entrust me with, either by themselves, their nuncios, or letters. The Roman Papacy, and the Regalities of St. Peter, I will help them to keep and maintain against all men. I will take care to conserve, defend, increase, and promote the rights, honours, privileges, and authorities of the holy Roman Church, for our Lord the Pope and his successors. I will observe with all my power, and make others do the same, the Rules of the Holy Fathers, the apostolic decress, ordinations, dispositions, reservations, provisions, and mandates. I will persecute and fight against all heretics, schismatics, and rebels to our Lord the Pope and his successors. I shall visit personally the shrine of the apostle every third year," &c. &c. So that every bishop of the Romish Church is under sworn obligation to persecute and fight against-whom? all who are deemed in the judgment of Romish charity, rebels to the Pope. The Notes of the Rhemish Testament say, "Evil men (be they heretics or malefactors) may be suppressed without disturbance to the good; they may and ought, by public authority, either spiritual or temporal, to be chastised and executed." The will to persecute is possessed: only the power is at present wanting. Will you allow that power to be regained? The Oath of Secresy of the Jesuits. "I, A. B., now in the presence of Almighty God, the blessed Virgin Mary, the blessed Michael the Archangel, the blessed St. John Baptist, the holy apostles St. Peter and St. Paul, and the saints and sacred host of heaven, and to you my ghostly father, do declare from my heart, without mental reservation, that his holiness Pope Urban is Christ's Vicar-General, and is the true and only head of the catholic or universal church throughout the earth; and that by the virtue of the keys of binding and loosing given to his holiness by my Saviour Jesus Christ, he hath power to depose heretical kings, princes, states, commonwealths, and governments, all being illegal without his sacred confirmation, and that they may safely be destroyed: therefore to the utmost of my power, I shall and will defend this doctrine, and his holiness' rights and customs, against all usurpers of the heretical (or Protestant) authority whatsover; especially against the now pretended authority and Church of England, and all adherents, in regard that they and she be usurpal and heretical, opposing the sacred mother-church of Rome. I do renounce and disown any allegiance as due to any heretical king, prince, or state, named Protestants, or obedience to any of their inferior magistrates or officers. I do further declare, that the doctrine of the Church of England, of the Calvinists, Hugonots, and of other of the name Protestants, to be damnable, and they themselves are damned, and to be damned, that will not forsake the same. I do further declare, that I will help, assist, and advise all or any of his holiness's agents in any place wherever I shall be, in England, Scotland, and Ireland, or in any other territory or kingdom I shall come to, and do my utmost to extirpate the heretical Protestant's doctrine, and to destroy all their pretended powers, regal or otherwise. I do further promise and declare, that notwithstanding I am dispensed with to assume any religion heretical for the propagating of the mother church's interest, to keep secret and private all her agents' counsels from time to time, as they entrust me, and not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writing, or circumstance whatsoever; but to execute all that shall be proposed, given in charge, or discovered unto me, by you my ghostly father, or any of this sacred convent. All which, I, A. B., do swear by the blessed Trinity, and blessed Sacrament, which I now am to receive, to perform, and on my part to keep inviolably and do call all the heavenly and glorious host of heaven to witness these my real intentions, to keep this my oath. In testimony hereof, I take this most holy and blessed Sacrament of the Eucharist; and witness the same further with my hand and seal, in the face of this holy convent, this An. Dom." &c. day of Extracted from Archbishop Usher. The Jesuits were banished from England in 1606. In 1787, they were expelled from Portugal; from France, in 1764; from Spain and Sicily, in 1767; and totally suppressed by Pope Clement XVI, in 1773. Everywhere they were prosecuted and repelled as injurious to youth, and dangerous to all existing forms of government. The present Pope has again revived the order; and now do we find the Jesuits both secretly and avowedly engaged again in all their pernicious and wicked devices. Let their Oath of Secrecy be duly pondered. Well would it be could we lay it before every man in every quarter of our land. Be it remembered, Popery claims to be infallible; and while Protestants are pleasing themselves by an assumed improvement in Popery, Papists smile at our credulity, and boast of their unchangeableness. It is clear to absolute demonstration, that Roman Catholics will not tolerate the profession of