her own strength, has too long neglected her defences through the medium of the press. She is, however, the ark of God, and is now tossed upon the restless waves of a fierce and stormy ocean, agitated by the turbulent spirit of Popery, and its offspring-the Dissenters. It is time to buckle on our armour, and to repel our assailants with vigour; to mark well our bulwarks, and not only to mark, but to man and defend them. The Protestant Church has not been the assailant: our enemies, animated by the uncharitable and aggressive spirit of Rome, have been the invaders of our peace, and are therefore answerable for the consequences. It is scarcely possible to defend our own territories without carrying the war into those of our enemies; but this we will always endeavour, with Divine assistance, to do in the spirit of charity. Christian men ought ever to remember that the Christian course is a warfare, and that in our baptism we were made soldiers and servants of Christ, and undertook to fight manfully under his banner. In this character we are commanded by an apostle "to contend EARNESTLY for the faith.' And another apostle directs us to be ever ready to give an account of the faith which we profess. This implies controversy, for without it, it is impossible either to contend earnestly, or to maintain and profess that faith undefiled which was delivered to the saints, and by them handed down to us, through "the Church of the living God, the pillar and ground of the truth."

The United Church of England and Ireland, and her merely tolerated sister in Scotland, is not a new church, calling herself after the name of some individual among the sons of men; but a holy and true branch of the Catholic and Apostolic Church, which we believe in our hearts and confess with our mouths in the Creed." She bears no name, and above all, she is not actuated, in her code of doctrine, by the partial spirit of any sect. She asserts the truth as she holds it-such as men of very various views in matters of detail, and in modes of expression may entertain, without disturbing the public peace and the Church's unity." The Romish Church in the three kingdoms is not a branch of the Catholic Church, but a schismatical intruder, which has thrust its sickle into another man's harvest. It derives its orders from the apostate churches of Italy and Spain; and, till lately, its bishops held foreign titles, though now they

illegally assume those of the reformed Catholic bishops of Ireland.

On the other hand the Dissenting interest, as they call their confraternity, are notorious heretics, having been founded by various individuals, and calling themselves after the respective names of their founders. This is in express disobedience to our Lord's command, to "call no man master" in this sense, for one is our master, even Christ. They have no mission, and therefore do not hold the Head, but have taken the honour of ministering in Christ's name on themselves, without any authority; they run unsent, and consequently their ministrations are sacrilege, and are decidedly that "gainsaying of Core," which is denounced by St. Jude.

The position which the Papists and Dissenters have lately assumed towards the Established Church, has become so alarming as even to arouse the most lukewarm. Popery is everywhere predominant, and wherever that is the case there is discord and degradation. They have recently set forward a claim to equality, and what that means does not require much sagacity to discover. They have ever enjoyed the most perfect freedom of worship and of conscience, and there appears to be no attempt meditated to deprive them of any privilege which they enjoy: equality therefore means dominion. And although the Dissenters have stricken hands with the Papists, and the latter use them as tools, yet should they, in God's righteous judgment on this Church, gain the ascendency, they will fare no better in the tender mercies of Popery than will the Church itself. The furious storm which now rages against the Church, and which is one of the marks of the true Church, is unquestionably a judgment from heaven on our dereliction of duty as a Protestant Church and nation, in taking Popery into the sanctuary of the Constitution. There will be no peace till we return to the old paths, where is the good way of righteousness and true holiness, as protestors against the idolatry and apostacy of Rome. Unless we do rouse ourselves out of the lukewarmness and indifference into which we have been sunk for so many years, God, in his wrath, may suffer the Romans to come upon us, and take away our Protestant name and nation. We can enjoy no security while the enemy's system is based on perjury, while no faith is to be kept

with Protestants, whom they call heretics-while "no oath contrary to ecclesiastical utility is binding." It is never, however, too late, even at the eleventh hour, to seek the Lord, who is ever more ready to hear than we to pray.

The Jesuits are the most formidable and dangerous of all the Papal satellites, and at this moment the empire is inundated with them. That pestilential society has established colleges in each of the three kingdoms, in direct contravention of the laws of the land, and of the Emancipation Act in particular. They are bending the whole strength of their order for the destruction of our Church, and unhappily they are but too effectually assisted in their sacrilegious project by the men who now wield the power and direct the councils of the kingdom. The Irish Papists have already denounced the Anglican Church as a “nuisance"-"the greatest nuisance on earth," and which is permitted, nay rather encouraged by those who ought to protect the Church, and punish those who by word or writing bring her into contempt. The Romish schismatical bishops now openly assume the Irish episcopal titles, in direct defiance of the Act 10 Geo. IV. c. 7, s. 24, and the prime-minister has declared that it is not his intention to prosecute this misdemeanour. Besides this, the open and unblushing perjury of the Popish members of parliament is notorious, and which is encouraged and relied on by her majesty's ministers for the preservation of their places. One of the ministers of the crown, which is based on Protestant principles, declared before the nation, that it has now become a question in the councils of our youthful sovereign, whether the reformed Catholic Church of Ireland shall be allowed to exist! This declaration, on the back of the suppression of ten bishoprics in that devoted country, ought to rouse all true lovers of our Church and country to a just apprehension of the danger in which our freedom and liberties are now placed. When our neighbour's house is on fire, it is surely time to take measures for the safety of our own.

