our flesh, so we may be presented unto Him with pure and clean hearts by the same, his Son Jesus Christ our Lord.  These days are observed to commemorate events declared to us on the most sure warrant of Holy Scripture; and these prayers are primitive and evangelical.  They pray only to God for spiritual blessings through his Son.  The second prayer was used in the Church {297} from very early times, and is still retained in the Roman Breviary (Hus.  Brev.  Rom.  H. 536.); whereas, instead of the first[103], we find there unhappily a prayer now supplicating that those who offer it, “believing Mary to be truly the Mother of God, might be aided by her intercessions with Him.” [V. 496.]

    [Footnote 103:  This collect also is found in the Roman Missal,
    as a Prayer at the Post Communion; though it does not appear in
    the Breviarium Romanum.]

In the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, feasts are observed to the honour of the Virgin Mary, in which the Anglican Church cannot join; such as the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and the immaculate conception of her by her mother.  On the origin and nature of these feasts it is not my intention to dwell.  I can only express my regret, that by appointing a service and a collect commemorative of the Conception of the Virgin[104] in her mother’s womb, and praying that the observance of that solemnity may procure the votaries an increase of peace, the Church of Rome has given countenance to a superstition, against which at its commencement, so late as the 12th century, St. Bernard strongly remonstrated, in an epistle to the monks of Lyons; a superstition which has been supported and explained by discussions in no way profitable to the head or the heart. [Epist. 174.  Paris, 1632, p. 1538.]

    [Footnote 104:  Ut quibus beatae Virginis partus exstitit salutis
    exordium, conceptionis ejus votiva solemnitas pacis tribuat
    incrementum.  H. 445.]

Of all these institutions however in honour of the Virgin, the Feast of the ASSUMPTION appears to be as it were the crown and the consummation[105].  This festival {298} is kept to celebrate the miraculous taking up (assumptio) of the Virgin Mary into heaven.  And its celebration, in Roman Catholic countries, is observed in a manner worthy a cause to which our judgment would give deliberately its sanction; in which our feelings would safely and with satisfaction rest on the firmness of our faith; from joining in which a truly pious mind would have no ground for inward misgiving, nor for the aspiration, Would it were founded in truth!

[Footnote 105:  “The Assumption of the Virgin Mary is the greatest of all the festivals which the Church celebrates in her honour.  It is the consummation of all the other great mysteries by which her life was rendered most wonderful.  It is the birthday of her true greatness and glory, and the crown of all the virtues of her whole life, which we admire single in her other festivals.”