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The main facts connected with the finding the alleged cross, and its accompaniments, are not to be doubted. The existence

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at Jerusalem of this pretended cross about the time affirmed, is vouched for by very many incidental proofs. And in consequence of the invention, and of the traffic carried on in bits of the Wood of Salvation,' Jerusalem became one of the most frequented, disorderly, and licentious cities of the Roman world. Jerome's evidence to this effect, already cited, is unexceptionable and conclusive or if it needed confirmation, we find it in the very explicit statements of a contemporary-an eye-witness also, and one who, beyond most of his peers, eagerly promoted the growing superstitions of the times. The language of Gregory Nyssen on this subject will be listened to with peculiar attention. He had lately visited the Holy Sites, and, with the animation of disappointment and disgust, he (as Jerome had done in a similar instance) dissuades his friends from undertaking a pilgrimage. After adverting to the perils to which ascetic, and especially female virtue is exposed amid the chances of a journey in the East, and after insisting with force on other reasons, he very pertinently observes, that if, as some seemed to think, the graces of heaven were more copiously afforded at and near Jerusalem than elsewhere, immoralities would not abound in it, as in fact they do, or vice be the very epidemic of Palestine. No form of impurity can be named that was not shamelessly perpetrated there ;-wickedness, and adulteries, and thefts, and idolatries, and sorceries, and envyings and murders.-Such was the profligacy of the people (of Jerusalem) that in no city was there such a promptness to assassinations:

-like so many beasts of prey did the inhabitants shed each other's blood, and this at the impulse of the most sordid motives. How does it appear then, asks this Father, that grace is shed more copiously upon those who occupy the sacred soil, than upon others? After meeting and satisfying the objection likely, as he

* Επειτα καὶ εἰ ἦν πλέον ἡ χάρις ἐν τοῖς Ιεροσόλυμα τόποις, οὐκ ἂν ἐπεχωρίαζε τοῖς ἐκεῖ ζῶσιν ἡ ἁμαρτία· νῦν μέν τοι οὐκ ἔστιν ἀκαθαρσίας εἶδος, ὃ μὴ τολμᾶται παρ' αὐτοῖς. Καὶ πονηρίαι, καὶ μοιχεῖαι, καὶ κλοπας, καί εἰδωλολατρείαι, καὶ φαρμακεῖαι, καὶ φθόνοι, καὶ φόνοι καὶ μάλιστά γε τὸ τοιοῦτον ἐπιχωριάζει κακόν, ὥστε μηδαμοῦ τοιαύτην ἑτοιμότητα εἶναι πρὸς τὸ φονεύειν, ὅσον ἐν τοῖς τόπους ἐκείνοις, θηρίων δίκην τῷ αἵματι τῶν ὁμοφύλων ἐπιτρεχόντων ἀλλήλων ψυχροῦ xépoovs xápw.-Greg. Nys. tom. ii. page 1086.

foresaw, to be brought against himself, on the ground of his own visit to Jerusalem, being such as it is, he acknowledges that he had derived one advantage at least from his journey, which was this, that, by the comparison of the Holy Land with his own country, he had learned to think of the latter as the holier of the two. It is in this temper that good Catholics return from a visit to Rome.

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It was amid the hubbub and profligacy of the Holy City,' such as it had become in consequence of the perpetual influx of pilgrims, and their attendants — their valets, guards, retainers, that the clergy kept alive the traffic of the town by cherishing the infatuation of christendom, concerning the True Cross,' and the other relics of the Passion. Even if this cross had been so obtained as might possibly have brought the instance within the range of an apology, on the ground of mere delusion or folly, the superstitions therewith connected could not have consisted with the simplicity and spirituality of christian worship; and how could the trade in the genuine chips of a never-diminished cross have consisted with any degree of christian integrity? But these superstitions, and this traffic, were in fact all of a piece with the Invention' itself, and with the blasphemous trick by which the pretended discrimination of the Lord's cross was effected!

All was an abominable machination, which could have been successful only in an age of intellectual degeneracy, and could have been hatched by ministers of religion, only when these had long learned to hold in contempt the restraints of religious fear.

Not merely are the facts assumed in the invention utterly incredible in themselves;-but the spot chosen (chosen no doubt because it was in actual occupation of the church, or under its control), is demonstrably not that of the Crucifixion and Sepulchre it was within the limits of the city, and far within the space densely occupied by the suburban town.

We have then before us a train of inferential queries not very loosely connected.

If the site of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre was included within the walls of the ancient city-then, the 'Invention' of the Cross comes to nothing; and if the cross produced by Macarius at the demand of Helena was not the cross of Golgotha, then

the miracles wrought in attestation of its genuineness, and the perpetual miracle of its multiplication, and the innumerable miracles wrought by the chips, and the nails, and the holy thorns,' come to nothing:-and if these be all lying wonders,'originated and kept a-going by knaves, then the christian reputation of the bishops and clergy who were therein concerned, and the authority' of the church and era of which these fooleries and frauds were the broad characteristics are all reduced to very little; and if so-what becomes of the scheme to restore that authority, and to return to its delusions?

