seared and deadened, till at length its unhappy victim becomes capable of the most dishonourable artifices in order to accomplish his object. This is human nature in an unregenerate state under the influence of a strong and absorbing passion; and there are few passions more strong and absorbing than selfish ambition, the besetting sin of talented but unprincipled statesmen. In nothing does this want of principle show itself more than in the conduct of our leading statesmen with reference to Popery. It is difficult to say which are the worse, the Ins or the Outs; both sides bid high for the Romish vote, and both sacrifice the welfare of their country for the sake of place. Not the slightest confidence, therefore, can be placed in the patriotism of these thorough-paced statesmen. They go all lengths with their party, and would just as soon endow an idolatrous as a Christian Church. They wink and connive at what they must know to be wrong, and even wicked. Where is their protest against the juggling tricks and impious frauds which the Church of Rome palms upon the world for miracles? The Times says:-"We stand aghast at the amount of assurance which is required in order to make the statement, that these miracles are well known, and admitted by the whole world, and at the brazen impudence which makes such notorious falsehoods the means of extorting money from the weak and credulous. In this instance we see something more than an extravagant or erroneous system of doctrine-a deliberate attempt to obtain the money of the people under the grossest and falsest pretences." (1852. Date omitted.) What is this but downright villany?

Dr. Southey, in his "Letters to Mr. Butler," says :-" This, Sir, is your position: that if Roman Catholics prove a constant succession of miracles in their Church, they consequently establish the truth of her doctrine.' Now, I advance as a position not less certain, that if Protestants prove a constant succession of frauds in that Church, the Papal system is what I have pronounced it to be, a prodigious structure of imposture and wickedness." Between Protestantism and Popery there is a great gulf fixed, which British statesmen, much to their discredit, try to bridge over.

The Record observes:-"The shameless delinquencies of statesmen have been winked at as things which can hardly be otherwise in political life; but were they more generally visited with the condemnation they so justly deserve, we should have in the British Senate a class of men and a class of measures every way more worthy of our national position and our national responsibilities." (April 23, 1859.)

When Mr. Windham lamented to Dr. Johnson, that as Secretary to the Lord-Lieutenant of Ireland, he should some

times be expected to act against his conscience, Dr. Johnson replied,-"Don't be afraid; you will soon make a very pretty rascal."

It thus appears evident that statesmanship is a most ignoble profession, rendered such by the selfish, unworthy conduct of those who follow it.

Our political chiefs call themselves Protestants, and profess to be sincere friends of civil and religious liberty; and how do they show this? By throwing all the weight of their influence into the wrong scale, and supporting that power which is the great enemy of civil and religious liberty, as well as of all progress and enlightenment; thus evidencing the hollowness and heartlessness of their professions.

Idolaters ought not to be recognised as fellow-Christians; nor ought those who acknowledge allegiance to a foreign and hostile potentate, who is the greatest tyrant, usurper, and impostor that ever existed, be recognised as fellow-subjects. There is something singularly base in allowing the laws of this country to be trampled upon by the adherents of a foreign despot, who regards our Sovereign as a heretic, and her children as illegitimate.

This

It would be difficult to exaggerate the evils arising from the vicious practice of calling things by their wrong names. is strikingly exemplified in the case of the Church of Rome. This apostate, idolatrous, blasphemous, and antichristian community is called a "Christian Church." Her priests, as well as her members, in this country are called our "fellowsubjects." She is designated "the Catholic Church," when there is not a single particle of catholicity about her. She really is the most bigoted, exclusive, intolerant, persecuting Church that the world has ever seen. She professes to love the Word of God, when she hates and dreads it, and does all she can to prevent its free circulation, exalting tradition above it. The Pope is called "the Vicar of Christ," when he might with more propriety be named the Vicegerent of Satan. Popery has been well defined as "Heathenism concealed under the mask of a mock Christianity."

Dr. Faussett, in a sermon preached before the University of Oxford in 1838, thus expresses himself:-"If the Roman Church be really that predicted apostasy which the most approved interpreters of prophecy unanimously maintain, we may rest assured that every encouragement afforded to a system thus offensive in the sight of heaven, whether by the grant of political influence, or by any general disposition to relapse into her errors, or even to relax from that strenuous resistance to her power and principles which was established at the Reformation, is a national sin, for which the severest national chastisement may be reasonably anticipated."

If there be one thing more likely than another to effect the ruin of our Constitution and the dethronement of our Sovereign, it is strengthening the hands of those who are enemies to Protestantism, and are constantly plotting its overthrow. As the Bishop of Ripon observed, in his admirable speech at the Meeting of the Irish Church Missions,-" Roman Catholicism is, in its very essence, directly opposed to loyalty to a Protestant Sovereign."

The ruinous policy adopted by our infatuated statesmen was shown in the long debate on the Franchise Bill. Where was the patriotism or loyalty of Her Majesty's Ministers, when they called to their counsels such a reckless democrat and leveller as Mr. Bright? By pursuing such unworthy tactics, they placed Mr. Bright in a false position, and themselves in a most undignified one. If their sweeping measure of reform should be carried out to its legitimate consequences, it will involve a great organic change in the constitution of our country, and must sooner or later lead to universal suffrage, and perhaps to a sanguinary revolution. Farewell then to royalty! Our aristocracy also may set their house in order, for their days will then be numbered.

"If

Dr. Fullwood, in his "Pillars of Rome Broken," says:the famous nobility and gentry of England would appear like themselves and their heroic ancestors, in the defence of the rights of their country, the laws and customs of the land, the wealth of the people, the liberties of the Church, the empire of Britain, and the grandeur of their king, or indeed their own honour and estates in a great measure, let them never endure the re-admission of Popery." (See Christian Observer, 1848, p. 343.)

