spirit which the Scriptures attach to those who are in authority. And the dissenting Churches, if they cannot accredit a dominant or endowed Church, yet, finding it in existence, and supported and selected by the majority, and themselves in an inferior position, nationally consider, it is evidently their duty and their interest too to exercise humility, and submission, and forbearance. We do not call upon them to abandon their views of church government; we cannot expect that they should all at once yield to our arguments, or see in all things with our eyes: but if the Bible is to be the rule of action, there can be no difficulty in determining what should be done. Let them progress with all diligence and zeal in an untiring effort to save their own souls and those of others, but let them forbear towards those who aim at the same object, though in a different course.

And, ah! if they could but see it, they would discover, that in any supposed inferiority of condition, they stand on no disadvantage for spiritual attainment. Our lowly Saviour has sanctified and ennobled the "lowest place." He took it himself, he recommended it to his disciples. He knew what is in man, and consequently, what was best for his highest interests. Our dissenting brethren may rest assured, that while they thankfully cling to what they consider their distinctive advantage, they will lose nothing by humbly submitting to any thing which they regard as of a subordinate character. That very subordination forms the discipline, the trial of the Christian life to them. Let them go forward intent upon doing good in their own way, rejoicing if others are coming to a similar issue though it be by a different course, and forbearing to be bitter towards those who seem to be ever so erring, recollecting, that but for the sovereign, unmerited grace of God, there is no error, or negligence, or provocation into which they would not themselves fall.

Now beyond this, we fear, in the present state of things at least, that we shall scarcely get. Yet this is a

grand step towards Christian unity: what mountains of difficulty and mischief will it not effect! If all would resolve to bear and forbear in Christian brotherly love, we should need little more. We cannot get rid of the condition of trial: God wills it for his Church on earth: and his Church needs it; it is the discipline which alone can bring her safely through her militant to her triumphant condition; but the principle of mutual forbearance disarms the trial of its sting, and in the luxury of the peaceable fruits of righteousness which result, we quarrel not with the irksomeness of the discipline that brings them.

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Forbearing one another in love," then, is a grand feasible means of effecting Christian union. We have said that we do not see our way much beyond this; but the practical exhibition of this precept will open the door to extensive blessing. Allay the bitter invective, the rancorous hate, the fretful jealousy, and we have at once the ground cleared for pleasant and profitable intercourse amongst differing Christians we have at once the primitive spectacle exhibited, 66 see how these Christians love one another :" and thus we have removed the grand barrier to the progress of the Gospel at home and abroad. We may not be able to accomplish more: but let not a despair of accomplishing all that we could wish, discourage us from attempting to do what we can. We confess that we read much on the subject of Christian union that appears to us Utopian and visionary; we may be far removed from many things that are advanced as essential, and we may question their expediency, but here let us take our stand. Let us seek to be so occupied with our own concerns, as to have little time or inclination to comment upon those of others. Let all that we know to be so faulty and wrong within ourselves and our own communion, lead us to be tender toward the defect of others; for mutual forbearance is best grounded on a heartfelt conviction of our own manifold sins, negligences, and ignorances.

And shall we not, before we lay down our pen, urge one more point on the consideration of all who are panting and longing for greater Christian union; and that is, the duty of meeting those who differ from us, as far as we can, in works of benevolence and charity. We really do not understand how there can be a difference of opinion on this point, amongst

those who are sincere in their desires after Christian union. We may not be able to admit the ministers of other denominations into our pulpits, and many other approximations may be at variance with our present ecclesiastical discipline, but here, at least, without any compromise, we can manifest the genuineness of Christian brotherhood, and make it evident, that we are not considering how far we can be removed, but how near we can properly advance towards those who differ from us. Hence we cannot but maintain, without thinking one disparaging thought or uttering one disparaging word towards those

many excellent societies which are exclusive in their constitution, every honest effort at Christian union should lead us to hail with a hearty welcome, and to support with a ready co-operation, those societies in which all Christians unite to spread the glory of their Lord and the best interests of their fellow-creatures. There never was a period in which, in this point of view, we regarded the British and Foreign Bible Society, and the Religious Tract Society, and some other similar institutions, with so much interest as we do at present. In the lack of opportunities for drawing closer together, we value those that do exist. We long to see a growing disposition to do so; and, oh! let our prayers unceasingly be offered up to Him who alone can order the unruly wills and affections of sinful men, that he would be pleased to engrave upon our hearts, and to enable us more and more to exemplify in our conduct the rule of his own word-" forbearing one another in love."

