What has been the effect of Popery upon human liberty? Permit me to use the word "liberty" in its widest sense. As to civil liberty, it has been its unchanging enemy. It has never permitted a spark of liberty to glow for an hour, when it could extinguish it. There is not in Europe, at the present hourperhaps not on earth-a greater civil despot than the pope. The man that in Italy writes a page, or makes a speech in favour of liberty, must fly the kingdom, or be dragged to a' dungeon. And we are to judge of Popery, not by its pliability where it cannot rule, but by the way which it shows its heart, where it can do so without let or hindrance. Kings as well as people have groaned under its tyranny. Henry IV., of Germany, was made by the pope to stand three days in the open air, with bare head and feet. Frederick I. was made to hold his stirrup. He caused Henry II., of England, to be scourged on the tomb of Thomas a Becket. And the present state of Spain, Austria, Italy, show the effects of Popery on civil liberty. It is equally the foe of mental liberty. The Bible is without any authority, save what your Church gives it. And the Bible must teach nothing, save what your Church allows. And man must believe nothing save what the priest permits. And philosophy must teach nothing save what the Church sanctions. You know for this last offence Gallileo was sent to study astronomy in prison. Pure Popery and real liberty never have breathed, and never can, the same atmosphere. The principle of your Church is to allow nothing that bows not to its yoke. What has been the effect of Popery upon human knowledge? When Christianity, like a new sun, rose upon the world, there was much that might be called education in the Roman Empire. The obvious effect of Christianity was to extend it. After the lapse of some ages, Popery, by gradual stages, crept, serpentlike, to the high places of power. How soon afterwards the lights of learning go out; how soon the dark ages commence, and roll on as if they were never to end! And those centuries of darkness form the golden age of your Church. And what spirit did it manifest on the revival of learning in England after the sacking of Constantinople, and at the Reformation? Leo X. prohibited every book translated from the Greek and Hebrew. This blow was aimed at the Bible. He forbade the reading of every book published by the Reformers. He excommunicated all who read a heretical work. The inquisitors prohibited every book published by sixtytwo different printers, and all books printed by any printer who had ever published a book of heresy! Nor has one of these prohibitions been ever recalled. At this hour, the noblest products of human genius are under the ban of your Church; and the Index Expurgatorius is in full operation at Rome! And what has been the effect of all this upon Luman knowledge? Look into the countries, for an answer, where your Church rules undisturbed. The nobles and the people in Spain, Portugal, Austria, Sardinia, Sicily, are sunk into almost the same state of ignorance. Upon the intellectual degradation of Catholic Ireland I have already dwelt. The Book of books which the Lamb died to unseal, your Church has resealed; it has laid an embargo upon human knowledge; it allows the people to read only what it permits; and it permits only what tends to rivet its chains, and to perpetuate the darkness which is its natural element. When the Reformation occurred. the retrograde movement of the world towards ignorance, and barbarism, and idolatry, had almost been completed. Had it not occurred, a radiance might| continue to gild the high places of the earth after the gospel sun had set—a twilight might be protracted for a few ages, in which a few might grope their way to heaven; but each age would have come wrapped in a deeper and yet deeper gloom, until impenetrable darkness had fallen on the world. Even the degree of knowledge which has obtained in the Papal world, it owes to the Reformation. And what has been the effect of Popery upon the happiness of our race? This is a question of wide bearing, yet I can do little more than glance at it. Has it ever laid out its energies for the promotion of human happiness? If so, when, and where? Has it not, on the other hand, set itself in opposition to every thing calculated to promote it? Your Church has always opposed it. Does the free circulation of the Word of God promote it? You have opposed this also. Does the inculcation of pure religion promote it? You have poisoned, or closed up all its fountains. Does advancing civilization promote it? Your efforts are untiring to reverse its wheels, and to roll us back to the darkness of the dark ages, whose very light was darkness. But what can I say more? for the time would fail me to tell of your monasteries and nunneries of the wars which Popery has excited—of its crusades of the bitter jealousies it has sown between