disputationibus inhærentes, digni reddamur misericordiis et gratia primi et magni supremi sacerdotis Jesu Christi Dei nostri, intercedente simul inviolata Domina nostra, Sancta Deipara, et omnibus sanctis. Fiat. Fiat. Amen.*

The decisions of this Council, thus summarily expressed in the above" acclamation" of the Fathers, fixed the most debasing idolatries upon the Greek and the Latin churches, through a long course of ages, and even to the present moment. At once to approve these decisions, and to inculpate the practice of the churches who have adopted them, is a palpable inconsistency, equally uncharitable and absurd. To disallow the decisions of the second council of Nice, and at the same time to profess adherence to the Fathers of the first council of Nice, and to their immediate successors, is not less absurd; and the absurdity in this instance is rendered despicable by the prevarication it implies.

What then is the amount of the difference between the Fathers of the second council of Nice, and the Fathers of the first; or, let us say, the immediate successors of these-the great divines from whose writings "church principles" are to be drawn?-The Fathers of the later council were not accustomed to pay any other religious regard to the Saints, the Martyrs, the Virgin, or their relics, or symbols, than had always been rendered by those of the earlier period; nor were they used to express their belief in the supernatural efficacy of such acts of devotion in terms of stronger import, or in language more exceptionable; nor did they encourage among the people any practices, or ritual observances essentially, or even ostensibly, unlike those prevalent at the earlier time. We find the leading persons of the church, in the fourth century, exhibiting an extreme anxiety to impart a definite, local, and palpable individuality to the devotion which the people were taught to render to their invisible guardians. Thus, whenever they needed help, they were to resort to" this Martyrium;"-they were to prostrate themselves before "this shrine;" -they were solemnly assured that the genuine dust-dust proved to be genuine by daily miracles, had been carefully sifted from out of the poisonous admixtures of inodorous heretical ashes!—

the innate virtue-the ineffable and terrific power of "these very relics" was, from time to time, awfully attested by the yells and convulsions of demoniacs.

Or, to bring the earlier and the later practices and notions of the church to a point of more particular comparison.-At the time (as we have already mentioned) of the Saracen invasions, the christian frontiers were at every accessible point, bristled with images of the Virgin and Saints-the people having been exhorted to put their sole trust in these invincible guardians—nothing fearing; since no weapons formed against these unearthly champions could be of any avail :-" look to the Saints, and no Saracens can touch your borders: their honour in heaven, as well as on earth, is pledged for your safety." Was not this polytheism? was not this idolatry? were not Mahometans orthodox men, compared with these baptized heathens?

But what had the great divines of the earlier age said on the same subjects?—the chief of them, in the most solemn phrases, and with a redundant explicitness of language, assures the populace of Constantinople that an empire, or a city, well furnished with the bones of martyrs, might defy the world in arms! Only trust to your saints, fellow citizens ! and you are safe :-for do not the invisible powers, mightier as they are than man, do not these tremble and resile ? what martial array then need you dread?

Yes, but here is a difference!-Well-instructed christian people, in the seventh and eighth centuries, were taught to defend their cities with images;-while those of the fourth were to do so— with relics! The Fathers of the second council of Nice put confidence in carved wood and sculptured marble; their predecessors, in crumbling bones, dust and rags.

Equitably considered then, it does not appear that any distinction more important can be made good between the piety of the second council of Nice, and that of the first, than what may be thought to attach to the difference between the skeleton of a Saint-and the image of him.

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THE GENERAL INFERENCE, AFFECTING THE HYPOTHESIS OF CHURCH PRINCIPLES.

THE chief slave within the circle of every despotism, is the despot himself; and often he is the most wretched, as well as the most degraded of all. This principle holds in various applications. Whoever is labouring to entrap, to beguile, and so to trample upon and abuse his fellow-men, is himself not only the miserable victim of tyrannic passions; but, in the end, if not at first, becomes so of those terrors that are born of cruelty and fraud. The direct tendency of the modern enterprise to revive the superstitions of the middle ages, is, it need not be proved, to weave about the lulled social system the invisible films of a spiritual tyranny. The people are to receive every thing relating to faith, morals, and even to their civil duty, from their lawful teachers and these teachers, in their turn, from a single centre: whoever inquires or disputes, is to be silenced:-the Holy Scriptures are to be put into the hands only of the "fully instructed," and the submissive, or "docile :"-the civil power, not only must not presume to rescue any whom the church would chastise, but must do its part, whenever called upon, to punish the contumacious.

