have books, and that they must read them, wholly unfit for circulation among young people. These books, however, are not written in the vernacular language of any country, and a very small part of them is occupied with the subject in question. But, nevertheless, the books do exist, and must exist, so long as sin shall be in the world, and a priesthood to deal with it. These books are not written for amusement, or recreation, or for improper purposes, but are the result of stern necessity, and of the wickedness of men in general. Their purpose is not to teach men how to sin, but to teach the priests how to discriminate between sin and sin,-how to terrify the hardy criminal, and, if need be, to comfort the scrupulous, and bring an erroneous conscience to the light of justice.

"We will also admit everything that the Protestant can say against certain treatises of moral theology, except that they are written for an evil end, or that they are erroneous, and meet him willingly on the low ground which he has chosen. Let these books be bad, full of language which cannot be spoken; let them be, as they are said to be, unfit for man's reading, and unbecoming a circulating library. We admit it all, and much more, and probably a Catholic has a keener sense than the Protestant that these books are ill adapted for general circulation, or popular reading. We certainly do not publish extracts from them, nor call public attention to them-we hide them as much as we can from the eyes of all, and permit their use only to those who are by the obligations of their office, bound to know them."

So much for the admission that the books are such as Protestants have long declared them to be. Their teaching may be regarded as the seed sown, and the misery, turbulence, and anti-social state of feeling in Ireland may be regarded as the fruit naturally produced by it. But we proceed to the following illustrations:

"A Protestant apprehends a serious illness, or is already laid prostrate on his bed. He sends for a physician or surgeon, and reveals to him the secrets of his soul, in order that his poor body may have a chance of escaping its inevitable doom. More than this: if wife or daughter be ill, the same medical friend or neighbour has unlimited access to them, and may ask them what questions he pleases, and examine every member of their body. No secrets are kept from him, and he detects possibly in an evanescent symptom what the sufferer would have given much to conceal. The Protestant trusts his doctor, and reveals to him what he very carefully conceals from his clergyman, for, in truth, a Protestant's confidence is confined to his lawyer and his medical attendant: the latter takes care of his body, and the former of his property, and both know of his soul as much as is involved in the matters of their respective professions, but about which neither he nor they care very much.

"If it were proposed to abolish the medical profession there would be either an outcry or a laugh. Physicians are a necessity of State; they are known to be useful, and though not always successful, yet, the whole, people have confidence in them, and no man worth a thousand a-year would consent to suppress them. They are,

on

further, a respectable class, scientific, philanthropic, and occasionally knighted.

But how have they been educated? We venture to say that there are no books in Maynooth comparable to the books which they have read, and that the ecclesiastical students of that place would have closed their ears in horror had they been compelled to hear the lectures which the medical attendants of Evangelical Protestants hear in the hospitals of London, Edinburgh, and Dublin. In Maynooth sin is spoken of as sin, and wickedness is not presented under attractive forms, and the men who are taught there are not sent into the streets of the city, under the impression that impurity is an inevitable and natural evil.

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Again, medical books are not now, as formerly, written in a dead language, but in plain English. The sellers of them are known, and he who likes may buy them. In these books there is no indication that certain practices may be sinful, and they are all of them not altogether free from some approach to lasciviousness. Medical students become practitioners in the course of time, and with all their dangerous knowledge, far more dangerous than that of the priest, are admitted into families, into the secret chambers, and often without witnesses, of the young and the innocent. They ask questions at which the hearer may blush, and there is no safeguard of religion thrown over their proceedings. Medical men, it will be said, are necessary, and we must excuse the knowledge to which they attain, because of the great benefits which they are able to administer; but the same is said of priests. Further still, medical attendants are not always religious even in the Protestant sense; they are supposed to be no better than their neighbours; some of them avow principles not distinguishable from Deism; and it is not easy to see why they should not make use of their knowledge for an evil end. If they chose, they could murder without a chance of detection, and yet people trust them, and leave themselves implicitly in their hands.

