The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1854-02-14 00:00:00

THE RIGHT OP PRIVATE J7TD a m-E2v

Tits fact that a departure from one extreme usually
Leads to an adoption of the other, is evident in too many
instances to need confirmation ; and the same remark will
apply as well to religion as to politics. OUR SAVIOUR,
said :—" Ye compass sea and
addressing a., is".ibeeS,
o make one proselyte, and when he is made he is
twofold more the child of hell than yourselves ;" and
modern Rome, in this respect, cloiels follows the example
of her prototypes of old. Mr. NEWMA.N, as a member of
the Church of England, bore a high character for the
ingenuity of his arguments and the closeness of his rea-
soning; but since his perversion to Rome he has become
notorious for his puerile attempts at argument and the
extravagant absurdity of his conclusions. Last week,
and again last night, at the Concert-hall in this town,
the Rev. W. H. ANDERDON, some time vicar of St. Mar-
garet's, Leicester, and now a dupe of Romish superstition,
made a display of the utter prostration of the reasoning
faculties to which such a perversion inevitably tends. His
discourse last week afforded no evidence of the ingenious
sophistry by which Jesuits seek to delude their hapless
followers, but was a melancholy proof of that mental
hallucination of which he is himself the victim. With
dreary pleasantry he attempted to define a Church as a
divine institution, which presented to helpless man a
system of revelation on which, if he attempted to exercise
his individual judgment, he started with an act of disobe-
dience. Granted the definition, and what becomes of Mr.
ANDERDON'S own position ? The minister of a Church
whose doctrines he had solemnly sworn to teach in their
purity and integrity, he exercises his individual judgment,
or rather want of it, by breaking his oath in order to join
an apostacy which has neither the warrant of Scripture,
the justification of reason, nor the merit of consistency;
which in one age has set up a particular dogma as indis-
pensable to salvation, in another has repudiated it, and in
every age has altered or amended articles of faith in order
to suit them to the expediency of the time, and gratify
the all-absorbing object of worldly gain and temporal
power. Denying the right of private judgment, Mr.
ANDERDON is himself a melancholy instance of its exer-
cise, with this great difference, that while Protestants, as
such, do it to " prove all things and hold fast by that
which is good," he has rejected Scripture, ignored the
teaching of the Apostles, denied the faith of all primitive
Christians, in order to adopt the wretched superstition
which displaces the SAVIOUR of mankind for the pre-
tended Mother of Heaven, and believes in Transubstantia-
tion, the existence of Purgatory andthe power of indulgence.
Either the Holy Bible is or is not the revealed will of the
ALMIGHTY. If it be, a belief in its doctrines is an ample
refutation of all the absurdities taught by Rome. If it be
not, there is an end of all revelation, for man has no other
means of ascertaining the will of his MAKER. The Bible
and Rome are in direct antagonism, and therefore the
latter sets up the convenient dogma of repudiating all
individual judgment, founding its faith upon popular
ignorance, and enforcing its precepts by denying all right
to question their soundness. Rome is wise in her gene-
ration, to deny her dupes the reading of the Scriptures;
for the effect would be the rejection of the creeds which
she has substituted. She has cunningly forbidden all
inquiry, for the slightest exercise of the human intellect
would demolish her complicated fiction ; and though we
may wonder that any man who has once drunk at the
pure fountain of Gospel truth should willingly wear such
soul-debasing fetters, we can only attribute it to that
mental depravity with which the ALMIGHTY sees fit to
punish a wilful rejection of the truth. It will be seen
that the gist of his discourse was the necessity of implicit
reliance upon the teaching of the Church, while his own
career was a practical instance of the violation of his own
doctrine, with this distinction, that while those who have
been educated in the faith of Rome may plead the excuse
of never having had the means of knowing better, Mr.
ANDEBDON'S first step must have been a rebuke to him
for having taken it. He has not even the wretched plea
of ignorance, but, like other waverers, he has coquetted
with the flame until it has burned him ; and such an
example should not be lost upon those still in our Church
who, in their Romanising tendencies, show that they
forget the injunction, "Taste not, touch not, handle not."
;y

Tim LATR Mn. ALEXANDER.—Our obituary this week
records the death of Mr. Robert Alexander, for many
years connected with the Liverpool press. Up to the year
1830, he conducted the Liverpool Standard, and from
that time till his death was the principal editor of the
Liverpool Mail. His talents as a political writer were
"well known.
PASTORAL AID SOCIETT.—We have much pleasure in
directing attention to the approaching anniversary of the
Pastoral Aid Society, a notice of which appears in our
advertising columns. The Archdeacon of Derby, who
pleads for it on Sunday next, has many connexions with
Liverpool. The Rev. W. Cadman is, well known as the
laborious and able minister of a London parish, containing
37,000 souls ; and the Rev. .1. Hart will give many
interesting details of the Society's work in Yorkshire. It
is a little humiliating to learn that Bristol and Bath far
exceed Liverpool in their support of the pastoral aid cause,
and that while they contribute a large sum beyond their
own wants, we are a drain on the Society's resources of
nearly Xl3OOO 4-year•