AN ANSWER 7872 TO THE REV. A. O'CALLAGHAN. A. M. ON THE TENDENCY OF BIBLE SOCIETIES, AS AFFECTING THE Established Church, AND CHRISTIANITY ITSELF AS A "REASONABLE SERVICE." BY THE REV. W. NAPPER, ONE OF THE SECRETARIES OF THE COUNTY OF WEXFORD BRANCH OF THE Whatsoever things were written aforetime, were written for our learning, DUBLIN: PRINTED BY ROBERT NAPPER, 140, CAPEL-STREET. 1816. f § 1. AFTER the experience of twelve years, in which the Bible Society has been the instrument of important and diffusive benefits, it might be hoped that the fears of its adversaries would be allayed and their opposition abated. But the alarm, which was variously and ineffectually sounded in England, has been lately echoed from the College of Kilkenny, and calls upon the friends of the Institution in Ireland to take their share in its defence. The Reverend Master of that Seminary, while he admits that the British and Foreign Bible Society, " in some points of view, is, perhaps, the noblest Association that ever appeared in the world," and admires "the sublimity of its object to promote the interests of Christianity at home, and impart to the deluded Mahometan, and benighted Heathen, the light of divine Revelation,"-declares himself to be one of those, who, on mature reflection, disallow the efficacy of the means employed:- He earnestly objects to the circulation of the Scriptures "without note or comment," and, at the close of the first sec A2 |