from them; but within the period to which the author, with the justest reason, confines himself, we believe no reputable individual of the body will accuse their examiner of having either mis-stated or under-stated. It is unnecessary for us to express our conviction, that the Protestant has fairly and fully demolished the whole array of evidence drawn by the Romanist from the resources of the prescribed period. We question whether any but those jurati in verba magistri, will deny, that the church of Rome's infallibility, supremacy, transubstantiation, purgatory, and all her varieties of creature-worship, have felt their foundations drawn completely from under their feet, and themselves left prostrate in the dust. This, indeed, has been effected by others from the time that the light of Scripture, and other light, was permitted to revisit our benighted and enslaved world. But it was almost left to the eminent talents of the writer with whom we are now concerned, to exhibit the refutation of a most unfounded claim with the luminous perspicuity and force which gratify us in "The Difficulties of Romanism.'

The positive opposition to the above-mentioned peculiar tenets of Rome, furnished by the earliest christian antiquity, which is the other division of Mr. Faber's work, is distinguished by equal superiority of talent. And here Mr. F. feels himself at the liberty, which he had bespoken, of proceeding beyond the limits hitherto observed, and of entering that part of the enemy's camp on which the latter most relied, the fourth and fifth centuries, and even onwards, as regards the different papal councils, up to the final one of Trent. If the Latin church derives a partial support in this new, and in some respects more favourable, position; yet, perhaps, her losses in this very field-the field of her own selection, are more severe, deep, and decisive, than in that which she is anxious to decline; and it may be a matter of doubt, whether more destruction has not been carried into the ranks of the Italian army by the Jeromes, the Ambroses, the Augustines, the Gregories, the Theodorets, of the later period, than by the Justins, the Tertullians, the Cyprians, the Irenæuses, the Origens, of the earlier. Were we to select that doctrine which, in our opinion, suffers most from the very hands upon which Romanism places its chief reliance, it would be the doctrine of transubstantiation, which occupies Mr. Faber from page 313 to 447 of his book-that doctrine, upon which almost more than any other the sons of the Italian church stake her honour, and her very existence; that doctrine, which they know not how, either to retain or surrender; that doctrine, which, in its honest extent, except by fits, they cannot believe, and dare not profess; that doctrine, which is not, as they flatter themselves and beguile others, above reason, but as contrary to it, as that the same thing should be and not be in the same sense, and at the same time; that doctrine, finally, respecting which Romanists,

when in power, have brought "the excellent of the earth" to the stake, for believing what, when well pressed, they profess to believe themselves. What else mean those obvious evasions of calling the doctrine of the real presence, or the conversion of the person of the Saviour into the bread and wine, a sacramental or spiritual one? The word, figurative, indeed, is avoided; but the meaning is, or may be, precisely the same. Why do they not speak out? Why are they not as honest in talking of bones and sinews and all other parts of a human body?* No; the whole is a deception, and can only be supported by the arms of deception-garbled quotation, forgery, ungrammatical translation, and the like. Who is not acquainted, and even familiar, with those decisive passages in Tertullian, Augustine, and Theodoret, in particular? We merely glance at the thing. It is here, in this case of certainly very pungent distress, that the Roman advocates of modern times have bethought themselves of invocating aid from a new quarter-the Disciplina Arcani-the principle and practice supposed to prevail extensively, if not universally, in the primitive church, of concealing the more solemn articles of the christian faith from the public gaze: and this precaution is supposed to have been particularly put in use with respect to the doctrine of the Eucharist, or, as Romanists would have it, Transubstantiation. There is certainly a good deal of ingenuity in this argument, not only because it supplies the place of an argument in a case, such as this, of absolute destitution; but because it converts nihility into a substance: it gives to "airy nothing" a real being. For, why are the ancients silent respecting transubstantiation?- -we must use that identical word, or one perfectly equivalent, if such exist. It was a sacred law of the church not to expose the mysteries to publicity and irreverence. But the practice certainly was very imperfectly observed in the earliest ages, even if it were then recognised; for the ancients speak with as little apparent reserve of the mysterious, as of other portions of the christian faith: and it is well known,-and has been observed by other writers, Bingham in particular, before Mr. Faber gave the finishing blow to the "web of sophistry,"that even when the practice did prevail, it concerned the doctrine of the Trinity and Incarnation quite as much as the doctrine of the Eucharist, whatever might be the prevailing view of that doctrine at the time. Our friends in the opposite ranks will hardly suppose us so simple as to admit a uniformity of belief on this subject. It is a subject on which we shall certainly claim a

The reader must not expect to find this in the Rev. J. Donovan's translation; but it is in the two prior English ones. Romanists improve in one way-we shall notice another eminent instance in time. How long is this to last?

right to rebel against the decision, even of the council of Trent, with all its canons and anathemas. The censors of Belgium would good-naturedly extricate Bertram from his heresy on this point: if he had risen from the dead at the time, he would probably have thanked them for their kindness; but he would likewise have told them, they were quite in the wrong. In short, the professors of the excogitated doctrine of the men of Capernaum are at their wit's end how to manage so stubborn a subject as the historic evidence respecting the Eucharist; and the heroes of the Perpétuité de la Foi, to which modern Romanists of England owe more than they tell, carefully abstain from that portion, as it stands discussed in the formidable work of Aubertin on the subject.

