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this very subject has been so often argued on our side."

This able advocate of the reformed then proceeded to enlarge on the marks of the true Church, and showed the fallibility of councils. The Cardinal, interrupting him, enquired what was his commission? He answered, that he had been elected by the people, confirmed by the civil magistrate, and sent out as the minister of God. Doctor Despence asked, who had lain hands on him? He replied, that he had not been ordained in that way. Despence observed, that it was evident the protestant ministers had not been established by an ordinary vocation; and since miracles were necessary for an extraordinary vocation, and they could produce none, it followed that they had not entered into the house of God either by one way or the other. That with regard to traditions, if a dispute

arose on the interpretation of Scripture, it was necessary to resort to the holy fathers, whose authority would appear in a legitimate and orderly succession. That in fact, the gifts of the Holy Spirit are conferred on those who preside over the true Church, as it is written of the Levites, whose decrees it was not permitted to call in question. That many things which could not be found recorded in holy writ had been confirmed by tradition; for instance, that the Father was not begotten; that the Son was consubstantial with the Father; that infants were to be baptized, &c. which having been resolved by general councils, were held as undoubted verities; and that these councils could not be considered as having erred in doctrine, since the more recent had not derogated from the authority of the ancient, or could be said to have corrected them.

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AN APPEAL TO THE CHRISTIAN PUBLIC IN BEHALF OF BRITISH SEAMEN.-LETTER II.

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now as numerous and as full as the granaries of Egypt at the end of the plenteous years, would soon be as empty and desolate as those of the poor Egyptians were, when they sold their all and themselves for a little bread. What, under God, has raised our nation to its present astonishing elevation of power and riches, but its commerce? from this has arisen its almost incredible revenue and unparalleled extent of dominion. To the astonishing increase of that commerce our cities owe their present glory. Before commerce had extended her arms, and thrown her revenue and her riches into the lap of statesmen and of merchants, what were London, and Liverpool, and Bristol, and Glasgow, and Edinburgh, and Dublin, and all those sea-port towns and cities, which now are the pride of the land? The richest and most populous of them were as nothing compared to their present state; and not a few of them had really no other existence but that of little villages of poor fishermen, or of shepherds and woodcutters. And what would these now great and magnificent cities and towns become, were it not for the instrumentality of Seamen? They would be deserted of their starving inhabitants; their public halls and banqueting houses and palaces would become the residences of owls and bats; and the reeds, and grass, and rushes would wave their rank crops to the winds, as they swept along their quays, and streets, and squares, and crescents. Nor would this universal wreck of public and private wealth be all the calamity. A thousand, thousand luxuries of food and clothing, of medicine and comfort, would never more pass before our eyes. Hardly would the land be able to feed and clothe her children in the plainest manner. Meanwhile she must every

have endeavoured to account for this conduct in three ways. Either that the friends of Missionary and benevolent institutions in general, think half a million of British Seamen an insignificant object;-or, that they are quite ignorant of their real wants and claims;-or, that they imagine their wants and claims bear no proportion to those of the heathen world. I have already shown, that multitudes of British Seamen are as ignorant and profligate as the heathen themselves. Permit me then now to urge their claims on the British public, from the consideration of their vast importance to the nation at large, and to the religious part of its community in particular. Many are, no doubt, ignorant why or how Seamen are essential to the comfort, power, liberty, prosperity, and safeguard of this realm. But every man who reads and thinks, or who might read and think on this subject, must stand accountable at the bar of heaven for wilful ignorance on the subject. As a nation, we owe almost every thing to the labours and services of Seamen. And could they once cease to exist, we must speedily become, the second time, a nation of shepherds and herdsmen. Dismiss the Seamen from society, and our custom-houses, though as magnificent as the palaces of Babylon, would soon become what those palaces long have been, heaps of rubbish and our Government and merchants' store-houses, though FEB. 1826.

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day lie open to the attacks of foreign invaders. Great Britain could exist a free, an independent, and powerful nation, without an army, so long as she were possessed of her present maritime forces. But were she stripped of these, her hardy and faithful, but neglected and perishing sons, it may fairly be doubted whether any army could long preserve her inhabitants from the sword and oppression of the combined and jealous powers of the Continent. Papistical and Grecian Europe would soon expunge every claim of religious liberty from our statute-book; and the Holy Alliance would rivet the iron collar on our necks, and draw the thick veil of darkness across our eyes.

