"They are required to give them (the images or pictures of the Virgin Mary, and other saints) in their churches, 'due honor and veneration;' and the religious honour due to them is considered by some of their own writers to be Latria 'honor sive cultus soli Deo exhibendus,' the worship or honour to be given to God alone."— (Par. 24, p. 75, March.)

"The second was treated as a continuation of its subject prohibiting the worship of image gods; and as images were not worshipped as gods by the church.”"'—(Par. 25, p. 76, March.)

"Venite adoremus is the express language of the Roman Missal: Come, let us adore. Thou shalt not adore nor serve them, is the language of their translation of Scripture. Roman Catholics will say they are not served; will they say that they are not adored? The language of the passage, as quoted by themselves, adore nor serve, not adore and serve.''-(Note to par. 25, p. 76.)

Now, good gentlemen, if our writers, to the knowledge of this man, required for those images the honour to be given to God alone, how could he know that our Church held and taught that it was not honour such as is due God?

To this I may add another paragraph.

"The second Council of Nice, A. D. 786, which is referred to by the Council of Trent on this subject, did assert the direct worship of images; declaring, at the same time, that it should not be Latria, which is due only to God, but merely an honorary adoration."-(Par. 23, p. 74, March.)

In my last letter I enumerated twelve propositions upon which he and I appeared to be fully agreed, and I showed in his essay the grounds for my assertion that he taught those propositions. Allow me, therefore, to use them as his assertions, and to continue the contrast.

"First. That Roman Catholics pay to the one only God of the Scriptures a purer worship than they pay to any other being."

"Second. That the worship which they pay to this God is a kind which is given exclusively to him, and which we call adoration, to distinguish it from any other."

"Christians under the denomination of Roman Catholics, like other Christians, worship the one true God of the Scriptures. But their Church has authorized a use of images in their places of worship, that would make a certain kind of worship paid to them consistent with the purer and exclusive homage which Jehovah demands for himself."(Par. 23, p. 73, March.)

"Do Catholics, then, thus dishonour Christ, the only mediator, and by giving to creatures the worship due to God alone, make themselves guilty of direct idolatry? To Protestants it cannot but appear that they do." (Par. 9, p. 49, February.)

"That they who use such worship as that of which I have adduced the several specimens selected, give to the creatures the worship due to

God alone, will not, at first view, admit of question; nor is it easy, even on a closer consideration of the matter, to separate the reproach of direct idolatry from prayer addressed in the same litany to God and to the many canonized saints, arbitrarily determined to be capable of hearing and answering prayer, and as arbitrarily pronounced to be the blessed attendants of the Divine presence."-(Par. 9, p. 50, February.)

I shall at present adduce but one or two other passages. I first give two propositions from my last letter, as containing his assertions. "Fourth. That there are different and distinct degrees of religious worship.

"Fifth. That however erroneous Roman Catholics might be, in their appendages of the worship of one only God, of which the worship of images is one, there is a wide distinction to be taken between them and those who worship fictitious deities, in idols in which they may be supposed to reside."

"His dulia might be an inferior worship: but if it was worship at all it was idolatry."-(Par. 23, p. 75, March.)

"And the religious honour due to them is considered by some of their own writers to be Latria, the worship or honour to be given to God alone; by others dulia, or the honour, or worship, or service which is paid to man by reason of some dignity, holiness, virtue or goodness."(Par. 24, p. 75, March.)

This is rather a bold stroke, where we are told that there are degrees of worship superior and inferior; and that to give any worship at all is idolatry, whether it be the worship due to God, or paid to man. The exhibition which I give here is not by way of refutation. It is merely to ask your correspondent to reconcile his own assertions, as consistency is creditable. When he has disposed of these I have a few more at his service. I merely threw them in now, to fill my sheet, as I wish to leave untouched the next subjects, in treating of which, I must show how very widely different are his notions of mythology and of theology from those of, gentlemen,

Your obedient, humble servant,

B. C.

LETTER VIII.

Iris! descend and what we here ordain
Report to yon mad tyrant of the main.

Bid him from fight to his own deeps repair,

Or breathe from slaughter in the fields of air.

If he refuse, then let him timely weigh

Our elder birthright, and superior sway.

"What means the haughty sovereign of the skies?''
The King of Ocean thus, incensed, replies;
"Rule as he will his portioned realms on high,
No vassal god, nor of his train, am I.
Three brother deities from Saturn came,
And ancient Rhea, Earth's immortal dame:
Assign'd by lot, our triple rule we know;
Infernal Pluto sways the shades below;
O'er the wide clouds, and o'er the starry plain,
Ethereal Jove extends his high domain;
My court beneath the hoary waves I keep,
And hush the roarings of the sacred deep:
Olympus and this earth in common lie;
What claim has here the tyrant of the sky?"

To the Editors:

POPE'S Iliad, Book xv.

CHARLESTON, S. C., June 20, 1829.

Gentlemen:-Since much of what follows in the essay of your correspondent, must be explained by a reference to the precepts regarding idolatry, which were given by the Almighty to the Israelites, and of course to the nature of that worship itself, probably it will save much time and trouble, and tend to give us more clear notions upon the subjects of which we treat, should we at once investigate the nature of pagan idolatry.

