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some things hard to be understood,* yet the simple fact of his recommending them to Christians in general, shows that, in his esteem, or rather of the Holy Ghost who inspired him, they were fit for general reading, and able to teach all mankind the way of salvation, through the longsuffering and tender mercy of God. Both these apostles, and all the others whose writings were given to the world, testify the good news of the glory of Christ. They declare that the same Jesus who was crucified, is exalted a Prince and a Saviour, to give repentance and the forgiveness of sins. By their writings, the apostles are still speaking to the world; and by writing, as well as by word of mouth, they obeyed the command of their master,-teach, preach, publish, make known the good news to every creature.

The New Testament, thus thrown upon the world, fell, in the first instance, into the hands of Christians who knew its value; and it became their duty to publish and make known its contents to all around them. There was no occasion for a divine command to learn to read, or to teach all men to read; for the command to search the scriptures necessarily implied this, as much as the command to the apostle John to write, implied that he should be furnished with the necessary materials. Follow out this principle, and it will be found to afford a sufficient warrant for printing and circulating the Bible; for establishing

*" And account that the longsuffering of our God is salvation; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you; as also in all his epistles, speaking in them of those things in which are some things hard to be understood, which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other scriptures, to their own destruction." 2 Pet. iii. 15, 16. This passage is often referred to by Papists, to confirm their doctrine, that the Bible is not intended for general reading, and that the unlearned are in danger of being injured by it. But Paul himself, writing to the same people, to wit, Christians who were Jews by birth, lets us know the reason why some things which he taught were hard to be understood. It was not because the things themselves were unintelligible; but because the people were dull of apprehension. (See Heb. v. 11.) They had been so long accustomed to look upon the shadows of the Mosaic law as of perpetual duration, that they could not clearly see the substance when it had come, and when the shadows were superseded by it. To minds thus preoccupied, very plain things appeared very mysterious. It is so with persons of the Romish communion at this day. The most liberal and intelligent among them, have their minds so prepossessed and bewildered with the ideas of a visible, universal, infallible church; with a visible head and apostolic succession; with the merit of good works, penances, pilgrimages, purgatory, &c. that the plainest passages in the word of God appear to them quite unintelligible. Most of the errors taught by their church they look upon as infallible truths, and first principles, which must not be called in question. Coming to the Bible with minds thus preoccupied, they must find many things mysterious and inexplicable, because it is impossible to make them bend to what they have already fixed in their minds as the truth. In this unhappy condition, they generally find it most comfortable to let the Bible alone, and acquiesce in the infallible teaching of the church.

Arguing from the passage in 2 Pet. above quoted, Papists always proceed upon the principle that the bulk of Christians must be unlearned; and it will be allowed that the church of Rome has always been successful in keeping the bulk of its members in that condition. But this is not a Christian state of things. Peter speaks of being unlearned as a sinful state, the same as being unstable. Every Christian, therefore, is required to be learned in the things which relate to the salvation of his soul, that is, to be learned in the scriptures. Paul exhorts the Ephesian Christians to "be not unwise, but understanding what the will of the Lord is." (Epist. v. 17.) And he speaks of Christians in a prosperous state of mind, as being "filled with the knowledge of his will." Every evangelical Protestant pastor labours and prays that this may be the condition of his people. But the nature and effect of popish teaching appear by the following answer, which a poor Papist gave lately to some questions of a religious nature. honour, we leave all these things to God and the priest."

"Please your

schools to teach the art of reading; and every other means which Christian prudence and benevolence may devise, for communicating to the world the knowledge of the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he hath sent.

The whole world might have been enlightened by the knowledge of this truth many centuries ago, had Christians of the second and following ages possessed the spirit of Christians of the first age. Had the impulse which was given by the preaching and writing of apostles and evangelists continued through subsequent ages, every Christian church would have had a company of zealous and faithful missionaries employed in distributing the word of God, and declaring its contents, to the heathen all around them. Daily inroads would thus have been made upon the kingdom of Satan. The reign of idolatry and superstition would have given place to the reign of righteousness and peace. The earth would have been filled with a holy seed, and heaven with an innumerable company, out of all kindreds, and tongues, and people, and nations.

