on its throne as the one judge and dispenser of one revealed faith, and the guardian of religion throughout the world-it can also rationalise, and scoff, and act the sceptic, and liberal, and utilitarian-even blaspheme, when necessary to gain its end, and that end universal dominion.* We say to the nineteenth century-beware of Popery. It has its arms against you, as well as against the ages of so-called darkness. You have minds sickened at the low, vulgar, materialism of the day-and Popery has a spiritual mask, and can clothe itself as a saint or a martyr. You are distracted by doubt and dissensions-and Popery offers you a rock on which to rest above the battles of opinion. Society is rent and torn from top to bottom-and Popery will undertake to make it whole. The whole body of thought is lying sick or dead by the departure of the soul of religion-Popery will promise to restore its life. Governments are broken up by rebellion-Popery will support them with its interdicts. Blasphemy and impiety are let loose by letting loose individual judgments-and Popery has a chain with which to bind them again. We hear of universal fraternisation, of liberty, equality, and peace throughout the world -Popery calls itself Christian, and Christians are a people of brothers, without distinction of place, or climate, or birth. We say again to the nineteenth century-beware of Popery. It was smitten down at the Reformation; in the next century it revived again. In the French Revolution it seemed at its death-gasp; it is now full of vigour. Never was a system constructed, so undy

In the year 1646, by order from Rome, above one hundred of the Romish clergy were sent into England, consisting of English, Scotch, and Irish, who had been educated in foreign convents for this very purpose. In these convents they had been 'set to learn the tenets, one of Presbytery, the other of Independency, others of Anabaptism,' to counterfeit, in fact, any sect opposed to that common enemy, which Rome most dreads, the Episcopal Church of England. They were entered in their convents as Franciscans, Dominicans, or Jesuits, and under various names, that when detected in one place they might escape to another. On their arrival in England they had licences from the Pope to assume and promulgate the doctrines of Presbytery, Independency, Anabaptism, or Atheism.' They taught people, as Faithful Commin, one of the most active among them, confessed, to hate the Liturgy,' 'to pray spiritually and extempore,' to despise ceremonies,' 'to profess tender consciences,' and to call a set form of words the Mass translated. They went over to Scotland, and preached up the Scotch covenants and Knox's rules and ordinations of the Kirk.' The main things,' says Archbishop Bramhall, then bishop of Derry, that they hit in our teeth are,-our bishops to be called lords; the service of the Church; the cross in baptism; confirmation; bowing at the name of Jesus; the communion-table placed altarways; our manner of consecration.' This admirable scheme was executed by order of the Pope, with the advice of his cardinals, and the plot was in several instances detected. Pray, may we ask, has there been any rebellious movement of Popery in Ireland, since the planting of the Ulster colonies, in which something of the kind was not visible among the Presbyterians of the North? It was the case in 1798. Is there no symptom of the kind at present?-No recent movement there against the Church?

6

The documents proving these facts (which are sufficiently known to clerical historians) may be found in Strype's Life of Parker,' and Archbishop Bramhall's letters in Parr's Life of Usher.' They have been reprinted in a volume of very valuable sermons, by the Rev. Francis Talford, rector of Trowbridge.

