difficulty in the Roman Catholic religion truly. It puts a tremendous strain on the mind.

There is also her doctrine about the necessity of baptism to salvation, which some of us find it very hard to believe. One reason of our difficulty is, that that doctrine bears so hard upon the heathen, and particularly on the immense multitude of infants who every where die without baptism. According to the doctrine of Rome, that baptism is indispensable to salvation, they are all lost for want of a little water! Poor things, they fare no better than the thief on the cross, who died without baptism. They get no farther than Paradise the first day. It is a hard religion. This doctrine is cruelly hard upon children; as her doctrine, that money, by the purchase of prayers and masses, releases souls from purgatory, is hard upon the poor.

So much for the difficulty of her faith. But all of that is not so hard; as for example, her doctrine of indulgences. It is never hard to be indulged. There is no hardship, but very great convenience for a delinquent sinner, to have such a bank to draw upon, as the accumulated merits of the saints in by-gone ages, who did more than they needed for their own salvation, having loved God with considerably more than "all the heart, and soul, and strength, and mind!" This doctrine does not make the Roman Catholic religion a hard one: neither does the doctrine of venial sins. You know they hold, that there are some sins whose wages is not death. They are excusable-mere peccadilloes. We recognise no such sins. We think with St. Paul, that “cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them." Gal. iii. 10.

But perhaps when the Roman Catholics speak of their religion as a hard one, they refer not so much to their faith as their practice. It is what they have to do that is so hard. But why do they speak of it as so hard? It looks as if it was a task to them-as if they do not find their sweetest and purest delight in it. It would appear as if they did not esteem the service of God as

much their privilege as their duty. One would suppose, to hear them talk, that the commandments of God are grievous. I am truly sorry for them, that Christ's yoke, which, He says, is easy, they find to be so galling to them. We, Protestants, never think of speaking of our religion as hard. "Wisdom's ways," we find to be ways of pleasantness, and all her paths peace." Prov. iii. 17. Our language is, "Oh how love I Thy law! How sweet are Thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" Psalm cxix. 97, 103. But it seems not to be so with Roman Catholics. I have been struck with surprise, to hear even the most devout of them speak of the requirements of their religion as things which they must comply with. "I must," is the language which they use, in reference to almost every thing of a religious kind that they do. I have thought with myself, how is it possible that their hearts can be in their religion, if they esteem it such a hardship. How will heaven be able to make them happy, if the exercises and acts on earth, most akin to those of heaven, are so irksome, that they engage in them only from sheer necessity?

But I must advert to some of the hard practices which the Roman Catholic religion requires of her votaries. There is that practice of confessing to the priest. Is not that hard! Truly it is. I think I should find it hard to tell every thing, even the most secret thoughts, to any body called a priest. And then to have to perform whatever penance he might please to prescribe. Yes, it is hard- -so hard, and so absurd too, that God has never required it at our hands. He says to the sinner, Come at once to me with your broken heart, and make your confession to me; for He is "in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them." (2 Cor. v. 19.)

Again, fasting is reckoned among the hard things of the Roman Catholic religion; and indeed it is hard not to eat when one is hungry. Their idea of fasting is in accordance with what St. Paul says to Timothy in his

prediction concerning them, an "abstaining from meats," or certain meats, or "whatsoever is sold in the shambles.' Now there is nothing so very hard in that restriction. He must be very difficult to please, who cannot satisfy his appetite out of all the variety of the vegetable kingdom, when he has moreover the liberty of the entire fish market.

But there is one thing about the Roman Catholic religion, in view of which I suppose I must admit it to be the hardest religion. It belongs strictly neither to faith nor practice. You will guess that I have in my mind-purgatory.* Now, as a doctrine, there are many things about it hard to be believed; as, for example, that material fire should be able to act on an immaterial

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* There is certainly something very hard in the doctrine of Purgatory. Purgatory," according to Bellarmine, one of the highest authorities in the Church of Rome, "is that place in which, after death, the souls of those persons are purified who were not fully cleansed on earth, in order that they may be prepared for heaven, wherein nothing shall enter that defileth." In attempting to prove it, he mainly relies on 2 Macc. xii. 43-46, on which Roman Catholic writers in general lay great stress. The words are: "And making a gathering, he sent twelve thousand drachms of silver to Jerusalem, for sacrifice to be offered for the sins of the dead, thinking well and religiously concerning the resurrection, (For if he had not hoped that they that were slain should rise again, it would have seemed superfluous and vain to pray for the dead,) And because he considered that they who were fallen asleep with godliness, had great grace laid up for them. It is therefore a holy and wholesome thought to pray for the dead, that they may be loosed from

sins.

