him to look forward to the peace of the grave: for "There the wicked cease from troubling; and there the weary be at rest; there the prisoners rest together; they hear not the voice of the oppressor. The small and the great are there; and the servant is free from his master."

66

'Hic, inter montes, posui mei domum, Religionis libertati dedicatam.

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Here, among hills I've placed my home,
Where, free from human test,

The word of God my only guide,

I seek for future rest.

A.D. 1838.

R. C."

Please give a place to these few sentences, and oblige

Down, Nov. 1838.

A PLAIN PROTESTANT.

THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.

(From Fox's Lectures.)

THE first idea of Christianity is the Roman Catholic. The Roman Catholic idea of Christianity I take to be this:that it is a system, or plan, for the salvation of men's souls by the agency of a priesthood; that it is, strictly speaking, a theocracy, which has superseded the ancient theocracy of Judea, but still which resembles it, and bears a general likeness to other kinds of priestly domination of a theocratic form, such as that substantially exercised by the Brahmins of India. Christianity is not, in the Roman Catholic idea of it, a mere revelation of truth to the world, but a particular mode of bringing the souls of men to God and Heaven by a divinely instituted and spiritual agency. Hence, in the Catholic system, the scriptures have not the importance they have in others; in fact, the Catholic Bible is the private trust-deed or charter of the priest's authority. Doctrines are points to be decreed; ceremonies are regulations to be enforced; penance, purgatory, and damnation are penalties to be denounced; heresy is an insubordination to be suppressed; individual salvation is a work to be accomplished under the priest's guidance and direction; and the redemption of the world is a conquest to be achieved by the Church. Nor should it be supposed, that this system is the result of

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any deep or deliberate conspiracy against the rights of conscience. It grew up naturally in the world under the circumstances. It arose from the habits of thought which had been generated by priesthoods under the more ancient systems; from the personal superiority of many bishops of the earlier times of Christianity over the society in which they lived; from the transition which took place in the spirit of Roman domination from one species of authority to another, spiritual supremacy uprising upon the world, from the barbarism of various tribes, which were subjected to the Church's power, while they did not acknowledge imperial authority; and from the penetration of great minds, when much of this was accomplished, perceiving how grand a work was in progress, imbibing their own principle of action from it, and carrying it on, with the power of their ambition and ability, towards the entire subjugation of the intelligence of the human race. And if we take the system in its most amply developed form, we find all harmonised with, and arranged upon, this principle. Look at the hierarchy. Everywhere power descends, and the individual rises. No matter how lowly his origin might have been, the meanest peasant, if gifted with qualities calculated to aid the purposes of the Church, was sure to be rewarded according to his merit, and might, in time, arrive even at the pontifical seat, and place his foot upon the neck of kings. The power of its dignitaries was mapped out by the geographical and political demarcation of countries, extending itself over all known regions, and with facility appropriating a newly discovered hemisphere. Those who aspired to the priestly office, or who enlisted themselves in the ranks of monkery, were trained, by long and severe tests of their mental keenness and firmness, and of their ability to undergo the severest privations and tortures, in the faithful discharge of the duties imposed upon them by their ecclesiastical superior. By the establishment of celibacy, and the renunciation of individual property, the hierarchy became a distinct class in all countries, alienated from the rest of society, holding little or nothing in common with the different ranks or interests with which they were in communication, but firmly bound to each other, and with an unity of spirit flowing from the fountain of all their great powers at Rome, that combined them together, a mighty and seemingly unconquerable

mass, armed for the spiritual subjugation of the world. Roman Catholic observances breathe the same spirit as the arrangements of the hierarchy, whether we look at them as they affected the public ceremonial of the religion, or its private influence. These grand structures which were raised-our old cathedrals-were formed not for the purposes of teaching, but for those of pomp and ceremonial, for the long-drawn procession, and all that could act upon the senses and imaginations of the worshippers. The priests seldom seemed to address themselves to the people, whatever multitudes might be congregated: they stood there appealing for the people to God, or to the saints with whom they were supposed to exercise their holy influence. All the vast treasures of art, as art developed its powers, and as genius impelled them to produce the grandest results, were therefore in requisition by the Romish Church. The architect, the sculptor, the painter, each found his sphere in carrying on its work, of holding in its capacious grasp all forms and modifications of society. The power of miraculous operation was claimed, and to be perpetuated from age to age; while there was ceaselessly repeated the great standing miracle of the Church of Rome-the transformation of what seemed bread to the senses, into the very substance of Him who was adored as Deity: thus levelling under its sceptre all the powers of sense, intellect, and imagination together.

