list of kings and queens, popes or bishops; and secondly, when the reader or hearer does not know that there is any.

Of the two modes of meeting the difficulty, however, Fox adopted the former; and, having given the epistle, he added;-" but here by the way the reader is to be admonished, that this epistle, which by error of the writer is referred to Pope Nicholas I., in my mind is rather to be attributed to the name and time of Nicholas II. or III.,” who (the reader will observe) began their pontificates in A.D. 1059 and 1277 respectively. The other mode is adopted by the Centuriators, who, in their account of the Bishop of Augsburgh in the ninth century, tell us "Huldericus (et non Waldricus, seu Walricus. Nam ille alius est, et inferiori seculo claruit) tempore Nicolai I. Papæ, Augustensis episcopus fuit: ut patet ex titulo epistolæ ejus quam ad Nicolaum scripsit, quæ passim exstat."* No doubt the document was easy enough to find when they wrote, by means of the notorious Illyricus, who had before published it, first I believe singly, and afterwards in his Catalogus, where it stands with same heading as in Fox's work. Indeed Fox professedly took it from thence.

But the reader will please to remember that our present business is not so much to discuss the genuineness of this document,† as to inquire into the truth of a story for which it is, as far as I know, the only authority. We are not concerned so much to discover whether St. Ulric wrote to Pope Nicholas, as with the facts of Gregory the Great's pontificate, about three hundred years before Saint Ulric was born; and as to the story which is our present subject, I should feel it an insult to the reader to talk about authority at all. What can be "authority" for such childish falsehood? Authority? Why, one might as well talk of authority for Jack and the Beanstalk. No, the very use and office of such outrageous stories, (for everything is good for something,) is to force open people's eyes, and make them look a little into the question of authorities, and to lead them to see how grossly they may be duped by the rhodomontade of agitation. It is curious that George Psalmanaazar's romance about the Island of Formosa was betrayed by an infanticidal story something like this, only that his children were broiled instead of drowned. He had the assurance to tell the world in general, and the Bishop of London his patron, in particular, that his countrymen were bound by their idolatrous religion to sacrifice 18,000 children every new-year's day. What shudders and cheers' might have been produced, if Mr. M'Neile had told the assembly in his very forcible way the duty of the "chief sacrificator," who, in the Formosan language, which, at the beginning of the eighteenth century, occupied the attention of the learned, was called Gnotoy Tarhadiazar. "The office of the chief

• Cent. IX. col. 309.

Those who wish to do it may easily find references which will lead them to what has been written on the subject. Among the most accessible are Wharton's tract on Celibacy in the Preservative against Popery, vol. i., p. 278, Cave and Fabricius under name of Hulderic. The document itself is in various collections, as far as I know without any variation, except that the copy given by Martene (Ampll. Coll. i. 449) omits sex and merely says, "plusquam millia." The fullest collection of references which I have met with is in Theiner's Einführung der erzwungenen Ehelosigkeit," I. 467.

sacrificator is to ordain other priests within his own precinct, which is as it were his diocese, to rule over them, and to take care of the sacrifices, but chiefly of the infants that are to be sacrificed; for which end he is to take an accompt how many boys each family can furnish, and to admonish them in time to send in their number. Moreover he alone is to cut the throats of the infants, and pluck out their hearts; others are to lay them upon the gridiron, but he is to pray publickly all the time they are a burning." p. 187.

I repeat that it is perfectly absurd to talk about authority for such a shameless falsehood; and I should think it an insult to the reader to suppose it necessary to say anything on that subject. It deserves. nothing but derision, and every broad manifestation of the disgust which every Christian who reflects on it must feel. But there are two points which seem to me to be very important, and for the sake of which very principally, I have noticed this childish trash.

In the first place, I would seriously ask those who wish to see a sound and steady opposition to popery, whether it is not a duty to oppose (even at the risque of being called names) the reprinting, and circulating, and arguing upon, absurd fabrications, with vague and often delusory talk about authority.'* I say this the rather because, since I had written almost all the foregoing, I have received the fifth volume of Fox, and to my great surprise I find the whole story of the fishpond over again, as "The epistle in Latin of Volusianus, or as some think of Hulderic, Bishop of Augsburg, to Pope Nicholas," v. 312, with a long, and what is meant to be a learned, note by the editor about the authorities, and whether the letter was written by the Bishop of Augsburgh or the Bishop of Carthage.+ Thus, after all the hints which might have led to some suspicion and inquiry, during many months occupied, (we are given to understand,) in referring to "many hundred authors and originals," the story is again affirmed, and the attention of the reader is again called to it, and to the very silly note with which the editor had the ignorance and bad taste to accompany it, and bind it round the neck of the vindicator. He settled on this rich piece of scandal, and began his note by saying:

"How far our author is correct in this awful statement the editor has no means of proving. If the standard of religious faith and practice in the Romish church Dens Theology' must be viewed only as an incentive to crimes, the blackest and the deepest, in the nineteenth century, it would be inconsistent to expect that the

Of course I do not mean to refer to Mr. M'Neile, who gave his authority fairly enough, though it may not be a very good one. Yet I have no doubt that he was really telling us where he found what he was saying.

