the right of consecrating the bishops of their several departments, and so they had the power of making only such instruments as were fitted to their use. They called councils and presided in them; they received the complaints and appeals of the inferior clergy, and exercised the supreme dominion in the Church." At length the scales of ascendency turned in favor of the Roman Pontiff, and Gregory the Great got himself acknowledged the legitimate successor of St. Peter, and the vicegerent of God for the whole Earth. "The keys of Heaven and Hell he has fastened to his girdle, and purgatory is the prisonhouse, where he confines disobedient souls till money enough is paid down for their release. The forgiveness of sins must connect with confession made to the priest, and money must be paid for the intercession of departed saints."

And now the ten proselyted kings, with the power of imperial Rome in their hands, have come to surrender it all to "His Holiness," to whom they dedicate this great house of wicked lucre, for the use and behoof of the clergy. Thus Christianity becomes a Temple of Priestcraft.

PROTESTANTISM VS. CHRISTIANITY. 195

SECTION III.

Protestantism the Overthrow of Christianity.

The Reformation, in common parlance, is that period of Church amendment which happened between A. D. 1517 and the end of the sixteenth century, and comprises, as Noah Webster tells us, "the change of religion from the corruptions of popery to its primitive purity." This definition is less acceptable than the one proposed by that select writer named in a foregoing note, whose orthodox testimony I have so often adduced, and shall continue to adduce, in confirmation of my own researches in this argument. He calls it "a return towards primitive Christianity." Without stopping to analyze these conventional assumptions, I hasten to displace them with the anonymous and less general opinion, that the Protestant Reformation is the work of extirpating Christianity; that it began with partial revolts from ecclesiastical imposition, but has subsequently progressed by rational illumination of the human mind through the gradual development of natural science and philoso

phy, and will end with a universal rejection of Christism, in the absolute reign of Reason.

I do not mean to assert that Luther and his immediate coädjutors attempted all this, or even conceived that such a work would ever be, or ever ought to be, accomplished. I mean to say that the principle of Religious Liberty, according to which the subordinate clergy attacked and overthrew the papal usurpation, is broader than their ecclesiastical policy; that to some minds, long before their day, that had promised more than was compassed by their undertakings; and that the spark struck from Saxon steel by the Protestant flint, presently kindled into a flame which still burns, and will continue to burn, to the utter consumption of all irrational authorities.

To see the truth of this statement, nothing more is necessary than to subject ecclesiastical events to the clear light of Reason, and to discriminate between cause and effect in the premises of our induction. This Church-historians generally have failed to do. They have begun their work with assuming that the Christian Faith is a pure principle, productive only of good; and when they come to consider its evil

workings, they forever impute these to the presumed hypocrisy and infidelity of believers. In this they resemble a Foulah, or other African fool, who puts his religious trust in gree-gree. One of these ridiculous saints, who carry their savior in a horn slung under the arm, as I have been told by a missionary to Liberia, disclosed his faith to a certain American sea-captain, by offering to stand as a mark to be shot at, declaring that his "horn of salvation" afforded a better protection to his person than any coat-of-mail. The captain of course was more willing to kill the superstition than the man, and therefore proposed to substitute the horn itself for the live target. The negro at length assented; and the shooter sent a bullet through the sacred horn, dashing it in pieces, and spilling the worthless gree-gree on the ground. "Ah! me see now," exclaimed the unwavering believer; "dat gree-gree bad: fill de horn wid good gree-gree, you no hit him den." It is precisely this kind of logic which has persuaded a great many wellmeaning people in Christendom that popery is a corruption of Christianity, instead of its complemental development that all the heresies, frauds, emula

tions, persecutions and bloody contentions, which have marked the rise and progress of ecclesiastical power, from Paul the apostle to Leo the Vicar of God, are chargeable to the want of that very faith which has been universally professed, and for which all have ostensibly contended. It strikes me that men have never reasoned so badly on any other subject, and that Christians themselves would never have erred so widely, if they had not first discarded the plain maxim of their nominal master, that "a good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree is known by its own fruit;" and that all "the corruptions of Christianity," so-called, are really legitimate fruits of its interior principle, is what I now propose to demonstrate.

There are two ways of doing this. In the first place, we may reason from cause to effect, and say that the religion of Paul, coupled as it has been with the historical character of mankind during the last eighteen hundred years, was well fitted to produce just such a mass of abominations as all good men in later times have protested against. Then we may