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After this wretched display of national destitution, surely some one in authority will be moved to adopt such a plan as is now proposed for the amelioration of so much acknowledged evil. Were only one bishop prevailed on to sanction a society similar to that now in full and beneficial operation in Scotland, it would allow a fair estimate to be formed of its value, and form an example for the whole Anglican Church to follow. It is admitted that the English laity have many and pressing claims upon their sympathy; but there are few which are more paramount than the horrible state into which the church has been cast by the plunder of the court at the Reformation. We supposed a possible case, that every Episcopalian in Scotland should annually give a shilling, which might amount to 50007. As it happened, the first year's collections and contributions did amount to within a trifle of that sum. Suppose, again, that the members of the Church in England should each give one shilling; the sum would be very great, but not a bit more than the necessity of the case requires. Some years ago, a writer in Frazer's Magazine calculated that there were 4,000,000 of communicants in Euglaud belonging to the Established Church. This, we think, is a very low estimate; but, admitting its truth, ten-pence halfpenny from each would make up 5597 livings which are now under 501. a year, to the comfortable sum of 2007. each, and leave a surplus which might be applied to any other ecclesiastical purpose.

It is evident, to any one making the most superácial observation, that in London there is not church-room for a very large proportion of the inhabitants. Those who either cannot or will not go to church must, therefore, be entirely deprived of the means of grace. Such an association as that which we now propose, would enable the Church Building Society to extend their exertions; and new churches might be built in populous districts where there are none at present. In the parish of Bethnal Green, for instance, the spiritual destitution is so great that it has been found necessary to erect Ten new churches; and it is questionable whether ten will be sufficient for the dense population of that parish. It should not be forgot that the erection of new churches brought back many wanderers to the church; and, if more churches were built, the result would still be a more extensive recovery.

The dissenters, where they are able, attempt to occupy the ground which the Church, with Laodicean apathy, has left destitute; but, from the pernicious working of the voluntary system, they are unable to accomplish much more than to alienate the hearts of the people from the Established Church. In this particular they make but too successful progress, and are well assisted by the more powerful and accomplished Jesuit. This evil would be entirely removed by the erection of more churches, which might be endowed by the exertions of such a society as we now propose. And those vicarages which yield their incumbents only 101. per annum, might be raised to the possession of a comfortable income. There may be difficulties in the way, but these should only stimulate men to meet and overcome them.

BELLARMINE'S NOTES OF THE CHURCH EXAMINED.

THE cardinal's sixth note is the "agreement in doctrine with the primitive church." This is a genuine mark of the true church with which, if Rome can prove that she agrees in all things, her triumph will be great. If, however, it should be found that not one of the twelve articles of Trent, which are her distinguishing marks, are in agreement with the primitive church; then, it will clearly appear that she does not possess the cardinal's sixth mark, and, therefore, is not a true church. The true church is known by the true doctrine which it teaches: and the surest way to discover the true church is by the true faith. But we cannot admit Cardinal Bellarmine's or any other man's mere private judgment to decide this case. The Cardinal, like a true son of Rome, always reasons in a circle, and takes his faith implicitly from the authority of the church, because the church bids him—that is, always be it remembered, the Church of Trent. He believes as the church believes, without inquiry, as Cardinal Cusanus recommends: "Wherefore an obedience without reason, is a complete and most perfect obedience, that is to say, when obedience is paid without the inquiry of reason, after the manner as a beast obeys its master." That small portion of the church which the cardinal calls the church, professes the Christian faith in part, and is, therefore, so far a true church; but it established another faith and another gospel, to which it demands the assent of the other portions of the church, under pain of damnation, although it lies under St. Paul's anathema. It is, therefore, somewhat doubtful whether this additional faith and other gospel has not cut Rome off entirely from the stem of the Catholic Church. She has rendered our Saviour's propitiatory sacrifice, once offered on the cross, of none effect by her own pretended propitiation in the mass. She has removed Christ's mediatorial office, by setting the Virgin and innumerable other mediators over him, contrary to express scripture, which says that Christ is the one only mediator betwixt God and man. stead of this creed being the true faith, it is evidently a departure from the faith, and, which shows that Rome does not possess the cardinal's sixth mark, consequently, cannot be considered wholly a true church.

