Abbildungen der Seite
PDF
EPUB

vinists. Throughout the whole of this matter they have taken a most prominent part; I thank them-I hail them as brethren; we are brethren in arms, and rivals only in renown. Our Independent and Baptist brethren, the last body of Nonconformists, also have fought nobly. God grant that this union, begún under so favourable auspices, and cemented round the altars of our father land, may never be dissolved in feeling or sympathy until the Church in grace be lost in the Church in glory-the Church militant in the splendour of a cloudless millennial morn, and the Church of Britain has become the Church of mankind. You have heard the ancient fable of the woodman, who applied to the trees to give him wood sufficient to make a handle for his axe, and at last found a tree stupid enough or traitor enough to give him a branch; possessed of which, he instantly set to work and hewed down the whole forest. Daniel O'Connell applied to the Church of England, but has got no handle, or a very rotten one; he tried the Church of Scotland and has gotten a few rotten sprigs, and these do not fit; the Wesleyans will not give even a twig; and I hope the old disturber will get no handle for his axe, or one that will snap asunder, and so these majestic and glorious olden trees, that have been the beauty and bulwark of Old England, will yet flourish, when his remains moulder at their roots.

It has been earnestly urged, that the measure will produce peace. I value peace, and I wish it universally prevailed; but peace, let it be remembered, is not a rootit is only a product. Truth is the stempeace is the blossom. Cut down the blossom, and the stem will hear the accents of returning spring, and again throw forth beauteous buds, to be unfolded in more beauteous blossoms; but cut down the stem, eradicate the root, and no sun will make bud or blossom appear any more. Sir Robert Peel is trying, honestly but impotently, to produce peace without truth the blossom without the stem. And even peace may be purchased at too high a price. If the endowment of Popery be eventually the disendowment of one Church in Ireland, and the extermination in the long run of all the others, I fear we shall find our Irish peace purchased at too dear a rate. Ireland must be Protestant before it be peaceful. The God of heaven has pronounced its character—“ they say, Peace, peace, when there is no peace."

It has been argued also, that there is an overwhelming majority of Roman Catholics in Ireland, and the creed of the overwhelm

ing majority we ought to endow. I confess, my lord, that the most startling part of this whole subject, is not the measure itself, but the infidel principles broached in the discussion. If the principle of a national establishment depends for its existence solely on majorities, it is not worth keeping up for another twelvemonth. It is indefensible. But truth depends upon no such basis. If the whole of this hall were to catch some dreadful inspiration of the damned, and to cry out with fearful infatuation and with unanimous shout, that Popery is truth; and if but one child stood forth in that gallery at the other end, and exclaimed that Popery is false, and Protestantism true; that child would be right, and the whole hall would be wrong. We do not count heads for orthodoxy-we appeal to texts alone. Truth remains truth, when we must follow her to the stake; falsehood remains falsehood, when all the riches of the earth are piled upon her altars, and the embroidery of the world is heaped upon her shrines. "To the law, and to the testimony; if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

It has been urged, that the Church of Rome merely holds a little more than we do, and that as she embraces all that we hold, she must have as great a chance of salvation as we have. This may be mathematics, but it is not morals. You are aware, that the most celebrated and authoritative formulary of that Church is the Creed of Pope Pius IV.; the first twelve articles of it constitute the Nicene Creed, and belong to the year 325; the last twelve articles of it constitute the Popish creed, strictly so called, and belong to the year 1564. It is perfectly true, that both Churches do hold the Nicene creed. But here is the difference -we receive the articles of that creed order to believe them, but she welcomes them as Jael welcomed the traveller-to pin him to the earth and destroy him. Herein is "the mystery of iniquity." She shows you twelve panes of glass, and bids you mark how the rays of the sun pour into the room through them; and when she has introduced you, she puts twelve shutters upon them, and leaves you to the dim lights of her traditions. She shows you twelve tumblers of pure water, taken from a good spring; but then she lets fall into them twelve drops of prussic acid. Most pure, no doubt, is the water; but such is the virus of the additional element, that it neutralises and poisons the whole.

It is said, that Popery is now a changed religion, and that it is absurd to rake up

obsolete canons, and fling them like mud in
the face of the modern Church of Rome.
This argument involves the admission, that
the Church of Rome has been something
worse than we see it now. But it overlooks
the fact, that her canons are stereotyped.
She is a fixture. She is infallible; she is,
therefore, unchangeable. Prove to her peo-
ple that one stone has fallen from her arch,
that one article of her faith has been re-
pealed, and you prove that she has ceased
to be what she pretends to be-infallible;
and thus the main element of her witchery
is gone. I know, the Roman Catholic will
thank you to say she is changed; but he
laughs in his sleeve at your folly, and
pockets the fruits of your delusion. He
believes that she has undergone no change;
that she remains in her persecuting prin-
ciples, the same as when Dominus Dens
lighted his fires in Ireland, or Dominick his
in Spain.
Semper eadem is her motto; or,
to give you the Irishman's translation of
that phrase, as he applied it to his wife,
"she gets worser and worser."

