ished models of virtue and piety. But instead of this being the case, I have shown that Patriarch Luther was the sport of his unbridled passions,* pride, resentment, and lust; that he was turbulent, abusive, and sacrilegious, in the highest degree; that he was the trumpeter of sedition, civil war, rebellion, and desolation; and finally, that by his own account, he was the scholar of Satan, in the most important article of his pretended Reformation. I have made out nearly as heavy a charge against his chief followers, Carlostad, Zuinglius, Ochin, Calvin, Beza, and Cranmer. With respect to the last-named, who under Edward VI., and his fratricide uncle, the Duke of Somerset, was the chief artificer of the Anglican Church, I have shown that, from his youthful life in a college, till his death at the stake, he exhibited such a continued scene of libertinism, perjury, hypocri sy, barbarity, (in burning his fellow Protestants,) profligacy, ingratitude, and rebellion, as is, perhaps, not to be matched in history. I have proved that all his fellow-laborers and fellowsufferers, were rebels like himself, who would have been put to death by Elizabeth, if they had not been executed by Mary. I adduced the testimony not only of Erasmus and other Catholics, but also of the gravest Protestant historians, and of the very reformers themselves, in proof that the morals of the people, so far from being changed for the better, by embracing the new religion, were greatly changed for the worse. The pretended Reformation, in foreign countries, as in Germany, the Netherlands, at Geneva, in Switzerland, France, and Scotland, besides producing popular insurrections, sackages, demolitions, sacrileges, and persecution beyond description, excited also open rebellions and bloody civil wars. In England, where our wri

*Letters to a Prebendary, Letter V.

+ Ibid. p. 183, where Satan's conference with Luther, and the arguments by which he induced this reformer to abolish the mass, are detailed from Luther's works. Tom. vii. p. 228. + Ibid.

§ The Huguenots in Dauphiny alone, as one of their writers confesses, burnt down 900 towns or villages, and murdered 378 priests or religious, in the course of one rebellion. The number of churches destroyed by them throughout France is computed at 20,000. The History of England's Ref. ormation (though this was certainly more orderly than that of other coun tries) has caused the conversion of many English Protestants; it produced this effect on James II. and his first consort, the mother of Queen Mary and Queen Anne. The following is the account which the latter has left of this change, and which is to be found in Dodd's last volume, and in the Fifty Reasons of the Duke of Brunswick: "Seeing much of the devotion of the Catholics, I made it my constant prayer that, if I were not, I might, before I died, be in the true religion. I did not doubt but that I was so till Novem ber last, when reading a book called the History of the Reformation, by Dr. Heylin, which I had heard very much commended, and had been told, if ever I had any doubts in my religion, that would settle me: instead of which

ters boast of the orderly manner in which the change of religion was carried on, it, nevertheless, most unjustly and sacrilegiously seized upon, and destroyed, in the reign of Henry VIII., 645 monasteries, 90 colleges, and 110 hospitals, besides the bishoprick of Durham; and, under Edward VI., or rather his profligate uncle, 2,374 colleges, chapels, or hospitals, in order to make princely fortunes for that uncle and his unprincipled comrades, who, like banditti quarrelling over their spoils, soon brought each other to the block. Such were the fruits of sanctity, everywhere produced by this pretended Reformation.

Lam, &c.

JOHN MILNer.

DEAR SIR

LETTER XXII-TO MR. J. TOULMIN.

OBJECTIONS ANSWERED.

