test of Scripture, they are fond of reminding us that it is by tradition only that we have the Scriptures themselves. But when you meet such persons, you may ask them, whether they would as readily believe the correctness of a report transmitted by word of mouth in popular rumours, from one end of the kingdom to another, as if it came in a letter, passed from one person to another over the same space? Would they think, that because they could trust most servants to deliver a letter, however long or important, therefore, they could trust the same men to deliver the contents of a long and important letter in a message by word of mouth? Let me put a familiar case. A footman brings you a letter from a friend, upon whose word you can perfectly rely, giving an account of something that has happened to himself, and the exact account of which you are greatly concerned to know. While you are reading and answering the letter, the footman goes into the kitchen, and there gives your cook an account of the same thing; which, he says, he overheard the upper-servants at home talking over, as related to them by the valet, who said he had it from your friend's son's own lips. The cook retails the story to your groom, and he, in turn, tells you. Would you judge of that story by the letter, or the letter by the story?

"The case of the Jewish Church is an apt illustration of the difference of security in the tradition of Scripture and the tradition of doctrine. The Jews, we know, faithfully preserved the writings of the Old Testament, which were entrusted to them. Nor do Christ and His Apostles ever charge them with corrupting or destroying their sacred books, as no doubt they would have done, if the Jews had been guilty of any such crime. But our Saviour does blame them for 'making the Word of God of none effect by their traditions,' and 'teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.' Might not the Jews argue, in their turn, that if we receive the Old Testament from them, we should also receive their traditions? the oral law (as they call it) no less than the written law? But our Saviour always teaches the people to bring the traditions of the elders to the test of the written word."-Pp. 23, 24.

"Again, the invocation of departed saints, and especially of the blessed Virgin Mary, as practised in the Church of Rome, is a thing plainly contrary to the spirit of the Gospel. For-not to mention that it is at least very doubtful as to some of their so-called saints, whether they ever existed at all-and as to others, whether they were not mere crazy fanatics--and as to others, whether they were not very wicked men--not to mention this, and supposing these 'saints' to have been all really good Christians, you will readily see that asking a dead person to pray for you, when you do not know him to be present, is quite a different thing from asking a living person to pray for you. The Scriptures never tell us that the dead can hear or know the requests which men make to them; so that asking their prayers at all is a piece of 'will-worship' that cannot be justified. We might, for all that appears, just as reasonably go down on our knees and ask a good man in America to pray for us. But when it came to be believed

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that a holy person, when removed from earth, can hear the addresses of thousands and millions calling on him in all parts of the world, and can know the secret dispositions of mind in each several person that invokes him, this belief did, in fact, deify him. Whatever subtle explanations may be attempted of the way in which glorified saints' are able to hear, from various regions, and repeat, more prayers in the day than there are minutes in the twenty-four hours, it is plain that at least the great mass of their worshippers must regard them no less as gods than the ancient pagans did the beings they worshipped. For the pagans acknowledged that many of the gods whom they worshipped had been MEN; only they fancied that, after death, their souls had obtained great power and influence over the management of things in the world; which is what was meant by calling them gods.

"Now, as the Almighty has declared Himself to be 'A JEALOUS GOD' just as unwilling to have His honour impaired as if He were jealous of it and as he always treated the conduct of the pagans in thus praying to dead men as idolatry, it cannot be safe in us to encourage anything like a practice which He abhors; particularly as, even if the saints can hear our prayers, there is plainly no necessity for praying to them, since God invites us at all times to come boldly' to Himself, through the one Mediator, Jesus Christ. It is much safer, then, certainly, not to pray to the saints, if God has not required us to do so, than to invoke them, especially (as the Roman Catholics do) in the same posture-at the same time-in the same place-and even in the same form of words as we invoke God Almighty.

"Now, God has nowhere in Scripture required us to invoke the saints. On the contrary, the New Testament seems framed purposely to guard all who are sincerely desirous of following its guidance against such a practice. Though we find, in the book of Acts, narratives of the deaths of the two martyrs, Stephen and James the apostle, the brother of John, there is no mention of their being invoked after death. And when God saw fit to convey his commands to Cornelius, and again to Paul, (Acts x. and xxvii.,) by a created being, it is not one of those blessed martyrs, but an angel that is sent.

