THE WIDOW AND HER SON.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE EPISCOPAL MAGAZINE.

Edinburgh, Dec. 8, 1839.

SIR,-The story of the Widow and her Son, in No. X., Vol. i., p. 610, is most beautifully written - pious, pathetic, impressive. And, Sir, should the Episcopal Magazine contain many such moving tales, it would soon lay claim to be the best periodical of the present day. You know, Sir, that I am a presbyterian, and do not find it easy to digest the funeral train, with the parson arrayed in the surplice, with the prayerbook in hand, &c., &c.; yet, the description of what took place, the poor woman's distress, and the piety she manifested in the hour of her sad grief, has almost made me forget the surplice and the prayer-book, and rejoice to find so much of true Christianity even in Bracebridge Yours,

Hall.

2

J. J.

PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION.

ADDRESS TO THE ELECTORS OF GREAT BRITAIN AND IRELAND.

THE time has now arrived when it is necessary to decide on what principles this great empire shall henceforth be governed; whether on the pure and sound Protestant principles of our forefathers, which formerly secured to Great Britain God's blessing, and under which she attained unequalled national prosperity and renown, or by the new system of modern Liberalism, under which truth and error are to be alike sanctioned or alike disregarded?

By you, fellow-countrymen! by your votes at the election of your Representatives, must an answer be given to this important, this vital question. Let each man then remember that, in exercising the elective

mour against Mr. Newman partakes a little of that intolerance which he himself justly condemns. The " Churchman "expresses the utmost alarm lest Mr. N. and others should, in the spirit of Dominic, introduce the Inquisition into England; but, from the spirit of intolerance shown by the Anti-Oxford-Tract-men, there is more danger of their introducing the Dominican institution. We hate intolerance, and deprecate persecution by any "party;" and we confidently believe that the "party" which presumptuously styles itself, par excellence, Evangelical, " knows not what manner of spirit they are of."-St. Luke, ix. 55.—ED.

1 We are indebted to the inimitable pen of Washington Irving for the Tale to which our correspondent alludes.-ED.

2 We like to oblige our presbyterian friends, and our heart's desire and prayer is, that they would not only "almost," but "altogether," forget their hostility to the surplice, and that blessed Book which is next to inspired scripture, and is undoubtedly its best interpreter. The writer may become familiar with both the surplice and the prayer-book in a chapel not five hundred yards from his own door, and "digest" them at his leisure.-ED.

franchise, he discharges a great public trust, and either fulfils or abandons his duty.

Consider, we beseech you, the real state of affairs; be not led away by idle words, but look, and look carefully, to facts! Popery, the former scourge and bane of the country-Popery, the curse of Ireland, and Italy, and Spain-Popery, the prophesied "MYSTERY OF INIQUITY," is again making progress among us. In 1837 forty-one Papists were returned to Parliament; by these men, on nearly every division since, has the scale been turned. By Papists, therefore, you have of late been virtually governed.

Think not, brother electors! that Popery has neglected to use the enormous power thus possessed.

In three short years Popery has placed her votaries in the Palace, in the Council, and on the Bench. A Papist is the Treasurer of the Queen's household; four of the Queen's Privy Councillors, three of the Irish Judges, one of the Lords of the Treasury, the Irish Solicitor-General, the Vice-President of the Board of Trade, the Secretary of the Admiralty, these, and many minor officers of State at home and abroad, are now Papists. Very much of this progress has been made since 1837. Return such another Parliament;-and what then? Will Popery be contented with what she has ? Far from it. She is ambitious, and craves supremacy; she is despotic, and will turn power into tyranny!

And what is this Popery? Some new or some amended religion? No! Popery is unchanged and unchangeable; she is the author of the Inquisition, the ancient persecutor of the Church of God; and even now, in the nineteenth century, teaches in her colleges the doctrines that so long degraded Christendom, and deluged nation after nation with blood. To Papists the Bible without comment is still a forbidden book; they still are deluded with the mummeries and idolatry of the mass. And what has been her treatment of Protestants? Let the atrocities of the Inquisition, the Gunpowder Plot, the fires of Smithfield, the massacre of St. Bartholomew, the slaughters in Ireland and the Low Countries, and the recent banishment of nearly five hundred Protestants from the Tyrol, reply to this thrilling question!

Brother Protestants! this very Popery is now supported by grants from the public Treasury.—50,000l. a year is paid for a system of education conducted almost entirely by Romish priests in Ireland- —a system in which the Bible is mutilated, and therefore God is dishonoured. 9,0007. is annually paid to the College of Maynooth, where Popish priests are trained to disseminate her baneful principles throughout Ireland. 2,3501. was paid in 1838 to build Popish chapels in Ireland. 14,7647. is annually paid to Popish priests in the Colonies.

