but without being brought to any decision, a juror having been withdrawn. "In the course of the proceedings this day, a man named Riordan, who was produced as a witness for the plaintiff, astonished the Court and the jury by his declaration. He swore that the present action was the result of a conspiracy against Mr. De Lacour; that he had perjured himself at the last assizes, and that other witnesses for the prosecution were perjurers; and that £20 a head was to be the payment for each perjurer. He said that he made this avowal now in consequence of the advice which he had received from the Rev. Mr. Cotter, the Roman Catholic Curate of Ballinamona, to whom he confessed his guilt, and who suggested the present mode of reparation. Riordan was committed for perjury on his own confession. "At 5 o'clock a verdict was returned for the defendant, with 6d. costs." What would Mr. De Lacour say to auricular confession putting the conscience of the laity under the direction of the priesthood? What do the holy alliance say to the restitution perpetually made in consequence of this direction? What say they to all the injustice and other crimes prevented by this direction? The God who established this doctrine knows more of human nature than they do. "Extreme unction is one of her means to allay fear and remorse." Unquestionably, when received with proper dispositions. But who made it so? "Is any sick amongst you? Let him call in the priests of the Church; and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick person, and the Lord will raise him up; and if he be in his sins they shall be forgiven to him." 32 White before he wrote this passage, should have done as Luther did: this holy father of the Reformation denied the Epistle of St. James to be an inspired document: how have his followers admitted it? White should also have recollected, if ever he knew the fact, that the Protestant Church of England retained extreme unction as a divine institution. "If the sick person desires to be anointed, then shall the Priest anoint him upon the forehead, or breast only, making the sign of the cross, saying thus: "As with this visible oyl thy body is outwardly anointed: so our Heavenly Father, Almighty God, grant of his infinite goodness that thy 32 James, v, 14. soul inwardly may be anointed with the Holy Ghost, who is the spirit of all strength, comfort, relief and gladness. And vouchsafe for his great mercy (if it be his blessed will) to restore unto thee thy bodily health and strength to serve him; and send thee release of all thy pains, troubles, and diseases, both in body and mind. And howsoever his goodness, (by his Divine and unsearchable Providence) shall dispose of thee; we his unworthy ministers and servants, humbly beseech the eternal Majesty to do with thee according to the multitude of his innumerable mercies, and to pardon thee all thy sins and offences, committed by all thy bodily senses, passions and carnal affections; who also vouchsafe mercifully to grant unto thee ghostly strength by his holy spirit, to withstand and overcome all temptations and assaults of thine adversary, that in no wise he prevail against thee, but that thou mayest have perfect victory and triumph against the devil, sin and death: through Christ our Lord, who by his death hath overcome the prince of death, and with the Father and the Holy Ghost, evermore liveth and reigneth, God, world without end. Amen. "Then follows the Psalm 33 xiii. How long wilt thou forget me, O Lord, and so forth. Glory be to the Father, and so forth. As it was in beginning," and so forth. 34 Bucer however, struck out the rubric and prayer, omitting the oil he only retained the Psalm: leaving its use also a matter of discretion. Si videtur commodum, dicatur etiam hic Psalmus, pro usitata, ante haec tempora, unctione. Usequequo Domine, and so forth. 35 The ceremony of anointing was then used in the time of Edward vi, in the Protestant Church of England, and the prayer expressed exactly and fully those effects which the Roman Catholic Church teaches to be those of extreme unction: it is in perfect conformity to the direction of the Apostles and the usage of the holy Catholic Church in the East and in the West: it was cast out by Bucer, omitted by Elizabeth, and declaimed against by White and the holy alliance. Bucer (Censur, page 486,) quoted by L'Estrange, page 299, says, "It is clear, this rite is neither ancient, nor commanded to the Churches practice, by any either precept of God, or example of the primitive Fathers," and upon those grounds he calls for its rejection, yet L'Estrange confesses, that it is Apostolical, and therefore ancient, and matter of a precept given in St. James, of course, a precept of God, if the Epistle be the word of God. As to the example of the primitive Fathers, we have the testi 33 In the Catholic enumeration, Ps. xii. 34 K. Edw. VI. First Book. Ord. Vis. Sick. 35 Ed. Lat. Buceri. mony of Pope Innocent I, who succeeded to the Chair of Peter in the year 402, who in his epistle to Decentius, c. viii, mentions it amongst those sacraments instituted by Christ, derived from the Apostles and always administered in the Church. St. Augustine, St. Jerome, and St. John Chrysostom, who lived at this period, make honorable mention of Innocent, as a holy, learned, and extremely well informed pontiff. The centuriators of Magdeburg, who were staunch Lutherans, acknowledge that the administration of the rite was customary in this age, (cap. vi. De Rit. Visit. Infirm.) In the sixty-ninth canon of the Arabic copy of the Canons of Nice, the oil for the anointing of the sick, is mentioned together with the oil of catechumens and the chrism. White's passage regarding ordination, may go for what it is worth. He and several of the holy alliance will at all events allow that it is a visible ceremony instituted by Christ, to be permanent in his Church, and that the person who is ordained with becoming dispositions will undoubtedly at the time of ordination receive the grace or gifts of the Holy Ghost to enable him to discharge the important duties of the ministry, and this is all that the Roman Catholic Church requires to make it a sacrament. Whether it imprints an indelible character is another question. The British Parliament which is the general council of the English Protestant Church, decided in the case of Horne Tooke, that it does. In the time of Edward VI, the teaching was otherwise: but I believe the doctrine