lation, whose intellectual character and external condition are affected by the opinions they have been taught, or the institutions under which they live and act; secondly, the class or body of directors and instructors. These, in a Popish country, assume the name of the priesthood or clergy. That class or institution constitutes Popery, just as a body of nobles and governing senate constitute an aristocracy.

Passing over for an instant the character of sanctity, or of priesthood, which it assumes, Popery, in a country that has a civil government, like France, Prussia, or Britain, may be described as the system according to which the affairs of a certain society, or company, or association, are carried on. The association consists of a body of individuals whose object is to rule mankind, and to acquire to their society the largest possible command of the power and riches of a people, without performing any part of the business, or submitting to any of the drudgery undertaken, or dangers encountered by the rest of the community. Yet, in those countries in which they are tolerated, they endeavour to attain, and generally do succeed in attaining, to the possession of high rank, riches, influence, and direct authority. The society, styled generally the Popish priesthood or clergy, consists of mem. bers received from all classes of the community. The association is per petuated by the admission of new members, under the sanction of the dignitaries of the body. The great object of the society being to rule over the rest of the community, all their rules and proceedings are made subservient to that object.

On entering into the society, a man by solemn vows devotes himself to the pursuit of its interests exclusively, and to obedience to the superior members of the association. He renounces whatever may interfere with his exertions to promote the influence and aggrandizement of the body of which he is becoming a member. More especially, he takes a solemn vow against entering into marriage, lest domestic affections and the interests of a wife and children should obstruct the future business of his life, which is to extend the power of the society. We know what efforts men have made for their families, their kindred, and

their country. Even for the glory of his regiment many a gallant soldier has, without hesitation, sacrificed his life. To the Popish priest, the association into which he has entered holds the place of a wife and children, and kindred and country. The Pope, as head of the body, is his prince, and the association is the brotherhood which forms the object of all his attachments, and the ascendency and glory of which absorbs every sentiment, either of public spirit, or of selfishness or ambition in his nature.

The society, for greater efficiency in its enterprises, divides itself into classes. It allocates some to special districts, under the name of priests and bishops; but has reserves of members in monasteries, both male and female, ready to go forth on the business of the association. These add to their other oaths a vow of poverty, which, however, is a mere equivocation. It only means that whatever a monk has belongs to his brethren of the monastery, who, along with himself, when not in the view of the multitude, endeavour to pass their lives in luxurious opulence. The most pestilent of the whole are the Jesuits, a corps created to oppose Luther's Reformation, and who form the master-spirits who devise every intrigue and share in every conspiracy in Europe.

The Popish association adopt as the groundwork of their operations the Christian religion, of which they pretend they are the only true priests; but they do not hold themselves bound by its laws and doctrines, as contained in the books written by the Hebrew prophets and historians, or by those instructed by the immediate followers of Jesus of Nazareth, the whole of which united we call the Bible. The Popish association pretend that, besides what is to be found in the Bible, they have many doctrines and precepts communicated expressly to their body by Almighty God. They regard with extreme horror any attempt to lay open the written scriptures to the perusal of the mass of mankind, lest they discover the palpable inconsistency between the written doctrine and the system of idolatry, usurpation, and gross superstition sanctioned by the association. The Jewish Rabbis were the original inventors of this kind of device. They pretended that, besides the written law openly sanctioned from Mount Sinai, a multitude of precepts were given and handed down to them by the traditions of the elders. Hence Jesus said, "Ye have made the commandment of God of none effect by your traditions." Matt. xv. 6.

On examination, it will be found that the drift and purpose of all the institutions, and even of the doctrines and practical operations of the Popish association, is to exalt the members of the priestly fraternity over the rest of the community, and, in reality, to bring the rest of the community under subjection to them. This might, perhaps, be thought tolerable by some persons, if the means adopted were not utterly flagitious. The fraternity pretend that their head or chief, the Pope, is on earth the vicar or deputy of God's eternal Son, by whom were created all things, visible and invisible. That, in virtue of this delegation, the association are, by inherent right, the superiors, and independent of all kings, and princes, and political human establishments. Indeed, if it be admitted that the Popish priesthood hold communications from heaven of authority equal to the written Christian scriptures, conferring infallibility on them or their chief the Pope, it is not easy to limit their pretensions, because, in the name and by the alleged authority of Almighty God, they can declare their own powers and prerogatives to be whatever they think fit, just as Mahomet could solve every difficulty by bringing down the angel Gabriel with a new chapter of the Koran.

The plans of the Popish association are most artfully devised and actively

enforced.

