But this claim is so repugnant to reason, so contradictory to the common sense of man, and so palpably overthrown by the vicious conduct of Popes, and the contemptible quarrels of Councils, that, even among the Papists, it has been the most dubious of all doctrines-some of the Popish parties placing infallibility in a General Council, some in a General Council united with the Pope, some in the Universal Church. But those disputes, which no human understanding could ever decide, show only the repugnancy of the doctrine itself to the human intellect. Infallibility was, at length, by the mere ignorance of knowing where to place it, quietly delivered into the possession of the Pope. He is now presumed to be the acting infallibility of the Romish world.

Yet, immeasurably absurd as this doctrine is, it is the especial and favourite one on which the Tractarians insist, and by which the apostates attempt to justify their guilty desertion to Rome. Infatuated as they are, they have fixed on the very point where infatuation is most infatuated, and where perversion most degrades the character of the understanding. The Celibacy of the Clergy.—After several attempts by ambitious Popes, this doctrine, or ordinance, was established by the tyrannical Hildebrand, Gregory the Seventh, in the eleventh century. The parochial clergy had generally married, and they protested long and strongly against abandoning their wives. But the advantage of having the ecclesiastics, in all countries, wholly separated from all connexion with their native soil and native interests, and the fixture of large bodies of men in every kingdom, wholly devoted to the objects of the Popedom, overpowered the voice alike of nature, justice, and scripture. "Those whom God had joined together" were put asunder by man.

No act, even of the Papacy, ever produced more suffering or more crime. No act could be politically more injurious, for it withdrew from the increase of the population-in times when population was the great want of Europe, and when half the land was desert 300,000 parochial priests, 300,000 monks and friars, and probably upwards of 300,000 nuns; thus

giving up to a life of idleness, and almost total uselessness in a national view, an enormous multitude of human beings annually, down to this hour, through nearly nine centuries!

But, to give the true character of this presumptuous contempt of the Divine will, and of the primal blessing of "Increase and multiply, and replenish the earth," and of the universal custom of the Jewish covenant, in which the priesthood descended by families; we should know the solitary miseries entailed by monastic and conventual life, the thousands of hearts broken by remorse for those rash bonds, the thousands sunk into idiotism and frenzy by the monotony, the toilsome trifling, the useless severities, and the habitual tyrannies of the cloister. Even to those we must add the still darker page of that grossness of vice which, in the ages previous to the Reformation, produced frequent remonstrances even from the Popes, and perpetual disgust among the people.

The Invocation of Saints.-This doctrine first assumed an acknowledged form in the seventh century. It had been gradually making its way, since the dangerous homage paid to the tombs of the martyrs in the third and fourth centuries. But this invocation made them, in the estimate of their worshippers, gods. For the supposition that they heard and answered prayer in every part of the world at once, necessarily implied Omnipresence-an attribute exclusively belonging to Deity.

Transubstantiation.- This doctrine declares that, when the words of consecration have been pronounced over the Eucharist, the bread and wine are actually transformed into the body and blood, the soul and divinity of Christ. This monstrous notion was wholly unknown to the Christians of the first four centuries. In the eleventh century, it was held that the body of Christ was actually present, without directly affirming in what manner. It was not until the thirteenth century (A.D. 1215) that the change of the bread and wine became an acknowledged doctrine, by the Fourth Lateran Council.

This doctrine contradicts the conception of a miracle, which consists

in a visible supernatural change. It contradicts the physical conception of body, which is, that body is local, and of course cannot be in two places at once; but the body of Christ is in Heaven. It also contradicts Scripture, which pronounces that the taking of the bread and wine would be wholly profitless, but by the accompanying operation of the Holy Spirit acting on the faithful partaker of the Sacrament; the language of Christ being "The flesh profiteth nothing. The words that I speak to you, they are spirit." The whole efficacy is spiritual.

The Mass.-Popery declares that in the Mass is offered continually the actual sacrifice of Christ. This conception arises from Transubstantiation, by which the Host is Christ; and the priest thus continually offering the Host is presumed to sacrifice our Lord, in every instance of the offering!

