Columbia (HnitJem'tp THE LIBRARIES AN INQUIRY INTO CERTAIN VULGAR OFIMIOJVS CONCERNING THE CATHOIJC INHABITANTS AND THE ANTIQUITIES OF IHELJND: In a Series of Letters from thence, addressed to a Protestant Gentleman in England. By the Rev. J. MILNER, D. D. F. S. A. &c. fi'riibus occiduis lU'Scribittir optima tellus. Nomine, ct antiquis Scolia scripta libris : Jnsuhi di-oes opum, (gc,; In qua Scotoninigentcsbabitare mercntur; Inclyta gens kominum militeipace, fide. St. Donatus, Episc. Fessul, S«cl. Nono. a iilllllllKKEllHIIIIIMIlca- — PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY KEATING, BROWN, AND CO. No. 3^ ' D'ike-itreej, • Jr:^,t-npr sc^ua/e.! 'I * ■ > ' r' <~ Booker, Bond-street; Budd, ^Pall-inall ; , Sy^^oNDS. rater-noster-row ; Simpson, Wolverhan'ptorf, ' Wfx'^s.^ BirWin^Aam ;, Mft^srs. Coyne and FiTzrATRiCK, Dubli-V'a'^a'i^AL.Y, ••^crL. [ CntcuxU ar fe»tatioiicr0 i^ilL ] ?3 (. . ,^1 b »»»»*— AN INQUIRY INTO CERTAIN VULGAR OPINIONS, S^c, LETTER I. Dublin, June ^7, 1S07. Dear Sir, IS it possible," said I to my- self, as I read over the Parliamentary Debates on a late question, "that the charges against " the Catholics of Ireland, so confidently " brought by one party, and so faintly denied, " if not almost conceded, by the other, can be *' true ? Are, then, my brethren in the sister W *' island so destitute of education, morality, re- " ligion, and civilization ; and are their clergy, " in particular, so scandalously illiterate, super- *' stitious, and disloyal as they arc represented to '' be? It is no such long journey, " continued I7 " from this my residence to the shore of the " Irish channel, and from thence to the capital of •'•' Ireland is but the voyage of a i'tw hours. '' What hinders me, then, from forming my '' own opinion upon these matters, by observing " and conversing Avith the Irish Catholics in *' their own country ?" I must, however, Sir, observe to you, that previously to my holding this soliloquy, I had conceived a wish of viewing one of the political phicnomena of the present times ; a people, with- out any revolution or other visible cause, rising up, as it were, all at once, from apparent insigniiicancy and absolute contempt, to the first rank of im- portance and respectability in the scale of na- tions. Within your memory. Sir, and mine, the Irish Catholics were hardly thought worthy of notice amongst politicians : they were almost non-entities in the law and constitution of the empire: if they were mentioned in the legisla- tive assemblies, it was merely for the purpose of adding some new weight to a system of legal op- pression avowedly contrived to grind them to atoms : when, behold, at the present day, these Helotes, these Gibeonites, the hewers of wood and drawers of water in the land of their natir vity, have suddenly acquired so much im^or- tance as to justify the first statesmen of the age in unanimously and emphatically assuring us, that the fortune of the British empire depends upon theirs. As I myself am no politician, I take up this alarmino' assertion on the credit of those o-reat men who are well known to hav^e often repeated it: but thus much I can pronounce from my own observations, that the fiite of us EHglish Catho- "" lies depends upon that of our brethren in Ireland. " If their claims are overlooked, ours will never — be thought worthy of notice. On the other - liand, whatever redress of o-nevances or leo-al — privileges they obtain, we shall not long remain— ' deprived of. Our political weight and impor- tance, compared with theirs, is small indeed. In a word, they are the stately vessel which catches the breeze and stems the tide, we are the cock-boat which is towed in her wake. Such, Sir, M'ere my musings, and such my inclinations with respect to a tour to Ire- land, when, a week ago, I received a letter from a respected and most valuable friend of mine then near Dublin, in which he entreated me so earnestly, and with such powerful motives, to pay him and certain other friends in his com- pany a visit, that I hesitated no longer about the :€xpedition. Already, then, after passing through places in England familiar to me, I have surveyed the romantic vale of Llangollen, and the stupendous scenery round about Capel- Carrig and Snowden. I have traversed the bar- B2 reii heaths of Anglesca, -where, instead of the frantic Druids of ancient times, described by Tacitus, I have seen the assembled population of tlie island agitated by the more enthusiastic or- gies of religious jumping. To be brief, I have crossed the narrow, but rough channel, the dread of which deprives you and many other Englishmen, who descant upon the Irish Catho- lics without knowing them, of the advantage I possess in being able to see them and converse with them. I now also have viewed tlie cele- brated Bay oi^ Dublin, confe-ssedly the most beautiful in Europe next to that of Naples, studded as it is on each shore with innumerable shining villages, villas, and martello towers, and bounded on this side by the majestic hill of Howth, and on that by the aspiring and diversi- fied mountains ofWicklow, with the vast and gorgeous capital of Ireland in the centre of the scene ; and now, behold ! having escaped from the plucking of the pigeon-house*, lam safely lodged upon one of the quays of the Liffey. I know, Sir, you would not forgive me, were I to omit communicating to you the result of my observations and reflections upon matters which have so often been the subject of our friendly de- bates, now that they are under my eye. I shall therefore comply with your wish in such manner as my leisure will permit, after stipulating with you for that perfect freedom of judgment and cx- * The Custom-ILouse is there situated. pression, without which all inquiry and discus- sion is nugatory and ridiculous. By the same rule, Sir, after I shall have delivered my opinion, you will be at liberty to judge of it, and to con- trovert it as yoQ please. HaiK vetiiam petimus damusque vichsim. I have the honour to remain, Your faithful servant, J. M. LETTER IL Maij}woth, June 29, 1 807- Dear Sir, 1 HE very morning after my arrival in Dublin particular business con- ducted me to this place, which is about a dozen miles distant from it. In my journey hither, and in my subsequent excursions, I have had opportunities of surveying the shores of the Liffy, which, if not so majestic and so rich in princely villas as the Thames is to the west of London, is more cnchantingly diversified by its meandering turns, its alternate shallows and 8 depths, its hanging woods, and its lofty banks, now smoothly shelving to the water edge, now surmounting it in bold rocks and perpendicidar precipices. The universal population of Maynooth, and particularly the inhabitants of the Royal Catho- lic Colleo-e, still mourn for the loss of their land- lord and friend, the late good Duke of Leinster. The noble palace and domain of his family bor- der the town to the east of it, whilst the college, with the mao-nificent ruins of the ancient castle of the Fitzgeralds, terminate it to the west. The new building consists of lodging rooms, schools, a church, a library, a hall, and other offices, erected in a style worthy the munificence of his I\Iajesty and the liberality of parliament, and suitable to the accommodation of 200 ecclesiati- cal students, besides- a provost, a bursar, professors, and servants. An extension of one of the wings for the lodo-ins: of 200 additional students ^ (for whose support, during the ensuing twelve months, the present parliament has voted 50001. in addi- tion to the 80001. granted heretofore) is far ad- vanced. — Methinks, Sir, I hear you exclaim, with a, pish ! as many others have exclaimed be- fore you : " What a needless waste of money, for " the support of an illiterate, uncivilized set of * When the length of the preparation for taking catholic orders, and the uncertainty of the students perseverance are considered-, it is plain that even the enlarged establishment will not furnish half priests enough to supply the vacancies annually occurring by deaths- amongst 2500 officiating clergy. 9 '^ proselyting bigots, as the Roman catholic " clergy of Ireland are universally known to *'be!" Let us then, Sir, suppose that the present set of catholic clergy are really deficient in educa- tion and literature, yet if the poverty to which they have been reduced, and the laws which have existed, till of late, against their rcceivhig an education, and especially their past literary glory and services are considered, candour, I think, Avill shield them from the severe censure too generally passed upon them in^this respect. For who, Sir, were the luminaries of the western world, when the sun of science had almost set upon it ? AVho were the instructors of nations during four whole centuries, but the Irish clergy ? To them you are indebted for the preservation of the Bible, the Fathers, and the classics ; in short, of the very means by which you yourself have ac- quired whatever literature you possess. In what- ever part of this extensive island St. Patrick preached the gospel, he founded convents and schools of instruction, by means of which he en- lio-htened and civilized the hihabitants at the same time that he converted them. These schools soon became so famous, that they were frequented by crowds of students from France, Flanders, and Germany*, as well as from the * Flaccus Albinus, alias Alcuin in vita St. Willibrordi. 10 different parts of Britain *. Giklas, the most ancient of our British writers whose works are extantj studied for a long time at St Patrick's seminary of Armagh f, as did, in the following century, St. Agilbert, a Frenchman, the second bishop of the West Saxons J. Soon after this, namely in the seventh century, we find great numbers of our countrymen, poor as well as rich, flocking to Ireland as to a general mart of litera- ture, where the hospitable Scots, as the inhabi- tants were then called, with a generosity un- known in every other nation, not only instructed them gratis, but also fed them gratis §. At length a residence in Ireland, like a residence now at an university, was considered as almost essential to establish a literary character |j. Not content, however, with teaching the fo^ reigners who came to them for instruction, the * Bed. Hist. Ecc. 1. iii. c. 27. t Adamnan. Apud. Usser. Primord. J " Agilbertus, natione Gallus, sed iegendarum gratia scriptura- •' rum in Hibemia nou parvo tempore commoratus." Bed. 1. iii. «' 7- § " Multi nobillum simul et mediocrium de gente Anglorum, •* relicta patria inscla, vel divinje lectionis, vel continentioris vitse •^ gratia, illo secesserant. Quos omnes Scoti, libentissime sus- •' cipienles victum quotidianura, sine pretio, librosquoque et magis. " terium gratuitum prsebere curabant." Bed. 1. iii. c. 27. B I cannot forbear quoting here the often repeated lines which Camden extracted from the life of St. Sulgenius, who flourished in the eight century: " Exemplo patrum, commotus amore legendi, " Ivit ad Hibernos sophia mirabile claros." 11 Irish clerg-y, in the eighth and ninth centuries, spread themselves over the greater part of Eu- rope for tb.e sake of converting and civilizing the remaining Pagans in the northern parts of it, and of instructing the unlettered Christians, as was the case with most of them every where*. St. Killian became the apostle of Franconia, St. Ilu- mold of Brabant, St. Virgilius of Carinthia, St. Columban of the Swiss, St. Gallus of the Ori- sons, being all of them Irishmen ; not to speak of St. Donatus, bishop of Fessuli f , and St. Ca- taldus, bishop of Tarentum, who illuminated the church of Italy, nor of St. Fursy, St. Fiacre, St. Firmin, St. Rupert, &;c. who illustrated the churches of France and Germany. In a word, there is hardly a diocese in the countries here mentioned Mdiich does not record the learning* and sanctity of several illustrious missionaries from Ireland who formerly served it. The most celebrated nurseries of learning- in those ancient times, both in our own country and abroad, MTre all instituted by Irish scholars. It was the learned Irish bishop St. Aidan who instituted that * " QuidHiberniamcommemorem contempto Pelagi discrlmine, " pcenetotam, cum f^rege philosophorum ad nostra Gallica littora •" migrantem, qaorum quisque, ut peritior est, ultro sibi indicit " exilium ut Salomon! sapientissimo famuletur ad votum." Erricus Antissiodorensis none sseculo. f This is the religious poet from whose verses in praise of his country I have taken my motto. See these verses more at large is Colgan upon St. Patrick. 12 of Lindisferne, which eiiHghtened the northern and midland parts of England. It was the vene- rable monk Macdidph who opened the famous school of Malmsbury, from which sacred and profane literature, Greek as well as Latin*, Avas diffused over the southern and western parts of it. St. Columkille founded the learned monastery of Jona, in the western isles ; St. Columban those of Luxieu and Bobist ; St. Gall the cele- brated one which bore his name amongst the Alps. In short, we are equally indebted to the Irish for the most renowned universities of modern times. Claudius Clemens was the first professor of the university of Paris, as Joannes Scotus was of the one at Ticinum, or Padua J. Even our boasted university of Oxford is greatly, if not chiefly, indebted for its foundation to the last mentioned acute and eloquent scholar, who first opened an academy for the instruction of Eng- lish children upon the plan of the aforesaid fo- reign universities, and who excited the great * •* Maydulph, natione Scotus eruditione philosophus." GuL Malms, de Pontific. f " Cum per totam Galliam divinse religionis fervor torperet, Do- " minus Chrlstus ad repel lendasignaviae tenebrasdeocciduis Hiber- ** nise partibus splendidissimum radiumOallicis finibus emergere prce- '* cepit, B. Columbanum egreo^ium Scotigenam." Diplom, Caroli Magni, apnd O'Flaharty Ogygia. X " Cum idem Carolus regnare csepisset et studia literarum ubi- *' que propemodura essent in oblivione, coniigil duo*; Scotos de Hi- *' bernia in littus Gallicum devenire et in saicular bus et in sacris Uteris *' mirabiliter erudites, &c." E.x Notkero Monacho S. Galli notao ^3poulo apud O'Flaharty. 'Alfred to institute one equal to them in his own ' dominions ^. True it is, the calamity which almost extin- guished the flame of literature in England, I mean the destruction of the monasteries by the Danes, was productive of the same effect in Ire- land. Nevertheless, it is easy to prove that the ' Irish clergy did not fall into total ignorance dur- ing the dark period which succeeded this storm ; as likewise, that they soon recovered a consi- derable degree of their former literary credit; and in short, that there was an uninterrupted succession of men eminent for their learning and \ talents amongt them, even down to the second • destruction of monasteries by the tyrant Henry VIII. Even under the cruel and almost unin- terrupted persecution which they have endured till within these few years, they have contrived to acquire not only professional, but also classi- cal and ornamental literature. Several of them have studied the classics and sacred literature under hedges, for want of schools, and others * Usher Priniord. The Centuriators of Magdeburg make Joannes Scotas the first professor at Oxford ; but he seems to have died a little before the schools were actually opened there. N. B. It isagreed amongst the learned, and it is evident by comparison, that our an- cient English or Saxon characters are borrowed from those of Ire- land. The celebrated Rd. Kirwan, Esq. L L. D. P. R. I. A. with whom I had the honour of holding a long conversation the other day, has published a learned Essay on the Primeval Language, which he supposes was the Greek. I cannot, however, help think- ing that the Celtic, which is the root of the Irish, has better preten- sions to this honour, C3 have spread themselves over the continent of Europe, in order to acquire that knowledge which their predecessors originally diffused throughout it. The success which they have generally met with in their studies has been equal to the ardour with which they hav^e apolied to them. Accordingly, Sir, you will find, upon inquiry, that the Irish students in the foreign universities, down to the very period of the late revolution, carried off more than their due propor- tion of prizes and professorships by the sheer merit of superior talents and learning, and a much greater proportion than fell to the lot of all other foreigners in the countries in question put together. , I am far, Sir, from undertaking to give you a list of the Irish Catholic clero-v, since the re^ formation, so called, who have left incontro- vertible proofs of their cultivated minds and superior literature in their writings : neither my leisure nor my means permit me at pre- sent to undertake the task. I will, however, present you with the names of a few of these. Amongst the prelates of this description were the R. R. Daniel Roth, Catholic Bisiiop of Ossory, who published a most interesting account of ca- tholic affairs about two centuries ago*. The M. R. Peter Talbot, Catholic Archbishop of Dub^ lin, a celebrated controversial writer, who died a * Analecta de Rebus Calholicis in Anglia. 15 • prisoner for his religion in the said city ; the R. R. Daniel O'Daly, who died Bishop of Co- nimbria, in Portus^al ; and tlie R. \l. Thomas Burke, Bishop of Ossory, both of them learned and celebrated historians, of the order of St. Dominic ; the late M. R. James Bntler, Archbi- shop of Cashel, and tlie victorious opponent of Dr. Woodward, Bishop of Cloyne. Am.ongst the learned writers of the second order of clergy were the R. Richard Stanvhurst, the well known his- torian ; Abb6 M'Geoghan, ; the R. J. Colgan, ; the R. Luke Wadding, ; the R. J. Lynch, ; the R.John O'Heyne, ; the R. Antony Lupi, alias W^o If, an anti- quarian ; the R. John Hacket, a theologian ; tlie R. Dominic Lynch, ; the R. F. Fitzsimons, the successful antagonist in controversy against Archbishop Usher ; the R. Edmund Burke, con- trovertist ; the R. James Lusher, author of tlie Free Inquiry * ; and the R. Arthur O'Leary, the * This most able and learned scholar was the immediate descend- ant of Archbishop Usher, who betaking himst-If to the study of the controversy carried on between his ancestor and the aforesaid F. Fitz- simons, was so overpowered and convinced by the arguments of the jatter, that he abandoned the religion in which he had been educat- ed, and embraced that of the ancient Church. Being a widower, he took holy orders in this Church, and was the first 'Ariterwho may be said to have defended it in the face of the public, his letters having been published in the Public Ledger, from which they were extracted, and published apart in a work now upon sale, called : A Free Examination of the common Methods employed to prevent the Growth of Popery. Mr. Usher left a son, who is still living, and V?hom I had the pleasure of seeing in one of the catholic establish- 16 triumphant, and at the same time amiable victor of John Wesley, and of the other enemies of reli- gious toleration*, &c. I do not mention cer- tain living writers, of whom posterity will speak, ments in Ireland. The plan of his Letters, which made a great noise in their time, is as follows. There being a great outcry concerning the alledged increase of popery in England about the year 1767, Mr. Usher, in his first letter, calls upon well informed and ingenious persons to account for the fact, and to explain upon what principle error can prove an over-match for truth, ignorance for learning, idolatry for pure religion. Having, in his following letters, refuted the idle and ridiculous reasons assigned, by different writers who at- tempted to answer him, for this strange circumstance, lie thus, in substance, explains the true cause of it : " You learned contro- vertists, when you aitack the Church of Rome, never fail to as- sault her in some point or other in which she is impregnable. You accuse her of teaching idolatry or impiety, or the breach of faith with heretics, or the lawfulness of murdering them, orsome other immorality. This, to be sure, gains 3 ou a temporary applause amongst your zealous partisans, and inflames their hatred against " Papists. But, in the mean time, the Papists themselves, being " conscious of the falsehood of these charges, are confirmed in their ** religion ; and serious protestant seekers, discovering by degrees ** the same falsehood, are induced to go over to the popish commu- " nion, &c." Besides this Examination, Mr. Usher also wrote Clio upon Taste, a work which deserves to be placed on the same shelf with Burke's Beautiful and Sublime. In writing the Examination he was assisted by my lamented friend, the late wor- thy, upright, and pious John Walker, author of the Pronouncing Dictionary, Elements of Elocution, the Rhetorical Grammar, Deism disarmed, &c. This ingenious author may with truth be called the Guide d'Arezzo of elocution, having discovered the scale of speaking sounds, by which reading and delivery are now reduced to a system. * How little does this head of a great party, and chief author of the riots in 1780, appear when opposed to the deep learning, the sound logic, and the sterling wit of an O'Leary ! See Remarks on John Wesley's Letters, in his Tracts, p. 805. Keating and Co. 17 because they are my friends, and therefore I might be suspected of partiality in the account I should give of them. I have the honour to remain, &c. LETTER III., « Maynooth, June, 30, 1807- Dear Sir, X ]\fake no doubt that you will consider my letter of yesterday as a set offy and that, being conscious of the ignorance and stupidity of the present race of officiating clergy in Ireland, I am desirous of investing them Math the past glories of their predecessors* To be sure, Sir, it is a difficult task to disabuse you and other Englishmen of your prejudice against Irish priests, if you are determined to entertain it : nevertheless, I beg you, by way of forming a right judgment upon this matter, to consider of an answer to the three following ques- tions. As you must admit that the natives of Ire- land have not degenerated in their bodily powers, have you any reason to suppose that they have fallen off from their ancient fame with respect to 18 their mental faculties ? Secondly, it being an established rule with us to consider mental ta- lents next to piety and morality in the choice of candidates for holy orders, is it not likely that the clergy in Ireland should prove to be endowed with, at least, an ordinary share of natural genius ? Thirdly, do you conceive it possible that youno- men thus endowed should spend ten or twelve of the choicest years of their lives in intense application to study, without ac- quiring some share of knowledge and intellectual improvement r You will probably say, that to solve the last question, it is necessary you should know how these ten or twelve years have been employed; what books have been read ; in short, that you should like to know, as an enlightened and liberal reviewer has expressed a wish to know, " \\'hat is the course at Maynooth*?" I answer, that if this is not known it is not the fault of the superiors of the college. Their well- frequented library f and their class Jbooks are open to the examination, not only of the Lord Chancellor and the Judges of Ireland, who are bound at stated times to visit the establishment, but also of every civil inquirer. I will endea- vour to give you a general idea of this course. An indefinite time, then, perhaps two or three years, is employed in the study of English, * See the Edinburgh Review in its strictures upon Carr's Stranger in Ireland. t To the fact here supposed I myself am a witness. ^9 Irish* , Latin, and French Grammar-f. After this, a distinct year is appointed for the study of poetry, and another year for that of rhetoric. At the end of each year public examinations are held, at which the literati of the neighbourhood, of whatever communion they may be, -are invit- ed to assist, and also bear a part in them :{:. This forms M'hat is called the course of the Hu- manity Studies ; after which begin those of a higher order. One whole year is always devot- ed to logic and metaphysics, upon Lock's sys- tem ; and another to mathematics, physics, and astronomy, in which Newton is the chief guide. The whole of this philosophical course the stu- dent must publicly defend, not by answering a few questions well known before hand, but by solving the objections of each individual present amongst the company indiscriminately invited to these defensions. To the study of philosophy succeeds that of divinity, including canon law and ecclesiastical history, which takes up four whole years, under three distinct professors, (at * A professor of the Irish language forms one part of the estab- lishment: an excellent constitution for perpetuating perhaps the most ancient language in the world, the Celtic. . t Regularly speaking, the students are expected to have acquired the greater part of these branches of knowledge previously to their admission at Maynooth. X At the small seminary of Kilkenny, which I afterwards visited, I found a boy explaining I^ucian and Homer. The established bishop, who was formerly provost of Trinity College, Dublin, fre- quently honours the examinations there with his piresence, and was expected the morning when I attended. D 20 least there is tliis number of them at Maynooth) a professor of speculative theology, a second of moraHty, and a third of the holy scriptures. The divines, no less than the philosophers, are required publicly to defend their several treatises ; and I may add, that they are no less willing than the last mentioned to exhibit their dictates and other class books to every civil stranger, of whatever religion, who chooses to inspect them. If all that I have here stated be matter of fact, and take notice, Sir, I challenge inquiry into the truth of it, where is the man who will dare to reproach the Irish Clergy with being uneducated and illiterate ? Indeed, few^ of those who hold this language have received half so good an educa- tion *. • It irray be alledgcd that I have here exhibited a pictureof the educa- tion at the Royal College ofMaynooth, being ill the neighbourhood of thecapitaUand under the eyeof dignified visitors; whereas tlie present charge Applies to the officiating clergy in general, and particularly to those in the remote parts of the island. To this I answer, that since I visited Maynooth I have seen other catholic seminaries, particularly those of Carlow and Kilkenny, and that the same studies are pur« sued, and 1 have reason to believe with equal success, in these as in the first mentioned. I must add, that having traversed a great part ofLeinster and Mnnster, I have sought in vain amongst the parish priests and other clergy, in the towns and villages as well as in the cities, for those illiterate and uneducated men which they are all in general supposed to be. So far from being persons of this descrip- tion, I have found them to be well informed, well behaved, gentle, modest, charitable, and pious. Some of them have occasionally been called into courts of justice, to give evidence in different causes; certain letters of others have been published on various occasions ; yet who of them has said or writien any thing unbecoming a scholar, ?t gentleman, or a Christian Divine ? 21 I have spoken to the charge of ignorance brought against the Catholic Clergy ; I will now speak to that of bigotry and proselyting; in do- ing which, I will not blink the question, but, having fairly explained it, I am content to take my share in the odium and contempt attached to the imputation.— If, then, the Catholic Clergy were not deeply persuaded that the change of religion and breach with the ancient Church, ef- fected by Henry VIII. and Elizabeth, were undertaken upon unjustifiable grounds, and that their Church still continues to be the true Church of Christ, they would certainly be not only the most wretched, but also the most foolish of men, to suffer what they do sufier for adhering to it and serving it. Now, Sir, admitting them to be thus persuaded, would they not be destitute of the characteristical virtue of Christianity, were they to refuse communicating the advantage they possess to those whom they find sincerely engaged in the search of it ? For they do not disturb the public peace by field preaching, nor that of private families, by intruding themselves into them uninvited. On the other hand, as it is not private emolument nor the aggrandize- ment of a party, but the mere exercise of a cha- ritable oflfice which they have in view in their communications with persons of a different com- munion, so they would conceive it a baseness and a crime to hold up any worldly consideration, hope, or fear to them, or to use any other impro- D2 22 per means for gaining proselytes. Accordingly, 1 maintain, without fear of confutation, that the conduct of the converts to catholicity in gene- ral, throughout Ireland, demonstrates the purity of the motives by which they have been induced to take this step, as, on the other hand, the be- haviour of those who have left this communion evidently shews they have done it for the sake of expatiating in wider fields of belief and practice than were allowed them in their native Church. Thus much, Sir, in vindication of the Catholic Clergy from this accusation. Let us now see how far the persons who bring this charge are themselves implicated in it. I have already had abundant means of learning that the Protestants of Ireland, in almost every part of it, are pos- sessed of the most ardent zeal for proselyting the Catholics ; and this not by the means of cool conviction and edifying example, but by down- right bribes and terror. Here a protestant lady clothes, feeds, and provides for catholic children exxlus'w^ly, whose parents will sell them to her at this price, for the sake of bringing them up Protestants; there a protestant landlord turns all his catholic tenants out of their farms, or exacts an oath, as the condition of holding them, that thev M'ill send their children to a protestant school which he has set up for the express pur- pose of proselytism. But why should I dwTll upon private instances of the system of protestant proselyting, when it has been publicly professed and acted upon by the government of the coun- try, ever since it gave up that of putting its sub- jects to death for adherino; to their rehgion. In fact, Sir, unexampled as such proceedings are ia past times, astonishing as it will appear in ages to come, no less than 25,0001. continue annu- ally to be levied, in a great measure, upon the Catholics themselves, independently of the rents of immense landed estates for purchasing the children of indigent Catholics (in as much as no protestant child can be admitted into a charter school) and educating them in the protestant re- lio-ion. In still o-reater violation of the laws of nature, these purchased victims are uniformly transported in covered waggons to the greatest distance possible from the residence of their pa- rents; the children of the northern provinces be- ing conveyed to the charter schools of the south, and those of the south to the schools in the north, in order that the parent may never have the consolation of embracing the child, lest he or she should again make a Papist of it, and that the child may never enjoy the advantage of a pa- rent's love and support, for fear it should there- by lose those religious impressions which, at so" great an expense, have bt-en wrought upon it ! The Turks, indeed, take' away the children of their Greek subjects in order to recruit the ranks of their janissaries ; but they do this from a mo- tive of policy, not of religion : the Irish govern- ment alone, of all governments in the world, violates the law of God and nature, in extin- guishing parental and filial affection, and in se- 24- parating parents and children for life, from a principle of proselytism ! If the theological dic- tates of the divines at Maynooth are inspect- ed, it will be found that they condemn the prac- tice of barely baptizing the children of Jews and Mahommedans, contrary to the will of their pa- rents. In common decency, Sir, do not reproach us in future with bigotry and proselytism, at least till the charter schools are suppressed. I have the honour to remain, &c. LETTER IV. Maynooth, June 30, 1 807. Dear Sir, X HAVE yet another subject to write to you upon from this place, and that I have preferred doing in a separate letter rather than swelling my former to a disproportionable size. You have heard that, besides the eccle- siastical seminary at Maynooth, there is also a lay college for catholic young gentlemen in- tended for the world, which is now under the direction of a worthy friend of mine. The latter establishment, however, has no other communi- cation with the former, except that its members 25 frequent the same church, and attend the same lectures in philosophy with the ecclesiastical students. It has been asked both in parliament and out of it, " What need there is of a lay catholic college, *' in addition to the ecclesiastical one?" and " Why at least those young men who are destined " for the various walks of life are not sent to the "public universities?" One answer to these questions is, that parents will judge for them- selves in these matters, and that the school in question being supported at their expense, they are not obliged to give an account to any one of the motives for their choice. However, Sir, there is no reason why 1 should conceal from~ you what these motives are. — To speak the plain truth then — we wish our youth in general to be educated apart, precisely for the opposite reason to that which makes you wish them to be edu- cated at the universities. You desire them to be sent to these in hopes that by associating with other youths, whom you call more liberal, we more lax, they may loose their religion, we wish to keep them at a distance from such society, for fear of the same consequence. We have proof, indeed, that this consequence does not always follow, but we have also proof that it frequently does follow. In fact, the catholic religion being much more strict and rigorous, both as to belief and practice, than that of the establishment, it is of course ridiculed by the members of the latter, 25 as being superstitious. 