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comprehensive interest, and presenting materials for the deep and anxious consideration of the friends of religious truth and civil liberty. We should like to see a cheap and easily accessible edition published, considerably reduced in size, which might easily be effected without materially impairing its value and utility. We do not intend to sketch a seriatim review of this able work, but shall avail ourselves freely of some of its pages to strengthen and enforce our general object: the exhibition of revived Popery, its proclaimed intentions, its extensive operations, and its inextinguishable antagonism to christian truth, liberty and civilisation.

Nowhere is the astute genius of Popery more transparent than in its profound study of fallen man in the abstract and in the relative, in the individual and in the concrete mass. This thorough appreciation, is the result of ages of pupilage on man's part, and tutorage on hers. The observations of Mr Wylie on this subject, in his chapter on the "Influence of Popery over the Individual Man," are so forcible and true, that we extract them for the benefit of our readers :

"If, as a wide induction of facts establishes, the religion of the Bible is by far the most powerful agent in quickening the intellect, and starting nations in a career of progress, and if, as we have already proved, Romanism is not the religion of the Bible, it follows that Romanism is devoid of this life-dispensing power. But farther, if Romanism be a system the spirit of which is antagonistic to the religion of the Bible, as we have shown it to be, it follows that its influence on the mind of man is antagonistic also-is as pernicious and destructive as that of religion is wholesome and beneficial. We might safely rest the matter, as regards the influence of Rome, on these general grounds; but we shall go a little into particulars, and show, first, from the doctrines, and, second, from the practice, of the Church of Rome, that the practical tendency and working of the system is ruinous in no ordinary degree.

"We take first the doctrine of infallibility. Can anything be conceived more fitted to crush all intellectual vigour than such a doctrine? As an infallible church, Rome presents her votaries with a system of dogmas, not a few of which are opposed to reason, and some of them even to the senses. These dogmas are not to be investigated; the person must not attempt to reconcile them to reason, or to the evidence of his senses; he must not attempt even to understand them; they are simply to be believed. If he demands grounds for this belief, he is told that he is committing mortal sin, and perilling his salvation. Here is all action of the mind interdicted, under the highest sanctions. The person is taught that he cannot commit a greater crime than to think that he cannot more grievously offend against his Creator than by using the powers his Creator has endowed him with. Thus, while the first effect of Christianity is to quicken the intellect, the first effect of Romanism is to strike it with torpor. She inexorably demands of all her votaries that they denude themselves of their understandings and their senses, and prostrate them beneath the wheels of this Juggernaut of hers. While the Protestant is occupied in investigating the grounds of his creed, in tracing the relations of its various truths, and in following out their consequences, the mind of the Roman Catholic is all the while lying dormant. As the bandaged limb loses in time the power motion, so faculties not used become at length incapable of use. A timid disposition, an inert habit, is produced, which is not confined to religion, but extends to every subject with which the person has to do. His reason is shut up in a cave, and infallibility rolls a great stone to the cave's mouth.

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"Not less injurious to the intellectual is the doctrine of absolute and unreserved submission to ecclesiastical superiors. If the former afflicts with mental imbecility, this deals a fatal blow to mental independence. The church issues her command, and the person has no alternative but instant, unquestioning, blind obedience. He acts not from the power of motive, but, like the beast of burden, is urged forward by the rod. Here are the two prime qualities of man destroyed. The one doctrine robs him of his strength, the other of his freedom: the one makes him an intellectual paralytic, the other a mental slave. To this double depth of weakness and servility does Popery degrade her victims. "The leading idea of Popery, as a scheme of salvation is, that the sacraments impart grace and holiness-the opus operatum. It is hard to say whether this inflicts greater injury upon the intellectual or the spiritual part of man. It injures vitally his spiritual part, because it teaches him not to look beyond the sacrament and the priest: it substitutes these in the room of the Saviour. The intellectual part it no less vitally injures,

