Primitive Christian Worship

er of our Lord:-the announcement of the Saviour's birth by the message of an angel, called, "The Annunciation of the bles

e in the substance of our flesh, so we may be presented unto Him with pure and clean hearts by the same, his Son Jesus Christ our Lord. These days are observed to commemorate events declared to us on the most sure warrant of Holy Scripture; and these prayers are primitive and evangelical. They pray only to God for spiritual blessings through his S

the Roman Missal, as a Prayer at the Post Communion;

n to dwell. I can only express my regret, that by appointing a service and a collect commemorative of the Conception of the Virgin104 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 s

tus exstitit salutis exordium, conceptionis ejus v

sumptio) 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 feeling

s the consummation of all the other great mysteries by which her life was rendered most wonderful. It is the birthday of her true greatness a

who, by their doctrine and writings, uphold, and defend, and advance it; lest they prove at the last to love Rome rather than the truth as it is in Jesus. So solemn, so marked, a religious service in the temples and at the altar of HIM who is the truth, a service so exalted above his fellows, ought beyond question to be founded on the most sure w

f the festival to be so remote, that its origin cannot be traced; and thence infer that it was instituted by a silent and unrecorded act of the Apostles themselves; others (among whom Kollarius, the learned annotator on the opinion of Lambecius) acknowledg

rance of probability, appealing to histories written more than a thousand years after the alleged event, to forged documents and vague rumours. I was willing to doubt the sufficiency of my research; till I found its defenders, instead of alleging and establishing by evidence what God was by them said to have done, contenting themselves with asserting his omnipotence, in proof that

thers might pronounce it fit that God should do, but what He has done; not what would be agreeable to our feelings, were it true, but what, whether agreeably or adversely to our feelings or wishes, is proved to be true. The very moment a Christian writer re

ire into the fa

assigned it to the year 48 of the Christian era, about the time at which Paul and Barnabas (as we read in Holy Scripture) returned to Antioch; whilst others refer it to a later date. I am not, however, aware of any supposition which fixes it at a period subsequent to that at which the canon of Scripture closes. Epiphanius indeed, towards the close of the f

before them. To such persons I trust this chapter may not appear altogether unworthy of their consideration. Those who would turn from it on the principle to which we have here alluded, will find themselves very closely responding to the sentiments professed by St. Bernard, "Exalt her who is exalted above the choirs of angels to the heavenly kingdom. These things the Church sings to me of her, and has taught me to sing the same

the Conception of the holy Mary. Paris, 1632, p. 1538. His observations in that letter, with a view of discountenancing t

me for the 15th of August before us, examine the evidence on which that r

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 soul108 from mo

ERESY of those who maintain that the reception of the Virgin into heaven, was the reception of her soul only, and not also of her body. "Ut damnet

m. Quomodo mois devoraret, quomodo inferi susciperent, quomodo corruptio invaderit CORPUS ILLU

ur Lord, and that within eight days, we find mentioned the name of Mary promiscuously with others; after that, no allusion is made to her in life or in death; and no account, as far as I can find, places her death too late for mention to have be

light does primitive antiquity e

sebius, opposite the year of our Lord 48. This is cited by Coccius without any remark; and even Baronius rests the date of Mary's assumption upon this testimony.

er. But instead of this passage deserving the name of Eusebius as its author, it is now on all sides acknowledged to be altogether a palpable interpolation. Suspicions, one would suppose, must have been at a very remote date suggested as to the genuineness of this sentence. Many manuscripts, especially the seven in the Vatican, were known to contain nothing of the kind; and the Roman Catholic editor of the Chronicon at Bordeaux, A.D. 1604

he Chronicon of Eusebius was going through the press, and can testify to the a

ved after the heresies of Nestorius and Eutyches had been condemned. I am not at all anxious to enter upon that point of criticism; that the letter is of very ancient origin cannot be doubted. This document would lead us to conclude, that so far from the tradition regarding the Virgin's assumption being general in the Church, it was a point of gra

Eustochium de Assumptione B.M. Virginis." It is found in th

use he asserts, that the faithful in his time still expressed doubts as to the matter of fact of Mary's assumption. By assigning, however, to the letter a still later date than the

John, the Evangelist, his servant, to whom being a virgin, the virgin was intrusted by Christ, because in his sepulchre, as it is reported, nothing is found but manna, which also is seen to flow forth. Nevertheless which of these opinions should be thought the more true we doubt. Yet it is better to commit all to God, to whom nothing is impossible, than to wish to define rashly113 by our own authority any thing, which

the author's own opinion, "Which we do not appr

loyed in effecting it. The first authority appealed to in defence of the tradition relating to the assumption of the Virgin114, is usually cited as a well-known work written by E