ing, so various, so universal, so capable of living in every form, under every change of circumstances, of perpetuating itself through every obstacle, of ruling over every heart-and so attesting its own internal falsity by the very extent of its reception in a corrupted world; and never, we firmly believe, was there a time more favourable to its growth, or more likely to witness its triumph, than a disorganised, latitudinarian, infidel, dissenting, luxurious, and self-willed age, calling itself enlightened. The very spirit of such an age, especially in matters of religion, is Papistical already. It despises ecclesiastical antiquity—so does Popery; her fathers are modern not ancient. It sets at nought received forms-so did Popery, by arbitrarily modifying them herself. It tampers with the mysteries of sacraments-so did Popery, by reducing them to matters of sense. It sets aside the privileges of baptism by instituting a second conversion—so does Popery, by its monastic vows. It frames new associations for itself, instead of adhering to the organisation of the Churchso does Popery, which rules not by its clergy, but by its monks. It denies the authority of bishops-so did Popery, by absorbing them in the Pope. It magnifies the Scriptures, till every one is left to read them without a guide, and without a guide the Scriptures are hard to understand-Popery does much the same, and venerates them so highly, that no one is allowed to look into them. The religious spirit of the day is clamorous against honouring our ancestors, and then chooses saints of its own, worships their memory, calls them Fathers, rules all things by their decision, encumbers the press with their biographies, makes pilgrimages to their graves, treasures up their relics, assumes their names, associates under their rules, changing only the titles from St. Bridget, St. Agatha, St. Theresa, or St. Dominic to the more modern appellation of Reverend or Miss. If Popery has its confessional, so has the religious spirit of the day; though it confesses to the public instead of to a priest, and confesses all kinds of criminality, omitting only to specify the offences, and submit to penance or humiliation. It has its raptures, its ecstasies, and miracles, and extraordinary providences, trials, and temptations; appeals to feeling instead of the understanding, irregular movements, missionary zeal, without instruction-the same as Popery. It gives absolution of sins as hastily and as dangerously, but through the conscience of the sinner instead of the voice of the priest. It undermines the authority of positive law, as much by its contempt for ordinances, as Popery does by the morality of Jesuitism; and it ends, when carried to its full extent, as naturally in Socinianism or Deism, as Popery in the sixteenth century became secretly infidel and blaspheming.

These things are not seen, or understood by the good, and

earnest,

earnest, and religious men who have been driven-in England by the coldness of a former age, and in Ireland by the immediate repulsion of Popery-into what are called Low Church views; but it is indeed needful that they should be awakened to the perilous position which they have assumed. When Rome wishes to stretch her doctrines of tyranny over a people, she excites them first to doctrines of rebellion against their king. She even encourages infidelity as a step to show the need of an infallible guide. She can rouse a spirit of disobedience to ecclesiastical discipline, that when a chaos is produced, her hand may be required to reduce it into order. She knows, and has confessed it before, and confesses at this day, that an united, disciplined, obedient Church, like that of England, fixed on the firm basis of primitive antiquity, and witnessing by historical testimony to a definite creed, is the only power which can withstand her aggression; and she rejoices at every word, which sows dissension in such a body, as her advocates do in enumerating the sects of Protestants, and as the Jesuits did, when they first introduced into England the practice of prayer-meetings.

No assurance, therefore, against the revival of Popery in England can be derived from the existence of a spirit apparently most opposed to it. There is but one firm bulwark against it, in the English Church, and in the principles of that Church fully and forcibly brought out: and whether she would have the power, under the present state of things, to do more than save a small portion from the encroachment of Popery, when once Ireland was abandoned to its rule, may well be doubted. Whether, also, England would like to be herself once more under the dominion of the Pope and the Jesuits, may be left to the advocates of civil and religious liberty, and to the readers of Fox's Book of Martyrs, and of the new edition, authorised by the titular bishops in Ireland, of Dens's Theology.

-

But there is a sight which would produce an answer to this question sooner than any reading. We have been permitting ourselves to suppose the possibility that England should withdraw the Church, or rather permit it to be extirpated from Ireland, and should yield up the whole country to Popery. We use the word Popery, not any of the smooth-sounding, apologetic titles by which the parties of whom we are speaking are so desirous to be addressed. We ask our readers do they know what Popery is in Ireland? Do they know the character and conduct of the men, to whose tender mercies it is proposed to deliver up, first Ireland, then the English interests in Ireland, and then England herself?