states-of the oceans of blood it has shed, to obtain its objects-of the inquisitions it has erected, to torture the unbelieving-and of the way and manner in which it has caused those of whom the world was not worthy to have trial of cruel mockings and scourgings; yea, moreover, of bonds and imprisonment; how it caused them to be stoned, to be sawn asunder, to be slain with the sword; to wander about in deserts and in mountains, in dens and caves of the earth. O! sir, the pathway of Popery through the world is marked by the blood and bones of its victims. It has gone into the earth feeling that Joshua's commission on entering Canaan was in its pocket; and that all who questioned its authority were Hittites and Amorites. And almost without a figure of speech it can be said, that the nations which it found as the garden of the Lord, it converted into a howling wilderness. I know not that human happiness has ever had a more determined foe than Popery. What is the influence of Popery as to the exercise of Christian charity? By charity I mean, not almsgiving, nor yet the love of God which the Spirit inspires in the soul, but that grace which induces love to those who differ from us, and to cast a mantle over their defects. The Bible teaches us to do good to all as we find opportunity-to love our enemies-to treat with kindness those who despitefully persecute How does your Church obey these institutions us. "KIRWAN'S LETTERS TO A ROMISH BISHOP." of Christ the Lord? Let your inquisitions, your auto de fes, your Bartholomew's day, your Irish massacre, your yearly anathemas against heretics, your consigning to perdition all beyond the pale of your Church, answer. All non-Papists you place beyond the pale of mercy-you refuse their bodies Christian burial, if such your burial can be called— you convert into the bitterest enemies of the man that becomes a Bible Christian those of his own household-you make the poor Irish servant to feel that his master and her mistress are the enemies of God, however pious; whose reading of the Bible, and whose prayers to Heaven cannot be heard without committing great sin-you enact a ceremonial law, and proclaim that all who submit not to it are speckled with plague spots. And, hence, your priests, wherever located in Protestant communities, instead of going about as men, to promote the general welfare, move about as spectres, as if afraid of the light of the day; here abstracting a child from a Sabbath school-there burning a Bible; here poisoning the mind of a servant against his master, and there that of a maid against her mistress; and seeking to place all save his own unlettered followers, like the lepers of Samaria, without the city of God. Does this look like the spirit of Christ? What is the influence of Popery on true religion? To this point I have already spoken. I have told you, sir, how it has corrupted our rule of faith, and the sacraments, and the doctrines of the Bible. This is but the theory of the matter; oh, how can I speak of its practical effects? The religion of Christ it has converted into a system of idolatry, in which God and witches, the Bible and traditions, canons, decretals, the worship of God and of saints, the mediation of Christ and of Mary, prayer and scourging, pious deeds, penances and processions, are all of like authority and like efficacy! 293 one particular, in any one country, or in any age, ever produced the results which prophets and apostles) have told us the religion of Messiah would produce? If not, are not Popery and Christianity, not only different, but antagonist systems? The letters which I have had the honour of ad dressing to you, I must now bring to a close. I have" stated to you, with all frankness and sincerity, my reasons for leaving the Church in which I was born, baptized, and confirmed; and which, on the most mature deliberation, yet prevent me from returning to it. I can assure you, on the word of an Irishman, and which is far more, on the word of a Christian, that I have no end in view but the exposure of error and the development of the truth. Thirty years have almost run their course since I left your Church; and although not utterly unknown to the men of our age, nor unsolicited, these letters form my first appearance on Popery. Unless some unexpected ripple is excited on the current of my feelings, they will, probably, form my last. Now, dear sir, what think you of these reasons? Are they, or are they not, sufficient to excuse, to forbid my return to your Church? Had I an ear sufficiently acute to hear the decision of your conscience, I believe in my soul that it pronounces them sufficient. Yes, I believe, that were it not for your sad doctrine of infallibility, which stereotypes and perpetuates every absurdity, you, and multitudes like you, men of sense and education, would rise and cast a firebrand amid the rubbish which ignorance and wickedness