VIII. could not persuade the Catholics of his timt* to believe

that he was lord paramount of all the kingdoms of the earth ; nor dissuade the king of France from writing the follow- ing letter to him : * We would have your Madness know, that * we acknowledge no superior in temporals but God alone.'
Pius the Fifth, and Sixtus Quintus, in publishing their bulls of deposition against queen Elizabeth,* and absoJving
* Such proceedings are accounted for iu Loyalty Asserted, in the discussion of the deposing1 power.
168 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
.her subjects from their allegiance, could not persuade the Catholics of England to rise up in arms against their so- vereign, though they were superior in numbers, and had room to expect every assistance.
Two proofs which will ever stand upon record, that Ca- tholics never hold difference in religion, as a sufficient plea for dethroning kings ; nor a Pope's bull a sufficient cause for withdrawing their allegiance.
In the dark ages, Popes were deposed by the Council of Constance ; and John the Twenty-second, who preached up the Milknarian doctfine, and held that souls do not enjoy the clear sight of God until after the resurrection, could not persuade the members of his church to believe him : nor dis- suade the university of Paris from censuring a doctrine, which the head of their church preached from the pulpit at Avignon, and which he himself retracted before a notary public, and several witnesses in his last sickness; nor dis- suade a French king from writing this short letter to him, ' Retracte, ou je te ferai ardre' — retract, or I will get, you burned. An evident proof that the Pope cannot ' persuade 'the members of his church, to what he lists, nor enjoin it 'them on pain of eternal fire.'
For the honour of Locke's memory, let my correspondent throw the fifty-ninth page of his treatise on toleration into the fire, for it is a jumble of nonsense.
All the Popes' bulls from the time of St. Peter, to the end of ages, cannot make an article of faith for Roman Catholics, without the acceptance of the Universal Church ; and the church has no power over the temporals of kings, much less to command any thing against the laws of God.
Catholics never folio w an arbitrary doctrine. The stan- dard is fixed ; the boundaries are prescribed, and the Pope himself cannot remove them : they consider him as the head pastor of the church. — Subordination in every society, re- quires pre-eminence in its rulers : but his will is not their creed.
As to Mr. Wesley, his reply to me is little more than a repetition of his first letter. He denies ' that he himself, or 'his followers, were ever persecuted.' For the truth I appeal
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 1 69
to his own conscience : I appeal to his ' Farther Appeal' to men of reason and religion, wherein he describes the suffer- ings of several of his followers in England; how he himself was dragged by the mob ; and the proceedings of a magistrate who dispersed a pamphlet, entitled ' A parallel between the Papists and Methodists ,' in order to kindle the rage of the po- pulace against him. I appeal to the letter he wrote, many years ago, to doctor Bailey of Cork, wherein he complains that the Grand Jury of that city found indictments against Charles Wesley, who makes the hymns, and ordered him to be transported as a vagabond. Mr. Wesley has got the let- ter printed, with the names of the Grand Jury. Hut, after having weathered the storm, the mariner on shore forgets his distresses as well as his sea chart.
To show that his friend, John Huss, never * kindled any 4 civil wars in Bohemia, and that he was quite innocent of 1 any offence whatever,' he quotes the following testimonial, given to John Huss, by the bishop of Nazareth, ' We, Nicho-
* las, do, by these presents, make known unto all men, that
* we often talked with that honourable man, John Huss, and 1 in all his sayings, doings, and behaviour, have found him 'to be a faithful man ; finding no manner of evil, sinister ' or erroneous doings in him, unto these presents.' To this Mr. Wesley subjoins a testimonial from the arch- bishop of Prague, declaring, * that he knew not that John ' Huss was culpable or faulty in any crime or offence what-
* soever.'
Let us now suppose those testimonials to be genuine, and grant them to Mr. Wesley to get rid of a bad cause. VV hat advantage can he derive from them ? The bishop of Naza- reth declares, that he talked very often with John Huss, and that in their conversation, he discovered nothing sinister or er- roneous in him. Doubtless, in conversing with a bishop who was an Inquisitor, John Huss was upon his guard. The archbishop ' knew not that he was culpable.' The conversa- tion of the first, and the know not of the other, must coun- terbalance the positive and decisive proofs, produced on a criminal's trial, in presence of a general council, no ways in- terested in the condemnation of a man, in whom there 4 was ' no evil, nothing sinister or erroneous.' Testimonials are
170 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
often granted to people from tenderness, or ignorance, which will avail but little on a trial.
The thirtieth proposition, extracted from Huss's works, and condemned by the Council, runs thus : ' there is no tem-
* poral Lord, there is no Pope, no Bishop, when he is in the ' state of mortal sin.' Huss himself acknowledged this sedi- tious proposition, which authorizes the fanatical saint to take the king's crown, if he sees him but once drunk ; or to seize the property of the lord of the manor, if, in scolding his coachman, he curses. The fruits of this doctrine were as visible in Bohemia, as the fruits of Mr. Wesley's Apology for the Associations, are legible in the glowing embers of London.
L'Enfant, the Calvinist historian of the Council of Con- stance, better informed than Mr. Wesley, can instruct him in these words : ' John Huss, by his sermons and writings,
* and violent and outrageous conduct, had extremely con- ' tributed to the troubles which then distracted Bohe- ' mia.'*
What becomes now of testimonials which carry contradic- tion on the very face of them, whereas John Huss was ex- communicated a year and a half before he obtained them ? Those Bishops, then, must have been mistaken if their testi- monials be genuine. Each of them must have been the Bur- net of his days ; of whom Protestant as well as Catholic his- torians remark, that he is never to be believed less, than when he relates facts, of which he pretends to have been an ocular witness.
Mr. Wesley denies that { John Huss ever attempted to
* make his escape.' He may deny his own journals. Dacher and Reichenthal, two German historians, present at the Coun- cil, and on whom L'Enfant passes the highest encomiums for candour and integrity, relate that John Huss attempted to make his escape. Here he violated his safe conduct, and forced his judges to confine him. L'Enfant exhausts his wit, to invalidate the relation of those (according to him- self,) i unprejudiced historians.' His chief reasons are 'the 1 silence of the acts of the Council about Huss's flight.' To this it is answered, that in the acts of a Council, the judi-
* L'Enfant, B. 3. No.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 171
clal acts done in full council, are alone related; not every incident that happens in a city where it is held. Hence Huss's imprisonment is not mentioned. Jerome of Prague's flight is mentioned, because the council sent him a safe- conduct, and the cause required to be specified. Secondly, he says that, ' it appears that John Huss was apprehended 4 on the twenty-eighth of November, and consequently could ' not escape in the following March.' Besides other reasons it can be answered that the mistake of a date, (often owing to the fault of copyers or printers,) cannot invalidate the truth of a public fact attested by such ocular witnesses, as L'Enfant describes the two German historians to have been.
But Mr. Wesley insists, that i the Emperor Sigismund 4 granted Huss a safe-conduct, promising him impunity, in 4 case he was found guilty.' I explained the nature of safe- conducts, in my Remarks on that gentleman's letters ; and I insist that safe-conducts of the kind are never granted. It is enough for sovereigns to extend the mercy of prerogative to criminals, when they are found guilty by their judges, with- out, saying to a rebel, oran incendiary, or to a highwayman : 4 go and take your trial: never fear : 1 will grant you your 4 pardon, when you are found guilty, though 1 am convinced 1 you are an arrant rogue.' They never enter into compacts of the kind with such people. A man who is to take his trial, and his enemies in the way, may call for a safe-conduct to go to the place of trial, and return unmolested, if he is acquitted ; and this was the case of Huss. He offered of himself to take his trial, and to submit to the sentence, if found guilty. He never upbraided the emperor with his breach of promise, when he was given up to the secular arm ; which he would have done, had the emperor given him such an assurance. The Hussites themselves went, on the faith of a safe-conduct, to the Council of Basil, and never aliened breach of faith with John Huss.
It was, then, in the sixteenth century, when interested men fomented divisions between Catholics and Protestants, that the hand of calumny wrote false commentaries on the text of the canon of the Council of Constance; and handed it down as a theme to religious declaimers, whom the test o{
172 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
orthodoxy proposed by the very Council, will ever stare in the face.
Here is the test inserted in a bull published with the approbation of* a general Council, not by the Pope in his personal capacity, but sacro approbnnte Concilia. ' Let the ' person suspected be asked, whether he or she does not * think that all wilful perjury, committed upon any occa- 4 sion whatsoever, for the preservation of one's life, or ' another man's, or even for the sake of the faith, is a mor- « tal sin ?'
I have read near upon a thousand religious declamations against Popery; not one of the authors of those invectives has candour or honour to produce that test in favour of Ca- tholics ; which shews the spirit that actuates them They should, at least, imitate the limner who first painted Pope's Essay on Man, and contrasted, on the same canvass, the blooming cheek with the frightful skeleton, linked together in the same group. No, they will paint the Catholic reli- gion in profile, and fix a Saracen's cheek into the face of the Christian. The declaration of a general Council, which can afford the least occasion for cavil, will be eternally held forth, whilst the decrees of the same Council, liable to no misconstruction, where fraud and perjury, even for the sake of religion, are condemned, will be overlooked. Bel- larmin, Becanus, and those other Knoxes and Buchanans of the Catholic religion, whose works are burned by the hands of the executioner in Catholic countries, are dragged from their shelves, whilst the decisions of the most learned universities in the world, that condemned the false doc- trine of those incendiaries, are buried in silence. The bee pitches on flowers, but the beetle falls upon nui- sances.
They will be eternally teasing their hearers and readers with the word heretic, without explaining its sense or accep- tation. They will erect it as a kind of standard to which all the fanatics of the world will flock to fight the battles of the Lord against Antichrist ; and in this confederate army, they will confound the archbishop of Cashel, who fills his see after a long succession of Protestant bishops, with John Huss, who starts up on a sudden, flying in the faces of kings and
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 173
bishops. They will confound the bishop of Cork with Theodoras Sartor, stretching himself naked before a num- ber of prophets and prophetesses, who burn their clothes, and run naked through the streets of Amsterdam, denounc- ing their woes, and foretellino; the destruction of Antichrist. They will put the archbishop of Canterbury on a level with the ratarini, who exclaimed against Popery, and held that no sin could be committed with the lower parts of the body.
In fine, all those monsters that started up from time to time, and whom our magistrates would doom to the rope or fagot, are made good Protestants, because they exclaimed against Popery ; an enumeration of their sufferings from Papists, is enlarged upon : and the Protestant bishop, or the Protestant king, has no mercy to expect from Papists: for sure they are held in the same light, by them, with James Nailer, who, after fighting against Papists and Malignants9 in Cromwell's army, turned prophet, and rode into Bristol, mounted on an ass, on a Palm Sunday, attended with num- bers of women, spreading their aprons before him, and making the air re-echo to loud hosannahs : 4 Holy, holy, 4 holy, hosannah to James Nailer ; blessed is James Nailer,
* who comes in the name of the Lord !'* Those gentlemen never mention heretics excommunicated by Protestant churches, and put to death by Protestant magistrates. They never mention the description given of heretics by Protes- tant writers ; by Godolphin, the Protestant canonist, and Sir Edward Coke, the Protestant lawyer, who both call heresy, 4 leprum animce.'' — the leprosy of the soul. No, he- resy is the Papist's favourite theme. No Protestant ever made any commentaries on it.
The same uncandid fallacy that lurks under the word he- retic, with wiiich the Catholics are always taunted, is mani- fest in the strained construction of the canon of the Council of Constance. A spiritual cause is to be tried by ecclesias- tical judges. They declare that ' no safe-conduct granted by 4 princes, shall hinder heretics from being judged and pu-
* nished.' (with ecclesiastical censures and degradation, for &eir power to punish can extend no farther) ' and that when
* Swell's Life »f Janes Nailer.
174 miscellaneous tracts.
4 the person who has promised them security' (from this ecclesiastical punishment, for no other can be meant by a spiritual tribunal), ; has done all that is in his power to do, « shall not in this case,' (the case of securing from a spiritual or ecclesiastical punishment inflicted by a lawful superior,) « be obliged to keep his promise :' because a promise of the kind, made to one of their rebellious clergymen, who cor- rupts and falsifies their doctrine, is an unjust usurpation of their rights, and subversive of their spiritual jurisdiction. — And an unjust promise, injurious to the rights of another, is not binding, let the tie be what it will. Herod promised upon oath to give his daughter whatever she would ask for. He was not nound to give her the head of John the Bap- tist. If the king of England, without even depriving a single man of his estate, bound himself by oath, to arrogate to himself the legislative as well as the executive power; every antagonist of Popery, from the Prelate down to the tub-preacher, would cry out, with the fathers of the Coun- cil of Constance : ' He is not, in this case, obliged to keep his promise.'
In this sense, the canon of the Council is to be under- stood. In this sense, the fathers themselves, the best in- terpreters of their own meaning, understand it. In this sense the Catholic doctors, all over the world, understand it; they who are more competent judges of their own creed, than either Mr. Locke or Mr. Wesley. Such of them as arc of opinion, that the supreme power of the state can make heresy a capital crime, rise up with indignation against the false accusers who say that the Council authorised breach of faith with heretics. They write in Catholic states where they have nothing to fear, and less to expect, from Mr. Wes- ley and his London rioters.
If Mr. Wesley construes this canon in a different sense, it is no reason for obtruding his tortured construction on me, as an article of orthodoxy. An Arian may as well persuade the public, that I do not believe the Divinity of Christ, be- cause he does not believe in it himself, and tortures the Scrip- tures in support of his errors. John Huss was a priest, or- dained in the Church of Rome, and said mass until the day of his confinement. I suppose Mr. Wesley Avill not allow, that a temporal prince could deprive his spiritual superiors
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 175
from censuring and degrading him, if found guilty of an erroneous doctrine.
Every church claims to herself the power of inflicting spi- ritual punishments, independent of the magistrates. The church of Rome, the consistories of Scotland, and all others. When the council of two hundred arrogated to themselves the power of denouncing and absolving from censures, and in consequence intended to absolve one Bertelier, Calvin ascended the pulpit, and, with outstretched hands, threat- ened to oppose force to force ; exclaimed with vehemence of voice against the profanation, and forced the senate to resign their spiritual commission. Bertelier was punished in spite of the promise of the civil power. When Mr. Wesley refused the sacrament to Mrs. Williamson, in Georgia, for opposing the propagation of the Gospel, in giving the preference to Mr. Williamson, the layman, at a time when the clergy- man intended to light Hymen's torch with a spark of grace ; a conflict of jurisdiction between the clergy and laity was the result; Mr. Wesley was indicted; and the following war- rant, copied by himself into his journal, was issued:
"GEORGIA. SAVANNAH, ff.
" To all Constables, Ty thing Men, and others whom these may
" concern.
" You and each of you are hereby required to take the " body of John Wesley, clerk, &c. &c. &c.
(Signed) "Til Christie."
' Tuesday, the ninth,' says Mr. Wesley, ' Mr. Jones, the * constable, carried me before Mr. Bailiff Parker and Mr. 4 Recorder. My answer to them was — that the giving or 'refusing the Lord's supper being a matter purely ecclesi- 4 astic, I could not acknowledge their power to interrogate 4 me upon it.'* If Mr. Wesley, then, thought himself justi- fiable in pleading the clerical privilege, let him not blame the fathers of Constance, for declaring their right to punish with ecclesiastical censures and degradation, one of their own subjects, in spite of any safe-conduct granted by the
* See this whole affair in Mr. Wesley's Journal of the year 1737, p. 43.
A A
17& MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
civil power; especially at a time when the superiority over their own clergy was confirmed to the bishops by the laws of the empire, with which Sigismund could no more dispense at that time, than James the Second could in his.
'But,' says Mr. Wesley, 'sure Huss would not have come i to Constance, had he foreseen the consequence.' That re- garded himself. Obstinate persons seldom think themselves in error. Strange instances of this obstinacy can be met with in the trials of the Regicides; some of whom declared, at the hour of death, that they gloried in having a hand in the king's death, and would cheerfully play over the same tragedy. We have a more recent instance of this obsti- nacy, in one of Mr. Wesley's martyrs. Scarcely could the Protestant clergyman prevail on one of the rioters, who had been very active in plundering the city of London, to take the blue cockade out of his hat, in going to the gallows. He cried out that he died a martyr to the Protestant religion. — We have daily instances of people giving themselves up to take their trial, who are disappointed, without any impu- tation on their judges.
Jerome of Prague, who maintained the same error with Huss, came to Constance, after his confrere's execution. — The Council sent him a safe-conduct, with this express clause : i salvo jure concilii? reserving to the Council its right to judge you. He came: and the Council judged and punished him with degradation, as it had done with regard to Huss: and left him to the secular arm : as Calvin, Queen Elizabeth, and King James I. did to the heretics whom their consistories and bishops had judged and found guilty of heretical pravity. cBut was not the Emperor Sigismund cruel in putting 4 those men to death ?' It is not his lenity or cruelty that we examine: 1 only vindicate myself and the Catholic Church from a slanderous doctrine. He was not more cruel for putting seditious men, one of whom had committed wilful murder, to death, than Protestant sovereigns who doomed old women to the stake, for a kind of gibberish about the incarnation. My sentiments on that subject I have explained.
Jerome of Prague's coming to the Council, shews that it did not violate faith with John Huss. Neither doth any one
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 177
accuse the Council of violating faith with Jerome. They were both more obstinate than Mr. Wesley, who ran away from the bailiffs of Georgia, and would not return to them. In this he followed Sancho's maxim : * Many go to the * market for tvool, that come home sliorn.'
I have the honour to be,
Gentlemen, your most affectionate, And humble servant,
ARTHUR O'LEARY.
AN
ESSAY ON TOLERATION.
MR. O'LEARY'S PLEA FOR
LIBERTY OF CONSCIENCE.
.itrOtCa**- TJIE INTRODUCTION.
My design, in the following sheets, is, to throw open the gates of civil toleration for all Adam's children, whose prin- ciples are not inconsistent with the peace of civil society, or subversive of the rules of morality ; to wrench, as far as in my power lies, the poniard so often tinged with human blood, from the hand of persecution ; to sheath the sword, which misguided 2eal has drawn in defence of a Gospel which re- commends peace and love ; to restore to man the indelible charter of his temporal rights, which no earthly power has ever been commissioned by Heaven to deprive him of. on account of his mental errors, to re-establish the empire of p all mortals, especially Christians, in the ties of social harmony, by establishing toleration on its proper grounds.
The history of the calamities occasioned by difference in religious opinions, is a sufficient plea for undertaking the task. But time does not allow me to enter into a detail of those melancholy scenes, which misconstrued religion has displayed. The effects are well known : but it is high time to remove the cause.
The mind shrinks back at the thoughts of the cruelties ex- ercised against the Christians by Heathen Emperors, for the space of three hundred years. Scarce did the Christians be- gin to breathe, under the first princes who embraced their re- ligion, than they fell out amongst themselves, about the mys- teries of the bcriptures. Arianism, protected by powerful sovereigns, raised, against the defenders of the Trinity, persecutions as violent as those raised formerly by the Hea-
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. J 79
thens. Since that time, at different intervals, error, backed by power, persecuted truth. And the partizans of truth, forgetful of thr moderation which reason and religion prescribe, committed the same excesses with which they up- braided their oppressors. Sovereigns blinded by dangerous zeal, — or guided by barbarous policy, — or seduced by odious councils, — became the executioners of their subjects who adopted religious systems different from those of their rulers ; or persevered in ancient systems, from which their sovereigns had receded.
Had those horrors been confined to one sect of Christians only, infidels would not have been so successful in their attacks on the system at large ; though religion disclaims the odious imputation. But all sects execrated and attempted to extirpate one another. Europe became one wild altar, on which every religious sect offered up human victims to its creed.
The ministers of a religion that had triumphed over the Caesars, not by resistance, but by suffering, became the apologists of calamities that swept from the face of the earth, or oppress to this very day, God's noblest images — upright, virtuous, and dauntless men. Like the warrior in the scriptures, they stept into the sanctuary, to grasp the barbarian's sword wrapt up in the ephod. The code of temporal laws, teeming with sanctions against robbers and murderers, was swelled, to the surprise and de- struction of mankind, with additional decrees against he- retics and Papists. The inoffensive citizen who, from an apprehension of offending the Deity, by acting against his conscience, was confined in the same dungeon, or doomed to the fagot or axe, with the parricide who laid aside every restraint of moral obligation : and the scrip- tures were adduced in justification of the sanguinary con- fusion. The wreath and the rod have been held forth, not to crown the worthy, and punish the pernicious, but to scourge to conformity, candid and steady virtue. The priest gave the sanction of Heaven to the bloody mandates of the civil magistrate : and the civil magistrate unsheathed the sword to vindicate the cause of the God of Heaven, who reserves to himself the punishment of man's conscience. No person has a greater respect for the clerical order, of every
180 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
denomination, than I have. I am of the number, and feel myself wounded through their sides, when the Deist and free-thinker, who hold them all in equal contempt, contend 'that in all ages, and in all countries, the clergy are the 4 main props of persecution. That had they been as solici- 4 tous to heal, and conciliate men's hearts, as they have been 1 to inflame and divide them, the world would by this time 4 bear a different aspect. That they should have left the laity *in peaceable possession of good neighbourhood, mutual
* charity, and friendly confidence. That instead of enforcing
* the great principles of religion, the very basis whereof is
* charity, peace, and love, they are ever and always the first
* oppressors of those who differ from them in opinion ; and
* the active and impelling spring that gives force and elasti- 1 city to the destructive weapons of the civil power.' In corroboration of the charge, the free-thinker will unfold the page of history, and open those enormous volumes, made up of religious declamation. He will prove from both, that if
* popes, and their apologists, have scattered the fire-brand,
* their spiritual brethren have faithfully copied their example,
* in succeeding times, wherever their power and influence 4 prevailed.'
4 Though the Protestant divines,' says Hume, * had ven-
* tured to renounce opinions, deemed certain for so many 4 ages, they regarded in their turn, the new system so cer- 4 tain, that tbey could bear no contradiction with regard to 4 it : and they were ready to burn in the same flames, from
* which they themselves had so narrowly escaped, every one 'that had the assurance to oppose them.'* Hence the scaf- folds reeking in Holland with the blood of many illus- trious men, who, after opposing Philip the Second's efforts to introduce conformity by fire and sword, fell themselves by the hand of the executioner, for denying Gomars predes- tination. Hence hecatombs of victims offered upon the gloomy altar of die Scotch league and covenant, and peopling the regions of the dead, for differing in opinion. 4 Out of 4 every contested verse,' says the satirical Voltaire, 4 there 4 issued fury armed with a quibble and a poniard, who in- 4 spired mankind at once with folly and cruelty.'
* Hume's History of England, Vol.4, p, 161.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 181
The same demon that poured the poisonous cup over the kingdoms and provinces of Europe, took his flight over the Atlantic, and spread his baneful influence amongst co- lonists who had themselves fled from the scourge. Their new built cities, like so many Jerusalems, were purified from idolatry. There no Popish priest dared bend his knee to k his idols, or transfer to stock or stone, the 'worship due to the God of Israel.' There the Quaker- woman's silent groans were raised on the high key of loud shrieks, when the Lord's deputy ordered her pro- fane breasts to be whipt off by the Gospel scourge, that whipped the profaners out of the temple. There the Quaker was seen, suspended by the neck on high, for daring to pollute the sacred streets with his profane (eett moved by BaaVs spirit. The holy city,* thus purged from the Jebuseans, and Pheriseans, was split soon after into two factions. The two famous covenants, the covenant of grace, and the covenant of works, soon divided the spiritual militants. The jarring of divinity caused such dissensions, that in the presence of sixty thousand savages, headed by their warriors, giving the signal for scaling the walls, to bury the contending parties under their ruins, grace would not permit works to lend the le-ast assistance for repelling the common foe. It became victo- rious over the Indians and Christians. It drove the first from its walls, and banished the latter from the city into savannahs and deserts, to procure themselves subsistence by the works of their hands.
In a word, persecution on the score of our conscience* has thinned the world of fifty millions of human beings, by fire and sword. Thousands, who have escaped the sword and fagot, have perished, and are daily perish- ing with hunger and want, for their mode of worship. The London riots, occasioned by a pretext of religion, have added about four hundred more, deluded by reli- gious frenzy, to the enormous number. And thougn they suffered as plunderers and incendiaries, yet religious intol- erance in tneir leaders, occasioned the deluded people's destruction.
The history of the calamities, occasioned by the gospel of
* See the History of Massuclmsets Bay, or Boston.
182 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
peace, could be concluded with the poet's Epiphonema. — i Tantum rcligio potuit suadere malorum? ' Such devilish ' acts religion could persuade !'*
The Quakers, to their eternal credit, and to the honour of humanity, are the only persons who have exhibited a meekness and forbearance, worthy the imitation of those who have entered into a covenant of mercy by their baptism. — William Penn, the great legislator of that people, had the success of a conqueror in establishing and defending his colony amongst savage tribes, without ever drawing the sword; the goodness of the most bene- volent rulers, in treating his subjects as his own chil- dren; and the tenderness of a universal father, who opened his arms to all mankind, without distinction of sect or party, In his republic, it was not the religious creed, but personal merit that entitled every member of society, to the protection and emoluments of the state. Rise from your grave, great man ! and teach those sovereigns who make their subjects miserable, on account of their catechisms, the method of making them happy. They, whose domi- nions resemble enormous prisons, where one part of the creation are distressed captives, and the other their unpitying keepers.
1 shall examine the charter which is pleaded in justifica- tion of restraints on the score of conscience. The Protes- tant and Catholic are equally concerned in the discussion. Each would plead for toleration in his turn ; and the honour of religion, should be vindicated from the imputation of enormities, which should be transferred to their real princi- ples— I mean the passions of men, or their ignorance of the limits which religion itself prescribes to their power. I know the difficultv there lies in encountering prejudices which have a lono- prescription to plead. 1 shall be asked whether I am ignorant of the rescripts of Popes inserting in the directory of the inquisition the imperial constitutions, dooming he- retics to the flames; the authority of Catholic and Protestant canonists, divines, and Civilians, Calvin, Bellarmin, Go- mar, benches of Protestant bishops, who gave their votes for enacting the law that doomed myself to transportation,
* Breech's Lucretius.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 183
and to death if ever I return to ray native country ; though, I am conscious of no crime against the state, but that crime of a legal creation, viz. saying my prayers whilst others are cursing! Ami ignorant of the practice of ages, which has given a sanction of fines, forfeitures, imprisonments, and death itself, on the score of religion ? A practice, supported by the most learned writers of every denomination, and legible in bloody characters in the ai.nals of Protestant states,fas well as in the registers of the inquisition ? I answer, that I am not ignorant of the sanguinary rubric that first taught the manner of preparing the human victim for the altar of religion, in honour of a God, who instead of requir- ing such ateacrifice, died on the cross for his creatures, and with expanded arms prayed for his enemies : Neither am I ignorant of the gloomy ritual, substituted in certain king- doms in the place of the fagot, and which prescribes the manner of stripping the man, in honour of a gospel, which commands to clothe the naked. They must both come un- der the same description. For if religion authorises to de- prive a man of the means of supporting life, and providing for the education of his children, and the maintenance of his family ; the same religion authorises to deprive him of life itself. Religion is alleged on both sides, and as the degree of punishment is arbitrary, and lies at the discretion of the legislator, he can extend, or reduce it to what compass he thinks f^t; and it is well known that a speedv death is pre- ferable to a tedious agony.
But what if I oppose practice to practice ; pope to pope ; doctor to doctor? Without a cardinal's robe, or a bishop's rochet, what if my arguments in favour of the rights of man- kind, should outweigh the reasoning of the purpled or mi- tred apologists of its oppressors ? What if my authorities should prove more numerous and illustrious than theirs ? W^hat if I should happen to demonstrate, that when they allege religion as a sufficient motive for the exertion of oppressive power, in such an age, or in such a coun- try; it must be the religion of time, or place, but not the religion of the gospel. 4 geliontm.'*
B B
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Cartesius, in a stove, by remarking the motion of the smoke that rolled from his pipe, gave the first shock to Aris- totle's barbarous philosophy, that kept the world in igno- rance for so many ages. Succeeding geniuses improved upon the new plan; until at last Sir Isaac Newton dispelled the mist, and made the light shine forth in its full lustre. I in my cell, reflecting on the revolutions that religion has occasi- oned, not for the good, but for the destruction of mankind — revolutions in their morals, by inspiring them with mutual hatred and aversion, by making them believe that they were dispensed with the unchangeable laws of love and humanity, and deluding them into a persuasion, that the death or oppression of a fellow-creature on account of his error, was an agreeable sacrifice to the Divinity — I also, by a feeble attempt to overthrow the altars of an idol, that has put Jesus Christ on a level with Moloch, and whose false oracles persuaded mankind, that the ears of a God of com- passion and tenderness, were pleased with the groans of vic- tims tied to the stake, or famishing in dungeons, or hovels, — may induce others to enlist under the banner of benevo- lence, and pave the way for abler hands to raise the structure of human happiness, on the ruins of religious frenzy.
