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THE

PROTESTANT ADVOCATE,

FOR DECEMBER, 1812.

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"O, my Lord God, bless my People, and save thine Inheritance; O, Lord God, save thy chosen People of England; O, Lord God, defend this Realm from Papistry, "and maintain thy true Religion; that I and my People may praise thy Holy Name, "for Jesus Christ's sake."-LAST PRAYER OF KING EDWARD VI.-Burnet's History of the Reformation, A.D. 1553.

ROMISH TYRANNY.

IN the notice which we have taken of Dr. O'Conor's dispute with the Romish Hierarchy in Ireland, and particularly with Dr. Troy, the titular Archbishop of Dublin, it was far from our intention to become parties in any private differences subsisting on account of the local discipline of the Irish Papal Church. We offer not ourselves as the champions of Dr. O'Conor, nor yet as apologists for Dr. Troy; we enter upon this affair on general and public grounds.

First; we would shew the Romish Church, in the Sister Island, stifling the voice of argument by the restrictions of authority ;– not indeed absolutely enjoining silence on the matter under discussion, but prohibiting Dr. O'Conor the exercise of his sacerdotal functions within the Romish diocese of Dublin. Despotism on the grand and heroic scale was not attempted; but a species of tyranny which betrays the testiness of the titular Vicar Apostolic, though it speaks not his wisdom;-yet, it must be owned, that it shews us what the wearer of the sham-archiepis.. copal mitre of Dublin would do, were his brows decked with the Papal tiara.-We produce the testimony of a Romish priest, in proof of Romish tyranny.-Whether Dr. O'Conor's reasoning on the mode of appointing Popish bishops in Ireland, be wellfounded or unfounded, whether it be vague or conclusive, we

* We gave the running title, and wrote a note, p. 95, and another, p. 97. VOL. I. Prot. Adv. Dec. 1812.]

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will not take upon us to say; but the way in which Dr. Troy has tried to seal up his mouth, and mar his pen, savours of that terrible spirit of ancient Popery, which harassed the fathers of the Reformation; which excommunicated those whom it could not silence, and burnt the men whom it could not confute.-We have undertaken (in our first Number, p. 5), to prove that the Papists of the present day, are as very Papists as those who embittered the days of our ancestors.

Secondly; we wish to inform the Irish Romanists, that with all their cries for Emancipation, as they term it, and with all their repugnance to allowing the King a negative voice, or the cautionary prerogative of a Veto, in the appointment of their prelates, the Pope has no actual power in the nomination of Irish Roman Catholic bishops. They are chosen, not by the free votes of the provincial suffragan bishops; not on the suggestion of the ecclesiastics of the second order, as Dr. O'Conor calls them; but they are chosen by A SECRET CONSISTORY at Maynooth ;by a dark divan, which issues its decrees to the executors of its councils, its active janizaries or its passive mutes; those who participate in the power of the existing tyranny, or those mere tools who dare not remonstrate against it. If the members of the Church of Rome in Ireland, disdain to acknowledge any authority, however guarded, exercised by the KING, will they endure the uncontrolled ascendancy of such men as Dr. Troy, Dr. Milner, and their associates? If Dr. O'Conor, himself a Roman Catholic, speaks truly, and we are about to quote his assertions, the highest dignities in the Irish Papal Church, are at the disposal of three or four intriguing men, governed by the same principles which formerly disgraced the Court of Rome, whilst there was yet a Pope who held a court in that city.

It always seemed strange, that, after a Veto was offered, it was afterwards withheld; that after something which, at least, gave a shew of security to the Protestant Religion had been apparently agreed on, it was suddenly denied, and refused by the same authority with which it originated, and whence it was proposed. The mystery of iniquity is exposed! Dr. O'Conor has drawn up the curtain; he has shewn us the SECRET CON. SISTORY at Maynooth, and has exhibited DEMETRIUS, with the

craftsmen of like occupation, sitting at the council-board and hammering the silver shrines by which they have their wealth. And was it a sense of private interest that occasioned the sudden burst of pseudo-public-spirit which withdrew, so indignantly, the once-proffered Veto? The Bishop of Castabala may now lay aside his grandiloquence, and may bottle up his sunbeams for amusement, as the philosopher at Laputa did for use.

But for this selfish denial of the Veto, the Romanists, by this time, probably might have been in the enjoyment of nearly all those civil rights, which it is not safe as yet to concede to them. The SECRET CONSISTORY at Maynooth have this to answer for; -the Parliament of the United Kingdom has granted all that prudence could allow, and perhaps a little more; considering the domination exercised by a few, over the generous minds of unsuspecting Irishmen.The PROTESTANT ADVOCATE would gladly free them from the tyranny which oppresses them. Tetzler's profligate sale of indulgences was hardly more disgraceful to the Church of Rome, than the pertinacity with which the CONSISTORY cleaves to the uncontrolled temporal patronage of £200,000 per annum.

