Wesley Corpus

Printed anno 1685.) Much after the fore-cited manner did the Council of Con stance invoke the blessed Virgin, as other Councils used to do the Holy Ghost, calling her the “mother of grace, the fountain of mercy;” and they call on her for “light from heaven.” REPLY. We cannot but wonder at the applications made to the blessed Virgin in the Church of Rome, whose acts on earth, and whose power in heaven, the Scripture doth very sparingly relate, or is altogether silent in. We read nothing there of her bodily assumption into heaven, nor of her exaltation to a throne above angels and archangels. (Brev. Rom. AEstiv. Fest. Assump.) We read nothing there of her being the mother of grace and mercy, (Officium parvum B. M. ad Matutin., Catech. par. 4, c. 5, n. 8,) the queen and gate of heaven, the advocatrix of sinners; (Completor. Catech. par. 4, c. 5, n.8;) and of her power in destroying all heresies in the world, (Fest. Assump.,) and being all things to all. (Missale Paris. ibid. & Le Psaultier de Jesus. Paris, 1620, p. 126.) When we read so much of the blessed Virgin in books of this kind, and so little of her in the divine writings, we cannot but reflect upon what is said by Epiphanius, of a certain sect of women that in his time offered cakes to the Virgin Mary, which he calls an “impious thing,” and altogether “contrary to the doctrine of the Holy Ghost.” (Haeres. 78, p. 1054. Par. 1622.) And he further adds, “This the Holy Ghost doth warn us of, in that Christ saith, ‘Woman, what have I to do with thee?” where he calls her woman, and as it were prophe sying, to refute those schisms and heresies which he knew would arise in the world; and that no one, being moved by a certain admiration of the blessed Virgin, might turn himself to those dotages of heresies.” And he adds, “Let the Virgin Mary be honoured, but the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost be adored.” (Haeres., 79, n. 4, 7, &c.) Much more hath that Father there to this purpose. But what would this Father have said, if, instead of a chair adorned and set forth in honour of the Virgin Mary, (as those women did,) he had found her advanced to a throne of a mediatrix in heaven?