PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION. SINCE the first publication of these Remarks, the Charge of the Bishop of Durham has gone through a second edition, and has been honoured with a second title: "The Grounds on which the Church of England separated from the Church of Rome." With due submission to superior judgment, I think the alteration impolitic. To discuss the reasons, which induced the English Protestants to separate from the Catholic communion, is a subject of dangerous investigation. There is much in the reformation more adapted to scandalize than to edify the dispassionate enquirer. In its origin and progress there was too much of human policy and human passion, too much of intrigue, duplicity, and violence, to characterize a work inspired by God for the amelioration of mankind. The Protestant is the established church. This should satisfy her ambition. In the present temper of mankind, while she remains in possession of wealth and honour, she may deem herself secure. Let her be content with her present glories, and cast a decent veil over the infirmity of her birth. But if her Prelates will provoke the discussion; if they will drag into public notice the motives, which influenced the establishment of protestantism in these realms, let them not be surprised if some Catholic writer step forward to reveal the scandal of former times, and paint the true characters of "the magnanimous fathers of the reformation." He will probably assign as the cause of their separation from the Church of Rome, not the motives so zealously inculcated by the Bishop of Durham, but the impetuous passion of Henry the Eighth, who renounced the authority of the Pontiff, that he might give to his mistress a seat on his throne; the rapacity of the courtiers of Edward the Sixth, who to fill their own coffers, promoted with all their influence the godly work of the reformation; and the policy of Elizabeth, who rejected an authority which she could not acknowledge, without confessing her mother's shame, and her own illegitimacy. But without discussing at present the real causes, which produced the separation of the Church of England from the Church of Rome, it may be fairly assumed that the arguments by which the Bishop of Durham has attempted to justify that separation, are the most plausible and satisfactory that can be adduced. To think otherwise would be an insult to the learning of the Prelate, and the discernment of the auditory, at whose urgent request he consented to publish his Charge. If then, in the following pages, I have shewn that these arguments are weak and inconclusive, that some of them recoil with double force against himself, and that the others are founded, not on the real doctrines of the Catholics, but on the calumnies of their adversaries; it will naturally follow that the cause of the Church of England has failed in the hands of a Prelate, the most able, the most willing, and the most interested, to support it. But of this the impartial reader must judge. One thing only let him bear in mind, that the Bishop was the aggressor. His zeal led him to the attack. From one extremity of his diocese to the other, he preached a crusade against the opinions, I had almost said the persons, of Catholics. He described them as idolaters, as children of ignorance, detractors from the merits of the passion of Christ, and enemies to the honour of God. The limits of his diocese were too narrow to confine his benevolence: he resolved to extend the benefit of his Charge to the whole nation. He presented it to his Majesty at a very critical period; he published it and re-published it; he gave it first one title, and then another; he printed it in quarto for the rich, and in duodecimo for the poor; he made himself all to all, that he might communicate to all his enmity to the opinions of Catholics. After so much provocation we certainly may be allowed to speak in our own defence. Ενεστι και μυρμηκι και σερφω χολή. CONTENTS. Remarks on the Bishop of Durham's Charge.. Review of "A Protestant's Reply". .... ... 149 On Fashionable Interpretations of the Apocalypse........ 141 Letter to a Clergyman of the Diocese of Durham. Remarks on the Bishop of Durham's Pamphlet, entitled, "The II.... 366 III.... 381 |