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what they meet with, and that in taking them as expositors of Scripture some private judgement and some personal help of the Holy Spirit are needful, in order to decide, amongst their variations, where the truth lies. This is Protestantism; and whilst himself acting on this principle, Dr. Pusey must allow us to choose between the quotations we adduce and the passages he has strung together, in deciding how far his views are in accordance with Scripture and the doctrines of the early Church."

Rome's True Character. A Sermon preached in Nottingham Church, November 5th, 1843. By C. OVERTON, Vicar. London: Seeley, Burnside, and Seely. Hull: Hutchinson; Cussons.

The manner in which the 5th of November was celebrated in the pulpits of the Church of England has very much annoyed the Tractarians. We are proportionally rejoiced. Mr. Overton properly commences his Sermon with the history of the transaction in these words:

"Catesby, Dighy, and Tresham, with Percy and the notorious Guy Fawkes, under the guidance and sanction of the two Jesuits, Garnet and Greenway, were the principal agents in this horrible plot. The conspirators bound themselves together by oaths. One of the Jesuits administered the mass to the others; and declared that all their sins were forgiven. Scruples were expressed, whether it were right to destroy the whole assembly that should meet in parliament, when some of their own party would be in the House of Lords. To this, Garnet replied, That if the advantage were greater to the Catholic party by taking away some innocents, with many guilty, doubtless it should be lawful to kill and destroy them all.' A cellar was hired by Percy, immediately under the House of Lords; and here Fawkes, acting as his servant, stowed thirty barrels and four hogsheads of gunpowder. The day for the meeting of parliament was now approaching, and each of the conspirators was prepared to perform his part. A mysterious letter, without a name, sent to Lord Monteagle, advising him not to be present at the meeting of parliament, was the means which the providence of God employed, for the detection and prevention of the whole plot. In this letter it was written, Though there be no appearance of any stir, yet I say they will receive a terrible blow this parliament, and yet they shall not see who hurts them.' This letter being shown to the king, with his usual penetration he suggested, that it might intimate some intended explosion by gunpowder. As soon as this suggestion was inade, some one present observed, A divine sentence is in the lips of the king." (Prov. xvi. 20.) And so the event proved. When a magistrate was sent to visit the cellar at midnight, he met with Fawkes, coming from the cellar-door, and found him furnished with matches and other materials for firing a train. A further search discovered, under a few faggots, the barrels of gunpowder, with bars of iron and massy stones laid upon them.

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"Now, what clearly fastens upon the Church of Rome the guilt of this horrible conspiracy, is the historical fact, that Garnet had sent a messenger to Rome, to acquaint the Pope with the projects of the conspirators, and that he fully sanctioned their design. On this occasion, therefore, the Church of Rome was acting out the character in which she was exhibited to the Evangelist in our text, where he says, 'AND I SAW THE WOMAN DRUNKEN WITH THE BLOOD OF THE SAINTS, AND WITH THE BLOOD OF THE MARTYRS OF JESUS: AND WHEN I SAW HER, I WONDERED WITH GREAT ADMIRATION.""

Of the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, he also writes

"There is one memorable piece of papal cruelty which I cannot pass by without mentioning. I mean the terrible massacre of the Huguenots, or French Protestants in Paris, on St. Bartholomew's day, 1572. When Charles IX. had treacherously decoyed many thousands of Protestants to his capital, at day-break, the bells were rung from every tower, and this was the appointed signal upon which the misguided papists were to rise up and murder their Protestant fellow-countrymen. Terrible was the butchery that ensued. Not only the streets of Paris, but those of many other cities, literally flowed with Protestant blood! Gregory XIII., upon hearing of the massacre, caused bonfires to be made in Rome; and sent King Charles word, that he

and his Cardinals had been to Church in solemn procession, to thank God for having put it into his heart to exterminate the heretics. To keep up the memorial of this triumph, a medal was struck at the mint in Rome. Now, it is a most appalling fact, that, instead of being ashamed of this bloody tragedy, the Church of Rome glories in it to the present day; for this medal is still to be obtained at the mint by any one who asks for it; and I have one now in my possession, which I obtained in Rome last spring. On one side there is the image and superscription of GREGORY XIII., and on the other there is a representation of the destroying angel, having a sword in one hand and a cross in the other, in the act of murdering the Protestants, with this inscription: VGONOTTORUM STRAGES, 1752.' That is, The slaughter of the Huguenots in the year 1572. How can we look upon this medal and not say to those who publicly send it forth to the world, Truly ye do allow the deeds of your fathers,' (Luke xi. 48,) and ye bear witness to yourselves that ye are the children of those' (Matt. xxiii. 31,) who murdered the Protestants. They indeed killed them, and ye glory in their murders, and perpetuate the memory of their slaughters! To whom shall we apply, if not to the papal Church, the fearful charge of being drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus?

