When Heaven was yet the Pope's exclusive trade, And thou, my Friend-if, in these headlong days, While G-ff-rd's tongue and M-sgr-ve'a pen remain And oh my friend, wert thou but near me now, To see the spring diffuse o'er Erin's brow Smiles that shine out, unconquerably fair, Even through the blood-marks left by C-md-n' there! Couldst thou but see what verdure paints the sod Which none but tyrants and their slaves have trod, And didst thou know the spirit, kind and brave, That warms the soul of each insulted slave, Who, tired with struggling, sinks beneath his lot, And seems by all but watchful France forgot-2 Thy heart would burn-yes, even thy Pittite heart Would burn, to think that such a blooming part Of the world's garden, rich in Nature's charms, And fill'd with social souls and vigorous arms, Should be the victim of that canting crew, So smooth, so godly, yet so devilish too, Who, arm'd at once with prayer-books and with whips,3 Blood on their hands, and Scripture on their lips, 2 The example of toleration, which Bonaparte has given, will produce, I fear, no other effect than that of determining the British Government to persist, from the very spirit of Whose wrongs, though blazon'd o'er the world they opposition, in their own old system of intolerance and injus be, Placemen alone are privileged not to see Oh! turn awhile, and, though the shamrock wreathes they admit those very decisions, they are branded as bigots and bad subjects. We are told that confidence and kindness will make them enemies to the Government, though we know that exclusion and injuries have with difficulty prevented them from being its friends. In short, nothing can better illustrate the misery of those shifts and evasions by which a long course of cowardly injustice must be support ed, than the whole history of Great Britain's conduct towards the Catholic part of her empire. 1 The "Sella Stercoraria" of the Popes.-The Right Honourable and learned Doctor will find an engraving of this chair in Spanheim's "Disquisitio Historica de Papa Femina," (p. 118) and I recommend it as a model for the fashion of that seat which the Doctor is about to take in the Privy-Council of Ireland. 2 When Innocent X. was entreated to decide the controversy between the Jesuits and the Jansenists, he answered, that "he had been bred a Lawyer, and had therefore nothing to do with divinity."-It were to be wished that some of our English pettifoggers knew their element as well as Pope Innocent X. 3 The breach of faith which the managers of the Irish Union have been guilty of, in disappointing those hopes of emancipation which they excited in the bosoms of the Catholics, is no new trait in the annals of English policy. A similar deceit was practised to facilitate the Union with Scotland, and hopes were held out of exemption from the Corporation and Test Acts, in order to divert the Parliament of that country from encumbering the measure with any stipulation to that effect. tice; just as the Siamese blacken their teeth, "because," as they say, "the devil has white ones." (a) Protestants and Catholics, is the mutual exposure which 3 One of the unhappy results of the controversy between their criminations and recriminations have produced. In vain do the Protestants charge the Papists with closing the door of salvation upon others, while many of their own writings and articles breathe the same uncharitable spirit. No canon of Constance or Lateran ever damned heretics more effectually than the eighth of the Thirty-nine Articles consigns to perdition every single member of the Greek church, and I doubt whether a more sweeping clause of damnation was ever proposed in the most bigoted council, than that which the Calvinistic theory of predestination in the seventeenth of these Articles exhibits. It is true that no liberal Protestant avows such exclusive opinions; that every honest clergyman must feel a pang while he subscribes to them; that some even assert the Athanasian Creed to be the forgery of one Vigilius Tapsensis, in the beginning of the sixth century, and that eminent divines, like Jortin, have not Liturgy and Articles, which no man of common sense hesitated to say, "There are propositions contained in our amongst us believes."(b) But while all this is freely conceded to Protestants; while nobody doubts their sincerity, when they declare that their articles are not essentials of faith, but a collection of opinions which have been promulgated by fallible men, and from many of which they feel retraction is allowed to Protestants upon their own declared themselves justified in dissenting,-while so much liberty of and subscribed Articles of religion, is it not strange that a ble obstinacy, to the Catholics, upon tenets which their similar indulgence should be refused, with such inconvincichurch has uniformly resisted and condemned, in every Catholics say, "The decree of the council of Lateran, country where it has flourished independently? When the which you object to us, has no claim whatever upon either our faith or our reason; it did not even profess to contain any doctrinal decision, but was merely a judicial proceeding of that assembly; and it would be as fair for us to impute a wife-killing