books. This fact has made it impossible for me to give credit for them
to the extent that I should have liked. I trust that any one who is
entitled to credit will accept this apology.

Much of the difficulty felt by Anglicans at expressions commonly found
in prayers and hymns addressed to our Lady is due to prevalent
unfamiliarity with the devotional language of the Catholic Church
throughout the ages. Those whose background of thought is the theology
of the Catholic Church, not in any one period, but in the whole extent
of its life, will have no difficulty in such language because the
limitations which are implied in it will be clear to them. To others, I
can only say that it is fair to assume that the great saints of the
Church of God in all times and in all places did not habitually use
language which was idolatrous, and our limitations are much more likely
to be at fault than their meaning. It is not true in any degree that the
teaching of Catholics as to the place of the Virgin intrudes on the
prerogative of our Lord. It is, as matter of fact Catholics, and not
those who oppose the Catholic Religion who are upholding that
prerogative. This has been excellently expressed by a modern French
theologian. "We are established in the friendship of God, in the divine
adoption, in the heavenly inheritance, solely in virtue of the covenent
by which our souls are bound to the Son of God, and by which the goods,
the merits, and the rights of the Son of God are communicated to our
souls, as in the natural order, the property of the husband becomes the
property of the wife. Surely, one can say nothing more than we say here,
and assuredly the sects opposed to the Church have never said more:
indeed, they are far to-day from saying so much to maintain intact this
truth, that Jesus Christ is our sole Redeemer, and to give that truth
the entire extent that belongs to it."