Isaac,
the God of Jacob, hath sent me unto you. This is my name for ever, and
this is my memorial throughout all generations." [Exod. iii. 6. 15.] Did
Moses in his alarm and dread, when he was afraid {26} to look upon God,
call upon those holy and accepted servants to aid him in his perplexity,
and intercede for him and his people with the awful Eternal Being on
whose majesty he dared not to look? Did he teach his people to invoke
Abraham? That was far from him. When Moses, that saint of the Lord, was
himself called hence and was buried, (though no mortal man was allowed
to know the place of his sepulture,) did the surviving faithful pray to
him for his help and intercession with God? He had wrought so many and
great miracles as never had been before witnessed on earth; whilst in
the tabernacle of the flesh he had talked with God as a man talketh with
his friend; and yet the sacred page records no invocation ever breathed
to his departed spirit. The same is the result of our inquiry
throughout.

I will specify only one more example--Hezekiah, who "trusted in the Lord
God of Israel, and clave to the Lord, and departed not from following
him, but kept his commandments," when he and his people were in great
peril, addressed his prayer only to God. He offered no invocation to
holy David to intercede with the Almighty for his own Jerusalem; he made
his supplication directly and exclusively to Jehovah; and, yet, the very
answer made to that prayer would surely have seemed to justify Hezekiah
in seeking holy David's mediation, if prayer for the intercession of any
departed mortal could ever have been sanctioned by Heaven: "Thus saith
the Lord, the God of David thy father; I have heard thy prayer, I have
seen thy tears; _I_ will heal thee. I will save this city for mine own
sake, and for my servant David's sake." [2 Kings (Vulg. 4 Kings) xix.
15. and xx. 6.] Of what saint in the calendar was ever such a thing as
this spoken? {27}

I have already intimated my intention of referring, with somewhat more
than a cursory remark, to the position assumed, and the argument built
upon it by writers in communion with Rome, for the purpose of nullifying
or escaping from the evidence borne by the examples of the Old Testament
against the invocation of saints. The writers to whom I refer, with
Bellarmin at their head, openly confess that the pages of the Old
Testament afford no instance of invocation being offered to the spirits
of depart