Locke has handled the subject as a profound philosopher; Voltaire as a partial satirist in a declamatory style, more with the view to censure the scriptures, than to establish it on its proper grounds : I am confined to the province of a di- vine, and in that quality shall arraign at the bar of religion itself, the calamities to which the mistakes, or passions of men, have given rise, under pretence of vindicating the Deity. The bigot will consider me as a latitudinarian, to whom all religions are indifferent; and as one who writes in such a manner, as dispense men with the obligations of -submitting to the church. He is mistaken: I am not an architect who would build the edifice of my faith on diffe- rent plans ; nor an ambassador who would sign two con- tradictory treaties in my legation. Every person is bound to enquire after the truth, and when he finds it, to embrace its dictates. If he neglected it, let the blame lie at his own door, Let charity and zeal induce his neighbour to instruct, and
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persuade him, when there is a probability of reclaiming him from error. But let not violence, oppression, and wanton insults be used in order to compel him. God has given him free will, and liberty of chusing either fire or water. The sanguinary divines, who think it lawful in the supreme ma- gistrate to inflict a capital punishment, on misguided religion- ists, (for they do not allow one individual to kill or oppress another, on account of difference of religion) acknowledge that heretical and idolatrous kings, should not be deposed or killed, by their Christian or orthodox subject; because, say they, ' dominion is not founded in grace, but in free will.'
I would fain know, by what right Christian, idolatrous, or orthodox kings, can deprive their heathen, Christian, heretical, or orthodox subjects of their lives or properties, on account of their mental errors. But the scripture com- mands to obey kings in ivhat is lawful : and where does it command kings to kill or oppress their subjects ? When it recommends justice and mercy to the rulers of the earth, does it make any distinction between their heathen, heretical, or orthodox subjects? The church disclaims the right of the sword, and the use of fines and confiscations to promote her spiritual ends. The civil powers are not competent judges of speculative errors. How come people then, to be oppressed between the civil powers, and the established church in any state ? If it be answered, that the established church in any state, can exercise the right of the sword, not by herself but by her magistrate. The death then of the criminal, must entirely lie at the hangman's door ; and the judge who passed a final doom on him has no share in the execution. Away then, for ever, with the odious and falla- cious distinction.
Are the Catholic and Protestant princes of Germany, who have granted a free exercise of their religion, to all their subjects, worse Christians than the Catholic and Pro- testant princes of barbarous times, who were their subjects' executioners? The Catholics and Protestants, who say their prayers in the same church, in that tolerating country, are they worse Christians, than the Catholics and Protes- tants whom Henry the Eighth used to couple together, on
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the same hurdle, and order to the place of execution ? Or is the Church that sees her children receive the sacraments at the rails of the sanctuary, wherein the Protestant minister, and the Catholic priest officiate by turns, less enlightened and less tenacious of her doctrine, than she was in the time of Pope Innocent the Third? Death, fines, and con- fiscations, then, on the score of conscience, when the reli- gionists behaves as a peaceable subject, are the ungraceful offspring of lawless rule. Tyranny begot it : ignorance fos- tered it: and barbarous divines have clothed it with the stolen garments of religion.
»«*=—
STATE OF THE CASE.
Has the supreme power in any state, a right to vindicate the Deity, by fines, forfeitures, confiscations, oppression, or the death of men, whose only crime is an erroneous re- ligion, which does not disturb the peace of society, whether they be Jews, Mahometans, Christians, heretics or Catholics, provided they believe a supreme Being, and rewards and punishments in a future state ; for all people exclude from civil toleration, those who confound vice and virtue in the horrors of the grave. Because the links of the society are dissolved, when vice loses its horror, and virtue its attrac- tions : when the heart is steeled against the fear of an invisi- ble Judge, and the conscience is unshackled from its bonds ?
Answered in the negative. For life, liberty, the power to accumulate a fortune by honest means, &c. are rights founded in nature : . and the rights of nature are not reversed by the religion founded by Him, who declares, that he came not to destroy but to save. Much less can they be re- versed by civil rulers, who are born like other men, and who would not be distinguished above the crowd, were it not for the social compact, by which they bound themselves to protect those rights, and preserve them inviolate. If they
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. J 87
do otherwise, as often they have done, and do to this very day, it is by a stretch of power, not by the rule of right ; and their only plea is that mentioned in Tacitus, * Id enim ast mquius ' quod est fortius.''
From the earliest ages the boundaries of religion, and the concerns of the civil magistrate were kept distinct. If in the Jewish theocracy alone, they happened to be interwoven, and that a secession from the established religion was made capi- tal ; it was by a special commission from God, which Jesus Christ repealed in the new law, as we shall hereafter prove. Scattered tribes, before they subjected themselves to civil in- stitutions, believed in God, at whose hands they expected the rewards of their virtues, and dreaded the punishment of their misdeeds.
Religion, and conscience, its immediate interpreter, were anterior to society, and altars reeked with the gore of victims, before the block was dyed with the blood of malefactors, spilled by the sword of the stern magistrate.
For his security and defence, man, on entering into so- ciety, gave up part of his liberty to dispose of his actions, his acquisitions, his time, which in die state of nature were at his own disposal. But he could never give up his way of thinking, or submit the dictates of his conscience, to the ma- gistrate's controul. It is an interior monitor, whose voice cannot be silenced by human laws, and which our very pas- sions, our inclinations, our temporal interest, can seldom bribe, how prone soever we may be to the collusive com- pact. Hear this, O ye rulers of the earth ! Usurp no autho- rity over God's inheritance. He alone can water and fertilize it with his grace, or from a hidden judgment, not cognizable by an earthly tribunal, strike it with barrenness and sterility. In this life you have power to kill, or to save the body : but leave the soul of man to the God who gave it. Call to mind that you must be regulated by justice. Illustrious cul- prits, whose authority screens you from the rigour of human laws, if you violate the sacred rules of order, you are also to be judged. The splendour that surrounds you made the prophet cry out, Ye are gods, and sons of the Most High ; but he afterwards eclipses this splendour with the vale of death, ye also must die. Let not bleeding victims, and famished o(>
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jects, for the sake of religion, which the rulers of the earth are the last to observe in their morals, be presented to you by your judge, who will call for your commission, and confront you with the works of your hands. The au- thority with which you are invested is delegated by the people, and while you enjoy it, you claim the sanction of Heaven. But neither Heaven nor man has granted you a power to punish any but malefactors. And no man is kss liable to the imputation, than one who follows the dictates of his conscience. To him it is the oracle of the Divinity. In abiding by its dictates, he imagines to please his Crea- tor. An intention to please God is no crime. Mistaken he may be; but every mistaken man is not a malefactor or cheat.
If in a wanton fit of cruelty, you imitated those African kings, who leaping into their saddles, cut off their squires' heads with one blow, to display their dexterity ; or that Turkish Emperor, who, to show the limner his mistake in painting the decollation of John the Baptist, called for a slave, and striking off his head, compared it with the picture ; saying to the painter, you see by this head, that the veins in
that picture are not sufficiently shrivelled would your
power screen you from the guilt of murder ? If I am doomed to the stake, or deprived of my horse, for not swearing to what I do not believe, the laws will justify the informer and executioner, who will say : * the laws of your governors have * so decreed.' It is, then, incumbent on governors to exa- mine how far God will justify themselves. Nor is it a suffi- cient plea, that such laws were made by others, when it is by their own authority, they are put in execution. It is equal to the individual who is deprived of his life or his property, whether it be by the highwayman or the officer of justice, when life or property falls a sacrifice to the integrity of his conscience.
God rejects a homage which the heart belies : and woe to the conscience liable to the magistrate's controul. It would be no longer the impregnable fortress that should never sur- render, but on conviction that such is the will of his Master. It would be the ductile wax, on which every new impression would erase the former, and resume it by turns. It would
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believe the real presence in Rome and Upsal. It would deny it in Geneva and Edinburgh. In Paris, it would hope for an empyreal heaven, and joys spiritual and unspeakable, through the merits of Christ, in a future state; an earthly paradise and a seraglio of women, amongst never-fading bowers, if it worshipped the great Alia, and Mahomet his prophet, in Constantinople. It would worship a living man inTartary, and evil genii in Africa. An evident proof that God has never granted any controul to kings or gover- nors, over the conscience of man ; and that it must be left to itself, and to the grace of him who gave it.
For, in every kingdom and government, the magistrates would claim the same power. Every one of them believes himself in the right; and should all of them be in the right, I am still in the wrong, when I act against my own consci- ence ; instead of making a sincere convert, they will only make a perjured impostor of me. Hence, the wise Theo- doric and other monarchs would never confer any extraor- dinary privileges on those who conformed to their religion. When one of his courtiers embraced Arianism, (that kind's religion,) 4 how could you have me trust you,' said the mo- narch, 'you, who betray your conscience and Christ whom 4 you have worshipped from your early days ?' He preferred steady virtue, blended with what he deemed error, to de- ceitful hypocrisy, resuming the mask of truth ; and never considered a man's religion as a sufficient plea for excluding him from the rights of a subject.
Must, then, a magistrate be quite indifferent about his re- ligion ? Must he see it insulted ? Must he see error spread, and stand by as a neutral spectator?
By no means : if he be convinced of the truth of his reli- gion, far from being indifferent about it, his duty is to prac- tise it. And no religion, established by the laws of any state, be it ever so false, is to be insulted. It would be equallv indecent and ridiculous in a Christian missionary, to cry out in the streets of Constantinople, * Mahomet is a devilish im- postor.' He would not succeed so well as that Scotchman who went to Rome in order to convert Pope Ganganelli. In all appearance, he studied the revelations well, and found out 'the number of the beast, as well as the year of his downfall.
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Accoutred with his bible, and sure of success, he sets off for Rome; and, meeting the Pope in St. Peter's Church, cries out with a loud voice : « Rome is tlie scarlet whore ; 4 and you are the Antichrist. Gang awa for Scotland, and be- 4 come a member of the kirk.'* The Pope's attendants requested he would get him confined. the Pope, i that I would punish an honest man, who has 4 gone through so many hardships, for what he thought the 4 good of my soul.' He made him some presents, and gave him full liberty to be guided by his Revelations.
With regard to the magistrate's duty in preventing error from spreading. Error may be considered in its different stages : either in its rise or progress. Montesquieu is of opinion, that, when there is but one religion established in a state, it lies at the magistrates' discretion to reject a new doctrine ; but, when many religions have got a footing in the state, they are to be tolerated.
The first part of this maxim is observed in Spain and Portugal : the second, to the happiness of mankind, and the honour of religion, is practised all over Germany, Switzer- land, Holland, &c.
It is true, the first beginning of controversy may be checked by a steady severity: and a new doctrine may, perhaps, be eradicated with the death of its authors, without leaving any seeds of future innovations. But still the difficulty re- curs, whether the misguided religionist, whose opinions do not interfere with the peace of society, the property of indi- viduals, and the rights of magistracy — and which are less subjected to the criterion of human understanding, being of the speculative kind, is punishable by the magistrate's sword? Reason combines with religion, to inform us that he is not; and the experience of ages evinces the impotence of such attempts. ' The melancholy with which the fear of death, 4 torture, and persecution, inspires the sectaries,' says Mr. Hume, ' is the proper disposition for softening religious zeal. 4 The prospect of eternal rewards, when brought near, over- 4 powers the dread of temporary punishments : the glory 4 of martyrdom stimulates all the more furious zealots,
* Moore's Travels.
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'Where a violent animosity is excited by oppression, 4 men pass naturally from hating the persons of their ty- 4 rants, to a more violent abhorrence of their doctrine : 4 and the spectators, moved with pity towards the supposed 4 martyrs, are naturally seduced to embrace those prin- 4 ciples which can inspire men with a constancy almost 4 supernatural.'
At all events, whatever may be said in favour of suppress- ing, by persecution, the first beginnings of error; no solid argument can be alleged for extending severity to multi- tudes. Or if persecution of any kind be allowed, the most violent is the most effectual. Imprisonments, fines,. and confiscations, are heavier torments, than the stake, wheel, or gibbet. For the man is tormented, but the error is not suppressed.
What is to be done, then, in the first stage of the error. Let the spiritual society, to whom the religionist belongs, when he attempts to alter her doctrine, correct, admonish, and exhort him. If he continues to be obstinate, let her refuse him her sacraments, the participation of her spiritual communion, the communication of her spiritual worship. — To this alone her power is confined : she may caution her members against the contagion of his errors. Life, limb, the enjoyment of his estate, the authority of a husband, are founded in nature, and cannot be alienated by any spiritual jurisdiction ; much less by the civil ma- gistrate, who is not a competent judge of error; and whose sword may pierce the body, but can never con- t'oul the mind.
But if the laws of God, and the rights of mankind, do not permit to oppress an individual, for his mental errors ; what are we to say when numbers of sects get footing in a state ? Let the door of toleration be thrown open to them all, and not one of them be exposed as a butt to all the rest. Mutual hatred will relax, and the common occupations and plea- sures of life, will succeed to the acrimony of religious dis- putations.
In vain do Calvin, Bellarmin, and other apologists of per- secution, arm the magistrate with texts of the old law, which commands to stone the false prophets to death,
cc
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to put idolatrous cities to the sword, and ' to slay Agag 4 before the Lord.' The Jewish polity is quite different from modern political institutions. God himself was the immediate governor of society, who worded, by himself, their laws and ceremonies — who blended together their civil and religious institutions — and who had an imme- diate power to deprive sinful man of the life of which he himself was the author. Neither was it every false prophet he ordered to be stoned, nor every city he ordered to be put to the sword ; but such prophets as sprang up from amongst the Jews themselves, and such cities as belonged to the Jewish theocracy — 1 mean, cities inhabited by Jews who had been instructed in his laws and ceremonies. 4 If a false prophet rise up amongst you, * in those days.' * The city which shall worship gods un- 4 known there before,' &c.
This was rebellion against the state which he had taken under his immediate protection, and which was of so peculiar a frame, as to be entirely dissolved by the introduction of idolatry. As, if a set of preachers got up now, and instilled into the minds of the people, a doctrine that would overthrow the three powers of the state in those kingdoms, to introduce a democracy ; or monarchy into Holland, on the ruins of a republican go- vernment—they certainly would suffer in both places, not for their religion, but for treason, in attempting to over- throw the respective governments.
Hence, the neighbouring cities, plunged in idolatry, which were not under the laws of the Jewish theocracy, were not destroyed on account of their false worship, but on account of crimes committed against the laws of nature, which had filled the measure of their iniquities. And Agag, a name so familiar in the mouths of fanatical preachers, in the time of Charles the First — and which, to the scandal of that age, and the discredit of the English peers and cavaliers, was couched in their address to Queen Elizabeth, requesting the death of Mary, Queen of Scots, 4 as Samuel slew Agag.' Agag, I say, was not put to death for worshipping his false gods, but for his cruelty and violation of the laws of nations : 6 As thy sword,' says the prophet, 4 has made many wo-.
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* men childless, so your mother shall be a widow this
Sensible rewards and sensible punishments were requisite for the Jewish people. It was requisite to raise a wall of separation between them and neighbouring nations to pre- vent the fatal effects of their inclination to idolatry. Their religious worship required to be inseparably interwoven with their civil polity, and considered the infringers of the law of God as rebels to the state, and enemies of their country. Their worship was an instrument in the hands of God, to exterminate people polluted with the most abomi- nable crimes. Hence, afflictive punishments and death itself decreed by the law of Moses, against Jews fallen into idola- try, or into any other crime contrary to the law.
Those institutions were to have an end : the new alliance, promised in the old, has levelled the barrier that separated Jew and Gentile — uniting both in the profession of the same faith. It proposes more sublime and exalted motives than those proposed by the Mosaic law. In the room of tempo- ral rewards and temporal punishments, it has substituted those of an invisible and eternal nature. It acknowledges no strangers.: it knows no enemy : it opens a door of mercy to all, and an entrance into its mysteries, without terror or compulsion. It is a delicious fruit that attracts the eyes of those who choose to view it ; but never forces the hand to pluck it. Jesus Christ never said : 4 whoever does not fol- 4 low me, shall be miserable in this world, shall be consi-
* dered as a rebel to the state in which he lives, unprotected 4 by the laws, doomed to the fagot, or stripped of his pro- ' perty.' — He leaves it to every one's choice, either to fol- low or renounce him : 4 if any one choose to come after me.' 4 Si quis VUU? When his very disciples intended to quit him, he does not retain them by compulsion, but says, in a gentle manner, 4 are you, also, willing to quit me ?' And it is in vain to boast a gospel liberty, when people are dragged, by confiscations, forfeitures, and death itself, as so many forced victims, into the sanctuary of religion.
It is an abominable palliative to say, that, though the fathers are bad proselytes, yet the children or grand-chil- dren may be good Protestants, or good Catholics. As if
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the son should be put in the way of salvation, by the perjury and hypocrisy of the father; religion propagated by crimes, and evil committed, in consideration of the good which may arise from it, in express opposition to the tenets of that reli- gion which forbids it. The religion of Jesus Christ is pro- posed to all ; and the more universal it is, the less it employs terrors or constraints to enforce obedience to its injunctions. It stamps the sentiments of humanity, dictated by the law of nature, with a peculiar character of sweetness and charity.
Scarce had its founder assembled a few disciples, when two of them, storming with rage for being refused the rights of hospitality, requested permission to bring down the fire of heaven on the inhabitants. They imagined themselves in the times of Elias, when God punished with visible chas- tisements the insults offered to his prophets. Jesus Christ undeceives them : ' you know not to what spirit you belong; 4 the son of man is not come to kill, but to save.' As if he said, both to them and their successors : 4 It is no longer 4 the time of menaces and torments. You live under a law ' whose spirit is not the spirit of error, but the spirit of con- 4 fidence and love. The Master whom you serve, does not 4 thirst after the blood of his enemies; he does not choose 4 to see them at his feet, in a fit of rage and despair. 4 Forced homages are odious in his eyes : thunder and the 4 exterminating sword are not his arms : he is only come to 4 convert and save souls : but not to destroy or famish the 4 bodies of men.'
Hence, he has not given to those whom he charged with the commission of extending and propagating his reli- gion, any instruction but that of imitating his zeal, his pati- ence, and his charity towards mankind. He has furnished them with no other means of making proselytes to his religion, but persuasion, prayer, and good example. The theocratical government is no longer confounded and inter- woven with civil and political institutions. The king- dom of Jesus Christ is not of this world : he leaves the ^jjers of the earth the full enjoyment of their preroga- tives, whether they know him, or whether they blaspheme his name : and he leaves their subjects in full possession of tttftp rights, as men.
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Jesus Christ does not choose for subjects but such as Freely list in his service. Those who are rebellious to his voice, he terrifies with the punishment of a future state ; and has not commissioned any power on earth to enlarge, by force, the boundaries of his kingdom. However his crea- tures may be divided in opinion about speculative points, he has left them one law which is liable to no interpretation, and must ever be interpreted in the literal sense : ' love one ano- 4 ther ; and do not to others, what you would not have others c do unto you.'
Calvin and Bellarmin's remaining arguments consist in similies, and some misconstrued passages of the fathers, who, in their homilies, inveigh against errors in faith, as against adultery, forgery, &c. on account of the divorce, a breach of divine faith causes between God and the Christian soul, and the enormity of forging or counterfeiting the divine creden- tials, with the hand of error. But the disparity is obvious. Adultery, forgery, and similar crimes, fall immediately under the jurisdiction of the civil magistrate, on account of the in- jury offered to society, by invading the property of indivi- duals committed to his care. The man who is in error, hurts none but himself. If others be milled by him, it is their own choice, and the result of their free will, over which the civil power has no controul ; nor the ecclesiastical power, but as far as it can refuse such persons the sacraments and the other religious symbols of her communion, which no other church will give those out of her pale, and which no person, out of her pale \\ ill require.
But, in every state, is not blasphemy punished, though of a spiritual nature ?
Blasphemy is punished, because it is an open irreverence to the Deity, the knowledge of whose attributes, and the dread of whose justice, is the very basis of civil society. But an er- roneous opinion, in religion, can subsist-with the respect due to the Deity.
A man, engaged in error, proposes to himself to serve God in the manner he thinks most pleasing to the Sovereign Being. Though he mistakes the right road, yet his inten- tion is sincere. Moreover, blasphemy involves a breach of manners, which has a natural tendency to disturb the peace
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of society. A friend takes offence, if his friend is abused in his presence ; a brother, if his brother is used in an indecent manner.
A Jewish rabbin may preach in his synagogue, that the Messiah is not yet come, and extricate himself as well as he can, by doing away the weeks and days of the prophet Da- niel. No Christian can blame him : for4 we all know that it is the man's belief; and that he is sincere, though in error at the same time. But this Jew, convinced that Christ is respected by the Christians, and worshipped by them, as their God, would expose himself to the rigour of the magis- trate, if he openly called Christ an impostor : because he in- sults the magistrate more than if he gave this denomination to his father or brother.
The most monstrous absurdity, then, that ever met with apologists in church or state, is the misdirected zeal that punishes the body for the sincerity of an erroneous con- science. Whereas, no person deserves more the severity of human laws, than the impostor who betrays it. The divines themselves, whose forced interpretations of scripture, and theological disputes, have armed sovereigns against their sub- jects, agree that no person can act against the immediate dic- tates of an erroneous conscience. Hence, the Jew, who is under a conviction that Christ is not God, would be guilty of gross idolatry, if, from motives of worldly interest, he wor- shipped him with the Christians. In punishing him for not worshipping Christ, you punish the candour, sincerity, and uprightness of a deluded man, who is afraid to offend his Creator. The same can be said of all others who dissent from any established religion.
But I will be told, that, in reasoning thus, I renounce my own creed ; whereas the rescripts of Popes, the establishment of the inquisition, and numberless texts of the canon law, re- lating to heretics, shew what a Catholic clergyman ought to believe.
I have already declared, and sufficiently proved, that the rescripts of all the Popes that ever sat in Peter's chair, or ever will, can never make an article of faith for Roman Catholics ; no more than a king of England's proclamation can make an
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article of faith for English Protestants, though he is head of their church.
Positive laws and human establishments, temporary sanc- tions and local regulations, are no creeds, nor articles of* religion: and, happy for the honour of the Protestant religion in these realms, that they are not. No Catholic divine ever attributed such power to a general council, as Sir William Blackstone attributes to the British Parliament. * It can change,' says he, ' the religion of the land, and do 'every thing under heaven, that is possible.' If all its acts were to be considered as articles of faith, (as some paltry scribblers would fain obtrude on the public, the texts of the canon-law, and the rescripts of Popes, as articles of Catholic belief,) the world has never seen such a religious creed.
The reader would see, in Gothic characters, imprison- ment and death decreed against the priest, for saying his prayers ; to pervert or be perverted to the see of Rome, punished as high treason ; a second refusal to take the old oath of supremacy, liable to a similar punishment. He would see the neighbour authorised to take his neighbour's horse ; the son authorised to strip the father of his property ; the articles of Limerick, under the solemn faith of a capi- tulation, violated without the least provocation on the part of the inhabitants. From those he would pass to others of less importance. He would see a solemn act of the legislature, commanding women to declare their own shame, and making it high treason in them to marry the king, if they were not virgins,* another making it high treason in people who saw the nuptial rites performed, and the monarch go to the nup- tial bed with his spouse, to believe that he was married to Anne of Cieves.
The Catholic orator, who would fain be on equal terms with his Protestant brother, either in the pulpit or in print, would amplify his theme, enumerate the circumstances, and in a long strain of invective, hold forth that it is a principle of the Protestant religion, to persecute to death those of a different religion ; to encourage disobedience and rebellion in children to their parents ; to rob a man of his property ; to violate the laws of nations ; to be so incredulous as not to be-
* Sec the monstrous Acts of Parliament, in the reign of Henry VIII
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lieve their own eyes ; and to administer to the passions and lust of their kings : than to produce extracts of their statutes, in corroboration of the charge, and to cast those horrors on all the Protestants in the world !
The candid, impartial man, would be more nice than to confound the actions of men, and their positive laws, with the principles of the Protestant religion. And candour should induce the ministers of the gospel, not to revile the body of Catholics, by extending local regulations, exagge- rating facts, and erecting the mistakes and prejudices of a few, into a religious creed and a symbol of orthodoxy for the whole.
Those laws, then, that doom heretics to death, as well as the establishment of the inquisition, are no parts of a Ca- tholic's creed ; no more than the fore-mentioned acts of par- liament are part of the church of England's creed.
The true religion should be preserved and perpetuated by the same means that established it — by preaching the word of God, attended with prudence and discretion — the practice of all Christian virtues — boundless peace and charity.
Machiavel is of opinion, that 'disarmed prophets never ' made any conquests.' Whatever respect is due to him, on account of his skill in sanguinary politics and literature, in this maxim he betrays equal ignorance and impiety. No prophet ever appeared more destitute of arms than Jesus ^Christ : no prophet ever made such rapid and extensive con- quests— I mean conquests such as he intended to make, by winning the hearts, changing the interior dispositions of men, and, from bad and wicked, making them better and more virtuous.
The Christian religion gained ground under the heathen emperors, in the midst of the most violent persecutions, during three centuries.
The reverend gentlemen, who thought it lawful for kings to handle the sword, in vindication of the Deity, should have recollected that all the fathers, during five centuries, took this famous saying of Tertullian for their motto : ' Non est * rehgionis, religioncm cogereJ' It is not the province of re- ligion, to force religion: it is needless to crowd my page with them. St. Gregory the Great, who lived in the sixth ceii-
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 199
tury, and knew the obligations of religion, as well as any of his successors, writes to a bishop who had beaten one of his clergy for heresy, that it is an unheard of and novel method of preaching the Gospel, to enforce faith with the cudgel. — ' Nova et inaudita pr&dicatio, quce baculo adigit jidem.' No heretics more dangerous in a state than the Pri>cillianists, whose maxim was — to swear and forswear themselves, sooner than betray their secrets. Their doc- trine was condemned in a Council in Spain, but their persons left at liberty. Two Spanish bishops, Ithacus and Ursatius, solicited the tyrant Maximus to put Priscillian to death. Hence St. Martin of Tours, and all the bishops of Gaul and Spain, would never communicate with those sanguinary prelates, who were afterwards banished. Even a council that was held, would not admit any bishop who would communicate with one Felix, who concurred in the accusation of Priscillian, and whom the fathers call, ' a mur- derer of heretics.'
The Council of Toledo forbids the use of violence to enforce belief: 'because,' add the fathers, 'God shews
* mercy to whom he thinks fit ; and hardens whom he
* pleases.' — ' Prcecipit sancta synodus nemini deinceps ad ' credendum vim inferre. Cui enim Dens vulty miser etur ; 1 et quem vult, induraV* And the Council of Lateran, under Pope Alexander the Third, acknowledges, that the church rejects bloody executions, on the score of religion : which proves to demonstration, that the canon charged to the fourth Council of Lateran, under Innocent the Third— in Which canon 'the secular powers are addressed to make ' an oath, to extirminate all heretics out of their territo- ' ries, and, in case ot refusal, to have their subjects absolved ' from their allegiance, and the lands of the heretics to be
* seized by the Catholics,' &c. — is spurious. Collier, the Protestant historian, in his fifth volume of ecclesiastical history, acknowledges that it is not found in any copy coeval with the Council. Some hundred years after the Council, it was produced to light by a German : and we know full well, that, at that time, several spurious pieces were produced, to serve the purposes of rancour.
* Cap. de JucLeis, dist. 43. D D
20tf MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
Were even such a decree, or any other of a similar nature, genuine, the Catholics would reject them, without any breach of faith : because the church has no power over life, limb, the rights of sovereigns, the property of individuals, or any temporal concern whatsoever. Her bishops, then, whether separately, or in a collective body, cannot graft any such power into their spiritual commission. They would act in an extrajudicial manner, and beyond the limits of their sphere. This I have proved in my Kemarks on Mr. Wesley's letters, and elsewhere.
Far from countenancing cruelty, death, and oppression,
* the spirit of the church was, in such a manner, the spirit of ' meekness and charity, that she prevented, as much as in her 4 power, the death of criminals, and even of her most cruel
* enemies,' says Fleury. * You have seen how the lives of the ' murderers of the martyrs of Aunania were saved ; and St.
* Austin's efforts to preserve the Donatists (who had exer-
* cised such cruelties against the Catholics) from the rigour
* of the Imperial laws. You have seen how much the church 4 detested the indiscreet zeal of those bishops, who persecuted 1 the heresiarch Priscillian to death. In general, the church
* saved the lives of all criminals, as far as she had power. St.
* Augustine accounts for this conduct, in his letter to Mace- ' donius, where we read, that the church wished there were 'no pains in this life, but of the healing kind, to destroy not 1 man, but sin, and to preserve the sinner from eternal
* torments.'*
If, in after ages, some Popes and bishops deviated from this plan of meekness and moderation, their conduct should not involve a consequence injurious to the principles of the Ca- tholic church, which condemns such proceedings. The re- ligion of Catholics and Protestants condemns frauds, fornica- tions, drunkenness, revenge, duelling, perjury, &c. Some of their relaxed and impious writers have even attempted not only to palliate, but even to apologize for such disorders. — The children of the Christian religion daily practise them : is the Christian religion accountable for the breach of her own laws?
