"out apparent scruple or reluctance :"-It occa sioned much contention and heart-burning among them, and a fierce and long war of words ensued upon it, both in England and on the Continent; finally, the oath was taken by the generality of the body, but it always had opponents. Nothing, however, in the dispute, warrants your charge of equivocation. Never did equivocation enter less into any conflict: nothing can be more explicit than Bellarmine's attack, or Widdrington's defence, of the oath. The Clarendon state papers* contain a multitude of documents, which show the fairness of the proceedings on each side. I believe that the views of James himself, in proposing the oath, were kind; the views of his minister appear to me to be, at best, very doubtful.

But upon what ground do you adopt the invidious charge," that the belief of the pope's abso"lute power renders it impossible to confide in "the catholics, as their consciences were not in "their own keeping."-I must say, that I spurn this charge; and to assure you, that, if all the roman-catholics in the universe were polled, all the roman-catholics in the universe would spurn it. A statement of the doctrine of the roman-catholics upon this head being too long for insertion in this place, I refer you for it to doctor Milner's fortysixth letter in his "End of Controversy."

It is particularly strange that you should bring it forward in this place, as in two lines nearly pre

* Vol. 1, p. 190. And see the Historical Memoirs, c. xlvii. xlviii. lvi.

ceding it, you have told us that the pope forbade the catholics to take the oath proposed by James I, yet that they took it without apparent scruple or reluctance. You assert, that the doctrine of equivocation was publicly taught by the catholic church it has, on the contrary, been often publicly condemned by her. Thus, when towards the end of the seventeenth century, certain loose opinions on the practice of it were found in the writings of some foreign divines, they were condemned, in the strongest terms, by a national assembly of the Gallican clergy in 1700*. Surely a person must be very bold, who accuses roman-catholics of maintaining equivocation to be lawful: he must know that nothing but a detestation of it, and a strong sense of the sacred nature of an oath, withholds the roman-catholics from taking those oaths, by taking which they would deliver themselves from all the penalties and disabilities under which they suffer, and entitle themselves to the full benefit of the constitution.

In this chapter you again attack us on the pope's infallibility: few tenets of the roman-catholic church are more misapprehended by protestants. The infallibility of the pope is not an article of the faith of the roman-catholic church. Some respectable

Bausset's Hist. de Bossuet, vol. 4, liv. xi. s. 9; Histoire Générale de l'Eglise, pendant le xviii Siècle, Besançon, 1823, tom. premier, p. 362; D'Avrigni's Mem. Chronol. et Dogm. ad annum, 1700; and Picot's Mémoires pour servir à l'Histoire de l'Eglise durant le xviii Siècle, ad an. 1700. And see Mr. Alban Butler's Life of sir Toby Matthews, p. 17.

ment.

divines have asserted it; but they confine it to concerns merely spiritual, and to those cases only in which the pope solemnly propounds, to the universal church, a specified proposition, to be a dogma of faith. Thus propounding it, he is considered to speak ex cathedrá, or from the chair of St. Peter, and with St. Peter's prerogative of inerrancy. For the infallibility of the decrees made by the pope under these circumstances, and with the limitation I have mentioned, some Transalpine divines strenuously contend; still, they universally admit, that the church has not decided this point, and therefore leaves it open to individual judgA contrary opinion is maintained by the "Declaration of the Gallican Clergy," in 1682. During the ancien régime this declaration was signed by all the archbishops and bishops, and all the secular and regular clergy, in France, and was taught in all the schools of divinity in the kingdom. It is supported, with the greatest learning and strength of argument, by Bossuet, in his " De"fence of the Gallican Declaration;" by La Marca, archbishop of Toulouse; and by several other eminent writers; amongst whom our countryman, the abbé Hook, deserves particular mention. His "Principia Juris Naturalis et Reve"lati" contains an ample discussion of the subject, and deserves the attention of all persons who seek for full and accurate information upon it. The French jesuits, in 1757 and 1761, formally and explicitly avowed their adherence to "the De"claration of 1682," and caused their avowal of it

U

to be certified to the court by the bishops of France. In all cases in which the pope does not speak ex cathedra, he has, in respect to doctrinal decision, only the character of a private doctor of the church *. In the year 1331-2, pope John XXII. preached, from a pulpit in Avignon, a doctrine that was novel in the church. A sturdy English Dominican monk, of the name of Vales, instantly ascended the pulpit, and denounced the doctrine he was imprisoned; but the pope, finding that the Dominican was supported by a crowd of divines, explained what he had advanced, retracted his expressions, and released the Dominicant.

In a former page, I have cited lord Liverpool's liberal expression, that "he had heard allusions "that night to doctrines which he did hope no one "then believed the catholics to entertain :" Is not the passage, which I have just transcribed from your work, a melancholy proof that there was not all the ground his lordship supposed for the hope, which his own honourable mind suggested to him?

* Historical Memoirs of the English, Irish, and Scottish Catholics, chap. lxxv. sect. 8.

Fleury's Ecc. History, vol. xix. ch. 94.-Bossuet's "Defense de la Déclaration du Clergé en 1682," liv. 9. chap. 46.

LETTER XVII.

CHARLES I.

291

SIR,

YOU are almost entirely silent on the condition of the roman-catholics during the reign of Charles I. -I. You should have mentioned the artifices then used to inflame the public mind against them; their sufferings and loyalty:-II. And the solemn judgment of archbishops and bishops of Ireland, against the toleration of the roman-catholic religion.

XVII. 1.

Artifices then used to inflame the Public Mind against the Roman-catholics; their Loyalty and Sufferings.

THEY were very great.-Stories, the most absurd and ridiculous, were propagated to inflame the popular spirit against them.-Reports were spread of foreign fleets threatening the coasts; of an army of papists training to the use of military weapons under ground; of a plot for blowing up the Thames, and drowning the faithful protestant city What should be said of the celebrated Hampden, who introduced into the house of commons a tailor of Cripplegate, who avowed that, walking in the fields, near a bank, he overheard, from the opposite side of it, the particulars of a plot, concerted by the

* Examination of Neale's History of the Puritans by Grey, vol. 2, p. 260.