it cuts the train of mental action, that intellectual process, to which the Gospel so naturally and beautifully gives rise, by joining works with faith,-the sinner's own efforts with the grace of the Spirit. Under the system of Popery, not a single quality or disposition need be cultivated: not the reason and judgment, for the Papist is forbidden to exercise these; not the power of sustained and patient effort, for all of which the Christian has to pray, and labour, and wait, is in the case of the Papist conferred in an instant, in virtue of the opus operatum; his power of self-scrutiny, his self-denial, and his self-control, all lie dormant. Here are the noblest and most useful of the moral and mental faculties, which Christianity carefully trains and invigorates, all blighted and destroyed by Popery. The very idea of progress is extinguished in the mind. The man is stereotyped in immobility. He is given over to the dominion of indolence, and shrinks from the very idea of forethought and reflection, and effort of every kind, as the most disagreeable of all painful things. These qualities the man carries with him into every department of life and labour; for he cannot be reflective, persevering, and selfdenied in one thing, and slothful, self-indulgent, and devoid of thought in another. Need we wonder at the vast disparity between Papists and Protestants generally! When called to compete with another man in the field of science or of industry, the Papist cannot, at the mere bidding of his will, call up those faculties so necessary to success, which the evil genius of his religion has so fatally cramped.

"Faith is one of the master faculties of the soul. It is indispensable to strength of purpose, grandeur of aim, and that indomitable persevering effort which guides to success. But faith Popery extinguishes as systematically as Christianity cherishes it. She hides from view the grand objects of faith. For a Saviour in the heavens, who can be seen only by faith, she substitutes a saviour on the altar. For the blessings of the Spirit, to be obtained by faith, she substitutes grace in the sacrament. Heaven at last is to be obtained, not by faith on the Divine promise, but by the mystic virtue of a sacrament operating as a charm. Thus Popery robs faith of all her functions. That noble power which descries glory from afar, and which bears the soul on unfaltering wing across the mighty void, to that distant land, teaching it in its passage the hardy virtue of endurance, and the ennobling faculty of hope and of trust in God,-lessons so profitable to the intellect as well to the soul of man,--has under the Papacy no room to act. In the room of faith, Popery, as is her wont, substitutes the counterfeit quality,-credulity; and a credulity so vast, that it receives without hesitation or question the most monstrous dogmas, however plainly opposed to Scripture and to reason.'

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Such being the deleterious action of Popery on man as an individual, it follows in the natural sequence of things, that its action upon the social machine, or upon man as a member of, and motive agent in civil government, must be equally disastrous. Man blasted at the root-his wide and human sympathies dried up and withered by the narcotics of a low superstition, or turned into foul and adulterous courses-his vast capacities for truth and knowledge-thoughts that wander through eternity-powers that grasp the visible universe, and which no speculations are too daring to deter, or too profound to discourage-cribbed and cabined up within the dreary range prescribed by an imperious, jealous, and ignorant priesthood, becomes in society the willing slave of his hard taskmasters, and grinds for them steadily in his prison-house, content with the husks of sensual enjoyment, which they freely abandon to his sordid instincts, instead of the rich and divine nutriment which a pure Christianity would supply to his restored and elevated humanity. The following eloquent summary by Mr Wylie of this department of Popish operation, appears to us very happy

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"So deeply did Popery corrupt the theory of government. First of all it confounded the two jurisdictions, and then set over them a head claiming to be divine and infallible, thus paving the way for encroachments to any extent on the conscience on the one hand, and on civil rights and liberties on the other. It enabled the sacerdotal autocrat to support his temporal usurpations by spiritual sanctions, and his spiritual domination by secular And this form of government, moreover, necessarily implied the accumulation of all authority in the hands of one man, forming a centralised despotism such as had never before existed. It was also of the nature of this government that it absolutely excluded every iota of the constitutional or democratic element. Farther being based on

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an element of a spiritual kind, it was not confined within political boundaries, but extended equally over all states, making Rome everywhere, and the world but one vast province, and its various governments but one irresponsible despotism.

