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sects have found an unmolested footing, we choose to believe one code of religious tenets in preference

Q. "Can we, then, consider the declaration as unnecessary, in respect of the Papists, or hard on Protestants?" A. "It is neither unnecessary as to the Papists, because the experience of the past shews that former laws were insufficient without it; nor can it be any hardship on the Protestants, because if they are Protestants, on principle, they know it to be true, and, as avowed Protestants, profess to believe it; and which, if they do not believe, they belie their Protestant profession."

Q. "How may we co-operate with the laws for preventing the growth of Popery?"

A. "By exposing the false pretensions, the errors, the evils, and the interests of Popery; and by doing what the laws require us to do for its prevention."

Q. "What do the laws require us to do for this purpose?"

A. "Certain solemn days are set apart for commemorating the plots and conspiracies of Popery against our Church, and our deliverance from them, &c."-(The Protestant's Catechism, by Thomas Burgess, Bishop of St. David's. Fourth Edit. pp. 216, 242, 250.)

Now, if to our Catholic Catechisms, we were to attach the following Appendix, to edify our catechumens with a specimen of the Christian charity of a Protestant divine, we should only be delineating with accuracy the conduct and principles of many of our revilers, and exhibiting a true portrait of the Bishop of St. David's "Protestant's Catechism," painted with his own colours.

Q. What is Protestantism?

A. The abjuration of Popery, and the exclusion of Papists from all power, ecclesiastical or civil.

to another; nor because, in spite of calumny and proscription, we continue to profess a Christianity

Q. How are we to abjure Popery?

A. By falsifying history*-by boldly maintaining the assertion of that which is false, under pretence that it is the proof of that which is true; by framing such fictitious doctrines for the Papists as they abhor and detest,-for their Church is so pure, that without this, we should have nothing to allege against them;-by calumny and misrepresentation in every shape and of every hue; by denying that which is true, and believing that which is false; by accusing Papists of crimes which they never committed, and punishing them for trespasses of which they never dreamt; by swearing that we know their doctrines to be superstitious and idolatrous, though they believe the same gospel that we do, and though they most solemnly aver that they hold superstition and idolatry in the same abhorrence and detestation as ourselves.

Q. How are we to exclude Papists from all power, ecclesiastical or civil.

A. By tyranny, oppression, and injustice; by scornfully refusing them all civil rights; by declaring them to be incapable of fulfilling the duties of good subjects, though they have ever been remarkable for their loyalty to their king, and their services to their country; by pretending that they desire to overthrow the constitution which they are so justly proud of having inherited from their ances*See Examination of certain opinions of the Right Rev. Dr. Burgess, &c.; Dr. Lingard's Tracts, p. 351, &c.

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Forgery-I blush for the honour of Protestantism while I write it seems to be peculiar to the reformed; I look in vain for one of those accursed outrages of imposition among the disciples of Popery."-Dr. Whitaker.

"The Protestants seem to have thought, (says Hume) that no truth should be told of Papists."

which has been the admiration of all ages, and of all nations, and which is still the prevailing religion of civilized man. It cannot be, that, in this free and

tors-by carefully excluding them from that inheritance -by accepting of their services when we want them, and rejecting them, unrequited, when we have no farther need of them-by working them like beasts of burden in all hard, dangerous, and laborious occupations, and suffering true Protestants alone to be their task-masters-by keeping all the good things, both of this world and the next, for ourselves-by leaving nothing for Papists but poverty, misery, and exclusion for their treasons here, and damnation for their superstition and idolatry hereafter-by so exciting the execration of the whole country against them, that Englishmen shall again rank Papistry where it stood but a few years back in our Statute Book, with treason and with murder.

Q. How may we co-operate with the laws for preventing the growth of popery?

A. By the same means by which we are to abjure Popery, and to exclude Papists from all power, ecclesiastical or civil.

Q. What do the laws require us to do for this purpose? A. Certain solemn days are set apart for worshipping the God of Charity and Truth with falsehood, calumny, and detraction upon our lips!!! (See the Service for the 5th of November in the Book of Common Prayer; and the real History of the Gunpowder Plot, in Lord Castlemain's Catholique Apology, (1674), Milner's Letters to a Prebendary, and Lingard's History of England.)

(e) Speaking of the religious belief of a Catholic, the faithful and elegant historian of his country, Dr. Lingard,

"His belief is not the belief of a single nation, nor

enlightened country, we are not equally at liberty with others, to enjoy the common prerogative of the Reformation, and to interpret Scripture at our will. There is no reason in such things. We must look to other causes, to account for that delusion of which we have been so long the victims; which imprints a stain upon our country; which makes us a bye-word among the nations of the earth, and converts the pride and glory we would gladly cherish, even as the degraded members of a free state, into feelings of shame and indignation. We consider ourselves, in common with a hundred millions of our Roman Catholic brethren in Europe,

the growth of a few years. It is the belief of the great majority of Christians. It is, and for centuries has been, the belief of learned and polished nations; the belief of scholars, philosophers, and divines; of generals, statesmen, and princes. Proudly as I may think of my own country, I cannot yet persuade myself that intellectual excellence is exclusively confined to this island; and when I look on the continent, and view the populous nations which there profess the Catholic faith-when I look back into past ages and behold millions of men, during a long series of generations, reckoning it as their pride and their happiness, I can smile at the invectives of its adversaries, and despise the disgrace which is heaped upon it here."

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Catholicity, which has been this night the subject of so much abuse, has been the belief of the most extensive and enlightened nations in Europe; and of the most illustrious characters that ever did honour to the name of

to possess as strong intellectual faculties, as clear a judgment, and as upright intentions, as any body of Protestants in the world: it is, therefore, the more wounding to our feelings to be treated as an ignorant, a worthless, and an unprincipled race, which we must be, if we are the just objects of the incapacities to which we are subjected by law,—and such as every member of the Legislature calls God to witness that he believes us to be,—the abettors of superstitious and idolatrous doctrines.

The Catholic Peer is defrauded of his hereditary rights; the Catholic commoner of the opportunities which wealth or talent might afford him to serve his country, in situations of honour and of trust ;the professional man, of those objects of lawful ambition, which are the incentives and the rewards of a long life of toil and labour;-the freeholder, of the exercise of that qualification which is as dear to him, at the proudest distinction is to the most exalted personage;—ALL are deprived" of their fair chances in the lottery of life, and condemned hourly to the innumerable slights that wait upon political inferiority. A painful sense

(d)

"of

man."-Speech of Lord Hutchinson in the House of Lords, May 10, 1805.

(d) “We take from them every object of honourable ambition; we doom them to the martyrdom, as far as our laws have power to inflict it, of popular scorn from the cradle to the grave; we leave them a separate class, with

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