prayer,

Called them now to pray and weep,
They wept as men who hoped in time
To share their pastor's sleep.
Though many a widowed mother,
And many an orphan child,
Would lose the hand that kindly
Their sorrows had beguiled,
Though many a wayward wanderer
Would miss the well-known voice,
That bid him quick his follies leave

And in God's ways rejoice,-
Though many a soothing word would want,
When soothing words are dear,
When sorrow to their humble homes
Had come companion near,—
Still, still these dwellers in Piedmont,
In their mountain home afar,
Could tell that sinful grief should ne'er
God's chastening mercy mar;
But ever, when the stroke is dealt,
Of his chastising rod,

Men never should the love forget
Of their Creator-God!

March 1, 1845.

J. B. BRODRICK.

OUR NEW CHURCH;
OR,

GODLINESS AND UNITY:

A DIALOGUE.

(Continued.)

some ?"

M.-It is reasonable to suppose it will. And I think, too, the publicans will be ashamed to let drinking go on in their houses during service time, as I have heard some do, when they see people on every side of them thronging to the House of God. Will not the comparison make the wickedness and impiety of their own conduct appear even to their own eyes?

G.-One would think so surely, and hope so. But if not, some will see their conduct who will be anxious to put down such scandalous violations of the laws of God and man.

M.-God grant it! But is it not strange that more wickedness should be done by the wicked on the Lord's day, than on any other day? It seems as if those who will not serve God, when He especially calls them to his service, fall then above all other times under Satan's power. The Sabbath breaker is on the high road to all wickedness.

G. It is too true. But what else can be expected for those who do despite unto the Spirit of grace? Well, some good then may result from the mere sound of the bells, and from the sight of the Church and of the people thronging to it. But besides this there will be a clergyman dwelling amongst

G.-They are many indeed; more than can be told in a short space of time. It will be enough perhaps to speak of some few.

"One of them is, that the very sight of the Church, and the sound of its bells, and the tidiness and quiet seriousness of many moving thither to worship, will admonish several of their duty who seem now to forget it entirely. The most careless and profane cannot but see the regard which others pay to God's House, and be reminded that there is a God whom they also ought to worship, and to whom they are answerable for every neglect of his

ing, and comforting us with words of heavenly wisdom; a servant of God, sent for our good, authorized and solemnly charged to watch for our souls as one that must give account, and assured of the continual presence of the Lord with him, to bless and prosper his labours while he seeks to be found faithful.

M. That will be indeed a great blessing. I well remember when I was with my mother in her last illness, how thankfully she spoke of the clergyman's diligent and kind attendance; and how, as we stood around her deathbed, he affectionately and solemnly warned us of the uncertainty of life, and that there could be no peace for us till we were truly in Christ by a

lively faith in him, and were walking not after the flesh but after the Spirit. And with many other words did he try to impress upon us a sense of that holiness which becometh Christians, and to excite in us a longing desire of those treasures of eternal delight which are hid with Christ in God. Oh! it was a very moving scene, a very heartrending solemn time; not easily to be forgotten. And then he bade us all kneel down, and with some suitable and holy prayers out of the Prayerbook, he commended the soul of my dying mother to the mercy of God in Christ, and entreated grace for us all to consider our own frailty and to apply our hearts unto wisdom. I have good reason to say then that it is a great blessing to have a servant of God dwelling nigh at hand, watching over us with affectionate carefulness, and guiding our steps in the way of peace.

:

G.-The good Lord send us an able and faithful minister; and bless his labours and (for I must not forget our part,) give us also grace to receive his holy admonitions with all due reverence. Much of the good we might experience through the ministrations of the clergy is lost to us because we forget that they are God's messengers

to us.

M.-That is true enough. I often find myself judging him and his doctrine, instead of meekly listening to him as to an ambassador for Christ, and minister of God, and with desire to gain improvement in knowledge and grace. And then I complain I am not edified. But, in truth, I have not gone the right way to work. The fault was

my own.

66

Well, I thank you," added he, "thank you for your friendly conversation about our new church; I already feel a much more lively interest in it, and better disposed, I trust, to profit by these new mercies which God is preparing for us."

G-I am glad to hear it, and would prolong our conversation unless you are tired; as there are other great blessings to be expected from it, which I have not touched upon.

M.-Oh! I am not tired of hearing, if you are not of talking to me.

G.-Come then, if that be the case, let us converse a little about the public' worship of the church; for if there be, as I believe, very great good in it, how much more may we enjoy that good when we have it nigh at hand, and can avail ourselves of it twice each Lord's day.

M.-Then you don't think a single attendance at church each Lord's day sufficient?

