are free from their oaths and obedience(1). The same in substance, were the maxims of Calvin, Beza, and the Huguenots of France, in general: the temporal interest of their religion was the ruling principle of their morality. But, to return to our own country: the enemies of Church and State having hunted down the Earl of Strafford, and procured him to be attainted of High Treason, the king, Charles I. declared, that he could not, in conscience, concur to his death; when, the case being referred to the Archbishops, Usher and Williams, and three other Anglican Bishops, they decided (in spite of his Majesty's conscience, and his oath to administer justice-in mercy) that he might, in conscience, send this innocent Peer to the block, which he did accordingly (2). I should like to ask Bishop Porteus, whether this decision of his predecessors was not the dispensation of an oath, and the annulling of the most sacred of all obligations? In like manner, most of the leading men of the nation, with most of the Clergy, having sworn to the Solemn League and Covenant, for the more effectual extirpation of (1) History of Scotland. The same was the express doctrine of the Geneva Bible, translated by Coverdale, Goodman, &c. in that city, and in common use among the English Protestants, till King James's reign: for in a note on ver. 12 of 2d Mat. these translators expressly say, A promise ought not to be kept, where God's honour and preaching of his truth is injured.; His. Account of Eng. Translations, by A. Johnson, in Wetson's Collect. vol. iii. p. 93. (2) Collier's Church History, vol. ii. p. 801. On the other hand, when several of the Parliament's soldiers, who had been taken prisoners at Brentford, had sworn never again to bear arms against the King, they were says Clarendon, absolved from that oath,' Exam. of Neal's Hist. Popery,' they were dispensed with from the keeping of it, by an express clause in the Act of Uniformity.(3) But whereas by a clause of the oath in the same Act, all subjects of the realm, down to constables and school-masters, were obliged to swear, that It is not lawful, upon any pretence whatsoever, to take up arms against the King;' this oath, in its turn, was universally dispensed with, in the Churches and in Parliament, at the revolution. I have mentioned these few facts and maxims, concerning Protestant dispensations of oaths and engagements, in case any of your Society may ject, that some Popes have been too free in pronouncing such dispensations. Should this have been the case, they alone, personally, and not the Catholic Church, were accountable for it, both to God and man. ob I have often wondered, in a particular manner, at the confidence with which Bishop Porteus asserts and denies facts of ancient Church-History, in opposition to the known truth. An instance of this occurs in the conclusion of the chapter before me, where he says: The primitive Church did not attempt, for several hundred of years, to make any doctrine necessary, which we do not: as the learned well know from their writings (4).' The falsehood of this position must strike you, on looking back to the authorities adduced by me from the ancient Fathers and historians, in proof of the several points of controversy which I have maintained: but, to render it still more glaring, I will recur to the histories of AERIUS and VIGILAN. (3) Statute 13 and 14 Car. II. cap. 4, (4) P. 73. TIUS, two different heretics of the fourth century. Both St. Epiphanius (5) and St. Augustin (6) rank Aerius among the heresiarchs, or founders of heresy, and both give exactly the same account of his three characteristical errors; the first of which is avowed by all Protestants, namely, that' Prayers and Sacrifices are not to be offered up for the dead;' and the two others by most of them; namely, that there is no obligation of observing the appointed days of fasting, and that Priests ought not to be distinguished, in any respect, from Bishops (7). So far were the primitive Christians from tolerating these heresies, that the supporters of them were denied the use of a place of worship, and were forced to perform it in forests and caverns (8). Vigilantius likewise condemned prayers for the dead, but he equally reprobated prayers to the Saints, the honouring of their relics, and the celibacy of the clergy, together with vows of continence in general. Against these errors, which I need not tell you, Dr. Porteus now patronises, as Vigilantius formerly did, St. Jerom directs all the thunder of his eloquence, declaring them to be sacrilegious, and the author of them to be a detestable heretic (4). The learned Fleury observes, that the impious novelties of this heretic made no proselytes, and, therefore, that there was no need of a Council to condemn them (1). Finally, to con (5) Hæresis 75. (6) De Hæres. tom. vi. Ed. Frob. (7) Ibid. St. John Damascen and St. Isidore equally condemn these tenets as heretical. (8) Fleury's Hist. ad. An. 392. (9) Epist. 1 and 2, adversus Vigilan. (1) Ad. An. 405.. 1 vince yourself, dear Sir, how far the ancient Fathers were from tolerating different communions or religious tenets in the Catholic Church, conformably to the Prelate's monstrous system, of a Catholic Church, composed of all the discordant and dis united sects in Christendom, be pleased to consult again the passages which I have collected from the works of the former, in my fourteenth letter to your Society; or, what is still more demonstrative, on this point, observe, in Ecclesiastical History, how the Quartodecimans, the Novatians (2), the Donatists, and the Luciferians, though, their respective errors are mere mole-hills, compared with the mountains which separate the Protestant communions from ours, were held forth as heretics by the Fathers, and treated as such by the Church, in her Councils. I am, &c, J. M. LETTER XLIX. To JAMES BROWN, Jun. Esq. DEAR SIR, ON RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION. I PROMISED to treat the subject of Religi ous Persecution apart; a subject of the utmost importance in itself, and which is spoken of by the (2) St. Cyprian being consulted about the nature of Novatian's errors, answered: There is no need of a strict inquiry what errors he teaches, while he teaches out of the Church' He elsewhere writes? The Church being one, cannot be, at the same time, within and without. If she be with Novatian, she is not with (Pope) Cornelius; if she be with Cornelius, Nova. tion is not in her.' Epist. 77, ad Mag, Bishop of London in the following terms: They, the Romish Church, zealously maintain their claim of punishing whom they please to call heretics, with penalties, imprisonment, tortures, death (1).' Another writer, whom I have quoted above, says, that this Churchbreathes the very spirit of cruelty and murder (2):' indeed, most Protestant controvertists seem to vie with each other, in the vehemence and bitterness of the terms, by which they endeavour to affix this most odious charge, of cruelty and murder, on the Catholic Church. This is the favourite topic of preachers, to excite the hatred of their hearers against their fellow Christians; this is the last resource of baffled hypocrites. If you admit the Papists, they cry, to equal rights, these wretches must and will certainly murder you, as soon as they can the fourth Lateran Council has established the principle, and the bloody Queen Mary has acted upon it. I. To proceed regularly in this matter: I begin with expressly denying the Bishop of London's Charge; namely, that the Catholic Church maintains a claim of 'punishing heretics with penalties, imprisonment, tortures, and death; and I assert, on the contrary, that she disclaims the power of so doing. Pope Leo the Great, who flourished in the fourth century, writing about the Manichean heretics, who, as he asserted, laid all modesty aside, prohibiting the matrimonial connexion, and subverting all law, human and divine,' says, that 'the ecclesiastical lenity was content, even in this case, with the sacerdotal judgment, and avoided all sanguinary punishments (3), however the secular Em(1), P. 71. (2) De Coetlogon's Seasonable Caution, p. 15. (3) Epist. ad Turib. |