Let such considerations as these then are in sample serve to show how evidently one might prove from anterior circumstances, (and the canon of Scripture is an anterior circumstance,) the probability of the rise and progress of the Roman heresies.  And if any one should ask, how was such a system more likely to arise under a Gentile rather than a Jewish theocracy? why was a St. Paul, or a St. Peter, or a St. Dunstan, or a St. Gengulphus, more previously expectable than a St. Abraham, a St. David, a St. Elisha, or a St. Gehazi?  I answer, from the idea of idolatry, so adapted to the Gentile mind, and so abhorrent from the Jewish.  Martyred Abel, however well respected, has never reached the honours of a niche beside the altar.  Jephtha’s daughter, for all her mourned virginity, was never paraded, (that I wot of,) for any other than a much-to-be-lamented damsel.  Who ever asked, in those old times, the mediation of St. Enoch?  Where were the offerings, in jewels or in gold, to propitiate that undoubted man of God and denizen of heaven, St. Moses? what prows, in wax, of vessels saved from shipwreck, hung about the dripping fane of Jonah? and where was, in the olden time, that wretched and insensate being, calling himself rational and godly, who had ventured to solicit the good services of Isaiah as his intercessor, or to plead the merits of St. Ezekiel as the make-weight for his sins?

It was just this, and reasonably to have been expected; for when the Jew brought in his religion, he demolished every false god, broke their images, slew their priests, and burnt their groves with fire.  But, when a worldly Christianity came to be in vogue, when emperors adorned their banners with the cross, and the poor fishermen of Galilee, (in their portly representatives,) came to be encrusted with gems, and rustling with seric silk; then was made that fatal compromise; then it was likely to have been made, which has lasted even until now:  a compromise which, newly baptizing the damned idols of the heathen, keeps yet St. Bacchus and St. Venus, St. Mars and St. Apollo, perched in sobered robes upon the so-called Christian altar; which yet pays divine honours to an ancyle or a rusty nail; to the black stones at Delphi, or the gold-shrined bones at Aix; which yet sanctifies the chickens of the capitol, or the cock that startled Peter; which yet lets a wealthy sinner, by his gold, bribe the winking Pythoness, or buy dispensing clauses from “the Lord our God, the Pope.”

There is yet a swarm of other notions pressing on the mind, which tend to prove that Popery might have been anticipated.  Take this view.  The religion of Christ is holy, self-denying; not of this world’s praise, and ending with the terrible sanction of eternity for good or evil:  it sets up God alone supreme, and cuts down creature-merit to a point perpetually diminishing; for the longer he does well, the more he owes to the grace which enabled him to do it.