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Her usurped supremacy is a direct departure from the faith and practice of the primitive church, which recognised no jurisdiction in the bishop of Rome. In the primitive church, his power was not greater than that of other bishops, his equals, and who gave him no higher titles than brother and colleague, which are very far from implying superiority of any sort. At the first general council of Nice, where his proxy sat as an ordinary member, the Bishop of Rome's power and jurisdiction was limited, and its bounds duly assigned in the same manner as the metropolitans of Alexandria and Antioch. His metropolitical limits were assigned and recognised by ecclesiastical authority; but this did not satisfy his ambition, and he claimed the supremacy over the whole church, and the absolute sovereignty over all princes and potentates, by divine right. It was simply the imperial city of Rome which gave him the honour of primacy, and not any divine institution or succession from St. Peter. When the emperor, he that letted,-removed the seat of government to Constantinople, it became the next greatest city, and raised its bishop

to a similar primacy. Accordingly, the fathers in the council of Chalcedon, for the same reason, because Constantinople was now become the imperial city, conferred upon its bishop equal privileges as upon the bishop of Rome-" to have prerogatives of honour next to the bishop of Rome, because, that (Constantinople) was new Rome." In addition to this may be specified "the famous case of appeals, which was claimed about the year 418, by Pope Zosimus, over the African Church, not by divine right, but by a pretended ecclesiastical canon, which was found afterwards to be forged; and also add, that the power of Rome to receive appeals, or to judge the causes of other churches, was fully disowned and disclaimed" (in the council of Carthage), " and this, with the exemption of the churches of Milan, Ravenna, and Aquileia, from the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome, though they were so near neigbbours to it, even in Italy itself, is enough to give full satisfaction, to any reasonable man, what a different opinion the primitive church had of the Church of Rome from what it now has of itself, concerning an universal supremacy, and of its being the mother and mistress of all churches."1

The tenet of transubstantiation is entirely contrary to the faith and practice of the primitive church, as well as to all the communions which now compose the Catholic Church. It is altogether the offspring of Popery, and is its distinguishing and burning article. It never was so much as heard of till the ninth century, and then it was condemned, opposed, and refuted; but, being the cause of so much wealth and power, it was made an article of faith in the Lateran Synod, and again rivetted in the Synod of Trent. It is the mother of solitary masses, the adoration of the sacrament, communion in one kind, and the proper and propitiatory sacrifice of the mass; all of which are contrary to the faith and practice of the primitive church. This tenet has entirely broken the unity of the church, by being made an indispensable condition of communion with one part of it, which part is thus cut off from the communion of the Catholic Church. "Had we kept to the words of institution as Christ left them, and gone no further, there might have been various opinions in the schools concerning the manner of the presence of Christ in the sacrament; and they who had nothing else to do might have spent their idle hours and vain distinctions about it; but it had never broke the communion of the Church, if it had not been adopted into an article of faith, and made a condition of communion. Our Saviour was then fulfilling a type of himself, which was the passover, and he kept to the same phrase or form of words which was customary with the Jews in their celebration of it, only putting himself in the room of his type; as, instead of, this is the paschal Lamb which was slain for us in Egypt,' he said, this is my body, which is given for you.' When Moses sprinkled the blood, it was with this form of words, this is the blood of the Testament, which God hath enjoined unto you,' instead of which Old Testament, Christ said, 'this is my blood of the New Testament.' In which words there is no difficulty at all, for no mortal ever understood these words of Moses in a transubstantial sense; and why should they, the same words, when Christ spoke them, following the very form of the words of Moses? This made it familiar and easy to the apostles, who

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1 Bellarmine's Notes, &c., page 158.

called many things hard sayings which were not so difficult as this, and yet expressed no wonder or astonishment at these words of Christ, which had been impossible for them not to have done, if they had taken them in the sense of transubstantiation; for it was a new thing never before heard or thought of in the world, to deny all their senses at once!"1

Auricular confession as practised in the Roman sect has no countenance from the primitive church. There are several easy methods in the Papal communion of washing out what they call venial sins; but they hold that for mortal sins there is no other door of mercy but the priest's lips; nor will they admit of any other way of reconciliation with God than the charm of auricular confession and the priest's absolution. This ceremony supplies the defects of repentance to the Papists, who fancy themselves saved ex opere operato; and whoever thinks otherways is damned by the council of Trent. They hold auricular confession and priestly absolution in this perfunctory manner, to be such an effectual remedy, that the greatest sinner returns from the polluted confessional as pure as he did from the baptismal font. And they allege that God hath conferred this ready and easy way of quitting all scores with himself, and men may contemplate the day of judgment without apprehension, because his deputy, the priest, has already decided their acquittal, and the priest's pardon can be produced and pleaded at Christ's tribunal in bar of judgment. The Romanists do not say or mean that the priest's absolution is a token or emblem of God's forgiveness of sins; but that the priest actually does pardon in God's stead by virtue of a delegated power. Now this whole doctrine is a dangerous delusion, of which the primitive church was wholly ignorant.

