of the continent, with some exceptions, had become either too unimportant, or too quiescent, to attract more than, now and then, an idle and transient expression of dislike. The religion of England was locally too distant to be seen; and it was also confined within our own island. But the recent invasion of the continent by British zeal, and especially the rapid and widely diffused effects of the Bible Society, summoned to arms, as with the shrillest clarions of alarm, the entire soldiery of the kingdom of Antichrist; and we once more repeat, in this place, our conviction, that the present war, raging from the head-quarters of Mohammedanism itself, to the western division of the British empire, and to aid which too many professed Protestants have joined the unholy alliance, is, practically, a gathering together of the nations against the Bible. This indeed is its one distinct, avowed, determinate object. It is not an expedition fitted out at Constantinople, or Rome, or at some subordinate arsenal and port of the Antichristian empire, against any specific fortress of the Reformation; but the point of attack is THE BOOK, which, according to its various enemies, contains the elements of universal mischief. As once, at Ramoth-Gilead, the king of Syria commanded the captains of the chariots, saying, "Fight ye not with small or great, save only with the king of Israel," so, in the present thickening conflict, the instructions delivered to the commanders and subalterns of the forces in array against us, when divested of the formalities of office, are,-"Op. pose not specifically the consistories of the Lutheran Church, the hierarchy of England, the General Assembly of Scotland, or even the conventicles of Independency, Methodism, Unitarianism, or Antinomianism; but fight only with the volume containing the professed foundation of these multiform heresies; lest this charter of evil should be yet farther disseminated, and ultimately shake the authority of the conclave and the

divan, refute the infallibilities of the koran, and the missal, and involve in one common ruin the holy places of St. Peter and St. Sophia."

Without, however, meaning to identify the interests of the Roman and Mohammedan communions, and of the other parties hostile to the Bible, we speak the sentiments of every true Protestant, in asserting, that the court of the Vatican feels the utter impossibility of suffering its divinity, and modes of worship, to establish their claims by a reference to the holy Scriptures; and therefore, between an unreserved study of the Bible and the Catholic population, a great gulph must be fixed. It is a matter admitting no compromise; the separation must be complete and absolute. Let no one stigmatize our periods as positive, or as intemperate, till he has read, among other documents, the circular letter of Pope Leo XII. to the patriarchs, primates, archbishops, and bishops of the Roman-Catholic Church; the bull of jubilee for the year 1825; and the annual pastoral charge of the Irish Roman-Catholic prelates. Extracts from the last appear in our Number for January, p. 62. A translation of the two former, with notes, was recently published by Messrs. Butterworth. Parts of these documents are inserted in Mr. Cooper's volume, as justifying the solemnity of his appeals to the original principles of Protestant readers. For the conclusion to which he comes is, that the spirit of Popery survives at this moment, as it existed in the pontificate of Leo X.; and that its superiors have never recanted any single dogma established by the decrees of the Council of Trent. We admit that whoever has seen with his own eyes, and heard with his own ears, the visible and audible mysteries of the Latin Church, as they are now practised in St. Peter's and the favourite basilicas of the "eternal city," or in Naples, Madrid, Vienna, and the principal cities under papal influence, must be convinced that, even

were its creed, or doctrinal system, pure as the aspirations of a seraph, still the actual ritual of their worship must, to a Scriptural Protestant, appear to be a continual insult to the common sense of mankind. Were indeed this all, one plea might perhaps be urged in its favour, that the delusion and corruption of the heart are not necessarily combined with the errors of the understanding. But Popery levels its devices at the heart, and, through the affections, degrades and enslaves the judgment. The Roman-Catholic religion is indeed sometimes called a corruption of Christianity; and at others, Paganism in a Christian guise; but whatever its designation may be, it is, in naked reality, the religion or irreligion of the world fighting against the genuine Gospel of Jesus Christ. It is so constructed as to be found an opiate for the guilty conscience; the refuge of man, obscurely conscious of his own sinfulness, and of his consequent exposure to punishment, yet unwilling to submit to "the righteousness of God," and to become in heart and life "a new creature in Christ Jesus." This adaptation of religion to relieve men from their natural fears; this release of the soul-with what ease and rapidity! —of its burden, by the apparatus of the confessional, mass, and other similar externals of the system, is the true secret of its ascendency over the mind. It is the human road to heaven; and what man makes for his own track of salvation is sure to run in an opposite direction to the narrow way which alone leads to eternal life. We are not writing a regular essay against Popery; but the subject of the work before us necessarily points to what is now in full action on the seven hills. Mr. Cooper refers us to the undesigned and concurrent testimony of the numberless tourists who, within these few years, have described the * Mr. Cooper (p. 253) particularly recommends a popular, and, we believe, accurate work, called "Rome in the Nineteenth Century;" published at Edinburgli (1820) in 3 vols. 12mo.

