Now, my Lord, having thus established a principle which may enable the most inattentive reader to distinguish our real doctrines from those imputed to us, I will proceed to notice your particular observations. "Nor are proofs wanting," these are your words, "that the doctrines and principles of Papists have undergone no alteration." If, by doctrines and principles, you mean tenets of faith or maxims of morality, they neither have undergone nor can undergo any alteration. If you mean seditious or treasonable opinions, we never entertained such opinions, and reject the imputation as we would that of falsehood or of cowardice, with contempt and indignation. If you allude to what you call elsewhere the "discriminating and exceptionable doctrines of the Church of Rome," that is, I presume, the articles in dispute between us, you must surely be unreasonable, if you expect us to resign, without stronger arguments than any which we have hitherto heard, doctrines which we believe to be a part of Christian revelation, and which we know to be founded on the practice of antiquity. You forget the fortitude and perseverance of which the Catholic body has given such an unusual example, or you would not require from it, as a condition of toleration, the sacrifice of that faith for which it has so long and so patiently struggled.

The doctrine of the Infallibility of the Catholic Church, you censure with particular asperity; but as you produce no arguments against it, it is not necessary for me to explain the reasons on which it is grounded. I must however observe, that it is very immaterial to the believer, whether a church be infallible, or act as if it were infallible. "What is the difference," we may ask with Steele," between a Church that never can, and a Church that never does err?" Submission is equally the consequence in both cases. The dissenter will smile at the distinction, my Lord.

Ambigitur quid enim!

Brundisium Numici melius via ducat an Appi?

The Council of Trent and the fourth of Lateran, we admit as general councils: their canons of faith we embrace as the senti ments of the Universal Church: their ordinances of discipline are received by some, and rejected by other, national councils. You censure the former, because it condemns that which it deemed er

roneous; or, in other words, because it did not sanction the opinions of the Reformers. The latter you defame, by imputing to it doctrines and opinions which it never did or could have taught, or even tolerated. A mis-statement, originating in malevolence and propagated by ignorance, is a blot which I discover with pain in the Charge of a Bishop of Lincoln. Give me leave, my Lord, to recal to your mind, for you may have forgotten, but cannot be totally ignorant, of the circumstance, that general Councils were at all times, and particularly in the middle centuries, not ecclesiastical only, but also secular assemblies, composed of princes and barons, as well as of bishops and abbots, under both the Emperor and the Pope, and thus constituting the legislative assembly or States General of Christendom. Such assemblies or parliaments were competent, you will admit, to enact laws affecting both the spiritual and the temporal interests of the bodies which they represented, and of course, to pronounce sentence both upon heretics and upon

rebels.

Now, the fourth council of Lateran, to which you allude, sat in judgment upon the Albigenses, a sect of Manicheans, who had risen in open rebellion in the southern provinces of France, and committed numberless most unwarrantable excesses. I am aware, my Lord, of your partiality to the heretics of the middle ages, and have often lamented that a body so respectable as the Church of England should so far forget its honor and even its interests, as to make common cause with all the fanatics and enthusiasts that preceded the Reformation, and astonished mankind, frequently by their crimes, and always by their absurdities. The Albigenses dealt largely in both, and drew upon themselves the vengeance of the temporal as well as the censures of the spiritual powers. Their numbers and their violences made them formidable, and the Count of Toulouse, with other petty princes of the provinces which they infested, had made treaties with them from motives of fear or of interest. Those treaties, and all engagements made with the rebels, not having been sanctioned by the King of France, the liege lard of these vassal princes, were, for want of that formality, null in themselves, though not declared to be so by the Council. Your Lordship, will, I presume, admit, that to reject such particular engagements in such circumstances, even if the Council had so

decreed, is not quite the same as to "declare that all engagements entered into with heretics, though sanctioned by oaths, are nullities in themselves." As for this latter declaration, it is not to be found in the fourth Council of Lateran, nor do I believe it ever to have been made by any council, synod, or assembly of any description; and to impute it to the Catholic Church, that is, to the far greater portion of the christian body, as an article of their faith, is to insult the common sense and common feelings of mankind. The expressions, if any such occur, which have been tortured by polemic ingenuity into this most mischievous meaning, either allude to particular places, times, and circumstances, or were grounded upon the legal incapacity of the contracting parties. In the great work to which your Lordship alludes in the Preface, as destined perhaps to employ some future hour, and to demonstrate the truth of what you now merely assert, we may expect to find the specific canons or decrees to which you allude, and when they appear, it will be time to take them each into consideration. Meantime, give me leave again to impress upon your mind the Catholic maxim, that the power of the Church is merely spiritual, and that in ecclesiastical assemblies, even in general Councils, any measures, taken relative to temporal arrangements or interests, rest entirely on the sufferance of princes and sovereigns, and consequently form no part of Catholic doctrine. It is unnecessary to add, what your Lordship must well know, that the decree of the fourth Lateran, to which you refer, is of very questionable authenticity, as it is not to be found in the Coder Mazarinus, a copy of the acts of the Council as ancient as the council itself.