IRELAND AND HER CHURCH. RAY, D. D., Dean of Ardagh. 2nd

Ir any one would really desire to know the truly evil character of the Romish Church, they must read it in the history of Ireland. If they would know the certain connexion of vital error with suffering, they must read it in the influence of that Church, and the unmitigated misery which it has produced in Ireland, otherwise one of the fairest spots upon God's earth, but now its plague-spot. The lesson has been taught to the European nations, and it should be read and learned; for never till it is, shall we have a sufficient value for the blessed, sanctifying, elevating influence of revealed truth, or sufficiently dread the privation of it by the artful intrigues of a worldly and ambitious clergy. It is historically possible that a land as enlightened as our own, renowned throughout the earth for its scholarship and its piety-the very light and balm of other nations-may, if it admits this same unholy agency permisOCTOBER-1845.

By the VERY REV. RICHARD MUREdition.

sively into its bosom, become a dark bog of ignorance, and superstition, and crime, and beggary, and sorrow, and may remain so for six hundred years! This tremendous fact is before us in the history of the sister country; and it has been shown so distinctly and so fairly in the present work by Dr. Murray, that its pages have a very strong claim upon our attention. It will correct, upon sure grounds, many false impressions.

Ireland, for a thousand years, had its Christian Church, its learned bishops, and its faithful preachers, entirely independent of any connexion with the see of Rome, either before or after its present lamentable apostacy and usurpation. The island was visited by Christian Teachers, within one hundred years from our Lord's Crucifixion. In the 2nd century, missionaries went forth from her. Her teachers were renowned in various parts of Europe, Sedulius, one 3 м

of her theologians, took a prominent and able part in the Pelagian controversy; and at the time when Augustine was sent by Gregory into England, a most uncompromising enmity existed in the minds of the Irish against every thing connected with Rome; so that a parallel attempt to obtain dominion in Ireland was eminently successful. The Church retained its Protestant character for ages, affirming "that they never acknowledged the supremacy of a foreigner." It is a proved historical fact, that the Irish Church was of Eastern origin; and never till the 12th century bowed to the authority of the great Western schism at Rome. It was pure in all essential points of doctrine, and resolutely resisted the growing errors of the age. It never admitted the errors of auricular confession, or authoritative absolution, or prayer to saints or angels. All these corruptions are comparatively novel and recent. They are since the introduction of Popery in the 12th century. They only obtained dominion over the Irish mind through persevering intrigue or violence.

Even St. Patrick, the assumed Patron Saint of the Irish Roman Church was not a Papist. A Britain by birth, and educated in Gaul, he was Irish only in his affections and his domicile; and as to orders or mission from Rome, he never had either. He was sound in the faith of the Scriptures, and held it as it is held in the Protestant Churches. It is sad to see a minister of the Church of England, educated in a Protestant university, the Rev. William Palmer, in his Ecclesiastical History, turning aside from important historical documents, and receiving and issuing as truth in this matter, the bald inventions of the Romanists. All confidence in such annalists must be destroyed.

It is also matter of clear, historical testimony, that Columba and Aidan, and all that galaxy of talent and piety that shined forth from Ireland, and were known under the general title of Culdees (Gaelic, Cuildeach) that is, the solitary inhabitants of cells, received their orders through an eastern

source, had no connexion whatever with Rome, were opposed to its superstitions, and were viewed there as irregular, hostile, and impracticable dissidents from the Romish system.