Those who shall attempt to lay this bare will undertake a task,

of

of which they ought fully to understand the difficulty and the danger. But the time is come when it must be undertaken, if the integrity of the empire-not to say the stability of the Church, and Christian truth in this country-is yet to be preserved. for ourselves, we are about, not to expose-this must be done by others--but to call on the English people to demand the exposure of a state of things, which, in the nineteenth century it is impossible to credit, except from experience, and which those who do experience it, seem at length to have abandoned all hope of forcing on the attention or the belief of others. Reformation societies, meetings at Exeter Hall, deputations from Ireland, public disputations, petitions to Parliament, trials in courts of justice, statements in Parliament, examinations before committees, publications by Romish priests themselves, and by converts from Popery, the reports of religious associations, portraitures in popular tales, the declarations of Irish residents, and the testimony of occasional travellers, who have had opportunities of investigating the truth, seem all to have failed in awakening Englishmen in general to any sense of its nature. With the parties who, for the most part, have brought forward these statements, we might have many grounds of difference. Public meetings are not favourable to a sober examination of truth: religious societies are not exactly the most impartial witnesses to the state of Popery. The Irish clergy who have come over to England, influenced, as we are sure they are, by the highest sense of duty, and full of intelligence and zeal, yet speak in a language and tone not grateful to the sober taste of our colder constitutions. There is, it is supposed, an habitual inaccuracy of detail in Irish stories, which throws doubt on all that is asserted; and there is, what is far more honourable to Englishmen, a profound unwillingness to believe ill of a body of men placed in the position of the Irish priests. They are ministers of religion, sworn to promote the glory of God and the peace of man; bound to enlighten the ignorant, to rebuke the offender, to support the laws, to soothe the angry, to abstain from violence themselves, and to condemn it in others; to bless when they are cursed, to give alms of all that they possess, to be constantly teaching and admonishing, to set an example of a holy, sober, and retired life, apart from the evil troubles of the world; not to be extortioners, or drunkards, or strikers, or revilers of dignities; to be, in fact, what Lord Plunket describes the Protestant clergy of Ireland to be, a most exemplary and deserving body of men,-mild, temperate, charitable, just,-on whom no praise can be bestowed which their conduct does not fully justify;' * or, as Sir T. Fowell *Romanism as it rules in Ireland, vol. i. P. 750.

Buxton speaks of the same body, as men exposed to the fire of persecution, out of which has arisen as pure and apostolical a ministry as the world ever beheld. He believed that a more pure or devoted ministry the world had not had than the Protestant ministry of Ireland.'*

What, from the testimony of these most impartial witnesses, we may believe, thank God, of our own Protestant Church in Ireland, we would willingly and gladly believe of any body of men calling themselves Christian ministers, however they may differ from our doctrines. An opposite view is painful and repugnant to all our habits of thought. But there is another reason for rejecting it. Englishmen have before their eyes a body of Roman Catholics, from which they draw their opinion of the Irish priests. Unhappily-we do not say unreasonably, but unhappily-when Popery is denounced, it is usually denounced in the mass, and sufficient allowance is not made for one remarkable feature in its character. It was intended to exercise an universal dominion, founded on a basis of religion: religion, therefore, and Christianity, and Catholic Christianity, form a very large part of its composition. It holds many of the truths which the primitive Church held, asserts them boldly, and maintains them firmly, where dissent has shattered them in fragments, and caused them to be lost. But, in order to secure the exercise of its universal dominion, not content, like the primitive Church, with witnessing to these truths, and placing them before men's eyes, leaving it to a higher power to engraft them in the heart-Popery adopted a system, which, preserving outwardly one set of forms and doctrines, admitted a double internal interpretation of them according to the character of the receiver. By this means it was enabled to hold within its grasp two distinct classes of minds, one of a very high and noble order, the other far different. And this is the real secret of the papal power. There is not a doctrine nor a practice of Popery, which, when traced up to its source, and exhibited in its formal statement, is not thus divisible into an exoteric and an esoteric interpretation, one for the vulgar, and one for the instructed; and the interpretation is left free to the individual. The worship of saints and angels, the unity and infallibility of the Church, the claim of belief in her decisions, the doctrines of the sacraments, the duty of penance, the right of excommunication, the practice of absolution, the respect due to antiquity,-in all of these (and many others might be mentioned), if an ignorant and worthless Romanist, and one who is educated and good, are asked for their view of the truth, they will give the most opposite explanations—one bordering-to use the mildest phrase on heathenism

*Annual Register, 1835, p. 209.

and