in the everlasting exclusion of the soul from the presence and favour of its Creator." SOCIETY FOR PROMOTING CHRISTIAN KNOWLEDGE.-From the annual report of this Society, it appears that 95,640 bibles, 87,496 testaments, 191,723 prayer books, 10,069 psalters, 145,479 bound books, 9,222,652 tracts, have been sold this year, making a total circulation of scriptural publications of 2,753,608. The income on the year amounts to only £83,163 14s. 5d. while the expenditure is stated at £85,140 3s. Od. The number of schools in connexion with the society are 6,068 Sunday schools containing 438,280 scholars; 10,152 Sunday and day schools, in which are 514,450, scholars; and 704 infant schools, containing 43,733 scholars. Total schools 16,234; and total number of scholars 996,460. HUMAN LIFE ESTIMATED BY PULSATION.-An ingenious author asserts that the length of a man's life may be estimated by the number of pulsations he is able to perform. Thus allowing 70 years for the common age of a man, and 60 pulses in a minute for the common measure of pulses in a temperate man, the number of pulsations in his whole life would amount to 2,207,520,090; but if, by intemperance, he forces his blood into a more rapid motion, so as to give 75 pulses in a minute, the same number of pulses would be completed in 56 years; consequently, his life would be reduced 14 years. THE POPE.-There are but few instances of Papal power in England before the Norman conquest; but the Pope, favoured by William the First, sent Legates and encroached until John was obliged to surrender the kingdom to him and hold it at the rent of 1,000 marks. In Henry the Third's time the money which went out of the country annually in taxes to the Pope amounted to £70,000 sterling-a great sum in those days. All the church benefices were given to Italians. In the reign of Edward I. it was declared in Parliament that the Pope taking on him to dispose of English benefices was an encroachment not to be endured. This was followed by the 25th of Edward III. against Popish bulls. THE LAW OF DIVORCE.-The jurisprudence of England, as far as it is represented by the opinion of the judges, adopts the law of the place where the contract has been made as the lex loci contractus, as the governing rule respecting foreign divorces; and holds that a marriage celebrated in any place subject to the English law, even by Scotch parties, is indissoluble. The jurisprudence of Scotland adopts the law of the country in which there has been a residence for a sufficient length of time to give a court jurisdiction, although that country may not be the actual domicile of the parties; and holds that all who contract marriage under the English law may have it nevertheless judicially dissolved, if the party accused, having violated its obligations, be found there and cited before the courts in an action of divorce.-Monthly Law Magazine. NOTICES TO CORRESPONDENTS. THE CHURCHMAN Volume for 1838, with three splendid Portraits of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Exeter, and the late Bishop of St. Asaph, in cloth boards, price 7s. Engravings and Histories of Cathedrals in preparation.-3. Westminister Abbey.— 4. St. Paul's Cathedral. SPERANS PERGO has been again unavoidably pastponed. D-. of Peckham's advice is well intended; but the present competition among Reviews requires that we should adopt a plan distinct from that of our competitors. Does he expect us to analyze our words as we write them?—that we should ascertain if this comes from the Greek and Latin, or that from the Saxon? Is he not aware that many words are common to the Saxon, the Greek, and the Latin? How did he forget our native Celtic ? Can a page, without excessive trouble, be written in the language whose words have not a Greek or Latin origin? Many of those in his letter may be so derived. We very much thank the Friend who sends us "Woolmer's Gazette." The papers of many other Correspondents have been received, and shall have an early attention. PRINTED BY W. E. PAINTER, 342, STRAND, LONDON. THE INFALLIBILITY AND TRADITIONS OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. SIR, It is well known to every one who is at all informed on the subject of ecclesiastical history, that Cardinal Bellarmine,* who, I believe, is regarded by Papists as one of the ablest champions and ornaments of their Church, has laid down fifteen different tests by which a true can be distinguished from a false Church, and by which he, of course, contends that his own communion may be successfully tried and acknowledged as the orthodox Church of Christ. No one who has examined these fifteen tests can fail to admit the consummate skill and ability with which the Cardinal has conducted his argument; nor resist the conclusion, that it is only in the application of it he has failed, in the judgment, at least, of every discriminating Protestant. It is true, indeed, that one or two of these tests are the marks of a true Church, but they have respect to doctrines entertained in common by the Anglican and by the Roman communion ; others that he mentions are peculiar to the Church of Rome, and they contain positions and dogmas from which every sound Protestant must dissent. I, at one time, intended to have examined these tests seriatim,+ but, on consideration, refrain at present, first, because the examination would fail to be popular, or, in other words, command sufficient interest * Cardinal Bellarmine, on one point, was accounted heterodox; and for questioning the power of the Pope's interference in temporal matters, his work was denounced by Sextus V. + Body of Controversy: the latinity of which is peculiarly chaste and clas sical. G and attraction; and, secondly, because all argument and reasoning on disputed points are nugatory, so long as one dogma of the Romish Church continues to be maintained