against the Church tyranny to which their religion binds them. They owe it also to the cunning system pursued by the Pope himself, who, by allowing to them, in silence, this apparent freedom, acts like the huntsmen in India, who let their tame elephants roam at large in the forests, that they may entice the yet untamed and free, into the pitfalls. No; trust them not? Had I a voice that could be heard from north to south, and from east to west, in these islands, I would use it to warn every Protestant against the wiles of Rome; wiles and arts, indeed, of so subtle and disguised a nature, that, I feel assured, many of the free-born Britons, who are made the instruments and promoters of them, do not so much as dream of the snare into which they are trying to decoy their countrymen. Such as believe that Popery, if allowed to interfere with the laws of England, would not most steadily aim at the ruin of Protestantism, even at the plain risk of spreading the most rank infidelity, should be sent to learn the character of that religion where it prevails uncontrolled; where I have learnt it during five and twenty years, in sincere submission, and for ten in secret rebellion. Would you form a correct idea of the character and spirit of that Church which the Roman Catholics bind themselves to obey, as they hope for salvation; of that Church, to be free from whose grasp, I deem my losses clear gain, and my exile a glorious new birth to the full privileges of a man and a Christian-grant me another patient hearing, at your own convenience, and you shall see the Pope's Church, such as she is, and without the disguises in which she begs for power.

R. I will hear you again, whenever you are disposed to speak on so important a subject.

DIALOGUE II.

Origin and true Principles of Protestantism; Calumnies of the Romanists against Luther; Origin and Progress of the Spiritual Tyranny of the Pope; Existence of true Protestants long before Luther; Persecution of the Vaudois and Albigenses; Right Notion about the Church of which we speak in the Creed.

Reader. I CANNOT tell you, Sir, how anxious I have been for your return.

Author. It cannot be more, my good friend, than I myself have been to come to you. But as I know that I must be either a welcome or an unpleasant visitor, according as people dwell upon or reject the words of my first conversation; I feel some misgivings within me when I approach them the second time. Now, I can tell you with a certainty, which I do not derive from any confidence in myself, but from my experience of the nature of truth, that since you have given some thought to the subject of our first conversation, you will, with God's blessing, bear with me to the end of our conferences.

R. That I will, Sir, for I love the truth in all matters; and much more so, of course, in those which concern my salvation. Now, I must tell you, my head has been at work upon things that I had never thought of before. When I formerly met my Roman Catholic neighbours, or saw their Chapel, these things appeared to me as natural as the large yew-tree in our church-yard, or the holly-hedge before the Rector's house. There they are; and I never troubled myself to know how they came there. But I now say to myself, I am a Protestant; and farmer such a one is a Roman Catholic. The reason of this I know to be, that my father, and my father's father, and so on, were Protestants, and his.

were Catholics. But was this always so? How did this great division begin among Christians? I have, of course, heard of the Reformation, and of Luther, who, according to a little penny book, which is frequently hawked among the country-folks, seems not to have been a good man; for, it is said, he himself declares that the Devil taught him what he was to write against the Roman Catholics. I can hardly believe this to be true: I wish, Sir, you would set me right about the Protestant Religion, and who it is that we Protestants follow: Is it Luther?

A. The Roman Catholics would fain persuade the world that Luther is the author of our religion; but it is to be hoped that their partiality deceives them, and that they do not use a deliberate untruth out of pure spite. Such as are really learned among them, cannot but know that Protestants acknowledge no master, on religious points, but Christ, whose instructions they seek in the inspired writings of his Apostles and Evangelists, contained in the New Testament. It is, however, a great shame that some learned men among the Roman Catholics, should employ themselves in writing and sending about such trash as The confessed Intimacy of Luther with Satan, when they must know, in the first place, that the story is a downright misrepresentation; and that, if Luther had really been the worst of men (which is the very reverse of the truth), it would be the same, with regard to us Protestants, as if a thief had, by some strange chance, put an honest individual in the way of recovering a great fortune, which a cunning set of men had converted to their own profit. I wish you, my friend, to remember the comparison I have just given you, whenever the Roman Catholics, or those writers of no religion, whom they employ to seduce the unlearned, come to you with stories about the wickedness of the Reformers, and the vices of Henry the Eighth. Surely, it is nothing to us by what instruments and what

means God was pleased to deliver us from the impostures and tyranny of the Church of Rome,-of that Church, which, having seized our rightful inheritance, the Bible, doled it out in bits and scraps to the people, mixed up and adulterated with human inventions. It is for them to be ashamed of the men they reckon among their Popes; poisoners, adulterers, and much worse still; a fact which they will not venture to deny. It is for them, I say, to be ashamed, that they believe and declare that such men held the place and authority of Christ upon earth; and that all Roman Catholics are bound still to believe their declarations, as if they had been given by Christ himself and his Apostles. We Protestants do not receive revealed truth through such channels. We feel grateful, indeed, to the Protestant Reformers, all of whom, at the risk, and many at the expense of their lives, roused the attention of the Christian world, to the monstrous abuses which the Popes had introduced into the Church. Our Reformers encouraged the world to shake off the yoke of iron, which, in the name of Christ, the Popes had laid upon it; but did not claim any authority over the Protestant Churches, similar, to that which Rome had usurped. The great and essential difference between the Romanists and ourselves is this: the Romish Church says to all Christians, "Follow not the Scriptures, but me;"the Protestant Church, on the contrary, says, "Follow me as long as I follow the Scriptures." Now, if Satan himself had directed us to the pure fountain of Revelation, to the genuine word of God, would it not be our duty still to follow the Scriptures in preference to all human authority?

R. But is there any foundation for the story which the Roman Catholics are so busy to spread among the poor people, that Luther used to converse with the Devil?

A. No other foundation, my friend, than the spite

which has rankled in the hearts of the Roman Catholic Clergy, since Martin Luther opened the eyes of men to their spiritual tyranny. Luther was called by the Romanists, an instrument of the Devil, and all his words were said to be put into his mouth by the Prince of Darkness. In this manner they tried to frighten the simple and ignorant, that they might stop their ears to the powerful arguments of the great Reformer. Well, then, said Luther, addressing himself to his calumniators, the Doctors of the Roman Catholic Church, see if you can answer the reasons by which the Devil proved to me that the Mass is an idolatrous and unscriptural manner of worship; and he overwhelms the said Doctors with unanswerable reasons drawn from the Holy Scriptures. What better method could he employ to refute their abominable and silly calumny, than by showing that what the Romanists attributed to the Devil, was the true and genuine declaration of the word of God? I have carefully examined the works of Luther, and can assure you, that what the Roman Catholics circulate in their penny tracts, is a most ungrounded calumny. Were we mean enough to retaliate, we might give a history of their Popes,-a history which they cannot gainsay, which would prove many of them to have been not in communication with Satan, but possessed by him, body and soul. I will, however, mention to you one of them, a Spaniard by birth, whom the Roman Catholics acknowledge as the head of their Church, and whom they declare to have been the representative of Christ upon earth. The Pope I speak of, whose name is Alexander the VIth. had four sons by a concubine, with whom he lived many years. The crimes he committed in order to enrich his children, exceed those of the most wicked heathen Emperors. After a life of the most diabolical profligacy, he died of poison, which he took by mistake, having prepared it for some person who stood