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The sumptuous adorning of the Apostate Church is also another mark by which she is distinguished. She was arrayed in purple and scarlet colour, and decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls.' (Rev. xvii. 4.) The Protestant who visits Rome, and travels through papal countries, is wonderfully impressed with the amazing exactness in which he sees the fulfilment of this description. Scarlet and purple are the colours in which the Pope and his Cardinals are usually to be seen. Their very carriages, and the chair of state, in which the Pope is carried in solemn procession, are covered with scarlet. When Addison visited Italy, previous to the French revolution, he was so struck with the splendour, and riches, and treasures that he beheld, that he said they as much surpassed his expectation, as other sights had generally fallen short of it. Silver could scarce find an admission, and gold itself looked poorly among such an incredible number of precious stones.' At the outbreak of the French revolution, the Romish Church was despoiled of much of her magnificence; for at that period some of the kings that had long ministered to her pomp and glory, began 'to hate her and make her desolate and naked.' (Rev. xvii. 16.) Bishop Newton's 'Dissertations on the Prophecies' were published about forty years before the French revolution; and with all that took place at that memorable period, full in our view, it is exceedingly striking to read his observations on this part of the chapter. These are his words: Some of the kings who formerly loved her, shall hate her, shall strip and expose and plunder her. And as the kings of France have contributed greatly to her advancement, it is not impossible, nor improbable, that some time or other they may also be the principal authors of her destruction.' Not only did Napoleon strike a terrible blow to papal domination, but he commenced a regular system of spoliation and pillage, carrying off the choicest specimens of Italian art, and actually making desolate and bare many a richly decorated shrine, by despoiling it at once both of the image of the saint, and of all the costly offerings that had been presented to it. But Rome has begun to recover from this blow. Many pilfered treasures have found their way back again to their original stations; and it is impossible, even now, to enter into St. Peter's at Rome, and many of the papal churches and palaces, and not be astonished at the lavish manner in which they are decked with gold, and precious stones, and pearls."

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Again: "Popery is apostacy, a falling away from the faith once delivered to the saints. The true faith is, that there is one God and one Mediator, and through that one Mediator, by one Spirit, we have access to the Father. But popery has made its hundreds and thousands of mediators, and draws men from the only way of access to God. By its manifold idolatries, it has apostatised from the spiritual worship of the one living true God. Apostacy was idolatry in the Jewish Church, and it is the same in the Christian. The Pope of Rome is evidently the man of sin, doing more to promote and uphold it, by his wicked decrees, than any other man in the world. He is especially the son of perdition, the name given to Judas the traitor: and the whole system which he upholds is sentenced, in the scriptures of truth, to be destroyed for ever. He, above all others,

is the lawless one, for he is declared again and again not to be bound by any law of God or man. Where shall we find the adversary who opposeth and exalteth himself above all that is called God, or that is worshipped; and who sitteth as God in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God, if not in the Pope of Rome? Kings and rulers are sometimes called gods; the heathen Romans gave idolatrous worship to their emperors, and the papist themselves actually worship, as God, the consecrated host. But this king of pride exalts himself above all these. He claims a dominion superior to that of all earthly rulers: constantly has he treated both kings and emperors as his slaves and vassals; and at his inauguration, exalted on high, he makes the table of the Lord his footstool, and, sitting there, receives adoration. Not content with a seat, (ex cathedra) as a bishop in the Christian Church, he pretends to be God's vicar upon earth, a supreme lord over every other bishop in the world. He shows that he is God-with wicked blasphemy affects to be so-by assuming divine titles and attributes, as holiness and infallibility, professing to do what God only can do; and claiming for his own laws and decrees an equal authority with the word and will of the unchangeable Jehovah. Popery, above every other system that ever appeared in the world, is the mystery of iniquity. It pretends to be so pure and so full of zeal to God and love to man, while really it is the great corrupter of the whole earth, the principal upholder of what God abhors and detests, and the most cruel and unpitying tyrant to the bodies and souls of men that ever was sent to smite the earth with a curse. The leaven of Popery was at work even in the days of the Apostles. The Galatians had fallen from grace, by mixing up the works of the law with faith in Christ, in order to their justification. (Gal. v. 4.) The Colossians had to be solemnly warned against a voluntary humility and worshipping of angels (Col. ii. 18); and the Corinthians had begun to exalt one Apostle above another. (1. Cor. i. 12.) These were the seeds from which the whole system took its rise. Let justification by faith only be distinctly maintained, voluntary humility abolished, and St. Peter be put on the level with the other Apostles, and we have then nothing left out of which Popery can grow. The Roman emperor, residing at Rome, kept for long the rising ambition of the Bishop of Rome in check. But when the emperor was taken out of the way, and the empire itself was divided and broken in pieces, there was nothing any longer to restrain the usurpation of the Pope; and then was he revealed in his true character. All the world knows how much popery is indebted, both for its establishment and its continuance, to the lying wonders which it has to tell, and the pretended miracles of which it has to boast. Thus it continues to the present day, reserved for the fulfilment of the awful doom already pronounced upon it."

