Ex Libris C. K. OGDEN CM . / - /t AN INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS, BV COMMAND OF THE PRESENT POPE, GREGORY XVI. IN 1835; BEING THE LATEST SPECIMEN OF THE LITERARY POLICY OF THE CHURCH OF ROME. REV. JOSEPH MENDHAM, M.A. M.E.H S. Author of Literary Policy of the Church of Rome, Ijife of Pius V., Memoirs of the Council of Trent, Index Sixti V., Spiritual Venality of Home, 3f. ORATIO. Pulchra Layerna, Da mihi fallere, da justum sancttitnque videri ; Noctem peccatis, et fraudibus objice niibem. HOR. Ep. 16. LONDON : DUNCAN AND MALCOLM, 37 PATERNOSTER ROW. LONDON: PRINTED BV MOVES AND BARCLAY, CASTLE STREET, LEICESTER SQUARE. TO GREGORY XVI. SUPREME LEGISLATOR OF THE PAPAL WORLD, WHO IN 1835 OBLIGED AND BOUND HIS SUBJECTS, AS WELL FOREIGN AS DOMESTIC, WITH A NEW PROMULGATION OF HIS WILL, IN AN INDEX OF PROHIBITED BOOKS, PUBLISHED WITH THE EXPRESS AND ENTIRE SANCTION OF HIS AUTHORITY THIS ATTEMPT TO EXTEND THE CELEBRITY OF SO VALUABLE A BOON, AND TO DO IT MORE JUSTICE THAN HAS BEEN DONE BY THE SECRETARY OF HIS SACRED CONGREGATION IS PERTINENTLY AND GRATEFULLY INSCRIBED BY THE AUTHOR. ~i C PREFACE. THE prospects of Protestant Christianity are im- proving. Light and vitality are beginning to in- fuse themselves into a mass, to which they had too much and too long been strangers. The genuine friends of true religion are rousing to something like preparation for a contest which they see to be un- avoidable and at no great distance ; and the doubt- ful or treacherous are doing them the favour and benefit of going over, more or less openly, to the ranks to which they really belong. Too long had Protestants been deceived and cajoled by the original enemy. They believed professions and demonstrations, because they trusted in the low honour which yet remains, and is one of the last good things to be handoned, in simple human nature, corrupt as it is. They became the dupes of impostors, because they could not believe it to be in that nature, that individuals, professing what is called Christianity, could practise gross and de- liberate deception, and could cherish a heart of settled and destructive hostility, while lips and pens vi PREFACE. exhausted the powers of language to express the fervour of their good will and gratitude. The bitter and the sweet came from the same fountain, and continued most harmoniously to flow in a collateral course: but the one was sincere, the other hypo- criticalthe one meant to be seen, the other to be concealed.* This is now no longer a secret. The faction has gained its end ; and there is now hardly an interest in keeping up the imposition. The dis- ciplina arcani has had its run and its reward, and is now abandoned. But the victors will find, that they have purchased their success full dear. A reckoning will come ; and the very arms by which they prevailed shall come to be the most effectual for their destruction. What they believe, because they have seen, will not be lost upon British Christians. They will have learned a lesson at last by which they will profit. They now perceive how they are to be guarded against, and treat, a foe of the worst will, the most intense and most fraudulent, that this world of sin and malice ever produced. Their natural protec- tors having betrayed them, and let in the Romish wolf among them, they are taught, if any thing can teach them, that it will not do to go on sleep- * See the Speech of Mr. COI.QUHOUN at Exeter Hall, March 11, 1836, where this concurrent flow of professed loyalty and secret rebellion is irresistibly demonstrated and detailed. Standard (Newspaper) and Publications of the Pro. testant Association, Vol. I. PREFACE. Vll insr, and flatter themselves that the wolf will do so O * too. The time is come that they must bestir them- selves in some appropriate and effectual way ; and, having found, that when the iron chains of civil restraint were so lovingly replaced by the chains of cherry-stones, which the dealers in securities had provided, the case was not much mended, they will feel it necessary to gird themselves to a new kind of warfare more within their own power ; and by at- tacking the very citadel of Popery, and exposing its essential iniquity, in principle and practice, they may confidently hope to cover it with an infamy, which, with all its impudence, it shall be able to face no longer. The means are furnished by the Impostor her- self, much of it indeed very involuntarily. The volumes of PETER DENS no longer enjoy the con- cealment of exclusive sacerdotal circulation. Their pages, with their sanction, are thrown open to the profane eyes of heretics ; and those heretics can read, and understand, and publish. The public is acquainted with the disclosure, the denial, and, when interest dictated, the re-acknowledgment, of these books. Their authority, their destined use, has been divulged. They are a mine, which has yielded much, but which is yet unexhausted. The rolls have been opened, and must still continue so. They will afford text for abundant future comment. It will not serve to put off their contents, as the Vl'il PREFACE. opinions of a private doctor, or, according to the suggestion of some weak or designing advocate, a kind of Paley's Philosophy : the main contents are, the most approved doctrines of the most ap- proved doctors of the Roman Church. The main contents are, the solemn, ex cathedra Constitu- tions of the heads of the Italian Church. Nor can they be set aside, or neutralised by being called foreign : they are naturalised and made of force in Ireland and England by non-reclamation, as well as by more formal recognition.* I can barely glance, additionally, at the CONFERENCES, to be regulated by Dens, at the MAYNOOTEI CLASS-BOOKS,-]- at * See M'GHEE in all bis Speeches and Works. t The Account of the Maynooth System, by Mr.O'BEiRNE, just published, has left its vindication only to the most profligate of advocates. The voice of truth will at last be heard and prevail even in the Lower House (and it is low enough) of the British Legislature. Were any portion to be selected for par- ticular attention, I should fix upon that under the head of " the Seal of Confession," pp. 124, &c. Let any honest man read the following, pp. 123-131 : " Were a conspiracy to murder the Queen revealed to the priest in confession, it is an established principle of the Popish Church, as laid down in the Maynooth Class-book, that the horrible intention is not to be disclosed. " In Prussia, the inviolability of the Seal of Confession is not allowed. Whenever it is necessary to prevent treason or to punish murder, the State requires the Romish priest, under severe penalties, to declare to the magistrate whatever he may have learned in confession relative to those crimes. " What a system of instruction ! What a course of educa- PREFACE. IX the DIOCESAN STATUTES, at the BIBLE OF RHEIMS AND DOUAY, with their Annotations, and all the mendacious knavery connected with them. But the subject is before the public, and I trust it will unceasingly be so, till the proper effect is produced. I am not so much concerned with these engines tion for the Roman Catholic priesthood of Ireland ! How can that unhappy country be expected to break its adamantine fetters, while Maynooth College continues to be supported by the Government and the country for the propagation of treason, perjury, sedition, immorality, and vice ! How long will the people of England tamely look on, and passively behold the application of the funds of the country to the support of a sys- tem of education which openly inculcates perjury and murder for the purpose of supporting the diabolical Confessional an institution to which may be ascribed the greater part of the outrages and crimes, the murders and massacres, which have stained and are daily staining unhappy Ireland 1 Owing to the ease of mind necessarily experienced by the murderer in com- municating his horrid deed to the priest at confession, and also the facility of obtaining absolution for his awful crime, murders have lost the greater part of their enormity in the eyes of the demoralised peasantry of Ireland. I am thoroughly convinced that the frequent occurrence of murder in Ireland is principally to be attributed to the pain of mind attendant on being the con- fidant of a guilty secret being removed, by communicating the secret to the priest in confession, and receiving absolution. Every one of common understanding must know what a heavy burden it is to bear the consciousness of crime how distress- ing it is to he the confidant of a guilty secret; but in Ireland, owing to the Confessional, that pain is not felt. If there was no such institution as the Confessional to interpose its au- thority and give the troubled mind an opportunity of obtaining all the comforts of a superstitious religion, not only would murder and other heinous crimes become of less frequent oc- a2 X PREFACE. of imposture, about to turn upon their employers, as with those of the INDEXES OF PROHIBITED BOOKS, which are capable of the same retro-action. These, in the first instance, and as long as they could be continued so, were a work of darkness. But the unwelcome light broke in, and made them manifest, currence, but such crimes would very often (as in this country) be openly acknowledged, and thus the ends of justice obtained. Have there not been numerous instances, in this kingdom, of murderers voluntarily surrendering themselves and confessing their guilt, owing to the dreadful weight with which the con- sciousness of their crime naturally oppressed them? Instances of this kind are unknown in Ireland, owing to the SAFETY- VALVE of the Confessional, by which the instinctive pangs of conscience are completely removed. The priest, according to the Maynooth Class-book, acts as God in the Confessional, (sacerdos peccata confessa excipiens Christi vices ac personam gerit,) and can therefore absolve from all sin, no matter how great ; nor can he ever disclose any communication made to him in confession. Nay more, were he summoned before any tribunal of the country, for example, before a judge of assize, to give evidence relative to r.ny of the prisoners at the bar, although he knew them, by confession, to be robbers or even murderers, he is bound to swear as in ignorance of the fact tout they are good and honest men, because their guilt he became acquainted with as God ; but the judge can examine turn only as man, ' judex confessarium interrogare non potest '"si quatenus hominem.' Admirable system of education, and well worthy of being supported by annual Parliamentary grants of the public money !" I could wish the reader to peruse with some attention pp. 197-208, where he will find a brilliant detection of the artifice, perhaps originally brought into complete practice by Preach encyclopedists, of opposing by weak argument what is maintained by stronger, for a politic demonstration and PREFACE. XI and in some respects harmless. In fact, the tide is now turning ; and the damnatory and prescrip- tive provisions of Rome, for the security of her own heterodox and immoral literature, is one of the best weapons put in the hands of her opponents for its exposure and ultimate demolition. For these deception. The subject is, the delicate one, of the power claimed by the Popes of deposing temporal sovereigns. The bishops of Rome have never ceased meddling with kingdoms, from the reign of the infamous Hildebrand ; at one time plaving off sovereigns against their subjects by persecution, at another subjects against their sovereigns by rebellion, insurrection, or secret assassination, as circumstances or interest required. The Earl of Shrewsbury knows that the power of deposing monarchs, particularly heretical, is in as full claim under Gregory XVI. as under Gregory VII. ; and his present holiness relies upon his beloved son, John, that by means of the pious Institute, and by every other pious and practicable means, he will do his best to bring the necks of Britons under the servile yoke, both civil and religious, which was gloriously shaken off by some of our monarchs; and when one apostate monarch attempted to reimpose it, was again dashed to the ground by the honourable and British efforts of a TALBOT and others more noble by their actions than their birth, and throwing forward a shade of infamy upon any degenerate descendant who should thereafter betray so righteous a cause. His infallibility, in a letter which deserves to be perpetuated, should have been better advised than to tnlk of his first name- sake's enlightening Britain. His more enlightened sons huve taken care to confine the enlightening to the Saxons, or Anglo- Saxons ; because they knew well enough what answer can be given a fortiori to the larger claim, and indeed to the smaller likewise. See SOAMES. The Pontiff might, perhaps, be thinking of the pretty story in the beginning of the second book of Beda's History, of the British youths exposed for sale Xll PREFACE. documents teach, and infallibly teach, not only what the Church of Rome condemns, but, by her omissions, where knowledge was unavoidable, what she approves. And then, setting aside as unworthy of notice her insolent and brute condemnation of what by its light condemns her darkness, think of in the Roman market, whose unhappy rendition moved the pun- ning commiseration of his predecessor. His holiness likewise was a little overseen in gratuitously suggesting to the imagi- nation of Englishmen, who mav not have forgotten the fires of Smithfidd, " the TORCH of the Catholic faith." The Catholic, the $anctitrima (as Sanders calls her), Mary, gave her subjects a fair specimen of the TORCH with which she meant to enlighten them. James attempted to give another. And the Italian priest, Gregory, with the aid of his beloved sons, hopes yet to apply the Catholic torch more effectually in these lands. But it is, indeed, miserable, that in this sanctuary of freedom there should be found noblemen of education taking their part in a conspiracy to renew spiritual slavery a slavery worse than Egyptian or West Indian in emancipated Britain, and to force or swindle upon it a creed, which it would be pure and ungracious irrny to suppose that, in its peculiarity, they believe therr selves. T'-e word swindle I use deliberately. Xone but such or an equh-ilent would adequately express the conduct of Papal individuals and bodies respecting the circulation of small books, particularly that unprincipled one of substituting a Popithfor a Protestant tract, leaving the caver of the latter. And yet an editor of a Popish periodical had the characteristic impudence of his Church to glory in the act. See the Birmingham Catholicon, for January 1836, p. 20. I transcribe the following from the Protestant Magazine, for January 1839. " MODE op PROSELYTING (To the Editor nf the Wolverhampton CJuvmic/e.) -Sir, I beg your insertion of the following facts ; they need no comment, and I shall therefore add none: I PREFACE. Xlll the wagon-load of Papal trumpery, as well as profligacy both in morals and theology, which this foreign monopolist of orthodoxy, virtually, that is, really, approves and recommends. An enumeration of a few only of the books which she have, connected with my church at Bilston, a society for the distribution of religious tracts in my district of the parish; these tracts are enclosed in a cover, bearing the name of the minuter of the district, and containing a few words of admoni- tion to the readers. Last week, Mr. John Hutton, one of those who kindly perform the office of distribution, brought to my curate, the Rev. J. E. Troughton, four Romish tracts under my covers, which had been circulated as if under my direction. The St.. Mary tracts had been torn out, and these Romish tnicts substituted in their place. I shall send the tracts in question to your office, in the humble hope that my brethren in the neighbourhood who may chance to read this paragraph may be upon their guard against a similar ingenuity. " I am, Sir, yours faithfully, " J. B. OWEN, " Incumbent of St. Mary, Bilston." I add another testimony to the same, and to a similar, ' ingenious device," from the same periodical, for May 1840, ]>. 160. " POPISH FRAUDS. Under the covers of the tracts of Religious Societies, other tracts containing Romish doctrines and superstition are now circulated. The cover of the Family Library is in like manner imitated. An engraving similar, at first view, to that on the tracts of the Society for Promoting Christ inn Knowledge is placed on the title-page of the CATIIOI.K INSTITUTE OF (JRKAT BRITAIN. Here, then, is a society espe- cially sanctioned by all the Vicars Apostolic of Great Britain, of which the KARI. OF SHREWSBURY is President, and several of tin- Romanist noblemen and gentlemen Vice-Presidents, and of which all the Romish M.s/io/is and clergy are ex-officio members, putting forth on the face of every copy of its stereo- x i v PREFACE. condemns, and of a few only of the books which she thus approves, is sufficient to convince a child, that the self-nominated mistress of all churches is unworthy of being a scholar of the meanest. Her worst enemies need not desire more effectual ex- typed tracts what looks very much like a deliberate attempt to impose on the poor uneducated persons among whom they are circulated." See, too, Record, April 6, 1840, from the Morning Herald, where it appears, that the word Catholic above Family Library is printed in small German letters with what effect among the illiterate is plain : the intention may be fairly inferred. The fallacious, arid palpably dishonest, as well as nugatory, declaration of the Papal prelates, &c. in 1826, founded on the celebrated Eiposition (or rather Imposition) of Bossuet, is pushed into fresh circulation. Every informed Romanist knows that this work does not contain the honest doctrine of his Chuch, and thart it never had the approbation of the head of his Church. A thing was issued meaning to cheat the author and the world with the notion that it was given : but it was plainly eluded. BAVSSET, who wrote the Life of the bishop, is utterly unable, with all his efforts, to stand against palpable fact See Hist. i. pp. 172, &c. or Liv. iii. xiii.-xv. He may satisfy persons, who, like "J. R." in the Gentleman's Magazine, are, or appear to be, satisfied with any thing on their own side. The specimens of dishonesty and artifice united which I have adduced are nothing irregular or abhorrent from the Papal system. In fact they are a natural and almost an essential part. Noble lords are not indeed to be accused of knowing or sanctioning them, till they are so notorious that they cannot be unknown or denied. To treat of BRIBERY and INTIMIDATION of all forms, as the subject deserves, would exceed my bounds. Let Lulworth Castle, or Stoke Alton Towers, Tavistock, and numberless other places, speak. A copy of the entire epistle of Gregory finds an appropriate place in the present work, as emanating from the person who PREFACE. XV posures of her disgraceful nakedness than are afforded by the pages of her own Catalogues of condemned books in redundant quantity. Were not an infatuation operating in the case, we might wonder that the more honest and better educated, even of her own communion, are not published the Index which is its subject, and as exhibiting a congenial character in its direct aspect. " POPE GREGORY XVI. " To our Beloved Son, John Earl of Shrewsbury, President of the Catholic Institute of Great Britain. "Beloved son, health and apostolical benediction. Whilst rilled with sorrow, on account of the ever-increasing calamities of the Church of Christ, we have received such abundant cause of gladness, as has not only relieved us in the bitterness wherewith we were afflicted, but has excited in us more than ordinary joy ; for we have been informed that, by the care of yourself, and other noble and pious men, the Catholic Institute was, two 3 r ears ago, established in Great Britain, with the design especially of protecting the followers of our Divine faith in freedom and security, and, by the publication of works, of vindicating the spouse of the immaculate Lamb from the calumnies of the heterodox. Since, therefore, these purposes tend in the highest degree to the advantage of the English nation, you can easily understand, beloved son, the reason why such joy should have been felt by us, who have been, by Divine appointment, constituted the heirs of the name and chair of that Gregory the. Great, who, by the torch of the Catholic fctitb, first enlightened Britain, involved in the dark- ness of idolatry. We are encouraged to entertain the cheering hope that the light of Divine faith will again shine with the same brightness as of old upon the minds of the British people. We desire nothing with greater earnestness than to embrace once more with paternal exultation the English nation. Wherefore, beloved son, we cannot refrain from XVI PREFACE. shocked and alienated by the injustice, the varia- tion, the trickery, and dishonesty discoverable in almost every literary sentence of their supreme head, when he assumes to sit as judge upon moral and religious doctrine and learning ; and that they do not at once give him up as the sovereign arbiter of their faith, who, in order to keep good his title to philosophic orthodoxy, is obliged to expunge a solemn decision of his own of two centuries' standing. There is plainly an infatuation in the case ; strenuously exhorting you, and all the members of the pious Association over which you preside, to offer up fervent prayers with us to the Father of Mercies,* that he would propitiously remove the lamentable darkness which still covers the minds of so many dwelling unh-.ippily in error, and in his clemency bring the children of the Church.t who have wandered from her, back to the bosom of the mother whom they have left. " Meanwhile, to you and to all your countrymen, who belong in any way to the Catholic Institute, we most affection- ately impart our Apostolical benediction. " Given at Rome, at St. Peter's, on the 19th day of February, 1840, the tenth of our Pontificate. "GREGORY, " P. P. XVI." * His holiness, it appears, has most unaccountably forgotten his " Patroness and Protectress," "his greatest hope, yea the entire ground of his Lope" the most blessed Virgin Mary. Perhaps eight years have improved his divinity. t "The children of the Church,' 1 enlisted by baptism, of any kind, into the Pope's church militant, and punishable as deserters if they leave it. PREFACE. XV11 and they who imagine that the infatuation is weak, or little formidable, have much to learn of human nature. Well adorned and well managed, Popery has something in the more plausible faculties and tendencies of the soul of man exactly adapted, and responsive, to its main attractions and solicit- ations. When, indeed, surveyed in its true de- formity, it has every thing to repel a sound under- standing and really holy feeling. But it has cover- ings and ornaments which its native sagacity prompts, and enables it to throw over its repulsive features ; and nothing more is necessary than a due calculation of human folly and human corrup- tion to account at once for the progress of such a mockery of Christianity as is the Papal system ; and really to wonder, that its progress is not tenfold greater than it is. But though falsehood is mighty, truth and holiness are oftentimes mightier, even in their effects on such intractable matter as the human soul. But falsehood still, with that intractability to good which is all in its favour, is deplorably mighty. To advert only to the more specious, and, distinctly from their application, innocent propen- sities of humanity what costly and energetic appeals are made to the various senses, particularly to the vague but mighty instinct of natural devo- tion ! what gorgeous and imposing apparel in the ministering priesthood !- what profusion of superb ceremonies! what splendour of precious stones XV111 PREFACE. and metals in the sacred vessels! what spiritual intoxication of melody and harmony, both vocal and instrumental ! what scientific and successful management of light and position ! in short, what a masterly performance of the whole external, sensual, and sensualising exhibition, where eye and ear have every imaginable gratification allotted to them ! So that the simple victims of the enchant- ment, instead of a saving religion, which will bring them to heaven, and fit them for it, find, to their endless disappointment, unless escaped from, that they have embraced, and mocked themselves with, a brilliant but noxious phantasm an inflated inanity a religion of sound and sentimentality made up of chants and anthems ; of copes, tunicles, albes, chasibles, and stoles; of the diversified luxuries of masonry and sculpture, arches, vaulted roofs, picturesque windows, carved and embossed; not to add, grotesque and satirical ornaments of all sorts, with shrines, monuments, tapers, and every ornament devisable by human ingenuity and last, not least, of the " dim religious light," so apt and expressive an emblem of the supersti- tion which it is meant to recommend, even in its most favourable form. This is the real material, though the formal may, and must, vary a cir- cumstance which presents the only admissible miti- gation in the affair; and it is admitted, as far as it extends, with joy. PREFACE. XIX Either simply and officiously, or insidiously, some individuals are fond of pushing forward this sen- timent, as if it were a discovery, or denied. It is far from either. With every charity to such names as the familiar ones of Pascal, Fenelon, Flechier, and others, be it known, that they were all distinguished, not only by bigoted intolerance against presumed heretics, but by mutual condem- nations, and by the condemnation of what was good in them by their own Church, which is thus quit of all the benefit which she might derive, and is perversely made to derive, from their Christian excellence, for which they were indebted, not to their Church, but to that unextinguished Christ- ianity, which their Church denounced and perse- cuted, and does so still. All the three who are named were respective persecutors, bigots, and enemies to the free circulation of the Scriptures : and they were all material idolaters. We believe, however, that a God of mercy regards circum- stances ; and that offences in the midst of dark- ness, and offences in the midst of light, will be visited by him in a very different manner. Every sincere and feeling Christian catches with eagerness at the supposition of so happy an incon- sistency as that presented in the instances just pro- duced. He cannot but detest fundamental error and corruption introduced into, and, as far as it prevails, poisoning, the religion which is all his hope, XX PREFACE. all his honour all the hope, and honour, and happiness of his fellow-sinners, if, and when, con- verted. He considers Popery as none the better for being the corruption of the best. He would rather see a noisome reptile on a dunghill than in a room of state ; and poison is not the more acceptable for being presented in a golden chalice. But the subjects of Papal antichrist are yet fellow-creatures; they are yet spiritual, immortal, and accountable creatures ; they may yet escape from their spiritual delusion and thraldom. For suck, no Protestant Christian exists, who does not entertain the sin- cerest and most fervent charity. He feels for them precisely as St. Paul did for his countrymen, similarly circumstanced, though they were no idolaters, not even materially, much \essformally. Our hearts' desire for every subject of erring Rome is, that he may be converted and be saved. There is a class I fear a large one of which we must think and speak in a far different strain. They are not the deluded, but those who silently and basely acquiesce in the delusion, knowing it to be such ; or, not simply acquiescing in it, but promoting it with the same knowledge. I will not say, but 1 believe, this to be the case with many of the clergy, nobility, and higher orders.* It is, * In the examination by the Committee of the Lords on the State of Ireland, of the Rev. JOHN BURNET, then of Cork, March 16, 1825, occurs the answer " Some gentlemen of the PREFACE. XXI indeed, impossible that some of the men of educa- tion among them must not be sensible of the utter nullity of so palpable a fable as Popery. Exclu- sion of all other objects may go a great way to bend the mind to an acceptanoe of such a system as true ; but common sense will find, or make, chinks to enter, whatever pains may be taken to exclude it. Acid what does all this exclusion, and the effort to produce it, mean ? What mean pro- hibitory and expurgatory Indexes ? Why may not the accused at least be heard ? Is there fear, that if they are heard, by the might of truth they must prevail ? I believe this to be both the fact and the motive ; and I believe every tolerably enlightened Papal priest to believe the same. But in what an awful predicament does this place them ! May they reflect and repent in time ! In opposition to the view here, and generally given, it is alleged, that many individual Romanists have in past time borne, and in the present bear, a high reputation, not only for piety, but likewise, and particularly, for humanity ; and that it is emi- nent injustice to deny them this praise. Nor is it Catholic community, men of information, have distinctly told me so themselves " that their profession was a point of honour. " They said, that they do not believe in the Catholic system of religion, nor in any other system of religion; but as their parents have been Catholics, they profess the religion of their parents, and adhere to that profession, because they believe the Catholics to be an oppressed people." The fact, however, is notorious, and could not be otherwise. XX11 PREFACE. denied. We have neither desire nor temptation to do it. Wherever, from circumstances, their peculiar faith fails, or is feeble, in its operation upon them, the principles of simple and independent Christianity are at liberty to act and produce their genuine effects in proportion to their force and purity. But it is past denial, that wherever the Church, that is, of Rome, commands, every true son of that Church must and will obey, whatever repugnance his natu- ral conscience, or natural humanity, may feel and oppose ; and there is not a nation where Christianity has been exposed to the superior power of Popery, whose history in such times has not been written in letters of blood ; and in this nation, in particular, the Italian usurper and his instruments will have an awful account to settle for the barbarities perpetrated by them under the name and pretence of religion. That these agents of religious cruelty may, aloof from their intolerant creed, have possessed every valuable and even amiable qualification, only serves to aggravate the charge against a misnamed religion, which no human virtue has power to arrest in her inhuman course, and which, in that course, can even convert the benevolent into savages. The concluding reflection of Bishop Mant in his valuable His tory of the Church of Ireland, on the character of Mary I. of England, is just and important. Having sug- gested the sincerity of her zeal as the cause of her cruelty, he adds, " But the more her evil deeds are extenuated, by the supposition of the sincerity of her PREFACE. XXlll zeal, the more deep and dark is the brand of igno- miny stamped upon that form of Christianity which actuated her in so nefarious a career."* * NICCOLA ORLANDINO was of noble family and author of the first part of the Historia Societatis Jesit. The work was published after his death by his Continuator, Francesco Sacchino, who, in a prefatory account of the deceased, says that he was Moribus suavibus, ingenio candido, &c. See how he speaks of Luther's death, lib. vi. 59 : Deus * * * portentum illud orbis ter- rarum, seminatorem malorum omnium, & hujus temporis Anti- christum de medio sustulit. Piget infernum hoc monstrum suo nomine nominare. Ille, inquam, Catholicse Religionis trans- fuga, desertorque Coenobii, instaurator hajresium omnium, illud Dei & hominum odium, duodetrigesimo suae defectionis anno, cum laute et spleudide cotnatus esset, facetiisque de more lusisset, ea ipsa nocte, repentino morbo correptus, jugu- latusque, sceleratissimam animam vomuit, gratissimam Satanre hostiam, qui se talibus oblectat escis, unde ejus saturetur in- gluvies. Such and more is the language of this sweet and candid man ; and it only shews into what brutes even such men may be transformed by being nursed with the milk of the Roman Tigress. For the lying calumny itself, it is the familiar language of the faithful children of the original liar. Corn- template Cardinal Pole in some of his candid moods, and then read his Pro Ecclesiastics Unitatis Defensione Lib. IV. The mite ingeninm of Cardinal Allen is likewise beautifully illustrated in the Catholic effusion of the Admonition to the Nobility, &c. "This tyrant," (Queen Elizabeth) " the infinite quantity and enormous quality of her most execrable wickedness" ''her horrible sacrifices," &c. " Luciferian pride" "Incestuous bastard ! born in sin, of an infamous courtesan, Anne Bullen," &c. &c. Pretty language to be addressed to the Nobility of the time! Even Mr. Tierney dares not to give the whole ori- ginal. On whosesoever's personal back it is to fall, whether Allen's, who gives his name to it, or the foul Parsons's, it falls ultimately upon the Papal Church. XXIV PREFACE. It may seem almost superfluous to observe, but it is important to consider, that the charge against Rome for her literary proscriptions does not attach to the simple act of censure or condemnation, but to the objects, quality, and character, of the cen- sure or condemnation. For there is not a determi- nation on the subject more just or applicable than that of the poet, Si mala condiderit in quern quis carmina, jus est Judiciumque. H. Esto, si quis mala; sed bona si quis, &c. HOR. Sat. II. 1. And to one affecting Academic sagacity, who should insist or insinuate, that the determination is indeci- sive, it may be enough to say, that there are many points on which suspense is allowable and even un- avoidable, and there are likewise others, not a few, which are about as certain, as that darkness is not light. Apart from books of impiety, obscenity, magic, &c. which, for form's sake, and for policy's sake, are condemned, and which are readily given up by all, let any one call to mind the other objects of reprobation, which are almost exclusively books of evangelical piety, and emphatically translations of the Scriptures, most hypocritically denounced as unfaithful ; and which, where particular passages are specified (as in the single Expurgatory of Rome, or the numerous ones of Catholic Spain,) are for the most part the main and saving truths of the Gospel, particu- larly justification by faith in Christ alone and then PREFACE. XXV let him say, whether these are not decisive and burning proofs of guilt. Although the present work may be justly and advantageously considered as a sequel to the Liter- ary Policy, it is perfectly distinct and independent ; and, without troubling himself with any thing which has preceded on the subject, the reader may here learn, what may be regarded as the present Pope's Profession of his own and his Church's Literary Faith, particularly as embracing what he considers as his proper and exclusive province, Theology. His Holiness has furnished facts, which it will remain for time to discover, with what prudence they have been made public. He has certainly, whether in- errably or not, calculated pretty freely upon the indifference or stolidity of Protestants. The very scarce Roman Catalogue of Prohibited Books printed at Venice in 1554, and here reprinted, will be valued, I doubt not, by students of the higher class. I am happy in this labour, contracted as it is, to follow the example of my estimable friend, the Rev. RICHARD GIBBINGS, of Trinity College, Dublin, to whom the public and myself are in- debted, not only for an elaborately exact reprint and facsimile of the rare Expurgatory of Brasi- chellen, but also for a Preface highly creditable to his learning, research, and judgment, and from which I have derived more important information than I was aware was extant. I may be allowed here to b XXVI PREFACE. allude likewise to my own rescue of the Index of a vigorous pontiff, Sixtus V., from intended and well-provided-for destruction and oblivion. It is seldom, indeed, that guilt of any kind, and particu- larly fraud, gains so much by its primary success, as not to be wofully overbalanced and punished by the effects of its subsequent detection, when that takes place, which may generally be reckoned upon. As a striking and instructing illustration of the familiar confidence with which the disciples of Rome put forward their most extravagant and base- less pretensions, as well as of the cool insensibility with which they receive the most palpable exposure of their literary dishonesty, I will present the reader with a quotation from a work not in every hand, and one of considerable ability and importance " Roman Forgeries, or a true account of False Records, discovering the Impostures and Counter- feit Antiquities of the Church of Rome. By a Faithful Son of the Church of England [THOMAS TRAHERNE], London, 1673." At the end of his Advertisement to the Reader, this author introduces, as an incident which befell him while in pursuit of his favourite studies, that which follows : these are his words " One evening, as I came out of the Bodleian Library, which is the glory of Oxford and this nation, at the stairs' foot I was saluted by a person that has deserved well PREFACE. XXV11 both of scholars and learning, who, being an intimate friend of mine, told me there was a gentleman, his cousin, pointing to a grave person in the Quadrangle, a man that had spent many thousand pounds in pro- moting Popery ; and that he had a desire to speak with me. The gentleman came up to us of his own accord. We agreed for the greater liberty and privacy to walk abroad into the New Parks. He was a notable man, of an eloquent tongue, and competent reading ; bold, forward, talkative enough. He told me, that the Church of Rome had Eleven Millions of Martyrs, Seventeen (Ecumenical Coun- cils, above a Hundred Provincial Councils, all the Doctors, all the Fathers, Unity, Antiquity, Consent, &c. I desired him to name me One of his Eleven Million of Martyrs, excepting those who died for treason in Queen Elizabeth's and King James's days. For the martyrs of the primitive times were martyrs of the Catholic, but not of the Roman Church, they only being martyrs of the Roman Church that die for Transubstantiation, the Popes Supremacy, the doctrine of Merits, Purgatory, and the like. So many he told me they had, but I could not get him to name one. As for his Coun- cils, Antiquities, and Fathers, I asked him what he would say, if I could clearly prove that the Church of Rome was guilty of forging them, so far, that they had published Canons in the Apostles' names, and invented Councils that never were; forged XXV111 PREFACE. Letters of Fathers, and Decretal Epistles, in the name of the first bishops and martyrs of Rome, made five, six, seven hundred years after they were dead, to the utter disguising and defacing of An- tiquity for the first four hundred years after our Saviour ? ' Tush ! these are nothing but lies,' quoth he, ' whereby the Protestants endeavour to disgrace the Papists' ' Sir,' answered I, ' you are a scholar, and have heard of Isidore Mercator, James Merlin, Peter Crabbe, Laurentius Surius, Severinus Binius, Labbe and Cossart, and the Collectio Regia, books of vast bulk and price, as well as of great majesty and magnificence. You met me this evening at the library door : if you please to meet me there to- morrow morning at eight of the clock, I will take you in ; and we will go from class to class, from book to book ; and there I will shew you in your own authors, that you publish such instruments for good records ; and then prove, that those instru- ments are downright frauds and forgeries, though cited by you upon all occasions.' He would not come ; but made this strange reply : ' What if they be forgeries ? what hurt is that to the Church of Rome?' ' No !' (cried I, amazed.) 'Is it no hurt to the Church of Rome to be found guilty of forging Canons in the Apostles' names, and Epistles in the Fathers' names, which they never made ? Is it nothing in Rome to be guilty of coun- terfeiting Decrees, and Councils, and Records of PREFACE. XXXI Antiquity ? I have done with you.' Whereupon I turned from him as an obdurate person." I cannot forbear an observation upon the correct distinction of Traherne, that they only can be claimed as Rome's martyrs, who suffered for Transubstantiation, the Pope's Supremacy, Merits, Purgatory, and the like. These only, and most truly, are Rome's, or her Sovereign's martyrs. On the subject of such martyrs, there is a fine apostrophe in the highly interesting and strangely overlooked work of the celebrated Dr. DONNE, the Pseudo-martyr, in defence of James the First's Oath of Allegiance, but embracing allied topics of much originality and moment. In the " Preface to the Priests and Jesuits, and to their Disciples in this kingdom," towards the close, he breaks out " I call to witness against you those whose testimony God himself hath accepted. Speak then and testify, O you glorious and triumphant Army of Martyrs, who enjoy now a permanent triumph in heaven, which knew the voice of your Shepherd, and stayed still he called, and went then with all alacrity Is there any man received into your blessed legion, by title of such a death, as Sedition, Scandal, or any human respect occasioned ? O no ; for they which are in possession of that Laurel are such as have washed their garments, not in their own blood only, (for so they might still remain red and b 2 XXX PREFACE. stained,) but in the blood of the Lamb which changes them to white"* The martyrs here most justly dis-canonized are so truly his Holiness's martyrs, that he is entitled to the full and sole credit of their murder himself * As concerns James's Oath of Allegiance it may be worth while to consult the account given by CHARLES DODD, author of the Ecclesiastical History in his Secret Policy of the Society of Jesus, &c., letter xiv. pp. 190-5, of the way in which those gems of purest Catholicity could play fast and loose with oaths and obligations, either of allegiance or rebellion ; and how, by their own conduct in defiance of Papal fulmina- tions, they justified the secular clergy, who took James's oath with the same heretical contempt of the head of the Church. The whole of Dodd's work is replete with exposures of Jesuitic immorality and knavery, as pungent and indignant as any which might be expected to flow from a Protestant pen : and it is a matter of some surprise, that the author should appear almost wholly unconscious, that no small measure of the castigation, which he deals out to individuals certainly very deserving of it, recoils upon the communion of the casti gator himself. True, as is done in many similar cases, he endeavours to atone for his apparently traitorous severity by occasional sallies of superfluous bitterness against presumed heretics: but the spon. taneous advantage which he has given those heretics, while he only thought of avenging a personal quarrel, is neither affected nor diminished by this circumstance. Campion, it appears, made no scruple of professing obedience to be due to Elizabeth as a lawful sovereign. The work is uncommon, and, at the pre- sent, and apparently approaching, crisis, peculiarly valuable. That this, as well as the History of the College of Douay, which gave occasion to it, as exciting the intemperate attack of a son of Ignatiusis, a production of C. Dodd, though both are anony. mous, is considered as not admitting a doubt by a very com- petent witness in the Catholicon for 1816, Vol. IV. pp. 120, &c, signing himself K, and who, I presume, is the Rev. Mr. KIRK of Lichfield. PREFACE. XXXI being the real murderer. For this just and unan- swerable view of the affair I refer to Dr. C. O'CONOR'S Columbanus, No. VI. pp. 108 and following, under the head " VI. Historical narrative of eleven Priests confined in Newgate for not renouncing the Pope's pretended Deposing Power" They were all but two executed. The whole is amply worthy of every Romanist's serious consideration. The charge against the head of his Church at the time, and every other head in similar circum- stances, is awful and irresistible. It is as plain as any demonstrable proposition can be, that the objection against James's oath of allegiance was not this or that alleged scruple, but the fact, that the oath compassed its intention, and obliged the taker to a real allegiance to his true and natural sovereign, independently of his pretended spiritual, who could easily draw any thing, however temporal, under his spirituality, by means of indirecte, and in ordine ad spiritualia. After enumerating the eleven sufferers with the cause of their suffering, Dr. O'CoNoa observes, " Let us now consider who, in the eye of unprejudiced reason, was the persecutor and executioner of those unfortunate men, James or the Pope? The evidence of facts is irresistible. The question bears not one moment's examination, Qui facit per alium facit per se" On precisely the same principle, and with the same demonstration, the blood of those who suffered PREFACE. for their Papal treason and rebellion in the reign of our Queen Elizabeth, in consequence of the dam- natory bull of Pius V., repeated or unrepealed by Gregory XIII., Sixtus V., Urban VII., Gregory XIV., Innocent IX., and Clement VIII., will be re- quired at the hands of those sovereign lords, their real murderers, at the day of just retribution, when neither bribery, nor force, nor fraud, will be of any avail.* Sutton Coldfield, September 15, 1840. * As a signal specimen of the literary knavery of Rome, and of the hard game it has to play, I will give in a final note, the result of a rather minute examination which I have made in the instance to be brought forward. In my Memoirs of the Council of Trent, pp. 277-9, I had occasion to notice, after James and others, a notorious and interested corruption of a passage in Cyprian, de Unitate Ecclesite. This is not the spe- cimen I now propose to introduce, but another, relative to an edition of CHRYSOSTOM'S Epistle to Ctesarius, first brought to notice in the Latin translation by Peter Martyr, who found it in a library of Florence, and presented it to Archbishop Cran- mer ; with the dispersion of whose library it was lost : Cardinal Perron thence obtained the opportunity, which he did not suf- fer to escape, of questioning its existence. It was, however, discovered in the Florence Library, and printed by EMERIC BIGOT, with PALLADIUS'S Life of Chrysostom, which formed the first and main article, in 1680, at Paris. The doctors of the Sorbonne were not pleased with it ; and before the publication, obtained the suppression and abstraction of the leaves both of the Epistle, and of the part of the preface referring to it ; and indeed of some others, as we shall see. Archbishop WAKE fortunately got possession of those very leaves, and pub- lished them in his Defence of his Exposition, &c. in 1686, Ap- PREFACE. XXXU1 pendii, pp. 142, &c. They had been published in the preceding year by LE MOYNE. See JENKYNS'S Remains of Cranmer, ii. 325, note. The genuineness of the Epistle is now, though reluctantly, admitted by the Benedictine editors of Chrysostom. I propose, however, to be a little more minute upon the subject, and lay before the reader some corroborating phenomena in the copy which I possess. The first leaf, then, containing the title-page, must have been sub- stituted ; for the contents of the volume are there enumerated, and the Epistle does not appear. The leaf after the Dedicatory Epistle must likewise be a substitution for the same reason. And here a new and positive deception commences ; for the article, following the Epistle in question, has the page 225 assigned to it, though 229 is assigned to that immediately preceding. It was en regie to begin the mystification at due distance from the point of main imposition; and a mistaken number might most hopefully be thrown upon the carelessness of the printer, as has been profitably done in other cases. We now get to the Prefatio, Signat. I (2). This is a substituted leaf, in the place of two leaves, or four pages from Signat. i(2) recto to I (3) verso. But the curious and elucidating circumstance in my copy is this. The substituted leaves would, of course, be fresher than the rest, and would, in tech- nical phrase, be set off on the opposite page, if, as appears to be the fact in my copy, the two were placed in contact too early. This has been the case in my copy, and must have taken place while the work lay in sheets, or before binding. Now both the sides, or pages, of the substituted leaf of the Prefatio are found set off one upon a leaf (likewise substi- tuted) immediately preceding the Epistle under view, for a reason which will appear; the other on the fly-leaf at the end. We now proceed to the main article, the Epistle itself. It was necessary to dismiss the immediately preceding leaf, because the Epistle began on the verso of that leaf. The Epistle oc- cupied that verso, or page, and four leaves, or eight pages besides. They are numbered, as in the Preface, in Wake's restoration, in the margin. But here was something of a difficulty : the sudden advance of the pages would betray the XXXIV PREFACE. abstraction. A true son of Rome is seldom at a loss for resources. The page preceding the substitution is 234 ; the next would be 235; but the careless printer might naturally mistake the middle number and make it 245. Here is a new confusion in an unsuspicious place. Then, next to this sub- stituted leaf is another quite new, and blank, with only a ge- neral title of what follows, with no page, and with the sig- nature (to get on) Hh, when it should in order be Gg iii. Then we land on the next article with its due and original page 245, which was provokingly anticipated by the careless printer, and the signature Hh iii another advance. The second of the two substitutes here mentioned is set off on p. 234, and we shall find the first likewise performing the same act. For, let the reader know, another substituted leaf was necessary, which is the last, being the last of the Index ; and that Index being a particular one of the first and main article, the Life by Pal- ladius, there followed another, at the end of which was the Privilegium. That last Index would let out all. It was there- fore dismissed, and with it the last leaf of the former Index, in order, with a new leaf, to get in the Privilegium at the end. This is done ; the substituted page is found set off on the recto of the substituted leaf immediately following p. 234, while, at the same time, it receives the impression, of which we were in quest, of the very page, falsely numbered 245. It is seldom that fraud presents us with so many subsidiary points of detection, so minute, so accidental, and yet so de- cisive. This instance of disgraceful exposure, it might have been expected, would have taught Roman editors a little caution. But the instance exactly similar in the case of Baluzius's edition of Cyprian, and in which nearly the same phenomena are visible, proves that the Church of Rome, on even a moderate temptation, does not know how to act honestly. At pp. 106, 7, where Ferrari is referred to as declaring, that the reading of prohibited books, even where the prohibition is not enforced, is yet, and nevertheless, a violation of a precept of the Church, it should perhaps have been added, that such violation is in the Papal code a mortal sin, subjecting to eternal PREFACE. XXXV death. So Dr. JAMES BUTLER, in his popular Catechism, approved by Dr. DOYLE, Dublin, 1827, p. 52, " Q. Do the precepts of the Church oblige under pain of mortal sin'! A. Yes; He that will not hear the Church," &c. So likewise in H. T[UBERVILLE]'S Abridgement of Christian Doctrine, Permissu Snperiorum, p. 66, " Q. What sin is it to break any of these Church commandments? A. A mortal sin of disobedience," &c. It is the same in Dr. DOYLE'S edition of this work, p. 70. Dublin, Coyne, 1828. C A T H A L 0- GVS LIBRORVM HAERETICORVM. * * * Q VI HA C TEN V S colligi potuerut a uiris Catholicis, fup- plendus in dies, fi qui alii ad noti- tiam deuenerint, de commif- fione Tribuna- Us, Sanctiflimae inquifitionis Ve- netiarum. VENETIIS APVD GABRIELEM IVLITVM DE FERRARIS, ET FRATRES. MDLIIII. N O M I N A EORVM QVI MALE DE FIDE SCRIPSERVNT, quorum scripta a Catholicis Legi prohiben- fur. A ACT A colloquii Ratisponce. Acta Comitiorum Augusta. Acta Concilii Tridentini an- no M.D.XLVI. celebrati, una cum annotationibus piis lectuq; dignissimis. Acta AdelpM Clarenbach. Achilles P. Gassarus medicus Augu. Adam Rysser. Admonitio ministrorum uerbi Argenti- nensium. Aenecp Sylvii sen Papce pii ii commen- taria de actis fy gestis Cone. Basilece. Aetius Anomocus. Alexander Alexius {Lamb. Gallam. Alchoranus Franciscanorum. per Franc. A Ich o ra nus Mali u metis. AlpJionsus Aemilius. Alphonsus de Valdes. Hispanus. A 2 Alpha- Alphabetum Christianum. Almaricus. Alnordus. (Illyrici. Arnica fy humilis fy devoid admonitio. Ambrosius Blaurerus. Andreas Carolostadius. Andreas Althameri. Andreas Hosiander. Andreas Hipperius. Andreas Knopen. Andreas Bondestein carolost. Assertio ortodoxa utriusq; in Christo na- tur1. pp. 48, 49. 77 the treatise was written in that language, t do not know that the work is any where ex- tant or accessible. But no one can doubt, particularly considering that it must .precede 1554, that it is the same as is known under the following title, which, as the book itself, is in Latin : Consilium quorundam Episcopo- rvm Bononice congregatorum, quod de ratione stabiliendce Romance Ecclesice Julio III. Ponb. Max. datum est. This document ap- pears in BROWN'S Fasciculus Rerum Exped. fy Fug., which I adduce first, though out of chronological order, for reasons which will appear. It is in the second volume, pp. 641, and following, and is copied from the edition of William Crashaw in 1609, who derived it from different originals, not very distinctly described. There is, however, no reason to doubt their genuineness. It is dated and subscribed thus: Bononice, 20 Octob. Anno MDLIII. 1. Vincentius de Durantibus Episc. Thermularum Brixiensis. 2. Egidius Falceta Episc. Caprulanus. 3. Gerhardus Busdragus Episc. Th essa lo n icensis . VERGERIO, in the first and only volume of 78 his collected works, 1563, includes the Con- silium, with the same date, but without the signatures. WOLFIUS has the work, with the signatures, in his Lectiones Mem., but under the year 1549, and with that date; and con- sistently therewith it is addressed to Paul III., instead of Julius III., and wants the allusion in the end to Mary I. of England, who was not then reigning. If the Italian original had this date, this may have been a translation from it. But this supposition involves conse- quences ; and Wolfius gives no information. Dr. WILLIAM CLAGETT gave a translation in English of this and the preceding Consilium, in 1688, under the title, Slate of the Church of Rome when the Reformation began, &c. ; and in his preface rather wonders at the varia- tion of Wolfius, as if he transcribed from "a false copy." It deserves here to be mentioned, that there is another piece very similar to that under consideration, and, I have no doubt, proceeding from the pen of Vergerio, the first edition of which, as it plainly is, being, in the copy which I have, bound up with other acknowledged productions of the same author, Actiones DUCK, Address to the Dominican fathers about il Roaario, and others. It is 79 entitled, Exemplum Liter arum R. D. Gerardi Dusdragi in Episcopatu Patavino Suffraganei. Ad Illustrissimum et Reverendissimum D..D. Franciscum Pisanum, In quibus agitur. Qita- r/arn ratione prceservari possit Italia, ne Lu- theranismo inficiatur. It is subscribed, Datum Padua die xv Decembris, Anno M.D.LVIIT. Gerardus Busdragus, Episcopvs Argolicensis. It may be seen likewise in GERDESII Miscell. Groning. I. 319, &c. He was not aware of the original edition. Now here a question of some importance arises. Most writers, all indeed, whom I have named, consider the Bolognese Consilium as a serious and real thing, and not as the fiction of Vergerio, like his Actiones and some other works. Clagett, in the preface to his transla- tion, ingeniously enough observes, that the dif- ference between the two Consilia seems to be this, that the Advisers in the first seemed to be serious, and were not ; those in the latter were serious, and seemed not to be so. It must be acknowledged, that in the piece with which we are now concerned, there is every appear- ance of a highly finished parody or satire, such as would naturally flow from the pen of Erasmus or Vergerio. But it may be said with justice, 80 that men of such views and necessities as be- long to every Papal corporation, when they talk freely and confidentially among them- selves, often, without being sensible of it. use language which appears very like the ridicule of their opponents. And it must be admitted that, in trying matters of fact, mere internal evidence is frequently very insufficient and de- lusive. A clever speculator in this way might easily prove to his own satisfaction, that every action in the life of Julius Caesar, or any other well-known individual, was highly improbable; and perhaps bring himself, and others like himself, to the conclusion, that no such person ever existed. But there is reason in things ; and we have in the present case some data of facts, which may serve as a guide and test. Vergerio himself might have settled the business ; and in the preface to his collected works he has done something. After correct- ing the mistake of some, who thought his Actiones a real transaction, he says of the other contents, one of which is the Bolo;nese * O Consilium Quid inaliis Tractatibus aaatur,non opus est dicer e, cum apertissime my recollection serves Ranke's Popes, of course, as the fact will prove, at a later part of the year. Now it would be nothing very extraordinary, in this case, since the only portion of his history in which he had any concern with Tridentine matters was confined to the first volume, if he had omitted all reference to certain English memoirs of the Council : unless, indeed, this view were contradicted by an express assertion of his own, that he had purposely neglected those English memoirs for certain alleged reasons. It is well known by those who have any acquaintance with the Berlin professor's able, but far from faultless, work, that his views of the transactions which he records are very summary and sketchy ; and that in rather an arbitrary manner, as well as degree. It is likewise to be observed, that the author has pretty exclusively confined himself to the MSS. documents to which he had access, generally pretermitting printed and common sources. And it is the fact, that in his brief outline of the two first assemblies of the Council of 124 Trent, there is no reference to the English memoirs published in the same year, and, in all probability, not till after the part of Ranke's first volume was in the press and printed. In the account, however, of the third, last, and most important convention of the Council, of which the account occurs pp. 329-351 of the first volume, second edition in 1838, there are three distinct references to the Memoirs, as authority, pp. 334, 344, 345. In the third volume likewise among the documents, in that, the subject of which is Sarpi, p. 276, speaking of a MS. history of Milledonne, which he possessed, he adds, * welche auch Fos- carini und Mendham kennen.' These, added to the reference first adduced, are really more notice than a foreigner, with so little notoriety and introduction as the present writer can pretend to, could well expect from a distant university. The only wonder with me is, that the work was known at Berlin at all, par- ticularly so early. " But now, what becomes of the Dublin Re- viewer's assertion, that Ranke has refrained from quoting Mr. Mendham s Memoirs, with the reason given by the author for the same 't and what becomes of his veracity ? 125 " The reason for a false assertion falls, to- gether with the falsehood of the assertion, and only serves to render the falsehood double. " It will be remembered, that the Dublin Reviewer perhaps throughout he will claim the benefit of an Irish bull has thought fit, under shelter of the Prussian professor, to im- pugn the ' learning,' as well as ' study' of the author of the Memoirs. I am not at all con- cerned to vindicate the learning of that author : but I am concerned to expose to the public the sheer invention, the palpable, interested, calumnious, and, I fear, I must add, inten- tional falsehood, of the gratuitous addition. " The reader who examines well the extract from the Dublin Reviewer, will probably ad- mire the dexterous construction of the whole, and the art displayed in it of intertwining so much neutral truth with so much substantial, though similar, untruth, as either to recom- mend the fabrication in a lump, or provide a point of defence on detection, as the case may require. " I cannot, however, conclude without offer- ing the critic my best thanks, for the real, though involuntary, compliment which he has paid my work. If there were not something 126 in it calculated to make him and his Church feel, I believe he would as gladly have omitted all reference to it, as he feigns the professor of Berlin to have done. I do not take to my learning, or study, or any other quality, the credit of being formidable to the members of the Roman communion : but I well know, that nothing is more closely concealed, and more dreaded when exposed, than some of the vital documents of their own Church. Nothing which her enemies can say, carries so much terror to her heart as the echo of her own words. In the case of a work, then, which is hardly more than such an echo, the point with them (since compulsion as yet is out of the question) is, to obviate the curiosity, especially of their own people, as effectually as possible. And this is be done, not by violent or elaborate censure, which would disclose the feeling ex- cited, but by an apparently dispassionate and passing remark, which shall impress upon the reader, that the work in question is entitled to no particular attention, and may be neglected without any loss of valuable information. The obnoxious author is not to be set upon with sword or pistol, but he is to be quietly smothered with a wet blanket. To do them 127 justice, Romanists have treated their own brethren, on necessity, in the same way. A Watson and a Widdrington, a Berington and a Geddes, have been silently entombed with the observation, as the sub-jesuitic C. Butler would phrase it, ' they are not much esteemed by Catholics.' Even their great historian, C. Dodd, fell within the gripe of a Catholic con- stable, who compelled him to say, that ' there is little mercy to be expected from those who attack the Jesuits.' He adds, 'The cry is, Lord, have mercy upon him : take him, gaoler.' Dodd well understood his own Church.* "Whether the reported be the real con- ductors of the Dublin Review, I know not, though I believe it. I certainly had it to learn, that it was so important an object to them to put an extinguisher upon their own most authentic conciliar records, as exhibited in the Memoirs, that, for the sake of attaining it, they were content to deliver up their own veracity, or, what may be dearer to them, their reputation for veracity, to irretrievable con- tempt. One effect of their inconsiderate liber- An Apology for the Church History, &c. 1742, p. 202. This, with the " Specimen of Amendments" will doubtless be reprinted by Mr. Tierney. 128 ality is certain and entitled to gratitude for the future, their world, as well as our own, will understand the exact value, not only of their judgment, but of their assertion. "JOSEPH MENDHAM. " Sutton CoUfield" P.S. The appearance of Mrs. S. AUSTIN'S long-expected English translation of Professor RANKE'S History of the Popes affords me the opportunity of observing, that her translation of the passage, with which I am particularly con- cerned, iii. Appendix, 81, perfectly in substance agrees with my own. In a communication of the Professor with Mrs. Austin, he complains heavily and justly of the bad faith of the French transla- tor, M. J. B. Haiber, and hopes that amends will be made by the English translator. It will still farther illustrate the subject of the preceding pages to adduce a signal specimen of infidelity in that translator out of a good number, some of which he has been compelled to acknowledge and correct. It concerns Fra Paolo Sarpi, and the differences between the republic of Venice and the Papacy. Ranke has certainly no prejudice in favour of the Venetian. His translator, however, could not digest the following passage, and has accordingly 129 altogether omitted it. " Justly is Paolo Sarpi's memory held in reverence in all Catholic states. He was the able and victorious champion of those principles determining the bounds of ecclesiastical authority, which are their guides and safeguards to this day," ii. 369. Here was no very violent temp- tation ; ard the falling by it, united with my own experience of Papal dishonesty as far as the Dublin Review is concerned, painfully impresses the iron necessity, under which every committed son of the Italian Church finds himself bound to violate truth and sincerity, when and wherever the felt interests of his Church require the sacrifice. To the very ambiguous censure of my Memoirs by the Prussian Professor, I have only to reply, that it would have been simply the employment of longer labour to have increased the matter considerably, and perhaps profitably. Whether systematic and theoretic views of the facts, just or unjust, but by courtesy of the age esteemed philosophic, would have materially edified, or even gratified, the reader, may be classed with doubtful matters. Perhaps many, and not the worst qualified, readers, may be as well pleased to have inferences and conclusions left to themselves. These may be sentimental, visionary, acute, or pro- found, as best suits their humour. My object was, to select, from materials not open to all, funda- mental and apparently most important points, and 130 present them with their best evidence and better, I may be allowed to say, than has yet been produced on the subject. Had the task been accomplished by another, I could not have denied that he had done some good service ; and it is not too much to add, that I expect and believe I have found more equity, as well as favour, from the competent part of the British public, than has been awarded by the criti- cism of Professor Ranke ; for the main body of which I have proved myself not ungrateful. August^, 1840. THE END. LONDON : PRIKTKD BT MOYKS AVD BARCLAY, CASTLE blHEET, LKICE8TKR SUUAKK. REMARKS ON SOME PARTS OF THE REV. T. L. GREEN's lid. LETTER TO THE YEN. ARCHDEACON HODSON. Nihil est quod absque argento Romana curia dedat. Nam et ips-a- manus impoaitiones, et Spiritus Sancti dona venduntur. Nee pecoatorum venia nisi nummatis impenditur. JEs. SYLVH Bp. LXVI. p. 549. Opp. Basil. J571. IN this Letter Mr. Green has honoured me with a notice, for which he is entitled to my best thanks ; and not the less for the op- portunity which he has afforded me, p. 22, of correcting an over- sight into which I had fallen in my Venal Indulgences, <%c. p. 105, where, in a note, meaning to refer to Bellarmine de Indul. 1 , ix. I had cited the cardinal as adjoining the remission of culpa, at least venlalis, to the Plenissima Indulgentia. He disclaims the opinion himself; while he attests it as that quorundam. My monitor therefore has given me plural for singular. I have accordingly in the first line of the note, after plenissima, added in MS. for any future edition, the words " according to the opinion of some, in his church necessarily, and possibly quite as good as his own, although rejected by himself, as not solid." Lines 5 and 6 I alter thus " They will probably kick away any of their advocates for the turn." My obligation does not end here. Mr. G. has attracted the attention of the public to a subject of mighty importance, particu- larly at the present crisis ; and he may be assured, that the reading and better judging part of that public will not rest satisfied with interested, superficial and partial views of it. If the effect be such as I anticipate from his criticism of my own small works, and his intention were in accordance, I ought to express my gratitude to him for much good will. For my own subordinate concern in the burthen of two years' gestation, of which Mr. G. has just been happily delivered, I should be perfectly contented to throw myself on the re-perusal by any can- did and competent reader of the works which Mr. G. would appear to have shaken. Those works, the Spiritual Venality of Home, giving a particular account of the Spiritual Taxes of the Papal church, and the Venal Indulgences and Pardons of the same church, I presume, from the skill and pains discoverable in his pretermissions, he has perhaps read through. Although he must be acquainted with, he has failed to notice, another publication, which originally appeared in a Quarterly periodical, Home's Traffic in Pardons substantiated. This I the rather regret, because it contains information respecting his own church of some importance, especially on one of the subjects handled by him, and from his own church's authors, principally from Amort, which to all appearance he has yet to acquire. If the omis- sion were intentional it cannot be denied to be prudent. Had he ventured to give its established conclusions with any fidelity he would have had a very different tale to produce to the public. It is a right pleasant thing for a smooth, plausible priest of Rome to select from the variations of his own church a line, or col- lection of eminent doctors, who all teach a doctrine perfectly uniform, without a single interference of dissent or opposition, and make his humble and trustful flock believe, that this, and no other, is the doctrine of u the catholic church" while at the very time he knows, or shame to him if he does not, that upon almost every doc- trine which he esteems vital, and particularly on that of Indulgences, his great doctors are all to pieces, some differing pretty diametrically, others by shades and conundrums, but all of them in their degrees much ahout as harmonious as the tongues of the builders at the dis- persion of Babel. These differences indeed did not proceed to blows ; for while the fundamental point, the income from Indulgences was satisfactorily forthcoming in its season, mere words and opinions were tolerated. When the opinion of Luther touched this, matters were altered. The first part of Mr. G.'s letter is no concern of mine, and is evidently intended, or, at least, is only fit, for his own particular adherents, who are bound to trust him for a fraction of his church's vagrant infallibility. At p. 35 the engineer opens his battery upon the Centum Gra- fimina, of which any one who knows any thing will at once perceive that the assailant knows next to nothing. However, with his little lie does his best. He finds it too late in the day to repeat the bouncing experiment of instantaneous denial of facts which fair his- tory well attests ; but he flees to the convenient refuge of abuses a name, which will throw a plausible mantle over any crime. And further, they were condemned !>>/ the Church. Just as if it were a rare thing for his church to commit and condemn the same thing ; or, like a living ornament of the papal Church i:i Ireland, abjure with one side ofher mouth to one audience, what she sanctions and pro- motes with the other side to another audience. Tacitus somewhere says, fact urn esse scelus loquunturfaciuntque. This church has not been set upon her hills so short a time as to be unseen and unknown. This flexible and accommodating entity has prudence if she has not shame ; and it is not for her most valued interests that she should herself appear in all her transactions, and bear the occasional infamy of instruments, which her inclination prompts, and her conscience does not forbid, her to employ. It is rather amusing to find Mr. G. p. 37, resorting to the con- dition expressed pro forma in the billets of Indulgences, and in other documents, " truly contrite and confessed," or to the same effect, as proof that the condition was literally enforced or required ; when by the application of his technical explanations, and his annexa- tion of the terms " not properly," at pleasure, he has completely emasculated his own argument. I am quite satisfied, that his " ingenious device" is far more applicable to these conditions than to the spiritual graces granted by the author or authors of the In- dulgences. These Indulgences, by those who issued them, were well enough known to be base coin ; they were nevertheless put into circulation as true and legal. The church, from whose mint they came, did mean to deceive; but she did not mean to be de- tected in the attempt, and exposed. Such abuses do not now exist why ? because they cannot. The trade of the Great Impostor is up ; " for no man buyeth her merchandise any more." Rev. xviii. 2. At p. 46, in order to gain some advantage to his cause, the pre- sent champion makes a scape-goat of poor Tetzel. This is, indeed, only the way in which his brethren treat their own most sacred Breviary, and its stupendous miracles one grand mark of the true church. But poor Tetzel ! what a return, as he himself feelingly complained, for all his honest and laborious efforts for the catholic church, and even for her tenderest part, her purse ! His " Puffs" in the virtuous indignation of the rather ungrateful censor so called, were good orthodox pleadings at the time, and would never have been esteemed otherwise by the rulers of Rome had not their effec- tual exposure thrown back disgrace upon the zealous official, which threatened to go on and terminate in the disgrace of the church and its head which employed him, unless prompt measures were used to avert it. Tetzel is no favourite with protestants of course; but to be abandoned by those, who pretend to be true sons of that church, which he devoted his great, approved, and for a time, rewarded la- hours, even to the sacrifice of conscience, to serve, is hard indeed; and shews that Rome has little pity for those of her servants whose zeal and labour are not rewarded with success. Had he succeeded always, as at first, all would have been well the Dominican (and noticed with real respect in the Bibliotlieca of the Fraternity by Quetif and Echard, ii. 40, 1 ;) Inquisitor General ; Sub-commis- sary ; and for his merits promoted by Albert, Archbp. of Magde- burgh, to the honour of Commissary and Special Inquisitor ; and loaded with no moral vice but such as he shared in abundance with popes, cardinals, and father confessors ; and this man, for his final failure, is so furiously rated by another, and no better servant of his master, Miltitz, that he sank under it, and in his last hours had none to pity him but Luther ! I perceive by the same note, that the Summary which I have given in the original at length of the Indulgences for the repair of the Cathedral of Saintes in Saintogne, somewhat discomposes Mr. G.'s sere- nity; and I do not wonder; for it contains a faithful and graphic description of his church and her doings. In puerile imprudence he lets out his wrath against the Commissary, Raymond Peraudi, who, let him remember, was a purpled ornament of his church, and as pains-taking a gentleman as Mr. G. himself. Yet of him he says " he was, in all probability, as accomplished a questor as the cele- brated Tetzel himself. And the Summary is worthy of its author." He was, in all probability, as worthy a man as the priest who should solemnly deny " that he knows of his own personal knowledge" or," so that Jte may tell" (according to Tresham's Treatise of Equinjca- tion, or Soto's instruction, see Mason's New Art of Lying, p. 27,) what in all Ireland and the Breviary is as obtrusive on the view as the light of the sun at mid-day. Mr. G. might have spared the second edition of his imaginary wit about " six folio volumes," had he foreseen that he himself would designate the places in Labbe's Councils by folia. He should have written columns ; and any of the young gentlemen of Oscott would tell him, that in one folium there are four columns. I may here suitably enough introduce another specimen of the habits in which Romish controvertists familiarly allow themselves. Arch- deacon Hodson quoted from Bp. Stillingfleet an Indulgence which contained a remission of all sins to those who in the article of death should devoutly commend their souls to God,&c. without referring to the authority. This made Mr. G. particularly urgent to obtain the reference. The call, however, suddenly dropped. Why? Be- cause Mr. G., in exploring Ferrari's Prompta BiUioiheca under Indul- ytntia, found three distinct copies of Indulgences containing pre- cisely the same form one by Benedict XIII. the other two by Be- nedict XIV. See iv. 525-8, and Addenda p. 35, ed. Venet. 1782. And if the Letter-writer had not determined to spoil some sheets of clean paper, he might have eased himself of the labour of collec- tions from various councils condemnatory of the abuses of the Quaes- tors all very right, with a good meaning of many individuals, and to save appearances by the rest. We ever admit, that there have been conscientious and even good men at all times in the Roman apostacy, or we should never have had the reformation. The fact contended for is denied by none, and the proof superfluous. Even Trent made bold demonstrations amounting to nothing. The thitnj was still secured, and the control was all in the hands of the Pope. He and his certainly wished the affair to be managed decently ; but fhe rule was Rem, Si possis, recte, &c. To close the first part of the subject, Venal Indulgences, I will simply observe, that Mr. G. has done what is done by most in the same predicament he has mixed some truth with his fiction, as much as would do him no harm, and would save or assist his credit, and the credit of the prevailing fiction. He has pretty adroitly selected what accorded with this plan. He has performed various contortions to extricate himself from the net in which he felt himself caught. But his main contrivance and refuge has been^w- UnMlM*. Of the plain grammatical meaning of the indulgences in question of the necessarily popular interpretation of the expres- sion of that popular interpretation in the jingling, proverbial phrase, tantum donant quantam sonant of the naturally conse- quent disputes among the doctors of the church herself respect- ing the honesty or knarery of that church ; and lastly and eminently, of those interesting and little known forms, the Confess\s,nals, of which 1 have given both a fac-sitnile specimen and so extended an account, with the priced varieties of spiritual graces contained in them, particularly the optional confessors he has preserved a pro- found and very prudent silence. In fact, I fear that Mr. G. has throughout been fighting against his own convictions ; and that he inwardly feels, because he knows, that he is incapable of facing, much less of confuting, a single substantial statement in what 1 have written on the subject of his Church's Veual Indulgences. At p. (i6 and onwards Mr. G., with his two years' preparation, "boldly" enters upon the subject of the Penitentiary Taxes uf.l'mf. as presented in my fyirituol Venality. He will readily agree with Al G me, if he has any experience in such cases, that works and children of darkness do not ordinarily court the light. From the offenders and their friends, as is evident in the proceedings of every court of justice, it is with the utmost difficulty, that any thing in the shape of criminating evidence can be wrung. So that the friends of truth and equity are often under the necesssity of satisfying themselves with evidence of a broken and deficient character accidental and apparently involuntary both admission and disclosures the light mutually reflected by different and distant admitted facts upon each other, and various other proofs weaker or stronger seldom suffi- cient for conviction absolutely fajal, and yet quite sufficient for per- sonal and moral assurance of the truth of the particular charge quite sufficient to exclude all reasonable doubt. This is precisely the case of the Church of Rome as respects the iniquities charged upon her, particularly that under consideration. I have done my best to collect and present all the evidence, weighing its value as I could, extant upon the subject. Kven an ad- vocate of Rome would riot expect me to invent evidence; this at least is not the practice with protestants. Had I allowed myself such liberty I might have made out a much clearer, indeed a perfectly clear case totus teres atque rotundus, Externi ne quid valeat per leve morari. 1 have given my materials as I found them in their natural order : some of them new, others improved or enlarged, all pertinent, many important. It is needless to say what I have done, as any reader who chuses may have recourse to my volume. It is more to my purpose to shew what my opponent has done, and likewise what he has not done. He has done as follows: He has given a long detail of ex- extracts from the Venality, with the effect, whatever were the in- tention, of appearing to present an extended and fair statement of the argument oppugned. But with this he has intermingled passages selected to favour his purpose from different parts, and some of them rather obtusely perverted : and assuming, that my cause is answerable for all the imperfections and variations in the docu- ments facts, not denied but openly and carefully stated with no- thing but a protestant though valuable re-print, and another, in his own possession, he feels himself warranted to come to the bold conclusion, " Now, Sir, whether I can reasonably be called upon to defend or reply to any of the individual charges in documents so strangely discordant with each other, and so totally destitute of valid authentication, I may fearlessly leave to the judgment of the reader." To this piece of flippancy it would be sufficient to answer, that particulars in the documents concerned may rar>j with times, places, and persons, and not be discordant ; and if they were, there may be good reasons for preferring one to another. And as for valid authentication, I believe I have displayed more than the priest resident in Tixall quite relishes, and more than is usually found in such dark cases as those in which papal iniquity abounds. Let me add, that I apprehend the fearless writer will on reflexion feel that he has committed somewhat of an oversight in bringing, as he has done, to the acquaintance of his own people, so large a por- tion of the contents of mv volume thinking rather fondly, that he is doing no more than helping forward his own object, forgetting, at the same time, their wry suspicious character, and exciting the almost irrepressible inquiry what can all this mean ? can such things have originated in nothing ? in what point do the converging lines unite ? But I must tell the reader what Mr. G. has not done. I do not say that he has altogether omitted, but he has done what perhaps is quite the same thing for effect, he has deprived of their prominence, he has thrown into the back ground, the main supports of the charge against his church the copy of the Penitentiary Taxes which I have reprinted the most au- thentic recognition which they have received by their being re- printed repeatedly in the body of law, the Oceanus Juxis, published in Venice, the volume in which it is found being dedicated to the reign- ing pope and the celebrated passage in Claude d'Esjiense, fixing upon the document the awful and indelible character, which not all the ingenious processes of the most expert of Rome's artizans can erase or expunge. No, no : whatever postern doors may have been provided as an escape from detection, Rome is openly convicted of having carried on a profligate trade in the souls of men, their crimes and their pardons, for many long centuries. The respectable Richer, Historian of the General Councils, knew what he said, when he charged her with " making the sins of men her golden harrest;" and Pius II. before he was Pope, and saw belter, than when at the last year of his life he was made to recant, felt himsL j lf secure against contradiction when he wrote, that at Rome " not eren the pardon of fin conld be obtained without being paid for in solid cash. Mr. G., however, Is disposed to nibble and qu'bble a little, and complains, pp. 88, &c. of the words " of sinning" being added to the word Ucfntia in d'Espense. They were added, because they ap- peared necessary ; and so, from the current of thought and aru- ment in the author, and the following context, I still think un- 8 moved by either the philological or logical finesse of Mr. G. His assertion, p. 89, that protestants industriously circulate a book, in which more wickedness may be learned than in all the Tax-tables, has no doubt reference to the Whole Duty of Man. The writer, in- dulgently, I suppose, adds, that he " need not specify it." This is the very matter which led the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Spencer into a labyrinth of puerile blunders. The Rector of Sutton Coldfield put him to complete rout and shame on the subject ; and the publication of his own Letters on Auricular Confession, together with those of his opponent, who, characteristically enough, had published his own sepa- rately by tltemsdves, has demonstrated not only the vile iniquity of the Confessional, but the utter impotence of the new comparative argument set up in its defence If Mr. G. could have pointed to a popular manual among us, containing the filthy pages which dis- grace a popular manual well-known by himself, the " Garden oft/ui SW" pages, of which the intrinsic uncleanness is the slightest part of their guilt ; for they acquire a satanic virulence by the practical con- sequences which can hardly fail to follow the atrocious instructions of such " sure guides" as Dens and others, pages, so revolting as to render it expedient that another book should be provided as a substitute for decent Romanists, females especially could he have done this, he would have done something; but he knows he cannot. It may be my defect of sagacity, but I can discern no other quality than that of quibbling in the note p. 92, on the phrase in foro conscientice ; and apprehend, that in the presence of leading ar- guments it is worth little, and may be left to its own insignifi- cance ; at least so I am content to leave it. What I read in p. 88, referring the reader to the Taxos in the BuUarium as " the genuine Taxae," might have occasioned sur- prise, if any thing in modern Papal tactics could. The things themselves are the most innocuous in all directions that can be imagined. I had expressly guarded against them as a common fallacy in my Venality, p. u, and hardly expected that any champion of Rome had forehead enough to attempt to palm them upon the public as the genuine, and only, or principal Taxae of the Roman see. They are, except for the cupidity which characterises them, per- fectly innocent matters, and have no appearance of being intended for deception, presenting, however, strong temptation in such times as the present to those who have an interest in so employing them. It is rather unfortunate that, when I had done my best to warn the pub- lic, particularly Romanists, of the danger, Mr. G. should span, taneously step into the not very honourable niche which 1 had unconsciously cut out for such indiscreet and not very high prin- cipled adventurers. But as long as Popery exists, her impostors will. I now travel back to pp. 76-9 in order to notice an argument which should not escape. It belongs to an approved canon of so- phistry, to wit, that of breaking the force of, or evading, a charge by a parallel, or similarity, meant to be complete as far as the argu- ment is concerned. Mr. G. has found a parallel, and therefore a justification to his church, in the pecuniary provisions of the An- glican. This line the author has adapted from Dr. Milner, C. Butler, Esq. and Dr. Doyle, without naming either, and rather disguising his obligations. He has acted prudently. At least he might know, that in my Venality, pp. 80 G, I had given that fallacy due consideration, and I believe, a death's blow. And it is curious to observe how, of two mutually destructive defences of the Church of Rome, that of Fees of Office is exchanged in Mr. G.'s epistle for the more general and evasive term " compensation for services" services, not likely to be extravagantly taxed, if rated at the valuation of Mr G., or according to the real worth of the trumpery published in the Romish annuals ; but calling for very high esteem, and verv costly remuneration, when understood in the good orthodox sense, as a release from sin, and a passport to the joys of paradise. The class of Taxse to which I have confined myself is that of the Penitentiary. In a catalogue, as authentic as authentic can be, to be discovered and published against the will and efforts of its au- thors, absolutions for various sins are included, and a price annexed to them. It is notorious, that such absolutions, and indulgences containing them, were put to sale, and vast sums collected in conse- quence. Those individuals who had, value received,- in spiritual graces, doubtless thought them worth something, as, if they were not deceived, they must do; and it is historically certain, that armies, (" truly penitent and contrite," as most armies, particularly Crusaders, must be !) went to the field of battle with the gay assur ance, that, if they fell, their church's indulgences would blot out all their sin?, and carry them clean and straight to heaven. But it seems they reckoned without their host ; for their host had a salro, which, were he called to account, he would be sure to produce. He had contrived certain reservations to save his credit. Just as if a banking company, with no capital, should issue ficti- tious notes to an enormous amount, thinking it quite enough to provide secret technical forms invented and used by themselves, such as would enable them to prove in a court of law, if called upon, 10 that the said notes were worth just so much waste paper. The whole indeed of Rome's defence is that of the Jew, whose razors were not made to shave but to sell. It is plainly to be perceived, that the present popular method with Romish apologists is, to approach as near as possible to heretical protestancy. They can put a good face upon their religion, either wholly, or in its parts, only by assuming this mask. Their gene- rally rigid, but occasionally most elastic principles allow them in this hypocrisy, for a season, and for a purpose. To attain that purpose they will virtually renounce, perhaps verbally abjure, all that constitutes their existence as a church, their supreme sove- reignty ; their intolerant exclusiveness ; their duty of persecution ; their transubstantiation ; their paramount tradition ; their splen- did adolatries ; the canonized heroes of their breviary ; and, as Mr. G. here does, the richest treasures of this rich church, her Indul- gences and Remissions, total, of all sins, full, fuller, and fullest, from guilt as well as from punishment,* made sure against accidents by being ready for use in the article of death, or as often as that danger occurs, the whole secured on the inexhaustible fund of merits, human and divine, in the hands of the vicegerent of heaven on earth, whether Alexander VI. or Gregory XVI they will thus, for justification, or advancement, renounce or abjure the absolute substance and vitality of their Popery. O! if this transformation which truth and conscience as well as policy extort if this hypo- crisy were converted into sincerity and reality, idolaters and here- tics would become Christians and our real brethren. But the fa- ther and mother of lies forbid the union : they cannot part with their children at least as yet ; and we must wait till " the spirit be poured out from on high," and all will be united to one another by being united in the abandonment of religious error, and the reception of divine truth. Here then I close, regretting that I have been engaged in an occupation which may be considered as auperfluous ; and promising, as far as I can, that 1 shall not easily be led to repeat the apparent indiscretion. Mr. G. has not shaken one material position in my books ; he has not, he cannot, and he knows it. I have anticipated his dialectic manoeuvres, and have provided antecedently for the * In the palmy days of Rome they were not at all coy on this subject. In the 12th book of Gio. Villani's Cronica, the author mentions the founder of the Jubilee, Boniface VIII., as pardoning colpa e pena ; and his.brother Matteo, who continued his Chronicle, in book i. cap. Hi., writes, that Clement VI., in a time of pestilence gave grandi indulgenzie di colpa e di penadi tutti i peccatl, &c 11 dispersion of his mystifications, and those ingenious tortuosities which have retired from every other profession than that of Roman controvertists. He will please to bear in mind, that the charge ag\inst his church is, not that she herself declares trust her for that but that from doings of her own proved upon her, it may legitimately be inferred, that in every single item of the spiritual articles in which she deals, she is saleable when her price is bid. Mr. G. therefore will excuse me if to his ineffective exculpation, I prefer the opinion of two of his betters in his church that of the Pope, who affirms Nee peccatorum renia nisi nummatls impenditur, and the tuneful Carmelite, a second Mantuan, who, with much more to the same purpose, sings Sacra sunt xenalia Romce. Should Mr. G. be inclined again to try his skill in the art, fami- liar to the defenders of his church, of confuting an opponent by omit- ting his main strength, he may become the unintentional occasion of exposing to the English public, more fully than has hitherto been done, the kind of u services" for which the Roman Penitentiary and her Tax-tables prescribe the pecuniary " compensation." Sulton Colctfield, Oct. 14, 1840. P.S. The reader may consult with advantage a review of my Venal Indulgences in the Church of England Quarterly Renew for 1840, pp. 138152, where he will see the old doctrines of Home on the subject made the present by Dr. Murray's sanction of Dens's Moral and Dogmatic Theology. I take this opportunity to observe, that the Confessionals, as bills of pardon, &c. are distinctly mentioned in the Card. Poli Mandatum de Confessionalibus, &c. 1557, as facul- ties or licenses, called Confessionals, obtained from the Pope, or the Penitentiary office, by letter, or breve, or otherwise. See Wilkins's < '<>iiril. Mj. Brit, iv., 14. See likewise Catal. Lib. MSS. M. Parker a Nasmith, No. cxi. 1610, p. 132. In my Index of Gregory XVI., at the end of the note p. 68, add The mistaken date is rectified by the fact, that Vergerio's Latin translation of the de Idolo Lauretano was first published in 1554 ; and the Epistle is addressed Othoni Henrico Palatine Rheni, dated Kal. Septembris, 1534, while in the 2d edition the Dedication, which is nearly the same, is Wolfgango Palatino Rheni, pridie Kal. Oc- tobris, 1">5G. The Rev. Mr. Gibbings, who gave me this informa- tion, has mentioned the earlier edition in his Index of Brasichellen, I'ri'f'iC'' ]). xvii. By the same friend I am admonished, that before I treated Gcrardus Busdragus as an ens ratwn'a, p. 82, I should have con- 12 suited POSSEVIN, who, I find in his App. Sac. thus notices him, Lucensis, et Episcopus Argolicensis Lecturam super Canone, de Consecrations Dist 3 De aqua benedicta. An edition was published of this book Wiliorbani 1594, 8vo. A copy is in the British Mu- seum. The Dedication, dated Padua, 1554, at the beginning has the words, sed cordialissime sum gavisus, cum nuper vidissem catcdogum et libros vestros. The place, Padua, connects with the date of the Exemplum Literanim and the Bishop addressed. I can make the present trifle useful, by adding, at the suggestion of another friend, to the purport of the note ending p. 107, a pas- sage of the brere of Benedict XIV. prefixed to his Index, and con- stantly repeated to the last atque ab omnibus, et singulis personis, iMcunque locorum existentibus, inviolabiliter, et inconcusse observari pracipimus, et mandamus sub pcenis, 8[C. In fugam vacui, I add the valuable and pertinent lines of Cowper in his Expostulation, suppressed by amiable feelings, but honestly restored by Southey. The British nation is addressed : Hast thou admitted with a blind fond trust, The lie that burn'd thy fathers' bones to dust, That first adjudged them heretics, then sent Their souls to heaven, and cursed them as they went? The lie that scripture strips of its disguise, And execrates above all other lies ; The lie that claps a lock on mercy's plan, And gives the key to yon infirm old man, Who once ensconced in Apostolic Chair, is deified, and sits omniscient there ; The lie that knows no kindred, owns no friend But him that makes its progress his chief end, That having spilt much blood makes that a boast, And canonizes him that sheds the most. Away with charity that soothes a lie And thrusts the truth with scorn and anger by ! Shame on the candour and the gracious smile Bestowed on them that light the martyr's pile, "While insolent disdain in frowns expressed, Attends the tenets that endured the test! Grant them the rights of men, and while they cease To vex the peace of others grant them peace ; nut trusting bigots, whose false zealhas made Treachery their duty, thou art self-betrayed. We might almost imagine Cowper were now living, and had written the a./ove in these bright days of liberal bigotry. 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