Popery-the same in corruption, the same in haughtiness, the same in blood thirstiness, the same in intolerance-the very Popery which lorded it over kings, assumed the prerogatives of Deity, crushed human liberty, and slew the saints of God.

O that England might be convinced of this before taught it by fatal experience! It may not yet be too late. She has tampered with Popery, yea, in many respects, she has patronized Popery, giving it by her compromises and concessions a vantage ground which its best wishers could hardly have dared to expect. Nevertheless, it may not yet be too late. Let Protestants only awake to a sense of the worth of their privileges so long enjoyed that they are practically forgotten, and this land may yet remain what for three centuries it has now been, the great witness for scriptural truth, the great centre of scriptural light. There is already a struggle: in Ireland especially, Popery is so wrestling with Protestantism, that there is cause to fear that falsehood will gain the mastery. And we call upon you to view this struggle in its true light. It is not to be regarded as a struggle between rival churches as to which shall obtain the temporal ascendancy; it is not a contest for the possession of tithes, for the right to the mitre, for the claim to the benefice: it is a contest between the Christianity of the New Testament, and the Christianity of human tradition and corrupt fable. It is a contest therefore by whose issue will be decided whether the pure Gospel is to have footing in Ireland, or whether it is to be altogether and irrecoverably banished. You talk of removing the means of Protestant instruction from parishes where the population is almost entirely papal. What is this but to condemn those parishes to a perpetuity of Popery, and to make it a moral certainty that they will never embrace truth? And could this be the duty of a Protestant government-to take measures for insuring that a papal population never should become Protestant? Rather let the lonely spark be nursed though it be as nothing in the vast sphere of darkness, hoping that God may yet allow it to gather strength, and shed light on all around, having at least a witness hereafter that there was no treachery in those whose duty it was to diffuse Christianity.

But we must conclude, though we seem to have left much that is important unsaid. Our counsel to you individually is, that you examine well into the tenets of Protestantism, and thus possess yourselves of the grounds on which it is impossible that we live peaceably with Rome. If you belong to the Reformed Church, acquaint yourselves with the particulars in which the Reformation consisted, that you may be able to give reasons for opposition to Popery, and be well convinced that they are not unimportant points on which Protestants differ from Papists. Let each in his station oppose the march of Popery, oppose it by argument, by counsel, by exhortation, by prayer. "Watch ye; stand fast in the faith; quit you like men; be strong." By the memory of the martyrs, by the ashes of confessors, by the dust of a thousand saints, we conjure you be staunch in supporting your religion. The spirits of departed worthies who witnessed a good confession, and sealed it with their blood, bend down, we may think, from their lofty dwelling, and mark our earnestness in maintaining the faith for which they died. O, if they could hear our voice, should it not tell them that there are yet many in the land emulous of their zeal, and eager to tread in their steps; ready, if there come a season big with calamity, to gird themselves for the defence of Protestantism in its last asylum.

and to uphold in the strength of the living God, that cause which they sustained by labour and cemented by blood? Yes, illustrious immortals! ye died not in vain. Mighty troop! there was lit up at your massacre a fire in these realms which is yet unextinguished, and from father to son has the sacred flame been transmitted; and though in the days of our security this flame may have burnt with a diminished lustre, yet let the watchmen sound the alarm, and many a mountain-top shall be red with the beacon's blaze, and the noble vault of your resting-place grow illumined with the flash. Repose ye in your deep tranquillity, spirits of the martyred dead! We know something of the worth of a pure Gospel, and a free Bible; and we will bind ourselves by the name of Him who liveth and abideth for ever, to strive and preserve unimpaired the privileges bequeathed us, and to impart them in their beauty and their fulness to the whole mass of our population. Protestantism has long enjoyed a season of tranquillity, and its enemies may have mistaken its quietness for its deadness. "As well," to borrow the simile of an illustrious departed statesman on another occasion, "might they have thought a ship finally dismantled when they have seen her laid up in ordinary, sleeping on her shadow with no signs of power. There needs nothing but news of the invader, and presently would this mighty mass, resting to all appearance uselessly on the waters, ruffle bravely her plumage, awaken her dormant thunder, and walk the waves as though instinct with life." Thus Protestantism may have seemed to be slumbering, but she has in herself the elements of might; and let only the tidings be heard that the Philistine is upon her, and again and suddenly shall she spring into energy; and it shall be proved that she has all along been the same, and needed nothing but a season of peril to make her spread her wings, and bear down her foes.

