that if the clergy are popular, the laity will always assist them in the defence cl their rights against the temporal sovereign.

The second proposition is, that the Pope is the sole judge of all matters appertaining to religion; and that in all doubtful cases, both of belief and of practice, it is the duty of all Catholics to apply to him for information, and to submit blindly to his decisions. In other words, the Pope is the absolute momarch of the Catholic Church. From this proposition, it was inferred by the Popes and their flatterers, that it was part of the office of the Pope to determine, from the particular circumstances of the case, whether resistance to the Prince was necessary to the preservation of religion. This proposition is so agreeable to the Court of Rome, that we doubt not that Mr Le Mesurier and several other writers, who have laboured so strenuously to convince the English and Irish Catholics that it is the true doctrine of their Church, would receive some distinguishing mark of the favour of that Court, if it were reestablished in its ancient splendour. For our own parts, however, we know of no other mode of ascertaining whether Catholics believe the Pope to be the absolute monarch of their Church, than by observing the degree of obedience which they actually pay to him: and we advise those persons who really wish for information on this subject, and who have no local and personal knowledge of the state of the Papal authority in Catholic countries, to lay aside the pamphlets of Mr Le Mesurier and Dr Milner, and to betake themselves to the reading of history. We do not recommend the historical writings either of Sir Richard Musgrave or of Mr Plowden, but those of almost any sober and judicious author, either Catholic or Protestant. Those who have not the opportunity of entering into a laborious investigation of the subject, will probably find, in the work now before us, a sufficient number of facts to convince them that the notions of the Papal au thority which have been lately revived, are greatly exaggerated. Although we think that Lord Clarendon has failed in his attempt to prove that Catholics do not believe the authority of the Pope to be of divine institution, he has sufficiently demonstrated that the Catholics pay very little practical regard to the mandates of the head of their Church, except when those mandates coincide with their own inclinations.

of

In what we have lately said respecting the deposing power the Pope, we have supposed the Roman Catholic religion to be the established religion of the country. We shall speak afterwards of the attacks of the See of Rome on Protestant Princes. We now request the reader to turn back to p. 436, and peruse Lord Clarendon's bill of indictment against the Pope in

his own words. Admitting the facts upon which this accusation is founded to be true, nothing can be more vulgar and unphilosophical than Lord Clarendon's application of them. With the assistance of Bayle's Dictionary and the Biographia Britannica, we could easily compile a bulky collection of the lives of wicked men named John, to which we might subjoin an exhortation to all parents not to suffer their children to be baptized by that abominable name. Perhaps Sir John Sinclair, Mr John Reeves, Mr John Bowles, Mr John Gifford, or some other person interested in supporting the honour of the name, might endeavour to demonstrate, that most of the crimes committed by the Johns, had arisen from the depravity of human nature; and that the Richards and Thomases were, upon the whole, not a great deal more virtuous, In the same spirit, we have many histories of the Presbyterians and Independents, composed by intemperate members of the Church of England, -and of Protestants in general, composed by intemperate members of the Church of Rome; the object of all which histories is to demonstrate, that the sects against which they are directed ought to be exterminated from the face of the earth; and the certain effect is to provoke recrimination, and to furnish materials for the amusement and edification of the enemies of Christianity in general.

The truth is, that the misery which Lord Clarendon supposes to have arisen from the Papal power, arose from the ignorance, superstition, and fanaticism of the dark ages; which, in all probability, would not have been less than they were, if all the bishops of the Christian church had preserved a perfect equality of rank. We see no reason for supposing that the decline of learning and true religion would have been retarded, if, after the fall of the Western empire, the different nations which belonged to the Latin church had formed themselves into separate and independent religious communities; nor do we see any thing in the condition of the Greek and other Oriental churches, which induces us to believe that they derived any advantage from the schism which divided them from the communion of Rome. We readily admit, that the Protestant churches which were founded in the sixteenth century, derived great advantages from their separation from the See of Rome; but we attribute those advantages, not to the separation itself, but to the circumstance of its having taken place in a learned and inquisitive age, and having been accompanied by great and important alterations both in the doctrine and the discipline of the Church. If the Church of England had assumed her independence in the reign of Henry II, instead of that of Henry VIII, perhaps her present condi

tion would have resembled that of the church of Muscovy. If the children of Henry VIII. had imitated their father, in retaining nearly the whole of Popery, except the authority of the Pope, we should have thought the abrogation of the payment of first fruits and tenths to the See of Rome, very dearly purchased, at the expense of the miseries of the last years of that execrable tyrant.

*

In our opinion, the most substantial inconvenience which arises from the authority of the Pope, and, indeed, the only one of considerable magnitude, is its tendency to perpetuate the corruptions which Protestants impute to the Roman Catholic religion. What we consider as an inconvenience, however, Catholics naturally consider as an advantage. They maintain, that, setting aside all consideration of the divine institution of the Papacy, the unity of the church, as they understand that unity, could not subsist, if the papal authority were destroyed: -and here it may not be amiss to add a short explanation of the sense in which the unity of the Church is commonly understood by Catholics.

