The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-03-26 00:00:00

DOCTOR MACHALE'S PASTORAL-LENTEN
ENTERTAINMENT-THE ROSARY.

(Prom the Dublin Evening Mail.)

•
" In every contest with error the Catholic Church has, in
all ages, especially invoked the intercession of the Blessed
Virgin, and put itself under her patronage. It has in a par-
ticular manner recommended the devotion of the Rosary,
which was first instituted to guard the Faithful against some
of the most pernicious heresies that distracted and defiled
the Church, of God. Let the devotion be familiar to the
people of this diocess." &c., &c.—Pastoral Letter of the
Most Rev. Doctor Mae Hale, dated the Feast of the Chair
of St. Peter,.lB39.
Seeing the high request in which the Rosary is to be this
Lent, we think we cannot make better amends to his Grace
and the rest of the Faithful, for the occasional hard things
we say of them, than by giving for their edification and com-
fort, a few extracts from one of a number of sermons
preached on this particular subject, with great approbation,
at Rome, by a learned member of the Society of Jesus :
" Father Antonio Vieyra was called from yPortugal by the
general of his order, at the request of Pope Alexander the
Seventh, and- many Cardinals, and of the famous Queen of
Sweeden, Christiana, at that time at Rome, who had a great
desire to hear him, from the fame which was spread of him
all over Europe. The Pope, the Queen of Sweden, and the
King of Portugal all contended for the honour of having so
admirable a preacher at their several courts : but, no ; Vieyra
had a call as he thought to the Brazils, whither he went, and
there died, A.D. 1697. The sermon on the Rosary, is the
twenty.sixth of thirty on that subject, being in the 120th
page of the fourth volume of his works, as printed at Barce-
lona, in 1752."
The preacher takes for his text that passage in Luke—
" Beatus venter qui to portavit et übera gum suxisti."—
(Luke 1, c. xi, v. 27.) and proceeds to show-Ist. " This
womb and these breasts of Mary, are now canonized by the
virtue and miracles of her Rosary." These virtues now to
be illustrated by examples :
" Singular (says the preacher) and in all its circumstances,
admirable is the case, my brethern, which I shall now tell
for you, related by St. Alon de Rupe, in his book on the birth
of the Psalter of the Virgin. Two young women of the
mountains were passing through a desert, when they were
met by two most fierce and hungry wolves, which divided
between them the innocent and defenceless prey. One of
these damsals was devoutly attached to the Rosary, which
she rehearsed every day, and the other not. To the latter
one of the wolves approached, and fixing his teeth in her
throat, presently brought her lifeless to the ground. What
happened to the former, I shall recite in the words of the
author—which are these :—` Quee Rosarium Beatissimee
Virginis recitare consueverat (nira res I) lupus tjus übera
abrumpit, ventrem discerpit, viscera voravit. Et adhuc
tridue vixit, in quo sincere confitetur, devote communicat,
fiducialiter moritur. A Maria in extremis visitatur, et ad
cwlum gaudio perchleitur.' That is to say—the other wolf
attacked the damsel who rehearsed the Rosary, tore off her
breasts, lacerated her womb, and ate it, and drew out all her
entrails. And did she directly die, too, like her companion ?
So it would have been in the course of nature ; but because
she was a devout of the Rosary, the Virgin our Lady pre-
served alive without heart or entrails for three days, in which
she performed the duty of confession much at her leisure,
and communicated devoutly; and at the end of them our
Lady herself visited her, and, as if the wolf had been a
tyrant, and she a martyr, carrried her directly up to Heaven
(a privilege martyrs are entitled to without entering Pur-
gatory)."
Hear that, ye virgin precursoresses, and fear not to walk
even through the howling wilderness of Killyman, armed
with your rosaries—
" Namque me sylva vir-aureus Armachana
Dum cecini Rosarium et ultra
Fines przecurro, curis expeditus
Fugit inermem."
•[" Priscian's head a leetle scratched ;—but twill do."
Our poet will have his joke, " though he make the blank
verse halt for it." The stanza, however, for the benefit of
the " subjects " of St.• Jarlath, may be thus rendered into
the vernacular :

