the errors of belief were involuntary and unavoidable, wherever the sacrifice was offered of a broken spirit and of a contrite heart. There was the Church of Christ; not in the ship of St. Peter, when that ship was manned by pirates, or floating at the mercy of the winds upon the Dead Sea, while the crew were carousing with harlots, or engaged in brawls and blood. If the Gates of Hell could have prevailed against the Church, it would have been by the agency of such a crew; and if by means of crusades, Inquisitions, leagues, massacres, conspiracies, assassinations, and armadas, they had prevailed, and the Reformation had been suppressed, England would now have been what Spain and Italy are, divided between superstition and atheism, in a state of moral leprosy and intellectual dark

ness.

Perhaps, Sir, you may expect that, when speaking of the Popes in general, I should take the opportunity of noticing your new version of an old story from Paulus Æmilius, and the triumphant manner in which you have rebuked me for so stating a proposition of Bellarmine's as to make its meaning appear diametrically opposite to the intention of the author, and to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. But I will not anticipate the order of your own

book. Those remarkable passages will come quite soon enough in course; and by this time it is probable that you may have felt some misgiving concerning both. You may have learnt from Mr. Blanco White the value of your verbal criticism upon Paulus Æmilius; "vous devez vous défier de vous, quand vous êtes seul de votre avis." And with regard to Bellarmine, you may have found cause, I think, to distrust those upon whose credit in this (and in one other) instance, I hope and believe that you have relied. Had my purpose been merely to vindicate myself, by exposing the misrepresentations which affect me personally, it would have been an easy but an ungrateful task. few pages might have sufficed. "There is a rebuke which is not comely:" and when such rebukes were to be dealt with, had I restricted myself to the task of vindication, I know not how the feeling of good will or the language of urbanity could have been maintained.

A

CONDUCT OF THE POPES TOWARD THE JEWS,

"PERSECUTED and plundered in England, France, Spain, Germany, and every other European state, the Jews (you say)* were uniformly protected by the Popes." Not uniformly, Sir. Generally, however, they were to a certain degree protected in the papal states. We will examine what the Popes have done in favour of this unhappy people, and what they have left undone. If ever there was a case in which the sin of omission was as deadly as that of commission; .. in which men became answerable before God for the crimes which they might and ought to have prevented, but did not prevent, it is here. I doubt not, Sir, but that you already apprehend the course of my argument.

The protection, such as it was, which the Popes, in their own States, contrary to their otherwise uniform intolerance, afforded this people, is remarkable: but Basnage, who notices, has at the same time satisfactorily explained it. There was nothing in Judaism either to alarm or irritate the Roman Pontiffs. It was an old religion, fallen and humbled and oppressed. The

* Page 97.

Jews had the privilege of antiquity to plead for their disbelief in the Christian dispensation; and as they did not specifically reject the Pope, they were innocent of what at Rome was accounted the great offence. Moreover they were an industrious and useful people; and the Papal Court, which has seldom been wanting in worldly wisdom, was the last place in Christendom to be influenced in its conduct by sincere bigotry, or to partake a popular superstition by which its own interest was not promoted.

When the Bishops of Rome began to assert that authority which, if they had always exerted it for useful purposes, and in a Christian spirit, they might still have retained, the Jews throughout Christendom were every where odious among the people, but frequently favoured by the sovereigns. Till that time the Popes are in no degree answerable for the outrages committed upon this most outraged and persecuted race; and after that time there are some honourable instances of interference on the part of Rome in their behalf. St. Gregory the Great censured those Bishops who molested them in the enjoyment of their privileges, and he forbade the Jewish converts to display their zeal by insulting the religion which they had forsaken;

*

Basnage, t. iv. 1403-7. M. Univ. Hist. vol. v. 519.

D D

*

but by an injurious edict he decreed that the slaves of a Jew should obtain their freedom if they fled to a church and chose to be baptized. Alexander II. prevented the first King Ferdinand of Castille from extirpating the Jews in his dominions as a means of propitiating Heaven in his war against the Moors; and Innocent II. protected them as far as he could against the crusaders, by exhorting and aiding him to which good work St. Bernard made some atonement for the intolerance† which he breathed at other times. Gregory IX. pursued at first a different course. At a time when he was on no friendly terms with the Emperor, he wrote to tell that Prince that he would do well in delivering over unbelieving Jews to the secular arm; but afterwards he had good sense enough to perceive that he had erred, and in several instances interfered to save them from popular persecution. King St. Louis, whose bigoted, cruel, and canonized superstition has tended in no slight degree to produce some of the greatest errors and worst crimes of his descendants, was checked by the same Pontiff in

* Basnage, t. iv. 1403-7. M. Univ. Hist. vol. v. 534. + Ib. 545.

Basnage, t. v. 1795.

§ Ib. 1796. 1810.