ingenuous and liberal Catholic of these kingdoms, to strike out the Roman from his religious denomination, and place in its stead the noble epithet of Christian? Preserve, with God's blessing, so much of your tenets as may appear to you consistent with his word; but disown a church which, by her miracles, libels the Gospel history with imposture; and whose mawkish piety disfigures the sublime Christian worship into drivelling imbecility. NOTES. A.-Page 10. "IVherever the religion of Rome reigns absolute, there is but one step between it and complete infidelity." A DIVINE of great eminence has observed to me, that this important position demands proof and elucidation.—I am most willing to defer to his judgment; though nothing is so difficult as reducing to theory the daily experience of life. I have stated as a general fact what I have seen invariably happen in my native country; what all inhabitants of Roman Catholic countries, in every part of the world, with whom I have become acquainted in the course of my life, have confirmed to me, both as witnesses and as instances. I hope I can give good reasons, and probable explanations of this moral phenomenon; but, to a mind deeply impressed by the experience of the fact, they must all appear tame and lifeless. As I cannot, however, communicate the impressions themselves, I request, that in case my theory should appear unsatisfactory, it may not be allowed to weaken my testimony. The tendency of Roman Catholic Christianity to produce complete and sudden infidelity arises, in the first place, from its exclusiveness. A Romanist is, from infancy, taught, as an article of faith, that Popery and Christianity are iden ૨ tical. He must therefore be prepared to reject the Gospel revelation, the moment he shall find cause to reject Popery. A Roman Catholic is also taught to believe in the infallibility of the church as an essential part of Christianity. He must therefore reject Christianity, upon being convinced of the existence of a single error in his church's creed. But, it will be asked, why do not Roman Catholics, in countries where Romanism reigns supreme, doubt and examine those two articles, before they reject the whole system of Christianity ?—I answer, because those two articles are impressed upon their minds above all others. I believe whatever the Holy Roman Church believes, is made to be the compendious creed of the Romanist. This implicit acquiescence, this faith by proxy, dispenses from all thought, all reading, all attention. The very common aversion of the understanding to abstract subjects, is cherished by this short creed; a load of care and trouble is thus thrown off the mind, and all apprehensions from the want of faith, vanish at the comfortable recollection, that the church is believing mightily for her children. The mass of Romanists are, on this point, like the good Tartar tribes, who employ praying-machines; a kind of little windmills which whirl their written prayers in the face of heaven. The church is a Faith-engine for the Roman Catholic. Now, suppose a young Tartar, in the practice of setting up daily his prayingmachine, grows intimately acquainted with an European traveller, who indulges his wit at the expense of the devout contrivance :-Can you expect that, when the force of ridicule or reason shall induce him to destroy his whirl, he will sit down to inquire into the necessity of prayer, and the right mode of performing it? No more will the young Spaniard (I say Spaniard, because I know them best), when Voltaire has made him heartily laugh at popes, saints, monks, and miracles, undertake a long and laborious study, to distinguish Christianity from Popery. The more I reflect upon the popular customs and feelings of Spain, the more clearly I perceive the bitter roots of unbelief which Rome has twined, as it were, round the very heart of the country, in the bonds with which she has secured it to herself. The Inquisition has indissolubly connected, in the popular mind, the ideas of absurdity, confusion, immorality, and disgrace, with that of heresy. The language preserves proverbial expressions, denoting a complete misrule, in the names of Geneva and Leghorn *; the first, as the best known school and shelter of the unfortunate Spanish Calvinists of the seventeenth century; the second, from the scandal of its commercial toleration of different sects. The historical origin of these proverbs is now lost to the multitude; but the spirit which produced them remains. I well remember the difficulty I often experienced in the attempt to persuade Spaniards, not of the lowest description, that, in Protestant countries, the practice of all vice and debauchery was not open and free. To my assertions they objected the common expression, "Alli cada qual vive en su ley" (Every man lives there according to his own law); conveying the notion most industriously spread at all times by the agents of Rome, that a heretic does not deserve the name of Christian. With these rooted prejudices, and under the regular and established ignorance of the Bible, which the Romanist system encourages, how is it possible that the doubts of the bolder minds should be properly and exclusively directed to the false foundation on which Rome has fixed the Gospel? The last thing which discipline gives to the intellect, is the power and habit of discrimination; will that discrimination be expected in the Romanist school of religion, where men are most anxiously accustomed to see Christianity as a whole, a system which cannot exist but * Esto es una Ginebra: esto es una Liorna, are, at this day, very common expressions to denote confusion. |