DIALOGUE IV. Superstitious Character of the Church of Rome; her Doctrine on Penance; Author. I COME prepared to describe to you the character of the Church of Rome: and in the first place I am to prove that she exerts her whole power in making her members superstitious. I must, however, ask you, before I proceed, whether you have a clear idea of what is meant by the word superstitious. Reader. I believe I have a tolerably good notion of it; but to say the truth, I should be at a loss to state clearly what I understand by that word. A. My notion of it may be expressed thus: superstition consists in credulity, hopes, and fears, about invisible and supernatural things, upon fanciful and slight grounds. We call that man superstitious who is ready to believe any idle story of ghosts and witches; who nails a horse-shoe upon the ship or barn, which he hopes, by that means, to preserve in safety; and dreads evil consequences from going out of doors the first time in the morning, with his left foot foremost. R. Does the Church of Rome encourage superstitions this kind? of A. She certainly encourages the same state of mind, though not exactly upon the same things. Every church may be compared to a great school or establishment for religious education. I will represent to you a pupil of that school, that you may infer what is taught in it, and I will draw the picture from various Roman Catholics whom I have intimately known. Imagine my Romanist friend retiring to his bed in the night.The walls of the room are covered with pictures of all sizes. Upon a table there is a wooden or brass figure of our Saviour nailed to the cross, with two wax candles, ready to be lighted at each side. Our Romanist carefully locks the door; lights up the candles, kneels before the cross, and beats his breast with his clenched right hand, till it rings again in a hollow sound. It is probably a Friday, a day of penance; the good 344 man looks pale and weak. I know the reason - he has made but one meal on that day, and that on fish; had he tasted meat, he feels assured he should have subjected his soul to the pains of hell. But the mortifications of the day are not over. He unlocks a small cupboard, and takes out a skull, which he kisses and places upon the table at the foot of the crucifix. He then strips off part of his clothes, and with a scourge, composed of small twisted ropes hardened with wax, lays stoutly to the right and left, till his bare skin is ready to burst with accumulated blood. The discipline, as it is called, being over, he mutters several prayers, turning to every picture in the room. He then rises to go to bed; but before he ventures into it, he puts his finger into a little cup which hangs at a short distance over his pillow, and sprinkles, with the fluid it contains, the bed and the room in various directions, and finally moistens his forehead in the form of a cross. The cup, you must know, contains holy water-water in which a priest has put some salt, making over it the sign of the cross several times, and saying some prayers, which the Church of Rome has inserted for this purpose in the mass-book. The use of that water, as our Roman Catholic has been taught to believe, is to prevent the devil from approaching the places and things which have been recently sprinkled with it; and he does not feel himself safe in his bed without the precaution which I have described. The holy water has, besides, an internal and spiritual power of washing away venial sins-those slight sins, I mean, which, according to the Romanist, if unrepented, or unwashed away by holy water, or the sign of the cross made by the hand of a bishop, or some other five or six methods, which I will not trouble you with, will keep the venial sinner in Purgatory for a certain time. The operations of the devout Roman Catholic are probably not yet done. On the other side of the holywater cup, there hangs a frame holding a large cake of wax; with figures raised by a mould, not unlike a large butter-pat. It is an Agnus Dei, blest by the Pope, which is not to be had except it can be imported from Rome. I believe the wax is kneaded with some earth from the place where the bones of the supposed Martyrs are dug up. Whoever possesses one of these spiritual treasures, enjoys the benefit of a great number of indulgences; for each kiss impressed on the wax gives him the whole value of fifty or one hundred days em ployed in doing penance and good works; the amount of which is to be struck off the debt which he has to pay in Purgatory. I should not wonder if our good man, before laying himself to sleep, were to feel about his neck for his rosary of beads. Perhaps he has one of a particular value, and like that whien I was made to wear next my skin, when a boy. A priest had brought it from Rome, where it had been made, if we believe the certificates, of bits of the very stones with which the first martyr, Stephen, was put to death. Being satisfied that the rosary hangs still on his neck, he arranges its companion, the scapulary, formed of two square pieces of the staff which is exclusively worn by some religious order. By means of the scapulary, he is assured either that the Virgin Mary will not allow him to remain in Purgatory beyond the Saturday next to the day of his death; or he is made partaker of all the penances and good works performed by the religious of the order to which the scapulary belongs. At last, having said a prayer to the angel who, he believes, keeps a constant guard over him, the devout Romanist composes himself to sleep, touching his forehead, his breast, and the two shoulders, to form the figure of a cross. The prayer and ceremonies of the morning are not unlike those of the night. Armed with the sprinkling of holy water, he proceeds to mass: if it happens to be one of the privileged days in which souls may be delivered out of Purgatory, you will see him saying a certain number of prayers at different altars. He will repeat his rosary in honor of the Virgin Mary, dropping through his fingers either fifty-five or seventy-seven beads, which are strung in the form of a necklace. There may be a blessing with the Sacrament, which the good Catholic will not lose, for the sake of the plenary indulgence which the Pope grants to such as are present. On that occasion you would see him kneeling and beating his breast, while the priest, in a splendid cloak of silk and gold, in the midst of lighted candles and the smoke of frankincense, makes the sign of the cross with a consecrated wafer, inclosed between two pieces of glass set in gold. It would, indeed, be an endless task were I to enumerate all the methods and contriv auces of this kind recommended by the Church of Rome to all her members, and practised by all who are not careless of their spiritual concerns.