accusers, traitors, evil men, and seducers, deceiving and being deceived." The Apostle John corroborates the testimony of his brother prophets. He affirms, Revelation, chapter xiii. 14. that "the beast with two horns, like a lamb, who speaks as a dragon," the Roman hierarchy, should "deceive them that dwell on the earth." They are also delineated, Revelation, chapter xvi. 14. as "the spirits of devils." In Revelation, chapter xviii. 23. it is affirmed of Babylon the great, "by thy sorceries were all nations deceived." "The beast and the false prophet deceived them that had received the mark of the beast." Revelation, chapter xix. 20; xxi. 27. and xxii. 15.

To believe therefore that popery is any thing else than a system of diabolical falsehood and perfidy; and that Roman priests and their bigotted followers can be men of truth, and sincerity, and integrity, is virtually to reject the divine testimony; and to substitute " the perverse disputings of men of corrupt minds, and destitute of the truth;" 1 Timothy, chapter vi. 5.; "that which defileth and worketh abomination, and loveth and maketh a lie;" Revelation, chapter xxi. 27. and xxii. 15.; instead of "the wholesome words of our Lord Jesus Christ, and the doctrine which is according to godliness; which in his times he shall show, who is the blessed and only potentate, "the King of kings and Lord of lords." 1 Timothy, chapter vi. 4, 15.

2. Popery combines all the elements of indolence, and consequently is subversive of national prosperity. The contrasts between the nations in former ages, when the Papal government tyrannized without resistance, and their present condition, are so great, that they would almost defy credibility, were not the existing condition of Protestant and popish countries infallible evidence of the degradation which ever marks the pontifical jurisdiction. All the grand incentives to that which is dignified in society, diligent in business, and aspiring in motive and practice, are nearly extirpated. The preliminary inquiry, and that which finally determines all collateral investigation, is this: Will the adoption of any measure consolidate the power, and increase the emoluments of the popedom, or the Roman priesthood? To this point, all things bend. But it is self-evident, that every ingredient, which constitutes true national prosperity, is directly opposed to the perpetuation of the papal aggrandizement, and the voluptuous indulgences of the crafty and sensual ecclesiastics.

Knowledge, wealth, and enlarged intercourse with the world, necessarily produce a proportionate independence of mind, and rejection of all coercive trammels, which others do not realize. Industry, economy, decorum, and integrity in the social relations, are ordinarily accompanied by respect, and superfluous wealth; but these induce a dislike of those mental and corporeal restraints, which popery ever enforces. Hence, the Roman ecclesiastics invariably adopt every artifice sanctioned by their "great wonders, and the fire which they make to come down from heaven on the earth in the sight of men;" Revelation, chapter xiii. 13. their bulls, excommunications, and Papal thundering curses, and burning anathemas-so that they may intimidate their deluded votaries from obtaining those acquisitions, which shall enable them in any measure to cast off the iron yoke of Italian priestcraft. Consequently, ignorance is sustained; the attainment of opulence is discouraged; all communication with persons who are rebels against

their "Lord God the Pope" is prohibited; and every mode of peculation which Jesuits can devise and practise, is incessantly employed to rob the infatuated wretched victims of the surplus proceeds of their labour, that they may be retained in comparative penury, and in complete dependence.

This impoverishing and miserable system is increased by the numerous festivals which are retained by the idolatrous ritual of Rome. All of them have been abolished in Protestant countries; and some of them have latterly been dispensed with in the papal dominions, but they still combine in all places where the pope's despotism is acknowledged, a very momentous article of national depression and individual profligacy. At the lowest possible calculation, even in those countries where popery is only tolerated-Ireland and Canada, probably from one seventh to one tenth part of the year, exclusive of the Lord's day, is dedicated to idolatry and its accompanying extravagance and crimes. That grand and universal bacchanalian festival of idolatry, the Corpus Christi, as it is blasphemously denominated, combines exactions on the part of the priests to an extent of which no correct estimate can possibly be made. For the privilege of walking in the procession, wearing particular dress or symbol, carrying a consecrated candle, receiving one of the mystical wafers, each of which they say is the same body of our Lord that was found, nobody knows where, some hundreds of years since, and decorating their houses with some of the branches of trees which have been sprinkled with salt-water, by the deceiving priest, with many other items of a like character, every cent which the poor silly devotee is known to possess, from inquiries at confession, is filched from him; and his own wants remain unsupplied; the necessary conveniences for his farm or workshop are abstracted; and the comforts of his family are sacrificed to a priest's mercenary extravagance, that he may exhibit the sublime spectacle of a man walking from one station of idolatry to another, in the middle of a broiling summer's day, with a piece of wood disguised in the shape and exterior of a wax candle.

