besides their frequent holidays, the short prayers they are daily called to, and the occasional devotions enjoined by confessors. By these means, their superstition sinks deep into the minds of the people, and their religion also into the minds of such among them as are serious and well-disposed. Our reformers, considering that some of these observances were in themselves wrong and superstitious, and others of them made subservient to the purposes of superstition, abolished them, reduced the form of religion to great simplicity, and enjoined no more particular rules, nor left anything more of what was external in religion, than was, in
reader must needs take this as spoken of the means and memorials of true religion, and will accordingly consider these as recommended to his practice and imitation." If a plain reader, at first view of the passage alluded to, should inadvertently fall into such a mistake, he would find that mistake immediately corrected by the very next sentence that follows, where the religion of the Roman Catholics, and their superstition, are distinguished from each other in express words. But the terms in question are used with the strictest propriety. The design of the Bishop, in this part of his Charge, is to consider religion, not under the notion of its being true, but as it affects the senses and imaginations of the multitude. For so the paragraph begins: "That which men have accounted religion, in the several countries of the world, (whether religion be true or false is beside his present argument,) generally speaking, has had a great and conspicuous part in all public appearances." This position he illustrates by three examples, the Heathen, the Mahometan, and the Roman Catholic religions. The two first of these, having little or nothing of true religion belonging to them, may well enough be characterised under the common name of superstition: the last contains a mixture of both: which, therefore, the Bishop, like a good writer, as well as a just reasoner, is careful to distinguish. In Roman Catholic countries, a man can hardly travel a mile without passing a crucifix erected on the road side : he may either stop to worship the image represented on the cross, or he may simply be reminded by it of his own relation to Christ crucified: thus by one and the same outward sign, "religion may be recalled to his thoughts," or superstition may take possession of his mind. In the celebration of the Eucharist, the elements of bread and wine are regarded by a Papist as the very body and blood of Christ; to a Protestant, they appear only as symbols and memorials of that body and blood; what in one is an act of rational devotion, becomes in the other an instance of the grossest superstition, if not idolatry.