have, in the progress of ages, collected around your Church, and send its smoke heavenward like the smoke of a furnace. But, sir, I am not ignorant of the slow progress of truth against bigotry -of the great difficulty of exchanging bad opinions and customs, hallowed by usage, for better ones. Nor have I read history so inattentively as not to learn from it the great difficulty of converting high ecclesiastics to the knowledge of the truth. The mitre has shielded many a head from the weapons of sense and logic; and under the surplice many a con The mind of the poor Papist it fills, not with light and love, but with darkness and fear. It closes to him the way to heaven through the blood of Christ, and opens it through the fires of purgatory. Leaving him in doubt as to where he will succeed best, he now prays for pardon to God-now to the Virgin-science has gone to rest that, without it, would have now to Peter and Paul-now before some old picture almost obliterated by age-believing alike the truths of Scripture and the absurdities of your system, and knowing little of either. It impresses the poor Papist with the idea, that religion consists not in love to God and man, but in external submission to rites and forms. Hence, the Spaniard will go to confession with his dagger under his mantle; and the poor, generous Irishman, will go from the mass and missal to the pot-house; and your inquisitors have gone out from your eucharist to kindle the fires which consumed your heretics and our martyrs, and which illuminated their pathway to glory! contended to the death for the faith once delivered to the saints. I must not forget that it was the high priest who occupied Moses' seat that put our Lord to death; nor can I forget that those claiming to be the successors of Peter, and the vicegerents of Christ, have been the greatest persecutors of the saints. They have shed Christian blood enough for popes and cardinals to swim in. Would to God you could see things as I see them; your influence would be strong in freeing our fellow-countrymen from that bondage of the soul which most degrades them. But despairing of this, I turn from you to the victims of your system. ROMAN CATHOLICS, and especially IRISH Roman But I must stop, lest my emotions swell beyond Catholics, to you I now turn. From your bishop, due bounds. These, reverend sir, are some, and but some, of the fruits of your system. How do they appear to you when thus brought together? Is the tree which bears these fruits good or bad? Has Popery, in any whom, with you, I respect as a man, though I oppose his religious principles, I appeal to you. With you is the power to bring to a perpetual end that system of ghostly tyranny the most oppressive that man has ever felt. Subjects and sceptres depart together; the farce of the mass will soon end when there are none to witness it; and popes, bishops, and priests will soon seek an honest calling when there are none to be edified by their jugglery-when "the alms and the suffrages of the faithful" cease to flow. Will you give an honest perusal to these letters; and candidly weigh the reasons and the arguments which they contain? That I was born in Ireland is my pride. My sympathies are all with Ireland in its civil, social, and moral degradation. The blood of my kindred, shed to defend it against English oppression, mingles with its soil. Your present feelings as to your Church I have had, and in all their force. I can entirely appreciate them. I have cordially hated Protestantism and Protestants; and I have seen the time when I regarded the man as my personal enemy who would utter a word against my religion. But those were the days of my youth and of my ignorance. When I became a man, I put away childish things. And my reasons for so doing are spread out before you in these letters; and all I ask of you is, kindly and candidly to consider them, and then to act accordingly. If they are not sufficiently cogent to cause you, as they have caused me, to leave the Church of Rome, then you will have my entire consent to be oppressed, fleeced, and ridden by your priests, as long as you live. A Yet permit me to entreat you to give to the subject of these letters the attention which it demands. I know that many of you are sincere; but this is no test of truth. I know many of you to be devout; but so are Mohammedans and Pagans. I know that many of you are prepared to make any sacrifice which religion demands. But we may give all our goods to feed the poor, and our bodies to be burned, and yet be strangers to the only true religion. My heart is deeply affected in view of your state. noble people, you are shut out from the joys to which God invites you. You are hoodwinked and manacled by a system of the grossest fraud and delusion; you are denied the common birthright of a citizen of the world-seeing with your own eyes and hearing with your own ears. You are robbed