REFLECTIONS

ON THE

Letters of Conciliator,

ON THE

QUESTION

OF

CATHOLIC EMANCIPATION;

Contained in No. V.

BY THE RIGHT REV. BISHOP MILNER, D. D.

ORIGINAL.

1814.

VOL. III. Pam.

No. VI.

2 N

REFLECTIONS, &c.

In reading the last number (p. 156,) of the Pamphleteer I was struck with the subject and signature of the writer who calls himself CONCILIATOR. His subject is Catholic Emancipation and Protestant Securities, which he undertakes to conciliate together by means of a plan which occurred to him "Onthe beach of the Atlantic Ocean," where he professes to have been "secluded from the follies and passions of the multitude." What a pity it is that he did not point out the particular part of the Atlantic beach to which folly and passion cannot find access, in order that those, who wish or whom the legislature might require to contemplate this and other irritating subjects with entire impartiality and perfect wisdom, may betake themselves thither!

Having laid it down as a principle that the dread of Buonaparte's forcing the Pope to take measures prejudicial to this kingdom, is the only remaining obstacle (though he is the only Prince in the power of this despot whom the latter could not bend to his views, and though he had lost his territories and personal liberty for refusing to make war against it,) to the Emancipation, he suggests the propriety and

necessity of Catholics' shaking off the Pope's spiritual jurisdic tion (for as to any claim in him of temporal power they have long since abjured it,) and of assuming that independent ecclesiasti. cal authority, especially in the appointment of their Bishops, which he maintains to be their natural right, and to have been enjoined for many hundreds of years by their ancestors. It is true that he does not venture" to write to the contracted or uninformed zealot, for who," says he," can give liberality to bigotry, or comprehension to ignorance? But I solicit (he continues) the attention of every intelligent Catholic who is conversant with the genuine history of his own church, and who has strength of mind to think for himself and to throw off the trammels of early credulity."-There is little doubt but most Catholics prefer the latter to the former character: still before " they throw off these trammels," that is to say before they renounce their early impressions concerning the necessity and divine origin of spiritual jurisdiction through. out the whole church in St. Peter's successor, and of its uninterrupted succession since Christ said to St. Peter: On this rock I will build my Church, they will wish to know whe. ther this anonymous Conciliator is quite so devoid of inte rest and prejudice as he professes to be, and whether his documents are as authentic and his reasoning as just as they are in this writer's imagination.

It is "to history, the voice of Catholic history, as written by Catholic historians," that this Protestant Conciliator calls upon us" to listen and submit." After first observing that this Conciliatory plan, so far from being a discovery, is no other than the old persecuting plan of the sanguinary Henry VIII. and Elizabeth: since all that they required of Catholics to save themselves from the gallows and the block and all that the remaining penal laws require of them still, to get possession of most of the franchises which they are contending for, is that they should renounce the Pope's

spiritual jurisdiction, and break off all connection with the See of Rome; I proceed to our writer's historical arguments. He begins with telling us that "Christianity came into Ireland from the Greek church in Asia, in the second centurythat it made a great progress there under the authority of the Eastern missionaries, who organized the Irish church into clerical departments agreeably to the practice of its oriental parent (without any reference to, or intercourse with the See of Rome)—and that the Irish church appointed its Arch. bishops and Bishops without any sort of connection with the Roman Pontiff." It is to be remarked, however, that Conciliator brings no original authority whatever for this unheard of conversion of Ireland before the mission of St. Patrick, nor can he mention a single Bishop (the name of Archbishop was then unknown) who was consecrated in Ireland antecedently to this grand period. Supposing some few Irish travellers, as St. Mansuetus Bishop of Toul in France, and St. Cataldus Bishop of Tarentum in Italy, to have been converted and consecrated in the two first centuries, this is nothing to the present purpose, since the former, as Usher allows, was consecrated at Rome, the latter at Tarentum, on his return from a pilgrimage to Jerusalem.' The whole story of Ireland's conversion by Eastern missionaries, previously to the arrival there of the Apostolic legate of the Holy See, St. Patrick, has been invented by the modern enemies of that See, and is grounded on no other argument than the pretended conformity of the Irish and British churches with the Quartodecimans of Syria and Mesopotamia, with respect to the time of keeping Easter, But it has been demonstrated by the present writer, first that

Carracioli, Ware, Alban Butler, &c. prove that St. Catuldus's episcopacy is not to be dated before the fifth or sixth century.

the conformity in question did not really exist; as the orien tals and Irish, though differing from Rome in this unessential point of discipline, differed also one party from the other; secondly that the British churches conformed to the practice of Rome, till some time after the reign of Constantine the Great: thirdly, that though it could even be proved that Ireland was converted by oriental instead of Roman Missionaries, this would be nothing to the purpose of the enemies of the Roman see, since the early Greek Fathers, such as St. Irenæus, St. Athanasius, St. Basil, &c. are no less explicit in their acknowledgment of the supremacy of this see, than are the most devout of the Latin Fathers.

CONCILIATOR next informs us, that "St. Patrick, on his arrival in Ireland from Rome in the fifth century, endeavoured in vain to prevail on the Irish clergy to change their ancient method of church-government, and to submit to the authority of the Roman Pontiff who sent him."But where is the writer's authority for these assertions? What Christian Bishop or Priest opposed the Apostle of Ireland? When and where did any contest take place? By what means did the Prelate of Armagh become Primate of Ireland? Who consecrated Bishops throughout every other part of that country? There was not, in his days, so much as a dispute about the day of keeping Easter, because it was not till after his death that the Irish fell into a wrong method of computing it.

We are assured, in the third place, "that during five centuries, after the death of St. Patrick, scarce any vestige can be traced between Ireland and Rome. In this long space of time, the ordination of the Irish Bishops and all the other clergy was settled at home among themselves by what may be called domestic regulations, without any application whatever to the see of Rome.". Now though it