This doctrine is threefold-that the priest can make God, that flour and water can be God, and that the wafer, which is still but flour and water to the senses, is the Christ of whom it is declared in Scripture that, "having suffered once for all for the sins of men, he sat down for ever at the right hand of God." This monstrous doctrine was long disputed, and, though practically adopted, was not confirmed before the Council of Trent, (A.D. 1563.)

The Half-communion.-This doctrine originated also in Transubstantiation. From pronouncing the Eucharist to be actually Christ, scruples arose as to its chances of pollution; and as the wine might be spilt, it became the custom to give only the bread to the laity, in whose mouths it is placed by the priest. But a mutilated sacrament is none. The consequence of this doctrine is, that no Popish layman ever receives the Eucharist, or has received it during the last four hundred years!-a most awful and terrible result of human presumption !

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Auricular Confession. - By this doctrine, the forgiveness of sin must be preceded by confession to a priest. In contradiction to the whole tenor of Scripture, which declares the forgiveness of sin to depend on sincere

prayer for forgiveness, through the atonement of Christ, and on the determination to sin no more: "Come to me all ye that are heavy laden, and I will refresh you."-"Repent ye, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out."

But Auricular Confession, with its subsequent Absolution, actually increases crime, by disburthening the mind of remorse, and by substituting absolution for repentance. This practice was established, as a portion of the acknowledged system of Rome, scarcely before the thirteenth century.

Purgatory. This doctrine was unheard of in the first four centuries. It crept in about the seventh century, the period of the chief corruptions of worship. It was not sanctioned by any council until the fifteenth century, (A.D. 1438.) Its first establishment was by the Council of Trent.

This doctrine, which is wholly contradictory to the redemption declared in the Gospel, as resulting from the sufferings of Christ alone; declares that every sinner must be qualified for redemption in part, by undergoing sufferings of his own; that he must be personally punished in Purgatory for his temporal sins, to be purified for Heaven. The doctrine is evidently borrowed from the Heathen ideas of Tartarus. It has not the slightest ground in Scripture, and is totally opposed to the whole spirit and bearing of Christianity.

Indulgences.-This doctrine originated in the combination of Purgatory and Saintship. It held, that the merits of the dead might be applied to the wants of the living; and that these merits, not being required for the redemption of the saints, were preserved in the hands of the Church,. to be distributed as remissions from Penance, in the first instance, and in the next, from the terms of suffering in Purgatory. These remissions were sold by Rome under the name of Indulgences, and were given for any and every period. These Indulgences extended from a year to ten thousand years. Instances are recorded of their being extended to thirty thousand years! This was the most lucrative portion of the traffic of Rome. It brought in prodigious sums to the Roman Treasury.

Masses for the Dead.-This doctrine was connected with those of Purgatory and Indulgences. By it a succession of solitary masses might be continually carried on, either to relieve the Purgatorial torments, or shorten their duration. But these masses must be paid for either in money or land. They formed the vast funds which endowed the great Romish establishmentsthe monasteries, &c. Operating on the fears of the dying, the Popish priesthood rapidly possessed themselves of enormous wealth, and, in England, they were calculated to be masters of one-third of the land! The statute of mortmain alone preserved the rest. This prodigious grasp was loosened at the Reformation, and the monkish institutions were deprived of the wealth gained only by superstition.

It is obvious how fatally a doctrine of this order must operate on society. If man could clear himself from the punishment of a life of profligacy by a bequest on his deathbed, his whole responsibility would be removed at once. The fear of judgment would be extinguished throughout his life; he could have no restraint but the arm of society. Masses would be his substitute for morals; and his conscience would be cleared by the acts of others, for years after he was laid in the grave. If Masses could avail, there would be no use in living virtue, to any man who was able to pay for them.

This doctrine, intolerable in the view of common sense, unjust in placing an insurmountable distinction between the rich and the poor, and wholly contradictory to the spirit of the gospel-which commands that "every man shall work out his own salvation with fear and trembling, for it is God that worketh in him, both to will and to do"-was created and continued for its vast profits to the priesthood of Rome.

The celebrated Council of Trent, which, under various forms, sat from 1542 till 1563, collected all these doctrines into a system, and the subsequent act of Pius IV. gave them in

the shape of a creed to the Popish world.

