I close then the catalogue of our witnesses before the Council of Nicaea with the testimony of St. Athanasius; whose genuine and acknowledged works afford not one jot or tittle in support of the doctrine and practice of the invocation of angels and saints, as now insisted upon by the Church of Rome; and the direct {190} tendency of whose evidence is decidedly hostile both to that doctrine and that practice.

I have seen it observed by some who are satisfied, that the records of primitive antiquity do not contain such references to the invocation of saints and angels, as we might have expected to find had the custom then prevailed, that the earliest Christians kept back the doctrine and concealed it, though they held it; fearing lest their heathen neighbours should upbraid them with being as much polytheists as themselves[66].  This is altogether a gratuitous assumption, directly contrary to evidence, and totally inconsistent with their conduct.  Had those first Christians acted upon such a debasing principle, they would have kept back and concealed their worship of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, as exposing them to a similar charge.  They were constantly upbraided with worshipping a crucified {191} mortal; but instead of either meeting that charge by denying that they worshipped Jesus as their God, or of concealing the worship of Him, lest they should expose themselves again to such upbraidings, they publicly professed, that He whom the Jews had murdered, they believed in as the Son of God, Himself their God.  They gloried in the doctrine of the ever-blessed Trinity, and did not fear what men might do to them, or say of them in consequence.  Had they believed in the duty of invoking saints and angels, the high principle of Christian integrity would not have suffered them to be ashamed to confess it, or to practise openly what they believed.

[Footnote 66:  Bishop Morley, (London, 1683,) in a letter written whilst he was in exile at Breda, to J. Ulitius, refers to Cardinal Perron, “Replique a la Resp. du Roy de la Grande Bret.” p. 1402 and 4, for this sentiment:  “The Fathers do not always speak what they think, but conceal their real sentiments, and say that which best serves the cause which they sustain, so as to protect it against the objections of the gentiles.  The Fathers, as much as in them lies, and as far as they can, avoid and decline all occasions of speaking about the invocation of saints then practised in the Church, fearing lest to the gentiles there might appear a sort of similarity, although untrue and equivocal, between the worship paid to the saints by the Church, and by the Pagans to their false divinities; and lest the Pagans might thence seize a handle, however unfair, of retorting upon them that custom of the Church.”  Had a member of the Anglican Church thus spoken of the Fathers, and thus pleaded in their name guilty of subterfuge and duplicity, he would have been immediately charged with irreverence and wanton insult, and that with good reason.  These sentiments of the Cardinal are in p. 982 of the Paris edition of 1620.] {192}

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