Within the United Kingdom we have at present BENEDICTINES, FRANCISCANS, DOMINICANS, and almost every other description of Monastic Order. But the JESUITS' funds now at Stonyhurst are alone sufficient to awaken our attention! Of the system of education, indeed, as there conducted, we know only that it is not the same as at Maynooth; and that their young men are afterwards sent out for ordination to the College of the Order in Sicily, from whence they are re-imported into this country. And yet, these are the persons who are now about to establish themselves in IRELAND, for the purpose of spreading their own peculiar and suspected modes of education.”—Again, he said,

As to the regulations of the Clergy, and the restrictions of Foreign intercourse, for the purpose of giving us some domestic security against Foreign Encroachments; these, I think, are necessary matters for legislation. But, upon the head of the Regular Clergy, it is well known, over and above their imperfect allegiance to their temporal Sovereign, and their allegiance also to the Sovereign Pontiff, that they owe also another allegiance, each to the General of his own Order. The General of the Order of the Jesuits is to-day in Russia, to-morrow he may be in France; the General of the Dominicans was in Spain, and is now I believe at Rome : and although Dr. TROY, now the titular Archbishop of Dublin, is himself a Dominican, I confess I do not wish to see others of the same description in the same situations."

THE RIGHT OF PRIVATE JUDGMENT, which forms the basis of Protestantism, and tends to destroy spiritual tyranny, has always been opposed by Roman Catholics, on account of the infallibility of their Church. Hence it happens, that every man presuming to doubt of their system, and to think wholly for himself, will be deemed an obstinate rebel. To persevere in disbelieving, leads necessarily to a state of independence and schism. It next, therefore, becomes requisite for Ecclesiastics to threaten and denounce

the offender; who is said to have fallen into a mortal sin, which demands auricular confession and priestly absolution: but if a culprit be not thus restored, nothing remains to be done, except a civil magistrate will execute vengeance on the condemned person, now expelled; who yet is canonically held fast, as a subject deserting from his first Lord, and is deemed by the Church still liable to death.

This procedure is very different from an act of selfdefence and preservation, in a temporal Sovereign; which is not grounded on any mere obliquity of opinion, or speculative error, but upon some outward injury done to the commonwealth, some personal injustice or violence. The former is religious persecution, the latter is political prudence; the one is purely an affair between God and his creature, the other is a business concerning two or more members of a society. The Church of Rome claims this mental allegiance from every soul of man: her empire, though called spiritual, is secular and universal; nor does she conceive it possible for one human being, under any change of circumstances, to be dissolved from the obligation of obeying her dictates, because they are of Divine authority and origin. Such is her reasoning, and these are its unsocial consequences.

When religion has become so blended with a bloody policy, that no provision is made for dissidents, toleration is impossible, and cruel laws will inevitably follow: a close alliance between worldly and spiritual objects is, therefore, always dangerous; as tending to debase Christianity and produce hypocrites. But the Church of Rome does not provide for dissenters, cannot allow them to enjoy free worship, cannot admit of any the least rivalry, cannot avoid arbitrary means of upholding itself; and, consequently, never can eease to persecute others when PHYSICAL power is acquired. Its canon law, its system, its whole fabric, is a refined policy; moved and excited by an insatiate lust of dominion.

It was therefore wise and statesman-like in Lord Castle

reagh to say, "Whilst the Roman Catholic Clergy feel a becoming confidence in the purity of their own intentions, and justly appeal to the tests by which they have solemnly disclaimed all the noxious tenets that have, in former times, been imputed to their Church: whilst they declare that they owe no obedience to the Pope, inconsistent with their duty as good subjects; and that their allegiance to the external Head of their Church is purely spiritual, and restricted to matters of faith and doctrine: yet, they must be too well versed in the history of mankind not to feel, and to allow, that, so LONG AS SPIRITUAL AUTHORITY IS EXERCISED BY MEN, IT IS PRONE TO MIX ITSELF IN TEMPORAL CONCERNS, more espe-.. cially in matters which may be considered as affecting the interests of the Church itself, since a taste for power is inseparable from human nature; and that the times may return when the power and influence of the See of Rome, if not restrained by wholesome regulations, may be turned against the temporal interests and security of the State.

