in this occult science, that our orators boast the country has become "the envy of surrounding nations." Verily, miracles will never cease! But to proceed. "Ask Protestants to prove the Bible to be true, when its evidences in the present day are accumulating from every quarter of the globe!" Ah! Ah! And so this is an answer to the great difficulty. Why this is what is vulgarly called Popery with a vengeance. Evidences in the present day! And pray, sir, what are they? What an unwilling witness is the writer that our position is so strong that no power is able to remove us! Here the writer is forced to acknowledge that without tradition the Scriptures cannot be admitted. He continues-"Ask Protestants to prove the truth of a book which contains the most precise prophecies respecting Babylon, Ninevah, and Jerusalem, which we have ocular demonstration have been fulfilled to the very letter!" If the writer be an Irishman, he, no doubt, can claim the privilege of speaking twice; but I very much doubt whether he has a right to write twice. So then, we have ocular demonstration of the truth of the prophecies regarding Babylon, &c. Very wonderful, if true! But, pray, my good siz, what ocular demonstration have those Protestants who are located in Blind Asylums? Eh ? Answer that, if you can. We know not how to account for these strange aberrations-but stop, we find by a reference to the almanack, that the moon was full about the time your mountain in labour brought forth a mouse; and this will account for your writing such sentences as no sane man ever wrote. But let him go on: "Ask Protestants to prove the truth of a book which contains the most lucid and forcible predictions respecting the present dispersion of the children of Abraham, converting the Jew wherever he is to be found into a visible and standing miracle for the truth of Christianity! Why the BIBLE is self evidential; it carries with it the mark of its Heavenly origin, and, like every other work of God, it bears the stamp of Divinity upon it." What strange contradiction. Here we have "Evideness in the present day are accumulating from every quarter of the globe," in one sentence; and the "Bible is self evidential," in another. If the Bible be "self-evidential," ,"where is the need of "evidences." &c. If, on the other hand, "evidences" are needed to prove its divinity, it is all nonsense to say that the Book is selfevidential." We think this good man has got himself into a "fix": it must be that his over anxiety to answer our question has completely unhinged him. We cannot, in any other way, account for his fantastic meanderings-his mental aberrations. We leave him for the present, with the intention of resuming our labours next week. We stop short now for two reasons; first, because we are pressed for room, and secondly, because we want a little time to examine his labours of the past week; and we are also desirous of reviewing the great. "Protestant Prize Es-ay," which has just issued from the press. Catholics of Manchester and Salford, we congratulate you on the present occasion, because we have to announce to you an important fact. Your opponents are reduced to a pitiable state, for we redeemed our pledge, by carrying the war into the very "camp of the enemy." They cannot reply to our invincible arguments without speaking downright nonsense. Catholicity has triumphed-its great adversary has been slain by the sword of truth. Protestantism cannot find a single man able to answer the question-" How can Protestants prove the divinity of the Bible upon exclusively Protestant principles ?" We have the plea. sare to subscribe ourselves, yours respectfully, Manchester, Jan. 19th, 1850. THE EDITOR. CARMELITE CHURCH AND NOVICIATE, KNOCKTOPHER, IRELAND.-The Rev. Eugene Cullen, of the Carmelite Order, has come over to collect subscriptions to liquidate the heavy debt contracted in erecting the above invaluable institutions. The charitable are called upon most earnestly to aid him by their contributions. Subscriptions will be thankfully received at St. Patrick's Hall, Charles street. POETRY. TIME AND ETERNITY.- By GERALD GRIFFIN, The brilliant course of earthly pleasure, 'Tis vain to say in youthful years, Time flies. earth fades, with all its pleasures; But nought of transient counsel treasures. A speck in nature's vast dominion, Forbid it truth, forbid it love, The faithless thought untold should perish, And all on earth we know and cherish. FACTS AND SCRAPS. Falsehoods, like distorted reflections from an uneven mirror, suffer death by contact with each other. Covetousness, like a candle ill-made, smothers the splendour of a happy fortune in its own grease. surmounting it. Skilful pilots gain their reputation from The greater the difficulty, the more glory is there in storms and tempests. depends upon the latitude, and if you allow yourself too TO FIND THE TIME OF SUNRISE.-The time of sunrise much latitude in lying in bed in the morning, you will never find the time of sunrise at all. one. PREMATURE COMPLIMENT.