province, seem not to have clearly understood the full extent of true Christian Liberty, of not affecting dominion over God's Heritage, when they remonstrated against the design of Lord Falkland, to allow the Catholics in Ireland the free exercise of their religion, on the principle of its being an impiety to grant such an indulgence to the Church of Rome, which they branded as superstitious and idolatrous.

To root out an inveterate prejudice from the mind is not a less difficult operation than to remove a natural blemish from the body. Children in Catholic Countries are taught, as soon as they can speak, that all persons except Catholics are Heretics-that all Heretics are in a state of damnation-that it is a crime to think well of them, and a meritorious act to convert them-that Popes and General Councils are infallible — that every thing which the Church of Rome enjoins as a matter of faith or a matter of practice, must be done and believed, under the risk of incurring the penalty

of

of the pains of Purgatory, or of Hell. It cannot be expected, that such principles, on such a subject as Religion, thus sucked in with the mother's milk, can be speedily changed in the bulk of the Catholics. Principles, thus produced, cannot be eradicated by Penal Laws, and they are confirmed by oppression: they will be shaken by the forbearance and moderation of Government; and they will be wholly changed by the progress of general knowledge. This progress is slow in all countries and on all subjects, and it is particularly slow on subjects of Religion, and in countries where the best books are prohibited; it will, however, at length prevail-magna est veritas et prævalebit-it will, not only in Ireland but throughout the Christian world, vindicate to mankind the Right of private Judgment, in all matters respecting God and Conscience; and it will put an end to Infidelity by exhibiting Christianity in its proper form-It is at least my fixed opinion, that the Christian Religion will stand,

stand, in every country, the free investiga

tion of learned men; but that the superstitious practices, the uncharitable and persecuting principles of the Roman Church, will stand it in none.

If the Roman Church has not, since the revival of Letters, openly renounced any

of the doctrines which the Protestants esteem erroneous; or abandoned any of the ceremonies which they judge superstitious; this ought not to surprise any one who considers, how difficult it is, even for an Individual, who has once delivered an Opinion on a solemn subject, ever to change, at least publicly to own. that he has changed it. There is, in this respect, a kind of Popery in every one of us; we conceive ourselves to be infallible in Judgment, and thence become incorrigible in conduct; we are ashamed of owning ourselves to have been in an error, preferring a culpable consistency to a rational change of sentiment, and conduct.

But if this perseverance in wrong often appertains to Individuals, it much more frequently

frequently appertains to Public Bodies; in them the disgrace of error, or even the criminality of conduct, belongs to so many, that no one is ashamed of the part which belongs to himself. I am not in truth prepared to say with Archbishop Tillotson, learned and liberal as I esteem him-"It "was the humour of Babylon of old" (as the Prophet tells us, Jerem. li. 9.) “that "she would not be healed, and this is still "the temper of the Church of Rome;

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they hate to be reformed, and rather "than acknowledge themselves to have "been once in an error, they will con"tinue in it for ever." I cannot adopt this sentiment, because it includes an uncharitable Judgment of such men as Bossuet, Fleury, Fenelon, Du Pin, and many other ornaments, not merely of the Church of Rome, but of Human Nature itself: I dare not say of such men that they hated to be reformed. The Catholics may say the same of Barrow, Tillotson, Tenison, and of an hundred other divines of our own and of other Reformed Churches.

Churches. This mutual imputation of hating to be reformed, of obstinacy in error, is no proof of any thing on either side, except of that error into which the greatest men of all sides usually fall, when they assume authority over other men's faith, and are positive in the orthodoxy of their own; when they exclusively arrogate to themselves and their party infallibility of Judgment, and sincerity of profession; imputing hypocrisy, ignorance, and obstinacy, to all those who dispute their pretensions.

But though it should be granted that the Catholic Religion, as contained in the Canons of the Church of Rome, is materially the same now that it had been for many Ages before the Reformation; that it was at the Council of Trent after the Reformation; that it appears to have been in the Creed of Pope Pius the IVth after the Council of Trent,-in the Bull Unigenitus of Clement XI. in 1713-in the letter of the Legate Ghilini to the Irish Catholic Bishops in 1768—and in