•% 
 
 
 
 Kf 
 
A SURE WAY 
 
 TO FIND OUT 
 
 THE TRUE RELIGION 
 
 IN A 
 
 C ONVER SATIO N 
 
 BETWEEN 
 
 A FATHER AND HIS SON. 
 
 BY 
 
 REY. T. BADDELEY. D 
 
 “ If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that you 
 have received, let him he accursed.” — Gal. I. 9. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 PATRICK DONAIIOE. 
 
 For Sale by all Booksellers 
 
 SOSTON COLLEGE LfBRAR't 
 CHESTNUT hjll, mass 
 
ELECTROTYPED BY JOIIN C. REGAIT, 
 19 SPRING LANE, BOSTON. 
 
 83 / 
 
 I 
 
A SURE WAY 
 
 TO FIND OUT 
 
 THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 DIALOGUE I., 
 
 Q. Pray what must a person do to save his 
 soul? 
 
 A. He must live up to the rules and regula¬ 
 tions of that religion which our divine Saviour 
 came to establish. 
 
 Q. But why do you say that religion which 
 Christ came down from heaven to establish; has 
 not Christ established all religions? 
 
 A. Yo: Christ established only one religion 
 — all the rest were made by men. 
 
 Q. How do you know that Christ established 
 only one religion ? 
 
 A. Because there is a great deal of contradic¬ 
 tion between the doctrines of any two religions; 
 which shows clearly that Christ could not form 
 them both; because as he is Truth itself, he can¬ 
 not teach contrary to what he once said. Christ, 
 
4 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 for instance, cannot teach the Iloman Catholic 
 that there arc seven sacraments, and afterwards 
 teacli the Protestant that there are only two. 
 Again: with regard to the Blessed Eucharist or 
 the Lord’s Supper, he cannot tell the Catholic 
 that it reallv and truly is llis sacred Body and 
 Blood, and afterwards tell the Protestant that it 
 is nothing but bread and wine taken in com¬ 
 memoration only of him. Therefore, if Christ 
 has taught the Protestant doctrine, the Catholic 
 doctrine is false; if he has taught the Catholic, 
 the Protestant doctrine must be false: they can¬ 
 not both be true. 
 
 Q. But though Christ established only one 
 religion, arc not all religions false? 
 
 A. Most certainly not. For when our Sa¬ 
 viour came to establish his religion, he made it 
 perfect and complete in all its parts. lie made 
 it pure, without spot or wrinkle , Ephes. v. 27, and 
 the very pillar and ground of the truth , 1 Tim. 
 iii. 15. lie likewise commanded all to obey and 
 believe the same under pain of eternal damna¬ 
 tion ; for if he will not hear the church, let him be 
 to thee as the heathen and the publican , Matt, xviii. 
 17. lie that beliei'etli not shall be damned, Mark 
 xvi. 16. We read also in St. Paul, that if any 
 person, or even »an angel from heaven, should 
 dare to preach another religion besides that which 
 he preached, he should be accursed. Though we, 
 says he, or an angel from heaven, preach a gospel 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 5 
 
 to you besides that which we have preached to you , 
 let him be accursed , Gal. i. 8. We see, therefore, 
 from the word of God, that God lias commanded 
 all to obey and hear his church; and that he pro¬ 
 nounces a curse upon the man, or even an angel, 
 that shall dare to teach a different religion. 
 Now, as we have seen before, the religions^ 
 formed bv men are different from the religions 
 established by Almighty God; therefore they are 
 accursed in the sight of God, and consequently 
 cannot be good. 
 
 Q. But may not this regard only those relig¬ 
 ions that teach a wicked doctrine? For how can 
 a religion which teaches holiness and godliness 
 displease Almighty God? 
 
 A. This is a very common objection; but it is 
 founded on a mistake. For Christ has made two 
 things necessary to salvation, viz., true* faith 
 and works. Without faith , according to Holy 
 Scripture, it is impossible to please God, Heb. ii. G. 
 And again, as the body without the spirit is dead, 
 so also faith without works is dead, James ii. 26. 
 Here then you see very plainly from the word of 
 God that two things arc necessary to salvation, 
 true faith and good works. Both these must 
 be joined together. Therefore, a religion which 
 teaches good works, but yet has not the true 
 faith, is not sufficient for salvation. Now, the 
 religions made by man have not the true faith ; 
 that is, any real faith at all; because, as we have 
 
6 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 seen above, they teach doctrines different from 
 the doctrines of Christ. They command ns to 
 believe either more or less than Christ command¬ 
 ed. Tims, in both cases, these religions displease 
 God; because they pervert the gospel of Christ , 
 Gal. i. 7. They exchange the doctrine of God 
 for the doctrine-of men; they teach a doctrine 
 which they have not received from Christ; and 
 therefore, as we said before , so say I now again; 
 if any man preach ajiy other gospel unto you than 
 that you have received, let him be accursed, Gal. i. 9. 
 
 Q. Still do not all religions aim at the same 
 place, and all strive to conduct us to heaven? 
 We only go by different ways, just like travellers 
 who are going to London; some by one way, 
 and some by another, but they all meet at the 
 same place at last. 
 
 A. -You can go to London, indeed, if you 
 please, even over hedge and ditch; but you can¬ 
 not go to heaven by any other way than by that 
 way which Christ has marked out; that is, by 
 faith and good works. And, as we have seen 
 above, that the religions which are forged by 
 man have not the true faith, therefore they 
 are not the way which Christ has marked out, 
 and consequently cannot lead to heaven. 
 
 Q. But does not the Bible say that a remnant 
 of all religions shall be saved? 
 
 A. No suoh thing; St. Paul says, that only a 
 remnant, or a small number of the children of 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 7 
 
 Israel, before the last day shall be converted and 
 saved; for, if the number of the children of Israel 
 be as the sand of the sea , a remnant , saith he, shall 
 be savea, Rom. ix. 27. But we nowhere read in 
 the Bible that a remnant of all religions shall be 
 saved; on the contrary, we read in St. John that 
 Christ said, other sheep I have which are not of this 
 fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear 
 my voice , and they shall be one fold and one 
 shepherd, John x. 1G. Here Christ is speaking 
 to those who are not of the same religion with 
 his apostles; and he shows that there is no sal¬ 
 vation for them in the state they are in, and 
 • therefore he says, them also I must bring. This 
 proves clearly, that they must be brought into 
 the one fold, which is his Church, if they wish 
 to be saved. And, when the apostles began to 
 preach the gospel, the Lord daily added to the 
 church such as should be saved , Acts ii. 47. Con¬ 
 sequently those that were not added to the church 
 were not saved. How, as the Church of Christ 
 can comprise only one religion (for it is highly 
 absurd to say, that God can reveal two religions 
 which contradict each other, as in fact all the 
 religions in the world do contradict each other), 
 therefore it is highly absurd to say, that God has 
 revealed more religions than one. Since, then, 
 the Church of Christ can be only one religion, 
 and the Lord added to this religion such as 
 should be saved, therefore, ordinarily, those that 
 
8 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 are not of this religion cannot be saved; and as 
 all religions formed by men differ from this, 
 therefore it is not true to say. that a remnant of 
 all religions shall be saved. 
 
 Q. But is it not a very cruel and uncharitable 
 doctrine to say that none can be saved out of this 
 one church, or who do not believe as this church 
 does? 
 
 A. Quite the contrary; for as I have before 
 proved that God revealed but one religion , and 
 commanded all to hear and obey the same, under 
 pain of damnation, is it not charitable to tell 
 people so, lest otherwise they should lose their 
 souls bv following the religions of men, which 
 can never lead them to heaven? Suppose a poor 
 man had lost his way, and was travelling in the 
 darkness of night, over afield hollowed by mines, 
 etc., where lie was sure in a few moments to be 
 dashed to pieces by falling down some old un¬ 
 guarded coal-pit; would it not be very kind and 
 charitable to forewarn him of his danger, and 
 lead him back to the safe road? 
 
 Q. Suppose in the uprightness of my heart I 
 follow the religions of men, and always do what 
 I think is just, shall I not be pleasing in the sight 
 of God? 
 
 A. I have already answered this question, 
 where 1 have shown you that two things are ncc- 
 essary for salvation, viz., true faitii and- good 
 works ; and that both these must be joined to- 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 9 
 
 gether. Therefore that religion which has not 
 the true faitii, but teaches you to do only what 
 you think is just; that religion cannot, I say, 
 make you pleasing in the sight of Clod, because 
 you have not faith, without which it is impossible 
 to please God, Ileb. xi. 6. Excepting in the case, 
 of invincible or inculpable ignorance. 
 
 Q. But is it not right that every person should 
 stick to his own religion, and very wrong for 
 him to turn from the religion in which he has 
 been brought up? 
 
 A. Ridiculous. You have seen above that the 
 religions made by men are hateful in the sight 
 of God, surely then it never can be wrong to 
 leave these religions; on the contrary, every 
 person rs bound in conscience from such to turn 
 away, 2 Tim. iii. 5. And moreover, if it is 
 -wrong to turn from the religion in which we 
 were born, why did Christ call his apostles from 
 the Jewish religion, in which they were born? 
 And why did the apostles persuade so many 
 thousands of Jews, Greeks, and Barbarians to 
 turn from the religions in which they were 
 brought up? Therefore, if a person finds that 
 he was born in a false religion, he must turn 
 from that religion. Now I have shown you that 
 •there is but one true religion. Every one 
 therefore must try to find it out; and when he 
 has found it, like St. Paul, lic.must turn from his 
 own religion, which is false, and follow the true 
 
10 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 one; otherwise lie will be following a blind guide. 
 Now the Bible says, if the blind lead the blind, they 
 shall both fall into the pit, Matt. xv. 14. 
 
 Q. But, among so many different religions, 
 how can 1 find out that which Christ has re¬ 
 vealed ? 
 
 A. By certain signs or marks; for good sense 
 tells us, that the true church must always teach 
 one and the same doctrine; that this doctrine must 
 bp holy, and must make people holy, who follow it 
 in practice; that she must be widely spread over 
 the world; and lastly, that she must teach the 
 same doctrine as the apostles did, and come reg¬ 
 ularly clown from father to son from the time of the 
 apostles, through every age, down to our time. 
 Good sense will show this to every thinking 
 man. So that it is plain that the true church has 
 these four marks, Unity, Holiness, Catholicity, 
 and Apostolic it y. 
 
 DIALOGUE II. 
 
 m 
 
 'On Unity, the First Mark. 
 
 Q. Why must the true church have unity ? 
 
 A. Because the true church is taught bv Christ. 
 Therefore she can teach that doctrine only which 
 Christ has taught her; neither more nor less. 
 She must, therefore, always teach one and the 
 same doctrine; and this is what I here mean by 
 unity. This inference, which is so clear from 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 11 
 
 common sense, is still more clear from the word 
 of God. St. Paul says, Be careful to keep the 
 unity of the spirit in the bond of peace. One body 
 and one spirit, as you are called in the hope of your 
 calling. One Lord, one faith, one baptism , Ephes. 
 iv. 3, 4, 5. Again he says, Let us continue in the 
 same rule , Phil. iii. 16. And in another place he 
 writes — Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name 
 of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all speak the 
 same thing, and that there be no division among 
 you, but that you be perfectly joined together in the 
 same mind, and in the same judgment, 1 Cor. i. 
 10. And, above all, our Divine Saviour declares 
 that there shall be one fold and one shepherd, 
 John x. 16. 
 
 Q. But may not the Protestant Church be 
 termed one? 
 
 A. Not with the smallest propriety. There is 
 nothing but discord among them: chopping and 
 changing their creeds, as often as they change 
 their clothes. They are neither one in doctrine, 
 nor one in worship. Hear what Dudith him¬ 
 self, a learned Protestant, writes on this subject: 
 “ Our people (the Protestants) are carried away 
 by every wind of doctrine. If you know what 
 their belief is to-day, you cannot tell what it 
 will be to-morrow. If you run over all the ar¬ 
 ticles— from the first to the last — you will not 
 find one which is not held by some of them to 
 be an article of faith, and rejected by others as 
 
12 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 an impiety.” * Doctor Blackburn, Archdeacon 
 of Cleveland, says “ that he has very good rea¬ 
 son to believe, that of one hundred Protestant 
 parsons who every year swear to believe and 
 teach the thirty-nine articles, which are in the 
 book of common prayer, not above twenty of 
 them (I say not two of them) believe these ar¬ 
 ticles in the same sense.” f Nay, Dr. Clayton, a 
 Protestant Bishop of Cloghcr, asserts “ that no 
 two thinking men ever agreed exactly in their 
 opinion, even with regard to any one article of 
 it, viz.: the book of common prayer.” X 
 Again, there are whole societies who do not 
 believe the doctrine of what is called the Estab¬ 
 lished Church; yet, each of them declares that 
 they are the true and real church of England. 
 Such arc the non-jurors, who maintain the orig¬ 
 inal doctrine of the church of England, contained 
 in the homilies, concerning passive obedience 
 and non-resistance, and who keep to the first 
 ritual of Edward VI. Such arc the evangelical 
 preachers and their disciples, who insist that pure 
 Calvinism is the creed of the church of England. 
 Finally, such are the Methodists whom Professor 
 He}' describes as forming the old church of 
 England. And even now it is w r ell known, that 
 Protestant parsons not unfrequently preach in 
 
 *Epist. ad Capitol, inter Epist. Bezse. 
 
 f Confess. 3d, p. 40. 
 
 J Confess. Black, 3d Ed. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 13 
 
 the churches in the morning, and in the meeting¬ 
 houses in the evening. Moreover, in the reign 
 of King Henry VIII., the Protestants had but 
 six articles of faith, which they were bound to 
 believe; nevertheless, in a few years afterwards, 
 under King Edward VI., they changed them 
 into forty-two, which remained till the reign of 
 Queen Elizabeth, and then they cut them down 
 to thirtv-nine, as thev now stand in the book of 
 common prayer. From this short view of the 
 Protestant doctrine, it is very clear that they do 
 not continue in the same rule , Phil. iii. 16, nor all 
 speak the same thing, 1 Cor. i. 10, and therefore 
 they have not unity of doctrine. 
 
 Q. It seems, then, that Protestants do not all 
 speak the same tiling; but pray what religion 
 does ? 
 
 A. The Roman Catholic Religion; she never 
 changes; she believes the same creed, and teaches 
 the same doctrine throughout the whole world. 
 For instance, the Catholics of England teach and 
 believe the very same articles of faith as the 
 Catholics do who live in the East Indies, West 
 Indies, France, Spain, Poland, or any other place 
 you can name. Moreover, the Catholics all be¬ 
 lieve the same doctrine this day, as they did in 
 the timer of the apostles. But perhaps you will 
 say, that this remains to be proved. Well, then, 
 let us examine the Council of Nice, which was 
 held in the year of our Lord 325, to declare what 
 
• 14 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 was tlie belief of the Catholic Church against the 
 errors of Arius. This holy synod did not teach 
 any new doctrine: it only declared what things 
 Christ and his apostles had taught; and it showed 
 most clearly, that the same things had been 
 taught by the apostles and their successors, the 
 bishops and priests of the Catholic Church, 
 down to that time. Now take the doctrines 
 which were declared articles of faith by the 
 Council of Nice, and compare them with the 
 doctrines declared to be articles of faith by the 
 Council of Trent, and sec if you find any differ¬ 
 ence. And take notice, that between the Coun¬ 
 cil of Nice and that of Trent, there was the 
 space of 1239 years. Try, then, I say, to find 
 out some difference between these two councils. 
 
 ,.'You may try, but you will try in vain; for the 
 Catholic Church, like her Divine Founder, is the 
 same yesterday, to-day, and forever, Ileb. xiii. 8. 
 
 Q. But have not Protestants at least unity of 
 iv or ship ? 
 
 A. No more unity of ivorship than they have 
 unity of faith. In the beginning of the reign of 
 King Henry VIH., all the people of England 
 were Catholics, an<J at that time there was not a 
 Protestant in the world. However, towards the 
 end of his reign, the king lost both his reason 
 and religion; he differed with the Pope, because 
 the holy bishop would not let him put away his 
 queen, and marry, as some writers say, his own 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 15 
 
 daughter. After this he became a religion- 
 maker, and then he prescribed a new form of 
 .worship. In this he showed much skill; for he 
 changed it into so many different forms — so 
 often and so fast — that the people could not 
 keep pace with him. “ From the multiplied 
 alterations which were made in the national 
 system of belief, mostly drawn up by Henry 
 himself, few knew what to think or what to 
 profess. They were ready enough to follow his 
 doctrines, however inconsistent or contradictory 
 soever; but as he was continually changing them 
 himself, they could hardly pursue so fast as he 
 advanced before them.” * Before the king’s 
 death, he and his new Protestant Church made a 
 form of faith and worship , that was to be believed 
 and practised by all within the realm; and if any 
 person refused to comply, the punishment was 
 burning alive.f This form of worship did not 
 stand .long, for it was changed by Act of Par¬ 
 liament in 1547. The next year, 1548, Edward 
 'VI. orders a committee of twelve bishops, and 
 six divines, to make another form of worship. 
 It was drawn up the same year, but not com¬ 
 manded to be used till the .twenty-fourth of 
 June, 1549; after which time no person was 
 allowed to use any other form of worship , either 
 in public or private, without incurring very se- 
 
 *Dr. Goldsmith’s Hist. Eng., p. 136. 
 
 t Reeve’s Hist. Ch., vol. iii., p. 132. 
 
1G 
 
 A SURE "WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 vere penalties, viz.: imprisonment and loss of 
 goods. Thus the same form of worship stood 
 from 1548, until they altered it again in 1552. 
 By this time many thought that tills last change 
 in their worship had made it complete; but, alas! 
 there is no end of their alterations: for in 1559, 
 Queen Elizabeth tried her hand at making an¬ 
 other new form of worship; and a strange alter¬ 
 ation she makes. For in the communion service 
 of Edward VI., we find the words Mass and sac¬ 
 rifice; and in its celebration arc recommended 
 to be used, the altar, vestments, and all the orna¬ 
 ments employed by Catholics. It allows, com¬ 
 munion in one kind, in case of necessity, and the 
 keeping of the sacrament. It recommends chrism, 
 oils, commemorations of the Pdcsscd Virgin Mary, 
 holy patriarchs, etc., invocation of angels, prayci's 
 for the dead, extreme unction, crossings, etc. This 
 liturgy, the statute says, “ was made by the aid 
 of the Holy Ghost." 1 In the liturgy of Elizabeth, 
 all these things which I have just named are 
 either left out, or condemned. And yet the 
 liturgy of Elizabeth, like that of Edward, is 
 declared to be composed u by the aid of the Holy 
 Ghost.” Here is something like a contradiction. 
 For here the Holy Ghost, who is the spirit of 
 truth, teaches one thing'to Edward, and the con¬ 
 trary to Elizabeth, and is it not blasphemy thus 
 to make the Almighty contradict his own words? 
 But though they said the Holy Ghost made this 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 17 
 
 last alteration, it did not yet come up to the 
 Protestant perfection. Wherefore King James I. 
 tries his skill, and alters the same form of wor¬ 
 ship, in 1603. It is again altered under King 
 Charles II., in 1662. And lastly, they attempted 
 it once more in 1689, hut grew tired before they 
 finished their job.* Upon which occasion Dr. 
 Hugh Weston merely said, “ The reformation 
 was like an ape, not knowing which way to turn 
 his tail.” 
 
 Q. How, then, can any thinking Protestant 
 believe that his religion is one ? But pray, are 
 the Catholics one in worship? 
 
 A. Yes, the Catholic Church is most strictly 
 one in worship as well as faith. For in every 
 part of the world she offers up the same un¬ 
 bloody sacrifice of the Holy Mass, which is the 
 chief act of divine worship; she administers the 
 same seven sacraments; the festivals of our re¬ 
 demption are kept holy on the same days; and 
 the apostolical fast of Lent is everywhere ob¬ 
 served. Spread as the Catholics are, more or 
 less, over the face of the whole earth, they all 
 continue in the same rule, Phil. iii. 16, and conse¬ 
 quently have both unity of doctrine and unity of 
 worship, which constitute the first mark of the 
 true religion of Jesus Christ. 
 
 *See Dodd’s Hist. Cli., vol i., p. 355. 
 
 2 
 
18 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 DIALOGUE III. 
 
 On Holiness, the Second Mark. 
 
 Q. Pray, wliat is the second mark of the true 
 Church? 
 
 A. The second mark of the true Church is 
 holiness ; for surely no one can think that Al¬ 
 mighty God, who is infinitely holy, could estab¬ 
 lish a religion devoid of holiness. And St. Paul 
 declares, that Christ loved the Church, and gave 
 himself for it, that he might sanctify and cleanse it 
 — that he might -present it to himself a glorious 
 Church, not having spot, or wrinkle, or any such 
 thing; but that it should be holy, without spot or 
 blemish, Eplies. v. 25, 20. Now, only one relig¬ 
 ion can be truly holy; because only one religion, 
 as I have shown you above, can come from Al¬ 
 mighty God. Therefore all religions, framed by 
 men, come not from God; and for that reason, 
 they displease God, and are therefore not holy. 
 It does not signify, then, to say this or that re¬ 
 ligion has this good thing, or that good thing. 
 For Jews, and Pagans, and Mahometans, and 
 even the blind worshippers of Juggernaut, may 
 do some good things; yet surely no one will say 
 that their religion is holy. And, moreover, men 
 may even work wonders and miracles, and yet 
 not be holy after all. For our Divine Saviour 
 says, Many will say to me on that day, Lord, Lord, 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 19 
 
 have we not prophecied in thy name ? and in thy 
 name have cast out devils ? and in thy name have 
 done many wonderful works ? And then will I 
 profess unto them, I never knew you. Depart from 
 me, ye that work iniquity, Matt. vii. 22, 23. 
 
