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ed unimpassioned, and contemporary chroniclers, so fully, and so perspicuously developed, according to the Prophetic Symbols, of "THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY," (v.7) and of "THE SON OF PERDITION.” (v.3).

To expose, then, Sir, the almost inexplicable and

commended to consult the learned Daubuz's reflections on the place here refered to in the Apocalypse; being next to the English Mede, and Vitringa of Franeker, the soundest Expositor of these abstruse prophecies.) But who was this Leo X.? Yes, the very Monster who has been accused by his own creatures of the grossest impiety and the rankest Atheism, and who has been handed down to posterity, as the Father of an INFAMOUS SPEECH, received even Now as a colloquial proverb among the profane and unbelieving; which he has been reported by contemporary historians as having often smilingly uttered in the presence of a kindred soul-his own Secretary-Cardinal Bembo, and by him also plainly, and fully recorded, calling the BLESSED GOSPEL of the Divine Saviour "A LUCRATIVE FABLE.' Nor was the servant, a less notorious infidel and atheist than the master his Holiness! We are informed that Bembo, habitually wallowed, in the very steeps of impure libertinism ;-the father of a numerous illegitimate offspring ;-and was constantly in the habit of excusing himself for neglecting the Scriptures, lest the reading of them should affect his latinity, which he proudly boasted was modelled upon Ciceronian purity!!! (See the Historical Dictionary of Moreria Romish divinc, and the Critical Dictionary of Bayle.) Accuse me not of harshness in designating Leo, the Mæcenas of the sixteenth Century a monster! What better epithet does the ruffian deserve; who following in the steps of MANY of his predecessors, that sat in Saint Peter's chair; has copied their gross examples, by indulging in the habitual practice of such horrid crimes, that cannot even be mentioned without fearfully outraging the feelings of common modesty? I may quote, veiled in a foreign garb, the joint attestation of two of the most celebrated historians of the times in which he lived, and who were not only members of your communion, but the protégés and favorites also of Leo; both having received high preferments from him, and one of them (Jovius) a Pension! 66 non caruit etiam infamia, quod parum honesté nonnullos e cubiculariis adamare!!!" (See Jovius, 192, and Guicciard. xiv.) An accusation also confirmed by the renowned Romanist, Bruys, in his (Histoire des Papes, 4 vol. p. 417,) and in some measure likewise by Thuanus, a Papal historian of deserved and great celebrity, in his (Histor. 1. 1. p. 13,) where he says "Pope Leo X. a man giving himself to all licentiousness!!!" And yet, Sir, this was the Vicegerent of God, who presided over the Council of the Lateran in the vear 1517; the last but one, ever convened or believed in as ECUMENICAL by your Church; to whose decrees and precepts you have sworn passive and implicit obedience :-and this Council, as if to uprear the blasphemics of your Papal system to a de

interminable mysteries of such continued, deluding Working" of the long-practised iniquities, of the heaven-marked HARLOTRY, of your nefarious system; -yea, even to unveil its hideous front, in all the