These are facts. Do you approve of them? If Popery be true, why is so little done for her, if false, why any thing at all? Remember, our present gracious Queen, when she ascended the throne, was required solemnly to declare that Popery was superstitious and idolatrous. And is she, almost as soon as seated there, to be surrounded by Popish Councillors ?

any

Fellow-countrymen, be not deceived. We do not ask you to vote for this party or for that; but we implore you to pause before you vote for one who directly or indirectly favours Popery or Infidelity. Vote then for true Protestants, and for such men only. Oppose all

who oppose them, and once more give to Great Britain a Protestant House of Commons, and restore to her the character of a Protestant nation. This, at the present crisis, when Jesuits and Infidels, when Chartists and Socialists, are banded together with revolutionary designs-this, fellowcountrymen, is your great political duty. For the blessings you now enjoy, martyrs have perished at the stake, and the blood of your ancestors has been profusely shed. Oh! let it not be in vain! Let not the blood

of

your fathers reproach you with treachery to the good old cause they loved, and with indifference to their glorious examples. Return Godfearing men to Parliament, and then the light of the Lord's countenance will shine on our Senate, His Spirit will guide their deliberations, and the righteousness which "exalteth a nation" will again bring down his blessings upon us.

1

"PROVIDE OUT OF ALL THE PEOPLE ABLE MEN, SUCH AS FEAR GOD, MEN OF TRUTH, HATING COVETOUSNESS."-Exodus, xviii. 21.

MAYNOOTH PETITION.

SIR,-I am directed by the Committee of the Protestant Association to call your attention to the accompanying petition, which they have again felt it their duty to adopt, against the annual parliamentary grant to the Popish College of Maynooth.

In the session 1837-38, petitions with about 11,000 signatures were presented against this vote; while, in the course of last session, the petitions on the subject were 199, and the signatures, 51,202. By suitable exertions, the Committee hope that this progressive increase may be continued; and, if so, they confidently anticipate that the important question of the endowment of Popery will at length be forced on the serious attention of the Legislature.

I am, &c.

EDWARD DALTON, Secretary.

The Petition of the undersigned inhabitants of Humbly showeth,-That your petitioners, receiving the written word of God as the only true standard of faith and morals, are convinced by its testimony, that the peculiar tenets of the Church of Rome, as defined and settled at the Council of Trent, are anti-christian, idolatrous, anti-social, and utterly incapable of being reconciled with the genuine doctrines of the Gospel.

That those heresies were solemnly and consistently repudiated by this country for many generations, during which the blessing of Almighty God descended upon the government in a marked and unprecedented manner.

That your petitioners, therefore, deeply lament that a college for the instruction of a Popish priesthood has been established, and is now supported, at Maynooth, in Ireland, by grants from the public Treasury; and they fear that this measure, being a participation in the guilt of idolatry, and a dereliction of the principles of our Protestant Constitution, is calculated to draw down divine judgments on the nation. Your petitioners would farther remind your honourable house that it has been proved, by the most satisfactory information given in evidence before both houses of parliament, and a royal commission appointed to investigate the state of Irish education, as well as by the uniform testimony of actual experience, that the objects contemplated by those statesmen who recommended the establishment of the College have in no respect been attained: but that, on the contrary, that institution has proved the chief source of seditious turbulence, as well as of superstitious delusion and religious discord, in Ireland.

Your petitioners, therefore, on every ground of principle, policy, and consistency, humbly pray your honourable house to withdraw every kind of public support from the Popish College of Maynooth.-And your petitioners, &c.

VOL. I.

CURRENT SENSE OF THE CHURCH.

THE DOCTRINE OF PREDESTINATION MOST COMFORTABLE IN THE SCRIPTURE SENSE, BUT ABSURD AND BLASPHEMOUS IN THE CALVINISTICAL SENSE.

By the Reverend CHARLES LESLIE, D. D., Chancellor of Down and Connor.

1. C. THE account you gave me last time, Master, of Predestination has satisfied me that, in the Scripture sense of the word, and taken only ad captum, as you express it, it is a most comfortable doctrine, and full of assurance to all good Christians; but that the rigid Calvinistical notion of it, and the inference they draw from it, are not only most absurd, but likewise blasphemous against God.

