selves, keep the Court of Rome informed of hidden political secrets.”— Memorial regarding the Holy Office at the time of its suppression, February, 1849.

If not for the purpose of refuting an attack on Protestantism, the subsequent paragraph would have been omitted; but as the Truth is at stake, no apology can be admissible. Pagan history tells of crimes so atrocious that the Sun shrank back with horror. Heathen myths sink into oblivion when counterpoised against those fearful realities enacted under the mask of religion. What among the whole cycle of misery can equal intense and prolonged mental anguish? The direst foe of the damned-Remorse, that giant terror of a future world, will doubtless be made up of this inexorable principle. All the agony of mind caused by the Inquisitors is beyond finite apprehension. Some victims were driven mad; others died through fear. Can such silent cruelty advance? Yes, Look at the actions of these Romish Judges in another light, and see how the common feelings of our nature have been profaned.

Some French troops commanded by Lieu. General de Legal arrived in Arragon, en route for active field operations. The private debaucheries of the Papal authorities were thus accidentally revealed. A difference arose between General de Legal and the Inquisitors, about the payment of 2,000 pistoles, which sum the Military Chief demanded towards defraying the expenses incident to an army on the march. The Jesuits

at first denied their liability to pay anything for the maintenance of temporal armies; then prevaricated concerning the low state of their revenues; lastly, they tendered some silver images to liquidate the claim, but under a solemn protest against such sacrilegious rapacity. The ban of excommunication accompanied this quibbling missive. General de Legal happened to be conversant in the knavery of priestcraft, hence he smiled at their threats, aye, and made the utterers of those Papish menaces remember cursing an old soldier. The brave General ordered the Inquisitors" to quit their lodgings,” and his troops to be quartered in the Holy Office. Remonstrance was futile. De Legal would not permit any trifling with his duty. "Immediate compliance" he retorted to the threats, evasion, and prayers of the priests. The soldiers having obeyed their General's mandate, the following exposure took place the Inquisitors kept a seraglio, the occupants of which were ladies they had arrested on various charges of heresy. Some of the miserable occupants of this libidinous den had given birth to children of

sin; others, after surfeiting the lust of these Holy Inquisitors had been secretly murdered! One of the lascivious villains, a certain Don Francisco Tirregon, was Confessor to the Countess Attarass. This disgusting narrative is given entire by Antonio Gavin in his Master-Key to Popery.

Here incidentally we remark that to such polluted ears, wives, mothers, and danghters even now privately reveal their inmost thoughts. On the Continent this system is pursued with unblushing effrontery. During the period of the Papal Aggression, i.e., when Westminster had the honor of a Cardinal, Priest, Archbishop, and Saint, all blended in the person of Dr. Nicholas Wiseman, this auricular confession was ably exposed by an eloquent Scotchman-John Cumming, D.D. The Author will not defile these pages with the interrogatories of the Confessional, for they are only adapted to a Holywell-street scribe. Suffice it to say, the priest can either wound the chaste feelings of the penitent, or pander to his own lewd desires; for the power vested in the confessor allows a cross-examination of both sexes concerning actual and constructive carnality. What do some of the priestly purlieus in Naples, France, and Rome reveal? Fragments of strange tales are occasionally wafted across the Channel. "The Court of Assizes of the Haut-Rhin, France, sitting at Colmar, has just tried by default the Abbe Blanck, Superior of the Convent of St. Marc, near Gueberschwihr, for having, between the years 1853 and 1856, in several cases treated in a most disgraceful manner young girls under fifteen years of age, of whom he was the confessor and spiritual director. The Abbe, who is in flight was condemned to hard labour for life."-Galignani's Messenger. In the course

of the notorious Monachism Trial before Lord Chief Justice Campbell and a special jury, a bevy of foreign girls deposed on oath to most disgraceful criminalities between them and their late confessor. "The fact is notorious, that the nunneries of Estremadura and Portugal are frequently infected with vice of the grossest kind.”—Bello. "A document privately issued from the palace of Rome, December 9, 1819, was published in the Protestant, No. 147. One of its clauses empowers a confessor to grant absolution to monks and nuns who have stolen into one another's apartments. It refers to some of these religious women as violating, for a wicked purpose, the rooms of the men, but still allows pardon, provided this has been kept secret, and without any event having succeeded such transgression.”—Antichrist Unmasked. Pike. "It

This monster escaped condign Voluptuousness, impurity, disprevails, just as Popery has the

would make your very heart sick to see the nunneries abroad. Murders of the most shocking nature have been often perpetrated by priests in my country. I knew the sister of a young lady who was stabbed to the heart at the door of the church, where the murderer, who was her confessor, had a few minutes before given her absolution! He stabbed her in the presence of her mother, to prevent the young lady's marriage, which was to have taken place that day. punishment because he was a priest. honesty, cunning, hypocrisy, every vice more sway. I heard one of the highest dignitaries of the Romish Church boast that, the night before the solemn procession of Corpus Christi, where he appeared nearly at the head of his chapter, one of two children had been born, which his concubines brought to light within a few days of each other. The intimacy of friendship, the undisguised converse of sacramental confession, opened to me the hearts of many, whose exterior conduct might have deceived a common observer. The coarse frankness of associate dissoluteness left, indeed, no secrets among the spiritual slaves, who, unable to separate the laws of God from those of their tyrannical Church, trampled both under foot in riotous despair. Such are the sources of the knowledge I possess: God, sorrow, and remorse are my witnesses."-Practical and Internal Evidence against Catholicism, by Blanco White, M. A., B. D. in the University of Seville, and exMagistral to Ferdinand VII, of Spain.

