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example of his faithful servants, were in after ages totally disregarded. The professed ministers of the gospel, without scruple, assumed to themselves lordship and dominion, and gradually attained to such a height of power as enabled them to impose a yoke of bondage on the necks of their brethren, and to tyrannize over the whole christian world. A despotism the most odious and destructive was established on the ruins of primitive christianity. The man of sin, sitting in the temple of God, exalted above all that is called god among men, claimed supreme dominion over the faith and consciences of others, ruled with the most despotic sway, destroyed those who refused to submit to his yoke; and mankind were tame enough to prostrate themselves in the dust before him, to permit him to set his feet on the necks of kings, and bind whole nations with the fetters of superstition.

Long inured to ecclesiastical tyranny and the most degrading servility, those who broke from under the papal yoke, supposing it lawful to support truth by coercion, and to suppress what they thought erroneous by the strong arm of power, hesitated not to exercise dominion over conscience in their turn, and to destroy those who would not submit to their authority.

This seems to have arisen from the habits of thinking and acting which they had formed in the popish community. Happy had it been for themselves and mankind if when they quitted the church of Rome they had left the spirit of popery behind them; but, alas! they animated the churches they formed with the old antichristian spirit of persecution.

Christianity being corrupted in its doctrines and discipline, the use of reason supplanted by implicit faith in prescribed dogmas and mystical interpretations, christian liberty destroyed and religious tyranny every where triumphant, the holy influences of the gospel would be but little felt, its genuine spirit would die away, and a temper more consonant with the existing state of things manifest itself. This was really the case, except with a persecuted few, who continued faithful in the most degenerate times. The church was become a worldly kingdom; the bulk of its members were become corrupt both in principle and practice; a spirit of ambition, pride and persecution influenced its rulers, and contaminated the body at large. Fraud and force were the engines by which the complicated system of corruption was supported; anathemas, racks and tortures, the weapons employed by its advocates for the destruction of those who dared to oppose the prevailing abominations. To condemn and destroy those who were accused of heresy had been so long the uniform practice, that men, otherwise virtuous and good, did not suspect it to be wrong, if they were persuaded that the persecuted were really in error, and refused to retract their opinions. Perverted by such corrupt maxims, the reformers felt not that they did wrong when they persecuted those who differed from them: so greatly had their connexion with the antichristian church of Rome defiled their consciences, i. e. perverted their sense of right and wrong.

The middle ages, those times of ignorance and barbarism which followed the destruction of the western empire, were highly favorable to the growth of error, superstition and religious tyranny. During that long night of illiteracy, while men continued in the sleep of ignorance, the enemy sowed the tares. Strangers to literature and science, generally incapable of reading and judging for themselves, and groaning under the yoke of feudal despotism, the people knew nothing about religion but what their priests, who were the tools of a foreign ecclesiastical despot, and the devotees of the reigning superstition, chose to tell them. To the priests they often resorted, not only for religious in struction, but for protection from the fury or avarice of some petty tyrant. To escape the teeth of the lion they threw themselves into the paws of the bear. The priests, ignorant as they were, knew how to avail themselves of circumstances, for the increase of their own influence and power. They extended their jurisdiction by the erection of spiritual courts; they drew the wealth of the laity into their hands; they acquired dominion over their faith, their consciences, their property, and became all powerful. They had the address to induce mankind to believe that their influence extended beyond the grave, and that the happiness of the dead, as well as of the living, depended on them. What would not a people immersed in ignorance, caught in the toils of priestcraft, and bound in the fetters of superstition, believe from the lips of a ghostly father, to whom they had already sacrificed reason and committed the keeping of their conscience? Of course a sys tem of the grossest corruption in doctrine, and of the vilest superstition in practice, spread and took deep root every where: the kings of the earth assisted with all their power to give it a firm establishment, and to cut off all who dared to rise up against it. Thus error, superstition and ecclesiastical tyranny were brought to maturity amidst the darkness of the middle ages, and deeply entrenched in the strong holds of prejudice and power, and encompassed with proscribing laws and all the instruments of per secution and death.

A variety of circumstances operated to produce a revival of literature among those nations which had long bowed their necks to the papal yoke. Literature has ever been favorable to the cause of liberty and religion. As men became enlightened they felt uneasy under the galling yoke of priestcraft and superstition. The general corruption of manners, the abominable lives of many of the priests, the nefarious practices by which they supported their cause, the barefaced tyranny and undisguised villany of the pope and his agents, became too notorious to be any longer concealed, and too grievous to be patiently indured, in an age when some degree of light was breaking forth. No

thing was necessary to the commencement of a reformation, but for some leader, of intrepid and daring mind, to enter upon the work with firm resolution, and to persevere in it with undaunted courage. The political state of Europe, the revival of literature, and the sense of

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