and “slavery” rung in our ears from our very childhood, till the Catholic name has been associated with every thing that is vicious and vile.

8. Why all this mis-representation and pains to deceive? The usurpation of Catholic property and the fears of some that the church revenues should go again to the original owners.

9. These fears, the real motives for all the abuse and calumnies which have been heaped upon the Catholics and their religion. Considering the weakness of human nature, the author seems not to be surprised, that persons having once embraced an erroneous system, should involve themselves in new faults rather than acknowledge their old ones. We could have wished therefore he had been a little more sparing in his censures upon the present race of men, who have been born, nursed and educated in the school of mis-representation and abuse, and hence have become, in some instances perhaps from principle, the unfortunate revilers of the Catholic name.

10. Inconsistency of these revilers-abomination of designating the pope as Antichrist, and the dreadful dilemma they invole themselves in by these impious calumnies.

11. England converted from Paganism to Christianity by Catholics and by monks sent hither by the then Pope.

12. What, then: will our kind teachers tell us that it was the "scarlet whore" and "Antichrist" who brought the glad tidings of the gospel into England? Will they tell us, too, that all the millions and hundreds of millions of English people who died during those nine hundred years, expired without the smallest chance of salvation? Will they tell us, that all our fathers, who first built our churches, and whose flesh and bones form the earth for many feet deep in all the church-yards; will they tell us, that all these are now howling in the regions of the damned? Nature beats at our bosom, and bids us shudder at the impious, the horrid thought! Yet, this, even this, these presumptuous men must tell us; or they must confess their base calumny, in calling the POPE “Antichrist," and the Catholic worship "idolatrous" and its doctrines “damnable.”

13 & 14. Enlarge upon and illustrate the same argument. "15. Away then, my friends, with this foul abuse of the Catholic religion, which, after all, is the religion of about nine-tenths of all the Christians in the world! Away with this shameful calumny, the sole object of which is, and always has been, to secure a quiet possession of the spoils of the Catholic Church, and of the poor; for, we shall, by-and-bye, clearly see how the poor were despoiled at the same time that the church was.'

16. Who gave us the New Testament, which contains the words of eternal life? Through what channel did we receive it? 17. This new testament, this real and genuine word of God, has been received from the Pope and the Catholic Church.

18. A council of the Catholic church held in the fourth century, to decide which gospels were genuine and which not, where and when it was determined that the four Gospels of Saints Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, should be received and believed, and all the rest rejected.

19. Protestants have no Gospel other than which they have received from the Catholic church, which they so much abuse. 20. The Nicene and Athanasian Catholic creeds still retained in the Protestant Church of England prayer book.

"21. To our law-Church PRAYER-BOOK there is a CALENDAR prefixed, and in this Calendar there are, under different days of the year, certain names of holy men and women. Their names are put here in order that their anniversaries may be attended to, and religiously attended to, by the people. Now, who are those holy persons? Some Protestant Saints, to be sure? Not one! What, not saint Luther, nor saint Cranmer, nor saint Edward the Sixth, nor the " VIRGIN" saint Elizabeth? Not a soul of them; but a whole list of POPES, Catholic BISHOPS, and Catholic holy persons, female as well as male. Several virgins; but not the "VIRGIN Queen," nor any of the Protestant race. At first sight, this seems odd; for this CALENDAR was made by Act of Parliament. But the truth is, it was necessary to preserve some of the names, so long revered by the people, in order to keep them in better humour, and to lead them by degrees into the new religion. At any rate, here is the Prayer-Book, holding up for our respect and reverence a whole list of POPES and of other persons belonging to the Catholic church, while those who teach us to read and to repeat the contents of this same Prayer-Book, are incessantly dinning in our ears, that the POPES have all been "Antichrists," and that their Church was, and is, idolatrous in its worship and damnable in its doctrines!

and par

22. No Protestant saints ever known or heard of. 23. "Christianity," which the judges say " is part cel of the law of the land," founded on the new testament, and consequently on the authority of the Catholic church.

"24. Enough! Aye, and much more than enough to make us sorely repent of having so long been the dupes of the crafty and selfish revilers of the religion of our fathers. Were there ever presumption, impudence, inconsistency and insincerity equal to those of which we have just taken a view? When we thus open our eyes and look into the matter, we are astonished at, and ashamed of, our credulity; and, this more especially when we reflect, that the far greater part of us have suffered ourselves to be misled by men not possessing a tenth part of our own capacity; by a set of low-minded, greedy creatures; but, indefatigable; never losing the sight of the spoil; and, day after day, and year after year, close at the ears of the people from their very childhood, din, din, din, incessantly, until from mere habit the monstrous lie got sucked in for gospeltruth. Had the lie been attended with no consequences, it might have been merely laughed at, as all men of sense laugh at the old silly lie about the late King having" made the Judges independent of the Crown." But, there have been consequences, and those most dreadful. By the means of the great Protestant lie, the Catholics and Protestants have been kept in a constant state of hostile feeling towards each other; and both, but particularly the former, have been, in one shape or another, oppressed and plundered, for ages, with impunity to the oppressors and plunderers.

