ever consistently be recognised by Protestants, but that Roman Orders can no more consistently be recognised by England, than the Stuart title to the throne can be recognised by the house of Brunswick. Of course I do not mean to say that a Roman priest is to be reordained on his conversion, but only that a Protestant State can know nothing of his orders until the Established Episcopate has given them currency. Until that is done, it appears to me the Roman priest is simply a Dissenting minister, and I cannot comprehend his right to a standing better than that of any other Dissenting minister, on the sole ground of his being under foreign allegiance, and claiming to exercise foreign jurisdiction.

In England and Ireland, as in France, and far more so, men are not only still human and religious, but the established religion is, in common, episcopal.

To recognise then, in these countries, any man as a "bishop," is to recognise a claim to exercise jurisdiction; but to recognise any man as a Papal bishop, is, as has been shown, to recognise a claim to supremacy of jurisdiction, is to recognise the claim of a jus divinum to exercise dominion, within territorial limits, over the person and possessions, over the body here, and the body and soul hereafter, of every baptized human being. True, the Council of Trent, has directed the exercise of this temporal dominion to be regulated by "expediency," and consequently, in England, it is, in general, (though by no means always,) secret. But that Papal ecclesiastics or foreign officials do enforce the claim when they think it "expedient," any one, who is in earnest, may have proved to him as easily as that they set it up. Nor, alas! is this all that must be remembered. The Papal ecclesiastics who thus "govern" in England, are not merely foreigners in allegiance and affection. They are, even in the midst of Roman Catholics, a caste apart. Nay, it is not even merely as a caste, and an alien, and an hostile caste, that they are separated from the rest of the community; that were, indeed, a fearful enough evil to be delivered from, for, as has been wisely said by one of the most thoughtful of modern statesman, "Caste has been the instrument of establishing among men, instead of a law of love, almost a law of mutual aversion and contempt." Caste still leaves men with brothers and sisters, and fellow-men and women, whom they may love and be united to; it still leaves men innocently human; it still leaves sacred and dear the ties of wife and daughter, son and brother, father and sovereign; its teachings are not necessarily "doctrines of DEVILS;"-while, with truly Satanical malignity, the Religious Celibacy of Papal Rome, makes disruption from all human ties obligatory, makes acopy, the want of natural affection, a virtue, even in a mother for her infant child.

When I compare the Church of Rome, as I now see it, with what I painted her to myself, with the imaginary realization of our blessed Saviour's scheme for fallen man's sanctification, no words. can convey my horror at the contrast. I should often doubt the conclusions of my reason, mistrust my moral sense, and reject my certain knowledge as a dream, if God's written word and man's universal conscience, if the experience of both hemispheres and of ten centuries did not confirm me.

And though I acknowledge, dear Lord Shrewsbury, that you are the man of all others in the world, to whom I am most bounden by duty, as well as in affection, to defend my renunciation of communion with Rome, I should not have had the heart to do so, if I doubted for a moment that the character of the system which I have revealed, was as abhorrent to you as to myself. Nay, more, I should belie my conscience, if I professed to think that the mass of Englishmen who think themselves Roman Catholics, really are So. I profoundly doubt, if,-out of the ranks of the recent converts to Romanism,there can be found a dozen Englishmen of thirty years of age, who are really Roman Catholics, who are ready to act upon their principles, when they maintain the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, and his infallibility, as Mouthpiece of the Almighty, in faith and morals.

The ties which bind an individual to his hereditary religion partake of the mysterious character of religion itself. God forbid I should ever treat them with irreverence. But religion has claims as a national, as well as an individual affair. And the religion of the Bible, protesting against that of Rome, is emphatically the national religion of Great Britain and America. And in my soul, I am persuaded it is their religion, that has made these countries, and that keeps them what they are, just as I am persuaded it is its religion that has made France what it is just now. Those who think any religion contemptible because it mixes error with truth, or because they see its ecclesiastics individually contemptible, are hopeless. They are almost fit to be considered, what Rome has always considered, mere men and women, as creatures half-way between priests and monkeys, not to be reasoned with, but ruled absolutely.

In the first interview I ever had the honour to have with Prince Metternich, the subject of his most minute inquiries was the religious development of America, politically considered, the relative numbers of the different sects and their distinctive doctrines and discipline. Upon my remarking one day in his private cabinet the admirable" American Almanac" for the current year, he playfully boasted that I would find few in Europe better acquainted with my native country than himself: but it was ever, even in that new empire, its religion that was his chief interest, that which he considered the preponderant interest of the State. The experie

of Europe during the last four years, it would seem, should be enough to make all men think it so in every commonwealth.

What thinking man, (thinking of other things than himself I mean,) what thinking man, that saw into whose hands France placed anew the rudder of the State in 1848, but knew where those hands would guide it? whether Cavaignac or Bourbon, Louis Bonaparte or Orleans, held the baubles of authority.

