"If they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."-Isaiah viii. 20. No. 64. JULY, 1845. VOL. VI. THE PRESENT STRUGGLE. logists Popery met with in the legislature, during the late debate-the hollow sophistry THE struggle between truth and error-be- with which a Popish Bill was defended in tween the powers of light and darkness, is our Protestant Houses of Parliament, and daily becoming of a more determined and its successful progress through those Houses, fearful character. To whatever quarter of in spite of the uplifted voice of the nation; the globe we may direct our attention, the these things have induced so much alarm enemy of all good is to be seen marshalling and apprehension in the minds, not only of his hosts for resistance to the progress of the previously watchful, but of those also truth. Foremost stands Popery, the great predicted Antichrist. Whilst the Protestant Association has for years been sounding an alarm, warning this country of the rapid strides towards the recovery of its long lost empire over the minds and liberties of mankind, which this foe to civil and religious liberty has been making, how few have been found to heed the warning. Though late, we rejoice, however, to see men now roused to action; and to find that the Protestants of England are awakening from their long slumbers. The Maynooth Bill has come upon them with all the force of a thunderstroke; and however incredulous the people of England have hitherto been, however careless about the progress of Popery abroad, yet the effrontery of the Government of Protestant England, in daring to bring forward a Bill for the Endowment of Popery, that system which our ancestors so carefully and, as they had hoped, so surely cast forth from the councils of this empire-the apo who have been careless, that all men are anxiously enquiring, what will be the end of these things? and the conviction has at length been induced in the minds of those who not long since thought otherwise, that Popery has gained, and continues to gain, an immense amount of influence in this country, which she is using to the injury of all our political and religious institutions. Amid the gloom caused by the fearful progress of Antichrist, it is cheering to behold the Sun of Righteousness still shedding his beams brightly, not only over our own lands, but also over other parts of the world. The increase of Gospel light and zeal among the true Protestants of England, the success of our missions abroad, the numerous conversions from Popery on the continent, shew to us, that however the prince of darkness may seek to envelope the world in the clouds of error, the work of the Lord still goes on; and we know from the Word of God, that, whatever may be the amount of power which Satan and his followers shall acquire, the Lamb will overcome all his foes, and the Lord bring to nought the schemes of Antichrist, until Babylon shall fall, and Christ reign for ever. In the present and future struggles, our Protestant Operatives have an important duty to perform. Their zeal and usefulness have long been acknowledged. This is not the time to slacken their exertions; our Associations should now be carried on with more energy and perseverance than ever. A great work is before us, and the Lord will bless the labour of his faithful servants. Above all, we should use more frequently the best and most successful weapon in a contest like this, we should go oftener and with more earnestness to a Throne of grace, to pray that the Lord would direct and bless our efforts, and avert the impending danger from our country. MAYNOOTH. SPEECH OF THE REV. JOHN CUMMING, D.D. at the great Protestant Meeting, held at Exeter Hall, on Wednesday morning, June 4, 1845, for the adoption of a Petition to the Queen against the permanent and encreased endowment of the Roman Catholic College of Maynooth. The Right Hon. the Earl of Winchilsea, in the chair. I AM most anxious, that it should be clearly understood, and deeply impressed upon this great assembly, that in moving on this important question, we are actuated by no enmity to the persons of Roman Catholics. On the contrary, I believe that it is the almost unanimous feeling, that whilst we abhor and detest their principles, we are ready to suffer and to sacrifice for the welfare of their souls. I believe, that just in the ratio in which we detest the creed, we love the men that subscribe it. It is most important, that if any Roman Catholic is present, he should feel that our opposition to this measure is not an opposition to men in the Protestant State or in the Romish Church, but to measures; and that it is because we are by solemn conviction, and on Scripture grounds, opposed to Romish principles, that we are anxious they should not be sustained and spread by the endowments of the nation. I am also desirous that we should as much as possible, abstain from all that may trench upon internal disputes. I have seen in the Committee room to-day, complaints upon this subject in The Patriot newspaper. It is important, that we should merge every ripple on the surface in one great flood of opposition to the principle of this measure. And I must say, that the conduct of the Dissenters on this question has been most proper; it has been worthy of the Owens, the Howes, and the Baxters of old. If I were a Dissenter, and actuated by a hostility to the Established Churches, greater than my love to my Saviour and my Bible, I should have supported the Maynooth Endowment Bill; because I should have argued, that if Sir Robert Peel endowed two so antagonistic churches in Ireland, like an acid and an alkali they would neutralize one another, and the issue would be no Established Church at all. But while