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BLACKWOOD'S

EDINBURGH MAGAZINE.

No. CXLI.

JULY, 1828.

VOL. XXIV.

DR PHILLPOTTS AND MR LANE ON THE CORONATION OATH.

APART from all question of Politics, and especially of what are called Party Politics, all men who have kept their eyes open in the light of the Reformation, and enjoy and value the blessing of the Protestant Faith,—that is, true, pure, and incorrupt Christianity,must regard with aversion all sentiments, opinions, and acts, the tendency of which, however remote, seems to be encouragement and protection to Popery. With indignation and hatred far stronger than their fear, and swallowing up their fear, must they regard all measures and all men employed as instruments, either in ignorance, indifference, or wickedness, to restore the reign of religious-that is, of intellectual and moral-"Chaos and old night." They desire to see the human mind unclouded by superstition, free from base apprehensions of the divine government of the world-unsubjected to the tyranny of priestcraft that bows down the soul, even in the exercise of its highest feelings and faculties liberated from most pernicious practical opinions, under whose influence none of the affections and relations of social and domestic life can exist in their natural strength and sanctity. In one word, they desire that man should live in and by know ledge, human and divine. They see him so living, under many deplorable and inevitable drawbacks on his felicity, in Britain, where Reason and Faith know each its own province; and VOL. XXIV.

where, owing, far above all other causes, to the direct influence of our Reformed Religion, of its learned and enlightened and laborious ministers and servants, and of the sacred institutions formed and endowed to uphold and foster its spirit, which they have nobly and gloriously done, the People have been saved on the one hand from Superstition that enchains, and from Atheism, (we use the word in its largest sense,) that lets loose human nature to its own ruin and destruction. This we owe to the Reformed Protestant Church.

It is the duty, therefore, of every Christian, living in the open daylight of the true Faith, to take heed that it shall not be again darkened. How it was darkened of old we know

chiefly by the devices of ignorant, crafty, sinful, and most selfish men, who saw that the very majesty and mystery of the Most High might be made subservient to their wicked designs upon the liberty of man's conscience, till, by a perpetual appeal to natural feelings, miserably perverted by the superstition in which their growth had been overshadowed, Temporal Power took, it may be said, the very place of Eternal-the voice of the Vatican was terrible to all ears, as that of old thundering from Sinai

the curse of the creature felt to be the curse of the Creator, and a worm crawling in slime to the grave-the Governor of the World! A

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