of itinerant Moslems, sent from a college at Cairo to enforce the doctrines of the pseudo-prophet.

8

to The Abyssinians might be called a religious people, if we could depend on their professions of piety; but, when they make pompous boasts of their zeal, they speak more like Pharisees than lovers of truth. They are more attentive to forms and ceremonies than to the practice of true holiness and virtue; for their morality hangs loosely upon them, and their conduct is not sufficiently regulated by the laws of honor or by good principles. Their addiction to perjury is an odious trait in their éharacters; for they will frequently imprecate curses upon themselves if their assertions should be false, knowing at the same moment that they are wholly unfounded; and, when the king has sworn that he will pardon a delinquent, whom he afterwards wishes to punish; he says to his attendants, Take notice that I scrape this oath away from the tongue which pronounced it,'-making movements and gestures corresponding with his faithless declaration. They do not regard marriage as a religious obligation, and the priests therefore do not officiate on the occasion; and chastity is little regarded by either sex. They consider fasting as a strong proof of piety; but the priests, while they order the laity to fast about 190 days in a year, only practise that kind of forbearance for 70 days. At the end of each fast the chief priest entertains his brethren, who greedily devour the raw flesh of a cow, sing hymns, and drink some fermented liquor until they are stupified. With regard to the authority of the abuna or metropolitan, it does not appear that he has a great extent of power or patronage. Officers, who are not resquired to be priests, administer the revenues of the churches and monasteries, and determine spiritual causes, an appeal to the king alone being permitted, if the decision should not give satisfaction.

Calvinists.

History of the Ecclesiastical Communities of the Lutherans and shar don bib qüilsupą THE Lutherans still bear the chief sway in the Swedish and Danish kingdoms. Their zeal, however, is less fer vent than it formerly was, and they are less arbitrary and intolerant. They begin to partake of the candor and liberality which are now more prevalent than even in the last century; they entertain more just sentiments of the right which all persons have to think for themselves in points of religion and of conscience; and they are more disposed to follow, in practice, that rational and wellfounded axiom. Indeed, they now grant full toleration, from which even the Jews are not excluded. to The addition of Norway to the kingdom of Sweden, in the year 1814, tended to infuse a more liberal spirit into the government. The easy acquisition of a new territory puts a prince into good-humor, and he instantly becomes more mild and conciliatory: but, even before that event, it was ordained, in the new constitution which was promulgated in 1809, that no person should be harassed gor called to an account for his religious opinions, unless it should clearly appear that his avowal of them, or the exercise of that religion to which they appertained, might be injurious to the state. This exception, it may be said, furnished a pretence for molesting the sectaries yet the ordinance, we believe, was intended to convey a complete toleration. pin 20 noitig

The present Danish government is liberal and bene ficent; and the king is as attentive to the interest of the church as to that of the state. Aware of the poverty of his clerical subjects in Iceland, he allows pensions to those who cannot procure a sufficiency of income from the limited bounty of their congregations; and he evinces his Christian zeal in the promotion of missionary undertakings.

In the kingdom of the Netherlands, formed in the year 1814 by the union of the seven United Provinces

་

with those which the French had wrested from the hands of the Austrian emperor, the sovereign, though a Calvinist, granted to his new subjects an entire freedom of religious opinion and worship, and an equal share with the protestants in the representative government. This equality did not satisfy the prelates, who were of opinion that the Romish faith, followed for so many ages by the people of the Netherlands, entitled its professors to superior privileges: but the king, instead of adopting their suggestion, merely promised that every proposal connected with their religion should be submitted to the considera tion of an executive committee, consisting of catholics. Since that time, they have occasionally vented their ill bumor in complaints and remonstrances; but they cannot effectually resist the commanding influence of the protest→ ants In 1825, the king gratified them by the establish ment of a seminary, in which candidates for the catholic ministry might acquire a sufficient fund of learning for the proper discharge of their sacred trust. With the same view, and in the same spirit of complacency, the college of Maynooth in Ireland is supported by the liberality of a protestant parliament.

