these promises he has sealed by taking the sacrament? Now, then, with these solemn engagements in his recollection; and knowing that he is forbidden even to sit at table with drunkards, and being assured that drunkards shall not inherit the Kingdom of Heaven, what must the Priest be, who is himself a drunkard; who is himself given to much wine, and who, while he is running over the service, is in haste only to get at the feast and the bottle? What are we to think of a Priest of this description? How are we to find terms wherein to apply to him a due portion of our reprobation? But if we abstain from censure, we may surely ask where can be the utility of such a Priest; and how such a Priest can be a bond of union and a holder together of the flock of Christ?

The fact is, that all the dissensions in the Christian Church; all the breaking off into sects; and all the consequent divisions in communities, and enmities in neighbourhoods and families arising from this cause; that all these have arisen from the negligence, the listlessness, the laziness, the various debaucheries of the Priesthood; and especially from their drunkenness and gluttony. Their sensualities of another description have been common enough. Greediness and cruelty have not unfrequently been prominent features in their character; but gluttony and drunkenness, and especially the latter, are not easily disguised from the eyes of the world; and have, therefore, had a more powerful effect than some other vices in alienating the flock from the pastor.

The mass of mankind are the creatures of habit; they generally follow in the track of their fathers; and to shake things long established is, therefore, diffi

cult. Yet, the Christian world has been continually experiencing revolutions occasioned by the misconduct of the Priests. The law clothes the Priest with every thing calculated to excite reverence; but to hear precepts of sobriety from the lips of a well known drunkard; or precepts of fasting and abstinence from a lump of mortality weazing and choaking with fat; these are too much for common sense to endure they overcome the powers of habit and the injunctions of law. The flock is disgusted. It becomes infidel, or it quits the Pastor; and this is the natural progress of things, which, in their result, if they do not justify the community, condemn the Priest.

The French people were represented as barbarians, as Deists, as Atheists, and as every thing hateful amongst men, because, at the beginning of their revolution, they cast off the Priests. The King of France had been called the most Christian King; and the people of France were certainly not less pious than their neighbours. How astonished, then, were we to see his people, all at once, turn upon their Priests, drive them into foreign lands, or tear them into pieces! But, when we consider, that these Priests, while they preached humility, abstinence and temperance, were amongst the most haughty and insolent of mankind; that they lived a life of feasting, drunkenness, and of all sorts of debauchery, at the expence of the labour of a people half starved; when we consider these things, we cease to be surprised at the conduct of the French people towards their Priests: our wonder is, not at the vengeance taken upon them, but that that vengeance was so long delayed

The Priests of France had made vows of chastity

and, for the far greater part, of abstinence also; and yet, it was computed that they were the fathers of more illegitimate children than all the other men in the Kingdom; and that they consumed more wine than a hundred times their number of men in any other rank of life. Ought such a band of men, such a horde of profligates, to have been permitted to exist? Was it not the duty of the most Christian chief Magistrate to interfere, and abate the pestiferous nuisance? The Magistrate did not interfere; the nuisance was suffered to proceed till the disgust at, and hatred of, this insolent and debauched body became universal, and until the resentment against it became irresistable.

If, with such a Priesthood, with such expounders of the bible, with such "spiritual guides," the people became luke-warm, doubting, unbelieving, and even profligate and reprobate; if they became impatient, resentful, vindictive and bloody, at whose door lay the sin? Who had set them the example of debauchery and profligacy? Where was the Convent that had not poured forth it's streams of poison to corrupt the morals of the people? Where was the city, the town, and almost the village, which had not witnessed the gluttony and drunkenness of the Priests; and where was the family that had not been robbed of it's patrimony or the fruits of it's labour to satisfy the ever-craving appetites of this gormandising and guzzling herd? Then, when men were enabled to look back to the injunctions to chastity, humility, mercy and sobriety, put forth by the Apostles and Disciples of which these men pretended to be the successors, how were their bosoms to be prevented from swelling with feelings of resentment; how were their hands to be restrained from

inflicting punishment on the daring and impious impostors !

If unbelief prevail, therefore, let it be ascribed to, it's true cause. If divisions take place amongst Christians; if sects arise, and feuds and deadly animosities succeed, let the Priesthood take the blame to themselves. Laws may be made, formulas may be promulgated; penalties may be attached to defection or non-conformity; but in the end, reason, justice, manifest right, are too strong for them all. Men will not believe him to be a saint who lives the life of a sinner. "To make others weep," says the Critic, "the poet must weep himself;" and, certainly, to make others believe in the soundness of our teaching, we must ourselves practise what we teach. Did it ever yet happen, that, in order to induce his soldiers to enter the breach, the Commander himself turned his back and ran away? To persuade men to labour, do we ever ourselves give striking proofs of our own laziness? To induce our children to abstain from gaming and to give them a horror of that vice, do we ourselves take them to the gaming-table to see us place our fortunes upon the hazard of ne die? Who, then, is to expect that a gluttonous and a drunken Priest will have a temperate and sober congregation; and, how necessary is it, then, that the law-giver and the Magistrate, in every community, take care that no protection, and especially that no grace or favour, be given to a Priesthood whose lives are a continual example of, and a continual encouragement to, an indulgence in this too prevalent and most pernicious of vice!

After all, however, were a Nation so unhappy;

were it afflicted with those chosen curses, an effeminate. debauched and profligate King, and a Priesthood addicted to gluttony and drunkenness; after all, notwithstanding these vicious examples, the people have themselves to perform their duty. Every man has conscience to guide him, and in these days, none is deprived of access to the commands of God himself. Kings, Magistrates, Priests may set evil example; but, after all, man has an account to settle with his Maker; and in that account evil example, from whatever quarter it may have come, can never be a justification of misconduct.

The Bible, from one end to the other, enjoins temperance and sobriety. SOLOMON, in Prov. Ch. xxiii. V. 31, says, that the " drunkard and the glutton shall come "to poverty ;" and in V. 29 and 30 of the same chapter he asks, "Who hath woe? Who hath sorrow? "Who hath contentions? Who hath babbling? Whe "hath wounds without cause? Who hath redness of eyes?" The answer is, " they that tarry long at "the wine, they that go to seek mixed wine."

Never was a truer picture than this. Here are the effects and here is the cause. The drunkard, he who delights in drink, passes upon himself the sentence of poverty, and of unpitied poverty, too: he suffers all its pains and penalties without receiving and without meriting compassion; because he has sinned, as was before observed, against nature as well as against reason and the word of God. "Drowsiness," says Solomon, "shall clothe a man with rags." And of all the drowsiness and laziness that is witnessed in the world nine-tenths arise from an inordicate indulgence ir drink. When once this vice hrs kep fast hold of a

!