*

abject idolatry and incredible ignorance of the population, noble and plebeian, of the papal kingdoms; and particularly the elaborate mystifications which awe and delude our young compatriots; thinking, as some of them do, that the animal emotions created by the contemplation of the transfiguration, and of the heathen statuary converted into the images of saints and martyrs; created also by listening to the overwhelming pathos of the misereres of the Sistine chapel, are devotion! These were indeed the arguments which wrought conviction in the mind of Kotzebue, and in the end effected his conversion to the Roman, Catholic religion. Many others will probably undergo a similar process. "Gods such as guilt makes welcome" are too often, we fear, the real divinities of Catholic mythology. They are not God the Father, reconciled, in Jesus Christ, to such as are partakers of the Holy Ghost; for though these names and ideas remain in their formularies, and sometimes in connexion with strains of fervid and sublime devotion, yet in practice too frequently all is lost, or is hidden under the superincumbent pollutions. Many of these abominations are the worse for the exterior of taste, beauty, and majesty with which they are invested; and, to reverse a well-known position, in this view vice itself augments its evil by losing its grossness. The victim perishes by a draught of secret poison administered from a crystal vase. But it is time to introduce to the reader Mr. Cooper's inquiries on this subject.

"What have been the marks and fruits of national reformation and improvement, which, since the restoration of peace, have characterised the kingdoms of the beast? What proofs have they manifested of an amended and ameliorated state on the great subjects of religion and morals? Have the kings and potentates of the papal earth,so wonderfully and almost miraculously reinstated in their ancient thrones, testified their gratitude to God, by endeavouring to promote among their subjects a purer worship, and a holier knowledge of Him, their gracious Benefactor? Penetrated by a sense of his goodness and power,

so strikingly displayed towards themselves, have they suppressed with abhorrence the mummeries and abominations of Popery, and renounced the idolatrous worship of the Virgin? Have they anxiously sought to enlighten the minds of their people, and to deliver them from the bondage of error and infidelity, by aiding every effort to disseminate among them the unadulterated word of God? Have they discountenanced the violation of the Sabbath; and endeavoured, by legislative enactments, and by the influence of their own example, to introduce a more scriptural observance of that sacred day, in the place of the heathenish and licentious profanation of it, which previous ly had so generally disgraced the papal kingdoms? Has any large portion of the community throughout any of these kingdoms expressed any desire for alterations and improvements of these descriptions? In the dissatisfaction and opposition which the people have so generally manifested in regard to those who have authority over them, is it the reluctance or supineness of their rulers, as to purifying the national religion, or correcting the public morals, which has formed any part of their complaints? Have they in these things set an example to their rulers, and by any outward improvement in their own conduct, have they given evidence of an amended principle within? Has a more elevated tone and line of moral policy marked the nations in question? Have they displayed a more sacred attention to the rights and feelings of other nations? Have they been distinguished by a stricter regard to justice, humanity, and fidelity, in all their political transactions? Alas! we are surely constrained to reply in the negative to all these questions. Public events and private information unite in compelling us to conclude, that one great use which the papal potentates have made of their recovered sceptres, has been to restore and reestablish the corruptions of Popery; to bind in still stronger fetters of ignorance and superstition the minds of their subjects; and to extinguish those sparks of liberty and right feeling which had been excited among them, which had inspired some hope of an amended state of things, and which, if cherished and encouraged, might have been kindled into a flame of moral and religious improvement; that the population of the papal kingdoms, however in some instances they may have endeavoured to oppose the revival of political grievances, have, in general, acquiesced, without any expressed disapprobation, in every attempt to resist the progress of moral and religious amelioration; and that consequently, from the influence of these combining causes, the actual state of the papal countries in general, so far as the interests of religion and morals are concerned, is at this moment in a retrograde condition; and exhibits a far more gloomy and awful aspect than it did even at the termination of the revolutionary CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 280.

