their beloved Africa, and set up house together as bibliopolists at Algiers; whilst St Raymond, when on the eve of being arrested, may have just time to wrap himself up in his cloak (where he would probably find room to accommodate St Melchior and St Melchisedek) and after a safe and speedy voyage in that marvellous conveyance (which, I believe, has, during many ages, been laid up in ordinary), the happy and holy trio would be cordially welcomed by Father Newman and the Redemptorists, and regaled, it may be, half-a-dozen times a day with chiming of bells and chanting of Magnificats, -(a strain which, if we may judge from what passes every day in chapels, convents, and cathedrals, the whole fraternity of saintly amateurs must take especial delight in encoring); whilst the restored usurper will confiscate the domains and accumulate the treasures of the Virgin Mary, and squander them upon the Ledas and Semeles, the Hebes, Europas, and Ganymedes, who, as pimps, parasites, weathercocks, and waiters upon providence, paid court to him during the long season of his obscurity and disgrace." Then turning to the colossal bust, the worthy baronet puffed a dense and fragrant cloud of smoke before it for a few minutes, and said, "Now, my good friend Jupiter, I don't wish to hurt your feelings, but you know that you are at present rather in the background. There was a time when a goodly drove of fatted calves was killed every day at your altars, but now during many a long year you have not been honoured with the offering of so much as a kid. I daresay your own conscience has often reminded you, that your venerable parent's deposition was, in all probability, the cause, as well as the forerunner, of your own calamity. When you were driven away with ignominy by Pope Boniface from the Pantheon, and gave your right arm to imperial Juno, whilst you held an umbrella in your left, I daresay you felt the same pang, which another powerful but discrowned monarch under similar circumstances experienced in modern times, and that you cried out, Comme

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Saturne Premier!' If however, most worthy sir, your star should again be in the ascendant, I trust you will not forget, that whilst millions turned their backs upon you and behaved themselves proudly in the day of your distress, I deemed it both a duty and a pleasure to take the foremost rank amongst your votaries, and have for several months been 'censing' you three times a-day with the potent fumes of a cigar-a luxury which you never could enjoy during the halcyon era of your pristine splendour and pre-eminence."

I must own, that I in no degree share the apprehensions of this long-headed observer of the times, as to the possible restoration of ancient Paganism; and do not feel the slightest inclination to unite with him in prematurely forestalling the revival of the rites or rubrics. of Jupiterolatry. I have also such a strong and unwavering confidence in the good sense of our Bibletaught Scottish peasantry, the indefatigable ardour of our enlightened Scottish ministers, and the profound wisdom of our scriptural Scottish standards, that I as little anticipate, on this side of the Tweed, the progress or triumph of Popish idolatry—an idolatry which militates almost, if not altogether, as powerfully as any system of pre-Christian superstition, against the moral character, the intellectual greatness, the generous freedom, and the social happiness of the human race. Whilst the Pope is "censing" the Virgin, and the Jesuits ❝censing" the Pope; whilst bones are ardently kissed by perverted novices, and beads laboriously counted by prostrate nuns, in order to assist in accomplishing the spiritual subjugation of Britain, let us pray with increasing fervour at the footstool of Him to whom all power is given in heaven and on earth. Expecting no aid, and dreading no danger, from St Clement's toe, or St Christopher's thumb-nail, may each of us, my friends, be enabled to say, My soul, wait thou ONLY upon God; for my expectation is from Him. O Lord, in Thee have I trusted; let me never be confounded.

LETTER II.

I. TRANSUBSTANTIATION.

Of all the Romish figments, Transubstantiation is by far the most extraordinary and the most extravagant. Let us suppose, that a baker takes a portion of flour and water, and manufactures it into a wafer. Let this wafer be divided into three equal parts. One of these remains unnoticed and unblessed; a second has certain words pronounced over it by a priest, but because he has not at the time any intention to perform a wonder, it also remains unaltered; but no sooner has the same or another sacerdotal magician uttered the same expressions over the third portion of this identical wafer, with a volition that the miracle shall take place, than it is at once converted into the body, blood, and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ -the priest thus assuming to himself the prerogative of Omnipotence; for, as God exclaimed, "Let there be light," and there was light-so the priest says, "Let this be God," and it is God! In the one case, the volition of God was indispensable to the creation of light, which did not exist in the world, until the Divine fiat was pronounced; in the other, the volition of the priest is essential, so far as the wafer is concerned, for the creation of God, who does not exist there, till the human fiat is uttered; and if ten thousand conjurers perform the same enchantment at the distance of hundreds of miles, the same body, the same blood, and the same divinity are, at the very same time, entirely present in each of the consecrated hosts: and yet, if the three above-mentioned portions of the same wafer were jumbled together in a bag, and taken out and given to three separate worshippers, it would be absolutely impossible

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to tell, which of them had partaken of the sacred host, or which had only swallowed the unchanged flour and water. And if these three wafers were to be promiscu ously laid aside together for a few days, the one in which the body, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ are asserted to reside, would, in common with the two unaltered and unsanctified portions, be converted into a mass of putrefaction. Whenever the consecrated host has been lost, mislaid, or kept too long, it has become like the manna, which "bred worms, and stank"-the "accidents" enveloping the Holy One of God, have been suffered to see corruption, and the worms have fed sweetly upon him. In many cases of sickness, the wafer has been rejected from the stomach; nay, according to Vasquez, "it is to be adored as a true sacrament, though it be vomited;" and, in every other instance, the divine and human nature of the Redeemer, though hidden from the human eye in the accidents of the flour and water, must "enter into the belly, and go out into the draught, purging all meats." When the Lycaonian heathens exclaimed, "The gods are come down to us in the likeness of men!" the apostles "rent their clothes;" but what must a Parsee or a Brahmin think, when gravely told, that, at the bidding of a priest, "God is come down to us in the likeness of bread?"

But if these reasonings, as to the results which follow from adopting the doctrine of transubstantiation, are repudiated on the ground of their emanating from Protestant prejudice, it appears to me, my dear friends, that they are not more startling and significant, than the statements promulgated by Romanists themselves. We Protestants concur with them in asserting, that to participate unworthily in the holy communion, is a sin of the deepest dye; that whosoever dares to do so, is "guilty of the body and blood of the Lord," insults the majesty, and profanes the ordinance of Him, in whom dwelt all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. But in order to perpetrate this crime, it is no more necessary, that the divine and human natures should be present in the elements, than it