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EXTRACT FROM THE LIFE OF BRADFORD.

DEAR SIR,

To the Editor of the Gospel Magazine.

Reading your article in this mouth's Magazine, "A Visit to the Brethren at Brussels ;" and noticing the subject of Popish Mass, and your enquiry as to what it really means, I felt a strong inclination to send you the enclosed extract from one of Bradford's letters, together with his biographer's note on the subject in question.

The letter alluded to is No. 100, in "Memoirs of the Life and Martyrdom of Bradford," by William Stephens. (London: R. Fenn, Homer's Head, Charing Cross, 1832).

and man.

In the commencement of the letter, he anathematizes all those professed gospelers that would go with the Papists to the mass, and "tarry with them personally at their anti-christian and idolatrous service; declaring them to be "the most perilous and pernicious, both before God That they were false to both, and true to neither.' That their excuses to save their life and property, would avail them nothing when they come to stand before the judgment seat of Christ. "That the Catholic church will not excuse them; nay, it will most of all accuse them, as will all the good fathers, patriarchs, apostles, prophets, martyrs, confessors, and saints."

"All those condemn the mass; and all who ever use it, as it is now, being, of all idols that ever was, the most abominable, and blasphemous to Christ, and his priesthood, manhood, and sacrifice; for it maketh the priest that saith mass, God's fellow, and better than Christ, for the offerer is always better, or equivalent, to the thing offered. If, therefore, the priest take upon him, there to offer up Christ, as they boldly affirm they do, then must he needs be better or equal with, Christ. Oh that they would show but one iota of the scripture of God, calling them to this dignity, or of their authority to offer up Christ, for the quick and dead, and to apply the benefit of his death and passion to whom they will."

"Surely if this were true, as it is most false and blasphemous, prate they, at their pleasure, to the contrary; then, it made no matter at all whether Christ were our friend or not, if so be the mass priest were our friend, for he can apply Christ's merits to us by his mass, if he will,

and when he will, and therefore we need little to care for Christ's friendship. They can make him,* when they will, and where they will. Lo he is here! there he is! say they; but believe them not, saith Christ; believe them not, saith He. For in his human nature and body, which was made of the virgin's body, and not of bread; in this body, I say, he is, and sitteth on the right hand of God the Father Almighty, from where, and not from the pit, shall he come to judge both the quick and the dead. In the mean season, heaven, saith St. Peter, must receive him. And as Paul saith, he prayeth for us, and now is not seen

* Make Him! Make whom? Jesus Christ, that is God! The priest-ridden, and ill-informed Papist will cry out calumny! and the pious, over-liberal, and not much better informed Protestant, will hardly refrain from re-echoing the charge, and both will unite in declaring, either that the martyr has here brought an unfounded charge against the Papists of that day, or that at all events, no modern disciple of the vatican holds any such horrible opinions. But Bradford, and the reformers of the sixteenth century, were too conscientious to make unfounded charges, and too well informed to be imposed upon, by the specious and never-ending manoeuvres of their antagonists. The books which contained their unblushing abominations, were then in the hands of the reformers, who having only just emancipated themselves from their thraldom, were as well acquainted with them, as the Papists themselves; and the works in question were then more acceptable than now to ordinary readers.

But was the charge false or true? It was true. It might be sufficient to allege, that the truth of the charge is inevitably involved in the doctrine of the real presence for do not the Papists believe in the divinity of Jesus Christ? and do they not maintain that the very body and blood of Jesus Christ exists in the sacrament, after consecration by the priest? "Si quis negaverit, in sanctissimæ eucharistiæ sacramento contineri vere, realiter et substantialiter corpus et sanguinem una cum anima et divinitate Domini nostri Jesu Christi, ac proinde Totum Christum; sed dixerit Tantummodo esse in eo ut in signo, vel figura aut virtute; anathema sit. Concil. Trid. Sess. 13. cap 8, can. 1."

Translation" If any one shall deny that the body and blood, with the soul and divinity, of our Lord Jesus Christ, and therefore the whole of Christ, are truly, really, and substantially, contained in the sacrament of the most Holy Eucharist, but shall say that it is only in it as a sign or figure, let him be accursed."

As the real presence therefore takes place only after consecration, it follows that the priest who consecrates, creates that which remains, after consecration; and if that which was bread and wine before consecration, becomes the body and blood of Christ, who is God, by the act of consecration, then the priest creates God. In other words, the vile and sinful creature, and God only knows how vile and sinful that creature often is, creates the King of kings, and Lord of lords!

But still the artful, or ignorant Papist, and the horror-struck Protestant will exclaim, "mortal man can never seriously intend to assert such blasphemy as this." Bnt our martyr made no false charge, and we would therefore solemnly and seriously appeal to every conscientious and well instructed Papist, whether this is not blasphemy in the abstract? and whether it does not, per se, justify the application to their own hierarchy, of all the horrible deuunciations in the apocalypse? Solemnly, seriously, and affectionately, would we entreat him to think what must be the inevitable doom of every one who identifies himself with such horrible association, and to listen to the voice from heaven itself, in the words of his own bible, "Come out from her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye may not receive of her plagues." Excite de illa, populus meus; ut ne participes sitis delictorum ejus, et de plagis ejus non accipatis." Apocal. 18. 4. Apud. Vulg.

elsewhere, or otherwise seen, than by faith, there, until he shall be seen as he is, to the salvation of them that look for his coming, which I trust is not far off. For if the day of the Lord drew near in the Apostle's time, which is now above fifteen hundred years past, it cannot be, I trust, long hence now. I trust our Redeemer's coming is at hand, then these mass sayers and seers, shall shake and cry to the hills, hide us from the fierce wrath of the Lamb, if they repent not in time."

