same cant which brought Laud and Charles I. to the block; the same cant which overthrew the Church and State in the Grand Rebellion. But what chiefly concerns my present purpose, in the Bishop's twice repeated quotation from Milton, is to observe that it breathes the whole persecuting spirit of the sixteenth century, and calls for the fines and forfeitures, the dungeons, halters, and knives of Elizabeth's reign, against the devoted Catholics; since it is evident that the Idolatry of Popery, as he terms it, exercised in private, cannot be removed without such persecuting and sanguinary measures. The same thing is plain from the nature of the different legal offences which the Right Reverend Prelate lays to their charge. In one place he accuses the Catholics of England and Ireland, that is to say, more than a quarter of his Majesty's European subjects, of acknowledging the jurisdiction of the Pope in defiance of the laws, and of the allegiance due to their rightful Sovereign;' though he well knows, that they have abjured the Pope's jurisdiction in all civil and temporal cases, which is all that the King, Lords, and Commons required of them, in their acts of 1791 and 1793. Again the Prelate describes their opposition to the Veto (though equally opposed, in the appointment of their respective Pastors, by all Protestant Dissenters, who constitute more than another fourth part of his Majesty's subjects) as Treasonable by Statute,' p. 35. Now, every one knows that the legal punishment of a subject, acting in defiance of his allegiance, and contracting the guilt of treason, is nothing less than death. Nay: so much bent on the persecution of Catholics is this modern Bishop, as to arraign

Parliament itself as guilty of a breach of the constitution, by the latter of its tolerating Acts; where he says: If the elective franchise be really inconsistent with the Constitutional Statutes of the Revolution, it ought to be repealed, like all other concessions that are injurious to loyalty and religion.' He adds,But it does not follow that because Parliament had been guilty of one act of prodigality, that it should therefore, like a thoughtless and unprincipled spendthrift, plunge itself into inextricable ruin,' pp. 53, 54. Thus, my Lord, though the Prelate after advertising in his Table of Contents, 'A CONCLUSION, showing, the means of cooperating with the laws for preventing the danger and increase of Popery,' defers publishing it, because, he says, it is connected with the credit of the Ecclesiastical Establishment; yet, we see, as clearly, from the substance and drift of the Protestant's Catechism, what his conclusion is, as if he had actually published it. Namely, we see that he would have the whole code of penal laws, with their incapacities, fines, imprisonment, hanging, drawing, and quartering, re-enacted, to prevent even the private practice of idolatry; and that he would have the Bishops, Clergy, Churchwardens, and Constables employed in enforcing them, according to the forms of Inquisition, prescribed by the Canons of 1597, 1603, and 1640.

Before the writer passes from the present subject of loyalty and the laws, to others more congenial with his studies, and those of the Prelate, he wishes to submit to your Lordship's reflection two or three questions connected with it. First: is it strictly legal, even for a Lord of Parliament, and is it

edifying for a Bishop, to instruct the public, especially in these days of insubordination and commotion, that the reigning King, and the two Houses of Parliament, have acted against the Constitutional Statutes, by affording religious relief to one large and loyal portion of British subjects, in the same manner as King William, George I. and George II. had afforded it to other portions of them? We all know what outcries are continually raised about violating the Constitution, and we know what effect these are intended to produce. Now, if a turbulent populace are made to believe, that the present Legislature has acted illegally and unconstitutionally in some of its acts, is there no danger that they may form the same notion concerning some of its other acts, which are peculiarly obnoxious to them, and that they may rank these among the Fictitious Statutes, as this Prelate terms the Acts of Parliament of three former reigns?-Secondly: the writer wishes to ask your Lordship, whether or no you think it is for the peace and safety of the sister isle, to alarm the bulk of its inhabitants with the threat of their being dispossessed of the elective franchise, which they have now enjoyed for a quarter of a century? In like manner, is it conducive to the same end, for a person of his Lordship's character and consequence to assure this people, that the Pope's jurisdiction and England's dominion over them were introduced into Ireland by a mercenary compact of the Pope and Henry II.' p. 24. founded on a fiction of the grossest kind, the pretended donation of Constantine,' p. v. though, by the by, this was never once mentioned or hinted at by either of the parties?-Lastly: the writer would be glad

to be informed by your Lordship, whether it be for the advantage of the Established Church so highly to extol John Wickliffe, who maintained that Clergymen ought to have no sort of temporal possessions? And, merely, because Lord Cobham was a Wickliffite, is it for the security of the State, to hold him up as a great and good man, and the Martyr of Protestantism,' p. vii. (1) though he was convicted in the King's Bench, and in open Parliament, of raising an insurrection of 20,000 men, for the purpose of killing the King, his brother, and the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and executed for so doing? How innocent was Colonel Despard, compared with Sir John Oldcastle, called Lord Cobham!

The writer has been speaking of the object of the publication that has lately appeared, under the name of a Rt. Rev. Bishop of the Established Church: he now proceeds to say something of its contents.

It professes to be THE PROTESTANT'S CATECHISM. From this title, it might be supposed to be an elementary book, for the instruction of Protestants of every description in the doctrine and morality taught by Jesus Christ: but not a word is to be found in it about Christ, or God, or any doctrinal matter whatever; except that, They who do not hold the worship of the Church of Rome to be idolatrous, are not Protestants, whatever they may profess to be,' p. 46; which is a sentence of excommunication against many of the brightest lights and chief ornaments of the

(1) See Walshingham's Historia Major, Knighton Leicest. Collier's Eccles. Hist. Stow, &c.

Bishop's own Church. Nor does this novel Catechism contain any moral or practical lesson; except that Every member of Parliament's conscience is pledged against the Catholic claims;' and, that as Popery is idolatrous, it is not to be tolerated, either in public or in private,' and that it must be now thought how to remove it,' p. 3. Had the Catechism appeared without a name, it might be supposed to be a posthumous work of Lord George Gordon; but, had its origin been traced to the mountains of Wales, it would certainly be attributed to some itinerant Jumper, rather than to a successor of St. Dubritius and St. David. What, however, chiefly distinguishes The Protestant's Catechism from other No Popery publications, is not so much the violence of its acrimony, as the boldness of its paradoxes. These, for the most part, stand in contradiction of all ancient records and modern authors, Protestant as well as Catholic, being supported by the bare word of the Bishop of St. David's: and, what is still more extraordinary, they sometimes stand in contradiction to the word of the Bishop of St. David's himself, resting in this case, on the word of Dr. Thomas Burgess. I purpose exhibiting a few of the paradoxes I refer to.

The great and fundamental paradox of the Right Rev. Catechist is, that Protestantism subsisted many hundred years before Popery; at the same time that he makes its essence to consist in a renunciation of, and opposition to Popery! for his Lordship lectures his Protestant pupils in the following manner: 'Question. What is Protestantism? Answer. The abjuration of Popery, and the exclusion