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self to any very practical measures; but is it nothing to have demonstrated before Christendom the essential oneness of thousands of Christian pastors and flocks throughout the world? Is it nothing to have it made plain to an incredulous generation, that Christians do love each other still? Is it nothing to have concentrated the attention of the churches on our points of agreement rather than our points of divergence? Is it nothing to have Popery unmasked, as it was by Dr Cunningham, or German atheism, pantheism, and infidelity analyzed as it was by Dr Krummacher, at the recent meetings in London? On the contrary, a large amount of substantial good has been done. Christians have been shown how they can commend the truth, and how the truth will prosper. The solitary struggler in Christ's cause has been cheered, the persecuted have been aided, and consolation administered even to the bleeding heart of crushed and priest-ridden Italy by means of the Evangelical Alliance.

coming. This is remarkably the case with Mr Wylie's volume-we should say it is its reigning characteristic. With much power, with no less clearness, and with more than usual eloquence, the diabolical system is described. Its tortuous machinations, its policy, such as makes Machiavelli a fool,-its hatred of all that is scriptural and divine, are here depicted in a way which may make us masters of at least all the salient points of the controversy.

For example: many Protestant writers are much in the habit of dealing with the Papacy as if it were a church. Not merely do Puseyites in England, with Froud at their head, deem it by turns their sister, or their mother, or "Christ's holy home"-even some who have better pretensions to the name of Christians than these dupes of superstition still concede that the Papacy is a form of Christianity, or its worship a thing which the holy God may accept. Now, is it possible that Antichrist, or Antichristianism, can be a portion of Christ's church? Can she who is branded The volume whose title we have transcribed, and as the Whore and the Beast really form a component part to which we would now draw attention, is another of that body of which Christ is the head? Men index of the benefits produced, and to be expected speak of the indelible orders of Rome, and we are from the Alliance. Some time ago, three prizes were not ignorant of the ecclesiastical difficulties which enoffered for essays on Popery, and Mr Wylie carried viron the subject; but speaking as Christians, and off the first. A perusal of it has taught us not to knowing that whatever is opposed to the truth of wonder that the adjudicators unanimously assigned God is an abomination in his sight, can we any longer to the treatise the rank which it holds. It is one of indulge the fond and shallow delusion that Antithe most elaborate and thorough exposures of Popery, christ is a portion of Christ's church, that the Mother both in its principles and development, which could of Abominations can be aught but an abomination to easily be found in the compass of a single volume. Him? We rejoice that this sentiment is gaining The work is divided into four books, comprehending ground. The baptism of Rome is denied to be Christhirty-six chapters; and in that space the whole field tian baptism, and we know some converts from her of the controversy, in its leading characteristics, is who have been re-baptized. Proclamation has been traversed with a power, an eloquence, and an appre-made with a ringing trumpet-blast, that she is not to ciation of the malignant nature of the Papacy, which has rarely been surpassed by its most vigorous assailants. The first book contains the history of the Papacy; the second, the dogmas of the Papacy, to which twenty chapters are devoted; the third book delineates the genius and influence of the Papacy; and the fourth describes its present policy and prospects, and under each of these a very ample digest is given. Moreover, a very clear delineation is submitted to the reader of the more than human ingenuity which devised, and the more than human power which maintains, that system which joins hands with Hinduism, and other colossal superstitions, in grinding and ruining the souls of men.

One thing which the perusal of this volume suggests is full of encouragement to the friends of truth, -we mean, a prize has been awarded to one who speaks out boldly and uncompromisingly against Popery as the offspring of the father of lies. A few years ago, such views would scarcely have been tolerated, even by some thinking minds. They would have been ascribed to intolerance and bigotry. It might have been supposed that the men who employed such language had succeeded by inheritance to the persecuting spirit of which they complained. But the Pope has disabused men's mind at once of their supineness, and their puling, and unscriptural charity. The mask has fallen, to some extent, from the abettors of the arch-apostasy; or rather, Papists have become insolent enough to cast it away; and when their "hateful mien" is beheld, men do not scruple to depict the system in all the offensiveness of its own inherent character, and all the malignity which signalizes, and will signalize the Papacy, till it be destroyed by the brightness of the Redeemer's

be reformed but destroyed. That has been listened to and approved in some of our highest places; and we hail that approbation as a token that the depths of the Mystery of Iniquity begin to be fathomed by some who were recently not indisposed to smile, askance at least, on the pretensions of her who is drunk with the blood of God's saints.

