stand indebted for the spiritual blessings we still enjoy, not to repel unjust insinuations against their characters-not to speak with severe animadversion on the idle stories raked up from the sink of old Romish calumnies, circulated among the vulgar and illiterate, who are ever fond of novelty, and with whom it is no difficult matter "to make the worse appear the better cause." Whatever may tend to put a stigma on our Church, and depreciate her in the estimation of the people, is studiously sought after, and circulated with the greatest avidity. The wily Romanist well knows the power and effect of satiric raillery. Erroneous tenets, or absurd notions, held by the early Reformers, are artfully and designedly palmed upon us as grounds of accusation and censure. If, indeed, the Reformers were subject to errors, and some of them of an intolerant spirit, they brought these blemishes with them from the Romish church;-they had great obstacles to surmount, and much difficulty to extricate themselves from a superstition which, accumulating from age to age, had, at length, condensed itself into an impervious atmosphere of clouds and darkness.

Church of England?

But what is all this to the

What have we to do with the early reveries of the pious Luther, or the horribile decretum of the learned and venerable Calvin? Our Church steers her vessel, in a safe

and prudent course, amid the dangerous shoals and rocks of theology; guarding her children against perilous interpretations of Scripture, and imaginary schemes of salvation.

Scurrilous titles and appellations have been not less sparingly affixed to the name of our Church, than false charges exhibited against her doctrines. She is contemptuously called, "The Church of Henry the Eighth,"-" The Law Church." These terms are bandied about by the emissaries of Rome, whose design is sufficiently obvious-To lower, in the minds of our people, the value and importance of the Reformation, and to conceal from their view the real ground of its separation from the church of Rome.

To Henry the Eighth, the staunch defender of the Popish faith, we stand indebted for no favour. A domestic feud-a contest for supremacy between a worthy son and an equally worthy mother-proved, indeed, under the overruling providence of God, an eventual benefit to the Protestant Church. "But the tyrant meant not so, neither did his heart think so; but it was in his heart to cut off Protestants not a few." From this parent stock of blood, of lust, and Popery, sprung a righteous branch, the English Josiah, our Sixth Edward, a nursing father of the reformed religion-the brightest ornament of the age in which he lived. With his untimely death,

the life of Protestantism seemed to expire: many of her sons became exiles and wanderers; and alas, such is the depravity of man! many more, whose hearts were not whole with God, conformed their creed to the creed of the court, and changed their religious complexion, as the camelion does its colour from the food on which it feeds.

The great Head of the Church, at this most remarkable epoch in our history, chose this country as the magnificent theatre of his wondrous love, and the Church, Reverend Brethren, whose ministers we are, as the highly favoured instrument of salvation to many generations. By the power of His Spirit, and the brightness of His coming, Papal darkness fled, as chilling damps and noxious mists before the morning sun. Faithful witnesses stood forth, firm and undaunted, and offered up to God the sacrifice of their bodies on the altar of their faith. From the sacred ashes of this noble army of martyrs, arose, in divine grandeur and glory, our Reformed Church, and proved again the truth of the old adage, “The blood of the martyrs is the seed of the Church." No sanction, no favour, did pure reformed religion receive from the laws then in existence: the very reverse; for the courts of justice, in the reign of Mary, the Papist and the

* See Appendix, C.

Bloody, most gladly carried into prompt execution the sanguinary edicts of the Popish hierarchy, and endeavoured to extirpate the Protestant faith by the excision of the Protestant name. 1

From past, we now turn to passing events. From the period above-mentioned, to the present. the old serpent has been casting out of his month a flood, to sweep our Church from off the face of the earth; but God has hitherto raised up an ensign against him, and we still remain monuments of his stupendous mercy and all-protecting power. The different eventful periods in which the outstretched arm of God has been conspicuously manifested, must be fresh in all our memories. A new era is now opening upon our astonished view, perhaps more remarkable than any that has preceded it-The relapse of Englishmen into Popery! "Similar causes produce similar effects." The evils which first gave rise to the man of sin, cause his revival amongst us"a falling away from sound doctrine and evangelical practice." What is in the womb of time, God alone knows; what is before us, and at our very doors, is for our due consideration and seasonable warning. The melancholy truth cannot be concealed, that the votaries of Rome have greatly increased in our land, and particularly in

h See Appendix, D.

this town and vicinity. The dismaying fact stares us in the face:-we need not go far before we enter a temple consecrated to the host-"the abomination of our forefathers;" there we may read an awful list of new proselytes; from thence mark a Popish procession, parading through our streets, to the great astonishment and deep concern of every true Protestant.'

Here it may not be improper to dwell for a few minutes on this painful subject — what I firmly believe, I must say in the presence of you,

Among the several circumstances which have lately tended to increase the influence of the Romanists in England, is one, to which the inspired penman ascribes the falling away of Israel to idolatry. They were mingled among the Heathen, and learned their works, and they served their Idols, which were a snare to them. A French Prelate, in a letter, says, "That foreign education will soon proselyte England to the Romish Church."

Another most powerful auxiliary is the intermarriages between the Roman Catholic and Protestant. If it be possible, a priest will allow of no such alliance, unless the advantage to be derived therefrom is apparently on the side of his church. Is not this being unequally yoked? The exhortation of Joshua is a seasonable warning on this head to Protestants:-"Take good heed, therefore, unto yourselves, that ye love the Lord your God, else, if ye do in any wise go back, and cleave unto the remnant of these nations, even these that remain among you, and shall make marriages with them, and go in unto them, and they to you; know for a certainty, that the Lord your God will no more drive out any of these nations from before you.”

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