This, however, I fear, removes the difficulty but a single step. For whence have the Angels a knowledge of our prayers ? What supports the Tortoise? Accordingly, a third plan has been thought of:—that the Saints see in the mirror of the Deity all that it is his pleasure they should see, and among other things, the prayers of their supplicants. A fourth mode of explaining the matter is, the supposition of an inconceivable celerity in the locomotion of Angels and Saints, a celerity, which, if it be sufficient for its purpose, is so near akin to ubiquity, that it leaves us where it found us.

I am not aware that any other expedient has ever been invented: and these, which I have recounted, are all the notions of individuals. As, therefore, on the one hand, your Church is not responsible for them; so neither perhaps, on the other, can it claim for its doctrine the benefit of any assistance which any of them may be supposed to yield. That doctrine, I repeat, proposed as it is by the Council in all its nakedness, seems to ordinary understandings to involve the ascription of the divine attributes of knowledge of the hearts of men, and of omnipresence, to the Saints. And this, I conceive, cannot but tend largely to augment the devotion of their votaries towards them.

But there are some other considerations to be taken into the account. Your Church is in the habit of dedicating sacred buildings to the Saints, not merely as a designation of those buildings, and to distinguish them from others, but strictly and formally to make them belong to those by whose name they are called. Hence the title of Basilica,* royal residences. For while they are Churches of God, they are also the palaces of St. Peter, St. Paul, or others, because those Saints occupy them by their relics, which are therein deposited. To these buildings very important spiritual privileges are annexed, in order to increase the honour of those to whom they are dedicated. For, pilgrimages to them, and the performance of divine worship in them, are rewarded with peculiar and very great advantages. But of this we shall have occasion to speak more particularly hereafter, under the head of indulgences; at present it is mentioned, only as an ingredient in the religious honour paid by the Church of Rome to Saints, and that too, under the express sanction of a decree of the council of Trent.‡

* The inscription on the front of St. Peter's, which bears the name of Paul V. is " In honorem principis apostolorum." + Bellar. de Cult. Sanct. lib. iii. c. 4.

+ Sess. xxv.

Another not unimportant particular, is that of Vows commonly addressed to Saints: and here I must beg your patience, while I dwell a little on this part of our subject. The greatest of your controversial divines, Bellarmine,* has judged it necessary to do so, which will be a sufficient excuse for me.

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He says that all the Heretics consider us

as Idolaters, on account of the Vows, which "are every where made to Saints. And the "reason may be," he adds, " because a Vow is an "act of religion due to God alone, as appears from "divine Scripture, where always Vows are said to "be made to God. Nevertheless, that they may "in some manner be made to Saints, is most cer"tain:" and to the establishment of this proposition, he then proceeds. After citing the authority of Fathers, he quotes the answer of St. Thomas to the argument against Vows to Saints, suggested above. This answer is as

follows-" That Vows made to Saints include "two promises, one to the Saint, and that is not formally a Vow, but the matter of a Vow; and "the other to God,-and this is formally the Vow;

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as, for instance, when a man says 'I Vow to "the blessed Mary that I will make a pilgrimage

*De Cult. Sanct. lib. iii. c. 9.

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"' to her house,' he promises to the Virgin this pilgrimage, but this promise is not a Vow; "and at the same time promises to God, that “he will fulfil his promise made to the Virgin; "and this second promise is truly the Vow." But this answer, Bellarmine admits, is insufficient. It will do very well, says he, in the case of vows made to living men, such as vowing obedience to a prelate, for this is in fact a Vow to God, the intention of it being to honour not the prelate but God. "But," continues Bellarmine," he who vows to the Saints a fast "or a pilgrimage, intends thereby to pay a religious "honour to the saints themselves." Besides, says he, it has been proved against that article of St. Thomas, from the very profession of the Fratres Prædicatores, that vows are truly made to the saints; for they say, in making their profession," I vow to God, and to the blessed Mary, "and to all the saints, that I will be obedient "to such or such a prelate," where of the two promises, included in the words, that, which is formally the vow is directed to God and the saints together.

Another solution, therefore, has been adduced, namely, that vows are made to saints not as they are certain creatures endowed with reason, but, as in them God dwelleth by Glory; so that