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GIROUARD'S BILL, THESE LETTERS ARE RESPECTFULLY DEDICATED. MEMBERS OF THE SENATE WHO VOTED AGAINST THE AMENDMENT TO DEFER THE BILL. Aikins, Boillargeon, Benson, Botsford, Boyd, Cochrane, Dever, Fabre, Ferguson, Ferrier, Flint, Gibbs, Hamilton (Inkernmn), Hamilton (Kingston), Hope, Leonard, Lewin, McMaster, Macfarlano, Maci)lierson (Speaker), Mont, gomery, Paquet, Pelletier, Penny, Price, Head, llcesor, Simpson, Smith, Stevens, TJiibaudeau — Nays, 31 ; Yeas, 33. MEMBERS 0'^ THE HOUSE OF COMMOiNS WHO VOTED AGAINST THE AMENDMENT OF xMR. JONES THAT THE BILL BE '* TAKEN INTO CONSIDERATION THIS DAY SIX MONTHS." Abbott, Allison, Angers, Anglin, Ai'kell, Baby, Beanchesne, Bechard, Benoit, Bergeron, Bill, Blake, Bolduc, Bourassa, Brown, Bunster, Burnham, Bur[)ee (Sunbury), Cameron (Huron), Cameron (Victoria), Carling, Caron, Cartwriglit, Casey, Cimon, Cockburn (Muskoka), Colby, Costigan, Coupal, Coursol, Carrier, Daoust, DeCosmos, Desjardins, Dugas, Dumont, Elliott^ Fiset, Fitzsimmons, Fortin, Gigault, Gillies, Girouard (Jacques Cartier), Grandbois, Gunn, Hackett, Haggart, Hay, Ilesson, Hilliard, Hooper, Hun- tington, Hurteau, Ives, Jackson, Killan\, King, Kranz, Landry, LaBue, Longley, McDonald (Pictou), Macdonell (Lanark), Mackenzie, Macmillan, McCallum, McDougal], McGreevy, JNIcInnes, McLennan, McEory, Malouin, Massue, Merner, Methot, JNEousseau, Muttart, Ogden, Oliver, Orton, Ouimet, Paterson (Brant), Perraulfc, Pinsonneault, Poupore, Rinfret, B,obertson (Shel- burne), Rochester, Rogers, Ross (Dundas), Ross (Middlesex), Routliier, Royal, Ryan (Montreal), Rykert, Scriver, Shaw, Skinner, Smith (Selkirk), Strange, Tellier, Thompson (Cariboo), Yallee, Wallace (Norfolk), White (Cardwell), White (Hastings), Wright aid Yeo— Nays, 108 ; Yeas, 34. er, Fabre^ Kingston), 3r), Mont, n, Smith, BILL UK , Bechard, Buniliam, iig, Caron, n, Coupal, it, Elliott, 5 Cartier), oper, IIuu- y, LaE-ue, Macmillau, Malouin, n, Ouimet, tson (Shel- liei', Royal, :), Strange, (Cavthvell), EDITOR'S PREFACE. DURING tlio Parliamentary session in the winter of 1881, D. Girouaid, Esq., M.P. for Jacques Cartier, brought down a bill to legalize mar- riage with a deceased wife's sist<;r. The Konian Catholic members were willing, in fact anxious, that it should ])as8 ; for, although such marriages are not permitted in the Koman Catliolic Chur-ch except by dispensation, it has always been a com])laint in Canada, as in England, that their disijonsations wei-e thwarted by the civil laws. The Protestant dissenters were also anxious for the passage of the bill, for, disbelieving the doctrine of the Roman Catholic and High Church that union by religious ceremony creates connection by blood, and finding no Scripture to justify such a prohib- ition, they were desirous of abolishing eveiy unnecessary restriction to mar- riage, as well as to remove a social grievance and legal disability frora the numerous families — many of the highest respectability and social standing — in which such marriages had been contracted. Under such circumstances, while the great )ody of the people were not only favourable to the measure but absolutely ridiculed the idea that such a prohibition should exist in Canadian law, it may seem strange that Mr. Girouard's bill, after having been carried by a large majority in the Commons, should have been defeated in the Senate. This result was brought about by the official and social exertions of the Right Rev. J. Travers Lewis, D.D., LL.D., Lord Bishop of Ontario. His Lordship's efforts, and those of his clergy, to flood Parliament with petitions from all parts of the country, as well as his pleadings with certain members of the Senaie, would have done him credit in any cause involving the real welfare of the people. Making himself, however, the head and front in a struggle in itself purely secular, he fairly became the object of so powerful an assailant as the authoress of the Gunhilda Letters. These were published during the session of 1881 in t^e Ottawa Citizen, and certain it is that no communications in a public newspaper have ever awakened a greater interest among women as well as men, or produced a moi-e j)rofound impression on the public mind, both in Canada and the United Kingdom. m pos it is detest J the m sister, inforn your ] iind tl the cc will 1 liorizc the e; Lord, iinish( that i: unscri 1 the ec physic the m gainec tempt the ea paren look i: insign flourij a Pro since i long MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. A LADY S LETTERS TO THE DISIIOP OF ONTARIO, " As no acquisition is more to be esteemed than peace, wlien it leaves ns in possession of our honour and lawful rights, so, on tlie other hand, whenever it is joined with loss of freedom or with infamy nothing can be more detestable and fatal." — Folybius. LETTER I. My Lord Bishop, — The Bill brought before Parliament last session bv the member for Jacques Cartier to legalize marriage with a deceased wife's sister, though passed by a large majority in the Commons, was, J am credibly informed, mainly by your personal and clerical influence — an iiilluence which your position as ecclesiastical head of this section of our church secures you. and the consequent freedom with which you move in the circle that surrounds the court and the throne — defeated in the Senate. With the prospect that it will be again before the Commons, Your Lordship again hovers upon the liorizon, not alone, however, as before, but "svith a great company, to secure the extinction of any liberty that may bo accorded to women. I am, ]My Lord, a plain, vinlottered woman, while you, I believe, enjoy a classic and finished education. But before I shall have done with you it may appear that if the position you have assumed is not unclerical it is at all events unscriptural, anti-Christian and ungenerous. In all ages of the world society has suffered from the encroachments of the ecclesiastical on the civil prerogative ; and the period when shivery, ijoth physical and mental, and the humiliation and debasement of mankind were the most general and complete was when the church may be said to have gained universal empire. Two beings were then the special objects of con- tempt in the eyes of priest and bishop — the philosopher who declared that the earth was round and she who is accused of having induced our first male parent to uiste of the forbidden tree. It is this period Your Lordship ctui look back with pride to as having endowed vou with those civil but papal insignia, the staff and the ring, wliich on great occasions Your Lordship still flourishes, to the delight of the high church party in Canada. Dr. Mosheim, a Protestant divine, and the most accurate and careful ecclesiastical historian since apostolic times, s?ys, in his History of the Eleventh Century, that " it had long been customary with the empei'ors, kings and princes of Europe to 8 confer the larger benefices and the government of monasteries by the delivery of a ring and a staff." — (Ecc. His., vol. ii, p. 324.) How striking the con- trast between this display of kingly power with the modest and humble pretensions of the first successors of the apostles ! " In the firsc century and the next," says this historian, " a bishop had charge of a single church, which might ordinarily be contained in a private house ; nor was he its ioi'd, but in reality its minister and servant — instructing the people, conducting all parts of public Avorship and attending on the sick and necessitous in person." — (Ecc. His., vol. i, p. 91.) The church did not then attempt to enact laws to restrict the liberties of the people, either as to mai'riage or other matters the control of which has at a comparatively recent date b-ien usurped by the priesthood, for these were regulated entirely by the uncontrolled will of the emperor. " Supreme power over the whole S'xcred order," .says Mosheim, "and over all the ;:os'~' ssions of the church was, both in the Ei^st and in the West, vested in the emperors and kings. The empero-s of the Franks inquired into the J Ives and conduct of all priests, superior and inferior, enacted laws respecting the mode of worshipping God, punished priestly delinquencies of every kind just as those of other citizens, and the decrees of a council could not have the force of laws unless confirmed and ratified by the reigning sovereign." — (Eoc. His., vol. ii, p. 188, eighth century.) But the influence and dignity enjoyed by the priests of the neighbouring barbarians were too much for the Christi- anity of the early bishops, A^ho, instead of remaining lender the control of the j)eople who supported them, now plotted to enjoy the authority and emolu- ment of their barbarian neighbours. To effect this purpose they had recourse to a council of bishops — a means by which the church has since not only seized upon the revenue of all civilized nations, but has well nigii despoiled the pc'jple of every liberty and privilege they enjoyed in the first ages of Christi- anity. To this day even the Protestant bishop is a lord of the soil in the mother country, and though in Canada he no longer enjoys a controlling in- fluence with the civil power still he manages through the instruments his spiritual progenitors have placed into his hands to obtain a livelihood of the most desirable kind without work. But it was not the fault of the bishops of George the Third's time that Your Lordship is not now a do. facto secular potentate, for, sitting in the House of Peers and influencing to a great degree, as they do now, the will of the sc ^ereign, they were sufficiently powerful to extend Jewish law — so delightful to Your Lordship — to Cs'.nada, and to secure a reserve known as the Clerg}^ lieserve — one-seventh of all our lands — for the support of the Established Church ; and so content were the political leaders of the day that even William Lyon Mackenzie endorsed this policy of the home government.* "These councils," says Mosheim, " of which no vestige appears before the niidille of the second century, changed nearly the whole form of the church ; f V, in the first place, the ancient rights and privileges of the people were by them very much abridged ; and, on the other hand, the authority and dignity \>i the bishops were not a little augmented. At first they did not deny them- selves to be the representatives of their churches, and guided by instruction from the people ; but gradually they made higher pretensions, maintaining that power was given them by Christ himself to decide upon rules of faith and conduct for the members of his church. In the next place, the perfect •In no part ot the constitution of the Canadas is the wisdom of the British legisla- ture more apparent than in setting apart a portion of the country, while yet it remained a wilderness, for the support of religion — Ufe of William Lyon Mackenzie, vol. i,p. 44. equality and parity of all bishops which existed in the early times these councils by degrees destroyed." — (Mosheini, Ecc. His., vol. i, p. IGl.) It is plain, thei'efore, that it was never intended by the founders of Christianity that the successors of the apostles should in any way interfere with imli- viduals in matters pertaining to citizenship ; nor need it astonish us that this wicked contravention of Christian princi{)les, when the apostles had been little more than a century in their graves— and by wliicli, as I will show, woman for seventeen centuries has suffered civil and religious martyrdom — should culminate, not only in the church seizing the secular power of all civilized nations, but in erecting a papacy whosp olyect was to bind in fetters the bodies and souls of all mankind. But, having gained tiie coveted pinnacle of power, the next step was to tax the people that the church revenue might enable the bishops and the clergy to live in the luxury and atttuence which i)ecame their high dignity and office. But how was this to be done without the peoph>'s consent? The task was easy. All that was necessary was to imitate the tricks of the sacerdotal orders of the heathen — deceive them. Instead of declaring themselves the successors of Christ and his apostles, say, with YourLordship, that they are the successors of Aaron in the line of the Jewish priesthood, and a tenth of the produce of all the land is theirs. Thus arose, ^ly Lord, the tithe system, which has sub- sisted in the church — even the Church of England — to our own day, which is now driving the young men of Quebec to seek a home in a foreign country, and which our high church bishops are constantly urging should prevail among Chui'di of England people in the Dominion ; the system that has driven the sons of Ireland to spread their hands towards almost every country nnder heaven, that they might find an humble resting place free from the galling taxation of the Protestant bishop, which will cover the proud name of England with shame for a hundred generations. "No small lionour and pro- fit," says Mosheim, " accrued to the whole order of the clergy who conducted the affairs of the church from the time they succeeded in persuading the people to regai'd them as successors of the Jewish priests. This took place not long after the reign of Adrian, ( A.D, 80), when, u])on the second destruction of Jerusalem, the Jews lost all hope of seeing their commonwealth restored. The bishops now wished to V)e thought to correspond with the high priest of the Jews, and, among other errors resulting from it, it established a wider difievence be- tween the teacher and the learners than accords with the nature of the Chris- tian religion. * * * 'Phis comi)avison of Christian teachers with the Jewish priesthood led the former to lay claim to tithes and first fruits, of whicli we find mention before the time of (>oustantine (A. D. 325). Per- haps the desire to increase their revenues, which were both small and pre- carious, led some of the bishops to apjdy Jewish Jaw to the (!Jhristian church. That they claimed first fruits as a divine right in this (second) centuiy is clear from Irenmus, contra litres. Tithes had lieen commonly paid among pigans from time immemorial. Their origin, therefore, is not to be sought in the Mosaic dispensation, but in that patriarchal faith which is at the bottom of every religious system." — (Ecc. His., p. IGl and note.) But even after the peoi)le had consented to regard the Christian bishops as the successors of Aaror and admit their claim to all the emoluments and