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But that day, we are angrily and contemptuously ordered to know, is gone by, never to return. And by whom are such orders on our belief issued? For the most part, by men who disbelieve the Christian miracles as mere fables and sneer and scoff at the notion of what is called Revealed Religion being anything else than perhaps at present a useful, and at all times a very powerful state engine. We take them, not perhaps at their own words, for they will eat in their words, on being solemnly challenged in high places; and they will talk hollowly of respect of reverence for religion, and the ministers of religion; yea, even for the church! But we take them on the general tenor of their talk at all times, and in all places, when and where they are not tongue-tied and curbed by the presence of their superiors-the tenor of their writings, when it chances they can write of their measures—and the men-infidels all-whom they patronise and ap prove, and, above all, the tenor of their own public and private life. It is thus visible to all who have any perspicacity to discern, or any courage to declare the truth, that such men long for the time, in whose not distant advent they most undevoutly believe, when the Bible shall be no more the Book of the Nations.

From such miserable men-and miserable men they must be-whatever may be the measure, great or small, of their much vaunted and exaggerated abilities and acquirementswho that has received a Christian education, would not scorn himself, were he to stoop to receive any kind of instruction whatever concerning the probable destinies of the human race -whether Popery perhaps the most fatal of all superstitions-because the best thing becomes in corruption the worst-be on the rise or the fall, the decay, or the decline? Blind in their infidelity, still, like seers, they will keep looking forwards into time-and backwards into time-from the has-been prophesying the will-be,-perplexed neither by the past nor the future,-on the petty Pisgah of their present, and most monstrous Moses's indeed are they, eyeing a promised land, in which human beings will be left free to the glory of their own inventions, and no such sight to be seen as a church, abbey, minster, cathedral! all convert

ed into manufactories! Where the altar stood, now a steam-engine-and for the pealing anthem choral to the organ's deep diapason, the clanking and creaking of machinery turning ten thousand spindles, all usefully at work on the busy Sabbath-day!

Such philosophers as these-and they are all philosophers-and with only a chance exception here and there can lecture you on the long winds, in a discourse most suitable to the subject and show you how by a difficult algebraical process you may make discoveries in numbers, almost as brilliant as that one is a third of three, discoveries nearly unattainable, they maintain, by any ordinary arith metical process-such philosophers as these, assure you that in this age, which they, and the like of them, have enlightened, there is no danger to be apprehended from Popish, or any other superstitions. All over the world there is, or soon will be, an end of the power of the priests. What, they demand, have the Established Protestant Churches to fear? If founded on the Rock of ages, they will stand fast for ever-if illumined by reason and revelation, they will be seen through the night from afar-if they who minister in them do their duty, they will be honoured ;-and after plenty more vulgar trash of the same sort, all delivered, or rather drivelled, in the same sneer, with curled upperlip and nostril, as if the supercilious and ignorant blockheads were smelling at a rotten egg, they demand of you again, why you have any fears about the Church?

Our answer is, that we have no fear not the slightest fear in the world, that fools will ultimately prevail over wise men-that is, Folly over Wisdom-yet, nevertheless, we do not suffer fools to open their mouths with impunity. If, on the one hand, they will keep bawling, we, on the other hand, must keep gagging; if, on the one hand, they will keep resisting, we must, on the other hand, keep kicking; and in the midst of all these proceedings of theirs and ours, can they seriously ask with their eyes, why we are so afraid of them? Afraid! It is an odd way of showing your fear of an individual person or opinion, by kicking the extremities of both. In like manner, with Vice as with Folly. We are not afraid that Vice will tri

umph over Virtue. But, hating, and loathing, and scorning, and despising it, we scourge it back into its hole in the wall, whenever we see its protruded snout. So, neither are we afraid of the fate of Christianity among hosts, in every nation, of Deists or Atheists generally cousins-german. But when Deists and Atheists dare to scoff and sneer insidiously at the Christian religion, which, merely be cause it is part and parcel of the law of the land, they do not openly insult; and from hatred to it, seize every opportunity of openly insulting its ministers, especially such as are most pre-eminently distinguished by their zeal and their learning-and then ask us, why we are afraid of the Church, we tell the insolent ninnies, that no fear of the Church is shown in clutch ing hold, with a somewhat savage face, of a few of its enemies, and knocking their numskulls even against the porch. Everything good and great is given into our own holy keeping by God-his laws shall never be overthrown-but we see, feel, and know, that every day and every hour they are violated. Not then to preserve the Jaws, which are eternal, but to preserve in men's souls the sanctity with which the laws ought to be regarded, which is often too transitory, is it the duty of all men, who have power and opportunity, to expose falsehood, flog folly, chastise crime, and, on the brazen forehead of audacious Vice, to brand the letters "infamous," that whenever he shows front, he may be known by the scars. Now, no false hood, no folly, no crime, no vice, which it is in the power of a man to utter, exhibit, perpetrate, or indulge, can be so hurtful to the soul of society as hatred and hostility to the Christian Religion.

