ing) to love our God and Redeemer with the whole heart, and ascribe our salvation exclusively to his merits and mediation, I again ask, how the Papist can be said to obey this injunction, when he attributes any part of his deliverance to the prayers and righteousness of canonized or beatified mortals? If a patient trusts his cure exclusively to the care and treatment of that eminent and accomplished physician Dr Holland, he may with truth be said to manifest complete faith in his skill and experience; but if he, pro majori cautelâ, encumbers himself with the help of half-a-dozen country apothecaries, and lays in a large stock of Morison's pills, and has frequent recourse to Holloway's ointment, the mercury of the thermometer which indicates the degree of his reliance on Dr Holland's prescriptions would soon descend below the freezing point. I must also again be permitted to observe, that in the College of Saints, one is often surprised, when considering both the admissions and the exclusions, factos aliquos, et non factos mir They are indeed so numerous, that the Pope seems to have said, as Cardinal Mazarin did in reference to the title of Due à Brevet, I intend to make so many, that it shall be disgraceful to be, and disgraceful not to be, a saint; and I fear, that the awards of the infallible judge will often give as little satisfaction, either in the armies of heaven, or amongst the inhabitants of the earth, as the recent decisions of juries at the close of the Great Exhibition, and that many respectable saints would return the silver medal of beatification, because others, whose merits have been less conspicuous, or whose miracles have been less numerous, have been honoured with the gold medal of canonization. I am, moreover, inclined to contend, that no true believer would be disposed to ground upon the performance of miracles, his own claim to be reckoned amongst them who are sanctified in Christ Jesus and called." Judas and Simon the sorcerer probably exercised that power. But the apostles, in their epistles, appeal much oftener to the holi amur. 66 ness of their lives, and to the strength of their faith, than to the frequency or certainty of their miracles. "It is somewhat remarkable," says Gibbon, "that Bernard of Clairvaux, who records so many miracles of his friend St Malachi, never takes any notice of his own, which in their turn, however, are carefully related by his companions and disciples. In the long series of ecclesiastical history, does there exist a single instance of a saint asserting, that he himself possessed the gift of miracles?" and it has been justly observed by Bishop Douglas, that, in the course of a ten years' correspondence in reference to his labours amongst the Hindoos, Xavier never makes the slightest allusion to his alleged possession of miraculous powers, and he laments, that his ignorance of their language prevented him from doing any good amongst these poor people; whereas, in the primitive times, when miracles were really performed, the gift of tongues, which was the most essential, was also the most commonly imparted by the infinite wisdom of Him, who divideth to every man severally as he will. It is not, I believe, pretended, that this supernatural gift,-which of all others is the most important, not only because it facilitates immediate intercourse with "the barbarous people," but because it cannot possibly be counterfeited, and is consequently, of all others, the most convincing,has ever been imparted to any Romish missionary, however illustrious a place he may occupy in the saintly army-list; and the substitution of winking images, liquefying blood, or the extending of the metallic hand of a crucifix, any one of which may be so easily got up for a special purpose, and none of which, in themselves, can answer any useful end,-affords (even supposing such miracles to be genuine) a very paltry and inadequate indemnity for its withdrawal; for (as Bishop Douglas well observes), "Xavier's not being assisted in these respects, would render all other miracles, though he had performed ever so many, of no effect. For unless he could draw consequences from the miracles,—unless he could explain himself to those who were witnesses of them, they would be as far from being Christians as ever. But whether the saints performed miracles or not, it is perfectly clear, that whosoever trusts in part to them, only renders pro tanto a divided allegiance, a divided confidence, a divided gratitude to the great Head of the church; and cannot be said, like the Protestant, who rejects all other aid, and builds on no other foundation, to comply with the first and greatest commandment, that of loving with the whole heart and soul our gracious and only Saviour, God. IV.