view, which must woefully pollute and deprave the infant mind. There are other truths which they say, the Apostles taught, beside those contained in the New Testament: these were handed down vivâ voce from them to the succeeding age: they have been gradually laid hold of by the Church, and committed to writing and as she cannot err in her judgment and decisions, these traditionary ideas, which are called doctrines of the Church, have her infallibility for their sanction, and are therefore received as nearly or entirely equal in authority with those contained in the word of God. Hence, as from a poisoned fountain flow noxious streams of error, superstition and absurdity. By this one thing another insurmountable barrier is fixed between the Popish and Protestant Churches: it renders an union between them impossible."

"The doctrinal part of the catechism," Mr. B. says, "is as little exceptional as any. The reader will here find the mere facts recorded in the sacred Scriptures, and the general principles of Christianity arising out of them, and depending upon them; and in these the Church of Rome is not unsound. The Doctrine of the Trinity, the Fall of Man, Original Sin, the Merits of Christ, the Grace of the Holy Spirit, the Eternal Misery of the Wicked, and the Eternal Blessedness of the righteous, have all a place in this compilation;" but they are very superficially treated.

In the specification of moral obligations, many branches of Christian duty are fairly and precisely stated; but then,-the duties are all on one side. "What inferiors," Mr. B. observes (p. vii.)" owe to their supe riors is minutely detailed, and sternly enjoined; but what superiors owe to their inferiors will be sought for in vain : not a word on the subject is to be found. Are not the young princes of the new dynasty, and the children of the great officers of State, and those who are to be Bishops and Judges, and Magistrates and Generals, &c. to learn the catechism as well as others? And should not they be taught betimes what they shall in their exalted stations owe to the mass of the people, as well as the people should learn what they owe to them? If this omission sprang from forgetfulness, and not from design, their memories must be of a very peculiar texture. On the day when the Pope issued his bull to sanction such a Catechism, and the Archbishop of Paris his mandate, surely the Church was not infallible."

However this may be-" the infallibility of the Church, (p. viii,) as roundly asserted as when the splendour of Rome was in its zenith, is pregnant with a thousand evils. It snatches the highest authority from the hands of God, and puts it into the hands of man. When a dispute occurs among Protestants, we have recourse to the sacred Scriptures; and

by searching into the mind of God, we decide the controversy: and in this case there is á prospect that the decision will be according to the dic tates of sacred and unerring truth. But where the Church is declared infallible, we are driven from the Scriptures. A man, erring, interested man, determines the question by another rule. In consequence of this maxim, one truth after another disappears, and a system of corruption and superstition is foisted into their place. Who would now regard the opinion of Ecclesiastics in the dark ages, when one half of the Clergy could hardly write their names, and multitudes of them were unable to read? yet the Church then was infallible; and amidst the light of the nineteenth century, their works of darkness must be supposed to have the sanction of heaven. In short, to mention an opinion more extensively hostile to truth and to improvement, would be a matter of singular difficulty."

The ingenious distinction which the Romish Church make: between mortal and veniat sins, is not overlooked, though perhaps not so pointedly stigmatized as it deserves.

The Seven Sacraments all maintain their old place. Transubstantiation is insisted on with all its prodigious absurdities. Auricular confession still holds its place, and more than two leaves are occupied in explaining and confirming the practice. Mr. Bogue here makes some remarks worth extracting, (p. xi.)-" For a person, whether male or femalé, to unbosom to a fellow creature, and to tell a Priest of every thought and word, and action, which is conceived to be contrary to the divine will, is one of the most shocking breaches of mental modesty. A consciousness that all the depravity of the soul is known to a neighbour, must have a degrading effect on the character, and produce degeneracy of soul, and lessen or destroy the restraints arising from ingenuous shame. Whether the greater looseness of morals in Roman Catholic than in Protestant countries, espe cially among females (the sex by far the most attentive to confession) be owing to this cause, is a thought which has at least a claim to serious consideration. Is it not generally observed, that when a woman know, that her departure from the paths of virtue is become a matter of public notoriety, she throws off all the restraints of decency, and becomes openly wicked? Confession, in its measure, may have the same effect.

