with banners;" bearing on her brow the bright signature of her God, and upon her bosom the superscription and the likeness of her Lord; irradiated by that glory, which was kindled at the cross, and is destined only to be consummated when faith is lost in fruition, hope in enjoyment, and grace in everlasting felicity.

V. Another assumption paraded by the Church of Rome, is sanctity. The Church of Rome, I may repeat, puts forth, what you find reiterated again and again in the Tracts of Oxford, these four as the marks of a true Church-apostolicity, sanctity, unity, and antiquity; we have looked at antiquity, and we would now examine sanctity, which she claims as her peculiar distinction.

If I were to ask a Protestant what he means by sanctity, he would instantly reply--The work of the Spirit of God upon a man's heart, melting his will into God's will, and making his wishes run parallel with the precepts and commandments of his holy laws. But if I ask a Roman Catholic - if I ask Vicar-apostolic Milner, the distinguished advocate of the Church of Rome, and author of one of the most subtle books ever written-The End of Controversy, in which Roman Catholics are regularly instructed; he tells me that he understands by sanctity what his Church has always understood by this attribute, viz. possessing beatified and canonised saints. Hence, the Romish defender, in order to show that the Church of Rome has sanctity, does not show her principles and practice to be coincident with those stated in the eighth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, or with the fruits of the Spirit enumerated in the fifth chapter of that to the Galatians; but he shows, that the Church of Rome has given birth to a Dominick, with rosary and torch, helping to forward the Inquisition, to a Santa Rosa, or Theresa, with all her wretched and miserable austerities, to an Aquinas, with his persecuting dogmas,-and to a Bonaventure, with his idolatrous psalter. And, in order to give you some instances of what she counts sanctity, I will read to you one or two extracts from the Breviary. I may just explain, that the Missal, in the Church of Rome, answers exactly to the Prayer Book of the Church of England, but the Breviary is a book sui generis; it is a book, a certain portion of which must be read every day by every priest of the Church of Rome, or else he is in mortal sin, and cannot say Mass. Hence, on the Continent, I have seen priests reading this book in the diligence or on the railway; and in this country, I understand, when it comes near twelve o'clock at night, some of them are known to step aside from the amusements in which they are pleased to join, and hasten into a corner to peruse the requisite quantity of the contents of the Breviary, that they may escape mortal sin, and be ready to say Mass the next day. Now, an extract or two from this book will show you the sort of sanctity possessed by the Church of Rome; and you will see, also, that it exactly coincides with the proofs of sanctity put forth by the Tractarians of Oxford. Holiness -"doing justly, and loving mercy, and walking humbly with God"are, with these men, old-fashioned, exploded, Protestant doctrine; but wearing hair-cloth belts and girdles, fasting, and doing penance, are proofs of a sanctity, that none but a Church with a true succession can manifest.

I will now read from the Ronan Breviary, the Antwerp edition; and I begin with page 591-St. Mary Magdalen de Pazzi: "She tortured her body with hair-cloth, whippings, cold, hunger, watchings, nakedness, and all kinds of punishments." Again, St. Anthony, Bishop and Confessor, page 572: "He laid down to rest upon the ground, on the naked boards; and always wearing hair-cloth, and sometimes girded with an iron chain next to his skin, he always completely preserved his purity." The Summer Portion, page 398, St. Juliana: "She was wont to bruise her body with scourges, knotted little ropes, iron girdles, watchings, and sleeping on the naked ground; she partook very sparingly of food, and that a vile sort, four days of the week, on the other two she was content with only angels' food; the Sunday was exempted, on which she was nourished on bread and water only." St. Jerome Emilian, page 483: “In a mountain having discovered a cave, he hid himself in it, where, beating himself with whips and passing whole days fasting, prayer being protracted far into the night, and enjoying a short sleep upon the naked rock, he paid the penalties of his own faults and of those of others." St. Ignatius the Confessor, page 508: "He passed a year, subduing his flesh by a rough chain and hair-cloth, lying on the ground and bloodying himself with iron whips." St. Cajetan the Confessor: "He sometimes afflicted his body by beatings whole nights, and he never would be persuaded to relax the asperity of his life, witnessing that he desired to die in ashes and sackcloth." St. Francis Borgia, page 416, the Autumnal Portion: "In that pursuit of a stricter mode of life, Francis reduced his body to a state of extreme thinness by fastings, by iron chains, by a very rough hair-cloth, by bloody and long beatings, and by very short sleep." St. Theresa, page 345: "She burned with so anxious a desire of chastising her body, that although the diseases with which she was afflicted might have dissuaded her from it, she often tortured her body with hair-cloth, chains, handfulls of nettles, and other very sharp scourges, and sometimes she would roll among the thorns; being accustomed thus to address God, O Lord, be it my lot to suffer or to die.' These are the children of the Church of Rome, and therefore she has sanctity.

