his view the Devil in the character of a black man, with horns on his head and a tail to his rump, he will behold a pigeon, hovering in a spot of light. This pigeon, which, however, he will be taught to call not by this name, but by its other and more poetical name, a dove-this pigeon it is, that if any thing will be the object of his belief.

Our God, whose picture here and now must not be drawn, but which when here it was drawn, was -and there where it is drawn, is the picture of an old man;-another God, whose picture may be drawn, and is continually drawn, and when drawn is seen to be the picture of a young man--which God is likewise not only a God but also a man ;a third God, whose picture may be drawn, and being drawn, is seen to be the picture of the sort of pigeon called a dove, these three Gods, who, man and pigeon included, make, after all, but one and the same object of belief, and that object a God, these, when this system of instruction has been read, marked, learnt, and inwardly digested, comprise and constitute the subject of all this science the object of the young child's belief -of that belief, of which he is forced to say that he entertains it.That he entertains it ?—why?— Even because, in an unthinking and half-hearing moment, three persons, under the rod of the law, -to save him from the endless and inscrutable mass of temporal inconvenience, attached to the non-performance of the ceremony,-undertook, by that which would be not only a rash, but a flagitious, were it any thing but a senseless vov, that, after having begun to entertain this belief, before he knew or cared what it was that he

was thus entertaining, he would to the end of his life continue to entertain it.

(7.) [The Holy Catholic Church.]-The Holy Catholic Church. -"I believe in the Holy Catholic Church." Not to speak of former times, what is it that at present a child can understand himself to have spoken of himself as doing, when he has declared that he believes in the Holy Catholic Church ?-1 believe in God? Yes, this is what he may conceive himself to understand.I believe in God; i. e. I believe in the existence of a God -and so in regard to Jesus Christ and the Holy Ghost. But I believe in the existence of a Holy Catholic Church ?-For this same Church, of which, under the name of the Holy Catholic Church-one Holy Catholic Church, and no more than one-he is thus forced to speak, where is it that he is to look? Jf, by any such name as the Catholic Church, there be any thing that on any other occasion he has ever heard spoken of as being in existence, it will have been the Roman Catholic Church-a Church composed of Roman Catholics, who are the same men that are sometimes called Papists, and who, when they were in power, burnt as many of the good people called Protestants, of whom he himself is one, as for that purpose they could lay hold of. Now, as to the Holy Ghost, in whom the child has just been declaring himself to believe,-whatsoever is or is not meant by holiness,-that Ghost, without any difficulty, is holy. But this Church, composed as it is of the barbarous men called Papists, is this too, Holy ?-holy, even as the Holy Ghost is Holy ?-On the part of the poor child, suppose any particle of thought to be bestowed upon the

subject, how distressing must be the perplexity into which he here finds himself plunged? But no:-before it has arrived thus far, the plain truth of the case is-that, whether in the breast of a child or in the breast of an adult, the faculty of thought, having found itself baffled and wearied out, has, in despair, withdrawn itself from the whole subject, leaving in the grasp of the conception and the memory nothing but a string of sounds and characters, void of all sense.

(8). [The Communion of Saints.]—The Communion of Saints? One more puzzle; a riddle which unhappily is not explicable, but which happily is not worth being explained.

The Communion of Saints-What is a Communion? What are Saints?-Saints, the poor child will soon have heard of.-There is St. Peter; there are the rest of the twelve Apostles, (Traitor Judas being excepted): there are Jesus's four Biographers, decorated with the title of Evangelists; all or most of them more or less known to him by their portraits; all of them striking likenesses; and, though last not least, there is St. Paul, whose beginning had borne but too near a resemblance to the latter end of Judas. In the Communion,-or, at any rate, in a communion, -the child may likewise ere long behold a thing which he has heard of, and moreover heard

-a part of the Church service, called sometimes for shortness the Communion simply, at other times without abbreviation the Communion Service.-Communion-Saints-belief-putting together the ideas brought to view by these three

words,-what in relation to this matter will be the little creature's belief? - - something, perhaps, to this effect; viz. that, among the Apostles and whatever other holy men used to be called Saints, it was a custom to join together in the performance of the Communion service; of the Communion service,—worded, as he has seen it, or is about to see it worded, viz. in the Church of England Liturgy.

If this be an error, well would it be for the successive generations by which the compound here analyzed is destined to be swallowed,-not to speak of those by whom it has been swallowed, -if, of all errors contained in it, this were the most pernicious one.

Saints, whose portraits he has there been used to see-that, like good Saints as they were, they used, all of them, to join in the performance of the Communion service-this may do for a time. But to believe in the Communion of Saints, is to believe in the Saints themselves:-and who are these Saints ? Any such question, should it ever happen to him to put to himself, what answer will he have to give?-Where shall he find it?Where shall he look for it?-Sooner or later it may happen to him to look into the Calendar that stands at the commencement of his Common Prayer Book, more especially as it is there that he will have to look for Holidays. Looking into this treasury of consecrated idleness, he will find, that, to the original stock of Saints, he will have to add a list of modern ones; not to speak of Martyrs and Confessors, with whom this Catechism has happily abstained from burthening his memory and his conscience. Neither in this however will there

be any great difficulty: and now, to his belief in the Devil will be added his belief in Saint Dunstan, whose Church is established still in Fleetstreet, and whose Saintship consisted in pulling the unclean spirit by the nose. Here at any rate may be Saints enough to satisfy his believing appetite, so long as his studies are confined to the Common Prayer Book, of which this Catechism makes a part, and the Calendar by which it is commenced or preceded. But by the Holy Scriptures should they ever carry him so far— how will those ideas, which by the Common Prayer Book he had been led to form of Saints, be enlarged, and at the same time confused and troubled? On this head, are the Holy Scriptures -is the New Testament-are the Acts of the Apostles, to be believed? If so, then is every one a Saint by whom the religion of Jesus is, or ever has been, or shall ever have been, professed. Read to this purpose the Acts of the Apostles; or, what is shorter, turn to any Concordance.

If this be so, then in the number of these holy subjects or objects of his belief, he may have to place not only St. Peter and St. Paul with their contemporaries, as above, with such of their successors as St. Sutton, and St. Vernon, and St. Howell, and St. Burgess, and St. Eldon, and St. Sidmouth, and St. Harrowby, and St. Bailey, and St. Stevens, and St. Parke, and St. Wilberforce, and St. Bernard, and St. W. Milner the Protestant, and St. Milner the Catholic, and St. Hannah and St. Joanna,-but St. Napoleon, moreover, and St. George, and St. Ellenborough, and St. Yarmouth the Orangeman, and St. Headfort,