66

God instantly replied, "Get thee with you for ever. If you say, up into the rock, and I will make" But I fear my sins are so many, all my glory to pass before thee." that I have exhausted God's mercy, Now remember, the apostle says the answer is, He is "abundant that "rock was Christ Jesus." in goodness and in truth." You Now I am going to tell you, my may say, But surely, after five Roman Catholic friends, what a thousand years of the world have sight you may see by faith, if you rolled by, God's mercy must be will turn saints aside. Take Christ exhausted, and there is none reas your only "rock," your only maining for me;" the answer is, advocate, your only intercessor. He keepeth mercy for thousand Moses went into the rock," and generations." If you should say, the Lord passed before him, and I have been guilty of original "proclaimed the LORD the LORD sin, of actual sin, of sin in thought, God, merciful and gracious, long-word, and deed," the next feature suffering and abundant in goodness in his character, which is laid and truth, keeping mercy for thou- before you, is "forgiving iniquity, sands, forgiving iniquity, transgres-transgression, and sin," i. e. all sorts sion, and sin." and kinds of sin and of wicked

Now only mark what you can ness. Now this is just the very learn from this, if you only lean God which sinners want; this is on Christ, and trust in him! the God, my friends, without whom The name of God is Jehovah; we cannot live, or attain to final he who creates something out of everlasting happiness. Now the nothing, a clean heart where there question is, Where are we to find is none. But you may say, I am a this God? Is it through Mary? N. guilty and a wicked sinner. Then Is it through Paul? No. Is it the next sight which Moses saw, through his distinguished and illuswas the Lord God, El, the strong trious saints? No; it is alone God, the God of infinite power and where Moses saw him, in the might, the God who can "change"ROCK," and that rock, my friends, the heart of stone into a heart of is CHRIST. And rest assured, if flesh." If you say, I am a sinner, you will go to God by faith through I am afraid to go near him, my answer is, That in Christ, by faith, he is " merciful;" the meaning of which is, he is the God who forgives sin, because in Christ he is "merciful." And if the Roman Catholic should still say, "Oh, but I have nothing to give him for his mercy, nothing to give him in return," then the next character in his name is that he is "gracious;" he gives gratuitously, without money and without price." If you should say, I have sinned ten, twenty, thirty, forty, seventy years, the answer I make is, That he is long-suffering," and will bear with you long, and will not be angry

66

66

Christ, you will find in that God every mercy and every blessing of which you stand in need, both for time and for eternity; and oh! remember this glorious truth, he is " able to save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him." "Christ is able to save to the uttermost." Tell me the limits of uttermost. Is it not infinitude itself; without beginning, without end; without bound or circumscription? Now, whom is he able to save to the uttermost? "Those who come unto God." Is it through Mary? Not a word about it.

Mr. FRENCH inquired for the reference.

Rev. J. CUMMING.-I am quoting |"For through him we have access from Hebrews vii. 25. Is it those by one Spirit to the Father." You who come unto him through Peter, observe, there is no need of saints or Paul, or James? Not a word between us and Christ; in Christ about these: He is able to save we have "boldness." The litera to the uttermost all who come unto translation is, "freedom of speech, God through HIM," (Christ.) Let the utterance of ideas in confime add, that sin is a tremendous dence;" and the apostle adds, "Begulf between earth and heaven. cause we have such an High-priest, Now Christ Jesus is the pathway; let us come boldly to the throne of he calls himself "the way, the grace to find mercy, and to seek truth, and the life;" he is the plank grace to help us in the time of need." placed across that gulf; the one Again we read, "Whosoever end of the pathway, being his shall call upon the name of the Godhead, is at the foot of the Lord shall be saved." And again: eternal throne; the other end, being (I address it to my Roman Catholic his humanity, completely spans the friends) "We have not received the gulf, and reaches mankind; so spirit of bondage again to fear, that the thief hanging on the cross, but the spirit of adoption, whereby should he by faith enter on that we cry, Abba, Father." When you pathway, will be borne onward want an intercessor, have recourse and upward until he reaches the to no other, for it is stated, bosom of his Father and his God."through Him we have boldness to "Seeing that Christ ever liveth to enter into the holiest, by the blood make intercession for us." My of Jesus. Ye have not received friends, he ever intercedeth for us, the spirit of bondage, but the spirit and therefore the aid of saints of adoption, whereby we cry, Abba, cannot be necessary, because if I Father." Oh, take with you, my go to the Father (let me call the dear friends, these words. Turn special attention of my Roman to the Lord, and not to Mary; Catholic friends to this), because if cleave to the everlasting Creator, I go to the Father (I quote from and not to the dying creature, your own Bible, the Douay), "what-"He that seeketh, shall find me; soever ye shall ask the Father in to him that knocketh, it shall be my name, I will do it, and the opened." "If ye, being evil, know Father shall be glorified." Now how to give good gifts unto your mark the safety of Protestantism. children, how much more will your You may be wrong; nay, if my reasoning be correct, you must be wrong; but even on your own principles, we Protestants are safe, because Christ is able to "save to the uttermost all that come unto God through him." Again: "Whatsoever ye shall ask the Father in my name, I will do it." And, therefore, we Protestants, who ask the Father in the name of Christ, must be right. And if ever you should need a passage to encourage you in the hour of trial, read in Ephesians, iii. 18:

heavenly Father give the Spirit to them that ask him!" Remember, you are all responsible before witnessing heaven, for the reception or rejection of these truths. As I told you before, we shall all stand at the judgment bar of Christ."

66

And if, my friends, notwithstanding the light of Scripture which you have received, you persist in leaning on "broken reeds" and drinking from "broken cisterns," in having recourse to Mary and ten thousand other saints, you will

[After the lapse of a few moments the learned gentleman (on the restoration of attention) began his second address.]

Mr. FRENCH.-My learned opponent has been most amusingly flut

most inevitably perish. You may | few exceptions. There have been go to God by faith, I assure you, some, but not any so violent as that. with no other intervention than Christ" For ye are not come unto the mount that might not be touched, and that burned with fire, nor into blackness, and darkness, and tempest, and the sound of a trumpet, and the voice of words, which voice they that heard entering about for the last half-hour, treated that the word should not be to use his own expression, as it spoken to them any more. But ye were, on the light wing of the are come unto Mount Zion and gossamer;" but, in his usual manunto the city of the living God, the ner, has rambled far, far away from heavenly Jerusalem, and to an the field of argument. I however, innumerable company of angels, to shall not follow his example. the general assembly and Church my friends, despising the vain thing of the firstborn, which are written called the gossamer, I shall dart at in heaven, and to God the Judge once on the wings of the eagle of all, and to the spirits of just men into the far distant regions of antimade perfect, and to Jesus, the Me-quity; and lighting at the feet of a diator of the new covenant, and to the blood of sprinkling, that speaketh better things than the blood of Abel."-Heb. xii. 18.

I implore, you therefore, by the mercy of God, despite what your Church, your priests, or your popes may say, to have recourse solely to the doctrines of the sacred oracles. If your Church speak at all contrary to that sacred book, it is because "there is no truth in it."

No,

true disciple of the apostles, the blessed Irenæus, who flourished in the year of our Lord 177, of him inquire, whether Mary may with just propriety be called our advocate or not. Now listen to his words:

And as Eve was seduced to fly from God, so was the Virgin Mary induced to obey him, that she might become the advocate of her that had fallen."-St. Irena. ade, Hares. l. v. 2-19, p. 316. Edit. Benedict. Paris, 1710.

Here the loud voice of a Catholic was raised at the extremity of the Really, my friends, my eagle, you room to the following boisterous must acknowledge, has conducted effect" It does not; it never will me on triumphant wing through the do;" upon which the reverend gen- space of ages! What will my tleman repeated the climax of his learned friend now say in answer speech with greater emphasis than to this glorious evidence? The best before. Both the Chairmen rose shift I could recommend to my to order. One gentleman insisted baffled foe would be, to cry out most that the person so dissenting should lustily, "Why, that said Irenæus give up his admission ticket, upon was a rank Papist, or he never which would have called Mary our advoMr. FRENCH rose, and address-cate." [Laughter.] My antagonist ing the audience, said-I am really asserts that it is superstitious, that sorry that any Catholic should so it is idolatrous so to call her. far forget himself. The Protestants course, he means to assert that it conduct themselves, I must say, is something novel in Christianity, with great propriety, with but very and of no ancient date. Does the

