childishness the human mind; and to rule it, in its fatuity, with mysteries and terrors. The times favoured the attempt. With the civil power of the Roman empire, science and literature were disappearing. A licentious army controlled the destiny of a debauched and effeminated people; and the Gothic and Hunnish nations, rushing in immense torrents over the superannuated states of Europe, scattered, for a time, desolation, poverty, and ignorance. At this crisis, while it had to deal with hordes of rough warriors, who, strong in body and boisterous in manner, had yet minds not destitute of great energies, and many traditional maxims of moral and judicial excellence, but clothed in all the simple credulity of children,-up rose the spirit of priestcraft in Rome, and assumed all its ancient and inflated claims. As if the devil, stricken with malice at the promulgation of Christianity, which threatened to annihilate his power, had watched the opportunity to inflict on it the most fatal wound, and had found no instrument so favourable to his purpose as a priest, such a glorious and signal triumph never yet was his from the creation of the world. Had he devised a system for himself, he could not have pitched upon one like popery; a system which, pretending to be that of Christ, suppressed the Bible,-extinguished knowledge,-locked up the human mind,-amused it with the most ludicrous baubles,—and granted official licenses to cominit all species of crimes and impurity. Satan himself became enthroned on the Seven Hills in the habit of a priest, and grinned his broadest delight amidst the public and universal reign of ignorance, hypocrisy, venality, and lust.

As if the popes had studied the pagan hierarchies, they brought into concentrated exercise all their various engines of power, deception, and corruption.

They could not, indeed, assert, as the pagan priesthood had done, that they were of a higher origin than the rest of mankind; and therefore entitled to sit as kings, to choose all kings, and rule over all kings; for it was necessary to preserve some public allegiance to the doctrines of Christianity,--but they took ground quite as effective. They declared themselves the authorized vicegerents of heaven; making Christ's words to Peter their charta-" On this rock I will build my church,"-hence asserting themselves to be the only true church, though they never could shew that St. Peter ever was at Rome at all. On this ground, however-enough for the simple warriors of the time—they proceeded to rule over nations and kings. On this ground they proclained the infallibility of the pope and his conclave of cardinals, and thus excluded all dissent. Their first act, having once taken this station, was that which had been the practice of priests in all countries,-to shut up the true knowledge amongst themselves. As the priests of Egypt and Greece inclosed it in mysteries, they wrapt the simple truths of the gospel in mysteries too; as the Brahmins forbid any except their own order to read the sacred Vedas,-they shut up the Bible,— the very book given to enlighten the world;-the very book which declared of its own contents, that "they were so clear that he who ran might read them;" that they taught a way of life so perspicuous that "the wayfaring man, though a fool, could not err therein." This was the most daring and audacious act the world had then seen; but this act once successful, the whole earth was in their power. The people were ignorant; they taught them what they pleased. They delivered all sorts of ludicrous and pernicious dogmas as scripture; and who could contradict them? So great became the ignorance of

even their own order, under this system, so completely became the Bible a strange book, that when, in after ages, men began to inquire, and to expose their delusions, a monk warned his audience to beware of these heretics who had invented a new language, called Greek, and had written in it a book called the New Testament, full of the most damnable doctrines. By every act of insinuation, intimidation, forgery, and fraud, they not only raised themselves to the rank of temporal princes, but lorded it over the greatest kings with insolent impunity. The BANN, which we have seen employed by the priests of Odin in the north, they adopted, and made its terrors felt throughout the whole Christian world. Was a king refractory-did he refuse the pontifical demand of money—had he an opinion of his own-a repugnance to comply with papal influence in his affairs?the thunders of the Vatican were launched against him; his kingdom was laid under the bann; all people were forbidden, on pain of eternal damnation, to trade with his subjects; all churches were shut; the nation was of a sudden deprived of all exterior exercise of its religion; the altars were despoiled of their ornaments; the crosses, the reliques, the images, the statues of the saints were laid on the ground; and, as if the air itself were profaned, and might pollute them by its contact, the priests carefully covered them up, even from their own approach and veneration. The use of bells entirely ceased in all churches; the bells themselves were removed from the steeples, and laid on the ground with the other sacred utensils. Mass was celebrated with shut doors, and none but the priests were admitted to the holy institution. The clergy refused to marry, baptise, or bury; the dead were obliged to be cast into ditches, or lay putrefying on the ground; till the superstitious people,

looking on their children who died without baptism as gone to perdition, and those dead without burial amid the ceremonies of the church and in consecrated ground as seized on by the devil, rose in rebellious fury and obliged the prince to submit and humble himself before the proud priest of Rome.

Realms quake by turns: proud arbitress of grace,
The church, by mandate shadowing forth the power
She arrogates o'er heaven's eternal door,
Closes the gates of every sacred place.

Straight from the sun and tainted air's embrace
All sacred things are covered; cheerful morn
Grows sad as night-no seemly garb is worn,
Nor is a face allowed to meet a face

With natural smile of greeting. Bells are dumb;
Ditches are graves-funereal rites denied ;
And in the church-yard he must take his bride
Who dares be wedded! Fancies thickly come
Into the pensive heart ill fortified,

And comfortless despairs the soul benumb.

WORDSWORTH.

But not merely kings and kingdoms were thus circumstanced, every individual, every parish was liable to be thus excommunicated by the neighbouring priest. The man who offended one of these powerful churchmen, however respected and influential in his own neighbourhood over night, might the next morning behold the hearse drawn up to his hall door, a significant emblem that he was dead to all civil and religious rights, and that if he valued his life, now at the mercy of any vile assassin, he must fly, and leave his family and his property to the same tender regards which had thus outlawed himself.

The invention of monkery was a capital piece of priestly ingenuity. By this means the whole world became inundated with monks and friars,

Black, white, and grey, with all their trumpery.

A standing army of vigilant forces was set up in every kingdom: into every town and village they entered; in every house they became familiar spies, ready to communicate the earliest symptoms of insubordination to the papal tyranny, ready at a signal to carry terror into every region, and rivet faster the chains of Rome. Like the frogs of Egypt, they came up and covered the earth; they crept into every dwelling; into the very beds and kneading tubs, sparing not those of the king himself-till the land stank with them.

That they might have something to occupy the imagination of the people equivalent to the numerous idols, gorgeous temples, imposing ceremonies, and licentious festivals of the heathen; not only had they paintings of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, but images of Christ, of his mother, and of a thousand saints, who were exalted to be objects of a veneration little to be distinguished from worship in the minds of the deluded people. To these they prayed; to these they made offerings. Splendid churches were built, and adorned with every fascination of statuary and painting; and carnivals, religious festivals, and processions ordained without number, in which all the lewdness and license of the pagan worship were revived. Instead of the charms which the pagans gave as a protection against evil, they gave relicsbits of wood, hair, old teeth, and a thousand other pieces of rubbish, which were pretended to be parts, or to have been the property of, the saints, and were endued with miraculous powers. Thus were men made fast prisoners by ignorance, by the excitement of their imaginations, and by objects on which to indulge their credulity. But other engines equally potent were set to work. Every principle of terror, love, or shame in the human mind was appealed to. Oral confession was invented. Every person was to