During the year 1839 we have witnessed Papists promoted to high official situations, and one very notorious person of that class sworn in as a privy Counsellor; an attempt has been made to procure the endowment of Popery in England, by the appointment of Popish Chaplains to the prisons; and although this failed, another very serious blow that was levelled by Popish intrigues, at the religion of the country-we mean the new scheme of education-has succeeded. Instead of any diminution having been made in the amount paid to Popery at Maynooth and in the Colonies, we fear that there has been no inconsiderable increase in the latter department; and above all the nation, it is now understood, must be prepared for the marriage of its Sovereign with a scion of a family, justly suspected of Popish inclinations. These are indeed fruitful sources of despondency; but on the other hand, there is some cause for hope in the increase of Protestant zeal among the people. To the Committee of the Protestant Association, it is a subject of great thankfulness, that their labors in promoting this revival have, during the past year been signally acknowledged and blessed by the Great Head of the Church. Their friends have multiplied; their means have increased; their organization progresses; and in nearly all parts of the country, great encouragement is offered them to persevere. May He who so far has led us forward, give us wisdom and strength to perform His will, and to walk in the way of his commandments! Our sufficiency is from him alone; our success is through him only and therefore to "His Glorious and Fearful Name," we ascribe the praise. To God then we commit ourselves for the ensuing year; in the humble hope that we may yet be honored instruments of recalling our fellow countrymen to a sense of their solemn duty as Protestants and Christians. The times are critical; the dangers are numerous; but amidst all, there is One who is mighty to save; and to His guidance and to His care we trust our country and those blessings of civil and religious freedom, which through His great mercy, for so many years we have unworthily enjoyed. THE OXFORD TRACTS. WE read in the Scriptures of Divine Truth that Satan can transform himself into an angel of light, and we perceive that in that character he is now endeavouring to sow the principles of Popery, justly described as his master-piece, in the soil of the Church of England. Happily we are not ignorant of his devices, and confiding in the protection of the Most High over our Church, we have no apprehensions for the result, notwithstanding the exultation with which this attempt has been hailed and received by Lord Morpeth in Parliament. Subjoined is given an able exposure of the dangerous and heretical tendency of the doctrines contained in these Tracts by two eminent prelates of the Church of England, the Bishops of Chester and Calcutta. 1st Extract. From the Bishop of Chester's Charge. Many subjects present themselves, towards which I must be tempted to direct your thoughts. One more especially concerns the Church at present, because it is daily assuming a more serious and alarming aspect, and threatens a revival of the worst evils of the Romish system. "Under the specious pretence of deference to antiquity and respect for primitive models, the foundations of our Protestant Church are undermined by men who dwell within her walls; and those who sit in the Reformer's seat are traducing the Reformation. "It is again becoming matter of question, whether the Bible is sufficient to make wise unto salvation; the main article of our national confession-justification by faith-is both openly and covertly assailed; and the stewards of the mystery of grace are instructed to reserve the truth which they have been ordained to dispense, and to hide under a bushel those doctrines which the Apostles were commanded to preach to every creature.' 2nd. From the Charge of the Bishop of Calcutta. "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 conviction 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 divine and 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." ILLUSTRATIONS. BY CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH. NO. XI. Not long since, I was exhibiting a few old coins to a friend, who, pointing to a series, consisting apparently of two copper penny pieces, a half-penny, and a farthing, inquired their title of admission among sundry specimens of gold and silver monies arranged in a small tray. Half-pence and farthings look odd in such a neighbourhood,' he remarked. Ay, but what you so irreverently denounce are a crown, a half-crown, a shilling and a sixpence, current coin of the realm, issued by royal proclamation from the royal mint.' 'You are laughing at me.' 'I am not-this is gunmoney.' 'And what is gun-money? I never heard of it before.' I was mightily astonished; and thenceforth I made a practice of asking my friends, Do you know what gun-money is? Many of them replied in the affirmative; but to several the question was so puzzling that I consider it may not be amiss to refresh the memories of this oblivious generation with a few brief notices of a remarkable coinage-one of the choice gifts conferred on his Protestant lieges by that most exemplary son of Rome, James the Second. Every body knows that, after abdicating the throne which the failure of his attempt to overawe the church and to seduce the army rendered untenable for him, James repented of the step, and threw himself upon the warm devotedness of his Irish subjects, in the hope of recovering his lost kingdom. He did not miscalculate either their zeal or their bravery: both were excessive, and among the Romanists both were his; but he did most grievously miscalculate the odds, when arraying numerical strength, animal courage, and blind submission against that talismanic bulwark A RIGHTEOUS CAUSE. Few and feeble were the servants of God in the land, compared with his priest-ridden millions; and he proceeded to the work