the massacre of St. Bartholomew was planned with all the coolness of deliberation, and that the object of it was the total excision of all the Protestants in France, in one night; and all historians agree, that 500 gentlemen, and 10,000 persons of the inferior class of that order, were massacred at Paris, and about 40,000 persons in the different provinces® As soon as it was known at Rome, Pope Gregory XIII. called a consistory in St. Mark's church, in which he expressed great joy on the occasion, praised the perpetrators of it, ordered the Cardinals to return thanks to the Almighty for so signal an advantage obtained for the Holy Sce, and that a jubilee should be published all over Christendom.-(Thuanus, lib. 63, sec. 14.)

It is generally believed that 100,000 Protestants were massacred, in the rebellion of 1641 in Ireland. Hugh Oge M'Mahon, one of the leading conspirators, confessed that it was intended to murder all the Irish Protestants in one night, and that all the Popish lords and gentlemen in the kingdom were engaged in the plot. His statements were confirmed by the testimony of others; which the reader will find in Temple, Borlase, and Nalson; and subsequent events afforded unquestionable moral evidence of their veracity. While that dreadful rebellion raged, Pope Urban VIII. issued a bull, dated the 25th May 1643, addressed to the Popish rebels of Ireland, in which he granted "absolution from all sins, trespasses, transgressions, crimes, and delinquencies, how heinous and atrocious soever, to such of them as would, in imitation of their godly and worthy ancestors, endeavour by force of arms, to deliver their thralled nation from the oppressions and grievous injuries of the heretics, wherewith this long time it hath been afflicted, and heavily burthened, and gallantly do what in them lieth, to extirpate and totally root out those workers of iniquity, who in the kingdom of Ireland had infected, and are always striving to infect, the mass of Catholic purity, with the pestiferous leaven of their heretical contagion." Hugh Reilly, of the county of Down, Edmund O'Junnagh, of the county of Antrim, Maurice M'Credon, of the county of Tyrone, and James Hallaghan, af the county of Armagh, all Papists, deposed, that the Priests, Jesuits, and Friars of England, Ireland, Spain, and other countries beyond the seas, were the projectors, plotters, and contrivers of that rebellion, and they had been six years in making preparation for it.*

Philip III. expelled the Moors from Spain, and Lewis XIV. the Protestants from France, at the instance of their bigoted clergy; by which they did material injury to their respective countries. Francis I. began

Their affidavits are to be found in Temple and Nalson.

in the year 1545, to persecute the French Protestants, when they were peaceable and loyal; and his successors, Henry II. Francis II. and Charles IX. continued to do so. As Henry III. instead of persecuting, gave peace and protection to his Protestant subjects, and refused to declare his successor incapable of enjoying the Crown; Sixtus V. in the year 1585, excommunicated him, as a favourer of heretics, absolved his subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and granted a full remission of sins to such of them as would rise in arms against him. On this, his subjects rebelled against him, and he was murdered by Jacques Clement. a friar. (Thuanus, lib. 96. sec. 8)-A soon as this was known at Rome, the Pope, in a public consistory, extolled the virtue and firmness of the friar, in a long premeditated speech, declared that his fervent zeal towards God surpassed that of Judith and Eleazar, and that the assassination was effected by Divine Providence !-(Idem. lib. 96. sec. 10)

