devoted to the heart of the Virgin, gives, dedicates, and consecrates itself and the hearts of its citizens to the heart of the Virgin, being rather prepared to die than not to live for Mary's heart.'

"The sovereign pontiff soon adopted all these pious associations, and enriched them with numerous indulgences. Already, June 2, 1668, Cardinal Vendôme, legate, à latere, of the apostolic see, had, in the name of Pope Clement IX., approved the devotion and the public office of the holy heart of Mary; and in 1674 the holy father, Clement X., the first who granted indulgences to the associations formed in honour of the holy heart of Mary, gave six bulls of indulgence to the churches of the congregation of the mission founded by Father Endes, with power to form associations. His successors continued to favour this holy work, aud we find that already, in the year 1743, in the whole Catholic world eighty-four associations had been formed to the honour of the holy heart of Mary, and overwhelmed with indulgences by the sovereign pontiff."-Pp. 172-174.

To what an extent this deplorable idolatry is increasing its influence in France we may conjecture by the facts stated in this volume. In the preface to the second edition

"It is only three months to-day since the first edition of this manual appeared, and in the interval 2,050 copies have been exhausted.". P. 1.

"Since this work has made known with what liberality of grace and mercy the Queen of Heaven and Earth recompensed these pious sentiments, the faithful have presented themselves in crowds to range themselves under the banner of her holy and immaculate heart. At the beginning of January we counted on our register only 4,500 associates; to-day the number exceeds 7,000, of more than 2,200 are men. Twenty associations are already established on the surface of France.

"Soon, oh, we are intimately persuaded, soon France, the privileged domain of the august Sovereign Queen of Heaven and Earth, France entire will erect the standard of the immaculate heart of Mary."Pp. 2, 3.

"Seven apostolical missionaries set out in a few days from the seminary of Foreign Missions. All are enrolled under the banner of her immaculate heart. Thus this beautiful-this touching devotion to the very holy and immaculate heart of Mary in favour of the conversion of sinners will soon be carried and practised to the very extremities of the earth."-Pp. 5, 6.

It is melancholy to observe, that in proportion as this subject is examined, new and new discoveries are made how widely the members of the Romish communion have abandoned the worship of God, and transferred their devotion to a created being.

As it would be tedious to enlarge further, we shall close our citations for the present by the following extract from the Manual of Devotion to our Lady of Fourvières, Lyons, 1838, WITH PERMISSION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL SUPERIORS.

"Very holy Virgin Mary, Mother of God and my mother, Queen of Heaven and Earth, chef-d'œuvre of the hands of the Omnipotent, worthy object of the complacency of the adorable Trinity, admirable mirror of all virtues, permit me, at the end of this month of salvation

and of grace, to throw myself at your feet, to offer you the homage of my gratitude and devotedness. I would wish, O Mother of Bounty, to have the hearts of all men, to present them to you; I would wish at every moment to render you all the honours which the angels and saints give you, and will give you, for ever in Heaven. But, incapable as I am to fulfil my desires, I will do at least all that is in my power. Prostrate at the foot of your throne, with sentiments of the most profound veneration and the most ardent love, in presence of my holy guardian angel and of all the celestial court, I choose you for my queen, my sovereign mistress, my protectress, and my mother. I thus consecrate to you, by a gift entire and irrevocable, my property, my body, my soul, my senses, my faculties, my person, and my life. I take the resolution never to be ashamed of your worship, to defend your honour against all those who would attack it in my presence, and to consider it always my glory to be your servant and child, submissive and docile; I will not suffer a day to pass without presenting to you my homage, and addressing to you my prayers. Oh, how, my amiable mother, could I forget you a single day, since every day you think of me, and cease not to be engaged with my happiness?

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"O Holy Virgin! behold me, then, from this moment, wholly consecrated to your service. I am yours, and belong to you without reserve. Under your amiable empire, what can I not, what ought I not to hope? Permit me, in the joy that my happiness inspires, to commence putting in practice this pious confidence with which you inspire me. From this vale of tears I claim your assistance; mother of mercy and of love, have compassion on a soul, which glories in being devoted to you! Assist me all the moments of my life; direct me to the end of my course on the tempestuous sea of this world, and conduct me to the port of the happy eternity, where I hope to obey you, to praise you, to love you, with all the elect, without end, and with undivided affection (sans partage).

"So be it "-Pp. 214–216.

