This is all very well; but-My Letter!-My Arguments !My PROOFS, W. L.! I wish you had been thinking of these, when you were looking out for a finishing school to send me to "at the Court of the Great Mogul."

One of my arguments, indeed, he answers. by asking me whence I learnt it; and then sagely conjectures I had been acting the plagiarist on Mr. Blanco White, the reformed Catholic Priest. But why did he not reply to the argument, without filling ten or twelve lines with Mr. White's titles ? No matter whence the argument came; answer it fearlessly. Horace Bentley wrote it, without ever having seen Mr. White's book; and certainly now he feels no disposition to retort upon W. L. by inquiring into the genealogy of his proofs: their pedigree I would add nothing to their fame, and H. B. would scorn to reproach them with their humble parentage. But W. L. met an argument with a conjecture; now that conjecture is dissipated, like a mist from a mountain's brow; the argument stands, I need not say unshaken,-that it would have been had the conjecture been as happy as it was unfortunate, but unobscured and palpable. Then he endeavours to parry some of my thrusts by blustering assertions and stingless irony. He has hinted, indeed, in terms smooth and oily, but in a manner he would call ungentlemanly in me, that my quotations are dishonest. The man who, in any controversy, insinuates such a charge, without an attempt at proof, is entitled to universal contempt, and should be excluded the lists of honourable controversy. My citations may be false! As he evidently knew that many of them were true, and as to the rest, knew nothing about them, he might just as well have written " and they may be true.” This part of his letter, therefore, will be best read, like Hebrew, backwards. With his ignorance we have no concern, except to pity his exposure of it, and regret that it should have wasted so much of our time.

I think I might here justly dismiss him. But he has sheltered his wretched cause behind another sandy defence, from which I must briefly dislodge him, before I proceed. After I had piled upon him learned authorities, ancient and modern, and the very highest of which his Church boasts; he retorts upon me-"6 Aye, but these are not the Church." As this is a fair specimen of the lubicrous dialectics of his party, and of Mr. Charles Butler at their head, I shall attempt to dispose of it, before I proceed further. In the first place, how are we to know the Church's meaning, but through its most approved and standard writers; its honoured, and canonized, and authorized agents? Where shall we seek its opinions, but in its decrees, its canon laws, its bulls, its books of devotion, its Bible, its expurgated index? Pray W. L. tell us then what is the Church, and where may its whole creed be learnt? Who is its Supreme teacher, and where is the line of fallibility and infallibility? Is it still a terra incognita? The Catholic Church is infallible,

but its Bishops have always been at loggerheads upon the ubi -its seat. It cannot be the infallibility of St. Peter, for that was proved in an instant, to the apprehension of the merest clown, by miracle. The question is at this day as far advanced as ever from being settled among them. Bossuet taxed his eloquence and his genius long and fruitlessly to decide it. His opinions never were popular at Rome. But who can tell us what, and how much, the Church of Rome believes? The witnesses contradict each other. But who ought to know best; some obscure W. L. who confesses that he is not even an ecclesiastic, therefore, no authority; or the learned Cardinals, Popes, Bishops, Councils, and Saints, whose words I cited in my last letter, as their own expositions of the doctrine of their Church? W. L.'s assertions, and doubts, and conjectures, and " are you sures," and all the rest of his babble, are not worth a straw in this controversy. The only way to know what the Church of Rome believes and teaches, is that which I have adopted—of consulting its own Bible, its own Council of Trent, its Cardinals and Popes, down to his Holiness the XIIth Leo. W. L. or any other English Papist, may object and refuse these, but he does so only on the ground of the right of private judgment, and for the assertion of which, in some Popish countries at this day, his Church would find him a lodging in the prisons of the "Holy Inquisition." If the authorities I have quoted are not the Church, then what false and incompetent guides are such Councils, Popes, and Cardinals proved, who have said Ecclesia Docet-" the Church teaches," when such an unpretending laic as W. L. knows better than all of them, and can most uncourteously give them the lie, and say the Church teaches no such thing. Is this a dutiful son of the infallible Church? Doubtless we must allow him to be in the secret of his own faith; perhaps he aspires to be the Ahithophel of his Holy Mother; his letter at least suggests strong suspicions of his ambitious projects, but if so, all we can say is, that it will require neither miracle nor prayer to turn his wisdom into foolishness. Really, Mr. Editor, what with Scripture on the one hand, and his own Church on the other, your correspondent has now so often been in the situation of Paul's ship, when it "fell into the place where two seas met," that I must act by him as the sailors did by the ship, leave him to his fate; for he is aground past all recovery, nothing can possibly get him off. He must go to pieces before he can say a single "Ave Maria !” He pledged himself to a recantation upon the proof of error; the proof has been heaped upon him to an overflow-but I would not recommend the inhabitants of B- -e to expect to meet him at the parish Church next Sunday morning; for he made an ignorant and rash vow, which Popish casuists will teach him there is no necessity to keep; and for which, in case of being worsted, he possibly contrived to antedate the absolution of his conscience, if not of

