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nounced by the inquisitors worthy of death. Thus was the inquisition established, the guardian of superstition, a most horrible tribunal, an engine of death, indescribably terrific, which has done more than any thing else to keep whole nations in subjection to the papal dominion, and has shed an ocean of innocent blood.

Holding emperors and kings in subjection, the popes also frequently called out monarchs with their armies, to subdue the rebellious and keep the world in bondage.

But men were bound by stronger chains than these. Fell superstition was increased by every art and device, until reason was lost, and the world raved in an awful mania. With the utanost hardihood, and a success which is altogether unaccountable, the pontiff and monks continually imposed upon the credulity of the multitude, by presenting to them pretended relics of ancient saints, a scull, a finger, a jaw, a bone, or a tooth. They even held up to the admiring crowd, the clothes in which Christ was wrapped in his infancy; pieces of the manger in which he was laid, of the cross on which he was hung, of the spear which pierced his side, of the bread which he brake at the last supper, yea, portions of the virgin Mary's milk, and of the Saviour's blood.

Having induced them to adore the relic, it was easy to lead chem to adore the spirit of the saint; and hence proceeded the work of Canonization.

The deluded and the fanatical had long been accustomed to have a particular patron among the eminent saints who had departed from earth. The principle existed in the heathen idolatry. The gods of Greece and Rome were deified heroes. Papal Rome had become pagan, and she must have her tutelary divinities. Every man must have one for himself, from the degrading supposition that one was incapable of saving two persons. These saints virtually took the place of Christ as mediators between God and man. They were supposed to be able to avert dangers, and heal maladies, and keep off evil spiits, and fit the soul for heaven. The pontiffs profited by this new proneness to idolatry, and decreed that no deceased person should be considered a saint, unless canonized by them. This threw an immense power into their hands. They made the tutelary gods of the deluded people; and often made them, as in the case of Thomas a Becket, of those who had been their greatest minions. The first that was formally sainted by the bishop of Rome, was Udalric, bishop of Augsburg, in the tenth century.

At the head of the papal mythology was placed the Virgin

Mary. The world were led to look to her with an amazing reverence. She was represented as conceived in the eternal mind, before all creatures and ages; born without sin; her most holy body, then dead, as translated to heaven. Her image was in every temple. Christ could be approached only through her mediation. She was adored under numberless titles. In honour of her were instituted the Rosary and the Crown. The former consisted in fifteen repetitions of the Lord's prayer, and an hundred and fifty salutations of the blessed Virgin. The latter, in six or seven repetitions of the Lord's prayer, and six or seven times ten salutations or Ave Marias. The house in which she lived at Nazareth, was said to be taken up by four Angels and carried to Loretto, where it was visited by unnumbered pilgrims. The fraud was sanctioned by several successive popes. In 1476, indulgences were granted to all who would celebrate an annual festival in honour of the immaculate conception of the blessed Virgin.

Church vied with church in pictures, images, statues of the canonized saints, especially of the Virgin Mary, and enormous prices were paid for supposed, and in most cases, false relics of them; the sight of which drew vast numbers, and no small gain, to the churches which held them.

Festival had been added to festival, until the people groaned under them; but in 1300, Boniface VIII. instituted the famous Jubilee. All who repaired to Rome every hundredth year, confessing their sins, received absolution. This added so much to the power and wealth of Rome, that it was soon celebrated every fiftieth year, and is now every five and twentieth, with great pomp and magnificence.

sacrament.

The popes strengthened themselves also, by an abuse of the In the year 831, a monk named Pascasius Radbert, advanced the strange sentiment, that the bread and wine used in the Lord's supper, was, by consecration, converted into the body and blood of the Lord Jesus Christ, and was actually the same as was born of the Virgin Mary, as suffered on the cross, and was raised from the dead. The doctrine was too absurd and monstrous to be immediately received even in that gross age, and met with general disapprobation. It was however a monstrous doctrine, and that was sufficient to insure it a reception with some. Warm altercations ensued. The most odious tenets were charged upon each other by the contending parties. Some of the popes saw it would exalt the priesthood; for if the meanest priest could convert bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, what must be the power of the sovereign pontiff? and when it was brought before the fourth Late

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ran council in 1215, it was declared by Innocent III. to be a doctrine whose belief is necessary to salvation. Thus was the doctrine of TRANSUBSTANTIATION introduced, which has remained popular, and amazingly exalted the Roman clergy in the eyes of the people to this day.

