deep sympathy, any progress in that which we believe is abominable to God, our Father, and ruinous to the everlasting welfare of our fellow men, our brethren in the flesh!

We believe popery to be THE MYSTERY OF INIQUITY, (2 Thess. ii. 7. with Cecil, we think it 'the masterpiece of Satan-formed to overwhelm-to enchantto sit as the great whore making the earth drunk with her fornications,' (Rev. xvii. 1, 2.) and believing this, and knowing that there are now in the world probably one hundred millions of our fellow men under this delusion, surely it is our bounden duty with all affection and earnestness to entreat all papists, come out of her that ye partake not of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues.

There is much reason to fear that POPERY IS NOW ADVANCING and extending in this Country and in the United States of America; and it is very desireable that protestants should be made acquainted with this fact, and be stirred up to exertion against so great an evil.

In considering the present state of popery, it must be admitted that it has different features in different countries.

On THE CONTINENT, popery, in its ecclesiastical revenues and political power, has materially suffered by the varied revolutions which have taken place in France, in Spain, in Portugal, and in other countries. Its dominion and influence to injure externally, have thus been greatly crippled and overthrown. Infidelity has made her desolate and naked. (Rev, xvii. 16.)

In NORTH AMERICA, though accounts differ, and probably the chief increase of papists has been from emigrants of their communion from other countries, it is probable that papists have also been to a certain extent successful in turning protestants to their awful delusions, and it is believed that foreign wealth has been furnished to a considerable extent to aid the progress of popery in America.'

The following statement taken from the Christian Observer of January, shews the progress of Popery in the UNITED STATES.All the priests of Rome and Ireland could not have accomplished one tithe of what has been effected for Popery in the United States, had they not added to their forms of religious worship, the monastic

The testimony of Bishop Broughton as to NEW SOUTH WALES, was given at the monthly meeting of the Christian Knowledge Society in January last, to this effect: Protestantism was much endangered in the Colony; the efforts of Rome in that Country were almost incredible. The country is traversed by the agents of Rome. I earnestly desire means of counteracting these machinations. The protestant schools could be maintained no longer, and a grant was required to maintain schools in connection with the church, and in the churches themselves.'

In IRELAND, the undisguised, bitter, and persecuting spirit of popery on the one hand, and on the other the large circulation of the Holy Scriptures, have been overruled and blessed by the mercy of God, to withdraw many a spiritually-minded follower of Christ from its ranks, and it is not believed by some, who have the means of information, to be there making progress.1

systems of education in colleges and convents. It is but a little more than forty years, since the first Roman Catholic See was created, by the Pope in the United States. There is now a catholic population of 600,000 souls, under the government of the Pope of Rome; an archbishop of Baltimore, 12 Bishops, and 341 Priests. The number of churches is 401; mass houses about 300; colleges ten; seminaries for young men, nine; theological seminaries, five; novitiates for Jesuits; monasteries and convents with academies attached for young ladies, thirty one seminaries for young ladies, thirty; schools of sisters of charity, twenty-nine; an academy for coloured girls at Baltimore, a female Indian school Michegan; and seven catholic newspapers.'

My friend, the Rev. Josiah Pratt, remarks, that in the state of Illinois in America, a district 360 miles long by 200 wide, a tide of 100,000 persons per annum is pouring in, and fast forming settlements and townships. The Unitarians, and the Romanists, are making great exertions to preoccupy the field: and it is understood that large sums are sent over from the Leopoldine Institution in Austria, to propagate the Romish Faith.

1 The following fact, occurring at a meeting of the teachers of the Irish Society at King's Court in Ireland, as given in a letter from the Rev. R. Daly, dated October 29, 1835.--The most interesting and gratifying part of the whole meeting was towards the conclusion of the day; the examination of thirty six of those Irishmen, who were anxious to receive on the next day, the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. They were addressed collectively on the nature of the step they were about to take, and afterwards several of them were individually examined, and led to express their reasons for leaving the Church of Rome, and desiring to join the Protestant communion. They were likewise strictly questioned as to their personal religion,

Respecting GREAT BRITAIN, we have information of its progress of a painful character. About forty years since, there were but about 30 chapels in Great Britain. In the year 1835 there were 510; in England 421, and in Scotland 89. In that year 11 new ones have been built. In Dover, and also in Kidderminster a protestant chapel has been converted into a papal chapel. They will, with praiseworthy zeal if it were in a right cause, build a chapel where they have not a dozen members, and this chapel is sometimes filled by the zeal of those members from the neighbourhood. There are said to be now, 700 ecclesiastics in this Island, and they have resorted in several places to preaching in the open air. Popish colleges and seminaries are multiplying, and these are modern institutions; there are now 8 popish colleges and 52 seminaries, and in many of them great decorum and application to their objects is manifested. Monasteries and nunneries are also beginning. With these efforts are connected several tract societies; they have been very active in distributing tracts in favour of popery at the doors of meetings and churches, and at the Scotch church near Covent-garden, at the evening service they distributed them in the church. They form schools adapted to attract the children of the poor, giving public breakfasts and clothing the children, and thus getting the parents to attend mass. The chief body of the reporters for the public journals are said to be papists. While a few of the higher classes, many of the lower it is believed, have been entrapped into this snare of the enemy. In Scotland there once were but few Roman Catholic families, there are now in Glasgow alone 30,000 Roman Catho

