delity has made her desolate and naked. (Rev. xvii. 16.)

In NORTH AMERICA, though accounts differ, and probably the chief increase of papists has been from emigrants of their communion from other countries, it is probable that papists have also been to a certain extent successful in turning Protestants to their awful delusions, and it is believed that foreign wealth has been furnished to a considerable extent to aid the progress of popery in America.

In IRELAND, the undisguised, bitter, and persecuting spirit of popery on the one hand, and on the other the large circulation of the Holy Scriptures, have been overruled and blessed by the mercy of God, to withdraw many a spiritually minded follower of Christ from its ranks, and it is not believed by some, who have the means of information, to be there making progress.

Respecting GREAT BRITAIN, we have information of its progress of a painful character. In 1775, there were but about 30 chapels in Great Britain. In the year 1835 there were 510; in England 421, and in Scotland 89. In that year 11 new ones have been built. In Dover, and also in Kidderminster, a protestant chapel has been converted into a papal chapel. They will, with praiseworthy zeal if it were in a right cause, build a chapel where they have not a dozen members, and this chapel is sometimes filled by the zeal of those members from the neighbourhood. There were said to be, in 1835, 700 ecclesiastics in Great Britain, and they had resorted in several places to preaching in the open air. Popish colleges and seminaries are multiplying, and these are modern institutions; there were then 8 popish colleges and 52 seminaries, and in many of them great decorum and application to their objects is manifested. Monasteries and nunneries are also beginning. With these efforts are connected several tract societies; they have been very active in distributing tracts in favour of popery at the doors of meetings and churches, and at the Scotch church near Covent-garden, at the evening service they distributed them in the church. They form schools adapted to attract the children of the poor, giving

public breakfasts and clothing the children, and thus getting the parents to attend mass. The chief body of the reporters for the public journals are said to be papists. While a few of the higher classes, many of the lower it is believed, have been entrapped into this snare of the enemy. In Scotland there once were but few Roman Catholic families, there are now in Glasgow alone 30,000 Roman Catholics, and it is believed that there has been an increase of popery on the eastern as well as on the western coast.*

The influence of papists with the government under all recent administrations has been manifested not only by the grant to Maynooth College, and the withholding of grants from the Kildare Place Society, but in aiding the sending out priests abroad, and in the national system of education now adopted in Ireland.

I am credibly informed that, since the year 1815, large sums have been remitted from the continent to this country and Ireland, for the purpose of promoting popery; my informant puts the sum at £400,000, and stated the name of the person to whom the distribution of it was assigned.

After making every abatement from the increase of population, there is then painful evidence of the growth of popery in protestant Britain. We have to say

The following account is taken from the Record of Jan. 21, 1836. "The Roman Catholic Bishop of Edinburgh, at the opening of the conventual church, is said thus to have expressed himself. Since the period of the Reformation there was a time when one solitary Catholic priest wandered over the length and breadth of the kingdom-now your places of worship adorn the places of the land and are widely scattered over the face of the country;-now you at noon-day worship the Almighty with almost all the splendour of Catholic times and Catholic countries. Scarce now does the year roll over in which several edifices are not reared and dedicated to God, according to the form and faith of the Catholic church. You are yet assembled, my friends, in the first conventual chapel that has dared to raise its head in this kingdom since the Reformation. Yes, my fellow Catholics, if to-day St. Margaret stands alone, the time may not be far distant when the increase of similar institutions may be proclaimed with as much joy as I at this moment experience in alluding to its solitary existence.'

of the papists of our day as Paul did of the Jews, I bear them record they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, and that, like the Pharisees of old, they compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and they have been successful in those countries where protestantism is in its purest form.

Before we proceed to show what the Scriptures say of popery, let us most carefully distinguish the system, from the men under the system. For the men under the system, we would do every thing in our power, we would say every thing that truth will allow that is kind and loving. We are sure God has his people among them, ignorant of the real character of this falling away from the truth, and thinking that they are in the only true church of Christ, for he himself has bid his people to come out of Babylon, (Rev. xviii. 4,) and therefore it is of such importance to set before their minds the light of God's word. We believe that there are bright and holy examples of devotion among the papists. We cannot look at the Jansenists without seeing this. Though there are passages in God's word which make us tremble for all under the full power of popery as in the extremest danger, (Rev. xiv. 9 11,) yet I cannot read the pious practical works of Bellarmine, himself the great defender of popery, and know that he said, "upon account of the uncertainty of life it is most safe to rely on Christ alone," without hoping that he was led before his death to renounce all confidence in any thing but God's testimony concerning his Son, and so became a child of our Heavenly Father, and an heir of our Saviour's kingdom. We believe also that there are in our country now thousands of truly benevolent, amiable, moral men, among the papists, who abhor from their hearts cruelty and tyranny. It is not in malice and hatred of the papists that we write against popery; but, we take God to witness, it is in love to God and man, in real fidelity to his truth, and to fulfil that confession of the truth to which Christ calls his disciples.

