in the first centuries, it were difficult to admit, that the free use of our reason will of itself preserve us from such corruptions; it should be recollected that this will not hold good with respect to what is called the unlearned, that is, much the most numerous body of Christians. They are wont, and not improperly, indeed almost necessarily, to take their faith very much upon the authority of others. It therefore would ill become us to discontinue any of the vigilance and activity employed by our predecessors in opposing a system of such danger to the souls of men; one which has been a snare not only to the vulgar and the foolish, but to the wise and the noble; still more to the scribes. and disputers of the world.

must admit to be treasonable. I have, I say, proved this from the declarations and conduct of Stapleton, Cardinal Allen, and the others who had the rule and direction of the English Romanists in those days. I have done this without the slightest attempt at contradiction by Dr. Milner in his "Observations upon the Sequel," though this, being a main point at issue between us, was what he was particularly called upon to confute, and which if he could have accomplished it, would have done his cause more real good, than hundreds of such pages as he has stuffed with unmeaning scurrility. The reader who desires further satisfaction on this head may consult Preservatives against Popery, tit. xiii. p. 154, for Cardinal Allen's opinion at large. And also p. 149. The admission of Bzovius that there was none suffered in Elizabeth's time but those who taught that the pope had power to depose kings. See also ib. p. 156, the letter of Pope Pius V. encouraging the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland in their rebellion, and the epistle of the secular priests immediately following.

L

Indeed there could never have been any relaxation in this respect but for the extraordinary prevalence of that latitudinarian system which I pointed out in a former discourse, and which has of late been so extended as to include the Roman Catholics in the association and alliance, which, either tacitly or expressly, has been formed against the established church. Of the confusion of principle which has by this extraordinary and unnatural coalition been necessarily produced among the dissenters, I have before taken notice; but the inconsistency becomes tenfold more glaring, when this sort of union is considered as subsisting between Romanists and Protestants. For thus it happens that they whose leading principle it is to give the utmost possible scope to even the eccentricities of private judgment in religious concerns, scruple not to stipulate for the supposed rights and immunities of those who have never suffered individuals to exercise any judgment at all upon such matters. They who complain because, with every facility of following their own religious opinions, they are still liable to a few civil disadvantages in consequence of those opinions, are become the champions of a sect, which, wherever it has had the mastery, has never tolerated not only the worshipping of God, but not the thinking of him in any way but its

own.

The ground upon which this union is justified, is as full of fallacy as the thing itself is extraordinary. We are referred to the weak and fallen state of the Romish church, and to the liberal sentiments of certain individuals belonging to her; by whom it is said the narrow and contracted spirit which she has formerly shewn, as well as the persecuting doctrines are disclaimed. But the fact is that no dependence can be placed upon any result which may be drawn from the situation of that church, nor even from the language of ever so many of her members speaking individually: because the principles of her usurpations are interwoven with her very essence: because too it has been one of her maxims, avowed and acted upon, that dissimulation and submission to her enemies was allowed whenever she had not the

• The misfortune is that in order to attain this spirit of liberality, the Romanist is obliged to make such an effort as carries him beyond the mark, and transports him into the very regions of infidelity. This is notorious of all the Roman catholic writers in other countries who have become famous as having taken the lead in emancipating the world from what they call the slavery of priestcraft. And if the reader wishes to see more recent instances of it, he may consult Sir John Throckmorton's Considerations, &c." or "the Remarks on the Bishop of Durham's Charge:" the former of which I have noticed in the "Sequel," and the latter in the

Reply to Dr. Milner's Obervations." I might mention also some late attempts of Dr. Geddes.

power to assert her superiority'; because lastly, according to her fundamental doctrines, no individual can speak with any authority of himself, nor can act upon his own private judg ment. In fact, none of those Romanists who disclaim the most strongly the tenets in question, will admit distinctly that the popes or the councils by whom those tenets were promulgated, or by whom they were acted upon, did err. They cannot indeed make such an admission without shaking the foundations of their church, and destroying the ground upon which she builds her claim to dominion. The infallibility which she arrogates to herself being thus impeached in one instance, would by necessary consequence leave every man at liberty to judge for himself as to the whole of the controversy which is what none of them will choose to admit of, or suppose to be lawful.

See the graces or faculties granted to Parsons and Campion, in 1580. Foulis p. 435, or Lord Burleigh's tract of "Execution, "&c. not for Religion, but for Treason." Preservatives against Popery, tit. xiii. p. 171. or Appen. to "Sequel," p. xlviii. Bellarmine's position is well known that "Hæretici non sunt bello petendi quando sunt fortiores nobis." Bellarm, de Laicis. See this set forth at full in Hicks's tract of "Missionaries' arts discovered,” printed in Preservatives against Popery, tit. xiii. 1.

• If there be any man who doubts of this I recommend to him Dr. Milner's late charge or pastoral letter before referred to. At p. iv. in a passage, part of which I have elsewhere quoted, he says, after inculcating the necessity of obedience to authority, "The

The truth is that intolerance is and must be the indelible character of that church; that it is interwoven with her very frame. The position so tenaciously maintained that out of her pale there is no salvation, constrains them, as it were, out of very charity, to use every means in their power to extirpate all whom they cannot reclaim; to persecute and put down all those whom they call heretics; and every page of their history will point out to them the horrible doctrine that all means are allowable for the

"Catholic church in particular, that most illustrious and perfect " of all societies, as being the work of infinite wisdom; that soci"ety, which like the ocean spreads its arms round the whole earth, and "which unlike all human institutions, is neither to be dissolved by "external violence, nor internal decay; the church, I say, owes "all her beauty and stability to the exact discipline and subordination "which her divine founder has established in her, and in which he "has marshalled her, like an army drawn up in battle array.'" Cant. vi. 9. (It is v. 10 in our translation, and rendered, “terrible "as an army with banners." No matter, the quotation is not the less remarkable, as well as the comment which follows) "As in

a disciplined army the soldiers obey their officers, and these other "officers of superior rank, who themselves are subject to a com"mander in chief: so in the Catholic church extending as it does from "the rising to the setting sun, the faithful of all nations are guided by "their pastors, who in their turns are submissive to the prelates, "whilst the whole body is subordinate to one supreme pastor, whose "seat is the rallying point and centre of them all. The Catholic, acknowledging in the church a living, speaking authority as the guide of his faith, must submit his private opinions to its decisions, "otherwise he ceases to be a catholic." This is afterwards explained to extend to the minu'est points of discipline, (p. x) and this under the express penalty of an ANATHEMA.