member that dies. Their accounts are regularly kept, and if any member dies without having paid his subscription, he is allowed to be tormented to the full amount of his debt in the other world, where the difference between rich and poor, according to these doctrines, is greater than in this life. A rich man may sin away, and settle his debt with masses; the poor must be a beggar even at the very gates of heaven, and trust to his savings properly kept and improved by a club, or to the charity of the rich, to escape out of that purgatory, which you may properly call the Debtor's side of hell.

"But no invention of the Roman church equals Confession, as regards the power it gives to the priesthood. One of the greatest difficulties to establish a free and rational government in popish countries arises from the opposition which free and equal laws meet with from the priests in the confessional. A confessor can promote even treason with safety, in the secrecy which protects his office. But without alluding to political reforms, the influence of the King's confessors, when the monarch is a pious man, is known to be so great in Catholic countries, that when there was a kind of parliament in Arragon, a law was made to prevent the king from choosing his own priest, and the election was reserved to the parliament called Cortes.

The revolting and dangerous practice of Confession grew up gradually and imperceptibly, together with the whole of the Romanist system. It was the prac

tice, in the beginning of the Christian church, to exclude the scandalous sinners from public worship, till they had shown their repentance by confessing their misconduct before the congregation. This discipline was found, in the course of some time, to be impracticable; and the act of humiliation, which at first was required to be public, was changed into a private acknowledgment to the bishop of such sins only as had occasioned the exclusion of the sinner from church at the time of worship. The bishops, a little after, began to refer such acts of public reconciliation with the church to some of their priests. The growing ignorance of after-times made people believe that this act of external reconciliation was a real absolution of the moral guilt of sin; and the church of Rome, with that perpetual watchfulness by which she has never omitted an opportunity of increasing her power, foisted upon the Christian world what she calls the Sacrament of Penance, obliging her members, as they wish for pardon of their sins, to reveal them to a priest."

PAPAL INTOLERANCE IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY.

It is the cant of the day to assert, that the Catholic Church is no longer intolerant in its principles, or domineering in its attempts to assert its power. The following extract is a good answer to such assumptions.

"In an instruction sent by Pius VII. in 1805 to the Papal nuncio resident at Vienna, he says, "That the church had not only taken care to prohibit heretics from confiscating ecclesiastical possessions; but that she had moreover established, as the penalty of the crime of heresy, the confiscation and loss of all property possessed by heretics. This penalty, as far as concerns the property of private individuals, is decreed, he says, by a bull of Innocent III. Cap. Vergentes X. de Hæreticis ; and so far as concerns sovereignties and fiefs, it is a rule of the canon law, cap. Absolutus XVI. de Hæreticis, that the subjects of a prince, manifestly heretical, are released from all obligation to him, dispensed from all allegiance and all homage. To be sure, his holiness goes on to say, we are fallen into such calamitous times, that it is not possible for the spouse of Jesus Christ to practise, or even expedient for her to recal her holy. maxims of just rigour against the enemies of the faith. But although, unhappily, she cannot exercise her right of deposing heretics from their principalities, and declaring them deprived of their property, yet can she not for one moment allow, that they should rob her to aggrandize and enrich themselves. What an object of derision would she become to heretics and infidels, who, in mocking her grief would say, that they had found out a way of making her tolerant!"-Essai Historique sur la Puissance Temporale des Papes, tom, P. 320.

PORTUGUESE MUMMERIES AND SUPERSTITIONS.

Miss Baillie says, "The ceremonies of Lent and the Holy Week, although much of the samé nature as those in all catholic countries, have been carried here to an extreme of impious and absurd farce, which, without seeing, it is difficult to credit. The processions on every Friday have been very numerous. Among the penitents, was a lady who followed a wooden image of our Saviour, without even the resource of a veil or hood, walking bare-footed through all the filth of the streets, exposed to the rude stare of the assembled populace. This penance appears doubly severe, when it is recollected that the paving of the streets is of the very worst description, and the city built upon an everlasting succession of steep hills, to say nothing of the peculiar nature of the dirt collected therein. The other day was enacted the hanging of Judas, and the sacrifice of Abraham, in the open streets. The part of Isaac was performed by a half-naked boy, and Abraham held a long knife in his hand, which he pretended to strike into his back every moment for at least a hundred times running but another boy, dressed in dirty tinseled rags, and soiled feathers, with painted wings upon his shoulders, who was meant to be an angel, walked behind the two, holding a red ribbon, one end of which was tied round the murderous weapon; and as often as Abraham set upon poor Isaac, so often the angel pulled back his arm with a dextrous jerk, by which means all mischief was

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prevented. The king washed the feet of twelve beggars on Holy Thursday. This office used to be performed by the patriarch, but as that personage is now suppressed, the duty devolves upon his majesty. With the exception of the lady to whom I have just alluded, the exhibition of penitents this year was quite insignificant. A very few years ago, an old Fidalgo of immense consequence, and who had been guilty of all sorts of enormities, wiped off every sin at once, and afforded a pious triumph to the priesthood, by crawling through the city upon his hands and knees, underneath a cart which conveyed an image of the Virgin: when the cart stopped, or he was tired, he reposed himself upon his haunches, sitting always in the attitude of a dog. I saw a procession in honour of a particular saint, not long since, in which there passed by above a dozen images of the Virgin, some of which were as large as life; the most conspicuous of these was adorned with very fine jewels, and her hoop petticoat and long-waisted stomacher were powdered with diamonds. The young ladies, at whose window I had been invited to take a seat for the occasion, had that morning been permitted the high honour of dressing this image in all her finery, and they seemed to attach great importance to the privilege. To me, the most revolting part of the spectacle were, the base and ludicrous representations of our Saviour; imagine a set of clumsy wooden dolls, of about a foot and a half in height, with hideous physiognomies, plastered with white and red paint, and the heads lost in coarse flaxen wigs, highly frizzled.

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