the taper stands on our social board, and the family circle is gathered round it, that the silly moth rushes in, resolved to venture and to perish despite of our interposition-our unwillingness to see his tender frame shrivelled in the destructive blaze: it is when our houses are fitted up, our walls adorned with hangings within, and trelliced without with gay flowering shrubs, that the spider makes his noiseless approach, greeting us with the spectacle of a finished web and a mangled victim before we have time to direct the removal of so unsightly an intruder. What other inference can we draw from this than that the lesson is laid open before us whether we will hear or whether we will forbear? The spider no doubt has furnished many useful hints to the reverend fathers of the Propaganda, and it is little to the credit of our wisdom if we neglect the intelligible warnings that our household artizan so readily supplies us with. It is not by listening to a treatise on net-work that any fly will escape the snare spread by his enemy; neither will the writing or the reading of such disquisitions avail us against the wiles of Popery: but so long as power remains with the Protestant section of the empire to retard the work, to disunite the threads, or to hunt the sanguinary contriver from his selected corners, if altogether disabling him be impracticable we are bound to urge upon them the necessity of a decisive movement. The propaganda system is the framework of the whole web: it catches up, combines, and connects with the central seat every loose and straggling line. Examine the cobweb, and you will be struck with the finished arrangement of those radiating threads of which the extremities, curiously gathered into a point at one end, widen at the other to an unequal extent, limited only by the existence of irregular outworks, every one of which they must embrace. There is no confusion, no entanglement: complicated beyond the wit of man to unravel the device, one thing is always clear; that each filament has its office and its use. Remove one, and you will be satisfied of this by the diligence of the artist in replacing it. So it is with the great mystery of iniquity: that cunning wisdom which is far more perceptible in the children of this world than in the children of light abounds here. The propaganda principle is to make every individual useful, to turn every event to profit, in pursuing its schemes: the principals have one defined object in view, and they regard whatever they meet with as the spider regards an object whereto he may attach a connecting thread. Here we may find a quiet, civil, liberal minded priest, intent only on the duties of his office, among a small body of his own persuasion, probably in very humble life: there we descry a schoolmaster, professedly waiving all disputed points, and communicating the rudiments of education without respect of persons or principles: again, we are called to admire the peaceful retreat of a holy sisterhood who, confining to the retired cell or the convent chapel all religious observances, receive young ladies under their tuition, imparting the required accomplishments with a cheerful pledge that nothing shall be said or done calculated to disturb their faith in the creed of their church. A governess, too, selected for her accurate enunciation of some foreign tongue, the grace of her movements, or the superiority of her address, is received into the bosom of some Protestant family: and who would be so basely uncharitable as to grudge her the private use of beads, crucifix and mass-book, or to suspect that treachery will lurk beneath so guileless an exterior? A servant, honest, faithful, attached and industrious is surely not to be looked on with the eye of doubt because obliged to frequent the confessional, and expected to attend the Romish place of worship: or the mistress of a family, who affords good wages, regards the morals of her domestics, promotes merit, and carefully gives unto all what is just and equal, surely we are not to fancy that she will trouble her head about making proselytes of the simple girl or youth whom we are disposed to favor with a recommendation to so valuable an establishment. All these are within the range of the propaganda radii: it is not necessary to charge them with premeditated deception: they are mere mechanical things, wholly dependent on a power that grasps, governs, coerces them all: Alas for the silly flies that presume to step the enchanted ground! Alas for the heedless lookers-on who will not move a hand to brush away the dangerous web now thickening around! The great Propagandist sits within, well pleased to see that no menacing broom is wielded against his growing texture, and carefully abstaining from any demonstration while an eye is fixed upon his movements. He does not in your presence touch the line that would agitate to its outmost verge the expanded manufacture: he would not for the world you supposed there was any connexion between the gossamer film that waves far off upon the rose bush and his sober, contemplative retreat in the wall. Yet, be it the priest or the schoolmaster, the mistress or the maid, the private governess or the saintly sisterhood, all however quiescent to our sight, can be brought into powerful action, separately or combined, whenever it suits this born Inquisitor" to touch the master spring and shew how perfectly every agent is fitted, how accurately placed, to carry out that skilful contrivance which, after the working of Satan, has fashioned the whole web. CORRESPONDENCE. Reading. February 9th, 1839. My dear Sir,-Having been informed that an outline of the measures, which the Papists have adopted to introduce their doctrines in this place, will be acceptable for the pages of the Protestant Magazine, I forward the present statement with much readiness, considering it a high privilege to aid by any means in exposing their schemes and endeavours. 1. The Priest, who had for many years officiated at the Popish chapel in the town, has lately been removed, and one has been appointed, as a successor, qualified in every way to take a more active and effectual part in the work of proselytism. 2. A Popish chapel is in progress of erection, calculated, according to the measurement of our churches, for a congregation of six or seven hundred people. Its situation is very conspicuous, and adjoins the line of the new rail-road, while the site derives additional interest from being in the very midst of the ruins of an old abbey. Doubtless the imagination will be called fully into exercise on this latter point, and the work of delusion increased, by the appeal to local and ancient recollections. 3. Hand-bills have been dropped in different shops of the town, endeavouring to prove the Protestant religion a novelty, and striving to shew that there is nothing unscriptural, false, or dangerous in the Popish tenets. 