-RELICS. THERE is, my dear friends, no subject on which there is a more complete discordance between Romanists and Presbyterians, than that of relics. If they are invested with all the value and importance which the Pope ascribes to them, we, who place no confidence whatever in their efficacy, stand very much in our own light, and should be commiserated as well as condemned. Our blindness and obstinacy carry their punishment along with them, since so many of us, and of our nearest connections, are labouring under acute or chronic complaints, which the mere application of a tunic or thighbone might at once mitigate or remove. I can scarcely comprehend why so many Roman Catholics visit Carlsbad or Graffenberg, when it is highly probable that the nearest church or convent might supply them with a far simpler and less expensive remedy. In Scotland, alas! the case is widely different. No Protestant place of worship between John o'Groat's and Berwick-uponTweed can boast of containing the fang of a saint's tooth, or the phalanx of a martyr's thumb. Were a cargo of such precious amulets, with the inscription, "These are ancient things" (1 Chron. iv. 22), to be imported, and put up to auction, they would not, amongst Protestants, meet with a single bidder; nor would the most adventurous heretical money-lender advance a single sixpence upon such a pledge, although Henry III., in the 27th year of his reign, ordered a valuable image of Mary to be pawned, to assist in raising funds for carrying on his great works in her chapel. The very correctness of the inscription itself would probably be doubted or denied, and, "These are modern rubbish," substituted in its place. If the bones of a holy abbot or hair-clad anchorite were dug up at Dryburgh or Dunfermline, the Presbyterian sextons would part with them to any itinerating Popish osteologist without money and without price, although, whilst pressing the highly-prized boon to his lips, he might shake his head and exclaim, in reference to the thoughtless donors "O fortunatus nimium, sua si bona norint." The heretics, unconscious of the importance of their treasure-trove," would be like the unwary bird, which, while picking up a pearl on a dunghill, contemplated it rather with disappointment than with delight— "Un jour un coq détourna Au bean premier lapidaire. Je la crois fine, dit-il, Mais le moindre grain de mil Seroit bien mieux mon affaire." Far different are the feelings of the Romish zealot, whose lucrative and laborious diggings extract the long-concealed osseous ore of bygone centuries from the consecrated California of a moss-grown churchyard. The Greek philosopher, who discovered the solution of a perplexing scientific problem, could not exclaim sügaza with more intense complacency. It is perhaps no easy matter to discriminate between "the gold, silver, and precious stones" of saintly relics, and the "wood, hay, and stubble" of such bones as appertain to the skeletons of ordinary mortals. But every man's work shall be made manifest, for the Pope shall declare it. The authenticity of each tooth or toe shall, so to speak, be revealed by the fire of infallible scrutiny, and that fire shall try every man's discovery of what sort it is, and whether an os innominatum, rescued from the dark unfathomed caves of the violated sepulchre, shall be carried in triumph to the cathedral, or consigned with ignominy to the charnel-house. Let us, however, proceed to consider the grounds on which this system is defended, of deriving from the coffin or wardrobe of the dead these hallowed appliances for curing the diseases, or kindling the devotions, of the living. In order to test the true value of relics and rotten bones, we have recourse to the practice and example of the earliest period in the church's history. We are not satisfied with appealing to the time when the disciples were first called Christians at Antioch-even this is too modern an epoch to satisfy our antiquarian fastidiousness. We may, in the first place, remark, that the apostles were the daily companions of our Lord during the whole period of his public ministry, and the admiring witnesses of all his miracles; but we are no where informed, that they availed themselves of the countless opportunities, which this close and uninterrupted intercourse presented, to solicit, or treasure up, the robes or sandals which he had worn, or any other memorials associated with the remarkable incidents of his life—an omission, which can only be accounted for on the principle, that such objects were endowed, in their estimation, with no intrinsic virtue, and would not be valued, in after ages, by the truly spiritual members of his visible church upon earth. We may next transport ourselves to the solemn and awful moment of the crucifixion, and ask, "What saith the Scripture?" There never was so favourable a moment for securing, at a low price, and with little trouble, greater riches than the treasures of Egypt." The robe 66 |