picturesque, a true sense of the natural and pathetic, force of thought, and liveliness of imagination, which were in common between Thomson and this Author.' The poem certainly discovers very clearly the powers of natural unassisted genius; and we hope that the friends of George Bloomfield will take warning from the injudicious treatment of preceding poets in humble stations, (Stephen Duck, Robert Burns, &c.) and not suffer the inconsistency of his turn of mind and his situation in life to prove his ruin, through the baneful influence of flattery, and by misguided attempts to befriend merit in obscurity. ART. X. A modest Apology for the Roman Catholics of Great Britain: addressed to all moderate Protestants; particularly to the Members of both Houses of Parliament. 8vo. PP. 271. 75. Boards. Faulder. 18co. PUB UBLICATIONS of this kind must surely contribute, more or less, to the diffusion of that liberality of sentiment, without which our boasted improvements in knowlege only proclaim our reproach. An enlightened ought to be a generous mind; and how lamentable that it is not always so! but that we often observe narrow prejudices entwining themselves around the heart of the wise and good, and vegetating with such luxuriance as to obscure, if not absolutely to stifle, the growth of genuine benevolence! It has been remarked, till we are tired of the repetition, that, while the profession of religion avows the purest and most diffusive love, it has been the source of the most rancorous hatred; and that often, in the very act of deploring the want of charity, proofs of the greatest uncharitableness are exhibited. Protestant sects have, at times, felt the sense of justice strongly enough to own how ungenerously they have treated each other: but they seem to think that towards papists they may fairly cherish all the acrimony of intolerance. Because papists once persecuted, they and their descendants are to be persecuted from generation to generation;" because men of this profession once gloried in the hateful principles of bigotry, and disgraced themselves by acting on them, we follow their steps in our treatment of their posterity, though we are convinced of and reprobate their errors! It is time to remove this scandal from the churches and governments of the protestant world. It is high time for the lovers of religious truth to disclaim the use of all weapons. in her cause, but such as she herself allows; and to avoid dishonoring her, by leading men to suspect that her divine energies require the miserable expedients of persecution, either positive positive or negative, to secure to her the victory and the triumph. Let Christians be assured that neither true religion nor good government has any thing to fear from their being just to each other. Let papists and protestants agree with Dr. Sturges, in a passage quoted in this Apology, that "the want of Christian charity is the worst of all heresies;" and let them resolve to have no zeal for truth but what is erected on the basis of love. Let the protestant, whose hand now holds the rod of power, candidly hear the complaint of the Roman catholic, and be ready to redress it as far as it is well founded; neither "visiting the sins of the fathers on the children,” nor being actuated by those illiberal fears which, under the pretext, of security, excite the deprivation of civil privileges *. Have the Roman catholics of this country been fairly treated? Have they not been misrepresented, not to say calumniated? Why, considered as a sect of dissenters, ought they not to enjoy all the privileges of other dissenters? It is commonly said, in justification of the disabilities of which the catholics complain, that they hold principles which cannot be tolerated by government, and which prevent their being placed on an equal footing with other dissenting subjects. This assertion, however, is denied by the ingenious and spirited author of the Modest Apology before us. He disclaims, for himself and his brethren, the wicked doctrine attributed to them, that no faith is to be kept with heretics; and he maintains that their doctrine of the pope's supremacy does not at all affect their civil allegiance and submission: but that their respect for his Holiness at Rome only regards his primacy of honour, rank, and precedence in the catholic church. To allay the fears of Government, he pertinently asks whether there is at present any protestant state on the Continent, that has the smallest suspicion of danger arising from the exercise of the papal power?' and, in order to calm the apprehensions of the church respecting the increase of popery, he pays his own religion a poor compliment, by giving it as his opinion, that the most effectual means of diminishing the number of Roman catholics in this kingdom would be by putting them on the same footing with other dissenters. He contends that they are as loyal subjects