doctrine to the Protestants, because their first Pope, Henry VIII. was sanctioned in an indulgence of that propensity, as for you to conclude that we have inherited a king-deposing taste from the acts of the Council of Lateran, or the secular pretensions of our Popes. With respect, too to the Decree of the Council of Constance, upon the strength (a) See l'Histoire Naturelle et Polit. du Royaume de Siam, etc. (b) Strictures on the Articles, Subscriptions, etc. Tyrants by creed, and torturers by text, Corrupts both State and Church, and makes an oath Adds the slave's suffering to the sinner's fear, which are in their original, end, business, and in every thing, perfectly distinct and infinitely different from each other."First Letter on Toleration. The corruption of Christianity may be dated from the period of its establishment under Constantine, nor could all the splendour which it then acquired atone for the peace and purity which it lost. 1 I doubt whether, after all, there has not been as much bigotry among Protestants as among Papists. According to the hackneyed quotation Iliacos intra muros peccatur et extra. The great champion of the Reformation, Melanchthon, whom Jortin calls "a divine of much mildness and goodnature," thus expresses his approbation of the burning of Servetus: "Legi (he says to Bullinger) quæ de Serveti blasphemiis respondistis, et pietatem ac judicia vestra probo. Judico etiam senatum Genevensem recte fecisse, quod hominem pertinacem et non omissurum blasphemias sustulit; ac miratus sum esse qui severitatem illam improbent."have great pleasure in contrasting with these "raild and good-natured" sentiments the following words of the Papist Baluze, in addressing his friend Conringins: "Interim amemus, mi Conringi, et tametsi diversas opiniones tuemur in cansa religionis, moribus tamen diversi non simus, qui eadem literarum studia sectamur."-Herman. Conring. Epistol. par. secund. թ. 56. of which you accuse us of breaking faith with heretics, we do not hesitzer to pronounce that Decree a calumnious forgery, a forgery, too, so obvious and ill-fabricated, that none but our eacties have ever ventured to give it the slightest credit for authenticity."-When the Catholics make these declararns (and they are almost weary with making them;) when tar y show too, by their conduct, that these declarations are sizere, and that their faith and morals are no more regulated by the absurd decrees of old councils and Popes, than their science is influenced by the Papal anathema against I that Irishman, (a) who first found out the Antipodes:-is it not strange that so many still wilfully distrust what every good man is so much interested in believing? That so many enould prefer the dark-lantern of the 13th century to the sunshine of intellect which has since spread over the world, and that every dabbler in theology, from Mr. Le Mesurier down to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, should dare Hume tells us that the Commons, in the beginning of to oppose the rubbish of Constance and Lateran to the Charles the First's reign, "attacked Montague, one of the bright triumphant progress of justice, generosity, and truth? King's chaplains, on account of a moderate book which he I There is a singular work upon the Souls of the Pa- had lately composed, and which, to their great disgust, gans," by one Franciscus Collius, in which he discusses, saved virtuous Catholics, as well as other Christians, from with much coolness and erudition, all the probable chances eternal torments."-In the same manner a complaint was of salvation upon which a heathen philosopher may calcu- lodged before the Lords of the Council against that excelate. He damns without much difficulty Socrates, Plato, lent writer Hooker, for having, in the Sermon against etc. and the only one at whose fate he seems to hesitate Popery, attempted to save many of his Popish ancestors for is Pythagoras, in consideration of his golden thigh, and ignorance. To these examples of Protestant toleration I the many miracles which he performed; but, having ba- shall beg leave to oppose the following extract from a letter lanced his claims a little, and finding reason to father all of old Roger Ascham (the tutor of Queen Elizabeth,) which these miracles on the devil, he at length, in the twenty-fifth is preserved among the Harrington Papers, and was written chapter, decides upon damning him also. (De Animis Paganorum, lib. iv. cap. 20 and 25.)—Dante compromises the in 1566, to the Earl of Leicester, complaining of the Archbishop Young, who had taken away his prebend in the matter with the Pagans, and gives them a neutral territory church of York: "Master Bourne (a) did never grieve me or limbo of their own, where their employment, it must be half so moche in offering me wrong, as Mr. Dudley and the owned, is not very enviable-"Senza speme vivemo in No desio." Cant. iv.