"the latter sacraments were treated of; in the twenty-fifth and last, "held on the fourteenth of December, 1563, the doctrine of purgatory, "images, invocation of saints, and indulgences was handled, and the "council concluded with the usual acclamations and subscriptions. "After the fathers had subscribed, the ambassadors of Catholic kings "subscribed as witnesses in a different schedule."

How different is this line of conduct from that pursued by the im pugners of truth. We here see the utmost pains taken by the pastors of the church, to elicit the doctrines taught by and received from the apostles of Christ. Here was no precipitation used; no hasty conclusions; no rejection of testimony unimpeachable; no reliance on private opinion; no display of empty learning; but the most careful research was made into the constant practice of the primitive ages, and of the different nations in the world on their first receiving the light of the Christian faith. Not so, however, the pretended reformers of religion at this time, whose demeanour was a scandal to that sacred name, and a display of irreligious blasphemy and insolence outraging common sense and decency. Luther is stiled by Fox the unmasker of Popery, and is ranked the father of the pretended reformation. Let us now see the disposition which prepared him for this work, so much extolled by those who hate the Catholic religion for their own temporal interest. In the preface to the first tome of his works, printed at Wirtemberg in 1582, Luther says, "I was mighty desirous to understand Paul in his Epistle to the Romans: but was hitherto deterred, not by any faintheartedness, but by one single expression in the first chapter, viz. "therein is the righteousness of God revealed. For I hated that word, "the righteousness of God; because I had been taught to understand it "of that formal and active righteousness, by which God is righteous and "punishes sinners, and the unrighteous. Now knowing myself, though "I lived a monk of an irreproachable life, to be in the sight of God a "sinner, and of a most unquiet conscience, nor having any hopes to appease him with my own satisfaction, I did not love, nay, I hated this righteous God, who punishes sinners; and with heavy muttering, if not "with silent blasphemy, I was angry with God, and said, as if it were not " enough for miserable sinners, who are lost to all eternity by original sin, to suffer all manner of calamity by the law of the Decalogue, "unless God by the gospel adds sorrow to sorrow, and even by the gospel threatens us with his righteousness and anger. Thus did I

rage with a fretted and disordered conscience." These, reader, are Luther's OWN WORDS, and must he not have been a most extraordinary instrument to work a reformation in the church of God, supposing him to have been actually commissioned to perform such a work? A man, by his own confession, raging "with a fretted and dis"ordered conscience,"-" angry with God,"-murmuring against him hating him-and silently blaspheming his justice, Precious dispositions for a reformer of religion! Yet this is the man who is held up by the editors of Fox's Book of Martyrs as an object of veneration! But let us see what he says of the ancient fathers:-"To what purpose "should any man rely on the ancient fathers, whose authority was revered for so many ages? For were not they too all blind? And even neg"lected Paul's clearest and most obvious words?-Brag now of the

"authority of the ancients, and depend on what they say: when, as you see, every man of them neglected Paul, the brightest and most intelligible doctor; and were so deeply plunged into earnal sense, "as kept them in a manner designedly at a distance from this morn"ing star, or rather from this sun."-Lib. de Serv. Arb. tom. 2. fol. 480. 2. "Had Austin in plain terms asserted, that there is a power "in the church to make laws, what is Austin? Who shall oblige us "to believe him? If then so great an error, and such a sacrilege "prevailed against the word of God for so long a time, with the consent, or submission, or approbation of all mankind—let them consider "if there be not good reason, why God would have no creature to be "credited."-Cont. Reg. Ang. tom. 2. fol. 345. 1. "Neither do I concern myself what Ambrose, Austin, the Councils, or practice of ages ¦ 66 say. Nor do I want king Harry to be my master in this point. I "know their opinions so well, that I have declared against them”—Ibid. ¦ fol. 347. 1.

