CHAPTER CLXII.

AMOUNT OF EVERY INDIVIDUAL'S PERSONAL SINS ACCORDING TO THE ESTIMATE OF MR. TOPLADY. THE DOCTOR'S OPINION THEREON. A BILL FOR CERTAIN CHURCH REPAIRS. A ROMISH LEGEND WHICH IS LIKELY TO BE TRUE, AND PART OF A JESUIT'S SERMON.

Mankind, tho' satirists with jobations weary us,
    Has only two weak parts if fairly reckon'd;
The first of which, is trifling with things serious;
    And seriousness in trifles is the second.
Remove these little rubs, whoe'er knows how,
And fools will be as scarce,—as wise men now.
                                                                    BISHOP.

It is not often that a sportive or fanciful calculation like that of Mr. Campbell, can be usefully applied, or in the dialect of the Evangelical Magazine, improved.

I remember well the look and the voice and the manner with which my ever-to-be-honored friend pointed out to me a memorable passage of this kind in the works of the Reverend Augustus Toplady, of whom he used to say that he was a strong-headed, wrong-headed man; and that in such men you always found the stronger the head, the wronger the opinions; and the more wrongly their opinions were taken up, the more strongly they were persisted in.

Toplady after some whimsical calculations concerning the national debt, proceeds to a “spiritual improvement” of the subject. He asserts that because “we never come up to that holiness which God requires, we commit a sin every second of our existence,” and in this view of the matter, he says, our dreadful account stands as follows. At ten years old each of us is chargeable with 315,036,000 sins; and summing up the account at every intermediate stage of ten years, he makes the man of fourscore debtor for 2,510,288,000.

In Toplady's creed there were no venial sins, any more than in Sir George Mackenzie's, who used this impious argument for the immortality of the soul, that it must needs be immortal because the smallest sin, “the least peccadillo against the Almighty who is Infinite cannot be proportionably punished in the swift glass of man's short life.”

And this man, said the Doctor, laying his finger upon Toplady's book, thinks himself a Christian, and reads the Bible and believes it! He prints and vouches for the authenticity of a painter's bill at Cirencester delivered in to the Churchwarden of an adjacent parish in these words:—Mr. Charles Ferebee, Churchwarden of Siddington to Joseph Cook, Debtor: To mending the Commandments, altering the Belief, and making a new Lord's Prayer £1. 1s.

The Painter made no such alteration in the Christian creed, as he himself did, (when he added to it) that the Almighty has predestined the infinitely greater number of his creatures to eternal misery!

God, says good old Adam Littleton, made no man purposely to damn him. Death was one of man's own inventions, and will be the reward of his evil actions.

The Roman Catholics have a legend from which we may see what proportion of the human race they suppose to be redeemed from perdition: it relates that on the day of St. Bernard's death there died threescore thousand persons, of whom only four souls were saved, the Saint's being one;—the salvage therefore is one in fifteen thousand!

But one legend may be set against another, and Felix Faber the Monk of Ulm gives us one of better import, when he relates the story of a lovely child who in her twelfth year was stricken with the plague, during the great pestilence which in the middle of the fourteenth century swept off a greater portion of the human race than is ever known to have perished in any similar visitation. As the disease increased upon her, she became more beautiful and more cheerful, looking continually upward and rejoicing; for she said she saw that Heaven was open and innumerable lights flowing upward thither, as in a stream,—which were the souls of the elect, ascending as they were released. When they who stood beside her bed were silent and seemed as if they gave no credit to her words, she told them that what she saw was no delusion, and added in token of its sure truth, that her own death would take place that night, and her father die on the third day following: she then pointed to seven persons foretelling to each the day of their decease, and named some others who were not present, who would in like manner be cut off by the plague, saying at what time each of them would expire; and in every instance, according to the legend, the prediction was punctually fulfilled. This is a tale which may in all its parts be true; for such predictions at such a time, when whole cities were almost depopulated by the pestilence, were likely not only to be verified, but in a great degree to bring about their own verification; and the state of her mind would lead to her interpretation of those ocular spectra which were probably effects of the disease, without supposing it to be a happy delirium, heightening her expectation of that bliss which faith had assured to her, and into which her innocent spirit was about to enter.

