and their objections were waived. But what has the Christian Observer, what have all the Protestant Churches in the world, to say to such language as this, which Dr. Pusey has given from the Roman Catholic bishops of the present time?

"To us the faithful seem to have no wish as to this definition. They are content to pour forth devout prayers to the immaculate Virgin." (p. 358.)

"In these storms of tribulation, in this whirlpool of great crimes, in these perils and strains of all sorts, all faithful Christians turn their eyes to Mary, think of Mary, call upon her, piously and most inwardly believing that she was conceived without stain." (p. 362.)

"Never in my flock, and I assert confidently in all the dioceses of France, did faithful Catholics burn with greater devotion and love towards Mary, never did they place fuller confidence in her; never in tribulations did they with more fervent impetus seek protection at her feet." (p. 363.)

"If in a short time, as I most firmly believe, the most splendid benefits of the Virgin, who is terrible as an armed host, require other attestations of gratitude, your Holiness has other honours at hand to discharge this debt, and declare throughout the world your piety and grateful remembrance." (p. 365.)

"In the bosom of France there still live unbelieving children whom heresy keeps far from their home. In their deplorable blindness, they still reproach us with the worship we render to Mary." (p. 369.)

"The peasantry, and other of the lower orders of the diocese committed to my care, worship most devoutly the most blessed Virgin, and frequent in great numbers the shrines in my diocese dedicated to her." (p. 372.)

"The faithful do not doubt the immaculate conception to the Virgin Deipara: the worship of that mystery increases daily." (p. 376.)

"Among the people of the diocese of Warmia, which is with inmost devotion addicted to the worship of the most holy Virgin, the faith of the immaculate conception obtains universally." (p. 379.)

"It is she who alone slew all heresies in the whole world." (p. 381.) "The greater the number of adversaries. . . . the more ought the Church, who has to contend with the powers of darkness, to pray for her aid and help, who bruised the serpent's head, to extol with praises, and venerate with prayers, her who, praying her Son, alone slew all heresies in the whole world." (p. 382.)

Here we stop; not because our extracts are exhausted, for they might be multiplied into a volume. And we remind our readers that this is not the language of ignorant peasants and unlettered rustics, in the dark ages of the world, but of all the Archbishops and Bishops of the Roman Catholic world, in the middle of the nineteenth century. Surely with such awful, and gross, and general idolatry as this before our eyes, we may ask, where shall we find the Antichrist of Daniel; the apostasy of St. Paul, and the spiritual harlot of St. John, if not in the Church of Rome? What is more eminently and un

mistakeably antichristian than to exalt a woman, who was conceived and born in sin, to the mediatorial throne of Him who alone is without sin, and who alone is the one Mediator between God and man? What is so surely and undeniably a falling away from the faith once delivered to the Saints, as to give to the creature the worship and service and trust which belongs only to the Creator who is blessed for ever? What is it, when applied to religious worship, to commit adultery, and to play the harlot, but to give our hearts to any created object whatever, instead of to the Lord our God, who is a jealous God? "Doth not the word of God call idolatry spiritual fornication ?" (Hom. on the Peril of Idolatry.) "The apostasy," saith Bishop Jewel, "hath of late years appeared so manifestly, that no man, who is not wilfully blind, can doubt thereof." And to the same purpose the blessed martyr Bishop Hooper :-" The very properties of Antichrist, I mean of Christ's great and principal enemy, are openly known to all men that are not blinded with the smoke of Rome, that they know him to be the beast that St. John describes in the Apocalypse."