2. R. And the effects of it (some of which I have seen) among the common presbyterians are terrible. For their heads being perpetually filled with the abstruse notions of predestination, election, reprobation, and secret decrees of God; and that they have no free-will or choice what to do, but must go on as it is secretly decreed; this, as it, of common consequence, makes men careless (for why should they struggle when there is no remedy, and their sentence is already past, and that irrevocably?) so it is observable that more of these die in despair, than any other sort of people. I have seen them, on their death-bed, cry out for Assurance! Assurance! Oh, what shall I do for Assurance! And when the merits and satisfaction of Christ has been preached to them, they would say, Alas! what is that to me, if I be not one of the elect? For Christ died only for the elect. (This is another of their doctrines, pursuant to their notion of predestination, that the decrees of God may not be frustrated.) And when they were asked why they did doubt of their election? and bid look into their lives, which, bating human infirmities, were good and virtuous, in the common size.of mankind; and therefore that they might take this as a mark of their election; they would answer, that the good works of the reprobate were hateful to God, (for so they had been taught) and therefore that this was no sure mark. Nothing but Election! Election! was in their minds. The condition of these poor people is most lamentable. Election is with them a secret decree, without any respect to our works; and they can have no other assurance of it but that of their own imagination. They cannot, as the apostle requires, be always ready to render a reason of the hope that is in them. Nay, they speak against reason, and think it rather an hinderance to faith.

3. C. I thank God, my faith (which I have learned in the Church of England) is this, that Christ died for all mankind, and consequently for me in particular. And I have his promise, which is an infallible assurance that, if I believe and trust in that complete satisfaction he has made for all my sins, and truly repent of them, I shall be saved. And, though my faith be weak, that I say, "Lord, I believe; help mine unbelief;" and my repentance is unworthy, and fit to be repented of, and all my righte ousness is as filthy rags, yet I despair not, because the satisfaction made for my sins was performed by Christ in his own person, wholly without me, in which I have no share or part at all; I paid not, nor could pay,

one penny of my debt, or make any satisfaction to infinite offended justice; but my whole debt was paid by my surety, and by him alone full satisfaction was made, who only could make it. And my faith is the hand which reaches this medicine to me, and applies it. The virtue is not in the hand, but in the medicine. But the stronger the faith, the greater the comfort. Therefore, Lord, increase my faith, and I pray that my faith fail not. They who looked upon the brazen serpent were healed, yet some had better sight than others. "Even so was the Son of man lifted up, that whoever believeth in him should have eternal life." Thus my faith is in Christ, but not in my faith itself. And, if I have but a grain of it as big as a mustard-seed, the mountain of my sins will be removed and cast into the sea. If my faith be well grounded, though weak, and my repentance be sincere, though unworthy, I am upon Jacob's ladder, and though upon the lowest step, yet in the road to heaven. Some are upon a higher step, and some upon a lower, but all are safe.

This is my faith and my assurance, and this is the reason and the rock upon which it is built. But what reason can any man give for his being elected by a secret decree, which he knows not? He fancies himself elected! there can be no more in it. For, as you have said before, there can be no sure mark of it, by the principles of the predestinarians. And what then could the apostle mean (in their sense) by bidding us make our calling and election sure? Is not the decree of God sure without us? 4. R. I am pleased with the account you have given of your faith; and you ought to bless God that you have been educated in the Church of England, where you have been instructed in the true foundations of Christianity, which give all the assurance that the word and promises of God can give. And this is the highest reason. But the assurance of the predestinarians is all imagination, being built upon decrees which they confess to be secret and hidden from us. Therefore it is no wonder they should cry out for assurance in their extremity. And when they say or may think they have it, and boast in it, yet they can give no reason for it, and therefore it is but imagination still.

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5. Impressions upon the imagination may give great pleasure and even raptures of joy. And if these are built upon the true foundation, they are gold and precious stones; otherwise they are but hay and stubble, and will not endure the fire. They are often the delusion of Satan, who thus transforms himself into an angel of light, and deceives many an stable soul. But they must be tried by the foundation upon which they are not built if we can give no reason for them, but are flashes and meteors, and give a false light. We may know them likewise by their effects. If such transports leave us more humble in ourselves, and with more love and charity to others, they come from God. But if they fill us with spiritual pride, and make us look down upon others as beneath us, they come, no doubt, from the spirit of pride, and tempt us to pride; though sometimes without our knowing it, and while we act humility. There is none so proud as the proud-humble man, who is proud of his humility! So subtle is our adversary that we must watch even over our virtues. He mixes poison with our meat. So that we often put darkness for light, and light for darkness. And if the light that is in us be darkness, how great is that darkness ?

6. And this must be known by reason. My reason tells me that I can