any other faith, in any place where they have the power of prohibition. Witness the late expulsion of the Tyrolese from the land of their fathers in Austria: witness the deadly strivings of Popery for ascendancy in Ireland. Beware of the plausibilities of this insinuating system: fly from it as from a serpent's face. Send none to represent you in the parliament of the empire but staunch and true Protestants. Give not your power to the beast: its death struggles will yet be dreadful. Let the truth your martyrs bled for, never be sacrificed at the shrine of an infidel expediency, or of a jesuitical fraternity. Be bold for God, and God will succour you. We will subjoin to the foregoing, the oath which our gracious Queen solemnly pronounced in the House of Lords, immediately after she had ascended the steps of the throne, in the first Parliament of her reign: "I, Victoria, &c. do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, testify and declare, that I do believe that in the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper there is not any transubstantiation of the elements of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ, at, or after the consecration thereof, by any person whatsover: and that the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as they are now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous. And I do solemnly, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, that I do make this declaration, and every part thereof, in the plain and ordinary sense of the words read unto me, as they are commonly understood by English Protestants, without any evasion, equivocation, or mental reservation whatsoever, and without any dispensation already granted to me for this purpose by the Pope, or any other authority or power whatsoever, and without thinking that I am, or can be, acquitted before God or man, or absolved of this declaration, or any part thereof, although the Pope, or any other person or persons, or POWER whatsoever, shall dispense with or annul the same, or declare that it was null and void from the beginning." English Protestants! aid your Queen in carrying out the import of her oath. In her view the practices of Rome are superstitious and idolatrous; let them be so in yours. Detest and abhor the fooleries that disgrace the religion of Jesus Christ. All is not yielded to Popery yet; the sovereign of England must be Protestant or cease to govern. Oh! aid by your prayers and influence to disenthral the nation from the trammels that would enslave its intellect and soil its greatness. Check that idle curiosity which would pry into the mysteries of Rome's iniquities: avoid her mass-house as you would turn from the lazaretto of contagion and death. Her blandishments are many; her lures are fascinating; her grasp would be fatal. Mark the oath of her bishops and emissaries; recollect they are sworn to deceive and persecute; and like the vampire fastening on its victim, would she suck your heart's blood from you, and make you the simple victims of a terror which it is the unrighteous aim of their penances and fabled purgatory to turn to temporal profit. "Slaves and the souls of men," are among the articles of her unholy merchandise. O beware of her sorceries, and still let the motto of your banner be NO PEACE WITH ROME! POETRY. PRAYER. BY R. K. GREeville, ll.d. of Edingburgh. (From the Church of England Magazine.) FATHER! when a thought of sin Open danger, secret snare, Then when, every conflict o'er, "M. Latimer very quietly suffered his keeper to pull off his hose, and his other array, which to looke unto was very simple: and being stripped into his shroud, he seemed as comely a person to them that were present as one should lightly see: and whereas in his clothes hee appeared a withered and crooked sillie (weak) olde man, he now stood bolt upright, as comely a father as one might lightly behold.....Then they brought a faggotte, kindled with fire, and laid the same downe at Doctor Ridley's feete. To whome M. Latimer spake in this manner, Bee of good comfort, Master Ridley, and play the man: wee shall this day light such a candle, by God's grace, in England, as I trust shall never bee put out.'-Fox's Acts, &c.Similar alterations in the outward figure and deportment of persons brought to like trial were not uncommon. See note to the above passage in Dr. Wordsworth's Ecclesiastical Biography, for an example in a humble Welsh Fisherman." The penal instruments, the shows of crime, VI. ENGLISH REFORMERS IN EXILE. SCATTERING, like birds escaped the fowler's net, By dauntless Luther freed, could they forget With speculative notions rashly sown, Whence thickly-sprouting growth of poisonous weeds; Is he who can, by help of grace, enthrone The peace of God within his single breast! WORDSWORTH. "And Moses wist not that the skin of his face shone.”—Ex. xxxiv. 29. (The following important tract has been published by the Protestant Association for one half-penny. As its statements are important we here reprint them.) |