Q. Which are the marks or signs of the true Church.

A. The true Church is one, Holy, Catholic, and Apostolical.

Q. How is the Church Catholic or Universal?

A. Because it has subsisted in every age, and is to last to the end of time, and will be spread through all nations.

Q. Why do we call the Church Roman?

A. Because the visible head of the Church is bishop of Rome, and because St. Peter and his successors fixed their see in Rome.

Q. Who is the visible head of the Church? A. The Pope, who is CHRIST'S VICAR ON earth, and SUPREME visible head of the Church!

And this is the doctrine with which the Papists of Ireland are inoculated in the cradle; to spread into intolerance and hatred of their fellow subjects. The man who does not confess the Pope to be the head of Christ's Church, and Popery to be the true faith, is put altogether out of the pale of salvation. And in what ferocity would the believers in this dreadful doctrine legislate for us, if, in our blindness and folly, they were suffered to have the power! In what spirit of evil would men legislate for

those, whom they declared to be damned! or capable of salvation only by being dragged into the Church of Rome!

The oath of the priest declares,

"Ye receive and confess all things delivered, defined, and confessed by the sacred canons, and general councils, and especially the holy Council of Trent; and withal condemn, reject, and ACCURSE all things contrary thereto, and ALL HERESIES whatsoever, condemned, rejected, and accursed by the Church."

"This true Catholic faith, oUT OF WHICH NO MAN CAN BE SAVED! which at this present time I voluntarily profess and truly hold, I promise, vow, and swear, with God's help, that I will retain and confess whole and inviolate to the last breath of my life; and will take care, as far as in me lies, shall be holden, taught, and preached by all that are under me, and within my care and tuition-So help me God." (12th Art. Pope Pius's Creed.)

This cursing of every belief but its own is so deeply interwoven with Popery, that it forms a portion of all its obligations. In the consecration of a bishop, the consecrator asks him,

"Q. Believest thou that the Holy Catholic

and Apostolic Church is the one true Church, in which the one true baptism is given, and the true remission of sins?

A. I believe.

Q. Moreover, dost thou ACCURSE every heresy, which lifteth itself up against the Holy Catholic Church?

A. I ACCURSE them."

This is the consecration service used in Ireland at this hour: and thus it atrociously asserts by direct inference, that the Protestant Church is a lie, that its baptism is invalid, and that its believers can have no remission of sins!

The Catechismus Romanus, (Edit. Rome, 1726,) declares, "That he is called a heretic, who neglecting the authority of the Church, pertinaciously maintains suspicious opinions! It divides the excluded from the Church, and, of course, from the hope of salvation, into three classes, infidels, heretics, and the excommunicated. It is declared of the heretics, in language highly significant, "that they are still within the jurisdiction of the Church, which may try them, punish them, and damn them by anathema *."

* Non negandum tamen, cum in ecclesiæ potestate sint, ut qui ab ea in judicium vocentur, puniantur et anathemate dam

mentur.

Thus, if the Papist tribunal can catch the heretic Protestant, who does not believe that the Pope is God's Vicar on earth, it will, whenever it dare, sentence, and torture, and damn him by order of infallibility!

And this denunciation is the common, undiminished tenet of Popes and Doctors to this day. The late Pope, in his rescript to France, on the subject of toleration, declares that "the toleration of other faiths is altogether inadmissible," as contrary to the canons, councils, and Catholic religion, and must be, therefore, utterly rejected by him. He further declares his Church to be that, out of which there can be no hope of salvation, "fuori della quale non vi e speranza di salute!"

The Class Book of the Maynooth students, the future priesthood of Ireland, bears, on its front, the same doctrine, and consigns to eternal flame both the excommunicated and the heretic, "tam illos quos ecclesia e sinu suo ejecit, quam eos qui illam relinquunt." Even at this moment, while the Popish petition is lying on the table of the House of Commons; the Pope, the lord and master of the petitioners, their sole and infallible interpreter of the truth, declares by a public instrument, that the Bible

in our Churches is "THE BIBLE OF THE DEVIL,

What confidence can we have in such men, in their promises of peace, or in their oaths of allegiance! The Pope, when he wrote that rescript, knew, for it requires no depth of scholarship, that the English translation of the Scriptures was a most faithful, sincere, and admirable version; the work of the most distinguished scholars of the day, and endeared to the English people. But it was enough for him and his, to know that it was the work of Protestants, to pronounce it the Work" of the DEVIL!"

And who shall, after this, have the hardihood to talk of conciliation on the part of those men. The guide of the Papist faith pronounces our religion accursed, our persons accursed, and our Bible accursed! Will the Irish Papists dare to tell their Pope that his declaration is a falsehood? And if they will not, what less than madness would it be, to give them the power of doing us evil.

The apparent public disregard of the Popish question, has been argued into a kind of evidence of its popularity. But there is a good deal of management and artifice in this affair.