RELICS OF ST. STEPHEN, PROTO-MARTYR.

To secure the inference we have in view from colourable exceptions on every side, I now bring forward a mass of facts which, differing materially from the preceding as to their bearing upon the reputation of the parties concerned, yet force us upon a dilemma conclusive as to the controversy in hand. We still keep in view however the historical conditions already mentioned, and confine ourselves to instances marked by the characteristics of—

COPIOUSNESS, both in the particulars, and in the evidence : CONTINUITY; or extension through some considerable portion of time:

PUBLICITY; or notoriousness; and

AUTHENTICATION; or a deliberate and reiterated approval on the part of constituted authorities, or persons of the highest repute in the Church.

Now, in dealing with what is before us, I hold myself excused altogether from the task of proving that the instances alleged were not really of a miraculous kind. Fully persuaded as I am that the finger of God was not herein manifested, and that the cases are all referable to a very different kind of agency, I yet leave this point with the reader to determine, as he shall see reason;-only insisting upon the alternative which they offer to us, and to which I ask strict attention.

The long series of alleged miracles now to be reported were not merely in their abstract tendency such as to promote among the

people the habit of relying upon the aid of subordinate divinities, and of rushing to their shrines for aid in times of trouble; but in fact this was the direct consequence which thence resulted; and, vouched for as they were by the most eminent persons of the Nicene era, their effect has been to fix upon the christianity of un-reformed Europe a polytheistic practice, admitted by all who now witness it, to involve what is essentially idolatrous.

Against this polytheism and idolatry the Reformed Churches, and not last, the Church of England, vehemently protest.-It is of their very essence to protest against these blasphemous super

stitions.

But now, if the alleged miracles which at first sustained these practices were real miracles, in the same sense as those recorded in the Gospels, then the Reformed Churches have been, and are, fighting against God; and nothing remains for them but a penitent abjuration of their infidelity.

But if these miracles (to whatever agency attributable) were not' of God;' and if they proceeded, whether more or less directly, from the father of lies,' then such inferences as these unquestionably follow

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That the Church of the fourth century, far from enjoying the extraordinary guidance of the Holy Spirit, or walking in the path of christian simplicity and godly integrity, was abandoned to the most pernicious infatuations, and was turned unto fables,' and had already travelled far upon that road which led it, where we find the Church in the middle ages-deep sunk in the swamp of doctrinal, ethical, and ecclesiastical corruption.

Our final inference then is, That a flagrant inconsistency-to use the gentlest phrase-attaches to the conduct of those who, while by the solemn, reiterated, and unexceptive approbation which they have expressed of the Nicene church, and of its chiefs, they tacitly accept as truly miraculous the alleged miracles of that Church, yet hold office and emolument as ministers of a Church which, IF THOSE MIRACLES WERE REAL, is schismatical, heretical, and antichristian!

The evidence to which we have now to appeal is copious enough to fill half a volume.—I shall use compression, and the learned reader may readily collate my abridged report of the

facts, with the original testimonies, which are found in the places mentioned beneath.*

I should premise the profession of my sincere belief, that the facts are of a kind susceptible of explanation consistently with the christian reputation of Augustine. In these instances, as in many others, he was the dupe of his own credulity, not the machinator of fraud. Intending, as I do, to employ the evidence now to be considered in an urgent manner, and scorning to catch my reader in a trap, it behoves me to state the case as it stands.All the principal facts we derive from the undoubted writings of the bishop of Hippo, who reports or refers to them on various occasions. We then turn to certain documents of less authority. But now I will first suppose that these supplementary pieces are, what they profess to be, of contemporary date. In this case the proof is complete, That the practices so fervently recommended by Augustine and his compeers, did, even in his own time, and under his personal observation, produce the very idolatry or polytheism which is now prevalent in the Romish church. If so, what is the drift of the Tracts for the Times, and whither would the writers lead us, in so earnestly labouring to restore the Nicene authority?

Let us however assume that the writings now to be cited in continuation of the evidence drawn from Augustine, are, or that some of them are, of a later age;-let us suppose, the sixth or seventh century. In this case, I appeal to the conscience of the readerI appeal to the honour and conscience of clergymen, to say whether the practices and notions held forth in these compositions, exhibit any thing else than the natural and inevitable consequences of the doctrine taught, and the worship encouraged, by the Nicene bishops? But if indeed the later writings are connected with the earlier, by the continuity of direct causation, then we arrive at the same conclusive inference-namely, that the scheme which has been slowly developed in the Tracts for the Times, involves the gradual restoration of polytheism and idolatry.

The restorers of antiquity may elude these conclusions; but they will never fairly escape from them.

See Supplement.

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