him for it-pardon all, and make that which is in itself sinful, to be no sin-can you truly think such a one to be an honest man?

"He who believes it lawful to deceive and undermine his neighbour, to injure him in his body, goods, or reputation, if by reason of any of these he stand in his way, and hinder his design of promoting the cause he hath undertaken-he whose avowed principle it is, that faith is not to be kept with heretics, or men of a different persuasion from himself-he who is persuaded that he owes nothing of love, kindness, affection, and good will to any persons, unless they be serviceable to him in his ill designs upon others-who hath devoted himself wholly to one interest and one party, and looks upon all the world besides as heathens and publicans, and to be dealt with accordingly-Have you so much false charity as to think, that such a person can be a good neighbour, when he hath an opportunity to be otherwise?

"He of whose sincerity we cannot be assured, and of whose fidelity we have all the reason in the world to doubt, because his principles teach him to dissemble, and his religion allows him to deceive ushe, to whom we cannot with confidence commit any secret, and from whom we cannot expect any kindness, unless we join interests with him, and drive on the same design that he doth; who believes it not only lawful, but sometimes necessary, to deceive, betray, and expose his best friends to all the dangers that are imaginable, merely to advance an interest which he hath espoused; whom no obligation, either of relation or affection, or kindness, or vows, or promises, or oaths, or any other engagement whatsoever, can keep within the rules either of justice or friendship, when the overruling interests of the Roman church require it should be otherwise-can you imagine that such a one can ever make a good friend?

"He who believes that there is a foreign power superior to that of his own government, even in his own country; and that he is bound in conscience to obey the former, and disobey the latter, if at any time their commands happen to run counter; that he may be absolved from his allegiance, and dispensed with for his duty and obedience, that it may be lawful for him to resist and rebel against his government; but if at any time it happen, that this superior power should be evil disposed, and declare the governors to be heretical and excommunicate, then he not only may, but ought to do all that in him lies, to depose, dethrone, and deprive this government of their authority; to destroy the laws, to ruin the constitution, and to subvert all established rule and order in the state-while a man is of this persuasion, can any person believe, that such a one can ever be a good subject?"

The ensuing discussion will necessarily include a reference to the principles which have already been cited-because it is nugatory to plead the ignorance or disbelief, or even the rejection by one man of the standard code of the community to which he belongs.

It is true, that popery, since the reformation in the sixteenth century is a perfect masquerader in Protestant countries, which assumes all forms and every disguise, expressly to evade scrutiny, and to bewilder the judgment. We must not estimate it, therefore, by this delusive appearance, assumed intentionally to deceive; but we must form our opinion by its standard commentators, and its pretended infallible

examples; not by the declarations of those who know not whereof they affirm, nor by the actions of men who have really rejected the usurpation, to which they nominally profess "for lucre's sake" to adhere. By this criterion only, the influence of popery will be examined in the topics which remain to be discussed.

2. Papists generally are impure. This is a grave and momentous charge, but it is attested by evidence irresistible; for no part of the annals of popery obtrudes itself upon attention with so much offensiveness, and with equal certainty, as the extreme sensuality of the Roman irreligion. It is not to be deemed an adventitious or an unnatural morbid excrescence, occasionally developed in connexion with a pure and healthful system; but it is the most essential, ostensible, and permanent quality of the antichristian confraternity. Romanism could not subsist without the utmost inordinate licentiousness. Popery never attained any comparative influence, until nominal Christendom substituted idolatry for devotion, and the traditions of men instead of the mandates of Jehovah; which unholy change unavoidably produced, as impiety always does, a laxity of moral principle, and as the natural result, a dissolute life. All the nations called Christian have been sensual, in exact proportion to the extent of the pontifical bondage in which they have been immured; and at this hour those individuals, families, and nations, perverse exceptions always excluded, are the most delicate and refined, which have removed the farthest in distance from the confines of Babylon. These are historical facts, which the history of Europe since the death of Theodosius undeniably confirms; and which are oracularly corroborated by the existing contrasts on the American continent. There is nearly as much difference existing between the state of society in Boston and Lima, or Philadelphia and Mexico, as between the scenes anciently enacted in the tents of Succoth Benoth, and the solemnities of a modern Christian devotional assembly.

This state of things and this diversity of moral character are naturally consequent upon the manner in which persons are educated. Nothing is more obviously true than the fact, that they who are trained up in the confessional, where the questions and the canons, which already have been cited, are discussed and enforced from their youth, like the old Romans, must be "filled with all unrighteousness."

