learn what is genuine, was above all things a personal religion, addressed to, and to be judged of by, the individual conscience; a religion in which the human soul came into direct and personal contact with the divine. The Catholic religion is essentially a corporate religion, in which the individual soul is receptive of what the priest or "Church" says or does. According to its theory the individual in himself has no spiritual life, or judgment, or contact with God: all depends on sacerdotal intervention.

I say, one has but to read the New Testament, however cursorily, to see that the religion preached by Jesus and by every apostle was a strictly personal religion. Individuals were called on to listen with their own ears, to judge by their private judgment, to cast aside the creeds or ceremonies in which they had been educated and as it were born, and devote themselves to a nobler morality. Judaism and Christianity alike attracted converts by purer and higher doctrines presented to their intellects and consciences: and nothing can be more opposed to this than to pretend with the Church of Rome that private men must not judge of doctrine, but must look for an external body which is to judge in their stead. No such submission was made to apostles in their lifetime as has been claimed after their death. The first preachers of Christianity called their hearers to believe in God or in a heavenly Christ; the Romish preacher calls on them to believe "in the Church." (I shall say more of this afterwards.) Paul invited men to spiritual freedom and counted it his main business "to minister the Spirit," "the Spirit (as he calls it) of wisdom and revelation;" that is, to develop in them a power of spiritual judgment. On the contrary, the Church of Rome invites us to become spiritual slaves, dependent on the priest or director. Paul looked with extreme scorn on hereditary ceremonies, and declares that even those of Mosaism, which he believed to have been from God, are carnal ordinances and are repealed by the mere fact of a Christian's higher spiritual teaching. The Church of Rome loads us with ceremonialism and every kind of frippery, from a Cardinal's gold brocade to the Holy Coat of Treves, which, with the approval of the Hierarchy, was in our recent memory carried in procession, accompanied by the solemn cry, "Holy Coat, pray for us!

Paul did not preach to his heathen auditors about any sacred book. The books of the New Testament were not written; those

* So at least the public press in that day told us.

of the Hebrews were not held out by him to the Gentiles as authoritative. The Church of Rome grounds her pretensions on two or three misquoted texts of the New Testament, and, having thus established her right over the hearer's conscience, kicks the book away, as far as he is concerned. Moreover, however

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dogmatic in form and tone the precepts of Jesus are, as now handed to us, it is certain that Jesus never intended those precepts to become a sacred letter to future and distant nations; else he must inevitably have taken precautions that his words should be accurately committed to writing and revised by himself. evidently never thought of providing us with a new authoritative code; for he has left us to guess, as we best may, who wrote what has come to us, and when, and with what means of knowledge; and nothing can be critically clearer than that much presented to us is variously erroneous. The Unitarian Christians, who discern the great inaccuracy with which the words of Jesus are reported, seem to me more logical, more just, more reverential, in sifting and rejecting and holding much with a loose hand, than Catholics and Bibliolaters who insist on sticking to the letter. The Church system, built up on the New Testament, ever since the last quarter of the second century, is necessarily quite different in spirit and in basis from that which prevailed before the books of the New Testament were written. Paul's rule (1 Cor. xiv. 29) is: "Let two or three prophets speak [at a single meeting of the church] and let the rest [the private members of the church] judge between [them]." Even prophecy, which he so extols, was not intended to supersede the individual judgment. "Try the spirits, whether they be of God," is the doctrine ascribed to John.

I said that the Church of Rome grounded her pretensions on two or three misquoted texts, in contrast to the statement of paragraph twenty-six, which calls her development "logical." I must verify my words.

The first weapon in her armory is the text "Hear the Church," utterly, absurdly and ridiculously misquoted from Matthew, xviii. 17. Jesus is speaking of two men who have quarrelled, and the authority here vested in "the Church" is not that of pronouncing upon religious doctrines, but of adjudicating in suits at law. He did not speak in Greek, but in the vulgar Hebrew; and it is even possible that by "the Church" he meant the Jewish Synagogue; as James in his epistle (ii. 2) calls the Christian Church-"your synagogue." I say, it is possible that Jesus was teaching the Jewish hearers not to go to law before the

Roman tribunals, but to be satisfied with the decision of the synagogue. However, the compiler probably thought that Jesus spoke prophetically of the Christian Church which was to be, and that the precept was practically idle and useless to the immediate hearers. Let us admit that Jesus did speak it, and that the narrative as we have it is correct (though both may be doubtful); what then follows? Why, that in the celebrated formula of the verse immediately following-"Whatsoever ye shall bind in earth. shall be bound in heaven,"-Jesus meant simply that the verdict of the Church in worldly quarrels between her members ought to be received as ratified by God; the "Church" being not a hierarchy, but the ecclesia, which means a democratic congregation. Catholics have perverted the meaning of the Greek word ecclesia.

And now for the second cardinal text of the Romanists: "Thou art Peter; and upon this Rock will I build my church; and I will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven, &c., &c." (Matt. xvi. 18, 19). Suppose that Jesus really uttered this extravagance; to whom did he give this supernatural power? Clearly to Peter. Does he say anything of Peter's successors? Nothing. There is, then, no basis here for any continued hierarchy, even if the Church of Rome could make out (which she cannot) that she is Peter's heiress. I find nothing whatever "logical" in this attempt to step into Peter's place.

