The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1844-02-13 00:00:00

(Hear and cheers.) I' ~a,„ ~1 hnatance had occurred it
'''11(1 have been sPreifie 1 1',',.; since. I inv'te•it now. I
invite one and ail of them t., so •cify the instance if they
can. of any charge Cast ly rd,:ru a-d against the Or irch
of Rome. Abuse in gen-ral tern, is easy, so easy t, write,
that it is very easy to bear. (Laughter.) Let them lay
it aside, and specify an instance. (Hear.) If the thing
has occurred so often us to justify this charge, there can
be no difficulty in pointing out some one time and place
and assertion. Watch now and see what they will do.
(Laughter and cheering.) See whether any one of them
will meet this as a man with truth on his side would and
could easily meet it. I fully anticipate that our friends
' who have come among us, and from whose statements 1
will no longer delay you, will meet with the same descrip‘
tion of treatment that I have met with. (Laughter.) I
believe they are quite used to it; and I have no doubt
they will thrive under it quite as well as I have
done. (Much laughter-and cheers.) The reverend gen-
tleman concluded try calling upon George Finch, Esq., to
address the meeting.
Mr. FINCH said he conceived they ought to esteem the
obloquy to which they had been exposed a high privilege.
They were only in that respect partakers with our Lord
and his Apostles. In the days of Nero, the Christians
were accused of setting fire to Rome. He did not agree
with the Chairman that they would incur as much odium
as himself, and for this reason, that they had not done as
much to deserve it. (Hear and cheers.) Since the last
time he was in Liverpool, during the discussion between
Mr. Dalton and Mr. Falvey, the society had been making
great progress. The society was-called the British Refor-
mation Society.B Book
ks porfinGcnipdl.es were
Theyy those which are con-
tained in the
were to be found in
the standards of the various reformed churches. He
felt that some apology was n-quired for their abstinence
from politics, intimately connected as these were and
m st be with religion. They professed not to be a great
national society, but a home missionary society : they
came forward to take up the irregular work which was
rendered necessary by the irregular proceedings of the
Roman Catholics,—to meet and counteract the manifold
and desultory efforts of the emissaries of Rome amongst
the population. For this purpose the absence from poli-
tics had many advantages. He referred to the thirty
years' war in Germany and to the religious wars in France,
as well as to what had taken place in our own country
under Henry, Mary, and Elizabeth, to show the spirit
which religious controversies in connexion with politics
engendered. On this account, unless there was something
of paramount importance forcing them into politics, they
had, he thought, a manifest advantage in keeping away
from them. The religious prejudices in the minds of
Romanist were too strong to make it expedient to add
to them the many prejudices of a political kind which
weighed upon the minds of that class of the population
' of this country. He thought this character of the society
would rather raise it in the estimation of Christians, how-
ever it might lower it in the opinion of worldly men.
Mr. Finch went on to show from the nature of the super-
stitions and delusions of Romanism, the importance of
the work in which the Reformation Society was employed.
The object of the society was two-fold :to warn Protes-
tants against the errors of Romanism., and to endeavour
to win Romanists to the embracing of the truth. There
was no place where this work ought to be carried on upon
a more effective scale than in Liverpool, chiefly on account
of the great number of Roman Catholics residing in and
passing through the town. Much might be done in this
way to the evangelising of Ireland. The feelings with
which this work should he engaged in were those of hu-
mility, patience, meekness, and forbearance. In addition
to these, there should be a correct knowledge of Protes-
tantism ; in order to obtain which, those who undertook
to act as missionaries in connection with it should get
themselves indortrined by their respective pastors. The
seminal principle of the Rornish error he believed to be,
that the Church of Rome made a distinction between sins
before and sins after baptism. For the former there was
forgiveness by the merits of Christ al me ; against the
latter he was represented as being angry: and here the
intercession of the Virgin and the saints was called in.
On this point Protestants must be clearly informed, or.
they would never succeed against Roman Catholics
(Hear.) Mr. Finch then pointed out the advantages this
country possessed for the encouragement of missionary
enterprises, and the responsibilities arising therefrom ;
and concluded by an urgent exhortation to zeal and per-
severance in the cause.