But if it has an evil influence on the person confessing, it is calculated to have a tenfold worse upon the Priest. His situation is really dreadful ; and he had need of all the purity and zeal of the angel Gabriel, to preserve him from a depravity of mind and foulness of heart, far beyond what is the common lot of human nature. The Priest's ear has been compared to the common sewer, where all filthy things are floating along. But the

comparison is by far too feeble. To have all the dishonesty of the parish; all the hatred and malice, and revenge; all the profaneness; all the plans of deception and injustice; all the evil concupiscence; all the lasciviousness, wantonness, and lewdness, poured into his ears, is a thousand times more than enough to have polluted the heart of Adam in paradise. What a miserable condition he is in! every new confession conveys fresh pollution: his office seems designed to make him vicious, and almost a miracle is required to make him a man of a pure mind. He is indeed to be considered as an object of the most affecting compassion."

The Romish Church still clings to those exploded doctrines which have afforded a source of pecuniary profit; and this affords a complete answer to the question which Mr. Bogue asks, (p. xiv.) Who would have expected to find Indulgences in a cate. hism of the 19th century?

But whatever is a source of emolument, the Church of Rome will not easily renounce. Let her modesty, however, have its share of praise, as she does not now profess to perform the mighty wonders which Tetzel * boasted of, when, Luther was provoked to raise his voice of thunder against them. Into a more diminutive size they are now shrunk. Their virtue consists in mitigating the rigour of the temporal punishments due to sin; that is to say, the punishments due to sin in this world, and in pur-, gatory. They are founded on the satisfaction of Christ, and the saints; and the power of granting them resides in the Pope throughout the whole Church, and in Bishops in their own dioceses, with the limitations, which the Church prescribes. How fond is Rome of placing barriers between man and his Maker! But no wonder, for it is to her that he pays the toll."

In connexion with this stands the Romish doctrine of Satisfaction, which consists in making reparation of the injury done to God; chiefly by means of prayer, fasting, and alms-giving. Purgatory follows next, where they who have not completely satisfied for their sins in this life, must make up the deficiency by the sufferings peculiar to that feigned. place of temporary torment, Purgatory brings in immense sums to the Church of Rome, which professes to hold in its own grasp, and its own power, the keys of this shadowy world; but she never opens its doors without a fee; she never liberates a single soul gratis. Purgatory seems. first to have been imagined by Plato, at least, Plato was the first who gave the fiction "a local habitation and a name." Macrobius quotes the words of Hermagoras, a disciple of the Platonic school, (in Somin. Scip. Lib. II. cap. 17.) "secula infinita dinumerans, quibus nocentum animæ in easdem pœnas sæpe revolutæ, sero de tartaris emergere permittun* See p. 14 of the "Rise of the Reformation," &c. extracted from Robertson's Hist. of Charles V. and published, in a cheap form, by J. J. Stockdale, 41, Pall-Mail.

tur, et ad naturæ suæ príncipia, quod est cœlum, tandem impetratâ purgatione remeare." (Edit. Colon. 1521, p. xlv.) The passage in the 6th Eniad is well known,—

Ergo exercentur pœnis, veterumque malorum "Supplicia expendunt," &c.

This is one, amongst many persuasions, which modern Rome borrowed from ancient Rome. Our late friend, Mr. Brand, many years secretary to the Society of Antiquaries, observes, in the general preface to his curious work on the antiquities of the common people, that-" Christian, or rather Papal Rome, borrowed her rites, notions, and ceremonies, in most luxuriant abundance, from ancient and heathen Rome; and much the greater number of those flaunting externals, which infallibility has adopted and used as feathers to adorn her triple cap, have been stolen out of the wings of the dying eagle." With the ancients, the idea of purgatory seems to have been an harmless speculation, but the Papists turn it to a lucrative account; they persuade the multitude that the Romish Church possesses the faculty of delivering the souls of their relatives from its penal terrors, the feelings of individuals, and families, are thus strongly excited-and, "therefore, fall the people unto them, and thereout suck they no small advantage."

