her pilgrimage, she said, "Weep not on account of our separation; it is but for a time. I am only going a little before; yon will soon follow, and throughout eternity we shall form, I trust, an unbroken family in heaven." To a near relative she observed, "Oh! if I had deferred religion until now, what should I have done? Oppressed with weakness and bodily suffering, I need now all the consolation and support which it can give. A time of sickness is not the time to seek God." Her sister saying to her, "Oh! my dear Jane, I wish I was as safely through my journey as you," with a sweet smile she replied, "Thanks be unto God, who giveth me the victory, through our Lord Jesus Christ.' It is a victory." During a restless night, she said, "I know in whom I have believed; he will not lay more upon me than he will enable me to bear. He sits as a refiner. Precious Saviour!" Adverting to the probable termination of her illness, a friend said, "Have you no fear, then ?" "Fear!" she replied; "no fear: no fearing nor doubting with Christ on my side!" For the last month of her life she was able to taste scarcely anything but cold water. Frequently, when taking it, she would say, "I shall soon drink of it pure from the Fountain, clear as crystal-living water." On being asked, a few days before her departure, if Christ was still precious to her, she replied, "Oh! yes; very precious!" A friend asking her if such excessive weakness was not trying to bear, adding, "But you have such cheering prospects," she replied, "Oh! yes; I am resting on the Rock, Christ Jesus; and he not only enables me to bear it, but to rejoice while passing through it. I shall soon drink of the Fountain, and whosoever drinketh shall never thirst again : "My soul, with such a scene in view, Bids mortal joys a glad adieu; Nor dreads a few chastising woes, Sent with such love, so soon to close."" She then repeated the whole of the hymn of Doddridge's, commencing, "Oh! happy day that fix'd my choice On thee, my Saviour and my God," &c. For the last two days and nights of her illness she may be said to have been in the very article of death. Yet under the most distressing weakness, and sometimes considerable inward pain, not a complaint or murmur escaped her lips. Once or twice, under the pressure of extreme suffering, she said, "Patience, patience;" but for the most part there was the same peaceful," thankful, triumphant expression of her hope and joy, which had characterized the whole of her previous illness. A few hours before her departure she broke out, after a lengthened period of silence and apparent exhaustion, "Praise the Lord for his goodness!" and after a night of restlessness and conflict with the last enemy, within about an hour of the victory being achieved, she exclaimed, "Waitingwaiting for the glory;" when the power of utterance seemed to fail, but on her sister adding, "The glory to be revealed," she faintly whispered, "Yes, yes" and after another hour of increasing exhaustion, gently and imperceptibly her happy spirit, freed from the clog of mortality, ascended to her Redeemer and her Lord. The Letter Box. POPERY AND ITS DOGMAS. A Letter to a Roman Catholic, by the late Sir Richard Hill. IT is a truth confessed and allowed, both by Protestants and Roman Catholics, that Christ always was, always is, and always will be with his Church, and that this Church shall so far be guided into all truth, as never to be uffered to err in such a manner as to affect the eternal salvation of any of its members. The whole dispute, then, between us is, What is the true Church of Christ? Those of the Roman communion confine it wholly to themselves, as descending regularly from the time of the Apostles down to the present age, and suppose infallibility to be inseparable from the papal chair. The Protestants affirm that by the Church is meant the body of all faithful people, from the beginning of the world to the end of it, all who are united to Jesus Christ the Head, by living faith, all who are created anew, and regenerated by the Spirit of God, though differing from each other in some lesser, outward matters. They moreover believe that infallibility no more belongs to the Bishop of Rome than any other bishop, but that the only infallible guide is the Spirit of God, which ever teaches agreeably to that word of which he himself is the author; that, therefore, it must be highly displeasing to Him who has graciously vouchsafed his divine instruction to his Church, to see any persons rely on man's authority, and instead of resting on the word of promise, that all God's children shall be taught of him, fly to human traditions and swallow down for truth whatever may be told them by those whose inclination or interest may have prompted them to take upon themselves the office of pastors, however contrary their lives may be to the precepts of that word whereof they profess themselves ministers, and even notwithstanding this very word assures us, that they only who "do his will, shall know the doctrine, whether it be of God." In answer to what you urge in defence of free-will and merit, I shall only say that all sound Protestants abhor these doctrines, as tending directly to establish the detestable and dangerous heresy of Pelagianism; making no difference between man in his fallen state, and Adam in his original state of innocence; and particularly as being subversive of the Apostle's declaration, that "God, of his own will, begat his children by the word of truth," and that they who are such are not born of the will of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God;" that" when we have done all, we are unprofitable servants," so that "all boasting must be excluded," and "he that glorieth must glory only in the Lord." The way, therefore, in which true Protestants settle their belief, is not by making the Scriptures submit to the traditions and decisions of men, but by comparing all human traditions and decisions with the sacred oracles of truth, and receiving or rejecting them according as they agree with or differ from this standard. For instance, if the Scripture tells us that "in the latter days seducing spirits should arise, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God hath created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth;" if in any age of the Church we find any prohibitions of meats, and such injunctions of celibacy, we reject them according to the Apostle's own words, as" the doctrine of devils," and as the delusions of those whose character it is" to speak lies in hypocrisy, having their conscience seared with a hot iron." Nevertheless, whilst