ginable. For his last spiritual encouragement, I said, "Your Majesty has now received the comfort and benefit of all the sacraments that a good Christian (ready to depart out of this world) can have or desire. Now it rests only, that you think upon the death and passion of our dear Saviour, Jesus Christ, of which I present unto you this figure" (shewing him a crucifix): "lift up, therefore, the eyes of your soul, and represent to yourself your sweet Saviour here crucified; bowing down his head to kiss you; his arms stretched out to embrace you,' "' &c. &c.-The rest is much in the same strain, and need not be copied. (Vol. iv. pp. 76-80.) The reader will observe, in this indescribable mass of confusion, that the King's chief point of repentance referred to his having delayed his reconciliation -meaning to the Papal Church! As to what is called the short act of contrition, we now find, that the fondling and amatory language of devotion, which modern divines have discovered to be the invention of Methodists and Moravians, was not considered as a disgusting intruder into the chamber of a king; and that none of the hymns and religious biographies and journals published by the followers of Whitfield and Wesley-and which were held up to public detestation by Bishops Gibson, Lavington, and Warburton-contained more revolting expressions of familiarity, than were used by a minister of Antichrist when presenting the crucifix before the eye of an expiring voluptuary! Whoso is wise will ponder these things.'With respect to the exceeding compunction and tenderness of heart, and all the symptoms of devotion imaginable, which this wretched priest discovered in his victim-as though he had the power of discerning spirits, and of accurately observing the transition from spiritual death to spiritual life—it is beyond the powers of language to express what that system must be, which allows its supporters to go such fearful lengths in the arts of delusion and flattery. Would that no analogy to such things existed among ourselves! and that the author of Death-be Scenes' had studied narratives similar to the one occasioning these remarks, before he offered his sacramental practice to the imitation of a Reformed Church!

O Thou great Power, in whom I move,
For whom I live, to whom I die!
Behold me through thy beams of love,
Whilst on this couch of tears I lie ;
And cleanse my sordid soul within
By thy Christ's blood, the bath of sin.

No hallowed oils, no grains I need,
No rags of saints, no purging fire;
One rosy drop from David's Seed

Was worlds of seas to quench thine ire;
Oh precious ransom! which, once paid,
That CONSUMMATUM EST was said;

And said by Him that said no more,
But sealed it with his dying breath.
Thou, then, that hast dispunged my score,
And dying wast the death of Death,

Be to me now-on thee I call

My life, my strength, my joy, my all!

SIR HENRY WOTTON.

PURGATORY is a natural extension of the

Papal system of the sacrifice of the Mass. It

defrauds the Son of God of the sufficiency of his atonement, by attributing a share of every individual's salvation to a process distinct from the death of Christ. It divides the glory of the event between a punishment borne for man by a Redeemer, and a punishment inflicted upon man; as though the last were necessary to fill up the deficiencies of an infinite merit.

The origin of Purgatory is readily detected, -apart from the self-righteousness connected with the process-in the vast super-addition it confers upon the sacerdotal prerogative. Did the doctrine imply, that the dead could, by their own unassisted energies, release themselves from posthumous penalties; or, that the purificative fires raged for a season, and then spontaneously subsided, it would have been without any assignable value: it never would have caught the attention of a hierarchy which monopolizes all spiritualities capable of impart ing influence, and of exuding silver and gold.

In the natural course, therefore, of the policy pursued by the Papal cabinet, the invention of masses for the dead lengthened out the chain of masses for the living; and, after this fashion, bound together the lucrative concerns of time and eternity. It is thus that the ministrations of the Church of Rome descend,

as it were, into hades; professing to loose the spirits in prison, not from any anxiety to diminish their sufferings, further than may consist with an augmentation of the power and affluence of the Church.

I would remark, by the way, that the doctrine of Purgatory is extremely inconsistent with the idea of a happy death; for who can expire in peace, with the assurance that he directly passes into a region of penal fire? Yet I have read of devout Papists-for such there are—who have approached the confines of the unseen world, not only with tranquillity, but with confidence. Had they forgotten the terrors of the middle state? Or, in the midst of many speculative notions, had they practically looked to the sacrifice of Christ, and to this alone, for salvation? Most serious Christians will answer both questions, I believe, in the affirmative; and will exult in the conviction, gathered from an unexpected source, that the Gospel is the power of God unto salvation to every one that truly believeth; notwithstanding he may have been surrounded all his days by the most impure corruptions of Christianity. From such circumstances the religion of Jesus Christ seems to derive another collateral evidence of its vitality and identical nature.

Many clergymen have frequently observed, in the course of their ministry, the natural appetite of the human mind for a something which, in an after-state, is to purify such persons as are, to vulgar apprehensions, too wicked to be directly saved, and too virtuous to be eternally lost. Such a sentiment seems to have floated even in the lofty imagination of Lord Byron. Similar expressions of opinion sometimes manifest themselves, in more humble guise, at the death-beds of our village poor. On such occasions, men, if they say any thing, speak out their meaning; and, certainly, it is an affecting consideration to observe the ignorance, even in theory, of our population concerning the nature of the Gospel, as a remedy all-sufficient for the spiritual distempers of mankind. They seem, as by a kind of depraved instinct, to reject the notion of a freely offered, complete, and unbought salvation; and would seem solicitous, either to plead their innocence of any indictable offence; or, if sin must be confessed, to seek for its pardon between the cross of Christ and some degree of positive merit, or meritorious suffering, furnished by themselves. Reference to this has been already made.

The wisdom of the Papal world is fully aware