It is unavailing to retort, that many Papists have been indisputably holy men and women; because the admission of the extraordinary fact only verifies the almost generality of the rule against which so feeble an exception only can be alleged. There may have existed honest Jesuits, continent friars, and chaste nuns; but this only proves, that, through divine mercy, they were better than their avowed rules, and that their whole life was a ceaseless tissue of practical inconsistency. The true condition of society, and of course, the temper of those individuals who compose it, in this reference may be accurately known, from one feature which has universally existed wherever popery predominates. A large proportion of the adult population pass their lives in celibacy. The Roman sacrament of marriage, of which the ecclesiastics, of all orders and of both sexes, are forbidden to partake, possesses neither sanctity nor attractions sufficient to interest even the laymen. Why should this antisocial state retain the ascendancy?

This system in the very highest degree is unnatural. Not only is it

destructive of national energy and opulence, but as essentially fraught with every species of disorder and crime, it must be in its own nature unspeakably reprehensible. If the cause be sought, it is found in the general and deep-rooted conviction, that through the evils which are practised and taught by the confessors to youth; by the secrecy with which every atrocity can be perpetrated by the priest and his devotees; and by the knowledge which the parties have acquired of the operations of the Roman system, personal purity is in a great measure extinguished and as is the invariable result, both in men and women, all the tender emotions of delicacy, honour, confidence, and attachment, wither and expire.

No persons but the parties are acquainted with the horrid impurities of the confessional. Some idea of the vastness of the popish "mystery of iniquity" may be formed from the citations which have been introduced in the former section. It is peremptorily enjoined that the questions introduced in the French and Spanish languages shall be propounded to all persons without exception, who attend upon the priest to confess their sins, and to obtain absolution. The confessor may put them all or not at his option-but that some of the most offensive of them are part of "the examination of conscience," as it is so wickedly entitled, which is adopted in this country, is known to all persons who are acquainted with this revolting topic.

The inference is unavoidable :-no Papist who complies with the requisitions of that system of impiety to the obligations of which he professes to submit, can possibly maintain that pudicity and decorum. either in feeling or action, without which all the dignified qualities of man are eclipsed and degraded. This is the prophetic delineation of popery in the Holy Bible-this is the record of Romanism in every country during a thousand years-and this is the universal character of Papists at this day; because popery and carnality in all its multifarious crimes are as inseparable as cause and effect.

3. Popery is a compound of deceitfulness.

The descriptions of "the working of Satan" which reigns at Rome, are precisely assimilated to its character as revealed by "the spirit of prophecy." In the minor transactions of life, or with his confederates, a Papist perchance may act uprightly; but in all the complicated questions and relations in which he is involved as a resident of a Protestant country, it is absolutely impossible, that he who succumbs to the priestly yoke can act consistently with rectitude and truth. He is taught from his earliest youth that dissimulation, equivocations, mental reservations and even direct falsehoods, for his own benefit or for the good of the church, are either venial sins, or else meritorious acts. He is assured, that no performances are more conformable to the commands of the Holy Roman church, that no good works are more expiatory of mortal transgressions, and that no religious services are more acceptable to God, than deceiving, obstructing and injuring heretics; and that the mischief which would be criminal if done to a Papist, becomes a subject of reward when executed upon a Protestant.

The doctrine of faithlessness in transactions with heretics, so as to sanction the violation of all treaties, covenants, promises and contracts, is ratified by popes and councils as obligatory upon all Papists, when it can be achieved with safety and impunity; and to accomplish the

desired result, the most corrupt and wilful falsehood and perjury exchange their inherent depravity, and are metamorphosed into saintly virtues. In addition to this wickedness, it must be remembered, that the dispensing power claimed and exercised by the pope, nullifies all holiness, and sanctifies all vice.

The history of the popedom is one incessant proof of the truth which the Apostle Paul declared to the Thessalonians, Epistle 2. chap. 2. that the "falling away" of the church, and the subsequent enthronement in the temple of God, of "the man of sin and the son of perdition," should comprise a system of "strong delusions and all deceivableness of unrighteousness," which he emphatically denounces as "the lie!"

One of the most convincing demonstrations of the divine origin of the Holy Scriptures is this-that its most extraordinary and apparently incredible predictions should be exemplified with minutely accurate precision, by the very craftsmen who boast that they are the only church of Christ; and yet who are so ignorant of the truth which divine revelation announces, that they are unconscious of their own steadfast fulfilment of all the turpitude against which the curse of God is promulged.

