Lectures on the Prophecies, proving the Divine Origin of Christianity: delivered in the Chapel of the Hon. Society of Lincoln's Inn, on the Foundation of the late Bishop Warburton.-By ALEXANDER M'CAUL, D.D., Professor of Divinity in King's College, and Prebendary of St. Paul's. London: 1846, pp. 171. John W. Parker, West Strand. THESE are lectures on a portion of Holy Writ which it appears to us is not sufficiently brought forward in these days. Science may delight the intellectual, but intellect, whilst it will not be

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clouded by religion, will be sanctified, hallowed, and improved by it.

Intellect, unsanctified by religion, is one characteristic of the lost spirits.

Intellect, pervaded by the hallowed influences of a pure religion, conduces at once to the utility and happiness of men. He can then best render to his Maker a reasonable service.

The lectures before us invite, and will receive, attention, as all the productions of Dr. M'Caul must do.

It is, however, to the last two that our attention has been more especially given, because they treat on a subject which has ever occupied our earnest thoughts.

The subject of these two lectures is, the fulfilment of the New Testament prophecies in the history of the Roman Church.

In Lecture VI. the following im"The very portant passages occur. words marked out by the apostles :'Mother of harlots' is that which

Rome adopts as her distinctive title a title necessarily distinctive; for Church, and one Church alone, can there cannot be many mothers. One lay claim to maternity. The Church of Rome declares she is that one, the only Church that ever pretended and righteous judgment of God to be the universal mother. O just

upon her presumption ! O merciful dispensation of an all-wise Providence! O marvellous and judicial blindness of usurping Rome, that led her to adopt not only the character, but the very word specified by the Holy Spirit as the characteristic of

the false and faithless Church, the pretender to catholicity. In her most solemn, her peculiar profession of faith, she calls herself the Mother of Churches, and their boasted uniformity of faith, and uniformity of worship, proclaims them to be harlots like herself. She is mother of harlots, and mother of their abominations. She claims to be, and they acknowledge her, as the centre of their unity, and the source of their doctrine. Thus far, then, the pseudo-catholicity of Rome proves that St. John was a true prophet. All that he has predicted concerning her idolatry and her diffusiveness has been fulfilled. We can compare what we now see with

what the prophet wrote, and the evidence of our senses will prove the Divine inspiration of the prediction. But there is another feature still so dreadful, so revolting, so unlike Christianity, as to cause some hesitation, or even to raise a doubt of the correctness of the prophetic picture, or, at least, of the propriety of the application. "St. John goes on to say, 'I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.' Is it possible that any community, calling itself Christian, and professing faith in the meek and merciful Jesus, should be found imbruing its hands in the blood even of idolaters or persecutors? Is it conceivable that any Church, even of heretics, not to speak of that society which calls itself the Church, the true Church, the only spouse and bride of Christ, should have to answer for the blood of the saints, and of the martyrs of Jesus. The wildest imagination could never have fancied anything more abhorrent from the spirit of Christianity. The feverish dreams of the wicked could hardly produce an image more unworthy of the Gospel. And yet it has been pourtrayed by the pencil of inspiration. St. John presents the picture of an idolatrous and pseudo-Catholic Church glutted with the blood of true and faithful Christians, and history bears witness that it is no phantom of a diseased imagination, but sober and dreadful truth."

the diplomatic corps was to be present, and had recommended him to avoid everything that could give offence, but being confined at the time to his bed by indisposition, the Nuncio had not ascertained what the Bishop intended to say. The orator, after his exordium, which embraced the whole universe, exposed the plan of his address. He commenced with France, and spoke of the commotions to which she had been exposed; deplored the scandal caused by the Eglise Française of the Abbé Châtel, and the errors of the Abbé Lamennais; and spoke of the support which, after so many trials, the Pope had found in the religious sentiments of the country, and in the virtues and piety of the King. He then proceeded to speak of Prussia, and alluded to the persecution of the Bishop of Cologne, and, in the presence of the Minister of Prussia, he declared that the late King had been punished by God; he concluded, however, by an eulogium on the present King. Russia came next. He commenced by calling the Emperor the modern Tamerlane stigmatized with great energy the persecution of the Catholics and the Poles: and then alluding to the interview between the northern despot and the late Pope, called Gregory XIV., another St. Leo, arresting in his nefarious designs the new Attila; and all this in presence of the Russian Minister! Spain, Portugal, and England

were treated with the same consideration; but what was strange is, that not a word was said relative to Aus

tria; Prussia and Russia had all the honours of his attack. It is said that the Ministers of these two Powers demanded explanations from the Nuncio, and received an assurance that he had no previous knowledge of the address. However, it is certain that this grave attack from a man so high in the Church has caused a great sensation."

