AYVIII INTRODIICTORY ESSAY. a Why, he doth bestride the narrow world Like a Colossus; and we puny men Walk under his hugelegs, and peep about To find ourselves dishonourable graves." Fictitious, however, as is the basis on which the Popedom rests, not so are the agents it employs, the homage it exacts, and themeans which it takes to uphold the fiction. Its agents, divided, as they may be, into the simpletons who actually believe in the pretensions of Popery, and who, if not grossly ignorant, will generally be found to labour under some mental malformation, and the sharpers whose business and interest it is to keep up the delusion, though neither of them would be formidable by themselves, become so by working into each other's hands. The largest and flashiest of impostors require the aid of their dupes ; and the finger of a mere child may serve to pull the trigger of the weapon which the assassin has charged and pointed. The homage, again, exacted by the Popedom, extends to every soul that lives, and to every action and relation of life ; demanding the abject prostration of every faculty, the sacrifice of every feeling, and the surrender of every right. And the means employed to bolster up the hideous phantasmagoria embrace every possible expedient, however much it may outrage the laws of God and man. To complete the magic circle of this "Mystery of Iniquity," it only remains to be told, that, according to the well-known maxim of the Jesuits, in matters involving the interest of their church (and these may be very widely stretched), all sorts of deceit and imposture may be lawfully and even laudably practised upon heretics, provided it be done " with a good intention ;" and, accordingly, all that we have now stated as "the common doctrine" of the church of Rome may be disclaimed, and pronounced, even under the solemn sanction of an oath, to be pure misrepresentation. What is more, on the same principle, it may be lawfully denied that any such maxim is held in the church of Rome as that it is lawful to practise deceit upon heretics ! With a body of men calling themselves a church, con- victed of holding such a principle, it would be vain to argue, and worse than vain to enter into compact. Their testimony, in their own case, like that of the convicted liar, must be held inadmissible in any court of justice, and the only safe course must be to ignore it altogether. It follows, that to form a souád and safe estimate of the Papacy, we must, independently of any disclaimer put in by the devoted adherents of that system, examine thoseworks written by themselves
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