When you turn to your Bibles, you will find the Virgin Mary there. You will find her there as “highly favoured” and blessed among women—but you will not find her as a mediator between yourself and her Incarnate Son; you will not find her as the object in any sense or measure, of religious worship. And when you turn to your Bibles, you will find Confession there—but you will not find confession to your priest necessarily enjoined; you will not find that, in order to absolution, you are bound to open to a fellow man all the secrets of your inmost soul. On Calvary alone, and at the foot of the cross, must you confess your sins. And when you turn to your Bibles, you will find Good Works there—but you will not find good works to have in any measure an atoning efficacy—but that we are justified by faith without the deeds of the law. And when you turn to your Bibles, you will find in them the blessed truth that the Lord Jesus Christ died on the cross for sinners—but you will not find the doctrine of the mass there. “Christ was once offered to bear the sins of many.”—“By one offering he hath perfected for ever them that are sanctified;” and that offering is never to be, and never can be, repeated. When you turn to your Bibles you will find that in the Sacrament of the Lord’s Supper we do, in a spiritual sense, by faith, eat the body and drink the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ—but you will not find that by the prayer of the Priest, common sense is contradicted, and the bread, and the juice of the vine, turned into the body and blood of the Son of Man.
Beloved, all I ask of you is to test these things by Scripture, and when you have done this, compare the Church of England with that of Rome, and may the Spirit of God be with you as your helper and your guide!
This congregation is now about to separate. The Roman Catholic who is here, will perhaps never more set foot within these walls. But remember we shall meet again at the last great day. On that solemn day no priest can stand in your stead; no Church doctrines or dogmas can be put in as your plea or excuse before your Judge. You will stand in the presence of Him who made you and hath redeemed you. And if I have seemed to speak bitterly, believe me, in these last words, it is my soul’s inmost prayer for every Romanist here present to-night, that, if he be not brought out of that Church before that solemn hour when the wood and hay and stubble shall be burnt up by the judgment-fires, he may yet, spite of his Romanism, be so found on the ONE FOUNDATION—even Jesus—as that we may meet in the Church in glory!
B. HALL, PRINTER, HIGH-STREET, BIRMINGHAM
FOOTNOTES.
[5] I subjoin the following documents, issued since the preaching of this Sermon:—
At a Meeting of the Committee of the Birmingham Auxiliary to the British and Foreign Bible Society, held December 11th, 1848.
It was unanimously resolved:
That the object of the British and Foreign Bible Society being the circulation of the Word of God without note or comment, this Committee cannot pass unnoticed the dishonour done to the Word of God by the act of a Roman Catholic Priest in this town, who, during the last month, burned a copy of the New Testament; nor the attempt made by his coadjutors and himself in repudiating that act, to excuse it in some respect, inasmuch as that excuse rests upon principles which, carried out to their legitimate conclusion, would infringe upon our undoubted right to circulate the Word of God, wherever parties of any and of every creed are willing to receive it.
To the Editor of Aris’s Gazette.
Sir—It is with much regret that I am obliged again to come before the public on the subject of the Testament which was burnt in London ’Prentice-street, in this town, by the Rev. W. Molloy, a Priest of the Church of Rome, but the cause of truth demands it of me. It is stated in the apology put forth by that Rev. Gentleman and his coadjutors, “that the act was regretted afterwards by the Clergyman by whom it was done, and strongly disapproved of by his brother Clergy as soon as known,” and that it was “under the excitement of the moment that the act, which it is not attempted to justify, was done.”
Now Sir, I ask you, as I ask the public, are these statements consistent with the following facts:—The Testament was burnt on Thursday, Nov. 16, about two o’clock p.m., and it was not till the following Saturday, about midday, that I had any conversation with the Priest upon the subject.
Being in London ’Prentice-street on the Saturday, Mr. Molloy sent for me to the house where he had burnt the Testament, to ask if I supposed that the woman to whose daughter the book had been given was a Protestant, because he had heard that I had visited her the day before. It was upon that occasion that I enquired of him whether or not he had burnt the Testament; he told me that he had, and would burn every Bible and Tract he found in the houses of his people. I warned him that I should make his words public, and he told me I was perfectly welcome to do so. I further remember saying that I had often been told that I had unjustly charged the Romish Priests with denying the Bible to their people, and his reply was to this effect—“You have stated the truth, and are perfectly welcome to state it when you will; you are furthering our objects by doing so.” There are several other points in the apology on which I should much like to dwell, but I think it best simply to state facts, and leave the public to judge for themselves whether the apology that this act was done in the excitement of the moment can apply to Mr. Molloy, who, after the reflection of two days, threatened to repeat the act again and again.
I remain, Sir, your obedient Servant,
JOSHUA GREAVES,
Incumbent of St. Peter’s, Birmingham.December 14, 1848.
[8] “Hopes had been raised of a new order of things, as a new Head, of a widely different character from any of his predecessors, ascended the Papal Throne. Yes—rail-roads and gas-lights shall be admitted for the first time in the dominions of Him of Rome: but, not the Bible Society; that shall be denounced with as loud a voice of thunder, as ever proceeded from the City of the Seven Hills. That voice of thunder has been re-echoed by Cardinals and others, in France, Holland, and elsewhere; and so re-echoed, that many a faint heart has quailed; and some, who before stood half-prepared to encourage the dissemination of the Scriptures, have drawn back and closed the door before half-opened. And yet, even among Roman Catholics, the distribution of the Scriptures has proved as large as ever.—In no previous year has the Society been counted worthy of suffering a fiercer vituperation from this quarter than during the past. Take as an example, the following paragraph from a famous Encyclical Letter, and see with what company the Society is associated:—
“You are already well acquainted, Venerable Brethren, with other monsters of error, and the frauds with which the children of the present age strive bitterly to beset the Catholic religion and the Divine authority of the Church: to oppose its laws, and to trample on the rights of the sacred as well as of the civil power. To this point tend those guilty conspiracies against the Roman Chair of the blessed Peter, on which Christ laid the irremovable foundations of his Church. To this point tend the operations of those secret Societies, emerging from their native darkness for the ruin and devastation of the common weal, as well sacred as social, who have been again and again condemned with anathema by the Roman Pontiffs our predecessors, in their Apostolic Letters, which we, in the plentitude of our Apostolic power, confirm, and command to be most strictly observed. This also is the tendency and design of those insidious Bible Societies, which, renewing the crafts of the ancient heretics, cease not to obtrude upon all kinds of men, even the least instructed, gratuitously and at an immense expense, copies in vast numbers of the Books of the Sacred Scriptures, translated (against the holiest rules of the Church) into various vulgar tongues, and very often with the most perverse and erroneous interpretations; to the end that (Divine tradition, the doctrine of the Fathers, and the authority of the Catholic Church being rejected,) every man may interpret the revelations of the Almighty according to his own private judgement, and, perverting their sense, fall into the most dangerous errors. Which Societies, emulous of his predecessor, Gregory XVI., of blessed memory, (to whose place we have been permitted to succeed, without his merits,) reproved by his Apostolic Letter (16) and we desire equally to condemn.”—Forty-third Report of the British and Foreign Bible Society.
[11a] “Awful Disclosure, being Extracts Translated from the Moral Theology of Alphonsus Liguori,” by Rev. R. P. Blakeney.