humiliation and awe. Thus doth this preacher, traversing daily Christ's kingdom, unceasingly admonish churches and individuals; and standing in our luxurious cities, should be to us as Jonah amid Nineveh, summoning us to repentance and mourning.”—R. W. Evans.

Minor Difficulties.

"The harmony of a science, supporting each part the other, is, and ought to be, the true and chief confutation and suppression of all the smaller sorts of objections."-Bacon.

Joseph's History Prophetic.

“This very remarkable history of Joseph and his brethren, seems placed at the beginning of the Bible as a short summary preface, containing all that should befall the Jewish nation, from its rise to the end of the world.

"Much of this interesting prophetic history is already accomplished; the remaining part of it will not perhaps be fulfilled, in its spiritual sense, before the time of the restoration of the Jews. Till the arrival of which happy period, the yearnings of Joseph's bowels towards his barbarous brethren, who supposed him to be dead, and knew not that it was he that had preserved, fed, and supported them, doth finely and strikingly represent the wonderful affection of Christ towards His crucifiers the Jews, who, though now He is estranged from them, and they esteem Him smitten, stricken, and afflicted (Isa. liii.), yet doth He still preserve them, and will never leave them nor forsake them, but at His second coming to establish His glorious kingdom in the millennium, will make Himself known to them, with more than that amazing tenderness wherewith Joseph at the second time (Acts vii. 13) discovered himself to his brethren (Gen. xlv. 1–6, &c.) Then shall they look upon Him whom they have pierced. Then shall they acknowledge Him to be indeed the Son of God, their much injured Messiah, as Joseph's brethren did look upon and acknowledge him to be their much injured brother, the dearly beloved son of their father, in whom he was well pleased.”— Sir Richard Hill.

Statistics of the Jews.

In the "Life of Christ," by Professor Sepp, of Munich, now in course of publication, are some statistics respecting the Jews, which may interest our readers.

"The Jews have unusually long bodies, finely formed, but lean limbs, sharply cut noses, black eyes and hair, prominent chins, knees curved inward, a rapid walk, and an observing glance. Measurements made in 1845 amongst the Jews of Russia, shew that their stature, in com

parison with that of other races, is only as 64.46 to 66.15 and 68.16. The body embraces 36 parts of the whole stature, whilst with the negro it is only 32; amongst other races, 34 and 35.

"Jewish marriage is more fruitful than Christian in the proportion of 28 to 25, shewing that the blessing pronounced upon Abraham still continues in force. Estimating the present number of Jews at 8,000,000, it amounts to one per cent. of all the population of the earth. The mortality amongst them, compared with that amongst other people, is as 34 to 46, thus making the average duration of life about 1.3 longer. The number of infants still-born is in 100,000 as 89 to 143. The proportion of suicides is still more in their favour. Of 100,000 children there are living amongst Christians in the 14th year, only 44.5, amongst the Jews, 50, or half; in the 60th year, among the former, 12, among the latter, 20. The usual proportion of boys to girls is as 105 to 100, with the Jews, 112 to 100.

"To all epidemic diseases the Jewish race shews little susceptibility. They rarely suffer from pestilence, typhus, or dropsy. Their exemption from the plague and other wide-wasting diseases in the middle ages often subjected them to popular suspicion, and drew upon them the rage of the populace. From the more recent ravages of the cholera,

they have suffered little. But they are much predisposed to diseases of the skin, and to those complaints which spring from meagre fare. Unable to perform severe physical labour, they endure, firmly, misery and suffering; they avoid strife, and delight in domestic life.

"That the Jew has in him noble elements of character, his history shews; nor can the Christian forget that Christ and the Apostles were of Jewish lineage. May the time be hastened when the promises to that race shall be fulfilled."

Correspondence.

To the Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy.

SIR, In the very interesting article on "The Dispensations," which appeared in the last number of your Journal, the writer, when speaking of "the apostasy" foretold by St Paul, states, "For the first two or three centuries it took many phases, and from about the sixth century it became consolidated in the Church of Rome. But it has not been confined to this Church." Further on, the writer, after contending that "real miracles," and not false ones, such as the Church of Rome works, are one of the prominent signs of the apostasy, remarks, "Other passages induce us to believe that a power to arise and supersede Popery will be the last great feature of antichristian apostasy" (see pp. 51, 53).

Now, believing that this is a serious misconception of the teaching of the Spirit on the meaning of the foretold apostasy, and has the natural effect of lessening our abhorrence of what Cecil justly termed "Satan's masterpiece," by leading us to expect, as a pious writer on prophecy has recently stated, "something far worse than Popery," will you permit me to offer to your readers some reasons for concluding that "the apostasy" referred to by St

Paul in his Epistles to the Thessalonians and to Timothy, must be, by the terms he uses, confined to the Church of Rome, and can have no reference to any other false or wicked system whatever?