by its members;-I mean, the dogma of its infallibility. I have not unfrequently conversed with members of the Romish communion on some of the leading tenets of their Church-with one or two even of the bishops of that hierarchy, and with several of the laity; among others, I may mention, the late Mr. C. Butler, whom I personally knew and most highly esteemed; and I have never failed to make this remark, that all friendly investigation was, and must be, cut short by the entertainment of this Romish tenet. Every Papist entertains the dogma, that his Church is infallible, as well as its head. Now, either this tenet is true, or it is not if it be true, there is an end of all argument and inquiry on the subject, and it is in vain to interpose the exercise of private judgment. In a word, that judgment is virtually surrendered, and its submission to the Church is claimed as an article of faith. But such concession no Protestant is willing to make: he claims the right of private judgment; and in the exercise of his reason, for every act and determination of which he considers himself to be alone responsible, and not to any human tribunal, he is led to examine whether such a tenet as that which the Church of Rome exacts from all within its pale, as a primary and essential article of belief, has any sanction or authority in the written word to sustain it. If it has, his judgment will be as cheerfully surrendered, as it has been duly and impartially exercised. Now, then, what is the result? Why, that if the Church of Rome be right in its plea of infallibility, it is not the written word from which it can draw its justification, and support its claim. What doth the written word teach? that "no man is to be accounted of;" and its plain and authoritative declaration is, "cease ye from man, whose breath is in his nostrils." And why should this injunction be recorded? for some weighty and substantial reason doubtless; and it is this, that "there is none that doeth good, no, not one;” that, therefore, all that ever have been, all that now are, and all that ever will be-the past, the present, and the future generations of the species, have the same common taint, and the same morbid corruption within them; that not an impulse of their nature, nor an affection of their hearts, nor a work of their hands, but have the same stamp of fallibility and imperfection impressed upon them; that, therefore, what is common to one, is common to all, and nothing that is clean can be generated from a source so impure and a being so unclean, as is every man. And, as if this doctrine of the written word were not sufficiently explicit and declaratory of the imagination of every man's heart being evil continually, it gives us the most decisive of all testimony-that of our common Lord and Saviour, who disclaimed for us and for himself, even in his human form, the attribute of infallibility, and in words which one would think are quite sufficient, were they but felt, to abash the arrogant claim, and to crush the shameless presumption-"call not me good, there is none good but one, that is God!" Without multiplying passages upon passages from the written Word, the revelation of every page of which is a revelation of human fallibility, of man's apostasy from God, and the merciful scheme of his recovery by the humiliation, and the alone satisfactory atonement of his incarnate Son, Christ Jesus, every rational being, whose object is truth and not theorythe infallible commandments of heaven and not the erroneous doctrines of man-must be satisfied with the above, and will need no other testimony to convince his understanding and to establish his faith. If his search be truth, he will find it in the written Word: he will find plainness and simplicity 2 G in its precepts and in its doctrines, if much above, nothing contrary to, his reason in its clearest and most wholesome exercise; but out of the written Word, falsehood and error-superstition and idolatry-the subjugation of his reason, the surrender of his judgment, and the curtailment of his liberty both in thought and action-a most unwarrantable interpolation of some, and a most arbitrary addition* to other passages of the written Word, and I may add, too, of the fathers; and an exaction of his belief in the fallible traditions of men, as of equal, if not, in some instances, of superior authority to the infallible commandments of heaven, rendering, as it were, by the substitution of the one, the injunctions or the other of none effect. If, indeed, to this latter article of the Popish creed his subscription be given and his assent surrendered, there is an end at once of all calm inquiry and rational belief: for if once the notion be entertained that the written Word contains not the whole of what is necessary to salvation, and that there is something behind, call it tradition or by any other name you please, from which the deficiency is to be supplied, a door is at once opened to everything that is delusive in theory and dangerous in doctrine : and where is man to find any firm and solid resting-place upon which he can base his faith and certify his hopes? Tradition! Where is it? Oral communications, handed down from mouth to mouth, from age to age, and from century to century! Can any reliance be reposed in so very uncertain a medium of conveyance? Can any of us have lived even for the shortest period in this world, and not know from observation and experience, how much perversion of truth and exaggeration of facts are produced, even on the minutest as well as the gravest subjects, when the mouth is the channel by which they are conveyed and delivered to us? And is it to be imagined that the stream of oral communications has flowed on clear and pellucid, ruffled as it must have been from age to age, by the storms raised by so many conflicting passions, and by