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POETRY.

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AWAY TO THE MASS!

On seeing a number of professed Protestants attending the opening of a Roman Catholic Chapel.

Away to the mass! there is music as fine

As money can purchase, or science supply; There is swinging of censers with odours divine, And much that may ravish the mind through the eye.

Ol once there were Britons who-but let it pass, We are liberal now-So away to the mass!

As to which creed is true, since we cannot agree, It were harsh to infer that one's neighbour is wrong;

"Tis as likely that I am in error as he; Then why should debate the old rancours prolong?

We had fathers who reasoned not thus-but alas,
The Briton is changed.-So away to the mass !
There cannot be peril; the water they use

Is water, the wafer is but what it seems;
The crucifix, made of what metal they choose,
Is metal,-then who is 't of evil that dreams?
Our Fathers were men of a different class,

London.-The City of London Association met at the George Hall, Aldermanbury, on Monday Evening, December 5, 1842. The Hall was Mr. R. Binden in the chair. densely crowded. The speakers were Mr. C. Sibley, Mr. Dalton, Mr. Lord, and Mr. Callow.

The Annual Meetings of the City of London and the Shoreditch and Hackney Associations, will be held (D.V.) in the month of January, and the Monthly Meeting of the Southwark Association early in the same month. The Annual Meeting of the Tower Hamlets Association is expected to take place in February, and its Monthly Instruction class (open to all members) will be held on Tuesday evening, January 10.

The Protestant Almanack.-We find that we were mistaken in stating that there would

And would blush for such sons.-But away to the be more wood engravings in the Protestant

mass!

Go, Protestant men, to yon edifice go!

Encourage the rites, if you do not partakeEncourage by joining and swelling the showYour fathers would rather have died at the stake! But then they were bigots-the man is an ass That thinks as they thought.-So away to the mass ! Take your offspring, your sons, and your daughters, to look

On crosier, white rose, and on altar illumed; Your fathers, that could not idolatry brookThose fathers would sooner have seen entombed! But those fathers sleep under the churchyard's rank grass,

And a new, giddy race-But away to the mass !

INTELLIGENCE.

R. S.

"PRAY WITHOUT CEASING."-1 Thess. v. 17. Finsbury.-A meeting of the Finsbury Operative Protestant Association was held on Monday Evening, November 28th, in the British School-room, Tabernacle Walk, City Road. Mr. Edward Dalton in the chair. Messrs. Lord, Sibley, Callow, V. Allen, and Spurgeon took part in the proceedings. Southwark.-A meeting of the Southwark Operative Association took place in the National School-room, Borough Road, on Tuesday Evening, November 29. Mr. Edward Dalton in the chair. The speakers were Mr. Theophilus A. Smith, Mr. Binden, Mr. Jarvis, and Mr. Chant.

Published under

THE PROTESTANT

At F. BAISLER'S'

124, Oxford-street;

Almanack for 1843 than the one for 1842. Still we most heartily recommend it to our Operative friends, and feel great pleasure in praising the way in which it is put out of hand by the compiler and printer.

Anecdote.- A Nobleman of Venice declared that the Pope might be excommunicated; the Pope hearing of it, ordered him to be seized and brought before the conclave;

when there, he was asked by the Pope, Whether by any power on earth he might be excommunicated? The Nobleman told him, he might. The Pope desired to know how? "Sir," said the Nobleman, "you are our brother, or you are not our brother; if our brother, then you are equal to us and may be excommunicated; if you are not our brother, why do you say Paternoster, Our Father?" The Pope was in a dilemma, until a Cardinal whispered in his ear that he could never answer that argument but by declaring to the Nobleman that he had never said a Paternoster since he came to the Popedom, which he did, and the Nobleman was sent to the Inquisition."-From “ The Jesuit's Catechism," 1642.

The Protestant Magazine for January contains a very beautifully executed steel engraving of the Right Hon. the Earl of Winchelsea.

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SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co.

LONDON,

W. DAVY,]

Seven Shillings per Hundred, for Distribution.

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"If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."-Isaiah viii. 20.

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FACTS ABOUT ROME. THE language used by the Church of Rome to excite the crusaders to take up arms against God's people was as follows: "There was, said they, to those ferocious and superstitious warriors, no crime so dark, no vice so deeply rooted in the heart, the very trace of which a campaign of forty days in the south of France would not obliterate. "Paradise, with all its glories were opened for them, without the necessity of purchasing it by any reformation of their conduct."(Sismondi, Crus. p. 61.)

