materials of all its Public Buildings, though they conveniently accommodate the business, the pleasures, and the devotions of seventy thousand People, would be insufficient to create such another Edifice as the Cathedral of St. Peter's-The most glorious Structure that has ever been dedicated to the purposes of Religion.

THE most rigid Dissenter from the most rigid Protestants, that have separated themselves from the corruptions of the Romish Apostacy, might feel some flushes of enthusiasm at the sight of a Christian Temple, more glorious than that of Solomon-so long the admiration of the Chosen People-however con

vinced that the heart of man is the Temple of the Lord; and that a contrite Spirit-the offering of the Gospel, is a more. acceptable Sacrifice than thousands of Rams, or tens of thousands of Rivers of

Oil.

The most frugal Moralist among those Reformed Societies that have brought their practice the nearest to the simplicity of their profession, might hear, without regret, of the uncounted Millions bestowed by Leo the Tenth upon this splendid Edifice, since it was the unlimited sale of indulgences, occasioned by this lavish expenditure, that gave rise to the declamations of Luther and Calvin, against the impositions of the Papal Antichrist.

Every Professor of Christianity—traditional, or conscientious-whether his creed adopts the sign for the Substance, or the Substance for the sign, must turn with complacency-perhaps with veneration, from Temples dedicated to voluptuous Deities, and exterminating Heroes, to a Church of which the foundations were laid in the Fourth Century-by the Survivors of the Tenth Persecution -for the worship of a meek, and selfdenying Saviour!

LETTER XI.

The Appendages of St. Peter's.

BOVE the principal Gate of the

Portico, and beneath the elevated Balcony, from which are pronounced, over kneeling Multitudes, the benedictions, and the anathemas, of the Tiara; and upon the bronze enclosure of the Chair of St. Peter, at the west end of the Nave, are exquisitely embossed, in brass and marble, the story of the Great Shepherd, charging Peter to feed his Sheep, and that of his presenting him with the keys of the Kingdom; when the well known allusion was made to the

name

name of the Apostle, as also signifying

a stone.

Pretended Infallibility might blush for its literal construction of the equivocal epithet, on recurring to the Patriarchal prediction of the Stone of Israel * the Prophetic anticipation of the Royal Psalmist, that the Stone, which the Builders would reject, should become the Head of the Corner; or the promise of the God of Abraham, by the mouth of the Evangelical Prophet, "Behold I lay in Zion, for a Foundation, a Stone-a tried Stone-a precious Corner Stone."

If however by this sublime annunciation, concurring Prophets can be supposed to have proclaimed the Apostle,

let

• Genesis xlix. 24.