you swore to the contrary ?" A. "Yes; such was the impression I brought with me in consequence of my education, that the Pope could absolve

me from all this, if it had any tendency to promote the interest of the Church." (Ibid., p. 326.)

Nor can this excite surprise when the doctrine relative to oaths laid down in the third Lateran Council, one of the General Councils of the Roman Catholic Church, is thus recorded. In the sixteenth canon of that Council, it is laid down, that "oaths are not to be called oaths, but rather perjuries, which are opposed to the interests of the Church, and to the decrees of the holy Fathers."

But if any person still doubts whether the Church of Rome is fairly chargeable with such unprincipled dogmas, whereby truth is driven out of the world, and prevarication and perjury are positively consecrated to the service of the Church, let him study the works of a modern saint of the Romish Church, canonized with great pomp at Rome so lately as 1839; when he was enrolled "among the saints, and declared worthy of being venerated as a saint by all Christians." The stamp and impress of the authority of the Holy See were placed upon his writings, "the Cardinal Reporter and the Congregation of Rites having solemnly declared that they had examined his manuscripts and printed works, and had found nothing censurable in them." Here, then, the infallible Church has identified herself with the doctrines and dogmas of Alphonsus Liguori; whose abominable casuistry equals, if it does not surpass, the worst specimens yet exhibited to the public from Peter Dens, Cardinal Cajetan, and others. To give only one or two specimens of the truth of this assertion.

In book ii., treatise 1, Liguori replies to the question, whether it is lawful to deny the faith, or to profess a false one: he answers, "In no case is it lawful, whether it be done by voice or any other sign, Christ having said, 'He that denieth me before men,' ""&c.; good man! had he stopped here, but what does he add? "Notwithstanding, indeed, although it is not lawful to lie, or to feign what is not, however, it is lawful to dissemble what is, or to cover the truth with words or other ambiguous doubtful signs, for a just cause, and when there is not a necessity for confessing! In another instance he cites a brother saint in corroboration of his most appalling doctrine, that such equivocation may be confirmed, if necessary, by an oath, and that without sin! "These things being established, it is a certain and a common opinion amongst all Divines, that, for a just cause," (and the interests of the Roman Church are, as we have already seen, pre-eminently the just cause,) "it is lawful to use equivocation in the propounded modes, and to confirm it with an oath! O true to thy prototype, thou most "lying spirit!" hast thou not put good for evil, light for darkness, and falsehood for truth? Such is the solemn act and dogma of the holy Roman Church.

And now, beloved brethren, I ask you solemnly and before God to ponder these things; gaze upon the false miracles and lying wonders of the Roman Church; examine the gross and multiplied forgeries of ancient documents by which she bolsters up her usurpation; contemplate her doctrines whereby the sanctity of all oaths is violated, perjury is made a virtue, and fidelity a vice;—and then I ask you, Am I uncharitable? do I exceed the evidence adduced, when I declare most publicly and deliberately, that, knowing these things, I would not, and could not, in any matter relative to the interests of their Church, believe for one moment a Roman Catholic Bishop, Priest, or Deacon, peer, gentleman, or peasant,

even on his oath! On any other subject I would take his word, as I would that of any gentleman or fellow-countryman; but, indeed, indeed, the oaths of Romanists are worthless, they are as stubble before the wind, in any matter in which the interests of the Popedom, or of their Church, are concerned. Believe them not, they are not to be believed. Believe not brother, husband, friend; trust not her who lieth in your bosom, if she apostatize to Popery! The thoughts of your heart shall be told to the Priest in the vile confessional; nothing is safe, nothing is sacred; and if, with such evidence as this before our eyes, the promises and oaths of Papists are still regarded, we can only conclude that hopeless, if not judicial, infatuation is come over our land.

I cannot but think, that an event which has recently been much canvassed in the public prints, may receive some elucidation by the aid of those principles which I have now endeavoured to expose. A youth of nineteen or twenty years of age is perverted to Popery at the University of Cambridge. His private tutor is vehemently suspected of contributing to his perversion. In the course of his attempt to vindicate himself, he mentions, evidently without the smallest intention of censure, or even disapprobation, that the Popish Bishop, who had already received the perverted and deluded boy into the Church of Rome, had offered to grant him “a dispensation" to attend College chapel, and perform his usual academic duties for three months,-for the benevolent object, as it should seem, of not wounding the mother's feelings prematurely, and of abiding the return of the father, who was abroad. The residue of good faith, and gentlemanlike feelings of honour in this English-bred youth, appears to have made him reject this proffered spiritual guarantee for religious deception. The public being somewhat scandalized by this transaction, an officious, and apparently zealous, Catholic steps forward, affecting to be shocked that any such act of deception should be laid at the door of his Church, and calls upon the Bishop to deny a scandal which had thus been occasioned; taking care to word his request in such language that the Bishop may, without positive falsehood, deny it: this denial appears in the next paper, couched in the very words required; words calculated to satisfy the unsuspicious, although they contained no denial of the fact, that he had offered, proposed, or suggested "a dispensation" to the perverted boy, to assume the garb of a Protestant, while he was secretly a confessed Romanist! This tender of a dispensation has not been denied, nor can it be; not because of the difficulty of stating that which is not true, or of swearing a false oath, if necessary, for which another dispensation, in such a case, might immediately be granted, but because the tutor, the friendly tutor, the Popish Bishop's coadjutor in this matter, would be sacrificed. He has, unfortunately, twice declared that such a dispensation was tendered; and therefore, though the Bishop can deny abstractedly, and with but little mental reservation, that "he countenanced an individual professing one religion, and being at the same time of another, for the sake of deception;" though he can deny this, he cannot deny the tender of "a dispensation," without contradicting the Tractarian tutor; who, not being, probably, so far initiated in the mystery of consecrated perjury, would rather be believed in this case than the Romish Prelate.