Mr Wylie's volume will tend to promote and deepen these convictions. Like one who has studied with care that system which is founded on the necessary ruin of souls, and built up by a combined cunning and ferocity such as the world never elsewhere witnessed, he has denied that Popery is a church at all:

amongst Christian churches.
"The Church (so called) of Rome has no right to rank
She is not a church, neither
is her religion the Christian religion. We are accustomed to
speak of Popery as a corrupt form of Christianity. We con-
cede too much. The Church of Rome bears the same rela-
tion to the Church of Christ which the hierarchy of Baal bore
to the institute of Moses; and Popery stands related to Chris-
tianity only in the same way in which Paganism stood related
to primeval Revelation. Popery is not a corruption simply,
but a transformation. It may be difficult to fix the time
when it passed from the one into the other; but the change
is incontestible. Popery is the gospel transubstantiated into
the flesh and blood of Paganism, under a few of the accidents
of Christianity."-P. 14, note.

nies that Popery is a religion:-
In the same thorough-going spirit, Mr Wylie de-

"We but perplex ourselves," he says, "when we think or speak of it simply as a religion. It contains the religious element, no doubt; but it is not a religion:-it is a scheme of domination of a mixed character, partly spiritual and partly temporal; and its jurisdiction must be of the same mixed kind with its constitution. To talk of the popedom wield

ing a purely spiritual authority only, is to assert what her fundamental principles repudiate. These principles compel her to claim the temporal also. The two authorities grow out of the same fundamental axiom, and are so woven together in the system, and so indissolubly knit the one to the other, that the Papacy must part with both or none. The popedom, then, stands alone. In genius, in constitution, and in prerogative, it is diverse from all other societies. The Church of Rome is a temporal monarchy as really as she is an ecclesiastic body; and in token of her hybrid character, her head, the Pope, displays the emblems of both jurisdictions, the keys in the one hand, the sword in the other."-P. 97.

Nor is this the result of mere Protestant antipathy. This author gives a reason of the convictions which he holds regarding the abhorrent system of the Papacy, which cannot easily be gainsaid:-

"Rome has a fine histrionic genius," he says. "She has eclipsed all other actors that ever appeared in the world. What is the Papacy but a mighty melo-drama, which, according to the vein of the hour, runs out into the humours and fooleries of comedy, or deepens into the horrors of tragedy? All the persons and verities of eternal truth pass in shadow before the spectator in Rome's scenic exhibition. She affects to play over again the grand drama, of which the universe is the stage, and eternity the development,-redemption. And for what end? That she may hide from man the reality. Her system is essentially counterfeit, and all she does is pervaded by a spirit of imposture and juggling. But in some of her rites she lays aside her usual disguise, thin enough at the best, and reveals her art to all as but a piece of naked witchcraft. If those are not spells which she commands her priests to operate with on certain occasions, Hecate herself never used incantation or charm. We open her missals, and find them but books of sorcery; they are filled with recipes or spells for doing all manner of supernatural feats,-exorcising demons, working miracles, and infusing new and extraordinary quali ties into things animate and inanimate. She has her cabalistic words, which, if uttered by a priest in the appropriate dress, will bind or loose men, send them to paradise, or shut them up in purgatory. What is this but magic? What is the Church of Rome but a company of conjurors? and what is her worship but a system of divination? Has she not an order of exorcists, specially and formally ordained to the somewhat dangerous office of fighting with and overcoming hobgoblins and devils? Has she not her regular formulas, by which she can change the qualities of substances, control the elements of air, earth, and water, and compel spirits and demons to do the bidding of her priests? Can any man of plain understanding take this for religion? What is her grand rite, but an incantation, which combines more than the foulness of ancient sorcery with more than the blasphemy of modern atheism? And yet do not kings, presidents, and statesmen, countenance its celebration? and, while themselves practising this foul sorcery, and leading others by their influence to practise it, they affect to be shocked at the impieties of modern socialism! We excuse not Voltaire and the other high priests of infidelity; but it is indisputable that they treated the human understanding with more respect than do the stoled and mitred sorcerers, who first create, then eat their god."-Pp. 303, 301.

