the Church of England would, in my opinion, be a most noble work; and it is most devoutly to be wished, that those who have been driven into the Roman pale might be recalled to their ancient church; a measure which it would not be difficult to accomplish, as the country governments would be likely to second any efforts to that purpose. Their occupations are various as those of other Christians; but they are chiefly cultivators and artizans: and some of them possess a comfortable, if not a splendid independence. Their clergy marry in the same manner as Protestants. Their residence is entirely inland *”

MISCELLANEOUS REMARKS.

By their long and energetic defence of pure doctrine against anti-Christian error, the Syrian Christians of Malay-ala are entitled to the gratitude and thanks of the rest of the Christian world. They have preserved to this day the language in which our blessed Lord preached to men the glad tidings of salvation; and they have preserved the MSS. of the Holy Scriptures incorrupt: so that their doctrine, their language, and their very existence, all add something to the evidence of the truth of Christianity.

But I cannot better conclude the account of this interesting society of Christians than in the words of the learned and excellent Bishop of St. Davids, who, in his able sermon before the Society for propagating the Gospel in Foreign Parts, in 1808, thus concludes his brief sketch of this church :

"There are several important views, which result from this report of the Syrian Church:

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1. Its connection with the evidences of Christianity : "2. Its relation to our own form of church government: and,

"3. Its suitableness to forward the means of enlarging Christ's kingdom on earth, by the propagation of the Gospel.

"To the evidences of Christianity it forms a powerful accession. A large body of Native Christians settled in India for fifteen or sixteen centuries, neither addicted to the Greek Church, nor to the Church of Rome, yet acknowledging episcopal authority-unconnected with any European establishment, and unsupported by their contributions-must, in all probability, have been a very early branch of the primitive church; and, as such, affords ample auxiliar testimony, both

• Buchanan's Researches," pp. 146, 147.

to the truth of Christianity, and to the apostolical origin of that form of church government established in this country.

"As a community of native Christians so long established in India, the Syrian Church appears to afford many encouraging inducements to the unconverted natives to embrace Christianity, when offered to them by a Syrian preacher. In the mouth of a Syrian missionary, Christianity is not an exotic brought from unknown countries. It is not introduced by strangers to their language and manners. Its antiquity in Malayala may convince the natives of other parts of India, that it is not the offspring of to-day or yesterday; nor imported by the right of conquest; nor encouraged for any selfish ends of civil government. Their ancient manuscript records of our religion have a strong tendency to promote belief in the authenticity of God's written word *."

* "Propaganda," &c. p. 125.

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CHURCH OF ROME.

CHURCH OF ROME, AND ROMAN CATHOLICS.

NAMES.

By the Church of Rome, as distinguished from Christian churches of other denominations and communions, is meant that great body of Christians who, united to the Bishop and See of Rome, "profess to ground their faith upon the authority of their church, as on a rule of faith sure and unerring."

Popery, Papal Superstition, Papists, and Romanists, are among the various appellations that have been given, in different ages, to this society and its members, who view them as terms of reproach, and as meant to deprive their church of the exclusive enjoyment of the name of Catholic, in which they glory. Catholics, or Roman Catholic Christians, is the only name by which they designate themselves; but the members of other communions cannot recognise them by the name of Catholics, to which they are by no means entitled, and Roman Catholics is now that by which they are designated amongst us in law and parliament.

RISE, PROGRESS, AND HISTORY.

In the ideas of a Roman Catholic, it must be obviously out of the question to give any account of the rise and progress of his church different from that of the Christian religion in general. The Apostles of Jesus Christ he considers as its founders, or rather as the ministers employed by its Divine Founder, Jesus Christ. Its origin, he tells us, is written in the New Testament, and its progress stands recorded in the annals of the church. St. Peter, he adds, was the first bishop of Rome, and the popes are his immediate suc

cessors.