At the close of the eighth century, the Danes and Northmen first began to infest the shores of the British Isles; and the period of anarchy and confusion to which their invasion and partial possession of Ireland gave rise, was most unfavourable to the quiet progress of the native Church, either in piety, learning, or wealth. The original Church gradually declined into indifference and poverty; and the conversion of the Danes by other instrumentality, gave the first spring to the Roman power in Ireland. The facts are not stated very systematically by Dr. Murray, yet he shows plainly that the Danes had no leaning to the native Church; that they introduced, in the tenth century, the Benedictine order of monks; and that they obtained the consecration of their bishops at Canterbury. Dublin, Waterford, and Limerick, at length refused the authority of the Primate of Armagh; and in the year 1038, Silitzic, a Danish king reigning in Dublin, made his fellow-countryman, Donagh, bishop of that See, and sent him to Canterbury for consecration. On his death the clergy fell into the same course, and sent Patrick his successor to Lanfranc, Archbishop of Canterbury; on which occasion he promised obedience to the English Primate and his successors in all things relating to the Church; and the wily Archbishop speedily took advantage of this favourable event to interfere with the government of the Irish Church. The work thus begun gradually went on, and at the end of the eleventh century, the Danish portion of the Church received a legate in the person of Giselbert, Bishop of Limerick. Councils were held at Dongus and at Meath; and although only about a sixth part of the Episcopal order consented to their devices, yet a plan was then laid for the subjugation of the Irish Church, which proved eventually but too successful. It was only in 1152, that the Court of Rome sent a Cardinal

legate into Ireland to endeavour to settle its hierarchy on a new plan: but finding that even then so decided a measure was threatened with failure by the opposition he had to encounter, Pope Adrian took another and yet more decided step. In 1155, he issued a bull to Henry II., King of England, in which, assuming that "Ireland, and all other Islands on which the light of Christianity hath shone, are his patrimonial right," he gives it to Henry, to enter in and possess it; reserving, what he calls, "the rights of the Churches," and the annual payment of Peter-pence, as a revenue for himself from these his assumed hereditary dominions.

Is it not sad, that the restless rapacity of some men in this world should so serve as a foundation for ambitious men to build thereon their insolent usurpations. Had Henry been a just man, the Pope's pretension would have been laughed at as folly. Honourable men would have put it down, and we should not have seen in the nineteenth century the same pretension really at work in the Pacific Ocean, to dethrone a legitimate queen, and to upset a successful Protestant mission. Nothing but the selfish interests of men would ever have given substance and currency to such a pretension; and yet it is lamentable that at this late era, ridiculous, unfounded, and unjust as is any such claim, Rome, though she dares not assert it openly, would not throw it up.

Is that like a legitimate and defined authority proceeding from a holy source? Is it not rather the unavailing assumption of power to the extent, that the weakness, the division, and the vices of men will allow it to proceed, a dominion having the base in men's iniquity, rather than in God's holiness? Let the Pope, in the 19th century say, whether he has this right to give away Ireland, and whether or not Queen Victoria holds it as his vassal! Let him say whether or not he claims now each island of the Pacific, as the Gospel light falls upon its shores; and if he does not, then let him admit the alternative, that the Pope of Rome is fallible in his pretensions, and has been an

usurper. He must either uphold or renounce such claims. Either way we know what to think of him, and we condemn yet more severely the intermediate plan of dishonest mystification.

The conquest of Ireland was accomplished by certain powerful barons. Arrogating much to themselves, and attributing little to their royal master, who had, in fact, done little, they claimed to divide the spoil, and consequently Ireland was chiefly divided among ten English families, who expelled the natives from their lands, and drove them into the mountains and morasses by incessant and harassing warfare. In the lapse of years, however, these new-comers (nearly as uneducated as the degenerated Irish) became lawless, violent, and rapacious; and, uniting in policy with the Romish ecclesiastics, they persecuted bitterly the remnant of the primitive Church, on the one hand; and on the other kept up a perpetual spirit of rebellion and discontent against the English government; always seeking further encroachments on the royal power in favour of the Church's enormous pretensions; or bringing into retributive action those paternal fulminations which the Romish Pontiff was ever ready to send forth in their behalf, and which in those days had a terror about them that it would be difficult to revive now. The "rosined lightning" is nothing to those who have been behind the scenes. The actual imbecility, however, of such weapons did not diminish the guilt of using them; and the outrageous ingratitude, sedition, and treason of the Hiberno-Romish clergy, for a long series of years, is only a sample of the universal doings of that strange combination of religious pretence and political aggression which is called "the Roman Catholic Church," and which is, in fact, not a Church of Christ, but, on the authority of inspiration, an apostacy from it. clergy had received large bribes for submission to the authority of Rome; not only all the tithes and glebe, but also complete immunity from all imposts and laws, and the power of taking, at any funeral, one third, or

