but under the conduct of humility. But this is not all: for such is the nature of truth, that after we have embraced it, we can never give it a fixed entertainment, nor ever be secure of not starting from it again, unless we continue under the same influence of humility. For truth, though it want not beauty, yet it is plain and simple, uniform and always alike. Its first and strictest obligation to all its followers is, that advice of the Apostle, "To be of the same mind; to walk by the same rule; and to mind the same thing." So that he who will fix upon truth must necessarily be humble in this respect, he must content himself to think as others do; to agree with the vulgar notion; and to go in the common track. Truth cannot put on those various modes and shapes that please the levity of human affections. Truth cannot start any thing novel and strange, to take the multitude, who admire nothing so much as monsters. Truth can make no room for the pleasure of singularity; none for the love of contradicting; none for the glory of heading, or the interest of siding with, a sect. All these are the rights and privileges of error: insomuch that it is impossible for a man, unless he be humble, to resist the temptation of catching at error, though he has truth already in his hand. And to this purpose it might easily appear from the particular history of all errors and heresies that ever sprung up to the disturbance of the church and the world, that not one of a hundred of them did ever spring from invincible ignorance, and want of light, but from affected mistake, and want of humility. Either ambition of greatness, or the thirst of glory, or impatience of a defeat, or some other designing intrigue of human pride, will appear to have been at the bottom of every dissension. So that all the different opinions which obtain in the world, and the various mists which are cast upon the face of truth, and the clamorous pretences that are laid to her by several sides, which it is certain can never be but one; all these do no way argue either the failure or limitation of God's promise to his church,-that he would send his Holy Spirit to guide her into all truth. They only argue this, that men are arrogant and opinionative, and therefore will not stick, upon every small occasion, to run away from their Guide. This is one advantage that humility brings. It disposes man to give a fixed entertainment to truth. Opinion of ourselves is like the casting of a shadow, which is always longest when the sun is at the greatest distance. By the degrees that the sun approaches, the shadow shortens; and under the direct meridian light it becomes none at all. It is so with our opinion of ourselves. While the good influences of God are at the greatest distance from us, it is then always that we conceive best of ourselves. As God approaches, the conceit lessens, till we receive the fuller measures of his grace; and then we become nothing in our own conceit, and God appears to be all in all.-Dean Young. MISCELLANEOUS COMMUNICATIONS. POPERY. To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine. It is a subject of painful regret, that, amidst the religious means and advantages by which the present period is distinguished, there should be too much reason to apprehend that the system of Popery, with all its pernicious effects, is considerably on the increase in several parts of this kingdom. Many of your readers, I am persuaded, will be much gratified by the following just and powerful delineation of the nature and character of that grossest of all the corruptions of Christianity, from the pen of a writer, "who," (in the words of the late Mr. Hall,) "to a a vein of profound and original thought, together with just views of religion and morals, joins the talent of recommending his ideas by the graces of imagination, and the powers of eloquence." But let us now look at the intellectual state of the people denominated Christian, during the long course of ages preceding the Reformation. The acquisition made by earth from heaven of Christianity might have seemed to bring with it an inevitable necessity of an immense difference, speedily, and for permanence, taking place in regard to the competence of men's knowledge to prevent their destruction. It was as if, in the physical system, some one production, far more salutary to life than all the other things furnished from the elements, had been reserved by the Creator, to spring up in a later age, after many generations of men had been languishing through life, and prematurely dying for the deficient virtue of their sustenance and remedies. The image of the inestimable plant had been shown to the Prophets in their visions, but the reality was now given to the world; it had the "seed in itself;" was of " wholly a right seed;" and claimed to be cultivated by the people, who, in every land, were suffering the maladies which it was endowed with properties to heal. But while by the greater part of mankind it was not accounted worth admission to a place on their blasted, desolated soil, the manner in which its virtue was frustrated among those who pretended to esteem it, as it was, the best gift of the divine beneficence, is recorded in eternal reproach of the Christian nations. As the hostility of Heathenism, in the direct endeavours to extirpate the Christian religion, became evidently hopeless in the nations within the Roman empire, there was a grand change of the policy of evil; and all manner of reprobate things, Heathenism itself among them, rushed, as by general conspiracy, into treacherous conjunction with Christianity, retaining their own quality under the sanction of its name, and by a rapid process reducing it to surrender almost every thing distinctive of it but that dishonoured name. There were, indeed, in