Answer-I think so!!"—"Irish Education Report," 8; App., page 165.

Hence, if the superior tells any in the religious orders in this country not to observe any oath he may have taken, the monks, friars, and nuns are bound to perjure themselves. Hence the children are dispensed from their oaths, if the father, who is a superior in the fullest sense of the word, tells them not to observe it! This is the doctrine taught within the walls of Maynooth, and admitted to be such by the professor who taught it!!

Hear Dr. M'Hale:-"Who is to be the judge of what the utility of the Church may require? Answer:-"The superiors of the Church." "Does it not appear there to be laid down as a universal proposition, and without any qualification, that the utility of the Church is a just cause for dispensing from oaths?" Answer :- "It is laid down as a proposition, that the utility of the Church is a just cause!"-"Irish Education Report, 8;" App. page 284.

-!

There is Dr. M'Hale admitting that if he perjured himself for the utility of the Church, he should, in so doing, have acted consistently with the doctrine of his Church.

O M'Hale! O holy mother-the son is worthy of the mother, and the mother of the son! Ex ore filii indice matrem.

No Roman Catholic should be allowed to sit on a jury until he renounced this horrible doctrine; for, according to it, the Pope can absolve from their oaths all the Roman Catholics throughout the universe, the bishops all those in their dioceses, the priests all those in their parishes; if they think, or pretend to think, that the utility of the Church requires it; for they are the superiors, and the superiors are the judges. No wonder if Roman Catholics will not find a verdict ! Your second reason is, the possibility of Sir Francis Hopkins having been deceived. If that were admitted as a reason, no verdict could ever be found. The courts of justice should be closed, and the clearest evidence set aside; for there is always a possibility of deception. Your third reason is, that the public sympathize, and declare their belief in his innocence. Is there one instance, I ask you, of an execution to be found in Ireland, in which that portion of the community which you call the public, have adopted a different course? Your fourth reason is, that Seery declared his innocence on the scaffold. I need not tell you, sir, or any priest of your Church, why the Roman Catholic fears not to go before his God, after telling a lie! Having been eleven years a priest of your Church, I know the reason, and you know it, and the public shall know it also. It is this: after telling it, he kneels down to his confessor, and gets absolution. This is the solution of a problem. that was too difficult-the unravelling of a mystery that was too dark for Protestants to understand. te absolvo of the confessor is the cause. The priest, standing by the side of the criminal, gives a false security to his guilty soul; and, like the false prophet mentioned in Scripture, cries to his troubled conscience, "Peace, peace, where there is no peace." He ushers him into eternity, with a lie on his soul, and gives his absolution as a passport to St. Peter, for admittance. The Council of Trent consigns to eternal flames any who will deny the validity of that passport! There can be VOL. VIII.-April, 1846. N New Series, No. 4.

The ego

no preventative against this but one, and that is, to give the chaplain full and free access to the convict, and to afford the convict every means and help to make his peace with God, and after he has declared that he has done so, to allow no other absolution after he addresses the public; as we see by the papers Seery was allowed. If this rule were established, we would hear no more of these awful imprecations, that blaspheme God, if false, and scandalize the Christian, even if true. As an instance of how little importance should be attached to those declarations of innocence on the scaffold, I shall cite an example, In the year 1821, a notorious ruffian, named Daly, a captain of Ribbonmen, called Ballinafadmen, was executed at Seafin, near Loughrea. The most of the murders and outrages committed in the county of Galway that year were committed by this Captain Steele (as he was called) and his men. On the day on which he was led to execution, I heard one of his associates say that he was along with him the very night he committed the murder for which he was executed; yet on the scaffold this man declared before God that he was innocent of that crime, and the next moment knelt down and got absolution. The Marquis of Clan ricarde, whose tenant he was, or Robert Daly, Esq., his agent, a Roman Catholic, can bear testimony to the truth of what I state. Since I became a priest, I never attended convicts on the scaffold, but on one occasion. Two men were executed in Montreal in 1832 for the murder of a soldier. The two were guilty; one of them said nothing on the scaffold; the other declared his innocence, although I knew that he was guilty.

How long, sir, will you and your priests stand forth as apologists for persons convicted by the laws of their country of the horrible crime of assassination ?-that crime that draws down the vengeance of an angry God on this unhappy land-that renders our name a bye-word among the nations-that converts the blood, with which the Irish soil is saturated, into a blight that paralyzes its natural fruitfulness. If Mirabeau, Pope Alexander VI., or his son, Cæsar Borgia-men who were monsters in human form-men who made murder a trade-were to write on the subject, on which you and Priest Savage wrote, they could not have omitted the insertion of a few words expressive of their horror of the crime, yet you and he studiously avoid it!

