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The Bishop observes that Roman Catholics are excluded from parliament "not because they believe in Transubstantiation, but because they who believe in that doctrine, believe also that a foreign Potentate hath or ought to have jurisdiction in the dominions of his Majesty, King George." His Lordship, however, does not show how this practical principle, as he calls it, affects the allegiance of Roman Catholics to their sovereign, or the exercise of their duties as civil members of the state. does not state it openly, and I trust he does not mean to insinuate that, in violation of their oaths, Roman Catholics acknowledge any but a purely spiritual jurisdiction in the sovereign Pontiff. Hence, we have not to prove, that the jurisdiction of the Pope is only spiritual, but that this spiritual jurisdiction is not a practical doctrine, hostile to the liberties of those countries in which it is exercised, and incompatible with those civil duties which, as subjects, we owe the state. Now, if the doctrine itself be not considered a sufficient guarantee if the renunciation, by all Catholic Divines, of every iota of temporal sovereignty, either directly or indirectly, in the supreme head of the Church; and the duty of civil obedience to every form of government under which our lot may be cast, as inculcated by all Catholic moralists-be not enough to satisfy the most timid and the most prejudiced; let us examine the machinery

of this practical principle, and see how it works, and how it has worked, ever since the deposing power, (which was a temporal and not a spiritual power,) was abandoned by the general concurrence of Christendom. The spiritual authority of the supreme head of the Church neither entitles him to dispose of the endowments of a single Bishopric, nor of a single Curacy-gives him no power over any portion of the temporalities of the Clergy-nor any right to interfere with the discipline or government of any national Church:-it only invests him with a general superintendance over the Christian world, in spiritual concerns, and places him under an obligation, as far as in him lies, to see that the doctrines and morality of the Gospel are both preached and practised by his subalterns in the hierarchy. He rules not as a despot, but regulates his conduct by the canons of the Church; he possesses no power of punishment, but that of suspension from the performance of spiritual functions; no power of removal from temporalities, but with permission of the sovereign, or commonwealth. In point of fact, I believe it to be true, that not a single instance is upon record, in any state, whether Catholic or Protestant, in which any inconvenience has arisen from the exercise of the spiritual supremacy of the Bishop of Rome. The Protestant states of Prussia, Holland, Hanover, Germany, Switzerland, &c. have all entered into a

concordat with the Pope, for the exercise of his spiritual supremacy amongst their respective subjects. They all, as well as Russia, retain accredited agents at the court of Rome; leaving England a solitary example of the infraction of the common rules of propriety and courtesy, in the intercourse between civilized nations. We send ministers to the Turk and the Idolater, to the worshippers of the sun, and perhaps to the votaries of Juggernaut, while we esteem it a crime, worthy of punishment by the laws of the land, to hold any communication whatever with the most ancient and most dignified sovereignty in Christendom!

But, to pursue our argument;-what is no treason in Prussia, Holland, or Hanover, cannot surely be treason in England. If the exercise of the spiritual supremacy of a foreign Potentate neither tarnishes the lustre of those crowns, nor impairs their authority, what is to infect it with its blighting and destructive quality the moment it arrives within the atmosphere of the British Isles? Does the Bishop of Peterborough suppose that his Majesty's Roman Catholic subjects in Hanover bear him a divided or qualified allegiance, because he has placed them upon an equality with their Protestant brethren, and legally permits the exercise of the spiritual supremacy of the head of their Church amongst them? Or does such a supposition exist in the minds of any one of the Protestant sovereigns of

continental Europe, who have all been wise enough to act with the same good sense and liberality? Are they not rather assured, thereby, of the encreased affections and loyalty of their people, of the augmentation of their strength, and of the stability of their government? Are the same tried and sacred principles to be true every where else, and false only in England? Are the feelings and dispositions of men to be regulated here by the laws of contrariety? Are wisdom, justice, prudence, benignity, and mercy, to be virtues in Germany, and follies in Great Britain? While the experiment has been found to fail every where else, is England alone expected to thrive upon the heart-burnings, jealousies, humiliations, and contentions, growing out of unjust and invidious legal distinctions between man and man? Are religious feuds and domestic strife to be the eternal, cherished, and hopeful inheritance of these realms? Is England, and only England, to be that cursed hot-bed of intolerance, which shoots up her rank and poisonous herbage, to the very infecting of the air we breathe; which nourishes that baneful spirit which almost every where openly insults us in public; which, ill-concealed even in the domestic circles of society, taints the charm of private life; which disturbs the mind, and preys upon the heart ?— It is absurd to attempt to explain it; and for this reason, I suppose, it is that the Bishop of Peter

borough does not attempt to explain how a system of justice and liberality is to weaken the allegiance and alienate the affections of the people; -how this practical doctrine of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope is thus to run riot amongst Englishmen, while it passes soberly through the imaginations of the Dutch, the Prussians, and the Hanoverians. Really it would seem to have become an axiom amongst us, that, while the rest of the world were triumphantly advancing in the science of legislation, we were compelled, as a matter of duty, to retrograde, for the sake of preserving an example of the perverse fatuity of man: and, as if a period of almost unparalleled political embarrassment, together with the common ills of mortality, were not sufficient to torment us, that we must needs try our strength and our patience, with the frightful evils of religious persecution. It would appear that the time was come when the wisdom of our neighbours ought to supersede our own; that old principles and old adages, which had been the pride of our ancestors for centuries, were to be reversed; and that it was now befitting the character and reputation of an Englishman to look with envy and complacency on the civil and religious liberties of foreigners, and even of Frenchmen!-But this spiritual supremacy is, and has been, and will be, exercised in these realms, in spite of laws, opinions, and penalties; and that,