4. A tract has been left from house to house, bearing the following title: "The present doctrine of the Church of England respecting the presence of Christ in the Sacrament, briefly shown to be opposed to Scripture, to the testimony of the early Fathers, and to the belief of all Christian Churches." 5. One of the ministers of the Established Church having preached a sermon in condemnation of Popery, received a letter from a Popish priest, complaining of his conduct as being groundless and uncharitable. It must be remembered that in this town and neighbourhood the number of Papists is extremely small. But the statements here made adequately prove that efforts are not wanting on their part to increase that number. To be opposed, these efforts must be known. I thank God that the Clergy of the town are on the watch, and already are exerting themselves diligently and boldly against the "mystery of iniquity," and the " of sin. "9 man Having no doubt that similar attacks on Protestantism, and similar designs in favour of Popery, are going on elsewhere, I trust that this brief notice may be useful to Clergymen and other friends of the truth, and may help them in their observation of the various movements made by their spiritual foes in behalf of a false, superstitious, and persecuting creed-condemned by God's word-condemned by history-and condemned by its baneful effects in every Popish land. I am, your faithful and obedient, FRANCIS TRENCH. Perpetual Curate of St. John's, Reading. LITERARY NOTICES. A Brief Apology for the Romish Priests of Ireland; or, their Conduct not inconsistent with their Religion. By the Rev. James R. Page, A.M., author of "Ireland: its Evils traced to their Source;" "Letter to a Romish Priest, &c." 8vo. pp. 16. Seeleys. We regret that our space will not admit of our doing more than making the following extract from this valuable exposure of the real principles of the church of Rome. "Ireland is in a fearful state. War would be preferable to the system of inquisition, and assassination, which now prevails in that land under the fostering influence of the hierarchy of Rome. It is almost impossible to convey to Englishmen an adequate idea of the state of Ireland, or of the conduct of the Jesuits in that doomed and distracted country. If an Englishman visits Ireland, those wily men, and cunning to deceive, can speak as a lamb, and, thus imposing on strangers, engage them to sound their praises in England. But the very same men can in a moment throw off the mask, and shew themselves in all the boldness-without the magnanimity—of the lion, and in all the ferocity of the tiger. By these arts (talibus insidiis) Englishmen have been deceived; while the testimony of eye-witnesses to the deeds of popery has too much shared the fate of the predictions of the Trojan prophetess. ་ "But this is not, after all, so much to be wondered at. For it is almost impossible to believe that men calling themselves ministers of the Prince of Peace should be thus guilty, or that those, who call themselves the Church,' should be defiled with such black crimes. But we should never forget this-IT IS THEIR RELIGION. -Yes, in all these things they are but obeying the instructions furnished them by their church. The poor Irish are from their cradles brought up in the belief that we are heretics, and that to rid the land of all such thieves,' 'murderers,' and followers of Cain, is doing God service. Such is the doctrine instilled into the minds of an ignorant population, by an order of men who have no ties to the country in which they live-no ties to bind them to the society in which they move-men whom you cannot satisfy by concession-whom you cannot bind by any vows or even oaths-men who never can be loyal subjects of the sovereign of England, so long as that sovereign is what, thank God, our sovereign must be, a protestant sovereign." The Bath Protestant. Published monthly. 12mo. pp. 24. We notice this excellent little periodical for the purpose of referring our readers to a very striking article in the January number, on the late decision in the Court of Arches, with regard to the prayers for the dead. Lon The Rise and Fall of the Papacy. By Robert Fleming, V.D.M. don: A.D. 1701. A new edition, 18mo. pp. 144. Baisler. THIS is a neat reprint of a very valuable old work, which we feel much pleasure in recommending to the notice of our readers. WE have received the first number of a Life of the Countess of Huntingdon, which contains much information of general interest to the religious world. POETRY. MARCH OF INTELLECT IN IRELAND. A parent ask'd the Priest his boy to bless, Who forthwith charg'd him—" He must first confess." "And whom do you confess to?"-" Why-the Dean." "Do Bishops, sir, confess? if so-to whom?" "Why, they confess, and pay the Church of Rome." "And does the Pope confess?"-" Oh yes, to God." "And does God charge the Pope?' "No," quoth the Priest, "God charges nothing."-" Oh, then, God is best; "God is able to forgive, and always willing; "To Him I shall confess-and save my shilling." THE CABINET. "Popery hath a restless spirit, and will strive by these gradations: if it once get but a connivance it will press for toleration; if that should be obtained papists must have equality; from thence they will aspire to superiority, and will never rest till they get a subversion of the true religion."—Parliamentary Remonstrance to James 1st. THE NOVELTY OF POPERY." The Reformed Religion is no novelty; if it can be proved a day younger than Christ and his Apostles, away with it from the earth as a pernicious delusion. It was no invention of Luther and his fellow-labourers. The Roman-catholics indeed would taunt us with the recent origin of our faith, as though it had sprung up in the sixteenth century, whilst their own is hallowed by all the suffrages of antiquity. There was never a more insolent taunt, and never a more unwarranted boast. Ours, as we have already intimated, is the old religion, theirs is the new. Ours is, at least, as old as the Bible; for it has not a single tenet which we do not prove from the Bible. But theirs must be younger than the Bible; for where in the Bible is the Bible said to be insufficient, and where is the Pope declared supreme and infallible, and where is sin divided into mortal and venal, and where are the clergy forbidden to marry, and where are images directed to be worshipped, and where is the Church entrusted with the granting indulgences? There is not a solitary article of Protestantism, in support of which we are not ready to appeal to the Canonical Scriptures, and the writings of the early fathers; there are a hundred of Popery, which Papists themselves are too wise to rest on such an appeal. They may ask us, where was your religion before Luther? and our reply is, in the word of the living God, in the creeds of Apostles and Apostolical men, and in the practice of those |