136 HUMAN ACCOUNTABILITY. -CHURCH OF CHRIST. prevails in his heart. So that this scheme of mercy interferes not with his free agency or accountability. And on the other hand, it secures the sanctification of all that submit to it. By connecting the blessing with the means-hearing with believing, believing with pardon, asking with receiving, diligence with progress, labour with reward, fighting with victory, and suffering with glory-it guards effectually against indolence and licentiousness, and tends most powerfully to stimulate the energies of the soul to all that is good and great. For Jesus "gave himself for us that he might redeem us from all iniquity, and purify unto himself a peculiar people, zealous of good works"-Titus ii. 14. LETTER XX. MY DEAR FRIEND,-Such is the character of the Church of Christ, to which I would conduct you. The marks of this Church-marks which distinguish each of its members-are, repentance toward God, faith in Christ, and the fruits of the Spirit visible in the life and conversation. These fruits are, "love, joy, peace, patience, gentleness, goodness, faith, meekness, temperance." The man who has not these has not the Spirit of Christ; "and if any man have not the Spirit of Christ, he is none of his"-Gal. v. 22; Rom. viii. 9. Thus are we "come unto Mount Zion, and unto the city of the living God;" "to the general assembly and Church of the first-born, which are written in heaven." This Church is not confined to any country or clime. It is persecuted or despised by the world, scattered among the nations, and to be gathered at last by the angels from “the four winds of heaven." It has existed since the fall of man, and will exist till the end of time. Sometimes its light has been scarcely visible amid the surrounding darkness; at other times, especially during the first and the last three centuries of the Christian era, it has shone upon the kingdoms of the earth with peculiar brightness and glory. Sometimes it has flourished in cities, and shed its influence abroad in the palaces of kings and the halls of legislation. Again, this virgin spouse of Jesus has been banished to the wilderness, and compelled to offer her spiritual sacrifices in caverns, and to lift up her voice of praise amid the roar of the mountain torrent. For three hundred years her children continued to multiply in the Roman empire. They also spread through the nations of the East, where, removed from Papal domination, which they spurned, they continued, in various regions, to hold forth the Word of Life even in the dark ages. Protestant Christianity (the name is nothing) prevailed in BRITAIN from the age of the Apostles till the Bishop of Rome sent over an insidious monk to corrupt the simplicity of their faith, and rob them of their indepen THE ANCIENT IRISH.-THE WALDENSES. 137 dence. In IRELAND,* the land of Gospel light and literature, the asylum of learning and piety when the rest of Europe was overrun with barbarism, the doctrines of Protestantism were professed and propagated, with more or less purity, till the twelfth century, when the Pope authorised Henry II. to conquer and Papalise our native land, on condition that the English should thenceforth pay him the tribute called Peter's-pence. Are communion with the Church of Rome and the Pope's supremacy articles of the Christian faith? Then was St. Patrick no Christian, and our boasted Island of Saints was an island of Pagans! The ancient Culdees,† who enlightened the darkness and civilised the barbarity of the British isles, were, in all essential points, Protestants. 66 The Waldenses, according to the reluctant testimony of Roman inquisitors and historians, maintained the doctrines of the Reformation, by the most eminent champions of which their confessions of faith were warmly approved. They separated from the Church of Rome during the reign of Constantine, from which period they dated the defection of that body. "Thus existing as the representative of the primitive Church, this community," says Rainerus, an inquisitor in the thirteenth century, "were found in almost every country." Another writer of the same creed confesses that they were "multiplied through all lands;" another, that "they infested a thousand cities;" another, that they spread not only through France, but also through nearly all the European coasts, and appeared in Gaul, Spain, England, Scotland, Italy, Germany, Bohemia, Saxony," &c. &c. A crusading army of 300,000 was raised to exterminate these simple shepherds of the Alps, whose numbers were so formidable as to threaten the very existence of the Papacy. These illustrious Protestants (they protested for twelve hundred years against the tyranny and superstition of Rome) sent out to the field 100,000 champions of religious liberty, to repel the aggressions of ecclesiastical despotism. Nobly did they guard the lamp of life during the dreary reign of darkness; nor until the long-suppressed light of the Reformation broke out simultaneously in various parts of Europe could all the power of the "Beast," combined with the subtlety of the "False Prophet," extinguish that lamp. It was caught by the son from the dying grasp of the martyred father; and there were never wanting Elishas to receive the falling mantles of those who, from the burning stake and the gory battle-field, ascended to the mansions of eternal peace, where the wicked cease from troubling, and the weary are at rest. "Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old, When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones : "The Irish Church never acknowledged the supremacy of a foreigner."