The Council of Toulouse forbid the reading of the Scriptures (see 14th Canon, p. 430) in the following terms: "We prohibit the laity from having the books of the Old and New Testament. We forbid in the most express manner to have the above books translated into the vulgar tongue. We command that whosoever shall be accused of heresy, or noted with suspicion, shall be deprived of the assistance of a physician."-(Sismondi, p. 227.)

When Napoleon Bonaparte proposed free liberty of conscience in the exercise ofreligious worship to those who dissented from the Romish religion, Pope Pius VII. wrote a formal letter to all the Cardinals, dated the 5th February, 1808, of which the following is a copy:

VOL. IV.

"It is proposed that all religious persuasions should be free, and their worship publicly exercised: but We have rejected this article as contrary to the canons and Councils of the Catholic Religion, to the peace of human life, and to the welfare of the State, on account of the deplorable consequences which ensue from it."-(History of Jesuits, p. 17.)

"Pope Pius VII. in his instructions addressed to his Nuncio, Vienna, in the year 1805, mentions the pretended right which the Romish Church has ever assumed of deposing heretical Princes; and he deplores the misfortune of those times which, as he says, prevent the Spouse of Jesus Christ (the Roman Catholic Church) from putting those holy maxims into practice, and constrain her to suspend the course of her just severity against the enemies of the faith."(History of Jesuits, p. 18, 19, and 20.)

In reference to the superstition and tyranny of the Catholic religion in Spain and Portugal, Mr. Pinkerton states as follows:

"The monks being extremely numerous and human passions ever the same, those ascetics atone for the want of marriage by the practice of Adultery, and the husbands, from the dread of the Inquisition are constrained to connive at this enormous abuse; the conscience is screened by the practice of

absolution.”—(Pinkerton's Geography, vol. 1, p. 409 and 413.)

tion "

Re-establishment of the "holy Inquisiagain in Spain, by Pope Pius VII. The edict of the Spanish Inquisitor, dated Madrid, April 5, 1815, will shew what Protestants have to expect from Rome. It is entitled, "The Edict of the most excellent Lord Inquisitor General, Don Francisco Xavier, Miery Campillo." After deploring the injury which the Catholic faith had suffered in Spain, the Edict observes, "It is not strange, that all the lovers of religion, should turn their eyes to the holy tribunal of the Faith, and hope, from its zeal for the purity of doctrine and manners, that it will remedy, by the discharge of its sacred ministry, so many evils, through the ways and means granted to it by the Apostolic and Royal authority with which it is invested.

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Nothing can be more urgent to the truth, nor more conformable to our institution; for in vain should we be sentinels of the peace of the Lord, if we were to remain asleep in the midst of the common danger to religion and our country.

"God will not permit us thus basely to abandon his cause, nor to correspond so ill to the exalted piety, with which the King our Lord has re-established us in the weighty functions of our ministry; in which we have sworn to be superior to all human respect, whether it be necessary to chastise, persuade, and cement, or whether to separate, CUT or TEAR down the rotten members, in order that they may not infect the sound ones." s." The edict, after observing that, "Now as well as ever, moderation and charity ought to shine forth, as forming the character of the Holy Office, and that before using the power of the SEVERE, granted to us against the contumacious and rebellious, we ought to attract them by presenting to them the Olive Branch," concludes in the following remarkable terms, 66 Wherefore, far from adopting for the PRESENT measures of severity and rigour against the guilty, we have determined to grant them, as we hereby do grant, a term of grace, which shall be from the date of the publication of this our Edict, till the last day inclusive of this year, in order that all persons of both sexes who may unfortunately have fallen into the crime of heresy, or feel themselves guilty of any error against which our Mother the Church believes and teaches, or of any hidden crime, whose cognizance belongs to the holy office, may recur to the latter, and discharge their conscience, and abjure their errors, under the security and assurance of the most inviolable secresy; and on the same being

done within the prefixed time, accompanied by a sincere, entire, and true manifestation of all they may know and remember against themselves as well as against OTHERS, they shall be charitably received, absolved, and incorporated into the bosom of our holy Mother the Church, without their having thereby to apprehend the infliction of the punishment ordained, nor the injury of their honor, character, and reputation, and still less the privation of the whole or any part of their property; since for those cases for which they ought to lose it, and the same ought to be applied to the exchequer and treasury of His Majesty, in conformity to the laws of these kingdoms; His Majesty, using his natural clemency, and preferring the spiritual felicity of his vassals to the interests of his royal exchequer, exempts them for the present from this penalty, and grants them grace and pardon whereby they may return and preserve the said property, on condition that they appear within the time prefixed."