"These corruptions in the theory of government led necessarily and directly to grievous corruptions in its practice. In truth, the government of the Papacy,-the only government known for ages to Europe,- -was but one enormous abuse. First, the Papacy, in self-defence, was compelled to retain its subjects in profound darkness. It knew that should light break in, its reign must terminate, seeing its pretensions were incapable of standing an hour's scrutiny. Obeying, therefore, the instincts of self-preservation, the Papacy was the great conservator of ignorance, the uncompromising and truculent foe of knowledge. "Let there be light," was the first command issued by the Creator. "Let there be darkness," said Popery, when about to erect her dominion. The darkness fell fast enough, and deep enough. First, the great lights of revelation, kindled by God to keep piety and liberty alive on the earth, were extinguished. Next, classical learning was discouraged, and fell into disrepute. History, science, and every polite study, shared the same fate. They were denounced as wolves; and Rome, the mighty hunter, chased them from the earth. The arts perished. If painting, sculpture, and music survived, it, was solely because Popery needed them for her own base purposes. But their cultivation, so far from tending to refine or elevate the general mind, powerfully contributed to enfeeble and pollute it. These arts were the handmaids of superstition, resembling beautiful captives bound to the chariot-wheel of some dark Ethiopic divinity. Thus the earth came a second time to be peopled by a race of barbarians. Italy herself became ignorant of letters. The ancient polytheisms possessed no such cramping effect on the genius of man. Greece and Rome established schools, patronised learning, and encouraged efforts to excel. Of all superstitions, that of Popery has been found the most injurious to the human intellect. She found the world civilised, and she sunk it into barbarism. She found the mind of man grown to manhood comparatively, and she reduced it into second childhood. She polluted and emasculated it by her foul rites, and the singularly absurd, ridiculous, and childish doctrines which formed the scholastic theology, the only intellectual food of the middle ages. She was the enemy of science, as well as of the Bible. Some of its earliest and most brilliant discoveries she placed under anathema, and she rewarded with a dungeon some of its most illustrious pioneers. Had the Papacy had her will, our knowledge of the world would have been not a whit more extensive than was that of the ancients. The Atlantic would have lain to this day unploughed by keel; and America would still have been hid in the mysterious regions of the unexplored West. The great law of gravitation, which first certified to man the order and grandeur of the universe, would still have been undiscovered; and the whole furniture of the heavens, fixed in their crystalline spheres, would have been performing a diurnal revolution round our little earth. We would have been trembling at eclipses, and helpless before the power of disease and pestilence. We would still have been engrossed in the pursuits of alchemy and judicial astrology, discussing quidlibets and quodlibets, and, for our spiritual food, listening to the mendacious legends of the saints. We would have been moved to compassion by the example of St Francis, who divided his cloak with the mendicant, stimulated to zeal by the story of Anthony, who sailed to St Petersburg on a millstone to convert the Russians,-fortified against temptation by the courage of St Dunstan, who led Satan about with a pair of red-hot pincers, when he tempted him in the likeness of a fair lady,-exhorted against the fear of danger by the story of St Denis, who carried his head half a dozen miles after it was separated from his body,and schooled into devotion by St Anthony of Padua's mule, which, after three days' fasting, left his provender to worship the host. Had the Papacy had her will, Milton would never have sung, Bacon and Locke would never have reasoned, the classic page of Erasmus and Buchanan would have remained unwritten, the steam-engine would still have been to be invented, and the age of mechanical marvels, which ennoble our cities, and give to man the dominion of the elements, would have been still to come."

There is no part of the machinery of Rome more profound in its operation, or terrific in its effects on man as an individual, or as a member of society, than the tremendous lever of the confessional. By it a window is made into every human heart, patent only to the priest. Man is not his own-woman is not her own-the wife and daughter are not the husband's and father's exclusive appanage. The dignity of the one and the honour of the other are within the grasp of a frousy monk, whose impure imagination is daily fed up by the very duties enjoined upon him, and his forced and unnatural abstinence from what God has commanded alike to priest and layman. In its

action on society, this master-engine of Satan is no less widely and fatally visible.