That the Church of Rome is apostolical, and was for some centuries a pure as well as a true church, we readily admit; but that St. Peter was her first bishop is not so evident; and that she is the mother and mistress of all churches *, or that she was at any time the only true church, we positively deny. She claims the honour of great exertions in extending the knowledge of Christianity throughout the world, and ranks almost all the nations of Europe in the list of her converts †. The honour of such exertions cannot be denied her; and, indeed, to have been less zealous in the cause would have been inconsistent with her doctrine, that there is no salvation ("nemo salvus esse potest") out of her pale. At the same time, it must not be granted without some limitations as to her motives, her objects, and her mode. As she herself became less pure, her motives plainly partook of her impurity; her objects of conversion were often, not heathens or infidels, but Christians and her mode too often savoured more of Mohammedanism than Christianity: as in the case of the Livonians, in the twelfth century, against whom Urban the Third declared a crusade, and compelled them to receive baptism, and so come into the church. The quantum of honour connected with such conversions will not weigh heavy in the minds of most readers of the present day. But such as it is, and whatever shall be allowed to the invention, the whole may be said to belong to this church-though it was not encouraged by some of Urban's predecessors, with the remark of one of whom, Gregory the Great, I dismiss it for the present: "Nova et inaudita prædicatio, quæ baculo adigit fidem."

In this way, and by other ways more or less honourable, the Church of Rome was established, during the middle ages, throughout the whole of the western world, with the exception

;

Sce above p. 166, note.-" The Church of Jerusalem is unquestionably the mother church, which the Church of Rome is not. The Church of Jerusalem was unquestionably founded by St. Peter, which the Church of Rome was not. In the Church of Jerusalem, and not in the Church of Rome, was fulfilled the prophecy of our Savour, that the church should be founded on St. Peter, as a rock. It is through the Church of Jerusalem, which was the mother of all churches, and not through the Church of Rome, that Christian churches in general partake of the prophecy of our Saviour."Bishop Marsh's "Comparative View of the Churches of England and Rome;" 8vo. 1816. p. 213.

+ See her claim to the honour of enrolling this country in the number of her converts to Christianity, ably repelled and refuted by the present learned Bishop of St. David's, in his "Tracts on the Origin and Independence of the Ancient British Church, on the Supremacy of the Pope," &c. 8vo. 1815. Bishop Cowper, of Galloway, also wrote a treatise on purpose to prove the antiquity of the Church of Scotland, and that she did not receive Christianity from Rome.

of that part of Spain which was in the possession of the Moors *.

Some of the peculiar doctrines of this church had made their appearance before the establishment of the Papal power, which is generally dated in 606, when Pope Boniface the Third assumed the title of Universal Bishop; though some fix it in 756, when Pepin, king of France, invested Pope Stephen the Second with the temporal dominion of Rome and the neighbouring territories, upon the ceasing of the exarchate of Ravenna. I have said the establishment, and not the rise, of the Papal power; for these were only the progressive steps the advancement of that dominion which began with the establishment of the Christian religion under Constantine the Great. Rome had so long been the seat of empire and the mistress of the world, that it was an easy matter for its bishops to gain an ascendency, and to conceive themselves entitled to superior respect. From these humble beginnings they advanced with such an adventurous and well-directed ambition, that they established a spiritual dominion over the minds and consciences of men, to which all Europe submitted with implicit obedience; till at length their formidable power was weakened, and their horns shortened, by the Reformation, for which we heartily bless God, but which they loudly condemn.

This power shewed itself first in ambition; then in contention; next in imposition: and after these symptoms it broke out, like a sore plague, in open persecution: and appears to have long triumphed in doing what God hath not enjoined, and in abstaining from what he hath not forbidden. Its establishment and long uninterrupted continuance may justly be considered as among the most extraordinary circumstances in the history of mankind. To the Roman Catholic, this is indeed the great evidence of the truth of his religion; the perpetual miracle, which proves a constant extension of the Divine favour to that church, against which they believe "the gates of hell shall not prevail." Others, who consider that this phenomenon may be accounted for from second causes, will perhaps be inclined to attribute it to the ductility and habi

"It is too, too apparent, that your Church (viz. the Roman) hath got, and still maintains, her authority over men's consciences, by conterfeiting false miracles, forging false stories, by obtruding on the world supposititions writings, by corrupting the monuments of former times and defacing out of them all which any way makes against you, by wars, by persecutions, by treasons, by rebellions; in short, by all manner of carnal weapons, whether violent or fraudulent.”—Chillingworth's "Religion of Protestants," chap. vi.

sect. 66.