But will not such transactions as these open the eyes of slumbering Protestants? Will nothing persuade you of the snares with which your perfidious foes are entangling your steps? Were it not for harrowing up private feelings, and re-opening wounds scarce healed, I could tell sad tales,

and not a few, of the wiles of Rome's crafty agents, and their success, especially among the young and inexperienced. I could tell of one Priest of Rome who carried on his clandestine correspondence with a daughter of a Clergyman, by thrusting letters under the pulpit-cushion in her father's church; and when the deluded girl was irretrievably perverted, and abducted from the paternal roof, sent her back with a pious fraud upon her lips to pretend herself a restored Protestant, only that she might steal her sister off to Rome! It is true she failed in this; but she persuaded a young friend to return with her to Popery, and that girl's father shortly after died, his death, it is asserted, being hastened by the loss of his beloved daughter! I could tell of another young lady, into whose bed-room a French governess, a Papist, introduced a Priest, who, the parents being from home, administered some religious rites to her in her bed! Since I began to prepare this sermon, a venerable father has been with me complaining of the disruption of his family by the perversion of his daughter to Popery; and since this discourse was preached, one on whom I can rely has informed me, that an old friend of his, a Clergyman, recently met him, and, with tears in his eyes, lamented that his son was not only become a Papist, but a Jesuit, and that he was shut up and not to be seen for two years; that he was to receive only six letters in the year, and those were to be first read by the sacerdotal Janizaries who imprisoned him! O most cruel and unnatural superstition, which violates the sanctity of the domestic hearth, dries up the charities of the human bosom, lays its iron hand on truth, and innocence, and youthful confidence, and perverts them all to suit the vile purposes of its insatiable ambition!

BLOT OUT THE SABBATH !

BLOT out the Sabbath, and you blot out the last beam of hope from the troubled and desponding heart. Blot out the Sabbath, and no longer will the salutary lessons of the Bible lead ungodly men to repentance and salvation. No longer will the silver clarion of the Gospel proclaim liberty to the captive, and the opening of death's prison-doors to those that are bound. No longer will the voice of supplication ascend from this ruined world, to draw from heaven the blessing now so munificently imparted by the Hearer of prayer. No longer will the Spirit of grace dwell among men, to dissipate their darkness, and communicate that influence which makes the desert like Eden, and the wilderness like the garden of the Lord. No longer will the sacred thanksgivings of the church on earth, intermingling with the sweeter and purer harmony of the church in heaven, ascend as a sweet-smelling savour before the God of the spirits of all flesh. No longer will ordinances quicken, or the soul be comforted, or grace be triumphant, or the unnumbered heirs of sin and perdition be conducted in the path that terminates at God's right hand. No! blot out the Sabbath, and darkness will cover the earth, and gross darkness the people. Sin will reign, Satan will walk through the earth in all the frenzy of his long-wished-for usurpation, and death and hell will follow in his train. Blot out the Sabbath, and, in one mighty crowd of pilgrims, this world's population would march quietly on to the gulf of remediless ruin.-Spring.

REMARKS ON THE RENEWAL OF THE COVENANT.

(To the Editor of the Wesleyan-Methodist Magazine.)

THERE are few religious services which are attended with more of hallowed expectation of receiving spiritual profit, which are observed with greater seriousness and solemn reverence, or which are followed by such important and sanctifying results, as the annual renewal of the covenant with God, which the members of the Methodist societies are accustomed to make on the first Sabbath of the year. The assembly of the saints is gathered, the memorials of the Saviour's love are received as pledges of God's faithfulness to his covenant with his people, and as the sign of their fealty and loyalty to him, and each seems to say, with the Psalmist, "I have sworn, and I will perform it, that I will keep thy righteous judgments."

It is proposed to present, in this paper, some information respecting that "Form of the Renewing of the Covenant" which is used amongst us in our yearly services. It is generally believed that this document was composed by the Rev. Richard Alleine: it is the design of this communication to correct that mistake, and to show that the author of the Form of the Covenant was the Rev. Joseph Alleine, so well known as the author, also, of "An Alarm to unconverted Sinners." Both these eminent men were Nonconformist Ministers, and remarkable for their piety.

