formularies and other books of devotion, that bear the imprimatur and the sanction of the Roman Catholic authorities; but, in the mean time, I will lay before you the summary of articles of faith only.

Now, first of all, there is laid down, what is called, the Nicene Creed, that is, the creed that was constituted by the bishops, who met together in the Council of Nice, in the year 325,-a creed read in the service of the Church of England, and to which every bibletaught Christian would most cheerfully subscribe. After the twelve articles of the Nicene Creed have been presented, there follows, what is strictly to be called the creed of the Roman Catholic Church,—the twelve articles of Pope Pius the Fourth's creed. The Nicene Creed is divided into twelve orthodox propositions, to which every Christian cheerfully assents. Then, as if to prevent the effects of admitted truth, there are administered the twelve poisonous and neutralising articles, which are the peculiar articles of the Papacy; and which contain, in small space, the very essence of the Roman Catholic superstition. The policy of this is obvious. It is just what entitles the Church of Rome to the epithet bestowed upon it by the distinguished Cecil,the master-piece of Satan. If Satan were to urge at once upon the Christian Church, a foul and unscriptural superstition, every enlightened and bible-taught Christian would revolt, and reject it, as not from God; but Satan shows well his skill, and proves that he retains the archangel's wisdom in the heart of the demon's wickedness. He, first of all, opens twelve panes, clear and transparent, through which the sunbeams of heaven pour in all their beauty and undimmed splendour; and, as soon as he has tempted you by this, to come within the forbidden ground, which is sacred to himself, he puts on the twelve shutters, corresponding to these twelve articles, which exclude all light, save the blue-lights of his own kindling, and which last constitute the pith and substance of the Roman Catholic superstition.

The first Popish tenet is as follows:-"I most steadfastly admit and embrace apostolic and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other observances and constitutions of the same Church." "I also admit and embrace the Holy Scripture, according to that sense, which our holy mother, the Church, has held, and does hold; to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of Scripture; neither will I ever take and interpret it otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of the Fathers."

These are the two first propositions. I shall have occasion to direct your attention to these errors in detail; at present I ask of you to mark, at the very outset, the deflection of the Papacy from God and truth, to man and tradition. When speaking of traditions, the Roman Catholic is taught to say, "I most steadfastly admit and embrace it," -the language of a hearty and cordial recognition; but when he comes to speak of God's word, he is made merely to say, "I admit,"ceiving God's word as an unwelcome visitor, whom he dare not altogether, for the sake of appearances, cast out, but whom he would much rather on the whole be rid of. There is a hearty and unfeigned welcome given to ecclesiastical traditions; there is a bare nod of toleration of the word of God.

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"I also profess, that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law, instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and necessary for

the salvation of mankind, though not all for every one; to wit, baptism confirmation, the eucharist, penance, extreme unction, order, and matrimony; and that these sacraments confer grace; and that of these, baptism, confirmation and order, cannot be reiterated without sacrilege. I also receive and admit the received and approved ceremonies of the Catholic Church, used in the solemn administration of the aforesaid sacraments." Baptism, it is here stated, cannot be repeated without sacrilege; that is, if it has been conferred by a Roman priest, who is supposed to have the true and apostolical or more strictly mechanical succession, then it is not to be repeated. But if the Archbishop of Canterbury, the distinguished and amiable prelate of the Church of England, were to baptise any individual in this assembly, that individual, on joining the Church of Rome, would be re-baptised, his baptism being regarded by that Church as utterly null and void. And, accordingly, when the Rev. Mr. Sibthorp (whom I had the pleasure of meeting with, only last week,) left the Protestant Church and joined the Church of Rome, he had, first of all, to be baptised, as if he had been an absolute heathen; he had, secondly, to be ordained as a deacon, after the usual examination; and, thirdly, he had to be ordained as a priest, after he had served the requisite time as a deacon: all that he received from the hands of the Church of England, being regarded as null and void, whether as respects his baptism or his ordination. And it seems to me a melancholy descent, that has been, more or less, characteristic of the whole of the Protestant Churches in Christendom, and, in some measure, at the present moment. The Church of Rome excommunicates the Church of England; the Church of England excommunicates those that are next to her; and, I fear, these last have not also been guiltless in excommunicating those that are next to them. And this will ever be the result, where any thing is taken to be the test of Christian ministry, save the apostolic test, laid down in the epistles to Timothy and Titus.

