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"Without precept, and without necessity, or even probable advantage": a Hackney Phalanx sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity

From A Course of Sermons, for the Lord's Day throughout the Year, Volume II (1817) by Joseph Holden Pott - associated with the Hackney Phalanx - an extract from a sermon for the Seventeenth Sunday after Trinity.  Preaching on Ezekiel 14:14 - "Though these three men, Noah, Daniel, and Job, were in it, they should deliver but their own souls by their righteousness, saith the Lord" - Pott contrasted seeking out "the prudent care, the pious prayers, and charitable offices of others" with invocation of the saints.  Mindful that within a few decades the successors to the Tractarians would be recommending this practice, Pott's sermon is a reminder of the Protestant character of the Old High tradition:

We cannot avoid remarking in this place, since man has been so weak as to flee to other intercessors, even saints and angels, with that kind of trust and confidence, which is due only to one righteous Advocate; that there is a clear difference between the intercession, which men may make for one another in the day of trial, or of danger, grounded on the one main intercession of Christ Jesus, and the fond conceit of intercession to be made by departed saints, for any who shall choose them for their advocates, and confide in any manner in their merits. 

During this scene of our common warfare, and in the joint course of our Christian fellowship and duty, each man is bound to help his brother in all ways possible, and therefore in the way of prayer, which is one effectual mode of succour: but if we extend this to another life, if we seek for succour from departed saints, we must ground our application upon several dangerous and uncertain notions. Thus, if we venture to address those who are removed from this scene of their faithful service; and if we desire their prayers and intercessions at the throne of grace, we must imagine also, that they are able to receive such supplications, and that they have the necessary knowledge of our wants, both which are unwarrantable, and most dangerous conceits. It is the property of God alone, to be present everywhere, to receive the prayers, and to look upon the exigencies of his creatures. 

To him only it belongs to have the universal oversight, without hound or limit. Many nice distinctions have been invented by those, who set themselves to defend that misapplication of the voice of prayer, by which it is diverted from one only Intercessor, and commended to the patronage of others: but if those subtleties come to be forgotten for a moment, he who calls upon saints and angels, gives away to them a portion of God's incommunicable glory: he does this without warrant, and against the strict cautions of the word of God: without precept, and without necessity, or even probable advantage; for there is one sufficient Intercessor, Christ the righteous, set forth for our needs.

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