reinstated in her former dignity and virtue, for a few ducats. This scandalous traffic was carried to an extent that soon destroyed all sense of morality, and heightened the hue of vice. Ambrosius of Canadoli, a prelate of extraordinary virtue, visited various convents in his diocess; but on inspecting their proceedings, he found no traces even of decency remaining in any one of them, nor was he able, with all the sagacity he exercised on the subject, to re-infuse the smallest particle of these qualities into the degenerated minds of the sisterhood. The reform of the nunneries was the first step that distinguished the government of Sixtus IV. after he ascended the papal throne, at the close of the sixteenth century. Bossus, a canon of the strictest principles, and of most inflexible disposition, was the agent selected for this arduous achievement. The Genoese convents, where the nuns lived in open defiance of all the rules of decency, and the precepts of religion, were the first objects of his attention. The orations which he publicly uttered from the pulpit, as well as the private lectures and exhortations which he delivered to the nuns from the confessional chair, were fine models, not only of his zeal and probity, but of his literature and eloquence. They breathed, in the most impressive manner, the true spirit of Christian purity; but his glowing representations of the bright beauties of virtue, and the dark deformities of vice, made little impression upon their corrupted hearts. pising the open calumnies of the envious, and the secret hostilities of the guilty, he proceeded, in spite of all discouragement and opposition, in his highly honourable pursuit; and at length, by his wisdom and assiduity, beheld the fairest prospects of success daily opening to his view. The rays of hope, however, had scarcely beamed upon his endeavours, when they were immediately overclouded by disappointment. The arm of magistracy, which he had wisely called upon to aid the accomplishment of his design, was enervated by venality; and the incorrigible objects of his solicitude, having freed themselves, by bribery, from the terror of the civil power, contemned the reformer's denunciations of eternal vengeance hereafter, and relapsed into their former licentiousness and depravity. A few, indeed, among the great number of nuns who inhabited those guilty convents, were converted by the force of his eloquent remonstrances, and became afterwards highly exemplary by the virtue of their lives, but the rest abandoned themselves to their impious courses; and, though more vigorous methods were, in a short time, adopted against the refractory monastics, they set all attempts to reform them at defiance. The modes, per

Des

haps, in which their vices were indulged, changed with the character of the age; and, as manners grew more refined, the gross and shameful indulgences of the monks and nuns were changed into a more elegant and decent style of enjoyment. Fashion might render them more prudent and reserved in their intrigues, but their passions were not less vicious, nor their dispositions less corrupt."

Eighty years after the reformation, in 1599, we are assured that the number of monasteries and convents in the papal dominions in Europe, exceeded 225,000, which must have contained at least six millions of persons, all of whom were of mature age. According to this calculation, as compared with the population of the United States, if the monastic system were as widely extended in this republic as in those

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European nations, there would be not less probably than one million and a half of monks and nuns, living in indolence, profusion, and profligacy, who would comprise one fourth of all the adult inhabitants of the federal union.

National prosperity, and especially the stability of those institutions which contribute to it, depend chiefly upon the freedom and virtue of the citizens. But these, it has already been proved, cannot exist where popery predominates. There are also subordinate causes which are very influential in producing the advantages that are so desirable. A numerous, active, and moral people, abundantly supplied with temporal comforts, would be the brief description of a prosperous nationbut this character never did appertain, and never possibly can belong to any country, where conventual institutions are plentiful and encouraged. This fact is manifest, because the monastic life is destructive of the human species. It encourages indolence; and grasps an enormous revenue, to squander in the utmost extravagance of debauchery. If an equal proportion of monasteries now existed in the United States as formerly in Europe; combining the loss of active labour, and the additional expenditures; the amount would constitute an annual sum equivalent, at least, to five hundred millions of dollars, to be deducted from the national income and opulence.

The system of celibacy, which is the corner-stone and the cap-stone of all the monastic edifices, "contemns the divine constitution of human nature, and outrages common instincts." It generates “the very worst corruptions and perversions to which human nature is liable; such clearly are the inflictions of monastic life; its solitude, and celibacy! The very same authority which forbids adultery, enjoins marriage: and as long as morality is understood to consist in obedience to the declared will of God, it can never be imagined, that a man is defiled by living in matrimony, any more than by eating with unwashen hands.' The anchoret is a selfist by his very profession: and, like the sensualist, though his taste may be of another kind, he pursues his personal gratification, reckless of the welfare of others. That so monstrous an immorality should have dared to call itself by the name of sanctity, and should do so too in front of Christianity, is indeed amazing." Hist. of Enthus. sect. 9.

That the European nations were vastly less in the number of their inhabitants prior to the reformation of the sixteenth century, than they now are, is an indisputable fact; and the causes are obvious to every political economist. The Roman priests and monks, with their nuns, sisters, and nieces, all of whom lived in canonical celibacy, comprised two fifths of the whole adult people; and these were either debilitated by inordinate and unnatural sensuality, or were guilty of procuring abortions, or of infanticide. Hence the people were comparatively few; and there is no doubt that Europe now contains three times as many people as were living two hundred years ago. One grand cause of this increase is obvious. The monasteries and convents throughout all the Protestant countries were demolished, and the friars and nuns were dismissed to useful life, with an injunction against the restoration of the ungodly craft. Hence selfishness died away; dissoluteness decreased; and their consequent crimes were so diminished, that instead of being tolerated, and adjudged to be venial faults, they

became aggravated felonies; and, of course, the people multiplied in a ratio never before known. This could not have been exemplified during the sway of the monastic corruptions. The erection of convents, and especially those for females, by impeding the increase of the people, is the greatest obstruction which Satan can devise, to multiply vice, and to counteract the approximation of these states to the first rank among the nations of the world.