with these words: "Euthumius Eremita Histori? Ecclesi

Coccius differs in some points from

this royal city. But Juvenal answered, 'In the holy and divinely inspired Scripture, indeed, nothing is recorded of the departure of holy Mary, mother of God. But from an ancient and most true tradition we have received, that at the time of her glorious falling asleep, all the holy Apostles who were going through the world for the salvation of the nations, in a moment of time borne aloft, came together at Jerusalem. And when they were near her, they had a vision of angels, and divine melody of the highest powers was heard: and thus with divine and more than heavenly glory, she delivered her holy soul into the hands of God in an unspeakable manner. But that which had conceived God being borne with angelic and apostolic psalmody, with funeral rites, was deposited in a coffin in Gethsemane. In this place the chorus and singing of the angels continued for three whole days. But after three days, on the angelic music ceasin

is page of ecclesiastical history. Not that the evidence alleged in support of the reputed miracle can leave us in doubt as to the credibility of the tradition; for that tradition can scarcely be now countenanced by the most zealous and uncompromising maintainers of the assumption of the Virgin. What I would say is, that th

ed 1665, says he was not aware that any one had so published them before his time116. But not to raise the question of their genuineness, the preacher's introduction of this passage into his homily is preceded by a very remarkable section, affording a striking example of the manner in which Christian orators used to indulge in addresses and appeals not only to the spirits of departed men, but even to things which never had life. The speaker here in his sermon address

blished them in 1712, refers to earlier homilies on the D

other of God?" [Vol. ii. p. 875.] The answer of the tomb begins thus, "Why seek ye her in a tomb, who has been taken up on high to the heavenly tabernacles?" In reply to this, the preacher first deliberating with his hearers what answer he should make, thus addresses t

brethren, what answer the all-glorious tomb makes to us; and that these things are so, in the

lesiastic, whom he supposes to be Cyril, the monk, who died in A.D. 531. This opinion of Lambecius is combated by Cotelerius; the discussion only adding to the denseness of the cloud which involves the whole tradition. But

tions on the departure of the Virgin out of this life; he thinks, moreover, that the Feast of the Assumption was at the commencement of the seventh century only recently instituted. Though all later writers affirm that the Virgin was buried in the valley of Jehoshaphat, in the garden of Gethsemane, the same editor says, that this could not have been known to Jerome, who passed a great part of his life in Beth

t the approach of death her exceeding fear of being exposed to the wiles of Satan,) he concludes, from that circumstance, that the work was written before the Council of Ephesus; alleging th

on of such prejudice be otherwise than increased by the insinuation which the same editor throws out against the honesty of Archbishop Juvenal, and on the possibility of his having invented the whole story, and so for sinister purposes deceived Marcian and Pul

he quotation carry in themselves clear proof that Juvenal's answer, as it now appears in John Damascenus, could not have been made by Juvenal to Marcian and Pulcheria. For in it is quoted from Dionysius the Areopagite by name, a passage still found in the works ascribed to him; whereas by the judgment of the most learn

he sight of the body which gave the principle of life; and there was present too James the brother of the Lord ([Greek: adelphotheos]), and Peter the chief and the most revered head of the apostles ([Greek: theologon]); then it seemed right, after the spectacle, that all the hierarchs (as each was able) should sing of the boundless goodness of the divine power. After the apostles, as you know, he surpassed all the other sacred persons, wholly carried away, and altogether in an ecstasy, and feeling an entire sympathy with what was sung; and by all by whom he was heard, and seen, and known (and he11

riginal ([Greek: kai eginosketo, kai ouk eginoske]

Rome for the feast of the Assumption, to be read to believers assembled in God's house of prayer,

Fourth Lesson begins "Ho

"Hodie virgo

Eva qu? serpent

ch of Rome to be in the CORPOREAL assumption of Mary. "Quomodo corruptio invaderet CORPUS IL

Bishop of Jerusalem is represented to have informed the Emperor and Empress of an ancient tradition, which was believed, concerning a miraculous event, said to have taken place nearly four hundred years before, that the body was taken out of a coffin without the knowledge of those who had deposited it there: Whilst the primitive a

aronius also refers to lib. 15. c. 14. This Nicephorus was Patriarch of Constantinople. He lived during the reign of our Edward the First, or Edward the Second, and cannot, therefore, be cited in any sense of the word as an a

icephorus Callistus, who, at the end of the thirteenth or the beginning of the fourteenth c

g torches120. The Apostles surrounded her bed, and "an outpouring of miracles flowed forth." The blind beheld the sun, the deaf heard, the lame walked, and every disease fled away. The Apostles and others sang, as the coffin was borne from Sion to Gethsemane, angels preceding, surrounding, and following it. A wonderful thing then took place. The Jews were indignant and enraged, and one more despera

s the forged work ascribed to Dionysius the

y," printed in Paris in 1526, from which we have made many extracts in the second part of this work, the frontispiece gives an exact representation of the story at the moment of the Jew's hands being cut off. They are severed at

ceived, that the Apostles opened the coffin to enable St. Thomas (the one stated to have been absent) to e

of the fifth century, or later; and that he should have declared in a letter to his contemporaries that the subject was one on which many doubted; and that he himself would not deny it, not because it rested upon probable evidence, but because nothing was impossible with God; and that nothing was known as to the time, the manner, or the persons concerned, even had the assumption taken place? Can we place any confidence in the relation of a writer in the middle of the sixth century, as to a tradition of what an archbishop of Jerusalem

dismissed summarily; and seems to require us to examine,