May God, for Christ's sake, give the Holy Spirit with the reading of these pages, that they may conduce to the glory of God, the salvation of souls, and the edification of the Reader. SOCIETY FOR IRISH CHURCH MISSIONS, (With which is Incorporated the late Irish Society of London.) OFFICE, 11, BUCKINGHAM STREET, ADELPHI, LONDON, W.C. CONTRIBUTIONS From the 21st of September to the 20th of December, 1863. The Banner of the Truth in Ireland. POPULAR POPERY. No. I. HERE are, in the practical, popular religion of Rome in Ireland, certain salient points which require only to be known to be repudiated as perilous to the soul. It is not that other doctrines when examined are not equally false, but that these are more startling, and their danger more readily perceived. It is only ignorance of these errors that can perpetuate among Protestants the apathy with which they so generally regard missions to Roman Catholics. In Ireland, Mission-work itself, in the course of its open controversy with Rome, by the information it has forced on public notice, has done much to awaken Protestants to a knowledge of these doctrines; but while, even there, this knowledge is far from being universal, in England it is confined to a minority by no means large. It is so difficult to realize the extent to which a Christian Church can have departed from the truth, that often in much understating the evil, we are suspected of exaggeration. Let practical Romanism, therefore, speak for itself. Appended to this article is an illustration of its most modern phase-an engraving taken from one of many pictures purchased at an ordinary Roman Catholic print-shop, whence such assistants to the devotions of the people are circulated at a low price. There are large paintings on the same subject in two of the great Romish chapels in Dublin. It is a substitution of the Blessed Virgin for the Lord Jesus, in the first term of the series of promises, prophecies, and emblems which was summed on Calvary in his expiring sigh, "It is finished!" She stands in his place in the attitude of victory bruising the serpent's head, intruded into the position of Him "who through death destroyed him that had the power of death, even the devil;" and her place in the picture is sanctioned by the words addressed to her in the " Garland of the Soul," a book in general use, B |