see her stand forth unendowed, but retaining her primitive Protestantism and purity, than see her sit down, the sister of the Church of Rome. I would therefore say, that if the clergy of the Church of Ireland are alive to the crisis which we are approaching, and if their brethren, scattered up and down in England, are alive to it, they will at once take measures to anticipate the design, and if possible to defeat it. And I do not hesitate to say, that if such an attempt be but humbly and prayerfully, yet boldly and decisively made, they will get up such a spirit in England, that they will be able to accomplish their object.

My Christian friends, there is one particular point more at which I must glance. We are on the eve of another election; it cannot be far off. Much as the clergy, who take part in the proceedings of the Protestant Association, are branded, as being political, I for one, am so entirely remote from being political, that I have never asked or influenced a vote, since I have been a clergyman of the Church of England; nor is it my intention, so far as I see, ever to do so; but in the exercise of my own vote, I feel I am discharging a solemn responsibility, given me by that God who is the God of nations as well as individuals; and therefore I have always given it, as far as I have been able, to the good of my country and my God. A simple declaration has been drawn up at Manchester (which I should wish carried throughout the country privately-for we do not make any to do about it)—to this effect:-" We, whose names are here recorded, declare our determination, on the occurrence of an election for members of Parliament, to give our vote to no candidates, of whose solemn conviction that no further concessions to Rome should be made, we are not perfectly satisfied." On that Resolution we are prepared to act; and whether the candidate be father or brother, or dearest friend-whether he call himself Whig, Tory, Conservative, or Radical, whether he be for free trade, or for so-called protection, we will not make that the first consideration; but our first question will be this"Will you betray or will you defend the Protestant faith of your fathers? I am now addressing some few hundreds of electors. If you mean by your presence here that you are honest-hearted Protestants, and that Protestant truth is dearer to you than the bread which perishes-as it must be, if it is dear at all—or anything in this world, then you will "go and do likewise;" you will vote for the man who is opposed to further concessions to Rome. May you be like a plain working man in our own vicinity, some time ago, on the occurrence of a general election. On that occasion I met this pious man incidentally in the street, and he said to me, "O Sir, what I would have given, to have seen you the day before yesterday. I went to your house, but you were not in. I was so agitated to know how I ought to vote in the sight of God." "I am glad you did not see me, for I could have given no opinion in the matter; I act myself as God determines my judgment, and leave others to do the same." "Well, Sir, I thought how I should act; for some men came and said to me,Why will you not vote for this candidate? he will give cheap bread to the poor, and you are a poor man' others said, Will you not vote for that candidate? he will uphold the Bible against the

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Romanists.' Now I was at a great loss; so I got up early, and went to my back-room before my wife was moving, and knelt down and prayed that God would influence me; and I no sooner got up, than I went in and said to my wife, I tell thee what, Betty, I will go and vote for so-and-so,-the man that will uphold the Protestant faith and the Protestant Church; for however fine a thing cheap bread may be, or however well it may be for a poor man to get plenty of the meat which perisheth, what is at all to be compared with that, without which his soul would be lost? and it would profit him nothing to gain the whole world, and lose his own soul."" Would to God there were such a spirit in every elector of our Christian country! We should have nothing to fear, if they were to take the matter to a throne of grace, and ask counsel there,-never to vote for the man who would support Antichrist, and put the Virgin Mary between Christ and the everlasting Father, and represent the God of all grace and consolation as an irritated and avenging God, when He is full of compassion and love-the man who would support a Church, that allowed to be put forth by one of her dignitaries, the blasphemous doctrine that we listened to this morning.

My Christian friends, on the issue of the next election, under God, will depend, I believe, the political and national destiny of this country. The next Parliament will either recover for us the lost ground which has been sacrificed, or send us down the inclined plane with fresh rapidity to ruin. And who will make the next Parliament? Electors of England! nen do not care for remonstrance. A million and a-half of names cast under the table as blank paper! If you do not petition, it is said, "See, the people do not care about it; we may go on with the measure; and if you do, it is no good; either way you are neglected. Electors of England! assert your place in the British Constitution. You cannot do it in St. Stephen's, but you may do it at the hustings. Ask the man who comes forward, as the first question, not "How will you vote with regard to free trade ?” although that is well in its place; not "How will you vote with regard to matters, which merely involve the perishing, shining dust ?" but "How will you vote on matters of eternity-on the bearing of the State upon the truth as it is in Jesus,'-the Protestant faith, which our forefathers sealed with their blood?"

