also, they began to repent, and acknowledged that they had been guilty of this imposition, with a view to stop the progress of Lutheranism, and save the souls of all good Papists in that country. He then dismissed them, at the same time telling them, that such pious frauds were mere diabolical inventions, and that he would no longer trust his salvation to men who used such means to support their religion. He accordingly began to turn his attention to the scriptures; and, notwithstanding their obscurity, he understood as much of their meaning as showed him the absurdity of popish principles, and induced him to make an open profession of the reformed religion.

"The reader may perhaps be curious to know what the pope had put into this wonderful box. But the loss of it has for ever deprived us of this important piece of information. For his satisfaction, however, I can give him an abstract of the catalogue of images and relics which formerly belonged to the cathedral of Glasgow. At the reformation, there were treasured up there, an image of our Saviour in gold, the twelve apostles in silver, and two silver crosses, enriched with precious stones, and small portions of the wood of the true cross. There were, likewise, five silver caskets, containing the following articles of adoration: 1. Some hair of the blessed virgin; 2. A piece of the hairy garment worn by St. Kentigern, a part of the scourge with which he flogged himself, and a part of the scourge used by St. Thomas à Becket; 3. A piece of St. Bartholomew's skin; 4. A bone of St. Ninian; 5. A piece of the girdle worn by the Virgin Mary. In a crystal case was found a bone of St. Magdalene. There were also four crystal phials, containing a part of the Virgin Mary's milk; a piece of the manger in which Christ was laid a red liquor which formerly flowed from the tomb of St. Kentigern; some bones of St. Eugene and St. Blaise; and a part of the tomb of St. Catherine. There were six hides containing very precious relics: such as, a piece of St. Martin's cloak, part of the bodies of St. Kentigern and St. Thomas à Becket, &c. Two linen bags were filled with saint's bones and a vast assemblage of small relics were lodged in a wooden chest." (Beauties of Scotland, vol. 3, pp. 217, 218.)

"When the reformation rendered images and relics useless in Scotland, the archbishop of Glasgow retired to France, and carried along with him this precious treasure. With such a host of friendly intercessors, he could not fail to enjoy a cordial reception from the church. The most mortified ecclesiastic in France could scarcely behold a golden Saviour, and silver apostles, without welcome greetings, and feeling his demure visage relaxing into smiles of complacency.

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Though I cannot at present give the reader a view of all the uses of relics in religion, there is one, which it would be doing injustice to the subject to omit. Like oral tradition, they have been found of vast use for explaining obscure passages of scripture. Of this many edifying illustrations might be produced; but one will serve as a specimen of the whole. Five devout pilgrims, happening to meet on their return from Rome, loaded with these excellent helps to religion, each began to extol his acquisitions. After much conversation, highly characteristic of their faithful simplicity, they produced their riches; and, lo, to their great amazement, each was honoured with a foot of the very ass upon which Christ rode to Jerusalem. Now, the reader may

recollect, that the scriptures do not even tell us that this ass had a foot, but here is decisive proof of the existence of five; and if five were collected by five pilgrims only, let him conceive how many must be travelling through other parts of the church, to assist the simple faithful in their exercises of devotion. The Romish church is extremely lucky, in picking up this relic before the existence of the Antiquarian Society. The discovery of an ass with five feet would have rendered them frantic with joy, and completely marred the devotions of the whole congregation of the simple. Rather than see such a precious ass deprived of one hoof, they would permit every member of the church to remain in ignorance for ever.

"Such idle fooleries has the church of Rome palmed upon the world, under pretence of religion. A view of their influence upon our ancestors is sufficient to show their opposition to the spirit of the gospel. In proportion as our progenitors were actuated by this gloomy superstition, we find them destitute of practical piety and every social virtue. They spent that time and property in idle pilgrimage, in hunting after relics, and other nonsensical acts of devotion, which ought to have been employed for the benefit of mankind; and multitudes at last beggared their families, to perpetuate these delusions. So prevalent was this evil in England, that the statute of mortmain was found necessary to prevent the whole landed property of the nation from becoming the plunder of the church.

