cocted, or even that it has been the subject of cabinet deliberation; but the avowed persuasion by the premier of the sound policy of such a course the anticipation expressed by him of a parliamentary settlement of the question, and the known favour of leading men of the great political parties to the pensioning of the Romish clergy, altogether make out a case of such portentous danger, as has not for many a day menaced the peace and welfare of our land.

Though our rulers are thus combined, they would find that they have been imagining vain things, if the country were duly aroused to the importance of the crisis, and were to act with the unanimity and energy which the occasion demands. What political party would take the lead in proposing the obnoxious measure in the face of a protesting nation, notwithstanding the declaration of the head of the government, so like bravado, that the opposition of the people of Britain would not bar the endowment of the priesthood, were the objections of the Catholics overcome? We have great faith in the "might and mastery" of public opinion, when unequivocally expressed. But we confess our painful conviction, that the country stands in need of awakening, and our fears that the passing of a Popish pension bill may be the first thing to shake off, when too late, the slumbers of our apathy. If this tone appear too desponding, we shall be glad to be convinced by proof to the contrary, that there is no great force in the following reasons for it :

First, Our recollections of the AntiMaynooth Endowment agitation are somewhat discouraging. Among those who came forward in opposition to it, there was no want of earnestness. But very many looked on with indifference. Others, from whose religious principles different fruits might have been expected, palliated, or even defended the measure. Now, the

plea, that the endowment of Maynooth seminary was a grant for education, showed such willingness to be persuaded; and the argument, that the sum was small,-why make so much noise about it?-so reduced a great argument of principle to a question of money, that we feel shut up by these things to infer an indisposition, and therefore an unpreparedness, in some respectable quarters, to take high ground in opposing the contemplated pensioning of the priesthood. To some it may appear that the circumstances at present are still less favourable, from the consideration that, in the Maynooth controversy, there was a more general cooperation among the various evangelical denominations than is likely to be attempted now. On this point, however, we hold very decidedly a different opinion. Nothing appears. to us plainer, than that the most effective opposition will be made by the different parties hostile to the endowment acting by themselves, and thus preserving unfettered freedom in bringing out and urging their several objections to the measure.

Secondly, We fear considerable de. fection from the opposition ranks, through the influence of political connexion. As the ministry of the day are likely to take the initiative, their credit, and with it, probably, place and power, will be staked upon the issue. In the knowledge of this, there will be a rally among their pledged supporters. This of course. But there are many who, without any particular ties of party, are much under party influence. Approving generally of the principles of a party, they are disposed to make allowance for occasional false steps, especially if the defeat of those whom, on general grounds, they support, could be likely to displace them from power. The recent history of parties in this country gives many examples of this. We are afraid of the extent to which this indulgence may be carried. We

know of no claims which the men now in power have on the country, that can justify such a tender consideration of their official stability. This we say without any inclination to join the hackneyed cry of "Down with the Whigs." The opposition tactics, of laying all manner of political sins at their door, we reckon both unfair and foolish. To be perpetually ringing the changes on Lord John Russell, and the Whigs, as if his opponents had but one rope to pull, shows equal virulence and poverty of invective. There is no need for indiscriminate censure to give effect to our just and deeply felt objections to a line of policy which our rulers have all but advertised as in near contemplation. If we believe that they are about to act upon a bad principle, how sorry a reason for aiding them by our connivance, that the present government may be turned out, and an illiberal ministry come in? We should like to know what worse an illiberal minis. try could do, or set their face to accomplish, than the identical measure we are speaking of? Considered financially, will it lighten the burden of a Popish Church establishment to know that it was a reformed ministry that laid it on? What is there in a name to charm away the oppressiveness of so uncalled for an impost? Considered as a stroke of policy, can a grosser blunder be conceived than to bribe the priesthood with a view to the submission of the people, when the very end and motive of the scheme must operate to neutralize the clerical influence, for which we are so forward to offer an imperial price? Moreover, is it not admitted that the priests, as a body, are hostile to the English connexion, and were fomentors of the recent disturbances? What, then, would the pensioning of such men be but a reward of turbulence-a bonus on rebellion? Considered in the light of common honesty and moral principle,