 Q. This is very alarming, because I see that 
 there is such a thing as false holiness. How 
 then must I discern true holiness from that which 
 is false ? 
 
 A. To help you to do this, you must observe 
 that a holy church must have, 1st, holy doctrine; 
 2dly, holy practices; 3dly, holy fruits; 4thly, 
 marks of God's favor and approbation. 
 
 Q. Have not the Protestants holiness of doc¬ 
 trine ? 
 
 A. By no means; for it is well known, that 
 their first preachers taught these wicked and 
 abominable doctrines: “ That God is the author 
 of sin ; ” * “ That man has no free will to enable 
 him to avoid sin;”f “That it is impossible to 
 observe the commandments; ” $ “ That the most 
 enormous crimes “ do not injure a person in the 
 sight of God”;§ “That faith alone will save a 
 man; that we are justified by faith only is a 
 most wholesome doctrine (says the Book of 
 Common Prayer), and very full of comfort.” || 
 “ Only believe,” says the father of the refor- 
 
 *Cal. Inst., L. 1. flnst., L. 2. 
 
 JDe Lib., A. d. §Inst., L. 3, c. 12. 
 
 || Book of Common Prayer, Art. 11. 
 
20 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 mation, u and without the load of fasts, and the 
 mortification of abstinences; without the pain 
 of confession, and the hardship of good works, 
 depend upon it you will be saved; — you arc 
 even as sure of salvation as is Christ himself. 
 Yes; six, and six boldly; oxly believe; and 
 your faith, although you commit fornication, or 
 commit murder, a thousand times a day, only 
 believe, I say, and your faith shall save you.” * 
 
 Q. Strange holiness is this to be sure: won¬ 
 derful morality of our evangelical reformers! 
 Can we find no better kind of holiness among 
 Catholics? 
 
 A. Yes; the holiness of the Catholic religion 
 is indeed very different from that of other relig¬ 
 ions, because the religions framed by men teach 
 doctrines invented by Luther, Calvin, Wesley, 
 Whitfield, and other deluded and wicked men, 
 whereas the Catholic Church teaches onlv that 
 
 v 
 
 doctrine which Christ taught his apostles; con¬ 
 sequently, if it was holy then, it must be holy 
 now. Instead of holding the blasphemous doc¬ 
 trine that God is the author of sin, the Catholic 
 Church positively declares that God tempts no 
 man, James i. 13, ancl in him there is no sin, 
 1 John iii. 5. She likewise asserts that man has 
 free will: The lust thereof shall be under thee, 
 and thou shalt have dominion over it, Gen. iv. 7. 
 
 ♦Luth. Op. Passim. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 21 
 
 That all the commandments can and must he 
 kept: For they (Zachary and Elizabeth) were both 
 just before God, walking in all the commandments 
 of the Lord without blame, Luke i. 5. And again, 
 If thou will enter into life, keep the commandments, 
 Matt. ix. 17. That faith alone will not save us; 
 we must also do good works, for faith without 
 good works is dead, James ii. 26. Finally, she 
 exhorts us to he perfect, even as also our heavenly 
 father is perfect, Matt. x. 48. 
 
 Q. Perhaps our Protestants, in lieu of holiness 
 of doctrine, may follow holy practices ? 
 
 A. Flo; there is nothing in the Protestant re¬ 
 ligion that can make a man more holy, or more 
 virtuous. They have no priests taken from 
 amongst men, that they may offer both gifts and 
 sacrifices for sins, Ilch. v. 1. They have no sac¬ 
 rifice nor sacraments except baptism, and that 
 they begin to make light account of, though 
 without baptism they cannot be Christians. 
 They receive no benefit when they go to the 
 Lord’s Supper, because they receive nothing but 
 a sup of wine and a morsel of bread; they have 
 no houses of devotion, no convents or monas¬ 
 teries ; scarcely a book of spirituality, as Burnet, 
 Bishop) of Salisbury, complains: “ The Papists,” 
 says he, “ have solitary and retired houses 
 among them, for leading a devout and strict 
 life; and many excellent books of devotion have 
 been published by many of that communion; 
 
22 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 and I do not deny that this is the greatest defect 
 of the reformation., that there are not in it such 
 encouragements to a devout life; and it really is 
 a great defect, that we want recluse houses.” * 
 Again: “ Protestants have no restraints put upon 
 their passions and appetites; no mortifications, no 
 fasts, or next to none are practised among them; 
 no private instruction is given to poor, ignorant 
 people — the children are left to their own will; 
 and there are thousands that never say a word 
 of catechism, and when they do it cannot teach 
 them to be more holy or virtuous, because it 
 contains but little morality, only a few dry ques¬ 
 tions, such as: "What is your name? Who gave 
 you that name? Who was the strongest man? 
 Who was the man that wrestled with God? All 
 these questions a child may know, and yet not 
 know how many Gods there are, or who came 
 down from heaven to redeem him; therefore, if 
 there are some good people who profess the 
 Protestant religion, it is owing to the grace of 
 God, and not to that religion which cannot make 
 a man more holy than itself.” 
 
 Q. Pray, are the practices of Catholics holy? 
 
 A. Yes; every one of their practices helps to 
 make a man more holy and pleasing in the sight 
 of God. In the first place, they have seven most 
 holy sacraments all instituted by Christ our 
 
 *Mys. of Iniqui., p. 145. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 23 
 
 Lord, and which give grace to the worthy re¬ 
 ceiver. They have likewise a most holy sacrifice 
 called the Mass, and priests taken from among 
 men to offer up the same to God ; for he is ordained 
 for men in things pertaining to God , that he mag 
 offer both gifts and sacrifices for sins, Iicb. v. 1. 
 Moreover, they have the communion of saints; 
 that is, all the faithful on earth partake of each 
 other’s prayers and good works. I am partaker 
 with all them that fear thee and keep thy command¬ 
 ments, Psalm cxviii. 53. They have fasts and 
 self-denials, and other mortifications; they have 
 private confessions, in which each one may find 
 a sovereign remedy for all the maladies of his 
 soul. Again: they have convents, monasteries 
 and other religious houses, where the pure mo¬ 
 rality of the gospel is practised, and vice and 
 impiety are excluded. They have many excellent 
 books of devotion, books of instruction, and his¬ 
 tories of the lives of all the most eminent ser¬ 
 vants of God. Lastly, their children are well 
 instructed; the ignorant are enlightened; the 
 doubtful are advised; the sorrowful are com¬ 
 forted; the sick and dying are well attended; 
 and prayers are offered up daily to the throne 
 of God, in behalf both of the living and the 
 dead. 
 
 Q. But what are the fruits of the Protestant 
 religion, — as “ the tree is known by its fruits,” 
 Matt. vii. 
 
24 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 A. At the very beginning of the Protestant 
 religion we find its votaries running into all 
 manner of disorders. For example, — King 
 Henry VIII., the father of the Protestants in 
 England, after living nineteen years with his 
 lawful married wife Queen Catharine, and at the 
 same time keeping two mistresses, Elizabeth 
 Tailbois, widow of Sir Gilbert Tailbois, and 
 Mary Boleyn, sister to Ann Boleyn,* wished to 
 put away his queen; and because- he could not 
 get the Pope to give his consent, he threw off all 
 shame, and married Ann Boleyn, who was, ac¬ 
 cording to some authors, his own illegitimate 
 daughter If As one wicked action brings on 
 another, the king gives to Rowland Lee the 
 priory of St. Thomas of Canterbury, with all its 
 lands, revenues, and beautiful buildings, with¬ 
 out having any just claim even to one stone on 
 the premises. Thus the impious king robbed 
 the Church of God to pay this sacrilegious priest 
 for performing the ceremony of marriage be¬ 
 tween himself and Ann Boleyn, though his 
 lawful wife, Queen Catharine, was still alive, 
 and the king had not procured a divorce either 
 from the Pope or parliament! The remains of 
 this noble priory are situated near the River 
 Saw, between Stafford and Taxall, and go by 
 the name of Sentimns Mill. 
 
 * r e Lingard’s Hist, of Eng., vol. iv., p. 118. 
 
 fDr. N. Sanders in lib. dc Schismate Anglicano, p. 15. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 25 
 
 Soon after this marriage, the adulterous king 
 takes a fancy to Jane Seymour; falls out with 
 Ann; cuts off her head on the nineteenth of May, 
 1536, and the next day marries Seymour. She 
 did not live long; and some writers say that she 
 was ripped up alive by the midwives in attend¬ 
 ance, by order of the tyrant.* His next wife 
 was Ann of Cleves, whom he married to spite 
 the Pope. But from the day of their marriage 
 he conceived a bitter dislike for her, put her 
 away, and directly after married Lady Catharine 
 Howard. This was his fifth wife; but it was 
 not long before he ordered her head to be cut off 
 on Tower Hill, and very soon after married his 
 sixth and last wife, Catharine Parr, who had the 
 good luck to outlive him, though her dcatli-war- 
 rant had been made out by the king’s orders. 
 In all these abominable murders and adulteries 
 he was helped and encouraged by Archbishop 
 Cranmer, one of the first founders of the Prot¬ 
 estant religion in Great Britain. These are some 
 of its precious fruits; but these are not all. For, 
 the wicked king and those about him, to gratify 
 their avarice, set the nation an example of sacri¬ 
 legious plunder, such as none but the most aban¬ 
 doned, and those that are pushed on by the 
 power of hell, are capable of committing. Ac¬ 
 cordingly w r e find that at the very beginning of 
 
 *Spelman de non Temer. Ecclesiis, p. 34. 
 
26 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 Protestantism in England, no less tlian 645 mon¬ 
 asteries, 90 colleges, 2,374 chantries and free 
 chapels, and 110 hospitals were taken away from 
 their lawful owners, and either sold at a low 
 price, or parcelled out among the courtiers, 
 whilst thousands of the poor unfortunate in¬ 
 mates were deprived of a home, and turned 
 naked out of doors. Here I will name a few of 
 the principal monasteries, with their yearly rev¬ 
 enues, which at the present day would be worth 
 at least five or six times as much, or more, that 
 were robbed, thieved, and plundered by the piety 
 of Protestants. «- 
 
 Monasteries. 
 
 Orders. 
 
 Yearly Revenues. 
 
 1S6 
 
 Benedictines 
 
 . £60,877 
 
 14$. 
 
 0 d. 
 
 20 
 
 Cluniacs 
 
 4,972 
 
 9 
 
 2J 
 
 9 
 
 Carthusians 
 
 2,946 
 
 14 
 
 41 
 
 101 
 
 Cistersians . 
 
 18,691 
 
 12 
 
 6 
 
 73 
 
 Austins 
 
 33,027 
 
 1 
 
 11 
 
 32 
 
 Premonstratentians . 
 
 4,807 
 
 14 
 
 1 
 
 25 
 
 Gilbertins . 
 
 2,421 
 
 13 
 
 0 
 
 3 
 
 Fontevrand Nuns 
 
 824 
 
 8 
 
 61 
 
 3 
 
 Minoresses . 
 
 548 
 
 10 
 
 6 
 
 1 
 
 Brigettines . 
 
 1,731 
 
 8 
 
 n 
 
 2 
 
 Bonhommes 
 
 859 
 
 5 
 
 in 
 
 
 Knights Hospitallers . 
 
 5,395 
 
 6 
 
 5 i 
 
 
 Friars .... 
 
 809 
 
 11 
 
 81 
 
 
 
 *£142,914 
 
 12 
 
 9 
 
 Moreover, thousands .of poor people, widows 
 and orphans, sick and aged persons, who had 
 
 * Tanner’s Notitia, by Mr. Nasmith. 
 
BOSTON COLLEGE LfBRARt 
 THE TRUE MASS.27 
 
 been kept in these hospitals and pious founda¬ 
 tions, were turned adrift, and died for want of 
 bread. Again, the churches were seized and 
 plundered; and, “ although some profit was 
 thereby raised to the king’s exchequer, yet the 
 far greatest part of the prey came to other hands, 
 insomuch that many private persons’ parlors were 
 hung with altar cloths; their tables and beds cov¬ 
 ered with vestments and copes, instead of carpets 
 and coverlets; and many made drinking cups of 
 the sacred chalices, as once Belshazzar celebrated 
 his drunken feasts in the sanctified vessels of the 
 Temple of God.” * Moreover, their avarice spared 
 not even the dead, but disturbed their remains, 
 and plundered the very plate off their coffins; 
 and at one time the king got so much of this 
 sacrilegious spoil, as filled two large chests, which 
 sixteen men could hardly carry off.”f “The 
 Duke of Somerset, who for some time was the 
 head of the Protestant religion here, pulled down 
 the parish church of St. Mary’s in the Strand, 
 and three bishops’ houses, for the materials to 
 build himself a palace.” X But the workmen 
 finding that more materials would still be want¬ 
 ing, the duke next commanded them to go and 
 pull down the parish church of St. Margaret’s, 
 in Westminster. No sooner, however, had the 
 
 *Heylin’s Hist. Reform., p. 134. 
 
 t Goodwin, p. 152. 
 
 J Goldsmith’s Hist. Eng., p. 144. 
 
28 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 workmen put up their scaffolds than the parish¬ 
 ioners gathered together in great numbers, with 
 force of arms, and prevented them from demol¬ 
 ishing their church. The duke, thus disconcerted, 
 fixes his eye upon a beautiful cloister, built round 
 a piece of ground called Pardon Churchyard, 
 with a chapel in the midst of it, together with a 
 most handsome charnel house on the south side 
 of the church; and another chapel belonging to 
 the same; sets his workmen, without more ado, 
 to pull it all down; converts the stone, timber, 
 lead and iron to the use of his intended palace, 
 and leaves the bones of the dead to be buried in 
 Finsbury Fields, in unhallowed ground l But all 
 this not sufficing to complete the work, the 
 steeple and most parts of the church of St. John 
 of Jerusalem were blown up with gunpowder 
 by the orders of the duke. Nor would all this 
 suffice: Barking Chapel and the church of St. 
 Ewens,' as also the parish church of St. Nicholas, 
 were pulled down for more materials to finish 
 Ins gorgeous new palace, called Somerset House. 
 About the same time the Protestants pulled down 
 the college church of St. Martin’s, sold the bells, 
 lead, stone, timber, glass and iron, and built a 
 tippling-liouse in lieu of it.* So great, indeed, 
 was the frenzy of our first Protestants, that they 
 seemed to judge everything lawful. King llenry 
 
 * Dr. Ileylin’a Ilist. Reform. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 29 
 
 VIII. played a game at dice with Sir Miles Par¬ 
 tridge for the line ring of hells in Jesus’ Church. 
 Miles having won the cast, takes and melts them 
 down, and sells the metal for his own profit. 
 And so closely did the Protestant gentry pursue 
 the steps of old Harry, that Bishop Latimer says 
 they invaded the profits of the church, leaving 
 the title only to the incumbent, and that manv 
 benefices were let out in fee-farm, or given to 
 servants, for the keeping of hounds, hawks, and 
 horses, and for making gardens. Finally, that 
 the poor clergy, being reduced to certain miser¬ 
 able pittances, were forced to put themselves 
 into gentlemen's houses, and there to serve as 
 clerks of the kitchen, receivers, etc., for a liveli¬ 
 hood.* In the midst of all this rapine, away go 
 also the libraries, which Bale laments in these 
 words: “ They seized upon the books, some to 
 serve their jacks, some to scour their candlesticks, 
 and some to rub their boots; some they s'old to 
 the grocers and soap-sellers, and some they sent 
 over sea to the book-binders; notin small num¬ 
 bers, but at times whole ships-full, to the wonder¬ 
 ing of foreign nations. I know a merchant,” 
 says he, “ that bought the contents of two noble 
 libraries for forty shillings a-piece — a shame 
 it is to be spoken, and a prodigious example to 
 be abhorred of all men who love their nation as 
 
 * Bishop Latimer’s printed Serin., pp. 38, 71, 91, 114. 
 
30 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 they should do.” After all this scrambling and 
 tugging for the treasures of the church, little or 
 nothing was left but the bare walls. Next, they 
 go and fill up all the churches with parsons of 
 their own reform, who, as soon as they get pos¬ 
 session, declare that they must have the tithes, 
 since it was a general maxim, “ no fee, no par¬ 
 son.” When the Catholic priests had their own 
 churches, these tithes were divided into four 
 parts.* 
 
 The first part was given to support the bishop; 
 the second was laid out on the repairs of the 
 church, and all the expenses that attended divine 
 service; the third part was to relieve the poor of 
 the parish, and the fourth part was for the priest. 
 Before the Protestant religion began, there were 
 no overseers, no workhouses, and no poor-rates. 
 For the poor were entirely supported by the con¬ 
 vents, hospitals and tithes, and the parish priests 
 servect instead of overseers, and took care of the 
 poor. But as soon as the Protestants had got 
 possession of the churches, the lands and the 
 tithes, the poor were everywhere neglected, and 
 thousands died for want of bread, till by statute 
 43 Eliz. c. 2, overseers of the poor were ap¬ 
 pointed to levy rates upon the inhabitants, and 
 to take care of the poor, since the parsons had 
 neglected them. But here let us see the great 
 
 * See Blackstone’s Com., vol. i., p. 384. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 31 
 
 charity, mercy and compassion of the first Prot¬ 
 estants to the poor. Before the parliament 
 appointed overseers, the poor, who formerly 
 obtained relief at the gates of the monasteries 
 and convents, wandered up and down the coun¬ 
 try in quest of bread; but a statute was enacted, 
 that whoever “ lived idly and loitering for the 
 space of three days, came under the description 
 of a vagabond, and was liable to the following 
 punishment: Two justices of the peace might 
 order the letter V to be burnt on his breast, and 
 adjudge him to serve the informer two years as 
 a slave. His master was bound to provide him 
 with bread and water, and refuse meat; might 
 fix an iron ring round his neck, arm or leg; and 
 was authorized to compel him to labor at any 
 work, however vile it might be, by beating, 
 chaining, or otherwise.” If the slave left his 
 master for a fortnight, the letter S was burnt on 
 his cheek or forehead; he became a slave for 
 life; and if the poor man ran away a second 
 time he was guilty of felony, and suffered death 
 without mercy.* Again, the parsons would not 
 keep in repair the churches, nor buy the bread 
 and wine, or even pay for the washing of their 
 surplices; consequently, churchwardens were 
 obliged to raise levies on the parish to pay these 
 burdens. 
 
 *See LingarcVs Hist. Eng., vol. iv., p. 381. 
 
32 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIXD OUT 
 
 We will now proceed to those cruel oppres¬ 
 sions and persecutions of Protestants towards 
 Catholics, which have conic down even to our 
 own times. For this end, more than a hundred 
 cruel and unjust laws were made. We will only 
 examine a few. Catholics could not possess the 
 estates of their fathers or relations, nor buy land 
 after the age of eighteen, except they would turn 
 Protestants. They could not teach nor keep a 
 school, under pain of perpetual imprisonment. 
 The Catholics paid double taxes. If a priest 
 said Mass he forfeited 200 marks, or 133/. 6s. 8 d., 
 and if a person heard Mass he forfeited 100 marks, 
 or 602. 13s. 4c2., and each suffered one year's im¬ 
 prisonment. If any Catholic sent his child or 
 any other person out of England to be educated 
 in the Catholic religion, both lie and his child 
 were deprived of everything but their lives; for 
 they lost all their goods and chattels, and like¬ 
 wise all their real estate for life, and were not 
 allowed to be employed in the kingdom. If a 
 Catholic did not go to the Protestant Church, on 
 Sundays and holidays, he forfeited twenty pounds 
 for every month he staid away; besides which, 
 he was looked upon as excommunicated; he 
 could hold no office or employment; he could 
 not keep arms in his house; lie could not come 
 within ten miles of London, on pain of forfeit¬ 
 ing 1002.; he could bring no action at law; he 
 could not travel above five miles from home, 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 33 
 
 upon pain of forfeiting all his goods; he could 
 not come to court, under pain of forfeiting 100Z. 
 No marriage or burial of such a Catholic, or 
 baptism of his child, was lawful, except per¬ 
 formed by the parsons of the Church of England. 
 A married woman, if she was a Catholic, for¬ 
 feited two-thirds of her dowry; she could not 
 be executrix to her husband, or have any part 
 of his goods; and during their marriage she was 
 to be kept in prison, unless her husband redeemed 
 her at the rate of 10Z. a month, or the third part 
 of all his lands; and lastly, all Catholics were to 
 be imprisoned, if they did not forsake their re¬ 
 ligion and become Protestants; they could be 
 transported for life by four justices; and if they 
 refused to go, or came back without the license 
 of the king, they were guilty of felony, and suf¬ 
 fered death as felons, without the benefit of 
 clergy. A Catholic gentleman could not keep 
 arms in his house, nor ride a horse above the 
 value of M. Catholic bishops or priests cel¬ 
 ebrating Mass, or exercising any part of their 
 functions, were liable to perpetual imprison¬ 
 ment. And by statute 27 Eliz. c. 2, any Catholic 
 priest born in the dominion of the Crown of 
 England, and who should stay in England three 
 days without becoming a Protestant, was guilty 
 of high treason, and suffered a cruel death; and 
 all persons harboring him were guilty of felony, 
 and condemned to death without the benefit of 
 3 
 
34 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 clergy.* To add to these cruelties, “ the greatest 
 violations of justice were committed on the part 
 of the judges, with whom it was at all times a 
 sufficient reason for giving no credit to a witness, 
 that he was a Catholic.” f In consequence of 
 these bloody laws, upwards of two hundred 
 persons were put to death for the profession of 
 the Catholic faith, during the reign of Queen 
 Elizabeth. Of this number, one hundred and 
 forty-two were priests, three were gentlewomen, 
 and the remainder esquires, gentlemen, and yeo¬ 
 men. Besides these, there were ninety more 
 priests and laymen who died in prison in the 
 same reign, and one hundred and five others 
 who were transported for life. Many more were 
 whipped, tilled, or stripped of their property, to 
 the utter ruin of their families. In one night 
 fifty Catholic gentlemen, in the county of Lan¬ 
 caster, were suddenly seized and committed to 
 prison because they would not go to the Prot¬ 
 estant Church. About the same time we find 
 fifty-three Yorkshire gentlemen lying prisoners 
 in York Castle, because they would not attend 
 the Protestant Church; these Catholics were 
 dragged by main force into the castle chapel, and 
 there forcibly kept to hear Protestant sermons, 
 once a week for twelve months together.In 
 
 *Sce Blackstonc’s Com., vol. iv., p. 55. 
 
 t Goodwin in the Lives of the Philipses. 
 
