The Statesman.
London, England, 1820-04-19 00:00:00

!.<7.4TE OF rrEturioN

One micht •urd: expecrtitnt, in a country possc•s-
inE cigh; archiddsops, neon, than Itlty hishups, and
tuure than a littio:resi abbacies, with a jurisdiction
aintost epi,copal—"in n hich," to use the language of
u Spanish writer, " there are more churches than
houses, more altars than hearths, more prie4ts
tSan pea .ants:"—in which every dwelling has its
saint, and every individual I^4 scapulary,--one might
expect to see some benefits, finite blesiiags resulting
from this gigantic ma. .4 of ecclesiastical influence.
Let us, then, look upon a picture drawn by the hand
of an a:•knowledged master. . _

" Our universities are the faithful depositaries of
the prejudices of the middle age ; our teachers, doc-
tor.; of the truth centnry. Beardless noviciates in-
struct us in the sublime mysteries of our faith ; men-
. tiic•awt friars, in the profound secrets of philosophy ;
while barbarous monks explain the nce distinctions
of nietaplryaics.
" Who goes into unr streets pithout meeting mfrs.
dias, processions, or rosaries,—without hearing the
shrill voice of ennuelts, the braying of sacristans, the
cunfund sound of sacred music. entertaining and in-
structing the devout with composition% so exalted,
and imagery so romantic, that devotion itself is forced
into a smile? In :he corners of our squares, at the
doora of our houses, the mysterious truths of use re-
lifion are coitiu•nted on by blind beggars, to the
discordant accompaniment of an unmet' guitar. Our
walls arc papered with records of ' authentic miracles,'
compared to which, the 3letamorphoses of Ovid are
natural and credible.
•• Anti letter:trier has been the Ivan n:. not of super-
stition aloae, hut of incredulity and infidelity. The
Bible, the argument and evidence of our Christian
faith, has be• n shauo.fully ali.oelonetl, or cautiously
buried beneath piles of deeretals, formularies, puerile
nieditatiuns, and fabulous hiatories.
" Monkish influence bas given to the dreams and
d:liriunis of foolish women, or crafty men, the autho-
rity of revealed truth. Our friars have pretended to
repair, with their rotten mid barbarous scaffolding.,
the eternal edifice of the Gavel. •they have twisted
and torturod the moral law into a thousand monstrous
forms, to snit their passions and their interests. Now
they describe the path to heaven as plain and easy ;
now it is difficult; to-morrow they will call it im-
passable. 'I hey have dared to obscure with their
artful commentaries the beautiful simplicity of the
word of Oaf. 'They have daeltened the plaint* truths
of revelation, and tin the hallowed charter of Christian
Liberty they have even erected the altar of Civil
Despotism!
In the fictions and falsehoods they have invented
to deceive their followers, in their pretended visions
and spurious miracles, they have even ventured to
compromise the terrible liajeaty of Heaven. They
show us our Saviour lighting one nun to put rakes
into an oven; throwing oranges at another from the
sarrttrio taetiag dith•rent dishes in the eunvent-
kitchens, and tortnentihz friars with childish and ri-
di:Arians playfulness. They represent a monk gather-
ing together tne fragments of a broken bottle, and
depositing in it the spilt wine, to console ■ child who
had let it fall at ►he door Of the wine-shop I another,
rejteatiug the miracle of Cana to satiety the brother-
hood, and the third rest.irini; a still-b trig chicken to
life, that some humor of t; e cunvent might nut be
disappointed.
"They represent to us a man preserving his spec ch
many years after death, in order to confess his silts;
another, throwing himself from a high balcony with-
out danger, that he might go to mass; a dreadful
Gre instantly extinguished by a scapulatory of Esta-
Lanka. They show us the Virgin feeding a monk
tram her own bosom; angel% habited like friars,
chanting the matins of the ronvent, because the friar,
were asleep. They paint the meekest and holiest of
men torturing and murdering the best and the wisest,
professing a different religions creed.
" We have indeed much ecq..irioa, but no Christian
charity. We hurry with our pecuniary offerings to
adva•rre any pious work, but we do not scruple to de-
fraud our fellow-men. We c •nfess every month, but
.air vices last us our lives. 11e insist (almost exclu-

sivcly) on the name of Christians, u bile our run-
duct is worse than that of intiflels. In cne conclnding
word, we fear the dark dungeon of the Inquisition,
but not the awful—the tremendous tribunal of trod"'
This is the representation of a SpaniarJ. Though
the colouring is high, it is a copy from nature, and
the shades might have been heightened, had he wit-
nessed the conduct of numbers of the monastic orders
during the late convulsions of Spain. There are, in-
deed, few examples of such infamous want of prin-
ciple as was exhibited by many of them on the King's
rAurn. Those who hail gone about preaching the
rights of man, proclaimieg the wisdron and exalting
eie blessings of the new Constitution, exhorting their
hearers, often with a veheMentelittle becoming their
situation, to live and die for its preservation, and
hurling their bitterest anathemas against those who
dared to question the wisdom of a single artiest•,--
when the King refused to sign that Constitution, be-
Caine the eulogists of every act of tyranny, the perse.
sastora of the libcrals, and the chosen friends of Fer-
dinand. They have hail their reward ; and though a
few of them have occupied the vacant sees, and have been
caressed and recompensed with no sparing hand, the
linger of hatred and of scorn points them out to the exe-
cration of betrayed and suffering millions, while their
names will go down to posterity, accompanied with
reproaches, nurses, and iufamy. If those he forgiven
who have gone on in one cun'i•tent career of servi-
tude and degradation, who Nave betrayed no cause of
liberty—•for they arc by habit and by election slaves
who haw sacrificed no manly prin'lples, for manly
principles they had none,—•still uo charity can wash
away the stains of those traitors to freedom, to hu-
manity, to Spain, who so atrociously deserted the ban-
ners of their country's welfare, to range themselves
around the standards of a profligate and unexampled
tyranny.
The most notorious of those, however, who co-ope-
rated to establish that fatal and ferocious despotism
which degraded and oppressed Spain, have already
become its victims. In their sorrow and suffering,
assts chile, let the unsha',en friends of constitutional
liberty, who are scattered over Europe, console them-
Lelves with remembering that their personal fate is no