charged his death upon his adversaries; since after all, the most probable supposition is, that his vigorous constitution, though not destroyed, was yet undermined by the sufferings it had undergone, which certainly might hasten, though they did not immediately effect, his dissolution. For a whole year no further inquiry was made; but at the expiration of that time, a Spanish bishop arrived, authorised with full powers from Rome. After the most diligent scrutiny, the whole imposition being fully proved, the four friars were solemnly degraded from their priesthood, and burned alive on the last day of May, in the year of our Lord 1509.

At the latter end of the seventeenth century, an English traveller* of undoubted veracity, who extracted the substance of the preceding narrative from the records of the city of Bern, beheld the memorials of this iniquitous proceeding. He was shown the cavity in the wall, through which the voice was conveyed to the image in the church, and saw the spot where the friars suffered the punishment due to their extraordinary crimes.

When such was the spirit of priests, what idea could the ignorant multitude acquire of present duty or of a world to come? If the teachers themselves could without scruple plunge into such enormities, to gain their ambitious ends, what must have been the condition of those who followed such deluding guides?

• Gilbert Burnet, D. D., Bishop of Sarum.

BLANCO WHITE'S ACCOUNT OF POPISH

RELICS.

"The city of Rome has carried on for ages a trade in bones, which, besides the donations in money, made by those who from all parts of the world came or sent thither to procure them, has been the cause of building churches, with large endowments for the clergy, in almost every province in Christendom.

Nothing can equal the impudence with which the bones really taken out of the public burial-grounds, where the ancient Romans buried their slaves, have been sent about under the names of all the Martyrs, Confessors, and Virgins mentioned in the Roman Catholic legends. The Pope claims the power of what is called christening relics, and the devout Romanists believe, that when their Holy Father has thus given a name to a scull or a thigh bone, it is equally valuable as if it had been taken from the body of their favourite Saint. They are not generally aware that what is thus christened, is probably part of the skeleton of some ancient heathen. But to give you an idea of the credulity which the Popes have encouraged on this point, I have seen the treasury of relics which belongs to the kings of Spain; where the Monk who keeps it, shows to all who comes to visit the Church of the Escurial, near Madrid, the whole body, as it is pretended, of one of the children who were put to death by Herod. But there is still a more monstrous piece of impudence in the same exhi bition. A glass vial, set in gold, is shown with some

milk of the Virgin Mary. These and a hundred other such relics are presented to be worshipped by the people; all duly certified by the Pope or his ministers. At the cathedral of Seville, the town where I was born, there is among other relics, one of the teeth of Christopher, a Saint who is said to have been a giant, the tooth was procured from Rome, and is to be seen in a silver and glass casket, through which the holy relic may be admired by the worshippers. It is clear, however, that the tooth, before which the Pope allows his spiritual children to kneel, belonged to a huge animal of the elephant kind. These impositions have been at all times carried on so carelessly by the Romish priesthood, that it was necessary in some cases to declare that the bodies of some saints had been miraculously multiplied, else people would have discovered the fraud by finding the same saint at different places. A French priest of high rank, who, having no religion himself, submitted quietly to the established superstition, though he would now and then give vent to a humorous sneer. He had been travelling in Italy, and in the Catholic parts of Germany, where the collection of relics kept in every great Church had been boastingly displayed to him. The priests of a famous Abbey in France were doing the same, when, among other wonders, "Here," they said to the traveller, "is the head of John the Baptist,”

"Praised be heaven!" answered the waggish priest, "this is the third head of the holy Baptist which I have been happy enough to hold in my hands!"

ACCOUNT OF THE PURGATORY AT CORONEA IN THE COUNTY OF CAVAN*.

Whoever takes an accurate view of the present doctrines and practices of the Church of Rome, will find that, instead of being improved by a gradual assimilation to that perfect model which is exhibited in the Holy Scriptures, she still not only retains, with pertinacity, those defilements which have lasted for ages, but also contracts more corruptions, and adopts new inventions," however abominable or silly they may be, where opportunity invites, and where that influence which the priests exercise over the minds of the people is sufficiently powerful to introduce and support them.

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It is also a well-known fact, that the baneful leaven of such inventions always spreads among and intoxicates the unthinking and uninformed part of the people, leading them into acts of fanaticism, as wild and degrading as those which are performed by the votaries of Juggernaut.

Such is the case with regard to the famous, though

The writer of this statement was bred up for the Roman Catholic Priesthood. He embraced Protestantism about seven years ago, and is now the highly-respected Minister of an Independent Congregation near Dublin.

+ I can produce, says the author of this statement, instances of Roman Catholics, who, on hearing an account of the prac tices of the Hindoo worshippers of Juggernaut, as recorded in the missionary papers, have exclaimed, "How like it is to what we do in the chapel!"

modern, station of Coronea, which has been modelled, as far as circumstances would permit, after the more ancient and celebrated St. Patrick's Purgatory at Loughderg*; and that too in the nineteenth century— in one of the most civilized districts of Ireland, do we find a most degrading relic of Paganism, created by the Church of Rome, sanctioned by her priests, and blindly submitted to by a misguided people.

It is well known that the religious in the Church of Rome, such as those of the order of the scapular, cord, ring, &c., look upon man as bound to atone for sins by torturing and macerating his body-by excessive abstinence-by toilsome and unmeaning repetitions of prayers, litanies, rosaries, offices; they hold that every person must equalize his bodily mortifications to the degree of guilt he has contracted from a vicious course of life. About eight years ago, a few of these gloomy self-tormentors, not satisfied with an annual pilgrimage to Loughderg, commenced the same "rounds" which are performed there, in the chapel of Coronea. They cut circles and figures in the chapel-floor and walls (inside) with coal, chalk, &c., and in imitation of the beds, crosses, altars, stones, &c., at Loughderg, gave mystic names to, and adopted the forms and numbers of prayers to be repeated, and the various gesticulations of bowing, crossing, kneeling, kissing the ground, &c. to be performed at each circle, cross, &c. Their super

For an account of the ceremonies performed by the Pil grims at Loughderg, vide page 43.