General Mathew, is, that the Sovereign Pontiff must be considered as "God's Vicar on earth, the Supreme Head of the whole Church, the Representative of God made man, before whom Kings are but dust and ashes." Abbé La Trappe tells us so !

I cannot conclude this Letter in more forcible language than the words of Lord Colchester afford me: "Their Prelates will still inculcate the same doctrine, and bow with the same implicit obedience to the Papal authority: § and this SPIRITUAL JURISDICTION, we have been distinctly told by the highest Roman Catholic authority in England, can be completely exercised, if necessary, by mere personal AGENCY; utterly passing by all ostensible securities, and without the formal intervention of any WRITTEN INSTRUMENT, OR DOCUMENT, OR ANY STATE-CONTROL WHATEVER. This spiritual supremacy of the Sovereign Pontiff, however exercised, is incompatible with the Protestant constitution of these realms: and this usurped dominion, although it be subdued and eclipsed for a time in France" [i. e. during 1813], "has recently blazed forth in Spain; and we may be well assured it never can be a harmless guest, much less a safe co-estate, with the government of any country under heaven. I feel it incumbent on me to repeat that, in my opinion, the great stand to be made for the preservation of our Constitution in Church and State, must be against the admission of Roman Catholics to seats in Parliament: a concession which would virtually accomplish, at no distant period, THEir adMISSION INTO EVERY OTHER BRANCH OF POLITICAL POWER; and an event which I dread and deprecate, and shall think it my duty to resist to the uttermost.”

§ Lord Castlereagh, in a Parliamentary debate on the VETO, stated, that "the Apostolic Vicars were mere Missionaries, removable at pleasure, and obliged implicitly to obey all orders from Rome."-Are these agents, therefore, fit persons to direct the consciences of British subjects?

LETTER XVIII.

SIR,

In the 8th and 9th chapters of the Koran, you may see that the Impostor MAHOMET gave express precepts and authority to propagate his religion by the sword. He tells his disciples "to strike off the ends of their enemies' fingers, and to kill idolaters wherever they are found;" and he says, "Ye Christian Dogs, you know your option-the Koran, the Tribute, or the Sword:" but, such precepts and injunctions form part of the Mahomedans' RELIGION, and they too might petition any Christian Legislature with which such men could live, to admit them into the supreme national council. They might urge: "We are subject to privations and restrictions, most unjustly, for no cause but our adherence to an ancient and pure RELIGION; which forbids us to take your common Test, Oath, or Declaration of loyalty; and it is solely owing to our conscientious attachment to principles of a religious nature, that we cannot do so; which principles, WE PETITIONERS AFFIRM, do not interfere or conflict with any of the moral, civil, or political duties we owe to your present Establishment."-Now, I ask, if this be not the exact prayer of a new Petition from English Roman Catholics, signed by more than 10,300 of them? They remain subject to penal laws, merely on account of their refusal of certain Religious Tests, Oaths, and Declarations: that they refuse these, is solely owing to their conscientious adherence to principles merely of a Religious nature, and not conflicting with any moral, civil, or political duty that the Petitioners have, at different times, presented Petitions to the House for relief from the laws remaining in force against them; and they now again approach the House, with the most perfect reliance on its wisdom and

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humanity-most humbly praying that the House will take their case into consideration, and grant them such relief as they shall deem proper for extending to them the enjoyment, in common with their fellow-subjects, of the blessings of the Constitution.”—This is a very fallacious, and yet a very plausible, mode of stating their case.

I am a Churchman; but can assent to Archdeacon Paley's words, that "differences of opinion, when accompanied with mutual CHARITY, are for the most part innocent, and for some purposes useful: they promote inquiry, discussion, and knowledge; they help to keep up an attention to religious subjects, and a concern about them,-which might be apt to die away in the calm and silence of universal agreement. I do not know (adds he) that it is in any degree true, that the influence of religion is the greatest where there are the fewest Dissenters."-Paley's Evidences, Vol. II. chap. vii. p. 389, 4th Edition, 1794.

