gether avoided it.' 'Sir,' said he, 'I shall be much your debtor for so friendly an act; for, upon my honour, I cannot conjecture in what I have transgressed.' 'If you, sir,' continued the gentleman, 'had a dear friend, to whom you were under unspeakable obligations, should you not be deeply wounded by any disrespect to him, or even by hearing his name introduced and used with a frequency of repetition and a levity of air incompatible with the regard due to his character?' Undoubtedly, and I should not permit it; but I know not that I am chargeable with indecorum to any of your friends.'

'Sir, my God is my best friend to whom I am under infinite obligations. I think you must recollect that you have frequently, since we commenced our journey, taken his name in vain. This has given to me heartfelt pain.' Sir,' replied the young man, with a very ingenuous emphasis, I have done wrong. I confess the impropriety. I am ashamed of a practice, which I am sensible has no excuse; but I have imperceptibly fallen into it; and I really make use of oaths without being conscious that I do so. I will endeavour to abstain from it in future, and as you sit next to me on the coach, I shall thank you to touch my elbow as often as I trespass.'

This was agreed on. The horn sounded, and the travellers resumed their places. In the space of four or five miles, the officer's elbow was jogged every few seconds. He always coloured, but bowed, and received the hint without the least symptom of displeasure, and in a few miles more so mastered his propensity to swearing, that not an oath was heard from his lips during the rest of the journey.

THE INVOCATION OF SAINTS.

(Concluded from page 119.)

Father. There is one part which, as Southey remarks, must completely destroy the analogy, I mean the strict censorship of the press existing in the Church of Rome, and her list of prohibited books; so that every theological work, especially of her own supporters, which is not condemned, may be considered as in a manner authorized. But at all events you will admit the unprohibited works of a Romish saint to be of authority. Rome does not canonize those whom she regards as heretical, or theologically unsound. To begin then with a work of Cardinal Saint Bonaventura, which in itself, standing as it does untouched by a breath of censure, is awfully adequate proof of the errors into which Rome has fallen on this point. She has actually gone through the whole book of Psalms, and in every passage therein relating to our Lord, some of which, be it remembered, are among the strongest Old Testament proofs of our Lord's divinity, has substituted the name of the Blessed Virgin, for instance; "Lady, thou art our refuge in all our necessities, and the powerful strength, treading down the enemy." "Have mercy

upon me, O Lady, have mercy upon me; because my heart is prepared to search out thy will, and in the shadow of thy wings will I rest." And in the last Psalm, "Praise our Lady in her saints," &c. "Let every thing that hath breath, praise our Lady." Again, St. Bernardine, of Sienna, asserts, that because she is the mother of the Son of God, who doth produce the Holy Ghost, therefore all the gifts, virtues, and graces of the Holy Ghost, are by her hands administered to whom she pleaseth, how she pleaseth, and as much as she pleaseth." Cardinal Peter Damianus teaches, that "Unto her all power was given in heaven and earth."

St. Anselm, "That it might be assigned as one reason among others why Christ left his mother on earth, lest perhaps the court of heaven might have been in a doubt whom they should rather go to meet, their Lord or their Lady." Bernardine de Busti, that considering the blessed Virgin is the mother of God, and God is her Son, and every son is naturally inferior to his mother, and subject unto her, and the mother hath preeminence and is superior to her son, it therefore followeth, that the blessed Virgin is superior to God, and that God himself is subject unto her in respect of the manhood which he assumed from her. And the Litany of Loretto, following up this last quotation, expressly says, "By the right of a mother, command the Redeemer." Add to this, that it is repeatedly said that Christ distributes mercy only through his mother; that Saint Mary and our Lord are frequently contrasted, the former as the Lord of Judgement, and the latter as Lady of Mercy; and also the general practice of attributing to different saints the power over different diseases, and I think you will need no further proof that whatever may be the case with some more Catholic minded men of her communion. The Church of Rome herself has a solemn charge to answer in leading the hearts of her people away from the one Mediator and one Saviour, to creatures whose highest aspirations are to be absorbed in this immensity, from the great fountain of light, to stars which however they may glorify the heaven in their bright association, yet singly would not serve to light one trembling sinner on his rugged path to God.

Son. Your quotations are truly heart sickening, but I observe you have adduced no proofs from the Holy Scriptures?

Father. Because as it is the explanation of Holy Scripture on which we differ, we must prove their explanation uncatholic, before the texts themselves have

any weight. You need no single texts to disprove the doctrines I have just quoted, the whole tenor of God's word is against them, and as for the invocation commanded by the Council of Trent, I cannot think myself bound to obey what neither in the Bible, nor through the perpetual tradition of his church, has God commanded.

Son. You have hitherto limited yourself to disproving the faith of Rome on this point; may I ask what are your own convictions?

Father. If you have understood what I have stated of the doctrine of the primitive church, you need no further explanation on that head. All that is implied in the communion of saints I hold; all that may be drawn from the sublime and soul refreshing mystery, which knits together in sympathizing union the members of Christ's body.

I have now given you all the proof I have to offer against the Romish doctrine of invocation of saints; if you require further details you can obtain them by your own search. And after all, what does our work amount to, but have proved her wrong whom we would give the world to have right. I entreat you to remember that to convict the church of Rome of error, is not to triumph, except in our own shame; the deeper her guilt the deeper should be our sorrow; her errors should but multiply our prayers. The church of England it may be, has long been sunk in a winter-sleep, but now amidst the rustling of old leaves, I can hear a waving of spring foliage, and, surely, it is right that the first symptom of re-awakening life should be an outburst of love and of pity towards one who trod so long and so gloriously the path we are now treading, and whose fall from her first purity and dignity, must be the bitterest sorrow, as her restoration the most earnest hope of all who see in the rending of Christ's body the agony of his spirit.

B.

EXTRACT FROM BURKE.

WHEN once the commonwealth has established the estates of the church as property, it can, consistently hear nothing of the more or the less. too little are treason against property.

Too much and

What evil can

arise from the quantity in any hand, whilst the supreme authority has the full, sovereign superintendence over this, as over any property, to prevent every species of abuse; and, whenever it notably deviates, to give to it a direction agreeable to the purposes of its institution?

In England most of us conceive that it is envy and malignity towards those who are often the beginners of their own fortune, and not a love of the self-denial and mortification of the ancient church, that makes some look askance at the distinctions, and honours, and revenues, which, taken from no person, are set apart for virtue. The ears of the people of England are distinguishing. They hear these men speak broad. Their tongue betrays them. Their language is in the patois of fraud; in the cant and gibberish of hypocrisy. The people of England must think so, when these praters affect to carry back the clergy to that primitive evangelic poverty, which, in the spirit, ought always to exist in them, (and in us too, however we may like it,) but in the thing must be varied, when the relation of that body to the state is altered; when manners, when modes of life, when indeed the whole order of human affairs has undergone a total revolution. We shall believe those reformers then to be honest enthusiasts-not, as now we think them, cheats and deceivers-when we see them throwing their own goods into common, and submitting their own persons to the austere discipline of the early church.