And again he says:—

"Popery is the counterfeit of Christianity,-a most elaborate and skilfully contriven counterfeit, a counterfeit in which the form is faithfully preserved, the spirit utterly extinguished, and the end completely inverted. This counterfeit church has its high priest, the Pope,-who blasphemes the royal priesthood of Christ, by assuming his office, when he pretends to be Lord of the conscience, Lord of the church, and Lord of the world; and by assuming his names, when he calls himself the Light of the World, the King of Glory,' the Lion of the tribe of Judah,' Christ's Vicar, and God's Vicegerent. This counterfeit church has, too, its sacrifice,-the mass, which blasphemes the sacrifice of Christ, by virtually teaching its inefficiency, and needing to be repeated, as is done when Christ's very body and blood are again offered in sacrifice by the hands of the priests of Rome, for the sins of the living and the dead. This church has, moreover, its Bible, which is tradition, which blasphemes the Word of God, by virtually teaching its insufficiency. It has its mediators,

saints and angels, and especially the Virgin; and thus it blasphemes the one Mediator between God and man. In fine, it blasphemes the person and the office of the Spirit as the sanetifier, because it teaches that its sacraments can make holy; and it blasphemes God, by teaching that its priests can pardon sin, and can release from the obligations of divine law. Thus has Popery counterfeited, and, by counterfeiting, set aside, all that is vital and valuable in Christianity. It robs Christ of his Kingly office, by exalting the Pope to his throne; it robs him of his Priesthood in the sacrifice of the mass; it robs him of his power as Mediator, by substituting Mary; it robs him of his Prophetical office, by substituting the teachings of an infallible church; it robs God the Spirit of his peculiar work as the Sanctifier, by attributing the power of conferring grace to its own ordinances; and it robs God the Father of his prerogatives, by assuming the power of justifying and pardoning men."-P. 404.

And just once more:

"We dishonour religion by giving that holy name to what was so called within the Church of Rome. The piety of the times, as we have already shown, was essentially and undisguisedly paganism. Religion, appalled by these gigantic corruptions, which had only borrowed her name the more effectually to counterwork her purpose, had fled, to bury herself in the caves of the earth, or to find a shelter amid eternal snows and inaccessible cliffs. A vast theocracy wielded the destinies of Europe. A blind, irresponsible, and infallible despotism, issuing its decrees from behind a veil which mortal dared not lift, sat enthroned upon the rights and liberties, the conscience and the intellect, the souls and the bodies, of Such was the Papacy!-a monstrous compound of spiritual and temporal power,-of old idolatries and Christian forms,-of secret frauds and open force,-of roguery and simplicity,-of perfidies, hypocrisies, and villanies of all sorts and degrees,-of priests and soldiers,-of knaves and fools,-of monks, friars, cardinals, kings, and popes,-of mountebanks of every kind, hypocrites of every class, and villains of every grade, all banded together in one fearful conspiracy, to defy God and ruin man!"-Pp. 433, 434.

men.

While these extracts from Mr Wylie's valuable volume may enable our readers to judge of its tone and vigour, it would be wrong not to enter somewhat more minutely into some of its arguments. The portion on which we have lingered the longest, is the first book, where the author traces, we think with unusual power, the development of the Papal system, and its gradual increment from small beginnings, till Upas-like it overspread the whole of Christendom. In this portion there are some pleasing generalizations, a specimen of which we submit, to show how competent our author is to grapple with his subject, colossal as it is:

