in semi-popish seminaries. It is wonderful that the right reverend bench is blind to this most imminent danger. It is wonderful that those who issued the above pastoral "Address" to the parochial clergy should actually be parties to providing the parochial clergy with schoolmasters habituated to almost all the innovations in ritual which they so emphatically denounce. It is wonderful that they are content, as we hear, to excuse themselves in thus doing, by saying that they have delegated their powers in these matters to the councils of several training institutions. But most wonderful of all is it that the really evangelical party in the Church of England can be brought to pay so little heed to this most serious evil and take so little pains to correct it-can with such extreme difficulty be led to see the difference between such corrupt practices being propagated by a private society, supported by persons known to be of a particular way of thinking, or by a society which calls itself national, is incorporated under royal and episcopal patronage, and partly supported by the Queen's command. As if the establishment of a few counter-institutions of a wholly private character, such as those at Highbury and Cheltenham, can in any way compensate for the infliction of such a national evil!-as if it were wiser to provide the antidote than to stop the poison -better policy to endeavour to fertilize the soil by irrigating it from a few newly-opened fountains, than to purify the source of the one great river by which the whole country is already overflowed!-better worth while to provide the means of putting out the fire than to prevent its being kindled! We have really no patience with the apathy shown by many of the evangelical party in this matter.

What, then, is to be done? What steps are to be taken, in order to prevent the encroachment of Rome upon Protestant England? Not, certainly, to persecute Romanism, as they, to the utmost extent of their power, always have persecuted all who differ from them, and still continue to do: not to keep them in ignorance, for this is only to prolong the reign and increase the power of superstition and bigotry not to imagine that, because Parliament has made penal the erection of territorial Roman sees or the introduction of Papal bulls, the danger is over and the encroachment checked. But rather our duty is to look at home. Let us seek for the viper lurking in our own bosom, and, whenever we find it, cast it out! Let us bear in mind that our foes are of our own household, and that one traitor within the walls is a thousandfold more dangerous than a host of avowed enemies without!

Wherever Roman poison is detected, let it be at once ejected, Wherever a Roman soldier is found disguised under a Protestant uniform, let him be at once and without mercy drummed out of the regiment! Let all our ecclesiastical authorities, archbishops, bishops, archdeacons, rural deans, each in his own sphere, determine to put their shoulder to the wheel, and purify the house over which they are invested with power! We are glad to know that this is being actually done by at least the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishop of Manchester. Let the laity protest loudly and act vigorously. Let the Government, as it has hitherto nobly done, continue to throw its influence into the scale. Let there be no want of resolution-no indecision amongst usno fear of consequences-no bartering of principle in order to purchase a hollow union and a deceitful peace! Let the evil be nipped in the bud! Let the universities, the public schools, and the training institutions for masters and mistresses, be purified! Let there be nowhere any tampering with anything Romish! Fire will burn-pitch will soil-fever will infect. Ritualism will, without doubt, conduct to Romanism, and Puseyism open the door to Popery. Let there then, we repeat, be no tampering with any, even the most diluted, preparation of the deadly poison! With the blessing of God upon a consistent course like this, Protestant England has nothing to fear from Papal Rome. The secret councils of her disguised emissaries will be then as harmless as the arrogant aggression of her mitred cardinal. 2 Cor. iv. 17.-" Wherefore, come out from among them and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty."

ART. III.—Martyrs of the Reformation: a History of Martyrdoms, Confessions, and Sufferings, from the Dawn of the Reformation until the Former Part of the Nineteenth Century. By the Rev. W. H. RULE. London: Mason. 1851.

THE battles of the Reformation have to be fought over again in England, and we now need to be made acquainted with the principles and tactics of the enemy with which we have to contend as much as our ancestors needed the same knowledge, and more so in one respect; for, while our enemy remains

unchanged in principle, we, in the course of three hundred years, have forgotten many things which our forefathers knew, and have credulously supposed that our adversary has improved in principle or practice: whereas, in truth, he is only become more crafty and insidious-therefore the more dangerous. No work proved of greater service to the Reformation in this respect than Foxe's "Book of Martyrs," because here the working out of the evil principles inseparable from Popery, was rendered manifest by example; and that in examples afforded by every profession, every class of society, every age. Every one who dared to read the Bible, or dared to think for himself, fell under the ban of Rome-clergy or laity, old or young, rich or poor, high or low, male or female. One would think that such a confederacy as this, waging war against reason and the common sense of mankind, would meet with universal resistance, and so we believe it would were its real character generally known and understood; but in former times the ignorance of the people, and in modern times our own liberality as it is called, or our credulity which it really is, has blinded mankind to the monstrous wickedness of the Papal system, to tolerate, if they do not even approve of it. The work before us is intended to convey information, at the present time, suitable to the contest which has been forced upon us by the Papal aggression, of a nature similar to that which was furnished by Foxe to our ancestors in the great contest which they had to maintain with Rome at the Reformation.

