Laodicea) it was provided, (Canon 17) "that a lesson should be “ interposed in the midst after every Psalm; which was done” (we are informed) "to take off the weariness of the people, whose "minds might be apt to tire, in passing through those prolix offices, altogether; especially the lessons being so large and many."* How different this from the simple prayer of the heart, and of the closet, as commanded by the founder of Christianity!

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Two circumstances appear to have mainly aided, about this period, in the introduction of public and stated prayer, in the self-named Christian churches; the one, the rise and establishment of a regular priesthood, who assumed the right of interposing between God and the people; and who, by their office, therefore, claimed to be the public medium of the prayers of the church: the other the union of that church, or its priesthood, with the temporal power, and, as a consequence, the corrupt means adopted to assimilate the religion of Jesus with the habits and conceptions of its pagan converts, by which Christianity, instead of being a religion which appealed to the reason of mankind, and which the common people could hear with gladness, was a faith received at court, and established by the strong arm of power; and worship, instead of being that "of the spirit and of truth," became a counterpart of pagan superstition, which it servilely imitated in its orders, titles, garments, ceremonies, and observances; being, in fact, but an ostentatious pageant, intended to impose on the people, and calculated to assist in enslaving them.

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The wily impostor Constantine-whilst using the cross as a warlike banner, the more effectually to gain his ambitious purposes, as a sign under which he was to conquer!-erected magnificent temples; patronized a splendidly endowed priesthood; and provided for all the forms and ceremonies of a worship, called by the name of Christian, but which, in reality, was an incongruous compound of paganism and judaism. Thus become the temporal head of the church, he is said-on all his gold coin, in his pictures, and in his statues to have caused his image to be represented in the posture of a person praying, with his hands spread abroad, and his eyes lift up to heaven!+

* See "Primitive Christianity; or, The Religion of the Ancient Christians, in the First Ages of the Gospel. By Willam Cave, D.D.-London, 1698." Ch. ix. p. 185.

+ Ibid. p. 179.

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A recent writer has, in bold, but correct and appropriate, language, described the Christian church, so called, as it existed in this age, "Suddenly acquiring power, and finally assuming infallibility; observing pagan feasts as religious ceremonies; consecrating heathen rites into Chris"tian solemnities; and, transforming the non-observances' "of primitive simplicity into precedents for gorgeous cere"mony, the church blazed with a scorching splendour that "withered up the heart of man. Every accession to the "dominion of ecclesiastics over his property and intellect, "induced self-relaxation and sloth; to the boldness that "seized a liberal supply for spiritual support, succeeded "the craft that extended it to a boundless revenue for "effeminate indulgence."*

What ensued throughout the ten succeeding centuries is too well known, to need more than a brief narration. As pure Christianity further declined, public prayer, and all its attendant pomps and ceremonies, naturally increased. The religion of the Romish church, when arrived at its meridian-at its "noon of night"-in what is, nearly without a figure, called the dark ages-consisted almost wholly of masses, intercessions, and public prayers for the living, or for the dead, of which the priest was the medium, standing as an intercessor between God and the degraded people the laity, as they were contemptuously called, who were treated and regarded as of a lower caste-the pariahs, or out-casts of the earth.

The outward and ceremonial observances of religion, in this age, attained the greatest height of which they were, perhaps, susceptible. If it was once said of an ancient city, remarkable for its spirit of idolatry, that it contained more Gods than men, it might, with equal truth, at this time, have been said of numerous cities, that they possessed nearly as many priests as laymen; and as many days, in the course of the year, devoted to religious ceremonials, as remained for the civil purposes of life. Worship and prayer, no longer addressed exclusively to the Deity, was extended, with a mixture of profanity and absurdity, to the son of God, and the mother of God-to hosts of angels, and armies of saints and martyrs. Religious worship would thus have been made insupportably tedious and oppressive, but that it naturally became as mechanical as it was formal;

* Ancient Mysteries Described, by William IIone.-London, 1823.

the prayers of the multitude were wafted towards heaven by their ecclesiastics, with as much regularity, and probably with as little feeling, as by the priests of the Calmuck Tartars, who are said to consign the petitions of their laity to a windmill-quietly smoking their pipes, whilst the machinery performs its sacred office. The grossest excesses, and the vilest abominations, were now also perpetrated and encouraged, under the guise of religious worship. Writers have, even in later times, discovered, in supposed Christian observances, remains of pagan enormites, respecting which the decencies of modern times compel us to silence. Setting these aside, however, enough will still remain for our present purpose. Cedranus, one of the Byzantine historians, who flourished about the year 1050, records that

"Theophylact (about the year 900) introduced the practice which prevails even to this day, of scandalizing God, and the memory of his saints, on the most splendid and popular festivals, by indecent and ridiculous songs, and enormous shoutings; even in the midst of those sacred hymns which we ought to offer to the Divine Grace, with compunction of heart for the salvation of our souls."

Reference appears here to be chiefly made to the feast of fools, and the feast of the ass; afterwards so frequently

observed in both the eastern and western churches.

"In France" (observes the author of Ancient Mysteries Described,' p. 157 and 161, when speaking of the former of these solemnities) "in France, at different cathedrals there was a bishop, or an archbishop, of fools elected; and in the churches immediately dependent upon the papal see, a pope of fools; these mock pontiffs had usually a proper suite of ecclesiastics." Having entered the church in masks, some of them personating females, and practising wanton devices, "during divine service they sang indecent songs in the choir; ate rich puddings on the corner of the altar; played at dice upon it, by the side of the priest, while he celebrated mass; incensed it with smoke from old burnt shoes; and ran leaping all over the church. The bishop, or pope, of fools, performed the service, habited in pontifical garments, and gave his benediction."

