display of the English government's benevolence towards his holiness, and to conceal from his holiness their ill wil to the Britsih catholics, I had rather speak of it in the words of Cicero, than my own. But who does not see the nature of such concealment, and from what manner of man it proceeds. Not certainly from an open, honest, downright man; but rather from a crafty, obscure, shrewd, deceitful malicious, sly old cozener, full of querks." Amongst the before mentioned rules for writing history, is the following, which I am strictly to observe. When the results (or consequences) are handled, that all causes (or motives) whether of accident, wisdom, or rashness, be thoroughly explained, and that not only the exploits of the actors them selves be set forth, but the general conduct and character of such of them, as have any pretensions to a name or reputation in life, In this situation of things, I have deemed it proper to address this letter to your eminence, in order that, if it contain any thing new and conducive to the cause of religion, it may be submitted to the supreme pastor, who is ever on the watch, lest harm should happen to his fold. It remains for me now only to entreat your eminence to believe, that, in writing this letter, and several other things heretofore relating to the cause of catholicity, I was actuated by no other motive, than that of preventing the suppression of truth: different indeed are the duties of the historian and lawyer from those of the priest and the divine. The latter it is my duty to honour in observance the former to follow up by faithful execution. Far be it from me to invade even in thought the holy boundaries of the priesthood, May I be graciously permited to recommend myself and family to the holy prayers and sacrifices of your eminence. In ardently wishing for every blessing and prosperity, to your eminence, the holy father, and the whole church, I have the honour of subscribing myself. Your eminence's most devoted and faithful humble servant. N. N. P. S. Having read over this letter I wish to be allowed, with your eminence's permission, to add some few lines unto it. It was a fair saying with the Romans of old, The better a man is, the less he inclines to think another man wicked. It is neither fitting nor decent, that the liberality of the holy father should be imposed upon. I feel myself called upon to speak more distinctly than I hitherto have concerning what I said to cardinal Con. salvi, who is now secretary of state to his holiness, relative to his refus ing credit to any thing said to him by the regent and his ministers concerning the catholic question: Es pecially, as it was through your eminence, that the holy father lately promised, that if an act of parlia ment concerning the catholics' emanci pation should have once passed, that his holiness would on his part address a proper brief to all the bishops and faithful catholics of Great Bri tain, with a view of proclaiming to the whole world his gracious sense of the clemency and generosity displayed by the most powerful British government. When matters essential to the catholic religion become the objects of treaty with those who are not of it, it mainly interests his holiness, as well as his ministers, thoroughly to know, not what is wished to be done, not what is promised, not what is treated about, but what is actually done. I am not ignorant, that it is a matter of boast with many (Hippisley in particular), that this late law is a sort of emancipation, by which the catholics are placed upon a level with all other dissenters from the oaths or declarations to be sworn or subscribed, after such officers shall have accepted their commissions, can be affected. Moreover this last law only affects the officers of the navy and army : and the act of George I, which requires not the receipt of the sacra ment, but only the abjuration of his holiness, reaches even the com, mou soldier and seaman, so that upon the widest construction of this last act, if any, the slightest, benefit could be derived to the catholics under it, out of six millions of subjects, which is about a third of the British population, the commissions to the catholic officers of the navy and army would not extend to fire thousand individuals. M. NELLESSEN'S DEFENCE OF CONTROVERSY. (Continued from our last, and translated from Le Spectateur Belge.) established religion. For it must be observed, that presbyterians, and all other sectarists without distinction (not so with catholics) are frequently raised and named by his majesty, to commissions, commands, and other offices in the state; not one of whom objects to renounce his holiness upon oath. It is only by the act of Charles II, that the person named is called upon to take the sacrament according to the rite of the Anglican church, within six months after he has entered upon his office, which every sincere dissenter scruples to do. Lest therefore those dissenters, who are so named by the king, should fall into all those penalties from not complying with the con. dition, the parliament every year, as if by custom, passes an act to enlarge the time for qualifying, until some day after the next session of parliament: and thereby indemnifies and discharges all those who may not have complied within the time limited, It is equally competent for the king to sigu a commission to To the Vicars General of the Diocess a presbyterian and a catholic. If therefore a catholic, after the royal signature to the commission, should not have qualified within the time, the annual act just availed him as much before, as it does since the passing of this last act. By no con. struction then can this last act be considered to be an act of emancipation, I have always thought, that the annual indemnity act never was of any avail to the catholics: and it is evident, that there is not a single word in the last act, which confers any boon or benefit on