"Great truths," he says, "are discovered, one after one; they are opinion first,-they become the basis of action next; and thus society is lifted up, by slow degrees, to the platform where the Creator has ordained it shall ultimately stand. A great principle, once discovered, can never be lost; and thus the progress of the world is steadily onward, Truth may not be immediately operative. To recur to the Saviour's figure, it may be the seed sown in the earth. It may be confined to a single bosom, or to a single book, or to a single school; but it is part of the constitution of things; it is agreeable to the nature of God, and in harmony with his government; and so it cannot perish. Proofs begin to gather around it; events fall out which throw light upon it: the martyr dies for it; society suffers by neglecting to shape its course in conformity with it; other minds begin to embrace it; and after reaching a certain stage, its adherents increase in geometrical progression: at last the whole of society is leavened; and thus the world is lifted a stage higher, never again to be let down. The stage, we say, once fully secured, is never altogether lost; for the truth, in fighting its way, has left behind it so many monuments of its power, in the shape of the errors and sufferings, as well as of the emancipation, of mankind, that it becomes a great landmark in the progress of our race. It attains in the social mind all the clearness and certainty of an axiom. The history of the world, when read aright, is

not so much a record of the follies and wickedness of mankind, as it is a series of moral demonstrations, a slow process of experimental and convincing proof,-in reference to great principles, and that on a scale so large, that the whole world may see it, and understand it, and come to act upon it. Society can be saved not otherwise than as the individual is saved: it must be convinced of sin; its mind must be enlightened; its will renewed; it must be brought to embrace and act upon truth; and when in this way it has been sanctified, society shall enter upon its rest."-Pp. 5, 6.

tracing with much tact, and historical truth, the real origin of the Pope's temporal supremacy, by turns the buttress and the tool of his spiritual usurpations, Mr Wylie says:—

"The Papacy is a new Babel," Mr Wylie says, " in which the old redoubtable idolatries are the builders. It is a spirit-putable and infamous in its beginnings. His mitre he had from

ual Pantheon, in which the local and vagrant superstitions find again a centre and a home. It is a grand mausoleum, in which the corpses of the defunct Paganisms, like the mum mied monks of Kreutzberg, are laid out in ghastly pomp, while their disembodied spirits still live in the Papacy, and govern the world from their grave. Analyze Popery, and you will find all the ancient systems existing in it. The Magian philosophy flourishes anew under the monastic system; for in the conventual life of Rome we find the contemplative moods and the ascetic habits which so largely prevailed in Egypt and over all the East; and here, too, we find the fundamental principle of that philosophy, namely, that the flesh is the seat of evil, and, consequently, that it becomes a duty to weaken and mortify the body. In Popery we find the predominating traits of the Grecian philosophy, more especially in the subtile casuistry of the Popish schools, combined with a sensuous ritual, the celebration of which is often accompanied, as in Greece of old, with gross licentiousness. And last of all, there is palpably present in Popery the polytheism of ancient Rome, in the gods and goddesses which, under the title of saints, fill up the calendar and crowd the temples of the Romish Church."-Pp. 11, 12.

And in the same searching strain, the author says:

"Popery is but the natural development of this great original transgression. It is just the early idolatries ripened and perfected. It is manifestly an enormous expansion of the same intensely malignant and fearfully destructive principle which these idolatries contained. The ancient Chaldean worshipping the sun,-the Greek deifying the powers of nature, and the Roman exalting the race of primeval men into gods,-are but varied manifestations of the same evil principle, namely, the utter alienation of the heart from God, its proneness to hide itself amid the darkness of its own corrupt imaginations, and to become a god unto itself. That principle received the most fearful development which appears possible on earth, in the Mystery of Iniquity which came to be seated on the Seven Hills; for therein man deified himself, became God, nay, arrogated powers which lifted him high above God. Popery is the last, the most matured, the most subtle, the most skilfully contriven, and the most essentially diabolical form of idolatry which the world ever saw, or which, there is reason to believe, it ever will see. It is the ne plus ultra of man's wickedness, and the chef d'œuvre of Satan's cunning and malignity. It is the great est calamity, next to the Fall, which ever befell the human family. Farther away from God, the world could not exist at all. The cement that holds society together, already greatly weakened, would be altogether destroyed, and the social fabric would instantly fall in ruins."-Pp. 13, 14.