Let us hear a Dissenter speak on this topic, as he cannot be interested or prejudiced in favour of our Church: I copy the following Extract from a sensible Letter by a " Protestant Dissenter," in the Bristol Journal of March 27, 1819; signed "CANDIDUS."

"I have said that the Catholic labours under disabilities, because his religious sentiments militate against the prin ciples of the Constitution, and I think the truth of the assertion is capable of the clearest demonstration. The Church established by law, is a part of the Constitution; and, though the Catholics profess to have no intention of overturning it, yet I must remind them that their profession is flatly contradicted by their religious principles. With regard to other religious systems, the uniform language of all the standard documents of the Catholic Church is-anathema. Its hierarchy, its government, its discipline, its creeds, are all founded on the same common principle of exclusive intolerance. From the Vatican of Rome to the

P

SIR,

LETTER XIX.

THOUGH I entertain no fear of a direct and immediate attempt being made by our present Rulers, either in Church or State, to unite once more the unreformed See of Rome with the reformed ecclesiastical establishment of England, yet I feel it right to allude here to this subject. The letters of Archbishop Wake to M. Dupin, a Doctor of the Sorbonne, may have given an idea that such a re-union (or rather a junction of the Gallican with the Anglican Church), was practicable; and yet, Sir, the result of that correspondence proved, that "Rocks as high, and more impenetrable than the Alps or the Andes, are cast betwixt us:" thus, indeed, thought the Roman Catholic author of " The State and Behaviour of English Catholics," whose candour is always conspicuous, but not so extravagant as to insult or betray his own Mother Church.

In the 4th Appendix to any modern edition of Mosheim's Ecclesiastical History, you will find this whole correspondence. The translator, in conclusion, remarks; that, "from this narrative, confirmed by authentic papers, it will appear with the utmost evidence,

"1st, That Archbishop Wake was not the first mover in this correspondence, nor the person who formed the project of union between the English and Gallican churches.

"2dly, That he never made any concessions, nor offered to give up, for the sake of peace, any one point of the Established doctrine and discipline of the Church of England, in order to promote this union.

"3dly, That any desires of union with the CHURCH OF ROME, expressed in the Archbishop's Letters, proceeded from the hopes that he at first entertained of a considerable

reformation in that Church, and from an expectation that its most absurd doctrines would fall to the ground, if they could be once deprived of their great support-the Papal authority, the destruction of which authority was the very basis of this correspondence."

Such misconduct was left to be perpetrated by 66 a beneficed Clergyman of the Church of England, who is in the enjoyment of a very respectable Rectory in Essex, and a not less respectable Vicarage in London; who is a Fellow of Sion College, a Member of the Society for promoting Christian Knowledge, the Treasurer and Secretary of the Ecclesiastical Society of Dr. Bray's Associates (of which the Archbishop of Canterbury is the President), the Chaplain at once of a Royal Hospital and of a Royal Duke, &c. &c."§; and to whom we owe the obligation of now publishing an EARNEST RECOMMENDATION of such Union to "His Royal Highness the Prince Regent, the Most Reverend the Archbishops, the Right Reverend the Bishops, the Reverend the Clergy, and all Lay Persons who are able and willing dispassionately to consider the important subject."

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As I am one of those "Lay Persons" who (if not able) may be thought willing to consider this subject, I will very briefly state my own views,—which arise from an impression left upon my mind when I some time ago read the work alluded to. In the first place, I cannot dissemble my astonishment at this proposal, by a Clergyman of the Church of England; who so little feels the duty he ought to have practised as a faithful son of that Establishment, to which he professes allegiance, and by which he gains a maintenance! I am told, that this beneficed Clergyman has also written a work in explanation and defence of the Thirty-nine Articles and I am surprised that, in doing so, he did not perceive the irreconcilable opposition (both in discipline

§ I learn this from the Eclectic Review for April, 1819, p. 301.

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