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THE

QUARTERLY REVIEW.

ART. I.-1. The Book of the Roman Catholic Church, &c. By C. Butler, Esq. New Edition. London. 1824.

2. Strictures on the Poet Laureate's Book of the Church. By John Merlin.

3. Letter to C. Butler, Esq. By the Lord Bishop of Chester. 4. Answer to the Bishop of Chester. By C. Butler, Esq. 5. Lingard's History of England. Vols. 3. and 4. 6. Review of Fox's Book of Martyrs.

Nos. 1. to 40.

4to.

By W. E. Andrews.

7. Cobbett's History of the Reformation. Nos. 1. to 10. THE question at issue between the Church of England and that of Rome may be reduced to a single point; is the creed of the latter to be found in the Bible, or is it not? To this test the Protestant appeals with triumphant security; the Word of God bears witness in his favour, and he naturally acquiesces in its decision with perfect satisfaction. The apologists of the Church of England, however, from Jewel down to Marsh, have never feared to abandon this vantage ground; nor refused to combat on the wider and more various field of ecclesiastical history. There also, by tracing with accuracy as well the source, as the gradual growth of every error; by developing the progress of popery from the episcopal administration of a city, to the usurpation of dominion over the world, their success has been equally decisive; the sophistry of their adversaries has been incontrovertibly detected; and the testimony of the purer traditions of the church has been turned against the appellants to their authority. On the other hand, the favourite system of aggression, which the Roman Catholic writers, from the most ignorant bigot to the most powerful polemic, have adopted against the protestant faith, has been the crimination of the great leaders of the Reformation, in Germany, France, and England. Motives the most unworthy have been imputed to all those eminent men to whom we are indebted for our emancipation: avarice, licentiousness, cruelty, dissimulation have been charged against some of the purest and most upright of mankind; every action has been distorted with the most ingenious perversity, and where misrepresentation has failed, direct falsehoods have been advanced with an intrepidity, which the modern Romanist, in many instances, prudently and properly declines to exhibit. It is important, indeed, to remember, that many of these falsehoods are now rejected by the descendants of those who first propagated them;

VOL. XXXIII. NO. LXV.

A

them; because thus rejected, they throw a suspicious character over whatever rests on the same testimony uncorroborated by other authority. That cause which has been mainly supported by writers wanting in veracity is not unfairly supposed incapable of vindication on trust-worthy and unexceptionable evidence. The Protestant who reads the foreign histories of our Reformation, that of Davanzati for instance, or even Bossuet, is at first absolutely bewildered with assertions, supported by no proof whatever, but advanced in a tone as peremptory, as if they were 'truths of holy writ: as he proceeds, however, he finds so many statements which he knows to be false, that he recovers from the temporary shock which his faith has sustained, and settles into a rooted and perpetual mistrust of such authorities for the future.

It is obvious that, of these three modes of controversy, the first alone is conclusive; the second of great but subordinate importance; the last is not merely inconclusive, but recoils with tremendous and destructive force upon those who employ it. Take the worst of the Protestant leaders, as they are described by their enemies, even the cruel and lustful King Henry, who was indeed no Protestant, and, excepting his denial of the Papal supremacy, remained a Roman catholic to his life's end; and compare them with the Popes of the same period, as delineated by their own writers. It is perfectly intelligible, that Providence should overrule the will of the passionate and remorseless monarch, so that he should contribute to advance the great design of purifying the church from its corruption, and even by his crimes incidentally advance the cause of the Reformation. But that the vicegerent of God upon earth, the delegate of the meek and holy Jesus, the spiritual head of the communion of saints, the infallible oracle who was to pronounce upon the authority of every christian doctrine, and the soundness of every exposition of the word of God, should be a furious Julius II., a voluptuous Leo X., or a monster of every iniquity like Alexander VI.—this indeed is so enormous an improbability, that no subtle distinction between the personal and spiritual character of the Pope, no attempt to separate the man from the successor of St. Peter, can reconcile it with our notions of God's moral government. Burnet has put this argument with great force in his preface. After admitting the enormities of Henry VIII.'s reign, he subjoins,

'these are such remarkable blemishes, that as no man of ingenuity can go about the whitening them; so the poor Reformers drank so deep of that bitter cup, that it very ill becomes any of their followers, to endeavour to give fair colours to those red and bloody characters, with which so much of his reign is stained. But our church is not near so much concerned in the persons of those princes, under whom the Reformation

began,

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