drawn by a near obferver, and it is executed with fidelity and spirit.

"You scarcely" says Phileleutheros, "ever speak on public business, and seldom in the pulpit, without throwing a dart at somebody; and what is very remarkable, you have not magnanimity enough to stand an enemy's fire. Rowland Hill máy at tack every body; but if Rowland Hill be attacked, sacrilege is committed, religion is dishonoured, and the nomenclature of Billingsgate is exhausted, to exhibit the offender in all the infamy of reproach. It is always understood, when your influence is necessary in any affair of moment, that you must have your own way? that if you are opposed you are offended, and to offend you would be impolitic. Thus, sir, you exercise tyranny where all are equal; and thus you have grown up to an enormous importance, when your only claim to distinction should be pre-eminence in goodness; and when that distinction, however merited, should not be homage, but respect. In the religious world, you should be Rowland Hill among his peers, with the degree of influence which your talents and usefulness deserve. But instead of this, the absurd servility of many, and your own natural love of power, have placed you on a throne, where you are totally inadequate to the task of government, and where government ever so ably conducted, would be usurpation.

"Thus, sir, I think I have in some measure accounted for the wayward inconsistencies, and the haughty follies of your public life. Pride and ignorance of the imperfections which are to be found in the human character, and which belong to you as well as the rest of mankind, have led you to set the world right, in a very wrong way. They have made you suppose, that you are right and all the world besides absurdly wrong; and it seems they are to be lashed into propriety by your satirical scourge, or laughed out of their errors by your ridicule. You are the ready executioner of all follies but your own, you meddle with controversies with which you have nothing to do, and so fond are you of censure and abuse, that every trivial occurrence is seized to gratify your spleen. Your maxim in this respect, appears to be that of the old proverb, Better play at small game than stand

out."

6

We repeat again our acknowledgments to the author of this excellent epiftle, for his liberal zeal in defending the Eftablished Church and clergy from the foul and malignant afperfions of an inconfiftent and bigotted renegado.

A Reply to certain Obfervations of the Right Reverend Dr. Milner, upon the Sequel to the Serious Examination of the Roman Catholic Claims: including fome notice of the Tranfactions of 1791 and 1793, of Dr. Troy's Paftoral Charge, &c. &c. By the Rev. THOMAS LE MESURIER, M. A. 8vo. pp. 247. 5s. 6d. Rivingtons.

a

THE learned and worthy author of this Reply, has gained a complete victory over his antagonist, whom he convicts, in the cleareft manner, of downright falfehood and polemical chicanery.

Every charge contained in the "Serious Examination" and the "Sequel," against the Church of Rome, is proved beyond all poffibility of refutation; though the furious bigots of that party, will fill endeavour to blind men by grofs mifreprefentation and bluffering affertion.

As a fpecimen of the prefent work, we fhall quote the very able and interefting defence of the Albigenfes.

"According to Dr. Milner, the third canon of IVth Lateran was made against certain monsters of such vice and impiety, who, if they had not some how or other been suppressed, we none of us should have received Being!! And elsewhere he talks of the murders, adulteries, and other abominations of the Cathari, Albigenses, &c. whom he will have to be very different from the Waldenses, or the later Protestants.

"Now I have shewn that it was levell'd principally against those who denied Transubstantiation, as indeed, from that time to this, the great point upon which the supposed heresy of delinquents against the Romish Church has been rested, has always been this of Transubstantiation. This is true with regard to the Waldenses, Albigenses, Lollards, Wickliffites, and all who have followed them. But this distinction between the Waldenses and Albigenses, was a convenient device of Bossuet, whose object it was to multiply the variations which have existed between the Protestant Churches, as well as to apologize for the cruelties of his Church.

"There are two observations arising out of this, which must strike every reader.

"In the first place, it is remarkable, that neither the Waldenses, being such harmless people, (being indeed most harmless and pure in their lives, as they will be proved to have been) nor

the

* For our account of those peformances, see Vol. viii. p. 382, and Vol. xii. p. 387.

the Protestants in later days, were, or are anxious to disclaim their connection with the Albigenses; that it was not they who established this distinction or endeavoured to represent the two sects as so materially differing in doctrine or in practice. The attempt is made by those who were equally the persecutors of both sects, and who in saying this have a particular purpose in view. The reader therefore, I think, will rather be inclined to give credit to the men themselves, and to those who profess to have succeeded them, than to those who have been their enemies from the beginning, and have exercised the most unwarrantable cruelties towards them almost down to our days.

"But, secondly, the reader will ask, allowing that in the judgment of the Roman Catholics, the Waldenses were so dif ferent from the Albigenses, was there any difference in the treatment which they experienced from these same judges of theirs? Was the persecution against the meek and innocent Waldenses at all more mild and mitigated, or any way more equitable in its proceedings, than that which was exercised against these murderous, adulterous, and otherwise abominable Albigenses? The an swer will be, not at all. Precisely the same measure was dealt out to all who held opinions contrary to the decrees of the fourth Lateran, let their manner of life be what it would. It is therefore a most pitiful shift to alledge as a justification for the persecutions exercised by the Romish ecclesiastics, crimes which, if they had been as truly as they were falsely imputed, never were in any degree taken into the account, so as to influence either the mode of trial, or the measure of punishment of the supposed criminals.

