body else; and nobody since Peter has been able to produce the keys. This settles the matter in my mind. I want to know where the keys are.

But some suppose, that Peter took them to heaven with him, and that he stands with them at the gate of heaven, as porter, to admit and keep out whom he will. But this notion does not tally very well with certain passages of Scriptures. Christ tells his disciples, that He goes to prepare a place for them, and that He will come again and receive them unto himself: (John xiv. 3). He will do it. He will not trust the business to Peter. "He that hath the key of David, he that openeth and no man shutteth, and shutteth, and no man openeth," is not Peter, but Christ. (Rev. iii. 7).

But the Romanists will have it, that Peter is the one; and he having the keys, they think that they will all be admitted, while not a soul of us, poor Protestants, will. They may be mistaken, however. I do not know what

right they have to put in an exclusive claim to Peter. I see no resemblance between Peter and a Roman Catholic-none in the world. I never care to see a truer and better Protestant than I take him to be. But, if he does stand at the gate of heaven, with such authority as the Romanists ascribe to him, yet I suppose he will not deny that he wrote the Epistles called his. Well, then, if he shall hesitate to admit Protestants, we shall only have to remind him of his Epistles. He does not say anything in them about his being POPE. No, he says, "The elders which are among you I exhort, who am also an elder." Not a word says he about the Mass, or the Seven Sacraments, or Transubstantiation. Let the reader turn to his Epistles, and see just what he does say; I think he will not find anything in those Epistles to frighten Protestants.

But there is still another supposition, viz. that Peter is not perpetual porter of heaven; but each Pope, as he dies, succeeds to that office-one relieving another. I do not know how it is: but I judge, if all the Popes have been in their day porters of Paradise, many of them must have tended outside. They have not been univer

sally the best of men, I think history informs us. But I will not mention any names.*

14. The Head of the Church.

The Church is represented in the Scriptures as a body. Of course, therefore, it must have a head; and that same blessed book tells us who the head is. And who, think you, is the head of the church? Who but Christ himself? Who else is fit to be its head-its source of influence and government? I will produce the passages of Scripture in proof of Christ's headship presently.

But the Roman Catholics say that the Pope is the head of the church. Ah, is he? Where is the proof that he is? Now there is nothing which irritates a Roman Catholic so soon, as to ask him for proof. "Proof, indeed!" he says; "do you ask proof of an infallible church? What is the use of infallibility, if we must prove everything? These are truly most degenerate days. The time was when nobody demanded proof; but now every little sprig of a Protestant must have reasons to support assertions! He calls for proof. And he must have it from the Bible. He will not believe anything in religion, unless some text can be cited in support of it. Things have come to a pretty pass, indeed." It is even so. We plead guilty to the charge. For everything alleged to be a doctrine of Christianity, we confess we do require some proof out of the writings of some Evangelist or Apostle. And, since our Roman Catholic brethren will not gratify us by adducing the scriptural warrant for believing the Pope or Bishop of Rome to be the head of the church, we will do them the favor of consulting the Scriptures for them. Well, we

* Besides which, we all know, from the Scriptures, that Peter was at Antioch (Gal. ii. 11-16); but it does not appear from the Scriptures, that he ever was at Rome. How then came it to pass, that (supposing he left the keys to any particular Church) he did not leave them to the Bishop of Antioch, rather than to the Bishop of Rome ? A. S. T.

begin with Genesis, and we go through to Revelation, searching all the way for some proof that the Pope is the head of the church. But so far are we from finding any evidence that he is the head of the church, that we find not a particle of proof that he is that or anything. We find no account of any such character as a Popenot a word about him. The subject of the proposition, that is, the Pope, [in their view of him] does not seem to be known to that book at all. I really do not wonder that it frets a Romanist, when we send him to the Bible for proof that the Pope is the head of the Church.

