The lawfulness of the practice of penance and the enjoyment of indulgences is, we perceive, defended by Catholics as being established on the same ground as the Jewish sacrifices. They expressly state that the _eternal_ pain due to guilt cannot be removed by indulgences, or averted by penance, but only the temporal pain over which the death of Christ has no power of remission. This bears a strong analogy to the case of the Mosaic sacrifices, which were ceremonial atonements for breaches of the ceremonial law, and were not of themselves, as is universally allowed, intended to avert the penalties of spiritual guilt. But this analogy yields no countenance to the Catholic practices we are considering, unless it can be proved that two distinct species of punishment were divinely ordained, and two distinct methods of atonement prescribed. And even if this were proved, the case would not be complete: for though we should suppose two kinds of punishment, and two methods of reconciliation appointed, it is further necessary that the offender should be liable to two distinct species of offence; a position in which none but an ancient Jew was ever placed. The Divine sanctions were altogether so different under the Jewish from what they are declared to be under the Christian dispensation, that no analogy which can be instituted between them will hold with any completeness. A future state of retribution formed no part of the revelation made to the Jews. To them, the ultimate punishment which they could anticipate was national adversity, which was the infallible consequence of moral guilt (unless averted by repentance), as ritual penalties were the necessary atonement for breaches of the external law. Of Christians, a higher obedience is required,--a more spiritual devotion to the will of God; and this higher obedience is enforced by more elevated sanctions. Christians are free from the Divine imposition of external observances, and therefore from all divinely appointed external penalties. They are to worship in spirit and in truth; to yield the obedience of the heart; and all their outward manifestations of devotion are of human appointment;--salutary, no doubt, and even necessary to the maintenance of piety, but still optional, possessing only a derived value, and in their very nature incapable of being made atonement for sin. Spiritual atonement, _i. e._ repentance, is the only atonement which the Gospel prescribes or supposes possible for spiritual guilt. Reparation indeed is to be made by the guilty to the injured person, when the case admits of it; but this reparation does not constitute the atonement, nor does it partake of the nature of penance. It is only an external atonement for an external injury, and is an evidence that the spiritual atonement,--repentance, has been already made. It bears a relation to that class of offences only which immediately respects our fellow-men, and is impracticable in cases where