-These are facts which no honest Roman Catholic will venture to deny. I therefore ask whether, since revelation is the only means we have of distinguishing between religion and superstition,-between things an acts which really can influence our manner of being when w shall be removed to the invisible world, and fanciful contriv ances which there is no reason to suppose connected with our spiritual welfare,-I ask whether the whole system of the Church of Rome, for the attainment of Christian virtue, is not a chain of superstitious practices, calculated to accustom the mind to imaginary fear, and fly to the Church for fanciful remedies? Saint Paul had a prophetic eye on this adulterated Christianity when he cautioned the Colossians, saying: Let no man therefore judge you in meat or in drink, or in respect of a holyday: Let no man beguile you of your reward in a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels, intruding into those things which he hath not seen, vainly puffed up by his fleshly mind, and not holding the head, from which all the body, by joints and vands, having nourishment, ministered and knit together, increaseth with the increase of God. Wherefore, if ye be dead with Christ from the rudiments of the world, why, as though living in the world, are ye subject to ordinances (touch not, taste not, handle not, which all are to perish with the using) after the commandments and doctrines of men? Which things have, indeed, a shew of wisdom in will-worship, and humility, and neglecting of the body. I cannot conceive a more perfect resemblance than that which exists between the picture of a devout Romanist, and the will-worship described in this passage. Observe the distinction of days, the prohibition of certain meats, the worshipping of angels, the numerous ordinances, the mortification and neglect of the body; and, most of all, the losing hold of the head, Christ, and substituting a constant endeavor to increase spiritually by fleshly, that is, external means, instead of fortifying, by a simple and spiritual worship, the bands and joints, through which alone the Christian can have nourishment, and increase with the increase of God. R. I confess that the likeness is very striking. But I wish to know if all the will-worship of the Romanists is fully recommended by their Church. A. It is in the most solemn and powerful manner. You have only to look into the devotional books which are used among the Romanists, and you will find their bishops encouraging this kind of religious discipline in the most unqualified terms. I could read to you innumerable passages confirming and recommending more fleshly ordinances than ever the Jews observed; and this, too, in English Roman Catholic books, which, for fear of censure on the part of the Protestants, are generally more shy of disclosing the whole system of their Church, than those published abroad. But what settles the point at once, and shows that it is the Church of Rome, * Cha; ii. and not any private individual, that adulterates the character and temper of Christian virtue, I have only to refer you to their Common Prayer-book, which they call the Breviary.Now, that is a book not only published and confirmed by three Popes, but which they oblige their whole clergy to read daily, for at least an hour and a half. Such, indeed, is the importance which the Church of Rome attaches to that book, that she declares any Clergyman or Monk who omits, even less than an eighth part of the appointed daily reading, guilty of . sin, worthy of hell,-a mortal sin, which deprives man of the grace of God. The Breviary contains Psalms and Collects, and lives of Saints, for every day of the year. These lives are given as examples of what the Church of Rome declares to be Christian perfection, and her members are, of course, urged to imitate them as far as it may possibly be in every one's power. Now, I can assure you, having been for many years forced to read the Breviary daily, that there is not one instance of a Saint, whose worship is not grounded, by the Church of Rome, mainly upon the most extravagant practice • of external ceremonies, and the most shocking use of their imaginary virtue of penance. R. What do they mean by penance ? A. The voluntary infliction of pain on themselves to expiate their sins. R. Do they not believe in the atonement of Christ? A. They believe that the atonement is enough to save them from hell, but not from a temporal punishment of sin. R. But have they not plenary indulgences to satisfy for tha temporal punishment? A. So they believe; but the truth is, that they cannot understand themselves upon the subject of penance and indulgences. Penance, however, the Romanist Church recommends, even at the expense of depraving the sense of the Gospel in their translations. As there is nothing in the New Testament which can make self-inflicted pain a Christian virtue, the Romanists, wanting a text to support their practices, have rendered the third verse of the 13th chapter of Luke, "Unless ye be penitent, ye shall all alike perish." Yet, this was not enough for their purpose, and as the same sentence is repeated in the fifth verse, there they slipt in the word penance.Their translation of that verse is, " Unless ye shall do penance, you shall all alike perish." By the use of this word they make their laity believe, that both crafession, which they call |