-Among the many errors imputed to Ori-Byshopp of York doe, in taking away my right. gen, he is accused of having denied the eternity of future byshopp in Q. Mary's time would have so dealt with me; not Mr. Bourne hymself, when Winchester lived, durst have punishment, and, if he never advanced a more irrational so dealt with me. For suche good estimation in those dayes doctrine, we may forgive him. He went so far, however, as even the learnedest and wysest men, as Gardener and Carto include the devil himself in the general hell-delivery dinal Poole, made of my poore service, that although they which he supposed would one day or other take place, and knewe perfectly that in religion, both by open wrytinge and in this St. Augustin thinks him rather too merciful-"Mise- pryvie talke, I was contrarye unto them; yea, when Sir ricordior profecto fuit Origenes, qui et ipsum diabolum," Francis Englefield by name did note me speciallye at the etc. (De Civitat. Dei, lib. xxi. cap. 17.)-St. Jerom says, council-board, Gardener would not suffer me to be called that, according to Origen, "the devil, after a certain time, thither, nor touched ellswheare, saiinge suche words of me will be as well off as the angel Gabriel"-"Id ipsum fore in a lettre, as, though lettres cannot, I blushe to write them Gabrielem quod diabolum." (See his Epistle to Pammachius.) But Halloix, in his Defence of Origen, denies that to your Lordshipp. Winchester's good-will stoode not in he had any of this misplaced tenderness for the devil-speaking faire and wishing well, but he did in deede that for nation to the particular attention of the learned Chancellor If men who acted thus were bigots, what shall we call Mr take the liberty of recommending these notitie upon dam- me, (b) whereby my wife and children shall live the better when I am gone." (Sce Nuga Antique, vol. i. p. 98, 99.)of the Exchequer. 2 Mr. Fox, in his Speech on the Repeal of the Test Act (1790,) condemns the intermixture of religion with the political constitution of a state: "What purpose (he asks) can it serve, except the baleful purpose of communicating and receiving contamination? Under such an alliance corrup tion must alight upon the one, and slavery overwhelm the P-rc-v-1? In Sutcliff's "Survey of Popery," there is the following assertion: "Papists, that positively hold the heretical and false doctrines of the modern church of Rome, cannot possibly be saved.'-As a contrast to this and other specimens of Protestant liberality, which it would be much more ensy than pleasant to collect, I refer my reader to the Declaration of Le Père Courayer, and, while he reads the sentiments of Locke, too, says of the connexion between Church and this pious man upon toleration, I doubt not he will feel inState, "The boundaries on both sides are fixed and im-clined to exclaim with Belsham, "Blush, ye Protestant movable. He jumbles heaven and earth together, the things bigots! and be confounded at the comparison of your most remote and opposite, who mixes these two societies, own wretched and malignant prejudices with the generous other." (a) Virgilius, surnamed Solivagus, a native of Ireland, who maintained, in the 8th century, the doctrine of the Antipodes, and was anathematized accordingly by the Pope. John Scotus Erigena, another Irishman, was the first that ever wrote against transubstantiation. (a) Sir John Bourne, Principal Secretary of State to Queen Mary. (b) By Gardener's favour Ascham long held his fellow ship, though not resident. But no-far other faith, far milder beams APPENDIX. Ma come i luoghi i fatti ancor son foschi, Che non se'n ha notizia le più volte. "Hence it is that the annals of Ireland, through a long lapse of six hundred years, exhibit not one of those shining names, not one of those themes of national pride, from which poetry borrows her noblest inspiration; and that history, which ought to be the richest garden of the Muse, yields nothing to her here but weeds and cypress. In truth, the poet who would embellish his song with allusions to Irish names and events must be content to seek them in those early periods when our character was yet unalloyed and original, before the impolitic craft of our conquerors had divided, weakened, and disgraced us; and the only traits of heroism which he can venture at this day to commemorate, with safety to himself, or, perhaps, with honour to the country, are to be looked for in those times when the native monarchs of Ireland displayed and fostered virtues worthy of a better age; when our Malachies wore collars of gold which they had won in single combat from the invader,2 and our Briens deserved the blessings of a people by all the most estimable qualities of a king. It may be said indeed that the magic of tradition has shed a charm over this remote period, to which it is in reality but little entitled, and that THE following is part of a Preface which was in-most of the pictures, which we dwell on so fondly, tended by a friend and countryman of mine for a collection of Irish airs, to which he had adapted English words. As it has never been published, and is not inapplicable to my subject, I shall take the liberty of subjoining it here. * "Our history, for many centuries past, is creditable neither to our neighbours nor ourselves, and ought not to be read by any Irishman who wishes either to love England or to feel proud of Ireland. The loss of independence very early debased our character, and our feuds and rebellions, though frequent and ferocious, but seldom displayed that generous spirit of enterprise with which the pride of an independent monarchy so long dignified the struggles of Scotland. It is true this island has given birth to heroes who, under more favourable circumstances, might have left in the hearts of their countrymen recollections as dear as those of a Bruce or a Wallace; but success was wanting to consecrate resistance, their cause was branded with the disheartening name of treason, and their oppressed country was such a blank among nations, that, like the adventures of those woods which Rinaldo wished to explore, the fame of their actions was lost in the obscurity of the place where they achieved them. - Errando in quelli boschi Trovar potria strane avventure e molte, and enlarged ideas, the noble and animated language of this Popish priest."