the Virgin and the Saints are comparatively rare; while in Italy these last are more frequent than the crucifix. Again, most of the modern paintings in the French Churches are taken from Scriptural subjects: and what is perhaps even more remarkable, amongst a collection of thirty or forty coloured prints of the cheapest description which I looked over in a shop at Cologne in June last, there was not one relating to any legend of the Saints or the Virgin, but the subjects of all were taken from the New Testament. Whereas at Rome and in its neighbourhood the pictures and legends of the Saints are far more numerous on the walls of the Churches, by the road-sides, in shops, and in houses, than pictures relating to our Lord, or that are taken from the Old or New Testament. Now it may be very true that a French or German priest, if pressed by a Protestant, would declare that the faith of his Church was one and unchangeable, and that the Catholics of Italy held the same doctrines as himself: but still the practical effect is infinitely different, if the parts of these doctrines which are prominently brought forward be in one country the main truths of Christianity which Catholics hold in common with Protestants, and in another their own peculiar corruptions of it. And this more Christian aspect of the Roman Catholic faith exists in every country where it has been much in contact with Protestantism, except in Ireland; while there, on the contrary, it presents itself in its very worst form. This is in itself a phenomenon; and this alone, if duly considered, should induce every man who is anxious for the religious improvement of his countrymen to promote the admission of the Irish Catholics to their civil rights. Wherever Catholics and Protestants have lived together on a friendly footing, the influence of Protestantism has been insensibly operating, and has practically improved the character of Catholicism; but where they have lived together as a degraded and a persecuting caste; while the one has groaned under a system of exclusion, and the other ex

ulted in the enjoyment of its ascendancy, there has been no room for the exercise of any beneficial influence; men's religion has become their party also; and thus its most distinctive peculiarities have been rather obstinately maintained than softened or abandoned. Yet the Irish Protestant Church is wealthy and learned; and has numbered amongst its ministers some of the most apostolical men who have ever borne the Christian name. Under any other circumstances their talents and their virtues, and the political influence of their Church, might have attracted the respect and love of the Catholics, might have drawn them into a cordial union in works of charity and public utility, and might in time have induced them to tolerate, if not, like the Catholics of Germany, to encourage, the circulation of the Scriptures amongst their people. But in Ireland the system of ascendancy has poisoned everything; and, while the Catholic regarded the Protestant as an oppressor, and the Protestant looked upon the Catholic as meditating insurrection, both were repelled from all approaches to union; and each was forward to hurl upon the other the names of heretic and idolater.

Nor should it be forgotten, that if the influence of Protestantism has improved the Catholic religion in Germany, it might be expected, if it were once disentangled from its encumbering armour of ascendancy, to produce a much stronger effect in Ireland. That which the Puritans charged upon the Church of England as its crime, has always recommended it to the Catholics as the least offensive of the Protestant Churches; I mean its form of Church government, its Liturgy, and its ceremonies. Hitherto the objects of our Reformers, in avoiding all needless departure from the doctrines and discipline of the Church of Rome, have not been fully answered; their policy has, perhaps, disgusted more Protestants than it has conciliated Catholics. I do not mean, therefore, to urge that it was blameable; but it will be a great reproach to ourselves if, after having suffered so long from its ill