The Rev. JOHN CUMMING recommended the persons
connected with the press in Liverpool, to whom allusion
had been made, to inform themselves of some of the prin-
ciples of Romanism. He would advise them to read the
encyclical letter of Gregory the XVI, which bad been be-
fore the world since 1832; by which they would see, that
if Rome had her way, the thumb-screw would soon be
upon their hands. How did Pope Gregory speak of that
boasted liberty of the press in which these persons gloried
so much? This was his language. " The never to be
sufficiently execrated and detested liberty of the press."
(Hear and loud cheers.) If those members of the press
of Liverpool, then, really cared for the liberty of the
press, how deply-rooted in their minds ought to be the
sentiment "No peace with Rome ! " The Church of
Rome was no less inimical to liberty of conscience than
to the liberty of the press. Of this charge Mr. Cumming
likewise offered proofs, as well as of its idolatry and
blasphemy, in the worship which it paid to the Virgin
Mary. He believed that until every clergyman followed
the example of their excellent chairman, they would never
succeed in spreading the Gospel throughout old and happy
England. There were some who wished to see the rose
wit bout any thorns, the atmosphere without any storms,
and the millennium coming to-morrow in all its peace and
uninterrupted beauty ; buc thorns are needful to defend
the rose, storms to purify the atmosphere, and there never
would be a millennium of peace uutil a millennium of
truth and righteouness should have been established over
all the earth. (Applause.) It had been argued as an
apology for Rome, that there were truths in that church.
This was the fact. Thera were truths in Hindooism and
many of the other infidel systems of the day. Satan's
policy, with regard to Rome, was to gild the bill.
The Rev. Mr. M'NEILE here expressed his regret at
being obliged to leave the meeting. The chair was
taken, amid loud applause. by the Rev. Fielding Ould.
Mr. CUMMING then proceeded to remark upon the
various expedients of the Church of Rome to circulate its
influence throughout the world. He confessed that when
he saw men drawing from the wardrobe of Aaron, with a
view of decorating the church, he began to think that
there was something which they wished to conceal. " The
king's daughter was all glorious within," not without,
and her beauty was a moral beauty. He wished the opera-
tive classes to be able to meet the salient points advanced
in support of Popery in a short compass. The readiest
mode of proving the existence of error was to contrast it
with what had been written by the Apostles. The ques-
tion had nothing to do with chronology, out with the
law and the testimony. In one sense, Roman Catholic-
ism was old ; for its members would appear before God
in a robe of their own righteousness, too short and too
narrow to cover them. He believed Cain was the first
Romish priest, and Abel the first Protestant martyr. It
was the height of effrontery for the Church of Rome to
ask where the Protestant Church was before the Refor-
mation, when she knew well that her own persecutions
had been the means of driving it out of almost all coun-
tries. Prior to the period of the Reformation, the Pro-
testant Church was in the odd iron death-grasp of a per-
secuting church ; and it was only when Cranmer, Latimer,
Ridley, and other martyrs rescued it from that grasp, that
it shot up and bloomed into those churches which are at
once the glory, the bulwarks, and the ornaments of all
lands. (Cheers.) The Roman Catholics were building
gingerbread cathedrals at present, thereby showing that
they bad given up the claim to the Protestant cathedrals.
He then proceeded to combat the doctrine of infallibility,
and to eulogise the character of the Church of England.
He said, the stones of the latter church were living stones,
her cement living cement, her foundations the rock of
ages, on the top of which there was a glory which was
met by the blending beams of righteousness and truth.
She had nut only a true priest, and a true altar, but she
had a true sacrifice also ; whereas the Church of Rome
was the mistress of isiquity, Babylon the great, drunk
with the blood of the saints and the martyrs of Jesus.
The points which separated the Churches of England and
Scotland were microscopic, for the articles of the one and
the confession of faith of the other were everlasting as the
attributes of God, enduring and immutable as eternity.
The rev. gentleman sat down amidst great applause, after
which a collection was made.

The CHAIRMAN called upon the meeting to return
thanks by acclamation to the two gentlemen who had
given the meeting such a feast of truth. He hoped the
deputation would soon return again to Liverpool, where
there were Protestants who loved the Reformation and
did not denounce John Knox. He hoped also, that all
who held the head would unite—that there would be unity
at least, if there was not conformity. He contended that
it was the duty of all Protestants to join in such a work
as the present, at such a time as this. Popery was active
in the United Kingdom ; she had her tracts and her sisters
of mercy, or, as he would call them, her pitiful sisters ;
and, at such a time, should Protestants be slothful, because
of the ribaldry of an infidel press ? (Loud applause.)
The meeting concluded with the singing of the dos•
ology.