of Bishop Kemp's Church is that the character of orders is indelible. I profess my ignorance of the doctrine of his associates of other Churches regarding this subject. White and Bishop Kemp then at least ought not to quarrel with us upon the score of ordination, for they value what they have got of it, just as highly as we do. With respect to matrimony, it is true that we raise it to an higher dignity than our opponents do, and yet the good gentlemen cannot be restrained from applying us to the text in which St. Paul condemns the Encratites, the Marcionites, the Ebionites, and their successors the Manicheans, who forbad marriage as criminal, and would never touch particular meats or wine, which came from the devil, as they say. But suppose we erred in believing that our blessed Redeemer did exalt this most necessary and important of all human contracts to the high dignity of a sacrament, and that since many religious duties are intimately connected therewith, it ought on those two accounts be in a great measure subject to the superintendence of the Church, we are at least consistent with our principle: nevertheless we do not deny the right which the State governments have, in all parts of the world, to make by reason of its being the "source and bond of civil society," such regula tions as they might see necessary, provided they be not inconsistent with the divine law in respect to this momentous concern. Upon our principles, we can very consistently explain why a clergyman is called upon for the celebration of marriage. But if it be only a civil contract; and the clergy have no concern in civil contracts; upon what principle will any gentleman of the holy alliance in the United States, who holds no civil commission, and in whom the State recognizes no civil authority, presume to be the principal official personage, and pocket fees for doing a civil duty? The general impression in the United States is that the clergy have no civil character beyond that of mere private citizens, but it seems this is an error: for a clergyman is an official personage, who receives a considerable sum for regulating mere civil contracts. The Roman Catholic Clergy do not pretend to be civil officers, they merely attend to the administration of the sacraments of their Church, and receive gratuities for discharging their duty as clergy men. White continues, page 90. "There still remain three exclusive offsprings of tradition, explained and defined by infallibility, which yield to none in happy consequences to the Roman Church-indulgences, purgatory, and the worship of saints, relics, and images. "The wealth which has flowed into the lap of Rome, in exchange for indulgences, is incalculable. Even in the decline of her influence, she still looks for a considerable part of her revenues from this source: to which she also owes the degree of subjection in which she keeps the Roman Catholic governments. My unfortunate native country shows the nature and extent of this influence in a striking light." He then continues upon the subject of indulgences to the 94th page. As this subject has been amply treated of in a former volume of the Miscellany, and every topic which White introduces has been there fully discussed, and all his positions disproved in those papers, I shall only refer you to the examination of an article which appeared in the North American Review, No. XLIV, for July, 1824, the remarks upon which are found in No. 69 of the Miscellany, Sept. 22, 1824, and the subsequent papers. After having read this examination, it will be manifest that Rome derives no part of her revenues from indulgences. His statement in page 93, that "the tax thus levied on the people of Spain, is divided between the King and the Pope," is a plain simple untruth, just as correct as the table given in Guthrie's Geography of the rate at which Rome sells leave to commit the sins there enumerated. But why should White have the hardihood to complain of the inability of the Spanish Cortes to reduce tythes one half, whilst he had full in and connexion of her peculiar doctrines, have happened. The power which he was writing to support, the power which grinds down the Irish Catholic peasant with tythes and taxes to support a Protestant Church. The Spanish people and not the Pope resisted the encroachment of the Cortes. The Spanish peasant is supported by the charity of the Catholic Church, the Irish peasant is beggared and maddened by the rapacity of the Protestant Church; the Spanish peasants and poor desire to prevent the impoverishment of their Church by infidels who desired to enrich themselves, because the poor know that the Church property is shared with them, whilst a great portion of the Cortes having imbibed French infidelity, and having leagued with the infidels of the rest of Europe, imitated France in their efforts to destroy religion, and having disgusted a Catholic people, they made liberty and irreligion synonymous; and inflicted a deadly blow upon public freedom. White misrepresents the political state of Spain as much as he does the tenets of our Church: but my object being only to vindicate the latter, I shall not enter farther into Spanish politics. I shall therefore pass forward to his portion on Purgatory. Yours, and so forth, B. C. LETTER XXXIX. CHARLESTON, S. C., Aug. 27, 1827. To the Roman Catholics of the United States of America. My Friends,-I stated in my last letter that the next portion of White's book which I would examine, was that regarding Purgatory. It is the following, and is found in pages 94, 95: "The belief in Purgatory is so inseparable from the former tenet, that I need not enlarge on the peculiar advantages which Rome has derived from it. I will not observe how fortunately for the interests of the Church of Rome, not only the existence, but even the mutual help and connexion of her peculiar dectrines, have happened. The power of remitting canonical penance would have been useless, on the cessation of penitential discipline; but tradition, having about the same time brought Purgatory to light, offered an ample scope to the power of the Roman keys. Transubstantiation now presented the means of repeating the sacrifice of the cross for those who were supposed to be undergoing the purification by fire. The whole system, indeed, is surprisingly linked together, and the very connexion of its parts, tending to secure the influence and power of the source from whence it flows, gives |