their metrical composition, and it is said that upwards of nine hundred
and fifty faults in metre were corrected, which gave to Urban occasion
to say that the Fathers had begun rather than completed the hymns.
These, as corrected, he caused to be inserted in the Breviary. Grancolas
proceeds to tell us that many complained of these changes, alleging that
the primitive simplicity and piety which breathed in the hymns had been
sacrificed to the niceties of poetry. "Accessit Latinitas, et recessit
pietas." The verse was neater, but the thought was chilled.

VI. But the Roman Church by no means limits herself to this kind of
invocation; prayers are addressed to saints, imploring them to hear,
and, as of themselves, to grant the prayers of the faithful on earth,
and to release them from the bands of sin, without any allusion to
prayers to be made by those saints. It grieves me to copy out the
invocation made to St. Peter on the 18th of January, called the
anniversary of the Chair of St. Peter at Rome; the words of our Blessed
Lord himself, and of his beloved and inspired Apostle, seem to rise up
in judgment against that prayer, and condemn it. It {261} will be well
to place that hymn addressed to St. Peter, side by side with the very
word of God, and then ask, Can this prayer be safe?

1. Now, O good Shepherd, 1. Jesus saith, I am the good
merciful Peter, Shepherd. John x. 11.

2. Accept the prayers of us 2. Whatsoever ye shall ask in
who supplicate, my name, that will I do. That
whatsoever ye shall ask the
Father in my name, he may give
it you. John xiv. 13; xv. 16.