The reader may perhaps have heard of a Volusianus Bishop of Carthage as the correspondent of Augustine in the beginning of the fifth century. If he ever heard of any other, or can give any account of the Bishops of Carthage in the eighth and ninth century, I shall be glad of information. If there really was a duplicate Volusianus Bishop of Carthage at that period, may we not suspect, both from the story itself, and from the circumstances of his see, that he had in some degree formed his style on the Arabian Nights Entertainments, which we may suppose to have been better known in that neighbourhood, than the real history of Pope Gregory?

darker ages of the ninth century under the fostering care of the same church, [a pleasant admission for a true protestant, that the church was the same then as it is now] would be wanting in the most aggravated instances of human depravity.” ji. 13.

Is it not, I ask, a disgrace to Protestants to rest their cause in the least degree, either in speech or writing, on such rubbish? Is it not a sin-or perhaps I may gain more attention to the question if I ask is it expedient to raise a noisy, senseless, ignorant, agitation, which 'shudders and cheers' without inquiry whether the bouncing story is true, or whether when rightly considered it does not tell for, rather than against, the papists? By this I do not mean that every falsehood, and every fresh exhibition of ignorance and absurdity still further degrades the self-constituted champions of protestantism, and the cause which they so unhappily patronize, in the eyes of all educated Romanists; nor do I mean merely that it may give the popish priests occasion to laugh among themselves, and tell their people, (perhaps now and then overheard by protestants,) "Well these are pretty fellows to talk of our Golden Legend, can they find a greater lie in it ?" "Yes," says another, "and after all their abuse of our Golden Legend, they have the impudence to refer to it, and to cite the authority of Jacobus de Voragine,' in the matter of this very story." "And that" says a third, "is a blunder." "From whence," adds a fourth, very pathetically, and so as to be scarcely audible by the protestant part of the company, "we see how heresy and schism are maintained, how the blind lead the blind, and we must pity and pray for the poor dupes, and very kindly receive those who may turn from the error of their ways. People whose private judgment' is able to swallow such stories must not be treated harshly." It is not because it may give rise to all this and a great deal more, in the way of reaction; but because the story if it were true is highly creditable to the popish priests. It shews that "the popes owne birdes" have much improved; for nobody doubts that the present generation have lived all their lives under a law of celibacy so complete and rigorous that no priest could think of setting up any thing like a pretence of marriage to palliate his vice. Vice, too much, there has been, and is, no doubt, among them; but are the priests and mothers of Ireland anything like as bad as those of the Gregorian age? Things may be bad, but surely they are better than they were, if that story is true.

Gregory was pope A.D. 590-604; but, I presume, the editor's eye (wherein there was no speculation) was caught by the running date "A.D. 858," on the top of the page, the letter being supposed to have been written about that time. The editor, however, would seem to have thought that it was to apply to all the facts and persons mentioned in the page, and reasoned accordingly. Of course St. Gregory might have lived in the ninth century, and how was he to know? But, indeed, it is like master, like man; and the only way to account for a good deal in Fox's work is to suppose (what is naturally and commonly incidental to those who compile on subjects which they do not understand) that in writing some parts, he had no idea what he had said in others. I do not know whether he confounded this Gregory with the seventh of his name, but he says elsewhere," This Gregory, otherwise called Hildebrand, was he that first took away priests marriage," ii. 326, though he had said before, at p. 11, "By this Pope [Now it is Nicholas I.] priests began to be restrained and debarred from marrying.'

And this brings us to the second point, to which as I have already said, I would most earnestly desire the serious attention of every Christian. It is a question the importance of which seems to render all the other points which I have noticed in this letter, comparatively insignificant. What idea are those who thus write and speak giving of the christian priesthood in the age of Gregory? Is it true, or is it a foul slander, to represent the great body of the clergy at that period as so diabolically wicked that immediately on an order for their celibacy, they broke out into general (I might, perhaps, say universal) lewdness and unnatural murder? What sort of husbands and fathers had they been before? Were they really just what radicals and infidels tell us that the parsons have always been, a set of sensual hypocrites who only tried to restrain the passions of others that they might indulge their own? Is the history of the church of God worth knowing, and if it is, how are we to come at any thing like a true view of it, while such misrepresentations of the state of things at different periods, are urgently and indefatigably circulated by men who have, on other grounds, very just claims to the respect of those whom (however undesignedly) they are hoaxing? It is bad enough when the never-mind' style of history jumps over centuries, or makes men of straw just as its ignorant whimsies happen to want them; but it is tenfold worse when it sends forth broad statements which give wrong general views, and lead men to form wrong estimates, not merely of single facts or individuals, but of classes and periods. Thus it is that men, women, and children, and even the editor of Fox have got up the cuckoo-cry of the dark ages; and he has the assurance to represent the "most aggravated instances of human depravity" which occurred in the ninth century, as things very naturally to be expected to arise from the fostering care of the church.

This digression, is, however, longer than it should be already. I hope to give further evidence of the aspect of Fox's work with regard to the Church of England, and in the meantime,

I am, my dear Sir, yours very truly,
S. R. MAITLAND.

ANTIQUITIES, ETC.

[The series of papers illustrative of the mode of disposing of Church Preferment in former days is not closed, but only suspended for this Number.]

PIETAS LONDINENSIS.

THE following paper is supplied by the kindness of a friend. He calls it an abstract of a treatise which appeared somewhat more than a century ago, and gave an account of the services performed in the various churches in the metropolis. It was entitled "Pietas Londinensis."