, had usurped the name of
Christianity, and that the Romish Church, as it is called, instead of
being the mother of all Churches, is truly the Babylon of the
Apocalypse; yet this is the system which ministers of the Church of
England are endeavouring to introduce into our country, with its
idolatrous rites and dogmas, and which you and many excellent men like
yourself look at with a lenient eye, instead of regarding it with the
abhorrence it deserves."

"My dear friend," said Mr Lennard, greatly astonished, "I certainly had
never regarded the Church of Rome in that light; I looked upon it as the
ancient Church, corrupted in the course of ages."

"It has no true claim to be a Christian Church at all," said the
general; "it is like the cuckoo, which, hatched in the nest of the
hedge-warbler, by degrees forces out the other fledglings, and usurps
their place. So did paganism treat Christianity; although, fostered by
God, the latter was enabled to exist, persecuted and oppressed as it
was, and still to exert a benign influence in the world. On examining
the tenets of many who are called heretics, we find that it was not the
creed they held, but the opposition they offered to the Romish system,
which was their crime, and brought down persecution on their heads.
When we read of the horrible cruelties practised on the Waldenses and
Albigenses, the followers of Huss in Bohemia, the true Protestants of
all ages down to the time of Luther, the detestable system of the
Inquisition, the treatment of the inhabitants of the Netherlands by Alva
and the Spaniards, when whole hecatombs of victims were put to death at
the instigation of the pope and his cardinals, the destruction of
thousands and tens of thousands of Huguenots in France, the martyrdoms
of the noble Protestants of Spain, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew,
and the fires of Smithfield--all these diabolical acts performed with
the concurrence and approval of the papal power--can we for a moment
hesitate to believe that that power owes its origin, not to the Divine
Head of the Church, but to that spirit of evil, Satan, the deadly foe of
the human race? Can any system founded on it, however much reformed it
may appear, fail to partake of the evil inherent in the original itself.
It is from not seeing this that so many are led to embrace the errors--
I would rather say the abominations--of Rome; while others are taught to
look at them with lenient eyes, and to believe that