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dred Churches of St. Thomas, founded, he was informed, by the Apostle Thomas himself, and of which the Sacred Books, the doctrine and the worship, were almost entirely the same as they are among Protestants; with this difference, however, that those Churches had not even heard there was a Romish Church in the world? And as to Europe, was not that already the Protestant religion, that was professed by the ancient Cathares or Puritans of Germany, the Vaudois of Piedmont, the Albigeois of Languedoc, the Wickliffites and Lollards of England, and many other congregations, both in France, and also in Italy and Spain?

Prophecy has declared this, in making mention of the Two Witnesses, who spoke not to the world, it is true, when under oppression, but who did nevertheless, from the first ages of Christianity, and with forcibleness, whether in the East, by the Paulicians, or in the West, by the Poor of the Valleys and of Lyons. (Rev. xi. 3.)

Thus, to give you only one example, when about the year 1530, some of the reformed of Switzerland were deputed to Merindol in Provence, to confer with the ancient Vaudois, who had built that city, did they not find them of the same religion entirely as that of the Reformers; and was it not from the synod of that city, at that time called The City of God, that the first impression of the French Protestant Bible was issued? There being certainty on this point, you see that your priest is deficient in reading.

He needs also reflection, since he does not appear to understand that if the Reformers taught the people according only to the Bible, their religion was in the Bible before any of the Reformers lived.

But last, perhaps this priest is deficient in frankness in feigning ignorance of the history of the Church-Here I cannot decide.

Stranger.-Tell me, I pray you, what marked difference is there between a Protestant and a Catholic?

Disciple. It is wrong to term a member of the Romish Church a Catholic. The Greek word catholic signifies universal: it is then an absurdity to call that universal which is only partial; if I affirm that one street only is the whole town, I should be convicted of folly. So the member of the Romish Church who calls himself catholic, shews that he does not understand what he says.

Stranger. What term then am I to use? Disciple.-Say Romanist, if you have Rome in view; or Papist, if you are speaking of anything in connection with the Pope. Stranger. What is there then so opposite between a Protestant and a Romanist? Disciple.-As I have said, the Protestant

believes in the whole Bible, and receives it only. The Romanist, on the contrary, on the one hand, does not receive the whole Bible, and on the other hand, receives that which is not the Word of God.

Stranger. It is the Bible then which makes all the difference?

Disciple.-Is not that enough? The Bible is the Word of God; to cover it up, or to take away any part of it, or to doubt it, is not this mocking God?

Stranger.-Does the Romish Church commit this evil?

Disciple.-First, she keeps back, or disguises, almost the whole of the Ten Commandments of the Law of God, when in place of repeating them as the Bible gives them, she cites them in other terms, or in a very incomplete or even erroneous manner.

Next, she keeps back the Second Commandment entirely from the knowledge of the people, which prohibits, and with great threatenings, the introduction of images into the worship of God.

Stranger.-Yet the Church of Rome has Ten Commandments of the Law?

Disciple. She has made two of the Tenth. But she certainly has not the Second in any of her Catechisms.*

Stranger. And how does the Romish Church explain this?

Disciple. She says that the Second Commandment of the Protestants is only the explanation of the First; and that the threatenings and promises which accompany it, belong equally to the whole Decalogue.

But that which proves that our First and our Second Commandments are really two commands, and not one only, is that they describe two different crimes, and which sometimes are not connected the one with the other.

Thus, the First Commandment prohibits Polytheism, which may exist without images. This has been and may still be seen among certain idolaters of Persia. They have many Gods, but they do not represent them.

The Second Commandment, on the other hand, prohibits Imagism, or Idolism, which may exist even among those who acknowledge the one God. It is this which we see among the Romanists, who make images of the Everlasting God; and who, in that respect, are certainly idolists if they are not idolaters.

These two commandments, then, are very distinct, since the Second addresses itself to an entirely different class of idolaters to that which the First does.

where Popery wears a mask, she introduces the chisms.-TR.