his priest. However, though he should not recant his religion, he may repent of the Cacoethes Scribendi; as I hear some of his brethren have regretted his presumption, and are about giving him a gentle hint. But with these private matters I don't wish to interfere. Perhaps the discipline I have bestowed upon him, may convince him that, whenever his fingers again itch to thrash the Protestants, there are other things he may thrash, to better effect, and with less risk of being paid in his own coin. As I have no wish to protract the controversy, and W. L. has not attempted an argument against my last, I hope, Mr. Editor, I may now consider myself entitled to proeeed with my letters weekly, without paying him any further respect. He has placed himself completely "hors de combat," and I shall wish to advance, without further interruption, to complete what I proposed, which I think may be done in two or three more letters.

Now FOR THE POPEDOM.-I shall first display the opinions of eminent Catholic writers upon this extraordinary assumption of authority; and then show that the office and pretensions of the Pope, have no foundation either in Scripture, history, or reason. The Lateran Council, addressing Pope Julius II. in an oration delivered by their spokesman Marcellus, says, "Take care that we lose not that salvation, that life and breath, which thou hast given us. For thou art shepherd, thou art physician, thou art governor, thou art husbandman, thou finally art ANOTHER GOD ON EARTH.” "ALTER DEUS in terris." (Concil. Edit. Bir. Colon. Agrip. 1618.) Dr. Stapleton calls his holiness "the Supreme Deity upon Earth."" Planeque Supremi in Terris Numinis." (Staple. Op. Lutet. Paris, 1620.) This work was approved by the "Licensers of Books," and authorised to be printed for the edification of the Church, "as containing nothing contrary to faith and morality." I formerly referred to an Extravagant of Pope John XXII. in the gloss upon which it is said to be heresy not to believe that our Lord God the Pope could not so ordain as he hath ordained. The words are "Credere autem DOMINUM DEUM NOSTRUM PAPAM conditorem dictæ decretalis et istius sic non potuisse statuere, prout statuit, hæreticum censeretur." (Lib.VI.Decret, Bonif. VIII. Constit. Clem. et Extravag.) But, these are not the Church! Very well. The Pope is its head, and has authority over the whole body. Pope Nicholas assumed the very title of God, and argued from it that no man ought to judge him. His words are these:-" It is evident that the Pontiff, whom it is certain that pious Prince Constantine called God, cannot be at all bound or loosed by the secular power. [Here is a little bit of their politics.] And it is manifest that God cannot be judged by men!!" (Decret. Par. 1. Distinct. 96, Cap. 7. Edit. Lugd. 1661.) Further instances of the same blasphemy may be found in the following authors. Muretus, Orat. 5, Vol. 1, p. 54, Edit. Ingolstad. Ib. p. 70, and 124.