I believe that the measure is calculated to sweep from beneath our feet the foundation principles on which a Church establishment can be most successfully defended, I feel the more delighted with the conduct of those, who have merged their Dissent in their Protestantism, and joined heart and hand in this righteous movement. I gave a glance at the newspaper reports of the debates in the Lords this morning; and I read, not with surprise, but with considerable pain, the speech of a noble and learned lord, who is half a countryman of my own-I mean Lord Brougham. In the course of that speech, he makes the most wanton and gratuitous attack upon Calvin, as unjust to the dead Reformer, as it was unworthy of the living Baron. wish his lordship would read Calvin before he criticize him, and then I am sure he will not repeat his own too celebrated aphorism, "that a man is no more accountable for his creed, than for the colour of his skin or the height of his stature." His lordship draws a contrast between Thomas Aquinas and John Calvin, and he comes to the most extraordinary conclusion, (perhaps not extraordinary, however, from him,) that of the twain, John Calvin was rather the worse. Now I have read a considerable portion of the writings of John Calvin, and I have read the Secunda Secunda-a very choice portion of the writings of Thomas Aquinas; and the contrast between them is just the contrast between liberty and slavery, between truth and a lie, between love and bloodshed, between light and darkness, between heaven and hell. His lordship is a learned man; he has read a great deal, and written a great deal, and said a great deal more; but if "the bray of Exeter Hall" should reach his illustrious ear, I would venture to suggest to him that his argument is not quite logical. If he can show us a collect in the Anglican Prayer-Book, or refer to an autho rized extemporaneous prayer by any clergyman of the Church of Scotland, or minister of any Secession or Dissenting body in Christendom, praying that we may imitate the example, and imbibe and preach the principles of Calvin, then he may hold us in some measure responsible for Calvin's sentiments. But he can point to no such thing. But I can prove this to be the homage given to Aquinas in the Roman Church. So truly does the Romish Church approve the persecuting dogmas inculcated in the writings of Aquinas, that all her members pray on the seventh of March in every year: "O God, who by the wonderful learning of blessed Thomas, Thy confessor, hast illustrated Thy Church, and by his virtues hast enlarged it; grant, we beseech Thee, that we may understand what Thomas Aquinas taught, and in our lives follow what Thomas Aquinas practised." Will his lordship tell me, in reply, on what day Protestants pray to be enabled thus to follow John Calvin? Protestants follow Calvin, as far as Calvin followed Christ; Romanists follow the beatified Thomas absolutely. But besides, the solitary sin to which Calvin was accessory, was not the sin of directly preaching persecution, and advocating it in the case of Servetus, but of acquiescing in the previously existing law of Geneva, which condemned him to death for his blasphemous creed. Neither did Calvin teach principles of persecution in his creed, nor if he did, having just emerged from a persecuting apostacy, are we responsible for what Calvin taught. All his sins were the sins of humanity-his excellencies were drawn from the Word of God; a generous mind would forgive and lose the one, in the splendour and the glory of the other. prostrate; never did I behold superstition so dense; never did I so clearly see, that if the Spirit of God do not eradicate the seeds and dissipate the clouds of Popery, all the Acts of all the Parliaments and States of Europe will not. They will fall upon it like rain drops upon Etna, likely to fan, but utterly unable to extinguish it. In wandering through Belgium, I spent day after day, from five in the morning till eight at night, in the churches; I was at matins, and vespers, and mid-day mass. I found in every one of the exquisite churches and great cathedrals a huge statue of the Virgin Mary, about five feet ten inches in height, cut in oak, and clothed in beautiful blue satin, trimmed with Mechlin or Valenciennes lace, with the best French kid gloves upon her hands, and a rod or symbol of authority in her right hand, together with a crown upon her head; and from morning till night, I saw the Belgians, some of them evidently belonging to the better classes, hurrying into the Churches, kneeling before this idol, and giving it the homage of their hearts and the ascriptions of their tongues. I have here one of the popular prints of this idol; it represents the Virgin Mary with her foot upon the serpent's head, intended to illustrate the text-" She shall bruise thy head.” This was taken from the castle of Antwerp; and when the gallant Chassè so nobly defended it against the French, it was said to be wholly owing to the Virgin's intercession. I purchased several books of devotion there also, and they all go to show the depth of mental darkness prevailing under that establishment of the Popish priesthood by the Government, which is supposed to be the means of ameliorating Romanism. I counted one day upon one of the pedestals on which the statue of the Virgin stood, about fifteen silver hearts, and thirty wax arms and legs, nailed to it; and meeting with a priest, I asked him to explain it. I spoke to him in Latin, and he could understand my Scotch Latin, though I believe he would not understand you; for in Scotland we pronounce Latin in a different way from what you prefer in England. We think it the better and more primitive style; though we may be