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show that such flaws are flaws only; and we may perhaps venture a step further, in presuming to point out the mode of their easy and safe removal-a removal which would leave the Protestant Church of England-such without a single point of reasonable exception, and strong by the consolidation of its imperishable materials.

END OF VOL. II.

R. CLAY, FRINTER, BREAD STREET HILL.

SUPPLEMENT TO No. V.

Ir is my intention in this Supplement, not merely to furnish the reader with the means of forming his own opinion as to the fairness and accuracy of the citations contained in the Fifth Number, but to supply a mass of additional evidence in support, or in illustration of, the principal allegations therein made. I shall therefore in this instance, at one and the same time, relieve myself from much of the responsibility which I have sustained in conducting the argument; and, so far as my limits permit, constitute the learned reader the umpire of the controversy; nor do I here think of the few erudite persons who are already familiar with the remains of ecclesiastical antiquity, and who have access to them (these, in fact, need no aid from the author) but all readers, whether lay or clerical, to whom the Latin and Greek languages are in a fair degree familiar; and who yet may not have the opportunity to examine the writers in question.

Especially with a view to the satisfaction of such readers, I am now about to adduce the original passages more at length than might otherwise appear strictly necessary, in order to exclude the suspicion that insulated sentences have been picked from the context, in such a manner as to produce an impression not borne out by it, and which would have been much modified, or entirely reversed by more ample citations. As to Salvian and Palladius, our two principal witnesses in this instance, it is not even the entire pages now to be adduced that can do justice to the argument that has been founded on their evidence. Strongly feeling this, I can only hope that some of my readers may, by these citations, be induced to peruse these authors for

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themselves. Such a perusal of Salvian cannot fail to inspire confidence in his integrity, seriousness, intelligence, and compeAs to tency, as a reporter of the state of things around him. Palladius, the effect of a perusal of the entire book can be nothing but amazement in the minds of those who, from the loose statements of modern church writers, or from the partial representations of the determined admirers of antiquity, have been led to think of the religious system of the third and fourth century as if it were something essentially unlike the folly and superstition of the middle ages; and something nearly identical with the christianity of the modern protestant church. If there are any who still entertain such a belief, they should think it a duty to read, as well Palladius, as the other contemporary writers of the same class.

To these writers I shall, in this Supplement, make such references as may serve to save time and trouble to any reader who will follow my recommendation. In a word, I now propose to do everything which a writer may be expected to do whose only fear is-lest inquiry should be quashed, and whose hope of carrying the convictions of impartial persons rests enirely upon a thorough investigation of the evidence to which he appeals.

Although it were admitted that nothing can be conclusive in the present momentous controversy but the production of the original evidence; yet it is natural that a writer who has ventured to aver much more than has usually been affirmed concerning the origin of the errors ordinarily attributed to the romish church should gladly avail himself of the support of highly reputed modern writers, to the same effect.

Some have been startled, as by a novelty, in finding it affirmed that the predicted apostasy which they have always supposed to be Rome's own, attaches fully, in each of its characteristics, to the church of the nicene era. But have such persons never read bishop Newton's Dissertations on the Prophecies? Whatever differences of opinion there may fairly be room for in relation to some of this learned writer's expositions, the dissertation to which I am now referring (the twenty-third, on St. Paul's Prophecy of the Apostasy of the Latter Times) involves scarcely a particle of what can be regarded as questionable :—it is a brief statement

of facts, the proof of which is easy and abundant. Any reader who has access to the Fathers may satisfy himself in an hour, that the bishop's affirmations were advanced on good grounds, and that they are indisputable. Yet these affirmations involve the substance of whatever the writer of these pages has asserted concerning the early development of the (so called) romish superstitions. Let those who have resented with so much vivacity what I have already written, give themselves the task of showing that bishop Newton has calumniated the Fathers of the fourth century. Before relinquishing my present task I propose to cite latin and greek enough to prove that he might have spoken of them in a still more decisive tone of reprehension. The following passages, quoted from the Dissertation above named, should be carried in the reader's recollection as he proceeds in examining the evidence presently to be adduced.