"It is also an admitted fact, that in Roman Catholic countries life is held much less sacred than in Protestant lands. The popish earth is defiled with blood, and the stain is deep in proportion as the Popery is intense. No one need be informed how dreadfully prevalent are assassinations and murders in Italy, in Spain, and in Ireland. In Paris, the Morgue furnishes awful evidence that suicides and assassinations are of nightly occurrence in the capital of France. The countries south of the Alps and the Pyrenees, which are those most under the influence of the church, are precisely those in which travelling is most dangerous. The towns swarm with assassins, and the roads are infested with banditti. Scarce a night passes without an assassination in the streets of Madrid. The slightest insult sends the man's hand to his poignard's hilt; or if he decline himself to shed blood, he knows that for a paltry sum he can hire a villain to undertake the deed. The facilities provided by the Church of Rome for enabling men to escape the future punishment of such crimes, is a main cause of their dreadful prevalence. So sensible was Napoleon of this, that he shut out the shriving priest from the condemned criminal. And we find Lord Brougham stating in his place in Parliament, that the same course was adopted by the Marquis of Wellesley in his colonial government, and that this judicious vigour was followed by a marked diminution in the commission of crimes. On the same occasion do we find the leading members of their Lordships' house tracing the noon-day murders and the midnight outrages, of so unhappy frequency in the sister island, to priestly influences, more especially to the confessional and altar-denunciations; and out of doors we find the Times' journal, in less courtly phrase, branding the apostolic clergy of Rome as 'surpliced ruffians.'

"The state of morality, as regards the marriage vow, is also much more lax in Roman Catholic countries. Infidelities are far from being unfrequent; concubinage is common. In a table recently compiled and widely published, of the 'morality of great cities,' the two cities that stood lowest on the list, as being the least moral in Europe, were the capitals of its two princpal Roman Catholic countries, Vienna and Paris. În Paris, the illegitimate births were marked as being about one half of the whole; and in Vienna the proportion was nearly the same. We speak not of the conventual establishments, which were the consecrated abodes of the twin vices of indolence and lewdness. Nor do we speak of the seduction and profligacy with which the law of clerical celibacy inundated private families. We speak of the state of general society as regards the great virtue of chastity, which is confessedly far below that of Holland, of Britain, or of any Protestant country.

"Analogous to this is the respect in which woman is held in Roman Catholic countries. Christianity alone gives woman her proper place. All idolatries agree in degrading her. Hinduism makes woman the slave of man; Mohammedanism makes her the toy of his pleasures. Modern Judaism teaches that they are very inferior beings;' and several great rabbies have held, that for them there is no immortality. Romanism, true to its genius as a false religion, has degraded woman, by forbidding its priest to marry. 'It cries up marriage for a sacrament, and yet at the same time bars its sacred clergy from it, because it will defile them.' Thus all false religions, and Romanism among the rest, have struck at the highest interests of society through the sides of woman. Nothing could more powerfully tend to barbarise mankind. It deprives youth of its persuasive instructor; it robs home of its chief attraction and its most endearing pleasure; and it deprives society of that strong though sacred guard which consists in the delicacy, refinement, and purity of woman.

"How rankly soever the passions shoot up beneath the shade of Popery, the domestic affections refuse to flourish in its neighbourhood. The confessional works sad havoc in families. We do not allude to the grosser pollutions and crimes to which it often leads, but to the fatal blight it inflicts upon the affections. Happy, guileless, unsuspecting youth becomes prematurely thoughtful; for persons of tender years are dragged into the confessional, the slaughterhouse of conscience, as it has with justice been termed, and are there doomed to listen to what must pollute, revolt, and shock them. Like a biting frost upon the early bud, so are the questionings of the confessor upon the warm sympathies of youth: these sympathies become dwarfed and stunted for life. Dreadful images of crime are mixed up with the earliest associations and amusements of the person, which not unfrequently in after years ripen into deeds of guilt. How the hearth and the confessional can exist together, it is impossible to conceive. How can there possibly be a full interchange of free, genuine, trustful sentiment and feeling between the different members of the family, when all feel that there, in the midst of them, sits one, though invisible, seeing and hearing all that is said and done? for all must be told over in the confessional. In the breast of the wife the husband knows that there is a secret

