ence on the legislature in 1829, when it was contended that the admission of Papists into parliament would tranquillise Ireland, strengthen the Church of England, and give satisfaction to all parties. The same favourable feeling towards the Church of Rome seems to have possessed your Lordship's mind, when you confidently asserted that fundamentally her doctrines were the same with those of the Church of England. But, my Lord, the doctrines of the Roman Church are so far from being fundamentally the same with those of our Church, that they are fundamentally and essentially opposed to them, and subversive of them. The Church of Rome has not left us at a loss to know what are the fundamental articles of her creed. Your Lordship will, I doubt not, readily admit, that all doctrines are to be so denominated in both Churches, which are held in each to be necessary to salvation. Such are the doctrines which are contained in the creed, commonly called Pope Pius's Creed, which at once presents this broad difference between the Church of Rome and all other churches - that all who deny her doctrines are pronounced by her to be accursed. In that creed are contained the following articles of her faith, without the belief of which she declares that no one can be saved:-The supremacy of the Pope and of his church, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the mass, the worship of saints, the veneration of images and relics, purgatory, penance for the remission of sins, seven sacraments, &c.

These articles of Pope Pius's Creed are fundamental doctrines of the Church of Rome, and not of the Church of England, but were rejected by her three centuries ago, as idolatrous, impious, and heretical. And so utterly at variance are they with the doctrines of our Church, that they are subversive of our whole Protestant establishment. Yet on the supposed approximation of the two churches was founded. much of that fatal delusion which led to the extinction of the purely Protestant character of the British legislature, by the admission of Papists into the great council of the nation. In consequence of this recent anomaly in our constitution, and the utter forgetfulness of the anti-British as well as anti-Protestant spirit of Popery, much encouragement has been given

to it in Ireland, to the great detriment of the Established Church, and of the true profession of the Gospel.

The peculiar doctrines of the Church of Rome in Pope Pius's Creed are preceded by the Nicene Creed, which creed being common to both churches, has probably contributed to the supposition that the doctrines of both churches are fundamentally the same. But, my Lord, the doctrines of Christianity contained in the Nicene Creed are so perverted by the Church of Rome, from the true sense of Scripture, by the additions of the Papal creed, as to constitute a very different profession of faith from that of the Gospel and of the Church of England. In the Scriptures we are taught that there is only one God, and in the Nicene Creed we profess it. But the Church of Rome, by her adoration of angels and saints, and prayers to them for spiritual and temporal blessings, becomes a worshipper of many gods. The Scriptures teach us that there is one Mediator between God and man, and only one name under heaven by which men must be saved; but in the Church of Rome every saint is a mediator, and every mediator a saviour. By the Scriptures we are taught that Christ offered himself once on the cross for the sins of mankind. The Church of Rome professes in the mass to offer up Christ every day as a propitiatory sacrifice to God. In the Gospel we are taught to honour the Son even as we honour the Father. But in the Church of Rome greater honour is paid to the Virgin Mary than to the Son, or to the Father. The Church of England believes that Christ in his divine nature is omnipresent, and that he is nowhere bodily present, but in heaven at the right hand of God. The Church of Rome teaches that Christ is bodily present in the consecrated bread of the Eucharist, and in every particle of bread that is eaten at the Lord's Supper. Nothing more strongly shows the fundamental difference of the Church of Rome from the Church of England than the doctrine, that the bread and wine are changed by consecration into the body and blood of Christ; and the worship of Christ under the visible forms of bread and wine; the belief of which the Church of Rome declares to be necessary to every man's salvation; but which the Church of

England pronounces to be idolatry, to be abhorred of all faithful Christians.*

You object, my Lord, to the imputation of idolatry, as applied by the Protestant prelates of the Irish Church to the Church of Rome. The charge of idolatry was so applied by our Reformers of the sixteenth century, who were born and bred Papists, and knew by their own experience and knowledge what Popery was. It is so applied in our Liturgy and Homilies; and has been so applied by the best informed and most learned + Protestants from their time to the present. It may be sufficient to quote the testimony of Bishop Jeremy Taylor:-"We know idolatry is a damnable sin; and we know that the Roman Church, with all the artifices she could use, never can justify herself, or acquit the common practice [image-worship] of idolatry." It is the legitimate language of parliament, and has been the language of your Lordship's own solemn declaration, as often as you have taken your seat in either house of parliament, - in terms expressive of the most unequivocal belief that "the invocation or adoration of the Virgin Mary or any other saint, and the sacrifice of the mass, as now used in the Church of Rome, are superstitious and idolatrous." §

When your Lordship, in your speech on the Irish Church Bill, condemned the charge of idolatry against the Church of Rome, as an insult on the Irish population, it must have been on the supposition that the worshippers of one supreme God are incapable of idolatry. But, my Lord, the profession of belief in one God, and the worship of one supreme God, are no proof that the members of the Church of Rome are not idolatrous by the worship of the Virgin Mary and other saints.

