characteristic badge is A DENIAL OF THE FATHER AND THE SON, can possibly and in the very reason of things partake of salvation.

2. And now for Mr. Rutter's palmary argument: a weighty theme, no doubt, because it professes to set me in direct opposition to our blessed Lord. Yet, grave as may be the allegation which it involves, a single glance will discover, that it can have no weight save with a Romanist, who devoutly fancies his own peculiar Church to be EXCLUSIVELY the catholic Church of Christ. Logical mood and figure sometimes have their use in detecting a paralogism. Let us throw the present argument into a syllogism, and then observe its cogency.

Daniel foretells, that the kingdom of Christ shall never be destroyed or given up to another, but that it shall stand for ever: and Christ expressly promises to his Church, that he will be with it to the end of the world, and that the gates of hell shall never prevail against it-The Church of Rome is that kingdom of Christ foretold by Daniel, and that Church to which the promises of Christ had EXCLUSIVE respect-Therefore (what can possibly be plainer?), if the Church of Rome became an apostate or idolatrous Church, and if the Pope be the head of that idolatrous apostasy; the prophecy of Daniel, and the promise of Christ, have alike failed.

(1.) Such, when regularly marshalled, is the argument, which is effectually to demolish me, by proving, . that "of all wild opinions there is none that appears.

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"more antichristian than my own or more opposite "to the plain words of Scripture."

Doubtless it will do its business root and branch, provided only we will concede, that the Romish Church is EXCLUSIVELY the Catholic Church, as its members delight to call it; that the Romish Church is SOLELY that Church, which Daniel described as everlasting, and to which Christ made the promise of eternal subsistence: but, as this is the very matter in debate between the Protestants and the Papists, the argument of Mr. Rutter, however convincing it may be to the latter, can only appear to the former as built upon a complete begging of the question. We Protestants venture to deny (and we conceive ourselves to have simple matter of fact on our side), that the Romish Church is EXCLUSIVELY the Catholic Church: for we suppose, that the appellation Catholic, so zealously claimed by the Papists as specially their own, and often so foolishly (as it were) conceded to them by unthinking or ignorant Protestants, belongs not EXCLUSIVELY to any particular national Church; but (as the liturgy of one sound branch of the Universal Church well expresses the matter) that it describes the WHOLE state of Christ's Church militant here on earth. Hence we contend, that the Romanists are no more Catholics, in any exclusive or peculiar sense of the word, than the Greeks, or the Armenians, or the Syriaus, or the Ethiopians, or the insular English, or the continental Lutherans and Calvinists, or the transatlantic Americans and we should be just as ready to censure

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an exclusive assumption of the title by any single communion of those various branches of the Church Universal; as we are to censure it, when thus exclusive, in the case of the mere Western or Latin Church in communion with the provincial bishop or patriarch of Rome. On these grounds, though we believe this particular provincial Church to have lamentably apostatised from the sincerity of the Gospel, though we conceive it to have been prefigured by the little horn which was to spring up SYNCHRONICALLY with the ten Gothic kingdoms of the dismembered Roman Empire, and though wẹ can discern no reason for supposing that the promise of Christ was made to the Romish Church any more than to each of the seven Asiatic Churches in the Apocalypse: still we find no difficulty in discerning, that this same divine promise, which was made not to this or to that provincial Church but to the CATHOLIC Church of Christ viewed collectively, has been most faithfully and accurately fulfilled.

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To say nothing of the concurrent lines of the Greek, the Syrian, the Armenian, and the Ethiopic, Churches; we are not deterred, either by the absurd and unwarrantable assumption of the title Catholic on the part of the meré provincial Latin Church, or by the cry of heresy which during the whole period of the 1260 prophetic days she has not failed to raise against those pious witnesses who throughout the limits of the Roman Empire have prophesied in sackcloth against her unscriptural innovations: by neither of these are we deterred from observing the faithfulness,

faithfulness, with which Christ has performed his promise, that, however widely real heresy might prevail (as in the days of the anti-arian champion Athanasius), or however deeply a corrupt and persecuting system might have rooted itself (as during the lapse of the fated three times and a half); he would still be with his catholic Church to the end of the world, and the gates of hell should never prevail against it. Mr. Rutter says much respecting the necessity of the Church being always visible *. I do not think it worth

*Key. p. 409-415. Mr. Rutter argues, that the Protestant Church (meaning, I presume, the collective body of the Protestant Churches) cannot be the true Church, because it was not in being before the year 1500, and because it has never yet converted any infidel kings and nations to the faith of Christ: and so confident is he on this point, that he sees not how the most learned protestant can give any satisfactory answer to his argument. Key. p. 424.

I am willing to hope, that it requires no great profundity of learning to answer the stale question, Where was the Protestant Church before Luther? In return, I would ask Mr. Rutter, Where was the German Church before Boniface? He will readily answer, that it is a continuation of the Catholic Church. And I, in like manner, will just as readily answer, that the collective Protestant Church is a continuation of the faithful persecuted Waldensic Church in the wilderness.

But Mr. Rutter triumphs in the circumstance, that the collective Protestant Church, which began indeed to exist upon a larger scale than before and to be distinguished by that particular name only since the beginning of the sixteenth century, has made none of those national and regal conversions which form the glory of the Romish Church.

A most notable discovery in good truth! The collective Protestant Church, which in the beginning of the sixteenth century

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worth my while to argue the point with him; though our Lord tells us, that "the kingdom of God cometh "not with observation," but that "it is within us* because the very persecution, of the Waldensic Churches before the Reformation, and of the Protestants after it, sufficiently proves the visible existence of that distressed Church in the wilderness of Popish error and heresy; which the inspired prophet has delineated with so much accuracy, and which he represents as subsisting in a low and depressed state during the whole period of the 1260 days †.

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continued the line of the old Waldensic and Bohemian Churches, did not convert the Saxons, the Goths, and the Huns, who embraced Christianity during the fifth and the sixth and the seventh centuries: therefore it cannot be a true Church. thing can be clearer: but I am afraid, this invincible argument will prove rather more than Mr. Rutter may wish. The German Church, which in the eighth century continued the line of the more ancient Roman Church, did not convert the Ephesians and the Galatians, who embraced Christianity in the first century therefore, on the same ground, it plainly cannot be a true Church. I am not aware, that the missionary labours of the Romanists SINCE the Reformation have been at all more exemplary or more successful, than those of the Protestants. * Luke xvii. 20, 21.

+ Rev. xii. 6, 14. xvii. 3. If the reader wishes to see the line of sound evangelical witnesses deduced through all the hitherto-elapsed period of the papal apostasy, he would do well to consult Bp. Newton's excellent Dissert. on Rev. xi. and Dr. Allix on the ancient Churches of Piedmont.

It has been a prevailing humour among the Romanists, from which even the candid and liberal Mr. Butler is not exempt, to charge the pious Waldenses with the Manichean heresy. Yet

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