now, under a Protestant Sovereign, after a lapse of more than two centuries, a prelate raises the alarm against persons who thought as little of depriving him of his tithes, or the lay gentlemen of their impropriations, as the inoffensive citizen thought of depriving of his life a suspicious prince, who, in his uneasy slumbers, dreamed that he cut his throat, and put the innocent man to death. I am in no manner concerned in tithes, but I appeal to to his Lordship whether, at different times, they have not been the occasion of popular commotions? Whether, at different times, the cottager who plants the potato, and the farmer who commits the grain to the earth, does not realize the fable of the man who sowed the dragon's teeth, which afterwards vegetated into armed men? Whether an honourable support, free from litigations and wrangles with parishioners of every description, would not comport more with the dignity of the clerical profession? And whether this be not the opinion and wish of the most sensible clergymen of the established religion? If I am asked the reason why I should interfere in tithes? I answer, that the radical cause of the distemper being not removed, it may break out at some future period; and that when the bramble shoots from the sod which will cover me, the wrangles of oppressed peasants may be construed into a Popish confederacy. His Lordship endeavours to refute the Bishop of Llandaff's arguments by the disparity of circumstances, as the number of the Dissenters of both communions is greater in Ireland. I take the liberty of asking him one question-is it because there is less to do, that the salary of the labourer must be increased at the expense of the cottager? Does he really believe that an honest Dissenter will be saved? Does he believe that an honest Catholic will be saved? If he does, why this zeal for conversion which alarms the nation? It is equal to any state whether the hand that steers the plough crosses the forehead or not, provided the man be honest and industrious. He complains of the zeal of the Catholic Laity to make converts, and the supineness of the Protestant gentlemen in not converting Catholics. Will he have a Protestant landlord turn missionary, and invade the episcopal functions? If his an : Lordship be so zealous for the salvation of the people, why not learn their language? The Catholic missionaries who penetrated into the vast empire of China, learned the Chinese, though there are eight hundred letters in the alphabet, and each letter stands for a word. They converted millions of the people, translated the writings of their philosophers, and brought Europe acquainted with the laws, customs and morals of that singular country. His Lordship is not under the necessity of travelling far to learn the language; it is at his door: and an English pastor may as well learn the Irish as Colonel Vallancey, English officer. His Lordship will excuse this freedom-it is as a writer who called me forth that I address him throughout my respect for a Bishop's character is a restraint which I would shake off, if a person of an inferior rank called on Government to bring into disuse the language of a country. It is what conquerors themselves seldom have done. The polished Frenchman has never attempted to abolish the low dialect of the Breton; the grave Spaniard leaves the Biscayen to the use of his speech; and the English have not abolished the Welsh or Erse: the Irish must have the badge of scorn. As to conversions made by the Catholic laity, I do not find it an easy matter: fasts, confession of sins, the belief of mysteries which and seem to contradict the very senses, penal laws and legal disqualifications, are no great inducements to conversion. Suppose that a Protestant, struck with the same arguments which made some German princes, Chillingworth and Dryden, to embrace the Catholic faith; suppose a Protestant of any sect became a Catholic, the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, upon the very principles of the Reformation, which allows freedom of thought and the right of private judgment, could not in equity censure him. Every one is free to embrace the religion that seems best to him. It is the privilege of nature; and a convert to the Catholic religion is sufficiently punished by a conformity that deprives him almost of every privilege. Many a learned man has quitted the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's communion. The famous Whiston wrote to the Archbishop of York and Canterbury, assigning the reasons of his separation from the surpass church of England. And not long ago Lindsay resigned his benefice, in order to offer up his prayers to one God in one person, and expunged the name of Christ from the collect. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne would make a more glorious conquest in reclaiming Doctor Priestly and Lindsay, than if he converted a hundred Irish peasants. I see no reason for alarming the nation with the danger of the church. Little did the world imagine a few centuries ago that a single German friar would have shaken the pontifical throne, and brought about the most astonishing revolution that the world ever beheld. Ever since that memorable æra the Protestant religion, from a small beginning, is rapidly increasing. When there were Catholic kings on the throne, it gained ground. It is then very much out of season now to alarm three kingdoms with the news that at this moment the church of Ireland is in imminent danger of sub version. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne believes two Sacraments necessary to salvation. If he could gain over to the established church all the inhabitants of Ireland who believe that neither is necessary to salvation, it would be a great acquisition to the established religion. His Lordship adverts to the total indifference of many for every kind of religion. Could he but kindle the flames of piety and fervor in the breasts of such people, it would be of infinite advantage. And if he could keep within the pale of the established church, such as are willing to form modes of worship for themselves, or reclaim such as have quitted it within those many years without becoming Catholics, he would leave no room to complain of the majority of Dissenters. What a field is open here for pastoral zeal! It is a Herculean task indeed, and worthy of a prelate of distinguished abilities. But want of Baptism, Deism, separation from the established church, and altar against altar, cannot draw forth the pen of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne. The stability of tithes and the downfal of Popery are his only themes. The wag on the stage received many a plaudit, who, on being asked his religion, answered that he loved a pot of porter, and hated popery. Let a Theophilus abuse Catholics and revile Mr. O'Leary; he is called an able writer in the beginning, and excused on the score of his apprehensions for the safety of religion at the end of a pamphlet. Cargoes of abstracts against popery are daily imported from England; luckily they arrive out of season; for the nation knows the purport of them. If violation of faith with heretics be the reason of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's attack, the Catholics disclaim it on oath. And whoever does not believe the oath of an honest man, deserves no answer. There is address and ingenuity in laying so often a stress upon the word heretics. When mentioned by the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, it conveys an idea that the Catholics alone consider those who are reared out of their church as heretics. His Lordship will, I hope, have the generosity to divide the imputation with Mr. O'Leary. Does the church of England acknowledge that there are no heretics? Have not her bishops pronounced them as such after a canonical trial? Has not the civil magistrate, nursed in her bosom, doomed them to the fagot? The inquisition could do no more: for the ecclesiastical judge barely confines himself to a declaration that such doctrine is heretical. The magistrate, armed with the power of the law, pronounces sentence, and sees it carried into execution. Doctor Godolphin, a Protestant canonist, in his Abridgement of the Ecclesiastical Laws of England, after Sir Edward Coke, calls heresy a leprosy of the soul;* and gives a description of no less than one hundred and thirty-seven heresies. If he was now living he could add to the catalogue many new doctrines, which the Lord Bishop of Cloyne would declare strange and erroneous by his consecration oath. Human victims were seen marching to the stake with fagots on their backs to purge in the flames the pollution of heresy, under a Protestant Elizabeth and a Protestant James, as under a half Catholic Henry and a Catholic Mary. And those strange and erroneous doctrines which the Lord Bishop of Cloyne promises by his consecration oath to banish and drive away, banished and drove away effectually Dissenters *Godolphin Repertorium Canonicum. and Catholics into the wilds of America, in the reign of that James, whom the Lord Bishop of Cloyne applauds for his wise saying, No Bishop no King. Those strange and erroneous doctrines, banished and drove away the Catholic Lord Baltimore, into Maryland, for bowing at the name of Jesus; and that great Penn, who deserved haif the world, for teaching Sovereigns how to govern the other. They banished and drove away Penn into Pennsylvania, for not bowing at all; for having rejected the ceremony of the hat, and wearing a few flat buttons on a plain unornamented coat. Those two great men, persecuted for their strange erroneous doctrines, and still diametrically opposite in religious principles, planted their colonies where they granted free toleration to all mortals; and where is man now restored to the indelible charter, which the free-born mind is entitled to plead. They resembled the two brave soldiers, who were always quarrelling by the instigation of their comrades, without knowing why. A general rout came on, in the flight they both fell into a deep pit. Said one, if I kill you, what shall I benefit by your death? Your putrified body will stifle me. The other retorted in the same tone; they saw the common danger, and agreed; one leaped on the shoulders of the other, and reached the verge of the pit, out of which he helped his fellow sufferer. They both retired in peace, and lived ever after in amity. Lord Baltimore and Penn did the same. The recollection of such melancholy scenes induces me to applaud my Lord Bishop of Cloyne, for declaring in his introduction, that it is not his object to enter into the defence of ecclesiastical establishments in general. It would be a heavy task indeed, since the beginning of ecclesiastical establishments until of late, sovereigns seduced by the counsels of the clergy, became the executioners of their subjects. The ministers of a religion, one of whose principal laws is a law of eternal love, became the apologists of calamities, that swept from the face of the earth, or oppressed to this very day, God's noblest images, upright, virtuous, and dauntless men. Like the warrior in the Scriptures, they stept into the sanc |