I HAVE received your letter, animadverting upon mine to our common friend Mr. Brown, respecting the fruits of sanctity, as they appear in our respective communions. I observe you do not contest my general facts or arguments, but resort to objections which have been already answered in these, or in my other letters now before the public. You assert, as a notorious fact, that for several ages prior to the Reformation, the Catholic religion was sunk into ceremonies and pageantry, and that it sanctioned the most atrocious crimes. In refutation of these calumnies, I have referred to our councils, to our most accredited authors of religion and morality, and to the lives and deaths. of our most renowned saints, during the ages in question. I grant, sir, that you hold the same language on this subject with other Protestant writers; but I maintain that none of them make good their charges, and that their motive for advancing them, is to find a pretext for excusing the irreligion of the pretended Reformation. You next extol the alleged sanctity of the Protestant sufferers, called martyrs, in the unhappy persecution of Queen Mary's reign. I have discussed this matter at some

I found it the description of the horridest sacrileges in the world: and could find no cause why we left the church, but for three the most abominable ones: 1st, Henry VIII. renounced the Pope, because he would not give him leave to part with his wife and marry another; 2dly, Edward VI. was a child, and governed by his uncle, who made his estate out of the church lands; 3dly, Elizabeth, not being lawful heiress to the crown, had no way to keep it but by renouncing a church which would not suffer so unlawful a thing. I confess I cannot think the Holy Ghost could ever be in such countils." Declaration of the Duchess of York.

length in The Letters to a Prebendary, and have shown, in opposition to John Fox and his copyists, that some of these pretended martyrs were alive when he wrote the history of their death; that others of them, and the five bishops in particular, so far from being saints, were notoriously deficient in the ordinary duties of good subjects and honest men ;† that others again were notorious assassins, as Gardener, Flower, and Rough; or robbers, as Debenham, King, Marsh, Cauches, Gilbert, Massey, &c. ; while not a few of them retracted their errors, as Bilney, Taylor, Wassalia, and died, to all appearance, Catholics. To the whole ponderous folio of Fox's falsehoods, I have opposed the genuine and edifying Memoirs of Missionary Priests and other Catholics, who suffered death for their Religion, during the reigns of Elizabeth and the Stuarts. Finally, you reproach me with the scandalous lives of some of our popes, during the middle ages, and of very many Catholics of different descriptions, throughout the church at the present day; and you refer me to the edifying lives of a great number of Protestants, now living in this country.

My answer, dear sir, to your concluding objections, is briefly this, that I, as well as Baronius, Bellarmin, and other Catholic writers, have unequivocally admitted, that some few of our pontiffs have disgraced themselves by their crimes, and given just dause of scandal to Christendom ;§ but I have remarked that the credit of our cause is not affected by the personal conduct of particular pastors, who succeeded one another in a regular way, in the same manner, as the credit of yours is by the behavior of your founders, who professed to have received an extraordinary commission from God to reform religion. I acknowledge, with the same unreservedness, that the lives of very many Catholics, in this and other parts of the church, are a disgrace to that holy Catholic Church which they profess to believe in. Unhappy members of the true religion by whom the name of God (and of his holy church) is blasphemed among the nations! Rom. ii. 24. Unhappy Catholics, who "live enemies of the cross of Christ, whose end is destruction, who mind only earthly things!" Philip. iii. 18. But, "It must needs be that scandals should come: nevertheless, wo to that man by whom the scandal cometh!" Matt. xviii. 7. In short, I bear a willing testimony to the public and private worth of very many of my Protestant countrymen of different religions, as citizens, as subjects, as friends, as children, as parents, as moral men, and as Christians, in the general sense of the word; still I must say

*See Letter TV. on Persecution. † See Letter V. on the Reformation + Letter IV. § See Letter II. on Supremacy.

Il Ibid.