existence the inspired oracles; and these could not be essentially falsified. But there was no lack of expedients and pretexts for keeping them in a great measure secreted. It might be done under a pretence that reverence for their sanctity required they should be secluded, as within the recesses of a temple; nor be there consulted, but by consecrated personages; a pretence excellently adapted for effect, since it was, by its very nature, its own security against exposure, the people being kept thus unaware that the sacred writings themselves expressly invited popular inspection, by declaring themselves addressed to mankind at large. And while the deceivers had specious pretexts to cover their management, they were not worse off for the other facilities. In the progress of translation, the holy Scriptures could be arrested and stopped short in a language but little less in telligible than the original ones to the bulk of the people, in order that this "profane vulgar" might never hear the very words of God, but only such report as it should please certain men, at their discretion, to give of what He had said. But even though the people had understood the language in the usage of social converse, there was a grand security against them, in keeping them so destitute of the knowledge of letters, that the Bible, if such a rare thing did ever happen to fall into any of their hands, would be no more to them than a scroll of hieroglyphics. When to this was added the great cost of a copy of so large a book before the invention of printing, it remained perhaps just worth while (and it would be a matter of no difficulty or daring) to make it, in the maturity of the system, an offence and a sacrilegious invasion of sacerdotal privilege to look into a Bible. If it might seem hard thus to constitute a new sin, in addition to the long list already denounced by the divine law, amends were made by indulgently rescinding some articles in that list, and quali fying the rules of obligation with respect to them all. In this latency of the sacred authorities, withdrawn from all communication with the human understanding, there were retained still many of the terms and names appropriate to religion. They remained, but they remained only such as they could be when the departing spirit of that religion was leaving them void of their import and solemnity, and so applicable to the purposes of deception and mischief. They were as holy vessels, in which the original contents might, as they were escaping, be clandestinely replaced by the most malignant preparations. And as crafty and wicked men had a most direct interest in this substitution, the pernicious operation went on incessantly; and with an ability, and to an extent, evincing that the utmost barbarism of the times cannot extinguish genius when it is iniquity that sets it on fire. How prolific was the invention of the falsehoods and absurdities of notion, and of the vanities and corruptions of practice, which it was devised to make the terms and names of religion designate and sanction! while it was also managed with no less sedulity and success, that the inventors and propagators should be held in submissive reverence by the community, as the oracular depositaries of truth. That community had not knowledge enough of any other kind to create a resisting and defensive power against this imposition in the concern of religion. A sound exercise of reason on subjects out of that province, a moderate degree of instruction in literature and science, rightly so called, might have produced, in the persons of superior native capacity, a competence to question, to examine, and to detect some of the fallacies imposed for Christian faith. But in such completeness of ignorance, the general mind was on all sides pressed and borne down to its fate. All reaction ceased; and the people were reduced to exist in one huge, unintelligent, monotonous substance, united by the interfusion of a vile superstition, which permitted just enough mental life in the mass to accommodate it to all the uses of cheats and tyrants, a proper subject of our Lord God the Pope," as he was sometimes denominated; and might have been denominated without exciting indignation, in the hearing of millions of beings, bearing the form of men, and the name of Christians. Reflect, that all this took place under the nominal ascendancy of the best and brightest economy of instruction from heaven. Reflect, that it was in the nations where even the sovereign authority professed homage to the religion of Christ, and adopted and enforced it as a grand national institution, that the popular mass was thus reduced to a material fit for all the bad uses to which priestcraft could wish to put the souls and bodies of its slaves. And then consider what should have been the condition of this great aggregate, wherever Christianity was acknowledged by all as the true religion. VOL. XIV. Third Series. September, 1835. 