'Now the imputation of this blind and gravelling vice is what few young- men of spirit can submit to. Hence they are under a continual temptation, when intimately and habitually mixed with protestant companions, of deserting their faith. Again, it is required of students in the universities to frequent the esta- blished service: now our church not permitting this, nor even winking at occasional conformity, it is clearly seen that these are not proper places of education for Catholics, But, Sir, we are full as anxious about the morah as the faith of the rising generation. Now we have been taught by those writers of the day who have the best means of gaining accurate information concerning the state of morality in the universi- ties, to form a very unfavourable opinion of it. Certain it is, that many things which would be attended witli expulsion in our catholic places of education, appear as slight faults at the public colleges, judging of them from the conversa- tion of very venerable members of them. Indeed I have received authentic information on this head which I do not choose to mention, but which confirms me in the opinion that a univer- sity education is by no means fit for a strict Ca- tholic. The fact is, all large assembhes of man- kind, without strong religious feehngs, frequent religious exercises, and rigid disciphne, are detri- mental to the cause of morality, though, with these advantages, they may be highly beneficial 27 to it. In a word, Sir, a comparison between the best regulated protestant college, and any well- disciplined catholic seminary, will demonstrate the very great advantages which the latter has over the former in all the above-mentioned means of maintaining strict morality, I have the honour, &c. LETTER V. Dublin^ July 6, 1807. Dear Sir, Being returned to Dublin, 1 have had an opportunity of viewing the public buildings M'hich adorn it, the Custom-House, the Parliament-House, the four Courts, the Ex- change, the Lying-in- Hospital, the Bridges, the Quays, Trinity College, and the Castle. The chief objection I have to these buildings in gene- ral, with the exception of the Castle and Trinity College, is that their magnificence is dispro- portioned to the appearance of the city in other respects, and to the circumstances of the people at whose expense they have been erected ; in the same manner as the statue of commerce, at the ttjp of the first mentioned of these erections, is too colossal even for the elevated situation which it 28 holds, and appears, at that distance from the eye^ to represent a Brobdinaggian female. Nothing could exceed m^^ grief and indignation at seeing the demolition, now going on in parts of the new and inimitably beautiful Parliament House, under the direction of the Bank of Ireland, which has now got possession of it. Methinks the Irish Paiiiameut, before it M'as guilty of the act of felo ih se, might have provided for the unimpaired preservation of its sumptuous house, as a monument of its own existence, and as some consolation to the citizens of Dublin for their irreparable loss by the legislative union. I have had opportunities, during the days I have spent here, of conversing and forming an acquaintance with several personages who are generally esteemed for their learning, talents, virtues, and public services. Amongst these I cannot but particularize, for their merit in all the above-mentioned points, the four catholic metropolitans, and the other catholic bishops, to the number of live or six, who happen to be in the city, or very near to it, at the present sea- st>n. The public services of certain of these pre- lates are recorded in the official dispatches of Go- vernment, and in the rolls of the corporate bodies which have lionoured them with letters of free- dom, and the merits of them all are conspicuous in those Pastoral Letters and Remonstrances which they addressed to their respective flocks during the dreadful rebellion of 17^8, by which 29 and their other exertions (seconded as they were h^ the general aid oi" the catholic priesthood) they prevented that sudden conflagration from spread- ing far and wide, and thereby probably saved the lives of thousands of his majesty's troops, and tens of thousands of his subjects. Their talents, natural and acquired, together with their christian and social virtues, have gained them general respect and regard, not only amongst their own people, but also amongst other religious denominations. The virtues which I most admired in them, and in others of their order whom I have occasionally conversed with, arc their fraternal union and cordial co-operation in the discharge of their several duties, particularly in providing to the ut- most of their power for the instruction, and the corporal as well as spiritual benefit of their nu- merous flocks, as well as for their perfect dis- interestedness, to the eye of which their own ad- vantages appear as nothing when compared with those of their people. You and your friends in England suppose, that nothing more is necessary to buy over the catholic bishops and clergy of Ireland than for parliament to vote a certain sum of money for this purpose ; but I have reason to believe that they never will consent to be bought to make a separate interest from that of their poor flocks, and that they would rather starve with them than appear to league against them. Indeed, were they to act this latter part, they would lose the confidence of the people, in Avhicb K2 ■ . . 64 sixteenth century. The natural advantages, how- ever, of Kilkenny are of such a nature as to bid defiance to the vicious taste and perversity of modern ages : for you must certainly, Sir, have heard the vulgar but true saying with respect to this city : " At Kilkenny they have earth without " bog, air without fog, water without mud, and " marble pavement that is good." — I have visited here the small but learned seminary of ecclesias- tics, and the edifying convent of the Presentation, instituted by a pious citizen of Dublin for the education, in continued succession, of some hundreds of poor female children. Having, in my last letter, treated of the reli- gion of the Irish Catholics, my subject now leads me to say something of their morality ; vulgar prejudices and obloquy, running still stronger against them on the latter than upon the former subject. The generality of our countrymen ima- p-ine that Irelantl is a countrv in which it is not safe either to travel or to reside, and that its catholi^ population consists of robbers, assassins, and othei'^ wretches, dead to every sentiment of moral ho- nesty and humanity. This prejudice of the nursery has been confirmed by the misrepresen- tations and fabrications of news writers, and other writers of Sir Richard Musgrave's descrip- tion. Tliese men frequently publish downright falsehoods against the Irish, as I myself have ascertained, and on all occasions they aggravate the real offences of this' people, and suppress the injuries or grievances which have led to the com- - - - 65 : ' - . : mission of them. Thus much, Sir, you may de- pend upon, and the records of the courts of justice will prove. That the number of capital convic- tions throughout Ireland, and more especially throuo'hout the counties in which the Catholics are the most numerous, those of Kerry and Gal- , way, during the last year, or the last three years, liave not borne the least proportion with those throughout an equal extent of population in any ■ part of England. With such characteristical dispositions as the Irish are proved to possess, it is not in the nature of things that they should be, upon the whole, an immoral people; and yet I am prepared to meet with a oreat number of villains, and those of the most hardened class, amongst them, for these two reasons. First, experiences shews that there areagreat many wretchesof thisdescrlp- tion in every nation under the sun, no advantage of disposition or education being at all times able to stem the tide of human passions. Se- condly, the example which the Irish have seen amongst our countrymen for ages past, the treatment which they have experienced at their hands, and the laws to which they hav^e been subjected by them, have all been calculated to eradicate every moral and humane feeling from their breasts, and cannot but have pro- duced a bad effect upon a certain number of them. . . ; 66 " Padet hfflc oppiobria nobis *' Et dici potuisse et non non potuisse refelii *." To mount upwards two centuries, ''Sir John " Davies relates," says the last historical writer on the affairs of Ireland, " that in his time it *' was held no crime to kill a mere Irishman f ." — • " Whenever the Irish were mentioned in Acts of " Parliament, it was to mark them out, not *' merely as enemies, hut as being wholly out of " the common rules of law and morality X- — The *' Irish were considered as a sort of rebel savages, " excluded from the contemplation of the laws *' of God and man §."' The same intelligent and liberal writer agrees with former writers ||, in" exposing and execrating the acts of alternate frauds <^ and violence practised by government upon its Irish subjects for dispossessing them of .. their property, and which prevailed from the . reiiyn of Elizabeth, down to that last and never- to-be-forgotten act of public perfidy, the in- •»»j * Ovid, ISIetamorph. t Historical Apology for the Catholics of Ireland, by Henry Parnel, Esq. p. 53. X Ibid. p. 54. § Ibid. p. 98. This writer brings authority to prove, that during Lord Mountjoy's administration, " No liishmaii was par- *' doned unless he undertook to murder his nearest friend or ** relation," p- 91. II See Dr. Curry's invaluable Review of the Civil Wars in Ire- land, 2 vols. 8vo. ^ The Apologist shews that the landholders in Connanght, after being obliged to purchase from the crown titles to their own estates^ twice over, were at last dispossessed of them by Lord Strafford, vr.der the pretext Q.f defective titles, fraction of the treaty of Limerick*. ''This •' treaty," say the Irish Catholics, " ratified and " " exempHfied as it was by King William and " Queen Mary under the Great Seal of England, " and confirmed by Act of Parliament f , was our " BILL OF RIGHTS, on the faith of which we " surrendered, not only the city of Limerick, " from which we had the year before driven King " William, but likewise all the southern and " western counties of Ireland ; THE BILL OF ' *' RIGHTS, on the faith of which we renounced " our allegiance to King James, till then our "king de Jure 3.nd de facto, and swore fidelity, " to King William. By the first article of " this treaty, it was stipulated that, *' The " Roman Catholics of this kingdom (Ireland), " shall enjoy such privileges in the exercise of their *' religion as are consistent with the laws of Ire- " land, or as they did enjoy i?i the reign of King " Charles II. and their Majesties as soon as their affairs xvould permit them to summons a Parlia- ment in this kingdoi?i, will endeavour to procure tlie said Ronian Catholics such farther secu" **' rity in that particular as may preserve them from any disturbance upon account of their (C (( * '* That treaty," says the Apologist, " remains a monument of ** the most flagrant perfidy that ever disgraced a nation: upon th6 " faith of it the Irish Catholics gave up that power and influence, " which you neither will nor can restore to them. And till that •* treaty is fulfilled in its most liberal sense, no ingenuity can re. " move the stain of deliberate perjury from the character of the *• English nation." Hist. Apol. p. 132. f Viz. of the Irlih Parliament in 1695. K ^" said reVigion.'" Yet no sooner were these articles thus ratified, than the bishops began to preach up, that ''^e(7ce ought not to be kept " with a people so per/idioiis," as they calumni- ously described us to be*, the doors of both Houses of Parhament were shut against us, which were open to us under Charles II. and more grinding laws were enacted against our re- ligion than we had ever before experienced. Not unlike these complaints respecting the treaty of Limerick are those relating to the Union. "Do not quibble with us," the Irish Catliolics say, " concerning terms and forma- ** lities, it was clearly understood between us ** that if wc co-operated to bring about the " Union, as we actually did, you Mould eifect " the enyancipation. To give a colouring to this *' engagement, you inserted in the Articles of ** the Union an intimation of a proposed change *' of the oaths in our favour f: when, behold! ^' now you roundly tell us, that this alteration " never shall take place, and that we must make ^' up our minds to wear our shackles till the end " of time." — Of a still more immoral tendency was the conduct of men in power, in their notori- ous connivance at the burning innumerable houses, and the banishing of their Catholic inhabitants * Dr. Doppins^, Bishop of Meath, preached this before the Jus- tices in Christ Church, Dublin. Harris's Life otKing William. -)- In tlie fourth article of the Union it is is enacted, that the qna- lif.ing onth shall remain, TILL PARLk\MENT -SHALf. OiliERWISE ORDAIN. 69 ., ■ • ' - from the county of Armagh, practised there some twelve years ago * ; as likewise the flaying and strangling, tortures so universally exercised upon men, not convicted even by a military tri- bunal of any crime, for the purpose of extorting confessions of guilt ; a practice as contrary to British law as it is to natural justice : all which horrors, with others still more flagitioUs, were afterwards hushed up by a general Act of In- demnity f. Such immoralities on the part of men in power, were the ciiief cause of the crimes committed by the people engaged in the subse- quent rebellion. I must add, that the penal laws, as they existed till of late years, had a direct tendency to undermine every principle of religion, justice, and humanity. " By these,'** says a late writer, " the entails of the estates of " Catholics were broken, and they gavelled " amongst their children. If one child abjured, " he inherited, though he were the youngest : if * Se? the Address of Governor Lord Gosford to the assembled ma- gistrates of Armagh, Dec. 26, 1795, in the Dublin Journal, and in. Mr. Hay's Insurrection of Wexford, Appen.No. V[I. — An outrageof a similar nature to those mentioned above is said to have happened in the same county within this twelvemonth, and that only one magistrate would receive the information of the man whose house was burned down. See a pamphlet called the Correspondence of R, Wilson, Esq. &c. — If the focts contained in that pamphlet be true, vve may subscribe to the proverb which Mr. Parnel ascribes to the common people of Ireland, that '• there is no law for a Ca- tholic." f This Act was passed immediately after a Mr. Wright had re. covered 500I. damages of Sheriff Judkin Fitzgerald for a most unjust as well as barbarous flaying of him. ire ic (( " the son abjured the catholic religion, the fa- " ther, though a purchaser, became a tenant for *' life, whilst the son was tenant in fee. Children were encouraged to betray parents and rebel against them ; brothers were opposed to bro- thers, and even the ordinary duties of family affection were prohibited as public crimes." Even now these unnatural laws are in full force against persons, who have once abandoned the catholic religion ; though an unexceptionable judge in these matters assures us, that such con- versions of Catholics are insincere, and made against their conscience. " Notwithstanding," he says, " the pains which persons, the best " qualified, have taken with persons, bred Ro- *' manists, but conforming to the established religion, and notwithstanding the honourable, confidential, and lucrative appointments which ** they have attained by this conformity; still *' the leaven of popery remains, and at the un- *' equivocal symptoms of approaching death, a *' few half smothered symptoms of Christianity were kindled in their breasts, and they have *' uniformly died in the Romish persuasion*." In. * See a Representation of the State of Ireland, &c. by Pat. Duige- nan, LL. D. M. P. &c. pp. 8, 9. There are few persons acquainted with the history of this gentleman and his family, namely, tiiat his father and mother returned to the catholic communion in the awful circumstances he has described, and that he himself was a Catholic. Who then will hesitate to pronounce that the Doctor is preparing a retreat for himself* when the half smothered sparks of Chris- " tianity will be kindled in his breast" also ! But the learned gentleman may carry the jest too far 5 and he ought to recollect, it it the same spirit of immorality, priests are still encouraged by legal rewards to disobey their bishops and abandon their religion ; who when, they afterwards perform unlawful marriages, or commit other acts of immorality, the blame is uniformly thrown, not upon the law which cherishes them, but upon their church which censures them. But to make an end of this inexhaustible mat- ter, I ask what has been the conduct of govern- ment, and what is it still with respect to the poor Irish Catholics who engage and spend their lives in its service ? Heretofore, they were cajoled to enlist into certain catholic regiments, so called, under promise of being allowed to practise their own religion, and not being required to attend any other. To render the deception more plau- sible, priests were hired as chaplains to these sup- posed catholic regiments ; but no sooner were these compleated, than the priests were dis- missed, and the soldiers drafted into different regiments, mostly in those stationed in the West Indies, where it was equally impossible for the poor men to practise their religion, or to claim the contract under which they enlisted. At pre- sent Irish soldiers are indulged in a certain de- gree of religious freedom in their own country ; this, however, is far from being the universal case what he learnt in his catholic catechism, not to place his con« ficlence in acts of piety which are to be performed when " unequi- vocal symptoms of approaching death" shall appear. even there ; for no sooner are they removed thence, to defend some other part of the empire, than they are required, under pain of mihtary punishment, (for that is the convincing argu- ment) to lay aside their own rehgion, and to take up that of the estabhshment. But, Sir, when you have thus forced an Irishman to go to church, have you made a Protestant of him ? — To satisfy yourself on this head, wait till the si- tuation described by Dr. Duigenan arrives, name- ly, till " urequi vocal symptoms of approaching " death" shew themselves. You will then uni- formly, and without exception, find these self- convicted conformists tortured with guilty hor- rors, and impatient for the presence of a priest, who may receive them back into the bosom of their native Church. What, then, have you ef- fected by your intolerant laws and articles of war ? You have not made Protestants, you have only made hypocrites ! You have not promoted the cause of morality and religion in any point of view whatsoever, but you have essentially in- jured it ! You have caused men to stitle the voice ■ of their consciences, and you expect them to be examples of strict morality I You have induced them in their own full persuasion to abandon their God, and you expect them to be faithful to you ! 1 have run to a much greater length than I intended upon this subject ; not, Sir, by way of recrimination or reproach, but to point out in the laws and governing powers of Ireland incitements and provocations to immo- 73 rality, which cannot but have producetl their effect upon a considerable number of its inhabi- tants. Still these examples are by no means suf- ficiently numerous to aftect the character of the Irish in general, and it is still, thank God, true to say of them, that they are at the same time a religious and a moral people. I take no notice of the ancient calumnies of Sil- vester Girald us, the most peevish and prejudiced of all our original writers*; first, because these were , evidentl}^ intended as an apology for the inva- sion of Ireland by the first Plantagenet, to whom , he was a retainer ; secondly, because these have been refuted by former writers f ; thirdly, be- cause thev have been in a o-reat measure retract- ed by the calumniator himself; and lastly, be- cause they are, in their own nature, monstrous and incredible. To mention, then, later charges : " The Irish have been accused of perfidy," says NewenhamJ, who, however, rejects the accusa- tion. Carr adds : " In no country in the world " is treachery held in greater detestation than in " Ireland, because in no region can be found a " higher spirit of frankness and generosity §." * As a proof of this disposition, he begins his account of Ireland with an apology for taking up a subject which he pretends is so con- temptible, applying to it a scriptural text concerning Nazareth : " Ah " Hibernia potest aliquid esse boni ?" f See Sir James Ware's Hist, and Antiquit. c. 23. also Lynch in his Cambrensis Eversus. X Essays, &rc. ' . § Stranger in Ireland, p. 149. it tc 74 It has also Wen alledged, that they are " desti- " tute of a sense of equity*." This vague slan- der is met by clear and certain facts : '' A friend " of mine," says the ingenious author quoted above, "in whose house there is seldom less than 120()L. or 1500L. in cash, surrounded with 200or 300 poor peasants, retires at night to *' his bed without bolting a door or fastening a *' window f." I myself observed that the houses, both in the towns and in the country, were very ill secured against nocturnal depreda- tion, and that in the day time strangers ap- peared to enter into them without molestation, and to remain in them as long as they pleased ; which circumstance argues a great degree of con- fidence in each others honesty. — I have already mentioned the small number of capital convic- tions in Ireland, compared with those in Eng- land. The Irish are also charged with drunkenness, and I am ready to allow that their cheerful and convivial temper, joined to the natural influence of the climate, disposes them to indulge in this - vice. But after all, it is not by any means so common as in England, and most other countries under the same latitude ; the reason of which is, that the Irish are instructed and habituated to ■ strive against this natural propensity. As a proof of this, you can hardly enter into conversation with a serious Irish Catholic on the subject of * Essays. t Ibid. 75 tlrinking, who will not tell you of the oaths he has taken against it. The fact is, in order to break themselves of the habit of drinking to ex- cess, they are accustomed to bind themselves by an oath not to taste of any inebriating li(iuor for a stated time ; for example, during a month, three months, or half a year. — There are persons so carried away v/itli prejudice, as to asperse the Irish character with the guilt of that other branch of sensuality ; but no accusation can be ■ more unjust. "The instances of connubial de- " fection," says the late tourist, " are fev/er in " Ireland, for its size, than in any other country " of equal civilization, &c. The modesty of " the Irish ladies is the effect of principle*. — " The low Irish are observant of sexual modesty, " though crowded in the narrow limits of a ca- " bin, and are strangers to a crime which red- " dens the cheek with horror. — They are not " only remarkable for their early marriages, but " for the inviolable sanctity with which the " marriage contract is kept : hence, amongst " other causes, the number and health of their " childrent." I have reserved the heaviest and most ordi- nary charge against the morality of Irish Catho- lics, and indeed of Catholics in general, that of habitual perjurj'', to be discussed in the last place. The liberal tourist, who has borne such honourable testimony to the virtues of the Irish * Carr, p. 236. f Ibid. p. 405, 76 in other respects, appears to have given some countenance to this cahimny by the manner in v/hich he has described the prevarication of a couple of witnesses at two different trials at which he was present in Ireland; just as if he could attend any trial of importance in England, with- out witnessing equal prevarication on the part of more than two witnesses ! But to shew how far some English persons of respectable circum- stances and situation are capable of carrying their prejudice : I know a person of that description, who has repeatedly and publicly declared, that " the Irish are taught to believe there is no guilt ** in perjury, and that priests attend at the doors *' of the courts in Ireland, to absolve perjured *' witnesses as they return from them." Good God ! when will these anti-catholic calumniators become so far rational, as to see that this parti- cular accusation stands refuted and scouted by the actual visible situation of the party accused ! When will they acquire sense enough to see that Catholics have no occasion to petition parliament for a redress of their grievances, but that they have at all times a remedy for them in their own hands, if they could but reconcile it to their consci- ences to take a false oath. Surely these Papists could procure some priest, eitherfor love or money, toab- solve them ! or, what would be better, they might procure a general dispensation from the Pope for a little occasional perjury, which other people com- mit without any dispensation whatsoever ! They would thus obtain a great deal of wealth, influ- ' ■ •' ; ■ If . ' . dice, and power, which they might afterwards employ for tlie benefit of the Church, as well as for their own ; and what would be more valuable to them than all this, by swearing contrary to their own conviction, they would vindicate their , characters from the foul charge of perjury, and' pass for honest men ! But, Sir, to be serious, I beg you will observe that the test oaths against Catholics have completely answered their pur- pose in keeping them out of parliament, bene- fices, and places, and in subjecting them to a thousand inconvenient and grinding laws. This incontestible and shining fact will for ever de- monstrate the religion which Catholics attach to the obligation of oaths, and that their Church - does not furnish them with any remedy for escap- ing from it. This incontestible shining fact will forever confute and put to shame the calumnies of their enemies, many of whom are well known to have never refused an advantage which could be gotten by swearing. 1 have mentioned to you, Sir, that the test oaths, invented to keep Popery out of the state, have completely answer- ed their purpose : but have those other oaths been equally effectual, which have been devised by the legislature to exclude heterodoxy from the estab- lished Church ? or corruption from parliament ? or smuo-o-lino- from commerce? You are aware, Sir, what details I could furnish upon each of these heads ; but I spare you the relation, on the condition that you never join the daring calum^ ' . 78 niators who have the front to reproach Cathohcs with the practice of perjury ! I am, &c. LETTER X. ^ilkem?!