crament of Baptism into an indelible brand of slavery: whoever has received the waters of regeneration, is the thrall of her who declares that there is no other church of Christ. She claims her slaves wherever they may be found, declares them subject to her laws, both written and traditional, and, by her infallible sanction, dooms them to indefinite punishment, till they shall acknowledge her authority and bend their necks to her yoke. Such is, has been, and will ever be, the doctrine of the Roman Catholic church; such is the belief of her true and sincere members; such the spirit that actuates her views, and which, by every possible means, she has always spread among her children. Him that denies this doctrine, Rome devotes to perdition. The principle of religious tyranny, supported by persecution, is a necessary condition of true Catholicism: he who revolts at the idea of compelling belief by punishment, is severed at once from the communion of Rome.

What a striking commentary on these canons of the Council of Trent have we in the history of

the Inquisition! Refractory Catholics born under the spiritual dominion of Rome, and Protestants originally baptized out of her pale, have equally tasted her flames and her racks*. Nothing, indeed, but want of power, nothing but the muchlamented ascendancy of heresy, compels the church of Rome to keep her infallible, immutable decrees in silent abeyance. But the divine authority of those decrees, the truth of their inspiration, must for ever be asserted by every individual who sincerely embraces the Roman Catholic faith. Reason and humanity must, in them, yield to the infallible decree in favour of compulsion on religious matters. The human ashes, indeed, are scarcely cold which, at the end of three centuries of persecution and massacre, these decrees scattered over the soil of Spain. I myself saw the pile on which the last victim was sacrificed to Roman infallibility. It was an unhappy woman, whom the Inquisition of Seville committed to the flames under the charge of heresy, about forty years ago: she perished on a

* Llorente mentions the punishments inflicted by the Spanish Inquisition on English and French subjects.

spot where thousands had met the same fate. I lament from my heart that the structure which supported their melting limbs, was destroyed during the late convulsions. It should have been preserved, with the infallible and immutable canon of the Council of Trent over it, for the detestation of future ages.

How far, to preserve consistency, Rome, in the present time, would carry the right of punishing dissent, which her last general council confirmed with its most solemn sanction; it is not in my power to tell. It may be hoped that the spirit of the age has extinguished her fires for ever*: but the period I fear is still remote when she will change another part of her system, by which she ruins the happiness and morals of numbers,-I mean her monastic vows, and the laws which bind Catholic clergy to perpetual celibacy.

Where church infallibility is concerned, I can readily understand the necessity imposed on the most liberal individuals who have filled the Roman see, to adhere strictly to former decrees and declarations; but nothing can excuse or palliate the * Note F.

proud obstinacy which Rome has always shown on such points of discipline, as might be altered for the benefit of public morals, without compromising her claims. Such are the laws which annul and punish the marriages of secular clergymen, and those which demand perpetual vows from them who profess any of the numerous monastic rules approved by the Roman church, both for males and females.

I will not discuss the question, whether a life of celibacy is recommended in the New Testament as preferable to matrimony at all periods, and in all circumstances of the church. I will suppose, what I do not believe, that virginity, by its own intrinsic merit, and without reference to some virtuous purpose, which may not be attainable otherwise than by the sacrifice of the soft passions of the heart; has a mysterious value in the eyes of God: a supposition which can hardly be made without advantage to some part of the ancient Manichæan system-without some suspicion that the law, by which the human race is preserved, is not the pure effect of the will of God. I will not assail such views, which, more or less, might be

inferred from the writings of the Roman Catholic mystics. I will take up the subject on their own terms. Let virginity be the virtue, not (as I believe) the condition of angels: let it be desirable, as Saint Augustine expresses himself somewhere, that mankind were blotted from the face of the earth by the operation of celibacy *. Let all this be so; yet are not celibacy and virginity described in the New Testament as peculiar and uncommon gifts, as perilous trials, and likely to place human beings in a state which Saint Paul compares to burning? Are not the warnings and cautions given by our Saviour and his apostles, as frequent as the allusions to it? Did not Saint Paul fear that the very mention of this topic might become a snare to his converts?-But how is the subject of virginity and celibacy treated by the Roman Catholic church? The world rings with the praises of the

* I cannot tax my memory with the words, nor is the object worth the labour of a long search. I believe that St. Augustine, in answering the objection that, if all the world followed the principle he recommended, the earth would soon be a desert, says, with an air of triumph-Oh felix mundi exitium!