any exposure of the various attempts made to evade and deny the truth, as for example, Dr. Murray writes to Lord Melbourne that he "did not make Dens a conference book," and that "in fact they had no such book." Mr. Woods pretends in this letter, that Dens merely was used as furnishing the order of the questions, but not the answers, which the statutes prove to be utterly destitute, even of the semblance of truth. It is only necessary to state the facts and direct the attention of the public to the documentary proof. It is clear from the foregoing statements, that

1. A book of moral theology must be purchased by every priest.

2. It must be a treatise which he had already learned, and which he was to study again.

3. He must make it his daily study, so that if it be possible, he must read one chapter, or title, every day.

4. He must do this, to fit himself by continual study, as a guide, to direct the consciences of the people.

5. His bishops must ascertain that he is thoroughly instructed in this book.

6. Conferences four times each year are appointed, for the twofold purpose, that he may be thoroughly trained, and that his bishops may know that he is so.

7. His attendance on these conferences is imperative, so that any priest absent from two of them, without a written license, is suspended.

8. He must be prepared to answer at these conferences, when interrogated by the archbishop, bishop, or master of the conferenee, on the subjects of the discussion, as the rules in the Appendix prove.

9. The archbishop declares that the questions shall be announced in the Directory of each year, under his authority.

10. The compiler of the Directory states that Dr. Murray did, in person, announce to him these ques

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tions, and directed the subjects, the chapters, and the author whence they were to be taken.

11. The Directory itself corroborates the statement of the man who compiles it, and gives the authority of the bishops, the subjects, and the book as known and acknowledged by all the priests; and the book mentioned, both by the compiler and in the Directory, is the Theology of Peter Dens.

Lastly. We have Coyne's testimony, the printer, corroborating all the foregoing, stating that these provincial bishops made Dens the conference book for the Province of Leinster, and that to obviate the difficulty experienced by them in procuring it, he printed a new edition.

The Editor submits to every reader of ordinary intelligence, that a more perfect series of proofs, to bring home a work as a standard of theology adopted by a body of divines, never was laid before the public.

The only question remaining on the subject, is, What is the nature of that theology? Of this the public may form a judgment by the specimens which have been often exhibited from the book, but which are a very small part indeed of that which cannot ever meet the ear of a mixed assembly.

The next extract worth translating, is from

CHAPTER VI.

OF VICARS-GENERAL AND RURAL DEANS.

IN which it is decreed "Whenever a priest falls into any disease, especially if danger of death appears to threaten him, the Rural Dean, (Vicarius Foraneus) within whose deanery he lives, shall visit him, and shall piously minister every spiritual aid to his sick brother in the Lord, as far as he can do so. He shall inquire

whether the sick man has made his will, as commanded in the first chapter, and he shall use the greatest diligence, lest the registry of baptisms and marriages, or the holy vessels, vestments, coverings or ornaments of the altar, whether they belong to the parish or the priest, should fall into the hands of any layman, but he shall rather put them into a safe place, But he shall carry the copy of these statutes home along with him."

Note on Chapter VI.

This latter command may perhaps account for the order to buy up the copy at Mr. Walsh's auction, even for £50. and it must be attributable to the singular providence of God, who "bringeth to light the hidden things of darkness," that the book should have escaped the rural dean, and found its way into a public auction-room, thus to lay open to the inmost recesses, proofs of the full and authoritative adoption of Dens's Theology.

Note on Chapter VIII.

The most remarkable feature in this chapter, which is not translated, is a quotation from the Council of Trent, in which it is commanded that every priest is obliged, within two months from the date of his being placed in any benefice, to promise and swear obedience to the church of Rome, and hence the creed of Pope Pius IV. is given as the form of the profession of his faith, and his oath of obedience to the pope; hence it appears that the canon laws published in the supplemental volume to Dens, being the laws of the pope, published for the guide of the priests and people by the bishops, are not only the law of Ireland, but the law to which every priest has sworn to yield an implicit obedience.

CHAPTER XVI.

ON THE SACRAMENT OF PENANCE AND RESERVED CASES AND CENSURES.

ALTHOUGH every chapter contains something of much interest, to those who investigate the principles of popery, yet as it is merely the object of the Editor to give a few brief translations of important matters, he must pass several over, and advert, in the next place, to the sacrament of penance. We find in the commencement of this chapter, the following melancholy testimony of men, whose evidence as to confessors is indisputable.

"It must be considered how great is the burthen and danger of those who undertake so formidable an office, since experience proves that this remedy, so salutary to the fallen, is sometimes so perverted by the ignorance and negligence of confessors, that this fountain of grace is turned into an occasion of perdition. We fear that there is no time in which the melancholy saying of St. Thomas, of Villanova, is not fulfilled in some confessors, 'that they send themselves and sinners down careless into hell.'"

Then in the list of reserved cases we have the following.

"The priest who shall attempt to absolve his accomplice in the foul sin against the sixth commandment, incurs ipso facto, the greater excommunication, reserved to the pope, and such absolution is altogether null and void, except in the article of death, and even then, unless no other confessor can be had."

"The priest who shall attempt to solicit or entice to the commission of dishonourable and base sins, either by words, or signs, or nods, or touch, or by writing, then, or afterwards to be read, any penitent, whatsoever person she be, either in the act of sacramental confession,

or before, or immediately after confession, or by the occasion, or pretext of confession, or even without the occasion of confession in the confessional, or in any other place destined or chosen to hear confessions, with the pretence of hearing confessions there, or who shall have held with presumptuous audacity any unlawful or dishonourable conversation or intercourse with them, is ordered in the bull of Benedict XIV. entitled Sacramentum Pœnitentiæ, to be suspended for ever; and the same Benedict XIV. decrees that priests so soliciting shall be for ever incapable of celebrating mass."

Note on Chapter XVI.

It will not seem wonderful, that statutes which make such confessions of the confessional, should be doomed, if possible, to a silence and a secrecy, as deep and dark as the tribunal which they so betray. Can a doubt rest on the mind of any man who reads this document, that this tribunal, which they presume to call holy, that it may overawe the consciences of blind and ignorant mortals, is actually, a means of perdition in the hands of some confessors, by their own admission,-and of how many who can tell? Are St. Thomas, Dr. Murray, Dr. Doyle, Dr. Keating, and Dr. Kinsella, all mistaken, when they say it is a means of sending down persons into hell? What a pretty sacrament of the Christian religion this must be, which these pious doctors confess to be so convertible into an engine, not of salvation, but of perdition! Let any Roman Catholics of common feeling read their bishop's own law here against their own priests; let them see the evils to which by the confession, both of pope and bishops, their wives, and sisters, and daughters are exposed; and let each man ask himself, is this the religion of the Bible? or am I a Christian who allow those of whom, as a man