I shall now offer a few more testimonials from the ancient reformers, showing their opinion of the effects of the reformation, so called.

Melancthon. "Indeed, speaking modestly, any other state of things, in any other age, exhibits the beauty of an age of gold, when it is compared to the confusion which the reformers introduced."

The same Melancthon writes to one of his correspondents;

"All the waters of the Elbe would not give me sufficient tears to bewail the miseries of the reformation. The people will never submit to the yoke which the love of liberty made them throw off. Our partizans fight, not for the gospel, but ascendency. Ecclesiastical discipline no longer exists. Doubts are entertained on the most important subjects; the evil is incurable !!"

In the preceding number I presented the picture of Luther, as a reformer, drawn by himself. I now present a picture of him, from his own writings, before he commenced reformer.

"When I lived in my monastery, I punished my body with watching, fasting, and prayer; I observed all my vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Whatever I did, it was with singleness of heart; with good zeal, and for the glory of God."

How much better he was made by becoming a Protestant, has already been seen.

Musculus. 66 If any one wishes to see a multitude of knaves, disturbers of the public peace, &c. let him go to a city where the gospel is preached in its purity;" referring of course to a reformed city.

Erasmus, though a Catholic, was a scholar and a philosopher. He marked the progress of the reformation with the eye of a master, and his testimony goes to corroborate that of the reformers. He was an eye witness of the introduction and progress of the reform

ation, and noted its phenomena with the accuracy of a candid and correct historian. The following is from his description of the fruits of the reformation.

"And who are those gospel people? Look around you, and show me one who has become a better man; —show me one, who, once a glutton, is now turned sober; one, who, before violent, is now meek; one, who, before avaricious, is now generous; one, who, before impure, is now chaste. I can point out multi-tudes who are become far worse than they were before."-"They have abolished confession, and few of them confess their sins, even to God. They have abrogated fasting, and they wallow in sensuality.They have become Epicureans, for fear of becoming Jews. They have cast off the yoke of human institutions, and along with it the yoke of the Lord. So far from being submissive to Bishops, they are disobedient to the civil magistrate. What tumults and seditions mark their conduct! For what trifles do they fly to arms!"-"It is folly to exchange evils for evils, and madness to exchange small evils for great ones."

Beza has left sufficient monuments of his intolerance in his Tractatus de Hereticis puniendis, and of his murderous disposition in the part he acted in different rebellions, and in the assassination of the Duke of Guise. Of his dissolute manners, his epigrams, printed in Paris, 1548, are a sufficient testimony, one of which commences thus ;

"Abest Candida, Beza quid moraris ?
Andebertus abest, quid hic moraris ?
Sed utrum, rogo, præferam duorum?
Amplector quoque sic hunc et illam," &c.

"This Candida, of Beza, was the wife of a tailor in Paris, by name Madame Claude, with whom this licentious divine, when under prosecution in the latter city, fled to Geneva."-Milner

And this is the man so often quoted as authority in the commentaries of Scott!!

There is no difficulty in tracing the steps of the Protestant church down to the present day, both by its persecutions and general immoralities. Not an age has passed in which any one sect was clearly in the majority, unmarked by persecution. Of the immoralities of the different sects, their own publications are the best witnesses. Hardly a Presbytery, or Synod, or General Convention meets, without the usual lamentations over their churches, on account of profane swearing, drunkenness, Sabbath breaking, fraud, covetousness, and the et cetera of general immoralities. And yet, Sir, with all these facts staring you in the face, you maintain sufficient impudence to accuse the Universalists of the same immoralities, and impute them to our principles! as if they were not matters of sufficient notoriety in your own communion, boasting a principle which you consider as much preferable to ours, as the light of the meridian sun is greater than the phosphoric twinkling of a glow worm.

Should my health be restored after the distressing illness by which I am now confined, the subject of the present number will be concluded in the succeeding, when the value of our different principles may be determined by a criterion from which no appeal can lie. Yours,

CANDIDUS

NO. 5.

To Rev. Joel Hawes,-Hartford.

SIR-Having through the blessing of our Heavenly Father, been restored to a state of comparative health,

I hasten to redeem the pledge given at the close of my last. I shall not pay so poor a compliment to your understanding, as to presume you ignorant of the means in my possession for the redemption of this promise. Sufficient has already appeared to satisfy any rational man, that abundance of facts is in store for this purpose, and the only difficulty lies in selecting the most important, and setting them in order for the specified purpose.

The writings of the Protestant Fathers show conclusively, that in the early ages of the Reformation, the advantages were clearly in favour of the Romish church, in general morals, even after the Lutheran and Calvinistic dogmas had converted nations. Then, if ever, ought we to look for fruits differing materially from those of the mother church. If, however, we are to take the writings of the nursing fathers of the Reformation, as proof of its effects, the picture is indeed appalling. If, in searching the history of the Reformation, we should find that its leaders were men, whose characters would sanction the belief that their ostensible was their real object; or if those who joined their standard, became obviously better men and better citizens, than they were while in the Catholic faith, a strong presumption would prevail, that they were actuated by an improved religious principle, and that the reformation was genuine. Such, however, does not appear to be the case, and a few facts will be added, as corroborating the quotations already made.

Luther's testimony is not yet exhausted. "Formerly, when we were seduced by the Pope, men willingly followed good works, but now all their study is to get every thing to themselves, by exactions, pillage, theft, lying, usury." "It is a wonderful thing, and full

of scandal, that from the time when the PURE DOCTRINE, was first called to light, the world should grow worse and worse."

How much better was Luther's opinion of his own pure doctrine, than is yours of Universalism?

Bucer. "The greater part of the people seem only to have embraced the gospel, in order to shake off the yoke of discipline, and the obligations of fasting, which lay upon them in time of popery; and to live at their pleasure, enjoying their lust and lawless appetites with out control. They therefore lend a willing ear to the doctrine that we are justified by faith alone, and not by good works, having no relish for them." Another inquires "to what else does the greater part pretend, except by shaking off the heavy yoke of superstition, to launch out more freely in every kind of lasciviousness?"

Strype, though an advocate for the reformation, gives a horrid picture of his times under the following heads "Covetousness of the nobility and gentry; oppressions of the poor; no redress at law; the judges ready to barter justice for money; impunity of murders; the clergy very bad from the bishops to the curates; and above all, the increase of adulteries and whoredoms."

Notwithstanding Luther renounced the supremacy of the Pope, he had no scruple in applying a title of pre-eminence to himself, with the reasons therefor, in the following words; "Martin Luther, Ecclesiastes of Wittemburg; for, it is not fitting that I should be without a title, having received the work of the ministry, not from man, or by man, but by the gift of God, and the revelation of Jesus Christ."

And yet it is remarkable that with all this boasting, by his own account, he had frequent conferences with the devil, through whose influence he was induced to leave the mass! The truth is, that Luther was an unprincipled, hot-headed leader, who had no concern either for purity of doctrine or morals. That he had none for the former is evident by a reference to his