them "Diables des ministres hérétiques, un Protestant, un diable!" with many other contumelious expressions.* It were endless to reckon up all the violences suffered by the Protestant clergy at this time, but an effort to cut them all off deserves to be recorded as one of the most diabolical artifices ever practised by the Popish clergy in maintenance of their wretched superstition. A friar was brought up to Dublin, who pretended to be dumb and maimed. The Popish clergy immediately reported that Duke Schomberg had cut out his tongue and thus maimed him, and declared that he would serve all the Popish priests and friars in the same manner; and they proposed to revenge it on the Protestant clergy. King, James caused the friar to be examined, and discovered the deceit which, with another infamous fraud of the same kind which he had just at that time detected, enraged him so much that he publicly declared that "for ought he saw, the Protestants were wronged and misrepresented unto him, and that there were some as great rogues among the Roman Catholics as among them."

The friars to acquit themselves of the cheat, got their dumb and maimed brother severely whipped, pretending that he was a spy, and belonged not to their fraternity; upon which he was carried naked through the city on a cart in a savage manner, to execution as it was supposed; but he was brought back and put into prison, from whence, after some time, he was dismissed and his habit restored to him.

Many such contrivances were daily set on foot against the Protestant clergy and laity of Ireland, whilst the Popish priests were busily employed in their schemes of conversion. With the utmost impudence, they thrust themselves into the rooms of such Protestants as were sick or dying. If they were found speechless, the priests reported they were converts. If they had any Popish relations, they besieged the house, and hindered the Protestant clergy from gaining access to their parishioners. The priests alleged that they had King James's command to visit the sick, and attempt their conversion, and therefore would not be hindered nor persuaded to withdraw, though frequently desired by the sick persons themselves. The Protestant clergy were often affronted and threatened on this account; and the ill will which they gained on particular occasions of this nature; caused not unfrequently their imprisonment, for the priest that lost his prey, (as they deemed every sick Protestant,) was sure to be revenged, one way or other, upon the minister whose diligence and vigorous opposition had disappointed him.

In this miserable situation were the Protestants of Dublin, when the

State of the Protestants of Ireland, page 280.

the glorious victory obtained at the Boyne on the first of July, put an end to the execrable system of imposture and outrage to which they were exposed; and opened the way to Dr. King's advancement in that church, whose cause he had maintained, with inflexible integrity and undaunted perseverance in the worst of times.

(To be continued.)

OBSERVATIONS ON DR. DROMGOLE'S SPEECH, BY SIR RICHARD MUSGRAVE, BART.-LETter IV.

Doctor Dromgole asserts in his speech, that "the Established Church shall fall, and nothing but the memory of the mischiefs which it created shall survive." Every person, whose mind is not clouded with ignorance, cannot but know that Popery, ever since its foundation, has been an inexhaustible source of treasonable conspiracies, civil wars, insurrections, persecutions, and massacres, some of which I shall endeavour briefly to describe. The Waldenses, who inhabited the vallies of Savoy and Piedmont, suffered a most cruel persecution in the year 1179, under Pope Alexander III. which, with some intermission, continued till the close of the 17th century; and for no other reason than that they professed that faith which was preached by the apostles, and rejected the innovations which the court of Rome had grafted on it.*

But the worst of all religious butcheries was that of the Albigenses, subjects of Raymond, Count of Thoulouse, of whom Pope Innocent III. presiding in the 4th Lateran council, in the year 1215, caused A MILLION TO BE DESTROYED, by massacres, tortures, burnings, and other violent deaths; and he deprived their sovereign of his territories, because, instead of persecuting them, in obedience to that Pontiff, he gave them protection; and he transferred them to Simon de Mountfort, who headed the crusade In this pious expedition there were many ecclesiastics, and amongst others, the Archbishop of Sens, the Bishops of Auxerre, Nevers, Clermont, &c. whom Spondanus, the Popish annalist, commended for their courage and zeal. This Pontiff, assisted by ignorance and fanaticism, persuaded 500,000 holy ruffians to fix the cross on their breasts; thus turning what brought " peace on earth, and good-will towards men," into the distinctive mark of a cut-throat and murderer; and, spurred on by the hopes of heaven and the certainty of plunder, they were encouraged

Du Pin's Ecclesiast. History, vol. iii. p. 201, 2, 3, 4.

