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and undisturbed repose? What! has millennial glory burst upon the world, so that henceforth there shall be nothing that shall hurt or destroy in all the holy mountain of the Lord? No! no! no!—far, far otherwise! For if there ever was a day, when it was needful for all genuine protestants and spiritual members of christian churches to prayerfully study the Scriptures; intelligently to understand their distinctive principles; and to stand steadfastly by their religious principles; it is the present eventful and trying period in which we live. Now is the time, of all times, when we should buy the truth and sell it not, when we should "believe not every spirit, but try the spirits whether they be of God, because many false prophets are gone out into the world." For surely in this day of abounding and abominable heresy, when popery, as avowedly opposed to and beyond the bounds of the Church of England-and Tractarianism, the sister of popery, though begotten and born at Oxford, and nurtured by Dr. Pusey and others within the pale of the Establishment, are each, in their several ways, attempting to undermine all that is peculiarly valuable and scriptural in the essential doctrines of protestantism; if, too, fundamental truths, for which apostles agonized, and martyrs and confessors willingly shed their blood at the stake, are being distorted,

ERRORISTS COMPLIMENTED.

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dishonoured, and contemned, or recommended to be kept back in "reserve;"* if ill-disguised popish error, meretriciously bedizened in innumerable specious garbs something like truth, is being superstitiously displayed, and assiduously promulgated from many a pulpit by many a priest, and even courteously complimented by mitred dignitaries of the church;+-if all this is transpiring around us, then surely it is high time for private christians, and the scriptural "bishops" of New Testament churches, to gird on the armour, to endure hardness as the good soldiers of Jesus Christ, and to" contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints."

* See Tract No. 80, entitled, " On Reserve in Commu-nicating Religious Knowledge." The object of this tract is, to attempt to show to the clergy that the doctrine of the atonement, and other grand truths, ought not to be fully and frequently preached to the common people!!

The Bishop of London, in his recent charge, commences the second part of it with a warm eulogium upon the Tractarian writers, for their zeal in reviving certain forms and "bodily exercises" which had fallen into desuetude. Thus graciously speaks Dr. Blomfield:-" We are much indebted to those learned and pious men, who have forcibly recalled our attention to a branch of duty too long imperfectly performed." Such is the commendatory language of this prelate, when alluding to a class of writers, who have embodied in the ninety "Tracts for the Times" almost every tenet peculiar to popery, who are ill

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NEUTRALITY INADMISSIBLE.

To live in times, when, and to be placed in circumstances where, the sacred interests of "the faith once delivered to the saints," or a good conscience must be sacrificed, if an inglorious silence or a cowardly neutrality be maintained, is an unenviable position. For if you speak out, and valiantly contend for the faith, you must break peace with many; yet if you keep back from coming to the help of the Lord against the mighty, you must connive at what is unscriptural in theory, and dangerous to souls in ten

disguised Romanists in sentiment and feeling, who recommend to hold back a part of the counsel of God, and who seize every opportunity of traducing the Reformation, and vilifying the honoured memory of the martyrs of the Protestant Church!!-but whose main and covert object appears to be, to re introduce as many popish dogmas, rites and ceremonies, and foolish rubrical observances as they possibly can, into the discipline and worship of the professedly protestant church. The Bishop of Exeter has also, in his charge (see pp. 5 to 15), given lengthened commendation to the Oxford Tracts; though disapproving of the last and worst of them, No. 90. But he has proceeded further, and withdrawn his licence, and thus suspended the Rev. Mr. Babb, of Turnchapel, near Plymouth," for the great crime (says the Devonport Telegraph) of declaring his hostility to the errors of the Puseyite doctrines, and for warning his flock not to hear those who held them." For this Dr. Phillpotts has silenced him!!

PAINFUL, IMPERATIVE DUTY.

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dency, and thus sin against conscience, truth, and God. Therefore to attempt, or even to wish, to preserve silence, our own ease, private friendships, or outward reputation, at the expense of that which the Eternal has revealed as saving and essential truth, is at once treason against God, injustice to the souls of fellow immortals, and execrable perfidy to the cause of genuine protestantism in our own country and the world at large. The susceptible mind of the plaintive prophet Jeremiah felt much inward commotion, between the yearnings of desire for peace, and the dictates of duty, as to continued opposition to the degeneracy of the times in which he lived. And as duty and private feeling were not then in happy combination, he exclaimed, "Woe is me, my mother, that thou hast borne me a man of strife, and a man of contention to the whole earth!" Something similar to this the christian soldier frequently feels. And if it be a woe to be born to strife, and a sorrow to be called to contention, nothing can reconcile a good man and a lover of peace to duties so painful (yet sometimes imperative in the church), but the solemn conviction that the voice of his Captain calls him to battle, that he wields no weapon but the sword which Christ came to send on the earth; and that if he seem compelled to assume a hostile attitude and bearing, it is only as he is

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TRUTH DEARER THAN REPOSE.

the champion of truth, not because he is pugnacious or quarrelsome, but rather because Bible verities are dearer to him even than peace, and the purity of the faith infinitely more valuable in his esteem, than a questionable tranquillity. And on these accounts only can he bring his mind into a state of willingness to blow the trumpet of war, to disturb a dangerous and destructive peace with the apostles of Error; in order the better, ultimately, to consolidate and preserve the vital and improtant interests of thetruth as it is in Jesus," "the doctrine which is according to godliness,"-" THE FAITH WHICH WAS ONCE DELIVERED TO THE SAINTS."

Influenced, then, by these painful, yet momentous considerations, the writer of the following pages affectionately invites the serious attention of all the members of the church of Christ scripturally to contemplate the object for which they are to contend-in connection, also, with the spirit of earnestness which they are to exemplify. For by the specious writings and indefatigable efforts of infidels, papists, semi-protestants, and superficial professors of religion, the cause of God, and Bible truth is perilled the tenets of the Reformers damaged -and the vital and invaluable interests of our common PROTESTANTISM ENDANGERED.

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