abound.  It by no means follows that if some such allusions were partially discoverable, therefore the doctrines and practice must forthwith be pronounced to be apostolical; but if no such traces can be found, their absence bears witness that neither did those doctrines nor that practice exist.  If, for example, through the remains of the first three centuries we could have discovered no trace of the doctrine or practice of holy Baptism and the Eucharist, we must have concluded that the doctrine and the practice were the offspring of later years.  But when we read every where, in those remains, exhortations to approach those holy mysteries with a pure heart and faith unfeigned; when we find rules prescribed for the more orderly administration of the rites; in a word, when we perceive throughout as familiar references to these ordinances as could be now made by Catholics either of Rome or of England, while this would not of itself necessarily prove their divine origin, we should with equal plausibility question the existence of Jerusalem or Constantinople, or of David or Constantine, as we {72} should doubt the prevalence both of the doctrine and practice of the Church in these particulars, even from the Apostles’ days.

With these principles present to our minds, I now invite you to accompany me in a review of the testimonies of primitive Christian antiquity with regard to supplications and invocations of saints and angels, and of the blessed Virgin Mary.

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SECTION II—­CENTURY I.—­THE EVIDENCE OF THE APOSTOLIC FATHERS.

It will be necessary for the satisfaction of all parties, that we examine, in the first place, those ancient writings which are ascribed to an Apostle, or to fellow-labourers of the Apostles; familiarly known as the writings of the Apostolic Fathers.  They are five in number, Barnabas, Clement, Hermas, Ignatius, and Polycarp.  Many able writers, as well of the Roman as of the Anglican communion, have discussed at large the genuineness of these writings; and have come to very different results.  Some critics are of opposite and extreme opinions, others ranging between them with every degree and shade of variation.  Some of these works have been considered spurious; others have been pronounced genuine; though, even these have been thought to be, in many parts, interpolated.  The question, however, of their genuineness, though deeply interesting in itself, will not affect their testimony with {73} regard to the subject before us[20].  They were all in existence before the Council of Nicaea; and we shall probably not be wrong in assigning to the first two a date at the very lowest computation not less remote than the middle of the second century; somewhere, it may be, at the furthest, about one hundred years after the death of our Lord. (A.D. 130-150.) With all their errors and blemishes and interpolations taken