powers prescribed to tlie Je<. ish })rie3thood by the Mosaic law, it was found that the prevailing desire to become pecuniarily independent would prevent them from granting that lil)ei'al support to the church which their early lord- ships (t)sired. The whole tide ot the church's enei'gy, tlierefoi-e, was turneti towards destroying in the [)eople I he desire of gain — towards persuad- 10 ing them tint man, though prhnortlially made in the image of the Creator, had by his primitive rebellion — induced to it by a woman — become the most despicable of creative objects ; that he not only merited eternal jMinishment, but was spared its infliction by the mere moment-giving mercy of God, and that of all the agents of Satan the most liable to debar him from lieaven was money ! True, it would be generations, and perhaps ages, befoi'e the doctrine of total depravity would bear fruit, but the fear of going to dwell forever with the rich man — of having to gain paradise by a feat more ditficultthan drawing a camel through a needle's eye — had the immediate effect in that superstitious age of rendering money and riches in general as the most abhorrent foe of mankind. The gates of paradise, the walls and pavements of the New Jeru- salem, were represented as of precious stones and of gold — of course the gifts of the pious in all ages from the days of Abraham, as were the golden candle- sticks, the ark of the covenant, and the sacred vessels used by the Jewish priests during the sovereignty of the Mosaic dispensation. Instead of being regarded as symbols of the purity and glory of the heavenly kingdom, they were interpreted in a literal sense, giving the Christian bishops the privilege exercised by the Druidical priests among the ancient Britons of borrowing money on the promise to pay in the next world. Thus, My Lord, was estab- :'shed that golden ladder which fifteen centuries afterwards mounted up to that monstrous doctrine which led to the sale of indulgences by Urban II and Leo X, that money, so long announced as the most perfidious enemy of the Christian religion, is the favourite means by which God's vicegerent on earth can extricate souls from the limbo of future punishment ! Here also originat- ed the doctrine of commutation — which signifies changing one thing for another, as the punishment of sin for money — a doctrine that existed in the Church of England so late as the landing of our loyalist fathers in this country^ and which I believe is still in existence. One of the twenty-eight grievances complained of to the House of Commons in the year 1648, over a hundred years after the Reformation, was " the general abuse of excommunication, which was inflicted for trivial matters, and the absolution thereof could not be obtained without money." — (Rapin, vol. ii, p. 3G1.) Excommunication in England is a matter much more serious than when a priest or deacon in Canada is excommunicated by Your Lordship for receiving the eucharist in a Pres- byterian church ; for after forty days a significavit is issued to the Court of Chancery — at least it was so in the reign of Charles I — which forthwith issues a writ de excommunicato capemlo, when the person is thrown into prison by the civil powers, " where he may lie for many years," says Rev. Mi\ Madan, " if he has not money enough to purchase his letters of absolution." It is easy to perceive the consequences ot such a course on the part of the religious teachers of that benighted age. Money which should have been em- ployed to carry on the commerce of the country everywhere left its natural channels and flowed into the coflers of the church ; expensive jilaces of worship rose in almost every village and town among the low, poverty stricken houses, so well represented in too many provinces of the Canadian Dominion. Show nie a people. My Lord, who regard money as the great enemy of our race, when, next to an honourable life, it is the most desirable of earthly objects, as even our bishops, by their actions if not by their professions, testify, and I will show you a people ignorant, cowardly and ])oor, behind the times in in- vention, art, manufacture and learning, physically and mentally enslaved, and who, having been taught to despise themselves, and the only means by which life can be made respectable, if not endui-able — to lean upon their spirit- ual advisers instead of relying upon themselves — are little less 11 than a nation of beggars ! Charity, in the highest sense of the term, can have no existence in such a comnninity, for where gifts are merely regarded as lawful dues the faculty of benevolence inust cease to be. True, we frequently meet with peoi)]e who affect to despise ihe ordinary means of earning money, " measuring tape and molasses," as they u)odestly express it, but they forget that it is to " measuring tape and molasses " that England to-day owes not only her wealth and commercial independence, but her high moral and liberal standing among the nations of the world. Napoleon the First wisely perceived this when he spoke of the English peo})le as a " nation of shopkeepers," ond so did our Edward III, who gained for himself the soubriquet of " Ihe royal wool merchant." " A ])eople," says John Stuart Mill, " has souietimes become free because it had first become wealthy." " Neither will it be," says Lord Bacon, " that a j)eople overbid with taxes should ever become valiant and martial. No people overcharged with tribute is fit for empire." It is easy to picture to one's self the condition of man in the early Christian age, when the great body of the people were as ignorant as the horse they drove, but who could depict the condition of woman — with a husband taught to see no virtue in humanity, that woman was the cause of all the evil in the world, who was opposed to commerce, for his suspicion of his fellows would render business impossible, an accusation frequently made against Roman Catholic countries ; to take no thought for the morrow, and, like the Digger Indian or the half breed on the Western jjlains, content with a bare existence ; hi j wife a slave, an a having none of the martial spirit of the American aborigine, for only a coward will beat his wife, ready at the slightest provocation to inflict upon her corporal punishment 1 No wonder woman in that age cheerfully surrendered a world that had nothing for her but povertv and degradation to drag out the rigorous experience of monastic life. So early as the year 3G0 the Council of Bishops at Laodicea enacted canon 44, that " women ought not to come near the altar," and in the year 400 the Council of Toledo, canon 17, permitted a man to have one woman who was not his wife ; the Council of Orleans, A.D. 533, enacted canon 18, that " the deacon's blessing shall no more be given to women," and in the sixth century so contemptible had woman become by the preaching of Chris- tian bishops that she was not even permitted to approach the altar, or to touch the pall that covered it, unless when by the priest it was delivered, her to be washed ! The eucharist was too holy to be vitiated by her naked hand, and she was therefore ordered by the canons of the church to put a white linen glove upon her hand- to receive it. — (Alexander's History of Women, vol. i, p. 166.) Even in the second century, Athenagoras, in his apology for the Christians, says, " the devils were ruined by the love that they bore unto women." — (Du Pin, vol. i, p. 56.) But woman was not yet totally deprived of protection and mental liberty, which nature itself had enabled her to look for to a certain degree in her children. But even that avenue was to be cloaed, and, to make her captivity complete in heart and pei-son, in body and soul, the clergy taught that the mother is not related to her child. Among the ancient barbarians parents sometimes married their children from this belief, which is mentioned by ^Eschylus, for he makes Orestes ])lead before the gods that he is not of kin to his mother. This was the belief of the Jews and the New Testament writers. In the genealogy of Christ we observe that whether we trace by the mother's or supposed father's side he is a descendant of Bathsheba, wife of Uriah, whom David married when he already pos- i 12 sessed several wives ; so that if the mothtr be regarded as a relative of the child Christ might Vje considered illegitimate in his royal descent from David, This accounts for the fact that the sons of Jacob by his women who were not liis wives, Bilhah and Zilpah, inhabited the land of Canaan equally with the children of his wives, Leah and Rachel. — (Gen. xxxv , 25.) Through the influence of Pagan and Jewish priests in the Church of England this doc- trine has been incorporated into British law and the statutes of the Dominion. In England it was decided in the courts that the Duke of Suffolk's wife was not of kin to her son, and for this reason the mother is not in law permitted to be the gtiardian of her own children, a statute of which Senator Trudel, one of the opponents of the Bill to legalize marriage with a deceased wife's sister, naturally enough took advantage a few months ago at Montreal.* It is a matter of no difficulty to count the domestic tyrants that sit in the Canadian Senate. The evident object of all this was to accumulate endless wealth into the hands of the priests, and to put woman completely into their power. Cyrus the Great and the greater Alexander, each of whom had conquered a world, were deified after death — a courtesy to Avhich Your Lordship is in no way liable — on account of their sympathy and gallantry to woman. "' 111 fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, Where wealth accumulates and men decay ; Princes and lords m.ay flourish or may fade, A breath can make them, as a breath has made. But a bold peasantry, their country's pride, When once destroyed can never be supplied." GUNHILDA. MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. A lady's letters to the BISnOP OF ONTARIO. "To alienate even our own rights would be a crime as much more enor- mous than suicide as a life of civil security and freedom is superior to a bare existence. And if life be the bounty of heaven we scornfully reject the noble.«t part of the gift if we consent to surrender that certain rule of living without which the condition of human nature is not only miserable but contemptible." — Letters of Junius. LETTER II. My Lord Bishop, — How sad the consequences arising from the first step into evil ! No sooner had the bisho]>s of the first and second centuries arrogated to themselves the powers heretofoi'o enjoyed by the Levitical priest- hood than they I'an into excesses so shocking in their nature as to demand the most vigorous efforts to successfully conceal them, except, indeed, from the penetrating eye of the historian ; and when it is considered that the history of the Christian church in those days was in a great measure shaped by the clergy themselves it is ])erhaps matter for surprise that any evidence whatever •The action brought by Mrs. Trudel against her husband, Hon. Mr. Trudel, for separation, has been dismissed by Mr. Justice Papineau. Her petition to be allowed to raise money on her own property and to visit her children was also rejected. — Quebec 'Chronicle, Jamiary 1st, 1881. 13 as to the true inwardness of their lives, notwithstanding the forgeries of which T am yet to speak, was ever permitted to descend to ns. It was now discovered that a tenth of the earnings of the primitive Christians was insuflicient to meet the requirements of tlie ecclesiastics ; accordingly it was rec;olved to make concessions to the surrounding heathen, to induce them to embrace Christianity and contribute to the funds of the church. " There is good reason to suppose," says Mosheim, " that Christian bishops (in the seconJ century) multiplied sacred rites for the sake of render- ing the Jews and pagans more friendly to them." — (Ecc. His., ]>. 180, second century). The o[)pre.«;sive taxation to which these people were subjected is almost beyond credibility ; and so late as the eleventh century we find that " rmong the Prussian and other nations, while many had embraced Cliristi- anity, on account of the numberless taxes laid upon them, e^pecially by the clergy, they again returned to paganism." — (Mosheim Ecc. History p. 297, eleventh century.) This new acquisition to the Christian fold enabled the bishops to enact the same superstitious practices to extort money as was pursued by the Pagan priests themselves ; so we find that before the close of the first century, and while the Apostle John was ypt living, "many with great v^neiation kept figures of Christ and his a])ostles in their houses." — (Mosheim Ecc. His. p. 60, first century.) " Faimours" says this historian "were artfully disseminated of prodigies and wonders seen in certain edifices and places, a trick befoi'o this time practised by the pagan priests, whereby the infatuated populace were drnwn together, and the stupidity and ignorance of those who looked 'ipon everything new and unusual as a miracle, were often wretchedly imposed upon. Craves of saints and martyrs were supposed to bo where they were not ; the list of saints was enriched with fictitious names, and even robbers were converted into martyrs. Some buried blood-stained bones in retired jdaces, and then gave out that they had been informed in a dream that the corj)seof some friend of God was there interred. Many, espe- cially of the monks, travelled through the ditferent ])rovinces, and not only shamelessly carried on a trafiic in fictitious relics, but also deceive i the eyes of the multitude by inventing combats with evil spirits." — (Mosheim Ecc. His., p. 957, fourth century.) Even St. Augustine, from whom Your Lord- ship claims apostolic descent Wcis one ot the chief promoters of this system to raise money for the support of the church. He enumerates about seventy miracles performed by the relics of St. Stephen, three of which were resurrec- tions from the dead ; all in the space of two years, and within the limits ol his own diocese. Synesius, one of the early Christian bishops, A.D. 400, says : " As darkness is most })roptn' and commodious for those who have weak eyes, so I hold that lies and fiction are useful to the people, and that truth vvould be hurtful to those who are nob able to bear its light and splendor." — (Leland, vol. xxi, p. 344.) To justify this method of ecclesiastical government, the bishops had no hesitation, as I