Enough we think has been said to shew that while Catholics rely upon the promises of Christ, and refer to the testimony of all ages, Protestants have no other grounds for their faith than the visionary productions of self-conceit, and oftentimes arrogance. This boundless license was the occasion of those struggles and wars of desolation that fill the blood-stained pages of the annals of those times. The superiority of the Catholic mode of ascertaining truth over any other, cannot be better shewn than by relating an anecdote to be found in Butler's Saints' Lives, on the authority of the archbishop of Braga, in Portugal, one of the deputies of the council of Trent. Two of the prelates present at that synod, from their attachment to Lutheranism, acted as spies to condemn its decrees. By assisting, however, at the conferences and deliberations, in which all points were discussed before the decisions, they were edified and confirmed in the Catholic faith, by observing the extreme difference of the method which the reformers pursued, who, in their deliberations about faith, consulted only their own private opinions, caprice, and fancy, as we have seen above in Luther, and that followed by the Catholics, who weighed every thing in the balance of the sanctuary, and by the most careful search into the undeviating and primitive tradition, and the faith of all nations, as we before observed, set the true doctrine of the church of Christ in a clear and perspicuous light. One of them afterwards distinguished himself by his advocacy of truth, and his successful efforts in refuting and converting the Calvinists and other sectaries. It is the practice with the adversaries of Catholicism, to represent its professors as blindly led by the priesthood, and it is said, that when a Catholic begins to inquire, he ceases to be a member of that church. The ignorance and falsity of such an assertion must be manifest to all who have read the preceding observations; because we have clearly proved that it is by inquiry, by searching inte the records of past ages, and comparing them with the generally re ceived opinions of the present, that Catholics become more and more confirmed in the truth of their faith. When Catholics see, on inquiry, the reformers of the sixteenth century bearing testimony to the evils produced by their own doctrines, and compare these evils with the good works resulting from a correct observance of the laws of God;

and the precepts of the Catholic church, how can they do otherwise, as men of common sense, than adhere to that system which is the best? Dare not inquire, truly! Oh, yes; they dare and do inquire, and in their researches they find the apostles of the pretended reformation complaining in these terms:

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66 Men," says Luther, are now more revengeful, covetous, and li"centious, than they were ever in the Papacy."-Postil. super Evang. Dom. 1. Adv. And Dom. 26. Post. Trinit. Heretofore,' says he, "when we were seduced by the pope, every man did willingly follow good works: and now no man neither sayeth or knoweth any thing,. "but how to get all to himself by exactions, pillage, theft, lying, usury, &c."

66.

Calvin, L. de Scandalis. "Of so many thousands, who renouncing. "Popery, seemed eagerly to embrace the gospel, how few have amended "their lives? Nay, what else did the greater part pretend to, but by shaking off the yoke of superstition, to give themselves more liberty 66 to follow all kinds of lasciviousness."

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Melancthon, on Matthew vi. says, "It is plain, that in these countries, (he speaks of those countries which first embraced Luther's "reformation) men's whole concern almost is about banquetting, "drunkenness, and carousing; and so strangely barbarous are the people, that most men are persuaded, that if they do but fast one day, "they must die the following night."

· ` Paulus Eberus, a learned Lutheran divine, in his preface to Melancthon's Commentaries on the first Epistle to the Corinthians, speaking of Protestants in general, writes thus: "Our whole evangelical congregation abounds with so many divisions and scandals, that it is nothing "less than what it pretends to be. If you look upon the evangelical "teachers themselves, you will see that some of them are spurred on "with vain-glory, and an invidious zeal, &c. some of them raise un"reasonable debates, and then maintain them with unadvised heat. "There are many of them who pull down, by their wicked lives, what they had built up by the truth of their doctrine. Which evils, as every one sees with his own eyes, so has he great reason to doubt "whether your evangelical congregation be the true church, in which so many and such enormous vices are discovered."

Audrew Dudith, in his epistle to Beza, (Beza's Theological Epistles, ep. 1.) writes as follows: "What sort of people are our Protestants, straggling to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, "sometimes to this side, and sometimes to that? You may perhaps "know what their sentiments in matters of religion are to-day; but you can never certainly tell what they will be to-morrow. In what "article of religion do those churches agree among themselves, who "have cast off the bishop of Rome? Examine all from top to bottom, you shall scarce find one thing affirmed by one, which is not immediately condemned by another for wicked doctrine," Jacobus Andreas, on Luke, xxi. "The other part of the Germans, (viz. the Protestants) give due place to the preaching of the word of God; but no amendment of manners is found among them; on the "contrary, we see them lead an abominable, voluptuous, beastly life; "instead of fasts, they spend whole nights and days in revellings and "drunkenness.".

Wolfingus Musculus, in his Common Pieces, cap. de Decalogo. "Our gospellers have grown so unlike themselves, that whereas under Popery they were religious in their errors and superstition; now in "the light of the known truth, they are more profane, light, vain and "temerarious, than the very children of this world."-Explanat. 3. Præcepti, p. 85. edit. 1560.