-Essays, xxvii. p. 86. 1 "La tolérance est la chose du monde la plus propre à ramener le siécle d'or et à faire un concert et une harmonie de plusieurs voix et instruments de différents tons et notes, aussi agréable pour le moins que l'uniformité d'une seule voix." Bayle, Commentaire Philosophique, etc. part. ii. chap. vi.-Both Bayle and Locke would have treated the subject of Toleration in a manner more worthy of themselves and of the cause, if they had written in an age less distracted by religious prejudices. of days when this island was distinguished amidst the gloom of Europe, by the sanctity of her morals, the spirit of her knighthood, and the polish of her schools, are little more than the inventions of national partiality, that bright but spurious offspring which vanity engenders upon ignorance, and with which the first records of every people abound. But the sceptic is scarcely to be envied who would pause for stronger proofs than we already possess of the early glories of Ireland; and were even the veracity of all these proofs surrendered, yet who would not fly to such flattering fictions from the sad degrading truths which the history of later times presents to us? "The language of sorrow however is, in general, best suited to our music, and with themes of this nature the poet may be amply supplied. There is not a page of our annals which cannot afford him a subject, and while the national Muse of other countries adorns her temple with trophies of the past, in Ireland her altar, like the shrine of Pity at Athens, is to be known only by the tears that are shed upon it; lacrymis altaria sudant.” "There is a well-known story, related of the Antiochians under of reign of Theodosius, which is not only honourable to the powers of music in general, but which applies so peculiarly to the mournful melodies of Ireland, that I cannot resist the temptation of introducing it here. The piety of Theodosius would have been admirable, if it had not been stained with intolerance; but his reign affords, I believe, the first example of a disqualifying penal code enacted by Christians against Christians. Whether his inter1 Ariosto, canto iv. 2 See Warner's History of Ireland, vol. i. book ix. 3 Statius, Thebaid, lib. xii. 4"A sort of civil excommunication (says Gibbon,) which separated them from their fellow-citizens by a peculiar brand of infamy; and this declaration of the supreme magistrate tended to justify, or at least to excuse, the insults of a fa ference with the religion of the Antiochians had any | Flavianus, their bishop, whom they sent to intercede share in the alienation of their loyalty is not expressly with Theodosius, finding all his entreaties coldly reascertained by historians; but severe edicts, heavy jected, adopted the expedient of teaching these songs taxation, and the rapacity and insolence of the men of sorrow, which he had heard from the lips of his whom he sent to govern them, sufficiently account unfortunate countrymen, to the minstrels who perfor the discontents of a warm and susceptible people. formed for the Emperor at table. The heart of TheoRepentance soon followed the crimes into which their dosius could not resist this appeal; 'ears fell fast into impatience had hurried them, but the vengeace of his cup while he listened, and the Antiochians were the Emperor was implacable, and punishments of forgiven.-Surely, if music ever spoke the misfortunes the most dreadful nature hung over the city of An- of a people, or could ever conciliate forgiveness for uoch, whose devoted inhabitants totaily resigned to their errors, the music of Ireland ought to possess despondence, wandering through the streets and those powers!' public assemblies, giving utterance to their grief in dirges of the most touching lamentations.' At length, V, Tandov.-Nicephor. lib. xii. cap. 43. This story is also in Sozomen, lib. vii. cap. 23; but unfortunately Chrysostom says nothing whatever about it, and ho natic populace. The sectaries were gradually disqualified not only had the best opportunities of information, but was for the possession of honourable or lucrative employments, too fond of music, as appears by his praises of psalmody (Exand Theodosius was satisfied with his own justice when he posit. in Psal. xli.) to omit such a flattering illustration of decreed, that, as the Eunomians distinguished the nature of its powers. He imputes their reconciliation to the interthe Son from that of the Father, they should be incapable ference of the Antiochian sotaries, while Zozimus attriof making their wills, or receiving any advantage from testa-butes it to the remonstrances of the sophist Libanius.