any statement of Trinitarianism, Papal or Protestant, Lutheran or Calvinistic, Episcopalian, Presbyterian, or Independent; mystery glares on its front, and enters into its very essence.

The doctrines concerning demons, of which Paul speaks, very accurately describe that prevalent invocation of saints, which was evidently borrowed from those notions of the souls of dead men, and acts of homage to them, which are so prominent in the mythology and superstitions of antiquity. On this ground, Protestants have often advanced the charge of idolatry against Papists. This offence is certainly elsewhere connected with Antichrist; and Bishop Newton very justly observes, that it is hinted at in the term Apostacy, (falling away, our translators have rendered it,) which "was idolatry in the Jewish Church, and therefore is the same in the Christian." it should be remembered, that the saints were honoured, not as gods, instead of the Father, but as mediators, instead of the Son. There could be nothing analogous to this error during the Jewish dispensation, nor any propriety in defining it by terms previously employed to describe a different offence. It is, doubtless, the demonology of New-Testament prophecy; but where shall we find the apostacy and idolatry? There are two kinds of idolatry; 1st, The adoration of any other being or person than the One God, the Jehovah of the patriarchs, and the Father of

Yet

Christ; and, 2ndly, that of a visible or imagined form, even if it be nominally identified with the true God. He is the Infinite Spirit, and any material representation of him is strictly forbidden. Yet some have worshipped his bodily picture or statue; while others adore him as incarnate, ex- : isting in a man, whose form may be painted or fancied, and who is besought to hear prayer by his birth, circumcision, agony, death, burial, and resurrection. In addition to God the Father, the uniform and sole object of scriptural worship, we hear supplications addressed to God the Son, God the Holy Ghost, and to that mysterious and complex idea, formed by their union, called God the Trinity. For the worship of the Holy Ghost and the Trinity, not even the shadow of Scripture precept or example can possibly be alleged; while that of Christ is in opposition to his express prohibition, "In that day ye shall ask me nothing; verily, verily, I say unto you, whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, he will give it you." (John xvi. 23.)

It is said of the power described in Dan. vii. 8, and again Rev. xiii., that he should "speak great words against the Most High; and open his mouth in blasphemy against God, to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven." Does this refer to the assumption, by ecclesiastical dignitaries, of titles which ought to have been held sacred to the Deity? Does it

describe that active malignity which has ever delighted to blacken the characters of reputed heretics, and cast out, not only from the church, but from an honourable abode in the memories of men, those who preserved the tabernacle of * God in this wilderness of corruption, and who shall dwell in heaven? The charge is advanced against the Ecclesiastical State, and the Civil Powers in alliance with the church. It may be a condemnation of their aspiring to spiritual legislation, and of the manner in which that authority has been exercised. Blasphemy is evil-speaking. Intentional defamation of the Deity is scarcely to be imagined. But we must lament that such creeds have generally been established, as tend to throw a dark shade over the Divine perfections. They impair our perception of his excellence, by notions which compress infinity into human shape, and connect spirituality with corporeal organs and sufferings: they sully his moral character, and dim its loveliness, by attributing to him actions that would disgrace even imperfect man, and sink him from the Father, into the tyrant of the human race.

Pious frauds, feigned miracles, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, are now matters of history, like the other predictions, and but too easily and frequently to be met with. (c) We find them abundantly in the fourth century, when the maxim was almost uni

versally adopted, "that it was an act of virtue to deceive and lie, when by that means the interests of the church might be promoted." Of this period, Mosheim remarks, "a whole volume would be requisite to contain an enumeration of the various frauds practised, with success, to delude the ignorant, when true religion was almost entirely superseded by horrid superstition." Athanasians and Arians, as opportunity allowed, fought with the same weapons, and opposed fraud to fraud, miracle to miracle, and persecution to persecution. While we gladly forget the gross trickeries by which, in dark ages, ignorance was gulled, that it might be enslaved and plundered, we must be allowed to express regret, that Protestants and Dissenters should yet retain some traces of this evil. How often, in the recollection of every one, has reputed heresy been assailed with calumnious and forged tales of blasphemies and sudden judgments, got up for the purpose of terrifying men from the use of their common sense on religious subjects! Truth disdains such arms: they are the weapons of Antichrist, and worthy only of the policy of the Inquisition, which, when its victims are led to the stake, clothes them with robes covered with painted devils. Happily, their use is almost abandoned by the more respectable of every party.

Persecution is also sufficiently visible in the pages of Ecclesiastical History, and alike inca

pable of an exclusive application to the Church of Rome; for though she may have been "drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs," her daughters have sipped, and many of them not sparingly, the same horrid beverage. The history of state religions, which is also the history of what is called orthodoxy, is written, for ages, with blood. The stain attaches also to the different sects which have only had temporary power. Socinus was a party to the unjust imprisonment of the aged and venerable Davides, for refusing to worship Christ: Calvinism has its infancy and origin blackened by the murder of Servetus: the Presbyterians in this country would have taken the life of Biddle, but for Cromwell: and the Puritans who fled to America for liberty of conscience, denied that, and even life, to some of the sectaries who followed them.

The following passage, on the propriety of making Babylon the symbol of Anti-christianity, and the impossibility of restricting that apostacy to Rome, while it evidently applies to the opinions, history, and practices, of the whole of what has been called the Orthodox Church, is by Evanson, a clergyman who relinquished his emoluments for conscience' sake: "The figurative terms, Babylon the Great, that great city, &c., are manifestly opposed to those of Jerusalem, the holy city, the new Jerusalem, &c.; and therefore, since the latter type cannot denote any one parti