&c." This is their assertion. Where are their proofs? I should like to see some of them, for the dictionaries ( tell us another story. Well, they appeal to the Scrip tures and the fathers: according to the use of the Scriptures and the holy fathers." Here are two autho rities, though of very unequal weight in my estimation. I wish these translators had said, where the Scriptures use this word in their sense. I suppose they would, if they had been able. The truth is, the word is never so used. It does not include this idea of theirs. Punishing! Repentance does not mean punishing. Punishing past sins! This is no very eligible phrase. It is much too figurative for an explanatory note. And punishingi them, how? By fasting! How does fasting punisha sin? I cannot see how any fasting punishes sin; but I am sure the Roman Catholic fasting does not. Do you know what Roman Catholics mean by fasting Not abstaining from food. No, to be sure; but changing their kind of food. Only abstain from certain meats, according to the prediction, 1 Tim. iv. 3, and you may eat whate else you please. Fasting, according to the opinions held by Roman Catholics in the region of country where Io live, and I suppose it is so elsewhere, consists in reli ducing one's self down to the low diet of fish (after all their kinds), eggs, oysters, terrapins, with all manner of vegetables, and every variety of dessert! This is fasting, because there is no butchers' meat eaten. You may eat what is sold anywhere else but in the shambles I cannot see any thing very punitive in such fasting. A man's sin must be exceedingly sensitive to feel the infliction of such abstinence. I do not believe that sin is to be starved out of the soul in that wayo si ni bebulo ti It is well enough sometimes,otobtry the value of an explanation upon a passage in which the thing explained occurs, as for example, "God now commandeth all men every where to punish their past sins by fasting and such like penitential exercises? (see Acts xvii. 30). How does that sound? Do you really think that it is what

the Lord meant?

19

Now!

Some plain, honest people may be surprised at the heading of this article, because it implies a dinner of some sort on a day of fasting; whereas, according to their old-fashioned notions, there should be no dinner at all on a fast-day. And truly fasting did formerly imply partial at least, if not total abstinence from food during the period of the fast. It was thought, that eating to the full was incompatible with genuine fasting. Indeed it was considered, that eating at all broke a fast. I suppose no one doubts, that Daniel, Nehemiah, Ezra, and the pious Jews in general, abstained entirely from food on their days of fasting. Who has an idea that they ate any dinner on those days? But mind has marched Whether its

a great way since those men flourished. march has always been forward, I leave others to determine. Now, according to the views which prevail in that church which professes that she cannot go wrong, and makes no mistakes, even when she contradicts herself, abstinence is not essential to a fast; and a fastday dinner, so far from being no dinner at all, as some puritanical Christians still contend it should be, is a rare repast one of the very best dinners in the whole week. I ought to say here that some protestants have imbibed this doctrine of the infallible church, and very complacently practise according to it. We have a great many Protestants among us, who do not protest as thoroughly or as strenuously as we think they should.

What put me in mind of this subject was the following incident. As I was sitting at table the other day, the topic of conversation was a very delicate preparation of eggs. I took no particular interest in it, until one of the company remarked that, when she resided in the family of Mr. A., a distinguished Roman Catholic, that dish was always a part of their fast-day dinner- This arrested my attention. "Fast-day dinner!" exclaimed 1, "Who ever heard of a dinner on a fast-day? It is not possible they have a dinner at Mr. A.'s on fastdays!" "Dinner!" replied the person, "I never

я

desire to eat a better." This made me curious to enquire, what constituted the fast-day dinner at Mr. A.'s table. Well," said she, "to begin, a rock fish dressed with eggs and butter (no mean affair this, where there is an appetite,) eggs prepared in two ways, and oysters." "They dispense with vegetables, I presume," said I. "O no," she rejoined; and to this I readily assented, for I had forgotten myself in supposing that they dispensed with vegetables. Timothy does not prophesy of the antichrist, that he shall command to abstain from vegetables, but only from "meats,* which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving." Well, surely," said I, "they have no dessert on their fastdays?" 'How you talk," said she, "they have the very best, and every variety." And they call that a fast-day dinner? and do they suppose that they fast when they eat it?" "Certainly," said she. "Well,

I suppose it is because they eat very sparingly of what is set before them." "You are mistaken," replied my informant, "quantity has nothing to do in the matter. It is not the quantity eaten that constitutes a fast, but the kind." There the conversation ended, but my thoughts proceeded on. And this, thought I, is fasting. So the church teaches, and millions on their way to the judgment believe it. What dupes! how deceived! to suppose that this is fasting. If not deceived themselves, what insulters of God, to endeavour to palm it off on Him as fasting! A change of food is fasting! To eat different things on one day from what we do on other days, is to keep a fast! Admirable doctrine!

