same exception may be made in a minor degree to Mr. Howitt's want of distinctness in reference to the Christian ministry. We object not to the indignant aversion which he displays, either for popery or for the Priestcraft established by the British government, -let those parasites defend them who can: we believe them both to be parts of "the mystery of iniquity, and the working of Satan;" but we maintain that neither the one nor the other have any more relation to Christianity than that they have, Satan-like, assumed a Christian name, more successfully to execute their unhallowed scheme as agents of the adversary of souls, to deceive their blinded followers into the ditch of perdition. We speak not of individuals. Mr. Howitt justly remarks, there are many excellent persons who profess to belong to "the Church of England" whom he knows; and there are, without doubt, many followers of Christ nominally included in the mystical Babylon,but they have discarded the "wood, hay, and stubble” which encumbered them-because it is a universal rule without an exception, that persons who are nominal adherents of the papacy and of the English hierarchy are pious, enlightened, spiritually-minded, and consistent Christians, in exact proportion as they abandon the peculiar characters of the Priestcraft which environs them. This is true everywhere. No man but an obdurate skeptic, therefore, will pretend that the Christian ministry, in its legitimate appointment and evangelical duties, being the direct institution of the gracious Redeemer, under any modification, is related to that Priestcraft which Mr. Howitt devotes to condign destruction. Is there no difference between Peter and Judas, and Paul and Tertullus? Is there no distinction between John the Apostle and Demetrius the shrine-maker of Diana? Is there no contrast between the synagogue of Satan and Polycarp of Smyrna? Can we perceive no contrariety between Dominic, and John Huss and Jerome of Prague ? Were Luther and Leo identical? Were Cranmer and Bonner twin-brothers? Did Whitgift and Cartwright,

or Laud and Owen, or Sheldon and Calamy, or Ward and Baxter, or Warburton and Whitfield, or Lavington and Wesley, belong to the same order of servants of Jesus Christ? The catalogue might be indefinitely extended; and the scrutiny would develop that Mr. Howitt's monster Priestcraft and the Christian ministry, in its strictly executed functions, are separated by the impassable gulf.

It will be requisite, therefore, for the reader of the ensuing "History of Priestcraft," constantly to remember the above discriminating marks, that his mind may not be confused with Mr. Howitt's incidental censures; and especially when he commences the perusal of the chapters devoted to popery and the English ecclesiastical establishment. Mr. Howitt belongs to the Society of Friends; and some of his statements, of course, are unavoidably tinctured by the opinions which he has thus imbibed. His facts are undeniable; but his comments, in reference to the Christian ministry, must be cautiously received. Among almost all the English dissenters, the abominations of Priestcraft are part of their domestic history. The spirit-stirring narrative of the sufferings, imprisonment, and premature death of their puritan and non-conformist ancestors, through the peculation and iron-hearted savageness of their persecutors, is their patrimonial heir-loom. Like the Scotch descendants from the old Covenanters; the memory of their tortured or murdered forefathers is the tale of their firesides. It is one of the first stories which they imbibe from their Christian mothers; it is the impressive record enforced by their intelligent, stern principled, Caleb-like fathers-in the mind and heart almost of infancy, like Doddridge, learning the Scriptures from the painted tiles, it is planted: it "grows with their growth, and strengthens with their strength," in ever-fresh and ever-living remembrance; and whenever they talk or think of "the spirits of just men made perfect," they always imbody with them the persons of the persecuted, but sainted dead of their

own name and blood. The lesson is most salutary, and scarcely ever forgotten.

In these recollections and impressive facts the Friends largely participate; and the memorial with them is probably more vividly ever kept awake by their refusal voluntarily to pay the exactions made upon them by the ecclesiastical "hirelings" of the government. The myrmidons of the bishops, or rectors, or vicars always rob by law the property of the Friends for tithes, Easter offerings, and the other numberless church plunder, which they so iniquitously purloin. These violations of equity and religion form a constant part of the details at the various meetings of the Friends; so that the fire of hatred to "hireling priests" and thieving Priestcraft, never goes out for want of wood. These facts will partially account for Mr. Howitt's indiscriminate censures, and for his confounding of principles, men, and institutions, which have no more real connexion than the truth of God with the wiles of Satan; or the wickedness of a rapacious ruffian Jesuit, with the benevolence, and compassion, and piety of Howard the philanthropist.

This volume was written, as Mr. Howitt declares, "without fear of one class of men or hope from another; his only motive, justice to all and kindness to the poor; his only object, the spread of truth and knowledge, without asking what is politic, but what is right; and as abuse and hostility are the certain fate of every one who defends the truth-let that be as it may."

New-York, September 26, 1833.

PRIESTCRAFT IN ALL AGES,

CHAPTER I.

GENERAL VIEW OF PRIESTCRAFT.

The two evil Principles, Kingcraft and Priestcraft, coeval in their Origin-Innumerable Historians of the one, but none singly and entirely of the other-The real and monstrous Character of Priestcraft-Evil Systems attacked in this Work without mercy, but not Men.

THIS unfortunate world has been blasted in all ages by two evil principles-Kingcraft and Priestcraftthat, taking advantage of two human necessities, in themselves not hard-salutary, and even beneficial in their natural operation-the necessity of civil government, and that of spiritual instruction, have warped them cruelly from their own pure direction, and converted them into the most odious, the most terrible and disastrous scourges of our race. These malign powers have ever begun at the wrong end of things. Kingcraft, seizing upon the office of civil government, not as the gift of popular choice, and to be filled for the good of nations, but with the desperate hand of physical violence, has proclaimed that it was not made for man, but man for it-that it possessed an inherent and divine right to rule, to trample upon men's hearts, to violate their dearest rights, to scatter their limbs and their blood at its pleasure upon the earth; and, in return for its atrocities, to be worshipped on bended knee, and hailed as a god. Its horrors are on the face of every nation; its annals are written in gore in all civilized climes; and, where pen never was known, it has scored its terrors in the hearts of millions, and

left its traces in deserts of everlasting desolation, and in the ferocious spirits of abused and brutalized hordes. What is all the history of this wretched planet but a mass of its bloody wrath and detestable oppressions, whereby it has converted earth into a hell; men into the worst of demons; and has turned the human mind from its natural pursuit of knowledge, and virtue, and social happiness, into a career of blind rage, bitter and foolish prejudices; an entailment of awful and crime-creating ignorance; and has held the universal soul of man in the blackest and most pitiable of bondage? Countless are its historians; we need not add one more to the unavailing catalogue: but, of

That sister-pest, congrégator of slaves
Into the shadow of its pinions wide,

I do not know that there has been one man who has devoted himself solely and completely to the task of tracing its course of demoniacal devastation. Many of its fiendish arts and exploits, undoubtedly, are imbodied in what is called ecclesiastical history; many are presented to us in the chronicles of kingcraft; for the two evil powers have ever been intimately united in their labours. They have mutually and lovingly supported each other; knowing that individually they are "weak as stubble," yet conjointly,

Can bind

Into a mass irrefragably firm

The axes and the rods which awe mankind.

Thus, through this pestilential influence, we must admit that too much of its evil nature has been forced on our observation incidentally; but no one clear and complete picture of it has been presented to our view. It shall now be my task to show that priestcraft in all ages and all nations has been the same; that its nature is one, and that nature essentially evil; that its object is self-gratification and self-aggrandizement; the means it uses the basest frauds, the most shameless delusions, practised on the popular mind for the acquisition of power; and that power once gained, the