/, July 13, 1807* Dear Sir, 1 O attempt to answer, or even to notice the diflerent writers ^ho have pubhcly caUimniated the religion and morals of the Irish Catholics would be an endless task : but there is one of them so distinguished by the virulence and grossness of his slanders, that I "cannot help at least pointing him out, and giv- ing you a specimen of his s[jirit, in a few ex- tracts which I shall make from his ponderous libel, called, A History of the difftrent Rebellions in Ireland. I was by no means surprised that a "U'ork of this complexion should have suifered the imprecedented disgrace of being rejected and 7y spurned at by the patron to mIioiii it was inscrib- ed *. Judging of it, however, as I used to do, by extracts, and knowing the mischief it occa- sioned, I really wondered that no inteUioent and spirited Insinnan should give that complete re- futation of the whole which several writers have given of particular parts of itf. At length, up- on readino- the work itself, and observino- that it is a mere farago of unconnected passages, bor- rowed, in all probability, from Orange News- papers, without plan, order, style, genius, or sentiment, I M^as no longer surprised that a man of talents and of a liberal mind was not found to undertake the dull and thankless task ; since of the most successful refutation of such a work it may with truth be said : " Nee babet victoria laudem*." For my part. Sir, I am far from having either the patience or the leisure necessary ror exposing theenoimous mass of malicious and infiamn.atory falsehoods which Sir Richard Musgrave has palm- * See a LeUer dated Dublin Casile, March 24, 1801, signed E. B. LiUlehales, by order of Marquis Cornwallis, the Lord Lieute- nant of Ireland, and addressed to Sir R. Musgrave, in which the writer is ordered not to inscribe any future edition of his book to the said nobleman. ^ - f Amongt these "are F. Plowden, Esq. in his History of Ireland, vol. iii. LJr. Caulfield, Ci'.tiiolic Bisliop ofWextoid, 111 his Reply to the \?isrt presentations ot Sir R. Musgrave, Edward Hay, Esq. and Theobald M'Keiina, Esq. ; Ovid's Metamor. " . ! "^ 80 cd upon the public. All that I shall do is to present you with a small posey of flowers culled from his savory garden, leaving them to make their natural impression on your sensorium. '•' The common Irish," says Sir Richard Mus- o-rave, " are doctrinally taught that they are " bound by their religion to resist the laws and " ordinances of a protcstant state, and that an ** oath of alleo-iance is null and void'*."' "It " is no less singular than true, that the lower " class of Irish Papists never think their priests " can contract any stain or contamination from " the commission of crimes, how heinous so- *' evert." " They (the rebels) killed one " Coyle, a shoemaker, because he couhl not cross " himself; but, on finding him to be a heretic, " thev compelled him to cross himself as well as " he could with his left hand, (his right hand " being disabled by a wound) superstitiously *' believing that the doing so would inevitably *' doom him to everlasting damnation J." Here we are told that a poor heretical shoemaker was murdered for not crossing himself, and yet that he did cross himself ! and that he was sup- posed to be damned, not for his heresy, but for * See Hist. &c. p. »/v8. Each of these assertions is directly con- trary to what the Irish are doctrinally taught in their General Cate. chism, printed by Fitzpatrick, Dublin, pp. 28, 29, 30, 4th edit. flbid. p. 545. This slander stands in opposition to the whole tenor of the Catholic Catechism, which makes no exception with re» spect to the obligation of doing good and avoiding evil. X Ibid. p. 254. ,. 81 *• crossing himself as well as he could I"—" The " practice of putting red tape round the necks *' of popish children prevailed in the counties of " Wicklow and Wexford, to enable the rebels *' to discriminate protestant from popish chil- *' dren in the massacre intended of the former*." If this be true, how much louder must have been the lamentation of mothers throughout M^icklow and Wexford when the rebels became masters of those countries, than that which was formerly heard in Bethlehem of Juda ! and how must these wretches have ont-heroded Herod himself in the murder of innocents ! But all this is left to our conjecture; for, unfortunately, Sir Richard has forgotten to put a word of it down in his book. In the mean time, as far as my informa- tion extends, not only the children, but also their mothers, were left uninjured by the rebels. Not a single protestant female was affronted by any of them, whilst the yeomen and king's troops were infamous for their conduct to catholic wo- men.— To return, however, to the tape : it is plain that our well-informed historian has mis- taken the strings with which the poor people are accustomed to tie the gospel of St. John round the necks of their children, for badges of protec- tion from slaughter. And surely the historian, who, as a custom-house officer, is accustomed to carry about the gospel of St. John in bis pocket, and to force poor merchants and tradesmen, with * Ibid. p. 317. ^ 82 uncovered lieads, to bow down and kiss the leather and paper of Avhich it consists, will not accuse ca- tholic M^omen of idolatry merely for honouring- St. John's gospel ! — " The C^lts immolated human *' victims to the Deity, and the Irish, who are of that race, follow the same practice, and both on the score of religion*" — From this pas- ; sage we learn that Sir Richard Musgrave, though an Irishman, is not a Celtic, or aboriginal Irish- man, and that he does not approve of murdering men in honour of God. Of what breed he really is, heralds, I apprehend, m^II determine with less re- search than divines will what religion he is of. .In the mean time, the religion of nature M'ill tell him that it is base and wicked to murder a whole ])eople in their reputation, from the price of whose sweat and blood he has risen to some dis- tinction, and still draws so comfortable a salary ! " In the year I790 the translation of a " book, entitled. The General History of the ' Church, from her Birth to her Triumphant State in Heaven, was printed in Dublin by J, Alehain, a j)opish bookseller. It was wz^V^e?? origi/ial/j/ at Rome, by a .sanguinary bigot of the name of Pastorini. This writer defends " and expresses his approbation of all the mas- sacres of Protestants which ever took place in France and Ireland. This piece o^ foil if and blasphemy w^s published to encourage the mass of Irish Papists to join in the conspiracy * Ilist.ofDiff. Rebellions, p. 374- a 83 '' which was formed so early, and in the mas- sacre which was to succeed it in 1798^'." 1 have quoted this passage, to shew the ease and confidence with which Sir Richard Musgrave, who professes to make " truth his polar star," and to be so anxious to investigate it in every matter, is capable of palming upon his reader a whole string of falsehoods. For, 1st, Tiiis History of the Church is not a translation, but the original text. Sdly, It was not originally written at Rome, but in England. 3dly, The author was not a sanguinary bigot, but a most mild and en- lightened Christian, as the whole tenor of his life and writings prove. 4thly, His name was not Pastorini, this being a mere allusion to his mi- nistr}^, but the R. Rev. Charles Walmesley, D. D. F. R. S. having been one of the scientific men who were employed in correcting the old style. «5thly. The work does not express the most remote approbation of any massacre, whe- ther French or Irish. 6thly, It consists neither of folly nor of blasphemy, but of a most ingenious and learned exposition of the book of revelationsf . Lastly, It was not published to excite an Irish conspiracy or massacre, neither of which could be foreseen at the time of the publication ; but to excite all Christians to lead a holy life, and to prepare for the coming of that awful Judge, be- fore whom Sir Richard Musgrave will be ar- • * Hist. ofDiff. Reb. p. 634. t See the 2d English edition, with additional Remarks and Elu- cidations by the Author, printed by Coghlan in 1798. M 84 raigned for his unprecedented malice and calum- nies. I shall conclude these quotations with an ex- tract from a copious Confession of Faith, con- sisting of 35 articles, which Sir Richard Mus- grave publishes as the genuine Creed of Catholics, assuring his readers that one copy of it was found in a priest's box at Gorey, and is now in the possession of a clergyman whom he names at Arklow, that a second was found some where at Carlo w, a third in the pocket of a drunken priest in the county of Meath, and a fourth in the pocket of a robber who was killed in the liberty of Dublin*. I am sure, Sir, after perusing these quotations, yo'u will not wish for any more of them, nor require any more documents to pronounce upon the cha- racter of Sir Richard's huge volume, or upon the conscience and honour of its author. 1. "When we assemble mc all cross our- selves, saying : " We acknowledge these our articles in the presence of Christ's Vicar, THE LORD GOD THE POPE, and in the pre- sence of the holy primates, bishops, monks, fri- ars, and priests. 2. " We acknowledge they can make vice ** virtue, and virtue vice, according to their pleasure. They all falling down flat on their faces, beginning the articles, and speaking to the host, &c. we must all fall down before the great effigy of our Lord God Ahnighty. * See Hist, of Diff. Rebel, pp. 447, 443. 4< K H 8J 6. " We are bound to believe that the holy '' massacre Avas lawful, lawfully put in execu- " tion ag-ainst Protestants, and likewise to con- " tinue the same, provided with the safety of our " lives. 8. " We are bound to believe a heretic can- ^' not be saved unless he partake of extreme " unction. 10. " We are not to keep our oaths with he- retics, if they can be broken : for, says our Holy Father, they have followed damnation, and Luther, and Calvin. 12. " W^e are bound to drive heretics out of " the land with fire, sword, faggot, and confu- " sion : as our Holy Father says, if their here- " sies prevail, we will become their slaves ! O, *' dear Father, keep us from that : (here the holy '' water is shaken, and they say Hail Mary three '' times.) 13. " We are bound to absolve for money or '' price those that imbrue their hands in the blood *' of a heretic. 19. "' We are bound to celebrate the holy *' mass in Latin, having ourselves cloathed in a " holy vestment and a shirt. 29. " We maintain seven sacraments essen- " tial to salvation, baptism, eucharist, penance, " extreme unction, holy orders, and matri- " mony*.'^ * Appeudis to Hist. ofDifF. Reb. p. 152. M 2 86 Such, Sir, is this most curious Confession of Faith, the authenticity of which Sir Richard ]\Iusgrave so stitly maintains; and thus far I be- lieve in his narration, namely, that different co- pies of it were dispersed throughout the kingdom, and actually found in the situations he mentions ; one of them in the confession box of an absent priest, another in the pocket of a drunken priest, and the third in that of a dead robber : but the questions which remain to be solved, are, first, who drew up this master-piece of erudition and orthodoxy ? secondly, who placed copies of it in those situations, or caused them to be placed there ? If you. Sir, and I, and a hundred other persons of common sense and information, were required to fix upon some one Orangeman in preference to all others, for these bold though un- successful attempts upon Papists, I am confident there would be no difference of opinion amongst us. If I had the unwished for honour of Sir Richard Musgrave's acquaintance, I would seri- ously advise him the next time he publishes a forged creed for the Catholics, to consult with Dr, Duigenan, who is a shrewd man, and well Acquainted with their doctrine and discipline. Methinks this learned gentleman, on such an occasion would address him as follows : " I do ** not find fault. Sir Richard, with the nonsense *' of this creed ; for as our great predecessor. Lord ** Shaftsbury, used to say of his popish plot (^the 87 " credit of which has been given to Dr. Gates), ''The more nonsense the better; if we cannot "■make the people swalloiv greater nonsense than " this, rce shall never do any good zvith them * ; *' still there is a prudence necessary in adapting *' our nonsense ad captum vulgi ; and there is some " deceptions, which, fiilling under their senses, "it is impossible to make them swallow; in " which case by attempting too much we shall " spoil all. Thus, to instance the most indis- " pensable, because the most irritating of all " charges against the Papists ; I, like you, have " maintainsd that thev are bound to murder all " persons of a religion different from their own: " but I did not pretend, as you unadvisedly do, " that they are conscious of such an obligation, " and have a written creed to this effect ; for ■' the Protestants, who have those popish cate* " chisms in their hands, Mhich I learnt in my ^' youth, and who have conversed and lived with " Papists in these islands, and at Rome itself, " would never have believed me, if I had said so. "My method was very different: I mounted " up to the Council of Lateran, held six hun- " dred years ago, and maintained that a certain " temporary ordinance of it, regarding the feu- " dal titles of the Albigenses, required, their " murder, and binds Catholics with respect to " all persons of a different communion from them " till the end of time ; notwithstanding they • North's Exaraen, p. 95. Sir J[ohn Dalrymple's Memoirs, p. 43, 88 '' know nothing at all of the matter. Now here *' I was out of the reach of the vulgar, both '*' well dressed and ill dressed ; and thus 1 suc- " ceeded in my object in raising a clamour '' against these Papists. — But above all things, " Sir Richard, it is necessary, in fabricating a " new set of articles for the Papists, that you '' should be acquainted with those which they '' are universally known to hold, as also with '' the terms they make use of in their faith and " liturgy. How ridiculous, for example, is it " to make them talk as you do, of saying Mass '* iw a holy vestment and a shirt, when their very " intants will tell their Protestant playmates, " that it is not a shirt, but an alb, which the " priest puts on for that purpose ! — How glar- '* ingly absurd is it to ascribe to them an opinion *' that heretics are to be saved b}^ means of " e.vtreme unction ! How inconsistent with the ar- '' guments and ridicule which you yourself con- " stantly make use of against the popish laity " for respecting ' their priests, and against the " priests themselves for not marrying like the " laity, is that article in which you make them " profess that both holy orders and nuitrimony are *' essential io salvation, and of course absolutely '' necessary for all Christians indiscriminately !'' But my heart is sick, and I am ill disposed to laugh, while the following awful reflections present themselves upon the perusal of this creed. If there are men in Ireland who are capable of deliberately forging such diabolical articles of 89 belief and practice in the name of their cathoHc fellow subjects, and of introducing them into the boxes of absent people, and into the pockets of drunken or dead people, in order to gain them credit, Avhat are not those men up to ! What will not they do, in other respects, against the poor devoted Papists, especially if they happen to be magistrates, or connected M^ith government ! Is not such a set of men capable of accusing Pa- pists unjustly, of crimes against the state and the peace of society, and of treating them as if they were actually guilty ? Is it not capable of ordering them to quit certain counties, and of burning down their cottages, in case they con- tinue to remain in them? Is it not likely, by suppressing information, packing juries, and in- timidating witnesses, to pervert the course of justice, where the point at issue lies between an Orangeman and a Catholic ? Again, Sir, if there is a people against whom such infernal artifices of calumny and forgery are employed by a pre- vailing party, how wretched must be their situa- tion I Can M-e be surprised that desperation should some times have driven them to the com- mission of those very crimes, which they are falsely accused of being habitually addicted to ? Lastly, Sir, (but here again I can indulge a smile), if Sir Richard Musgrave is capable of publishing to the world a document so glaringly absurd, so revolting to common sense as this Confession of Faith is, and of even appealing to witnesses for its authenticity, there needs nottnng 90 more to stamp the character of the historian, and to consign the ponderous history itself to the class of fabrications. I remain, &c. LETTER XL Thurles, July 15, 1807- Dear Sir, From the variegated beauties of Kilkenny I arrived, after a tedious journey westward, at the dull uniform plains and dreary bogs, in the midst of which this populous town is situated. But the endearing kindness and rare virtues of so amiable and valuable a friend, as my present host, are capable of rendering the most gloomy situation pleasant and agreeable. With ' respect, however, to the bogs, dark as they are to the eye, they are yet a source of comfort and of wealth to an industrious people, who have little or no other fuel. Amongst other objects of their industry at present, one of them is the rebuilding of their noble and spacious chapel in the name 91 . -. -^ ,':■ of their peculiar patron, as well as natiotial Apos- tle, THE GREAT SAINT PATRICK. Nothing could equal my surprise, at coming into this island and dipping into the works of history and antiquity, which have lately appeared - here, than to find that it is becoming the fashion to deny the very existence of this renowned saint ; and to class him with the tutelary deities of pagan nations. This opinion, which was" first broached upon a principle of hostility to the religion preached by St. Patrick, has been ' taken up by the ignorant, the bigotted, and the irreligious. To the last mentioned class in par- ticular, nothing is so precious as a pretext for. - laughing at the presumed darkness and super- stition of their pious ancestors, whilst, in fact, - they themselves are the deserved object of pity -' to men of sound judgment and real learning. After all. Sir, we must allow, it is not so very extraordinary that the existence of the Apostle of Ireland should he called in question, since upon the self same principle, pretenders to phi- losophy have, in our days, denied there ever weie such beings as Abraham, the father of God's people, Moses, the prophet and legislator of the Jews, and even Jesus Christ, the founder of the Christian religion. The author of the system in question is the . Ptev. Edward Led wich, LL. D. *, a writer who, * This writer informs us, from Harris, that Ryves, as Master in Chancery, in the reign of James I. started some doubts concerning N. 92 A warped by religious prejudices, takes as much pains to depreciate the character of his ancestors, and to obscure their history, upon almost every . subject lie treats of, as a genuine antiquary would take to illustrate them. I can forgive the Irish . for not giving a complete answer to Sir Richard .. Musgrave's History of the different Rebellions, , on the grounds which I have elsewhere stated ; but really I cannot excuse their neglecting to re- fute Dr. Ledwich's History and Antiquities of Ireland. Whenever this task shall be under- • taken by a writer of ordinary talents, learning, and industry, I pledg'e myself that the said work "f will be seen to contain more errors, both as to ., facts and as to reasoning, than any other M'ork of ' , equal bulk, bearing the name of a man of letters. The authority of Dr. Ledwich has seduced the Rev. Mr. Gordon*, and Sir John Carr I, who ,^ give blindly into all his errors concerning St. Patrick, the original faith of Ireland, and a va- riety of other religious subjects. It is hardly worth while mentioning that Sir Richard Mus- ^ tlie existence of St. Patrick, by way of answering a ceilaiu libel, and that he tried in vain to get them contirrned by the iearned Camden and Usher, lamenting, as he does, heavily, that they could not be induced to do this, and that in consequence of the " decisions of ih se men hagiography," (as he calls ancient his- tory), " triumphed over criticism and erudition," p. 59. The fact is, Camden and Usher had a reputation for learning to lose, which Ryves had not. * See his late History of Ireland. t The Stranger in Ireland. It is proper to mention that this ingenious and otherwise liberal writer, professes not to be versed in subjects of antiquity, but to be guided by Dr. Ledwich. 93 , : , . grave has thought proper to insert these at the beginning of his ponderous History, where also he^ condescends to lecture the Irish Catholics on the relio-ion of their ancestors, and to give them, his spiritual advice in a variety of particulars. Let US now see what force we have to draw up in defence of the patron Saint of Ireland against this new formed battahon which opposes him. In the first place we have amongst our cotem- pories, General Vallancey, Rev. Mr. Whitaker, Charles O'Connor, Esq. Rev. Alban Butler, &c. each of whom is a host of literature compared" with Dr. Ledwich and his followers. To go higher up, we have Fleury, Mosheira, Tillemont, Cave, Nicholson, Harris, Ware, Usher, Cam- den, Spelman, BolUindus, Baronius, Bellarmin, Godwin, Parker, Bale, and, in short, every other writer of distinguished learning in modern times, Protestant as well as Catholic, who has had oc- casion to speak of the conversion of Ireland. Are authors of their character to be reproached with beina: inferior to Dr. Ledwich and Dr. Ryves in criticism and erudition?"* To pro- ceed now to ancient authors in behalf of St. Pa- trick. There is the great light of the twelfth century, St. Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux in Burgundy, who mentions the saint by name, as " the apostle who converted the whole Irish na- *' tion to the faith of Christ f.'* Another writer * See Ledwich's Antiq. p. 5»»* f 111 Vita S. Malach. c. x. - • ■ . N2 - - ■ -. . of the same age, our countryman Joceline, a Cistercian monk, of the Abbey of Furness, in Lancashire, has left us this saint's Hfe in o-reat ■, detail. lie tells us that about three score other writers had preceded him in this subject, but - that he had particularly made use of the four ~ histories of St. Patrick's life, which had been drawn up by four cotemporary authors, his dis- .. ciples, SS. Lunian, Mel, Benignus, and Patrick Junior- There is another life of this saint still extant, . composed by Probus, uho lived in the seventh .century *, and a pretty long account of him by our British annalist Nennius, who flourished also in the seventh centuryf. Our saint's name occurs, and on the same day, March 17, in all the ancient martyrologies extant, namely, in the Roman, in that of venerable Bede, in those of Usuard, \ Khubanus, and Notker, to say nothing of the ; Chronicle of Sigebert, the Saxon Chronicle, that of Addo, Erric of Auxerres, Giraldus Cam- , brensis, William of Malmsburv, Marianus, Sco- tus, and a great number of other ancient writers, ' from the eighth to the twelfth century ; all which authorities shew that St. Patrick was acknow- ieged by the whole Church in ancient times, as ' well as by the Christians of Ireland, for the apos- , , * Such is the date assigned to this writer by tlie profoundly learn- ed Bollandus. His work formerly passed for that of Bede. t Historia Britonum. The learned editor of this autlior, Gale, , says of him, " Claruit Nennius Anno post Christum 620." Some awthois, however, bring him down to the teath ceut«ry. 9S tie of the latter. Not only do all ecclesiastical histories, but also the civil or Brehoii laws of Ireland, record the merits of this saint ^. In short, we have an hymn still in being, composed in his honour, by one of his converts and dis- ciples, St. Fiech, which is generally allowed by the learned to be genuine t' We have, more- over, the acts of two councils held by St. Pa- trick:]:, and even a circumstantial account of his life, called a Confession, drawn up by himself, together with a letter addressed to King Corotic, Avhich all the best critics admit to be his real composition §. But there are not only written documents which prove the existence of St. Patrick, but likewise all other kinds of monuments by which the memory of personages who heretofore lived can be recorded. The churches which he built, the dioceses which he formed, the monasteries which he founded, the havens where he landed, the places in which he dwelt (most of which edifices and places have preserved his name from time immemorial), the very conversion of the Irish nation, and the universal tradition, not * Collectanea de Rebus Hibernicis, by General Vallancey, vol. iii. pp. 95, 108. t Colgan. In V^ita S. Pat. Ware, Harris, Usher, Nicholson's Irish lib. Ledwich, by way of discrediting the antiquity of this hymn, makes the poet appeal to Old Historians for certain particu- lars of the saint's life, Thife is a wilful literary fraud. The original words are barely, Ut referlur in Historiis. X See Spel man's Councils, also those of Labbe. ^ Tillemont, Fleury, Butler, Usher, Ware, &c. 96 only of our islands, but also of the whole Chris- tian continent, are all so many monuments of this illustrious saint, and have preserved his memory fresh and untainted till the very hour in wliich Dr. Ledvvich wrote his book, as he him- self acknowledges*. In a word, I have no diffi- culty in saying, that the proofs of there having been such a man as Romulus, or Alexander the Great, are not so numerous and convincing, as are those for the existence of St. Patrick, and that the latter cannot be rejected without esta- blishing a universal historical scepticism. Sup- posing for a moment that St. Patrick did not convert the Irish, the question then is: Who did con\'crt them.'^ It would be strange if they alone were ignorant of what all other nations are acquainted with, namely, who was their apostle I if they alone had no tradition to inform them by v.'hom they had been taught to abandon idolatry, to abhor human sacrifices, to renounce the gratification of their passions, and to worship one Eternal Being, by the observance of his pure and sublime precepts f "■ * Antlq. p. 59. T A late tourist, whose wit becomes him better upon every other subject than upon those of religion, says, that " St Patrick. •' was canonized for teaching the Irish to believe in the Trinity by *• means of a shamrock."— The Stranger in Ireland. — It is plain this writer has a very inadequate idea of the benefits of Christianity In elevating the mind, and purifying the heart, independent of its future promises. But leaving all this out of the question, Dr. Ledwich should have informed him that St. Patrick, was never canonized and that there is no foundation for tlie story of the shamrock. . 97 • ■; The apostle of Ireland being thus insolently at- . tacked, it was not to be expected that its pecu- liar patroness, that saint's coteniporary and spi- ritual daughter, St. Bridget, would escape from insult. But in this instance it seemed adviseable to adopt a different kind of warfare for annoy- ing: the ancient reli«'ion, from that which was used in the former instance. The existence of this female saint, though resting upon the same sort of evidence as that of St. Patrick and his fellow missionaries from Rome, is by no means denied : it is even admitted on this occasion, and to answer the present purpose, that they also had an existence * : but it is pretended that they had - '' an accommodating spirit," in making an in- congruous mixture of Christianity and Paganism. In short, it is maintained that St. Bridget and her sister nuns of Kildare, were a continuation of ** heathen Druidesses, who preserved from the " remotest ages an inextinguishable firef;" or " priestesses of Vesta J." This is asserted on no better grounds, than because the nuns of Kildare used to keep a fire always lighted in their convent, whilst other Catholics extinguished theirs previously to the paschal solemnity §. * Antiquities of Ireland, p. 76. t Ibid. X See Gordon and Carr. § " ApiidKildariam occurrit Ignis Sanetae Brigidse qaem Liex. ** tmguibilem vocant, non quod extingui non possit, sed quod tarn *' solicite moniales et sanetae mulieres igiiem, suppetente materia, ' But first, if the sixty-six hagiographers ^vho Avrote the life of St. Patrick are not to be believ- ed for the existence of this apostle of Ireland, upon what rational ground is Cogitosus, with a comparatively small number of the same hagio- graphers, to be credited for the existence of St. Bridget? 2dly, Upon what authority is it as- serted that '' Druidesses kept up an inextin-' *' guishable fire from the remotest ages ;" or that there were Druidesses or priestesses of Vesta in Ireland at all during the sixth century ? Dr. Ledwich, after all his enquiries, has not been able to produce any such authority, (which, in- deed, if it existed, would overturn his system concerning the conversion of Ireland previously to that century.) But lastly, it is plain that Dr. Ledwich and his followers, in representing the preservation of a constant fire as a practice essen- tially connected Avith paganism, have overlooked a divine ordinance to this purpose, of earlier date than either Celtic Druidism or the worship of Vesta : I speak of the law in Leviticus, c. vi. v. 12. The Jive upon the altar (of the tabernacle) shall he burning in it^ and shall not he put out. It was for contemning this inextinguishable Jire^ and using a profane fire instead of it in thf^ir cen- sers, that the Levites, Nadab and Abihu, were miraculously burnt to death, Levit, vi. 12. To ** fovent et nutriunt ut k tempore virginis per tot anaorum curricula " semper mansit inextinctus." Girald. Camb. de Mirabilibus Hibern. Dist. ii. c.34. 99 : give you a proper idea, Sir, of this matter, I must observe, that according to the ancient as well as the modern ecclesiastical liturgy *, fire was to be struck and lighted up, with solemn prayers and ceremonies, on Easter eve, which fire was to be kept burning in the church lamps till the eve of Good Friday in the ensuing year. Now it might easily happen, that for some such charitable or pious motive as the nuns of Kildare afterwards pleaded f , St. Bridget might have urged an excuse, or obtained a dispensation for keeping up the fire in her convent on the afore- said eve. This custom being once established, from mere respect to the holy foundress, would unquestionably be retained by her successors. At length, however, to prevent any superstitious attachment to a singular practice, and to destroy the resemblance between this fire at Kildare, and that which had formerly been kept up in pagan Rome in honour of Vesta, the Archbishop of' Dublin, Henry de Londres, in the year 1220, caused it to be put out J ; after which the nuns were left at liberty to light it up again, and to keep it unextinguished, as they did till three centuries later, when it was finally quenched by the rapacious tyrant who turned them out of their habitation. * That this discipline prevailed in Ireland at the period in ques- tion, we learn from the life of St.Kiaran, Bishop ot Saigar, who was cotemporary with St. Bridget. . f The nuns urged that they kept up this fire for the relief and comfort of the poor. See Harris's Ware. I Auctor Anonym, apud Jac. Ware. Disquis. p. 97. o 100 These modern hunters after paganism in Ire- land, think they have discovered another in- stance of it (though they derive this neither from the Celtic Druidesses nor the Roman Ves tals, but from the Carthaginians or Phcenicians) in the fires hghted up in different parts of the country on the eve of St. John the Baptist, or Midsummer day. This they represent as tli& idolatrous worship of Baal, the Philistine god of fire, and as intended by his pretended catholic votaries to obtain of him fertility for the earth. The fact is, these fires on the eve of the 24th of June were heretofore as common in England and all over the continent, as they are now in Ireland, and have as little relation with the worship of Baal, as the bonfires have which blaze on the preceding 4th of June, being the King's birth- day : they are both intended to be demonstra- tions of joy. That, however, in honour of Christ's precursor is particularly appropriate, as alluding to his character of bearing witness to the lights John i. 7. and of his being himself a \)ng\\id^Xid shining light, John v. 35*. I remain, &c. ♦ Durandus Rationale Divin. O0ic« lOi LETTER XII. Thurles, July 17, 1807. Dear Sir, IT would be an injustice to Dr. Ledwich, still more than to St. Patrick and to Ireland, were I to omit noticing the effulgence of " erudition and criticism" which burst upon the learned world " in the hour" when he wrote the sixth chapter of his Antiquities* : an efful- o-ence, however, which is acknowledged to have escaped the optics of a Camden ar.d an Usher, when particularly directed to itf, and of every other historian and critic down to our present an- tiquary. Dr. Ledwich, upon whose foundation Gordon, Carr, and Musgrave -build, tells us that there were Christians, and even bishops in Ireland, previous to the lera fixed on for the arrival of St. Patrick :|: ; unfortunately, however, for the * Antiq. p. 59. t Ibid. p. 58. % Dr. L. frequently repeats that the Irish had a regular liierarchy before the age of St. Patrick. His argument is truly singular : Archbishop Laurence says that the religion of the Irish was the same with that of the Britons (namely, at the beginning of the 5th century.) Now the Britons had then a hierarchy, therefore the Irish had a hie-.., rarchy at the beginning of the 5th century ! 