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We could with little inconvenience dispense with the services and labours of some descriptions of the community, which now make a figure in the nation; but we cannot, on any terms, dispense with the services of our Seamen. They are as instruments in the hands of Providence, essentially necessary to our comfort, safety, liberty, and prosperity. Surely then they have paramount claims on the whole kingdom. And if they have these claims on the nation in general, they come forward with them exceedingly increased, as connected with the religious public. While our forefathers were shipping Thor and Woden, and offering up the living fruit of their bodies for the sins of their souls; Seamen were employed to convey the first preachers of the Gospel to our land. These messengers who brought the first glad tidings of peace to our shores, found it a land of darkness, the habitation of cruelty, the region of the shadow of spiritual death. And had no seamen existed to launch the bark and trim the sail, we had been as our forefathers were. And what would all the sympathy and compassion of the religious public for the moral darkness and degraded state of the heathen world avail, were there no Seamen ?

Great Britain might shut up her Missionary seminaries, and send her Missionary students to keep sheep on the mountains; and every Foreign Missionary Society must close its books, and end its labours; for vain would it be to collect resources and prepare Missionaries, when there were no Seamen to convey them across the ocean.

When a messenger travels but a few miles from a distant parish, and brings us tidings from absent and beloved friends, we hail his approach, and feel on account of the cold, and wind, and rain, he may have encountered on his short journey; we bid him welcome to good cheer, and send him not empty away. But is there no remembrance, no feeling, no gratitude, no sympathy, towards the mariner, who brings glad tidings from the furthest ends of the earth? Speak, ye Britons, who have relatives and friends in distant lands! You hail the postman, who travels a few streets with the welcome packet to your door;-and yet the men who have jeoparded their lives, in crossing, it may be, five or ten thousand miles of the ocean, as the bearers of your letters, are not thought of. And all this charge falls with double weight on the religious public. In the month of October last, one Missionary Society alone, received letters from Missionaries at Malta, Selinginsk, Leeward Islands, South Sea Islands, Vizagapatam, Corfu, Madras, St. Petersburgh, Surat, Malacca, Berbice, Demerara, Madagascar, Behrampore, Cape Town, Amboyna, Singapore, Bangalore, Nagercoil, Cuddapah, Batavia, &c. Oh, ye Missionary Societies, ye Ministers of the Gospel, ye various ranks and orders of men on British ground, how much are ye indebted to the Seamen of the nation! There is hardly a comfort ye enjoy, which does not, more or less, come to you through them.

The loss of religious liberty, however, which, but for their instru

mentality, would certainly follow, would soon preclude the religious public from attempting to evangelize the heathen. Neither schools for the poor, nor seminaries for the rich, could be established except as a Papistical, Jesuitical, and tyrannical priesthood, acting for the Holy Alliance, should approve; and their approval would never be obtained to any thing really good. It becomes the duty of every man who reveres his Bible, and can estimate the blessings of the British constitution, to contrast his present situation with that which would infallibly be his lot, were this country at the mercy of a Popish army, and a Popish king and priesthood. It is to our deliverance from such curses, that we owe, as a nation, our superior mental and religious blessings, and our present enviable station among the kingdoms of the earth. More than one half of the nations are in the same melancholy state our forefathers were, when Seamen landed the first Christian Missionary on their coast. A large proportion of what are called Christian kingdoms, are the deluded and enslaved subjects of the Church of Rome:-that Church whose iron rule and creed of darkness have destroyed their political liberties, and bound and shackled their minds in the chains of ignorance and superstition. We read of the havoc which that apostate Church has made among all nations, over whom it could exert its power, who presumed to read the Scriptures for themselves, and to worship God according to the dictates of their own conscience. And we know assuredly that she is the mother of spiritual harlots, the mystic Babylon, who hath made herself drunk with the blood of the saints. We know also, that she is in very deed and truth, the selfsame corrupt and ambitious, the same superstitious and tyrannical Church as ever; and that it is not from a change of feeling, or from an improved creed-for in these things

she changeth not-but only from a want of political power, that the people of Great Britain are not, at this moment, the same abject ignorant slaves of her despotism, which they once were.