 + See Dr. Milner’s Let. to a Prebcn., p. 131. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 35 
 
 the year 1587, the illustrious Mary Queen of 
 Scots, and cousin to Queen Elizabeth, was put to 
 death for the Catholic faith. A Protestant party, 
 with the consent of Queen Elizabeth, cruelly 
 murdered Mary’s husband, King Henry Darnly,* 
 and then raised a rebellion against her, their 
 lawful queen. The defenceless Queen of Scots, 
 thus insulted and betrayed by her own rebellious 
 subjects, hoped to find a friend in her cousin 
 Elizabeth. For “the Queen of England had 
 given her a strong expectation of shelter in case 
 of distress, and had presented her with a dia¬ 
 mond as a mark of her affection.” f But Mary 
 was a Catholic; and she had no sooner set her 
 foot on English ground than the treacherous 
 Elizabeth, contrary to all justice, commanded 
 her to be thrown into prison, where she remained 
 till her dying day. In this wretched state of 
 confinement, the poor queen suffered every in¬ 
 sult, and, over and above, was deprived of the 
 exercise of her own religion. After living eight¬ 
 een years in this miserable condition, expecting 
 every day to be her last, she was informed by 
 Lord Buckhurst that she was condemned to die, 
 and that “ the established religion was thought not 
 to be secure whilst she was in being” X Mary, 
 with the greatest resignation, answered, “ I had 
 
 *See Dr. Milner’s Let. to a Preben., 6 ed., p. 284. 
 
 f Collier’s Eccl. Hist., vol. ii., p. 516. 
 
 t Camden. 
 
3G 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 not thought that my sister, the queen, would 
 have consented to my death, who am not subject 
 to your laws. But since it is her pleasure, death 
 shall be to me most welcome.” * She then begs 
 to see a Catholic priest; but this is flatly denied 
 her.f They offer her the Protestant bishop or 
 dean of Peterborough; but them she refuses, 
 expressing her determination to die in the Cath¬ 
 olic faith. After having joined with her servants 
 in most fervent and humble prayer to God, she 
 then takes off her mantle, amidst the shrieks and 
 lamentations of her servants, and, throwing a 
 white veil over her face, lays herself down on 
 the block, repeating the Psalm, “ In thee, O 
 Lord, do I put my trust,” etc., with the words, 
 “ Into thy hands, O Lord, I commend my 
 spirit,” and the executioner severs her head from 
 her body. 
 
 “Here let the reader pause; and if he has a 
 heart to feel for injured majesty, let him not be 
 ashamed to drop a tributary tear to the memory 
 of Mary, the unjustly dethroned, and not less 
 basely murdered, Queen of Scots.” 
 
 Dr. Bridgewater gives us the names of about 
 twelve hundred Catholics who were persecuted 
 for their religion before the year 15884 Besides 
 these, in the following reigns many hundreds 
 
 ♦Echard. llist. Eng., p. 37S. 
 
 t Camden An. Eliz., p. 382. 
 
 t See Concertatio Eccles. Cath., by Dr. Bridgewater. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 37 
 
 more suffered death and other cruelties for the 
 Catholic religion. “ And as for priests,—it was 
 made as great a crime to have taken orders after 
 the rights of their church, as to have committed 
 the most heinous treason that can be imagined; 
 and they were far more cruelly punished than 
 those that murdered their own parents.” * Those 
 that suffered death were drawn to the gallows, 
 hanged by the neck, and, for the most part, cut 
 down alive, their bowels torn out whilst they 
 were yet living, and burnt before their faces; 
 after this, their heads were cut off, and their 
 bodies divided into quarters.f Incredible as it 
 may appear to an Englishman, still it is true, 
 that several of those who suffered this cruel 
 death, as well as many more who escaped death, 
 were, before their trials, most barbarously tor¬ 
 tured by the common rack, by which their limbs 
 were stretched with levers to a length too shock¬ 
 ing to mention; by the hoop, called the Scaven¬ 
 ger's Daughter, on which they were placed and 
 their bodies bent until the head and the feet met 
 together; by confinement in the chamber, called 
 Little Ease, being a hole so small that a person 
 could neither stand, sit, nor lie straight in it; by 
 the iron gauntlet, a screw that squeezes the hands 
 until the bones were crushed; or by needles 
 
 * Christian Modera, Part I., p. 9, etc. 
 
 fSee Dr. Milner’s Let. Preb., p. 134. Butler’s Mem., vol. i., 
 p. 171. 
 
38 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 thrust under the nails of the sufferers; or finally, 
 bv starvation ! * Even the reward of 100J. was 
 given to any person who should discover a Cath¬ 
 olic priest, and bring him to suffer these most 
 diabolical punishments. Nor were these atroc¬ 
 ities confined merely to England; for Elizabeth 
 extended them to even Ireland, where she per¬ 
 secuted many innocent Catholics, merely for the 
 profession or exercises of their religion. Amongst 
 these were six prelates — Patrick O'Kelly, Bish¬ 
 op of Mayo, Dermit O’Hurle, Archbishop of 
 Cashel, Richard Creagh, Archbishop of Armagh, 
 and Edmund Magauran, his successor, Cornelius 
 O’Duanne, Bishop of Down, and Edmund O'Gal- 
 lagher, Bishop of Derry. The first two of these 
 suffered horrible torture previously to their exe¬ 
 cution— the former having his legs broken with 
 hammers, and needles thrust under his finger¬ 
 nails; the other being obliged to wear for several 
 days jack-boots, containing a quantity of quick¬ 
 lime and oil. It was not unusual to tear the 
 nails from the fingers of the Catholic prisoners, 
 or to batter the heads of the clergy with sticks 
 and stones till their brains were open to view. 
 The year before Elizabeth's death, a number of 
 monks and clergy, amounting in all to fifty-one 
 persons, obtained permission, in consequence of 
 a petition to her, which they got presented, to 
 
 *Dr. Milner’s Let. Preb., p. 134, in note, and Butler’s Mem., 
 vol. 1, p. 115, etc. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 39 
 
 retire to the continent; and a queen’s ship was 
 appointed to convey them. They embarked, as 
 they were ordered, at Slattery; but had not 
 sailed far, when they were all thrown into the 
 sea and drowned. This glorious exploit was 
 performed by the orders of the godly Queen 
 Elizabeth, who gave to these officers, as a reward, 
 the lands which had belonged to the aforesaid 
 monks.* Moreover, large armies of soldiers 
 were sent over to Ireland to make the Catholics 
 turn Protestants. They began by burning the 
 Catholic chapels, murdering the priests at the 
 altar, and hunting them like wild beasts. “ They 
 scarce ever gave quarter; and when they did, 
 it was in order to satiate their revenge. They 
 massacred their prisoners in cold blood, as rebels 
 and idolaters. Treaties, capitulations, the laws 
 of nations, the rights of war, were of no avail. 
 They butchered the garrison of Smervie, the 
 troops of a foreign power, after a formal capit¬ 
 ulation , and they set tire to the towns and vil¬ 
 lages ; they destroyed the corn and cattle, and 
 forced the inhabitants, without distinction of sex 
 or age, to feed on docks and nettles. Morrison, 
 an eye-witness, mentions that no spectacle was 
 more frequent than multitudes of those victims 
 of human cruelty lying unburied in the fields, 
 exhibiting in their ghastly visages the color of 
 
 * See note, p. 32, in Dr. Milner’s Let. from Ireland. 
 
40 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 the weeds on which they fed, and that children 
 
 were seen feeding on the dead bodies of their 
 mothers.''' * 
 
 But, to return to the sufferings of the Catholics 
 in England, in the years 1643 and 1644, the par¬ 
 liament sent ont commissioners, with orders to 
 seize two-thirds of the real and personal estates 
 of all the Catholics, without distinction. The 
 commissioners employed people under them, 
 with power to break into houses, and to force 
 open locks; and they gave to informers who 
 could tell where the Catholics had their property, 
 one shilling in the pound.f They even took 
 from the poor day laborers two-thirds of their 
 goods; and if a man had but three cows, they 
 took two of them. When the commissioners 
 had got into their hands two-thirds of the most 
 innocent Catholics’ lands and goods, “then came 
 the excisemen, tax-gatherers, and other collectors, 
 and filched away no small part of the poor third 
 penny that was left them; so that, after these 
 deductions, I have known some estates of 300/. a 
 year, reduced to less than 60/. f Again, on July 
 16, 1651, and August 4, 1652, and November 18, 
 new acts of parliament were made, by which 
 they seized upon more than one hundred estates 
 belonging to the Catholic nobility. Another 
 
 ♦Catholic Miscellany, vol. i., p. 233. 
 
 t Butler’s Mem., vol. i., p. 21. 
 
 | Christian Modera., Part I., p. 9, etc. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 41 
 
 grievance was, that the Catholics had no power 
 to sell or mortgage the least part of their estates 
 in order to pay their just debts, to defray their 
 necessary expenses, or to buy food for their chil¬ 
 dren. This was a most cruel injustice, because 
 they could not be employed in the kingdom, and 
 if they wished to go to another country where 
 they, might gain a livelihood for their families, 
 they could not sell or exchange their estates for 
 money to pay their passage. Moreover, many 
 plots have been hatched by Protestants, and then 
 laid upon Catholics; for instance, Mocedo's plot , 
 Oates’s plot , Gunpowder plot, etc. This last, the 
 memory of which is still kept up by making 
 bonfires, ringing the bells, etc., on the fifth of 
 November, was a Protestant plot, planned by 
 the Protestant minister Cecil, and discovered by 
 a Catholic peer, Lord Montagle. But perhaps 
 you will ask, why should a Protestant minister 
 form the gunpowder plot? It was because the 
 Protestants at that time were afraid that the 
 king was going to favor the Catholics. For 
 you must know that King James I. was born of 
 Catholic parents, was baptized and confirmed in 
 the Catholic Church, and, though he was com¬ 
 pelled to forsake his religion by the new laws of 
 Scotland, he, nevertheless, retained at first a 
 great regard for the Catholic faith; and he de¬ 
 clared in open parliament, that he considered the 
 
42 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 Church of Rome as the “ Mother Church.” * * * § 
 Even in his writings, he calls u the Pope the 
 chief Bishop of all the western churches.” f 
 Moreover, the king looked upon his Catholic 
 subjects of England as a loyal body of people, 
 who had been long oppressed and most heavily 
 afflicted. He made no secret of his friendly dis¬ 
 position towards them; and this it was that gave 
 offence to the ministers, and set Cecil to work to 
 find out ways to make the king hate his Catholic 
 subjects; which he soon accomplished by means 
 of the famous gunpowder plot, of “ which he was 
 either himself the author, or at least the main 
 • conductor.” % However, “ Cecil did not carry 
 on his schemes so secretly, but that some of his 
 own domestics got a general notion of them. 
 Accordingly, one of them advised a Catholic 
 friend of his of the name of Buck to be upon his 
 guard, as some great mischief was in forge 
 against those of his religion. This was said two 
 months before the disclosure of this gunpowder 
 plot .” § Again, many Protestant writers allow 
 that Cecil was the principal contriver of the 
 plot. One of them calls it “ a neat device of the 
 secretary.” || Another says, that “ Cecil engaged 
 
 *Dr. B. Carier’s Missirs. 
 
 fDr. Milner’s Let. to a Preb., 6 ed., p. 268. 
 
 X Politician’s Catech. 
 
 § Osborne’s Hist. Mem. of James I. 
 
 II The Author of the Political Grammar. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 43 
 
 some Papists in this desperate plot, in order to 
 divert the king from making any advances 
 towards Popery, to which he seemed inclinable, 
 in the minister’s opinion.”* King James him¬ 
 self used to call the fifth of November “ Cecil’s 
 Holiday.” Finally, a third Protestant writer 
 says, “ that this design was first hammered in 
 the forge of Cecil, who intended to have pro¬ 
 duced it in the time of Elizabeth; that by his 
 secret emissaries he enticed some hot-headed 
 men, who, ignorant whence the design first 
 came, heartily engaged in it.” f Thus you see 
 that this famous plot was first of all made by a 
 Protestant; and besides, those who were deeply 
 engaged in it were by no means Catholics. For, 
 out of the sixteen persons who were all that the 
 Protestants could accuse, only nine at the most 
 knew that any gunpowder plot was intended; and 
 the greater part of these were rash youths, who 
 for a long time had conformed to the Protestant 
 religion, and were looked upon as apostates and 
 outcasts from the Catholic communion. This a 
 Protestant writer assures us of, where he says: 
 “ There were a few wicked and _ jdes^erate 
 wretches, whom many Protestants Pa¬ 
 
 pists, although the priests and true Catholics 
 knew them not to be such; nor can any Prot¬ 
 estant say that any one of them was such as the 
 
 * See Stowe and Echard. 
 
 t Short view of Hist. Eng., by Bev. Higgons. 
 
44 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 law terms Popish recusants; and if any of them 
 were Catholics, or so died, they were known 
 Protestants not long before.” * This is a short 
 history of this famous plot contrived by Prot¬ 
 estants for the ruin of Catholics. What a shame 
 then and mockery it is, that every parson on the 
 fifth of November should go to church and thank 
 God for his deliverance “ from the secret con¬ 
 trivance and hellish malice of Popish conspir¬ 
 ators!”! Their effrontery is most astonishing 
 indeed. Moreover, we read in history, that so 
 great was the malice of Protestants against their 
 Catholic fellow-subjects, that “ they voted that 
 in case of the king’s death by the hands of con¬ 
 spirators they should be accused as the perpetra¬ 
 tors of the murder.” “ Protestants were to kill 
 the king, and Papists were to be hanged for 
 it!”f 
 
 Such were the plots, cruelties, and persecu¬ 
 tions, exercised with more or less barbarity, 
 against the Catholics, because they would not 
 turn Protestants — during the reigns of Eliza¬ 
 beth, James I., Charles I., Cromwell, Charles II., 
 James II., William, Anne, George I., George II., 
 and down to the 18th year of George III. — per¬ 
 secutions which continued till about fifty-two 
 years ago; for in 17G9, the Hon. James Talbot, 
 
 * Prot. Plea for Priests, pp. 56, 58, Ann. 1621. 
 
 f In last Prayer of Thanksgiving, 5th Nov., Book Com. Prayer. 
 
 J L’Estrange His., p. 156. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 45 
 
 uncle to the present Earl of Shrewsbury, was 
 tried for his life at the Old Bailey, for saying 
 Mass; and escaped condemnation only from the 
 want of evidence. Other priests were prosecuted, 
 and some imprisoned for life. In 1778, the first 
 indulgence shown to Catholics in his late Maj¬ 
 esty's reign, was the repeal of the act of the lOtli 
 and 12th of William . This act of justice towards 
 them very much disobliged our Protestant breth¬ 
 ren, who, on the 2d of June, 1780, presented a 
 petition to the House of Commons, containing 
 44,000 names, begging that the Parliament would 
 continue these cruel and bloody laws against the 
 Catholics; but, as their petition was not attended 
 to by the House, they were determined to see 
 what they could do by force; and then it was 
 that the famous London riots broke out, in which 
 100,000 Protestants marched about the streets 
 with No Popery flags flying, set fire to the Cath¬ 
 olic chapels, demolished their houses, and at 
 night, it is said, that the city was seen blazing 
 in thirty-six different parts from one spot. After 
 these dreadful riots, which lasted six days, and 
 many other evils that befell the Catholics, his late 
 Majesty passed another act in 1791, for the relief 
 of his Catholic subjects, and gave them all those 
 privileges which they now enjoy, and for which 
 they were and ever will be grateful to their de¬ 
 ceased friend and Sovereign. 
 
46 
 
 A SURE AY AY TO FIND OUT 
 
 Q. And are these the fruits of the Protestant 
 religion ? Admirable fruits indeed! 
 
 A. Yes: but this is not all. They spoiled the 
 good fruits they found, and they brought in 
 many bad ones. For example, Avakes AYere for¬ 
 merly festivals of the dedication of the parish 
 churches kept by the Catholics in devotion and 
 penance. But every one knoAVS that these times 
 are now turned into riot, debauchery, profaneness, 
 drunkenness, and everything that is bad. More- 
 over the festivals of Christmas, Easter, and Whit¬ 
 suntide, etc., Avhicli Catholics are taught to keep 
 holy, have been kept up indeed by the Protes¬ 
 tants, but in a A T cry different manner from what 
 they ought to be. They are uoav nothing but 
 times of idleness, cursing, swearing, lighting, 
 drunkenness, etc., and here let me observe, that 
 this detestable vice of drunkenness has so much 
 increased with the Protestant religion, that War¬ 
 ner says, “ that in 1688, there Avere more ale¬ 
 houses in London alone than in any ten Catholic 
 towns in Europe, and probably more than served 
 the whole kingdom in Catholic times.” * 
 
 Protestant writers themselves have often owned 
 that the practice of confession was a good thing, 
 by keeping men from evil and preventing crimes. 
 And Dr. Beattie remarks, “ that people Avere 
 hardly ever known to lay violent hands on tliein- 
 
 * A Defence of the Doctrine, etc., p. 290. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 47 
 
 selves, when confession was practised.” But 
 this good practice Protestants have done away 
 with; and accordingly, every day’s newspaper 
 gives account of people shooting, hanging, 
 and drowning themselves. “ In the city and 
 liberty of Westminster, within these last ten 
 years, there have been no less than two hundred 
 and twenty-six suicides.” * Again, you perhaps 
 never heard of the Protestant charter school in 
 Ireland. It is a fact, that every year no less than 
 25,000/. and the rents of several large estates are 
 spent by the Protestant government, for the pur¬ 
 pose of buying up poor Catholic children, who 
 are separated from their parents, and carried in 
 covered wagons from one end of the kingdom to 
 the other, in order that they may never see them 
 any more, and be brought up in the Protestant 
 religion! This abominable practice tends to the 
 violation of the laws of God and of nature: it 
 breaks the ties of affection between parents and 
 their children; and it may often happen, that 
 these unfortunate children, when they are grown 
 up, go back to their own native place, and marry 
 their brothers and sisters, or even their own pa¬ 
 rents, without knowing it! 
 
 But not only has the Protestant religion 
 caused these crimes and oppressions; it has, 
 moreover, made the people extremely wicked. 
 
 * Litchfield Chron., Nov. 22d, 1721. 
 
48 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 What a wicked tiling - it is, for instance, to swear 
 away a man’s life by a false oath. And yet it is 
 stated in the Times paper of the third of April, 
 1810, that Mr. J. Smith said, in the House of 
 Commons, that at Guildhall “perjury was re¬ 
 duced to such a system that no honest man could 
 think of it without shuddering.” Besides false 
 swearing, crimes of every other description have 
 increased thick and threefold. Only look into 
 our prisons, and sec the miserable wretches of 
 whom they are full. Consult the following lists 
 of the commitments for trial in the short space 
 of thirteen years: — 
 
 Criminals. Criminals. 
 
