In the service of the Assumption, more than twice seven times is it reiterated in a very brief space, and with slight variations of expression, that Mary was taken up into heaven; and that, not on any general and indefinite idea of her beatific and glorified state, but with reference to one specific single act of divine favour, performed at a fixed time, effecting her assumption, as it is called, "to-day." [Æs. 595.] "To-day Mary the Virgin ascended the heavens. Rejoice, because 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 soul[108] from mortal life to eternal bliss, which the Roman Church maintains and propagates by this service, is put beyond doubt by the service itself. In the fourth and sixth reading[109], or lesson, for example, we find these {303} sentences:--"She returned not into the earth but is seated in the heavenly tabernacles." "How could death devour, how could those below receive, how could corruption invade, THAT BODY, in which life was received? For it a direct, plain, and easy path to heaven was prepared." [Footnote 108: Lambecius, indeed (book viii. p. 306), distinctly affirms, that one object which the Church had in view was to condemn the HERESY 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 eorum hæresin qui sanctissimæ Dei genetricis rcceptionem in coelum ad animam ipsius tantum, non vero simul etiam ad corpus pertinere existimant."] [Footnote 109: Non reversa est in terram, sed ... in coelestibus tabernaculis collocatum. Quomodo mois devoraret, quomodo inferi susciperent, quomodo corruptio invaderit CORPUS ILLUD in quo vita suscepta est? Huic recta plana et facilis ad coelum parata est via. Æs. 603, 604.] Now, on what authority does this doctrine rest? On what foundation stone is this religious worship built? The holy Scriptures are totally and profoundly silent, as to the time, the place, the manner of Mary's death. Once after the ascension of our 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 been made of it in the Acts of the Apostles. The historian, Nicephorus Callistus, refers it to the 5th year of Claudius, that is about A.D. 47: after which period, events through more than fifteen years are recorded in that book of sacred Scripture.