SAINTS, (Encycl.) Cardinal Bellarmine, and other Popish writers, have pleaded, that by praying to the saints, they only intend to express a desire of their intercession, and that their invocation of the saints terminates ultimately in God. Accordingly they have distinguished two sorts of worship; one called latria, appropriate to God; and another dulia, which, being of an inferior nature, is paid to angels and saints. However, many of their own writers have exploded this distinction, and others have owned that it is unscriptural. There is another sort of worship, which is of a higher degree than that paid to saints in common, and which is peculiar to the Virgin Mary: this they call hyperdulia.
After all, those who read their books of devotion, their Hours, their Offices, their Rosaries, their Breviaries, and their Missals, will find many direct addresses to the saints, which are very different from those prayers whose object is merely to supplicate their intercession. Besides, the council of Trent, sess. 25, directs to apply to the saints for their help and assistance, as well as their prayers; and condemns all who think that it is not good and profitable to offer prayers to saints, as chargeable with impious sentiments. And the creed of pope Pius IV. expressly insists upon it as an article of faith, that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be invoked. As to the antiquity of this practice, the council of Trent, sess. 25, speaks of it as the usage of the apostolic and catholic church from the beginning of Christianity. As to the doctrine of the intercession of saints and angels, there is not the least intimation of it in the writings of the two first centuries; though it must be allowed to have been introduced in the next century, and that Origen and Cyprian expressly favour this superstition. The worship of saints and angels is of a much later date, especially as a standing generally-received doctrine of the church. For though Athanasius was for worshipping the saints, yet Cyril, who lived in the next century, says, We neither call the holy martyrs gods, nor are we used to worship them. St. Austin affirms, that neither saints nor angels will be worshipped. Archbishop Usher says, that as to the first 400 years after Christ, for nine parts of that time, not one true testimony can be produced out of any father in favour of this doctrine; and cardinal Perron,
Richieu, and other learned writers among the Romanists, own, that the invocation of saints was not practised for the three first centuries. The first symptoms of this worship did not appear till towards the end of the fourth century, and it seems to have sprung out of the regard which the Christians at that time manifested to the memory of the martyrs. They frequented their tombs, and erected altars there, praying to God, and engaging themselves to a strict imitation of the virtues and piety of the departed martyrs: by degrees this veneration degenerated into praises and eulogiums of the saints themselves, in which they used some apostrophes and rhetorical addresses; whence proceeded a superstitious regard to them, and at length a direct invocation and worship of them. Nor does it appear, that any public prayers to saints were established till A. D. 788, by the second council of Nice; and this council was condemned by another held at Francfort, A. D. 794; and the invocation of saints was likewise condemned by a former council held at Constantinople, A. D. 755, consisting of 388 bishops. In the seventh century, Gregory expressly says, that angels refused to be worshipped since the appearance of Christ.
In order to convey some idea of the extravagance to which veneration for reputed saints hath arrived in the Romish church, we shall only mention one instance out of many that might be alleged. It is well known that there were three altars in the cathedral church of Canterbury, one erected to the honour of Christ, another to the Virgin Mary, and a third to St. Thomas à Becket; and the offerings at his shrine amounted to 1000l. when those to the Virgin did not amount to 5l. and those to Christ were nothing; and Rapin informs us, that in one year, viz. A. D. 1420, there were no less than 50,000 foreigners who came in pilgrimages to pay their homage at this tomb.