* In other countries it is so; but in England,

Second Commandment into some of her Cate

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Disciple. I think that the Bible opposes it, since that Commandment is only one and the same command. That which proves it is, that when the Commandment is repeated, in Deut. (v.), the words are not in the same order that they are in Exodus (xx.).

There the house of the neighbour is named before his wife; and in Deuteronomy it is the reverse.

There can be no question, then, that these two passages relate to one and the same command, which both comprehend, although in a different order, all that which belongs to our neighbour; for if the Lord had directed they should be two distinct commandments, they would not have been set forth in Exodus in a different manner to the passage in Deuteronomy.

But that which is astonishing in this affair is, that the Catechism of Trent has taken the house of the neighbour (that is to say, his goods) as the subject of the Ninth Commandment, whilst other Romish catechisms have taken the wife.

We behold, then, by that which is but one commandment of God, the Church of Rome interdicts sometimes one thing and some

times another!

(To be continued.)

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.

(Continued from page 56.) But it is urged-" You clergymen are becoming politicians." It is not in my judg

ment a mere political question, with which I have nothing to do; but a great Protestant question. And if it be true that it involves such interests as have been referred to, and implies such sacrifices as I have stated, I do think a clergyman may be pardoned for coming down for once from his pulpit and appearing on this platform. Were some pupil of Dominus Dens to point a pistol at your lordship's head, would any one say, if I rose to dash aside his hand, "Pray, do not step out of the minister's province; to protect your lordship, and keep the peace, the duty of the policeman"? I am sure I do not miscalculate the feelings of this great assembly, when I assert, you would forgive the pastor for becoming for the moment the policeman. But the priests of Maynooth are presenting, not a pistol, but arranging a masked battery of cannon for the destruction of our most hallowed institutions, and the nation is about to supply the artillerymen and ammunition, unconscious of the danger; and I should be unfaithful to my Church, my country, and my God, if I did not raise the solemn warning, and openly protest against it. Quiescence would be treachery, neutrality cowardice, and silence sin.

I trust we are not approximating to the example of France, in which all religions are endowed. Surely the fruits that France has borne, do not commend her as a precedent in this. A restless populace, and a rocking throne, are emphatically hers. Do we envy this? I must say, that rather than acquiesce in the French system, which endows all sects and creeds-the teachers of idolatry, and the preachers of truth, much as I love the Church of my fathers, I would say-Perish both our establishments to their very foundations. Such endowment would not be impartiality—it would be infidelity ; it would not be liberality—it would be latitudinarianism; and, attached as I am to the Church of Scotland, desirous (if God enable me) to live and die in that Church, yet if such attachment implied, as, thank God, it does not yet, approval of this principle, I would, with Mr. Hamilton, leave it. Such policy, I trust, we shall none of us live to see in the councils of the land; and such sacrifices will then be uncalled for.

But say some-"You have already en

dowed Episcopacy in England, and Presbytery in Scotland, and why not Romanism in Ireland?" The best reply will be the shortest : you have given Englishmen wheaten bread, and Scotchmen oatmeal cakes, and why not give Irishmen arsenic, or prussic acid? If Church endowments be right, it is because they are the endowments of

truth.

On no inferior ground can any such national support of a Church be worthy of defence.

It is, surely, (I put it to Protestant statesmen,) a painful consideration, that we are asked to contribute, through the channels of national support, to the manufactory of priests, that they may spread like locusts throughout the country, and for the maintenance of a system, which infects the whole social atmosphere with suspiciousness which sends an argus-eyed police into all the relationships of life, which poisons the well-springs of social being, and ultimately rouses the nations that have suffered from its success, to pass penal enactments against it, in order to save themselves from utter prostration. You must never suffer the Church of Rome to become the Irish National Establishment, should such an attempt be made by any party. Your illustrious Reformers watch you from their beds of glory. They adjure you by their re-opening wounds to be faithful-to hand down to your children, if not improved, at least not impaired, the blood-bought heritage they left you; and woe to our children, if we shrink from duty, because it may come once more to be set in perilous responsibility. We must yet learn to see in sainted martyrs, not phenomena, whose brilliant transit through the world proclaims their having been here, but in each a projection only of our own soul, an ordinary model for us and others to imitate.

