friend, Dr. Bell, who well understands the importance of training up children in the way they should go, and who knew what my feelings were upon that subject, asked me to compose a summary view of our Church history for the elder pupils. I easily promised what for the moment I thought might presently be done. But upon considering the matter, I soon perceived that it would be both easier and of more utility to extend the design, and compose such a compendium as might be a fit manual for our English youth: that is, for those (still happily the great majority) whose good fortune it is to be bred up in the principles of our two-fold constitution. Supposing that this might be accomplished in the compass of one little volume, I began: I lingered and brooded over it as I advanced, and as my collections increased; but regarding it always as an outline, and believing that the facts and views which it presented, must be familiar to all those who were well read in ecclesiastical history, I considered that a display of references would give the book an appearance of pretensions altogether inconsistent with its structure and purpose, that purpose remaining the same, though the composition had extended to four times the length of what had been designed.

I am not sorry that the references have been called for; nor that it should have been hinted to me, from a friendly quarter, that this is a point of more consequence to my reputation than I seemed to esteem it. The desire, on one part, that my statements should be authenticated, and the suspicion which is attempted to be cast upon them on the other, equally indicate that the Book of the Church has produced and is producing the effect for which it was intended. They prove also, (which is not to be observed without sorrowful concern,) that such a book was indeed wanted, if the history of our religious emancipation be so far forgotten, that a faithful statement of the corruptions and enormities from which it delivered us, can be received with surprise and doubt. As for the apprehended risk to my reputation, I must confess that it excited a smile. I have not been labouring in the quarries for thirty years, that I should build with untempered mortar, and upon sand, at last.

You are not unacquainted, I believe, Sir, with the most elaborate of my works, the History of Brazil. Some twelve or thirteen years ago I received a letter from an English merchant who had been travelling in that country, and had there met with the first volume, the only one which

had then been published. He had read it with general satisfaction; but the manner in which the Roman Catholic system is there spoken of, had given him some displeasure, for though of the reformed religion, he had been bred a Romanist. In the hope of discovering that I had misrepresented or exaggerated the facts, he traced me to my authorities, which in Brazil he had an opportunity of doing. They are given with great exactness, as the plan of such a work required; and the result of the inquiry convinced him so entirely of my perfect fidelity as an historian, that he wrote to tell me what he had done; and added that, having thus put my accuracy to the test, he had collected some materials, manuscript and printed, in the hope they might prove useful to me in the completion of the work. They were eminently so; and to this circumstance I am indebted for something more than the acquaintance of a gentleman whose attainments and character I equally respect.

Sir, if I wrote for party purposes, and merely with temporary views, I should be more solicitous to please some, and more careful not to offend others. My desire, as an historian, has ever been to represent all persons and all parties in the truest light, not in the strongest; neither dissembling the errors nor palliating

the offences of those whom I consider as enti tled on the whole to the esteem and gratitude of posterity, nor withholding any thing that may abate our abhorrence for those who have rendered themselves infamous. I have always allowed full weight for those motives, however fallacious, by which good men are sometimes led astray, and even bad ones not unfrequently deceive themselves. Judging of actions by the immutable standard of right and wrong, I have endeavoured to judge of men according to the circumstances of their age, country, situation, and even time of life, glad to discover something which may extenuate the criminality of the agent, even when I pronounce the severest condemnation of the act. With this purpose, and in this temper, the Book of the Church was composed. But never will I affect a reputation for candour, (as that term is now abused,) by compromising principles of eternal importance; nor is that current liberality to be expected from me, which, if it does not act like a palsy upon the heart, taking from it all sense of indignation at what is base and atrocious, all feelings of admiration at what is virtuous and exalted, perverts its perceptions so as to make evil appear good and good evil.

47

LETTER I.

DIFFUSION OF THE ROMAN CATHOLIC RELIGION.

*

THE object of your first letter, Sir, is to display" the general diffusion of the Roman Catholic religion over the habitable globe, and the immense numerical superiority of its members over those of any Protestant Church, and even over those of all Protestant churches in the aggregate." Supposing that the survey on which your estimate is founded, were accuratet

* Page 15.

+ Dr. Milner's geographical view of the Roman Catholic Church, on which Mr. Butler relies, will bear scrutiny as little as some other of the Vicar Apostolical's statements. He talks of many millions of converted Indians in South America. Where are they to be found? The Paraguay Reductions, in their most flourishing state, never contained 100,000 souls, and those of the Chiquitos did not reach to a fourth part of that number. He says that "the whole population of the Philippine Islands, consisting of two millions of souls, is all Catholic." This is easily said, and not so easily contradicted, because the means of information are not generally accessible. But I happen to know, on the authority of P. Fr. Juan Francisco de S. Antonio, the chronicler of the Barefooted Franciscans in that