it urged, strangely enough, that even Lancastrian schools and Infant schools are but parts of a system for abolishing a, truly religious education among the people. With regard to the former (Lancastrian schools), as we have National schools in abundance, which as churchmen we prefer, we shall not undertake their defence, except so far as to say, that no one who has ever visited one of them would, we think, be able to urge that he found the children ignorant of the leading points of Christian faith or duty. With regard to the latter (Infant schools), we reject the charge as wholly unjust; for, whatever may have been the particular practice at one private institution, the children of the schools conducted by the friends

of the Infant School Society display a remarkable, we might say a precocious, acquaintance with the precepts and declarations of holy writ, and, what will not be thought of less importance, a mostpleasing, early exhibition of them in the little details of infant conduct. But we did not purpose to go so far at present into the subject; our only intention being to urge upon every truly Christian member of the community the necessity of watching the aspect of the times on the important subject of public education, and to consider the pecu-.. liar cuties which devolve upon himself individually towards securing the benefits and preventing the evils which may respectively arise from a right or wrong application of this vast machine.

ANSWERS TO CORRESPONDENTS..

A PROTESTANT; Z. Y.; T.. W.; EDUCATOR; S.; SCHOLASTICUS; A. B. C.; D. S. W.; V.; and ANONYMOUS, are under consideration. The circumstance alluded to by J. B. has been frequently mentioned in our pages. We perfectly concur with J. P. as to the duty of British Christians availing themselves prudently, but most zealously, and, by the blessing of God, efficiently, of the present facilities for extending the pure light of the Gospel in South America; both among the Pagan and the Roman-Catholic part of the population; and he will find that we have already frequently urged the subject upon the notice of our readers. The remaining half of the anonymous Bank note for 1001. has been received by the Bible Society.

If M. W. P. will carefully refer to our Family Sermons, he will find his wish antici pated in fact, though not in name. With regard to his first query, we reply, that the Church intended nothing but Canonical Scripture to be used for Sunday Lessons on the subject of the second, he had better consult his proctor.

F. C. will find an account of the opening of the Missionary Institution at Basle, in our volume for 1820, p. 847. We are much obliged by his communications. We are requested by some friends of the Hibernian Society to state, that Mr. O'Connell having publicly alleged against the Society, that it had misapplied its funds, including 26,000. of parliamentary grants; that it had published false statements; and that not a child was under education by its means in all Munster; a correspon dence ensued, in which Mr. O'Connell was unable to adduce a shadow of proof in favour of his assertions. The Committee, on the other hand, affirm, that "the funds of the Society have never been applied to any other purposes than those pointed out by its laws and regulation, which have now, for many years, limited its operations to the establishing of schools, and the reading and circulating the holy Scriptures in Ireland: that the Society has never received any assistance from Government, and therefore could not misapply the parliamentary grants: that it has been always, and it now is, supported entirely by the private and volun tary contributions of benevolent individuals, to whom it delivers an Annual Report, and publishes the same for their information that it has never calumniated the people of Ireland, nor misled the people of England; but has confined itself to the publication of events and circumstances founded, as the Committee believe, on unquestionable evidence: and that it has instructed, and now instructs, in its schools in the province of Munster, as well as in the other provinces of Ireland, many Roman-Catholic as well as Protestant children." Respecting one county of this province, Kerry, of which Mr. O'Connell says, "In your 17th Report, you charge for six hundred children in Kerry; six hundred children educated by your Society in the county of Kerry!!! Oh monstrous!-Why, any person, who knows the county of Kerry, and could swallow the assertion, that the London Hibernian Society educated, in the year 1822, six hundred children in Kerry, would actually swallow the children themselves, clothes and all!" the Committee state, “that, in the year 1822, there were in the county of Kerry, in connexion with this Society, four schools, containing six hundred and three children; that in the year 1823, there were, in the same county, five schools, containing seven hundred and forty-three children; and in the last year, twenty-two schools, containing two thousand six hundred and forty-one children."

CHRISTIAN OBSERVER.

No. 283.]

JULY, 1825. [No. 7. Vol. XXV.

RELIGIOUS COMMUNICATIONS.

For the Christian Observer.

THE PHILOSOPHY OF THE ROMAN

CATHOLIC RELIGION.

No. I.

THE usual resources of controversy appear to have been long since exhausted in the disputes between Romanists and Protestants. What at an earlier period of discussion was advanced and received as original argument, has now degenerated into wearisome and powerless repetition. The inquiry is, notwithstanding, once more revived; and it is urged, perhaps with greater fervour than has been exhibited, at least in this country, since the Revolution at the close of the seventeenth century.