DEVELOPMENT OF TRAC

TARIANISM.

BUT an express PROHIBITION to pay any worship, however sophistically disguised or verbally modified, to a creature, can never, consistently or rationally, be developed into the Idolatrous Worship of Mary.

In truth, the miserable expedient of this same System of Development seems to shew pretty clearly that both Tractarianism and Popery (the latter, as it has been justly remarked by one of the recent perverts, being the necessary and inevitable development of the former) are reduced to the last extremity.

Most curious and instructive is it to note, how, step by step, the ground originally taken up has been abandoned.

(1). At first, both Tractarians and Papists boldly appealed to the evidence of Primitive Antiquity. Such was the language of Dr. Pusey and Mr. Newman: and such was the famous boast of the Tridentine Council, This Faith was ALWAYS in the Church of God.

(2). On this ground they have been met, with a distinct challenge to pro

."-Isaiah viii. 20.

VOL. VII.

duce EVIDENCE: and, after every effort of fabrication and falsification, they silently, descended from the earlier Fathers to the later Fathers; having now discovered, that the fourth and fifth centuries were the Golden Age of the Church, and that it required full three hundred years to lick the unformed Church of the Apostles into a tolerably presentable shape.

(3). Still, though the later Fathers may have aided them on some points; aid, most valueless, without the corroboration of the earlier: still even these were found insufficient to support the entire huge Babel of scripturally unauthorized Human Inventions.

(4). Baffled and perplexed, yet judicially hardened in their Apostasy, they next, under the auspices of Dr. Moehler and Mr. Newman, resorted to that ingenious modification of the Quidlibet ex quolibet, that painful extraction of sunbeams out of cucumbers, which is celebrated as The Theory of Development: a theory, which brings out the notable result that, the further we are removed from the apostolic age, the more pure and

K

;

the more complete will be our Christianity.

(5). Yet even that wretched prop gives way: and so, at length, " sith❜t will no better be," we are exhorted, with the joint COUNTER-EVIDENCE of both Scripture and Antiquity alike staring us in the face, to resort to the Personal Infallibility of the Pope and the so called Catholic Church, as they happen to exist for the time being: Mr. Newman assuring us that he has searched the Bible without the least emolument, and Dr. Moehler rapidly settling the matter by the profound dictum that Christ and the Church are strictly identical, and consequently that by virtue of this identification the Church must inevitably be infallible.

3. If such miserable drivelling were not awful, as shewing, how persons, who receive not the love of the truth, may be judicially given up to strong delusion that they should believe their own lie, it would be positively ludicrous.

The ground, originally taken up, has been entirely shifted. Nor does the disgrace attach to only a single shift: it descends, with perpetual increase, to a succession of mutations. To maintain the cherished lie, per fas atque nefas, is necessary to the position (as Mr. Newman speaks) of both Tractarian and Papist. The original ground of EVIDENCE, therefore, must be relinquished: and the dupes of the silliest System, which human folly ever excogitated, are finally expected to give in their degraded adhesion, not only without, but against

EVIDENCE.

4. Nevertheless, this state of things, this complete successive shifting of the original ground, this alacrity of sinking from one level to another, is a happy augury for the future. The force of folly can no further go: and, though Tractarianising Popery, like a hunted wild-beast, may finally stand at bay, and may even, through the astounding folly of Modern Liberalism, which seems more inclined to patronise falsehood than truth (for it can scarcely be said to hold them in equal estimation), acquire once more the old and venerable power of persecution for conscience sake; yet the voice of Prophecy, most remarkably

corroborated by the signs of the times, distinctly announces, and that at no distant period, the final triumph of sound Religion and the final destruction of the grand Apostasy. We have, indeed, to encounter a time of previous trouble such as never was since there was a nation: but, unless the Bible be an imposture, the end itself is certain.

Meanwhile, by this successful and successive driving of Tractarianism and Popery from one line of defence to another, until, at length, the very citadel, the last resource, is invested: we may behold the Lord gradually consuming the Lawless One, with the spirit of his mouth, and may thus confidentially anticipate his final destruction by the brightness of Christ's still more sensible presence.

