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also shewn them how to build ; and has During the last week our people introduced a variety of English culi- cheered us with songs in the night; nary roots and vegetables, which in the Lord doubtless tuned their hearts. that climate will probably soon become On hearing several voices at a disso abundant as to furnish an ample tance, I arose from my bed, and opensupply to the various inhabitants. And, ed the window, when all resounded in addition to all the rest, he devotes a with the high praises of God. O how part of every day to the instruction of delightful! All nature seemed to fathe children, whilst every evening in vour the song. The moon shone with the week he either preaches, or cate- | her borrowed splendour; the glitterchises, or converses on spiritual sub- ing stars twinkled in their spheres; jects, and prays with the Hottentots. and the everlasting rocks gave echo to Such is the nature of the every-day the sound, and raised the charming work of the men, who by the Quarterly | melody. The music was so sweet, that Reviewer are most malignantly repre- at the time I supposed I had never sented as 66 encouraging idleness by heard any thing so delightful. The instructing the natives in their own pe- company of those who sung consisted culiar doctrines, and in nothing else." of about thirty, who also joined in prayer." Such are the people who, according to our Quarterly Reviewer, never express their gratitude to their Creator in hymns and songs."

The Hottentots who go naked, or who appear in their ancient sheep-skin clothing, have nothing to do with the Methodist mission. Such a report, whether true or false I know not, has been circulated of one, and only one missionary. But he, and the people among whom he labours, have no more connection with the Methodist mission, than with the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge. Should the fact have been as. reported, the evil has, no doubt, by this time engaged the attention of that respectable body of Christians from whom that missionary received his appointment, and either is already, or soon will be, completely remedied. But, admitting the existence of the evil to the full extent of the Reviewer's statement, does it, I would ask that gentleman, comport, I will not say with candour, but with common heathen honesty, to filiate it upon the Methodists, and to make nakedness and filth the ordinary accompaniments of their mission?

That they, the Methodist Hottentots, never express their gratitude to their Creator in hymns and songs," is a charge which will obtain credit only among those who are totally ignorant of the mode of worship among the Methodists. Singing hymns and spiritual songs occupy a considerable place in their public devotions. Nor is this the case here only, but in Africa also. Neither is the expression of 66 their gratitude in hymns and songs" confined to public worship, but in this way they give vent to the pious emotions of their souls in other places. In a letter from the Rev. Mr. Shaw to his father, dated Leelie Fontien, March 27, 1818, are the following observations.

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From what has already been stated, the last charge cannot possibly be true, viz. That the Methodist Hottentots do nothing but whimper, whine, and groan." But do they never groan? Sometimes they do. Why? Because they, like consistent members of our established church, are convinced that they "have erred and strayed from God's ways like lost sheep;" and therefore like them they cry Lord have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercy upon us." Like them, with broken and contrite hearts, contemplating the danger of eternal death to which they are exposed, they, with the utmost earnestness, pray

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By thine agony and bloody sweat, by thy cross and passion, by thy death and burial, by thy glorious resurrection and ascension, and by the coming of the Holy Ghost, GOOD LORD DELIVER US." The members of the established church, if they are not hypocrites, are some of the greatest" whimperers, and whiners and groaners" in Christendom, until God mercifully absolve them from all their sins.*

Wherever there is genuine repentance, there is mental sorrow, and sorrow will naturally express itself in

*The Liturgy of the Church of England is remarkable for its religious fervour. Much of its language expresses a high degree of devotional excitement, and therefore can never the impenitent. be properly adopted by the thoughtless and In their case they are words without meaning; but in the case of humble penitents, such as the Methodist Hottentots appear to be, they are literally correct.

matter for sneer and sarcasm, I behold in it the indications of the ultimate Christianization of the various countries where they have already erected the standard of the cross. Whilst reviewers are enjoying all the comforts of this life, and are not only not advancing the interests of Christianity, but, as far as in them lies, hindering its progress, by raising a cry against those whom God has eminently ho

what the Reviewer elegantly calls "whimpering, whining, and groaning." Whether he knows any thing of that godly sorrow which worketh repentance to salvation, there is much reason to fear. Did he, he could not have treated with envenomed rancour the poor uneducated Hottentot for smiting on his breast like the publican, and like him crying (he would say whimpering or whining) "God be merciful to me a sinner." Or, like the three thou-noured in the missionary field; these sand, who under the ministry of Peter, were pricked to the heart, and said (or as our Reviewer would say whined and whimpered) "Men and brethren, what shall we do?" Personal religion has its beginning in repentance, and its sorrows will be found uniformly to precede the joys of salvation.

I have confined my observations to the Methodist mission in South Africa, because the censure of the Reviewer applies to that mission; and have fully shewn, that the missionaries preach both the doctrines and the duties of the Bible; that they catechise and instruct both the old and the young; that, like St. Paul, their own hands minister to their necessities; and that they have introduced several of the arts of civilization, and consequently added to the temporal comfort of the Hottentots. I have confined my observations to that mission, otherwise I should have felt a sacred pleasure in dilating on their other important missions, especially on those established in the West Indies, and Ceylon ;-missions by which an indescribable quantum of moral good has already been accomplished, and which exhibit the fairest prospect of a rich missionary harvest.

When I contemplate the zeal, the labours, the sufferings, the privations, of those holy men, who brave the dangers of the deep, sacrifice the pleasures of polished society, and associate with men little elevated above a savage state, and living on their humble fare; instead of viewing them, as our Reviewer does, as objects of contempt, I look upon them as beings of a higher order, as eminently treading in the steps of Him" who was rich, yet became poor, that we through his poverty might be made rich;"-and as hastening to a great and glorious reward. And instead of seeing nothing in the success with which they have been favoured, but what furnishes

apostolic men are cheerfully exposing themselves to perils by water, and perils by land, and perils among wild beasts, and perils among savage tribes; and are not even counting "their lives dear unto themselves, so that they may finish their course with joy, and the ministry which they have received of the Lord Jesus, to testify the gospel of the grace of God."