This is the Church which the Regius Professor of Hebrew would conciliate, and for which he seems to see visions of peace; and he thinks it to be the office of our English Church to be the means of restoring visible unity between the longseparated churches of the East and the West. We tell him, with all the undoubted certainty with which he himself believes the Bible to be the word of everlasting truth, that his design is entirely chimerical, and absolutely contrary to the revealed purpose of God. Our blessed Reformers would have healed the great mystical Babylon; but she refused then, and she refuses still, positively and deliberately refuses, to be healed. Now, therefore, there is no healing for her. Persisting, as she so pertinaciously does, in her idolatries, and her falsehoods, and her abominations, how can we be reconciled to her, and be at peace with her? "Can two walk together except they be agreed?" What unity can there be between Christ and Antichrist? "That which is crooked cannot be made straight, and that which is wanting cannot be numbered." "Mark," says Bishop Jewel, "the Apostle's speech. He saith not, God shall convert Antichrist, or change his heart, that he may be saved; but he saith, 'Whom the Lord shall consume.'. . . Such is the hardness and the blindness of his heart, he will not receive the love of the truth, he will not believe the truth of God, that he might be saved; therefore destruction shall come upon him. Hereby we are taught what to think or hope of reformation of the abuses and errors of the Church of Rome. They have been advertised of them, not only by the professors of the Gospel, but also many of themselves have spoken for

reformation of sundry abuses. They have kept many councils and assemblies. They have promised redress. What one thing have they reformed? Hitherto they have reformed nothing. They have hardened their hearts, and set themselves against the Highest. Therefore shall the glory of the Lord show itself in their destruction." (Works of Bishop Jewel, p. 928, P.S.) Let any reader of the Christian Observer cast his eye over the deplorable mariolatry which Dr. Pusey has brought together from apostate Christendom; and then let him ask, Can this indeed be the language of the true bishops and pastors of the Church of Christ? For our own part, we boldly but sadly declare the conviction which it produced upon ourselves. It is this. As surely as we believe the Bible to be the word of God, and every part of it, from the beginning of Genesis to the end of Revelation, to be pure and unmingled truth, so surely do we believe the Romish community to be the apostate and idolatrous church, so minutely and so wonderfully described in the oracles of God. And we do not hesitate to say, neither the worshippers of Baal, when they cried from morning until noon, "O Baal, hear us!" (1 Kings xviii. 26); nor the degenerate Jews in the land of Egypt, when they so deliberately persisted to "burn incense to the queen of heaven, and to pour out drink-offerings unto her" (Jer. xlv. 17);-neither one nor the other, we confidently affirm, were more truly or more grossly guilty of idolatry than these blind bishops of the apostate Church, who thus teach and encourage their deluded followers to worship the Virgin Mary, to call upon her, and to put their whole trust and confidence in her. The literal Babylon was not more mad after her countless idols, than the mystical Babylon is mad after her special and peculiar idol, the Virgin Mary. Her idolatry is incurable, and her destruction is inevitable. This long-lasting adversary is neither to be pacified with terms of peace, nor won over to the acknowledgment of the truth. Delenda est Carthago. Her sins have reached up to heaven; and in one day, a day we believe that is nigh at hand, shall her plagues come. Our blessed Reformers, more than three hundred years ago, lamented that in their days, for above eight hundred years, the whole of Christendom had been drowned in abominable idolatry. (Hom. on the Peril of Idolatry.) Has it been otherwise in Roman Catholic countries since the Reformation? Surely the predicted period for the reign of Antichrist is rapidly drawing to a close. Or, to take another mode of argument, perhaps more convincing to the author of the "Eirenikon." He appeals to the Fathers. Let him consider diligently what some of them have said. "I speak it boldly," says Gregory bishop of Rome, (Dr. Pusey gives the quotation,

and calls him St. Gregory,) "whosoever either calleth himself universal priest, or desires to be so called, in the pride of his heart, he is the forerunner of Antichrist." Not the immediate successor, but the next bishop but one after Gregory, obtained this proud title; and it has been claimed by the Popes ever since, for well-nigh 1260 years. Irenæus says that the name of Antichrist, expressed by the mystical number 666, is Lateinos; and that he shall sit in a city called Latium, which is Rome. Joachimus Abbas, who was contemporary with our first Richard, has these words,-"Antichrist is long since born in Rome, and yet shall be advanced higher in the apostolic see." While Bernard expressly says, "The beast that is spoken of in the book of Revelation, unto which is given a mouth to speak blasphemies, and to make war against the saints of God, is now gotten into Peter's chair."