The

even to one half of the goods of the deceased. Yet even now were they constantly standing forth in seditious opposition to the sovereign, though Roman Catholic; and in every petty dispute that they could raise, threatening excommunication as the consequence of resistance to their will. In one instance, Comyn, Archbishop of Dublin, in pursuit of some disputed land, excommunicated the Lord Deputy and all the members of his administration, and laid the city and diocese under an interdict. And it is worth while to notice the arts to which in those days they resorted.

"To indicate that the passion of Christ had been renewed in the indignity offered to his minister, he caused the crucifixes of the Cathedral to be laid prostrate, with crowns of thorns on the heads of the images; and one of the figures was pointed out as the miraculous representation of the suffering Redeemer, the face inflamed, the eyes dropping tears, the body bathed in sweat, and the side pouring forth blood and water!" By such stratagems the Lord Deputy was beaten, and gladly purchased his peace with a donation of twenty plough lands to the See of Dublin.

Is "Semper eadem" the motto of Rome? Why, then, are similar tricks not played now? Because the spreading light of education would expose them. Why, then, have they not the manliness to admit the guilt and folly of such puerile legerdemain, and take the low ground of fallibility, to which such authentic historic facts drive them? While they still strive to bolster up such a system of fraud, when they may-while they yet exhibit the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius-they bind upon the shameless forehead of their system all the criminality of their former lying and conjuring for God! What a developement it will be by and by for those who have pulled the wires of such a system of mummery, in hostility to the true, sanctifying, and saving religion of Jesus! In the day of decision what a tremendous matter will be the apportionment of such guilt!

The remainder of the history of Ireland, after the full establishment

of the papal power, is easily told, sad as it is. It is nothing but a series of vexatious attempts to raise the power of the clergy, and to depress the legitimate influence of the Crown; to emancipate the Romish system from all interference by the secular authority; and to leave the clergy triumphant in the midst of the most open and gross immorality; varied only by occasional disputes among themselves. At one period a contest was maintained for twenty years by the Archbishops of Armagh and Dublin, (the one, in fact representing the original Church, and the other the Romish schism,) for the Primacy; which ended at last only in a silly compromise, that the one should bear the title of "Primate of Ireland," and the other that of "Primate of all Ireland," a distinction which still continues in something very like a bull upon the face of it. The immorality of the clergy was of a fearfully notorious kind-open and unshrinking adultery and concubinage, rapine and murder. In 1421, the Archbishop of Cashel was impeached by two other Bishops among other offences, with forging the King's seal and letters patent, and with openly taking a ring from the image of St. Patrick, and giving it to his concubine." And Bishop Bale_relates, that, on his first arrival in Ireland in 1552, he found that "for a man to be able to claim a bishop, priest, or monk for his father, was accounted a great honour."

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Sir

Henry Sidney complains of the conduct of the clergy in "admitting to ecclesiastical dignities the children of unmarried bishops and priests.' In any case of rebellion or revolt, the clergy were almost invariably the open or secret abettors of the mischief. They crowned Edward Bruce king, and then abandoned him; and they received the impostor, Simnel, with an extravagant affectation of loyal zeal. The Bishop of Meath preached before him in the cathedral of Dublin, enforcing his right to the crown; and a crown taken from a statue of the Virgin Mary was placed on his head. And when the rebellion was terminated, and an oath of allegiance