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VI. The next assumption of the Church of Rome is what is called apostolicity that is, the maintaining precisely the doctrine and discipline of the ancient or primitive Church.

Now, without entering minutely into this pretension, let me just submit to you the following contrast, and then ask, if you can well maintain gravity of feeling or face as you listen to the claim of the Romish Church to the character of apostolicity? The Apostolic Church said-We break one bread; the Romish Church says--We break no bread at all, for it ceases to be bread, and becomes flesh and blood. The Apostolic Church said-" Bodily exercise profiteth little;" the Church of Rome says-It profiteth much, as in penance, to the forgiveness and atonement of sin. The Apostolic Church said-Scripture is profitable for all; the Romish Church says-It is not profitable for the laity, the fourth rule of the Index of the Council of Trent containing these words, that "inasmuch as greater evil than good

results from the indiscriminate perusal of the Scriptures," the laity are forbidden to have them, except with the written permission of the bishop or inquisitor. Again: the Apostolic Church said-" Prove all things;" the Romish Church says-Prove nothing, but believe everything. The Apostolic Church said-"A bishop must be the husband of one wife ;" the Romish Church says-He must be the husband of no wife. The Apostolic Church said-" Marriage is honourable in all;" the Romish Church says-Marriage is not honourable in priests. The Apostolic Church said" The wages of sin is death;" the Romish Church says (as every Roman Catholic will find in Dr. Doyle's Catechism)" Venial sin is a light offence, such as the stealing of an apple or a pin, which does not break charity between man and man, much less between man and God." [The illustration derived from the stealing of an apple is a most unfortunate one, for it was stealing an apple that

"Brought death into the world, and all our woe;"

-but let that pass.] The Apostolic Church said-There is one sacrifice, once for all, for the sins of the world; the Romish Church says-There are many sacrifices, and as many priests always trying, and never able, to take away sin. Now, with this contrast, which every one possessed of a Bible and the canons of Trent may verify, is there any foundation-in fact, can there be any foundation, for the pretension that the Romish Church is apostolical? Her apostolicity seems like lucus à non lucendo; that is, she is called apostolic because she is wholly apostatic.

VII. Another assumption put forward by the Roman Catholic Church is, that within her bosom, and her bosom alone, is there certainty, or the dissipation of all doubt, for every one who embraces her principles and subscribes her creed. The argument. of Romish priests is, In the Protestant Church all is uncertainty, every body is at sea, one believes one thing, and another believes another; but if you enter the Roman Catholic Church, you come into the region of sunshine, and to the possession of a certainty which can never be shaken.'

Now, let me reply to this assumption, that of all Churches under heaven, the Roman Catholic has the least of certainty in her construction. There is a canon of the Council of Trent, which every Roman Catholic priest knows, and which every Roman Catholic layman ought to know, in which it is declared, that if the priest "should not intend to do what the Church intends," then there is no sacrament. And recollect, there are seven sacraments in the Church of Rome;matrimony is a sacrament, penance is a sacrament, holy orders a sacrament, confirmation a sacrament, extreme unction a sacrament, as well as baptism and the eucharist. Now, I know, from no questionable source, that many of the priests in Ireland, and not a few on the continent of Europe, are infidels at heart, and priests only in profession; and the Rev. Mr. Nolan, who became a clergyman of the Church of England, having abjured the Roman Catholic faith, has stated that, for twelve months before he left the Church of Rome, he

did not believe the doctrine of transubstantiation, and adds, in his pamphlet, which has never been replied to, that he knew numbers of priests in Ireland who did not believe in many of the peculiar heresies of the Romish faith. In all these cases, according to the law of the Church of Rome, wherever the priest happens to be an infidel at heart, and who does not believe the sacrament about which he is conversant, nor hope or intend to effectuate what the Church does, there is no sacrament at all. For instance, if a priest does not believe in transubstantiation, then, though he may consecrate the wafer, there is no transubstantiation, because his intention is wanting; and the consequence is, that in such cases every Roman Catholic must adore what, on his own principles, is only flour and water, and trust to a sacrifice which is no sacrifice. Let me refer to another sacrament— marriage on Protestant principles, a man knows whether he be married in the sight of God or not; on Roman Catholic principles, no Roman Catholic husband can be sure that he is a married man. If the priest who solemnised that sacrament was an infidel, it was not solemnised at all; it was a mockery. Not only so; but if the bishop who ordained that priest was an infidel, orders being a sacrament, it was no ordination; if the bishop who ordained that bishop was an unbeliever or uncanonical, he was no bishop at all: and, in fact, a Roman Catholic must be able to trace the succession of his bishops and priests, and to scrutinise the thoughts of their hearts, up to the days of Gregory the Great, and beyond these, before he can be sure that he is not living in sin, or that he and his wife are lawfully married in the sight of God. So much for certainty in the Church of Rome.

