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we need not, however, trace further. The spectacle of a Pope worshipping old rags and bones is surely conclusive illustration and proof of the degradation inflicted by this system on the intellect, its terrible abuse of the religious nature of its votaries, and the equal dishonour it does to the only true object of religious worship.

It is startling, however, to find our English Protestant Church following so closely and eagerly as she is doing in the wake of Popery as a system of superstition, down even to the preservation of relics. The twenty-second Article of the Church of England says "The Romish doctrine concerning purgatory, pardons, worshipping and adoration, as well of images as reliques, and also invocation of saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repugnant to the Word of God." One of the Ritualist writers says of this, that "It may mean a great deal, or it may mean very little;" and Ritualistic practice proclaims that it means little indeed, and is obliterating the distinction between the one Church and the other. Our Anglican Ritualists use at least one image in their worship-an image of Christ. Describing the altarcross, the "Anglicanum Directorium" says "It is often jewelled, and not unfrequently has upon it an engraved representation in alto relievo of our Lord's passion;" alto relievo really signifying "image," as they are one and the same. Of the archbishop's crozier it also says, "The crozier ought, according to Catholic custom, to have a figure of our Lord hanging nailed to the rood on each of its two sides. Thus one figure of Christ crucified looks towards the archbishop as he follows it, whilst another meets the eyes of those in front." There are societies for giving effect to Popish views of the Lord's Supper, which is described as "The adorable sacrament of the altar," in which the bread and wine are to be worshipped as concealing the actual person and deity of the Saviour, which is in reality the grand Papal superstition of transubstantiation. The directions for this service in the "Anglicanum Directorium" all proceed, indeed, on this assumption, and are as degradingly superstitious, almost, as anything to be found in Popish mass-books. One or two extracts will clearly show this.

"Also if by negligence any of the blood be spilled upon a table fixed to the floor, the priest must take up the drop with his tongue, and the place of the table must be scraped, and the shavings burned with fire, and the ashes reserved with the relics beside the altar, and he to whom this has befallen must do penance forty days.

"But if the chalice have dropped upon the altar the drop must be sucked up, and the priest must do penance three days.

"But if the drop have penetrated through the linen cloth to the second linen cloth, he must do penance for four days. If to the third, nine days. If the drop of blood have penetrated to the fourth cloth, he must do penance for twenty days, and the priest or the deacon must wash the linen coverings which the drop of blood has touched three times over a chalice, and the ablution is to be reserved with the relics."

If the eucharist have been lost, "this is to be observed, that wherever the species of the sacrament are found in their integrity

they are severally to be consumed; but if this cannot be done without risk, they are still to be reserved for relics."

Here we have quite a cluster of superstitions, Romish both in spirit and in form, penance and relic worship included. That is clearly the spirit in which the relics are to be reserved, and these relics would doubtless form a nucleus around which would gather in due time collections similar to those to which we have referred. No wonder that these men repudiate the name and associations of Protestant, and sigh for re-union with the Church of Rome.

Our next charge is that Popery is a demoralizing system. One of the glories of the Gospel of Christ is, that it is perfect as a system of morality. While it justifies the ungodly, it strikes at the root of ungodliness, and brings men under the operation of all those principles and motives from which springs a pure and faultless morality. Popery, to a frightful extent, dissevers morality from religion, weakens or destroys the motives to personal holiness, and fosters and shelters vice. From its substitution of the mere form for the reality of religion; its false doctrines as to sin and forgiveness; the fact of its priests taking the moral responsibilities of their flocks; its indulgences; its doctrine of purgatory; its confessional; its clerical celibacy; its monastic system; and its Jesuitism, it seems as if it had been expressly planned for what it has certainly become a grand engine for undermining and corrupting the morality of the Papal world. The only difficulty in relation to this charge is that of selecting from the overwhelming evidences of its truth, and in so selecting as to avoid offending the sense of decency. Whether we reason from result is the same.

cause to effect, or from effect to cause, the Take first the Confessional, as it is a part of the Papal system on which Ritualism looks with especial favour, and for which, as we have seen announced, it makes regular appointments. We remember having received a vivid impression of the manifold evil effects of the confessional, from reading a work on the subject by a distinguished French historian.* In our happy English homes we can form but a faint conception of the system of espionage the confessional establishes in society, and the amount of immorality, jealousy, suspicion, and misery it creates in families. It is evidently, on the showing of M. Michelet, a fatal foe to the family constitution. On its effects in the destruction of female virtue we dare not dwell. But look at the inevitable effect of the confessional on the minds of the priests themselves, making them, as Isaac Taylor expresses it, the receptacles into which the continual droppings of all the debauchery of a parish are falling, and through which the copious abomination filters.

