than the Popes had attempted to depose during the preceding fifteen hundred years of their supremacy. To this accusation another of a more alarming nature is tacked, that of our 'annulling the most sacred promises and engagements, 'when made to the prejudice of the Church.' (1) These are other words for the vile hackneyed calumny of our not keeping faith with heretics. (2) In refutation of this, I might appeal to the doctrine of our Theologians, (3) and the oaths of the British Catholics; but I choose rather to appeal to historical facts, and to the practical lessons of the leading men by whom these have been conducted. I have mentioned, that when the Catholic Queen Mary came to the throne, a Protestant usurper, Lady Jane, was set up against her, and that the Bishops, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Rogers, Poynet, Sandys, and every other Protestant of any note, broke his allegiance and engagements to her, for no other reason than because she was a Catholic, and the usurper a Protestant. On the other hand, when Mary was succeeded by her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, though the Catholics were then far more numerous and powerful than the Protestants, not a hand was raised, nor a seditious sermon was preached against her. In the mean time, on the other side of the Tweed, where the new Gospellers had deposed their Sovereign and usurped her power, their Apostle, Knox, publicly preached, that neither promise, nor oath, can oblige any man to obey or give assistance to tyrants against God; (4) to which lesson his colleague, Goodman, added, 'If 'Governors fall from God, to the gallows with

(1) P. 71.

(2) In the Protestant Charter-school Catechism, which is taught by authority, the following question and answer occur, p. 9. Q. How do Papists treat those whom they call Heretics?A. They hold that faith is not to be kept with Heretics; and that the Pope can ab'solve subjects from their oath of allegiance to their Sovereigns.'

(3, See in particular the Jesuit Becanus De Fide Hæreticis prestanda.] (4) In his book addressed to the Nobles and People of Scotland.

them.' (1) A third fellow-labourer in the same Gospel cause, Buchanan, maintained, that Prin

ces may be deposed by their people, if they be ' tyrants against God and his truth, and that their 'subjects are free from their oaths and obedience.' (2) The same, in substance, were the maxims of Calvin, Beza, and the Huguenots of France in general; the temporal interest of their religion was the ruling principle of their morality. But, to return to our own country: the enemies of Church and State having hunted down the Earl of Strafford, and procured him to be attainted of high treason, the King, Charles I. declared, that he could not, in conscience, concur to his death; when, the case being referred to the Archbishops Usher and Williams, and three other Anglican Bishops, they decided (in spite of his Majesty's conscience, and his oath to administer justice in mercy) that he might, in conscience, send an innocent man to the block, which he did accordingly in the person of Strafford. (3) I should like to ask Bishop Porteus whether this decision of his predecessors was not the dispensation of an oath, and the annulling of the most sacred of all obligations? In like manner the leading men of the nation, with most of the clergy, having sworn to the Solemn League and Covenant, for the more effectual extirpation of Popery,' they were dispensed with from the keeping of it, by an express clause in the Act of Uniformity. (4) But, whereas, by a clause of the

(1) De Obedient,

(2) History of Scotland.-The same was the express doctrine of the Geneva Bible, translated by Coverdale, Goodman, &c. in that city, and in common use among the English Protestants, till King James's reign; for in a note on ver. 12 of 2d Mat, these translators expressly say, A promise ought not to be kept, where God's honour and preaching of his truth is injured. Hist. Account of Eng. Translations, by A. Johnson, in Watson's Collect. vol. iii. p. 93.

(3) Collier's Church History, vol. ii. p. 801.-On the other hand, when several of the Parliament's soldiers, who had been taken prisoners at Brentford, had sworn never again to bear arms against the King, they were absolved from that oath,' says Clarendon, by their divines.' Exam, of Neal's Hist. by Grey, vol. iii. p. 10.

(4) Statue 13 and 14 Car. II. Cap. 4.

oath in the same Act, all subjects of the realm, down to constables and schoolmasters, were obliged to swear, that It is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take up arms against the 'King;' this oath, in its turn, was universally dispensed with, in the Churches and in Parliament, at the Revolution. I have mentioned these few facts and maxims, concerning Protestant dispensations of oaths and engagements, in case any of your Society may object, that some Popes have been too free in pronouncing such dispensations. Should this have been the case, they alone, personally, and not the Catholic Church, were accountable for it, both to God and man.