The worship of created beings is still enjoined; the blessed Virgin in particular; Saints are to be addressed in prayer, and the holy Angels are to be supplicated. St. Paul informed Timothy that there was “one mediator between God and man ;"—the infallible Church of Rome maintains that there are many; she impiously invests created beings with the attributes of the Deity, and sacrilegiously takes away from the Son of God the divine honours due to him alone.

In these instances we have followed Mr. Bogue, in the introduction prefixed to his translation. Through a fear of swelling it to a disproportionate size, he does not touch upon every point set forth in the catechism compiled for the instruction and edification of the French people. We shall extract a few samples of the work itself, by which our readers will see that the Church of Rome continues unchanged-semper eadem-in France as well as in this United Kingdom, she works on her votaries by the instrumentality of terror, and endeavours to secure their fidelity by exciting fearfulness and timidity in their bosoms. The poor people nevertheless, "strange as it may appear to some," (says Mr. B.) are exposed to the vain delusion of self-confidence and spiritual pride. They are taught that, by penance, &c. they can make satisfaction for their sins, and that the Priest can absolve him from all his offences, and is able to" raise him from the excruciating agonies of purgatory, to the joys of

Heaven." They must ever be liable to acquire mechanical habits of devo◄ tion, and to place their trust in the efficiency of the opus operatum. It appears very evident that Mr. Bogue is not a member of the Established Church, bat we perfectly agree with him in what he says, (p. xxi),— "One day a man is to be sorry, another day he is to rejoice; to day he is to weep, to-morrow he is to laugh; and the recurrence of these, scores of times in a year, is adapted to produce an up and down temper, a mechanical spirit of devotion, formed not by the influence of God's word, or of the dispensations of Divine providence, but by the Romish calendar. This is not the liberty wherewith Christ has made his disciples free."

What follows we offer as a " portion for the liberalists to drink." Truth and error are incompatible with each other, and are as directly op posed, as "righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial;" woe to that church which blends them! "The portion of gross error," says Mr. Bogue, (p. xxi,) " which is in this catechism blended with the truth of Christianity, merits the serious consideration of every reader, and may justly excite an enquiry what the effects of this mixture are likely to be. There is here a considerable number of the fundamental principles of the gospel; and there is here likewise a considerable number of dangerous errors in direct opposition to these. What shall we say will the effects of this mixture be? "I poured out," said my friend to me, 66 some generous wine, into a cup, and desired my servant to fill it with water. Instead of taking water from the spring, he took it from the common sewer, and has entirely spoiled it." "But the wine is good, pray drink it." 66 No, it is impossible, the mixture is so nauseous that it cannot be drunk: it is become worse than useless: I cannot bear the smella let it be thrown away: it defiles the house." May not a mixture of error with truth be equally disgusting, or at least equally hurtful to those who receive it? Many of the doctrinal parts of this catechism are true and good; but whenever we come to the specification of their influence on the temper and conduct, they are almost universally spoiled by superstition and error."

Speaking of the French catechism, Mr. B. says, (p. xxiv.) "if we may judge from this specimen, the Romish religion in France is nearly the same as it was before the Revolution. Much of its pomp and splendour it has lost its immense endowments and its princely revenues are all gone; but its spirit and pretensions are still the same. The beast, a non-descript, has lost its sleekness and its corpulence, its fat and its size; scarcely any thing remains but skin and bones, and it is chained: but it growls as loud as it did before; and it barks as fiercely as in the days of old, at those who refuse to throw it a sop. Not one doctrine to which Protestants objected, VOL. I. [Prot. Adv. August 1813.]

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