still waiting a more full revelation of its lawless iniquity, in times now at hand; for we have many reasons to expect that Antichrist will at last assume an open and infidel form, and we already see instances that the Romanists are more and more making their stand on infidel principles,

HER SINS AGAINST THE SPIRIT OF GOD are very serious. If any man defile the temple of God, him will God destroy, and Christians are the temples of the Holy Ghost. What can be more defiling than the Roman Confessional? Their whole doctrinal system tends to supersede and overthrow the grace of the Holy Spirit, and to bring in man's free will as disposing and preparing him to obtain the Divine favour. It degrades the true miracles of the Holy Ghost, by feigning absurd and false ones, wrought by deceivers. It forbids or limits the circulation of the Word of God.* It annuls the inspired Volume by the traditions of men.t The sins of the Roman Church against the Holy Spirit are seen also in their condemning as false, shocking, impious and blasphemous, by the Constitution Unigenitus of Pope Clement XI., in 1713, scriptural propositions taken from Quesnel's Reflections, such as these: "When God does not soften the heart by the unction of his grace, exhortations and external graces serve only to harden it the more. When God accompanies

worshipped, then our SAVIOUR; and lastly, God our HEAVENLY FATHER." What a commentary on He is Antichrist that denieth the Father and the Son. Brightman, in his "Revelation of St. John Illustrated," has a full an

swer to Bellarmine's "Book of Antichrist."

Thus in the "Index of Prohibited Books," by Sixtus V., 1590, we have the following rules:-VI. "Versiones Bibliorum ab hæresiarchis, vel etiam ab hæreticis quocunque sermoni editæ damnantur et interdicuntur.", VII. "Biblia Sacra, aut earum partes etiam a Catholico viro, vulgariter quocunque sermone redditæ, sine nova et speciali sedis Apostolicæ licentia nusquam permittuntur: vulgares vero paraphrases omnino interdicuntur." So an "Encyclical Letter of Pope Leo XII.," in 1825, requires a permission in writing for liberty to read Catholic Bibles.

What little evidence can be produced from early antiquity in favour of Rome, may be seen by Jewell's famous "Challenge," and his "Defence of his Apology." See also "Faber's Difficulties of Romanism."

his command and his external word with the unction of his Spirit, and the internal power of his grace, it then works in the heart that obedience which it requires. The reading of the Holy Scriptures is for all men."* One hundred and one such truths of God's Word were, after vehement struggles in this Church, condemned by this Man of Sin, blasphemously claiming our Saviour's authority for contradicting his word. It furnished a remarkable proof that the Church of Rome is wholly incurable, and corrupt beyond remedy, when the revival of grace in its own bosom by the Jansenists, notwithstanding all their submission and adherence to the supremacy of the Pope, was thus disowned and suppressed.

HER SINS AGAINST MORALS ARE NOTORIOUS. Her pretences indeed are to the heights of holiness, nor would I deny that eminent holiness has distinguished many who have worshipped in her communion; but these have not been those who have been zealous for those things which the Church of Rome has added to the Word, but for those things which she holds truly, and which have the form of godliness, and without which there would not be the deceivableness of unrighteousness and the mystery of iniquity. The Scripture, furnishing us with a solemn warning against final apostasy, distinguishes between the sin unto death, which is open and wilful apostasy from the truth, and sin not unto death, which is consistent with spiritual life, for there is not a just man upon earth, that doeth good, and sinneth not. Perverting this clear distinction, the Church of Rome has taken occasion to erect a system of venial and mortal sins, by which all kinds of moral evil are introduced. By their lying legends and feigned miracles,† they have verified the Scripture prophecy, speaking lies in hypocrisy. By their

The Decree is given at large in Bishop Wilson's edition of "Quesnel's Reflections on the Four Gospels," and in Finch's "Supplement to the Sketch of the Roman Catholic Controversy."

† See Stillingfleet's "Second Discourse in Vindication of the Protestant Grounds of Faith," chap. iii., in proof of the multitude of these false miracles.

doctrines of indulgences and absolutions; by the constitutions of the Jesuits, and especially by the writings of their casuists, they have established a wide wasting scheme of immorality, by which God may be made, and is made, the patron of sin; every vice may be practised with impunity from man; and all religious services be performed without spiritual life or inward devotion. What our Saviour said of the Pharisees is true of the Romanists. Ye make clean the outside of the cup, and of the platter, but within they are full of extortion and excess. Ye are like unto whited sepulchres, which indeed appear beautiful outward, but are within full of dead men's bones and of all uncleanness. I have no wish to open before you this mass of corruption, hidden under a system of outside show of morality and sanctity.*

HER SINS AGAINST MAGISTRATES AND

KINGS are those of direct usurpation of their rights; and with a pretence of having God's Word for this usurpation. St. Peter charges us from God himself, Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake. In a note on this passage, by an interpolation early foisted into St. Ignatius's Epistles, they bring out this false doctrine, that "he exhorts them first to honour God, next the bishop, and then the King." Their practical instruction has been according to this false doctrine, teaching the people, though God's directions were given under the worst Roman emperor, that they owe no subjection to wicked kings, and albeit they have given an oath of fidelity to them, nor are to be accounted perjured though they hold against the King. "It is absurd," says Bellarmine, "that the sheep should judge the shepherd, and the apostle wills all men to obey their bishops and overseers." Under this doctrine several of our own monarchs have from time to time, as far as the power of the Pope allowed, and his interest prompted,

See Clarkson's "Practical Divinity of the Papists," 4to., 1676.

