SERIOUS DISSUASIVES FROM POPERY. BY ARCHBISHOP TILLOTSON, AND BISHOPS HALL AND JEREMY TAYLOR. With Entroductory Essay, BY THE REV. EDWARD NANGLE, B.A., OF ACHILL. THE LAW AND TO THE TESTIMONY LONDON: PUBLISHED FOR THE PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION, 28, COCKSPUR-STREET, CHARING-CROSS. MDCCCXLIII. . The Church of Rome, as it is at this day dis- ordered, teaches doctrines and uses prac- tices, which are in themselves, or in their true and immediate consequences, direct The Church of Rome teaches doctrines, which in many things are destructive of Christian society in general, and of monarchy in special: Both which the religion of the Church of England and 264 INTRODUCTORY ESSAY. POPERY shrinks with instinctive terror from the Holy Scriptures. Conscious that its dogmas will not abide a trial by that standard, its advocates exercise their ingenuity to put the Bible altogether out of the way; or when they cannot accomplish that, they deny its sufficiency as a standard of doctrine and practice, and even question its authenticity and inspiration. Before the Reformation, the Bible, except to a few learned and studious men, was an unknown book; but when it was brought forth by the Reformers from the obscurity in which the leaders of the Apostasy, with common consent, had entombed it, and when those holy men, whose hearts God had stirred up with zeal for his truth, began to restore the spiritual temple to the dimensions of the model exhibited in the volume of inspiration, then the tactics of the Pope and his confederates were changed, and as they could no longer keep the Bible out of men's hands, they endeavoured to weaken their reverence for its authority, by an appeal to their |