Henry IV. of France, while King of Navarre, was excommunicated by Sixtus V. in the year 1785, as a heretic. He declared him incapable of succeeding to the Crown, absolved his subjects from their oaths of allegiance, and forbade them to obey him as a King. (Idem, lib. 82, sec. 5)-Afier his accession, he was twice deposed by a similar sentence, in the year 1591 by Gregory IV. and by Clement VIII. in the year 1592, as a favourer of heretics. At length, to conciliate his bigoted subjects, and to soothe their fanatical hatred, he became a Papist; and yet, because he was indulgent to his Protestant subjects, and granted them toleration by the edict of Nantes, a crime which the clergy never could forgive, his life was attempted in 1594, by John Chastel, of the order of the Jesuits; again, by a Monk, in the year 1600; and he was at last stabbed by Ravaillac. Similar sentences of excommunication and deposition pronounced by the following Popes against Queen Elizabeth, produced many treasonable conspiracies against her life and government. Pius V. in 1589, Gregory XIII. in 1580, Sixtus V. in 1587, and Clement VIII. in 1600. By these bulls, Ireland, kept in a constant state of rebellion during her reign, was so desolated, that Spencer, secretary to Lord Grey, observed, "that there was little left Queen Elizabeth to reign over, but miserable carcases, and the ashes of sacked and destroyed towns."

A short time previous to the death of Elizabeth, Pope Clement VIII. issued a bull, addressed to his votaries in the British isles, "to keep out the Scotch heretic, unless he would reconcile himself to Rome, and hold his Crown of the Pope." It was to be kept secret till the Queen's death, and then it was to be published, to raise an opposition to the accession of James I.; and it produced that effect in Ireland, where the Popish inha

bitants of some of the cities and principal towns, headed by their clergy, rose in rebellion, and openly declared, "that he could not be a lawful king, who was not placed on the throne by the Pope, and was not sworn to maintain the Popish religion."-(Moryson, p. 291, 292, folio edition.) -Garnet, the Jesuit, acknowledged at his trial, that this bull was sent to him, to be used at discretion on the Queen's death.-State Trials, vol. i. p. 244.)-It is mentioned also in Carte's Ormond, vol. i. p. 133; the Gunpowder Plot has been imputed to it. During the reign of Charles II. the state of Ireland was nearly the same that it has been in our time, which the reader will find by perusing the secret consults and intrigues of the Romish party in Ireland, in State Tracts, vol. iii. p. 626, Lord Orrery's State Letters, and Cox's History of that Reign. It appears that the titular primate Reilly, and his clergy, invited the French to invade Ireland, that they organized the people to have them in a state of readiness to join them, that their treasonable combinations were cemented by oaths, that money was raised on the mass of the Romanists, that pikes were manufactured, and that government was frequently under serious apprehensions of an insurrection in Dublin. In the reign of James II. the Protestants suffered a most grievous persecution, in the course of which "the virtues and morality of a priesthood, which go indirectly to propagate the faith which they profess," appeared in a mostconspicuous manner; which the reader will find in Archbishop King's' State of the Protestants in James the Second's reign. The Popish parliament assembled by James at Dublin, in 1689, passed an act for attaint- ́ ing by name every Protestant, whom they could discover to be possessed of any property; by which two archbishops, one duke, seventeen earls,' seventeen countesses, twenty-eight viscounts, two viscountesses, seven bishops, eighteen barons, thirty-three baronets, fifty-one knights, 2,182 esquires, were made subject to the penalties of death and confiscation, without a hearing. James's Governor of Dublin issued a proclamation, ordering that no more than five Protestants should meet together, even in churches, on pain of death.*—(Leland's Hist. b. 5. c. 6.)

As the Irish Roman Catholics had been unremittingly endeavouring to extirpate their Protestant fellow-subjects, and to separate their native country from England, for 160 years previous to the revolution, the government were driven to the necessity of imposing penal restrictions on them; and the preamble of the 9th William III. c. i. shews the real source from which flowed all their treasonable machinations for that pur

* We beg to refer the reader to Melancthon's fifth letter, Prot. Adv. where the calamities brought on Ireland, by Popery for the last 300 years, are described; and particularly those of our own times.-Editor.

pose: "Whereas it is notoriously known, that the late rebellions in this kingdom have been contrived, promoted, and carried on by Popish archbishops, bishops, Jesuits, and other ecclesiastical persous of the Romish clergy."

"but it is known that every Ca

Doctor Dromgole says in his speech, tholic acknowledges him (the Pope) as supreme head of the church-that the bishops correspond with him as a father-that they receive his pastoral instructions-that they communicate to Lim the success of their labours in the mission."