02 102 cause of incredulity, these bishops, if there were more than one, received their orders and their mission from Rome, no less than St. Patrick and his companions did : now it is to get rid of this Roman origin that Dr. Ledwich plunges into the gulph of scepticism and inconsistency. It is ad- mitted, then, that there were many Christians in Ireland before the arrival of St. Patrick in the fifth century. It is admitted that St. Palladius, a li^Iiop, was in Ireland a little before St. Patrick, having been sent thither by the same Pope Celes- tine, who sent St. Patrick*, as likewise St. Kia- ran, St. Ibar, St. Declan, and St. Albeus ; but they likewise derived their episcopacy and mission either immediately from Rome, or through the medium of St. Patrick's consecration f. The question, however, is not who was the first bishop in Ireland, but by whom the Irish nation was generally converted to Christianity. Our critic next attempts to invalidate the cre- dit of all the ancient calendars and martyrologies, that is to sa}', of the public registers of all the ancient churches in Christendom, being the most authentic and certain monuments of the facts they contain which are to be found. He objects that certain errors have been detected in some of the calendars. But by whom have they been detected ? By the catholic hagio- * Prosper, a cotemporary writer j also Bade, Eccl. Hist. 1. i. s. 13. t See Butler's Lives of the Saints, March 5, Sept. la. Usber. Ware, &c. 10 n graphers themselves, by BoUancUis, and Baillet, Butler, Latoni, and Fleury, in consequence of which detections they have been generally cor- rected in the calendars and liturgical books, as that in particular was M'hich confounded St. Dennis of Paris with St. Dennis the Areopagite in those of the GaUicanChurch. In thenextplace, if it were reasonable to reject all ancient histories and records in which an error had been detected, we mio-bt throw the whole collection of them into the fire. For which of them is entirely faultless ? After all, the errors which are now in question are not, generally speaking, those of the hagio- graphers, but of the present critic. He pre- tends, indeed, that " those eminent cathohc " writers, Bollandus, Papebvoch, Launoi, and " Tillemont, rejected and spoke contemptibly of " the deified phantoms," as he calls the saints in general. But what person of learning is not in- dignant at this deception ; it being notorious that these truly profound scholars spent their lives in recording the histories and illustrating the virtues of these very saints ? In writing their works, the martyrologies were avowedly thefr authority ; next to which, were the most genuine acts of the saints they could procure. But what more particularly regards the present purpose is, we know that these profoundly learned scholars and enlightened critics have one and all acknowledg- ed the existence of Ireland's apostle St. Patrick in general, and the authenticity in particular of 1*04 the account which he gives of himself in his cele- brated Confession. Dr. Ledwich proceeds to find fault with cer- tain puerile stories recorded of St. Patrick by Joceline and other writers. But do not the classical Curtius and the judicious Livy relate many idle tales of the founders of the Macedo- nian and Roman empires ? Are we, therefore, to say there never were such personag-es as Alexander the Great and Romulus? — Certainly not. What then are we to do ? — Reason tells us to imitate the example of those illustrious scholars and ha- giog-raphers mentioned above, in lighting up the torch of criticism, when we examine the legends of antiquity, in order to discover which of them are to be rejected and which retained. Hitherto it appears that Dr. Ledwich has but been skirmishing : now, however, he is going to display his full force, as needs must be, against the united learning and criticism of past ages. " I shall now proceed," he says, " with stronger " evidence to prove our apostle an ideal person- " age*.*' He first argues, that if St. Patrick had received his mission and orders from archi- episcopal dignity, Pope Celestine, Cogitosus, Adamnan, Cummian, and Bede, would not have passed over these circumstances in silence. — To this I answer, that it is contrary to every rule of criticism and common sense, to oppose negative presumptions to positive testimony. The whole ■_ * Antiq. p. 6z. 105 /. - collection of ancient writers, whose subject requir- ed them to treat of the conversion of Ireland, agree in the above-mentioned particulars; but Bede, for example, having undertaken to write the history of England's conversion, not that of Ireland, (which latter event preceded the former by a century and a half) he had no greater reason to jsptak of St. Patrick, than he had to speak of St. Remigius, the apostle of the French. The same observation applies in a great measure to the Irish writers, Cogitosus, Adamnan, and Cuni- mian. We have seen above, that where Bede's subject did lead him to commemorate St. Patrick, namely, in his Martyrology, he has actually done it *. The remainder of our sceptic's " stronger evi- *' dence" is equally defective and trifling. He objects that Laurence, St. Austin's successor in the see of Canterbury, writing to the prelates of Ireland, complained that Dagan, one of their number, coming to pay him a visit, refused to eat with him, or to remain in the same house with himf. Hence the sceptic concludes that St. Pa- trick could not have been the apostle of the Irish, because, in this case, Laurence, who was the Pope's legate, would not have failed to reproach them with ingratitude to the Roman See. He goes on to argue that Dagan must have consider- * Vide i6Kalendas Aprilis in Martyrol. Ven. Bedse, item Ra- bani, Usuardi et Notkeri. f Vide Hist. Eccles, Bedse, I. xi. c. 4. p. 63, 106 ed Laurence as excommunicated, by refusing to eatwitii him, in as much as by the canons it was held unlawful to eat with an excommunicated person. — The first part of this paralogism, I con- fess, I am unable to refute, because 1 cannot see in it the very semblance of an argument. To the second part I answer, that though it was held unlawful to eat with an excommunicated person, yet a man might refuse, in ancient as well as modern times, to eat with those who are not ex- communicated, through pride, resentment, and a variety of other motives. Dr. Ledwich goes on to quote the letter of St. Aldhelm to Geruntius, King of Cornwall,, and the British clergy of his dominions, in which the saint testifies that the people of South Wales (Dcmetce) carried their resentment against the English, though Christians, so far that they Avould not salute them, nor pray with them, nor drink out of any cup which they had used, un- less it was previously washed, &c.* After this, the sceptic exclaims : ''Words cannot convey a " stronger detestation of Popeiy, than this testi- " mony of Aldhelm f." The conclusion he would have us draw is, that the Irish being of the same religion with the Britons, could not be of the same religion with the English, in as nmch as the latter Mere avowedly converts of Roman piissionaries ; and that therefore the Irish had * Ep. 44. Inter. Epist. S. Buiiifac. t P. 60. 107 not been converted by St. Patrick, who was one of that description. This is a hobbling sorites, beino; lame in all its joints. It is sufficient, how- ever, for the present purpose, to observe that the ancient Britons or VV^elsh had other motives of animosity against the English Saxons than those of a religious nature: motives which everyone who has travelled in Wales, knows they cherish down to the present times. Nevertheless, I do not deny that there were a few even religious differences, for a certain time, between the an- cient Christians of these islands on the one hand, and the See Apostolic, with the English and the Christians of the whole world, on the other. We are distinctly informed what the subjects of these dif- ferences were, being merely points of discipline, and no way regarding faith. It is notorious that the chief of these related to the time of celebraring the festival of Easter, (a festival which regulat- ed all the moveable feasts and fasts of the year) and to the above-mentioned pride and uncharita- bleness of the Welsh with respect to the English. We have the most clear and positive evidence possible for deciding upon this whole matter, in, the conference which was held between St. A\i- gustine of Canterbury and the British bishops on the confines of England and Wales. In this conference St. Austin told them that many of their practices (observe, Sir, there is no com- plaint on the subject of thew faitli) were con- trary to those of the Universal Church ; never- P 108 theless, that if they would yield to him in the following three points, to keep Easter at the proper time, to observe the ceremonies of the Apostolic Church of Rome in baptism, and to join their labours with his in converting the Enolish nation, he was willing; to tolerate their particular practices in otiier respects*. This last condition required by St. Augustine demon- strates that it was a M'ant of charity on the part of the Britons towards their former ene- mies the English, and not any diversity of religion, A\'hich caused the principal part of the differences between them : for if these British bishops had differed from the Roman missiona- ries, either about the Eucharist or the Supre- macy of the Roman See, or any other article of faith, would St. Augustine not only have allowed but even have required them to join with Kim in the evangelical work of converting the English, "which M'ork he had begun and was then carrying- on witii the greatest success ? Here it is imj)ossi- ble to excuse Dr. Ledwich, who, it appears, has read Oede, from a deliberate imposition on his unlearned readers, especially when, referring to Dicebat autem eis (Augustinus Episcopus Britonum) quod in " multis qiiidem nostrse consuetiulini, imo universalis ecclesire con- " traria seritis ; et tamen, si in tribus his mihi obtemperare vultis, ut " Pascha suo tempore celebretis, ut ministerium baptisandi juxta " morem Romanje Sanctae et Apostolicse Ecclesiac compleatis, ut " genti Anglorum una nobiscum prsedicetis verbum Domini, csetera " quae agitis, quamvis moribus nostris contraria sequanimiler cuncta " tolerablmuf5." Bed.Eccl. Hist. 1. ii. c. 2. 109 the passage above cited, lie exclaims : " Words " cannot convey a stronger detestation of *' Popery than this testimony of Aldhelm.'* This writer is not only aware that the disputes between the Welsli prelates and the Roman mis- sionaries in the sixth century, had no sort of re- lation with the doctrines and practices whicl^ constitute Mdiat is now contemptuously termed Popery : but he is conscious, that in these very disputes, particularly in what regards tiie time of keeping Easter, and the obligation of forgiving injuries, he himself is forced to side with the Roman missionaries against the British bishops. Our critic's next strong objection, like his first, is a mere negation. He refers to a letter written in the name of Pope John, and certain other officers of the Roman Church, to the bi- shops and priests of Ireland, in which he says there is no mention made of St. Patrick. He ought, however, to have added, that the subject of the letter did not lead to any mention of him, as it barely related to the old question concern- ing the right time of celebrating Easter, and to the Pelagian heresy, which heresy appeared to be then sprouting up in Ireland *. This letter, or another written a little before it by Pope Ho- norius, seems to have produced its proper ef- fect, as we are assured by Bcde that, about this time, the right and canonical time of keeping * Bede 1. ii. c. 19. P2 no Easter was observed in the soutliern parts of Ire- land, in consequence of " an admonition from *' the Apostohcal See*." Thus much is clear from this letter, and from two former letters of St. Gregory the Great to the bishops of Ireland'!", that these prelates were in the habit of consulting the Pope for the time being as their spiritual father, and the latter of directing and reprehending them as his spiritual children : so far were they from treating each other as he- retics ! After all his boasting, the declared enemy of St. Patrick is forced to confess that all his '' stronger evidences," as he calls them, are of a mere '' negative nature ;" but he expresses his hope that they may gain some " weight by *' their accumulation |," though they have none ■when separately taken. It is proper, however, he should learn that nencntUy added to nontnilly ivill never make positive being. Uneasy at the awkward situation in which he finds himself after all his vaunting of enlightened criticism and demonstrative proofs, he at once begs the question, by asserting, in vaiious vague and un- • ** Porro gentes Scotorum quae in Australibus Hybernise in- " sulae partibus morabantur, jamdudum, ad admonitiwnem Apo- <( stolicae sedis Antistitis, Pascha canonico ritu observare (iiuicerunt." Bed. 1. iii. c. 3. t Vide Epistolam Gregorii " Universis Episcopis per Hyberniam," lib. ii. Epistolarum Greg. Ep. 36. Ed. horn. Item. Epist. Greg. " Quirino Episcopo et caeteris Episcopis in Hybernia Catholicis," lib. ix. ep. 61. - - t Antiq. pp. 62, 64. Ill supi)ortecl forms of speech *, that the religion of the ancient Irish vv^as essentially different from that of the English and then- Roman instructors, and that this is plain from Bede; lastly, that tho' he cannot discover " who was the preacher of " these new opinions," as he calls them, " so " opposite to the Romanst;" yet that cer- tainly it was not St. Patrick, nor any other missionary from Rome, fie adds, that the first preachers of Christianity in Ireland must have come from Asia j;. I shall take an opportunity, in a subsequent letter which I mean to send you, of recurring- to this alledged difference between the ancient Christianity of Ireland and that of Rome, in ^vhlch I shall particularly enquire what the enemies of St. Patrick would gain for their cause, were it in their poMcr to derive the Christianity of Ireland from the Eastern Church. In the mean time, I am, &c. * Antiq. p. 64. t Ibid. J Ibid. 112 LETTER XIII . Thurles, July I9, 1807-. Dear Sir, S- ►TILL dissatisfied, as he has rea- son to be, witli his success against St. Patrick, Dr. Ledwich returns to the charge, and begins to carp at a number of circumstantial particulars related by the different biographers of our saint, being such, as if proved to be untrue or absurb, would barely affect the accuracy, or judgment of the writers, and not the existence of the saint. However, as I have resolved to give this bold invader of historical truth a full hearing, I will not leave even these his minuter criticisms un- answered. He objects then to what is related of our saint's being born in Scotland of Christian parents, be- " fore that country was evangelized,*' according to the chronology of Bede ^\ But first our critic rejects the authority of Bede in toto, as to the different conversions of tlie inhabitants of these islands, in as much as Bede ascribes these con- versions in general to Rome. In the second place, Dr. Ledwich knows that several hagio- • P. 64. ■ 113 - ' graphers and learned writers place the saint's birth at St. David's, in Pembrokeshire *. Thirdly, he is aware that Kirkpatrick, though now in Scotland, was formerly within the territory of Britain!; and that at all events St. Patrick was of a British, not a Pictish or Scotch family X- ^^ what consequence then is it to enquire when the Picts and the Scots were converted, since it is demonstratively certain that the Britons were Christians long before St. Patrick's grandfather was born ? Our critic next objects to the circumstance of St. Patrick's having resided amongst the canons of the Lateran Church at Rome, because he tells us, from Onuphrius, that " Pope Gelasius " was the first who placed canons there, in the " year 492 §.'' — He had before objected that Platina, a superficial modern writer, does not speak of St. Patrick in his lives of the Popes, and now he quotes Platina's Commentator, Onu- phrius, to prove that there were no clergy to officiate at the head church of the Christian world 11 in the middle of the fifth century. The * Probus in Vlt. Pat. Gerald. Camb. Topogr. Hib. Stanyhurst, Camden, &c. •f Usher in Primord. X The saint in his Confession calls himself a British Roman. ■§ Antiq. p. 58. II There is an inscription on its walls to this effect. It was the im- ' perial palace of Constantine, and given by him to Pope Silvester long before the Pontificate of Gelasius. St. Leo had established the regular observances of St. Augustine of Hippo amongst the clergy of this church. 114 fact is, though Dr. Lechvich does not appear to know it, that, during several ages after the death of St. Patrick, the secular clergy in gene- ral were called Cauomci, because the canons were their rule of life, in contradistinction to the Monachi or Regulars^ who professed to follow the rule of St. Benedict *, or some other monas- tic rule. The critic now carps at the title of Archbishops conferred on St. Patrick by his biographers : " Here," he says, " all biographers, ancient and " modern, discover their ignorance of ecclesias- " tical history. — Before Theodore, Archbishop " of Canterbury, enjoyed this title in ^1^^ *' it Avas unknown in Britain |." Now let us see (without going further for this purpose than our national historian) whether " all bio- *' graphers, ancient and modern, discover their " ignorance,"' or M'hethcr Dr. Ledwich discovers his presumption in this particular ! —I read then in Venerable Bede, that the man of God, Au- gustine, going to Aries, was consecrated Arch- bishop of the English nation, "according to the " orders of the holy father Gregory, by Etherius, " Archbishop of the said city :[.*' 1 read concern- ing St. Laurence, the immediate successor of Au- gustine, that, having " obtained the rank of * Concil. Vernum. A. D. 755. Can. ii. Coucil. Aquisgraii. cap. 1 1 5. See Van Espen, Tom. i. de Canonicisi + P. 65. i Bede Eccl. Hist. 1. i. c. 27. See also c. 24. 115 ■ Archbishop,'' * he endeavoured to promote the work of God wliich was begun; and that lie " not only took care of the new church of Eng- " land, but also extended his pastoral solicitude '* to the ancient inhabitants of Britain, and to " the Scots who inhabited Ireland f." I read of their successors, Justus and Honorius, that they also were honoured with the title of ^rc/^^/.y/2o/;:j:. I might extend my arguments, were there occa- sion for it, by demonstrating that York §, St. David's, Seville, jMentz, Sirmium, and several other sees in tlie western, as well as in the eastern church, no less than Canterbury and Aries, were honoured with the title and jurisdiction of Arch- bishoprics long before the time of St. Theodore. But the occasion does not require such a disser- tation, and, I think, enough has been al- ready said to prove that critic grossly ignorant, as well as intolerably vain, who has ventured to reproach '' all the biographers of St. Patrick, " ancient and modern, with ignorance of eccle- *' siastical history." The following objection is nearly allied to the foregoing. The writer cavils at the legatine autho- rity and the use of the pall, said to have been con- ferred upon St. Patrick by Pope Hilary in 462. * " Laurentius Aichiepiscopatus gradu potitus," l.ii, c. 4. t Ibid. X Ibid. 1. ii. c. 15, 18. § St. Paulinus, who was consecrated for the see of York in 622, is expressly termed Archbishop bv Bede, 1. ill. c. 25, and received th« metropolitical pall fiom Pope Honorius, 1. ii. c. I7. Q 116 Now supposing that Joceline, arguing from tlie practice in his own time, may have erred in imagin- ing that the use of this ornament necessarily ac- companied the metropohtical dignity, yet nothing is more certain than that Dr. Ledwich himself is most egregiousiy deceived in fancying that the Popes had no legates before the second Nicene Council in 767. To mention two or three in- stances out of as many hundreds of such dele- gations. The great St. Augustine says, that he Avas sent by Pope Zozimus to Cesaraia, in Mauritania, to perform certain ecclesiastical commissions in his name *. St. Leo the Great, in the year 444, testifies, that he had appointed Anastasius, a bishop, to be his Vicar in the pro- vince of Illyricat, and St. Gregory the Great acknowledges the Archbishop of Aries to have been the legate of the apostolic see for a long time past, with the use of the pall, in the letter by Avhich he makes St. Augustine of Canterbury his legate throughout the British islands J, though he did not bestow the pall upon him till a later occasion. Dr. Ledwich concludes the above- * Aug;. Kpis. 157. "■' ;-' f ♦' Vicem nostram coeprscopo nostro Anastasio, secutl eorum eNempUmi quorum nobis recordatio est veneranda, com- misianis." St. Leo, Metrop. Ulyricum, ep. 25. X " Inlrrvogatio Augustiiii— Qualiter debemus cum Galliarum an Britanniarum episcopis agere ?— Respondit Gregoiius— li> Gal- liarum Episcopos nullam tibi auctoritatem tribuimus ; quiaabantU quis priedecessorum meonim temporibus pallium Arelateusis epis- copus accepit, quem nos privare auctoritate accepta non debemus, Britanniarum autem omnes episcopos tus fraternitati committimus uL uuiocti doceanlur, infirmi robborentur, pervcrsi auetoritate cot- rigantur." Bed.Hist. Eccl. 1. i. c. 27. - ; ^'' ]]7 mentioned criticisms, or rather cavils, in the fol- lowino: manner : *' It must be tiresome to the " reader^ as it is to the writer, to pursue further " this critical examination of the life of our saint. " I do not hesitate in affirming that every chap- *' ter in Jocelinc, Colgan, and Probus, is liable " to similar objections ; internal and invincible " proofs these, that our apostle and his history " are equally fabulous *.''' I also, Sir, must con- fess, that it is tiresome to argue with a writer so strong in assertion and so weak in proof ; and I, in my turn, do not hesitate to affirm, that there is not a paragraph in all Dr. Ledwich's criticisms concerning St. Patrick and the ancient religion of Ireland, which does not consist of groundless assertions and chimerical suppositions, in oppo- sition to positive evidence. What I have just now said concerning chimeri- cal suppositions more particularly applies to the account which our writer gives of the supposed origin of the history of St. Patrick. He says : that ''The ninth century, being famous for re- " viving and incorporating pagan practices " with the Christian ritual, and observing that '' Rome had her Mars, Athens her Minerva, Car- " thage her Juno, and every country and city ** a proper and peculiar deity, whose guardian " care was its protection and security, conceived *' it a very becoming employment for Christian " saints to assume the patronage of a Chris- * Antiq. p. 66. ■ . Q2 118 " tian people, &c. *." — I should be glad to know what Dr. Lechvich means by the ninth century. Did these brilliant ideas seize all at once the whole collection of men, women, and children in the ninth century ? Or was there a combination of artful impostors throughout C'hristendom, who undertook to make their respective country- men believe that there had been a St. Patrick in Ireland, a St. David in Wales,, a St. George in England, a St. Palladius in Scotland, he. whilst they were perfectly convinced that all such saints were mere chimeras ? If the latter supposition is adopted, as undoubtedly it must be, I ask, by what means could these impostors prevail on the learned men throughout Ireland, England, Scot- land, France, Flanders, and Italy, to adopt their scheme, and concur together, as they have done, in publishing the same particulars concerning St. Patrick ; for example, without the reclamation or objection of a single individual amongst them? By what artifice could they induce the princes and peo- ple of Christendom to build churches to the honour of this phantom termed St Patrick, and to call their toM^ns, havens, and other places after his name ? I could be amused. Sir, with the revery of Dr. Ledwich, had it the merit of originality, but being acquainted with the learned dreams of the celebrated Hardouin, who gravely maintains that all the classical books, except Cicero's * Antiq. p. 66. 119 works, Pliny's Natural History, Virgil's Geor- gics, and Horace's Satyrs, M^ere forged by the monks of the thirteenth century*. Dr. Ledwich's system loses its only merit in my eyes, and raises no other sentiment in my mind than unqualified contempt and indignation. Our author, by way of illustrating his sup- position, alludes to the error of Hilduin, in con- founding St. Dionysius, Bishop of Paris, with Dionysius the Areopagite, and to the legendary tale of St. James's body beins^ conveyed from Judea to Compostella, but in neither of these cases does there appear to have been a deliberate attempt to impose upon mankind. The writers of these accounts were weak and ignorant men, who paid too much credit to popular reports, and by committing them to writing, gave a temporary run to them. They did not palm upon the world a belief in the real existence of phantoms. The author had before quoted with applause the opinion of a well-informed writer, as he calls him, who says, that " the Spanish " Patrick might have appeared in a dream to the * If Dr. Ledwich could be compared with Hardouin, be might hereafter be lionoured with the same epitaph : Hie Jacet Hominum paradoxototatos Orbis literati portenlum, Venerandse aniiquitatis cullor et destructor, Docte Febricitans, Somnia et iiiaudita commenta vigilans edidit, Credulitate puer, audaciajuvenis, deliriis senexo 120 '' Irishas St. George did to the English *, and " become their protector, and at last their apos- " tlef.'' The truth is, St. George was chosen to be the patron saint of England J, not in tonseqiience of any dream, but of his being pre- viously the acknowledged patron of military ' men ; and he never once was termed the apostle of England, or even said to have been in Eng- land, by a single man of learning. Dr. Ledwich has elsewhere endeavoured to prop up his system of mingled scepticism and ir- religion with the following chimerical assump- tion : " The christian missionaries found it in- *' dispcnsably necessary to procure some saint *' under whose protection the inhabitants might , *' live secure from temporal and spiritual evils. At *' a loss for a patron, they adopted a practice, de- , ~ * The learned Dr. Percy, Bishop of Dromore, in his " Collection - " of Ancient Ballads," denies the existence of the patron saint of, , his country and of the Society of Antiquaries, pronouncing him to be nothing more than a talisman, or character of enchantment. Hence, when the writer of this had, in a Discourse on the King's Recovery, mentioned St. George as an ilhistrlous saint, hisT.ordship, in a letter addressed to the editor of the CJcntlcman's Magazine, called upon him to produce his proofs of the fact in question. The writer accordingly published "A Dissertation on the Existence and Character of St. Georgo," in which he has demonstrated, from the most ancient and authentic monuments, in opposition to the bishop, that there was such a saint ; and that this saint was not the infamous intruder into the see of Alexandria in the time of St. Atiianasius, against the assertions of Gibbon the historian. See the Dissertation at Keating and Go's. It is presumed that the bishop was fully con- vinced of his error, as he is not known to have renewed it since. f Antiq. p. 59. - , X In the Council of Oxford, heldiu 1222. 121 *' rived from paganism, and pursued it to a great " extent in the corrupt ages of Christianity *. — " Thus of a mountain atGlendaloch a saint was " made, as of the Shannon, St. Senanus, and of " Down, St. Dunust." When our reverend sceptic first sported this ridicule J on the great and good man to whom lie is indebted for his civilization, and for whatever he possesses of Christianity, the truly learned and judicious Charles O'Connor was living, who did not fail to call him to a proper account for his scepticism and irreligion. This celebrated antiquary chal- lenged him to prove a single instance of such pa- gan metamorphosis in the ecclesiastical history of Ireland ; and, descending to the particulars mentioned by Dr. Ledwich, he shewed that the Shannon, or Senus, was so called many ages be- fore the Christian saint, called Senanus, was born ; and with respect to the pretended St. Dunus, he denied that the name of any such saint was to be met with, except amongst the fabrications of Dr. Ledwich§. With as good reason may some writer, a few ages hence, deny * Dr. Ledwich has the effrontery to quote Baroiiius, Ciampini, &c. as approving of such vile and impious frauds, whereas the words of these writers barely imply that the christian bishops were accus* tomed to substitute the names of real saints for those of imaginary deities. f Antiq. p. i?'- X Collectanea de Rebus Hib. § Ibid. See Reflections on the Hist, of Ireland by C. O'Connor, Esq. addressed to Col. Vallanccy, vol.iii. ion that any such personages as a Lord Shannon or a Lord Down exbted at the beginning of the 19th century, and may assert that it was the practice of these our times to personify rivers and countries. With a still better shew of reason may the learned, some two hundred years hence, if perchance any account of Dr. Ledwich and his book should reach them, deny that such an egregious sceptic ever could have existed, or at least that he could have been " A REV. '' L. L. D. AND MEMBER OF SEVERAL " LEARNED SOCIETIES*." Our author, after appearing to quit the field, again returns to it ; and, as I have taken up the gauntlet against him on the chapter of St. Pa- trick, I am bound to return him stroke for stroke as long as he pleases to continue the combat. He denies, then, that this saint is mentioned by any author, or in any work of veracity down to the time of Nenniusf, (whom he places 238 years below his date) that is to say, he denies that St. Patrick is so mentioned during more than three centuries and a half from the time of his death. 