will show, in forging passages of Scriptm-e to represent the Creator in the same cluiracter as themselves, so that it need no longer excite surprise that women are daily deceived and ruined by men when they only adopt the same method as the Deity in accomplishing His purposes. To deceive and destroy Ahab, King of Israel, He " put a lying spirit in the mouth of all His prophets," — (I Kings, xxii, 22). So He is represented assaying, " If the prophet be deceived when he hath spoken a thing I, the Lord, have deceived that prophet, and I will stretch out my hand upon him and will destroy him from the midst of my people Israel" (Ezek. xiv, 9.) Synesius lived in the fourth century, at a pei-iod when the church is generally supposed to have enjoyed its original purity, and two 14 i hundred years before the elootion of tlio lloraau prelate as universal bishop. We are disposed to smile at the miraculour. manifestations seen in Ireland, while I now write, as the out -ome of wicked fraud on the part of the Irish Oatholic clergy, and tiie solemn parade this year of saints' bones — or rather the cast of them — through the Canadian capital, for the purpose of obtaining money, but how few Canadian Protestants are aware that these same means of defrauding the people were employed by the most orthodox of the early bishops, and by the almost immediate successoi'S of the apostles themselves 1 It is true, My Lord, that the Church of England clergy have recently schooled the people to believe all this a mere Popish innovation, and that when the Church of England sprang into being, the fountain of the Christian religion was wholly pure ; but this assertion, like the doctrine proj)ounded by the bishops of the second century has no foundation in fact. To ovoid being responsible for the enormities of the Church of Rome for several centuries, and immediately before, as well as afcer the Reformation, they have taken upon themselves to declare that the Church of England, so far from being an ofl'shoot of the papal church, was founded by Joseph of Aramithea, Simon Zelotes, Aristo- bulus, and even the Apostle Paul, as they affect to infer, from Clemens Romanus' first letter to the Corinthians, but " those stoi'ies," says Mosheim, ** are too recent, and unsubstantial to be received by any inquisitive lover of the truth." — (Ecc. His. p. 58.) But even if a church had been established among the savage Britons, it exerted no influence upon the pagan Saxons who afterwards landed in their countiy, and from whom the lllnglish people — if we except the Normans and Danes who subsequently settled in England — are descended. The Church of England, My Lord, was founded by a woman, Bertha, the Queen of Ethelbert, the Kentish King, by whose influence the Saxons were converted to Christianity (Mosheim Ecc. Historv, p. 268), so that it well becomes our noble Queen to be saluted as the head of the Chiirch, and for Your Lordship to pray for her as Queen Defender of the Faith. The si-me is true of the ( Jhristian Church in France, for *' King Clovis, founder of the French monaichy," says Fullom, " was converted to Christi- anity by his \vife, the beautiful and devout Clotilda, Princess of Burgundy." — (Hist, of Women, p. 261.) Your Lordship takes great pride in reminding us that our clergy trace their ecclesiastical descent to St. Augustine, and from him to the Apostle John — Archbishop Tait, the pi'esent Archbishop of Canter- bury, being the one hundred and twenty-fifth indirect orderfromthat apostle — but you have never pointed outthat this, the most illustrious of the Christian bishops since apostolic times, owed all his greatness to Monica, his noble mother. Neander says that Gregory Nazianzen, John Chrysostom, Arch- bishop of Constantinople (A.D. 397), Theodoret, Bishop of Cyrus, (A.D. 325), and Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (A.D. 400), to whom, perhaps, the Christian •church owes its very existence, " were all indebted to early maternal care for most of their futui-e eminence." — (Hist. Christianity, Vol. 3, p. 321). You rejoice, my Lord, that the Reformation freed the English Church from the dominancy of Rome, but you forget — if, indeed, you ever knew — that this event merely exchanged an Italian Pope for an English one, and that the Church of England would have remained a papacy to this day had it not been for the providential interposition of a woman. Dr. Mosheim declares jhat Henry the Eighth "understood the title he had assumed of supiemo head of the British church as investing him with the Roman pontiff's power, so that he had a right to make decrees respecting religion, and to prescribe to his people what they must believe and practice. An act was passed in this 15 reign makiJig the penalty burning for denying transubstantiaiion. It adjudged to death as felons all who niaintaiied the necessity of commu- nicating in both kinds or who attacked private masses or auricular confession. During lienry's whole reign the church remained in appearaT\co completely Romish."— (Vol. 3, pp. 1 49-172.) '* Henry VIII.," says Father Maguire, a Roman Catholic, in his discussion with Mr. Pope, ** thought it safest to die ill the Catholic Church ; " and it is well known that he left large sums of money to pay for masses which he had directed to be said for his soul, irrotestants and Catholics knew but one chui-ch,and attended no other till the tenth year of Elizabeth's reign. There is nothing to be gained, My Lord — though the clergy have ever beei,. slow to believe it — by literary dishonesty ; but be it known to you that for years after the separation from Rome the Church of England, was as completely papal as the papacy itself. The Church of England, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, not only continued commutations — another form of indulgences — the worship of the Virgin, and /b.'bade the clergy, on pain of death, to marry, but, as a natural sequence, actually attempted to establish nunneries on the same plan as the parent church — which the High Church bishops of England and of Canada would to-day establish if they had the power — they having already erected the confessional — and from the disgrace of which the nation was saved by the timely accession of a woman to the throne. Englishmen have submitted only by force to the condition of being ruled V>y a woman, as any tampering with the line of succession would be certain to repeat the wars of the Roses. Strange, however, but true — and to the morlitication of Englishwomen — the the same nation which permits a woman to wear her diadem, gives the patri- mony to the eldest son, and with a heart unfeeling as iron turns the daughters into the street, through the law of primogenitiire. It would be well if women only were permitted to sway the English sceptre, for England never so pros- pered at home or abroad — in art, agriculture, commerce, refinement and under her queens. Not a traitor was executed in Anne's learning — as reign ! Hut while the English people were willing that a woman should wear the English crown, they were not willing — having been so long tutored by the Romish Church — that she should act as Sovereign Pontiff, though a woman (Pope John, who succeeded Leo the Fourth) had occupied the chair of St. Peter, " nor did any one," says Mosheim, " regard the thing, prior to the Reformation, either incredible or disgraceful to the Church. — (Vol. 2, p. 184, Ninth Century.) As the rod of correction never fails to be somewhere on the track of the offender, so the preaching of the Catholic priesthood that woman was the cause of all the evil in the world was now rewarded by the refusal to admit her to the ]>ontifical office and the consequent overthrow, under Mary and the great Elizabeth, of the papacy in England. Still no one would suppose, on hearing Your Lordship read the service from the Book of Common Prayer, composed entirely by High Church Bishops, that there ev3r was a woman in England, much less that the Pi-otestant Episcopal Church began in a woman's reign and through a woman'ci influence, and that a woman is now recognized as its ecclesiastical head, save in the prayer for the Queen and Royal family. You begin by saying, " Dearly beloved brethren, the Scripture moveth us in sundry places to acknowledge and confess our manifold sins and wickedness." I am not sufficiently charit- able. My Lord, to attribute to ecclesiastical modesty the omission to include women among those who have committed " manifold sins and wickedness." You desire us to repeat in the Apostles' Creed that Chi-ist " for us men and for our salvation came down from heaven." You read the parable of the nuiniage supper, in wliich it is said there was pnisent " a innti who hail nob on a wedding garment," jdainly hinting that the guests were all men ; or you may give in charming detail the story in the eighth chai)ter of John's Gospel of the woman discovered in criminality, but which has been by the late translators expunged frc.a the Bible, not being found in tho early m.^nu- scripts ! You may select that cha|>ter of iSt. Paul's letter to the Corinthians in which he assures theui, with reference to their p.igau wives, that " it is a shame for a woman to sj)eak in tho church," or, haply, you may read about the hundred and forty-four thousand saints that Jolin saw in heaven. (Rev. xiv, 1-4), but not a woman anion^- rLsm, for he tells us that '' these are they which were not defiled by women " — a forgery, as I will show by tho early bishoj)s — finishing up, My Lord, with the ai)proi)riate Levitical command ment, so dear to Your Lordship, in Avhich we are yoked with the ox and the ass ! Should you, however, be called upon to perform tho '^ neral service over the remains of a widow, you will read to us, *' nuai that is born of a woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh np and is cut down like ayi?oi«e7'." On reading first Cocinthians, 15th chapter, you will refer to the resurrection state and to " every -nayi in his own order," evidently because in the great procession there will not be a solitary woman ! Should you favour the audience with a sermon you will probably select as your text, " Thou rewardfst every man according to his work," or " Without holiness no man shall see the Lord," when you will speak of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, without their wives, as safely landed in the Kingdom of Heaven ! The following day a notice will apjiear in the Dominion Churchman, " Died, at her residence. King Street West, Toronto, Louisa Parthenia, relict of the late Canon Brown " — something the old canon had left behind with his boots ! Should the more fortunate cii'cum stance of a marriage occur, you will call for a ring — tho old pagan emblem ivf servility, and too often but a link in the chain that ensures a lifelong humiliation — and you bind the charming victim under the vow of perpetual obedience — a papal ceremony galvanized into lifo by Cranmer, with twelve assistants, in the reign of Edward the Sixth, when superiors, priors and abbots sat in the House of Lords, and wher^ the lords spiritual exceeded the lords temporal. Thus have you made the word of God of none effect through your traditions. But in all this is Your Lordship aware that you are contravening Levitical custom, and exceedi^ » evem the Jewish code, which treated marriage merely as a civil contract 1 The mar- riage ceremonial among the Hebrews was po-forracd, not by tiie piiests, but by tlie parents. There was no offering of sacrifice, parade to the temple or tabernacle, or payment of money to an exacting priesthood. " The maidens led the bride, and the young men the bridegroom, to the parents, who placed the riglit hand of the wife within the right hand of the husband, and pro- aaounced upon them the paternal blessing : ' Blessed be thou, Lord o\ir God, who didst create Adam and Eve. Blessed be thou, O Lord our God, who causeth Zion to rejoice in her children. Blessed be thou, O Lord our God, who makest the bride and the bridegroom to be glad together. The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac and the God of Jacob be with you, and help you together, and give his blessing richly upon you. Jehovah make the wife that conjes into thy house like Kachel and like Leah, who built up the house of Israel." — (Childs' His. of Women, vol i, ]). 16.) Marriage then was per- formed by the father and mother, but this privilege has bee'^. wrested from them by the Christian priesthood, who receive from four to twenty dollars for perlorniing the ceremony because '* from an ecclesiastical point of view," 17 suya Blunt, in lii.s Aniiotatod Dook of Common Prayer, " benedictions ur© boyoiul tho i>o\vers of a deacon," and, of course, of a layman, and can only be ])erformed by a priest ! Do you not k-,iow. My Lord, tliat during the first twelve liundred years of tlio church':! history marriage among the laity was not solemnized, either in Engliind or elsewhere, by the clergy, and that nmr- riage, as a rfcligious ceremony, was originated b^ the Pope solely to obtain money] Jacob, in his Law Dictionaiy, says: "Before the time of Pope Innocent the Third, A.D. 12 If), there was no solemnization of marriage in the church ; but the r.