Is this to love the Lord our God, with all our heart, and soul, and mind, and strength? Is this to believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, that we may be saved? Is this the worship of just men made perfect; unto Him that loveth us, and washed us from our sins in his blood, be eternal praise? Oh, if idolatry under any circumstances be a heinous crime, if all idolaters are to have their part in the lake that burneth with fire and brimstone (Apoc. xxi. 8.), what must be the condition of those who unite such dreadful criminality with the avowed profession of Christianity, and who possess the revealed will of God, instructing them in the worship which he demands? Comparatively the heathens are excusable, for they have not the knowledge of revelation; but to profess there is one God, to profess that Jesus Christ is the Saviour of sinners, and then to share that religious honour, which is due to God alone, with a creature, even this were to surpass the heathen in guilt; but to go much further, to devote the whole of our affections and services to a created being, to bring to her worship expressions which it would be difficult to exceed in the highest worship of the Supreme; and, worst of all, whatever the expressions of the lips, to depart in heart from a holy and undivided zeal for the honour of the Divine Being, and to be virtually depending on a creature, and to

be really labouring for the honour of a creature, and all this whilst we acknowledge that adoration is due to God only-what is this but to add insult to idolatry; to mock the Eternal Jehovah with the false assertion that we adore him, whilst in deed and in truth we really prefer to Him the Blessed Virgin?

EPISCOPAL ORDINATION AND SUCCESSION.

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EXTRACTED FROM THE LIFE AND TIMES OF ARCHBISHOP CRANMER" AND OTHERS,

A NEW formulary was now published for the ordination of bishops, priests, and deacons, which first appeared separately, and was afterwards subjoined to the second Liturgy of Edward. It sets forth that the orders of bishop, priest, and deacon were those only which are of apostolical institution; and that by Episcopal authority all the three orders are conferred, thus conforming to the practice of the ancient Christian Church, which never accounted an Ordination valid that was performed by persons beneath the Episcopal character. It distinguished, also, the two higher orders of bishops and priests; and while it pronounced the forms of ordination, as mentioned in Scripture, to be only the imposition of hands and prayer, it directed that two bishops should expressly declare that the person presented is to be consecrated to their own order; and to him are accordingly applied more questions by the archbishop than are mentioned in the office for ordaining priests, implying the superior authority of one who was to exercise discipline, and to govern a diocese. The compilers rejected the inferior orders of acolyths, sub-deacons, and readers, which had been the provision of modern ages, and were still retained in the church of Rome; they also discontinued some unmeaning ceremonies, and were governed simply by the forms used by the early Church. Thus, in the consecration of bishops, the gloves and sandals, the mitre and ring, were omitted; and, in the ordination of priests, they discarded the anointing with chrism, and the delivery of the consecrated plate. By the rule of this ordinal, a deacon was not to be ordained under twenty-one years of age, nor a priest under twenty-four, nor a Bishop under thirty. The forms used by the primitive Churches in consecrating the clergy, are not now extant; but if the reader will consult the most ancient ordinals now to be found, he will perceive that nothing essential has been omitted in our Church, which was formerly required to make an ordination valid.

In the compilation of this ordinal, the Reformers adopted a principle which had been universally admitted and acted upon in the Church from the earliest times; namely, that they alone could rightly, and of right, administer the Word and Sacraments of God, who have received a commission for those purposes from the apostles to their appointed successors. The same principle has ever been, and still is, avowed and acted upon by the Church of England. The necessity of this limitation of the ministerial office to a distinct order and succession of men, is grounded on the terms of the commission given by our Lord to his apostles-on the uniform practice of the apostles themselves,

