which cannot be disputed or withstood.-Your friends, I dare say, are not much acquainted with the histories of these brightest ornaments of Christianity: let me then invite them to peruse them; not in the legends of obsolete writers, but in a work which, for its various learning and luminous criticism, was commended even by the infidel Gibbon, I mean, The Lives of Saints, in twelve octavo volumes, written by the late Rev. Alban Butler, President of St. Omer's College. Protestants are accustomed to paint, in the most frightful colours, the alleged depravity of the Church when Luther erected his standard, in order to justify him and his followers in their defection from it. But to form a right judgment in the case, let them read the works of the contemporary writers, an A Kempis, a Gerson, an Antoninus, &c. or let them peruse the lives of St. Vincent Ferrer, St. Laurence Justinian, St. Francis Paula, St. Philip Neri, St. Cajetan, St. Teresa, St. Francis Xaverius, and of those other saints who illuminated the Church about the period in question. Or let them, from the very accounts of Protestant historians, compare, as to religion and morality, Archbishop Cranmer with his rival Bishop Fisher; Protector Seymour with Chanceller More; Ann Boleyn with Catharine of Arrogan; Martin Luther and Calvin with Francis Xaverius and Cardinal Pole; Beza with St. Francis of Sales; Queen Elizabeth with Mary Queen of Scots; these contrasted characters having more or less relation with each other. From such a comparison, I have no sort of doubt what the decision of your friends will be concerning them, in point of their respective holiness.

I have heretofore been called upon to consider the virtues and merits of the most distinguished reformers; (1) and certainly we have a right to

(1) Reflections on Popery, by Dr. Sturges, LL. D. &c.

expect from persons of this description finished 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, (1) 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. (2) 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, hypocrisy, 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-labourers and fellow-sufferers 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. (3) The pretended Reformation, in foreign countries, as in Germany, the Netherlands, at Geneva, in Switzerland, France and Scotland, besides producing popular insurrections, saccages,

(1) Letters to a Prebendary, Letter V. p 178.

(2) 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,

(3) Ibid. Letter V

demolitions, sacrileges, and persecutions beyond description, excited also open rebellions and bloody civil wars. (1) In England, where our writers boast of the orderly manner in which the change of religion was carried on, it, nevertheless, may be said to have most unjustly and sacrilegiously seized upon, and destroyed, in the reign of Henry VIII., 645 monasteries, 90 colleges, and 110 hospitals; 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, every where produced by this pretended Reformation!

I am, &c.

J. M.

(1) The Hugenots 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 then throughout France is computed at 20,000.-The Histo ry of England's Reformation (though this was certainly more orderly than that of other countries) 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 Ann. The following is an 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 November 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 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: 2ndly, Edward VI. was a child, and governed by his uncle, who made his estate out of the church lands: 3rdly, Elizabeth not being lawful heiress to the erown, 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 councils.' Declaration of the Duchess of York.

DEAR SIR,

231

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 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; (1) that others of them, and the five Bishops in particular, so far from being Saints, were notoriously

(1) See Letter IV, on Persecutions.

deficient in the ordinary duties of good subjects and honest men; (1) that others again were notorious assassins, as Gardener, Flower, and Rough; or robbers, as Debenham, King, Marsh, Cauches, Gilbert, Massey, &c. (2) while not a few of them retracted their errors, as Bilney, Taylor, Wassalia, &c. did, who 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 cause of scandal to Christendom; (3) but I have remarked that the credit of our cause is not affected by the personal conduct of particular pastors, who regularly succeed one another, in the same manner, as the credit of yours is by the behaviour of your Founders, who professed to have received an extraordinary commission from God to reform Religion. (4) 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

(1) See Letter V. on the Reformation.

(3) See Letter II. on Supremacy.

(2) Letter IV.
(4) Ibid.