The Liverpool Standard, and General Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-08-29 00:00:00

O, lie down in a P

Lon of prescribed

crustean bed, and be trimmed to the fas
rule, we find such bad lags prevailing. Are we not thus
taught that the laws of Romish countries are not fitted
for restraining the evil passions of men ? It would
be unfair to charge the Church of Rome with wilfully
and directly preaching advocacy of crime. (Hear, hear.)
She, like every other Church, whether Christian or
heathen, professes to discourage crime ; but by wishing t
make a disburthening of the guilts

conscience an equiva-
-1 an element readily

lent for innocence, she introduces
converted into the most drngerous agency

In our Pro--

testant Church we inculcate the doctrine that as the tree
falls so it must lie—we know and teach that there is no
alteration beyond the grave. We thus associate something
terrible with the idea of sending an immortal spirit into
the presence of its judge. The murderer is haunted by
the belief that he must meet the judgment in his own
immortal spirit, and he is tortured by remorse at the idea
of being confronted by the spirit of his victim. The
believer in the doctrines of the Church of Rome sees all
these matters in a different light. The murdered man,
in his view, is not sent before his judge : but is sent to
purgatory, where the spirit of the victim undergoes a
change. By a series of masses which his friends can
readily purchase, the Romanist is taught to believe that
his victim is released. The full horror of the dreadful
effect of murder is thus lessened. In Rome, at
least one church exists in which it is believed by the
populace, that all souls for whom masses are said in that
church are relieved from purgatory ; and to this church
great numbers of the people resort daily. The priest—he
had seen it himself—keeps a regular book of entry in
which the names of all the souls relieved, or to be relieved,
are written. He had seen the monk get the money and
give receipts
_for it (cheers and laughter).. In Milan he

aw a similarly privileged church, and being desirous of
having one of those receipts, furbishing up his best Italian,
he addressed the priest, saying, he wished to have the soul
of a friend relieved from purgatory, and asked if he could
get it done, and if so, at what price. He replied at once
that it could be done, and said the cost would be two
francs, Milanese currency (a laugh). He then said, to pre-
vent any mistake with an English name, he wished that he
(Mr. Seymour) would write it and hand him the book
3 ! (L

—.Lighter.) POssessed of the book, he continued, I was re-
solved to write in it the name of a soul which I knew was
not in purgatory, and wrote at full length Hobart Seymour,
paid him the money; and, not content to do the work by
halves, I took a receipt for it, and here, sir, I place it
before you. [The rev, speaker here laid the document on
the table amidst roars and shouts of laughter. It was a
dirty-looking bit of paper, partly written and partly
j He continued, he might be told that, although
n mummery might be practised in Italy, it would not
)in more civilised countries. In answer, he might ask