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country were to petition Parliament at this crisis, Parliament must act. The Papists, too, would then clearly see that England would not allow these insidious encroachments. In the interim, before the new Parliament meet, we advise every congregation who are opponents to Popery to prepare a petition.

But it may be urged that it is not right for Christians, under any circumstances, to appeal to the civil power. Paul did not think so when he made the magistrates at Philippi come to the prison and lead him out, although he had free permission to leave it without putting them to this mortification (Acts xvii., 35, 39.) But can you carry out this principle? A principle is worthless which cannot be carried out. If a mob were to attack our places of worship, may we send for the police? or if we do not send for them, may we use their services if they come uncalled for? Is not this employing the civil power? May we, under threatenings of further violence, seek the protection of a magistrate? Is not this seeking the aid of the civil power? And if we are allowed to employ the civil power to protect our religious assemblies from violence when it takes place, why may we not appeal to the civil power to prevent the violence from taking place at all; in other words, prevent a Roman Catholic mob from pulling our places of worship down, a few years hence ? Take the thing in time. Something may be done now, and that without persecution or violence. Let the house burn on, and

who shall stop the conflagration?

We

But are we not advocating persecution? By no means. don't want to persecute them, but to keep them from persecuting us. What we are opposed to is, the temporal power that Rome claims a claim rejected by many Roman Catholics themselves. There are two parties in the Church of Rome; one embracing all the priests, and advocating what are called ultramontane * principles; and the other, consisting in this country chiefly of the laity, holding what are called cismontane † principles. The

* Ultramontane, literally, "across the mountains," (ie.) the Alps, which separate Italy from the rest of Europe.

+ Cisamontane, literally, "this side of the mountains," as embracing the other Roman Catholic countries, on this side of the Alps.

former claim for the Pope absolute dominion, temporal and spiritual, civil and ecclesiastical, over all the world, as the vicar of Jesus Christ. The latter allow him supreme spiritual authority, but deny him temporal power beyond what he exercises in his own limited Italian territories. It is this ultramontane power which the Pope is trying to set up in this country, the same system as is carried out in Ireland as far as the civil power there permits. Now, these ultramontane claims put Popery on a completely different footing from all other sects. No religious party in this country is seeking or claiming supreme temporal power.

Here, then, is a palpable line of distinction between Popery and every other religious system. In asking, therefore, Parliament to interfere, we do not ask for penal laws to punish them for religious opinions, or to meddle with the internal government of themselves simply as a religious body. Let them have the same privileges as other sects in this country, but no more. But when they move out of the circle to which they have hitherto confined themselves, and claim a territorial dominion over large districts, thereby saying that every baptised person in these districts is ipso facto an apostate Catholic, and as such may be reclaimed, if necessary, by fire and sword-when Rome thus comes forward, and leaving her position as a part demands to be the whole, she puts herself out of the pale of the 'Toleration Act. She is no longer a dissenting body, as the Wesleyans, Baptists, Independents, and others, but she is, or claims to be-Queen; aye, Queen Bee, who will sting to death every rival, that she may reign alone in the hive, and enjoy all the honey.

To call, therefore, upon Parliament to stop her encroachments, is not to advocate persecution, or deprive her of present privileges. Let her have what she has enjoyed, but no more, and stop her before she gets further vantage ground. It may prevent effusion of blood hereafter. For let no man think, that if Rome is to sit as a throned Queen in these isles, it will be without fearful struggle, in which blood will be shed as water. To stop Rome, therefore, by legal enactments, from marching on to universal dominion, is no more persecution than to pass laws against highwaymen and housebreakers. Let Rome see that Dissenters in

this country will not join her to pull down the Church. But let them come forward as their forefathers did, and say, "Popery is our common enemy. We must resist her to preserve the enjoyment of our civil and religious liberties."

MILTON'S SONNET ON THE MASSACRE OF THE
VAUDOIS IN PIEDMONT, A.D. 1655.

Avenge, O Lord, Thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scatter'd on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept Thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones
Forget not in Thy book record their groans
Who were Thy sheep, and, in their ancient fold,
Slain by the bloody Piedmontese that roll'd
Mother with infant down the rocks. Their moans
The vales redoubled to the hills, and they
To Heaven. Their martyr'd blood and ashes sow
O'er all the Italian fields where still doth sway
The triple tyrant; that from these may grow
A hundred-fold, who, having learn'd thy way
Early may fly the Babylonian woe.