Every person, conscious of the incurable diversity of human opinion on all points incapable of ab. solute demonstration, must be aware of the difficulties of a subject so extensive and diversified as the one in question; for, as the materials of the controversy have rapidly increased with time, it seems, at this late hour of the discussion, to defy compression. The combatants are now required to take the field, not barely to argue direct questions of divinity; but to deliver in their theses on metaphysics, physics, chronology, language, history, bibliography, and a variety of other subjects diffused over the accumulations of literature and science. All this is an involution of what, in its abstract nature, is a matter of plain argumentation. The majority of our op ponents divert us from the straightforward track into the bordering thickets of uncertainty; and, as long CHRIST. OBSERV. No. 283.

If the solution of the question can only be effected by years consumed in examining the evidence deposited in the Vatican, Bodleian, and British Museum; or even by weeks devoted to the study of recent publications on the controversy, it is utterly impossible for the bulk of the persons interested in the result, both for time and eternity, to become acquainted with the truth; farther than as what professes to be such is delivered out to them, at second hand, by persons who may, or may not, have discovered the truth for themselves. In the concerns of the life to come, every man is bound to search on his own separate account. It is criminal to attempt this by a substitute. Christianity is a religion addressed, indeed, ad aulam, and ad clerum, but also ad populum; and to the last, as inviting and requiring all individuals to be, in one sense, their own instructors. Such is at once the obligation and the privilege of our own countrymen. As the subjects of the British crown, they have been, for upwards of two centuries, in possession of the canonical Scriptures, provided for their express use in the shape of an authorised translation; executed by royal mandate, confirmed as a national right by successive acts of the legislature, and recognized by all our ecclesiastical formularies, as their basis and criterion. In this view, there is only one portal into the temple, to be entered alike by priests and people.

3 F

Grounding our estimate on this undeniable statement, it is asked, whether the investigation at issue may not be confined within definite and manageable limits; accessible to men of plain understandings, and educated without the pale of theological erudition? And may not this be accomplished by examining the subject in its primitive elements? The present writer aspires to attempt this. He by no means professes to have gone through a regular course of study on the points before him. It will appear, in the sequel, that his plan is formally opposed to such a procedure. He would endeavour to analyse the controversy on the principles of sound philosophy, under the guidance of the written revelation of God; illustrated by appeals to the general sense of mankind, and to the experience and observation of all such as observe, with discrimination, the passing events of the world. It must further be distinctly understood, that, though he is a member and minister of the national established church, he does not approach the arena, on the present occasion, either under the banner of his own confession, or that of any other Reformed communion whatever. He cannot, as a consistent Protestant, concede, that even the purest assembly of Christians is to be regarded as the sole accredited interpreter of the general charter of the church. The debate must never be lowered from the lofty scriptural position already taken, into an effort to establish the superiority of any single branch of the Reformation, to the disparagement of the rest. Matters of eternal importance involve struggles, not for rivalry, but for the salvation of souls. The writer would urge this, without in the least impeaching his own attachment to our public establishment. It would be offering a degrading compliment to the Church of England, as the eldest daughter of the Reformation, to press claims in her behalf far higher than she ever herself preferred. She is not answer

able for the adulation of friends, whose false zeal is more adverse to her prosperity than the attacks of her confessed opponents. Enemies, in the guise of flatterers, have beset her in every period of her history. Some of these have exerted themselves to force her back almost to the intolerance and despotism of the times of darkness. Such injudicious advocates should be apprised that the church will prosper or decay, not by reviving among us the principles of the hierarchy which we so justly deserted, but by our consistency or inconsistency with our original doctrine and discipline. We do not oppose the papal scheme of Christianity, in order to substitute the Confession of Augsburg, or our own Articles, or any human formularies, however excellent, for the decrees of the Council of Trent. From the earliest dawn of the Reformation, it has been a current head of impeachment against the pontiff and his conclave, that they limit the faith by the boundaries of the Latin Church, and thus reduce religion, I might say, to a question of geography. Let therefore those who persevere in the accusation, beware of the extent of the charge, of its powers of recoil, and of their own exposure to the stroke of its reaction. The friends of pure and undefiled Christianity, must suspend their inter-ecclesiastical dissensions, while they agitate questions of more pressing interest. They must agree, in the interval, to fight in the same ranks; and, for the time, cease to quarrel on the subordinate distinctions of uniform, accoutrements, and discipline.

It should be ever recollected, that Cramner, Ridley, Hooper, and Latimer, no farther died for the Anglican Church than Huss and Jerome of Prague suffered for the congregations of Bohemia. They were, severally, martyrs for the faith of Jesus Christ; as that faith existed then, and exists now, independently of its connexion with any human system. No church, as