Now at least his holy anxiety may cease, and perhaps it might not be amiss to inform him for the greater consolation of his spirit, that the writer of this, although he has had pretty ample opportunity of mixing amongst the young and the ignorant of various Catholic nations, never yet found one of them who had not "elevated abstraction of enlightened piety" sufficient to know that the honour due to the eternal God, was not to be paid to an image; perhaps one or two illustrations would help to make it appear that he does not speculate. The first is a very painful avowal. He has more than once had occasion to inquire, whether there was any truth in particular assertions made by persons differing from him in religion, where the names and places of abode were stated, of those who were said to be as ignorant as our multitude is here represented to be, and he uniformly found the statement to be totally false. Those occurrences are not new, nor unusual: they are like the statement made some time since by the holy men who were employed to distribute Bibles in the sixth ward, New York; that they found with one family, believed to be Irish, a Catholic Bible, in which the second commandment was omitted. The corporation of the Seminary pledged themselves to pay a sum of five hundred dollars to the Bible Society, or to any person who would produce such a Bible. The propagators of the falsehood did not accept the offer, nor retract the falsehood. The notions of our multitude upon this subject, are more accurate than are those of your correspondent himself, and it is by no means creditable to his modesty or good sense to make the charge which he has put forth. I shall bring his assertion to a practical test. I hereby pledge myself, that if within three months from the date of this letter, he shall point out any one of our multitude, black, brown, or white, that has had the opportunity to sufficient instruction, or been admitted to confirmation, or communion, who shall upon examination, be found to believe that the honour which is due exclusively to God, may be lawfully paid to any creature, living or dead; I shall, through the hands of the printer of the Miscellany, who will give my name if I fail, pay one hundred dollars to you, to be disposed of as your correspondent may please. Gentlemen, your correspondent might in his own estimation take this aristocratic assertion regarding the multitude, as a proof of his superior intellect; I beg to inform him, that with me at least, it always passes as a mark of quite another kind, and the distinction which some of your writers affect to draw between our enlightened and our illiterate Catholics, is taken amongst us, by no means as a compliment: rich and poor, learned and unlearned, our doctrine is the same; we have no genteel belief, no aristocratic orthodoxy; we are all, whether emperors, kings,

popes, beggars, or slaves, members of one church, holding fast the same faith; and when any man grows so fastidious as to imagine that God Almighty revealed more or less for his negro than for himself, he ceases to be a Roman Catholic. I know not a more insulting, nor a more unfounded distinction that this, which is here insinuated. Some of our poorest people are some of those best informed in the doctrines of our church, and some of our most wealthy, are some of those most ignorant of our tenets. I have known poor children not ten years of age, who have more clear notions of the nature of idolatry, and the meaning of what you call the first two commandments, than your correspondent appears to possess.

Then if the meaning of this phrase "that all Roman Catholics intentionally violate this commandment, in rendering the due honour and veneration, which their church requires, to the images of the Virgin Mary, and so forth, should not be asserted," be, that they who do not "render in their hearts any honour which is due to God (divine worship, I presume) to the image of his creature," do not violate the precept; I will, upon a palpable fact united to this principle, claim for the Roman Catholic Church full acquittal of its violation. That palpable fact, your correspondent so far from denying, appears to admit; it is, that persons of enlightened minds capable of that abstraction which considers God and the image distinct and distinguished, do not give to the image the honour due to God, thus do act according to the true spirit of the Church. He only fears that the multitude are not capable of this abstraction. If these things be so, the spirit of the church and the conduct of its enlightened members are not in violation of the precept. The only crime then of which we would be guilty, would be imprudence in placing the images before the ignorant multitude, with the danger of their committing idolatry. But this danger does not exist, it is all fancy; it will cost me one hundred dollars if it be anything more than a mere, unfounded surmise of your correspondent. Now, since we have our own experience against his surmise, every good logician would tell us, that we must reject his conclusion, and hence, even upon his own showing, the precept is not violated in our church.

Yet still, your correspondent will not acquit us of violating the commandment, for he concludes his paragraph 25, with the following passage.

"While, however, this may be, we may confidently ask, is not the commandment violated by Roman Catholics, as a body, by the fact of their erecting images in their churches, to which it is obligatory to render honour and veneration? And if, as a body, they conscientiously obey, in this particular, the authority of their church, must

they not, as a body, violate the second commandment 'without scruple?' I see not how it can be otherwise.''

Upon this, I would remark, merely for the sake of precision, that it is not obligatory upon Catholics to render honour or veneration to images, nor to place them in churches. It is permitted, not commanded; and it is a doctrine of the church that this permission is not contrary to the law of God, but in conformity therewith. Hence the person who would neither erect nor venerate an image, would not cease to be a Catholic; but he who should assert that the erection or veneration was unlawful, would err from the Faith. It would have saved me much trouble if your correspondent used precise terms. However, perhaps he is not to blame: for terms are the expression of ideas; and where the ideas are confused, the expression cannot be accurate.

The ground upon which he endeavors to sustain his position is, that the commandment forbids what we permit. I believe we have seen that this is, to say the least of it, a great mistake. He in the same paragraph brings to the aid of his interpretation, the following texts.

Catholic version. (Levit. xxvi. 1). “I am the Lord your God: you shall not make to yourself any idol or graven thing, neither shall you erect pillars, nor set up any remarkable stone in your land to adore it: for I am the Lord your God."

Protestant version. "Ye shall make no idols, nor graven image, neither rear up a standing image, neither shall ye set up any image of stone in your land, to bow down unto it: for I am the Lord your God."

