apostolical men, and in the practice of those witnesses, who, in every age, refused to participate in the abominations of Rome. But we ask them, where was your religion before such or such an aspiring pontiff put forth such or such a doctrine or claim? We challenge the documents. We fix the doctrine of the papal supremacy to the sixth centurylet them prove it older if they can; of seven sacraments to the twelfth century-let them prove it older if they can; of transubstantiation to the thirteenth century-let them prove it older if they can. And yet protestantism is the spurious manufacture of a late date, whilst popery is the venerable transmission from the first year of the christian era. Yes, all that is true in popery has been transmitted from the earliest days of christianity; but all that is true in popery makes up protestantism. Popery is protestantism mutilated, disguised, deformed, and overlaid with corrupt additions; protestantism is popery restored to its first purity, cleansed from false glosses, and freed from the rubbish accumulated on it by ages of superstition. bility of peace with Rome; and though they could wage the war only at the risk of substance and life, yet did they manfully throw themselves into the struggle; for far dearer to them was "truth as it is in Jesus," than wealth, or honor, or the quiet comforts of home; and seeing that this truth was disguised or denied, they, could not rest till it was fully exhibited, and boldly proclaimed. Their ashes are yet in our land; our cities and villages are haunted by their memories; but shall it be said that their spirit hath departed, and that we value not the privileges purchased for us by their blood? Children as we are of men who discovered, and acted on the discovery, that to remain at peace with Rome were to offer insult to God, we will not prove our degeneracy by lapsing into an alliance which they abhorred as sacrilegious. The echo of their voices-trumpettongued as they were, so that, at the piercing call, Europe shook as with an earthquake-still lingers on our mountains and in our valleys; still is it syllabling to us that popery is the predicted apostacy of the latter times; still is it We recur then to our former asser- discoursing of Rome as the mystic tion, and declare that the protestantism Babylon of the Apocalypse, and reiterfor which we contend as irreconcil- ating the summons, Come out of her, able with popery, is nothing else than my people, that ye be not partakers of the protestantism of Christ and his her sins, and that ye receive not of her apostles. And the protestantism of plagues." Thus it is reminding us— Christ and his apostles can have no though, if there were no such echo, peace with popery. We would, if pos- there is speech enough in reason, sible, "live peaceably with all men," speech enough in revelation-that, in and, therefore, with the Roman church. separating from the Romish church, But it is not possible. We cannot sur- we are not forgetful of the duty of enrender justification by faith. We can- deavoring to keep "the unity of Spirit not multiply mediators. We cannot in the bond of peace;" but that, in rebow down before images. We cannot fusing communion with that church, believe bread to be flesh, and wine to and requiring her to renounce her abobe blood. We cannot ascribe to a falli-minations ere we will keep back our ble man the unerring wisdom of the one living God. And, therefore, it is not possible. No; if popery regain its lost power, let it not be through our giving it the right hand of fellowship. Let it wrest back ecclesiastical endowments; let it rekindle the fires of persecution; let it be legislated into might by time-serving concessions; but never let us be silent, as though we thought popery to be truth; never supine, as though we counted its errors unimportant. A righteous ancestry felt the impossi protest, we obey to the utmost the precept of the apostle, "If it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men." Now we have been the more ready to embrace an opportunity of bringing protestantism before you in contrast with popery, because we believe that the Roman catholic religion has been rapidly gaining ground in this country. There must be great inattention to what is passing on all sides, if any of you be unaware that popery is on the increase. It is easy to meet statements in regard to the growing number of papal chapels and colleges, by saying that the growth is but proportioned to the growth of population, and therefore does not indicate any influx of proselytes. Of course, a reply such as this is of no worth, except as borne out by facts; and we thoroughly believe, that, the more carefully you examine, the more you will find that there is a greater growth of Popery than you had right to expect from the growth of population. When you have made due allowance for the increased numbers in Roman catholic families, there will be a large surplus, only to be referred to a successful system of proselytism. It should suffice to convince you of this, to observe, as you easily may, that Roman catholic chapels are rising in neighborhoods where there is