-St. Ibar to St. Patrick in the fifth century. ↑ "Worshippers of God." 138 THE REFORMERS.—CHARACTER OF THE REFORMERS. Forget not: in thy book record their groans, Who were thy sheep, and in their ancient fold To heaven. Their martyred blood and ashes sown The Reformation occurred in a rude and barbarous age, when governments were despotic, the people vassals, and society broken up into clans. Both clergy and people were ignorant in the extreme; their manners were gross, and the ordinary language of even the respectable classes was coarse to a degree that would be absolutely intolerable at the present day. The artificial refinement the conventional proprieties of speech, which gild over the offensiveness of an idea-the graceful euphemism, that decorates deformity, and calls disgusting objects by mellifluous names-were totally unknown to the plainspoken Reformers, and their no less indelicate opponents. But those who should compare their modes of expression with those that prevail at the present day, and thence infer that the fastidious moderns greatly surpass Luther and his contemporaries in moral purity, would betray their ignorance of the progress of society, and the principles of our fallen nature. Had Luther and Knox been like those fine gentry that, by the softness of their address and the pliancy of their manners, seem "to beg pardon of all flesh for being in the world,” they could never have roused by their eloquence the inert masses of society, nor torn up by the roots a despotism that had been the growth of centuries. Their rudeness of speech and their violence of manner were the faults of the age, and should not be judged by a modern standard. God overruled even their failings for good. They were fit instruments for the materials they had to work upon. The Gospel, with its two attendant luminaries, literature and civilisation, was just beginning to move over the chaos of bigotry and barbarism; and some time must have elapsed before their comingling radiance could penetrate and purify the social system, especially while the "Prince of the powers of the air" was rolling to the illuminated regions dense masses of darkness, with a view to extinguish the rising light. During this conflict of principle-this earnest struggle between the hostile forces of truth and error when tyranny put forth its fiercest energy, and corruption exerted its vilest influence, was it to be expected that the Reformers would be all gentleness and politeness? So much for the violence which your writers lay to the charge of the Reformation. They also assert, that that great event originated in the vices of princes and priests, who were impatient of the restraints of religion; and by way of proof, we have been incessantly referred to Henry's divorce and Luther's CAUSES OF THE REFORMATION. 139 marriage. The restraints of religion indeed! Did you ever hear of the Bull of Leo X., and the preaching of Tetzel on the subject of indulgences? Did you ever read a history of the middle ages? I am almost tempted to turn over a few pages of that history, that you may see how truly your Church, in her palmy state, has been styled the “Mother of abominations." I might quote passages from your own accredited writers, describing the unblushing profligacy and shocking impurity that had corrupted all ranks of the clergy, and which were not only tolerated, but encouraged, by the heads ofthe Church; but I will not pollute these pages with such revolting records. If, however, you are incredulous or curious on this point you may consult the last chapter of Mr. Edgar's "Variations of Popery," where you will find some well authenticated illustrations of celibacy in the dark ages. If the priests are prudent, they will "talk no more with such exceeding arrogancy" on this point.