wearing surplices. The Irish people might at that time have been, in all probability, reclaimed from Popery, at the expense of half the zeal and activity which Whitgift employed in oppressing Puritans, and Martin Marprelate in reviling Bishops."

"Protestantism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed churches were mere national churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly without any machinery for foreign operations. The Church of Scotland, in the same manner, existed for Scotland alone. The operations of the Catholic church, on the other hand, took in the whole world. Nobody at Lambeth or at Edinburgh troubled himself about what was doing in Poland or Bavaria. But at Rome, Cracow and Munich were objects of as much interest as the purlieus of St. John Lateran. Our island, the head of the Protestant interest, did not send out a single missionary, or a single instructor of youth to the scene of the great spiritual war. Not a single seminary was established here for the purpose of furnishing a supply of such persons to foreign countries. On the other hand, Germany, Hungary, and Poland were filled with able and active Catholic emissaries of Spanish or Italian birth; and colleges for the instruction of the northern youth were founded at Rome. The spiritual force of Protestantism was a mere local militia, which might be useful in case of an invasion, but could not be sent abroad, and could therefore make no conquests. Rome had such a local militia; but she had also a force disposable at a moment's notice for foreign service, however dangerous or disagreeable. If it was thought at head-quarters that a Jesuit at Palermo was qualified by his talents and character to withstand the Reformers in Lithuania, the order was instantly given, and instantly obeyed. In a month, the faithful servant of the Church was preaching, catechising, confessing, beyond the Niemen."

VII., and lastly, The Reformers were men of God. This is a larger theme than we have space left to dilate upon; but the discussion is not necessary, for the matter is patent, and we have in part anticipated it. Never probably was there a more holy, zealous, self-denying, "Christexalting " body of men since the days of the Apostles than the Protestant Reformers. They preached, they studied, they prayed, they laboured with enthusiastic energy; and they counted not their lives dear to them for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus the Lord. When we read their writings, we see what, under God, was the secret of their success. They were men of one thought, one feeling, one wish, one hope, one book. For Christ and his cause they lived and died. In England the Marian persecution severely tested their principles; and they were found faithful to them. They died daily; and thus the crown of martyrdom was not thorny to them.

Succeeding generations witnessed a different race. We still speak in generals, and with innumerable exceptions. Even in the days of Queen Elizabeth, Protestantism in our own and other lands had begun to degenerate; and what it eventually became in various parts of Europe, we have already seen. If Popery is to be re-conquered, it must be by men of the impress and character of the first Reformers. There were giants in those days;-where are our giants now? Yet the very stripling who has David's heart, and David's faith, may hopefully attack this Goliath; not with the noisy clang of armour; but with a sling and a stone, which shall silently, but inevitably, sink into its forehead. Rome, with all its apparent solidity, is a sham, a pretence, a gaudy bubble, which shall one day burst; and whatever may be the appointed season, and whatever of miracle may attend the predicted issue, means (we repeat) are ours, events God's. In our own Church, if the real spirit of our holy Reformers thoroughly pervaded her clergy and laity, Popery, with all its wiles, would tremble at the onslaught.

We have written so long a sermon, that we have no space for application. Nor is any needed, but that which our readers will abundantly supply for themselves. One thing only will we say that the. CHRIST. OBSERV.

APP.

5 H

candle, though it has not always burned brightly has never (as the venerable Reformer predicted) been extinguished. Though the Reformation was blighted, it was not uprooted; and it brought forth good fruit which shall last for ever. It did its work. True, that work was not complete, or final; and it is our duty to endeavour to carry it on and enlarge it ;-but it was not in vain in the Lord. Rather should we say God did his work by it; and he will still do his work—(when he does not operate miraculously)—by the instruments which he shall raise up from time to time to effect his purposes. The seasons are his, and the ends;-it is ours to pray and strive to be, if so He wills, in this great design, "fellow-workers with Him."*

DR. PRIESTLEY'S ALLEGED CHANGE OF OPINION ON THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD.

For the Christian Observer.

It is painful to throw a shade of doubt over the statement of Dr. Priestley's change of sentiment (Christian Observer for October, p. 593), but the doctrines of the Socinian, like those of the Scriptural, system, so hang together, that a true renunciation of any part of the scheme would probably have been attended with a rejection of the whole. The account, however, of his last hours, given by his son, affords melancholy proof that he died in the wretched covert of this refuge of lies. "He desired me" (writes Mr. Joseph Priestley, in a letter to Mr. Lindsey) "to reach him a pamphlet which was at his bed's head-(Simpson on the Duration of Future Punishments;)-'It will be a source of satisfaction to you to read that pamphlet '-said he, giving it to me. 'It contains my sentiments, and a belief in them will be a support to you in the most trying circumstances, as it has been to me. We shall all meet finally; we only require different degrees of discipline, suited to our different tempers, to prepare us for final happiness.""

The account of the retractation of one of the foreign heresiarchs of

We have spoken in the text only of the spiritual benefits of Protestantism; but we will avail ourselves of the Edinburgh Reviewer's just attestation to its

social and national value.

