The-papacy-its-history-dogmas-genius-and-prospects-wylie

OF THE WORSHIPPING OF SAIiNTS. 361CHAPTER XYIII.OF THE WORSHIPPING OF SAINTS.The next branch of the idolatry of the Roman CatholicChurch is her worship of dead men. These she denominatessaints. Of this numerous and miscellaneous class some unquestionablywere saints,as the apostles and others of theearly Christians. Others may be accounted, in the judgmentof charity, to have been saints ; but there are otherswhich figure in the calendar of Roman apotheosis, whom noTheystretch of charity will allow us to believe were saints.were unmistakeable fanatics ;indeed from being of a harmless kind.and their fanaticism was farIt drew in its wake,as fanaticism not unfrequently does, gross immorality andsavage and unnatural cruelty.In the list of Romish divinitieswe find the names of persons whose very existence isapocryphal.There are others whose incorrigible stupidity,laziness, and filth, rendered them unfit to herd even withbrutes ;and there are others who, little to the world's comfort,were neither stupidnor inactive, but who made themselvesbusy, much as a fiend would, in inventing instrumentsof torture, and founding institutions for destroying mankindand devastating the earth,—St Dominic, for instance, thefounder of the Inquisition.Prayers offered to such persons,and directed to heaven, run some risk of missing those ofwhom they are in quest. But the question here is, granting