sideration will shew that such difference affords a strong argument against conceding those claims. Every false or corrupt religion is a sanguinary and persecuting religion. It was so with the religion of Heathenism, as the character of the Heathen wars before Christianity, and of the Heathen perse→ cutions after its introduction, sufficiently testifies. Now, such has been remarkably the case with the Romish Religion, which from its earliest period has been a Religion of bloodshed and of bigotry; in proof of which fact, its whole history might be cited, but the present space will only permit the enumeration of a few instances; such as the Papal wars in Italy fomented and perpetuated by the pretended successors of the PRINCE OF PEACE-the civil wars in France, which lasted a whole century, and which are so ably recorded by DAVILAthe continental wars of Germany, France, and Flanders, as recorded by DE THOU-the massacre of St. Bartholomew in Paris and the Provinces, for which the Pope of that day solemnly returned public thanks to Almighty God in the Cathedral of St. Peter-the cruelties of the Duke of ALVA, and of the Jesuits in the Low Countries-the horrors which followed the Revocation of the Edict of Nantz by that splendid scourge of Protestant Europe, Louis XIV.-the abominable cruelties of the Inquisition in Spain, Portugal, and elsewhere, from the earliest period of its establishment-the martyrdoms of England in the reign of PHILIP and MARYthe appalling conspiracy of the 5th of November, and the other sanguinary plots of the Reigns of ELIZABETH and JAMES I.-the atrocious and extensive massacre of the Protestants in Ireland in the Reign of CHARLES I., as recorded by Sir JOHN TEMPLE-and the Irish Rebellion in 1798, whose main object was undoubtedly and avowedly the extinction of Protestantism, and which was founded and conducted by the Romish Priests, as authenticated, beyond all controversy, by Sir RICHARD MUSGRAVE in his History of that rebellion. In all these abominable cruelties, the mystical woman of the Apocalypse has trodden in the track of her heathen precursor; and in either case, their footsteps have been marked with blood. If modern Rome has not caused her children, like the ancient Idolaters, to pass through the fire to Moloch, she has not, on that account, slain fewer in other ways, and the sanguinary rites of the ancient superstition have only given place to the immolation of human victims in another form, though not on a less extensive scale. It is not difficult to understand upon what principle a false Religion should become the scourge and plague of the true one. The contrariety of darkness and light will furnish us at once with a clue out of this labyrinth—the virulent enmity of the human heart in its natural state, and its uniform opposition to truth and holiness, will sufficiently account for the dislike evinced by the wordly and the profane, at the exhibition of these qualities in others; Vital Religion is in itself a silent but effectual reproach and condemnation of those who want it; and the remark of the Lawyers to CHRIST will serve to unveil the secret motives of their hostility:-" Master, thus saying, thou reproachest us also." The only reason of the hatred and malignity of many persons against spiritual religion is, that they are any thing else than spiritual themselves. The splendid miracles and faultless life of our Saviour himself, when they failed to convince and convert the majority of his own countrymen, only excited a resentment which ended in their crucifying the Lord of life and glory; and thus, as he himself declared, if his real disciples had been "of the world, the world would have loved his own; but because they were not of the world, but he had chosen them out of the world, therefore the world hated them." The same principle accounts for the first murder on record: "CAIN," says the Holy Scripture, “slew his brother, because his own works were evil, and his brother's righteous;" and "as then, he that was born after the flesh, persecuted him that was born after the spirit, even so it is now." If in so many historical instances as have been adduced above, (and more might easily be added), the investing of a false and corrupt Religion with power has ever had a hostile operation upon the lives and liberties of men, we have no reason to distrust the evidence of antiquity on such a subject, and to reject the lights of history in favour of an experiment for which preceding ages have already paid the costly price of a terrible and fatal experience. I shall enlarge on this point in my next, and am, dear Sir, your faithful Servant, AMICUS PROTESTANS. LETTER III. DEAR SIR, THAT the Romish religion is one and the same as it has ever been, and that its immutability is as well secured as its infallibility, we have the testimony, I will not say of its foes, but of its best and warmest friends; and when in addition to this evidence (drawn from no hostile source) we consider the late Manifesto of the Roman Catholic Bishops in the Netherlands against the toleration of Protestants -the violent rescripts of the present POPE against Bible Societies, and