publicly lay for us. By the eye of faith the signs of the times may be clearly and distinctly seen; the Catholic Church has entered upon a great controversy with Jews, Turks, infidels, heretics, and schismatics, with whom she must contend earnestly for the faith which has been delivered to her keeping. The time is at hand-nay, it is already come-that our Lord shall find but little faith on the earth. The faith, the doctrine, and the discipline of the Church can alone stand betwixt the living and the dead and stay the plague; and therefore, with the divine blessing, the original design of the CHURCHWARDER shall be carried out in making them familiar to our unlearned readers.

WE respectfully entreat both the reverend the clergy and the earnest-minded laity to further our good intentions, by recommending the CHURCHWARDER to their friends; but especially to that class of readers to which it is addressed. If all our present subscribers were to obtain even one more reader, it would materially improve our circulation; and we beseech them to make the exertion. Hoping to be favoured with their support during the ensuing year, we respectfully bid them farewell.

Advent, 1847.

AT THE Commencement of a new Series of the CHURCH-WARDER AND DOMESTIC MAGAZINE, it is necessary and proper to state that the discontinuance of the first Series was occasioned by the death of Mr. Lendrum, the former publisher. This circumstance deranged all the Editor's plans; and so much time elapsed before arrangements could be made to continue the WARDER that it has been thought advisable to make a new commencement, instead of continuing the former Series, which only reached to the ninth number.

OUR OBJECT has been to elucidate in a popular manner, the history, doctrines and discipline of the Catholic Church of England. Ever since the Church was planted in England by St. Paul, she has been in close alliance with the State, which she made religious by her influence. But since the fatal repeal of the Corporation and Test Acts, her sworn and banded enemies have had the dominion over her. The fierce papist, the unchristian quaker, the latitudinarian dissenter who calls himself after an earthly founder, and the blaspheming Socinian, have become her legislators and oppressors. Since that time she has been in a state of persecution, and has neither received comfort nor support from a Government that still professes to be of her Communion. Ten Irish bishopricks were suppressed at "one fell swoop"Bristol was united to Bath and Wells, and the attempt was made and long persevered in to unite the ancient bishoprick of Mann with Carlisle, and St. Asaph with Bangor. Thus proceeding by little and little to injure and cripple the Church; but the last evil intentions were frustrated by a little wholesome agitation. In addition to the indifference of her friends the dissenters have stricken hands with the papists; and they have set themselves in array against her, as the last and the only bulwark of the Reformation. But let us hope that the storm which rages against her, will, by divine grace, be directed to purify and strengthen her, and to produce in all her ministers and members the spirit of unity and godly love.

NOTWITHSTANDING the disclaimers of the Prime Minister of England, by which he means only to keep the word of promise to our ears but to break it to our hopes, the Church of Ireland is doomed to be disestablished. The late Prime Minister laid the foundation for it by offering a premium for agitation, and the present Minister is pledged No. I.

B

by former professions to effect it. But when bad men combine the faithful soldiers and servants of Christ ought to unite for mutual defence and protection-for union is strength. We are commanded to contend EARNESTLY for the faith, and to be ever ready to give an account of our profession. These commands imply controversy; for without it, it is hardly possible either to contend earnestly for the faith, or to maintain it undefiled as it was delivered once for all to the primitive Church, and handed down to us by "the pillar and ground of the truth." Christian men ought ever to remember that their course is a warfare; that in baptism they were made soldiers of Christ; and that then they undertook to fight manfully under his banner. Now then, in this time of rebuke and blasphemy, is the time to come up to the help of the Lord against those mighty men who are suffered "to reproach the living God."

LET US HUMBLE ourselves therefore before Him, and turn unto Him with all our hearts, with all our minds, with all our souls, and with all our strength; and peradventure He will "repent of the evil which He purposed to do unto us, because of the evil of our doings." Then He will avert the evil, and not suffer the Romans to take away our name and nation, as they proudly boast, nor to place again the papal yoke about our necks, which neither we nor our fathers were able to bear. But amongst the most ominous signs of the times, the worst and most dangerous perhaps, is that lukewarmness and false liberality that have got possession of the public mind. With His own mouth God has declared that the former is utterly hateful to Him, even to the excitement of the most disgusting emotion. The latter is one of the evil portents of the times in which we live, giving fearful note of the approach of that awful period when Christ shall not find faith on the earth.

IN DEFENDING Our own territories, it may be necessary sometimes to invade those of our adversaries. In doing this however we will endeavour to act in the spirit of charity, warring only against the corruptions of our adversaries, but acknowledging and respecting the truth wherever we may find it. It will not be against a solitary error that we shall have to protest; but against a mass of them in the papal church; and such as shall not be met with in any other church in the world. None of their errors are innocent; but they are chiefly malignant in their nature and influence. Some of them directly contradict God's word, by teaching that the souls of the faithful departed, instead of being at rest from their labours and in joy and felicity, are tormented in purgatory, till their release can be purchased from some covetous priest: some strike at the foundation of the Christian faith, by transferring the atonement and mediation of Christ to the blessed Virgin and other saints; some operate as a practical denial of the One all-sufficient sacrifice of Christ once offered; and others supersede the necessity of a holy and obedient life, by the sale of indulgences, together with the value that they place upon ceremonial righteousness.