But not content with having slandered a General Council, you proceed a step farther and defame the Catholics of these realms by accusing them of having acted upon various occasions" during the last twenty years, in exact conformity with these principles;" and though you allude "to a variety of facts and events,” yet you confine yourself to one, as I presume, in itself a satisfactory evidence of their guilt. As the information it contains may be as new and surprising to the public as it was to me, I will give it in your own words. "All those demands (that is, of 1793) were then granted, and what was the consequence? The Papists having acquired additional strength, and having, as they supposed, lulled the

Government into security by their promises and professions, formed new conspiracies, prepared for open rebellion, and invited the French to their assistance, for the purpose of accomplishing their real objects-separation from Great Britain, and Roman Catholic ascendancy."

I have long labored under a mistake, and as it was of an agreeable nature, I shall resign it with regret though with all possible deference for your Lordship's superior information, I do not mean to give it up without further proof than your assertion. In opposition to this assertion, there are, I believe, the authority of the Irish parliament and of administration-the declaration of the Lord Lieutenant and the Secretary of Ireland -the Pastoral letters of the Irish Catholic Bishops: and that which is paramount to all authorities united, the fact itself. What, my Lord! a Catholic rebellion! why all the chiefs were Protestants! all the Catholic nobility, all the Catholic baronets, and all the great Catholic proprietors were drawn up in array, at the head of their respective yeomanry in order to put it down. All the Catholic Bishops published pastoral letters to caution their flocks against it, and to reclaim its deluded supporters. All the Catholic Clergy of dignity and note, and the body of Catholic Pastors at large exerted all their influence to check its progress."

Still you assure us that it was a Catholic rebellion; because (for I cannot even conjecture any other reason) the mob of rebels were Catholics; but surely, your Lordship is not to be informed that in every country, the mob must in all cases be of the predominant religion or that rebellions take their tendency, and their denominations, not from the religion of the crowd, who are mere instruments, but from the designs of the leaders who conduct the plot, and give the impulse. No, my Lord, it was not a Catholic rebellion, nor for Catholic ascendancy; it was a French rebellion, and for French Anarchy. But I leave this subject to persons of greater weight and talents: and I trust, that some Irish peer, or perhaps bishop, prompted by an honorable sense of what is due to justice and to his country, will call upon your Lordship in your place in the House of Lords, either to prove, or to recal, an asser

1 There were some Catholic as well as Protestant Clergymen and Dissenting Ministers in it, but their number was very small.

VOL. II. Pam.

No. III.

E

tion highly injurious to so numerous and so respectable a portion of the Irish nation.

In the same p. (No.II. 363.) your Lordship observes that the "advantage resulting from the grant of the Catholic claims now urged would necessarily be confined to a few of the richer and higher classes:" an admission which, I own, rather surprises me. A very small number of Catholics are then likely to be introduced into parliament: where then are we to find the Popish legislators, and the Popish laws, the Popish advisers and Popish advice, with which you attempt to terrify your readers in the following page? Your Lordship, it seems, can raise and lay phantoms at pleasure,

Pectus falsis terroribas implet.

"the

But to return to the council of Lateran, it enjoins, you say, utter extirpation of Heretics (that is, of all Christians differing from the Church of Rome) and the dethronement of heretical sovereigns." I am under the disagreeable necessity of pointing out three grievous mistakes in these three short lines. The Council of Lateran, that is, the sovereigns and bishops of Christendom ordered war to be waged not against heretics in general, but against the Albigenses in particular, heretics who taught odious and immoral doctrines, and at the same time rebels who had disturbed the public peace. They deposed not heretical sovereigns but vassal princes, who, in opposition to their liege lords, aided or protected those rebels. In fine, my Lord, heretics are not "all Christians differing from the Church of Rome," but those only who are engaged in obstinate error.

Your Lordship will, I presume, admit that heresy is a crime: it is qualified as such by St. Paul.' Heresy is not every error, but an obstinate error in matters of faith. Such is the definition which we all learn in our infancy! To this liberal definition, which condemns the opinion but spares the person, your Lordship can have no objection; at all events you cannot censure Catholics, who,

Titus III. 10, 11,

Question. What vice is opposite to faith? Answer. Heresy, which is an obstinate error in matters of faith.-Douay Catechism, p. 13; a catechism in universal use in English Catholic Schools.