"The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued to run almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years' War; nor has Protestantism given any proofs of that 'expansive power' which has been ascribed to it. But the Protestant boasts, and most justly, that wealth, civilization, and intelligence, have increased far more on the northern than on the southern side of the boundary; that countries so little favoured by nature as Scotland and Prussia, are now amongst the most flourishing and best governed portions of the world-while the marble palaces of Genoa are deserted-while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania-while the fertile sea-coast of the Pontifical State is abandoned to buffaloes and wild boars. It cannot be doubted, that since the sixteenth century the Protestant nations-fair allowance being made for physical disadvantages—have made decidedly greater progress than their neighbours. The progress made by those nations in which Protestantism, though not finally successful, yet maintained a long struggle, and left permanent traces, has generally been considerable. But when we come to the Catholic land, to that part of Europe in which the first spark of reformation was trodden out as soon as it appeared, and from which proceeded the impulse which drove Protestantism back, we find, at best, a very slow progress, and on the whole retrogression."

"Our firm belief is, that the North owes its great civilization and prosperity chiefly to the moral effect of the Protestant Reformation; and that the decay of the Southern countries of Europe is to be mainly ascribed to the great Catholic revival."

this school appears to be more clearly authenticated. Mosheim remarks of Crellius, that he bewailed with tears that he could not see evidence for the Divinity of Jesus Christ; adding, however, that in this he, like many others, deceived himself (Syntagma, &c. 1723). Yet Crantz, in his History of the Moravian Brethren, gives the following interesting account, p. 201: "Count Zinzendorff had much intercourse in 1736 at Amsterdam with the Memnonists and their teachers, whom he warned against Crypto-Socinianism, and actually rescued some of them from it. Nor was his conversation without some benefit to Samuel Crellius (the celebrated Artemonite), who also sought an interview with him, and it proved a lasting blessing, especially to the two daughters of this man."

The late Rev. B. La Trobe (the translator of Crantz) adds the following note at this place: "Samuel Crellius was a Socinian, and a leader of that party. He is still quoted as one of their strongest advocates. But the endless mercy of the Lord was also manifest in him. He not only rejoiced to see his daughters bow their knees to the Crucified; but he himself, turning to that Lord, called upon him as his Lord and his God, and found at the latter end of his life no consolation but in the atonement by the blood of Jesus, and wished that all his books could die with him. This has been testified, not only by his daughters, but by all who were with him before his end."

THE SUPPRESSED REFORMATION IN ITALY - LIFE AND WRITINGS OF PALEARIO.

(Continued from page 671.)

For the Christian Observer.

IN our last Number we narrated some of the chief facts which we had been able to glean of the history of that blessed Italian martyr for Jesus Christ, the learned, the amiable, the accomplished, the devout Aonio Paleario. He was faithful unto death; and his Saviour gave him a crown of life.

Our further acquaintance with his writings has augmented our esteem and affection for his memory. We proposed and are about to redeem our pledge to give some passages from the English translation of his suppressed Treatise upon The Benefits of the Death of Christ; the original of which is asserted to be "as utterly lost as the Decade of Livy." Bayle, writing a century and a half ago, considered it irrecoverable; and Dr. M'Crie could discover no writer who had seen a copy of it for two centuries but Reiderer. Hitherto every research for a copy has failed. Schelhorn says that it was translated into Spanish and French; but we have not been able to trace out any extant copy in either of those languages. That it was translated into English was unknown to any of the authors who have written concerning Paleario. The fact was never published till it appeared in our pages last month; for the translator himself did not know his author, his name not being in the original Italian; and the translation has long been forgotten, and copies of it are now extremely rare.

We said last month that it would be astonishing, did we not know the virulence of the Romanists against the doctrine of justification by faith in Christ, that this treatise, so void of a controversial spirit, and in which there is no mention of the errors of Popery except by implication, should

have been the chief cause of his being imprisoned, tortured, and burned alive. But Paleario had written another book, which if Pius V. and his blood-thirsty coadjutors had seen, it would have excited their hottest displeasure, if it had not the better effect of leading them to repentance. But there is no reason to suppose that they were acquainted with it, for it was not printed till the next century; and no allusion is made to it in the vituperations heaped upon his memory by his persecutors, who would not have failed to aggravate his crimes by reference to its contents, had they been aware of the existence of the manuscript; for never was there penned a more faithful, powerful, and withering denunciation of the Church of Rome, as Antichrist, than in this remarkable volume. But it was not for this book, which was expressly severe upou Rome, but for another which was severe only by implication, as setting forth the teaching of Scripture respecting "The Benefits of the Death of Christ," that Paleario was burned alive. Thus did Rome exhibit her hatred to the doctrine of justification by faith, which it was the object of Paleario to exhibit and defend.