"The feast of the ass, antiently celebrated at Beauvais every year, on the 14th of January, commemorated the flight of the Virgin into Egypt, with the infant Jesus. To represent the Virgin the most beautiful girl in the city, with a pretty child in her arms, was placed on an ass, richly caparisoned. Thus mounted she preceded the bishop and his clergy, and they all went in grand procession. from the cathedral to the parish church of St. Stephen. On entering the chancel they ranged themselves on the right side of the altar; the mass immediately commenced, and the Introit, Lord have mercy upon us, Gloria Patri, the Creed, were terminated by the burthen of Hin-Han, Hin-Han, in imitation of the braying of an ass."

Ignorance was now, indeed, the mother of devotion; and with ignorance and a love of the mere forms of religion, persecution naturally went hand-in-hand. An act of faith"

was, in later times, the name given to the last sad scene, at which the victims of the inquisition paid the forfeit of their lives to their cruel oppressors. This was emphatically considered as a praiseworthy and pious act of religious worship. Kings, with their courts, have attended it as such; and priests were always, (though professing to disavow it) in reality, the officiating ministers. Little more than a century has elapsed since the last performance of thisreligious ceremony!* Political events have, since that period, produced various changes in the ecclesiastical establishments of the European continent; but we have lately beheld strong and but too successful efforts for the restoration of papal ascendency, and of the Catholic forms of worship. Several facts recorded in the previous number of this workt, will best illustrate the latter position; in France, particularly, the re-establishment of the Brotherhood of the Cross, speaks volumes upon this subject. "Seven "thousand Christians," we are told, "prostrated themselves at "the foot of the cross, and were inscribed in the brotherhood, "amid cries of Vive la Croix-Vivent les Bourbons!"" Amid" tears abundantly shed, the procession commenced, "attended by affecting music, and accompanied by pious songs; passing over a road strewed with flowers, towards an altar "covered with garlands-through triumphal arches prepared by the faithful, as," they say, "in the days of the primitive

* When Mr. Wilcox, afterwards Bishop of Rochester, was minister to the English factory at Lisbon, he wrote the following letter to Dr. Gilbert Burnet.-Dated Lisbon, Jan. 15, 1706.

"MY LORD.-In obedience to your Lordship's commands of the 10th ult. I have here sent all that was printed concerning the last Auto da Fé. I saw the whole process, which was agreeable to what is published by Limborch and others on the subject. Of the five persons condemned there were but four burnt, Antonio Tavanes, by an unusual reprieve, being saved after the procession. Heytor Dias and Maria Pinteyra were burnt alive, and the other two first strangled. The execution was very cruel. The woman was alive, in the flames, half an hour, and the man above an hour. The present king and his brothers were seated at a window, so near as to be addressed to a considerable time, in very moving terms, by the man as he was burning. But though the favour he begged was only a few more faggots, yet he was not able to obtain it." The description which follows of the means taken to prolong the agonies of the victims is too horrible to be transcribed. Such is the loving kindness of priestcraft! The reader will find much valuable information on this subject, communicated in a popular form, in "A History of Religious Persecutions, from the Apostolic Age to the Present Time. By F. B. Wright-8vo.-Liverpool, 1816."

See the Review of the Religious World, p. 41, &c.

church; seven or eight hundred SOLDIERS, many officers, magistrates, and persons of the first rank being present; the "Labanum, or standard of the cross, was carried by VETERANS, who themselves, covered with glory, came that day, to offer sacrifices to the glory of the God of peace."

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Such is religious worship, as now re-established over the greater part of the continent of Europe. In order to trace its progress in our own, as well as in some other countries, we must now go back a few centuries, to the date of what is called The Reformation.

Some evils were here redressed-some corruptions removed some absurdities exploded; but the essential dominion of anti-christ still remained. Religious supremacy, amid the various classes of "protestant papists" in this and other countries, was merely transferred from the pope to the prince, or temporal magistrate; and, whatever might be the extent or the degree of reformation, the priest was still retained, and with the priest, of course, the work of the priest the forms of public prayer; and, more or less, the ceremonial parts of religious worship.

A marked distinction, however, as to the mode of per forming public prayer arose, or was rather revived, at this time, between too numerous and powerful parties. The liturgic form-consisting of pre-composed prayers, in which the people, either throughout, or alternately, in the way of response, accompany the priest-having been the practice of the church of Rome, naturally became that of the church of England, as well as of some other establishments; built, as that was, on the model of the mother church. Whilst the extemporaneous form, more fitted to the excitement of strong feeling, and better calculated for an appeal to the passions of the multitude, has been generally adopted by the more enthusiastic or fanatical classes of dissenters.

The Unitarians, at a later period, possessed of more enlightened doctrinal views, but still retaining the priest at the head of their establishments, have also equally retained,

* For some time the services, as they were called, of the several English cathedrals, though all equally borrowed from Roman missals, were different from each other; thus there were the services of Westminster, of Canterbury, Sal sbury, &c. Inconvenience being supposed to arise from this, one set form was provided by convocation, and afterwards established by law; hence the title The Book of COMMON Prayer. When the Act of Uniformity was passed, this book was therein recited at length, with a view to which it has therefore been truly said, that the form of worship of the established church, is but “ a long act of parliament.”