Dr. Pusey does not even hint, what many of the ancient fathers so sagely suggested, what all our Marian martyrs protested at the stake, and what the Church of England positively teaches in her homilies, that the predicted apostasy (2 Thess. ii. 3) has been developed in the Romish Church. On the other hand, he seems still to cherish the dream that the Eastern and the Western and our own Church are to melt in visible communion into one cecumenical fold. (See page 256.) Then he speaks decisively, that before our Lord shall come, there must be "the Apostasy." Had he forgot that the mystery of iniquity was already working in the days of St. Paul; that it was fomenting for well nigh 600 years, until the Roman Emperor was taken out of the way; and that, since then, in the deliberate judgment of almost all who believe and love the Bible, it has been manifesting itself in the Romish Church for nearly 1260 years?" This one thing," says Bishop Hall, which God has pronounced, we do verily expect to see, the day when the Lord Jesus shall with the breath of His mouth destroy this lawless one, long since revealed in His Church, and by the brightness of His glorious coming fully discover and dispatch him." (No Peace with Rome.)

There would be no mystery, nor anything to marvel at, in the most daring iniquity, or the most dreadful cruelty, being perpetrated by an infidel or atheistical antagonist. But for the professed representative of the lowly Redeemer to be enthroned for ages as the king of pride; for the acknowledged keeper of God's truth to be the great upholder of idolatry and superstition and sin; and for the Church, which would be styled the one Holy Catholic Church, to become actually drunk with the blood of martyrs and of saints-here is the mystery of iniquity; and here is what caused the evangelist to wonder with great admiration. But while this interpretation of God's

Holy Word is to us an article of faith, we by no means sympathise with those who found fault with Hooker for charitably maintaining, cautiously and guardedly as he did so, that salvation may be found in the Romish Church. Neither do we attach ourselves to those who, in a similar spirit, accused the excellent Bishop Hall of being unfaithful to Protestant truth, because he declared that, though corrupt, and fallen, and diseased, Rome is really a Church. If Rome were not truly a Church, Antichrist could not sit in the Temple of God. Because, therefore, the whole Bible is there professed, and the three creeds are there acknowledged, and the two sacraments which Christ ordained are not ignored, though miserably corrupted, we do not deny to our Romish brethren the name of Christians. While we speak of their religion as God describes it in His Holy Word, we believe surely that numbers among them are saved, not by their religion, but notwithstanding their religion. We mean, not by professing the errors and delusions peculiar to Popery, but by believing in their hearts the vital truths of the everlasting Gospel, which the Holy Spirit unfolds to every member of the Holy Church throughout all the world. But while we know that God has a people in the midst of Babylon, it is at our peril that we sacrifice in the hope of peace, and under the pretence of unity, any of the distinctive truths, for the sake of which our martyred ancestors resisted even unto blood. On the other hand, now that her idolatries are so openly manifest, and that the day of her retribution is so fast approaching, it is our plainest duty to cry with a loud voice, to all her members, wherever we find them, "Come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues." (Rev. xviii. 4.)

We conclude with the deliberate opinion expressed by Cassander, a learned and candid Romanist, who was required by two German emperors, in the early morning of the Reformation, to do then what the author of the Eirenikon is attempting to do now. These are Cassander's words, and they are quoted by Bishop Hall, as a motto to his treatise entitled "No Peace with Rome":-" My opinion is, that the Church can never hope for any firm peace, unless they make the beginning which have given the cause of the distraction. That is, unless those who are in the place of ecclesiastical government will be content to remit something of their too much rigour, and yield somewhat to the peace of the Church; and, hearkening unto the earnest prayers and admonitions of many godly men, will set themselves to correct manifest abuses, according to the rule of Divine Scripture, and of the ancient Church from which they have swerved."