But I beg you to bear in mind, that a new principle is now introduced in national policy a new movement in a new direction, prolific of new and ominous results; or, as Mr. Shiel called it-" the first of a series of new measures towards Ireland." Do you think, that if Maynooth gets £26,000 a year, Stoneyhurst and Oscott will be quiet, or ought to be quiet? No; they will come to the Government, especially in a day when one sin is made the pretext and pioneer for another, and they will ask for an endowment, not then as liberality, but as equal justice. You are opening a door, which will be crowded with applicants, no longer suppliant for boons, but thundering for rights. And as for Rome, she must be all, if she be anything-aut Cæsar, aut nil.

standards. By so doing, you pour oil upon the flame, you add fuel to the smouldering fires, and nourish, unintentionally it may be, the very enmity you would quell. Should it be permitted, in the providence of God, that England should be plunged in foreign war, let her continue at peace with God, by loyalty to His will, and she will emerge from war like gold from the furnace. To escape war with man, we may not rush into war with God. Wellington's laurels, bright, enduring, imperishable, (oh! that there had not been among them one fading leaf!) were not the produce solely of his transcendant genius, or of the bravery of his brave soldiers, but of the prayers of England's firesides and widows and orphans. While our country was Protestant, her armies swept wide Europe, and left the impress of their prowess wherever they left the vestiges of their presence; and, befriended and blessed of Him to whom the shields of the earth belong, her battles will again be victorious, and the roll of her conquering drum the prelude to yet more brilliant achievements.

Another plea has been adduced, that this endowment will give a better education to the Irish priests. Mr. Roebuck, in one of his excursus in the Commons, said, that if they were Hindoos or Mahommedans, he would educate them by national endowments in their respective creeds. He would educate the Trinitarian in the faith, that 'Christ is God;' he would educate the Socinian in the scepticism, that Christ is not God.' He would teach the Romanist to worship the Virgin Mary; and he would educate the Protestant to pronounce it idolatry. What limit could be assigned to such liberality? In what would he not educate humanity ? Only teach, and it is of no consequence whether it be falsehood, fanaticism, or folly!

But will the education at Maynooth really It has been urged, that unless you thus improve the rising priests? Will it be educonciliate, you will have internal civil war; cation in the truths of the Bible, or in the or Ireland may be made an outpost, on fables of the Breviary? in holy ethics, or in which America and France can plant their the immoralities of Bailly, and the anti-social forces, and wage a successful conflict with dogmas of Thomas Aquinas? It may be in England. On this point I believe the re- anything, and in any way; for so little conmarkable statements made in the Lords by troul is the State to have over teacher or the Duke of Wellington-I do not believe lesson, that, as it has been stated, in order the representations of those, who adduce not to spoil the " grace "of the measure, this reason; I firmly believe there is no England shall merely stand at the door of danger of either result. But if you want to Maynooth, holding a bag, into which the produce civil war in all the provinces of priests may dip their digitals, and help Ireland, if you want to apply those elements themselves. They may teach the principles that will excite and madden every fell pas- of murder, sedition, privy conspiracy, rebelsion in the unregenerate man's heart, till he lion, still the State will apply no check, and is driven by them, as by a whirlwind, pay exercise no controul. England must be for inculcating the fierce principles con- merely the dumb purse-bearer of Maynooth. tained in the Maynooth class books and If it be just to pay for teaching Jesuitism in

1845, it was wrong to expel the Jesuits in 1829.

It has been urged, that Maynooth is very poor, and therefore we ought to help it on the ground of charity. Thus, Romanism can either demand as a right, or sue and supplicate as a boon. Will not Tuam, and Waterford, and Carlow, soon find out their poverty also? But the Irish Romanists send about £1000 a month to the Propaganda, and contribute about £400 a week to O'Connell, and the cause of repeal. Does this look like poverty?

But, says Mr. Macaulay, what the State does, the State ought to do well. True; and if Maynooth has proved a national blessing, and is entitled to distinctive rewards, by all means let the State reward it, and do it well. But if Maynooth can be proved to have been, within its limits, rather a national curse, then the State's right way of doing it well is to root it out altogether, and endow in its stead the Kildare, or other scriptural schools.

the Conservative government. Surely, we select men to be the organs of the principles we espouse, and the exponents of the policy we prefer, and not to be popes, whose rescripts we must bow to, whether they be consistent or not. I respect Sir Robert Peel-I revere and defer to the Word of God. I respect him so much, that I cannot worship him. The path of principle is the path of policy; better embarrass a party, than place in peril the most precious interests of the empire. Were a man walking blindfold to the edge of a precipice, or preparing to drink a cup of poison, would you let him walk to the one, and quietly take the other, assigning the plea, that you did not like to disturb him? The premier of England may yet live to thank your lordship and Exeter Hall for its remonstrances, and to feel that his majority on the 18th of April was his most disastrous defeat; and what seemed the laurels of the conqueror, were, in reality, only the fillets around the head of the victim.

