* * * * * CHAPTER III.--THE ASSUMPTION OF THE VIRGIN MARY. By the Church of England, two festivals are observed in grateful commemoration of two events relating to Mary as the mother of our Lord:--the announcement of the Saviour's birth by the message of an angel, called, "The Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary," and "The Presentation of Christ in the Temple," called also, "The Purification of Saint Mary the Virgin." In the service for the first of these solemnities, we are taught to pray that, as we have known the incarnation of the Son of God by the message of an angel, so by his Cross and Passion we may be brought to the glory of his resurrection. In the second, we humbly beseech the Divine Majesty that, as his only-begotten Son was presented in the Temple 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 Son. The second prayer was used in the Church {297} from very early times, and is still retained in the Roman Breviary (Hus. Brev. Rom. H. 536.); whereas, instead of the first[103], we find there unhappily a prayer now supplicating that those who offer it, "believing Mary to be truly the Mother of God, might be aided by her intercessions with Him." [V. 496.] [Footnote 103: This collect also is found in the Roman Missal, as a Prayer at the Post Communion; though it does not appear in the Breviarium Romanum.] In the Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, feasts are observed to the honour of the Virgin Mary, in which the Anglican Church cannot join; such as the Nativity of the Virgin Mary, and the immaculate conception of her by her mother. On the origin and nature of these feasts it is not my intention to dwell. I can only express my regret, that by appointing a service and a collect commemorative of the Conception of the Virgin[104] 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 superstition, against which at its commencement, so late as the 12th century, St. Bernard strongly remonstrated, in an epistle to the monks of Lyons; a superstition which has been supported and explained by discussions in no way profitable to the head or the heart. [Epist. 174. Paris, 1632, p. 1538.] [Footnote 104: Ut quibus beatæ Virginis partus exstitit salutis exordium, conceptionis ejus votiva solemnitas pacis tribuat incrementum. H. 445.]