That shows in what light you hold it. Another proof is—if a murderer were to apply to any of your priests for absolution within his parish, he has faculties for absolving him; but, if a man who had been present at the baptism of a child by a Protestant clergyman were to apply, he has no faculties for absolving him; it is a reserved case the bishop alone or the vicar-general can do it, and he should pay a certain sum of money to be applied to pious purposes before he could get absolution. Had Sir F. Hopkins lived among the Hottentots of Africa, or the Iroquois of North America, his life and property would have been held sacred by those savages. The Indian knows no enemy but him he meets as such, foot to foot, face to face, in the wood, or on the field of battle; he never steals, like the tiger, at the dead hour of night, to the wigwam of a brother Indian. No Indian warrior ever returns home with the scalp of a member of his own tribe snatched by surprise ;-else his family would receive him with averted

faces and downcast eyes; but, what the uncivilized savage would scorn to do, the low, mean, and cowardly Irishman will do without a blush; and a civilized Savage, professing to be a minister of Christ, will stand forth and be his apologist, by saying it was not he who committed the crime, but some other person who is well known, but whom he takes good care shall never be brought to justice. For everybody knows there is no such person; it is all moon-shine-a pious fraud to have revenge on Sir Francis Hopkins. "All Ireland," says Mr. Savage, mourns over the sad and appalling fate of Bryan Seery." That, to say the least of it, is false. All Ireland does no such thing. But all levellers and sans culottes mourn; those who would change the social system by the torch and midnight dagger; those who have no sympathy with the victim, provided he be a Protestant; these mourn and are sad; but every friend of peace and order-every man who would wish to sit and rest under the shade of his own vine and fig tree, without fearing to have "slugs ringing in his ears," as Priest Savage facetiously terms it, or the knife at his throat; every such man, and I am sure they are numerous, is delighted to find by this energetic stroke of the executive, that there is a law to protect him, and energy in the Government to enforce that law. After these two inflammatory missiles hurled by you and priest Savage against Sir Francis Hopkins, I do think that he, and the gentlemen of your county, and the peaceably-disposed in all other disturbed districts of Ireland, should combine for mutual safety and defence, and petition the executive for the most stringent co-operation of the new Coercion Act, in order to put down, with the mighty arm of the law, not only the cowardly assassin, but the worse than cowardly instigators to assassination. Sir Francis Hopkins, has shown his bravery; let him now show pudence, bravery, and strength, combined with others, against assassination. He is denounced by competent authorities as a fit and proper subject for the bullet of the murderer. Irish landlords ought to present him with a gold medal, as a token of their admiration of his bravery on that eventful occasion; on one side of which he should be represented with his knee on the breast of the prostrate assassin; while priest Savage gives absolution, and bishop Cantwell, Episcopal benediction to Bryan Seery, on the other.

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I have done with you, Sir. May God convert you. May he open your eyes to see the falsehood of the doctrine which you teach-the awful nature of the crime of murder-and the impiety of the Church of which you are a bishop. May he, by the teaching of his Holy Spirit, "draw you from darkness to light, and from the power Satan unto God." May he lead you and your deluded followers_into the narrow way that leadeth unto life-life eternal-even to Jesus Christ who is "the way, the truth, and the life," and the only mediator between God and men. Your Church is shaking to her centre in Ireland and on the Continent. One hundred thousand persons and sixty priests have renounced her within a few months in Germany, while in our own beloved land both priests and people are shaking off the yoke of priestcraft, in east, west, north, and south. This is fearful odds against the few Puseyites who have been perverted in Oxford; but they will soon discover that your Church is the pre

dicted apostasy portrayed in the 17th chapter of the Book of Revelation-that scarlet lady, "full of names of blasphemy, having seven heads and ten horns; full of abominations and filthiness; and upon her forehead a name written, Mystery! Babylon the great, the mother of harlots, and abominations of the earth; drunken with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus;" and ashamed, and enlightened, they will turn to the true fold of Christ, out of which there is no salvation. If Newman or Walker believe that you can convert a piece of paste or a glass of wine into that holy, infinite, and all-powerful Spirit that made heaven and earth, they are worthy of you, and you of them. All I now say to them is-Credat Judæus Apella.

I cannot avoid observing, that the energetic esrnestness with which you have laboured to exculpate the departed Bryan Seery, savours more of the feelings of sympathy for a near relative, than of a defence by an impartial advocate. Your humble servant,

RODERICK Ryder,

Lately a Priest of the Church of Rome, diocese of Kilmacduagh and Kilfenora, and now in connexion with the Priests' Protection Society for Ireland.

Dublin, March, 1846.

ROMISH ABSOLUTION.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ACHILL HERALD.

