Wesley Corpus

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? What, if instead of cakes, there had been litanies and prayers offered to her, and that in more abundance than to Christ himself? What, if he had found them praying, “O holy mother, succour the miserable, help the weak, comfort those that mourn?” (Breviar. Rom. AEstiv. Suffragia.) I doubt not but he would have said of this, what he doth of the other, that they “would obtrude her upon us for God;” and have called it “heresy and idolatry.” Q. 41. What external representations or memorials have they in the Church of Rome, which they give veneration and worship to? A. They have the relics and images of the Virgin Mary and saints (Concil. Trid, Sess. 25, de Invoc.) Q. 42. What do they mean by relics? A. The bodies or remainders of them, or particular things belonging or relating to them when alive, as an arm, or thigh, bones, or ashes; (Ex Decret. Regist. Praefix. Brev. Rom.;) and the part in which they suffered; (Catech. Rom, par. 3, c. 2, n. 15;) or the things by which they suffered; as the chains with which St. Peter was bound. (Brev. Rom. Par. AEstiv. Aug. Fest. Petri ad Vinc.) REPLY. “He” (God by Michael) “buried Moses; but no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto this day.” (Deut. xxxiv. 6.) S. Barradas the Jesuit, upon the place, saith, “It is the common opinion of Lyra, Abulensis, Cajetan, and others, that the sepulchre was hid, lest the Israelites, who were inclined to the worship of idols, should worship Moses as God. For they say, that when the devil would for that reason have showed the grave and the body of Moses to the Israelites, St. Michael hindered; and this was the contention spoken of Jude 9.” (Seb. Barrad. Itinerar. Fil. Israel.) They could give no greater honour to the body of Moses, than is given to relics in the Church of Rome; and if that was idolatry, and Moses’s body was concealed to prevent it, then there is as much reason to think it unlawful now in this case, as it was then in that. Q. 43.