for which state the whole discipline of the gospel was designed to prepare them. Let those who are courting the favour of men; whose objects are answered here; who, in the present life, have their reward-let them give up the hopes of an hereafter--let them renounce the name of CHRISTIAN and our opposition to them is at an end; it is as Christians we arraign them-it is as Christians we try them -it is the assumption of that honoured name that constitutes the gravamen of our charge against them.

But convinced, as we are, that true religion can never prevail until this specious, showy, popular system of outward faith, which blinds men's eyes and satisfies their consciences, is brought into disrepute, it will be our object, in these papers, to detect and to expose the religious hypocrisy of the times-to examine and to analyze the mass of folly and delusion which passes current for Christianity-to bring to light the vile arts which are practised on public credulity -and to trace conduct and principles to their just motives and consistent objects. In the execution of the task we have thus imposed upon ourselves, if our language should be strong, and our reprobation decided, let it not be supposed that we are actuated either by personal feeling or party spirit-we have no selfish objects-"we have no resentment;" but, convinced that an inveterate disease, which preys on the vitals and tugs at the life-strings of the system, is not to be removed by opiates, we venture to apply the most active remedies that our materia medica can furnish.

The subjects which will come under observation in these papers will, necessarily, be so various that we have not been enabled to fix upon any plan of arrangement. Our observation, and that, indeed, of the public, has, of late, been chiefly directed to the CHARACTER AND CRIMES OF THE CLERGY; and to this subject, specifically, we propose devoting the remainder of this paper, conceiving that its present importance will justify us in leaving for a future occasion any more general examination and notice of the religious world. It is our intention, also, to confine our strictures to the regular, the established clergy of this and other of the states of Christendom. These stand first in importance: these, from their alliance to worldly power, have the greater means of mischief. We have no attachment, certainly, to priests of any denomination; but a dissenting priesthood is a luxury in which ignorance and fanaticism have a natural right to indulge: an established priesthood is an incumberance to which all are alike compelled to become contributory.

Turning our attention first then to the south of Europe, the Peninsula may be regarded as the head quarters of priestcraft as the hot-bed and forcing-frame of fanaticism and superstition.

SPAIN, at the present moment, engages the observation: of every friend to humanity; and the ecclesiastics are notoriously the instigators or instruments of those calamities of which that ill-fated country is now the unhappy scene. There is no spectacle at once so truly interesting and so sublime as that of a nation-groaning under oppression, and enchained in superstition and slavery-rising from the dust with a giant's strength, and claiming those common rights and equal laws which are essential to the happiness and well-being of mankind. Spain had placed herself in this noble attitude:

Spain" (to use the terms of the report recently addressed by the Spanish Secretary of War to the Cortes) "was advancing majestically in the career of liberty, and was affording a proof, in the tranquillity and content of her inhabitants, of the possibility, in this enlightened age, of passing, without convulsion, from a state of ignorance and despotism to one of knowledge and rational liberty. The Cortes were assembled; abuses were reformed; new institutions were established with so much order and harmony, that Spain was, under this new aspect, the admiration of the universe, as much as she had before been in the arduous undertaking of resisting Buonaparte. Some nations wished to imitate her example; and, in short, the political code of Spain served as a model, and was adopted by several European nations."

"This glorious circumstance" (continues the reporter) " which affords the best eulogium of our institutions, was precisely the cause of our present sufferings. The genius of despotism is alarmed; trembles for the existence of his cherished system; foresees its total ruin; and, deaf to the cries of liberty which surround him, silently and secretly prepares the ruin of those nations which, having made themselves free, will not allow him to interfere in their internal affairs."

The character and conduct of the clergy, by whose machinations the fair prospects of the Spanish nation have been thus cruelly marred, are sufficiently conspicuous. All the accounts from Spain agree in representing them as the fomentors of disorder-the accursed demons of discord and of strife. Merino and many others of the insurgent chiefs are, in fact, priests. O'Donnel, the general in chief of the army of the faith, in Navarre, avows, in a recent address, that religion and the worldly interests of religion are the objects for which he fights.

"The Regency" (says he) "commands me to put myself at your head; to direct your tried valour and your efforts towards the sole end of all good and loyal Spaniards, which is to replace the religion of our fathers, now debased

and outraged, in all the splendour which it once possessed in the midst of a nation so justly celebrated by its catholicism.

66

The spirit of this religion, which is now to be maintained by the swords of traitors and the devices of priests, is admirably illustrated by reference to one of the "secret "instructions" given by Eguia, to General Quesada, on his taking command of the army of the faith, which instructions are said to have been found among the papers of Quesada, when defeated at Bolea.-Art. 7. You will not give quarter "to any prisoner taken on the field of battle, even though the enemy should treat theirs with the greatest forbearance pos"sible!!" From the Madrid papers, of August last, we are furnished with certain honourable testimonies of the part taken by some of the dignified clergy, in the present distressing state of Spain. In Malaga the Bishops Canedo and Valez appear to have acted an insiduous and odious part, in fomenting the public distresses and seducing the authorities. But in Algesiras the direful plot, in which the ecclesiastics were engaged, appears to have been exposed to the government, by the defection of one of the political chiefs, who is said to have made known "the crusade that was in prepara"tion, previous to the month of July, and even sent a pattern "of the crosses which were ordered to be made at Gibraltar."