+ Histoire Générale de Languedoc.

Concil. tom. ii. p. 33.

to riot in the blood of the Albigenses-(Thuanus, lib. vi. sec. 16.)—and Mezeray, in his history says, that they professed the same religion as the French Protestants; St. Bernard, who lived amongst them, praised them for the purity of their religious principles, and moral conduct.-(Serm. 65, super Cant. Edit. Venet. vol. i. p. 328.)-Rainerus says the same, and that their only fault was, their hatred of the church of Rome.-(Test. Verit. vol. ii. p. 545.)

The same Pope persecuted the Paulini (called in Italy, Paterini, from pati, to suffer); of whom he had 70,000 put to death; plundering, burning and confiscating their property; and merely because they denied the power of the prelates to grant indulgences, and disbelieved the fire of purgatory, the miracles of the Romish church, disavowed the worship of images, and the Virgin Mary. His coadjutors in these barbarous murders, were the infamous Italian spy,

Francis, and the Spanish assassin Dominic, who for these services have been sainted!!!

This dreadful persecution gave rise to the inquisition, the superintendence of which was committed by Pope Gregory IX. in the year 1233, to the Dominican friars, who took cognizance, not only of heresy, but of magic, sorcery, and witchcraft; and assumed a power independent of, and paramount to every state in which they held that sanguinary tribunal. -(Hist. Gén. de Languedoc, tom. iii. p. 394, 395).*

The author of that excellent work, The Pursuits of Literature, observes, in Part iv. on a Pamphlet, entitled, 'A Reply to the Report made by the Cisalpine Club, on the authenticity of the Protestation, at the British Museum, by the Rev. John Milner, printed in London in 1795. "He seems to be of the most intolerant principles, and deliberate in the application of them." "He is afraid that we, Protestants, should think the spirit of his Church has suffered an abatement." "Thus to our judgment (he cries out, page 28.) am I and the whole Catholic Body, without consenting to it, pledged, in the face of the Legislature, to condemn the wars of Charlemagne and the crusades against the infamous Albigenses." "What opinion, or what comment, shall we form on this merciless Priest, who, after the lapse of centuries, feels the same passion, and the same thirst of blood, against these innocent victims of Popish and arbitrary violence."-This man is much admired by the Irish Papists, both clergy and laity; Dr. Dromgole in his speech, ranks him with Bossuet, Arnot and Lingard.

Mr. Swinburne, a Roman Catholic gentleman, in his tour through Spain, made in made in the year 1775 and 1776, and published in the year 1787, says, of the Inquisition in Granada, "So late as the year 1726, the inquisition, with the sanction of government, seized upon 360 families, accused of secret Mahometanism, and confiscated all their property to the amount of twelve millions of crowns, of which no account was ever given; and they were dispersed in different parts of Spain,” (vol. i, p. 262.)--In the Irish Magazine, for October 1808, the inquisition is much praised and its benign effects in Spain are much extolled. England is accused of a want of wisdom, for not baving early introduced and adopted it. It is well known that this work is much admired VOL. III. [Prot. Adv. Nov. 1814.]

N

The Bohemians were cruelly persecuted as heretics, under the mandates of Urban VI. Martin V. and Pius II. in the 14th and 15th centuries. Pope Martin V. in his letter to Alexander Duke of Lithuania, who had taken them under his protection, wrote thus: "If thou hast been any way induced to promise to defend them, know that thou couldst not pledge thy faith to the violators of the holy faith, and that thou mortally offendest if thou dost observe it." *—(Spond. ad. an. 1422.)-Urban VI. declared the same to Winceslaus, King of the Romans and Bohemians, and that any compact entered into with heretics, even though confirmed by oath, was null and void.—(Bulla Urbani Sexti in Biblioth. D. R. Cotton.)

John Huss and Jerome of Prague were burnt as heretics in the year 1415, notwithstanding the safe conduct of the Emperor Sigismund to the former, and of the council to the latter; but they determined that no faith was to be kept with heretics.-(Sleidan's Commentary, p. 58, 59, Frankfort edition, 1618.)