Priests' Asylum, Achill, Jan. 22, 1846. MY DEAR SIR,-The Government journals have been for some time, as so many State quacks, feeling the public pulse as to the expediency of a State provision for the Irish Roman Catholic priesthood. Previous to the introduction of this measure to the Imperial Parliament, permit me to state two facts, of which I have been cognisant, and which will clearly prove the animus of Romanism and the feeling of its priesthood towards the united churches of England and Ireland, as also towards Protestantism in general.

I was assisting a neighbouring parish priest at a station of confession, shortly after the murder of Mr. Blood, near Corofin, in the county of Clare, and which took place during the reign of Terryaltism in that county, in the year 1831 or 1832.

After breakfast the parish priest and those assisting him, who consisted of two other priests and me, walked out, and while taking some recreation, the parish priest asked us whom did we think was with him at confession. We said, we could not possibly conceive. He then told us that one of Mr. Blood's murderers confessed to him the double crime of murder and robbery. I asked him if he gave the murderer and robber absolution, and he answered in the affirmative.

On my way homewards, after the station of confession was over, I met one of the parishioners, who entered into conversation with me, when he expressed his great regret at not going to me to confession. I inquired of him what could be the cause of his regret, and he told me that his parish priest, Father, refused giving him absolution, and would not hear his confession, on account of being present at the baptism of Mr. -'s child; and that he thought there was no harm in being present at the baptism of a Protestant child in his father's

house, as the sacrament was not administered in church; and that the priest told him he should go to the bishop to obtain forgiveness of the grievous sin he was guilty of, as the bishop alone, or some priest specially authorized by him, had the power of forgiving the damning sin of witnessing the administration of a sacrament, or being present at any of the ceremonies of the Protestant Church.

The case is simply this: the Romish priest whom I assisted (according to the doctrines of the Church of Rome) had the power, and willingly absolved the murderer and robber of Mr. Blood, and the same priest could not-nay, peremptorily refused granting absolution to one of his own parishioners for being present at the baptism of the child of his Protestant friend and connexion, and this Romanist had to go some miles to the titular bishop of to obtain absolution for the grievous sin of seeing a clergyman of the united Church of England and Ireland administer the sacrament of baptism to an infant babe, the child of a true believer. Oh, Popery! Popery! what zeal without knowledge. I have heard these facts from the lips of the parties, and I did then, as I do now, firmly believe them to be true, and I am ready and willing to swear to the truth of the statement of these two facts. I remain, my dear Sir,

Your most obedient humble servant,

THE INTRIGUES OF THE JESUITS.

COMPILED BY THE REV. JOHN SPURGIN,

VICAR OF HOCKHAM, Norfolk.

THE Society or Order of the Jesuits, was instituted at Paris, by IGNATIUS LOYOLA, in the early part of the Reformation. The founder was a Spanish knight, who had been wounded in the siege of Pumpeluna-a citadel which he had resolved on defending with his usual impetuous and headstrong rashness; and being instigated by a morbid craving after notoriety, he became the victim of a mingled spirit of ambition, fanaticism, and superstition, at once, the most inexorable of tyrants and the most abject of slaves. About this time, the Church of Rome was sustaining great injury from the ignorance and profligacy of her priesthood, and, the heart of the Papacy being alarmed at the giant strides of the Reformation, Pope Paul III. (after some delay, and not without fear of danger,) confirmed this newly-formed Society, in 1540, under the title of "The Companions of Jesus," or, as in common phrase, "THE JESUITS." The

WILLIAM J. BURKE, Formerly P. P. of Liscannor, Co. Clare, and Vicar-Gen. pro tem. of Killenora.

CONSTITUTION of this order was and still remains military: its GOVERNMENT is monarchical, the supreme authority being vested in the Grand Master or General, whose power is absolute; and its MEMBERS, who enter into every profession, are sworn to strictly to keep secret its purposes, deny that they belong to it, as well as while they themselves are employed to work them out. The REAL OBJECT of the Society is To OVERTURN EVERY CONSTITUTED AUTHORITY THROUGHOUT

THE WORLD, EVEN POPERY ITSELF, and To ESTABLISH ITS OWN SOVEREIGNTY!!* Hence we find that

* The SECRETA MONITA, or "The Secret Instructions of the Jesuits," (a MS. copy whereof is to be seen in the Library of the British Museum,) depict, in awful colours, the moral and political workings of their past and present usurpations. These instructions declare, that it will "tend to the benefit of the

Church, that all bishoprics, and EVEN THE APOSTOLICAL SEE ITSELF, should be hooked into their hands." (See Short Extracts, in No. 11, of the Editor's Second Series of Anti-Tractarian Tracts.)