We are glad to find that the "Papal Aggression" has awakened the intelligent and important authority of the English bar. On all great questions of the liberties and rights of the empire, that authority is of the most decisive order; and in this spirit we welcome with peculiar gratification a pamphlet from the well-known and eloquent pen of Mr Warren.* He commences by this bold and manly denunciation of the Papal interference with the rights of the Church and the privileges of the crown :—

The

faith in this country is in danger, not"The ascendency of the Protestant withstanding the noble movement which has been made in its defence. position so suddenly taken by the mortal enemy of that faith, is meant to be permanent; and he is silently intrenching himself in it: regarding all that has been said by this great nation as "sound and fury, signifying-NOTHING." He is infinitely more to be feared than he wishes at present to be believed; and though the precipitancy of priestly ambition may have deranged, for a moment, the working of his policy, it is really profound and comprehensive, as its results will in due time show; and has been accommodated to the political and ecclesiastical circumstances of the country with malignant exactitude and skilfulness.

"The political power of the Papacy lies hid under its spiritual pretensions, like a venomous serpent lurking under lovely foliage and flowers. A leading object of this Letter, is to explain and illustrate that truth, in its practical application to the great question now before the country, challenging its best energies of thought and will. It would be fatally fallacious to regard the late act of the Pope as exhibiting only the spasms of weakness. The more it is considered, the greater cause will be developed for anxious but resolute action. As a pretender to the exercise of direct temporal power, the Pope seems quite impotent; but he is the visible exponent of a spiritual despotism, founded (so we Protestants believe, or have no right to be such) as clearly on falsehood and impiety, as its pretensions and purpose are at once sublime and execrable; that

purpose being to extinguish, and in the name of Heaven, the liberties of mankind. "The question then- The Queen or the Pope?is a momentous one, which we have been very insolently challenged to answer. The whole matter, social, political, and religious, is gathered up into those few words; and posterity will sit in judgment on our mode of answering that question."

Mr Warren, in taking a lawyer's general view of the subject, strikingly adverts to the impudence of the Papist assertions. It is true that these assertions have now shrunk into a very small compass; that the bravado of "my Lord Cardinal" has dwindled down into a sort of supplication to be suffered to remain here on any terms; and that the "prince" has stooped into the pilgrim, gliding through the filth, vice, and poverty of the Irish colony in Westminster, or, as he terms it, the slums-an expression of extreme vulgarity, which, Mr Warren justly observes, does not belong to the English language, and which, we may as justly observe, belongs only to the meanest

of the rabble.

But the organs of Popery abroad have not submitted to circumstances so demurely, and they let out the Popish objects with all the easy insolence of the foreigner. Thus Count le Maistre, in a work translated and published in London, says, "What shall we say of Protestantism, and of those who defend it, when it will no longer exist? Let them rather aid us in making it disappear. In order to re-establish a religion and a morality in Europe, in order to give to truth the strength which it requires for the conquest it meditates, it is an indispensable preliminary to efface from the European dictionary that fatal word, Protestantism." L'Univers, the journal of Popery in France, has no hesitation in pronouncing the Protestant faith in England to be totally undone, and that Popery is only taking its time to make the operation complete.

The Popish organ here has been equally plain-spoken, and pronounced, in the most dashing style, the triumph of Rome, and the return of all Protestants under its yoke, on pain of damnation! Who but must be indig

nant at this language! But who can henceforth be deceived?

Не

Mr Warren, in reverting to the character and pretensions of the Papacy, lays it down as a fundamental proposition, that "the Pope's avowed spiritual power is pregnant with disavowed political power." tells us further, "that we have to tolerate a rival, who condescends to equality only as an advance to ascendency." He then gives the memorable Florentine canon of 1439, which the Romish lawyers regard as containing "the true doctrine of their church," and for the consequences deducible from which all Papists are answerable. These are its words:

"Moreover, we define that the Holy Apostolic See, and the Roman Pontiff, have a primacy over the whole world!-and that the Roman Pontiff is the successor of St Peter, the chief of the apostles, and true Vicar of Christ!-and that he is head of the whole church,' and the father and teacher of all Christians!