This, of course, would be much to the purpose, if it were from canonical Scripture; but we all know that it is from the Apocrypha-from a book, at the end of which the writer says, "I also will here make an end of my narrative. Which, if I have done well, and as it becometh the history, it is what I desired but if not so perfectly, it must be pardoned me" (2 Macc. xv. 38, 39). Is not this a very plain renunciation of all claim to inspiration?

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Furthermore, it is affirmed, that purgatory is situated in the centre of the earth, and that it forms one of the four compartments into which the infernal regions are divided.

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spirit, and thereby purify it too. But, hard as purgatory is to be believed, it is still harder to be suffered. Yes, it is hard, after having gone through the whole routine of the sacraments, and lived long a good Roman Catholic, then to die, and go into an intense fire. It is so hard, that I, for my part, prefer the religion of poor Lazarus,

punishment endured in this fictitious abode is said to be that of fire, "corporeal fire ;" but how such an agent can act upon an incorporeal spirit, the Cardinal prudently confesses cannot be understood upon earth. All that can be known in this state is, that the pains of purification are so horribly severe, that no sufferings ever borne in this world can be compared with them. How long they continue is not reported; but it is thought that the process is very gradual, and that some will not be thoroughly cleansed till the Day of Judgment.

Some say that the torments are as terrible as those of Hell -the only difference being, that those of Purgatory are only for a time.

An awful prospect for the poor Romanist when dying! And those who are most earnest and conscientious, and have the deepest convictions of sin, must feel it most terribly ;-of which there is a most affecting illustration in the case of Martin Boos, whose life, by Gossner, has been translated, and published by Seeley. An account of his last days has also been published, in a little tract, by the Monthly Tract Society. And it seems that, as a rule, all Romanists have to expect this dreadful torment: for we never hear or read of any one, however eminent-Pope, Bishop, or what else for the repose of whose soul Masses are not said. Certainly as long as the Church of Rome celebrates Mass for them, she confesses that they are yet enduring the torments of Purgatory—that is, (though only for a period) the torments of the damned! Is not this a hard religion?

But "let the Bishops take care that the suffrages of the living faithful-viz., masses, prayers, alms, and other works of piety, which the faithful have been accustomed to perform for departed believers-be piously and religiously rendered, according to the institutes of the Church." Hence arise great gains to the priests. These masses must be paid for. An Irish Scripture reader, being asked of a clergyman what he thought of Purgatory, said, "I think, your Reverence, that it is the milch cow that never runs dry." It is, indeed, an inexhaustible source of gain to this Apostate Church. With it is closely connected the whole system of Indulgences.

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whom the angels took straight to heaven; and of the penitent malefactor, who spent a part of the day on which he died in paradise. Surely St. Paul could not have been thinking of purgatory when he said, "To me to die is gain." But I forget: he lived before the

time of the Roman Catholic religion.

Let us hear both sides. In my former article on this subject, I objected to the translation doing penance, in the Douay Bible. But have the Roman Catholics nothing to say in justification of their rendering? I suppose that whatever they have to say is expressed in a certain note on Matthew iii. 2, "Do penance, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand," is the edifying translation of the passage. Our attention is then directed to this note, "Agite pœnitentiam, metanoeite, which word, according to the use of the Scriptures and the holy fathers, does not only signify repentance and amendment of life, but also punishing past sins by fasting and such like penitential exercises." This is the sage note.

Now here is an acknowledgment, that the ideas of repentance and amendment are intended in the original word. Why then is a translation of it adopted, which excludes both repentance and amendment? If the original includes them, yet their translation does not. A man may do penance, and yet neither repent nor amend neither be sorry nor better. These translators must have thought, that repentance and amendment, though included in the original word, were of little importance, otherwise they would not have suppressed them in their translation. They must have judged them too insignificant to be taken notice of in their standard version! As for us Protestants, we think that to be sorry and to reform are very important parts of repentance.

But, besides repentance and amendment, they say the original word signifies "purishing past sins, by fasting,