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must still be to the word; and if any passages be obscure, they are to be compared with others, and thus Scripture will be its own interpreter. If an angel from heaven,' saith the Apostle, preach any other Gospel than that ye have received, let him be accursed.' Surely, then, Luther may oppose the plain sense of Scripture to councils, fathers, and universities. What can you reply? Either deny that there is any certain meaning in the divine writings, or allow that Luther is justifiable in placing its dictates in opposition to human opinion.

"But, I ask, to what amounts his disagreement with ancient fathers and councils? On various points he is completely supported by Augustine, Cyprian, Hilary, and Chrysostom; though, it is true, many things are to be found in the writings of Luther on the Sacraments, vows, and other subjects, which are not to be seen in them. No wonder. That age knew nothing of the tyrannical laws of Roman Pontiffs, nothing of our Parisian masters, and their articles of faith. That season, indeed, was the noon-day of evangelical truth; ours is the eventide, in which darkness covers the minds of sinners as a punishment for their guilt; and, above all, that is gross night in which the Sorbonne divinity prevails; preferring, as it does, these human opinions to the Scriptures of truth! Does not the Spirit of God, by his prophets, threaten such a punishment; and does not Paul speak of those who should teach for doctrines the commandments of men? and to whom can he refer, but to the Sorbonne divines, or such as they?

To go still farther, I declare that whatever blame may attach to any opposer of the Fathers, attaches in fact to the Parisian disputants themselves. The best of these writers denounce whatever is not from the Spirit of Christ as

sinful; but the Sorbonnists not only deny that such acts are guilty, but even affirm that many of them are meritorious. The Fathers will not allow, that mere human strength is adequate to keep the divine law; the Parisians maintain that it is.

"It is written, if an offender refuse to hear the church, let him be unto thee as a heathen man and a publican.' But, pray, what do you call the Church? No doubt, you would answer, the Gallican church. But how can that be the church of Christ, which has not the word of Christ, who declares that his sheep hear his voice? We call that his true Church which is built upon the word of God, and which is nourished, fed, and governed by it; in a word, which derives every thing, and judges of every thing, by the Gospel of Christ; for he that is of God, heareth the words of God.'

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"You condemn Luther, and excommunicate him, without making an appeal to reason or Scripture! It was your part to accuse, not to condemn. You neither accuse nor argue; but, contrary both to divine and human laws, summarily condemn, and for no other reason than because you are our lords and masters! O shame, shame! But hold, I must not treat these lords so disrespectfully. They declare they imitate the example of the Apostles, when they send out decrees without scriptural authority. I wish, however, they would make good this declaration. Christ quotes Scripture. So doth Paul. Sorbonne has the exclusive charter to be believed without Scripture ! I reckon you are of Egyptian descent; the offspring of Jannes and Jambres, who withstood Moses. But know, the truth of Luther's doctrine will stand firm and unshaken, in spite of your opposition, and that of all the powers darkness. You talk of grace producing grace. Alas! poor France, to have such wretched instructors."

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The substance of this powerful Apology is thus given, as containing matter useful for the Protestant church in every age. It failed, however, to convince those to whom it was addressed. A mock answer appeared in the name of the Parisian divines, which Dupin supposes to have been written by Luther; but this conjecture is not supported by the superior judgment of Seckendorf.

Albert, archbishop of Mentz, exhibiting new tables of papal indulgences at Halle in Saxony, and compelling a clergyman to repudiate his wife, on pain of imprisonment, Luther wrote a severe remonstrance to that prelate; who replied, by advice of Capito, his counsellor and chaplain, in a pacificatory tone. Melancthon, how ever, had previously commended this cause to the notice of Capito, whom he knew to be favourably disposed to the reformatory doctrines; but with too much fearfulness and prevarication, in an epistle, which Scultetus has preserved from the original; but which is generally unnoticed by the writers of his life.

"You receive herewith a letter from that great and good man Luther, in which your prince is admonished of his duty; an office, however, which ought to have been discharged by yourself; and I send it you, that your sovereign and yourself may comment upon it in private; as I well know what the world thinks of Luther, and fear some of your courtiers may enter tain similar contempt of him. You should strive, by every means in your power, to counteract this sentiment, and to give effect to this remonstrance. For, in the first place, if Luther be raised up of God, as numbers believe, to call back mankind to the knowledge of the Gospel, beware, lest it should appear, that ye have not so much opposed Luther, as Him, whose Apostle he is. ReJAN. 1824.

member, Christ considers all injury done to the least of his flock, as done to himself! The Lord complains, that the pharisees and lawyers, who rejected the testimony of the Baptist, had despised the counsel of God. What, if the same should be done by those who despise Luther! I know he ap

pears to the world both fool and knave; but the Gospel must prove foolishness to the Greeks, and a stumbling-block to the Jews. You cannot deny that he preaches the Gospel: if Luther be rejected, that is rejected. Nor am I ignorant that his severity offends you. But still the reflection occurs, What, if he be raised up to declare the truth! Think, I beseech you, of the state of things among us, and say, if they do not require something pungent. And now that one is come who can thus prick you, will ye kick against him? Paul bids us take heed, that we quench not the Spirit.

