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SECTION IV.—­BIEL, DAMIANUS, BERNARDINUS DE BUSTIS, BERNARDINUS SENENSIS, &c.

Unhappily these excesses in the worship of the Virgin Mary are not confined to Bonaventura, or to his age.  We have too many examples of the same extravagant exaltation of her as an object of adoration and praise in men, whose station and abilities seemed to hold them forth to the world as burning and shining lights.  Again, let me repeat, that in thus soliciting your attention to the doctrines and expressed feelings of a few from among the host of the Virgin’s worshippers, I am far from believing that the enlightened Roman Catholics in England now are ready to respond to such sentiments.  My desire is that all persons should be made aware of the excesses into which even celebrated teachers have been tempted to run, when they once admitted the least inroad to be made upon the integrity of God’s worship; and I am anxious also, without offence, but with all openness, to caution my countrymen against encouraging that revival of the worship of the Virgin in England, to promote which the highest authorities in the Church of Rome have lately expressed their solicitude, intimating, at the same time, their regret that the worship of the Virgin at the present time has, in England, degenerated from its exaltation in former ages, and that England is now far behind her continental neighbours in her worship.  Though these excessive departures from Gospel truth and the primitive worship of one God by one Mediator may not be the doctrines of all who belong to the Church of Rome, yet they are the tenets of some of her most {368} celebrated doctors, of men who were raised to her highest dignities in their lifetime, and solemnly enrolled by her among the saints of glory after their death.  Their words and their actions are appealed to now in support of similar tenets and doctrines, though few, in this country at least, are found to put them forth in all their magnitude and fulness.  But even in their mildest and least startling form these doctrines are awfully dangerous.

The fact is, that the direct tendency of the worship of the Virgin, as practically illustrated in the Church of Rome, is to make GOD himself an object of FEAR, and the VIRGIN an object of LOVE; to invest Him, who is the Father of mercy and God of all comfort, with awfulness, and majesty, and with the terrors of eternal justice, and in direct and striking contrast to array the Virgin mother with mercy and benignity, and compassionate tenderness.  Christians cannot be too constantly and too carefully on their guard against doing this wrong to our heavenly Father.  His own inspired word invites us to regard Him not only as the God of love, but as Love itself.  “God is love;” [1 John iv. 8.] and so far from terrifying us by representations of his tremendous majesty, and by declarations that we cannot ourselves draw nigh to God; so far from bidding us to approach Him with our suits and supplications