their oaths of allegiance and their natural obedience to their sovereigns; the closest ties of friendship and nature have been broken; and children exempted from the duty they owed to those who gave them birth.

THE COUNCIL Of Trent confirmed and concentrated all the idolatries and wickedness which had been diffused and accumulated for ages in the Church of Rome; and added this sin more of placing itself in a state of schism with every other church and body of Christians in the world, by presenting sinful terms of communion, so as to prevent the union of Christ's body. By her apostacy the third part of Christendom became " Wormwood; and many men [spiritually] died of the waters because they were made bitter.” But the Holy Spirit has Himself directly accused the Church of Rome of idolatry by the pen of St. John: “and the rest of the men [that is, the Western Church, after the destruction of the Eastern "third part " by the Turks] which were not killed by these plagues, yet repented not of the works of their hands; that they should not worship DEVILS, and IDOLS of gold and silver, and brass, and stone, and of wood: which neither can see, nor hear, nor walk. Neither repented they of their murders, [by massacres, by fire, and by the tortures of the inquisition ;] nor of their sorceries, nor of their fornication, nor of their thiefts." Rev. ix., 20-21.

FOR THE enormity of the decrees of the Council of Trent, says Mr. Perceval, "for its outrageous violations of former general councils, and for its rash and reckless sentences of Anathema, [or curses] whereby, if they are to be understood retrospectively, four-fifths at least of the fathers of the church will be found to be condemned, it is without parallel in the annals of the Christian church." And de Ranchin, a popish historian of this council, says that " for [or instead of] a canon of a synodical decree [it] brought forth a papal bull; instead of an extirpation of abuses, a nursery of errors—a depravation for a reformation." Again, "the iniquity and injustice of it were such, that even good [Roman] Catholics ABHOR IT."

THE COUNCIL of Trent was neither lawful nor general.

It

was convened solely by the Pope's authority; and there were no representatives in it from the Protestant parts of Germany; nor from the churches of Great Britain; nor from the northern churches of Europe; nor from any branch of the great Eastern church. Most of its members were Italian Monks, who were ordained bishops for the occasion, and had no dioceses; and withal, were so few as when, at its utmost strength, says Mr. Perceval, "there appear no more than 200 signatures of cardinals, patriarchs, archbishops, and bishops present; and 19 persons representing themselves as proxies for 34 others. This is the utmost strength of a synod which dared to anathematise the Catholic Church from its foundation, and to set up a NEW Communion; and of these about two-thirds were from Italy; the rest, with very few exceptions, from France and Spain: and the most flagrant of all the outrages which were perpetrated, were the work of cabals, varying from 30 to 40." W. C. P.

We are justified by God the Father, considered as principal and first mover; and by God the Son as meritorious purchaser ; and by God the Holy Ghost as immediate efficient; and by baptism as the ordinary instrument of conveyance; and by faith of such a kind, as the ordinary instrument of reception; and lastly, by faith and holiness, as the necessary qualifications and conditions in adults, both for the first receiving and for the perpetual preserving it.— Waterland.

We e are baptized into His body; by some supernatural and mysterious operation, we, our bodies and souls, are, in baptism, united to the body and soul of Christ; and thereby to the Godhead; and the Holy Spirit it is, by whom we have this union -an union which makes us to be as truly in the lineage of the second Adam, as we are naturally in the lineage of the first Adam.-Bishop of Exeter.

MIRACULOUS FIRE.

In our 44th number we gave a brief account of this blasphemous superstition of the Greek Church, which is practised during Easter week at Jerusalem, to which we beg leave to refer; and we now present our readers with the effects of that superstitious rite, as witnessed by the Hon. Robert Curzon. It is extracted from his delightful book, "Visits to the Monasteries of the Levant."

IT WAS, he says, on Friday, the 3rd of May, that my companions and myself went, about five o'clock in the evening, to the church of the Holy Sepulchre, at Jerusalem, where we had places assigned to us in the gallery of the Latin monks, as well as a good bedroom in their convent. The church was very full, and the numbers kept increasing every moment.