^n came to the house where the woman inhabited and led her to his own house, which was all the ceremony then used (vide Lilly Abrtit Bar and Femme)." Blackstone says : " It is held to be essential to marriage that it bo performed by a person in orders ; though the intervention of a j)riest to soler.nizo this contract is merely juris positivi, and not juris naturalis aut divini, it being said that Pope Innocent the Third was the firtiC who ordained the celebration ol marriage in the church, l.otore which it was totally a civil contract" — (Comm. vol. i, p, 437). Tiio Churcli of Rome made marriage a sacrament, and tl'ough our church pretends not to so re- gai'd it, yet the clergy really do so, fc. in performing the ceremony they use the words in the real sacrament of the Roman Church : ** I ])ronounce that they be man a)id wife together, in the name of the Father and of the Son, and of the Holy Ohosi.' '* The Church of England " says Blunt " reckons mar- riage as one of the seven lesser sacraments." How completely the priesthood has taken possession of \is, body and soul ! They receive us into the church by baptism, give us our name, receive us from our parents, give us to our husband, marry us (and the best of all) bury us ! But what a crime it would be in a Canadian matron to imitate her Jewish sister — and her Christian sister from the days of Christ to the reign of King John — in performing the ceremonial of the marriage covenant ! In short, you impose upon women that part of the Jewish code which is the most restrictive, though never intended to be a law unto us, and yet you seize upon its ceremonies — and at the expense of woman's privilege — to make money ! Ye blind guides that strain out the gnat and swallow a camel I GUNIIILDA. MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. nt of view, A lady's letters to the BISnOP OF ONTARIO. '* Is there anything better in a State than that both women and men be rendered tho very best? There is not." — Plato. LETTER 711. My Lord Bishop, — That the Ajio.stles and writers of the Old Testament had t'le gift of insi)irabion, iimi (htit Chi'istianity is a revelation to mankind, there is little i-ooni for doubt, and it is a i)roof forcible and convincing that, notwithstanding the corruption to which Christianity has been exj)oscd in the hands of an unscrupulous priesthood, it continues to refine and purify society, and though interwoven with falsehood, and forged into chains to bind and drag to serfdom its unnumbered RU))phants, it shines like the bow on the 2 18 \i\ brow (,f evening, and bears fruit like the vino encircling the tree in tlio asliOR of V'^cHnvius, iJut on the princiiplo that what may fetter tlio weak may not impetlo the strong, woman, ii^steail of being ecjually benelitted with man — as thelonnders of Chtihtianity intended— haei profited only by being bis servile companion. There never was a greater mistake, My Lord, than the astiertion Your Lordship is so fond of making — and wiLh an evident pur|)Gse — that the Christian religion has proven to be the es2»ecial friend of woman, when the truth is that of the hundreds of religions that have existed, none — except, perhaps, Mahoniedanism, as i)racti8ed by the Tmk — has proved such a power in the hands of man to demoralize her nature, to bl intellect, and rob her, if possible, of every liberty anr virtue with whic v, was originally endowed. And, if wo except the Roman Catholic, what section of the Christitin Church has o such a degree sought to restrict her liberties and rob her of honours as the High Church party of the British empire'? Nay, it is a truth long since] ])assed into history that, while the papacy has created honorary titles for woman, the High Church clergy of p]ngland have succeeded — as will be shown in a subsequent letter — in blotting from tlio Bible the only honorary title conferred upon her by the pen of inspiration. If Canadian women of the present age are to receive any legislative favours, it must be through the influence of a very few of them whose fingers can touch the throne. It was women like these liigh-churchism in England first brought under its power, and from that moment women's influence throughout the kingdom began to decline. The most noble order of the Garter, first created in honour of a woman, and first confen-ed upon women, and worn by the wives of knights for several centuries, but now only by men, was conferred u|)on a woma.i for tlie last time in the reign of Charles the First — whose final and unfortunate political career was in a great measure shaped by Archbishop Laud, the second Cranmer of High Church history. How strange to add that Lady Russeil, daughter ef the Earl of Southampton, an earnest adherent of the king, when all the men who had grown ricli by his bounty had deserted him, stood alone beside the corpse of the beheaded monarch. The contempt of the High Church clergy for women is perhaps best shown by the title given to the wives of archbishops and bishops, for while the Avives of temporal peers receive titles equally honourable with their husbands — which place them upon the same social equality, the wives of spiritual peers — the i-esult of their old indulgence in a plurality of wives — take the same title as that of the ordinary labourer. We address the wife of the Duke of Devonshire as Her Grace the Duchess of Devonshire, and the daughter of an earl, though married to a private gentleman, as ** The Honourable VVilmina Blake," while the wife of His Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury (the lovely Catharine Spooner, niece of William Wilberforce), though the first peer of the lealm, is plain Mrs. Tait, and the wife of ** The Bight Rev. Father in God, the Lord Bishop of Ontario," is not even Mrs. Ontario, but merely Mrs. Lewis! So, in exact proportion to the Church's influence with Parlianient, woman has lost her jjolitical power in England. " In an action at law," says Child, " it has Ijeen determined that an unmar- ried vroman, having a freehold, might vote for members of Parliament ; and it is recorded that Lady Packington returned two members to the Commons. Lady Broughton was keeper of the Gate House prison, and in a much later period a woman was a])pointed governor of the House of Correction at Chelmsford by order of the Court. In the reign of George II, the minister .19 (if Clorkcnwi^U umr cIiorch li.v ii iiiaj ,rity of wom«ii. I'lu; odico of Gi-hiuI ('lianibcrluiii, in 1S22, wns filled l>y two woni^n, and that of thcj (Hprk of the Crown in iUa Court of Kinx'H Hcncli liin been »KHed Kway, throUjCfh tho corrn|iiiii^ influcnno and troHoliery of Chrislitn hiKhops, fhe iioliticid lil>'!rti(!S fornu'ilv cnjovt d liv her will iii'iiin return on tho decline of clerical influence with the udvi*i'eiB of tiie Hov(,rei;.^n. The olive hranch of Liberty borne to intin by a dove will be brought to woman by the Lion and the Kiigle. How lon{.>:, TMy Lojd, wor.ld a fjiieon wrar the iniiieiial crown wei-e High Chnrchisin the sole ^Miardian of her dt'stiuv ? If Youi- Lordshij) is not aware of the fact, ] have tho great pleasure of inf'oi-iniiiower of the Church, and the extent of its l)rerogativo and jurisdiction." No art of the politician, of the ])irate, or of the priest, was ever so wicked in its design, or so cruel in its execution, as the doctrine promulgated by the first Christian bishojis that all the sin in tho world exists throiigh the agency of woman. This, in the hands of the cunning ecclesiastics, with the establishment ot the confessional, by which all the thoughts of h " heart could ))e known, and her ca})ture and cai)tivity were com]deto. The ti ne when the (Christian religion arose was oi)portune, for the Jewish law haa led men to believe that woman lias no soul, and this was faithfully copied by the author of the Koran, which all admit to have been founded on tho Jewish scrij)turcs — the prime cause of the degraded condition of woman in Mohammedan countries. The Jewish law classed her with the brute, and did not j)ermit her presence on the most solemn occ;\sions, even when the law was given from Mount Sinai. — (ExoJ. xx, 15.) The commandments also show that no woman was j^resent. " Thou shak not rovefc thy neighbour's wife," but nothing is said of a woman coveting her n ^ighbour's husband ! The same fact is a[iparent in Levit. xviii, 20. Thus sho is spoken of not only as absent, but as being merely equal to the beast of the field ; for, in the commission of the sin referred to in the latter passage, the man is defiled- -the woman was not defiled ! ! It was fitting, thei'efore, that she should not enjoy the seal of the Jewish covenant ! This accc -ds with the story of the fall, in which she is classed with tho lower animab, and appears without a soul I We are told that God breathed into Adam's nostrils the breath of life and '* man became a living soul." — (Gen. ii, 7.) As the ''vord translated life in this passage is plural in the Hebrew, it is explained to mean that his spiritual and intellectual life then began to be, and as this was anterior to Eve's creation, it is pro})or to infer that she was not endovv'ed with '20 un imniortnl nntiu-f. TTnnco liotli tlio OM and Now TostamPTit writfrs Hpenk of the niiin only as b( iii^ iti tlio iiiuij^^' of (Jod : "In tlio imuijo <"f (iod ere- atod ho hhn, mali* and lonKilo created ho them." — ((j!en. i., 20 : v. "21.) " Put on the ?i«JM ina/i which is renewed in knowledge (f/ter the imtuje of lllm that created him" — (Col. 4, 10.) Moreover, the animals were con>idered her efjual, for it is waid, " lait aa for Aciaiu tiiere was not found (utnonj; the animals) an help-meet for him." And they themselveH regarded her as a compaidon, for they frcipiently talked with her — one of tho er of wives, morganatically, and thus legally live like modern Solomons, and, naturally enough, without mA... 23 any word of reproof or adverse com auMit from priest or bishop ; but the monuMit the charming Baroness — lier sun qiiito past tho meridian — ar.tem[:ts to enter the marriage condition, though her companion is acknowledged amiable, talented and exemplary, she is rebuked and jibed at by tho higiiest and the lowest — the former the meanest — in the kingdou, though her l)ounty has sailed on every sea, sui)porte 1 missionaries in evei-y clime, and her noble hand has saved the lives of starving thousands. Wiiilo the Canadian Government was passing measures through Parlia- ment last session, endowing women with the same powers as to lioldiug and conveying pro[)erty, as men, in what was Your Lordship engaged in the way of recompensing those who support Your Lordship's person and dignity 1 Shall I tell the Canadian people that you were then communicating with the other Anglican bishops of the Dominion, — High Churchmen like yourself — prompting tliem to issue a bull, like thit issued by Your Lordship, command- ing their clergy, without respect to their conscience, to preach a sermon to the laity and to denounce the bill before the Commons as unscriptural, and its introduction a crime in the eyes of the nation, urging them with all possible speed to obtain a petition from the women — alas too ready at the service of the priesthood to the cost of liberty ! — asl'.ing that the lull might not pass ! But when the Campbell case was before Parliament last session, what did Your liOrdship do to secure justice to that much wronged and outraged woman 1 Here was an occasion when the loud voice of Duty called you, not merely as a Protestant prelate, but as a Christian minister. While the Hon. William Macdougall, in a speach that did him honour, was pressing Par- liament to support the claims of Mrs. Campbell, simply on the grounds ot" equity and Christian decency, did Your Lordship remember the Mosaic injunction to the priesthood — " Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor nor honour the person of the mighty, but in righteousness shalt tli )u judge thy neighbour." — (Lev. xix, 15.) Did Your Lordship preach a serm'):i on the text " Husbands love your wives ] " Oh, no. You were found, My Lord, where the law of contrarieties always places you — on the side of the strong against the weak, sympathizing with the oppressor and against tlje oppressed. " There is no vice," says Lord Bacon, " that doth so cover a man witli sliame as to be found false and perfidious." In the reign of King Charles the Second, the Earl of Rochester wrote the followins: lines on the door of the roval l)ed-charaber, and I never read them but I think of Your Lordship : — " Here lies our sovereign Lml the king, Whose word no man relies on, Who never said a foolish thing, Aud never did a wise one." GUNHILDA. MAERIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. A LADYS LETTERS TO THE BISHOP OF ONTARIO, " Nothing doth more hurt in a state than that cunning men pass for wise." — Lord Bacon. LETTfiR IV. My Lord Bisiior, — The good, though brave in the field, are always timid in approaching t vil. History furnishes many examples of barbaric 24 1 I ! si 11(1 valour, but none more remarkable than that of Prometheus, ndemned as a forger}'", for the late translators have put a note in the margin sa3'ing, " Most of the ancient authorities omit it." The first part of the fourteenth chapter of Revelation is of the same wicked stock, and should not have been retained in the new edition, unless, indeed, the old doctrine of no women in heaven is still to do duty with the priest- hood. Easebius Pamphilus, Bishop of Coesarea, the Father of Ecclesiastical History (A.D. 26i), and the most reliable authority of those days, though accused by Gibbon of favouring the church at the expense of truth, and he himself confesses the crime (Lib. viii, c. 2 and De Martyr Palestin ii, c. 12), says the genuineness of the Book of Revelation was in his day greatly dis- puted. That this book is a forgery is proved beyond all doubt by a circum- stance mentioned by St. Epiphanius (De Haeres, p. 51), viz., that the Alogians, a sect of Christians in the latter part of tho second century. 