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CHRISTIANITY AND

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they are warranted in their veneration of Relics by the prac of abas telfone dooffy bur tice of the first ages, and by the best monuments of antiquity. ylinguib bai these "best" of Papal " monuments" are their Legends; and these very Legends were, be it remembered, the Gospels of Popery for eight hundred years. But where is the British Roman Catholic so totally debased as to avow his faith in these fables of impiety? Yet three hundred years ago he would, in England, have been condemned as a heretic, who expressed even a doubt of their authenticity, as he would be now in Spain, &c. That the Pope is mistaken in the practice of the first ages of Christianity we trust is already proved. "The allusion to St. Augustine is not the Pope's happiest hit ;— does he wish it to be understood that Augustine either lived in the "first age" of Christianity, that he was a Relic-hunter, or that he affected the power of working miracles? Augustine, we know, was Archbishop of Canterbury in the beginning of the seventh, and not the first age, of the Christian world he never pretended to raise one dead man, either by the charms and spells of relics, or by any other means; and, what is more surprising still, there are but very few miracles recorded of his performance in the Legends, or by our Venerable Bede, whose historical, and not his miraculous, matter is the memorial of his fame.

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We now arrive at the Pope's authority for the miracles of his "Church”—and this authority is contained in the above extract from the Bible, which informs us that a dead man, when cast into the sepulchre of Elisha, rose on his feet on touching the Prophet's bones-and that handkerchiefs and aprons from the body of St. Paul cured the sick. Is it, then, because the Omnipotent King of the Universe wrought a miracle by the bones of his Prophet, and empowered his Saint to perform others by the means of kerchiefs and Laprons, is it on this account that " poor worms of the earth," whilst speaking lies in hypocrisy," should have the power of changing every dead carcass-that they, for their own worldly purposes, may choose to consecrate, with every rag

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which they may think proper to submit to their own vain ceremonies into a means of grace, and effect similar ends to the miracles of God, and of those whom he had directly gifted with his authority?-The inculcation of a belief in their miracles, by Popish priests *, is their certain means of establishing a power over the minds of the vulgar; and the latter of every profession are ever too ready to attribute even ordinary occurrences to superhuman, rather than to natural causes. Because miracles were wrought by the rod of Moses, the Romish schoolmaster miraculously makes a good boy from a bad one by the power of his own-every priest's rod (if consecrated) becomes a means of grace, and an extract bfrom Holy Writ, showing the power of the rod of Moses, would be deemed quite sufficient to prove its infallibility! Papists should know, and knowing, they should believe, that it is not the examples of the Almighty God, but his own institutions which are bequeathed to us as means of grace. Because He, to our confined sense, miraculously called forth worlds into the ambient air, called Nature into being, and was pleased to endue some of his most favourable creatures with peculiar powers-are the vain, the ambitious, and the merei cenary, to form themselves into a body, and to aver that to them is delegated the power of working miracles-a power which Scripture + and Reason deny?-Clothes, linen, or any other thing proceeding from the Apostles, who were filled

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The late Dr. Milner, the most redoubtable of the modern champions of Popery, (Miracles and all!) has boldly entered into the very marrow of his subject with much -19 more phrenetic zeal than the Pope himself and who, we should suppose, will be the chief of the next batch of Papal Saints. Of course he sends all to perdition but Papists (wittily sneering at Bishops Watson and Hoadley, as he says, for being " inJe dignant" at his "stinting the Omnipotent in the exercise of his mercy")—but on the subject of miracles, Munchausen was not more at home than Milner. It is true, borthe latter, as well as the former, disbelieves some things he has heard of; but he speaks of such multitudes of marvellously-wrought miracles of his brother Saints as b it requires the very soul of Popery to credit. We give the following sample in his own words; "In like manner (Roman) Catholics have reason to complain of these and other Protestant writers for the manner in which they discuss the stupendous 19/miracle that took place at Saragossa in 1640, to one Michael Pellicer, whose leg having been amputated, he, by his prayers, obtained a new natural leg!"-End of Con. 11 W note, p. 117.1 Matt, vii, 15-24, &c. &c.

as it is, because nothing is impossible to God,"to couple His sacred name with such glaring yet undeniable cone temptible yet wicked, impostures. 90g de lovil sved of

We will first speak of that notable of Papal Saints, Francis, since, as his "gospels" are still worn, so even among the learned of Romanists of the present day, his miracles are Gospel manifest as they are numerous, and quite as useful as they are true. One day Francis took it into his head to have a vision, in which a cross appeared to him, and to which he offered adoration. But, behold when he awoke, he had the same wounds in his body as those imprinted on the sacred person of our Saviour. Yea, his side, hands, and feet, showed the same marks; and that every one of his friends might behold them, we are gravely assured he bore the impression on his person for two whole years! (It is really painful to couple the sacred name of JESUS with these contemptible Legends ; but it must be seen they cannot otherwise be repeated.) This is the Francis d'Assise, who was was employed by his Pope to assist in the extirpation of heretics

