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bowl of arbitrary and uncanonical Censures ad libitum, who dare to expose the point of a temporal sword peeping from under the hem of a sanctified garment, who unfold the worldly passions as they proceed, mitred, in solemn procession, to the Altar of the Lamb of God, incensing their precious selves at the expence of the Religion you profess, are held up to you as wolves in sheep's clothing, suspended as heretics, calumniated as immoral, pointed out as persons unworthy and unfit to be received under your rooves, and that you can for a moment be imposed upon by the cheat? Is it thus that you will give to Englishmen lofty notions of your deserving to be admitted into the bosom of the Constitution?

4. Surely if we can patiently endure that a trick so stale, which was detected, and exposed, by our Lynches, and Walshes, our Darcey's and Bellings, in the 17th century, can thus be played off at our doors in the meridian splendour of the 19th, our friends in Parliament can hardly boast of the purity or correctness of our ideas of civil or religious Liberty, or of our know

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ledge, and attachment to the genuine principles of that mixed Monarchy which forms the glorious, and, I hope, immortal basis of our Liberties and Laws? If we so countenance the dangerous maxims of Ultramontane intrigue, and allow them to prevail in the very shrines of our ancient Fathers, do we not establish for millions yet unborn the very principles by which Rinuccini lorded over our Gentry and Nobility in 1646, the exclusive maxims which shut the doors of our Synods against the Second Order of our Clergy, the appointment of Bishops without Election, the doctrine that Bishops alone shall judge and decide on all matters, whether mixed or unmixed, relating to the Irish Church, Suspensions and Depositions without any judicial proceedings, and Star-chamber Despots, who shall be at once accusers and judges, witnesses and parties, in causes personal to themselves?

5. Those who entertain just notions of rational liberty do not relish the clanking of arbitrary chains, especially in matters so nearly touching their domestic tranquility, their friends, their

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Altars, and their fire-sides. They do not like to witness an avowed and daring violation of the most sacred Laws of their Church, which require that no man shall be condemned without a trial, no man deprived of his commission without a Canonical sentence, no man calumniated with impunity. If the Sacraments of mercy can be refused for resistance to unjust and unca¦ nonical Censures, then adieu to the honest spirit of Christianity in the Irish nation.* Cicero knew that the temper of the Roman people would bear him out, when he appealed to them against the arbitrary flagellations of a Verres. He had only to relate the fact, that Venes had ordered a Roman citizen to be degraded before he was tried, to be punished before he was convicted; the people heard him, and they trembled with indignation.†

6. Would any Protestant Bishop in England or

See a Statement of the Canons by which Clergymen are to be judged, in the next Section of these sheets.

"Cædebatur Virgis

+ Cicero in Verrem, Act. ii. c. 62. " in medio foro Messanæ civis Romanus," &c.

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Ireland pretend to an arbitrary power of punishing offenders according to his own will and pleasure? Must they not govern according to the common Law Ecclesiastical? and are not the ancient Ecclesiastical Laws, which were enacted in Catholic times, still in force in the British Islands?-A Statute of the 25th H. viii, c. 19, enacts, "that such Canons, Constitu❝tions, Ordinances, and Synodals Provincial

being already made, which be not con"trariant nor repugnant to the Laws, Statutes, "and customs of this Realm, nor to the damage "or hurt of the King's Prerogative Royal, "shall now still be used and executed as they δε were afore the making of this Act?"

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The English Bishops of greatest learning acknowledge that the Laws by which their Churches are governed, are those which were adhered to in Catholic times, all along from the Norman invasion, throughout a period of seven hundred years.*

"As to the method of proceeding in the Ecclesiastical "Courts, it is no other than hath been continued here, with

It was the deep sense which the Roman people had of the crime of condemning without a trial, that overawed the Magistrates of Philippi, when S. Paul threatened to appeal against them to the Romans. They have beaten us "openly uncondemned, says he, we being Ro

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mans, and have cast us into prison, and now do

they thrust us out privily?-Nay, verily, but "let them come themselves and fetch us out. "And the Sergeants told these words unto

"out interruption, till of late years, ever since the Conquest.' Stillingfleet's Rights of the Parochial Clergy, Lond. 1702, p. 103. See also Lyndwood and Beveridge.

The Protestant Bishops, far from pretending to this species arbitrary Church Government, disclaim it as intolerable, and repugnant not only to the British Constitution, but to the most venerable Canons of the English Church.

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"We Bishops cannot proceed arbitrarily we must allow "our Clergy timely notice: we must summon. them to appear, and give them a just liberty of defence." Ibid. p. 98. He adds, "that arbitrary Episcopal Courts are repugnant to "natural justice, nothing could be more grievous and intoler

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able, or more inconsistent with the common rights of Man"kind." lb. p. 106 and 109. Compare Duguet Devoirs d'› un Eveque, and Dupin's Biblioth. des Auteurs du 18me siecle. Paris, 1736, t. 2, p. 3.

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