no Roman catholic population; and that, in cases where the chapel has been reared, in hopes that a congregation would be formed, the hopes have not been altogether falsified by the event. What are we to say to this? Men would indeed persuade you that the enlarged intelligence of the times, the diffusion of knowledge, and the increase of liberality, are an ample security against the revival, to any great extent, of a system so absurd and repulsive as popery. But they quite forget, when they hastily pronounce that popery has no likelihood of being revived in an enlightened age, that it is emphatically the religion of human nature; and that he, who can persuade himself of its truth, passes into a position the most coveted by the mass of our race, that in which sin may be committed, with a thorough security that its consequences may be averted. We find no guarantee against the reinstatement of popery, in the confessed facts of a vast outstretch of mind, and of a general developement of the thinking faculties of our people. It is an axiom with us, that people must have some kind of religion; they cannot so sepulchre their immortality, that it will never struggle up, and compel them to think of provision for the future. And when a population shall have grown vain of its intelligence, and proud of its knowledge; when, by applying universally the machinery of a mere mental education, and pervading a country with literature rather than with Scripture, you shall have brought men into the condition, O too possible, of those who think it beneath them to inquire after God; then, do we believe, the scene will be clear for the machinations of such a system as the papacy. The inflated and self-sufficient generation will feel the need of some specific for quieting conscience. But they will prefer the least spiritual, and the least humiliating. They will lean to that, which, if it insult the understanding, bribes the lusts, and buys reason into silence by the immunities which it promises. It is not their wisdom which will make them loathe popery. Too wise to seek God prayerfully and humbly in the Bible, they will be as open to the delusion which can believe a lie, as the ignorant to the imposition which palms off falsehood for truth. They will not want God, but a method of forgetting him, which shall pass at the same time for a method of remembering him. This is a definition of popery, that masterpiece of Satan, constructed for two mighty divisions of humankind, the men who would be saved by their merits, and the men who would be saved in their sins. Hence, if a day of great intellectual darkness be favorable for popery, so may be a day of great intellectual light. We may as well fall into the pit with our eyes dazzled, as with our eyes blindfolded: ignorance is no better element for a false religion than knowledge, when it has generated conceit of our own powers; and intellect, which is a defender, when duly honored and employed, becomes a betrayer, when idolized as omnipotent. You are told moreover, and this is one of the most specious of the deceits through wh ch popery carries on its work, that the Roman catholic religion is not what it was; that it took its complexion from the times; and that tenets, against which protestants loudly exclaim, and principles which they indignantly execrate, were held only in days of ignorance and barbarism, and have long since fled before the advance of civilization. And very unfair and ungenerous, we are told, it is, to rake up the absurdities and cruelties of a rude and uninformed age, and to charge them on the creed of men in our own generation, who detest them as cordially as ourselves. Be it so: we are at all events dealing with an infallible church and unless the claim to infallibility be amongst the things given up, we are at a loss to know how this church can so greatly have changed; how, since she never goes wrong, she can renounce what she believed, and condemn what she did. And the Roman church is not suicidal enough to give up her claim to infallibility: but she is sagacious enough to perceive that men are willing to be deceived, that an excess of false charity is blinding them to facts, and that there is abroad amongst them such an idolatry of what they call liberal, that they make it a point of honor to believe good of all evil, and perhaps evil of all good. Of this temper of the times, is the Roman church, marvellously wise in her generation, adroitly availing herself and so well has she plied men with the specious statement that she is not what she was, that they are rather covering her with apologies for their inconsiderate bigotry, than thinking of measures to resist her advances. But there is no change in popery. The system is the same, intrinsically, inherently the same. It may assume different aspects to carry different purposes, but this is itself a part of popery: there is the variable appearance of the chameleon, and the invariable venom of the serpent. Thus in Ireland, where the theology of Dens is the recognized text-book of the Roman catholic clergy, they will tell you, when there is any end to be gained, that popery is an