25 disputed its genuineness because the Cliurch of Tliyatira (Rev. ii, 18), one of the Seven Churches of Asia (Rev. i, 11), to wliich this book was addressed, did not exist till their d ly, nearly a hundred years after the death of John, a fact to which St. Epiphanius himself bears testimony ; and you will believe me. My Lord, when I say that the council of bishops at Laodicea, in the year A.D. 360, at which were the bishops of these same "Seven Churches of Asia," unanimously voted that this Book of Revelatioii is not genuine. That the second Epistle of Peter is a forgery of the first centuvy, Eusebius posi- tively declares, and among modern scholai's this opinion is fearlessly asserted — as Grotius, Cajetan, Scalager, Salmasiiis, Sender, Neander, Cred- nor, DeWette, Reuss tmd Mayerhoff. Eusebius further says, that the Epistle of James and the second and third Epistles ot John were in his century condemned as spurious. These are the words of the most learned and pious of the eai'ly Chriitian bishops. Manes, one of the most active promulgators of the Christian religion (though corrupted witii Eastern fables) in the third century, and whose morality is eulogized by St. Augustine, " rejected nearly all the sacred books," says Mosheim, "in which Christians think their religion to be contained. The four histories of Christ, which we call gospels, he either denied to have been composed by the apostles, or he maintained that if they were so, they had bean corrupted, interpolated and amplified with Jewish fables by crafty and mendacious men (meaning, of course, the bishops). The Acts of the Apostles he wholly rejected." — (Ecc. History, third century, p. 268.) It is a remarkable fact that while all the East was flooded with books pretending to have been written by the apostles, but really forgeries of the bishops to induce the heathen to accept Christianity, the books we now regard as canonical were almost entirely unknown. "It was from the Gospel of our Saviour's Infancy, from the Gospel of the Birth of Mary, and th« Protevangelion of St. James," says the Encyclopedia Britannica, " that Mahomet derived all his knowledge of our Saviour's life. He does not seem to have been acquainted with the canonical gospels, and the legends of the East in general are all from Apocryphal sources." " The Platonists and Pythagoreans," says Mosheim, " deemed it not only lawful, but commendable, to deceive and lie for the sake of truth and piety. The Jews living in Egypt learned from them this sentiment before the Christian era, as appears from many proofs, and, from both, this vice early spread among the Christians. Of Diis no one will doubt who calls to mind the numerous forgeries of books under the names of eminent men, the Sibylline verses, and I know not what besides, a large mass of which appeared in this age (second century), and subsequently. I would not say that the Orthodox Christians forged all the books of this character; on the contrary, it is probable that the greater part of them originated with the founders of the Gnostic (Christian) sects. Yet that the Christians who were free from heterodox views were not wholly free from this fault is too clear to be denied." — (Ecc. Hist., second century, p. 179.) Will you believe me, My Lord, that during the last few years I have, greatly against my will, slowly come to the conclusion that there is scarcely a writing that has come down to us, whether Jewish, Christian or pagan, that does not contain some passages in favour of Christianity that were forged by the first Christian bishops ! A few years ago I was disputing in a distant city with a Jewish rabbi concern- ing the death and resurrection of Christ, and after quoting those well known words of Tacitus (vol. i, p. 42, Oxford Translation), and a passage from Suetonius, bot. ( ". which the learned gentleman — for he was learned — pro- jnounctsd jt forgeries by the Christian bishops, I turned upon" him Jewish 26 I ;l ill evuleiicf, cifcingthedistingtiifili -1 words of Josophus (Antiquities xviii, 3, 3) itt whicli that author doelarea that Jesus, called the Christ, died and rose again the third day. Imagine my hu-ror when, stopping into his library, the scholastic rabbi laid before rao a volume of tiie Kucjjclopedia Britannica, and opening it with a triumphant smile requested me to read the following pas- sage : ** The famous pas^agu of Josephus (Antirj. xviii, 3, 3) referring to Christ, and which is referra I to by Eusebius, was mver called in question as to its genuineness till the sixtoenth century, when Qifanius and Osiander refused to receive ir. Since that period it has afforded matter for much controversy among the learned. It is found in all the copies of the works of Josephus from th.i time of Eusebius. It also exists in a Hebrew translation in the Vatican and there is an Arabic version preserved by the Maronites of Mount Libanus also containing it, Josephus mentions John the Baptist, and the death of James the brother of Jesus called the Christ. ( Antiq. xx., 9, 1.) Strange to ftay no defender of Christians be/ore Eusehiut quoted Josephus' testimony of (Jhrist, and in particular Origen." You see, said he, that this is a forgery, and so is every passage in Josephus that speaks of Jesus, wbont you blindly call the Christ. Who wrote the Jewish Scri|)ture8 ] said I. Moses, who conversed with God as a man speaks with a friend, he replied. Where were they after the Babylonian Captivity 1 Were they not all lost at that period, and does not a Hebrew writer of the highest respectability tell us — a fact which all the Christian Fathers taught and believed — that they were all reproduced three hundred years afterwards by Ezra (Esdraa ii, 14- 21)1 You may say, as you will say, that they were re- written by Ezm through inspiration, but I shall speak of it imder another name. He could not answer, nor could Your Lordship, for you will iind these same writings of Eadras ranked as canonical in the Book of Common Prayer. I then remarked that Christianity, even if it be a false system of morals, is infinitely superior to any other, and especially Judaism, which regards woman as man's slave. " Ah !" said he, warming under my remarks, " but we never sell our women, at all events, for a pipe of tobacco.'' I instantly remembered having read the following in Dr. McElheran's " Condition of Women" : "The Republican commissioners under Cromwell recommended that Irish women be sold to merchants, and transported to Virginia, New England. This was in 1652. A manuscript in Dr. Lingard's possession gave the total number at 60,U00. Brandin, a contemporary, says 100,000. They v;ere mostly exchanged for tobacco " ( p. 146). My reply was, the Jews did not sell their women, for having so long kept them in bondage and ignorance they were not desirable in the eyes of even the heathen, besides they required them all for wives ! But the learned rabbi was correct as to the passage in Josephus, for if it had existed in Origen's time he would certainly have cited it, as it exactly meets the point he hae Catholic standard of faith." — (Demonology and Witchcraft, p. 194.) " Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull," says Sir Walter Scott, " which was followed by the burning of thousands of innocent women all over Euix)pe. In ID 15 five hundred were executed at Geneva under the character of " Protestant witches." In 1524: a thousand persons were put to death in one year at Como, in Italy, and about one hundred every year for several years. In one instance forty persons were executed in the Swedish villages of Mohra, of whom fifteen were children." "The ministers of the Church of England, continues Sir Walter, meaning, no doubt, those who most sympathized with Rome, in other words, the high church bishops, " are fur from being entirely free of the charge of encoiirgging the witch superstition." — (p. 230.) " In the year 1645 " — for the clergy were the chief makers of law — •' a commission of Parliament was sent down comprehending two clergymen in esteem with the leading party, one of whom, Fairclough, of Kellar, preached before the rest ou the subject of witchcraft, and after this appearance of inquiry the inquisitions and executions went on as before." — (p. 252.) But the demon of witchcraft— the climax of the doctrine so long promul- gated by the priesthood, woman's greatest foe — has breathed its last in our own day and in the very presence of those who gave it birth. Well may the women of Canada shudder at the thought of bishops and priests attempting to influence the legislation of the State. Truth crushed to earth shall rise again, The eternal years of God are hers ; But Error, wouuded, writhes in laln, And dies among his worshipper?. GUNHILDA. f II V m 30 MARr.IAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. A lady's Llili'KRS TO THE BISHOP OF ONTARIO. " Forty-two thousand adi It women of Leeds, England, have signed a petition desiring the House of Coinmous to legalize marj-iage with a deceased -wife's bister." — JJomhdun Churchman. LETTER V. My TjORD Bishop, — A few months ago the editor of a Hussian journal was Lanished to Siberia for criticising a sermon preached by the Bishop of Moscow, in which he aflirnied the Czar's infallibility and that of his ministers while executing liis commands in the government of the empire. But the IlussiaD bishoi) was only imitating his predecessors in the Jewish priesthood for they educated their people to "worship God and the King" (Ohron., xxvii, 20) — the same dogma of infallibility */hat is perpetuated by the Church of Home, and till recently was guarded by a penalty even more severe than that inflicted by the Emperor of all the liussias. This was continued in the Church of England under the paternal care of Cranmer, the High Church Archbishop of Canterbury, who ordered Annie Eskew and Joan Bocher to be burned for denying the doctrines promulgated by the injallihle Henry the Eighth. The same ]jenalty he inflicted on John Frith for denying the doctrine of transubstantiation. You have read. My Lord, of Hypatia, a maid, " not more distinguished for her beauty," says Fullom, "than for her learning and virtue." This young lady opi)Osed the doctrine of St. Cyril, Archbishop of Alexandria (A.D. 412), who, it would appear, considered himself infallible, when by his instructions she was seized, dragged naked through the streets, and then torn limb from limb on the stejjs of the cathedral. — (Hist, of Woman, p. 215.) Liberty of the press is interwoven with liberty to woman, and one cannot exist without the other. His INluscovite Majesty who banishes the knights of literary progress to Siberia, keeps the women of his dominion in servitude, marries wives morgauatically, and breaks the heart of his empress. Need ho marvel if, like Napoleon III, of equally wicked memory, he should see in the midst of his dreams the ghost of a fallen Ciesar pointing to Phillippi, or the handwriting upon the wall proclaiming that his kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians. In all ages of the world's history theocratic kiur^doras, whose chief divinities were gods and not goddesses, have been singular for their savage nature and opi)ression of wcaien ; and it is equally true — for deities whether true or false merely reflect the character of their worshippers — that those whose chief divinities were female deities, as Egypt, Greece and Rome, were not only the most leai-ned and civilized, but the only conquerors of the world ; 80 that, if any lesson may be learned from the past, it is that the ruling nation of the future will be distinguished for her political indulgence and personal liberties to women. The history of the Hebrew nation is a witness to the truth ot this principle ; for though its Deity was the true God, it was not only the most cruel of all ancient kingdoms, but the most despotic in its political, ecclesiastical and domestic economies. Woman was a slave in law and cus- tom, though the prophet speaks of the kingdoms of Judah and Israel as having descendedfrom two women (Ezek. xxviii, 2). The Christian church, the offspring of the Jewish, is represented in the Scriptures by a woman clothed with the sun and the moon under her feet (Rev. xii, 1), and is compared to a woman in being the spouse of Christ, and yet in Christian nations to-day woman is comparatively less esteemed, and has less influence in the government of the 31 LYe signed a ih a deceased hron., xxvii, state than union;; the barbarian nations of antiquity. The reason is obvious : because the Jowisli Scriptures are read in our Sunday scliooLs and churches, and priests and bishops press their Jewish ideas upon the hiw niakeis of the realm. How few think of this when they hear Your Lordshi[) reading the words of the i)ious and merciful Psalmist : " Blessed shall he be that shall take your little ones and dash their heads in pieces against the stones " (Ps. cxxxvii, 9), a passa^^eour clergy read with as much relish as if they were sipping wine at a political banquet at Ottawa. "A large portion of the romantic interest which Grecian legend insjtires," says Grote, " is derived from the women. Penelope, Andromache, Helen, Clytemnestra, Eriphyle, Jocas.ra and Hecuba all stand in the foreground of the picture, either from their virtues, their beauty, their crimes or their sufferings." — (History of (Jreece.) The legends concerning the Amazons, whether true or false, prove that woman's power and influence were recognized as a jjublic fact. Juno, Minerva, Diana and Isis, of the Egyptians, attest the popular estimation in woman's divinity and equality even in heaven ; and, being favourable to their own sex, permitted neither concubinage or })olygamy. Chetesses, queens and judges —and were no doubt the originators of that law in Athens that inflicted the severest penalty upon the master who should ofTer a personal insult to his female slave. That the mother was absolute niistress of the household — which she certainly is not now — we learn from the dis[mte between Agamemnon and his wife concerning their daughter's marriage. Themisfcocles said ; ** My little boy rules Athens, for he governs his mother and his mother governs me." The women of Rome took as much interest in the government of their country as the men, for we learn from Polybius that on the approach of Hannibal after the massacre of 80,000 Roman troops at the battle of Cannae that the women of Home " went around the temple offering supplications to the gods and sweeping the pavement with their hair." — (General History, p. 229.) The maidens and matrons of Carthage shaved off their bountiful tresses to make cordage at the invasion of Scipio. The most successful men of antiquity always sought the council of their wives, which reminds us of the wife of Lord Beaconsfield, of Mrs. Gladstone, Ladv Palmerston and that beautiful woman called the Great Electress, the Duchess of Devonshire. " Modern Europe," says Gibbon, *' has produced several illustrious women who have sustained with glory the weight of emf)ire." " Some of the greatest characters of ancient and modern times," says Butler, " have been educated by women." Speaking of Sesostris, King of Egypt, who was one of the world's ronquerors, and who took and plundered Jerusalem in the reign of Rehoboaui, son of Solomon, Herodotus says that, learning of certain plots against his life, " he immediately consulted with his wife, /or he always took his wife lolth him." — (Euterpe, p. 134.) It was Atossa, daughter of Cyrus the Great and queen of Darius of Persia, who induced the latter to engage in the famous war against Greece. Her son. King Xerxes, who subsequently conducted the campaign, was accom- panied at the head of his army by his queen, Amestris. Queen Artemesia, 32 iil m i an ally ai\d tributary of PorHJa, sailfnl in tlio fU-ot of Xoixch ixn comnnuidcr of a squadron, "and of all tlio allies," Hays IlorodotuH, " <,mvo tlie best advioo to the kin^'." Xerxes was dofeatc'd iu tlio naval en-^'au'enient at SalaniiK by neglecting to take her advice, which resulted in the almost conii)lete annihihi- tion of his army of five million of soldiers, and her skill and valour in the retreat caused King Xerxes to excl.iini, " My uwn liiivp become women and my women men." At the battlu of Phvtea, fought and lost to the Persians in this camjiaign, Ihe wife of Pharandatos, the Persian commander, was found on the battlefield covered with gold and gems, and on her condition being made known to Pausanias, the victorious Spartan king, she was delivered to her friends in safety — an incident that could never occur among a people in- fluenced by the tutelage of modern ecclesiastic?