The posthumous volume is entitled: "Aonii Palearii, Verulani, Jesu Christi martyris, Actio in pontifices Romanos, et eorum asseclas, ad imperatorem Romanum, reges et principes Christianæ reipublicæ summos Ecumenici Concilii præsides, conscripta cum de concilio Tridentino habendo deliberaretur.' This book is very scarce, and can scarcely be said to be known in England. It was printed without any mention of the Editor's name, or of the year or place of publication; nor is there in the Editor's Preface any hint which supplies this information. This "Pleading against the Roman Pontiffs" is embodied in Wetstein's edition of Paleario's collected works, issued at Amsterdam in the year 1696; and a panegyrical review of that edition in the Leipsic "Acta Eruditorum" for that year (January, p. 44), mentions (for we have carefully verified all that we have quoted) that it was in the good town of Leipsic that the original edition (a copy of which is now before us) was published; and that the date of publication was 1606; but that it was not known by whom the work was sent to press: "Vogelianus apud nos Lipsiæ; incertum quo auctore." We find on the title-page no notification except "Editione Voecelliniana." The conductors of the Acta Eruditorum say that Germans owe a debt of gratitude to Paleario. His works, they add, had never been printed in Italy, and would have been lost but for the publication of them at Lyons, Basle, and Bremen. Our own venerable Foxe carries down his notice of the Italian martyrs only to the year 1560, so that the justly memorable name of Paleario does not occur in his narrative. The Editor of the original edition of 1606 says that the manuscript was discovered in the year 1596; that it was in Paleario's own hand-writing, and was beautifully written. It was composed about half a century before that date; and the manuscript was placed in the hands of confidential friends, lest in case of the Author's being consigned to the dungeons of the Inquisition, or put to death, on account of his free confession of evangelical truth, by those whom he had refuted and condemned for their impieties," the work should be mislaid or destroyed. The unknown Editor adds, that it would have been printed long before, but that (Paleario's friends having been many years dead) the manuscript had lain, buried in dust, (at Sienna) though uninjured, in the guardianship of a certain good and pious man, and was unknown to every body else of that age. Even then, so long after Paleario's martyrdom, neither the manuscript nor its possessor would have been safe from the Inquisition. The entrusting it

to confidential friends corresponds with the author's own declaration in the prefatory "Address to the faithful holy men, depositories of this little book." He says that he composed the work, and had taken precautions for its preservation, in order that if he were condemned to death, he might, after his decease, do some good to his brethren; and that a copy of it might be presented, as he desired, to the delegates of Charles the Fifth at the Council of Trent, so that his labour might not be lost. The work exhibits with much force the doctrinal and practical enormities of Popery, the whole argument being grounded upon clear declarations of holy writ. The author accompanied his "Testimony and Pleading against the Roman pontiffs" with an admirable Letter to the Protestant Reformers of Germany and elsewhere. He directed one copy of his Letter to Calvin, and another to Bucer. He strongly urged the Lutheran and Reformed Churches to compose their minor differences, and to form a compact body against Rome. He had counted the cost of what he was doing in drawing up such a faithful testimony against that apostate and persecuting church-not worthy to be called a church -and he truly presaged that he should suffer martyrdom; and in his concluding chapter (p. 271 of the 1606 Edition) there is a noble, a splendid, outburst of Christian faith and calm triumph, accompanied by the meekest resignation, in which he says that happen what might to himself, he had endeavoured to defend the cause of Christ, and in the strength of God was prepared to die for it. "Accede Lictores"but we must not begin quoting, for we have already run off, as is our wont-say our vice-too far from the book we particularly intended to notice the suppressed Treatise on the Death of Christ, to mention another which fell in our way while we were writing, and which also well deserves commendation. The former was stifled in its maturity; the latter had well nigh never seen the light. We may give some further account of the "Actio" in a future Number. The unknown Editor of the Leipsic edition says that the Author, having boldly confessed his faith, died in the Lord, being adjudged to the flames, a pious faithful servant of Jesus Christ. "Thus," continues he, "is accomplished, step by step, the number of the saints who are slain for the name of our Saviour Jesus Christ; thus is fulfilled the prophecy which declares, I saw the woman drunken with the blood of the saints, and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus.'

199

His

We mentioned in our last Number, that the date of Paleario's martyrdom was disputed; for though he was put to death openly at Rome, it was not safe to speak of a heretic who, as the persecuting Inquisitors taught the people, was justly consigned upon earth to the flames, and was suffering the vengeance of eternal fire. How fearful the remark of Paleario's biographer, Wetstein, on Rome's victims, "With the body perishes all memory!" Wetstein concludes that Paleario's widow and fatherless children pined away in poverty and wretchedness. mother happily had preceded him to heaven. So far as Rome could carry out her policy, the ploughshare of oblivion passed over everything connected with his history; except that there had once lived an awfully wicked man of that name, who had been justly put to death for his crimes; a man so impious, writes one of his defamers, the poetaster Latinus Latinius, in wretched iambics, that he renounced his baptism by changing his name from Antonio to Aonio, (a common custom in those days), thus spurning the letter T, which indicated the cross, and little thinking that it was ominous of the gibbet! In consequence of this breaking up of his family, and the imprisonment, exile, or martyrdom of