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AN INFIDEL TEACHER.-TRAITS OF THE CLERGY, ETC. "Thus have you learned the circumstances that led to my present occupation. I have not the power of converting wafers into God; but I am engaged, Sir, in the very important work of furnishing the rough materials for the fabrication of god-making priests."

I found my new friend many degrees farther advanced in infidelity than myself. He had acquired a tone of levity on religious subjects which showed that conscience had long been overborne and reduced to silence. He was greatly strengthened in his sceptical habits by a gentleman from Trinity College, who had been in the neighbourhood as a tutor-a man of commanding talents, but one of the most cold-hearted and calculating profligates that ever insinuated poison into the unsuspecting ear of youth.

I was glad to meet with one to whom I could speak my mind freely, and the feeling was fully reciprocated by my friend. We amused ourselves much in secret with the follies that passed under the name of religion, and felt compassion for the multitudes whom superstition had enslaved. He was intimately and extensively acquainted with the clergy. He knew the abilities, the foibles, and faults of each, and he spoke of one and all with supreme contempt. He had an inexhaustible fund of anecdote about their pride, arrogance, selfishness, and avarice-their flattery of the rich, and contempt of the poor-their extortion and their prodigality. These he illustrated by facts, with some of which I was acquainted myself. For instance, is the priest called on in the night to visit a person dying? If the party be rich, he starts up at midnight, mounts the horse that has been brought for him, and dashes off in the midst of rain or snow, bidding defiance to the tempest. But if the patient be poor, he draws the bed-clothes closer round him, and tells the messenger that he may expect him in the morning.

I was once conversing with a very respectable parish priest, and, as we walked up and down near his house, a poor woman came up and humbly addressed him in the following words :

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May it please your reverence, it's now three o'clock, and I'm waitin' here since nine this mornin', hopin' your reverence would hear my confession; and I lives four miles away, and I came out without my breakfast, and besides there's no one mindin' the childher."

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'Begone, woman!" replied the priest in a voice of thunder, "Don't you see I am engaged at present ?" The poor creature was petrified. She shrunk away with a sigh and a look of resignation that powerfully touched my heart, and must, indeed, have touched any heart not steeled with ecclesiastical pride. My indignation was mingled with contempt, when he instantly resumed the conversation in a tone as mild, and with a smile as bland, as if nothing had happened.

But wherefore dwell on the faults of the Irish priests? Many of these arise out of these circumstances in which they are placed, and have naturally resulted from the treatment they have received. And, upon the whole, I am sure they are better than their system. My object, my dear friend, is not to arraign the moral character of your clergy, but to canvass principles.

32 CATHOLIC SEMINARIES.-CHARACTER OF THE PRIESTHOOD, etc.

these are proved to be unsound, the conduct which flows from them cannot be good. We cannot gather figs from thistles, nor draw sweet water from a bitter fountain. Several of them, however, I have known to be in a very high degree intelligent, benevolent, and candid-in their deportment unassuming-as friends, amiable and faithful.

Mr. F. had about forty pupils, nearly all studying Latin and Greek, with a view to ordination. Never was there a more unmanageable school. They were all pets, spoiled by the fond indulgence of their parents and friends, Sometimes, when their conduct became outrageous, the master would wax wrathful, and rebuke sharply the ringleader of the disturbance. This was frequently a young man, whose brother was a Franciscan friar, and who was one of the most reckless beings that could possibly be selected for the clerical office. He was an incorrigible idler, and so exceedingly comical that the most serious found it difficult to avoid laughing at him. When the master scolded and threatened, he would listen with a look of deep contrition, and then, with an air of affected gravity, irresistibly droll, he would hand him his snuff-box, at the same time casting a leering glance at the students. The result was a general burst of laughter, in which the master heartily joined.

These young men were very ignorant. They knew scarcely a syllable in English Grammar, Geography, or History, and scarcely a question in Arithmetic, when they were sent to this school of the prophets. And here the heathen classics consumed the whole of their time for four or five years. Nearly all were passionately addicted to card playing, and several were too fond of ardent spirits. This is a tolerably fair specimen of the preparatory schools of the priesthood throughout Ireland; and I am sure you should agree with me, that a worse system of moral training could hardly be devised. I regret to say, that the education which is afterwards received at Maynooth is not very eminently fitted to enlarge the mind or purify the heart. I have been frequently asked, by Protestants, "Do the priests really believe the doctrines they teach? How is it possible for men of education to maintain such absurdities ?" I am of opinion that the majority of the priests do honestly acquiesce in the truth of their religion, and are persuaded of the efficacy of its rites.

