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Catholics, who had saved the King's life in their priests hiding-holes, when he was a Protestant, at the risk of their own lives, and when they might have gained £100,000 by betraying him, had plotted, now that he was a Catholic, to murder him, by stabbing him, by poisoning him, and by shooting him with silver bullets, and afterwards to bring over 30,000 pilgrims, armed with black bill-hooks, from St. Jago in Spain, to overturn the Government! History tells us, moreover, that, on the credit of this plot, near 20 Catholics were actually hanged and quartered, and all their nobility confined in prison!

I have spoken of our ancestors, I now speak of our posterity, concerning whom I will confidently affirm, that if any thing will equal their astonishment, that so unjust, false, malicious, and absurd an Act, as that containing the Declaration, should have passed through the Houses in the 17th century, and this under the hypocritical pretext of "An Act for the better preservation of his Majesty's person and Government," it will be, that the same Act, and under the same hypocritical title, should have remained unrepealed till the present period in the nineteenth century. And yet it does stand unrepealed at the present hour, a signal monument of the religious and moral integrity of the Catholics, in still refusing to purchase honours and emoluments at the expense of a false oath, [which persons of other religions have taken, with the consciousness either of swearing a falsehood, or of swearing what they do not understand, when they swear that the Catholic worship is idolatrous,] as likewise in their bearing the infamy or perjury, rather than the guilt of it. In fact, the whole latter part of the Declarationis swelled out with implied charges against Catholics, of evading the obligation of oaths by "equivocations, mental

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reservations, and Papal dispensations," which vile expedients, if they actually possessed them, it is self-evident, would render the whole Declaration nugatory.

General Thornton, in his late Parliamentary Speech against the Declaration, which pronounces the Catholics guilty of Idolatry, takes up the subject on the grounds just stated, that is to say, upon Protestant grounds. Accordingly, he feelingly appeals to the Members of Parliament themselves, whether it be not "abhorrent from their religious and moral feelings," to charge their fellow Christians, upon oath with the guilt of idolatry, while they not only clear themselves of that crime, but also were acquitted of it by the most learned Protestant Bishops and Divines this country could boast of, when the Declaration was devised.4 The General then argues as follows: "How is it to be accounted for, on any just principle, that those, who, preparatory to their going into holy orders, are called upon to subscribe to the 39 Articles of Religion, after it has been their duty to make this subject their particular study, should only be required to consider the practice as having given occasion to many superstitions, when the Members of both Houses of Parliament, on taking their seats, are obliged to declare, that they solemnly and sincerely,in the presence of God, do believe the practice, not only to be superstitious, but likewise idolatrous?-Let me beseech the House to consider

(4) Such as the Bishops Jeremy Taylor, Blandford, Montague, Forbes, Gunning, Archbishop Sheldon, Prebendary Thorndike, Chillingworth, &c. When the Declaration was under consideration in the House of Peers, Bishop Gunning, of Ely, protested that he could not in conscience swear it. Burnet's Hist. of his own Times.

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well the consequence of it."Here the Right Rev. Prelate chooses to make a vigorous assault upon the General, by way of proving that the law requires no stronger declarations against the Catholics, from Members of Parliament, than it does from the Clergy of the Establishment; and that the latter, in subscribing the 39 Articles, do, in fact, charge the Catholics with idolatry. Let us now attend to his proofs. He says: "The Articles, besides saying that the doctrine of Transubstantiation has given occasion to many superstitions, say moreover, that it is repugnant to the plain sense of Scripture, and overthroweth the nature of a Sacrament and that the Sacrament was not, by Christ's ordinance reserved, carried about, lifted up, and worshipped." Atqui :-Ergo.- -Now, my Lord, I appeal to your Lordship's theological learning, first whether a thousand tenets and practices may not be repugnant to Scripture, and may not overthrow the nature of a Sacrament, without constituting idolatry? Secondly, whether a Member of Parliament, for example, or his worship the Mayor, or a worshipful Alderman, or any man's own wife, whom he has married according to the form in The Common Prayer Book, may not be reserved and carried about, and lifted up and worshipped, without making such a person an object of idolatry? In case your Lordship answers these two questions, as every other man of sense will do, it is evident at once, that the Act of 30 Car. II. by the Declaration in question, does impose an infinitely heavier burden on the consciences of Parliament-men, than the 39 Articles do on those of Church-men. Thus it is demon

strated, that the Right Rev. Bishop has made a false attack on the gallant General; and that he has been completely beaten on his own ground.

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to the Prelate's disingenuous statements of the arguments in my foregoing Letters on the Real Presence and Transubstantiation, and his feeble nibbling at them, in his Appendix, I shall leave them to make whatever effect they are capable of making on the minds of intelligent readers, satisfying myself with barely requesting them, after they have perused the Prelate's statements and objections, to look back again upon the arguments them.selves.

In conclusion, my Lord, I am so little apprehensive that the Catechism and the Defence of it, put together, will induce a single member of the great Universal Church to quit what the Prelate, whimsically and by Antonomasia, calls The Grand Schism of the sixteenth century, that I might safely promise, without danger of being called upon to make my promise good, that, upon satisfactory proof of this having happened in one instance, I would furnish a second instance in myself. Nor am I, in the least, fearful that a single Peer or Gentleman, who is not otherwise induced to vote in Parliament against the Catholic Claims, will be influenced to do so by these episcopal lectures. All I dread is, that, as the Catechism is now reduced in size and expense, for the evident purpose of being widely circulated among the furious jumpers of Wales, and the no less ignorant and infuriate mobility of the metropolis, who have already deeply imbibed his Lordship's grand principle of Protestantism, the swearing against Popery, they may be worked up by it to equal demonstrations of zeal, with those which we witnessed in the former champion of Protestantism, Lord George Gordon, and his associators. These, we remember, argued the Catholic question against Members of the Legislature with their fists

and clubs, confuted the Catholics by burning down their chapels and houses, and demonstrated the purity of their Religion, by demolishing the prisons and storming the Bank.

I have the honour to remain, my Lord,

Your Lordship's obedient Servant,,

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