CONVERSATION

BETWEEN TWO FRIENDS ON THE DOCTRINES AND CEREMONIES OF THE CHURCH OF ROME.

(Continued from p. 83. Vol. III.)

Mr. B.-Now a thought has suddenly occurred to my mind-When the Church of Rome had extended her sway so far that she became the Universal Church, and allowing that she has departed from the doctrines of scripture, what became of the Church of Christ? had it ceased to exist? was Christ without a church on the earth at that time?

Mr. A.-No, certainly not. The Redeemer was never without a church, neither was the Church of Rome ever universal. The name Catholic, or Universal, was originally applied to all the Christian churches, or collected number of Christians in different parts; meaning that all true believers, formed but one body, of which Christ was the Head; but when Rome assumed the superiority over the others, she took the name of Roman Catholic; implying that she was the Catholic or Universal Church; and from long custom we usually call her members in the present day Roman Catholics, which however is an inconsistency, because, although we acknowledge 'a Catholic Church,' meaning the union and communion of all saints or believers, (for in the Gospel the terms Saint and believer are one.) we do not acknowledge the Church of Rome to be Catholic, she having erred from the primitive faith.

Mr. B.-Well, you have answered my

question as to the term Catholic or Universal, and I acknowledge the term never could be properly applied to the Romish Church; but where then was the Church of Christ at this time?

Mr. A.-She was a little flock, as our Saviour called his disciples, and for many years a sadly persecuted flock, obliged to flee into the wilderness, but never left or forgotten by the "good Shepherd."

Mr. B. Did the Romish Church at once begin to persecute them?

Mr. A.-Yes. When the Church of Rome had established those doctrines which you have seen to be unscriptural, and had decreed by her councils that all who refused to obey her decisions, should be accursed and condemned as heretics, she commenced those dreadful persecutions of which history will inform you, when the Christians suffered as much as they had formerly done under the cruelties inflicted by the heathen emperors of Rome. It is recorded that by one of the agents of the church, (Dominic by name,) by means of the Inquisition alone, of which he was appointed First Inquisitor' by Pope Alexander the 3rd, in the thirteenth century,—that one hundred and fifty thousand Christians, who would not receive her doctrines and traditions, were destroyed by various tortures within the space of thirty years!

Mr. B.-Most truly indeed said one of the elders, when explaining to St. John, who those were who were arrayed in white robes: "These are they which came out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb: therefore are they before the Throne of God, and serve Him day and night in his temple; and He that sitteth on the Throne shall dwell among them.". Rev. vii. 14-17.

· Mr. A.—In this manner pursued and destroyed as heretics by the persecuting bulls of successive Popes, the sheep of Christ were obliged to take shelter in the secluded glens and valleys of Piedmont, in caverns, or sometimes in the most inaccessible parts of the Alps, from whence they were never entirely exterminated by their inhuman pursuers. Here then, Christ had a Church which, though scattered, poor, and few in number, continued to exist, and hold the pure truths of the Gospel. Now, if Heresy consists in departing from the true doctrine, which were the real heretics, the persecuted or the persecutors?

Mr. B.-A question not very difficult to decide, my friend.-But you have not yet

told me when the Church of Rome is considered to have taken the principal step of separation from the true Church.

Mr. A.-Errors, as I have observed, came in gradually: sometimes the weakness, or the mistaken opinions of well-meaning men assisted their growth, as in the case of St. Augustine, and also Pope Gregory the 1st, who introduced pictures and images into the churches in order to instruct the people in scripture history: he persisted in doing this, although remonstrated with on the subject by Bishop Serenus, who foresaw the too probable abuse of the practice in future times-and so it happened, for his successor, Pope Gregory the 2nd, commanded that these pictures and images should receive homage from the people. Then it was but to ascribe some miraculous powers to them, which was a step soon taken, and the people began to pray and make their offerings to them; indeed, so gradually did many of the worst errors creep in, that commentators have never been agreed as to the time of the rise of the beast mentioned in Rev. xiii. 11, which almost all agree describes the Papacy. However, it is generally considered, that the rapid decline of the Church of Rome from the pure faith of the Gospel, may be dated from the reign of Constantine, in the fourth century. When that emperor professed the Christian faith, Christianity became the pathway to honor and preferment, both in the church and at court; consequently vast numbers of the worldlyminded and ambitious, both Jews and heathens, professed to believe the religion of Christ, (which till this time they had either persecuted or dispised,) and became candidates for Baptism. It may easily be imagined that this accession of numbers, unconverted in heart, though Christians in profession, would prove fatal to the purity of the church: some, probably from mistaken zeal, and a want of discernment in spiritual things, followed their own opinions of what was great and glorious, and therefore laboured to raise her in the estimation of the world by the means of external pomp and magnificence: for this purpose ceremonies were instituted, whieh partook both of the Jewish and the heathen forms of worship, according to the inclinations of the new converts, and their influence in her church enabled them to introduce one or the other; but all this time the pure and spiritual doctrines of a religion whose only recommendation in their eyes had been the patronage of royalty, were disliked as much as ever; "For (as the Scripture says) the