* Fleury, Discourse 2, No. 9-
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 201
We prefer, then, the primitive fathers of the church, to Sylvester a Prieris, and some other canonists : and we pre- sume as much knowledge and zeal for the Catholic religion in Gregory the Great and his predecessors, as in any of his successors, in ages less refined.
The opposition given in Catholic countries to the esta- blishment of the inquisition — the death of the inquisitors by the hands of the people — and the general odium it raised — prove that sparks of the moderation and meekness recom- mended in the Gospel, and practised in the primitive times, with regard to people of a different persuasion, were not quite extinct, even in the ages of darkness and barbarism. Popes themselves opposed its introduction into Venice : and whe- ther from policy or piety, I shall not take on me to deter- mine.
But Berkley remarks, that, ' if policy induced a Pope to 1 oppose its introduction in a certain state, policy might have * induced another Pope to introduce it into his own.'* I am convinced he was not mistaken in his conjectures.
The Pope was in possession of a city which formerly gave birth to so many heroes, besides a good territory bestowed cfi him by several sovereigns. He thought it high time to look about him, when all Europe was in one general blaze. The liberty of the Gospel, preached by Muncer and several other enthusiasts, threw all Germany into a flame, and armed boors against their sovereigns. As he was a temporal prince, he dreaded for his sovereignty, as well as other crowned heads in his neighbourhood ; and the more so, as his soldiers were better skilled in saying their beads, than handling the musket.
Great events, the downfal of empires, and the rise or de- struction of extraordinary characters, are commonly foretold in oracles, both sacred and profane ; and he found himself m the same dubious and critical situation with Montezuma, when the Spaniards landed in America.
" Old prophecies foretel our fall at hand,
•* When bearded men in floating- «astles land."f
Long before the reformation, the dimensions of his city
* Minute Philosopho)-. \ Dryden's Indian Que«n.
202 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
weie taken; the line was extended over its walls,; and it ware discovered that it was the ' great city, built on seven ' bills, tin harlot that had made the kings of the earth drunk
* with her cup ; and that her sovereign was Antichrist, the ' man of sin,' mentioned by St. Paul, in his epistle to the Tiiessalonians, Wickliff, Huss, and Jerome of Prague, had laid down a rule, many years before, that ' Popes, princes
* and bishops, in the state of mortal sin, have no power :' and a state of grace was, doubtless, incompatible with the character of Antichrist. Jerome of Prague, who was burnt afterwards at Constance, to shew that Rome was the harlot of the Revelations, after beating a monk, and drowning another, cliessed one day, a prostitute in a Pope's attire, with the three- crowned cap, made of paper, on her head, and in her head- dress, without being so careful of the rest of her body ; leads the female pontiff, half naked, in procession through the streets of Prague, in derision of a religion professed by the magistrates.
Some well-bred divines there are, who justify such pro- ceedings, on the principle that it was requisite, at that time,
* to cry aloud, and use a strong wedge to break the knotty
* block of Popery.' I do not believe there is a well-bred Protestant living, who wouid applaud either martyr or divine who would exhibit such a merry spectacle in the streets of Dublin or London ; or who would shed a tear for his loss, if, after exhibiting such a show in Rome or in Pans, he fell into the hands of the inquisition, or were sent to the gallies. The gospel truth is no enemy to decency.
St. Paul, in pleading his cause before Festus, did not in- veigh against his vestal virgins, the adulteries of their gods, or the wickedness of his emperors. Let a religion of state be ever so false, the magistrate who professes it, will feci himself insulted, when it is attacked in a gross, injurious manner : and, if iipologies can be made for indecencies and seditious doctrines, under pretence of overthrowing idolatry, some al- lowance must be made for men who think themselves insulted by such attacks.
The Pope, then, as a sovereign prince, had every thing to dread, when the thrones of the German princes began to totter from the shocks of inspiration : but what still increased
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 203
his alarms, was — the unfolding of the Revelations, which held him up to all Europe, as the Antichrist, the ge- neral enemy of Christians, who should be destroyed. Lest any one should miss his aim, it was proved from the Revelations, that he was the beast with ten horns; and, in bearing down such a game, the world was to be renewed, and the peaceful reign of the millennium, during which Christ was to reign with the saints on earth, was to begin. The time was approaching. Old John Fox, the martyrologist, says, that ' after long study and 4 prayers, God had cast suddenly into his mind, by di- vine inspiration, that the forty-two months must be re- ferred to the church's persecution, from the time of 4 John the Baptist.' This calculation was to bring on the Pope's destruction about the year sixteen hundred. Brightraan was more precise, and foretold the final down- fal of the Pope, in the year fifteen hundred and forty- six : others in fifteen hundred and fifty-six : and others in fifteen hundred and fifty-nine. Luther came closer to the famous aera ; and published his prophecy, in which it was revealed to him, that the Pope and the Turk would be destroyed in two years after the date ol his oracle. This cer- tainly, was a close attack on the Pope, who in all appear- ance, did not like to die so soon, even of a natural death. He apprehended the accomplishment of the ora- cles the more, as at that time almost every one was inspired, and ready to do any thing for the destruction of Antichrist.
Alexander Ross, in his view of religion, describes numbers of those prophets, and amongst the rest one Hermannus Sutor, a cobbler of Optzant, who professed himself a true prophet, and the Messiah Son of God : a very dangerous neighbour for Antichrist ! This man, to receive the prophetic inspiration, stretched himself na- ked in bed ; and, after ordering a hogshead of strong beer to be brought close to him, began to drink in the source of inspiration, and to receive the spirit by infusion; when on a sudden, ■* he,' to use the words of Alexander Ross, ' with a Stentor's voice and a horrid 'howling, among other things, often repeated this: Kill, 4 cut throats, without any quarter, of all those monks,
204 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
'all those Popes. Repent, repent: for jour deliverance is *at hand.'* However extraordinary such a character would appear now, jet at that time, inspiration was so frequent, that one would imagine all Germany was a nation of pro- phets; and Hermannus, who was afterwards put to death by Charles, lord of Guelderland, had credit enough to make proselytes.
The Pope, thus aimed at, as an object of destruction, from all quarters — and seeing, almost in every nation in Europe, a nursery of prophets foretelling his ruin, and animating the candidates for sanctity to undertake the pious task — began to tremble, not only for his territo- ries, but moreover for his personal safety. He knew that the imaginations of his Italian subjects were naturally warm ; and that, if but one of them caught the prophetic flame, the stiletto would soon be darted into Antichrist. He found Imperial laws already enacted, and as be was a temporal prince whose person was more exposed than any highwayman in Europe, he copied those laws into his directory ; and erected the Inquisition as a barrier between himself and the formidable foes, who not only foretold his downfal, but encouraged their followers to fulfil the prediction.
The impartial reader, in tracing this formidable tribunal, will discover a pelitical establishment, and a temporal safe- guard. None can infer from its institution, that it is lawful by the principles of religion, to deprive a man of his life, precisely on account of his worship : and every one must acknowledge, that, if ever a prince, whose life and territories were in danger, was authorised to take the severest precau- tions to secure both, no mortal could plead for greater in- dulgence in having recourse to rigorous measures, than one who united in his person the dignity of a prince, which at that time was both an object of envy and detestation to people who considered sovereignty as subversive of Christian li- berty— and the character of a sovereign pontiff, which made him pass for an outlaw, and the great enemy of Christ, in whose destruction the world was so deeply concerned. Let any person put himself in his case, and judge for himself.
* Ross's Vi«w of Religions. Id the appeidix, p. 31.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 205
It is then, to those authors who disgraced themselves, and exposed the oracles of the Christian religion to the derision of infidels, with their fanatical calculations, their beasts, horns, and strained allegories of seven hills — it is to the rage of people who could not take more effectual steps to get him stabbed in his church or his palace — and to the terrors of a man who thought himself justifiable in provid- ing for his personal safety — that the world is indebted for the inquisition in Rome. Its fires are daily extinguishing, in proportion as prophecy is diminishing ; and the liberty of a refined age discovers no horns on the head of a Gangan- nelli, or Benedict the Fourteenth, who united in their persons the grandeur of kings, the discretion of bishops, the elegance of courtiers, and the learning of philoso- phers.
The two last prophets I have read who have brought the Pope's destruction nearer our own times, are Whiston and Burroughs. The first foretold that the Pope's destruction would happen in seventeen hundred and twenty-four. And the second finding Mr. Whiston's prophecy contra- dicted by time, began himself to prophecy that this great event was to happen in seventeen hundred and sixty. Yet, since those two prophets i have been gathered unto their father,' the air of Rome has not been embalmed with the effluvia of the smoking blood of a Jew; and in Spain and Portu- gal, we hear no longer of human victims being offered up as 4 a sacrifice of agreeable odour to the Lord.'
In those two kingdoms, the inquisition owes its origin to causes much similar to those which gave it rise at Rome; but causes, however, which did not so immediately affect the sovereign, who was blended with the common mass of monarchs, without any peculiar distinction to expose him to the hatred of mankind ; or to afford his assassin a plea of impunity, bv alleging that he was the deliverer of the world, by ridding it of the enemy of the Son of God, de- scribed in the prophecies of Daniel, pointed out in the Revelations, and whose downfall was foretold at such a time, by the most celebrated interpreters of scrip- ture.
The Spaniards struggling for a long time with Maho-
206s MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
met's followers who had invaded their country, and reduced them not only to the most abject slavery, but moreover forced them to supply the fire of their lusts with continual fuel, by sending an annual tribute of Christian virgins to their seraglios, made at last that great effort so memorable in history.
It is well known that before the defeat of the Moors, and their total expulsion from the Spanish dominions, they were preparing, under hand, for war, and had their leaders already chosen. Banished for ever from a kingdom where they had trampled on the laws which all Christians, and even heathen fathers deemed most sacred, a barrier to their return was erected; and, as by their own laws, every Christian who has any connexion with a Mahometan woman, is to pass through the fire, the tables were turned on themselves, and the ex- pectants of an earthly paradise were threatened with the fagot, if they returned to initiate the children of Christians in their mysteries.
The most effectual way to remove prejudices, is — to put one's self in other people's situation. And if the establish- ment of the inquisition seems severe and unreasonable, it must be acknowledged, that the love of life, and the abhor- rence of oppression, are passions that very often overpower reason itself. No man would choose to be considered as an outlaw on whose head a price was set, and to whose de- struction thousands were animated, under the sanction of scripture. Neither is it in the nature of Christian Kings, who often destroy their own relations, when they suspect them for aspiring to their throne, to suffer the sworn ene- mies of the Gospel, and the corrupters of the morals it en- forces, in possession of their provinces and palaces, when they can recover what they deem their right. It was, then, dread of danger, and love of liberty, a deep sense of inju- ries, and a provisionary caution against death and oppression, not a principle of religion, that gave rise to the inquisition in Rome, Spain, and Portugal. It is not from the church it can derive any power: and if it has any other motive in view than to secure the peace of society by temporal means, it exceeds the limits of its authority. For error in faith is not a crime, but relatively to a supernatural order, which does
MISCELLANEOUS ^RACTS. 207
not come within the verge of «civil jurisdiction : and the last resource of the church is only a canonical censure. Those censures she never denounces, but against her own rebellious children, reared up in her bosom: and with regard even to those, she is boimd to use the greatest precaution.
Her spiritual weapons should not be drawn but against the enormities of individuals ; nor against those, when they are powerful enough to raise a faction or party; nor against any one, when it is probable they will not obtain the end proposed — I mean, the correction of the sinner. 'With regard to the multitude, censures are ' never employed,' says St. Austin. Exhortations, not com- mands— instructions, not menaces — are, then, her only weapons. And when any of her popes or bishops adopted any other plan, they consulted more their power, and the rigour of the law, than the rules of prudence. They behaved like those hot headed princes, who, finding a great number of their subjects guilty of insurrection, would put them all to the sword, at the hazard of seeing their king- doms depopulated. ^ *
Whence, then, came those rigorous laws on the score of religion to be introduced ? If speculative errors, un- connected with principles subversive of subordination and morality, have been the oniy motives, it must be ac- knowledged, that they originated in an abuse of power, and an error of fact, as well as of right, which made princes believe that, as they were the arbiters of life and death they could punish all kinds of crimes, whether against God, or the peace of civil society. In matters more immediately within the reach of the civil magis- trate, the laws of all nations afford instances of power extending beyond the limits of reason, and confounding the sacred rules of equity, which proportion the punish- ment to the offence. Thus, in Holland, a suhject forfeits his life, if he kill a stork, when a few dollars would be a sufficient penalty : especially for a Dutchman. In England, the cutting down a cherry-tree in an orchard is a capital offence. And in. Ireland, 1 have seen two men put to death — the one, because a sheep was found
E E
2oa
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
in his bain, which the real thief had left there ; and the other, for a miserable calf-skin, which he bought on the high- road, from the man who stole it; and who, doubtless, did not inform the purchaser of the manner in which he had acquired it: — when the laws dictated by God himself, decreed no more than the restitution of an ass, against the thief who had stolen one from his neigh- bour; and a four-fold restitution against the man who stole an ox.
If princes and other rulers, then, magnify objects in such a manner as to make trifles capita!, in consequence of their power, to which they imagine no bounds should be pre- scribed ; let us not be surprised if monarchs, who thought themselves the delegates of Heaven, and answerable for any crime against the divinity, which they would countenance if) their state, have enacted laws which torture the body for the errors of the mind.
It was with difficulty that king Edward the Sixth was prevailed on, not to commit his sister Mary to the flames. For he could not reconcile his conscience, to permit his sister to live in idolatry, when it was in his power to check the progress of such a disorder.
We see, by the different edicts against heretics, in the Theodosian code, that the first Christian emperors did not, however, consider religious error as a sufficient cause for capital punishment. Constantino grants a free toleration to all Christians, in one of his edicts: in another he restrains this indulgence to Catholics alone. In one edict, he orders the churches to be taken from the Donatists : in another, he moderates the rigour of this edict, by permitting them tore- turn to their country, and to live there quiet; ' to God the punishment of their crime.'' Remarkable words ! We have seen before, how the primitive fathers opposed sanguinary executions, and pleaded for liberty of conscience. St. Hilary earnestly requests the Emperor Constantius to grant his subjects liberty of conscience, whether they be Aliens or no
If, then, in an age enlightened by the works of the fathers, and after the example set by Constantine, the Emperor Theodosius condemned Maniclueans to the tire; it must b
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
209
more owing to abominable practices, than to speculative er- rors. And, if succeeding emperors continued the same ri- gour, it is that sedition or immorality, or both, kept pace and were incorporated with speculative deviations. Scarce an age, since Theodosius's time until of late years, but brooded some immoral or seditious doctrine, which armed the magistrate's hand with the exterminating sword. Great part of St. Austin's time was taken up in pleading for mercy with the African governors, in favour of the Donatists and Crescellians, who continually exercised the greatest cruelties.
Another age gave rise to the Patarini and Runcaires, who amongst other errors maintained, that no mortal sin could be committed by the lower part of the body. The theory was reduced to practice ; and, doubtless, the magistrate was roused to severity.
The Albigenses said that God had two wives. Marriage, however, was condemned, without considering chastity as a virtue. In detestation of the sacrament of the altar, churches were turned into receptacles for the unhappy votaries of venus : and in the sanctuary where the magistrate was ac- customed to see the minister of religion officiate, nothing could be seen but offerings to Cloacina. In twelve hundred and thirty, the Stadings of Germany honoured Lucifer; in- veighed against God for condemning that rebel-angel to darkness ; held that one day he would be re-established, and they should be saved with him. Whereupon, they taught that, until that time, it was not requisite to serve God, but quite the contrary ; and reduced their theory to practice.
To write the history ot all the sects which gave rise to the severe sanctions of kings, from the time of the Emperor Theodosius down to the sixteenth or seventeenth century, would be to attempt writing a history of all the horrors and abominations of which abandoned man is capable. In this long space of time, the sects most tree from any mixture of immorality, gave umbrage to the civil power, by their sedi- tious tenets and insurrections.
Huss's doctrine, in Bohemia, sowed the seeds of civil wars. WicklifPs doctrine, in England, was productive of similar fruits. The fagot did not blaze in England until the Lol-
210 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
lards began to overturn the state. In the sixteenth century, what wars, what commotions, in Germany, in consequence of fanatical delusion. The most moderate Protestant divines of that age, complain in their writings, of the confusion in- troduced by sectaries. Hcylin, in his cosmography, talks of seme of them ' begotten in rebellion, born in sedition, and 'nui> his Polyglote, says, that ' A ristarchus- heretofore could scarce 'find seven wise men in Greece; but that, in his time, so ' n any idiots were not to be found: for all were divinely '^earned.' 'Hence,' continues the Doctor, ' the bottomless ' pit seems to have been set open : and locusts are come out ' with stings, a numerous race of sectaries who have renewed 'ali the ancient heresies, and invented many monstrous ' opinions of their own.' In examining, then, the laws en- acted against heretics, and tracing them up to their origin ; in taking a review of the times and .circumstances in which they were enacted, and the tenets of the persons against whom they were levelled — in weighing the Emperor Con- stantine's words, already quoted — and observing the insta- bility of his opinion, in the change of his laws — we can, with every reason, presume that error in doctrine was never deemed a sufficient title to deprive a man of his life or pioperty, by the most pious and enlightened Christian legislators.
Immorality or sedition, mingling with the speculative opinion unpunishable in itself by any civil tribunal, drew the vengeance of the laws upon the entire system and its abet- tors ; as the circulation of bad coin is punished by the ma- gistrate, net on account of the particles of gold or silver, but on account of the base metal, which predominates and de- bases it. If time, civilization, commerce, a more extensive knowledge of mankind, and the rights of society, helped the mind to work off the feculence of pernicious opinions, as rough wines work off their tartar : freedom of thought, its inalienable prerogative was at last reconciled amongst most men with the principles of morality, and the peace of society. Men have changed, but long habit and the power of rule have still, in many places, kept up laws which confound mis- taken notions of a spiritual nature, with practical principles
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 21 1
which disturb the order of society. Heresy is of too inde- terminate a signification, to become the object of legal ven- geance. And to punish a man for Popery, is to punish him because another pronounces a word of three syllables. Let the Heretic and Papist, who rob, steal, murder, preach up sedition, rebellion, and immorality, sutler like all other felons. But the magistrate who punishes an honest, peace- able man, for following the religion of his education, and the dictates of his conscience ; and the legislators who au- thorise him to do so : both forget themselves and the rights of mankind.
The heathen magistrates punished none for worshipping many gods. But we read of a city whose inhabitants were all drowned, for adopting the impiety of Diagoras, who was a declared atheist.
The Christian magistrate will not punish a man who has no religion ; because the versatile conscience of such a man will mould itself into any frame. But the upright man who, from fear of offending God, will not resign his way of thinking, but upon a thorough conviction that he is in error; is deemed unworthy the protection ofjthe laws. His conscience, which it Avould be a crime to betray, is made a crime by positive institutions. Thus, Tiberius's artifice is revived. It was prohibited by the laws, in his time, to put a virgin to death. A virgin is accused of high treason ; and, on conviction, (an easy matter in his days,) her virginity is pleaded, in bar to the execution of the sentence ; he ordered the executioner to ravish her, and then the law took its course. Thus guilt and punish- ment were reconciled.
The laws of God command me not to act against the im- mediate dictates of my conscience. The laws of man make this conformity to the dictates of my conscience a crime, and I am accordingly punished.
Towards people confirmed in the prejudices of their edu- cation, and the religion of their fathers, no severity, tending to deprive them of the rights to which na- ture entitles them, should be used. It is the unanimous opinion of the fathers, and a large volume could be composed of passages, extracted from the works of modern writers of every denomination, in support of the assertion —
212 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
4 We know that faith may yield to persuasion ; but it 4 never will be controuled.'* 'Remember that the disease:-; * of the soul are not to be cured by restraint and viojence.'f 4 Indulge every one with civil toleration.'^
If, to the spirit of the Gospel, the authority of fathers, councils, the practice of the primitive times, and the opinions of the most learned of the modern writers, we add arguments drawn from the sources of divinity, we expect to disarm the magistrate, and to prevail on him to sheath the sword which God never commanded him to wield against the pro- lessors of peaceable errors.
Faith is a gift of God, which it is not in the power of the state either to give or take away. It depends chiefly on the change of the heart, the interior dispositions of the mind, and the grace of the Almighty, which it is in his power alone to give, in greater or lesser abundance to his crea- tures. We do not pretend to open the gate to error, or to lull mortals asleep in an indifference to the truth. We only beseech the powers of the earth not to add to the calamities of Adam's children, by fines, confiscations, poverty, re- straints, or death, for abstruse and speculative matters be- vond the reach of human controul. We know that God beinpr everv where present to call his creatures to his service, to support them in their hope, to confirm them in his love, to help their endeavours, and to hear their prayers, it is their own fault if they perish. To some he gives the knowledge of his law ; but they reject it. Others he inspires with the spirit of prayer: but they neglect it. He speaks to the hearts of all : but few listen to his voice. Some he converts by an effectual grace, who plunge themselves a second time into their disorders. Some he strengthens and fortifies in the constant love of order and justice to the last moment of their lives : and others he gives lip to their blindness and corruption. He permitted the first man to sin, and thus to involve us in all the miseries, when it was in his power to prevent sin, without thus de- stroying his liberty. And this will ever be an insoluble diffi- culty to man.
* Flecliier, bishop of Nismes. f Cardinal Camns.
X Fenelon to the Duke of Burgundy.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 213
Faith, then, depending entirely on the interior dispositions of the mind, the quantity of grace, and the measure of spi- ritual science, which it is in the power of God either to in- crease, or, from a just but hidden judgment, to diminish; the want of it cannot be punished by any earthly tribunal : because the magistrate's power extends only to outward crimes that disturb the temporal peace of society, but not to the hidden judgments of God, nor to the interior dispositions of the mind, nor to the disbelief of divine truths — the neces- sary result of both. Death, restraints, and confiscations, then, on the score of religion, are murders and robberies, under the sanction of mandatory.
* We were of opinion,' says St. Austin, writing to the Manicheans, ' that other methods were to be made choice
* of; and that to recover you from your errors, we ought to 1 persecute you with injuries and invectives, or any ill treat- 1 ment ; but endeavour to procure your intention by soft
* words and exhortations, which would show the tenderness
* we have for you : according to that passage of holy writ — 1 The servant of the Lord ought not to love strife and quar- s rels : but to be gentle, affable, and patient towards all man- 4 kind ; and to reprove with modesty those who differ from c him in opinion. Let them only treat you with rigour, who ' know not how difficult it is to find out the truth, and avoid
* error. Let those treat you with rigour, who know not how
* rare and painful a work it is calmly to dissipate the carnal
* phantoms that disturb even a pious mind. Let those treat
* you with rigour, who are ignorant of the extreme difficulty
* that there is to purify the eye of the inward man, to ren- 4 derhina capable of seeing the truth which is the sun and
* light of the soul. Let those treat you with rigour, who
* have never felt the sighs and groans that a soul must have,
* before it can have any knowledge of the Divine Being.
* To conclude, let those treat you with rigour, who never ' have been seduced into errors near akin to those you are en*
* gaged in.
1 I pass over in silence, that pure wisdom, to which but a
* few spiritual men attain in this life ; so that though they *know but in part, because they are men; yet, nevertheless.
214 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
* they know what they do know with certainty ; for in the
* Catholic church, it is not penetration of mind, nor profound
* knowledge, but simplicity of faith, which puts men in a
* state of safety.'*
To such an illustrious authority we shall add another, — Salvianus, bishop of Marseilles, discoursing on the Arian Vandals, speaks as follows: 'they are ignorant of what is
* commonly known among other men ; and only know what
* their doctors have taught them, and follow what they have 1 heard them say. Men so ignorant as these, find themselves
* under a necessity of learning the mysteries of the Gospel,
* rather by the instructions that are given them than by
* books. The tradition of their doctors, and the received 1 doctrines, are the only rules they follow, because they know 1 nothing but what they have taught them. They are then
* heretics, but they know it not. They are so in our account,
* but they believe it not, and think themselves so good Ca- 1 tholics, that they treat us as heretics ; judging of us as we
* do of them. We are persuaded that they believe amiss,
* concerning the divine generation, when they maintain the
* Son inferior to the Father ; and they imagine that we rob 4 the Father of his glory, who believe them both to be equal.
* We have the truth on our side, and they pretend it on 4 theirs. We give to God his honour, and they think they
* honour him better. They fail in their duty, but they ima-
* gine they perform it well ; and they make true piety cqri- ' sist in what we call impious. They are in a mistake, but 4 with a great deal of sincerity ; and it is so far from being an 4 effect of their hatred, that it is a mark of their love of God ;
* since by what they do, they shew the greatest respect for 4 the Lord, and zeal for his glory. Therefore, though they 4 have not true faith, they nevertheless look upon that, as a 1 perfect love of God. It belongs only to the Judge of the
* universe, to know how those men will be punished for their
* errors at the last day.'*
1 As to what is concealed from the knowledge of mortals,' says St. Chrysostom, ) let the searcher of hearts determine, 1 who alone knows the measure of knowledge, and the quantity
* Salvianus,
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 215
' of faith : whose judgments are inscrutable, and ways un* * searchable.'*
Religion, then, recoils at the thoughts of stripping the vie-' tim for his mode of worship. We should make allowance for the weakness of our fellow creatures ; and reflect that few persons view objects in the same light. What makes a deep impression on me, makes but a slight impression on another. Universal orthodoxy has never been established, since Cain has built the first city, and separated from the children of God, nor never will to the end of time.
Amidst the dark and doubtful images of things, the sport of the passions, the prejudices of education, the disputes of the learned, and the clouds that hang over weak and fluc- tuating reason, it is hard to separate the clear from the ob- scure, truth from error, and to assign them their proper si- tuations in light and shade. Add to this what I remarked hrfore, that faith is a gift of God, to which the heart must be disposed by the operations of an interior grace, which God alone can give, and which is obtained more by prayer than by disputing. If we take a survey of nature itself, which God has given up to the disputes of men, the smallest insect baffles our severest scrutiny. From the ant up to the elephant, and from the germination of a blade of grass, to the immense bodies that swim in the yielding ether above, every thing is an inexplicable mystery. The very soul with whose nature we should be better acquainted, and from whose active powers we derive our faculties and judgment, is a torch with which we are enabled to view the universe, and yet our philosophers know not where it shines. Some assign the brain for the seat of this immortal spirit: others the blood ; others the pineal gland ; and others, unable to com- prehend how matter and spirit can be so closely interwoven, as to form one compound called man, assert that the soul abides at a distance from the body, and influences it as the sun influences certain plants, that turn round and humour its motion.
What an immense library could be made up of all the books on this immortal spark that animates us ! Whether
* Homilia contra anathemati™nfp F V
216 MISCELLANEOUS TRACT3.
it existed before its union with the body — whether it under- goes the same fate of extinction — if it survives, whether it goes to the silent shades of the dead, naked, or clothed in a thin pellicle, imperceptible to the anatomist's eye, but quali- fying it in the other world for feeling the smarting sensa- tions excited by tormenting fire, which otherwise could not affect a pure spirit, without having recourse to an extraordi- nary power, the miraculous exertion whereof is spared by this coat of imperceptible skins, cut for the spirit in a philo- sopher's brain — the soul's state and residence in the long in- terval between death and the final consummation of all things —
Burnet, the learned author of the Theory of the Earth, laughs at the purgatory of the Catholics ; but strikes into a path in which few Protestant divines would choose him for their guide. He admits none to the clear sight of God, until after the resurrection ; heaps up testimonies to vindicate prayers for the dead ; establishes Kades, a recepta- cle for souls, and a middle state where they expect the com- ing of Christ, and the sound of the last trumpet.*
If, from ourselves, and nature that surrounds us, we make an excursion into the region of mysteries, with what dark- ness has not God overspread ' the face of the deep !' What disputes between Catholic and Protestant writers on one side, and the Arians and Socinians on the other, about the divine generation of the Son of God ! What a deluge of blood spilt on that occasion, when the Arians were supported by power- ful emperors, who drew the sword to decide the con- troversy !
Should one of the Bramins come amongst us, and after studying our languages, sit down to read the scriptures, to consult our writers, and to determine upon the choice of a religion, what a laborious task ! From the time of Pelagius, down to our days, what disputes about original sin ! How- could it be propagated to a child whose body could not sin, whose soul came pure from its Creator's hands, whose father and mother were purified themselves from original stain, and guiltless in complying with the institutions of God and
* In his Book De Stalu Mortuorura ct Resurgentium,
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 217
nature. Let this Bramin read the works of the divines of the church of England, in favour of infant baptism, he will regret his not having been consecrated to God before the use of his reason. When he reads the Anabaptist divines against infant baptism, he will rejoice that he did not enter too soon into a covenant, whereof he did not know the conditions and terms.
When Barclay published his apology for the Quakers, he cut out a good task for the divines of the church of England, who were obliged to display their erudition in order to re- fute him.