as the protestant dissenters, and that there is no reason for degrading them by any civil disability. * The discerning reader will not find these and the following re marks, which are to be applied generally, inconsistent with the censures which we were obliged to pass on the particular conduct of some catholics, in our 31st vel. p. 405, &c. This learned apologist divides his subject into three sections In the first (says he) I shall lay before the reader those articles of catholic belief, about which there is, or ought to be, no dispute: because they are articles in which we are perfectly agreed with all protestants; and it will appear, I apprehend, that those articles are much more numerous and important than it is generally imagined; at least than pragmatical fomenters of division are willing to have it known. In the second section, I shall mark more particularly the points in which we are either perfectly agreed, or nearly coincide, with some one or other protestant communion; especially with the established church of England. In the third section, I shall fairly and candidly sum up all the tenets that are peculiar to catholics; ascertain what is certain, remove what is doubtful, and determine the strict sense in which a British catholic receives them; and, which is the principal part of this undertaking, depend or apologize for those tenets, the best I can; and endeavour to shew that they merit neither proscript.on nor persecution, nor even the privation of a single privilege that other Britons enjoy.' (P. 15-16.) As the doctrines of the pope's supremacy, and of no faith being to be kept with heretics, are important points in this discussion, we shall transcribe a part of the author's remarks on those subjects. The Supremacy, Power, and Prerogatives of the Pope. Here I find my task a difficult one indeed: the more so, as I shall be obliged to make concessions, which many of my communion may think ought not to be made. But, as truth and candour must guide my pen, I will not prevaricate in a single instance. It is allowed then, it must be allowed, that the Pope's supremacy, and the consequences that seem to flow from it, have always been accounted the greatest obstacle to the emancipation of the Roman catholics of Britain.-Their adherence and subjection to a foreign Power have been considered as inconsistent with the allegiance which they owe to their own liege Sovereign, and a legitimate reason for excluding them from the rights and privileges of other British subjects. For all the other objections against their tenets are, politically speaking, of little or no importance. 16 They are, indeed, regarded as such by the acute Sir William Blackstone. He fairly allows, that neither transubstantiation, nor purgatory, nor the invocation of saints, nor any other such speculative opinions peculiar to Roman catholics, are sufficient reasons to exclude them from the pale of British liberty; much less to subject them to legal pains and penalties. The Pope's supremacy is the only article in their creed, which, in a political view, he thinks exceptionable; and on which he grounds the expediency of continuing to guard against its consequences by penal restrictions. I have been told that on of the first law characters of the present day entertains nearly the san.e idea; and has been more than once heard to say, That nothing but but the dependence of the English catholics on that old man at Rome, and the oath of obedience to him, which their chief pastors take at their ordination, could justify the severity of British laws against British Roman catholics, or preclude them from any civil privileges, that Britons are born to enjoy. Let me endeavour then to destroy this fatal barrier, by showing that the tenet of the Pope's primacy, rightly understood, and such as it is at present generally held, not only by the catholics of Great Britain, but by those of most other countries, has nothing in it dangerous to any State or Government; nothing that can authorise the proscription of those who hold it; nothing that should defranchise them from the right of denizens. I said, "such as it is at present generally held:" for it must be confessed, I think, by the most zealous papist, that it was once a dangerous, a most dangerous tenet. When circumvested with supposed infallibility, uncircumscribed by canons, and in the hands of an aspiring ambitious pontiff, it could not but be dangerous: and so it proved.