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tant primate's throne, but that his own living has been conferred on the reverend Patrick O'Shaugnesey, P. P., and that Lord Arundel's retired shoe-black is nominated for parish-clerk. It is undeniable, that transactions of this kind took place in the damnable reign of the bloody papist, Mary. No scepticism can reject this fact; and as such things have been, why may they not be again?

Before the enacting of this tragedy, which will put an end, at once, to our religion and our Review, we propose to take advantage of the interim, by shewing-up some of the leading idolatries of the Romish church. We intend to die like martyrs: we wish it to be said hereafter that we also wrote, and were roasted; and when the lion-shewer of Smithfield shall point out, in after times, the spots where the faggots of the nineteenth century were piled, we wish him to enumerate ours amongst the most illustrious; and when he has told some gaping rustic that "there was the Archbishop's, there the Lord Chancellor's stake," he may add, "and there was the faggot of a Retrospective Reviewer!" Before we are spitted, as we assuredly shall be, we shall endeavour to do all in our power to deserve so glorious a fate; and how can we begin better than by printing the result of a few inquiries into the Sacrifice of the MASS?

Now, let it be remarked, that we have nothing to do with the doctrine. The differences between the reformed and the unreformed churches are, by no means, so plainly marked as to render this safe ground. Mr. Wix, who has been labouring these twenty years, to amalgamate the two sects, finds no great difficulty in the doctrinal part of the operation. He thinks there is more in the diversity of form than substance; and he is probably right in believing, that a creed is an easier thing to change than a hierarchy. Opinions, do little more than identify the persons who possess that substance of orthodoxy, the incorporeal hereditament, as the lawyers have cunningly called the corporeal part of the church establishment. So, at least, Mr. Wix seems to think, and we shall not quarrel with such authority.

We shall, therefore, leave opinious to shift for themselves, and attach ourselves to the consideration of the exterior form in which those opinions have been clothed in the Catholic ritual. This is more a matter of romance than of theology. Not but that it suggests reflections of deep importance to the philosopher, and in that view the reader may consider it, if he prefer instruction to amusement; but it is, also, a fit subject for poetical imaginations, to observe with what nice attention to stage effect the pomp and circumstance" of the greatest

of the seven sacraments has been got up by the managers of the Vatican.

In the Catholic church, the ceremonial has completely excluded the contemplative and moralizing-we are careful not to say moral-forms, into which religion naturally runs under a simpler exterior. It has none of the metaphysical disquisition, and but little of the sentimental piety, which are the respective resources of the men and the women where there is nothing for the eye to rest on but the four walls of a rectangular meeting-house, and a coloured deal reading-desk. With the exception of the worship of the Virgin, and the prayers for the dead,-two beautiful episodes of the Romish mythology, there is little but outward shew and glitter. The effect is mainly produced by sensual objects. It has been the policy of the Catholic church to render the theatrical part of worship as attractive and absorbing as possible. This is the natural policy of all churches pretending to universal empire. Their object is to deaden the intellectual faculties, to repress the spirit of inquiry, to stifle any feeling that might lead to the least diminution of the clerical despotism. They have no need of the speculation and enthusiasm which are essential to the existence of smaller sects. The feelings, the passions, the affections of the human heart, over which the sectarian pastors exercise an influence at once so easy and so powerful, are avoided as dangerous, or rejected as useless, instruments, by the directors of these iron superstitions. The dogmatic part of their theology is remarkable for its dry formality; the poetical, for its cold and barren exaggerations. Every thing like beauty and fervour of expression, or elegance of fancy; every thing pathetic, every thing affectionate, every thing which stirs the imagination, or warms the heart; is rigidly excluded. In this respect, the Catholic ritual is strikingly different from the splendid, the beautiful, the poetical superstition of antiquity. Both were equally religions for the eye and the ear; both equally delighted in pictures, music, and odours: but the one was furnished with statues from the hand of Praxiteles, with poetry from the lips of Pindar; her priestesses were taught to move with the most captivating grace, to sing with the sweetest cadence; the whole pageant was at once an object of reverence and wonder to the illiterate, and of elegant amusement to the refined. But the religion of Greece and Rome, in the state in which we view it, was the work of a polished age and a cultivated priesthood, grafted on the barbaric stock of their ancestral superstition. The Romish edition of Christianity was a coarse dish served up by Vandal hands to Vandal appetites. Equally adapted to the taste of those for whose subjec

tion it was framed, it was neither in the power nor was it the interest of its framers to invest it with the elegance and beauty of paganism. In politics, the diadem of the Cæsars had given place to the iron crown; and a similar change occurred in the religion of Italy. At no period, and amongst no people, did clerical despotism extend a more undisguised dominion than was exercised throughout Europe by the Romish church, about the age of Gregory the Seventh. Rulers, and priests, and people, were sunk into an equal stupidity. The church was in the zenith of its power; the human mind in the depth of abasement. What kind of liturgy, what species of ceremonial, would be generated by such a priesthood for such a people, it is easy to divine. We believe, that the Romish Missal lays claim to a date not later than the time we mention. Some parts are, undoubtedly, of greater, others of less, antiquity; but the whole work bears the impress of the most barbarous of the feudal ages.

The points of difference and comparison between the pagan and Romish mythologies, which we have just described, have been happily seized and depicted with more than his usual force by an author of the last century, whose reputation was once as much above as it is now below his real merits; -we mean Lord Shaftesbury. We shall quote two passages, in which the comparison we speak of is thus delineated.