From this proceeded the thin wafer, which the Catholics use in the sacrament, that no part of the precious body of Christ may be lost; and the prohibition of the wine to the laity-for if the bread is the real body of Christ, it contains his blood, and the wine is superfluous, and should not be wasted; only it might be used by the priests, who need a double portion. Communion in one kind, however, was never fully established until the meeting of the council of Constance. The procession of the Host followed. When the sacrament was to be adminis tered to the sick, the priest was ordered to carry the host, or bread in procession, clothed with his proper garments, and lights borne before him. To complete the structure of superstition, the Festival of the Holy Sacrament was instituted 1264; as ordained by heaven, "to repair all the crimes of which men might be guilty, in the other masses."

They laid hold too of the natural fears of men respecting the future state of the soul. They cunningly invented and imposed upon the world the belief, that as saints had some imperfections, hey were not immediately to be admitted into heaven, but were located, for a time, in a place so near the abode of the wicked, that they should feel the heat of the flames of hell until they were sufficiently purified for heaven. Over this place, called Purgatory, the popes pretended to have power. They declared, that an immense treasure of merit, consisting of the unnecessary blood of Christ, which had been shed, of the unnecessary good works of saints, which were called works of supererogation, had been committed to them to be dispensed for the release of such as were confined in that dreadful region, for any number of years as they should see fit. To those who could not obtain release by any pilgrimage, or service, the popes, in the plenitude of their benevolence, granted indulgences for certain sums of money, which should go into the papal treasury. people were not only permitted to buy their own deliverance, but the deliverance of their friends. And, to induce them to do this, pictures, representing the souls of individuals weltering in fire, were exposed in churches. Fraternities of monks were

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established, to wander through Europe, and beg and plead for them.

Yea, they went farther, and claimed, as the representative of St. Peter, the control of the keys of heaven and hell. Whosesoever sins were remitted, by the Pope and his clergy, were reImitted to them. The priests thus became confessors; and, if any failed to confess to them their sins, and receive absolution, they were to perish for ever. This became a source of immense power and wealth; made men sin fearlessly; and, as the clergy lived in a state of celibacy, produced, throughout the Catholic countries, the most debased state of morals. Absolution from the future punishment of the most atrocious crimes, was fixed at a few shillings. A man might rob and murder his neighbour, go to his priest, receive pardon, and feel wholly at ease in his conscience, and have no fear of a future punishment for his deeds.

Moreover, to hold the people in perpetual bondage, the Roman pontiffs forbad the worship of God in any language which the people could understand; requiring the use of the Latin tongue, which had become obsolete throughout all the churches. The Bible being supplanted by tradition, became a rare and neglected book, and the light of heaven was completely extinguished.

They finally declared the Roman church infallible. Its decísions, its decrees, were always right, how absurd and contradictory soever to plain common sense, to matter of fact, or to one another they might be. Some ascribed this infallibility to the popes, others to a general council; but the minds of the people at large, fully believed it was committed to the Catholic church, and, as this was governed by the pope, it placed him in the seat of God, and gave him a kind of Omnipotence.

Out of the superstition of the age, arose the crusades, or attempts to rescue Jerusalem from the hands of the Mahometans. The Roman pontiffs were not backward to improve these wild and mad undertakings, for the increase of their own power. Jerusalem was taken by the Saracens, A. D. 637. The Christians, who remained there, were treated with the greatest cruelties. These cruelties were witnessed by pilgrims from Europe, who, on their return, excited, by their relations, the indignation of all Christian nations. A general expectation prevailed throughout Europe in the tenth century, that, at the close of a thousand years, Christ would come to reign on earth, and would fix the seat of his empire at Jerusalem. produced an unusual panic. As the period drew near, eft their employments, abandoned their connexions, deemselves and their property to the churches and mo

Storms, earthquakes, and eclipses, were viewed as