-as

St Paul, writing (A.D. 52) his Second Epistle to the Thessalonians, speaks of "the apostasy "—ǹ ȧñоσтаσía, or, as it is translated, "a falling away" the result of "the mystery of iniquity which doth already work." If we refer to the Old Testament for an explanation of this term, it is not difficult to discover its true meaning: e. g., in Num. xiv. 9; Josh. xxii. 18, 19; 2 Chron. xxviii. 22, 23; Neh. ix. 26; Dan. ix. 9, we find the word, either as a substantive or in its verbal form, used by the LXX. to express the defection of the children of Israel from the worship of the true God to heathen idolatry. In the New Testament we read of a warning before "the apostasy" had developed itself. "Take heed, brethren, lest there be in any of you an evil heart of unbelief, in apostatising from the living God" (Heb. iii. 12). Hence we may conclude that the meaning of the term, as used by St Paul, implies a defection on the part of the professing Church of Christ from the truth to rebellion against God by the great sin of idolatry, and not a profession of infidelity, as some in the present day imagine "the apostasy to mean.

The Church of Rome once taught the truth so plainly, that her "faith was spoken of throughout the whole world" (Rom. i. 8). Is it not exactly the reverse now?

For, as if to prevent doubt on the subject, we find St Paul writing (A.D. 65) to Timothy, "The Spirit speaketh expressly (pηTŵs), that in the latter times some shall apostatise from the faith," and we naturally conclude that there is an express allusion to what the Holy Ghost had thirteen years before inspired the apostle to write to the Thessalonians. Let us consider some of the characteristic marks of this apostasy, and see whether they are applicable to the Church of Rome or not. I will confine myself to three for the sake of brevity, though the rest are equally applicable, as those who are acquainted with the authorised teaching of that fallen Church well know.

It is declared, then, that these apostates would (1.) "Give heed to doctrines of devils;" (2.) That they would "speak lies in hypocrisy;" (3.) And would "forbid to marry."

(1.) By the expression "doctrines of devils or demons" (daiμovíwv)—i. e., "worshipping devils" (Rev. ix. 20)-we understand that deification and adoration of dead men and women, for which the heathen were so famous of old, and of which the Church of Rome is so guilty now. Thus we find ancient authors declaring "Every demon is a middle-being between God and mortal man (Plato's Symp. § 28). And the same author says elsewhere, "When good men die they attain great honour and dignity, and become demons" (Cratyl. § 33). Hesiod speaks exactly in the same way regarding demons. And so we read, when saint-worship was beginning to glide into the Church, of Epiphanius thus sternly reproving some professing Christians for offering a cake to the Virgin Mary as Queen of Heaven-"The apostle's words are fulfilled by these giving heed to the doctrines of demons; for, says he, they shall be worshipped of dead men,' as they were worshipped in Israel" (Panarion, 78). Now, what is the authorised teaching of the Church of Rome on this head? From a multitude of similar specimens of blasphemy we select the following: "O immaculate Queen of Heaven, and of Angels! I adore you. It is you who have delivered me from hell. It is you from whom I look for all my salvation" (Prayer published by Pope Gregory XVI., A.D. 1840, with an indulgence of 100 years to all who used it). "O God, who has translated the Bishop Dunstan, grant that we, by his glorious merits, may pass from hence to never-ending joys, through the Lord" (Collect in the Breviary for May 19).

(2.) "Speaking lies in hypocrisy" is another characteristic mark, and though there are many liars and many hypocrites who have never acknow

ledged the Church of Rome, no other community in the world has ever attempted, with such profound subtilty, to combine the two, as the following examples prove. Thus, the General Council of Constance, A.D. 1414, which condemned Huss and Jerome to death for their testimony to the truth, decreed that "by no law, natural or divine, is it obligatory to keep faith with heretics to the prejudice of the Catholic faith." And Peter Dens, whose "Complete Body of Theology" is the great standard work sanctioned by the Romish Bishops in Ireland, very candidly argues in favour of hypocritical lying, thus, "A confessor should assert his ignorance of the truths which he knows only by sacramental confession, and confirm his assertion, if necessary, by oath" (Dens, vi. 219).

(3.) "Forbidding to marry" is the last characteristic mark to be noticed; and that it peculiarly and exclusively (as we believe) pertains to the Church of Rome, let the following legislative enactments declare. In a Synod held at Rome, A.D. 1074, under Pope Gregory VII., it was enacted that "no priest should henceforth marry, and such as had wives should relinquish either them or the sacred office." This agrees with the canon passed at the Council of Trent, and which expressly declares, "Whoever shall affirm that persons in holy orders, or regulars, may contract marriage, let him be accursed" (Coun. of Trent, Sess. XXIV., Can. 9, Doctr. de Sac. Mat.).