If from baptism we pass to the Lord's supper, what difficulties to encounter ! What arguments against the real presence by Zuinglius, Calvin, Du Moulins, Claude, Til- lotson ! And what formidable opponents have not those writers to engage, in the persons of Luther and the Lutheran divines ; Bossuet, Arnauld, and the numerous tribe of Catholic divines ! Text for text ; reason for rea- son. Assailants and defendants take their weapons from the same arsenal, and handle them with surprising address and skill.
If the church of England be consulted on the important mystery, her answer only puzzles and perplexes :
' What is the inward part of the Sacrament?
* The body and blood of Christ, verily and indeed received ' by the faithful.'
For as Doctor Burnet remarks, the divines who com- posed the liturgy, had orders to leave it as a speculative point, not determined ; in which every person was left to the freedom of his own choice.* If the divines, after search- ing the Scriptures and Fathers, call philosophy to their assistance, Mr. Locke, one of its oracles, will tell them, that the idea of body and the idea of place, are so closely connected, that it is impossible to conceive one body in two different places at the same time. Cartesius, who was the first that dispossessed Aristotle of his throne, Gassendi, that famous priest, who revived and improved Epicurus's system of atoms, Cassini, and thousands beside, were as well ac*
* History of tlie Reform . b. 3.
218 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
quainted as Locke, with the nature of place and bodies, and doubtless his superiors in knowledge of the mathematics; yet they could discover no contradiction in the same body being in different places at the same time, when once they supposed the interposition of infinite power, and the pliancy of space and matter, to the irresistible will of omnipotence, which can either create or annihilate them.
Thus, after a laborious excursion into the provinces of philosophy and theology, the philosophical divine must return back to the first elements of logic and grammar, that treat of the modes of speech ; and, from the com- bination of time, place, circumstances, the nature of the testament, or last will of a man on the eve of his death, (but a man who united in the same person, the sinless weakness of humanity, with the power and nature of the Godhead,) determine whether he spoke in a literal or figurative sense. For place and body, matter and space, are incomprehensible riddles which the greatest philoso- phers are at a loss how to unravel. The sensations of cold, hunger, thirst, pain, and pleasure, convince us suf- ficiently that we have bodies, whose daily decay we are continually repairing with sleep and aliment. We are, in like manner, convinced that there is such a thing as place, when we remove from the fireside to bed, where, locked up in the close arms of sleep, we are for a while in an intermediate state between life and death : dreaming some- times that we are sovereigns, swaying the sceptre of autho- rity; and at other times trembling under the hands of the exe- cutioner, who has the axe in his hand to sever the head from the body, or the rope to strangle us : alternately enjoying the grandeur of kings, and undergoing the punishment of criminals, without the reality of either. The different impressions we receive from the sun, moon, and stars, scorch- ing flames, and refreshing springs, make us believe that there are other bodies in nature, besides those frail machines we carry about us.
In a word, sensations from within, and impressions from without, concur to convince us that there are places and bodies. The arguments of divines, and the severity of hu- man laws, in support of those arguments, consigning those
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 210
bodies to prison, death, banishment, or hunger, are colla- teral proofs that we have those bodies, and that we feel their existence by means of painful sensations. Yes ; the im- mortal Berkley, bishop of Cloyne, has proved by arguments hitherto unanswerable, that there is no demonstration for the existence of one single body in nature. He has recon- ciled the Catholic and Protestant philosophers and divines, about the real presence, by cutting oft", at one blow, both body and place.
Our whole life, according to this system, adopted by several learned men, is but one continual scene of delu- sion. Objects we never saw, during the day time, are present to us in our sleep, and make a deep and lasting impression. Who knows, then, but all the actions we per- form, when we imagine ourselves awake, are real dreams? We are spirits created millions of years before the Mosaic account.
In that pre-existent state, we gloried too much in our knowledge ; and, as a just punishment, we are given up for a short time to dreams and deceptions, not on earth, or in corruptible bodies, for there are no such things, and whoever says there are such things, can never prove this assertion : but the great theatre on which we play the sportive farce, is" nothing else but God's immensity, which can never fall within the reach of corporeal organs, eyes, ears, hands, &c. for the existence of such organs is a mere delusion.
Origenes, the most learned of the fathers, who wrote six thousand books, and was complimented by Porphyry, the heathen philosopher, was of opinion, that the souls of men were angels, who, in the great conflict between the good and bad spirits, observed a strict neutrality, and were doomed to corruptible bodies, in order to try their sincerity. Had Origenes been as well versed in philosophy, as our modern writers, he would have confined himself to spirits, and granted bodies no existence in the class of beings.
Happy for millions were the philosophers' system founded in reality, and that we had no bodies ! For the disputes of theologians have destroyed and famished a good part of the creation. We have every respect for the Christian religion and its ministers of all denominations, and without any
220 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
doubt, for that system in which we have had the happiness of being reared up. But we are extremely sorry that reli- gion has ever been made a pretext for persecution or op- pression.
We have taken the liberty, in the course of this treatise, to glance at some religious as well as philosophical systems, to shew the weakness of reason, and the impossibility of establishing universal orthodoxy.
Should this treatise fall into the hands of any of our legislators, in whose power it is to ease the necks of their inoffensive subjects from the galling yoke of op- pression ; we expect from their wisdom and feelings, that they will no longer consider difference in religion as a sufficient reason for hindering the young gentleman from purchasing a pair of colours, and fighting the battles of his king and country ; the industrious citizen from realizing the fruits of his labour, in getting landed security for his money, and purchasing- an estate, descendible to his chil- dren ; the physician, the opulent farmer, the man of pro- perty, from carrying a gun, a sword, a case of pistols, for their defence from the attacks of the midnight as- sassin or highwayman ; the clergyman, who instils the principles of good morals into the minds of the ignorant who would follow the fierce instinct of savage and un- cultivated nature if they were deprived of their pastors, from the protection of the laws, which now leave them exposed to the caprice and fury of every ruffian, in whose power it is to shut up their chapels, and get them trans- ported : When it is obvious that such restraints arise from speculative points disputed on a narrow ridge by the greatest men the world ever produced — when philosophers them- selves are bewildered in their notions — and when the learned are at variance, about matters far beyond the reach of the bulk of mankind.
Should it be said that these laws are seldom put in force; it can be answered that the liberty of the subject, which is the birth-right of man, should not depend on the capricious benevolence of his neighbour. The law should be the com- mon mother whose arms should be open to all ; and the ghost of intolerance, more destructive than Attila's sword, should vanish on the approach of the rays of benevolence,
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 221
which are now blazing all over the continent. Attila's sword destroyed but such as it met in its way : but the rage of religious feuds has thinned the world of fifty millions of human beings; and is stili trampling, in these kingdoms, on compassion, on equity, on national interest.
In Ireland, where such scandalous scenes have not been exhibited, as last vear in Scotland and England, the ghosts of chose legislators who enacted the penal code, are still looking, with a clouded, malevolent joy, over the long wastes and desolated pastures they have made in a fruitful country ; and supplying the want of sword and fagot, with a more lasting and tedious torment — I mean, the hunger and dis- tresses of thousands. They have renewed and perpetuated the torments invented by the former princes of Tuscany, They make the living expire in the arms of the dead.
The liberality of the times, the interest of the kingdom, the wisdom and humanity of our rulers, every thing cries aloud for the repeal of the laws enacted on the score of con- science. If subordination and policy require what, in every country, is called a religion of state, though in fact an en- croachment on the natural rights of man, when it excludes from him the privileges to which he is entitled by nature: yet this happy system of toleration should be introduced by excluding in this kingdom the Catholics from any high oilices under the crown : secondly, from the privilege of sit- ting in the senate : thirdly, if the use of arms gives any um- brage, from the privilege of carrying them, except to such as have a mind to serve their country in the army, or such persons as are possessed of a real personal estate, amounting to whatever value the legislature thinks fit to determine: all other laws, heretofore enacted, to be null and void. The kingdom would soon flourish: and the brilliant ex- ample, set to such princes as have not as yet thrown open the gates of toleration, would rescue mankind from the heavy yoke which misconstrued religion has laid on their necks.
The Author of nature intended men for society ; and eiv titles every man to the advantages of that condition, who is free from all principles and practices injurious to the civil .good of society. The great Giver alone can repeal the uni-
222 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
versal charter. He has not done it : and I hope that I have sufficiently proved that he has not delegated that power to any of his creatures.
The rulers of the earth, whether Catholics or Protestants, owe all social benefits to their loyal subjects of every deno- mination. If one of these powers withhold their people's na- tive rights, it is no excuse for the other, that their conduct is countenanced by their neighbours' example. Honour, hu- manity, and the rights of mankind, should suggest to modern legislators to repair the losses, caused by their predecessors' misguided zeal. And as the clergy of all denominations, consider themselves the delegates of heaven, and invested with the commission to prescribe a mode of worship to man, let them propose it in a manner that may secure its triumph over the heart; brighten it up with the genial rays of hu- manity, benevolence, and love, and not cloud it with the sullen gloom of severity, oppression, and distress. For Christ who is the Creator of all, has not declared in his gospel, that one should be excluded from the protection of the laws, and persecuted for his worship ; and the other au- thorized to famish, starve, and insult the weakness of a fel- low creature.
MR. O'LEARY S DEFENCE ;
CONTAINING
A VINDICATION OF HIS CONDUCT AND WRITINGS
DURING THE LATE DISTURBANCES IN MUNSTER. WITH A
FULL JUSTIFICATION OF THE
AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE
RISINGS OF THE WHITE BOYS.
TOGETHER WITH
MR. O'LEARY'S ANSWER
TO THE
FALSE ACCUSATIONS OF THEOPHILUS,
AND THE ILL-GROUNDED INSINUATIONS OF THE
MIGHT REV. DOCTOR WOODWARD,
LORD ETSHOP OF CLQYNE*
THE
INTRODUCTION.
Whoever attempts to give an account of public transac- tions should be above the reach and power of hope and fear, and all kinds of interest ; that he may always dare to speak truth, and write of all without prejudice, religiously observ- ing never to abuse the public faith, but to guard against the bias and affections of those who would endeavour to impose on him by false or exaggerated reports. He should not con- fine himself to a bare recital of the actions of men, but to lay open the motives and principles from which they took their rise, and upon which they proceeded to their final issues. When in public transactions in which all parties are con- cerned, some persons make themselves more conspicuous than others, it is not barely sufficient to mention their names. The hearts of such actors must be laid open. The reader must be let into their most important motives and designs, and favoured with a sight of those secret springs which moved them with enterprise whether it succeeded or mis- carried. He should be disinterested himself, and attribute no bad motive to persons whose actions could bear a favoura- ble construction ; when he is convinced that they had no in- terest in interfering in those scenes of disorder and tumult which he chooses for the subject of his narrative.
Upon those principles Doctor Woodward should have proceeded when he introduces me on the stage after his ac- count of the disturbances in the south of Ireland ; distur- bances which disgraced the nation, by the manner in which they were heightened in the foreign prints, painting us in 3 state of barbarism and rebellion, and which however unjusti* fiable, yet borrow (in the county of Cork at least) their im. portance more from the colourings of exaggerating writer?
226 THE INTRODUCTION.
than from any signal or singular event which would suit the dignity of the historian's pencil, whose office it is to pro- nounce the destiny of the great ones of the earth ; to fix their character with posterity, to do justice to virtue and worth, end to admit no figures into his historical group but the figures of the great and illustrious. It is true that public transac- tions should be recorded, though the characters which ap- peared on the scene are far from being illustrious. The Ro- man historians have transmitted to posterity the war of the slaves. And the Right Reverend Bishop of Cloyne has fa- voured the public with a general account of the operations of the Minister rabble. But he differs widely from the patterns after whom he should have copied : for however unworthy of the historian's pen the exploits of shabby heroes may ap- pear, yet when he hands their achievement down to poste- rity, he should paint them in their proper colours, and range them under their respective banners. When Tacitus de- scribes the revolt of the Pannonian legions, incited to sedition by Persennius, a common soldier, and the Captain Right of his time, he informs his readers of that incendiary's profes- sion. But when the Bishop of Cloyne promises, in his title- page, * A general Account of the Insurrections of the South * of Ireland, with their rise and progress,' he leads all his warriors into the field in the same uniform. They are all a Popish mob disarming Protestants to overthrow the esta- blished religion. In this assertion I shall take the liberty of differing in opinion from the Bishop, with the same freedom that Lesley, a dissenting minister, contradicted Archbishop King, when that prelate wrote his History of the State of the Protestants in Ireland under James the Second ; and as Be- verly Higgins, a gentleman of the established religion, differed widely in opinion from Bishop Burnet, when he wrote the history of his own times.
Happy ! if I could discover nothing reprehensible in the Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet, but historical inaccuracy ! It would affect me no more than some of the stories of Heredo- tus, who was so liable to misinformation. For a mob is a mob, whether they be Protestants or Papists. A Popish mob may crop horses and burn ricks of corn in Ireland : and a Protestant mob may burn houses and attempt to plunder the
THE INTRODUCTION. 227
bank in London. It is the crime, not the religion of the criminal, which disturbs the peace of society, and is punished by the judge.
But when in the Bishop's pamphlet I see myself personally attacked, and (what concerns me more than any personal injury) my religion glanced at as inconsistent with the secu- rity of the state. When I see Catholic prelates, who are an ornament to the age, wounded by an intimation that their allegiance to their king in temporals is a prevarication of their obedience to their supreme pastor in spirituals. For here, according to Doctor Woodward's inuendo, perjury must be the alternative: if they swear allegiance to the Pope, they cannot swear allegiance to the king : if they swear allegiance to the king, they cannot swear allegiance to the Pope — still they swear allegiance to both; perjury then is inevitable. A dreadful dilemma arising from a con- secration oath, translated into English for the purpose of perplexing the ignorant, and left unexplained for the pur- pose of rendering venerable prelates obnoxious to the pub- lic. When 1 see Doctor Woodward one of the pilots of the vessels of the established religion hanging out the signal of distress, and crying aloud on the deck, 'The Church of Ire- •land is at this present moment in imminent danger of sub- * version.' From whom? From the dissenters ready to pull down an ecclesiastical establishment, and the Catholics ready to set up their own. That is to say, from two classes of subjects more interested m improving thirty-nine acres of ground for the support of their families, than in abolishing the thirty-nine articles of Bishop Woodward's profession of faith, which, (however founded in the Scriptures) thousands of Protestant divines all over Europe would not subscribe. When 1 now see the three great classes of High-churchmen, Dissenters and Catholics, whom I have formerly seen to drown their religious distinctions in the noise of the alarm drum, and march under the same banners to protect the beds of their wives, and the cradles of their children against the common foe. — When I see them now disunited, (if they were mad enough to be disunited by the croaking of controversy, and in speculative points which puzzle the mind, to forget
228 THE INTRODUCTION.
social friendship which cheers and warms the heart.)* When I see them disunited, or on the eve of a rupture in conse- quence of this alarming proclamation, truths, ivhich at otheY times should be kept in silence for the preservation of harmony, must now be brought to public notice, 1 am at a loss what to say. By such a declaration the Bishop acknowledges that his pamphlet is not calculated to preserve harmony, otherwise he would have been silent; or his words are a riddle which must be unravelled by a greater CEdipus than Mr. O'Leary.
However, as the unhappy disturbances in the South of Ireland have afforded a pretext for the dissolution of this harmonv which reigned amongst the natives of this kingdom a few years before ; and as the Catholics in general, as well as Mr. O'Leary in particular, have been misrepresented, the following defence, in which the insurrections are mentioned, is humbly submitted to the judgment of the public. If Mr. O'Leary speaks of himself, it is because he is personally at- tacked. Every man who is put on his defence, must do the same. In the course of his defence he will hold up the historical mirror.
If it reflects any specks on the faces of some who may be- hold it, let them attribute their deformity to themselves. Truths shall guide my pen, and the historian must be impartial.
If I enter more deeply into the subject than I first in- tended, it is in order to shew by every proof which moral evidence can afford, that the Catholics of this kingdom could not form any design against either church or state, as has been maliciously insinuated in several pamphlets. The Bishop of Cloyne has given the profile ; I shall draw the face in full.
* Mr. CLeary hopes that none will cavil at these words, as if uttered by a latitudi- narian. He is a steadfast Catholic; but is no more inclined to quarrel with any person on account of his religion, than to quarrel with him en account of the colour of his clothes.
MR. W LEAHY'S DEFENCE.
The unprovoked attack made on my character was for a long time a mystery to others as well as to myself. The pe- rusal of several pamphlets at length enabled me to unfold it. The murmurs of the lower orders against proctors and tithe- canters, induced the authors of several publications (some of them were beneficed clergymen) to wish for some other mode of supporting the clergy, less oppressive to the poor than the collection of tithes attended with continual litiga- tions, but equally advantageous to the clerical profession, and more honourable, as it would remove every occasion of dispute between pastors and their parishioners. This plan, however countenanced by the ablest men in England, and by many sensible men of the established church in Ireland, made Theophilus mad, and the Bishop of Cloyne somewhat angry. The alarm bell was rung by Theophilus, and the presses began to teem with the Bishop's pamphlets. Some batteries were to be erected to defend the usual mode of col- lecting tithes. And on the walls of the church was planted the rusty cannon of popery to fire, and give notice of the approach of the enemy. It was laid down as a maxim, that in the Catholic church the clergy enforce the payment of tithes jura divino ;* and that the clergy of the church of Rome would resume the tithes with the assistance of foreign powers. This master-piece of generalship (if I may use a word which I cannot find in Johnson's Dictionary) succeeded. What Lord Clarendon said of the reign of Charles the First, was verified in eighty-seven. The Papists were the most
* See Theophilus,
230 llllSCtiLLANfiOUS TRACTS.
common place, and the butt against which all the arrows were directed. Ghilinis's letter and the Bishop's consecra- tion oath were roused from their dusty pillows, and stripped of their long Roman dress were introduced into every circle in an English garb. The arrival of those foreigners alarmed several on their first appearance, as much (and with as much reason) as the tidings of the arrival of eight hundred Jesuits mounted on dromedaries, alarmed the citizens of Lon- don in the reign of Charles the Second, though the mes- senger who frightened others knew that he was secure from the danger.
It happened that in order to reclaim by reason people who had shaken off the yoke of authority, I told the white- boys that if they had grievances to complain of, the legisla- ture alone was competent to redress them ; informing them, at the same time, that no power on earth would permit any set of men to overturn established laws by private autho- rity.* The word grievances alarmed the Bishop,vfor reasons unknown to me, but best known to himself. This was the the signal of war, as if my conduct and writings had been incentives to sedition. Every advantage was taken of me. But it is now time to repel force by force, and to recover the ground of which my aggressors have taken possession during my careless inactivity.
Pray, then, my Lord Bishop of Cloyae, and you Theo- philus,\vhose mouth, like that of Palinurus, is better qualified for blowing that trumpet which you have thrust into mine, tuba ciere viros martemque accendere cantu. On what ground can you bring the charge against Mr. O'Leary ? Can you oround it on my writings ? You have garbled them ; you have mangled them; you had models to copy after. And imitation is no bad help. A man attempted once to denv the resurrection by the same texts that establish the belief of it. He succeeded by adding a monosyllable, and placing a point of interrogation in the room of a full stop, and transposing a word. Text runs thus i—Surrexit. JVon est hie. He is risen. He is not here. The literary magician got rid of the difficulty by punctuating and trans- posing the. words in the following manner: — Surrexit ne?
* The letff rs may he seen in the Appendix,
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 231
Noil. Est hie. Is he risen ? No. He is here. There is ingenuity. And by his skill in mangling phrases the Bishop of Cloyne changes the way of the cross is the road to the crown, into sedition
When I come to the vindication of my writings, I shall show more of the Bishop's ingenuity in scattering limbs, Which I shall restore to their proper places. Doctor Wood- ward and I live in the same country. Can he stand forth, and arnign my conduct ? •
The disturbances took their rise in the diocese of Cloyne, about the month of September, 1785. I never had been in that diocese but twice on a visit to Mr. Roche of Trabuigan, who, about two years before the disturbances, had retired to Naples for the benefit of his health. I had no acquaintances in the diocese of Cloyne, except the Protestant and Catholic gentlemen of consequence. And however great my esteem for> and the confidence I repose in them, I am not so di- vested of common sense as to put myself in their power ; it Would be the means of losing their esteem. — Want of pru- dence, sayb Lord Littleton, is often times want of virtue. And I would forfeit my claim of both, if I urged a deluded multitude to their destruction by encouraging them to fly in the face of the established laws, and to deprive any per- son of the property secured to him by the state. For whom does the Bishop of Cloyne take me then, when, in his Post- script, interlarded with the garbled passages of my addresses, he throws out insinuations so injurious to my character, and attempts to palliate and extenuate those insinuations under the thin gause of a saivo. I do not say that the reverend author intends to sow sedition, but if such were his design ?.* will any man of sense be satisfied with the excuse of a mo- nosyllable but or iff I am not acquainted with the lower classes in his diocese, though they know me from cha- racter, as a man more inclined to lead them into the path of subordination and peace, than to goad them to mad- ness.
I have renounced every claim to tithes by sacred vows.
* Bishop of Cloyne's Pamphlet, p. 103. H H
232
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS,
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne then may rest satisfied that I never intended to sow sedition from a rapacious view to his ecclesiastical revenues, and that I can frankly say with par- son Adams to his brother Trulliber, in Fielding's Joseph Andrews, Nihil habeo cum porcis. I have no call to your tithe pigs.
The Bishop and the public must then acknowledge, that I was in no manner whatever interested in tithes, much less in fomenting riots and disorders. But common sense and pru- dence must acknowledge, that a person in my situation could not with propriety stand by as an indifferent spectator of tu- mults and disorders which threatened the peace of the com- munity, and which I well foresaw would be construed by ma- levolence into a Popish confederacy against the state, as Theophilus has since construed it. Neither does the Bishop of Cloyne contradict him in the short and partial account he has given in his pamphlet of risings which he attributes to a Popish mob.
From one parish in the diocese of Cloyne, the disturbances began to spread to another, and as bad example seldom ends where it first began, the contagion at last reached the bor- ders of the diocese of Cork ; and as a gangrene that eats its way from the extremities of the body to the very vitals. — Captain Right's proclamations made their way to the very heart of the city, about five months after they had been pub- lished in the diocese of Cloyne. On a Sunday morning a seditious notice was posted (and breathing nothing but a downright disrespect to the clergy) on the gate of the parish chapel, inviting such as found themselves oppressed by pam- pered Theologians, whose God ivas their belly, and whose re- ligion iv as a hogshead of wine, (the very words of the notice) to meet at an appointed hour in order to regulate their pit- tance according to the Gospel rule. That very day I was going on business to the country, when to my surprise I met with numbers of common people reading a similar notice posted up against the gate of my own chapel. Was it med- dling with the politics of the Protestant country, as the Bishop of Cloyne's favourite Theophilus upbraids me, to make war upon disorder and licentiousness f Or is it because the
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 233
Bishop of Cloyne was silent and passive during the tumults which had changed his diocese into a scene of disorder and anarchy, that I should be silenced by the clamour of sedition sounding the trumpet at the threshold of my chapel? I de- ferred my excursion, and at every congregation from eight to one o'clock, I enlarged upon the scandal and impropriety of such proceedings, pointed out to the common people the danger to which they exposed themselves, the confusion in which they were involving the community ; and made use of the most persuasive arguments in my power to re- claim them to their duty. If I deserved to be compared to any illustrious character, it is not to Mark Anthony working upon the passions of the multitude, in order to arm against Brutus and his confederates, that the Bishop of Cloyne should have compared me. If he intended a compliment, and wished to temp' my vanity, of becoming a boaster, he should have compared me rather to Junius Biesus appeasing the Pannonian legions, who had been urged to revolt against their officers by a common soldier called Persennius, the Captain Right of his days.
I thought it my duty both as a loyal subject, a clergy- man, and a member of civil society, to contribute to the preservation of public order, and to guard deluded multi. tudes against destruction, to the utmost of my power.
The honour and interest of the Catholic body, often mis- represented, and become the theme of scurrilous or fanatical writers, were further incentives to my zeal. I recollected the unmerited abuse given for a long time in the papers to the Catholics, because seventeen house-keepers in Dublin had unguardedly signed a requisition to the High Sheriff for the purpose of convening an aggregate meeting relative to a par- liamentary reform ; though I am confident the seventeen knew as little about the impropriety of their signing that re- quisition, and foresaw as little the offence it would give, as the High Sheriff himself foresaw that he would be attacked by the Court of King's Bench. And as to the Catholics, in their disqualified situation, they could not with either pru- dence or propriety, follow any other line but that of a strict neutrality in a political question, on which neither the friends nor opponents of a parliamentary reform would acknowledge
234 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
them competent to determine. I heard moreover in my very recent recollection, the false alarm rung all over Ireland and Great Britain, on the occasion of Mr. O'Connor, whose lineal descent from Roderick O'Connor, the last Monarch of the Milesian race, in the reign of Henry the Second, was pub- lished in the papers : the formidable forces of that claimant to the royalties of his ancestors, forces which a member in the House of Commons affirmed to amount to a thousand, but which, soon after, in the English papers, were increased to eighteen thou sand, well disciplined men— another mem- ber's declaration in the Senate, that the Protestant interest was now at stake, and that he would stand forth its champion ; and the consequent challenge made on the Minister ot State to know if government had marched the army against King O'Connor. When I recollected a private gentleman, at the head of few servants, armed with spades and clubs, keeping possession of a litigated spot of land, confirmed to him after- wards by a decree of the Courts of Justice ; when I recol- lected this gentleman enlarged into a mighty monarch, through the magnifying glass of misrepresentation, 1 had every room to apprehend that the enemies of the Ca- tholics would misrepresent them to government, according to their usual custom, and that the quarrel between the peasant and the proctor for a basket of potatos, would be misconstrued into a struggle between the king and the subject, for the jewels of the crown. The nobility and gentry of Ireland are now convinced that my conjectures and apprehensions were groundless, when they read the slanders of Theophilus, and the pamphlet published by Doctor Woodward.
If I were allowed the liberty of using a metaphor, wild and extravagant indeed as to the manner of the expression, but natural enough as far as it may convey my mean- ing, I could say, that my apprehensions on similar oc- casions were not the fruit of fancy. They are the na- tural growth of the county of Cork, and vegetate in that soil. In that county Machiavel's maxim, divide and govern, has been followed for many years, and the plan for changing the pretended dangers of Popery into so many steps of the political ladder whereby to
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 235
ascend to power and consequence, had been for many- years invariably pursued. The Catholics, excluded from the senate and councils of the nation, could not be known to every English nobleman who came here to manage the reins of administration, during a temporary residence. Chance may bring him acquainted with some individuals, but he must be a stranger to the real state and principles of the body at large. The Catholics, then, could not be known to government but in the colours in which those persons painted them. And from such political limners, a just resemblance between the picture and the original, could not be expected.
Hence, in the county of Cork, scarce could Catholics breathe until the administration of the Earl of Halifax and Lord Townsend, who, upon a closer investigation into their case, removed the film with which the misrepre- sentations of interested men had overspread the eyes of the former rulers. I had then just grounds to appre- hend that the disorders of a motley group of insurgents would be made out a Popish confederacy; and I know that the silence of a man who stood for his country, in the sight, 1 may say of the enemy, and who has as much influence as any individual in his station, would o«ive a colourable sanction to the accusation. Nor (however plain and simple in other respects) was I so unexperi- enced in life, or ignorant of the events which had hap- pened in this kingdom, as to put myself in the power of my enemies, or expose myself to the rigour of the law, by a seditious conduct. I learned wisdom from the folly of others ; and if I were inclined to be seditious, I knew that it was not my interest to give my incli- nations their exertion or energy. In foreign countries 1 had read much about the White-boys in Ireland, and on my arrival in the kingdom, I collected every in- formation in my power, in order to be acquainted with the history of my country.
The first paper I read after landing in Cork, was the dying speech of Buck Sheehy and others, who had been executed for Whiteboyism at Cloheen. In their speech they declared that their lives were offered them on condi- tion that they would swear asrainst several Catholic o-en-
23& MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
tlemen as confederates and abettors of Whiteboys. And who would not pass for a Whiteboy at that time, when one if the most inoffensive men on earth, Doctor M'Kenna, the p sent Titular Bishop of Cloyne, was escorted under a gti ORg guard, on a pretended suspicion of an insurgent. I read of Nicholas Sheehy's fate, with which the illiberal Theophilus threatens me, and learned that a Catholic cler- gyman in all places, but especially here, should confine him- self to the line of his duty, by enforcing morality and sub- ordination to the laws. That unfortunate man was tried be- fore the Court of King's Bench, for Whiteboyism, and was acquitted. Sheehy, whose blood his enemies thirsted for, is at last indicted for the murder of one Bridges, a man of no good character, whose dead body could not be found, but whose living body (if report be true, was afterwards seen in Newfoundland. The dead bodies of rogues who had been murdered in one kingdom, had been afterwards seen living bodies in another, as so many enchanted dragons, watching the Hesperian Gardens of the temple of Venus, alias bullies to a brothel. That this was Bridges's case I cannot affirm, but for the rest, the history of the kingdom is my voucher.* Sheehy, on hearing that a proclamation was issued against, and a reward offered for apprehending him, wrote to the Secretary of the Chief Governor, that to spare Government the expense, he would give himself up, on condition that he would not be tried in Clonmel, where he said his enemies were too powerful. A promise founded on justice was made, though it was never performed. He was sent to take his trial at Clonmel, where he was found guilty upon the evi- dence of the same identical witnesses whose testimony had been rejected before by the Court of King's Bench, viz. a naughty boy, a lewd woman, and an impeached thief, taken out of Clonmel jail. Hence Sheehy's jury is become as pro- verbial in Ireland, as the ancient justiciaries of Donfront, in Normandy, who used to hang regularly at the hour of one, every prisoner who had been tried at twelve.