1 answer, first, that if it v/ere rca^ sonable to question the existence of all personages deceased, concerning whom we have no cotem- porary, or other authentic records composed within three or four centuries from that in which •See the title-page of the Book called, "The AntiquitiPs of Ire- land." • ... _ ■ f Antiq. p. 67. ' - ^ • , 1^23 they lived, then we may deny there ever v/ere such men as Romulus, as Cyrus, as Abraham, or as Adam himself. But secondly, the fact itself, asserted by Dr. Ledwich, is demonstrated m my last letter to be grossly false. For, to omit other documents, venerable Bede, who inserts the name of our saint in his martyrology, lived within two centuries from the time of his decease ; the four disciples of St. Patrick, who furnishedJocelinewith his most important materials, were the saint's own cotemporaries ; so was St. Fiech, whose hymn in honour of his master yet remains. Nay, the very history of the saint, composed by himself, is still extant, as well as the acts of his councils. I have not yet referred to the important testimony of St. Prosper of Aquitain, a cotemporary of St. Patrick and Pope Celestine, and one of the most celebrated writers of his age. Commending the zeal of this Pope, both in repressing the Pelagian heresy and in propagating the christian faitli, he says : " Moreover, the same holy Pope or- '* dained a bishop to the Scottish pagan nation, *' and thus, whilst he endeavoured to preserve the " Roman island (Britain) Catholic, he made the " barbarous island (Ireland) Christian*." I am * *' Nee signior cura ab hoc eodem morbo (Pelagiana hseresi) " Britannias liberavit (Celestinus Papa" per Germanum Antissiodo^ ♦' rensem) quando quosdam inimicosgratiEe, solum suse origin is oc- " ciipantes, etiamabillo secrete exclusit oceani ; et, ordinalo See " tis episeop'o, diim Romanam insulam studet servare Catholicam, " fecit etiam barbaram Christiaiiam." Prosper, lib. contra Col- ■ atoiem, cap. 41. 124 not surprised that Dr. Ledwich should always have Carefully shunned this irrefragable testimo- ny, since it cuts up his laboured system to the very roots ; for it proves that Ireland was a pagan island before the time of Pope Celestine and St. Patrick ; it proves that this island was converted by a bishop sent thither for that pur- pose by the said Pope ; and it proves that this bishop must have been no other than St. Patrick, because St. Palladius, whom Prosper mentions as having been sent thither a little before by Pope Celestine on the same errand, did not succeed in the attem])t, and therefore crossed over the sea to preach to the Scots in Britain. Drawing at length towards a conclusion of his long chapter, the writer presents us with an un- faithful translation of two prayers in honour of St. Patrick *, which translation expresses what they do not say, and omits what they actually say. What is omitted in each of them, is tlie main hinge upon which these and all the prayers of the Church turn, namely, THROUGH JESUS CHRIST OUR LORD. By this con- clusion of her prayers, the Catholic Church pro- fesses and practically enforces, that we can nei- ther merit any favour from heaven of ourselves, nor obtain it by the prayers of the saints, except through and on account of the merits and atone- ment of Jesus Christ. Had our critic been so honest as to have inserted this conclusion of the * P. 68. . 125 prayer, his cliargc of idolatry against the reli- gion of his ancestors would have struck the most ignorant reader with its absurdity. Our writer finishes his laborious researches, as he calls them, with a flattering address to the Catholics of Ireland, terming them a liberal and enlightened people, and affirming, " that it is not '* possible they should be any longer amused *' with fictitious legends, or pay their adoration " to ideal personages, and that (what he calls) a " scriptural, rational, and manly religion, is alone " calculated for their present improvements in ''science and manners*." Here, Sir, we find the key to that "mystery of scepticism and ab- surdity, which we have been viewing with so much astonishment. It is for the sake of de- priving the Irish Catholics of their original faith, that Dr. Ledwich takes so much pains to deprive them of the great apostle who preached it to them. The fact, however, is, the Irish Catholics are really too much " enlightened" to become the dupes of such wretched artifices. After hav- ing baflled the machinations and withstood the persecutions of almost three centuries in support of the religion once for all delivered to them by the saints f, namely, by St. Patrick and his disciples in one of the golden ages of Christianity, they are not likely to make a compUment of it to the ca- joling, the declamation, or the sophistry of Dr. Ledwich. On the contrary, I promise myself * Antiq. p. 69. t Jude, V. 3. R2 126 that some of them, at least, will keep an eye upon him in fLitui:e, and not let one of the num- berless impieties and errors, with which his book is replete, be again published without a thorough refutation of it. I am, Sec. Dear Sir, LETTER XIV. Cashel, Jalij 21, 1807. I LEFT my worthy host and the other good people of Thurles with regret, and, at the distance of about a league from it, I stopped for some time to contemplate the beau- tiful and interesting ruins of Holy Cross. This was an ancient abbey of the order of Cisteaux in Burgundy, being a reformed, or stricter branch of the Benedictine order. Holy Cross was founded by Donald O'Brian, King of Li- merick, in the year 1169; though the present ruins exhibit a style of architecture of a later period than his reign by more than a century. Here are seen the noble remains of the gorgeous church, with its mullioned windows, canopied l%7 niches, perforated piscinas, and elaborate sepul- chres dispersed throughout the nave, transepts, and side ailcs. Here also may be traced the rich sacristy, the strong muniment-house, the solemn chapter-house, the studious cloisters, the seques- tered abbot's quarters, the frugal kitchen *, and various other offices. But all is now a dreary ruin and a wide waste; where a deeper silence reigns than that prescribed by conventual discipline in the twelfth century. For then the church, at least, Avas seven times in the day responsive to the Great Creator's praise. But now a gloomy and profane muteness has supplanted his worship, even in his temple, which silence is never inter- rupted except by the discordant voices of impure birds and beasts that shun the day light.— Such is the blessed change which is blasphemously at- tributed to *' the hght and spirit of God" in the Book of Homilies ! And for making this change the obscene and irreligious Henry is likened to " the pious Josaphat, Josias, and Ezechias ! f Well might the poet ask : What must have been the sacrilege of such reformers, when what we now view at Holy Cross was the effect of their piety ! t * Tliese monks observed a perpetual abstinence from flesh meat, wine, and all delicacies, and they fasted every day in the year, except the Sundays, and within the I'aschal time. t Horn. vol. i. Sermon on Good Works, Part iii. X 1 cannot forbear quoting at full length the admired passage of the poet here alluded to, describing monastic ruins : " Who sees these dismal heaps but will demand, " What barbarous invader sacked the land ? 128 The church and inonastery of Holy Cross were built for the particular purpose of preserving a portion of the true Cross on M'hich our blessed Saviour suffered death. Certain it is, from ec- clesiastical history, that the Christians never lost sight of this precious relic. It was buried by the heathens under a temple of Venus, in the reign of the Emperor Adrian, when he demo- lished the original city of Jerusalem ; but it was found again by the Empress St, Helena, at which time particles of it were distributed throughout Christendom *. The three principal pieces of it were preserved at Jerusalem, Constantinople, and Rome, from each of which small particles were occasionally taken. You will be surprised. Sir, when I tell you that the identical portion of the true Cross, for the sake of which this splen- did fane was erected, is now in the possession of my respected friend and fellow traveller, having been preserved from sacrilege, in the reign of Henry VHI. by the Ormond family, and by them transmitted to the family of Kavenagh, a surviv- ing descendant of which has deposited it with my " But when he hears no Gotli, no Turk, did bring *' This desolation, but a Christian King; " (While nothing but the name of zeal appears " 'Twixt our best actions and the worst of theirs) " What must he think our sacrilege would spare *' When such th' effects of our devotion are?" Sir John Denhum's Cooper's Hill. * St. Cyril, Bi«hop of Jerusalem, a cotemporary author, Catech. iv. lo, 13. 129 friend *. It is by far tlie largest piece of the Cross I ever met with, being about two inches and a half long, and about half an inch broad, but very thin. It is inserted in the lower shaft of an archiepiscopal cross, made of some curious wood, and inclosed in a gilt case. Had you seen me respectfully saluting that material instrument of my redemption, you would, perhaps, have ac- cused me of idolatry, and yet. Sir, you may re- collect, that when vou and I and certain other friends visited the British Museum, most of the company kissed the old parchment of Magna Charta upon bended knees, without any impu- tation of idolatry ; and when the miniature of. your deceased father, inclosing a relic of his hair, ' was brought home to you by the artist, you paid it, if I well remember, some suCh homage of respect and affection. You will tell me that you did not mean, on this occasion, to pay respect to the picture itself, but to the beloved personage whom it recalled to your remembrance ; and 1 admit your plea. But pray. Sir, why may not I avail myself of the same plea, in justification of the respect which I paid to what I believe to have been part of the very wood on which my best friend shed his blood for me. Am I less able to make a distinction between a piece of wood and the great Redeemer, than you are to distinguish between colouring and your deceased • I have seen authentic vouchers for these several particulars in \ the possession of my friend. 130 parent? Or than the nobles of the land are to distinguish between the empty chair of state, to which they sometimes bow, and the King's per- son ? Or than witnesses in a court of justice are to distinguish between the paper and ink they kiss, and the word of God which these represent to them ? But, to quit the regions of controversy for those of antiquity, having again mounted my chaise at Holy Cross, and proceeded two or three miles in the same western direction in which I came to it, I descried, amongst the clouds, the Rock of Cashel : for so the ancient cathedral of this me- tropolitical see is called, from the lofty rngged rock upon M'hich it stands. A nearer survey of this awful pile suggests the idea of a castle rather than a cinirch. In fact it was both one and the other. For here the renowned Cormac Cuillinan, who was at the same time King and Archbishop of Munster (being also a celebrated legislator, poet, and saint), erected his royal castle and his tnetropolitical cathedral close together. The latter he consecrated to God, in honour of St. Patrick, A. D. 900 *. A much more spacious and eleq-ant cathedral was added to this above two centuries later, being consecrated, and * A curious old painting of Cormac in robes, pnrtly royal and partiy archiepiscopal, together witli his patron St. Patrick, is seen in the new and spacious catholic chapel of the city of Cashel. Though I have followed Ware, Harris> Nicholson, &c. in the date hf re assigned to Cormac, yet I have some reason to suspect that he lived at a much later period. 131 a synod held in it, A. D. 1134 : at which time the former church began to be used as a chapter- house. The present cathedral bears intrinsic ' marks of the age assigned to its erection, namely, the twelfth ; as does Cormac's church, now called Cormac's hall, of the tenth. But both these venerable edifices, together with the ad- joining palace, have been abandoned by the late archbishops, who have built for themselves a more comfortable residence, and a church more proportioned to the small number of their flock, in a different situation. But the huge pile of building before us, covering, as it does, the na- tive rock, and seeming as if it had been formed out of its summit, does not consist only of the cathedral and the castle, but also of one of those remarkable round towers, which are, in a manner, peculiar to Ireland, and which have exercised the ingenuity of so many antiquaries to explain their original use. This tower, and that at Kilkenny, are the highest I have seen in this country, and stand close to the cathedral, the latter within a few feet of it, M'hile the other actually commu- nicates with it by a door at a considerable height from the ground. These towers are, as their name imports, perfectly round, both on the outside and in the inside. They are carried up, in this shape, to the height of from 50 to 150 feet *, and they terminate at the top in a tapering sugar-loaf covering, which ij * Kilkenny Td*ver is said by Harris to be 1 50 feet high. S 132 concave in the insirle, and convex on the out- side. They are, in o-cneral, about l^ feet in the diameter at the bottom, comprehending the thickness of the walls, and about 8 feet in the diameter of the cavity. They decrease insensibly lip to the top, where they measure about 6 feet in the interior. There is a door into them, at the heio'ht of from 8 to 1 6 or 20 feet from the ground. They are universally built of stone, the' not always of the stone which the country affords. The materials of this tower of Cashel are found to have been brought from a considerable dis- tance, and are much better than those of \vhich the cathedral is built. The workmanship of them is excellent, as appears to the eye, and as is proved by their durability. When viewed in the inside, they are found to be perfectly empty. There are, however, holes in the stone work of the walls, into which beams appear to have been heretofore inserted, for forming stories at pro- per distances, though all these beams are now decayed, and there are a few small loop-holes, perhaps four or five in the whole height, for ad- mitting light into the interior. Near the top of each tower there are usually four of these loop- holes, corresponding in general with the four cardinal points. I must not forget to add, that the Round Towers are always found, either ad- joining to churches, or to the site of ancient churches. From this description of these celebrated towers, I make no doubt but you will form as^ 133 accurate an idea of them as if you had actually seen them ; and of course you will be qualified to judge of the respective systems of different authors concerning their use. But first to say a few words concerning the period in which they were generally erected. It appears to me that this must be very remote, from the circular arches over the doors of many of them, which proves them to be anterior to the introduction of the pointed arch, from the Saxon zigzags and other ornaments of these door- ways, from the circum- ' stance of the timber which formed the stages in them having entirely mouldered away and dis- appeared, and from the account which Giraldus Cambrensis gives of them in the 12th century; for he describes them as quite common through- out Ireland, and as being then of a remote an- tiquity. It seems to me, however, that he him- self did not then understand their original use. The prevailing opinion uhich ascribes the build- ing of them to the Ostmen or Danes, does not seem to be well founded. These invaders never extended their conquests to all the parts of Ire- land in which these towers are found. They were not so completely masters of any considerable part of the interior country as to venture upon raising considerable structures in it. These pi- rates did not build similar towers in England, Normandy, or Sicily, when they conquered those countries, nor did they even build such in their own country, as appears upon inquiry. Finallv, the reason assigned for attributing these S2 134 V'orks to foreigners, namely, the supposed rude- ness of the Irish, is evidently ill founded. For can we suppose that the tutors of the English, French, and Germans, in the learned languages, the sciences, and music, as the Irish are known to have been during four centuries, were incapa- ble of learning how to build plain round towers of stone, when they saw their scholars all around them erecting stately churches and monasteries of stone; most of which we are assured M^re ornamented with towers, Some persons have conceived the Round Towers of Ireland to have been built as places of security. I grant that a single person might de- fend himself in one of these cceteris paribus against a single enemy ; but the man who had the means of erecting a tower of this nature would want space for many other defenders, and for many persons to be defended besides him- self. Other conjecturers have supposed they were intended for pharos, or beacons. But not to mention that they are frequently placed in low situations, and that two or three of them are sometimes found to stand near together ; the apertures at the top of them are not large enough to transmit any considerable body of light ; being very different, in this respect, from our modern light houses. — ■ — A third opinion, which is that pf the learned Vallancey and others, is, that they were made by the Phoenicians or Carthaginians, in tlieir commercial visits to Ireland, as Pyra- theia, or fire-altars.-^— But to auswer this puf-; 135 pose there was no occasion of carrying them up to so great a height ; and they ought rather to have heen left open at the top, like our great furnaces, than closed up as tliey are fouud to be. A fourth system is, that they were built for watch-houses, in which guards were stationed to give notice, by trumpets, or other means, of the approach of enemies or thieves ; and certainly if these towers had been placed near the castles which were built in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries throughout Ireland, there would not want tolerable good authority to support this sys- tem in a passage of a well-informed author of the l6th century which has generally been over- looked*. But as they are universally found near churches or chapels, or at least near the site of ancient churches or chapels, and as they are not always even in elevated situations, I cannot admit them to have been watch-towers. A fifth hypothesis is, that of Molyneaux and Dr. Ledwich |, who maintains that they were built for belfries to the churches near which thev are * Stanyhurst ilescribing the manners of the Irish says: " Im- " primis autem caslellano prsesidio se tuentiir, ne, illis quiescen- " tibiis, nocturna vis iiiferatur. Quare, ut tale quiddam incom. " modi de nocte non accidat, habent in castelli vertice, tanquam " in specula, exciibias, quae siEpissinie vociferant, et in frequenti- " bus clamonbus majorem partem noctis vigilant. Atque has " vociferationes idcirco iterant ut nocturnis furibus et viatoribus *' significent patrem familias non ita graviter dormitare quin promp- " tus sit hostes a suis laribus viriliter ejicere."— De Re1)usinHib. Gestis, p. 33. f See his Dissertation in Collectanea, vol. ii. also his chapter pn Round Towers, in his Antiquities, p. 155, &c. 136 placed. — —In opposition to this assertion I have to observe, that none of these towers is large ^ enough for a single bell of a moderate size to swing round in it; that from the whole of their form and dimensions, and from the smallness of the apertures in them, they are rather calculated to stifle than to transmit to a distance any sonnd that is made in them ; lastly, that though possi- bly a small bell may have been accidentally put up in one or two of them, at sonie late period *, yet we constantly find other belfries or contrivances for hanging bells in the churches adjoining to them. In the mean time, we can derive no in- formation from the earliest writer M'ho takes no- tice of the towers, except that they were com- mon throughout Ireland, that they were of great antiquity in the 12th century, and that they were considered to be built for some relio-ious O purpose t- * Dr. Ledwich tells us, from Mr. Smith, that the Round Tower atArdmore has been, at some period, used to hang a bell in, as appears by three " pieces of oak still remaining near the top of it," and by " two channels which are cut in the sill of the door where " the rope went out, the ringer standing below Uie door on the " outside," Aiitiq. p. 163. But if these pieces of oak were coeval wiih the tower, it is unaccountable that they should have remained entire while the beams in every other tower have mouldered away. Again, what reason can Dr. Ledvvich assign why there are not holes in the sills of every olhe;- tower. — In a word, the ancient architects were too wise to place the bell under cover and the ringer ill the open air. t Giraldus giving a fabulous account of the origin of the lake called Lovgh-Neagh, which, he says, was caused by ihe over- sowing 01 a fountain, that on a sudden deluged a large tract of land 137 The idea, Sir, which first struck me, upon- attentively surveying these towers, was the same which I have since learnt was adopted by Dean Richardson and the learned Harris^ namely, that they were built as habitations for a certain set of anchorites, called Indus'^ or Cdlani. We other- wise know that such recluses were often found close to the churches of Ireland in ancient times. An early model of anchorites was St. John the Baptist, who passed his life in the deserts of Jii- dea, clothed widi a hair-cloth, and living upon locusts and wild honey *. Afterwards, we find a Paul the Hermit, an Antony, an Hilar ion, and a crowd of other solitaries, who filled the deserts of Egypt and Syria. The greater part of these lived in monasteries, but several of them resided by themselves in caves, or upon the tops of mountains, or in other situations almost inacces- sible. At length, in the fourth century, one of them, St. Simon, a Syrian, to prevent the in- terruption of visitants, and to lead a more mor- tified life, caused a pillar to be erected 40 cubits high, and three feet in diameter, at the top of and destroyed a wicked race of people, adds that. In cal m weather, the lishermeti of the lake are accustomed to pouU out ** the tall narrow " ecclesiastical round towers, peculiar to Ireland, under the water; " Piscatores aquse illius turres ecclesiasticas, quae, more patriae, '• arctae sunt et altse, uec non et rotundae, s,ub undis manifeste, " sereno tempore conspiciunt et extraneis transeuntibus, reique •' causas admirantibus frequenter oslendunt." Topograph. Hib. Dist. ii. c. 9. * Mark i. 4. Luke i. 8. 138 which he passed the last 20 years^of his life* His example was followed by others, and an or- der called Stylites, from their living upon pillars, subsisted in the East till it was desolated by the Saracens. An attempt was made to lead the same kind of life in the West by one Vulfilaic, a na- tive of Lombardy, who undertook to live upon a column, near Triers, in Germany. But the Ger- man bishops judging this practice to be too sin.- gular in itself, and too rigorous for these climates, put a stop to it, and obliged the new Stylite to descend from his column f- It i^ well known that the number of the recluses, together with their austerity and abstraction from the things of thi^ world, was in no part of the western church so great as in Ireland, during the first four centuries after its conversion X' 'Ihh being so, what won- der that those amongst them who resided near the churches, for the sake of approaching to the sacraments, should wish to raise their cells into the air, to be thus more retired from the crowds which frequented the churches, and also to imi- tate, as closely as this noithern cliniate would * Amongst other vouchers for this extraordinary fact is the famous church historian Theodoret, who professes to have been perfectedly well acquainted with theaaint. — Tiie Stylite, as he was called, was from time to time, furnished with a small quantity of food from below, and he reposed agamst certain rails which surrounded the top of the pillar wht;n he slept. f Greg. Turon. Hist. 1. viii. c. i 5. X Harris has furnished us u ith a long list of Irish anchorets or lucUisi, though it is e-'ideiit he could not get to a knowledge o|' one thousandth partof iheir number. ■ 139 permit, the famous St. Simeon and the other Stylites of the East*'. By Hving within the co- lumn instead of the outside of it, they avoided the ostentation which the western bishops object- ed to, and by having- a covering over tl^eir heads, they were protected from the greatest severity of the weatlier ; as it M'as indispensably necessary they should be in this northern climate. If we examine the door-ways of the towers, we find them universally raised from the ground, gene- rally to the heighth of from eight to twenty feet. Hence we may conclude that they were not made to be easily entered into, or for any of the ordi- nary purposes of life. They are also generally ornamented in the Saxon style ; because the ceremony of introducing the anchorite into the door of that cell, from which he was no more to go oil t, like a monastic profession, was conduct- ed with much solemnity f. It required a ladder >to get into the tower, which the recluse, of * It, is certain that St. Simeon's ?TUAv) was round, and though Raderus speaks of the cells usually built for the Inclusi of Bavaria as being square, yet, it is certain, that in a matter of optional devotion, such as the one in question, there was no fixed ecclesiastical law. 1 have observed that the piers for supporting large doors and gates, as also many other buildings in Ireland, are made in a circular form witli a conical cap upon them. Whence could this singular style have been derived, except from the round towers ? And from what models are the round towers themselves copied, except from the columns of the eastern anchorets > f In the life of St. Raynerus the Anchoret, it is said : "Cum ** multa devotione et reverentia clausus est inclusorio juxta ostium " maioris ecclesiae.'* 140 course, drew up after liim when he entered, and which would be equally necessary for him to ascend or to descend from one story to another. He would occupy Avhich ever story suited the weather, his health, or his devotion; but he would undoubtedly receive the priest, who came to communicate him, or the charitable person who brought him provisions, or the pious Christian who sought his advice* in the lower apartment, next to the door. Upon the whole, Sir, I have no sort of doubt that these curious and singular monuments of Irish antiquity were built for the habitation of anchorites, within a century or two after the conversion of the island. They are admirably well adapted and situated for the purposes of these recluses, and they bear as near a resem- blance as circumstances would permit with the iTvKui of the admired Svrian hermits. It is im- possible to shew what other purpose they were calculated for, and it is equally impossible to ' discover the vestiges of any other Clusorice in the neighbourhood of the great churches ; which, however, we know to have heretofore existed near many of them. But, after all, the present * We learm from St. Bernard that St. IMalacliy, afterwards Archbishop of Annash, in the 12th century, applied for religious instruction, when a voulh, to a holy solitary, by name Imanis, who was shut up in a ce\l near the cr.thedral of the said city, probably in a round tower. St. Bern, in vita St. Malach. c. 2. Ul antiquarian disquisition is insignificant compared with that which I am next required to enter upon, namely, what species of C'hristianity was originally preached to the Irish nation ? I am, &c. LETTER XV. Cashel, July 9.3, 1807. Dear Sir, Xn treating of the important subject of antiquity, which I announced at the conclusion of my last letter, 1 have to combat t\\ o principal adversaries, being persons of very different characters, attainments, and systems ; but, nevertheless, combined together in the same cause, that of robbing the Irish Catholics of their ancient faith. These persons are Arch- bishop Usher and Dr. Ledwich. They both maintain that the original Christianity of Ire- land was not Catholic, but rather the reverse of it. They are, however, in very different and in- consistent stories with respect to the source and T2 142 nature of this Christianity, as will appear from the following abstrct of tlieir respective systems. Archbishop Usher says : " Unquestionably there was a missionary from Rome, of the name of Patrick, who, together with his disciples, converted the greater part of our Irish ances- tors from Paganism to Christianity, about the middle of the fifth century. All history attests ■ it, and it would be madness to deny it. But I can prove, from the very acts of this apostle, from venerable Bede, and other ancient doc- tors of the Church, that the religion then im- ported by St. Patrick was different in its essen- tial parts from that professed by* the Catholics at the present time." On the other hand, Dr. Ledwich exclaims : " Away with the phan- toms invented by missionaries of the ninth century, in imitation of Mars, Minerva, and Juno. There never was such a man at all as St. Patrick, the apostle of Ireland ; and it is cer- tain that the Irish were converted to a religion the very reverse of Popery, by certain un- known preachers from Asia ; which pure reli- gion continued in Ireland down to the year 1 152. As to Ware, Harris, and Primate Uisher, they had not even a tolerable idea of our origi- nal episcopacy * ; and when they appeal to the testimony of Bede and the English Saxon church, in opposition to Popery, they appeal to acknowledged Papists." I sljali first pay * ScieAaticj. p. 87, 143 attention to the arguments of the Archbishop, as they are detailed by Harris, after which I shall again notice the declamations of Ledwich * : the occasion, however, requires that I should com- press both the former and the latter, as likewise my answers, within as small a compass as possi- ble. I. It is urged by Usher, that the Christianity which prevailed in the age of St. Patrick, and a considerable time afterwards, could not be the religion of modern Catholics, because the poet Sedulius in the fifth century, and our vener-. able Bede in the eighth, strongly recommend- ed the reading of the holy scriptures. — But does the Catholic Church in these times forbid the reading of them ? — On the contrary, she im- poses a strict obligation of readmg them upon all her clergy, and she interdicts the practice to no one, but only expresses a dcsiire that they who apply to it may have some previous tincture of literature, or at least that they may be pos- sessed of a docile and humble mind, so as to be willing to admit her interpretation of the many things hard to be uNcierjitoodlj, which occur in them. In the mean time, i might quote whole volumes of passages from the Fathers X * See a Dissertation annexed to the Life of St, Patrick. ^ 2 Pet. iii. 16. J See in particular amongst St. Patrick's cotemporaries, St. Basil, Lib. de Spir. S. c. 27. St. JohnChrys. in Orat. 4. n\ Epist. adThessal. and St. Vincent of Lerins, in the whole of his golden work, called. Commonitorium adversus profanas Hsereseon novitates, 144 and Councils* of the Church, belonging to the ages in question, byway of proving that they ad- mitted certain unwritten apostolical traditions as the word of God, equally with the written Bihie, and that they unanimously rejected from their communion, as heathens and puhricans, all those who refused to hear the Church f.