-o In France, the protestants are chiefly Calvinists. With regarde both to the French and German branches of that sect, it was stipulated, in the agreement between Napoleon and the pope, that a synod, composed of five consistorial churches, should regulate all religious and ecclesiastical concerns, but that its resolutions should be submitted to the rulers of the state for confirmation; and that the appointment of pastors should be subject to similar recog nition or approbation. If the contributions of the different communities should be insufficient for the support of the officiating ministers, the government promised to increase the amount to a fair allowance. As the incorporation of a part of Germany with France had added a multitude of Lutherans to the state, it was provided by the same concordat, that their church should be regulated, under the authority of the consuls, by consistories both general and local, and by councils of inspection. The ministers of the Calvinist persuasion were to be educated at Geneva, and

those of the Lutheran church at a peculiar seminary of their own religion. When the territories in which these protestants resided were withdrawn by the allied powers from the French yoke, in the year 1815, such regulations were made as softened the arbitrary clauses of the former compact, and yet left a controlling authority in the hands of the civil power. tou riadi

The attachment of the elector (now king) of Saxony to the Romish faith did not induce the people of that country! to relinquish their habitual regard for the Lutheran system; and therefore no catholic bishop is allowed to act or reside in that realm, except the king's confessor, to whom the pope grants the authority of an apostolic viear. In Upper-Lusatia, some dignitaries who form a chapter elect a mitred dean, in the presence and with the approba tion of an Austrian commissary; and, at Bautzen, there is a chapter which, though catholic, has a Lutheran president. In civil rights, the members of the two com munions now stand upon an equal footing in Saxony.oult

4

In the Hanoverian territories, the catholics were long subjected, by the Lutheran rulers of the state, to various restrictions. They were not allowed to carry the host publicly, or to have any processions; and, in points of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, they were obliged to have recourse to the odious authority of a Lutheran consistory. But more auspicious days at length dawned upon them? and they are now gratified with all the rights of citizens.

In the three electoral archbishoprics (Mentz, Cologne, and Treves), which were incorporated with the Prussian monarchy by the congress of Vienna, it might be supposed that the catholics, forming the bulk of the population, would be treated with lenity and indulgence, if not highly favored; and, in fact, they have greater privileges than their brethren who reside in other parts of the king's dominions. They have, at the court of Rome, an agent who promotes their interest, and encourages the pope to counter-act the arbitrary spirit of Frederic. In Silesia, where the catholics form only a third part of the population of the capital, the king has suppressed some of their monasteries, and precluded all appeals to Rome. In East Prussia he

suffers no Romish bishop to act, though the priests are retained; and, in Brandenburg and other provinces, he rules the sect with a high hand, yet not with oppressive At the same time, he favors the Calvinists tyrannys more than the Lutherans, but is so far from suffering the former to molest the latter, that he would rather witness their union than their discord.

The increasing liberality of sentiment, in the present age is strikingly evinced by the union of the Lutheran and Reformed churches in many of the German states. The grand duke of Nassau, being connected in marriage with a lady of the latter persuasion, and wishing to pre clude religious differences among his children, resolved, as far as his influence could extend, to unite his family and his subjects in the same devotional forms and worship; and his laudable endeavours were crowned with success. In the grand duchy of Hesse and some other states the example was speedily followed; and the completion of three centuries from the first exertions of Luther in the cause of religious reform, furnished an appropriate day y for the first public celebration of the new union. To all liberal-minded Christians this must have been a day of joy and of sincere congratulation. They recurred to the page of history for an elucidation of the dawn of religious reform: they reflected on the troubles and sufferings to which their ancestors were subjected in the progress of emancipation from the yoke of a corrupt church; and they now hailed with heart-felt satisfaction the union of those who, without differing on essential points, had long been unhappily divided".

DoNotwithstanding these approaches to an union of senti ment, differences of religious opinion still subsist in various parts even of protestant Germany; for an uniform standard of thought cannot be expected to exist in any com zoformarg on

In the year 1817.

sit Among the Bavarian protestants, this reconciliation was adjusted with particular formality in the year 1818. The united establishment received the appellation of the Protestant Evangelical Christian Church, and the holy scripture was declared to be the only basis of faith to which its members ought to adhere.