to offer insult to God, we will not prove our degeneracy by lapsing into an alliance which they abhorred as sacrilegious. The echo of their voices-trumpet-tongued as they were, so that, at the piercing call, Europe shook as with an earthquake-still lingers on our mountains, and in our valleys; still is it syllabling to us that Popery is the predicted apostacy of the latter times; still is it discoursing of Rome as the mystic Babylon of the Apocalypse, and reiterating the summons, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not pártakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." Thus is it reminding us— though, if there were no such echo, there is speech enough in reason, speech enough in revelation-that, in separating from the Romish Church, we are not forgetful of the duty of endeavouring to keep "the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace;" but that, in refusing communion with that Church, and requiring her to renounce her abominations ere we will keep back our protest, we obey to the utmost the precept of the Apostle, "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men."

Now we have been the more ready to embrace an opportunity of bringing Protestantism before you in contrast with Popery, because we believe that the Roman Catholic religion has been rapidly gaining ground in this country. There must be great inattention to what is passing on all sides, if any of you be unaware that Popery is on the increase. It is easy to meet statements in regard to the growing number of Papal chapels and colleges, by saying that the growth is but proportioned to the growth of population, and therefore does not indicate any influx of proselytes. Of course, a reply such as this is of no worth, except as borne out by facts; and we thoroughly believe, that, the more carefully you examine, the more will you find that there is a greater growth of Popery than you had right to expect from the growth of population. When you have made due allowance for the increased numbers of Roman Catholic families, there will be a large surplus, only to be referred to a successful system of proselytism. It should suffice to convince you of this, to observe, as you easily may, that Roman Catholic chapels are rising in neighbourhoods where there is no Roman Catholic population; and that, in cases where the chapel has been reared, in hopes that a congregation would be formed, the hopes have not been altogether falsified by the event.

What are we to say to this? Men would indeed persuade you that the enlarged intelligence of the times, the diffusion of knowledge, and the increase of liberality, are an ample security against the revival, to any great extent, of a system so absurd and repulsive as Popery. But they quite forget, when they hastily pronounce that Popery has no likelihood of being revived in an enlightened age, that it is emphatically the religion of human nature; and that he, who can persuade himself of its truth, passes into a position the most coveted by the mass of our race, that in which sin may be committed, with a thorough security that its consequences may be averted. We find no guarantee against the reinstatement of Popery, in the confessed facts of a vast outstretch of mind, and of a general development of the thinking

faculties of our people. It is an axiom with us, that people must have some kind of religion: they cannot so sepulchre their immortality, that it will never struggle up, and compel them to think of provision for the future. And when a population shall have grown vain of its intelligence, and proud of its knowledge; when, by applying universally the machinery of a mere mental education, and pervading a country with literature rather than with Scripture, you shall have brought men into the condition, O too possible, of those who think it beneath them to inquire after God; then, do we believe, the scene will be clear for the machinations of such a system as the Papacy. The inflated and self-sufficient generation will feel the need of some specific for quieting conscience. But they will prefer the least spiritual, and the least humiliating. They will lean to that, which, if it insult the understanding, bribes the lusts, and buys reason into silence by the immunities which it promises. It is not their wisdom which will make them loathe Popery. Too wise to seek God prayerfully and humbly in the Bible, they will be as open to the delusion which can believe a lie as the ignorant to the imposition which palms off falsehood for truth. They will not want God, but a method of forgetting Him, which shall pass at the same time for a method of remembering Him. This is a definition of Popery, that masterpiece of Satan, constructed for two mighty divisions of humankind, the men who would be saved by their merits, and the men who would be saved in their sins. Hence, if a day of great intellectual darkness be favourable for Popery, so may be a day of great intellectual light. We may as well fall into the pit with our eyes dazzled, as with our eyes blindfolded; ignorance is no better element for a false religion than knowledge, when it has generated conceit of our own powers; and, intellect, which is a defender, when duly honoured and employed, becomes a betrayer, when idolized as omnipotent.

You are told moreover, and this is one of the most specious of the deceits through which Popery carries on its work, that the Roman Catholic religion is not what it was; that it took its complexion from the times; and that tenets, against which Protestants loudly exclaim, and principles which they indignantly execrate, were held only in days of ignorance and barbarism, and have long since fled before the advance of civilization. And very unfair and ungenerous, we are told, it is, to rake up the absurdities and cruelties of a rude and uninformed age, and to charge them on the creed of men in our own generation, who detest them as cordially as ourselves. Be it so: we are at all events dealing with an infallible Church and unless the claim to infallibility be amongst the things given up, we are at a loss to know how this Church can so greatly have changed; how, since she never goes wrong, she can renounce what she believed, and condemn what she did. And the Roman Church is not suicidal enough to give up her claim to infallibility; but she is sagacious enough to perceive that men are willing to be deceived, that an excess of false charity is blinding them to facts, and that there is abroad amongst them such an idolatry of what they call liberal, that they make it a point of honour