(i. e. all mankind who did not acknowledge the supremacy of the Infallible Innocent the Third !)-"A pious and wellmeaning man," says Mosheim, though grossly ignorant and weakened in his intellects."-Many of the murderers of the Albigenses were also "pious pious" "men; but their gross ignorance rendered them the fittest tools for the Popish purposes of blood. From the annalists of Francis, we learn that he preached to Birds, which put up their bills in wonder (as well they might), and clapped their wings with joy. He made a covenant with a wolf also, that the latter should not devour any more human beings, and to which agreement the latter punctually kept. His rencounters with the Devil are

n wriborg od bbe yằm | [ 2915 Mr. Charles Butler appears perfectly satisfied of the veracity of the annalists of this favourite Saint. He says of the Fable here treated of, in his Book of the Roman Catholic Church, that it would be a difficult task to refute any of the learned Francise eans upon the subject. Not having his work readily at hand, we here quote Mr. B.'s observation from memory. adeland's in ab wyk app mude z lo Jon anew yada ogod

too numerous to be particularized; suffice it to say, he always got the better of him. Of course, it must have been impossible to have lived with so great a miracle-worker without acquir ing some knowledge on the subject; and, as might be éxpected, all the brethren of his order became adepts in this Papal Art. Brother Andrew set some birds flying after they had been roasted for his dinner, and so on, ad infinitum. Dominic had (and we believe it) as much to do with the Devil as his fellow-labourer, Francis; but one of his miracles we must particularly notice, as it will show the heresy of the Albigenses*, whom he afterwards slaughtered, in its proper light. Resolved on confounding their prejudices, he changed a dog into a cat, which ran up a bell-rope; yet his victims remained unconvinced, and the cat almost stifled them with offensive exhalations. Swithin performed the important task of making whole a poor woman's broken eggs: Bridget dried her clothes upon a shadow (she thought it had been a TREE), and Aldem his on a sun-beam, but Cadrac hung his staff on the air. Vincent Ferrier raised thirty-eight dead men +3 but he was beaten by Jacinthe, who raised fifty-two. St. James (who was beheaded by Herod Agrippa in Asia) is the St. Jago of Spain, where the good folk travel to Compostello to worship his bones: Dionysius, the Areopagite (the St. Denis of France), Bishop of Athens, was broiled on a gridiron at Paris; yet, wonderful to say, was unhurt: he was thrown to lions, who humbled themselves on his showing them a cross; and after many similar escapes, \a\choir of angels came to his prison where mass was sung, in which other pris Jon Blions ne

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Miln Notwithstanding the inhuman butchery of this noble and innocent race, Dr. true spirit of Popery, thus speaks of them, when, praising one of his Saints (Thus preaching at Sarlat against the impious and impure Henricians, a species of Albigenses," &c. Of their murderer in chief he says: To these [mira cles] I may add the prodigy of Saint Dominic, who, to prove the truth of the (Roman) Catholic doctrine, threw a book containing it into the flames, in which it remained unconsumed, challenging the heretics whom he was addressing to make the same experiment on their creed."—End of Con.

DroMilner says, he had the gift of tongues also. Ibid. We may, in charity, hope they were not of a similar flexibility to those of his annalists?

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soners joined, who were afterwards all beheaded, and then their heads continued to sing. As for Denis, he carried his head out of the company two miles off, and made a present of this Relic to a holy lady, whose name was Catulla. The fables of the founding the churches of Our Lady, at Monserrat, Loretto, &c. would be amusing to young children, if told as romantic instead of true Romish Legends; but there are "children of a larger growth" who profess to believe in them. In the first, a young infant (the daughter of the first Count of Barcelona) releases a Monk from his enchantments, who had formerly seduced her sister. This infant's sister feeling that, as we are told, she had the Devil in her, she applied to the Monk to drive him out; the Monk readily set about it, when the lady's devil took possession of the Monk himself} and to conceal the outrage he then committed, he murdered his penitent. He then, as is usual in such cases, applied for absolution to his Church; but this, the Legend says, could only be obtained but by the penance of crawling on his hands and knees until a child of three months old should bid him rise. The Monk accordingly went creeping about this way for seven years only, when the infant (as above) said, "Arise, and stand upon thy feet, Brother John Guerin," &c. The lady he had murdered was afterwards found alive, fresh, and beautiful as ever; for she had devoted herself to the Virgin, who had preserved her. The building a convent (could they do less?) was the consequence of which the young princess became the abbess, and Guerin, very properly, confessor to the young ladies. Every convent has its Legends*. We will

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*There is a particular Legend of a certain convent, for which we have sought in vain ; but as we know a late Jesuit who was a party concerned in the miracle he himself, in his moments of jollity, narrated, we will briefly mention it. [We beg our Roman Catholic friends not to doubt the occurrence we are about to speak of, as it was not the only miracle that happened to our Priest; since, wonderful as it may appear to some good folk, he actually, though not a Pope, was a papa !] Some years ago, on an eruption of Mount Etna taking place, the lava descending, forced its way in the direction of one of the numerous convents which are to be found within its neigh bourhood: the holy brethren carefully watched its progress until it ceased to flow, and then, to stop its ravages, in full procession, bearing a cross, they solemnly planted it on the verge, marked by the sulphureous matter, which proceeded no further,