a bond of union would spring up between them-a mutual feeling of confidence and sympathy-which would bring the influence of the Church to every poor man's door, and raise her high in popular esteem. By which means her peculiarly characteristic principle-I mean that of giving to each of her ministers a distinct parochial charge, would be thoroughly and efficiently worked out. this a call for all who love her to be up and doing?

Is not

But I would strengthen this appeal by another argument, and say that love for the Church of England invites us to commence open-air preach ing.

2. Because it would deprive her enemies of many arguments usually urged against her.

We need do nothing but read some of the more ardent dissenting periodicals and low radical newspapers, and what is worse, the productions of an infidel press, in order to ascertain how terribly the Church of England is maligned. Her rectors and vicars are unblushingly accused of being mere hirelings and luxurious worldlingsloving place, pension, and power, but shrinking from bodily labour. Or if any of them are allowed to be active, yet they are represented as courting the rich, and spending their energies on a class that can well remunerate them, while the poor are left in the hands of ill-paid curates and unpretending Scripture Readers. The consequence is, that through an immense mass of our fellow-countrymen the very name of a parson is abhorred. We are looked upon more as enemies than as friends. Thousands on thousands ignorantly suppose that we draw our incomes from the industrial resources of the country-that in fact we are living upon the pockets of the public, and robbing the poor of a golden mine of wealth-without returning them any more labour than we are obliged to give by law. We are regarded as polite gentlemen, as clever scholars, and as proud politicians; but not as untiring, unselfish, and all sympathizing ministers of the meek and humble Jesus.

Now I hold that anything which

And

will lessen the power of these falsehoods over the popular mind,-anything which will tend to disabuse the masses of this, our unreal character, must certainly be desirable. such I believe to be open-air preaching. Once let us begin it in earnest, -once let us sound out the notes of Gospel love, as our Liverpool brethren have so nobly attempted, in the courts and lanes of all our great cities, -and I am sure that we shall sweep away in a few weeks half of these hideous slanders. Then it will be seen, in broad and open daylight— with a plainness altogether unmistakeable that we care for perishing souls, and are not ashamed to stand like our Blessed Master among the very publicans and harlots. We shall not then be accused of doing nothing more than we are paid for. We shall not then be regarded as proud hirelings, loving to trample on the poor, and to court only the rich. We shall not be treated as a dead, torpid mass, unknown to the lower orders, except through church rates and burial fees. But we shall be really respected and loved. Sympathy will beget sympathy. In some few cases, our motives may be misrepresented, and our efforts opposed by wicked men; but throughout society I am convinced we shall raise up an increased respect for the Church of England.

The present age is one of earnest

ness.

In proportion, therefore, as we thus throw ourselves boldly and earnestly into our work, we shall fall in with the spirit of the age,-not by pandering to its evil, but by ministering to it all that is good.

In conclusion, dear brethren, I have once more to apologize for my own temerity in thus undertaking to address you. Forgive me if I have written a word in any offence, or if I have assumed a tone unbecoming my humble position among you. I wish not to dictate, but to plead. And I feel that I should not have done even this, had I not been led in God's providence last year to commence the work of open-air preaching myself. It has been attended with many good results, such as I have not time now to detail. Suffice it to observe that it

has practically fulfilled in my own parish, on a small scale, what I have just been predicting more largely if it be adopted more generally.

May the good Lord lead us all into the path of wisdom, and teach us by

His Holy Spirit what we each ought to do, for His dear Son's sake! Your faithful and affectionate brother,

J. H. TITCOMB.

To the Editor of the Christian Guardian. SIR, Permit me, if needs be, to draw your special attention, and through you, that of some others at least of our faithful Protestant watchmen, to the very large and unintermitting influx of Irish Roman Catholics setting in upon our shores; a movement, of which the following significant threat on the part of a Romish bishop, appears to be the real key, and not the oft-alleged pleas in the Times and other papers, of starvation, &c. See the Times of February 12th; under the head of "Ireland," appeared 66 a voice from St. Jarlath's,' and alluding to the growth of Romanism in England, as attributable in a great measure to the Irish immigration there," the titular "Archbishop of Tuam," (as the correspondent of the Times remarks,) thus expresses himself, in "his Grace's organ, towards our prime minister;-after referring to the Tractarian apostates, the merely "intellectual men," destitute of Scripture truth, and untaught by the Holy Spirit, he proceeds,

66

With the increasing numbers of such converts the tide of Catholic immigration to your shores will more than keep pace -an immigration sure to be as steady as the cruelty that continues to propel it will be untiring, until at length you hear the exiled Catholics of Ireland addressing you from every quarter of England in the language of Tertullian,- We have filled your cities, towns, fields, armies, senate, the' conventicles alone we leave to yourselves.'

