Justus having withdrawn from the kingdom of Essex to France, because of the infidelity of the three joint kings, Laurentius had declared his intention of following them from Kent for a like

reason.

"But when Laurentius was about to follow Mellitus and Justus and to depart from Britain, he gave orders that a bed should be prepared for him that night in the church of the blessed Apostles Peter and Paul, (of which we have frequently spoken,) in the which when, after pouring forth many prayers and tears to God for the state of the Church, he had lain down to rest and was asleep, the most blessed Prince of the Apostles appeared to him, and, inflicting upon him many severe stripes in the dead of the night, demanded of him with apostolic severity, wherefore he was about to forsake the flock which he himself had committed to his charge? or to what pastor, when he was thus flying, he meant to consign Christ's sheep, who were placed in the midst of wolves? 'Art thou,' said he, forgetful of my example, who for the little ones of Christ, which he in the choice of his love commended to me, endured chains, stripes, prisons, afflictions, death itself at last, even the death of the cross, from the unbelievers and enemies of Christ, myself, therefore, to be

crowned with Christ? The servant of Christ, Laurentius, being excited both by the stripes and exhortations of the blessed Peter, went as soon as it was morning to the King, and throwing off his garments, showed him how he was lacerated with stripes. The King was greatly astonished thereat, and inquired who had dared inflict such strokes upon a personage of his station. But when he heard that it was for the sake of his salvation that the Bishop had suffered this torment and these lashes from the Apostle of Christ, he was greatly affrighted, and, forbidding all idolatrous worship, and breaking off his unlawful marriage, received the Christian faith, and was baptized, and sought to promote and favour the Church in all things as much as he could."*

Now, Sir, this is not a floating fable cast up by the stream of tradition. The Venerable Bede is strictly a veracious writer, and he tells us that the materials for that portion of his history which relates to the South of England were transmitted to him from the best authority and in the most authentic manner. He received them from Abbot Albin, who was bred at Canterbury under Archbishop Theodore

* L 2. c. 6.

and Abbot Hadrian, persons whom Bede calls venerable and most erudite men. Albin had collected all that could be learnt concerning Augustine and his successors, either from written documents or the relation of old people, within whose fathers' memory the event in question had occurred. The story came directly from the scene of action: whether fiction or fact, it is a Canterbury tale, and given us on the authority of Laurentius's successors. I believe the story, though not the miracle; it has every mark of being a fact; ...it is a part of the history, not an episodical incident which might be inserted or omitted at the pleasure of the writer. You did wisely, Sir, to keep the notable circumstances of this pretended vision out of sight; for I appeal to every one who has not delivered his common sense as well as his conscience into a Father Confessor's keeping, whether they do not bear the stamp of fraud as plain and legible as the King's broad R.? We have the Acts of the Apostles, and there we see what the miracles were which they wrought, or which were wrought for them; how public in their circumstances, and how unequivocal: and there we do not see that they were either addicted to flogging themselves, as so many Saints of the Romish Church have been, or to

flogging others, as the wonder-makers of that Church have thought proper to represent them. It would require something more than Jerome's asseveration, Saint and Father though he is, to make me believe that he was taken bodily in a vision before the throne of our Redeemer and Judge, and there by that Redeemer's order scourged for reading Cicero. That he may have dreamt so is not improbable; but when I find St. Jerome asserting that he awoke with the marks as well as the smart of the stripes, I must believe either that a miracle was wrought for an unworthy and even an ill purpose,.. or that the Saints and Fathers of the Romish Church dealt in what they supposed to be pious frauds more than two centuries before the Anglo-Saxon Missionaries arrived in England. It was the system of the Romish Church, and in that system the Missionaries were trained.

The titular Bishop Milner may perhaps bravely profess his belief in these precious miracles; for one who has taken under his protection not only St. Winifred, but St. Ursula, and the whole company of the Eleven Thousand Virgins, may be valiant enough to defend any thing. But you, Sir, and those persons whom I must be allowed to call the semi-reformed English Romanists, of whom you may be con

sidered as the representative,... you are ready to exclaim that you believe them as little as I do; that all such stories are only the weaknesses of your ancient writers.. the natural growth of unenlightened and credulous times. I cannot allow you to escape so easily. Base the money is, but it is the currency of the Romish Church; the perpetual succession of your boasted miracles is made up of such stories; they are not the weaknesses of your writers, they are the frauds of your teachers and your Saints. It was the system of that Church to encourage, to accredit, and to practise them. It is so still. Witness the pictures of the Virgin Mary at Rome that moved their eyes and squinted! witness the canonization of Joseph Labré! witness the Episcopal Knight of St. Winifred's Well! witness Prince Hohenloe! witness the blood of St. Januarius! Would the Neapolitan priests exhibit this experiment in the presence of Sir Humphry Davy, and permit him to examine the phial and its contents? Sir, you are conscious that they dare not submit their miracle to any such investigation. You know also that this juggle is annu

A trick of the same kind, which was practised at Hales, in Gloucestershire, was detected and exposed at the Reforma