— mentary donations." Gibbon, I think, does not even allude to the story of the mu 1 Μέλη τινα ολοφυρμού πληρη και συμπάθειας συνθε [sicians. THE SCEPTIC; A PHILOSOPHICAL SATIRE. ΝΟΜΟΝ ΠΑΝΤΩΝ ΒΑΣΙΛΕΑ. PINDAR. ap. Herodot. lib. 3. PREFACE. (ut videbatur) sententias evertendas?" etc. etc.' Manuduct. ad Philosoph. Stoic. Diss. 4. The difference between the scepticism of the anTHE sceptical philosophy of the ancients has been cients and the moderns is, that the former doubted as much misrepresented as the Epicurean. Pyrrho, for the purpose of investigating, as may be exempliperhaps, may have carried it to an irrational excess fied by the third book of Aristotle's Metaphysics,2 (though we must not believe, with Beattie, all the ab- while the latter investigate for the purpose of doubtsurdities imputed to this philosopher,) but it appears ing, as may be seen through most of the philosophical to me that the doctrines of the school, as stated by works of Hume. Indeed the Pyrrhonism of latter Sextus Empiricus,' are much more suited to the days is not only more subtle than that of antiquity, frailty of human reason, and more conducive to the but, it must be confessed, more dangerous in its tenmild virtues of humility and patience, than any of dency. The happiness of a Christian depends so those systems which preceded the introduction of much upon his belief, that it is natural he should feel Christianity. The Sceptics held a middle path be- alarm at the progress of doubt, lest it steal by degrees tween the Dogmatics and Academicians, the former into the region from which he is most interested in of whom boasted that they had attained the truth, excluding it, and poison at last the very spring of his while the latter denied that any attainable truth ex- consolation and hope. Still, however, the abuses of :sted: the Sceptics, however, without asserting or doubting ought not to deter a philosophical mind from denying its existence, professed to be modestly and indulging mildly and rationally in its use; and there anxiously in search of it; as St. Augustin expresses is nothing, I think, more consistent with the humble it, in his liberal tract against the Manicheans, "nemo spirit of Christianity, than the scepticism of him who nostrum dicat jam se invenisse veritatem; sic eam quæ-professes not to extend his distrust beyond the circle ramus quasi ab utrisque nesciatur." From this habit of human pursuits, and the pretensions of human of impartial investigation, and the necessity which they knowledge. A philosopher of this kind is among the imposed upon themselves of studying, not only every readiest to admit the claims of Heaven upon his faith system of philosophy, but every art and science and adoration: it is only to the wisdom of this weak which pretended to lay its basis in truth, they neces-world that he refuses, or at least delays his assent; sarily took a wider range of erudition, and were it is only in passing through the shadow of earth that more travelled in the regions of philosophy than his mind undergoes the eclipse of scepticism. No those whom conviction or bigotry had domesticated follower of Pyrrho has ever spoken more strongly in any particular system. It required all the learning against the dogmatists than St. Paul himself, in the of dogmatism to overthrow the dogmatism of learn- First Epistle to the Corinthians; and there are pasing; and the Sceptics, in this respect, resembled that sages in Ecclesiastes and other parts of Scripture ancient incendiary, who stole from the altar the fire which justify our utmost diffidence in all that human with which he destroyed the temple. This advantage reason originates. Even the sceptics of antiquity over all the other sects is allowed to them even by refrained from the mysteries of theology, and, in Lipsius, whose treatise on the miracles of the Virgo entering the temples of religion, laid aside their phiHallensis will sufficiently save him from all suspi-losophy at the porch. Sextus Empiricus thus declares cion of scepticism. "Labore, ingenio, memoria supra the acquiescence of his sect in the general belief of a omnes pene philosophos fuisse.-Quid nonne omnia aliorum secta tenere debuerunt et inquirere, si poterunt refellere? res dicit. Nonne orationes varias, raras, subtiles inveniri ad tam receptas, claras, certas 1 Pyrr. Hypoth. The reader may find a tolerably clear abstract of this work of Sextus Empiricus in La Verité des Sciences, by Mersenne, liv. i. chap. ii. etc. 2 Lib. contra Epist. Manichæi quam vocant Fundamenti. Op. Paris, tom. vi. I 1 See Martin. Shoockius de Scepticismo, who endeavours. think weakly, to refute this opinion of Lipsius. 2 Έστι δε τοις ευπορήσαι βουλομενοις προύργου το δια πορήσαι καλως. Metaphys. lib. iii. cap. 1. 3 Neither Hume, however, nor Berkeley, are to be judged by the misrepresentations of Beattie, whose book, however amiably intended, appears to me a most unphilosophical appeal to popular feelings and prejudices, and a continued petitio principii throughou |