G.-How can I? What does such sparing attendance arise from but indolence and indifference? It is a dis honour to God, inasmuch as it shows that we grudge his service, and desire to shorten it as much as possible. What blessing can it bring, then? And if, as is too frequently the case, people only go to church in the afternoon, there is much of the service of the church that they lose altogether. On the und lys, and on certain other days, the Communion Service and the Litany are a ided to the usual Morning Service. It is a great pity to miss either of these. For, to speak first of the Communion Service : it leads us in order through all the main parts of the Christian faith, in the selections for the Epistles and Gospels. It reminds us continually of the several particulars of our duty to God and man, by rehearsing to us the Ten Commandments. It offers us, from time to time, the means of having our souls strengthened and refreshed by the body and blood of Christ in the Lord's Supper. Then for the Litany, What is there needful for soul or body, for ourselves or others, that is not made the subject of prayer in that portion of our Common Prayer? And how singularly suited is it to train us in godliness, by turning our duties into prayers for grace! and not only that, but also to teach us brotherly love, by setting us upon asking for so many and such unspeakable blessings, both spiritual and temporal, for our fellowcreatures, even our enemies! It is impossible to join in those prayers with any sincerity and earnestness, and not to rise from them with an increase of love and good-will towards all. Now does not all this show that the Morning Service ought to be attended by everyone who desires to know the truth, to be instructed in his duty, to be armed

M.-Well, I hope henceforth to be constant attendant at the Morning Service. I used to attend the Evening Service because it was the shortest, and because we came to the sermon soonest, which I thought the most entertaining part of all. But I now feel I have deceived myself in thinking it was enough to attend that service alone!

How

ungodly was that feeling which tempts us to shorten our devotions as much as possible, as though we counted it a wearisome thing to serve God!

G.-You may well condemn such conduct. God's service ought to be a delight, not a burden to us and we have not the spirit of his children in us till we can delight in Him, and desire to adorn the doctrine of God our Saviour in all things. Oh! that it would please God to dispose our hearts to give him the honour due to his name! that He would awaken in us a more lively interest in all that concerns his service and the advancement of the Gospel of Christ, and diffuse every where a spirit of holiness and unity (From the Church Newspaper, Canada.)

(TO BB CONTINUED.)

A DISCOURSE OF THE SACRIFICE OF THE MASS.

(First published in 1688.)* THE sacrifice of the mass is the most considerable part of worship in the Roman Church. It is their juge sacrificium, their daily and continual

* [This scarce and valuable treatise we purpose to reprint from the original copy, published anonymously in 1688. It is one of the many treatises on every de

It

offering, and the principal thing in which their religion does consist. is, they tell us, of the greatest profit and advantage to all persons, and I am sure their priests make it so to themselves, for by this alone a great number of them get their livings, by making merchandise of the Holy Sacrament, and by selling the blood of Christ at a dearer rate than Judas once did. The saying of masses keeps the Church of Rome more priests in pay than any prince in Christendom can maintain soldiers; and it has raised more by them than the richest bank or exchequer in the world was ever owner of; it is indeed the truest pariched it more than anything else. trimony of their Church, and has enwas that which founded their greatest monasteries and their richest abbeys, and it had well nigh brought all the estates of this kingdom into the Church, had not the statutes of Mortmain put a check to it. The donation of Constantine, were it never so true, and the grants of Charles and Pepin, were they never so large, and the gifts of all their benefactors put together, are infinitely outdone by it. The gain of it has been so manifestly great, that

It

partment of the Romish controversy, separately published, in small 4to, at that former period of threatening aspect to our Protestant, and therefore Catholic Church. Many of these were collected and reprinted by Bishop Gibson, in his " Preservative against Popery," in three volumes folio, and a very large, and perhaps complete, collection of them is deposited in the Chatham College Library, Manchester. Perhaps the reprinting of many of these, whether or not selected by Gibson, would be very seasonable at this time. The treatise, of which we now give the commencement, is not included in Gibson, and Gibson's Volumes are only attainable at high prices. Tractarian error has long approached to, if it is not now almost identical with, Romish doctrine on this subject. Hence the subject is one of very great interest and importance.-ED.]

