of this country upon the teachers and doctrines of the Church of Rome, are called to notice the general effect which a compromise of such a character must be expected to produce upon the interests of Christianity at large. In this more extended view of the subject, your Petitioners, while they lament the encouragement which the emissaries of the Church of Rome are deriving from a prevalent ignorance of the religious principles of the Reformation, on one hand, and the accommodated representations of Romanism which are sedulously and successfully inculcated by its professors on the other, they would more especially direct the attention of your honourable House to the assistance which is directly afforded to the spread of these doctrines, in the shape of Parliamentary grants, to educate and maintain Roman Catholic ecclesiastics in the British empire and her colonial dependencies; a form of support which, in the judgment of your Petitioners, would appear to involve a dereliction of principle in a Christian Government, an express sanction to abrogated error in a Protestant State, and an authoritative abolition of the distinction which subsists between the doctrines of an abjured creed, and the sacred verities of the Christian religion.

"Your Petitioners, moreover, believing, as they are taught by the Word of God, that fundamental error in religion, and its necessary influence on the moral and political condition of society, is held by the immutable appointment of the righteous Governor of the Universe to be the cause of penal visitation, are not less certainly persuaded by the letter of Scripture itself, than by the facts of history, that this is especially the case with regard to that system of antichristian doctrine, superstition, and will-worship, which is embodied in the creed and practice of the Church of Rome. They cannot, with such a conviction upon their mind, entertain any other than the most painful apprehensions that the nation, which in the face of such warnings and precedents, shall make itself a party to the support of the errors of that Church, or the revival of her antichristian and intolerant pretensions, becomes, by the fact of such identity, directly implicated in her sins, and shall eventually be made to share in the judgment of her plagues.

"That in consequence of these momentous considerations, your Petitioners, as consistent Protestants, professing Christians, and advocates of the godliness which is profitable unto all things, having the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come,' are constrained to pray that you will withhold all such grants as tend directly or indirectly to support the interests, or to propagate the faith of the Church of Rome in this essentially Protestant State; but more especially would they beseech your honourable house to discontinue from henceforward the annual Parliamentary grant to the Royal College of Maynooth. And your Petitioners, as in duty bound, will ever pray, &c. &c."

THEOLOGICAL STUDIES.

No. XIX.

REV. H. THOMPSON'S LIST.

(Continued from page 185.)

[*] Shews that the Book is added by the Author to the Lists from whence this was

compiled.

The Books marked thus [+] form in themselves a Theological Library.

VII. DOCTRINES OF THE BIBLE.

1. Theology of the Church of England.

Baronii Annales, with Pagi's Critique. Heylin's History of the Reformation.

RELIGIOUS CONDITION OF THE JAVANESE.

[We are indebted for the interesting details which follow, to the pen of Colonel Pfyffer, of Neueek, a Swiss officer, who filled a very high and responsible situation under the Dutch government in the island of Java, from 1819 to 1827.]

THE Javanese are Mahometans, of the sect of Ali, which is avowedly less violent in character than that of Omar. Islamism was introduced into the island by the combined efficacy of persuasion and the sword, sometime about the year 1406; and was first propagated and adopted in Cheribon, through the instrumentality of Ibn Moelahna, an Arabian Sheik. The progress of the new faith was, however, but slow and difficult of accomplishment; for the zealous followers of Brahma, in no few districts, sealed their adhesion to the faith of their ancestors with the last drop of their blood; they strewed the sacred woods with their dead bodies, and fell in the struggle against superior numbers and prowess, cursing the heresy of their own brethren, many of whom had joined their Arabian and other foreign enemies in the work of extermination. Few had the courage to bear up against their wretched destiny; and these preferred to drag on their remaining days in pain and misery, exposed to all sorts of want and hardships, and doomed to the solitude of wildernesses, rather than abjure their creed for the threats and promises of Mahomedanism. The greater part of them fell victims to their religious loyalty. A few survivors of this inoffensive and once happy race, a knot of about forty families, are yet

to be found in a lonely mountain-district, in the kingdom of Bantam, where they are known by the name of Buddahs. They have no way swerved from the faith of their progenitors, whose graves are still extant in their immediate vicinity, and they appear to have inspired even the fanatic Mahometan with respect; for he abstains from molesting them in their peaceable asylum. It will be found, I think, that this religious convulsion has been of no advantage whatever to the Javanese. At all events, their social character has been no gainer by it, as is obvious, upon comparing the ways of this remnant of the disciples of Buddah, with their Mahometan fellow-countrymen.

Splendid remains of ancient temples in Kadoeh (the capital) and other places, sepulchres and beautiful monuments of the chisel, and the Panton's (or minstrel's) songs, which have descended from father to son, are a living evidence of the flourishing state of the arts and sciences, antecedently to the invasion of Islamism. Indeed, I heard the poor Buddahs repeatedly dwell upon the greatness and power of their former rulers; and their very sports, (the Wayang and Toppeng,) as well as very many of their ceremonies and ballads, are evidently of an ancient date.

If the pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina were prevented by casualty, and not by force, the interruption, in respect of the fate of Mahomedanism, would be of incalculably beneficial consequences. Those spots are the well-spring of Islamite fanaticism; were they once extinguished, it would not survive the blow. Like as the deadly poison of a serpent's bite instantly insinuates itself through the veins and arteries of the healthiest frame, so does the regenerated zeal of the votary diffuse itself with the velocity of lightning, upon his return from Mecca; destroying every generous feeling in its germ, and violently arresting every social amelioration in its infant effort. The meanest Javanese becomes a 66 Hadjee" by a journey to Mecca, wears a white or coloured turban as a distinguishing mark, acquires influence among the vulgar, and in this way raises himself to the post of a teacher, however consummate his ignorance may be.

The clergy is divided into several classes, of whom some are called Katibs or Banditas (learned in law,) and others, Santries (learned in divinity), or Pangholoes (priests). During their great fast, the faithful bring them their tenths; and to this branch of ordinary income, may be added the presents made to them on festivals, and at burials, and other religious ceremonies. Their remuneration is, after all, but inconsiderable.

Fasting is a duty enjoined by the prophet as a lively means of salvation. 66 Every thing has its gate," says he, "and that of religion is fasting. At the beginning of the month Ramadan, the portals of heaven are open, and those of hell closed." Now the common people, who are fond of practising outward observances to their very letter, conceive that they have religiously complied with Mahomet's injunction, by fasting from six in the morning to the same hour in the evening. The period of the Ramadan is, in truth, a season of great denial to the Javanese, for even water itself may not pass his lips; and his beloved betel,—the darling of his stomach-worship, the restorative of the hungry, the cheerer of the mournful; in a word, the inseparable