"We say, then, that the education of a priest is as different as possible from that of a medical man; that he does not learn what the surgeon or physician learns; and that the books which he has to study are not so impure, in the Protestant sense, as are those books and those lectures which the medical student is familiar with. We will not press the further argument derivable from the sights and operations with which the young mediciner is acquainted, not under the restraints of religion, but under circumstances which we need not describe. Medical science is necessary because of physical health, and yet we are told that the spiritual science is not necessary. A headache or a stomach-ache deserves consideration, but the spiritual illness of a soul is to be left untended, and the man who pampers his body, and has his physician about him daily, is the very man who tells us that an immortal soul is to be neglected; that it may be damned with the pampered body for ever.

"Until Protestants get rid of lawyers and physicians, they have no right to cry out against priests. They must leave moral theology alone until they can produce medical books which may be left in the hands of the young and the innocent. If medical science be

necessary on account of physical disease, so is moral theology necessary because of the spiritual disorders into which men fall; and nobody will be able to acknowledge this truth more heartily than Messrs. Spooner and Newdegate when they shall have the grace to make a general confession before a priest, with the requisite faculties."

The attempted analogy between the spiritual physician and the medical man altogether fails. The dark system of the confessional, unauthorized and unsanctioned by Scripture, is not of Divine appointment, but of human invention, and tends to promote and to perpetuate some of the worst evils which characterize the Romish system of theology.

ON THE PROFLIGACY AND WICKEDNESS OF THE ROMISH

PRIESTHOOD.

"If the boundless credulity of mankind be a mournful subject for consideration, it is yet more mournful to observe the profligate wickedness with which that credulity has been abused."-Southey's Book of the Church. BISHOP Newton, in his Dissertation on the Prophecies, thus speaks of the character of the Romish priesthood:-"It is plain that the great apostasy of the latter times was to prevail through the hypocrisy of liars having their conscience seared with a hot iron; and hath not the great idolatry of Christians, and the worship of the dead particularly, been diffused and advanced in the world by such instruments and agents, who have changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator.' It is impossible to enumerate all the various falsehoods which have been invented and propagated for this purpose: the fabulous books, legends, miracles, and revelations; and even the fabulous saints, who never existed but in the imagination of their worshippers. And all these stories the monks, the priests, the bishops of the Church, have imposed and obtruded upon mankind-it is difficult to say whether with greater artifice or cruelty-with greater confidence or hypocrisy and pretended sanctity, a more hardened face, a more hardened conscience. The history of the Church,' saith Pascal, 'is the history of truth; but as written by bigoted Papists, it is rather the history of lies.' So well doth this prophecy agree with the preceding one, that the coming of the man of sin should be after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness.' A farther character of these men is given in the following words, Forbidding to marry.' The same hypocritical liars, who should promote the worship of demons, should also prohibit lawful marriage, &c.

"The last note and character of these men is, commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth.'. . . . The same lying hypocrites who should promote the worship of demons;

should not only prohibit lawful marriage, but likewise impose unnecessary abstinence from meats; and these two, as it is indeed fit they should, usually go together, as constituent parts of the same hypocrisy. . . . It is as much the law and constitution of all monks to abstain from meats as from marriage. So lived the monks of the ancient Church; so live, with less strictness, perhaps, but with greater ostentation, the monks and friars of the Church of Rome; and these have been the principal propagators and defenders of the worship of the dead both in former and in later times. The worship of the dead is, indeed, so monstrously absurd, as well as impious, that there was hardly any possibility of its ever succeeding and prevailing in the world, but by hypocrisy and lies; but that these particular sorts of hypocrisy, celibacy under pretence of chastity, and abstinence under pretence of devotion, should be employed for this purpose, the Spirit of God alone could foresee and foretel But this idle, Popish, monkish abstinence is as unworthy of a Christian, as it is unnatural to a man."

These, be it remembered, are not the ravings of a wild and visionary enthusiast, but the sober and deliberate opinions of a sound and enlightened Christian, who had deeply and attentively studied the Word of God. And what a testimony does this learned prelate bear to the hypocrisy and wickedness of the Romish priesthood! In his recapitulation of the Prophecies, he observes:-"Why were the vices of the Scribes and Pharisees left so particularly on record, if not chiefly for the correction and reproof of their natural issue and descendants, the clergy of the Church of Rome? Read the whole of the twenty-third chapter of St. Matthew, and you will find that there is not a single woe denounced against the former, but as properly belongs, and is as strictly applicable to the latter."