-As a musician was employing his talents in Lassus, a town chiefly inhabited by fishermen, a crowd collected around him, and seemed to enior his music At length. the signal being given that the fish market was open, all the fishermen left him but When the musician saw only one remaining, he began praising his taste, and admiring the pleasure with which he seemed to listen to the piece he had played, when the re of his companions had precipitately left him, who was deaf, "has the bell rung? By Jupiter, I did not upon hearing the first bell. "What!" said the fisherman, hear it!" and off he ran, after his brother fishermen. Notices to Readers and Correspondents. We should feel obliged to Confraternities, Guilds, and School Seleties. if they would send to our office, reports of their number, progress, past state, present increase, and future prospects. We shall be very happy to be the medium of giving useful statistical reports. AGENTS. Ashton-under-Lyne-Mr. Kerrison. Printed and Published by EDWARD STAVELEY, at No. 183, G + MANCHESTER ILLUMINATOR, No. 7, Vol. I. AND GENERAL CATHOLIC RECORD. SATURDAY, JANUARY 26, 1850. THE INVIOLABILITY OF THE SEAL OF CONFESSION BEAUTIFULLY ILLUSTRATED. ST. JOHN NEPOMUCEN, M.-A.D. 1383. (Continued from our last.) PRICE ONE PENNY represented to him, in the most respectful manner possible, TRUTH. ST. PETER. (Continued from our last.) and in the return of a fit of mad jealousy, he made her virtuous conduct an argument for his suspicions. To know her interior, he formed a design of extorting from St. John what she had disclosed to him in the secret of confession, by which means he thought he should learn all the private sentiments she had ever entertained concerning him. In this view, he sent for the holy man, and at first The empress Jane, daughter of Albert of Bavaria, Earl began indirectly to sift him, and at length openly put to of Hainault and Holland, was a most virtuous and accom-him his impious questions. The saint, struck with horror, plished princess. Touched by the divine unction of the holy preacher, she chose him for the director of her conscience. The emperor loved her with the most violent passion; but as he was capricious and changeable, he often abandoned himself to fits of jealousy, which, joined to the natural fierceness and brutish fury of his temper, gave the princess much to suffer. As the world is saved by the sufferings of a God, so it is by afflictions that all the saints are crowned. To make the empress one by the crucifixion of her heart to whatever might divide it from God, the Lord employed the persecution of her husband, which was sometimes cruel to the utmost excess. But he gave her a comforter and guide in our saint, by whose counsels she squared her life. What fruit did not she reap by this means in a few years! Supported by a man whose zeal prepared him to martyrdom, she learned to suffer her afflictions with joy. Not only this princess, but all the virtuous persons of the court, sought to have the saint for their director, and he seemed to possess the talent of making saints upon the throne, and in the court, and men happy upon the cross. He also took upon him the direction of the nuns of the castle of Prague, whom he conducted in the exercises of a spiritual life in such a manner, that this house became a model of perfection to all others. The empress, though always a person of virtue, became much more devout after she began to follow his advice. She became altogether religious, and was not afraid to appear such. The churches were the ordinary places in which she was to be found; she spent in them whole days on her knees, and in a recollection which was the admiration of every one. Her prayers were only interrupted by offices of charity to the poor (whom she served with her own hands), or by a short time for meals or relaxation, which she passed in conversing with her ladies on eternity and spiritual matters, on which she spoke with an ardour which bespoke her own fervour. This fire she nourished in her heart by the frequent use of the sacraments, and the practice of perpetual mortification. Such was her holy fear of God, that the very shadow of the least sin made her tremble; and upon the fear of the least failing or imperfection, she hastened to expiate it in the sacred tribunal of penance; from which she never came but with a heart broken with sorrow, and her eyes bathed in tears. As a corrupted heart turns everything into poison, Wenceslas grew the more impatient and extravagant by the piety of his consort, and by the tenderness and condescension with which she always behaved towards him; St. Peter, whilst he preached in Judæa, chiefly laboured in converting the Jews. They being tenacious of the legal ceremonies, the use of them was for some time tolerated in the converts, provided they did not regard them as of precept; which being always condemned as an error in faith, was called the Nazarean heresy. After the council at Jerusalem, St. Peter went to Antioch, where he ate promiscuously with the Gentile converts, without observing the Jewish distinction of unclean meats. But certain Jewish converts from Jerusalem coming in, he, fearing their scandal, withdrew from table, at which action the Gentile Christians took offence. To obviate the scandal of these latter, St. Paul publicly rebuked his superior, lest his behaviour might seem to condemn those who did not observe