less than the laity-to wait ever so late for their breakfasts on Sundays and holidays-to distribute to the poor-to attend the sick by night and day, at a moment's call, and at all hazards. They can have no interest, because they receive no fees but such as are perfectly voluntary, and are supported exclusively (that is, where they are supported at all) by the people paying for their seats in the public chapel. They can have no ambition, because their dignities are few, and in general inaccessible; and also because these dignities are naked, unadorned, spiritual, and apostolical, and like the honours of decayed nobility, which it is almost necessary to hide to prevent their becoming objects of derision-(assumed honours he should have said, for what right by law, human or divine, has any Papist to call himself Bishop of any place in Ireland, when there are lawful Bishops in every see?) Does he really think that he has made out a clear case, that those ordinary motives which actuate less divine creatures, have no sway with his brethren? After all this parade of suffering, no one, he may depend on it, will believe but that the Roman Church Priesthood are as well fed and comfortable as any other class of his Majesty's subjects, and obtaining as fair a provision as they could reasonably expect in propor tion to their claims on society.-And what else is all this invidious display of their poor, and naked, and hungry, and withered dignity, but mere declamation? What class of professional men is there, that could not pathetically set forth its grievances, and call upon the public to acknowledge them to be the most hard-working, ill-paid, and spiritualized set of men in existence?

As to the merits of particular individuals of the Roman Church, whether of the Clergy or Laity, there is no one of our Church who has any disposition to speak or think unfavourably. We willingly receive Dr. Baines's testimony to the individual exertions of the Priests whom he describes as having fallen ́ a sacrifice to their charitable zeal in visiting and comforting their flocks. And of Dr. Baines himself as a Christian and a gentleman, we are disposed to think much more highly than we possibly can if we confine our judgment to his opinions, and his mode of stating, and defending, and propagating them. Let all personal arguments then be banished from the consideration of the question. They are only invidious means of prejudicing the truth. It is the spirit of the Roman Church with which we are concerned-its errors and their tendency. The point is not whether certain persons, holding certain opinions, act inconsistently with those opinions and are practically better. Christians than they would persuade themselves or others that they are. All we care about is, the obnoxious tenets of the Roman Church, as they are professed and taught and

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their falsehood may be demonstrated, without mixing up with the inquiry, the personal merit or demerit of the individuals who hold them. Be it fully understood therefore that, with all our detestation of the erroneous doctrines and practices of the Church, we do not compromise our charity and our respect for those who do well, notwithstanding the imperfection of their system. Practically indeed, (and happy for the world it is that things are so ordered) there are not really so many erroneous opinions in the world as people imagine. Locke made a similar observation long ago, and experience proves it. Very few are they, who, where action is concerned, bring the false notions to bear, which they can defend with obstinate ingenuity when they are tried only by the verbal test. The advocates of the doctrine of necessity are obvious proofs of this, as Butler points out in his chapter on that doctrine in his Analogy. We do not maintain that a Romanist is necessarily what his creed would depict him. We argue against it as false, and against him only as far as he may be actuated by it. The point at issue is this, that a consistent Papist must be superstitious and intolerant-a consistent Church of England man cannot be so-if he is, he is more blame-worthy than the Papist, for he has not so learned Christ. We are not surprized, for instance, when we meet in the writings of a Papist with such a passage as the following, which we transcribe from Dr. Gandolphy's sermon on the "Apostolicity of the Church."

"My brethren, I now conclude, having earnestly laboured to point out to you the real Minister of God, through the Apostolicity of the Church.

"True, I have not miraculously manifested myself, like Elias; but I have produced testimony sufficient to convince you, that an approved Minister of the Catholic Roman Church is the lawful Minister of God, authorized to announce his word and dispense his

sacraments.

"In presenting myself to you, therefore, as an approved Priest of the Catholic Roman Church of Christ, before God and this congregation, I bid all remember these my words at the last day, when we shall be again assembled in the presence of our Creator and Judge. My God, in thy name I have declared myself thy Minister, and as such have announced thy word. To thee I now appeal, in the face of angels and of men-hear this protest, and may these souls bear witness to it at thy judgment seat.

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"If thou hast a lawful Minister out of thy Catholic Roman Church, then, as a false teacher, number me with the dead this instant; let me be a sign of malediction to this people, and the world, and may thy anathema be upon my soul for eternity." Gandolphy's 23d Sermon, Vol. ii. p. 266.

That such sentiments should have been uttered from a Christian pulpit, (and the author, lest the outrageous character of them should raise a doubt in the mind of the reader, takes the pains to affirm in a note, that they were) may well produce a feeling of horror. All we remark is, that they are only consistent with the genius of Popery. Christianity disowns them, and remits them to the rocks which gave them birth and the tigers which nursed them:

duris genuit te cautibus horrens

Caucasus, Hyrcanæque admorunt ubera tigres.

We pass over some more trifling, in which Dr. Baines attributes, in his usual style of irony, the opposition of the Established Clergy, to their fear of forfeiting their title to the revenues of the Church; and represents them as naturally panic-struck at the danger which he anticipates for them from the relaxation of the "penal laws," and at last we come to his laboured defence of the infallible authority of the Church of Rome. It is thus solemnly introduced.

