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within us, and we are kept and preserved from error and heresy! This is our comfort and consolation-we know that his kingdom shall stand.

Do you ask, then, in the contemplation of these things, What are the principles of the Protestant Association? It is for the vindication of Protestant truth; it is to vindicate the purity and to support the existence of our religious institutions. It is, on the one hand, to unmask the errors of the Papal hierarchy, who are insidiously introducing them into the Church, and to bring before the public what is the real state of things: we who are for the most part immersed in the various occupations of life, are not able to abserve what is going on in the great (shall I call it) world of religious life; but they who know what is going forward there, and are acquainted with the machinations that are going on against that which is near and dear to every Briton's soul, will unmask it to this Protestant nation. And it is, on the other hand, to arouse the Protestant Church to its danger; for if a departure from God's truth be the ruin of a people, why then, if we do not maintain the purity of that truth, and serve Him in the way that He has appointed therein, we may become the pioneers of our own destruction; for idolatry does not consist merely in the bowing down to images,-to worship God in any other way than he has appointed is idolatry. There is in the people of this country a love and attachment to the faith of their Protestant fathers, which will never leave them indolently and supinely to see "the enemy coming in like a flood," but impel them unitedly to "lift up a standard against him ;" and that is another object of this Association. Then, thirdly, it is to stir up the nation to rally about the throne, and to stand up in vindication of the Protestant Government under which we live; it is to make known unto her who reigns over us what a loyal people are those, who are influenced by the faith of their forefathers, to show how

many thousands would be ready to flock around and to maintain her throne and her sceptre, while she maintains that which has been delivered to her-the Protestant faith in which we live, and to assure her how many swords would be drawn for her, and how many flags would wave in the air, so long as "Victoria" is inscribed on them all, and she is engaged in the defence of the Protestant faith. And yet another object is to call our rulers' attention to these things, and to petition them (and that continually and earnestly) to apply the only remedy that is calculated to meet the evil. If the statement now made to you be true, idolatry was the worm at the root of the tree, the cause of the downfall of Israel. And, my dear brethren, so sure as the Word of God is truth, and Papal Rome is the beast, the Antichrist that is denounced and accursed of God, and so long as Protestant England stands identified with it, the evil will remain, and so sure will be its downfall. What, therefore, is the remedy? There is only one, and it is that we would entreat the attention of our governors, namely, to sever and to separate us at once, entirely and eternally, from the man of sin—the Antichrist; and then the blessing of the Lord God Almighty will again rest upon our land.

Is not the Association worthy of your support? You must be aware that to carry on a plan so extensive as this, and to fill so wide a field as it would occupy, it requires that which is the nerves and the sinews of every Societyit requires money. We call upon you, therefore, to give that which you feel it in your hearts to give, for the good of the Protestant faith, and for the glory of Christ, and for his kingdom.

But, dear brethren, let us not separate without my attempting at least to press upon your minds the great importance of cultivating Protestant principles in your own souls. Oh! look well, I beseech you, to the ground

of your own faith. See that all is right there. See that Christ is "formed within you the hope of glory," that you hold the truth in its purity according to the Word of God, that you have it therein in all its spirit and in all its life, that you are spiritually and truly united to Christ Jesus. So shall you be fit champions for the faith against dangers from without; so shall you be as lions within, to whom is committed that which is dearer than life itself, namely, the faith for which God has given his Son, and the Word which has set before us the glad tidings of salvation, and discovered to us the way which leadeth unto life. Then, and then only, will you be fit champions for that faith, and for the kingdom of Christ and his glory.

FINIS.

MAYNOOTH.

Extract from the Hon. and Rev. B. W. Noel's "Notes of a Short Tour, &c., 1836."

of

"As I departed from the college, grateful for the polite attention of Dr. Montague, I could not but reflect with melancholy interest on the prodigious moral power lodged within the walls of that mean, rough-cast, and whitewashed range buildings, standing without one architectural recommendation on that dark and gloomy flat. What a vomiting of fiery zeal for worthless ceremonies and fatal errors! Thence how the priestly deluge, issuing like an infant sea, or, rather, like a fiery flood, from its roaring crater, pours over the parishes of Ireland, to repress all spiritual improvement by their anti-Protestant enmities, and their cumbrous rites!

"For those poor youths themselves, many of them with ingenuous countenances, I felt a deeper pity still. There, before they know it, to be drilled and practised for their hopeless warfare against the kingdom of Christ, there to imbibe endless prejudices fatal to themselves and others, there to be sworn upon the altars of superstition to an interminable hatred of what they call heresy, which is indeed pure and undefiled religion; to have prejudice blackened into malice against those who love God; to have all their worldly interests thenceforth identified with priestcraft, to settle down, perhaps, after a fearful struggle between interest and conscience, into Epicurean scepticism; perhaps, in some instances, to teach the people to adore what they know to be a bit of bread; to curse them from the altar, for what they themselves believe to be right and a duty-the perusal of the Word of God; and, lastly, to despise them for trembling at the impotent malediction."

THIRD ANNUAL REPORT

OF THE

PROTESTANT ASSOCIATION,

DELIVERED MAY 8, 1839.

To which is appended,

THE ANNIVERSARY SERMON,

PREACHED IN

ST. CLEMENT DANES CHURCH, ON FRIDAY, MAY 10, 1839.

BY THE

REV. HUGH MNEILE,

OF ST. JUDE'S, LIVERPOOL.

LONDON:

Printed by A. Macintosh, 20, Great New-street.

SOLD BY HATCHARD AND SON, AND L. AND G. SEELEY: AND AT THE OFFICE OF THE ASSOCIATION, 2, EXETER HALL.

M DCCC XXXIX.

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