 In 1805 . 4605 In 1S12 . 6576 
 
 1806 4346 1813 7164 
 
 1807 4446 1814 7390 
 
 1808 4735 1S15.7818 
 
 1809 5330 1816 9091 
 
 1810 5146 1817 13932 
 
 1811 . 5337 - 
 
 Total. 85910 
 
 “ It is a sorrowful truth, that in London alone 
 there arc at present supposed to be upwards of 
 three thousand receivers of stolen goods, who 
 keep open shops for the purpose of purchasing 
 at under price, often for a mere trifle, every kind 
 of property brought to them, from a nail or a 
 glass bottle up to the most valuable article, 
 either new or old; and this without asking a 
 question. The supposed amount of the different 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 49 
 
 robberies committed in London and its environs, 
 in the course of a year, is estimated at 2,000,000 1 ”* * * § 
 “ There is not in any country in Europe one-six¬ 
 teenth part of the petty larceny (i. e. thieving) 
 that is committed in London alone.” f These 
 ' are the lamentable fruits of the Protestant relig¬ 
 ion, which we see in these our days; and such 
 have they been all along, ever since the begin¬ 
 ning of thp reformation; for, that the Protestant 
 religion has always made men wicked from its 
 very first commencement, we can prove from 
 Protestant writers themselves. Luther says, 
 “ It is a wonderful thing, and full of scandal, 
 that from the time when the pure doctrine was 
 first called to light, the world should daily grow 
 worse and worse.” X Calvin writes: “Of so 
 many thousands seemingly eager in embracing 
 the gospel, how few have since amended their 
 lives? Nay, to what else does the greater part 
 pretend, except by shaking off the yoke of super¬ 
 stition, to launch out more freely into every kind 
 of wickedness.”§ Erasmus says, “Take notice 
 of this evangelical people, and show me one in¬ 
 dividual amongst them all, who, from being a 
 drunkard has become sober, from being a liber¬ 
 tine has become chaste. I, on the other hand, 
 
 * Reflect, on Communities, p. 86. 
 
 |Xew Monthly Mag., January, 1822. 
 
 JLuth. in Berm. Conviv. 
 
 § Calv. S. 0. De Scand. 
 
 4 
 
50 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 can show you many who have become worse by 
 the change.” * * * § “ I am sure,” says Henry VIII., 
 “ that charity was never so faint amongst you, 
 and virtuous and godly living was never less 
 used, nor God Himself, amongst Christians, was 
 never less reverenced, honored, or served.” f' 
 The Protestant Bishop Burnet sa) r s, “ that under 
 Edward VI. the sins of England did at that time 
 call down heavy curses on the land:” $ “ For 
 lechery is used in England, and such lechery as 
 is used in no other part of the world. And it is 
 made a matter of sport, a trifle not to be re¬ 
 formed.” § Strype, a Protestant parson, gives 
 us a history of the dreadful wickedness that 
 spread over all the nation after the Protestant 
 religion began. The whole account is too long 
 to be given here; I shall mention only the heads: 
 
 “ The covetousness of the nobility and gentry; 
 the oppression of the poor; no redress at law T ; 
 the judges ready to barter justice for money; im¬ 
 punity of murders; the clergy very bad, from the 
 bishops to the curates; and above all, the increase 
 of adulteries and w horedoms.” || “ And so rag¬ 
 
 ing is this abominable vice, at the present day, 
 that in London alone there are at least fifty thous- 
 
 * Erasm. Spong. advers. Hutten. a.d. 1592. 
 
 f Stow’s Annals, a.d. 1546. 
 
 t Burnet’s Ilist. Ref. Eng. Part 2, p. 226. 
 
 § Ileylin’s Hist. Ref. Edwd. 6. An. 1550. 
 
 || Strype’s Mem. Eccles., Book 2, c. 23. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 51 
 
 and prostitutes, and so nearly in equal propor¬ 
 tion all over the country.” * “ The world grows 
 
 every day worse and worse; it is plain that men 
 are more covetous, more cruel, more disorderly, 
 more insolent, and much more wicked than they 
 were at the time of Popery.” f 
 
 Q. ¥e have here fruits enough of the Protes¬ 
 tant religion; and they are very had; are the 
 fruits of the Catholic religion no better? 
 
 A. I answer in the affirmative: for before the 
 coming of our divine Saviour, the greater part 
 of mankind had, through their own wickedness 
 and superstition, lost the knowledge of the true 
 God, by changing the glory of the incorruptible God 
 into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, 
 and of birds, and of four-footed beasts, and of 
 creeping things, Pom. i. 23. Besides worshipping 
 beasts and animals of every description, they wor¬ 
 shipped plants, wood and trees, and they made 
 themselves idols, and worshipped them, and of¬ 
 fered most horrible sacrifices to them. For, as 
 Tacitus tells us, they made their altars flow with 
 the blood of the prisoners whom they took in 
 war; and if they wished to know what would 
 come to pass hereafter, they took a man, and 
 having run him through with a sword, they fore¬ 
 told what would happen by taking notice in what 
 manner he fell to the ground; by tearing the flesh 
 
 * Reflect, on Communities, p. So. 
 
 fLuth. Serm. in Post. Dom., 2 Adv. 
 
52 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 oil his bones, and by the flowing of his blood. 
 They likewise built up an enormous large figure 
 of basket-work and straw; this they filled with 
 a great number of living men,* as likewise with 
 beasts of every kind, f and a sufficient quantity 
 of fuel; they then set fire to the whole; the rag¬ 
 ing flames of which, together with the mingled 
 shrieks of the tortured men, the bowlings of the 
 enraged beasts, the shouts of the Druids, and 
 the sounding of their trumpets, were dreadful, 
 and naturally put us in mind of the regions of 
 hell; and to complete their diabolical rites, they 
 went and tasted the scorched flesh of the men 
 whom they had just sacrificed.^ Lastly, they 
 had another most horrible custom of burning, 
 with the bodies of the dead, whatever had been 
 most necessary and dear to them; not only their 
 clothes and armor, their dogs and horses, but 
 also their servants and dependants. § These de¬ 
 testable rites were carried on in England for 
 many hundred years, and no other than the 
 Catholic religion has the honor of banishing this 
 infernal idolatry from the face of the earth; it 
 was she that broke down the dreadful Crom¬ 
 lechs, or huge stones which had so often smoked 
 with the blood of human victims offered in sac¬ 
 rifice; she that dashed in pieces the idols them¬ 
 selves, and changed their temples of wickedness 
 
 * Cues. L. G. 
 t Pliny, I., 3, c. 1. 
 
 t Strabo, L. 4, cxvers. Lat. 
 § Cubs. L. 6. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 53 
 
 into churches tilled with the praise and adoration 
 of the true God. Through the Catholic religion, 
 the world came again to the knowledge of its 
 author, and God was restored to Ilis rights. The 
 worship of God was everywhere established, and 
 in every place of the world he had true believers 
 who adored him in spirit and in truth. Arno- 
 bius says, “Is not this an argument for our faith, 
 that in so little a space of time the sacraments of 
 Christ’s great name are diffused over the world; 
 that there is no nation so barbarous and cruel 
 that has not laid aside its rudeness, and become 
 meek and tractable; that orators, grammarians, 
 rhetoricians, lawyers, physicians and philoso¬ 
 phers, men of great genius, love our religion, 
 despising those things wherein they before trust¬ 
 ed ; that servants will rather suffer torments from 
 their masters, wives sooner part with their hus¬ 
 bands, and children choose to be disinherited by 
 their parents, than abandon the Catholic faith * 
 So great was the change which the Catholic 
 religion made even in Great Britain, that Collier 
 says, “ Everything brightened, as if nature had 
 been melted down and re-coined.” f It changed 
 the people that were rude, salvage, barbarous, 
 and wicked, into a nation mild, kind, benevolent, 
 and holy, teaching men to do in all things as 
 they would be done by. And, so much did men 
 
 * Avers. Gentcs, L. 1, p. 53. 
 
 f Pref. to Eccl. Hist. 
 
54 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 live up to this grand rule, that in those days, 
 when England was Catholic, “ a boy or girl 
 might openly carry a bag of gold or silver, and 
 carry it safely all the country over; * and golden 
 bracelets were hung up near the highways, which 
 no man dared to touch.” f Then they did not 
 build so many frightful jails and gibbets to dis¬ 
 grace the land; but beautiful convents and mon¬ 
 asteries, where the humble penitents, who, for¬ 
 gotten by this world, and forgetting it in their 
 turn, employed all their time in fitting themselves 
 for a better. Again, it was the Catholic religion 
 that erected all the fine old churches and cathe¬ 
 drals in England; all the best colleges at Oxford 
 and Cambridge, and grand libraries for the edu¬ 
 cation of youth; charity-schools for the poor; 
 asylums for the blind, the lame, the sick and 
 incurable; establishing not only funds for their 
 support, but providing a number of persons to 
 take care of them; almshouses for the widows 
 and fatherless. Finally, it is the Catholic relig¬ 
 ion that has done all these things, and, moreover, 
 has sent all the saints to heaven, even those 
 whose names are mentioned in the book of Com¬ 
 mon Prayer; for they all lived and died strict 
 members of the Roman Catholic Church; and to 
 conclude, she alone has brought down to our 
 times the pure word of God, the Bible; for if it 
 
 * Baker’s Chron., p. 9. 
 
 |M. U. Young’s Hist., p. 62. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 55 
 
 had not been for the Catholic religion, whence 
 would the Protestants have received the Bible? 
 
 Q. You said that all the saints who are gone 
 to heaven lived and died Roman Catholics. 
 Pray, does not Fox’s Book of Saints and Martyrs 
 show that there are many Protestant saints as 
 well as Catholic? 
 
 A. Fox’s Book of Saints and Martyrs is full 
 of lies; for there is scarcely one whole story in 
 that huge volume but what is falsified and per¬ 
 verted, one way or the other.” * * * § There were 
 found on two leaves of Fox’s book one hundred 
 and twenty lies; f and “F. Parsons, who had 
 examined Fox’s writings thoroughly, declares 
 that, to speak modestly, there were in them at 
 least ten thousand notorious lies.”J Anthony 
 "Wood, a Protestant writer, says, u that Fox has 
 committed many errors in making such martyrs 
 who were living.” § See the remarkable story 
 of one Grimwood, who was actually present in 
 a church, whom the parson was describing on 
 the authority of Fox’s Acts and Monuments, 
 p. 2100, the circumstance of Grimwood’s miser¬ 
 able death; he said that “ Grimwood’s bowels, 
 by the judgment of God, fell out of his body.” 
 
 *Rel. of Trial between the Bishop of Evreux and L. Plesis 
 Morney, p. 59, by N. I). 
 
 fSee the same, p. 60. 
 
 JEng. Con. and Ref. comp., p. 110. 
 
 § Athen. Oxon. 
 
56 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 Upon hearing this, Grimwood, falling in a 
 fury, went and brought an action against the 
 parson for defamation.* Other instances of 
 gross error in this godly book of martyrs are dis¬ 
 covered by Collier and Alanus Copus. Fox 
 says, that on the day of Ilidiey and Latimer’s 
 execution at Oxford, Gardner put olF his dinner 
 until he had received an account of that tragical 
 event; that the old Duke of Norfolk, who was 
 going to dine with Gardner, was very uneasy for 
 want of his dinner; and that as soon as Gardner 
 heard the news of their deaths, he was trans¬ 
 ported with joy; sat down to table, where lie 
 was seized with a dvsury, and, being carried to 
 bed, died in great torment a fortnight after. The 
 falsehood of this tale is shown by Collier; for 
 Latimer and Ridley suffered October 1G, and, on 
 October 21, Gardner opened the parliament, 
 which he afterwards attended a second time. 
 The old Duke of Norfolk had been dead a year 
 before this great event; and Gardner himself 
 died November 21, not of a dysury, but of the 
 gout!! f However, for your greater satisfaction, 
 I will just run over the first six months of Fox’s 
 calendar, and give you the true character of a 
 few of these Protestant saints and martyrs. 
 
 January 2. — John Wickliffc, martyr. This 
 Wickliffe was never put to death, nor yet so 
 
 * Athen. Oxon. Hen. Morgan. 
 •fEcc. Hist., p. 3S6. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 57 
 
 much as imprisoned for his heresy, hut died in 
 his bed at Lutterworth, in Leicestershire. 
 
 Jan. 5.— William Swinderby, martyr, in 1400. 
 Though Fox himself says, that in 1401, twelye 
 months afterwards, no great harm was done 
 unto him, nor does he eyen know what became 
 of him.* 
 
 Jan. 7. — Sir Roger Acton, martyr. He plotted 
 against the life of King Henry V., was taken in 
 open rebellion in St. Giles, and hanged for trea¬ 
 son, not as Fox says, on the seventh of January, 
 1401, but thirteen years afterwards, on February 
 10, 1414.f 
 
 Jan. 8. — John Brown, martyr. He was one 
 of the same rebels, and hanged for the same 
 crime. 
 
 Jan. 9 .—John Beverly, martyr. He was hanged 
 for stirring up these rebels to kill the king. 
 
 Jan. 10. — Richard Silbeck, martyr. He also 
 was hanged for being concerned in the same re¬ 
 bellion. 
 
 Jan. 12. — Thomas Whittle, martyr, 1525. Whit¬ 
 tle did not die till thirty-one years afterwards, in 
 1556, and then the devil appeared to him in 
 prison before his death. 
 
 Jan. 13. — Bartlett Green, martyr. He was 
 guilty of a conspiracy against Queen Mary. 
 
 *Fox, p. 428, col. 2, n. 44. 
 t See Stow and Holingshed. 
 
58 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 February 3. — John Claidon, martyr. lie was 
 executed for open rebellion. 
 
 Feb. 4. — Richard Turmyn, martyr. Fox says 
 in a part of his work, that he does not know 
 what became of him, though he here put him 
 down as dying for the faith! * However, this 
 Richard was one of the rebels in Oldcastle’s re¬ 
 bellion. 
 
 Feb. 5. — Zisca, confessor. He was a famous 
 outlaw, rebel, and murderer in Bohemia. He 
 called himself Monacomastix, the murderer of 
 monks. After many robberies and risings against 
 his lawful sovereign, he died of the plague. 
 u Thus at length he breathed out his soul, strick¬ 
 en with the plague from heaven, as we may well 
 believe, being a detestable, cruel, and horrible 
 monster.” 
 
 Feb. 6 . — Sir John Oldcastle , martyr. He was 
 hanged for open rebellion against his king, on 
 the fourteenth of December, 1417. 
 
 Feb. 9. — Paid Crawes , martyr. He was a sol¬ 
 dier of the rebel Zisca; came into Scotland, and 
 there raised a sedition. 
 
 Feb. 12. — Sir Roger Onely, martyr. He was 
 hanged at Tyburn, on the eighteenth of No¬ 
 vember, for trying to murder Henry VI. by 
 necromancy. 
 
 Eleanor Cobham, confessor. She was Dutchess 
 
 *Fox, p. 519, col. 1, 53. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 59 
 
 of Gloucester, and wife of Duke Humphrey; 
 she was banished to the Isle of Mail for haying 
 attempted the life of King Henry YI. by witch¬ 
 craft, in the twentieth year of his reign.* 
 
 Feb. 14. — Mother of the Lady Young , martyr. 
 Her proper name is Margery Gourdmyn; she 
 was the famous witch of Eye, and burnt in 
 Smithfield, for having tried to murder the same 
 king by her conjurations and witchcraft.f 
 
 Feb. 15. — Thomas Eckles , martyr , 1510; mis¬ 
 name for George Eckles, or Trudge-over-the- 
 World. He was hanged for high treason forty- 
 seven years afterwards, on the second of August, 
 1557. 
 
 Feb. 18. — Dr. Martin Luther, confessor. Fox 
 says, Martin Luther “ is the Elias, conductor, 
 and chariot of Israel, to be reverenced next after 
 Christ and Paul. Let us see, then, how far his 
 life can be compared with the life of Christ and 
 St. Paul. 
 
 Martin Luther, or Luctor, was the son of a 
 blacksmith, born at Isleby, in Saxony, in 1483. 
 Having laid the foundation of his studies at 
 home, he was sent to Erford University, where 
 lie remained till his twenty-second year. One 
 day, as Luther was walking with his companion, 
 a thunderbolt struck his companion dead, which 
 so much frightened him, that he went and joined 
 
 *Stow, A.D. 1441. 
 
 f Alan. Cop. Dial., 6, 609, 610. 
 
60 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 the Friars of St. Augustine, and there became a 
 Catholic priest. About twelve years afterwards 
 Pope Leo X. granted an indulgence, and the 
 Archbishop of Metz employed the Dominican 
 Friars, instead of the Augustinians, to preach to 
 the people. This preference of the Dominicans, 
 before him and his order, Luther could not 
 brook; and, like the fox and the grapes, because 
 he could not preach the indulgence himself, he 
 began with all his might to preach against it. 
 Being called upon by his lawful superiors to an¬ 
 swer for his bad conduct, his proud spirit would 
 not let him yield; he therefore threw off all au¬ 
 thority, and gave himself up to every kind of 
 wickedness. He kept no law, nor lived under 
 any restraint, as he himself informs us, where 
 lie savs: — ‘‘ When I lived in my monasterv, I 
 observed my vows of chastity, of poverty, and 
 obedience; but now I am burnt with the flames 
 of my untamed flesh. I am mad, almost, with 
 the rage of lust, and the desire of women. I, 
 who ought to be fervent in spirit, am fervent in 
 impurity, in sloth, etc.* Belying on the strong 
 foundation of my learning, I yield not in pride 
 either to emperor, king, prince, or devil; no, not 
 to the universe itself.” f Thus Luther, raging in 
 his Inst; trampled under foot the laws of God 
 and man. lie broke his solemn vows of chastity, 
 
 *In Coll. Mens. 
 
 t Repp, ad Maled. Reg. Aug. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 61 
 
 and commanded others to do the same. He 
 went and lived in adultery with a nun, whom he 
 had seduced, to the end of his life. He allowed 
 Philip, the Landgrave of Hesse, to have two 
 wives at once; and he says, in certain cases, “ A 
 man may have ten or more wives, all living at 
 the same time.” * In the second volume of his 
 works he puts forth most horrid blasphemy 
 against God; such blasphemy as chills the blood 
 of every Christian when he reads it. Again, the 
 Bible, the holy word of God, Luther most shame¬ 
 fully corrupts. The first three gospels of St. Mat¬ 
 thew, St. Mark, and St. Luke, he declares are 
 false, and that the Epistle of St. James is no 
 better than straw. In his Dutch translation of 
 the New Testament, Staphylus found more than 
 fourteen hundred wilful corruptions.f To add to 
 his character, he was a most excessive drunkard; 
 so much so, that they have this proverb in Ger¬ 
 many: u Bibamus Lutheranice ”— Let us drink 
 like Luther. 
 
 Finally, Luther held an intimate familiarity 
 with devils, as it appears from his letter to the 
 Saxon elector, where he says “ that the devil 
 jigged through his head in such a merry mood, 
 that at times he could neither write nor read.” % 
 Whilst at other times they walked about the 
 room in deep and learned conversation. “ The 
 
 *Serm. de Mat. fLind. Dub., p. 84. 
 
 t Epist. ad Elect. Sax., v. 5. Ed. of Jena., p. 482. 
 
62 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 devil walked sometimes about my bedroom with 
 me,” savs the doctor, “ and often down to dinner, 
 at which I have eaten above a bushel of salt with 
 him.”* * * § Some of the devils, Luther tells us, 
 were malicious devils, who cracked his nuts, and 
 rolled empty barrels down stairs while he was 
 asleep. Others were more good-natured devils, 
 who attended him in his walks by day, and went 
 to bed with him at night. But there were two 
 whom he so much admired for their abilities and 
 learning, that he declared “ that they could not 
 be every-day devils; nay,” says he, “ I have a 
 pair of marvellous devils, learned and solid di¬ 
 vines, in the universities below, who continually 
 attend me.”f “The devil,” says he, “sleeps 
 oftener and closer to me than my Catherine.” X 
 Yfe find him even wishing to fall by the hand of 
 his sooty majesty. “ I should like death,” says 
 lie, “ by Satan, as I should then fall by a more 
 noble arm than that of the emperor.” § Whether 
 he had his wish is not certain; but he was found 
 dead in his bed after eating and drinking heartily 
 at supper. 
 
 Before I conclude, I must inform you, that one 
 night the devil had a long dispute with Luther, 
 and persuaded him to abolish the Catholic faith, 
 
 *Con. Dom. Rem. F. 19. 
 
 tColl. Mensall. Germ. ed. F. 283. 
 
 Jlbid., p. 275. 
 
 § Ibid., p. 32. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 63 
 
 and to begin the Protestant religion. “ Being 
 awakened at midnight,” says Luther, “the 
 devil began to dispute with me, according to 
 custom; but with so deep and powerful a tone of 
 voice, that a cold sweat began to ooze from 
 every pore, and my heart to beat; and, after a 
 long dispute, he got the upper hand of me.”* 
 The devil urged him to abolish the Mass, etc.; 
 and his arguments were so strong, that Luther 
 says he was obliged to yield! Thus having taken 
 the devil for his leader, Luther immediately goes 
 to work to pull down the Catholic faith, and 
 build up the Protestant religion. To do this, he 
 makes use of all the arguments which the devil 
 had put into his head; but these not succeeding 
 so well as he could wish, he next declares that 
 all the Catholics must be murdered. “ Why not 
 assail them,” says he, “ with every kind of 
 weapon, and wash our hands in their blood?” f 
 And writing to one of the League, he says, 
 “ You have more merit in shedding the blood of 
 the Papists, than others have in praying.” X 
 Thus I have given you a short but true character 
 of Pox’s Elias, the conductor and chariot of 
 Israel, who, he says, ought to be reverenced next 
 to Christ and Paul! What! can a man who was 
 mad with lust — who lived in adultery, and 
 
 *De Missa privata, Ed. Witten., tom. 7, fol. 228. 
 
 fTom. 1, Ed. Wit., p. 195. 
 
 I Lib. ad Rust. 
 