Each article of this scheme of horrors has been formally or incidentally professed by its present promoters. Until the moment shall come for openly giving it effect, the labours of these persons are chiefly directed toward that which is ever the preliminary work of the despot, namely, to degrade his intended victims in their own esteem; and especially to trample upon their understandings, not so much by refusing them the liberty to think, as by beguiling them into the belief of a farrago of

frivolous and monstrous fables. Only fix the trembling eyes of the credulous vulgar upon some grotesque divinity whose ugliness cannot endure the day, and then the people have become the creatures of the church. Why was it that the priests of the "ancient Egyptian church" seduced the people to the worship of monkeys, cats, crocodiles?-for the same reason which impelled the priests of a more modern church to propound tales of folly and wonder, which could neither please nor impose upon any but the abject:-tales, revolting alike to children and philosophers-grateful only to slaves.

The insidious endeavours now so diligently making on all sides of us, to prepare a way for the restoration of saint-worship, and the adoration of pictures and images, means nothing else than this. The people of England, not even its women, not the feeblest and most obsequious portion of the male sex, will ever be brought to bend again at the foot of a spiritual despotism, until, by long listening to fair speeches and fine poetry, and by gazing upon painted windows, wax candles, crimson curtains, and at the last "holy images," and by joining in modest invocations, they have been beguiled into polytheism, and an acquiescence in church fables. The moment of triumph will then have come; and all but infidels and obstinate dissidents (not that the former would much care to resist) would dutifully kneel while the yoke is put upon their necks; and then go away, delighted with some visionary assurance, or some sensible pledge of the peculiar favour of that most exalted of creatures-" the Queen of Heaven," toward themselves!

Is all this incredible, as likely to come about in England? Only ten years ago, the supposition would have been scouted as utterly absurd that an attempt should be made, within the protestant church, and should prosper, to restore the dark doctrines, the frauds, and the follies of the fourth century.

But we return to the movers of this scheme, and ask whether they themselves, while forging chains for the people, are free in soul? The mere facts forbid us to believe that they are. These learned persons, long before they broached the scheme for the restoration of church principles, had acquired (we are bound to suppose this) a familiar and extensive acquaintance with the

ecclesiastical remains of the early ages. Not to assume this, would be to throw upon them the heaviest possible imputation : for how could they, without the most culpable presumption, have come forward to recommend and restore that, concerning which, they were not themselves duly informed? We cannot admit any such supposition as this. They were then well versed in the patristic lore or let us only say, that they had repeatedly perused Basil, Ambrose, Gregory Nyssen, Ephraim Syrus, and Chrysostom. They therefore distinctly knew—they individually knew, ten years ago, or more, that these "fully instructed doctors" solemnly taught, and constantly practised the invocation of the saints, and that they instructed and exhorted the people, in the most emphatic manner, to have recourse to the relics of the martyrs, and to address their prayers to them, in every hour of trouble; and that they, on all occasions, encouraged their hearers to believe that these very relics, or the saints through them, had, when devoutly venerated, power to heal sicknesses, to restore sight, to raise the dead, to drive away demons, and to keep hosts of barbarians at bay.

These learned persons distinctly knew ten years ago, or more, that, in relation to saint-worship, and the veneration of relics, of crosses, and of "holy pictures," there is absolutely no difference between the Nicene divines, and those of the middle ages :-or that, if there be a difference, it is in favour of the latter, who have been much more careful than were the former to insist upon necessary distinctions, and to point out the bearings of latria, dulium, hyperdulium, and to protest against the imputation of idolatry and even this protest ought to be accepted as a testimony to truth.

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And yet, knowing all this, and having the broad facts constantly before their eyes-the subjects of their daily and nightly studies, these learned persons have continued, through a course of years, and in every variety of phrase; in prose and in poetry; in treatises, in tracts, in reviews, in newspapers; through the press, from the pulpit, from the professor's chair; and in the privacies of common life, to speak of these very writers-naming them, and defining the period in which they flourished, as our best guides in theology, our patterns in religious sentiment, our teachers in