We speak now to persons calling themselves Protestants-not to Papists. If they are what they call themselves, they must abhor Popery, and pray that its reign may be constantly contracted, till it finally cease. It is not enough now and then, in some public vehicle or other, such as a fine flaming speech, or a coarse flameless book, to allow and lament the evils that haunt, like so many demons, the darkness of that benighted Creed, while in all their measures, in all their active conduct, they show, under a thin disguise indeed, or un

der no disguise at all, we shall not say, an equal indifference to all creeds, but an inveterate hostility to the Protestant. For who so weak as to believe it possible that the same man can, with all his heart and all his mind, and all his soul, love and honour the Gospel, and at the same time hate or despise the Protestant Church? Is he a Dissenter? Then he loves and honours his own Church, and we love and honour him for so doing; for his belief, though different from ours, originates in an enlightened and liberated conscience. He is Protestant from the abuses and corruptions of Christianity, but the others are Protestants from Christianity itself; and did they dare to profess their full faith-and they hope that the time when they may do so is not very far off

they would say-of all creeds claiming to be of revealed religion-let us break their bonds asunder, and cast their cords from us. For do they not set themselves either openly or covertly against all Christianizing of heathen lands-and do they not ridicule the progress of the pure light of Christianity among the corrupted and dark-and while they make a loud outcry in favour of the march of intellect and of mind, do they not, with a shocking inconsistency that shows the hollowness of their hearts, preach liberty of religion to all men-that is, liberty to remain for ever in the darkness of idolatry, and to deliver up all that is holiest and most sacred in liberty into the hands of others-the Bible, which alone can raise up a nation, when lying open throughout its leaves before every eye of all ranks, all the while being hidden beneath the mantle of the priests?

Such persons as these howl for what is called Catholic Emancipation, in hatred of the Church of England, which is the great bulwark of Christianity. Strip it of all dignity-all wealth-all power-and then the Bible, they believe, will become like any other book in a library-be read in the same spirit as the history of any other real or alleged transactions,-nay, read, they hope, as a most wonderful and instructive history of fiction and superstition!

That a very great number of those who clamour about the Catholic claims belong to this class, you may know by listening to a languid speech

in the House of Peers from my Lord King, or a lively one in the House of Pots from my Jack Straw. His Lordship's slang against Parsons and Bishops is not the twentieth part as entertaining as that of the Ostler; but it is spurted and spluttered out with equal good-will to, and nearly equal great knowledge of, the Church Establishment. Yet the effect produced, owing to his Lordship's inferiority in liveliness, a quality of great avail both in a public and a private speaker, is very different indeed-the eloquence of the one setting and keeping the House of Peers asleep or ayawn, that of the other setting and keeping the House of Pots broad awake and on the guffaw. Both are alike earnest and anxious for unbridled liberty of religion—as indeed they both are, though we hope, on different theoretical and practical grounds, against all protection to corn. In all political clubs, intermediate between the House of Peers and the House of Pots, such characters are to be heard haranguing in pretty much the same tone and temper, every day and every night; and as the House of Pots generally sits later than the House of Peers, the question being put from the woolsack, Catholic Emancipation has been, many a midnight, after a stormy debate the clerk and the grave-digger constituting the minority-and the schoolmaster declining to hold up his handcarried by acclamation.

Others, again, there are who are totally and entirely indifferent about the whole matter. They go to church, and seeing, perhaps, a good fat, stout, jolly, rosy-faced pastor, in a roomy and strong-built pulpit, preaching away in perfect security, within the four thick walls of a building, with a roof covered on the outside with lead, and in the inside with rafters, and supported on prodigious pillars running all the way round and round,-they no more think of danger to the Church Establishment than danger to the Solar System. They look up to the ceiling of the parish church on the Sundays, and to the ceiling of the universal sky on week days, without ever dreaming about what it is that supports either the one or the other-and as it is the custom or fashion of the times to be liberal in religion, why then they cheerfully and carelessly acquiesce in Catholic Emancipation, hoping that

neither the Pope nor the devil is so bad as has been represented, and that both will contrive to do their duty, even after the removal of all restrictions from seven millions of the finest people on earth, without any danger either to Church or State.

