of the noblest assertors of our freedom. He was not only at the head of the barons at Runnimede, but the very project of demanding a charter of liberty was originally his own. It was Langton that convened the previous assembly in London, and it was he who afterwards negociated the terms at OxfordWhen the king his master had summoned the nobility and prelates to witness the ceremony, at St. Paul's, of his doing homage to the see of Rome for his kindom, that venerable man, well aware, in common with the rest, that this affair was but a con-certed arrangement between John and the Pope-a bargain of feudal supremacy on one hand, as the price of protection in tyranny on the other, and that both would then unite in opposing any arrangement for giving a more free constitution to England, boldly stept forward to express his indignation at the scheme; and when the record was presented for his signature, instead of affixing to such a document his name, he placed his protest against it on the altar and withdrew.

"With this spirit thus actuating both the clergy and barons, how might not John,, even in those days, had he been disposed to promote the liberty and happiness of his kingdom, have bid a proud defiance to the extravagance of Papal pretensions, and laughed at the thunders of the Vatican. If the Londoners rang their bells in triumph and derision, when the bull of suspension arrived for Langton, and excommunication for the barons, what would not both barons, and bishops, and people, have done in any cause which a patriot king had been wise enough to make their own?

"We have now gone through the gloomiest period of our history as it regards the spiritual condition of our country; for though the lengthened reign of John's successor furnished many marks of political tyranny and clerical usurpation, yet the eyes of mankind were open to the combination against their rights, and the spirited resistance made to Henry's attempted infrac-tions of the great charter, and the abolition of the trial by or-deal, shewed very clearly that both civil liberty was beginning to gain ground and superstition to decline. The Edwards found no difficulty in enacting the statutes of Mortmain and Præmu nire, in establishing bounds to ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and in reducing Papal authority to much narrower limits.

"They did not cease to be as orthodox Catholics as their predecessors, but they wisely, instead of looking for other instruments of power, threw themselves on the councils and affection of their subjects; they roused the House of Commons to an effective share in the legislation, and the third Edward acquired, as he deserved, the honourable distinction of being the Justinian of England. Sis Matthew Hale did not scruple to affirm, "that more was done in the first thirteen years of his reign, to settle and establish the distributive justice of the kingdom, than in all the ages since that time put together." The later authority of Blackstone not only fully subscribes to this assertion, but tells us that "all the essentials of our jurisprudence, and even its forms likewise, were then settled, and that the legal treatises written at this period by Britton, Fleta, Hengham, and the rest, are, for the most part, law at the present day." If then the learned prelate alluded to has a breast fired as he said, with zeal and admiration for the free constitution of his country, surely he will, upon more mature reflection and inquiry, be disposed to think less unfavourably of those to whom he owes it; to whom he owes not only the broad and deep foundation upon which are rested its general principles, but also the majestic form of its edifice, the style of its architecture, and the very ornaments which give to the interior its grace and beauty.

"Even if the learned prelate should choose to consider the birth of that spirit of freedom which animates our constitution, as rather to be referred only to the æra of the reformation in our religion, or of our revolution in the state, still he will find it equally impossible to connect it with any growth of feeling engendered by Protestantism, in contradiction to that which had prevailed in times more purely Catholic. For the plain fact cannot be disguised, that from the reformation down to the revolution, the pulpits of our Protestant churches rung with the doctrines of divine right and the duties of passive obedience; that our prelates were, almost without exception, the adherents of these principles, and that our great seminaries of religion and learning inculcated their propriety and truth. In 1662 the university of Oxford condemned, as false, dangerous, and wicked, the proposition that it was lawful to resist a tyrant as you would a private individual, in the commission even of a robbery or a

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robbery or a rape, tanquam latro sen strupator;" nor even when, in 1710, this celebrated document was burnt in London, together with the sermons of Sacheverell, had these principles ceased to be cherished by that august body. When Sacheverell, on his release from his imprisonment, passed through the university, they received him with ceremony and distinction, and treated him as a martyr to their cause. The whole series of monarchs, moreover, under whose rule the reformation had been begun and was matured, were the most arbitrary princes that ever sat on the throne of England; and if the last of them had aimed only at the arbitrary power, without interfering with the established faith and threatening its total subversion, there is no limit, short of complete despotism, in which, if we may judge by the language of addresses tendered to him, he would not have been supported by the church. He found no difficulty in procuring to this high commission the sanction of the archbishop of Canterbury and the other prelates, though they could not be ignorant of its tyrannical, and perfectly unconstitutional, nature. Luckily for his subjects, James began his attack in this very quarter, and thus, as it were, by accident, connected the cause of the national faith with the cause of national freedom. His contest with Magdalen college threw a fresh light upon the doctrines of nonresistance amongst the Oxonians; and his cause with Dr. Sharpe and the bishop of London, upon silencing the clergy, made the bishops reflect whether the rights of kings really were divine. This long chain of evidence then seems to point to very different conclusions from those urged by the learned prelate, that the religion of the church of Rome is either incompatible with the growth and maintenance of civil liberty, or that we are peculiarly indebted for its blessings to the exertions of the church of England in its favour. But it suggests another feeling, namely, of deep regret, that religion should have so often been made the stalking horse upon which ambition and avarice have pursued their object, and that its sanction should so often have been lent to measures at variance with its precepts. The bishops of 1680, with the exception of but three, voted that the duke of York's being a Catholic was no just cause of exclusion, even from the throne. The bishops of 1822 have decided, with as few exceptions, that about half

a dozen Catholic peers cannot safely be restored to the ancient hereditary privilege of a share in framing those laws to which their persons, their property, and their lives, are amenable."

(To be continued.)

To the EDITOR of the CATHOLIC MISCELLANY.

Sir,-Allow me to ask, through the medium of your useful Miscellany,-What is the meaning of the term, " Festum in pop," as marked in the Ordo Recitandi, for March 25th, 1823. I am, Sir, your's respectfully,

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