3

or friend: and those who make no scruple of abusing the image of Christ, would severely punish the man that would abuse the image of his king. * Does your Blessed Trinity?

church allow of images of God the Father, or of the

Our profession of faith makes no mention of such images as these: yet we do not think them unlawful, provided that they be not understood to bear any likeness or resemblance of the divinity, which cannot be expressed in colours, or represented by any human workmanship. For, as Protestants make no difficulty of painting the Holy Ghost under the figure of a dove, because he appeared so when Christ was baptized, Matt. iii. 16, so we make no difficulty of painting God the Father under the figure of a venerable old man, because he appeared in that manner to the prophet Daniel, vii. 9.' pp. 57, 58.

Our readers will notice in this and the preceding extracts, the dexterous application of the argumentum ad hominem, drawn from the language and ceremonies of the Anglican Ritual. In an appendix are given the rational inducements to the Catholic 'faith, which, according to Dr. Jeremy Taylor, a learned Protestant prelate, (Lib. of Proph. Sect. 20, p. 249, 250,) may very easily persuade persons of much reason and more piety, to retain that which they know to have been the religion of their 'forefathers, and which have had actual possession and seizure of men's understandings, before the opposite professions had a 'name.' Jeremy Taylor would seem to have been not very far from being as good a Catholic as Dr. Challoner. And there has always existed a class or school of high-churchmen within the English Church, whose sentiments approximate almost, if not quite as nearly to this modified Popery, as the expositions we have cited do to the grosser creed which forms the actual religion of the millions under the Papal bondage. Compare the doctrines of the Church of England as held and expounded by Thomas Scott and Legh Richmond, with the Church of Englandism of Archbishops Laud and Parker, and the difference will be found almost as wide and essential as between the Popery of Gother and Challoner and Charles Butler, and the Popery of Pope Gregory XVI. and the Austrian or Irish peasantry.

Now, if there be any danger of the revival of Popery in this country, it must be in this milder form, which may be termed the evangelicalism of the Romish Church; between which and highchurch tenets there has always been a strong affinity. And in this form, as it has not yielded to the force of penal statutes, so neither will it succumb beneath the knock-me-down-arguments of certain polemics, who think that, by pronouncing Popery a damnable heresy, they have settled the business. Archbishop Whately has shewn with equal acuteness and candour, that the errors of

Romanism, having their origin in human nature, may lurk under Protestant forms *.

The cry of 'No Popery' has ever proceeded from a party the nearest akin to the Papists in their ecclesiastical policy. It is a remarkable fact, that the English Catholics have generally sided with the Tories in politics, discovering as little sympathy with their brethren in Ireland, as was manifested by the Clergy of the Church of England towards the persecuted French Protestants. We hope that it will not be regarded as a breach of candour to say, that Popery is, by a large proportion of the more violent Anti Catholics, viewed with disfavour and apprehension, not as error, but as dissent. When the Papal hierarchy in France was overthrown at the Revolution, the Clergy of the Church of England mourned in sackcloth, and Bishop Horsley echoed the eloquent. lamentations of Burke over the fallen power of the Gallican priesthood. How is it that the Irish Roman Catholic priesthood are not fortunate enough to possess the sympathy or respect of the English clergy? Simply because they are placed in an opposite political predicament. In France, Popery was the esta blished religion: in Ireland, it is in hostility to the Church-establishment. This makes all the difference. Hence, the same Government has been found upholding Popery abroad, and proscribing and persecuting it at home; and without any political inconsistency. The only heresy in the eyes of political Churchmen or Church and State religionists is-Dissent.