We can add no more. We exhort each in the words of the prophet to be "valiant for the truth ;" and thus, God helping, may you cause that the religion which this day three hundred years back was gloriously established in our land, shall be transferred unsullied to posterity, the mightiest safeguard for future generations, as it has been the honour and the blessing of past. Yes, be it ours to shew that the spirit of Protestantism, if it has lain dormant, has not been extinguished; but that there are yet staunch and true hearts in England who hold religion dearer than substance, and who having received from their fathers a charter of faith dyed in the blood of the holiest and the best, would rather dye it afresh, if necessary, in their own heart's blood, than send it down torn and mutilated to their children.

THE WRITTEN WORD OF GOD THE ONLY STANDARD OF TRUTH.

REV. W. CURLING, A.M.

ST. SAVIOUR'S CHURCH, SOUTHWARK, OCTOBER 4, 1835.

"To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."-ISAIAH, viii. 20.

WE are assembled this day, my friends, according to the announcement which I made on Sunday last, to consider a subject in which, as Protestants holding the pure faith of the reformed religion of this country, you cannot, I think, but be deeply interested. It was on the fourth of October, three centuries ago, that the first entire English version of the Scriptures, translated by Coverdale, afterwards Bishop of Exeter, was printed and published under royal authority: and as it was this work which, more than any thing else, under God, prepared the way for the events which soon followed, events so happily connected with all the civil and religious privileges which we now enjoy, it has been thought a seasonable occasion for reconsidering the principles upon which Protestantism is established, and for reverting in grateful remembrance to that great mercy of our God, which, placing in the hands of our forefathers the Scriptures of truth, saved us their children from the errors of Popery.

Now, before I enter upon the subject of my text, which I have chosen as being very applicable to the great point at issue between us and the Church of Rome, I wish to make three or four preliminary observations.

The first is, that Popery is unchanged, and that we have, therefore, just as much reason now for pointing out its evils as formerly. Many persons do not think so. There is much lukewarmness in the present day, much religious indifference. The liberality of the age is carried so far, that it is now deemed uncharitable to speak harshly of Popery; and there is thought to be so little difference between the two religions, that with many Protestants it is, I am grieved to say, no longer a question, whether the one religion be not nearly or quite as good as the other! Alas! my brethren, the sufferings, the deaths of our reformers, those men, who, by the sacrifice of their lives, secured to us ali that we have now of civil and religious liberty, are allowed to pass from our memories; and it may be said of them in the language of one of our poets,

"Their blood is shed,

In confirmation of the noblest claim,

The claim to feed upon immortal truth,
To walk with God, to be divinely free,

To soar and to anticipate the skies:
Yet few remember them!"

I can easily understand how this has arisen: it is partly owing to the circustance of Protestant principles having been of late years so little urged upon the attention of the people; and it is also to be attributed, in no small degree to the appearance which Popery has of late years presented to the public eye -an appearance so much more favourable, that persons who do not think, and are not aware of the artifice, are led to believe that the religion of the Papists has undergone a material alteration, and is quite another thing from which it was in the days of the reformers. But I would remind these persons who are so ready to forget what was done by their martyred forefathers, that Popery is a religion that cannot change. It can assume a false appearance; it can change its external to suit the circumstances of the times in which it is endeavouring to regain its lost ascendency: but in all its essential qualities it is precisely the same. Is it not the boast of Roman Catholics that their Church is infallible? And does not this assumed infallibility of the Church necessarily involve the unchangeableness of its principles? Let her change her principles, and her claim to be the true Church ceases for ever.