*. Perhaps the best example of the dignity of women under the ancient j)agan government is the vestal virgins of Komo, maidens dedicated to serve in the temple of Vesta. These virgins were at liberty to dispose of tiieir pro[)eity and ])ossessions as they pleased ; their evidence was received in courts of justice without the formality of an oath, and in difhcult cases they wore often chosen as judges and arbitra- tors. They had the pow^r of pardoning criminals whom they met accidentally in the streets ; the cliief places were assigned them at the public games, and ail classes, from the higliest magistrates to the slave, fell back at their ap- proach, the very lectors of the consul turning tJieir fasces as ttiey passed. — (Fullom, p. 183.) In Lacedemonia " large dowries were given to daughters, often to the comj)lete spoliation of the sons ; and it was a common occurrence for a Spartan, at his death, to leave his property exclusively to his daughter. By law and custom wealth was allowed to accumulate in the hands of women ; but a rich man, however innocent and blameless his conduct, was looked upon with suspicion. Women were allowed the utmost liberty, and Xenophon and Plutarch described them as taking part in the public games. — (Fullom.) " The Egyptian women," says Herodotus " attend markets and traffic, but the men stay home and weave. Sons are not compelled to support their parents u. less they choose, but daughters are compelled to do so whether they choose or not " (Euterpe, p. 108.) ; because, like the women of Sparta, but unlike modern Englishwomen, they inherited the property. Diodorus Siculus informs us that the husband in ancient Egypt promised obedience to the wife at the marriage ceremony, when the weak, as if to com- pensate for the absence of physical energy, were accorded even greater liberties than the strong. How exactly converse the liberties, or rather the want of them, in our day, only to be accounted for on the principle enunciated by Garrick, that " corrupted freemen are the woi'st of slaves." And yet though public opinion was mainly shaped in ancient days by woman and public morality was almost entirely due to her, we find Mr. Parkmr.n, in a letter that has accorded him more notoriety than credit, saying that though *' many women have worn crowns we look among them in vain for one of those royal benefactors of the race," and that " instead of purifying politics they corrupted them !" But the liberties given to women in those days had an effect quite the contrary to that announced by Mr. Parkman, and other vaporous haters of women in modei'n times. Mr. Parkman do^s not seem to know that Home, the most refined of all the ancient empires and once the mistress of the world, remarkable alike for her learning, virtue and liberty, owed all her progress and distinction to the laws of her twelve tables, whose author was a woman — laws that were implicitly obeyed by her kings, her consuls and emperors, and which are the origin of that legal code which has gone hand in hand with Christianity for 1,800 years ! While the public 83 idea of (!econcy iti Cauiiila an 1 Mr. P.ukmaii'rt own city b ho corrupt ih.it young men may appear in tlio condition of naditv upon our wliarvos in presonco of lumdn.'ds of pass(>rM.|,y, tljun> was a lino of a thousand erty, as if you had injured his ox or his ass.* But even this is preferable to the laws of the clergy, for, according to the ecclesiastical laws of England, in case of bigamy the union is merely dissolved as a nullity and without penalty ! — (Bacon's Abr. vol. iii the son, m , p. 574.) year 1777, The following case is an illustration was presented at the primary Ann Jenkin- visitation of the Aichbishop of York. The man who was the father of her child had promised •The following are clipped from the same column of the Ottawa Citizen of July 30tb, 1881 :— Brantford, 29th. — J. Blacliburn, the man found guilty yesterday of committing an indecent assault on a little girl, was sentenced to-day to four months in jail and 40 lashes, 20 lashes at a time. Montreal, 29th. — Francois Malouin dit Kinfret, was sentenced to-day to four years in the penitentiary for obtaining money from the merchants here imder false pretences. Mrs. Kiely, of St. Catharine Street, Montreal, was fined $95 and costs on Saturday for wiling champagne cider without an Inland Revenue license. — Citizen^ Axigust, 1881. 36 )Muiiag.. nohoiily lolierHftlf, Imt l)cforo.\jiiHtico, l.ut lio iifierwanis nmmod Jiuotlau- woinsui. 'J'|n' H|.iritnul court pionifulfd lujuiiiHt tho poor alHU.donril fjirl, ami, witliout ovt'ii Hnmnionin;,' hw, wmit ' lior an cxcotmnunicaliun. *• Another," K:iys Madan, " was citod on Niudi an account, but could not take out luM- ponanco hocansc kIio could not pay a certain Hum of money," and of course hIio too was exoonm)unic;itf«;, tlm uif n in both ca.scs hein^' allowed, even without a roprimatui, to ;,'o frcn. l.ft our cltn-Lry malc(» lawH in is daughters, that Abraham's bi'other Nahor married his niece, that Tyloses' mother was his father's aunt, and that Zelophchad's five daughters were according to the law of Moses obliged to marry their cousins. — (See ISum. xxvii, 1-11; Ruth iii, 12; 1st Chron. xxiii, 22.) In the year A.D. 44G, when, according to Your Lordship, the Ancient Church of England existed in all its fruition, Vortigern, king of the Scuth Britains, married his own daughter. ** There is no doubt," says Huth, " that the marriage of first cousins was always permitted by Roman law." The Emperor Theodosius, A.D. 390, was the first to prohibit such marriages. St. Athanasius and St. Augustine, through whomYoui Lordship claimsdescent from the Apostle John, declare that " marriage between first cousins is neither against the law of God or man." By English civil law. Statute 32 Henry VIII, c. 38, cousins are allowed to marry, but by the canon law the marriage of both first and second cousins is prohibited. If marriage under this bill, should ifc become law, will irritate the sensitive conscience of the clergy, by what ecclesiastical canon does it happen that they have without any conscientious qualms continued to marry first and second cousins since the times of the Reformation, when such unions have always been held incestuous by Church of England canon law ] A nd in celebrating these marriages they have not only violated the laws of the church, but, in many cases, have broken the statutes of the kingdom, and made themselves liable to transportation. " The 62nd of the canons of 1603," says Rogers, " enjoins marriage to be solemnized between the hours of eight and twelve in the forenoon. The 4 Geo. IV, c. Ixxvi, by-s. 21, enacts that any clergyman celebrating marriage at any other hour than between eight and twelve shall be liable to be transported for oiirteen years. The same hour is still specified in the civil law of England. But Your Lordship will reply that the clergy would not and did not perform such marriages without the consent of the church. That is the point. Those persons were obliged to obtain a dispensation — and to pay for it — the same as Roman Catholics do from the Pope, and this has been for two centuries a fruitful source of income to the Church of England. " Marriage by a special license " says an English author, " enables the contracting parties to be married at any time or place. This costs about thirty pounds, and cnn only be obtained by application to the archbishop of the province." — (Modern 41 1 niiglit ns Alex- " those ?ro con- thers of bb their lietween ■(Huth's Inditins, aughters murried sters, as Ighteous is Jiioce, lughters usins. — he year England ried hk i of first iodosins, and St. tie John, B law of cousins irst and become siastical qualms of the Church Lve not :ea the " The smnized IV, c. 7 other ted for agland. >erform Those anie as iries a special to be ri only lodern Etiquette, p. 79.) If tlie English clergy in this country be permitted to shape legislation they may be as successtul as in the Mother Country, where, according to civil law, illegitimate children may become legitimate, and can inherit through a dispensation from a bishop. Shadowy indeed must be modern jurisi)rudence and the consciousness of human justice when a Protestant bishop is permitted in the lobby of the Canadian Senate to defeat an humble measure intended to relieve the restrictions upon a small proportion of Canadian women, when we ni-e abso- lutely debarred from the civil service of our own country, from the privilege of holding any respectable, nob to say lucrative, position in the gift of thy Crown. Never, My Lord, since the lleformation, did tlie fate of civilization in Europe and America so quiver in the balance as at this moment, when Kitualisra,*^ in the spangle of refinement and the guise of Protestantism, seeks to enlist the sympathies of the V)otter classes, especially the women, having for its object not only the control of parliaments but of the executive itself. Are you not aware. My Lord, that the dial of human progress was swept backward a thousand years by Christian bishops seizing on the powers of temporal princes, which entailed national and moral ruin upon the grandest and proudest nation that ever had ennobled the graces and virtues of mankind 1 Befoi'e the age of Constantino when duke est p7'o 2>^^"ici' mori,f was the national sentiment, it was the boast as well as the protection of the subject of the Cresars to say : "I am a Pvom an citizen " j but the subject who could quell the Gaul and the German under Caius Julius Caesar easily fell a prey to the Goth and the Hun, when he came to bo taught by the Christian bishop that there was no virtue in love of country, and that he should yield his allegiance to a spiritual rather than to a temporal prince. Gibbon having said that Christianity caused the fall of the Roman Empire, his critics, no doubt as consciencious,if not as orthodox, as Your Lordship, added the follow- ing note: " Gibbon has here laid open the true cause which produced the fall of the Roman Empire and the dark ages that followed. But he has not traced its workings distinctly. M. Sch re iter has justly accused him of con- founding Chi'istianity with its hierarchy, and ascribing to the former evils which are strictly attributable only to the latter. The mischief originated in the abuse which ingrafted on Christianity a powerful, ambitious and imperious priesthood." — (Decline and FcJl of the Roman Empire, vol. ii, pp. 374-5.) It was at this period woman's power had risen to an eminence greater than it 'lad ever attained in the history of the world, and as her infiuence was used by the high church bishops, in the reign of the Stuarts, to erect the papacy in England, which resulted in the political destruction of Englishwomen, so her sympathies, which have ever induced her to surrender her wealth to the church, bore the spiritual power to the thi-one of the Roman Empire, which resulted not only in her own moral and political degradation, but well nigh in the extinction of the social and political liberties of the human race. The influence of religion upon woman, for reasons unnecessary to explain, is always more potent than with men, and will always render her moi*e subservient to the ecclesiastical power. The cry of pain arouses her anguish, so ready to respond to theory of her child; the stroke of aflliction in her family, or the loss of fortun-i, bows her down at the religious shrine, so that influence of a religion tl ages appi sympathi •The three Roman Catholic cardinals who attended the funeral of the late Dean •Stanley had once been Church of England clergymen. ilt is sweet to die for one's native country. 42 the Christian, has lioen liable to endanger her mt-utal iuLlependenco and personal freedom ; and as, from her physical nature, she must always, to a certain degree, he debarred from the same activity as man in framing the laws, it doubly becomes the duty of'tho latter to see that she is neither oppressed by designing ecclesiastics nor by the fetututes of the commonwealth. The people of Canada, es))ecially tlie members of the Church of England, aro content to direct their priiyers to heaven over the throne wliose base is washed by the othoi" side of the sea, that our national and religious sympathies should blend witli those of the land that gave us birth, receiving in exchange that higher civilization and refinement which shine from beneath the golden gates of the rising sun, in the same way that half savage England, in return for the blood and treasure consumed in carrying the Cross on the plains of Palestine, received from her retui'ning armies a taste for eastern refinement^ and for the arts of the Greek and Roman world. But, while this i;: trv*e, the leading women of Canada are not willing, without protest, either that their less intelligent sisters who know nothing of the intrigues of a court or the plottings of a bishop, should be influenced by the priesthood to petition against a measure intended to remove a mortifying personal disability, or that a prelate, who has never in his ideas risen above the age of feudalism, should seek to continue a galling religious code that originated in the twilight of the dark ac^es. Never, My Lord, has there existed in the history of this country s\ich a feeling as to British connection as since the period when Your Lordship, a bishop ot the National Church, presumed to enter the saci'ed precincts of the Canadian Executive to influence legislation against an humble class of Her Majesty's Canadian subjects — f^.n act which may prove a crime against the Mother Land, by casting into i i balances of Fortune the fate of an empiie. Were I not a daughter of Eve I would beseech Your Lordship to descend from your political Carmel, lor, lo ! there is " a man's hand " ou the western sky. GUNHILDA. MARRIAGE WITH A DECEASED WIFE'S SISTER. A LADY S LETTERS TO THE BISHOP OF ONTARIO. *' It is doubtful if freedom could long be sustained in a country where anonymous writing is prohibited." — Uncyclopcedia Britannica. LETTER VII. My Lord Bishop, — From the times of the Reformation to the present there have been two parties among the clergy of the Church of England, tho Roman Catholic, or — which is perhaps a better term — the Papal Catholic, and the Protestant ; in other words, the high church and the low church. The former included, and still includes, with some exception, the bishops, both outside and within the House of Lords, and who havo ever been a, clog to the wheels of legislation in England. It was they who were the first to rush to the aid of Mary, who subsequently, and mainly by their advice, deluged the kingdom in blood ; were the firm adherents of the Roman Catholic Charles I, ox the r niit James II, and the most treacherous foes of William III, Prince of Orange. For several centuries after the Reformation they continued the worship of the Virgin, and up to the times of Elizabeth the public worship of images. In 1547 Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, said that '* he thought the removing of imaj"is was on design to subvert religion and the state of the 43 Jiico and ^ays, to a ming the 1 neither mwealth. land, are ) base is mpathies exchange le golden in return plains of inement^ trviG, the liat their rt or the petition bility, or judalisni, > twilight ^ of this len Your e sacred 1 humble ) a crime le fate of Lordship and " on Lda. y where present and, tha olio, and h. The ps, both 3g to the rush to iged the Jhai'les I, am III, ontinued worship thought le of the world." -Gurnet's History Ref. vol. ii, p. 11.) Up to the year 1551, in the reign of Edward Vi, the oath of the king'.s supremacy taken by the bishops closed with these woixls : " So help me God by all the saint* and the htdy evangelists."