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vigilance, and indefatigable activity, of their burning zeal, must have realised his fondest hopes, and they may safely defy the most industrious malice to detect, in the history of six hundred years, a single act of their performance, inconsistent with the purposes of the institution committed to their charge, or with the character of its founder. Such services to the Roman see may well challenge a comparison with those of any other body of regular clergy. I limit the challenge, advisedly, to regular clergy; because any expression that would imply the possibility of any other description of persons being qualified to compete with the peculiar merits of the disciples of Saint Dominic, would be a gratuitous insult to an illustrious order of monkery which, in addition to its long and exemplary management of the Holy Inquisition, claims the gratitude of the Latin church for five popes and numerous saints, male and female, of whom many have been beatified, others canonised, while some, more fortunate, have been both beatified and canonised. (See Butler's Lives of the Saints.)

Such, reader, are the bitter fruits whereby Popery is known--such were the deeds which, in her high and palmy state in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, developed and have perpetuated for all time, the genuine character of a church that boasts of her immutability. Her claim is incontrovertible, and its justice is echoed in shrieks of woe, that resound through twelve hundred years, over oceans and continents, from Peru to Goa. The papal persecution of the Vallenses and Albigeois is proclaimed by the

first trumpet--the inexpiable guilt and indelible. infamy, resulting therefrom to the immutable church, are exhibited in the effusion of the first vial.

THE FIRST

TRUMPET-ch. viii.

7. "The first angel sounded, and there followed hail, and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt

up.

VIALch. xvi.

2. "And the first went and poured out his vial on the earth; and there fell a noisome and grievous sore upon the men which had the mark of the beast, and upon them which worshipped his image.

The signification of these symbols appears to me very plain. Hail and fire mingled with blood represent the agents of a fierce and destructive persecution. They are cast, not on the area within the precincts of the tabernacle whereon the angels were standing, but on the earth,- that is, some portion

of the Roman dominions. Trees by their timber and fruits, valuable for so many purposes, represent the industrious classes or, as they are described by the Economists, the productive labourers, of a community-the third part-a considerable portion. 'All green grass'-the fresh nutritious herbage the spiritual food of the flock of Christ,-of the sheep of his pasture-was burnt up-every appearance of a pure, uncorrupted, church was destroyed.

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That the beast' is the Roman secular empire, and his image'-the papal empire, will be abundantly shewn hereinafter. The men having his mark and worshipping his image are the churches in the empire, subject to the spiritual dominion of the papacy, every one of which participated in the infamous crusade. The noisome and grievous sore' that fell upon them, is the everlasting guilt and infamy which, like an incurable ulcer, attach to them all.

The second of the seven plagues of popery is the next memorable event in the history of the latin church the REFORMATION.

Writers of ability adequate to the magnitude of the task (they must be familiar to every reader) have saved such pens as mine from the necessity of an attempt to unfold the causes and consequences of that momentous occurrence. Its great and permanent services to the interests of pure and spiritual religion have not ruffled the contemptuous silence of Gibbon with a sneer; but the moralist could not be insensible to the vast and various benefits of which the glorious event has been the prolific source to all the temporal concerns of human society; and the plaudits which the philosopher has bestowed on the reformers reflect honor on the historian. "The visible assemblies of the Paulicians or Albigeois, were extirpated by fire and sword; and the bleeding rem

nant escaped by flight, concealment, or catholic conformity. But the invincible spirit which they had kindled, still lived and breathed in the western world. In the state, in the church, and even in the cloister, a latent succession was preserved of the disciples of St. Paul; who protested against the tyranny of Rome, embraced the bible as the rule of faith, and purified their creed from all the visions of the Gnostic theology. The struggles of Wickliff in England, of Huss in Bohemia, were premature and ineffectual; but the names of Zuinglius, Luther, and Calvin, are pronounced with gratitude as the deliverers of nations.”* (Gibbon, chap. 54.)

The stupendous revolution, by whose multitudinous blessings on mankind the cold scepticism of the

Gibbon does not name (in him an unusual omission) any authorities for his statement that the Vallenses were the real founders of the Lutheran reformation; but he might have cited the respectable testimony of Thuanus, who in the address to Henry IV., prefixed to his great work, thus speaks of those glorious martyrs—"contra quos cum exquisita supplicia parum proficerent, et remedio, quod intempestivé adhibitum fuerat, malum exacerbaretur, numerusque eorum in dies cresceret, justi tandem exercitus conscripti sunt: nec minoris molis bellum, quam quod antea nostri adversus Saracenos gesserunt, contra eosdem decretum est: cujus is exitus fuit, ut potius cæsi, fugati, bonis ac dignitatibus ubique spoliati, atque huc illuc dissipati sint, quam erroris convicti resipuerint. Itaque qui armis se initio tutati fuerant, postremò armis victi, in Provinciam apud nos et Gallicæ ditionis Alpeis vicinas, confugerunt. Pars in Calabriam concessit, in eâque diù, atque adeò usque ad Pii IV. pontificatum, se continuit. Pars in Germaniam transiit, atque apud Bohemos, et in Poloniâ et Livoniâ, larem fixit. Alii, in occidentem versi, in Britanniâ perfugium habuerint. Nam ab eorum reliquiis

infidel appears to have been almost warmed into the religious sensibility of a christian, exploded at the beginning of the sixteenth century, like a volcano, in the midst of benighted Europe, and is the subject of

THE SECOND

TRUMPET-ch. viii. 8. "And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea:

and the third part of the sea became blood:

VIAL-ch. xvi.

3. "And the second angel poured out his vial upon the sea; and it became as the blood of a dead man: and

every living soul died in the sea."

9. "And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed."

St. John is informed by an angel that, in the Apocalyptic symbols, waters signify nations-xvii. 15. "And he saith unto me, The waters which thou

ortus Joannes Wiclevus putatur, qui diu Oxoniæ docuit, et ante CCC annos, post varias de religione concertationes, morte fatali decessit in mortuum enim tantum a magistratu animadversum fuit, ossibus ejus, diu postquam obiit, publicè crematis. Hinc alii atque alii secuti sunt usque ad nostram ætatem; quâ, post infeliciter tentatam suppliciorum severitatem, res à disputationibus ad aperta bella et totas populorum defectiones in Germaniâ, Angliâ, et Galliâ devenit." When Thuanus laments that the illustrious Wickliff was not burned alive, and confers the title of army of righteousness (justi exercitus) on the infamous banditti that massacred the Vallenses, he only speaks the genuine language of his church; and Hayley admires his liberality

There, in the dignity of virtuous pride,

Through painful scenes of public virtue tried,

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