in private families, were innumerable
images of saints, pictures of the Virgin, relics, crucifixes, &c.,
designed at first to kindle a spirit of devotion among the rude and
uneducated, but gradually becoming objects of real adoration.
Intercessions were supposed to be made by the Virgin Mary, and by
favorite saints, more efficacious with Deity than the penitence and
prayers of the erring and sinful themselves. The influence of this
veneration for martyrs and saints was degrading to the mind, and
became a very lucrative source of profit to the priests, who peddled
the bones and relics of saints as they did indulgences, and who
invented innumerable lies to attest the genuineness and antiquity of
the objects they sold, all of which were parts of the great system of
fraud and avarice which the church permitted.

Again; the public worship of God was in a language the people could
not understand, but rendered impressive by the gorgeous dresses of the
priests, and the magnificence of the altar, and the images and vessels
of silver and gold, reflecting their splendor, by the light of wax
candles, on the sombre pillars, roofs, and windows of the Gothic
church, and the effect heightened by exciting music, and other appeals
to the taste or imagination, rather than to the reason and the heart.
The sermons of the clergy were frivolous, and ill adapted to the
spiritual wants of the people. "Men went to the Vatican," says the
learned and philosophical Ranke, "not to pray, but to contemplate the
Belvidere Apollo. They disgraced the most solemn festivals by open
profanations. The clergy, in their services, sought the means of
exciting laughter. One would mock the cuckoo, and another recite
indecent stories about St. Peter." Luther, when he visited Italy, was
extremely shocked at the infidel spirit which prevailed among the
clergy, who were hostile to the circulation of the Scriptures, and who
encouraged persecutions and inquisitions. This was the age when the
dreadful tribunal of the Inquisition flourished, although its chief
enormities were perpetrated in Spain and Portugal. It never had an
existence in England, and but little influence in France and Germany.
But if the Church did not resort, in all countries, to that dread
tribunal which subjected youth, beauty, and innocence to the
inquisitorial vengeance of narrow-minded Dominican monks, still she
was hostile to free inquiry, and to all efforts made to emancipate the
reason of men