and revived in every possible way, and on every suitable occasion. Books and tracts upon every branch of the controversy with Rome should be poured forth in torrents, till our artisans and labourers understand what an enemy to their enlightenment, their liberty, and their prosperity exists, and ought to be resisted, in every quarter of the land.

Hitherto there has been no lack of controversial works of all sizes, and upon all the diversified subjects included in the controversy, from the bulky and learned octavo to the cheap tract. It is highly desirable that the supply should still be kept up, and that these works should be freely circulated in every neighbourhood where popery is lifting up its head, and pronouncing its incantations. Protestants every where should know that their deadliest enemy is not asleep, though he may seem so, but is stealthily pursuing his purpose with the subtlety of the serpent and the cooing of the dove. He will grow bolder by our forbearance, and confident if we are inactive. But he will shrink from manly conflict, and hide himself from the penetrating beams of truth and reason. He will assert and reassert his old and unalterable dogmas, but he will not answer your arguments nor reply to your objections. Every man that values his Bible, his religion, and his liberty; every man that loves his country, and desires its prosperity and the perpetuity of its glory, ought to equip himself in some tolerable degree to resist the secret and silent workings of popery, which are all directed against human rights. With this object in view, we heartily commend every competent author who throws in his contribution to the treasury of protestantism at the present moment. We cannot have too many works similar to those named at the head of this article. The Evangelical Alliance is to be commended for offering a handsome premium for the best work upon the papacy. The Rev. J. A. Wylie proved the successful competitor, to whom the adjudicators, Doctors Wardlaw, Cunningham, and Eadie, awarded the first prize, and recommended that the essay should be published under the sanction of the Alliance. This has now been accomplished, and the work has been extensively circulated. We regret that it has not been in our power to give it an earlier notice. The work, however, is one of permanent value, and may be regarded as a text-book to which preachers and lecturers may safely refer for years to come. The delay of our notice, therefore, is of the less consequence. The interest of such a volume passes not away in a few months. It is perennial, and may at any time be recommended to public attention.

Mr. Wylie commences with a brief but able history of the papacy, occupying nearly one-third of the volume. It is replete

with valuable information, and displays an admirable analysis of the subject. We could make large extracts from this portion of the work, with which our readers would be highly gratified. But there is one chapter of great excellence and importance, from which we must indulge them with rather a long citation, because it treats upon one part of the system but little known by Protestants, and because it is appropriate to the recent aggression. Cardinal Wiseman publicly announced that his great object was first to set up the canon law in England, and this as preparatory to the reconciliation of our country to Rome, and its restoration to its place in the spiritual heavens. Few Englishmen understood what was meant by this introduction of the canon law, and many have yet to learn. Mr. Wylie has devoted his sixth chapter, book i., to this subject, and has touched it with a master's hand:

It would be bad enough that a system of the character we have described should exist in the world, and that there should be a numerous class of men all animated by its spirit, and sworn to carry into effect its principles. But this is not the worst of it. The system has been converted into a code. It exists, not as a body of maxims or principles, though in that shape its influence would have been great; it exists as a body of laws, by which every Romish ecclesiastic is bound to act, and which he is appointed to administer. This is termed CANON LAW. The canon law is the slow growth of a multitude of ages. It reminds us of those coral islands in the great Pacific, the terror of the mariner, which myriads and myriads of insects laboured to raise from the bottom to the surface of the ocean. One race of these little builders took up the work where another race had left it; and thus the mass grew unseen in the dark and sullen deep, whether calm or storm prevailed on the surface. In like fashion, monks and popes innumerable, working in the depths of the dark ages, with the ceaseless and noiseless diligence, though not quite so innocently as the little artificers to whom we have referred, produced at last the hideous formation known as the canon law. This code, then, is not the product of one large mind, like the Code Justinian or the Code Napoleon, but of innumerable minds all working intently and laboriously through successive ages on this one object. The canon law is made up of the constitutions, or canons of councils, the decrees of popes, and the traditions which have at any time received the pontifical sanction. As questions arose they were adjudicated upon; new emergencies produced new decisions; at last it came to pass that there was scarce a point of possible occurrence on which infallibility had not pronounced. The machinery of the canon law, then, as may be easily imagined, has reached its highest possible perfection and its widest possible application. The statute-book of Rome, combining amazing flexibility with enormous power, like the most wonderful of all modern inventions, can regulate with equal ease the affairs of a kingdom and of a family. Like the elephant's trunk, it can crush an empire in its folds, or conduct the course of a petty intrigue-fling a monarch from his throne, or plant the stake for the