That the insolent spirit of domineering tyranny and antichristian persecution is as strong as ever in the harlot Church of Rome, is abundantly clear from the scandalous conduct of the Popish Priesthood in Ireland and of the wretched dupes whom they employ as their tools. Without danger to life and property, no man can quit the ranks of the Apostasy, which our wise Government, after solemnly declaring it to be IDOLATROUS, delights in defiance of an insulted God, to honour and foster and cocker and strengthen. For a practical exemplification of this ruthless spirit in a concentrated form, we need only turn to Dingle and Achill; and, shame to say, the proceedings of the priestly tyrants have actually been encouraged by the infidel approbation of nominal Protestants, while these same nominal Protestants have liberally volunteered their services to calumniate the victims of Popery.

The effort, so conspicuously now making, both in England and on the Continent, to resuscitate the Apostasy, is, I believe, chronologically the last: nor is it anything more than might have been anticipated from the sure, though madly slighted, voice of Prophecy. The Ottoman Empire totters to its fall and the three spirits of Hellish Infidelity, Despotic Anarchy, and Jesuitical Popery, are already engaged in their allied predicted voca

tion. The peace of Europe and of the world apparently rests upon the life of a single wise old man. When the obstacle presented by this modern Sobrino shall have been removed, the demons of discord, now scarcely repressed, will be let loose. Revolution will elevate the successful soldier, the revived Buonaparte, of the day, to the imperial throne of military despotism. Then will follow, or rather then will be continued, that fearful material universal war, which is foretold by all the prophets, as occurring at the time of the end and synchronically with the restoration of Israel. And then Popery, budding as it has ever done into Lawlessness and Infidelity, partly through the loathliness of its own corruptions, and partly through such desperate arguments as constitute at once the delicia and the forlorn hope of Mr. Newman and the Romish Priesthood: then Popery, allied with the great God-denying Antichrist, the False Prophet associated with the apostatic Secular Empire under its last governing head, will, by some extraordinary process of violence, come to its end, none helping it.

If we expect a gradual gliding into a new golden age through the medium of peace and prosperity, the nations, as the modern phrase confidently runs, becoming too wise to rush any more into war: we shall, I fear, find ourselves grievously disappointed. The present lull is nothing more than the predicted interval of mercy, placed between the two constituent portions of the last great woe. That no repentance has occurred, no turning away from idols to serve the living God, the present state of what is called Christendom sufficiently shews. THEREFORE may we expect those tremendous judgments, through which we must pass, as all the prophets testify, ere we reach that blissful season, when war shall be no more, when real Christianity shall universally prevail, and when a king, through the agency of his faithful servants, shall reign in righteousness. -From Letters of the Rev. G. S. Faber on Tractarian Secession to Popery, now published by the Protestant Association.

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A POLITICAL DREAM, IN MAY, 1821,

AFTER JOHN BUNYAN.

AFTER hearing the debates in a certain great House on the question of giving political power to Roman Catholics in this Protestant country, I returned home at three in the morning, and being exhausted by the attention I had given to all the speakers, I threw myself on a sofa and fell fast asleep. And as I slept, I dreamed that I approached an ancient castle, surmounted by four turrets:-near to this building was a crowd of people holding a consultation, apparently on some important subject. I inquired of a person who was passing, the name of the place, and the cause of the assembly. He informed me that I was on Tower Hill, and that the crowd was composed of the neighbouring inhabitants, who were then considering the merits of a Petition which had been presented to them from the wild beasts who had inhabited the Tower, praying emancipation from confinement, and an equal participation in all rights and privileges possessed by every tame and harmless animal in the metropolis-also admission to the Select Vestry of the parish, and a share in all offices, emoluments, and advantages, at present enjoyed by the resident inhabitants and householders.

I thought I was in time to hear the Petition read; and it set forth, among other things, "that the brutes were, properly speaking, lords of the creation, being created previously to man: that they were also the original inhabitants and possessors of the British Isles, which were infested by wolves, and other wild animals, before they were discovered by man: that, although they did not deny the truth of certain histories respecting the cruelties, murders, and enormities of many of their progenitors, nor even that they had been sworn enemies both to the human race and to all tame animals, yet that ever since they had become their fellow-parishioners in the Tower they had lived harmlessly and peaceably, molesting no one, and neither biting, tearing, nor devouring anything but