"It is hard not to suppose that the Romish Church, in constituting her hierarchy, had wittingly kept in view the purpose of rendering her clergy the fit instruments of whatever atrocity her occasions might demand them to perpetrate, and so had brought to bear upon their hearts every possible power of corruption. Not content with

cashiering them of sanatory domestic influences, she has, by the practice of confession, made the full stream of human crime and corruption to pass-foul and infectious-through their bosom !

Michelet's" Priests, Women, and Families."

Having to construct at discretion the polity of the nations, the Romish architects have so planned it, as that the sacerdotal order shall constitute the Cloaca-the sewers-of the social edifice; and thus they have secured for Rome the honour of being, through these channels, the great stercorary of the world! How fitly, then, in the language of prophetic vision, is the apostate Church designated, sitting as she does at the centre of the common drainage of Europe, as the mother of abominations, and as holding forth, in shameless arrogance, the cup of the filthiness of her fornications !"* He mentions one of the books in which the mysteries of the art of the confessional are expounded, of which even a respectable Romish writer speaks as a most subtle examination of all imaginable impurities—a lazar-house, containing the most horrible things the pen can pourtray; and says, "It is impossible to conceive how an author can so far have divested himself of shame as to write such a book."

Thus Rome, by her system of clerical celibacy, prepares her clergy in the highest degree for being tempted, and then places them in circumstances of the strongest possible temptation. The results, on the testimony of even Papal writers, have corresponded with the circumstances. One of them-Maimburg-says, "The lives of the clergy themselves are so horribly debauched, that I cannot, without trembling, relate the hideous description." Mr. Arthur found the opinion of the Italians as to the morals of the priests, agreeing with the view of their position here given. "Black in robes, black in heart," one expression which he quotes, is fearfully significant. The Pope speaks of the poisonous pastures of the Bible Society; but what must be the kind of pastures into which the poor sheep are led by shepherds such as these? And can we be surprised that a large proportion of the intelligent minds in Popish countries should hate and reject a Christianity thus misrepresented by its teachers, and that infidelity should there prevail so extensively as it does?

The monastic system, making all possible allowance for exceptional cases, is open to the same charge. In the thirteen Papal dioceses of England and the three districts of Scotland, there are now over 250 conventual and monastic establishments, and the Anglican Ritualists favour the system. While Papal countries, including even Spain to some extent, have been dismantling these institutions as a pest to society, in our Protestant land we are re-planting them. "The Reformation cleansed our soil from these abodes of lawlessness and lewdness, of licensed beggary and sanctified vagabondism; but the locust brood have again returned. Along with them, we may be sure, will return the same moral and physical devastation which marked their course in other days. We cannot imagine a more effectual way of inoculating society with the most virulent vice than by permitting the erection within its bosom of such establishments uncontrolled by law." We refrain from giving evidence of the immoral tendency of these establishments drawn from the horrible discoveries which have been made in connection with them. We shall, however, give the testimony of Signor Gavazzi, as that of a

"History of Fanaticism," p. 176.
Wylie's Rome and Civil Liberty.”

most competent witness, and as showing how the system still operates. In a lecture on the subject, given at Sheffield in 1865, after a minute exposure of monasticism, he said that the monks have a tribunal of their own, so that their gross immorality is kept secret. Lately, in France, a monk had been sent into banishment for no fewer than sixty crimes; and in Italy another had received a similar sentence for eighty seductions! What, then, must be the state of society where these institutions have become naturalized? It is said by Dr. Campbell that the history of these institutions in Scotland is one uniform stream of enormity, a chronicle of crimes at which even now the virtuous reader turns pale. Yet on the opening of a nunnery in Edinburgh in 1835, the first there since the glorious Reformation which had purified and saved the country, the Catholic Bishop Murdoch said in his sermon, "Scotland was once happy in her nunneries, monasteries, and convents, from whence issued a sweet odour of virtue, that attracted multitudes around to the faithful worship of the world's Creator." Either, says the doctor, the bishop had not read the history of Scotland, or he must have presumed that it was unknown to his hearers. The unsoundness of Papal morality seems, indeed, to be all-pervading, corrupting historical testimony in the lips of bishops, and on the most solemn occasions, when a purpose is

to be served.

