reliance on Mr. Berington is not misplaced. Now it is obvious that no government can possibly exist without a right of prohibiting the entrance of hostile emissaries into its dominions. The statutes against the admission of bulls, &c. from Rome, and the entrance of priests educated abroad, were but the exercise of that undoubted right. The missionary priests, as self-expatriated aliens, knew these laws, violated these laws, suffered under these laws. There may, indeed, have been some instances of severity in their execution; but in themselves they were necessary, and in their general application not untempered with mercy. After the failure of the Armada, new plots excited new prosecutions; everywhere Jesuitical agency was detected, and it cannot be matter of surprise if the laws were administered with gradually increasing severity. As the demise of the Crown became more probable, the writers of the Roman Catholic party became more alert, and the work which Persons had published under the name of Doleman was in particular disseminated with great activity. The irritated queen and her vigilant government continued their severities; and the perverse intrigues of the factious prevented that reconciliation of parties, which the loyalty of the Catholic nobility at the trying moment of the Spanish invasion might have brought about.* On the whole we assure Mr. Butler, that we can admire equally with himself the devotion, the fortitude, the resignation, with which these missionary priests encountered tortures and death. We can mourn over the accomplished Campion and the amiable poet, Southwell. But we must be excused if our indignation is not so vehement against those who, by the strong and cogent law of self-preservation, put an end to their sworn and mortal enemies, as against those who, by inflaming the minds of their pupils with dangerous principles, could drive them thus upon certain death; against those who, like Persons, fled himself from the scene of danger, and left the advocates of his doctrines and the accomplices of his treasons, to certain, inevitable, and horrible execution. These men we hold responsible, not merely for the blood which was then shed, but for the dreadful entail of hatred and jealousy, which oppressed and afflicted their own communion for * The party-spirit of Dr. Lingard is in no part more offensive, than in the rancorous hatred which he exhibits towards Burleigh and Walsingham. He speaks of this latter as 'thirsting for blood;' and without assigning any rational motive charges on two men, whom he himself represents as most cautious and far-sighted politicians, the fabrication of the numerous Roman Catholic plots detected in the course of Elizabeth's reign. Now Walsingham died a beggar, having expended his fortune in the detection of these plots; and no indifferent person can discover how their interest at this period of Elizabeth's reign, when they had long been firmly seated in their ministry, could be secured (or indeed require security) by rendering the Roman Catholics odious. centuries centuries with penal enactments and legal incapacitations, the most severe and invidious. They bequeathed their own misplaced activity, their own spirit of intrigue to their descendants, and as long as there was a possibility of their success, the protestant faith was never secure from their dark and subtle policy. They bequeathed their execrable doctrines, not merely of the deposing power of the Pope; but of that more dangerous usurpation, the right of absolving men from their oaths, and the principle that faith is not to be kept with heretics; to a large and zealous and daring part of their communion. Such men as these prevented the ashes of the martyrs in the Marian persecution from becoming cold; it was their avowed object, it was their paramount duty, on their own principles, to re-kindle them; the power only was wanting; and if that power was wrested from them with a stern, relentless, and implacable hand, who shall deny to the Protestants the unexceptionable plea of self-preservation? For it was obviously impossible to discriminate between them and those peaceful and loyal Roman Catholics who disclaimed their monstrous positions; there was no test by which those who held the Cisalpine and Transalpine opinions could be separated and set apart; the unsparing vengeance of the law therefore necessarily fell on all with equal and indiscriminate rigour. Not merely did the name of Jesuit, on this account, and the laxity of principle avowed in their moral writings, become proverbial for dishonesty and treachery; but the jealousy of protestants was kept constantly alive, breaking out occasionally in follies and cruelties, which disgraced the religion they professed; exposing them to be deceived and misled by such infamous liars as Oates, and such contemptible madmen as Lord George Gordon. Justly does Mr. Berington style Persons the calamity of his religion;' for to him and his coadjutors may be distinctly traced the principle of that long and acrimonious contest which divided and distracted England, but has convulsed Ireland with more fatal disorder. To them, to the want of decision and unanimity in the leaders of the more moderate Romanists in not distinctly and authoritatively renouncing their dangerous doctrines, and, above all, to the favourable reception which they and their writings met with at Rome; to their being the admitted, if not avowed, organs of papal decisions and decrees of councils, may be justly attributed all that system of exclusive legislation, which has been repealed by degrees, and as soon as protestants. could reasonably feel secure from similar aggressions. Having thus distinctly proved the deaths of these misguided men to bear no analogy whatever to the savage executions of Mary for difference of religion; and that alone; we by no means assert the doctrine of religious toleration to have been fully known or or acknowledged in the reign of Elizabeth. Though men were not persecuted to death, (so much had been already gained on the old inveterate error,) they suffered most severely in other ways. Toleration was the growth, but the tardy growth of Protestantism. The Bible, examined, discussed and sifted by those conflicting sects with the existence of which the Reformation is reproached, at last made itself distinctly heard, and its authority was recog nized by all. The knowledge of the Scriptures and the progress of intellect were undoubtedly simultaneous, but the fires of persecution did not wane merely before the daylight of human reason they were rather quenched by the dews of divine grace, shed abroad through the Holy Scriptures. -- That intolerance is a necessary and universal consequence of the Romish doctrines, we are not now called upon to assert; that it is and will be the ordinary inference from them, we cannot disguise our conviction. Allow the Romanists to disclaim all their Popes and councils which have enforced it as the first of duties; allow them to recant the notes of their authorized version of the Scriptures, where the very passage, in which the Son of God authoritatively rebukes his own apostles for intolerance, is explained with a reservation of the duty of putting heretics to death:Rheimish Bible, Luke ix. 55; still the voice of history remonstrates with our charity, and almost precludes that better hope, which we are most unfeignedly desirous of entertaining. We cannot forget, that even in the Gallican church, the same reign, which was distinguished by those most acute and eloquent theologians, Bossuet, Massillon, Pascal, Bourdaloue, and Fenelon, was rendered infamous by the revocation of the edict of Nantes, and the atrocious Dragonnades. Was one voice from all these able men earnestly and vigorously raised against those deeds?