In closing these extracts, we beg leave to express ourselves in the words of the Rev. Dr. Sunderland, of Washington city, in a sermon delivered before the American and Foreign Christian Union, at its anniversary in May, 1856.
"But new it is asked, 'Why all this tirade against Roman Catholics?' We repel the implication. It is not against the unhappy millions that are ground down under the iron heel of that enormous despotism. They are of the common humanity, our brethren and kinsmen, according to the flesh. They need the same light instruction and salvation that we need. Like ourselves they need the one God, the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus; and from the heart we love and pity them. We would grant them all the privileges which we claim to ourselves. We can have no animosity towards them as men and candidates with ourselves for the coming judgment. But it is the system under which they are born, and live, and die, I repeat, which we denounce, and when we shall cease to oppose it, then let our right hand forget her cunning, and our tongue cleave to the roof of our mouth. What is it but a dark and terrible power on earth before which so many horrible memories start up? Why, sir, look at it! We drag the bones of the grim behemoth out to view, for we would not have the world forget his ugliness nor the terror he has inspired. 'A tirade against Romanism,' is it? O sir, we remember the persecutions of Justinian; we remember the days of the Spanish Inquisition; we remember the reign of 'the Bloody Mary;' we remember the revocation of the Edict of Nantes; we remember St. Bartholomew; we remember the murdered Covenanters, Huguenots, and Piedmontese; we remember the noble martyrs dying for the testimony of the faith along the ancient Rhine; we remember the later wrath which pursued the islanders of Madeira, till some of them sought refuge upon these shores; we remember the Madiai, and we know how the beast ever seeks to propagate his power, by force where he can, by deception where he must. And when we remember these things, we must protest against the further vigor and prosperity of this grand Babylon of all. Take it, then, tirade and all, for so ye must, ye ministers of Rome, sodden with the fumes of that great deep of abominations! The voice of the Protestant shall never be hushed; the spirit of Reformation shall never sleep. O, lands of Farel and of Calvin, of Zwingle and of Luther! O countries where the trumpet first sounded, marshalling the people to this fearful contest! We have heard the blast rolling still louder down the path of three hundred years, and in our solid muster-march we come, the children of the tenth generation. We come a growing phalanx, not with carnal weapons, but with the armor of the gospel, and wielding the sword of truth on the right hand and on the left, we say that ANTICHRIST MUST FALL. Hear it, ye witnesses, and mark the word; by the majesty of the coming kingdom of Jesus, and by the eternal purpose of Jehovah, THIS ANTICHRIST MUST FALL."
END