Allez a Donfront, juste ville de malheur.
Ou bou est accuse a midi, et pendu a une beure.
Under the impressions which such singular events must make on the mind, and in the delicacy of the clerical si tua-
* See the continuation of Curry's Memoirs of the Civil Wars of Ireland.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACT&. 237
lion, who could suspect that any Catholic clergymen would blow the trumpet of sedition in the ears of a deluded p^a- sintry? Or has the Bishop, like Socrates, a sinn'ar spirit to give his information which no mortal besides himself can pretend to ? But reserving the discussion of such an accu- sation for its proper place, 1 must proceed in the course of my narrative.
The associations were now extending, and a notice posted up against the gates of the parish churches and chapels was a kind of standard to which all parties, with- out distinction of religion, flocked, and entered into a general confederacy. For the public are not to form their judgment of the disturbances from the mad decla- mation of a Theophilus, nor the imperfect one given by the Bishop of Cloyne. The first is a bare-faced slanderer. The Bishop gives the profile of the picture, in entirely shadowing the other side of the face, by makinp- out the insurgents a popish mob, connived at by some Protes- tants, without mentioning the effectual and active con- currences of any. The unprovoked and unmerited at- tack made on Mr. O'Leary, by the right reverend prelate and his less reverend confederate, has forced the pencil into his hand, and now compels him to draw the pic- ture with a full face. The notice alluded to is to the following purport. « You are hereby cautioned not to pay ' ministers' tithes, only in the following manner, viz. potatos '4s. per acre; wheat and barley Is. 6V. per acre; oats and * meadows Is. per acre. Roman Catholic clergy to receive 'for marriage 5s.; for baptism 1*. 6d.; for anointing and ' visiting the sick Is. ; for mass Is. : for confession 6c/. You ' are hereby warned not to pay parish priests' clerks money, 'nor any other dues concerning marriages. Be all sure not 'to go to any expenses at your confession terms, but let ' them partake of your own fare. '
This notice which I censured, as may be seen in my letters, seemed moderate however to many acquainted with the distresses of the poor. In vain has the Bishop of Cloyne attempted to justify proctors, tithe-canters, tithe-jobbers, &c. by declaring them to be agents to the clergy, equally necessary as receivers to lay-gentlemen. The general voice
238 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
is against them. Moreover, the comparison does not hold. The gentleman's agent only collects the rent at the expense of his employer; the tenants pay the de- termined sum agreed on by the lease, and if his farm should produce a hundred fold every year, he pays nei- ther more nor less until his lease expires. But these eccle- siastical agents, of whom the Bishop becomes the apologist, are so many locusts, that eat up the peasant's green herb- age without feeding the wind that wafts them. Several instances could be procured to prove that they gain more than their employers, whilst they distress the cottager. When the potato-stalks begin to shoot to a certain dis- tance above the surface of the earth, the sharp-eyed lynx surveys it in the name of God and of our holy mother the church. On the spot where the stalks crowd toge- ther thick and threefold, in order to discriminate the ranks and to avoid confusion, the proctor's hand rears a land- mark, Doctor Woodward thinks it a duty of a bad pastor to appoint agents well qualified for preserving order. The hun- gry peasant whose teeth water for the vegetable he had sown and reared up from its infant state, wishes to try its quality ; but if he approaches within a certain distance of the fatal land- mark, he is sure to share the fate of the benighted mariner, who approaches those hostile shores, when allured by the false lights held out to decoy him to the rock, on which he is to be shipwrecked. The bishop's court is the strand on which the proctor gathers the spoils, it is not the fault of the institu- tion, nor the gentlemen who preside in the courts ; but it is the misfortune of tire peasant, who has neither means nor skill to cope with those agents, who are adepts in their professions. From many instances of the abuse made of the authority of those courts by crafty agents, I shall select one. In the province where Doctor Woodward and I reside, and now the theatre of pamphlets and politics, there lived a poor peasant; his poverty had not deprived him of those qualities which constituted a husband and a father ; to him a child was born, who did not live long enough to enjoy his father's estate, he died; and for want of a shilling to purchase the hallowed ground wherein to deposite the defunct heir of an opulent fortune, the father rolled him up in a bundle of straw
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 239
and smuggled him into the church-yard in the dead of night- Happy ! thrice happy ! had he met on that fatal night with a custom-house officer. He would have escaped with the con- traband goods. But alas ! his destiny was to meet with one of those officers who have recourse to what the moderator calls the Court Christian. A decree (whether real or fictitious I cannot tell) from the Bishop's-court was produced by the carrion-hunter and another, who were hurrying away the pea- sant, fainting after a violent resistance. Luckily he was met by an intimate friend of mine, who released him by paying the charnel house fees.
These anecdotes I relate to shew that, notwithstanding Doctor Woodward's zeal in defence of what he writes in fa- vour of ecclesiastical agents, they are oppressive, and impose both on Bishops'-courts and their employers. I do not say, that they do it with their consent : far be it from me. It was against the prophet's will his servant received presents from Naaman the Assyrian officer: and it is against the clergy's consent that their agents are vexatious to the poor. But there is this difference be- tween the Bishop and the prophet : ' the latter struck his
* agent with the leprosy ; the Bishop of Cloyne spins out a
* chapter of his pamphlet to shew that his agents are imma- *culate.'> I shall then join the moderator in his litany, from such agents good Lord deliver us ! In parishes where the rectors took the tithes into their own hands, it is acknow- ledged that the clergyman has received much more than ever he did through the mediation of such agents, besides the additional comfort of seeing peace, harmony and con- fidence restored to his district. It is not my business to make calculations, nor is it a part of my duty to run over parishes, in order to know how far a wretched peasant may be relieved by the removal of a relentless agent, who, like a dense cloud, intercepts the rays of benignity, which would certainly cheer him by a more immediate communication with a clergyman, whose ministry is peace, and whose duty is charity. I only glance at such matters as far as they are interwoven with a subject which it is my duty to illustrate, in order to vindicate both the Catholic body and myself from the false and groundless imputation of attempting the over-
i i
210 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
throw of the established religion, by encroaching upon the rights of its clergy.
The supineness with which the Bishop of Cloyne upbraids the Protestant gentlemen, shews that the lower classes were truly miserable, and that their table of rates was only proportioned to their circumstances. That they are truly miserable all parties must agree. This supineness also shews that the Protestant nobility and gentry were under no apprehension of the constitution, either in church or state. Neither was the Bishop of Cloyne ; otherwise he, who is one of the pilots, would not have slept for the space of fifteen months at the helm, if he really fore- saw that the ship was in danger of going to the bottom : though he now alarms three kingdoms with the danger to the established church from Catholics and dissenters, jndling down and rising up. But the Catholic nobility and gentry foresaw, from the reasons I have already alleged, that they would be misrepresented to Government, and that the old game of Popish plots and confederacies would be renewed. They had moreover their properties to de- fend, and their character to support : as men and sub- jects they were as much interested as others in the pre- servation of the peace of society. And the history of a country where their ancestors swayed for ages the sceptre of authority, informed them that, in the successive revolutions occasioned either by brave and fortunate aspirers, or by timid, ductile, and unfortunate kings, the Catholics have been in- variably the losers. The Bishop of Cloyne then must be a stranger to the passions of the heart, of which interest has so strong a hold ; or unacquainted with the history of the king- dom ; or under a very strong bias ; or prepossessed with a strange notion of their stupidity — if he supposes they had any thing to expect by the commotions of a rabble. If Go- vernment, however, had been induced to believe that tehy had such prospects in view, and mistaken the shadow for the reality, the Catholics would have become equally obnoxious. And what efforts are now making to persuade Government that phantoms are realities, let the public judge from the pamphlets dispersed all over the three kingdoms. The fox in the fable did well to take to his heels when the lion issued a proclamation, ordering all the horned beasts to quit the
/
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 241
forest. And although no branches sprouted from his head, yet his remark was very wise, when he said, What if his ma- jesty thought I had horns. It was then prudent in the Ca- tholic gentlemen to have taken the most effectual steps to remove every suspicion to which their misrepresenters are so industrious in laying them open. They were the first to take the alarm : they transmitted an address to Government through the Secretary of State. On hearing that the common people complained in a few places of the exactions and rigorous conduct of their parochial clergy, they were the first to interfere in writing to the Catholic prelates of the province, pressing them in the most earnest manner to inquire into the conduct of their clergy, and to remove, by every means their wisdom could suggest, any cause of complaint.and every occasion of obloquy. The application could not be made to more proper per- sons than to prelates, whose lives are so many living and animated sermons ; some of them, by their birth, titles, and fortunes, would be this instant seated in the House of Peers, deliberating with che nobles of the land, on these measures on which the fate of a nation must depend, if they could leave their creed at its threshold. Others are, by their knowledge and wisdom, qualified for directing the councils of kings. And the piety and exemplary lives of them all would make them objects of veneration in any age, or in any nation. A letter addressed to these venerable and illus- trious prelates, from the Catholic gentlemen, was attended to with the same condescension, as if it were the man- date of a superior. They assembled, deliberated, and enquired into the conduct of their clergy ; when in four or five parishes, they discovered that the pastors and flocks could not agree, either from inflexibility in the former, who perhaps thought themselves injured by submitting to regulations dictated by their inferiors, or from the obstinacy of the latter, who would abide by no regulating standard for the support of their pastors, but such as they themselves thought fit to determine : or from a personal dislike founded perhaps upon the recollection of severe usage, prompted more by ardent and good-natured zeal, than by this sage discretion, which attains its end by
242 MISCFXLANEOUS TRACTS.
more lenient means. Let the motives of discontent be what they may, without having recourse to canonical quibbles, which must ever be superceded when the peace of society interferes, the wise prelates removed the Pastors, and sub- stituted others in their room. A more painful sacrifice could not have been made; nor could a more evident proof be adduced to shew the falseness of the infamous charge, that the ill usage received by the Catholic Pastors from their flocks, was but a sham battle, like that of the Doctor, who, when he beat his wife, said that he beat half himself A silly simile, and worthy of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's able writer, Theophilus. Not satisfied with giving this proof of their most ardent desire for the restoration of peace and good order, the prelates gave the most public and signal proofs of a disinterestedness worthy the most apostolical times. After declaring that a small stipend was requisite for the support of their clergy, they enjoin that this stipend be not exacted with rigour; and that even if it be refused, they are not to refuse their spiritual assistance, but to shew upon all occasions, that zeal, disinterestedness, and charity en- forced by the Gospel, for the sake of which they had made an anticipated sacrifice of all the prospects of this life, in their early days, at the foot of the altar. No more could liave been said ; no more could have been done. Such of their clergy as had not been forced by violence from their parishes, declared from their altars, that it was for the sanctification of their own souls and those of their flocks, not for the sake of any worldly emolument, that they took orders; that they required nothing of them but what they themselves were willing to give, and that no mercenary views would ever hinder them from going day or night to their assistance, whilst they had strength to perform their functions. All were unanimous in crying out with the Prophet, if it be on my account that this storm is raised, cast me overboard. Are these the prelates whom the Bishop of Cloyne ex- poses to the detestation of such as cannot explain their consecration oath, which he has translated, in his sixth edition, into English for the instruction of the ignorant ? For I am to suppose, he presumes that the Peers and Com- mons of Ireland know Latin,
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 243
Let the zeal, activity, and disinterestedness of those pre- lates be compared with the passive silence of the Bishop of Cloyne for the space of fifteen months. And let the public determine to whom the community is most indebted, for en- deavouring to restore peace and order to a distracted pro- vince.
Where are now those agitating Friars and Romish Mis- sionaries sent here to sow sedition ; and of whom Doctor Woodward speaks in his Postscript ? I challenge him in the face of the kingdom to produce either agitating Friar, or Ro- mish Missionary, or parish Priest, sent here to sow sedition, or who has sown sedition. The Bishop of Cloyne cannot produce one : he must then prove a negative, which, in his Postscript in extenuation of Theophilus's slanders, he ac- knowledges hard to be proved. The Bishop perceiving that negatives are no proofs, has a recourse to casual affirmations, by saying, perhaps Theophilus alludes to Mr. O'Leary's Letters, &c. Here the attack is personal on Mr. O'Leary, the Friar with a barbarous sirname, whose letters are most artfully contrived to sow sedition. Such a heavy charge re- quires a full investigation, and must plead my apology with my readers for proceeding farther in my defence. Previous to the arrival of the Catholic prelates in Cork, we were con- tinually alarmed with the insurrections in the diocese of Cloyne. They spread gradually, and, as I remarked before. Captain Right's proclamations were at last posted up against the gates of the chapels of that city. Tithes, proctors, and priesVs dues, were alleged as causes of complaint, and be- came the subject of general conversation.
The common people who, in times of persecution used to follow their clergy into recesses of forests, to hear their prayers and instructions, nailed up chapels in some places against their pastors in the very blaze of toleration. The disorders which would arise from such proceedings were easily foreseen ; and it was requisite that some persons should step forth to stem the torrent. Doctor Mann, the Protestant Bishop of Cork, was absent for the benefit of his health : the Catholic Bishop of the same diocese, the present Lord Dun- boy ne, had been under the necessity of going to Dublin on
244 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
the death of the young Lord Dunboyne, his nephew, before the disturbances broke out in the diocese of Cork. The ti- tular Bishop of Cloyne, Doctor M'Kenna, was sinking under the weight of years, and ignorant of what happened in his district. And Doctor Woodward, who had the administra- tion of the two dioceses, was taken up with rummaging pon- tificals and other old books, in order to collect materials for his pamphlet, whilst the Catholic peasantry were flocking to his churches, and the lower orders of the Protestants going on Sundays to meet the Catholic congregations in his dio- cese, in order to swear the people, and give solidity to the confederacy in support of the regulations of Captain Right ; the head pastor being either absent or infirm, or inactive, and the flocks daily maddening, who was to be applied to ? Or will the Bishop of Cloyne controvert the maxim, that in dan- ger every person is a soldier. The Catholic gentlemen, in- stead of thinking of a confederacy against either church or state, with the assistance of a foreign power, which so often haunts the Bishop's imagination, dreaded that it was rather a confederacy against themselves, by affording such politi- cians as are hostile to their interest, an opportunity of misre- presenting them to Government. In consequence, after wri- ting to Lord Dunboyne, pressing his return as soon as con- veniently possible, they deputed five or six gentlemen to the Catholic Bishop of Cloyne, earnestly requesting of him to enquire into the complaints alleged by some parishes in his diocese, to use his efforts with the people of his persuasion, in order to reclaim them to their duty, and to remove every pretext for aspersing the Catholic body, as far as his influence could extend.
Unable from age and infirmity to go in person, he re- quested of me to take an excursion into the discontented parishes. 1 set off in order to allay the tumults in the dio- cese of Cloyne, the first in the county where they broke out. Here an extraordinary sight was exhibited. The common people deluded into a belief that by going to Church for a few Sundays they would be less liable to punishment, if not entirely exempt from it ; and authorised to carry arms in conjunction with the lower classes of Protestants, to whom
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 245
Proctors, Tithe-jobbers, and the Tithes themselves had be- come equally obnoxious, under this delusion they flocked in several places to the Churches, and as they had not David's Psalms in metre, they chose the old ballad of Patrick's Day in the Morning, for an Anthem, and got a piper to play it as a voluntary on his iavourke organ, as a preparation for divine service, in approaching the house of worship. The marriage of Figaro represented on the French Stage did not raise more humour, nor attract more spectators, than did their extraordinary marriage of the Paddereen and the common Prayer-book, in the diocese of Cloyne. Irish wives are remarkably attached to their husbands, and follow them wherever they go. Upon this occasion they gave signal proofs of the constancy of their attachment. Joan followed Darby, and Judy followed Paddy to Church, where the gay and unthinking were highly diverted with the novel spectacle of hands thrust into the Baptismal font, in order to sprinkle about the holy water, and beads drawn out near the Communion-table to reckon the Ave Marias, To the gay and unthinking it was like an after-piece which creates humour, in order to relieve the mind from the impressions of terror and pity, which it had received during the representation of some serious drama. To me it appeared as a prelude to a tragedy. — It struck the serious and sensible gentlemen of both religions in the same light.
I was happy in an extensive acquaintance, and still more happy that the Protestant gentlemen were convinced of the uprightness of my intentions. My situation was delicate, and without their concurrence my endeavours would have proved abortive.
They had previous notice of my arrival in their respective districts through which 1 intended to pass ; and I was happy in the full assurance of their co-operation. On a Sunday I arrived in a parish of Doctor Woodward's diocese. — The parish Chapel was quite deserted. The Priest was * aban« *doned by hi* flock,' and the deluded multitude, lulled into a false security, had crowded to the Protestant Church as to an asylum of impunity. — Thus in former times when the privilege of the sanctuary was pleaded, malefactors flocked to the temples as a shelter against the pursuits of violated
246 MISCELLANEOUS TRACT*.
justice. I considered a crowd of peasants actuated by re* sentment, brooding over some wild scheme, preparing for nightly excursions ; yet saying their beads up near the communion-table, I considered them as the abomination of desolation in the holy place, as mentioned by the prophet Daniel. In every bead I figured to myself the warhoop of a Mexican, ready to sound the nocturnal charge, or the massy club of an Indian, soon to be . ornamented with a Proctor's scalp.
I must do this justice to the Protestant clergy, in whose churches this religious farce was carried on, that they did not like such proceeding. They in reality could have said with the Psalmist, you have multiplied the people ; but you have not encreased our joy. Multiplicasti gentem sed non magnificasti Icetitiam. But what could they have done ? They had no directions from Doctor Wood ward to shut the doors of the churches against people who had shaken ofFevery subordination to their own pastors. But that was the time for the Bishop himself to appear in my poor opinion, 4 and ' which was however the opinion of every rational man, 8 with whom I have conversed on the subject,' and which will be the opinion of every rational man who shall read this narrative, he should have published a pastoral letter upon the occasion, and recommended to his clergy not to permit their houses of worship to be changed into the upper galleries, crowded with a mobility, assembled for the pur- pose of making a farce of religion.
Had I been in his situation at the time, instead of tali auxilio nee defensoribus istis, I would have thought it no dis- honour to stand at the door of the church, on the right hand of Mr. O'Leary, and to harangue a deluded multitude in the following manner :
4 My good people,
I I am a Protestant Bishop, and you (as it appears) are * Roman Catholics. It would be my glory, my comfort, and 4 my joy to bring all strayed sheep into my fold, to enlighten 4 them with the rays of the Gospel, to dispel the clouds of 4 error, and to enlarge the kingdom of truth. It is my wish, ; and my sincere wish — it is the wish of every honest man
Miscellaneous tracts. 247
who thinks himself in the right way, to wish the same happiness to his fellow- creature. It was the wish of St. Paul that his hearers were not almost Christians, but al- together Christians. And it is my wish that you were not only almost Protestants of the High-church, but altoge- ther Protestants of the High-church. It is the wish of charity, and if charity were banished from the hearts of all other mortals, it should find its last retreat in the heart of a Bishop. Were I then convinced of the sincerity of your motives^ I would be not only the first to unlock the gates of this Church, in order to give you admittance, but I would be the first to go to meet you at a distance. But as a bad motive pollutes the best of actions, and as it is not from conviction of truth, nor a desire to as- pire to a higher degree of perfection, that you crowd about my house of worship, but from a sinister design to seek impunity for licentiousness; and under the cloak of a religion, which you do not believe, to conceal the out- rages you are intent on committing; I cannot, in con- sequence, profane the house of God by the admission of persons who, perhaps to-morrow night, will be disturb- ing the peace of the public, and eluding laws in the dark, which, in all likelihood, will hereafter punish them in the open day : and remind them when too late of the admonition which I now give from the best of intentions. It is not the chime of my bells, but the sound of Captain Right's horn, that has kindled in your breasts this name of extraordinary devotion, which, perhaps hereafter, may be extinguished with your blood. VVill you have me change the house of God into a barrack of sedition ? I see in that crowd an old man, with a pair of beads in his hands. My good man, where are you bringing your beads ? Do you intend to expose yourself and me, re- ligion and its temples, to the derision of the public ? If you come, come from conviction, and leave your beads at home, or bestow them to another. It reminds me of a history that 1 read in the Scriptures. Assyrian colonists were transplanted to Samaria ; they worshipped their idols and the God of Israel by turns in the same temple.
* It is not then a house of worship, but a good life, that will
* sanctify you. Instil this truth in the minds of the young
K K
248 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
people iii your neighbourhood, and caution them against the practices of those who may engage them in outrages. If you are not submissive to your own pastors, but ob- stinate to their advice, what good can I expect from you ? You are, I believe, now too old to learn, and the gene- rality of you all, are not much inclined to alter your creeds. I give you then the advice suggested by an amia- ble Protestant prelate, my brother Bishop of Clonfert, in his letter on Sunday Schools. / cannot expect to make good Protestants of you, therefore I advise you to be good Catholics. If you have any complaints against your own clergy, your Bishops will redress them ; but I cannot, nor will I permit you to come to my churches to erect the standard of sedition, when f have every room to believe that you have no other motive in view. Nor can your- selves reap any benefit from a conduct which, in the eyes of God, is a prevarication. That God who unfolds the recesses of the soul ; who rejects a spotted victim ; and ac- cepts of no sacrifice, but such as A sincere, honest, and pure heart offers upon his altars. Nor would my churches grant you any security against the rigour of the laws. The hand of justice stretches into the inmost part of the sanctuary. In vain did Joah, a mighty man, grasp the comer of the altar: he was slain by the sword of justice. And much more, in vain would you seek for impunity in my house of worship, for the sanctuary itself is no sanc- tion or shelter for crimes. Follow the advice of Mr. O'Leary, who is here on my left hand, as you followed his advice when you imagined that you had more to expect, and were convinced that you had less to lose.
4 And you, my dearly beloved brethren, of^ my own com- munion, how am 1 to address you ! I address you with that confidence which my zeal for the peace of society, the pre- servation of good order, and the purity of good morals should inspire. Recollect the maxim of the heathen Sage ; a maxim to which the blessed St. Paul has given his sanc- tion, evil communications corrupt good morals. These poor people are wild olive branches going to ingraft themselves on the stock of the Protestant religion in appearance. But alas ! as they intend to use it only as a cloak for temporary outrages, they will be soon disjoined without taking sum-
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 219
' cient time to be cicurated and mellowed by the sap or vital
* juice which circulates from the stock through the new in-
* serted branches. You may judge of their inventions by 4 those of some of your own. Has my diocese ever exhi- ' bited such a spectacle as was seen in the parish of Clona- ' kilty last Sunday ? Protestants going to a Popish congre- ' gation to swear the people to Captain Right's regulations !
* Was it to become Catholics ? No, neither do these people
* intend to become Protestants : religious distinctions are of-
* ten lost in the idea of common oppression — I acknowledge
* it. And would to God they were for ever lost ! The vices ' and virtues of all men flow in the same channels. Their
* hearts are the same though their opinions be different ; and ' for those opinions to God alone they are accountable. I
* like to see all the subjects of every description in my diocese 1 well united. Such an union is the strength of the state, ' and should be the glory of a Prelate. But I foresee tnat
* those mutual visits will consolidate a confederacy which the ' sword of the laws will cut asunder, to the indiscriminate ' ruin of the associations. For the edge of that sword has 4 no eyes in it, and justice that handles it, is painted blind. ' You all complain of proctors, canters, and tithes. I shall
* do what lies in my power to remove every complaint you
* may have against the two first — no more can be expected. ' but as to tithes, they are established by law : the legislature
* alone can modify them, or substitute an equivalent in their
* room. Wait with patience for its decision ; and guard ' against proceedings which must hurt your temporal interest, ' and injure your consciences. Or, if any of you are already 4 engaged in the confederacy of disorder, break the engage-
* ment of iniquity, whose ties cannot bind the conscience.
* The peace of God be with you alV
A discourse from a person of Doctor Woodward's credit and authority, would have been of infinite consequence in the beginning. Or a pastoral letter, with an open dis- countenance of the interchange of religious visits would have been productive of the most salutary effects. Principis ob- sta sew medicina paratur, hold good in politics as well as in physic.
One pastoral letter or sermon in eighty-five, would have been worth a thousand pamphlets in eighty-seven, and few
250 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
persons are so well qualified for such a part of the pastoral charge as the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, had he been as intent upon the discharge of that office which Saint Paul enjoins on pastors, preach the ivord, be instant in season ; as his Lord- ship was intent on writing a pamphlet out of season.
I should never blame Doctor Woodward for writing a pamphlet in favour of tithes, which (if I am well informed,) bring him an income of eight or nine hundred a year. But he could have written his pamphlet without reviving old contro- versies, and bringing the Catholics and Dissenters on the stage. Much less should he have made a personal attack on Mr. O'Leary, whom he might have left unnoticed. But leaving the Bishop in full possession of his tithes, which to me are matters of no concern, I must proceed in my de- fence.
Convinced that the Protestant gentlemen who were ac- quainted with the uprightness of my intentions, were willing to co-operate with my endeavours, which had no object but the preservation of public tranquility, when divine service was over, we conferred together ; and presuming, with rea- son, that their resemblance of religious conformity, was but a mask which covered features, which when exposed to view would not exhibit an inviting aspect, we agreed to tear it off, and expose the wearers to their neighbours and themselves. I exhorted them to my utmost, in the most persuasive man- ner, adapted to the circumstances. The magistrates explained the laws with proper comments. The people recovered from their delusion, returned to their duty, fully determined to desist from those dangers and romantic enterprises, which have proved equally destructive to themselves and to the peace of the community, had not the law of God, which Mr. O'Leary explained, and the law of the land explained by the civil magistrate, checked the progress of their pernicious career.
Thus, with the concurrence of the Protestant gentlemen and magistrates, have I begun my mission in the diocese of Cloy ne.— Sedition, with which mad malevolence has upbraided me, fled as a routed enemy before me ; whilst peace, like the inseparable companion of a man framed by nature, and dis* ciplined by habit to cast its shadow on every side, trod in my steps and humoured my motions. It embraced me so close
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 251
that the meridian sun could not discover us asunder. I chal- lenge Doctor Woodward, or that infamous libeller, Theo- philus, to disprove this assertion.
In the interim the Catholic prelates met in Cork, and framed those regulations so worthy of Apostles, who de- spise the grandeurs of this fleeting world, and of whom the world is unworthy. — The words of Saint Paul.
Their arrival dispensed me with any further trouble; and after bringing on my narrative so far, will dispense me in future with speaking so much of myself. — A personal attack required a personal defence; and as my conduct has been minutely censured, I have been under the necessity of entering into a minute detail. My enemies, or rather the, friends of tithes, to which I have no call, have attempted to brand me with the stigma of sedition. Whoever reads my plain, unadorned narrative, without prejudice or partiality, will wipe away the mark of infamy.
Had the Bishop of Cloyne been as active in enforcing peace and subordination as I have done, the tire which kindled in his diocese, would not in all appearance have •extended the conflagration. — Nor is his Lordship to take any offence at my freedom for making this remark. I only remind him of the obligations enjoined on him at his con- secration, when he answered the following interroga- tory. ' Will you maintain and set forward, as much as 4 shall lie in you, quietness, love and peace among all men; * and such as be unquiet, disobedient, and criminous, within ' your diocese, correct and punish ? Answer. — I will do so 4 by the help of God.'*
God and his own conscience can inform him how far his 6ilence and inactivity have contributed to punish and cor- rect the unquiet, disobedient, and criminous within his diocese, in a manner conformable to his pastoral charge, and to that gospel whose author preached nothing but glory to God, and peace to men of good ivill on earth. And the public are now the most competent to judge, how far his pamphlet has contributed to maintain and set forward quiet- ness, love and peace among all men.
t The Consecration of Bishops in the Euglish Liturjy.