of the only volume that can guide you, and are forbidden to enter the way of life, save through the gate which is guarded by your priests. O! listen to the entreaties of one who suffered as you now do under the galling chains of Papal tyranny. Break the fetters which priests have forged, and in which they have bound you. You are now in a land where you may laugh at the excommunications and anathemas of popes, prelates, and priests. God has given you his Word; let no man filch it from you. God has given you a mind to think for yourselves; let no man usurp the power of thinking for you. God invites you to himself, to receive at his own hand pardon and forgiveness. O! submit not to go and pay for these, and on your knees, to a priest. Go to the Bible for your religion. Receive nothing as religious truth which is not there taught; and your mental, social, and moral regeneration is commenced. But you meet this appeal with the objection that I am a deserter from your Church, and that I am not therefore to be heard. If your priests take any notice at all of these letters, I know well the changes they will ring upon this idea. But was not Peter a deserter from the Jewish Church? And must he not be heard on that account? Must a man who renounces error never be Leard by those who continue in it? And what think you of the persecution by your Church of those who renounce its authority? To say the least of it, it is in bad company. The Jews put Christ to death for deserting the faith of Moses. The Mohammedans put to death any man of their number who rejects the Koran for Christ. The Hindus expel from their society all who reject their ', religion for ours; and Popery has shed in rivers the... blood of those who could not but reject its follies and absurdities. In this happy land the bull of a pope is as harmless as a lamb, and the thunders of the Vatican have no lightning that injures. Priests may prejudice you against these letters; but they are the interested party-their craft is in danger. And all I ask of you is, to give my reasons the candid consideration which you owe to yourself, and which their importance requires. But you may ask, What! do you wish me to give up my religion? Is not mine the oldest religion? Here, I well know, is the invincible argument with many of you; but has it any weight? Are the oldest things always the best? If so, then the Jews were right in resisting Christianity; and the Pagans are right in clinging to their false systems-and you do wrong in ever exchanging an old garment or an old house for a new one. But is Popery the oldest religion? O, no; Christianity is older. Popery and Mohammedanism arose at the same time, and centuries after the establishment of Christianity. They are alike corruptions of the religion of Jesus, though the prophet has apostatized farther than the pope. They both appeal to the senses, and are both idolatrous.. If the pope has his holy water, the prophet has his holy well. If the one has his holy bones, and coats, and relics, the other has his holy pieces of tapestry from the temple of Mecca. They have alike their pilgrimages-their senseless repetition of prayerstheir Lents-their penances, and their external symbols which alike adorn the church and the mosque And if the Papist can object to Christianity, saying Is not mine the oldest religion? then can the Mohammedan do the same. But yours is not the oldest religion. I could here' give you the time, did the limits of a letter permit, when the distinguishing doctrines of your Church were introduced. The celibacy of the clergy came into the Church in the fourth century; purgatory appeared in the seventh, and was affirmed in the twelfth; auricular confession, and the worship of the Host, in the thirteenth; and so on to the end of the chapter. And instead of wishing you to give up the oldest religion, we wish you only to give up Popery for Christianity; to give up the new, and return to the old. All that I have done myself, and all that I' desire you to do is, to lay aside every thing that pope, bishops, and priests have added to the religion of Jesus, and to embrace that religion just as it is taught in the Bible. Convinced that you have been deceived by these THE WAYWARD SON. to whom you have been looking for guidance-that priests have sought your money more than your salvation that instead of bread they have given you stones, and for eggs, serpents-that they have sought to brutalize, instead of enlightening you to enslave, instead of elevating you to the liberty with which Christ makes his people free; do any of you inquire as to the course best for you to pursue? If you will take the advice of one that has gone before you in the way, it is cheerfully given. Think not of giving up all religion because of the deceptions of Popery. This was one of my mistakes. Take the Bible for your guide; that will not deceive you. It teaches you that you