Our Saviour was both a lawgiver and a perfect example to his church ; yet we find no traces in Scripture of his exacting auricular confession or enjoining any penance during his ministry. He demanded no auricular confession nor imposed penance on his disciples on their appointment, nor on the woman of Samaria, nor on her taken in adultery, nor on Mary Magdalene, nor on many others, when he forgave their sins. The apostles exercised no such prying curiosity into other men's matters, nor exercised such tyrannical power over their consciences; and St. James' advice is confined to confession in sickness or in distress of conscience, as it is followed in the Church of England. If this tyrannical engine of priestly power and covetousness had been in existence in the primitive church, some of the writers of the first two centuries would certainly have mentioned or alluded to it: but of this there is no trace.

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There is not the slightest allusion to purgatory in the whole of the Scriptures, and a Popish author confesses that" there is almost no mention of it in any of the ancient writers; but we have the assurance of Holy Writ that the blood of Christ is sufficient to cleanse us from all sin.

Prayers for souls in purgatory are no older than the doctrine of purgatory itself; and, therefore, if the primitive church knew nothing of purgatory, it requires no great sagacity to see that they were equally ignorant "that the souls detained therein are helped by the prayers of the faithful." If the apostles and the primitive church prayed for the dead in Christ, (2 Tim. i. 18.) it does not concern our present purpose; because 2 Cess. vii., can. 8.

1 The Case Stated, pp. 138, 139.

the Papal church prays only for the dead in purgatory and for none other. "It is certain," says Bellarmine, "that the prayers of the Church do not profit the blessed, nor the damned, but only them that live in purgatory:" whereas the primitive church commemorated those who had departed this life in God's faith and fear, as an affectionate wish for their enjoyment of that rest from their labours, which we are assured they do enjoy the Church of England prays that Christ would shortly accomplish the number of his elect, and that he would give us grace to follow the good examples of those who have gone before us into joy and felicity.

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Cardinal Cajetan frankly confesses that there is neither authority in Scripture, nor in the primitive church for indulgences. He says of the rise of them, "no authority of Scripture, or ancient doctors', Greek or Latin, have brought this to our knowledge, only within these three hundred years it hath been written," &c. And Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, grants "there is neither precept nor council for it in Scripture."

Prayers in an unknown tongue are also contrary to Scripture, and the usage of the primitive church. They are the device of that cunning craftiness which is so distinguishing a feature of the Papal system, and arise out of the tenet of implicit faith, which no other church whatever demands. We read in Scripture that the primitive Christians "lift up their voice to God with one accord," which could only be done by prayers known and understood by the people. But the Papal prayers are not understood by the people, and are nothing better to them than an opus operatum; and, accordingly, Suarez asserts "that it is not necessary to prayer that the person praying should think of what he speaks." Therefore Bellarmine's sixth note, in this particular, does not apply to the Papal church of the present day; for the ancient Roman church was quite of another mind, as we learn from the declarations of Popes and councils. In the year 880, Pope John VIII. declared his sentiments on this subject, to the Church in Sclavonia, as follows: "We command that the praises and works of our Lord Christ be declared in the same (Sclavonian) tongue. For we are admonished by Sacred Writ to praise the Lord, not only in three, but in all tongues; and the apostles, filled with the Holy Ghost, spake in all tongues. And St. Paul admonisheth, let every tongue confess; and, in the first to the Corinthians, he doth sufficiently and plainly admonish us that, in speaking, we should edify the Church of God. Neither doth it hinder the faith or doctrine to have the mass sung, or the gospel or lessons well translated, read, or other divine offices sung, in the same Sclavonian tongue; because He who made three principal tongues, viz., Hebrew, Greek, and Latin, made all to his praise," &c. And four hundred years after the above was written, Pope Innocent III. in the Lateran Council, in 1215, can. ix., decreed "that, because in many parts within the same city and diocess there are many people of different manners and rites mixed together, but of one faith; We therefore command, that the bishops of such cities or diocesses provide fit men who shall celebrate divine offices according to the diversity of tongues and rites, and administer the sacraments.”

The next point in the Papal creed is the worship of saints and angels and the blessed Virgin, which distinguishes the Trent sect from the primitive and all other Christian churches. "I shall offer but one consideration out of antiquity," says Dr. Payne, "which does for ever destroy all manner of worship, of what degree soever, to any but the true God;

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