These festivals encourage idleness, and through the indolence thus acquired, men become attached to the days on which they can indulge their laziness without reproach. The loss of one seventh of national industry and labour must be irreparably mischievous; but this is the least evil that appertains to the unholy contrivance. Romish feast days, fast days, festival days of devotion, and holidays of obligation, except probably certain times during their Lent, are perfect Carnivals; on which every attainable excess is indulged, and all kinds of sensuality greedily, and as Papists believe, safely gratified. After their forty days of Lent, for instance, plenary absolution for all past sins having been obtained, which is ratified by the mass on Easter Sunday morning, from the termination of the mass until the Wednesday morning, the intervening days are passed in all possible riot and licentiousness, as if the sinners were resolved to make up, by their unrestrained gratifications, for the partial abstinence and macerations of the preceding weeks.

It needs no additional illustration to prove, that the Romish system which commands such laziness, and which encourages such dissipation, must be destructive of all the best and moral attributes of indivi

dual character, the bane of domestic comfort and improvement, and the deadly antagonist of all national freedom, intelligence, and enjoyment. 3. Popery diminishes or exterminates all those kind and amiable sensibilities which are essential to social existence. It encourages hardheartedness, cruelty, and murder. In vain do we attempt to reconcile the sober dictates of an unbiassed judgment with the charitable sensibilities of our hearts; they ever retain the same discordant variance. Cruelty is the very aliment of the papal system. Without its continuous exhibitions and prevalence, the pontifical tyranny never would have attained its giddy exaltation; and had not insensibility ever reigned predominant, popery could not have been prolonged for a day. And the worst feature in the whole barbarous machination is this, that while it developes surpassing characters of sanguinary excitement insatiable for Christian blood, it stands before the world, decorated with a religious exterior, and dignified by evangelical appellatives.

The general principles, that "no faith is to be kept with heretics; and that it is equally just and lawful, even meritorious, to kill all persons who are not Papists," are the very curse of the world. Sa maintains, that it is lawful to murder judges and witnesses to escape condemnation. Henriques teaches, that a Roman priest is justifiable, for butchering the husband of his adulterous paramour. Escobar contends, that it is lawful to kill your antagonist secretly, and also every person who is proscribed or excommunicated by the pope. Molina declares, that priests may kill the laity for their goods. Dicastilla asserts, that a son may lawfully kill his father. Fagundez affirms, that Papist children may justly kill their parents for heresy. Escobar pronounces, that a father may kill his daughter, or a husband his wife, or may commission a son, a servant, or a stranger, to kill them, for certain alleged offences. Similar decisions are promulged in endless variety by all the Roman casuists. It requires no illustration to manifest that a system which inculcates these principles, must inevitably be barbarous, and that its adherents must be bloody-minded. Nothing can be more fallacious, than to repel this painful conclusion, by a summary denial, or a reference to the state of popery in Protestant countries. A leopard appears very quiet and harmless as long as he is unprovoked, and tamed in a cage. A bear also may have his griping energies removed from him, or he may be so manacled that he cannot injure. A lion may be so adroitly managed, that his native ferocity and strength may be curbed and rendered apparently extinct to an incurious observer. And even a sorceress may be so decorated, and assume such a hypocritical demeanour of gravity and modesty, that the unsuspecting may be deluded and unconsciously ensnared.

This is exactly the existing condition of popery in the United States. "The beast" cannot unfold all his complicated nefarious attributes-he is muzzled and chained. His claws are rounded, his teeth extracted, and his legs are fettered; and the "Mother of Harlots" dare not as yet publicly present her "golden cup full of abominations and filthiness of her fornication," otherwise "the beast" would at once he strangled, and the Queen of Babylon, drunk with the blood of martyrs and saints, would instantly be expatriated, and ordered back to Rome, her rightful abode.

In consequence of this disguise, and of these counteracting causes,

Roman

popery yet does not display its essential qualities among us. priests have not hitherto dared in America to act as they have done in Ireland-command in the mass-house a crusade against the heretics, and instantly proceed to plunder, ravish, and murder, their unoffending and unsuspicious neighbours. Jesuits, in the United States, have not as yet despatched their mercenary assassins, with the consecrated poison, dagger, and pistol, to destroy heretical governors, and Protestant legislators. They have not been openly discovered in the fact of defiling women, and then murdering their husbands, expressly to decoy the former into a convent, that they may possess his property. But the materials are all ready; the agents are all prepared and willing; and the power only is wanting to fulfil all their atrocious projects of aggrandizement and desolation, exactly as in prior ages.