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Paul. Emil. De Reb. Fran. Lib. 7.-Papists will say the Church is not answerable for the follies of individuals. But this will not suffice to extricate them. For the Church pretends to infallibility, and this infallibility is said to inhere in the Pope, or in a general Council. But the Council of Trent committed to the Pope the authority of examining all books, and the Church, that is the Council with the Pope or without the Pope, no matter, for I have them both ways, has made itself amenable for the Books the Pope licenses, and none of these absurdities are yet rescinded either by Pope, Council, or Church. The book published by order of Pope Gregory XIII. 'entitled Corpus Juris Canonici, contains Nicholas's logic, that "the Pope cannot be judged by man because he is God." The Oration of Marcellus was spoken at the head of the Lateran Council, to Pope Julius II. heard by them, assented to by them, received by his Holiness as theirs, and therefore, according to the doctrine of the infallibility of Councils, the appellation of God on Earth is a dogma of their Church.-I am no stranger to the controversies which have agitated this infallible Church respecting the seat of its infallibility. It cannot be disputed that the general opinion has been, and perhaps is still, among Continental Catholics, that its residence is in the Pope; but as I am writing for the conviction of English Catholics, I will meet them upon their own ground, They maintain that the Pope is not infallible per se, but with his general council. Well! we will take the Pope simply as what they affirm him to be-the Visible Head of Christ's Universal Church-the true legitimate Successor of St. Peter.-The foundation and superstructure of the Papacy is composed, by its wisest and most temperate master-builders, of these three stages :-First and foremost, the supremacy of Peter among the Apostles.-2nd, the Episcopacy or Primacy of Peter over the Church of Rome.-3rdly, the undisputed unbroken succession from him down to his existing Holiness. These are the three grand links that hang or dissolve together. If they were of genuine materials, then there would be some hope of success, but if we show that any one of them is weak, the whole fabric totters. I shall be able to prove to every reasonable man that not one of these propositions is valid. The supremacy of Peter over his brethren is the foundation-plot. Matt. xvi. 18, 19, "Thou art Peter, and upon this rock will I build my Church," &c. "And I will give thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven," &c. There, they say, is the supremacy of Peter as plain as the sun in the firmament. Let us try it. Is it clear that by the words "upon this rock,' is meant Peter? Bellarmine maintains the affirmative,-the whole Church of Rome, I believe, maintains the affirmative. I deny it, upon these obvious grounds. St. Peter never exercised any supremacy over the other Apostles. He could not do so,-for Christ had said, "Be not ye called Rabbi," &c. "Call no man Father (literally Pope, Papa) upon Earth."

"The Princes of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them, but IT SHALL NOT BE SO AMONG YOU." They had disputed who should be chief; but Christ silenced their disputation at once, by prohibiting all such notions of superiority. The meaning of Christ is plain, when he said "on this rock;" it was Peter's confession of the Divine Nature of Jesus Christ-"Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Against the false gloss of the Church of Rome, I oppose the positive prohibition of any such supremacy, by Jesus Christ. I could cite the opinion of St. Augustine, the Council of Basil, St. Ambrose, St. Origen, and others.-names of which the Church of Rome is dishonestly proud-for they are not hers. The earliest fathers say that the "rock" was the confession of Peter's faith. I would give the words of all these authorities, but W. L. might again doubt them, and I must be brief. The supremacy of Peter would be a contradiction to Christ's commands of equality, and Peter never assumed, and the other Apostles never conceded to him, one iota of superiority. St. Paul withstood and blamed him, and claimed equality with him and all the Apostles, when he said, "I am not a whit behind the very chief of the Apostles;" his errors and infirmities were greater than those of all the others, and he was never admitted by the first Christians, or any of the Gentile Churches spoken of in Scripture, to have been exalted above his brethren. What, then, becomes of Peter's Supremacy? To be sure it is a bad case for Rome; but the worthy Apostle certainly would not regret to have it remitted to those "muddy and strawy ages," whence it first emanated.-2. To make good the authority of the Popedom, the Church maintains that Peter was Bishop of Rome, and that the line of true Bishops has been continued there ever since. The first assertion is false. Peter was Bishop of no particular Church. He was the Apostle of the Circumcision, as Paul was of the Gentiles. In his Apostleship he could have no successor, for the office required an eye-witness to the resurrection of Christ.-(Acts i. 21, 22.) But where does the Scripture say he ever even went to Rome, much less that he was Bishop of that Church? Had he been Bishop of Rome, it could have given him no right to lord it over the whole Church, as the Pope of Rome does. But we stand to the fact, that Peter never was Bishop of Rome; we challenge our adversaries to the proof. The utter silence of the Scripture upon this point, explodes their second master-principle. The Papacy has no foundation in our infallible authority, and no other authority can give it strength.-3. They claim regular undisputed succession for their Popes from Peter. This is as gross a piece of delusion as all the rest. In the first place, could any man be a legitimate successor who denied Peter's faith, and polluted the holy cause for which he suffered ? A succession of Holinesses!! Yes, there was John XXII, who denied the immortality of the soul, John XXIII, Gregory XII, Benedict