being, at this day, to an honourable degree, incapable of believing incredibilities, of adopting solemn shams, or pretending to live on spiritual moonshine. Which has been of unaccountable advantage to Brandenburg: how could it fail? This was what we must call obeying the 6 To which same voice,' at that time, all that did not give ear-what has become of them since? have they not signally had the penalties to pay?

audible voice of heaven.

"Penalties:' quarrel not with the old phraseology, good reader; attend rather to the thing it means. The word was heard of old, with a right solemn meaning attached to it, from theological pulpits and such places; and may still be heard there with a half-meaning, or with no meaning, though it has rather become obselete to modern ears. But the thing should not have fallen obsolete; the thing is a grand and solemn truth, expressive of a silent law of heaven, which continues for ever valid. The most untheological of men may still assert the thing; and invite all men to notice it, as a silent monition and peophecy in this universe; to take it, with more of awe than they are wont, as a correct reading of the will of the Eternal in respect of such matters; and, in their modern sphere, to bear the same well in mind. For it is perfectly certain, and may be seen with eyes in any quarter of Europe at this day.

"Protestant or not Protestant? The question meant everywhere: 'Is there anything of nobleness in you, O nation, or is there nothing? Are there, in this nation, enough of heroic men to venture forward, and to battle for God's truth versus the devil's falsehood, at the peril of life and more? Men who prefer death, and all else, to living under falsehood-who, once for all, will not live under falsehood; but having drawn the sword against it (the time being come for that rare and important step), throw away the scabbard, and can say, in pious clearness, with their whole soul: "Come on, then! not good for me; and we will try it out now. between us, then!""

Life under falsehood is
Let it be to the death

"Once risen into this divine white-heat of temper, were it only for a season and not again, the nation is thenceforth considerable through all its remaining history. What immensities of dross and crypto-poisonous matter will it not burn out of itself in that high temperature, in the course of a few years! Witness Cromwell and his puritansmaking England habitable even under the Charles-Second terms for a couple of centuries more. Nations are benefited, I believe, for ages, by being thrown once into divine white-heat in this manner. And no nation that has not had such divine paroxysms at any time is apt to come to much."-Carlyle.

Man's Incompetency to Judge the Language of Scripture.

"We cannot argue that this cannot be the sense or intent of such a passage of Scripture (at least not to the prophetic parts of it); for if it had, it would have been expressed more plainly, or have been represented under a more apt figure or hieroglyphic. 'Yet we may justly

argue this with respect to common books. And the reason of this difference is very evident. In Scripture we are not judges, as we are in common books; competent to pronounce how plainly it were to be expected what is the true sense should be expressed, or, under how apt an image figured. The only question is, what appearance there is that this is the sense, and scarce at all how much more determinately or accurately it might have been expressed or figured.'"-Butler's Anal. ii. 3.

Montalembert's Recent Work on England.

"In an essay in the Correspondant, which has drawn upon him the wrath of the French government, M. de Montalembert declares the Roman Catholic Church to be more free in England and Ireland than in any other part of the world; and, per contra, no nation to be so grossly insulted as the British by the Catholic journals of France, Belgium, and Italy. He finds some excuse even for the religious policy of the East India Company, because its character was purely commercial, and it never pretended to labour like Spain and Portugal, pour le plus grande gloire de Dieu. Nevertheless, to its prestige, power, and protection, the Catholic missionaries are wholly indebted for their 19 bishops, 780 priests, and 700,000 converts. He passes an eloquent eulogy upon Havelock—' a personage of antique grandeur, resembling in all that was noblest in the type the great Puritans of the sventeenth century occupied in his last moments, as he had been all his life, with the care of his soul and the propagation of Christianity—a figure worthy to head a group of heroes, such as Nicholson, Neil, Lawrence, Peel, the son of the great Sir Robert-victors in a struggle between civilisation and barbarism-strangers to no Christian people-to be admired by all without restriction or reserve--an honour to the human race.' The victims of Cawnpore listening to the liturgy of their Church before they went to slaughter,' seem to M. de Montelambert a page taken from the acts of primitive martyrs-a scene he loves to place beside that day of fast and humiliation, which exhibited the noble spectacle of a whole people prostrate before God, demanding pardon and mercy.' He inflicts a keen chastisement upon the religious press of France for its cruel exultation over supposed disasters,' for its 'sympathy with murderers,' for its daily invectives against a handful of heroes,' for its " sanguinary provocations to war between two allied nations.' 'I have a horror,' he exclaims, of orthodoxy which takes no account of truth or justice.' To accusations of neglect of duty against England and Protestantism, the retort, he says, is only too plain. What has Catholicism done with its charge? Catholic nations have miserably failed in the great task entrusted to them by Providence. History cries out to Spain, Cain, what hast thou done with thy brother?' What remains of the conversions of Francis Xavier in Hindostan? What of all that was entrusted to Portugal? Ask of Goa what the mere moral influence of absolute power has done either for Catholic colonies or for their metropolis."—Daily News.

เ

THE QUARTERLY

JOURNAL OF PROPHECY.

APRIL 1859.

ART. I.-AN OLD MILLENARIAN CATECHISM.

