be innocent, does it become criminal by the sanction of the civil power? If it be dangerous to salvation, we avow that even the ecclesiastical cannot enforce it on the conscience of a Christian. So that even were the magistrate to ordain every thing in the Church, it would only be time to break up the communion when sinful terms were required.

But Christianity is so far from enjoining, that it actually forbids obedience to civil governors in all things of a religious nature.”* What? if his commands happen to coincide with those of Christ? "No; they cannot coincide; because the Scriptures are positive on this point. (See Matt. xx. 25; xxiii. 8, 9.)" Mr. Towgood, like many other interpreters of Scripture, does not trouble himself to consider the context of which he quotes. Both these passages were addressed to the disciples under similar circumstances. The first was a rebuke of that spirit of worldly ambition which had already shewn itself in the sons of Zebedee, and an exhortation to mutual lowliness of mind; the other was a censure of the Jewish teachers, and a warning to beware of contracting their arrogance and superciliousness. Neither had the slightest reference to the present question. In short, if the expression-" call no man your father upon earth," be literally interpreted, it will apply to political as much as ecclesiastical subjection, and one will be as unlawful as the other. So that this argument, like some others from the same pen, proves too much for its purpose.

We must really entreat the reader's pardon for reverting so much at length to a subject, which we think we have before settled to the satisfaction of every candid mind. The fact is, as we have previously stated, that Mr. Towgood's work is so ill arranged and digested, that it is almost impossible to answer it without transferring some portion of its irregularity. If we have treated this branch of the question at greater length than it deserved, we think, moreover, that we have satisfactorily proved the right of the Church to ordain rites and ceremonies conformably to Scripture; and to determine controversies of faith in like manner; the Church being represented by its Convocation, and the assent of the king being necessary to all its public acts. But before we proceed to draw from this conclusion the important consequences which it infers, we must attend to another little difficulty of Mr. Towgood's, which is so profoundly ridiculous, that, did it not present a fair specimen of his reasoning, we should hesitate to notice it at all.

Hence, by the way, you see the extreme vanity of your imagination,-"That the civil magistrate, by ratifying the XXth Article, hath recognised and owned the power to be not in himself but in the Church:" i. e. as you are pleased to understand it, in the Clergy. By what logic, Sir, do you make the Church, in that Article to mean the Clergy? Are not the laity also an essential part of the Church? Does not the very preceding Article, the XIXth. expressly declare that they are defining the Church to be a congregation of faithful men? But, would you impute to the magistrate so tame, so absurd, so ridiculous a part, as publicly to disown himself to have any power in Church matters; yea, to deny himself to belong to the congregation of the faithful? Yes, with astonishment

+ Towgood, p. 11.

be it seen, this is what you are not ashamed openly to impute to him. "But the King and Parliament (you say) have plainly disowned any such power as we are speaking of in themselves, and recognised it to be in the Church; and nobody imagines, that, by the Church, they mean themselves."-But, if by declaring it to be in the Church, they have disowned it to be in themselves, they have thereby also disowned themselves to be of the congregation of the faithful; for, this congregation they declare to be the Church, to whom this power belongs. Besides, this is supposing the King to disown and give up a power which the whole legislature hath solemnly vested in him, and which every Bishop and ecclesiastic in the kingdom (till the time of King William) did swear, that he believed in his conscience to be true, under the penalty of a premunire, viz. "That the King is the only supreme governor of this realm, as well in all spiritual or ecclesiastical things, or causes, as temporal: and they will assist and defend him in such jurisdiction and authority."-Pp. 236, 237.

It would be easy to paraphrase the terms of the XIXth Article in a definition of a State. We might say, "the State is a congregation of loyal men, in the which the government is duly administered:" and we might say afterwards, paraphrasing the XXth Article, "The State hath power to decree laws and statutes." Both these affirmations would be true, and involve no contradiction: yet, if Mr. Towgood's argument be correct, every individual member of the State has this legislative power, unless he would "deny himself to belong to the congregation of the" loyal. The absurdity of this statement is no other than that of Mr. Towgood. When we speak of power, either in Church or State, we of course only speak of those to whose hands such power is confided.

Let us now review the inference from what we have proved. A most important inference it is-the concession of the whole question in debate. For "this is the grand hinge upon which the whole controversy turns." Such is Mr. Towgood's admission in his own words!