-unfeignedly shall we rejoice if Mr. Butler can cite one glorious instance. The Romanists reproach us with the persecutions of the Covenanters; but the latter were in actual rebellion, (goaded to it no doubt by the oppression of the government,) and the whole affair was as much a political re-action, as a war of religion. In France the soldiers were let loose on a peaceful and unoffending people, against whom no disorders could be charged, from whom no danger was anticipated; even the revengeful recol lection of former injuries could not be alleged as an excuse; for sufficient time had elapsed to wear out all ancient animosity. Unhappily, where the doctrine is rigidly enforced, which precludes the possibility of salvation out of the pale of a particular church, persecution imposes itself on the mind as a sacred duty, as an act of merciful severity to the individual, of necessary protection to many. This was the principle of the Bulls which deposed the C 2 Protestant Protestant princes; this was the reasoning which filled the prisons of the Inquisition; the fatal argument which caused moral and conscientious men to lay whole regions waste with fire and sword. For the final expulsion of this doctrine from the bosom of our church, we are indebted to the immortal Hooker; and to its renunciation the Christian world may ascribe all its present liberality of action, and its diminished acrimony of dispute: Roman Catholics themselves, nurtured, like Mr. Butler, in the lap of Protestantism, have practically dismissed from the creed of their hearts, what they may not perhaps have explicitly disavowed in the written articles of their faith. During the whole of this inquiry we have expressed no opinion directly on the great question which has recently agitated the country; not because we have no opinion, or are slow to declare ourselves respecting it; but because this inquiry, which has been devoted to a single branch of the subject, does not furnish all the premises from which a general conclusion can be drawn. Something, however, may be collaterally inferred from the examination we have thus far made. From the accession of Elizabeth to the present moment, the Roman Catholics have been divided into two parties; the one who, with some sacrifice of their religious consistency, have held the tenets of their church in moderation and candour, who have possessed so much of English loyalty and patriotism as divested their divided allegiance of half its danger, and too much real Christian spirit to push the principles of intolerance to extremity: the other, who have adhered to the old Popish doctrines in all their uncompromising bigotry. To these doctrines no concession can safely be made, with these men no hearty or profitable union can be effected. If then the Roman Catholics hope to obtain further concessions, either from the wisdom of parliament, or, what is of more importance, from the feelings of the people, they must effectually put down the bigots among themselves. Every attempt to delude, either by exaggerating their grievances or disguising their opinions; every endeayour to intimidate by the display of their strength, will be inevitably connected in the public mind with the insincerity and restless ambition of the ultra Romanists. The loyal, therefore, and the wise, must set themselves apart, and make themselves heard above the clamour of the intemperate and the ignorant; they must discountenance and endeavour to suppress the wretched ribaldry now circulated, insulting to the Protestants and disgraceful to themselves; they must disclaim the hollow and unworthy league formed with the radical and atheistical part of the public press; they must prevent their bishops from appearing one day in the character of virulent pamphleteers, the next as dignified prelates; they must 14 discountenance, above all, the rancorous abuse of their adversaries. On the other hand, we most earnestly deprecate in their opponents any thing like a tone of triumph, the encouragement of uncharitable feelings, or the excitation of popular clamour. Acting, as they do, upon a defined principle, and appealing to history, to reason, and the human heart in justification of their apprehen: sions, they may repel the charge of bigotry with silent contempt. But they should be the last not to allow the difficulty of the question, the last to deny that the legislative disqualification, however narrow, of any class of British subjects, is, though a necessary, not the less a serious evil. For ourselves, we fully comprehend the reasons upon which they mistrust any security which has yet been offered in lieu of those provided for us by our forefathers; but we do not comprehend how any considerate Christian, any one who duly prizes civil and religious freedom, can find matter for exultation in that issue of the contest, which only proves that, in the opinion of our legislature, a large portion of our fellowsubjects are still too much enslaved to the dangerous doctrines of their faith to be admitted to a full participation of every political privilege with ourselves. We may be thankful that there is enough of firmness and wisdom to withhold the boon till the moment arrives when it may be safely granted; but surely we must regret the very conviction which is forced upon us, that the happy moment is not arrived; and still more deeply must we lament that the Romish church does not as yet manifest that increased moderation, or that disposition to reform gross abuses, and disavow dangerous pretensions, which can alone accelerate its arrival. ART. II.-An Account of the American Baptist Mission to the Burman Empire; in a Series of Letters addressed to a Gentleman in London. By Ann H. Judson. London. 8vo. 1825. THE little volume we are about to notice is the joint produc tion of an intelligent, well-educated, and apparently rightminded couple, who left their native country, America, from having, as they say, felt deeply impressed with the importance. of making some attempt to rescue the perishing millions of the east.' The narrative is drawn up from their journals and letters by Mrs. Judson, who, after several years' residence in Rangoon, came back to America in an ill state of health. Though it chiefly relates to the proceedings of the mission, there are interspersed, through its pages many incidental descriptions of the country and traits of the character of the Burmans; and, on the whole, it is an entertaining and even impressive book. But, before we enter on the work itself, we wish to say-a C 3 few words |