in the Queen any authority to interfere in their religious concerns, to appoint their ministers for them, or to mark the limits of the separate districts in which authority has to be exercised.'-1b. p. 10.

The second objection lies against the existence of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England; but this the Cardinal is equally successful in exploding. The validity of what are called holy orders in the Romish Church is notoriously admitted in the Church of England, though, for obvious reasons, the Roman Catholic does not reward this compulsory liberality by returning the compliment. If,' observed Lord Lyndhurst, in the House of Lords (April 20, 1846), the law allows the doctrines and discipline of the Roman Catholic Church, it should be allowed to be carried on perfectly and properly.'

'Hence,' argues the Cardinal, to have told Catholics, “You have perfect religious liberty, but you shall not teach that the Church cannot err; or, you have complete toleration, but you must not presume to believe holy orders to be a sacrament," would have been nugatory and tyrannical.

Now, holy orders require bishops to administer them, consequently a succession of bishops to keep up a succession of persons in orders. Hence the Catholic Church is essentially episcopal; and to say, "You Catholics shall have complete religious toleration, but you shall not have bishops among you to govern you,' would have been a complete contradiction in terms-it would have amounted to a total denial of religious toleration.

When, therefore, emancipation was granted to Catholics, full power was given them to have an episcopate—that is, a body of bishops to rule them in communion with the Pope, the avowed head of their Church.'-Ib. p. 13.

'But,' he adds, the law did not put on a restriction. There is an axiom in law, "exclusio unius est admissio alterius;" that is, if you specifically exclude or deny the use of one particular thing, you thereby admit the lawful use of that which is not denied. The Act of Emancipation forbids any one from assuming or using the style or title of any bishopric or archbishopric of the Established Church in England or Ireland. From this it follows that they are allowed to assume any other titles. The Bishop of London has seen this, and, in his answer to the Chapter of Westminster, acknowledges that the new Catholic bishops cannot be touched by the law as it stands; but he wishes Parliament to be petitioned for a new law, which will narrow the liberty here given us.

'I conclude, therefore,

First, that Catholics, by law, had a right to be governed by bishops.

Secondly, that no law or authority bound them to be for ever governed by vicars-apostolic, and that they were at liberty to have a hierarchy, that is, an archbishop and bishops with local titles, or titles from places in the country.

Thirdly, that accordingly such titles are not against any law so

long as they are not the actual titles held by the Anglican Hierarchy.' -Ib. p. 15.

The third charge is, that a foreign potentate, namely, the Pope, should have presumed to exercise a spiritual jurisdiction in this country. But in this there is nothing new. It is unquestionable that Catholics are permitted by law to maintain the Pope's supremacy in ecclesiastical and religious matters, and one point of that supremacy is, that he alone can constitute a hierarchy or appoint bishops. If, therefore, the Catholics of this country were ever to carry out their ecclesiastical system at all, it could only be through the spiritual authority of the Pope. That this admits of no alternative is clearly shown by Lord John Russell himself, in his speech in the House of Commons, on the 6th of August, 1846:—

There is,' says his lordship, another offence of introducing a bull of the Pope into the country. The question is, whether it is desirable to keep up that, or any other penalty, for such an offence. It does not appear to me, that we can possibly attempt to prevent the introduction of the Pope's bulls into this country. There are certain bulls of the Pope which are absolutely necessary for the appointment of bishops and pastors belonging to the Roman Catholic Church. It would be quite impossible to prevent the introduction of such bulls.'-Hansard, vol. lxxxviii. p. 362.

The fourth charge universally urged by the Anglican clergy is, that the recent arrangements trench on the prerogative of the Crown. But this the Cardinal clearly shows to resolve itself into a question, of which he has previously and satisfactorily disposed.

It has been shown that the Pope is permitted by the law of this land to exercise a spiritual jurisdiction over the Roman Catholics in this country. No one for a moment imagines that the Pope, or the Catholics of England, or their bishops, dream that the appointment of the hierarchy can be enforced by law. They believe it to be an act altogether ignored by the law; an act of spiritual jurisdiction only to be enforced upon the consciences of those who acknowledge the Papal supremacy by their conviction and their faith. Can an act,' the Cardinal adds, of a subject of her most gracious Majesty, which by law he is perfectly competent to do, be an infringement of her royal prerogative?'-Appeal, p. 21.

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The fifth charge to which the Cardinal addresses himself is that contained in what we cannot but characterise as the illjudged letter of Lord John Russell;-that the recent Papal arrangement has been insolent and insidious.' This he appears to us successfully to refute, by showing, first, that not only in Ireland had the Catholic hierarchy been recognised, and even royally honoured, but that the same form of ecclesiastical government

had been extended to the greater part of our colonies. Secondly, that the appointment by the British Government of Protestant bishops in foreign and Catholic countries precludes them from condemning a similar course on the part of the Pope with respect to Great Britain: and thirdly, that the declarations of the officers of State, and of the most eminent statesmen in this country, heartily encouraged the recent measures of the Pope. The parliamentary language of Lord John Russell, recorded by the side of his recent letter to the Bishop of Durham, must, we think, occasion extreme mortification both to his lordship and his allies. In the pages of Hansard, that Nemesis of political inconsistency, we find the following unfortunate debit against the present Prime Minister:

6

'I believe,' said his lordship, that we may repeal those disallowing clauses which prevent a Roman Catholic bishop assuming a title held by a bishop of the Established Church. I cannot conceive any good ground for the continuance of this restriction.'-Hansard, vol. lxxxii. p. 299.

In whatever light the recent movement of the Papacy may be viewed by the British people and by Dissenters in particular, it surely does not belong to the present Government to assail with hard names a Church which, for their own political purposes, they have for years been fostering, and on whose officers they have conferred distinctions alike gratuitous, illegitimate, and offensive.

