Where, I ask, are all these? "and echo answers where?" They are no where to be found in the creeds of men. We behold cruelty and revenge, and hatred and malignancy there, but we may search in vain for these bright and beautiful angels of mercy. Long since did they spread their golden wings, and with a mournful requiem, slowly and solemnly depart from beyond the pale of the chris tian church.

More than thirteen hundred years ago, the Papal church, in her unconquerable thirst for power, and to accomplish her ends, even at the sacrifice of thousands and millions of human victims, gradually denied the "love" and "simplicity" and "char ity," for which the religion of Christ had been so justly valued, and instead of these introduced many of the most absurd and cruel doctrines of which the mind can possibly conceive. A general judgment, a purgatory, and an endless hell of fire and. flames, peopled with devils aud damned spirits, suffering tortures inconceivable and eternal, these horrid dogmas were all taught by the Romish church, as the fundamental doctrines of christianity. The Bible had no circulation amongst the people, and was interpreted by their spiritual teachers according

to the designs of the church. Mysterious rites and ceremonies were introduced, and, in short, every measure taken which art or ingenuity could devise, or hatred and cruelty invent, to make the religion of Christ an engine to inspire fear and dread.

An appeal to the good feelings and desires of the soul, in order to produce a repentance and reformation, was no longer regarded as evangelical. "We should love God, because he first loved us;" and "it is the love of God that leadeth to repentance," were sentiments which soon became entirely obsolete in the teachings of the professed heralds of the cross. Such doctrines were, indeed, so directly at war with the spirit of cruelty and revenge which was lurking around the very heart of the Papal church, that an exhibition of the beautiful simplicity and mercy of the Gospel would have put both church and pontiffs to an open shame. No, their designs were cruel; their schemes ambitious. And. it was necessary to have a religion whose spirit and whose principles corresponded with dark and fearful operations of kings and potentates. And so God was represented as a most cruel tyrant, filled with revenge at the crimes of the wicked, and ever ready to con

sign any miserable heretic to the dark regions of endless damnation. To do the will of the priests, was to do the will of God. And wo, wo! to that unfortunate wretch who should presume to dictate to himself in matters of faith and works. And hence the most horrid, cruel and blasphemous execrations and anathemas were pronounced, by order of the church upon all such as should dare to think for themselves, and act for themselves, and worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences. Nor was this all; for thousands, and I might add perhaps in truth, that millions of good men and women were not only excommunicated from the church, but put to death in the most inhuman and bloody manner, simply for opinion's sake.

Thus were men ruled by fear, and made religious by fear. In short, the whole vast work of the church, during the age of which I am speaking, social, ecclesiastical and political, was a work founded in despotism, cruelty and revenge. And so completely had the mild and beautiful religion of Jesus been changed, that "the LAMB of God which taketh away the sin of the world had become a LION" that would tear in pieces and vora

ciously devour millions and millions of God's own offspring. The FATHER of the universe had become a FIEND, and for the space of a thousand years during the dark ages, the mild and humane and tender spirit of the blessed Gospel was totally extinguished in the bosom of the visible church of the Redeemer. All was enshrouded in the dark gloom of terror. Fire and faggot universally prevailed, and the Pope and the See of Rome held unlimited sway over the minds of

men.

The distinctive sentiment of an endless hell, and of an omnipotent Devil, was the great engine which moved all the ponderous machinery. Nothing could be effected without this. And to sustain this doctrine, all the texts of Scripture that contain a single threatening, of what nature soever, was tortured into an application to that subject, and if possible, made to sanction it. Thus it was through the dark ages. Thus it has been since the startling reformation under the celebrated LUTHER, 300 years ago; for though the infallibility of the Pope, and the supremacy of the church were denied, and strenuously opposed in the great revolution which was so boldly undertaken by this intrepid

man, yet all the errors which had been gathering around the heart of the church for centuries, remained untouched.

Christianity, for a long series of years, had been anything but christianity. It had become one living, moving mass of ERROR. A body corrupted in every limb! But the great leaders in the Reformation seemed to be unmindful of this fact. They acted with an eye single to the power and assumption of the Romish hierarchy. So that all the monstrous errors of the Catholic creed, as terrible and revolting as they are, are now discoverable in the creeds of almost all Protestant churches in christendom. There they stand, purporting to be part and parcel of the religion of Christ, but great engines of fear and terror. And the very same means are still in vogue to help them there; vizA misconstruction of the Revelation of God!

For notwithstanding a brighter day has dawned upon the Religion of Jesus, and the spirit of inquiry is running from heart to heart, and men are everywhere abandoning the cruel spectres of Papal darkness, yet there are thousands and millions, even to this day, over whom the power of tradition, and early received impressions hold such unlimi