After this opening-we shall call our witness,-Dr. O'Conor.Writing" to his friend in Ireland," under the signature of Columbanus,* he says, (p. 4)—“ It is generally known, that Dr. Kelly "has been nominated to Tuam, by the Secret Consistory of May

nooth, in defiance of all the suffragan bishops of Connaught, " each of whom seems to have been active in opposition to the

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man, who is thus unexpectedly elevated above them; and that "much rancour has prevailed on this subject, not only amongst "the leading men of the second order of our clergy, but amongst the Bishops themselves!"Again, (p. 5)—"The am"bitious spirit also, which betrays itself amongst us, whenever "an episcopal vacancy occurs; the spirit of ecclesiastical do"minion, which broods at Maynooth over the exclusive patronage "of five millions of people, styling that spiritual independence,

Columban wrote in spirited terms to Pope Boniface IV., asserting that his inferiors had a right to resist him when his decrees are not apostolical. Boniface IV. was elected Pope, A.D. 608.

which is, in fact, an uncontrouled temporal patronage of "£200,000 per annum; and a determination formed at May"nooth, to resist every lay presentation to Catholic livings in

Ireland, have provoked minute inquiries into the internal go❝vernment of our Church; and many circumstances relating to "marriages, dispensations, excommunications, and parish dues, "begin to be weighed in the scales of politicians, which, if we "had been more conciliatory in our manners, might have passed 66 away unnoticed, either lost in apparent insignificance, or per"haps unregarded by that species of apathy which ensues, when "the disputes of religionists subside in settled hatred to each "other, and the disputants, disgusted by contests of malignity, "turn away indignant from every fact, that might lead to more "acrimony, or compel them to further investigation.”—Again; (p. 11) The motives of men ought to be deemed virtuous, unless "the facts are so obviously atrocious, as to manifest the wicked "intention of their perpetrators, or in cases where the motives 66 are avowed. Now, in the instance before us, the persons con"stituting the Private Consistory of Maynooth avow, that Mr. "Kelly is appointed to Tuam, because he was nominated by his "deceased predecessor, the most Rev. Doctor Dillon; or in "other words, because the see of Tuam was bequeathed to him by the last will and testament of the deceased!

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"The truth is, that twenty-one suffragan bishops have en"tered into a solemn compact with the four archbishops of "Ireland, that they, the suffragans, shall be allowed to bequeath "their respective dioceses to whomsoever they please; provided "the archbishops are allowed to do the same; and so Doctor "Troy has bequeathed Dublin to a Mr. Murphy; Doctor Dillon "has bequeathed Tuam to a Mr. Kelly; other bishops also have already elected their own successors, without the least re"ference to the feelings of the subordinate clergy, gentry, or nobility, and this is styled canonical election! This is the boasted, this the glorious spiritual independence of the Irish "Church!"-Again; (p. 35)-"Shall that be tolerated in an Irish "bishop, which never was tolerated, and never can be tolerated, " even in a Pope? No Pope can bequeath his See, or nominate "his own successor. Montesquieu and Gibbon have said, that the

government of the Catholic Churc is monarchical. In one sense it is, in another it is not. It is not monarchical in Montesquieu's idea of the French Monarchy, where the sovereign "was restrained only by a sense of honour, and respect for the

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usages of his people; but it very nearly approaches the mixed "monarchy of England, in which the sovereign is restrained by "law."--Again; (p. 79)-" I will not inquire, whether it is wise, "at a time when all the feudal establishments of Europe have "been levelled, and all feudal ideas have expired, to attempt to "force upon us, a feudal Church government of twenty-five "spiritual lords; who, having no legitimate children to inherit "their dioceses, claim a right of adopting children, and bequeathing to those adopted favourites, all the clergy of their "dioceses, as the proprietors of West-India lands, bequeath, or "sell, or dispose of, their black slaves without any controul. "But I will challenge any man to show that the Pope's supremacy consists in nominating Irish bishops, or that the Pope "ever nominated Irish bishops before the 12th century."

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We here take our leave of Dr. O'Conor for the present. What we have here printed from his first letter, 1810, will give our readers a competent idea, of the nature of the crime which he has committed against the higher powers of his Church.-As Protestants, we beg to return him thanks for his very ingenuous observation, (p. 91)-which we cannot resist printing,"It must, in common justice, be acknowledged, that the title "of Head of the Church, though odious to a Catholic, means no more in the acceptation of an Englishman, than Temporal "Head of the Church, or Defender of the Faith. No Englishman ever yet for a moment supposed, that the King could administer sacraments, ordain priests, give a mission for preaching or teaching, or be the source of spiritual as well "as of temporal power. They give him no authority even in "Church discipline, but such as is necessary for maintaining order "in the State, supporting by the civil sword, the laws of morality, "defending the rights of the inferior, as well as of the superior, "clergy; and excluding all foreign interference from the

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ment of those temporal concerns, which are necessarily connected with every species of human authority. This is the explanation

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