of Christians, and not severing
ourselves from them because we deemed our views preferable to theirs. In
such a case we might well walk in the house of God as friends, without
any interruption of the harmony which should exist between those who
worship the true God with one heart and one mind, ever striving to keep
the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace. But when the points at
issue are of so vast moment; when two persons agreeing in the general
principles of belief in the Gospel and its chief characteristic
doctrines, yet find it impossible to join conscientiously in the same
prayer, or the same acts of faith and worship, then the necessity is
imperative on all who would not be parties to the utter breaking up of
Christian unity, nor assist in propagating error, to make sure of their
{11} foundations; and satisfy themselves by an honest inquiry and
upright judgment, that the fault does not rest with them.

Such appear to me both the doctrine and the practice of the INVOCATION
OF SAINTS. I have endeavoured to conjecture in what light this doctrine
and this practice would have presented itself to my mind, after a full
and free inquiry into the nature and history and circumstances of the
case, had I been brought up in communion with the Church of Rome; the
question to be solved being, "Could I continue in her communion?" And
the result of my inquiry is, that I must have either discarded that
doctrine at once and for ever, or have joined with my lips and my knees
in a worship which my reason condemned, and from which my heart shrunk.
I must have either left the communion of Rome, or have continued to
offer prayers to angels, and the spirits of departed mortals. Unless I
had resolved at once to shut my eyes upon my own personal
responsibility, and to surrender myself, mind and reason, soul and body,
to the sovereign and undisputed control of others, never presuming to
inquire into the foundation of what the Church of Rome taught; I must
have sought some purer portion of the Catholic Church, in which her
members addressed the One Supreme Being exclusively, without
contemplating any other in the act of religious invocation. The
distinction invented in comparatively late years, of the three kinds of
worship; one for God, the second for the Virgin Mary, the third for
Angels and Saints;--the distinction, too, between praying to a saint to
give us good things, and praying to that saint to procure them for us at
God's hand,