04 
 
 A SURE AY AY TO FIND OUT 
 
 caused olliers to do the same — who ay rote most 
 horrid blasphemy, and corrupted the Bible — 
 who was a notorious drunkard and companion 
 of deA’ils— who Avas as proud as Satan himself, 
 a preacher of sedition and murder; what! can 
 this Avretch be compared with Christ and Paul? 
 If this man is a Protestant saint, pray Avhat are 
 their sinners? 
 
 March 0. — Thomas Hylton , martyr. lie was 
 taken at Gravesend, on suspicion of stealing 
 clothes from a hedge. Tie suffered at Maidstone, 
 in Kent, under King Henry VIII.* 
 
 Mar. 10. — Thomas Bit nay , martyr. lie re¬ 
 tracted his errors, and died a Roman Catholic. 
 
 Mar. 12. — Edward Freeze , confessor. This 
 man Avas mad, and died in that state. 
 
 Mar. 23. — Thomas Cranmer, Archbishop of Can¬ 
 terbury , martyr. Was a-most Avicked and per¬ 
 jured man, guilty of blasphemy, incontinency, 
 heresy, high treason, rebellion, and murder.” f 
 
 April 1.— Bobert Hatches , Archer , and Haw¬ 
 kins , martyrs. 
 
 Apr. 2.— Thomas Bond , martyr. 
 
 Apr. 3.— Wrig sham, martyr. 
 
 Apr. 4. — Landsdalc , martyr. 
 
 Apr. 5. — Mrs. Smith , widow , martyr. These 
 martyrs, says Fox, p. 887, were put to death for 
 lothing else only because they had taught their 
 
 *Sir Thomas More, Tref. Ans. of Tyndall, 
 t See Lempriere Eiog. Dr. Milner’s Let. Preb. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 65 
 
 children the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the 
 Ten Commandments in English. Ridiculous; 
 for every man of sense knows, that the Catholics 
 in England always teach their children their 
 prayers in English. These people suffered under 
 King Henry VIII., not for teaching their children 
 the Lord’s Prayer, etc., hut for holding the errors 
 of the Lollards and Lutherans. 
 
 Apr. 8. — William Flower, minister, martyr. 
 This wretch stabbed a priest, the Rev. Sir John 
 Clieltliam, at the altar, at St. Margaret’s, West¬ 
 minster ; and he even thanked God that he had 
 committed this horrible crime — “ of which,” 
 says he, “ I repent not.” * 
 
 May 2. — John Huss, martyr. He was a sedi¬ 
 tious priest, of Prague, who commenced as re¬ 
 former in Bohemia, as Luther did afterwards in 
 Germany. 
 
 May 3.— Hieronymus Savonarola, martyr. This 
 was an Italian friar, put to death in Florence for 
 raising seditious riots in the commonwealth, 
 though in all matters of religion he agreed ex¬ 
 actly with the Catholic Church.f 
 May 4. — Dominick, martyr; a friar of the 
 same order, in Florence, executed for joining the 
 riots, but who died in the Catholic faith. 
 
 May 5. — Sylvester, martyr; another friar of 
 the same order, in Florence. He was taken by 
 
 *Fox, p. 1430. 
 
 5 
 
 f Guiccerdine’s Hist. L. 3, p. 99. 
 
66 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 u the magistrate upon the slaughter of one Fran¬ 
 cisco Valori, murdered in that tumult; was exe¬ 
 cuted for the same, but died a Catholic.* 
 
 May 6. — Friar Roy, martyr. He was a friar, 
 put to death in Portugal; but whether for theft, 
 murder, or anything else, Fox says he cannot 
 tell.f 
 
 May 7.— Robert Kingc, martyr. This man was 
 condemned for theft and sacrilege; he robbed 
 the church of Dover Court, in Kent; and was 
 hanged in chains for the same, by order of a 
 justice, in the time of Henry VIII. 
 
 May 8. — Robert Debdam , martyr. This man 
 was also hanged for the same robbery and sac¬ 
 rilege in the church in Dover Court. 
 
 May 9. — Nicholas Marsh, martyr. The third 
 thief hanged for the robbery and sacrilege com¬ 
 mitted in the same church.:}: 
 
 May 23 .— William Morant, martyr; a seditious 
 man, who went about to raise a rebellion. 
 
 May 24. — Stephen Gratrick, martyr; another 
 fellow of similar character, who tried to raise 
 tumults against the bishops.§ 
 
 June 1.— Hierome of Prague, martyr. He was 
 an associate with John IIuss. Before their time, 
 the Catholic university at Prague had nearly 
 
 * Guic. Paulus Jovin’s Life of Leo X., Coveus 7. Part Hist. Itali. 
 fFox, p. 936. 
 
 t F. Parsons 3d part of 3 Con. of Eng., p. 466. 
 
 • §Ib., p.478. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 67 
 
 thirty thousand scholars, with their dependants, 
 till Hierome and his master Huss caused a rebel¬ 
 lion among them. In consequence of which 
 more than twenty-four thousand German schol- 
 ars left within eight days, which entirely ruined 
 the colleges and the town of Prague.* After 
 this he began to defend the opinions of Wickliffe, 
 which brought on rebellions, tumults, and blood¬ 
 shed in every place; and these rebellions were 
 afterwards kept up by the rebel Zisca, another 
 saint of Fox’s church, whom we have mentioned 
 on the fifth of February. 
 
 Thus we have gone through six months of 
 Fox’s calendar, and I have not mentioned one 
 quarter of his falsehoods: the other six months 
 are quite as bad. You see, then, what a book 
 this is, which Protestants so much boast of. 
 These saints were nothing but a set of deluded, 
 rebellious, impious, and blasphemous wretches, 
 most of them put to death by the law of the land 
 where they resided for their crimes. Many of 
 them were condemned for their lewd lives, con¬ 
 spiracies, rebellion and murder; some for witch¬ 
 craft and conjuring; others for sacrilege and 
 theft, and'even for flatly denying Christ himself. 
 In fact, “to call a man one of Fox's saints, is 
 become the same as to call him a great rogue.” f 
 What a pretty set of saints, then, are those to 
 
 *Dubravius Hist. Bohem. R. 23. 
 
 fEng. Con. and Ref. Comp., p. 110. 
 
68 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 boast of! Surely every sensible Protestant must 
 be ashamed of such saints as those. 
 
 Q. Has Almighty God favored Protestants 
 with the gift of miracles, to show that He was 
 pleased with their new religion? 
 
 A. S.ome of them indeed have attempted to 
 work miracles, but failed in the attempt. In 
 1545, Luther undertook to cast a devil out of a 
 young girl of Misnea, at Wittemberg; but, like 
 the Jewish exorcists (Acts xix. 16), the demon 
 assaulted, and seriously hurt, both Luther and 
 his companions. Staphylus, seeing the devil 
 hold his master, Luther, by the throat, endeav¬ 
 ored to leave the room, but could not turn the 
 lock; so picking up a hatchet, which the clerk 
 had thrown through the window, he hewed 
 down the door and scampered off.* Again, 
 Bolscc, in the Life of Calvin, c. 1, and L. Surius, 
 in his Chron., relate, that Calvin bribed a man, 
 whose name was Brunean, to counterfeit himself 
 dead, that he might raise him to life; after some 
 prayers, Calvin taking him by the hand, com¬ 
 manded him in the name of our Lord to arise; 
 but all in vain, for Brunean was really dead, and 
 all the prayers of Calvin and his saints could not 
 restore him to life! Upon this Brunean’s wife 
 became distracted with grief, and declared that 
 her husband was alive when he made the bur- 
 
 *Frid. Staphylus’ Absolute Apology, p. 404. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 69 
 
 gain, but now, she exclaimed, “ he is as dead as 
 a nit, and as cold as a stone.” Moreover, in the 
 reign of Queen Mary, the Protestant's pretended 
 that there was a spirit in an old stone wall at 
 Aldersgate that spoke many wonderful things. 
 The spirit spoke in a solemn tone, and declared 
 that it came down from heaven to authorize the 
 Protestants to cut off the Popish Queen Mary, 
 and to put an end to the Catholic faith. This 
 was believed for some time by the credulous 
 mob, till at length they pulled down the wall, 
 and found witliinside Elizabeth Crofts, a Prot¬ 
 estant impostor, put there to blind and seduce 
 the people! Scarcely was this trick over when 
 they bring forward a young man, of the age and 
 features of Edward VI., declaring that the young 
 king was risen from the dead, and that Mary 
 must be expelled, and the king replaced upon 
 the throne again! This pretended king was a 
 young impostor of the name of Fetherston.* So 
 much for Protestant miracles. 
 
 As for the tokens of the divine favor, in reading 
 Baker’s Chronicle, Dr. Ileylin’s History of the 
 Reformation, and other Protestant writers, we 
 find a succession of wonderful things that 
 have happened since the reformation , which 
 shows how much Almighty God was offended 
 and displeased with the Protestant religion. In 
 
 * Word’s Eng. Ref., pp. 107, 108. 
 
70 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FJNI> OUT 
 
 1552 , a sweating sickness infested the land; it 
 iirst began at Shrewsbury, went through the 
 northern countries, and then visited London. 
 This disease seemed a judgment to the first Eng¬ 
 lish Protestants, for it followed them whereso¬ 
 ever they were, in foreign parts, but did not so 
 much as touch one of another country. In 1577, 
 July 4, Mr. Rowland Jinks, a Catholic book¬ 
 seller in Oxford, for having in his shop the 
 Pope’s Bulls and Catholic papers, was cast into 
 prison, and most unjustly condemned to lose all 
 his property, to have both his ears nailed to the 
 pillory, and to deliver himself by cutting them 
 off with his own hands; but no sooner was the 
 sentence passed, than a most dreadful disease 
 burst forth in the midst of the court, and seized 
 upon all there present. Great numbers dropped 
 down dead on the spot; others rushed out of the 
 court half suffocated, and died in a few hours 
 afterwards. In the space of two days, nearly 
 all the witnesses died; and in the first night, 
 about six hundred lost their lives; and the next 
 day, it seized upon one hundred in the nearest 
 streets. The disease was a kind of madness; for 
 the sick leaped out of bed, and beat with their 
 sticks all those who came to assist them; some 
 ran through the courts and streets in a state of 
 insanity, and others threw themselves down 
 headlong into deep waters. Every hall, every 
 college, every house had its dead; and what is 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 71 
 
 more remarkable, all the grand jury, except one 
 or two, died as soon as they had left Oxford.* 
 In 1580, in Somersetshire, sixty persons, all 
 clothed in black, appeared about two hundred 
 and twenty yards from those who saw them; 
 and, after haying staid a short time, they van¬ 
 ished away; but immediately another strange 
 company, in like manner, color and number, 
 appeared in the same place; they encountered 
 each other, and then vanished away ; and a third 
 time, there appeared sixty more, all in bright 
 armor, and, after having encountered one an¬ 
 other, they also vanished away.f In 1594, a 
 dreadful plague in London carried off 171,890 
 persons, with the Lord Mayor and three Aider- 
 men. In 1596, Lord Hundsdon, being very ill, 
 saw six of his companions, already dead, come 
 to him one after another. The first was Dudley, 
 Earl of Leicester, all in fire; the second w r as 
 Secretary Wa 1 singham, also in fire and flame; 
 the third was Pickering, so cold and frozen, 
 that, touching Hundsdon’s hand, he (the latter) 
 thought he should have died of cold; the fourth 
 was Hatton, Lord Chancellor; the fifth Hen- 
 neage; the sixth Knolles—these last three all on 
 fire; they all told him that Sir William Cecil, 
 one of their companions yet living, was to pre- 
 
 * Ant. 'Wood Hist. Anti. Univer. Oxon. 1. p. 294. 
 
 ] Baker’s Chron., p. 400. 
 
72 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 pare himself to come shortly after them.* In 
 1603, Queen Elizabeth saw, one night as she lay 
 in bed, her own body, exceedingly lean and fear¬ 
 ful, in a light of fire. After this, she sat ten 
 days and ten nights on the carpet, ready dressed, 
 and could never be brought by any of her coun¬ 
 cil to go to bed, or eat, or drink, except a little 
 broth which one of her courtiers persuaded her 
 to take. On that occasion she told him that if he 
 knew what she had seen in her bed, lie would 
 not tease her as he did; and, shaking her head, 
 she said, with a pitiful voice, “ My lord, I am 
 tied with a chain of iron about my neck; I am 
 tied, and the case is altered with me.” How¬ 
 ever, she seemed still to place more confidence 
 in charms and spells, than in prayer to God; 
 for she wore a piece of gold in her ruff, by means 
 of which an old woman in Wales was said to 
 have lived to the age of one hundred years, and 
 could not die as long as she wore it upon her 
 body, and the card called the queen of hearts 
 was found nailed under the bottom of her chair. 
 As the sickness grew worse, the council sent to 
 her the Bishop of Canterbury and other clergy¬ 
 men ; but as soon as she saw them, she fell into 
 a passion, began to abuse them, and bade them 
 be packing. Upon this, some of her lords moved 
 to have other bishops sent for; but she answered, 
 
 *F. Costerus, Compen. Orthodox* Fidei. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 73 
 
 that she would “ have none of these hedge-priests .” 
 Falling 1 soon after this into a slumber, she de¬ 
 parted. Her body was then opened and em¬ 
 balmed. It was afterwards brought to White 
 Hall, where it was watched every night by six 
 ladies, who were on each side of the body, which 
 was fast within a board coffin, and one of lead, 
 covered with velvet. It happened, however, that 
 her body burst the coffins with so great violence, 
 attended with a most dreadful noise, that it split 
 the wood and lead, and tore the velvet, to the 
 terror and astonishment of all present.* The 
 plague began the same year in London, Decem¬ 
 ber 23, and continued till the twenty-second of 
 December following, and there died in that 
 place 38,244. In 1619, a small pool in Cambridge 
 became as red as blood — the water being taken 
 up into basins still kept the same color; and 
 many signs were seen in the air, such as armies 
 fighting one against another. In 1665, there was 
 another dreadful plague in London, that destroyed 
 100,000 inhabitants. In 1666, many Protestants 
 prophecied the downfall of the Pope, on the 
 second of September; and, on that very day, a 
 dreadful fire broke out in London, and continued 
 burning three days and three nights. In spite 
 of every effort to stop its progress, 600 streets, 
 
 *F. Parson’s Discus., pp. 217, 218, printed 1612. 
 
74 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 89 churches, St. Paul’s Cathedral, and more than 
 30,000 houses, were burnt to ashes. 
 
 After Henry VHI. began to introduce the 
 Protestant religion, his life seems to have been 
 one continued curse; nothing that he did, pros¬ 
 pered; the plunder of all the religious houses, 
 the fines imposed upon the clergy, and the rilling 
 of the churches, brought him more money than 
 all the preceding kings had received during the 
 long period of five hundred years; yet all these 
 vast riches, added to the enormous sum of 
 £4,300,000 (which was equal to near £10,000,000 
 • at the present day of ready money) left by his 
 father, could not keep him from want.* For about 
 the thirty-sixth year of his reign, of all the kings 
 of England, he alone was so wretchedly poor, 
 that he was obliged to make base coin; not only 
 tin and copper, but leather money! He was un¬ 
 happy in the midst of all his pleasures; poor 
 amidst all his rapine and plunder; and he died 
 exclaiming, u All is lost.” The curse of this 
 wicked king extended to his offspring; his chil¬ 
 dren all died childless; his family is extinct ; his 
 crown and his kingdom are given to a foreign 
 nation; and, like Kero, his name is not men¬ 
 tioned but as coupled with his crimes. The 
 Stuarts next ascended the throne; and James I., 
 born and confirmed a Roman Catholic, becomes 
 
 * Spelman de non temer. Eccl., p. 44. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 75 
 
 an apostate from his faith, ancl puts himself at 
 the head of the Protestant religion. On account 
 of his apostasy, a heavy curse seems to he de¬ 
 nounced against him and his posterity; for, 
 after meeting with many difficulties and trou¬ 
 bles, he dies — not without suspicion of being 
 murdered. Ilis son, King Charles I., was be¬ 
 headed at Whitehall; and his grandson, King 
 Charles II., after having been defeated in battle 
 by his own subjects at Worcester, narrowly es¬ 
 caped with his life. He went abroad, and lived 
 in banishment for many years; and, after his 
 restoration, he seems to have been constantly 
 alarmed with plots, conspiracies, and bloody 
 executions; nor dared he to die in the practice 
 of that religion of which he had professed him¬ 
 self the head. When his last moments drew 
 near, the Protestant Bishop Kenn waited on him, 
 and asked him if he would receive the Lord’s 
 Supper; he answered, “I will not.” lie then 
 said to the Duke of York, “ I will have Father 
 Huddlestone , who preserved me in the tree ; and I 
 hope will now preserve my soul.” Father Huddle- 
 stone was a Roman Catholic priest, who had 
 lived for some time with Mr. Whitgrave, of 
 Moseley, in Staffordshire. He came and soothed 
 the troubled mind of the dying king, and gave 
 him all the rites of the holy Catholic Church. 
 King James II. next succeeded, but was so beset 
 with difficulties and troubles on every side, that 
 
76 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 in bitter anguish he exclaimed, “ God help me! 
 My own children have forsaken me in my utmost 
 need.” He lost his crown, and lied to banish¬ 
 ment, where he died a member of the Catholic 
 Church. Queen Anne, the second daughter of 
 James, reigned with little better success than 
 her father; after many years, rendered unhappy 
 by party disputes, she dies of a broken heart. 
 The rest of the posterity of the unhappy king 
 became wretched wanderers in a foreign land; 
 and the race is now extinct. The judgments of 
 God, which seem to have fallen so heavily upon 
 the kings and their posterity, appear to have 
 fallen with no less vengeance upon the nobility 
 and gentry, and on all those who had any hand 
 in forming and introducing the Protestant relig¬ 
 ion ; for, in less than twenty years after the 
 mock Reformation, more of our nobility have 
 been brought to trial, condemned and executed, 
 than had been for nearly five hundred years 
 before.* And, if we examine the list of the 
 nobles and barons who composed the parliament 
 of the 27th and 31st of Ilenry VIII., and con¬ 
 sented to the introduction of the Protestant re¬ 
 ligion, and the destruction of the religious houses, 
 we shall find very few who did not die a pitiful 
 and untimely death; and what is more remark¬ 
 able, scarcely one of all that vast number has 
 
 *Spelman de non temer. Eccl., p. 42. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 77 
 
 left a son or heir to bring clown his name to the 
 present day. In the year 1615, Sir II. Spelman 
 described with a pair of compasses, in the map 
 of JNforfolk, a cirole of twelve miles, placing the 
 centre about the chief seat of the Yelvertons; 
 within this circle and the borders of it, he en¬ 
 closed the mansion-houses of about twenty-four 
 families of gentlemen, and the same number of 
 monasteries, all standing together at the time of 
 the dissolution; and he then observed, that the 
 gentlemen’s seats continued at that day in their 
 own families and names. But no sooner hacl 
 these gentlemen got possession of the monas¬ 
 teries and lands of the Catholic Church, than all, 
 except two, were either sold out, died, or met 
 with some misfortune, so that all their estates, 
 two only excepted, changed their masters at least 
 three times, and some of them four, five, or six 
 times, in the short space of seventeen years.* 
 Again, when England professed the Catholic 
 religion, every one enjoyed peace and plenty. 
 There were then no poor taxes, no taking over¬ 
 seers before the magistrates, no workhouses, no 
 bankrupts, and no national debt. But now, see 
 the change! Yo sooner had the Protestant re¬ 
 ligion begun, than she opened Pandora’s box, 
 and out Hew every species of evil that afflicts the 
 human race. By the returns of the poor-rates 
 
 *Spclman’s Hist, of Sacrilege, p. 243. 
 
78 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 in England and Wales, it appears that for law 
 expenses only, in the year 1819, more money 
 was paid than the whole expenditure for the 
 king, his court, minister, ambassadors, the 
 princes, and all the state pensioners added to¬ 
 gether. The whole expenses of the poor amount 
 to a sum equal to the revenue of the Emperor of 
 Russia, who maintains an army of a million of 
 soldiers, and to more than twice the expenses of 
 the United States; * and, in less than three hun¬ 
 dred years, the nation has become so wretchedly 
 poor that it has contracted a debt of more than 
 £1,250,000,000. 
 
 Q. Arc we then to conclude that the Prot¬ 
 estant religion must be very displeasing in the 
 sight of God, to draw down upon the nation all 
 these evils? 
 
 A. Beyond all doubt; nor is it a matter of 
 surprise, that Almighty God should show so 
 many signs of His displeasure against those who 
 have brought upon the land the destruction of 
 religion, and the profanation of everything that 
 was consecrated to his honor and glory, when 
 we consider the heavy judgments inflicted upon 
 those who were formerly guilty of the same 
 offence. We read in Numbers xvi. that Korah 
 and his companions, for aspiring to become 
 priests without being lawfully called and sent, 
 
 * Birmingham and Litchfield Chron., Feb. 7, 1822. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 79 
 
 were punished in a most dreadful manner; the 
 earth opened and swallowed them down alive 
 into hell, and fire came out from the Lord and 
 destroyed fourteen thousand seven hundred of 
 the people who had dared to complain that the 
 punishment of Korah was too severe. In 2 
 Chron. xxvi. 19, King Uzziah took upon himself 
 the priestly office, and burnt incense in the tem¬ 
 ple; but, for this wicked action, he was upon 
 the spot struck with an incurable leprosy. Jer¬ 
 oboam did but stretch out his hand against the 
 prophet, and presently it withered, 1 Kings 
 xiii. 4. Antiochus Epiphanes died in great tor¬ 
 ment, devoured alive by worms, for robbing the 
 temple of God, 1 Mac. c. vi.; and in c. vii., 
 Kicanor is slain for threatening to burn that holy 
 temple; his head and right hand are cut off, and 
 suspended over against Jerusalem; and the 
 whole of his army perished to a man. Lastly, 
 the prophet- Isaias, in describing the church of 
 Christ, says: That the nation and the kingdom that 
 will not serve her shall perish, c. i. v. 12. 
 