It is a remarkable fact in the history of human depravity, that idolatry has ever been accompanied not only by the most abhorrent sensuality, but also by the most ferocious cruelty; demonstrating that the substitution of any supreme object of attachment and worship, instead of the one true and living God, is the very "working of Satan," by which men are necessarily drawn into the two most revolting and pernicious courses which can afflict and lay waste the human family, profligacy and savageness. In this aspect, popery is not one jot preferable, in its principles and claims, to the ancient Babylonish Astarte, and the Moloch of the Canaanites.

The spirit of modern popery in no situation is more correctly and lucidly developed than in Ireland. There it is counteracted by all the chief elements of civil society. Not only does the government impede its operations, but Christian philanthropy brings up all its mighty array to diminish and reform its astounding evils; and, in addition, every motive, which is connected with self-interest, and domestic peace and comfort in all their varieties and unerring operation, aid to lessen and exterminate the predominance of popery. Nevertheless, it still retains its ascendancy, and constantly exhibits its ruthless barbarity, in a series of atrocious iniquities, which only bespeak, that popery is not less their curse than their crime.

At the annual meeting, in London, of the British Society, for promoting the religious principles of the reformation, in May, 1832, the Rev. Marcus G. Beresford, an Irish Protestant minister, delivered the usual sermon. His chief design was briefly to delineate the system of popery; after which he proceeded to show the influence and result of the Roman principles. The following extract from that discourse will fully confirm our general proposition, that a Papist who truly believes, and consistently fulfils his own system, must necessarily be an obdurate and remorseless violater of all the rights and sensibilities of humanity. As for the Christian religion, it is absurd to suppose, that a Papist idolater knows any thing aright of that sublime system.

Mr. Beresford, a native of Erin, thus addressed his auditory:`" If we wish to know the effect of these doctrines of Romanism, let us look into the state of society where they are professed by the mass of the people. Compare Ireland, where popery is the prevailing religion of the lower orders, with either Scotland or England." It may be properly remarked, in this place, that the contrast is equally true, and not less visible, in America-not merely between the United States and

Lower Canada; but also in those districts of this republic where the Papists are numerous; and even in the large cities, the distinction between the Protestant and popish inhabitants, is as clear, as that which exists between the light of day, and the gloom of night.

Mr. Beresford thus proceeds: "Here, in Britain, property is safe, life is respected, and the law takes its course. There, in Ireland, the assassin walks abroad in the noon-day; there murders are committed in cold blood, in the sight of multitudes. Terrified juries dare not convict, lest they share a similar fate. Whence does this arise? There is nothing in an Irishman's nature that renders him bloody-minded and atrocious beyond the people of other lands. God made of one flesh all the kindreds upon earth.' 'The disease is of a moral character. It is founded upon a false religion, that places both sin and holiness in a deceitful light, and uplifts before the people the traditions of Rome, instead of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

"But it may be thought that this is not a fair comparison: then let Ireland be contrasted with herself. One province, Ulster, is principally Protestant; the other three, Leinster, Connaught, and Munster, are chiefly popish. How stands the balance? In the Protestant province, crime is rare; the law takes its course, and life is safe. There are more murders in one year in some of the single popish counties, than in five years in the whole Protestant province, notwithstanding that in nineteen criminal cases out of twenty, the offenders in Ulster are Papists.

"Where the Protestants predominate, crime decreases: as the Romanists increase, crime also increases. This is invariably the case, and requires no comment. Evils will augment, wherever popery triumphs. They may not always wear the appearance, as in Ireland, of terror and blood: but deep-seated corruption will be spread over the people that bow their necks to the spiritual yoke of Rome. In peace, they will be sunk in profligacy; in troublous times, they will be bloodthirsty and remorseless; intolerant in their bigotry, and unceasing in their persecutions. Do I say this, unsupported by evidence? The whole testimony of history proclaims it to be a truth." This is the statement of a minister who resides in Kilmore; and whose life has been passed among his popish countrymen.

In addition to this description, it may be mentioned, that in Italy every priest and monk will assassinate any man who is pointed out to them to be murdered, for the stipulated price. While in the United States and Canada, as in Ulster, nineteen crimes against the law out of twenty, are committed by Papists; besides all the murders and thefts which are perpetrated without discovery, and which are known to the Roman priest only, who either divides or receives the whole of the spoils, with his less guilty associate.

Another fact is also worthy of remembrance. The annals of mankind afford no examples similar to those of the Papists, of men, except, probably, the Mohammedans, their brother apostates from Christianity, who appear to delight so much in the tortures of their agonized victims, and who equally exult in the unbridled ferocity with which the miseries of rapine, massacre, and desolation among Protestants, are extended. Since the thirty years war in Germany," and the revocation of the edict of Nantz, no part of the world has exhibited the evils of popery.