place, which even he dare not enter, and to which none but the priest, with his curious and loathly questionings, has access. The same dark shadow comes between brother and sister, and the mutual and trustful confidence of their childhood years is blighted for ever. The father can mark, day by day, the dark stains of the confessional deepening on his daughter's soul, clouding the sunshine of her face, and restraining the free current of her talk. Infernal institution! invented in the pit, and set up on earth to root out all that is lovely and pure, and holy and free, among the human family. The confessional is slavery worse than death. How a people who have once tasted freedom could advocate the introduction of a tyranny so unspeakably odious and so perfectly unbearable_surpasses our comprehension. And yet there are not wanting, at this moment, some in England who seek to revive the practice of confession."

Mr Wylie is no less effective in his admirable analysis of the condition of Popish countries, as compared with those where the Protestant religion is established, even in an imperfect and mutilated state; but we cannot afford here to present his views to our readers. We must hasten to lay before them his powerful sketch of the avowed aims of revived Popery on the Continent and amongst ourselves. As the extracts are somewhat lengthy, we shall content ourselves with one observation. The main object of the Papacy is to subdue this country, or so to fix its fangs into our institutions, civil and religious, as to frustrate or impede their wholesome action, and to lower for ever the flag of a pure Protestantism before the abomination that maketh desolate wherever it plants its impure and godless rites. Britain vailing her pride of place among the nations to Popery, she is whole and founded as the rock, and again will all the kings of the earth, and the vain rulers of unchristianised republics, commit a long adultery with her till her times be accomplished, and her career of rapine and lust be stayed by Him whose earthly throne she has so long usurped. We commend this all-important sentiment to the reason and conscience of every considerate Christian.

66 NEW CATHOLIC LEAGUE, AND THREATENED CRUSADE AGAINST PROTESTANTISM. "We greatly err if we regard the above in the light of unconnected efforts. They are parts of a colossal plan, hatched in the Vatican, for the purpose of restoring arbitrary government and papal domination all over Europe. The European DEMOCRACY is the modern Sphinx: the dynasties of the Continent must solve her riddle, or be torn in pieces. They must either rule that democracy or annihilate it. Should they resolve on the first, not only must they feign to be in love with what at heart they abhor, but they must be prepared to grant concessions unlimited in magnitude and endless in number. It is now too late to adopt such a policy; and none know better than the ruling powers themselves, that were it adopted, it would speedily issue in the complete suspension of their functions and the total annihilation of their authority. In the face of constitutions ignored, oaths and promises violated, and the profuse expenditure of blood which darken the history of the past three years, the least approach towards conciliation would be sternly repulsed by the democratic party. The second alternative only remains-coercion. The democracy, and, along with that, whatever is free, whether in religion or in government, must be crushed promptly and universally. The last spark must be trodden out, else the conflagration will blaze afresh. Now, in this war the infallible Church presents herself to the absolutist state as by far its oldest and staunchest ally. Her organisation, which is the most flexible that exists; her influence, which operates in a domain from which that of the state is shut out,-for, till the intellect and the conscience are blindfolded by superstition, power cannot succeed in permanently enslaving men; are all now made available. Moreover, it is equally the interest of both to quell this revolt; and what so likely as that a community of interest should suggest unity of action? A priori, then, we might infer the existence of a grand conspiracy against the liberties of Europe, even did not the facts already stated, and those we now proceed to state, render the existence of such a conspiracy undoubted. We do not, of course, know the day or the hour when this criminal confederacy was formed, such transactions belong to the darkness; but the public measures of the conspirators enable us to read the history of their most secret hours, and to unveil the character of their deepest plots.

"A crusade has been undertaken simultaneously in all the countries of Europe against civil and religious liberty. This bespeaks concert. The agents who conduct that crusade

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