To the idols of Popery, thus set up to be the gods of the Christian Church, it may be said with truth, that no fewer human victims have been immolated than to the demon-gods of Paganism.

at once, in the most satisfactory manner, for the immense reputed superiority of one Madonna above another. Our Lady, it seems, is pleased to honour some of her images with a much more abundant portion of her physical or real or personal presence, than she deigns to vouchsafe to others: and these highly distinguished puppets are thence, of course, worthy of especial adoration.

It may be said, that the Church of Rome has not, through the medium of an ecumenical Council, distinctly recognised the miserable superstition before us; and, consequently, that she is not bound to answer for the inculcation of the doctrine, lamented by Erasmus, and lauded by Peter de Medrano.

:

This is the usual resource of modern apologists for the Latin Church but it cannot be allowed to avail them, until they shall have fully shewn, that such teachers as Peter de Medrano have been censured and silenced, and that the adoption of his fancies by the Laity has been strictly and explicitly prohibited as downright heresy, by the authority of the sovereign Pontiff, in his capacity of head of the Catholic Church and Vicar of our Lord Jesus Christ. If the Pope, knowingly and without any censure, allows such superstition to be taught by the Clergy and to be received by the Laity, he clearly makes himself particeps criminis for, by so doing, he virtually recognises the superstition in question as part and parcel of Roman orthodoxy. What should we think of the English Bishops, if they allowed their Clergy, without the least censure, to inculcate upon the Laity the Pie credatur of Peter de Medrano? Should we not say, that, by such conduct, they, to all intents and purposes, con verted a mere individual superstition into absolute public property? In a word, has Peter de Medrano ever been censured by his ecclesiastical superiors?

During the long and dreary period of almost incessant persecution, to which the two ancient and venerable Churches of the Vallenses and the Albigenses were subjected, one special mark of heresy was a refusal to worship images: and that refusal, which equally characterised the reformers of the sixteenth century, like the similar refusal of the primitive Christians to adore the idols of the Gentiles, never failed to expose the innumerable martyrs under Popery, those second men of understanding mentioned by Daniel, to the horrors of a death peculiarly dreadful'.

(10.) The second beast caused all persons, of whatsoever degree, to receive, in their right hand or on their foreheads, that mark or stigma, which is the impress of the name of the first beast, and which therefore exhibits the number of his name: and he suffered none to buy or to sell, except those who were branded or stigmatized by the blasphemous name in question.

We have already seen it established, that the name of the first beast, alluded to by the prophet as the name of blasphemy, is no other than the name APOSTATÈS. This name, during the period of the latter 1260 years, he specially bears in his

Dan. xi. 35. See Bp. Newton's Dissert. on the Proph. diss. xxiv. on Rev. xi, and Jones's account of the Vallenses and Albigenses in his Hist. of the Christian Church, vol. ii. One of the crimes, for which these alleged heretics were condemned by the Roman Church, is almost invariably a refusal to worship dead saints and their images.

quality of the grand secular patron and upholder of the predicted demonolatrous Apostasy. Hence, when all persons are required, under certain pains and penalties, to receive, as a conspicuous mark, the name of the beast or the name of an Apostate; we are effectively taught, with the utmost possible degree of clearness and precision, that all persons within the sphere of his influence would be compelled by the ecclesiastical beast, under certain pains and penalties, to apostatise to that gross gentilising demonolatry which should so eminently characterise the latter 1260 years.

Such is the prophecy: and most accurate has been its completion. The man of sin, as the head of the great Apostasy, has compelled all, save a small remnant of the faithful, to become apostates, in the most open and conspicuous manner, from the pure religion of the Gospel. On each of their foreheads, that so they might be seen and known of all men, is the brand of blasphemy. For the name APOSTATÈS is alike impressed, both upon the secular beast or the collective temporal Roman Empire, upon the ecclesiastical beast or the man of sin at the head of his gentilising clergy, and upon every individual Romanist who is in communion with the Latin false prophet.

The special penalty, under which the ecclesiastical beast should compel every person to receive the name of blasphemy or apostasy, is said to be an interdict from buying and selling.

In this particular, the christian false prophet has

industriously revived an edict of the pagan Roman beast, under the Emperor Dioclesian, against the primitive Christians: for, agreeably to the testimony of the early Church, no believer was allowed either to buy or to sell, until he had first offered incense to detestable idols'.

The papal transcript of that edict is truly remarkable; both as shewing how perfectly the modern Gentiles of the outer court have caught the very spirit of the ancient Gentiles their predecessors, and as exhibiting the wonderful accuracy with which the prediction now before us has been accom→ plished.

If any, as Bp. Newton well remarks upon the present clause of the prophecy, dissent from the stated and authorised forms of the Latin Church, they are condemned and excommunicated as heretics: in consequence of which, they are no longer suffered to buy or to sell; they are interdicted from traffic and commerce and from all the benefits of civil society. Thus Roger Hoveden relates of William the Conqueror, that he was so dutiful to the Pope that he would not permit any one in his power to buy or sell any thing, whom he found disobedient to the Apostolic See. Thus the canon of the Council of Lateran under Pope Alexander the third, made against the Vallenses and the Albigenses, enjoins, upon pain of anathema, that

Med. Comment. Apoc. par. ii, oper. p. 509.

no man presume to entertain or cherish them in his house or land or to exercise traffic with them. Thus the Synod of Tours in France, under the same Pope, orders, under the like intermination, that no man should presume to receive or assist them, no not so much as to hold any communion with them in buying or selling: that, being deprived of the comfort of humanity, they may be compelled to repent of the error of their ways. And thus Pope Martin the fifth, in his bull set out after the Council of Constance, commands, in like manner, that they permit not the heretics, to have houses in their districts, or to enter into contracts, or to carry on commerce, or to enjoy the comforts of humanity with Christians'.

It may not be unimportant to observe, that what may be called the poetical machinery of the pre

1

Bp. Newton's Dissert. on the Proph. dissert. xxv. vol. iii. p. 228, 229. The machinery of papal excommunication seems to have been very much borrowed from that of the ancient druidical excommunication as enforced among the Celtic tribes.

Si quis, aut privatus aut publicus, eorum (scil. Druidarum) decreto non stetit, sacrificiis interdicunt. Hæc pœna apud eos est gravissima. Quibus ita est interdictum, ii numero impiorum ac sceleratorum habentur. Iis omnes decedunt; aditum eorum sermonemque defugiunt; ne quid ex contagione incommodi accipiant: neque iis petentibus jus redditur, neque honos ullus communicatur. Cæsar. de Bell. Gall. lib. vi. § 13.

It may justly indeed be said, as Mr. Mede and Dr. Middleton have fully shewn, that Popery is throughout a complete plagiarism from ancient Paganism.