Clergy of England, beware how ye trifle with this subject. Whilst the heart of man "is desperately wicked and deceitful above all things," God forbid that any temptations should be loosely cast in his way. The Anglican Throne has tottered more than once through violent inroads upon our Faith: therefore let no high authority again rashly endeavour to precipitate the essentials of the Reformation amongst the obscenities of Rome.

By way of summary, observe:-A Pontiff founded the Inquisition, and Ecclesiastics were its Chief Officers; consequently the cruelties and debaucheries of that Tribunal may all be laid to the charge of the Catholic Church. Patronized for five hundred years by successive Popes, the Holy Inquisition, under the ostensible plea of crushing heresy, has been a Pandemonium of lust, robbery, and murder.

ANTICHRIST AT HOME.-England, 1156.-We must briefly revert to persecution in the United Kingdom. Priestdom mourns over the

banishment of Popery from our native Land, and with touching sympathy still lingers on the possible advent of that religion to power, for (says M. Montalembert) "the influences of Catholicism would soften the unbending disposition of Englishmen." The zeal of Popery's adherents not only leads them to discover sundry unpleasant facts in the magnitude of Britain's secession, but further, to draw copious streams of advice from that well filled, though stagnant reservoir, the imagination. During our plodding researches, we have never found any clue to what extent Englishmen could be improved under the Roman yoke. Let us examine some Papal advantages. “The Bull of 1850, re-establishing the episcopal hierarchy in England, will attach to the Pontificate of Pius IX, a glory so rare and so enviable"-Montalembert. Very likely. But a nation ought to have other objects in view than supplying platitudes for the annals of a Pope. Where is the vaunted benefit? To deduce practical conclusions from an ideal standard of holiness, requires greater faith than we can command; especially when the virtues of Priests are to be the centre of such observations. While probabilities remain infinite, we must abandon the contemplation of those promised blessings to see how in olden time the Anglican race was softened by the Papists. Experience rivals Fancy, for "Facts are stubborn things."

The earliest Papal persecution was during the reign of Henry II. A number of Germans fled from their own country to escape the wrath of such kindred bigots as they were destined to encounter here. The chief offence laid to the charge of these refugee Christians was their repudiation of that absurd doctrine, the Real Presence. To think for one's self constituted a grave offence, because in those days human Reason might have detected imposture everywhere. Necessarily the Priesthood felt very anxious and were always on the alert to espy nonconformity. They persuaded the Parliament to pass an order, (not a law) which prohibited any person giving the Germans food or lodging. Thus the poor fugitives who trusted to our generosity were, in the course of a month, gradually starved to death. The famishing wanderers oft entreated their persecutors to forego the cruel edict, but the priests bid defiance to all pity, and left the Germans to their fate. Subjoined is the second instalment of the bygone softening process. The ill-treatment of the Lollards is a dark chapter in English history. From the time of their founder, Wickliffe, one of the earliest translators of the Scriptures into the English language, down to the reign of Henry IV, these early Reformers

suffered oppression, though of a milder nature than ordinary. The smouldering embers of cruelty were aroused in 1401, by the passing of an act for burning heretics; and the Statute Book of England received its first stain of murder to uphold the Papal religion. The pyre at Smithfield was inaugurated with the martyred ashes of Santree, and a new method of treating heresy dawned upon the priestly mind. Truly it may be said "the spirit of evil prevailed." The Lollards were surrendered by the inscrutable will of Providence to the vengeance of their enemies. "Benign!" Why mock the dead with such falsity? Though the Lollards have slumbered for centuries in their graves, the accusing voice of tradition is still heard. Like the conservation of forces, the remembrance of crime echoes on and on to eternity. After the monks had initiated these new severities, the immolation of victims became universal. Speedily the gibbet and the stake gained a terrible notoriety. Meanwhile the attractive doctrines of the Cross won the Lollards' affections and constrained them to endure the greatest bodily suffering, their enemies visited all grades of heretics with capital punishment. Throughout the reigns of several Monarchs this kind of persecution involved the lives of peers, citizens, and peasants. Discrimination was utterly abandoned; neither fame nor poverty could arrest the anger of the enemy. The ignorant and the learned, the pious and the profane were the victims of a common destroyer. That eminent and devout Minister of the Gospel, George Marsh, was slowly roasted until his flesh became so distended as to enfold the chains which bound him. Indescribable cruelty! At Guernsey, a poor girl whilst fastened to the stake and enveloped by flames, prematurely gave birth to a child. One of the Popish attendants was moved to pity, and rescued the offspring. But the Bailiff, execrable monster! ordered the innocent to be taken from its rude cradle-the grass, and thrown into the fire! The annals of the Lollards' Tower also tell a wondrous tale of human woe. A Popish Bishop fitted up an apartment in the palace to maltreat Christians at his leisure. How clearly the Redeemer predicted these enormities when he exclaimed "Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the midst of wolves; be ye therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves. And the brother shall deliver up the brother to death, and the father the child: and the children shall rise against their parents, and cause them to be put to death. And ye shall be hated of all men for my name's sake: but he that endureth to the end shall be saved."--Matt. c. x., v. 16, 21, 22.