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Further testimony to the same effect I find in a poem just published, by the Rev. James Bandinel, M.A., of Wadham College, of which the Reviewer, (John Bull, November, 1851,) says:

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"One of the most striking features of Mr. Bandinel's poem is the war to the knife' which he wages against the superstitions and corruptions of Rome, and especially against her Mariolatry. The view which he takes of the latter is as startling as it is original. We shall give it in his own words :

'Oh! not to Thee the prayer ascends,

Thou Mother of the Babe Divine,
When the deluded votary bends

Before the idol's gorgeous shrine;

A spirit of the Nether Flame
Usurps thy highly-favored name.
Lost for a brief, brief space, again
Astartè claims her ancient reign,
And millions bow with suppliant mien
Once more to Zidon's Demon Queen.

In every age, in every clime,

That worship teems with woe and crime;

Where'er her temples greet the abhorring sun,

Known by her impious rites, the goddess still is one.

Thus on Boeotia's Canaanitish shore,

Before her awful shrine, in days of yore,

The ruthless votaries of her gloomy faith

Condemn'd the daughter of their Chief to death,

Unchastely chaste,- —even in the very hour
When she had best beseem'd a bridal bower,

Demanding that the first-born should be given
A virgin offering to the Queen of Heaven.'

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"This onslaught upon the chief feature of Practical Romanism, Mr. Bandinel informs us in a note, is not made for poetical effect,' but is the simple statement of a conviction at which he has arrived after some years' consideration, and which the reconsideration of some additional years has tended to confirm.' And to satisfy his readers that he is not speaking without book, he goes on, very learnedly,-for Mr. Bandinel is at home in the Fathers as well as on Parnassus,-to demonstrate

the identity of the ancient pagan worship of the Queen of Heaven' with the idolatry carried on under the very same name by the Church of Rome, who has blasphemously associated with it the name of the Mother of Jesus.

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***It seems clear,' he says, that the actual objects of Pagan worship, especially those adored in addition to the Supreme, or in opposition to the Revealed GOD, were devils; and amongst these a prominent position was occupied by the demon or demons worshipped under the title of the Queen of Heaven.

"The many striking points of analogy between the worship offered of old under the name of the Queen of Heaven, and that offered now under the same Lame, have led me to the persuasion that they are identical. It may be, indeed, that many demons were of old adored under this and similar titles—it may be, also, that such is the case now-my conviction, however, is that whether Ashtaroth alone received the homage offered of old at the shrines connected apparently with the worship of either the Moon or the Queen of Heaven, or whether a multitude of evil spirits presided separately over the rights of the Roman Diana, the Greek Artemis, the Phoenician Astartè, &c., or even appropriated particular spots and individual temples, the same demon or demons are now actually worshipped by those who adore the Queen of Heaven, and profanely associate with their idolatry the name of Her who is highly favored, blessed among women.

"The very adoption of the title, Queen of Heaven—a title never applied by the sacred writers except to the object of an idolatrous superstition—is strange and significant; the frequent use of that phrase in the worship paid professedly to the Blessed Virgin, is well known; and it is a singular fact, that by its adoption of this phrase at its very first rise, Mariolatry asserted its identity with that superstition, of which it is but another Avatar, a later form, a more modern development, or, to use the striking phrase of an early Father, A RENEWAL.'”

So, also, in Sir Bulwer Lytton's Oriental Tale of the Siege of Granada, is a passing mention made, if not of the prototype, at least of a corrollary to the adoration of the Host by the Romanist Idolater, in relation to the "tribe of Hanifa, who eat their God only in time of famine"❞—the object of worship by this tribe being-a LUMP OF DOugh.

And as a proof that there is something more than coincidence in the similitude between the Romanist professed Christianity, but really Romanist paganism, and the paganism of the avowedly heathen world (the collateralism of which I have essayed to point out) I may quote a striking passage or two from Monastier's History of the Vaudois Church-among many that

might be cited in substantiation of my argument—to show how "the public services of the Church were affected by the substitution of Christianity for paganism as the state religion;" how "the worshippers of idols, who, yielding to the force of events, made a profession of the Gospel, brought their superstitions with them into the Church;" how it being "thought necessary to make some concessions to them, the temples were adorned; recourse was had to the magnificence and pomp of the ancient rituals, both Jewish and pagan, from which were borrowed emblems, images, statues, vestments, altars, sacred vases, and ceremonies"—" the cross being adopted as a standard, quickly becoming an object of worship, as his banner was for the Roman soldier.