1. As they do not hesitate to claim intimate communication with the Eternal God, so they do not scruple to make profit of the Day of Judgment. Men, conscious of imperfection and improper conduct, have a natural fear of standing in judgment before the terrible tribunal of omniscient justice and irresistible power. Availing themselves of this fear, the fraternity say, God has given us power to forgive all sins; but to entitle us to do so, you must confess to us your sins. These they divide into two classes, venial and mortal. Venial sins may be expiated by the fire of purgatory, or the priest may pardon them on submitting to penance, or for a consideration.

Mortal sins are liable to be punished by eternal torture in hell. This can only be avoided by the sinner confessing them to the priest, declaring that he repents, and obtaining absolution. If the priest absolve the sinner from these mortal sins, he never can be sent to hell on account of them. But he must be careful to confess them all; for, if he omit one of them, he will certainly be condemned to hell fire for ever for that one sin, whereby absolution from the other sins will be of no avail. On this pretext the whole community, from infancy to old age, are assured that, to secure their salvation, it is absolutely necessary to inform the priest of all they think or do, lest they should omit the confession of some mortal sin. After absolution from a mortal sin, although the man cannot be sent to hell on account of it, he may, nevertheless, be put into the purifying and sufficiently horrible fire of purgatory, or exposed to misfortunes in this life. But from these consequences also, absolution may be purchased with lands or money, or by some good deed required by the holy fraternity.

The result of the whole is, that the priest is, upon earth, truly a god, seeing he holds the divine power of forgiving sins. The only practical inferiority of the priest to the Most High God is, that the priest does not know the actions of men till they are told (confessed) to him. To secure their future salvation, the children of Papists are carefully trained to the practice of confession, and to pour into the ear of the priest, both spontaneously and in answer to his minute interrogatories, a detail of all their acts and imaginings.

Confession to the priest is represented as a holy sacrament. It must be made by the sinner (though a king or queen) kneeling before this ter restrial god, who has full power over the world to come. Thus the fraternity of priests become the lords and rulers of the credulous nation or people over whom they have acquired an ascendency, or whom they have persuaded to believe in the fabulous privileges which they assume. procure safety from hell and possession of immortal felicity in heaven, becomes a matter of bargain with the priest, who has the power of fixing the price of the inestimable boon

To

which he is to bestow, and which is to soothe the mind and allay the horrors of the dying sinner. By such bargains, the Popish association of priests, monks, and nuns, were at one time proprietors of nearly half the land of Scotland, and of a tenth (teind) of the annual produce of the remaining lands of our country.

2. The fraternity affirm that each individual priest has the extraordinary power of actually making or creating God himself. On the repetition, by the priest, of certain Latin words (hoc est corpus meum), a morsel of bread (generally a wafer) is transformed into the Eternal Second Person of the Holy Trinity, both God and man in one person. The priest offers him up as a sacrifice for the sins of any person who will pay for the operation. The table at which the operation is performed, is called the altar. After a wafer has thus been converted (without any apparent change) into the Lord Jesus Christ, soul, body, and divinity, it is raised aloft, and all persons are expected to kneel and worship it, as it is borne along the streets to the house of any sick person who has sent for it and is to pay for it.

Necessarily, the priest who has the power to create the Son of God, or to perform the Mass, must, in the estimation of Papists, be of extreme importance-sacred in his person and awfully privileged.

To all practical purposes, Christ has only died for the profit of the priest, who may grant or refuse at his pleasure all the benefits resulting from the sufferings and intercession of "the Son of the Blessed." God is converted into a sort of slumbering or inactive divinity, who has intrusted all his powers to his prime minister or vicar on earth, the Pope and his subordinates. God and Christ are thus practically dethroned, and so they are usually complimented merely with Latin prayers, while the real business of obtaining safety here and hereafter must be transacted with the ministry.

3. As the fraternity thrive by exciting towards themselves and their operations the sentiments of fear, wonder, and admiration, and by withdrawing the minds of men from rational pursuits and fixing them on ob

jects of superstition, they adorn the persons of the higher priests with costly robes, they build magnificent temples, and support establishments of vocal and instrumental music. They fill their temples with paintings to represent God the Father, and Jesus, and his mother Mary, and especially with innumerable statues of Mary, and saints, and angels, before which the people are admonished to offer up prayers for their intercession with God and Christ. In every shape, the fraternity labour to establish a religion that is to fill the imagination with objects of superstition. They baptise bells to drive the devils from the airthey consecrate barrel-fulls of water wherewith to sprinkle devotees-exhibit bones of saints as objects of veneration-encourage pilgrimages to their celebrated temples. Above all, in utter despite of all the prohibitions in the Bible, they fill their temples with consecrated idols. Indeed, with the exception of the sacrifice of animals, there is scarcely a practice of paganism which they do not adopt.