WE HONESTLY believe that the churches on the Continent that are

under the dominion of the See of Rome are true though corrupt churches; but we are also firmly of opinion that the popish communion in the three kingdoms is not a branch of the holy catholic and apostolic Church. It is a schismatical intruder, which has thrust its sickle into another man's harvest. At the Reformation almost all the British bishops washed their hands of the Roman slavery, and purified their Churches from idolatry and false doctrine. From that period till about the year 1570 there were neither Roman bishops nor priests in the three kingdoms. About that time however the pope sent some priests and afterwards some foreign bishops into both England and Ireland, and thereby created a schismatical and dissenting communion which has existed till now. The restless ambition of Rome has ever since been actively engaged in creating divisions in our branch of the Catholic Church; and the papal church, as the mother of harlots, has organized several of the protestant dissenting bodies, and has excited seditions and rebellions against the civil government. The popish dissenting communion in the British dominions is therefore no part of the holy Catholic and Apostolic Church of which we confess our belief in the Creed, but a schismatical and heretical foreign sect. Its chief ministers are not Catholic. bishops, but the pope's vicars or representatives. Till lately they did not call themselves bishops but only vicars apostolic, and we know that priests have held that office. They sometimes took the titles of foreign churches; but now, in the teeth of an Act of Parliament, they have dared to assume the titles of our catholic bishops.

ON THE OTHER HAND the "Dissenting Interest "for they do not call their communions churches-are notoriously guilty both of heresy and causeless schism. Their various communities were all founded, since the Reformation, by different individuals, some of whom were concealed Jesuits; and they call themselves after their founders' names, contrary to Christ's commandment. Their ministers have no ecclesiastical orders, and consequently no mission-they run unsent. They have taken the honour of ministering in Christ's name on themselves; and in consequence their ministrations are sacrilegious, and decidedly partake of the "gainsaying of Core." It is painful to think that they are mostly the children of popery and jesuitism, and that they partake much of the spirit of their parent. Bishop Walker, in his Life of Archbishop Whitgift, has drawn an admirable portrait of them, in the following words:-"The truth is that the disciplinarians, whom Whitgift opposed with a firmness becoming his condition, and yet with a mildness and moderation beyond the spirit of his age, and beyond the appreciation of those fiery zealots, were actuated by mere faction and phantasy. The spirit has subsisted from that period to the present by uninterrupted succession, the same identical spirit, but under a thousand separate shapes. The identical grievances of that age have vanished every one, and with a vast variety of intermediate successors have made way for grievances of a different sound, and of a more recent date; while the holy discipline, which bore with it, forsooth,

the seal of God and the authority of Scripture, is now nowhere to be found-its influence lost, its authority disregarded, while the dissenting body, which now occupies its place, is made up of shreds and patches, repelling each other with more than magnetic repulsion. But with this irreconcileable repulsion they can yet unite even with the papist in one general principle of ENMITY and OPPOSITION to the Church of England to that Church which, by the blessing of God, the prudence of Whitgift contributed to preserve, when her reformation was recent; which the providence of God still preserves in perfect and uninterrupted uniformity of faith, worship and discipline; and which still stands in the high and holy attitude of an effectual bulwark of pure and undefiled religion, equally, though in perfect charity, opposed to the papist, the fanatic, and the infidel-to the papist, who gives to superstition the attributes of true religion-to the fanatic, who when he is not a hypocrite, is a fool-and to the infidel, who whether Socinian or Deist, refuses to believe the revelation which God gave of His Son."

IT IS EVERY Christian man's duty to obey the Apostle's command to mark and avoid, those that cause divisions and offences in the Christian Church-to withdraw from every person that walketh disorderly, and not after the orthodox traditions which he once delivered to the saints-to note and not to keep company with those who disobey his teaching. We think that we cannot exercise our obedience more fully and practically than by exposing the errors and corruptions of those that are without the Church, in the spirit of meekness and charity. At the same time we will endeavour to bear in mind that the Apostle also commands us not to count such men as enemies, but to admonish them as brethren.

OUR CHIEF OBJECT shall be to make the doctrine, discipline, and constitution of the Catholic Churches of Great Britain familiar to the meanest capacity of her uneducated and labouring members. In the performance of this duty we will endeavour to keep that moderation from extreme opinions which is so happily set before us by the Church of England, and to follow the Liturgy which contains her whole doctrine. Also, under divine guidance, to counteract the poison of popish and other dissenting principles, and to present the Agriculturist, the Tradesman, and the Mechanic with arguments against the sleight and cunning craftiness whereby false teachers lie in wait to deceive them. We therefore most respectfully but earnestly entreat the reverend the Clergy, to assist our efforts, and to aid in the circulation of the WARDER amongst their parishioners and others with whom they have any influence. We would also appeal to the wealthy amongst the laity that they would give us the advantage of their countenance, both upon religious and also upon political grounds. And it shall be the Editor's unceasing endeavour to render the WARDER worthy of the patronage both of the Clergy and of the laity; and also a mean under divine assistance to advance the cause of religion and loyalty amongst the people.