But though we discover nothing in the Bible about a Pope, yet we find much about the Head of the Church. In Ephesians i. 22, 23, Christ is said to be "the Head over all things to the church, which is his body." Now if the church be his body, surely He must be the Head of it, as well as Head over all things to it. Will any one say that the Pope of Rome is the head of Christ's body? That is shocking. And yet the Romanists are told they must believe it; and, seeing they cannot help it, they do somehow or other contrive to believe it. In Eph. v. 23, it is explicitly declared, that "Christ is the Head of the church." The same is repeated, Col. i. 18. -"He (Christ) is the Head of the body, the church." Our brethren of the Roman Catholic church have long been in the habit of asking, where our religion was before the Reformation? They may see where one doctrine of it was, fifteen hundred years before the Reformation. One would suppose, from the way they talk, that they supposed the Bible was written a considerable time after the Reformation, and that it was then

*

Except indeed the description of the "Man of Sin," the "Son of Perdition," which we read in 2 Thess. ii. 3-12, and the account of the "Image of the Beast," which is given in Rev. xiii. 14-18; which passages are thought by very many, and with at least very great appearance of reason, to be prophetical descriptions of the Pope. To my mind the description is too plain to be mistaken. So that though the Pope is not named in the Scriptures, his picture is very plainly drawn in them. But how far this will help their cause, I leave to the Romanists to determine. A. S. T.

got up to support the Protestant heresy! I might ask them, where their doctrine of the Pope's headship of the church was, when the New Testament was written? i.e. some seventeen hundred and fifty or eighteen hundred years ago. But I will withdraw the question: it may

seem unkind to press it.

Now, since the Bible says, that Christ is the head of the church, if the Pope is so also, there must be two heads of the church. But there is only one body: why should there be two heads? Is the church a monster? Besides, if there had been another head, Christ would have been spoken of in the Scriptures, as one of the heads of the church, or as a head of the church. But He is called the Head of the church. The article is definite, denoting only one. There is not a syllable in the Bible about another head; indeed, the language of the Bible does not admit of there being another. Yet Roman Catholics say there is another; and it is their Pope. "Christ being absent," they say, "it is necessary there should be a visible human head to represent him on earth." Now the Pope, they say, is this visible head of the church—the head that you can see. But is their assumption correct, that Christ is absent? Is he absent? Hear His own words: "Lo, I am with you alway, even unto the end of the world." " Where two or three are gathered together in My Name, there am I in the midst of them." Was He absent from Paul? He says, "I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me. A visible head! What do we want with a visible head? Of what use to us—the part of the body hereis a head a long way off at Rome? It is no better than a caput mortuum to us.

But what if we admit the possibility of a visible human head of the church, who made the Pope that head? Did he inherit this also from St. Peter? Was Peter head of the church? He, more modest than his pretended successors, does not anywhere claim that title. I know the Roman Catholics hold him to be the rock-the foundation of the church: but I really did not know that they regarded him-whom, however they exalt, they

still consider but as a mere man-as capable of being head of the church too. It is not too much to speak of Christ as both the foundation and head of the church; but to speak of Peter, poor Peter, as we are accustomed to call him when we think of the fact of his denial of Christ, as both foundation and head of the church, is really carrying the matter rather too far. How little Peter thought he was both, when "he went out, and wept bitterly!" How little he knew of himself!

The Pope the head of the church! Then the church is the Pope's body!! Alas for the church !!!

15. The Power to Forgive Sins.

Seculum modestum, I rather suppose, will not be the designation by which the 19th century will be distinguished in history from her sister centuries. I know not whether any age has been more remarkable for cases of unfounded pretension than the present. The case, however, of which I am to take notice, did not originate in the 19th century. It has existed many hundred years. I do not wonder at its surviving the dark ages, but that it should have lived so far into the luminous 19th does somewhat surprise me. The pretension to which I allude is that made by the Roman Catholic priesthood. What do you think it is which they pretend they can do? Forgive sins. They pretend that they have power over sins, to remit or retain them. They claim that the prerogative of pardon is lodged with them. And that is the reason why they receive confessions. priest would be a farce, if it was not could forgive sins.

Confession to a thought that he

The first thing that strikes me is the contrariety of this notion to common sense. The idea of being pardoned by any other than the being offended, seems absurd. What! a fellow-sinner pardon sins against God! It is as if, of two debtors, one should play the creditor and forgive the other his debt. That would be a strange way of getting rid of debts. I always thought he to