morals and religion, and regulate and correct the schemes of ingenuity or experience. But as soon as he passes the bound of sanctity, and profanes his consecrated character with secular ambition, he has surrendered that charter of circumstances, which delivered him from temptation, and has invited the approach of every lawless desire. This did the Roman clergy; and their civil character ranks no higher than their moral one, as we shall presently see. Notwithstanding a current proverb of that age, It is good to live beneath the crooked staff,' their government was oppressive, and seemed only mild in compari son with the iron law of the posterity of the Goths. It was mild only where it was weak. From the nature of its constitution it was precarious, and dependent upon the superstition of the neighbouring potentates; it was exposed to their violence, and bought their forbearance by threats, by persuasion, and by art. Its policy, therefore, could never exercise, in such circumstances, a fierce tyranny, which would arm vassal and lord against itself, and complete its ruin. But where its power had grown firm and fearless, in the patrimony of the Holy See, and within the walls of Rome, the violent spirit of oppression and civil rapine broke out with unrestrained force. We must extend our melancholy inquiry from these peculiar features of the hierarchy, to its general influence upon the condition of society. History sets this in its true light. It was the singular fortune of Rome twice to become the capital of European civilization and empire, and its first magnificence, hardly exceeded the glory of the pontifical city. It was likewise its singular fortune to see its portentous grandeur balanced by a double desolation. There are two distinct periods recorded in its annals, when its miseries proved as unexampled as ever its glory had been. I allude to its disastrous condition in the sixth, and at the close of the fifteenth centuries. In the first of these periods, the devoted city was wasted by pestilence, famine, and the barbarian. So deadly was the infection, that fourscore persons expired in an hour,' and the extreme thinness of the population left the eternal city' almost empty. This calamity befel Rome in the time of Gregory the Great; and, of course, it was somewhat too early an event to be laid to the charge of the ecclesiastical dynasty, whose power was not yet fully established. Indeed the city owed to the active measures of Gregory, its rapid restoration to health and power; and under a continuation of such popes, might have sustained its character. But in 1499, the wretched misrule of the sixth Alexander, and the factious discord which he fomented, had so desolated Rome and the surrounding country, that the whole people were obliged to seek the safety of their lives, in the fortified castles of the combatants. A plague followed the desertion of their dwellings, and the centre and court of the christian religion, from the direct influence of christian dignitaries, became a scene of riotous quarrels, and of fearful desolation. A similar exhibition of misrule and violence, and of extravagant private vice extends throughout the catholic countries of that day; and the modern student is shocked and astonished at the abundant examples of an outrageous turpitude of private manners. At the castles of men in power, dogs were fed with human flesh; professed assassins were maintained; poison, treachery and sacrilege were familiarly resorted to; meanwhile the forms of religion were scrupulously observed, and the chieftain under whose patronage all this was done, was perhaps himself a bishop. No man, conversant with the histories of the time, can deem this overcharged. Froissart's anecdotes of French and Flemish wars, and the numberless annalists of the Italian dynasties, will amply justify a darker picture. In this dissolute state of society, there were, as may be easily supposed, multitudes who abjured altogether the name and forms of religion. Among the German Condottieri of the fourteenth century was an adventurer who ravaged Italy with a large band of mercenaries, designating himself Enemy of God, of pity, and of compassion.' This was no more than an open profession of that want of principle, which thousands of his contemporaries shared. Now this desperate atheism must be laid to the charge of the corrupt system of religion whose absurdities produced this reaction. Because the world has seen this irreligion vanish in great measure, as a purer faith has supplanted the system of which we speak. This intellectual and moral degradation through so vast an interval of time, should be regarded, as decidedly the most melancholy event in human history. That this darkness should follow immediately in gradual increase, upon the new revelation which had been imparted from heaven, is another ordination of Providence, which we do not understand. It seems to be another departure of the divine presence, like Jehovah's abandonment of his temple at Jerusalem; and admonishes man of his miserable errors when left to himself. It sets aside the presumption of those vagaries which philosophers have indulged concerning buman perfectibility. It establishes the necessity of a pure religion-simple in doctrine, and rigid in practice, to quell the outrage of the indulged passions, and to preserve the world from barbarism. Meantime, the illumination of the understanding, which accompanied and followed the reformation, proves the natural operation of religion upon the mind. One 1 of the fruits of the middle ages, is the discovery of the proper limits of human inquiry; this fruit is gained from sad experi ence of the evils which result from inattention to these limits. And it is the duty incumbent upon after generations, to treasure up carefully these results, in order to avoid forever a second degeneracy. As we remember the perverted views of God and man, which the very best men of numberless generations received from a missal and a priest, we clasp our Bible with deeper fervency, thankful that the voice of God is substituted for the earthly command of knaves and fools. For the grotesque heaven of the papist, which rivalled the impiety of the pagan Olympus, there is opened to the eyes of our faith, a scene of moral magnificence, which surpasses the reach of human imagination, and which is altogether worthy of its Divine Author. The puerile fiction of purgatory, and the abominable sale of indulgencies, have given place to the real horrors, which rational nature deduces