INTELLIGENCE.

THE PRINCIPLES OF THE MAJORITIES ON THE

It is said, that this endowment will make the priests loyal. The almost invariable. rule of former times, was to reward men because they were loyal; the new process, "PRAY WITHOUT CEASING."-1 Thess. v. 17. strange as it may appear, would seem to be, to reward seditious men, in order to make them loyal. Does the warm embrace of the State generate loyalty in rebels? Is Irish loyalty a marketable article? Does loyalty leap into the priest's heart the moment the State stipend descends into his pocket? But if this new plan is tried at Maynooth, may not the rogues in the Old Bailey be paid so much a head, in order to make them honest? Thus, neither prevention-the prescription of Christian philanthropists; nor punishment-the preference of statesmen; but payment is the grand panacea for eradicating all moral evils, and fostering the contrary virtues! Endow Maynooth, and, lo! Luthers and Knoxes will go forth from its cloisters; endow Botany Bay, and Howards and Ashleys will start up in it, while its desert acres will blossom as the rose! Out on such fooleries!

But it is alleged, that by our pursuing the course we have adopted, we shall embarrass

Published under

THE PROTESTANT

At F. BAISLER'S

124, Oxford-street;

SIMPKIN, MARSHALL & Co.

MAYNOOTH BILL IN THE TWO HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT.-1. Fifty years' practice of any iniquity will make it a holy work.-2. The professors of all reliwith religious consolation according to their respecgions, whatever their quality, ought to be provided tive tenets.-3. If a man is dying in a state of relirmed in his delusion.-4. If the tenets of any religious delusion, he ought by all means to be congionists be bad, they ought to be furnished with abundant means of teaching their tenets, as the religion have numerous professors, it is a work of surest way of destroying them.-5. If any false mercy, benevolence, and goodness to support it.6. In the government of nations, the word of Burke is more to be heeded than the word of God.-7. The having sworn that a religious system is idolatrous, is not inconsistent with the cultivation of such idolatrous system.-8. That having engaged to drive away all false doctrine, is not inconsistent with the encouragement of false doctrine.

Correspondent of the Record.

On Monday afternoon, the 16th June, the Earl of Winchilsea had an audience of Her Majesty, and jesty, against the Maynooth Endowment Bill. The presented 348 memorials and addresses to Her Maobject of the petitioners was to entreat Her Majesty

to withold her Royal assent from the Bill till the sense of the nation had been taken by a general election.

[blocks in formation]

W. DAVY & SON,]

LONDON:

Seven Shillings per Hundred, for Distribution.

[Gilbert-street.

[merged small][graphic][subsumed][merged small][merged small][merged small][merged small]

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

[blocks in formation]

A SKETCH OF OUR DANGER,
AND AN EXHORTATION
TO DUTY.

VOL. VI.

out to the soul of man; whilst her own apostate sytem is painted in the most attractive colours, represented as different to that which all history, both ecclesiastical and of the annals of martyrdom, declares it to be, and it is brought up somewhat to the mark of Protestantism in the professed absence from its system, of all that is notoriously unscriptural. Besides which, the priests, the sisters of charity, and a male visiting society, as well as a thousand agencies set at work by the Jesuits, lie in wait at every turn to wheedle, and buy, and entrap the unwary Protestant into Popery.

OUR readers well know that Popery is spreading very rapidly. In political power it has acquired an immense influence in this country, since the passing of the Roman Catholic Relief Act in 1829: each session we hear of some fresh demand by Popish agitators, which, in spite of the voice of the nation, is conceded by a faithless legislature. The cormorant appetite of the Papacy, we may rest assured, will never be satisfied until it has obtained all we have to give. The It cannot be denied that watchfulness and religious influence of the Church of Rome activity on the part of Protestants, are more in this country, is diffusing itself throughout needful now than at any period since the the land to a most fearful extent; and the Reformation. Protestants must make themmummeries and idolatries of Popery, which selves thoroughly conversant with the Word our Protestant forefathers once flung from of God, for the Bible is, undoubtedly, the them with holy horror, are again embraced "best weapon against Popery;" furnishing by many of their degenerate descendants. the most complete exposure of that apostate That this is a fact which cannot be denied, we system, and the best arguments to be offered well know; from amongst ignorant and cre- in reply to the sophistry of the Popish addulous Protestants, Popery is constantly vocate. With the Scriptures in his hand, gaining converts. To this end, she gets up assisted by the Holy Spirit who dictated pompous and theatrical shows, she circulates them, the humblest Protestant Operative artfully written tracts, depreciating Protest- need not fear to meet the most clever Papist, antism and exalting her own wicked system, whether layman or priest. As a valuable representing the former as a new religion, auxiliary to the Bible, there are many parts without Divine and Apostolical authority, of the controversy between the Church of harsh in its requirements, false in its creed, Rome and Protestants, with which our Opeand unsatisfactory in the prospects it holds rative friends ought to be familiar; the

