sented to me in the strength and vivid beauty of graphic delineation, I do not remember ever to have been so greatly astonished. "Do they believe all this, Sir?" said I to my companion; 'Yes, and a great deal more of the same kind, was the reply.

66

Perhaps, Sir, the Book of the Church might never have been written, had it not been for the impression which I then received. My first thought was,...here is a mythology not less wild and fanciful than any of those upon which my imagination was employed, and one which ought to be included in my ambitious design. A little reflection convinced me that there was an insuperable objection to making this the machinery of a serious poem; because in so doing the most sacred truths could not be separated from the audacious superstructure of Romish fable. It then occurred to me, that its grotesque character made it excellently adapted for a mock-heroic strain; but to this also the same fatal objection applied, and in greater force: for though I was sufficiently inclined by nature to look at things in their ludicrous aspect, that dangerous propensity, happily for myself, has always been overruled by worthier considerations. But my attention had thus been drawn to the legendary and

monastic history of the Papal Church; and when we reached Lisbon my uncle recommended me to look at the works* of one of his predecessors, Dr. Michael Geddes, (afterwards Chancellor of the diocese of Sarum,) as a collection containing much valuable information concerning the history of Spain and Portugal, and the actual state of the Romish superstition

They consist of Miscellaneous Tracts, in three vols. 8vo. 1730 (3d edition). Several Tracts against Popery, together with the Life of D'Alvaro de Luna-one vol. 8vo. 1715. The History of the Church of Malabar, giving an Account of the Persecutions and violent Methods of the Romish Prelates to reduce them to the Subjection of the Church of Rome.—8vo. 1694. The Church History of Ethiopia, wherein, among other things, the two great splendid Roman Missions into that Empire are placed in their true light. To which are added an Epitome of the Dominican History of that Church, and an Account of the Practices and Conviction of Maria of the Annunciation, the famous Nun of Lisbon.-8vo. 1696. The Council of Trent no free Assembly, with an Introduction concerning Councils, and a Collection of Dr. Vargas's Letters.-8vo. 1697. The most celebrated Popish Ecclesiastical Romance; being the Life of Veronica of Milan: a book certified by the Heads of the University of Conimbra, in Portugal, to be revised by the Angels, and approved of by God, ja visto e revisto pallos Anjos, e approvado por Dios. Begun to be translated from the Portugueze, by the late Dr. Geddes, and finished by Mr. Ozell, with the approbation of his Grace the Archbishop of Canterbury, in whose library at Lambeth the original of this curiosity remains. 8vo. 1716.

in those countries. count* of the Granadan manuscripts and relics, one of the most demonstrable impostures that was ever practised upon public credulity: yet was it solemnly and judicially ratified by the ecclesiastical authorities in Spain, who pronounced that the said relics" ought to be received, honoured, venerated, and adored, with due honour and worship :" and nearly fifty years elapsed before the Court of Rome condemned the palpable and detected fraud. There I read the Legend of †Santiago; the History of the House of Loretto; and the Life of Maria des Jesus, Abbess of the Franciscan Convent of the Immaculate Conception at Agreda, whose biography of the Virgin Mary, as dictated to her by the Virgin herself, was published with the sanction of her Diocesan (who was one of the Council of State), of the Franciscan Order, of the Inquisition (by its Calificador, a Jesuit), of the General of the Benedictines, and of the Universities of Salamanca, Alcala and Louvain. And

There, Sir, I found an ac

* Misc. Tracts, vol. i. p. 345. Several Tracts, p. 99.

+ Misc. Tracts, vol. ii. p. 221. § Misc. Tracts, vol. iii. p. 141. cannot be disputed by the Salamanca and Louvain are

The value of their opinions English Romanists, inasmuch as two of those Universities upon whose authority the British Parliament is required to believe, that the infallible and immu

there I found a View* of "all the Orders of Monks and Friars in the Romish Church, with an account of their Founders, sufficient to help any one to form a right idea of the men, and of the writers of their lives."... After this, his accounts of the Portugueze Inquisition,† and of the Auto-da-fe, which he had himself seen, were not required to make me bless the day when Martin Luther was born.

Sir, I might have been told in England that these things were misrepresented, or at least exaggerated by Dr. Geddes;... that no such legends were to be found in Mr. Alban Butler's Lives of the Saints, or believed by the Roman Catholics of the present age. But, incredible as it might seem that such abominable impos

table Papal Church at this day condemns, reprobates, and stigmatizes certain principles upon which, at no very remote period, it acted as notoriously as it professed and inculcated them. See Mr. Grattan's speech of May 25, 1802, upon the Catholic Claims. And Mr. Butler's Book of the Roman Catholic Church, Appendix, Note I.

* Misc. Tracts, vol. iii. 357.

Misc. Tracts, vol. i. p. 385.

He saw one of the sufferers on that accursed day gagged as soon as he came out of the gates of the Inquisition, because, having looked up to the sun, which he had not seen before for several years, he exclaimed, "How is it possible for any people who behold that glorious body, to worship any being but Him that created it!" Misc. Tracts, vol. i. 406.

tures should ever have been palmed upon a Christian people, I knew that there was neither misrepresentation nor exaggeration in his state

ments.

The authorities were at hand. And that the belief in such things was still entertained among the people and kept up by the clergy I had proof before my sight: for I was in a country where Popery wore no disguise. Knowing that it was gaining ground in England, because its history has passed away from the remembrance of the nation, and its real and indelible character is no longer understood, one of the objects which I resolved to qualify myself for performing in due season, was that of exposing this baneful system in its proper deformity, and showing it to my countrymen such as it has been, is, and must continue to be, so long as it maintains its pretension to be infallible. That purpose will be pursued in these Letters. It has been partly fulfilled in the Book of the Church, some latter pages of which were written in that very room, looking over the river Thames, where in my boyhood I had first been attracted to a course of reading which in its consequences had thus produced it. More than thirty years had intervened; the house had several times changed its possessors; it was now occupied by another of my best and oldest friends. Old