wrong. But it has been supposed by some of the advocates of a new course of treatment of Romanism, that the establishment or the endowment of a bad system is one of the great prescriptions for curing all its errors. Attached as I am, personally, to the vast practical value and principle of a national establishment, I never could so far worship it and exalt it. Two years ago I went up the Rhine, part of the way in company with my friend, Mr. Plumptre, after I had travelled through Belgium, where the Church of Rome is established by law, and liberally maintained, with an archiepiscopal seminary at Malines, probably the model from which Maynooth is about to be constructed; and it is natural to ask-has the establishment of Popery done there what Sir R. Peel is sponsor for its doing here? It has not. In no country did I see the human mind so [Here the Rev. Gentlemen repeated a few passages from the Æneid of Virgil, first with the broad pronunciation of the Scotch, and next with that of the English.] The explanation of this priest, endowed by the Belgic Government, and educated at an endowed College at Malines, was this: "These wax arms and legs are votive offerings; persons who have had diseases in the leg or arm, which no physician's skill could hold in my hand a book, which I obtained cure, have had recourse to the blessed Virgin, after persevering search-the celebrated and these are to commemorate her cures.' "Psalter of St. Bonaventure; for whom, as I asked him what were meant, then, by the silver hearts? and he answered-" If a wife has a husband upon the distant sea, and she hears the winds blow and the tempest beat, she thinks of him, and goes to the Virgin, and promises her a silver heart if she will bring him safe home." But I heard a different explanation from a hotel-keeper in Ghent; he said-" Suppose some ingenuous youth were resolved to have some lady for his partner in life, and found all the usual artillery of sighs and sonnets fail him; he has recourse to the blessed Virgin; and some of those silver hearts are to commemorate the effects she has produced upon the hearts of obdurate young ladies." But I will not dwell upon the characteristics of that unhappy land; I will only say, that it is matter of too notorious observation, that the fostering care of Government has not produced any amelioration of Roman Catholic principles or practices beyond the channel. Romanism remains in Belgium, what its canons make it—a system, which displaces the atonement of God by the atonement of man-the worship of Jesus by the worship of the Virgin; which puts a padlock on the Bible, and punishes the cottager who reads it, and confiscates the property of the bookseller who sells it; which incorporates all deadly error, and excludes all the precious and renovating principles, which emanate from God, and are embodied in the oracles of everlasting truth. It is not because it is an anti-social system, that I so much deprecate its endowment; it is because it dishonours God, and ruins precious souls. It is not her crimes against my country, but her blasphemies against my God, that I condemn. As a minister of the everlasting Gospel, I would scarcely come upon this platform, to protest against its anti-social tendencies; but, zealous for the glory of the great Head of the Church, I come here and protest, in the name of God and of all that is sacred, against any national recognition of its awful conspiracy against the glory of heaven and the salvation of souls; its eclipse of the one, its ruin of the other. This, my Christian friends, is too solemn a thing for you to receive with bursts of cheering; it is a very grave and a very awful matter, that the Parliament of mighty England should to any extent form itself into an auxiliary to the Propaganda, for maintaining this terrible system. I have spoken of its superstition and idolatry. May I briefly illustrate it? I well as Aquinas, there is a special collect in the Missal. In the Psalms edited by this cardinal saint, you have the name of God expunged in every instance, and the name of the Virgin introduced in its place. As in Psalm xcv.-"Oh! come, let us sing unto our Lady; let us heartily rejoice in the Virgin that brings us salvation; let us come before her presence with thanksgiving, and show ourselves glad in her with psalms." Psalm li. is-" Have mercy upon me, O Lady, who art called the Mother of mercy, and according to thy great compassions blot out all mine iniquities." It opens in the preface with-"Come unto Mary, all ye that are weary and heavy laden, and she will give you rest." Then there is that beautiful hymn in the Anglican Prayer Book, but which belongs to the Church universal, for it was composed and sung before the Church of England was endowed; namely, the Te Deum; which is made to run thus-" We praise thee, O Mary, we acknowledge thee to be the Virgin; all the earth doth worship thee, the spouse of the Eternal; to thee all angels cry aloud, Holy, holy, holy art thou, O Mary, Mother of God." I know that some object to what is called the Athanasian Creed; but I presume they will not be reconciled by the version of it presented by Bonaventure—“Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he have a firm faith concerning Mary," &c. The Litany of the saint runs in the same way— " Spare us, O Lady; from all evil and mischief, deliver us, O Lady." I recollect a clause in the English Litany, which made a deep impression upon me, when I first came to England and went for the first time into a parish Church, and heard its sublime language not read, but prayed—" In all time of our tribulation, in all time of our wealth, in the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, Good Lord, deliver us."