The Catholic by inquiry discover no signs of amendment at the present period. He sees in this Protestant country the prisons filled with criminals, the gaol deliveries exhibiting scenes of immorality and vice unknown in Catholic countries, where religion is duly practised; he sees hundreds rushing into the presence of their God in horrible fits of despair, with their hands imbrued with their own blood; and with such scenes before him, with a knowledge of the consolations derived from the sacraments of the Catholic church, whether in plenty or misery, can it be a subject of wonder that no good Catholic thinks of turning Protestant, while the thinking Protestants are daily coming over to the Catholic faith? Fox has noticed the miserable end of the Roman emperors who persecuted the primitive Christians, but he does not tell us of the untimely fate of the principal reformers of the sixteenth century. The death of Christ's apostles and their successors in fence of the faith they taught is to this day looked upon as a glorious mark of their divine commission, for nothing but the grace of God could enable men to withstand such tortures as they endured, or main-tain such invincible courage in support of the divinity of Jesus Christ. How unlike was the conduct and end of the sham apostles of Protestantism. Luther, after a life of intemperance and lust, was suddenly taken ill after supper, and died in the night, in the year 1546.— Zuinglius was killed in battle, fighting against the Catholic cantons in Switzerland, in 1530. Ecolampadius was not long after found dead in his bed, killed, as Luther writes in one of his works, by the devil. L. de Missa Privita et Unct. Sacerd. t. vii. fol. 230. Calvin died in the year 1504 of a dreadful complication of distempers, which his friend Beza says he bore with Christian fortitude, but the Catholics and some Protestants say, he died in despair, blaspheming God, and invoking devils. This is related by Bolseck in his Life of Calvin; Schlusselberg, a learned Lutheran, in Theolog. Calv. printed in 1594; and Herennius a Calvinist preacher, who states he was himself aneye-witness of Calvin's tragical end; and that he died in despair of a most filthy stinking disease. See Libello de vita Calvini.

The reader will now be able to estimate the manner pursued by the reformers to unmask Popery, as Catholicism is termed, and the vigour with which they prosecuted their doctrines. We have disclosed the outrages committed by the mad fanaties, in the name of religion; and we have shewn the mode followed by the Catholic divines to reclaim them from their error and draw them back to the path of truth. We have shewn that deliberation was attempted in the diet at Worms in 1521; at Nuremberg in 1524; at Spire in 1526 and 1529, but to no effect; that a Protestant profession of faith was announced in 1530, and a Protestant league the year following; that the council of Trent assembled in 1545; and it now remains for us to state, that it was not till the year 1546 that Charles declared war against the confederate princes, not however as Protestants or heretics, but as rebels

and enemies to the empire. Thus was civil war enkindled in the very heart of Germany, which continued nearly six years, when both parties agreed to sheath the sword, and restore peace to the country. Whatever violences may have taken place, we think it is clear that they cannot be fairly classed as religious persecutions, and we have made it as clear as the sun at noon day, that the reformed or Protes¬ tant party were the aggressors; that the Catholics acted on their own defence; and, therefore, whatever disasters might befall the Protestanty party, they arose out of their own misconduct.

"SECTION V.

"PERSECUTIONS IN THE NETHERLANDS."

This section is prefaced with the following passage:-"The glo"rious light of the gospel spreading over every part of the continent, "and chasing thence the dark night of ignorance, increased the alarm "of the pope, who urged the emperor to commence a persecution against the Protestants; when many thousands fell martyrs to superstitious malice and barbarous bigotry."-Fox then proceeds to detail the pretended martyrdoms of "a pious widow, named Wendeli"nuta," two Protestant clergymen, a minister of the reformed church, and many others, for offences so trivial as to be utterly unworthy of credit. He then goes on, "In Flanders, about 1543 and 1544, the persecution raged with great violence. Many were doomed to perpetual imprisonment, others to perpetual banishment; but the greater num"ber were put to death either by hanging, drowning, burning, the "rack, or burying alive," and concludes the section with an account of the assassination of the prince of Orange. As usual we have no authorities, nor are we told which prince of Orange was assassinated, nor when, nor where. Such is the method adopted by the "few plain Christians" to diffuse among their " fellow believers, a knowledge " and love of the genuine principles of Christianity." They do not, we imagine, expect their fellow-believers to enter into an inquiry, for if they did they would at least have made some greater shew of authority for their assertions. We hope however that these fellow-believers will in quire, and to assist them in the course of their research, we will here furnish them with an extract or two from Dr. Heylin's History of the Presbyterians, treating of the period chosen by the "few plain Christians" for the time of persecution. The time selected by Fox or his editors is between 1543 and 1544, when, he says, "the persecution "raged with great violence." We are at a loss to know what he means by the term persecution, for the doctrines preached by the reformers did not inculcate submission to authority, and the bearing of injuries for conscience sake, but encouraged sedition, pillage and murder, as we shall see presently. The resistance therefore made to the turbulent and illegal proceedings of these sham reformers of religion could by no means be called a persecution, but a measure of self-defence to preserve the already established authorities, ecclesiastical and civil, both of which the then New Lights meditated the destruction. It does not appear from Dr. Heylin that a persecution was commenced at that time by the Catholics, but, he states that measures were taken, as we before