2S2 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
Had he as a Pastor gone forth among his flock, or as the Historian done justice to all parties, he would have disco- vered several of his own sheep amongst the speckled flock of insurgents, and not confine them solely to a Popish mob. Were not they Protestants who proposed the oaths in the congregation at Clonakilty ? Were not they Protestants who overrun the parishes of Affydown, Skibbereen, &c. ? Were not they Protestants who headed a party of four hun- dred White-boys near Butterant ? The most respectable criminals (if a criminal can be respectable) who was ar- raigned before the Judges on the Munster circuit, were Protestants. If from the county of Cork his Lordship had taken an excursion to the county of Kerry, he would find the truth of the assertion made by a gentleman who is both a clergyman and a magistrate, and who bears the happy character of uniting the qualities of the three orders in his person, the liberality of the gentleman, the charity of the clergyman, and the justice and uprightness of the magis- trate. * Many Protestants, (though I thank my God, mostly •of the lower order,) says that gentleman, were engaged in
♦ tendering oaths, in procession by day, and in outrages by 4 night, as any other description of men whatsoever. Nay,
* some of them were captains of these lawless corps, and 4 have been obliged to fly from the prosecution that awaited 4 them.'*
Who could have been more active in suppressing those tumults than my Lord Kenmare, a Roman Catholic noble- man, the tender father of the honest and industrious tenant, and the just avenger of the injured, without any partial regard to religious distinctions ? Could the public expect a more honourable testimony of his conduct? or can there be a greater proof of the contempt in which the liberal-minded of all persuasions hold feuds and discontents on the score of religious creeds, than the following address of thanks voted to him by the clergy of the established religion ?
* Short and Civil Answer to a Pamphlet, intitled, " An Address to the Nebility and «' Gentry of Ireland."
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 253
TO THE BIGHT HONOURABLE LORD VISCOUNT KENMARE, &c.
T/ie Address of the Clergy of the Established Church, as- sembled at Tralee.
My Lord,
* We have seen with indignation the progress of a delu-
* sion, which affected in its object to controul the laws of the
* realm. — From the spreading contagion, every good citizen
* felt an encreasing alarm j and the tranquility of the country ' was suspended in the fever of the times. — You, my Lord,
* came forward in the crisis. — You led the way in zeal and
* in vigilance ; and borrowing less from the station you pos-
* sess, than from the esteem you deserve, you interposed ; an
* example which had a title to success ; by such an exertion, ' and by the native energy of violated justice, we trust that
* the growing mischief has been effectually repelled. We
* owe you our acknowledgments, and in the hour of subsid-
* ing tumult, we thank you for the prospect of repose. To
* some minds there is a conscious satisfaction, which exceed
* every other measure of reward'; yet, my Lord, to the testi- ' mony of your own feelings, you will not refuse to join the i tribute of general applause.'
« MAURICE CROSBIE,
t
( Deaa •! Limerick, and Rector of Castle-Island, Ice/
Tralee, Oct. 4, 1786.
Can then any man in honour to conscience say with the unconscientious Thcophilus, that the insurgents are all Pa- pists ? Or is it not a falsehood bordering upon blasphemy,* for that slanderer to say, * that the parish Priests are in a
* confederacy with their flocks, in order to plunder the Pro-
* testant clergy of their tithes, and to appropriate to them- selves a compensation for absolution V These Pastors have suffered more than any in the shipwreck. — Was not a Father
* Tkese vrords aye n»t enmradictp d b» the. Bjshwv
2.04 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
Burke obliged to quit his parish, the same day that Archdeacon Tisdal quitted his? Were not balls fired at one Father Sheehy? Were not two clergymen, one a Secular, and the other Regular, robbed the same night of their wearing apparel? Another parish Priest, a venerable old man, who was never charged with any extortions, and who, in my own presence, challenged his congre- gation to bring forward any charge against him, was robbed of what little lie had to support him in his old age, even of his very bed. — Another on suspicion of having brought the army to his congregation to prevent the deluded people from swearing, was on the point of being torn limb by limb at his altar, had not a gentleman stepped forward and said, that he himself was the person who had applied to the magistrate for the purpose. The gentleman himself narrowly escaped with his life, through the interposition of the Vicar- general, who had the presence of mind to step with the Crucifix in his hand between the gentleman and the en- raged multitude, crying out to them with a loud voice, J conjure you in the name of the God whose image I hold, not to pollute his altar with murder.
Is it possible that a man could be so callous to the feelings of honour, and so impenetrable to the impressions of truth, as to obtrude on the public such barefaced slanders as Theo- philus has done ? Could not his zeal against Popery, and that unprovoked vengeance, the offspring of the Demons of night, be sufficiently glutted with the persecution which de- fenceless men suffer from their own, without blackening their character ? Or could the Bishop of Cloyne, who is presumed not to be ignorant of transactions which happened both to his own and the other diocese committed to his care, excuse a Theophilus in saying with such sangfroid) than an appre- hension for the safety of religion will naturally excite a warmth? Will zeal for religion justify what nature and religion con- demn? Or did the Bishop of Cloyne imagine that I would be so divested of honour, or such an enemy to my character, as not to cast a light upon the subject, when once his pamph- let in which I am so cruelly treated, would fall into my hands ? The insurgents then were of every description of the lower orders. They made no distinction between the clergy of either religion, when once they became obnoxious to them.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 255
Their creeds were different, but they all equally com- plained of tithes and tithe-jobbers, whom the Bishop in his great charity, calls the agents and servants of the clergy. I could add to the number of the persecuted Roman Ca- tholic clergymen of this county, several against whom their parishioners swore, and whose masses they have not heard, in the long space of fourteen months.
There are powerful Protestant peers in the county of Cork: the Bishop of Cloyne by his profession is of the number. — And those persecuted, defenceless Roman Ca- tholic clergymen had it not in their power to vote a grate- ful and well penned address to the most powerful of the noblemen of the county, for their favourable anfl timely in- terposition, as the Protestant clergy had voted one to the Catholic '.-lobleman. No : the county of Cork is the only county in Ireland, where the temporal peer attacked a se- cular priest with the cane; and where the spiritual peer has made so extraordinary and unprovoked an attack on a regular clergyman with the pen.
Glorious triumphs indeed ! and battles worthy to be re- corded in histories, written in golden characters, in paper preserved with cedar juice. Histories vere aurece cedroque dignee.
..How far the Bishop of Cloyne's history would deserve such an honour, may be conjectured by his account of the insurrections, in which he enlarges on the persecutions of the Protestant clergy, without mentioning a word of the sufferings of the Catholic Pastors. He speaks of a Popish mob. — But why does he not speak out, and unfold the his- torical page, from one margin to the other ? — Why does he leave so many blanks for me to fill up? Or as he at- tempted the tragedy of Orestes : when he placed the Pro- testant sufferers in the front, why did not he place the Catholic sufferers on the back of the page, and finish the piece ? Scriptus et intergo nectum finitus Orestes. Did not the Catholic priest suffer as well as the Protestant minister, only that he had not so much to lose, nor the game expec- tation of being reimbursed ? Was not the Catho!ic farmer as ill treated as the Protestant? Or were there two dif- ferent sounds in Captain Right1 s horn? arms were taken
L L
256 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
out of the hands of Protestants by the Bishop's account—
and I ask him by whom ? Is he sure that the hand that
wrested them from the Protestants, had ever made the
sign of the cross ? Beds, clothes and money were taken
from the Catholic clergy. — Who took them from those
men to whom (according to the Bishop's favourite Theo-
philus,) the Catholic laity are slaves ? I must however, do
the Bishop the justice that he assigns as a partial cause of
the insurrections 4 the connivance of some members of the
4 established church, the supineness of more, the timidity
' of the generality of magistrates, a corrupt encouragement
4 of those lawless acts is not a few.' I am extremely
thankful to him for this figure of rhetoric, called a climax.
It is an evident confession on his part, that the gentlemen
of the established church were under no apprehension of
its danger, much less of the overthrow of the state by a
Popish mob. But I am doubtful whether they will be so
thankful to him for bringing them forward as confederates
• in the insurrections, by connivance and encouragement. —
1 entertain a better opinion of them. Their supineness then must have originated in a conviction that the poor cottagers and the griping tithe-jobbers did not stand upon favourable terms with each other : and that in the conflict for a potato or sheaf of corn, the Protestant gentlemen would not regret if the latter were worsted. They had their properties and consequence to hazard in case of a re- volution.— And had their imaginations been haunted with the gloomy spectres which Doctor Woodward now raises all over the kingdom, they would have been more active and vigilant ; though they have not read the Roman Pon- tifical with that attention which Doctor Woodward has be- stowed on it, to find out the Catholic Bishop's consecration oath; yet common sense and the knowledge of the world informed them, that there was no danger of the Protes- tant ascendancy, from a Popish mob, assisted by a foreign power.
When Doctor Woodward promised in the title-page of his pamphlet, a General account of the Insurrections in Munster, we little expected a short martyrology of two or three pages, announcing threats to burn new churches, which are stiH
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 257
standing, and have no elements to resist but wind and rain : old churches to be changed into mass-houses, which have not yet been sprinkled with holy water; the tongues of cler- gymen to be cut out, which tongues have not yet lost their spring ; and other alarming menaces, for which he acknow- ledges to have no other voucher, but a paper he received from Cork. Thus the boasting poet in Horace promised a mighty description of the feats and achievements performed before the walls of Troy. Fortunam Priami cantabo et no- bele bellum.
The mountain was in labour (saith the Poet) and was de- livered of a mouse. — From great promises of a General Ac- count of the Rise and Progress of the Insurrections in Munster, we expected mighty matters. We expected that the digni- fied historian, would not be content with moistening the nib of his pen with a small drop of ink, without going deeper into his standish. We had room to expect that he would lay open the sources of information, do justice to all parties, and be religiously accurate in his descriptions. He talks of a Popish mob, taking arms out of the hands of Protestants. — A Church nailed up. — A new Ohurch threatened to be burnt, if an old Church was not left for the purpose of being changed into a mass-house, 4 and vestries controuled in such a manner as 4 not to afford elements for the C^imunion, though the Ca- « tholics are excluded from having votes when these vestries
* are held.' — Those facts and the threats already mentioned, make up this interesting and ' general account of the rise
* and progress of the Insurrections in Munster.' — And from such facts who would not infer that the overthrow of the established religion was meditated by the Catholics. It must be the author's meaning and drift to create such a belief in the minds of his readers, or there is no meaning in what he writes. — Why does he not mention the chapels that were nailed up ; the Catholic clergy who suffered ; the reduction of their accustomed dues ; the Protestants who headed the Insurgents; his own churches resorted to as so many asylums in order to elude the laws ; the motives and springs of their different transactions; the rise of the evil, and the application of the remedy.
258 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
He informs us that Donoughmore church was nailed up : and leaves his readers to look at the nails without pointing out the hand that fastened them; after having so deeply- impressed his mind with the terrors of Popery, as to make him guess that a Popish hand had raised the hammer.
The Bishop could not be ignorant of the circumstances which gave rise to this transaction. He knows that the Pro- testant clergyman of that parish was beloved in the place, and had a great number of powerful friends. The Bishop of Cloyne appointed another clergyman to officiate in his room. This was not agreeable to the parishioners : when the strange clergyman came on a Sunday morning to the church he found it nailed up. Let the reader draw the infe- rence. The Bishop of Cloyne should have either not men- tioned the Church of Donoughmore, or not omitted this cir- cumstance, which would either lead his reader into a knowledge that either the Protestant parishioners nailed up the church, or if there were any Catholics amongst them, that it was not from a design to invade the church, but from a love for the clergyman who was to quit the parish. But this manner of relating facts would not answer Doctor Woodward's end : he mentions a clergyman at whom stones were thrown whilst he was officiating, and who would have been murdered by a neighbouring Popish Congregation, hut for a messenger who was dispatched from the same congregation to inform him of the danger. I am not a person of such a cavilling disposition as to deny facts, except when I have sufficient evidence to disprove them. But if the Bishop had related all the circumstances relative to the above trans- actions, the reader would attribute it to some cause different from the design of a popish confederacy to overturn the established church.
In relating this transaction, which a Catholic would hold in the same detestation in which a Protestant would hold it, has the Lord Bishop, as a candid historian, informed his readers that previous to this insult there had been an un- happy affray ? A warrant which the parishioners of both religions deemed illegal, had been issued in order to levy church rates, after a manner to which the parishioners had not been accustomed. As far as 1 have been informed, the
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 259
rates were to be levied on plough-lands, instead of having re- course to the usual mode. The people resisted, and in the resistance two of the parishioners unfortunately lost their lives. The killers were indicted for murder. The bills were ignored : this exasperated the people : their minds still in a ferment — a new clerg) man was sent to officiate in the parish : they were more disposed in favour of his predecessor : whilst the clergyman was reading his prayers, a boy, perhaps a son to one of the men who had been killed, began to throw stones, and was immediately hindered. As to the fact that the men were killed, 1 appeal to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne himself, who would not have been glad that the affair would have been brought at that time before the Court of King's Bench, as bloodshed on the score of consecrated goods, has ever* wounded the clerical profession in every age, and in every nation: as to the circumstances, I am not acquainted with the minute detail of them. For the truth of the above account, I appeal to the Protestant gentlemen in the neigh- bourhood of Ballivoorna, when he talks of the reduction of the tithes in the foregoing district. The Bishop and I relate the same facts, but our inferences are different. He relates bare facts, without mentioning one single circumstance which mav determine the reader's judgment in favour of an injured and misrepresented people. His only object through the course of his pamphlet, is to prove what no man of sense in Ireland believes, viz. the Church of Ireland is at this present moment in imminent danger of subversion.
If facts such as are related by the Bishop were really be- lieved, they certainly would be very alarming. But when re- lated with their concomitant circumstances, and the motives that gave them rise, the phantom vanishes. The candid reader will infer from the above fact, that the attack on the clergyman was not a Popish confederacy against the esta- blished religion, but an ebulition of passion occasioned by re- sentment. When Pope Alexander the Sixth, ordered six cardinals to be sewed up in a bag, and cast into the Tyber, none but a fool can imagine that it was with a view to over- throw their religion ; and no wise man will construe into a plot against the church, two or three stones thrown at a clergyman by a boy, after seeing the mangled body of his
260 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
father stretched dead in a field, in consequence of ecclesias- tical dues, however unjustifiable the insult. The Lord Bi- shop of Cloyne must certainly have piercing eyes when he dis- covers every one's religion in a crowd : or when he confounds all religions concerned in the South, and amalgamates or unites them into one Popish mass : we can literally apply to the Historian of the Whiteboys, the remark made on Camb- den, who from partiality to his nation, had both eyes open when he wrote of the English, one eye shut when he wrote of the Scotch, but was quite blind when he wrote of the Irish.
Angligenus oculis perlustras Camdenne duobus ; Monoculus Scotos : Cjecus Hibernos.
Hitherto the Lord Bishop has kept me at the doors of his church. Now let us follow him into the sanctuary — he" talks of Vestries being intimidated by the Whiteboys from granting money for the purchase of elements for the Holy Communion.
How many Vestries have they intimidated ? Or was this intimidation a Popish confederacy, to overturn the established religion by extinguishing fervour and devotion ? I do not perceive this extraordinary zeal for the Sacraments in either Catholics or Protestants, which gives the ministers of religion room to complain of the great consumption of sacramental wine, and consecrated bread. The more they see their in- structors attached to the world, the contempt of which they are bound to enforce; the more they see them intent upon blowing the trumpet of religious war, on the score of specu- lative tenets, which surpass the comprehension of the multi- tude, and neglect charity, peace, and humanity, which are within the reach of all ; the more the laity perceive the mi- nisters of a religion which is the offspring of heaven, intent upon fixing its root in the earth, the more they will relax in their fervour, and be inclined to believe that the sacred mi- nistry is a kind of craft in the hands of skilful interested men, who for the sake of lucre and emolument, would preach up Christ in Europe, and Diana at Ephesus, had they lived in the time of Demetrius, the silver-smith, who complained that his trade would be lost if the temple of the Goddess was de- serted. His Lordship knows that these are the obloquies and reproaches of our modern deists and free-thinkers.
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 261
He knows that in every age, people have availed them- selves of obloquies and reproaches against the clergy, and alleged them as a cause of separation from his church, as well as from mine. The best method of silencing the voice of obloquy raised against the ministers of religion, is a con- duct marked with that charity and disinterestedness which the public arc entitled to expect from persons of their sacred functions. How far the Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet has contributed to vindicate the clerical profession from the as- persions of obloquy, and to prove that the ministers of the Gospel are the most charitable and disinterested mortals on earth, let his readers judge. He is a minute historian who is not satisfied with informing his readers that the White- boy s intimidated Vestries from collecting Church rates, without alarming the piety of the devoutest souls, by threatening them with a spiritual famine from Popish plun- derers, who deprive them of the elements for the Holy Communion.
If the Lord Bishop of Cloyne had been as accurate in the enumeration of all the transactions of the Munster peasantry, as he has been in his detail of churches and elements, more figures would rise to view on his historical canvas, and in the groupe would appear persecuted priests and deserted chapels. He has painted one side of the face and shadowed the other. It is incumbent on me to supply the defect. He has given the profile, I must draw the face in full. My readers will excuse my prolixity when they are acquainted with my mo- tives, and the reasons which induce me to enter into so mi- nute a detail.
The character of the nation has been injured in foreign countries, where we are considered as in a state of barbarism and rebellion, in consequence of the exaggerated accounts industriously circulated in the prints, since the beginning of the disturbances. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet has been read at St. James's ; and his Majesty must entertain an extraordinary opinion of the Dissenters and Catholics of Ireland. The Irish Catholics in particular, are objects of detestation all over Great Britain, in consequence of Theo- philus's address, the marrow of which is inserted in the Monthly Review, which fell into my hands the day I sat
262 MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
down to write this defence. In that Review of January,,, eighty-seven, the disturbances in Ireland are the result of a Popish confederacy, cemented ' by Popish clergymen, and ' their votaries, with a design to overturn the established re.
* ligion. All these misfortunes flow from a relaxation of the
* Popery laws, as from their genuine source,' &c. &c.
I am then indispensably bound to undeceive the pubic both in Ireland and wherever this pamphlet may appear. Justice to my country, to the Irish Catholics, and to myself, requires an exact and minute detail.
A pitched battle, in which ten thousand on each side had fallen in the field, has not employed so many pens, nor occa- sioned such alarms, as the mighty excursions of Captain Right's forces. They disturbed the peace of the commu- nity, it is true ; and for this they are justly censured, and justly punishable. They collected money in two or three places, for the support of their confederates who were in goal. No person exculpates them for this ill- directed be- nevolence ; and if they forced it from the people whose relations were in goal, they deserved death. There was one man cruelly and barbarously murdered in the county of Tipperary : at this murder humanity shudders ; th was a respectable clergyman of the established church, the Rev. Mr. Ryan, most cruelly used ; the Rev. Mr. Hare, was way-laid and escaped. In the county of Cork, the Rev. Doctor Atterbury, was forced to swear to the Right- boys table of tithe-rates, but received no other injury; the Rev. Mr. Mayne had some of his out-houses burned ; the Rev. Mr. Kenny, from terror quitted his habitation ; and Archdeacon Tisdal, with Father Burke, the priest of the parish, in which both resided, took shelter in Cork ; the Rev. Mr. Browne had two or three horses cropped : these gentlemen are the clergymen of the established church, who were most materially injured. There was not a sensi- ble Catholic in the county of Cork that did not condemn and detest the usage given to the Rev. Gentlemen now men- tioned, and the more so, as some of them are considered as fathers to the poor ; though the Lord Bishop of Cloyne up- braids me with uttering panegyrics on some of the Protes-
MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS. 263
tant clergy. But equally indifferent to his applause, or censure, F shall ever pay a tribute to merit. Sorry am I, as an Historian and a man of feeling, that he has not enu- merated the Catholic clergymen, who were equal sufferers in the storm. His readers would then be of opinion, that the Rightboys were as hostile to the Church of Rome, as to the established religion.
In the long space of fifteen months, whilst the distur- bances continued, until the Earl of Carhampton, (then Lord Luttrell) came to Munster, I heard of no murder committed by the Whiteboys; if there has been any such barbarity committed, I shall relate it in the second edition of my pamphlet.
Every robbery, every outrage has been attributed to those deluded and unhappy people : and to my surprise, (if surprised I would be, after so many falsehoods propagated from the county where I reside,) on my arrival in Dublin, what should I see but an account of four hundred White- boys attacking officers of the army near Cork. Three nights before I set off from Cork, we had an account of this extraordinary encounter : an officer on his return from the sports of the field, for want of other game, shot a pea- sant's dog; before he had time to charge his piece, the active clown with his stick, revenged the death of the guardian of his cabin. This brought on an affray which was construed into Whiteboyism; and had there not been a Whiteboy or a Rightboy in the world, touch mc, touch my dog would be a standing maxim with an Irish peasant ; he commonly answers one question with another, and returns blow for blow : this last part of his education he receives from the instinct of nature, which is forwarded by the Irish soil, so favourable to the growth of valour. If he was guilty of no other fault but that of resenting an unprovoked injury, with a stroke of Shilelah, the nobility and gentry of Ireland would not blame him much. They themselves are remarkable for bravery; and their character is not to be insulted with impunity.
Far be it from me to countenance disorder, but I must. make allowance for the passions of man ; and I feel when I see every trifling scuffle magnified into rebellion against the
M M
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state, and every murmer against a proctor or tithe-jobber exaggerated into a confederacy against the Church. Yet to the discredit of the county of Cork in particular, every dwarf is metamorphosed into a giant. Tithe-jobbers strain- ed every nerve to alarm the fears of Government, in order to secure themselves in their extortions, by painting the deluded peasantry as unworthy of the least compassion. In the Reverend author of the letter found on the road be- tween Cork and Cloghnakilty, addressed to Dr. O'Leary, they found a favourite Historian, who, in peasants going before day for sand to manure their spots of ground, could discover Orlandos and Orsons. The sport of school-boys was mao-nified into sieves. In Monkstown, where ladies and gentlemen pass a good part of the summer for the be- nefit of bathing, what uproars and alarms: two wags, for the sake of diversion sounded an old horn in the dead of the night, and threw all the ladies and gentlemen into a panic terror. In the space of three weeks this nocturnal sport appeared in the distant prints a serious blockade by Captain Right, at the head of five hundred men ; in this manner, at a distance from the scene of action, were num- bers alarmed at the report of the talcing of Umbrage* To give a history of the false accounts propagated in the public papers, and of th*e manoeuvres of tithe-dealers, would be an endless task : I must hasten to the vestries, as the Lord Bishop of Cloyne complains that they were intimidated from purchasing the elements for the holy communion.
I have heard but of one vestry in his diocese relative to which there has been any intimidation. The people who complained of tithes complained of the rise of the parish rates, and requested the gentleman who had the superin ten- dance of the vestry, not to increase them. In the year eighty, church-rates in some parts of the diocese of Cloyne, were but 1/. 2s. 6d. The people, both Protestants and Catholics, finding that their piety did not increase in proportion to the
* As the words require an explanation, for the instruction of several, it is fit to re- mark, that when it was reported in the papers that the French had taken Umbrage at the proceedings of the English, some wiseacres imagined that Umbrage was the name of some great city. The mistake of the meaning' of a word often leads into error: and of this error are guilty those who confound Whiteboyis'n with a Popish Con- federacy.
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rapid rise of the ecclesiastical revenues, and that the clergy were not more holy and disinterested in the year eighty-six, than they were in the year eighty, thought fit that sanctity should not be distanced by so many odds by the price of sanctification. They brought both within nearer view of each other, and hence this mystery of popery controuling vestries, and depriving souls who did not choose to pay too much for their canonization, is unravelled. With regard to the notice ordering a church to be left for a mass-house, and threats to burn a new one, I ridiculed the very idea of it in my last address to the Whiteboys. He says that they bound themselves by oath, in presence of the church-wardens, to burn the new church, if the old one was not left for a mass- house. Who were those who bound themselves by oath to commit such a deed ? Does his church-wardens know them ? If he does, let him bring them to justice ? If he does not know them, how does he know their religion ? And have they fulfilled their engagement ? Was mass said in the old church ? Is the new church burnt ? It is very likely that a set of men who have not heard prayers from their own pas- tors in the long space of fourteen months, and who had flocked to his churches, for the sake of impunity, would (as I remarked in my letter to them) indulge such fervour as to have a church for a mass-house, and die martyrs for prayers. Jlpago nugec !
If the Bishop of Cloyne believes this a serious affair, 1 applaud him for the strength of his faith. Under the appre- hensions of terror the imagination realizes phantoms. We read in history that armies in the dead of the night encamped on the summit of a hill, imagining that the enemies were drawn up in battle array in a distant plain.* The out-scouts at the dawn of day discovered, to their surprise, that it was an extensive field covered with overgrown thistles, noddino- with the breeze, and seeming to beckon to their pursuers to advance. Doctor Woodward's imagination creates similar foes. Nor can we discover any danger to Doctor Wood- ward's old church ornew church, except what he figures to himself in his pamphlet.
* The array of the prices in the rnio-ii of Louis the Eleventh. See Father Daniel's History of France.
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But will Mr. O'Leary deny that such notices were posted up, and such letters, threatening to cut out tongues, &c. were written ? By no means : Mr. O'Leary is not a man to controvert facts vouched by the Bishop's authority, except when he has facts to counterbalance them. In that case he will humbly take the liberty of being guided by his own judgment. He does not believe the Pope's infallibility ; much less will he place infallibility in the Bishop of Cloyne's oracles when he delivers them from his tripod. But he is humbly of opinion that such notices and letters came from other quarters. Tithe-proctors, tithe-jobbers, and others were interested in alarming the nation, and awakening the fears of Government. They dreaded the least alteration in the present system, and knew that the best method to secure success to their plan, was to blacken as much as pos- sible deluded men who were already but too obnoxious. Hence the exaggerated accounts of theWhiteboys circulated in the distant prints ; all provisions, and every communication between town and country cut off. Yet our markets were supplied as usual.
A lady of consequence, who spends her time and income in encouraging arts and manufactures, on whose estate the little girl of five earns her bread by knittings whose tenants wear shoes and stockings, clean shirts and warm frize, whilst the tenants of several are shivering with cold and pinching with hunger ; who, when the peasant dies, gives the warm cabin, and a spot of ground rent-free to the widow and orphans, until the eldest son is able to provide for them; who has diffused a spirit of industry and vigour amongst the naked and unemployed inhabitants of barren rocks ; and who, like another Zenobia, has a manly heart
in a female breast This lady intended to drain part of
a lake, in order to enlarge her improvements. A grateful peasantry flocked to the work. It was enough. We soon read in distant papers that a thousand Whiteboys had thrown up intrenchments, and had formed a regular encampment upon her lands. Numberless falsehoods have been indus- triously propagated, to the dishonour of the country. No honest man would justify any breach of the public peace, and no man who pavs any regard for justice or truth would propagate falsehoods and infamy.
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Before the relaxation of the Popery laws, a wretch, after having quitted his house, set fire to it in the dead of the night, and swore to damages which were to be made good to him at the expense of the innocent. The villany was proved in open court. Had the Lord Bishop of Cloyne made enqui- ries, perhaps he would find that some tithe-jobbers tampered with their hirelings to set fire to their own corn. — By this manoeuvre they expected that a tenfold gain would com- pensate for this wilful loss. I doubt not then the reality of the notices, however absurd, nor the threats, however unlikely to be carried into execution. But I suspect the quarter from whence they came. Interest and vengeance combined, are capable of giving greater alarms, but the judg- ment must not be captivated to the yoke of an implicit be- lief, when the motives of credibility are dubious ; and anony- mous letters are bad vouchers. No man intent upon the murder of another, ever forewarns him of the danger. If a person wrote me a letter, threatening to cut out my tongue, I would not be under the least apprehension that he would deprive me of the organ of speech. If he were in earnest, he would watch his opportunity without putting me on my guard. Be this as it may, we all deplore the peace of society disturbed ; the property of individuals in- jured by nightly excursions, and the distraction of the community.
But the duty of the historian confines him within the li- mits of truth, and in relating events when he cannot know the real causes, he must assign the most probable. The Bi- shop's favourite layman, talks of people hanging in galloivses, noses and ears cut off, &>c. Will the Bishop of Cloyne be his voucher. For while I am on the spot, I shall controvert the legendary tales of any modern Sir John Temple. — No ; the Bishop cannot produce one single instance of any man's being murdered by the Whiteboys, in the counties "of Cork or Kerry, and as for noses, had he discovered any of them to be cut off by the Whiteboys, his zeal for religion would have induced him to collect and fix them in the face of his pamphlet to ornament his picture of persecution, and give it its due proportions. I enquired about those noses and
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ears, I can get no information. The operations then of a campaign of fifteen months, (a campaign, which has attracted the attention of all Europe, thanks to our tithe journalists,) have confined, as I remarked before, to two or three proctors, buried without being dead, and rising immediately without waiting for the sound of the last trumpet ; the burning of some few ricks of corn, and the cropping of nine or ten gar- rans which are still at the plough ; and notabene, the two last garrans that were cropped after Lord LuttreiPs first excur- sion to Minister, though the oldest in studd, were cropt with as much nicety as if a young miss's ears were to be pierce d for the reception of ornamental pendants. A small flit ! but great noise. Such, is the number of the wounded by the Whiteboys in the counties of Cork and Kerry : but where is the number of the slain ? The slain and mortally wound- ed were the deluded bipeds, whom the Bishop of Cloyne did not exhort, nor banish from his churches ; and who goaded by oppression on one hand, and the expecting impunity from hypocrisy on the other, gave into those wild and extravagant measures against which Mr. O'Leary cautioned them. Du- ring the disturbances, the Catholic clergy and laity suffered more than their Protestant neighbours of the same respective orders. And when the Lord Bishop of Cloyne promised his readers a general account of the rise and progress of the in- surrections in Munster, we little expected that his account would be inclosed in a nutshell, of which five or six Pro- testant clergymen were the kernel, whilst the persecuted Ca- tholic clergymen are omitted, as the withered leaves of the tree, left out of his historical dessert.