improved, and modified, and humanized thing: whereas, all the while, there is not a monstrous doctrine, broached in the most barbarous of past times, which this very text-book does not uphold as necessary to be believed, and not a foul practice, devised in the midnight of the world, which it does not enjoin as necessary to be done. Make peace, if you will, with popery, receive it into your senate, shrine it in your churches, plant it in your hearts; but be ye certain, certain as that there is a heaven above you and a God over you, that the pothus honored and embraced, is the pery very popery that was degraded and loathed by the holiest of your fathers, the very popery-the same in haughti ness, the same in intolerance—which lorded it over kings, assumed the prerogatives of Deity, crushed human liberty, and slew the saints of God. O that England may be convinced of this, before taught it by fatal experience. It may not yet be too late. She has tampered with popery in many respects she has patronized popery, giving it, by her compromises and concessions, a vantage-ground which its best wishers could hardly have dared to expect; but, nevertheless, it may not yet be too late. Let protestants only awaken to a sense of the worth of their privileges, privileges so long enjoyed that they are practically forgotten, and this land may remain, what for three centuries it hath been, the great witness for scriptural truth, the great centre of scriptural light. There is already a struggle. In Ireland especially, popery so wrestles with protestantism that there is cause for fear that falsehood will gain mastery. And we call upon you to view the struggle in its true light. It is not to be regarded as a struggle between rival churches, each desiring the temporal ascendency. It is not a contest for the possession of tithe, for right to the mitre, for claim on the benefice. It is a contest between the christianity of the New Testament, and the christianity of human tradition and corrupt fable-a contest, therefore, whose issue is to decide whether the pure Gospel shall have footing in Ireland. There is, there will be, a struggle; and our counsel to you individually is, that you examine well the tenets of protestantism, and possess yourselves of the grounds on which it is impossible that we live peaceably with Rome. If you belong to a reformed church, acquaint yourselves with the particu lars in which the reformation consisted, that you may be able to give reasons for opposition to popery. And when convinced that they are not unimportant points on which protestants differ from papists, let each, in his station, oppose the march of popery, oppose it by argument, by counsel, by exhortation, by prayer. १९ Watch ye, stand fast in the faith, quit you like men, strong." By the memory of martyrs, by the ashes of confessors, by the dust of a thousand saints, we conjure you to be stanch in defence of your religion. be The spirits of departed worthies, who witnessed a good confession, and counted not their lives dear, so that truth might be upheld, bend down, one might think, from their lofty dwelling-place, and mark our earnestness in defending the faith "once delivered to the saints." O, if they could hear our voice, should it not tell them, that there are yet many in the land, emulous of their zeal, and eager to tread in their steps; ready, if there come a season big with calamity, to gird themselves for the defence of protestantism in her last asylum, and to maintain in the strength of the living God, that system which they wrought out with toil, and cemented with blood? Yes, illustrious immortals! ye died not in vain. Mighty group! there was lit up at your massacre a fire in those realms which is yet unextinguished; from father to son has the sacred flame been transmitted: and though, in the days of our security, that flame may have burnt with diminished lustre, yet let the watchmen sound an alarm, and many a mountain top shall be red with the beacon's blaze, and the noble vault of your resting-place grow illumined with the flash. Repose ye in your deep tranquillity, spirits of the martyred dead! We know something of the worth of a pure Gospel, and a free Bible: and we will bind ourselves by the name of Him" who liveth and abideth for ever," to strive to preserve unimpaired the privileges bequeathed at such cost. The spirit of protestantism may have long lain dormant, but it is not extinct: it shall be found, in the hour of her church's peril, that there are yet bold and true-hearted men in England, who count religion dearer than substance; and who, having received from their fathers a charter of faith, stained with the blood of the holiest and the best, would rather dye it afresh in the tide of their own veins, than send it down, torn and mutilated, to their children. SERMON V. CHRISTIANITY A SWORD. "Think not that I am come to send peace on earth: I came not to send peace, but a sword." Matthew, 10: 34. When Isaiah predicted the birth of ¡ of Peace," the being whose entrance Messiah, "the Prince of Peace was one of the titles which he gave to the coming deliverer. When angels announced to the shepherds