, until
that era cometh, meant and contrived for any thing rather than a
Catholicity. True, the Church is so far Catholic that it numbers of its
blessed company men of every clime and every age, from righteous Abel
down to the last dear babe christened yester-morning; true, the
commission is "to all nations, teaching them:" but, what mean the
simultaneous and easily reconciled expressions--come out from among
them, little flock, gathered out of the Gentiles, a peculiar people, a
church militant, and not triumphant, here on earth? Thus shortly of a
word much misinterpreted: let us now see what the Romanist does, what,
(on human principles,) he would be probable to do, with this
discriminating religion. He, chiefly for temporal gains, would make it
as expansive as possible: there should be room at that table for every
guest, whether wedding-garmented or not; there would be sauces in that
poisonous feast, fitted to every palate. For the cold, ascetical mind, a
cell and a scourge, and a record kept of starving fancies as calling
them ecstatic visions vouchsafed by some old Stylite to bless his
favoured worshipper; for the painted demirep of fashionable life, there
would be a pretty pocket-idol, and the snug confessional well tenanted
by a not unsympathizing father; for the pure girl, blighted in her
heart's first love, the papist would afford that seemingly merciful
refuge, that calm and musical and gentle place, the irrevocable nunnery;
a place, for all its calmness, and its music, and its gentle
reputations, soon to be abhorred of that poor child as a living tomb,
the extinguisher of all life's aims, all its duties, uses and delights:
for the bandit, a tythe of the traveller's gold would avail to pay away
the murder, and earn for him a heap of merits kept within the cash-box:
the educated, high-born and finely-moulded mind might be well amused
with architecture, painting, carving, sweet odours, and the most
wondrous music that has ever cheated man, even while he offers up his
easy adorations, and departs, equally complacent at the choral remedies
as at the priestly absolution; while, for those good few, the truly
pious and enlightened children of Rome, who mourn the corruptions of
their church, and explain away, with trembling tongue, her obvious
errors and idolatries, for these the wily scheme, so probable, devised
an undoubted mass of truth to be left among the rubbish. True doctrines,
justly held by true martyrs and tru