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VIII. Another assumption, or rather mark, is catholicity. The Church of Rome contends, that she is the Universal or the Catholic Church.

Now, I am prepared fully to admit, that no system ever spread so widely and fearfully through the length and breadth of the world as the Roman Catholic system. This dread despotism has made her name to be revered, like the name of destiny itself. She has struck her superscription upon the literature, the poetry, the painting, of every page of the history of Europe; she has laid her polluting grasp upon the altar and the throne, upon coronets and crowns, and the marks of bloodshed she left in her wake have indisputably testified that she has spread her power from the wilds of the Arab, onward to the steppes of the Cossack. But, while I admit all this, and deplore it too, I must add, that there never was a period in the history of Europe, when the Roman Catholic Church could say, she was strictly and literally catholic; that is, that every human being in Europe was a Roman Catholic. She contends for literality in the interpretation of every epithet, and we take her own construction, and assert that she never was, as she never will be, catholic. Her greatest spread is the symbol to heaven and earth of her near destruction. And, I believe, that even the true Church is not destined to be catholic, until the Jews shall be brought in, and the fulness of the Gentiles shall arrive, and then "the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established upon the top of the hills, and all nations shall flow to it."

IX. Another lofty assumption of the Roman Catholic Church is, that of infallibility. Now, if infallibility be a real thing, we must long to have it; if it be a promised thing, we must pray to have it.

Let me, in the outset, give you two or three specimens (the plainest will be the most effective,) of the practical worth of infallibility in interpreting Scripture, and thereby we may judge of its importance by the ascertained results of its application to the word of God.

Pope Nicholas the First, in the exercise of this infallibility, with which he professed to be invested, proves his supremacy from Acts, x. 13,-" Arise, Peter, kill and eat;" therefore, says the fountain of infallibility, the Pope is supreme. Pope Boniface the Eighth proves it from Genesis, i. 1,-" In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth," the heaven representing the Pope, the earth representing the secular power; therefore, the Pope is king of kings. The Council of Lateran proves the Pope's supremacy from the 72d Psalm,-"All kings shall bow down before him.”

Again: the second Council of Nice proved the worship of images from this text," God created man in his own image;" and from another," No man, when he hath lighted a candle, putteth it under a bushel." Some members of this Council began to complain, not of the Council's authority (for that they did not dispute), but of the Council's logic; and they said, that building such doctrines upon so flimsy a foundation, was not good. The reply of the distinguished president of the Council, Pope Adrian the First, was, "I will maintain these texts to be sufficient proof in spite of fate." If infallibility makes no better comments upon the Scriptures, and deduces no more justifiable conclusions from its texts, we Protestants may be content with the exercise of private judgment, and the promised aid of the Spirit of God.

But, here let me observe, that Councils have contradicted each other, and therefore they could not be each infallible. The Council of Nice, which met in the year 325, repudiated the Pope's supremacy; but the fourth Council of Lateran maintained the Pope's supremacy. The apocryphal books of Scripture were rejected by the Council of Laodicea; but they were declared to be as inspired as the gospels by the Council of Trent, in 1546. The celibacy of the clergy was rejected at the Council of Nice; but it was maintained and decreed by the first Council of Lateran. The worship of images and relics was maintained by the second Council of Nice; it was condemned by the Council of Constantinople, in the year 754. The fourth Council of Constantinople declared, that Scripture was above tradition; the Council of Trent declared, that tradition and Scripture were precisely equal. Now, in each of these cases, if the one Council was infallible, what must the other be, which contradicts it? Both cannot be infallible. The safe, and more than probable inference is, that all were very fallible indeed.

But if you ask Roman Catholics, in various parts of the world, where the seat and fountain of infallibility is, you will see the absurdity of this claim. It may be good, it may be true, it may be an attribute of the Christian Church; but if the seat, the locus where it exists and developes its inherent energies, cannot be discovered, what is its