We call, therefore, upon the Dissenters, as honest and religious men, to yield up their cause, as untenable upon the very grounds on which their chief advocate has rested it. But we have not yet dismissed the subject. We have annihilated all the gravamen of the charge against the Church, and overthrown Mr. Towgood's favourite bulwark but we must not leave him here. Nothing, indeed, that he has said beside is, on the principles which we have laid down, a sufficient excuse for dissent; and the soundness of these principles, the more we consider them, we cannot but regard unquestionable; nay, on his own principles, the Dissenter is bound to concede the rest. But we are desirous of exposing the weakness of this "masterly”* production, and of the cause which it was written to support. We are desirous of showing how much the Church has been misunderstood, and how little the importance of spiritual unity has been recognised. This, however, must be left to another opportunity.

THE CATHOLIC QUESTION.

OUR table is covered with pamphlets on this all-engrossing topic; the consideration of which we had at first intended to have embodied

in a Review, but the bare enumeration of their titles would occupy a larger space than we can allot to the full discussion of the subject. So often, indeed, have the Popish "claims," as they are called, been examined in all their various bearings, that little or nothing can be said which has not been said a thousand times before, as far as the political or religious rights of the claimants are concerned. The question has now resolved itself into one of expediency. Referring, therefore, to the host of pamphleteers, who are daily sending forth their statements in defence of the Constitution, as by law established, in Church and State, and particularly to the masterly appeals of Messrs. Soames, Warner, Vever, Townsend, Chesnutt, and "A Devonshire Freeholder," for the general bearings of the question, we shall confine ourselves to the particular of expediency only, more especially in connexion with the alleged securities for the INVIOLATE preservation of the Protestant Establishment. We would also direct the attention of our readers to the parliamentary speeches, now published by authority, of Mr. Sadler and the (late) Attorney-General; to the "Plain Reasons why Political Power should not be granted to Papists," published by Mr. Wix, in the year 1822; and to the celebrated Letters of Dr. Phillpotts to Mr. Canning, written before his shameless apostacy from that Church, from the revenues of which he is "laying up for himself treasures upon earth.”

It is deemed expedient then to grant the proposed concessions to the Romanists; and for these three reasons:-1. Division in the Cabinet. 2. The distress arising to Ministers from their repeated minorities in Parliament. 3. The agitated condition of Ireland.

With respect to the first of these reasons, it seems something strange to allege divisions in the Cabinet upon a particular measure as the cause of making it a Cabinet measure. One would rather suppose that the natural tendency of such division would be to exclude the question entirely from their councils; as its discussion could only end in breaking up the ministry altogether, or in the ultimate ejection of one party or the other. In the present instance, the latter alternative has been the result; and Sir C. Wetherell, with a few others who have dared to be consistent, and to keep their faith at the expense of their places, has been informed that his Majesty has no further occasion for his services. In fact, the only intelligible inference that can be drawn from the whole course of proceedings since the contents of his Majesty's speech were publicly known, is this: that the Premier was determined to have no division in the Cabinet; and that those who differed from his Grace on this important measure have, with little exception, from motives of private expediency, fallen into the ranks of emancipation, and nodded an immediate assent to the opinions which he had evidently long entertained, but thought it more prudent to conceal. We do not mean to affirm positively that matters stand precisely in this posture ; but upon any other view of the case within the limits of our conception, the sudden conversion of the present Government must be ranked among the most portentous miracles in the annals of Popery, not excepting those of Hohenlohe himself.

It is easy to believe that repeated minorities are not very agreeable

to a ministry; but it is strange that the present Government should ever expect to command a majority again. We do not suppose that those staunch friends of the Constitution, who have been deserted in time of need by their legitimate guardians, will be less true on that account to the interest of their country, and cease to support her in the struggles which the reckless indifference, not to say the heartless treachery of her accredited champions, will inevitably entail upon her. But those who now occupy the ministerial benches will quit them upon the first measure which is brought forward in opposition to their enlightened views; and Ministers must be prepared to go all lengths in order to keep the Emancipationists on their side. They now vote with Government, or rather Government votes with them, in support of their own darling object; and their next step will be a union with the Catholic members, which the "Relief Bill" will admit into the House, in extorting fresh concessions, in setting aside the nominal securities at present offered, and in paving the way for the renewal of those scenes which have invariably marked the bloodstained annals of Catholic ascendancy. We shall probably be stigmatised as bigots, or fools, or worse, for holding these antiquated notions; but greater men than ourselves or our opponents have fooled in the same way, and we are content to partake in their folly. In a sermon of one of these great men, the late Dean of Carlisle (Dr. I. Milner), preached before the University of Cambridge in 1807, we meet with the following passage, which we cannot forbear from quoting ::

I say nothing of the follies; I confine myself altogether to the dangers of Popery. The Romanists maintain not only the Pope of Rome's supremacy, but also his dispensing power; and their clergy are sworn to do their utmost to extirpate heresy. Therefore, to effect their purposes, say what they will, do what they will, or take whatever oaths they may, the Pope and his substitute, at any convenient moment, can, in any one instant, dissolve in the minds of such men, every human obligation which the heart of man can conceive. In fact, it is well known that one of the conspirators in the business of the fifth of November, (1605), who escaped the hand of justice here, met with both commendation and reward at Rome; nor can it be doubted that if their plot had succeeded, the memorable day would have been marked in the Popish calendars, as glorious and triumphant, as it is now in the Protestant, as a day of divine interposition and deliverance.

