notion of mankind, God was pleased so far to comply, as once for all to have a general atonement made for the sins of all mankind, by the sacrifice of his only Son, whom his wise providence did permit by wicked hands to be crucified and slain.

"4thly, Another very common notion, and very rife in the heathen world, and a great source of their idolatry, was their apotheosis, or canonizing of famous and eminent persons, by advancing them after their death to the dignity of an inferior kind of gods, fit to be worshipped by men here on earth, &c. Now, to take men off from this kind of idolatry, and to put an end to it, behold! one in our nature exalted to the right hand of the Majesty on high, to be worshipped by men and angles; one that was dead and is alive again, and lives for evermore to make intercession for us.*

"5thly, The world was mightily bent upon addressing their requests and supplications, not to the Deity immediately, but by some mediators between the gods and them. In a gracious compliance with this common apprehension, God was pleased to constitute and appoint One in our nature to be a perpetual advocate and intercessor in heaven for us, bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh; so very nearly allied and related to us, (that) we may easily believe that he hath a most tender care and concernment for us, if we ourselves, by our own wilful obstinacy, do not hinder it; for if we be resolved to continue impenitent, there is no help for us; we must die in our sins, and salvation itself cannot save us." (p. 152)— Thus far his Grace of Canterbury.

The reader is requested to compare this language throughout, with the avowals of Mosheim, the apologies has the most explicit texts of the New Testament on his side, (and no rational man will ever have a word to say against the Old Testament): “For if the blood, of bulls and goats, and the ashes of an heifer sprinkling the unclean, sanctifieth to the purifying of the flesh, how much more shall the blood of Christ," &c.? Heb. ix. 13.-The force of the whole argument is,the more monstrously horrible, the more cruel, barbarous, and bloody, the more sanctifying efficacy in the sacrifice, and the more acceptable to this HORRID GOD. *Perhaps this is the severest irony, the most caustic sarcasm; that was ever couched in words. It is the "Shew 'em in here," and "All alive O!" of Bartholomew Fair. It is" Our tricks beat theirs!" It is" The fools! the idiots! nothing can be too gross for 'em."

This is good, honest, downright materialism. "Bone of our bone, and flesh of our flesh," must involve our ways of making and sustaining bone and flesh. Here is no skiey and cloudy work, and no room to rail at Mahomet's terrestrial paradise.

of Minucius Felix, Justin Martyr and Tertullian-with the concessions of Gregory of Cæsarea, Origen, and Melito, in their places in this DIEGESIS and with the total absence of any historical recognition of the existence of Christianity, as distinct from Paganism, within the first hundred years, or as distinct from a sectarian excrescence grown upon Paganism, within the first thousand years; and let him be faithful to his own con

victions.

CHAPTER XXXV.

RESEMBLANCE OF PAGAN AND CHRISTIAN FORMS OF WORSHIP.

Ir would be alien from all ends of a Diegesis, or general narration of the character and evidences of the Christian religion, to have any ear or regard to the vituperations and wranglings of the various sects of Christians, who are each, if attended to, for unchristianizing all but themselves, and thus tearing the cause of their common Christianity to pieces, or surrendering it undefended to the scorn and triumph of its enemies. If Christianity be not, or was not, what the majority of those who professed and called themselves Christians, through a thousand years of its existence, held it to be, there is a sheer end of all possibility of ascertaining what it was or is, since, at that rate, it amounts to no more than the ideal chimera of any cracked brain you shall meet with; and all that can be said of it is

"As the fool thinketh,
So the bell tinketh."

The intolerant and persecuting spirit of the established Protestant church, and the severity of the penalties inflicted by law on all conscientious and honest avowals of the convictions which superior learning and deeper research might lead to, has enforced on the wisest and best of men a necessity of conveying their general scepticism under covert of attacking the peculiar doctrines and practices of the church of Rome. Because this mode of attack would be endured, this only was to be tolerated. The predominant sect, so their own tenure on the profits of gospelling remained unendangered, would look on with indifference, or even join in the game of running down and tearing to pieces their common parent. To this conten

tious spirit of Christians among themselves, and their union only in the wicked policy of persecuting infidels, we owe discoveries which in no other way could have attracted equal attention. We are thus enabled to carry some or other of recognised Christian authorities all the way with us, taking up one where we set down another, till we arrive at the complete breaking up of all pretence to evidence of any sort, and bring orthodoxy itself to subscribe the demonstrations of reason. Thus M. Daille, in his attempt to show that the religious worship of his fellow Christians of the Roman Catholic communion could be distinctly traced to the institutions of Numa Pompilius, must lead every mind, capable of tracing our Protestant forms of piety to Roman Catholic institutions, to connect the first and last link of the sorites: ergo, Protestant ceremonies must have had the same origination.