war. Witness, in support of these conclusions, the principles of despotism so openly avowed, so unblushingly recorded, and so practically developed in the unjustifiable invasions of Naples and Spain. Witness the systematic opposition in most of the papal countries, and especially in the dominions of Austria, to the free circulation of the word of God. Witness the revival by papal authority, of the order of Jesuits, the most experienced and indefatigable emissaries of the Church of Rome; their restoration to all their former privileges; and the renewed and recognised acceptance of their services by the Holy See. Witness the Papal Bulls, repeatedly issued against the principle and the objects of Bible Societies, and conveying their animadversions in language little differing from that of profaneness and blasphemy. Witness the revived sufferings and difficulties of the Vaudois churches, struggling anew in the valleys of Piedmont, with Roman-Catholic oppression and tyranny. Witness in every town of Italy the idolatries and abominations of Popery universally practised, and exclusively supported, to the extinction of pure religion and worship. Witness the intolerance and bigotry of Spain and Portugal, who, in their new-modelled conceptions and codes of liberty, and of the rights of man, could find no place for religious freedom, nor could grant to any others than to Papists, the right of serving God according to their conscience. Witness in France the restless and unceasing endeavours of the court to revive the spirit of Popery, and to reestablish the follies and pageantries of the Roman-Catholic church. Witness in that country (as in every other country of the beast) the allowed habitual desecration of the Lord's day, and the profane application of it to purposes far less congenial with its instituted design then even worldly labour and secular occupations. Witness in that country the continuance of the licensed abominations of the Palais Royal and the moral degradation of the capital. Witness in that country the monstrous iniquity of the slave-trade, revived and pursued with renovated vigour, under circumstances of very aggravated guilt, in the face of a direct recognition of its enormity, in a defiance of national engagements, in a violation of national honour. Other testimonies of a similar kind might be adduced, and observation will abundantly supply them. But these are sufficient for the purpose of supporting the conclusions before us. Let us only bear in mind the additional weight which these testimonies derive from the consideration of the time in which these things are doing, and of the situation of the parties who are doing them. It is in the nineteenth century of the Christian era: it is when the full blaze of pure Christianity is illuminating the mists of papal darkness, and even in some places, notwithstanding every precaution to the contrary, is pene

2 H

Have Papists ceased to be Papists? Now, it is evident, that while they continue to be professors of Popery, they will of course retain much of what we may justly designate as mummery, and they will still address their prayers absurdly enough to the Virgin Mary. But this is a charge which, be it remembered, no less affects the Greek than the Romish Church, and which no less affects five-sixths of the population of Ire land, (about a third of the whole population of the United Kingdom), than it affects Italy, France, Spain, or Portugal. But with all her revived mummery, it may surely still be a fair question whether France be not now in a better state in respect to religion, morals, and government, than during the closing decade of the last century, or at any preceding period. And even in Italy, Spain, and Portugal, there has not, we apprehend, been any deterioration in these respects, but rather an improvement. Is it no improve ment, for instance, that Protestantism should be tolerated in France; that Bible Societies should be allowed to exist there? That in Spain the Inquisition, instead of being a secret tribunal, should have been converted into an open court? That in Portugal, the Inquisition should have entirely ceased? That in the colonies of Portugal, and even inLisbon itself, Catholic churches should have been appropriated to English Protestant worship? That in Leghorn, for instance, and even in Rome itself, such worship should be allowed by authority?

Again; while we fully admit that many of the continental governments are justly charged with not having laboured to enlighten the minds of their people, with not having aided in disseminating the word of God, and with not having framed laws to prevent the desecration of the Sabbath, yet, we would ask, is no part of this serious charge applicable to our own Protestant realm? And in so far as it is applicable, is not our guilt, consider

ing our superior advantages, of a more aggravated character than theirs? Have our rulers in church and state, (speaking of them generally, for there are doubtless bright exceptions,) given their support and countenance to that part of our clergy who have been labouring most assiduously to enlighten the minds of the people? Or have they not rather in too many instances regarded and treated these devoted servants of their Lord with marked dislike and discouragement? Nay, do we not owe it to the freedom of our political institutions, rather than to the anxiety for the diffusion of religious light which is prevalent among them, that the men to whom we allude are even tolerated? Then have we nothing to complain of on the score not merely of supineness in disseminating the word of God, but of active opposition to those who are zealously engaged in that work? And, with respect to the Sabbath, have not some good men laboured in vain for the last thirty years to obtain some legislative correction of the abuses and profanations of that sacred day, which abound among us? The very intimation of such a purpose has been met on more than one occasion only by scorn and derision; and Sunday newspapers continue to multiply, and the ordinary occupations of life to be pursued, on that day, in open defiance of the Society for the Suppression of Vice, and of the inefficacious enactments which it vainly endeavours to enforce; enactments which, however they may prove the piety of our forefathers, are now become ridiculously impotent.

In the popular discontents which, during the period that has elapsed since the return of peace, have prevailed both in Ireland and in the manufacturing districts of England and Scotland, there certainly have not been visible many traces of that high moral feeling, the want of which among continental malcontents Mr. Cooper regards as one of the symptoms which mark out the