When the church of Rome maintains the usefulness of images and relics as means of devotion, it is merely a cloak to conceal the most selfish views. Wherever these appendages of superstition have abounded, they have always been connected with swarms of monks, remarkable only for their vices, and for impoverishing the bigoted and the ignorant. Mistaken views of religion introduced them at first into the church; and afterwards they have been used to render mankind subservient to the gratification of the clergy. The advice given to Pope Julius III. by the bishops assembled at Bononia, discovers the light in which the crafty ecclesiastics of the Romish church view the relics of the saints. When any bishop,' said they, 'sets himself to officiate in any divine service with pomp and solemnity, he ought to have many ornaments to distinguish him from ordinary priests; such as, the bones and relics of some dead man. Do you command him to hang a whole leg, arm, or head of some saint about his neck, by a good thick cord; for that will contribute very much to increase the religious astonishment of all who behold it. The truth is, these ceremonies were all invented and continued by popes; you, therefore, who are a pope, may, if you please, augment them.' M'Culloch, Pop. Cond. pp. 368, 376.

I make no apology for quoting so largely from so lively a writer as Mr. M'Culloch, whose interesting work is not known in this country, except by a few individuals. This gentleman, who is a minister in Nova Scotia, in connexion with the Associate Antiburgher synod, has most ably exposed the errors of popery, and the quibbling, shuffling practices of its advocates in that part of the world, who are truly worthy of being brethren, and of the same body, with those in this country. Relics have commonly been used for the vilest purposes of avarice and imposition. It was not enough to excite the devotion of the peo

ple, to have the most splendid and richly adorned buildings for the celebration of their idolatrous rites, unless they had them enriched by the bones of some saint; and these bones themselves could not be expected to excite much reverence, unless some extraordinary virtue were ascribed to them, such as the healing of diseases; that is, unless divine power were supposed to reside in them. It was easy for the priests to say that such power resided in the bones of any deceased man or woman, which they taught the people to worship. It was a lie to be sure; but that was a matter of no consideration, if it brought multitudes of pilgrims to pay their money, and feast their eyes with the sacred relics. In order to maintain the credit of such relics, it was necessary to maintain a succession of miracles. All the art and cunning of a numerous host of monks and priests was called into activity. It became their sole business to tell lies, and to deceive the people, by means of false miracles, which they pretended to perform by the touch of their relics, or by getting the diseased person to pray before the altar on which they were laid. They hired persons for the purpose of counterfeiting blindness, lameness, madness, and in short all the diseases incident to men; and then they pretended to cure them by touching them with some dry bone, or by some old rotten rag. They had such power over the minds of the people, that few doubted the reality of what they told them; and as for those whom they had hired to personate the blind and the lame, they had them bound by a solemn oath not to divulge the truth; they would promise them heaven, if they kept the secret; and threaten them with hell, if they told it; and during a period of general ignorance and superstition, there were few indeed who had the courage to despise such threats and such promises. I could give some curious instances of absurd and false miracles said to have been performed by the relics of St. Wenefride, when her rotten carcass was removed to Shrewsbury; but some of my readers were so nauseated by former extracts from that "excellent little volume," as Mr. Andrews calls it, that I dare not venture to quote any more from it.

It is well known that the authority of scripture goes a very little way with Papists, if it be opposed to any of their traditions and superstitions; yet if they can find a passage in which the words, detached from their connexion, or taken in a perverted sense, seem to countenance any doctrine or practice of theirs, they gladly avail themselves of it. Thus they do profess to find, in scripture, a warrant for worshipping dead men's bones, &c. "The pious Josiah," says the American opponent of Mr. M'Culloch, " respected the bones of the prophet, who foretold the destruction of Bethel, 4th book of Kings xxiii. 18, and Moses himself, returning from Egypt, took with him the bones of the great patriarch Joseph."

It would be well, if those who make use of these passages to prove the propriety of worshipping dry bones, or any thing besides the one living and true God, would read them in connexion with the context, and those parts of the sacred history to which they refer. Let them, for instance, read what is said of Josiah and the bones of the prophet, which in our Bibles is 2 Kings xxiii. 4-20. Let them compare this with what is related in the xiiith chapter of the same book, and they will find, that the prophet denounced the destruction of Bethel, because they presumed to give divine honour to a creature, or to worship God

by images. It is true, Josiah did respect the bones of the true prophet, and also of the lying prophet, who was buried beside him, so as not to burn them, when he was burning those of the idolatrous priests. Though acting under a divine commission, Josiah did not profess, like the pope of Rome, to be able to distinguish the bones of the saint from those of the sinner, seeing they were blended together in one grave, and therefore he respected both. But how was this respect shown? Not by giving an arm to one priest, and a leg to another, to hang round their necks, when they performed divine service; not by sending fragments of their ribs and skulls to the temple at Jerusalem, to be adored by the many thousands of Israel, when they came to their great festivals. This is exactly what Papists would have done; but Josiah knew that this would have brought as heavy a punishment on Jerusalem as that which he was the instrument of inflicting upon Bethel. He respected their bones, as those of every saint ought to be respected; that is, he allowed them to rest quietly in their graves. "Let them alone," said Josiah, "let no man move his bones; so they let his bones alone."

