cited by such shows, for just before, he said, that these carnal minded people 'preferred spending the whole day in wondering at these things, rather than to be meditating on the law of God." He could have meant nothing else therefore, than that these splendid images were placed in the churches under the PRETENCE of exciting dovotion, while the real object was, that the "foolish people," (as he calls them,) "might BESTOW A GIFT." Id. ib. "O Crux ave, spes unica!" "Hail, O Cross, our only hope!" as exclaims the Romish church in her "BREVIARY." "Besides the little images of Christ crucified, and of the Blessed Virgin," continues the saint, "which the priest ought to be careful to place near the sick persou, if it can be done, let him also place before his eyes large images of the Mother of God, and the Redeemer, that the sick man, turn which way he will, may see them and commend himself to them." Id. ib. N. 235.

66

So much for this lesson on the morality of the Romanist rule of faith. On these matters we have not time to comment. For those who think they need a comment, my worthy friend knows how to manage the cause admirably! His talents suit this exigency. He is fluent in all the dogmas of Catholicism. To these he has devoted many years and is a good judge of a certain class of human nature. He knows the power of a laugh-an anecdote a sigh-a compliment -a picture—and, above all, he knows how much it weighs, with one class, to say, with a triumphant air, “There's logic for you!" "what an argument is that!" "I have proved it now!" "this is sound logic!" 'my friend Mr. C. feels it-it is the badness of his cause-my cause is so good, so ancient, so venerable, so holy, so catholic!" &c. &c. I say, in this sort of rhetoric, my learned opponent is an adept. It has only one fault, it is too luscious sometimes, and he lays it on rather thick, to stick long upon the audience. He is performing his part nobly! For myself, I regard all this as a grave, serious, scriptural and rational discussion; I expect the good feelings of my audience, of which I am already conscious, only by addressing myself to their understanding, and in the cool argumentative dignity of reason, fact, and argument. But really, no man, in my knowledge, could sustain the Romanist cause better than my learned and ingenious respondent; and if he fails, Roman Catholicism in the West need not look for an abler defendant.

My friend has admitted the seven methods of electing popes, but says it is no matter how they are chosen. Americans! How would you relish such doctrine in respect to your governors, judges, and presidents? If some city or county in this state should elect a governor for the whole state, would it make no difference to you? Should your chief magistrate be elected by a mob, by a party, or by force, or bribery, would you say it matters not-the virtue is in the office, no matter how the incumbent has come into it?!

The "Palladium" and "Baptist Banner" prove as much against Protestantism, and for Catholicism, as they deal in ribaldry and personal abuse. If these are arguments on which the bishop relies, they may be good authority for him; but, for myself, I need no such logic, and my cause disdains such auxiliaries. He has great use for Unitarians also, and sometimes for. Universalists, and even Quakers; but in his last argument he has mistaken the point. These all appeal, in their controversies, to the bible alone, just as the Jansenists and Jesuits, the Dominicans, Bernardites, Benedictines, Franciscans, &c. &c. while they have disliked and opposed one another, all acknowledge the pope as supreme head of the church, the judge of controversies.

I am glad that he has at last admitted that the Jansenists in all essentials are Catholics, and that they are repudiated only for a difference of opinion. But where now are his objections against Du Pin? He objected to him that he was a Jansenist, as if a difference in opinion destroys the credibility of a witness-a principle that forever roots up all history; for no one upon this principle is authentic, unless he be a Roman Catholic; nor then, unless a Jesuit, and this is equivalent to saying, that no one is authentic unless he bear witness for him.-[Time expired.]

BISHOP PURCELL rises-

Twelve o'clock, M.

I shall begin where my friend left off. I am charged with appealing to the feeling, and not to the reason of my hearers: "my rhetoric is too luscious; I lay it on too thick; it won't stick," &c. &c. Well! if my rhetoric is too luscious, that of my friend is too insipid; if mine is too thick, his is too thin. The fallacy it would cover, grins through the flimsy gossamer: the weakest eyes can see it beneath the veil. But I trust, I need not offer any vindication of my arguments to this assembly. They are able, and, I thank God, willing, too, to judge for themselves. They see that all, or the main force of my friend consists of two renegade priests, Smith and Du Pin. These are the two pillars of his logic. The published volume will shew how superior and how honest are mine. În the oral debate, I address the judgment, without neglecting the heart: and if I did present my argument chiefly to the former, it would be because of an observation of the celebrated John Randolph, in the Virginia convention for altering the constitution of the state. Speaking of my learned opponent, who was a delegate to that convention, Randolph said, "He had politics in his heart and religion in his head." I cannot vouch for the authenticity of the anecdote, I have just heard it. I hope it was not founded in fact-[Mr. C. explained-Mr. Randolph had never said so to him.] I proceed to more important matters. I did not pretend to day that an informal election had any force. But that any form on which the entire church agreed, according to the majority principle governing our own elections, was valid. It was Christ who drafted the constitution of our church. I do not much like to see any comparison instituted between it and the works of human legislators. But if closely examined, it will be found to contain the excellencies, while it excludes the defects of the most popular forms of civil government. We have a perfect feature of the Republican Model, in this, that with us, merit is the grand criterion of fitness for office. No favoritism is allowed. No matter how humble the parentage or obscure the kindred of the individual, virtue, talent and common sense are sure, sooner, or later, to elevate him to any situation he may be advised to accept. The church often selects her chief officers, as God did David," from the flocks of sheep," Ps. 7. viii. 70. from the humblest walks of life. It is to this system, of giving merit a fair field, that we are indebted for the brightest ornaments in civil society, a Curran, chosen for his intelligent blue eye, his wit and archness, from among his playmates, when "they that won, laughed, and they that lost cheated," as is very often the case.

