nonically and irreverently) but indecently, and stupidly to prevent Doctor Troy (and consequently every Bishop throughout Christendom) to refuse, withold, or withdraw from every transient or occasionally resident Priest (in a metropolis they must be numerous) the licit and valid exercise of the most awful functions of the Priesthood. Eum oportet esse bene & naviter impudentem, who can thus pretend, that he has a jure divino range over every part of the world, to which business may lead him, in defiance and in contradiction to every church governor, but his own, into whose temporary jurisdiction he shall come, to perform a function denied even to Angels (Antea 259), when it is notorious, throughout all the dispersed churches of the British Empire, that you have by a formal interdict been prohibited by the Bishop of the London, district, within whose jurisdiction you published your unsound and dangerous doctrines, from offering that holy sacrifice, on account of your unworthiness, and the public scandal produced by those very publications. If Doctor Troy have, as your Reverence holds, jure divino the right of governing, and possess spiritual jurisdiction over the Arch-Diocese of Dublin, without any pretensions to theology, as a simple layman, I must necessarily infer, that knowing what he does know of your Reverence, he would have grievously neglected his pastoral duty, and brought irreparable scandal on the Church, had he permitted, licensed or hot prohibited you to perform any sacerdotal function within his jurisdiction, whilst you are interdicted from exercising them by your own Prelate; and whilst your scandalous publications are not only not retracted, but forced into circulation to the disedification of all, the danger of the weak, lax and ignorant, and the contempt, disgust, and horror of the well-informed and steady part of the faithful. ... From your unvarying infidelity in translating, you cannot expect credit for the accuracy of your English quotation of the Council of Sevile. But should you on this occasion have varied from your habitual practice, by giving the real sense of the Author quoted, you have still fastidiously ad hered to another of your predominating habits: irrelevancy of application. In quoting the case of Fragilianus, you have let down your judgment beneath anility. By your own statement, that Priest was dispossessed of his Ecclesiastical benefice (a freehold for life), where the civil magistrate sanctioned such establishments, by his Bishop, who was not authorized by law to exercise any such power over that property. At no time, before or since the reformation, could property of that nature be shifted or transmuted without the sanction of some juridical act or judgment. Well might I deny you credit for accuracy of translation, when you betray such palpable infidelity in quoting from your own work this very case of Fragitanus, as you there call him. (5 Col. 104.) In order to disguise the 2 2 inapplicability of that case to your own, you have most unwarrantably kept back an essential feature in the Bishop's excess of power, by the banishment of that Priest, which when you had no particular view to an swer by the suppression, you brought forth in that work. He must be more than blind, who does not perceive the wide difference between privation of property and banishment, and the prohibition or refusal of faculties to an štinerant Priest; particularly to one, who is interdicted by his own Prelate for publishing the unsound doctrines, which he is endeavouring to propagate among the flock of the Pastor, who so refuses them. You have quoted the resolution of a provincial Synod, evidently bottomed on practices arising out of a civil establishment, as a most sacred law of the Catholic Church, to which all Bishops as well as Priests are bound to submit. The Catholic Church existed for the three first centuries without any civil esta blishment at all, and many parts of it, like the Church of Ireland, have subsisted for the three last centuries without any civil establishment, upon which such resolution or law could operate. And this irrelevant note of ostentation you ineptly obtrude upon your temporary spiritual superior, in order to prove, that until such a time as immorality, heresy, or schism, is in à fair, open, trial canonically proved against you, (in a country where for want of forensic jurisdiction no such trial can be had) you are entitled jure divino to officiate without the permission and contrary to the express will of the Ordinary. I again call my reader's attention to that Arian lu bricity, by which you affect to elude the letter of disobedience, and to keep up the appearance of resistance. Your Prelate warns you against the public or private exercise of any sacerdotal function in his diocese, which in his discretion he is entitled to do. You reply, that you will continue to offer up your prayers, &c. You say not in the mass. The one is a sacerdotal function, the other a commendable act, and a duty in all Christians. Believe me most learned Doctor, that this attack upon an Arch-Bishop, which in a senseless and shameless manner you wished to invite the publie to take a part in, by giving it publicity in the Newspapers, is disgusting and revolting to your country men; it will not be eulogized by the fine Nation, whose generous and heavenly sentiments of liberty of conscience, it is impossible for Irishmen not to admire! (5 Col. 123.) I much doubt whether your virtuous, admired and esteemed new friend, Sir John Gog