Such are the systematic doctrines and practices which render it unfit for Protestant governments to trust any material power in the hands of Romanists. But, then, it is here said, these representations, at the present day, are absolutely fabulous, and altogether unworthy of the notice of wise men.

The answer is, if this indeed be so-if the objectional doctrines of the Romanists have really terminated their disgraceful existence, every true Protestant will rejoice in the event of such a revolution, and be heartily disposed to allow them the utmost licence of rational toleration: He will, however, expect to have better proof of their sincerity, than the mere declaration, or even the signatures, of a few interested members of that communion, collected at suspicious moments, and to serve particular purposes. You know that no people on earth are more completely under the dominion of their clergy than the congregations of the Roman Catholics; and you know, also, that their clergy, as a body, have not relaxed or amended in any one syllable of their ancient, most atrocious, and detestable doctrines. And is it not, therefore, with a fearful astonishment, that you hear it gravely affirmed in Parliament, that all the peculiarly odious, offensive, and dangerous parts of the Romish religion have long since been done away?

Let me ask-Do you believe that the numerous sanguinary decrees of the Pope and his councils, which for so many years have been the disgrace of reason and humanity, are now actually repealed? Do you believe that the Roman Catholic clergy, particularly those of Ireland, do now avow, before all the world, this revolution which is said to have taken place? And do you seriously think, that they are now instructing their deluded congregations in these new and reformed doctrines? Forgive me: to believe these things would require a most uncommon portion of credulity! Yet you would not deny that there may be several humane Deists, or half Deists, nominally of the Romish communion, who may sincerely detest many of the political doctrines, and the scandalous practices of the Church of Rome; and to their candid concessions, most probably, we are in part to ascribe the favourable impression concerning the present state of Popery, made on the minds of several leading characters in our own country. But surely, wise and watchful British senators would not suffer themselves to be ensnared by such partial and unsatisfactory professions; surely they will examine, and even scrutinize, with an industrious and jealous attention, whether the great body, particularly the clerical body, of the existing modern Roman Catholics, are not themselves educated, and are at this moment educating their offspring, in precisely the same systematic plans of bigotry, persecution, contempt, and hatred of Protestants, which caused their forefathers to be guilty of so many horrid plots and massacres. Yet, God forbid we should harbour the smallest degree of unchristian animosity towards any of our fellow-creatures, of whatever persuasion they may be! Let our abhorrence be always not of the men, but of the cruel, unrelenting principles in which the Romanists are steadily educated.

From the ruinous operation of these, may Almighty God protect us! And be it our earnest prayer, that (as one very material mean of our protection) He would be pleased to give our senators wisdom.

Heartily and fervently do we unite in this prayer;-devoutly do we pray for the removal of that judicial blindness with which, as a warning to our guilty land, the Almighty seems to have visited those who have the rule over us. Nothing less than infatuation could possibly have produced the renunciation of their former sentiments, and induced them to give up those principles in a moment, which have 66 grown with their growth, and strengthened with their strength.' But it is time to say a few words respecting the third reason, which renders concession necessary. Emancipation is to unite the Cabinet! to place ministers in a majority!! and-to tranquillize Ireland!!! If it do all this, we really should not wonder if it did one thing more; - convince the people of the policy of granting it. But Emancipation has just as much to do with the peace of Ireland as with the amelioration of the slaves in the West Indies. The Irish want work, they want bread, they want civilization; and, in one respect, they want emancipation--but it is emancipation from the tyranny of their priests. The grievances which they suffer, and which give rise to the broils and tumults in which they are for ever engaged, originate in the deprivations and spoliation to which they are subjected by the unnatural agency of the middle-men-a race of beings who defraud the land-owner, while they gripe the labourer. Hence the destitution of the lower orders, which their priests take every opportunity of fanning into discontent; and of which the agitators persuade them that emancipation is the only remedy. If Ireland is on the eve of a rebellion it is not concession that will quench the flame. The true remedy for the evil will be found in the residence of the land-holders upon their estates, which ought to be enforced by a