against all translations of the Bible in the vernacular tonguesthe revival, by the same authority, of the Inquisition, that monstrous engine of persecution and tyranny-and the restoration, by the same power, of the Jesuits, who were the earliest foes of the Reformation, and have been ever since the most indefatigable instruments of a corrupt and persecuting Churchit is impossible to doubt that Popery Is what Popery was, and, of course, that its resumption of legislative or executive power, in a Protestant State, must be followed by the same consequences as have always attended it. That, in the present state of the world, those consequences may display themselves precisely in the same form as they once did, is by no means meant to be asserted; the fires which translated RIDLEY and LATIMER from their dungeon in Oxford to their rest in Heaven, are not likely to be lighted again; nor is it probable that those Papal atrocities which have spared neither age nor sex in so many parts of civilized Europe, will, in the present age of the world, be renewed in our own country. There are, however, other ways in which a Religion of dark ness and intolerance can make itself known and felt; in opening our prisons and shutting our places of worship-in enforcing laws which yet remain upon our Statute book, or in enacting new ones which may supply their deficiencies-in imposing restraints upon conscience, and exacting oppressive fines as the punishment of resistance-in abridging the religi ous rights of the nation, and silencing the faithful Ministers of Divine truth-in refusing the Bible to the people, and opposing the Society which distributes it; these and various other political expedients for "healing the deadly wound of the Beast," by "making war on the Saints," with whose blood a corrupt and apostate Church has so long been "drunk," will not long be wanting if ever the question of "Catholic Emancipation" (as it has been perversely and sophistically termed), shall be carried; and how those persons in particular, whether in Parliament or elsewhere, who (in common with yourself), affect to set peculiar value on their Religious privileges, and some of whom are the ornaments of the Religion they profess, can advocate the cause of those claims, and espouse the side of an intolerant and bigoted Church, appears inexplicable upon any grounds, and evinces a palpable inconsistency, amounting to infatuation of the first order. Such a line of conduct displays a short-sighted policy which, under the garb of charity, liberality, and candour, is at variance with the first principles of self-preservation, and is opposed to the obvious interests of a Protestant Church and Empire; indeed, it is such a course of action as ought to induce yourself and others, on reference to its inevitable results, to ask yourselves in all seriousness, whether, if the Bible be true, and the records of History authentic, you are not examples of the greatest inconsistency which can be displayed by rational agents. You are at once the unfeigned lovers of rational freedom, and yet the unwitting advocates of the purest despotism-the friends of Religious toleration, and yet the Patrons of an Intolerant Church-the professors of pure and undefiled Religion, and yet anxious to give credit and influence and power to a corrupt and unscriptural faith; you profess to be guided by evidence, and are incessantly calling for fresh facts, and yet are resisting the light of universal history, and are still untaught by the accumulated wisdom of ages; ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth." It is to such characters, estimable in themselves, but acting under false impressions, and propagating error by the influence of respectable names, that I would say--be wise in time, and if the Religion of the Romish Church be both dishonourable to God, and injurious to man, take care how you incur the terrible responsibility of aiding such a Religion in its present object of making and administering laws in a Protestant Commonwealth. If such a creed be in its nature sanguinary, and secular, intolerant, and exclusive-I intreat you to look to it that Persecution do not rear her head again under your auspices. If the Religion in question be one whose main object is to keep the world in utter ignorance, and the sou in carnal security, to satisfy the conscience with external opiates, and to supersede the necessity of personal holiness; beware how you lend a helping hand to set up the spiritual abominations of Popery, lest those who come after you should rue the day in which you hazarded an experiment of accommodation, for which you had no warrant either in the example of your Protestant ancestors, or in any modern facts which might have proved the Religion of the Church of Rome to be a more scriptural thing now than it was in the reign of JAMES II. I am dear Sir, your very faithful Servant, LETTER IV. DEAR SIR, I apprehend that a positive identity has been established by Dr. MIDDLETON in his "Conformity between Paganism and Popery," and by Dr. GALE in his "Court of the Gentiles," between the worship of false gods, as exhibited in |