heretic. Like a net of steel, forged by the Vulcan of the Vatican and his cunning artificers, the canon law encloses the whole of Catholic christendom. A short discussion of this subject may not be without its interest at present, seeing Dr. Wiseman had the candour to tell us, that it is his intention to enclose Great Britain in this net, provided he meets with no obstruction, which he scarce thinks we will be so unreasonable as to offer. Seeing, then, it will not be Dr. Wiseman's fault if we have not a nearer acquaintance with the canon law than we can boast at present, it may be worth while examining its structure, and endeavouring to ascertain our probable condition, once within this enclosure. Not that we intend to hold up to view all its monstrosities; the canon law is the entire papacy viewed as a system of government: we can refer but to the more prominent points which bear upon the subject we are now discussing-the supremacy; and these are precisely the points which have the closest connexion with our own condition, should the agent of the pontiff in London be able to carry his intent into effect, and introduce the canon law, 'the real and complete code of the church,' as he terms it. Here we shall do little more than quote the leading provisions of the code from the authorized books of Rome, leaving the canon law to commend itself to British notions of toleration and justice.

The false decretals of Isidore, already referred to, offered a worthy foundation for this fabric of unbearable tyranny. We pass, as not meriting particular notice, the earlier and minor compilations of Rheginon of Prum in the tenth century, Buchardus of Worms in the eleventh, and St. Ivo of Chartres in the twelfth. The first great collection of canons and decretals which the world was privileged to see, was made by Gratian, a monk of Bologna, who, about 1150, published his work entitled Decretum Gratiani. Pope Eugenius III. approved his work, which immediately became the highest authority in the western church. The rapid growth of the papal tyranny soon superseded the Decretum Gratiani.' Succeeding popes flung their decretals upon the world with a prodigality with which the diligence of compilers who gathered them up, and formed them into new codes, toiled to keep pace. Innocent III. and Honorius III. issued numerous rescripts and decrees, which Gregory IX. commissioned Raymond of Pennafort to collect and publish. This the dominican did, in 1234; and Gregory, in order to perfect this collection of infallible decisions, supplemented it with a goodly addition of his own. This is the more essential part of the canon law, and contains a copious system of jurisprudence, as well as rules, for the government of the church. But infallibility had not exhausted itself with these labours. Boniface VIII., in 1298, added a sixth part which he named the Sext. A fresh batch of decretals was issued by Clement V., in 1313, under the title of Clementines. John XXII., in 1340, added the Extravagantes, so called because they extravagate, or straddle, outside the others. Succeeding pontiffs, down to Sixtus IV., added their extravagating articles, which came under the name of Extravagantes Communes. The government of the world was in some danger of being stopped by the very abundance of infallible law; and since the end of the fifteenth century, nothing has been formally added to this already enormous code. We cannot say that this fabric of commingled assumption and fraud is finished even yet it stands

