A LETTER TO THE

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less, are at least sincere, and many of whom, without examining the subject them-selves, have merely taken up those ready-made terrors, of which your orators keepsuch a constant supply — 1 shall, with deference, submit a few considerationswhich may soften, if they do‘not remove, those objections which have been consi-dered so formidable; and, as arguments on this side of the question are strangerstoyour ears, I cannot doubt that your ears will receive them hospitably.

With respect to the supremacy of the Pope, it has not, I believe, been assert-ed, even by those who possess most facili ty of assertion, that his interference in thenomination of Bishops, any farther than the form of recognition, or his exercise ofan appellatory jurisdiction upon matters relating to discipline, are, in any degree,necessary to the existence or purity of a Catholic hierarchy. Indeed, the exampleof the Gallican church, * so long free and so long illustrious, sufficiently proves thefull compatibility of liberty with reverence, of independence with orthodoxy. Fromthe conflict which her enlightened divines maintained against the pretensions ofRome , your religion rose purer and firmer than it had stood for many ages before;and those slavish notions of papal authority, which had been taken up in times ofdarkness, and clung to during the storm of the Reformation, ** were cast off as in-sulting alike to piety and common sense. The deposing power of the Pope, his per-sonal infallibility, and all those absurd attributes, *** which degraded the Churchmuch more than they elevated the Pontiff , were then indignantly rejected from yourbelief, and consigned to that contemptuous oblivion, from which even the maliciousindustry of your enemies has been unable to call them up in judgment against you.To Launoi, one of the ablest advocates of the Gallican church, your religion owesher release from much of that legendary superstition, f which sat, like a night-mars,upon her bosom, and filled her dreams with monsters: and in the works of the ableChancellor Gerson we find, mingled with his vindication of the rights of the Church, ffsome of those pure principles of political freedom, jf f which his country afterwards sograndly, though intemperately asserted, and which, how'ever their animation maybe suspended at present by the strong grasp of military power, have too much vita-lity, I think, to expire altogether beneath the pressure: like those tables of science,which Shem is said to have taken with him into the ark, they are preserved,!trust, to enlighten mankind, when the present deluge of despotism shall have “abat-ed from off the earth. ”

While the religion of England was Catholic , the same guards against papal en-croachment were adopted under her wisest sovereigns; and it was in the reign ofEdward HI. that patriotic monarch who first spiritedly filled up the rude outline ofthe British Constitution, that the statutes of Praemunire and Prom isors were enac-ted, for the utter exclusion of the Pope from all matters of ecclesiastical discipline,— Can Catholics then wonder that Protestants should be unwilling to endanger theii 1establishments by the least infusion of an influence, which Catholics themselveshave so invariably pronounced to be mischievous? Nay, though Protestants shouldbe inclined to try the experiment, would not Catholics blush to re-enter the temple

* “ Why a man may not be a Romanist without being a Papist, in Ireland as well as inFrance , I can see no reason. We know that the Gallican Church has long been emancipatedfrom the thraldom of the Roman Pontiff .” — Caoii’bei.i.’s Survey of the South of Ireland,inV%.

** The advances which the Church and Court of Rome were making towards parity ofdoctrine and practice, when they were checked by the turbulent burst of the Reformation, arestrongly acknowledged by Hume, in the following curious passage, w hich (according to Towers)is to be found only in the first edition of his History, printed at Edinburgh in 1751. “It has beenobserved, that, upon the revival of letters, very generous and enlarged sentiments of religionprevailed throughout all Italy , and that, during the reign of Leo, the Court of Rome itself, inimitation of their illustrious Prince, had not been wanting in a just sense of freedom. But,when the enraged and fanatical reformers took arms against the papal hierarchy, and threa-tened to rend from the Church at once all her riches and authority, no wonder she was animatedwith equal zeal and ardour in defence of such ancient and valuable possession.”

It is remarkable, that a similar spirit of political improvement had been manifested bv someof the governments of Europe, when the French Revolution frightened them back into all theirruinous old errors.

In corroboration of the foregoing passage from Hnme, I beg to refer the reader to Whit-aker’s Vindication of Mary Queen of Scots (voi iii. pp. 2, 50), where he will iind the sameeffects imputed to the intemperance of the Reformers, and an honourable tribute to the Catho-lics of that period, upon the subject of forgery, “which (says he), I blush for the honour ofProtestantism while I write it, seems to have been peculiar to the reformed.” — Page 2.

*** It was an assertion of Innocent III. “that the Pope is as much greater than the Emperor as the sun is greater than the moon ; ” which modest pretension became, afterwards, a part otthe common law, and set a wise Glossator upon the following interesting calculation — “Cumterra sit septies major luna, sol autem octies major terra, restat ergo ut pontiticalis dignityquailragesies septies sit major regali.”

f See, among others, his Treatise “De Commentitio Lazari et Maximini et Marthas in Pro-vineiam Appulsu;” in reading which, and similar works of this author, we regret to think thatit should ever have been necessary to exert courage and ingenuity in the refutation of suchpuerile absurdities.

■f-j- In some of his ideas about the right of resistance to Popes , he was thought, indeed, atthat time, to have ventured too far; as in the passage, “Casus multi esse possuut, inquiliusac-quis ee gerens pro Papa, et pro tali habitus ah Ecclesia, poterit a subdito lieite vel occidi, velin-carceran,” etc. etc. Tom. secund. in Regulis Moralibus, tit. De Praeceptis Decalogi.

j-ff In the famous passage (Adversus Adnlatores, cousiderat. 7.) which King dames quotes,with such horror, in his “Defence of the Rights of Kings, ” against Cardinal Perron.