"The Virgin Mary, again, is never (but once, Acts i. 14) so much as named throughout the Acts and Apostolic Epistles. Now, this silence respecting her is utterly inconceivable, supposing it had been the practice of the early Christians to pray to her. In the Gospels, again, she is but rarely mentioned. And on three of the most remarkable occasions on which she is mentioned, it is apparently on purpose to discourage anything like adoration of her. At the marriage feast at Cana our Lord checks her interference. (John ii. 3, 4.) And on the two other occasions, (Matt. xii. 50; Luke xi. 27,) he takes pains to impress upon his hearers that, in His sight, the ties of kindred are as nothing in comparison of obedience to God's will." -Pp. 32, 33.

"Another point in which the teaching of the Church of Rome is plainly contrary to Scripture, is transubstantiation.

"Roman Catholics hold that, when Christ, at the last Supper,

taking the bread in his hands, said,This is my body,'-he meant, This is no longer bread, but is changed into my body. Such, they say, is the natural, because literal, sense of the words.

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(1.) But even if it were the literal sense, it would not follow from that that it was the natural sense of the words. Because the natural sense is that (whether figurative or literal) in which the persons, who heard him speaking at the time, would naturally and reasonably understand his words. For instance, when, on the same occasion, our Lord said, This cup is the New Testament [covenant] in my blood,' neither the Roman Catholics nor we suppose that He meant to speak literally of the cup which he held in his hands: but we both agree that here the cup' is put, by a common figure, for the cup-full of wine, which the company were drinking. In this case, therefore, we both agree that the figurative sense (not the literal) is the natural meaning of our Saviour's words. Again, if in explaining a map, I were to point to a part of it and say, this is France,' no one would think that I meant that a part of that sheet of paper on canvas was literally France; that would not be the natural sense of my words. Nor, if I showed you a picture, and said, that is the Queen,' would you think I meant to say that it was literally Queen Victoria.

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"Now it would not have naturally occurred to the apostles, when they heard Christ say of the bread, This is my body,' and saw it continue in his hands just the same (to all appearance) as it was before, and when they ate it up, that He was then working a miracle—that He was holding his own body in his own hands, and that they were, each of them, eating up his body, while he sat there all the while conversing with them. But, on the contrary, they would naturally have understood Him to be speaking figuratively: because they knew that He was then appointing a religious rite; and they (as Jews) were quite accustomed to figurative religious rites. Indeed, they had just been celebrating one such figurative religious rite--the Passover; in which a lamb was eaten, representing the lamb which their forefathers had sacrificed on the night they left Egypt; and bitter herbs, representing the affliction they had been under; and unleavened bread, representing the hastily-made bread which they took with them in their flight, when there was no time to leaven it. And it is the custom still among the Jews for the master of every household to explain to his family, when eating the Passover, the meaning of the rite; saying, for example, when the bitter herbs are laid on the table,This is the food of affliction which our fathers ate in Egypt,' &c. The apostles, therefore, would naturally have understood our Saviour to be, in the same way, explaining the meaning of a figurative rite of His religion, and would have taken him to mean-' This bread represents, or stands for, my body,' &c. For such a way of speaking is quite common, and was often used by our Lord, when explaining figures. So, in explaining the parable of the tares in the field, He says, 'The field is the world-the good seed is the children of the kingdom-the tares are the children of the wicked one-the reapers are the angels,' &c. Meaning that the field of which he had been speaking stood for, or represented,

the world; and so of the rest. The apostles, who had often heard Jesus speak thus before, would, therefore, have naturally understood Him to be speaking in the same way then.