one cannot but upon that account a little suspect its godliness; but yet, if it could fairly be made out to be a true part of religion, it were by no means to be rejected for that accidental though shameful abuse of it. It is accounted by them the greatest and the most useful and comfortable part of Christian worship; and if it be so, it is a great defect in us that want it. They charge us very high for being without it, without a sacrifice, which no religion (they tell us) in the world ever was before and one amongst them of great learning, and some temper in other things, yet upon this occasion, asks,whether it can be doubted where there is no sacrifice, there can be any religion?* We, on the other side, account it a very great corruption of the Eucharist, to turn that, which is a sacrament to be received by us, into a sacrifice to be offered to God. And, there being no foundation for any such thing in scripture, but the old ground of it being an error and mistake, as we shall see anon, and it being a most bold and daring presumption, to pretend properly to sacrifice Christ's body again, which implies no less than to murder and crucify him; we therefore call it a blasphemous fable. And, as it is made use of to deceive people into the vain hopes of receiving benefit by the communion without partaking of it, and a true pardon of sin by way of price; and recompense is attributed to it; and it is made as truly propitiatory as Christ's sacrifice upon the cross, both for the dead and living, and for that purpose is scandalously bought and sold, (so that many are hereby cheated

* An dubitari potest ubi nullum peculiare sacrificium, ibi ne religionem quidem esse posse Canus in loc, Theol. 1. 12, p. 813.

+ See Article 31 of the 39 Articles of religion.

not only of their money but of their souls too, it is to be feared, who trust too much to this easy way of having a great many masses said for them); and because, when the priest pretends to do those two great things in the mass, to turn the bread and wine into the very substance of Christ's body and blood, and then to offer Christ up again to his Father as truly as he offered himself upon the cross, (which are as great as the greatest works which ever God did at the very creation and redemption of the world) yet that he really does no such thing as he then vaunts and boasts of; for these reasons we deem it no less than a dandeceit. gerous

of

These are high charges on both sides; and it concerns those who make them, to be well assured of the grounds of them. And here I cannot but pas sionately resent the sad state Christianity, which will certainly be very heavy upon those who have been the cause of it, when the corruptions of it are so great, and the divisions so wide about that, which is one of the most sacred and the most useful parts of it, the blessed Eucharist; which is, above any other, the most sadly depraved and perverted; and if the Devil had hereby shown his utmost malice and subtlety, to poison one of the greatest fountains of Christianity, and to make that, which should yield the waters of life, be the cup of destruction. That blessed sacrament, which was designed to unite Christians, is made the bone of contention, and the greatest instrument to divide them; and that bread of life is turned into a stone, and become the great rock between them. Besides the lesser corruptions of the Eucharist in the Church of Rome, such as using thin wafers

* Ibid.

instead of bread, and injecting them whole into the mouths of the communicants, and consecrating without a prayer, and speaking the words of consecration secretly, and the like; there are four such great ones as violate and destroy the very substance and essence of the sacrament, and make it to be quite other thing to what Christ ever intended it, and therefore such as make communion with the Roman altar utterly sinful and unlawful. 1. These are, the Adoration of the Host, or making the sacrament an object of divine worship; 2. The Communion in one kind, or taking away the cup from the people.; 3. The turning the sacrament into a true and proper sacrifice propitiatory for the quick and the dead; and 4. The using of private or solitary masses, wherein the priest who celebrates, communicates alone. The two former of these have been considered in some late discourses upon those subjects; the fourth is a result and consequence of the third. For, when

the Sacrament was turned into a sa crifice, the people left off the frequent communication, and expected to be benefited by it another way. So that this will fall in, as to the main reasons of it, with what I now design to consider and examine. The SACRIFICE OF THE MASS OR ALTAR, wherein the priest, every time he celebrates the Communion, is supposed to offer to God the body and blood of Christ under the forms of bread and wine, as truly as Christ once offered himself upon the Cross, and that this is as true a proper and propitiatory sacrifice as the other, and that it is so, not only for the living, but also for the dead.

The objections we make against it, and the arguments by which they defend it, will fall in together at the same time; and I shall endeavour fairly and impartially to represent them in their utmost strength, that so what we have to say against it, and what they have to say for it, may be offered to the reader at one view, that he may the better judge of those high charges which are made, he sees, on both sides.

FIRST, then, we say, that the very foundation of this sacrifice of the Mass, is established upon two very great errors and mistakes. 1. The one is the doctrine of Transubstantiation, or Christ's bodily presence in the Eucharist. 2. The other is the opinion that Christ did offer up his body and blood as a sacrifice to God in his last supper, before he offered up himself upon the Cross. If either of these prove false, or both, the Sacrifice of Mass is so far from being true, that it must necessarily fall to the ground, according to their own principles and acknowledgments.

SECONDLY, that there is no Scripture ground for any such sacrifice, but that it is expressly contrary to Scripture. Under which head I shall examine all their Scriptural pretences for it, and produce such places as are directly contrary to it, and perfectly overthrow it.

THIRDLY, that it has no just claim to antiquity, nor was there any such doctrine or practice in the primitive Church.

FOURTHLY, that it is in itself unreasonable and absurd, and involves a great many gross errors.

(TO BE CONTINUED.)