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that it was at length suppressed. What was still encouraged is sufficiently disgraceful to the Romanists. The bodies of their Saints are even now exposed in their churches; some dried and shrivelled, others reduced to a skeleton, clothed either in religious habits, or in the most gorgeous garments, . . . a spectacle as ghastly as the superstition itself is degrading. The poor fragments of mortality, a skull, a bone, or the fragment of a bone, a tooth, or a tongue, were either mounted or set, according to the size, in gold and silver, deposited in costliest shrines of the finest workmanship, and enriched with the most precious gems. Churches soon began to vie with each other in the number and variety of these imaginary treasures, which were sources of real wealth to their possessors. The instruments of our Lord's crucifixion were shown, (the spear and the cross having, so it was pretended, been miraculously discovered,) the clothes wherein he was wrapped in infancy, the manger in which he was laid, the vessels in which he converted water into wine at the marriage feast, the bread which he brake at the last supper, his vesture for which the soldiers cast lots. Such was the impudence of Romish fraud, that portions were produced of the burning! bush, of the manna which fell in the wilderness, of Moses's rod and Samson's honeycomb, of Tobit's fish, of the blessed Virgin's milk, and of our Saviour's blood! Enormous prices were paid by sovereigns for such relics; it was deemed excusable, not to covet merely, but to steal them; and if the thieves were sometimes miraculously punished, they were quite as often enabled by miracle to effect the pious robbery, and bring the prize in triumph to the church for which it was designed. In the rivalry of deceit which the desire of gain occasioned, it often happened that the head of the same Saint was shown in several places, each Church insisting that its own was genuine, and all appealing to miracles as the test. Sometimes the dispute was accommodated in a more satisfactory manner, by asserting a miraculous multiplication, and three whole bodies of one person have been shown; the dead Saint having tripled himself, to terminate a dispute between three churches at his funeral! The

1 Dugdale, i. 225. This was shown at Exeter, with a piece of the manger in which the infant Saviour was laid, and a piece of the table at which the last supper was eaten.

catacombs at Rome were an inexhaustible mine of relics. But the hugest fraud of this kind that was ever practised was, when the contents of a whole cemetery were brought forth as the bones of eleven thousand British virgins, all bound from Cornwall, to be married in Armorica, carried by tempests up the Rhine to the city of Cologne, and there martyred by an army of Huns under Attila. Even this legend obtained credit; all parts of Christendom were eager to acquire a portion of the relics, and at this day a church may be seen at Cologne, literally lined with the bones!

With the reverence which was paid to relics, arising thus naturally at first, and converted by crafty priests into a source of lucre, Saint-worship grew up. If such virtue resided in their earthly and perishable remains, how great must be the power wherewith their beatified spirits were invested in Heaven! The Greeks and Romans attributed less to their demigods, than the Catholic Church has done to those of its members who have received their apotheosis. They were invoked as mediators between God and man; individuals claimed the peculiar protection of those whose names they had received in baptism, and towns and kingdoms chose each their tutelary Saint. But though every Saint was able to avert all dangers, and heal all maladies, each was supposed to exert his influence more particularly in some specific one, which was determined by the circumstances of his life or martyrdom, the accidental analogy of a name, or by chance and custom, if these shadows of a cause were wanting. The virtue which they possessed they imparted to their images, in which indeed it was affirmed that they were really and potentially' present, partaking of ubiquity in their beatitude. For the Monks and Clergy promoted every fantastic theory, and every vulgar superstition, that could be made gainful to themselves; and devised arguments for them which they maintained with all the subtleties of scholastic logic. Having thus introduced a polytheism little less gross than that of the heathens, and an actual idolatry, they hung about their altars (as had also been the custom in heathen temples) pictures recording marvellous deliverances, and waxen models of the diseased or injured parts, which had been healed by the Saint to whose honour they were there suspended. Cases enough were afforded by

'Lewis's Life of Pecock, 79. Medrano. Rosetum Theologicum quoted.

chance and credulity, as well as by impostors of a lower rank; and the persons by whom this practice was encouraged, were neither scrupulous on the score of decency nor of truth. Church vied with church, and convent with convent, in the reputation of their wonder-working images, some of which were pretended to have been made without hands, and some to have descended from Heaven! But the rivalry of the monastic orders was shown in the fictions wherewith they filled the histories of their respective founders and worthies. No language can exaggerate the enormity of the falsehoods which were thus promulgated, nor the spirit of impious audacity in which they were conceived; yet some of the most monstrous and most palpably false, received the full sanction of the Papal authority; the superstitions founded upon them were legitimated by Papal Bulls; and festivals in commemoration of miracles which never happened,— nay, worse than this, of the most blasphemous and flagitious impostures, were appointed in the Romish kalendar, where at this day they hold their place.

