worship of Jehovah; yet neither Hezekiah nor his grandson yielded to despair. The first not only cleansed the temple and resumed the sacrifices, but even ventured (whilst their king yet survived) to call back the ten tribes to the forsaken worship of their forefathers; and when he saw that the king of Assyria resolved to make him and his people captives, after the manner of the ten tribes, though his was the only petty state that survived, he had such unexampled confidence in Jehovah, that he set Assyria at defiance, expecting deliverance from God, according to the promise. His faith was amply rewarded. Josiah trod in the same steps, by first cleansing the temple, and then sending messengers to the remnant of the tribes, inviting them back to Jehovah. Here were zeal, confidence in God, and defiance of difficulty without example in all history. Never had Judaism been at a lower ebb. There has been nothing like it under Christianity, for in the dark ages at the breaking out of the Reformation there were true, devoted, and spiritual worshippers of God dotted over Europe and Asia, and the reception it received in almost every kingdom proved this beyond a doubt.

What confidence, then, beyond all past experience, ought we now to cherish, when Protestants are thickly scattered over all Europe and the United States, and when even the most Popish countries are breaking away from Rome, and conceding to their subjects the right to judge for themselves, and demand from their

teachers a scriptural reason for every doctrine and practice enjoined. This restraint in every Popish country once removed, will inflict on Romanism a wound that will never be healed. None are more sensible of this than intelligent Papists. The foundation of their superstructure is implicit faith and authority not to be questioned. They refuse to submit to the grammatical sense of the received text of Holy Scripture, and impose an interpretation pretendedly derived from tradition, and partly from the writings of the early Church, or imposed by the Pope's own exclusive authority.

The first fathers have, certainly, given us their thoughts on religion, but they are so meagre that they serve equally as a foil, whether compared with Holy Scripture or with the writings of the fathers who immediately followed them. But even these, though beyond comparison superior to their predecessors of the first century, so far contradict themselves, that the Protestant and Romanist alike partly furnish their quiver from their heterogeneous stores. Since then the fathers are a common ground to both alike, the Protestant renounces their authority and falls back upon what these very fathers acknowledge to be their final appeal, viz., the Scriptures of unerring truth.

Here, then, is the last battle field, where the Protestant will have to contend with every shade of rationalism and with all the pretensions and im

moralities of Rome. The Bible, and the Bible alone, in the hand of the Spirit, is the religion of Protestants. Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required by any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or thought requisite or necessary to salvation.1 This is the Protestant's true position. Holy Scripture in every period of its development was the sole directory to the people of God, and to which alone the Holy Spirit in the Church appeals. The children of Israel were not allowed to extract from, or supplement the Mosaic law.2 In like manner under the prophets, it was written, "To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.3 If then Holy Scripture was sufficient during its development, what excuse can now be framed for adding to what is declared to be the final communication of the Divine will? 4

Sixth Article. 'Deut. iv, 2; xii, 32. Isa. viii, 20. 'Dan. ix, 24.

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APPENDIX.

(From Mommsen's History of Rome.)

"In a certain sense we might no doubt name, along with the Romans and Greeks, a third nationality which vied with them in ubiquity of that day, and was destined to play no insignificant part in the new state of Cæsar. We speak of the Jews. This remarkable people, yielding yet tenacious, was in the ancient as well as in the modern world, everywhere and nowhere at home, and everywhere and nowhere powerful. The successors of David and Solomon were hardly of more significance for the Jews of that age, than Jerusalem for those of the present day; the nation found, doubtless, for its religious and intellectual unity a visible rallying point in the petty kingdom of Jerusalem; but the nation itself consisted, not merely of the subjects of its Hasmoneans, but of the innumerable bodies of the Jews scattered through the whole Parthian and the whole Roman Empire.

Within the cities of Alexandria and of Cyrene the Jews formed special communities, administratively and

even locally distinct, not unlike "the Jews quarters " of our towns, but with a freer position, and superintended by a "master of the people," as superior judge and administrator. How numerous, even in Rome, the Jewish population was already before Cæsar's time, and how closely at the same time the Jews even then kept together as fellow-countrymen, is shown by the remarks of an author of this period, that it was dangerous for a governor to offend the Jews in his province, because he might then certainly reckon on being hissed after his return by the population of the capital. Even at this time the predominant business of the Jews was trade; the Jewish trader moved everywhere with conquering merchant, then, in the same way, as he afterwards accompanied the Genoese and the Venetian, and capital flowed in on all hands to the Jewish, by the side of the Roman merchants. At this period too, we encounter the peculiar antipathy of the Occidentals towards this so thoroughly Oriental race and their foreign opinions and customs. This Judaism, although not the most pleasing feature in the nowhere pleasing picture of the mixture of nations which then prevailed, was nevertheless an historical fact developing itself in the natural course of things, which the statesmen could neither ignore nor combat, and which Cæsar on the contrary, just like his predecessor Alexander, with correct discernment of the circumstances, fostered as far as possible. While Alexander by laying the foundation of Alexandrian Judaism, did

I