gree, unparalleled even in the darkest ages of priestcraft, superstition, and monkish ignorance; and unappalled by the polluting presence of an impious, blaspheming libertine, or the atrocious horrors of a debauched infidel;-filled up as it were the poisoned cup of Popish blasphemies to the very brim, by ratifying the Bull of Pope Boniface VIII. which taught the subjection of all Christians to the Roman Pontiff as necessary to eternal salvation; and that in the Supremacy there was the exertion of a power, which could wield at pleasure the temporal and eternal interests of worlds. No, not even this was sufficient; we find also that this same Council held forth that "the Pope was by every one to be wORSHIPPED." And of course you are not ignorant, how perfectly agreeable the PRACTICE of your Church, is to such enactments. By this we shall see what construction, your Infallible Heads allow, even with the irresistible force of example, to be put upon a doctrine, which if it be held PRACTICALLY, as it is unanswerably in THEORY ;-there remains nothing further to be done, but to cast upon your whole system, the unanswerable accusation of blasphemy and idolatry, of the most awful stamp, and the blackest dye: and this at the very entrance of the inexplicable labyrinth of your Church's circuitous rounds of neverending creeds. Well, is it not at this very day recorded in the ROM, PONTIFICAL. in the Inauguration Offices of your Popes; that when the Tiara, or Triple crown, corresponding with the Triple Key on their arms, the EMBLEM of their threefold sovereignty over the Terrestrial, Infernal, and Celestial Worlds, is placed upon their heads; the act is accompanied with these words, "Receive this diadem, adorned with three crowns; and know yourself to be Father of Princes and Kings, Ruler of the World, and Vicar upon Earth of our Saviour Jesus Christ!!!" ("Accipe Tiaram Tribus Coronis ornatam ; et scias te esse Patrem Principum et Regum; RECTOREM ORBIS; in Terra Vicarium Salvatoris nostri Jesu Christi!") And at this august ceremony, are not the Pontiffs, clothed in their Pontifical robes, placed upon the High Altar in St. Peter's Church, making the Table of the Lord their FOOTSTOOL, and occupying a Seat which is specially denominated God's Seat ;-a name, by the way, which is given exclusively to the Pope's chairs in all the sacred ceremonies? Does he not in this position receive the ceremony, called the ADORATION ; which consists in the prostration and adoration of the entire worshiping Sacred College of the seventy-two Cardinals, representing under their Vicar the disciples of Christ, kissing his feet, and invoking him in terms, of the most execrable blasphemy? And are there not at this day Medals to be seen, in commemoration of Martin V. (the Pope who condemned Wickliffe, and had John Husse with Jerome of Prague, his followers, burnt at the murderous stake;) on

ism; as from time to time in the lapse of ages, they have manifested themselves, in the progressive changes of the widely diversified field of Society; and on the other hand, of Society on the manoeuvring of Papal power and Romish pretensions. For disquisitions of this nature, cannot but be, to the scrutinizing glance of a philosophic observer, as amusing as they are interesting; and as remarkable as they are highly important, in furnishing certain Data for prescribing due boundaries ;-beyond which, Hypocrisy, with all its accompanying train of subservient attendants,Falsehood, Misrepresentation, and Deceit,-dare not with impunity transgress.

The full development of this fantastic medley ;-an extraordinary medley, indeed, which must necessarily result from a general review of the complicated effects, so wonderfully produced, by the protracted mutual embraces of your Apostacy and the World ;-by the orthodoxy of the One, spontaneously, and naturally, obeying the very persuasive impulse of her temporal policy, in close junction with the interests of the other;

whilst, in the fairness of exchange, for the protection and encouraging patronage, bestowed upon her, by the nations of the earth, which were all at the same time, wallowing in the veriest depths of profound and barbaric darkness and licentiousness; your Church, in return, has unceasingly, and readily, paid an obsequious and flattering court, to glut and sate the carnal appetites of her polluted, and polluting handmaid :—and thus reviving, and verifying, by the frequency of her example and precept, the venerable and infallible dogma of the old Grecian philosophy-that,

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the SENSES were the highest natural light of MANKIND." Such a development, I say, presents to the reflecting mind, so marvellous a Phantasmagoria, of so many and so different variegated Phases; insomuch, that it were vain, to search for a parallel, in the extended records of the progress of human intellect ; in the whole range of the diversified history of human nature, or the world; or even in the vast assemblage

