the system. Give to any man, or to any class of men, these two advantages, and he must be a dull teacher, if he fail to win all who yield to these first claims. Just suppose a preacher of the reveries of Joanna Southcote, or of the Atheism of Owen, to go to a congregation of eager listeners, and announce to them in his exordium, that he demanded two things from them : First of all, an admission that he was an infallible man, and then, that they themselves were such perfect non-entities in the matters to be brought before them, that they had no right to the exercise of any jugdment of their own in the matter. Would they not at once be prepared to receive the follies of the one and the blasphemies of the other? This is precisely the case with the Popish Priest. By an infinite series of sophisms, he has established the notion of his own infallibility, and persuaded the poor people that they are without the right of exercising the faculties which distinguish them as men, on the momentous matters relating to their religious state and immortal destiny.

Thus disarmed, the Popish system of doctrines becomes a mighty engine, and must operate when it thus obtains free access to the mind, with irresistible and overwhelming power. The Priest must, under such an admission, be regarded as not merely a mystic, but a superhuman being. In the opinion of the deluded devotee, who bows before him, this sacerdotal personage possesses Divine attributes. He is EX-OFFICIO infallible; stands in a long line of descent from the Apostles, and is entrusted with similar credentials and powers with those honourable and holy men; he is anointed to his office with the incense and unction, supposed to be retained, only, in the regular succession of this royal priesthood; he possesses the right to exact confession of sins, and to demand a knowledge of the secrets of the inmost soul, as well as all the events of domestic and public life; he holds the power of the keys, by which he claims the prerogative of enforcing all the laws, penalties, and observances of the Church; he assumes the right of remitting sins, of closing the gates of paradise, of opening the portals of hell, and of sealing the everlasting doom of his followers. This super-human creature must, in the nature of things, be a much greater and a more awful being in the apprehension of a mind under the full influence of Popish sentiments, than either the Priest of the ancient Delphic oracles, or the Brahmin of modern Paganism. The wizard enchanters of ancient times, as well as the Priests of modern Pagan superstition, are only supposed to interpret the will of the gods, and to foretel the fate of men; but these Christian demi-gods are thought to hold the EXECUTIVE of religion in their own hands. They are not mere interpreters of the laws of God, but they denounce and execute; they not only minister the rites, ordinances, and sacraments of religion, but they "shut, and no man can open, and they open, and no man can shut," they are admitted not merely to hold the seal of grace essential to authenticate the right of the " faithful" to pass into paradise, but also the thunders of the Divine indignation and wrath. HERE, then, stands the Priest, on one hand assuming that he possesses these powers; and there on the other hand, stands the ignorant disciple, with the admission of the fact fully on his mind.

What must be the effect on this poor deluded soul? He is shorn of all strength of mind; he is filled with trepidation and fear; he is utterly incapable of any kind of resistance, and appears like a mental petrifaction in the presence of the man who holds his fate in his hands. Something like this must be the state of every person when he enters the confessional, or bows before the altar, when the Priest is supposed to change the wafer into the very body, blood, and divinity of the Son of God. How can it be otherwise? The admission of these powers must involve all the rest. Talk of the strength of human reason, the influence of education, the light of science and literature, and the noble advances of the age, to free itself from the barbarism and superstition of dark and distant centuries! Are there not millions of men, and an increasing multitude too, who allow the claims of the Popish priesthood to infallibility; to the right to receive their confessions; to the mystic and divine power to transform a morsel of paste into "God with us;" to absolve from the guilt and penalty of all sin; to exalt to heaven, and to doom to hell? It is difficult to conceive how these claims can be conceded by rational creatures, and only shows how low the human intellect is capable of sinking, when removed beyond the true light of the Gospel. However, when once conceded, this one admission must pave the way for the entire absorption of the soul into all the luscious follies of the Popish superstition. When the enquiries of the deluded disciple are all silenced by the doctrine that faith and reason are quite incompatible; when his scruples are ended by the wheedling dogma, that because the priesthood is in possession of an infallible key to unlock the truth, it is a sin for him to exercise his own judgment, or to trouble his own conscience-then the enchantment of superstition begins.

