from the strictness with which she enforces the perusal of it. Whoever enjoys any ecclesiastical revenue; all persons of both sexes who have professed in any of the regular orders; * all sub-deacons, deacons, and priests, are bound to respect, either in public or private, the whole service of the day, out of the breviary. The omission of any one of the eight portions of which that service consists, is declared to be a mortal sin, a sin that, unrepented, would be sufficient to exclude from salvation.

"The breviary, therefore, must be reckoned the true standard to which the Church of Rome wishes to reduce the minds and hearts of her clergy, from the highest dignitary to the most obscure priest. Nay, should a Roman Catholic clergyman, as is often the case be unable to devote more than an hour and a half a day, to reading, his church places him under the necessity of deriving his whole knowledge from the breviary.

"The office of the Roman Catholic Church was originally so contrived as to divide the Psaltery between the seven days of the week. Portions of the Old Scriptures were also read alternately with extracts from the legends of the saints, and the works of the fathers-but as the calendar became crowded with saints, whose fes

* Some orders have a peculiar breviary, with the approbation of the Pope. There is no substantial difference between these monkish prayer-books and the breviary which is used by the great body of the Roman Catholic clergy.

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tivals take precedence of the regular churchservice, little room is left for any thing but a few psalms, which are constantly repeated, a very small part of the Old Testament, and mere fragments of the gospels and epistles. The great and never-ending variety consists in the compendious lives of the saints, of which I will here give some specimens.

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"In the first place, I shall speak of the early martyrs, the spurious records of whose sufferings have been made to contribute most copiously to the composition of the breviary. The variety and ingenuity of the tortures described, are only equalled by the innumerable miracles which baffled the tyrants, whenever they attempted to injure the Christians by any method but cutting their throats-houses were set on fire to burn the martyrs within; but the breviary informs us that the flames raged for a whole day and night without molesting them. Often do we hear of idols tumbling from their pedestals at the approach of the persecuted Christians; and even the judges themselves dropped dead when they attempted to pass sentence. The wild beasts seldom devour a martyr without prostrating themselves before him; and lions follow young virgins to protect them from insult. The sea refuses to drown those who are committed to its waters; and when compelled to do that odious service, the waves generally convey the dead bodies where the Christians may preserve

them as relics. On one occasion a Pope is thrown into the Lake Mootis, with an anchor, which the cautious infidels had tied round his neck, for fear of the usual miraculous floating: the plan succeeded, and the Pope was drowned. But the sea was soon after cbserved to recede three miles from the shore, where a temple appeared, in which the body of the martyr had been provided with a marble sarcophagus.

"I shall next mention the stories by which the breviary endeavours to support the extravagant veneration for the Popes and their see. The most notorious forgeries are, for this purpose, sanctioned and consecrated in the breviary. We thus find the fable about the contest between St. Peter and Simon Magus, before Nero, gravely repeated in the words of St. Maximus-The holy apostles (Peter and Paul) lost their lives,' he says, 'because among other miracles, they also, by their prayers, precipitated Simon from the vacuity of the air-for Simon calling himself Christ, and engaging to ascend to the Father, was suddenly raised in flight by means of his magic art. At this moment Peter, bending his knees, prayed to the Lord, and by his holy prayer defeated the magician's lightness; for the prayer reached the Lord sooner than the flight; the right petition outstripped the unjust presumption. Peter, on earth, obtained what he asked, much before Si

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mon could reach the heavens to which he was making his way. Peter, therefore, brought down his rival from the air as if he had held him by a rope, and dashing him against a stone, in a precipice, broke his legs: doing this in scorn of the fact itself, so that he who but a moment before had attempted to fly, should not now be able to walk; and having affected wings should want the use of his heels.' (Septima die infra Octavam SS. Apost. Petri et Pauli).

"The standing miracles of the city of Rome— those miraculous relics which still draw crowds of pilgrims within its walls, and which, in former times, made the whole of Europe support the idleness of the Romans at the expense of their devout curiosity-are not overlooked in the prayer-book of her church. Let me mention the account it gives of St. Peter's chains, such as they are now venerated at Rome. Eudoxia, the wife of Theodosius the younger, being on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem, received as a present one of the chains with which St. Peter was bound in prison, when he was liberated by an angel. This chain, set with jewels, was forwarded by the pious empress to her daughter, then at Romethe young princess, rejoiced with the gift, showed the chains to the Pope, who repaid the compliment by exhibiting another chain, which the holy apostle had borne under Nero. As, to compare their structure, the two chains were

brought into contact, the links at the extremities of each joined together, and the two pieces became one uniform chain.

"After these samples, no one will be surprised to find in the same authorized record, all the other supposed miracles, which, in different parts of Italy, daily move the enlightened traveller to laughter or disgust. The translation of the house of Loretto from Palestine to the Papal States, is asserted in the collect for that festival. The two removals of that house by the hands of angels, first to the coast of Dalmatia, and thence, over the Adriatic, to the opposite shore, are gravely related in the lessons; where the members of the Roman Church are reminded that the identity of the house is warranted by papal bulls, and a proper mass and service, published by the same authority for the annual commemoration of that event.

"It is rather curious to observe the difference in the assertion of Italian and of French miracles the unhesitating confidence with which the former are stated; the hypercritical jealousy which appears in the narrative of the latter; the walk of St. Dionysius, with his own head in his hands, from Paris to the site of the present abbey of St. Denis, is given only as a credible report-De quo illud memoriæ proditum est, abscissum suum caput sustulisse, et progressum ad duo millia passuum in manibus gestasse.**

* The breviary, however, does not betray such hesitation as to the works of the said Dionysius, the Areopagite-the most