-From it, as from the Trojan horse, issued forth an Iliad of evils, which, for a time, destroyed all lawful subordination, and subjected crowns and tiaras to the will and pleasure of one absolute ghostly despot, who governed a great portion of the world with sovereign sway. Yet this usurped empire was neither universal, nor, in its highest altitude, of long duration. It fell more rapidly than it rose, and is now almost totally annihilated. Kings no more dread the effects of pontific rage; Vatican fulminations are no longer formidable; Roman infallibility is laughed at even in Rome itself; and a Pope's bull, or breve, is, as such, as little regarded at Paris, Vienna, Madtid, and Lisbon; as it would be at Petersburg, Berlin, Copenhagen or London. "Still (it will be urged) the Pope's supremacy is a Roman Catholic tenet-it was once, confessedly, a dangerous tene-what was once dangerous may become so again-and, therefore, every protestant state should be careful to prevent it from ever recovering its former pernicious influence."-Undoubtedly-and so, too, should every catholic state; and, in reality, there is not, I believe, any catholic state in Christendom, that is not as jealous of papal influence as we can be. But, jealous as they are, they sce no danger from acknowledging the Bishop of Rome to be in rank, honour and dignity, the first prelate in the Christian church-a privilege which was caily conferred on him, partly from his being the supposed successor of two great apostles, but chiefly from his see being in the capital of the Roman empire; a privilege acknowledged by the Councils of Nice, Constantinople and Chalcedon, and admitted even by the Greeks themselves in the Council of Florence; although they soon repented, and retracted the concession. But this privilege, whencesoever it flows, when stript of all its usurped appendages, and reduced to its primitive simplicity, is nothing more than, as I have already said, a bare primacy of honour, rank, and precedence, which is not more dangerous to the liberties of the Christian church in general, than the primacy of Lyons is to the liberties Liberties of the Gallican, or that of Canterbury to the liberties of the Anglican church.'-(P. 73-80.) (P.131.) I have yet another political prejudice to encounter of no small magnitude; namely, that it is a part of our doctrine, That faith is not to be kept with heretics; and consequently that our protests, declarations, and even our oaths are not to be depended on. Now, that this odious, detestable, doctrine has actually been taught by Romish divines and canonists, I will not, I cannot deny. What is more, I am obliged to allow, that popes themselves have taught and practised the same doctrine, and even appealed for the truth of it to canonical sanctions. When Innocent III excommunicated the Emperor Otho, he not only declared his subjects free from their oaths of allegiance, but justified this conduct by the authority of the Fathers: for thus he expresses himself in a letter to the French King Philip Augustus: "But if he (the Emperor} incur the sentence of excommunication, let him know, that all are absolved from their fidelity to him: for, according to the canonical sanctions of the Holy Fathers, with him, who keeps not faith with God and his church, faith is not to be kept. Here then we find a pope arrogating to himself, and exercising, the power of absolving subjects from their fidelity, and supporting that act by a pretended canonical sanction, "That no faith is to be kept with one who keeps not faith with God and his church :" than which a more dangerous and hateful position can hardly be maintained. It is in vain, that some of our modern controvertists deny that ever such doctrines were taught the fact is indisputable: but still, what has all this to do with the Roman catholics of Great Britain, who have again, and again, protested and declared, and solemnly sworn-That such tenets are no part of their creed? : But it may be urged-I am sorry to say, it has been urged by unfair, ungenerous opponents, That our swearing is no sure criterion of our real sentiments, no secure bond for our allegiance: because the Pope may dispense with any oath which we may take to Government-even with that by which we swear that the Pope cannot give The British us such a dispensation! This is subtilizing indeed. catholic solemnly swears, That he acknowledges in the Pope no power to depose Princes, or free their subjects from their oaths of allegiance, on any pretext whatever.-That he sincerely believes that faith is to be kept equally with all mankind, whether they be reputed heretics or not-and, That no power on earth can dispense with the strict and literal observance of this oath, which he declares (still on oath) that he takes without restriction or mental reservation-And yet, strange to tell, it is said, He cannot be believed! If there be any protestant of common understanding and candour, who may still suspect that a snake lurks in the grass, I would ask him this plain question: If the English catholics imagined that the Pope could dispense with their oaths, why have they so long persevered in refusing to take the oaths of Supremacy* and the Test? and so re-enter, **As an individual, I have been long of opinion, that the oath of supremacy ought to be taken by the Roman catholics of Britain after 14 |