you have invited, asserts that "the Poet has taken care* to suppress two facts of the greatest importance in the present case, though acknowledged by Bale, the Centuriators, and other learned Protestants; namely, that the Apostles of our ancestors, these envoys from Pope Gregory, brought along with them from Rome the same Christianity which is professed in it at the present day; namely, the Mass, the Real Pre sence, the Supremacy of the Pope, Prayers to the Saints and for the Dead, Relicks, Crucifixes and Holy Water. The second fact is, that the Roman missionaries arriving here at the end of the sixth century, found the Britons, or Welsh, who had been converted in the second centur y professing the self-same religion with themselves."

At present I have no opportunity of consulting Bale and the Centuriators. But if, upon consulting them, it should prove that they really have made any such acknowledgement, I confess that, on two accounts, I shall be greatly surprized. It would surprize me much to find that they could have been, not so mistaken in historical facts, but so completely ignorant of them; and it would surprize me still more to discover

* Page 5.

that Dr. Milner, who deals so largely and so boldly in round assertions, should for once be borne out by the authorities to which he refers.

The first of these pretended facts has been disposed of upon sufficient proof; and there is even fuller proof against the second, because it relates to an age concerning which there is no want of documents. A single sentence may comprize all that need here be said. Reminding you, Sir, (for it cannot be necessary to inform you upon these points,) that in the AngloSaxon times there was no attempt to withhold the Scriptures from the people in their own tongue; that the doctrine of the Pope's temporal authority had not been broached, and that he himself disclaimed the spiritual supremacy which was arrogated by his successors; that communion was administered in both kinds; and that Transubstantiation had been then so little dreamt of, that both you yourself and Dr. Milner cautiously in this place avoid the word, and speak of the Real Presence, as if the terms were tantamount, (an artifice too palpable to pass without animadversion,).. I refer you to Bishop Stillingfleet for a parallel between the doctrines taught by Gregory's missionaries, and those established at the Council of Trent, whereby

the Romanists are at this day bound; or to the extracts from Stillingfleet in the volume addressed to yourself, Sir, by Mr. George Townsend, a gentleman whose work will render it unnecessary for me to enlarge upon those branches of our subject which he has so ably and convincingly treated.

You charge me with sins of omission because some pages in the Book of the Church have not been bestowed" on the edifying holiness of St. Neot; the monastic sanctity and extensive learning of Bredfirth, the monk of Ramsay; the extensive learning of Bede, and the royal virtues and piety of Alfred." "On themes like these," you exclaim, "how much did justice call on you to dwell! But how little do you say upon them!"* And you press this on my consideration as an important remark. A little consideration on your own part might have shown you that, unless the scale of my work had been greatly extended, there could be no room for entering upon the merits of such persons as St. Neott and the monk of Ramsay. With

* P. 71.

†The last work of Whitaker, the hypothetical historian of Manchester, was "the Life of St. Neot, the Oldest of all the Brothers to King Alfred." It is, like his other works, laborious, minute, inductive, positive-and inconclusive. When

Q

regard to Bede, it sufficed to mention him as he was there mentioned; and perhaps, Sir, you may now be inclined to wish that I had past over his life and writings as cursorily in these Letters as in the work which you have called upon me to vindicate and substantiate. I did not enlarge upon "the royal virtues and piety of Alfred," because the theme was altogether irrelevant. Thus much for the specific points

the reader comes to the end he wonders how so much erudition and ability and vigour of mind can have been employed to so little purpose. One singular mistake occurs in this volume. (p. 194.) In a game law of 33 Henry VIII. he finds the inhabitants of certain places allowed to use their guns, 66 so that it be at no manner of deer, heron, shovelard, pheasant, partridge, wild-swine, or wild-elk, or any of them;" and this he adduces as incontestable evidence that "that astonishing animal, the morse deer, or elk, roamed in our woods very late-even so late -could we think it? as the sixteenth century"—that it existed among us, and was universally known to exist, even within a COUPLE OF CENTURIES FROM OUR OWN TIMES. It would have surprized him to have been told that the wild-elk of Henry VIII.'s law exists among us still, being, in fact, nothing more than the wild swan.

66

If this monk was, as Mabillon conjectures him to have been, (Lingard's Antiq. of the Ang. Sax. Church, n. p. 395.) the coeval biographer of St. Dunstan, whose work is printed in the Acta Sanctorum, he would deserve notice for something very different from sanctity, though it entered largely into the character of many a monkish saint.

of omission for which you have arraigned me; the general charge is once more repelled as confidently as it has been made. My declared purport was not only to expose " the errors and crimes of the Romish church," but also to show "in what manner the best interests of the country were advanced by the clergy even during the darkest ages of papal* domination;" and this was done in the Book of the Church, not faintly and insidiously, but fairly and fully, with the sincerity of one who knows the strength of his argument, and leaves the tricks of disingenuousness to those who may be weak enough in themselves, or in their cause, to need them.

This imputation is followed by a charge which must not be dismissed so lightly. You notice as a great but unintentional misrepresentation that I have praised the primate Theodore for prohibiting divorce for any other cause than that which is allowed by the Gospel." The courtesy with which this is expressed is your own; the remark appears to have been adopted from your coadjutor the Titular Bishop Milner, who, pro singulari humanitate sua, says, in this place, that I have "falsified‡ a synodical decree

* Vol. i. p. 2.

† P. 71.

Merlin's Strictures, p. 7.