forward, and Christ and the justification through his blood and the sanctification of his Spirit too little insisted on; whilst a feebler language is employed on these and other great doctrines of the gospel even when they are introduced. Already are some rather lowering intimations given, not intentionally I am sure, but conveying the impression to the ordinary reader, concerning our Articles and Homilies. Already are appeals made to documents which were superseded by the more purely evangelical formularies of our present Book of Common Prayer, with its Articles and Homilies, at the definitive settlement of our reformed church; and a desire not obscurely expressed that our reformation had retained more of the traditionary model.

All this is but too natural. The false principle will go on eating as doth a cancer,” if things proceed as they now do. The inspired word of God will be imperceptibly neglected; and the traditions of men will take its place. The church will supersede the Bible. The sacraments will hide the glory of Christ. Self-righteousness will conceal the righteousness of God. Traditions and fathers will occupy the first place, as we see in the sermons of the chief Roman Catholic authors of every age, and Christ come next or not at all; and a lowered tone of practical religion will come in.

The whole system, indeed, goes to generate, as I cannot but think, an inadequate and superficial and superstitious religion. The mere admissions of the inspiration and paramount authority of holy scripture will soon become a dead letter; due humiliation before God, under a sense of the unutterable evil of sin, will be less and less understood; a con

viction of the need of the meritorious righteousness of the incarnate Saviour, as the alone ground of justification, will be only faintly inculcated; the operations of the Holy Ghost in creating man anew will be more and more forgotten; the nature of those good works which are acceptable to God in Christ will be lost sight of; and "another gospel" framed on the traditions of men will make way for an apostacy in our own church, as in that of Rome, unless, indeed, the evangelical piety, the reverence for holy scripture, the theological learning, and the forethought and fidelity of our divines of dignified station and established repute at home INTERPOSE BY DISTINCT CAUTIONS TO PREVENT IT-as they are beginning to interpose, and as I humbly trust they will still more decisively do; and as their signal success in the instance of the Neological theories a year or two since, may well encourage them to resolve on.

AGAINST the Romanist, the church of England confines the testimony of the ancients to the bare interpretation of scripture: rejecting all pretended tradition, whether written or oral, which purports to be an apostolical deposit, independent of and distinct from scripture, and which propounds a body of doctrines that scripture nowhere recognises, and nowhere teaches.-Faber on Justification.

THE PILGRIMAGE.

(Continued from page 151.)

THIS last thought moved me profoundly, and I fancied that the imposing and pure voice of this Christian, of this minister of truth, raised itself anew, upon this spot and before this same idol, where so often heretofore it had resounded, and that, filling the vallies with its truth-telling accents, it summoned the multitude to listen, and that it replied to the preacher in these terms:

Fool, I will say to thee with St. Paul, Who hath bewitched thee so far, that thou puttest the flesh into the place of the Spirit? and thy folly and thy darkness above the wisdom and the light of the powerful God?

'I see thee: thou pleasest thyself with these words, which may be read over the entry of this temple, Here is to be had the plenary remission of all sins; and thou willest persuade this ignorant multitude of it, whose souls thou art about to murder, in telling them that it is only here, only in this temple built by men, that the God of mercies is to be met with.

'But, imprudent spirit, and altogether terrestrial, knowest thou not that whatever be the country which a soul inhabits, God encompasses it, as well as here? Should it be in one place rather than in another, that he who hath made the heavens and the earth should be found near to the heart which seeks him?

'Thinkest thou, then, new Samaritan, that it is

here that one must worship, because that thy fathers worshipped there before thee? What signifies this antiquity which flatters pride, if it be not but a superstition, but a lie?

Or rather, perhaps, thou art ignorant even to this point of the covenant of salvation, and of what the blood of the Son of God is worth, that thou countest this blood an unholy thing, in preferring to it or uniting to it the merits of creatures, or in associating to the work of the Saviour those of the Virgin or the angels, or the saints?

'Soul yet ignorant of the gift of God! should it be useless books, long pilgrimages, offerings, images, the multitude of prayers, or the dress of the body, which should obtain the grace of God? Is it not to the heart that God looks? And Christ, who has offered himself once upon the cross, is he not the hostie and the victim which satisfies even to all eternity for the sins of all the faithful?

'Thou speakest of the immaculate conception of the Virgin, of her resurrection, of her assumption into heaven, of her power, and of her intercession, to which thou joinest that of the saints and of angels, whom also thou wouldest to have adored, honoured, and invoked.

'But how is it that thou hast not read the holy scriptures, or even so much as the authentic history of the church of God, before proclaiming these superstitions, these signal idolatries?

If thou hadst done so, wouldest thou not have known that an Athanasius and an Epiphanius reprove those who adore other servants of God; declare that adoration (of what sort soever it be) belongs neither to the saints, nor to the angels, nor to the

Virgin herself, but to God; and that Augustine said that all catholic Christians serve none of the dead, but God alone?

'But above all, wouldest thou have known (and may God grant you to believe it!) that the Word of the Eternal denounces even the smallest religious honour which man addresses to another than to God alone, though it be done even for God, in his intention? Thou shalt worship, it says to thee, the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. Ye shall fear only the Lord, ye shall serve only him, and ye shall swear only by his name. I am the Lord, saith he to thee; and I will not give my glory to a graven image. Thou shalt not turn thyself towards an idol; but thou shalt break it in pieces, and thou shalt demolish its altar. This is what God saith unto thee.

'Thou wilt reply to me, I know, that these idols and these images do not represent false divinities, and that besides this homage which thou renderest unto the Virgin, to the angels and saints, is only an inferior worship; but the supreme adoration, thou renderest it only to God alone.

'But who hath told thee that there are two sorts of adorations? Where seest thou this in the bible? 'I see, indeed, with the pagans of ancient Rome two or three degrees of adoration, according as the gods of these idolaters were superior or inferior. But the book of God reproves such a practice. But further (and be pleased to yield attention to it), it is of this very word, of dulia, as thou callest it, that it also makes use, to express that supreme adoration which is due unto the Eternal; and you may see it in many places.

Thus thou oughtest to know that one of these