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NEW CONNEXION MAGAZINE.

JUNE, 1867.

Theology and General Literature.

POPERY:

ITS DEGRADING SUPERSTITIONS AND DEMORALIZING INFLUENCE.

SAINT-WORSHIP-PATRON SAINTS: THEIR NUMBER-MARIOLATRYDR. PUSEY A WITNESS-RELICS-HISTORY OF A TEAR-POPEWORSHIPPING RELICS - HOLY VISAGE-RELICS AMONGST THE RITUALISTS-A DEMORALIZING SYSTEM-THE CONFESSIONAL: ITS INFLUENCE ON THE PRIEST-BLACK IN ROBES, BLACK IN HEART -MONASTIC SYSTEM-FATHER GAVAZZI-LUTHER AT ROME— TETZEL INDULGENCES-FATHER ROCCO'S SERMON-THE CARNIVAL -IMPRESSIONS OF COLERIDGE.

To deal with the subject of Popery adequately within reasonable limits is altogether impossible, and, as we do not wish to weary our readers, we shall compress our charges into as brief space as is compatible with presenting even a specimen view. It is, then, a system of superstition. The best things, perverted, may become the worst. What the Godlike gift of reason becomes in the idiotic or insane, such, or something approaching it, is the religious faculty when perverted to superstition and fanaticism. Superstition is rooted in all the doctrines peculiar to Popery, and the growth is proportionately abundant. It is like the jungle in tropical climates, giving shelter to all noxious things. Its image-worship, saint and angel-worship, veneration of relics, pilgrimages, miracles, faith in indulgences, and modes of receiving absolution, are some of its manifestations. And these pitiable perversions of reason and faith have the fullest authorization in the decrees of councils, and the creeds and practices of Popes. They are genuine developments of Popery, made possible by that withholding of Scripture truth to which we have already referred.

First, as to saint-worship. The creed of Pope Pius IV. affirms that the saints reigning with Christ are to be worshipped and invoked. To what an extent does this decision multiply the objects of worship! The Romish Calendar has upwards of a thousand saints, a number so large that three or four patrons, on an average, can be allotted to every day in the year; and the present Pope is adding to the number! Every trade and profession has its patron saint; and some of these worthies take charge of particular diseases, and some of brute beasts. Sufferers from the falling sickness trust to St. Cornelia; St. Appolonia takes charge of the toothache; horses are the special concern of St. Loy; and St. Anthony looks after the swine! So great, too, is the delusive faith in these saints, that on

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the days devoted to their honour the edifices which contain their images are crowded with devotees, who embrace and kiss these images with a fanatical fervour. What a degradation of worship itself, to be thus divided between the Redeemer and mortals, even if they had been as pure and perfect as Popery pretends!

So universal is the worship of the Virgin, that the religion of Italy might more correctly be called the religion of the Virgin than the religion of Jesus Christ. She is called the Divine Mary, Queen of the Universe, Bridge of Salvation, Our Co-Redemptress, the Complement of the Trinity, Mistress of Paradise, and at least forty similar titles. Greater faith is avowed in her mediation than in that of the Saviour himself. An English Protestant recently heard the children in a Roman Catholic school taught to address the Lord's Prayer to the Virgin Mary, and to say, not "Our Father," but " Holy Mary, who art in Heaven, hallowed be thy name; thy kingdom come; thy will be done;" thus most absolutely putting a creature in the place of the Creator. Can we wonder at this, when one Pope addresses her as "The Illustrious Saviour of Sinners," another speaks of her as "Our greatest hope; yea, our entire ground of hope;" and when the present Pope, besides similar extravagant and idolatrous expressions, has enforced the doctrine of the Immaculate Conception, as an infallible truth, which men are bound to believe on pain of eternal damnation? Even Dr. Pusey, in his "Eirenicon," a work written to advocate union between the Roman and Anglican Churches, mourns over this idolatrous devotion to Mary in the Church of Rome, as constituting a formidable obstacle in the way of this union-an "insoluble difference" between the Churches. His book abounds with quotations in proof of the idolatry and blasphemy of the Marian devotion. He says, "There seems no limit to the extent, either of the increase of devotion to the blessed Virgin, or the subjects which may be made the doctrines of faith." "Where our natural language would be, God will do this or that,' there it seems equally natural to Roman Catholics to say, 'Mary will do it.' At least, where we expect before-hand in the unfinished sentence to find God' or 'Jesus,' we find Mary ;'" and this system, he understands, "is developing," so that if there is "a lower deep" than the depths to which idolatrous superstition has sunk in the worship of the Virgin, Popery may be expected to find it. Thus, on the testimony of a friend and admirer of the Romish Church, this Church is convicted of putting the Virgin in the place of the only Mediator between God and man, and adopting Mary as the name that is above every name! Is it any wonder, looking at this saint and Virgin-worship, that Popery leaves the second commandment out of her Catechisms and Prayer-books, or mutilates it, or so anxiously withholds the Scriptures from her people? To a system so degrading to the human soul, and so dishonouring to its Creator and Redeemer, darkness is evidently a great necessity.

