me, from the 16th chapter of his gospel according to St. Matthew, shews of itself that the authority given to Peter was to last as long as the Church, for if he were made the foundation of it after Christ, the rock on which it was built, it is perfectly obvious, that as long as the superstructure lasted, the foundation could not be removed; in other words, that as long as a Church was to remain on earth, the authority given to Peter should continue to it, that so long as the kingdom of heaven or city of God, continued in this world, so long should some person be vested with the keys of government,-that as long as there would be a fold of sheep and lambs, so long there should be a pastor to feed them in the place of Peter;-in fine, that as long as the faithful were to be one body, saying the same thing, and not having divisions among them, so long there should be some person vested with power to enforce obedienceto collect the sentiments of the body-to publish its acts-to institute or sanction its officers-to preach and cause to be preached the doctrines of Christ to dispense and cause to be dispensed the mysteries of God, that so the people might obey their prelates and be subject to them, that the prelates might not lord it over the people, but be made patterns to them from the heart; in fine, that all might have one faith, and not be tossed

about by every wind of doctrine, but be kept united in that common charity, which is the great source, as it is the bond, of perfection.

"But this consequence, however plain and necessary—however spontaneously flowing from the very source of Christianity, yet it has been contradicted, and seldom more violently, or at least less temperately, than at the present day. The furious men who now agitate this country, seem to know that the sword and the law could not have been drawn, or, if drawn, could not have been wielded with such deadly effect against the holy and ancient religion of these islands, if that religion had not first been decried, abused, and maligned, until it appeared to the multitude a very moral monster. 'From the sole of its foot,' like its founder, to the top of its head, there was no soundness in it; it was buffetted, abused, spit upon; it was covered with a mantle of derision; it was scourged, and drenched with vinegar and gall; the waters of affliction entered into its very soul: and it was, when thus disfigured by a clamorous rabble, and seemingly abandoned by God, that the bigots and the fanatic cried out to the agents of the law and the sword,—' away with it, away with it.'

"But as there was no tenet of this religion more opposed to the machinations of those furious and designing men, nor again, no tenet more strongly

supported by argument, by the practice of the Church, and an undisputed possession of fifteen hundred years, than that of the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter, so there was no tenet against which their sophistry, their misrepresentations, their violence, their rancour and persecution were so unceasingly directed. To such extremities did these men proceed, as not only to confound the power claimed by some few Popes of Rome over the temporal interests or rights of kings and kingdoms, with the spiritual jurisdiction of St. Peter's successor, but, in addition to this misrepresentation, they actually designated not one or other, but a whole series of those successors, as Antichrists, and excited the deluded multitude to hate them and curse them as the capital enemies of our Lord and Saviour. Yes, the very men who maintained from the beginning, and still maintain, against an infidel or Arian world, the divinity of the Son of God; the very men who designate themselves as the last of his servants, and who, without any doubt, have caused his name to be published and adored throughout nearly the whole Christian world, these men, who never ask any thing of the Father except through the Son, and identify him in their daily prayer with the King of Ages, the immortal and invisible God, to whom alone are due and given all honour and glory, these very men have been called, by the ferocious leaders of the revolt, An

tichrists'!! and the Church in which they have always presided, and whose faith was from the beginning, and still is spoken of throughout the entire world,--this Church they called Babylon,' and the great apostacy,' with all manner of 6 opprobrious and insulting names.

"To the present day, this warfare of calumny is continued for the same purposes, and by the genuine successors of the wicked men who first commenced it; hence it necessarily enters into the design of these observations, that I endeavour, not to dissipate the cloud of calumny which still prevails, (a task to which I confess my incompetency), but to prove, in addition to the argument adduced by me, that the supremacy given to Peter has passed to his successors, the bishop, for the time being, of the See of Rome.

"This is a truth, like many others, connected with a matter of fact, and a fact which, as it commenced with the demise of Peter, cannot be found recorded in the Holy Scriptures; but it is, at the same time, as we have seen above, a truth flowing necessarily from the institution by Christ, of the primacy in the person of that apostle; and all antiquity, as it attests the existence of that primacy in Peter, so it attests the transmission of it to his successors in the See of Rome.

"The law of nature sanctions a presumption in favour of him who has the peaceable possession of

any thing, and he is supposed to have acquired it justly, until his title to it is disproved. The burden of proof lies on him who questions the right of possession, and not upon him who holds it; but when we Catholics call for this proof against the title of Peter's successor to the spiritual supremacy which he enjoys, we are replied to by loud declamation, by angry invective, or by visionary speculations on the Apocalypse. If we refer to historical records to show not only the possession, but also the exercise of this supremacy in every age from the apostolic times, we are told that Mosheim (the faithless Hume of the Protestant Churches,) says, that the early Churches, like the Greek republics, were all independent one of the other, and their councils like the amphyctionic assemblies. To refute this folly we refer to Eusebius, to Fleury, to Natalis Alexander; we present the long and accurate catalogue of cases compiled by Cardinal Perron for the information of King James the First, to shew that no Church was ever independent of the head of the episcopacy,—that he exercised in every quarter of the known world a jurisdiction commensurate with the exigency of the case which required it. We exhibit the appeals made to him from each of the three great patriarchates, as well as from all parts of his own in the West, and refer to the decisions pronounced by him-we mention the names and the sees of the