the Jewish ceremonial precepts, and lest they might apprehend some disagreement in the doctrine of the two apostles. St. Peter, whilst he studied to avoid what might give offence to the weak Jewish converts, had not sufficiently attended to the scandal which the Gentile proselytes might take at his action. Nevertheless St. Austin justly observes, that both these apostles give us on this occasion great lessons of virtue, for we cannot sufficiently admire the just liberty which St. Paul showed in his rebuke, nor the humble modesty of St. Peter. "But" says that father, "St. Peter sets us an example of a more wonderful and difficult virtue. For it is a much easier task for one to see what to reprehend in another, and to put him in mind of a fault, than for us publicly to acknowledge our own faults, and to correct them. How heroic a virtue is it to be willing to be rebuked by another, by an inferior, and in the sight of all the world!" "This example of Peter," says he in another place," is the most perfect pattern of virtue he could have set us, because by it he teaches us to preserve charity by humility." Every one can correct others; but only a saint can receive well public rebuke. This is the true test of perfect humility, and heroic virtue; this is something far more edifying and more glorious than the most convincing apologies. St. Gregory the Great says of this conduct of St. Peter, "He forgot his own dignity, for fear of losing any degree of humility." He afterward commended the epistles of St. Paul as full of wisdom, though we read in them something which seems derogatory from his honour. But this lover of truth rejoiced that all should know that he had been reproved, and should believe the reproof was just. St. Peter wrote two canonical epistles. The first he dates from Babylon, by which, St. Jerom and Eusebius tell us, he meant Rome, at that time the centre of idolatry and vice. The Jews usually called such cities by that figurative name; as they gave to a city infamous for debaucheries the name of Sodom, to an idolatrous country that of Egypt, to a race accursed by God that of Canaan. Rome is also called Babylon in the Apocalypse. This name might be frequently given it among the Christians of that age. This epistle seems to have been written between the years 45 and 55. It is chiefly addressed to the converted Jews, though the apostle also speaks to the Gentile converts, as St. Austin observes. His principal view in it was to confirm them in faith under their sufferings and persecutions, and to confute the errors of Simon and of the Nicolaites. Erasmus, Estius, and all other judicious critics, admire in the style a majesty and vigour worthy the prince of the apostles, and a wonderful depth of sense couched in a few words. His second epistle was written from Rome a little before his death, and may be regarded as his spiritual testament. In it he strongly exhorts the faithful to labour earnestly in the great work of their sanctification, and cautions them to stand upon their guard against the snares of heresy. (To be continued in our next.) FALSEHOOD. THE GNOSTIC SECTS-THEIR SIMILARITY. (Continued from our last.) The Gnostic schools taught that Judaism was a revelation of the Demiurgos, but that multitudes of carnally minded Jews had imagined that this creator of the world, who had manifested himself in the Old Testament. was the Supreme God. Those Gnostics who reputed the Demiurgos to be a servant of the author of all being, recognized a concealed truth in the Old Testament, and esteemed Judaism as a divine preparation for Christianity: those, on the contrary, who maintained that the Demiurgos was no more than a wicked and malicious spirit, saw in the Old Testament only a true representation of his own nature, a means employed by him to keep men in slavery, or in an ignorance of their divine origin. To destroy this ignorance, and to reveal to men their hitherto unknown God, Christ, the highest, or one of the highest, of the Eones, descended from the Pleroma; and the Gnostics, according to their different ideas of the Demiurgos, taught that he voluntarily subjected himself to Christ, or violently opposed him. With regard to the person of the Redeemer, they either denied the reality of his human appearance, and taught, that as he could not enter into strife with the evil which resided in matter, he possessed only the phantom of a body; or they imagined only a temporary union of the higher with the inferior Christ, his organ and instrument; which union, they said, commenced at the baptism in the Jordan. The Christian doctrine of the resurrection of the body was necessarily rejected by all those different sects. The errors of the Gnostics began so early to intrude themselves into the Christian churches, that the apostles, St. Paul and St.John, found it necessary to warn the faithful against them. Thus St. Paul, in his first epistle to Timothy, (chap. i. 4.) requires his disciple to warn certain persons "not to give heed to fables and genealogies without end;" and in the conclusion of the epistle, he conjures Timothy to avoid“ profane novelties of words and oppositions of knowledge, (Gnosis) falsely so called." In the first epistle of