before they burnt the fat the priests' servant came, and said to the man that sacrificed, 'give flesh to roast for the priest, for he will not have sodden flesh of thee, but raw.' And if any man said unto him, 'let them not fail to burn the fat presently, and then take as much as thy soul desireth;' and then he would answer him,- Nay, but thou shalt give it me now; and if not, I will take it by force.' Therefore the sin of the young men was very great before the Lord; for men abhorred the offering of the Lord. Now Eli was very old, and heard all that his sons did unto all Israel; and how they lay with the women that assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the congregation." When we read this, we are on fire with indignation. But when we hear the chief priests crying out against Christ-the hope, nay, the great object of the formation of their nation,-the most meek, and pure, and beneficent being that ever existed— away with this fellow! he is not fit to live! Away with him! crucify him!" we are thunderstruck with astonishment! we are silenced and satisfied for ever, of the rooted and incurable malignancy of priestcraft. If God himself descended from heaven, and charged a priestly hierarchy with corruption, they would tell him to his face, that he lied. They would assail him as a slanderer and misrepresenter of the good, and raise, if possible, his own world in arms against him! If the fate of all other nations spoke to us in vain-that of the Jews should be an eternal warning. The very priests which God ordained, first corrupted, and then destroyed the kingdom. They began with idolatry, and ended with killing the Son of God himself. Their victims, the Jews, still

66

walk before our eyes, a perpetual and fearful testimony against them. It was the priests who mainly contributed to annihilate them for ever as a people, and to disperse them through all regions, the objects of the contempt, the loathing, and the pitiless persecution of all ages, and of every race.

CHAPTER X.

POPERY.

O that the free would stamp the impious name
Of Pope into the dust! or write it there,
So that this blot upon the page of fame
Were as a serpent's path, which the light air
Erases, and the flat sands close behind!
Ye the oracle have heard ;

Lift the victory-flashing-sword,

And cut the snaky knots of this foul Gordian word,
Which, weak itself as stubble, yet can bind
Into a mass, irrefragably firm,

The axes and the rods which awe mankind.
The sound has poison in it-'t is the sperm
Of what makes life foul, cankerous, and abhorred;
Disdain not then, at thine appointed term,

To set thine armed heel on this reluctant worm.

SHELLEY.

CHRIST appeared; the career of Paganism was checked; the fate of Judaism was sealed. A character and a religion were placed before the eyes of men hitherto inconceivable in the beauty and philanthropy of their nature. Unlike all other founders of a religious faith, Christ had no selfishness, no desire of dominance; and his system, unlike all other systems of worship, was bloodless, boundlessly beneficent, inexpressibly pure, and, most marvellous of all, went to break all bonds of body and soul; and to cast down every temporal and every spiritual tyranny. It was a system calculated for the whole

wide universe ;-adapted to embrace men of all climes, all ages, all ranks of life, or intellect; for the rich and for the poor; for the savage and the civilized; for the fool and the philosopher; for man, woman, and child;-which, recognizing the grand doctrine, that "God made of one blood all the nations of the earth," represented the Almighty as the father, and all men as brethren born to one universal love,— to the same inalienable rights, to the same eternal hope. He himself was the living personification of his principles. Demolishing the most inveterate prejudices of men, by appearing a poor man amongst the poor; by tearing from aristocratic pride and priestly insolence their masks of most orthodox assurance; by proclaiming, that the truth which he taught should make all men free; by declaring that the Gentiles lorded it over, and oppressed one another, but that it should not be so with his followers; by pulling down with indignation spiritual pride in high places, and calling the poor and afflicted, his brethren, and the objects of his tenderest regard,―he laid the foundations of civil and religious freedom, of mental power growing out of unrestrained mental energies, and of love and knowledge co-equal in extension with the world. This perfect freedom of universal man he guarded by leaving no DECREES; but merely great, and everlasting principles, intelligible to the mind and conscience of the whole human race; and on which, men in all countries, might found institutions most consonant to their wants. By declaring that "wherever two or three were met together in his name, he would be in the midst of them," he cut off, for ever, every claim, the most specious, of priestly dominance; and by expressing his unqualified and indignant abhorrence of every desire of his disciples "to call down fire from heaven upon

his enemies," or to forbid those to preach and work miracles in his name, who did not immediately follow him, and conform to their notions, he left to his church a light more resplendent than that of the sun, on the subject of non-interference with the sacred liberty and prerogatives of conscience.

One would have thought that from this epoch, the arm of priestcraft would have been broken; that it would never more have dared to raise its head;-but it is a principle of shameless avidity and audacity; and it is exactly from this time that we trace the most amazing career of its delusions and atrocities, down to the very day of our own existence.

Who is not familiar with the horrors and arrogant assumptions of the papal church? Scarcely had the persecutions of the pagan emperors ceased, when the Christian church became inundated with corruptions and superstitions of every kind. Constantine embraced Christianity; and almost the whole world embraced it nominally with him. From a conversion of such a kind, the work of regal example and popular interested hopes, what effects were to be expected ? The martial tyranny of ancient Rome, which had subdued the world, was coming to an end. The wealth of which a thousand states had been stripped, had turned to poison in her bosom, and brought upon the stern mistress of bloodshed and tears that retribution, from which national rapine and injustice never eventually escape. But as if the ghost of departed despotism hovered over the Seven Hills, and sought only a fresh body to arise in a worse shape, a new tyranny commenced in the form of priestcraft, ten times more terrible and hateful than the old, because it was one which sought to subjugate not merely the persons of men, but to extinguish knowledge; to crush into everlasting