In reference to this class of persons, the influence of an education, whose tendency is to weaken or pervert the rational principle, has not been sufficiently adverted to. It should be borne in mind that, with them, the whole course of instruction is opposed to any healthful exercise of the powers of the understanding, or the feelings of the heart. From childhood, the consecrated boy is isolated from the common herd around him. Most of his enjoyments are like "stolen waters," sweet to the taste, but bitter in their results. His pleasures are enjoyed in spite of the remonstrances of conscience. But conscience, repeatedly violated, loses its sensibility, and finally relinquishes the ineffectual strife against the increasing power and turbulence of passion. Heathen classics, uncounteracted by Christian instruction, imbue the mind with Pagan vices, especially with the spirit of pride and self-dependence.

"The Lives of the Saints" is an appropriate sequel to the ancient Mythology, appealing to the same dispositions of our fallen nature, and inculcating the same principles of virtue. Alban Butler, the Catholic Plutarch, engrafts the religion of Papal on the virtue of Pagan Rome; and it must be confessed that the scion and the stock are equally congenial with the soil on which they grow. Taught to cherish the most extravagant notions of sacerdotal power, the sanctity of the clerical office serves, in the mind of the young priest, to cover a multitude of sins. He knows that in former times the clergy were not amenable to human tribunals; and he believes that, were society in a proper state, it would be so still. Accustomed from infancy to rely on the form of godliness without the power-to rest upon the overt act, apart from the inward feeling-to attribute a mysterious virtue to the opus operatum of the Church-exulting in the possession of prerogatives on which so many are implicitly depending for everlasting life—it is natural that he should cherish an overweening self-conceit, and an overbearing arrogance— that he should assume a tone of authority and dogmatism which is most unfriendly to the impartial examination of evidence, especially of evidence militating against this intoxicating power. Of all the delusions of Satan, the most subtle, as well as the most fatal, is that which converts the altar into an asylum for sin, and teaches that the sanctity of an office, or the virtue of rite, or the immunity of a state of acceptance, can dispense with the duties of morality. It is this widely-operating delusion that accounts for the presumptuous confidence of the dissolute antinomian, and the spiritual pride of the cold-hearted formalist-for the bitter zeal of sectarianism, and the strange mixture of austerity and sensuality, which characterise the monastic orders, and, to a great extent, the priesthood of the Roman Church. When the mask of hypocrisy can no longer conceal immorality, men naturally try to redeem character in the eyes of those who are the accomplices or the witnesses of their offences, as well as to quell the risings of remorse and smoothe the channel of vice, by removing the stress of religion from genuine piety, and placing it on an abstract and inoperative principle, or on the lifeless acts of formality and the reiterated ceremonies of superstition. This system, whose maxims others have only ventured to whisper in the ears of those whom they would corrupt, has been openly avowed and defended by the Jesuits-those ecclesiastical panders who have betrayed religion, and led her defiled and degraded from their own dark and mysterious haunts of pollution into the glare of profligate courts, and then exposed her to contempt and derision on the highways of a scorning and incredulous world.

In Maynooth, the priest has seen nothing of Protestantism but its hideous caricature the impure and bloody phantom of a monkish imagination. Against this phantom he has been wielding for years his logical weapons. When let loose from college, he desists from the Quixotic warfare, not from satiety of bigotry, but from mere lassitude of mind. Thus, the light which is in him is darkness, and how great must be that darkness! Learning has

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THEIR AVOCATIONS.-THEIR POLITICS.

exerted all its ingenuity to blind and bar the inlets of knowledge. Superstition has long possessed the fortress of the soul, and sophistry has been daily thickening the texture and multiplying the folds of that net in which the captive-reason-has fruitlessly struggled.