St. John, also, we may discover allusions to a Gnostics dochetism. But the history of the founders of the Gnostic sects, in the apostolic ages, as well as these founders themselves, are concealed under a thick veil of obscurity. Thus also is hidden the history of the Samaritan magician Simon, who is designated by the ancients as the patriarch of all heresies, and in particular of Gnosticism. In the Acts of the Apos tles, he names himself the "great power of God." What he thereby intended to express, we learn from the Clementine Homilies, and from the account of St. Epiphanius. He declared himself to be a power flowing from the Supreme Godhead; and his wife Helena, whe had also emanated from God, to be the soul of the world, but then held in captivity by matter. To liberate her, and to restore universal order and harmony, were the objects of his descent upon this earth. How far the docrines of the sect, who were from him called Simonians, were derived from him, it is now impossible to discern. It cannot be called a Christian heresy, as it contained scarcely one Christian doctrine. It acknowledged, indeed, by its syncretism, a revelation of God in the person of Christ. The one God, so the Simonians taught, revealed himself to the Samaritans, as the Father; to the Jews, as the Son of God in Christ; and to the Gentiles, as the Holy Ghost. The Eutychates, a sect springing from the Simonians, by removing all the laws of morality, which they termed the arbitrary impositions of the spirits that rule this world, opened the broad road of all iniquity and crime. Similar to these were the autinomistic principles of the Nicholaites, a Gnostic sect, which claimed, for its founder, Nicholas, one ef the seven deacons who were placed by the Apostles in the Church of Jerusalem. As the Ebionites boasted that St. James was their apostle, so the Nicholaites assumed to themselves the deacon Nicholas; but, according to the Alexandrian Clement, an ill-advised action, and a misinterpreted expression of Nicholas, were their only claims to this assumption. It is more than probable that the Nicholaites of whom St. John speaks in his Apocalypse (ii. 6, 15.) belonged to this sect, and were the same with the disciples of Balaam, mentioned in the verse immediately preceding. In the doctrines of Cerinthus, if he indeed taught the Judaic principles that are attributed to him, there is a more perceptible combination of Jewish and Gnostic ideas than in the system of the Ebionites. He had made himself master in Egypt of the Alexandrian philosophy, and went into Asia-minor and to Ephesus, where he became the founder of a sect at the time when St. John the apostle resided there. According to him, this world was formed by a spirit greatly inferior to the great God, but which recognized no authority in him: this spirit was the author of the Mosaic law, and the ruler of the people of Israel. The man, Jesus, was the son of Mary and of Joseph, and was raised above other men only by his virtues; until at his baptism, the Christ, who was superior to all other heavenly spirits, united himself with him, to impart to him, (and by him to other men) the knowledge of the before unknown true God. This heavenly spirit operated through Jesus as by an instrument, and worked miracles through him, but at length forsook him and returned again to heaven. Jesus, thus abandoned, suffered and died, but was raised from the dead. Cerinthus presented to his followers the prospect of an earthly kingdom of Christ in the glorified Jerusalem, under types and figures, which his adherents and his opponents have, perhaps without reason, interpreted of pleasures and delights of sense. It is greatly contested, whether he insisted upon an observance of the Mosaic law: St. Tranæus is silent on this subject, but St. Epiphanius testifies that he acknowledged an authority in a part of the law, probably the moral part. That St. John wrote his gospel to confute the errors of the Nicholaites, and particularly of Cerinthus, we have the unanimous testimony of SS. Irenæus, Epiphanius, and Jerome. (To be continued in our next.) HULME CONFRATERNITY FESTIVAL. The Confraternity of the Order of the B. Virgin of Mount Carmel, held their annual festival in the Sunday school, Christ's Church Square, Hulme, on Tuesday evening, January 8th, 1850. This school is connected with St. Wilfred's Church. The Rev. L. Toole is the treasurer of the society; Mr. A. C. Pilkington is the president; and Messrs. Dominick Fannon, and Michael Clarke, are the vice presidents; Mr. Thomas Kelly is the secretary. On the aforesaid evening about 150 persons sat down to tea. In this number were included, with the Confraternity, many friends and relatives. The room presented a lively and cheerful appearance; it was very neatly decorated with flowers, evergreens, pictures, and statues. In the refreshment department there seemed to be a profusion of the necessary good things; and if we may judge from what we ourselves saw, we may safely pronounce that both the Confraternity and their friends were in a healthy condition, for their appetites seemed very keen, and the waiters were thankful when the ceremonial of eating and drinking came to a close. Mr. Pilkington, the