When Joseph was dying, he spoke of the departure of the children of Israel out of Egypt, and gave commandment concerning his bones, Heb. xi. 22. This, it is said, he did by faith. This was a testimony to the children of Israel, that though he had lived almost a century in the court of Egypt, he died in the faith of the promise of the God of Israel. During the dreary period of the bondage of the people, the fact, known by them all, that the body of Joseph was kept in a state capable of being removed, was calculated to confirm the faith of believing Israelites, and to encourage them to hope for deliverance. Moses also testified his faith in the promise of the God of Israel, when he took the body of Joseph out of Egypt, and carried it along with the congregation, during all their wanderings in the wilderness. But let it be remembered, the body was put in a coffin in Egypt; and we have no hint that ever it was seen again by human eyes; and it was carried out of Egypt, through the desert, not that it might be worshipped, but that it might be buried. It was his dying command, that his body should rest with those of his fathers in the land of promise; believing, no doubt, that as he slept with them, so he would be raised up together with them, to the enjoyment of the everlasting inheritance.

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The American Papist is not more successful in his appeal to the instance of the brazen serpent, as a scriptural authority for worshipping relics. "We know," says he, "the veneration which was conceived for the brazen serpent, on which whoever looked, when bit by the fiery serpents, were instantly healed." 'And we know, likewise," says Mr. M'Culloch, "that when Israel treated it with popish honours, Hezekiah, a pretended reformer, sprung up in the church, and afforded an example which has been duly imitated by his Protestant successors. 'He removed the high places and brake the images, and cut down the groves, and brake in pieces the brazen serpent which Moses had made; for unto those days the children of Israel did burn incense unto it."" Papists will no doubt execrate such conduct;-it is so like that of John Knox, who brake down the altars and images in many a church, at least if his enemies say the truth. No matter: we are as

sured, upon divine authority, that what Hezekiah did was right in the sight of the Lord, 2 Kings xviii. 3, 4.

It is argued further, that "God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul, so that from his body were brought unto the sick, handkerchiefs, or aprons, and the diseases departed from them, and the evil spirits went out of them." Acts xix. 11, 12. But Paul was alive, and these articles were not his relics; nor is it said that the handkerchiefs and aprons had any hand in working the cures which are mentioned. It was God who wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul; and it is admitted that, for the confirmation of the truth which was preached by his inspired apostles, he wrought many miracles. In this instance, he made the articles of dress which are mentioned, a sign to connect the miracle, in the minds of the people, with the person of his inspired ambassador; but the articles themselves are thrown aside, and never mentioned again, as being of any use in relation to religious worship, though they would be as good as ever as aprons and handkerchiefs; but none but an idolater would have thought of preserving them as objects of worship.

In the fifth chapter of the Acts, ver. 15, we are told that the people brought out their sick into the streets, that the shadow of Peter might overshadow them, in order to their being healed. Now, it is a fact, that I have not been able to find, in any catalogue of relics, the identical shadow of the apostle, though it might have been catched almost as easily as Joseph's breath, which Papists profess to have preserved in a phial. The fact is, God wrought such miracles as pleased him by the instrumentality of his apostles. These were for the purpose of silencing adversaries, and for the confirmation of the truth; they were open to the inspection of enemies; and they were always well authenticated. But the miracles of popish relics are all done in the dark, or in the presence of such only as are willing to believe them, and not one of them is supported by credible testimony. To the man

who boasted that he had made a leap of ten yards, in Rhodes, it was answered, "Make such a leap here, and we will believe you." So, to our Papists I would say, "Show the power of your relics here, and we will believe you."

CHAPTER LIV.

LETTER FROM HAVANA, WITH AN ACCOUNT OF SOME POPISH CEREMONIES PRACTISED THERE. LETTER FROM IRELAND. SUPERSTITIONS AND INDECENCIES AT THE WELLS

OF ST. PATRICK.

SATURDAY, July 24th, 1819.

Ir will be gratifying to my Protestant readers to know that my work is known, and spoken of, in the remote dominions of the king of Spain. I know nothing that can form a better conclusion to my dissertation on the worship of images and relics, than the following letter, from a gentleman in the Havana, island of Cuba, to his friend in Baltimore, which has kindly been handed to me by a gentleman of this city, who received it from a correspondent in the western world. I did not previously know, or even suspect, that THE PROTESTANT was known in the island of Cuba: