XC. PROLEGOMENA. 



a tepidity of faith : so the disuse of any particular 

 rite brings the rest into contenopt, and thus the 

 iconoclastic fury of the " Reformation" ended 

 in the abolition of all order and forms among the 

 puritans. And no one can observe accurately 

 ■what has passed, and is daily passing in the 

 world, without perceiving that a real diminution 

 of faith, hope, and charity, has always attended 

 heresy. 



This was very conspicuous at the gloomy 

 time of the Commonwealth : the very church- 

 yards and cemeteries were stripped of their 

 crosses, and of all the emblems of imnoortality. 

 The heretics seemed to want to put God out of 

 sight, and while they rebelled against St. Peter 

 in his Chair, they closely imitated him in his fall, 

 making a virtual denial of Christ, and destroying 

 every emblem of his Passion. This Satanic 

 mania, coupled with the loss of the consoling 

 doctrines of purgatory and prayers for the dead, 

 held before in Catholic and protestant churches, to- 

 o-ether with the loss of hospitals and convents, and 

 the substitution of rack rent and workhouses, and 

 other hardships for the poor, has in reality at last 

 deprived religion of its comforts, and in the end 

 made it merely the cold, the selfish, the nominal 

 profession of a lukewarm and degraded generation, 

 instead of being, as it was in times of catholic 

 hospitality, the boast and glory of a highminded 



