selytes do we respectively number, but-how many converts do we effectually gain to the faith of Jesus Christ? The more this anti-sectarian spirit prevails, the greater will be our success. Our triumph will be less brilliant, and more solid and permanent.

were.

As to minor points, let them remain as they No man is called upon to compromise his principles, by working, even with an opponent, on the common territory of the Gospel. Let A yet continue to lead his flock to the church, and B still head the line of march to the meeting; but no longer desecrate their several pulpits, by displaying the front of Antichrist in the shape, alternately, of Conformist and Nonconformist. Leave to Antichrist the use of his own weapons

CHAPTER XIII.

PENANCES-RELICS-ABSOLUTION-PER

VERSION OF THE ANGLICAN LITURGY.

In shirt of hair, and weeds of canvass dress'd,
Girt with a bell-rope that the pope has bless'd;
Adust with stripes told out for ev'ry crime,
And sore tormented long before his time,
See the sage hermit

His works, his abstinence, his zeal allowed,

You think him humble-God accounts him proud :
High in demand, though lowly in pretence,
Of all his conduct this the genuine sense,-
My penitential stripes, my streaming blood,
Have purchas'd heav'n, and made my title good.

*

*

But why before us Protestants produce

An Indian mystic, or a French recluse?

Their sin is plain; but what have we to fear,
Reform'd and well instructed? You shall hear.

COWPER.

THE doctrine of Compensations is valued, beyond all names of value, in the divinity of the Sacred College. The Romanists, having gained from their votaries vast accumulations of silver and gold, precious stones, and every other article of value; having also required of them an

implicit submission to creeds and confessions; and having, farther, subjected them to external mortifications, amounting, in some instances, to self-denial, and even self-torture; the question arises, By what means does the church reconcile her adherents to this repulsive part of her discipline? how does she persuade men to endure actual anguish and pain? In more direct terms, How does she repay them-for there must be some compensation-for their severe losses ?

In attempting to think out a reply to these inquiries, I am driven to confess, that although it seems not very difficult to explain the principle on which men yield to moderate degrees of voluntary distress, yet my philosophy has found its line too short to fathom the depth of the fact, that immense numbers of persons among the Roman Catholics have deserted all the endearments of life, suffered almost all things, and done almost all things, for the sake of what they considered to be the truth; and this with the prospect of no recompence, in the least adequate, in a human sense, to afford a competent reward. I refer to the expatriation, poverty, hunger, thirst, nakedness, and exposure to death in its most appalling forms, en

K

dured, for example, by Jesuit missionaries; and to the severities practised by some individuals attached to certain modifications of monachism./ We understand the motive and the recompence of a patient who endures, for instance, the excision of a mortified member: the prize is life; the alternative, death. We sympathize with a parent who, to save a child from ruin, consigns himself to indigence and the world's oblivion.

But where is any approach to proportion between the martyr-life of a Josephus a doloribus, in cloisters more gloomy than those of La Trappe, and the advantage proposed as the final result? Or, if this measure of sufferingas the difficulty appears to class among questions of degrees-be capable of analysis, what enabled Sister Rachel and Sister Felicite to sustain the anguish of an actual crucifixion; nailed, as they were, through the hands and feet, to two crosses, for upwards of three hours; during which, they affirmed, that they felt the most exquisite delight;' affecting sometimes to slumber, as if in a beatific trance; and sometimes addressing the spectators in the fondling and babyish language of the nursery ? *

* Quarterly Review, Oct. 1822; criticism on Gregoire.

Let those who can furnish the natural history of the fact then proceed to explain the counter-part system of torture and exeruciation among the Hindoos. I will abandon this department of the inquiry with one remark,—that if Catholicity be, as is contended, the only true religion, because it can inspire its disciples with a calm disdain of agony and death, Hindooism has equal, if not superior, claims upon human credence; a circumstance which must precipitate a Papal apologist upon very thorny perplexities. In the mean time, the doctrine of compensation is perfectly intelligible, when interpreted in connection with the minor sacrifices offered, by the Papal populace, at the shrines of their divinities. A sensualist will fast, if you will allow him a carnival. He will abstain from meat on Fridays, if you will take no notice of a voluptuous life *. He will wear

The following fragments of a letter (of the date of 15-), very recently published, from Bishop Gardiner to the University of Cambridge, upon the eating of flesh in Lent, and on the pronunciation of Greek, may illustrate also our general subject, being a specimen of the identity of the Roman-Catholic system :- I have been advertized how divers of the Regents, who should rule, and be good example to others, have this Lent very dissolutely used themselves in eating of flesh; which fault, how it hath been punished here, I am sure you have heard: wherein I have been noted a great advancer and setter-forth of that punishment.-I will have it in any wise punished; for I will not suffer the University with these dissolute