saints, and prayers and masses for the souls of the dead? So blind and 'devious is error.*

I must here take leave of Bishop J. Taylor's evidence, and proceed to that of Bishop Horsley, which will take up less time, from its straightforward, gross, and scarcely imaginable absurdity; so different from the tangled web of Taylor's argument, in which there is truth-truth intermixed with fable.

Having derived very much instruction and benefit from the sermons and other works of Bishop Horsley, his sermon on 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19, 20, did indeed astonish me beyond measure.

The subject of an intermediate state had occasionally occupied my mind; and how could it be well otherwise, in attendance as I constantly was on the bed of sickness, and a listener often to the last accents of the departing breath? But it was not until after reading Bishop Horsley's most eccentric sermon, that the truth flashed fully upon my mind, respecting the romance of an intermediate state. With regard to the parable of Lazarus and Dives, I am aware that it has been too commonly considered a true history, notwithstanding all the evidence possible to the contrary on the face of it. Parables are, in fact, essentially figurative representations, intended to convey instruction, somewhat after the manner of fables of old, as when Balaam is said to take up his parable, when he uttered his sublime poems and predictions relating to Israel.

* See Campbell, "Of a middle State," passim. Campbell's great argument is, that because God hath revealed nothing clearly concerning actual and complete felicities till the day of judgment, therefore there must be an intermediate state of incomplete happiness! Was there ever a more palpable inconsequence than this?

Nathan reproved David under the parable of a rich man that had taken away and killed the lamb of a poor man. (2 Sam. xii. 2, 3, &c.)

The woman of Tekoah, that was hired by Joab tc reconcile the mind of the king towards his son Absalom, proposed to him the parable of her two sons, suggested to her by Joab himself. (2 Sam. xiv. 2, 3, &c.)

Jothan, son of Gideon, proposed to the men of Shechem, that parable (or fable) of the bramble, whom the trees had a mind to choose for their king. (Judges ix. 7, 8, &c.)

The prophets often reprove the infidelity of Jerusalem, under the parable of an adulterous wife.

But the parables with which I am now chiefly concerned, are those of our Saviour, who so often spoke to the people in parables; thereby verifying the prophecy of Isaiah vi. 9:—Matt. xiii. 14; Matt. iv. 12; Luke viii. 10; John xii. 40; Rom. xi. 8.

The fallacy of Bishop Horsley's exposition of our Saviour's descent into hell shall not detain me long. The words of his text are, "Being put to death in the flesh, but quickened by the Spirit; by which also He went and preached unto the spirits in prison, which sometime were disobedient, when once the long-suffering of God waited in the days of Noah.” (1 Pet. iii. 18, 19, 20.)

The sermon begins by placing the integrity of the doctrine of our Saviour's descent into hell upon the authority of the clause in the Apostles' Creed, strengthened by the third Article of our church, which the bishop tells us, was framed purposely to protect the doctrine from the ruthless zeal of reformation. His words are, "They, the

Reformers, were aware that upon the fact of our Lord's descent into hell, the Church of Rome pretended to build her doctrine of purgatory; which they justly esteemed one of her worst corruptions. But, apprehensive that the zeal of reformation might in this, as in some other instances, carry men too far, and induce them to reject a most important truth, on which a dangerous error had been once ingrafted-to prevent this intemperance of reform, they assert in the third Article of the Thirty-nine, 'That as Christ died for us and was buried, so it is to be believed that he went down into hell.' The terms in which they state the proposition, imply that Christ's going down into hell is a matter of no less importance to be believed than that he died upon the cross for men; is no less a plain matter of fact in the history of our Lord's life and death, than the burial of His dead body. It should seem, that what is thus taught among the first things which children learn should be among the plainest,—that what is thus laid down as a matter of the same necessity to be believed as our Lord's passion and atonement, should be among the least disputed,-that what every Christian is required to acknowledge as his own belief, in the daily assemblies of the faithful, should little need either explanation or proof to any that have been instructed in the very first principles only of the doctrine of Christ. But so it is, that what the sagacity of our reformers foresaw, the precaution which they used has not prevented. The truth itself has been brought into discredit by the errors with which it has been adulterated; and such has been the industry of modern refinement, and unfortunately so great has been its success, that doubts have been raised

about the sense of this plain Article of our Creed by some, and by others about the truth and authenticity of it. It will therefore be no unprofitable undertaking, to show that the assertion in the Apostles' Creed, that 'our Lord descended into hell,' is to be taken as a plain matter of fact, in the literal meaning of the words; to show what proof of this fact we have in Holy Writ; and lastly, to show the great use and importance of the fact as a point of Christian doctrine."

It can scarcely fail of striking the most cursory reader of the above extract, that if the Church of Rome built her doctrine of purgatory upon the assertion set forth in the clause in the Apostles' Creed, the very tendency of the clause to such corruptions is primâ facie evidence against it; and that the surest way, therefore, of disproving purgatory would be to show that the clause itself, with reference to an intermediate state, is altogether unscriptural.

I question whether there is another instance, in the writings of our divines, of so much ingenuity expended upon such palpable self-delusion as the following:-"It is evident," the bishop says, "that the place to which the soul of our Saviour went, in the interval between death and the resurrection, must be below the surface of the earth, for it is said in the Creed, that He 'descended,' that is, He went down to it." Can there be anything more puerile than this notion of the descent of the disembodied spirit of our Saviour to some region beneath the surface of the earth? This is followed by a laboured dissertation on the meaning of the word hell, in order to clear it from the imputation of being the place of torment,

to which the word is so familiarly applied. He then proceeds to say-"Assuming, therefore, that every departed soul has its place of residence, it would be reasonable to suppose, if revelation were silent on the subject, that a common mansion is provided for them all, their nature being similar; since we see throughout all nature creatures of the same sort placed together in the same element. But revelation is not silent."

"The sacred writers of the Old Testament spoke of such a common mansion in the inner parts of the earth; and we find the same opinion so general among the heathen writers of antiquity, that it is more probable that it had its rise in the earliest patriarchal revelations than in the imaginations of man or in poetical fiction. The notion is confirmed by the language of the writers of the New Testament; who concur with the earliest heathen poets in dividing this central mansion of the dead into two distinct regions for the separate lodging of the souls of the righteous and the reprobate." This assertion, in as far as it concerns the writers of the New Testament, has reference to the parable of Lazarus and Dives, upon which, in fact, is mainly founded the medieval doctrine of an intermediate state. Now, if that parable were a real history, what must be the inference? Must it not be that condemned souls, however separated by an impassable gulf from the souls of the faithful, are still so close to them as to be able to hold converse with them? How then are we to reconcile this with Bishop Horsley's notion that the visit of our Saviour was confined to the souls of the faithful? "The common people," he says, "know of no other hell but that of the burning lake, which certainly