Every person, who attentively considers the history of Ireland, must be convinced that his pastoral instructions were frequently the vehicles of treason; and that the priests and bishops, agreeably to their oaths, were ever ready to obey them; and while this continues to be the case, and Doctor Dromgole assures us that it will, his fellow-votaries never can be faithful and obedient subjects to a Protestant state; and their religion, according to Mr. Plowden's assertion, will be, "semper eadem "

After these letters had been far advanced in the press, it was announced, that the persons whom the Pope had entrusted with the management of all ecclesiastical affairs, during his confinement in France, had, in a letter to the Vicar Apostolic of the Middle District in England, not only admitted, but enjoined, that the king should have a veto in the appointment of Romish bishops in the British dominions. Many persons have been erroneously led to believe, that this measure will so effectually secare the Protestant establishment from the de'eterious principles of Popery, that its votaries may safely be admitted to seats in parliament, and to all the high and confidential offices of the state; but I hope that the following inferences, which obviously result from the statements made in these pages, will convince the reader of the contrary. The leading canons of the Romish church, of which I have given some specimens and the frame of its hierarchy, which I briefly described above, are obviously calculated for the subversion of every state, and the destruction of every individual, that will not acknowledge its doctrines and its supremacy. Popish priests are bound by their canonical oath, not only to maintain and profess them, but to infuse them into their flocks. What solid, or even plausible, reason, then, could the King's ministers have, for preferring one Popish priest to another for the prelacy? Loyalty to the state must be the chief motive of his preference, and that would be a direct imputation on the principles of a Romish pastor; for he could not be sincerely loyal to a Protestant state, without violating his canonical oath, by which he is bound to subvert it. The appointment of a Popish priest to a titular bishoprick, would not

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alter or meliorate his principles, nor give the Crown any control over him; on the contrary, immediately after his elevation, he swears by his consecration oath, unlimitted fidelity and obedience to the Pope, and to obey all his decrees, orders and mandates; and his holiness is bound by a solemn oath, to maintain and enforce the canons of his church to the least tittle, even to the shedding of his blood. Could any thing be more absurd, than that the King should be required by law to nominate a titular bishop for any see in Ireland, to which he had previously appointed a Protestant prelate, by his congé d'élire. This would be placing two persons in one episcopal chair; and it is well known that the Romish clergy regard our's as intruders and usurpers. How could the King's ministers form a proper estimate of the moral and intellectual endowments of Popish priests; for their education is occult, as they will not allow government to interfere in it? For this, should he depend on the report of Protestant noblemen and gentlemen, in whose vicinity a Popish priest resided, he may be grossly deceived. Previously to the rebellion of 1798, Romish priests, in many parts of Ireland, had long enjoyed the esteem and good opinion of their Protestant neighbours, by their peaceable and moral deportment; and in some counties they took oaths of allegiance at the eve of that dreadful event; but it appeared, on its explosion, that this was done merely to deceive the government and the magistrates, and to lull them into a supine and fatal security; for those very priests took a very active part in that destructive rebellion.

CRANMER.

To the Editor of the Protestant Advocate.

SIR,-You not long ago spoke in strong terms of the time-serving character of the church of Rome. That pretended Catholic and consistent church makes no scruple of sacrificing principle in utilitatem ecclesiæ. The indelible nature of her priesthood, and its celibacy, are unquestionable dogmata of the Romish church. With what propriety can the eldest son of the church, (as the King of France is affectedly styled,) or how can the Pope connive at the secularized and married Bishop of Autun, Prince Talleyrand, who lately wore the name of the Prince of Beneventum ? I am, Sir, your's, &c.

Oct. 12, 1814.

HAGUSTALDENSIS.

A certain nobleman, in the county of Wexford, was fo egregiously deceived by these base and delusive practices of the Romish clergy, that he gave the most solemn pledge to the viceroy of their loyalty, in the year 1797.