to whom he allowed no repose in any part of his kingdom; and for whose execution, when condemned to be burnt, he used to carry the wood with his own hands*." Who then shall be surprised to find inquisitors canonized by Rome, or to hear her addressing a daily prayer to the great and merciful Father of mankind, "that he would be pleased to bruise, by the power of his right hand, all pagan and heretical nations ?" Such are the words which Rome puts in the mouth of every Spanish priest who celebrates high mass †. The power of persecuting others, upon the grand scale, which the Church of Rome exalts into a kingly virtue, is given but to very few among * "In eo, adjunctis regni curis, regiæ virtutes emicuere, magnanimitas, clementia, justitia, et præ cæteris Catholicæ Fidei zelus, ejusque religiosi cultus propagandi ardens studium. Id præstitit in primis hæreticos insectando, quos nullibi regnorum suorum consistere passus, propriis ipse manibus ligna comburendis damnatis ad rogum, advehebat." Propria Ss. Hispan. Die 30 Maii. + The concluding collect contains a prayer for the Pope in the first, for the bishop of the diocese in the second, and for the royal family in the third place; it then proceeds to pray for peace and health, and concludes, " et ab ecclesia tua cunctam repelle nequitiam, ET GENTES PAGANORUM ET HERETICORUM DEXTERÆ TUÆ POTENTIA CONTERANTUR, &c. &c. mankind whilst every individual may be made his own tormentor by adopting the practices which that church represents as the means to arrive at Christian perfection. Zeal and sincerity, are equally dangerous under the tuition of Rome, The Catholic nunneries rob society of the most amiable and virtuous female minds-those who in the practice of the social duties, would be a blessing to their relatives and friends, and patterns of virtue to the community-to make their lives, at the best, a perpetual succession of toilsome and useless practices. The quiet and soberminded are made the slaves of outward ceremo¬ nies; the ardent and sensitive are doomed to enthusiasm or madness. Such are the invariable results of the models which Rome presents them daily for imitation. The love of external ceremonies is notorious in the Roman Catholic church; but few, even among the persons whom I address, will probably have given a distinct and separate consideration to the special models, by which their church sanctions and recommends this peculiar manner of sanctity. Let them, therefore, conceive themselves as con temporaries of Saint Patrick, and imagine they see him pursuing the regular and daily employ ment of his time. The holy saint rises before daylight, and, under the snows and rains of a northern winter, begins his usual task of praying one hundred times in a day, and again one hundred times in the night. Such, the Breviary in`forms, was his daily practice while still a layman and a slave. When raised to the see of Armagh, his activity in the external practice of prayer appears quite prodigious. In the first place he repeated, daily, the one hundred and fifty psalms of the Psaltery, with a collection of canticles and hymns, and two hundred collects. The two hundred genuflexions of his youth were now increased to three hundred. The ecclesiastical day being divided into eight canonical hours, and each of these having one hundred blessings with the sign of the cross allotted by Saint Patrick, his right hand must have performed that motion eight hundred times a day. After this distracting stir and hurry, the night brought but little repose to the saint. He divided it into three portions: in the first he recited one hundred psalms, and knelt two hun dred times; during the second he stood immersed in cold water repeating fifty psalms more, " with his heart, eyes, and hands raised towards heaven;" the third he gave up to sleep, upon a stone pavement*. Imagine to yourselves, I again request, the patron saint of Ireland, not as an ideal and indistinct personage of legend; but as a real man of flesh and blood. Depict, in the vivid colours of fancy, the bustle, the perpetual motion, the eternal gabbling, the plunging into water for prayer, the waving of the hands for benedictions, the constant falling upon the knees, the stretching of hands, the turning up of eyes, required for the ascetic practices of his life; and then repeat the memorable words of our Saviour-The hour * "Antelucano tempore per nives, gelu, ac pluvias ad preces Deo fundendas, impiger consurgebat; solitus centies interdiu, centiesque noctu Deum orare... Aiunt enim integrum quotidie Psalterium, una cum canticis et hymnis, ducentisque orationibus consuevisse recitare: ter centies per dies singulos flexis genibus Deum adorare, ac in qualibet Hora Canonica, centies se crucis signo munire. Noctem tria in spatia distribuens, primum in centum psalmis percurrendis, et bis centies genuflectendo, alterum in reliquis quinquaginta psalmis, algidis aquis immersus, ac corde, oculis, manibusque ad cœlum erectus, absolvendis insumebat: tertium vero super nudum lapidem stratus, tenui dabat quieti.” Die 17 Martii. cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father, in spirit and in truth ; for the Father seeketh such to worship him. God is a spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth *. Compare the sublime simplicity of this description of Christian piety, with the models which your church sets before you; and tell me whether they agree. I will not dispute whether the list of devotional practices attributed to Saint Patrick, be authentic or fictitious, accurate or exaggerated. The church of Rome would not have recorded it in her authorised book of spiritual instruction, if, in her opinion, it did not exalt the piety of her saint. The worthies of the Breviary, whether sketched from nature or pictured from fancy, must be a faithful transcript of Rome's ideal models of Christian perfection. The practices attributed to Saint Patrick are, therefore, made an object of imitation to all the sons of the church of Rome, according to their strength and circumstances; and the principle that such practices are a part of Evangelical * John iv. 23, 24. |