that i find the best of them far short of the holiness which is prescribed in the Gospel, and is exemplified in the lives of those saints whom I have mentioned. On this subject I will quote an authority, which, I think, you will not object to. Dr. Hey says, "In England, I could almost say, we are too little acquainted with contemplative religion. The monk, painted by Sterne, may give us a more favorable idea of it, than our prejudices generally suggest. I once travelled with a Recolet, and conversed with a Minim at his convent; and they both had that kind of character which Sterne gives to his monk: that refinement of body and mind, that pure glow of meliorated passion, that polished piety and humanity," &c.* In a former letter to your society, I have stated that sincere humility, by which, from a thorough knowledge of our sins and misery, we become little in our own eyes, and try to avoid, rather than to gain the praise and notice of others, is the very groundwork of all other Christian virtues. It has been objected to Protestants, ever since the defection of their arrogant patriarch, Luther, that they have said little, and have appeared to understand less of this essential virtue. I might say the same with respect to the necessity of an entire subjugation of our other congenial passions, avarice, lust, anger, intemperance, envy, and sloth, as I have said of pride and vain-glory; but I pass over these to say a few words of certain maxims expressly contained in Scripture. It cannot then be denied that our Saviour said to the. rich young man, "If thou wilt be perfect, go, sell all thou hast and give to the poor, and thou shalt have treasures in heaven;" nor that he declared on another occasion, "There are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs (continent) for the kingdom of heaven's sake. He that is able to receive it, let him receive it." Matt. xix. 12. Now it is notorious that this life of voluntary poverty and perpetual chastity continues to be vowed and observed by great numbers of both sexes in the Catholic Church; while it is nothing more than a subject of ridicule to the best of Protestants. Again, "that we ought to fast, is a truth too manifest to stand in need of any proof:" I here use the words of the Church of England in her Homily iv. p. 11; conformably with which doctrine your church enjoins in her Common Prayer Book, the same days of fasting and abstinence which the Catholic Church does; namely, the forty days of Lent, the Ember-days, all the Fridays in the year, &c.: nevertheless, where is the Protestant to be found who will submit to the mortification of fasting, even to obey his own church? I may add, that Christ enjoins constant prayer, Luke, xviii. 1; conformably

* Lectures in Divinity, vol. 1. p. 364.

with which injunction, the Catholic Church requires her clergy at least, from the sub-deacon up to the pope, daily to say the seven Canonical Hours, consisting chiefly of Scriptural psalms and lessons; which take up in the recital near an hour and a half, in addition to their other devotions. Now, what pretext had the Protestant clergy, whose pastoral duties are so much lighter than ours, to lay aside these inspired prayers, except indevotion? Luther himself said his office for some time after his apostacy. But to conclude: as it is of so much importance to ascertain which is the holy church mentioned in your creed, and as you can follow no better rule for this purpose, than to judge of the tree by its fruits; so let me advise you and your friends, to make use of every means in your power, to compare regular families, places of education, and especially ecclesiastical establishments of the different communions, with each other, as to morality and piety, and to decide for yourselves according to what you may observe in them.-I am, &c. JOHN MILNER.

LETTER XXIII.-TO JAMES BROWN, ESQ.

ON DIVINE ATTESTATION OF SANCTITY. DEAR SIR

HAVING demonstrated the distinctive holiness of the Catholic Church, in her doctrine, her practices, and her fruits of sanctity, I am prepared to show that God himself has borne testimony to her holiness, and to those very doctrines and practices which Protestants object to as unholy and superstitious, by the many incontestable miracles he has wrought in her and in their favor, from the age of the apostles down to the present age.

The learned Protestant advocates of revelation, such as Grotius, Abbadie, Paley, Watson, &c., in defending this common cause against infidels, all agree in the sentiment of the last named, that "Miracles are the criterion of truth." Accordingly they observe, that both Moses, Exod. iv. xiv, Numb. xvi. 29, and Jesus Christ, John, x. 37, 38,-xiv. 12,-xv. 24, constantly appealed to the prodigies they wrought, in attestation of their divine mission and doctrine. Indeed the whole history of God's people, from the beginning of the world down to the time of our blessed Saviour, was nearly a continued series of miracles. The latter, so far from confining the power of working

*

* To say nothing of the Urim and Thummim, the Water of Jealousy, and the superabundant harvest of the sabbatical year, it is incontestable, from the Gospel of St. John, v. 2, that the probatical pond was endowed by an angel with a miraculous power of healing every kind of disease, in the time of Christ.