When Machiavelli, whose infidelity was learnt from Popes, but whose depth of wisdom was all his own, when Machiavelli points to profligate and dismembered Italy, "This," he exclaims," "is what we owe the Church of Rome.' What kingdom on the Continent, but may now echo Machiavelli's gratitude for Italy!

In bringing this painful Letter to a conclusion, perhaps it only remains for me to add, that, though I have not entered into the religious part, properly so-called, of the Papal System, it is not because I still cling to any single one of the distinctive doctrines of the Church of Rome; but I have not forgotten the awful regard with which I ever approached them, during my great delusion. Their mysterious fascination of soul and sense, must have been felt to be imagined. God only knows, how my whole being was bowed down before, what I believed, His real presence in the mass, how I almost seemed to myself sensible of angels kneeling round me, when I lifted up the host to be adored. And I cannot but respect the deep sincerity of such faith in others, however, I can no longer hold it, when all the visionary basis it was built upon is gone for ever.

No one knows better than your Lordship what a wretch it was that broke me from the Church of Rome. But painful as it was, I should be the most ungrateful of men, if I did not ever bless God, publicly as well as in private, for the grace that delivered me, and if in doing so, I did not also give my humble thanks to Him through Jesus Christ our Lord, that the grounds on which I renounced the communion of that Church, left my faith unshaken; that, of His great mercy, I was saved from the infidelity which is a too intelligible reaction with those who, because the faith which grasped at the secret things of the Lord our God" has proved a great delusion, reject also "those revealed things which belong unto us and to our children for ever, that we may do all the words of the law."

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Believe me ever,

Dear Lord Shrewsbury,

With the sincerest affection and regard,
Your faithful servant,

PIERCE CONNELLY.

Albury Heath, Guildford,

NOTES.

NOTE page 14, line 15, "colour of obedience."

PAPAL morality is just as multiform as the abberations it is designed to trade in; rigid for the rigid, lax for the licentious, daring and desperate for the blindly obedient. The Jesuit Diocastillo makes it the glory of a theologian that he should be contradictory, even with himself, in the matter of morality, that he should reprobate in one page, what he is going to counsel in another. True," says he, "Diana contradicts himself, not once only, but repeatedly; and, so far from blaming him for it, we consider it matter of thanksgiving. Suiting his vast and copious learning to the wants, or even the desires, of whoever it may be that seeks counsel at his lips, when authority is found for contradictory opinions, he gives one to one penitent and the opposite to another: and he does so safely. What, I beg to ask, can practically be more to a director's purpose?" "Ecce hic auctor sibi contrarius est, id tamen, quod illi non semel contigit, non reprehensione sed gratiarum actione dignum est. Nempe vir, pro communi bono laborans, et communi utilitati serviens, plurima lectione dives et copiosus, pro occurrenti consultationum et quærentium necessitate, aut etiam desiderio, jam huic, jam illi parti adhæret, quando pars utraque probabili ratione et doctorum virorum auctoritate nititur et in praxi utriusvis operari tutum est; voluit autem nobis in medium proferre ad hunc ipsum finem, quid in una, quid in alia occasione responderit quærentibus. Quid quæso utilius pro praxi?"-DE SAC. Eu., iv. 10. What, indeed! "And," adds Diocastillo, with all the indignation that became so liberal a spiritual politician, "with this passing remark, let me teach modesty to the envious and obscure cavillers who have irreverently raised objections to Diana's contradictions." I will give an historical illustration of the " practical utility" of CONTRADICTIONS in political morality. The truly orthodox Romanism of the Spanish people enabled Aquaviva, (the Jesuit General, or Black Pope of the day,) to govern Philip II. by a wholesome fear of what we call assassination. But Romanism having been checked in its development in England, it was out of the question to influence James II. in that way, even if it had not been notorious that he was English, at least in animal bravery. So then a CONTRADICTION was resorted to; and I will place it in parallel lines with the true doctrine of the Church, as expressed by the most eloquent of its innumerable defenders, and one, moreover, who was tutor to Philip's II.'s son.

"Any private man, whoever he may be, has a right, equal to the best, to kill the king declared a public enemy; let him only have the will to fling away hopes of impunity, despise the risk, and dare attempt to serve his country. I never will believe that he who makes essay to slay him, has

"It is not in the power of the people to call God's immediate minister to an account: It is per ME," (that is God, or His Vicar,) "REGES regnant, not, per me Senatus Populus que, the senate and the people reign in an imperial state. There is no room for intruders betwixt the King of Kings and (33)

Mariana's discourse was printed, with royal approbation; the English Jesuit's, by royal command. At that time, however, Contradictions were only the system of the Jesuits, and their school. This system is now the established, irrevocably established moral policy of the Church of Rome.