classes, and whoever has an eye and an ear to catch the expressions of human charities, as rudely uttered or uncouthly displayed, must often, in the crowd that gathers in a street about distress, have detected home-taught hearts, and paternal sympathies, where the aspect and the tones indicated only a sensual ferocity.

Should we count it then a light matter to come in upon the circle of the domestic remedial influence (God's beneficent ordinance) with our monstrous institutions, and at a stroke to cut off from a numerous body of men, and for ever, and from the class that are to be the teachers of mercy, all their part in the economy of human kindness? If indeed the design were horrid, the means would be fit; but if it be religious, how preposterous are the means!

Let it only be imagined that the preservation of the social system demanded some necessary office, at once foul and sanguinary, hard and loathsome, to be discharged, and that, to secure a supply of wretched beings to go through with the cruel function, it were deemed proper to train from the cradle a certain proportion of mankind.-Among the various means that might be devised for effecting the initiation of such a miserable class, and for securing to it an education exclusive of every gentle sympathy, and of rendering our agents both impure and rancorous, what measure more efficacious could be imagined than that of imposing upon the

unfortunate band the very celibacy in which the Romish Church breeds her ministers?

We must yet look at this institution in its operation upon specific temperaments.

It is fair to assume that, of a body of men taken at hazard from the mass, and placed under the restraint (or rather the profession) of continence, a considerable portion-perhaps a third, will very early in their course throw off every thing but their hypocrisy, and become thoroughly profligate. The notorious condition of those countries where nothing has forbidden the natural expansion of the Romish system, would warrant our affirming that two-thirds of its clergy come under such a description. Nay, perhaps our English credulity would be ridiculed at Madrid, Grenada, Lisbon, Florence, Lima, or Rio Janeiro, if we presumed that any more than a very few of the sacerdotal class were not utterly debauched.20 Now if men of this

20 The Romanist can have no more right to boast of the purity of the Catholic clergy of England, or to appeal to the manners (confessedly respectable) of English priests, as a fair specimen of the sacerdotal body, than modern deists have to take a parallel advantage of the mild temper and irreproachable character of some who now reject Christianity. To judge equitably of Deism, we must look at it where it has received no correcting influence from Christianity. Popery must be judged on the same principle. We do not ask what Romish priests are when surrounded by protestantism; but what where the system develops itself without restraint. Most readily and cheerfully is it granted that, notwithstanding the cruel disadvantages of his condition, the English priest is ordinarily correct in his behaviour, and estimable as a member of society.

sort are to be placed by the side of the licentious "out of orders," then the difference against them will consist in that aggravation of crime which his sacrilege and blasphemy heap upon the head of the Churchman. As violator and corruptor of every family about him, he makes his way, as it were, through the presence chamber of the Eternal Majesty, and, as he goes, formally invites the Omniscient Purity to look upon his deeds of shame!

It cannot but happen that the dissolute priest-one hour surpliced and before the altar, and the next-where we must not follow him, should become intensely more wicked than the secular man of pleasure. So foul at heart will he become, that no enormity can distaste or alarm him. Not often are such men in any sense fanatics; - of enthusiasm they are incapable, and rancour is not their characteristic. Nevertheless, in times of general excitement, or at the call of superiors, and for the support of corporate interests, they will fall into their places around the scaffold, or the stake, with much composure;-and lend their hands too in the work if needed. Nay, human nature admits, when it has reached this stage of corruption, of an infernal frenzy: sensuality and cruelty in a moment collapsing, and the herd of swine suddenly seized of the demon of malice rush on-not themselves indeed to dash

from the precipice, but to fall upon the inno

cent.

To omit lesser distinctions, we may next adduce the instance of those, and they will not be a few, of a middle sort, who though they may once and again have fallen under peculiar temptations, and so may have lost that mens conscia recti which their vow should have preserved, are nevertheless ordinarily retained in the path of virtue by the motives proper to their order; - - by a sense of professional decorum, by ecclesiastical pride, and by sentiments too which, for want of an unexceptionable term, must be called-religious. And yet the continence of men of this class is not at all attributable to coldness of temperament. We must stop short of a full explication of the state of feeling likely to grow out of a position such as this; it may however be said that the human mind can hardly be placed in circumstances more pitiable or injurious. Quite unlike to it is the voluntary celibacy of secular men of similar constitution.- The iron girdle of a solemn irrevocable oath, galling the conscience, because a violated oath, and yet not to be laid aside-the Churchmans' prudery of spotless virtue, wounded to the quick by humiliating recollections, and the impulses of nature fought off from disadvantageous ground, leave no tranquillity, allow no repose within.

Rather a tempest of passion rages in the bosom-a tempest so much the more afflictive, because it may gain no vent."1

To the tumultuous stage of this mental conflict there succeeds perhaps, either a dead hopeless debility, most pitiable to think of, or perversions of the mind still more sad.-But if the character have more vigour, and does in fact repel the assailants that would tread it

21 It were better to sustain in patience the imputation of advancing exaggerated statements, and of giving a stronger colour to an argument than the facts of the case would justify, than to do the uninitiated reader so serious an injury as to bring to light the evidence that bears upon this question. An appeal therefore is made to whoever has actually perused, or at least looked into the ascetic writers from Macarius, Ephraem, Palladius, and Cassian, downwards to those of the twelfth century. On the ground of the evidence which might from those sources be adduced, a general result may be stated under three heads-namely,

1st. That the monastic vow and the life of celibacy FAILED TO SECURE THE PROFESSED OBJECT of the institution in all but a very few instances, and that it did not promote that purity of the heart which was acknowledged to be its only good end.

2d. That beside the evil of cutting men off from the common enjoyments, duties, and sympathies of life, the work of maintaining and defending their chastity (exterior and interior) absorbed almost the whole energies of those (a very few excepted) who sincerely laboured at it:-so that to be chaste, in fact and in heart, was pretty nearly the sum of what the monk could do, even with the aid of starvation, excessive bodily toils, and depletic medicine to say nothing of his prayers, tears, and flagellations.

3d. That the monastic institution, even during its earlier and better era, entailed the most deplorable miseries, and generated the foulest and most abominable practices, so that, for every veritable saint which the monastery cherished, it made twenty wretches, whose moral condition was in the last degree pitiable or loathsome.

Now shall we leave these propositions unsupported by proof?-or will the Romanist—the pride and prop of whose Church is monkery, challenge us to make good our allegations?