president, occupied the chair; supported by the vice presidents, &c. After the cloth was removed, the President called upon Mr. Cleary to address the meeting: the following is a briet outline of his speech :-Mr. President; I feel happy in being called upon to address you on the present occasion; for though I am not enrolled on your books, yet I am a member of your society-for nearly 32 years have elapsed since that great and good man, Father Matthew, the apostle of temperance, conferred upon me the privileges of a member of your venerable, ancient, and renowned order of Mount Carmel. I am rejoiced to find your body so numerous in this locality, and I trust that you will be distinguished from others by your zeal, your piety, love of each other, and of all mankind; by your fervour in the divine service, by your hearty co-operation-as far as your circumstances will permit--with your venerated pastors, in extending church accommodation, in erecting new schools for the religious education of the young, and in supporting efficiently those which have already been erected. You are perfectly aware that men may be saved without being members of any confraternity whatever. And that men may be members of pious sodalities, and yet may die reprobates. The first thing we have to do is to satisfy our ordinary obligations. If this great duty be well discharged, then if time and prudence permit, we may, nay I would almost say we ought to, join some good confraternity-in order to be more actively employed in the holy work of reforming society-to teach by our good example-to pro- | mote the greater honour and glory of God-and of course to largely increase our own merit, and the number of our intercessors. But I am sure that you are fully alive to the nature and extent of your obligations, and that you will become the instruments of great good in this congregation, -that the good will assist you by their prayers,-that the bad will be reformed by your demeanour,-that your pas tors will ever give you their countenance and support, so long as you live up to the spirit of your institute, and are guided by the spirit of Christian charity,-and finally that God the Father will bless you, if you devoutly honour his virgin daughter, the blessed and immaculate Mary;-that God the Son will raise you up to himself, if you piously invocate, and religiously try to imitate the virtues of his holy Mother, your great and glorious patroness,-and that God the Holy Ghost will inflame your hearts and purify your consciences, if you perseverantly continue to lead good lives, and to invoke the aid of his chaste and lovely Spouse, upon whom you are specially used to call under the significant title of "Honour of Mount Carmel." I cannot, Mr. President, find words to express the feelings of my heart on this joyful occasion. Yes, on an occasion truly joyful, and that on many accounts. But it seems to me to be a time of special joy in this locality. And why? Because Hulme has been desecrated by the revival of the filthy and blasphemous heresy of Nestorius, who was justly - condemned in the 3rd general council, in 431, for denying that the B.V. Mary was the mother of God, but of only the man Christ. The English Church joins the Catholic Church in this condemnation, as may be seen by referring to the 1st Elizabeth. S. 1. And yet the noisy parsonsthe sticklers for "No Popery"-have rewarded the man who has revived, in your township, this abominable heresy. I rejoice, then, that you have assembled here to nightand for the purpose of honouring your holy patroness, the Virgin Mother of God's eternal Son-of honouring her in whose chaste womb the marriage of the divine and human natures took place-of honouring her from whose immacu late veins was taken that very blood which the Redeemer afterwards poured out so profusely on the cross, for the salvation of the human family. I am glad that you are here to night, and for such a purpose-that you are met to imitate the Church, though at an humble distance. She, on some occasions, when desecration has reached a certain degree of atrocity, commands even her temples to be closed, until they are again purified and reconsecrated. Your township has permitted itself to be defiled, polluted, desecrated, by the revival of Nestorianism! And you are assembled to-night to cleanse, to purify, to reconsecrate your township-you are met to honour God, the divinity of whose Son has been called into doubt-to venerate the B.V. Mary, the Mother of God, whose divine maternity has been impiously attacked and blasphemously denied. Your task to night is a glorious one-and I feel highly honoured in being privileged to speak on such an occasion, and on such a topic. Follow up this excellent course, and remember that at a time when Protestants allow the Church was pure, the people of Ephesus set you a glorious example, for when they found that the council then sitting (431) in their city, had vindicated this glorious prerogative of Mary, and that their impious patriarch, Nestorius, was condemned, and even banished, they made the very streets shake, as it were, with the sound of the name of Mary the Theotokos, or THE MOTHER OF GOD. Shun, on the one side, Nestorius and his impiety, with