In the religion of Rome, though the laity are denied the use of reason, the system seeks to make ample amends by appeals to the imagination and senses. One thing must have struck the attention of every one who has visited Roman Catholic countries; it is, that in the midst of the employment of poetry, painting, music, sculpture, and scenic preparations of every kind, even to profusion, the emotions of happiness are scarcely ever appealed to. We find no imagery of joy. The tones of their organs, the structure of their melody, the sonorous voices of their priesthood, in conducting the service, are all struck to a deeply pensive and melancholy key. The ceremony of High Mass is only calculated to inspire awe towards the priesthood, reverence and fear for some abstract, hidden, and mystic power connected with the service, and win over the trembling homage of the people to the system. In the midst of the performances of the mitred High Priest, and his retinue of dependents; the blazing light of innumerable candles; the incense and perfume of the censer; the utterance of hymns and prayers in an unknown tongue; and the elevation of the host; every thing seems constructed to inspire dread. There is, even in this highest service of the Church, nothing to call forth the sentiments of confidence and joy. The pictures which adorn their Churches, and the images which they either adore, or at least look upon in order to incite their devotion, are all calculated to awaken

emotions of fear and dread. Relics of the cross, of dead men's bones, and of innumerable other imaginary remains of ancient and departed piety, carefully preserved, and exhibited in their shrines, are intended to excite sombre feelings. The very household gods, so to speak, of these people, all serve to inspire terror. I have seen myself, very often, in one of the most perfectly Popish countries in modern times, lighted candles stuck in human sculls, placed in the corners of the streets of a large town, kept constantly burning, whilst pictures of Purgatory, Popes, Priests, and Devils, were so intermingled as to teach the efficacy of the system, while they struck the mind with awe. O no, there is no joy in this religion-how should there be? Superstition only dwells with the horrible, never with the happy. She throws a midnight darkness over the territory she occupies, and then calls up the furies of her pandæmonium to perform their evolutions of mimic power, to silence any murmurs which may arise, and fascinate her poor deluded followers through the impulse of their fears.

Our present position is, that this superstitious influence has, for the past few years, been greatly on the increase amongst the members of the Church of Rome. The fact, in all probability, is universally true; but especially in countries where Popery had been in a declining, or, at least, a depressed state. We will take that of our own country as an illustration. By its own means, since the passing of the Relief Bill, the Popish Church has, no doubt, succeeded in inspiring her own people with a vastly augmented amount of devotedness and zeal. It was imagined by many Christian and philanthropic men, that the storm from without, in the penal laws which existed to exclude Papists from power, pressed them together for mutual succour; but as soon as this external pressure should be removed, the party would, for the want of a principle of cohesion, fly off into a thousand scattered fragments, or, at least, mingle in good Christian brotherhood with their neighbours. This has been found a fallacious opinion. Popery possesses an internal organization, by which she can hold together. She is now seen to work, from within, through all the ramifications of her system, with wonderful effect. The isolated, compact, vigorous, united, zealous, and absolutely devoted state of the Popish Church in Ireland, is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the world. people, speaking our language, and, consequently, having access to our literature,as well as the means of informing themselves on questions relative to their rights as men, and their privileges as Christians should be kept in their present state of vassalage, is an event of difficult solution. Here, however, is the unquestionable fact. The Popish people intermingle less with their Protestant neighbours; the lines of demarkation between the two classes are more distinctly marked; the hatred of the Papist towards the Protestant has greatly increased in virulence; the difficulties attendant on the transactions of the common and ordinary business of life, have multiplied exceedingly; and the possession of the bounties of nature and providence in common, is now, next to impossible.

That a

Moreover, Popish places of worship are constantly and rapidly

increasing; the multitudes attending them are great and overflowing; the mass and the confessional are more steadily regarded, whilst the principles involved are now fully imbibed; and a deep, strong, urgent, and glowing zeal for all the peculiar doctrines, services, and claims of the Church has been produced in the entire mass of the Popish population of these islands, as well as in other places.

