exhibit such a portent before the eyes of his english laic correspondent, I shall not pretend to determine. From whatever motive, he omits it altogether. Yet the lucrative absurdity is in no wise obsolete. We have the authority of the late sovereign Pontiff himself to assert that it still, even in the present day, continues to exist. Let the tale be recited in his own words: for no other can be found equally appropriate.

We have resolved, says Pope Leo in the year 1824, by virtue of the authority given to us from heaven, fully to unlock that sacred treasure, composed of the merits, sufferings, and virtues, of Christ our Lord and of his Virgin-Mother and of all the Saints, which the author of human salvation has entrusted to our dispensation— To you, therefore, venerable brethren, Patriarchs, Primates, Archbishops, Bishops, it belongs to explain with perspicuity the power of Indulgences: what is their efficacy in the remission, not only of the canonical penance, but also of the temporal punishment due to the divine justice for past sin; and what succour is afforded, out of this heavenly treasure, from the merits of Christ and his Saints, to such as have departed real penitents in God's love, yet before they had duly satisfied by fruits worthy of penance for sins of commission and omission, and are now purifying in the fire of Purgatory, that an entrance may be opened for them into their eternal country where nothing defiled is admitted. Bull for the observ. of the Jubilee. A.D. 1825.

From a stock of merits, supplemental to the otherwise too scanty merits of Christ, and contributed by the dead Saints over and above what was necessary for themselves: from this heterogeneous stock, which by special divine authority the Pope even now actually claims to have at his own disposal, indulgences are issued, which shall not only remit the canonical penance imposed by the Church

and thus liberate the fortunate possessors from the temporal punishment in this world due for past sin to the divine justice, but which shall also open the very doors of Purgatory for the blissful escape of those faithful suffering spirits who departed this life without having made full satisfaction for their iniquities by fruits worthy of penance !

The time will come, it was long since foretold, when they will not endure sound doctrine: but, after their own lusts, shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears. And they shall turn away their ears from THE TRUTH, and shall be turned unto FABLES. 2 Tim. iv. 3, 4.

NUMBER IV.

ANGLICAN ORDERS.

THE Bishop of Strasbourg, in a tone of dogmatism which more prudently as well as more decorously might well have been omitted, has taken upon himself, for the honest purpose of perplexing his English Layman, to decide, that the Orders of the Anglican Church are invalid, and consequently that our pretended Clergy are mere Laics without any legitimate apostolical call to the ministration of God's word and sacraments. Discuss. Amic. Lettr. i. vol. i. p. 1-14.

Every thing, says this unprovoked calumniator of his brethren, which has been done in the Church of England under Elisabeth, has been done without right and without a shadow of possible competency. The whole is radically null, in the commencement; null, during its present existence; null, so long as it shall continue to exist.

These truths are not less clear to the intellect, than broad daylight is to the visual organs. Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 408.

I. It is somewhat remarkable: that Dr. Trevern should carefully specify, as luminaries of the Gallican Church, Perron and Morin and Petau and Vansleb and Renaudot and Le Brun and Arnauld and Nicole (Discuss. Amic. vol. ii. p. 397.); and yet that he should have been as totally silent respecting the very learned and the very able Courayer, as if no such individual had ever existed. Nevertheless, on the precise point of the English Ordinations, this identical Courayer was the professed opponent of Renaudot, one of the writers mentioned by him with so much approbation.

While Dr. Trevern was engaged in the charitable and doubtless (according to the title of his Book) very amicable occupation of strenuously reviling, to an English Layman, the Orders of the Anglican Church: while he was diligently employed in assuring his correspondent, that, from the reign of Elisabeth, every thing was null; null yesterday, null to day, null to-morrow, null to the very end of time: why did he not inform his meditated proselyte, that one of the ablest defences of the validity of our Ordinations was actually written; not by an individual among ourselves, but by a Latin Ecclesiastic; not by a Latin Ecclesiastic of some obscure and easily overlooked district, but by a native of the always distinguished country to which Dr. Trevern himself owes the no small honour of his own origination?

Was the Bishop of Strasbourg ignorant of the existence of the Work of Courayer? If so how shall we deem so scantily instructed a controvertist in any wise competent to step forward for the purpose of gratuitously attacking the Church of England?

Was the Bishop of Strasbourg well acquainted with the Work of Courayer? If so: why did he not, in all fairness, refer his english friend to that masterly production; in order that, after perusing his own crude and hasty invectives, the Layman might have an opportunity of learning the well argued and well established sentiments of another French Romanist, who, without any great derogation from Dr. Trevern, may certainly, in point of talents and acquirements, be pronounced at the least not his inferior?

However we are to account for the fact, yet assuredly it is a fact, that the Gallican Prelate, while amicably occupied in the hopeful task of vilifying our English Ordinations, preserves a most ominous silence respecting the important Work of Courayer, entitled Dissertation sur la validité des Ordinations des Anglois et sur la succession des Evesques de l'Eglise Anglicane, avec les preuves justificatives des faits avancez dans cet Ouvrage.

II. When the first edition of the Difficulties of Romanism was published, I take shame to myself, even though an Englishman, that I had never perused the Work of Courayer: for, had I done so, I should have judged my own very brief and summary defence of the Anglican Church plainly superfluous.

But, if I, an Englishman but little conversant in gallic literature, thus take shame to myself for having never read the Work of a french author: how shall we estimate the unenviable predicament, in which Dr. Trevern, himself a Frenchman, must submit to be placed?

Has he read, or has he not read, the Work of his own fellow-countryman, the Work of his own fellow-religionist?

Let the question be answered as it may, the not very agreeable alternative has already been stated. In his

attack upon our English Ordinations, he must even be content to take his choice between disgraceful ignorance and deliberate dishonesty.

III. Courayer, himself a dutiful child of the mother and mistress of all Churches, pronounces, as a matter of course, us unlucky Anglicans to be graceless heretics and mischievous schismatics. That standing piece of popish civility were to be expected alike, whether he really in his heart deemed us so, or whether he prudently judged any urbane concession on such long since established points to be bad policy.

But, while he will not flatter us, either as to our doctrinal faith, or as to our ecclesiastical independence: he settles the perfect canonical validity of our Orders upon such a basis of facts and authorities, as a much stronger arm than that of Dr. Trevern, even though aided and abetted by the polemical prowess of Mr. Husenbeth, will not be able to overturn.

All the disingenuous assertions of the Bishop of Strasbourg, duly retailed at second hand by the indiscriminating zeal of his english coadjutor, had already, more than a century ago, been distinctly met and admirably exposed to well deserved contempt by the learned and able Courayer. From that lingering delight of Mr. Husenbeth the anile figment of the Nag's Head Tavern retrospectively, down to the modern labours of Dr. Trevern and his editorial ally prospectively, the subject, through the most stubborn of all arguments, that which is built upon the direct evidence of OFFICIALLY RECORDED FACTS, had been completely set at rest by a singularly powerful controvertist, who to succeeding examiners has left nothing to be added and nothing to be desired.

1. Parker of Canterbury, from whom descend all our English Ordinations, and whose own ordination consequently is the turning hinge of the dispute, was conse