The former, the Rev. Richard Alleine, resided at Batcombe, in Somersetshire, and afterwards, on the passing of the iniquitous Five-Mile Act, at Frome-Selwood. He was the author of several devout and heart-stirring works, some of which are abridged and inserted in Mr. Wesley's Christian Library, and another, "Instructions about Heart-Work," has been recently republished at the Methodist Book-Room, with a Biographical Sketch of the writer, by the Rev. John S. Stamp. Mr. R. Alleine died December 22d, 1681.

The Rev. Joseph Alleine resided at Taunton, and suffered imprisonment in the jail of Ilchester. The Christian Letters of "that blessed man, Joseph Alleine," as Mr. Wesley terms him, are well known, and Mr. Wesley gave them the preference even to Mr. Rutherford's, as expressing in a still higher degree the love that is long-suffering and kind. In 1655, Mr. Joseph Alleine married a daughter of the Rev. Richard Alleine, and died in 1668, aged thirty-five years.

It is apprehended that the common mistake by which the authorship of the Form of the Covenant is attributed to Mr. Richard Alleine, may have arisen from it having first appeared in his "Vindicia Pietatis; or, A Vindication of Godliness," first published, it is probable, in the year 1662 or 1663.* The Form appears in that work, and the directions for profitably entering into a covenant with God are unquestionably to be ascribed to Mr. Richard Alleine. But that the opinion that he was the author, is erroneous, seems clear from the terms which he employs in introducing it to his readers. The following are his words, extracted from the edition printed in 1664:-"Now, that which I would persuade you to, is this solemn and express covenanting with God: providence hath lately brought to my hand the advice of a dear friend and

* Stamp's Biographical Sketch, p. xvi.

faithful labourer in the word of the Lord about this matter, together with an excellent form of words, composed for the help of weaker Christians, and aptly accommodated to all the substantials of our baptismal covenant; which having found great acceptance with many precious Christians, I do, with much zeal, and great hope of good success, for the establishing of souls in holiness and comfort, commend it to the use not only of young converts, but of the more grown Christians, that have not experimented this or the like course.' To this passage, as it appears in Mr. Wesley's Christian Library, vol. xviii., p. 142, the following note is there appended :-"The Rev. Joseph Alleine is, probably, the person here meant. The same Form of Covenant, or one which exhibits no material difference, will be found in his Alarm to unconverted Sinners.' (See Christian Library, vol. xiv., pp. 141–144. 8vo. Edit. 1822.)" It is now designed to offer proof of what the editor of the Christian Library suggests the probability.

It will be observed, that Mr. Richard Alleine expressly declares that he is not the author of the Form of Covenant; but says, "Divine Providence hath lately brought to my hand an excellent form of words, composed for the help of weaker Christians ;" and that the "dear friend," with whose advice he was favoured, and who, as his words intimate, supplied him with the Directions, was Mr. Joseph Alleine, will appear almost certain from the consideration that the Form, with the directions immediately preceding the words of the covenant, and commencing with, "1. Set apart some time, more than once, to be spent in secret before the Lord," are found in Mr. Joseph Alleine's "Alarm," without any intimation that it is the work of another hand.* It may strengthen this evidence to be reminded, that Mr. Joseph Alleine was Mr. Richard Alleine's son-in-law; and that the "Alarm" was published with an "Introductory Address, by Mr. R. A.”

But further quotations will make this evidence clearer; and so strong, as to be almost irresistible. The third part of Vindicia Pietatis, entitled, "Heaven opened: or, a brief and plain Discovery of the Riches of God's Covenant of Grace," by "R. A.," (Richard Alleine,) was printed in 1666. In the "Introduction to the Reader," there is the following sentence :— "There came to my hands a synopsis of the covenant of grace on God's part, with a soliloquie annexed, (both penned by the worthy author of that form of man's covenanting with God, inserted in my Vindicia Pietatis,) attended with the author's desires, and of divers other Christians, that this also might be incorporated into the same book." The table of contents contains the following:-" Chap. 17. A synopsis of the covenant of grace on God's part, by another hand." In the body of the work, page 195, that chapter is thus headed :-"Chap. XVII. God speaking from Mount Gerizim: or, the Gospel in a map : being a short view of the exceeding great and precious promises,* by another hand."-In the margin, "* Mr. I. A.” The title of chap. xviii. is, “A soliloquy, representing the believer's triumph in God's covenant; and the various conflicts and glorious conquests of faith over unbelief. By the same author." That "Voice of God speaking from Mount Gerizim," and the "Soliloquy," are both inserted in an edition of Mr. Joseph Alleine's Works, published in Edinburgh, in 1752; and Mr. Baxter, who wrote an introduction to his Life, says, that he also wrote the Synopsis of the Covenant, inserted in the third part of

* The edition of Alleine's "Alarm," published by the Religious Tract Society, has this invaluable Form of Covenant expunged.