THE behaviour of the pilgrims was riotous in the extreme ; the crowd was so great that many persons actually crawled over the heads of others; and some made pyramids of men, by standing on each others shoulders, as I have seen them do at Astley's. Altogether it was a scene of disorder and profanation, which it is impossible to describe. In consequence of the multitude of people, and the quantities of lamps, the heat was excessive; and a steam arose which prevented your seeing clearly across the church. But every window and cornice, and every place where a man's foot could rest, excepting the gallery, which was reserved for Ibrahim Pasha and ourselves, appeared to be crammed with people; for 17,000 pilgrims were said to be in Jerusalem, almost the whole of whom had come to the holy city for no other reason than to see the sacred fire

THE NEXT morning a way was made through the crowd for Ibrahim Pasha, who sat in the gallery on a divan; and as our seats were very near the great man, we saw everything in an easy and luxurious way; and it being announced that the Mahomedan Pasha was ready, the Christian miracle, which

had been waiting for some time, was now on the point of being displayed.

THE PEOPLE Were by this time become furious; they were worn out with standing in such a crowd all night; and as the time approached for the exhibition of the holy fire, they could not contain themselves for joy. At about one o'clock the Patriarch went into the ante-chapel of the Sepulchre, and soonafter a magnificent procession moved out of the Greek chapel. It conducted the patriarch three times round the tomb; after which he took off his outer robes of cloth of silver and went into the Sepulchre, the door of which was then closed. The agitation of the pilgrims was extreme; they screamed aloud, and the dense mass of people shook to and fro like a field of corn in the wind.

THE WHOLE Ceremony has already been detailed in our Vol. IV., page 123; there was no sermon nor prayers, except a little chanting during the processions; and nothing that could tend to remind you of the awful event which this feast was designed to commemorate. Soon you saw the lights increasing in all directions, every one having lit his candle from the holy flame; the chapels, the galleries, and every corner where a candle could possibly be displayed, immediately appeared to be in a blaze. The people in their frenzy put the bunches of lighted tapers to their faces, hands, and breasts, to purify themslves from their sins. The Patriarch was carried out of the Sepulchre in triumph on the shoulders of the people he had deceived, amid the cries and exclamations of joy which resounded from every nook of the immense pile of buildings. As he appeared in a fainting state I supposed that he was ill; but I found that it was the uniform custom on these occasions to feign insensibility, that the pilgrims may imagine he is overcome with the glory of the Almighty, froni whose immediate presence they believe him to have returned !

IN A short time the smoke of the candles obscured everything in the place; and I could see it rolling in great volumes

out at the aperture at the top of the dome. The smell was terrible; and three unhappy wretches, overcome by heat and bad air, fell from the upper range of galleries, and were dashed to pieces on the heads of the people below. One poor Armenian lady, seventeen years of age, died where she sat, of heat, thirst, and fatigue.

AFTER a while Ibrahim Pasha got up and went away, his guard making a line for him by main force; and the soldiers made way for us across the church. I got on as far as the place where the Virgin is said to have stood during the crucifixtion ; where I saw a number of people lying one on another all about this part of the church, and as far as I could see towards the door. I made my way between them as well as I could, till they were so thick that there was actually a great heap of bodies on which I trod. It then suddenly struck me they were all dead! I had not perceived this at first; for I thought they were only very much fatigued with the ceremonies, and had lain down to rest themselves there; but I now saw that sharp and hard appearance of the face; many of them were quite black with suffocation; and farther on were others all bloody, and covered with the brains and entrails of those who had been trodden to pieces by the crowd.

AT THIS time there was no crowd in the part of the church where we were; but a little farther on, round the corner toward the great door, the people, who were quite panic-struck, continued to press forward, and every one was doing his utmost to escape. The Turkish guards outside, frightened at the rush from within, thought that the Christians wished to attack them, and the confusion soon grew into a battle. The soldiers killed numbers of fainting wretches with their bayonets; and the walls were spattered with the blood and brains of men, who had been felled like oxen with the butt end of the soldiers muskets. Every one struggled to defend himself or to get away; and in the melè all who fell were immediately trampled to death by the rest. So desperate and savage did the