ere not disgusting. Imbecility that is not even
meek, ceases to be pitiable, and becomes simply odious.

Parenthetic lashes of this kind against Popery are very frequent with Dr.
Cumming, and occur even in his more devout passages, where their
introduction must surely disturb the spiritual exercises of his hearers.
Indeed, Roman Catholics fare worse with him even than infidels. Infidels
are the small vermin--the mice to be bagged _en passant_. The main
object of his chase--the rats which are to be nailed up as trophies--are
the Roman Catholics. Romanism is the masterpiece of Satan; but reassure
yourselves! Dr. Cumming has been created. Antichrist is enthroned in the
Vatican; but he is stoutly withstood by the Boanerges of Crown-court.
The personality of Satan, as might be expected, is a very prominent tenet
in Dr. Cumming's discourses; those who doubt it are, he thinks,
"generally specimens of the victims of Satan as a triumphant seducer;"
and it is through the medium of this doctrine that he habitually
contemplates Roman Catholics. They are the puppets of which the devil
holds the strings. It is only exceptionally that he speaks of them as
fellow-men, acted on by the same desires, fears, and hopes as himself;
his _rule_ is to hold them up to his hearers as foredoomed instruments of
Satan and vessels of wrath. If he is obliged to admit that they are "no
shams," that they are "thoroughly in earnest"--that is because they are
inspired by hell, because they are under an "infra-natural" influence.
If their missionaries are found wherever Protestant missionaries go, this
zeal in propagating their faith is not in them a consistent virtue, as it
is in Protestants, but a "melancholy fact," affording additional evidence
that they are instigated and assisted by the devil. And Dr. Cumming is
inclined to think that they work miracles, because that is no more than
might be expected from the known ability of Satan who inspires them.
{86a} He admits, indeed, that "there is a fragment of the Church of
Christ in the very bosom of that awful apostasy," {86b} and that there
are members of the Church of Rome in glory; but this admission is rare
and episodical--is a declaration, _pro forma_, about as influential on
the general disposition and habits as an aristocrat's profession of
democracy.

This leads us to mention another conspicuous characteristic of Dr.
Cumming's teaching--the _absence of genuine charity_. It is true that h