Obrázky na stránke
PDF
ePub
[ocr errors]

the merits of our Redeemer to our soul,) how, it may be asked, are they to be holy and vigilant watchmen of the Lord? Upon thy walls, O Jerusalem, I have appointed watchmen all the day, and all the night, they shall never hold their peace.(*) In fine, if they use not holy orders as a sacrament, how can her ministers possess the grace of God, which should be in them by the imposition of the hands of the priesthood 2(a) They who have extraordinary duties imposed upon them, must surely need: extraordinary graces to be enabled worthily to fulfil them.

As the Church of England is not holy in her pastors, for the same reason she is not holy in her people." In acknowledging but two sacraments, she has narrowed the means destined to convey the graces of heaven to her followers; she has cut off so many sources for applying the merits of our Redeemer to the soul, and thereby abridged the sanctification and perfection of man.

Another proof of the want of holiness in the Protestant Church is, that those who leave the Catholic communion for the Establishment, inva

(*) Isai. lxii. 16.

(a) 1 Tim. iv. 14. 2 Tim. 1. 6.

(b) Let any one read Dr. Clarke's Account of the public and private morals in Sweden, Norway, and Russia, and say whether he thinks holiness a characteristic mark of the Protestant Reformation in those countries.

riably shew by their conduct, that they do so, solely in furtherance of their worldly interests, and to enjoy a greater latitude both of faith and practice. In deserting their religion, they almost always desert their morality with it: yet, even then, they generally flatter themselves with the hope of returning to die in the bosom of the ancient faith.) But how seldom does the Almighty permit them thus to trifle with him? They say within themselves : Yours is the church in which we will live at our ease, but we will return to our own, to die in penitence and peace. But as they abandon God, he abandons them in their turn; he withdraws his grace, and consigns them to their folly. Far dif

(e) It has been no uncommon occurrence for Catholics, who for temporal motives have abjured their religion, to educate their children in the creed they had deserted, thus giving the strongest practical proof of the fallacy of their own conversion, and of the estimation in which they held the ancient faith. This was the case with the Earl of Arundell, the father of the unfortunate Lord Stafford, as well as with many others." Sir William Scott informs me that he heard Johnson say: 'A man who is converted from Protestancy to Popery, may be sincere; he parts with nothing, he is only superadding to what he already had: but a convert from Popery to Protestancy, gives up so much of what he has held as sacred as any thing that he retains there is so much laceration of mind in such a conversion, that it can hardly be sincere and lasting." -Boswell's Life of Johnson.)

[ocr errors]

ferent is the conduct of converts to Catholicity; evincing the purity of their motives by the severity of their religious observances, and by the example of disinterested piety which they exhibit to the world. No one scarcely has yet left us, who has lived well, or died happily: hardly any one has yet sought and found us, who has not been a pattern of virtue while living, and a saint in death.

The extraordinary circumstance of her followers choosing rather to remain without places of divine worship, than to make any sacrifices or exertions to erect them, might also be cited as another proof of the want of holiness, or at least of zeal, in the Protestant Church. It certainly is an anomaly in the history of Christianity, that the richest church in Europe-in the most opulent country in the world-should be compelled to call upon the whole nation, not one half of whom profess the religion of the State, to supply her with temples for the celebration of her religious rites. It was far different when the present possessions of the church were in the hands of a Catholic Hierarchy. The most sumptuous buildings in the world, the wonders of each succeeding age, then every where arose in profusion, through the spontaneous zeal and piety of the clergy and the people. -In poor, degraded, insulted, and impoverished Ireland, what exertions have not a Catholic starv

IBRARY

117

UNIVE

ing peasantry, and an unbeneficed clergy, made for the erection of decent places of public worship!

Thirdly.-No Protestant Church possesses that other characteristic of revealed truth, Catholicity, that is, universality. The Protestant Churches are not universal in point of time, having had no existence for upwards of 1500 years after the coming of Christ; for no one can show that the doctrine and belief of Protestants was ever professed by any individual, much less by any Church or any congregation of Christians, previous to the days of Luther. Their very name is a novelty.

No Protestant Church is universal in point of space, because not one of them embraces more than comparatively a very small portion of the Christian world, no where comprehending any large numbers of the flock of Christ :-no where is Protestantism any thing but a sect. If the Church of England looks for universality, she finds herself checked upon every side; she is a mere insulated province of Christendom. To be universal, she should be like the Roman Catholic,-preached to every creature ;(c) carried to the uttermost parts of the earth;(d) ruling from sea to sea, and from the river even to the ends of the earth; offering

(e) St. Mark, xvi. 15. (d) Acts, i. 8. (e) Psal. lxxi. 8.

a clean sacrifice in every place from the rising to the setting of the sun; extending from the sands of Syria to the deserts of Paraguay; from schismatical Moscow to infidel Japan. To be universal,— like the Roman Catholic, she should have preserved inviolate the everlasting covenant, a covenant like that of the day and the night,(") to stand for all generations, which the Almighty has made with her, and confirmed by a solemn oath." By a perpetual, uninterrupted, and visible existence, she should have shown herself the constant and steady light of the world, the standing and living memorial of the promises of Christ; she should have been the mountain of the House of our Lord in these latter days, prepared on the top of mountains, and exalted above the hills, with all nations flowing unto it.)

There neither is, nor ever was, upon earth, any other Church to which these and numberless other prophecies can possibly be applied, but the Roman Catholic :-she is universal in point of time; she is universal in point of space.-After an existence of more than 1800 years, we still find her every where. We find her glorious and magnificent before the learned and the rich, under the golden dome of the Vatican, seated triumphant on the

--

Malach. ii. 11.

(h) Jer. xxxiii. 20.21.

(8) Ezek. xxxvii. 26. Ps. lxxxviii. 4, 36, & Isaias, liv. 9. (*) Isaias, ii. 2.

« PredošláPokračovať »