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More degrading still, however, is the Papal faith in relics. It seems akin to nothing so much as to heathen fetish worship. Among the relics mentioned by D'Aubigné as carefully treasured in different churches were a piece of Noah's ark; soot from the furnace of the three young men ; a bit of the manger in which the Saviour was

laid; the breath of St. Joseph, which Nicodemus received in his glove; hair from the beard of the great Christopher, and nineteen thousand other relics. Sir J. Stephen mentions a collection of relics, which included one of the arms in which the aged Simeon raised the infant Jesus in the Temple, and the very hand which the sceptical Thomas had stretched out to touch the wounded side of his risen Lord. He illustrates also the kind of evidence on which the Church rests her faith in the genuineness of these precious treasures. The fathers of Vendôme exhibited in the convent one of the tears which fell from the eyes of Jesus as he wept at the grave of Lazarus. An angel gathered it up and gave it to Mary, the sister of the deceased. It passed some centuries afterwards to the treasury of relics at Constantinople, and was bestowed by some Greek emperor upon some German mercenaries in reward for some services to his crown. They placed it in the abbey of Frisengen, whence it was conveyed by the Emperor Henry III, who transferred it to his mother-in-law, Agnes of Anjou, the foundress of the monastery of Vendôme, where she deposited it; and Catholic learning has expended its resources in defending the genuineness of the relic on the ground of these facts! We know a good Catholic in Bradford who has upon her rosary five nails which she firmly believes to be the nails of the true cross. Doubtless they are as genuine as the tear. Let none suppose, however, that this absurd and degrading superstition is confined to poor ignorant Irishwomen. The Rev. W. Arthur found it one of the specialties of Rome. At the Lateran he saw numbers crowding the holy stair, stained with the blood of the Redeemer! At the top of this stair is a dark little chapel, called "The Holy of Holies." It contains a picture by St. Luke-an exact likeness of the Saviour when twelve years old. No woman may enter, it is so holy! On a Good Friday evening, Mr. Arthur saw the Pope, before whom men kneel, in God's house, himself kneeling, and to what? Some robed canons held up something in their hands three times in succession. "What are those things the priests are holding up, as if they meant us to look at them?"

"Those, signore, are the most holy relics."

"And what is the Pope doing?"

"The holy father is adoring the most holy relics."

"And pray what may the relics be?"

"There is the most holy cross, the sacred spear, and the most holy visage."

These, says Mr. Arthur, were word for word the answers given him by his next neighbour. The holy visage is an imprint of the countenance of Christ, made in the hours of his agony, upon a handkerchief wherewith he was then wiped by St. Veronica. After quoting the evidence Romish writers give of the genuineness of this visage something like that in the case of the tear-Mr. A. says, "And on this evidence we are to fall down upon our knees before a cloth! On such grounds, the whole pomp of Rome is brought out to teach the world to worship relics! As an elaborate attempt on the part of the great to teach superstition to the low, this ceremony of adoring the major relics seemed to surpass all I had ever seen.' Popish superstition has many ramifications and reticulations, which

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