and as to their views of Christian truths. The result was most satisfactory. We have every reason to hope that they left the Church of Rome on a scriptural conviction of its errors, and that they now wished to approach the table of the Lord from a sense of their situation as sinners, and from a value of the salvation purchased by the blood of Jesus. On the Sunday I had the pleasure of preaching to these men, and administering to them the sacrament in the Church of Kingscourt; except twelve or fourteen, who had received the sacrament before, all were NEW converts from the Church of Rome, and all brought to the knowledge of the truth by the Holy Scriptures in the Irish language.'

lics, and it is believed that there has been an increase of popery on the eastern as well as on the western coast.1

The influence of papists with the government is manifested not only by the grant to Maynooth College, and the withholding of grants from the Kildare Place Society, but in aiding the sending out priests abroad, and in the national system of education now adopted in Ireland.

I am credibly informed that, since the year 1815, large sums have been remitted from the continent to this country and Ireland, for the purpose of promoting popery; my informant puts the sum at £400,000, and stated the name of the person to whom the distribution of it was assigned.

After making every abatement from the increase of population, there is then painful evidence of the growth of popery in protestant Britain. We have to say of the papists of our day as Paul did of the Jews, I bear them record they have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge, and that, like the pharisees of old, they compass sea and land to make one proselyte, and they have been successful in those countries where protestantism is in its purest form.

Before we proceed to shew what the scriptures say of popery, let us most carefully distinguish the system, from the men under the system. For the men under the system, we would do every thing in our power, we would say every thing that truth will allow that is kind and loving. We are sure God

1 The following account is taken from the Record of Jan. 21, 1836. The Roman Catholic Bishop of Edinburgh, at the opening of the conventual church is said thus to have expressed himself. 'Since the period of the Reformation there was a time when one solitary Catholic priest wandered over the length and breadth of the kingdom -now your places of worship adorn the places of the land and are widely scattered over the face of the country ;-now you at noon-day worship the Almighty with almost all the splendour of Catholic times and Catholic countries. Scarce now does the year roll over in which several edifices are not reared and dedicated to God, according to the form and faith of the Catholic church. You are yet assembled, my friends, in the first conventual chapel that has dared to raise its head in this kingdom since the Reformation. Yes, my fellow Catholics, if to-day St. Margaret stands alone, the time may not be far distant when the increase of similar institutions may be proclaimed with as much joy as I at this moment experience in alluding to its solitary existence,'

has his people among them, ignorant of the real character of this falling away from the truth, and thinking that they are in the only true church of Christ, for he himself has bid his people to come out of Babylon, (Rev. xviii. 4) and therefore it is of such importance to set before their minds the light of God's word. We believe that there are bright and holy examples of devotion among the papists. We cannot look at the Jansenists without seeing this. Though there are passages in God's word which make us tremble for all under the full power of popery as in the extremest danger, (Rev. xiv. 9-11) yet I cannot read the pious practical works of Bellarmine, himself the great defender of popery, and know that he said, 'upon account of the uncertainty of life it is most safe to rely on Christ alone,' without hoping that he was led before his death to renounce all confidence in any thing but God's testimony concerning his Son, and so became a child of our Heavenly Father, and an heir of our Saviour's kingdom. We believe also that there are in our country now thousands of truly benevolent, amiable, moral men, among the papists, who abhor from their hearts cruelty and tyranny. It is not in malice and hatred of the papists that we write against popery; but, we take God to witness, it is in love to God and man, in real fidelity to his truth, and to fulfil that confession of the truth to which Christ calls his disciples.

Of the system itself we can only speak with ab

1 The followings extracts and Creed will enable even the uninformed reader who knows his Bible, to judge of the true character of Popery.

Extracts from a few of the first pages of the prayers of the ROMAN MISSAL, for the use of the laity. Published by Keating, the Roman Catholic Bookseller. 1815. Page xvii. I beseech the blessed Mary, ever a virgin, blessed Michael the arch-angel, blessed John the Baptist, the holy Apostles Peter and Paul, and all the saints, and you O father, to pray to the Lord our God for me.

xviii. We beseech thee, O Lord, by the merits of thy saints whose relics are here, and of all the saints, that thou wouldest vouchsafe to forgive me all my sins.

xx. By the intercession of glorious and blessed Mary, the ever Virgin mother of God, of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, of blessed and of all the saints, grant us in thy mercy health, and peace.