Besides which, logic ought surely to criticize. To vest in any man the keys of the kingdom of heaven is in violent contrast to the entire teaching of Jesus; and in the Apocalypse (i. 18) Jesus is represented as saying "I have the keys of Hades and of Death;" and again more pointedly (iii. 7)-"I am he that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth and no man openeth." The Apostle John, whose genuine writing this is, can have had no suspicion that Jesus had given this key to Peter. Also in the "Acts of the Apostles" it is abundantly manifest that no one, at the time of its composition, had idea that Peter held this wonderful supremacy over all any the apostles, and that the church was built upon him, any more than that Jesus was a person of the Divine Trinity. And how does Peter himself speak in his first epistle (which I suppose to be genuine)? Does he assume any special authority? Nay, but he says "The elders who are among you I exhort, who am also an elder, not to be lords over God's heritage, but ensamples to the flock." And of the Christian people collectively, he says: "Ye

are a chosen generation, a royal priesthood, a holy nation, a peculiar people, &c." No single element of sacerdotalism appears throughout. If it be denied that this epistle is genuine, yet at any rate it is very ancient, and contains the doctrine received by the Church as Peter's in the second century certainly, earlier than the subjection of the Church to any hierarchy or code.

These two texts, "Hear the Church," and "Thou art Peter," are the foundation stones of the Roman Catholic Church. Grant her the authority of these texts, and her interpretation of them, and she wants no more of the New Testament. Thenceforward she is supreme arbitress and has sufficient resources from the Holy Spirit within herself. It may be necessary for me to confirm what I said above, that Rome does not demand belief in God or Christ or indeed in any definite doctrine, but only belief in the Church. This is most clearly seen in the doctrine of Implicit Belief, which few Protestants understand. It was fully discussed in the Council of Trent. The difficulty to be met was this. Some doctrines of the Church are so puzzling that pious Catholics are liable unawares to fall into heresy. A man means to be a good Athanasian, but unluckily he is so stupid as to receive the Nestorian or the Eutychian heresy-or something else which the Church has anathematized-supposing himself all the while to be a pious Athanasian. Will he then fall under the awful curse of the Church and of God? The reply is "No; for although he has not explicit faith in the true doctrine, he has implicit (or virtual) faith, inasmuch as he means to believe what the Church believes;' and this gives to his implicit faith all the merit of explicit faith." Thus we have the doctrine laid down, that it does not signify what pernicious heresy, cursed by the Church, a man believes, if he do but believe in the Church. Naturally, therefore, I deny your twenty-seventh paragraph, which calls the Romish doctrine the most perfect form of Christianity.

I have yet to remark on one grand and cardinal doctrine, characteristic of the whole early Church, which the Catholic Church has rejected. It was the kernel and heart of Christianity with James, Paul and John-the belief in the speedy return of Jesus in the clouds of heaven, to set up the kingdom of God on earth and overthrow all the heathen royalties. The first resurrection of saints was to take place at this crisis, who were to be joined with their heavenly Master in judging (i. e., governing) the world. This doctrine kept the first Christians in great indifference to all political events and all attempts to improve

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the course of the world. To take out of the world a people chosen for God was their sole and sufficient task. To live looking for and hastening unto the coming of that day of God, to keep the faith until Christ's appearing, to wait for God's Son from heaven, to be patient unto the coming of the Lord, to love his appearing-were perpetual exhortations of the apostles; and were enforced by the declaration so often attributed to Jesus, "Behold, I come as a thief." It was inculcated that those were "the last days," "the last time;" that "the time was short." The doctrine pervades the New Testament ;* and most efficacious it was to string up the early Christians into an unearthly exaltation, in which they should live for religion alone, be indifferent to kinsfolk, to country, and to life-take joyfully the spoiling of their goods, and even covet the crown of martyrdom.

But such a religion was not made to last. It was disproved and worn out by the mere passage of time. In the second and third century it began to yield; in the fourth the millennium, the first resurrection and the reign of the saints, was exploded, though so clearly taught in the Apocalypse and assumed by Paul. No moderns can recover the state of sentiment, judgment and belief, which actuated the Church of the first two centuries. Our very astronomy and geology suffice to make it impossible. But I think it very unjust to deny that of all Christian sects the Unitarians come nearest to the Church of Jerusalem in its general doctrine. The Epistle of James and Acts of the Apostles suffice to prove it. The Unitarians do not much agree with Paul; but the doctrine of Paul was vehemently, indeed violently, rejected in the primitive centre of Christianity, which was for a while most influential; and it ought not to be forgotten, especially considering how prominent and important the doctrine of an eternal Hell has been with the Catholic Church, that the Unitarians were the first in modern times to renounce this, and that according to any just interpretation of Romans xi. 25-36, the doctrine was no part of Paul's belief. From not understanding this, Augustine, Luther, Calvin and those who are called Calvinists, have done great injustice to Paul's doctrine of election. Paul believed in universal salvation, in the last result, though in the earlier stage there was arbitrary election.

I fear I have been rather diffuse in expounding the ground of

Nay, I must except the fourth gospel, the Epistles of John the Elder, the Epistle of Jude, and second Epistle of Peter (so-called), all produced in the second century.