We should like to dwell on this author's views of the Popish perversion of the true doctrine regarding the connection between church and state. Nowhere does the antiscriptural nature of the Papacy more clearly appear than there; but we must pass on to observe the process by which the different corruptions of Popery arise out of each other, as delineated by our author. Usurpation is added to usurpationfalsehood to falsehood-distortion to distortion-till the aggregate becomes perhaps the most appalling incubus that ever weighed down poor humanity. The combined craft and cruelty of the whole is steadily kept in view. The darling object of the Papacy-whether in the hands of a Hildebrand or a Borgia self-aggrandisement, is never obscured-and after

rebellion.

"According to his own claim, the Pope's power is from heaven; but history refuses to let the claim pass current, and points unequivocally to a different quarter as the source of his prerogative. Of the two branches of his power,-the sacerdotal and the regal,-it is hard to determine which is the most disrethe murderer Phocas; his crown from the usurper Pepin. A spotless and noble lineage forsooth! The pontifical trunk has one stem rooted rankly in blood, and the other foully grafted on As a priest, the Pope is qualified to minister in the ensanguined temples of Moloch; as a sovereign, his title is indisputable to act the satrap under the arch-rebel and 'anarch old. No one can glance a moment at the contour of his character, as seen in history, without feeling that the hideous likeness on which he gazes is that of the Antichrist. Every line of his visage, every passage of his history, is full of antagonism-is the very counterpart, of that of the Saviour. All these things will I give thee,' said the tempter to Christ in the wilderness, if thou wilt fall down and worship me." 'Get thee hence, Satan,' was the reply. The fiend returned after three hundred years, and, leading the pontiff to the summit of the Roman hill, showed him all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them.' 'All these,' said he, 'will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me.' No second denial awaited the tempter: instantly the knee was bent, and the pontiff raised his head crowned with the tiara. Twice has Christianity been crowned in bitter derision and mockery of her character. Once with a crown of thorns by the blasphemers of Caiaphas' Hall; and now again with the tiara, in the person of the pontiff. Never did she demean herself with such divine dignity as when the thorns girt her brow; but, ah! the burning shame of the tiara."-Pp. 55, 56.

As an instance of the effrontery with which Rome profits by detected lies, and founds her procedure or pretensions on what the world knows, and what Rome herself knows to be false, we quote the following :

"No weapon was too base for the use of Rome. Her hand grasped with equal avidity the forged document and the hired dagger. Both were sanctified in her service. In the beginning of the ninth century came the decretals of Isidore. These professed to be a collection of the decrees and rescripts of the early councils and popes, the object of their infamous author, who is unknown, being to show that the see of Rome possessed from the very beginning all the prerogatives with which the intrigues of eight centuries had invested it. Their style was so barbarous, and their anachronisms and solecisms were so flagrant, that in no age but the most ignorant could they infallibly decreed the truth of what is now universally achave escaped detection for a single hour. Rome, nevertheless, knowledged to be false. These decretals supported her pretensions, and that with her decided the question of their authenticity or spuriousness. There are few who have earned so well the honours of canonization as this unknown forger. For ages the decretals possessed the authority of precedents, and furnished Rome with appropriate weapons in her contests with bishops and kings."—Pp. 63, 64.

And based thus on falsehood and forgery, need we wonder at the appalling pollution which nestled for ages in the palaces of the infallible vicars of Christ!

"The palaces of the worst emperors," Mr Wylie says, "the groves of pagan worship, saw nothing so foul as the orgies of the Vatican. Men sat in the chair of Peter, whose consciences were loaded with perjuries and adulteries, and whose hands were stained with murders; and claimed, as the viears of Christ, a right to govern the church and the world. The intrigues, the fraud, the violence, that now raged at Rome, may be conceived of from the fact, that from the death of Benedict IV., A.D. 903, to the elevation of John XII., A.D. 956,-an interval of only fifty-three years, not fewer than thirteen popes held successively the pontificate.