In a recent account of China, the superstitious practices of the priests of Budho are mentioned. A recital of them may supersede the necessity of a far ther detail of the Romish superstitions.

"We cannot conclude our account of the Buddhestic religion," says the author, "without noticing the similarity of its ceremonies to those of the Church of Rome. The points of coincidence are many and striking. The celibacy, tonsure, professed poverty, secluded abodes, and peculiar dress of the priests-the use of the rosary, candles, incense, holy water, bells, and relics, in their worship-their belief in purgatory, with the possibility of praying souls out of its fires-the offering up of prayers in a strange language, with their incessant repetition-the pretension to miracles-the similarity of their altar. pieces, and the very titles of their intercessors, such as 'Goddess of mercy,' 'Holy mother,' 'Queen of heaven,' with the image of a virgin having a child in her arms holding a cross-are all such striking coincidences, that the Catholic missionaries were greatly stumbled at the resemblance between the Chinese worship and their own when they came over to convert the natives to Christianity; and some of them thought that the author of evil had induced those Pagans to imitate the

manner of holy Mother Church, in order to expose her ceremonies to shame."

As the ambition of the ministers of superstition is every where the same, it has naturally happened that systems of superstition have borrowed ceremonials from each other. European monks have often reached China; and no doubt taught to their fellow priests the emblems of Western superstition. The inference is, that the Romish religion is truly a system of Pagan superstition, which has disguised itselfunder Christian names.

4. The Popish fraternity pretend that the Eternal God has at all times inspired them, or their chief the Pope, with a perfect knowledge of all religious truth. Not to believe what they announce, is styled heresy. It is an act of rebellion against the association; and, in proportion to their powers, is without mercy to be hunted down by persecution, assassination, confiscation, tortures, and death. It is, when persisted in, equivalent to a sin against the Holy Ghost, speaking through his Holiness the Pope and his fraternity. It is therefore a sin, and the only sin for which the priest can grant no ab. solution. A man may buy absolution for the crime of murdering his wife, or poisoning his father, but not for refusing to believe what his priest requires him to believe.

5. The greatest danger the fraternity ever encountered, arose from the invention of the art of printing; and they did at first receive from it a rude shock. A sagacious old priest said

" If we do not destroy printing, printing will destroy us." Printing did not destroy them; and it was in baffling the efforts of this formidable adversary, that the system of Popery has most eminently displayed its reAll was at stake. It was

sources.

obvious, that if the Bible should be freely perused by multitudes in their own language, and intelligence acquired by the free perusal of books of all sorts, the idolatry fostered by the priests their infallibility-their wafer-god-their pretended miraclestheir power over the world to come -their vestments, processions, holy water, holy bells, holy bones, and all their other mummery, would be swept away. The arch enemy Printing, was encountered thus :

The fraternity pretended to entertain a great favour for it. The dan

ger was, that the people would employ teachers, whereby to enable themselves and their children to read the cheap books now produced. The priests stood eagerly forward, and offered to become teachers; and then they so managed matters as that nobody should learn. They taught the children to venerate the priests; to make endless repetitions of questions, creeds, and Latin prayers; and contrived so to disgust them with literature, that they carried little or none of it from the school. Thus, there remained little danger that they would read prohibited heretical books. On this subject, I cannot do better than quote the able and valuable letters of Mr Colquhoun of Killermont, M.P., to the Rev. James Carlisle, Commissioner of the Board of National Education, Dublin. In letter 8th, Mr Colquhoun says:

"On this point, as on many others, we mistake the policy of the Roman Catholic Church. We think it shallow-in fact it is profound; but ourview of it is superficial. Two very distinguished priests, Wiseman and Dean Macnamara, were examined by the Committee (of the House of Commons) of 1835-6 on Education. To those who have not watched the policy of the priesthood, that evidence will appear embarrassing; to those who are acquainted with it, consistent and clear. Dr Wiseman informs the Committee that his Church pays the utmost attention to popular education. He says, 'that in Italy the education of the poor is specially attended to: that in every commune in the Roman States there is a free school; in every quarter of Rome there is the same. It will delight you to learn, that in Rome there is a board of national education. There are, besides, religious orders, who devote themselves to the instruction of the poor; and there are colleges and seminaries, generally gratuitous and largely en

dowed, for the instruction of the young, from the earliest period to the most advanced. For females there are schools of industry, and schools of general instruction. In fact, according to Dr Wiseman, there never was a country so favoured as the Papal States-so drilled through and through with popular education. Nor is it confined to these States. Popular education,' he tells us, 'equally prevails in Tuscany.' He might have added-it is to be found in Naples, in Spain, and in France. In France, the Freres Ignorantins devote themselves to the work of educating the people, and upwards of 50,000