"The common heathen religion, especially in its latter age, when adorned with the most beautiful temples, and rendered more illustrious by the munificence of the Roman senate and succeeding emperors, ran wholly into pomp, and was supported chiefly by that sort of enthusiasm, which is raised from the external objects of grandeur, majesty, and what we call august. On the other side, the Egyptian or Syrian (read, papal) religions, which lay more in mystery and concealed rites, having less dependence on the magistrate, and less of that decorum of art, politeness, and magnificence, ran into a more pusillanimous, frivolous, and mean kind of superstition; The observation of days, the forbearance of meats, and the contention about traditions, seniority of laws, and priority of godships, (read, saintships).'

Summus utrinque

Inde furor vulgo, quod numina vicinorum

Odit uterque locus; quum solos credat habendos
Esse deos, quos ipse colit."

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The second passage is still more in point, and does credit to the author's penetration, of which, indeed, he seldom exhibited any lack, when his affected style and disorderly way of writing permitted him to think of the sense as well as the manner of his composition.

"I shall conclude with observing how ably the Roman-Christian, and once Catholic, church, by the assistance of their converted emperors, proceeded in the establishment of their growing hierarchy. They considered wisely the various superstitions and enthusiasms of mankind, and proved the different kinds and force of each. All these seeming contrarieties of human passion they knew how to comprehend in their political model and subservient system of divinity. They knew how to make advantage, both from the high speculations of philosophy, and the grossest ideas of vulgar ignorance. They saw there was nothing more different than that enthusiasm which ran upon SPIRITUALS, according to the simpler views of the divine existence, and that which ran upon EXTERNAL PROPORTIONS, magnificence of structures, ceremonies, processions, quires, and those other harmonies which captivate the eye and ear. On this account, they even added to this latter kind, and displayed religion in a yet more gorgeous habit of temples, statues, paintings, vestments, copes, mitres, purple, and the cathedral pomp. With these arms, they could pursue the victorious Goths, and secure themselves an Attila, when their Cæsars failed them."

Nothing can be juster than the distinction here taken between the faith of the spirit and the devotion of the eye and the ear. We have before observed, that this is the distinguishing characteristic of the Catholic mode of worship, and that of the other sects of Christendom,-for, with regard to numbers, the rest may be fairly called sects. We shall have occasion to observe this prominent feature of the papal faith throughout the remainder of this article.

The literary mediocrity of the Romish ritual would be quite sufficiently accounted for upon the hypothesis we have already stated; namely, the indifference to literary excellence, resulting from the barbarousness of the age in which it was composed. But there was something more than indifference; something more than the absence of a motive to write well, from the want of a public competent to appreciate and reward merit of that kind; there was an absolute hostility to classical refinement of style and grace of composition, which began to be regarded, in the decline of the ancient religion, as rags of their idolatrous worship. To be sure, it seems somewhat squeamish in a priesthood who had borrowed so much of the pagan ceremonial, to reject the heathen style of writing on such a ground; although the fact is not incapable of solution. It is one thing to steal a ceremony from the pagan church, and another to imitate the genius of the pagan writers. Be this, however, as it may, nothing is more fully established than the fact. Sparks of the spirit of Omar have not unfrequently appeared in the councils of a Christian priesthood. So early as the sixth century, Gregory, the most illustrious of the

Roman pontiffs, waged open war with the arts and letters of antiquity. In one of his letters to a bishop of the Gallican church, he expresses himself in the following unmeasured

terms:

"Pervenit ad nos, quod sine verecundiâ memorare non possumus, fraternitatem tuam grammaticam quibusdam exponere. Quam rem ità molestè suscepimus, ac sumus vehementiùs aspernati, ut ea quæ prius dicta fuerunt, in gemitum et tristitiam verteremus, quia in uno se ore cum Jovis laudibus Christi laudes non capiunt.... Unde si post hoc evidenter ea, quæ ad nos perlata sunt, falsa esse claruerint, nec vos nugis et secularibus literis studere contigerit, Deo nostro gratias agimus, qui cor vestrum maculari blasphemis nefandorum laudibus non permisit." (Gregorii Op., Epist. 48, lib. 9, Paris, 1533.)

"We are informed of what we cannot mention without shame, that your fraternity have instructed certain persons in grammar. Which we have taken grievously to heart; because the praises of Jupiter and of Christ are inconsistent in the same mouth..... Whence, if this turn out to be a false report, and it should prove that you have not applied yourselves to these trifles and secular letters, we shall thank God that he has not permitted your hearts to be defiled by these blasphemies." (We have given only the sense of the passage.)

In the dedication, or first preface to his morals, after some feeble declamation against the study and art of speech, he proceeds in the following strain; betraying, as has been well remarked, his inveterate hatred to ancient learning, as well as the natural effect of this zealot passion, in his own barbarity of style:

"Unde et ipsam artem loquendi, quam magisteria disciplinæ exterioris insinuant, servare despexi. Nam sicut hujus quoque epistolæ tenor enunciat, non metacismi collisionem fugio: non barbarismi confusionem devito, situs motusque præpositionum casusque servare contemno: quia indignum vehementer existimo, ut verba cœlestis oraculi restringam sub regulis Donati."

"Hence I contemn the art of writing; for, as this very letter shews, (it does, indeed!) I am indifferent both to correctness of style and grammar, since I hold it derogatory to Holy Writ, that its language should be submitted to the rules of criticism."

A liturgy composed under such auspices is not likely to be distinguished by elegance of style; it may be supposed to accord, in most particulars, with the account we have given of the liturgy of the Romish church.

It may seem somewhat singular, that The Book of Common Prayer, which is chiefly compiled from the Romish liturgy, should be marked by characters so different from those we have

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