Page:Tracts for the Times Vol 3.djvu/69

Rh and ages, existing especially where the system is allowed to act most freely, and only absent where external checks are present, sanctioned moreover by its celebrated teachers and expositors, and advocated by its controversialists with the tacit consent of the whole body, under such circumstances surely it is not unfair to consider our case parallel to that of the Catholics during the ascendancy of Arianism. Surely it is not unfair in such a case to interpret the formal document of belief by the realized form of it in the Church, and to apprehend that, did we express our assent to the creed of Pope Pius, we should find ourselves bound hand and foot, as the fathers at Ariminum, to the corruptions of those who profess it.

To take the instances of the Adoration of Images and the Invocation of Saints. The Tridentine Decree declares that it is good and useful suppliantly to invoke the Saints, and that the Images of Christ, and the Blessed Virgin, and the other Saints should "receive due honour and veneration;" words, which themselves go to the very verge of what could be received by the cautious Christian, though possibly admitting of a honest interpretation. Now we know in matter of fact that in various parts of the Roman Church, a worship approaching to idolatrous is actually paid to Saints and Images, in countries very different from each other, as for instance, Italy and the Netherlands, and has been countenanced by eminent men and doctors, and that, without any serious or successful protest from any quarter: further that, though there may be countries where no scandal of the kind exists, yet these are such as have, in their neighbourhood to Protestantism, a practical restraint upon the natural tendency of their system.

Moreover, the silence which has been observed, age after age, by the Roman Church, as regards these excesses, is a point deserving of serious attention;—for two reasons: first, because of the very solemn warnings pronounced by our Lord and His Apostle, against those who introduce scandals into the Church, warnings which seem almost prophetic of such as exist in the Latin branches of it. Next it must be considered that the Roman Church has had the power to denounce and extirpate them. Not to mention its use of its Apostolical powers in other matters,