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"The forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats,' are circumstances only, and appendages of the great apostasy, and not the great apostasy itself, which is always represented in Scripture as 'spiritual fornication,' or idolatry, of one kind or other, and it is not likely that the apostle should specify the circumstantial errors, and omit the main and capital crime. În this place it is not the great apostasy that he is describing, but the characters and qualities of the authors and promoters of it. Castalio therefore very properly translates, ev vπоKPITEL Vevooλoywv through the dissimulation of men speaking lies.' 'I have added men,' says he, lest "speaking lies," and what follows, should be referred to demons or devils.' It is plain then that the great apostasy of the latter times was to prevail through the hypocrisy of liars, having their conscience seared with a hot iron:' and hath not the great idolatry of Christians, and the worship of the dead particularly, been diffused and advanced in the world by such instruments and agents, who have (Rom. i. 25) 'changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever?'" It is impossible to relate, or enumerate all the various falsehoods and lies which have been invented and propagated for this purpose; the fabulous books forged under the names of apostles, saints, and martyrs; the fabulous legends of their lives, actions, and sufferings, and deaths; the fabulous miracles ascribed to their sepulchres, bones, and other relics; the fabulous dreams and revelations, visions and apparitions of the dead to the living; and even the fabulous saints, who never existed but in the imagination of their worshippers: And all these stories the monks, the priests, the bishops of the church, have imposed and intruded upon mankind, it is difficult to say whether with greater artifice or cruelty, with greater confidence or hypocrisy and pretended sanctity; a more hardened face, or a more hardened conscience. The history of the church, says Pascal, is the history of truth; but as written by bigoted papists, it is rather the history of lies. So well doth this prophecy coincide and agree with the preceding one, that the coming of the man of sin should be after the working of Satan, with all power, and signs, and lying wonders, and with all deceivableness of unrighteousness.'

"A farther character of these men is given in the following words 'Forbidding to marry.' The same hypocritical liars, who should promote the worship of demons, should also prohibit lawful marriage. Saturnius, or Saturninus, who flourished in the second century, was, as Theodoret affirms, the first Christian, who declared matrimony to be the doctrine of the devil, and

exhorted men to abstain from animal food. But according to Irenæus and Eusebius, Tatian, who had been a disciple of Justin Martyr, was the first author of this heresy; at least he concurred in opinion with Saturninus, and Marcion; and their followers were called the Continents, from their continence in regard to marriage and meats. The Gnostics likewise, as Irenæus and Clemens Alexandrinus inform us, asserted that to marry and beget children was of the devil; and under pretence of continence were impious both against the creature and the Creator, teaching that men ought not to bring into the world other unhappy persons, nor supply food for death. Other heretics in the third century advanced the same doctrines, but they were generally reputed heretics, and their doctrines were condemned by the church. The council of Eliberis in Spain, which was held in the year of Christ 305, was I think the first, that by public authority forbade the clergy to marry, and commanded even those who were married to abstain altogether from their wives. The council of Neocæsarea, in the year 314, only forbade unmarried presbyters to marry, on the penalty of degradation. At the first general council of Nice, in the year 325, a motion was made to restrain the clergy from all conjugal society with their wives, but it was strongly opposed by Paphnutius, a famous Egyptian bishop, who yet himself was never married; and to him the whole council agreed, and left every man to his liberty as before. But the monks had not yet prevailed; the monks soon overspread the eastern church, and the western too: and as the monks were the first who brought single life into repute; so they were the first also, who revived and promoted the worship of demons. It is a thing universally known, that one of the primary and most essential laws and constitutions of all monks, whether solitary or associated, whether living in deserts or in convents, is the profession of single life, to abstain from marriage themselves, and to discourage it all they can in others. It is equally certain that the monks had the principal share in promoting and propagating the worship of the dead; and either out of credulity, or for worse reasons, recommended it to the people with all the pomp and power of their eloquence in their homilies and orations. Read only some of the most celebrated fathers; read the orations of Basil on the martyr Mamas, and on the forty martyrs; read the orations of Ephraim Syrus on the death of Basil, and on the forty martyrs, and on the praises of the holy martyrs; read the orations of Gregory Nazianzen on Athanasius, and on Basil, and on Cyprian; read the orations of Gregory Nyssen on Ephraim Syrus, and on the Martyr Theodorus, and on Meletius, bishop of Antioch; read the sixty-sixth and other homilies of Chrysostom; read his orations on the martyrs of Egypt, and other orations: and you will be greatly astonished to find, how full they are of this sort of superstition, what powers and miracles are ascribed to the saints, what prayers and praises are offered up to them. All these were monks, and most of them bishops too, in the fourth century; and the superstitious worship which these monks begun, the succeeding monks completed, till at length the very relics and images of the dead were worshipped as much as the dead themselves. The monks then were the principal promoters of the worship of the dead in former times: and who are the great patrons and advocates of the same worship now? Are not their legitimate successors and dependents, the monks and priests and bishops of the church of Rome? And do not they also profess and recommend single life, as well as the worship of saints and angels? As long ago as the year 386, pope Siricius held council of eighty bishops at Rome, and forbade the clergy to cohabit with their wives. This decree was confirmed by pope Innocent at the beginning of the fifth century, and the celibacy of the clergy was fully decreed by Gregory the Seventh, in the eleventh century; and this hath been the universal law and practice of the church ever since. Thus hath the worship of demons and the prohibition of marriage constantly gone hand in hand together and as they who maintain the one, maintain the other; so it is no less remarkable, that they who disclaim the one, disclaim also the other, and assert the liberty which nature, or (to speak more properly) the Author of nature, hath indulged to all mankind.

'Our Maker bids increase: who bids abstain

But our destroyer, foe to God and man ?'-MILTON.

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