I rejoice to see, that this unhappy measure is being overruled for good. It was thought, by some, that Protestantism was dead; it turns out to have been only asleep—culpably, I admit, but yet only asleep. It waited for the stamp of some foot firm and energetic enough to rouse it from its slumbers. It waited till it heard a voice, "sleep no more," and it rose, and now fills broad England with its enthusiasm, and we hope, ere long, wide Europe with its thunders. Like Sampson, deceived and beguiled, it had been too long sleeping upon the lap of apathy, but it no sooner heard the shout, "The Philistines be upon thee," than it recollected the secret springs of its indomitable power, shook again its locks of strength, and put on its attributes of grandeur, its robes of victory. Let it now act. It will reimburse itself. Let its prescriptions be practically and powerfully displayed. I do not prescribe to you how to act in elections, except so far as Moses does, whose criteria are sound. But this much I will say; whether you vote for Tories or for Whigs, vote for none but sound-hearted Protestants. Permit me to

teach you by an anecdote. I have read of a nobleman who advertised for a coachman. He asked the first applicant, an Englishman, how near he could drive to a precipice without driving over it; the man replied, he thought within six feet. The next candidate was a Scotchman; and as we are much more cannie, and are supposed more anxious not to lose a good situation that may offer, le said he would undertake to drive safely within three feet of a precipice. Then came an Irishman, and when he was asked, "how near to a precipice would you undertake to drive your master without peril?"-he answered, “Oh! please your honour, I would drive you the farthest off from it possible." "That's the coachman for me," was the reply. Now do not elect the member who pirouettes upon the edge, or within six or three feet of the precipice of Popery; but choose the representative, who, whatever else he do, will drive you the farthest possible from it.

Let me ask you too, not to be discouraged in this great controversy. You are too prone to be so. Irishmen will, Englishmen may, but we Scotchmen never; we have a love to our country, an attachment to our Church, and a loyalty to our Queen, that do not falter in the worst, nor weary in the best of times. Learn something of the spirit of a countryman of mine, a Highland piper, who was taken prisoner at, I think, the battle of Waterloo. Napoleon was struck with his mountain dress and his sinewy limbs, and asked him to play on his instrument, so unmusical in your Anglican ears, but which, I assure you, sounds magnificent in our glens and mountains and grey moors. "Play a Pibroch," said Napoleon; and the Highlander played it. "Play a march;" it was done. 66 Play a retreat;" "Na, na," said Donald, "I never learned to play a retreat." No Protestant retreat-I say; play any march or movement you like, but no retreat.

The great principles involved in this question are unspeakably important. If I might venture to unfold the reverend auspices of our beloved land, and to cast its great horoscope in that sky in which nations have waxed and empires waned, I would solemnly declare, that the crisis seems rapidly arriving around which will gather and converge destinies for good or evil, decisive and final. At such a period there ought to be less of mere excitement and personal feeling, and more of deep-toned and fervent prayer, that God would put it into the hearts of our ministers and statesmen, and our most gracious Queen, to stand stedfast still to "the

THE DOCTRINE OF HUMAN

MERIT.