The attempt were vain to pursue these fleeting pontifical phantoms. Their brief but flagitious career was ended most commonly by the lingering horrors of the dungeon, or the quick despatch of the poignard. It is enough to mention the names of a John the Twelfth, a Boniface the Seventh, a John the Twenty-third, a Sixtus the Fourth, an Alexander the Sixth (Borgia), a Julius the Second. These names stand associated with crimes of enormous magnitude. This list by no means exhausts the goodly band of pontifical villains. Simony, the good-will of a prostitute, or the dagger of an assassin, opened their way to the pontifical throne; and the use they made of their power formed a worthy sequel to the infamous means by which they had obtained it. In the chair of Peter, the pontiffs of this and succeeding eras revelled in impiety, perjury, lewdness, sacrilege, sorcery, robbery, and blood; thus converting the palace of the apostle into an unfathomable sink of abomination and filth. A mass of moral impurity,' says Edgar, might be collected from the Roman hierarchy, sufficient to crowd the of pages folios, and glut all the demons of pollution and malevolence."" -P. 65.

In order to show the crafty machinations, and the lordly pretensions by which Popery ascended to its place of power over the nations, it might suffice to exhibit the history of Gregory VII., the noted Hildebrand, who became Pope in the year 1073. Temporal ascendency, and a world-wide spiritual despotism were the objects of his ambition; and both of these he achieved with a power as resolute as it was well directed; and of a period soon after that, at which Hildebrand held the primacy over a down-trodden Christendom, Mr Wylie has written the following graphic sentences:

"Thus did Rome seize the golden moment when the iron of the German race, like that of the Carlovingian before it, had become mixed with miry clay, to complete her work of five centuries. She had watched and waited for ages; she had flattered the proud and insulted the humble; bowed to the strong and trampled upon the weak; she had awed men with terrors that were false, and excited them with hopes that were delusive; she had stimulated their passions and destroyed their souls; she had schemed, and plotted, and intrigued, with a cunning, and a malignity, and a success, which hell itself might have envied, and which certainly it never surpassed; and now her grand object was within her reach, was attained. She had triumphed over the empire; she was lord paramount of Europe; nations were her footstool; and from her lofty seat she showed herself to the wondering tribes of earth, encompassed by the splendour, possessing the attributes, and wielding the power, not of earthly monarchs, but of the Eternal Majesty."-P. 82.

Innocent III. was another Pope, whose grasping power, and insatiable cruelty, helped to rivet the fetters which the Papacy had now wreathed around men's souls. As a persecutor, he stands second to none-and "drunk with the blood of the saints," is a literal description of this vicar of Christ :

"He was the first," Mr Wylie writes, "to discover the danger to the popedom which lurked in the scriptural faith, and in the mental liberty of the Albigenses and Waldenses. On them, therefore, and not on eastern schismatics or recalcitrating sovereigns, fell the full storm of the pontifical ire. Assembling his vassal kings, he pointed to the peaceful and thriving communities in the provinces of the Rhone, and inflamed the zeal and fury of the soldiers by holding out the promise of immense booty and unbounded indulgence. For a forty days' service a man might earn paradise, not to speak of the worldly spoil with which he was certain to return laden home. The poor Albigenses were crushed beneath an avalanche of murderous fanaticism and inappeasable rapacity. To Innocent, history is indebted for one of her bloodiest pages -the European crusades; and the world owes him thanks for its most infernal institution-the Inquisition. He had for his grand object to bestow an eternity of empire upon the papal throne; and to accomplish this, he strove to inflict an eternity of thraldom upon the human mind. His daring aim

was to make the chair of Peter equally stable and absolute with its fellow-seat in pandemonium."-P. 85.