34. The Mass.

There is a great deal of the phraseology of the Romish church which is not a little peculiar, not to say outlandish. The Christian reader, who is not very familiar

*This is a bad argument. Bromata, in the original Greek, includes all things eatable: some of which the Apostate Church forbids the use of, at certain times: but the Apostle does not specify which, or of what kind. A. S. T.

with other authors than those who by inspiration wrote the Bible, does not know what to make of these terms, when he comes across them in books professing to treat of Christianity. "The mass, the mass," he repeats to himself, "what is that?" He has read his Bible through and through, but he has found nothing about the mass there. He thinks it ought to be there, if it is any part of Christianity. Why should apostolical Christians have been silent on a subject, on which those who claim to be their direct descendants are so loquacious? He does not even meet in his Bible with any doctrine or rite, to which the word mass seems at all appropriate. He would not object to the word, if he could find the thing there. It never occurs to him, that, by the mass, Roman Catholics can mean the ordinance of which the institution is recorded by Matthew, in his 26th chapter, and by three other sacred writers; and which we commonly speak of as the Lord's Supper. But that is what they mean by it. Then, they tell us, the first mass was said. In the Douay Catechism we find these questions and answers: Q. Who said the first mass? A. Jesus Christ. Q. When did he say it? A. At his last supper." Here is question and answer for it, if not chapter and verse. The Biblical reader will please to bear in mind, whenever hereafter he reads the narrative of that transaction, that the writer is giving an account of the first mass that was ever said.

But they may call it mass, if they please; and they may speak of Christ's instituting the ordinance as his saying mass. Words are nothing; though it is certainly best that they should be well chosen and fitly applied. Do they mean by their mass, what we mean by the Lord's Supper? that is the main point. But the truth is they mean by it as different a thing as you can well imagine. Just hear what "The Christian's Guide" says on the subject: "I profess likewise, that in the mass there is offered to God a true, proper and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead." Christ, they say, offered it first when he said mass and every priest now offers it

when he says mass. Well, reader, you and I must not judge rashly. We will look again at the account given of the matter in the Bible; and we will see if we can find in it any thing of the nature of a sacrifice. He took bread, and blessed, and brake, and gave to the disciples, and said, "Take, eat. And He took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it." Where is any sacrifice here, and especially where is any propitiatory sacrifice? Does the account we have of sacrifices in the Old Testament, and in the epistle to the Hebrews, accord with what was done on this occasion? The Roman Catholics say, that, when Christ performed these actions with the bread and wine, he offered himself to God as a propitiatory sacrifice. How does what He did bear even the least resemblance to the offering of a propitiatory sacrifice? There was no bloodshedding— no life taken as was the case in all propitiatory sacrifices under the law, and in the sacrifice which Christ made of himself on the cross; and which has always, by Pagans as well as the disciples of the true religion, been considered as essential to a propitiatory sacrifice. I confess there was something offered. Bread and wine were offered. These might constitute a eucharistic sacrifice, but never a propitiatory one. If things of this kind can constitute a propitiatory sacrifice, then I do not see why Cain, who offered "of the fruit of the ground," was not accepted equally with Abel, who brought to the Lord "of the firstlings of his flock." But, whatever was offered, it was not offered to God. A sacrifice, to be a sacrifice, must be offered to God, as even the quotation from the Christian's Guide recognizes. But what was offered in this case was offered to the disciples. "Take, eat," He said to them. It is true the bread and wine were offered them, as the memorial of a sacrifice in which the body of Christ was to be broken and his blood shed; but the memorial of a sacrifice is not a sacrifice. The emblematical representation of a thing is not the thing itself. Plainly there was no sacrifice in this transaction.

But again if Christ in the eucharist offered himself