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

:426 INFLUENCE OP POPERY ON THE INDIVIDUAL MAN.with all its enjoyments ? We have only to transfer theirmodes of thinking and their habits of action on the subjectof religion, to matters of this world, and we have the woefulpicture of sloth, and decay, and want of forethought, whichRoman Catholic countries almost uniformly indicate. Theinternal powers of the individual Catholic lying undevelopedand running to waste, form but the type of his country lyingneglected, with all its rich resources locked up in its bosom,because the poor popery-stricken man has neither skill norenergy to develop them. The one is more than the type ofthe other :they stand related as cause and effect.Such are the characters whom Popery is fitted to create,?uch are the characters it does create. Every noble facultyit chills into torpor and death. The understanding of theman lies crushed beneath the dogmas of his Church : hisindependence is overborne by an infallible priesthood : hisvery senses are blunted ; for Popery judges it unsafe toleave her miserable victims in possession even of these, andtherefore she systematically outrages them in some of themore awful of her mysteries. And conscience, which, didthe moral sense survive, might rise in its strength, and,rending asunder these fetters of brass, set free the intellectualpowers, Popery drugs, by her horrid opiates, into a deathslumber.A more pitiable and hopeless condition it is impossibleto imagine. The man is divested of almost all thatis distinctive of man. He becomes a mere machine in thehands of Popery. He trembles to assert his manhood.And these unreflective and slavish habits are inwroughtinto the very being of the man by daily iterations, and theyattend him in every avocation of life, proving a certain sourceof failure and mortification.Of the 'practice of Popery, as tending to degrade, we shallhave a more legitimate opportunity of speaking when wecome to exhibit the influence of Romanism upon society.And as regards the influence of the system upon the religiouscharacter of the man, we have so fully entered intothis already, when discussing the several dogmas of Popery,that we do not here return to it.