P. 28. -In many respects as burthensome, &c. It would be more than common presumption on my part to suppose that I can advance any new, or state in a more luminous point of view any former arguments on the important question of the Catholic claims. I therefore with very great diffi dence submit the following considerations to the candour of the opponents and the indulgence of the friends of this measure, and to the patience of all. Indeed I should hardly have ventured on this step, but for the sake of honestly and openly contradicting an opinion, which I found to be very prevalent, that in some passages in my sermoni (perhaps not perfectly heard in all parts of a church crouded beyond example) I had expressed a decided hostility to the Catholics.

It were much to be wished that the opponents of farther concession to our Catholic fellow subjects would distinguish between the Catholic Church and the present Catholic question. There is not, I am firmly convinced, any Church so apostolical, sơ pure, so truly Christian in spirit, in doctrine, and in discipline, as the Established Church of England, in which I consider it a blessing to have been educated, and an honour to be a teacher. Nor can any of her most zealous sons entertain a more respectful and affectionate veneration for her authority, or a more decided conviction of her purity and truth. I will add, that I am persuaded no one who has been at the pains to peruse the foregoing pages, will accuse me of any disposition to overlook or to conceal, much less to defend or

to approve the errors of the Church of Rome. Yet still, I cannot find in those errors, reasons for such unusual jealousy and suspicion, or as I might more truly say, such intolerant and unjust restric tions, on the part of the Protestants. Other causes appear to me to operate in order to produce this effect, which with the patience of my readers I will briefly state.

At the time of the Reformation, it was natural that questions involving not only points of speculative belief in matters of the highest interest to the spiritual welfare of mankind, but the possession of present temporal power and temporal emolument, should be agitated with unusual warmth. Jealousy of Papal encroachments, in an age when almost every great state in Europe was in communion with the Church of Rome, was so natural a feeling, that the coercive laws of the Protestants may be considered rather as measures of security and self defence, than of cruelty and unprovoked hostility towards the Catholics. We must remember also that in the reign of Henry VIII. and his immediate successor, the great mass of the people, who had been educated in the doctrines of the Church of Rome, and who had largely participated in the munificent and widely extended bounties of the monastic establishments, were either secretly attached to the Catholic, or at least but lukewarm advocates of the Lutheran cause. The legislators also of that period, were men enriched by the suppression of the monasteries, anxious to retain the plunder they had acquired, and alarmed at the prospect

prospect of being called to severe account in the event of the possible restoration of the Catholic religion. These considerations therefore, together with the ill-timed severities of Bonner and Gardiner, the unhappy intermarriage of Mary with Philip II. of Spain, the far-famed yet execrable Bull of Pius V. and the subsequent danger from Spanish invasion, will sufficiently account for the severe and oppressive laws enacted against the Catholics, and the growing enmity between them and the Protestants from the time of the Reformation to the death of Queen Elizabeth.

In the reign of James I. the celebrated Powder Plot, with whomsoever it originated, was sufficient at least to excite a vehement popular cry of "No. POPERY" (encouraged as it was by the Minister of the day) throughout the nation, and is still a fertile theme of declamation to the old women and child. ren of the year 1811. In this reign also the Puritans began, like the Evangelical reformers of the present age, to creep into lectureships in large towns, and by degrees to get possession of our pulpits; and these men, who in conformity to the ravings of John Knox could not even tolerate a surplice, much less a mitre, from its supposed resemblance to the ceremonial of the Church of Rome, in the reign of the unhappy successor of James, subverted both the church and state, and drew the whole nation into a phrensy of the wildest fanaticism and the fiercest intolerance. When this fury had subsided, in the reign of Charles II. the jealousies of the Protestants, the

want of principle in the Sovereign, the intrigues and ambition of Louis XIV. and afterwards the arbitrary and oppressive conduct of James II. and his ministers, and that weak though unfortunate monarch's open profession of the Romish faith, occasioned new and severe regulations against the Catholics. Nor ought I to pass over the popular outcry raised against them by allegations of plots, now acknowledged to have no existence, and even the imputed charge of the dreadful fire of London, in 1666, whose Monument, as a great poet has no less justly than wittily observed,

"Like a tall bully lifts the head and lies.”

William III, was a Calvinist, and the implacable enemy of Louis XIV. who espoused the cause of the exiled James.--He was engaged in open war with the deposed monarch at the head of his Catholic adherents, and was even exposed to the dagger of the assassin, not without the connivance and consent of James. Self defence may therefore be pleaded for the restrictions on the Roman Catholics in this reign.

All who know the History of the Court of Queen Anne, know that she had favourable inclinations towards a Catholic successor. It is not therefore to be wondered that her Protestant subjects should feel a degree of alarm.

Iu the reigns of George I. and George II. we were twice invaded by a Catholic claimant of the crown, protected and supported by Catholic powers. It was therefore but natural that some jealousy

should

should be felt towards the Catholic subjects of the reigning prince *.

I have thus taken a rapid view of the possible, for I do not always say the just causes of the restrictions on our Catholic fellow subjects, and of the jealousies which their Protestant brethren, with any colour of reason might entertain of them, from the Reformation to the present reign. I would only ask the opponents of Catholic emancipation, WHICH OF THESE CAUSES OPERATE NOW? What POSSIBLE danger can arise from acceding to the Catholic claims, when,

I. The rights and property of the Established Church have been secured by possession for above 250 years

II. The question of Protestant succession is settled by the extinction of the Catholic familyIII. The spiritual power of the Pope is limited, and the temporal power of the Pope is utterly abolished?

But this is not all. The gradual progress. of intellectual improvement in the nations of Europe, have rendered obsolete, or indifferent, to the Catholics themselves, many points of doctrine formerly insisted on with greater earnestness, though

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* These rebellions, however, cannot be considered as connected with religion. The Protestant nonjurors of Scotland were infinitely more forward in them than the Catholics, a great portion of whom offered to take arms against the Pretender-and all Ireland, in 1745, was quiescent. Lord Chesterfield even sent some regiments from thence to assist the Duke of Cumberland.