CHAPTER XXIII.

The advantage of receiving blessings for the soul from God directly, without coming through angel or saint, bishop or priest.—Any goodness coming from a priest liable to be corrupted by his own badness and curses.-Much good not being done by the courtiers of the Prince of Wales compared to his own great goodness, shews the folly of putting religious servants in God's place.-Reprobation proved from the state of society, from nature, Scripture.

IF

reason and

F our salvation were to come to us through servants, whether saint or angel, priest or bishop, instead of reaching us directly from the fountain-head Christ himself, it would be made second-hand, or what is worse, we should be swindled out of it as unworthy of it. Those who are gone to heaven cannot be of any use to us, as they did so little for us when on earth, whether in temporal or in spiritual matters; and they were as holy then, being members or parts of Christ, as they are now. The bishop and the saint are like the butler, who, when delivered out of prison and promoted, made it his business not to remember poor Joseph. (Gen. xl. 23.) The more power people have got the harder they are on the poor; and the better the man the more he requires of us. There are no windfalls for the poor man from any quarter; and he is not always allowed even what he earns. The Pope, bishop, and priest, being big men, can afford to preach their invented doctrine of Invocation of Saints,

The Priestly charm of mixing good and evil. 163

which is for the purpose of making little gods of themselves over people in this life; and for preserving their memory as a legacy to be left, when they are dead, for the honour of their relations. But the most profitable religion for the poor man to preach is every man for himself, without depending on priest or saint, and Christ for us all. My own Invocation of Saints is to invoke honest John Bull to feed me in my church. The Pope makes Saints to rival the Queen in creating Peers.

The Priest says that his sacraments give grace; that his absolution takes away sin; that those upon whom he puts the curse of the church are ruined; and that binding people in sin and in hell fire is a part of his religion. Now ruinous things, such as the priest's curses, destroy good things, for even rats know that eating bread with arsenic will not improve the poison. Therefore, the absolution of the priest, and the grace of his sacraments are poisonous drugs, as well as his curses; for arsenic and bread mixed together form a poisonous lump. This must be so, for God says that "blessing and cursing ought not to come from the same mouth; and that no fountain yields both salt water and fresh.” -(James iii. 12.)

As the Bishops deny the Pope's doctrine of Invocation of Saints, they did not consult St. James when writing that Article of Religion, in which they say that what their holy lordships have put into the hands of a bad minister cannot be affected by his badness, in passing through his hands to others, on account of the charm of their lordships' goodness.

H.R.H. the Prince of Wales, for instance, is like God Almighty by being supreme above all, by virtue

164

Relying on the inferior.

of his position and his superior goodness. Like the bishops, saints, and angels under God, the great people of this country under the Prince, do not do much good for poor men. The courtiers have not looked after the souls and the Church at Flitcham for him, where he has the shooting property of nearly 4000 acres.

God did not leave my soul depending upon saints, nor yet upon priests and bishops, for these had cut me off long enough before God Himself converted me. Nor did the great and good Prince of Wales leave me depending upon the courtiers, for he was pleased to send me the following letter inviting me to preach a sermon before him to make a qualified man of me for ever afterwards. It is to Christ himself, and not to saints, angels, priests, or bishops, that we must come for salvation, and it is to the good Prince and not to the courtiers that we must come for consideration. I can give no better instance to prove the folly of invoking saints, than the way the courtiers neglect despised poor people, who look up to them and who expect something from them. Showing any respect whatever toward courtiers is dividing our reverence toward the Prince, and, therefore, weakening or reducing it to the smallest possible degree. Therefore, it is God alone we should honour by invocation. Any other course is making princes of courtiers, and gods of saints.

[COPY OF LETTER.]

Sandringham, King's Lynn, Thursday, Jan. 21st, 1875. Dear Sir, The Prince of Wales has desired me to request that you would preach the sermon for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel, on Sunday next, the 24th, at Sandringham

Loyalty shewing itself under difficulties.

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Church, morning service. Should it be in your power to comply with his Royal Highness's wishes, will you be good enough to call in the course of to-morrow, or to call on the Rector, the Rev. Lake Onslow, to hear the arrangement he proposes for the collection. I am, Dear Sir,

The Rev. B. O'Malley.

Yours truly,

W. KNOLLYS.

None of the courtiers told the great and good Prince when he took the Flitcham game property, that the Lord wanted the tenth of all things which any man takes out of a parish, and that the Vicars were his holy gamekeepers in his State Church, by preaching the eighth commandment against thieves. Similarly I am certain no Popish saint, to whom people pray, would go to the trouble of pleading for wretched sinners, even if he could hear them.

After H.R.H. the Prince, who is the best man on earth, came shooting on the Flitcham soil, which was cursed by the ill-treated clergymen of by-gone days, I was distressed to see H.R.H. brought to death's door by fever. I was at that time curate of Congham Church, near Flitcham, and I prayed aloud in my sermon for the recovery of H.R.H. The law would imprison me for putting this good prayer into the service: so I turned my unwritten sermon into two parts, namely, praying for the good Prince of Wales (who began to recover, thank God, from that moment forward), and preaching to my hearers so to live as to escape any punishment from God, whether sickness, loss, misfortune, or hell-fire. I comforted the sickly among them by telling them that the righteous, like Job and the Prince of Wales, are sometimes afflicted. To prove the exalted position of God and of the

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The reasonableness of Reprobation.

good Prince of Wales, and that we should not dictate to either of them, and to reconcile people to the state or position in which God has placed them, I entered my pulpit and preached the following short sermon upon Reprobation. I took for my text Rom. ix. 21, "Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour and another unto dishonour?"

Oh! poor sinners, cried I, the force of this scripture is, that the treatment of the inferior by the superior, when they are of different natures, however hard it may appear in our eyes, must not be condemned. It is as wrong and as unreasonable for you to complain of God's treatment, as it would be for the clay to condemn the potter for his use of it. Surely God could save all people from going to hell if He thought proper. If it were otherwise, the man who damns himself, and the devil, would be stronger than God. This would be blasphemy; and it would mean that the clay is lord and prince of the potter. If, therefore, we blame God for sending souls to hell, or for allowing them to go there (which is the same thing, when He can stop them if He likes), we are making out that we are better doers, or more merciful, or cleverer than He, or that, unlike Him, we are so good as to leave no good thing undone. This again would be blasphemy. God and the Prince of Wales are the potters, and you and I are the clay. Let both, then, do as they like. The Lord's will be done, when He sends to hell "the rich man clothed in purple and fine linen, and faring sumptuously every day" with poor minister Lazarus starving at his gate. It is true that