the real character of Roman Catholic worship, rather than to draw fine
distinctions. I shall therefore survey within the same field of view the
two fatal errors by which, as we believe, the worship of the Church of
Rome is rendered unfit for the family of Christ to acknowledge it
generally as their own: I mean the adoration of saints, and the pleading
of their merits at the throne of grace, instead of trusting to the alone
exclusive merits of the one only Mediator Jesus Christ our Lord, and
addressing God Almighty alone.

[Footnote 92: I believe the method best calculated to supply us
with the very truth is, as I have before observed, to trace the
conduct of Christians at the shrines of the martyrs, and follow
them in their successive departures further and further from
primitive purity and simplicity, on the anniversaries of those
servants of God. What was hailed there first in the full warmth
of admiration and zeal for the honour and glory of a national or
favourite martyr, crept stealthily, and step by step, into the
regular and stated services of the Church.]

I. In the original form of those prayers in which mention was made of
the saints departed, Christians addressed the Supreme Being alone,
either in praise for the mercies shown to the saints themselves, and to
the Church through their means; or else in supplication, that the
worshippers might have grace to follow their example, and profit by
their instruction. Such, for instance, is the prayer in the Roman
ritual[93] on St. {246} John's day[94] which is evidently the foundation
of the beautiful Collect now used in the Anglican Church,--"Merciful
Lord, we beseech thee to cast thy bright beams of light upon thy Church,
that it being enlightened by the doctrine of thy Apostle and Evangelist
St. John, may so walk in the light of thy truth, that it may at length