which such writers themselves reprobate. Now, if persecution do really admit of these seve ral explications, it is to be feared we are all sadly involved in this most hateful crime. " Mental persecution" appears in most ancient and modern works of religious controversy; it lurks in obsolete Acts of Parliament, it steals into many of our prayers, and infuses its poison into most of our public services of Religion. "Verbal Persecution" is heard from almost every pulpit, and "goeth about, seeking whom it may devour", into social parties, meetings, and assemblies wherever religion is allowed to come into discussion. As to the last description of persecution; that which is manual, "actual or open by the hand," as I have already remarked, it has been but too general, and is still practised even by all those Protestants in this country who persist in forcing their fellow subjects to support measures or perform services at which their principles revolt, or by excluding them from places of honour and profit, purely on account of some real or supposed religious mistakes.* ..

In writing of persecution, as it has been maintained by some Catholics, it is proper to

* I allude principally to the tithe laws, the Test and Corporation Acts, and all taxes and services deemed ecclesiastical, which bear heavily on Catholics and Dissenters.

repeat, that such a spirit and conduct are directly opposed to the religion of the Roman Catholic Church. To talk, therefore, of the Church as a persecuting Church, is to libel and defame If this were not the religion of our ancestors.

the case, then all Catholics who do not practise persecution are bad Catholics; they would be considered as departing from the rules and obligations of their religion, and would receive the spiritual censures which attach to every wilful deviation from the faith and discipline of the universal Church. Yes:-if the religion of Catholics taught persecution, then we should find prayers, creeds, articles, and charges enforcing coercion and severity against the opponents of the Church; and bulls, anathemas, censures, and excommunications would abound against all those who should refuse to persecute, hate, and

"Because we are Catholics, it is not necessary that we should be actuated by a persecuting spirit against those who Meekness and charity are its are averse to our religion. grand characteristics, and the examples left us by our predecessors recommend to us a contrary conduct." See the "Answer to the third Question" proposed to the University of Salamanca, respecting the supposed tenet of not keeping faith with heretics. The reader will find an abstract of these several questions and answers in a former part of this work, and a still more extended abstract in the Appendix to Sir John Cox Hippesley's Speech on the Catholic Question, in 1810. The answers and judgment of the several Universities are given in length at the Appendix to Cuthell and Martin's Edition of the Catholic Debates in Parliament, in 1805.

destroy heretics. It would be a sin, in the eye of a good Catholic not to inflict misery on the body of his religious neighbour who should differ from him, and it would form a subject of confession to all the faithful who should neglect to propagate the truth by means of force. But who ever yet heard of a mass for the hanging of unbelievers? What general council has decreed, ex cathedra, that whosoever does not burn heretics without doubt he shall perish everlastingly? Did ever any Catholic lady go to confession, bitterly lamenting that she had not poisoned her heretical husband, or any husband that he had not strangled his infidel wife? Was any monarch ever deposed, or any kingdom interdicted, because all the non-conforming subjects had not been hanged, drawn and quartered? And what is the price of an indulgence for having neglected to rob and plunder a Protestant? I repeat it -if persecution be a tenet of the Catholic Church, how erroneously have the biographers of the mild, the excellent Fenelon, estimated his merits as a Catholic. The almost seraphic Madame de Guion, the truly devout Mons. de Renty, and the pious Thomas à Kempis, were all hypocrites, and contumacious despisers of the religion which they professed, and to whose interests they appeared to have been so sincerely devoted. And what should we say, in that case, to the great body of English and Irish Catholics of our own day? What inconsistency appears in the conduct of such Catholics as the Earl of Fin

gal, who, with others, took up arms in the County of Meath against his rebellious brethren, and in defence of a Protestant government, and an heretical monarch!* How supine and negligent is the conduct of such men as the author of the Lives of Abelard and Eloisa,† the learned and liberal author of Horæ Biblicæ, or the friend of the pious and excellent, but afflicted Cowper.§ Men with whom numerous highly respectable Protestants have thought it an honour to be acquainted, and who never yet manifested the most distant disposition to persecute others on account of their religion.

There is another consideration worthy of regard, on the supposition that persecution is a tenet of the Catholic Church, which many Protestants have imagined to be the case :||

I be

p. 367,

*See Mr. Wakefield's Account of Ireland, vol. ii. Whoever would become perfectly acquainted with the true state of this oppressed and injured country will find ample gratification in the perusal of this invaluable publication, which has but just made its appearance.

The Rev. Joseph Berington.

Charles Butler, Esq.

§ Sir John Throckmorton, Bart. See the Letters of Cowper, in Hayley's Life of that poet.

"If it be true," says Dr. Sturges, "that persecution was not a tenet of the Roman Catholic Religion, all of us Protestants must have been long under a most egregious mistake." This observation owes its origin to what Dr. Milner said, "that if Mary was a persecutor, it was not in virtue of any

tenet

lieve it will be granted, that there is not a single article of faith to be found in any acknowledged Catholic Catechism, Creed, or Council, which has not, at one time or other, been defended from the press, and been urged upon the people as essential to their final salvation. It is with the Catholic articles of divine faith, as Mr. Pope declares to be the case with the universal system of nature, from the chain which if you strike either a "tenth or a ten thousandth" link, it is equally broken. The religion of Catholics, according to their ideas, as it admits of no additions, neither does it allow of any deductions. So common is this opinion, that Protestants have even charged it against the Catholics as a mark of extreme obstinacy and prejudice.* Now I should be glad to know what Catholic author ever wrote expressly in defence of persecution, as an article of divine faith, which has been received by all Christians, at all times, and in all places, according to the rule of St. Vincent, so often referred to. Some writers may, nay, doubtless, have appeared to extenuate, or even justify the interference of the magistrate, when the doctrines of religion have been opposed; but these mistakes, to give them no harsher a term, are unfortu

tenet of her religion that she became so," than which a more just remark could not have been made. See Sturges's Reflections on Popery, p. 52; and Milner's History of Winchester, vol. i. p. 355.

* See "Popery always the same."