With this melancholy result of popery, is connected another pernicious device. The monks and nuns are ever illegally and corruptly grasping after wealth. Except the offspring of priests and nuns, precious illegitimate darlings! no parents can place their children within those Jesuit institutions, unless they furnish large present pay, and hold out the expectation that the reversionary property accruing from their parents will eventually belong to the confraternity of friars or of nuns, by whom the deluded victim has been beguiled, until impiety and irreligion have assumed undivided supremacy, or death has transferred the victim to the tomb. For even in this country, no murder which is perpetrated in those "holds of every foul spirit, and in those cages of every unclean and hateful bird;" and no atrocity, however flagrant-ever passes under a coroner's research, or the jurisdiction of a court of justice. They are equally exempt from the civil authority in these states, as though they resided in an undiscovered island in the Pacific Ocean. It is self-evident, that a system which ever obtains all of earthly goods which it can possibly grasp, only to expend it in the most iniquitous manner, must be incompatible with the social welfare, and destructive of national prosperity; because the wealth accumulated by convents has always been devoted to purposes most hostile to personal virtue, domestic comfort, and the welfare of the body politic.

Monastic institutions are a death-blow to all industry. Indolence, and uselessness, and corruption, are their grand attributes. They are supported by the labour of others, exacted not for an equivalent, but for the most absurd as well as ungodly objects. Their pretended vow of poverty is a ridiculous and shameless imposture. In idleness they commence, and live, and die; a nuisance and a burden upon the public.

The ancient Gothic castles, in their exterior alone, declare that they must have been the receptacles of all the products of the surrounding country, the seats of barbaric magnificence, and the domicil of every brutal indulgence. But even in the modern papal countries, and especially in those where monachism still partially maintains its supremacy, there are no factories, no internal improvements, no rail-roads and steam-boats, no science to direct, and no arts to execute any measures for the benefit of families, the augmentation of comforts, and the advancement of the commonwealth. Debasement is their inseparable patrimony; and poverty, and crime, and wretchedness, are their inalienable

curse.

"Such is the record of monastic profligacy and corruption; and when we think how the monks were regarded by the people with profoundest reverence, and moreover with what swarms of them Europe was filled-friars, white, black, and grey; canons, regular, and of Saint Anthony; Carmelites, Carthusians, Cordeliers, Dominicans, Franciscans, Conventual and Observantines, Jacobins, Remonstraten

sians, monks of Tyronne and of Vallis-Caulium, Hospitallers, knights of Saint John of Jerusalem, nuns of Saint Austin, Clare, Scholastica, Catherine of Siena, &c., with canonesses of various classes, we cannot entertain a doubt, that the contagion of their example operated with most debasing and corrupting effect upon the character of mankind. What must have been the condition of morality, when its professed teachers were so immoral? What, in the view of the God of truth and purity, must be the turpitude of that popish system, and of that widely extended institution, monachism, which, for more than a thousand years, spread its unhallowed influence over so great a portion of the world, and triumphed in the overthrow of all that is virtuous and noble in the character of man. The reformation, in effecting the overthrow of the monastic system, has promoted, in no ordinary degree, the prosperity of every state in which it has obtained."

III. PRACTICAL POPERY.

THE INFLUENCE OF ROMANISM UPON INDIVIDUAL CHARACTER, AND ITS CONTROL OVER DOMESTIC LIFE AND THE SOCIAL RELATIONS.

THAT the operations of the system which has already been delineated must necessarily be most pernicious, is self-evident. It would be absolutely impossible to darken the human mind, and to corrupt the moral sense without very malign results. The delineations of popery which are furnished by the Protestant, unfold this very impressive fact, that the principles and ceremonial of Romanism combine a very extraordinary and unexampled medley of superstitious departures from reason and religion. Popery is not less impious, than it is idolatrous and irrational. The unvarying testimony of the sacred oracles of God is corroborated by the uniform history of mankind, that idolatry is universally and always attended by every diversified fraud and pollution. The orgies of the ancient Bacchanals commingled with the licentiousness which characterized the Chaldean votaries of the ancient "Queen of heaven;" while the priests of Bel were enacting their deceptive mummery, and their blasphemous rites; neither of whom surpassed the idolatrous juggleries, and the obscene practices which are inseparable from the modern Babylon.

The irreligion of the papal hierarchy, however, has been so luminously displayed in the previous essays, that it would be irrelevant to subjoin any additional illustrations. Our object is restricted to this inquiry, How does Romanism ordinarily exemplify its genuine attributes in the minuter conditions of human society?

In general, it must be premised, that the Roman system differs from all others which hitherto have existed, in its boundless influence upon its disciples. Christianity peremptorily forbids its despotic assumptions. No known form of irreligion which has ever prevailed in the ancient or modern pagan countries, has exercised so complete a mastery over the will and the affections of its infatuated devotees, as "the working of Satan," originally invented, and yet prolonged, at Rome.

For simplicity in contrivance, greatness of imposture, plenitude of sway, and adaptation to produce the intended effect, no conceivable machination can parallel AURICULAR CONFESSION, with its concomitant dogmas and exactions. It is apparent whence this most destructive evil originated. The arrogated supremacy of the pope, which is partially assigned to all papal ecclesiastics, and their blasphemous claim, which even exceeds omnipotence in power, and "Satan's devices" in impudence, that every Roman priest can make his Creator, are the corner-stones on which the whole popish edifice is erected, and the mainspring of that despotism which the papal hierarchy exercise over their deluded vassals.