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not this very thing. I might add more upon this subject, were I not writing to a scholar and a divine.

In the second place, as to what privately concerns your prince. Let him feel this sharp rebuke; and do not help him, by any dexterity, to evade its force. It will cost you but little trouble to give it full effect. It relates, as I apprehend, to indulgences, which, as they were some time since deplored, could be altogether abolished by a little management. And you have even cause to admire Luther's forbearance, in confining himself to the cause of indulgences. Suppose he had chosen to meddle with the rest of the vices and impositions of your supreme chamber, as he justly might. Yield, then, in this one point, to a faithful monitor, with so much real benefit to yourselves, if you would send out a decree worthy of a bishop*.”

*Vonder Hardt. Hist. Liter. Reform, P. v. p. 41.

Thus faithfully did this excellent person exhort a weak brother, knowing that the fear of man worketh a snare. Capito answered both Luther and Melancthon. He requested the former to be guarded in making charges against particular dignitaries, in his desire to reform the state of ecclesiastical affairs; and hints, that his violence might do more harm than good.

At the same time he assured the latter, that he really exerted himself to keep the prince-bishop well affected towards the Saxon professor; and would endeavour, not only that he should not be despised; but that he should be had in honour as an Evangelist, to whose admonitions it became both his master and himself to give all serious attention.

THE NATIVITY!

"Tis midnight, o'er Judæa's plains
A more than mortal silence reigns;
The starry hosts in squadrons bright
Glow in the firmament of night;
And shepherds watch their sleeping fold,
Beneath that arch of fretted gold.
When, lo! a stream of glorious light
Burst in appalling splendour there,
And showed to their astonish'd sight
A seraph visitant of air.
Radiant in beams ineffable

The herald angel stood confest,
And thus in liquid sweetness fell

The accents of the heavenly guest:
"Fear not; to you and all mankind
Glad tidings of great joy I bring;
In David's city, ye shall find

A new-born Saviour, Christ, and King!

A manger is his humble bed,

And, while the virgin mother keeps

Her vigils round that holy head,

E'en there the world's Redeemer sleeps."

He spake-attending seraphim

Confirm the mission from above;

And countless thousands swell the hymn
Of triumph and redeeming love!
Oh! who but they whose gifted eyes
Were bless'd with this apocalypse,
May speak th' angelic harmonies

Of golden harps and cherub lips!
The hierarchy of heaven, again
Pour'd jubilant th' exulting strain,
As at creation's birth:

And thus the lofty prelude ran,
"Glory to God, good-will to man,

And peace to all on earth.”

Unveil'd appear the glittering throng,
Salvat.on is their joyful song;

While hallelujahs fill the sky,

And hail the " Day-spring from on high."

And Truth and Mercy met inspire

The strains of this celestial choir.
Slowly recede the heavenly host,
And dying echoes soft and clear
Melt into silence on the ear,

As in the realms of light the pageantry is lost.

J. S***.

EXTRACT OF A DISCOURSE DELIVERED AT THE FUNERAL OF THE REV. WM. D. HOARE, BY THE LORD BISHOP OF LIMERICK.

Revelation, xiv. 13.—I heard a voice from heaven saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth: Yea, saith the Spirit, that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them.

THE most affecting passage in all heathen antiquity is the last conversation of Socrates. This great and virtuous man, by an iniquitous sentence, was condemned to die. On the morning of his death, at a very early hour, his friends assembled in the prison-for the last time to look his countenance; for upon the last time, to drink in wisdom from his lips; and, in his last moments, to learn from his precepts how they ought to live, from his example how they ought to die. His manner and his words were answerable to the solemn occasion. His cheerfulness, indeed, was unabated; but, as it was fitting, his discourse was more than usually elevated and grave. He spake as a dying man ought to speak, of life and death, of time and eternity and, according to the best light which had been vouchsafed him, he argued for the immortality of the soul; under the manifest impression, that he was about to pass from bondage into liberty-from the troubles of mortality, to the joys of blessed and immortal spirits, There was reasoning-there was desire there was hope-there was a kind of moral assurance; but there was not, for in the dispensation under which he lived there could not be, the realizing view of faiththe substance of things hoped forthe evidence of things unseen. He felt strongly himself, and he excited strong feelings in his friends. But his arguments were not for the multitude; they were addressed only to the privileged and intellec

tual few; and, even among those few, they were too refined and subtile, to bring home to the mind a settled and serene conviction. The great philosopher and orator of Rome has left it on record, that, whenever he was reading this dialogue, it extorted his assent; but, whenever he laid aside the volume, his belief was gone. And the impression of these reasonings on another Roman worthy, as described by our Christian poet, was no more than this:

"The wide, the unbounded prospect lies before me;

But shadows, clouds, and darkness rest upon it."

Not such, my brethren, is the Christian's prospect; and speaking, as I do, with the remains of mortality before me, the emblems of mortality around me, and the consciousness of mortality within me, I thank my God for that blessed hope of everlasting life, which he hath given us in our Saviour Jesus Christ! Those things which, for ages, were hidden from the wise and prudent, are now revealed unto babes. The unlettered peasant, the scarcely weaned child, are admitted, as it were, behind the veil of the invisible world; and there, by the eye of faith, are given to behold Him who brought life and immortality to light, seated on the right hand of the Father, and diffusing joy through the assembly of the first-born, and speaking peace to the spirits of the just made perfect. We have a revelation which, by manifold and incontestable proofs, we know to have ceeded from God; and by that revelation we are assured, that all who depart this life in his faith and fear, depart to be with Christ, even as Christ is with the Father. am the resurrection and the life," saith our Lord; "he that believeth

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on me, though he were dead, yet shall he live; and whosoever liveth and believeth in me shall never die."-" We know," saith the Apostle St. Paul, “ that, if our earthly tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal, in the heavens." And, not to multiply passages, which crowd upon the mind and press for utterance-in the text we have the testimony of him who leaned upon Christ's bosom while on earth, and who, by special revelation, saw Christ in the kingdom of his glory; and these are the words of his testimony: “I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write, Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth; even so, saith the Spirit;—that they may rest from their labours; and their works do follow them."

The manner in which these good tidings were delivered, is worthy of attention. I heard a voice from heaven. It was thus, that, in the divine economy, truths of an everlasting interest were commonly revealed to man. The Law was proclaimed from Mount Sinai; the Gospel was announced in the field of Bethlehem; the Saviour was inaugurated in his kingly, priestly, and prophetic office, on the banks of Jordan; and the same Saviour, on the Mount of Transfiguration, received honour and glory as fulfiller both of Law and Gospel-all through the ministry of a voice from heaven. The same audible assurance, in the same supernatural manner, has been graciously afforded, that the dead in Christ, his humblest follower, his most afflicted servant, the beggar at the rich man's gate, passeth at once from death unto fife: a life of blessedness, and peace, and rich reward. This is not the cold result of argument the feeble glimmering of reason; it is the voice of angels, the voice of the Spirit, the voice of God himself; and, that its sound might go forth into all lands, its words

unto the ends of the world, though, at its first utterance, heard only by a solitary prisoner in the Isle of Patmos; he was commanded to register this voice, and to enroll these words: "I heard a voice from heaven, saying unto me, Write;" and the words so written are incorporated in the Book of Life, in the everlasting Gospel. He that runneth may read them; he that mourneth may take comfort in them; he that sorroweth, may henceforth sorrow not as them that are without hope; for by death the hope of the good man is converted into assurance; and his faith into possession; and his charity is rendered co-extensive with the whole family of earth and heaven.

In the Sermon on the Mount, as you are all ed his public ministry, with those aware, our Lord opengracious words which are usually called the Beatitudes: "Blessed are the poor in spirit; blessed are the mourners, the meek, the hungry and thirsty after righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peace-makers, the persecuted on account of righteousness. In the Apocalyptic vision, the voice of an angel, perhaps the voice of Christ himself, pronounces a new beatitude, the crown and consummation of all the rest-Blessed are the dead ; not, indeed, the dead universally, but the dead which die in the Lord. The other beatitudes have their growth, and, to a certain degree, bear their fruit on earth; but the growth and fruit of this beatitude are altogether in the invisible world. The dead are no more seen among us; no sooner has the spirit left its tabernacle of clay, than it is transported to worlds beyond the grave; and in some one or other of our Father's many mansions, the spirit of each individual that has died in the Lord, is present with the Lord in happiness which knows no end.

But who are "the dead which die in the Lord ?" This saying has, by some interpreters, been restrict

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