My Christian friends, but when we have done all, what are the efforts of man, whose "breath is in his nostrils ?" Surely we are taught that " men of high degree are vanity, and men of low degree are a lie ; surely we are taught, that an arm of flesh can never sustain us, and that the promises and professions of men are not to be trusted in. Oh! then, let us go more humbly and simply to God, that He may maintain His causé, defend His truth, supplant and subvert its enemies, and give its friends the victory. Be it so, that Antichrist again obtain temporal power; be it so, that Infidelity make common cause with her, to serve her purposes; be it so, that for a time the saints of God be trampled under her feet; and much as I tremble for our country, and weep for the sorrows that are coming upon her, as did Jeremiah of old, when he wished "that his head were waters, and his eyes a fountain of tears, that he might weep day

and night for the slain of the daughter of his people," yet we may still hope for victory, for Antichrist can never long prevail, and temporary triumph will be the prelude to utter and eternal destruction.

The Rev. CHARLES PREST, in supporting the Resolution, said,-It always gave him great pleasure to be associated with the Chairman, whose righthearted and unswerving efforts, in good and in evil report, to maintain truth, stamped his character with true and Christian dignity; and he highly admired the Association whose efforts they had met to promote, for its steady and uncompromising consistency, because it did not endeavour to court popularity or support by accommodating itself to ever-shifting circumstances, or the cant and sin of the day, "expediency." (Cheers.) They were always steady and stedfast opponents of Antichrist, and firm foes to the shifts of a temporary and beggarly expediency. The Association had often been much misrepresented, not misunderstood,--their objects and their conduct were too clear for that, but misrepresented, by parties whose sagacity told them that their proceedings would tell against their unscriptural and unchristian proceedings, and who therefore sought by such misrepresentation to abate the force of that which they durst not honestly meet. (Cheers.) He would be seriously sorry to see the United Church of England and Ireland placed in the position pointed out by Mr. Stowell, but he believed he knew enough of many ministers of that Church to say, that they would never consent to sit down as a sister Church with the Church of Rome. (Cheers.) No, if Rome was to be endowed, he fully believed that very many of the clergy of that Church would rather forego all connexion with the State than sit down in so degraded a position. He trusted that all present would not think their duty done, the moment the excitement of the proceedings of that day had subsided; on the contrary, let every one throw off that apathy which was too prevalent, and each act as though the fate of the Protestant cause depended upon himself. There was nothing in the present aspect of things to induce Protestants to despair; had our noble forefathers been so faint-hearted, passively complaining and inert, as many sincere Protestants of the present day, what would have become of the glorious Reformation itself? That event had germinated out of seed which had been hid for centuries. Martin Luther obtained it out of the holy Testament, which he rescued from the mummy-case in which it had been so long shut up: but he did not despair-it grew in his day, it was growing, and would shortly spread into a goodly tree. Ever since that blessed event, Popery had been endeavouring, by every means in its power, to re-establish its political supremacy in those countries from which she had then been driven forth. Political ambition was her only object-from the time of the council of Trent ambition had been the only object of the Papacy. Her organization, her machinery, her dogmas, her dishonesty, well fitted her object. In her mystery of iniquity she had recourses of expediency which her humble and blundering imitators, the mere politicians of the present day, would find more than a match for their most elaborate plans. It might be called uncharitable; but he cared not for names, he had been long used to them; and he said that the Papacy was no Church of Christ. It might be asked of