It was this "crowned demon" that spread wo and devastation over the homes of tens of thousands. In him we see embodied some of the most fierce and fiery elements of hell; and yet we must believe, under pain of eternal perdition, that he was infallible, that he was the vicar of Christ, that by him was bound what is to bind for evermore! The following is Mr Wylie's summation of the great work of this human

monster:

"Lest the work of vengeance should slacken, Rome held out dazzling bribes, equally compounded of paradise and gold She could afford to be prodigal of both, for neither cost her any thing. Paradise is always in her gift for those who will do her work, and the wealth of the heretic is the lawful plunder of the faithful. With such a bank, and permission to draw upon it to an unlimited amount, Rome had no motive, and certainly would have had no thanks, for any ill-judged econo

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my. The fanatics who mustered for the crusade hated the person and loved the goods of the heretic. Onward they marched, to earn heaven by desolating earth. The work was three centuries a-doing. It was done effectually at last, however. 'Neither sex, nor age, nor rank, have we spared," says the leader of the war against the Albigenses; we have put all alike to the sword.' The churches and the workshops, the Christianity and the industry, of the region, were swept away by this simoom of fanaticism. Before it was a garden, behind it a desert. All was silent now, where the solemn melody of praise and the busy hum of trade had before been so happily blent. Monarchs had drained their exchequers to desolate the wealthiest and fairest portion of their dominions; nevertheless they held themselves abundantly recompensed by the assurance which Rome gave them of crowns and kingdoms in paradise."-Pp. 92, 93.

We are sure that our readers would find much to instruct them, could we transfer the chapter on the Canon Law entire to our pages. At once as to its general principles, and its wasting enactments, its unlimited pretensions, and thorough perversion of every sphere of social life, the light which is here shed on the system, may well serve as a beacon to all who would not be willingly enslaved. We earnestly recommend all who are in danger of being captivated by the pretences of Popish emissaries regarding the alleged change in the spirit of Popery, to read its impious and insolent pretences, as embodied in the extracts from Popish authorities, given by our author in book i., chap. vi. We cannot but think that men would be cured by the study of every Popish leaning. An infallible, and therefore unchangeable system, there overrides every social and civil relation— crushes freedom-prostrates the civil power-fetters thought and mind--absorbs property-and blots out the landmarks which the Word of God makes sacred. The crafty emissaries of Rome, who are now so presumptuous, that we have known them creep into shops, and actually engage in defence of their abhorrent system, with those who resort to such places, complain that Protestants misrepresent their views. In this chapter, Mr Wylie quotes only from Popish authors. Out of their own mouth they are there condemned and at this very hour, wherever they have the power, the ferocious and tyrannical spirit of the canon law is every where acted on :—

"As the world grows better, the Papacy grows worse. The Papacy of the present day, so far from being set off by a comparison with the Papacy of the middle ages, rather suffers thereby; for of the two, the latter certainly was the more tolerant in its actings. No thanks to Rome for being tolerant, when there is nothing to tolerate. No thanks that her sword rusts in its scabbard, when there is no heretical blood to moisten it. But let a handful of Florentines open a chapel for Protestant worship, and the deadly marshes of

the Maremme will soon read them the lesson of the Papacy's tolerance; or let a poor Roman presume to circulate the Word of God, and he will have time in the papal dungeons to acquaint himself with Rome's new-sprung liberality; or let the Queen's government build colleges in Ireland, to introduce a little useful knowledge into that model land of sacerdotal rule, and the anathemas which will instantly be hurled from every Popish altar on the other side of the Channel, will furnish unmistakeable evidence as to the progress which the Church of Rome has recently made in the virtue of toleration. Assuredly Rome will not change so long as there are fools in the world to believe that she is changed."-P. 156.

We earnestly ask our readers to peruse the chapter on the canon law-to study it in connection with the recent Papal aggression-and then let them say whether the nation and its government have not still done by far too little in defending our civil and religious privileges, from a tyranny so hateful and in

tense.

The quotations which we have given must suffice; but we trust that many may be induced to study the volume before us. There may be one or two repetitions observable in its contents, and perhaps some local details towards the close might have been omitted-but withal, the volume is a valuable contribution to the Protestant side of the controversy which has only recommenced, and which will terminate only when Rome is destroyed. It is the elucidation of principle which signalizes the volume, or the able manner in which the author has traced Popery from its germ and incipience to its full-blown maturity, under its Gregorys and Innocents. He enables us to see farther and farther into the deep-rooted malignity of the whole Papal system-its adaptation to the purpose of crushing, or sapping and destroying the truth of God, and, by consequence, the souls of men. terrible nature, and its measureless blasphemies, are here depicted by one who has studied them well. The crowned demon of the seven hills is presented in his real character; and we do hope, that under the teaching of this and similar volumes, the churches of Christendom will awake at last to a full sense of their danger from the Antichrist-the hereditary antagonist of the truth of God.

