standing, to crush inquiry, to extinguish knowledge, to gather into its treasury the wealth of the world, and to establish a boundless and uncontrolled dominion over the bodies and the consciences of mankind?

As you pass on through the long series of its bloodstained pages, and contemplate successively its unhallowed achievements, it will be impossible for you not to feel that it is pre-eminently THE FOE OF HUMAN SOCIETY, and you will wonder that ever rational minds should have become so fearfully debased, as patiently to resign themselves to its atrocious oppression.

Of the truth of the proposition which I have been endeavouring to illustrate, our forefathers in the times of Reformation were deeply convinced. It was no matter of doubt with them, whether the principles of Popery are hostile to the social welfare of mankind. Its baneful influence had been long before their eyes. Alas! they had felt it. In the character of patriots, as well as of religious men, they set themselves against it, and sought to break its yoke for ever from the necks of their posterity. For this purpose, among other momentous measures, they originated those confederacies, or coVENANTS, SO famous in our country's annals-in which they solemnly consecrated their land to the Most High-put it under his protection, and separated it for ever from the system by which it had been degraded and oppressed. And although, on the part of ignorant, and unprincipled, and prejudiced men, these transactions have been censured

and traduced, I hesitate not to express my conviction, that they rank among the most memorable and illustrious appearances on behalf of civil sand religious liberty which our history records, and that to them, under the blessing of divine Providence, we are mainly indebted for the preservation of the reformed religion, and the establishment of liberty throughout our realm.* Alas! these interesting and honourable deeds have long since been trampled in the dust by

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*Dr. Robertson, whom no one will accuse of bigotted attachment to these ancient deeds, has the following honourable remarks respecting them ;-" When roused by any extraordinary event, or alarmed by any public danger, the people of Israel were accustomed to bind themselves, by a solemn covenant, to adhere to that religion which the Almighty had established among them; and this the Scots considered as a sacred precedent which it became them to imitate.--Almost all the Popish princes were then joined in a league for extirpating the reformed religion, and nothing could be more natural, or seem more efficacious, than to enter into a counterassociation, in order to oppose the progress of that formidable conspiracy. To these causes did the covenant, which is be come so famous in history, owe its origin.-At the juncture in which it was first introduced, we may pronounce it to have been a prudent and laudable device for the defence of the religion and liberties of the nation, nor were the terms in which it was conceived, other than might have been ex. pected from men alarmed with the impending danger of Popery, and threatened with an invasion by the most bigotted, and most powerful Prince in Europe."-History of Scotland.

the great body of those who have shared their blessings. A load of condemnatory sentences has lain upon them even to this day. Against them runs a strong current of public opinion; and now, at length, measures are proposed to be incorporated in our constitution, as entirely opposed to their spirit and tendency, and to the great cause which they were instituted to promote, as can possibly be conceived.Whether all this be not deep infatuation, as far as concerns the glory of God, and the religious and political interests of these covenanted lands, time will show.

It is not necessary for me to dwell on the remaining part of the proposition which I have been illustrating. At the same time, it is of importance to advert to it; for, in the judgment of every person who is aware of the unspeakable value of the soul, its need of salvation, and its awful misery if finally lost, it cannot but be regarded as a fearful aggravation of the iniquity of the Papal Church, that ITS DOCTRINES ARE RUINOUS

TO SOULS.

Of this truth it does seem that multitudes of Protestants, in present times, have entirely lost sight. In their imagination, Popery is merely Christianity under a peculiar form-differing from others, just as one system of ecclesiastical administration differs from another-and it is supposed that the great truths of the gospel by which sinners are saved are as really and as freely accessible to its disciples, as to the mem

bers of any denomination in the Protestant Church, Alas! it is a vain imagination-entertained, not only in opposition to all that Scripture affirms respecting the Papacy, but in defiance of all the evidence to the contrary which is afforded by the avowed doctrines of the Church of Rome. Is she not, in holy Scripture, expressly, and in point of eminence, termed "ANTICHRIST”—“ MYSTERY OF INIQUITY”—“ MAN OF SIN" and "SON OF PERDITION ?" And is it not obvious, that, while these emphatic terms, applied by the Spirit of Truth to the Church of Rome, express the irreconcilable opposition that exists between her doctrines and the glory and kingdom of Christ-they at the same time intimate the fatal tendency of Papal principles, in reference to the spiritual and eternal interests of mankind?-Is it conceivable, that a system, which is pre-eminently "the foe of Christ," should be any other than the foe of man? Is it likely, that a system, which, before God, is a "mystery of iniquity," should have any correspondence in its spirit and influence with the " great mystery of godliness?" Is it to be imagined, that a system, whose character and doctrines are so corrupt and abominable, as to procure for it, from him who cannot lie, the appellation of the "man of sin," can have any tendency to renovate the heart, or to sanctify the life? No, my brethren, if faith in the doctrines of the Papal Church could really be the mean of holiness and salvation, it would be impossible to account

for the appalling terms in which her character was before-hand delineated in holy writ.

In the enumeration which the Spirit of God has given of the articles of Rome's unhallowed merchandise, it will be recollected that express mention is made of "the souls of men;"* and it is impossible to contemplate her acknowledged principles, without feeling that the perdition of the human soul is the melancholy consummation to which they lead. In the first place, she interdicts "the indiscriminate perusal of the Holy Scriptures" on the part of her members, affirming "that more evil than good is found to result from it ;"+ or, if, in some instances, she permits them to be read, the permission is restricted to those versions which she has thought proper to authorise. And what are they? Versions in which important statements of Holy Scripture are grossly mis-translated, to countenance her favourite but ruinous doctrines, and in which the holy Oracles of the living God are corrupted and debased, by being intermingled with the heresies and blasphemies of ungodly men. Now, in the one case as well as in the other, there is peril to souls. If the disciples of the Papacy be deprived altogether of the Divine Word-and this is the condition of by far the greater part of them-how shall "the simple" be made "wise unto salvation ?". '-"Faith

cometh by hearing," but "hearing by the Word of

等

Rev, xviii. 13.

+ See Appendix. No. IV.