This is an eloquent and excellent discourse. We must give yet another quotation. "Has the Church of England in such a clear and decisive voice expressed the light in which she views popery? How then are we to regard the leaders of the controversy which has now unhappily for some years been dividing and distracting our Church? If we had nothing else to object against them, the mild and gentle terms in which they speak of the apostacy, which our Church declares to be the great whore that corrupteth the earth with her fornications;" this alone would be sufficient for suspecting that they were not in their hearts sound Protestants. But when, in addition to this, we seriously examine their statements of the doctrine of baptism, and the supper of the Lord, and of a sinner's justification before God; when we notice their extreme affection for things trifling and indifferent in themselves, as if a main part of religion consisted in bowing the body and turning to the east; when we hear them speak so much about tradition, as if the Word of God were not the only perfect and sole rule both of our faith and practice; when we do this, we cannot but regard them as unsafe guides, and shepherds who scatter instead of feed the flock. Let none say they can receive the teaching of the Oxford guides, and yet be as far removed from popery as ever. The thing is impossible. It is the avowed design of these teachers to go as near as they can to the Church of Rome: that is, to go as near as they can to a system which God has marked for destruction, and from which he has commanded us to stand afar off! Oh, perilous enterprise! Oh, blind infatuation! What! shall we go still nearer and nearer the burning mountain, and not at length be consumed by the fiery stream that is emitted from it? Shall we boldly

approach the great harlot, admire her drapery, and stand listening to her fair speech, and her flattering words, and not at last be overcome by her sorceries and her witchcraft, and seduced into sin? How many have been drawn aside already by means such as these; and have actually returned into Babylon again! Let us learn from their apostacy, and from the steps that led to it, the truth of the wise saying which we have recorded, 'He that despiseth small things, shall fall by little and little.' Oh that all whose labours are evidently tending to involve our beloved country in Egyptian darkness and Babylonish bondage, would seriously ponder, the solemn and almost prophetic words, of one of the great men whom we have already quoted: The walls of the spiritual Jericho are fallen down before the blast of the trumpet of God; and Cursed, cursed shall he be who goeth about to build them up again.'

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"Lastly, is there much reason for believing that great Babylon, before she sinks to rise no more, will again become drunken with the blood of the saints, and of the martyrs of Jesus? Then let us consider what we ought to do. Let us arm ourselves with the same mind that was found in those who waxed valiant in fight, and completely triumphed over all the craft and all the rage of this subtle and cruel adversary. Our Marian martyrs, and all the saints and martyrs of Jesus, whose blood will be required at the hand of Babylon, overcame by the blood of the Lamb, and the testimony of their mouth, and they loved not their lives unto death.' They had the Father's name in their forehead, and they followed the Lamb whithersoever he went. Only let this be our character, and these the weapons with which we war, and we, like them, shall get the victory too. Only let us experience the power of vital godliness in our hearts, and manifest it in our lives; let us know, and believe, and feel, and show that God in Christ has indeed become our Father; let us follow in all things the steps of Christ; let us feel the preciousness of his atoning blood; boldly testify his faithful word; and be more fearful to displease him than careful to preserve our lives; so shall we prevail over our adversary, however terrible may be the form in which he comes against us. He in whom we have believed, having made us faithful unto death, will bestow upon us a crown of life. And though, when the witnesses are slain, (Rev. xi. 7,) we may be called to experience the last dreadful rage of the Apostate Church, and be required to resist even unto blood, striving against her; only let us cling to the faithful word, the atoning blood, and the glorious Spirit of our God and Saviour, and then, when the conflict is past, we shall be permitted to unite in the triumphant song of those who have gotten the victory over the beast, and over his image, and over the number of his mark.' (Rev. xv. 2.)"