Its

And tokens for good appear in many directions. The Evangelical Alliance has led to the production and publication of this volume, and some of its ablest members have spoken boldly out against the great incubus of Christendom. Then the chief cities of the empire are stirring against the enemy of freedom, human and divine. Dublin is alert, and its measures are blessed with success. In one Irish diocese, 10,000 have recently abjured Popery. London begins to concentrate its scattered energies. Liverpool is moving-Manchester is moving-Glasgow is moving Edinburgh has moved. Lethargic or supine as the nation was, the Pope has roused men from their false security; and though much remains to be done, nay, though we have but broken ground in the controversy, it would seem that the tide begins to turn-the Papacy has another humbling lesson to learn-a lesson which may perhaps precede her final and utter overthrow. Then the measures employed to meet the aggression through the press are encouraging. Scheme after scheme is projected against the antagonist of the truth; and if only the churches prove faithful to the trust committed to them, it will be found at last that Popery, like other foul offensive things, must hide its head before the light which radiates from the Word of God. Surely the time will come when men

shall cease to worship a God which "they have made out of a little dried batter."

MEMENTOES OF THE DISRUPTION. PERHAPS no great movement, affecting a whole people in their deepest interests, ever took place so calmly as the Disruption of the Church of Scotland. Looking back upon the magnitude of that event in itself and its results, we cannot help wondering at the way in which God led so many to a large place, through a period of excitement, no doubt, but an excitement which was calm, deep, and conservativenot tumultuous or revolutionary. Some hundreds of men, with perhaps eight hundred thousand of their people, young and old, were about to enter on a new or untried state of ecclesiastical being. Many expected only life-long privations or even poverty,-some, and these such men of faith as M'Cheyne and others, were preparing for exile, as if in the land of their fathers a home for them could no longer be found. Some were repressed by the lordly ascendency of the titled beside them, or galled by the insolence of rank, which would have dictated even to conscience; and all were chafed by shrinking and apostasy in the hour of trial, on the part of men who had once seemed foremost in the contest for the crown-rights of Christ, but who eventually proved that some things were dearer to them than the glory of their Lord. Yet amid these multiform causes of grief or perplexity and pain, all proceeded calmly, and even serenely, till the set time came, when the Church of Scotland escaped from the fetters which had been wreathed around her, as a bird escapes from the snare of the fowler. It is true, there were some bold and resolute speeches,-some sweeping language, embodying right principle, but exaggerated and distorted by those whose interest it was to distort them. The unfeeling or the duped politicians who had persisted in fettering the church, were obliged in self-defence to blazon these expressions into importance; and the time of the British Parliament was, in fact, wasted by noble lords and baronets, who affected to see in such language something akin to rebellion or to treason. They had injured the church,-they therefore hated it; and, as a breast work behind which they might stand with some feeling of safety, amid the desolation which they were causing, they held up a few scraps of garbled and distorted speeches. Men on the verge perhaps of poverty, occasioned by the fatuity of their rulers, spoke keenly on the subject of their trials,—or rather, on the sin of the nation in the matter; and, because they did so, they were pilloried before the world as transgressors. The time of Parliamentary committees was engrossed by inquiries which did no honour either to legislation or right feeling; and surely those who hunted with so keen a scent for phrases which they might exaggerate or distort, though sound and true in the principles which they embodied, cannot now look back with complacency on the ungenerous part which they acted towards men who were perilling their all in defence of what they believed, and believe now more than ever, to be the truth of God.

It is well, however, that every thing akin to acrimony should subside and disappear. "The wrath of man worketh not the righteousness of God" -and however natural, or however easy of explanation, the sayings to which we have referred as alarming our legislators so intensely may seem, the

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