that Messiah was born, they sang as their chorus, "Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men." At first sight, there scarcely seems to be thorough agreement between such a prediction, or such an announcement, and the declaration which Christ makes, in our text, with regard to his mission. Is it "the Prince upon earth was hailed by the heavenly hosts as insuring peace to mankind, who proclaims that he had not come to send peace; but that, as though he were the warrior, all whose battles are "with confused noise, and garments rolled in blood," he had come to send a sword? Let it be observed at once, though your own minds will anticipate the remark, that it is common in Scripture to represent a person as doing that of which he may indeed be the occasion, but which is not effected by his own will or agency. Sometimes, in deed, the action is ascribed to an individual who has not even been its occasion, whose only connection with the result has been the announcing that it should surely come to pass. Thus God says to Jeremiah, "See, I have this day set thee over the nations, and over the kingdoms, to root out, and to pull down, and to build, and to plant." Undoubtedly the prophet had no part in the demolition of our empire, and the aggrandizement of another. He was no agent in effecting the revolutions which he was commissioned to predict. All that he did was to proclaim a coming destruction, or a coming exaltation; and then he is said to have wrought what he merely announced. the animosities of our nature against holiness and God. his glory in order to reconcile this creation to God, and restore friendship between man and his Maker. We must conclude, therefore, that he is not speaking of the object of his mission, but only of the operation of a fatal and perverting power, resident in the creature, by which the greatest blessing may be turned into a curse. Christianity, in its own nature and tendencies, may be emphatically peace but christianity, as clashing with corrupt passions, may be practically a sword, which, wounding and devastating, brings injury, and not benefit, to thousands. Hence, knowing by his prescience that disastrous consequences, chargeable altogether upon man, would follow the introduction of christianity, You are moreover aware that the our Lord, who had come to send peace, Bible often ascribes to God's author- might declare that he had come to ship, what can only be referred to his send a sword-the only sense in which permission; so that the Almighty seems he sent the sword, being that of pubrepresented as interfering to cause re-lishing doctrines which would excite sults, which we are bound to conclude that he simply allows. It cannot, therefore, excite surprise, for it quite consists with the ordinary phraseology of Scripture, that Christ should apparently announce, as the purpose of his mission, a result produced only by human perverseness. There can be nothing more easy of demonstration, than that the Gospel is a message of peace, that christianity is a system which, cordially received and fully obeyed, would diffuse harmony and happiness through all the world's families. And if it once be acknowledged that it is the design and tendency of the religion of Jesus to unite in close brotherhood, by uniting in the fellowship of "one faith and one baptism," the tribes and households of our race, there is an end of all debate on the fitness of appropriating to the Savior the name "Prince of Peace;" and we must search elsewhere than in the nature of the christian dispensation, for reasons why the sword, rather than the olive-branch, is ascendant upon earth. We lay it down then as a position whose justice will be readily admitted, that our text announces a result, and not the design, of the introduction of christianity. Our Lord declares of himself, that he came not to send peace; but we are, notwithstanding, assured that he had left the throne of But there are sundry inquiries suggested by our text, besides that of the sense in which the sending of the sword can be referred to him who came to send peace. We have introduced our subject with the foregoing remarks, in order to remove misapprehension as to the true cause of evils, which all must both observe and lament. We shall indeed see more clearly in the sequel whence these evils originate. But it is sufficient, at the outset of our discourse, to have shown summarily the unfairness of charging the consequences on the Author of Christianity; any blessing, whatever its beauty and brightness, may be abused by the recipient: but assuredly, when turned into an instrument of mischief, it is only in its original goodness that it can be ascribed to the Creator, and in its injuriousness wholly to the creature. This being premised, we design, in the first place, to consider our text as a prophecy; examining how Christ's words have been verified, and meeting such objections to the plan of God's dealings as the subject seems likely to suggest. We shall then endeavor, in the second place, to point out specifically the causes which have turned into a sword that, which, in its own nature, is emphatically peace. |