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It has ever been to the Seamen of the realm that sensible and reflecting people have looked for protection and safety, when wars and rumours of wars have sounded in their ears. And as often as the country has looked to her Seamen, and sent them forth to the post of danger,-so often have they gone forward, and bared their bosoms to the storm; and, side by side, have stood parallel with the enemy's cannon, and have ever been ready to wage the battle, and to fall in the conflict; so that with the last effort of dying men, they might turn aside the tide of and beat back the sword and the oppressor from the inhabitants of their sea-begirt land. This every man knows to be true. And why, then, does not every man, who has thus partaken of the benefits of their services, come forward to make what returns he can? Why, it may especially be asked, should any man or any Minister, who reveres his Bible, and duly estimates his political and spiritual mercies, remain in the back ground? Not merely does justice, common-place justice, demand it, but gratitude calls aloud ; and he who obeys not the call proves himself unworthy of the benefits he has received.

Will any man of education, or of plain common sense and reflection, now say that half a million of such men are an insignificant object? Will any congregation of professing Christians, or any Minister who professes to inculcate justice, gratitude, and equity, with the love of souls and the glory of God, on his people, attempt to plead, that the moral and religious instruction of our Seamen is a subject which he and they may be excused from attending to? If so, the writer of this letter, for one, must be excused

for holding all such professions of love of souls, and of love of Christian virtues, as mere sounding brass and tinkling cymbal.

When it pleased the Almighty to visit the nations of Europe with his indignation, and to scourge them with the late sword of war, our land was involved in the calamity, and for many years together stood surrounded by hostile fleets and armies. They regarded us with every feeling and desire that breathed destruction to its inhabitants, to its wealth, and power, and freedom; but they were not able to shoot an arrow against her walls. They were not able to assault our borders. God had mercy in store for guilty Britain, and he taught our fleets to war, and our seamen to fight. They encountered, and defeated, and captured the foe, long before his hostile squadrons came within sight of the landman's peaceable dwelling. From time to time the trump of fame sounded through the land, and told how our ships and fleets had engaged, and captured the fleets and the enemy, and how they had brought them into port. The bells rang loud, and loud were the boasts of our countrymen, concerning the prowess and security of the nation, and of the skill and valour of her sons of the ocean; and many a party, grave and gay, hurried down to Portsmouth, to see with their own eyes the victors and the vanquished. They went on board the captured ships, and saw the havoc of naval war. They visited the British fleet, and saw the shattered, though victorious wooden walls, and heard how many of their brave defenders had fallen in the contest. saw the beams and timbers of the ships still black with the broad and deep stains of their countrymen's blood; and they returned home full of admiration at the things they had heard and seen. They returned home in a state of mind which de

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livered them from all future dread of the landing of a foreign power on our coast. They no longer could fear any harm coming near their happy and secure dwelling. "Our fleets," they would say, our fleets will protect us in safety and peace." Yes, God, by these fleets, did protect them, because the nation had seamen to stand in the breach, and as instruments to work their deliverance. But what return have these people made to the brave instruments of their deliverance ? Many thousands of them have made none whatever. At this moment riches and honours, and power, and wealth are the portion of British merchants, and statesmen, and princes. At this moment the religious public is enjoying facilities of a religious and missionary nature, which no other nation could afford. At this moment all ranks and orders of society are reaping the happy fruits of our seamen's former toils, and labours, and blood; and what are our merchants, and statesmen, and princes, and professors of the gospel doing in return? Thousands and tens of thousands of them have done nothing whatever for the religious and moral instruction of those to whom they owe almost all the comforts and blessings they enjoy. Is this acting according to the will of Him whose followers we profess to be? Can any zeal for Christianizing heathen lands excuse this neglect of our own brethren ? Can our profession of the love of souls pass current in heaven, when we thus pass by the poor perishing British seaman, and make not one effort to save him? Leaving your readers to answer these questions to God, and their own consciences, I must, for the present, lay down my pen, when I have assured you that I remain, your's truly,

R. MARKS.

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