"Then will neither gold, nor goods; friendship, nor fellowship; lordship, nor anthority; power, nor pleasure; unity, nor antiquity; custom, nor counsel; doctors, devils, nor any man's devise serve. The Word which the Lerd hath spoken in that day shall judge. The Word, I say, of God, in that day shall judge."

"And what saith it of idolatry, and idolators? Saith it not, flee from it? And further, that they shall be damned! Oh terrible sentence to all mass-mongers and worshippers of things made with the hands of bakers, carpenters, &c. This Word of God knoweth no more oblations or sacrifices for sin, but one only, which Christ himself offered, never more to be re-offered; but in remembrance thereof his supper to be eaten, sacramentally and spiritually, according to Christ's institution; which is so perverted now, that there is nothing in it-simply according to the judge. I mean the Word of God."

Such, dear Editor, is the joint testimony of our reformers, and the church of Rome ifself, and the gross idolatry of the mass. Idolatry, worse than heathenism, and which of itself, must ever characterize the Church that teaches such doctrine as Antichrist.

May the shining of the blessed Spirit illuminate your path-gladden your heart with sweet views of Jesus-unfold his mediatorial treasures to your view-till the world, and sin, and self are left, to bask in glory's beams, and feast in everlasting love. This is the only cure for the vexations and ills of life; and this alone can enable us to meet and triumph over Death. In the bonds of covenant love,

Yours, sinful and unworthy,

Stourbridge, Nov. 16th, 1846.

J. P. S.

TO THOSE WHO MOURN THEIR DEAD.

"Had not God a property in them as well as you, prior to yours, or superior? They were his, before they were yours; they are his, now they are no longer yours; by a thousand obligations, ties, and relations that ought to take place of all our daring and pretensions.

Should they have been immortal here, only to please you? to have lived, though weary of it; to have stayed, though longing to be gone; and in misery, though fit for happiness? Should they be kept in the troubles of life,-in the pains of sickness,-and the infirmities of age; or, at best, in the insipid repetition of the same round of things, only to prevent a vacancy in any of your amusements or delights? Is this thy kindness to thy friend?

Some parting time must come, why not this? If the time of parting with them was left to our choice, it would greatly iucrease our confusion.

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"Moderate sorrow is allowable on account of our own loss, even of those who sleep in Jesus. The apostle does not say he would not have them sorrow at all, but not as others,-not as those who have no such hopes, as you have. It is the regulation of sorrow that he aims at, and not the total suppression of it. To be altogether unconcerned is unnatural. To be so overmuch, is unchristian. They are both hurtful extremes to any soil, either to have no water at all, or to have it overflow and drown the land round about.-From Grosvenor's " Mourner, or the Afflicted Relieved."

THE THRONE OF GRACE.

We are invited to come, and that even with boldness, to the throne of grace. And why should we not do so? If, indeed, we depended for obtaining the petitions that we ask, upon our own merits, and might ask nothing but what we deserve, then it would be useless to go to a throne of grace, or to take the name of God into our lips at all, since we have deserved only wrath. But if our petitions be founded on the merits of Christ, then we can ask nothing that he has not deserved, and nothing that, if it be really good for us, he is not willing to bestow. In this case, to come to God with fear and hesitation, to limit our petitions to small matters, because we feel that we have no claim to ask larger or to make our own merits, in any degree, the measure of our acceptance, or to ask, as if God would grudge what he bestows; in all this we are just dishonouring our great High Priest, and living far beneath the privileges which he bestows upon us. To consider religion as being our business, but the world, as the source from which we must draw our pleasures, to approach God in prayer as a duty which it is right and proper and profitable to perform, but without any notion or feeling of its being a privilege which it is delightful to enjoy, to come to him as a judge, whose good-will it is our interest to conciliate, with

out being able to look upon him as a Father, whose power, and riches, and kindness, it gives us pleasure to contemplate and celebrate, and whose approving smile, the light of whose countenance is a greater treasure than corn, and wine, and oil; is to take a view of that communion to which God calleth us, and of the privileges which he has conferred upon us, that must greatly mar both our peace and our progress in the Christian life. While, therefore, every thing approaching to presumption, or to that affected fimiliarity with God which some appear to mistake for filial confidence, is to be [guarded against with the most sedulous care; with equal care ought we to guard against that distrust of our High Priest, which makes us dread to exercise and to enjoy, with the most perfect confidence and freedom, the privileges which in Christ Jesus we profess.-Dods on the Incarnation.

FRAGMENTS FROM IRELAND.

THOSE Sweet lines of Toplady

"Musing on my habitation,

Musing on my heavenly home,
Fills my soul with holy longing,
Come, Lord Jesus, quickly come.
Vanity is all I see,

Lord, I long to be with thee,"

were occupying my mind, as I lay sick under an attack of Influenza, when a dear friend called and told me that poor Jack Moriarty, the old bellman of T―, had departed. I had just been thinking about him, and of the speaking intelligence of his countenance, as he lay in his dark dismal cabin, surrounded as it was, not merely by destitution, but by vice in almost every form. I was startled, a day or two after my first visit there, at being told it was the worst locality in the whole neighbourhood; the resort the resting-place of thieves and murderers ; yet, there lay poor old Jack, his eyes-his whole countenance-beaming with an interest I had scarcely ever seen equalled in a dying man; the light from the little low door-way, and from a patched window, darting a ray upon his wrinkled face, that caused me to stand and gaze with admiration, as the old man responded to the remarks that were made about his poor never-dying soul. It must be short sermons at sick-beds, and just the pith-the marrow-of the Gospel! Jack listened attentively, and he answered as if he thoroughly understood what he heard. It was a Popish cabin; poor Jack bad been brought

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