To finish the conversion of the Jew, when I discontinued my argument, at half past eleven, on different principles. He knew there

was a synagogue which the people were bound to consult, by the express command of God, and that it was no servility, it was blasphemy against God and often visited with the heaviest penalties, even in this life, to oppose its authority, or to contradict its teaching. He is therefore prepared to hear of authority in religion-in fact, the synagogue was a type of the church, its introduction-as the CHURCH is the fulfilment and the consummation of the teaching and testimony of the LAW. The Jew having had reason to question the truth of his religion, for which, he remembers he had often read, a better was to be substituted, and aware that the time marked so distinctly by the prophets for the coming of the Messiah, has long ago past, he looks for any religious society, that can illustrate the splendid prophecies of Isaiah, respecting the catholicity, or universal diffusion and the duration of the church, from the time of the CRUCIFIED ONE. He has only to open his eyes to see that the Catholic church extends the dominion of Christ, the limits of his spiritual kingdom from sea, to sea. Then he looks at the other denominations. He finds none of the qualities of such a kingdom, in them. They are not Catholic, they are not old, they are not uniform. They are the contrary of all this. This is enough for him. He uses his reason, thus far, alone, because he is not yet baptized. Like the wise men, he follows the light of that star, until he reaches Jerusalem-when its light fails him, there, as the star did them, he asks, as they did, of authority, where the truth may be found, and reason and revelation concur to shew it to him in the church. He consigns himself to its guidance, he becomes a Catholic-and reason tells him, every day, he has done right. He lives and he dies without a doubt of the soundness of his decision, for this blessed security is the distinctive character of the Catholic. All other creeds based on the essential maxim of their fallibility, leaves the human mind, in life and death, a prey to the most torturing anxiety. But I have not done with this very instructive incident in the discussion. If the Jew witnesses an occasional scandal in the church, he calls to mind how Adam fell in Eden, and Aaron fell, at the foot of the smoking Sinai, and Heli and his Sons, the priests, fell in Silo, and that Christ said not, reject a religion, whose ministers have, personally, transgressed, but on the contrary, that he said: "Upon the chair of Moses have sitten the Scribes and the Pharisees. All things therefore, whatsoever they shall say to you, observe ye and do ye: but according to their works, do ye not, for they say and do not. Thus truth is not abandoned; if the bad liver meets his merited doom.

I now come to all that farrago of the Renegade Smith's translation of Liguori. My friend says the Catholic rule is immoral. He approached this topic with so much reluctance, and with so many struggles, that, conscious of his having nothing true to produce against Catholic morality, I was going to say to him, "SPEAK OUT." But I didn't, and now he has said all. Well, what does it amount to? Why to this, that the Catholic church is blackened, but beautiful (Nigra sum, sed formosa, as the spouse says in the canticle). She is, though misrepresented, fair, though slandered, pure. If a Catholic were always what his church teaches, and the sacraments she is appointed by Christ to minister, give him grace, to be, he would be an ornament to human nature, as well as to his faith. But "the Catholic rule is immoral and dispenses with the law of God." No; it enforces dreadful penalties here and eternal torments hereafter, for a viola

