...

is mere accusation." And again*. "You must admit that the principle which you impute to the Anglo-Saxon missionaries, is most nefarious, and fraught with the worst consequences. You must also admit that a charge of this nature, when it is brought against an individual, can only be proved by producing either his own. acknowledgement of it, or else such facts as establish it by just inference; and that when it is brought against a body of men, it can only be proved by producing a multiplicity of such acknowledgements, or a multiplicity of such facts. But in the present case, where are those acknowledgements? Where are those facts?"

8

Where are those facts! Sir, if you ask for them as relating specifically to the British and Anglo-Saxon Churches, I refer you to Bede and Capgrave passim; or to your own authority, Father Michael Alford; or to that industrious and faithful compiler, Father Serenus Cressy, whose "Church History of Brittany" I recommend all persons who may have read Dr. Lingard's Antiquities of the Anglo-Saxon Church, to examine as supplementary to that work, because it contains the whole series of pious frauds and falsehoods which the able modern historian has

found it convenient to discard. If you require such facts as relate, not to the Anglo-Saxon alone, but to the general, or, in Romish language, the Universal Roman Catholic Church, then, Sir, I refer you to your own Breviaries; to the one-and-fifty folios of the Bollandists; to all collections of that kind, that of your kinsman included, (for, prepared as it has been for the English scale of credulity, by weeding, it still contains a choice assortment of the facts desired ;) to every biography of a Romish Saint, or candidate for Saintship; and to all the chronicles of all the Monastic Orders in all their varieties and subdivisions. These references are not given at a venture, after the manner of an advocate, who recks not whether what he affirms as a fact, or appeals to as an authority, be true or false, .. careless of after detection, so his immediate purpose may be answered by the profligate and audacious artifice. I am conversant with the books to which I appeal. A collection from them of such miracles as bear directly upon the charge that a system of falsehood and imposture has been regularly carried on by the Romish clergy, (more especially the Regulars,) and sanctioned by the Popes, would fill more volumes than Dr. Rees's Cyclopædia; and, without intending any disparagement

to your production, such a collection might, with much greater propriety, be entitled the Book of the Roman Catholic Church. You call for proofs and authorities, Sir, and you shall have them. Midas was not more fully satisfied in his desire for gold, than you shall be with both.

The assertion which you have so complacently pronounced to be mere accusation, stands in the Book of the Church warranted and approved by the fact with which it is there introduced. You have past over that story with noticeable dexterity, calling it a " vision related to have been seen by Laurentius," and saying nothing more of it. To use your own mode of interrogation," is it equitable,.. is it candid,... is it consistent with fair controversy," to treat a charge of fraudulent practices as a direct and groundless calumny, and thus to slur over the particular instance which gave occasion for introducing the general remark? Look at the story, Sir, and say whether it be not either miracle, or fraud, or falsehood. I set it before you now, not as I had there compressed it in few words, but that you may have no pretext to complain either of subtraction or addition, in close translation from Bede...the well-head, as well know, for all this portion of our history. It is necessary to premise that Mellitus and

you

Justus having withdrawn from the kingdom of Essex to France, because of the infidelity of the three joint kings, Laurentius had declared his intention of following them from Kent for a like

reason.

But when Laurentius was about to follow Mellitus and Justus and to depart from Britain, he gave orders that a bed should be prepared for him that night in the church of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, (of which we have frequently spoken,) in the which when, after pouring forth many prayers and tears to God for the state of the Church, he had lain down to rest and was asleep, the most blessed Prince of the Apostles appeared to him, and, inflicting upon him many severe stripes in the dead of the night, demanded of him with apostolic severity, wherefore he was about to forsake the flock which he himself had committed to his charge? or to what pastor, when he was thus flying, he meant to consign Christ's sheep, who were placed in the midst of wolves? 'Art thou,' said he, forgetful of my example, who for the little ones of Christ, which he in the choice of his love commended to me, endured chains, stripes, prisons, afflictions, death itself at last, even the death of the cross, from the unbelievers and enemies of Christ, myself, therefore, to be

crowned with Christ? The servant of Christ, Laurentius, being excited both by the stripes and exhortations of the blessed Peter, went as soon as it was morning to the King, and throwing off his garments, showed him how he was lacerated with stripes. The King was greatly, astonished thereat, and inquired who had dared inflict such strokes upon a personage of his station. But when he heard that it was for the sake of his salvation that the Bishop had suffered this torment and these lashes from the Apostle of Christ, he was greatly affrighted, and, forbidding all idolatrous worship, and breaking off his unlawful marriage, received the Christian faith, and was baptized, and sought to promote and favour the Church in all things as much as he could."*

Now, Sir, this is not a floating fable cast up by the stream of tradition. The Venerable. Bede is strictly a veracious writer, and he tells us that the materials for that portion of his history which relates to the South of England were transmitted to him from the best authority and in the most, authentic manner. He received them from Abbot Albin, who was bred at Canterbury under Archbishop Theodore