She still continues to lift her head among the nations, and as the depository of the pure word of God stands prominently forward in these stirring times of religious and political excitement, the great bulwark of Protestantism-the hope and glory of Christendom.

CHAPTER VIII.

"Stand ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths, where is the good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your souls."-Jerem. vi. 16.

IN bringing this sketch of the rise, fall, and restoration of the British Church to a conclusion, the author believes he has most fully established all the points that he proposed to prove-that the Church of England is a primitive, apostolical, and independent branch of Christ's Holy Catholic Church -that her antiquity is unquestionable-her priority to the Church of Rome as an established national church, recognized by the State, undoubted-that she was a protestant Church more than 900 years before the Reformation-that her independence as such was maintained till after the Norman Conquest -that her submission to the See of Rome was effected by the force of error, of arms, of intimi

dation, and of priestcraft. He has shown that the Popish claim, through the power of "the Keys," to be the mother and mistress of all churches, is a vain and arrogant pretence, warranted neither by Scripture nor by history—that the papal usurpation and tyranny was effected and maintained by means the most infamous that can be conceived-that the Church of Rome riveted her yoke on the necks of the people, by keeping them in the grossest ignorance-by locking up the Scriptures in an unknown tongue-by perverting the truth-by denying the right of private judgment—by forcing on them doctrines, rites, and ceremonies such as Christ, his apostles, and their immediate successors never taught -by invading the heritage of their forefathers, and burning and blotting out, tearing or interpolating their sacred title-deeds to eternal life, the Holy Scriptures and by substituting for the Scriptures the vain traditions of men.

These several points the author confidently believes have been proved by the fairest and most incontrovertible testimony that history affords-and consequently that the Reformation was not the invention of a new religion, but the restoration of the old-the recovery of that heritage of our fathers which was surreptitiously stolen from them. So that the question with which the Romanists are continually taunting Protestants,-Where their reli

gion was before the Reformation ?—adds mockery to theft. Thanks be to God, the popish plunderers could neither totally deface the seals, nor utterly destroy the parchments of Protestantism. They might, and they did, mar and mutilate them by the legends and fables of an infallible church; but the God of truth" laughed at their devices—the Lord had them in derision." The restorers of the Church of England were too wise in their generation, when they discovered the theft, to abandon the strong ground of scriptural light. The Cranmers and Latimers, the Ridleys and Jewells—the giants of those days, -men, who, "by God's grace, lighted up such a candle in England as shall never be put out❞— "stood in the ways, and saw, and asked for the old paths, where was the good way, and they walked therein." Yes, these mighty men had been eyewitnesses of the scandalous corruptions and gross idolatry of the Church of Rome-they had seen "the churches full of images wonderfully decked and adorned with precious stones; their dead and still bodies clothed with garments stiff with gold," to which the stupid people bowed down and worshipped-they had seen "the priests themselves, with a solemn pace, pass forth before these golden puppets, and fall down to the ground on their knees before these idols, and then rising up again, offer

up odours and incense unto them 1"—they had seen the bowings, and gesticulations, the cross-creepings, and altar-kissings, and bread-breathings, and all the hundred other acts of mummery and pantomime, which so disgraced the Roman ritual-they had heard the prayers mumbled in a strange tongue, unintelligible to the people-they had witnessed the famine of the Word, the withholding the Scriptures from the people-they had seen and heard, and felt these unwarrantable innovations and novelties-they brought them to the test of Scriptureof primitive practice-they weighed them in the balance of the sanctuary-they "measured them by the Pattern", that had survived the Church's ruin-and without casting all away because in the assay they discovered a great admixture of alloy, they carefully cherished whatever remained pure"that only in which the Church of Rome had prevaricated against the word of God, or innovated against apostolic tradition, was pared away." Of the truth of this remark of the venerable Taylor, the Liturgy, that we have seen them compile so cautiously, and scripturally, is an everlasting witness. A strict "regard for ancient faith and piety is manifest in every page, and almost every para

1 Hom. of the Church of England.