Here there is no Thro', etc. brought in as a saving clause at the end. We leave this, and, indeed all our extracts, with the common sense of Protestant readers. They may compare our extracts with the original whenever they please. We are not conscious of our having wilfully misquoted from the "Vespers ;" indeed, had we been so disposed, we trust we had prudence enough to refrain from a species of fraud which could be so easily detected. We have no wish unnecessarily to wound the feelings, or to offer violence to the prejudices of Catholics, and we are convinced that such of them as are disposed to think for themselves must at once admit that "a disputable point is no man's ground." One principal object of our remarks has been, as we said before, to warn Protestants against what we conceive to be the errors of Papists. They ought not to throw themselves in the way of hearing Catholic doctrine until they have good reason for rejecting their own. But we are confident that those Protestants who are able to give a reason of the hope that is in them, are in no danger from Catholic contagion. To suppose that our opposition to Papists proceeds from any dread that in this country they should gain an ascendency, is the height of folly. Theirs is, and long has been, a falling cause. Need we prove this ? Think what the creed of this country was three centuries ago, compared with the prevailing faith of the present times. The palmy days of the Romish Church have passed away like a dream of the night. Its spirit is truly congenial only with an unenlightened age. Where are now the days when the Popes not only usurped the authority of supreme arbiters in disputes about religion or church discipline, but assumed the character of lords of the universe, arbiters of the fate of kingdoms and empires, and supreme rulers of the kings and princes of the earth? Where are now the authority, the opulence, and splendour of the Papal See? Need we wonder at its reverse of fortune? Its kingdom was of this world, and it has therefore shared the vicissitudes of every power which is not founded on the "rock of ages!" BE HEAVEN MY STAY. IN all the changes, here below, Be Heaven my stay! When my poor heart would fail for fear, Without the hand of pity near, Gently to wipe the unseen tear ; Be Heaven my stay! When I must bear the worldling's scorn, Derided for my lot forlorn, E'en of itself, but hardly borne ; Be heaven my stay! When many friends, whom once I knew, Have waxed, in number, very few, And doubts arise if these be true; When one with whom I'd link my fate And leaves my heart all desolate ; When days of health and youth are flown, The thorns are all I find my own; When full of tossings on my bed, I cannot cannot rest my head, Scared with dim visions of the dead! When sorely chastened for my sins, When all in vain, I strive to brave When faith itself begins to fail, And when, for praise, I find but wail ; FASCICULUS FACETIARUM ABREDONENSIUM. "A word in season-how good is it?"-SOLOMON. A TALE OF THE BROADGATE. -A member of that proverbially loquacious craft, who are particularly hostile to the distinguishing mark of the disciples of Joanna Southcote, which they denounce as a barbarism, was one night "working with sinuosities" along the Broadgate, with several bottles in his pate, making sundry hair-breadth escapes of a broken nose, ever and anon coining soap-suds, encountering a brush with a Charley, a dry-shave from a quizzical crony, a cut from every strapping wench he chanced to meet, when he was thus accosted by a douce woman of his acquaintance: "Ah! George, George, ye're i' the Braidgate." Unwilling to be thus bearded, George, with a contemptuous curl of the lip, replied, "I ken that; but for as braid as it is, I need it a'!" A FRIEND IN NEED.-Our townsman, Captain |