heart, bare good will and were entirely devoted to himself and the · Pope. What more could he require? He had only to will, to order, and to annex.

But Philip was not to be so easily taken in by this earnest appeal, backed though it was by this great array of names. Our readers. will not fail to have noticed that Mr. Froude does not inform us what became of this petition, or what answer it received, or whether it received any answer at all. We shall take the liberty of supplying this omission. The king's reply, such as it is, is on the document itself, in his own handwriting.* It is written in Spanish. We give the translation as kindly made for us by a learned friend :—

"I do not know for what purpose this comes, nor who sends it; no letter of advice comes with it, and is the same (subject) as the Nuncio mentioned the other day. (Let) these letters be seen in Council, but not those which are wanting, which came along with them, which are in my Confessor's hands. He will send them to you beforehand, under charge of showing them to me again, in order that I may see what answer to give."

We must say we cannot admire the want of candour which withheld the king's answer, and afforded no hint even of its

existence.

We have now done. We have by no means exhausted this "Comedy of Errors" in this modern history, but we think we have said quite sufficient to guard our readers against being led astray by Mr. Froude's statements of the History of Ireland. It is evident that Protestantism in Ireland is Mr. Froude's bête noir. With a strange obliquity he attributes to this one source almost all the ills, all the wrongs, and all the disloyalty of Ireland and the Irish. To accomplish this primary purpose, he entirely ignores the whole previous history of that unhappy land. With an equally strange fatuity, he, an English gentleman, writing the history of his country, rakes up and records all the errors, all the shortcomings of the past, and at a moment when every loyal subject would wish to throw a veil over the sad passions and the bitter feuds of the past, he re-opens the old wounds, not to pour in oil and wine, but to inflame and aggravate an already sufficiently embittered sore. He throws a halo of grandeur and almost of glory around the Irish leaders, who, lashed into fury by papal and foreign agents, in an evil hour for themselves, their posterity, and their country, induced their poor ignorant followers to take up arms against their lawful sovereign, and that, not so much on account of their own real or fancied wrongs, but as a means to accomplish foreign objects, to advance foreign interests,

* We learn this most important fact from a gentleman officially employed amongst the Simancas Archives, who has also kindly favoured us with a transcript of the docu--ments preserved in Simancas.

and to promote the designs and the policy of foreign politicians. The guilty agents of foreign despots fondly hoped by their cunning craftiness to lessen the prestige, and eventually to destroy the power, of England, the incurable enemy of their bigotry, their intolerance, and their despotism. They fondly hoped to shake to the dust the very foundations of her empire-to snap in pieces her trident, and to render helpless and desolate the happy home of the oppressedthe glorious land of freedom and of the free. But "His truth" was England's shield and buckler. "Her strength" arose with more than a giant's might. He defeated the counsels of these Ahithophels. He scattered His and her enemies as "chaff before the wind, and as the thistle-down before the whirlwind," and "at the blast of the breath of His nostrils, the sea covered them; they sank as lead in the mighty waters." "O God, we have heard with our ears, and our fathers have told us, what works Thou didst in their days, and in the old time before them." Let us add in faith and humility, "Our father's God shall be our God for ever and for ever."

RICHARD NUgent.

[Since writing the above we are glad to be able to inform our readers that this great question has been most ably and learnedly dealt with by probably the greatest living authority on Irish Church History-the Archdeacon of Meath. He is well supported by an earnest and valiant supporter of the Irish Church, the Rev. Alfred Lee, LL.D. These learned friends exhaust the question, and leave nothing to be desired by the friends of our pure Protestant Church. We cordially commend "The Unity of the Anglican Church and the Succession of Irish Bishops," by the Archdeacon of Meath (Dublin, 8vo, Hodges, Smith, and Co.), and "The Irish Episcopal Succession," by the Rev. Dr. Lee (London, &c., 8vo, Rivingtons), to the attention of our readers.]

THE RISE AND PROGRESS OF MARIOLATRY.

THE worship of Mary was originally only a reflection of the wor

ship of Christ, and the feasts of Mary were designed to contribute to the glorifying of Christ. The system arose from the inner connection of the Virgin with the holy mystery of the Incarnation of the Son of God; though certainly with this leading religious and theological interest other motives combined. As mother of the Saviour of the world, the Virgin Mary unquestionably holds for ever a peculiar position among all women, and in the history of redemption. Even in heaven she must stand peculiarly near to Him whom on earth she bore, and whom she followed with true motherly care to the cross. It is perfectly natural, nay, essential to sound religious feeling, to associate with Mary the fairest traits of maidenly and maternal character, and to revere her as the highest model of female purity, love, and piety. From her example issues a silent blessing upon all generations, and her name and memory are, and ever will be, inseparable from the holiest mysteries and benefits of faith. For this reason her name is even wrought into the Apostles' Creed, in the simple and chaste words, "Conceived by the Holy Ghost, born of the Virgin Mary."