— (Blunt.) The doctrine of transubstantiatiou was then, as it is now, as much the belief of the high churcli clergy as of Rouie. " Tliat the body and blood of Christ exist in the elements of bread and wine," says Blunt, "is as much the belief of the English Church as of the Latin and Greek Chui'che.s." To show how completely the bishops of the Church of Rome in England ground down the people, we are informed that in the age immediately before the Reformation the laity received the Holy Communion only in one kind, that is, the consecrated bread. The Council of Constance (A.D. 1415) gave a law to withhold the consecrated wine altogether from the laity — subse- quently teaching that if the people stood and saw others partake of the Com- munion it had the same effect as if they took it themselves " (His. Ref pp. 33-35), — the wine, of course, being kept for the clergy. A high church clergyman once contended with me that this taking of the wine wholly by the priest is perfectly proper and scriptural, for Christ said to his disciples — that is those who were to preach the gospel — " Drink ye all of it — (Matt, xxvi, 27) — meaning no one but the clergy should partake of it ! Imagine his surprise, however, when I pointed out to him in his Greek Testament that " all " refers not to the wine but to the disciples, for the Greek word is not in the accusa- tive case but in the nominative plural ! Mr. Blunt further says : " So grossly had the custom of appointing bishops who did not reside in the country extend that when Archbishop Longham made inquiry respecting the pluralist clergy of the Province of Canterbuiy some were found who held as many as twenty benefices and dignitaries. These were mostly Italians." But will you believe me. My Lord, that, when the House of Commons in Elizabeth's reign brought in a bill to remedy this monstrous evil Archbishop Whitgift wrote a letter to Her Majesty bewailing the wickedness of the times and declaring that the Church of England would be ruined should this bill become law ! — (Fuller's Church History.) "The woful and distressed state in which we are like to fall," says His Grace, " forceth us, with grief of heart, in most humble mien to crave Your Majesty's most sovereign protection. We, therefore, not as directors, but as humble remembrancers, beseeclf Your Highness's favourable beholding of our present state and what it will be in time if the bill against pluralities should take place." The same Parliament afterwards brought down a bill giving liberty to marry, not merely as formerly, in Lent, but at all times of the year, without restraint. Again is the Ai-chbishop in terror, and again he prays at the feet of the Queen that this bill, which will pauper- ize the clergy, may not ^;ass, but pass it did, notwithstanding. The ditfioulty in the former case was that the bishops held each several benefices from- which they drew immense sums every year ; and in the second they had always "eceived large sums for dispensations, bl Tiilar to those now granted by the Pope and the Archbishop of Canterbury, giving liberty to individuals to marry in Lent, and of course this source of revenue would no longer exist on the passing of the bill. In Your Lordship's letter to the Ottawa Citizen (March 24th, 1880) you used the follov.ing — and, as usual, ungrar^matical — expression : '* While I am amazed that any man should avow that he marritd his brother's wife, yet Mr. Lantier's letter corroborates my state- ment that the proi)osed bill is one to facilitate the sale of indulgences and dispensations." This, JMy Lord, is insolence and assurance combined, for u snrely Your Loi'ci.sliij) must know that while Canvcliau legislation could not intcrffjin with tho canons of tho Roman Church, i'or sovoral hundred yeai'S similar dispensations were granted — as I liave just shown — by the Arch- bishop of Canterbury, and are to this day. "The Archbishop of Canter- bury," says Hecs, " has a power by statute, 25 Henry VIII, c. 21, of dispen- sing in any case within the realm wherein dispensations not contrary to tho law of God wore formerly granted by the iSee of Home, as well to the king as to his subjects. Every bishop of common right 1ms the power of dispensing in common cases." In the history of the Protestant church, with the exception, perhaps, of the Burial's Bill, no legislation to restrict the ecolesia.stical ])ower lias ever been more vigorously resisted by the bishops than that which sought to jn-event this lucrative sale of indulgences by the archbishops and bishops of the English church. You say " Mr. Lantier gave £100 for a dispensation from the Pope to marry his brother's wife," and ask — " What is a poor man to do ? " I answer Your Loi'dship's question by asking another — " What is a poor woman to do?" I have already cited an instance — and that only one out of thousands — of a poor woman having been excommunicated, so late as the reign of (ieorge III, because she had not money enough to buy the pardon of t!ie English bishops ! The famous Alsop in his Melius Inquirendum, referring to this conduct of Archbishop Whitgift, says, "no reformation in the marriage law can be made but what will notably diminish tlie revenues, grandeur and credit of the church, and that, whatever hiive been tlie upecious jn-etensions, this has been the ?'eaZ obstruction to effectual reformation. Kings and parliaments have always been inclinable towards a redress of exorbitances, but the covetousness and pride of church- men have ever impeded their pious endeavoui'S." — (p. 68.) The table of degrees, which seems the special object of veneration by Your Lordship and the Metropolitan ol Canada, was rracle out from the Eoman Catholic table by Archbishop'Parker and Bishop Jewel, both of whom not only believed in women being witches, but were foremost in preparing the public to enact the most horrible butchery and murder of women in England that has ever been known since Englishwomen began to be. This table was con- lirmed by a convocation of Bishops in 1563, one of the leading spirits being this same Archbishop Whitgift who so zealously contended for papal supremacy in the Church of England. In our Book of Common Prayer the heading is "A table of kindred and aflinity wherein whosoever are related are forbidden in Scripture ai!d our laws lo marry together." This is a false- hood to begin with ; for, while this table forbids marriage between uncles and nieces the Scriptures do not aw/where forbid such marriages. " Moses nowhere," says Huth, " prohibits the marriage of an uncle and a niece. Indeed we have an instanceof suclia nuirriage in Othneil, the younger bi'other of Caleb, the spy, who married Achsah, his niece and the daughter of Caleb." — (Josh. XV, 17.) In your petition to Parliament you say, "Any infringe- ment of the Table of Affinity must inevitably lead to the abolition of the whole code, so that a man may marry his wife's mother or his wife's daughter." The Pope might have said the same thing to .the English Reformers. But this is not as bad as marrying his half sister, as did Abraham, or his daughters, iXH did pious Lot, or murdering a husband to get his wife, as did David, or marrying thi*ee hundred wives, as did Solomon. According to Moses, if the mother is not related to the child, there is no harm, even in an ecclesiastical view, for a man to marry his wife's daughter if he be not her father. But the Table of Affinity has been remodelled scores of times by the church and has been so since the Heforraation, and yet no attempt has been made to uld not d yeans J Arch- Canter- dispen- • to the to the ower of h, with rict the bishops by the ler gave and ask tion by ited an ng been had not IS Alsop ^hitgift, lat will id that, traction iclinable church- ition by I Roman not only e public ind that vas cen- ts being ' papal lyer the I related a false- cles and '' Moses X niece, bi'other Caleb." nfringe- of the ighter," s. But ighters, avid, or , if the iiiastical ". But rch and nade to 45 commit the immorality of whicli Your Lordship spoak;-!. Morwover, thou'^h marriacje with a dtcejisod wife's sister svas ti»rlii(l(I"ii by oeclesiiisticiil hiw, but admitted by the civil, boloro the Marriagu Act of 1835 (.") and () Williain IV), yet the Church of England bisiiops in tlio IIouso of Lords, in order ta prevent by civil enactment such marriages in future, actiially voted to legalize thoHe, that had been consummated before the j)assage of this Act. " Of this, conduct of tiie bisho[)S," said Lord Hougliton in the IIouso of Lords in May last, "no explanation has ever been given which exonerates them from a charge of the grossest inconsistency. Professing to believe that marriage with a deceased wife's sister was unhiwful and incestuous, only one course was open to them, and that was to refuse on any grounds and for any reasons to assist in giving them legal sanction. Instead of pursuing this plain and intelligible course, they condoned all the sins of the past and consented to bless the incestuous couples who had been married before the 31st August, 1835." If the Scriptures do forbid marriage with a deceased wife's sistei-, then their Lordships voted to legalize what they knew God had expressly for- bidden. Cease, therefore. My Lord, bewailing the iniquity of the Canadian Commons for voting to legalize marriage witli a deceased wife's sister, when they were but imitating the highest ecclesiastical authority in the United Kingdom. But are you aware that marriage with a deceased wife's sister was permitted by Christ and His apostles and by the Christian church during the first three cen aries of its history 1 "Constantino forbade marriage with a sister-in-law," saysHuth, ''but it was permitted up to his time. The prohibition was renewed by Valentinian, Theodosius and Arcadius, but Justinian does not seem to have noticed it." — (Marriage of Near Kin, p. 42.) On what authority, therefore, did Your Lordship presiune to use thef)llowing language in your j)etition to the Commons : " The Church, for one thousand four hundred years after Christ, held that a man's wife's sister becomes his own sister ! " The first Council of Bishops, that for- bade marriage with a deceased wife's sister, also forbade marriage with bridesmaids, a wife's god-daughter or god-child, and first imposed celibacy upon the clergy ! For twelve hundred years the church has forbidden bishops to marry, and yet Your Lordship has contravened the plain doctrine of the church, according to your own sho-ving, by taking a wife ! "Marriage with a deceased wife's sister," says Lange in his Comment- tary, " is clearly allowable imder the Levitical law, not merely by not being prohibited, but, being prohibited during the lifetime of the sister first taken to wife, it becomes doubly certun that it was permitted afterwards." To deceive the Canadian Commons, Your Lordship and the clergy generally pretend to have surrendered the scriptural argument, wliile during the last year, to secure the sympathy and signature of church women, the church journals have been flv;)oded with anonymous correspondence, evidently by clergymen, arguing that Moses foi-bids marriage with a deceased wife's sister ! In your letter to the Ottawa Citizen, March 22nd, 1880, Your Lord- ship says, speaking of Leviticus xviii, 18 : " I knew that the Hebrew is capable of six different interpretations, all, however, tending to forbid marriage with a deceased wife's sister." Here I must claim Your Lordship's indulgence, but I affirm that you cannot simimon a respectable author — not six, My Lord, but one — who does interpret this passage to forbid marriage with a deceased wife's sister ! ! ! I have seyrched all the great authorities, Jewish and Christian, and they all affirm that such a marriage tvds lawful under the Levitical code. All Jewish authors support the position I have assunied. The Targum of Onkelos, the- 40 oMeat mid best of tho Jewish coinnientari' h, and which was read in the «ynagoguo, says i)laiidy that ihis is the meaning of the jiaHsaqe, for it trans- lates it— " And a woman, w .th her sister, thou slialt not takt, to ,i(Hict her m hit lifetime." Tlio Syriao version, made in tho second century, says the same ; so the transh^tion made from tho original Hebrew by St. Jerome. Pliilo the Jew, who wrote in the tune of Christ, says this passage refers simply to two sisters living at the same time, and does not even hint that any other construction or interpretation had ever been suggested. In the Penta- teuch " newlij tra)ialated (into English) %uvler the supervision of the Rev. the Chief liahbi of the United Cortfjreijations of the Jiritish Umpire," the passage is translated thus — ** N«!ither shalt thou take a wife to her sister to vex her in her lifetime." Dr. Alder, tlie Chief