the sea, and the fountains of waters. (Rev. xiv. 7, 8.) In our day, and within the recollections of many yet surviving, we have seen this great work going on from small beginnings to a state that gives hope that Christians may yet awake to an adequate sense of their duty to the heathen. Without excluding the great work of the Reformers from Wickliffe downwards, in translating the Scriptures, and giving them to the people; and the earlier efforts in Christian Missions of Eliot and Brainerd, the Christian Knowledge, Gospel Propagation, Scotch and Moravian Missions; it is, still, in our day, contemporary with the beginning of the judgments on papal kingdoms in the first French Revolution; that efforts corresponding to the largeness of the terms of the prediction, open, conspicuous, and universal, have been made. This work, remember, precedes the hour of judgment on Antichristian kingdoms. It will be little aided by dead, nominal Christianity, but it is an enlarged means of confessing Christ through the world. This is the work in which, whatever mixture of human infirmities they may have had, our chief Religious Societies are engaged, and blessed be God, it is a work year by year increasing,' and which he has owned with the highest success, gathering his elect from every land into her Church.

now

But let us see to it,' that it be THE EVERLASTING GOSPEL that we carry and make known both at home and abroad. A protestant Minister asked a papist Why she did not attend the protestant church? She replied, for three reasons; because she heard nothing of Jesus Christ, found no worshipping congregation, and saw no connection between the Minister and peo

1 The following statement, (taken from the Missionary Register, a truly valuable work, which all who love the progress of the gospel should read,) exhibits the progress of the income of the known Religious Societies in the Protestant churches in the last thirteen years. About nine-tenths of this income is British. To God be all the glory.!

1823, 1824,

£ 367,373

£

406,426

1829,

601,267

1833,

655,488

ple. It is too true this has been the awful state of many a nominally Protestant parish Church in our country, and we see in it why popery has so grown; and popery which does hold truth, though it be leavened, is better than such a formal dead Protestantism. Let us then take care what gospel we make known, remembering the solemn, twice repeated curse, though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached, let him be accursed. As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed. What that gospel is, is clear from repeated testimonies in the same epistle: The Lord Jesus Christ gave himself for our sins, that he might deliver us from this present evil world, is its main doctrine, and this is clearly laid out in that most distinct statement of our free justification in him, knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law, but by the faith of Jesus Christ, even we have believed in Jesus Christ, that we might be justified by the faith of Christ, and not by the works of the law, for by the works of the law shall no flesh be justified. Surely it must be felt, that a very different gospel to this has been preached extensively, and destructively, over decayed protestant churches.

And let us see to it, that this gospel is connected with that awful sanction the coming judgment, in which the Lord will discriminate between those who have received his grace, and the unbelieving and fearful of this world; between those who serve him, and those who serve him not.

The second duty is, TO PROCLAIM THE FALL OF BABYLON. And there followed another angel, saying, Babylon is fallen, is fallen, that great city, because she made all nations drink of the wine of the wrath of her fornication. (Rev. xiv. 8.) Here is the next important work of the Church, to which it is of vast moment that its energies should be now directed. While we feel, while we in every way shew love to the papists, and because we love them, therefore bate so much the chains which imprison them, the poison which destroys them, the unsound ship in which they are sinking, let us testify irreconcileable enmity to

popery as man's bitterest foe, and doomed of God to certain and speedy destruction. Let us more distinctly shew that Rome is Babylon; that it shall surely, (twice is the fall mentioned to indicate the reality,) suddenly, (Rev. xviii. 8-10.) swiftly, (Rev. xvi. 19,) and for ever fall; as a mill-stone cast into the sea, thus with violence shall that great city Babylon be thrown down, and shall be found no more at all. (Rev. xviii. 21.) This is that offensive weapon, the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God, that can alone meet all the sophistries of popery. Soft and polished words, arguments from reason, and powerful eloquence displaying its inconsistency and absurdity, are valuable in their place, and very thankful we have to be for such advocates; yet these no more penetrate the skin of the dragon, than straws do that of the crocodile. It is the word of the living God that is irresistible. May not God withhold his full blessing from all that which, however it may be courteous to man, yet does not rise to the full testimony of his word? Nor must we be stopped by unbelieving notions of charity. It is very remarkable how the heavenly Host are described as praising God for the fall of Babylon. I heard a great voice of much people in heaven, saying, Hallelujah, salvation and glory, and honour, and power, unto the Lord our God, for true and righteous are his judgments; for he hath judged the great whore which did corrupt the earth with her fornications, and hath avenged the blood of his servants at her hand; and God commands his people to rejoice in it, rejoice over her thou heaven, and ye holy Apostles, and prophets, for God hath avenged you of her. The causes of this joy are the removal of reproaches against the gospel, the dishonour put on our Lord, and the darkness, misery, and sin, entailed on men by this apostacy.