6

Those words are not light, they deserve special attention on the part of the Protestants of Great Britain.

Under the pretence of a pressure from dearth and famine, under the pretence of revenging (assumed) cruelty on the part of England; the policy of Rome appears to be to swamp us, by degrees, by numerical preponderance in leading towns at first, and afterwards throughout the country. It is to be noted, too, that a comparatively small proportion of Romanists gives them a vastly disproportioned influence and power in our "" cities, towns, fields, armies, senate," &c., inasmuch as they form one united phalanx; whilst we Protestants are deplorably separated and antagonistic to each other, owing, no doubt, in very great measure, to the secret intrigues and cunning "cat's-paw" manoeuvres of JESUITS working secretly amongst the various Protestant denominations, as also amongst the political bodies. History tells us of such deeds of darkness, and it were well if they were collected into a tract, with some remarks on the duty and the wisdom of love, union, and mutual assistance on the part of Protestant brethren;-God be praised for the valuable observations on this head, made by the Rev. Hugh Stowell and the Rev. F. Close at the late Church Missionary Meeting, and similar sentiments by the Rev. J. C, Miller in one of his lectures on Popery in Birmingham;-Christ's real believing people, amongst Churchmen, and amongst Nonconformists, OUGHT to love one another in Christ, OUGHT to hold out the right hand of fellowship to each other, frankly, cordially, unreservedly, allowing to each other the freedom accorded by the BIBLE (as taught for instance in Acts xv.; Romans xiv.,

xv. 1-7; Galat. vi. 2; Mark ix. 38 -40): D'Aubigné comprehensively puts it, "Unity amidst diversity, and diversity amidst unity, such is the law of creation; it should be that of the Christian Church," or in words to that effect. We have all of us grievously broken,-we are, alas! but too sinfully breaking every day, our one Blessed Lord and Master's "new commandment," (the "eleventh_commandment," as Archbishop Usher called it) to "love one another." We are "verily guilty ;" and have we not accumulated "needs be's," for our God to whip us into union with the fiery rods of that unchanged and unchangeable system of LYING and MURDER (John viii. 44; 2 Corinth. xi. 13-15; 2 Thess. ii. 3, 4, 9, 10; Rev. xvii. 6, 9, 15, 18,) whose intolerant and sanguinary characteristics, illustrating as they constantly are in many parts of the earth, may be expected to develope themselves in a degree, and to an extent which (but for the Lord Jesus and His Spirit in us) it is indeed appalling to anticipate? Some faint indications of what is before us may be gathered from the late affair at Birkenhead, the atrocious treatment of the Hon. Miss Broderick, and other sparks from the anvil.

66

Dr. Cumming (in his Apocalyptic Sketches) dwells upon the fact, that in London alone there are 200,000 (not like many professing Protestants, mere sham," but "thorough") Roman Catholics! The papers inform us that steamers are bringing over freight after freight (to London) of 700 at a time. This increase has been going on for days, weeks, and months, not to speak of those swarms of the same recruits flocking to Liverpool, Manchester, Birmingham, &c., and expanding that Beast, which, as Bellarmine and others teach, only bides its time to make the wolf's spring with security! Such an element of the London population (considering its union and its awful capabilities through the secret arrangements of the confessional) deserves very serious attention, and close watching; in these days more particularly. Is this watchfulness in exercise? The pressure of

Lecture xxi.

Roman Catholic immigration in Edinburgh is vividly pourtrayed in an extract" of interest in a national point of view," taken from an Edinburgh newspaper, and inserted in the British Protestant of this month.

Have we not urgent need to say of our Roman Catholic myriads in London and other towns: "We must think of some means of thawing this massof converting this Popery into Protestantism. We must destroy it, or it will destroy us?"

