alone; but the Romish rule is the priesthood, and the priesthood alone. Protestants, in short, acknowledge no infallibility but in the Bible; and most truly did a good old Church of England clergyman say respecting Papists being forbidden to examine Scripture, "If God's book were in the hands of men, popery could not remain in their hearts."

Pius IX., in his recent circular letter, anathematises "the new art of book-making;" and truly a free press must be a very inconvenient companion to Romanism, the very existence of which depends on the generality of Papists being kept ignorant of truth, and debarred from reading Scripture in their own language, so as thus to understand its real meaning. The agitation of thought is the beginning of knowledge; therefore, Protestants endeavour fairly and frankly to lay open the word of God to every man without exception, while they enjoin, inculcate, and even entreat its careful examination. But the great object of Romanism is, that none but the priests, being parties concerned in most important concealments, may have an opportunity, by reading Scripture in their own tongue, to find out how the obvious meaning is misrepresented. Fortunately, in free and happy England the Bible has been wide open during so many Protestant years, that the light of revelation is too strong for popery, which thrives best in mystery and darkness; therefore,

it is to be hoped that the majority of British Bibles may long remain without a lock over their sacred contents, or over those understandings that seek the teaching of God's own Spirit in reading them.

How solemn must be the last farewell of a perverted Protestant to her Bible! She has carried it in her heart and in her hand from earliest childhood, as a book illuminated with Divine truth; but now that sacred candle of the Lord is to be for ever hid under a bushel. She has enlisted herself among those Papists with whom it is a forbidden book, who have put thousands to death for reading it, who give her in exchange "The Glories of Mary," by Alphonso Liguori; and who insultingly executed the brave old Scottish martyrs with a Bible strung round their necks, in punishment for the crime they had committed in possessing one.

By the breath of legendary tradition, Romanists dim the clearness of Scriptural truth, and would, by hanging a mill-stone of imaginary stories to the Holy Bible, sink it if possible into oblivion. Those who obey the Council of Trent in placing tradition," the unwritten word," on a level with Scripture, place themselves on an inclined plane with nothing to stop them short of Romanism or infidelity. It is not the authority of tradition that can be raised by such an extensive belief, but the authority of Scripture must be immeasur

To a

ably lowered in the estimation of those who think themselves bound to credit all or nothing. thinking convert, the Popish legends and visions become, on mature examination, so utterly incredible, that too often all is thrown over-board together, and the excitement of a feverish fancy becomes calamitously followed by a collapse into atheism. Men have often said that there never existed a nation of infidels; but it is also wellknown that there is one city full of them now, and that city is Rome. There the Pope places on his shoe the visible sign of man's redemption; but he tramples under foot all its happiest fruits; seeing which, the more deeply any man reverences the religion of Christ, the more must he abhor that spurious imitation of it, the religion of Mary.

The works of Voltaire, Volney, and Hume are not so contraband at Rome as the Bible; and in the list of prohibited books within the Pope's dominions may be found every Protestant work on religion worth reading, from the most learned classical authors, down to the unobtrusive little "Dairyman's Daughter:" but a certain very influential Priest made an unintended admission lately, when, in publicly forbidding the use of Scripture, he hastily added, "The moment a man searches the Bible for any doctrine he becomes a Protestant." When Paul preached to the Beroans, even though he was an inspired Apostle, they are commended because they "searched the Scrip

tures daily to see whether these things were so; and it is a pleasing proof of English liberty in testing doctrine by Scripture, that when a portion of the Holy Bible is quoted by any Protestant clergyman, more than a hundred Bibles are searched on the spot to ascertain that the text is rigidly adhered to. The audible flutter of so many pages hastily turned over in church, tells of truth and faithfulness in those who preach and in those who hear.

There is a very awful curse promulgated in the book of Revelations against those who add to or take from the Word of God; but the sin must be yet greater of those who take away the Word of God altogether, substituting in its place many volumes of legendary tales, and thus giving men the stones of tradition for the bread of Holy Scripture. The words of our Divine Saviour sound very like promulgating Protestant liberty for every mortal to search the Scriptures, when He says to the Sadduces, "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures." This proves that even the Sadduces were intended to read them; and when our Lord repelled Satan himself, it was by quoting what is written in Scripture. He also describes Abraham blaming the rich man's brethren "if they hear not Moses and the prophets:" and our Lord rebukes the Pharisees for "not knowing the Scriptures." In Revelations, too, St. John says of the most mysterious

Matt. xxii. 29.

book in Scripture, "Blessed is he that readeth and they that hear the words of this prophecy." It is singular that the Romanists have never published any authorised explanation of a single book in the Bible, because, as is proved in Edgar's Variations of Popery, they say, like the builders of Babel," Behold, we are one," yet cannot agree. Edgar historically demonstrates, that instead of unity in the Romish Church, there are numerous sects of Papists fiercer in their hostility, and in their stronger denunciations against each other, than any sects in the Protestant faith, which is the more surprising, as in the Popish Church only one person is allowed to think for all. They are divided about free will and predestination, whether their boasted infallibility lies in the Pope, or in the Council, or in both together. The Dominicans differ from the Franciscans on an important point respecting the Virgin Mary. The bitter feuds of the Jansenists and Jesuits are notorious in history; and many rival Popes have existed at once, each infallibly condemning the other as a fallible impostor. When Peter said "no prophecy" is of private intrepretation, he did not say so of doctrines; and St. Chrysostom remarks, in most Protestant language, "He that would know which is the true Church of Christ, whence may he know it in so great confusion, but only by the Scripture? Now the working of miracles is altogether ceased;