This then is Romanism; it is not transubstantiation, nor the mediation of the Virgin and the Saints, {131b} nor the infallibility of popes and councils; these are natural consequences indeed, but the distinctive character of the Romish church is _tangibility_. “There is the actual flesh,” it says, “there is the representation of the actual human presence of saints and martyrs; there is the actual man enthroned, who represents the power of God:” but it might have fifty other ways of satisfying this restless craving of the human mind, and it would be equally pernicious in any of these forms. Man’s great struggle has always been between the animal and the spiritual nature, and when religion goes one step farther towards tangibility than the Deity himself has allowed, the animal nature gains strength; and vice and licentiousness follow as naturally, among the mass of the people, as rain follows the cloud. Observe, I do not here deny that many may profess a religion of sense, and remain spiritually-minded themselves: Heathenism had its Socrates, its Xenocrates, &c.—Romanism has its Pascal, its Fenelon, and a train of other great names: but look at the _people_ during that period, and the account will be very different. When an ignorant man imagines that he can remove the Divine anger by a sacrifice or a penance, he avoids the trouble of curbing his passions, and compounds, as he thinks, for indulgence of the one, by the performance of the other; but when he is told that purity of life and thought is the only road to Divine favour, if he sins, he sins at least with some feelings of compunction, some dread that he may not have it in his power to remove the stain he is incurring. The preaching of Wesley reformed multitudes, all enthusiastic as it was; but it would be difficult to find a parallel in the annals of Romanism. As great a movement of the public mind was made by the preaching of Peter the Hermit; but how different was the object and the result! The personal pilgrimage to the Holy Sepulchre, as a mode of wiping out sin, was undertaken by thousands, who perished miserably, or, if they lived, came back not better men than they went: under a system of less tangibility, and a preaching as effective, they might have staid in their homes, and glorified God by a life such as Christ came to teach and to exemplify.