Hippesley, even under the enthusiasm of his new lights,will follow up this rude, sensele s, and innocuous blow at his old friend and correspondent Doctor Troy, for exercising spiritual jurisdiction within his Arch-Diocese, over a Priest whilst resident in it. Sure I am, that it will not be publicly commended by your learned friend Mr. Charles Butler, 66 This recent effort of your Reverences' Anti-papal prowess, from which you anticipate such crops of laurel, has reduced to practice most of the charges, suggestions and inferences contained in the foregoing letter. again repeat. "If ambitious of singularity, you have certainly attained that object; Bil æquale homini fuit illi. (ant. 274) We have read of a man, that had been caught up into paradise, saying of himself, I will not glory but in mine infirmities. But he also applying to the good sense "of a nation (the Corinthians) famed for quickness of perception, keeness of wit and vivacity not to be cajoled by the hypocritical canting "of men. &c." (1 Col. 24) warns them, that there are false Apostles, "deceitful labourers, transforming themselves into the Apostles of Christ" (2. Cor. XI. 13) Now as it is evident, that you, Reverend and most learned Doctor, glory not in your infirmities, but taking the opposite course, you boast on all occasions of your own merits and good deeds, representing yourself in Dodesley, (ant. 52) as "the worthy inheritor and able re presentative of the peculiar attainments of your progenitor," furnishe ing self drawn testimonies of your being a fit person to succeed Dr. "French in the diocese of Elphin" to be handed up to his Holiness by Dr. O'Reilly of Armagh, and Dr Troy of Dublin, and recently that is on the 17th of July 1812, you glory (I apply not to you the words of St. Paul, fb. v. ii. I am become a fool in glorying) in your letter to Dr. Troy, of your laborious and faithful discharge of your duty, of your humility and exemplary life of 50 years; as an historian it becomes my duty, to trace the means, by which, after failure of all honest exertions on your own part, and the solicited mediations of Dr. O'Reilly, Dr. Troy, the most Noble antifanatical Marquis, and even the Zebedean canvas not having insured the Mitre of Elphin, you undertook to transform yourself into an Apostle of Christ. Maddened with the titillating_thrill of posthumous renown (“ something whispers into my ear, that I may "look with confidence to posterity" (5. Col. 296) Yon speculate upon a golden legend, in which (1. Col. 26) one day will be memorable for the festival (of a St. Columbanus, as you say of) a St. Cobbett, "St. Finnerty, and a St. Horne Took." That favourite theme of the posthumous mead of virtue engrosses your very soul. (Ib. 19) Fanaticism boasts of its Martyrs, Usurpers have been deified, and Buonaparte has already marked his own apotheosis in the sword of Orion." You most learned Dr. have already marshalled yourself in the ranks of the holy Confessors, who once illumined and edified benighted Ierna, by applying to yourself in your Letter to Doctor Troy, the whole substance of the hymn,which your church sings on their festivals. You have paraphrazed it in prose: I do it in metre, as more congenial with the spirit of the original. Qui pius, prudens, humilis, pudicus, The man most fit for Elphin's See, Is he, whose life for fifty years Is the most learned CHARLES O'CONOR. ALPHABETICAL INDEX. A ABBOTT, Charles, Mr. refuses the Author access to the State Papers, when Secretary in Ireland, p. 25. Addington, Right Honourable Henry, Vide Lord Viscount Sidmouth, 25, Letter from the American to the Irish Hierarchy. Appendix 99 Address of the American Hierarchy to their flocks about Pope Aquin, St. Thomas of, explicit as to the jurisdictional authority of the Pope Arius, his lubricity and dreadful end, 133. His subtle errors and sanctimonious appearance, 303, Arnaud, the noted Jansenist, inveighs like Columbanus, against the con- Athanasius, St. how considered by some moderns, 304, holds jurisdictional authority of the See of Rome. Ibid. Augustinus, Jansens' book so called. Vide JANSESTICAL. His efforts to disclose the truth of Irish History, 2, Ilis correspondence with Dr. M'Dermott, 13. His first knowledge of Doctor O'Conor, Ibid. Acquires Doctor O'Conor's suppressed work, 14. Offends Marquis of Buckingham by his Historical Review, 15, His postliminious Preface, 25, Author His second and last Letter to Doctor O'Conor, 26 to 28. His Dissertation on Antiquity of Irish Hist. published in 1800, 48. Reflects on Doctor O'Conor's professions, 66, Retorts the charge of Anachronism upon Columbanus, 120, 1, 2. Gives proofs of Columbanus's wish for an Irish Bishoprick, 127 te His Church and State, 143, 4. His account of the Civil Constitution of the French Clergy, 153. Gave in his Historical Review what he could collect from the pre His opinions of Papal supremacy delivered in his Church and His note in his History about the Acts collating Spiritual Jurisdic- His execration of Jansen ism.-Appendix 29. His motives for laying open Jansenism.-Appendix 30. Zealous in his efforts to prevent its progress.-Appendix 37, His Case Stated, published in 1791.-Appendix 52 to 82; # Benedict, Pope, XIV. says the jurisdiction of Bishops is controulable by Berwick, Duke of, no Irishman, as falsely asserted by Columbanus, 169. Bishops, Irish Catholic, their Synodical Resolutions at Tullow, 178.—Ap.V. May be in Episcopal Order and liable to religious rule, Íbid. The qualities of a proper one according to St. Paul, 366, 7. |