of extinguishing that small remnant. Popery is never backward to unsheath the sword when secure of her prey; but she better loves to come in the darkness of night and stealthily to poignard the victim, to drug his bowl, or to insinuate the live coal under the thatch of his cottage. True to this principle, and secretly dreading the moral power of a despised handful whose banner was the word of the living God, and their strong bond of union the profession of Gospel truth, James resolved to levy against them a characteristic war of cowardly oppression, by prostituting to the vilest ends those royal prerogatives of which they were loth to divest him: for William had not yet been recognized, the throne, vacated by James, remained unappropriated; and the loyal subjects of a renegade monarch desired to yield him obedience so long as no attempt was made to compel them into a national or individual apostacy. But this is not a history of 1688: it is only a brief notice of one particular act by which the Papal king sought to "wear out the saints of the most High," and so to rid himself of their conscientious opposition. The diabolical ingenuity of this scheme deserves to be specially recorded. There was no scarcity in the land; but, of course, Protestant industry and independence had secured the far greater part of money, and other property, as it ever must do when brought into competition with the cramped energies and fettered faculties of the Papal class in any country. To transfer this wealth so as utterly to impoverish its holders while enriching his own treasury and the coffers of his creatures, was the king's aim; and to effect it he caused a coinage to be struck, not of honest copper, but of a vile compound, of which the ingredients were old brass, pewter, bell metal, and above all, the residue of battered cannon, of which he found such store that it supplied by far the largest proportion, thereby obtaining for this holy Catholic coinage the cognomen of 'gun-money.' The intrinsic worth of the metal was calculated at four-pence per pound weight: which when stamped with the king's effigies bore the nominal value of £5. sterling, so that, by such exercise of the royal prerogative of coining, given expressly to prevent the adulteration of money, king James made just 6,000 per cent. at the sole expence of his Protestant subjects; for upon them alone was this base counterfeit forced. Yet more, after a while he called in, by proclamation, the fictitious half-crowns; and re-stamping them with an Equestrian figure in lieu of the bust, he dubbed them crown pieces, and so at once doubled his unrighteous gains. The Protestants were by law compelled to take this money in exchange for their gold and silver, their merchandize, and lands, their houses, and in payment of debts; but it was not regarded as a legal tender when made by them. For instance, a Protestant baker selling a sixpenny loaf to a Papist must accept in payment one of the king's brass farthings: whereas a Protestant housekeeper making the same purchase of a Popish baker must give a silver sixpence for it. Even the property of Protestant widows and orphans, vested in trustees, was brought into the courts, to be turned into brass money; while every bond, mortgage, or obligation of whatever sort entered into with a Papist was instantly forced to a settlement, either by making the unhappy creditor pay the demand in full in good coin, or else incarcerating him in a dungeon. By the vigorous enforcement of this monstrous law, a very short space of time sufficed to steep the wealthiest Protestants to the lips in penury, while an enormous accession of wealth flowed into the coffers of their adversaries; and all the property of the land changed masters. But Derry, obstinate old Derry, had closed her gates against the tyrant power. On the 18th of December, 1688, a handful of young apprentices had barricaded each inlet, and manned the walls of their diminutive town on the unflinching principle of No SURRENDER; the 30th of July, 1689, found the famished remnant of that heroic garrison sternly immoveable amid the ruins of their battered habitations, and the graves of their slaughtered companions. The Lord no longer tarried to be gracious; He frowned upon the troubled host of their enemies, and like the smoke they were driven away. The night of Popish usurpation closed: the bright dawn of national and spiritual freedom spread its glorious beams over the land and King James's gun-money became the scoff of those for whose destruction it was originally planned, coined, and issued. I prize my worthless series far above the precious metals that surround it. It is an eloquent illustration of what I desire never for one moment to forget. What tears of suffering patience may have dimmed its false lustre, what prayers of enduring faith may have been breathed over its surface, I know not but this I do know, that it will appear a witness against me to my everlasting confusion if I swerve from the watchword of my protest, No PEACE WITH ROME. : EXTRACTS FROM CORRESPONDENCE. To the Secretary of the Protestant Association. My dear Sir, Tawstock, Barnstaple, I, and very many more in association with me, should like you to procure of some (Roman) Catholic Bookseller in Town, the "Declaration of the Catholic Bishops, the Vicars Apostolic, &c., in Great Britain,"* (issued by the Catholic Institute), and either by your own pen or by that of some competent Individual, furnish an immediate counter-declaration, or exposure of the fallacy of the above named document; and that in order to preserve the Protestant public from the insidious designs of Popery. The above named Declaration is stereotyped; thousands of copies are circulating, and in this neighbourhood, the Papists are giving them at almost every door. We want something referring particularly to this declaration: and would like it to shew, 1st, That * The Declaration alluded to is in the possession of the Protestant Association, and under consideration. |