Rome for the 15th of August before us, examine the evidence on which
that religious {302} service, the most solemn consummation of all the
rest, is founded.

In the service of the Assumption, more than twice seven times is it
reiterated in a very brief space, and with slight variations of
expression, that Mary was taken up into heaven; and that, not on any
general and indefinite idea of her beatific and glorified state, but
with reference to one specific single act of divine favour, performed at
a fixed time, effecting her assumption, as it is called, "to-day." [Æs.
595.] "To-day Mary the Virgin ascended the heavens. Rejoice, because she
is reigning with Christ for ever." "Mary the Virgin is taken up into
heaven, to the ethereal chamber in which the King of kings sits on his
starry throne." "The holy mother of God hath been exalted above the
choirs of angels to the heavenly realms." "Come, let us worship the King
of kings, to whose ethereal heaven the Virgin Mother was taken up
to-day." And that it is her bodily ascension, her corporeal assumption
into heaven, and not merely the transit of her soul[108] from mortal
life to eternal bliss, which the Roman Church maintains and propagates
by this service, is put beyond doubt by the service itself. In the
fourth and sixth reading[109], or lesson, for example, we find these
{303} sentences:--"She returned not into the earth but is seated in the
heavenly tabernacles." "How could death devour, how could those below
receive, how could corruption invade, THAT BODY, in which life was
received? For it a direct, plain, and easy path to heaven was prepared."

[Footnote 108: Lambecius, indeed (book viii. p. 306), distinctly
affirms, that one object which the Church had in view was to
condemn the HERESY of those who maintain that the reception of
the Virgin into heaven, was the reception of her soul only, and