may yet be a more direct violation of the constitution, as for instance, by the endowment of the clergy and Church of Rome -and that, from the policy of the Government, the maintenance of the Established Church in Ireland, although a fundamental article of the Union, may be seriously endangered.

"But there are other and obvious causes of deep anxiety to Irish Protestants; they find themselves encompassed by a widespread and fearful conspiracy, and our fair country has been made notorious amongst the nations of Europe as a land of blood and crime: the perpetrator of the foulest murder escapes into triumphant security, and the arm of the law is utterly powerless.

"We will not dwell upon this fact; but we earnestly beseech you, in forming an estimate of the conduct and circumstances of an Irish Protestant, to give full room and weight to this sad and horrible ingredient.

"To associate firmly and peacefully, in the earnest spirit of men who feel the importance of religious truth, and with the cordial loyalty which renders full obedience to the law, has been the thought, and is the wish, of the Protestants of Ireland; let your judgment as to this desire be deliberate and impartial.

"We have confidence in that veneration for constitutional liberty which makes an Englishman jealously watchful over the right of free expression of political opinions. We remind you that the very first indication of a wish to unite for an object we held to be legal, conservative, and religious, has been met by the Government with an act both arbitrary and harsh. In the late dismissal of magistrates all consideration of their object has been discarded, and a principle established, that to unite for a legal and Protestant purpose, and to unite for an object illegal and unconstitutional, shall incur an equal penalty, and must be treated alike.

"How far is this principle to be pushed? Are we to understand that all Irish magistrates are prohibited from being connected with any association, or any movement of a political

nature?

"If so, any Government of the day may convert the magistracy into a body of political partisans. Would such a course be pursued or submitted to in England?

"We cannot believe that a cause so righteous as ours, and so momentous to the destinies of this great empire, can be wanting in support from the people of Great Britain. However this may be, we despair not; the truth of God, which we desire to uphold, teaches us not to fear, for there is no restraint with him- to save by many or by few.'

"To our Protestant brethren in Ireland we would now address a few words :-Undoubted loyalty has ever distinguished you as a faithful Protestant people. We trust you would not stoop

from your high position to seek aid from any source which the spirit of the laws and constitution forbids or condemns. We need not urge you, we hope, against weakening your union by administering oaths, or using secret signs, a system which modern sedition has promoted, and the law has denounced.

"The friends of that faith which you profess intently and anxiously observe, whilst your enemies as keenly watch your every movement, one act of disobedience to the laws by the humblest individual amongst you reacts upon the character of the Irish Protestant, and gives occasion to the enemy to malign our glorious cause. It is ours and yours; our interests are vitally identified with yours, and one member cannot suffer without an influence upon the rest.

"We are conscious of the severe trials which many of you suffer the state of insecurity and restlessness which the evil policy of man has generated by the discouragement of the good and loyal, and the encouragement of the bold and the bad. Be calm and united, confident that your principles can never perish. "You can wield lawful weapons with all the confidence of men who know their cause is righteous. The great constitutional arena is the House of Commons; and, therefore, every energy should be exerted to secure, to the utmost, a faithful representation of your principles in Parliament. If the registries are neglected your political influence is paralyzed; if perseveringly attended to, some, perhaps much, benefit may arise. We therefore earnestly implore you not to be deceived, or persuaded to abandon the battle of the registry. Political privilege involves political responsibility, and your neglect or apathy is triumph to the foe.

"You have, under every difficulty, the assurance that the darkest cloud with which human tyranny can overshadow you cannot obscure the bright bow of Christian hope, nor obstruct the voice which ever invites you to hear Him who is our peace. England cannot abandon you without sacrificing her Protestantism, and forsaking her God.

"RODEN, Chairman."

"FIFTH OF NOVEMBER" AND THE LORD BISHOP OF
WINCHESTER'S CHARGE.

To the Editor of the Protestant Magazine.

SIR,- For several years past letters have appeared in reference to the Church service appointed for the "Fifth of November," and the Protestant Association has made efforts to promote the due observance of that day. It must, I think, be admitted that at no period of our history were

the clergy more imperatively called upon to commemorate the day by the devout use of that service, than the present. Not only does the Act of James the First (Act 3, chap. 1), command this to be religiously observed and to "be had in perpetual remembrance that all ages to come may yield praises to his (God's) Divine Majestie for the same, and have in memory this joyful day of deliverance;" but it is appointed in our Prayer-book to be commemorated as a day of thanksgiving, for the most singular and providential deliverance of the King, Lords, and Commons from the most atrocious and wholesale slaughter that ever was meditated in the corrupt heart of man. Now, why is a perpetual thanksgiving for this, rightly appointed in our Church?

In the first place, to perpetuate the memory of so great a deliverance from God. For if, as they (the conspirators) expected, such a desperate crime had succeeded and the nation had been thrown into such confusion, as must necessarily have ensued from the slaughter of the Royal family and all her nobles and senators, they thought that by that means they would be able to carry on a system whereby they might establish Popery in the land again; and God alone can tell, whether it is not to that deliverance that we have been indebted for the blessings and privileges we have since enjoyed, and enjoy to this day.

"But another reason why it is necessary is, to keep continually in the remembrance of the nation, in the remembrance of the Protestant Sovereign, the Protestant peers, the Protestant commons, the Protestant bishops, the Protestant clergy, and the Protestant people, the awful character of that Antichristian apostasy which could concoct and endeavour to carry out such an atrocious crime as this."