Between the benefits resulting to the world from the labours of zealous Christian missionaries, and those which result from the lucubrations of such reviewers as the gentleman reviewed in this paper, there is no more comparison than between the lives of the celebrated John Elwes, and the great Howard. The one might perhaps perform one act of benevolence in seven years, an act which required no privation, and subjected to no inconvenience; but the life of the latter was one unbroken series of beneficence; he sacrificed kindred, and acquaintance, and property, and country, and every earthly comfort, to promote the happiness of mankind: and for such men to affect to censure the exertions of missionaries, is not less ludicrous than for persons like Elwes to ridicule the zeal, and sufferings, and associates, and mode of living, of the great philanthropist. It is the owl complaining of the harsh and unmelodious note of the nightingale ;-it is the pigmy lamenting the weakness of the giant; and the glow-worm pitying the dim lustre of the sun. Such missionaries will be had in everlasting remembrance, when their adversaries shall be written in the dust.

Jan. 24, 1820.

ABEDNEGO.

HISTORICAL FACTS RESPECTING
POPERY.

[Continued from col. 138.]

Thus have I passed through those eight religious orders, who were pos

*

sessed of our land. I come now to The Dominicans, or Black Friars, those, who, although they had no pos- took their rise in the year 1216, from sessions of their own, yet were in ef- | that godly butcher St. Dominick, whose fect masters of all the land in this na-catholic zeal was first manifested in tion, it being accounted a crime equal | the barbarous croisade which he set on to sacrilege, to deny them entrance foot against those innocent people the into any place which they would ho- Albigenses, of whom, above one hunnour with their presence; I mean those dred thousand were massacred at once, four venerable orders, the Franciscans, by this saint's instigation: for, at a Dominicans, Carmelites, and Hermites smaller price of blood he could not of St. Austin. hope to purchase a canonization in a church, which was so well stocked with such kind of saints before. To give yet a farther instance of his Christian charity, when he saw how the number of heretics was diminished by his wholesome severities, like a true high-church champion, he listed into his order a set of merciless ruffians, whom he styled the militia of Jesus Christ; whose employment was to cut the throats of all those who were so schismatical as to dissent from him in opinion. It was he also who founded that merciful court of justice, called the Inquisition, of which himself was made the head. Nor did he want for miracles any more than his brother St. Francis; for though he had no such bodily marks,** yet he received the Holy Ghost with the same glory of a flaming tongue as the Apostles did; and whereas Christ being Verbum Dei, only proceeded from the mouth of God, St. Dominick ++ was seen to come from his breast. Nay farther, he like St. Paul was ravished into the third heaven, where seeing none of his own order, he complained to Jesus Christ of it; who exhibited his mother, the Virgin Mary, cherishing vast numbers of his followers in a manner that delicacy compels us to conceal. This diabolical sect pretended to follow the rule of St. Austin, and multiplied so fast, that in the space of two hundred and seventy years, they had one thousand one hun

The Franciscans, or Grey Friars, were instituted in the year 1206, by St. Francis, whose first prank of holiness, was robbing his father, for which pious act being disinherited, he, like a true ranter, stript himself stark naked, and ran away to a chapel near Assisy in Umbria, where being a beggar himself, he began a begging order; which being founded on sloth and idleness, drew in so many converts, that St. Francis, even in his life-time, saw two thousand five hundred convents of his own monks, all mumpers, gipsies, vagrants, and such like persons, taking upon them his profession of sanctity, which agreed so well with their own inclinations. It were endless here to enumerate those many ridiculous and blasphemous miracles with which his lying legend is filled; such as his bearing the marks of Christ upon his body, which were imprinted there by Christ himself; such as his conversing intimately with the Virgin Mary; such as his healing the lame and blind, nay, and even raising the dead to life. Miracles, upon the strength of which, his blind followers have not hesitated to publish him greater than John the Baptist, and all the apostles, and to affirm that a roll from heaven declared him to be the "Grace of God." Nay, they have not been ashamed to call him § "Jesus of Nazareth, King of the Jews." Relying upon the sincerity of the author of his legend, (I mean Lu-dred and forty-three convents. cifer, whose seat this great saint now fills in heaven) who being once abjured by a priest, answered " that there were only two in heaven marked alike, Christ and St. Francis."

*Hospin de Orig. Mon. lib. 6. cap. 8. Bonavent. in Legend, cap. 4.

Lib. Conformitatum Ord. St. Francis, fol. 228. N. B. This book was written by Bartholomew de Pisis, or Pisanus, a Franciscan, and approved at a general chapter of Franciscans at Assisy, in the year 1399, and by them entitled the Golden Book. § Ib. ut sup. lib. 1.

The Carmelites, or White Friars, pretend that the §§ Prophet Elias was the first Carmelite, who obtained of our Saviour, at the time of his transfiguration on Mount Carmel, this grand

|| Ib, ut sup. page 44, 293.

¶ Lib. Conformitat. fol. 230, 231.

**Nic Jansenius Vit. St. Domin. lib. 1. cap. 8. page 56.

tt Ib. lib. 2, cap. 14, page 109.

++ Apol. Dom. in Vita St. Dom. and Ben. Gonom. Chron. B. Virg. page 212, 218, 223. §§ Ben. Gonom. Chron. 8, v. page 319.