"I embrace and receive all and every one of the things, which have been defined and declared in the holy council of Trent, concerning original sin and justification." Justification, I may here explain, according to the Church of Rome, is partly by Christ's merit, partly by man's merit, partly by priestly absolution, and partly by Church power; it is a very compound and heterogenous result indeed.

"I profess likewise," continues the Roman Catholic, "that in the Mass, there is offered to God, a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead, and that in the most holy sacrament of the eucharist, there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ, and that there is a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood; which conversion, the Catholic Church calls transubstantiation. I also confess, that under either kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and there is a true sacrament." I need not add any explanation of this, as I shall afterwards have occasion more fully to refer to it; let me only say, that the moment the priest has pronounced over the flour and water, "Hoc enim est meum corpus," ["For this is my body,"] that moment, according to the Roman Catholic Church, the flour and water become really and truly flesh and blood, and our Lord Jesus Christ is present on the altar, not in his spirit (as he is in the

midst of his own, in every age), but bodily and substantially; so that the Roman Catholic kneels down and adores that piece of flour and water, on the hypothesis that it is really the body and blood, the soul and divinity, of the Son of God; and then, after this act has been performed, which is called transubstantiation, the priest, as he believes, has power to take up that which we call flour and water, but which he believes to be the body and blood of the Son of God, and present it to God the Father as an atonement, proper and propitiatory, for the sins of the living and the dead. So that the very same trust which we repose in the glorious atonement on the cross, the Roman Catholic reposes on the sacrifice of the Mass. The explanation of the last clause is this: that in the Church of Rome, the cup is withheld from the laity, and given only to the clergy, the bread alone being given to the laity; simply (on their own admission,) by a tradition and arrangement of the Church, and not according to primitive and apostolic usage.

In the next place: "I constantly hold that there is a Purgatory, and that the souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages or prayers of the faithful." Every Roman Catholic believes that there are two sorts of sin,-mortal sin, in which if a man die, he goes to hell for ever; and venial sin, in which most men die, and which must be expiated in Purgatory; that is, a middle place of torment. According to the language of the catechism of the Council of Trent, "there is a purgatorial fire, in which the souls of the faithful suffer for a season," before they are made pure, and fit for the kingdom of heaven.

The next article is, "Likewise I believe, that the saints reigning together with Christ are to be honoured and invoked [invocandos et venerandos] and that these saints offer prayer to God for us, and that their relics are to be had in veneration." Hence, in most Roman Catholic churches on the continent, the remains of some saint are deposited below the high altar. When St. Chad's Cathedral at Birmingham was erected, they brought the mouldering remains of a saint, as they called them, from abroad, and deposited them beneath the high altar; and from that deposition they believe a peculiar sanctity and sacredness are communicated to the place.

"I most firmly assert," proceeds the Roman Catholic," that the images of Christ, of the mother of God, ever virgin, and also of other saints, ought to be had and retained, and that due honour and veneration is to be given to them." The explanation of the qualification 66 due," "is this: the Roman Catholic holds that the worship of deλea, that is, an inferior worship, is to be given to the saints; that the worship of væepdaλea is to be given to the Virgin Mary; and then that the loftiest worship, λarpaa, or supreme religious worship, is to be given to God. But at the time the bishops met in the Council of Trent, there were great disputes what degree of veneration ought to be given to the image or representation of Christ. Thomas Aquinas, a distinguished doctor of the Roman Catholic Church, held that the extreme worship of harpeia ought to be given to the picture of Christ, because the worship does not terminate on the picture, but extends to Christ himself; and that the extreme worship of harpeia ought to be

given to the cross of Christ. And, in fact, on Good Friday, that worship is actually given, when, at a certain moment, the priest brings forward a wooden cross for the people to adore. On talking with a Roman Catholic, I was assured that his priest informed him, that Catholics alone glory in the cross, and that Protestants do not; and the proof the priest adduced was, that on Good Friday, in the Romish Church the cross is produced, and the people approach and kiss it, and thereby glory in the cross; whereas, in the Protestant Church, no such exhibition takes place. On Good Friday, according to the Roman Missal, the priest calls out, the moment he produces the cross, "Come, let us adore" [adoremus]; and immediately afterwards he makes another movement, and says, "Come, let us adore the wood of the cross, on which the salvation of the world hung." The Council of Trent, being placed in a difficulty, whether to side with Thomas Aquinas, or with the more moderate party, defined and decreed, in the exercise of their presumed infallibility, that "due honour and veneration" (not expressing the kind or amount of veneration that is due,) ought to be given to the images of Christ, of the mother of God, and of the other saints.