Such is the plain, candid, and unadorned account of the disturbances, in the suppression of which I have taken so ac- tive a part, whilst the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, as an uncon- cerned spectator, stood gazing upon an eminence at a great distance from the field of battle. After a large fabric has been on fire for more than twelve months, it is laudable in him to come forward with the doleful news, that a few rafters have been burnt, tie should have been the first to put his hand to the engine, in order to bring the fire under, and to prevent it from communicating to the adjacent buildings.
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When the prophet Jeremiah wrote his Lamentations, it was a long time before the destruction of Jerusalem, in order to caution the people, and induce them to guard against the impending calamity. When the prophet Ezekiel had eaten a book in which were written lamentations, and a song, and ivoe, it was to forewarn an obstinate people. But when the Bishop of Cloyne cries aloud from the walls of Jerusalem, the church of Ireland is at this present moment in imminent dinger of subversion, it is after the Chaldeans had raised the si ge and retired to their country; fifteen months after the disturbances had broken out ; after Lord Kenmare, a Catho- lic peer had suppressed them in Kerry ; after the Lord Chief Baron Yelverton had decreed an atonement to violated jus- tice, by the punishment of such criminals as were found guilty of a breach of the laws ; and after the Earl of Car- hampton (then Lord Luttrell) had pacified the entire pro- vince, a few stragglers excepted. If in the long space of fifteen months he was really convinced that the ves- sel, of the established religion, of which he is one of the pilots, was in clanger, why has he slept at the helm ? When the storm is over and the sea exhibits a smooth surface, he sings the doleful ditty of the shipwrecked mariner all over the three kingdoms ; but where was he when the ship was on the point of sinking? Where was the pastoral letter ? Where was the pathetic address ? Where was the publication replete with those figures and images which would work on the passions of the Protestant nobility and gentry of the province, and awaken them to a sense of their danger? It is no great hardship for a bishop to pub- lish a pamphlet in eighty-seven, which he had all the leisure to write in the year eighty- six. But where were the exer- tions of the pastoral care ? Where was the shepherd's whis- tle heard, when the wolf was devouring the flock ? The Bi- shop of Cloyne acknowledges that the diocese of Cork was committed to his care in the absence of Doctor Mann. This additional charge to that of his own diocese should naturally have redoubled his vigilance: he then should have mada it his business as superintendant of such extensive dioceses, :•; get every information relative to the disorders which dis- tracted the places committed to his care, to endeavour to
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stifle the evil in its birth, and to prevent its spreading any further.
I shall make no further comments, but leave my readers to their own judgment, without anticipating their reflections. However the learned may admire Tacitus for his art in rais- ing a rich work from poor materials, his judicious reflections, and concise (though obscure) manner of impressing his sentiments ; yet he shall never take him for my guide, because he is too malignant, and ascribes the most casual events to a dark policy. If Augustus names Tiberius for his successor, it is according to Tacitus, with a design that the vices of that tyrant should serve as a foil to set off his own qualities. If Piso is appointed governor of such a province, it is in order to be a spy over Ger- manicus, whom Tiberius envied. If Sejanius is elected prime minister, it is in order to glut the vengeance of the gods : he ascribes the offspring of chance to a gloomy destiny : his characters generally bear the same features : it is not the man whom he describes, but the historian's heart I read : for this very reason 1 do not like him, because he distorts the objects. Had the same events happened in his time at Rome which have happened within those fifteen months in the county where I reside, what a political picture would not Tacitus have left to future ages ! The plebians all up in arms, and the supreme Augur asleep without con- sulting the Omens ! The temples of the gods threatened with destruction, and the Pontiff silent ! And when the danger is over, the empire in commotion, and the Pontiff offering pro- pitiatory sacrifices and inviting the people to burn incense, in order to avert those calamities from which the gods had de- livered them, during his security and somnolence ! Reflec- tions of the kind I leave to such historians as Tacitus or to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne himself, who is so ingenious as to metamorphose me into a being to which I bear no re- semblance, and to cast me in a mould so ill fitted to my frame.
Can any person in his senses presume that the Catholics of Ireland, after the late indulgence extended to them by the reigning powers, would be so divested of gratitude and com- mon sense as to expose their necks to the chain with which
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rigorous laws had bound them for so many years.— When their ancestors signed the capitulation of Limerick, and submitted to the son-in-law of their former fugitive and cowardly king, sooner than violate the laws of nations, afterwards so basely violated by the last of the Stuarts, they declined availing themselves of the succours sent by Lewis the Fourteenth. When Alberoni sent the son of James the Second to Scotland, the Irish Catholics remained quiet and peaceful, though they had every reason to expect the assistance of Spain if they joined the son of their former king, when the present family was not sufficiently settled on a throne threatened by foreign foes, and an aspiring candi- date who had his father's title to plead, and numbers of his partizans, each to join hfm in support of his pretensions. When the plains of Fontenoy were dyed with English blood, and George the Second threatened with expulsion from the British dominions, by a young pretender marching to the seat of empire, where was any commotion amongst the Catholics of Ireland ? When Thurot landed at Carrickfer- gus where were the Catholics who flocked to his banners in the North ? Where were the Catholics who caused a diver- sion in his favour in the South ? When England was sur- rounded by a warring world; one of her strongest limbs torn from her body, by the loss of America; her fleets pur- sued by a victorious enemy, displaying their flag on her coasts ; and Ireland, destitute of any assistance but the loy- alty and courage of her sons, who forgot their unhappy and fatal prejudices in the common danger, did the Irish Catholics stand by as neutral spectators, in expectation of the event? Did not they flock to the standard of their Pro- testant neighbours, and march at the signal, either to defend their common country, or to mingle their blood in the same trenches with their fellow-subjects ? Are those the men whose loyalty should be suspected, and character traduced ? Or must the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's clamour about tithes become now a wakeful trump to thunder division amongst three bodies of men, who in time of danger were consoli- dated into one ? He alarms the members of the established church with the danger wherewith they are threatened from the Dissenters inclined to pull it down. He alarms
N N
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them with the danger wherewith they are threatened from the Catholics ready to set up their own. He excludes both from national confidence ; then shifts the ground, and after having discarded the Dissenters as hostile to his establish- ment, he invites them to his standard, to join him in his attack, upon the Catholics, by reminding them of the lenient usage they met with from his church, when compared with the severe usage they would meet with from the church of Rome.
The Lion invited one day the beasts to a bunting party, and promised to divide the spoils : the ass with his loud notes roused the game, which was soon run down : the division of the spoil commenced — this belongs to me said the Lion, ac- cording to compact; and this because my name is Lion, and this for such a reason ; and who would dare to touch the rest ? One would imagine that iEsop had read the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet. 4 Come Dissenters to my ' assistance, though 1 have excluded you before from national 4 confidence, enemies to my establishment, which from prin- 4 ciple you are inclined to pull down, become my auxiliaries 4 in chaining your fellow-subjects of the Catholic persuasion, 4 lest they reach their hands to the sacred sheaf. But, as for 4 you, you dare not touch it, for my name is Lion.' The Lord Bishop of Cloyne would have some colourable pre- tence for alarming the fears of Irish Dissenters, and preju- dicing them against their Catholic fellow-subjects, if he had the generosity to divide the spoils. But will he divide the tithes with their clergy ? His invitation then and his com- pliments are equally unmeaning.
Heavens forbid, that the natives of this kingdom (let their religion be what it may) should ever relapse into the irenz? of destructive and unchristian dissensions.
The Dissenters then will say to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, 4 we will support the State, not in compliance with your cha- 4 ritable admonition, but because it is our duty and interest. 4 Be we will not make war upon our neighbours for tithes 4 and mitres ; we shall not efface from the pannels of the Lord 4 Bishop of Cloyne's carriage, that emblem of ecclesiastical 4 pre-eminence he has borrowed from the Church of Rome, ■ which he is now exposing to public detestation j' nor dimi-
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nish the number of his dishes, which the Catholic clergy had dressed for him, ages before they imagined that Bi- shops, instead of praying for them and their successors, would disturb the dead in their graves, by attributing to them doctrines they never taught, and exciting the jea- lousy and resentment of the reigning powers against the living, by casting at their thresholds abortives they disclaim. We shall not engage, my Lord Bishop of Cloyne, in a Crusade to make war upon infidels who are not in pos- session of your Holy Land.
It is extraordinary in you to alarm the public, with the dangers of Popery, when you retain the most oppressive part of a religion, from which you are sprung, tithes that are oppressive to the poor, and pre-eminence which in all ages has not been well relished by the rich. We cannot in reason hate a Catholic for his speculative creed. His belief of the real presence affects us no more than if he believed that Berenices tresses were changed into a comet : nor are we much concerned whether in that immensity be- yond the grave, there may be an intermediate place be- tween the two extremes of complete happiness and com- plete misery. A place where the soul attones for venial lapses, and pays off a part of the debts it has contracted here. It is equal to us where a man pays his debts, whether here or in purgatory, provided he pays ourselves what he owes us. And however clamourous a mitred divine may be about a Popish purgatory, he may perhaps go further, and speed worse.
The proctor's pound where the cottager's cow or calf is imprisoned, is a greater nuisance to the living, than thou- sands of subterraneous caverns beyond the grave. When you call upon us then to your assistance against our Ca- tholic neighbours, we shall not obey the summons, until you divide with us the spoils of piety which have been transmitted to you by the Catholic clergy, whom you are now attacking. When they were groaning under the yoke of penal laws, we published at Dungannon those resolu- tions which Europe read with admiration ; in them w7e de- clared, that as we held freedom of conscience sacred in ourselves, so we held it sacred in others, and gloried in the
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prospect of our Catholic fellow-subjects' emancipation. America copied after the illustrious example. The Em- peror has placed the God-like image of toleration, in the same banner with the Imperial Eagle. Good sense and the general good of society, are restoring to unhappy morals the inalienable charter, which school divinity had usurped, the choice of the religion they think, the best ; and the pri- vilege of being accountable to God alone for their specula- tive tenets. Any person who would preach or practise a contrary doctrine, is an agitator indeed, and an agitating Bishop is as obnoxious to us as an agitating Friar. You have directed your arrows against Mr. O'Leary in particu- lar : he has washed off the paint which your brush nas laid on his face : he has proved in his narrative, that you have not criven an accurate account of the disturbances in Mun- ster ; you have not stemmed the torrent — you have not as- signed the genuine causes of the insurrections, which in your heart you know not to have originated in any Popish confederacy against either church or state, but in the de- spair of wretchedness, ascribable indeed to several causes, amongst which tithes and tithe-canters are to be enumera- ted. Mr. O'Leary has fully justified the Catholic body from the foul aspersion of Theophilus and the insinuation of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne. He has called on you both, to produce one agitating Friar, or Romish Missionary sent here to sow sedition, or who has sown sedition in the land. There is the challenge given by conscious innocence. We shall not then quarrel with our Catholic neighbours, much less with Mr. O'Leary : if he has any more to say we shall hear him: it is the privilege to which every injured man is entitled ; but we consider him as fully acquitted, whatever further remarks he may think fit to make on your pamphlet.
SECTION THE SECOND,
Containing a vindication of Mr. O^Lear^s address to the Whiteboys.
I know not upon what ground the Lord Bishop of Cloyne can say that my addresses are most artfully contrived to sow
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sedition ? Is it for recommending peace ? No. Is it for re- commending patience under sufferings ? If so, the Lord Bishop of Cloyne must burn the Bible. Is it because I did not enlarge upon the miseries of the peasantry, in con- sequence of low wages and rack-rents, as the Bishop in- timates ? The reduction of tithes and the dues of the parish priests were the only objects mentioned in the insurgents' proclamations. In addressing them upon complaints which they did not express, was to represent the orator who finished, by the deluge, his sermon on the resur- rection. The public knew the people were exasperated and outrageous. I had one object in view, which was to work on their passions, by the fittest springs, to move the hearts and allay the passions of a discontented mul- titude. I mean hope and fear ; the dread of punishment, and the hope of redress — I knew that such of the clergy as, from the warmth of zeal, and want of foreknow- ledge that their flock would ever rise against themselves, had recourse to the usual method of reclaiming them by severity, had lost their influence. In vain had they substituted a curse for a prayer, and the oak saplin for the peaceful asperges ; the obstinacy of the flock increased in proportion to the rigour of the pastor ; at last the rupture rose to such a height, that they swore in some places never to hear
prayers from their present parish priests. This the
Lord Bishop of Cloyne cannot be ignorant of; and the candour of the historian, when he talks of the insurrections, as well as justice to those persecuted ecclesiastics, should have induced him to advert to this very singular and unex- pected circumstance ; especially when he had read in the slanderous Theophilus the false and infamous charge brought against those clergymen, accusing them of being in a con- federacy with their flocks for the overthrow of the church and state. It was not from want of zeal and loyalty that they miscarried in their attempt to re-establish order. In all probability they would have succeeded better, had they tempered their fire.
I had to guard against the inconvenience which proved a stumbling-block to others. I knew that oil smooths the ruffled sea, and that a long time before Cicero and Quintilian
27& MISCELLANEOUS TKAC1S.
had laid down rules for rhetoricians to work on the passions, Solomon, a greater adept in the knowledge of the human heart, had said, A soft ansiver breaketh anger, an d a hard word ralscih up fury. In my ttro first publications I ad- dressed them in the soft language of sympathy ; led them on, step by step, to the temple of hope, at whose gates they should wait with patience, keeping at a distance from the precipices which surround its confines, violence from despair, and licentiousness from presumption. All parties acknowledge they were wretched ; the clergy knew it, and they blamed the landlord ; the landlords knew it, and they blamed the clergy's agent. It was not my duty to dictate to either; but if the Lord Bishop of Cloyne affirms, in his pamphlet, that they did not suffer from such persons as deal in tithes, with every deference he should be better informed. A gentleman of veracity has declared to me that thirty-two shillings have been ex- torted for one acre of potatos ; and that when a pea- sant offered to buy his tithes at a certain price, he was horse- whipped : I do not say that this happened in the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's diocese, to which he should have con- fined himself when he became an advocate for ecclesiastical agents : and if report be true, in some places it is said that the tithes which were set by the clergyman for three hun- dren pounds, were raised by those harpies to the enormous sum of £700, and more. This rapid rise must have been oppressive to the poor, without any benefit, but rather a loss to the clergyman : the Bishop of Cloyne would have done well if, in the beginning of the disturbances, and even a long time before, he had inquired, whether there had been in his own diocese a certain tithe -jobber of such art, power, and in- fluence, as to get the tithes for about one hundred and sixty pounds, which he raised to about five hundred. The clergy- man, who is all sweetness and humanity, was under the ne- cessity, in his own defence, to make over a bond to this agent, who had the policy and influence to hinder the peasants from taking the tithes from the lenient and lawful owner, who was willing to set them at a moderate price. But when, by the above stratagem, this man got them into his own possession, they became the scourges of the poor, who were continually
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harassed by decrees, either real or fictitious, which he either obtained or pretended to obtain from the Bishop's-Court. No music could be heard in his district but the noise of cat- tle, mingled with the cries of the wretched, seeing their little stock sold for half value. That man's pound was like unto a lion's den. The oppressed people came to the clergyman requesting him to take the tithes into his own hands, offering- him twenty pounds more than he got from the jobber ; an offer which the clergyman who feels for the poor, was under the painful necessity of refusing, on account of his engage, ment with the other. All parties then agree that the unhappy- people were oppressed : and the Earl of Carhampton (then Lord Viscount Luttrell) who commanded the army in M mi- ster, and who acquitted himself of his commission with such honour and humanity, is convinced that distress, but not wantonness ; the stings of poverty, but not the design of over- turning church or state, gave rise to the disturbances in the South of Ireland. Had the maxim that it is better to pre- vent crimes than to punish them, been followed ; had all the landlords, both noblemen and getlemen taken an active part at the first breaking out of the insurrections ; had they ex- plained to their respective tenants the danger and impropriety of their proceedings, inquired into their complaints, informed them that the senate of the nation was alone competent to make any alteration in established laws, and that if they did not follow their advice, or obey their injunctions, they would be under the necessity of punishing them, both as landlords and magistrates ; had this plan been adopted, the distur- bances would have been stifled in their very birth. Such of the gentlemen of consequence as had adopted this plan, soon restored peace and tranquillity to their districts. It was the plan which Menenius Agrippa adopted with success, when the discontented plebeians retired to the sacred mountain. It was the plan adopted by Junius Blesus, when the Panno- nian legions revolted at the instigation of a common soldier. It was the plan adopted by Lord Luttrell when he went to the congregations, and reclaimed to their duty several parishes, instead of marking the progress of his march with the impo- verished blood of half-starved wretches. Caesar's clemency outshone the splendour of his victories, And Lord Lut-
2/tJ MISCELLANEOUS TRACTS.
trell's wisdom and humanity upon that occasion, besides the honour and esteem he acquired, have contributed more to the restoration of order and tranquillity, than if he had let the army loose, and begun with coercion and vio- lence.
The ministry of a clergyman, is a ministry of charity and compassion ; when I see then, heroes bred in camps, and trained up amidst the clash of arms, sheath upon several oc- casions the sword, and hold out the olive branch ; when in the cure of wounds, lenitives are preferred to caustics, I am not ashamed for having addressed a discontented and op- pressed people, in the style of sympathy and tenderness. But when I see a Prelate, whose very robes are by their in- stitution emblematical of extensive charity, exhibit symptoms of joy in the expectation that the poor will not be relieved by their rulers, I should be more inclined to curse the priesthood than to revere it ; if I were so blind as to confound the un- feelingness and other defeets of the ministers of religion, with the holiness and other duties of their ministry.
I recommended patience, which softens the afflictions of sufferers, to the distressed, after informing them that the le- gislative powers alone were competent to redress a general grievance, and that a disorderly conduct was a bad recom- mendation to their humanity.
Here are the comments of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne upon the above texts, ' To what do these lectures of Mr. O'Leary 4 tend ? To tell the insurgents that though he knows that c they are more oppressed than any sect of men in the world : ' though he is convinced that they had a right to expect re- ' dress from the humanity of the legislature ; yet the legis- * lature shew no compassion for them ; they must remain in 4 their misery : they have no remedy but that of patience, 1 which softens the afflictions of sufferers.'
I am not ashamed of the admonitions — But I blush at the censure : I prefer the charitable Samaritan, who did not offer up sacrifices in Solomon's Temple, yet relieved the bleed- ing man on the road from Jerusalem to Jericho ; I prefer him to the unfeeling Priest and Levite, who passed by un- concerned, without pitying a man whom they saw welter- ing in his blood. I shall ever pity the poor, and shall ever
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recommend them to their rulers. If this be a crime, may it be the only crime of which I may be found guilty.
I recommend them to their rulers ; it would have been more becoming in the Lord Bishop of Cloyne to have done the same, than to censure me for the feelings of piety. I still indulge the hope, that the legislators of Ireland will re- dress the grievances of the wretched, at the period which their wisdom will appoint. And I am very confident that they will glory in feelings congenial to those of Francis the Firsts who, on hearing that a nobleman had killed a peasant, dressed himself in mourning, bound up his arm in a scarf, sent for the murderer, to whom he said, Rebel, you have wounded your king in the right arm, in depriving him of one of the props of the state. For without the peasantry, who will feed my armies, or supply my treasury?
The plough, the spade and reaping-hook, handled by vi- gorous, healthy, and well-fed peasants, are of more benefit to the state, than a thousand goose-quills, brandished by so many controvertists, puzzling the minds and dividing the hearts of men and citizens, who in the interests of society? and the feelings of humanity, would soon extinguish the flames of discord, if (he sacred fire were not continually fed by the very hands that should preserve the temple of peace from the conflagration. It is the peasant's labour, and not his catechism, that should be the object of legislative atten- tion, says Voltaire.
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne censures me for pointing out to the insurgents the dangers that threatened them from the severity of the law, the eloquence of Crown-lawyers, the perjuries of witnesses, and the prejudices of juries. What was the purport of this enumeration, but to make a deeper impression on the minds of the deluded people, by a greater variety of images ? And thus to attain my end, by preventing them from disturbing the peace of the public, and rushing to their own destruction.
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne's remark on the above pas- sage is curious, and descriptive of his ingenuity and candour. 1 shall give it in his own words, ; After expatiating on the 4 severity of the laws, as not being fit for a christian eoun- ' try and warning them that they could not expect a fair
o o
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execution, even of those cruel ordinances, from the law- officers of the crown, the witnesses or jury, I think one may say with justice, of his address to the common people of Ireland, particularly to such of them as are called Whitcboys, (printed in Dublin, 1786, and revised and cor- rected by himself,) that it is calculated to raise discontent and indignation in the Roman Catholic peasantry, against the national clergy, the legislature, the executive power, and their Protestant fellow-subjects.' Let the reader compare my letters with the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's commentary. Had I said in plain terms to th© insurgents, 4 Do not put yourselves in the power either of i Judge or Jury, King or Parliament, Lawyer or Witness, c what would it amount to ?' No more than if I had said, behave as peaceable subjects, and do not put
J 'ourselves in the power of any person. I say it now; give the same advice, and will the Lord Bishop of Cloyne say that for giving this advice, I am seditious ? It well behoves the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, who calls the verdict of the Jury in the county of Monaghan, infa- mqus; and who becomes the eulogist of Theophilus, who has the effrontery to compare the Irish House of Commons to plunderers, for passing a vote against the tithes of agist- ment; to carp at my words about witnesses and juries.
His Lordship's letter verifies the words of Saint Paul, Wherein thoujudgest another, thou condemnest thyself.
In order to expose me to the detestation of the clergy of the established religion, he attributes the following words to me: These disturbances originate in the dues of the clergy.*
I never wrote, nor made use of such words : I am sorry that the Lord Bishop of Cloyne has put it in my power to anwer the charge with a flat contradiction : the Lord Bishop of Cloyne dates his pamphlet in 1787, and remarks that 1 think it expedient to inform the VVhiteboys, that the Whiteboy act will be in force till next June. The remark is shrewd, and of a very charitable tendency,
My first address to the White boys was in March eight v-
* Lord Bishop of Cloyne's Pamphlet, page 106, third Edition.
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six — a rumour was propagated amongst the insurgents, that the VVhiteboj act would be no longer in force after the en- suing June. To guard a deluded multitude against every danger to which they might be exposed, from an expec- tation of impunity in consequence of their ignorance of the law, I informed them that the Whiteboy act would be in force until the month of June eighty-seven: this was a long warning of fifteen months. What means then the Lord Bishop of Cloyne by his remark ? It impresses the minds of his readers with the notion that this is Mr. O'Leary's meaning, viz. ' the Whiteboy act will be at an end next 4 June ; after that time you have nothing to dread, you may 4 go on.' His Lordship means this, or means nothing.
What an opinion must not strangers to my principles and conduct, form of me when they read the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet !
About twenty years ago, when the Whiteboys first rose up in the South, a person of consequence (who is since dead) contributed to the insurrection, in order to defeat a plan that was then intended by Parliament for the relief of the Catholics, whom by this diabolical stratagem, worthy of another Cecil, he intended to render obnoxious to their rulers. 1 intended to reclaim the Whiteboys by every ar- gument which prudence, as well as religion could suggest : and as the report of the expiration of the Whiteboy act in the month of the ensuing June, was propagated amongst the people, I know not by whom, (but I knew that the motive was such) I thought it incumbent on me to guard the deluded multitude against the snare, and to shelter the honour of the Catholic body, by defeating the designs, and disappointing the hopes of such artful politicians. I would be an enemy to the peace of society, the Catholic body, and to myself, if I had written in the sense which the Lord Bishop of Cloyne would fain convey to his readers. Far from encouraging the insurgents to proclaim a truce of three months to concert their plan in the interim, and renew the war with fresh vigour, at the expiration of the term, (for such must be the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's meaning,) I ap- plied for information to a Protestant gentleman, who is married to the daughter of a clergyman in the diocese of
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Cloyne, and who wrote to the Whiteboys under the signa* ture of a Dublin Shopkeeper. If 1 intended to encourage them in their proceedings, by marking out the time beyond which they had nothing to dread, 1 would have abridged the term, and pleaded ignorance of the laws.
To examine further into the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's commentaries on my texts, would be not only a loss of time, but childish. Or what must the public think of the ingenuity of a Prelate, who construes the way of the cross is the road to the crown, into sedition.
lam surprised that his Lordship has not adverted* to those words of my last address to the Whiteboys, " Mul- titudes are easily misled, and incapable of drawing the de- licate line, to which common sense points out, and of which it says, thus far you shall go, and no farther."
I am surprised that he has not made the following com- ments on them, ' You have done very well in disturbing * the peace of society, cropping cattle and burning corn ; 4 but stop now, and wait for a while.' This would have opened a field for criticism, though he should know that the giddy populace, let their complaints be ever so well founded, is easily misled ; when once in motion never knows where to stop, and can never draw the delicate line which common sense points out, and of which it says, thus far you shall go ; if you have complaints lay them before your rulers ; but go no further. And no further shall I go in explaining letters which may be read in the Appendix. His query then to me about the Emperor of Germany is not in point. But I shall take the liberty of proposing a query very applicable to the present circumstances.
Quere. What would the Emperor of Germany, who has granted free toleration of all religions with a conjunction to their teachers, not to divide his subjects, or distract his do- minions with the jarings of controversy, but to enforce the principles of morality. What would that tolerating prince think of a Catholic Prelate, who in a pamphlet, would ring the alarm all over his dominions, and inform his Majesty, that none but his subjects of the established religion were en- titled to national confidence, and thus inspire his subjects, not with mutual confidence, but with mutual jealousy,
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fear, and distrust ? I leave the Lord Bishop of Cloyne to judge.
When the Lord Bishop of Cloyne begins his query, with these words, 4 if there were an insurrection of Protestants 4 in Bohemia, for the purpose of robbing the established Ro- ' man Catholic clergy, and there might have been Protes- 4 tants enough if the perfidious Cruelty of the late Empress 4 had not nearly rooted them out.'*
When his Lordship begins his query with such words, I must take the liberty of reminding him, that in his short query there are two fallacies. The first fallacy is in these words, if there were an insurrection of Protestants in Bohemia. For the insurgents in the South of Ireland, were merely Catholics, as I have proved in my narrative : they were a motley group of different religions, complaining both of tithes and tithe-jobbers. Our readers will be surprised that in the course of our controversy, we have been so sparing of latin words ; this fallacy then is called by the logicians a dicto simpliciter ad dictum secundum quid ; when we confine to a few what is common to many, and vice versa. The second fallacy consists in supposing that my writings have a tendency to rob the Protestant Clergy ; and this fallacy is called by the logicians de falso supponente — a false supposi- tion, which the respondent answers with a flat denial, by saying nego suppositum.
When the Lord Bishop of Cloyne calls the late Empress Queen, cruel and perfidious, I wish he were a little more courtly and flattering in his epithets ; rudeness to the fair sex, from an ascetick or hermit like me, who by the obliga- tions of celibacy had not an opportunity of polishing and refining my manners by a more frequent and friendly inter- course with the softest and fairest part of the creation; rudeness in me would have some excuse to plead, but in his attack on the illustrious fair, little or no excuse can be pleaded for the Lord Bishop, who from his early days was at liberty to court and pray; to repeat the Penitential Psalms with David, and to compliment with Otway :
O Woman, lovely woman ! nature form'd thee
To temper man ; we had been brutes without thee.
• See the Lord Bishop of Cloync's Pamphlet, page 111 ; fifth Edition.
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Little or no excuse then can be pleaded in favour of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, when he treats the late Empress Queen with such severity :• for she was neither cruel nor perfidious. His Lordship was not a member of her Privy Council, to know the nature of her compacts with, or pro- mises to her subjects; compacts and promises in the per- formance of which no Sovereign could be more honourable and punctual. She had in her dominions the descendants of those German boors who had attempted to dethrone her ancestors. Those men were under legal restraints for their fathers' guilt, in which they had no part. It was their unhappy fate, in common with many others, to be victims to human laws, which by a faint resemblance of Omnipotence, make of the folly, or madness, or weakness of one genera- tion, a kind of original and hereditary sin, which afflicts in a long succession the innocent posterity, with this difference, that the offence against the Deity is instantly forgiven upon repentance, or the application of the remedy which mercy appoints to counteract the rigour of justice. But human legislators all over Europe, have given proofs of their om- nipotence in penal codes which immortalize the punishment ages after the death of the guilt, and require a rigorous atone- ment from the sober and innocent decendants, for the frenzy of their forefathers. They have their patent in Scripture, wherein we read, I have §aid, ye are Gods and all Sons of the Most High. But Dryden's Indian Emperor was tortured for paying a greater veneration to the bright luminary of the day, than to a book bound up in sheep skin, which Pizzaro's chaplain called the Bible, and of which the unhappy prince knew nothing. To each of those legislators who punished their subjects for'hereditary errors, or their forefathers' guilt, Dryden's Indian Emperor would say,
If thou art that most croel God, whose eyes Delight in blood, and human sacrifice.
