pages, particularly as Oaths are concerned. The only rule respecting them in papal estimation is the interest of the church, that is, the Roman, blasphemously identified with religion, or Christianity. We have seen, on the most solemn platform, the reverence which has been paid to oaths. It is worth while to recal, how that sacred obligation was regarded, at no very distant period by Romanists, in whom their religion had not extinguished natural conscience and honour. In the second of what are called the Blue Books, of the date 1791, the "Catholic Committee," who were desirous of confirming by oath what the general body had professed in a formal" Protestation," addressed a Letter to Three of the Four Vicars Apostolic, who condemned the oath; and in page 23, they write thus:"This protestation was converted into the form of an oath. Shall we refuse to swear when called upon by our country, what we most solemnly protested under our hand-writing? The violation of an oath may accumulate the guilt of perjury on prevarication; but veracity is equally sacred, whether a protestation be made upon honour, or upon oath. Tantus in te sit veri amor, ut quicquid dixeris, id juratum putes, was the exhortation of a Father of the Church, and he must be destitute of christian sincerity, who thinks he is not equally bound to tell the truth without disguise, when called upon to make a solemn asseveration, as if he had an oath officially tendered. To recede therefore from any part of the Protestation would be a flagrant violation of veracity; a criminal prevarication; a mortal wound to the integrity of Catholics, and consequently an everlasting confirmation of the prejudice of Protestants, that our religion permits us to use duplicity and equivocation. Is it into this dishonor we are exhorted, nay required by your Lordships, to plunge?" Another illustration, equally edifying, of this honest and straightforward way of viewing things is supplied by a passage in the work of a respectable Roman Priest, the Reverend Joseph Berington. In his Memoirs of Panzani, 1793, afterwards published with another title, at page 433, in a note, he writes-" I am informed that many priests, with the vicars Walmesley and Douglas at their head, have recently withdrawn their names from the protestation, (the original of which is deposited in the British Museum,) and that the deed is recorded in an authentic instrument, termed a Counter-Protestation.—Are we, therefore, sure that there may not exist a counter-oath ?-When our enemies, as I thought them, used to proclaim, that no form of words could bind us, I indignantly repelled the charge. In future, I, and others, must be silent, hang our heads, and blush." I rather wonder at this honourable simplicity, but give the individuals full credit for their defective information. Dens,* with his relaxity and impurity, was not then in authority and operation as the authorized guide of the Irish clergy—the rule of faith and manners. Nor did the Protesters distinctly British Christianity owes unlimited gratitude to Mr. M'Ghee. Mr. O'Connell has doubtless registered a vow somewhere, that he will accept no challenge from Mr. M'Ghee. Freemason's Hall was well barricadoed against all hostile intrusion, when the champion of national education, without fear of reply, triumphantly advocated a system, which should put absolute and unlimited power over the souls of the rising generation into the hands of his church, while it crippled, neutralized, and nullified the whole power of the established Christianity, not only of the church of England, but of every evangelical section of dissent. The conduct of the Wesleyans on this subject is highly honourable and efficient. The trap set for simplicity and indifference in the Scripture Lessons has been completely exposed by Todd and Newland. He who would form a just opinion on the whole iniquitous system should read carefully the System of National Education in Ireland, by J. C. Colquhoun, Esq. 1838. The variations in the scheme are purely circumstantial: the substance is unaltered; and the trickery by which the attempt, (to be frustrated, as I trust in God,) is made to impose the support of it upon the nation, plainly enough betrays the quarry from which it is brought. It is a swindling concern of Rome and her confederates from beginning to end-in principals and agents. The advantage of mere education as affording an access to the mind might be of some weight, if the system actually proposed were mere education. But it is plainly meant to be popish. That is the object to which it is calculated and fitted practically to work. : No one could more deeply regret at the time, and more deeply regret even now, the single great mistake of Mr. M'Ghee, in se but in its consequences no event could be more auspicious to Protestant Christianity; for it has proved to demonstration, that the pretence of despising the charges of Mr. M'Ghee is the purest imaginable hypocrisy-hypocrisy-HYPOCRISY. It has done more. know, or recollect, the doctrine of the great authorities of their church, which, for the most part, are simply recited by the Louvain divine. But what would these men have thought, had they lived to our times, and seen, what we have seen, since the year 1829! They would indeed have had all their blushes to themselves; for the perjured guilty would have betrayed no such weakness. The prophet Jeremiah has anticipated them: "Were they ashamed when they had committed abomination? Nay, they were not at all ashamed, neither could they blush." A system of iniquity and falsehood, such as the Roman, necessarily requires another system-of force, if at hand, if not-of sophistry and fraud, to support it: and this has been brought into full and profitable play by the advocates of Romanism on every controverted subject of their peculiar creed. On the main subject of the present volume, Indulgences, it will be seen that they have not failed in all the familiar tactics of defence, and have had recourse to all the artifice, evasion, fiction, trickery, and knavery, which are generally supposed to be peculiar to dishonourable institutions or pursuits. It has converted the very silence, intended to express and be taken for contempt, into as strong a positive admission of the justice of the main charges, as if Dr. Murray, and his whole band, had thereto set their hand and seal. * vi., 15, or viii., 12. In fact, there are few-very few-controvertists of the Roman communion, who, when such a course offers any adequate advantage, and can be adopted without reasonable danger of detection, know how to refuse it.* To one who understands what such a *On this subject, generally, I know no work more deserving of being read and studied than Baxter's Key for Catholics, to open the juggling of the Jesuits, &c. And it is an auspicious sign, that the growing interest in a most important controversy has encouraged a new edition of this valuable work, illustrated by notes derived from sources opened since the time of the estimable writer, and powerfully corroborating every division of his argument. It is no small recommendation of Baxter's work, that amidst the present exuberance of similar productions it may justly be represented as almost unique. In its direct object it is highly valuable and efficient, and its efficiency is accidentally applicable to an unexpected quarter, which wields the weapons, and exercises the stratagems, of the Italian heresy. If any thing is to be blamed in the work, it is the trifling error of making Jesuitism too prominent in the title. Papists wish to have at command the liberty of detaching this section from the main body; because that section is sometimes odious and hurtful. But popery has not the slightest right so to do. Jesuitism is absolutely part and parcel of Popery-an essential part, the very quintessence of it. Protestants therefore should not make themselves a party in the policy meant to impose upon them. In the Church of England Quarterly Review, No. VIII., pp. 386, &c. is an article entitled "Jesuitism and Romanism absolutely identical," where the occasional repudiation is explained and effectually scouted. In a work, too, of high importance in all respects, and which I believe to be perfectly authentic, Confessions of a French Catholic Priest, &c. edited by S. F. R. Morse, A.M. Professor in the University of New York, 3d ed., Dublin, 1838, there is a passage towards the end, page 209, in remarkable concurrence with the preceding observations; and the italics are the writer's own-“ At the head of the Popish army are the Jesuits, the most |