the Romanists absolutely forbid their clergy to marry, they profess to believe in that word which speaks of the wife of St. Peter, whom, notwithstanding, they call their first Pope! With regard to what you have offered in favour of transubstantiation, I must beg leave to observe, that all Protestants reject this doc- | is by no means a fair way of arguing, trine, not only as a novelty un- nor is the case at all similar; for heard of in the six first centuries of though the doctrines of a Trinity and the Church, but as subversive of the of the Incarnation are above our reawhole design of Christ's suffering, which son, yet they are not contrary to it, was once by one offering (not by being nor do they offer violence to any of many times offered) to obtain eternal our senses, as the doctrine of transubredemption for us, and to perfect for stantiation does. ever them that are sanctified. But to say nothing of the manifest absurdity of Christ, in his human nature, being present in many thousand places at once, nor of the horrid idea of eating the God of heaven and earth, if there be, as the Roman Catholics suppose, a miraculous change of the bread and wine, it is the only miracle Christ ever wrought which contradicted the senses of the beholders, and certainly the design of every miracle is to force conviction on the senses, but never to contradict them. As when our Lord, at the marriage of Cana, turned the water into wine, the change was evident to the taste of the governor of the feast and to all the guests. It may be urged that what Christ has literally asserted ought, however mysterious, to be literally believed. True, when it does not set the Scripture at variance with itself; where it does not destroy the very nature of a sacrament by turning it into a sacrifice, and overthrow the whole design of our Lord's one offering for sin, as the doctrine of transubstantiation evidently does. Besides, this way of arguing would soon prove too much, and we have the same authority to believe Christ to be literally a way, a door, and a vine-tree, as to suppose a piece of bread or a consecrated wafer to be literally his body. Nor can I think it would be a whit less absurd and unscriptural to affirm, because Christ hath promised to come in and sup with those who open to him when he knocks, that therefore he literally and bodily comes down from heaven and sits at table with us; and that he himself having made this positive declaration, we ought not to reason about the manner in which it is done, any more than we ought to call in question the doctrines of the incarnation, and of a Trinity in unity, because these truths are so far above what our finite capacities can comprehend. But this We must, therefore, explain Scripture by Scripture, and by this unerring rule we shall clearly see that Christ is present at his table, just in the same manner as he is present with his Church, viz., not grossly, and corporeally, but divinely and spiritually, and that when it is said, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of Man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you," this must be understood as a spiritual feeding of the soul, by faith, upon Christ, or, as it is styled by the Apostle Peter, "a tasting that the Lord is gracious;" and indeed the passage itself will not, without manifest distortion, admit of any other interpretation, because the eating and drinking here mentioned stand in connection with the life spoken of in the latter part of the verse, which life is, without dispute, the spiritual life of the soul, and not bodily or animal life. Either, therefore, it must be granted that the life mentioned in the latter clause is the life of the body, or else that the eating and drinking in the former clause must be a spiritual eating and drinking. Again, when our Lord says, "He that eateth my flesh and drinketh my blood, dwelleth in me, and I in him," it is most certain that a material eating and drinking cannot be intended, because thousands of wicked persons, and such as are destitute of a lively faith, may, as saith St. Augustine, carnally press with their teeth the sacrament of the Lord's supper, yet it can in no wise be said of them that they dwell in Christ and Christ in them, since this is only true of real believers. It should be further particularly noticed that our blessed Lord, in the 6th chapter of St. John, speaks of the manna which was given to the Church, under the Old Testament dispensation, as typical of himself, the true manna and living bread, which came down from heaven. This manna Israel after the flesh ate in the wilderness for their bodily sustenance, thereby pre-figuring that feast of fat things which was reserved for God's spiritual Israel under the Gospel, who now feed upon Christ by living faith; and by virtue of their mystical union with him, through his spirit dwelling in their hearts, their souls are nourished unto everlasting life, and they become one with Christ, and Christ one with them. But the Church of Rome, by interpreting the texts quoted out of this chapter, of a gross carnal eating and drinking of Christ's real body and blood, destroy the very end and idea of that more noble, divine, and spiritual feast which believers feed upon under this better covenant, and to which they are more especially invited at the table of their Lord and Saviour, when, through the elements of bread and wine, they view him as really present to the eye of faith, for the strengthening and refreshing of their souls during their pilgrimage through this wilderness world of sin and sorrow to the heavenly Canaan; as the Israelites of old viewed the manna in the wilderness, through which they journeyed, by the eye of sense, and by which their bodies were nourished till they arrived at the promised land. Yet even in this wilderness, those that were spiritual among the Jews rested not in carnal ordinances and institutions, but looked through all the types and shadows under the law, to what the Apostle calls the more glorious times of reformation under the Gospel. But the doctrine of transubstantiation exactly harmonises with the gross conceptions of the carnal Jews, when they asked, "How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" And therefore the same answer should be given to the Romanist as our Lord gave to them: "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit and they are life." Though, in order to defend a corporeal presence in the sacrament, the Church of Rome pleads for an adherence to the very letter of Scripture, yet in some other of her tenets she does not scruple to depart from