nance which the rigidity of his profession has rendered familiar, and modulating his voice in a way to heighten the horrors which already occupy the mind, he prefaces with several long and deep sighs, and then proceeds to gather ear-rings and jewels as follows; Do you view yourself lost and undone by nature? Do you now realize that you hate God? Do you see the holiness of the divine vengeance for your sins, and the justice in your being sent to hell for ever? All these jewels are delivered to the priest, and of them he forms the calf. When every feature of this Egyptian god is perfectly formed, it is customary for the priest to pronounce the subject of those horrors, hopefully converted. We frequently find published in relig ious papers, and in religious tracts, accounts of these wonderful conversions. The narration will detail the particular exercises of mind, and set forth the views which the subject had, when it is supposed that the divine spirit had the control. In these accounts we are informed that poor sinners were made sensible of their lost condition by nature, their desperate hatred towards God, and the justice of the divine law in demanding their utter destruction. And sometimes it is carefully inserted, that the converts were deeply impressed with the entire falsity of the doctrine of universal salvation. But the Priests, who give us these accounts, are as careful not to intimate that they were the authors of all these views and exercises, as Aaron was not to own that he formed the molten calf and fashioned it with a graving tool. But whoever will take the liberty to examine these things, and compare them; whoever will judge of them according to common rules of judging of other things, will be satisfied at once, that all their gloomy fears, all their erroneous notions about the depravity of our nature, of our natural hatred towards God, of God's enmity and wrath towards us, and, of the justice of our eternal condemnation, when brought together and consolidated into one

mass, is nothing but a Moloch formed by priestcraft; an idol produced in the schools of superstition, and carefully guarded by the holy office.

My friends, I solemnly declare that I feel no opposition, no enmity against any denomination of religionists in the world, if I know my own heart. These remarks are not designed against men, against my fellow beings; but I acknowledge my determined opposition to all priestcraft, to all religious deception; and I openly avow my entire devotedness to the work of rending the vail of superstition from the minds of men to the utmost of my feeble abilities. I hold in utter abhorrence the craft and art by which thousands are deceived, and made to believe, that the spirit of God teaches these abominations, which are as unlike God, as was the Moloch of the ancients, to whom thousands of innocent children were sacrificed. If we can be persuaded to believe that the divine spirit teaches such religion as we have noticed, then, of course, it becomes our duty to kneel before it and honour it with the devotion of our hearts. pears to have been the design of Aaron to deceive Moses, and make him believe that the calf was miraculously formed, when he knew that he formed it himself. I should be glad with all my heart, to save Aaron from this imputation, but it is out of my power. And I should be equally glad to save our antichristian clergy from the imputations here suggested, but it is equally out of my power. Every feature, every attribute of false religion is a direct and palpable testimony that the spirit of the true God has nothing to do with its whole scheme. The fingers of the priests of Baal have had the fashioning of every part of this idol; and as Moses ground the Horeb calf to powder, and gave it to those who made it, to drink, so those who have fashioned false religion, must receive its deadly qualities to themselves.

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To a heart of sensibility, the consideration of the evil effects of this priesteraft, is peculiarly af

fecting. The dismal horrors which are reiterated from pulpits, so powerfully operate on weak nerves, as to produce effects truly lamentable. The female part of the audience is generally most affected; and these abominable notions produce in the minds of women and children such concern as banishes all comfort, and drives many even to despair entirely of the mercy of heaven. It is so well known by the clergy, that these gloomy fears have a greater power on female minds than on men, that they almost uniformly attack this weaker part. And some have given it as their opinion, that there will many more women be saved, than there will be of men. What makes them think so is, they find it easier to lead women into their notions, than to lead men. In consistency with these remarks, we find the most women in those congregations where the most of this gloomy doctrine of divine vengeance, eternal misery, &c. is held up. These remarks regard the subject generally. There are, females, to the honour of the sex be it observed, that are too sensible to be led away by that which is destitute of either scripture authority or the dictates of reason.

It is enough to melt one's heart into pity and compassion, to observe the operations of this false religion on the minds of children. It is not long since I was told of a poor distressed child, who, on its return from a sunday school, went to its parent and burst into tears, exclaiming, "I wish I had never been born!" With surprise and compassion the parent inquired the cause of this bitterness of soul; when the child replied, I must go to hell and burn for ever in fire and brimstone! Thus early does priestcraft begin its operations, operations most insidious, artful, and deleterious.

We may now proceed to notice how those who make and worship this antichristian idol are plagued and even tormented. And here we shall do well to observe, that it is not because our heav enly Father is possessed of any enmity towards

his deluded children, that they are thus plagued; but these torments are the necessary consequences of false ideas of God, and of the services which superstition imposes on the deceived. A fair sample of this may be seen in the idolatrous worship into which the Israelites degenerated, when they caused their sons and their daughters to pass through the fire unto Moloch. What must have been the distress of parents, who became so infatuated as to offer their little children in sacrifice to this abomination. Christian professors vainly imagine that such idolatry is most stupid, and offensive to God; but they kneel to an altar, on which millions of infants are devoted to a deity, whose wrath, they think, will kindle a flame upon them to all eternity! And, my friends, will you allow yourselves to reflect, one moment, on the aggregate amount of misery which such religion produces in what is called christian communities? Who can be otherwise than miserable, while believing that they themselves, their connexions, their dear children are every moment exposed to drop into unspeakable torment? Not only are the tenets of false religion fraught with consequences resulting in the misery of poor deluded mortals, but all the duties it requires are burdensome. We constantly hear the outcries of the superstitious, representing the hardships they undergo in the service of their deity. They acknowledge themselves, that were it not, that they expect a reward hereafter, for their religious duties performed, if they were not in fear that God will administer, in the future world, dreadful torments on them, they would, by no means attend to the duties of their religion, but would indulge in every vice to which blind passion should lead. In this, we have their honest confession, that their God is a tyrant, is a real Moloch, who takes delight in the misery of his subjects, and is so pleased with their sufferings, that he is willing to reward all such as will voluntarily torment themselves for his gratification! We have

here also their honest confession, that their religious duties are irksome, and that they think they deserve a recompense in the world to come, as they have none in this! Thus they are plagued because they make the calf which their priests make. The blind lead the blind, and all fall into the ditch together.

As the image of the Egyptian idol was in the minds of the Israelites, it was natural for them to give their idol the same form; and so it is with idol-makers in our times. They form their Molochs according to images which exist in their own deceived hearts, and furnish them with their own spirit and passion. We may learn the disposition of the deity people worship by the disposition of his worshippers; or we may learn their disposition by the disposition of their idol. There is not a quality in one which is not in the other; and for this good reason, the idol exists no where, but in the imagination and disposition of these idolaters. St. Paul says, and very justly, "We know that an idol is nothing in the world." When professors of religion exercise a bitter, persecuting spirit towards those who do not conform to their notions, they are always able to vindicate the justice of their unmerciful cruelty by the vindictive justice of their equally unmerciful deity; and when they doom their fellow creatures to a state of endless sufferings, they can look up and see the wrath of their offended idol, all hot and ready to be poured down on their devoted heads! But after all, my friends, the whole of this vastly extensive scenery, the idol, the heaven he resides in, his wrath, together with the hell in which the subjects of his fury are to be tormented are no where in the whole universe, only in the deceived hearts of those idolaters. What an incalculable aggregate of misery is endured, by the millions, who are devoted to the service of such superstitions. Those who worship, worship out of fear, and those who do not