The genuine Epistle merely states, it is a good thing to have a due regard both to God and the bishop. See the Epistles, in the interpolated and the original state, as both are given in Ittigius "Bibliotheca Patrum."

been deprived of their thrones, and their subjects released by his Bulls from their allegiance.* To this we owe the Gunpowder Treason. The Spanish Armada was fitted out for the purpose of dethroning Queen Elizabeth, placing a Pápist on the throne, and re-establishing Popery.

HER SINS AGAINST SOCIETY AT LARGE ARE VERY GRIEVOUS. Popery, while it dishonours God, debases and enslaves men. The miseries everywhere endured under the fatal domination of the Church of Rome, blighting the sweetest affections of social life, would fill volumes! She is the enemy of that knowledge which refines and blesses man. An excellent library might be collected only from the list of books prohibited by her. She

In the time of Bellarmine, Popery had not become so weakened and exhausted by infidelity as it is now. It contained then much of

the strength and power of the better elements out of which it originally fell away. Bellarmine raises long and subtle distinctions to bring out the supreme power of the Pope, as may be seen in his "Treatise de Summo Pontifice," but all is gained in the assertion, “The Pope, although as Pope he has not any merely temporal power, yet has the supreme power of disposing of the temporal things of Christians, for their spiritual benefit." He compares it to the power of the spirit in man over the flesh, as two republics which may be found separate and conjoined. He asserts "that the Pope may change kingdoms, and take away from one and bestow upon another, as supreme spiritual prince, if the same shall be needful to the salvation of souls." On the same ground he puts the Pope's making civil laws, and abrogating the civil laws of princes. (See "BelJarmine de Sum. Pont.," 1. v. ch. 6.) Thus Antichrist changes times and laws. (Dan. vii. 25.) Much might be learned, however, by

some modern statesmen, of the difficulties of

this subject, and the real danger of giving power to Rome, from this treatise. Barrow's "Treatise on the Pope's Supremacy," furnishes a full answer to the Romanist on that point, as well as details of the sins of the Church of Rome against kings and magistrates. He gives the oath made by the Roman bishops at their consecration. He also answers the ten

dency to similar excessive views of Church authority in Thorndike's "Epilogue," and is thus useful in meeting reviving errors of this day. Chamier, Amesius, Whitaker, and many others, have fully answered Bellarmine's elaborate " Defence of Popery."

See Mendham's "Literary Policy of the Church of Rome," and "Popery as opposed to Knowledge."

has ever been the enemy of the Jewish nation; to this day they are confined to the Guetto at Rome, and shut up at night within its walls and gates, and to this day they suffer most in Papal and Mohamedan lands. The Pope annulled the Magna Charta in the time of King John. She hinders all freedom wherever she can, that would interfere with every man being subject to her alone. Though now occasionally in alliance with republicanism, as she gains her ends, we may see by her former acts, and her present course, where she has power, that nothing like scriptural liberty of speaking, or writing, or labouring for God, would be left for society. What frauds upon all the relations of human society are the confessional, and the systems of nunnery and monkery!* Men have from age to age groaned under her oppressive yoke with out remedy! What national cruelties and atrocities have for centuries been inflicted through her instigation! To what a miserable state of social relationship are towns, and cities, and kingdoms reduced where she has full sway. Who can tell the millions of broken and ruined families, of sorrowing hearts, of parents deprived of children, and children of parents, husbands of wives, and wives of husbands, occasioned by that tribunal which Rome invented, and in which it gloried for 600 years - the horrible Inquisition! But there is an inquisition for blood coming on, in which God remembers the whole. (Psalm ix. 12.) Rome has robbed all

* The Scripture gives it as the character of the Beast which had two horns like a lamb, and he spake as a dragon, that he caused all to receive a mark in their forehead, and that no man might buy or sell, save he that had the mark of the Beast. The Roman Church has fulfilled this to the letter; in the Third Lateran Council, after anathematizing the Cathari, Patrini, Publicani, it decrees that no one should presume to have them in their houses, or on their land, or carry on business with them. See Binnius, vol. vii. p. 662, ed. 1636. A similar decree of the Florence Council was issued against the Wickliffites and Hussites. I add the very words,-"Nec eosdem in suis districtibus, prædicare, domicilia tenere, larinis fovere, contractus inire, negotiationes et mercantias quaslibet exercere, aut humanitatis

solatia, cum Christi fidelibus habere, permittant."-See Binnius as above, p. 1121.

nations, not only of enormous sums of money, but of what is far more precious, the bright light of Divine truth, and, wherever she had power, she has taken from them its best defenders. Her traffic has been with the souls of men (Rev. xviii. 11); and deceiving her buyers, she has lived in splendour, luxury, and excess, on the sacrilegious spoil of her adherents. To this day masses are multiplied for the pretended repose of the soul, according to the price paid for them. Thus through covetousness with feigned words they make merchandise of you. Rome is rich in pomp and luxury, in splendid dresses and palaces; they have heaped treasure together for the last days. But, while it retains its false doctrines, and adheres to all its idolatries; its riches, its precious stones, its marbles, its magnificent buildings, and its frankin cense, do but fix its name as Babylon the great.

