THE ROSARY.

THERE is another topic connected with the hyperdulia,* super-service, or ultra-devotion to

* Hyperdulia, a word, says Dr. Clagett, which our people cannot understand better, than by knowing the practice which it is a name for.

"It is so vast a proportion of religious service which they render to her, it consists of so many parts and diversities, that it were a labour to recount them as particularly as the case would bear. It shall suffice to mention some of the principal heads. They worship her with religious prayers and vows. They erect Churches and Oratories for her service, where they worship her very Images and Pictures, and pretended Reliques. They make Rosaries, and compose hours, psalters, and other forms of devotion to her. They ask things of her, that are proper to be asked of God only. They burn Incense to her Images, and offer their very Sacrifice of the Mass in her honour.

"Now as to this, and all the rest, we cannot but stand amazed that this service of the blessed Virgin should grow to be one of the principal parts of their religion, when the Holy Scriptures have not given us the least intimation of rule or example for it, or of any doctrine or practice that leads to it. That it should be a main design of their Catechisms to instruct youth in the worship of the Blessed Virgin; of their sermons to excite the people to put confidence in her and to call upon her, for the present occasion; of their books of devotion to direct them to pray to her, and magnify her in formal invocations; of their confessors to enjoin penitents to say so many Ave

the Virgin, which may in this place properly be brought under your consideration. The facts which I shall bring forward may possibly induce you to doubt whether the charges which Protestant Christendom brings against the Church of Rome are so easily refuted as you perhaps may have imagined, as well as wished. I speak of the history and mystery of the Rosary, the practices connected with it, the morality deduced from it, and the miracles with which its use is said to have been introduced and repeatedly rewarded.

When or by whom this implement of devotion was invented, is a question concerning which antiquaries are divided. Some of that class

upon

Marias in satisfaction for their sins, and to make at least as frequent applications to Mary, as to Jesus himself, for deliverance from sins and dangers: when not one word, not one intimation of any thing, like to any thing of all this is left record in the writings of the Evangelists and Apostles, from whom those men pretend to derive their religion, whose books are large enough for this so famous a service, to have been at least mentioned somewhere or other; and who without all doubt would have more than mentioned it, if it had been the religion of those times. This is that we must always wonder at, and so much the more, because the constant tenor of the Holy Scriptures bears against such practices as these, agreeably to that precept of both Testaments, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve."--Preservative against Popery, vol. i. p. 181.

who will hazard anything, say it is as old as the apostolic age, and that Bede was the person who restored its use: for the latter assertion they have a plausible argument, drawn from its English name (which has, however, a direct and obvious etymology in our old language); and they have a pretext in the undoubted fact that Bede at his death distributed certain oraria among his friends, to which this interpretation might well be applied.* But the opinion is not thought tenable. Peter the Hermit is said to have re-introduced it. It is certain, however, that no such implement was in general use before the twelfth century, when the Dominicans, according to their own statement, brought it into notice. They claim the credit of the invention for their Patriarch St. Dominic, ever-memorable, and in their language, ever-glorious, as the great founder of the Inquisition. It seems indeed likely that it should have come from Spain, for just such a prayer-string the Mahommedans adopted from the Hindoos,† and the Spaniards

* See note, p. 87. Perhaps it may favour this supposition that the fragments or rather joints of the Encrinus, or Stone Lily, which are found on the coast of Northumberland, are still called St. Cuthbert's beads.

+ Major Moore in his Hindu Pantheon, (p. 21) supposes it to have originated there. It is used also in Tartary. Ysbrant's

probably learnt it from the Moors. Nor is it surprizing that the same usage should be found among people who differ so widely in the grounds of their belief; for when the opinion was once established, that prayers are taken by tale, some such device was necessary for those who might be desirous of keeping even scores, and knowing how their accounts stood with the other world.

The use of vain repetitions in devotion is one of those superstitions which may be derived from the Judaizing Christians. It was an axiom with the Jews that every one who multiplies prayers is heard; and against this error Christ warned his disciples, thus condemning the notion that in such repetitions there can be either power or piety. I know not if there be an earlier example than that which Sozoment mentions; and that points to a Jewish origin, for it occurred in Egypt. It is of a certain Paul

Idas (p. 36) describes a Lama at Jakutskoi, "who had such a string of beads in his hand, according to the Mongalian and Colmakkian fashion, which he very swiftly and incessantly turned over through his fingers, continually moving his lips as though he were at his private devotions; and with this perpetual telling of his beads, his thumb was worn through the flesh and nail up to the knuckle, which rubbing off by slow degrees did not at all pain him."

* Lightfoot's Works, xi. 140.

+ L. vi. c. xxix.

who resided at Pherme, where he had five hundred disciples. This person, having made a vow that he would say three hundred prayers every day, used to put that number of pebbles in his bosom when he began his task, and drop out one at the end of every prayer, that he might neither fail in the performance of his engagement, nor weary himself with any work of supererogation. In later times, and in our own country, the Lady Godiva, who figures so remarkably in the history of Coventry, counted her prayers upon a string of jewels, which at her death she bequeathed to an Image of the Virgin in that city.* The use of such beadstrings was common in the thirteenth century, and it appears that they were then, as now, divided into fifteen decads of smaller beads for the Ave Maria, with a larger one between each ten for the Pater Noster. They were then generally called Pater-Nosters. But it was not till the fifteenth century that their virtue was preached far and wide, and that the history and mystery of the Rosary were revealed.

Of all the tools, trinkets, or playthings of devotion, in whichever class we place it, the

*William of Malmsbury. Gest. Pont. Aug. 1. iv. c. iv. p. 289. Acta SS. Aug. t. i. p. 434.