While the monastic orders contended with each other in exaggerating the fame of their deified patriarchs, each claimed the Virgin Mary for its especial patroness. Some peculiar favour she had bestowed upon each. She had appointed their rule of life, or devised the pattern of their habit; or enjoined them some new practice of devotion, or granted them some singular privilege. She had espoused their founder with a ring, or fed him like a babe at her breast!-(it is fitting and necessary that this abominable system of imposture should be displayed :)—and each of the popular orders had been assured by revelation, that the place in Heaven for its departed members was under her skirts. All therefore united in elevating her to the highest rank in the mythology of the Romish Church, for so in strict truth must this enormous system of fable be designated. They traced her in types throughout the Old Testament: she was the tree of life; the ladder which Jacob had seen leading from heaven to earth; the ever-burning bush; the ark of the covenant; the rod which brought forth buds and blossoms, and produced fruit; the

1 The curious reader is referred to Sir Thomas More's Dialoge, for an example of the scandalous practices arising from this superstition. St. Valory's, in Picardy, was the scene: p. 76. Ed. 1530.

2 For example, the five wounds of St. Francis.

fleece upon which alone the dew of Heaven descended.

Before

all creatures and all ages, she was conceived in the Eternal Mind; and when the time appointed for her mortal manifestation was come, she of all human kind alone was produced without the taint of human frailty. And though indeed, being subject to death, she paid the common tribute of mortality,... yet having been born without sin, she expired without suffering, and her most holy body, too pure a thing to see corruption, was translated immediately to heaven, there to be glorified, and enthroned higher than all saints and than all orders of angels. This bodily translation had been presumed, because, had her remains existed upon earth, it was not to be believed but that so great a treasure would have been revealed to some or other of so many Saints, who were worthy to have been made the means of enriching mankind by the discovery; and that all doubt might be removed, the fact was stated by the Virgin herself to St. Antonio. Her image was to be found in every church throughout Christendom; and she was worshipped under innumerable appellations, . . . devotees believing that the one which they particularly affected, was that to which the object of their adoration most willingly inclined her ear. As an example of the falsehoods by which this superstition was kept up, it may suffice to mention the brave legend of Loretto, where the house in which the Virgin lived at Nazareth is still shown, as having been carried there by four Angels. The story of its arrival, and how it had been set down twice upon the way, and how it was ascertained to be the genuine house, both by miracles, and by the testimony of persons sent to examine the spot where it was originally built, and to measure the foundations, ... received the sanction of successive Popes, and was printed in' all languages, for pilgrims of every Christian nation, who were attracted thither by the celebrity of the shrine, and by the indulgences promised to those who should visit it in devotion. By such representations and fables, the belief of the people became so entirely corrupted, that Christ, instead of being regarded as our Mediator and Redeemer, appeared to them in the character of a jealous God, whom it behoved them to propitiate through the mediation of his Virgin Mother, for through her alone could mercy and salvation be obtained. Prayers were ad

I have seen it in Welsh, brought from Loretto.

dressed to her as our life and hope, our advocate and mediatrix, who was to reconcile us to her Son. The Pantheon, which Agrippa had dedicated to Jupiter and all the Gods, was by the Pope, who converted it into a Church, inscribed to the blessed Virgin and all the Saints. Nor was it in idolatry, polytheism, and creature-worship alone, that the resemblance was apparent between the religion of Pagan and of Papal Rome. The Priests of the Roman Church had gradually fallen into many of the rites and ceremonies of their heathen predecessors, profiting in some cases by what was useful, in others not improperly conforming to what was innocent, but in too many points culpably imitating pernicious and abominable usages. The incense which was employed in Christian Churches, as profusely as it had been in honour of the discarded Gods, was grateful, and perhaps salutary; the lamps, which burnt perpetually before the altar, an allowable mark of reverence to the place; the holy water, to be censured, not as symbolical in its use of that inward purification which is required, but for the purposes of gross superstition to which it was so easily abused. The open shrine, and the rustic chapel, give a character of humanity to the wild, of religion to the cultivated, country; they are good in their intention, and in their uses; and it is only to be desired that the Romish Saints which are there installed, as they have superseded the objects of earlier idolatry, shall themselves be removed, and the Cross alone be seen there.

Some, even of the reprehensible resemblances between Popery and Paganism, were accidental, having arisen in both from the excess and misdirection of the same natural feelings. But the greater number arose from a desire of accommodating the new profession of the converts to their old ceremonies, and of investing the Clergy with the authority and influence possessed by the Pagan priesthood. Both motives led to the toleration of customs which ought not to have been permitted, to the introduction of ceremonials more burthensome than those of the ritual law which had been abrogated, and to the adoption of so many outward and visible signs of Paganism, that, had it not been for the Cross, the appearances of the old system would have predominated. The change meantime which took place in the spirit of the religion thus strangely corrupted, was not less re

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