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PROTESTANT.

ESSAYS

ON THE

PRINCIPAL POINTS OF CONTROVERSY

BETWEEN THE CHURCH OF

ROME AND THE REFORMED.

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SECOND AMERICAN FROM THE NINTH GLASGOW EDITION..

1833.

Entered according to act of Congress, in the year 1833, by

HUTCHISON & DWIER,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of Connecticut.

HUDSON AND SKINNER, PRINTERS.......HARTFORD.

2-13-1932

PREFACE

TO THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.

No one pretension of the Roman church has been more confidently reiterated, and perhaps none more relied on as an efficient auxiliary in the propagation of its doctrines and influence, than its claim to UNITY. The Papists say, "Our church is every where the same. While other professedly Christian communities are rent with divisions, and split into parties and sects, have no common interest and no common creed, the Catholic church is ONE. Built on the same foundation, actuated by the same spirit, and pursuing the same object, it is indivisible; and wherever it is discovered, may be known by this infallible criterion, to be the true church." Such are the pretensions of Romanism. Now, if by Unity is meant the prosecution of one aim, and that pre-eminence-an undiminished thirst for power, which neither elevation nor depression, success nor decay have quenched-intolerance of all other forms of piety and modes of worship-absorption. in the one great interest of advancing the supremacy of the church of Rome-if by these and such like things are meant Unity, then we cheerfully accord the claim. Surely no community on earth has been more distinguished for its singleness of purpose, and it may be added, its uniform adaptation of means to the end, than this. One soul appears to actuate all its adherents, from the self-styled successor of St. Peter, down to the humblest individual who kisses his slipper. One aim is seen to direct the movements of this wide spread community. And wherever it has been practicable, one system of means and efforts has been put in requisition to increase its wealth, confirm its power, and extend its dominion over the consciences of men. In Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, England, Scotland, and Ireland, and still later in America, notwithstanding the great variety of character which these countries afford, the same measures have been adopted, and to a considerable extent the same result has been obtained. All these discordant materials have been moulded, under the plastic hand of the church of Rome, into a mass of servility, and subserviency to her own interests. It remains to be seen, and the experiment will perhaps be tried by no distant generation, whether the pollutions which have defiled the convents of the old world, can exist amid the purity of our own

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