The false assumptions of Popery, the daring spirit of infidelity, and the rashness of insubordination have called forth many external efforts. And looking at them, some are full of vain confidence that all is yet secure. Oh that we might learn, before it were too late, that our strength is not in our institutions, and their outward adaptation to our wants,-important as it is to pay a due regard to these things-but our true strength is in the mighty Spirit of the Living God!

This lawlessness IN A CONTRAST FORM, and especially in the lower orders we see in the progress of chartism, and insubordination, and of men reviling rulers, despising authority and dominion. They fulfil exactly the prediction, These are murmurers, complainers, walking after their own lusts; and their mouth speaking great swelling words, having men's persons in admiration because of advantage. But, beloved, remember ye the words which were spoken before of the apostles of our Lord Jesus Christ; how they told you that there should be mockers in the last time, who should walk after their own ungodly lusts. These be they who separate themselves, sensual, having not the Spirit. Jude 16-19.

(3.) THE SPIRIT OF POPERY, is a third danger. This, too, has its rise from the corrupted heart of man. It is the foul atmosphere of the Babylon of the New Testament, the mother of harlots and abominations of the earth, drunken with the blood of the saints, the great city seated on the seven hills, which once reigned over the kings

of the earth. It is the self-righteous leaven, which, by the corruption of the truth, allows the indulgence of the various lusts of the human heart. This was once triumphant in dominant Popery from the times of Hildebrand, and of Innocent the 3rd, to the Reformation. Though greatly weakened, its remains have still innumerable ramifications, and a fast friend in the fallen heart of man; and it is yet to be seen in professedly Papal lands in most of its abominations. The spirit of Popery is however the present evil to be contended with.

We see its spirit fully unveiled in the ceaseless activity and labours of the Papists. The indifference of Protestants, and their secularity, and their endless divisions, have revived the hopes of the Apostate Church, and given it the means of re-entrance into many places where it had once been expelled. Hence we have seen in our own country of Britain in thirty years, its chapels increase from 30 to 582, and eleven colleges, with innumerable schools, and thirty-one convents, and three monasteries established, and societies avowedly formed for diffusing Popery through the land. We have, it is said, forty Roman Catholic members now in the House of Commons. We are told in the Roman Catholic Directory for 1845, there are in England 666 missionary priests, and ninety-one in Scotland. We see our own government helping to build chapels, to support Papal Bishops, and to maintain a Papal Col

lege. Our own East India Company in 1833, applied to the See of Rome for Romish Priests to be settled at Calcutta, the application was hailed with joy, and they were eagerly sent and arrived there the following year. The plans of public education in Ireland are purposely so contrived as to satisfy the Romanist. The whole Roman Catholic population of England and Wales in 1767, was 67,916; notwithstanding the growing population, it had but increased 1400 in 1780, thirteen years subsequently. They now profess, though this is probably a vain boast, to have two millions, but certainly the increase has fearfully extended since 1780.*

The spirit of Popery on the Continent has led to the formation of a Roman Catholic concert of prayer for the re-conversion of England, and the restoration of the unlimited sovereignty of Popery through the land; this concert has the sanction of the Archbishop of Paris, and many of the provincial Prelates and Clergy of France. All this shall turn to our good, as all the prayers of the false prophet Balaam were turned to the real blessing of Israel.

The Lord thy God would not hearken unto

* Each parliament sees fresh measures granted, giving facilities to popish establishments, and popish progress. This was the character of the Roman Catholic Penal Acts Repeal in August 1844, and of the Charitable Bequests Bill in the same session, of which the Roman Archbishop Murray says in a Pastoral Address, 'it confers on us advantages of the very highest value.' Any step of the legislature in this direction, is, in the view of those who believe the plain testimony of God's word (Rev. xiv. 9, 10.) pregnant with national danger.

Balaam, but the Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing because the Lord thy God loved thee.*

*The Church and State Gazette publishes the following copy of the prayer composed by the Hon. and Rev. G. Spencer :

PRAYER FOR THE CONVERSION OF ENGLAND.

Almighty God! Father of Mercy! thou who hast determined to save men by faith, cast a propitious glance upon the kingdom of England. Disperse the darkness which heresy has spread there, and there make the torch of truth gleam in the eyes of her children, so that all may joyfully return into the bosom of our mother, the holy Church, through our Lord Jesus Christ! So be it. Holy Virgin, Mother of God, pray for England!

St. Peter and St. Paul, pray for her!

St. Gregory, the Pope, and St. Augustine, the Apostle of England, pray for her!

St. Thomas of Canterbury, holy Martyrs, and holy Confessors of England, pray for her!

Holy virgins and widows of England pray for her.

Deign to be moved, O Lord, by the prayers of your friends (sic). Deliver your people; bless your heritage; and save those souls redeemed at the cost of the precious blood of your Divine Son, who liveth and reigneth with you for ever and ever. So be it.

APPROVAL.

We give our sanction to the above prayer; and, for every day on which it shall be devoutly repeated, we hereby grant a hundred days' indulgence (from the pains of purgatory). We accord the same favour to those who shall receive the Holy Communion, as well as to the priests who may celebrate Mass with the like views (of bringing about the conversion of England.)

We earnestly engage all who are of our diocese, and especially the priesthood, and the members of religious societies, to be frequent in prayer for an object so important, and to especially dedicate the Thursdays to this work.

ENGLEBERT,

Cardinal Archbishop of Malines.

With an extraordinary width of diffusion and rapidity of movement, this spirit of error has gone to all lands, and with unequalled energy meets Christians in every part of the world. Many are the reasons why we should shrink with horror from contact with the apostacy. It is the Antichrist, tyrannical and oppressive to man, an abomination to God, having the most disgusting names given to it in Scripture, (Rev. xvii. 5, 6.) bringing down present judgments on the world, and especially threatened with eternal punishment. Rev. xiv. 11; xx. 10. Its character has ever been to wear out the saints of the Most High. It is also a delusive preanticipation of the hopes of the Church.

It thinks to change times and laws. Popery here is a mockery of our best hopes. We know that the saints shall reign hereafter. 1 Cor. vi. 2, 3. Rev. v. 10; xx. 4. The Pope says they do reign, and therefore all men must now pray to them. We know that saints shall be kings and priests-the Pope says that he has now supreme dominion, and his ministers are already priests, and so they lord it over God's heritage. Fallen man has always been prone thus to snatch before the time the promised glory. It was the first temptation of Satan, Ye shall not surely die, for God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as Gods knowing good and evil. The exaltation of the priesthood, the magnifying of the sacraments, the visible, imaginative, and sensual religion sought every