what are we to think of a proposal to endow a system of superstition and uncleanness, which is such in the estimation of the very men who would thus bolster it up with state patronage, and pamper it with the public money? Considered in relation to consequences, is not the tendency of the scheme to extend, and so to perpetuate, the principle of church and state alliance? Endow the Romish church, and Ireland throughout its length and breadth— Popish, Episcopalian, Presbyterianhas her mouth stopped with a bribe. The Established Church will remain as it is and has been—a marvellous monument of the grasping covetousness of the few, and of the wrongs of the many; and a sister establishment, like a system of outworks, will be raised around her for a buttress and a blind. Priest and presbyter, hired by the same paymaster, and jointly accepting of the wages of their loyalty, which of them shall cast the first stone? Must they not feel that the safety of all is the safety of each, and that mutual forbearance-not spontaneous but sordid—is their common interest for the future? With such a complexity of evil as to motive, accompaniments, and consequences, who, for a moment, would think of winking at the outrage in order to spare the perpetrators, lest the worse thing come upon us, of worse men in their place.

Thirdly, We greatly fear there is a decay of the sound and earnest Protestant feeling which characterised former days, the effect of which will be to make the opposition of some half-hearted and tardy. We express ourselves thus in full recollection of the intolerant and factious spirit in which, in other times, and not unfrequently in our own, the

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no popery ery has been raised. Sympathy we have none with the party agitators who would exclude the Catholic from any, the least or the greatest, of his rights as a citizen

on account of his creed. And as little sympathy can we have with those, who, missing the distinction between a man's rights as a citizen, and his errors as a religionist, leap to the con clusion, that because we have no title to withhold the one, we must there fore respect the other. So sincere and earnest is the demand for equal political rights to Papist and Protestant, bond and free, that undistinguishing thinkers learn to speak smoothly of those weightier differences with which politics have no concern. We are perfectly persuaded that this has been a cause of lowering the Protestant tone of our day. To de nounce the errors of popery in strong and unflinching terms, would be regarded by many worthy people as better suited to our forefathers' days than to ours. They were rough men, living in rough times, with rough work to do; but let us remember the ameliorated spirit that becomes us. Now, amidst all this blandness, we must undisguisedly declare, and would have every man who has the Bible in his hands to remember, that popery is the "man of sin;""the son of perdition,' ," "the mystery of iniquity." If any man's Protestantism needs to be freshened and revived, let him but take in one hand Paul's second epistle to the Thessalonians and his first to Timothy; and, in the other, almost any page of the history of Europe from the time these epistles were written. Let him mark the system, portrayed by the spirit of prophecy,* in its prominent features, as one whose elements were then at work, and were afterwards to be developed as a system of error-teaching doctrines concerning demons, or spiritual powers, as objects of religious regard intermediate between God and men; upheld by the false arts of men, who,

2 Thess. ii. 3, &c.; 1 Tim. iv. 1-3.

with seared consciences, would show themselves to be remorseless and shameless in the lying wonders of imposture; forbidding marriage, and making celibacy a holy state; forbidding meats, by declaring things to be unlawful which God has created to be received with thanksgiving; in the enactment of these things exalting itself to an authority over conscience, a dictatorship in sacred things, and a title to divine names and worship ;and all this in the character of “a falling away," an apostacy "in the temple" or church of God:".

Where, then, shall we find these conditions fulfilled? Where shall we find a system which, as idolatrous, is distinguished from the heresies of the primitive church; as a wickedness yet to come, is distinguished from heathenism; as a departure from the faith once embraced, is distinguished from Mohammedan imposture? To what phase of error shall we turn? Ah, what but the popedom is here! foreseen of prophecy, foredoomed of God.

But our Protestant money must endow it. And our Protestant consciences are expected to protest and be still. Because our Protestant politicians, of whatsoever craft they be, have found it in their heart to bring their gifts to the "little horn," and great blasphemer, and whose“ look is more stout than his fellows."

Be astonished, O ye heavens, at this! Let the priests weep between the porch and the altar. Let all that fear the Lord cry to him in the evil day. Let them arise as one man to make their voice heard in behalf of truth and righteousness; and, it may be, that He who turns the hearts of men whithersoever he will, and accepts his people in their prayer and work of faith, will bless them in their struggle, and avert the dreaded iniquity.