- II. It is objected 'by Usher, that what is called St. Patrick's Purgatory was not instituted by the saint of that name:[:. — This I readily grant ; but if he argues from thence, that St. Patrick and the early C hristians did not believe in a middle state of souls after death, which may be assisted by the prayers of living Christians, he is guilty of an error both in reasoning and in fact. It will be seen in this saint's second council, that he forbids the holy sacrifice to be offered up for those persons after their death, who had render- * See ia particular the speech otSt. Wilfrid, commended by Bede, Hist. 1. iii. c. 27. also the decrees of the synods ot Herudford, I. iv. c. 5. and of lledfield, !. iv. c. 17. Sir Richard Musgrave, referring to the asstrtions ol Ushtr, wiiith he recommends to the cons-idera- tion ofCalholics, takes upon himself to assert, that " until Arcli« " bishop Anselm's time, (namely, the 12th century) the Irish clergy " were totally ignorant of the councils ot the thurch, and d4 was once suppressed by an order of the Pope, in 1497. 145 cd themselves unworthy to have it offered up for them in their life time*. The writings of Bede abound with testimonies in favour of prayers for the dead, of purgatory, &c.t and he him- self, when he came to die, earnestly desired that prayers and masses might he offered up for him J. III. It is said that St. Patrick condemned the worship of images. — It is true, he condemned and extirpated the use of pagan idols ; hut there is not the shadow of an argument that he deviated from the received doctrine and practice of the Universal Church with respect to the paying a proper reverence to the cross of Christ, his image, or the images or relics of the martyrs and saints, or with respect to the pious usage of desiring the saints to offer up prayers for us. At the time when St. Patrick arrived in Ireland, he saw the cross of Christ exalted upon the imperial stand- ards, and he left the great doctors of Christia- ty, a Chrysostom, an Augustine, a Prosper, and a Leo, bearing ample testimony to the piety and utility of these practices §. He himself is re- corded for bringing relics into this island |j. With respect to our native historian and theolo- gian. Venerable Bede, he describes St. Augus- tine of Canterbury preaching the gospel to King • 2 Concil. S. Patricii, cap. 12. Spelrran, Conci!. p. 57. f Hist. 1. iv. c. 22. l.iii. c 19 X Cuthbert in Vit. Bed. Act. Benecl. torn. 3. § See the Liturgy of St. Chrysost. A\ig. Sernn. 25, de Sanctis, &c. Prosper de Vita Contemplat. c. iv. Leo Setm. de 3. Vine, y Jocelin. 146 Ethelbert, with the cross for an ensign, and the figure of Christ for an emblem *; he represents the same saint consecrating pagan temples with holy water and relics ti and offering up homage to God by the sacrifice of the mass J. .With re- spect to images in particular, Venerable Bede proves that God did not interdict the total use of them, by his commanding the figures of che- rubims and oxen to be placed in the temple: "for certainly," he adds, " if it wss lawful to '' make twelve oxen of brass to support the *' brazen sea, it cannot be amiss to paint the " twelve apostles going to preach to all na- " tions§." IV. We are told that the liturgy of St. Patrick differed from that of the Roman Church. — It is not, however, proved to have differed, in the smallest tittle, from that which was followed at Rome when St. Patrick received his mission; much less is it proved to have de- viated in any point which is essential to the na- ture of the sacraments -and sacrifice of the church in all ages and countries. That the ca- tholic liturgies of all times and countries have been essentially the same in this respect, is abun- dantly proved by divines and canonists ||. Ne- vertheless, it is to be remarked, that a certain * l/ib. i. c. 25. t Lib. i. c. 26. % Lib. i. c. 30. § De Templo Salom. cap. 19. II See Explication de la Messe, par Le Brun, Goarlus, ?Jo- riiiHs, &c. 147 hititade in mere ceremonies and particular devo- tions has always been allowed to great or na- tional churches, under the regulation of their head pastors. St. Gregory permitted our apos- tle, St. Augustine, to adopt any usages of this nature for the infant church of the English, which he mio-ht choose to borrow from the Frencli or other catholic nations*; and the court of Home at the present day, so far from re- quiring the ortliodox Greeks Avho have colleges there to conform to her ritual in these unessential points, obliges them to adhere to their own. V. It appears that mass was sometimes, in former ages, said by the Irish clergy at night.— So it was, in the same ages and on the same occasions, namely, on the eves of certain great festivals, by the clergy of every other catholic country. It is still said by them at midnight on Christmas night. In the mean time, we learn from Bede that nine of the clock in the morning M^as the usual time of saying itf- VI. Bede and Cogitosus speak of " the sacrament of the Lord's body and blood:" whence it appears that the sacrament was in an- cient times administered in both kinds. — I an- swer, that the Catholics use the same language at the present day, though the laity receive the sa^ crament only under one kind ; that the difference in this respect is a mere point of discipline, which may be and has been changed as the civcum- • Hist. Ecc 1. i. c. 27. + Hora tenia. Hist. EcqI. 1. iv. c. 22. u us stances of time and place reqnired, and that, ne- vertheless, the present practice of the Chnrch, in communicating the laity under the form of bread alone, was the practice of our infant English church, as appears from Bede himself *. In the mean time, we are to observe that tbis illustrious doctor of the English church, at the beginning of the ninth century, expressly teaches, not only that the mass is a true sacrifice, in which Christ is truly and really present, but also that a true and proper change or TRANSUBSTANTIATION of the bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ takes place in it. I mhII transcribe liis words in the margin, and I defy the subtilty of the most disingenuous controvertist of your ac- quaintance to give them any other meaning than that which I have assigned f. VII. Arch- bishop Lanfranc complains that the Irish neg- * See the History of the Sons of Sabereth, I. ii. c. 5. f ♦' Lavatnos (Christus) a peccatis nostrisquotidie in sanguine suo, " cum ejusdem beatse passionis memoria ad altare replicatur, cum " panis et vini creatiirae in sacramentum carnis et sanguinis ejus, incf- " fabili spiritus sanctificationeTRANSFERTUR : si cr| 11 e corpus et " sanguinis iMius noii infidelium manibus ad perniciem ipsorum fun- " ditur et occiditur, sed fidelium ore, suamsumitur ad saluteni." Bed. Horn, in Epiph. torn. 7. — As the doctrine of the eastern chnrch is particulaily implicated in the present controversy, 1 shall select, from amongst scores of other testimonies relating to it, a pas- sage from, tiie calechistical discourses of a holy father wiio was bishop ofthe primitive church of Jerusalem in the fourth century : "The *' bread and wine of the eucharist, before the invocation of the ador- " able Triiiitv, were mere brtad and wine ; but tliat invocation hav- " iutr taken pi ice, the bread becomes the body of Christ, and the *' wine becomes the blood of Christ. — Since, then, Christ thus de- " Clares concerning the bread: THIS IS MY BODY, who can U9 ' Jected the use of chrism in baptism, or did not make use of it in a proper manner, and that a single bishop amongst them was accustomed to consecrate another bishop, witliont the pre- sence of two others, as the Council of Nice requires. — But what trifling, Sir, is this ! For since it is evident that Lanfranc did not, on this account, deny the vahdity of the Irish baptisms and orders, and since „both Catholics and Pro- testants are agreed that chrism is not essential to baptism, nor the presence of tliree bishops to con- secration, it is plain that the diversity in question neither was, nor was considered as a sufficient ground for the rest of the Church to break off communion with the prelates of this island. VIII. In order to prove that the clergy were per- mitted in ancient times to marry, and that there- fore the Church then was upon a different foot- ing from M'hat it is now, Archbishop Usher men- tions that St. Patrick was the son of the deacon Calphurnius, who himself was the son of the priest Potitus. — I answer, that if the learned primate had acted fairly by his readers, he would have informed them that the same author who men- tions these particulars concerning St. Patrick's family expressly tells us that the children of Cal- " doubt any longer? And since he confirms what he said, and declares " THIS IS MY BLOOD, who will dare to hesitate, and affirm that " it IS not his blood ? He once changed water into wine, which re- " sembles blood, at Cana in Galilee; and is he not worthy to be " believed, when he says that he changes wine into blood?" &c. St. Cyril of Jerusal. Catech. Mystagog. i. See also the Liturgy of St. Basil, and of St. Chrys. in Le Brun, &c*. U2^ 150 phurnius and Potitus were horn previously to their father s ordination *. To prevent being obliged to return again to tbe same subject, I shall here take notice of some of the extravagant assertions of Dr. Ledwich concerning it He says that theancient Irish monks called Culdees, were married f; in proof of which he quotes an authority of still less M'cigbt than his own, the assertion of the w^U-known deistical wri- ter in the last century, Toland. To be sure, a monastery of 3000 monks, as was that of Ben- chor under St. Comgal'|, with each one a wife and family, was admirably calculated for the ob- servance of those austere lules of obedience, si- lence, abstemiousness, poverty, chastity, &c. which Dr. Ledwich admits them to have prac- tised ; having borrowed them, as he tells us, not from the monks of Egypt, but from the more an- cient heathen priests of Egypt § ! He says, how- ever, that " when it came to their turn to offi- " ciate they did not cohabit with their wives ; as " by the 28th canon of the African code, subdeacons, who handle the holy mysteries, deacons, priests, and bishops are tiirected, at' their several terms, to abstain from their. M-ives ; a practice derived from Egypt to the Jews, and from them ado])tcd by the Christians. Celi- bacy was unknown for the first three hundred years of the Church |j." What a mass of mis- representation and falsehood is here heaped to-r * Joceline. -}- Aatiq. p. m. J Ibid. p. 90. § Ibid. !| Ibid. pp. 1 11, 112. n <( iC - now can, without indignation, look upon the follow- . ing passage of Dr. Ledwich's book, in which, endeavouring to prove a religious conformity, in the second century, between the churches of these islands and those of Asia, and their com- mon opposition to that of Rome, he writes thus concerning St. Irenseus, who was a Greek by '~'' ■ . ■ * Can. ill- and Can. viii. 161 birth, and had conversed with St. Polycarp, the disciple of St. John the Evangelist, but who then was Bishop of Lyons in France : " irenjEus, " in the second century, loudly complains of " Roman innovations, that the schismatics at " Rome had coi^rupted the sincere law of the " Church, which led to the greatest impieties. " These opinions, adds he,^ the Presbyters who *' lived before our times, who were also the dis- " ciples of the apostles, did in no ^vhe deliver. " I who saw and heard the blessed Polycarp, am *' able to protest in the presence of God, that if " that apostolic presbyter had heard these things, " he would have stopped his ears, and cried out, *' according to his custom : Good God ! for " what times hast thou reserved me, that I " should suffer such things. He would have " fled from the place where he was sitting ^' or standing, should he have heard these *' things^'." To say nothing of the alterations and mutila- tions f which Dr. Ledwich is guilty of in trans- lating this passage from the Greek, 1 aliirm that he here knowingly and deliberately imposes upon the public in a point of the utmost importance. For he knows that what Eusebius quotes from the work of St. ~ Irenaeus, now lost, does not re- * Antiq. p. 56, and in [ndex. f Amongst other omissians Dr. L. suppiesses tlie circumstance that Floriuus, the innovator in question, was hims.^lf an Asiatic- priest. 162 gaid the Church oF Rome itsself, but certain schismatics called Blastus and Florinus, wlio were cut off from its communion, and degraded from the priestly office * on account of their errors. The former taught, amongst other errors, that of the Quartodecimans concerning the time of keep- ing Easter^, which error Dr. Ledwich so frequent- ly preconizes ; the latter was a Valentinian here- t'c, and a precursor of ]\Ianes, in denying that God created whatever evil tliere is found in the world :}:. It was against the latter innovator that St. Irenaeus exerted himself M'ith so much force, reminding him of the time when they were-joint hearers of the holy Bishop of Symrna, St. Polycarp, and affirming that if the master of the latter, St. John the Evangelist, were alive, and heard such doctrines as Florinus taught, he would express his indignation against them in the terms above quoted §. As to the Church itself of Rome, so far from representing it as schismatical, St. Irenceus, as Eusebius himself testifies, openly exhibits it as the standard of truth, and the depository of apostolical tradi- tions ; enumerating, for that purpose, the suc- , cession of its bishops, from St. Peter down to * (pKicpTvog Tpcv/Jurap/ou rvig sw^Xvigiag ocTrozegwv- Euseb. Eccl. Hist. 1. V. c. 15. Tertul, Praescrip. c. 53. •f" Tertul. PrsGscrip. c. 53. X Euseb. Eccl. Hist. 1. v. c. 20. ^ Ibid. . ' . ' ^ his contemporary Pope, St. Eleutherius *, being the same M'ho sent missionaries for the conver- - sion of Lucius and his British subjects t- The passage quoted by Eusebius, and here referred to, is taken from a work of St. Iren^us still in existence J, in which this celebrated Greek doc- ■ tor, the ornament of the second century, says many things still more energetic § in defence of tradition, of the authority of the Church and of the apostolic see, than the passage alluded to. It is possible Dr. Ledwich may not have seen this well-known work of St. Irenaeus, but he must have been perfectly conscious he was shamefully misrepresenting this father's meaning in the passage which he quoted from Eusebius. With respect to the bestowing of palls by Car- dinal Paparo in the name of Pope Eugenius III. A. D. 1152, upon which Dr. Ledwich and other writers so much harp, it was not in fact, nor , was it considered any subjection of the Church - of Ireland to that of Rome. On the contrary, it was a dignity and an immunity from foreign * Tvj' auTy ra^si (twv €%i pw/xvi? i'KiGY.O'xevcdvTm) ycii T0 uvTi^ h^uX'-a v) Tf ^Tfo tZv uTcoaroKwv ev rvi iniiKvi(Tioc xfljpa5o(7/f^ HKt TO rviQ aKvi^siccg wfjyixu jfari^VTvicrfiv iig VjiKoig. Ibid. c. vi. f BedeEccl. Hist. 1. i. c. 4, &c. X Contra Hseres. II "Adhanc ecclesiam (Romanam) PROPTER POTIOREM ** PRINCIPALITATEM necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam,'' &c. Contra Hares. 1. iii. c. 3. . Y - ' " . 164 •- -; ■ ' - ■ > '_ jurisdiction conferred upon it ; in as much as the Archbishop of Canterbury for the time being- had claimed a Icgatine jurisdiction over Ireland ever since the time of St. Augustine*, by virtue of the authority "overall the Britains t>" c^^"^" ferred by St. Gregory upon this our apostle. Accordingly the Irish prelates, and St. Malachy in particular, had earnestly solicited the court of Rome to send certain palls to the Church of Ireland, as the proof of her immediate depend- ance on the See Apostolic :[:. , ' 1 come now to consider the system which is peculiar to Dr. Ledwich on the present subject. In fact it is such as never did enter, and is never * Bede says of St. Laurence, snccessor of St. Augustine of Can- terbury; "Noil solum uovse, (juse de Anglis erat collecta, ecclesiae " curam gf-rebat, sed et veterum Britannise incolarum, necnon et " Scotonim, quillibeniiain incolunt, populis pasloralem impendere '• solicitudiiiein curtbat," 1. ii. c. 2. In after times Lanfranc exer- cised this paramou:itj ;ridiction, and received oaths of canonical obe- dience from Patrick and Donatus, whom he successively cor.secrated to the see of Dublin. See the very explicit oaths to this effect in Wliarfon Angiia Sacra, vol. i. pp. 80, and 81. Hence when there was a question of rai^ug the city of Waterford to the dignity of a bishopric, the Irish prelates, with their King, applied to St, Ar.selm of Canterbury, to effect this by bis legatine jurisdiction. See Eadmer, Hist. Novorum, c. 36. Hence also, when the four palis were granted to the Irish metropolians, Roger Hoveden com- plains : " Hoc factum est contra antlquam consuetudinem et dig- ** nliatem Cantuariensis ecclesise." Hoveden ad an. i 1 51. t " Britanniarum omnes episcopos tuie fraternitati committi- mus." Bed. 1. i. c. 27. By BrUunniie, in the Plural, Polybius and Ptolemy understand both the sister islands. X See St. Bernard in Vita Malach. c. 15, " Melropoliticae sedi *' deeratadhiic Pallii usiis qaod est plenitude honoris. Erat et altera " nietropolitica sedes, &c." 165 likely to enter, into the conccj)tion of any other man of letters whomsoever. Having vainly at- tempted to give an Asiatic origin to the Chris- tianity of Ireland, totally unconnected with, • and in direct opposition to the Ciiristianity which prevailed at Rome, in England, and other places ; he endeavours to sliew a continuation of this new discovered religion down to the 12th century '*, amongst an order of pious monks, called Culdees. lie tells us, that their founder St. Columbaf was a quartodeciman ;]: ; that *' they did not adopt the corruptions of the " Anglo-Saxon church, or the superstitions '' which contaminated Christianity § ;" that *' they adhered to the ancient faith, and abhorred *' Roman innovations || ;" that " Commian, a " Culdee, apostatized and listened to Roman " emissaries ^ ;'' that " at length Adamnan, the *' Culdean abbot of Hy, likewise apostatized*^.'* These are a few among the many glaring errors which this "cultivator and destroyer of anti- " quity," as I have elsewhere called him, has fallen into in speaking of the Culdees. In the first place then these CoUdei, or wor- shippers of God, were not a distinct order of monks founded by St. Columba, and confined to the island of Hy ; but this was a general * Antiq. p. y6. f Ibid. p. 103. % Ibid. p. loy. § P. Ibid. 11 P. 100. ^ P. ic8. ** P. III. 166 name for all the ancient Scotch and Irish monks, or rather canons regular, as we are assured by unquestionable authoiity *:— 2dly, St. Columba and his monks of Hy were not quartodecimans, if Bede, wiio knew them so well, may be credited in what he affirms concerning tiiem f. — 3dly, The Culdees had no other faith, or ecclesiastical discipHne, except as to the mode of computing the festival of Easter, ;han the English church, and all the other churches of the same ages had. For does Dr. Ltdwich liimseif believe that if they had denied the real presetice of Christ in the blessed Eucharist, or the utiUty of praying for the dead, or that of desiring the prayers of the saints, or the Pope's supremacy, or had even rejected the use of pious pictures in their churches, or of holy water, and such like things which we are sure the English Saxons adopted, they would have been invited to join with the Roman missionaries in forming our infant church, in educating its youth, anil in governing it in quality of bishops ? Would their virtues have been so highly extolled * Giraldus calls them " Cjelibes, quos Caelicolas vel Coli-w " deos vocant." Topograph. Mib. Dist. ii. c;i p. 4, Hector Boctius, lib. vi. Hist. Scot, says, tliat the name became so vulgar, that priests in general, almost down to his own time, were called "Culdei,'' that is to say, " Cultores Dei." f *' Quenn tamen (Diem Paschse) non semper in luna qiiarta- ** deciraa, cum Judaeis, ut quidam rebantur, sed in die quidem Do- *' minica, alia tamen quam decebat hebdomada celebrabant." Eccles. Hist. I. iii. c. ^. by Bede, and the Catholic hagiographers in gene- ral, as they are, and would the names of their saints be inscrihed upon the churches, and in the martyrologies of Rome, and all the Catholics of Christendom. — 4thly, It is evident tl^at what Dr. Ledwich writes concerning the ancient reli- gion and Roman innovations, ought to be in- verted : for nothing is more certain than that the ancient British prelates originally followed the practice of Rome and the other churches, with respect to the time of keeping Easter, as well as in other particulars, and, that the error which they and the Irish prelates fell into upon this point was an innova- tion comparatively of a late date. Of this we have positive proofs : for the chief bishops of the British church were present at, and subscribed to the Council of Aries, as I observed to you before, the very first canon of which appoints the time of Easter to be kept on the same day throughout the workl, and that the Pope should give general notice of that day*. This canon was confirn^ed in the a-cumenical council of Nice, and the Emperor Constantine * " Breviarium Episto'.oe Domino Sanclissimo Fratri Silvestro •• Mariniis vel Csetiis Episcoporiim qui adunuti fnerunt in oppido *• Arelatensi. — Quid decrevimus communi consilio caritati ti!32 " significavimus ut omnes sciant quid in faiuriim obsprvare de- " beant. — Canj i. Prime loco de observatioue Paschse dominici " ut uno die et uno tempore per omnem orbem a nobis observetur " et juxtaconsueludiuem, literas ad omnes tu dirigas," Labbe, " Concil. torn, i, . , 168 .■ • - . ■wrote a circular letter to all the churches of the christian v\^orld, informing them of what had been decreed in this particular, and exhorting the several bishops to subscribe to it*. In this letter he testifies that our British provinces were amongst those which agreed with Rome and the remainder of the West, as also with the South, the North, and a great part of the East, in op- position to a certain part of the East, (namely, Syria and Mesopotamia) as to the time of calcu- latino- Easter t- It is evident, then, that the observance of the British churches was conform- able to that of Rome in this particular, down to the year ^'■IS, when the aforesaid letter was writ- ten ; and there cannot be a doubt that they con- tinued in the same observance as long as the Pope, agreeably to the ancient custom, and the decree of the council of Aries J, had a facility of writing to them, and giving them notice of the right day of keeping Easter ; that is to say, un- til the Britons were crushed by the Saxons, and driven into the mountains of Wales and Corn- wall. This catastrophe was complete about the year 500, at which time we may suppose that, attempting to calculate the vernal equinox, and * Euseb'. in Vit. Constant. 1. ii'u c. 17. •\ oirs^ ^'av' y.arx tviv roiv pccfLUio^v iioKiv rs aui ci0^in-/jM, hciKiciv re a%ci(Tuv, afyvirrov, (jzaviccv, yuKKkg, Co^STTUViug, hi(ivug, ohviv khhalu, kciuvav ts hor/.Vigiv, xovr/xviv re viai yM'/jav, Lhioi (7iJfx(?)wVM QuKccTTSTUi TJxixyi. Euseb. Vit Cons. 1. iii. c. 10. I Can. i. ■ ' ■" 'V ' -' - 1^9 • the time of the moon, for themselves, instead of receiving the calculations of Rome and Alexan- dria*, they fell, not into the practice of the Jews and the Quartodecimans, which consisted in keeping the Pasch on the 14th day of the moon next after the vernal equinox, whatever day of the week that happened to he, but into a pecu- liar error of their own, by keeping Easter on the 14th da}^ when it fell upon a Sunday, M'hereas the churches on the continent, in this case, waited till the ensuino- Sunday. This erroneous caculation the British prelatesseemtohavecommunicated to those of Ireland and Scotland. The error in question, tho' attended with great inconveniencesf, yet not hav- ing been formally condemned by the Church, like that of the Quartodecimans, ^vas tolerated by the Roman See and the prelates in communion with it, until the Christians of these islands be- coming sensible of it, gradually relinquish- ed it. Now this rectifying of an acknowledg- ed error. Dr. Ledwich repeatedly terms apostacij. But to what system did the British churches apostatize? Namely, to that which was common * St. Leo testifies that the calculation was made at Alexandria (which city was famous for astronomical studies) and being notified to the Pope, was by him promulgated throughout Christendom. f Venerable Bede funjishcs us with a striking instance of this in- convenience with respect to KingOswy, who followed the British computation, and his Queen EanfeUi, wlio adopted that of the con- tinent. It happened on one occasion, that the King was celebrating his Easter with Halleluiahs and flesh meat, while the Queen was be- ginning her Holy Week with lamentations and fasting. L., iii. c. 25. 170 . to all Christians except themselves ; to that which their fathers had followed, and subscribed to in a g-reat council ; in short, to that which Dr. Ledwich himself, with all those of his com- munion, adopt at the present day ! See, Sir, into what disorders and contradictions this bewildered antiquary has plunged, in order to prove that catholicity was not the ancient religion of Ire- land ! " I have run to tliis length upon a controversy, comparatively trivial, because I could not more briefly dispel the mist in which Dr. Ledwich has involved it, for the sake of misrepresenting one of the most important subjects of Irish antiquity, the ancient religion of the island* am, &c. LETTER XVII. Corh, July 27, 1807. Dear Sir, ]V[y road from Cashei to this city led me through Cahir, Balliporeen, and Fermoy. The last mentioned town is a new 171 creation, having started up, all at oncf, at the command of its proprietor, Mr. Anderson. It is pleasantly situated on the banks of the Black- M^ater River, over which a firm and elegant stone brida'e is thrown. The town itself beino; uni- forinly built of neat houses of stone, overcast with a white composition, and the streets stand- ing in parallel and perpendicular lines, being also well paved, and kept exceedingly clean, few, if any towns of the same size in England, can be compared with it in exterior beauty. With re- spect, however, to the face of the country in ge- neral, speaking of it as far as 1 have yet seen it, I cannot agree with a late able writer, that Ire- land is, ""the fairest island in the world*;" especially while her elder sister stands by her side. This I am sure of, that I have not yet seen in Ireland such a garden as the Vale of Evesham, such hills and dales as those of Derbyshire and South ^yales, nor such forest scenery as that of Windsor or the New Forest. True it is, this country appears to a disadvantage in consequence of its relative poverty and unsettled state, which cannot but have proved unfavourable to the planting of hedges, trees, and woods; as also to the building of neat villages, elegant churches, and comfortable farm-houses, with the other nu- merous ornaments and conveniencies to be met with in every well inhabited part of England. I • See Patnell's Historical Apology for the Irish Catholics, p. 107. z 172 may add that, as far as I am able to judge, the soil and climate of this island, though perhaps better adapted to pasturage, are not so favour- able to the growth of large timber trees and wheat corn, nor to the ripening of fruit, as those under the same parallels of latitude in our own. As I approached, however, to this city of Cork, I found the country surprisingly improve in all these respects, till reaching the Vale of Glanmire, by what is called the lower road, I was quite enchanted with the beauties, natural and artificial, of the scenery which opened to my view ; particularly with the grand expanse of water in the center of it, skirted as it is on each side with verdant meadows, and enclosed by lofty hills, whose groves, at the tops oi^ them, seem to reach the clouds. That view, however, ■was but a foretaste of the delight which I expe- rienced when I beheld this sheet of water disem- boguing itself into the grand estuary of Cork. As my eye wandered up and down the delightful scene, surveying by turns the majestic tide, co- vered with ships and boats, moving in various directions; the aspiring hills and rocks, crowned with elegant villas and plantations ; and the magnificent city itself, with the back ground of vast mountains, I concluded in my mind, that neither the Severn at Chepstow, nor the sea at Southampton, were to be comj)arcd with it The renowned emporium of Cork owes its foundation to St. Finbar, its first bishop, and his disciple St. Nessan, who about the end of the 173 sixth century established a school there, which soon became exceedingly celebrated and numer- ous. By this means a hollow marsh, as the name Cork impHes *, soon grew up to he a bishop's see and a flourishing city. It is still remarkable for the numerous well regulated schools it con- tains for instructing the youth of both sexes, especially the poor, in the several branches of lite- rature proper for them, but chiefly in the religi- ous doctrine and morality originally taught here by St. Finbar. Indeed, no pains are spared for this purpose by the bishops and priests in every part of Ireland which I have visited ; and I co^ifi- dently assert that a more glaring and calumnious falsehood never was published against any set of men, than that which is constantly propagated in England against the Irish Catholic Clergy, that they keep the lower order of the people unin- structed, in order to attach it more hrmly to themselves and their religion, under an idea that ignorance is the mother of devotion. This very morning, Sir, 1 have visited a ca- tholic school, formed upon Mr. Lancaster's plan, for the education of poor boys ; and I could not but admire the method by wiiich two hundred children are taught to read, write, and cast ac- counts, besides their christian duty, under one master, and in less time than a tenth part of their jiumber could acquire equal learning by the ordi- * Corcach, Z 2 1 74 iiar^' method. A larger school is now preparing for this establishment, when the 200 boys will be aiiomented to 600. There are other schools in the city, at which from 600 to 700 poor catholic boys are educated, by means of a subscription amongst the bishop, clergy, gentry, and opu- lent tradesmen of their religion. In other parts of Ireland, where there are few or no Catholics of these descriptions, I found that the poor- schools were supported by"' the pence and half- pence c(;llected for this purpose every week by the parish priest. For the education of poor girls there are two houses in diflerent parts of the city, of the institute founded by my respectable friend, call- ed the Presentation, in each of which there are seven or eight njistresses, who educate gratis as many hunfheds of poor children in constant suc- cession : for the nature of the institute requires that its members should receive no gratuity whatsoever for their trouble, but should devote themselves during life to the instruction of poor children, from pure motives of charity and reli- gion *. There are already five other houses of this new institute : one at Kilkennv, another vere wanted, and that they themselves were trusted. Of two things I am confident, that the stories of dangerous combinations and un- lawful meetings amongst the Catholics*, which have been propagated in the newspapers of late f, originate in the mere bigotry and malice of their enemies ; and that the Catholic Sishops and Clergy will, at all times, do their own duty in endeavouring to keep the people steady to theirs. I will here, Sir, close my correspondence with you from Ireland, hoping, M'hen we meet, to hear your remarks on the several subjects of it. By way of conclusion, I will present you with an extract from a pamplilet lately published at Dublin, for the sake of the sensible and pathetic address at the end of it, which I am confident is calculated to reach both the heart and the head of * Having called, by appointment, upon a mobtrtspcctable friend, to dine and pass the evening, on my luad into the Soytii of Ireland, in company with two other friends of known loyalty, (one of whom has been distinguished by such public honours for the proofs he has given of it, that few Oranti^men are likely to merit the same) I after- wards found that a messenger was seiit by some of these to the Castle of Dublin, to accuse us of a seditious meeting. The charge, however, was dismissed with deserved contempt. f The accompanying of a funeral, an ordinary meetingto digpo- tatoes, the plaaiin.