a catholic. Nay, even if before its passing, he could have been benefited by the annual act, he would cease to be so, since the passing of this last act for by this last act, it is explicitly and distinctly enacted, that there is nothing contained in it, that really does, or can be deemed to produce any effect, by which any of Aix la-Chapelle. SIRS, I observe by the letter I have had the honour to receive from you, on the second of this month, that I have been reported to his excellency the first president and minister of state, Von Ingersleben, on the subject of the discourse that I delivered on the 10th of last March, and that I am reproached, not only with my own intolerance, but still more with having sought to propagate and augment it among iny audience. With the most profound respect and entire obedience, which, in affairs of this nature, I owe to my ecclesiastical superiors, I receive your orders to justify myself before you touching this affair. In compli ance with this obedience, I have the honour, gentlemen, to submit to you, first, some general reflections on the lawfulness, and even actual necessity, of dogmatical sermons, and will present you afterwards with | to my accusers, is not more intolerant my defence on each head of the accasation preferred against me. than truth is compatible with sound doctrine. Besides, I many times (particularly in my third sermon) distinguished with precision between religious and civil tolerance, and proposed the latter to my catholic audience as an indispensable obligation. I even made a distinction between excusable and inexcusable ignorance, ple from the prejudice which makes them believe, what never was a doctrine of the church, that no one who does not profess the catholic religion can avoid damnation; in which belief they say all catholics are instructed. It is doctrine, and not men, said I, that we are permitted to condemn. It consequently appears to me, that I fully acquitted myself of the reproach of intolerance, inasmuch as it can co-exist with the principles of our holy religion. From these general observations and preliminary remarks, I pass to the particular discussion of the heads of the accusation in question. When the catholic religion can be but barely tolerated, (and I think in our province we should enjoy some thing more than mere toleration) it should, by an inevitable consequence, in this case, be permitted to its minister to make known to his hearers the principles of the religion he pro-and endeavoured to dissuade the peofesses; and as the expositions of these principles cannot take place without making mention of contrary doctrines, it is by a necessary consequence no less certain, that a development of these doctrines should be equally permitted. I have thought myself the more obliged to give these respective explications at this time, since the ministers of other communions in Germany take upon themselves, in their public writings, to make numerous attacks upon us, of which all may be convinced by reading the Jenasche Litteratuzeitung of last year; besides which, these at tacks are not unknown in our town. With what facility may not catholics, They reproach me, in the first but little instructed, be drawn away, place, with having ranked the deby doubts, to tepidity, carelessness, ceased professor Bahrdt amongst and complete indifference, if we do those who, in our days, have dissenot exert ourselves to make them at- minated error. I cannot conceive tentive to the snares which beset what could induce my informers to them on every side! And for what resolve on becoming the champions else has a minister his mission? If of a man, who, for his bad principles, priests are invested with this right, was forced to quit Erfort, Giesen, how are they to make use of it, if the Marschlinz, and Heildesheim; and exercise of it is interdicted even in who, on the representations of the their own church? Now if, in the theological powers of Wurzbourg exercise of this privilege, I am guilty and Gottengue, was, in 1778, by an of intolerance, I will willingly share act of the imperial council, deprived the culpability with St. Paul, St. Am- of the functions of a public professor brose, St. Chrysostom, St. Augus- throughout the whole extent of the tio, and many other great men, the | kingdom, and was even shut up in lights of the church, who combatted the fortress of Spandau for publisherror with independence, and in- ing a libel against king Frederick cessantly represented to the faithful Williamll, entitled Religions edickt!! the ancient deposit of the truth. If Bolland's Beytrage zu Bahrds lethis then is intolerance, it is an into-ben may be consulted on this subject, lerance commanded me by my reli- and found in the Giesener Religionsgion, which, however it may appear begebenheiten. His son, the pro spots of ink on the wall, as Bredow, a modern protestant writer, informs us in his Merkwürdigen Begebenheiten aus der allgemeinen weltges chichte? fessor of the college of this town, | so extremely revered? And do they from a motive of filial respect to his not still continue to shew to the eufather, (for I cannot suppose his at-rious, as a proof of this dispute, the tachment can be to the principles he professed) should be recognised as the informer against me. But even in this case, he cannot impute it as a crime in me to be incensed against a man generally known to have been an infidel, and to whom the protest. ant religion was no more sacred than the catholic; and, notwithstanding the man has ceased to live, since his writings have survived him, I was not obliged to know the affinity be tween the dead professor Bahrdt and the living professor Bahrdt of our town, much less, in consequence of this knowledge, that is, supposing I had it, to refrain from censuring the father from respect to the presence of the son. A third grief consists in what they find extremely shocking indeed, that I should have reproached our enlightened age with a predilection for superstition, in asserting their refusal to believe the prophets of the old testament, at the very time they are giving credit to an Adam Muller and a Madame Von Krudener.