In ages and countries, in which ignorance has produced and nourished superstition, many artifices have been invented, of practising piety without virtue, and repentance without amendment. The devotion of our blind fore-fathers consisted, for a great part, in rigorous austerities, laborious pilgrimages, and gloomy retirement; and that which now prevails, in the darker provinces of the popish world, exhausts its power in absurd veneration for some particular saint, expressed too often by honours paid to his image, or in a stated number of prayers, uttered with very little attention, and very frequently with little understanding.
Some of these practices may be, perhaps, justly imputed to the grossness of a people, scarcely capable of worship purely intellectual; to the necessity of complying with the weakness of men who must be taught their duty by material images, and sensible impressions. This plea, however, will avail but little, in defence of abuses not only permitted, but encouraged by pertinacious vindications, and fictitious miracles.
It is apparent that the Romish clergy have attributed too much efficacy to pious donations, and charitable establishments; and that they have made liberality to the church, and bounty to the poor, equivalent to the whole system of our duty to God, and to our neighbour.
Yet nothing can be more repugnant to the general tenour of the evangelical revelation, than an opinion that pardon may be bought, and guilt effaced, by a stipulated expiation. We naturally catch the pleasures of the present hour, and gratify the calls of the reigning passion: and what shall hinder the man of violence from outrage and mischief, or restrain the pursuer of interest from fraud and circumvention, when they are told, that after a life passed in disturbing the peace of life, and violating the security of possession, they may die at last in peace, by founding an alms-house, without the agonies of deep contrition?
But errour and corruption are often to be found where