The chief object of the "EPISCOPAL MAGAZINE, AND CHURCH OF ENGLAND WARDER," will be, to bring forward the principles of those blessed Martyrs who reformed and purified our Church, which they watered with their blood-to show the sandy foundations on which both Popery and dissent rest their claims-the

first to be considered the Catholic Church, and the others to be accounted churches at all. We are far from meaning to give offence to weak brethren, and certainly not to destroy him with our meat, for whom Christ died, by halting between two opinions, in thus declaring our intention to maintain the principles of the Reformation. It is, however, impossible but that offences will come; but the woe is denounced against those who causelessly occasion offence or division. It is time, in these days of rebuke and blasphemy, for consistent and sober-minded churchmen to mark those who cause divisions, and to avoid them, but especially those who are ever ready to plead tender consciences, which just means their own private opinions. These private opinions are, with great humility no doubt, set up against the evidence of Scripture and the current sense of the Church.

We beg to return our hearty thanks to those who have so steadily supported us since the commencement of our humble services in the cause of the Church. We earnestly hope that we shall still be assisted with the kind co-operation of the clergy, both in contributions and in condescending to recommend the "EPISCOPAL MAGAZINE, AND CHURCH OF ENGLAND WARDER" to their flocks. We shall also be greatly obliged by their communicating notices of ordinations, preferments, and other articles of intelligence. From our connexions in Scotland and America we are enabled to communicate full information respecting these two interesting and extending branches of the Anglo-Catholic Church. And we conclude in the words of the chief Bishop of the former, in his interesting life of Archbishop Whitgift, which shows that precisely the same restless spirit of intrigue were in active operation in his times as now so wantonly and dangerously agitate the Church in the present day:

"The truth is, that the disciplinarians, whom Whitgift opposed with a firmness becoming his condition, and yet with a mildness and moderation beyond the spirit of his age, and beyond the appreciation of those fiery zealots, were actuated by mere faction and phantasy. The spirit has subsisted from that period to the present by uninterrupted succession, the same identical spirit, but under a thousand separate shapes. The identical grievances of that age have vanished every one, and with a vast

variety of intermediate successors have made way for grievances of a different sound, and of a more recent date; while the holy discipline, which bore with it, forsooth, the seal of God and the authority of Scripture, is now nowhere to be found, its influence lost, its authority disregarded, while the dissenting body, which now occupies its place, is made up of shreds and patches, repelling each other with more than magnetic repulsion. With this irreconcileable repulsion they can yet unite with the Papist in one general principle of enmity and opposition to the Church of England-to that Church which, by the blessing of God, the prudence of Whitgift contributed to preserve when her Reformation was recent, while the providence of God still preserves in perfect and uninterrupted uniformity of faith, worship, and discipline, and which still stands in the high and holy attitude of an effectual bulwark of pure and undefiled religion, equally, though in perfect charity, opposed to the Papist, the fanatic, and the infidel-to the Papist who gives to superstition the attributes of true religion—to the fanatic who, when he is not a hypocrite is a fool—and to the infidel who, whether Socinian or Deist, refuses to believe the revelation which God gave of his Son."1

SERMON FOR THE NEW YEAR.*

PSALM CXLIV. 4.

"Man is like a thing of nought; his time passeth away like
a shadow."

Ir after a few years spent in this vain world we were to lie down in the dust, and retain no traces of what we once were, or had we nothing to hope or fear from our conduct in this state of existence, we might in that case begin our years with the sentiments of the sensualist, and say, " Come, I will fetch wine, and we will fill ourselves with strong drink, and this year shall be like the last, and much more abundant." But when we consider that "life and immortality are brought to light by the Gospel," that our present

Bishop Walker's Life of Archbishop Whitgift, in Scottish Episcopal Magazine, December 1821, p. 506.

2 By the Rev. John Stephen, L.L.D., late rector of Christ Church, Nassau, New Providence, one of the Bahama Islands.