to believe good of all evil, and perhaps evil of all good. Of this temper of the times, is the Roman Church, marvellously wise in her generation, adroitly availing herself: and so well has she plied men with the specious statement that she is not what she was, that they are rather covering her with apologies for their inconsiderate bigotry, than thinking of measures to resist her advances. But there is no change in Popery. The system is the same, intrinsically, inherently the same. It may assume different aspects to carry different purposes, but this is itself a part of Popery: there is the variable appearance of the chameleon, and the invariable venom of the serpent. Thus in Ireland, where the theology of Dens is the recognized text-book of the Roman Catholic clergy, they will tell you when there is any end to be gained, that Popery is an improved, and modified, and humanized thing: whereas, all the while, there is not a monstrous doctrine, broached in the most barbarous of past times, which this very textbook does not uphold as necessary to be believed, and not a foul practice, devised in the midnight of the world, which it does not enjoin as necessary to be done. Make peace, if you will, with Popery, receive it into your senate, shrine it in your churches, plant it in your hearts; but be ye certain, certain as that there is a heaven above you and a God over you, that the Popery thus honoured and embraced, is the very Popery that was degraded and loathed by the holiest of your fathers, the very Popery—the same in haughtiness, the same in intolerance-which lorded it over kings, assumed the prerogatives of Deity, crushed human liberty, and slew the saints of God.

O that England may be convinced of this before taught it by fatal experience. It may not yet be too late. She has tampered with Popery in many respects she has patronized Popery, giving it, by her compromises and concessions, a vantage-ground which its best wishes could hardly have dared to expect; but, nevertheless, it may not yet be too late. Let Protestants only awaken to a sense of the worth of their privileges, privileges so long enjoyed that they are practically forgotten, and this land may remain, what for three centuries it hath been, the great witness for scriptural truth, the great centre of scriptural light. There is already a struggle. In Ireland especially, Popery so wrestles with Protestantism that there is cause for fear that falsehood will gain mastery. And we call upon you to view the struggle in its true light. It is not to be regarded as a struggle between rival Churches, each desiring the temporal ascendancy. It is not a contest for the possession of tithe, for right to the mitre, for claim on the benefice. It is a contest between the Christianity of the New Testament, and the Christianity of human tradition, and corrupt fable-a contest, therefore, whose issue is to decide whether the pure Gospel shall have footing in Ireland.

There is, there will be, a struggle; and our counsel to you individually is, that you examine well the tenets of Protestantism, and possess yourselves of the grounds on which it is impossible that we can live peaceably with Rome. If you belong to a Reformed Church, acquaint yourselves with the particulars in which the Reformation

consisted, that you may be able to give reasons for opposition to Popery. And when convinced that they are not unimportant points on which Protestants differ from Papists, let each, in his station, oppose the march of Popery, oppose it by argument, by counsel, by exhortation, by prayer. "Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, be strong." By the memory of martyrs, by the ashes of confessors, by the dust of a thousand saints, we conjure you to be staunch in defence of your religion. The spirits of departed worthies, who witnessed a good confession, and counted not their lives dear, so that truth might be upheld, bend down, one might think, from their lofty dwelling-place, and mark our earnestness in defending the faith "once delivered to the saints." O, if they could hear our voice, should it not tell them, that there are yet many in the land, emulous of their zeal, and eager to tread in their steps: ready, if there come a season big with calamity, to gird themselves for the defence of Protestantism in her last asylum, and to maintain in the strength of the living God, that system which they wrought out with toil, and cemented with blood? Yes, illustrious immortals! ye died not in vain. Mighty groupe! there was lit up at your massacre a fire in these realms which is yet unextinguished; from father to son has the sacred flame been transmitted: and though, in the days of our security, that flame may have burnt with diminished lustre, yet let the watchmen sound an alarm, and many a mountain top shall be red with the beacon's blaze, and the noble vault of your resting-place grow illumined with the flash. Repose ye in your deep tranquillity, spirits of the martyred dead! We know something of the worth of a pure Gospel, and a free Bible: and we will bind ourselves by the name of Him "who liveth and abideth for ever," to strive to preserve unimpaired the privileges bequeathed at such cost. The spirit of Protestantism may have long lain dormant, but it is not extinct: it shall be found, in the hour of her Church's peril, that there are yet bold and truehearted men in England, who count religion dearer than substance; and who, having received from their fathers a charter of faith, stained with the blood of the holiest and the best, would rather dye it afresh in the tide of their own veins, than send it down, torn and mutilated, to their children.

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M DCCC XXXIX.

No. XVIII.

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M DCCC XXXIX.

No. XIX.

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