 Q. It must be then a dreadful thing to meddle 
 with, or alter, that religion which God himself 
 has established. But pray, lias Almighty God 
 given the Catholic Church power to work mir¬ 
 acles ? 
 
 A. Yes; our Divine Saviour promised to his 
 disciples the power of working miracles, and even 
 greater than he himself had done, Mark xvi. 17, 
 
80 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 John xiv. 12. Accordingly the fathers and doc- 
 tors of the church have always appealed to the 
 miracles that have been performed by the mem¬ 
 bers of the Catholic Church, as a proof that the 
 Lord is with her; for without the power of God, 
 no man can do such things. Giving sight to the 
 blind, speech to the dumb, hearing to the deaf, 
 casting out devils, raising the dead to life, etc., 
 are true miracles; and these, many Protestant 
 writers allow to have been done in the Roman 
 Catholic Church. Collier, a Protestant divine, 
 speaking of St. Augustine, a Catholic bishop, 
 and his companions, all Catholics, who came 
 and converted England above nine hundred 
 years before the Protestant religion commenced, 
 says, “ that notwithstanding the seeming impos¬ 
 sibilities, they were blessed with surprising suc¬ 
 cess. The sanctity of their lives, and the force 
 of their miracles ,” says he, “ broke through the 
 difficulty of their enterprise.” * Even Fox ac¬ 
 knowledges that “ the king considered the honest 
 conversation of their lives, and was moved with 
 the miracles wrought through God's hand by 
 them.”f Lempriere, a Protestant writer, says, 
 “ that in the 12th century, St. Bernard, a Cath¬ 
 olic abbot, wrought miracles ”% Hackluys, a 
 Protestant parson, writes, “ that St. F. Xaverius, 
 a Catholic priest, in the 16th century, converted 
 
 *Pref. to Eccl. Hist. f Acts and Monuments, Col. 2. 
 
 J Biogr. Die. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 81 
 
 the East Indies, and performed many miracles”* * * § 
 Baldeus and Tavernier, both Protestants, attest 
 the saine.f About the same time lived Philip 
 Xeri, a Catholic priest, who wrought many mir¬ 
 acles ; and in proof of which, three hundred wit¬ 
 nesses were examined, and all declared them to 
 be true. 
 
 The 17th century was made glorious by the 
 well-attested miracles of St. Francis de Sales, a 
 Catholic bishop, even to the raising of the dead 
 to life,$ as it was also by those of St. J. Francis 
 Regis, concerning which, twenty-two bishops of 
 Languedoc wrote thus to Pope Clement XI.: 
 “ AVe are witnesses that before the tomb of St. J. 
 F. Regis, the blind see, the lame walk, the deaf 
 hear, the dumb speak.§ ' Thousands of other 
 miracles I pass over in silence, but these few 
 even Protestants, you see, do not deny. There¬ 
 fore, since miracles are wrought in the Catholic 
 Church, we know for pertain that she comes 
 from God; for no church can do the miracles 
 which she doth, except God be with her, John 
 m. 2. 
 
 * Voys. and Vaviga., Vol. 2, Part 2, p. 8. 
 
 j Bahour’s Life of St. Xav. 
 
 J Marsolier’s Life of St. F. de Sales. 
 
 § Life of J. F. Regis, by Deberton. 
 
 6 
 
82 
 
 A SURE AY AY TO FIND OUT 
 
 DIALOGUE TV. 
 
 On Catholicity, the Third Mark. 
 
 Q. Pray, what does the word Catholic mean? 
 
 A. The word Catholic means Universal — that 
 is, spread over the known world. And this Gos¬ 
 pel shall be preached in the ivhole world, for a 
 testimony to all nations, Matt. xxiv. 14. Go ye 
 therefore and teach all nations, Matt, xxviii. 19. 
 Go ye into the ivhole world, and preach the Gospel 
 to every creature, Mark xvi. 15. 
 
 Q. Do not the Protestants say that theirs is the 
 Holy Catholic Church, and ours the Roman Catholic 
 Church ? 
 
 A. The parsons indeed say this to blind the 
 ignorant people, and that is all. That the Prot¬ 
 estant religion is not holy, I have sufficiently 
 proved in treating on the second mark, Holiness; 
 and that it is not Catholic, I shall prove to you 
 by the following argument. First, the Protestant 
 religion in Great Britain, as it is established by 
 law, is a religion by itself; distinct are its faith 
 and worship, and different from every other sect 
 of Protestants. “ Our Articles,” savs the Prot- 
 estant Bishop of Lincoln, “ our Articles and 
 Liturgy do not correspond with the sentiments 
 of any of the eminent reformers on the continent, 
 or with the creeds of any of the Protestant 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 83 
 
 churches which arc there established.” * Conse- 
 
 • • 
 
 -qnently, the Protestant religion of that nation is 
 the religion of only that one nation. Now let 
 me ask the good sense of any Protestant, if the 
 religion of a single nation, the religion of a small 
 island, the religion of a little corner of the world, 
 and of a mere handful of men, is a Catholic 
 religion? you might as well call England the 
 universe, for Catholic is the same as Universal. 
 Again, the Catholic Church is that church into 
 which all nations flow. Now the Protestant 
 Church of that nation consists of little, or noth¬ 
 ing else but Englishmen. But I have even said 
 too much, for it is by no means true that all 
 Englishmen, or yet the greater part of English¬ 
 men, are members of the Protestant Church: for 
 the greater part of Englishmen are not its mem¬ 
 bers. Therefore the Protestant Church consists 
 of a mere handful of people, of a small portion 
 of a small community, in a small island, and 
 consequently cannot be Catholic or Universal. 
 The true church must be Universal in point of 
 time as well as place. For “ the true church,” 
 says a Protestant bishop, Dr. Tomline, “ was 
 designed not only to be Universal, but Perpetual.” 
 Therefore, the true church has existed always, 
 from the age of the apostles down to the present 
 dav. But the Protestant Church has not existed 
 
 * Dr. Tomline’s Charge, November, 1803. 
 
84 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 always, from the age of the Apostles down to the 
 present day; for we know exactly the beginning 
 of the Protestant religion in England; the history 
 of the men who formed it; the occasion which gave 
 it birth; the plots and crimes which accompanied 
 and helped to establish it; and from these we 
 know that it is new, and not yet three hundred 
 years old; we know that it is a creature of yes¬ 
 terday, and consequently can no more claim the 
 title of Catholic in point of time, than it can in 
 point of place. 
 
 Q. Is, then, the Roman Catholic Church spread 
 over the whole world? 
 
 A. Yes; the Roman Catholic Church is spread 
 throughout the known world. The Roman Cath- 
 olic religion is the established religion of the sev¬ 
 eral states of Italy, of most of the Swiss cantons, 
 of Piedmont, of France, of Spain, of Portugal, 
 and of the islands in the Mediterranean; of more 
 than five parts out of six of Ireland, of far the 
 greater part of the Netherlands, Poland, Bo¬ 
 hemia, Germany, Hungary, and the neighboring 
 provinces; and in those kingdoms and states in 
 which it is not the established religion, the Cath¬ 
 olics are very numerous, as in Holland, Russia, 
 Turkey, the Lutheran and Calvinistic states of 
 Germany and England. Even in Sweden and 
 Denmark, several Catholic congregations are to 
 be found. All the great families of Europe are 
 Roman Catholics, as the Protestants themselves 
 

 THE TRUE RELIGION. 85 
 
 are forced to confess, when they say that u as his 
 late Majesty, King George the Third, could not 
 espouse a Roman Catholic, he was precluded 
 from intermarrying in any of the great families 
 of Europe.' 1 ' * The whole vast continent of South 
 America may be said to be Catholic, the same may 
 be said of the empire of Mexico, and the kingdoms 
 in ISTorth America, including California, Cuba, 
 Hispaniola, etc. Canada and Louisiana are chiefly 
 Catholic, and throughout the United Provinces 
 the Catholic religion propagated; to say noth¬ 
 ing of the islands of Africa inhabited by Cath¬ 
 olics, such as Malta, Madeira, Cape Verd, the 
 Canaries, the Azores, Mauritius, Gorec, etc. 
 There are numerous churches of Catholics in 
 Egypt, Ethiopia, Algiers, Tunis, and the other 
 Barbary States on the Northern coast, and thence 
 in all the Portuguese settlements along the 
 Western coast, and particularly at Angola and 
 Congo. Even on the Eastern coast, for instance, 
 in the kingdom of Zanguebar and Monomotapa, 
 are numerous Catholic churches. There are also 
 numerous Catholic priests and many bishops, 
 with numerous flocks, throughout the greater 
 part of Asia. All the Maronets about Mount 
 Libanus, with their bishops, priests, and monks, 
 are Catholics; so are many of the Arminians, 
 Persians, and other Christians of the surround- 
 
 
 * Goldsmith’s Hist, of Eng., 10th edit., p. 322. 
 
86 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 ing kingdoms and provinces.* The whole pop¬ 
 ulation of the Philippine Islands, consisting of 
 two millions of souls, are all Catholic. The 
 diocese of Goa contains four hundred thousand 
 Catholics. In short, there are numbers of Cath¬ 
 olics throughout the whole Peninsula of India 
 within the Ganges. In Travancor and Cochin 
 are a Catholic Archbishopric and two Bishop¬ 
 rics, one of which contains thirty-five thousand 
 communicants.] There are numerous Catholic 
 flocks, with their bishops and priests, in all the 
 kingdoms and states beyond the Ganges, partic¬ 
 ularly in Siam, Cochin China, Tonquin, and the 
 different provinces of the Chinese Empire. Since, 
 then, the Roman Catholic Church is not confined 
 to a little island, but is taught in almost all the 
 kingdoms of the earth, and in every corner of 
 the known world, it follows of course that she 
 is the true Catholic, or Universal Church. The 
 Roman Church-is also Catholic in point of time; 
 for she has existed always, from the age of the 
 apostles down to the present day. That the 
 Roman Catholic religion came down from the 
 time of the apostles is a truth wliich the Prot¬ 
 estants cannot with any consistency denv; for 
 in their book of homilies, they declare that all 
 the world was Popery, and that for more than 
 
 * Sir R. Steele’s Acc. of the Catholic Religion throughout the 
 World. 
 
 |Dr. Kerr’s Let., p. 7, 487. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 87 
 
 eight hundred years before the Reformation. No- 
 pier, a Protestant writer, says, “ that from the 
 year of Christ 316, the Papistical reign had 
 begun, reigning universally, and without any 
 debatable contradiction, 1260 years.”* Again: 
 “The Pope and clergy have possessed the out¬ 
 ward visible Church 1260 years.” f And this 
 before th e Reformation. Lastly, the fourProtestant 
 annalists say, “ that the straw and stubble of the 
 Papistical religion began even from the age im¬ 
 mediately after Christ and his apostles.” Thus 
 has God confounded the enemies of his holy 
 Church, by making them become witnesses of the 
 truth, and proclaim themselves that the Catholic 
 religion has come down from the time of the 
 apostles, in those very writings which they in¬ 
 tended for the bitterest reproaches against her. 
 Since, then, the Protestant writers acknowledge 
 that the Roman Catholic Church has come down 
 from the time of the apostles to the present day, 
 it follows, of course, that time as well as in point 
 of place; and, therefore, most certainly has the 
 third mark of the true Church of God. 
 
 *Nepier’s Revela. prop. 37, p. 38 
 
 tlbid. chap. 11, p. 145. 
 
88 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 DIALOGUE V. 
 
 On Apostolicity, the Fourth Mark. 
 
 Q. You say the true church must also be 
 Apostolical? 
 
 A. Yes; the true church was established by 
 our Divine Saviour, and governed by the apos¬ 
 tles; for you are built, says St. Paul, upon the 
 foundation of the apostles — Jesus Christ himself 
 being the chief corner-stone, Ephes. ii. 20, and no 
 one can lay any other foundation but that which is 
 laid, I. Cor. iii. 11. Indeed, that the true church 
 must be Apostolical, that is, the same as the 
 apostles established, no consistent Protestant can 
 call in question. 
 
 Q. Do not Protestants say that their church is 
 the \;ery same church as that which the apostles 
 governed? 
 
 A. They say so, indeed, but without the least 
 semblance of truth; since her beginning, her 
 doctrine, her orders, and her mission are all 
 new; they are other own making,and therefore 
 do not come down from the apostles. The Prot¬ 
 estant book of homilies declares “ that every 
 man, woman, and child of the Christian world 
 was drowned in damnable idolatry, or Popery, 
 as they nicknamed the Catholic religion, and this 
 for more than 800 years. Where, then, was the 
 Protestant Church all this time? Was she a 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 89 
 
 Christian church, and yet in no part of the 
 Christian world? She could not be in the world 
 at all, because all the world was overran with 
 Popery, as the Protestants allow. The plain 
 truth of the matter is, that the Protestant relig¬ 
 ion had no being at all before the sixteenth 
 century, and, therefore, came into the world fif¬ 
 teen hundred years too late to be apostolical. 
 
 II. The Protestant Church has not received 
 her doctrine from the apostles; that is, she does 
 not teach the same doctrine which they taught, 
 but a doctrine of her own making, as can be 
 easily shown from the histories and records of 
 the church. We will just examine a few of the 
 doctrines that were taught in the first five ages, 
 when the Protestants say the church was pure, 
 
 [ and had taught the doctrine of the apostles. In 
 those times, w T e find that the bishops and priests 
 of the church believed, and taught the people, 
 that there were seven sacraments—all instituted 
 by our Lord, whereby the merits of his passion 
 are applied to the soul of the worthy receiver; * 
 that in the blessed sacrament of the Eucharist, 
 there is truly and really the body and blood of 
 Christ under the appearance of bread and wine.f 
 
 *See Faith of Catholics, p. 181. 
 
 t St. Ignatius Ep. ad Smyrn., p. 8G, T. 2. St. Cyril Catech. 
 n. 4, p. 281. 
 
90 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 The holy sacrifice, or Mass,* the confession of 
 sins,f indulgences ,% purgatory,' and prayers for 
 the dead; that the souls in purgatory are helped 
 by our prayers,§ and that it is good and profit¬ 
 able to ask the angels and saints to pray for us, 
 etc.|| Nowall these doctrines were believed and 
 taught in those very ages in which the Prot¬ 
 estants say that the church was pure, and taught 
 the doctrines of the apostles, and yet the Prot¬ 
 estant Church will not teach these doctrines 
 now, but quite the opposite. For example, the 
 Protestant Church teaches that there are only 
 two sacraments; that the Lord's Supper is noth¬ 
 ing but bread and wine; that the Mass is idol¬ 
 atry; that confession of sins is nothing but 
 priestcraft; that indulgences give a license to 
 commit sin; that there is not such a place as 
 purgatory ; that we must not pray for the dead; 
 that prayers for the dead can do no good; and 
 lastly, that we must not ask the saints and angels 
 to pray for us, because it is idolatry. From these 
 
 * St. Cyril Jems. Catech. Mysag., n. 67, p. 297. St. Cyprian, 
 Ep. L., pp. 1, 2, 3. 
 
 f Tertullian do Penitent, c. 9,10,11,12. St. Cyprian dc Lapsis, 
 p. 134. St. Augustin, Ilomil. L. T. 10, p. 178. Ibid. 102-194. 
 
 t Council of Ancyra in 314. Council of Nice in 323. Council 
 of Carthage in 398. 
 
 §St. Ephrem of Edcssa, Testament T. 3, p. 294. St. Gregory 
 of Nyssa, Orat. de Defunct. T. 2, p. 1066. 
 
 || St. Ninus, Tract de Orat. c. 81, T. 1. St. Hilary, Comment. 
 Psalm 126, ibidem 129. 
 
.THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 91 
 
 few examples, we see that the Protestant Church 
 does not teach the same doctrines that were 
 taught in the first five ages; and therefore the 
 doctrines of the Protestant Church are not apos¬ 
 tolical. 
 
 III. The Protestant Church has not received 
 her orders from the apostles, or their lawful suc¬ 
 cessors ; and therefore her parsons are no priests, 
 and consequently cannot he true ministers of the 
 Church of God. The Protestant Church could 
 not receive her orders from the apostles them¬ 
 selves, because the apostles had been dead for 
 more than 1500 years before there was either a 
 Protestant bishop or parson in the world. 2dly, 
 She has not received her orders from their law¬ 
 ful successors, but from one Barlow, who had 
 never received orders himself, “ for this Barlow 
 w T as never made bishop by even any pretended 
 consecrator whatever. Nor are there any rec¬ 
 ords in being in the world, that give the least 
 hint of his ever being consecrated.” * Since, 
 then, Barlow had received no orders from the 
 apostles, or their lawful successors, it is vciy 
 clear that Barlow could not ordain Parker, on 
 whom must be built, as on a foundation, the 
 whole episcopacy and priesthood of the Prot¬ 
 estant Church of England, because he could not 
 give him those orders which he himself had not 
 
 *See Ward’s Controver. of Ordination. 
 
92 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 received; therefore the Protestant orders are not 
 apostolical. But, supposing that Barlow had re¬ 
 ceived proper orders, still he could not give them 
 to the Protestant Church, because they made use 
 of an invalid and unlawful ordinal for the space 
 of 110 years, from 1552 till 1G62. In 1662, they 
 made a new ordinal; but, unfortunately, there 
 was no one to use it; because during 110 years 
 there was no other ordinal in being, but only 
 that made by King Edward VI., which was null 
 and invalid; so that in all those 110 years, there 
 could be neither priest nor bishop made, for want 
 of a valid ordinal to ordain them by. Conse¬ 
 quently there could not be one bishop in the whole 
 Church of England in the year 1662 to consecrate 
 others by the new-made ordinal, therefore there 
 are neither bishops nor priests in the Protestant 
 Church of England. Again, the Protestant par¬ 
 sons are no priests, for another reason: when 
 they were made parsons they did not intend to 
 receive the power of offering up sacrifice, 
 neither did the bishops intend to give them such 
 power, therefore they are no priests, because the 
 very essence of the priesthood consists in offer¬ 
 ing up sacrifice, without which power no man 
 can possibly be a priest, according to St. Paul: 
 For every priest is ordained that he may offer up 
 sacidfices for sins, Ileb. v. 1. Such, then, being 
 the case, let ns hear what Dodwell, a Protestant 
 writer, says, “ that where there is no episcopal 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 t 
 
 93 
 
 ordination, there is no ministry, no sacrament, 
 no church. Men are out of the covenant of grace 
 and hope of salvation.” * 
 
 IY. The Protestant Church has not received 
 her mission from the apostles, or their lawful 
 successors, and therefore she has no power to 
 administer the sacraments, or to preach the word 
 of God. Here you must observe, that orders 
 and mission, or jurisdiction, arc two very dif¬ 
 ferent things. Orders only qualify a man, and 
 make him a bishop or a priest; but a mission or 
 jurisdiction gives him leave and power to make 
 use of the orders which he lias received; and 
 without which mission no bishop or priest can 
 lawfully and validly exercise over others, that 
 power which they may possess. So necessary is 
 a lawful mission, that Christ declares, that he 
 himself was sent by his Father, and he hath sent 
 me, John vii. 29, and he gave a commandment, 
 what I should sag, and what I should speak, John 
 xii. 49, and, addressing his apostles, he says, As 
 my Father hath sent me, even so I send you, John 
 xx. 21, go ye therefore and teach all nations, Matt. 
 xx:x. 19. In like manner the apostles sent others 
 after them, as St. Paul and Barnabas were sent 
 by the pastors of the church at Antioch; and 
 their doing so was declared to be the work of 
 the Iloly Ghost: they sent them away. So they 
 
 * Fletcher’s Serm. on Moral Sub., 2d vol., p. 294. 
 
