Master Bezaes sermons upon the three chapters of the canticle of canticlesMaster Bezaes sermons vpon the three chapters of the canticle of canticles

but it followeth not therefore that they hear or know all things, neither shall we ever find either commandment to call upon them, or any example in the Scripture that ever they were called upon by any servant of God, no not when they appeared unto him. But we shall well find that it is not so lately that the Invocation of angels was reprehended by the Apostle expressly, Col. 2.18. Moreover let us see ⟨p. 408⟩what is the original of this Invocation of the Saints departed, so il grounded. The ground therefore of it in a word is double, to wit, their Merits, & their Intercession. Of their Intercession we will afterwards speak by it self. As for their Merits, whence are they drawn? Not from the holy scriptures which oppose them directly unto Grace, Rom. 4.1. But though a man should grant them this, and that there had bin in those personages a perfect observation of the Law without any defect, those who merit are they not sufficiently satisfied and contented with the payment they have received, to wit, with eternal life, according unto the tenor of the legal covenant, do all these things and thou shalt live? Whence cometh then the rest of the merits which they call the treasure of the Church, and of which they make every day so great a merchandise and yet it is not exhausted and spent? And if the Saints, as they call them, have had so many and such plenty of merits that there is an infinite surplusage of them, what need had they of those of Jesus Christ? Besides this unto whom have they given that charge of distributing of them? Where and when and who passed the covenants of this bargains? Besides all this if it be true which is taught in the schools, as it is most true that the merit of our Lord Jesus Christ, which we only approve, draweth his infinite virtue from the divinity in which his humanity is personally subsisting, how can this same virtue be attributed to those merits of Saints, though they rebate never so much from them, without attributing unto them also some divine nature? And what is it else but to adore the creatures to attribute unto them an heavenly and divine virtue and power? As the power to preserve the soul or the body, to sanctify the spirit, nay to do forth sins which the Jews being more blind a great deal, knew to say that it appertained unto God alone, Luk. 5.21