Let us substitute for the name of Mary, the holiest of all, The Eternal Spirit of Jehovah Himself; and will not these words be a proper vehicle of the sentiments of a Christian pastor?  Let us fix upon Christmas-day, or Easter, or Holy Thursday, and what word expressive {382} of gratitude for past mercies to the supreme Giver of all good things, or of hope and trust in the guidance of the Spirit of counsel, and wisdom, and strength—­of the most High God, who alone can order the wills and ways of men—­might not a bishop of Christ’s flock take from this declaration of the Sovereign Pontiff, and use in its first and natural sense, when speaking of the Lord Jehovah Himself?  “We select for the date of our letter this most joyful day on which we celebrate the solemn festival of the most blessed Redeemer’s nativity, (or glorious resurrection, or ascension,) that He who has been through every great calamity our patron and protector, may watch over us writing to you, and lead our mind by his heavenly influence to those counsels which may prove most salutary to Christ’s flock.”

In these sentiments of the present Pope there is no allusion (as there is in the other clause) to Mary’s prayers and intercessions.  Looking to and weighing the words employed, and as far as words can be relied upon as interpreters of the thoughts, looking to the spirit of his profession, only one inference can be fairly drawn.  However direct and immediate the prayers of the suppliants may be to the Virgin for her protection and defence from all dangers, spiritual and bodily, and for the guidance of the inmost thoughts in the right way, (blessings which we of the Anglican Catholic Church, following the footsteps of the primitive flock of Christ, have always looked for at the hand of God Almighty only, to be granted by Him for the sake of his blessed Son,) such petitioners to Mary would be sanctioned to the utmost by the principles and example of the present Roman Pontiff.

We have already, when examining the records of {383} the Council of Chalcedon, compared the closing words of this encyclical letter with the more holy and primitive aspirations of the Bishops of Rome and Constantinople in those earlier days; and the comparison is striking between the sentiments now expressed in the opening parts of the same letter, and the spirit of the collects which were adopted for the use of the faithful, before the invocation of saints and of the Virgin had gained its present strong hold in the Church of Rome.  For example, a collect at Vespers teaches us to pray to God as the source from whom all holy desires and all good counsels proceed [Hiem. 149.]; and on the fifth Sunday after Easter this prayer is offered:  “O God, from whom all good things do come, grant, we pray Thee, that by thy inspiration we may think those things that be good; and by thy guidance may perform the same;” whilst on the fifth Sunday after the Epiphany, in a collect, the spirit of which is strongly contrasted with the sentiments in both