Then there are hundreds of thousands, we are sick and sorry to say it, of silly people of some slight education, but no talents, who, incapable of forming an opinion, or indeed even of collecting data on which one might be formed, on any subject of the least doubt or difficulty, deliver themselves up,-one following the other, or all leaping and bounding over one another's heads, like so many sheep dogdriven into a pen,-into the charge of the great big blustering leading Whig of the place, who, with the assistance of a few yelping Radical curs, turns the flock, like that woolly people, into the hurdles of Liberalism, which, after all, is a very wet, miry, uncomfortable, and by no means roomy inclosure, and all dotted over with cloven feet. There are they all crowded together, rams, wedders, ewes, and lambs, staring at you or at one another with unmeaning faces, and ever and anon bleating baa-baa-baamaa-maa-maa! This absurd noise forms, forsooth, part of the voice of the people crying aloud for Catholic Emancipation!

In a class very superior to these are to be found, no doubt, many able and conscientious men, who, true members of the Protestant Church, have convinced themselves, either that little or no danger could attend or arise out of the granting the Catholic claims, or that it is better even to run some risk of danger, or of evil at least, than, by withholding the boon so long silently desired, or loudly demanded, to keep in operation what they conceive to be the chief, or one of the chief causes, of the unhappy condition of the Irish people. Many of these most respectable persons are decidedly of opinion that the Catholic claims should be granted, and many of them have only a leaning, more or less strong, to that side of the question. But all of them agree in this, that some plan of securities must be devised and they all allow that there are great difficulties to be encountered in the settlement of the kind and sort of those securities. With such oppo

nents it is pleasant to argue; for their opinion, though, as we think, erroneous, is formed on due reflection, on knowledge, and in conscience.

Last of all, might be mentioned a list of great and illustrious names, friends and champions of Catholic Emancipation-some of whom, perhaps, would not stickle for securities are no security-mongers-to use a rather imprudent expression of Mr Canning, when in a state of irritation with himself and others-of whom some are or were, we verily believe, true friends to the Protestant Church, and some are or were, we verily be lieve, to say the least of them, no friends to it at all, or, what is worse, false ones, and too indifferent altogether, too philosophical, too liberal, too much citizens of the world, on the subject of religion, natural or revealed. But far the greater number, and the most illustrious of the former, have always looked to securities, ampler or more limited, firmer or more uncertain, vague or better defined; most of the latter, of course, have spoken sneeringly or slightingly of securities, we know not if any have strenuously opposed them, or insisted that to demand them was useless and unjust. Absolute, total, unqualified, unrestricted emancipation, without salvo or security, seems to be demanded only by the most rabid of the Catholic leaders themselves, or the most idiotic of the priest-ridden, or the revolutionary radicals pretending to be Protestants, but, in all practical matters of morality or religion, men of no creed at all, that is, in one single strong word-Atheists!

Such is our classification, hastily and rudely sketched, of the heads of Catholic Emancipators; and they have been, are, and will be, opposed by three-fourths at least of the people of Britain-including far more than that proportion of the most virtuous, the most learned, the most enlightened, and the most illustrious. Let but the ngland and of Scotland, and the Protestant Dissenters of the better and higher order, be true to themselves, and no breach will be battered even by all the light and heavy artillery of this liberal age, in the great bulwark-the fortress of our national well-being, a Protestant State, of which the very Citadel is a Protestant Church.

The very Citadel. For, let knowledge spread wide over the whole land, let the discoveries of all sciences be multiplied a hundred fold, let all the people think, and feel, and act for themselves in the power of liberty, so that the conscience is as free in the hut as in the hall, and the very pauper may have familiarity in his hovel with emotions of mind that are the highest enjoyment of the prince in his palace, let the fairest visions be realized of the most enthusiastic and imaginative philanthropist dreaming of the amelioration, the perfectibility, the perfection of the race, and still the Protestant faith, the Reformed Christian religion, that is, the Christian religion restored to its original purity, as it breathes and burns in the New Testament, will be found commensurate with all the capacities and powers of the human soul,-and will still be the "bright consummate flower," in the wreath on the forehead of glorified humanity. But let the spirit of Christianity be polluted or perverted as, in the religion of Popery, it has ever been among the great body of the people, or let its light be darkened by a veil of idolatrous ceremonies, or shut up in the shrines of superstition,-and then, as human reason and human knowledge and human science advance, and, we say, let them advance for ever and ever, and may no barrier be raised to obstruct their progress, Christianity will, in its perversion or obscuration, appear what it then indeed really will be, a mockery and a delusion, its priests will deserve to fall, and they will fall, with all their towers and temples, and the bare, naked, and denuded earth will again look up in blank destitution of religion, and the holy forms and shadows and symbols of religion, to the disconsolate skies.