Speaking of the more earnest side of monkish life-its religious side-Isaac Taylor says: "In truth, among the monks the subject of infernal seduction quite occupied the mind, to the exclusion almost of every happier object of meditation. The devil, whatever may be the title of the piece, is the real hero of the drama of monastic piety." When such is the piety, we surely need not wonder at the dark hue of the morals; but the stealthy step of such an evil in the land may well be dreaded.

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The discovery by Luther, on his memorable visit to Rome, of the shameless impiety and immorality prevailing amongst all orders of the priesthood, was the first circumstance which created in him misgivings as to the system. He had dreamed of nothing but holiness, and found nothing but profanation. "It is almost incredible," he says, "what sins and infamous actions are committed at Rome. One would require to see it and hear it in order to believe it. Hence it is an ordinary saying, that if there is a hell, Rome is built upon it. It is an abyss from whence all sins proceed." His first open assault upon the system, however, was occasioned by the scandalous sale of indulgences by Tetzel. This worthy, when plying his vocation, erected a red cross, which he declared had the same efficacy as the actual cross of Jesus Christ. He declared also that he had saved more souls by his indulgences than St. Peter had by his sermons, for the moment the piece of money chinked on the bottom of the strong box, the soul escaped from purgatory, and flew up into heaven! There was no sin, he said, too great for an indulgence to remit. Should any one (the thing, no doubt, was impossible) have done violence to the holy Virgin Mary, mother of God, let him pay, let him only pay well, and it will be forgiven him. And, that nothing

* "History of Fanaticism," p. 109.

might be wanting, he offered letters under seal, by which even sins they might desire to commit in the future should all be forgiven— due payment being made.* Incredible as it may seem, this system, though not so unblushingly proclaimed, is still in operation. An intelligent writer, describing his impressions of Rome, says-" Plenary indulgences and remission of sins are offered here on very easy terms. In consideration of repeating certain prayers before the shrine, of certain saints, or paying a sum of money to certain priests, you may buy as many masses as will free your soul from purgatory for twenty-nine thousand years, at the Church of St. Lateran, on the festival of that saint, and at another on the Quirinal Hill for ten thousand and for three thousand years, at a very reasonable rate. But it is in vain to particularize; for the greater part of the churches of Rome and the neighbourhood are spiritual shops for the same commodity." In England even the year 1845 was proclaimed as a year of "redemption and indulgence," and the Vicar-Apostolic of the London district exhorted his charge to make the most of it. Thus it is evident that the whole tendency of the religion of Rome is immoral. Its direct and irresistible tendency is not only to sever morality from religion, but to make the religion itself an encouragement to vice. Dr. Wylie mentions a priest of great repute in Naples, who lately preached a sermon on the festival of St. Joseph, which will strikingly illustrate this. "A brigand," said Father Rocco, "guilty of murder, of rape, and other sins, having died, was conducted before the tribunal of God, and there condemned. No sooner did St. Joseph learn what had happened, than he rushed into the presence of the Eternal Father, and began to intercede for the brigand.

"It is not possible,' was the reply.
"It is not possible,' said St. Joseph.

'How? A man who was

so greatly devoted to me: a man who always came to the priest for mass, bringing at the same time a goodly portion of his spoils: a man who punctually told his rosary in my honour: a man who—oh, yes! he must be admitted amongst us, or I myself must take my departure.'

"Father!'

"But you know,' continued St. Joseph, 'that by the civil law, the husband has the right of property in his wife, and I will take away the queen of heaven. And besides, the wife has power over her son, and if you do not admit my devotee into paradise, I will take away Jesus. And, consider well, with him will go all the saints, all the angels, all the martyrs, all the virgins-all will depart, and what then will you do?'

"On the instant the Eternal Father threw open the door of paradise to the brigand." †

No wonder that the greatest criminals appear to be the most religious men, that the brigand goes fresh from his orisons to Mary, to rob and murder, and that the harlot rises from her knees before the Madonna to tread anew her path of shame. "Nowhere," says Mark Monnier, "is the Virgin more fervently adored than in the

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