* Declaration subjoined to the Communion Service.

Bishop Jewell, Archbishop Whitgift, Bishop Bilson, Bishop Andrews, Bishop White, Archbishop Usher, Bishop Davenant, Bishop Jeremy Taylor, Bishop Downman.

Dissuasive from Popery, p. 10. Preface.

§ Declaration (30 Car. 2.), “I., A. B., do solemnly and sincerely, in the presence of God, profess, testify, and declare, that I do believe," &c.

The Jews, who were under the immediate and peculiar government of God, were addicted to idolatry from the time they left Egypt, uniting the worship of Baal with that of Jehovah, in spite of God's awful judgments against it, and in defiance of the national calamities which it frequently brought upon them, till they were finally punished for it by the total overthrow of their nation, and their captivity in Babylon. The most enlightened people of pagan antiquity were worshippers of one supreme God, at the time that they had many subordinate deities, national, domestic, and local, like the deified angels and saints of modern Rome.

For an exact parallel between Pagan and Papal idolatry, I may refer your Lordship not only to Dr. Middleton's celebrated Letter from Rome, but to the author of a tract, entitled "A true and lively Representation of Popery, showing that Popery is new-modelled Paganism, and perfectly destructive of the great Ends and Purposes of God in the Gospel," published in London in 1679; a period, when the increase of Popery extorted from the legislature a remedy *, which we have lived to see repealed, to the great increase and encouragement of Popery-a remedy, the wisdom and expediency of which nothing was wanting to prove, but its loss (what if it may be but a temporary loss?) and the renewed and dearbought experience which has followed this repeal.

Your Lordship objects to that part of the petition of the Protestant Prelates of Ireland, which appeared to you to be couched in injurious, uncharitable, and unchristian language towards the Roman Catholic Church of Ireland. "The words usurpation, idolatry, and blind superstition," you observe, are not terms of conciliation, nor were they fit language for a bench of right reverend prelates." The language is justified by the example of the many great authorities before mentioned, from Bishop Jewell down to Archbishop Usher, who have proved the Church of Rome to be usurping, idolatrous, and superstitious. The words are not terms of conciliation; but they are the language of truth, of history,

*30 Car. 2., A. D. 1678, repealed 1829.

and (as before mentioned) of parliamentary authority. What other term, indeed, than usurpation can be given to the assumption of universal dominion over the Church of Christ, which the Pope and the Church of Rome have employed to the degradation of sovereigns, the interdict of kingdoms, and the massacre of provinces? What other terms can with truth be applied to the bowing down in prayer before the images of saints, and to the adoration of Christ under the visible forms of bread and wine, than those which are employed by our church and parliament, and constitutionally adopted by your Lordship?

Your Lordship laments the great errors of the Church of Rome; and you scruple not to deprecate the spirit of some of her doctrines. But experience has abundantly shown, that those errors are not to be reformed, nor her doctrines mitigated, by conciliation and concession. To call idolatry, superstition, and apostacy by any other terms than by their own appropriate appellations, is not to conciliate the Church that is guilty of such corruptions, but to confirm her members in their errors, and to mislead uninformed Protestants. The Prophet's denunciation is true in respect of religion above all other subjects: "Woe unto them that call evil good, and good evil; that put darkness for light, and light for darkness."

The disuse of the old parliamentary terms, Popery, Papistry, and Papists, and the common use of the term Catholic instead of Popish, of Catholicism instead of Popery, of real presence instead of transubstantiation,—cannot fail to confound the understandings of uninformed and unthinking Protestants, and to propagate pernicious errors. The Church of Rome is falsely called Catholic, and most inconsistently denominated Roman Catholic. It never was the Catholic or universal Church of Christ, either in authority or doctrine :— not in authority; for it never had dominion over the Eastern Church, nor over the whole Western Church, for the first ten centuries, nor after the beginning of the sixteenth.

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Nor can a church be Catholic in doctrine, which has added to the generally received faith of Christians sundry articles of belief, as necessary to salvation, which are mere "novelties and heterodoxies," as they are called by Barrow at the close of