The volume abounds with forms of prayer to the Virgin, many of them prefaced by extraordinary notifications of indulgences promised to those who duly utter {194} the prayers.  These indulgences are granted by Popes and by Bishops; some on their own mere motion, others at the request of influential persons.  They guarantee remission of punishment for different spaces of time, varying from forty days to ninety thousand years; they undertake to secure freedom from hell; they promise pardon for deadly sins, and for venial sins to the same person for the same act; they assure to those who comply with their directions a change of the pain of eternal damnation into the pain of purgatory, and the pain of purgatory into a free and full pardon.

It may be said that the Church of Rome is not responsible for all these things.  But we need not tarry here to discuss the question how far it was then competent for a church or nation to have any service-book or manual of devotion for the faithful, without first obtaining the papal sanction.  For clear it is beyond all question, that such frightful corruptions as these, of which we are now to give instances, were spread throughout the land; that such was the religion then imposed on the people of England; and it was from such dreadful enormities, that our Reformation, to whatever secondary cause that reformation is to be attributed—­by the providence of Almighty God rescued us.  No one laments more than I do, the extremes into which many opponents of papal Rome have allowed themselves to run; but no one can feel a more anxious desire than myself to preserve our Church and people from a return of such spiritual degradation and wretchedness; and to keep far from us the most distant approaches of such lamentable and ensnaring superstitions.  In this feeling moreover I am assured that I am joined by many of the most respected and influential members of the Roman Catholic Church among us. {195} Still what has been may be; and it is the bounden duty of all members of Christ’s Catholic Church, to whatever branch of it they belong, to join in guarding his sanctuary against such enemies to the truth as it is in HIM.

At the same time it would not be honest and candid in me, were I to abstain from urging those, who, with ourselves, deprecate these excesses, to carry their reflections further; and determine whether the spirit of the Gospel does not require a total rejection, even in its less startling forms, of every departure from the principle of invoking God alone; and of looking for acceptance with Him solely to the mediation of his Son, without the intervention of any other merits.  As we regard it, it is not a question of degree; it is a question of principle:  one degree may be less revolting to our sense of right than another, but it is not on that account justifiable.

The following specimens, a few selected from an overabundant supply, will justify the several particulars in the summary which I have above given: