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ANECDOTE.

EDWARD VI., KING OF ENGLAND, AND THE BIBLE.

"BALE relates, upon the authority of credible witnesses, that when three swords were brought to be carried in the procession, as emblematical of his three kingdoms, the King said there was one yet wanting. The nobles inquiring what it was, he answered, THE BIBLE,' adding, "That book is the sword of the Spirit, and to be preferred before these swords. That ought, in all right, to govern us, who use them for the people's safety by God's appointment. Without that sword, we are nothing, we can do nothing, we have no power. From that we are what we are this day. From that we receive whatsoever it is that we at present do assume. He that rules without it, is not to be called God's minister, or a king. Under that we ought to live, to fight, to govern the people, and to perform all our affairs. From that alone we obtain all power, virtue, grace, salvation, and whatsoever we have of Divine strength.'

"When the pious young King had thus expressed himself, he commanded the Bible to be brought with the greatest reverence and carried before him."-British Reformers, Edward VI.

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ROME. We learn from Rome that the Cardinal Secretary of State has made choice, from the lists presented by the Governors of the different provinces, of the Deputies who are to assemble at Rome, to make known to the Pope the wishes and wants of the provinces. The Deputies are twenty-three in number, and are convoked for the 5th of November.

THE EMIGRANT FEVER IN CANADA. The following is an extract from a private letter from Her Majesty's ship Apollo, dated Quebec, July 8, 1847:

"In the midst of life we are in death; it grieves me very much to tell you the heartrending scenes that have taken place in the River St. Lawrence, on the Island of Grasse, the destination of the unfortunate emigrants. There are now seventeen large vessels in quarantine, all from Ireland with emigrants, which have all had the typhus fever on board; the emigrants have been landed on the island. It is an awful sight; there are 9,000 on shore, and 1,900 of them have had the fever: they are dying from sixty to a hundred a-day, and are buried from four to ten in a grave or hole. The evening our ship was there sixty bodies were interred, and 160 remained to be buried the next day. On their passage out upwards of ninety have died in a single day; nearly as many have died as there are now on the island; the poor creatures are living in tents in a wretched state, being nearly naked, and from eight to twelve in a tent, and only one blanket amongst them, and nothing but the ground to lie on. It is enough to make the blood run cold to see the distressed condition they are in; such a sight, I think, no man before ever witnessed; you may judge by your own feeling the state of mine, and you can in a slight degree picture to yourself the state of this country, while the relentless hand of death is mowing thousands down."

Macintosh, Printer, Great New-street, London.

THE

PROTESTANT MAGAZINE.

OCTOBER, 1847.

MOVEMENTS OF POPERY.

THE increasing circulation which our periodical has attained, as an organ of the Protestant Association, evinces an increase of interest on the part of the Protestant public in the stirring questions of the day. Never was there a time when efforts, prompt, prayerful, energetic, and united, were more peremptorily required on the part of Protestants than now.

It may be wearisome to many so repeatedly to have their attention drawn, in our pages, to the importance of maintaining a No-Popery policy. The garrison who protect the city in time of danger, and the sentry who walks his lonely round, may grow as weary of their unvarying duty as those for whose benefit they endure hardship and encounter danger, and work while others sleep.

Still there is a duty incumbent upon all, as they value their peace and safety, not to relax in one tittle from the efforts already made.

The foe slumbers not, though they may sleep. Evil is restless, active, powerful. It must be opposed by active, prayerful, Christian exertions. They who love the Lord Jesus in sincerity should be found upon their guard against the evils of the day; much in prayer, watchful and ready to detect and resist the evil one and his emissaries, though their voice may be that of the cooing dove, or the bleating lamb, and their vesture radiant as the clothing of an angel of light.

The influence of Popery is as minute as it is extensive, condescending. to the affairs of domestic life, and grasping at authority in Cabinets, and the control of princes.

From the palace to the cottage-from the monarch to the peasant— from youth to age-the Romish system is to be seen at work; endeavouring to assimilate all things to itself, and to annihilate or destroy what is opposed to it.

Liberty and despotism, though not alike congenial with its nature, yet by turns serve to advance its objects. Even the spirit of commerce itself is made subservient to Romish purposes, where Romanism has sufficient influence and interest to work out her plans.

We have heard from one, who spoke from practical experience, the efforts made by Rome to deter influential persons in mercantile transactions from any open efforts to oppose Romanism.

VOL. IX.-October, 1847.

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New Series, No. 22.

And the following, taken from a work recently published in America, tends to show the dangerous and insidious nature of the workings of the Papacy, seeking to expel the independent merchant, to monopolize commerce, and forbid those to buy and sell, who have not already made league with the iniquity.

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"Alas for Tahiti! The Polynesian,' published at the Sandwich Islands, of the date September 26, has the following ominous tidings for the poor Protestants of Tahiti :

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"The Catholics have adopted a very novel, but we apprehend effectual system of proselytism, at all events, so far as the pockets are concerned, by a sort of co-partnership between mammon and faith. We give the information on this point, as received from our Correspondent in the following extract:""We believe business has received a death-blow here by the establishment of a commercial missionary store, by the Jesuits of France. Their object is to disseminate the Catholic faith throughout the islands in the Pacific, and their first step is to ingratiate themselves with the natives by selling them goods at cost and charges, undersell the merchants, and drive them off the island. They are to have a house at Valparaiso, Tahiti, and Oahu, and branches at the Navigator's, Wallis Island, New Caledonia, and the Feejees. They have twelve ships of the size of Arch Dalliance,' and another, both here now, with some twenty or thirty Jesuits on board, and a number of small vessels. It is so arranged, that one of them will leave France every month to keep their establishment supplied with goods." "Comment is unnecessary."

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If Protestant statesmen court an alliance with the Papacy to augment their influence, or to serve personal or party purposes, or from any cause whatever identify this Christian land with the unchristian principles, practices, superstition, cruelties, and idolatries of the Romish system, then, as sure as the word of truth is to be relied upon, this country must expect more and more to experience the effect of Divine wrath and displeasure.

All that has been done to conciliate Popery has been done in vain. We have sacrificed at the idol shrine, instead of seeking the conversion of the idolater, and sought to propitiate evil, by sacrificing the cause of true religion as a votive offering.

The course of Rome is still onward. A Roman Catholic has been recently made Governor of Malta. The journals speak of Dr. Wiseman being made Roman Catholic Archbishop of Westminster, of Romish Archbishops of Canterbury and York being appointed, and of other sees and inferior offices of ecclesiastical dignity being filled up, so as to have in England as complete a Romish Establishment as now exists in Ireland.

When then should Protestants bestir themselves if not now? When, if not now, should they seek to obviate existing and increasing evils, to stem the tide of Popery, and preserve for their posterity the blessings of a pure and scriptural Christianity, which their ancestors have bequeathed, in trust for themselves, their children, and the world?

* From a "Statement of Facts on the Universal Spread and Expected Triumphs of Roman Catholicism."-Boston. 1847.

MONTMORENCY.-A ROMAN CATHOLIC TALE.

(Continued from p. 282.)

WHILE Hubert remained in Italy, he chanced, by one of those singular circumstances which sometimes occur, to meet with the mother of Ernest Willoughby, who (with her only daughter, Laura, and her brother, Mr. Murray) was then in that country.

Mr. Murray was a man of deep piety, considerable information, sound judgment, and a warm heart. All these qualities, joined to pleasing manners, won on the feelings of our hero so that to his utter surprise, and certainly contrary to his own intentions, he found himself a second time unconsciously drawn into friendship with a Protestant.

Mr. Murray had determined to avoid all controverted topics at this early period of their acquaintance; but one day as they were walking together in a crowded street, they unexpectedly met a procession of the host. Many of the people prostrated themselves on the ground in token of lowly adoration. All uncovered their heads but Mr. Murray, which, when the mob observed, they pelted him with stones, and otherwise insulted him. Hubert interfered, and hurrying Mr. Murray from the spot, inquired of him, half reproachfully, whether it would not have been wiser had he paid so slight an homage to public opinion, and to an ordinance which even Protestant Christians professed to

reverence.

"No, my dear young friend, I could not have joined in the idolatrous reverence paid by the multitude, without sanctioning an error which I regard as most deplorable-an error which leads hundreds of rational and immortal beings to fall down in lowly adoration before a wafer made of flour and water!"

"We do not adore the wafer, because after consecration it is no longer what it was originally, but so divinely changed, as to be an object worthy of adoration."

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My dear friend, with all possible respect to your feelings, allow me to say, this is one of the doctrines of Romanism that has always struck me to be most repugnant to common sense, most revolting to our feelings, and most degrading to the blessed Saviour. How can you believe against the evidence of those senses which God has given you, that what appears to your sight, taste, touch, to be but bread, is really the flesh and blood of the Lord of glory?"

"It is a mystery," replied Hubert, "and as such I receive and reverence, though I attempt not to explain it. Do not the words of Scripture plainly say, 'This is my body?'"

"We must take Scripture there, as well as in many other places, in a figurative sense. You would not attempt to prove that when the Saviour said, 'I am the true vine,' he meant he was a tree; or when he called himself a door the words are to be understood literally; neither because the Prophet Isaiah exclaimed, ' All flesh is grass,' would you be guilty of the absurdity of asserting that our human bodies are formed of grass, though their fading nature is so aptly compared to the grass and the flower of the field.

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"When our blessed Saviour, shortly before the hour of his bitter sufferings, gave the bread and wine to his disciples, his body had not then been broken on the cross, nor his blood shed: undoubtedly, then, he meant, This bread represents my body, which shall be broken, and this wine my blood, which shall soon be shed on the cross for your salvation. I am about to leave you: forget me not, but meet together to commemorate my bitter sufferings, and do this in remembrance of me.'

"But still," persisted Hubert, "the words of Scripture are, 'This is my body,' otherwise I own natural reason and the evidence of my senses would lead me to agree with you!"

"If your only objection be because you will take Scripture literally, I contend that you must take it equally in a literal sense everywhere; and then you will meet with more than one difficulty in the institution of this very ordinance, because if you refer to Luke xxii. 17, the disciples are first told to divide the cup, not what it contained, among themselves, but this, surely, is not the meaning of the evangelist; again, in the twentieth verse, This cup is the New Testament. Now, would it not be an absurdity to suppose our Lord meant the disciples to believe the cup was a Testament? but if Scripture be understood figuratively here, why not in the verse above, which you insist on taking literally, though it involves the absurd, I had almost said blasphemous supposition, that the Maker of the world, at the will of a priest, is summoned from the abodes of eternity to be devoured by his creatures."

Hubert looked shocked, and hastily said, "I do not view it in the light you have represented it. I cannot understand how it is, but I receive it as a matter of faith, and humbly adore the means God has appointed of conveying grace to our souls."

"Pardon me if I have unintentionally hurt your feelings, I believe that pious Romanists do not reflect upon it sufficiently to see the impieties of its system, but either the wafer which those multitudes have adored, is only flour and water, in which case they are guilty of idolatry, a sin expressly forbidden by Scripture, or else, as your Church declares, Christ, whole and entire, exists under the species of bread, and under each particle of that species."

"But does not the Saviour say, in another part of Scripture, Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink his blood, ye have no life in you?'

"Yes, but I can see still more plainly there, that he spoke in a figurative sense, since he first calls himself the bread that came down from heaven; and then changing the figure, speaks of eating his flesh, which you must see if you view it with a candid and unprejudiced mind, means simply this, that as the natural body is nourished by bread and meat, so the soul that looks by faith to Christ is said to feed on and live by him. The Jews who heard the Saviour speak mistook his meaning, and murmured, saying, 'How can this man give us his flesh to eat?" when the Saviour assures them 'It is the spirit that quickeneth, the flesh profiteth nothing.""

"Surely the view held by Protestants is plain, simple, and most affecting, whilst the doctrine held by the Romish Church is revolting

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