The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1856-02-05 00:00:00

customers, for their garments always appeal' to shine, whilst
their hearers often enough are compelled to let theirfs become
" seedy." . . . If the meeting had teen weeded of
the " white chokers," of their wives and daughters, of their
hangers-on in the garb of Scripture readers, of deacons, of
churchwardens, and their wives and families, the Hall would
have been much thinned, and the meeting stripped of its fine
feathers.'''

TER" next advocates the setting up as preachers
men wile "work during the -week at the hammer, saw,
&c., and says, "we do not want refined speculations, or
scientific discourses on the Sunday. Plain food is best for us,
and it may be provided at a cheap rate."
Would Mr. B. like to be lectured from the pulpit, Sunday
after Sunday, by his tailor, joiner, or shoemaker ?—would
not his "amen" be exchanged for "ne sutor ultra cre-
pidam ?"
8., in proceeding with his letter, abuses preachers right
and left, in "exchanging sermons for money." "When Dr.
Raffles was first appointed, he had a lower salary than he re-
ceives now • as he increased in popularity he obtained higher
wages. The same may be said of Dr. M`Neile and others.
. . . These, our blind leaders [very complimentary !] work
on the Sabbath, because they receive money for what they do
on that day. . . . The meeting to my [blistered ?] mind
smelt a good deal of the shop, and, I fear, had no better root
than hypocrisy." [Very charitable, Mr. B. !] He next would
lead one to believe that " Mr. Horsfall's forge hammers" are
" not always silent on Sunday," and that ".Mr. Peto employs
workmen in Paris on the Sabbath."
"BLISTER," in concluding, makes the following extraordi-
nary statements :="Drunkenness is the sin of this nation; and
nowthat an attempt has been made to wipe it off, the old cleri-
cal spirit is with its hand up against every man. . . . Every
great reform has been made in spite of the clergy, and by men
moved by a higher feeling than the love of gain. . Lord
John Russell was moved by the spirit of a noble philanthropy
when he carried the Reform Bill. [I !!] . . . Drunken-
ness will be done away with in a great measure, but not by
the_preachers and clergy. They will do their best to hinder
the progress of the good work. [!!] They must be made to
stand aside, to make IT om for other men. . . . Seeing
that the speakers were so-much affected by, inflammation, for
their good lam moved to apply this BLISTER.' "*
So ends Mr. B.'s production. Will not even the Anti.
Sabbath Defence party exclaim, " Save us from our friends !"
Talk of inflammation, why "B." himself is in a most highly
inflammatory condition ! Let his medical man keep him, by
all means, for the next three weeks, upon a very low diet.
The St. George's Hall meeting has been much too exciting
for his tender constitution ! The " white cravats " haunt
his disturbed brain and his poor mind is evidently blistered
.with prejudice against all the preachers of the present day, and
especially against those who stand boldly forward in defence
of that noble, sacred, and Divine Institution, which (in pro-
portion as it is honoured) tends, and ever will tend, to exalt a
kingdom, whilst the opposite course is sure eventually to end
in degradation and ruin.
Trusting, Sir, that Mr. B.'s future productione upon the
matter in hand (i. e., whilst he continues a victim to prejudice)
will be consigned to the receptacle "number three," I re-
main, your obedient servant, R.
"Blister's" letter appeared in the Liverpool Mercury, of Janu-
ary 22, 1856.

THE IMPO.RTANCE OF SPEAKING THE
TRUTH in RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.
A LETTER FROM THE REV. DR. BLYLEE, PRINCIPAL OF ST.
AIDAN'S THEOLOGICAL COLLEGE, BIRKENHEAD, TO THB
REV. EDWARD NANGLE, EDITOR OF THE ACHILL MIS.
SIONARY HERALD.

MY DEAR BROTHER, —I read with much pain your stric-
tures on)ny little tracts upon certain proposed changes in our
Liturgy.
The pain and grief which your observations caused arose
from the sad exhibition of how far one Christian can go in
falsely accusing his brother. You have written respecting me
that which, so far as I am concerned, I am thankful to say; is
utterly contrary to the truth. You accuse me of Romanizing
tendencies, which, in my heart, I abhor ; and of ignoring part
of God's Word, although I have written a little treatise on
Verbal Inspiration, asserting and, I hope, proving, that every
word and syllable of the Holy Scriptures is just what God
would have spoken from Heaven, had He employed no human
instrumentality. • .
In endeavouring to make your statements appear. to be
true, you suppress those parts of what I have written which
would have prevented the possibility of ypur readers accepting
those statements. Your first charge against me is, that I have
rapidly gone down the inclined plane towards liumanism in
my statements respecting the Christian priesthood.
Now, what are the facts ? •
In the year 1836, I was engaged with you in the active
duties of the Achill Mission. I.then wrote a little book, en.
titled, " The Institutions of the Church of England one of
Divine authority." Every line of that book you heard read
as it was going through your own printing-press, and you
made no objection to a single statement in it. ' _ _

That little work contains precisely the same views of the
analogy between the Levitical priesthood and the. Christian
ministry which my recent tracts advocate.
As we lived neat door to each other for nearly three years,
and were in habits. of daily intercourse, you were intimately
acquainted with my sentiments.
With such facts on record, it is no wonder that my heart
felt sad that a minister of Christ should so pervert Christian
morals, to the bitterness of religious controversy, as actually
to print a statement, highly injurious to his brother, which
he knew to be without foundation. Your second charge is
that of Romish and Tractarian principles, because I assert that
the Christian ministry is au exact transcript of the Levitical
priesthood in all its peculiarities. In making this assertion,
you suppress the part of the sentence which would have shown
the true meaning of my words. _ _

My statement-is, that " Priesthood has been strangely con-
founded with mediation, so that, to most minds, to speak of
sacerdotal functions is the same thing as to speak of a media-
torial office."

A still more prevalent error has been, to regard a certain
ritualism as essential to priesthood.
" In the following pages I hope to prove the erroneousness
of those opinions, and to show that the Levitical priesthood
was in reality far less ceremonial than all former ones • and
that in all its peculiarities• it was an exact pattern of the
Christian ministry."
_ _

The whole of the tract is written to show what were those
peculiarities.
They were these :
I. Public Worship, without Sacrifice.
11. Public Teaching on the Sabbath-Day.
111. The Pastoral care.
'IV. Judicial Functions.
How far this agrees with Romanizing tendencies, I leave to
the judgment of my readers.
Your third charge is, that I ignore the Epistle to the
Hebrews. I believe every word, not only of the Epistle to
the Hebrews, but also of the whole Bible, to be God's Word.
As I have already said, I have written a little treatise on
Verbal Inspiration as a truth essential to the authority of
Holy Scripture.
The ground of your false accusation is my saying that
Christ is nowhere called a priest, except in the Epistle to the
Hebrews ; but you omit the real force of the argument. It is
commonly alleged that, inasmuch as Christian ministers are
not called priests in the New Testament, therefore they are
not priests.
My answer was, that throughout the whole Gentile portions
of the New Testament our Lord is never once called a priest ;
that the question is not about names but things. The func-
tions peculiar to the Levitical priesthood, as distinguished
from former priesthoods, belong to the Christian minister ;
and, therefore, this argument about a name ianothing.
And now, to prevent further misrepresentation, I shall state
briefly my views upon two or three points in which I have
been grossly misrepresented in various quarters.