and the rules which they, in different places, laid down for the government of the Churches, and on the unvarying practice of every Church, wherever planted, for many centuries after their time. "The Church being a kingdom," says the Rev. W. Jones, "not of this world, is of a spiritual nature, and in that capacity it is invisible; but as a kingdom in this world, it is visible, and must have a visible administration. To know what this is, and whence its authority is derived, we must go back to the Gospel itself. Jesus Christ was sent from Heaven by the Father, and invested with the glory of the priesthood by an actual Consecration, when the Spirit descended upon him. As the Father hath sent him, so did he send his disciples, and gave them authority to send others; so that the Church which followed derived its authority from the Church which Christ first planted in the world; and the Church at this day must derive its authority after the same manner, by succession from the Church which went before; the line extending from Christ himself to the end of the world. "Lo (said he), I am with you always, even unto the end of the world;" certainly not with those very persons, who all soon died, but with those who should succeed, and be accounted for the same; for a body corporate never dies till its succession is extinct. "Take away this succession, and the clergyman may as well be ordained by one person as another: a number of women may as well give them a Divine commission; but they are no more priests of God than those who pretend to make them So. If we had lost the Scriptures, it would be very well to make as good books as we could, and come as near them as possible; but then it would not only be folly, but presumption, to call them the Word of God."- Second Letter to the Bishop of Bangor. Our Saviour at first ordained his twelve apostles according to the number of the tribes of the Church of Israel. Afterwards he ordained other seventy, according to the number of the elders whom Moses appointed as his assistants. When the Church in Jerusalem was multiplied, seven deacons were ordained by the laying on of the hands of the Apostles, to preach, and baptize, and minister, in distributing the alms of the Church. Here, then, we have three orders of men, each distinct from the other; the twelve apostles, the seventy disciples, and the seven deacons and by the first Christian Church in Jerusalem was governed and administered. The apostles were superior in office to the disciples; because, when Judas fell from the apostleship, one was chosen by lot out of the disciples into the apostleship. The deacons were inferior to both; and it appears that they were appointed by the laying on of the hands of the twelve apostles; for it is said, Acts vi. 2, "the twelve called the multitude of the disciples unto them," &c. That the apostles appointed others to succeed to their own order, is evident from the case of Timothy, who, in the ancient subscription at the end of the second epistle, is said to have been ordained the first bishop of the church of the Ephesians. He is admonished" to lay hand suddenly on no man ;" therefore he had power to ordain. And he is admonished likewise not to "receive an accusation against an elder (or presbyter), but before two or three witnesses;" therefore he had a judicial authority over that order. Directions are given with respect to the same Church; therefore, in the first Church of the Ephesians, there was a bishop, with elders and deacons under him.

As in the Church which began at Jerusalem, there was the order of the apostles, of the disciples, and of the deacons. In the Christian Church throughout the world we find these three orders of ministers for fifteen hundred years without interruption. The fact, therefore, is undeniable, that the Church has been governed by bishops, priests, and deacons, from the apostles downwards; and where we find these orders of ministers duly appointed, the word preached, and the Sacraments administered, there we find the Church of Christ, with its forms and its authority. Now, if it is needful that ordination should be conferred by those who form a part of that " golden chain" which is bound unto the bench of the apostles; if a commission must be regularly given before a man can rightly exercise his ministry; if no one of himself may assume any spiritual authority (Heb. v. 4), it follows that that authority itself cannot be derived from or through any unauthorized person. No lapse of time can render that valid which at first was invalid. The ministry of things Divine," says the learned Hooker," is a function which, as God did himself first institute, so neither may men undertake the same but by the authority and power given them in a lawful manner. That God, which is no way deficient or wanting to men in necessaries, and hath therefore given us the light of his heavenly truth, because without that inestimable benefit we must have wandered in darkness, to our endless perdition and woe, hath, in like abundance of mercies, ordained certain to attend upon the due execution of requisite parts and offices therein prescribed for the good of the whole world, which men thereunto assigned do hold their authority from him, whether they be such as himself immediately or the Church in his name investeth, it being neither possible for all nor for every man, without distinction, convenient to take upon him a charge of so great importance. They are therefore ministers of God not only by way of subordination, as princes and civil magistrates, whose execution of judgment and justice the supreme hand of Divine Providence doth uphold, but ministers of God, as from whom their authority is derived, and not from men. For in that they are Christ's ambassadors and his labourers, who should give them their commission but He whose most inward affairs they manage? Is not God alone the Father of Spirits? Are not souls the purchase of Jesus Christ? What angel in Heaven could have said to man, as our Lord said unto Peter, Feed my sheep: preach, baptize. Do this in remembrance of me: whose sins ye retain, they are retained: and their offences in Heaven are pardoned, whose faults you shall on earth forgive.' What think ye, are these terrestrial sounds, or else are they voices uttered out of the clouds above?"-See Hooker's Eccles. Polity, book v. ch. lxxvii. 2. Now, it must be evident to any one who chooses to investigate this subject, that the bishops who rule the Church of these realms were validly ordained by those who, by means of an unbroken spiritual descent of ordination, derived their mission from the apostles. To prove this fact, let any one read the catalogues of our bishops, ascending up to the most remote period, and he will find that their mission stands on the ground of prescriptive and immemorial possession, not merely from the time of Augustine, but from those more remote ages, when the bishops and priests attended the Councils of Arles and Nice, when Tertullian and Origen bore witness that