have taken it upon themselves, in a Secret Synod, to deny to the Irish nation !-With regard to the V. A. of Castabala, (I beg pardon for having so often disgraced these pages by any allusions to him) I allude to him now, only to mention that, having been appointed ad libitum, and only for a limited time, his power has, if I am not much mistaken, either been withdrawn, or has expired. Let him produce his charter; let us see by what authority it has been granted, by what intrigue it has been renewed.

Countrymen-I take my leave-Beware of two extremes-false philosophy which will deprive you of the Sacraments; and Italian maxims of discipline, which will impose upon the necks of your Parish Priests, and consequently upon your own, the doctrine of arbitrary excommunications. Then, instead of your holy and sublime religion, you will have the miracles of well-worshiping, the holy house of Loreto, the blood of S. Januarius, the visions, the prophecies, and the revelations of Devotees; miracles such as those by which Father Murphy stopped, with his hand, the bullets

which were fired by the King's troops at Vinegar hill; the miracles of Genazzano in Italy, where every thing is miraculous; and those of the Druidic, excommunicated Wells of Ireland and Wales! The recent miracles of the Roman Court, the pictures opening their eyes, and the prodigies of the Roman Breviary,* are more prodigious than the genuine miracles of the primitive ages, and for this some cause n ust be assigned.†-Did recent Canonizations

The learned Dominican Natalis Alexander maintains against the Castabalas of the Roman Court, that "the autho rity of the Roman Breviary must yield to the genuine docuinents of antiquity." The Courtiers opposed and censured him; but he was supported by all the learned; and he bore away the palm. See his Sec. 3, Dissert xiv, t. 1, p. 698, and again more victoriously p. 733.

* Miracles were neither so frequent nor so prodigious in the days of Pope Gregory the Great, who fairly acknowledges that they had in a great degree ceased even then.

"Numquidnam Fratres mei, quia ista signa non facitis, minime creditis? Sed hæc necessaria in exordio Ecclesiæ fuerunt. Ut enim ad fidem cresceret multitudo credentium, miraculis fuerat nutrienda. Quia et nos cum arbusta plantamus, tamdiu eis aquam infundimus, quousque ea in terra jam coaluisse videamus; et si semel radicem fixerint irrigatio cessabit. Hinc est enim quod Paulus dicit.-Linguæ in sig, num sunt non fidelibus sed infidelibus." Gregorii Magni Homil. 29, in Evangel.

bring any grist to the Roman mill?-Let us not inquire of Spain or Portugal!

God avails himself of our sins, to correct the abuses which our passions have introduced into his Church, and the worldly mill has been destroyed! But the gold will come purified from this ordeal; and the surrounding Sects shall see that there is some difference between reformation of abuses and extirpation of truth.

I conclude with the adjuration in the 2d of Maccabees.-"I beseech those who shall read "this book, that they be not shocked at these "calamities, but consider the things that hap'penned, not as being for the destruction, but "for the correction of our nation; for it is a "token of great goodness, when sinners are not "allowed to go on in their ways, for a long time, "but are presently punished!"

END OF PART II,

J. Seeley, Printer, Buckingham,

Whilst I was closing these last sheets for the press, an unexpected proof has reached me, by which I find, that the same uncanonical assumption of power, against which I have laboured to guard my Countrymen, has been levelled by Dr. Milner and by some of the Irish Bishops, against the V. Apostolic of the London District, supported by his brethren of the Northern and Western Districts of England!

A scene of such scandal, could not have occurred in a Church Canonically governed.---The English Vicars Apostolic have answered to these violences of the Rinuccini school, with the temper and firmness that befits them; and I am not without hopes that the man, of whom, on behalf of the Catholic Church, I have so much reason to complain, and who has been repeatedly put out of the society and intercourse of the English Catholics, may be judged by my Countrymen, amongst whom his character is not so well known, from the testimony borne by four Prelates of the English Catholic Church, to his utter want of temper, discretion, integrity, charity, and truth. These charges are, in this instance, their's and not mine; and if this affair was not to me very serious and of deep regret, as materially affecting the Episcopal character, I might be permitted to sinile, on finding that his English brethren are the first to share the menace of excommunication, which he has levelled at me!--Confidence in the Canons of the Catholic Church and in the Laws of the Land, has taught me always to treat such menaces with the contempt they deserve; but, when I began this work, I little expected this conclusive evidence, of the necessity of all that I have laboured to establish against arbitrary powers, claimed under foreign principles, and undefined, self-constituting, uncanonical authorities, which have been proscribed by our Catholic Ancestors in the most Catholic times.