Of the system itself we can only

The following extracts and creed will enable even the uninformed reader who knows

speak with abhorrence; it being most dishonourable to God, and most ruinous to man. But even here we must be

his Bible, to judge of the true character of Popery.

Extracts from a few of the first pages of the prayers of the ROMAN MISSAL, for the use of the laity.

Page xvii. I beseech the blessed Mary, ever a virgin, blessed Michael the arch-angel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, and you O father, to pray to the Lord our God for me.

xviii. We beseech thee, O Lord, by the merits of thy saints whose relics are here, and of all the saints, that thou wouldest vouchsafe to forgive me all my sins.

xx. By the intercession of glorious and

blessed Mary, the ever Virgin mother of God, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, of blessed and of all the saints, grant us in thy mercy health, and peace.

xxiii. Accept, O holy Father, Almighty and eternal God, this unspotted host which I thy unworthy servant offer unto thee, my offences, and negligences, and for all here living and true God, for my innumerable sins, present, and also for all faithful Christians, both living and dead, that it may avail both me and them unto everlasting life.

chalice of salvation, beseeching thy clemency, xxiv. We offer unto thee, O Lord, the that it may ascend before thy Divine Majesty as a sweet odour for our salvation, and for that of the whole world.

XXV. After pronouncing the words of consecration, the Priest kneeling ADORES and ele

vates the sacred host.

The adoration of the cross, (notwithstanding a previous note that they only adore Jesus Christ,) is awfully idolatrous. One hymn is left untranslated. It is indeed too open for the light of this country. This is the meaning of one verse in the hymn; Hail O cross, our only hope in this time of the passion, increase the grace of the faithful, and pardon our sins.' See p. 294, 295.

But I cannot transcribe any more of these the whole Missal, with such an intermixture idolatries and blasphemies. They run through of the Scriptures and pious prayers, as to make it eminently THE MYSTERY OF INI

QUITY.

The Council of Trent is the chief standard

of the Roman Catholic Religion.—The following extracts from the DECREES OF THE COUNCIL OF TRENT, on the Rule of Faith, will show how it adds to God's word. The sacred Council 'receive and reverence with EQUAL piety and veneration all the books as well of

the Old [in this is included a great part of the Apocrypha] as of the New Testament, the same God being the author of both, and ALSO the aforesaid TRADITIONS, pertaining to faith

careful in our abhorrence of popery, not to bear false witness, or to think by falsehood to promote the cause of truth; the

and manners, whether received from Christ himself, or dictated by the Holy Spirit, and preserved in the Catholic Church by continual succession.' This is contrary to Deut. iv. 2. Matt. xv. 3-9. Rev. xxii. 18. 'It has not appeared expedient to the Fathers, that the mass should be everywhere celebrated in the vulgar tongue.' This perpetuates prayers in an unknown tongue, directly contrary to 1 Cor. xiv. The Catechism of the Council of Trent says, 'This our Church cannot err in the delivery of faith and discipline of manners. p. 96. This is contrary to Rom. xi. 20 -22.

The Roman Catholic CREED OF POPE PIUS IV., added to the Decrees of the Council, is a summary of its doctrinal decisions; it is as follows, after giving the Nicene Creed:

'I most firmly admit and embrace apostolical and ecclesiastical traditions, and all other constitutions and observances of the same church.

I also admit the sacred scriptures, according to the sense which the holy mother church has held, and does hold, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and interpretation of the holy scriptures; nor will I ever take or interpret them otherwise, than according to the unanimous consent of the fathers.

'I profess also, that there are truly and properly seven sacraments of the new law, instituted by Jesus Christ our Lord, and for the salvation of mankind, though all are not necessary for every one; viz. baptism, confirmation, eucharist, penance, extreme unction, order, and matrimony, and that they confer grace; and of these, baptism, confirmation, and order, cannot be reiterated without sacrilege.

I also receive and admit the ceremonies of the Catholic church, received and approved in the solemn administration of all the above said sacraments.

'I receive and embrace all and every one of the things, which have been defined and declared in the holy council of Trent, concerning original sin and justification.

I profess likewise, that in the mass is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy sacrifice of the eucharist there is truly, really, and substantially the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a conversion of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which conversion the Catholic church calls transubstantiation.

I confess also, that under either kind alone, whole and entire, Christ and a true sacrament is received.

damnation is just of those who say, Let us do evil that good may come. We cannot, if Christians, rejoice in ini

'I constantly hold that there is a purgatory, and that the souls detained therein are helped by the suffrages of the faithful.

Likewise, that the saints reigning together with Christ, are to be honoured and invocated, that they offer prayers to God for us, and that their relics are to be venerated.