For whilst—escaped the nunnery's botnds—
Through Armagh's woods I took my rounds,
And bead by bead my rosary scanned ;
An Orange monster at my sight,
(When least I thought of men) took fright
And fled from helpless me—unmanned.
Interpolation of our Printer's Devil.]
For what says the preacher?—
"We shall see, then, with the Divine grace: that as the
Virgin our Lady, in reward for the devotion of the Rosary,
supplied in this her votary the want of what was so necessary
to her for this life, so she does and will supply in all who
have the same devotion, all want of whatever is convenient
for temporal life, and all want of whatever is important for
that which will be eternal—Ave Maria ! "
He then proceeds to make it appear that it was the Virgin
Mary who guided the ark of Moses to the shore of the Nile ;
and that it was she also who changed the water into wine at
the feast of Cana—for why ?
" She represented to her Son, as Creator of all things, the
deficiency there was.—Vinutn non habent. And the Lord,
as surprised at her implied request, answered—ibid 4. Quid
mihi et tibi—what business is that of yours or mine what is
wanting in the house at the table of other people ?—./bid
5 Nondum venit hora mea—my hour for working miracles is
not yet come. But, notwithstanding, this Lady did not de-
sist from prosecuting the remedy for that want, saying to
them who served that they should do whatever he command-
ed them, as if she had said to him herself, if your hour for
working miracles is not yet come, my care and obligation to
supply what is wanting pays no regard to hours ; and the
same hour in which things are wanting, that is my hour,"
Then after the miracle had been wrought—
"ln this manner did the most gracious Mary supply in
this want not only one but many wants, and the wants of
many. To the_govertior of the feast she supplied the wantof
attention ; to the married couple the want of provisions ; to
the table the want of drink, and even to Christ himself the
want of—"
But the remainder is too blasphemous to make public,
even for the purpose Lof exposing these awful perversions of
God's Word, which appear fast becoming the standard lite-
rature of seven millions of the people of these countries.
But, to return to the devout of the Rosary ; there is one
auu Elle snaffle 01 sued-7177.0ff lies wholly at the door of St. Jarlath's
College :
" God supplies-the want of a thing with the thing itself ;
but in the case of the devout of the Rosary, Mary supplied
the want of bowels, heart, See., with the privation and non-
e.ristence of the thing wanted—in this perfection, excellence,
and curiousness of supplement excelling "
But again we draw back the pen in horor, and are unable
to complete the hideous profanity.
And this is fast becoming the standard literature of Ire-
land. Vieyra's sermons are generally in the hands of the
Popish clergy. His thirty sermons on the Rosary will now
be in more request through the diocese of Tuam than any
other work on Mr. Coyne's shelves. But let us go on with
the preacher's illustrations :
" One of the Queen's children, a little girl, fell from a
window of the palace into an area, in which a lion was kept
confined in whose paws they expected to see her die, if she
should escape from the fall. The child wore a Rosary for
ornament, for Rosaries were the necklaces of ladies in those
days. The keeper of the beast, and the other servants, ran
directly to the place, and what they saw and heard was, that
the lion having attacked the child, she had thrown her. Rosary
round his neck, and was playing with her little hands among
his shaggy locks, and fondling him as if he had been a lap-
dog, saying to him very prettily—` Lion, lion, don't eat me,
for I am to be a nun in Castler "
The preacher then returns to St. Alan de Rupe, and his
story of the wolf and the devout damsel, arguing very learn-
edly from the expressions in Solomon's song, " Venter tuus,
si cut acervus tritici valiatus rosin,' and übera tua sicut duo
yenzelli caprce qui pascuntur in rosis,' that the royal
poet plainly alluded to this adventure of the breasts and belly,
supplied by the miraculous assistance of the Rosary
" Thus, then, as our gracious Lady supplied in this damsel
the want of her breasts and belly, by virtue of her Rosary, so
will she likewise supply, on like conditions to us all, all our
wants temporal and eternal."