When the priest commences his official duties, a new scene opens. He is excited by the novelty, the piquant curiosity, and the powerful interest that encircle the confessional. The secrets which are there, in loneliness and silence, whispered into his ear, become the subjects of his daily lucubrations and his nocturnal visions. There is incessantly passing through his mind a stream of impurity, which is retained, fetid and foul, in the reservoir of memory; alas, too tenacious of evil! and from this reservoir imagination draws its food, and reproduces, with many additions, the delectable banquet !

He is, besides, occupied with a perpetual round of confessions, masses, marriages, christening, anointing, visiting, feasting, offices, and newspaper reading, so that there is scarcely any time for serious reflection. And even if there were, does not a slight knowledge of human nature teach us that man eagerly catches at any excuse for avoiding painful reflection, especially when conscience seizes the opportunity to urge the renunciation of interest, pleasure, or power? Thus, we see that everything from within conspires to keep the priests in error.

And the most superficial observation will show that the causes that operate from without are all of a similar tendency. Shunned by Protestants, as the enemy of truth; violently assailed, and sometimes, no doubt, misrepresented by political partisans and fiery zealots, he fiercely retaliates, and throws back the missiles of abuse with a degree of energy which shows he is not to be put down. He deems himself the champion of a degraded people and a persecuted Church. And the keen sense of neglect, of contempt and insult, with which he is almost universally treated by his more reputable neighbours, infuses no small portion of bitterness into his opposition to Protestantism. It is natural to us to hate those by whom we are despised. In all the attempts to reclaim the Roman Catholic people, the priests are strangely overlooked. No efforts to conciliate them have ever been put forth by the religious portion of the Protestant community. They have been treated rather as demons than as We have forgotten that they are possessed of like passions with ourselves; that while they are alienated and exasperated by harsh and violent attacks on their faith and their moral character, they may be won by Christian courtesy, friendly intercourse, and the cordial expression of kind and charitable feelings. Should we not make allowance for the influence of circumstances? Could they be expected, in the nature of things, to cherish towards Protestants other sentiments than those by which they are actuated? Our clergy almost invariably shrink from contact with a priest, and if compelled to transact public business in connexion with him, they eye him with an air of supercilious jealousy, which must be exceedingly irritating, and is often, in fact, strongly resented. They never meet him at the social

men.

THEIR SOCIAL POSITION.-THEIR SINCERITY.

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board. This would be deemed a dereliction of principle; it would be thought a "bidding him God speed," and giving their sanction to his ministerial character. Were an evangelical minister seen walking in the street, leaning on the arm of a priest, though endeavouring to convince him of his errors, his character would be ruined.

Now, if religion be allowed to operate as a barrier in the way of properlyregulated social intercourse, much of its power of propagation is thereby destroyed. An early apologist for Christianity declared that its converts were found in vast numbers in all departments of the empire, and that they abounded even in the army. They must then have mingled freely with the Pagan population; and, indeed, it was by thus carrying the principles and the spirit of the Gospel into the intimacies of social life that they were enabled so effectually to leaven the whole mass. How else can example, the most intelligible and powerful of teachers, be brought to bear on the world in which we move? It is in vain that our light shines under the bushel of sectarianism, or within the high frowning walls of exclusiveness which we have reared up around us.

Nothing, I am persuaded, more powerfully dissipates prejudice than the light of a holy example. Of this I had ample proofs in my own experience. Circumstances made me acquainted with two or three clergymen of the Church of England, whose domestic habits and family arrangements I had an opportunity of observing; and I can truly affirm, that the picture of peace, and order, and purity which they presented, did more to remove my dislike of Protestantism than volumes of arguments could have accomplished. This, however, by the way.

Is it not manifest, therefore, that the Irish priests are, from their education, their position in society, their political bias, their official avocations and social habits, so perfectly the creatures of their own system, so fully imbued with its despotic spirit, so effectually impelled and controlled by its dark energies, that, instead of wondering at their credulity, we should rather admire the power of that saving grace by which so many of them are emancipated? I grant that there may be among them, as well as among the laity, men of bold and independent minds, who secretly despise the system which they are constrained by a sense of honour to administer. But the number of these is, I apprehend, comparatively small; and I think even they will, for the most part, be found absorbed in literary pursuits; or hurried along amid the bustle of political agitation, while the routine of official duty is gone through mechanically, and the mind has fallen into a state of religious apathy, deep as the slumber of death.