It may be an observation too apparently obvious, and yet we cannot satisfy ourselves to withhold it,-that there exists not an expression in any writer of the first three centuries, and even later, on the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, which is not strictly and grammatically (according to the universal law of interpretation in the case of figurative language,) consistent with the view of the doctrine generally held by the reformed churches. And it certainly is important to be recollected, that these writers, living, we will assume, before the existence of the gross interpretation of the modern Latin church, might, in the warmth of their imagination or feelings, make use of strong and even extravagant expressions on the subject, without suspicion or danger; at which, had they lived after the birth of the interpretation in question, they would have hesitated, and adopted a phraseology not liable to misconception. And yet, even among decidedly Protestant divines, such as have committed themselves for their hostility to the Roman error by their published writings, there are not wanting some, who have used language, of which a transubstantialist might avail himself, with quite as much reason as is exercised in claiming many of the expressions of the early christian writers.

It may farther be observed, that those who believe and practise, as the council of Trent dictates, respecting the holy sacrament under view, however they may escape the charge of formal idolatry, are, by the whole evidence produced by Mr. Faber, inextricably guilty of material idolatry. The officiating priest adores the assumed transubstantiated wafer, and he directs the congregation present to do the same. And it is not only admitted, but asserted, in the Manuals of Henry VIII. and Mary I.-public and authorized rituals of the time-that, if the people, by mistake, perform the act of adoration before the consecration of the elements, that is, before Christ has been converted into the bread and wine before them, they are guilty of idolatry. This reasoning in the rubric of the Manual assumes, or is built upon the foundation, that if the conversion stated does

not take place, or, in other words, transubstantiation is not true, all the worshippers, priest and people, are idolators-materially so. This is screened, as far as the Missal is concerned, in the popular English translation, by a rendering ingeniously unfaithful. That the consecrated host is the object of adoration is concealed: the reader is left, and indeed led, to suppose, that the object is God or the divine Son. Nor will it do to give a qualified or inferior meaning to the word adore; for Romanists think to escape the condemnation of the second commandment, by substituting the rendering adore for bow down. If bowing down be the sin prohibited, they willingly plead guilty to an act which they flatter themselves expresses but an inferior worship; but adoration is an act of divine worship; and, by just keeping clear of that, they presume that they pass untouched.

The latter part of the work, impugning the peculiar doctrines of Rome, is occupied with the congenial subjectthe variegated idolatry of that church, under the heads of "Saint-worship, Image-worship, Relic-worship, Cross-worship." Mr. Faber justly scouts the distinctions-distinctions without a difference-invented by the miserable members of a corrupt church, for the plain and only purpose of justifying what they must, in their own consciences, know to be idolatrous, and consequently more directly offensive to the true Deity than any other crime;-distinctions, so far from being sanctioned by Scripture, that Scripture does not condescend to notice them, even so far as to condemn them;-distinctions, which can have no other effect than to keep entangled in the net of a fatal impiety, souls which might otherwise think of freedom and become free. It is hard to determine which species of idolatry is the most revolting or injurious; but we must confess, that none affects us with more alternate pity and disgust, than the worship of the virgin mother of the man Christ Jesus, as man; not only considered as a simple fact-the worship of a fellow-creature, however eminent and favoured, call it hyperdulia, or any thing else but as the form and particulars of it are considered. And putting out of view, for the present, the external acts of worship performed to, or before, (it is all the same,) her various, numberless images and pictures, let our attention be concentrated to the names, titles, and attributes applied to her in all the books and services of her peculiar devotion-names, titles, and attributes not at all distinguishable, in many cases, from those commonly applied to God and the Saviour himself; let us advert, but in a passing way, to the innumerable volumes, not tracts and thin quartos, but bulky tomes, some in folio, filled with adulatory, and, we must say, indelicate discussions and representations, relative to the individual concerned; and we positively declare, that productions more dishonourable to the christian name and faith never issued from the presses of heathens and infidels; never

was the blessed virgin herself more disgraced and affronted; and if wrath could be in heaven, we believe, that more would never be shown than by her, whose son was the Messiah, against, not simply her indiscreet worshippers, but against any worshippers of herself at all. Not meaning to underrate the information of our readers in the slightest manner, we still believe, that the majority have no conception of the quantity of literature which has been lavished in praise of the Virgin Mary; and we are persuaded, if the founder of a library on a large scale were to appropriate one entire department to works of this description, he would soon find, that that department must be no small one. We must acknowledge, that we are deeply grieved when contemplating this subject, because we know not how to exculpate the patrons and performers of such idolatrous superstition, but by vindicating their integrity at the expense of their understanding, or their understanding at the expense of their integrity; and this, too, in an affair of religion!

The subject is old, and common property; and we have found it in Mr. Faber's pages, and we think, somewhere else than in those before us but it is a very observable fact, that the apologies of heathen Rome and christian Rome for their respective idolatries, are not only substantially, but almost verbally, identical. They both have the same general note-their worship is not direct to the image, but mediately to the object which the image represents. And what idolatry cannot exculpate itself by such a plea? The offence amongst the Jews must have been perfectly fictitious, and the Divine denunciations and inflictions on account of it, superfluous. God is not mocked; and we should not suffer ourselves to be mocked.

The volume before us closes with an appendix, on four important subjects:-"Liturgies, Auricular Confession, Satisfaction, and Anglican Orders." Each are consistently and satisfactorily discussed by the master-mind of the author.

We now in a manner change the scene. We intimated that some attention would be given to the work brought into especial notice for the first time by Mr. Faber-the Faith of Catholics.

* Should any one feel disposed to hesitate at this statement, he may be pleased to consult the indexes of the different Bibliothecæ of the different orders in the Roman church, under the general head Materiæ, and the section of writers De Vita et Laudibus B. Mariæ Virginis; and in Sotwell's edition of Alegambe's Bib. Soc. Jesu, he will find eight columns of authors and their works; in Wadding's Script. Ord. Min. he will find four; and, to go no further, in Quetif and Echard's Script. Ord. Præd. he will find four, of the names of authors only, amounting to nearly three hundred in this last instance. The hesitator will then probably exchange a portion of his incredulity for surprise and indig

nation.