the doors of inquisitorial dungeons, where no light of the sun or of the moon ever enters,-where no sound is heard but the wail of woe uttered by those voices which have forgotten, that they ever had the power of combining other sounds? Then shall we drag the wretch from his cell, and convey him to the judgment hall; stretch his enfeebled limbs on the rack, torture him to falsehood, and then tear his soul from him even as he utters it, and send it flaming to the regions below? Ayetempt him to his perdition, and then hurl him from life to the damnation into which he has been plunged by tortures begun on earth? Or instead of de- . scending to the very abysses of the gulf, shall we stop mid-way, and enter the tranquil retreat from which the world is shut out for ever? Shall we penetrate the cells of those who call not the earth their abode even whilst they

continue on it; who separate themselves from communion with their species, that they may hold continual communion with saints and angels, whom they hope to draw down, by what? by flagellations and scourgings-and fastings-and torments of the flesh-and humiliations of the body! And what is the state of the spirit-the immortal essence? It is puffed with pride, with a conviction of self sanctity; it hath no correspondent humility with the humiliations to which its tenement is so ostentatiously exposed; it is clad in the phylactery of the pharisee, to meet the eye of God, whilst sackcloth envelopes the frame, to meet the eye of man! Here are vain emulations, and strifes, and wraths, and contentions, for preeminence in sanctity, in the sanctity with which Satan sanctifies, the veil of hypocrisy and imposture. But what is yonder dungeon dark and deep? There

lies some wretch whom plausible appearances have not deluded, who has not imagined that painful incarceration will work out for him that salvation which is to be obtained with fear and trembling; who has penetrated the illusions with which they who should. have enlightened, have attempted to dazzle him; but he has nevertheless. been torn from all to which reason bound him, to which judgment directed him, perchance to which passion clung! Oh-are not those unutterable groanings of spirit, the agony of a heart severed from those ties in which it had bound itself with some beloved one? On their union all his hopes of bliss hung, and they have been dashed piecemeal!-How is he taught to repent of his former worldliness, and to comprehend the superior beauty, and grace, and loveliness, of a life dedicated to the God their religion presents to him?

They imprison him; they shut out from him the light of that sun, which was placed in the centre of the Heavens to shine on all, the aptest emblem of the universal bounty of the Creator. They permit him to inhale only noxious vapours, and suffer him not to breathe that air in which perchance he might hear the voices of angels. The moon and the stars are hidden from him; he may not view the host of Heaven burning there as beacon-lights to direct man to happiness. He is excluded from the prospects of creation, spread out by a God of love; he is taught to recognize Him in the midst of gloom and darkness; to raise to Him hands macerated by famine, inflicted by those who call themselves His servants, bound with fetters with which they have manacled him. Tortured in body and agonized in mind, a wretched victim from whose soul light is as much excluded as from

his eyes, he sinks daily to the borders of the grave, and dies, bewildered into doubt of the being of a God, who is represented as a father, but whose acceptable offering is practically enforced as the compulsive imprisonment of the body, whilst the soul is alienated from him, and at length denies Him! Oh, who shall controvert evidence such as this? And will not the disciple of the intellectual Plato, the magnanimous Socrates, the humane Cicero, the elegant Pliny, be very fond to exchange their doctrines for those of a creed like this?-Oh-" he continued with a laugh of ineffable scorn, "the eloquence of the hermit, Peter, must be exerted, to tempt the most fiery zealot to a crusade like this, where the mockery of intellect, and the scorn of talent shall continually pursue him, and harrow him to madness and impotence !"