that in the midst of the earth for which it was ordained it has not been a light; it has not been the salt which would have preserved secular society from putrefaction. All that God has obtained, because it is all that the clergy would suffer Him to obtain, has been the preservation of an invisible election, the individuals of which, in many instances, the clergy have persecuted to death. Here and there have been a scattered faithful few, whilst the mass has been as bad as the mass of secular polities.

Although the Romish community is not alone guilty as Protestants declare, she has a proud pre-eminence in evil as well as in good preeminent in completeness of doctrine, rite, and ceremony, so pre-eminent in her corruptions of the same pre-eminent in order and discipline, so pre-eminent in cruelty and drunkenness in human blood pre-eminent in alliance with temporal governments, and, therefore, pre-eminent in adultery with the kings of the earth, by which she has become at once the great harlot herself, and the mother also of harlots. Nothing of good or of evil exists in other sects which is not greater in her, and just as she is loved by her children, or hated by her enemies, are these good and bad points elucidated, exaggerated, and criticised.

An endeavour to recover the Church of Eng

land from the depth of Puritanism, into which it has fallen, by some of her most pious and intelligent members, gave rise to the unjust accusation of the Evangelicals, that these her sons were hypocrites, really Papists in disguise, and secretly endeavouring to sap the principles of the Reformation. The lie was readily credited by the Roman Catholics, who, partly from the desire of proselytism inherent in all worldly sects, or partly from genuine pious belief that out of the pale of Rome there could be no salvation, laboured greatly for the return of the English to the Roman communion, and many prayers have been offered up daily for that object. But the French and Italian clergy are greatly mistaken, and perhaps deceived by the Irish priests, respecting the grounds of the rooted antipathy which prevails amongst all classes of Englishmen equally to Romish supremacy. The Irish have never been very obedient to the Bishop of Rome: the members of the Church of England who most approve of their rites and ceremonies, who charitably shut their eyes to many idolatrous expressions, and who feel sensibly the sin of schism, are just as resolutely opposed as others to every particle of interference by Italian priests in secular affairs, whether of the State or of the family. They see the effects produced by the clergy in Spain and

Ireland; they know that the most offensive words and doctrines, respecting the rights of the Bishop of Rome over the crown of this realm as of other secular kingdoms, are vindicated by all ecclesiastics in Rome, instead of being retracted or repented of and if the Romish clergy desire to bring the English into ecclesiastical obedience to them, the first step they must take is to abandon all they have ever taught respecting the duties of the clergy towards the civil ruler. Never was a dream of fanaticism more wild than to imagine that a people, which has been made lawless against all discipline through hatred of ecclesiastical tyranny, will ever again give the clergy the power of resuming it. Moreover, the Italian clergy greatly overcalculate the extent to which their ultramontane notions are admitted by the English noblemen and gentlemen who have received any education, save that which the priests have given them. There are very few who would not repudiate the doctrines promulgated at Rome respecting the rights of Italian ecclesiastics to interfere in British secular affairs. A Roman Catholic commanded the fleet which annihilated the Armada, fraught with relics and instruments of torture, blessed although it was by the Pope; whilst curses were invoked on England's Queen, her generals, and fleets. It is strange that the hierarchy of

Rome should be so blind to the spirit of the nineteenth century, as not to see that it is as idle to expect that the English would again submit to the tyranny of a priesthood, as to expect that they would submit to another James II., repeal Magna Charta, and the Bill of Rights. No! the union of the Churches of England and Rome is impossible, from every point on which the question can be viewed. The rupture never can be healed.

Nothing has been said of the monastic orders, because there is nothing in them that is not included in the general Romish ecclesiastical system. Houses for congregations of lonely and friendless persons might be made refuges of helplessness, and a blessing to all. But the interior history of convents, so far as it has ever been known, is one of the blackest pages of accusation against the cruelty of the clergy. Convents have been, and are in Italy to this hour, secret prisons, where slow murder is continually committed ad majoram Dei gloriam. Some of the victims the writer of these pages has seen and the terror with which these establishments are looked upon by the helpless orphans of the middle classes throughout that country, invokes secretly, but powerfully, vengeance on the system. The day of reprisal of outraged humanity on the clergy at the French Revolution was tremendous, but none can say it was unmerited.

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The Romish French, and German Governments have testified their sense of the iniquity of the system by curtailing the priestly power through the convents, suppressing many, and preventing their being used as ecclesiastical prisons.

It is not likely that the Roman Catholic Clergy will be benefited by any thing that Protestants shall say concerning them; for Protestants, in the madness of their sectarianism, blindly execrate what is good as well as what is bad amongst them; but the Roman Clergy may hear the knell of their doom sounding from amongst the laity of their own communion. Until the time of the French Revolution, the most just complaints of the laity were as much unheeded as the complaints of the serfs against the nobles under the feudal system. In France and Germany the clergy are attacked by an infidel party, so that the faithful hesitate to speak their opinion, lest they should appear to be fraternising with opponents of such a character. But, amidst the middling classes in Italy, and, indeed, amidst the enlightened laity throughout all Christendom, there is not a sentiment that has been expressed in the preceding pages which may not be heard by all who are in their confidence, and to whom they think they may speak with safety.

However strong may have been the expressions of Protestant writers against the conduct of the