^ of a May-pole, and even the amusements ot lutle children, have been denounced to government, aad published iq the newspapers as insurrectionary movements. (C t,i (I (c 217 every Engiisman who is not quite brutalized by bio-otry or avarice. The author is arofuins: af>'ainst tliose friends of the CathoHcs who constantly dis- suade them from petitioning parhament for a re- dress of "-rievances, on account of the ailed o-erl unseasonableness of the time, when he says : " If the friendly dissuasion is unable to fix a period at which it shall be not wrong to break silence; if their friends resolve, that to attempt it this year is improper, and in the next will be dan- gerous, and in the third will be unusual, unne- cessary, and the symptom of punishable dis- aftcction reviving. — l^ years of slavery roll on •' their generation, to the exit of their fore- " father, and bring to their last view the sad vision of a posterity of slaves, condemned by THE GREAT OATH, which givesfreedom to all others, is not such dissuasion the acknow- ledgment that forbearance would be a crime.^ " If during this endless round of evils still great, and hope deferred, and friends not yet resolved, a mighty apparition should start up between earth and heaven, intercepting the view of the world: if lightnings blaze, and bloody meteors run through the atmosphere, and shouts approach, that ' SLAVERY IS NO MORE:' if the sufferers, as they will do, re- ject the unholy invitation, and offer to die with the brothers who afflicted, rather than live with the aliens who court them : with what consistency shall it be saicl to those deluded, u (I ii li ti a ii. a (I a ti 218 broken-hearted reptiles : Come on, brave men, and fight for ouj^ common freedom !" May they not well answer to this call: " We will fight for you, and let Providence judge our cause, and see our distress. If i/ou conquer with us, our doom is perpetual. The consti- tution will be saved, and i/oii say it excludes us everlastingly. If j/ow are vanquished, you will be spared with honour ; you had fought for the dearest things to man, which those enemies came to wrest. But while they spare you, they will exterminate us for safety and for example. We shall fight as slaves, and we shall perish as traitors !" * * Remarks on the Protestant Barrister's Vindication, &c. by a Catholic of Dublin, pp.71, 72. APPENDIX, Coniaining tzvo Letters addressed to a Catholic Merchant of TFaterford, by the Rev. J. MiLXER, D. D. F. S. A. LETTER I. ■At Sea, August "[2, 1807, '' ' ■', Dear Sir, X OUR kind anxiety for the suc- -cess of my voyage to my native island, made you wish to hear the particulars of it ; and your im- patience at the interruption of our conversation concerning chapel-building induced me to pro- mise you that I would resume the subject in writ- ing as soon as possible : I therefore take up the pen hereon shipboard," by way of beginning my two-fold task ; hoping, with God's permission, 220 to finisii it on the opposite coast, which there is every appearance, from the state of the weather, I shall reach in the course of twelve hours. My journey from your city to the station of the Milford packet at Cheek Point, was the most unpleasant one I had experienced since my ar- rival in Ireland, from the reflection that it was the last I was to take, at least for a considerable time, ill a country so interesting in itself, and so dear to n}e, for the numerous and valuable friends I was leaving behind me in every part of it which I had visited. Impressed with these ideas, I strayed on the shore of the gTand estu- aiy, v.iieie the united currents of the Suire, the Eanow, and the Nore, mingle with the briny M'aves of St. George's Channel ; and my melan- clioly was far from being relieved by contem- j;lating the magnificent ruins of Dunbrody Abbey on tlie opposite side of the harbour. I itit indignant at the memorv of that sacrilco-ious tyrant who could envy good men and loyal sub- jects the privilege of worshipping God in peace and retirement ; and I was mortified that the state of the tide would not allow me to visit those instructive remains, for the improvement of my heart as well as of my knowledge. My revered friend and myself came on board the vessel yesterday evening, being the only passengers in it. But the sky threatening a squall, which actually took place in the night, the cap- tain would not set sail till four o'clock this •morning. The weather is now moderate. There 221 is wind enough to make us spooni briskly through the waves, and there is sea enough to give spirit to the saiHng ; for the worst kind of prison is that of being on shipboard in a mill-pond. Al- ready have the pleasant coasts of Tramore Bay disappeared to my view, and Hook Head itself is perceptibly flying from me. While thus I cast a farewel look on the land of my catholic brethren, and offer up a prayer to God the Father of mer^ cies* for their welfare, a number of affecting- thoughts, relating to their singular history and situation, present themselves to my mind, which I cannot help here giving vent to, by committing them to writing. I reflect on the long continued and uninter- rupted sufferings of your countrymen ; no other christian nation having been for so long a time,and without remission, subject to successive calami- ties and degradations as yours has been. Other races of men have occasionally been visited by misfortunes and disgrace : my proud country- men, in particular, have twice been bowed so low by the yoke of foreign conquest, as to be ashamed of the name of Englishmen, and to drink the very dregs of human misery. But each of these disgraces was of short duration. Canute, the son of the sanguinary tyrant Swaine, re- pressed the injustice and insolence of his Danish countrymen, and placed his English subjects on a perfect equahty with them. In like manner * 2 Cor. i. 3. Ff 2 222 Henry, the son of the Norman Conqueror, left no means untried to make the EnoUsh forget that they were a conquered people. The success of this policy was equal to the wisdom of it : for, whereas his father had subdued England M'ith an army of Normans, he himself sul)dued Normandy with an army of Englishmen. In a word, the ca- lamities of England, both foreign and domestic, like those of other christian states, have been of a temporary nature, whereas those of Ireland seem to have been perpetual. I look in vain for the period of her greatness -and glory, compared with her physical strength, wealth, situation, and other advantages : or rather, to come nearer to the idea of national as well as individual hap- piness, I look in vain for the period when the Irish, sitting in their native woods and cabins, could eat the produce of their herds and gar- dens, and enjoy the comforts of their reli- gion unmolested by others, and at peace among themselves. On the contrarv, I see nothino- in their history but a succession of civil wars, fo- reign invasions, conquests, oppression, and reli- gious persecution ; the latter still multiplying and refining its modes of injuring and torment- ing, down to the very commencement of his pre- sent Majesty's reign. What has added a sharp- ness to their sufferings on the score of religion, has been that they have had to endure them at the hands of a people who were the avoAved patrons of religious as well as civil freedom, and who, in faet, have left every other description of subjects to invent and follow new modes of relio-ion at their pleasure ; whilst they endeavoured to extort from your ancestors that original faith which the latter had received, with the very name of Christ, 1400 years ago. Tiiese severe and long-continued sufferings, no doubt, have proved a subject of complaint and scandal to many of your countrymen. Those which the people of Italy, equally M'ith your fore- fathers, had to endure 1200 years ago, proved such to the latter, as we learn from their cor- respondence with the cotemporary Pope, St. Gregory the Oreat *. The saint, in return, ad- monished them, in the words of scripture, that God chastiseth every child xi'hom lie luzetk. In- deed, how frequently, or rather generally, M'as God's chosen people of old in attliction and hu- miliation ! W hat had they not to endure in the bondage of Egypt, in the captivity of Babylon, from the persecuting sword of the Greeks, and the iron yoke of the Roipans 1 They were the most enlightened people on the face of the earth, * Regist. Epist. St. Greg. M?.g. Lib. ix. Ep. 6i. Tls address is as follows : " Giegorius Quirino Episcopo, caetensque Episcopis in Hi- " bernia Cathoiicis," From this letter, it appears that the bishops in Ireland were, at the end of the sixth century, under the same mis- take concerning the intricate question of the Three Chapters, that their countr\ man, St. C'oiumbanus, was at the same period in Bur- gundy. Nevertheless, as their error evidently proceeded from mere misinformation with rexppct to a fact which they were disposed to quit, as they actually dul, upon being better informed from due authority, the lioly Pope addresses them and treats them as orthodox Catholics. in consequence of their possessing the revealed truths of heaven ; yet, in what contempt and detes- tation were they not held by their aforesaid con- queroi s ! What sarcasms and invectives do not the brightest and most liberal minds of pagan anti- quity, a Tuliy, for example '^, and a Tacitus t, pour forth against them and their religion ! It was the same with Christianity and Christians durino- the three first centuries of the Church; that is to say, duiing what are called her golden ages. What stupid bigots, as well as odious criminals, are not the followers of the divine Jesus represented to have been by the philoso- phers Tacitus and Pliny, and by the imperial Dioclesian and Julian. We, nevertheless, know that a poor christian slave was more truly wise and enlightened, as well as virtuous, than was the whole collection of these philosophers and emperors ! Considering the suiiject of national sufferings with reference to these facts ; and reflecting, in particular, how generally God's j-cople of old * Cicero, in his Oration pro L. Flacco, calls tlie religion of the Jews, "Barbara superstitio," and Jerusalem itself; " Maledica ♦' civitas," addinp; : " Stantibus Hierosolymis, paccatiscjue Jiidpeis, " tamen istoriiiT; religiosacroruni aspietHiore hujus imperii, gravi- " tate noniinis noslri, majorrm que inslitutis abhorrebat: nunc vero *' hoc magisqnod ilia g'.ns, quid de nostro imperio sentirel, ostendit «' armis : quani cara Diiti inimoitalibus esset docuit, quod est " victa, quod elocata, quodservatu (obso'vuta),''' f Tacit:. Hist. L. v. 225 abandoned him in their prosperit}^, and returned to him in their calamities, may not M'e suppose that God has made use of the long continued temporal afflictions of your people as the means, in his hands, of preserving- them in that inviolable attachment to the faith which they first received, and in that general disposition to piety for which they have been celebrated, as surpassing other christian na- tions, by ecclesiastical historians and writers,' from Venerable Bede down to Pope Benedict XIV.?* There is one circumstance relative to the religion of the Irish Catholics, which seems almost peculiar to them, namely, that it makes an indelible impression not only upon those who live up to its precepts, but also upon those who disgrace it by their conduct. The consequence is, that there are always much better hopes of re- claiming a profligate Irish Catholic during his life time, or else of his spontaneous repentance previously to his death, than there are witli respect to wicked Christians of other countries. Whether this is owing to a peculiar mercy towards your people, as our ancient historians, Englisht as well * InEpist. ad Arcliiep. and Ep. Heb. die 15 Aug. A. D. 1741. Md. tlibern. Dominicanam, p. 21. t " Undecim diebus, totidemque noctibus (S. Patricias) in " caciimine montisEli jeJLinavit, id est Cruaclianeli ; in quo coll e, " in aere tres petitioncs pro his Hibernensibus qui fidem Chrisii " reciperentclementer postulavit. Prima ejus petitio fult, ut fertur a Scotis, quod unusquisque reciperet pcenitentiam credentium, iicet in extreme vit?e sus. Secuntla, ne a barbaris consunieren- 00() as Irish tell us, or rather to the care of their pas- tors, in deeply imprinting' the maxims of the gos- pel on their infant minds, the fact is indis- putahle, as most of those who have had much experience in the sacred ministry, particularly in death-hed scenes, can testify as well as myself. After all, Sir, I grant we must not pretend to trace, with any thing like certainty, the inscru- table ways of the Almighty, and it is certainly in the order of his providence, as the example of the saints and the doctrine of the Church, ex- pressed in her liturgy, prove, to seek for peace, and tranquillity, by procuring the redress of our temporal evils when it is in our po\ver to obtain them. On the same principle we are bound to ■ entertain a sense of gratitude to\vard those per- sons who have been instrumental in conferring these temporal blessings upon us, and therefore towards his ^lajesty, and many other distin- '. "-uished characters now living, whom it is unne- cessary to name. The civil advantages which the Cathohcs have obtained during the present ■ reign have certainly been very great, and it is -frequently asserted, (though chiefly, I believe, by ' those persons who are sorry we have obtained any benefits at all) that all the positive grievances of the Catholics are redressed, and hence that they have attained to ihtiieplusultraoHhehv constitu- •' Uir in rcternum. Tertia, iit non siipervivat aliquls credentiura in " adventu judicii." NenniusHislor. Britotvum. Vide etiam Mat, ,' ^ Wtst. an. 491. 227 tional claims ; in a word, that it is no penalty nor hardship to be deprived of those furtlier pri- vileges, which the law (with what consistency I do not inquire) has reserved for persons M^ho do not believe in Transubstantiation. Supposing, for the sake of the argument, that all positive penal laws against Catholics were actually redressed, yet we are the best, because we are experimental judges, whether the mere exclu- siv^e laws against us, do or do not act as penalties. I should be s'lad to ask one of these ethical politicians, if in consequence of some whim- sical exclusive law regarding the colour of his hair, or some other circumstance totally irrele- vant to his civil and social duties, he found him- self held in contempt as a person not to be trusted, nor placed on their level by persons of his own rank, if, I say, in this case, he would not feel he was suffering from a law both penal and unjust ? In short, if disgrace be not a penalty, where is the suffering of standing for a short time in the pillory ? That Catholics, and particularly Irish Catholics, do experience this contemptuous treatment from their fellow subjects in conse- quence of the partiality of the laws constant ex- perience proves. Heretofore when the latter were excluded from the benefit of the laws, and when it was held no crime to kill a mere Irishman, they were supposed by the vulgar to be Ouran-outangs, or brutes of somespecies or other, and accordingly scores of allfidavits were made by serious religi- ous Englishmen, from the testimony of tlieir own G g eyesight, that the Irish people were found ttf have tails o-rowincr IVoin hehincl their hodies, a qyarter of a yard long*. At present, when the laws are mor€ eqA^utahle, and are content with re- ■ quiring that no Irish Catholic shall he entrusted to carry a military dispatch in quality of aid-de- camp, or to summon a jury as an under sheriff, they are barely looked upon as a race ot savages by the English people. Accordingly the term fVihl Ir'isli is as familiar in the English lan- guage as that of JVild beastfi. But the particular exclusion of Catholics from the offices of sheriff and under sheriff, is not a mere disgrace, as you well know, for it is at- tended with the most serious ill consequences, as your countrymen frequently experience. In like manner the existence of an " Incorporated So- " ciety for promoting Protestant Schools" is the continuation of one of the most odious and fatal kinds of persecution devised by th© religi- ous politicians of the last century. In fact, how much more wise a thing would it be to employ fifty or sixty thousand pounds of the annual reve- nues of Ireland, a great part of which is raised upon the Catholics themselves |", in buying up the • See Hay's History of the Insurrection, la-t page, and tlie an- ll-.orilies quoted by him. This opinion of the original Irish having tails seems to have been generally propagated by the Puritans in the reign of Chafles f. f 25,000]. or rather, I believe, 30,000 1. are annually voted for the Ctuirter-schools. Their landed property belonging to the public must amount to as much, or probably to a gieat deal more. ■ 229 tithes of the poor, than in purchasing their chil- dren, and educating them to liate and persecute their fathers, mothers, and brothers. Our states- men complain of the violent animosity which actuates thediiferent religionists in Ireland: but are not they themselves, in a great measure, the cause of it, M'hile they lavish the public money upon such institutions as the Charter Schools ? For my part, I cannot help thinking, that this is the case, from knowing the heart- burning which these schools provoke among the Catholics, and the spirit of contempt, hatred, and resentment which these seminaries labour to infuse into their purchased victims against the Cathohcs. I have now lying before me what is called THE PROTEStAIsT CATECHISM of the INCORPORATED SOCIETY, as also that of the Catholic IMetropolitans, ca,lled the GENERAL CATECHISM, both of them lately published. A slight comparison between these clearly shews the different spirits by which they have been dictated. The former industriously instils into its pupils an abhorrence of the Catho- lics as idolaters, a hatred of them as traitors, and a dread of them as murderers I In defiance of common charity, of the repeated declarations and acts of the legislature, and of constant ac- tual experience ; it teaches the catholic infants, whom its patrons have purloined, that *' the " papists (namely their parents as well as other " Catholics) hold that faith is not to be kept O g 2 230 ** with heretics, and that the Pope can absolve " subjects from their oath of allegiance to sove- *' reigns*." It instructs them to believe that these their parents and other Catholics, are persuaded that those " who differ from them," and of course the children themselves, are to be " rooted " out by fire and sword." To strengthen this belief, the misrepresented histories of Queen Mary's persecution t, and of the Irish mas- sacre % are exhibited to the frighted imagination * Protestant Catechism of the Incorporated Society, part.Vi. p. 9. 4th ed. + I have always lamented and condemned the persecutions ia Mary's reign. It must, nevertheless, be remembered, that deprived, as she had been, of her hereditary throne, by Cranmer, Ridley, Sandys, Poynet, Dudley, and the other heads of the Reformation, ■ she never persecuted any of them till two years afterwards, whea they set on foot a second rebellion against her, under Wyat, &c. Such was the case in England ; in the mean time the Protestants in Ireland remaining quiet, were never once molested during the whole of this catholic reign, though it is evident they might have been exterminated by a word speaking. — ** The Irish Roman Catholic " bigots," exclaims the eloquent Parnel ; " the Irish Roman Ca^ " tholics are the only sect that ever resumed power without exercising "• vengeance i" Hist. Apolog. p. 47. 1 No part of Irish history has been nrnie maliciously misrepre- sented than that of the year 1641. If the Irish Catholics then took u? arms, let it be remenbered that the English Protestants and the Scotch Presbyterians had previously taken up arms ; but with this difference, the Catholics armed in their own defence and in de- fence of their sovereign, the Protestants and Presbyterians armed for the destruction of both, and they succeeded in bringing the King to the scaffold. 2dly, If in the confusion and horrors of the civil war in Ireland many Protestants were murdered by lawless Catliolic banditti, an infinitely greater nuipber of Catholics were sl9ugblcieii 331 of these poor infants. In the mean time the impor- tant duties of citizens, subjects, and Christian's, are hardly so much as hinted at throughout the whole Catechism. — How different in all these respects is the code of christian and moralinstitutes which the Catholic Prelates of Ireland have drawn up for the instruction of their unbought pupils. In this there is no mention of the numerous and revolting blasphemies and immoralities with which the works of Luther and Calvin abound; no notice of the perfidy, treason, and rebellion taught and practised by Cranmer, Ridley, Knox, and every head of the reformation in every coun- try where it has prevailed, nor so much as a hint at the countless hosts of catholic victims whom Protestantism has immolated, in the pure spirit of religious persecution, in England, France, Germany, and especially in Ireland, during the reigns of Elizabeth, James I. Charles I. and Oliver Cromwell. Instead of copying, in these particulars, the example of the dignihed authors and patrons of the Protestant Catechism, the Catholic Prelates have framed their Catechism to enforce the general duties of Christians, sub- jects and citizens, particularly submission to law- jn cold blood by Protestants; and the latter were the first to begin the diabolical work of massacre, as Clarendon owns, namely, in the island Magee, where near 5000 unarmed and peact^able men, wo- men, and children, were murdered, mostly in their sleep. Seethe I'riai of the R. Catholics of Ireland, by Henry Brooke, Esq. ; also Dr. Curry's History of the Civil Wars of Ireland, vol. i. book 5. 132, ful autliority *, and cliaiityf to all mankind. — The attention of our great statesmen is other- wise taken up (though it is a question M'hether it can he taken up with a matter of greater im- portance), or else I should be glad to ask them, if, after this brief view of the doctrine and spirit of the Irish Protestant and the Irish Catholic Catechism, they really think it is for the benefit of the state to pay 60,000l. every year in order to get a certain number of ca- tholic children instructed in the former rather than in the latter? And secondly, whether it would not be more wise to employ that sum in paying the tythe-tax of the poor cottagers ; thus enabling them to rear their own children, and instruct them in their own Catechism ? I M'ould say one word more to the illustrious personages in * Question. What are the duties of subjects to the temporal pow- ers ? Answer. To be subject to them, to honour and obey them, ?iot only for wrath, but also for conscience sake ; for such is the icill of God, I Pet. ii. — Q,. Is it sinful to resist or combine against established au- thorities, or to speak with contempt or disrespect of those who rule over us ? A. Yes. St. Paul sa)'s : Let evert/ soul be subject to the higher powers : he that re.iisteth the pozoer resiatcth God's ordinance : and thty that resist purchase to themselves damnation, "Rom. xiii. Ge- JVeral Catech Lesson xvii. p. 29. f Q. Who is my nei<:;hbour, whom I am bound to love? A. Mankind of every description, and without any exception of per- sons; even thoRe who injure us, and ditFer from us in religion. — Q. What particular duties are required of me by that rule ? A. Never to tnjure your neighbour by word or deed, in his person, property, or character; to wish well to him, 10 pray for him, and always to assist him as far as you are able in his spiritual and corporal necessities, lyesson xix. p. 34. ed. 4. 233 question, if I liad an opportunity, to the following effect; "As far, my Lords and Gentlemen, as " relates to exciting the hatred and detestation *' of the charter-school children, and the other *' uninstructed Protestants of Ireland, against its general population, no doubt these public charges of perfidy, disloyalty, barbarity, _and idolatry *, answer their purpose. This, how- ever, I know you consider as an evil, rather than a benefit. But, with respect to the object " which you so earnestly wish I'or, namely, that all your subjects should be of one religion, and that the religion of the state, be assured that neither the Irish Protestant Catechism, nor " the Bishop of London's Confutation of Po- " pery, nor De Coetlogan's Abominations of " the Church of Rome, nor all the interpreta- *' tions of the Revelations, either by learned *' Warburtonian lecturers*, or unlearned coun- " try clergymen, ever gain one single proselyte " from the Catholics in either Island. The fact " is, Catholics of every description are perfectly *' conscious they have been taught a creed dia- " metrically opposite to that on which the ob- '* jections of these adversaries are grounded. What the arguments really are, which, from time to << a suring you, inat his book called The Anticpnties of Ireland, is chietly distinguished by the Singularity ana ex- travagance of the opinions which it contains, and the confidence and disingenuity of the author in supporting them. But I must here apprise you, that I have treat- ed the subjects last mentioned, and indeed most of the others here touched upon, at much greater lenath in a series of letters which 1 have addressed fron) your island to a friend of mine in England; and as I am convinced the perusal of them would aftord some pleasure to you and my other nu- merous friends in your island, and some userul information on several important points, to many . persons who stand greatly in need of it in the country to which I am hastening, I am strongly inclined to get these letters back into my hands, in order to revise and publish them. Should I do this, I am aware it will be to my own cost, as X 240 am sensible what an outcry they will occasion against me. One clergyman will preach and print a sermon, of which I and my writings will form the subject matter for the beginning, the middle, and the end *. Another will probably snatch up some half sentence, and having dragged it out of its context, and dressed it up in his own ma- licious comments, will hold it up to the public as. a specimen of my immoral or seditious doctrine. In vain should I protest against the caricature ; in vain should I appeal to the whole tenor of my doctrine ; he Mill stun me and the public with these repeated vociferations : " I hold you to " your own words. — Fire shall not burn this out " ofme." I had not such an adversary to deal • with when I wrote my former letters t ; ^oi' ^^^ Sturges is both a gentleman and a scholarj. It is true, he tried the strength of his pen, and his friends tried their weight in parhament; while other friends tried the efficacy of certain specific arguments upon me, which are generally found convincino- : still there Mas in that controversy - no contemptible quibbling, no indecorous braMd- ing, no confident impugning of the known trutli. From adversaries M'ho can descend to take up * See the Sermon preached before the University of Oxford, at St. Mary's, Nov, 5, 1805. t T.etters to a Prebendary. X Whilst this work is in the press, 1 hear with infinite regret of the death of that respectable and learned gentleman. " Spargete flores, &c. " Has saltem accumulem donis et ftuigarinani »• Munere." 