were to become the standard among his disciples, whether they will, by their practice, illustrate the habit of these antediluvians! ------------------------------------ Study IV. ------------------ LESSON I. In the course of the present study, we propose to notice the doctrine and action of the church as connected with the subject of slavery; and to examine what were the tenets and conduct of those men who claimed to be governed by the immediate teachings of Christ and his apostles. In this investigation, we must apply to the records of the Catholic Church, although we are aware that, in the minds of some, strong and bitter prejudice may exist against these records; that some will say the canker of corruption had destroyed the very kernel of Christianity in that church. Bower, a Protestant author, in the preface to his “History of the Popes,” 7 vols. quarto, says— “We must own the popes to have been, generally speaking, men of extraordinary talents, the ablest politicians we read of in history; statesmen fit to govern the world, and equal to the vast dominion they grasped at; a dominion over the minds as well as the bodies and estates of mankind; a dominion, of all that ever were formed, the most wide and extensive, as knowing no other bounds but those of the earth.” Page 10, vol. i. 3d edition, London, 1750. Mr. Bower was a very learned man, had been educated a Catholic, was professor of rhetoric, history, and philosophy in the universities of Rome, Fermo, and Macerata, and counsellor of the Inquisition at Rome. He commenced a work to prove the pope’s infallibility and supremacy. But he proved to himself the adverse doctrine. He resigned his professorships and places, removed to London, abjured the Catholic religion, and wrote the work quoted. It is a work of great labour and merit, and well worth the attention of the curious in these matters. But it is proper here to remark, that Mr. Sale, in his preface to his translation of the Koran, has made a severe, yet an unexplained attack, on the character of this writer; but whatever may have been the provocation, we have to view him through his book. It is not always possible for a just degree of merit to be awarded those who lived in former times. We cannot always learn the circumstances influencing them, nor do we often throw our minds back into their peculiar position, by which alone can we be able to give a just value to those influences. History has handed us a few of the acts of him who lived a thousand years ago; by them we judge, as though he lived to-day, acts which prejudice may have distorted, or favour presented to the lens of time. We must look to the condition of things at the time of the act; to the probable effect under such condition, and to the real effect as developed by time.