5.4.1029 ENGLAND'S PROTEST IS ENGLAND'S SHIELD, FOR THE BATTLE IS THE LORD'S. BY THE REV. HUGH MCNEILE, A.M. RECTOR OF ALBURY, SURREY; AND CHAPLAIN TO HIS GRACE THE ARCHBISHOP OF DUBLIN. "Her sun has gone down while it was yet day."-JER. xv. 9. "And now I have told you before it come to pass, that when it is SECOND EDITION. LONDON: J. HATCHARD AND SON, 187, PICCADILLY. 1829. $79. FELLOW-COUNTRYMEN, Do you believe the Bible? The Bible! Yes; for this popish question is a Bible question. Do you believe that the everlasting God, the ruler of all the nations upon the earth, has revealed any portion of his will to the children of men; and that the Bible contains that revelation? Is the God of the Bible the God of England? Hear me, then, on the authority of God's word, while I speak his revealed purposes concerning our native land. Is it too late to give warning? Has the tide of liberalism sapped our foundations indeed? And must every attempt, even to retard the crash of our noble edifice, prove utterly unavailing? Well, a voice of witness for the truth of God must still be raised, and England's doom be sounded in her ears. Almighty God so arranged and overruled the circumstances of the lives of his servants of old, Abraham, David, and others, as that their histories, and the language which they were influenced to make use of, should supply a rich fund of application to the experience of all the elect people of God in every age. This is what makes the book of Genesis, and the book of Psalms, as truly and personally applicable now, as they were when first written. So also with respect to the nations of Israel and Judah. Their histories were so arranged and overruled by the Lord of all the earth, as to supply a counterpart, a sort of rehearsal, upon a small scale, of the fore-ordained histories of the nations of Christendom. And the language which the Prophets were taught by the Holy Ghost to use, respecting Israel and Judah, is most truly applicable now to the nations with whom we have to do. Thus, in the Old Testament, we have a language supplied for the personal experience of individual Chris tians, and also a language supplied for God's dealings with the nations of Christendom: and thus, whether as sinners, or as Englishmen, whatsoever things were written afore-time were written for our learning. Look back then upon Israel and Judah, as our key. Israel, for her abominable idolatries, had been severely scourged, in the righteous providence of God. Intestine broils had led to the cutting off of one royal family after another; Samaria had been visited by famine; at last, an invading army, under Shalmaneser, the Assyrian, was raised up, and commissioned by the Lord of Hosts, to sweep through the whole kingdom of Israel with the besom of destruction and desolation. Thus were the ten tribes visited with the national plagues of the wrath of God. I say national plagues, because nations having no existence as nations in eternity, must receive their national rewards or punishments in time: this, however, not interfering with the eternal salvation or damnation of the individual inhabitants of those nations. After Israel's national calamities had come upon her to the uttermost, Judah was still pre |