It is also not irrelevant to remark, that if popery did not imbody and manifest all the abhorrent guilt which is imputed to it in the previous essays of the Protestant, it would not be a consummation of the prophecy. Therefore, nothing in this aspect can be more astonishing, than the disposition which so many professed Christians betray, to extenuate the wickedness, and to mask the deformity of the "Mother of harlots and abominations of the earth."

The spurious liberalism by which this ungodliness is engendered, undoubtedly constitutes one of the grand sources and aliments of modern infidelity. Prophecy ever depicts popery as a system of spiritual ignorance and impiety; of the grossest corruption; of incurable error and deceptions; and of a malignant cruelty, which could be represented in no more forcible and repulsive emblem, than that of a meretricious woman most gorgeously arrayed, "drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus." In direct contradiction to this infallible portrait by the Apostle John,-modern Christians pretend, that popery is a system of light, truth, holiness, and philanthropy; only a little deteriorated with unhallowed mixtures which the Romanists themselves will gradually eject. Thus, the whole system of prophecy, as it yet remains to be fulfilled, is expunged. By this means Christianity is treacherously surrendered to her deadly foes. The most virulent and incorrigible enemies of the cross of Christ are encouraged in their direful apostacy; the anxious inquirer after divine truth is arrested at the vestibule of the temple of scriptural illumination; and the infidel scorner is justified in his atheistic folly, by that base perversion of the Holy Bible, for which its professed friends and avowed expositors are righteously condemnable.

This itself is part of "THE LIE!" Protestant nations even are but very partially reformed. Three centuries have elapsed since "the men of whom the world was not worthy"-the Luthers, the Zuingles, the Calvins, the Cranmers, the Knoxes, and their immortal compeers, commenced the glorious work of regeneration; but the Augean stable of popery is uncleansed. Mountain masses of wood, hay, and stubble, remain to be burnt up amid the hallelujahs of Christian beholders;

and as the Lord said unto Joshua, so it should be resounded in the ears of the purest of the reformed churches-"there remaineth yet very much land to be possessed."

Travellers with one accord assure us, that truth is not to be found in popish countries-not evangelical doctrine, because that blessed gift of God is not sought after among Papists-not that sincerity and veracity, which are essential to the existence of society; there is truth just sufficient to retain the national compact from dissolution, and no more. In all the Papistical countries of Europe, there is not now existing scarcely any resemblance of the truth, honour, and integrity which exist among the Cherokees; and indubitably there is more sound knowledge, and evangelical principle, among that tribe of fifteen thousand people, than could be found in Portugal, Spain, and Italy!

A Papist, if he conforms to his church, adopts its casuistry, as it has been authoritatively described, and copies the examples of them whom he considers as infallible and delegates of God, must unavoidably be a deceiver: for "the truth is not in him!"

4. A Papist is necessarily cruel!—Nothing can more graphically depict Romanism in this decisive attribute, than the exterior appearance of "the Beast," as John viewed him, Revelation, xiii. 2-11. "The beast which I saw was like unto a leopard, and his feet were as the feet of a bear, and his mouth as the mouth of a lion; and the dragon gave him his power, and his seat, and great authority. And he had two horns like a lamb, but he spake as a dragon." This is the condensed history of popery during its whole past duration-it is the picture of the present Roman court-and when the Papal system loses these expressive symbols, it will cease to exist.

This beast is delineated as a leopard for his activity and fiercenesswith a bear's paw, for his brutal and griping rapacity-a lion, for his ferocity, power, and terrific ravening-a dragon for his devilish rage and deceitfulness a mother of harlots, for her sorceries and monstrous impurity and a drunken harlot, intoxicated and infuriated with Christian blood, to unfold her unnatural licentiousness, and her unparalleled sanguinary and savage disposition. If no other proof of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures could be adduced, this luminous and minutely exact portrait of the Roman antichristian hierarchy would demonstrate infallibly their divine origin and veracity; for popery always has been, it is now, and it ever will be, until it is exterminated, the restless, and crafty, the incessant and voracious, the fearful and destructive enemy of mankind.

It is the cement of Romanism, that out of the Popedom there is no salvation; and that it is a heaven-appointed duty, if it can be executed without danger, to murder every man, woman, and child, who will not submit to the Roman pontiff, or as in imitation of the ancient heathen Arch Flamen and high priest, he blasphemously calls himself, Pontifex, Optimus, Maximus. Upon this subject, in the Corpus Juris Canonici, lib. 6. Decretalium, are the subsequent most edifying enact

ments:

Cap. 9. page 137. "Non valeat, &c. All laws by which the office of a heresy-hunter is obstructed or retarded, are null and void."

Cap. 10. page 137. "Officium, &c. The office of an inquisitor for heresy does not expire by death."