In like manner, in support of the allusion which is made, in the text of my Letter, to the Romish tampering with the word of God, to the nonsensical authority claimed for the dicta of the Fathers, the Councils, and the Church of Rome, and to the inefficacy of the "mass for the living and the dead," Monastier says, "The authority of the Holy Scriptures was weakened by the intrusion of apocryphal books into the canon of inspired writings; by the increasing importance and value attached to the opinions of the Fathers, or ancient Ecclesiastical writers; by the pretensions of Councils to fix the sense of the sacred text in an exclusive manner; and, lastly, by the usurpation of spiritual power by the popes, in their pretended quality of successors of St. Peter and St. Paul." Moreover, he subjoins in proof of the little value to be placed upon the boasted patristic authority in respect of either form or doctrine, the narrative of the circumstance of how "Vigilantius, a well-informed man of Comminge, in Aquitaine, who had exercised the functions of a priest at Barcelona, or its neighbourhood, during his travels in the East fell in with St. Jerome❞—and how "this celebrated recluse having in vain attempted to convince Vigilantius, and to bring him over to his opinions respecting relics, saints,

images, and prayers addressed to them, tapers that were kept burning at the tombs, pilgrimages, fasts, the celibacy of priests, and a solitary life"-in one of his epistles to Riparius, says, "I saw a short time ago that monster, Vigilantius, I would fain have bound this madman by passages of Holy Writ, as Hippocrates advises to confine maniacs with bonds." "The foundations of the Christian faith," Monastier goes on to say, "having been disturbed, the doctrines of the Church underwent continual modifications, and a ritual of man's device supplanted the worship of God in spirit and in truth.'"*

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"The mass, originally designed to commemorate the sacrifice of the Saviour, gradually became itself a pretended sacrifice, though an unbloody one, of the body of Christ, for the remission of the sins both of the living and the dead. Twenty popes, probably, have contributed to form the canon of the mass, each one of them devising some new forms, some additions to its ceremonial. Having commenced so promising an undertaking why should they stop short? They proceeded to invent purgatory, indulgences, penances, vigils, fastings, Lent, dispensations, auricular confession, extreme unction, absolution, and masses for the dead—all but so many means of entangling souls, and holding them in a fatal security, as well as of attracting to the Church a tremendous authority and boundless wealth."

So likewise, further, in regard to the charge of Idolatry which I bring against Romanism, and the ridiculous claim to unity and infallibility which the Church of Rome sets up for herself, and which I have, in the discourse in chief, I hope not unsuccessfully combatted, Monastier adds, "Lastly, by the doctrine of the real presence of Jesus Christ in the sacrament of the supper, and the adoration of the host, the Church fell back into Idolatry. Composed of the ruins of Jewish formalism, Pagan superstitions, disfigured fragments of the Gospel, mixed with human speculation and reveries, the Latin Catholic,

Apostolic, and Roman Church has for ten or twelve centuries been toiling to collect together, arrange, amend, and settle this strange medley, which she has decorated with the imposing title of—one and infallible.”

Upon this mere pretension to unity and infallibility, and in relation to the fact that the corruptions which have defaced the Romish Church were of gradual growth, rather than such as were always persisted in by the Christian Church--truths which I have dwelt upon at some length, I find also this further undeniable, and, in part, very remarkable testimony in favor of my position. "We have seen," says Monastier, "that the Bishops of Lombardy approved of Vigilantius, and joined him in opposing the above mentioned errors. In Lombardy, it would appear that many Churches had, more or less, preserved sound doctrine. The long and persevering resistance of one part of the Church to the encroachments of the errors of the Romish Church, is unquestionable; for at the close of the sixth century, we find that Serenus, Bishop of Marseilles, had succeeded in banishing images from his Diocese." "Towards the middle of the eighth century, the struggle of the faithful against these errors still continued. We see it carried on between the French Prelates and Boniface, the Apostle of Germany. Claude Clement, Sidonius, Virgilius, Samson, and Aldebert at their head, reproached Boniface with propagating the following errors :--the celibacy of the priests; the worship of relics; the adoration of images; the supremacy of the popes; masses for the dead; purgatory;" and other Romish dogmata. Upon this particular point, further, the evidence of Charlemagne is not without its weight. The prelates of the second Council of Nice [A. D. 787] having anathematized those who refused to worship images, the Great French King pertinently reminded them that "in so doing, they had anathematized and branded as heretics their own fathers, and as they had been consecrated by them, their consecration was null, and therefore they were not themselves true priests."

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