ROMISH OBSERVANCE OF SAINTS' DAYS. 129 tain altars on certain saints' days, and concerning which popish practice the Bishop of London has spoken out in terms of proper reprobation? For unless all ecclesiastical history be a tissue of falsehood, some of the pretended saints in the Romish calendar were the most infamous wretches and most abandoned sinners. Yet days are kept in honour of them! How we wish that, instead of the Bishop harping so much upon the regulations of the rubric, (although he truly said "Ordinances and ceremonies, which cannot be shown to have been instituted by the Apostles, with a direction for their continuance, are not of perpetual obligation upon the whole Church ") in contravention of New Testament directions-and instead of recommending to his clergy "a stricter observance of saints' days," he had, for all he enjoined, appealed "to the law and to the testimony." Surely it would have been far more consistent and truly protestant if he had thundered forth, in his charge against the Puseyite ministers, these words of the Apostle :-" How turn ye again to the weak and beggarly elements, whereunto ye desire again to be in bondage. Ye observe days, and times, and years. I am afraid of you, lest I have bestowed upon you labour in vain." Such language as this would, in our opinion, have been faithful, appropriate, 130 VENERATION OF PLACES, and peculiarly seasonable at the present crisis of the Church's duties and dangers. For there is increasingly cherished and manifested a superstitious veneration for days, and places,* and relics; witness the fact that, in direct defiance of the laws of the Church, the communion table is, by name, construction, and design, now transformed into, and continually honoured and approached as an altar. Even pulpits and pews are now to be removed, that the people may see and bow before the altar! The chancel, too, is henceforth to be considered as adumbrating the Holy of holies, where the ark and the Shekinah originally had an abiding place,+ whilst - *Tract No. 87 says "Some devotional act of the mind, as a reverential exercise, ought to be practised at the very sight of a church." And it is said-" we ought to look upon a church and altar as holy." - -for what "Look at the chancels of the churches were they intended? Why, it is called the chancel just because there the absolution was to be pronounced which CANCELS (for that is the origin of the term)-cancels the sins of the people; and Puseyism will soon have you believe, when they get rid of the reading desk, and have the absolution confined to the chancel, that the congregation is safe when the absolution is pronounced there."See "Burnett's Fourth Lecture on Puseyism," p. 32. Let us drop the h then, and call that part of the building what its name popishly designs-viz., the CANCEL end of the church, where sin is pronounced cancelled, and forgiven! PRIESTS' VESTMENTS, &c. 131 the ministers, as priests, are to be decked in their surplices and furry ornaments to symbolize, we are told, the coats of skin which, as sinners, our first parents wore, and the white linen, being (it is said) to represent the righteousness of Jesus Christ! It is thus that Puseyism is preparing the way for an infinite number of absurd and popish practices, and leading away the minds of the people from the simplicity of Gospel truth. All these puerilities may be traced to the notions of a priestly and apostolical succession, and a supposed sacramental efficacy attending the administration of certain mere bodily exercises. But in reference to all such ceremonies and utterly unfounded assumptions, we adopt, in closing this part of the subject, the words of Claude, in his able defence of the Reformation, who says:-"To speak my own thoughts freely, it seems to me that that firm opinion, of the absolute necessity of episcopacy, that goes so high as to own no church, or call, or ministry, or sacraments, or salvation in the world, where there are no episcopal ordinations, although there should be the True Faith, the True Doctrine, and Piety there; and which would that ALL RELIGION should depend on a FORMALITY, and even on a formality that we have shown to be of no other than human institution; that opinion, I say, cannot be 132 CLAUDE'S OPINION. looked upon otherwise, then, as the very worst character and mark of the highest hypocrisya piece of pharisaism throughout, that strains at a gnat when it swallows a camel; and I cannot avoid having at least a contempt for these kind of thoughts, and a compassion for those who fill their heads with them.”* *See "Claude's Reformation," Part IV., page 97. PART III. ON THE TEMPER OF MIND WITH WHICH WE ARE TO CONTEND FOR THE FAITH. HAVING already contemplated the several reasons why we should contend for the faith, we come now to consider the spirit in which the present conflict for certain fundamental principles of Protestant doctrine is to be carried on. Grave and onerous are the duties which, in the present day of high-wrought controversy, devolve on every lover of scriptural truth. Responsible and exposed the position which the faithful soldier of Jesus Christ is called frequently and fearlessly to occupy. For never perhaps, since the primitive times, was there a period wherein errors in morals, ecclesiastical polity, or in religion, more various or more injurious, so awfully prevailed-when views the most visionary and unfounded were ever more greedily embraced, or with greater pertinacity retained-when old and oft-repeated heresies were more speciously |