3rd.  The third stage seems to have owed its origin to orators constantly dwelling upon the excellences of the saints in the panegyrics delivered over their remains, representing their constancy and Christian virtues as superhuman and divine, and as having conferred lasting benefits on the Church.  By these benefits at first was meant the comfort and encouragement of their good example, and the honour procured to the religion of the cross by their bearing witness to its truth even unto death; but in process of time the habit grew of attaching a sort of mysterious efficacy to their merits; hence this third gradation in religious worship, namely, prayers to God that “He would hear his suppliants, and grant their requests for the sake of his martyred servant, and by the efficacy of that martyr’s merits.”

4th.  Hitherto, unauthorized and objectionable as the two last forms of prayer are, still the petitions in each case were directed to God alone.  The next step swerved lamentably from that principle of worship, and the petitioners addressed their requests to angels and sainted men in heaven; at first, however, confining their petitions to the asking for their prayers and intercessions with Almighty God.

5th.  The last stage in this progressive degeneracy of Christian worship was to petition the saints and angels, directly and immediately themselves, at first for the temporal, and afterwards for the spiritual benefits which the petitioners desired to obtain from heaven.  For it {69} is very curious, but not more curious than evident, that the worshippers seem for some time to have petitioned their saints for temporal and bodily benefits, before they proceeded to ask for spiritual blessings at their hands, or by their prayers. (See Basil.  Oral. in Mamanta Martyrem.)

Of these several gradations and stages we find traces in the records of Christian antiquity, after superstition and corruption had spread through Christian worship, and leavened the whole.  Of all of them we have lamentable instances in the present ritual of the Church of Rome, as we shall see somewhat at large when we reach that division of our inquiry.  But from the beginning it was not so.  In the earliest ages we find only the first of these forms of worship exemplified, and it is the only form now retained in the Anglican Ritual; of which, among other examples, the following passage in the prayer for Christ’s Church militant on earth supplies a beautiful specimen:  “We bless Thy holy name for all Thy servants departed this life in Thy faith and fear; beseeching Thee to give us grace so to follow their good examples, that with them we may be partakers of Thy heavenly kingdom:  Grant this, O Father, for Jesus Christ’s sake, our only Mediator and Advocate.  Amen.”