COUNCIL OF TRENT.

In the process of ascertaining the real state of doctrine and practice in the worship of the Church of Rome at the present day, we must first gain as clear and accurate a knowledge of the decree of the Council of Trent, as its words will enable us to form.  Into the character of that Council, and of those who constituted it, our present investigation does not lead us to inquire.  It is now, I believe, generally understood, that its decrees are binding on all who profess allegiance to the Sovereign Roman Pontiff; and that the man would be considered to have renounced the Roman Catholic Communion, who should professedly withhold his assent from the doctrines there promulgated as vital, or against the oppugners of which the Council itself pronounced an anathema.

Ecclesiastical writers[88] assure us, that the wording of the decrees of that Council was in many cases on purpose framed ambiguously and vaguely.  The latitude, however, of the expressions employed, does not in itself {230} of necessity imply any of those sinister and unworthy motives to which it has been usual with many writers to attribute it.  In charity, and without any improbable assumption, it may be referred to an honest and laudable desire of making the terms of communion as wide as might be, with a view of comprehending within what was regarded the pale of the Catholic Church, the greatest number of those who professed and called themselves Christians.  Be this as it may, the vagueness and uncertainty of the terms employed, compel us in many instances to have recourse to the actual practice of the Church of Rome, as the best interpreter of doubtful expressions in the articles of that Council.  The decree which bears on the subject of this volume is drawn up in the following words:—­

    [Footnote 88:  See Mosheim, xvi.  Cent. c. i. vol. iv. p. 196. 
    London, 1811.]

    “SESSION XXV.[89]

    “On the invocation, veneration, and reliques of saints, and of
    sacred images.

“The Holy Council commands all bishops and others bearing the office and care of instruction, that according to the usage of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, received from the primitive times of the Christian religion, and the consent of holy fathers, and decrees of sacred councils, they in the first place should instruct the faithful concerning the intercession and invocation of saints, the honour of reliques, and the lawful use of images, teaching them, that the SAINTS REIGNING TOGETHER WITH CHRIST, offer their own {231} prayers for men to God:  that it is good and profitable SUPPLIANTLY TO INVOKE THEM:  and to fly to their PRAYERS, HELP, and ASSISTANCE, for obtaining benefits from God, by his Son Jesus Christ our Lord, who is our only Redeemer and Saviour.  But that those who deny that the saints, enjoying everlasting happiness in heaven, are to be invoked; or who assert either that they do not pray for us; or that the invocation