This is sound and good advice. Let the people of God, both clergy and laity, look to it. It has to do with us all. The tendency of the Tractarian doctrines is worse than are the doctrines themselves. This tendency is now a possibility—it may become a bloody actuality.

The Church of England, Apostolical, not Patristical. A Sermon, preached in the Parish Church of Witney, at the Visitation of the Ven. the Archdeacon of Oxford. By the Rev. G. C. ROLFE, A. B., Perpetual Curate of Hailey. London: Hatchard & Son. 1843.

We have seldom been better pleased than with this sermon of sound doctrine, earnestly contended for. The plain and straightforward way, not without eloquence and power, in which Mr. Rolfe has sounded the trumpet of the Church and gathered around him the panoply of war, fencing himself within the bulwarks of her Canons, her Liturgy, her Articles, and her Homilies, proves him a warrior able and ready for the battle.

Of her Liturgy, he says, "It stands unrivalled in uninspired compositions, retaining so much of antiquity as is pure and scriptural, and rejecting what has been foisted by Rome on primitive offices of devotion. In the use of this inimitable formulary of prayer, praise, and thanksgiving, the most devout may find a ready utterance for the aspirations of their soul after God. As a whole, it is so varied, so intercessory, so full of praise, so reverential, so intensely thirsting after mercy and holiness, that I cannot coincide in sentiment with those who feel that a some

thing is lacking, a something only is to be found in the breviaries of a corrupt, idolatrous, and Apostate Church."

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Again: "Her Articles are her glory, her ornament of grace, her bulwark of defence against error in every shape; they are her credentials to every age and every man, that she is a living Church, the pillar and ground of the Truth; that the ark of the Lord is amongst us, and that the Shechinah has not departed from our sanctuaries,"- That they are Catholic, but not Romish; Protestant, but not Sectarian,"- "That in her Articles the Church pays a willing homage to Prophets and Apostles, but declines to sit at the feet of the Fathers, and yield implicit deference to their instruction. She does not judge of Scripture by tradition, but tradition by Scripture. She assigns to Scripture an independent and paramount authority, and insists upon the clearness, the fullness, and the sufficiency of the sacred volume." In the spirit of the caution of our venerable Reformers, he adds, let us not set aside the testimony of the Fathers as witnesses of facts, but reject their authority as infallible interpreters of Divine Writ."

Our limits will not permit us to follow Mr. Rolfe through his exposition of "some of the unscriptural opinions of the Fathers," which he has done with great clearness, but we may ask with him, "Is our reformed Church-that glories in the Reformation, and shrinks from alliance with unchanged and unchangeable Rome, and admits us to the liberty wherewith Christ alone can set us free-to be brought in bondage by an assimilation with the Church of the fourth and fifth centuries, when the rank errors of Romanism existed in their embryo state, and the clouds of darkness that afterwards enveloped Christendom for many ages, were slowly and imperceptibly gathering?"

Mr. Rolfe acknowledges the improved condition and increased efficiency of our Church, and the privileges which her ministers enjoy under an episcopal control judiciously exercised, and a monarchical constitution duly limited. He reminds his reverend brethren to whom this sermon was addressed, that, if "they would have their trumpet from the pulpit blow no discordant sound, they must preach according to the interpretation of Scripture given in the Liturgy, the Articles, and the Homilies; their minds must be cast in the mould of our venerable and judicious Reformers, zealous for revealed, not traditionary, truth: and hating error, though in the garb of antiquity."

We cheerfully offer to the reverend gentleman our meed of praise, and we heartily join him in the prayer, that "the chief Bishop of souls may ever preside over our beloved Church, and that He may be daily fulfilling to her clergy that encouraging promise, Lo, I am with you always,' that their trumpets may blow the same unerring sound, that they may fight manfully under one standard, may be armed with the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, may form a united phalanx against the assaults of our common enemy, and may be leading themselves and their flocks to a complete and triumphant victory; so that at last both they and we may receive the welcome from our Captain, and the crown of glory from our Judge."

II. RELIGIOUS PUBLICATIONS.

Salvation by Christ. A Lecture upon the Eighteenth Article of the Church of England, delivered in St. Stephen's Church, Norwich, on the Evening of Thursday, the 6th of October, 1842. By the Rev. H. E. PRESTON, M.A., Rector of Tasburgh, Norfolk. London: G. F. and J. Rivington. Yarmouth: Sloman. 1843. Mr. Preston states that it enters deeply into the definition of a Church, that it circulates the truth: and for this end, it is a matter of the last importance, that Christians should come to an understanding, final and conclusive, upon what

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