"Manual," translated from the French of Dr. Malan, the first part of which appears in the present number, affords valuable information, and is easy and interesting in its style. It may be read with much advantage. We would, therefore, urge on our Operative friends the necessity of exertion. Let them be up and doing. The enemies of our Protestantism are emboldened by the success of their attacks, and the cowardice of the professed defenders of our dearest rights. We must offer a bold and manful resistance, or we are undone ourselves, our children, and our country, compelled to succumb to the Man of Sin, or suffer the martyr's fate. Let us remember that all we hold most dear is at stake, and calculate accordingly all that which our families, our country, our religion, and God, require of usand act at once and with vigour. Prayer and honest Protestant exertion have often been successful; and why not again? Let us try!

MANUAL OF THE TRUE
PROTESTANT;

Or, Short Answers of a Disciple of the Bible to the principal questions of the Romish controversy. By Dr. Cæsar Malan of Geneva. (Translated from the French.)

FIRST CONTROVERSY-THE BIBLE.

A Stranger.-I come from afar. I read the Bible, and other books also; and as I am earnestly solicited to enter the Church of Rome, I desire to know what you, who are called a Protestant, think of that Church. I wish you then to hear me with patience, and answer me; and first tell me, I pray you, what is a Protestant?

A Disciple of the Bible.-A Protestant, or a Reformed, or a Huguenot, is a Christian, who believing the Bible, and the whole Bible, protests against everything that is not in accordance with the Bible; whether in doctrine or in practice.

Stranger.-What is the origin of these three names?

Disciple.-All three accord with the Bible. First, in 1529, at Spires, biblical Christians having protested against certain pretensions of the Romish Church, the name of Protest ant became from thence that of the disciples of the Bible. At the same time, many eminent men, such as Luther. Zwingle, Bullinger, Viret, Farel, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Calvin, Knox, and others, having reformed the doctrine and government of the Church, according to the Bible, the Christians who regarded these reformers as ministers of God, were called Reformed. And last, about the

same period, the reformed Christians of German Switzerland, having declared themselves eidgenossen, or bound by oath, as to the Bible, they were called, in France, at first Eigenots, afterwards Huguenots.

Stranger. But is it not considered that the last name is one of insult?

Disciple.-You see that it is, on the contrary, a very high encomium, since it signifies decidedly faithful to the Bible.

Stranger. But a priest with whom I have conversed frequently, has positively assured me that this Luther and Calvin, of whom you speak, were not very worthy men. What do you think?

Disciple. That if that were true, they were not so despicable as many of the If then the Popes whom I could name. argument is against Luther and Calvin, it is much more against the Popes of Rome. But recommend the priest to read without prejudice the life, writings, and familiar letters of those two men of God, and I am sure, if he does that, he will retract his assertion.

Stranger. And you tell me that it was the Bible to which the Reformers gave the pre-eminence?

Disciple.-Only the Bible.

Stranger. They are then neither reformed nor Protestant who do not believe the Bible? Disciple.-The Bible is the testimony of God. He who does not believe it, makes God a liar; and such a man is not called a Christian. (1 John v. 10.)

Stranger. It was not then a new religion that the Reformers preached?

Disciple. When they reformed the calendar, they corrected it, but they did not make another. So, after that Rome had, by degrees, perverted its belief from all conformity with the Bible, God raised up, in the 16th century, and precisely when that corruption was at its height, men who, by the reading of the Bible, discerned this corruption, made it known to the world, and repaired that which Rome had defaced.

Stranger. Why did the priest say to a Protestant, in my presence, "Where was your religion before Luther and Calvin?"

Disciple.-Because, most probably, the priest had not read, or reflected, or was wanting in frankness. He has not read, since he is ignorant that long before the Reformation, the same doctrine which the Protestants now believe, was preserved from apostolical times, among divers people, and even in the great Churches of Europe and Asia.

Stranger.-Are you certain of that fact? Disciple.-I am certain! For example, was it not Vasco de Gama who in the 16th century, found near the extremity of the East Indies, which he discovered, the hun

« ZurückWeiter »