are a sinner; this you should believe and feel. It teaches you that Christ died for sinners, and that his blood cleanses from all sin; and that to escape the wrath and curse of God due to you for sin, the great and the only pre-requisites are repentance toward God, and faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. Give up your Missal for the Bible-confess your sins, not to your priests, but to God-look for pardon and meetness for heaven, not to priestly ablutions, and eating wafers, and extreme unctions, but to the righteousness of Jesus Christ; and in spite of popes, prelates, and priests, life, life eternal, is yours. "IN CŒLO QUIES." I HEAR a voice at dawn of day, And to my heart it seems to say, When sorrow dims hope's brightest ray, "There's rest in heaven." I hear it at the evening tide, "There's rest in heaven." F'en at noon's busy hour I hear "There's rest in heaven." Blest words! which tell of nought but joy, Spirit of life and love divine, Subdue my heart, and make it thine, That "rest in heaven." THE WAYWARD SON. Two young men, the children of pious and wealthy parents, felt themselves exceedingly displeased at being constantly refused the family carriage on the Lord's-day. It was in vain they urged their confinement during the week, as a sufficient reason why they should be thus indulged on the Sabbath. It was the father's settled rule, that the authority which commanded him to rest, included also his servants and cattle; he therefore turned a deaf ear to their en 295 treaties and remonstrances. In their madness or in their folly, they determined to resent this refusal, by leaving their situations and going to sea. Intelligence of this step was transmitted to the Rev. John Griffin of Portsea, and he was requested to make diligent inquiry, and, on finding them, to use every possible means to induce them to return home. After some search he found them in a rendezvous house, and, introducing himself, he stated his business and urged their return. He, however, urged in vain; for bent upon the fulfilment of their design, they thanked him for his advice, but determined to reject it. Among other reasons for their return, he urged the feelings of their parents, and especially those of their mother. "Think," said the good man, "what must your mother's situation be, after years of anxious watching and fervent prayer-after looking forward to this time, when in your society and in your welfare she hoped to meet a rich reward for all that she had suffered on your account; yet, in one moment, and by one imprudent step, she finds you plunged into misery, the depths of which you cannot conceive of, and herself the subject of a wretchedness she has never deserved at your hands." In the heart of the youngest there was a sense of gratitude, which answered to this appeal; and, bursting into tears, he expressed his sorrow for his conduct, and his willingness to return. Still, the eldest remained obdurate. Neither arguments persuaded him, nor warnings alarmed him. The carriage had been repeatedly refused; he had made up his mind to go to sea, and to sea he would go. "Then," said Mr. Griffin, "come with me to my house; I will get you a ship, and you shall go out as a man and a gentleman." This he declined, assigning as a reason, that it would make his parents feel to have it said that their son was gone as a common sailor-as a common sailor, therefore, he would go. "Is that your disposition ?" was the reply; "then young man, go," said Mr. Griffin; "and while I say, God go with you, be sure your sin will find you out, and for it God will bring you into judgment." With reluctance they left him; the younger son was restored to his parents, while all traces of the elder one were lost, and he was mourned for as one dead. After the lapse of several years, a loud knock- | ing was heard early one morning at Mr. Griffin's door. On the servant's going down to open the door, she found a waterman, who wished immediately to see her master. Mr. Griffin soon appeared, and was informed that a young man under sentence of death, and about to be executed on board one of the ships in the harbour, had expressed an earnest desire to see him, urging, among other reasous, that he could not die happy unless he did. A short time found the minister of religion on board the ship, when the prisoner, manacled and guarded, was introduced to him, to whom he said: "My poor friend, I feel for your condition, but as I am a stranger to you, may I ask why you have sent for me? it may be that you have heard me preach at Portsea. "Never, sir. Do you not know me?" "I do not." "Do you not remember the two young men whom you, some years since, urged to return to their parents, and to their duty?" I do! I do re and groans, and tears, proclaimed a heart bursting with grief, and a soul deeper in misery than the depth of the waters he was upon. It was the prisoner's member it; and