It is unnecessary to refer to the considerations on which Cardinal Wiseman defends himself against the sixth and last charge brought by his opponents, founded upon his assumption of the title of Archbishop of Westminster. Of this part of his Appeal we will only say, we do not envy the feelings of the Dean and Chapter under the vitriolic distillation of sarcasm to which the Cardinal most unsparingly, but, we fear, we must add, most justly, subjects them.

The entire Appeal, which we have thus epitomized, we may fairly designate as a masterpiece of controversial exposition, and, as against the Protestant hierarchy, absolutely triumphant. At the same time we cannot but feel surprise both at the boastful comparison which the writer institutes between the social effects produced by the ecclesiastical corporations of the two Churches on the vicinities which surround them, and at the ostentatious humility with which he claims the most squalid and neglected inhabitants of the purlieus of Westminster Abbey as his own peculiar charge, leaving the parks and mansions to the visitation of the Dean and Chapter. The first of these pretensions is surely rather a daring one, unless we are to discredit all testimony, contemporary and historical. The Cardinal seems

to forget that the precinct of St. Peter's is anything but an Arcadia of peaceful innocence and purity, or a Paradise of comfort and content; that ignorance and vice have ever tracked the footsteps of the Papal mission; that the Catholic countries, and even cantons, of Europe are notoriously distinguished for their destitution alike of civilization and religion, and Catholic capitals the lowest sinks of debauchery and impiety. In the 'pride that apes humility' his Eminence is equally unfortunate. It is well known to all that the Romish priesthood only seek the cottage when they are excluded from the mansion; and that when they address themselves to the poor it is not for the purpose of affording intelligent religious instruction, but of gratifying an all-absorbing spiritual ambition, by making themselves the tyrants of the soul, and riveting the chains of sacerdotal despotism.

We now proceed, in conclusion, to indicate the course which, after much reflection, we consider to be binding upon our Dissenting fellow-countrymen; and we will found the advice which we respectfully offer solely on the premises which we trust we have substantiated in the foregoing pages.

And first, we must strongly express our dissent from those of our own body who would represent these recent events as of trifling importance. If, as we are perfectly convinced, it is the large amount of religious error and corruption in doctrine and practice prevalent in the Church of England, which has invited and occasioned these bolder assumptions on the part of Rome, this, of itself, is matter for the most earnest solicitude, and the deepest sorrow. If, again, the minds of the ignorant and unstable are likely to be seduced by the harlotry and covert intrigues of the Romish Church, no considerations of spurious liberalism shall ever withhold us from lifting our voice to warn them of their peril. We deliberately record our conviction, that a more frightful and soul-destroying curse than the Papal heresy was never inflicted upon the human race, by the arch-enemy of God and man. We believe that it is designated in the term, The Mother of Harlots;' and that she and her daughters, whom it would not be difficult to name, constitute the Antichrist of Scripture. We believe that her doctrines invade the very foundations of that gospel which she conceals from her deluded victims; that her practice is idolatry, and a standing insult to the Son of God; that her spirit combines the tyrant and the slave; that her morals are impurity and falsehood; and that her unrestrained sway is the reign of ignorance and cruelty, involving the loss of all that makes manhood a privilege-the blighting of virtue, the extinction of intelligence, and the perdition of the soul. It is the special duty of those whose vocation it is to

attend to the public and private ministration of Christian truth in its entireness and simplicity, to use the present opportunity of impressing on all classes of society, and especially on the young and uninstructed, the fatal tendency alike of the doctrines and the practice of the Church of Rome.

But, secondly, while such considerations should deter all who love the truth from a complacent toleration of these deadly errors, so the views which have been presented in the foregoing pages, should withhold them from hounding down their Catholic fellowsubjects to the rabid cry of No Popery.' Let them be impressed with a seasonable suspicion, by noticing the quarter from which this cry is raised. It comes from a Church which, as we have shown, is fundamentally at one with Rome, and from a camp filled with traitors to Protestantism. Indeed, it is fully admitted, in the late admirable speeches of the Dean of Bristol, that this invasion, as it is called, has been brought about by the Romanizing clergy of the Church of England; that in tolerating these traitors, both the bishops on the one part, and the laity on the other, have been deeply culpable; and that if the written constitution of that Church is so faltering and unintelligible in the enunciation of its doctrines, as to leave these heresies fair matter of dispute among its clergy, the great body of its members should at once rise up and demand its second reformation.

Thirdly, if it would be unworthy to join in the cry of these effigy-burning and rioting polemics, it would be no less inconsistent and disgraceful in Dissenters to call for the interference of the Legislature in an ecclesiastical dispute. This would, indeed, be to surrender the whole ground on which we as Nonconformists take our stand; namely, that the Legislature has no rightful power to interfere with the subject in spiritual and ecclesiastical concerns. Hence we view with great regret that hasty and illjudged letter of Lord John Russell to the Bishop of Durham, by which he has purchased a sudden, and we imagine a very transient, mob popularity. His lordship greatly mistakes the temper of the age if he thinks that the British people will permit any Government to take a retrograde step towards religious persecution; and if, in an unguarded and ill-omened hour the Dissenters of Great Britain should lend their influence, even by a silent neutrality, to the enactment of a restrictive statute against their Catholic fellow-countrymen, they will be forging the fetters and twisting the scourges for their own future degradation and torture. Let them ponder in time the fate of Perillus, and take heed to the ancient maxim

'Nec lex est justior ulla

Quam necis artifices arte perire suâ.'

Lastly, we earnestly entreat Dissenters to discern the true