[Footnote 103: This collect also is found in the Roman Missal,
as a Prayer at the Post Communion; though it does not appear in
the Breviarium Romanum.]

In the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, feasts are observed to
the honour of the Virgin Mary, in which the Anglican Church cannot join;
such as the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and the immaculate conception
of her by her mother. On the origin and nature of these feasts it is not
my intention to dwell. I can only express my regret, that by appointing
a service and a collect commemorative of the Conception of the
Virgin[104] in her mother's womb, and praying that the observance of
that solemnity may procure the votaries an increase of peace, the Church
of Rome has given countenance to a superstition, against which at its
commencement, so late as the 12th century, St. Bernard strongly
remonstrated, in an epistle to the monks of Lyons; a superstition which
has been supported and explained by discussions in no way profitable to
the head or the heart. [Epist. 174. Paris, 1632, p. 1538.]

[Footnote 104: Ut quibus beatæ Virginis partus exstitit salutis
exordium, conceptionis ejus votiva solemnitas pacis tribuat
incrementum. H. 445.]

Of all these institutions however in honour of the Virgin, the Feast of
the ASSUMPTION appears to be as it were the crown and the
consummation[105]. This festival {298} is kept to celebrate the
miraculous taking up (assumptio) of the Virgin Mary into heaven. And its
celebration, in Roman Catholic countries, is observed in a manner worthy
a cause to which our judgment would give deliberately its sanction; in
which our feelings would safely and with satisfaction rest on the