2 Y The people should have consisted of so many beings, having each, in some degree, the independent beneficial use of his mind; all of them trained with a reference to the necessity of their being made sensible of their responsibility to their Creator, for the exercise of their reason on the matters of belief and choice; all of them capacitated for improvement by being furnished with the rudiments and instrumental means of knowledge; and all having within their easy reach, in their own language, the Scriptures of divine truth. Can any doubt arise whether there were in the Christian states resources competent, if so applied, to secure to all the people an elementary instruction, and the possession of the Bible? Resources competent! All nations, sufficiently raised above perfect barbarism to exist as states, have in all ages consumed, in some way or other else than they should, an infinitely greater amount of means than would have sufficed, after comfortable physical subsistence was provided for, to afford a moderate share of instruction to all the people; and in those Popish ages, that expenditure alone which went to ecclesiastical use would have been far more than adequate to this beneficent purpose. Think of the boundless cost for supporting the magnificence and satiating the rapacity of the hierarchy, from its triple crowned head, down through all the orders, consecrated under that head to maintain the delusion, and share the spoil. Recollect the immense system of policy for jurisdiction and intrigue, every agent of which was a consumer. Recollect the pomps and pageants for which the general resources were to be taxed; while the general industry was injured by the interruption of useful employment, and the diversion of the people to such dissipation as their condition qualified them to indulge in. Think also of the incalculable cost of ecclesiastical structures, the temples of idolatry, as in truth they may be adjudged to have been. One of the most striking situations for a religious and reflective Protestant is, that of passing some solitary hour under the lofty vault, among the superb arches and columns, of one of the most splendid of these edifices remaining at this day in our own country. If he has sensibility and taste, the magnificence, the graceful union, of so many diverse inventions of art, the whole mighty creation of genius that so many centuries since quitted the world without leaving even a name, will come with magical impression on his mind, while it is contemplatively darkening into the awe of antiquity. But he will be recalled. The sculptures, the inscriptions, the sanctuaries enclosed off for the special benefit, after death, of persons who had very different concerns during life from that of the care of their salvation, and various other insignia of the original character of the place, will help to recal him to the thought, that these proud piles were, in fact, raised to celebrate the conquest, and prolong the dominion, of the Power of Darkness over the souls of the people. They were as triumphal arches, erected in memorial of the extermination of that truth which was given to be the life of men. As he looks round, and looks upward, on the prodigy of design, and skill, and perseverance, and tributary wealth, he may image to himself the multitudes that, during successive ages, frequented this fane in the assured belief, that the idle ceremonies and impious superstitions which they there performed or witnessed were a service acceptable to Heaven, and to be repaid in blessings to the offerers. He may say to himself, Here, on this very floor, under that elevated and decorated vault, in a "dim religious light," like this, but with the darkness of the shadow of death in their souls, they prostrated themselves to their saints, or their "queen of heaven;" nay, to painted images, and toys of wood or wax, to some ounce or two of bread and wine, to fragments of old bones, and rags of cast-off vestments. Hither they came, when conscience, in looking either back or forward, dismayed them, to purchase remission with money or atoning Popery. penances, or to acquire the privilege of sinning in a certain manner, or for a certain time, with impunity; and they went out at yonder door in the perfect confidence that the Priest had secured in the one case, the suspension, in the other the satisfaction, of the divine law. Here they solemnly believed, as they were taught, that, by donatives to the Church, they delivered the souls of their departed sinful relatives from the state of punishment; and they went out at that door resolved to bequeath some portion of their possessions, to operate in the same manner for themselves another day, in the highly probable case of need. Here they were convened to listen in reverence to some representative emissary of the man of sin, with new dictates of blasphemy or iniquity promulgated in the name of the Almighty; or to witness the trickery of some detestable farce, devised to cheat or fright them out of whatever remainder the former impositions might have left them of sense, conscience, or property. Here, in fine, there was never presented to their understanding, from their childhood to their death, a comprehensive, honest declaration of the laws of duty, and the pure doctrines of salvation. To think, that they should have mistaken for the house of God, and the very gate of heaven, a place where the Power of Darkness had so short a way to come from his appropriate dominions, and his agents and purchased slaves so short a way to go thither! If we could imagine a momentary visit from Him who once entered a fabric of sacred denomination with a scourge, because it was made the resort of a common traffic, with what aspect and voice, with "rebuke what infliction, but the with flames of fire," would he have entered this mart of iniquity, assuming the name of his sanctuary, where the traffic was in delusions, crimes, It was even and the souls of men? as if, to use the Prophet's language, the very "stone cried out in the wall, and the beam out of the timber answered it," in denunciation; for a portion of the means of building, in the case of some of these edifices, was obtained as the price of dispen- In all this, and in the whole con- We have often mused, and felt a gloom of dreariness spreading over the mind while we have mused, on descriptions of the aspect of a country after a pestilence has left it in desolation, or of a region where the people are perishing by famine. It has seemed a mournful thing to behold, in contemplation, the multitude of lifeless forms, occupying in silence the same abodes in which they had 2Y 2 |