Stowell, Knowles, and the Protestant Association, who have revived it. Let our cotemporary defenders of Nestorianism take warning from the fate of that unhappy wretch whose errors they have recently revived - he died miserably, and his impious tongue was consumed with rottenness before his decease. On the other hand, keep constantly before your eyes the example of the Ephesians-and, as Hulme has been desecrated by the heretics, let you labour diligently by word and example to purify your town from its defilement, and shont loudly, but reverently and always-Mary Theotokos. We hail thee, glorious mother-we proclaim thy divine maternity-knowing full well that if thou art not the mother of God, then the world has not been redeemed, and we are left without hope. But we are Christians, and we are not left without hope. Let us, then, live under the influence of Christian charity, and having the mother of God for our Patroness, both in life and in death, we may entertain a well-grounded hope of our being blessed in life, and crowned after death, by a kind and merciful God. The above is only a portion of Mr. C.'s speech, after the delivery of which, the thanks of the party was unanimously voted to Mr. C., who in a short address very appropriately returned his acknowledgements, and then retired. In the course of the night the Rev. Mr. Toole visited the school, apologized for his non-attendance, in consequence of his having had to attend another party in his own house, He viz., the clerks whom he had specially invited to tea. also eulogized the Confraternity-wished them success— and trusted hopingly that they would live up to the spirit of their institute.-Some time after the departure of the Rev. Mr. Toole, the meeting was honoured by the presence of the Rev. Mr. McCann, of St. Wilfred's, who, in conse quence of his being called away by the duties of his ministry, could not call at an earlier hour. The assembly broke up at half past eleven o'clock, determined, with God's permission, to hold their next festival on a larger scale, in the new schools which are now being erected in connection with St. Wilfred's Church. A REVIEW OF THE SPEECHES Delivered by Parsons M'Neile and Stowell at the Free Trade Hall, Nov. 7th, 1849, It would afford matter for mirth, if the subject were not too solemn, and if too many important considerations were not bound up with it,-to contemplate the successors of those men, who, in the 16th century, by violence and schism, seized upon the dignities and ministry of the church, writing and talking as if they had legitimately succeeded to the Apostles, instead of being what they really are the descendants, in office, of those who by un lawful means drove out the rightful pastors-and who now enjoy, by the power of the secular arm, their unjust and schismatical authority. Do these men ever reflect, that their teaching and their practice are invariably arrayed in hostility to each other?-do they ever consider, that the public eye is particularly directed towards them, and their strange and varying movements?-and, that sensible people condemn them because the infallibility they refuse to the Church of God, they unhesitatingly, but with strange, unaccountable inconsistency, claim as their own peculiar privilege? It is true, that they do not in words demand to be heard on the ground of their being infallibly guided-but still it is a fact, beyond all doubt, that in their teachings and writings they individually claim a larger share of inerrancy, than was ever claimed by the most enthusiastic Trans-Alpine theologian, for his Holiness the Pope. Yes, the Pope is the Father of the Faithful; he is their true Shepherd and faithful guide. But, he cannot alter the faith of the Church, and cause her to teach one thing now, and another thing hereafter. But, these men are ever chopping and changing, veering about like weathercocks, now here, now there-they know not what to believe themselves, and consequently must be very ill qualified to teach others. And how is this to be accounted for? Simply thus: "They err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." But, let us now turn to Mr. N'Neile, and his explanation of the prophecies. In the last quotation which we selected from his speech, he says: "It should be carefully noticed that there was a great difference between the ministry of a Christian missionary to a heathen people, and the ministry of a pastor in a long established national church." This, my dear sir, is all very true! Indeed, from the mouth of a legitimate pastor, it would make a very strong and lasting impression. But we ask you, by all that is serious, to point out in what way any benefit can accrue to your cause, or to yourself from it, or why it was that you introduced the subject at all? For in the first place, we remind you that your Anglican Church is scarcely three hundred years old, and we are, therefore, perfectly at liberty to ask you-how is it pos sible, then, that she could have seen the Apostles? If your church be of so recent an origin, it naturally follows that she is the work of human device,-a mere human institution. She is, then, arrayed in opposition against that one religion which is alone worthy of a God of