Would that the aristocracy of our country in the present day would follow this wholesome advice! Alas! they are a degenerate race. Quem Deus vult perdere prius dementat."

There is, perhaps, no better way of ensuring a higher tone of morals among our public men than by publicly exposing their delinquencies. This may bring them to their senses, hardened as their conscience seems to be. As public men, they are amenable to the public for the faithful performance of their duties. They have been weighed in the balance and found wanting. They are therefore in bad odour with the public, as the public press testifies. About ten years ago, the Editor of the Times lashed them with unsparing severity. Some of them cannot have forgotten the chastisement they so deservedly received for the selfishness of their tactics and the all but seditious character of their language. If these statesmen have any regard for their own reputation, they will turn over a new leaf, abandon their Jesuitical tactics, and reverse

their anti-Protestant policy. In order to save appearances and give something like a colour of consistency to their proceedings, they feel it necessary to deny that the Church of Rome is an idolatrous Church. This they have the hardihood to do, although they have solemnly sworn that they believed it to be such. What is perjury, if this be not perjury? By pursuing such a course, they will go down to the grave with a lie in their right hand.

Political combatants, like prize-fighters, inflict terrible blows upon each other. This they do, not for the good of their country, but for the sake of place. A life spent in political strife and debate will not bring a man peace at the last. It brought none to the late Sir Robert Peel, and he had the candour to admit it. (See Christian Observer for October, 1860.)

G. POYNDER.

CORRESPONDENCE.

To the Editor of the Christian Observer.

MR. EDITOR,-Your Correspondent "C. O.," in his friendly strictures on my Commentary on the Revelation of St. John, invites an answer, which, with your permission, I am glad of the opportunity of giving.

In the first place, " C. O.," in substance asks why I reject Elliott's interpretation of the death of the witnesses, which to him appears as satisfactory as we are happily agreed in considering that Commentator's interpretation of the Seals to be.

It is very difficult, in answering such a question, to be brief. But "C. O." has read my Commentary, and therefore I need not repeat I have there said.

Even in the passage in question there are considerable points of agreement between Elliott and myself. We are agreed that the two witnesses represent the two long lines of witnessing churches of Western and Eastern origin; that the period of their sackcloth witnessing is 1260 years, and has not closed at this moment; that the Great City is Rome in its wide acceptation, as defined in Caracalla's edict; that the Beast is the same as that described in Rev. xiii.; and that the "occasion," to quote Elliott, "of the two witnesses appearing as dead corpses," is the gathering of some General Council." On all these points we agree. We differ in the following points: Elliott holds that the death, resurrection, and ascension of the witnesses took place in the midst of their sackcloth witnessings, when they had perfected their testimony; I hold that it will take place when they shall have finished their testimony. Elliott holds that the particular "street" of the Great City in which the witnesses were slain was the actual city of Rome; I suppose it to be Jerusalem,

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also a street of the Great City formerly, and, according to my view, to be so again. Elliott understands by the Beast, both in this chapter and in Rev. xiii., the Western Roman Empire, under the headship of the Pope; I understand by it, in both passages, the Roman Empire, both East and West, under one or two emperors, supporting, and influenced by, the combined Latin and Greek apostasies. Elliott supposes a "General Council from the several states of Western Christendom to be described; I, a General Council of all Christendom, East and West united. Elliott interprets the appearing of the two witnesses as dead corpses before the Council, as their non-appearance there when cited; I interpret it conversely, as their appearance there, having abandoned their protest and lost their vitality.

I object to Elliott's view on the following grounds :—

First, that it requires an allowable, but less natural, translation of the words, "when they shall have finished."

Secondly, that it involves an incongruity in the emblem. Whatever the interpretation of the symbols, the symbols themselves are those of death, resurrection, translation into heaven. That St. John should see two symbolic men raised in the garments of woe, and so translated into heaven, is in the highest degree unlikely; that he should see them prophesying three hundred days and more in heaven, and not record the fact, seems to me impossible. For it must be remembered, that even translating "they shall have perfected," instead of "they shall have finished," there is not a word to intimate that they perfected their testimony before they finished it, or prophesied after their death and ascension.

Thirdly, Elliott does not really explain at all the symbol of the "dead bodies" of the witnesses. He illustrates it by the refusal of burial to "heretics"; but since the witnesses are symbolic, and the death symbolic, the dead bodies cannot be the natural bodies of individual men. "The expression is, of course, symbolic, as having reference to the two symbolic witnesses, the Apocalyptic representation of many," says Elliott. But he ends, after speaking of the denial of burial to persons convicted of heresy: "So that it was a fulfilment to the very letter of what was predicted, 'They &c.'" There is the symbol; but where is the interpretation of it? The "dead bodies" of churches can only, in my opinion, be churches out of which the life has departed; the denial of burial to them by the Council, the refusal on the part of the Council to treat these dead churches respectfully, and a determination to triumph over them, after their submission, in the person of their deputies.

These objections apply to interpreting the death of the witnesses of any past event, and compel me to agree with Bishop Newton and Thomas Scott in regarding it as still future.

With respect to the three years and a half before October 1517, it appears to me that it was a period of life, and not a period of death; and that life one which had been growing since the time of John Huss.

Scarcely," says Merle D'Aubigné, Vol. II. p. 83 of the edition before me, "had a termination been put to the Council of Constance and Basle, in which Huss and his followers were sentenced, when we