! and how completely does
its empire, founded on the counteraction of the natural temper, and the
mortification of all our passions, prove its divine origin! How forcibly
does its mild and compassionate morality, its affections altogether
spiritual, attest its emanation from God! Many of its doctrines, it is
true, soar above the reach of the understanding, and impose on reason
a respectful silence; but this more fully demonstrates its revelation,
since the human mind could never have imagined such mysteries."

Then, holding the Bible in one hand and the four Gospels in the other,
the doctor began to relate that, in the beginning, God, after passing an
eternity in idleness, took the resolution, without any known cause, of
making the world out of nothing; that having created the whole universe
in six days, he found himself fatigued on the seventh; that having
placed the first human pair in a garden of delights, to make them
completely happy, he forbade their tasting a particular fruit which he
placed within their reach; that these first parents, having yielded
to the temptation, all their race (which were not yet born) had been
condemned to bear the penalty of a fault which they had not committed;
that, after having left the human race to damn themselves for four or
five thousand years, this God of mercy ordered a well beloved son, whom
he had engendered without a mother, and who was as old as himself, to go
and be put to death on the earth; and this for the salvation of
mankind; of whom much the greater portion, nevertheless, have ever since
continued in the way of perdition; that to remedy this new difficulty,
this same God, born of a virgin, having died and risen from the dead,
assumes a new existence every day, and in the form of a piece of bread,
multiplies himself by millions at the voice of one of the basest of
men. Then, passing on to the doctrine of the sacraments, he was going to
treat at large on the power of absolution and reprobation, of the means
of purging all sins by a little water and a few words, when, uttering
the words indulgence, power of the pope, sufficient grace, and
efficacious grace, he was interrupted by a thousand cries.

"It is a horrible abuse," cried the Lutherans, "to pretend to remit sins
for money."

"The notion of the real presence," cried the Calvinists, "is contrary to
the text of the Gospel."

"The pope has no right to decide anything of himself," cried the
Jansenists; and thirty