infinite wisdom, infinite truth, infinite mercy, and infinite goodness. And as you are bound, by the very nature of the office which you hold, to array yourself in hostility to the true religion, it follows, as an admitted consequence, that you are neither a missionary nor a pastor. To be a missionary or a pastor, a man must be called by God, as Aaron was; he must be sent, and the parties who send him must have credentials to shew, that they have been commissioned to send others. And this authority must be derived from the Apostles of Christ down to this very time, and it must be destined to continue for ever. But how can you pretend to be a Christian minister? For, in the first place, you must bear in mind that the Catholic Church, the Greek Church, the Nestorian, and other Eastern Churches will not admit that your orders are valid. The Catholic Church cannot more forcibly shew you what she thinks of your orders, than by receiving converted parsons as mere laymen, and by ordaining such as feel called to the ministry. Now, when the Church has any doubt of the sacrament of baptism's being properly administered, she administers it again in a conditional manner, but her invariable practice respecting ordination, is to ordain unconditionally all of whatever rank, or to whatever Protestant denomination they may have belonged. Secondly, the Anglican Church justifies this conduct of the Catholic Church; for she examine their motives-or to ascertain what sort of lives receives apostate priests, and without taking the trouble to they had been leading immediately previous to their defec tion; she recognizes the validity of their ordination, per mits them to preach and teach--to baptize and administer what is called the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper (?); and, in a word, to do all that she supposes one of her parsons is authorized, through her, by an Act of Parliament to perform! This, sir, is very strange conduct. You have been actively engaged in calling the Pope "Antichrist," and in attacking the priesthood of the Catholic Church as im pious, as usurped, and as Anti-Christian. You seem to be very forgetful; otherwise it could not have possibly hap pened that you would fall into so many absurdities. If you believe the Pope is Antichrist, and the Catholic orders are Anti-Christian, why during three centuries have yon Anti-Christianized your own darling Anglican Establishment, by permitting unsanctified Popish perverts to perform ministerial functions in it, without being re-ordained? This is a matter deserving the serious attention of every well disposed Protestant; it is of paramount importance. To you and to your party it is one beset, on all sides, with great and innumerable difficulties; and to us it appears truly astonishing that you should be ignorant of it; or, if not ignorant of it, that you should be so rash, so fool-hardy, and so simple as to provoke public controversy, at a time when this strange and singular fact was staring you in the face. My dear sir, if you wish to avoid public exposure, if you wish to save your darling establishment from severe attacks, if you wish to prevent the public mind from being directed towards your church, with a view to effect its destruction on account of its inutility, its rottenness, its expensiveness, its inconsistencies, and its proverbial hatred of justice and social amelioration-then cease your pother; remain quiet; shun notoriety; and avoid by all means the public exposure to which we have, within the past few days, subjected your confriers, parsons Stowell, M'Grath, and Richardson, for their opposition to the teachings of their own church-the Athanasian Creed, the Thirty-nine Articles, and the decrees of the General Council of Ephesus, held in 431, against Nestorius, who blasphemously maintained that the B. V. Mary was not the mother of God, but only the mother of the man Christ. Yes, your confriers, as we have clearly proved, even in the estimation of respectable Protestants, stand guilty before the bar of public opinion of their denial of a fundamental principle of Christianity, viz., the divinity of the Christ whose mother was the B. V. Mary. We have brought the charge home against them-they cannot get over the difficulty by a side wind, and we shall never cease, so long as life and health remain, to upbraid them with their impious conduct, until they either publicly apologize for their impiety, or the dignitaries of the Establishment stand up to demand that they should be ejected from the Church, for their duplicity in receiving payment for teaching one kind of religion, whilst they actually teach another kind. In truth you are a perverse generation, for you are willing to patronize every abomination-every species of irreligion, provided the authors should say something, however little that something may be, in praise of your low, unchristian, dastardly, and uncharitable No-Popery movements-some thing laudatory of your unnatural, brutish, malevolent, and infernal attempts to blaspheme our religious principles, to defame our characters, to rob us of our just and in alienable birthright, and natural privileges as citizens and British subjects. (To be continued in our next.) |