"The true cause of these men being persecuted was their opposition to the See of Rome, and its practices, and particularly their denying transubstantiation, (a) which is what that Church considers as of all others, the most unpardonable act of rebellion. against her dignity and state; since it is in fact controverting the main source of her riches and influence, it is denying the assumed power in the Priest, of making his God; upon which is built his absolute dominion over the laity.

"But

(a) Much pains have been taken, but I apprehend without effect, to shew that the Waldenses did not deny transubstantiation. It is indeed certain, that John Huss did not, in this respect, dissent from the Church of Rome. He was however, most strictly, and in the first place, interrogated upon that point. But then, the question naturally arises, Why were the Waldenses persecuted, and John Huss, and Jerome of Prague, burnt?" Bossuet and Dr. Milner, by the pains which they take, are only aggravating the guilt, at all times heinous enough, of their predecessors,

VOL. XIV.

Chm. Mag. May 1898,

३. D

"But I will admit, that among the Albigenses, as among the Waldenses, there were individuals who held certain principles of the Manicheans. Is it indeed wonderful, that at a time when all the efforts of the Romish Church were exerted to keep the people in darkness, when the lives of bishops, priests, and monks, were openly and notoriously scandalous, and the Scriptures were almost inaccessible to the laity; is it wonderful, I say, that under these circumstances, those who saw and detested the corruptions of the reigning Church, should not be able to keep entirely clear of error? Could it be expected that in such times they should have had a zeal so very just and enlightened, as would lead them to put down falsehood, without in any way injuring the truth? This is more than we could hope to meet with from human nature in such a state of things. It was also not to be expected that among such numbers there should not be some immoral and ill disposed persons, who even might take advantage of the doctrines of the sect more freely to indulge in their vices. This was the case undoubtedly with the priests and the monks of those days; it might be so with the poor and illiterate Waldenses and Albigenses. But was this the case with the body of them? Were the abominations which Dr. Milner speaks of, a part of their creed? It is most evident, that they were not. Had they even been Manicheans in the utmost extent of the word, this would not have been the more true of them, because it has been demonstrated to the satisfaction of any fair man, that the charge against the Manicheans themselves, is false and unfounded. (b) It is the same charge as was made against the primitive Christians, and against the first reformers of the sixteenth century. And as it has been well observed, (c) had either the Heathen or the Papists succeeded in suppressing the innocent individuals whom they opposed and persecuted, these most scandalous and groundless calumnies would have descended to our days with as little contradiction as those which in the middle ages were devised against the Waldenses and the Albi genses.

"Had therefore the Albigenses been nothing else but Manicheans, where was the justice of subjecting them to such persecutions, as that which finally ended in their extirpation? The truth is, that the principal errors of these men, (I mean the Albigenses) as to their manner of living, were exactly and precisely the same as the errors of the Romish Church. And as we are all living, although the Romish Church is not destroyed, so might we still have "received a being," though the Albigenses had been suffered

(b) See Beausobre Hist. de Manichée, Liv. ix. c. 7. and seq. He proves this by St. Austin's own words, who, like some later persecutors, had belonged to the sect which he afterwards calum niated.

(c) By Beausobre, ubi supra, p. 731.

suffered to exist. The Albigenses, I say, did no more than the Church of Rome does at this day. They did not forbid marriage to the generality of the sect, but to their elect,' or 'perfect' only: that is, as the Romanists do, not to the laity, but to the ecclesiastics. This was the case also, with their rigid fasts. They only differed from the Papists as to names. (d) I will state this in the words of a most unexceptionable witness, Du Pin, a Romanist, and a most approved writer. He says of the Albigenses, as to their way of living, there were two sorts of people among them, the perfect, and the believers. The perfect boasted of living continently, did neither eat flesh, nor eggs, nor cheese, and abhorred lying, and never swore. The believers lived as other men, and were as irregular in their manners, but were persuaded that they were saved by the faith of the perfect, and that none of those who received the imposition of their hands were damned." (e)

"Here again, we have the poor believer saved by the merits of his Saints! another Popish error!

"And now, may I ask, what hindered but that if all men had their deserts, the persecutors might have been burned for doctrines in themselves exactly similar to those which they condemned in the sects whom they were persecuting?

"Such is always the inconsistency of falsehood.

"That further, these men were not seditious or dangerous to the state, is clear from the protection given to them by their sovereign, and the anxiety shewn by the Pope, that no princes. should in future protect them. Why should the Pope have any apprehension of this kind? Neither the emperors nor the kings could be backward, or wanted the aid of the ecclesiastical power in suppressing rebellious subjects. Henry IVth, knew very well how to maintain his right (such as it was) without the spiritual aid of the church. He never called upon his bishops to excommunicate Percy, or Owen Glendower. The truth is, it was feared that the sovereigns of that day might favour, or not be active enough against the enemies of the church, and so they were by this canon to be obliged, at the call of the clergy, to extirpate heretics; they were to be made the tools of the Pope, in persecuting their innocent subjects.

"This is abundantly clear, without further authorities. I will, however, produce two quotations more; one of them out of Dr. Milner's own store, though in a garbled state, which will deci

dedly

(d) Hardly however even that; for the reader must recollect that to perfection' in the Romish Church, celibacy and strictness in fasting are two material requisites. See the Lives of the Saints, passim; and Mumford's Catholic Scripturist, twentieth Point, and seq.

1

(e) Du Pin. Hist. Eccles. 13th Century.