Perhaps a more profligate and wicked set of men do not exist on the face of the earth than the priests of Rome, in countries where Popery is dominant. Nor need this excite surprise, for there is everything in their system to demoralize and brutalize them. The impurities of the confessional and the cruelties of the Inquisition stamp infamy upon the system. Romish priests, really believing and practising what the Church requires, are gross idolaters. They bow down and worship a piece of bread believing it to be God, which is the grossest idolatry. They worship the virgin and the saints, and they adore the wood of the cross. All this is plain and palpable idolatry. Now, idolatry more than any other sin alienates and separates man from his Maker. Ephraim is joined to idols, let him alone." God intensely hates this sin, and abandons those who commit it to their own wretched devices. Idolatry, impurity, and cruelty, invariably accompany each other. Where shall we find more impurity and cruelty than among the idolatrous priests of Rome?

Romish priests are guilty of the most horrible blasphemy. This sin prevails to a fearful extent in the Church of Rome. The titles and attributes assumed by the Pope are full of blasphemy. He, whose character is drawn to the life in 2 Thess. ii., is blasphemously styled His Holiness, our Lord God the Pope; Sovereign of Kings and Kingdoms; and Christ's Vicegerent upon Earth. The blasphe

mous character of Popery is further shown by the impious homage paid to the Virgin Mary, who has far more honour conferred on her than the Triune Jehovah. In the Psalter of the Virgin occurs the following blasphemous prayer:-"From thy fulness the whole sacred Trinity receives its glory." What is blasphemy if this be not blasphemy?

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Romish priests are notorious for their mendacity, when the interests of their Church may be served by it. Speaking lies in hypocrisy," is a characteristic feature of these ungodly men. Bishop Newton and all sound Protestant expositors speak of the priests of Rome as " lying hypocrites." And is there not a cause? Should any persons require evidence of this fact, they may consult "The Laws of the Papacy," published by Seeley and Burnside. See in the Index, "Hypocrisy of Popish Bishops as disgusting as their Crimes." See also Scott's Bible, 1 Tim. iv. 1, 5, notes. Popery is eminently the religion of the Father of lies, and instead of being a blessing, is a fearful curse in the world. "The system," as the author of the "Protestant observes, "is founded upon lies, and supported by all deceivableness of unrighteousness. This has impressed a character upon the general body, which appears in almost every thing that they say and write on the subject of their religion and worship. This system of falsehood and deceit appears in nothing more than in the lying wonders which they relate concerning their images." Bishop Carleton says, "It would fill a book to speak of their particular lies. They understand well enough whom they serve herein; their practice is to lie, their hope is that every lie cannot be examined by the common people; they care not though it be found out by some, so it be not found out by the multitude; whom to deceive is their chief care, not respecting God, nor truth, nor God's Church, which is the Pillar of Truth, and may not be maintained with lies."

Another distinguishing mark of the Romish clergy is, their detestable cruelty. Popery is represented in Scripture as a harlot drunk with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus. Dr. G. Benson, in his "Dissertation on the Man of Sin," says, "The horrible and infernal Court of Inquisition is said in about thirty years to have consumed 150,000 by various kinds of torments, and still remains in Spain, Portugal, Italy, and other places, on purpose to hinder all free inquiry, and to keep mankind in the greatest ignorance of the true religion, and in a most slavish subjection to an hierarchy of ambitious, lazy, and debauched priests."

It is an awful consideration that there should be such a being in existence as Satan, whose only object is to do evil, and who is constantly endeavouring to defeat God's beneficial designs and his gracious purposes of salvation to our lost and ruined race. And it is also an awful consideration that there should be such a set of human beings in existence as Romish priests, who are agents or emissaries of Satan, and who are constantly endeavouring to subvert the religion of our blessed Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, and to set up the false, idolatrous, blasphemous, obscene, and cruel religion of Antichrist in its place.

It is to be hoped that many Protestants, who, under the influence