devilish." Prejudices of education may, I hope, Sir, exeuse both you and others at the last day, even though you should believe that an Italian bishop may safely," lord it over God's heritage," through a pretended authority from St. Peter, though St. Peter himself strongly reprobates all such conduct; (1 Pet: 5-3) and though you should allow, in compliance with this same bishop, that the living God, like the dead prophet of Mecca, stands in need of a Kaliph, or earthly vicar and substitute, in the government of his church, &c. &c. Though from circumstances, I say, it may possibly be pardonable in a Romanist, should he believe in such delusions as these; yet in us it would not be pardonable should we fail contend earnestly for the faith which was once delivered to the saints, though certain of being branded with heresy for so doing.

to

I was not a little tickled, I must own, at discovering, through Mr. Le M. that you yourself, Sir, are no better than a bit of a beretic; that you are one of those who having sworn to the Almighty some most righteous baths, submitted on the threats of this same Italian bishop to unswear them again (see Prot. Adv. p. 132), so that I might parody your curious quotation from an old play, and say, "Ah! brother brother, so I find we have been both in the right!" About word-eaters much has been said, and of these Mr. Canning, since his anti-papal declaration at Liverpool, seems to be facile princeps, but as for oath-eaters they are surely a very different sect; I should not wish to depend on their caterer; because such food, I am certain, would never suit my stomach. Still, Mr. Butler, you are an Englishman like myself, and let me hope and trust that you are not so far Italianized but that you will approve of my setting before you the primitive glory of our native land, even in a spiritual point of view.

Our great Milton (no favourer of kings) observes in his Hist. of Brit, that "Lucius, King of Britain, was the first king in Europe that received the Christian faith; a high a singular grace, if we did but act up to it!" (Kennet's Hist. p. 21.) Could any one rival Lucius in this honour it must be another of our kings, the famous Caractacus, who, as our excellent Bishop Burgess conjectures, probably brought over St. Paul from Rome to evangelize this island. It is pretty clear at least that he did evangelize it, and that we had not only royal converts, but bishops, and a settled ministry previously to there being any such in (not papal but) Christian Rome; for the same prelate informs us (Letter I, pp. 43,53) that St. Paul appointed Aristobulus (Rom. 16-10) the first bishop in England, before he had, with the concurrence probably of St. Peter, appointed Linus (II. Tim. 4-21) first bishop of Rome, &c. N. B. both of them friends of St. Paul, but not of St. Peter

But if princes were first converted here, to what visible buman means was it owing that the Roman emperors were at last converted? I answer, without fear of contradiction, to British means. A British king, it seems, named Coilus, had, through oppression most probably, rebelled, and Constantius Chlorus, afterwards emperor, was sent to conquer him; but finding him dead, he was himself conquered by the charms of his daughter Helena. Hence surely we may date the conversion of Constantius himself, who forty years afterwards died, apparently a Christian, at the Christian city of York; as also the avowed Christianity of his and her glorious son Constantine, the establisher of our holy faith in the great emporium of the world! To this virtuous British princess, then, so blessed a change is principally, under heaven, to be attributed; nor can I altogether agree with Dr. Clarke in his severe censure of her misguided zeal, merely because this venerable lady, in that unenlightened age, went to Judea at the age of eighty, and built a church over the holy sepulchre. Did this alone profane that sacred spot? Was it not profaned before by Adrian, &c.? I only hint this in justice to our countrywoman; and it was not her fault that the monks afterwards thought proper to turn her into a Popish saint, and to attribute to her their legendary nonsense "de inventione crucis, &c." But I only mean to point out, that Papists were well aware of there having been Christianity in England, and on the throne of England too, long before the fatal intrusion of their bloody emissary Austin the monk.

We must now proceed to that disgraceful period when Britons, enervated by long subjection to Rome, adopted a policy, which is again recommended to us under the most opposite circumstances—they called in a people whose religion was abhorrent from their own, to assist them against the common enemy! Such cowardice deserved the ruin it ensured; for the Saxons, admitted into a share of the government, very naturally in due time usurped the whole, and drove the unhappy coufiding Britons into the fastnesses of Wales. Nor was this by any means the worst fate they were to experience; for we must here contemplate a most curious literary phenomenon, an universally-received historical LIE." Austin the monk," say all our historians, came over in 597, and planted Christianity in England." As truly might they have asserted that Scipio, in the year 608 ab U. C., went over with a colony and founded Carthagefor it happens that this Austin was the very man who eradicated Christianity out of the island. The fact is this-he first sent to Ethelbert and his Saxons, as Milton tells us," a new and wondrous message, that he was come from Rome to proffer to them Heaven, and eternal happiness, &c." and thus converted them to Popery. Then turning to the Christians,

he demanded that they should subject themselves to an Italian bishop; but against this, abhorring his superstitions, or possibly perceiving the fallacy of his title, they resolutely protested, which shews that England, highly to its honour, has possessed true Protestants from the moment that Popery was promulgated. But mark the dreadful catastrophe; enraged at the refusal, this same Austin required his converts, as the first test of their improved principles, and actually prevailed upon them, to murder all their Christian neighbours in cold blood! This was a strange method of planting Christianity in Britain! nor was it very likely to conduct its inhabitants to heaven and eternal happiness, though it may, I think, with certainty assure us that Austin himself, and all such as he was, must have been consigned to a very different place. Would to God their principles were now altered, or likely to be so, but their acts in Ireland and their struggles to preserve the inquisition in Spain are very unfavourable symptoms.

