uiry and deliberation confirms me more and more in this:--

In the first place, negatively, that the Christian writers, through the
first three centuries and more, never refer to the invocation of saints
and angels as a practice with which they were familiar: that they have
not recorded or alluded to any forms of invocation of the kind used by
themselves or by the Church in their days; and that no services of the
earliest times contain hymns, litanies, or collects to angels, or to the
spirits of the faithful departed.

In the second place, positively, that the principles which they
habitually maintain and advocate are irreconcileable with such a
practice.

In tracing the history of the worship of saints and angels, we proceed
(gradually, indeed, though by no {65} means at all periods, and through
every stage, with equal rapidity,) from the earliest custom established
and practised in the Church,--of addressing prayers to Almighty God
alone for the sake of the merits of his blessed Son, the only Mediator
and Intercessor between God and man,--to the lamentable innovation both
of praying to God for the sake of the merits, and through the mediation
of departed mortals, and of invoking those mortals themselves as the
actual dispensers of the spiritual blessings which the suppliant seeks
from above. It is not only a necessary part of our inquiry for
ascertaining the very truth of the case; it is also curious and
painfully interesting, to trace the several steps, one after another,
beginning with the doctrine maintained by various early writers, both
Greek and Latin, that the souls of the saints are not yet reigning with
Christ in heaven, and ending with the anathema of the Council of Trent,
against all who should maintain that doctrine; beginning with prayer and
thanksgiving to Almighty God alone, and ending with daily prayers both
to saints and angels; one deviation from the strict line of religious
duty, and the pure singleness of Christian worship, successively gliding
into another, till at length the whole of Christendom, with a few
remarkable exceptions, was seen to acquiesce in public and private
devotions, which, if proposed, the whole of Christendom would once with
unanimity have rejected.

Before I offer to you the result of my inquiries as to the progressive
stages of degeneracy and innovation in the worship of Almighty God, I
would premise two considerations:

First, I would observe, that the soundness of my c