tion of the law. If her ministers make any mitigation of her strict code of morals in consequence of the arduous duties, weak health, or other circumstances of her children, she teaches them, that if the alleged motives of such mitigation do not, indeed, exist, it is not "a faithful dispensation, but a cruel dissipation" of the heavenly ordinances; that the priest has no power but what he derives from God, and that God will infallibly inflict all the rigors of his vengeance for its abuse, as well on the priest, as on the people. If all the priests and bishops in the world were to pronounce the words of absolution over a sinner, in whose heart God did not see true sorrow for his fault, with a sincere resolution to sin no more, the absolution would be null and void, and the horrid crime of sacrilege superadded to the previous guilt of the transgressor. The hope of the hypocrite shall perish, says the scripture. We have a maxim, which must make the pope and bishops and priests, as well as the laity tremble, when we approach the dread tribunal of penance. It is this: "a good confession is the key of Heaven, a bad one is the key of Hell." How admirable are the lessons read today from Liguori-and they were faithfully rendered for a sinister motive-and how well does the Catholic church describe the perils and the obligations of their sacred office to her ministers! Hence it is that we assume our religious robes and hear confessions in the open church, where are also our confessionals, under the eyes of all. If Liguori were the immoral man that Smith would make him, would he have given such lessons to the clergy and pointed out so impressively the dangerous consequences of a single indiscretion, or the slightest familiarity on the occasions to which he was adverting? "I made a covenant with my eyes, says Job, xxxi. 1. that I would not so much as think of a virgin; for what part should God from above have in me, and what inheritance the Almighty from on high?" Liguori says: "He that does any servile work on the Lord's day, let him do penance, three days, on bread and water." To what does my friend object in this, on the score of immorality? Is it the enforcing of the observance of the sabbath? Surely that is not immoral. Is it to the severity of the penalty? But did not God ordain the pain of death against the man who gathered a few sticks on the sabbath? Liguori allows work on the sabbath, on certain occasions.So do we.-Doctors work on the sabbath, without sin. So do printers, though I think not always, especially when they publish pious lies against the Catholics. "Which of you, says Christ, whose ox, or his ass, falls into a pit, will not quickly draw him out, on the sabbath. If a house is on fire on the sabbath, will not the Presbyterian bell ring and the citizens haul out the hose and engines? Will we not save the harvest, on a Sunday? New Orleans' profanity on the sabbath! Why, they are not all Catholics, many of them are infidels and Protestants, who there break the sabbath-and their sin, though bad enough, is not so bad as theirs, who, as it has been done elsewhere, meet in gangs for forgeries and other such frauds, on the sabbath. "Custom is fast becoming an excuse for every thing."-No where does Liguori say this. I call for the original. Let Mr. C. produce his proof, if he can. If he cannot, what will this community think of him? "The Romanist rule of faith places the Virgin Mary above Christ." It does no such a thing. It says "cursed be every Goddess worshiper," while it renders "honor to whom honor." We know and profess that the mother has no power but what she derives from the Son.

Mr.

To Him, we say "have mercy on us;" to her "pray for us." C. says, "No being in the universe should be called mother of God." Was not Christ God? And does not the gospel call Mary, his mother? Did not one hundred and fifty eight bishops so call her, in the year 431, in the council of Ephesus? Who is the intelligent Catholic, as my opponent states, who is ashamed of what the gospel and the church sanction? I ask who is he? Let us have his name. The streets of Ephesus rung with loud applause when the decision of the council was announced, vindicating the name and dignity of the mother of God, and the words Mapía soronos were echoed from mouth to mouth, mingled with the most joyful and exulting cries of the populace, to the consternation of Nestorianism. 'Son! behold thy mother!' were among the last words spoken by the expiring Savior on the cross. Will my opponent call them ill timed at that hour, when all was consummated!

"The Catholic rule makes a distinction between mortal and venial sins." And why should it not? Does not the bible, which proportions the penalty to the offence, does not the civil law, which punishes not every offence alike, does not common sense point out the distinction? Is it as great a sin for a child to tell a little, white lie to excuse itself, as for a son to whet the razor and cut his father's throat? I am sensible that a lie is never innocent. Nor do I excuse it under any circumstances-but it is of various shades of guilt, according to the circumstances when it is uttered. I know of national legislatures which give a bribe of forty pounds per annum to an apostate priest, to tempt him by filthy lucre to act against his conscience-and which not so many years ago, encouraged a son to turn Protestant, by empowering him to take his father's estate and turn both his aged parents and with them his brothers and sisters, if they persisted in being Catholics, out of doors, and it would be easy for me to prove that this law was passed by many Protestant ministers, and that it was not over scrupulous in point of morality in papistical distinction between moral and venial sins; but let us have more of Smith's translation of Liguori, he says 'let stolen money be paid for masses? No; he says first, let the rightful owner be hunted out by the penitent thief, and to him let the restitution be made. If he can be no longer found, let the money be given for masses, for his spiritual benefit, or distributed, for his sake, in alms to the poor, and what better use could be made of it-what better counsel given?

Another proof of Catholic immorality is that we are bound to go once a year to confession! Where the immorality of this is, I cannot conceive. Is it not good to be obliged to examine, at least, once a year, if not more frequently, the state of our consciences and to confess ourselves sinners? Is not this an admirable institution for the acquiring of the best kind of knowledge, the knowledge of oneself? Is it not worthy of God? Is it not God himself that instituted it? Did he not leave to his church, the power of binding and loosing from sin, when he said to his apostles, after having mysteriously breathed upon them and given them the Holy Ghost, "Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven, and whose sins you shall retain, they are retained: Whatever you shall bind on earth, it shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever you shall loose on earth, it shall be loosed in Heaven." John xx. 22, 23. And my friend quoted St. Thomas Aquin, and St. Augustin, as well as Liguori, for the holy rules the priest must observe, in hearing confessions. That establishes the im