the positive words of Holy Writ. Of this we have an instance in her denial of the cup to the laity, though our Lord has expressly | said, "Drink ye all of it," and lest any in future times should confine this "all" to all his Apostles, or all his ministers, we find St. Paul, in his epistle to the whole Church of Corinth, repeatedly enjoining on the people individually the drinking of the cup, as well as eating of the bread; and it is remarkable that in five or six different places, in the same and in the foregoing chapter, he never mentions receiving the bread without drinking of the cup; and instead of calling one the real body and the other the real blood of Christ, he calls them "the communion of the blood of Christ," in conformity to his great Master, who has commanded us to receive both, not as his actual body and blood, but in remembrance of him. I know that one reason given by the Church of Rome for depriving their members of one part of the Lord's supper is, that whosoever receives the body of Christ must also receive his blood, since the blood cannot be separated from the body; but this way of reasoning renders the command of our Lord and St. Paul to receive both kinds, quite needless, and is indeed to profess ourselves wiser than what is written. Besides, this argument proves too much, for, by the same rule, the priests themselves ought to receive the sacrament only in one kind. Let me now ask what authority there is for the priest's receiving alone, whilst the people are kneeling all about him? The answer I suppose usually given is, because the priest offers up the sacrifice of the Mass for the sins of the people. Bring only one text of Scripture in confirmation of this, and I will allow the truth and the necessity of it. But this cannot be done, though numberless texts may be produced to prove that it is striking at the very root of that most fundamental doctrine of Christianity, the satisfaction made for sin by the death of Christ; and that it in a manner brings believers back again to the ceremonial law, under which daily sacrifices were offered up; but these were to cease, when He who was the end of them all was to appear, and by the offering of his own body, once for all, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. But they who look upon the Mass as a daily sacrifice for sin, are quite of a contrary mind to St. Paul, who tells us, that "Christ needeth not daily, as those high priests, to offer up sacrifice, first for his own sins, and then for the sins of the people; for this he did once, when he offered up himself. Nor yet that he should offer himself often, as the high priest entered into the holy place every year with blood of others; for then must he often have suffered since the foundation of the earth, but now once in the end of the world hath he appeared, to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself. And as it is appointed unto men once to die, but after that the judgment, so Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many; and where remission of these is, there is no more offering for sin." I might now enlarge on the strange unscriptural custom of praying in an unknown tongue and of offering supplications to departed saints, and to the virgin Mary, to the great dishonour of the one Mediator between God and man. I might also say much on the idolatrous practice of bowing down before pictures and graven images, the work of men's hands, in open violation of the second commandment, which says, "Thou shalt not make to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of anything in heaven or in earth; thou shalt not bow down to them," &c. It is well known that the Roman Catholics do not scruple to leave the second commandment out of the decalogue. I might further speak of the arrogant practice of granting pardons and indulgences, and might particularly expatiate on the doctrine of purgatory, which, though it has not one text of Scripture for its own support, has brought plenty of gains for the support of the Church's power, and this by undervaluing, and almost making of none effect, the sufferings of the Redeemer, which it does by supposing that any other sufferings besides his are necessary towards expiating and putting away the sins of those that shall be saved. The vain-glorious notion, also, of justification by man's own righteousness, and especially of works of supererogation, in defiance of the plain declaration of God's word, which tells us that "when we have done all those things which are commanded us, we are unprofitable servants," might furnish me with matter for a volume. But neither my own time, nor the compass of a letter, will allow me to dwell on any of these points; I shall, therefore, conclude what I have to say with my most earnest wishes and prayers that the God of all grace would enable you to lay these things to heart with that seriousness which their great importance demands at your hands: and for this end I beseech you diligently to examine your heart, as in the presence of Him to whom the secrets of it are all open, whether you are divested of all prejudice in favour of the Roman Catholic, and against the Protestant religion; and when you have done this, fear not to take into your hands those divine oracles which God has graciously vouchsafed for your instruction, under the guidance of his blessed Spirit, though, by the craft of designing men, this inestimable gift is wrested out of the people's hands, in downright opposition to the divine command of Him who has positively enjoined us to "search the Scriptures," and whose apostle so much commendeth the Bereans for having done so. To the reading of God's word add earnest prayers for Divine illumination in your searches after truth; and in the use of these means I doubt not you will soon be brought to see that the charge of novelty belongs to the Church of Rome, and that the stale question so often put to the Protestants, "Where was your religion before Luther's and Calvin's time?" may very properly be answered by saying, "It was where it is now, viz., in the Bible-where the creed of His Holiness could never yet be found." Yet, because the innovations of Popery have crept in by degrees, and in the darkest ages of superstition, therefore the Romish Church lays claim to antiquity, and brands the Protestant religion with the charge of novelty. But this is not less unreasonable than if I were to see an ancient shield covered with rust, and from thence were to conclude that the rust was still more ancient than the shield itself. The rust indeed might carry the vestiges of antiquity, but still it |