Those who are in the habit of considering religion as a solemn transaction betwixt the soul and GOD, sustained by faith in the pure revelations of Scripture, and exhibited by the spiritual affections, find it difficult to conceive how it can be possible, in the absence of all this, to beget in the minds of millions of men an enthusiastic devotedness to a false system. It must be recollected that this false system, in the case of these people, stands in the place of the true. It is that on which the mind rests, in the hope of obtaining some indefinite and distant blessings. Besides, it belongs to superstition to clothe its mimicry of religion in the array of a gorgeous drapery, that it may gratify the senses, and ronse the susceptibilities of the heart. The thunders of her dogmas, associated with services which admirably strike in to swell and excite the passions, may well awaken deep and powerful feeling. The disciple of the hierarchy of Rome, is taught to consider his Church as the only true, apostolic, legitimate Church on earth, out of which there is no salvation. This idea dwelt upon, fixed in the soul in all the force of an intuitive truth, and never doubted for a moment, is calculated to produce a most thrilling effect. From this elevated pinnacle, the favoured disciple must be prepared to look, with a strange commotion of feeling, on all the world around him. If true piety could be associated with such a claim, pity to others might possibly be the result; but as it is, and especially when the validity of the claim is disputed, contempt, hatred, revenge, and the spirit of persecution, must be produced. In the estimation of every ignorant, immoral, brutal, and ferocious Papist in the world-on the principle that his is alone the true Church-every saint on earth, though as holy and spiritual as Leighton, as benevolent as Howard, as zealous and indefatigable as Baxter, as exemplary and useful in all the relations of public life as Wilberforce, and as self-denying and devoted to the work of saving souls as Martyn, is abhorred and hated as a heretic, and doomed, in the feelings of his mind, to the anathemas of the Church in this world, and to the vengeance of GOD in the next. Whether the doctrines of the Papacy tend to produce "good will on earth," or not, it is certain that they are highly calculated to produce animosity; and men may be brought to act as ardently from the passion of hatred as from that of charity and love.

Moreover, the notion that their Church possesses rights paramount to all others, and is destined to overthrow all rival power, and reign in universal majesty, powerfully tends to influence the ambitious feelings of the multitude of her disciples. The triumph of the Church, according to the expectation of the spiritual Christian, and the triumph of Romanism, as anticipated by the Papist, are perfectly different events. The glowing hopes of the former are fixed on a period when peace, righteousness, joy, and holiness, shall universally prevail as a class of purely spiritual bless

ings; the expectations of the latter rest on the image of a mighty ecclesiastical empire, in which the Roman Pontiff shall be absolute, his throne be exalted in undisputed grandeur, his mandates become the law of all men, his Priestly emissaries be recognized as the viceroys of this "King of Kings," the services of this temple of Idolatry shall be chaunted in "every land and by every tongue," and all Kings, Senators, Magistrates, as well as the teeming multitudes of the general population of the earth, shall bow in solemn adoration at the feet of this "VICAR" and representative of the "Lord of all." Ambition, the master passion of human nature, finds ample scope in this system; and, although the multitude can never hope to possess any elevated position in a grand enterprize of this nature, yet we all know with what ease it is possible to enlist them on the side of any cause which dazzles their imaginations with its pomp of circumstance, and the magnificence of its extent.

But in addition to these present and more obvious appliances of the doctrines of Popery as stimulants to her disciples, whenever they count their Beads, repeat the Pater Nosters and Ave Marias, enter the Confessional, purchase Indulgencies, visit the shrines of the Saints and the relics of the departed, offer Prayers for the Dead, and encourage Masses for those in Purgatory; they are taught to believe that they are performing works of merit, by which their own salvation will be in some way secured, and a general stoek of good works prepared at the same time, by which to serve the general interests of the Church. This again meets, with admirable effect, the pharisaical propensities and pride of human nature. When it is taught that the penalties of the law may be averted, and the joys of salvation secured by purchase, who would not, in the weakness and agonies of dissolving nature, the passing away of all earthly things, and the apprehension of an approaching judgment, part with his wealth to secure the good of his soul, and aggrandize his Church at the same time. A lawyer, of great and almost universal practice, in the midst of a population of upwards of twenty thousand Roman Catholics, in one of the dependences of the British Crown, and who was extensively employed in preparing their wills, informed me, that he did not recollect ever receiving instructions for the device of the property of a Romanist, in which he was not directed to assign a portion, more or less, to the Priests, to say Masses for his soul after death.

This horrid system strikes at every sentiment in the human bosom, but chiefly at the passion of fear. What her own gloomy and sombre services fail to effect, she takes care to complete by example. Just as instances of severe justice are intended to impress the public mind with awe, so the tyranny of this system is not only meant to inflict punishment on those who are deemed enemies and heretics, but also to fill the minds of her faithful adherents with fear. With the Church, there is the gloomy cell. With the hall of justice, so called, the rack, the thumb-screw, and the clanking chain. With the laws of the hierarchy, the Inquisition, and its dismal traditions and autos-da fe; with the exaction of obedience, the recollections of the slaughtered Waldenses, the brutalities of Alva in the Netherlands, the massacres of St. Bartholomew in France; the butchery of the thousands