THE CHRISTIAN REFORMER: OR, UNITARIAN MAGAZINE AND REVIEW. NEW SERIES, VOL. VII. FROM JANUARY TO DECEMBER, 1851. BIBL LONDON: EDWARD T. WHITFIELD, 2, ESSEX STREET, STRAND. 1851. THE Church is again in danger. The cry of Wolf! has been once more raised by the timid shepherds of her spiritual flock. Not many weeks ago, and all was quiet. Members of Parliament were busy on moors, in copses and stubble-fields; barristers were taking their hasty trip up the Rhine and into Switzerland; stay-at-home Englishmen were fain to look to Prussia and Austria for exciting news; and foreign correspondence crowded the long columns of the Times. And then suddenly, like a West-Indian hurricane, there was a roar of many words throughout the land. One might have supposed that the French bayonets which had carried the Pope from Naples to Rome, had escorted him on to Westminster. The thunders of the daily press are fulminated against the Tiara. The Prime Minister is straightway so seized with Protestant zeal, as to become a newspaper correspondent, and stigmatize the worship of one-third of her Majesty's subjects as the "mummeries of superstition." But Whiggism, though predominant, is not the only party in the State, nor is allowed to monopolize the new political capital. D'Israeli, on behalf of the Conservatives, contributes sarcasm, and Roebuck, for the Radicals, sense, to the now seething caldron. Catholics appeal, Protestants make doughty resolves. There are lectures, and disputations, and pamphlets, and newspaper letters innumerable. The Pope is burnt in effigy in the streets of our great cities, and the police stand by in approving silence. Nor is violence wanting. Clerical hands are laid upon Mr. Miall, and policemen's heads are broken by Irish navigators at Birkenhead. Bishops are kept in a perfect fury of correspondence with their divers dearly-beloved brethren. Sheriffs and Archdeacons are persecuted with innumerable requisitions; and pulpits echo with the double warcry of Papal Aggression and Religious Liberty! And a stirring cry this last doubtless is to the heart of English Protestant Nonconformity. It recals the time when it was but feebly heard from the thin ranks who fought and won, inch by inch, the long battle of Emancipation. But there are many circumstances of the present agitation which are calculated to excite a just suspicion. It is suspicious that the existence of the Establishment and the principles of Religious Liberty are in alleged peril at the same moment. It is An Appeal to the Reason and Good Feeling of the English People on the Subject of the Catholic Hierarchy. By Cardinal Wiseman. Supremacy of the Crown and the Liberties of the British People vindicated from Romish Usurpations, in a Letter to the Rev. Dr. Wiseman; being a Reply to his Address, &c. By the Rev. J. W. Worthington, D.D. |