.
David, a St. Elisha, or a St. Gehazi? I answer, from the idea of
idolatry, so adapted to the Gentile mind, and so abhorrent from the
Jewish. Martyred Abel, however well respected, has never reached the
honours of a niche beside the altar. Jephtha's daughter, for all her
mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other
than a much-to-be-lamented damsel. Who ever asked, in those old times,
the mediation of St. Enoch? Where were the offerings, in jewels or in
gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, St.
Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung about
the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, that
wretched and insensate being, calling himself rational and godly, who
had ventured to solicit the good services of Isaiah as his intercessor,
or to plead the merits of St. Ezekiel as the make-weight for his sins?

It was just this, and reasonably to have been expected; for when the Jew
brought in his religion, he demolished every false god, broke their
images, slew their priests, and burnt their groves with fire. But, when
a worldly Christianity came to be in vogue, when emperors adorned their
banners with the cross, and the poor fishermen of Galilee, (in their
portly representatives,) came to be encrusted with gems, and rustling
with seric silk; then was made that fatal compromise; then it was likely
to have been made, which has lasted even until now: a compromise which,
newly baptizing the damned idols of the heathen, keeps yet St. Bacchus
and St. Venus, St. Mars and St. Apollo, perched in sobered robes upon
the so-called Christian altar; which yet pays divine honours to an
ancyle or a rusty nail; to the black stones at Delphi, or the
gold-shrined bones at Aix; which yet sanctifies the chickens of the
capitol, or the cock that startled Peter; which yet lets a wealthy
sinner, by his gold, bribe the winking Pythoness, or buy dispensing
clauses from "the Lord our God, the Pope."

There is yet a swarm of other notions pressing on the mind, which tend
to prove that Popery might have been anticipated. Take this view. The
religion of Christ is holy, self-denying; not of this world's praise,
and ending with the terrible sanction of eternity for good or evil: it
sets up God alone supreme, and cuts down creature-merit to a point
perpetually diminishing; for the longer he does well, the more he owes
to the grace which enabled him to do it.

Now,