Such was the state of the Hussites in the Empress Queen's dominions, and such was the case of Catholics and Dissenters under Protestant Sovereigns, when prelates of the Lord Bi- shop of Cloyne's philanthropy directed their councils; as the Reverend Mr. Samuel Barber of Rathfryland, has ingeni-
* Rudeness would be an improper word when I am animadverting on the writings of a Bishop.
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ously and pointedly remarked to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne.*
The state of the Hussites in Bohemia was not worse than the state of the Dissenters and Catholics in Ireland, even so late as the beginning of that illustrious Empress's reign.
That magnanimous Heroine, surrounded by numerous and powerful foes, ready to invade her dominions, and to ornament the triumphal car with the procession of a captive Queen, worked up the softer soul to a martial firmness. Reduced to fifteen thousand men, against the numerous armies of powerful Sovereigns, she took in her arms the present Emperor, who was then in his cradle, shewed him to her subjects of every religious description, ' behold your prince unable to protect you ; defend his rights, 4 and when those infant hands will be able to wield the 4 Sceptre, the grateful remembrance of your services will 4 procure you the love, favour, and protection of your 4 Sovereign.'
It was the characteristic of the rude courtiers and stern divines of Queen Elizabeth's reign, not to pity a Queen in distress ; but at the sight of Maria Teresa controuling: fortune on the verge of ruin, a generous ardour glowed in every breast. Her Protestant subjects of Hungary flocked to her banners, and as the reward of their loy- alty, she repealed the restrictive laws which former So- vereigns had enacted. As a proof of her fidelity to her promise, she ordered her son's picture to be hung up in their houses of worship, making it high treason to molest them in the exercise of their religion. What the mother began in her hereditary kingdom, the son com- pleted all over his dominions.
This is the historical information which the Lord Bishop of Cloyne should have given his readers. But it would not answer his ends : cruelty, perfidy, and persecution are his favourite theme ; generosity, humanity, and toleration are quite shadowed in his picture. Catholic powers are em- bracing their subjects, without inquiring into their cate- chism: if an enemy of toleration were as industrious in
* See Remarks on a Pamphlet, entitled " The Present State of the Church of Irc- I*nd," by Samuel Barber.
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translating into French or German, the Bishop of Cloyne*sr pamphlet, as he has been in translating Ghilini's letter, and the Bishop's consecration oath into English; violation of faith with heretics, and other charges : if in consequence of the impression his pamphlet had made -on the public minds, Catholic princes, prelates, and doctors, read the clause pro- posing to empower the civil magistrates to pull down, level, and prostrate Roman Catholic chapels upon the deposition of one witness; if they read all the pamphlets published of late against the Catholic body, and knew the steps that are taking in order to degrade them; I appeal to his Lordship, and to the public, whether the Bishop of Cloyne's pamphlet, and the proceedings now mentioned, would tend to promote toleration ?
What was the Bishop of Cloyne's intention in abusing the memory of the Empress Queen ? Why has not he proposed her good qualities, and the tolerating spirit of her son as models for imitation ? Or does he really believe the case of a Bohemian Hussite, now restored to the privilege of the great and inalienable charter, to which a man guilty of no personal crime against the state is entitled ? Does he really believe his case, and that of an Irish Catholic to be quite similar ? If the Irish Catholics profess the religion of the greatest monarchs, and the creed of flourishing Universities, one would imagine that their faith should not make them ob- jects of contempt. They introduced no new religion into the state, nor encroached upon any man's property. They had the lands of their fathers, and the religion of their educa- tion, ages before their Sovereigns thought fit to change their creeds. Their blood flows in the veins of the Protestant nobility and gentry of Ireland, whose pedigree is proclaimed the more illustrious, in proportion as they trace it back to Catholic times. Their loyalty at home, and their valour abroad, when disqualifying laws, and the thirst of glory urged them to dispute the laurel under the banners of foreign kings, cannot disgrace the kindred of affinity the Catholic noblemen and gentlemen may claim to the Protestant nobi- lity and gentry of the land. Had the island been even sub- dued by the sword of the conqueror, conquest itself has its limits circumscribed by justice. Transfer of allegiance, and Xhe tribute paid to the former Sovereign, is all that the
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conqueror is entitled to. Locke would grant him no more, but would secure in the unchangeable profession of their consciences and inheritance, the subjects who had changed their masters. They had the prescription of ages to plead for their religion and properties, when the wrecks of both were secured to them by the laws of nations under the walls of Limerick. This capitulation, which it was in their power to break forty-eight hours after the interchange of the arti- cles, they adhered to inviolably. It was shamefully broken by the daughter of the very king to whom they had sworn, allegiance, though from the day on which it was signed until this very hour, not a pistol was fired, or a sword drawn by a Catholic in this kingdom against the state. Such being the case, which no man can contradict, what must not be the indignation of every man of feeling, when he sees about two millions of Irish subjects treated with as little ceremony as if they were a set of negro slaves upon a West India plantation ; compared to a pack of hounds impatient at the view of the game ; and to a set of treacher- ous, insidious, and faithless Popish rebels, to be cut off by his Majesty's sword.* Could mortals foresee that, in the year eighty-seven, a clause would be introduced into the Irish House of Commons, for the purpose of pulling down, levelling and prostrating Roman Catholic chapels, if one witness swore before two magistrates that an unlawful oath was taken in said chapel, or in any place adjoining thereto ! It would be more honourable to banish the whole Catholic body out of the kingdom, after giving them sufficient time and notice for selling their properties, than to oner them the insult of proposing on the evidence of a single witness the destruction of their houses of worship, in the course of the same session when a member of Parliament talked of heads of a bill to prevent the stealing of dogs.
We read of two philosophers in antiquity, the one con- tinually laughing, and the other continually crying at the scenes of human life. This contrast would unite them both. Christian houses of worship to be demolished, and the ken- nels of dogs to be protected by the law.
* See Theophilus, calLed by the Bishop of Cloyne an able writer against whom it is hard to prove a negative, and (Proh Deurn et homiuum fides !) by Counsellor Douiinick Trant, a well meaning- writer.
P P
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After what I have related in the course of my narrative, and in the vindication of my writings, I cannot see how the Irish Catholics deserved such severe and disgraceful usage, as to have their houses of worship treated with the same in- dignity as if they were houses of prostitution, or cabinets of leagues and confederacies against the crown and dignity of our most gracious Sovereign. If they were either the one or the other, they would not be destroyed upon the evidence of one witness, at a time when twenty witnesses would take a hundred false oaths for the twentieth part of the materials (which were proposed as a reward) for the demolishcrs of chapels : much less would a temple of Venus be demolished, because a thousand unlawful oaths would be taken in places adjoining it. The only fault with which the Catholic body can be upbraided, is their misfortune originating from their attachment to their religion, without any disloyalty to their Kings ; but unfortunate people ought not to be insulted. The most flourishing empires, as well as individuals, are not proof against the revolutions of time, and the vicissi- tudes of fortune.
Marius, the great conqueror of the Cimbri, was seen in a reclining posture, and forlorn and half famished on the ruins of Carthage, formerly the rival of Rome. The sight of such a change disarmed the officer who was sent to behead him, when the other cried out, go and tell the governor that you have seen Marius hungry on the ruins of Carthage. Tra- vellers pay a certain respect to the ruins of old temples and other buildings stripped of their former decorations ; and it would be matter of surprise, if in the very blaze of tolera- tion, the legislature of Ireland would pay such little regard to the descendants of the people, who in former times open- ed their houses and seminaries for the reception of all the natives of hurope, who flocked to them for improvement, and erected magnificent structures in honour of the Deity, as to force them to pray in the open air. The dissolution of morals amongst the lower orders, deprived of a place of worship, and the scandal of Europe would be the con- sequence of such a rigorous law. The Irish senate foresaw it, and to their honour rejected the clause.
The Catholics of Ireland should be very thankful to ths
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289
Lord Bishop of Cloyne for endeavouring' to procure them, the confidence of their rulers. And the Dissenters and Ca- tholics of Ireland are no less thankful to you, Counsellor Trant, for your kind assistance in becoming his auxiliary, and painting both as internal confederated enemies against the constitution.* You, doubtless, glory in a revolution which has spread the broad basis of your civil and religious liberty ; you should not have forgotten the heroes of Enniskilleo, nor the defenders of Derry, against the forces of James the Second, to whom the latter had sworn allegiance, and whose son-in-law the former had placed on the throne. For a gen- tleman who is so well versed in history as you are, should know that the combined efforts of the Dissenters and Catholics could have turned the scale at that critical period, and put a speedy end to the contests. Both parties were well rewarded for their exertions in support of the cause which to each seemed best : the daughter riveted the chains of the Dis- senters, who had procured her the throne, by the exaltation of her brother-in-law, and gave the coup de grace to the Ca- tholics, for having fought in her father's cause, before they could have any notion that she would sway the sceptre which dropped from his feeble and unnerved hands. Since that memorable sera, so undeservedly degrading to both, the Dis- senters and Catholics of Ireland have behaved with equal loyalty to each succeeding monarch.
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne and you have paid them a very handsome compliment— the Bishop excludes them from national confidence, on account of their readiness to pull down and set up : and you proclaim them internal confede- rated enemies against the constitution.
The Reverend Mr. Barber has shaved the Lord Bishop of Cloyne with a keen and polished razor ; and he is very capa- ble of trimming your pamphlet. May I ask you a few questions ? Can you assign a reason for calling Theophilus a well-meaning writer f Is it for calling your flesh and blood a pack of hounds? You are the son of respectable Roman Ca- tholic parents : you need not blush at it, for the reasons al- ready alleged. Is it in your father's loyal and hospitable
* Sec Ccuinsellov Trant"'? Pamphlet
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family, you have discovered any plot against the state ? Is it amongst the respectable Dissenters and Catholics of the county of Cork ? You have travelled over the most refined nations in Europe, and conversed with the Roman nobility, not far from the tombs of Scipio and Emilius. In Catholic countries have you discovered any treacherous correspon- dence between the Catholics of Ireland and the Princes of the houses of Bourbon and Sardinia, whom your well-mean- ing Theopkdns points out as their deliverers ? You go over the same ground with the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, and talk, of Papists disarming Protestants. Did not this happen in the night time ? Are you so clear-sighted as to discover a man's religion in the dark, when you are slumbering on your pil- low ? I doubt not but that some Protestants gave up their arms with as much reluctance as Counsellor Trant would reach forth his hand to receive the Commission of a Judge, when the Quarter Sessions are to be established in Munster, or the patent of a Vicar General. For numbers of them would not be much concerned if proctors, tithe- canters, and tithes, were at a great distance beyond Purgatory ; which contributed so much to the establishment of those church revenues, which give the Lord Bishop of Cloyne and the Counsellor an occasion of rough-handling the Catholics and Dissenters of Ireland. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne preaches against what he dtemsthe superstition ; but likes to live well by the institution to which it gave rise.
In the same strain with the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, you speak of notices threatening to burn a new church, and to change an old church into a mass-house.
Is Counsellor Trant in earnest ? Does he really believe that a Catholic ever posted up that notice ? Is the new church burnt ? Is the old church sprinkled with holy water ? If he gave himself the trouble to read my addresses to the Whiteboys, with the same attention with which Doctor Woodward read thern, in order to brand me with sedition; he must know the manner in which I ridiculed the idea. Where would they have found a chaplain to give them mass in that church ? Or does Counsellor Trant believe that night strollers who would not hear mass from their own pas- tors, would die martyrs for prayers near the Bishop of
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Cloyne's communion table ? Apage Nugce ! This I re- marked before, and I here repeat it. But will Mr. O'Leary deny that such a notice was posted up ? By no means. He has read the memoirs of artful knaves, and knows that there are still living, and will be found to the end of time ingenious Hoyles, who can lay down rules for playing a game of political whist. A Cardinal, whose life was a disgrace to the purple, got information that Pope Innocent the Eleventh, intended to expel him the Sacred College in consequence of complaints daily preferred against him to his eminence ; the crafty courtier wrote to the Pope an anonymous letter against himself, informing his Holiness that the Cardinal was so profligate, that a Roman lady was to be found with him the following night, in such an apartment of his palace, and re- questing his Holiness to procure personal information ; the Pope, who was a man of the most rigid morals, came with his guards in the dead of night to the Cardinal's pa- lace, and forced his way into the apartment, where to his surprise, he found the holy man with his arms expanded before a crucifix, and on his bare knees upon a flag instead of carpet. The stratagem succeeded, and from that night forward he never would listen to any complaints against the Cardinal. Rather the Lord Bishop of Cloyne and Counsellor Trant, must produce the person who post- ed up the notice threatening to burn a new church, or leave me at liberty to attribute the notice to a much si- milar stratagem. They should have inquired whether tithe-jobbers did not contrive to set fire to their own corn, in order to prevent any alteration in the system of tithes, and to draw the vengeance of the laws upon deluded peasants, who were already but too obnoxious. Many evidences should be produced to support Counsellor Trant's charge ; and if he produced ten thousand, not one of them, but upon examination, would be discovered a false witness.
That Doctor Woodward, the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, come from Westminster School to enjoy an Irish Bishopric, should insult the natives of Ireland, both Dissenters and Ca- tholics, by excluding them from confidence, I am not sur- prised. Every allowance must be made for the prejudices
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of early education. Perhaps at the age of twenty, he ima- gined that the Irish walked upon all fours, as an English Judge at the age of forty, a few years ago, wrote to his agent, to know whether there was a slated house in Dublin, to hire for his accommodation on his arrival. His Lord- ship is further by his profession and consecration hostile to all doctrines except his own, and interested in tithes, which in Ireland bring him in a greater income than he could ex- pect in England. But that Counsellor Trant, a native of the land, a man of the world, whose mind should be enlarged by a more extensive intercourse with people of every descrip- tion, and a gentleman of independent fortune, should stand forth as a pamphlet writer, in support of the charges of the well-meaning, scurrilous and slanderous Theophilus, must be to his acquaintances a matter of surprise. There is not, however, a fortune-teller in the county of Cork, but could guess at the reason ; and the reason must be very pressing, when Counsellor Trant commits himself with almost the bulk of the natives of Ireland, by calling them internal confederated enemies against the constitution of this king- dom.
It is to be expected that in the second edition, and all fu- ture editions of his pamphlet, he will mark down in large le- gible characters the above assertion amongst the errata; otherwise he must sanctify himself among the beneficed clergy, for no Dissenting or Catholic gentleman can with any warmth of affection keep company with their accuser.
The senate of the nation is now assembled. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne and Counsellor Trant are in Dublin; and I am here to meet them. I call on them both in the face of the kingdom, to bring forth their charges against the Ca- tholic body. I call on them to contradict what I have re- lated. I call on them to prove Popish confederacy against church or state. I cite them before the senate of the nation. — They are silent, they decline the summons. Let the reader infer the consequence.
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SECTION THE THIRD;
Containing a Refutation of the Lord Bishop of Cloyne'' s Argu- ments, drawn from the Legate's Letter and the Catholic Bishop's Consecration Oath.
In the persecutions against the primitive Christians, their enemies used to dress them in the skins of sheep and other animals, and after having forced on their bodies their livery of contempt, used to cry out Christians ad bestias ; to the wild beasts with the Christians. The enemies of the Ca- tholics of this kingdom have been so industrious of late, in dressing them in a strange drapery, and attributing to them sedition, hostility to the state, and doctrines inconsistent with the security of the throne, as to excite a general clamour Catho* lici ad funem ; to the halter with the Catholics. To refute every charge would make up a volume. My defence is already swelled to a tolerable size ; and after a full vindica- tion of the Catholic body, and of my own conduct, I think it needless to take up my reader's time with any farther tedious discussions.
However, as the Lord Bishop of Cloyne has favoured the
f)ublic with a translation of Ghilini's letter, and the Catho- ic Bishop's consecration oath, 1 must trespass further on the patience of my readers. The Catholic body must be grossly misrepresented if the public are to believe that the opinionr of Casuists make a part of their creed. Were I to sum up all the erroneous opinions of the Divines who pro- fessed themselves members of the church of England, and the opinions of several other Protestant Divines; did 1 col- lect them all into a volume with this title, the Creed of the Right Reverend Doctor Woodward, the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, how would he gaze with astonishment, and exclaim against my want of sincerity and candour ! In the very sup- position then, that Burke and Ghiliui were really of the opinion which the Lord Bishop of Cloyne attributes to
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them, how far does it affect the Catholics of Ireland, or the Catholics all over the world ? When the Elector of Saxony proposed a case of conscience to Luther and Melancthon to know whether in the absence of his wife or during her pregnancy he would make use of another ? Those Casuists answered in the affirmative. A case of conscience much similar was proposed to Bishop Burnet. After labouring much, and torturing texts of Scripture, the humane Divine decided that polygamy was lawful. Would it not be ridicu- lous in me to force into the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's con- science, such decisions as articles of creed ? Nay, some Protestant Divines went further. Doctor Dopping, Bishop of Meath, preached publicly in Christ church, Dublin, that violation of faith with Catholics was lawful, in justifica- tion of the breach of the articles of Limerick. To several Christian Divines then can be applied, what Cicero said of the philosophers of his time, that there was no absurdity so glaring, but had some philosopher to support it. If then the Lord Bishop of Cloyne intends to swell the Catholic creed, with the opinions of Catholic Schoolmen, I shall re- pay him tenfold, by sending to him a collection of absurdi- ties and strange doctrines advanced by Protestant authors. Every man of sense will acknowledge this a sufficient answer to his Lordship's remark on Ghilini's letter. And what is Ghilini's opinion to countervail the doctrine sworn to by the Prelates and Catholics of Ireland, both clergy and laity ? Or does the Lord Bishop of Cloyne intend to hold us up to our King and Country, as unprincipled perjurers ? This is severe usage to men, labouring under so many disqualifica- tions, because they refuse to take an oath against the con- viction of their consciences. Let the most profligate amongst us swear against our whole creed, he is believed, and becomes an adoptive child of the state. When we swear against imputed doctrines without fee or reward, it is hard indeed if we deserve no credit. But without being an apologist for Ghilini, much less for Burke, has the Lord Bishop of Cloyne fairly stated the case, and the principles on which the titular Archbishop of Rhodes rejected the oath, which in reality he did not, nor could understand as well as the Catholics of Ireland ? Did he say, or could he
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have the absurd effrontery to say that Catholics could not in conscience swear allegiance to a Protestant King, when in the purest ages of the Christian Religion, the primitive Christians swore allegiance to the Heathen Caesars ? When the rigid Tertullian, a stranger to fear or flattery, who would expire in the tortures of the rack for his belief, has left us an abridgment of the prayer offered up by Christian subjects for their Pagan rulers. ' We pray, says this great ' man, We pray for the Emperors, and that God may grant
* them a long life and a quiet reign : that their family may
* be safe, and their forces valiant : their senate wise, their ' people orderly and virtuous : that they may rule in peace, 'and enjoy all the blessings they can desire either as 'men or princes. Et omnia quae tendunt ad Caesar's ' votum.1*
Upon what ground does Ghilini reject the oath? from ignorance. It is evident from his letter that he did not know the nature of it. His very words prove it to demon- stration. I shall give them in the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's own translation.
Extract from Ghilini' 's letter.
' Besides, whether he be inviolably bound as the new form " prescribes, to be always true and faithful to his Majesty, ' which is afterwards explained to affirm upon oath according ' to the sense intended by the laics of Ireland, is to me a very ' dubious point.1 [Remark here, Irish reader, how Ghilini doubts.] ' For since the laws of England and Ireland re-
* cognise the King as head of the Church, and the foun-
* tain of its spiritual authority, he who takes such an oath
* and promises to be faithful to his Majesty, according to 1 the prescription of the laws of Ireland, might also recog- 1 nize the King as head of the Church, and the fountain of
* its spiritual authority. Should it happen that such expres-
* sions either were or could be so understood, your most 'illustrious Lordships and each of the Catholics themselves, ' ought to take notice that this is a most manifest error, 'and directly contrary to the principles of the Catholic
* Tertullian's Apolojy,
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1 religion, which acknowledges only one head and fountain 'of all spiritual authority, namely, the Roman Pontiff.'
From these very words the reader may know that the Nuncio did not know the nature of the oath. He confounds civil and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, and imagines that the Irish legislature proposed an oath of allegiance to the Catholics, binding them to acknowledge the King as Pope, head of the universal Church, and the fountain of all spiritual authority ; w l ereas they only swore that no foreign Prince, Prelate, or Potentate, hath or ought to have any civil jurisdiction within these realms. Hence the doubts and ignorance of an Italian casuist, are trumpeted over three kingdoms, as articles of Catholic belief, and wavtd as so many signals for perse- cution.
Nor does the Lord Bishop of Cloyne discriminate the clauses of the oath from each other ; nor explain the dis- tinctions of which Ghilini's letter is susceptible, with that accuracy to which he should have, attended if he expected an answer.
In the same period of the oath, there are two clauses, the one ' disclaiming violation of faith with heretics, as an arti- ' cle of Catholic belief:' the other 'disclaiming the depo- 1 sition of Kings, in consequence of Papal excommunications.' The Legate gives his opinion, that the condemnation of the latter as abominable is absolutely intolerable, because, ac- cording to him, this doctrine (Hanc Doctrinam) has been defended and contended for by most Catholic nations, and the Holy See has frequently followed it in practice.
It is to be remarked, that he speaks in the singular num- ber, (doctrinam hanc,) and alludes to the indirect deposing power, supported by some ultramontane Canonists, whom the Legate in consequence of his prejudices in favour of the court of Home, enlarges into most Catholic nations. For violation of faith with heretics was never defended nor con- tended for by Catholic nations, much less by the Apostolic Ste. But it has been detested and exclaimed against, as a black slander, invented by indelicate controvertists, in order to misrepresent the Catholic doctrine, and to bring an odium on the Apostolic See. This the Lord Bishop of Cloyne should know.
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If he had no authority but that of Doctor Hayes, who proved it a slander five or six years ago in Scotland ; or of Mr. O'Leary, who exclaimed against it as a slander about the same time in Ireland, and who proclaims it a slander still ; the Lord Bishop of Cloyne might plead the pliant policy of men, who, under the terror of prosecution, wtre obliged to soften their doctrine. But when he reads Natalis Alexander, a Dominican friar, in his dissertations on Ec- clesiastical History ; Arnaldus, in his apology, and so many Catholic divines writing in Catholic countries, against vio- lation of faith with heretics, and making it out downright slander; the Lord Bishop of Cloyne might have spared himself the trouble of translating Ghilini's letter: that Le- gate then must allude to the indirect deposing power ex- ploded all over the world, though supported by some Ita- lian Canonists, and unsuccessfully attempted by some Popes, not in consequence of any divine right, but in consequence of a temporal claim, founded either on compacts or a long prescription pleaded, against monarchs, wnose predeces- sors had rendered their kingdoms tributary to the Holy See.
If the Protestant Bishop of Cloyne, who is so ardent for the security of his tithes, (the occasion of so many distur- bances in this kingdom,) had the same title to Peter's-pence, and been as powerful as the Roman Pontiffs were at the be- ginning of the reformation, he would have been as clamorous as Pope Paul the Fourth, and Sixtus Quintus, who considered England as a fief of the Holy See.* For the generality of church-men, however divided as to creeds, agree very well in one point, viz. not to part with what they have. Hence they are called Mortmain in law form, perhaps from the gripe of a dead man's hand. The best manner of living on £ood terms with them, is to give them all, and take nothing from them: but such is not the present humour of Catholic Mo- narchs, who, without any breach of the Catholic doctrine, and in defiance of the thunders of the Vatican, lay siege to the Pope's cities, if he gives them any provocation. Jn vain would he fulminate his excommunications on the score of
* This was the answer of Poue Paul the Fourth, to Queen Elizabeth's) Ambassadors.
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temporalities. They are considered as a ftdmcn brutem. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne then either misunderstands Ghilini's letter, or tortures it as he tortured Mr. O'Leary's writings. I would stake my life this very instant, that if the Lord Bishop of Cloyne wrote to the Nuncio, and asked him if he meant in his letter that violation of faith with heretics, was a doctrine defended, contended for by most Catholic nations, and frequently followed in practice by the Holy See ; I would stake my life that the Nuncio would write to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne a very obliging letter, in which he would disclaim any such meaning, equally with the doc- trine. The Nuncio mentions in his letter, doctrinam, doc- trine. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne changes doctrine into doctrines, the plural number, in the following manner, page twenty-two of his pamphlet.
1 The Legate treats the clauses in the proposed oath, 6 containing a declaration of abhorrence and detestation of 4 the doctrines, that faith is not to be kept with heretics ; and 4 that princes deprived by the Pope may be deposed, as ab- 4 solutely intolerable, because those doctrines are defended ' and contended for by most Catholic nations.' Had the Legate expressed himself in the same identical words with the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, there would be no need of any comment. We would condemn the Legate's ignorance, and the horror of his doctrine in a more pointed manner. But here it is a Roman courtier, who is so zealous for the honour of his ultramontane Canonists, who supported the discarded deposing power, and takes offence that their doctrine should be called abominable ; and for this reason says, that such a stricture is intolerable. The Lord Bishop of Cloyne, from brotherly love, increases the ecclesiastical funds, by ad- ding to the Archbishop of Rhodes's doctrine of the indirect deposing power, violation of faith with heretics, of which the other certainly could not think. Thus one Prelate shews an extraordinary generosity in bestowing on his Confrere more than he would accept of Nothing more then can be inferred from this letter, than that the Titular Arch- bishop of Rhodes doubts the validity of an oath, of the nature of which he expresses his ignorance, in imagin- ing that the Catholics of Ireland intended to make a Pope
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of their Sovereign. In his very ignorance he nevertheless shews the abhorrence in which he holds a false oath. Whereas in the alternative of perjury or suffering, he re- commends to the Catholics to suffer for ever under the penal laws, sooner than to take an oath which he deems erroneous. The same can be said of Burke, who calls it horrible impiety, to say that a Catholic who had sworn allegiance to George the Third, should abjure the same King if he became a Catholic. Under the change of re- ligion, he considers the oath taken to a Protestant King still binding, when he alters his creed. Of what advan- tage then Ghilini's letter can be to the Lord Bishop of Cloyne's cause, after the bustle it has occasioned, let the reader determine. This case of conscience proposed to an Italian, by a doating Prelate who filled up a volume with minutias and trifling occurrences, concerns the Ca- tholics of Ireland as much as the question which Rabelais proposed to the logicians ; whether a chimcera bouncing in a vacuum, could eat up the premises of a syllogism? Numquid chimcera in vacuo, bombinans possit comedere, primas intentiones ?
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne cries out with an air of triumph, ' who is the voucher to be set in opposition to the
* Legate of the Pope V And I raise my voice in my turn. 4 Who is the Pope's Legate ? A man who did not know the
* nature of the subject of his letter, to be set in opposition to
* the Catholic clergy of Ireland ? Or who is the Pope him-
* self, to be set in opposition to all ages acknowledging the ' right that Temporal Princes have to the allegiance of their
* subjects ; whether those Princes were Trojans or Constan- 1 tines? Or who is the Lord Bishop of Cloyne, to be
* fabricating creeds for his neighbours ?' Are not Catholic Prelates better and more competent vouchers of the Catholic doctrine, than a person reared out of their communion? He may alarm the ignorant with a letter which the Catholic Prelates condemned in the year 1775. If he attacks the Catholics on a fair ground, why does not he explain their genuine principles ? Or does he intend to sport with com- mon sense, in erecting the decision of every doating Casuist, into an article pf Catholic belief? If he does, I shall
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meet him on his own ground and swell his treed to an enor- mous bulk, by adding to it the reveries and extravagant opinions of those writers who attacked the church of Rome, and at the same time struck into those devious paths, in which the Lord Bishop of Cloyne must acknowledge that scripture was not their guide ; or if he acknowledges it, he must renounce his creed.
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne has favoured the public with the Catholic Bishops' consecration oath : and from what mo- tive ? To insinuate to the public, that the oath of allegiance they have taken to their Sovereign is not to be relied on, and consequently that they and their flocks are not to be trusted. I should imagine that common justice should have induced him, not to throw out such an injurious intimation, and that the Catholic Prelates are the most competent judges of the sense and meaning of an oath which they take at their con- secration.
The Lord Bishop of Cloyne has translated the entire oath at the close, and given the most obnoxious clauses of it in the twenty-third page of his pamphlet. Let us now examine the most obnoxious clauses of this oath. For as to visiting the thresholds of the Apostles every three years ; I believe the Lord Bishop of Cloyne would not quarrel with his fellow Prelates whom his pamphlet is calculated to transport out of the kingdom.