and to him, in St Peter, was delegated by our Lord Jesus Christ full power to feed, rule, and govern the universal church, as also is contained in the Acts of General Councils, and in the holy canons!" In this daring proclamation of power, we have the assumption of an authority obviously incompatible with the peace of any nation under heaven, and equally incompatible with the common liberties of mankind-for there can be no liberty where the arbitrary will of a stranger is the fountain of the law, and most especially contradictory to that Scripture which declares that Christ's kingdom is not a kingdom after the fashion of this world. When the question was contemptuously put by Pilate to our Lord himself," Art thou a king?" the answer was, that he was not a king in the sense of the Roman; that, if he were such, "his servants would fight"

in other words, that he would have the troops and attendance of an earthly king, that he would have resisted and made war. "But now is my kingdom not of this world."

But what is the Papacy, with its princes and pageantries, its armies and intrigues, its cabinets and alliances? In what does all this com

And it has felt the consequences. Of all the kingdoms of this world, since the fall of Rome, the Popedom has been the most marked by calamity. There has been no nation whose sovereign has been so often flung from his throne; whose throne has been so often contested with bloody dissension, whose sovereign has been so often a prisoner in foreign lands, whose capital has been so often sacked, whose provinces have been so often in foreign possession, whose population is so miserable, and whose vassalage has been so palpable, so humiliating, and so wretched.

But need we look to the past, when we see the Papacy at this hour? Need we dig up ancient fields of battle, to see how often its armies have been buried; or dive into its dungeons, to see how many centuries of fetters are recorded there against its presumption? Need we break up its tombs to see its shattered crosiers and tarnished tiaras, when we see the living figure that sits in mock majesty in the Vatican, with a French garrison in the Castle of St Angelo?

But the Papist demands religious liberty. The words, in Papist lips, are jargon. He has never had it in any country on earth. Has he it in Rome? Can the man have the absurdity to call himself a freeman, when the priest may tear the Bible out of his hand; when, without a license, he cannot look into the Book of Life?-when, with or without a license, he cannot exercise his own understanding upon its sacred truths, but must refuse even to think, except as the priest commands?—when, for daring to have an opinion on the most essential of all things-his own salvation-he is branded as a heretic; and when, for uttering that opinion, he is cast into the dungeon?-when the priest, with the Index Expurgatorius in his hand, may walk into his house, and strip it of every book dis

pleasing to the caprices, insolence, and ignorance of a coterie of monks in the Vatican?

If the legitimate and noble boast of the Englishman is, that his house is his castle, what is the house of the Italian Papist, but his dungeon? If the Irish or the English Papist demands " Religious Liberty," let him demand it of his master the Pope. If the Papist desires it, let him break the Popish fetter, and emancipate himself. Till then, we must look upon his claim as lawlessness instead of liberty, and hypocrisy instead of religion.

But, before the Papist requires more than toleration, must he not show that at least he tolerates? If, in the Popish kingdoms of the Continent, fear or policy has produced some degree of Protestant toleration, what is the condition of Protestantism in the capital of Popery; and, in its most important point, freedom of worship? To this day, no English Protestant is suffered to worship within the walls of Rome.

The Americans, with a sense of national right, of which it is a scandal to England not to have adopted the example, have insisted on having a chapel-a solitary chapel-in Rome; while the English have been forced to run from one lodging to another, to hide in holes and corners, and to exhibit to the Roman rabble the sight of Protestants sneaking to a worship indebted only to connivance for its being suffered to exist at all! From 1815, the year in which we gave liberty to the Pope, their worship was held only in private rooms for the ten following years, even to which the English were prohibited from going in carriages. They must go on foot! From 1826, the condition of their worship is thus stated on the authority of the chaplain :

"In that year, the English congregation migrated to a granary outside the Flaminian Gate. In the upper part of this huge building, a space, large enough for a congregation, was hired. It was reduced into shape by lath and plaster; it had a ceiling of canvass to hide the rafters and cobwebs, and carpets laid over straw, for covering the mud floor. The rats and mice ran races over the canvass above the heads of the worshippers; the pigs, in great