carnal mind is enmity against God; it is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be."-Romans viii. 7.

The truth and simplicity then of the Gospel of Christ was gradually obscured and lost sight of under a load of rites and ceremonies, which amused and fascinated the people, forming a substitute for the heathen worship they had left. If you read a little work entitled "Heathen Rome," from which I have made several remarks, you will perceive the source from which many of these ceremonies were taken; for the names only have been changed; and no Roman Catholic can read it, without being struck with the resemblance, not only to the ceremonies, but to the doctrines of his Church. In this state of things the rulers soon began to "Lord it over God's heritage," giving little heed to the admonition of the Apostle whom they profess to reverence so much: "Feed the flock of God which is among you, taking the oversight thereof, not by constraint but willingly; not for filthy lucre, but of a ready mind; neither as being lords over God's heritage, but being ensamples to the flock" (1 Epis. Pet., 5th chap.); even the true signification of the term Church became little understood; it now implied the Pope, Cardinals, and Bishops; and all the decrees passed in the councils they held, became identified with them, as the "Voice of the Church!" To maintain and extend this power therefore was their constant aim; and while they professed to exalt the Church as the "Holy Mother Church," and the "Spouse of Christ," whose judgment was infallible, they assumed universal dominion in her name, and the word of God was made to speak according to their interpretation as the "Voice of the Church" to the deluded people!

Mr. B.-But how could the people be so deluded if they still had the Word of God? Mr. A.-Until now they had had that blessed word, but not as we have it, in our own tongue and in rich abundance. With all our boasted light, with all our privileges, which are great and many, and call for our unbounded gratitude to our gracious God, yet still amidst all these advantages there are many in our own days, who talk of interpreting God's blessed word by man's foolish fables! We see the motive which induced the Bishops of Rome to change their rule of faith: so many things having been introduced which the Scriptures could not in any way be made to authorize, it became necessary to have some other source to draw from: and this source was the

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Apocrypha, and Tradition. It was afterwards decreed by the Council of Trent, as I have already said, that the Apocryphal Books, and all Tradition, should be received and acknowledged to be of equal authority with the word of God!! Here then an inexhaustible mine was opened; for whatever could not be found in Scripture, was easily supplied by Tradition, and according to the "Voice of the Church' it was to be held equally sacred!! This proceeding stamped authority on all the idle fabulous tales which had long been circulated among the people, so as to entirely supplant the word of God, which became proportionably scarce, and if attainable, its true doctrines were buried under the interpretations of the Church of Rome, and shortly became forbidden altogether; while from the ever-flowing source of Tradition proceeded all the pretended miraculous legends of Saints and Relics, together with cures performed by wonderful pictures, and images brought down from heaven, which have inundated the Church of Rome ever since.

Mr. B.-The contrast is indeed wonderful, as I have observed since I have read the Bible, the people must indeed, as you say, have been gradually weaned from the one and introduced to the other. It would have been impossible to have made them pass from one to the other all at once.

(To be continued.)

WHO IS HAPPIEST, THE INFIDEL

OR THE CHRISTIAN?

INFIDELS may scoff at Christianity as much as they like, but it would be easy to prove that it imparts a happiness to the soul which embraces it, which renders the true Christian the happiest of beings. It would be as easy to prove that the heartlessness and cold selfishness of Infidelity prevented the Infidel from enjoying real happiness. The contrast between the Christian and the Infidel is great in this world as well as that which is to come, and confirms the declaration of Scripture, that "Godliness hath the promise of the life that now is, as well as of that which is to come." For instance, what a difference in the two following references to the birth of the individuals.

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"Who," says Voltaire, can without horror, consider the whole world as the empire of destruction? It abounds with wonders; it also abounds with victims. It is a vast field of carnage and contagion. Every species is without pity pursued and torn to

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