Here then commenced a new, and very different sort of subjugation of this island to that "mother of harlots," the city of Rome, by which however Austin and his party fully attained their ends. They hereby seized upon all the benefices of England and retained them, not without many protestations, till the reign of the bloody Queen Mary, and till the Reformation restored them to their ancient owners. I have now, Sir, arrived at the point which I have all along been aiming at, and that is, as you are not a priest of any sort, and therefore do not profess any knowledge of divinity, I have wished to appeal to you in your own proper line as an eminent conveyancer. In this capacity then, after duly weighing what I have adduced in my last and present letters, I would Jequest your deliberate decision as to which of these parties has the most rightful title to the several stations of authority in the British Churchwhether those to whom they were originally consigned by the apostle to the Gentiles, or those who held them under a Pope, who, claiming to be universal bishop by virtue of a pretended grant from the apostle to the Jews, and a real grant from an usurping tyrant (Phocas), had, as such, forcibly acquired possession by slaughtering their former occupants?

God forbid that we should imitate the Papists by delivering them over to eternal perdition, for believing in a Pope of Rome; yet surely whoever considers the cruelties committed by that church in these islands only, from the times of Austin to those of Bishop Caulfield (see my last) adverting at the same time to a sacred text, Mat. 23-35, will see no causes 1 apprehend, to envy the situation of Papists at the great day of account. That they have some expectation of being able to repeat these atrocities, and to regain these possessions, may be suspected from their bring VOL. I. [Prot. Adv. September 1813.]

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*

ing forward the prediction of Dr. Walmesley, a late blaspheming Romish bishop, who pretended to deduce from the prophecies that "the total extermination of the Protestants is near at hand." Since, therefore, the danger to Protestants is temporal, but that to Papists is eternal, all good men should join in earnest applications to the Throne of Grace, that this latter opinion may prove the true one; and in particular, Sir, I wish I could say something which might arrest your attention,† as you by no means appear to possess the bigotry of a Walmesley, a Troy, or a Milner. And let me just add the still stronger saying of one who was higher than ail these, for he was an infallible Pope himself, in the year 1555 (that very year, by the bye, when his church was drinking the blood of those true saints Ridley, Latimer, &c. see Rev. 17—6) I mean the saying of the unhappily short-lived Pope Marcellus, who is said to have declared, that," HE DID NOT SEE HOW IT WAS POSSIBLE FOR A POPE OF ROME TO BE SAVED."

I am, Sir, &c.

FIDEI DEFENSOR.

MYSTERY DISTINGUISHED FROM CONTRADICTION.
Extracted from Saurin's Sermons.

If we seek for the doctrines of the church of Rome in the decisions of her councils, and not in the works of some individuals, that church cannot exculpate herself from the reproach of teaching doctrines contradictory in their nature. And as the doctors of the council of Trent lived in a dark and unphilosophical age, they had the indiscretion to determine not only the doctrine of transubstantiation, but to enter into an explicit detail of it, and by this means they were led into palpable contradictions.

The canon is conceived in these terms:-" If any one denies that in the venerable sacrament of the Eucharist the body of Christ is to be found, under the one and under the other kind—in short that the body of Christ,

* I well recollect that there is in this writer a passage to the following purport, viz. that the Protestants were to be borne with for a time: but that if at last they refused to repent, Jesus Christ would strike!!!" Blasphemy cannot surely be carried further than thus daring to attribute their own bloodthirstiness to Him who was not even to * break a bruised reed, &c."

+ You, Sir, having been kind to a near and dear relative of mine, I should be happy in an opportunity of further conferring with you on these important topics. I hope some friend will point out to you what I here say, and on application to Mr. Stockdale, publisher of this work, you may be informed of my address.

is in every host, and every separate part of the host, let him be anathema." Is it possible to fall into greater contradictions? If you say that the bread is destroyed, and that the body of Christ is infused by an Almighty Power, you may perhaps shelter yourself from the charge of contradiction, but not from that of impenetrable mystery: but to suppose that the substance of bread is destroyed while it remains exactly the same in every respect as before, is not to advance a mystery but a contradiction. If you say that the body of Christ, which is in heaven, passes in an instant from heaven to earth, you may cover yourself under the appearance of mystery; but to affirm that the body of Christ when it is all in heaven is also entire on earth, is not to advance a mystery but a contradiction. If you say that some parts of the body of Christ are detached and mingled with the elements of the Eucharist, you may perhaps shelter yourself under cover of a mystery, but to affirm that the body of Christ is entire, and yet that it is in every sacramental wafer, is to support a glaring contradiction and an extravagant absurdity,

A Roman Catholic who follows his principles can have no just cause for believing the Christian religion to be of divine original, for the proofs of Christianity are founded on this proposition, "evidence* is a character of truth;" but if the doctrine of transubstantiation be believed, the most glaring contradictions might also be believed as truth, and if these are received, evidence is no longer a mark or test of truth. I will go still further, and maintain that the most bigotted Roman Catholic does not believe transubstantiation himself-he may say he believes it, but he cannot believe it in his conscience. He may obscure his mind by confused ideas, but he cannot assimilate ideas perfectly contradictory. He may adhere to a proposition when he is inattentive and heedless, but there is no man in the world can force himself to coalesce together ideas so incongruous, essentially opposite, and contradictory.

For the Protestant Advocate.

MR. EDITOR,-The reference which you have made (at p. 585) to my account of the mode taken by the Romish bishops in Ireland to get themselves enthroned in the cathedrals of the respective sees, reminds me of the propriety of saying a word more on the subject, in order to take away the possibility of cavil. I have been told that some of the Romanists, not denying the practice, but yet wishing, as far as they could, to impeach my veracity, have said that what I have reported cannot be true,

* See Dr. Forster's able tract called "Popery destructive of the Evidence of Chris tianity," reviewed p. 469.