The second observation I would make, is this, that the subject to be brought forward to-day, is not a political but a religious one. True, our civil rights were involved in the question which caused the breach in the days of the reformers, and God forbid we should ever lose sight of what we owe politically as well as religiously to the blessed Reformation: but I wish it to be clearly understood that the ground of separation which our Reformers took, was that Popery taught doctrines, not only not sanctioned by the Scriptures of God, but directly opposed to them. It was for high and holy and heavenly principles, principles connected with God's honour and man's salvation, that those who stood forward to maintain the truth, so manfully contended. It may, indeed be said by those, who care not much whether Popery or Protestantism be the religion of this country, that it was a question of mere politics: but no, my hearers; the grand, the vital question, was one of religion. It was whether God was to reign supreme, without a rival, or whether the Pope was to claim to himself God's attributes, and to take upon himself a portion of God's authority; whether Jesus Christ was to be adored as the only Saviour and the only Intercessor, or whether there was to be added to the merit of His righteousness, the merit of our own good works, and to His intercession the intercession of departed saints; whether the Scriptures of God were to be taken as the only and sufficient guide to happiness, or whether there were to be superadded to the Scriptures of God the traditions of men; nay, whether the Scriptures were to be possessed and perused by all, or whether they were to be looked upon as belonging exclusively to the Church, and as such were to be kept altogether from the hands of the people. These and such like points were the points of difference between the Church of Rome and the reformers: and it is because we still differ so essentially on fundamental matters of faith that we are bound still to protest against, what I may truly call, the God-dishonouring and the soul-destroying doctrines of Popery.

My third remark is, that the question before us is not one that concerns merely the established Church of England. We were only a part of the separatists at the time of the Reformation-Sweden, Hungary, Denmark, Prussia, Switzerland, and other continental powers, were illuminated with the same light that broke forth in England. The church of Geneva rejected Popery; the Lu

theran church in Germany broke away from its yoke; the Moravian church asserts its independence; and the Protestant dissenter in this country, who tas, since that period, left our pale-on points of discipline, not of doctrinefeels equally interested with ourselves in preserving the truth of God from antichristian error. I suppose that Christians of all denominations are thanking God, on this occasion, for their deliverance from Popery. May the united effort shake the yet remaining fabric of the antichristian power to its base; and may the determination that will be so generally expressed to-day, to stand by the Scriptures of truth, produce, by God's blessing, a stirring and a thrilling effect upon the minds of the people of this country!

I have one more observation to make, and it is this, that in speaking of Popery, I shall evince no bitterness of feeling towards Roman Catholics. [ have come to this subject as a Christian, and I shall pursue it as a ChristianI have no hostility of feeling towards another man, however hostile his religion I love him as my brother; and I feel compasmay make him feel towards me. sion for him, because he is a deluded brother; and "my heart's desire and prayer to God for him is, that he may be saved." Do not, then, call it intolerance; do not charge us with being bigoted, when we speak in strong and revere terms of the religion of the Romanists. It is not against them personally, It is against their system, so unscriptural in its nature and so ruinous in its effects, that we would awaken hostility. We wish well to, we would save the one, but we hate, we would destroy the other

I now proceed to the subject before is; and may that gracious ud, in whose cause we are this day engaged, help us both in preaching and hearing, and fill all our hearts with gratitude for his past mercies, the fruits of which we now so richly enjoy, through Jesus Christ our Lord.

We will first consider the principle laid down in our text. It is, that the Scriptures are to be appealed to as the standard, the only standard of truth"To the law and to the testimony." Secondly, I will shew you how sadly the Church of Rome, both in doctrine and practice, has departed from this principle Thirdly, how the acting on this principle, in opposition to the Church of Rome led to the Reformation, and produced those blessed consequences, which we at now reaping the advantage of; and fourthly, I will try the reformed religion by this Scriptura! rule, and prove thereby the soundness of its principles.

The first point to which I solicit your serious and prayerful attention, is the grand principle laid down in the text; namely, that we are TO TAKE THE SCRIPTURES, the inspired word of "the true and living God," AS THE ONLY STANDARD OF TRUTH. "To the law and to the testimony" (says the prophet) "if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them."

These words were spoken at a time when the men of Judah were in expec tation of an attack from the combined forces of Syria and Israel; and the prophet Isaiah, who made use of them, warns the good people of the land against going in that season of perplexity, for comfort, and advice, and aid, to any quarter but God. The unbelieving Jews would urge them to apply to those that "had familiar spirits," but they were resolutely to hold out against the counsel thus given, and were to settle the matter in dispute between them.