"I also affirm, that the power of Indulgences is left by Christ in the Church, and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people." Now, many Protestants have a wrong notion of what is meant by Indulgences in the Church of Rome, and I have heard distinguished Protestant advocates commit themselves very strangely upon this subject; and nothing so rejoices a Roman Catholic, as to hear a Protestant make a rash assertion, which cannot be substantiated. An Indulgence does not mean liberty to commit sin for the future (though Romanists have thus used it), or pardon for sins that are past; all that it is theoretically understood to mean is, a remission of the temporal punishment that may be due to the individual, after the sin, whether mortal or venial, has its guilt forgiven. The Roman Catholic Church holds, that after God forgives sin, or after the priest judicially forgives it in God's place, there remains a temporal punishment, and if it is not endured in this world, it must be borne in Purgatory, till it is completely burnt out from the soul, and the soul made fit for heaven. Indulgences are a remission of that temporal punishment. It is, at best, a wretched caricature of the real forgiveness of God. Hence, according to Roman Catholic theology, if I had been guilty of a venial sin, which deserved a century of suffering in Purgatory, then if, through my influence with the Pope, or some introduction of a more substantial nature, I were to receive a bull from the Pope of fifty years' Indulgence, that would exempt me from fifty years of the suffering in Purgatory; or if he gave me a full Indulgence, it would extend over the whole period, and I should not have to go into Purgatory at all. You perceive the tremendous power thus conferred on the priesthood; and on the continent of Europe, so vigorously did the priests wield this power, up to a recent period, that a law has been, not long ago, enacted, in Belgium, under Leopold, that no money left to a confessor by a dying layman, should be a valid bequest in the estimate of the law; the whole property of the dying being found to be passing into the hands of the priests, to pay them for saying masses for the soul, and shortening the torments of Purgatory. In Bath, for instance, after Prior College was consumed by fire, circulars were

issued (one of which I saw, and therefore I can speak from my own personal knowledge), promising to every one who contributed, if I remember the exact sum, five guineas towards the rebuilding, that he should have a mass offered up for himself or his friends in Purgatory, once a day; to every one who contributed one guinea, that he should have a mass once a week; and to every one who contributed a sum below a guinea, that he should be remembered in the general prayers of the faithful. Now, observe what is the plain common sense of this arrangement; that if I contributed five guineas, my friend, presumed to be in Purgatory, would have seven prayers offered up for the deliverance of his soul, for one that another's friend would have who could contribute only one guinea; the latter receiving but a seventh portion of the meritorious appliances that mine would have; and the obvious result would be, that my friend would get out of Purgatory seven times sooner than his. In other words, the speed with which the souls of the faithful escape from the regions of suffering, is precisely in the ratio of the golden stimulus that is placed in the "itching palms" of the priests, by way of hire for masses for the dead.

"I acknowledge the holy, apostolic, Roman Church, for the mother and mistress of all churches; and I promise true obedience to the bishop of Rome, successor of St. Peter, prince of the apostles, and vicar of Jesus Christ." Such is the next article.

"I likewise undoubtedly receive and confess all other things delivered, defined, and decreed by the sacred Canons and General Councils, and particularly by the holy Council of Trent; and I condemn, reject, and anathematise all things contrary thereto, and all heresies which the Church has condemned, rejected, and anathematised."

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You will observe, that the bishop of Rome is called "the vicar of Jesus Christ;" a very awful and perhaps blasphemous assumption. He is also called "prince of the apostles," and "successor of Saint Peter." Now it does so happen, just as it does with what is called apostolical succession, that the very link that is absolutely vital in this claim, is altogether wanting. In the first place, there is not one particle of evidence that the apostle Peter ever was at Rome at all. In the course of a discussion which I had with a distinguished advocate of the Roman Catholic Church, his argument was, that it was perfectly clear that Peter was at Rome, because at the close of his first epistle he says, The church that is at Babylon saluteth you." "What, then," said I, "do you admit that Babylon is the scriptural designation of your Church?" He replied, "Certainly it is." "Then," I said, "turn with me to the eighteenth of Revelation, and read the description of your Church as it is stereotyped there; and I am sure, if there be a possibility of shame in your mind, your countenance must blush as you hear the enormities by which it is characterised." Here let me just state, that what are called postscripts at the close of the epistles, "Written from" so and so, are no part of the word of God; they are additions not of the least value, and often historically inaccurate. At all events, there is no evidence that Peter ever was at Rome. But, in the second place, if he ever was, there is no record of his being Pope, and appointing a successor; and we know that, in certain points, it is clear the Pope does not look like his