effects, as exemplified in our bitter dissensions with the Puritans, we do not now avail ourselves of the opportunity which Ireland affords, to realise some of its intended benefits. A Puritan clergy in Ireland, or a clergy at all partaking of the spirit of Puritanism, would be an evil which the Government should carefully watch over, and to the utmost of its power vigorously prevent. There should be no furious commentaries on the Apocalypse, no raving about the sin of tolerating idolaters. The deep folly of such conduct can hardly be an excuse for its utter uncharitableness, and the incalculable mischief of its consequences. Our language to the Roman Catholics should be that of St. Paul to the Jews: "Believest thou the Prophets? I know that thou believest." "After the way that you call heresy, so worship we the God of our fathers, believing none other things than. those which the Prophets and Moses did say should come." "You have a zeal of God, but not according to knowledge." You are our brethren, "yours are the fathers," and "if concerning the Gospel you are at all our enemies, yet are you beloved for the fathers' sake," even those same fathers who, in their heroic zeal for Christ's sake, became the fathers of this very nation in Christ, and "in Christ Jesus have begotten us through the Gospel." And if they receive our charity with unkindness, against all example; if our Church, after all, shall produce less effect upon them than has been wrought by other Protestant communions, whose differences with them are more universal, we shall then, at least, be entitled to say, what at present would be an impious mockery, "Your blood be upon your own heads, we are clean." We have, at last, presented truth to you fairly, not as your oppressors and persecutors, from whose hands even truth herself must be received with suspicion, but as your countrymen and brethren, not pretending to have dominion over your bodies, but, if it might be, willing to deliver your minds from error, and to be helpers of a Pope Gregory and Augustine.

your joy. If you reject it now, you reject not us, but the truth itself: your fall will be your own fault, and we shall be no more guilty of having thrown a stumbling-block in your way, by uniting truth of religious profession with the practice of iniquity and oppression.

The answer to all this is the mere repetition of the assertion," that popery is unchanged and unchangeable." It is in vain that we appeal to facts, and shew that it is not unchanged in practice; that in some countries it is practically Christianity mixed with some errors, while in others it is practically idolatry and superstition bearing the name of Christianity: that the German Catholics who circulate the Scriptures are not exactly the same sort of persons as the Italian Catholics who carefully proscribe them that the Catholic Kings of Saxony, who being the absolute Sovereigns of a Protestant people have left the Protestant Church Establishment in Saxony uninjured and unmolested for a hundred years; and the reigning monarch in particular, who by a recent law will allow no convert from Protestantism to be received into the Catholic Church till after an interval of some months after his declaring his change, or without producing a certificate from his Protestant minister that he had tried without effect to shake his conviction; that these Catholic princes do not exactly resemble that picture of a persecuting bigot, which we from the single example of James the Second pronounce to be the common likeness of all Catholic sovereigns. Or if we say that the Pope would be very thankful to our zealous Protestants if they could make their words good, and prove that his political influence over all Catholics outweighed all considerations of allegiance, patriotism, or national interest; if we suggest that not only have the Kings of France, the eldest sons of the Church, constantly asserted against the Popes the rights of their crown and nation; but that Pope Pius the Sixth went from Rome to Vienna in person to deprecate in vain the vigorous ecclesiastical reforms of the Emperor

Joseph the Second; that the Republic of Venice by its well-known distinction between the Church and the Court of Rome, resisted all political interference of the Popes while acknowledging their spiritual supremacy; and that neither the Catholic cantons of Switzerland nor the Catholic subjects of Prussia have ever allowed their religion to interfere with their civil duties to their country and their King: if we quote all these facts and a hundred others of the same kind, our opponents content themselves with answering, that they know nothing about facts (which indeed is true), but that they know that a Catholic must always be a bigot, and must always obey the Pope implicitly. They say that Catholics must be bigots, because they believe that no heretics can be saved; that they cannot change their opinions, because holding the Church to be infallible, what she has once decreed must for ever remain valid; or at least that they are fairly chargeable with all the doctrines professed by the Council of Trent, until another General Council shall have declared that those doctrines are no longer to be maintained. If we bring instances of Catholics who have shewn themselves not bigoted, and who have not considered themselves bound to obey the Pope in temporal matters; then we are told that these are not true Catholics: and although if this be so, a majority of the Catholics of Europe are not true Catholics, and the probability is, that the Catholics of Ireland will be no truer, in this sense of the term, than those of the Continent, yet it is always assumed that they will retain the extremest rigour of the tenets of their Church, even under circumstances which, as experience has shewn, have generally qualified them.

It is important however to enter into this subject somewhat more fully, and to shew the unfairness or the ignorance of the enemies of the Catholics when they thus press upon them the most obnoxious tenets of the worst ages of papal superstition and violence. Nearly three centuries have now elapsed since the dissolution of the