to give alms to the poor, to hear mass, to repent of their sins and confess to a priest, to receive the holy Eucharist, to pray for the extirpation of heresies, the propagation of the Catholic faith, and for the Church generally? You promise them a plenary Indulgence on certain feast-days in the year". Do you wish to excite the people to repeat devotional offices during their life, and to recommend their souls to God at the hour of death? You promise them Indulgences. (Ib. p. 185.) Is it your desire that they should instruct their children, relations, or servants, in the Christian doctrine? You offer them 200 days of Indulgence for doing so. (p. 185.) They meditate on our Saviour's passion to gain 100 days of Indulgence. (p. 186.) They examine their consciences, and repent of their sins, resolve to amend them, and recite the Lord's prayer, to gain the same amount. of Indulgence. (p. 186.) They accompany the holy Sacrament when it is brought to the sick; endeavour to bring back into the right way those who have wandered from it; and practise other good works in honour of our Lord. And for what reason? To gain an Indulgence of 100 days in Purgatory. (p. 191.) Is it considered desirable to promote the spirit of prayer? One indulgence is promised to all those who instruct the people to meditate or to offer prayer, and another to all who offer prayer every day for half or a quarter of an Bouvier, Traité des Indulgences, p. 183, 184.

n

hour. (p. 213.) In short, there is not a good work or a devotional practice amongst you, which is not presented as a means of obtaining Indulgences. Your whole system depends on the popular belief in Indulgences, and the popular wish to obtain them. Your confraternities, your charitable and religious works of all kinds, are vitally dependent on them. The promise of future glory, the desire to shew love and gratitude to Him who redeemed us with His own blood, are insufficient to excite your people to the discharge of Christian duties. They require the stimulant of Indulgences to rouse them into activity. And what are those Indulgences? Which of the Fathers ever wrote a treatise on Indulgences, or even mentioned them? Were they known to Augustine, to Chrysostom, to Gregory, or to any of the Fathers for. a thousand years after Christ? You are well aware that there is a profound silence in Christian Antiquity on this subject; that the only Indulgences known for a thousand years were remission of canonical punishments imposed in this life. And this novelty it is, which now constitutes the moving power of your religion, and which usurps amongst your people that influence which Revelation assigns to Heaven and Hell-to the love and the fear of God.

Having now completed the first part of my task, and shewn that the public is not so grossly

mistaken as you would persuade us, in the view which it takes of the superstitions prevalent amongst you. I return to the consideration of your Letter.

You assure us, that throughout the whole course of your residence in the Roman schools you "never heard a word that could lead you to suppose that our blessed Lady and the Saints are, or ought to be, "the prominent objects of regard,' or could be dispensers of mercy,' nor that ́ Purgatory or Indulgences are the means of obtaining it,'" &c. ; and you have, as you say, "always there heard and "taught exactly the contrary." (p. 9.) In a certain sense, perhaps, the Professors in the Roman University may not maintain those doctrines; but I would ask, whether you have ever heard any contradiction offered by them to the scandalous and blasphemous positions which have been above cited from authorized sources? Until you have shewn this, they and you yourself must be held responsible for those positions.

You argue, from the shortness of the Treatises on Invocation of Saints and Purgatory in your theological course, that there could have been no intention to supersede the worship of the Trinity by the one, and the preaching of Heaven and Hell by the other. This seems to me a very bad argument, for surely we are not to judge of the practical importance of a doctrine by the extent which its discussion occupies. A Treatise on the Trinity involves many

C

difficult questions, and therefore occupies more space than one on the Invocation of Saints. Yet it does not follow that the Trinity itself is practically more worshipped and honoured than the Saints.

What has been just observed applies equally to the argument from your Catechisms. The Trinity, Incarnation, and Creed, may be, as you say, the principal articles of instruction. (p. 13.) They may occupy most space, and yet the worship of the Virgin, and the Saints, and Purgatory, may practically be the main subjects" put before the popular mind.

You are indignant at Mr. N.'s assertion, that, with reference to Purgatory, "the main idea really "encouraged by Rome is, that temporal punishment "is a substitute for Hell in the case of the unholy," and you characterize this doctrine ascribed to you as "wicked and fiendish." (p. 14.) What, Sir, are you not well aware, that, according to your Church, "the unholy," those who are guilty of mortal sin, are, by the sacrament of Penance, relieved from the punishment of Hell, and made subject only to temporal penalties? It is your doctrine that Hell is the penalty annexed to mortal sins which have not been remitted by the sacrament of Penance, and that temporal punishment in this life or the next, follows sins which have been thus remitted. I shall not occupy your time in attempting to prove what is the well-known doctrine of your Church-a doctrine which was evidently in Mr. N.'s mind, when he

employed the expressions which have excited your wrath.

Mr. N. has quoted from the Catechism of Trent the following passage, which, he says,

"the existing Romish doctrine.'

66 expresses

"There is a purgatorial fire, in which the souls "of the pious are tormented for a certain time and expiated, in order that an entrance may lie open "to them into their eternal home, into which nothing "defiled enters."

Your reply is, that "it is unnatural and a fallacy"

to "

put the Catechism at variance with the Council "which ordered it to be drawn up"-that we must suppose persons who had been members of the Council" deliberately contradicting their own acts," &c. Now, Sir, the fallacy, permit me to say, is all your own. Mr. N. never adduced the Catechism of Trent as "at variance" with the Council, or as "contradicting" the Council. He merely adduces it as expressing "the existing Romish doctrine," which he most correctly distinguishes from the Decrees of Trent, without meaning that there is any opposition between the two. He asserts nothing more than what you yourself admit-that it (the Catechism)" employs the usual language in which

a doctrine is spoken of in the Church" of Rome. (p. 15.) That it is invested with authority in your Church you cannot deny, though it may not be binding on you in the same sense as the Decrees of Trent.