The confessional gave the priest power as absolute over the individual, as these influences exercised over congregated multitudes; the interference of the priest was made necessary in all the relations and changes of life from the cradle to the grave. By the continual confession of faults, and submission to penance, the power of the Church extended over man's inmost thoughts and feelings. His character, his heart, his sins, were laid bare to his confessor. was humbled before an usurpation, the most daring of all the modes of ambition that have ever been exhibited; and, even at the last moment, made to feel that his eternal destiny was contingent upon its decision.

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A system thus elaborated in its different modes of action, could not be expected to be very temperate in its pretensions. It felt its own gigantic strength, and used it like a giant; it claimed independence of social arrangements and political authorities; and, from claiming inde

pendence of them, it advanced to the assertion of supremacy over them, it taught the powers of this world that they must bow to the powers of the world to come, as they were believed to be incorporated in the Romish hierarchy, and eminently in the person of its pontiff. Hence the language of Gregory the Seventh, the most gifted and daring of a long succession of pontiffs, many of whom had claims to be regarded as extraordinary men; when he said, that the excommunicated, though they were kings, must be avoided by all; that the meanest exorcist was superior to an emperor; that priestly authority was of God, royal authority of the devil; that every species of temporal power was included in the spiritual, as the major includes the minor; that to this authority it became earth's potentates to submit implicitly; and accordingly, when he excommunicated the Emperor, he declared, "We bind him body and soul, taking prosperity from his life, and victory from his arms." Hence the pride with which he kept the Emperor waiting at his gate, with his Empress and child, for three whole days, in the depth of winter, before he would receive even the confession of his penitence; then compelling him to resign his crown, and receive it back, as a grant. And in this spirit, it was, that Alexander III. planted his foot on the neck of the Emperor Barbarossa, chanting his canticle, “I will trample on the lion and the adder; the young lion and the dragon will I trample under foot." Hence Celestine III. when in the act of crowning Henry VI. as the Emperor knelt, spurned the crown from his head. Whilst the power of the Popedom, stretching beyond the limits of the Vatican and its Continental tributaries, even in this our proud and sturdy country, made one of the proudest of our monarchs bare his back to the lash, and submit to the degradation of public penance on the spot, where his knights had vainly thought, by the murder of Becket, to vindicate his authority, and exalt his greatness. Oh, never has Jacobinism, in its triumphant moments, so levelled with the dust and trampled on the claims of feudalism, as did the Catholic system on all the pretensions that political authority could set up; raising its own above them, and looking down with the scorn of an authority that belonged to a higher world, and saw all earthly things beneath its feet.

29

REVIEW.

Jesus, the Mercy Seat: or, a Scriptural View of Atonement.

By

J. C. Means, Pastor of the General Baptist Church, Colesstreet, London.—pp. 224. John Green, Newgate-street.

THIS book is remarkable as being a clever defence of the Calvinistic doctrine of the Atonement, by a Unitarian Minister. We shall presently demonstrate that the chief positions occupied by the author, are untenable; but we must admit the justice of his assertion, that there is no necessary. connexion between the doctrines of the Trinity and the Calvinistic Atonement, and that, therefore, it is not inconsistent to deny the one and maintain the other. Nay, we are free to grant, that if Calvin's doctrine of Atonement can be maintained at all, it must be by one who denies that Christ and God are one and the same being; because 'tis utter folly to assert that God died to satisfy his own wrath. The Author says, in his preface,

"The publication of a work in support of the doctrine of Atonement by one who yet avows his belief in the sole deity of the Father, may be regarded, by some, as the evidence of intellectual peculiarity, rather than as entitled to any serious consideration. The doctrines of the Trinity and of Atonement have been so frequently considered as inseparably connected, that many will deem the attempt to uphold one apart from the other to be preposterous and futile. Yet, among the earlier believers in the divine unity, many still clung to the hope of salvation through the Redeemer's death. Two, at least, of the most illustrious, are known to have done so: Milton's Treatise of Christian Doctrine sufficiently shows his opinion; and Locke, near the end of the Second Vindication of his Reasonableness of Christianity, agrees in the declaration, that the doctrine of satisfaction Is a doctrine of mighty importance for a Christian to be well acquainted with.' 'And I will add to it,' he says, 'that it is very hard for a Christian who reads the Scripture with attention, and with an unprejudiced mind, to deny the satisfaction of Christ.' Milton and Locke are authorities of sufficient weight to shelter me from any very serious imputation of unreasonable singularity."

All this we grant, most willingly, as there are no names in English literature more authoritative than these. But whilst we acknowledge that the opinions of the good and