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is with their church to the end of time. It strikes me, however, that he could not have been with them at that point in the progress of time when the Council of Constance sat.

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I do not know what others think, but for my own part I don't believe that any power on earth has a right to limit a grant of Jesus Christ, or, in other words, to take away what he has given. He said of the cup, "drink ye all of it”—and I, for one, will do it, and I think all ought—and if the Catholics will come over to us, they too shall have the cup of salvation. O, if I had the ear of the Catholics now, I would not ask them to confess their sins to me, but there is a thing I would tell them: I would say, My dear Catholic brethren, you never remember Christ in his sacrament. You only half remember him. He said, eat and drink in remembrance of me. You only do one. You do not show the Lord's death; for Paul says, as often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do show the Lord's death." It is only they who do both that make this exhibition. Christ's death is not shown by the bread merely, but by both the elements. I know your church says that the blood is in the body, and that, in taking one, both are taken, for that "Christ was entire and truly under each kind," as the council decrees. But how came Christ himself to know nothing of this? Did he do a superfluous thing in giving the cup? What if the blood is in the body, and the bread being changed into the body, we take the one in taking the other, we want the blood separated from the body, the blood shed. The blood of Christ is not an atonement for sin, except as it is shed. Catholics, you

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never celebrate the Lord's Supper. Supper there was a cup. In yours there is none. You hold that the discourse in John, 6, relates to an atonement, and there it is written, "except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you." Now, according to his own principles, you have no life in you, for you do not drink his blood. The most you can be said to do is, that you eat it in connection with his body! One thing more, Catholic brethren. There can be no such thing in reality as half a sacrament. To divide a sacrament is to destroy it. What follows then, but that the whole sacrament is taken from you! Look at thisjust fix your mind five minutes on this subject, and you are, I do not say what, but you are no longer a Catholic. Five minutes. That is all. But you say, I must not doubt; yet you may think, and God the judge will never condemn you for exercising your mind.

29. Extreme Unction.

When it looks as if one was going to die, then by all means let the priest be sent for: and when he has come, let him receive the dying man's confession, (but if the priest should be long in coming, I would advise him to confess to God. I think it would answer as well. Indeed I prefer that near way to pardon, to the other circuitous route)—and let him then in that extremity anoint him with oil! This is extreme unction

—a sacrament-one of the seven! I think they must have been at a loss to make up the seven, when they pressed this into the service.

There don't seem to be a great deal of religion in it; nor indeed any excess of common sense. But to speak of it as constituting a preparation for death is really shocking. What! a preparation for dying, and for meeting and answering to God, procured by the intervention and unction of a human priest-done by oil! Truly this is an easy way of getting to heaven, particularly where priests are plenty. I do not wonder that the Catholic religion is popular. This is indeed prophesying smooth things. We Protestants have no such doctrine to preach. When we are called to see a sick person, we candidly acknowledge that there is nothing we can do for him which shall infallibly secure his salvation. We tell him what he must do that he must repent and believe in Christ: and then we ask God to undertake and do for him. It is only on certain conditions that we can assure him of his salvation. The priests say that they can insure the person's salvation; but to any such power as that we do not pretend.

But have not the Catholics plain Scripture for their doctrine of extreme unction? If they have; if it is written, and not merely handed down, then I am at once a believer in it. Let us see: they adduce two passages in support of their dogma, Mark, 6: 13, and James, 5: 14. The first is historical. It affirms that the apostles "anointed with oil many that were sick and healed them." The other is hortatory. "Is any sick among you? let him call for the elders of the church; and let them pray over him, anointing him

with oil in the name of the Lord," that is, doing what the apostles are represented by Mark as having done; and doing it, as appears from the next verse, with the same end in view, viz. healing. Now, what authority for the sacrament of extreme unction is there here? Here is indeed an anointing with oil by an ecclesiastic. But who does not see in how many particulars, and how widely this anointing differs from the extreme unction of the Catholics? Their anointing proceeds on the supposition that the person is going to die; and could his recovery be foreseen, it would be omitted. But the anointing practised by the apostles and elders of the church was in order to the recovery of the person, and was in every case connected with his recovery. Their anointing was the attendant and token of a miraculous cure. It held precisely the same place with Christ's making clay of spittle, and anointing therewith the eyes of the blind man; or with Naaman's being directed to go and wash seven times in Jordan. It was, like each of these, an external, and in itself inefficacious sign of a miraculous recovery; and even now there is no objection to the use of the sign, if the thing signified is to be expected. Let the priests anoint with abundance of oil all their sick, if they can accompany that unction with such a prayer of faith as shall save the sick. But if the miraculous recoveries have ceased, let there be a doing away of the sign. As soon as any sign becomes insignificant, let it cease to be used. Extreme unction is now a sign of nothing. There was no use in going down into the pool of Bethesda after the angel had ceased to pay his periodical visit to it. So in this case, there being now no healing, there need be, and there should be, no anointing.

How the priests now differ in their use of the oil from those whose successors they pretend to be! The apostles and elders anointed persons with a view to their living; but the priests with a view to their dying. The former would not anoint, if they foresaw the person was to die; the latter will not, if they foresee that he is to live. How at odds they are! How Scripture and tradition do quarrel! And the worst of it is, there is no such thing as bringing about a reconciliation between them.

Among the doctrines of the Catholic church, I am at a loss whether to give the palm to this or to purgatory. Purgatory teaches the doctrine of salvation by fire. Extreme unction, the doctrine of salvation by oil. There does not seem to be much Christianity in either. Extreme unction is, however, the smoothest doctrine. Decidedly so. Jesus Christ came by water and blood. The salvation he proclaims is by these; and the sacraments he instituted, are Baptism and the Lord's Supper. These signify something: the first, regeneration; the second, the propitiation made for our sins.

30. Doing Penance.

Insufferable! What? Why, that the Catholic translators of the Bible should render the Greek word, which signifies repentance, (metanoia,) by the phrase doing penance! I would not willingly be uncharitable, imputing a bad motive where a good one might have

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