on earth, as always to provide that the election should fall upon one whose former life had been at least blameless; or, by an unequivocal manifestation of its consent, that it should have made regeneration a necessary consequence of the appointment, so that the newly-created Pope with the title of Holiness should receive the grace, and put on sinless perfection as well as infallibility with his pontificals? If God delivered over the power and dominion in Heaven as well as Earth to the Roman Pontiff; if that Pontiff be indeed the living and oracular depository of the faith, the unerring expounder of what is written, and the sure preserver of those unwritten interpretations and additions which in the Romish Church are held of equal authority with Scripture,.. if upon the Pope under God the salvation of all the faithful depends,.. is it possible that these stupendous prerogatives should coexist with imbecility, with vice, with flagitious profligacy... with flagrant unbelief? Would the offence have been less for Cossa or Borgia to take upon themselves such an office, than for Uzzah to approach the ark? "The Holy Ghost," says Bishop Taylor, never dwells in the house of passion." Will it dwell with ambition, with avarice, with impiety, with all the cardinal sins? For in their company

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the Holy Spirit must have dwelt,..with all these sins in monstrous hypostasis it must have been united, if the pretensions of the Papal Church were true!

No, Sir, it is not through these broken conduits,.. through these sinks and sewers that we can be content to receive the waters of life! We drink of them at the living well, at the fountain-head, at the Rock of Scripture from whence they flow pure, and will for ever flow. In Scripture it was that the truths of Christianity were preserved when the Popes were, what Baronius confesses them to have been, monsters of wickedness,.. or, as you are pleased to qualify it, when they were "stained with vice;" .. when, in St. Bernard's words, they had wolves instead of sheep for their flock, and Rome was the Devil's own pasture. It is not there, Sir, that we must look for that Church to which the promise was made, nor for the

*Scio ubi habitas, increduli et subversores sunt tecum. Lupi, non oves sunt, talium tamen tu pastor.-De Consideratione, 1. iv. c. iii. 885.

+ Si auderem dicere, dæmonum magis quàm ovium pascua hæc. -Ib. c. ii.

What a picture of Rome does he set before the Pope! Quem dabis mihi de totá maximá urbe qui te in Papam receperit, precio seu spe preci non interveniente? Et tunc potissimum volunt dominari cum professi fuerint servitutem. Fideles se spondent, ut

head of that Church who made it. That Church is neither to be found under the Eastern Patriarch, nor the Western Pope. It existed among the Pyrenees and the Alps,.. where the Albigenses have been destroyed with fire and sword, and where at this day the Vaudois in patience and in poverty bear testimony to the Gospel. It existed in Bohemia and in Britain; wherever two or three were gathered together in their Saviour's name, wherever the covenant grace was accepted in meekness and in truth. It existed even among heretics and monks and friars,.. more erring than all heretics,.. wherever

of

opportunius fidentibus noceant. Ex hoc non erit consilium tibi a quo se arcendos putent, non secretum quo se non ingerant. Si stante præ foribus quoquam illorum, moram vel modicam fecerit ostiarius, ego tunc pro illo esse noluerim. Et nunc experire paucis, noverimne et ego vel aliquatenus mores gentis. Ante omnia sapientes sunt ut faciant mala, bonum autem facere nesciunt. Hi invisi terræ et cælo, utrique injecere manus, impi in Deum, temerarii in sancta, seditiosi in invicem, æmuli in vicinos, inhumani in extraneos, quos neminem amantes amet nemo; et cum timeri affectant ab omnibus, omnes timeant necesse est. Hi sunt qui subesse non sustinent, præesse non norunt; superioribus infideles, inferioribus importabiles. Hi inverecundi ad petendum, ad negandum frontosi. Hi importuni ut accipiant, inquieti donec accipiant, ingrati ubi acceperint. Docuerunt linguam suam grandia loqui cum operentur exigua. Largissimi promissores, et parcissimi exhibitores. Blandissimi adulatores, et mordacissimi detractores. Simplicissimi dissimulatores, et malignissimi proditores.-Ib.

the errors of belief were involuntary and unavoidable, wherever the sacrifice was offered of a broken spirit and of a contrite heart. There was the Church of Christ; not in the ship of St. Peter, when that ship was manned by pirates, or floating at the mercy of the winds upon the Dead Sea, while the crew were carousing with harlots, or engaged in brawls and blood. If the Gates of Hell could have prevailed against the Church, it would have been by the agency of such a crew; and if by means of crusades, Inquisitions, leagues, massacres, conspiracies, assassinations, and armadas, they had prevailed, and the Reformation had been suppressed, England would now have been what Spain and Italy are, divided between superstition and atheism, in a state of moral leprosy and intellectual dark

ness.

Perhaps, Sir, you may expect that, when speaking of the Popes in general, I should take the opportunity of noticing your new version of an old story from Paulus Æmilius, and the triumphant manner in which you have rebuked me for so stating a proposition of Bellarmine's as to make its meaning appear diametrically opposite to the intention of the author, and to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church. But I will not anticipate the order of your own

book. Those remarkable passages will come quite soon enough in course; and by this time it is probable that you may have felt some misgiving concerning both. You may have learnt from Mr. Blanco White the value of your verbal criticism upon Paulus Æmilius; "vous devez vous défier de vous, quand vous êtes seul de votre avis." And with regard to Bellarmine, you may have found cause, I think, to distrust those upon whose credit in this (and in one other) instance, I hope and believe that you have relied. Had my purpose been merely to vindicate myself, by exposing the misrepresentations which affect me personally, it would have been an easy but an ungrateful task. A few pages might have sufficed. "There is a rebuke which is not comely:" and when such rebukes were to be dealt with, had I restricted myself to the task of vindication, I know not how the feeling of good will or the language of urbanity could have been maintained.