Had the story been fabricated it would not have been of so humane a character. The Roman Catholics, as is well known, believe that all who are not of what they please to call the Holy, Roman, Catholic and Apostolic Church, are doomed to everlasting perdition; this doctrine is part of the creed which their laity profess, and to which their clergy swear. If any member of that Church reject an opinion so uncharitable in itself, and in its consequences so infinitely mischievous, he may be a Roman Catholic by his connections, by courtesy, by policy, or by fear; but he is not so in reality, for he refuses to believe in the infallibility of his Church which has on no point declared itself more peremptorily than upon this. All other Christians of every persuasion, all Jews, all Mahometans and all Heathens are goats; only the Romanists are the Sheep of God's pasture,—and the Inquisitors, we may suppose, his Lambs! Of this their own flock they hold that one half are lost sheep; though a liberal opinion, it is esteemed the most probable one upon that subject, and the best founded, because it is written that one shall be taken and one left, and that of the ten virgins who went with their lamps to meet the bridegroom, five were wise, and five foolish.

An eloquent Jesuit preaching before the Court in his own country stated this opinion, and made an application from it to his hearers with characteristic integrity and force. “According to this doctrine,” said he, “which is held by many Saints, (and is not the most straitened, but a large and favorable one,) if I were this day preaching before another auditory, I should say that half of those who heard me belonged to the right hand, and half unto the left. Truly a most wonderful and tremendous consideration, that of Christians and Catholics, enlightened with the faith, bred up with the milk of the Church, and assisted by so many sacraments and aids, half only should be saved! That of ten men who believe in Christ, and for whom Christ died, five should perish! That of an hundred fifty should be condemned! That of a thousand five hundred go to burn eternally in Hell! who is there that does not tremble at the thought? But if we look at the little Christianity and the little fear of God with which men live, we ought rather to give thanks to the Divine Mercy, than to be astonished at this justice.

“This is what I should say if I were preaching before a different audience. But because to-day is a day of undeceiving, (it was the first Sunday in Advent,) and the present Auditory is what it is, let not those who hear me think or persuade themselves, that this is a general rule for all, even although they may be or call themselves Catholics. As in this life there is a wide difference between the great and powerful and those who are not so, so will it be in the Day of Judgement. They are on the right hand to-day, but as the world will then have had so great a turn, it is much to be feared that many of them will then be on the left. Of others half are to be saved, and of the great and powerful, how many? Will there be a third part saved? Will there be a tenth? I shall only say (and would not venture to say it, unless it were the expressed oracle and infallible sentence of supreme Truth,) I shall only say that they will be very few, and those by great wonder. Let the great and mighty listen, not to any other than the Lord himself in the Book of Wisdom. Præbite aurem vos qui continetis multitudinem, quoniam data est a Domino potestas vobis. ‘Give ear ye that rule the people, for power is given you of the Lord.’ Ye princes, ye ministers who have the people under your command, ye to whom the Lord hath given this power to rule and govern the commonwealth, præbite aurem, give ear to me! And what have they to hear from God who give ear so ill to men? A proclamation of the Day of Judgement far more portentous and terrible than that which has to summon the dead! Judicium durissimum his qui præsunt fiet; exiguo enim conceditur misericordia; potentes autem potenter tormenta patientur: A sharp judgement shall be to them that be in high places. For mercy will pardon the mean; but mighty men shall be mightily tormented. The Judgement with which God will judge those who rule and govern is to be a sharp Judgement, because mercy will be granted to the mean; but the mighty shall be mightily tormented, potentes potenter tormenta patientur. See here in what that power is to end which is so greatly desired, which is so panted after, which is so highly esteemed, which is so much envied! The mighty fear no other power now, because the power is in their own hands, but when the sharp judgement comes they will then see whose Power is greater than theirs; potentes potenter patientur.”

This was a discourse which might have made Felix tremble.