llabbi of the Jews in the United King- dom, says, in his evidence before tlie lioyal Commissioners : " Marriage with a deceased wife's sister is not only not considered as prohibited, but it is distinctly understood to be j)ermitted ; and on this point neither the Divine Law, nor the rabbis, nor historical Judaism, leaves room for the least doubt. I can oidy reiterate my former assertions, that all sophistry must be split on the clear siiid unequivocal words (Lev. xviii, 18) ifi her lifetime." In this he was supported by every rabbi in the Kingdom, by the whole Jewish press, and by every Jew in the British Parliament. Tho Septuagint, or Greek version, translated from the Hebrew text nearly three hundred years before Christ, gives a similar sense. This is the Bible that was publicly read in the synagogue for nearly three centuries ! Our Saviour and the apostles read and quoted it more than any other, nnd, excepting the Syriac, t7 was for several centuries the onlif translation used in the church ; nor is any other ixsed in the Gieek C/hurch r.o this day! The passage in dispute \a thus trans- lated from the Septuagint by Sir Lancelot Charles Lee Brenton : " Thou shalt not take a wife in addition to her sister as a rival to her * * * xohile she is yet livinr/." (.ranmer, believing with high churchmen of the present day that the church is higher authority than the Bible, did not scruple to give the correct translation. This passage, in Cranmer's Bible of 1540 roads thus : ** Thou shalt not take a woman and her sister also to vex her as long •tie she lives." In the revision of Cranmer's Bible by Cuthbert, Bishop of Durham and Ridley, in 1541, the same translation is retained. But Jewish law, like all others, is only followed by the bishops when it answers best for the moment the political exigencies of the church. As a noted example. Your Lordship exonerates King Henry VIII for divorcing his wife. Queen Catharine, with whom he had lived happily for twenty years, on the plea that she had been his brother Arthur's wife, when, if the law, as laid down in Leviticus, and of which Your Lordship and the Dominion Churchman are such admirers, is to be followed, he was in reality hound to marry her, for Arthur had died childless ! In your letter of Mai'ch 22nd you say : " Moses allowed marriage of a man with his deceased brother's wife in one special case, that is, when tribal inheritance was involved." But, to use Your Lordship's words in that same letter, " a thing is morally right or morally wrong, and why should a dispensation be given to anyone to commit a moral wrong %" I ask " Why ? " also, and the answer must be, that Moses gave the dispensation because it was morully right for a man to marry his brother's wife. If not, then you defeat yourself, for if Moses gave a dispensa- tion to commit a moral wrong, then there is no reason why that precedent should not be followed by the Pope of Rome ; and Mr. Lantier was perfectly right to ask for the dispensation, and Your Lordship was perfectly wrong — < \ n tlie trans- ict her ys the Biome. refers at any Penta- ev. the as ( I. MoscR beinj? judpjo — in reproviticj tho Pope for granting it. Wo shouKl never tiavo luul any (lillionlty with this pjohibition — for even liishop Jowcl was opp05// Cranmer's (i©lygamy on tho same principle. 8t. Augustine says : " Quoniani multlpUcandae poaterilatls causa plurea rtxores lex nulla prohibehat " (Because, for the sake of multiplying posterity, no law forbade m.iny wives). Bishop Burnet, chaplain to Queen Anne, says : " Polygan.y was made, in some cases, a duty by Moses' law." Martin Luther says: "The Mosiic law concerning tho wife of a deceased brother and a daughter diilled against the father's con- sent, are well known, which compel a man to have a plurality of wives." To this Your Lordship asw.its, for you say ** under tho Mosiac law a man might have many wives." Was the marriage law, therefore, which he laid down intended to bo binding beyond his own state or not ? If not, then we are not governed by it ; if so, then Mormonism is right and polygamy should be tho law in Canada; and when Christ said to his disciples "henceforth ye shall catch men," he meant " it will be your chief business henceforth," as it seems always to have been with the clergy, especially with the bishops " to catch women." The Metropolitan, in his address before the Provincial Synod at Montreal a few months ago, said that " we are under the law to Christ." The Kev. Mr. Madan, a clergyman of our own church, was right when he urged the doctrine believed in by many high church clergymen and apparently by the Metropolitan, that polygamy ourfht to be the law in the British dominions. Paul, however, held a decidedly different opinion, for he says, " we are no longer under the law, but under grace ; the law was our schoolmaster to bring us to Christ." St, Basil, Bishop of Csesarea (A.D. 340) says the marriage laws of Moses are no more binding in the Christian Church than circumcision or other ceremonial rites. " Whatever the law saith," says St. Basil, " it says to them that are under the law, else by parity of reasoning circumcision and the sabbath and abstinence from meats might be urged upon us." But Your Lordship has surrendered the whole argument. To avoid the responsibility of encouraging divorce, which Moses in many cases per- mitted, you say his marriage law is no longer binding ! ! Your words are " Moses allowed the Jews to put away their wives, but the Great Reformer restored the primeval law of marriage as we have it in Genesis ii, 24 ! 1 " But with high churchmen and Roman Catholics it is not what the scrip- tures teach — having forged a large portion of them — that decides questions ecclesiastical, but what the church teaches ; and this is plainly the secret 48 belief of Your liOnlsliii). I u your petition to Pailiamout, l>efore citiii;,' tlio ovidcnco of Holy Hcriptiuc, you »irm' ub lir.st tlio eccfesitistiuil o^i^U)nce : '" tlio Church of Kmjlanil iu Proviiidial Syiioil usHeintili'tl in thf your 1877, Huloninly re-«;niit;to(l the lahla oj cj/initi/," giving your hilnieal uvi(l«.ni'o hh your stcond clause. This is tlio Woctrino of Kov. JJcdfottl Jones, rector of St. Albana, Ottawa, tt cler;;;ytn;in who is u llomaii Cuth.^lic jui. sfc cxci.'pt in mime. His words are : " Tho Holy ScripLure-s in tlio IhukIs of God's ministers are tho divinely ordained means of making men iliihc unto salvHtion. Thu Reriptures are 710 ineana of Kalvution." — (Ottav>a, Citizen, Au^just I7th, ISSO.) That ih, the ordained elergy — in other words the ehureh — .ire higher than the fterip- turos, and tho latter only mean what tin; church says they do. One of tho articles in tho famous creed of Popo Piuri IV is: "I do adndt tho Holy Scriptures in tlie same sense that Holy Mother Church doth, whoso Inisinoa.s it is to judye ot tho true sense and interjirotation of them." Ono of the papal canon laws is : " 0/iinis quae nunc apud nos cut scriptunn auctoritas ah ecclesiw auctoritate necensitrio depemlet ;" thut in : '• all tho aulhurity which we attribute to the scriptures necessarily depends on the authorioy of tho church." Eccius maintains that " ecclesiavi esse scripturiH uniiquioreta et scripturaru non e.we autheuticuin nisi ecclesiac aiictorit.itc," (tho church is more ancient than the scriptures, and the scriptures are not authentic, save hy the authority of tho church). Hon. John Bright, in his speech in tho English House of Commons, April 21st, 18G7, said " .so far as the Catliolic Churcli is concerned they feel it a grievance that in this country tho law is as it is ; because under it the dispensations of tiu;ir church have no eftect." Tho Koman Catholics are willing the bill should pass, because the authority for marriage is not in the Bible, but in the church, and dispensations will he as necessary in the eye of the Sovereign PontilF as they are now, and Your Lordship is opposed to it — not because Moses forbids it — which he does nob — but because the church, which is higher than Mo.ses, has subscribed to a certain table of allinity, which orginated 7iot in the Bible, but in the Ptoman Church and a council of colonial bishops. In order, however, to catch tho support of Protestant dissenters in the Commons you state. My Lord, in your petition — in that contradictory logic which has made you famous — that " the Holy Scriptures plaiidy forbid such marriages," and you appeal to Leviticus for proof! ! But while you are unwilling to judge as to what is right and wrong from the experience of modern society, but must subject our rule of lite to Moses, why have you stumbled on a mite when a monstrous system of iniquity — first introduced by Christian bishops, and which is condemned by Moses — exists in your own city as well as every other on the continent — to women a sea of sorrow that has no shore and a crime against our sex that reaches to heaven, threatening the moral and physical destruction, not only of ycuth, but of the human race. How piously Your Lordship can talk of the Christian hand of England that is staying the African slave trade — which, however, first introduced it in the person of Sir John Hawkins — but who ever heard of an English bishop, except the son of the great Wilberforce, of abolition memory, either within or without the House of Lords, ever refer- ring to the thousands of baautiful Georgian and Circassian women tliat are hourly abducted and sold under the rod of the auctioneer to tho beasts of Constantinople, when not a night passes there are not sacks thrown into the Bosphorus c aitaining the mutilated, worn out, and murdered bodies of thuso once beautiful women. This trade Russia called piracy, but her attempts to destroy i' wee frustrated by the holders of Turkish bonds, and the Shylocks of London, vvhu;o .influence was suliicient to send Her Majesty's fic't into the » U sac j"t hoi N« m thj to hJ th inl ml Pi 86 49 h tlie '•• tho liiiiily tcond harm, ifis p till) Uurt'S [lib in, icrip- \i tlio Holy It is; Tlio h Algenn Sea. Little did the Britinli soldier know when freezing in tho trenches btiiore SehiiHtopol and breathing out liin brave life on the red tieldtt of Alma and ot Inkcrrnan that he wuh fighting in tho caune of the Great Red Ortigon, born under the throne of (Jhristianity and Judaism, an I wliich fiiods and lives upon tho lu'iiuty, virtue and blood of modern women. Did the lords spiritmil, though their blood cried to them from the ground, ever press the nuignitudo of this iniquity upon the attention of Her Majesty's Government 1 Not once. Nor has Your Lordsliijj over declared from tho puljjit that hundreds and tiiotjsands of young Canadian women are annually waylaiil and kidnap))ed* to lead a life of shame more horrible than death, even to crucifixion with the wormwood and tho gall. But why did yon not attack Sir John Macdonald for asking an appropria- tion to take tho census in 1881 I for this is plaiidy forbidden in scripture (1 Chron., xxi, 1). Why did you not reprove him for legislating to legalize a certain percentage in usury 1 for Moses, in this same book of Leviticus, says : "Thou shalt not give thy brother thy money upon usury! nor lend him thy victuals for increase." — (Lovit. xxv, 37.) Is there a church in Your Lord- ship's diocese that is not five times more expensive than people can aflbrd, and in which we are dunned the annual round for money to pay interest on mortgages] Why did you not excommunicato tho Minister of the Interior for selling, and Hon. Edward Blako for advising to sell, the lands of the North- West] for Moses says, "The land shall not be sold forever, for the land is mine." — (Lovit. xxv, 20.) There are bishops in the Church of England who are fond of blood pudding, but this diet is strictly forbidden by Moses ! — (Lovit. xvii, 12.) In Levit. xxi, 5, it is written : " Thou shalt not shave oti' the corner of thy beanJ ! " Moses says, " neither shall a garment mingled ot linen and woollen come upon thee" (Levi xix, 19); for this ancient National Policy lawgivei, like the enlightened legi-slatjrs of modern days, did not wish to see the money sent out of his own country to purchase the linen of Egypt. But even this plain Mosaic command you were never known to respect, for although Your Lordship is fond of attending National Policy banquets you have ever contended for the use of the linen surplice in tho Church of England. Moses says : " The seventh year shall be a sabbath of rest unto the land ; thou shalt neither sow thy seed nor prune thy vineyard." — (Lev. xxv, 27.) Did you ever attempt to show the ministry what a blissful thing it would be — enjoined upon them by Moses ! — to introduce the sabbatical year into Canada 1 " Every fiftieth year shall be a year of jubilee." — (ch. xxv, 11.) Have you ever sought to obtain for this country a year of jubilee ] Moses says : " Remember the sabbath day (Saturday) to keep it holy," and yet this day is not held as sacred with the Church of England. Nay, let me ask. My Lord, while I bid you adieu, does the church now to promote its ends resort less to disreputable cunning and fraud than in the days of Synesins, who declared that "lies and fiction are useful to the people ] " Do the clergy aim less to captivate, pillage and humiliate women than in the first ages of Christianity, when they robbed them at tho confessional, discouraged marriage, legalized polygamy, and in consequence of scandalous misdemeanours were lorbidden by the chief even to enter the houses of widows and virgins, the em- magistrate ♦A villain who is supposed by the police to have been connected with the ruin for purposes of prostitution of one or two hundred girls, is, on conviction in one case, sentenced to six months' imprisonment and a fine of one hundred dollars. — Montreal Wilneas, July, 1881. 4 vi 50 peror himself tlireatening their disobedience with the animadversion of the civil judge? Are bishops more honourable in their private life than was Judah, or David, or Solomon, or Paul Bishop of Antioch, who had several wives, or even St. Augustine — less worthy of being classed as money-sharks and winebibbers, friends of publicans and sinners, — than were the first successors of the apostles ] Those are questions Your Lordship will not answer. Nor is it necessary. Your appearance, My Lord, in the lobby of the Senate to secure the defeat of Mr. Girouard's bill, and the uniform tenor of your past career, are an answer to them all. GUNHILDA. of life och, -ing ^,— ions My bill, q:{