Surely these testimonies are sufficient to brand the Church of Rome with that which exclusively pertains to her-viz., fulfilling all the characteristic marks of that dreadful apostasy which the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of Paul, hath warned that would arise out of the Church, and continue until its head should be "consumed with the spirit of the Lord's mouth, and destroyed with the brightness of His coming." And if our three national churches of England, Scotland, and Ireland have with one voice authoritatively declared their belief in the Bishop of Rome fulfilling the character of him who is described by St Paul emphatically as "the Man of Sin," who is symbolised in the Old Testament as "the little horn" of the 7th chapter of Daniel, and by St John, as "the great whore" who now rules in "Babylon the Great," and at whose overthrow (for which we should daily pray) the angelic choir are represented as shouting twice their hallelujahs, are we warranted, as it is deeply to be regretted that some pious persons in the present seem inclined to do, in deluding ourselves with the expectation that all the wickedness of Rome is nothing to be compared with the apostasy which is yet to come?

Those who are fully acquainted with the doctrines and practice of Popery, as set forth, e. g., in that authoritative and self-condemning document of the Church of Rome, the "Taxæ Sacræ et Pænitentiariæ Apostolicæ," in which absolution for every crime that the mind can imagine, or human nature in its most corrupt form can commit, is to be obtained upon the payment of a small sum, will feel there is no reason, as I venture confidently to believe there are no Scriptural grounds, to expect anything more apostate than the Papacy, or anything more exactly resembling what the Holy Ghost declared should come, than what has been, and what now exists, in the guilty Church of Rome.

Believing it to be the duty of a "good minister of Jesus Christ to put the brethren in remembrance of these things," I beg you will kindly admit this in your valuable Journal, and allow me to subscribe myself, Dear Sir, yours very faithfully, B. W. SAVILE.

Newport, Barnstaple, January 1859.

P. S.-I have omitted to notice the introduction of image-worship into the Church of Rome, which is a distinct sin from that of saint-worship, but which is no less a sign by which the apostasy may be detected. It appears that Marcellina, the disciple of Carpocrates, was the first who brought this idolaVOL. XI.

trous heresy to Rome, in the time of Pope Aincetus, having, as Epiphanius and Augustine declare, "secretly made images of Jesus, and Paul, and Homer, and Pythagoras, he burnt incense before them and worshipped them" (Epiph. in Anac. de Carpo. August. de Hæres. c. 7). Thus the images of God, and Christ, and angels, and saints, were introduced into the Church of Rome, until the practice of idolatry was defended, as Cardinal Cajetan does, by saying that they "are not only painted that they may be shewed, as the cherubims were of old in the temple, but that they may be adored, as the frequent use of the Church doth testify" (Caj. in part. iii. Thomæ, Quæst. xxv. art. 3).

To the Editor of the Quarterly Journal of Prophecy.

SIR,-You have shewn that Christ's vicarious, or substitutionary, or surety character began with His life; that the sorrows and sufferings of His life were really part of the great satisfaction which terminated on the cross. You have shewn that this was the judgment of the best and truest divines, and that they who held the opposite have always been accounted unsound in the faith-if not verging to Socinianism. Let me, in corroboration of your statements, ask you to give your readers the following passage from Jonathan Edwards of America :

"1. I would observe, that whatever in Christ had the nature of satisfaction, it was by virtue of the suffering or humiliation that was in it. But whatever had the nature of merit, it was by virtue of the obedience or righteousness there was in it. The satisfaction of Christ consists in His answering the demands of the law on man, which were consequent on the breach of the law. These were answered by suffering the penalty of the law. The merit of Christ consists in what He did to answer the demands of the law, which were prior to man's breach of the law, or to fulfil what the law demanded before man sinned, which was obedience.

"The satisfaction or propitiation of Christ consists either in His suffering evil, or His being subject to abasement. For Christ did not only make satisfaction by proper suffering, but by whatever had the nature of humiliation and abasement of circumstances. Thus Christ made satisfaction for sin, by continuing under the power of death, while He lay buried in the grave, though neither His body nor soul properly endured any suffering after He was dead. Whatever Christ was subject to, that was the judicial fruit of sin, and the nature of satisfaction for sin. But not only proper suffering, but all abasement and depression of the state and circumstances of mankind below its primitive honour and dignity, such as His body's remaining under death, and body and soul remaining separate, and other things that might be mentioned, are the judicial fruits of sin. And all that Christ did in His state of humiliation, that had the nature of obedience or moral virtue or goodness in it, in one respect or another had the nature of merit in it, and was part of the price with which He purchased happiness for the elect.

"2. I would observe, that both Christ's satisfaction for sin, and also His meriting happiness by His righteousness, were carried on through the whole time of His humiliation. Christ's satisfaction for sin was not only by His last sufferings, though it was principally by them; but all His sufferings, and all the humiliation that He was subject to from the first moment of His incarnation to His resurrection, were propitiatory or satisfactory. Christ's satisfaction was chiefly by His death, because His sufferings and humiliation in that was greatest. But all His other sufferings, and all His other humiliation, all along had the nature of satisfaction. So had the mean circumstances in which He was born. His being born in such a low condition, was to make satisfaction for sin. His being born of a poor virgin in a stable, and His