remember that you were one of them." "I have sent, then, for you to take my last farewell of you in this world, and to bless you for your efforts to restore me to a sense of my duty.father! Under the assumed name, he had discovered Would God that I had taken your advice; but it is now too late. My sin has found me out, and for it God has brought me into judgment. One, and but one, consolation remains; I refused the offer of going to your house until I could be provided for, assigning as a reason, that it would make my parents feel to have it said that their son was a common sailor. A little reflection showed me the cruelty of this determination; I assumed another name, under which I entered myself; and my chief consolation is, that I shall die unpitied and unknown." his wretched son, and had been to take his last fare- TO A CONGREGATION MOURNING THE 1. GIVE thanks to God that ever you had him or saw him, and that you had him so long in this place. Do not many of you owe even your very souls to him, under God? While you mourn, give thanks to God that you ever knew him. Old and great mercies must be thankfully remembered. What the feelings of Mr. Griffin were, at this sad discovery, may be more easily conceived than described. He spent some time with him in prayer, and offered him that advice which was best suited to kis unhappy case. The prisoner was again placed in confinement, and Mr. Griffin remained with the officer who was then on duty. "Can nothing be done for this poor young man?" was one of the first inquiries made after the prisoner was withdrawn. "I fear not," replied the officer; "the Lords of the Admiralty have determined to make an example of the first offender in this particular crime. He unfortunately is that offender; and we hourly expect the warrant for his execution." Mr. Griffin determined to go immediately up to London, and, in humble dependence upon the Lord, to make every effort to save the criminal's life, or to obtain a commutation of the sentence. It was his lot, on the day of his arrival in the metropolis, to obtain an interview with one of the Lords of the Admiralty, to whom he stated the respectability of the young man's connections, his bitter and unfeigned regret for the crime which had forfeited his life; and, with that earnestness which the value of life is calculated to excite, ventured to ask, if it was possible to spare him. To his regret, he was informed that the warrant for his execution had been that morning signed, and was on its way to the officer, whose melancholy duty it was to see it executed. With compassion the nobleman said: "Go back, sir, and prepare him for the worst. I cannot tell what is to be done; but we are shortly to meet his majesty in council, and all that you have urged shall be then stated; may it prove successful." Mr. Griffin returned, but discovered that the morning of his reaching home was the time appointed for the young man's execution. Joy, and fear, and anxiety by turns possessed his mind, as, within a few minutes after his arrival, came a pardon, accompanied with the most earnest request to go imme-feel it more than I am able to express. If any diately on board, lest the sentence of the law should be executed before he could reach the ship. Upon the issues of a moment now rested the life of a fellow-creature, and perhaps the salvation of an immortal soul. The minister reached the harbour, and saw the yellow flag, the signal of death, flying, the rigging manned, and, for aught he knew to the contrary, the object of his solicitude at the last moment of his mortal existence. He reached the ship's side, and saw an aged man leaving it, whose sighs, 2. Rejoice in the glory that he now enjoys. "Weep not for him, but weep for yourselves." The primitive Christians buried their saints with hymns and psalms of joy. Chrysostom, on the Hebrews, saith we are to glorify God, and give thanks to him, that he hath crowned the deceased, and free them from their labours; and chides those that mourned and howled. And the days of their death were called the birthdays of the saints and martyrs. And Hierom in his epitaph on holy Paula (and in the lives of other holy persons, wrote by him), saith, that at her funeral no shrieks. were heard, but multitudes of psalms and hymns were sung in divers languages. 3. Bewail the loss, the general loss, and yours in particular, yet so as to have hope in God. 1 need not tell you how great your loss is, you rejoice that he is gone, because he tormented them, say as the Church, Micali vii. 8, 9. 4. Seek out for a supply; do not mourn and sit still, but up and be doing in your places. You have had a cheap gospel hitherto. God sent you one that could preach freely, and which is more, that would do so too; one that sought not yours, but you; and now God will see what you will do for yourselves, that now the shepherd is smitten the sheep may not be scattered. |