-words worthy of a Christian to pray, and of a Church to prescribe; but in this execrable version in my hand I find it thus caricatured-" In the hour of death, and in the day of judgment, from all evil, and from the torments of the damned, good Mary, deliver us." Now this is a book, the teaching of the principles and practices of which we are to endow. But you say -"It is an obsolete document." I have got ten successive editions of the Psalter and Te Deum, published at Rome, between 1831 and 1840, under the sanction of the present Pope and all the authorities of the Vatican. I have these editions in Latin, and in Italian, and with devised. Eminently powerful, it is yet the most elastic and accommodating; retaining all its principles, and yet adapting itself to every class; one day it will flatter the despot on the throne, and the next day pander to the fierce democracy; one day it will put a rod of iron into the tyrant's hand, and the next day blow the trumpet of a wide-spread sedition; one day, raging like a lion, it will rouse and array all the passions that disturb society, and the next day it will gambol and slumber like a lamb. It finds society rent and torn, and it comes to statesmen offering to heal it; it finds kings threatened with rebellion, and it asks for power, and promises to quell it by its bulls. Its promises are Paradise; its performance Pandemonium. Facit solitudinem; pacem appellat. to 66 all the authority it is possible for the Church of Rome to impress upon any document that comes out under her auspices. Shall we aid this blasphemous teaching, this heinous idolatry? Shall we concur in nationally endowing what dishonours God and involves the destinies of souls throughout eternity? But I will say, (though it may be in some measure unpopular,) I cannot concur in unmeasured attacks on Sir Robert Peel; there are mitigating points, we ought not to forget in our estimate of the course pursued by the ministry. They mean what is good, and their motives are good. And do not forget that a considerable body of learned, accomplished, persevering divines in the Church of England have been labouring, during the last ten years, to impress upon I rejoice exceedingly, that there is not a the minds of our peers and senators that Christian body, which has not stood forth Romanism is the true type of Christianity, by great majorities against the endowment and the Roman Catholic the primitive faith, of this system. The Church of England, and that the nearer the Church of England notwithstanding some episcopal and presbyapproximates to it, the more it approaches terial defaulters, has on the whole given a the Ante-Nicene or ancient Church. Is it sound Protestant opposition to this national matter of surprise, that illustrious statesmen, dereliction of duty. The Church of Scotnot accustomed to discuss theological ques- land, to which I belong, has resolved the tions, and of whose state we are not called other day in the General Assembly, by a pronounce any judgment in reference to majority of 187 to 41 to petition against it; that great principle, Except a man be and of the minority of 41 in the General born again, he cannot see the kingdom of Assembly, (composed chiefly, I believe, of God," should at length have their minds in- lay elders,) there was not one that ventured fected by such teaching, backed by such to say he approved of the principle on which erudition, and sustained by such argumen- the measure is based. I rejoice to say, that tation? There is also another mitigating not only have the two Establishments thus point; we Protestants have unfortunately acted, but, among Nonconformists, that been divided among ourselves, and have active and zealous body, the Free Secession been so taken up in discussing the micros- Church, has acted very much in the same copic jots in which we differ, that we have way. Common principles are in jeopardy. ceased to proclaim with all our energy the When I, a minister of the Established olden cry "No peace with Rome!" and Church, am tied to one faggot in Smithfield, thus allowed her to push her victories. I and my friend Mr. Hamilton of the Free trust that henceforth there will be consoli- Secession Church, (who, I believe, is to dated a permanent union upon Protestant take a resolution,) to another, the flame that and scriptural principles; and that the result consumes us will show how microscopic of all this agitation will not be a mere were the points on which we differed-how political movement, but some arrangement majestic and glorious the truths on which for the extended preaching of the precious we are agreed. The Wesleyans too, another Gospel for the regeneration of Ireland-the Nonconformist body, have acted nobly. I only panacea for its grievances, the only an- envy them the abuse they have received; I tidote to its wrongs, the only lever that can never was so tempted to become a Wesleyan, lift it from the oppressive incubus under as when I read, that Daniel O'Connell, that groans, into that light and liberty composite of Nero and Nebuchadnezzar, wherewith Christ makes men free indeed. feeling his power to be shaken a little, wrote But there is yet a third mitigating point I an abusive letter about the Wesleyans on urge in behalf of our Premier. I believe one side, and when Lord Brougham, seeing that no mere man is a match for Popery; a a powerful demonstration roused against Christian leaning on God is; a statesman Maynooth, waxed furious against the Wesresting on politics is not. Such is the sub- leyans-though he must have forgotten tlety of that system, that it is the nearest some of his theology last night when he atmatch for Omnipotence the devil ever tacked them under the misnomer of Cal which |