Testament, saying, “ Let those who object to this conclusion .... make the most ample allowance. . . . for eastern hyperbole let them join all together, and they will find an honour so high and universal, a splendour so glorious, a majesty so awful yet abiding on the throne of Jesus, as is meet only for HIM, who is the Most Highest over all." The title of God's only begotten Son is shown to be exclusive, not to have had respect to his miraculous conception, nor yet to his Messiahship, but solely to the truly divine nature which was inherent in him: and Christ's assertion of this title, his exclusive vindication of it to himself, is proved to have been so understood by the Jews of his day; of which we need no stronger evidence, than that it formed the plea for his condemnation to the cross. The seventh sermon passes to a discussion of the personality and godhead of the Holy Ghost: and the eighth is devoted to the purpose of bringing together the several conclusions from the whole. contains many quotations from Dr. Burton's ، Ante-Nicene Testimonies" and Faber's "Apostolicity of Trinitarianism;" and gives a short but splendid review of many of the ancient heresies. This compendious account is sufficient to enable our readers to form their own judgment of the work.

This sermon,

The Errors of the Romish Church. By the Rev. J. RUDGE, D.D. Hawkesworth, Dorset. 1835.

THE date of this sermon is October 4th, 1835,-the day on which, three centuries past, the people of England received the power of searching the Scriptures in their vernacular tongue. This circumstance led Dr. Rudge into an historical detail of the rise and progress of the Reformation, and, by consequence, into an exposition of the errors of Popery. Although, in controverting the notions of tradition, the supremacy of the pope, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, adoration of images, and the invocation of saints, the arguments are those which have been commonly used, and have already occurred in our work, the manner in which they have been concentrated on his point, the vivid picture which he has drawn of the baleful effects of Romanism, both in its ecclesiastical and political operations, and the forcible light in which he has placed the scriptural contradictions of papistical pretensions, are recommendations by which his sermon can authoritatively lay claim to public regard, and to every one's deep attention.

In discussing Matt. xvi. 18, on which the supremacy of the pope is principally founded, the Doctor recapitulates evidences from the sacred page, that Peter was disqualified from being the rock of the Christian church,-that Christ alone was that rock, according to the predictions of the ancient Scriptures, and that the words

in the Evangelist referred not personally to him, but applied to the doctrine which he had just uttered. What man of sober mind can read the context without drawing the same conclusion? It suits the Romanists in this, as in many other cases, to detach passages from their connexion, and in this severed state to make them the basis of most incredible doctrines; and those who are thus deluded have only to blame themselves for not searching the word of God, and bringing the strange things proposed to them to its unerring test. Το persons conversant with the paronomasia of the Jews no other interpretation can suggest itself: in most other instances the article is prefixed to Peter's name, and its absence in this play on Térpoç and Térpa is fatal to the Roman exposition of the passage:-it is omitted purposely, that the words, which our Lord spoke in Hebræo-Syriac, might, with the utmost fidelity, be translated into the Greek. omission, the paronomasia in both is obtained.

By this

In the part which relates to the assumption of infallibility, Dr. Rudge has made a very sensible remark." Is it in good taste, and with perfect consistency, that you should rebuke the Reformers of the sixteenth century,-you who, to a man, are now reformers in the nineteenth century, and who, together with your representatives in parliament, are in league and combination, expressed or implied, with those, who at their political unions, and in their public documents, have professed that their object is to root out and pull down, to destroy and throw down all state religions and ecclesiastical establishments?" Has not, indeed, a church, which can promulgate the monstrous dogma, that it has power to create a God at each communion, by its impiety and perversion of Scripture (as Dr. Rudge urges), lost all claim to infallibility?

In like manner, notwithstanding the express and implicit prohibition of image-worship, on which point the Divine Mind is more sensitive than another,-which, in fact, has no essential difference from the act of idolatry, for which the pagan world is censured ;-notwithstanding the Divine denunciations against the practice in the second commandment, in the whole body of the Mosaic law, and in the prophetic oracles, the Romanists in this respect arrogate to themselves a right to infringe these sacred institutes. That there should be representations of Him whom no eye hath seen, and therefore no hand can carve,-whether they be pictures of the Godhead embodied in the Mediator of man, or images of the mother of the incarnate God, once the instrument of marvellous agency, but never to be worshipped; or portraitures of saints, relics of martyrs, and the like,—is as surprising, as the superstition and idolatry connected with them is revolting. Not only profanation of the religion of the one true God and his Messiah, but the canonization of the dead, to whom invocation is made, and intercession is offered, with

mummeries and will-worship, are blots, which unchristianize the spirit of the Roman-catholic religion.

On these particulars Dr. Rudge has enlarged in a temperate tone, and with a great power of convincing argument; and we conceive that the short notice, which we have given of his sermon, will cause many of our readers to be desirous of perusing it in its fulness.

Ecclesiastical Report.

IRISH MUNICIPAL CORPORATION BILL.

FOR many months past there has been an organized tranquillity in Ireland, the result of discipline, of calculation, and of orders from head-quarters, which indicates to the eye of observation the very dangerous condition of affairs in that country. Yet, despite every care and caution not to defeat a purpose which, in this instance, seems to us perfectly transparent, the natural disposition will occasionally discover itself. It is difficult to play a part for any time without some involuntary movement betraying the imposition. A community, any more than a single individual, cannot be every instant on their guard. Not long ago the Ballyshannon Herald contained an account of an outrage committed by above a thousand of the peasantry upon the property of Mr. Hector, a Scotch gentleman, who is (or rather was) the proprietor of extensive salmon fishery. They cut to pieces and utterly destroyed, or carried off, every article belonging to him by land or water: nets, boats, fish, &c. were one and all made prey of. On the Sunday preceding this outrage, a priest pronounced from the altar of the chapel, "all the condemnations of the reprobates of hell," against the persons and fishermen who were in the employment of Mr. Hector. The catastrophe which ensued, was from that hour, inevitable. And yet a plenary municipal dominion is proposed to be granted to an entire priesthood composed of such men!-the only dominion which they do not already exercise over a populace who, whatever their implicit submission to the thraldom of their priests, display but small capacity for obedience to the laws.

