beginning of his chapter, namely, that "The Pope's Supremacy is an impudent cause, which has not one tolerable argument for it ;" and such revolting brag as that with which he concludes it, namely, that he has "discarded this Supremacy, by every authority, ancient and modern." That there is impudence on one side or the other is unquestionable. You, Dear Sir, and your fellowreaders will judge on which side it lies.

I am yours, &c.

J. M., D.D.

LETTER XXII.

ON RELIGIOUS PERSECUTION.

DEAR SIR;-In attacking my letter on this subject, in The End of Controversy, the Rev. Vicar has, according to his usual method, misrepresented both the nature and the object of it. It is very remote from the author's disposition to delight in scenes of cruelty, and therefore it is a calumny to say of him, as the Vicar does, that he treats with more than ordinary satisfaction of religious persecution, and of fires, stakes, faggots, axes, knives, halters, gibbets, racks and tortures."* The fact is, that having to answer

* Reply, p. 351.

B. Porteus, and a whole host of his associate controvertists and preachers, whose customary and most popular argument against the Catholic Religion is to represent it as a sanguinary system, that persecutes upon principle, concealing in the mean time the persecutions of Protestants against Catholics, and against one another, in these circumstances there appeared to be but one effectual method of stopping the pens and the mouths of these inflammatory writers and declaimers, which consisted in proving to them that persecution has been more extensively and cruelly exercised by Protestants against Catholics, than by Catholics against Protestants. Accordingly I adopted this method both in The Letters to a Prebendary and The End of Controversy; not from any satisfaction I felt in treating of those melancholy subjects, but from “a wish to cut off one of the most virulent sources of religious acrimony, and promoting conciliation and peace," between the contending parties, as I signified on both those occasions.* Nor does

it seem that the method was unsuccessful, either with Dr. Sturges,† or with the present defender of Dr. Porteus: for certainly I cannot attribute to any other cause than the demonstrative proofs

* Letters to a Preb. iv. p. 84, sixth Edit. End of Controv. Let. xlix, p. 173.

+ See the Second Edit. of Reflections on Popery by Dr. Sturges.

I brought of the persecuting principles and practices of Protestants of every denomination, in every country in which they have obtained an ascendancy, during the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries, that the Vicar expresses a willingness to draw a veil over the disgusting subject" of persecution.* I agree to the proposal, whatever may be his motive for making it; still reserving to myself, however, the right of refuting some very acrimonious and false charges against me and the cause I defend, which he brings in the very act of professing his wish to "cultivate the feelings of mutual charity and forbearance."†

The Vicar reproaches me with not having mentioned, in my Letter on Persecution, in The End of Controversy," the intolerance of Charles IX. and Lewis XIV., or the bloody tribunals of the Duke of Alva." The case is, my subject did not lead me to speak of these, but rather of the persecutions which Catholics had endured at the hands of Protestants, for the purpose, as I expressed of balancing the account of bloodshed between the two parties, and of closing it for ever. And, though I have not expressly treated of these subjects in The End of Controversy, I have there referred to my former work, The Letters to a Prebendary, where they are, each of them, discussed at considerable

length. The Vicar adds: "When speaking of Queen Elizabeth, he (Dr. M.) details with circumstantial minuteness the cruelties she inflicted on two hundred Catholics, whom she got hanged, drawn, and quartered, for the mere exercise of the Religion of their ancestors:" although he is conscious that those persons suffered, "not because of their belief in Popish doctrines, but because their zeal to restore Popery led them to rebel against her government."* Foul calumniator! so far from being conscious of this, I have proved the contrary from the confessions and conduct of the conscientious and loyal sufferers in question, from the tenor of the different Acts of Parliament and Proclamations which took place in that reign, and from the acknowledgment of that unfeeling Queen herself, as reported by her feed historian.§

The Vicar now passes to political subjects, in which, however, he does not seem to be better versed than in those of theology. I mentioned

* Reply, p. 251.

+ See the genuine history of all the plots, real or fabricated, during Elizabeth's reign, in Letters to a Prebendary, Letter vi. N.B. In the above list of two hundred sufferers for their Religion, John Felton, who denied Elizabeth's title to the throne, and Babington, Ballard, &c. implicated in a real conspiracy, are not included.

† 1 Eliz. c. i. 5 Eliz. c. i. 13 Eliz. c. ii. 23 Eliz. c. i., &c. § Camden testifies of her as follows: "Plerosque ex misellis his Sacerdotibus exitii in patriam conflandi conscios fuisse non credidit. Importunis precibus evicta permisit ut Edmundus Campianus, &c. judicio sisterentur." Annales, Eliz. Anno 1581.

that unparalleled machination of villainy and absurdity, hatched by Lord Shaftesbury and the Doctors Tongue and Oates, against the whole Catholic body, and which actually spilt the blood of Lord Stafford and eighteen other loyal Catholics; and I shewed that one effect of the national delirium, produced by this plot, was the passing of the impracticable Test Act, and the unintelligible Declaration against Popery.* Now the Vicar, instead of vindicating the character of those his heroes, or the reality of their plot, asserts on the bare authority of his own word, that "Were it not for those impregnable barriers," as he calls them, "there would be no established Church to defend." He then goes on to remind the distinguished advocates of Popish aggrandizement, who have joined Dr. M. in denouncing the Parliamentary Declaration against Popery as unnecessary, of certain passages in the Homilies, Articles, and Rubricks, which describe the Catholic Religion as superstitious, false, and idolatrous." Just as if the abolition of the Test, and the Declaration, before the existence of which the Established Church flourished much more than it has done since, were the abolition of this Church itself! With equal force of argument, the Vicar states the opposition of Catholics to the Veto, and the pub

+