WE ought to bear in mind that error is much more likely to make progress when it comes under the mantle of truth, than when it stands forth in all its naked deformity. Had Rome denied the great doctrines of the Trinity and the Atonement, many would have started back with horror who have now taken their place within her pale. But this she does not, but rather aims at endorsing every error with some Scriptural truth. Thus her first justification is at baptism, and her second justification is by penance, or the satisfaction which the sinner makes for sins committed after baptism; and because men (she asserts) seldom pay all their debts in their life, she has found out a place called Purgatory, where they are to be cleansed from their remaining pollution. In all these steps of self-justification, she takes care to introduce the Saviour's name, and teaches that where the sinner comes short, the merits of the Redeemer must be thrown into the scale of Divine justice to make up our deficiencies.

faith once delivered to the saints." The transforming all she touches, till "the GenChurch of God in England's heart is the tiles see her righteousness, and all kings her secret of the stability and splendour of the glory." crown on England's brow. Both must flourish and fall together. Like Jacob of old, we may wrestle during the long dark night, but the morning will burst in benedictions around us. It was said that the bones of the patriarch Joseph, in their Egyptian sepulchre, were to the Israelites the pledge that God would revisit them, and deliver them and carry them to Canaan. Upon the moors of Scotland, and in England's Smithfield, there reposes the sacred dust of illustrious Reformers the awful pledges that God will yet have mercy upon us, and that the hour of our visitation, shall prove the hour of our triumphant and glorious deliverance. For the Church of God I have no fears. God has her walls continually before Him. Her destiny is linked with the throne of heaven. Should we be driven from our altars, our pulpits, our Churches, and our Chapels, by rampant Romanism, the God that built the universe, and gemmed the sky with all its stars, will build us temples. Persecution itself will protect us. The hills will be our castles, the tangled thicket our palisado, and the living God our ally. The Gospel in our country, however, let us not forget, is the life-blood of all its institutions -the oxygen of our atmosphere; Christianity is the parent oak, around which social prosperity and riches rise and grow, dependent on it for support, and feeding on its juices. Destroy it-cut it down-and you may write upon the altars and churches and palaces of England, "Ichabod, Ichabodthe glory is departed."

But I am not without bright anticipations of the ultimate issue. Clouds, however black, are not eternal nor immutable. The holy cause of heaven shall not want upholders, nor sufferers if needs be. Christianity shall yet emerge from the tents of Mesech and the tabernacles of Kedar, leaving behind her the scenes of her bondage, and put on her coronation robes, and move by universal love to universal empire, the emancipatrix of the oppressed-the ambassadress of heaven-the benefactress of the earth. And wheresoever upon God's earth the finger of antichrist has written Mara, bitterness; there, in deep, illuminated and imperishable letters, the finger of Jesus shall inscribe Naomi, beautiful. The grandeur of the man shall shine in all the glory of the saint; and we shall be called Hephzibah, and our land, no longer Ichabod, but Beulah; and the Church of Jesus shall go forth with all the speed and splendour of an angel's wing,

All this ministers to the pride of man, and makes the Roman system most palatable to the generality of mankind. Our Reformers saw through this deadly mixture; they aimed at restoring the pure doctrines of Christianity by removing the poison in which Rome had buried them. With the inspired Apostle they exclaimed — “God forbid that we should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus !". "Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth." They cast away these idle distinctions of a first and second justification, and proclaimed their firm belief, "that we are accounted righteous before God, only for the merit of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ by faith, and not for our own works or deservings;" (Art. xi.)—and then they proceeded to show that Romanism is a systematic attempt to throw into the back ground the glory of the Saviour's finished work, by placing the creature on the pedestal of human merit.

If men are charmed with self, and their own poor efforts, they will side with Rome. The bait will succeed, and they will find it much easier to try and make atonement in sackloth and ashes, than to strip off the mantle of self-righteousness at the foot of the Redeemer's Cross.-Rev. W. Dalton.

CABINET.