We cannot but regard it as a very strong argument against ecclesiastical establishments, that they uniformly tend to create, in the minds of the endowed order, a sympathy, more or less, with the ministers of all other Established Churches, of whatever creed, as having a common cause; and to cut them off from all cordial intercourse with the pious of every non-established communion. This has been strikingly evidenced in the history of the English Church from the time of Elizabeth to the present moment. There is nothing which an Episcopalian more heartily abhors than Presbyterianism, so long as it wears the garb of Dissent; but let it be once politically established, and his animosity is disarmed. We have recently seen English Episcopacy and Scottish Presbyterianism, forgetful of all the blood shed in their ancient feud while struggling for political ascendancy, now that each is the ascendant Church within her own domain, embracing as sisters, and making common cause against those arch heretics, the Voluntaries. If Popery were the Established Religion of Ireland, nay, were its priesthood but participants in the bounty of the State, like the Regium Donum Churches of Ulster,

See Ecl. Rev. Vol. V., 3d Ser. p. 113.

we make no doubt that we should hear little more of the No Popery cry in certain quarters. Dissenters would then have cause to look well to themselves, for they might expect to find English Bishops, Scotch Presbyters, and Irish Priests all in holy league against them.

It is not, however, as a political adversary that Popery ought to be viewed by the enlightened Protestant; and the feeling of angry irritation or alarm which it is apt to awaken when regarded in this light, ill agrees with that spirit of faith which becomes the champions of the truth, and the servants of Christ. Why is Popery more to be dreaded, or why should it be encountered more angrily, than Mohammedism or Paganism? Nothing can be more foreign from the genuine zeal of the Christian Missionary, than that fierce and haughty spirit of defiance and invective in which the apostles of Protestant ascendancy have gone forth against Popery. It was not so, that Christianity achieved its triumphs.

But we ought really to beg pardon of Mr. Mendham, for having suffered ourselves to be so long diverted from his curious and interesting Memoirs, which let us more behind the scenes, in the whole transactions of the Council, protracted through twenty-five sessions, than any work which has yet appeared. Of the sources, chiefly manuscript, from which he has derived the information now first communicated, he gives the following

account.

I am in possession of a rather copious collection of manuscript volumes in folio, and of varied but competent bulk, on the subject of the Council of Trent, formerly the property of the Earl of Guilford, and forming a part of his unique and very valuable library, dispersed not many years ago. I purchased the collection, consisting of twentyeight volumes, from Mr. Thorpe, in 1832. The greater part appear to have constituted a portion of some public or extensive library, or libraries, in different parts of Italy and Venice; the product, not improbably, of the spoliation of the collections of cardinals, or other opulent individuals interested in ecclesiastical matters, during the time in which the French were masters of that portion of the world. This conjecture is confirmed by circumstantial or internal evidence. They are probably none of them originals, but copies, of varying age; and there are among them duplicates of a part or the whole of the separate volumes.' pp. vii., viii.

He then proceeds to describe the voluminous documents thus fortunately obtained. Among those which he reckons of inferior importance, is one which must be regarded as of no slight value; a transcript of Father Paul's History of the Council, in Italian, corrected by Cardinal Pallavicino's history in very extended annotations, written in a hostile spirit; and a private letter from the Cardinal to the Author of the transcript, signed with his auto

graph, is attached to an early page of the work. From these ample materials, Mr. Mendham has compiled a continued narrative of the proceedings, which terminated, at length, in giving an authoritative and definite form to the ever-varying and disputed doctrines of the Romish Church. This result, Mr. Mendham regards as, in some respects, a compensating advantage;—but it is an advantage only, we submit, to the polemic.

The canons and decrees of Trent, with the riveting creed and oath which issued from the authority of the Council, and both expressed, and was sanctioned by its enactments, have at length fortunately bound the Proteus, and fixed him to a figure which he can no longer change. We cannot indeed altogether subscribe to the position, that the Council of Trent erected, what were formerly only questions of the schools, into dogmas of faith. Rome had certainly not a few dogmas of faith before, founded upon the highest and most binding authority, her preceding councils, not to add the constitutions of her chief pontiffs: and while a Nicene council established the worship of images; a Lateran one, transubstantiation, and auricular confession; a Florentine, purgatory and papal supremacy; while her liturgies and offices oblige the participants in them to offer prayers to saints; to implore their intercessions and the application of their merits before God; to deify the Virgin Mary by such appellations and addresses as belong exclusively to divinity; and to adore an equally deified vegetable substance under the manufactured form of the consecrated host;-it must be acknowledged, that matters of belief of no trifling number or ponderosity were hung about the necks of the papal population. Still, there was a great deal remaining, which the Tridentine synod contrived to add to the burthen, both upon itself, and upon all who were to receive it.' pp. xx., xxi.

