The professor (in a note, p. 195) points out a mistake of another gentleman, Sir J. C. Hippisley, relative to the revealing of confessions by a minister to whom they are confided,-" As the church of England allows, though it does not command, the use of private confession, it has wisely made the following provision in the 113th canon, which relates to ministers certifying to the ecclesiastical courts notorious crimes and scandals by presentment. "Provided always, that if any man confess his secret and hidden sins to the minister, for the unburdening of his conscience, and to receive spiritual consolation and ease of mind from him, we do not any way bind the said minister by this our constitution, &c." Surely nothing could be more proper, or even more necessary than this provision. By the 109th canon the churchwardens of every parish are required to present notorious offenders; and by the 113th canon the same is required of ministers, if the duty is neglected by the churchwardens. Since then confession to a minister is allowed by the exhortation in the com. munion service, there would have been a strange inconsistency if men who voluntarily confessed, for the purpose of unburdening their conscience, and whose offences would otherwise have remained unknown to the minister, were confounded with those whose offences were notorious. To betray a secret confided by one man to another, for the purpose of unburdening his conscience, is something so detestable, that the prohibition of the 113th canon can require no further defence. And if this canon had been estimated as it ought, with reference to the exhortation in the communion service, it would have excited less surprise when Sir J. C. Hippisley read it in the House of Commons. See his Speech of May 18, 1810, p. 46."

The minister of the church of England, we may observe too, by no means lies under a general injunction of secrecy,-" such crimes (says the canon) as by the laws of this realm his own life may be called in question for concealing the same," are excepted. How often have the Romish clergy been guilty of misprision of treason! how often might the massacre of hundreds have been prevented, had they disclosed the horrible confessions whispered in their ears, either through a sensation of fear or an indulgence in triumph!

We are afraid of overstepping all limits, and therefore, although we have much to observe on many points discussed in this excellent work, we shall confine ourselves to two more only. 1. That which relates to the religious liberty enjoyed by the members of the church of England, and the system of religious slavery which disgraces the church of Rome."While the church of England (says Dr. Marsh, p. 192) admits that it may have erred, the church of Rome contends that it cannot err': if, while the

church of England admits that salvation may be obtained in the church of Rome, the latter denies the possibility of it in the former, we cannot have a more striking contrast between the powers which are claimed by the respective churches. The authority of the church of England goes no further than is necessary for its own preservation; its members have no other restraints than such as the welfare of every society requires: it neither prevents them from adopting any other form of christianity, nor excludes them from salvation if they do. But the church of Rome, which denies salvation to all who depart from it, and inculcates the belief that the very act of departure is the forfeiture of salvation, enslaves the conscience, and enchains the faculties of man. The church of England, then, is a system of religious liberty; the church of Rome a system of religious salvery." And again (p. 176)" The church of England carries its authority no further than is absolutely necessary for its own preservation. It requires, on the one hand, a compliance with its rules from its members in general, and its ministers in particular; but as no man is compelled to remain a member, he may exercise his private judgment in the investigation of its doctrines, and withdraw from its communion if he believes that its doctrines are false. We allow, therefore, to others the privilege which we claimed for ourselves in withdrawing from the church of Rome. And since they who withdraw from us continue the exercise of that very authority to which they had been previously subjected in the church of England, our church stands exculpated from the charge of inconsistency and a departure from the principles of the Reformation."-It may be proper to print here a note appended to p. 199: "Mr. Crowley, who was formerly a student in the college of Maynooth, and is therefore perfectly well acquainted with the effects of confession among the Romanists in Ireland, says, at p. 4 of his Thoughts or the Emancipation of the Roman Catholice, "Long before children are sent to confession, they are taught by their parents and others to respect and dread the priest. Confession, and especially confirmation, afford him the best opportunities that can be, and which he very rarely neglects, to make the deepest im pressions on their tender minds. And his occasional admonitions and threatenings, together with the discourses and examples of priest-ridden or credulous people, are in general sufficient to prevent those impressions from being afterwards either effaced or weakened." At p. 23 he says, of the Romish priests in Ireland, "Considering the restraint under which they labour, it is wonderful how much power they presume, with the aid of these doctrines, to exercise over the common people." And he adds in a note, "that many a countryman has patiently borne a flogging from a priest, which would entitle him to heavy damages in a court of justice."

-Among other instances of patient submission, I remember many years ago to have seen, in the cathedral of Mecheln, a grenadier, who had been the terror of the Turks, kneeling two hours on the bare stones, performing a penance imposed by his confessor."

We must now shew the feeble attack on Dr. Marsh, on account of these and similar passages, in the Popish Orthodox Journal for November last, p. 433." He (says the reviewer in this egregious work) has endea voured to prove the church of England to be a system of religious liberty, and the church of Rame a system of religious slavery. Whether the church of England be or be not such a system as he has described, I have at present neither time nor inclination to make a minute enquiry. It is, however, worthy of notice, that every Protestant is so free, that he is at liberty to withdraw himself from the communion of his church. And will Dr. Marsh venture to assure his readers that such a man is free, when he is shortly after met by the parson of the parish, who comes in search of the strayed sheep, not indeed with the Bible in one hand and the thirty-nine articles in the other, to convince him of the error he has committed in deserting an establishment almost two hundred and sixty years old, but he comes to him demanding his tithes! In vain `does the free man urge that he no longer belongs to bis church, that he is now obliged to assist those ministers who have received him into their communion, and who are perhaps equally deserving; and that a Dr. Marsh has writ ten a book, in which he says, that the church which he has left was a system of religious liberty. The parson replies, my good friend, I must have my tithes with regard to those ministers who now preach to you, assist them as you can; and as to Dr.

