mends, and which the other condemns ?" But that is not so. The two parties do not approve of it. So far from it that the Protestant declares the Catholic way to be an exceedingly dangerous way, while his own way, though pronounced by the Catholic to be fatal, can claim the most respectable testimony that it is the true and safe way. Then comes an illustration, which like a great many other illustrations, is well constructed, but happens to be totally inapplicable to the case in hand, "Who, in fine, can doubt, but that a medicine prescribed by two physicians may be taken with more security than another which one of the two judges may be his death?" How the Duke rolls on his argument! Just now the Protestant only admitted the possibility of the Catholic's salvation. Then he is represented as approving the Catholic way-and immediately after as prescribing it! It is easy proving any thing, if one may make facts to suit his purpose. I believe it is not true that Protestants prescribe the Catholic religion to those who ask them what they shall do to be saved.

People must become Catholics, if they please, but I would advise them to look out for better reasons for the change than the Duke of Brunswick's fifty; and especially than this, his seventh, It is a poor reason for becoming a Catholic that they say they are the people, and haughtily bid all others stand by, because they are holier. I cannot think it so great a recom mendation of a religion, that it denounces, and so fa, as it can, damns all who cannot see their way clea to embrace it.

51. The Duke's Eleventh Reason.

I don't know what is to become of our Protestant religion, with so many reasons against it. I don't know but we shall all have to go back again to the Catholic church, compelled by the cogency of argument. Fifty reasons why the Roman Catholic religion ought to be preferred to all others! Only think. And some of them that I don't find any answer to in any Protestant writer! Such a one is the eleventh of the formidable series. In the three preceding reasons or considerations, as he calls them, the Duke had been giving us the result of his inquiries. It seems he was quite an investigator. He searched almost every book but the Scriptures. He looked for what he wanted every where but where the thing was. When a man is inquiring after the truth, and consults the philosophers, the fathers, the martyrs, and all the saints, I cannot see where is the harm of just looking into the prophets, the evangelists, and the apostles too. I don't know why they should be treated with such neglect; I think they are quite as respectable writers as some of the fathers. But be this as it may, the Duke, in his eighth consideration, tells us about his consulting the writings of the ancient fathers, to find what they would advise him to do, whether to embrace the Roman Catholic faith or no. And he says they all told him to be a Roman Catholic by all means. Then says he in his ninth consideration, "I appealed to the saints of God, and asked them what was the faith they lived in, and by which they arrived at eternal bliss." And they said,

not that they had "washed their robes and made them white in the blood of the Lamb," in accordance with the account given of some other saints in Rev. 7, but "they all made answer, it was the Roman faith." By the way, the Catholics have an advantage over us Protestants. They know just who are saints, and have a way of consulting them after they are dead. We are not equal to those things. Why, the Duke even tells us the names of those who made answer. "Thus," says he, "I was answered by St. Martin, St. Nicholas, St. Athanasius, and many more among the bishops; among the religious, by St. Dominick (!?) St. Francis, &c. Among the widows, by St. Monica, St. Bridget, St. Elizabeth, &c. Among the virgins, by St. Agatha, St. Lucy, St. Agnes, St. Catharine, &c." I think if a Protestant had had the privilege of cross-examining the above when the Duke consulted them, the result might have been somewhat different. But no Protestant had notice of his intention to carry his inquiries into that quarter. The Duke was determined to make thorough work of it. Therefore, in his tenth consideration he tells us: "Then I turned to the holy martyrs, and inquired what faith it was for the truth of which they spilt their blood." They answered it was the Roman Catholic. "This," he says, "I was assured of by thirty-three bishops of Rome, who were crowned with martyrdom; by the saints Cyprian, Sebastian, Laurence; by St. Agatha, St. Cecily, St. Dorothy, St. Barbara, and an infinite number of other saints." They all told the same story. "Then," says the Duke, "I wound up my argument." But he concluded on the whole, before winding it up, to let it run down a little

lower. And this brings us to his eleventh reason. The reader will please prepare himself now for a prostrating argument. "My next step was in thought to hell, where I found in condemnation to everlasting torments, Simon Magus, Novatus Vigilantius, Pelagius, Nestorius, Macedonius, Marcion, &c." May I never be under the necessity of descending so low for an argument! But the Duke does not say that he actually went to the bad place, but he went in thought. There, having gone in thought, he found so and so. Here is another advantage the Catholics have over us. They know who are in hell. We do not. Perhaps some are not there who we may fear are. We do not hold ourselves qualified to judge in these matters. Well, he found them there. He was quite sure not one of them had repented and been saved. And he asked them how they came there, and they very civilly answered that "it was for their breaking off from the Roman Catholic church." Now this is the argument that I have not seen answered by any Protestant writer, as far as I can recollect. I don't read of any Protestant who went even in thought to hell to consult the lost on the points in controversy between us and the Catholics. So that the Catholics have the whole of this argument to themselves. The Duke says they told him they were there for not being Catholics, and we have no counter testimony. Protestantism, however, having so many other "witnesses on the truth" of her system, can easily do without the testimony of "the spirits in prison." Let that be for the Catholics. But by the way, I wonder that the Duke relied so unhesitatingly on the testimony of those persons. How

does he know they told the truth? Are not all such called in Scripture "the children of the devil," and does not every body know his character for veracity? It is certainly an extraordinary answer for one of them, Simon Magus, to give, considering the time when he lived. How could he say with truth that he was there for breaking off from the Roman Catholic church, when at the date of his apostacy the Gospel had never been preached at Rome? There was no Roman church to break off from.

I was expecting that the Duke would push his inquiries yet one step farther, and, seeing he was on the spot, interrogate Satan in regard to the true religion. But he does not seem to have consulted “the father of lying," but only the children. The truth is, the Devil does not wait to be consulted on that subject, but makes his suggestions to "them that dwell on the earth," without being called on so to do.

I hope the Reformed religion will be able to stand the shock of this argument, notwithstanding the doubt I expressed in the beginning.

52. Beauties of the Leopold Reports.

I have been not a little interested with the extracts recently published from the Reports of the Leopold Society in Austria, and it has struck me that I might do some service, especially to those who have not the time or the patience to read long articles, by calling