94 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 being sent by the Holy Ghost, went to Sclucia, Acts 
 xiii. 3. St. Paul sent Titus, and, speaking of the 
 apostles, lie says, IIow can they preach unless they 
 be sent ? (Rom. x. 15.) St. Clement, whose name 
 is written in the Book of Life, Phil. iv. 3, says, 
 “ That Christ Jesus received his mission from 
 God. The apostles received their mission from 
 Christ. And, after having received the Holy 
 Ghost and preached the Gospel, they established 
 bishops and deacons, to whom they communicated 
 the charge which they themselves had received 
 from God. They established a rule of succession 
 for futurity, in order that in each age, at the 
 deaths of its pastors, their office and,ministry 
 might be regularly handed down to others.” * 
 This, then, is the door by which the true pastors 
 of Christ’s flock must enter; that is, they must 
 be lawfully ordained, and sent by the lawful 
 pastors of the church, who have received valid 
 orders and lawful jurisdiction from the lawful 
 successors of the apostles of Christ. For all who 
 take the priestly office upon themselves, without 
 entering by this door, are declared by Christ 
 himself to be thieves and robbers , John x. 1. 
 From this short statement you will sec that a 
 man must have a lawful mission or jurisdiction, 
 as well as orders, before lie can act as a bishop 
 or priest. Xotv the Protestant parsons have no 
 
 * Epistle 1. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 95 
 
 lawful mission whatever, and therefore they can¬ 
 not act as priests in the Church of God. In the 
 first place, they have not been from the days of 
 the apostles, and therefore the}' could not receive 
 their mission from them. In the second place, 
 we know from history, that the first Protestants 
 did not receive any mission or authority what¬ 
 ever from the apostles or their lawful successors; 
 for in “ King Henry’s reign they preached and 
 ministered in spite of all authority, ecclesiastical 
 and civil.” * And “ their successors in the reigns 
 of Edward and Elizabeth, claim their whole right 
 and mission to preach and administer, from the 
 civil power only.” f Finally, as the Protestant 
 parsons have not received valid orders, it follows, 
 of course, that they cannot have a lawful mission, 
 because a mission without orders can never b'e 
 given; therefore, they run ivithout being sent, 
 Jerem. xxiii. 21; they are blind leaders, Matt, 
 xv. 14; and, as Mr. Lesley says (speaking of 
 the Dissenters), “ they have thrust themselves as 
 guides upon the road towards heaven, upon their 
 own heads, in utter contempt and opposition to 
 all the guides of God’s appointment from the 
 days of the apostles; whence he most justly con¬ 
 cludes, that they have no power at all either to 
 preach the Gospel, or to administer the holy sac¬ 
 rament, which God has instituted; no, not even 
 
 * Collier’s Hist., Vol. 2, p. 81. 
 
 f See Oath of Sup. and Homages of Bishops, etc. 
 
96 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 to bless in TIis name.” * Whereas the ministers 
 of the Catholic Church are in a very different 
 predicament. 
 
 The Catholic Church has received her begin¬ 
 ning, her doctrine, her orders, and her mission 
 from the apostles of Christ, and has brought the 
 same down pure, and without any corruption, to 
 the present day. 
 
 I. That the Roman Catholic religion had its 
 beginning from the apostles, we can easily prove 
 by counting up, through every age, a regular 
 succession of pastors. In the fourth century, St. 
 Optatus, speaking of the See of Rome, says, 
 “ that in this one chair sat Peter I.; to him suc¬ 
 ceeded Linus; to him Cletus and Clement, and 
 the rest, down to Siricius, the present Pontiff, 
 with whom we and all the world hold com¬ 
 munion. And now,” he adds, “ do you give an 
 account of your Sees: you that pretend to call 
 yourselves the Catholic Church.” f If the saint 
 could with propriety say all this, when he could 
 number only thirty-nines Popes, with how much 
 more reason can a Roman Catholic in these days, 
 when lie can count on the long list of Popes, 
 from St. Peter down to Pope Pius IX., both 
 included, two hundred and fifty-live, exclaim, 
 “Let the Protestants show us anything like this! 
 Let them show us the list of their bishops suc- 
 
 *Priv. Judg. and Auth., p. 222. 
 
 f Contra. Parmen. L. 2. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 97 
 
 ceeding' each other in a regular order, from the 
 days of the apostles down to the present day!” 
 Again, the calendars, the ancient monuments of 
 the*state, and the tombs of the dead, all declare 
 that the Catholic religion is very old, and flour¬ 
 ished long before the Protestant religion had any 
 being in the world To begin with the division 
 of the year — Christmas, Candlemas, Michael¬ 
 mas, Lady-dav, Shrovetide, Whitsuntide, etc.— 
 they were all introduced by our Catholic fore¬ 
 fathers. Again: if we go into the old churches 
 and lofty cathedrals, ^rnany of them above a 
 thousand years old, and ask them if they were 
 always Protestant, and, if the mysteries which 
 they once saw celebrated there, were the same 
 as those which the Protestants now use? No; 
 reply the venerable temples: “ We are not Prot¬ 
 estant, and the very form in which wo were built 
 shows that we were built for the performance of 
 other mysteries than those winch at present we 
 are obliged to witness.” Again: let us go to 
 the ruins of some old abbey, and ask its moul¬ 
 dering walls, which now support little but the 
 mantling ivy, whose hands were those that an¬ 
 ciently had reared these stones into a building? 
 Who were the men that lived there? Were they 
 Protestants? Were those niches, crosses, and 
 broken statues Protestant? “ No,” reply the 
 holy ruins, “we are not Protestant; and it is 
 merely because we were not Protestant, that the 
 7 
 
98 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 anger of Protestants has reduced us to this heap 
 of ruins.” These are the answers which the 
 monuments will give, that have existed more 
 than a thousand years. They all proclaim that 
 the Catholic religion is very ancient, and had a 
 footing in our own island, long before the Prot¬ 
 estant religion was ushered into the Avorld 
 
 II. The Homan Catholic Church has received 
 her doctrines from the apostles, as the Protestant 
 Church of England is obliged to confess. For 
 “ during the first five hundred years the Church 
 was pure , and inviolabiytaught the faith deliv¬ 
 ered by the apostles; ” * and in I. Act Eliz. 1,‘ the 
 Protestant Church declares that the first four 
 general Councils taught the doctrines of the 
 apostles. Now, I ask, who sat in these four 
 Councils? Were they Protestants? No; for at 
 that time there was not a Protestant in the 
 world. Who were they? They were all Roman 
 Catholics: they alone sat in the Councils, and 
 taught the doctrines of the apostles; and, as we 
 can prove that the Catholic Church teaches the 
 very same doctrine that was taught in those four 
 Councils, then it follows, of course, that the 
 Catholic Church received her doctrine from the 
 apostles. 
 
 III. .The Catholic Church has received her 
 orders from the apostles and their lawful suc- 
 
 * Whitaker on Antichrist, p. 31. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 99 
 
 cessors; therefore her ministers are true priests 
 in the Church of God. Yes, the Catholic clergy 
 are the only true priests, because they alone have 
 received the power of offering up sacrifice, in 
 which the very essence of the priesthood consists, 
 and without which power no man can possibly 
 be a priest, according to St. Paul, where he says, 
 “ Every priest is ordained that he may offer up 
 sacrifices for sin ,” Ileb. i. u No w no man taketh 
 the honor of the priesthood to himself Heb. iv., 
 neither can any man have the power of the 
 priesthood, unless it be given to him by those 
 who have the power to give it. Thus St. Paul 
 writes to Titus, “ For this cause I have left thee at 
 Crete, that thou shouldst set in order the things that 
 are wanting; and shouldst ordain priests in every 
 city, as I also appointed thee, Tit. i. 5. In looking 
 over the writings of the Fathers,* we find that 
 the apostles, before their deaths, gave the power 
 which they had received from Christ, along with 
 their bishoprics, to their lawful successors; and 
 these successors gave the same to their own suc¬ 
 cessors, and so on in a regular line down to the 
 . present day. Among those histories, we find 
 the apostolic power, which Christ gave to .St. 
 Peter, who went and fixed his bishopric at 
 Pome, where he left his see and powers to his 
 lawful successors. These have come down, with 
 
 *Irenasus, Tertullian, St. Optatus, and St. Austin. 
 
100 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 a regular succession, to the present Pope Pius 
 IX., with whom all the Catholic bishops and 
 priests in the world hold communion. Now 
 here every Catholic priest can say what no other 
 minister can say with truth: “The Gospel which 
 I preach, and the holy sacraments which I ad¬ 
 minister to the faithful, I have received power to 
 preach and to administer, from such a Catholic 
 bishop, who was consecrated by another Catholic 
 bishop; and so on in a regular succession, which 
 reaches up to the apostles themselves! ” 
 
 IV. The Catholic Church has received not 
 only her orders from the apostles, but also Her 
 mission or power to exercise those orders in the 
 Church. Thus can each Catholic priest say to 
 his flock: “ I am sent to preach the Gospel, and 
 to administer the sacraments by such a Catholic 
 bishop, who received authority for that purpose, 
 from the present Pope, who is a lawful successor 
 of St. Peter, in the Apostolic See of Pome.” 
 
 Q. Must not, then, the Protestant Church, in¬ 
 stead of leading men to heaven, infallibly lead 
 them to hell? 
 
 A. AVe certainly have too great reason to ap¬ 
 prehend it, particularly when we consider that 
 Christ has made two things necessary to salva¬ 
 tion : namely, true faith and good works; and, as 
 we have shown before that the Protestant Church 
 has not the true faith, it is impossible that her 
 works can save her. Again, we read in “ the 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 101 
 
 Book of Common Prayer,” that if a man wishes 
 to save his soul, he must believe — not the Prot¬ 
 estant Church, but the Catholic; for “ whosoever 
 will be saved before all things, it is necessary 
 that he hold the Catholic faith. Which faith, 
 except every one doth keep whole and undefiled, 
 without doubt he shall perish everlastingly.” * 
 And Dr. Pearson, a Protestant bishop, says: 
 “ The necessity of believing the Catholic Church 
 appears first, in this, that Christ hath appointed 
 it as the only way to eternal life. We read at 
 the first (Acts ii. 27), that the Lord added to the 
 Church daily such as should be saved; and what 
 was then daily done, hath been done since con¬ 
 tinually. Christ never appointed two w T ays to 
 heaven; nor did he build a Church to save some, 
 and make another institution for other men’s 
 salvation,” Acts iv. 12. “ There is no other name 
 under heaven given among men, whereby we 
 must be saved, but the name of Jesus; and that 
 name' is no otherwise given under heaven, than 
 in the (Catholic) Church. As none were saved 
 from the deluge but such as were within the ark 
 of Noah, framed for their reception by the com¬ 
 mand of God; as none of the first-born of Egypt 
 lived, but such as were within those habitations 
 whose door-posts were sprinkled with blood, by 
 the appointment of God, for their preservation; 
 
 * See Creed of St. Athanasius. 
 
102 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 \ 
 
 as uone of the inhabitants of Jericho could es¬ 
 cape the fire or sword but such as were within 
 the house of Iialiab, for whose protection a cov¬ 
 enant was made, so none shall ever escape the 
 eternal wrath of God, who belong not to the 
 ( Catholic ) Church of God.”* Here let us ex¬ 
 claim, with a holy saint, “ Come, brethren, our 
 Protestant friends, if it be your wish to be en- 
 grafted on the vine, I weep to see you as you 
 are, lopped off from its sacred stock. Count up 
 the Popes in the chair of Peter, and in that order 
 see which succeeded which. Conte—this is that 
 rock, over which the proud gates of hell can 
 never prevail. Come, for in this Church alone 
 you will find the greatest security, peace, and 
 comfort for every sad and dejected soul.” It is, 
 therefore, clear that the Protestant Church can 
 no more claim this mark than she could the other 
 three; consequently, she is neither One, Holy, 
 Catholic, nor Apostolical, and, consequently, 
 cannot be the true Church of Christ: whilst, on 
 the other hand, I see plainly that the Catholic 
 Church is truly Apostolical; therefore, she has 
 all the four marks, which point her out to be the 
 true Church. From all that has been said con¬ 
 cerning the marks of the Church of God, it is 
 most clear that the Roman Catholic alone has 
 the fairest claim to them all. 
 
 * Expos, of the Creed, Edit. 1609. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 103 
 
 DIALOGUE VI. 
 
 On some of the Pretended Errors of the Roman 
 Catholic Church. 
 
 Q. But, then, clo not the Protestants say that 
 the Catholic religion has fallen into many errors? 
 
 A. It has always been the practice of schis¬ 
 matics and heretics to vilify and belie their 
 mother Church, and the Protestants, of course, 
 will say many strange things about the Catholic 
 religion; but they cannot prove that she has ever 
 fallen into ONE error; for all these pretended 
 errors, when they come to be examined, are 
 found to be nothing but the lies of her enemies; 
 the fact is, the Protestants do not understand the 
 Catholic religion, and therefore, as the apostle 
 St. Jude observes, they will be speaking evil of 
 those things which they know not , Jude i. 10. 
 
 Q. Is it not an error, to say with Catholics, 
 that the Bible is not a sufficient rule of faith? 
 
 A. No; the Catholics respect the Bible as the 
 Word of God, and own it to be the greatest au¬ 
 thority, and that it is capable of leading a man 
 to all truth, when it is rightly understood. But 
 they believe, that the Bible alone, as liable to be 
 misunderstood by any private person, is not a 
 sufficient rule of faith, and therefore cannot in¬ 
 fallibly lead a man to the kingdom of God. In 
 fact, that the Bible alone is not a sufficient rule, 
 
104 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 good sense will easily show. For, in the first 
 place, if a man is to build his religion on the 
 Bible, just as he himself understands it, he must 
 know, and be quite sure of, six things. 1st, lie 
 must know, that the book which he holds in his 
 hand is the real and true Bible. 2dly, That he 
 has the whole of the Bible. 3dly, That the Bible 
 is inspired. 4thly, That the Bible is not cor¬ 
 rupted. 5thly, That he can understand it. Ctlily, 
 That it contains all things necessary to salvation. 
 
 I. lie must know that the book which he 
 holds in his hand is the real and true Bible. 
 Now this no Protestant can know by his own 
 private judgment, because the Bible is nothing 
 but a book, or dead letter, which cannot give 
 evidence to itself.* Besides, it is agreed upon 
 amongst the learned, that together with the tem¬ 
 ple aiid city of Jerusalem, the Bible written by 
 the hand of Moses, and the ancient prophets, was 
 destroyed by the Assyrians, under Nebuchad¬ 
 nezzar. f And though the Bible was replaced by 
 a true copy, at the end of the Babylonish captiv¬ 
 ity, through the care of the prophet Ezra, yet 
 this copy was also destroyed in the following 
 persecution of Antiochus.J Therefore a person, 
 by his own private judgment, cannot tell whether 
 he has the true and real Bible or not. 
 
 *IIook. Eccles. Polit. b. iii., c. 8. 
 
 t Brett’s Dissert. Bishop Watson’s Collection, Vol. III., p. 5. 
 
 JIbid. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 105 
 
 II. When a Protestant has got a Bible, he 
 must be sure that no part of it was lost, because 
 if any part of the Bible is wanting, then he has 
 got only a part, and not all the Word of God. 
 Now I can show the Protestant, that many parts 
 of the Bible are wanting. For a learned author 
 proves, that no less than twenty books are quite 
 lost! * If you doubt what I say, go and look in 
 vour Bible for some of the following texts: — 
 Num. xxi. 14, It is said in the book of the Wars of 
 the Lord. Where is this book? Joshua x. 13, 
 Is not this written in the Ijook of Jashar ? Now, I 
 ask the Protestant, where is this book of Jashar? 
 I. Samuel x. 25, Then Samuel told the people the 
 manner of the kingdom , and wrote it in a book, and 
 laid it before the Lord. This is lost. Again: I. 
 Kings iv. 32 ,Solomon spoke three thousand prov¬ 
 erbs , and his sojiqs were one thousand and five. 
 Where are all these proverbs and songs? Again: 
 I. Chron. xxix. 29, The acts of David, first and 
 last, are written in the books of Samuel the seer, 
 and the book of Nathan the prophet, and the book 
 of Gad the seer. Where are the hooks of these 
 two latter prophets? Again: II. Chron. ix. 29, 
 Are they not written in the book of Nathan the 
 prophet, and in the prophecy of Abijah the Shilon- 
 ite, and in the visions of Iddo the seer ? These 
 books are all lost. In the xii. 15, are they not 
 
 *Contzen, Preface upon the Four Gospels. 
 
106 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 written in the book of Shemeiah the prophet, and in 
 Iddo the seer , concerning genealogies ? These are 
 lost also. In the xiii. 22, Ilis ways and his say¬ 
 ings are written in the story of the prophet Iddo. 
 This book is lost. In the xx. 34, They are written 
 in the book of Jehu. Ariel in the xxxiv. 3, They 
 are written among the sayings of the seers. Lastly, 
 St. Paul wrote three Epistles to the Corinthians. 
 The lirst is lost. For in that which we call the 
 1st Cor. ix., St. Paul says, I wrote to you in an 
 Egoistic. Where is this Epistle which he wrote 
 to them? Again, St. Paul commands to be read 
 in the Church the Epistle from Laodicea, and 
 that ye likewise read the Epistle from Laodicea, 
 Colossians, iv. 16. This is lost. And there are 
 also many things which Jesus did, the ivhich, if they 
 should be written every one, I suppose that even the 
 world itself could not contain the books that should 
 be written, John, xx. 25. St. Justin, writing 
 against Tryphon, says, “The Jews made away 
 with many books of the Old Testament, that the 
 New might not seem to agree with it.” There¬ 
 fore the Protestant has not got the whole of the 
 Bible, but only a small part of the Word of God. 
 
 III. lie must know that the Bible is inspired, 
 which no Protestant can do by his own private 
 judgment. For where does the Bible inform us 
 that Moses was inspired when he wrote it? Or 
 that the apostles were inspired when they wrote 
 the Gospel? They were by nature men liable to 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 107 
 
 error, and how can a Protestant find. out that 
 they were infallible writers? 
 
 IV. A Protestant must be sjire that his Bible 
 is not corrupted, but that it is, word for word, 
 just as it came from the pens of the writers. 
 This he cannot do by his own private judgment. 
 For the Bible was written in Hebrew, Greek, 
 and Latin, and therefore it is not in the same 
 language in which it was written. The Bibles 
 that were translated into English by Tindal, 
 Coverdale, and Queen Elizabeth's bishops, were 
 so abominably corrupted as to cause a general 
 outcry against them by some of the most learned 
 Protestants, in which King James I. joined.* 
 “ In TindaFs Bible, Bishop Tunstel noted no 
 less than two thousand corruptions, in his trans¬ 
 lation of the New Testament.” f Mr. Broughton, 
 a learned Protestant, wrote to the Lords of the 
 Council to beg for a new translation; “for,” says 
 he, “ that which is now in England is full of 
 errors.” And he tells the bishops, “ that their 
 public translation of the Scripture into English 
 is such that it perverts the text of the Old Tes¬ 
 tament in eight hundred and forty-eight places, 
 and that it causes many to reject the New Tes¬ 
 tament, and to run into eternal flames.” X Sta- 
 phylus found in Martin Luther’s New Testament 
 
 * Bishop Watson’s Collect., vol. iii., p. 98. 
 
 f Table of certain places Rhenish Testa, 
 
 \ Triple Chord, p. 14. 
 
108 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 alone about one thousand corruptions; and, in a 
 petition to King James I., it is asserted “that 
 the translation of*the Psalms comprised in the 
 Book of Common Prayer, doth, in addition, sub- 
 traction and alteration, differ from the truth of 
 the Hebrew in at least two hundred places.” * 
 Only look at Psalm xiv. in the Protestant Bible, 
 and you will find four whole verses in the Prayer 
 Book which are left out of the Bible. If these 
 four verses are Scripture, why are they left out 
 Of the Bible? And if they are not Scripture, 
 why do t lie Protestants mark them down as such 
 in the Book of Common Prayer? The plain 
 truth is, that the Protestant Church has corrupted 
 the Word of God, by either adding to, or taking 
 awag from, the words of this prophecy. 
 
 V. lie must be sure that he can understand 
 it by his own private judgment. Now this no 
 Protestant can do; for the Bible 'says, that no 
 prophecy of Scripture is of any private interpreta¬ 
 tion, II. Peter i. 20, and that in St. Paul’s epistles 
 there are some things hard to be understood, which 
 they that are unlearned and unstable ivrest, as they 
 do also the other Scriptures, unto their own destruc¬ 
 tion, iii. 16. Now if the Bible is so very easy to 
 be understood, how conies it that the unlearned 
 mistake the true sense, and by so doing procure 
 their own damnation? The disciples going to 
 
 * Petr. pp. 75, 79. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 109 
 
 Emmaus did not understand the Bible till Christ 
 himself explained it to them; neither did the 
 eunuch of Ethiopia, for Philip said to him, Dost 
 thou understand what thou readest ? And he said , 
 How can I, except some one show me? (Acts viii. 
 31.) Again, if the Bible is so very clear, how 
 comes it that scarcely two Protestants under* 
 stand any one text of the Bible in the same 
 sense? For example, the Protestants have enu¬ 
 merated no fewer than thirty-six different opin¬ 
 ions (of their holy apostle, Luther) on the’ single 
 article of the Eucharist, in these few words,* 
 u this is my body,” which seems very easy to be 
 understood. There are among the Sectaries no 
 less than eighty different interpretations put on 
 these words! f Again, I would ask the Prot¬ 
 estant how he understands the following texts: 
 Call no man father upon earth, neither be you 
 called masters, for one is your master, Christ, 
 Matt, xxiii. 9, 10. If any man sue thee at law, to 
 take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also, 46. 
 Give to every man that asketh of thee; and of him 
 that taketh away thy goods ask'him not again, Luke 
 vi. 33. When thou makest a dinner or a supper, 
 call not thy friends, nor thy brethren, xiv. 12. 
 Hundreds of seeming contradictions occur in 
 Scripture, which show that the Bible of itself is 
 not clear, even with regard to our moral duties; 
 
 * Catholic Manual, Intro., p. 82. 
 
 t Collet. Dogma, Vol. II., p. 520. 
 
no 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 and hence a great saint and scholar exclaims, 
 “ there are more things in Scripture that I am 
 ignorant of, than those I know.”* 
 
 VI. A Protestant must know that the Bible 
 contains all tilings necessary to salvation. Now 
 this no man can know by his own private judg¬ 
 ment; for in what chapter, or in*what verse, 
 docs the Bible say clearly that just such and such 
 things are necessary to salvation, and that we 
 must believe and do nothing more? On the 
 other hand, I can tell you, that a man must be¬ 
 lieve and do many things which are nowhere in 
 plain terms contained in the Bible. This is con¬ 
 firmed by Montague, a Protestant bishop, where 
 he says, that “ there are six hundred particulars 
 instituted by God in the point of religion, com¬ 
 manded and used in the Church, of which we 
 own, that the Scripture delivers or teaches no 
 such thing.” f In the first place, a man must 
 believe “ that the Holy Ghost is neither made 
 nor begotten, but does proceed, and that from 
 the Father and Son. And that he who will be 
 saved must believe this. For this is an article 
 of the Catholic faith, which, except a man be¬ 
 lieve faithfully and steadfastly, lie cannot be 
 saved.” f Again, to baptize little children is 
 nowhere mentioned in the Bible; and yet, if 
 they die without baptism, they cannot be saved. 
 
