ADVERTISEMENT TO THE READER. THE author of the Remarks on the Charge of the Bishop of Durham had prefixed to his pamphlet a motto from La Harpe. The gentleman who undertook to reply, whether a Jewish rabbi, as his name would indicate, or a clergyman, as I should guess from his zeal, after endeavouring to shew his knowledge of the French language by giving a false translation of the motto, informs us in an advertisement that he does not know who Mr. La Harpe is. This probably may be true; though I should wish to learn in what part of the literary world our learned controvertist has been slumbering during these last twenty years. To relieve his anxiety, then, La Harpe was a French academician, celebrated for his lectures at the Lyceum, and distinguished by the title of the French Quintillian. An abstract of his life may be read in the Oxford Review, for February. Thus far to satisfy the enquiries of the gentleman styling himself Elijah Index, and dwelling in Protestant-Row, South-Shields. To the reader I have only one word to premise. Should many passages in the following sheets be deemed too light for so grave a subject, or too severe for so feeble an adversary, I trust a sufficient apology may be found in the multifarious merits of the pamphlet, which I have attempted to review, under its different pretensions, as a vehicle of humour, of controversy, and of abuse. A REVIEW, &c. &c. The IN the course of the last summer, the Bishop of Durham made the usual visitation of his diocese. charge which he then delivered was received, as all such charges should be, with attention and respect. With much feeling he informed his clergy, that it was his dying speech: and their affection induced them to request that, by the aid of the press, he would leave it behind him to edify and console his afflicted flock. However, for reasons which it is not my province to explain, their request appeared to be forgotten; and the charge, to the great disappointment of the public, was confined, during several months, to the obscurity of the bishop's desk. At length, when expectation was almost exhausted, it was ushered into the light under the most favourable auspices, and at the very moment when the intrigue which succeeded in removing the late ministry from the cabinet, had arrived at maturity. The first who was permitted to feast on the spiritual manna, was his Majesty: and the Charge, as soon as it had been presented to him, was published, and circulated through these two counties, with an industry equal to the solicitude with which it had been previously withheld. To those who combined, the time of its appearance with the nature of its object, it seemed designed to prepare the way for the warwhoop of no popery, which many reverend gentlemen have of late so creditably but unsuccessfully attempted to excite.* I am far, however, from attributing such worldly motives to the right reverend Prelate. At his years, ("they have exceeded the ordinary age of "man," he is too old to defile himself with the dirt of political intrigue, or " to wish the revival of persecu"tion and impassioned controversy."+ His object, I have no doubt, was to defend what he conceived to be the truth, and to guard his flock against seduction to what he conceived to be error. In the prosecution, however, of this object, the venerable Prelate thought proper to direct a very impassioned attack against the doctrines of the Catholic Church. He described its members as the parents of infidelity, as idolaters, as mutilators of the sacrament, falsifiers of the Scriptures, enemies to the passion of Christ, patrons of religious ignorance, and adversaries to the diffusion of scriptural knowledge. It was not, I think, in the nature of things, that the Bishop should expect such a charge to remain unanswered. Be that as it may, a Catholic writer ventured to meet his lordship in the field of controversy; and the issue of the conflict was, at least in the opinion of many Protestants, that the Bishop was fairly unhorsed by his adversary: when lo! a second champion started up--Mr. Elijah Index, and with officious celerity interposed his mantle between the fallen Prelat e and the strokes of his opponent. Now, whether this doughty warrior, this new Elijah, be descended from the prophet of old, I am not genealogist enough to determine: but of this I am certain, that from the accuracy of his statements, and the cogency of his rea *He foresaw, probably, the temper of the times, and what events were likely to ensue. Protestant's Reply, p. 4. Sermon of the Bishop of Durham before the House of Lords, 1799, p. 13.5 soning, he must be twin-brother to a "liege subject," whose loyalty prompted him not long ago, to disprove the loyalty of others, by imposing on the public the, work of a Protestant controvertist for a Catholic catechism! "Ovo prognatus eodem:" (or, that I may not speak in an unknown tongue) "A chicken hatched from the same egg." That the author of the Remarks on the Charge of the Bishop of Durham will condescend to notice so puny an adversary as our Elijah is, I think, hardly to be expected. Yet, as many are accustomed to mistake assertion for fact, and invective for argument, it may not, perhaps, be improper to point out the weakness of the reasoning which he has adopted in his pamphlet. He has volunteered as second to the Bishop of Durham in this controversial duel: why may not I step forward as second to the author of the Remarks? Certainly it cannot be presumption in me to think my services of equal value at least with those of Elijah Index. Elijah begins by informing us, that he considers his own church" as the best constructed and the most beautiful fabric upon earth." For this I am willing to give him credit. Every sectarist naturally loves and admires his own creed, because it is the child of his own judgment. I also esteem the Church of England, not indeed as the best constructed and most beautiful fabric upon earth, but as receding the least of all the reformed churches from the beauty and construction of the Church of Rome. It is, to use the words of Dryden The less deformed, because reformed the least.” The reformation has, indeed, proved a prolific parent. She has produced Lutherans, Calvinists, Arminians, Anabaptists, Quakers, Methodists, Swedenborgians, Jumpers, and a thousand other sects, which it would be a difficult task to enumerate.* But were I a Protestant, I think I should most admire the creed of Socinus. The Socinians are of all Protestants the most consistent. They adopt without hesitation the principles which gave birth to the reformation; nor refuse to admit the consequences that naturally flow from them. Their arguments against the faith of the established church, are but transcripts of those which the fathers of the reformation urged against the Church of Rome. The Catholic cannot without a smile behold the orthodox divine sweating and writhing under the difficulty of proving and disproving the validity of the same argument; of proving it, when it is urged by himself against the papist, and of disproving it, when it is urged against him by the Socinian. But what part of the Protestant church may be the most truly Protestant, is foreign to the present enquiry. Leaving Elijah, therefore, to gaze at the beauty of his own church, we will return to his pamphlet. His great object in the preliminary observations is to shew, that the first provocation was given, not by the Bishop of Durham, but by the author of the Remarks. To most of my readers this assertion will appear extraordinary; and they will naturally conceive that our Israelite entertains far different notions of * Elijah is fond of poetry. Let him, then, take the poet's account of the first reformers and their offspring: “Church quacks, with passions under no command, 66 Poisoning the waters where their swarms abound. "Scorn'd by the nobler tenants of the flood, "Minnows and gudgeons gorge the unwholesome food. "Even Lewenhoeck himself would stand aghast, 66 Employed to calculate the enormous sum, "And own his crab-computing powers o'ercome." |