"(2.) Did they, then, learn afterwards to put another meaning on His words? On the contrary, we find Paul expressly calling that which is eaten in the communion, 'bread,' even after it has been solemnly set apart as the sign of Christ's body. The bread which we break, is it not the communion of the body of Christ? For we, being many, are one bread and one body; for we are all partakers of that one bread [loaf.] ' (1 Cor. x. 16, 17.) And again :-' As often as ye eat this bread and drink this cup, ye do shew the Lord's death till he come. Wherefore, whosoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily, [in a manner unworthy of the solemn rite,] is guilty of [that is, is culpable in respect of the body and blood of the Lord. But let a man examine himself, and so let him eat of that bread and drink of that cup.' (xi. 26, 27, 28.) Where he distinctly explains that it is because, in eating the bread and drinking the wine at the communion we shew forth-exhibit the representation of the Lord's death, therefore he who partakes of it rashly and indecently (as you will find from that chapter the Corinthians did) is guilty of an insult to the Lord's body and blood, not of mere indecorum at a common meal. The Apostle Paul, then, plainly calls what is eaten at the Lord's Supper bread, even after it had been made a sign or symbol of the Lord's body. In answer to this the Roman Catholics say, that the apostle speaks figuratively, calling it bread, because it once was, and still appears so. But it is very strange that men should choose to suspect a figure, in calling that bread, which certainly was, and still seems to all a man's senses to be real bread; and yet not to suspect any figure in calling that Christ's body, which was made by a baker, and neither had nor assumes any resemblance whatever to human flesh.

"(3) But, indeed, the meaning which they (when they explain themselves) give to Christ's words is not, after all, the literal meaning of them. For in common speech we describe things not by their substances (of which we know nothing directly) but by their qualities. We call that bread, which has such a colour, smell, taste, power of nourishing, and so forth. No one would think of calling a mole-hill a mountain, though all the matter of the mountain were pressed into the size of a mole-hill. We should say, in that case, that the mountain had become, or shrunk into, a mole-hill. So, when Moses' rod assumed the appearance of a serpent, it is said that his rod became a serpent; not that a serpent became his rod. Now, according to the Roman Catholics the substance of Christ's body in the communion has none of the attributes of flesh, but appears under all the attributes of bread. Therefore, in ordinary speech, we should say that Christ's body becomes bread; not that bread becomes Christ's body. To suppose our Lord, when He says, 'This is my body,' to mean 'the substance of this bread, without a change in any of its qualities, is changed into the substance of my body, only without any one outward quality of flesh,' is certainly not to suppose Him to speak literally, but in the most dark and perplexed (not to say unintelligible) language that ever was uttered. And to say that this is a natural and obvious meaning of His words, is what scarce any one would venture to say who had not been carefully trained up to believe it such." -Pp. 35-37.

These we regard as very successful specimens of the way in which Popish arguments ought to be dealt with, while they are likewise fitted to impress a general consideration of no small importance in the present day, viz., that the discussion even of what may be called the familiar commonplaces of the Popish controversy, affords abundant scope for the exercise of high and varied talent. There is likewise a masterly discussion of the sacrament of penance and the forgiveness of sins, (pp. 39-44,) but it is too long for quotation.

A great deal is done in the present day to bring the case of the Church of Rome before the community in the most taking and plausible dress it can be made to assume. The counteraction of the efforts made for that purpose is a service which requires, and is entitled to, the best talents the community can produce. Popery can be defended with much greater plausibility than those who are imperfectly acquainted with the subject generally suppose. It is not to be disregarded or despised, as if it were so utterly absurd in every point of view as to be unworthy of serious examination. The series of Popish tracts to which Dr. Whately refers, though, of course, full of sophistry and misrepresentation, are yet got up with a good deal of skill and talent, and possess no inconsiderable measure of plausibility. If they were really read by our Protestant population, they would produce an impression and do no little mischief, unless suitable efforts were made to counteract them, and it is in no way unbecoming Dr. Whately's talents and position that he should have taken the trouble of exposing them.

It is indeed true that the formidableness of Popery as a system of tenets and practices, and the plausibility with which it can be defended, result chiefly from the foundation which it has in some of the tendencies of human nature. Dr. Whately is fully alive to this important consideration, and has illustrated and applied it in some of its aspects with singular ability and success. Indeed, his larger work, the "Essays," of which a sort of abridgment or summary is given in the fifth and sixth of the Cautions, is devoted to this subject, and to this chiefly we mean to advert in the remainder of the article.

The rise and growth of the Popish system, and its lengthened and extensive prevalence in the world, are well fitted to excite surprise and astonishment, and form a very interesting subject of investigation. When we survey the system in its full and