been, of ever will be experienced? Reasoning analogically affords no prospect of amelioration, and facts áre in high relief against it.

It is vain to object that the Protestant church has uniformly protested against the spirit of persecution, as inherent in the Romish church. The very charge is against herself, for their fundamental principles are the same, and that these have not retarded the progress of persecution, is most obviously certain. That human conduct differs materially under the influence of the same principles, is a position which few will attempt to vindicate, and no one successfully. All the anathemas hurled by the Protestant against the Papal church, are mere sound, while the same essential principles are common to both. It is allowed, indeed, that the language has been ransacked for epithets of opprobrium to be heaped upon that church; and what is the inference? The same language has passed current between contending Protestant sects, all equally detesting the Romish hierarchy. What now is the inference? Does all this amphibolous verbiage prove more in the one than in the other case? Certainly not.

A certain orthodox writer styles the church of Rome "debateable ground, the half-way house between christianity and idolatry;" but he also allows, that it "has so much both of the christian and the heathen," that it can hardly be determined to which she belongs. The much of christianity, which she is allowed to possess, has not stayed the horrors of persecution, for that much is the doctrine of endless misery, of which you are the champion. There is no avenue for escape from the conclusions at which we shall arrive by this process. Her orthodoxy is too notorious to be denied, and a very able writer of her church has quoted the sentiment from the mild, the comparatively amiable Melancthon, that a departure from, the Trinitarian doctrine, is sufficient cause of persecution!

I shall now offer a few more testimonials from the ancient reformers, showing their opinion of the effects of the reformation, so called.

Melancthon. "Indeed, speaking modestly, any other state of things, in any other age, exhibits the beauty of an age of gold, when it is compared to the confusion which the reformers introduced."

The same Melancthon writes to one of his correspondents;

"All the waters of the Elbe would not give me sufficient tears to bewail the miseries of the reformation. The people will never submit to the yoke which the love of liberty made them throw off. Our partizans fight, not for the gospel, but ascendency. Ecclesiastical discipline no longer exists. Doubts are entertained on the most important subjects; the evil is incurable !!"

In the preceding number I presented the picture of Luther, as a reformer, drawn by himself. I now present a picture of him, from his own writings, before he commenced reformer.

"When I lived in my monastery, I punished my body with watching, fasting, and prayer; I observed all my vows of chastity, poverty, and obedience. Whatever I did, it was with singleness of heart; with good zeal, and for the glory of God."

How much better he was made by becoming a Protestant, has already been seen.

Musculus. "If any one wishes to see a multitude of knaves, disturbers of the public peace, &c. let him go to a city where the gospel is preached in its purity;" referring of course to a reformed city.

Erasmus, though a Catholic, was a scholar and a philosopher. He marked the progress of the reformation with the eye of a master, and his testimony goes to corroborate that of the reformers. He was an eye witness of the introduction and progress of the reform

ation, and noted its phenomena with the accuracy of a candid and correct historian. The following is from his description of the fruits of the reformation.

"And who are those gospel people? Look around you, and show me one who has become a better man; -show me one, who, once a glutton, is now turned sober; one, who, before violent, is now meek; one, who, before avaricious, is now generous; one, who, before impure, is now chaste. I can point out multitudes who are become far worse than they were before."-"They have abolished confession, and few of them confess their sins, even to God. They have abrogated fasting, and they wallow in sensuality.They have become Epicureans, for fear of becoming Jews. They have cast off the yoke of human institutions, and along with it the yoke of the Lord. So far from being submissive to Bishops, they are disobedient to the civil magistrate. What tumults and seditions mark their conduct! For what trifles do they fly to arms!"—" It is folly to exchange evils for evils, and madness to exchange small evils for great ones.

Beza has left sufficient monuments of his intolerance in his Tractatus de Hereticis puniendis, and of his murderous disposition in the part he acted in different rebellions, and in the assassination of the Duke of Guise. Of his dissolute manners, his epigrams, printed in Paris, 1548, are a sufficient testimony, one of which commences thus ;

"Abest Candida, Beza quid moraris ?
Andebertus abest, quid hic moraris ?
Sed utrum, rogo, præferam duorum?
Amplector quoque sic hunc et illam," &c.

"This Candida, of Beza, was the wife of a tailor in Paris, by name Madame Claude, with whom this licentious divine, when under prosecution in the latter city, fled to Geneva."-Milner

And this is the man so often quoted as authority in the commentaries of Scott!!

There is no difficulty in tracing the steps of the Protestant church down to the present day, both by its persecutions and general immoralities. Not an age has passed in which any one sect was clearly in the majority, unmarked by persecution. Of the immoralities of the different sects, their own publications are the best witnesses. Hardly a Presbytery, or Synod, or General Convention meets, without the usual lamentations over their churches, on account of profane swearing, drunkenness, Sabbath breaking, fraud, covetousness, and the et cetera of general immoralities. And yet, Sir, with all these facts staring you in the face, you maintain sufficient impudence to accuse the Universalists of the same immoralities, and impute them to our principles! as if they were not matters of sufficient notoriety in your own communion, boasting a principle which you consider as much preferable to ours, as the light of the meridian sun is greater than the phosphoric twinkling of a glow worm.

Should my health be restored after the distressing illness by which I am now confined, the subject of the present number will be concluded in the succeeding, when the value of our different principles may be determined by a criterion from which no appeal can lie. Yours,

CANDIDUS

NO. 5.

To Rev. Joel Hawes,-Hartford.

SIR-Having through the blessing of our Heavenly Father, been restored to a state of comparative health,

I hasten to redeem the pledge given at the close of my last. I shall not pay so poor a compliment to your understanding, as to presume you ignorant of the means in my possession for the redemption of this promise. Sufficient has already appeared to satisfy any rational man, that abundance of facts is in store for this purpose, and the only difficulty lies in selecting the most important, and setting them in order for the specified purpose.

The writings of the Protestant Fathers show conclusively, that in the early ages of the Reformation, the advantages were clearly in favour of the Romish church, in general morals, even after the Lutheran and Calvinistic dogmas had converted nations. Then, if ever, ought we to look for fruits differing materially from those of the mother church. If, however, we are to take the writings of the nursing fathers of the Reformation, as proof of its effects, the picture is indeed appalling. If, in searching the history of the Reformation, we should find that its leaders were men, whose characters would sanction the belief that their ostensible was their real object; or if those who joined their standard, became obviously better men and better citizens, than they were while in the Catholic faith, a strong presumption would prevail, that they were actuated by an improved religious principle, and that the reformation was genuine. Such, however, does not appear to be the case, and a few facts will be added, as corroborating the quotations already made.

Luther's testimony is not yet exhausted. "Formerly, when we were seduced by the Pope, men willingly followed good works, but now all their study is to get every thing to themselves, by exactions, pillage, theft, lying, usury. "It is a wonderful thing, and full of scandal, that from the time when the PURE DOCTRINE, was first called to light, the world should grow worse and worse.