sort of climacteric in the history of the early Church.  It was the first Council to which all the bishops of Christendom were summoned; and the influence of its decrees is felt beneficially in the Catholic Church to this very day.  In fixing upon this Council as our present boundary line, I was influenced by a conviction, that the large body of Christians, whether of the Roman, the Anglican, or any other branch of the Church Catholic, would consent to this as an indisputable axiom,—­that what the Church Catholic did not believe or practise up to {393} that date of her existence upon earth, cannot be regarded as either Catholic or primitive, or apostolical.  Ending with St. Athanasius, (who, though he was present at that Council, yet brings his testimony down through almost another half century, his death not having taken place till A.D. 873, on the verge of his eightieth year,) we have examined the remains of Christian antiquity, reckoning forward to that Council from the times of the Apostles.  We have searched diligently into the writings, the sentiments, and the conduct of those first disciples of our Lord.  We have contemplated the words of our blessed Saviour himself, and the inspired narrative of his life and teaching.  With the same object in view we have studied the prophets of the Old Testament, and the works of Moses; and we have endeavoured, at the fountainhead, to ascertain what is the mind and will of God, as revealed to the world from the day when He made man, on the question of our invoking the angels and saints to intercede with Him in our behalf, or to assist and succour us on the earth.  And the result is this:—­From first to last, the voice of God Himself, and the voices of the inspired messengers of heaven, whether under the patriarchal, the Mosaic, or the Christian dispensations, the voices too of those maintainers of our common faith in Christ, who prayed, and taught, in the Church, before the corruptions of a degenerate world had mingled themselves with the purity of Christian worship, combine all, in publishing, throughout the earth, one and the self-same principle, “Pray only to God; draw nigh to Him alone; invoke no other; seek no other in the world of spirits, neither angel, nor beatified saint; seek Him, and He will favourably, with mercy, hear your prayers.”  To this one {394} principle, when the Gospel announced the whole counsel of God in the salvation of man, our Lord himself, his Apostles, and his Church, unite in adding another principle of eternal obligation,—­There is one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus; whatsoever the faithful shall ask the Father in the name of that Mediator, He will grant it to them:  He is ever living to make intercession for those who believe in Him:  Invoke we no other intercessor, apply we neither to saint nor angel, plead we the merits of no other.  Let us lift up our hearts to God Almighty himself, and make our requests known to Him in the name, and through the mediation of Christ, and He will fulfil our desires and petitions as may be most expedient for us; He will grant to us, in this world, a knowledge of his truth, and in the world to come life everlasting!