The cruelties to which Milton refers to in this noble sonnet took place nearly three centuries and a half after the Crusade prescribed by Pope Innocent III. against the Albegenses, A.D. 1208, but Popery devised and accomplished both. Oliver Cromwell, that noble champion of Protestantism, sent a letter to the Duke of Savoy "that he should think himself wanting in his duty to God, to charity, and his religion, if he should be satisfied with pitying only the sufferings of the Vaudois, unless he exerted himself to the utmost of his ability to deliver them out of it." This letter, backed by a note from Cardinal Mazarin, the French minister, who used to turn pale whenever Cromwell's name was mentioned, stopped the massacres. But to strike some further terror into the Pope, and the little Princes of Italy, the Protector gave out that, forasmuch that as he was satisfied they had been the promoters of this persecution, that he would keep it in mind, and lay hold of the first opportunity to send his fleet into the Mediterranean, to visit Civita Vecchia, and other parts of the ecclesiastical territories, and that the sound of his cannon should be heard in Rome itself.

CHAPTER VIII.

The Mystical Number 666, applied to Romanism, fully explained and dilated upon.

To fully understand the meaning and application of the number 666, we shall first give the characteristics of the Beast, as described by St. John, Rev. c. XIII.

Here the Beast is described at large who was only mentioned before (c. XI. 7.), a Beast in the prophetic style is a tyrannical idolatrous Empire. The Kingdom of GOD and of Christ is never represented under the image of a Beast. As Daniel (c. VII. 2, 3.) beheld, four great Beasts, representing the four great Empires, came up from a stormy sea, that is from the cominotions of the world; St. John (v. 1.) saw this Beast in like manner rise up out of the sea. He was before (c. XI. 7.) to ascend out of the Abyss, or bottomless pit, but here he is said to ascend out of the sea; so that the Sea and Abyss, or bottomless pit, are in these passages the same, no doubt is to be made; but that this Beast was designed to represent the Roman Empire, for this far both antients and moderns, Papists and Protestants, are agreed. The only doubt and controversy is, whether it was Rome, Pagan, or Christian Imperial, or Papal; to be clearly determined in the sequel.

St. John saw this Beast rise up out of the sea, but the Roman Empire was risen and established long before John's time; and therefore this must be the Roman Empire not in its then present, but in some future shape and form; and it arose in another shape and form after its destruction by the Northern Nations. The Beast hath seven Heads and ten Horns, which are the well-known marks and signals of the Roman Empire, the seven Heads alluding to the seven mountains on which Rome is situated, and the seven forms of Government which successively prevailed there, and the ten Horns, signifying the ten kingdoms into which the

Roman Empire was divided. It is remarkable that the Dragon had seven Crowns upon his Head, but the Beast had upon his Horns ten Crowns, so that there had been in the meanwhile a Revolution of power from the Heads of the Dragon to the Horns of the Beast, and the Sovereignty which before was exercised by Rome alone was now transferred and divided among ten kingdoms; but the Roman Empire was not divided into ten kingdoms till after it was become Christian. Although the Heads had lost their Crowns, yet they still retained the names of Blasphemy. In all its Heads, in all its Forms of Government, Rome was guilty of Idolatry and Blasphemy. Imperial Rome was called, and delighted to be called, the Eternal City, the Heavenly City, the Goddess of the Earth, the Goddess; and had her Temples, with Altars and Incense, and sacrifices offered up to her; and how Papal Rome hath arrogated to herself Divine Titles and Honours is well known to all who have read the History of Romanism.

As Daniel's fourth Beast was without a name (ch. VII. 7.) and devoured and broke in pieces the three former; so this Beast (v.2.) is also without a name, and partakes of the nature and qualities of the three former, having the body of a Leopard, which was the third Beast, or Grecian Empire, and the feet of a Bear, which was the second Beast, or the Persian Empire, and the Mouth of a Lion, which was the first Beast, or Babylonian Empire, and consequently this must be the same as Daniel's fourth Beast, or the Roman Empire. But still it is not the same Beast, the same empire entirely, but with some variation. And the Dragon gave him his power, or his armies, and his seat, or his Imperial Throne, and great authority, or jurisdiction over all the parts of his empire. The Beast is, therefore, the successor and substitute of the Dragon, or the Idolatrous Heathen Roman Empire, and what other idolatrous power hath succeeded to the Heathen Roman Emperors. in Rome all the world is a judge and a witness. A new species of idolatry has been introduced by Papal Rome, nominally different, but essentially the same, the worship of Angels and Saints, instead of the Gods and demi-Gods of Antiquity.

Another mark of the Beast was described (v.3.) One of the Heads as it were wounded to Death. This head was the sixth,

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