"Why is the British Government alone, of all the powers in Europe, to remain exposed to a danger, against which it has been the invariable policy of all other States, Roman Catholic as well as Protestant, to provide ?"

See this whole Speech in Mr. Charles Butler's Historical Memoirs of the Catholics, VOL. II. CH. xxxix. § 6.

LETTER XVII.

SIR, I HAVE affirmed, in my last Letter, that the oppressive and infamous "Laws of the Congregation of the Index," published at Rome, still remain in full force; and that they are, accordingly, sometimes insisted on by the

Vicars Apostolic acting in Great Britain. How truly, therefore, did Dr. Geddes declare, that "every one who knows what Popish principles are, must consider them as radically incompatible with civil government; and only ceasing to be hurtful by contingency and circumstances. I have no hesitation," said this loyal Catholic PRIEST, " in asserting, that a GENUINE CONSISTENT PAPIST cannot be a good subject under any government! There is hardly a nation in Europe, which has not at times experienced this: and as to their fawning on the established Clergy, it is truly ridiculous! The established Clergy must be dim-sighted indeed, if they can deem such homage sincere, and snuff up incense from a Romish censer.-I have heard a Bishop of the Establishment compared, by a Pope's Vicar, to the skin of a calf stuffed with straw, for the purpose of inducing the deceived cow to let down her milk.”

Even Sir John Throckmorton and Mr. Berington were so bold as to admit, that " as long as the present Ecclesiastical Government (by Apostolical Vicars) continues, neither the principles nor the allegiance of the Catholic Clergy are secure." A letter of M. Quarantotti to Dr. Poynter proves this.

The Pontiff himself, on the 17th of April 1808, in his Memorial to M. Champigny, stated very plainly, that the personal allegiance claimed by the reigning civil power over the French Cardinals, "could not avail against the sacred obligations undertaken in the Church of God;" thus evincing the nullity and absolute childishness of all ties to temporal governors, which they who rule in the Church may determine to be prejudicial to the interests of their " DIVINE HIERARCHY."

Mr. Charles Butler has printed a very learned pamphlet to demonstrate the supremacy of the Bishop of Rome.But, JUDGE BLACKSTONE observes, that "while Papists acknowledge a foreign power, superior to the sovereignty of the kingdom, they cannot complain if the laws of that king

dom will not treat them upon the footing of good subjects:" and, it was well said by King Henry VIII. in his speech on the 11th of May 1532, " All the Prelates at their consecration make an oath to the Pope, clean contrary to the oath which they make to us; so that they seem to be his subjects, not ours."

Bishop Poynter, in his examination by a Committee of the House of Commons, in 1816, as also in a letter which I myself received from him (dated August 24, 1813), plainly shows his settled determination to be governed by the "Laws of the Congregation of the Index."§ And Bishop Milner, in his late Inquiry into the Vulgar Errors of the Irish, complained of certain Societies in the following terms: "Among other pious frauds of these Societies in Ireland, in order to trick the Catholic inhabitants out of their religion, is that of endeavouring to persuade them that their own Popes and most eminent Divines advise them to lay aside their Catechisms, turn a deaf ear to their Pastors, and hammer their own religion out of the several books of the Bible. For this purpose they have published and circulated among the Catholic poor, a garbled and corrupt translation of a letter from Pope Pius VI. to Martini of Florence, in com mendation of his translation of the Scriptures into Italian: but they have taken care to suppress the passages in which His Holiness enforces the Rules of the Index, and praises the work for having notes to explain difficult passages conformably to the doctrine of the holy fathers."

The irreconcilable opposition between our Church and that of Rome in the article of reposing on Scripture ALONE

§ See a "Correspondence on the Formation, Objects, and Plan of the Roman Catholic Bible Society; including Letters from the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lord Clifford, Right Rev. Bishop Poynter, Rev. Peter Gandolphy, Ant. Richard Blake and Charles Butler, Esqrs. with Notes and Observations, exhibiting the genuine Principles of Roman Catholics. London, 1813."