"Reader! we are accused of abjuring reason in the concerns of religion. It is to the tribunal of reason I now appeal. It is by reason I wish the Catholic religion to be tried. If reason convicts her of falsehood, she shall no longer have my feeble support. It was reason which confirmed me in her truth; it is reason which keeps me against every worldly consideration in her communion. Dismiss from thy mind every prejudice, suppose if thou canst, that thou hast never heard a single sermon, nor read a single tract, nor novel, nor play, nor historical mis-statement, abusing, ridiculing, or mis-representing the Catholic religion; attend only to the evidence of proofs, and prepare to be guided in thy decision by argument alone." P. 24.

This is the flash-now for the fumum ex fulgore. Who would suppose after this solemn appeal to reason, that the object of the ensuing argument is to depreciate the exercise of reason, and in that very matter too wherein reason is invoked to give her aid. The author is about to prove the incompetence of reason to decide on the true religion, in order that an inference may be drawn from such incompetence to the neces sity of placing an implicit trust in himself and his brother ministers; and calls upon us therefore to use our reason in order to discredit our reason. But let us not insist upon this little inconsistency, let us examine the stages of proof.

He proceeds to inform us that Christ instituted Christianitythat Christianity consists of doctrines and precepts-that it is a permanent institution-and must be perpetuated either by the Scriptures alone, or by a succession of authorized living

VOL. VII. NO. IV.

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teachers and rulers, or by some other means; that the doctrines and precepts cannot be contradictory or inconsistent, and therefore that there cannot be two essentially different religions which shall both be true, or as he afterwards explains himself more fully, "that Christ has only one true, pure and uncorrupted religion, and that is a religion which teaches all the doctrines, enjoins all the duties, and follows all the regulations, which he required as essential to salvation." Here he should have added, "and no others as essential to salvation but such as Christ has required." It is not enough that the truth and the whole truth be spoken, there must be also nothing but the truth. But this is a case for which the Roman Church has not provided-it was politic therefore not to admit it into the argument. Let it be noted however in passing, that the author has made his premises too narrow to admit his Church into their conditions.

Stating then (what we are not disposed to dispute) that there is, and always has been, in the world, a true and saving Christianity-the author sets about finding it out. How does he commence his search? a Protestant would say, of course, he appeals to the law and the testimony, and examines the Scriptures, the authentic records of this true and saving Christianity, that he may know what they say of it, by what marks they describe it, so that he may know it when he sees it in the world. But no-instead of looking into the Scriptures, the author goes up on high and looks down from the dome of St. Peter's on the various conflicting sects which are agitating the world, and is accordingly much puzzled to find out the true religion amongst the variety presented in his panorama of Christianity. This method of pursuing his discovery, appears to us very much as if any person, wishing to acquire a knowledge of natural philosophy, should merely go about inquiring of dif ferent persons what they know about it, instead of directing his observation to that course of nature from which it is experimentally derived. To facilitate his discovery however by this process, the author distributes the result of his survey into two large masses. In one he places all the sectaries of this country (for he does not extend his induction further) and in the other the Church of England.

"All, except the Church of England, tell me that the Bible is the only rule of belief and practice, and that to come at the knowledge of the doctrines which Christ taught, and the duties which he enjoined, I must diligently read my Bible, and explain it according to the best of my own private judgment, taking care not to suffer any man or body of men to tyrannize over my faith, or to oblige me to believe or to do any thing which I do not find in the Bible; that this is true Christian

liberty, and that every thing else is popery and slavery. The Church of England also bids me take my Bible, and assures me that it contains all that I am to believe and practise, and that if I read I shall find it there; but she adds that whether I find it there or not, she insists upon my admitting her interpretation, or she will consider me a heretic or a schismatic." P. 30.

The same perverseness of inquiry we find still continues to infatuate the author's judgment. After he has commenced in á wrong way, he proceeds in a wrong way. The error of looking abroad in the world for a religion, is followed up by asking those conflicting sects what he is to do next; instead of looking into their professions and practices, which might at least have led him to reflect which sect was most likely to be in possession of a true religion. But the author's object, gentle reader, is not to find out the true religion. It is to uphold the infallible authority of the Church of Rome; and therefore it is that he presents before our view authorities confessedly fallible, that he may slily induce us to recoil from the acknowledged imperfection of those modes of investigating the truth which he places before our eyes into the Circean embrace of his own Church. How fairly he has represented the opinion of our Church respecting its authority we shall presently consider.

Dr. Baines promises then to discuss the merits of the two systems which he has brought forward, and to shew that neither of them will do for him. But what do we find in the place of the promised discussion, but a string of objections to the plan of private interpretation of Scripture, in which he miserably confounds the question of expediency as to the exercise of a right, with that of the existence of the right. He proves nothing more than that it is inexpedient to trust exclusively to such a plan, because of the extreme difficulty of ascertaining the canon of Scripture because the plan is generally impracticable-because it has been abused to the propagation of erroneous doctrines, and because, as he says, it is a revolutionary and self-destructive principle," leading to "contention, separation, disunion and final dissolution." He promises also hereafter to shew that "the plan of private interpretation," which he has here discussed, "was that upon which the Church of England, like all other separatists, founded her defection from the Catholic Church, and her adoption of her peculiar doctrines;" but he has not done so in the course of this pamphlet, nor can he in any future one. The sufficiency of the Scriptures, as the sole rule of faith and conduct, was the great principle of our reformers. They set their faces steadily against any licentious use of the right of private interpretation, and though they held that right, as every rational man must, they did not justify their proceedings