beneath the shadow of the Cross. It was maturing its plans; watching the movements in the enemy's camp; and learning how to accomplish a plausible compromise between God and the world. The conspiracies of the first century were thus the radical principle of the highest triumph achieved by any subsequent form of Antichrist.

Electrified and confounded therefore, as a Christian philosopher at the present day might at first be, could he be transported instantaneously from the seclusion of his closet to the Basilica of St. Peter's, during the pageantries of a festival; yet how rapidly would his astonishment subside into the calms of contemplation, when he could recal to his mind the simple circumstance, that, for eighteen centuries, mankind had been employed in elaborating the stupendous spectacle before his eyes, with all its adjuncts, out of the Gospel of Jesus Christ! Their success is indeed great and overwhelming; but not greater than the urgency of the case prompted. It is the natural, inevitable result of the world's endeavour to darken the effulgence of truth, and to divert its rays in such a manner as might seem to light up man's own inventions.

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Christians, whose minds, as instructed from

above, look before and after, would wonder if things were otherwise. They are not strangers to the maxim, that in proportion to the excellence of any thing is its capacity of abuse. In the same proportion is it found necessary to impose upon human ignorance by dazzle and glare; that is, by such an exterior as overpowers men too much to allow of their investigating what it conceals.

The above remarks surely reduce the question, Whence originated Catholicity? within definite and narrow limits. It exhibits a creative, restless principle, always in action, and quite sufficient to explain every mystery of paganized Christianity. Where, then, exists the necessity of dilating the subject according to the immeasurable scale usually adopted? Fathers, councils, schoolmen, cardinals, are not only without authority; but their interference is positively superfluous. We can anticipate all they can advance; since whatever they allege is comprized, in its elements, in our present theory.

Neither does it more efficiently determine the debate, when Protestant disputants, on the other hand, bring forward counter-statements from the same fathers and councils; and turn the

ordnance of these artillerists upon themselves. On the principle we assume, it can be of no avail, when they allege, for instance, that Paschase Radbert invented the Real Presence; Ignatius Loyola, the order of Jesuits; Dominic, the Inquisition; and Benedict, a certain order of Monachism. We are concerned, imme

diately, with the doctrines and observances which we find; and not with the dates of their appearance. It matters not, in this view, what sides Radbert and Berengarius took in the controversy of the Eucharist. The invention itself, like every super-addition to Papal despotism, was only a step found to be necessary in the progress of a system intended to enslave mankind.

To illustrate this part of the argument, I would ask, whether, in the ferment excited among us by the question of the abolition of Slavery, we are anxious to ascertain, at the present hour, what individuals have rendered their names illustrious, in colonial history, by the discovery of the cart-whip, the iron collar, and the brand?

No: our undivided aim is the ultimate annihilation of sanguinary oppression. The system may have its own accurate and undisputed

chronology of cruelty and avarice; but this part of the investigation is remote, and practically useless. The mere annalist of guilt and misery may, indeed, busy himself with the arrangements of dates and events occurring in West-India history; as they who compile the memoirs of the age of Louis the Sixteenth may find it expedient to detail the invention of the guillotine, and the organization of the Revolutionary Tribunal. But if your friend be assassinated, do you ask, except perhaps for the purpose of fastening upon the murderer his guilt, when and where he purchased his dagger?

CHAPTER VI..

ASSUMED INFALLIBILITY OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC HIERARCHY.

Imperial Rome governed the bodies of men, but did not extend her empire further. Papal Rome improved upon imperial: she made the tiara stronger than the diadem ; pontiffs more powerful than prætors; and the crozier more victorious than the sword. She devised a system, so complete in all its parts for the subjugation both of body and of mind, that, like Archimedes, she asked but one thing, and that Luther denied her-a fulcrum of ignorance on which to rest that lever by which she could have balanced the world.- COLTON.

We will now dare to approach a point in the discussion, where the spirit of Antichrist has displayed all its malignity, throughout every division of the Christian world, but chiefly in mystic Babylon-I mean, the question of Ecclesiastical Polity.

So extraordinary is the irritation produced, in certain circles, even by the mildest allusion to this subject as matter of controversy, that a by-stander might imagine, that the entire of the Gospel were comprised in the arrange