25. Promises to show how the Reformation was engendered,&c. 26. The present progress of truth in the public mind. 27. An erroneous opinion still exists that the Catholic Religion is unfavourable to civil liberty.

28. The motives for inculcating these false notions.

29. Judge Blackstone, who rails against "monkish ignorance and superstition," a mere pigmy in mind compared with those whom he had the impudence to abuse.

30. Oxford College, founded by Catholics and by Monks where there were, in the 17th century, three hundred halls and private schools-at present only five remaining.

31. The folly of railing against Monastic Institutions. 32 and 33. Catholic and Protestant countries compared.

34. A scale of learned men from the year 1600 to 1787, while France was under what Blackstone calls "monkish ignorance and superstition," and while these islands were in a blaze of light sent forth by Luther, Cranmer, Knox, and their followers; and by which rule, there appears 132 for England, Scotland, and Ireland, 676 for France, and 164 for Italy.

35. Protestants rank lower instead of higher than Catholics in the scale of intellect and talent.

"36. Here, then, my friends, sensible and just Englishmen, I close this introductory Letter. I have shown you how grossly we have been deceived, even from our very infancy. I have shown you, not only the injustice, but the absurdity of the abuse heaped by our interested deluders on the religion of their and our fathers. I have shown you enough to convince you, that there was no obviously just cause for an alteration in the religion of our country. I have, I dare say awakened in your minds, a strong desire to know how it came to pass, then, that this alteration was made; and, in the following Letters, it shall be my anxious endeavour fully to gratify this desire. But, observe, my chief object is to show, that this alteration made the main body of the people poor and miserable, compared with what they were before; that it impoverished and degraded them; that it banished, at once, that " Old English Hospitality," of which we have since known nothing but the name; and that, in lieu of that hospitality, it gave us pauperism, a thing which was never before known in England."

Such is the nature of the first number of this very interesting history; in which not a single statement is made that can be controverted or refuted by any fair words or sound argument. We do not, however, mean to give the work our unqualified approbation; we think the author is sometimes too harsh and inconsiderate in his expressions, which we conceive to lessen rather than increase the natural force of his excellent arguments; and he detracts from the dignity of the historian, whenever he

descends to the calling of any set of men by absolute nick names. With these, which we consider blemishes in the work, it is still by far the best defence of Catholics ever written by a Protestant; and we recommend every Catholic to read it, and promote its circulation by every means in his power. And we hope that all prejudice against the writer, if any exist among Catholics, will now at least be laid aside. For surely the man who will fearlessly write the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, is a friend to the cause of truth. He who so powerfully defends the long persecuted, trodden down, maligned Catholics of these countries, is a friend to religion. The author who labours to disabuse his readers of prejudices deep rooted, and alike prejudicial to their present and future happiness, is a real friend to his neighbour

ance.

The man who will do these deeds in time of need,
Is a friend to his country and to his GOD indeed.

No. 11.

The Second Number of this Work has just made its appearIt treats of the Origin of the Catholic Church-its history in England down to the time of "the Reformation,”—and the beginning of "the Reformation," or, as the author more properly calls it, the Devastation of England by Henry VIII. We have read it with attention and with unalloyed feelings of pleasure and satisfaction. From the first letter, we were led to expect favourably of the second; our expectations have been more than realized, even the blemishes which we have pointed at in the first, are amended in this second number. We understand its sale has already exceeded 20,000 copies; and we venture to predict that this little volume of history will be more read than any other ever published in this kingdom; no one of whatever class or condition can fail to derive pleasure and profit from its perusal. The educated Catholic, however, should not expect to meet with much information, or any thing new, in a plain historical relation of facts; the novelty is in its being a True History written by a Protestant-its abounding with truths so well told, and those very truths which Protestants ought to know, and must know, before they can expect the restoration of their long lost rights, and a return to that happiness and prosperity for which Old England has been in her ancient days of glory deservedly distinguished.

Original Poetry.

(For the Catholic Miscellany.)

ADESTE FIDELES.

Literally translated in such measure as will suit exactly the favourite Tune of the Latin Hymn.

EPIPHANY.