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he would act just as I do." -What, in the name of common sense, has stuff like this to do with the liberal toleration afforded by the church of England to those who differ from her in religious tenets, and the tyranny exercised by the church of Rome over all who subscribe to her corrupt tenets, as well as over those who refuse to bow the knee to her usurped authority; or, convinced of the monstrous errors which she cherishes and asserts as true doctrines, quit (as Mr. Crowley, and, recently, Lord Kingsland, have done) her im pure bosom for other churches, where they may be nourished with “the sincere milk of the word?" Those who buy estates charged with the payment of tithes, in fact purchase but nine parts of their value. The enth is the property of the church, and the tithe issues to the parson from the estate on which it attaches, and is not paid at the cost of the farmer, as the vulgar fancy. But, obliged to yield the rent-charge of tithe or not, the church of England pursues not seceders with vengeance, with excommunication, imprisonment, torture, or death. She resorts

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not to the dreadful apparatus of the inquisition, she follows not with vengeance the dead bodies of those who constructively are not deemed. within her pale, such as stage-players for instance,-Moliere in former times, and Mlle. Raucour the other day; or of those who have departed this life in the Protestant communion, like the daughter of the author of the Night Thoughts, and others, who dying in countries oppressed by the unrelenting tyranny of Popery, have been buried in "dens and caves of the earth," like the primitive Christians, or interred "with maimed rites," under the veil of night, in private gardens or obscure groves;-neither does she consign their souls to damnation.-Does the. church of England affect the attribute, of infallibility, and imperatively demand credence for absurdity? Has the church of England compiled an Index expurgatorius? Or does she forbid her followers to read even the Bible without a licence first had and obtained?-Not that Professor Marsh can mean that the church of England stands on no authority, but that people may leap or clamber over her fences, or pull up and trample them under foot at will. Even as a religious society, in common with all societies, she must possess some powers of self-defence, and a right to dissever herself from an unsound member. But more than this,component part of the universal church of CHRIST, she must, and does, possess certain privileges and immunities,-all the rights and all the blessings belonging to genuine Catholicism. If a man think proper to withdraw from the Universal Church, he does it at his peril. If he be mad or foolish enough to quit the ark of salvation, and encounter the horrors of the great deep, he must bear the consequences of his perverseness, or his temerity. The Church of England will not pronounce an anathema {on. him; she leaves him to the cognizance of the searcher of hearts, and to that sentence which the awful splendors of the day of judgment shall disclose. She knows that schism is a sin, but she will not visit it with the punishment due to crime. Man may. chastise crime, but it is God's prerogative to take vengeance on sin. Those besotted men who deny THE LORD that bought them, who reject the atonement, and degrade the only begotten SoN OF GOD to a level with themselves,-the church of England pities and prays for, (" all Jews, Turks, infidels, and heretics "); but she is far from burning them at an Auto da fé; she leaves them to the conviction which cannot but take place hereafter, when they shall see the Son of Man clothed in that primæval glory which he had before the world was, at the final "manifestation of the glory of THE GREAT GOD, EVEN OUR SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST; when every eye shall see him, even those who pierced him."

VOL. III. [Prot: Adv. March, 1815.1

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II. We must, in conclusion, take the liberty of protesting against the interpretation which the Professor puts on the famous text, "Thou art Peter," &c He admits, (p. 212,) "that St. Peter was the rock on which the church was built."-(P. 213) "He was the rock on which the church of Jerusalem was built, the church which was the mother of all churches, and which, if the arguments of the Romanists were valid, might claim to be mistress of all churches. At this very day there is a patriarch of Jerusalem, who, though he possesses no patrimony of St. Peter, has an infinitely stronger claim to the primacy among Christians than the Pope of Rome. The church of Jerusalem is unquestionably the mother church, which the church of Rome is not. The church of Jerusalem was unquestionably founded by St. Peter, which the church of Rome was not. In the church of Jerusalem, and not in the church of Rome, was fulfilled the prophecy of our Saviour, that the church should be founded on St. Peter, as a rock. It is through the church of Jerusalem, which was the mother of all churches, and not through the church of Rome, that Christian churches in general partake of the prophecy of our Saviour." In what the Professor says in the last sentence of this passage we, generally, concur, excepting that our Lord's prophecy did not relate at all to the person of St. Peter. It related to Peter's confession of faith-" Thou art Christ, the Son of the living God. And Jesus answered, and said unto him, blessed art thou Simon BarJona; for flesh and blood hath not revealed IT unto thee, but my Father which is in heaven." Our Lord here addresses Peter, and moreover speaks of something which Peter had said," hath not revealed IT unto THEE." He then goes on-"and I say unto thee, that thou art Peter,"— but he does not add "and upon thee will I build," but "upon this rock," which, from the plain grammatical construction of the words, must mean something apart from Peter's person, and nothing else appears except the glorious confession of faith which Peter had just made. To have sustained the doctrine of the Romanists, our Saviour's words should have run thus: Συ ει Πετρος, και επι σοι—but our Lord reverts to IT, that something which Peter had just said, and says και επι ταυτη τη πέτρα οικοδμήσω *. T. λ-The Professor, notwithstanding, by no means sanctions the claim of the church of Rome to universal dominion, founded on an erroneous interpretation of the words in question. The Romanists gain nothing by his admitting of their idea that IIɛrgos and Terça mean the same thing-the person of Peter; but we cannot allow that this is a just interpretation of the passage. If so much importance, however, be attached to Peter's person, are they content to couple with it the rebuke which our Saviour gave him, recorded in the sixteenth chapter of St. Matthew, five verses after the words just explained,-"Get thee behind me, Satan, thou