This method succeeded; and, accordingly, these Letters, which, otherwise, would have been published fifteen years ago, have slept in silence ever since.

I trust your Lordship will not be the person to ask me, why the Letters, after having been so long suppressed, now appear?-You are witness, my Lord, of the increased and increasing virulence of the press against Catholics; and this, in many instances, directed by no ignoble or profane hands. Abundant proofs of this will be seen in the following work. For the present, it is sufficient to mention, that one of your most venerable colleagues publishes and re-publishes that we stand convicted of Idolatry, Blasphemy, and Sacrilege. Another proclaims to the National Clergy, assembled in Synod (1), that we are enemies of all law, human and divine. More than one of these writers has charged us with the guilt of that Anti-Christian conspiracy on the Continent, of which we were exclusively the victims. This dignitary accuses us of Antinomianism; that maintains our religion to be fit only for persons weak in body and in mind. In short, we seldom find ourselves or our religion mentioned, in modern sermons, or other theological works, unaccompanied with the epithets of superstitious, idolatrous, impious, disloyal, perfilious and sanguinary. One of the theologues alluded to, who, like many others, has gained promotion by the fervour of his NO POPERY zeal, has exalted his tone to the pitch of proclaiming that our Religion is calculated for the meridian of hell!! (2)-Thus solemnly, and almost continually, charged before the tribunal of the public, with crimes against Society and our Country, no less than against the Christian Religion, and yet conscious, all the while, of our entire innocence, it is not only law(1) The Bishop of Ely, Concio ad Clerum.

(2) The Rev. C. De Coetlogan, Abominations of the Church of Rome.

ful, but it is also a duty, which we owe to our fellow subjects as well as ourselves, to repel these charges, by proving that there was reason, and religion, and loyalty, and good faith among Christians, before Luther quarrelled with Leo X., and before Henry VIII. fell in love with Ami Boleyn; and that, if we ourselves have not yet been persuaded by the arguments, either of the monk or the monarch, to relinquish the faith originally preached in this island, above 1300 years before their time, we are, at least, possessed of common sense, virtuous principles, and untainted loyalty.

The writer might assign another reason for making the present publication; namely, the number and acrimony of his own public opponents on subjects of religion. To say nothing of the groundless charges, by word of mouth, of certain privileged personages, the following writers are some of those who have published books, pamphlets, essays, or notes against him, on subjects of a religious nature: the Deans of Winchester and Peterborough; Chancellor Sturges; Prebendary Poulter; the Doctors Hoadley-Ash, Ryan, Ledwich, Le Mesurier, (1) and Elrington; Sir Richard Musgrave, John Reeves, Esq.; the Reverend Messrs. Williamson, Bazeley, Churton,

(1) To only one objection of his adversaries the writer wishes here to give an answer, that of having quoted falsely, which, however, has been advanced by very few of them, and is confined, as far as he knows, to two instances. The first of these is, that the writer in his History of Winchester, vol. i. p. 61, quotes Gildas, for the exploits of 'King Arthur, who never once mentions his name. This objection was first started by Dr O'Conor, in his Columbanus, was borrowed from him by the Rev. Mr. Le Mesurier in his Bampton Lectures, and was adopted from the latter by the Rev. Mr. Grier, in his Answer to Ward's Errat 1.-After all, this pretended forgery of the writer will be found, on consulting the passage referred to above, to be nothing else than a blunder of his critics; since it will appear that he quotes William of Malmsbury for the exploits of Arthur, and Gildas barely for the year in which one of them, the battle of Mons. Badonicus, took place! The second accusation of this nature was inserted by one of the above named writers in the Gentleman's Magazine, namely, that the writer had ad. vanced, without any historical authority, that James I. used to call No. vember 5, Cecil's Holiday. In answer to this charge, he gave notice in

Grier, and Roberts; besides numerous anonymous riflenien in the Gentleman's Magazine, the Monthly Magazine, the Antijacobin Review, the Protestant Advocate, the Antibiblion, and other periodical works, exclusive of numberless newspapers. By some of these he has been tauntingly challenged into the field of controversy, and when he did not appear, there, he has been posted as a coward.

A still more cogent reason, my Lord, for the appearance of this work, which, as I have said, was heretofore suppressed, at the desire of a former Bishop of St. David's, is furnished by his present successor, in a work which he has recently published, called, THE PROTESTANT'S CATECHISM. This work is no ordinary effusion of NO-POPERY zeal. It was not called for by any increase of the Ancient Religion in his Lordship's diocese, which teems with Methodist Jumpers, to the glaring danger of his Cathedral and his Parish Churches being totally deserted; while not one Catholic family is, perhaps, to be found in it. It was not provoked by any late attempt on the Established Church, or on Protestantism in general; as the Bishop does not pretend that such thing has taken place. Nevertheless, he comes forward in his episcopal mitre, bearing in his hands a new Protestant Catechism, to be learned by Protestants of every description, which teaches them to hate and persecute their elder brethren, the authors of their Christianity and civilization! In fact, this Christian Bishop begins and ends his Protestant Catechism with a quotation from a Puritan Regicide, declaring, that Popery is not to

the next number of the Magazine, that he had sent up to the Editor's office, as he actually had done, there to remain, during a month, for public inspection, Lord Castlemain's Catholique Apology, which contains the fact, and the authorities on which it is advanced. The writer is far from claiming inerrancy; but he should despise himself, if he knowingly published any falsehood, er hesitated to retract any one that he was proved to have fallen into.