Luther would have shared the same fate at Worms, but for the firmness of the Emperor Charles V. who from a sense of pride and honour, would not suffer his safe conduct to be violated; and yet, afterwards, yielding to the sanguinary spirit of his ghostly advisers, he became a grievous persecutor; for Grotius, an, author of undoubted veracity, says, that, in bis reign, NOT LESS THAN 100,000 PERSONS PERISHED AS HERETICS BY THE HANDS OF THE EXECUTIONER, IN THE LOW COUNTRIES, BY HIS ORDERS. (Annals, lib i.) Father Paul states them at 50,000.

The people of England were so galled at the tyranny and rapacity of the court of Rome, that they listened with joy to the doctrines of Wickliffe, and would have derived through him the blessings of the reformation, in the 14th century, but for the following unlucky incident. Henry IV. having acquired the crown by the perpetration of treason and murder, and being desirous of obtaining the influence of the clergy, to confirm his title to it, and to varnish over the turpitude of his crimes, he, at their instance, prevailed on the parliaments to pass a law, by which the bishops were empowered to try any person, within their respective dioceses, whom they charged with heresy; and, when condemned, the sheriff, or other officer, was required by it to burn the heretic in the most eminent

and read by the Irish Papists, and that its editor, Walter Cox, is protected by the Catholic Board; some of whose leading orators opened a subscription for him, when he was committed for a libel little short of treason. Such are the persons who complain of a want of religious liberty!!!

Here is a practical illustration of that dogma of the Romish Church, denied in vain by some of her adherents of the present day, that faith is not to be kept with those whom she calls heretics.

place.* On the rise of the reformation in Scotland, Cardinal Beaton procured many persons to be banished or burnt for heresy. Nothing.but fight saved from his sanguinary fury the illustrious Eucbanan, whose genins and learning did honour to his country and the age in which he lived. Beaton [or Bethune] presented to the king, a proscription of 360 of the nobility and gentry, whom he suspected and meant to have tried for heresy, and the great Earl of Arran was the first on that black roll. Drummond, in his History of Scotland, tells us, that the clergy worked on the avarice of the king to persuade him to second their sanguinary designs, by offering him the estates of all those who should be convicted of heresy, (for they would be confiscated according to the canons of the Romish church, as I have already stated in my third Letter). But should this scheme of confiscation fail, they offered him 50,000 crowns annually out of their own estates, and much more, should his necessities require it. The reader will find all these incidents in Spotswood, in Keith's Ecclesiastical History, in Buchanan, and in Sadler's State Letters.

Queen Mary, on her accession, gave her subjects the strongest assurance, by a solemn declaration in council, that she would not lay any restraint whatsoever on religious liberty; and yet when firmly seated on her throne, she, at the instance of the Popish clergy, had the sanguinary law of Henry IV. re-enacted, and under it they condemned as heretics many of her subjects, and had them committed to the flames. James II in the same manner gave the most solemn pledges, that he would maintain the constitution in church and state; and yet, at the instance of his clergy, he soon proceeded to subvert it, in violation of his coronation sath.

Davila, in the 5th book of his history, and Thuanus, inform us, that

• This engine of Popish cruelty, which answered in every respect to the Inquisition, was soon employed by the clergy to extirpate the followers of Wickliffe. William Sautre, Rector of St. Osithe's, in London, the first person who fell a victim to it, was burnt the year 1405, and the next person was Viscount Cobham. They continued to burn heretics under it till the reformation; these trials may be seen in Fox's Acts and Monuments. The Wickliffites were burnt for denying, or refusing to acknowledge, the grossest superstitious doctrines, and among others the following, as stated by Sir Edward Coke: "That there was no merit in doing pilgrimage at the tomb of Thomas a Becket, or of St. Mary of Walsingham, nor in adoring the crucifix, or the images of any saints, and that it was sufficient to confess to God instead of priests." He then observes: "which opinions were so far from heresy, as the makers of the statute of the Ist of Elizabeth had great cause to limit what was heresy." (3d Institute, p. 41, sce p. 8.) This sanguinary law was introduced into different editions of the General Councils. (Concil. Binii, torn. x. part ii. p. 21 e1, A. D. 1408.)