Dr. Conyers Middleton, the most distinguished ornament of the church of England, could not, compatibly with his personal convenience, venture to go the whole length of the way which he points out to the travel of freer spirits, though, by demonstrating the utter falsehood and physical impossibility of all and every other pretended miracle that ever was in the world, not excepting one (except such as he might have been put in the pillory if he had not excepted), he leaves the conclusion to be drawn as it may be by every mind capable of drawing a conclusion, and as he could securely calculate that it would be—with a stronger effect of conviction than if he had himself prescribed it.

Without regarding any of the distinctions without difference upon which the jarring sects of Christians wrangle among themselves, we pass now from the comparison of the doctrines of what has been called divine Revelation, with the previously existing tenets and dogmas of Paganism, to an examination of the no less striking resemblance of Pagan and Christian forms of worship.

Priests, altars, temples, solemn festivals, melancholy grimaces, ridiculous attitudes, trinkets, baubles, bells, candles, cushions, holy water, holy wine, holy biscuits, holy oil, holy smoke, holy vestments, and holy books, state candlesticks, dim-painted windows,* chalices, sal

* In the most splendid chapel of the Methodists (Queen Street, Lincoln's Inn), the altar stands in a druidical alcove, upon which the light descends through yellow glass, to give to the countenance of their priests such a death-like tinge, as might make them seem to be standing under the immediate illapses of inspiration, "Creatures not of this earth, and yet being on it."

vers, pictures, tablets, achievements, music, &c. are found in various modifications and arrangements, not only in the sanctuaries of the Roman Catholic communion, but some or other, or all of them, even in methodistical conventicles, or in Unitarian pagodas supposed to be at the farthest remove from any intended adoption of the Pagan and Papal ceremonies.

We have seen the pontifical mitre, the augural staff, the keys of Janus, and the Capitoline chickens, emblazoned on the armorial bearings, not of Popish, but of our Protestant bishops. The religious faction that seemed very reasonably to object to the "pomps and vanities of this sinful world, while in the possession of those who had corrupted the pure faith of Christianity, very meekly and consistently take upon themselves the burthen of three times the revenues of that corrupt church.*. Those who were shocked at so flagrant a violation of the precepts of their divine master, as that of the bishop of Rome, who styled himself servant of the servants of God, were content to be known only as-Right Reverend and Most Reverend Fathers in.God, His Grace the Lord Archbishop, Bishop, Prelate, Metropolitan, and Primate, next in precedency to the blood royal, &c. &c. We have only to hope that Lactantius might have carried the matter too far where he says, that among those who seek power and gain from their religion, there will never be wanting an inclination to forge and to lie for it."

"That Popery has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doctrines from the rituals of Paganism," is a fact which the most learned and orthodox of the established church have most strenuously maintained and most convincingly demonstrated.

That Protestantism has borrowed its principal ceremonies and doctrines from the rituals of Popery, is a fact which the most learned and orthodox of the Catholic church as strenuously maintain, and as convincingly demonstrate. The conclusion, that Christianity is altogether Paganish, is as inevitable, as that if it be to be found neither among Catholics nor Protestants, there can be no such thing upon earth.

THE WHITE SURPLICE,

As worn by all our Protestant clergy, was the dress of the Pagan priesthood in a part of their public officiations, *See the Table of Ecclesiastical Revenues. + Lactant. De fals. Relig. 1. 4.

and is so described by the satirist Juvenal,* and the poet Ovid. It was the peculiar habiliment of the priests of Isis; and Isis herself being believed to have been the inventress of linen, of which these surplices are made, her effeminate priests were distinguished from more manly imposters by the still-applicable epithet of surplice or linen-wearers. Silius, however, speaking of the rites used in the Gaditan Temple of Hercules, instructs us that the priests of Hercules were also distinguished by wearing the white surplice. "They went barefoot, practised chastity, had no statues, wore white linen surplices, and paid tithe to Hercules;" that is, they were liberal in subscriptions to keep up the system that kept them up.

HOLY WATER.

WATER, wherein the person is baptised in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost.-Church of England Catechism.

THE BAPTISMAL FONT,

In our Protestant churches, and we can hardly say more especially the little cisterns at the entrance of our Catholic chapels, are not imitations,, but an unbroken and never interrupted continuation of the same aquaminaria or amula, which the learned Montfaucon, in his Antiquities, shows to have been vases of holy water, which were placed by the heathens at the entrance of their temples to sprinkle themselves with upon entering those sacred edifices.

And with pure dews sprinkled, enter the temples," Euripides stands only in paraphrase in our Heb. x. 22, "Let us draw near with a true heart, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water." The same vessel was called by the Greeks the sprinkler.§ Two of these, the one of gold, the other of silver, were given by Croesus to the temple of Apol lo at Delphi. Justin Martyr, the second in succession of the Christian Fathers, next to those who are called apostolic, says, that "this ablution, or wash, was invented by demons, in imitation of the true baptism, that their votaries

* Qui grege liniger circumdatus et grege calvo.-Juv. 6. 3.

+ Nunc Dea linigerâ colitur celeberrima turbá.—Ovid. Met: 1. 746.