Of

learned gentleman mean seriously | Church of God. But instead of to maintain, that the year of our doing that, he gives us his own Lord 177 is not an ancient date? arbitrary ipse dixits and arbitrary And if he acknowledge it to be declamation on the meaning of the ancient, with what front will the Gospel, where, even in the most reverend gentleman continue hence- figurative parts, whether apocryphal forward to laugh the Catholic to or apocalyptic, he has a most ready scorn for calling Mary our advocate, explanation, and pours it forth in when one of the earliest of those the most didactic and imperious very fathers whom, when occasion manner. But I at once deny his suits, the reverend gentleman him- interpretation. I deny that those self quotes as corroborative testi- angels which were worshipped by monies in his own cause, positively Isaac and others-I deny that they calls her by that very name, against were the Lord God. I maintain which he has been so violently most strenuously that they were storming for this long time past, to real angels. And at all events, if my no small astonishment, but to they were not angels, when Isaac my infinite delight, whilst I was paid them the devotion and adorsilently collecting all the strength ation which is mentioned in Scripof that irresistible thunderbolt from ture, I affirm that he was under a the archives of antiquity, by which delusion at least, and that, even if my antagonist in argument now lies it was God, he thought it was an prostrate at my feet. Yes, Mary angel. The learned gentleman never being thus clearly proved by Irenæus can contradict, and I could logiin the year 177 to be our advocate, cally establish my position by the who will listen to my reverend an- pages of the Gospel, that it was tagonist in the nineteenth century, lawful to venerate angels; and I furiously and tempestuously voci- will prove it most circumstantially ferating that she is not? and most clearly in what I have Thus you see, gentlemen, there is prepared to lay before you this nothing like darting on the wings evening. Before I go on, however, of an eagle, when one wishes to I am determined to notice those arrive swiftly at the place of desti- disingenuous proofs which my friend nation. At all events my metapho- has collected from the pages of the rical friend will long remember the Testament. With respect to the luckless introduction of his gossamer book of Maccabees, I maintained into a discussion of this kind; that it was canonical, because it never can the name of that genus volatile be mentioned hereafter in the learned gentleman's presence, without calling to his mind, by association of ideas, the eagle and Irenæus!

was settled by the fathers of the Council of Carthage between the years 300 and 400. It was then that those books were settled. From that time down to the period of the Reformation they were uniformly To come now to my learned op- received by the whole Christian ponent's general train of reasoning, world, as comprehending and conespecially in his allusions to Scrip- taining the authentic Bible. At the ture. The argumentative way of time of the Reformation the docproceeding on the part of my learned trine of Purgatory incurred dislike friend would have been, to prove and was expunged, about the reign that in some age, some distant age, of the eighth Henry. And what prayers were not offered up by the are the arguments by which the

learned gentleman wishes to perpe- of his saying, "It seemed good to tuate and ratify the expunging of the book of Maccabees? Observe how weak and indefensible they are! One appears to be because the author excuses himself as to his impoverished style; he says he has "done his utmost." Well! and did not St. Paul, talking of his own writings, declare that some things were of his own, and not inspired? Did he not at other times say, "I am rude in speech," that is unskilled in the minutia and elegances of language? My learned friend well knows that the word rudis in Latin signifies unskilled; and what is that but a downright apology for inclegance of language and style? And does Maccabæus say more? And if he does not say that the subject was under inspiration, he at least says nothing to invalidate its worth. But who would ever wipe away a book which has been received so long without murmuring, settled by an early Council, merely in con sequence of a few observations of this kind? If so, then let us reject the Gospel of St. Luke, for he says, "Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to set forth in order a declaration of those things which are most surely believed among us, even as they delivered them unto us, which from the beginning were eyewitnesses and ministers of the word; it seemed good to me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certainty of those things wherein thou hast been instructed." Now I most firmly believe every tittle of this book of the Gospel written by St. Luke to be divinely inspired; but if I am to give way to his train of reasoning, I must say that it is not inspired, and that most clearly so, by reason

me also, having had perfect understanding of all things from the very first, to write unto thee in order, most excellent Theophilus;" instead of saying, "It seemed good unto the Holy Ghost," &c. &c. I say, if we are to adopt this human kind of reasoning, if we are not to receive the authentic sanction of age after age, from the time of the Council of Carthage till now, then we must expunge this book from the creed of a Christian land. Nay, even the Song of Solomon, if we are to judge in this way with the eyes of the natural understanding, must also be expunged; and if you were to appeal to the Christians of the whole universe, and to ask them whether they would even have suspected them to be inspired, they would answer, if they spoke truth, No, they never could, unless they knew it from the authority of the church? What church? what church? The Calvinistic Church ?-it was never heard of! The Lutheran ?—it was never heard of! The Anabaptist?— it was never heard of! The Society of Friends?-they were never heard of! No; the CATHOLIC CHURCH settled its character, and handed down that book to posterity, otherwise they would not have known that it was inspired. And there is not a candid man in this assembly, if he were to take it up and consider the expressions therein used, that would affirm, unless he had the guide and the authority of the church, that it was divinely inspired. I say, therefore, it is a most unfair and uncandid way of thus defac ing the completeness of the Bible, and of defrauding — deliberately, wickedly, impiously defrauding the British nation of that solid food, immutable and eternal.

Another observation I have to make, before I go to the subject.