It is impossible to disconnect the ideas of the abolition of tithes in Ireland, the destruction of the Anglican church, and the Repeal of the Union, from the measure of Municipal Reform, and the increase of democratic influence involved in that contemplated innovation. In the abstract, and under peculiar circumstances, municipal institutions may be supposed to come

seasonably in aid of the well-being of a community. During the middle ages they were resorted to by many states as a sort of scaffolding, till the structure of their liberty was completed. They were preferred as an admirable bulwark against the crown. But, God be thanked, these kingdoms have grown out of their necessity. At no time, in our opinion, even as a temporary arrangement, was such a system advisable; but our European ancestors thought differently; nor, indeed, were they altogether at liberty to pick and choose what instruments they would work with. They did the best with such materials as were ready to their hands, according to their lights. They raised civil fortresses against the aggressions of the despot, which we must not suffer a worse than sceptred tyranny to take by sap, in order to turn into schools of peaceful agitation. Great Britain and Ireland, anterior to the reign of Elizabeth, were subject to very heavy servile payments, and the Irish corporations were originally instituted with the object of exempting from this burthen the inhabitants of any place to which they were granted. James I., by one artifice or another, succeeded in enforcing from these towns a surrender of their ancient privileges. The new charters he substituted were found to deprive the bulk of the population of their franchises. In one day this monarch exalted some forty hamlets into the rank of boroughs. Cromwell's followers usurped the rights of the ancient Irish; and the bribe of an excise bill induced Charles II. to perpetuate this injustice. The corporate power thus fell into the hands of a few individuals, who almost uniformly exerted their influence to foster Protestantism and property, to rebuke and check the temporal authority of the Romish priesthood, and so the more closely rivet the connexion between Ireland and Great Britain. It is now proposed by the Irish Corporation Bill to transfer this municipal monopoly into the hands of those who are pledged to the subversion of the Anglican church, and the divorce of the two kingdoms. Instead of rooting out all invidious privileges, which were an act of justice and wisdom, it is intended to invest with exclusive municipal power the Roman-catholic inhabitants of Ireland-a power to be wielded as a rampant hierarchy shall see occasion; and gradually to be employed to sever the connexion between the sister kingdoms, and on the ruin of the Protestant Establishment to raise the church of Rome. Ireland is unhappy in her national souvenirs; and it militates against the weal of the realm at this day, that she cannot summon up amongst her historic associations the memory of a Douglas, a Bruce, and a Wallace; that she cannot repose her wounded pride in such a defeat as that of Falkirk, or a triumph like Bannockburn. The glorious achievements of later years, in which she has had her share, side by side, and foot to foot, with Englishmen, do not content her. Could she seek relief from the false sense of humiliation in a dream of former

glory, could she recal one great victory over her invaders,-(and that she cannot, no human being thinks of imputing to any deficiency in the individual prowess of her children or her children's ancestors,)—she were now at peace; and we esteem it one of the greatest misfortunes entailed upon this country, that we were not driven as well across the Irish Channel as over the Scottish borders. The annals of a nation which present only one series of civil warfare and insurrection, averted or put down, furnish no pleasing retrospect to dwell upon.

The great orator and statesman of antiquity has well discriminated between the issue of a foreign war and a rebellion. Either our foreign enemies, he observes, are overcome in fight, and then they serve us; or if they are taken into our friendship, they are obliged to us in generosity; but if any of our own countrymen are once debauched into so high a degree of frenzy as to declare themselves enemies to their country, these, when you have repressed them from destroying the commonwealth, you can hardly restrain by any force, or reconcile by any favour. History presents no more apposite exemplification of the above sagacious remark than the state of the sister island. The gordian knot, which has so long enchained the faculties of that country, remains yet to be unravelled. She exhibits a jarring discordant system,-her people are discontented. From the dying embers of one revolt bursts out, at almost regular intervals, the flames of a succeeding insurrection. And thus has Ireland been harassed and afflicted for a long series of years. Her pecuniary prosperity within the last twelve months has been steadily increasing; but it is an alarming and note-worthy symptom in her case, that the very disposition to insurrection is apt to break out into overt demonstrations in times of comparative ease and affluence,--as, for example, in 1796, and the three succeeding years. As this has gone on for centuries, it cannot be of a sudden eradicated. It existed before the clouds of popery alighted on the nation-before Adrian III., in 1156, issued a bull in favour of Henry. And it will continue to desolate the land after: "for her transgressions, new judgments be brought upon her." Courage and force, though exercised in the commission of the most revolting crimes, have ever been more honoured in the sister kingdom than any pacific virtues. Irishmen for successive generations have been divided by the fiercest animosities against each other, and are invariably more intent on the means of reciprocal injury, than on expedients for public or even for private interest. This may appear so common-place a fact as to be hardly worth noticing in our pages; but for the very reason of its being universally admitted we advert to it. In practical subjects the force of every argument is diminished by triteness and familiarity. It will read like a paradox to many but it is nevertheless certain, that when truths, have