To begin with the temporal—
" What dost thou want ? I want that which supplies all
all wants, which is, money. This says a poor man, and thus
all men say. But I say that if thou rehearse the Rosary every
day to the Mother of God, she will abundantly supply this
want."
Instances are then given of this being so completely done
in France and Germany, that the good people on whom the
miracle was wrought became so rich, that they maintained
all the poor in the country in which they lived.' Hear that,
ye Connaught gentlemen, who turn pale at the mention of
the Poor Laws.
One may be rich, but unhappy from the want of children.
The devotion of the Rosary brings down the blessing of fruit-
fulnes, as is shown by " incontestible examples in France
and Holland."
Who has more wants than the poor soldier ?—particularly
those of defence in the day of battle, and of security from the
severe laws of his commanders ? Yet, in the late war in
Flanders—our soldiers " swore terribly there," says my
Uncle Toby : but Father Antonio says—many of the Catholic
soldiers, by virtue of repeating the Rosary, found the bullets
of their enemies strike against them but as pellets of wax, and
fall harmless to the ground. Then as to its ascendancy over
the decisions of a court martial :
" Two 'soldiers being condemned to die for having broken an
edict of the Duke of Alva, their confessors, knowing the ex-
treme severity of the general, gave them no hopes of life, but
exhorted them to recommend themselves to the Lady of the
Rosary. One of them, an hardened and obstinate wretch,
paid no attention to his advice ; but the other embraced it
hearily, and set himself to repeating the Rosary with all the
devotion and ardour that the emergency of the case required.
At length they were carried forth to punishment, each seated
on an ass, as is the usual custom, and the event was, that the
asses passing, surrounded with gaurds, before a church, the
ass which carried the soldier who had repeated the Rosary,
broke through the middle of the throng with such fury that he
could not be stopped, and entering into the church, went
up to a chapel of our Lady of the Rosary, under the sacred
immunity of which the soldier remained not only secure but
free."

p To the soldier follows the litigant ; a poor widow, who,
having neither money nor friends, had a cruel and unjust de-
cree made against her by the judge ; and by virtue of her
attachment to the Rosary, the wordi are so changed iu the
judge's mouth, as to appear on the record wholly in her
favour.

A good woman was unhappy for want of her husband's
love, she repeated the Rosary, and soon found him at her
feet in an humble posture.
Who undergo more danger than seafaring people, particu-
larly from the Moors and from storms ? Companies of Moors,
observes Father Antonio, frequently lie in ambush on the
southern coast of Spain to kidnap unwary passengers. A
religious Portuguese travelling that way, was set upon by one
of these companies; he had immediate recourse to his Rosary
'and " as if a flash of lightning had issued from each bead,"
the Moors were all suddenly struck blind ; the delivered tra-
veller returned thanks to his protecting Lady, and laughing
at the blind Pagans, joyfully pursued his journey.
Against storms the preacher himself can prove the efficacy
of the Rosary from his own experience. He was once in such
a storm that the ship lost all her masts ; but upon the crew
promising to repeat the Rosary every day of their lives, the
storm ceased, and another ship immediately hove in sight,
which took them from their own disabled barque, and carried
them on shore.

In a voyage from Europe to Brazil a sailor fell overboad,
and was brought to the ship four days afterwards, by virtue
of his repeating the Rosary all the time, riding on fish-
back.

" Captain Allan, famous in the history of the Rosary, to
which he was most devoted, on one of his ships going to the
bottom in the midst of the sea, and every soul on board being
drowned, found himself in that very place on shore and walk-
ing on land, made unequal by little hills and some mountains.
At the end of them he observed, for he went on. counting
them, that the mountains were in number fifteen, and the
hills one hundred and fifty ; for, of that very Rosary which
he wore about him, had our Lady made a bridge of firm land
over the waves of the sea."

That among the variety of states and conditions, men of
letters may not be excluded, several proofs are given of the
Rosary conferring great abilities, and particularly—
" One student who wanted neither parts nor memory, was
so unapt to poetry that he could not join three syllables to-
gether which would run in a verse ; hut, being taught, not by
his master, but by his mother, to repeat the Rosary, so fruit-
ful a vein of poetry was opened in him, that he directly not
only far exceeded all his fellow students, but became equal to
the poets of the greatest fame:"
Poor souls shut up in prison want liberty ; the Virgin has