Catholics believe, that the Catholic or Universal Church is a society of divine institution, of which it is the duty of all Christians to be members, and which is composed of a number of smaller societies, called particular churches. It is not material to the present question, whether, by particular churches, we understand national churches, as the Churches of France, Spain, and England; or societies of Christians, each governed by one bishop, as the Churches of Paris, Toledo, and Canterbury. The latter is the proper and ancient acceptation of the term. The unity of the Catholic church consists in the agreement of particular churches, not in rites and ceremonies, which are admitted to be of inferior importance, but in doctrine and government, which are the essentials of Christianity. Two particular churches which compel their members to profess opposite doctrines, and which refuse to hold fraternal communion with each other, cannot both be members of the Catholic church. The same assertion may be made, a fortiori, of two particular churches which excommunicate and anathematize each other. Church of Spain, for instance, pronounces the Church of England to be heretical and schismatical. The Church of England, on the other hand, charges the Church of Spain, in common with all the churches of the Roman communion, with blasphemy

The

*The payments of all sorts which the Pope received from France, amounted to less than 16,000l. per annum, on an average of five years ending 1768. Duclos, Voyage en Italie, p. 40.

*

my and idolatry. Whether these mutual accusations be true or false, it is quite obvious, that the churches which bring them against each other, cannot both be members of the Catholic Church, according to the preceding description of it.

Such being the notion which the Catholics entertain respecting the unity of the Catholic Church, it remains to inquire, how that unity is to be preserved, when the unity of the state is dissolved, and the great body of Christians is no longer subject to one Sovereign. It is contended by all Catholics, and admitted by many Protestants, † that, in the present state of the world, the unity of the Church, in the Catholic sense, can only be maintained by the adoption of some common tribunal, entrusted with a certain degree of jurisdiction over all particular churches. Whether this tribunal be composed of one person, or of many-whether it be called Pope, or General Council, it must necessarily be deemed a foreign jurisdiction, and an invasion of the rights of the Sovereign, as those rights are understood by Lord Clarendon, and by many other writers.

J

No person who is acquainted with the heat and passion with which many controversies have been carried on, even in modern times, within the pale of the Church of Rome, can doubt, that if particular churches in that communion enjoyed the same independence on all other churches, which Protestant churches enjoy, every Catholic country would long ago have erected many doctrines into articles of faith, in addition to those points on which all Catholics are agreed. Nothing but the prudence and management of the See of Rome, and the necessity which is incumbent on the Pope, of consulting the temper of all the churches under his jurisdiction, has prevented Thomism from becoming the established religion in one country, Scotism in a second, Jansenism in a third, and Molinism in a fourth.

Whether the Catholics are mistaken in considering unity of doctrine as one great criterion of the Catholic church, is a question into which we do not mean to enter at present. If they

are

For the blasphemy of the Church of Rome, see the Thirty-first Article of Religion. For her idolatry, see the Homilies, passim, and the Declaration against Popery, 30 Car. II, st. 2.

John Fox, the Martyrologist, was of opinion, that if the Pope could be prevailed upon to turn Protestant, and to renounce those pretensions which are as offensive to most Catholics as to Protestants, his opposers should not refuse but that some one man may have the principall place of counsell and government in the Churchaffairs, as being a thing, which would have many conveniences in it, when it might be done with security.' See his Life, prefixed to his Acts and Monuments.

are in an error, every person who has any tincture of theology will admit, that their error is a very ancient and respectable one, and that the measures which they take to preserve that unity, are entitled to some indulgence even from those who discern the fallacy of the system.

These considerations, however, do not seem ever to have occurred to Lord Clarendon. If he suspected that the authority of the See of Rome has any tendency to preserve unity among Catholics, he acted wisely in concealing his suspicions, as he was writing a book for the information of Catholics. A Protestant dissenter may be convinced in his own mind, that the Test and Corporation acts are the great safeguards of the Church of England. If, however, he is pleading for the abrogation of those laws, he will carefully abstain from revealing his private opinion of the consequences to be expected from that measure. This species of wisdom is not possessed by our friend Mr Le Mesurier, whose words we subjoin.

If they [the Catholics] could be brought to dismiss all hopes of it [the reestablishment of the Papal supremacy], we might then have a reasonable prospect of seeing them united to us, not only in allegiance to their Sovereign, but in religious faith. Once cut off from the see of Rome, I am persuaded that they could not long persist in the schism which separates them from the national church. '-Serious Examination, &c. p. 30.

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It is Lord Clarendon's opinion, that Catholic princes, by acknowledging the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pope, deprive themselves of the better moiety of their sovereignty in their

own dominions' (p. 6.); a circumstance which he conceives to be injurious to the cause of Christianity among Turks and Heathens.

And how can we reasonably hope that those great and powerful princes, who command so much the greater part of the world, will ever embrace the Christian faith, when they know that they are not only thereby to cease to be Mahometans, but to be Monarchs; and admit another prince to have an equal, if not superior command o̟ver their own subjects in their own dominions, and must cease to be emperors before they can be admitted to be Christians?'

p. 7. We know of no better mode of answering this question, than by producing the authority of another writer, whose knowledge of the state of religion in Catholic countries was very accurate and extensive, and whose dislike to the Pope and all his works was very vehement and sincere. The following passage is extracted from Bishop Burnet's Exposition of the Thirtyseventh Article.