selves to be the original church, stripped of their birthright, and robbed of their possessions by usurpers-Esaus supplanted by Jacobs.

They are now regularly organized: they have their parent associations, their auxiliaries, and their branches *. And mark the tone which they assume; how they talk of their oppression and their long lost RIGHTS; and declaim about a bigoted faction, tyrannous laws, and an enslaved country. "But it is all in vain," says the Jesuit writer of Stonyhurst †; "these are only the efforts of men in despair. The Catholic religion is again spreading itself over the land. It has been kept down by a series of intolerant laws, and almost extinguished by the bloody persecutions of Protestant kings; but it is again taking its hereditary attitude, supported by Him who promised that the gates of hell shall not prevail against it." But the very genius of Catholicism accords with these expressions. Men, who firmly believe that their own religion is the only true one, and that there is no salvation in any other, must, in order to be consistent, whenever they see an opening, push its interests by all efforts; and, whatever protestations they may make, account themselves acquitted, even of oaths, in prosecution of the

*See Proceedings of Catholic Finance Committee, in Dublin, 1824.

Pamphlet, the first of a Series, John Bull, Oct. 3, 1824.

higher duty. It is true, we are asked, triumphantly, to explain--how, if there be no security for Catholic protestations,-if they think that Christ's vicegerent can loosen the bond of an oath,-do they forfeit civil advantages by refusing the oath of supremacy? And we reply, because the oath of supremacy would immediately commit them with the Pope, who would excommunicate them as rebels to his authority, as the ecclesiastical head of the church. Their ineligibility to high places

To the Catholic claims of being the supreme Church in domination, and the original Church in Britain and Ireland, the Bishop of St. David's has replied, in several masterly confutations: in his "Protestant Retrospect;" his "Protestant's Manual;" his "Observations on the Western Travels of St. Paul;" his "Popery incapable of Union with a Protestant Church;" his "Christ, and not St. Peter, the Rock on which the Church was built;" his "Independence of the Ancient British Churches;" and, chiefly, in his "Protestant's Catechism." The reader, who refers to these excellent tracts, will find, that various churches subsisted before the Church of Rome was founded; that supremacy, or jurisdiction over the whole Christian church, was never assumed by the Pope until the seventh century; that it was reprobated by Gregory the Great; that it was reprobated by the Eastern Church, and by the Churches of Britain and Ireland, who followed the Eastern Church in celebrating Easter; that Christianity was planted in Britain by St. Paul, or, certainly, as early as in the year 61; and this on the joint authority of Clemens, Eusebius, Tertullian, Gildas, and the British Triads (though Dr. Hales says the Gospel was introduced A.D. 57, by Bran, the father of Caractacus); that this existence of the British Church long

of trust, may be rested on the following dilemma; if they are indifferent to their own religion, they

before the Papal supremacy arose, in the seventh century, and the Papal domination in this country in the eleventh, shows the primitive independence of the British Church on the Pope. They will find that the Church of England existed before the Reformation, in the New Testament, and in Britain six centuries before the arrival of Austin; that the British Churches were Protestant long before they were Popish, having different usages from Rome, and rejecting the Pope's authority; that the Irish Church is said by Bede to have differed in nothing from the British. They will find the authority of Usher cited, to show that the Irish, Saxon, and Norman Kings, down to the beginning of the twelfth century, nominated their own bishops, and that the nomination by the Popes was only for one hundred and fifty years; that the Anglo-Saxon Churches differed from the Church of Rome, in regard to purgatory, image-worship, saint invocation, transubstantiation, and other errors: the foundation of the church upon the rock Christ, the giving of the Scriptures, grace, faith, works, justification, and sanctification (Hales's Independence); that the Church of England was part, not of the Church of Rome, but of the Church of Christ: that the Reformation was not a separation from the Church of Christ, but a renunciation of Papal jurisdiction and Romish errors; and that the Revolution was a completion of the Reformation, having for its principle the exclusion of Papists from political power.

"Let us oppose to the immutability of the Romish Church, the immutable union of Church and State, provided for and sanctioned by so many statutes: by the 1st Elizabeth, for abolishing all foreign powers; the 30th Charles II. for excluding Papists from Parliament; the Bill of Rights, 1st William and Mary, for excluding Papists from the crown; by the Act of Settlement, for securing the Protestant succession;

must be more so to one not their own; and if they are zealous for their own, that zeal will rouse

by the Act of Union with Scotland, confirming all Acts for the establishment and preservation of the Church of England." "Let us remember, if we cannot convince Papists, that in excluding them from our churches, and from political power, while we maintain our own rights, we do them no wrong; that theirs is not, as they think, the ancient religion, either of England or Ireland; that Popery was in both countries an intruder and an usurper; that in both countries it obtained its footing, as a system of jurisdiction, by the weakness and ignorance of some, and the mercenary policy of others; and that, however first established, its exactions and oppressions were never congenial to the national spirit of this country; but were always (except in the twelfth and part of the thirteenth century,) from time to time, opposed and restricted by our kings and parliaments; were abolished by the Reformation, and finally precluded from revival by the laws of the Revolution. We are the heirs of our ancestors' labours. May we do justice to the valuable inheritance entailed upon us, by maintaining inviolably what they have willed to be perpetual and unalienable."-Bishop Burgess's Protestant Catechism, p. 50. See also Hales on the Independence of the British Churches.

The same subject is eloquently treated in the first Lecture of Birt's Summary of Popery, 1824.

He treats the word Catholic as sometimes meaning universal, and sometimes true. With reference to the former term, he shows, first, that as not coeval with Christianity,-that as having acknowledged the relation of a part to the whole,that as never having included even a majority of professing Christians, the Church of Rome cannot be universal; and, secondly, that as opposite in constitution to the essential principles of Christianity; as, in fact, divided by many internal

itself, on the attainment of one step, to climb to another.

IX. Add to all this, that it has been openly asserted in Parliament, and maintained by the secular advocates of Catholicism, that all religions are equally good in a political view, and that that of the majority ought to be that of the state. Attachment to Protestantism, or any specific modification of religion, is termed bigotry; as indifference to all religious distinctions, receives, of course, the honourable title of liberality. "To me," said Lady Morgan, "it is immaterial, Protestant or Catholic." This is a favourite sentiment with northern literati, who, thinking the nonsensical Calvinism of the kirk to be the pure Christianity of Scripture, recoil from its horrible decrees into cold and confirmed Deism. But if the religion of the state ought to be the religion of the majority, we should soon run through the whole diapason of superstition, enthusiasm, falsehood, and absurdity. Methodism would, at present, be established in England; and perhaps our governors would next have to support the senseless creed of a second

schisms; as superseding the necessity, and preventing the existence of piety in the human heart; and as teaching doctrines contradictory to the revealed will of Christ, and destructive of souls: masses for the dead, the insufficiency of Scripture, invocation of saints, &c. it cannot be the true church. In the former case, then, it errs in styling all beyond its own pale schismatics; and in the latter, in deeming them heretics.