gant a degree, cannot surely be paralleled in any country, or in any age. Many of these fanatics were possessed with the horror of life, and the desire of martyrdom, and they deemed it of little moment by what means or by what hands they perished, if their conduct were sanctified by the intention of devoting themselves to the glory of the true faith and the hope of eternal happiness. The Donatist suicides alleged in their justification the example of Razias, which is related in the fourteenth chapter of the second book of the Maccabees. Sometimes they rudely disturbed the festivals and profaned the temples of paganism, with the design of exciting the most zealous of the idolaters to revenge the insulted ho-. nour of their Gods. They sometimes forced their way into the courts of justice, and compelled the afflicted judge to give orders for their immediate execution. They frequently stopped travellers on the public highways, and obliged them to inflict the stroke of martyrdom, by the promise of a reward if they consented, and by the threat of instant death, if they refused to grant so very singular a favour. When they were disappointed of every other resource, they announced the day on which, in the presence of their friends and brethren, they should cast themselves headlong from some lofty rock; and many precipices

VOL. III.

were shewn which had acquired fame by the number of religious suicides.

CHURCH PROPERTY.

By parliamentary returns made in 1818, it appears that there were 4361 livings under £150; 5,995 above £150; 65 appropriated and sinecures, so that the total number of livings was 10421 of these 5417 had habitable glebe houses, 2626 not so; of 195 there were no returns. By the same returns to parliament, the number of churches was shown to be 10193, of chapels 1551, and the total number of places of the established worship, amounted to 11623. The annual revenues received from tithe by the clergy is £2031000; the impropriations are £1588000 of which the universities and clergy hold one third, or £512670, therefore the sum received for tithe is in the whole £3569000, a little more than one third of what is estimated its value. The clergy receive from tithes £2031000, the discipline from glebe &c. averaged at £40 amount to £426000, the augmentation lands to £100000. Total 2551000.

EXCOMMUNICATION.

In earlier ages robbers became so formidable that the magistrates were obliged to apply to the ecclesiastical power to issue anathemas against them. One of these forms of excommu

nication, issued in 988, is still preserved; it runs thus: "May your eyes, that have coveted, "be darkened; may the hands be withered up "that have robbed; may all the limbs be en"feebled that have helped, may ye always find "labour but never find rest; and may ye be de"prived of the fruit of your labour; may ye be "in fear and dread from the face of the enemy, "whether he pursues or does not pursue you: "that, by wasting away, you may at length be "consumed; may your portion be with Judas, "who betrayed our Lord, in the land of death " and darkness, till your hearts are converted to "make full satisfaction; may these curses, taking

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vengeance of your wickedness, never cease. "their effect on you so long as you remain in "the sin of robbery: amen, so be it, so be it."

'ST. AGATHA.

The number of saints, allowed to be such by the Romish church, is as prodigious as the spawn. of fish. Father Papebroche reckons seventeen. or eighteen hundred to have died on the first of June only, so that what was said of the christian world, that "many are called but few are cho"sen," cannot be applied to the popish community. However, father Mobilla was free enough to doubt whether many of the invoked saints are,

themselves, in heaven. Very little, we presume, can be entertained, as to the lady whose name appears at the head of this article; she was a Sicilian young lady, of great beauty and virtue. She had resisted the vicious importunities of the prætor of Catania, until his unmanly resentment was aroused against her-as a christian. The legend runs thus:-upon being questioned as to her religious tenets, Agatha nobly persevered in her profession of christianity, and was in consequence put to the rack, burnt with hot irons, and deprived of her breasts: still, however, living and stedfast amid her agonies, the cruel tyrant remanded her to prison to be reserved for future tortures, but providence (for it is always enlisted" by the legend writers, though whether in the right place will presently appear) here benignly interfered, i. e., after her being burnt and mutilated, bestowing on her spiritual comfort, and even throwing down the wall of her prison, and crushing two of the governor's servants as they were executing their master's orders for her confinement. There was a veil of hers which was left as a relic to the Sicilians, and was to protect the country from earthquakes. But, notwithstanding the continually increasing shocks since felt, and some dreadful convulsions, one of which destroyed twenty thousand inhabitants, the veil

of St. Agatha is still held to be miraculous, and will now be a secure defender, against any future similar disasters.

FATHER POPE.

Father Pope, the Jesuit, died at Naples, May twenty-nine, 1759, so great was his popularity, that, for his pulpit and confession box, the people made great scrambling, from a notion of his superior sanctity. His apartment:being opened in the presence of the cardinal, arch-bishop, and one of the king's ministers, there were found in it six hundred ounces of gold in specie; bills, amounting to fifty-six thousand ducats; one, thousand six hundred pounds of wax; ten copper vessels full of dutch tobacco; three gold repeating watches; four boxes made of rare shells; two hundred silk hankerchiefs; and a capital of three hundred thousand ducats. Before his death he made a present to the church of Jesus, of a piece of velvet hangings, laced with gold, a a large statue of the immaculate conception of massy silver, and a fine pyramid, to be erected in the front of the church. The Jesuits certainly made their way among nations surprisingly, but they told lies in great abundance. They played. off this lying spirit in America, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians their great