Your correspondent informs us, paragraph 27, That he has abundant evidence that the Council of Trent misrepresented the heathens: and refers to the Iliad, the Aeneid and the Pantheon, in support of his assertion, which is contrary to that of the council. Probably we may yet discover better authority than either of those works. I shall in the first place give the statement of St. Thomas of Aquin, respecting the nature of pagan idolatry, and any person who doubts the accuracy of my translation, can, by applying at the Miscellany Office, consult the original.

"It is to be said, as was before stated, that an undue excess in the mode of divine worship is to be classed under the head of superstition. But this is principally done when divine worship is bestowed on that to which it ought not to be given: but, as we previously observed when we treated of religion, this divine worship

ought to be given only to the supreme, uncreated God. And therefore, it is superstitious to bestow it upon any creature whatever. But since worship is paid to God by some sensible signs, for instance by sacrifices, exhibitions, and others of this sort: so also it is used to be given to a creature represented by some sensible form or figure, which is called an idol. Yet this divine worship was given in various ways to idols.

"Some persons indeed, by a certain wicked art, constructed a sort of images, which by the power of devils had certain effects: whence people thought that in the images themselves there was some divinity; and consequently that divine worship was due to them. And this was the opinion of Hermes Trismegistus, as Augustine says in his book viii, Of the City of God.

"Others did not pay the worship of the Divinity to the images themselves, but to the creatures whose images they were. And the Apostle touches each of those. (Rom. i.) "And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God, into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things.' And as regards the second, he adds, "and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator.' The opinions of those were of three sorts. Some indeed thought that certain men whom they worshipped through their images, were gods; such as Jupiter, Mercury, and such others. But some persons thought that the whole world was one God, not by reason of its bodily substance, but, by reason of a soul which they thought was God; saying that God was nothing else but a soul governing the world by motion and reason: as man is said to be wise by reason of his soul, not by reason of his body. Whence, they thought the worship of the divinity should be paid to the whole world, and to all its parts; to the heavens, to the air, to the waters and to all other portions of this description. And to these, as Varro said, they used to refer the names and the images of their gods; and as Augustine relates in his seventh book, On the City of God.

"But others, to wit, the Platonists, laid down that there was one supreme God as the cause of all things: after whom they placed, that there were certain spiritual substances created by the supreme God, which they called gods, by reason of their participation of the divinity, but we call them angels. After whom, they placed the souls of the heavenly bodies, and under those demons, who were, they said, certain airy animals, and under those they placed the souls of men, which through the merit of virtue, they believed to be assumed to the fellowship of gods or of demons; and they paid the worship of the divinity to all those, as Augustine relates in his book viii, Of the City of God.

"But they said that these two last opinions belonged to physical theology, which the philosophers considered in the world, and taught in the schools. But they said that the other, regarding the worship of men, belonged to fabulous theology, which according to the feigning of the poets was represented in the theatres. But the other opinion concerning images, they said belonged to civil theology, which was celebrated by the pontiffs in the temples. But all these belonged to the superstition of idolatry, whence Augustine says, in his second book, 'Of the doctrine of Christ,' All this is superstitious, whatsoever has been instituted by men to make and worship idols, leading to worship, or worshipping as God, any creature, or the part of any creature."-2da 2dæ, quæst. xciv. art. 1.

The authority to which the angelic doctor of the school refers in the above extract, is principally that of St. Augustine, Bishop of Hippo,

who flourished in the decline of the fourth and the commencement of the fifth ages. He lived at a time, and amongst associates that still afforded him opportunities of learning from personal observation, facts which are to us now only the subject of remote history: his father was a pagan, and so were several of his companions and friends: and previously to his becoming a Christian, Augustine himself occupied an eminent place as an erudite and respectable scholar and rhetorician. He informs us himself that his work Of the City of God was compiled as a reply to the pagans who endeavoured to attribute to Christianity the destruction of Rome by Alaric. This work occupied some years of his life: and in it he enters deeply into the errors of paganism, for the purpose of exhibiting not only its contrast to Christianity, but its folly and criminality. It was published in the midst of pagans, and when several eminent scholars warmly advocated the mythological practices and the ancient philosophy. I therefore rely on its statements as deserving the highest credit. It is too late now, after the lapse of several centuries, for the republic of letters to be insulted by setting up the Iliad and the Aeneid, and the Pantheon as equivalent to the testimony of such a writer. They indeed give us the fabulous theologly or mythology of the poets; but this is only one, and the least useful subdivision of the information required to enable any person correctly to judge of the true nature of the religion of the people themselves. You might just as well refer to Tasso's Jerusalem, Milton's Paradise, and the Lusiad of Camoens, to know the exact nature of the Christian doctrine. O! it is sickening to behold the intoxicated conceit of those who have been forced in childhood to sip the shallow draughts, boastingly brought by meagre empirics, from the stream of knowledge! What a contrast is exhibited in the calm, dignified, and consistent demeanour of the sages, whose lives have been spent under the shadow of those venerable oaks that surround the fountain. One views in astonishment the collection of splendid and accurate charts that have been flung aside in the spirit of overweening pride, by the hardy and courageous adventures, who infected with the mania of indiscriminate reform, launch out as strangers, upon an ocean which has been navigated for ages. And what name shall we bestow upon those supercilious looks with which they regard the persons who use information of facts collected by their predecessors?

St. Augustine shows in this work, that the pagans were all polytheists, if not in belief, certainly in practice: he shows that even the followers of Plato paid divine honours to created spirits, whom they called gods, and clearly shows that Cicero was a polytheist, though he condemned the extravagance and absurdity of the civil as well as the