 *St. Aug. Ep. a Januar. 
 t Creed of St. Athanasius. 
 
 f Origen. 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Lastly, the keeping holy the Sunday is a thing 
 absolutely necessary to salvation, and yet this is 
 nowhere put down in the Bible; on the con¬ 
 trary, the Bible says, Remember the Sabbath-day 
 to keep it holy , Exod. xx. 8, which is Saturday , 
 and not Sunday; therefore the Bible does not 
 contain all things necessary to salvation, and, 
 consequently, cannot be a sufficient rule of faith. 
 Now here let me ask a Protestant, can he with 
 safetv trust his salvation to a mere book, which 
 he cannot prove to be the Word of God; a book 
 which he cannot understand; a book which the 
 unlearned and unstable read to their own dam¬ 
 nation ; a book that has lost many of its parts; 
 a book which is most shamefully corrupted, and 
 which does not contain all things necessary to 
 salvation? No; the Almighty never intended 
 that every man should make his own religion 
 out of the Bible, else he would never have estab¬ 
 lished a Church, and commanded all to hear and 
 obey the same, under pain of eternal damnation, 
 Matt, xviii. 16; Mark xvi. 16. 
 
 Q. But does not the Catholic Church forbid 
 the people to read the Bible in English? 
 
 A. No; the Catholic Church wishes the people 
 to read the Bible; but then it must be a true 
 copy, and not the Protestant one, "which is false 
 and corrupt; and, moreover, they mTist read it 
 with due submission to the Catholic Church, to 
 whom alone the privilege belongs to give the 
 
112 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 true meaning of the Bible. The Catholic Church, 
 so far from undervaluing the Bible, had pre¬ 
 served it pure for fifteen hundred years before 
 the Protestants had existence; and she has con¬ 
 firmed many of her most solemn decrees from 
 its sacred text. She ha's composed her prayers, 
 her catechisms, and her liturgy out of the Holy 
 Bible. Finally, she commands her pastors, 
 whose business it is to instruct the faithful, to 
 read and to study the Bible without intermission, 
 knowing that all Scripture is given by inspiration 
 of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, 
 for correction, for instruction in 7'ighteousness. — 
 II. Tim. iii. 
 
 Q. But do not Catholics pray to images, and 
 worship wooden gods? 
 
 fi. No; they do not pray to images, neither 
 do they worship wooden gods. “ The Catholic 
 faith and practice is, to worship One God in 
 Trinity, and Trinity in Unity; ” and the Catholic 
 catechism says, “ that wo must not pray to 
 images, for they have no life nor sense to hear 
 or to help 11 s.” 
 
 Q. Does not the Bible say, Thou shall not make 
 to thyself any graven image, nor the likeness of any¬ 
 thing. Thou shall not bow down thyself to them, 
 nor worship them, Exod. xx. 4, o. 
 
 A. No; Protestants indeed read in their Bible, 
 any graven image, but it ought to be a graven 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 113 
 
 thing; * thus the Word of God itself is corrupted 
 to make the ignorant people believe that the 
 Catholics are idolators, because they have im¬ 
 ages, and that the Protestants are innocent, 
 though they, likewise, have images at home; 
 nay, even in their churches they have the absurd 
 figures of the lion and the unicorn, stretching 
 their paws over the tables of the law, instead of 
 the pious picture of our Saviour expiring on the 
 cross. How absurd is their conduct in this re¬ 
 spect! They are scandalized at the Catholics for 
 having images in their chapels, and at the same 
 time take no notice of the senseless images in 
 their own church, like the Lamian witches, 
 who, at home, could see nothing, and from home, 
 could see everything. What, therefore, is the 
 true meaning of this commandment? It forbids 
 us to make a graven thing, to be worshipped or 
 prayed to; that is, it forbids us to make them 
 our gods, or to give them any honor whatsoever 
 that belongs to God. But this commandment 
 does not forbid to make an image for ornament, 
 etc., because after the commandment was given, 
 God himself commanded Moses to make images 
 — two cherubims of gold — Exod. xxv. 18, and 
 place them upon the ark; and from between 
 these two images, the Lord would give his ordi¬ 
 nances to Moses, 22, and Bezaleel made two clier - 
 
 *Pesel, eidolon, glupton, and sculptile, in the Hebrew, Greek, 
 and Latin, denote a graven thing, or idol. 
 
 6 
 
114 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 ubims of gold, and put them on the two ends of the 
 mercy-seat, Exod. xxxvii. 7. After this, the Lord 
 commanded Moses to make another image: And 
 the Lord said unto Moses, make thee a fiery serpent 
 — and Moses made a serpent of brass, and pid it 
 upon a pole; and it came to pass, that if a serpent 
 had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of 
 brass, he lived, Numb. xxi. 8, 9. Afterwards, 
 when the tabernacle came to be placed in God’s 
 temple, the temple itself had graven cherubims on 
 the wall. And in the most holy house he made two 
 cherubims of image work — and they stood on their 
 feet, and their faces ivere inward. And he made 
 the veil of blue, and purple, and crimson, and fine 
 linen, and wrought cherubim thereon, II. Chron. 
 
 iii. 7, 10, 13, 14. Also, he made a molten sea — 
 and two rows of oxen ivere cast, when it was cast, 
 and it stood upon twelve images of oxen, II. Chron. 
 
 iv. 2, 3, 4. And in the borders thereof he graved 
 cherubims, lions, and palm-trees, I. Kings, vii. 36. 
 Again, the king’s throne was surrounded with 
 images, and two lions stood beside the stays, and 
 twelve lions stood there — upon the six steps, x. 19, 
 20. The prophet Ilosea, where he laments the 
 desolation of the temple, also laments the want 
 of images. For the children of Israel shall abide 
 many days without a sacrifice and without an 
 image, Ilosea, iii. 4. Moreover, we read in his¬ 
 tory, that the woman who was cured by our 
 Divine Saviour, Matt. ix. 20, went and made 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 115 
 
 images of Christ, and herself kneeling at his 
 feet; and she placed them before the door of her 
 house in CaBserea Phillippi; and an herb sprang 
 out at the foot of them, and grew for many 
 years, which cured them that had the same 
 disorder. 
 
 Q. But is it not wrong for Catholics to bow 
 down before images? for the Bible says, thou 
 shcilt not bow down thyself to them, Exod. xx. 5. 
 
 A. Neither does the Word of God say, thou 
 shall not bow down thyself to them , but thou shall 
 not adore them. If it is not lawful for Catholics 
 to bow down in their chapels, how comes it to be 
 lawful for Protestants to bow down themselves 
 when they enter their churches? Again, w T hy do 
 Protestants suffer beggars to bow down at their 
 doors for a morsel of bread? Their little chil¬ 
 dren bow down before the rich; and all the 
 Protestants bow down before the Lord’s Supper, 
 as they call it, and even to an empty chair, in 
 order to show their respect and veneration to an 
 earthly king; how much more lawful is it for 
 Catholics to bow down before a crucifix, in order 
 to show their respect and veneration to Jesus 
 Christ, the King of kings and Lord of lords, at 
 the very sound of whose name every knee shall 
 bow of things on earth, and things under the earth ? 
 (Phil. ii. 10.) 
 
 Q. If all this be true, is it not very wrong in 
 
116 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 Protestants to tell such lies of the Catholic 
 Church? 
 
 A. If these were the only lies, they would 
 have less to answer for; but, alas! it always has 
 been, and still is, the practice of the Protestants 
 to belie every part of the Catholic doctrine. To 
 refute all their calumnies and misrepresentations 
 would require a large volume; I therefore take 
 leave to recommend to Protestants to read Dr. 
 Milner’s End to Religious Controversy, or to 
 consult some Catholic priest, from whom they 
 will have an answer to all the objections that 
 ignorance or malice may suggest. 
 
 In the beginning of our discourse, I showed 
 you that the Son of God came from heaven to 
 teach mankind a religion which was most pleas¬ 
 ing to himself, and which he commanded to be 
 received, to be believed, and to be professed 
 throughout the whole world. This command 
 was so express, that he pronounces a curse 
 against all those who should reject it; he that 
 believes shall not be damned , Mark vi. 16. He 
 commissioned his apostles to preach the same 
 doctrine, and they used their utmost endeavors 
 to convince mankind of the necessity of submit¬ 
 ting to it; for St. Paul says, that there is but one 
 Lord, one Faith, ohe Baptism, Ephes. iv. 5. The 
 successors of the apostles have, in every age, 
 continued to teach the same, and to hold fast the 
 form of sound words, II. Tim. i. 13, delivered 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 117 
 
 down to them from the aiiostles by their pre¬ 
 decessors. And in order to preserve this doctrine 
 pure throughout all ages, and free from errors, 
 our Saviour promised to his apostles, and their 
 lawful successors, that he himself would always 
 abide with them, and, moreover, that he would 
 send them another comforter, even the Holy 
 Ghost, the Spirit of Truth, to guide them into 
 all truth, and continue with them forever. Be¬ 
 hold , says he, Matt, xxviii. 20, 1 am with you all 
 days, even to the end of the world. And, John xvi. 
 16, 17, I.will ask the Father, and he ivill give you 
 another comforter, that he may abide with you for¬ 
 ever, the Spirit of Truth. It is in consequence of 
 these promises, that St. Paul calls the Church of 
 God the pillar and support of truth, I. Tim. iii. 
 15. And our Saviour having thus promised to 
 support, assist, and direct his Church and its 
 pastors, said to them: He that heareth you heareth 
 me, and he that despiseth you despiseth me, and he 
 that despiseth me despiseth him that sent me, Luke 
 x. 16. But notwithstanding the express com¬ 
 mand of Christ for preserving his faith always 
 the same, notwithstanding the constant endeav¬ 
 ors of his ministers to teach and maintain this 
 same faith, yet many men full of pride and self- 
 conceit, and impatient of subjection, have denied 
 that Christ has fulfilled his promise; they have 
 therefore departed from the Church of Christ, 
 and from the unity of Faith; and by abounding 
 
118 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 in their own sense, and following the vicious 
 inclinations of their own hearts, have made 
 multitudes of different religions, and bewildered 
 themselves in labyrinths of error. Thus fulfil¬ 
 ling St. Paul's words, where he says, The time 
 will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; 
 but after their own lusts shall they heap to them¬ 
 selves teachers having itching cars: and they shall 
 turn away their eyes from the truth, and shall be 
 turned unto fables, II. Tim. iv. 3, 4. But, thanks 
 be to God, amidst all those mulitudes of different 
 religions, and jarring sects of Protestants — the 
 Unitarians, Calvinists, Methodists, Presbyterians, 
 Kilhamites, Jumpers, Dunkers, Banters, etc., 
 etc. — you can easily find out the true religion of 
 Jesus Christ, by following the rules which have 
 been laid down in this small treatise. But then 
 you must bring along with you the following 
 dispositions: a spirit of piety, begg'iifg'of the 
 Lord to put you right, if you are wrong; a 
 spirit of innocence and purity; and a spirit of 
 humility and candor. With these dispositions, 
 examine the subject well, for no security can be 
 too great where eternity is at stake. And oh! 
 remember that the unbelieving shall have their 
 portion .in the pool burning with fire and brimstone, 
 ivhich is the second death, Bev. xxi. 8. Ah! this 
 it is that makes the True Beligion of so great 
 importance, in order that we may escape that 
 miserable eternity into which the unbelieving are 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 119 
 
 to be cast forever; to suffer all those dreadful 
 torments which are described in the Word of 
 God; and this for no term of years, but for as 
 many hundred thousand millions of ages as there 
 are drops of water in the ocean, or atoms in the 
 air; in a word, for a never-ending eternity. 
 
120 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 THE MOTIVES UPON WHICH THE NEW RELIGION 
 WAS BROUGHT IN. 
 
 It is a great argument in favor of Christianity, 
 that (as we find by all the circumstances of its 
 first establishment) neither ambition, avarice, 
 passion, or lust, or any other branch of self-love 
 had any share in that work, either by influencing 
 the first teachers of the Christian religion, or 
 their first converts and followers, and that neither 
 the one nor the other had any honor, interest, or 
 pleasure to expect in this world from embracing 
 a religipn which exposed them to the utter loss 
 of all this world could give. But the case was 
 quite otherwise with regard to the pretended 
 Reformation , where both the reformers and the 
 reformed had so many human considerations to 
 bias them in the choice of the new religion, that 
 we cannot help suspecting their motives were 
 not pure. As for the preachers of the Reformat ion, 
 they began the work by giving a loose to their 
 incontinence, by breaking through their solemn 
 vows made to God, by casting off their monastic 
 discipline, by laying aside their canonical hours 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 121 
 
 of prayer, their regular fasts, etc.—Was all this 
 for God’s sake? They gave up, to the great ones 
 of this world, all the rights and possessions of 
 the Church, and by this means kept them close 
 to their interests; not to say that they have 
 gained over whole kingdoms (as Sweden and 
 Denmark) by gratifying the avarice of the kings.* 
 Is it likely that these princes and great ones had 
 no other views in seizing upon church lands, and 
 improving their estates at the expense of relig¬ 
 ion, than the greater glory of God? The people 
 also were inveigled by these new gospellers, by 
 that Christian liberty, which they so much 
 preached up; a liberty which exempted them 
 from all obligation of church laws, from fasting, 
 confession, penitential austerities, etc. A liberty 
 of contradicting their church guides, and disbe¬ 
 lieving whatever they please in the difficult mys¬ 
 teries of faith. In fine, a liberty which reduced 
 all to faith alone, divesting good works of all 
 merit, and giving up the keeping of God’s com¬ 
 mandments as a thing impossible. Is there any¬ 
 thing in all this that can serve to convince an 
 impartial judge that either the teachers or fol¬ 
 lowers of such a Reformation had no intentions 
 or motives but what were pure and good? 
 
 But to leave the other branches of the Refor¬ 
 mation, in which our countrymen think them- 
 
 *See Heylin’s Cosmog., 2d edit., pp. 401, 4S4. 
 
122 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 selves less concerned, and to coniine our consid¬ 
 eration to the Reformation of England, such as it 
 is represented by historians of its own com¬ 
 munion, we shall scarce find one step taken 
 towards that grand revolution in religion, but 
 what was visibly influenced by some irregular 
 motive. 
 
 The first step that was made in this work was 
 the divesting the Pope of his authority in this 
 realm; and, upon what motive this was brought 
 about, Dr. Ileylin informs us, in the jireface to 
 the History of the Reformation : u King Henry,” 
 says he, “ being violently hurried with the trans¬ 
 port of some private affections, and, finding that 
 the Pope appeared the greatest obstacle to his 
 designs, he first divested him by degrees of his 
 supremacy. This opened the first way to the 
 Reformation , to which the king afforded no small 
 countenance out of politic ends.” 
 
 This first step was followed by another, which 
 was the dissolution of the religious houses, and 
 putting the revenues into the king’s hands; of 
 which I shall say no more, than that even Prot¬ 
 estants themselves, generally speaking, cannot 
 help condemning these proceedings, but are not 
 so charitable as to believe that the king or his 
 ministers were influenced herein by any other 
 motive than avarice. 
 
 In the days of King Edward VI., the Refor¬ 
 mation made a far greater progress by the favor 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 123 
 
 of the Duke of Somerset, Lord Protector, his 
 successor Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, and 
 the other great men about the court, than by the 
 inclinations either of the clergy or the people. 
 These great men of the court found their interest 
 in the Reformation , by making up their estates 
 out of the spoils of the Church, as may be seen 
 in Dr. Heylin’s history, who, though a great 
 friend to the Lord Protector, is forced to ac¬ 
 knowledge his manifold sacrileges in this kind; * 
 a demonstration that his zeal for Protestancy 
 was not grounded upon conscience. And, as 
 for the Duke of Northumberland, he acknowl¬ 
 edged publicly at his death, that being blinded 
 by ambition, he had acted all along against his 
 conscience; and what better judgment can we 
 make of the rest of the grandees of the court, 
 when we find those great sticklers for the Prot¬ 
 estant Reformation , as they pretended to be in 
 King Edward's days, all to a man, going to 
 Mass in King Henry’s time, and all returning to 
 Mass in Queen Mary’s? 
 
 But concerning the proceedings of these great 
 ones of the court, and the motives upon which 
 they proceeded, let us hear Dr. Heylin, in his 
 preface, where he tells us: “ That under color 
 of removing such corruptions as remained in the 
 Church, they had cast their eyes upon the spoil 
 
 * Pages 54, 72, 73, 116. 
 
124 
 
 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT 
 
 of shrines and images (though still preserved in 
 the greatest part of the Lutheran churches), and 
 the improving of their own fortunes by the chan¬ 
 try lands, all which most sacrilegiously they 
 divided amongst themselves.” Then, speaking 
 of the Zuinglian gospellers inveighing against 
 altars: “The touching of this string,” said he, 
 “ made excellent music to most of the court, who 
 had before cast many an envious eye on those 
 costly hangings, that massy plate, and other rich 
 and precious utensils which adorned these altars; 
 besides, there was no small spoil to be made of 
 copes — some of them being made of cloth of 
 tissue, of cloth of gold and silver, or embroi¬ 
 dered velvet. And might not these be hand¬ 
 somely converted into private uses, to serve as 
 carpets for their tables, coverlets to their beds, 
 or cushions to their chairs and windows? .Here¬ 
 upon some rude people are encouraged under¬ 
 hand to tear down some altars, which makes 
 way for an order of the council to take down all 
 the rest, and set up tables in their places, fob* 
 lowed by a commission to be executed in all 
 parts of the kingdom for seizing of the premises 
 for the use of the king. But as the grandees of 
 the court intended to defraud the king of so great 
 a booty, and the commissioners to put a cheat 
 upon the court lords, who employed them in it, 
 so they were both prevented in some places.by 
 the lords and gentry of the country, who thought 
 
THE TRUE RELIGION. 
 
 125 
 
 the altar cloths, together with the copes and 
 plate of their several churches, to he as necessary 
 for themselves as for any others. This change 
 drew on the alteration of the former liturgy.” 
 So far the doctor. 
 
 But as religion could not be changed without 
 the concurrence of the parliament, let us hear 
 from the same Protestant historian of what kind 
 of men this reforming parliament, which first 
 settled the Protestant religion in Great Britain, 
 was composed, and by what motives they were 
 influenced: “The parliament (of King Edward 
 VI.) met on the fourth of November, in which 
 the cards were so well packed that there Avas no 
 need of any other shuffling to the end of the 
 game. Though this parliament consisted of such 
 members as disagreed amongst themselves in re¬ 
 spect of religion, yet they agreed Avell enough 
 together in one common principle, which was to 
 serve the present time, and preserve themselves. 
 For, though a great part of the nobility and not a 
 few of the chief gentry in the House of Commons 
 were cordially affected to the'Church of Rome, 
 yet were they willing to grve way to all such acts 
 and statutes as Avere made against it, out of a 
 fear of losing such church lands as they Avere 
 possessed of, if that religion should prevail and 
 get up again. And for the rest, avIio either were 
 to make or improve their fortunes, there is no 
 question to be made, but that they came resolved 
 
126 A SURE WAY TO FIND OUT, ETC. 
 
 to further such a Bcformation as should most 
 visibly conduce to the advancement of their sev¬ 
 eral ends, which appears plainly by the strange 
 mixture of the acts and results thereof—some 
 tending to the present benefit and enriching of 
 particular persons, and some again being devised 
 of purpose to prepare a way for exposing the 
 revenues of the Church unto spoil and rapine.” 
 
 As Queen Elizabeth and her chief ministers 
 took the same method as the court of reformers 
 of King Edward’s days had done, enriching 
 themselves at the expense of the Church,* so we 
 have all the reason in the world to think that 
 they acted upon the like motives; though what 
 seems to have had the greatest influence upon 
 the queen to make her so close a friend to the 
 j Reformation was, “ That she knew full well that 
 her legitimation and the Pope’s supremacy could 
 not stand together, and that she could not pos¬ 
 sibly maintain the one without discarding the 
 other.” f 
 
 * As may be seen in Dr. Ileylin, pp. 2S0, 292, 293, 295, 310, 313, 
 
 328, etc. 
 
 fDr. Ileylin, p. 275. 
 

I 
 
 
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