of the prevailing lamentable, and ridiculous absurdities, and contradictions,-which are so well adapted to satyrize the proud intellectual prowess of civilized, or of barbarous nations. By this means, however, we are easily enabled to have before us a perfect exhibition of the Protean faculty, inherent in your Romish policy; by which, at any time, as circumstances may profitably suit, she puts forth to the world, in the spirit of mildness, mitigated and LIBERAL representations of the doctrines she professes to believe, and of the practice which she pretends to follow; at the same time, clothing herself in the tinsel ornaments of a false, deceiving and attractive garb,—in order the better, to lull suspicion asleep, and to draw a darkening film over the eyes of your unsuspecting adversaries; who are thus either unguardedly, or ignorantly, turned aside, from instituting and grounding inquiry, upon the only proper, adequate, and unerring foundation and rule, to which they can possibly have recourse, when they desire to ascertain the absolute certainty of the doctrines of your system :-for that foundation and rule are as old as Popery itself; but doubtless you are aware of its tendency, and can adequately appreciate its force, that, "IF WE DESIRE TO KNOW WHAT ROME TEACHES, WE MUST NOT TAKE IT FROM HER TEACHERS, BUT FRON HERSELF." Now, Sir, when the diligent and accurate inquirer, keeps this steadily in view, as the prescribed rule and appointed method of his investigation; very soon will he be supplied with an uninterrupted flow of examples, to instruct and warn him; that the greater and more pompous the profession of mildness, charity, and liberality,—that the more captivating, the fascinating charms, of a gilded and decorated exterior; just in the same proportion, nay, EVEN MORE, is danger to be apprehended:-it is then most certainly, that the ravening tiger's destructive spring, putting forth her paws to tear and voraciously to destroy, may in truth be justly apprehended :--and that is the very period when each, and all of the sincere and avowed defen

hateful and haggard frightfulness of its festering polluting sores, and of its moral contagious disorders, to the full and astonished gaze of a disgusted world ;will now, and unceasingly, be ever my unshrinking,

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which two Cardinals are represented, as crowning the Sovereign Pontiff, and two are kneeling, with this inscription, Quem creant adorant, whom they create they adore!" And to conclude, can you contradict the notoriously well-known fact, recorded even by one of your own historians, that one of your most celebrated Universities, the famous one of Coimbra, so very recently as the year 1717, sent a declaration to Clement XI. containing assurances of their unwa vering belief in his Infallibility and Divinity, in the following style; "Our University knows, that, by the mouth of the Sovereign Pastor, it is God Himself who speaks to the flock over which the Holy Ghost has constituted him the Universal Bishop, to govern the Church of God." (Hist. des Papes, tom. v. p. 476, par Bruys.) Notwithstanding all this fine language, it may not be amiss to remind you, what a POLITICAL WEATHERCOCK the Divine Infallibility of the Holy Clement XI. appeared to be, on the memorable subject of the learned and pious Quesnel's New Testament, at that time so violently agitated in your Church. An anecdote illustrative of the matter, is related by Voltaire, in his (Siècle de Louis XIV. vol. ii.) under the article Jansenism. The credit of the narrator is extremely small, the anecdote however is well and incontrovertibly attested, and is as follows. "The Abbé Renaudot, a learned Frenchman, happened to be at Rome the first year of the pontificate of Clement XI. went one day to see the Pope, who was fond of men of letters, and was himself a learned man, and found his Holiness reading Father Quesnel's book. On seeing Renaudot enter the apartment, the Pope said, in a kind of rapture, Here is a most excellent book-We have nobody at Rome that is capable of writing in this manner; I wish I could engage the author to reside here!" And yet, Sir, you know this same book was condemned afterwards by this same Pope, in his well-known Bull of "UNIGENITUS"!!! No more of this, at least at présent; enough has been brought forward, forming a collective body of such evidence and facts as cannot be diminished, much less denied; from which it unanswerably appears, from Public Canons, Decretals, acts of Councils, oracular writers, and infallible authorities, that the Infamous Usurpations, and Blasphemous Pretensions of your Popes are, in the minutest tittle, perfectly coincident with the prophetic and scriptural marks of the Antichristian Tyrant, when we are told, as it is written, "his look was More Stout than his fellows;" (Dan. vii. 20.) again," he shall speak Great Words against the Most High;" or as Symmachus interprets the passage," he shall speak Great Words as the Most High;" (id. 20.) again, that he would have "a Mouth speaking Great Things and Blasphemies," (Rev.xiii.v.) and that he would open "his Mouth in Blasphemy against God, to Blaspheme His Name, and His Tabernacle;" (id. 6.) and finally, in

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