be tolerated, either in public or in private, and 'that it must be thought how to remove it, and hinder 'the growth thereof;' adding, If they say that by 'removing their idols we violate their consciences, we have no warrant to regard conscience which is 'not grounded on Scripture.' (1) This your Lordship must know, is the genuine cant of a Mar-Prelate Independant; the same cant which brought Laud and Charles I. to the block: the same cant which overthrew the Church and State in the Grand Rebellion. But what chiefly concerns my present purpose, in the Bishop's twice repeated quotation from Milton, is to observe, that it breathes the whole persecuting spirit of the sixteenth century, and calls for the fines and forfeitures, the dungeons, halters, and knives of Elizabeth's reign, against the devoted Catholics;

(1) Milton's Prose Works, vol. 4. The prose writings of this Secretary of the Long Parliament are as execrable for their Regicide and Anti-prelatic principles, as his poetry is super-excellent for its sublimity and sweetness. Four other English authors are brought forward by the Bishop of St. David's to justify that persecution of Catholics, which he recommends. The first of these is the Socinian Locke, who will not allow of Catholics being tolerated, on the demonstrated false pretext that they cannot tolerate other Christians. The true cause of his intelerance was, that his hands being stained with the blood of twenty inno cent Catholics who were immolated by the sanguinary policy of his master Shaftesbury, in Oates's infamous plot, he was obliged to find a pretext for excluding them from the legal toleration which he stood in need of himself. Bishop Hoadley, who had no religion at all of his cwn, would not allow the Catholics to enjoy theirs, because, he says, No oaths and solemn assurances, no regard to truth, justice, or hon'our, can restrain them.' This is the hypocritical plea for the intol erance of a man, who was in the constant habit of violating all his caths and engagements to a Church which had raised him to rank and fortune, and who systematically pursued its degradation into his own Anti-Christian Socinianism, by professed deceit and treachery, as will be seen in the Letters to a Prebendary, Letter VIII. Blackstone being a crown lawyer, and writing when the penal laws were in force, could not but defend them; but, Judge, as he was, and writing at the above. mentioned time, he in the passage following that quoted by Dr. Burgess, expressed a hope, that the time was not distant, when the fears of a Pretender having vanished, and the influence of the Pope becom ⚫ing feeble, the rigorous edicts against the Catholics would be revised.! b. iv. c. 4.; which event accordingly soon after took place. As to Burke, the last author whom the Bishop quotes against Catholic Emancipation, it is evident from his speech at Bristol, his letter to Lord Kenmare, and the whole tenor of his writings and conduct, that he was not only a warm friend, but in some degree a martyr to it.

since it is evident that the Idolatry of Popery, as he terms it, exercised in private, cannot be removed, without such persecuting and sanguinary

measures.

The same thing is plain from the nature of the different legal offences which the Right Reverend Prelate lays to their charge. In one place he accuses the Catholics of England and Ireland, that is to say, more than a quarter of his Majesty's European subjects, of acknowledging 'the jurisdiction of the Pope in defiance of the laws, and of the allegiance due to their rightful Sovereign:' though he well knows, that they have abjured the Pope's jurisdiction in all civil and temporal cases, which is all that the King, Lords, and Commons required of them, in their acts of 1791 and 1793. Again the Prelate describes their opposition to the Veto, (though equally opposed, in the appointment of their respective Pastors, by all Protestant Dissenters, who constitute more than another fourth part of his Majesty's subjects,) as Treasonable by Statute,' p. 35. Now, every one knows that the legal punishment of a subject, acting in defiance of his allegiance, and contracting the guilt of treason, is nothing less than death. Nay: so much bent on the persecution of Catholics is this modern Bishop, as to arraign Parliament itself as guilty of a breach of the Constitution, by the latter of its tolerating Acts; where he says: If the elective 'franchise be really inconsistent with the Constitu'tional Statutes of the Revolution, it ought to be 6 repealed, like all other concessions that are injurious to loyalty and religion.' He adds, 'But it 'does not follow that because Parliament had been guilty of one act of prodigality, that it 'should therefore, like a thoughtless and unprincipled spendthrift, plunge itself into inextricable ruin,' pp. 53, 54. Thus, my Lord, though the Prelate, after advertising in his Table of Contents, A CONCLUSION, showing the means

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