PREFACE TO THE THIRTEENTH VOLUME.

THE thirteenth Volume of "THE CHURCH WARDER" is now completed. As the chief use of a preface is to give a brief scantling of the principal subjects contained in the work, we shall now proceed to fulfil this design; and to give an account of our stewardship for the year just come to an end; but which we could wish had not been so unprofitable to our readers as we regret to think that it has been.

Imprimis: The abridgement of our own larger history of the Church of Scotland,* has now been brought down to the death of Charles II.-This abridgement will be continued till the present time.

The Rev. H. C. Heilbronn has completed his comparative view of the Churches of England and Rome; which we beg to intimate it is his intention to publish in a separate form. As it has been written in such temperate language, and it is so entirely free from theological rancour, we make no doubt but that it will be acceptable to his professional brethren, and beneficial to the laity.

* Now to be had at a reduced price in 4 volumes, with plates, at Bohn's, York Street, Covent Garden.

We have given the remarkable events which have occurred both in the church and in the establishment of Scotland, as prominent a place in "The Church Warder," as the small extent of our periodical would admit; and we earnestly pray that the Great Head of the Church will extract much good out of the great evil which He has permitted the passions of men to commit; that He will put a right spirit into the hearts of the presbyterians, and a spirit of obedience, unity and concord, into the hearts of the erring episcopalians; that He will incline the hearts of the former to consider how entirely they have been alienated and isolated from the whole family of Christ on earth, from the time of their founder the Jesuit Andrew Melville, in 1580; that He will permit the Ark of Christ's Church to be restored to their distracted country; that they may receive it "with pure affection," and with the same joy and minstrelsy with which the holy psalmist and the Mosaic Church received the Ark of the Covenant from its captivity among the Philistines.

The "Five Points" of the Antinomian doctrines of Calvinism have been continued from last year's volume; and Mr. Parks the ultra-Calvinist whose sermons we have reviewed, in his blind zeal for the "Horrible decree," has threatened us with the perpetration of a whole volume of ultra-Calvinism, in order to attempt the refutation of our brief papers in this and the preceeding volume of "The Church Warder;" but great is Truth, although it may be obscured in our feeble hands, and it will prevail. Predestination in the Calvinistic sense, is a doctrine which few

people of sense and reflection care much about; yet its consequential doctrines, so to speak, retain a firm hold from puritan times, on the mind and imaginations of the profanum vulgus; and therefore however nauseous the subject may be, both to the writer and to the reader, it must be encountered in the fear of the Lord, explained and refuted. Men must not shrink from disagreeable duties, for the sake of personal ease and popularity.

Three tailors of Tooley Street, in Peel's time, called themselves the people of England; and now Lord Ebury's small faction of 460 clergymen that form his petitioners, seem to consider themselves the Church of England. They are of the Antinomian and Calvinistical denominations, and of dissenting principles; and they desire covertly to establish the "HORRIBLE DECREE," and their own private opinions, on the ruins of that everlasting gospel which is embodied in the Book of Common Prayer.

If Lord Ebury be the righteous man which he is represented to be, he will "remove his foot from evil" counsellors, and from the crafty Tooley Street combination. We beseech him to "ponder the path of his feet and let all his ways be established" in the good old paths of the tolerant and enlightened church of his fathers; for the real design of the Tooley Street party is, by deceiving him, to gain admission for the small end of the wedge, to rend asunder the noble and ancient Oak of the Church of England. The ostensible object of the Tooley Street church is, to open the door for the admission of such good men as Havelock and Livingstone. But will they satisfactorily informus, how

an apostolic church can adopt doctrines so elastic, as to embrace men of such decidedly opposite denominations as these, and at the same time to retain her own doctrines and discipline? The former was a Baptist and rejected infant baptism. The latter is a presbyterian and is bound by covenant to extirpate episcopacy root and branch. How then can the Church of England descend to them? She cannot, either consistently or practically; but let these worthy and good men ascend to her, when she will in no wise reject them, but hold out her right hand of fellowship to them.

The illustrious patriarch of restoration in the Church of England, may hide his diminished head; for an ultra high church party has arisen under, as it were, his very nose in the course of last year, which outherods Herod; which seems more allied to Dr. Newman than to him; and which has its chief support in Scotland, where it has a bishop at its head. It has disturbed the harmony of that church by the overbearing conduct of the clergy connected with it, towards their own diocesan, and their contempt of their Supreme Court of Appeal; and also by the new and semi-popish doctrines on the subject of the Lord's Supper, which they are moving heaven and earth to propagate.

We have also noticed certain so-called "Innovations" which had been silently introduced into the accustomed mode of the public worship of the Scottish establishment. This effort to improve their manner of public worship, was a long and happy step in advance; and a gradual approach to the use of a Liturgy, and of course to the avowal of a

settled system of faith on the Catholic basis. We have been told by parties connected with these "innovations," "that it is a remarkable fact that they are very widely approved of." In the meantime the subject, that is, of using a printed form, the kneeling at prayer, and standing up whilst singing,—is working its way in the public mind; there is, therefore, little doubt that in God's good time, when the old ministers are gathered to their fathers and gone to their reward, a set form of prayer-whether by authority, or composed by each minister for the use of his own congregation-will be gradually introduced, and lead the way to the removal of that prejudice and hostility to catholic usages which has ever been a distinguishing feature in Scottish presbytery.

In the course of the present volume we have endeavoured to call attention to "the signs of the times," which are portentous of the second mystical advent of the Judge of all the earth, to pass sentence on the great Midianitish woman who has proved herself to be the predicted Mother of Harlots and Abominations of the earth. The careless indifference of the days of Noah, is at present the characteristic of our own days; and ominous events of daily occurrence are witnessed now, as they were then, with lukewarmness and apathy. The powers that be, are fulfilling the prophecy that they should hate the Sorceress, make her desolate and naked, eat her flesh, and burn her with fire, which means to despoil her of her temporal possessions. The protestant powers at the Reformation deprived her of all the ill-gotten possessions of her