CONCLUSION.

Two systems of worship, ministry, and doctrine, have now been submitted to the deliberate attention of the reader. They contain some important features of truth in common, and experience proves, that under either system, there may be spiritual life, and therefore salvation for the soul. Indeed there are not wanting instances of eminent attainments in grace, among the professed adherents of both these systems; so that there has been developed, at times, among persons belonging respectively to these opposite classes, a unity of religious feeling and exercise, so marked and peculiar, as to have become matter of common observation. The most simple and

spiritual of Christian believers-worshipppers of God, the most divested of all dependence upon forms-may find much to admire, and much to sympathize with, in the experience and sayings of a Fenelon, a Guion, a Thomas à Kempis. The Jansenists, who openly preferred evangelical religion

to the errors of popery, form a distinct class of themselves; and it is probable there might be more of a mental alienation from many of those errors, in the individuals now mentioned, than was known or apparent. Something may also be ascribed to the prevalence of solitude and silent devotion in the Romish communion, which, in the midst of abuses, may promote the formation and growth of the spiritual mind.

But I conceive that these are rare exceptions to the general rule. While genuine Christianity can never fail to be productive of spirituality of soul, and of sound practical fruits, the Papal and Hierarchical system has produced the opposite effects, precisely in proportion as it deviates from the religion of the New Testament.

The objectionable features of that system, as it has been unfolded from a very early age of the church, but especially during the last twelve centuries, may be briefly recapitulated as follows.

First, and principally, it rests, to a very great extent, and in a vast variety of particulars, on the authority of man. While it acknowledges the divine origin of the Holy Scriptures, it claims for a priest

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hood ordained by man, the sole right of interpreting their contents; and it adds to Scripture, as an authoritative ground, both of doctrine and practice, writings, both ancient and modern, which were not given by inspiration, together with an undefined and undefinable mass of oral traditions. Hinc illæ lacrymæ here is the fruitful fountain of other departures from the truth.

Secondly, this system has not only claimed, from an early age, the armed protection of states and princes, but has humbled both under its feet, and has involved, to an amazing and unparalleled extent, both the usurpation and abuse of temporal power. That abuse has been chiefly manifested in the cruel persecution of sincere Christians, who have not conformed to the principles of the ruling hierarchy. Myriads of these have fallen victims, under the tyrannical influence of Rome, to the tortures of the inquisition, the fires of martyrdom, or the sword of assassination.

Thirdly, the papal hierarchy, with its clergy, assume and exercise a despotic spiritual power

the subordinate grades of their own class, and over the whole body of the laity, being

truly "lords over God's heritage." This power is maintained, within the clerical body itself, by an arrangement purely military in its form and action. The Bishop, or General of the Romish church, can say with the centurion, "I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me, and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it." No liberty of thought, no dictates of conscience, may interfere with this implicit obedience. As to the laity, they are kept in servile subjection to the priesthood, by means of confession, absolution, penance, and the sacrifice of the mass- -by the stern and awful fact, that their viatica to heaven (without a single exception) are in the hands, or under the key, of their spiritual guides.

The power of the priesthood, in the apostacy, both temporal and spiritual, has moreover been propped, from age to age, with an incalculable multitude of "lying wonders ;" most of them so gross and ridiculous as to be fit only to cheat the ignorant and vulgar others so artfully contrived, or so strange and anomalous, as almost to deceive the very

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elect; but taken as a whole, (whether we look to

the evidence of their reality, or to their own nature, or to the character of the system which they are intended to support) as much in contrast with the miracles of Christianity, as light is with darkness, or life with death.

Fourthly, this system involves the religious adoration of Mary the supposed queen of heaven, and mother of God, and of a vast multitude of departed spirits, saints in reality or imagination-thus trenching on the sacred prerogative of the true God, as the only right object of divine worship. This spiritual fornication, moreover, descends into gross and palpable idolatry, the worship of images of wood and stone, gold and silver, and even of the consecrated wafer. Further than this-the worship of the true God is defiled, and the whole doctrine of probation and rewards, corrupted and confounded, by the invention of purgatory, and by prayers and masses for the dead not to mention those gaudy trappings, that worldly splendour, those carnal fascinations, which are wholly at variance with spiritual religion, and which, in destroying the native simplicity of Christianity, deprive it of its wholesome influence, its sober practical operation.