against an insiduous enemy against one who professes a sincere friendship for you, and yet in. the end designs to ruin you, how can you defend yourself? If then Christ was justly severe upon the hollow apostacy of his time, and scrupulously avoided all communion with it, we only act under his authority, and follow his example, when we condemn the Roman apostacy, and the "mystery of iniquity" belonging to it, and turn our backs upon it.—Severity and reproof, in some cases, produce better effects, than tenderness and affection;-neither do they derogate from the christian character, any more than they did from that of Christ. We may relieve the prodigal in distress, and shew compassion to the man whose evil courses have reduced him to penury;-but, the bad habits, that brought him into such a state, we are bound to reprove, and are justified in avoiding the contagion of vice.—In the hour of necessity and suffering, Christians forget all the religious errors of their fellow creatures, whether at home or abroad;-at all other seasons, they must not forget them.-The "man of sin" must be destroyed, and make way for Christ, and for a religion of justice and truth-of sincerity, not of pretence of the heart, not of the face— "whose praise may not be of men, but will "certainly be of GOD."

PETITION, &c.

To the Right Honorable the Lords Spiritual and Temporal in Parliament assembled.

The Petition of

Most humbly sheweth

That from attentively

reading the sacred writings, your petitioner, is impressed with the firm belief, that (1) the spiritual interest of "all kindreds and tongues and nations" in that part of the world, which formerly constituted the (2) Western Roman Empire, has been materially injured for nearly thirteen centuries by the great apostacy foretold by the prophets of God, the character and marks of which are distinctly to be seen, and traced in the Papal hierarchy.-The history of the vices and corruptions of the Papacy, in the plenitude of its power, together with its present tottering and declining state, clearly demonstrate that, what St. John and St. Paul have recorded by inspiration, concerning the rise, the power, the errors, the fall of this great apostacy, is applicable alone to the false system of religion prevailing in the church of Rome: