6

Prelates, mentioned at the beginning of it, they would have lowered, if not totally altered, their tone on the present subject. The Bishop of London would not have charged Catholics with claiming a right to punish those whom they call heretics, with penalties, imprisonment, tortures, and death:' nor would the Bishop of Lincoln have laid down toleration as a mark of the true Church, and as a principle, recommended by the 'most eminent Reformers and (Protestant) Di'vines.' At all events, I promise myself, that a due consideration of the points here suggested, will efface the remaining prejudices of certain persons of your society against the Catholic Church, on the score of her alleged 'spirit of persecution, and of her supposed claim to pun'ish the errors of the mind with fire and sword.' They must have seen, that she does not claim, but that, in her very Councils, she has disclaimed all power of this nature; and that, in pronouncing those to be obstinate heretics, whom she finds to be such, she always pleads for mercy in their behalf, when they are liable to severe punishment from the secular power: a conduct which many eminent Protestant Churchmen were far from imitating, in similar circumstances. They must have seen, moreover, that, if persecuting laws have been made and acted upon by the Princes and Magistrates in many Catholic countries, the same conduct has been uniformly practised in every country, from the Alps to the Arctic Circle, in which Protestants, of any description, have acquired the power of so doing. But, if, after all, the friends alluded to should not admit of any material difference, on one side or other, in this matter, I will here point out two discriminating circumstances of such weight, as must, at once, decide the question concerning persecution in disfavour of Protestants.

In the first place, whenever Catholic States

and Princes have persecuted Protestants, it was always in favour of an ancient Religion, which had been established in their country perhaps, a thousand or fifteen hundred years, and had during that time preserved its peace, order, and morality, while they clearly saw, that an attempt to alter this religion would, unavoidably, produce incalculable disorders and sanguinary contests. On the other hand, Protestants, every where, persecuted in behalf of some New System, in opposition to the established laws of the Church, and of their respective states. Not content with vindicating their own freedom of worship, they endeavoured, in each country, by persecution, to force the professors of the old religion to abandon it and adopt theirs; and they acted in the same way by their fellow Protestants, who might have adopted opinions different from their own. In many countries, where Calvinism obtained any considerable footing, as in Scotland, in Holland, at Geneva, and in France, they were riotous mobs, which, under the direction of their Pastors, rose in rebellion against their lawful Princes, and having secured their independence, proceeded to sanguinary extremities against the Catholics.

In the second place, if Catholic States and Princes have enforced submission to their Church by persecution, they were fully persuaded, that there is a Divine authority in this Church to decide in all controversies of religion, and that those Christians who refuse to hear her voice, when she pronounces upon them, are obstinate heretics. But on what ground can Protestants persecute Christians of any description whatsoever? Their grand rule of fundamental charter is, that the Scriptures were given by God for every man to interpret them as he judges best. If, therefore, when I hear Christ declaring, Take ye and eat, this is my body, I believe what he says, with what consisten

ey can any Protestants require me, by pains or penalties, to swear that I do not believe it, and that to act conformably with this persuasion is idolatry?-But religious persecution, which is everywhere odious, will not much longer find refuge in the most generous of nations; much less will the many victorious arguments which demonstrate the True Church of Christ, our common Mother, who reclaimed us all from the barbarous rites of Paganism, be defeated by the calumnious outcry, that she herself is a bloody Moloch, that calls for human victims.

I am, &c.

J. M.

LETTER L.

To the FRIENDLY SOCIETY' of NEW

COTTAGE.

CONCLUSION.

MY FRIENDS AND BRETHREN IN CHRIST, HAVING, at length, in the several letters addressed to your worthy President, Mr. Brown, and others of your Society, completed the task which, eight months ago, you imposed upon me; I address this, my concluding letter, to you, in common, as a slight review of the whole.- -I observed to you, that to succeed in any inquiry, it is necessary to know and to follow the right method of making it. Hence, I entered upon the present important search after the truths of the Christian Revelation, with a discussion of the rules or methods, followed, for this purpose, by different classes of Christians. Having taken for granted the following maxims-that Christ has appointed some rule or method of learning his revelation;-that this rule must be an unerring one; and that it must be adapted to the capacities

and situations of mankind, in general; I proceeded to show, that a supposed, private spirit, or particular inspiration, is not that rule; because this persuasion has led numberless fanatics, in every age, since that of Christ, into depths of error, folly, and wickedness of every kind.-I proved, in the second place, that the written word or scripture, according to each one's conception of its meaning, is not that rule; because it is not adapted to the capacities and situations of the bulk of mankind; a great proportion of them not being able so much as to read the Scripture, and much less to form a connected sense of a single chapter of it; and, because innumerable Christians have, at all times, by following this presumptuous method, given into heresies, impieties, contradictions, and crimes, almost as numerous and flagrant as those of the above-mentioned fanatics.-Finally, I demonstrated, that there is a two-fold word of God, the unwritten and the written; that the former was appointed by Christ, and made use of by the Apostles, for converting nations; and that it was not made void by the inspired Epistles and Gospels, which some of the Apostles and the Evangelists, addressed, for the most part, to particular Churches or individuals; that the Catholic Church is the divinely commissioned Guardian and Interpreter of the word of God, in both its parts; and that, therefore, the method, appointed by Christ for learning what he has taught, on the various articles of his Religion, is to HEAR THE CHURCH propounding them to us from the whole of his Rule. This method, I have shown, continued to be pointed out by the Fathers and Doctors of the Church, in constant succession, and that it is the only one which is adapted to the circumstances of mankind, in general; the only one which leads to the peace and unity of the Christian Church; and the only one, which ffords tranquillity and security to individual

Christians during life, and at the trying hour of their dissolution.

At this point, I said, my labours might have ended, as the Catholic Church alone follows the Right Rule, and the Right Rule infallibly leads to the Catholic Church. But, since Bishop Porteus and other Protestant controvertists raise cavils as to which is the True Church, and whereas this is a question that admits of a still more easy and more triumphant answer than that concerning the Right Rule of Faith, I have made it the subject of a second series of letters, with which, I persuade myself, the greater part of you are acquainted. In fact, no inquiry is so easy to an attentive and upright Christian as that which leads to the discovery of the True Church of Christ; because, on one hand, all Christians agree, in their common creeds, concerning the characters or marks which she bears; and because, on the other hand, these marks are of an exterior and splendid kind, such as require no extensive learning or abilities, and little more than the use of our senses and common reason to discern them. In short, among the numerous and jarring societies of Christians, [all pretending to have found out the truths of Revelation,] to ascertain which is the True Church of Christ; that infallibly possesses them, we have only to observe which among them is distinctively ONE, HOLY, CATHOLIC, and APOSTOLICAL--and the discovery is made. In treating of these characters or marks, I said it was obvious to every beholder, that there is no bond of union whatever among the different societies of Protestants; and that no articles, canons, oaths or laws, have the force of confining the members of any one of them, as experience shows, to a uniformity of belief, or even profession, in a single kingdom or island; while the great Catholic Church, spread as it is over the face of the globe, and consisting, as it does, of all