The time is approaching when this shall be realized, as we are assured by Old and New Testament prophecy; and it will be so, when Christians and Christian churches shall have returned to the princiciples which were abandoned at so early a period; and shall be animated by the same spirit of love and zeal which marked the character and the conduct of those of the first age. Nothing remains to be done, but what ought to have been done seventeen hundred years ago; and which was prevented only by the false principles and corrupt practices which began to prevail even before the close of the first century. All the churches, without exception, and the church of Rome, in particular, neglected the important duty of giving the word of God, and publishing the gospel to the whole world. Nay, the church of Rome having gotten possession of it, locked it up from the sight of all but a chosen few. She, therefore, is justly chargeable with the guilt of slaying the many millions who have perished for lack of knowledge. Other churches cannot plead innocent, considering how little they have actually done for promoting Christianity; but the church of Rome herself must sustain the greatly aggravated guilt of positively withholding the means of promoting it, by prohibiting the translation and distribution of the holy scriptures.

Bishop Milner tells us that "the bulk of mankind cannot read at all; and we do not find any divine commandment as to their being obliged to study letters." This shows us the low esteem in which the common people are held by priests of the Romish communion. It is not considered a duty to promote their mental improvement, because there is no divine commandment as to their being obliged to study letters. Christianity teaches us to promote, in every possible way, the mental improvement as well as the eternal salvation of our fellow-creatures. This is implied in the comprehensive commandment, "Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself." This, however, has no place in the popish system. If the priests find the people ignorant, they will keep them so. They will instruct them only in such things as will give them an awful and distant respect for their ghostly authority: but they will take care to prevent, as far as they are able, the people from having access to the source of knowledge, lest they should think and

judge for themselves. Though there were nothing else objectionable in the popish system, this alone would mark it out as not of divine origin, because it is hostile to the improvement and civilization of the human race.

Having thus paid my respects to the avowed writings of the right reverend the bishop of Castabala, I return to the correspondent of the Orthodox Journal, who subscribes himself M., who, if not Dr. Milner himself, expresses the same sentiments, as the reader will see by turning to my thirty-fourth number, in which I gave large extracts from his letters. In page 263, I quoted his words, which are as follows:"Our Bible men of the nineteenth century may, perhaps, think that it would have been much more wise, in the Founder of Christianity, to have furnished each of the apostles, before his setting out upon his mission, with a knapsack well filled with Bibles, to be distributed among the towns and villages through which they were to pass."

I have the charity to think that the writer considered himself as addressing only persons of his own communion,-persons who were studiously kept in ignorance, and who were left to suppose that matters, in our Saviour's time on earth, with regard to the publication of books, were precisely the same as they are now. Papists in our day, even though they cannot read, see that what is called the Bible is comprised in a small volume that any man may carry in his pocket, and of which one might carry twenty in a knapsack. The writer takes for granted that it was the same at the time when the apostles received their commission; and, by this assumption, he attempts to delude his readers into the idea that the distribution of Bibles is not approved by Christ. If the writer did not know the real state of matters, in this respect, he was guilty of great presumption in attempting to write upon it; if he did know it, then he is guilty of wilfully misleading and deceiving those who confide in him.

My Protestant readers must bear with me while I state a fact, of which they do not need to be informed; but which I take to be necessary for the information of my readers of the Romish communion,— that, in the time of the apostles, a single copy of the Old Testament, written upon skins, was as much as a man could carry; that those who could write copies of it correctly were comparatively few; and that, had the apostles been set to the work of writing them with their own hands, it was not possible that they could attend to the work of preaching. It does not appear that the apostles carried Bibles about with them. Their minds were familiar with the contents of the Old Testament, on which they were enabled, by the Holy Spirit, to draw at all times. Whenever they came to a synagogue of Jews, or a church of Christians, they would find a copy to which they could refer; and when they addressed either Jews or Gentiles, there was a power in their preaching, accompanied by the miracles which they wrought, that made it manifest that God was with them.

The gift of miracles accompanied that of inspired preaching. Those who possess not the former, can lay no just claim to the latter; and, therefore, no man has a right to demand, for his word-of-mouth teaching, the respect and obedience which were yielded to apostles, unless he can show himself possessed of the same miraculous endowments. The mode of teaching which the apostles adopted, in the first in

stance, was that of declaring the divine message by word of mouth. Afterwards they committed it to writing; their writings completed the revelation of God to men; and, together with those of the Old Testament, they form a divine and infallible standard of faith and practice. Notwithstanding the labour and expense of multiplying copies before the invention of printing, copies were multiplied, and translated into various languages at a very early period. It was the duty of Christians to multiply them; and had they continued to do so, and had they given attention to their contents, they might have been preserved from the flood of error and superstition, which so soon overwhelmed them. Should any of my popish adversaries reply, that had it been the will of Christ to propagate Christianity by the distribution of Bibles, he would have enabled mankind to invent the art of printing in the apostolic age; I have only to answer, that it does not appear to have been a part of his plan, as a teacher come from God to instruct men in any thing which they were capable of learning or discovering by their own ingenuity; and that the art of writing, tedious as it is in comparison of printing, was sufficient to multiply copies of the scriptures for all needful purposes, had men but devoted themselves to the work with a diligence in any degree proportioned to its magnitude and importance.