Religion men will have, as long as the earth groans with the griefs of us transitory creatures. It is, indeed, at all times tending towards, bordering upon, Superstition. For the passions, in their disorder, drive men sometimes to seek, and sometimes to shun, God and his vicegerent Conscience; and to soothe or propitiate those powers divine, God and the God-given, they bow down even before unhallowed altars, and fly for refuge to unsanctified shrines, in fear, or hope, or despair, blind to the only

light, deaf to the only sound, that can save: Therefore so frequent and so fell is Superstition. But, as long as 'the Bible lies open in its boards, as long as all eyes can read, and thousands of eloquent tongues are dedicated to expound, its pages, Religion, in her happiness, scares away Superstition, and all her train of shadowy phantoms, and thus, indeed, and not by mere fleets and armies, is a Nation -truly great.

No revolutions will ever, earthquake-like, rend and rock the structures of social life to their foundations again, as long as Christianity endures in purity and in truth. Religion shall be the strength of the nations-when Reason and Faith kneel together in all her temples. But in all nations lying under the darkened clouds of Christianity, there will, at frequent periods, be great political earthquakes. There will be alternations of Superstition and of Atheism-building up and pulling down-pouring out of blood like water, and all in vain-intervals between of sullen servitude or fierce license for where Religion is not, her sister Liberty "will be far ;" and Religion there never will be, permanent and steadfast, while there are men, afraid of Reason to guard the gates of all her temples, and to minister at all her al

tars.

Take, then, we say, any number of well-educated men indiscriminately from the population of Britain, unconnected, as far as they can be so, with political parties-with all their main opinions unswayed, as far as they can be so, by political predilections-following the dictates of their reason and their conscience-and meditating on the essential interests of this our Protestant State, and we firmly believe, that a great majority of them indeed, while they may la ment the necessity of it, on account of the many thousands of enlightened Gatholics, whose faith is far better than that of their priests, and, just in proportion as it is better, makes an approximation to Protestantism, will decide for the exclusion of all persons of that religion from the privileges to which they are seeking to be admitted. So far from being of a persecuting spirit, it is the spirit of persecution which they desire to keep down; so far from being bigoted, they desire that the worst of bigotry shall be shut

out from our councils; so far from being illiberal, and haters of the light, and, if we must use language that has now degenerated into slang, of the "march of intellect," they desire that light shall overflow the land, and that the triumphs of intellect shall be limited only by the extent of the human faculties, cultivated to the utmost, and applied to all the most useful and most noble objects of human pursuit and ambition,

Within these few years, the selfdubbed champions of Truth, Knowledge, and Liberty, have become more and more audacious in their abuse of every man who stands forth to defend the rights, the privileges, and the principles of the Church of England, and declares her to be an integral part of the Constitution of this Protestant State. If they did themselves venerate that Church, they would speak of her in a very different style of language, and also of those men who, whatever be the real merits of this

great question, are certainly among her most distinguished ornaments. We cannot think it natural to wear a perpetual sneer on the lip-to drop perpetual rancour from tongue and pen, on all occasions when we hear the name of the object of our inward respect and admiration. Neither is it natural, in such cases, to be for ever qualifying our praises; " to hint a fault, and hesitate dislike," during the progress of a panegyric. The real feeling in the mind of the eulogist often shews itself in an apparently very insignificant word, which somewhat sneakingly gives the lie to a man's whole discourse-for one single syllable of impertinence betrays the dissembler, and converts what was beginning to be felt as fulsome flattery into silly satire, both alike beneath considerate contempt. Far better to speak boldly out-and to utter their real sentiments in abuse of the Church and churchmen, like the Examiner, and the other filthy fools and knaves of the lowest Cockney school; but to "palter with us in a double sense," at the very time they are holding up their heads, and pluming themselves on their attachment to the religious establishments of their country, is a sort of insult which a sensible man, even of the most meek and Christian temper, cannot often, without losing a little of it, stand from hypocritical

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