that our reason should be at all subdued by the imagination or the passions. The chief among offenders is startled at the approaches of crime, and the wildest among visionaries is alarmed to find his malady infectious. Surely that opposition to truth must be inveterate, which not only thus leads to a rejection of it, but which can induce men to descend to contradiction and falsehood, thus palpable, in their effort to cover it with odium.

3. It is just to anticipate that an apostacy disclosing so much opposition to the doctrines of the Gospel, and to the chartered liberties of Christian men, must involve many violations of the great principles of moral obligation. We are warranted in expecting that the morality of the Gospel will be of a purer and more expansive kind than that of any other system, from the fact that the relation into which its doctrines bring mankind to God, and to each other, is of a higher and a holier character. Accordingly we find, that it not only requires the law of truth and kindness to be upon our lips, but that it should be engraven on the heart, and shed its mild and attractive influence over the whole of our deportment. Its language is, "Little children, love not in word only, but in deed and in truth." Instances will occur, in which it will become us to bear our testimony against sin. But in every such case, whether the offender be a believer or an unbeliever, it is required that our conduct should be regulated with a view purely to his welfare, as included in his reformation. It is

enjoined, that all the delicacies, or peculiarities of individual feeling should be consulted, so that the sin may be removed at the least possible cost to the mind of the transgressor. And should this mixture of wisdom and kindness fail, should it only appear to aggravate the malady, still the exhortation follows: "Let not the sun go down upon your wrath; bless them that curse you, pray for them that despitefully use you and persecute you, bless and curse not."

Now I am aware that some of the more obnoxious violations of these injunctions on the part of Romanists are condemned as delinquencies by many of that communion. Still they are violations of equity and truth, which are chargeable, not on individuals merely, but on communities, and nations; and they are moreover such as are in accordance with maxims avowed and published by infallible authorities, and handed down from generation to generation. If it be not fair therefore to consider such practices as an essential part of the system, it surely is no breach of charity to infer that there must be some gross moral defects in the structure of a scheme from which they have so commonly arisen. When we find pontiffs, and councils, discarding the sanctity of oaths at pleasure, in the sight of all Europewhen we see that for the sake of some worldly interest, they could absolve princes from all contracts, so confirmed, in relation to the peopleand their people in turn, from every such bond in reference to their sovereigns-when the fathers in the council of Constance stand forth in the

page of history as perjured ruffians-when their maxim that faith is not to be kept with heretics is reiterated long before and long after their time by popes, and cardinals, and councils; and when we see it acted upon in a thousand forms, leading to the persecution, even unto death, of millions of our species-while these things are before us, and a host of things like these, can we cease to abhor the papal apostacy, viewed only in its trespasses against the morality of the Gospel?

If it be affirmed, and by the Catholics too, that popes, and councils, and communities, did wrong as they thus did, we must still say of principles, as of persons," By their fruits ye shall know them." Is it not just to conclude that the properties of the tree which has borne such fruit, so abundantly, and through so many seasons, are deeply tainted? Instead of regenerating the world, the papal usurpation has served rather to confer the sanctions of religion on many of the worst propensities of our race. This is especially

evident in the story of papal intolerance and persecution; in the wars of Christian nations with each other; and in the atrocity and suffering which so long marked the contest between the disciples of Mahomet and the accredited disciples of the cross. In these evil movements the influence of the papacy was the propellant rather than the controlling power. The spirit of the Gospel was thus allowed to be absorbed by the spirit of the world. If it be said that Protestant states have borne no mean harvest of the vice which we thus impute to the apostacy,

it is, we must contend, because they are only partially recovered from the spirit of that apostacy-because they have abandoned a part only of the disastrous inventions which they profess to have wholly renounced. The effect of corrupting the morality of the Gospel so as to blend it with the maxims and passions of an unregenerated world, has been wholly to efface its character, as a scheme of renovation and peacefulness, and thus to form the chief barrier in the way of its progress through the earth, from the commencement of the apostacy to the present hour.*

* I am aware that the tendency of principles is a matter on which it is often difficult to reason correctly. The practice of many who embrace them supplies no certain test. Were protestantism left to itself, we may affirm that it would be much what it is-but to the existence of a rival creed in the land our catholic countrymen are indebted for all that distinguishes their popery from that of our ancestors in the fourteenth century, and from what so justly passes under that name in Italy, Portugal, and Spain. Few infidels act as their favourite speculations suggest; and the checks which influence the man of no creed, will have their effect on the man of a corrupt one. The scheme, however, which makes a participation in religious benefits depend on obtaining the sacramental benediction of a certain priesthood, tends necessarily to render both faith and morals of little importance, when compared with the one virtue of ecclesiastical obedience. Hence the virtues of heretics have generally served but to sharpen the resentment of their persecutors. Confession and absolution, as practiced in the church of Rome, can hardly leave the priest uninjured; but with the votary, the process, which in fact substitutes confession to men for repentance towards God, and the absolution of man for that of his Maker, can have no other effect than to smooth the path of transgression. To this pass things generally, and almost inevitably come, in the practice of the Romanist; and the same effect too often results from certain kindred customs which our imperfect Protestantism still serves to perpetuate.

4. Conformable with the various motives which conduced to this corruption of Christian morals, are those which have led the same parties to efface or mutilate every distinguishing feature of Christian polity.

In the primitive age peculiar gifts were not unfrequently bestowed on the ministers of the Gospel; but the ministerial office, amid these adventitious circumstances, continued to be one and the same. The apostolic vocation was something added to the ministerial function, and something distinct from the pastoral relation. But as no man was qualified to be an apostle who could not bear witness to the Saviour's resurrection, it follows that the office so named was peculiar to the age and the circumstances which gave it birth. The apostolic superintendance moreover was that of inspired men, and was such as not to admit of their having any fixed dwelling place. That office disposed of, it would not be difficult to demonstrate that, among the remaining teachers of Christianity, however variously they were designated, there existed no official precedence-none of the elements of a modern hierarchy. It was to correct the ambition which led his disciples to contend as to which should excel the rest in official dignity, that Jesus declared, in the most emphatic terms, what should be, in this respect, the law of his kingdom. "Ye know that they which are accounted to rule over the Gentiles, exercise lordship over them, and their great ones exercise authority upon them. But so shall it not be among you; for whosoever