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do it, they shall perish. Luke, 13: 3. This thing God expresses by the Greek term metanoia. But all do not understand Greek. Wherefore, for the admonition and instruction of those Catholics who read only the English language, and who cannot be persuaded of the sin of reading the Bible, it becomes necessary to render that word into English. Certain persons undertake to do it, that is, to interpret the mind of God as expressed by metanoia. And what do they make it out to mean? Hear, hear! Doing penance! That is it, they say. "Do the penance which your priest appoints, after you have made your confession to him, and that is all." It is no such thing. This is a misrepresentation of the Almighty. This is not the subject of the command and warning to which reference has been made. And to suppose that it is on account of this that angels rejoice, i. e. when a sinner does penance, is truly farcical. O what a translation! "There is joy in heaven over one sinner that does penance." Truly angels must be easily made to rejoice, if this be the case! How it sounds! How offensive to the very ear, and how much more to the enlightened judgment, is this rendering! "God commands all to do penance. Except ye do penance, ye shall all likewise perish. He is not willing that any should perish, but that all should return to penance !" Shocking! Away with such a translation from the earth. The Douay Bible is not God's Bible; for it purposely misrepresents him in a main point, viz: on the article of repentance. Here is a translation of metanoia implying no sorrow for sin, no change of mind, (which the word literally signifies,) nor any moral reformation; but only the doing of certain ex

ternal, and generally puerile, things prescribed by a priest; all which may be done without any internal exercise without any emotion of any kind. The word, according to the Catholics, makes no requisition on the heart whatever. And truly, a man may be a good Catholic without ever feeling any thing, unless it be the bodily pain of self-inflicted penance. And every one knows that thinking is not necessary to constitute a good Catholic. Wherefore a man may be a good Catholic without either thinking or feeling, that is, without any exercise of either mind or heart. All that seems requisite is mechanical action. Maelzel, the constructor of automatons, could almost make one. Is this uncharitable? It is true, and ought to be said. It ought to be known and proclaimed that the religion of the church of Rome overlooks the reason, conscience, and heart of man, addressing no appeal to them, and indeed making no use of them. Is it then the religion of the Holy Ghost? Is this the Christianity of Christ? It cannot be.

I ought perhaps to say that I find, in one place in the Douay Testament, the Greek metanoeite translated correctly, repent. It occurs in Mark 1: 15. Whether it was done in a moment of relenting, or through inadvertence, I cannot say. It was never repeated that I can find. Perhaps the translators had to do penance for presuming to render the word in that one case correctly.

Do you not see what a difference it makes to the priests, if you give it out that repentance is the requisition? Then a sinner will be saved if he repent, irrespective of the priest. The great High Priest that is passed into the heavens will see to the case of every true

penitent. But if the requisition be doing penance, in that case, there being something necessary which the priest prescribes, he has the poor sinner completely in his power. It makes the salvation to depend on the act of the little low priest. Do you wonder that the priests insist on the translation do penance, and forbid the people to read in a Bible which requires them to repent?

There is a precious note in the Douay connnected with this subject, which may afford me a topic hereafter.

31. The Hardest Religion.

Among the compliments which our brethren of the Church of Rome pay to their religion, this is one. They say it is the hardest religion—that no other religion requires so much of its votary. Hence they would have it inferred that theirs must be the divine and only true religion. The yoke being so hard, and the burden so heavy, they must of course be Christ's.

I shall examine this claim to the precedence in point of difficulty. And something I am prepared to concede to the Church of Rome on this score. There is a part of her faith which I acknowledge it is exceedingly hard to receive. It requires a powerful effort doubtless to believe the doctrine of transubstantiation, viz. that the bread and wine of the sacrament are changed into *** what? The body and blood of Christ? Not

that alone, but also into his soul and divinity! Yes, it is hard to believe it is so, when one sees it is not so, and knows it cannot be so. It is hard to disbelieve at will those long-tried and faithful servants, the senses; and especially that first of the five, the sight. There is difficulty in the Catholic religion truly. It puts a tremendous strain on the mind.

There is also her doctrine about the necessity of baptism to salvation, which some of us find it very hard to believe. One reason of our difficulty is that that doctrine bears so hard upon the heathen, and particularly on the immense multitude of infants who every where die without baptism. According to the doctrine of Rome, that baptism is indispensable to salvation, they are all lost just for the want of a little water! Poor things, they fare no better than the thief on the cross who died without baptism. They get no farther than Paradise the first day. It is a hard religion. This doctrine is cruelly hard upon children; as her doctrine that money, by the purchase of prayers and masses, releases souls from Purgatory, is hard upon the poor.

So much for the difficulty of her faith. But all of that is not so hard; as for example, her doctrine of indulgences. It is never hard to be indulged. There is no hardship, but very great convenience for a delinquent sinner to have such a bank to draw upon, as the accumulated merits of the saints in by-gone ages, who did more than they needed for their own salvation, having loved God with considerably more than "all the heart, and soul, and strength, and mind!" This doctrine does not make the Roman Catholic religion a hard one-neither does the doctrine of venial sins. You know they hold that there are some sins whose

wages is not death. They are excusable-mere peccadillos. We recognise no such sins. We think with St. Paul, that "cursed is every one that continueth not in all things which are written in the book of the law to do them."

But perhaps when the Catholics speak of their religion as a hard one, they refer not so much to its faith as to its practice. It is what they have to do that is so hard. But why do they speak of it as hard? It looks as if it was a task to them-as if they do not find their sweetest and purest delight in it. It would appear as if they did not esteem the service of God as much their privilege as their duty. One would suppose, to hear them talk, that the commandments of God are grievous. I am truly sorry for them that Christ's yoke, which, he says, is easy, they find to be so galling to them. We, Protestants, never think of speaking of our religion as hard. "Wisdom's ways" we find to be "pleasantness, and all her paths peace." Our language is: "O how love I thy law! How sweet are thy words unto my taste! yea, sweeter than honey to my mouth!" But it seems not to be so with Catholics. I have been struck with surprise to hear even the most devout of them speak of the requirements of their religion as things which they must comply with. "I must," is the language which they use in reference to almost every thing of a religious kind that they do. I have thought with myself how it is possible that their hearts can be in their religion, if they esteem it such a hardship. How will heaven be able to make them happy, if the exercises and acts on earth, most akin to those of heaven, are so irksome that they engage in them only from sheer necessity?

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