coming from there. The Lord bless you more and more! Pray for me!" It was a cheque for thirty-seven pounds. The next morning I went over to see my old friend newly-found, and to thank him in person for his generous gift. Poor man, I found him very low and depressed, and quite ready and willing that I should talk and pray with him. I sincerely hope that he became changed before I left the neighbourhood, but I never heard that he declared himself. By this time, while I was still in Tregoney, Mr. Aitken had found his way to the village where my family were lodging, and he was preaching at the church with his usual power and effect. Night after night souls were awakened and saved. The vicar's wife was in a towering rage of opposition. Poor woman! she declared that she "would rather go to Rome than be converted;" and to Rome she went, but remained as worldly as ever. It matters very little whether unconverted people join the Church of Rome or not; they are sure to be lost for ever if they die in their unconverted state: for nothing avails for eternal salvation but faith in the Lord Jesus Christ. CHAPTER XXXI. Secessions. 1856. FTER the mission which Mr. Aitken had held, people came out so decidedly, that the vicar and curate, who had all along kept aloof, doubting, fell back into a kind of revulsion, and began to Eventually, they themselves Whether they were read and lend Romish books. decided to join the Church of Rome. ever really converted or not, I cannot tell. I thought and hoped they were, but they seldom stood out on the Lord's side. They certainly had light, and may have had some experience. At any rate, they chose such a harlot as the Church of Rome for the object of their love, instead of Christ Himself. I loved the curate. He was the man who had the unopened letter in his desk,* of which he harboured such a dread. Sad to say, he ended by falling away at last. Poor man! he went over to Rome, and never held up his head any more. Evidently disappointed, and ashamed to come back, he lingered on for some months, and then died. See Not long after his secession, we accidentally met in a quiet lane, in another part of the county, where I was walking for meditation. Perhaps he was led there for the same purpose. Meeting so unexpectedly, there was no opportunity to evade one another. I felt a trembling come over me at seeing him, and he was none the less moved. We held each other's hands in silence, till at last I said, "How are you? I love you still." "I cannot stand it!" he said; and snatching his hand out of mine, he ran away. I never saw him again, but mourned for him till he died. I cannot help thinking that he is safe, and that he died in a faith more scriptural than that of the Church of Rome. Why do men secede, and break their own hearts, and the hearts of those who love them? Rome seems to cast a kind of spell upon the conscience, fascinating its victims much as the gaze of the serpent is said to hold a bird, till it falls into its power; or as a light attracts a moth, till it flies into it, to its own destruction. Such seceders mourn and dread the step; pray about it, think and think, till they are bewildered and harassed; and then, in a fit of desperation, go off to some Romish priest to be received. A man who had an honourable position, a work and responsibility, suddenly becomes a nonentity, barely welcomed, and certainly suspected. Romish people compass sea and land to make proselytes; and after they have gained them, they are afraid of them, for their respective antecedents are so different, that it is impossible for them to think together. They get the submission of a poor deluded pervert, but he gets nothing in return from them but a fictitious salvation. They gain him but he has lost the kind regard and sympathy of friends he had before, and with it all that once was dear to him; and he voluntarily forfeits all this upon the bare self : assertion of a system which claims his implicit obedience. The poor pervert is required to give over his will, his conscience, and his deepest feelings to the keeping of his socalled "priest" or to the Church, and is expected to go away unburdened and at peace. Some there are, it is true, who actually declare that they have peace by this means; but what peace it is, and of what kind, I know not. Supposing that I was in debt and anxiety, and a man who had no money, but plenty of assurance and brass, came to me and sympathized in my trouble, saying, "Do not fear trust me; I will bear your burden, and pay off your debt"-if the manner of the man was sufficiently assuring, it would lift up the cloud of anxiety and distress; but, for all that, the penniless man would not, and could not, pay my debt. I might fancy he had done or would do so; and then, when it was too late, the debt, with accumulated interest, would fall on me, to my overwhelming ruin, even though I had been ever so free from anxiety before. So it is with these deluded ones, who go to the priest instead of to Christ, and take his absolution instead of Christ's forgiveness. Any one who carefully reads the Word of God may see that the Church of Rome has no such priesthood as she claims, nor power to forgive sins, as she professes to do. The whole supposition is based on a misunderstanding of the text, "Whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted unto them; and whose soever sins ye retain, they are retained" (John xx. 23). The disciples (some of them not apostles) who received this commission or privilege, never understood that they were by these words (men and women together) empowered to be absolving priests. Even the very apostles never knew that they had any such power; and it is certain they never exercised it. They were perfectly innocent of being priests after the Romish type, and never dreamed of offering a propitiatory sacrifice. They simply believed that Christ had completed the work of propitiation once for all; and that there is now no more sacrifice for sin-that Christ only can forgive sins. Therefore in the words of St. John we are told, that "if any man sin (apostles and people alike), we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous; and He is the propitiation for our sins" (1 John ii. 1, 2). The apostles and early Christians never understood that the power of the keys meant the exercise of mere priestly authority, neither was the doctrine known for several centuries after their time; therefore we may be sure that the peace which perverts have, if it professes to come from that source, is a delusion. No true remission or peace is, or can be given, but by direct and personal transaction with Christ Himself. I am perfectly convinced that the Epistles to the Romans and the Galatians are the answer to all the pretences of the Church of Rome, and that a man who will not read and follow them deserves to be misled. God is perfectly justified and clear on this point. During that winter six of my friends joined the Church of Rome. One I have already told about, who died, I am sure, from grief and disappointment.* Another became bigoted, and with a sullen, dogged pertinacity, set himself to work for Rome, looking very miserable all the time, although he used once to be happy in the Lord's work. The others, without exception, went back into the world, and made no secret of their conformity with it, its ways, and fashions. *See page 271. |