Whatever those persons may be induced to believe or assert who are not conversant with the subject of the Papacy, of this they may be assured as an incontrovertible fact, that the same insidious spirit which instigated the "Gunpowder Treason" in 1605 is upheld and maintained at the present day in the authorized commentaries of the Church of Rome. In accordance with this Antichristian spirit, I would refer to the case of Garnet the Jesuit, who absolved the "Gunpowder Treason conspirators from the awful crime they were about to commit, and was executed at a traitor, but who in the Almanack of the (Roman) Catholic Directory of last year published by "permissu superiorum" is honoured as a martyr.

"

Let us, however, be encouraged with hope for our muchabused and betrayed country, when we reflect on the importance of the solemn warning addressed by the Lord Bishop of Winchester to the assembled clergy in his admirable Charge delivered on Monday, the 13th instant, in the Church of the

Holy Trinity, Guildford, when, after dwelling at great length on the evil of the endowment of Maynooth College, and on the abominations of the Church of Rome, his Lordship earnestly entreated his Reverend Brethren to make themselves masters of the controversy, not by adopting the opinions of others, but by investigating and studying her decretals, councils, and canons. It was not, his Lordship observed, in this country that her true character could be fully developed, but on the "seven hills," the seat of her arbitrary power.

The charge was indeed worthy of a Protestant prelate. May it be instrumental in awakening the clergy to a deeper sense of their awful responsibilities, and of the perilous position in which they and their country are at this moment placed, is the earnest prayer of,

Sir,

Your faithful, humble Servant,
A PROTESTANT.

Guildford, October 17, 1845.

-CAMPBELL.

WORKS OF BISHOP LATIMER.* Thus, while Elijah's burning wheels prepare From Carmel's heights to sweep the fields of air, The prophet's mantle, ere his flight began, Dropt on the world—a sacred gift to man.— ANYTHING Connected with the persons of our Reformers and their labours, cannot but be full of interest to their Protestant countrymen. Exclusive of the intrinsic value of their productions for the pulpit and the press, there is attached to them a certain relative attraction, fraught with the eloquence of "the voices of the dead," and those dead the faithful witnesses amid a perverse generation.

"The trees about a temple become soon

Dear as the temple's self,"

and the component parts that frame the abstract idea of the GLORIOUS REFORMATION, and suggest associations holy and time-honoured, will rightly be esteemed as worthy of affectionate regard and attentive examination. Honesty of expression -open-heartedness in discourse-candour of purpose-plain, straightforward announcements, characterize the works of the early confessors and founders of our Church. There is no fighting behind the bush,-no sharp-shooting, from beech to elm and from oak to cedar ;-it is all plain and above-board, or to give one multum in parvo definition, it is un-Jesuitical. Times of trouble and distraction, when "fear and the pit and the snare are upon the inhabitants of the land," when "the treacherous dealers deal very treacherously," and widow and orphans wail together in suppressed anguish for the vacant places of those who have glorified God in the fires;-times * Sermons and Remains of Bishop Latimer, 2 vols. Parker Society.

when the noise of strangers is heard, and the hoarse alarum bell issues its omens of sorrow; these are not times for the servants of Christ to deal glozingly or indefinitely with the souls of men, but they demand a clear, sonorous peal from the silver trumpets of the imperilled temple. And how direct, how much to the point are the sermons and epistles of the Protestant watchmen! Whatever be their faults in style, they have at least the merit of giving no uncertain sound. Hence, refreshing are the spirited appeals of such men as Bradford and Becon, Jewell and Cranmer, Latimer and Hooper, Ridley and Philpot-when they discourse upon the high topics of spiritual matters, and exhort to a holy wariness of conduct and humble dependance upon heaven

"The sacramental host of God's elect."

BISHOP HUGH LATIMER, than whom none of the noble army is better known to the people at large, excels in a clear, driving style of hortatory preaching-disfigured, however, by most ludicrous expressions and ideas, upon which the good man is only too fond of harping. He pulls the wire of discord, and finding that the jarring notes tickle the ear of his hearers, he lets it spend its vibrations, and then pulls it again. Page after page does he dilate upon some textual joke, some equivocal bon mot, some personal pun, with a relish and redundancy that is rather palling to the taste. True, we must make every allowance for the style of the times; and much later down, we find pulpit orators of most distinguished fame, indulging in like eagerness for merciless witticisms. Jeremy Taylor is such; and South must take a prominent position in this side-shaking category. Mr. Blunt illustrates the same propensity from the pages even of the "judicious Hooker," and the sober, precise Isaac Barrow. Thus the former speaks of "the mingle-mangle of religion and superstition," and of Christ "manuring his vineyard with the sweat of his own brows." The latter puts his hearers or readers on the broad grin by talking about "the fox who said that the grapes were sour because he could not reach them; and that the hare was dry meat, because he could not catch it," of the man 66 who would have his sickle in another's corn, or an oar in another's boat, being in no condition to wonder if his fingers be rapped," &c., &c.

But even these are an improvement upon the quaint irregularities of Latimer. We will subjoin an illustration or two, in proof.

In his famous "Sermons on the Card," he thus speaks (Latimer's Sermons, Parker Society, p. 13):

"Then further we must say to ourselves, 'What requireth Christ of a Christian man? Now turn up your trump, your heart (heart is trump, as I said before), and cast your trump, your heart, on this card; and upon this card you shall learn