The Catholic Church, however, both Latin and Greck, did not stop with this. After the middle of the fourth century it overstepped the wholesome biblical limit, and transformed the "Mother of the

Hence

Lord" into a Mother of God, the humble "handmaid of the Lord "+ into a Queen of Heaven, the "highly favoured "‡ into a dispenser of favours, the "blessed among women "§ into an intercesser above all women, nay, we may almost say, the redeemed daughter of fallen Adam, who is nowhere in Holy Scripture excepted from the universal sinfulness, into a sinlessly holy co-redeemer. At first she was acquitted only of actual sin, afterwards even of original; though the doctrine of the immaculate conception of the Virgin was long contested, and was not established as an article of faith in the Roman Church till 1854. Thus the veneration of Mary gradually degenerated into the worship of Mary; and this took so deep hold upon the popular religious life in the Middle Age, that, in spite of all scholastic distinctions between latria, and dulia, and hyperdulia, Mariolatry practically prevailed over the worship of Christ. in the innumerable Madonnas of Catholic art the human mother is the principal figure, and the divine child accessory. The Catholic devotions scarcely utter a Pater Noster without an Ave Maria, and turn even more frequently and naturally to the compassionate, tenderhearted mother for her intercessions, than to the eternal Son of God, thinking that in this indirect way the desired gift is more sure to be obtained. To this day the worship of Mary is one of the principal points of separation between the Græco-Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. It is one of the strongest expressions of the fundamental Romish error of unduly exalting the human factors or instruments of redemption, and obstructing or rendering needless the immediate access of believers to Christ, by thrusting in subordinate mediators. Nor can we but agree with nearly all unbiassed historians in regarding the worship of Mary as an echo of ancient heathenism. It brings plainly to mind the worship of Ceres, of Isis, and of other ancient mothers of the gods; as the worship of saints and angels recalls the hero-worship of Greece and Rome. Polytheism was so deeply rooted among the people that it reproduced itself in Christian forms. The popular religious want had accustomed itself even to female deities, and very naturally betook itself first of all to Mary, the highly favoured and blessed mother of the divine-human Redeemer, as the worthiest object of adoration.

Let us now trace the main features in the historical development of the Catholic Mariology and Mariolatry.

The New Testament contains no intimation of any worship or festival celebration of Mary. On the one hand Mary is rightly called by Elizabeth, under the influence of the Holy Ghost, the "Mother of

* Η μήτηρ τοῦ κυρίου, Luke i. 43. Kexapırwμivŋ (pass. part), Luke i. 28.

† Ἡ δούλη κυρίου, Luke i. 38. § Εὐλογημένη ἐν γυναξίν. Luke i. 28.

the Lord"*—but nowhere "Mother of God," which is at least not entirely synonymous—and is saluted by her, as well as by the angel Gabriel, as "blessed among women; "+ nay, she herself prophesies in her inspired song, which has since resounded through all ages of the Church, that "henceforth all generations shall call me blessed."‡ Through all the youth of Jesus she appears as a devout virgin, full of childlike innocence, purity, and humility; and the few traces we have of her later life, especially the touching scene at the cross,§ confirm this impression. But, on the other hand, it is equally unquestionable that she is nowhere in the New Testament excepted from the universal sinfulness and the universal need of redemption, and represented as immaculately holy, or as in any way an object of divine veneration. On the contrary, true to the genuine female character, she modestly stands back throughout the Gospel history, and in the Acts and the Epistles she is mentioned barely once, and then simply as the "Mother of Jesus; "|| even her birth and her death are unknown. Her glory fades in holy humility before the higher glory of her Son. In truth, these are plain indications that the Lord, with prophetic reference to the future apotheosis of his mother according to the flesh, from the first gave warning against it. At the wedding in Cana he administered to her, though leniently and respectfully, a rebuke for premature zeal mingled perhaps with maternal vanity.¶

On a subsequent occasion he put her on a level with other female disciples, and made the carnal consanguinity subordinate to the spiritual kinship of the doing of the will of God.** The well-meant and in itself quite innocent benediction of an unknown woman upon his mother he did not indeed censure, but he corrected it with a benediction upon all who hear the word of God and keep it, and thus forestalled the deification of Mary by confining the ascription within the bounds of moderation.++

Luke i. 43 : Η μήτηρ τοῦ κυρίου μου.

† Luke i. 28: Χαῖρε, κεχαριτωμένη· ὁ κύριος μετὰ σοῦ, εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξίν. So Elizabeth, Lukei. 42: Εὐλογημένη σὺ ἐν γυναιξί, καὶ εὐλογημένος ὁ καρπὸς τῆς κοιλίας

σου.

† Luke i. 48 : ̓Απὸ τοῦ νῦν μακαριοῦσί με πᾶσαι αἱ γενεαί.

¶ John ii. 4: Ti ¿μoi kai σoı, yúval; compare the commentators on the passage. The expression "woman" is entirely respectful; compare John xix, 21; xx. 13, 15. But the "What have I to do with thee?" is, like the Hebrew 71-7 (Josh. xxii. 24; 2 Sam. xvi. 10; xix. 22; 1 Kings xvii. 18; 2 Kings iii. 13; 2 Chron. xxxv. 21), a rebuke and censure of undue interference; compare Matt. viii. 29; Luke viii. 28; Mark i. 24 (also the Classics). Meyer, the best grammatical expositor, observes on yúval, "that Jesus did not say μñtep flowed involuntarily from the sense of his higher wonder-working position, whence he repelled the interference of feminine weakness, which here met him even in his mother." ** Matt. xii. 46-50.

++ Luke xi. 27, 28. The μevovvye is emphatic, utique, but also corrective, imo vero; so