"The result" (adds the writer) "has proved in unison with what we have seen every where, in attempts to replunge us into slavery, in the name of God. The Bishops of Malaga and Ceuta, practising the scandalous and notorious infraction of human and divine law, have employed themselves in misleading the minds of the inhabitants of the Serrania, who are the victims of the grossest superstition and the lowest ignorance, joined to a ferocity and boldness of character, of which the priests know how to avail themselves to their own advantage. The most miserable inhabitants of the deserts of La Ronda have been excited, by means of the clergy, and misled by the idea that those are martyrs, who die for the temporal interests of fanaticism."

The compound of cruelty and superstition, of which the character of these defenders of the faith is made up, is well exemplified by the instance recorded in the accounts from Barcelona, of the 2d August, in which some infuriated banditti had entered the house of the Rigidor of Dosrius; and, having dragged the Rigidor and his son into an adjoining wood, impelled by murder, robbery, and religion, they sent for the curate of the parish to confess them, as their consciences would not permit them to shoot any person until the ceremony of confession was performed!

The addresses of the insurgent chiefs are in the same spirit with these monstrous proceedings. In one of these

compositions, printed at Bayonne, the Navarrese are invoked to this effect:

"The insults suffered by our holy religion, which is publicly outraged by the arms of the Liberals, excite terror. The proclaimers of the most perfidious of men cry down with religion! The devil for ever.' (Meura la religion! y viva el demonio.)

"The people of Erro and Viscaret deplore the profanation of the churches, and the sacrilegious robbery of the sacred utensils, caused by the Vandals of Spain.

"The standard of the faith is unfurled; and the banners of the king are every where displayed. Hasten then to join them; and, bravely fighting for our captive king, Ferdinand, this faction of impious Republicans will instantly vanish, who endeavour to deprive us at once of eternal felicity, and of temporal happiness."

""

The Navarrese are finally conjured to hazard their lives "in the cause of God, of the king, and of the country.' But what says the king, whose name is made the sanction to these transactions? Ferdinand, in his address to the Spanish nation, dated Sept. 16, declares that these proceedings are abhorrent even to his bigoted breast.

"The scenes" (says the king) "which the contests between the sons of the country and their criminal adversaries produce, are too public not to demand my attention-too horrible for me not to denounce them to the acts of the law, and not to excite against them the indignation of all those who are proud of the name of Spaniards. You are witnesses of the excesses which have been committed, and are still committed by that liberticidal faction. It is needless to lay before you the picture which Navarre, Catalonia, and other provinces of this fine country present. Robberies, murders, arson; and brother armed against brother; and father against son have, repeatedly, excited your indignant courage, and caused your generous tears to flow. Embrace in idea all the evils to which fanaticism gives birth; and supply from your indignation all the expressions which I want to make you comprehend mine. Ministers of religion! you who announce the word of the living God, and preach his morality and his charity, tear off the mask with which the perjured cover themselves. Declare that the faith of Christ is not to be defended by crimes; and that it rejects, from the number of its ministers, those who employ fratricidal arms: annihilate these criminals from the altar-destroy them with those thunderbolts which the church has placed in your hands;-be good priests as well as good citizens!"

so.

The language of Ferdinand is either sincere, or it is not

If the former, how odious must be the conduct of the Spanish ecclesiastics to perpetrate, in the name of the king, those crimes which he thus indignantly denounces. If the latter, what an appaling-what a disgusting picture of every thing that is perfidious and hypocritical would this crowned head present!! Who, that entertains such a suspicion, will ever after put their trust in princes? Who will say that the bare idea of the sentiments here sanctified by

the royal lips, being dictated by the policy or circumstances of the moment, does not convey to the agent a title to be regarded as the most finished specimen-the most perfect masterpiece of fraud and of hypocrisy, that even Spanish priestcraft could turn out from its hands?-Compared with this, oh! amiable and much-abused Machiavel, how exemplary was thy "Prince!"

Turning our eyes to FRANCE the same spirit appears to animate the national clergy with that of Spain. They have, indeed, a kindred interest in the crimes and the violence that are committed by their reverend brethren in the Peninsula; for, if the reign of darkness and superstition terminate in Spain, light and liberty will necessarily dawn in France. That the clergy of both these nations are alike, not only in their creeds but in their crimes, may be proved by the persecutions, cruelties, and murders committed on the protestants in the south of France, at the restoration of the Bourbons. For a long time it was thought, in this country, that the accounts of these atrocities were exaggerated by party feeling; but the chain of established facts, and official evidence, which Mr. Mark Wilks has laid before the public on this subject, has proved, beyond all doubt, that the people of this country were ignorant of the real extent of the sufferings of their protestant brethren in France.

This work has performed an important service to truth; it has furnished materials for history, by whose imperishable records

66 -this foul deed shall smell above the earth!"

And to what end were these barbarities (to which it is unnecessary more particularly to refer) directed? Man is not naturally a savage animal-he becomes so only by the force of education or the hopes of gain. Both these causes operated with the priesthood of France. Nursed in the corruptions of the church of Rome, they were desirous of restoring religion to that state in which it had existed before the revolution; and of re-establishing that spiritual dominion which had contributed so largely to their temporal benefit. Mr. Robinson's "Memoirs of the Reformation in France," convey a lively picture of that state of religion which it was and is the object of these wretched men to restore.

Religion itself was made to consist in the performance of numerous ceremonies of Pagan, Jewish, and monkish extraction-all of which might be performed without either faith in God, or love to mankind. The church ritual was an address, not to the reason, but to the senses of men; music