taught, that, by donatives to the church, they delivered the souls of
their departed sinful relations from their state of punishment; and they
went out of that door resolved, such as had possessions, to bequeath some
portion of them, to operate in the same manner for themselves another day,
in the highly probable case of similar need. Here they were convened to
listen in reverence to some representative emissary from the Man of Sin,
with new dictates of blasphemy or iniquity promulgated in the name of the
Almighty: or to witness the trickery of some farce, devised to cheat or
frighten them out of whatever remainder the former impositions might have
left them of sense, conscience, or property. Here, in fine, there was
never presented to their understanding, from their childhood to their
death, a comprehensive, honest declaration of the laws of duty, and the
pure doctrines of salvation. To think! that they should have mistaken for
the house of God, and the very gate of heaven, a place where the Regent of
the nether world had so short a way to come from his dominions, and his
agents and purchased slaves so short a way to go thither. If we could
imagine a momentary visit from Him who once entered a fabric of sacred
denomination with a scourge, because it was made the resort of a common
traffic, with what aspect and voice, with what infliction but the "rebuke
with flames of fire," would he have entered this mart of iniquity,
assuming the name of his sanctuary, where the traffic was in delusions,
crimes, and the souls of men? It was even as if, to use the prophet's
language, the very "stone cried out of the wall, and the beam out of the
timber answered it," in denunciation; for a portion of the means of
building, in the case of some of these edifices, was obtained as the price
of dispensations and pardons. [Footnote: That most superb Salisbury
Cathedral, for example.]

In such a hideous light would the earlier history of one of these mighty
structures, pretendedly consecrated to Christianity, be presented to the