forbids the idea of transfer: "I am, I am he that blot out thy iniquities for my own sake; and I will not remember thy sins. Put me in remembrance, and let us plead together."* "It is God that justifieth." The Jews considered it blasphemy, in our Redeemer, to forgive sins, because they were ignorant of his Deity. Our Lord did not condemn this idea; but he exerted his divine nature in the cure of the sick man, in order to prove to them, that possessing the divine nature, it was no assumption to exercise a divine prerogative. Had he not possessed that nature, the charge would have been authorized by their Scriptures. The passages appealed to by the Church of Rome to warrant this assumption, are those we adduced, which our Saviour employed in giving the apostolic commission authoritatively to declare the terms by which God would regulate the distributions of his grace, and the admission of individuals to eternal life: "I give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven-whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven :-the power to bind and loose," &c. There is not, however, the shadow of a pretext from the context to apply this language to any other than the Apostles: these passages are generally associated with * Isa. xliii. 25, 26.

our Saviour's commission to his disciples to go and teach all nations; but they were not delivered together, and have no connexion with each other. A succession of teachers and Pastors was to exist; but the canon of the gospel, being once fixed, would want no succession of authority of this class; and hence the apostolic office ceased in the Apostles. The Apostles did not understand the passages as giving them authority to absolve sins against God. The only instance of personal forgiveness, is the case of the Corinthian, and that alluded to his re-admission to church privileges; and even this originated in the Apostles' demand for his excommunication, and was made to depend upon their satisfaction with his state of penitence.

The Sacrament of Extreme Unction is liable to the same objections, and is equally unscriptural. The Council of Trent decrees,—“ If any one shall say, that the sacred unction of the sick does not confer grace, nor forgive sin, nor relieve the sick; but that its power has ceased, as if the gift of healing only existed in past ages, let him be accursed." The Council goes on to curse any who shall say that the elders mentioned by James, were aged persons, and not Priests; or that the practices of the Church may be altered or

despised; or that it is not a true sacrament, instituted by Christ, and published by the blessed Apostle James. Peter Lombard, in the 12th century, was the first to enumerate this amongst the sacraments; Pope Eugenius in the fifteenth confirmed it; and with this introduction, the Council of Trent did not hesitate to establish it as an article of faith. The passages of Scripture urged in its defence, are one in St. Mark, alluding to the Apostles' casting out devils, and anointing with oil those who were sick, and healing them; and one in James's Epistle, in which he directs the sick to send for the elders of the church, and let them pray, and anoint him with oil in the name of the Lord, "and the prayer of faith shall save the sick man; and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him."* There is an evident allusion to the gift of healing conferred upon the Apostles, and bestowed by them on others, by the laying on of their hands. The object of the anointing was the recovery of the body, in answer to the prayer of faith; and if sin had brought the affliction as a chastisement, the removal of the affliction was to afford evidence, that God had pardoned the sin. If this gift of healing still exist in the Church, let it be exercised in this * James v. 14, 15.

apostolic mode, and we shall have a shadow of evidence that the Apostles have successors; but this cannot be shown. The sacrament of extreme unction is essentially different in its character; and hence has not the shadow of a connexion with these passages. It has no design for the restoration of the body. It is not administered until all hopes of recovery are gone. It is professedly intended to confer grace on the soul; to forgive sins, and fit the soul for its entrance into eternity. In it we have another instance of daring interference with Divine prerogatives; the forgiveness of sins being the act of God the Father, and the communication of grace the sole work of the Divine Spirit. This system, so fearfully supplanting the simple method of salvation, is thus made to follow the soul to the very verge of its probationary existence; and sends it to the bar of God, with the lie of the Church in its right hand.

There is just another point demanding remark on this subject, and that is,-the act of forgiveness is mutilated. God is represented as only remitting the eternal punishment due to sin, and still charging against the sinner a personal satisfaction to be rendered in penal sufferings of a temporary duration, and venial sins are to be thus personally expiated. The Council of Trent, sess. vi., can. 30, says,-" If

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any man shall say, that after the grace of justification, his fault, and the guilt of eternal punishment is so remitted and cancelled to the penitent sinner, that there remains no guilt of temporal punishment to be paid by him, either in this life, or hereafter in purgatory, before he can attain to the kingdom of heaven, let him be accursed." In the abstract of the Douay Catechism, it is said,-"Whither go such as die in venial sin, or not having fully satisfied for the punishment due to their mortal sins? purgatory, till they have made full satisfaction for them, and then to heaven." The satisfaction in this life alludes to the penances imposed by the Priest, when he grants absolution. Bishop Baines, in his sermon on "Faith, Hope, and Charity," in alluding to the conditions of absolution, after referring to contrition and confession, says,-" Nor is even this all: the sinner must, moreover, submit to make such atonement to his offended God, by prayer, by fasting, by works of self-denial, and the like, as may be required of him." The Council of Trent in her 25th sess., says,—that "there is a purgatory;" "the souls detained there, are assisted by the suffrages of the faithful, but especially by the acceptable sacrifice of the mass. He therefore commands,-" Let the Bishops take care that the suffrages of the