like the great dome of Cologne, with the crane a-top, ready to receive a new tier whenever infallibility shall begin again to build, or rather to arrange the materials it has been producing during the past four centuries. While Rome exists, the canon law must continue to grow. Infallibility will always be speaking; and every new deliverance of the oracle is another statute added to canon law. The growth of all other bodies is regulated by great natural laws. The tower of Babel itself, had its builders been permitted to go on with it, must have stopped at the point where the attractive forces of earth and of the other planets balance each other; but where is the canon law to end? "This general supremacy," says Hallam," effected by the Roman church over mankind in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, derived material support from the promulgation of the canon law. The superiority of ecclesiastical to temporal power, or at least the absolute independence of the former, may be considered as a sort of key-note which regulates every passage in the canon law. It is expressly declared, that subjects owe no allegiance to an excommunicated lord, if after admonition he is not reconciled to the church. And the rubric prefixed to the declaration of Frederic II.'s deposition in the council of Lyons, asserts that the pope may dethrone the emperor for lawful causes. Legislation quailed,' says Gavazzi, "before the new-born code of clerical command, which, in the slang of the dark ages, was called canon law. The principle which pollutes every page of this nefarious imposture is, that every human right, claim, property, franchise, or feeling, at variance with the predominance of the popedom, was ipso facto inimical to Heaven and the God of eternal justice. In virtue of this preposterous prerogative, universal manhood became a priest's footstool; this planet a huge game-preserve for the pope's individual shooting." We repeat, it is this law which Dr. Wiseman avows to be one main object of the papal aggression to introduce. Its establishment in Britain implies the utter prostration of all other authority. We have seen how it came into being. The next question is, What is it? Let us first hear the canon law on the subject of the spiritual and civil jurisdictions, and let us take note how it places the world under the dominion of one all-absorbing power-a power which is not temporal, certainly, neither is it purely spiritual, but which, for want of a better phrase, we may term pontifical.'-pp. 128-132.

It would be very desirable to lay a complete analysis of this canon law before our readers, but this would be no easy task; and when done, would be too long for our space. We must content ourselves with a few brief specimens, which will convey some notion of this monstrous exhibition of priestly imposition, cruelty, and tyranny, this outrageous encroachment upon all rights, personal, social, and regal.

'The constitutions of princes are not superior to ecclesiastical constitutions, but subordinate to them.

The tribunals of kings are subjected to the power of priests.

The yoke which the holy chair imposes must be borne, although it may seem unbearable.

The decretal epistles are to be ranked along with canonical scripture.

The temporal power can neither loose nor bind the pope.

The emperor ought to obey, not command, the pope.

We ordain that kings, and bishops, and nobles, who shall permit the decrees of the bishop of Rome in anything to be violated, shall be accursed, and be for ever guilty before God as transgressors of the catholic faith.

The bishop of Rome may excommunicate emperors and princes, depose them from their states, and assoil their subjects from their oath of obedience to them.

The bishop of Rome may be judged of none but of God only.

If the pope should become neglectful of his own salvation, and of that of other men, and so lost to all good that he draw down with himself innumerable people by heaps into hell, and plunge them with himself into eternal torments, yet no mortal man may presume to reprehend him, forasmuch as he is judge of all, and is judged of no one.

'An oath sworn against the good of the church does not bind; because that is not an oath, but a perjury rather, which is taken against the church's interests.

It is not lawful for a layman to sit in judgment upon a clergyman. Secular judges who dare, in the exercise of a damnable presumption, to compel priests to pay their debts, are to be restrained by spiritual cen

sures.

Temporal princes shall be reminded and exhorted, and, if need be, compelled by spiritual censures, to discharge every one of their functions; and that, as they would be accounted faithful, so, for the defence of the faith, they publicly make oath that they will endeavour, bona fide, with all their might, to extirpate from their territories all heretics marked by the church; so that, when any one is about to assume any authority, whether of a permanent kind, or only temporary, he shall be held bound to confirm his title by this oath. And if a temporal prince, being required and admonished by the church, shall neglect to purge his kingdom from this heretical pravity, the metropolitan and other provincial bishops shall bind him in the fetters of excommunication; and if he obstinately refuse to make satisfaction within the year, it shall be notified to the supreme pontiff, that then he may declare his subjects absolved from their allegiance, and bestow their lands upon good Catholics, who, the heretics being exterminated, may possess them unchallenged, and preserve them in the purity of the faith." pp. 132-138.

Mr. Wylie has given distinct references to the decretals for every extract, so that there can be no denial of his accuracy, and no valid palliation offered of the detestable and inhuman doctrines enforced by the authority of this church.

The Second Book, consisting of twenty chapters, treats of the dogmas of the papacy. Although this occupies the largest portion of the volume, yet on account of the number and complexity of the topics, the author is compelled to compress and abridge discussions of great interest and value. It was next to impossible, within the limits of a single volume, to treat of all