The Select Committee of the Lords on the Declaration Against
Transubstantiation have reported that the Declare- ticn can be modified advantageously, and for the future should be in a form which they set forth. In the new form the words "contrary to the Protestant religion" are substi- tuted for the declaration that the Mass and the adoration of the Virgin Mary and the saints are " superstitious and idola-
trous," and the word " unreservedly " is used instead of a long clause declaring that the Sovereign had made no mental reservation and received no dispensation from the Pope or any other person. The new form is certainly a great improve. ment on the old, and ought to be adopted, even though the Roman Catholics should declare it to be so inadequate as to be hardly worth having, but we wish that the old Declaration could be done away with altogether, and an entirely different one substituted, in which the King should simply declare himself to be a member of the Protestant or Reformed religion. The King must be a Protestant, and not a Roman Catholic, but this secured, nothing must be said or done to wound in the slightest degree the feelings of our Roman Catholic fellow. subjects throughout the Empire. To shower vituperative epithets en the tenets of the Roman Church is a barbarous outrage, and contrary to the true spirit of the Reformed faith in England, which when at its best has never fulminated against other creeds, and has refrained from imitating the rhetorical invectives of Papal Bulls.
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