WE make no apology for reprinting the following curious piece of puritanical theology. It is as rare as it is in general sound and scriptural. It is one of the numerous publications of the seventeenth century which shew these three things:-1. That millenarianism was much more extensively received in England than we generally suppose; 2. That it was not confined to those who are known as "Fifth Monarchy Men;" 3. That even these fifth monarchy divines held it for the most part soberly and scripturally, and were not chargeable with the fanaticism which is generally associated with their names.

The Catechism which we give to our readers is by Thomas Beverley, from whose writings we have several times made large extracts. Its title is, "The Catechism of the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ, in the Thousand Years, shewing, by Scripture-1. That the great articles of the Redemption; 2. The Resurrection; 3. The Mystery of the Saints not Dying, but being Changed; 4. The Judgment; 5. The delivering up of the kingdom to God all in all-cannot be explained without it." The edition from which we print is the second, published in 1696, "with considerable additions, in relation to the kingdom of Christ." It is dedicated "to the Bishops assembled in Parliament, and to the Evangelical Episcopacy throughout the Protestant Churches of Christ in these nations, and to all Christians in general." He thus expostulates with opposers— "Because the general prepossession of men, caring for none

VOL. XI.

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of these things, would not have prophetic Scripture searched; that I might make acceptable this great truth every way, I have now represented it, as it is carved and wreathed into the whole analogy of faith, the great articles and principles of the doctrine of Christ, according to the most instructive scriptures, viz., the redemption, the resurrection, the eternal judgment, the saints not dying but changed, the delivery up of the kingdom to God all in all; which cannot be without the kingdom of Christ explained at full dimensions.

"Now I call the following treaty hereof a Catechism, as an intimation of the plain manner of handling, for the benefit of all; and of the necessity of consideration, and repeated application of our minds to it; and also to shew, the kingdom of Christ, though it yet lie hid in its roots, the forenamed articles, is still a fundamental truth; and so, though catechism may seem below your orb, yet this of the kingdom of Christ, even as all catechetical truths, deserves the gravest and most awful judgments to try and recommend them.

"I do acknowledge myself the unworthiest of the servants of Christ, in the most abased circumstances; and lay myself at the feet of the Church of Christ with most penitential confessions and acknowledgments; yet I must be bold in our God to say, He hath been pleased to reveal to me, of an infant understanding in compare, and the chief of sinners, what He hath not so fully revealed to the more holy and prudent; even so, Father, for so it seemed good in Thy sight.

"I do most humbly therefore beseech, and do even adjure you, by the coming of our Lord Jesus, and by our gathering together to Him in the general assembly of His kingdom, that you would either shew by Scripture these things cannot be so, or receive this ministry, as the oracles of God, and testify your regard to it, that now makes in your ears the cry of the Bridegroom's coming in His kingdom, that none of us may be among the slumbering, though wise virgins, much less among the foolish."

Then follows a general preface to all Christians :

"I know it will be said with plausibleness against this following Catechism, we had rather preach, and hear of the plain, safe, fundamental points of faith and repentance, of the resurrection of the dead, and of eternal judgment, in the ordinary way of discourse; the old wine we have tasted is better; we will not, as it were, ask a sign, and tempt God in seeking to understand prophecies and mysteries (Isa. vii. 11, 12).

"But is it not enough for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also, who hath given you prophecy to search it, and the strong meat of Scripture, and not only the milk, as to children unskilful in the word of righteousness? He hath commanded you to leave (not by way of forsaking) the word of the beginning of Christ, but to go on to perfection; not dishonourably staying in foundations without a superstructure; He hath given you the example of steady resolution herein; this we will do, if God permit (Heb. v. 11, vi. 1). He hath in a figure represented to you the primitive Christian Church, not doing thus, though it was so plentiful a partaker of mighty effusions (wonderful gifts) of the Holy Spirit, had a liberal taste of the good word of God; they tasted of the mighty powers (miracles) of the world to come, viz., of the kingdom of Christ; yet through resting in principles, not loving truth, not going on to perfection, they dwindled away, and fell into the Antichristian apostasy, and came to crucify, in that spiritual Sodom and Egypt (even Rome, called Catholic Church now, where also our Lord was crucified, viz., under its dominion) the Son of God afresh in His witnesses, and have put Him to an open shame; and through the impossibility of repentance, as such an Antichristian Church, as we see in Rev. xvi. 9, it cannot be renewed; but under all the droppings of the Reformation upon it, it is a ground overgrown with briars and thorns, and is very nigh now to a curse, whose end is to be burned (Rev. xviii.). But of Reformed Churches and Christians we hope better things, and things that have hold of that great salvation of the kingdom, though we thus speak; Isa. vi., ix. 9, the Lord therefore shall give you a sign, a Maharschalal-hash-baz, a sign of His making haste to the prey; for as soon as the child now born shall, by a seven years' age, know to choose the good and refuse the evil, that great city shall be forsaken of its ten kings, who have so long given their kingdom to the beast; and so its tenth shall fall, and the witnesses shall rise. Let us therefore, in our earnestest going on to perfection, wait upon Christ till He rises upon this glorious mount of prey, in the succession of His kingdom, when the light of one day then shall be as the light of seven now; even the sun shall be ashamed, and the moon confounded, when He comes to reign before His ancients gloriously. And now His going forth is prepared as the morning, we shall know, if we follow on to know the Lord. But if any will be ignorant, it must be so; if any one aggrieved, Scripture is open, let him implead what is written; I stand on the justification by Divine help."