from the analogies of the universe, and receives from scripture, as the necessary and certain punishment, which God has connected to the commission of sin. The inferences which every philosophic christian draws from this portion of history, and which this brief notice was intended to produce, are manifold and remarkable. The dark purposes of God's providence in suffering the mind to be led astray until the way became too devious and the night of doubt too frightful to be borne, we cannot pretend to explain. From those tremendous dreams the world has awaked, with energies which it never exercised before, and with virtues, and a progressive virtuous character, which promise better and brighter centuries to its old age, than ever its infancy boasted. But if this hope be delusive,-if the little day which we enjoy, of useful institutions, of knowledge, improvement and evangelical zeal, is speedily to be clouded over, and vice and corruption are to resume their sovereign reign in the ways of this world,-still, it will not make the world, to which we are travelling, less bright, nor disturb, for one moment, its everlasting peace. H.O. N. DO GOOD AND LEND, HOPING FOR NOTHING AGAIN. FOR THE CHRISTIAN DISCIPLE. In morals we generally use but one term to express a passion or affection both in its good and its bad sense. Love may sig nify a love of evil or a love of good; it may mean self-love and the love of the world, or the love of the Lord and our neighbour. This habit of expressing opposite qualities by the same term, produces an indistinctness and confusion in moral discourses and moral reflections, often leading us to call evil good and good evil; to put darkness for light and light for darkness. It is useful to analyze our affections, to describe their various states, and to show when they are animated by the breath of life, and when derived from our selfishness. Hope produces a great part of the cheat and illusion of our present state, with many of its sorrows and all of its disappointments. It proceeds from a wrong source, when it is applied to an improper object, and when it anticipates an end without reference to the means of attaining it. All acknowledge that hope of evil proceeds from hatred: but it is not so well considered, that to hope for our neighbour's good when we do not endeavour to promote it, implies a criminal inactivity in our affections. We solace our minds with the conclusion, that we love even our enemies, because we can cheat ourselves so far, as to say that we wish them well. Be ye warmed and filled :'-'What doth it profit?' There is another abuse of hope, which is still more dangerous. Knowing that eternal happiness is attainable only by virtue, we continually deceive ourselves with a pretended resolution to become better at some future period. This is a most alarming, and melancholy state of mind. We know that we have evils, which contaminate all the exercises of our minds, and that they are totally incompatible with the character at which we aim, but we cannot resolve to put them away; and, to quiet our minds, we resort to the awful delusion of hoping for the end, without resolving on the means, by which only it can be attained. Whether this be real hope is an unnecessary question. It passes for it with us: and like an anchor to our evils, it sustains them even under the denunciations of the law, and the reproofs of our own consciences. With this they stand fast: and though we progress in knowledge, make much fine show of self-denial in other things, and acquire a name and character which will illuminate and cheer a wide sphere of life, still they may be nourishing a secret corruption, they may be acquiring an internal dominion: our righteousness in other things may be this same Lucifer arrayed in his garments of light; and when the scene is closed, and we have done all, these evils may stand. New Seriesvol. IV. 52 Similar to this delusion is our confidence in the mercy of God, to pardon our sins without repentance. It is well for us to believe and constantly to remember, that no evils will be imputed to us, which we have put away. To suppose that the Divine justice is vindictive, is to estimate God by our know ledge of rulers and tyrants among men. Those evils which will cause our misery in the world to come, are those only, which we do not put away in the present world. Our state, either of happiness or misery, will be determined by what we are when we die, with no other reference to what we have been, than that our final character is the result of our past improvement or misimprovement of the blessings we have received. In the future life we shall not be punished for our wickedness but by it; in like manner as the happiness of heaven is not a reward for obedience, but in keeping the commandments there is great reward. Misery is not of arbitrary infliction, but arises naturally and necessarily from an evil state of mind. It is not the effect of evil that has been repented of, that is removed, but of existing evil; for the pangs of remorse cease, when no love of the evil remains. If we carry with us the love of an evil, the divine mercy can do nothing towards pardoning it; for to pardon a sin, is to remove the cause of it. Hence the vanity and danger of hoping to attain happiness by the goodness or mercy of God. We should remember that the goodness of God is exercised in leading us to repentance; and this alone is the effect of it, on which we should rely. The changes which the human mind undergoes from age to age, render a corresponding change necessary in the accommodation of truth to the mind. Hence the difference between the Old Testament and the New. The one directs us to act from obedience to truth; the other, from love to God and our neighbour in conformity with truth, or render its guidance. Great changes have also taken place since the Christian revelation. Both Testaments, however, when rightly understood, contain truth adapted to every state of mind. But the age has passed in many places, when men could be driven to heaven by denunciations. The mind ranges in freedom. It cannot now as formerly be restrained by fear of punishment, nor can it be made virtuous by rites and ceremonies and laws, of which the real meaning is unknown. What it is to believe, it must first understand; and what it is to do, it must first love. This change has made it not only unnecessary, but absolutely injurious, to teach men to hope for an end, without disclosing to them all the means for attaining it. To encourage men to |