of the Clergy-against these, and many other idle, superstitious, or erroneous doctrines, and against the Supremacy and Infallibility of the Pope, the Reformed Churches Protest, and are therefore called Protestant Churches. The Popes formerly claimed the supreme dominion in things spiritual and temporal over all the Sovereigns of the earth, by virtue of being themselves the immediate vicars or vicegerents of God.-It is but justice to the Roman Catholics to add, that these high pretensions, generally known under the name of the dispensing and deposing powers, (or the power of the Pope to dispense with the oath of allegiance from the subject to the Sovereign, and to depose the Sovereign in case of heresy,) have been formally disavowed by the six principal Catholic Universities, consulted for that purpose in the year 1788. The following countries are Roman Catholic: France, Spain, Portugal, Italy, Austria, nearly the whole of the Southern German States, Belgium and part of Switzerland. The King is the head of the Church of England. The established Religion of Ireland is that of the Church of England; but the mass of the population is Roman Catholic. The Greek Church is derived from the Greek Christians, who formed the Eastern division of the Roman Empire, the capital of which was Constantinople. Hence it is also called the Eastern, in contradistinction to the Romish or Western Church, from which it differs in many unimportant points of discipline, but few very material points of doctrine. The Patriarch of Constan tinople is head of the Greek Church, which comprehends the Russians and Greeks, whether on the Continent or in the Grecian Islands. Mahometanism is a form of religion engrafted on the Jewish and Christian dispensations by the impostor Mahomet, who was born A. D. 571, at Mecca, in Arabia, and died A. D. 632. The Mahometans acknowledge the divine missions of Moses and of Christ; but maintain that these were ineffectual to convert mankind, and that none but faithful Mussulmen, or Mahometans, will be entitled to future happiness, which they believe will consist in a paradise of sensual delights. They are also believers in predestination. The doctrines of Mahomet are to be found in the Coran, which may be called the Mahometan bible. E CHAPTER III. ENGLAND. THE Island of Great Britain extends from 50° to 58° 30′ of North latitude. Its length is about 580 British miles, and its greatest breadth, from the Land's End to the North Foreland in Kent, is about 370. England is bounded on the East by the German Ocean, on the South by the English Channel, on the West by St. George's Channel, and is separated from Scotland, on the North, by the Cheviot Hills, the River Tweed, and an imaginary line falling South West down to the Firth of Solway. England was divided into Shires by Alfred; these are also denominated counties, from having been governed by an Ealderman, a dignity corresponding with the Latin Comes, or Count, afterwards with the Danish title of Earl. England and Wales are divided into fifty-two coun Bordering Shropshire Herefordshire 1200 94,073 Hereford. 1320 194,700 Shrewsbury. on Wales. Huntingdonshire 414 42,208 Huntingdon. Cambridgeshire 670 101,109 Cambridge. Besides the chief city of London (which, with the exception perhaps of Pekin, is the largest metropolis in the world, and in point of splendour, wealth, and the congregated intellect of its inhabitants, far beyond that celebrated Chinese capital), and the other county capitals which we have already enumerated, the following places and cities are worthy of remark : Bath or Brighton County. Somersetshire. Warwickshire. Sussex. |