The Council of Trent may be said to have had its origin in that loud call for a reformation of the Church, which had been heard in the Papal world even before Luther denounced the venal indulgencies issued by Pope Leo X. in 1517. His successor in the pontificate, Adrian VI., shewed some desire to reform his Court; but his design was opposed by Cardinal Soderini, who observed, that to reform the Church, would be to canonize the cause of Luther, which he should unite with the princes of the empire in endeavouring to extirpate. He accordingly sent his Legate to the Diet of Nuremberg, then sitting, 1522, who endeavoured to compromise matters by making the suppression of Lutheranism the condition of the reformation of the Papal Court. This proposal produced the list of grievances presented in the name of the assembled princes, known by the title of Centum Gravamina, the authenticity of which, Mr. Mendham shews to be indisputable.

Adrian, although chiefly intent upon crushing Luther and his doctrine, was, for the attainment of that object, willing to make great sa

crifices, and, in order to them, very humble confessions. In one of his instructions to his legate, he commissions him to say:- "We acknowledge that, in this holy see, there have for some years been many abominations, abuses in spirituals, excesses in mandates,-all things, in fine, perverted. Nor is it to be wondered, if the sickness of the head should descend to the members, that of the chief pontiffs to the other inferior prelates. We have all (prelates and ecclesiastics) declined to our own ways; and it has been long that there was none who did good, no not one. Wherefore," &c. Such language was little likely to please any Roman sycophant; and Pallavicino could not well do otherwise than applaud the simplicity of the pontiff at the expense of his prudence.

The Italian Diarist has noticed and described the contents of the Centum Gravamina in fair proportion. He has specified the various extortions, expensive dispensations, absolutions, indulgences, pecuniary penances, and so forth. But the document is too important to be dismissed in a summary way. Let the reader take any edition of the book into his hand, and peruse only a few of the century of charges which the lay and principal members of a great legislative assembly of the German empire felt themselves impelled to bring against an authority, which they still acknowledged as supreme in spirituals. Let him begin with the third article, on the burthen of papal índulgences, by which money was drawn in profusion from the simple, brought like any other commodity for sale into public market, and, in proportion to the price paid, conferring what the purchaser could not understand otherwise than as a licence to sin; whence all kinds of specified iniquity. Let him read in article vii. what is affirmed of the authorized questors, the stationary preachers of indulgences-their impostures, their extortions. Not to detain himself with the minor, although scandalous impositions respecting ecclesiastic benefices, the Annates, Reservations, Expectative graces, and various assumptions of temporal jurisdiction, let him proceed at once to the lxviith article, where the ecclesiastic judges and officials are charged with aggravating the spiritual penauce to such a degree, that laics are induced to purchase immunity with money, which goes no further than the private pocket of the ecclesiastics. Let him, in article lxxiv, read how double fees are imposed upon some for the same offence; and in the two following, the charge of unchastity and profligacy in the lives of the clergy. Article xc. is to much the same purpose; and the next, openly, in the face of the world, and in the ears of his holiness at Rome, like all the rest, declares, that while concubines were allowed to priests on the payment of a certain tax, the same tax was levied upon those who lived continently, because the bishop was in want, and they were at liberty to do otherwise at their option. The xciiid article asserts and exposes the pertinacity with which the vagabond Terminaries and Stationaries, monks and priests, infested sick beds, and the artifices which they used to obtain legacies. The whole, however, of this portentous document ought to be read, to convey an adequate view of the superlative iniquity of the church, as well as court, of Rome, at the time. "The whole head was sick, and the whole heart faint: from the sole of the foot even unto the head, there was no soundness in it; but wounds and bruises, and