superstition, of folly. If an absurd dress or behaviour, indeed, to recur to a familiar example, be introduced in the world, it will soon be found out and discarded. But, on the contrary, a habit, or ceremony, though preposterously ridiculous, which has taken sanctuary in the church, will stick in it for ever. Thus an early bishop, perhaps, thought it proper to repeat a certain form, in a particular kind of shoes or slippers; another fancied, it would be very decent, if such a part of public devotions were performed with a mitre on his head and a crosier in his hand to this another added an extravagant garb, which, he conceived, would allude very aptly to such and such mysteries; till by degrees, the whole office degenerated into empty and lamentable pageantry.*

In St. Peter's, you have, I am sure, often seen the pope, for hours together, busied in scarcely any thing else than putting on or off his different accoutrements, according to the different parts he had to act. Nay, you must have even seen his infallibility, in this respect, so thoroughly deranged, as to have stood in need of direct, and reiterated prompting. But recollect, I beseech you, the small aperture in the altar of that church,

VOL. VI.

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Addison.

church, in Rome, which formerly belonged to the Jesuits, and in which petitioners put letters, addressed to the saint of the spot, for his gracious intercession with God in their behalf. What a happy contrivance, for mental inquisitors, to acquire ready intelligence of the wants and the secrets of individuals! Did the priest of the Oracle of Delphos ever more glaringly, or more impudently, impose on the credulous herd, which they allured to the shrine of idolatrous inspiration? Nor can you have forgotten the infantine image of our Saviour, called Bambino, which is carried to the houses of the sick, who can afford a carriage for its transportation; for it would be beneath its dignity, to be carried to any one on foot.

This is really revolting, in an age so enlightened as the present, and when most of the Roman Catholics themselves are sorely grieved, at such scandalous and interested deviations from the purity of their faith. The ancients, they know, only saw with the eye; while they are peculiarly instructed to look with the intellect. Educated as they are in the superstition of their country,. we are not, I am ready to acknowledge, to judge harshly of their prejudices, nor to condemn, as unpardonable, what long and sanctified custom

has rendered, I might almost say, a part of themselves. What would dissolve them into tears, is by us coolly investigated. What' to them is simple, is to us inexplicable. What speaks to their passions, addresses our understandings. That precept comes directly levelled at their hearts, which with us only affects the head. They at once melt into rapture; while we, after tracing the meaning of what is hidden and obscure, feel scarcely any other emotion than that of wonder.

He does the best service to truth, in my opinion, who endeavours to hinder it from being supported by falsehood. As Christianity is a religion. established on a divine rock, it cannot but be proof against the most searching torrents of human enquiry. Why, therefore, should we have that timid zeal, which some of its advocates betray, who express an extreme anxiety to preserve even the loose sands, weeds, and heterogeneous substances, which the waves of error and imposition have accumulated on its sides; as if these could at all add to its stability, or the removal of them weaken its foundation?

Even the faulty superstitions of the church may serve to confirm the purity of Christianity. R 2 They

They furnish an additional evidence of its truth and importance. For it is a real satisfaction, though, at the first aspect, of a melancholy kind, to trace the progress of those superstitions, and those corruptions in doctrine and discipline, by which Christianity has been so much debased, and the natural influence of it diminished; now that by the force of its own principles it has, in a great measure, recovered itself from the deplorable state into which it had sunk.* It has not, in reality, been for religion, but for superstition, that mankind have in general been wrangling. Some, for instance, will not sit; others will not kneel: some are for the religion of cloaks and grey coats; and others for the religion of gowns, cassocks, and surplices; some are for the religion of extempore prayer, and others for the religion of a ritual.

The doctrine of transubstantiation, in this manner, had its origin in a council held to decide on the adoration of images. The council of Constantinople, in 750, decided the bread and wine to be merely representative. The council of Nice, in 780, decided, "that after consecration, the sacramental bread and wine were not the representation or antitype of the body and blood

• Priestley.

+ Bayle.

of

of Christ, but were really his body and blood." In 818, it was taught that the figure or appearance only of bread and wine remained, and that the true body of Christ was present. Joannes Scotus spoke with still more clearness and precision, for he said, "the bread and wine were images of the absent body and blood of Christ." But Innocent III. took away this simplicity of explanation in the council of Lateran, 1215, the same council which decreed, that no body could be saved out of the Catholic church, he pronounced, "that the bread was really transubstantiated into the body of our Saviour; still leaving a quality belonging to bread, paneitas; and a quality belonging to wine, vineitas, capable of abating hunger and thirst."

We read, in Cicero, that though the human race had indulged themselves in the wildest. superstitions, they yet had never arrived at that last pitch of extravagance, the eating of their gods. It was the remark of Averroës, the famous Arabian philosopher; "That religion is surely, of all others, the most absurd and contemptible, in which its votaries first create their god, and afterwards eat him." It was reserved, however, to the ninth century of

the

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3

Paschasius Rudbertus.

† De Nat. Deorum.