Calvin, a Grotius, an Usher, and the innumerable host of Protestant luminaries, pass under the humble denomination of that ignorance, on which Catholic divines allow a chance of eternal happiness to pagans and savages? If sincere conviction is a valid plea with the Roman Catholic Church, why has she scattered to the winds the ashes of those who allowed that conviction to be tried in her inquisitorial fires?

I rejoice to find the dogma of intolerance branded in the Book of the Roman Catholic Church with the epithet of DETESTABLE*; but cannot help wondering that a man who thus openly expresses his detestation of that doctrine should still profess obedience to a see, under whose authority the inquisition of Spain was reestablished in 1814. If Catholics are so far improved under the Protestant government of England as to be able to detest persecution, by what intelligible distinction do they still find it consistent to cling to the source of the intolerance which has inundated Europe with blood, and still shows its old disposition unchanged, wherever it

* Book of the Roman Catholic Church, p. 303, 1st ed.

preserves an exclusive influence? In what church did Spain learn the necessity of forbidding her subjects, for ever, the right of choosing their religious tenets, and that at the very moment when she was proclaiming a free constitution? Who has induced the republican governments of Spanish America to copy the same odious law in their new codes? That church, no doubt, who looks complacently on such acts and declarations, in countries where even her silence stamps public doctrines with the character of truth. Yes; the "detestable dogma of religious intolerance" is publicly and solemnly proclaimed in the bosom of the Roman Catholic Church, without a single observation against it from the Pope or bishops of that church; nay, the legislators themselves are forced to proclaim and sanction it against their own conviction, because the mass of the people are allowed by the church to understand that such are their duty, and her belief.

If the Roman Catholic Church can thus allow detestable dogmas to act in full force within the inmost recesses of her bosom, those Catholics who differ from her notions, so far as her apologist

Mr. Butler, might guide themselves in religious matters without the assistance of her infallibility. That able writer allows himself to be blinded by the spirit of party, when he labours to prove that intolerance does not belong exclusively to his Church; and charges Protestants with persecution. That Protestants did not at once perceive the full extent of the fundamental principle of the Reformation-the inherent right of every man to judge for himself on matters of faith-can neither invalidate the truth of that luminous principle, nor bind subsequent Protestants to limit its application. It is a melancholy truth, that Protestants did persecute at one time; but it is a truth which rivets the accusation of inherent and essential intolerance upon that Church, whose erroneous doctrines the patriarchs of the reformation could not cast off at once. Thanks be to the protecting care of that Providence, which, through them, prepared the complete emancipation from religious tyranny which Protestants enjoy at this moment; the infallibility of their churches made no part of the common belief on which they agreed from the beginning, or the spirit of intolerance

would only have changed its name among us. The dogma of an infallible judge of religious subjects is the true source of bigotry; and whoever believes it in his heart, is necessarily and conscientiously a persecutor. A fallible Church can use no compulsion. If she claim "authority on matters of faith," it is to declare her own creed to those who are willing to be her members. The infallible judge, on the contrary, looks on his pretended gift as a miraculous divine commission, to stop the progress of what he condemns as an error. He persecutes and punishes dissenters, not because they cannot be convinced by his reasons, but for obstinate resistance to his supernatural authority. Rome never doomed her opponents to the flames for their errors, but their contumacy. It is by this means that she has been able so often to extinguish sympathy in the breast of her followers; for error excites compassion, while rebellion never fails to kindle indignation.

The Roman Catholics have been accused of holding a doctrine which justifies them in not keeping faith with heretics. This charge is false as it stands ; but it has a foundation in truth which I will lay

before you, as an important consequence of the claims of your church to infallibility. The constant intercourse with those whom you call heretics, has blunted the feeling of horror which the Roman Church has assiduously fomented against Christians who dissent from her. It is, indeed, a happy result of the Reformation, that some of the strongest prejudices of the Roman Catholics have been softened wherever the Protestant religion has obtained a footing. Where this mixture has never taken place, true Roman Catholics remain nearly what they were in the time when Christendom rejoiced at the breach of faith, which committed Huss to the flames by the sentence of a general council. In England, however, far from pretending to such unfair advantages, the Roman Catholics resent the suspicion that their oaths, not to interfere with the Protestant establishment, may be annulled by the Pope. The settled and sincere determination to keep such oaths, in those who appear ready to take them, I will not question for a moment; but I cannot conceal my persuasion, that it is the duty of every Roman Catholic pastor to dissuade the members of their