The mode in which this duty is to be fulfilled is very varied. There are RELIGIOUS SOCIETIES by which something may be done. And even the extravagance of rash zeal is better than the lukewarmness of modern protestants on this point. (Rev. iii. 15.) The Reformation Society is now active and useful, and has nothing to do with the politics of

this world. Its Protestant Journal,' should be encouraged, and its useful short tracts and hand bills enable ministers to meet the like methods of papists seeking to spread popery. The French Protestant Tract Society, and the European Missionary Society, furnish us with doors of access to foreign papists, and justly claim support from us.

SERMONS AGAINST POPERY well become us as ministers of the church of England. We are under that discipline which states in its very first canon. 'All ecclesiastical persons having care of souls, and all other preachers and readers of divinity lectures, shall to the uttermost of their wit, knowledge and learning, purely and sincerely, without any colour or dissimulation, teach, manifest, open and declare, four times every year at the least, in their sermons and other collations and lectures, that all usurped and foreign power (forasmuch as the same has no establishment nor ground by the law of God) is for the most just causes taken away and abolished.''

1 The following circular of the Venerable Bishop of Salisbury suggests a suitable method of fulfilling this canon.

To the Clergy of the Diocese of Salisbury.

Reverend Brethren,-Most cordially and readily do I assent to the justice of the call which has lately been made upon us, as ministers and members of the Church of England, by some zealous friends of the Reformation, to co-operate with the members of a foreign Protestant Church, in expressing our gratitude to God, by commemorating the blessing of the Reformation, and especially by distinguishing and celebrating, on our part, the completion and publication of the first English translation of the Bible, on the 4th of October, 1535. There is another day, which evidently deserves to be celebrated by us as the birth-day of our Reformation-the day on which was completed our emancipation by law from the foreign supremacy of the Popethe 20th of March, 1534, on which the act passed, by which the power of the Pope in this country, and all connexion with Rome, were for ever abolished, and the supremacy of the King, in all causes ecclesiastical and civil, within his dominions, was re-established. I say re-established, because, before the eleventh century, the English sovereigns rejected with indignation the jurisdiction of the Church of Rome. The supremacy of the King you are required, by the first canon of the church, publicly to declare and maintain to your congregations four times at least in every year. The 4th of October, therefore, and the 20th of March, may well be appropriated as two of the days for our ob servance of the canon. There are, besides, two other days in the year distinguished by events intimately connected with the great Protestant interests of our country, and consecrated in our Liturgy by special forms of prayer,-the King's accession and the 5th of November -the former relating to the commencement of our present Protestant dynasty, and the latter to an indelible evidence of the hostility of

The preaching of Tercentenary Sermons, on the 4th of October 1835, was a commencement of a practice too important and too useful to be discontinued. Let our parishioners and congregations understand what the bitter root of popery is, that they may all join in the dying prayer of good King Edward the VIth, 'O my Lord God, defend this realm from papistry and maintain the true religion, that I and my people may praise thy holy name, for thy Son Jesus Christ's sake.'

PUBLICATIONS AGAINST POPERY may be multiplied. O what a reproach is it to the protestant church of England that the vast body of information

Popery to our Protestant religion and establishment-that religion and establishment, which the three powers of the realm are bound, by the most solemn oaths and engagements, to protect and maintain.* There are, therefore, four days in the year, on which you may so fulfil the first canon of our church, as to combine with the observance of it, in your discourses, subjects of the deepest interest to us, as Christians, as Protestants, as ministers of the Church of England, and as loyal subjects, by inculcating to your congregations the truth of scripture, and the vanity of traditions,-the deliverance of our country from a Popish dynasty, --the inextinguishable hostility of Popery to our national institutions,-and the emancipation of our church from subjection to a foreign bishop, and from the idolatry, apostacy, and anti-Christianity of his Church.

The Protestant religion, the Protestant people, and Protestant wealth (whatever Papists may assert) are still the ascendants in the empire: and nothing but indifference to the blessings we enjoy in the profession of our Protestant faith, and ingratitude to that gracious Providence which restored it in the sixteenth century, can ever enable Popery to regain in this country the domination which it once possessed here. Let Commemorative and Conservative Associations multiply; be active, co-operative, and united, and it never will regain it. Let us be true to the Protestant faith that we profess, and faithful to the Church of which we are members, and "the gates of hell," with all the powers of darkness, of error, and idolatry, "shall not prevail against it," or its doctrine.

1 am, Rev. Brethren,

Your faithful Friend and Brother in Christ,
T. SARUM.

Palace, Salisbury, July 1, 1835.

*At the commencement of every Parliament, the members are summoned to their legislative duty by the king's writ, and are expressly convened to defend the church,' as well as the state,' against imminent perils.' If certain persons are now, by a very strange anomaly, admitted into Parliament, from whom peril' to the church is especially to be apprehended, they must feel them. selves bound in conscience (if they consult their conscience), by the tenor of the King's writ, to defend the church' of England and Ireland; and, by their own declaration, to do nothing to its detriment or loss!