I most firmly assert, that the images of Christ, and of the mother of God ever virgin, and also of the other saints, are to be had and retained; and that due honour and veneration are to be given them.

'I also affirm, that the power of indulgences was left by Christ in the Church, and that the use of them is most wholesome to Christian people.

I acknowledge the holy catholic and apostolical Roman church, the mother and mistress of all churches; and I promise and swear true obedience to the Roman bishop, the successor of St. Peter, the prince of the apostles, and vicar of Jesus Christ.

'I also profess and undoubtedly receive all other things delivered, defined, and declared by the sacred canons, and general councils, and particularly by the holy council of Trent; and likewise I also condemn, reject, and anathemtaize all things contrary thereto, and all heresies whatsoever, condemned, rejected, and anathematized by the church.

This true catholic faith, out of which none can be saved, which I now freely profess, and truly hold, I, N. promise, vow and swear most constantly to hold and profess the same whole and entire, with God's assistance, to the end of my life; and to procure, as far as lies in my power, that the same shall be held, taught, and preached by all who are under me, or are entrusted to my care, by virtue of my office. So help me God, and these holy gospels of God?

water.

How enormous are the evils of this creed,1. It adds to the word of God human traditions. 2. It binds the conscience to human interpretation. 3. It multiplies God's sacraments from two to seven, and makes them necessarily confer grace. 4. It approves the adoration of what is really only flour and 5. It sets aside the grace of the gospel on justification. 6. It makes a constant renewal of Christ's sacrifice, against God's plain word. Heb. ix. 25-28. 7. It sets aside Christ's appointment of both bread and wine. 8. It makes a purgatory which God has not made. 9. It requires what God has expressly forbidden, idolatry by the invocation of saints, and the retaining of images. 10. It brings in indulgences, and so sets aside the whole doctrine of all men's total corruption, of after having done all, being unprofitable servants, and of the sufficient and perfect sacrifice of Christ. 11. It makes the pope lord it over

quity; we should mourn over it, as the apostle did when he said, many walk of whom I have told you often, and now tell you even weeping, that they are the enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, whose God is their belly, and whose glory is in their shame, who mind earthly things.

It is the peculiarity of this system to retain the doctrine of the gospel of our Lord Jesus Christ, nominally and in outward appearance, but in reality to set it all aside. It has two horns like a lamb, but it speaks as a dragon. Rev. xiii. 11. Salvation by grace is wholly corrupted by the Romanist. The Bible doctrine is plain and explicit. By grace are ye saved through faith, and that not of yourselves, it is the gift of God, not of works, lest any man should boast. For we are his workmanship created in Christ Jesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them. Ephes. ii. There is no room for mistake here: salvation is wholly of grace, all human merit is excluded, and works flow from our being created in Christ Jesus to them.

In the 9th, 11th, and 24th canons of the council of Trent (afterwards quoted,) these truths are expressly denied. In the 32d canon good works are expressed to be the merits of the justified person in

God's heritage, against his word, Matt. xx. 25, 26, and the honour of our Redeemer. Ephes. i. 22. 12. It approves all the false doctrine of the council, and the word of iniquity of former councils. 13. It denies salvation, in utter intolerance, to all who differ from the church of Rome, and obliges every papist to do his utmost to spread the peculiar errors of his system. It blinds, manacles, and delivers up as a slave to popery the human intellect and affections; the whole body, soul, and spirit of an immortal being. What Christian can find the good tidings of our free salvation by Christ, through all this mass of superstition and antichristian delusion? How can I make my

way through all these human additions, to the love of my God who was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself not imputing their trespasses unto them, and invites me freely to come and be reconciled, seeing Christ was made sin for us who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him? Christian reader, may God preserve us from being corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. (2 Cor. xi. 3.)

these words, If any one shall say that the good works of a justified man are so the gifts of God that they are not also the merits of the same justified person; or that he, being justified by the good works which are performed by him through the grace of God and merits of Jesus Christ, whose living member he is, does not truly merit increase of grace and eternal life, and the attainment of that eternal life, if he shall depart in grace and even the increase of glory, let him be accursed.'

The prayer about the ashes on AshWednesday puts human inventions in the place of Christ. Roman Missal, p. 115. Grant by our calling on thy most holy name, whoever shall be touched by these ashes, for the remission of their sins, may receive health of body and defence of soul.' Mercifully vouchsafe to bless these ashes which we design to receive on our heads in token of our humiliation, and to obtain forgiveness,' promerendæ veniæ, for deserving pardon.'

The prayer on Wednesday in Ember Week sets aside Christ and puts fasting in his place. Judge, reader, for yourself. See Roman Missal, p. 61. • Let our fasts we beseech thee, O Lord, be acceptable to thee, that by ATONING FOR OUR

SINS THEY MAY BOTH MAKE US WORTHY OF THY GRACE, AND BRING US TO THE

EVERLASTING effects of thy promises.' There is added the word Through,' intending, I suppose, to point outThrough our Lord Jesus Christ; but his name is left out here as in other prayers: but if inserted, the evil doctrine is not mended. (Gal. v. 4.)

