The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1845-04-29 00:00:00

AN ARGUMENT AND A PROTEST.

The Rev. G. S. Faber, of Sherburn House and Pre-
bendary of Durham, whose name has been associated with
the defence of Protestant truth for upwards of half a cen-
tury, has addressed the following excellent letter to the
Cnurch and Stale Gazette :
" In the year 1829, I published in the Standard and
the St. James's Chronicle, a series of letters, respecting
the measure, which was insidiously denominated catholic
Emancipation, but which really was a complt t- crinsti-
tution.ll amalgamation with a body of religionists whom
our rulers collectively and solemnly declared to be ido-
lator s.

•• My argumeet, at that time, ran thus :—The true
question is, not so much whether Popery be or be not
idolatry. but whether you, gentlemen legislators can ex-
pect a bles,ing upon the country from Almighty God. if
you deliberately insult him, by first declaring Popery to
be idolatry, and by ❑ext engrafting it upon our Protestant
constitution.

" Now, if this argument were of acy weight in the year
1829, its weight is plainly increased a hundred fold in the
year 1845.

" In the year 1829, you only effected a close and imme-
diate union with what you yourselves had declared to be
idolatry. But now, in the year 1815, after declaring it to
be idolatry, you, these very declarers, are invited to vote
the Hin;ilie money for the parpr..o nr training a uurribor of
individuals, that so they may the better and more effec-
tually teach this idolatry.
" Such is a plain statement of the case : and I really
cannot conceive a more gross'and daring insult to be of-
fered to Almighty God, than first to declare that Popery
is idolatry, and next to vote away the public money for its
support and encouragement.

"Some have strangely argued, that, because a grant has
already been made to Maynooth, the principle is given up,
and the question has become a mere question of amount.

" I see no evidence that the country is pledged to a
perpetual continuance of this grant to Maynooth ; but,
even if it were, the argument before us would amount to
this. We have done wrong once: therefore teems/ con-
tinue to do wrong upon a still larger scale
' _

' In truth, the whole series of measures respecting the
Romanists have been avowedly a matter of supposed po-
litical expediency: for, certainly, they, who have de-
clared Popery to be idolatry, cannot base its support and
enconragement upon a religious principle.
" What, then, is the true nature of this pretended ex-
pediency?

" Verily, it is worthy of the cause. For it is no other
than the Jesuitical principle so admirably exposed by the
immortal Pascal; that it is lawful to do acknowledged
evil, in order that expected good may come. In a word,
it is no other, at the bottom, than an infidel distrust of
God : a relying upon our own miserable devices, instead
of faithfully doing our duty, and then, in Christian faith,
leaving the issue to the Almighty.
" The de laration of our lawgivers that Popery is ido-
latry, is nothing more than a parallel declaration of the
Protestant Church of England in her rubrics and in her
homilies. On this point, she has faithfully borne her tes-
timoney ; and, whatever may be the sentiments of those
who look " Rome-ward," no consi,tent member can
sl ght it.

Should this fatal measure pass, I see no other
method of averting the wrath of heaven than a solemn na-
tional protest against the fearful sin when perpetrated by
our lawgivers. Under this impression, I beg at least, be-
fore I descend into the grave, which at my age cannot be
very far distant, to record my own individual protest
against a well-nigh unexampled insult to the Supreme
Moral Governor.