Catholic version. (Deut. iv). “15. Keep therefore your souls cheerfully. You saw not any similitude in the day that the Lord God spoke to you in Horeb from the midst of fire:

"16. Lest perhaps being deceived you might make to you a graven similitude, or image of male or female.''

Protestant version. 15.

Take ye therefore good heed unto yourselves; for ye saw no manner of similitude on the day that the Lord spoke unto you in Horeb out of the midst of the fire:

"16. Lest ye corrupt yourselves, and make you a graven image, the similitude of any figure, the likeness of male or female."

Having previously examined the text of the original precept (Exod. xx), and found that it did not prohibit the making images, but the making them for idolatrous purposes; and having seen, I trust clearly, that the Israelites not only innocently, but religiously held those which were made by God's command in high esteem and reverence, not for any inherent sanctity which they possess, but because of their relation to God himself; I now proceed to examine whether the text of Leviticus does prohibit more than that of Exodus appears to do. The words printed above in italics are found in the Protestant Bible, but not printed in the quotation of your correspondent.

I believe it will be admitted that the passage in Leviticus is not a

new enactment, but is a repetition of that in Exodus, with some more special enumerations. Your correspondent agrees with me in this, for he adduces those texts to explain and confirm the true meaning of Exodus. Now if construing Exodus xx. to forbid the making of an image would be a contradiction to Exodus xxv. 18, as we saw it manifestly would, no number of texts adduced to prove that Exodus xx. 4, prohibits image-making will lessen that contradiction or palliate the absurdity of such a construction. You, gentlemen, cannot do what your church declares she cannot do. Article xx. "Neither may it [the Church] so expound one place of Scripture, that it be repugnant to another." In truth, this text of Leviticus is but an enumeration of two new particulars, which though not therein specially expressed, came under the general description in Exodus xx. 4, and the object for which they should be erected in order to come under the description of idolatry, viz. "adoration," "bowing down," is also specially expressed in Exodus xx. 5, as in Leviticus xxvi. 1.

The Catholic version exhibits to me four distinct objects of specification, idol, and graven thing, which we have previously found specified and described in Exodus, in addition to which we have here, pillar, and remarkable stone, which are new specifications. I must leave to some better intellect than mine, to distinguish the specifications of your text in its imagery, and to inform us why idol is specially introduced, if every image for a religious purpose be an idol. That it was lawful for God's servants, both before and after this prohibition of Leviticus, to erect remarkable and consecrated stones, provided they did not erect them for the purpose of adoring them, which the heathens did, I shall show by one or two Scriptural instances, and I shall adduce an outline of evidence sufficient to show that the purposes of the heathen were idolatrous, and altogether dissimilar to our object in making images of marble or other stone, which are the only kind that might come under your designation, unless a standing image be in contradiction to the cherubim which were kneeling figures, if our traditions be correct.

Jacob was not an idolater. I use your own version of Genesis

xxviii.

"18. And Jacob rose up early in the morning, and took the stone that he had put for his pillow and set it up for a pillar, and poured oil upon the top of it. 19. And he called the name of that place Bethel: but the name of the city was called Luz at the first. 20. And Jacob vowed a vow, saying, If God will be with me, and will keep me in this way that I go, and will give me bread to eat, and raiment to put on, so that I come again to my father's house in peace; then shall the Lord be my God: 21. And this stone which I have set for a pillar, shall be God's house," and so forth.

God did not command an idolatrous act, yet we read Joshua iv. “‘1. And it came to pass, when all the people were clean passed over Jordan, that the Lord spake unto Joshua, saying, 2. Take you twelve men out of the people, out of every tribe a man. 3. And command them, saying, take you hence out of the midst of Jordan, out of the place where the priests' feet stood firm, twelve stones, and ye shall carry them over with you, and leave them in the lodging place, where ye shall lodge this night. . . . 8. (The children of Israel brought the stones). 9. And Joshua set up twelve stones in the midst of Jordan in the place where the priests which bare the ark of the covenant stood: And they are there to this day. 20.

And those twelve stones which they took out of Jordan, did Joshua pitch in Gilgal.” He then informs them of the reason, when the children should ask what mean the stones, that they should be informed, and then for the religious purpose.

“24. That all the people of the earth might know the hand of the Lord, that it is mighty: that ye might fear the Lord your God for ever."

That is, this religious memorial preserved the recollection of the opening of the Jordan, and thus reminded the people of the power and might of God, as well as of his mercy, thus powerfully exciting to his worship. Probably you may think that the Scriptures were evidence enough, and that those stones "subjected the multitude to a temptation of having their spiritual conversation more on earth than in heaven.' I can only answer, that I prefer God's wise regulation, to the surmise of a man whose name is contradiction. I have thus shown, that neither the erection of images, nor of remarkable stones was prohibited. What then was prohibited? What the heathens did. I shall give you a few specimens.

Arnobius in his work Contra Gentes, lig. i., writes: Si quando conspexeram rubricatum lapidem, et ex olivi unguine lubricatum, tanquam inesset vis presens, adulabar, affabar. "Whenever I had seen a reddened stone, and make smooth with the ointment of olives, I used to speak to it, I used to address it soothingly, as if a power was present in it."

Eusebius, (Praepar. lib. i. c. 10) informs us that the old Phenicians used to call stones thus prepared for worship, Bethules. It would be very curious to trace the history of one of those from Phenicia to Spain, thence to Ireland, thence to Scotland, and since the conquest by Edward I., preserved even for the use of the head of the English Protestant Church, after the change in religion, for the coronation chair, with which I believe it may now be found in the tower of London. Sanchoniathon traces the origin of those stones to the God of heaven, and says several of them which lived and were animated were worshipped near Libanus. Apuleius describes some of the pillars [Florenorum initio] which received worship. Strabo, (book xvii), describes for us