If any have been weak enough to suppose that the Papacy has changed its character, and is different now from what it was in the days of our forefathers, the events which are taking place under our own eyes must enlighten them. The withholding of the Scriptures and the suppression of all enquiry is the same, as we learn from the imprisonment of Guicciardini on no other charge than that of reading the Bible, and from the following instance which lately occurred in London :"One of our first Protestant publishers, and who has written much and ably on the subject of Popery, was conversing with a barrister who had apostatised but a few months before to the Church of Rome; and, after having expostulated with him on having swallowed the absurdities of the Popish system, asked him whether he had read his Essay on Romanism.' The barrister agreed to take the book with him, saying that he would read it; but he shortly afterwards returned, saying that, on second thoughts, he had brought the book back, as he could not read it till he had asked permission of his priest!

Where was the intellect of that man?" Another, on being reproved for his neglect of religion, replied with a sneer, "Oh! religion-that is no concern of mine. I have nothing to do with that. I pay my priest to take care of my soul: it is his business and not mine." (Stowell's "Introduction to Blots on the Escutcheon of Rome.")

"Can any one read the blessed Gospel of peace and love, and reconcile it with the horrible persecutions of the Church of Rome?" And in this respect, again, the Papacy has not changed. We write deliberately in expressing our conviction that the massacre of St. Bartholomew is one of the foulest stains on humanity that has ever been perpetrated. When we consider the art with which it was concocted—the hypocrisy under which it was veiled-the solemn oaths which were violated the savage brutality with which it was carried into execution—and the long continuance of the butchery: when, moreover, we remember that this was planned and executed in the politest court of Europe, in the palace of the King, under the eyes of son and mother, with the ladies of the court not only looking on, but making sport of the dead bodies of those who had been thus basely betrayed and savagely murdered --when, we say, all these circumstances are considered, this massacre appears to us one of the foulest deeds that has ever disgraced humanity. And, as no system but such an one as the Papacy could prepare the instruments for such a deed of blood, so Rome has made the guilt her own by at once glorying in the deed and striking a medal in commemoration of it, and, if we are rightly informed, glories in it still: for Sir Culling Eardley Smith has said that there was a re-issue of medals from the same die as late as the year 1844.

We think that, taking all the circumstances together, and considering the station and relative situation of the respective parties, and the previous provocations and the heat of frenzy into which the populace had been gradually worked up at the French revolution, the horrors of this last national disgrace are less astounding than those of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; and it tends to convince us still more of the truth, which many other facts serve to establish, that Popery is even worse than Infidelity, as diabolic possession is worse than the mere absence of grace. For the massacre was not only an outrage on humanity-not only on civilized society-not only perpetrated on those of equal rank with themselves, with whom they had professed to live in friendly and familiar intercourse up to the very night of its execution-but it was gloried in as a religious act and as meritorious in the sight

of God. And we know of no system, save that of Rome, that has inculcated principles thus diabolical.

We have abundant evidence that the principles of Rome remain unchanged at the present day, and that not only in Italy and Spain and Austria, but at our own doors. It was not many weeks ago that one calling himself a bishop of that Church expressed a hope to see Frenchmen's swords sheathed to the hilt in the breast of every man, woman, and child in England that professed the Protestant faith; and the Tablet took up and echoed back and gloated over the fiendish desire showing that, had they the power, they want not the inclination to act the massacre of St. Bartholomew over again in a still more savage and unsparing manner through the length and breath of their native land. But, the truth is, they have no human feelings: country, kindred, the dearest domestic ties, must be snapped asunder if they stand in the way of aggrandising the Roman Church.

A large field is covered in the work before us, showing that the principles of the Papacy have ever been thus treacherous and false-thus blood-thirsty and savage; and all under pretence of being the only true Church, under the immediate guidance of Christ's sole vicar-the earthly representative of the meek and lowly Jesus. And it is shown that the Reformation is of older standing than persons generally suppose that it did not begin with Luther in Germany, and still less did the English Reformation begin with Henry the Eighth for Huss and Jerome of Prague had prepared the way in Germany, and it could not long have been delayed if Luther had failed; and Wickliffe and Tyndale had laid its foundations in England by their translations of Scripture, which had taken such hold on the hearts of the people that Henry and his worthier offspring, Edward and Elizabeth, were but instruments for giving expression to the national feeling; and, if they had not done so, it would have found expression by other Edwards or Elizabeths.

It was by the writings of Wickliffe that Huss and Jerome of Prague became convinced of the false doctrines of Rome, which, together with its own corruptions and the indulgences it granted to others, tended to harden men in their sins, instead of reproving them or delivering them from bondage; and Henry, with all his faults, had a just sense of what belonged to a King of England, and, from the very beginning of his reign, resisted the Papal pretension to exercise any temporal jurisdiction within the realm of England:-" By the permission and ordinance of God, we are King of England;