can be found,* and to render the very Sacraments subservient to his anger, perverting them into engines of personal malignity, and using them as instruments of systematic revenge." Flectere si nequeo Superos, Acheronta "movebo."

In vain does he hope that Columbanus may be tempted by falsehood, or provoked by insolence, to descend from that superiority which historical truth and manly argument have conferred, into a contemptible warfare of personality. No Columbanus will not brawl with defeated spleen, nor will he hurl back the revilings of disgraced ignorance. Imputations

* "Doctor O'Conor, says he, maintains that all spiritual "power, whether of excommunication, suspension, the with"holding or withdrawing of spiritual faculties, should be sub"ject to the civil power."-Letters, &c. Dublin, 1811, p. 98.

Now I defy him to find any such doctrine in my works, and, until he does, I charge him not only with propagating and publishing, but also with the malicious invention of slander. My arguments apply not to genuine spiritual power, but to a horrible abuse of it; and I have said nothing on this subject, which has not been repeatedly said by hundreds of the most orthodox Catholic Divines, as shall be shewn in the sequel.

of heresy, and excommunications of malice, are cheap commodities, in which it is beneath the dignity of a Columbanus to contend; nor ought the tongue which has been consecrated to piety, to be profaned by slander; or the life which has been dedicated to Religion, to be contaminated by malice. The pen of a Vicar Apostolic which has been, by a Charity School education, plucked from under the wing of the Altar, ought not to be prostituted to falsehood; the Sacraments which have been instituted by our Saviour for the remission of sins, ought not to be rendered subservient to the vilest ebullitions of envy and revenge?

3. It has indeed been argued, and some foreign influenced Vicars have dared to quote the Scriptures in support of the assertion, that

* I defy the Vicar of Castabala to make good his assertion, that he can name an English Priest to whom I made promises connected with my expected promotion to the Diocese of Elphin. Letters, p. 82. I solemnly appeal to God that this is, in every part of it, a direct falsehood. I bid defiance.-Name---Name.

falsehood may be propagated for the sake of truth, that there may be a holy Lie, and that a pious fraud has often been practised even by the Saints. Eusebius, Bishop of Cæsarea, undertakes to prove, and bestows a whole chapter of his celebrated Præparatio Evangelica on demonstrating, expressly "that it is often ne"6 cessary to use falsehood as a medicine for "those who cannot be convinced without it," οτι δεήσει ποτε τω ψεν δει αντι φαρμακο χρησθαι επι ωφελεία των δεομένων τε τοιέτε τροπο. Præp. Εν. 1. 12. c. 31.

But though the over-righteous Antinomian is above ordinances, though he insists that the obligations of morality are suspended in favour of the Elect, and that, guided by an internal principle of holiness, he, good soul, is above the beggarly elements of truth and justice, yet, countrymen of the great Columbanus, you who revere the virtues of that greatest father of the western world, do you not believe that to do evil in order that good may come of it, is an abomination in the eye of God? and do you not observe that the Rinuccini doctrine of blind

submission, even to uncanonical and unjust Censures ad libitum, is still maintained ?*

Alas! my Countrymen, entertaining, as I most sincerely do, noble and lofty ideas of the,

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• "Supposing Doctor O'Conor's account of the Irish Re"bellion as bad as he represents it, (says the Bishop of Cas"tabala,) I maintain that it is quite as just to reproach the present Parliament with the rebellious and regicide pro"ceedings of the Long Parliament, as it is to charge the present Catholic Bishops, and the poor prisoner in the dungeon of Savona, with any thing amiss which might have been done by Catholic Ecclesiastics during the same pre"cise period in Ireland." Letters, p. 114. Now, I admit that this long-winded period and foolish argument might be tolerated without indignation, if we did not all know that the present Parliament not only does not maintain the principles of the Long Parliament, but on the contrary, that it publicly proscribes those principles. But do the present Bishops proscribe the maxims of Rinuccinni? Do they not in private, and in public, and in practice endeavour to enforce the doctrine of Censures ad libitum by which Rinuccini and his sycophant Bishops compelled the second order of the Clergy to deny the Sacraments of Mercy to all those who did not obey their arbitrary Decrees? Has not the Bishop of Castabala ordered the Rev. Mr. Corbeishley of Tusmore to refuse the Sacraments to Dr. O'Conor, unless the Doctor will implicitly submit to retract something, he knows not what, in Columbanus? Have not the four Apostolical Vicars in Synod agreed privately in a New Test Act, by which all the French Clergy are excluded from the Ministry, unless they become Rebels to

generosity of your temper, respecting even the errors of many of you, not excepting Mr. Keogh, whose talents I respect, perceiving with a mixture of admiration and delight that your hearts pant for the rational liberties of your country, allow me to ask, is it true, can it be true, that whilst you are engaged in so noble a struggle, so worthy of your ancestors and of you, your own children who endeavour to dash from your unsuspecting lips the poisoned

their King by approving of the Concordat of Pius VII. with Buonaparte? Can this be denied ?---If not, then the Rinuccini leven exists to this day. And really are these principles consistent with the safety of the State?

Has not the poor prisoner of Savona, virtually absolved all Frenchmen from their oaths of allegiance by crowning Buonaparte? Has he not thereby renewed the rancid doctrine of crowning and uncrowning Kings? and have not the Irish Bishops, assembled in their exclusive Synod of Tullow, in direct violation of their oaths of Allegiance, by which they renounce these doctrines in words, approved of these proceedings of Pope Pius VII, and sanctioned the same doctrines by facts, and that too so lately as on the 6th of June, 1809!

Away then with the impudent attempt to throw dust into the eyes of the discerning, by comparing the present Bishops of England and Ireland with the present Parliament. Let them first submit to the most venerable Canons of the Catholic Church. "Fiat justitia."