the mire cast up by so many foul and disturbing elements of strife and confusion? If such be tradition, away be our faith and confidence in it. And yet is my belief in tradition rightly conceived and understood, firm and inviolable and let not the most orthodox startle at this declaration of my faith. What, then, is the tradition that claims my belief? The tradition of the written Word, and that only. In one sense, all Scripture is tradition that of the Old Testament, which was delivered by God to Moses and his prophets; and that of the New Testament, which was delivered by Christ Jesus to his evangelists and apostles. The communications of God and of his Christ, were oral communications; they were *Not to multiply instances, which are numerous, I will mention in this note one passage only, in 2 Peter i, 10. In all the Greek copies, of which, of course, the Vulgate is a translation, the words, election sure by good works, are not to be found, excepting in two, according to Beza: Vulgata post verbum σovdacere legit, et in duobis manuscriptis codicibus græcis invenimus, nempe iva dia kaλwv epywv toinole,-a just remark, which reminds me of one of the many excellent prayers, or good thoughts, of the admirable Fuller, worth quoting. Lord, I observe that the vulgar translation reads the apostle's precepts thus, give diligence to make your calling and election sure by good works. But in our English Testaments, these words, by good works, are left out. grieved me at first to see our translation defective; but it offended me afterwards to see the other redundant. For those words are not in the Greek which is the original. And it is an evil work to put good works in to the corruption of Scripture. Grant, Lord, that though we leave good works out in the text, we may take them in in our comment, in that exposition which our practice is to make on this precept in our lives and conversation. It literally Tapadóveis, which they, to whom they were delivered, were enabled, by inspiration, to recall to their minds, and to commit to writing, without any admixture of error, without any forgetfulness of what their ears heard, or any addition of their own to the things which they were commissioned and inspired to teach. As the word was delivered to them, so they delivered it to others, through the medium of the written Word; and for that Word we claim what can surely not, in any sense, be predicated of what is commonly understood by the term, tradition; that arbitrary, erroneous, and most fallible addendum of Papists to the all-sufficient and alone infallible standard of truth, God's written Word. There were those, in the times of our Lord, who, for their belief in the traditions of certain of their scribes and elders, were reprobated as apostate Jews, n 7718 1718 7 ; and, surely, with equal truth, those who now, and who through the last sixteen centuries have believed in this heresy, may be regarded as apostate Christians. Nor is there any other conclusion at which we can arrive, if the written Word be our guide, and the words of Christ himself are to be admitted as authority, from which there can be no appeal: and let me add, that it is an inference, manufactured by no logical skill, nor put together by any arbitrary fancies of man-the premises and the conclusion are to be found in the inspired and written Word of God, and which claim, therefore, our implicit and reverential belief. The Papists have no such standard to appeal to; or, to write more correctly, none such to which they will appeal; for if they did, they would at once repudiate those human dicta and those erring traditions of theirs, which may be made to speak any language, to explain away any truth, and to propagate any falsehood! O shameful, shameful, ye Papists, who, leaving the commandments of God, are led by traditions of men, to use such hard speeches, and to utter such opprobrious epithets against your Protestant brethren; and who, to fill up the measure of your abominations, would treat them as Peter, in his worst and most phrensied zeal, did the unoffending Malchus, and add the sanctity of an oath to the imprecations of your lips and the malevolence of your hearts! For what do the priests of your sanctuary-those even who are clothed with the episcopal robes, which ought to be alone robes of meekness and charity, vow at their consecration? "To the utmost of my power, I will persecute and attack heretics." Did I speak of the sanctity of an oath? But with what sanctity can a Papist regard it, when it is a part and parcel of his creed, that no oaths are to be kept with Protestants? And do not the times in which we live furnish examples of the facility with which promises the most solemn may be broken, and oaths the most sacred may be violated? In a neighbouring state (Prussia), is there not an instance of a Popish bishop showing his contempt for vows and promises made with heretics? And is there not something of the kind enacted at our own doors, and by a portion of our Popish community? In the decretals of Pope Sextus, concerning oaths, the following dictum is recorded-"That as both ecclesiastics and laymen are obliged to take oaths in many churches and states, &c., whenever these oaths are found unlawful, or impossible, or obstructive of the liberty of the Romish Church, they are not to be kept." What a latitude is here afforded for the perpetration of perjury, and what Papist, who believes in the infallibility of his Church, would hold an oath to be binding on his conscience-that felonious refuge in which all intrench themselves, whose object it is to evade truth and trample upon principle and integrity? And then, with what want of even decency of language, are the National Church of Englishmen and the translators of our English Bibles treated by Papists in their decretals and writings? And does not the very |