They have never once used the words "Church in England." The proclamation, therefore, of the new establishment of bishops for England, clearly denotes an aggressive intention; and when we find that it is to be accomplished by a new territorial division of the entirety of the ancient kingdom of England, over the whole of which the spiritual jurisdiction of the bishops of the Established Church actually extends; what ingredients, we may ask, are still wanting to convert such language explained by such acts into an aggression upon the Government, and the laws of the land ?*

I had prepared some comments upon Dr. Ullathorne's pastoral letter to his two dioceses of Birmingham and Nottingham,† and had proposed to myself to examine rather more minutely the address of Dr. Briggs, the new titular of Beverley. My attention was also drawn to a sermon preached by Dr. Doyle, at St. George's Chapel, Southwark,‡ in which some expressions occurred, strongly illustrative of the ultimate design of this movement. But reflecting, that upon the whole there was little novelty in these exhibitions of mingled pride, spleen, and cunning, and that what they have enunciated does not in any degree vary the views of the Bull, its scope, and intent, already laid before the reader, I pass on to the manifesto of the accomplished lawyer, whom the Pope and Dr. Wiseman

* See Dr. Ullathorne's letter of the 22d Oct. published in the "Times" of the 24th of that month.

‡ "Morning Chronicle," Monday, 28th Oct. 1850.

have retained to plead their cause before the tribunal of British common sense and justice.

§. 12. Mr. Bowyer's Pamphlet.

I will state at once what seems to me to be the argument of the learned gentleman. It is shortly this: "You have abolished the oath of supremacy as against Roman Catholics, and by that act you have legislatively admitted the religious supremacy of the Pope in this country, and have legalized all the consequences that naturally flow from that recognition."

We deny, however, that the Act of 1829 does admit the spiritual supremacy of the Pope in any legislative sense. We also deny, even were it so, that that would be sufficient to legalize the consequence Mr. Bowyer regards as the natural results of such recognition. We protest more particularly against this latter inference; and trust that we shall be able to shew that it implies a total surrender of our religious, and of a large portion of our political liberties—not so much to our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects, as to the Pope and his active agents, the newly established hierarchs.

In the first place, there could be no occasion for any parliamentary license for Roman Catholics to believe in the spiritual supremacy of their Pope. In this country any man may believe what he pleases; therefore the Act of 1829 could not have contemplated giving them a right they had before. That Act went no further than to substitute for the oath of supremacy taken by Protestants, such an oath as should not deprive a portion of our fellow-sub

jects of their civil rights, by reason of a scruple of conscience on their part to recognise the spiritual supremacy of the Queen. In this there is no other recognition of the Roman Catholic church, or its head, than in the legislative measure relieving Quakers and Moravians from taking oaths, there was a design to recognise a Quaker or Moravian church government as legally established in this kingdom, or to permit them to hold any tenet subversive of the royal prerogative.

But says Mr. Bowyer: "The Roman Catholic church, being not only tolerated but recognised, unless it be so with the features essential to its proper nature and constitution, such toleration is a manifest absurdity." We think the absurdity would be all the other way. We have shewn that it is a feature essential to the proper nature of Romanism to hold, that heretics are to be coerced and punished; that by the Bull, "Unam Sanctam," the Pope is held to have temporal supremacy whenever its exercise is requisite to the fulfilment of his ecclesiastical purposes: that promises and oaths are not binding upon the faithful, when they shall turn out to be disadvantageous to the schemes of the Pontiff, or the interests of his church. If, therefore, Mr. Bowyer's argument be good for any thing, we have, by the simple repeal of an oath, burthensome to the consciences of Romanists, legalized and permitted them to carry out all these "essential features" of their religious creed ;-in other words, to trample under foot the law and constitution of England.

* See pages 109-113.

Without dwelling further upon this extravagant assertion, I will only remark, that though we are pretty confident that the Roman Catholics cannot, -very few of them probably would, if they could,attempt to carry it out in practice, yet we know, likewise, that within these extreme limits of ambitious pretension, intolerance, and persecution, there is a vast range of mischief to which we may well hesitate to expose the Crown, the Church, and the laws of our country. Indeed, if we look at these "essential features," with reference to the law and practice of the constitution, we find them to be profoundly illegal in their nature and operation; and moreover, that they are neither obsolete nor revoked, but that, on the contrary, they have been, down to the latest times, solemnly avowed and republished by the very authority from which the late Bull proceeded.*

We must beware how we permit the malignant spirit, lurking in these "essential features," to poison the life-blood of our social existence. Admitting that, under existing circumstances, its specific operation must be very gradual; yet if we allow the demoniacal influence to become naturalized among us, the difference will only be between a slow and a quick poison. It cannot be doubted that the hierarchs and their emissaries will spare no pains, fair or foul, for the overthrow of the national establishment. We know that for this

* See pp. 112, 113.

See the joyous anticipations of Dr. Doyle in his sermon of the 20th Oct. 1850.

purpose they will urge upon the consciences of their laity, a great variety of ordinances and practices upon which neither their judgment nor their loyalty will be consulted. But as this circumstance makes no difference in the obligation on their part to obey, they can give us no assurance to-day what will be their duty to-morrow. But obedience to the supreme pastor and his accredited ministers, is one of the "distinctive features" of the Roman Catholic persuasion; and thus, if we admit Mr. Bowyer's conclusions, we shall have denuded ourselves of the means of knowing or measuring the amount of the obligations we have contracted towards our Roman Catholic fellow-subjects. But Mr. Bowyer boldly contends that the Church of Rome is not only tolerated, but recognised by the law of the land as a body known to the law, and as having certain characteristic features of its own, essential to its existence as such. That our legislators knew of the existence de facto of such a body, I am not disposed to deny; but I do emphatically deny that they knew of, or acknowledged its existence as a body de jure endowed with any attributes at all; for not only does it so happen that the law neither does nor can officially know what those attributes are, but that when the lawgivers come to examine the repertories of canonism, they find that the principles there set down, stand in direct and irreconcilable contradiction to the law and constitution of the kingdom, and to the liberties, civil and religious, of the people of this country. These, therefore, cannot be legally taken notice of by the