him, did he deny that there ever was a good man in the Church of Rome, and he would be glad to have the question put to him; he would have no hesitation whatever in answering, that his opinion was, that there were good men in that Church—that many good men had gone to heaven out of the Romish Church, but they had never gone to heaven in consequence of any part of the system of Popery ; (cheers ;) never, no one could; if any one in that Church loved God, he was not indebted for that good state of heart to the system of Popery, he had become a Christian in spite of it; (cheers;) yes, many went to heaven through that Church, or rather, as he ought to say, from that Church; he would be sorry for both his heart and his head, if he had not the charity to make that admission. He was not like the Romanist, he did not deny salvation to all who were out of his own creed. But he was no Liberal, in the modern and abused sense of that term. (A laugh.) He used to call himself a Conservative, and had always acted as one, but what he was now he did not know, for those in whom he used to put faith, had deserted the principles which he loved, and which they had professed when wooing what they had betrayed, the confidence of the country. He believed that if any of the parties of the present day were to put their claims before him and say, which did he choose? he should not choose any of them, but would say that he was a Protestant. (Cheers.) He believed that much of the liberalism of the present day owed its origin, strange to say, to Rome itself; at all events, where it did not create it, it did all in its power to give it strength wherever it found it, even although it was reduced into perfect licentiousness, and such a state of public feeling has worked well for some, and furthered the cause of her intolerance and despotism. Liberalism may enthrone Rome, but Liberalism will never be enthroned with her. (Cheers.) The Act of 1829, he had considered a fault at the time, and he thought so still. He had been strongly opposed to the system of national education in Ireland, which gave a mutilated Bible into the hands of her youth,-he saw that it might be wrested to the purposes of the Papacy, and he believed that practically, in nine cases out of ten, it was neither more nor less than a system of teaching and spreading the erroneous doctrines,—the souldestroying tenets of the Church of Rome. England had never been more grossly insulted than in the recent endowment of the College of Maynooth. (Cheers.) Protestant England had never been more outraged by those who called themselves the representatives of the people. He hoped that every one who had heard the advice given them that day, respecting the conduct to be pursued at the approaching election, would follow it to the letter, and give their votes only to those who were true in their Protestant principles, and had the courage to express them; let them give their votes only to those who would support God's holy cause, if they wished England to prosper. If any Protestant dared then to vote wrong, to forget the paramount claims of Protestantism in the inferior claims of fiscal regulations and temporary civil questions, let him never again shew his face in that Hall, unless indeed it were to perform that penance which he would so richly deserve; if any one then voted wrong, they would betray the

best interests not only of their children but of their children's children; they would betray the best interests of their country for the bread that perisheth. Let such a man go home and burn the Book of Martyrs, lest the sight of it should fill him with deserved reproach and shame, and think of his inconsistency in complaining of the conduct of the Legislature, he having created the very agents of whom he complained. The next Parliament will settle the destinies of their empire for generations, and a more solemn and momentous responsibility never rested upon free-born Englishmen than will devolve upon them at the next election. (Cheers.) He trusted that the attention of all Christian men would be turned to the Charitable Trusts Bill. A more monstrous proposition had never been brought under the notice of the Legislature, for it would give powers to three Commissioners, who might take the oath in a non-natural sense, (cheers,) or who might be Romanists or Unitarians, to turn out all trustees of charities; to appoint others to their minds, and in defiance of the well-known legal doctrine of Cypress, it enabled this irresponsible triumvirate, to do what, as Lord Cottenham said, the Legislature never claimed a right to attempt, to divert the trust funds to other purposes; if it passed, but few years would elapse before all trust funds would be in danger of being wrested to the purposes of Romanism or of Infidelity. The Bills of Mr. Watson and the Lord Chancellor were almost beyond belief for their unblushing effrontery: they tampered directly with the Oath of Supremacy, and he trusted they would both be closely watched and strenuously resisted. If in this meeting fears be entertained, they are sympathized in by the Bishop of London, who declares that apprehensions may be reasonably entertained of the danger which will arise to the integrity and supremacy of the crown, for the supremacy of the Pope had never been given up. If it were not openly taught it was still maintained. The Bishop of Exeter had said, that if these bills pass, we must prepare ourselves for another religious war." But he (Mr. Prest) thought that by passing these bills we were preparing not for war but for shameful defeat. demolishing our fortifications, disbanding our army, manning our ships, and garrisoning our fortresses with the enemy be a preparation for war? (Cheers.) But we are doing worse than this, and it is to be regretted that the last named Prelate did not begin the fight in earnest by pressing his Motion, that his questions should be submitted to the Judges, for in those venerable men the nation had more confidence than in law-makers. Nor should the startling observation of Lord Campbell be forgotten, that if these bills passed the Pope would have more power in this country than in any other European state. He had no hesitation in quoting, in that Meeting, the remarks of one, whose memory he revered, and whose name, he was persuaded, would meet with a cordial welcome, he meant John Wesley. (Cheers.) That great man said years since, "That no Roman Catholic does, or can, give security for his allegiance or peaceable behaviour. I prove thus. (Let him answer it that can.) It is a Roman Catholic maxim, established, not by private men, but by a public council, that no faith is to be kept with heretics.' This has been openly avowed by the Council of Constance; but it was never openly disclaimed. Whether

Would