H.

See Mede's Apostacy of the Latter

Times.

continent, where the corresponding defection was not in like manner stayed. If we have escaped the cold dark night of rationalism, that, with its attendant frightful evils, has hung so long over the Protestant churches of Germany, France, and Switzerland, we owe it under the Providence of God to the men who arose at that turningpoint of our history, to vindicate afresh the grand truths of the Reformation.

The wing of this great movement was headed in Scotland by the Erskines, Gillespie, Boston, and their coadjutors, the fathers and founders of the United Presbyterian Church. The advancing corruption of doctrine tolerated in the establishment, formed one of the grounds, we might say the broadest of them, on which the Secession of the Erskines first took its stand; and though it did not enter openly into the Protest of Gillespie, yet it can scarcely be doubted that President Edwards took the true view of the case, when, in a letter of sympathy to him, he attributed his deposition to a radical dislike on the part of the majority to evangelical doctrine and pious ministers.

It would be unjust, indeed, to forget that there never was wanting a large number of faithful men within the church of Scotland, who proclaimed the gospel with fervour and effect under all the cold rigour of predominant moderatism, a number which increased till, from the sympathy that evangelical truth always must have with Christian liberty, we have witnessed the Secession of 1843. But the question still is, Was not the cause of evangelical truth, within the Church of Scotland, powerfully sustained and stimulated by those bodies without, that set themselves expressly for the defence of the gospel, and are we not to look upon the first and second Secessions as having led the way to the third? A candid consideration will, we believe, establish the affirmative answer, and will trace the preservation of the purity of gospel truth in our country, in no small degree, to the uncompromising stand made for it by the fathers of our church.

To the members of the church itself, it might seem less necessary that we should point out the importance of this series, and the claims of interest which their own history possesses on them. Yet there is a tendency in the present day, and more prevalent, perhaps, in our denomination than in some others, to cast into oblivion the denominational testimony, and to merge our particular views in some general form of Christianity. It may be the recoil from a former extreme of exclusiveness, but still it is itself another extreme. In the expansive spirit of Christian charity, we do and will rejoice; but not only is denominational

attachment consistent with this expansive spirit, it is strongly auxiliary to it. Love to our own immediate Christian societythen to our denomination-and then to the great Christian world, like love to our family, to our country, and to our race, are concentric circles which do not cut but enclose one another. The affection rises in the innermost orb, and swells till it fills them all; it springs from the centre, and undulates outward with an increasing circumference. But let charity beware for its own sake, how it forgets, in its expansiveness, its primary origin and source of strength. As we would wish to love the whole company of the faithful, we must seek to bind closer the ties that unite us to our immediate friends and brethren. For their sakes we shall say to the entire Israel of God, "Peace be within thee!" Truth, moreover, has its claims on us no less than love.

To particular denominations, God has assigned different positions which they are to take up, and rights which they are to maintain; positions and rights which they cannot surrender without abandoning a great trust. These can be learned best (in due subordination always to the supreme rule, the word of God) from the history of the origin and progress of the denomination itself. The articles of faith, held by the church of Christ, viewed as one Catholic whole, are the combined result of her struggles for truth on the field of the word of God. They are the trophies of victories gained over successive errors, and are to be watched by her as indicating those points which are still most liable to be attacked, and most needful to be maintained. And the same is true, according to its degree, of separate denominations. They are divisions thrown out from the great Christian army to meet particular assaults. Their attitude is an admonition of danger at that point, an exhortation to vigilance in that direction, and till the hazard is gone, the attitude must not be relaxed, nor the vigilance remitted. The remarks of Mr Thomson are so judicious on this subject that we transcribe them. "It has become the fashion," he says, "in some quarters, to mock at the idea of a historic church, but the wisdom or the folly of thus mocking, altogether depends on the meaning we attach to the phrase. If it be meant by it, that the authority of the founders of a denomination is to be final-that their very errors are to be stereotyped, and themselves canonized-and that their children and descendants are to be restrained from taking any step in advance of their discoveries and attainments, then are we prepared to become mockers too. But what Protestant has ever used the word with such an unprotestant meaning? The