Have we not urgent need in these "cowardly and trimming days," (as Hugh Stowell truly designates them,) to cry earnestly to our God, in importunate prayer, that for His dear Son's sake, He may raise up a larger number of witnesses suited to our times, men like Joshua, Caleb, and Nehemiah; like Wickcliffe, Latimer, Luther, and John Knox; like the Apostle Paul, that most devoted, most wondrous soldier of the Great Captain of our salvation-of Him who was and is pre-eminently and incomparably "the faithful and true Witness:" men, in short, "following the Lord fully," not double-minded, not halfhearted, not "loving the praise of men more than the praise of God;" not "receiving honour one of another, and seeking not the honour that cometh from God only;" not loving worldly politics and political parties rather than Christ, and to the prejudice of Christ's cause, Christ's people, and perishing sinners for whom Christ died; not dismayed nor deterred by the "fear of man which bringeth a snare," unbeguiled and unbefooled by "maudlin sentimentality," architectural fopperies, or other trickeries of the Tractarian (or Anglo-Romanist) school of "Posture and Imposture ;" undaunted by ignorant, or slanderous, or Jesuitical charges of bigotry, uncharitableness, puritanism, &c., (falsely so called); but men like Barnabas, "full of the Holy Ghost and faith,' full of prayer, holiness, humility, and fervent zeal, "according to knowledge,"-full of that charity which 'rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth;"-men, above all, constrained by the supreme love of Christ our adorable Lord and Sa

viour, and "by consequence necessarily abhorring and opposed to (not indeed the poor Romanists for whom we should fervently pray, and whom, with love, and truth, we should earnestly seek to convert, but) that awful Romish System called Popery, that system of Superstition, Idolatry, Blasphemy, Falsehood, and Cruelty, which exalts itself against the holy, blessed, and glorious Trinity,-"worships and serves the creature rather than the Creator,"*-dishonours, degrades, and dethrones the Son of God, -and whose representatives practically "deny the" [but once and allatoning the one and only "Mediator between God and man"—which is the] "Lord that bought them;" that system which in the confessional pollutes its unhappy victims with impurity the most filthy and most abominable,teaches and urges to perjury, faithlessness, disloyalty, anarchy, hellish tortures, murder, and wholesale butcheries of men, women, and children, and that too (blasphemously) in the name of Him who came "NOT to DESTROY men's lives, but to SAVE them;" that system which gags the press, rivets "manacles and mufflers on the human mind,"-which,in the Mass, practices Cannibalism of the most awful, most appalling kind, and Idolatry of a graven image, the most impious and most senseless, which, in defiance of the injunctions of God, daringly presumes both to "add unto the word " of God, and also to "diminish from it," not only hiding the second commandment from its people, but (in spite of the most express commands of God, that ALL men should "search the Scriptures," which are "able to make us wise unto salvation,") forbids the reading even of its own inferior version, except with notes, which, in effect, supersede the Word of God, and "make it of none effect," by "teaching for doctrines the COMMANDMENTS OF MEN," and so effectually blinding and preventing poor Romanists from finding out the deadly errors, the deceits, and iniquities

Rom. i. 25.

taught to, and practised upon them. But what pen can describe, what tongue set forth the full enormities of "MYSTERY, BABYLON THE GREAT, THE MOTHER OF HARLOTS AND ABOMINATIONS OF THE EARTH," and described as "drunken with the blood of saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus?"

Oh, thrice happy and blessed day, when shall be "heard a great voice of much people in heaven, and saying, Alleluia, Salvation, glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God: for true and righteous are his judgments: for he hath judged the great whore, which did corrupt the earth with her fornication, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand."

Meanwhile, "Who is on the Lord's side? Who?" Who of us is "valiant

for the truth?" "contending earnestly for the faith delivered unto us?" Loving Christ, trusting in Christ, living unto Christ, obeying Christ, and faithfully" coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty?"

It is written: "He that is not FOR us is AGAINST us," and again, "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven. The Lord give us grace to be "faithful unto death,' and to " try them which say they are apostles," and to "bear, and have patience, and for [Christ's] name's sake to labour, and not faint," and to "hold fast His name," and "not deny His faith;" even should fiery days burst upon us, when such as His "faithful martyr" Antipas, (Rev. ii.)

are

"slain among us," and many are tortured, mocked, imprisoned, tempted, afflicted, tormented, (Heb. xi.)

"Lord, increase our faith," and make us faithful unto death. O give us grace to overcome, and "having done all, to stand," being found complete in Christ,-perfect, justified, saved, in "the Lord our Righteous

ness.

I remain, sir, yours, &c.,
ALPHA..

10th June, 1851.