§ 84. THE WORSHIP OF MAKTYRS AND SAINTS. 433
Tlieir graves were, as Chrysostom says, more splerdiclly adorned and more frequently visited than the palaces of kings. Banquets were held there in their honor, which recall the heathcT? sacrificial feasts for the welfare of the manes. Their relics were preserved with scrupulous care, and believed to possess miraculous virtue. Earlier, it was the custom to pray for the martyrs (as if they were not yet perfect) and to thank God for their fellowship and their pious example, l^ow such intercessions for them were considered unbecoming, and their intercession was invoked for the living.'
This invocation of the dead was accompanied with the presumption that they take the deepest interest in all the fortunes of the kingdom of God on earth, and express it in prayers and intercessions.'' This was supposed to be warranted by some passages of Scripture, like Luke xv. 10, which speaks of the oTKjels (not the saints) rejoicmg over the conversion of a sinner, and Kev. viii. 3, 4, which represents an aitgel as laying the ]>rayers of all the saints on the golden altar before the throne of God. But the Xew Testament expressly rebukes the warship of the angels (Col. ii. 18; Rev. xix. 10; xxii. 8, 9), and furnishes not a single example of an actual invocation of dead men ; and it nowhere directs us to address our prayers to any ci-eature. Mere inferences from certain premises, however plausible, are, in such weighty matters, not enough. The
' Augustine, Serm. 159, 1 (al. 1*7): "Injuria est pro martyre orare, cujus noa debemus orationibus commendari." Serm. 284, 5 : " Pro martyribus non orat [ecciesia], sed eorum potius orationibus se commendat." Serm. 285, 5 : " Pro aliia lidelibus defunctis oratur [to wit, for the souls in purgatory still needing purifica- :ion] ; pro martyribus non oratur; tam enim perfect! exierunt, ut non sint suscepti nostri, sed advocatV^ Yet Augustine adds the qualification : " Neque hoc in se, sed in illo cui capiti perfecta membra cohseserunt. Ille est enim vere advocatus unun, ((ui interpellat pro nobis, sedens ad dexteram Patris: sed advocatus unus, sicut et pastor unus." When the grateful intercessions for the departed saints and martyrs were exchanged for the invocation of their intercession, the old formula : " Annue nobis, Domine, ut animse famuU tui Leonis hsec prosit oblatio," was changed mto the later: "Annue nobis, quaesumus, Domine, ut intercessione beati Leonis haeo nobis prosit oblatio." But instead of praying for the samts, the Catholic churcn now prays for the souls m purgatory.
" Ambrose, De viduis, c. 9, calls the martyrs " nostri praesules et speculatoree (.spectatores) vitse actuumque nostrorum."
434: TUlllD PEKIOl). A.D. 311-590.
intercession of tlie saints fur us was drawn as a prohable inference from the duty of all Christians to pray for others, and the invocation of the saints for their intercession was supported by tlie unquestioned right to ap[)ly to living saints for their prayers, of which even the apostles availed themselves in their epistles.
But liere rises the insolvable question : How can deparkd eaints hear at once the prayers of so many Christians on earth, unless they either partake of divine omnipresence or divine omniscience? And is it not idolatrous to clothe creatures with attributes which belong exclusively to Godhead ? Or, if the departed saints first learn from the omniscient God our prayers, and then bring them again before God with their powerful intercessions, to what purpose this circuitous way ? Why not at once address God immediately, who alone is able, and who is always ready, to hear His children for the sake of Christ?
Augustine felt this difficulty, and concedes his inability to solve it. He leaves it undecided, whetlier the saints (as Jerome and others actually supposed) are present in so many places at once, or their knowledge conies through the omniscience of God, or finally it comes through the ministry of angels.' He already makes the distinction between Xarpeia. or adoration due to God alone, and the itivocatio {SovXeia) of the saints, and firmly repels the charge of idolatry, which the Manicluiean Faustus brought against the catholic Christians when he said: "Ye have changed the idols into martyrs, whom ye worship with the like prayers, and ye appease the shades of the dead with wine and flesh." Augustine asserts that the church indeed celebrates the memory of the martyrs with religious solenmity, to be stirred up to imitate them, united with their merits, and supported by their prayers,' hut it offers sacrifice ard dedicates altars to God alone. Our mai--
' De cura pro mortuis (a. d. 421), c. 16. In another place he decidedly rejects the first hypothesis, because otherwise he himself would be always surrounded by nis pious mother, and bcca-ise in Isa. Ixiil, 16 it is said: "Abraham is ignorant of
■* " Et ad excitandam imitationem, et u ' mentis corum consocietu atque oratio nibus adjuvetur." Contra Faustum, 1. 20, n. 21.