I have often wondered, in a particular manner, at the confidence with which Bishop Porteus asserts and denies facts of ancient Church History, in opposition to known truth. An instance of this occurs in the conclusion of the chapter before me, where he says, "The primitive Church 'did not attempt, for several hundreds of years, 6 to make any doctrine necessary, which we do 'not, as the learned well know from their writ'ings.' (1) The palpable falsehood of this position must strike you, on looking back to the authorities adduced by me from the ancient Fathers and historians, in proof of the several points of controversy which I have maintained: but, to render it still more glaring, I will recur to the histories of AERIUS and VIGILANTIUS, two different heretics of the fourth century. Both St. Epiphanius, (2) and St. Augustin, (3) rank Aerius among the heresiarchs, or founders of heresy, and both give exactly the same account of his three characteristical errors. The first of these is avowed by all Protestants, namely, that Prayers and Sacrifices are not to be offered up for the dead:' and the two others by

(1) P. 78. (2) Hæresis 75. (3) De Hæres. tom. vi. Ed. Frob.

most of them, namely, that there is no obliga'tion of observing the appointed days of fasting, and that Priests ought not to be distinguished in any respect from Bishops.' (1) So far were the primitive Christians from tolerating these heresies, that the supporters of them were denied the use of a place of worship, and were forced to perform theirs in forests and caverns. (2) Vigilantius likewise condemned prayers for the dead, but he equally reprobated prayers to the Saints, the honouring of their relics, and the celibacy of the clergy, together with vows of continence in general. Against these errors, which I need not tell you Dr. Porteus now patronizes, as Vigilantius formerly did, St. Jerom directs all the thunder of his fervid eloquence, declaring them to be sacrilegious, and the author of them to be a detestable heretic. (3)—The learned Fleury observes, that the impious novelties of this heretic made no proselytes, and therefore, that there was no need of a Council to condemn them. (4) Finally, to convince yourself, dear Sir, how far the ancient Fathers were from tolerating different communions or doctrines in the Catholic Church, conformably to the Prelate's monstrous system, of a Catholic Church, namely, one composed of all the discordant and disunited sects in Christendom, be pleased to consult again the passages I have collected from the works of the Fathers, in my fourteenth letter to your Society-or, what is still more demonstrative on this point, observe, in Ecclesiastical History, how the Quartodecimans, the Novatians, (5) the Donatists, and the

(1) Ibid. St. John Damascen and St. Isidore equally condemn these tenets as heretical.

(2) Fleury's Hist. nd An. 392.

(3) Epist. 1 and 2, adversus Vigilan.

(4) Ad An. 405.

(5) St. Cyprian being consulted about the nature of Novatian's errors, answers; there is no need for a strict inquiry what errors he 'teaches while he teaches out of the Church. He elsewhere writes: The Church being one, cannot be, at the same, time within and

Luciferians, though their respective errors are mere mole-hills, compared with the mountains which separate the Protestant communions from ours, were held forth as heretics by the Fathers, and treated as such by the Church in her Councils.

I am, &c.

J. M.

LETTER XLIX.

To JAMES BROWN, Jun. Esq. &c.

ON RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.

DEAR SIR,

I PROMISED to treat the subject of Religious Persecution apart; a subject of the utmost importance in itself, and which is spoken of by the Bishop of London in the following terms: They, 'the Romish Church, zealously maintain their 'claim of punishing whom they please to call heretics, with penalties, imprisonment, tortures, 'death.' (1) Another writer, whom I have quoted above, says, that the Catholic Church breathes 'the very spirit of cruelty and murder:' (2) indeed Protestant controvertists vie with each other, in the vehemence and bitterness of the terms, endeavouring to affix this most odious charge on the true Church. This is the favourite topic of preachers, to excite the hatred of their hearers against their fellow Christians: this is the last resource of baffled hypocrisy. If you admit the Papists, they cry, to equal rights, these wretches must and will certainly murder you, as soon as they can: the fourth Lateran Council has estab

without. If she be with Novatian, she is not with Pope Cornelius; if she be with Cornelius, Novatian is not in her.' Epist. 76 ad Mag. (1) P. 71. (2) De Coetlogan's Seasonable Caution, p. 15,