tution of the French clergy which threw that church into the schism, out of which that respectable portion of the flock of Christ was taken by the Concordat before mentioned. It now becomes requisite to shew, what were the effects of that civil magistrate's interference with Church Government, by erecting, as you so frequently and ardently wish, a National Church independent of the Papal supremacy. You will allow me to refer to what I said as an impartial and faithful historian (a character I never mean to forfeit) about eighteen years ago, because on re-perusing it, I find that your, and some other attempts to plunge Ireland into a similar schism, have added strength and incalculable importance to the truths contained in that passage.. Emigrant After having (p. 104) stated, that the execution of French the decree for banishing all the nonjuring clergymen Clergy. to Guiana, who should not have quitted the kingdom in fourteen days from the passing of that decree, poured thousands of those venerable exiles from Normandy, Piccardy, and Britanny, upon our coasts of Kent and Sussex, I observed, that the naked plea of wretchedness, was a precept to British philantrophy, and it was but justice to that persecuted clergy to apprize their benefactors of the motives and necessity of their exile. I am free to say, that the same motives and necessity exist for the Irish rejecting the doctrines, and solicitations of you, Rev. Sir, and most learned Doctor, if they wish not to be plunged into a simi lar Civil Constitution of Clergy. lar schism, pregnant perhaps with more dangerous consequences than that of France, by reason of the civil disunion, which would attend it. "The test proposed to them was an oath to subthe French mit to the civil constitution of the clergy. The nature and tendency of this oath has been grossly miscon ceived, and maliciously misrepresented by many, to the great prejudice of those, who have refused to subscribe to it. The philosophizing party in France, who had grounded their success in abolishing every idea of Christian revelation upon the previous destruction of all the respectable clergy, were too refined to un⚫ mask their designs, till the people were prepared for so daring an attempt. They knew, that religion could not long survive the destruction of Church Govern ment; and therefore under the sanctimonious pretence of reducing it to its ancient form, they artfully transferred to the civil power, the whole pure, spiritu al jurisdiction, which the Catholic church has uniformly through all ages maintained to be holden immediately of Christ, and to he transcendent to, and independent of all temporal authority. This self-created lay power of deposing, displacing, and suspending from all spiritual powers and faculties both the Bishops and the inferior Clergy, of curtailing and enlarging the limits of their spiritual jurisdiction, of abolishing the old and erecting new Bishopricks and parishes, of conferring by their election, the power and right of exercising the ministry of the gospel, of superceding superseding the authority of the holy councils, and annulling the primacy of jurisdiction, which as Ro man Catholics, they admitted in the Bishop of Rome. To subscribe then to the Oath of submission to this civil constitution of the clergy, was in effect to deny the divine establishment of a church upon earth: it was to allow, that the spiritual power and jurisdic tion, which they had hitherto exercised over their flocks were usurped and invalid; it was to admit that a self-constituted lay tribunal could annihilate those powers, which it had not given, and absolve the flocks from their obedience to their lawful pastors; it was to subject the divine mission and ministry of the gospel to all the changes and fluctuations of temporal governments; it was to raise the intrigues, passions, and artifices of popular demagogues and tyrants above the authority of the ecumenical councils of the church it was to substitute a profane and impious prostitution of their sacred characters to lay usurpers, in lieu of that submission to the su preme Bishop of Rome, by and through which (in the Roman Catholic tenets) they hold communion with the universal church of Christ upon earth. Such is the Oath, for the recusancy of which, the nonjuring clergy of France have been persecuted as refractory and rebellious: for which hundreds have been martyred in that kingdom, and for which thousands in this, and many other countries of Eu Their civil compliance State. rope have emulated the constancy of the primitive Christians, in giving lustre and dignity to the sufferings they undergo for their faith. It will be well for the modern liberal deriders of fanatacism, and scoffers at Priestcraft to review impartially the horrid impieties, the blasphemous atrocities, with which the profane miscreants of France, since the expulsion of their conscientious clergy, seemed to have braved the vengeance of the Almighty. The crimes and offences of the abandoned flocks proclaim the glorious eulogies of their persecuted pastors.", "In vain is this respectable clergy calumniated by with the their enemies, for having resisted the civil power and lawful constituted authorities of the State. It is notorious, that they had peaceably submitted to a reduction of their livings, little short of annihilation, that they offered their unequivocal submission to eve ry change or alteration, which the authorities for the time being should chuse to make in the civil establish anent of their religion, either by the abolition or substraction of tithes and other temporal possessions, by the repeal or annulling of their temporal dignities and civil immunities, or otherwise, provided, they would leave untouched and inviolate that sacred deposit of faith, of which, with their spiritual jurisdiction, they had received the guardianship and trust, which they could only surrender into the hands, from which they had received received them, and which they could not of them selves transfer nor abandon, but with their lives." cal antipa the See of Such, Rev. and most learned Doctor, was the Jansenistifaithful statement of the case of the French emigrant thy against clergy, which the lay historian or annalist felt him- Rome. self called upon to transmit to posterity, with a particular view of preventing the followers of Peter Walsh (not in his truths but in his errors) the compilers of blue books, and such declaimers against an efficient primacy of dignity and jurisdiction in the successor of St. Peter as Columbanus, from misrepresenting their motives, and depriving them of the palma martyrum. I always traced in their oppugners and revilers, that sort of insidious antipathy against the chair of St. Peter, which notoriously prevailed in Quesnel, and the Jansenistical party in France. They were the unrelenting labourers to establish a national church, and self-elected and civilly appointed Bishops in France, as at Utrecht they had done, by way of experiment: but had always failed, until the philosophizing leaders of the French revolution reduced to practice their Anti-Christian speculations, in the wicked establishment of the civil constitution of the clergy. * infidelity Irishmen beware. Watch closely and with live jea- Flagrant lousy your countryman, who has so long ago washed of Golum Z 2 ce off * Doctor O'Conor openly boasts of his sympathies with him and other leaders of the Jansenists (who may not improperly banus. |