out giving offence to a person in communion with the Church of Rome, however truly devout that person supplemental chapters of Esther will equally, on the same grounds, demand the exertion of Mr. Rutter's ingenuity. Nor is this all we Protestants reject the Apocrypha, as well from internal, as from external, evidence. So palpably unlike to the genuine wonders of Revelation is the strange story (for instance) of Tobit smoking a devil out of a young woman with the liver of a fish, and so closely allied is it in texture to the marvellous Rabbinical tales of the gigantic cock and the fish leviathan, that we cannot hesitate to pronounce it a mere Jewish figment. Again: if Mr. Rutter wishes us to join him in prayers for the dead, let him produce a single solitary warrant for the prac tice from any one of those books which are universally received as canonical; and we will readily comply with his invitation. But, so long as he can only produce a passage from the Maccabean history in favour of the usage, that very circumstance speaks trumpet-tongued to our conviction, that the history so cited is apocryphal and uninspired: for passing strange it is, that EVERY book both of the Old and New Testament, which Protestants and Papists agree to receive as canonical, should be WHOLLY silent respecting such a practice. II. Mr. Rutter however assures his readers, that several of the most learned Protestants, while they reject the name of purgatory, seem to admit the thing. Mutato nomine, de te fabula narratur. The reason assigned is this: many Protestants deny not, that there is a middle state of departed souls before the final day of judgment. Key. p. 437. What resemblance exists between such an opinion and the Popish doctrine of purgatory, I possess not critical acumen sufficient to discover. Many Protestants suppose, that, after the separation of soul and body, the spirits of the righteous are received into the safe keeping of Paradise, where they enjoy the sure and blissful anticipa person might be as an individual: but I wish it to be distinctly understood, that what I attacked was a anticipation of future glory; while the souls of the wicked pass into the strong hold of a separate prison, where they writhe under the horrid expectation of future inevitable misery: that in this state they respectively remain, while disembodied: and that they receive not their final doom, until, at the last day, they are reunited to their bodies. Such is the doctrine held by some of us Protestants, in favour of which it were easy, to produce numerous passages of Scripture. But the Romanists fancy, that all the souls of the righteous (with the exception, I believe, of infants which die immediately after baptism) flit after death into a place of purgatorial torment; where, for the several sins which they have personally committed, they suffer misery differing from that of hell not in intensity but only in duration. Out of this region of horrors, the several parts of which are arranged on the exact model and principle of the pagan purgatory so largely described by Virgil in the sixth book of the Eneid, the prayers of the Church can deliver the wretched victims even before their allotted time of cleansing has been completed: and these sovereign prayers for the dead are to be purchased by the money of the faithful; a simoniacal abomination, which (as it is well known) first moved the indignation of the illustrious Luther, and ultimately led to the glorious Reformation. Such is the doctrine of purgatory held by the Romanists, in favour of which not the shadow of an argument can be produced from Holy Scripture. Yet does Mr. Rutter assure the Roman laity, for whose special instruction his Key is written, that many Protestants, while they reject the name of purgatory, SEEM to admit the thing. Well however may he cautiously insert the qualifying word SEEM (your SEEMS and your Irs are great peace makers), lest peradventure the prying eye of those without should look too curiously into these Aporreta of the Romish school. system system and the corrupt and interested upholders of a system; not those numerous excellent individuals, who, in the midst of great disadvantages, faithfully hold Christ the head, and who tacitly give up that heterogeneous mass of hay and stubble which has been industriously accumulated upon the divinely laid foundation of the Gospel. With our own judicious Hooker I can cheerfully say; "God, I doubt not, was merciful to save thousands of our fathers living in Popish superstitions, inasmuch as they "sinned ignorantly:" and, whatever tinge of unauthorized will-worship there may have been in such men as the venerable Fenelon and à Kempis and Pascal and Arnauld; yet (so far as fallible man can judge), bearing as they do the very impress of the Holy Ghost, I can venture to take up the words of an ancient father," May my soul be with them!" But the vigorous piety of individuals neither will, nor can, sanctify a radically corrupt system. In the worst of times, Christ has ever had those who are his but they owe their own character, not to the system in which they are unhappily entangled, but to that divine infusion of sound evangelical principle which prevents their system from being one entire mass of rank putridity. God, I believe, has a people scattered among all denominations of Christians, who hold the grand fundamental truths of the Gospel: and, since these are doubtless held (though with occasional obscurity and with many superadded fancies) in the Church of Rome, I feel joyfully assured, that many of that communion will be saved through the the alone merits of Christ, though the natural preju dices of education and the shuddering terrors of early implanted superstition may have closed their eyes to the manifold corruption of the entire system. In short, I do not believe the Romish Church to be the predicted Antichrist, though I am convinced that it is the predicted apostasy from sincere Christianity *. Mr. Rutter, perhaps not imprudently since he specially writes for the benefit of his own communion, will not pretend to follow the train of reasoning which pervades my two large volumes: he rather contents himself with observing, that, if the basis of my elaborate work be unsound, the whole superstructure must fall. Now he asserts the basis of that work to be, that the 1260 days denote 1260 solar years. Whence, if I have no authority for this mode of calculating the 1260 days; the whole, that rests upon it, must of course fall to the ground f. I might here very fairly deny the validity of Mr. Rutter's assertion: for, though the confutation of my calculating principle would destroy my application of the Roman beast's little horn to the Papacy, it would not at all affect my application of the apocalyptic harlot to the same ecclesiastical power; because this latter application depends not upon the computing of any prophetic numbers, but simply upon circumstantial evidence. Still less will his * 2 Thess. ii. 3. 1 Tim. iv. 1-3. + Key. p. 306. proposed proposed confutation affect what I have written respecting Daniel's Wilful King, the development of Antichrist, and various other matters which I might mention. But let this pass: though I thought it good briefly to notice it, because it serves to shew Mr. Rutter's want of care and strict accuracy even in limine. I. The first objection, brought against the protestant mode of computing the 1260 days, is the opinion of Jerome and certain others of the fathers. These pious men, it seems, like the modern Romanists, supposed the 1260 days to be 1260 natural days. THEREFORE; namely because fallible mortals, who had no greater advantages for deciding the question than we ourselves have, pronounce the days in question to be natural days: THEREFORE Protestants MUST NEEDS err in dissenting from them*. 1. Now, even if we grant to the fathers all the authority in other points which our Romish brethren could wish us to grant: still it must be abundantly obvious, that persons, who lived before the accomplishment of a prophecy, are of all others the most improper to cite as the authoritative interpreters of it, as interpreters from whose decision there can lie no appeal. What is disolute and explicit, they may see indeed as well as those who live after the accomplishment of any prediction: but, however preëminent they may be in talents, on all other particulars they must inevitably and from the very nature of things be quite in the dark on all other particulars, Key. p. 306. the |