what he found written or had heard; and while he repeats fables which to us are gross and palpable, the manner of his relation is such as completely to approve his own perfect veracity. And this leads me to the subject of monkish miracles.

You complain, Sir, that I treat the miracles of your Church with contempt and ridicule it would be well if they called forth no other feeling in a sincere and ingenuous mind! You tell me that a Roman Catholic may disbelieve them all* without ceasing to be a Roman Catholic: and you ask " if it be either just or generous to harass the present Catholics with the weaknesses of the ancient writers of their communion, and to attempt to render their religion and themselves odious by these unceasing and offensive repetitions?" Is it quite consistent, Sir, thus to cry mercy upon this part of your case, and yet to rely at one time upon the very fables which you abandon at another?

For

toremque suppliciter obsecro, ut si qua in his quæ scripsimus, aliter quàm seceritas habet, posita repererit, non hoc nobis imputet, qui (quæ vera lex historia est) simpliciter ea quæ famá vulgante collegimus, ad instructionem posteritatis literis mandare studuimus. * Page 46. + Page 48.

Rather than interrupt the text, I chuse here to protest against Mr. Butler's repeated and injurious insinuation.

you boast of a perpetual succession of miracles

in the Romish Church, as a perpetual proof that it is the true one. You give them up in the detail, and appeal to them in the gross. This is something like your proposed rule of controversy, and your Maynooth rule of faith, in which we are told that you are not required to believe in the Saints whose names are in your kalendar, whose churches and whose altars you attend, whose relics and whose images you venerate, whose festivals you keep, and whose legends make a part of your liturgy, Methinks, Sir, this manner of playing fast and loose with opinions, of advancing at one time what you have renounced at another, as may happen to suit the bearing of your immediate argument, savours rather of law than of logic; it belongs to the practices of perverted subtlety, not to the use of right reason. The subterfuges of disputation are always unworthy; they are especially misplaced when we are looking for the realities of historical and religious truth. itbod

This, Sir, is your position:" that if Roman Catholics prove a constant succession of mira

*Truly, indeed, did Bishop Jewel say, ca legunt in templis suis, quæ ne ipsi quidem dubitant esse mcru mendacia et inan es fabulus! Apologia, p. 123. ed. 1591.

+ Page 40.

cles in their church, they consequently establish the truth of her doctrine." Now I advance as a position, not less certain, that if Protestants prove a constant succession of frauds in that church, the Papal system is what I have pronounced it to be.. a prodigious structure of imposture and wickedness. You have said that the words Superstition and Idolatry are the burthen of the Book of the Church:* if they are not the burthen of the present volume, it is because one that will be even less palatable, must more frequently be used. Superstition and idolatry call as much for pity as for condemnation, but there is nothing to qualify our detestation of imposture; and if I do not substantiate that charge upon the Romish Church, let me be held for a calumniator by posterity!

The Book of the Church contains facts enough to substantiate it, in the series of frauds which are there noticed, as natural and no unimportant parts of the narrative, from the bodily flagellation of Laurentius in a vision, down to Father Garnet's miraculous miniatures on straw. But you are pleased to call for authorities, and in a manner too as if it had been my plan to withhold them because none

* Page 338.

H

*

could be produced in support of what I had advanced. Here, Sir, I am compelled to trouble you with some little repetition both of your own words and of mine, from which the argument cannot in this place be disentangled. "The following passage,' you say," will be read by Roman Catholics with surprise and concern. A vision is related, said to have been seen by Laurentius, one of the missionaries. This, it is asserted in the Book of the Church, must be either miracle, or fraud, or fable: many such there are in the history of the Anglo-Saxon as of every Romish Church; and it must be remembered, that when such stories are mere fables, they have for the most part been feigned with the intent of serving the interests of the Romish Church, and promulgated, not as fiction, but as falsehood, with a fraudulent mind. The legend which is here related, is probably a wonder of the second class. The clergy of that age thought it allowable to practise upon the ignorance and credulity of a barbarous people, if by such means they might forward the work of their conversion, or induce them, when converted, to lead a more religious life. (There is a sentence omitted here, which I shall

notice presently.) Whether they thought thus or not, it is certain that thus they acted, and it is not less certain that a system which admitted of pious fraud opened a way for the most impious abuses." In the next chapter it is said, "the missionaries were little scrupulous concerning the measures which they employed, because they were persuaded that any measures were justifiable if they conduced to bring about the good end which was their aim."

assertions.

"Here... (I am proceeding now with your comment upon these passages)... "here we particularly lament your avowed plan of withholding from your readers your authorities for your To support this charge against the Anglo-Saxon clergy, it was incumbent upon you to bring authentic evidence to prove their having published or practised fictions in the manner you have described: to produce instances of it so numerous as must justly fix the guilt on the general body of the Anglo-Saxon clergy; and to show that they acted on these. occasions, not in consequence of the general weakness or pravity of human nature, but under the impulse or sanction of their Church, or her doctrines. Nothing of this kind have you brought forward; all, therefore, that you say,