* But do not our German journals at. test these circumstances, the parts these new visionaries have taken, and the fanaticisms they have caused to appear? And, with respect to the They exclaim against me, in the latter, do they not reckon her asecond place, for having said that mong the many sectaries of our mo many dogmas of the catholic religion dern philosophers? Now what can were now made the objects of the have given rise to such extremes, if most galling derision; for having ad- it is not the private spirit of protestvanced that they hesitated not to ants, which grants to every man the call the mass, indulgences, and pur- privilege to interpret the scriptures gatory, lucrative traffics. But have to suit his own humour? Is not the I betrayed the truth in affirming sect of quakers derived from prothese facts? If they will give them-testantism? A sect in which perselves the trouble to read only the first edition of Stiegler's Chorale, which was published on the occasion of the secular feast, even under the eyes of the magistrates of this town, they will peruse only one of the thousand sermons, of the thousand pamphlets by which this famous feast has been solemnized in Germany; and may convince themselves that the railing genius of Luther has re-appeared in the nineteenth century. They are scandalized that I should have spoken of the dispute between Luther and the devil on the Wartburg. But has not Luther himself spoken of it before me, in his book called Von de Winkel Messen? How could I dare presume to doubt their reliance on the word of a man sons of either sex are eligible to preach? What examples better adapted to my subject could I have found, to illustrate the height to which the error and superstition, so glaring in our times, have risen?— It is only in the catholic church a barrier can be found to oppose this profligacy. Lastly, they have taken the greatest offence that I should have dared to maintain, that the protestants, by the inevitable consequences of their system of religion, are now fallen into indifferentism and scep ticism. This alarming decline is, * Should not M. Nellessen have added the trembler Lee and the prophetess Southcott?-Spectateur. however, of even a more remote | much as even speak of it. The act of re-union between these two protestant communions in the Bavarian circles of the Lower Rhine of the 15-21 of August, 1818, which has been inserted in No. 24 of the Amtsblatt of this circle, has just published a fresh proof to those which I have already furnished, relative to this affair, as it has taken However, none of the accusations of which I have been the object appears to me so strange as that founded on my having exhorted my catholic audience to pray for their dissenting brethren. Alas! what could I do more, conformably with my principles, to my own hearty convic tions, to the pure spirit of christianity, than evince so universal a love to my neighbours, as to lead my co-religionists to address their prayers to heaven for the conversion of their wandering brethren? Did not this exhortation afford, the most convincing proof that I was animated by no spirit of hatred towards the pro epoch. Have not Semler, Teller, Paulus, Reimarus, and other protestant theologians, most daringly attacked, by consequences deduced from the principles of protestantism, the canon of the holy scriptures, as likewise the revealed truth, of which it is the sacred deposit? And have they not, in doing this, disposed their minds to a most complete in-place in the country of Nassau and difference in matters of religion?— elsewhere. In short, what remains in the order of supernatural things, to reason abandoned to itself, but religious scepticism? Are the symbolical books, the synodal and consistorial ordinances of the protestants, any thing but violences offered to the conscience, since, by their authors' own confession, these acts do not bear the seal of infallibility? And consequently are men wrong in withdrawing themselves from such inconsistencies? But who, allow me to ask, are these men ? No other than rational christians. It was highly necessary for them to desert, if I were willing to retrace all there is to say on that subject.-testants, but, on the contrary, by a The complaint of protestants of the most ardent desire to see them redecay of their religious system abun- turn to us, and that it was charity dantly confirms all that I have said alone towards them that led me to on that topic. We may consult on say what I did? that head, D. Walsch's Einleitung in die Religions streitigkeiten der Evangelisch Lutherischen Kercken. How can they deny that the secular feast has augmented divisions amongst them? Have they not at present united and disunited members of the same communion, a distinction which did not exist anterior to the era of this feast? On the other hand, their pretended reunion had no other object in view than certain ceremonies relative to the celebration of the Lord's supper; the essential question of the real presence has remained just what it was, in the two communions before this re-union; they do not so ORTHOD. JOUR. VOL. VIII. I conclude with the known words of Jesus Christ, my master and guide-If I have spoken ill, shew me my error; but if well, why accuse me? (Signed) NELLESSEN, Curate of St. Nicholas, Aix-la-Chapelle, April, 1819. Scarcely had I remitted the preceding defence to my ecclesiastical superiors, probably it had not yet been forwarded for Coblentz, still less had it been answered, when the letter of the first president and minister of state, Von Ingersleben, to the vicar-general, by which I was summoned to justify myself, appeared in the public papers. But to 3 F |