PRAYER." And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray." Prayer was a sacred and habitual engagement to the Man of Sorrows, which nothing was permitted to suspend or to interrupt. Neither the weariness and fatigue of his body, caused by the labours of the day, nor the necessities of his disciples, who were struggling, in weakness and fear, with the dangers of the storm, could prevent him from attending to his private devotions. How many, who call themselves his followers, are often ready to urge their laborious occupations during the day, as an excuse for neglecting prayer at night! And how many sometimes think that they are serving God, when they allow even the duties of benevolence and the calls of mercy, to take up that time which should ever be appropriated by an inviolable dedication to the offering of their regular sacrifices of praise, thanksgiving, and prayer! Let such persons be well assured, that God is not honoured by their allowing the claims of one duty to interfere with those of another. But what a proof is here presented to our minds of the value and the necessity of prayer! Jesus, the Man of Sorrows, was emphatically and pre-eminently a man of prayer! He never entered upon the path of duty or of trial without having first offered up prayers and supplications, with strong crying and tears, unto Him that was able to save him from death. And if prayer was needful for the Saviour, shall any of his professing followers be found to deny its value, or to question its necessity ?*

INTELLIGENCE.

"PRAY WITHOUT CEASING."-1 Thess. v. 17.

Clare, Suffolk.-The Annual Meeting of the Clare Protestant Association was held in the School Room, on Tuesday, July 22nd, Colonel Baker in the chair. The meeting was opened with prayer by the Rev. J. Hopkins, after which the Report was read by the Secretary, and the following Resolutions were passed:-Moved by Geo. Arden, Esq. Seconded by the Rev. W. L. Suttaby-"That the Report now read be adopted and printed." Moved by James Lord, Esq., Seconded by Rev. J. Hopkins-" That the events of the present Session of Parliament, especially with reference to the Bill for Endowing Maynooth College, show the necessity of increased and continued efforts on the part *From "The Disciples in the Storm." By the Rev. Daniel Bagot, Edinburgh.

of true Protestants, to resist the progress of the Church of Rome." Moved by Rev. W. Curling, Seconded by Rev. L. Bull-" That as it appears to be the intention of various parties to endow the Church of Rome in Ireland, this meeting is of opinion, that it becomes the bounden duty of all those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in sincerity and truth, and value the institutions of their country, to resist any such measure, as fraught with danger to their best and dearest

interests." We regret that want of space prevents our adding more, but we hope to notice the interesting Report in our next

number.

ENGLAND.-Aylesbury. The priest, who eighteen months ago, established a Popish mission in this town, is appealing for funds to build a Mass-house. Leyland, Lancashire.-A Mass-house will be commenced shortly in this town. Ross, Herts.-The Popish mission in this town has been reestablished. Blackmore End, near Worcester. -A Popish Church and Monastery are being built in this neighbourhood. Great Marlow, Bucks. -The 2nd of July, the foundation stone of a Popish Church was laid at this place by Dr. Waring, VicarApostolic of the Eastern District. It is to be built at the sole expence of Mr. Scott Murray, the late convert to Popery. About 1500 persons were present; there are but 6 Papists in the neighbourhood. Burnley, Lancashire. - The Roman Catholics are about to erect a splendid Church, School, and Presbytery, or priest's residence, in the immediate neighbourhood of Burnley, at an estimated cost of about £6000.-Preston Guardian. Preston. The house of the Sisters of Charity, adjoining St. Ignatius' Church, is forthwith to be considerably enlarged, in order to accommodate a greater number of the sisterhood.-IBID. Liverpool. -Wednesday, July 9th, the first stone of the Jesuit's Grand Church, in Liverpool, sisted by the Coadjutor, Bishop Sharples. was laid by Bishop Brown. He was asA lengthened line of clergy formed the procession. Probably a greater body of Jesuits has not been witnessed for many a long year, publicly engaged together in so (un) holy a cause in England.-Tablet.

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IRELAND.-Achill.-A priest, named Monahan, is in Dublin, soliciting contributions to complete the erection of two Masshouses in the neighbourhood of Achill. The Jesuits.-The Jesuits have established themselves and their schools, within the last few years, in and near the City of Dublin, in the following places, viz.-in the magnificent house, late the residence of the Earl of

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