Our orthodox letter-writer informs us, that the books of the New Testament were not all written till nearly a century after Christianity had been announced to the world. If by this he means the period when the apostles received their commission, or when the Holy Ghost came upon them on the day of Pentecost, he states what is not the fact; for the greater part of the New Testament was written within half a century of that period, and during the life of those who were witnesses of the events recorded in it. I have before me an interesting work of Père Lamy, a divine of the Romish church, and one who pays a thousand times more respect to the Bible than our modern Papists do. The work is entitled, "An Introduction to the Holy Scriptures." Speaking of the period in which the books of the New Testament were written, he says, Matthew wrote his gospel only six years after the crucifixion: Mark wrote his ten years, and Luke his twenty-three years thereafter; and that the Acts of the Apostles, and all the epistles of Paul, together with those of Peter, were written within thirty-three years of the same period. He does not pretend to fix the dates of the epistles of James and Jude; but he brings the latest writings of John within sixty-five years of Christ's death; and there is no part of the inspired writings even pretended to be of later date than those of John. Lamy states these facts on evidence that satisfied him, though absolute certainty is, perhaps, not to be obtained in a matter of this kind. Then it is not true that a century elapsed after Christianity was announced to the world, before the greater part of the New Testament was writThe binding obligation of the law of Moses remained in every respect until Christ said upon the cross, "It is finished." It was but a few years after that period, when the scriptures of the New Testament were written; and, in the interval, the church was favoured with the personal presence of the apostles, whose living voice supplied a rule of faith of equal authority with that of Christ; for, according to his own declaration, they that heard them heard him.

ten.

These things may appear at first view of small importance, but they are really of great importance in the popish question. It is with the church of Rome a fundamental point to get her clergy acknowledged as successors of the apostles; and to have the same authority and power with which Christ endowed these his extraordinary ambassadors. It would help very much to the attainment of this end, if it were allowed that a hundred years elapsed between the expiring of the old dispensation and the writing of the New Testament; because it is well known that the apostles did not live so long; and the church of Rome would shove in, behind them, their lawful successors, whose living voice was to be the only rule of faith, as that of the apostles had been. But the fact of the matter, plainly stated, overthrows the whole system. The apostles left their writings, which were divinely inspired, as their only successors; and, until these writings were completed, some of them remained alive to give instruction, under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit, with regard to every doctrine and practice, respecting which a question might be agitated in any of the churches. When they had not personal access to any of the apostles, they consulted them by writing to them, and received an answer in writing. The seventh chapter of first Corinthians is evidently an answer to a letter which Paul had received from the church in Corinth. Since the death of the apostles, the scriptures have been the church's only guide. They will be so till the end of the world; and there is no need of any other, for they are able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus.

My opponents complain that I take my representations of popery from the writing of enemies, and not from their own approved authors. The complaint, however, is unfounded, as the reader will see by this and some of my preceding numbers: for, independently of the council of Trent, whose authority is supreme in the church of Rome, I have quoted largely from the very works of my opponents themselves, which I hope they will admit to be approved writings. Besides quoting and replying to the Orthodox Journal, I have presumed to attempt an answer to the most "unanswerable" and most "orthodox" Dr. Milner. Both he and Mr. Andrews, indeed, are unanswerable on some points; not from the truth and accuracy, but from the extreme absurdity, of their statements.

If a man should come boldly forward, and deny that two and three make five, I presume most persons would think him unanswerable, at least unworthy of a serious answer. Yet the proposition that two and three make five, is not more evident to those who understand the terms, than the proposition, that, if the Bible be the word of God, it will do good, and not evil; and that all ought to read it, is evident to every mind under the influence of Christianity. Yet this proposition is solemnly denied by the council of Trent, and by all the popish authorities of the present day. There is really, therefore, no arguing with Papists upon the principles either of Christianity or common sense. There is no common ground on which we can meet them. Through the influence of a dark and cruel superstition, their minds are unsusceptible of impressions from moral evidence; and this is not surprising, seeing they actually refuse the evidence of their own senses.

Mr. Andrews is much offended with Luther for comparing the Pa

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