* It betrays great ignorance to ascribe the English Reformation to Henry VIII. Reformation usually begins at the base of society, and ascends gradually to the summit. The Lollards and the Wickliffites had disseminated the truth long before, and not in vain. The Word of God had taken deep root in the hearts of the people. The hardy seed outlived the winter of persecution, and only waited for the genial sunshine of liberty to "blossom at last." According to Mr. Bulwer, who is no bigot on our side of the question, the Reformation in England is to be ascribed to the education that had previously enlightened the middle ranks of society, through the medium of the grammar schools which were in great numbers established. But the testimony of Lady Morgan, whom nobody will suspect of too powerful a bias towards evangelical Protestantism, comes more precisely to the point. Speaking of Henry, her Ladyship, with no less truth than beauty, remarks: "The crowned and bloated monster, the prostrator of all ties and sympathies, the English Nero and guardian defender of the Catholic faith, who took to himself the merit of reform, was but the passive agent of events, over which the fluctuation of his impulses exercised no permanent control. He could cut off heads, but he could not obliterate ideas. The Reformation emanated not from his decrees, nor is it justly reproachable with his vices. It existed in the minds of the people long before it served the purposes of his brutal passions. It is the nature of Reform, as of flame, to ascend; the wisest of sovereigns can but direct, the worst cannot extinguish it."† The people had learned to think; the Bible had been translated into their own language; and the translation of the Scriptures, observes Dugald Stewart, had the same influence on religious discussion that the invention of gunpowder had on the art of war. As the private soldier is now a match for the armed knight, so the peasant can enter the lists with the Doctor of Divinity, and not unfrequently shows himself better instructed than his * What must have been the state of public morals in the Church of Rome, when the confessor required such a guide as Dens! † Athenæum, No. 393. 140 VARIATIONS OF PROTESTANTISM.-VARIATIONS OF ROMANISM. teachers. Give to any people education and the Bible, and no human power or policy can long maintain the authority of the Pope. To these, in connexion with the preaching of the Gospel, we are indebted for instrumentally effecting the Reformation. To these, under the Divine blessing, we confidently look for its rapid progress and ultimate triumph. "It is not by might nor by power, but by my Spirit, saith the Lord." He will consume the MAN OF SIN "with the breath of his mouth and with the brightness of his coming." Of this we have no doubt. The predicted apostacy is drawing to a close; the day of vengeance is fast approaching. O, my dear friend, come out from the fore-doomed city where you dwell, that you be not partaker of its plagues ! A great deal has been said about the variety of sects that prevail among Protestants, but with very little truth or candour. Some years ago Dr. M'Hale rifled Bossuet, and ransacked our theological dictionaries, and then taxed his own ingenuity to multiply and muster these varieties in the most imposing manner before the public. This declamatory writer (who is rather much lauded for the beauty of his style) recently made a speech, which you have doubtless read, in which he glorifies himself as an incomparably profound reader, and intimates that he has been diving into the gulf of the dark ages. I am afraid he draws up a great deal that he would not wish to meet the eye of a heretic. But has he never, in his researches, met with varieties of doctrine and discipline in his Church, which boasts so loudly of her unity? Let him pull the beam out of his own eye before he attempts to draw the mote out of ours. Are there not schisms in the Church of Rome? Do not some contend that the Pope enjoys only a primacy; others, that he is infallible? Do not some claim infallibility for a general council, and others limit this prerogative to the Pope and Council conjointly? Is it ascertained what constitutes a council general? Is not the Church divided into predestinarians and advocates of free-will? Is it not divided on the question of exclusive salvation? and on the question of persecution? and on the doctrine of penance, some holding, with Archbishop Fenelon, that sorrow for sin must be disinterested, springing solely from a regard to the glory of God; while the majority con-` tend that attrition, a mere selfish regret for sin because of the suffering which follows it, is all that the sacrament requires? And do not the Jesuits hold the doctrine that the sacraments themselves, by a physical energy, remove sin from the soul without any dependence whatever on the state of the feelings? To the Jesuits belongs the honour of reconciling the practice of religion with the habit of vice! It is true that, since the Council of Trent, they have laboured to suppress any open dissent from its dogmas. But let Dr. M'Hale dip a little more deep into ecclesiastical history; let him read Mosheim; or, if he object to this able and honest writer, as a Protestant, let him consult his own Fleury or Du Pin, or let him turn over the folios of Labbeus, the Jesuit historian of the councils, and he will find such variety |