The doctrine of forgiveness of sins is so stated in the TRENT CATECHISM, as

entirely to destroy the main doctrine of the Bible. Through this man is preached unto you the forgiveness of sins, and by him all that believe are justified from all things, Acts xiii. While, with

THE MYSTERY which marks the whole of Popery, it acknowledges that God only can forgive sins, and that Christ received this gift; it pretends that he granted this power to the bishops and priests in the church, and asserts that the priests and the sacraments are as it were the instru ments to the forgiveness of sins, by which

Christ our Lord, who is the very Author and Giver of Salvation, works in us for giveness of sins and righteousness.'* We are dependent then not on Christ, but on Papal priests, for our forgiveness and righteousness: and so the creature is exalted in the place of the Creator and Redeemer, and the doctrine of salvation by grace is really frustrated.†

The open and undisguised conduct of the papists in Ireland has given us the actual sight of and contact with the persecuting spirit of popery in our own day. Events passing before our eyes have proved it to be the same as ever: only, instead of the open warfare of death by fire, we have the more insidious plans of starvation and ruin, by withholding those just rights which the laws of the country give to protestant ministers.

The name given in the Scriptures to the great corruption of Christianity, that was to take place before the coming again of our Lord, is mystery: (Rev. xvii. 5.) the mystery of iniquity, (2 Thess. ii. 7.) Babylon the great, (Rev. xvii. 5.) the

See Trent Catechism, page 103. If it be said the absolutions of the Church of England, whether in its ordinary service, its sacraments, or especially in its visitation of the sick, have fallen into the same error: we

utterly deny that the Priest or Presbyter gives

absolution. Ministers have committed to them

the preaching of the gospel of free forgiveness by the blood of Jesus, to be received in faith and penitence, and with this, the confirmation of forgiveness to the believer, by administering those ordinances which the Lord has appointed, Baptism and the Lord's Supper, as signs and seals of his forgiving love. The Lord has intrusted the ministers of his gospel with the mysteries of Christ and the word of reconciliation. We are the heralds and witnesses of his grace, and the stewards to dispense his mysteries. (Matt. xxviii. 19, 20. John xx. 22. 1 Cor. iv. 1, 2. 2 Cor. v. 18, 19. James v. 14, 15.) Beyond this plain word of God the Church of England goes not. The words in the visitation of the sick absolution, "I absolve thee" (though it is admitted that the expressions may be easily abused) mean not more than "I pronounce thee absolved," as is clear from the express statement in the 74th article of the Irish Church: "God hath given power to his ministers, not simply to forgive sins (which prerogative he has reserved only to himself), but in his name to declare and pronounce unto such as truly repent and believe his holy gospel, the absolution and forgiveness of sins." See Usher's Certain Discourses.

great whore that sitteth upon many waters, (Rev. xvii. 1.) the man of sin, (2 Thess.) Volumes have been written to show that these names belong to pope ry, and volumes have been written to refute the charges-but the mark is on the forehead-(Rev. xvii. 5.) and the broad face of popery to this day answers so to the description, that it never can be shaken off.

Popery is the MYSTERY OF INIQUITY. The name is full of instruction. What besides of wickedness, in the whole history of man, has ever been so wonderfully mysterious? The Apostle himself who had seen such marvels as he had described in his former chapters on beholding this woman on the beast, without crowns either on its head or its horns, says, when I saw her I wondered with great admiration. There is no special mystery in Rome pagan, nor even in Mahomedanism, still less in infidelity; ambition, and lust, and pride, there work naturally and obviously. But what a mystery there is in popery! Look at some of its pretensions, and its realities. It boasts of purity, sanctity, universality, and apostolicity, and yet has practised the most horrible wickedness that this world has ever seen. O mystery of mysteries! The shepherd is the wolf devouring the flock. The servant of Jesus Christ claiming to be his only true follower, sets aside his Master's laws, tramples upon his word, and exalts his own inventions above them. The follower of that lowly One who washed his disciples' feet, requires emperors and kings to kiss his feet and do him homage. He styles himself servant of servants,' and yet claims a direct, supreme, spiritual power, and thereby indirectly, as Bellarmine says, a certain and that a supreme power in temporal things. In profession he owns God and Jesus Christ, humility, and justice, truth, and love, and yet under this pretence has masked the very utmost pride, injustice, falsehood, wickedness, and cruelty, dispensing with the laws of God, murdering men, women and children who have followed their conscience and the word of God, rather than his blasphemous decrees. O horrible scheme of satanic religion! What mysteries it comprehends! to for