HER SINS AGAINST THE CHURCH OF GoD are the last which I have to notice. By dishonouring the Church through her own wickedness, and by her injuries inflicted from age to age on God's true children, and latterly, when she had full power, by her murders of his 'most faithful servants, the Romish Church has for centuries shown herself the implacable enemy of the true Church of Christ. What can the world think of that which assumes to be the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of Christ, but which is in reality full of worse than heathenish abominations! If any thing could excuse the world in its infidelity and worldliness, it is the foul abominations which, under the mask of the Christian religion, Popery has practised. When, also, God's faithful witnesses have openly testified against these abominations, and the Roman Church had the power, she has persecuted, imprisoned, tormented, and finally put them, in innumerable instances, to cruel deaths, and even rejoiced over their slaughter. Thus the Pope of Rome or dered a "Te Deum" to be sung over the slaughtered Protestants in France on the massacre of 30,000 of our fellow-men, which was commenced at Paris on St. Bartholomew's day. He also ordered a medal to be struck in commemoration of

that dark tragedy, and a painting of it is still placed at Rome, in triumph, as it were, of the deed. She is, in the strong language of the Bible, drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. (Rev. xvii. 6.) This is but a slight sketch of the enor mities of that predicted wickedness, which the Scriptures concentre in the emphatic terms, the man of Sin, and the Mystery of Iniquity.

THE PLAGUES TO COME UPON

BABYLON.

The warning, to come out of her, is grounded on the threatening, that ye receive not of her plagues. What, then, are her plagues?

1. MAN'S EXECRATIONS SHALL COME UPON ROME. Even the nations of the earth, many of whom have been so slow to learn the necessary truth of her apostasy, shall at length be fully awakened to a conviction of the enormous evils that have come upon the earth, through this spiritual tyranny and bondage. Hence the feelings of the European kingdomins of the Roman empire towards this apostate Church are thus clearly foretold: The ten horns which thou sawest upon the beast, these shall hate the whore, and shall make her desolate and naked, and shall eat her flesh, and burn her with fire. For God hath put in their hearts to fulfil his will, and to agree and give their kingdom unto the beast, until the words of God shall be fulfilled.

Something of this has begun to be accomplished in the last half century, and in the vast spoliations the Roman Church has already endured without showing any signs of repentance. And if even the nations at large thus manifest their hatred, the saints of God also are called to join in holy joy over the destruction of this destroyer, Rejoice over her, thou heaven, and ye holy apostles and prophets; for God hath avenged you of her. And in pursuance of this invitation, we hear the whole heavenly company described as rejoicing in her fall: I heard a voice of much people in heaven, saying, Alleluia, salvation, and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God. For true and righteous are his

judgments, for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication; and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hands. And again they said, Alleluia. And her smoke rose up for ever and ever. Nor need we wonder at this joy on her fall, when we think of the dishonour she had brought on the name of Christ, and the impediments she has every where raised to the triumph of the Gospel of the grace of God.

2. GOD'S REMEMBRANCE OF HER INIQUITIES SHALL BE MANIFEST. For her sins have reached unto heaven, and God hath remembered her iniquities.

In the holy Scriptures we frequently find it stated, that the time of judgment takes place on nations when their iniquities are full. Thus, just before the destruction of the cities of the plain, it is said, The cry of Sodom and Gomorrah is great, and their sin is grievous. Thus the possession of Canaan by Abraham was delayed, because the iniquity of the Amorites was not full. Thus the Jews filled up the measure of their father's sins, before Jerusalem was destroyed. So there has been a gradual filling up of the sins of the Roman Church, and God has already shown that he is beginning to remember her iniquities. See the situation of those countries that have most supported Popery, and been the strength of that apostasy. The vials of God's wrath largely and especially descended on them and on those countries that had departed from the purity of Protestantism in the first French Revolution. Men were scorched with great heat, but they blasphemed the name of God which had power over these plagues, and repented not to give him glory. Again, they have returned to Popery, with all its debasing idolatries and slavery, or to avowed infidelity. The present head of this corrupt Church, Gregory XVI., mourns over what he calls the tempest of evils and disasters;" and then avows that a human being, the Virgin, is "his greatest confidence, even the whole foundation of his hope." So far from repenting, his followers are full of in

* See his "Encyclical Letter" in 1832.