241 these weapons, I must ever turn with disgust, hoping that they are not employed or abetted by persons of greater respectability than them- selves. There is, however, another set of combatants, who thou^'h they should make use af the most unfair weapons, it is not lawful for us authors to despise ; I mean, the Minos, the iEacus, and the Rhadamanthus of the regions of literature. Now as I am provid- ed with no golden bough, nor any medicated sop, I can expect nothing but the severest sen- tence and treatment from them for this my pre- sent bold intrusion into their domains. The latter I believe to be the more essential requisite, and might alone suffice, if I could agree to make use of it, to secure me from the severity of each of the two parties into which the dusky quorum is divided. But to speak without figure : if in issuing these letters to the public, I would but compound with the religion and the irrelio-ion of the times ; if I would but make a few slight sacrifices of the cause which I support, I make no doubt that I should find my own pri- vate account, by so doing, in the reports of the Reviewers, and even the Antijacobin might once more speak favourably of a Papist*. But, * How (lid this Review cheej: me and praise me, when I publislied the first volume of" my History ofVVinchester, as may be seen by look- -ing buck to its uum))ers fur February and March 1791 1 But now, I 242 with God's help, I hope to keep on my steady couise, ill the pursuit of truth alone, till the end of it, content with no other reward for the pre- sent th in that of conscience. I find I mast reserve for another letter the subject of ecclesiastical architecture, which I had or'm'inally desig-ned should have been the princi- pal matter of this. I shall therefore, by way of finishing with you at present, take the liberty of giving you, and our other friends, a few words of advice. Circumstances then, dear Sir, have certainly been irritating ; the times are critical and eventful ; but for heavens sake keep yourselves cool: a great part of your past miseries have been owing to the intemperate warmth of some of your countrymen. Be patient : for it is un- questionably better '^to bear the ills we have, " than fly toothers that we know not of Re- mind the poor people, over whom your influence extend, of the accumulated misery which too many of them drew upon themselves nine years ago, by listening to the exaggerated histories, false alarms, and delusive promises of anarchists, and ap'itators of different manners and habits, and of a different creed from their own, men who sought not the relief of the i)eople, but their own aggrandizement and emolument. They excited and fanned the flame, and then, seeking their safety make no doubt, it will discover that lam ignorant, stupid, and even a Jacobin. Still they are not my talents nor my sentiments, but the interests ot the Aatijacobiu, which have undergone a change. 243 inflight, they left it to be extinguished in the blood of their deluded victims. — If I had the voice of thunder, I would cry throughout your island, at this momentous period in particular : " Irishmen, be cool : command your temper. " Your evils are working their own cure : they " can last but a very little time longer. In a ''word, increasing as you are so rapidly in '' numbers, wealth, and influence, you must find *' your proper level in society, and your weight in the scale of the empire. Those statesmen who pretend to fix the ne plus ultra of your privileges at any point whatever short of those " enjoyed by the rest of your fellow subjects, " might just as well usurp omnipotence, and say " to the flowing tide: hither shalt thou come, but *' no further : and here shall thy proud leaves be '' stayed"^:* In a word, be loyal, remembering the obliga- tion incumbent upon us all, both by the natural and the divine law, of being subject to the higher powers — not only for wrath but also for conscience sake ; and of rendering to all their dues: tribute to whom tribute is due, custom to zvhom custom, fear to who?n fear, honour to whom honour '\* Re- member also the additional obligation of loyalty which we have contracted by the strict oath of alleijiance which we have taken. We are con- stantly accused of making the apparent interest of our religion the only rule of our loyalty ; buit * Job xxxviii. 1 1 f Rom. \\\\i I i (( a (I 244 the history of Christendom, during the three last centuries, demonstrates the falsehood of this charge, and shews that it may be retorted on those Avlio bring it. Let one example suffice : when Edward VI. died, was there a single re- former of any eminence M^ho was not engaged in Lady Jane's rebellion ? Vrhen Mary died, was there a single Catholic, and the nation was then almost all Catholic, to oppose the succession of Elizabeth ? - ' But, whilst I exhort you to be faithful to your sovereign, let me not forget to admonish you of the fidelity you owe to your God. You will gather from what I have already said, that I consider your approaching emancipation as an event which is likely to be trying to your religi- ous constancy and piety. To speak the truth, I think I see that the very prosi>ect of this change makes a few individuals affect an air of latitudi- narianism totally inconsistent with the tenets of catholicity, and disposes them, in particular, to barter away the inalienable spiritual rights of the Church for their own temporal advantage. This system of indcmnitication, at the expense of the .Church, has been acted upon to a great extent of late upon the continent of Europe. But then they were only temporal possessions AV'hich were thus disjiosed of: whereas, in the in- stance to which I allude, the vital interests of Christ's spiritual kingdom have been held up to sale by those who never had or can have a right to dispose of them. Nevortheless, wh;itevcr may 245 be the dispositions and conduct of a few indivi- duals, I trust, in the divine protection, that the great majority of the Irish Catholics under all circumstances, whether prosperous or ad- verse, will, in conformity with their conduct, dur- ing the fourteen past centuries, continue faithful! in the belief and practice of every tittle of their unchangeable religion till the very end of time : or rather, until that day previous to it, when, if the prayer of Patrick, upon mount Chruachaneli was heard, the vast Atlantic will cause Ireland to disappear from the face of the globe, in order to spare his beloved children the experience of those horrors whicb Christ tells us, will cause men to xcither cavay for fear, and cry out to the mountains, fall upon us, and to the hills cover us " I Havino- kist now been upon deck, I find we are off the light-house of the Small Islands, as tbey are called. This light-house has much the appearance of an Irish Round Tower, though, instead of standing in an open country, it is placed on the pinnacle of a small insulated rock which just appears above the bosom of the deep, at the distance of twenty miles from the Welsh coast. In this narrow and dreary cell, seeing nothing but the " wild and wasteful ^' ocean," hearing nothing but the perpetual * Luke xxi. 26. xxiii. 30. I ia 246 lashing of its surges, mingled with the howhng jof contending winds, and the shiill screaming of cormorants, three poor human beings hve im- mured from one three months to another, when they receive a fresh supply of oil for their lamps, and of provisions for themselves. Their only pleasure, in the mean time, is to drink whiskey, and their only prospect is to have it in their power to drink it as long as they live. On the other hand, if there are charnis in heavenly con- templation and devotion beyond all other plea- sures which can be tasted here upon earth ; and, unless the inspired penmen deceive us in assuring us that there are such, we may well believe the ancient inhabitants of the round towers *', the anchorets, enjoyed these, and thus received an ample indemnification for the austerities they endured, even that hundred fold reward which Christ has promised here upon earth to those who ' Fn deciding, as I unequivocally do, that the round towers of Ireland were the cells of certain ancliorcts in the tarly ages of its Christianity (though not of all anchorets or Jnclini; for doubtless many lived in cells upon the ground), I enter my protest against the idea qf penitentiary houses, in which the hermit is supposed to re- move from one floor to another, according to the terms of his pe- nance, or in which a number of "penitents were shut up in the dif- ferent floors of the building. To form a right judgment in matter? of this nature the antiquary ought to be acquainted with the general discipline of the Catholic Church, and the particular manners and opinions of the monks and hermits during the early and middle ages. . > I 247 abandon satisfactions in tliis world for his sake*. — But I must here conclude with assuring you that I am. Dear Sir, Your's, &c. J. M. Dear Sir, LETTER II. Milford, August 13, 180/. Wi ITHIN two hours from the concluding of my letter to you of yesterday, I found myself at the entrance of the celebrated haven of this place. I was surprised and de^ lighted with the capaciousness of this bold inlet, capal)le, as it is, of containing all the ships of war in the world, with its numerous and diversified bays, and with the smooth and tranquil state of its waters, compared with the boisterous waves of the Irish Sea which I had just quitted. This circumstance is owing to the haven's being so completely landlocked. * MjlU. 5iix. 29. 248 I have Avalked iVom the hotel this morning to enjoy ihe -different views of this charming place, which rises in the form of an amphitheatre above the majestic bason of the haven, and commands every part of it, with the numerous vessels in dif- ferent directions upon it. The town is rapidly increasing in size and impoitance: but were it Avithin a hundred miles of London, it would in- crease at a much (|uicker rate ; and, I make no dou]:)t, would soon become the largest place within an equal distance of it. Still the haven cannot vie, either with the bay of Dublin or the harbour of Cork in grandeur or beauty. After the sea prospects, the object Avhich pleased me most in my rambles, was a small, plain, new- built church, upon an eminence, near the en- trance of the town, which froni the hasty A'iew I had of its outside, appeared to me as faultless a specimen of pointed architecture as I had almost ever met with from modern skill, I was told that the architect is a French emi- grant, by trade a ship-builder, who resides near Milford; and I make no doubt tliat his success in the present work is owing to his having closely copied some ancient church in the neighbour- hood. The mention of this unexpected sight, brings me to the subject M'hich ought to have formed the matter of my last letter to you, that of ecclesiastical architecture, or rather the branch of it v. Inch ref>ards the build in<2: of Catho,- lie Chapels. I must premise, however, that I am not myself an architect, in the lowest sense of the term : all that I can pretend to in this line is, 249 some little experience in it, and a few obvious re- flections which I have made concerning it. You will judge for yourself of the propriety of my rules and observations, and adopt them or not, in the chapel you talk of erecting, just as you please. I own, I was delighted to find the spirit which I everywhere met with amongst the Catholics of your country, after I had quitted the capital, for rebuilding their chapels in a better style than they have heretofore been in ; and I can rea- dily believe the anecdote you told me con- cerning the vestry that was held in your neigh- bouring parish*. I have been informed that you are indebted, for the improvements which are going on in so many places, to the bigotry of the Orange yeomanry, and the fury of the sol- diers during the rebellion of 1798. Not content with destroying whatever houses they found va- cant at that period, they every where burnt down the chapels. For the loss of these, go- vernment, with equal justice and wisdom, made an adequate compensation, by means of which, and of voluntary contributions, they are in a * The anecdote is as follows. A parish church in the county of Wateifofd being in great decay, a vestry of the protestant inliabitants of the parish was held, to consider of the means of raising money to repair it. No such means, however, occurring to the meeting, on^ ofthecompany spoke to this effect : " Gentlemen, \i you will fol- low my advice, I will be answerable for the success of it. Let us jnake a present of our church to the Papists. They will not fail to put it into good repair ; and when that is done we can take it from them, as we did before." 250 great measure restored M'ith great advantage. The example of your counties, in which tliese transactions took place, has stimulated the Ca- tholics in other counties, that ^ve\•e never dis- turbed, to exert themselves in the same line of chapel improvement. I cannot recollect half the places where I saw new and elegant chapels, either built or in the act of building: the following- places, however, strike my memory at the pre- sent moment ; Timolin, Castle Dermot, Tullow, Carlow, Thurles, Cashel, Cahir, Our Lady's at Cork, Carrick on Suire, and St. Nicholas at Waterford. All these erections, hoM'cver, must yield in exterior beauty to your principal chapel, or rather church, at Waterford. Its extensive and lofty facade, with its massive, but regular pillars, pilasters, entablature, and pediment, the latter surmounted with an ornamented cross, and charged in the tympanum with appropriate ecclesi- - astical ornaments, carved and gilt, forms not only the greatest ornament of your great city, but is the noblest front of any modern place of worship I recollect having seen in Ire- land. Still I must give the preference, for an in- - side view, to Our Lady's at Cork ; and you • know, Sir, it is the spirit of our religion, to - bestow the greatest pains and expense upon the interior decorations of our churches and chapels, ^ while other modern denominations of Christians exhibit their ma"-nificence and ornaments on the outside of their places of worship ; imitating, ' in this respect, the example of the pagan 251 Greeks and Romans. It remains to be seen wbe» ther the new grand chapel at Thurles will or will not, when finished, evceed each of these chapels, both in exterior and interior j^randeur and ele- gance The chief and the sreneral fault of all these new built chapels consists in the incongruous mixtures of different orders and styles of archi- tecture which is observable in them. In your grand church, for example, and in the elegant one which is almost finished at Carrick, I re- marked that the windows and the inside arches of the intercolumnations are sharply pointed, Avhile the general style of each chapel is Grecian. I re- collect also, that the vaulting of your chapel is exe- cuted partly in circular arches, partly in pointed groins; and it is plain to me, from conversing with twoor threeof your architects, that they consider it * Interior dimensions of the three above-mentioned chapelg. Feet, Waterford Great Chapel, length 105 Breadth of the nave and side aisles, 65 Length of the transept, thechapel beingin the form of across, 95 Height to the groined deling, 50 Our Lady's Chapel, or Church of Cork, having three altars, length 109 Breadth of the nave and side aisles, . 6a Length of tlie transept or cross aisle, 90 Height of the vaulting, 42 New Chapel at Thurles, length 120 - Length of the porch, 20 Length of the transept, 1 29 Height of the vaulting, 34 Height of the tower, 100 Kk 2^2 as a proof of their taste aiul knowledge, thus to combine differeut styles in the same building, and even to invent new styles of their own. Seeing the master builier, at one of the above-men- tioned new chapels, about to place a whimsical sort of capital for the butment of a pointed arch, I took the liberty of asking him, what order or style that capital belonged to ? He answered me : " It is of no particular order or style ; but it is a *' fancy Corinthian capital."—" Do you, then, " really fancy. Sir," said I, " that you can in- '' vent a more beautiful Corinthian capital, than " that which has obtained the approbation of all " civilized nations in all ages ?" The first canon, or rule, then, for chapel- building, which, Sir, I shall venture to lay down for your observance, and of the other parties concerned in the intended erection, is that, after proper consultation with respect to beauty, pro- priety, expense, and practicability, you should fix, not only upon the general style, but also upon the particular order or period of architec- ture in which you will have it executed, and that vou should gi^e the most precise and rigid orders, that this style and order be adhered to; not only in the essential, but also in the minuter parts of your building, and in the very ornaments and furniture ol" it. You will find, in your illustri- ous countryman's * Treatise on the Sublime and Beautiful, the principles upon which a number of * Burke-. 253 uniform members of a building- are calculated to give pleasure ; and, without reading this treatise, you will experience the pleasure in question, from contemplating your building when finished, if it be so constructed. Your practice of introducing so much pc^inted work into your chapels as you do, shews that you see the beauty of thib style, and its peculiar propriety for ecclesiastical buildings : but again let me impress my first canon upon your mind. Good taste and good sense require that you should adopt the point in all your arches, or in none of them. The law of unity and sim- plicity applies to the other arts, namely, to painting, statuary, music, and even poetry, no less than to building. '' Denique, sit quod vis, simplex duntaxat et uniun." Horat. de Art. Poet, You will gather from what I have just now said, that 1 myself greatly prefer the pointed style, which by some persons is called the Nor- man, by others the Gothic style *, especially for ♦ I agree with those persons who object to the term Gothic, as ap- plied to the pointed style of architecture, that it was invented by the artists wlio restored the Grecian style, as a word of reproach to the former. Nevertheless, since the word does not convey any such dis- graceful idea at present, and the style itself is generally ad.nired j since the inhabitants of Gothland are now a civilized people, and the sovereijjn of S^veden values himself in quality ot King of the Goths and Vandals : and since the Normans themselves, to whom the in- vention of the beautiful style m question is ascribed, were tliemselves, two centuries before that period, as great destroyers of tlie arts as ever the Gotlis liad been, f own the word Gothic does not raise mv stomach in the same degree it does those of some of my friends. K k a -254- religious edifices. Indeed, it was invented and perfected in the zenith of the Church's wealth and power, by ecclesiastical personages, for rcfigious purposes; that is to say, for augmenting the so- lemnity of divine worship, and exciting the at- tention, awe, and devotion of those who assisted at it ; and certainly, never did any invention of the human mind more completely answer its intended purpose than this has done. For where is the mortal so stupid, so dissipated, or so irreli- gious, who does not experience something of these awful and religious feelings at his entrance among the long-drawn aisles, the aspiring arches and pinacles, and ramified tracery of an ancient cathedral! Since the plundering of ancient re- formers, and the fury of later fanatics, and the more destructive caprice of fantastic modern im- provers, these venerable piles are but, as it were, the skeletons of what they were three hundred years ago ; yet where is the being, possessed of a soul, who will say that the paragon of modern art and magnificence, St. Paul's Cathedral, dis- poses his mind for jjrayer and contenij>lation in the same degree that York, Lincoln, and Win- Chester Cathedrals do *? It has been pretended by different writers, that * I would have added to this list Westminster x^bbey, were it not now a mere statuary shop, where huge blocks of stone, ili wrought, no less than well wrought, and some of them not wrought at all, confusedly cover all the beautiful arch-work of the walls, and now begin to fil) the open spaces of the aisles and nave. 5255 this jvrand effort of human ingenuity and indus- try, tiie pointed style, was borrowed from the Eastern Saracens, the Western Moors of Spain, and the Northern Goths of Seandinavia; as if there had been more native o-enius and orandeui' of conception, more ardent religious feehngs, and greater encouragement for ecclesiastical ar- chitecture among tiiese several barbarians, tliau among our own magnificent and ingenious Nor- mans of the 12th and 13th centuries! Let any intelligent person survey the vast and expensive cathedrals and abbey churches which the Nor- man i)relates began to build in every part of England soon after the conquest, the substance of which still remain, and then let him tell me wliether so much ardour, so much ingenuity, and so much liberality as they severally manifested for the advancement of ecclesiastical architec- ture, was not likely to discover in it whatever was most beautiful and perfect ? But I have elsewhere fully confuted tJiese several systems*, and have shewn, amongst other things, that if -this beautiful style had been borrowed fiom any foreign original whatsoever, we should have pos- eesscd some copy or other of it, that was intro- duced all at once in a kind of complete and regu- lar form, liut no such specimen can he pointed out. On the contrary, we see this art, jike other * See the History of Wincliester, vol. ii. p, 1S4. Also Essays ou •Gothic Architfctiire, by the Rev. Thomas Wartoii, Rev. J. Bentham, Captain Grose, and tiie Rev. J. Milner, publtshed by J.Taylor, at j:he Architectural Library, Holbojn. ^56 arts, rising from a small beginning, and gradually- growing up to its perfection through a succession of asres. It is evident to the eve-si"'ht, that the Norman architects, in the 11th and 12th centu- ries, used to ornament the plain surfaces of their churches with rows of circular arches ; and that, by way of variety, they frequently caused these arches to intersect each other, which intersec- tions formed pointed arches; and that they soon after began to open these intersections by way of windows; and tliat, in a very short time, they made all their arches pointed ; and that they pro- ceeded to ornament these with trefoils, canopies, &c. In short, it has been proved*, both by his- tory and theory, tliat as the pointed arch is the chief character, so it is the grand source of all the other members, and of all the ornaments of archi- tecture in question. I am far, however, from asserting that the Normans of France and Italy, and the Christians of Europe in general, were not intent on the improvem.ent of their churches at the same time that our ancestors were, or that the dis- coveries of one nation were not immediately com- municated to the others : all that I maintain is, that as ecclesiastical architecture was no where so much encouraged as it was in England from the 11th century to the 15th, so I am convinced the chief merit of discovering and improving pointed arches is due to the Normans and English. The tradition of foreign countries, which ascribes the -* See the above-mentioned History and Essays. 25f building of tlieir most beautiful pointed cathe- drals to our countrymen, confirms this opinion. Again, I do not mean to deny that pointed arches are to be met with in Syria, in tlie East Indies, and in tlie Moorisli parts of Spain ; but I deny that any of these arches are 600 years old; that is to say, are coeval with many of ours, or that they ever grew to he such miracles of gran- deur and beauty as our ancient cathedrals. Should you and your friends resolve upon building in the pointed, vulgarly called the Go- thic style, it will, in the next place, be neces- ', sary to determine upon some particular order, or period, as it is sometimes called of this style ; for there is as much difference between the pointed order of Henry the Third's reign, in _ > M'hich Salisbury Cathedral was built, and that of Henry the Seventh's, who built the chapel of his name at Westminster, as there is between the Doric and the Composite orders of Grecian ar- chitecture. The chief distinguishing features of the different periods consists in the span of the arch. During the first period, indeed, that is to say, during the reigns of the three first Henries, this was not fixed, the angles being either very gblique and hardly perceptablc, or else prodi*^- ciOi giously sharp, and by no means elegantly formed. During the second period, namely, during the reigns of the three first Kd wards, the taste of our architects directed them to prefer the form of pointed arch, in which right lines drawn from the springing or imposts across, and so up to 258 tlic crown of the arch, make an equilateral trr- angle. I>uring the tlind period of the pointed style, which comprises the reigns of the three last Henries, the architects being more anxious about their own reputation, by hanging vast . weights in the air, and surprising the spectators with the richness and intricacy of their work, than about the general effect of the buildings, /./- made and brought down the roofs much lower than their predecessors had done. The dressings of this style M'ent on increasing in richness, so that to take up the idea of my friend, the late Poet Laureate *, the first period may be called 5 .-tliat of the simple Gothic, the second that of the '3 -€rjimiien ted Goth ic, and the third that of the '' " 'Mprid Gothic '\\ You will easily judge from what I have here said that I myself prefer the second order, as better calculated to answer the grand object of the pointed style, and as being grace- fully ornamented Avithout being gorgeously be- decked. Hence also you comprehend that I like the style of York, Lincoln, and Winchester churches, better than I do that of King's College, Cambridge, and Henry the Seventh's, Westmin- ster. Still there may be a necessity, for the sake of economy, or to gain more space in a chapel, to adopt the flat arch of the third order (but without its usual dressings) rather than the grand aspiring arch of the second. ^Miich ever * The Rev. Thomas Wartoii. f Observations on Spencer's Fairy Queen. 259 order, hoM'ever, you clioose, you must strictly adhere to it, within the same range of build- ino-, for all your windows, doors, ballusters, picture frames, and for your very tabernacle. If you wish to be convinced of the necessity of this rule, go to Lincoln's Inn Chapel, and ob- serve the bad effect of the great Inigo Jones's inattention, who, in attempting the pointed style, has placed a sharp angled East window under a remarkable flat arched ceiling. From the whole of what 1 have said concern- ing the pointed architecture, you will judge how difficult, or rather impossible, it is to build a chapel in it without the assistance of persons Mho understand it, and are accustomed to it. At all events, you must have an architect who is com- pletely master of it, and this architect must fur- nish you, not only with a plan, but also with working drawings for the several parts of the building, the decorations, and the furniture. But where is this master of ancient architecture to be found ? Not among the men who hav-e been em- ployed by the king, the nobles, and the prelates, to build what are called their Gothic Castles, and to improve^ as the dabblers undertake to do, the master-pieces of antiquity, our awful cathedrals, while "they do not understand," as an able judge pronounced of them, " either the nature or '* the uses of a cathedral*." I know one man, • This is what the late Dr. Douglas, Bishop of Salisbury, pub. licly declared at a meeting of the Society of Antiquaries, concerning LI 260 indeed, who is eminently qualified to direct any work of this nature, and who, without either an original or a copy to look at, could sit down and make pure and perfect drawings for any kind of buildings in the pointed style, from a monument to a cathedral, according to any one of its dif- ferent periods ; but this architect resides not in Ireland, but in England, and he is so inflexibly strict in adhering to ancient rules and practice, that he would not build for a prince who should require the slightest deviation from them *. It is probable, that the difficulties attending the erection of your chapel in the pointed style may determine you to adopt the Grecian archi- tecture ; and certainly, it is infinitely preferable, to have a perfect work of the latter kind, than a caricatura of the former ; which, indeed, is the proper term for most of the Gothic chapels, as they are called, which I have met with in England. the celebrated architect who had, just before he came to the see, spent i6,oool. in sweeping away the altar, chapels, monuments, and whatever else was most interesting in that sacred edifice, in da^ jtroying its proportions, and in making a confused jumble of its or- naments. See a Dissertation on the modern Style of altering an- cient Cathedrals, by the Rev. J. Milner, D. D. F. S. A. Nichols, Red-Lion-Court, Fleet-Sireet: Keating, Brown, and Co. * Mr. Carter, Architect, Eaton-Street, Pimllco. See his An- cient Architecture of England 5 also his Specimens of Ancient Sculpture and Painting ; but especially his Intersected A-^iews of dif- ferent Cathedrals, &c. of England, engraved at the expense of the Societ" of Antiquaries. With the most enthusiastic passion for the pointed architecture, his whole life has been devoted to the study of it, [rem its great principles down to ifc minutest orna- mentsi .■J 261 I will, then, suppose you have fixed upon the Grecian style : it will still remain with you to choose amongst the different orders of this style, whether your buildings shall be of the sim- ple Tuscan or Doric Order, or of the elegant Ionic Order, or of the florid Corinthian or Com- posite Order. This being once chosen, you must insist upon its being strictly adhered to ; and above all, you must prohibit the introduc- tion of the smallest pointed arch, trefoil, quatre- foil, or pinnacle, and much more so of a spire. In fact, nothing can be more improper or in- congruous than the practice of modern archi- tects, in raising spires upon Grecian churches ; since the spire is the natural growth of the point- ed arch, as I have elsewhere demonstrated * : nor can any example of such an ornament be dis- covered among the pure remains of Greece or Kome. This matter being settled, you will next want a plan, tlie most important part of which will be the proportions. Here in England, when a catholic chapel is to be built, thearchitect, who is generally some common carpenter or mason, instead of being directed to take his proportions from those well-studied mo- dels of our religious ancestors, in the churches and chapels which still subsist in every part of the land, is left to form his own plan ; and he, being possessed with no other ideas than those of building • See Historj' of Winchester, and Essays on Gothic Architecture, quoted above. Lis z place of zcorsh'ip, and of following the fasbioii as nearly as he can, ftiils not to go and measure some one or more of the snug chapels of ease or Methodist meeting houses, which sprout up, like mushrooms, around us. In short, he values himself upon the breadth which he gives to Ids plan ; and if he can even bring it to the form of a square, he fancies he has gained the best shape for a chapel possible. But these ideas argue an ignorance of the characteristical difference be- tM'ecn our ))ublic Avorship and that of the ]\Ie- ihodists and other Protestants. Theirs consists, in a manner, wholly in words, ours chiefly in action. They meet to hear the Bible expounded, and the Common Prayer read to them, in a room to which they do not attacli the idea of greater sanctity than to any other place. Accordingly, the pulpit, with the king's arms painted on the wall, and some huge boxes, called })eM's, to contain the people, are all that is required for the ornament and furniture of such a place of worship. Whereas the essential part of our worship, like that of the people of God in all past times, consists in an action of the most solemn and awful kind; one that much more perfectly and emphatically expresses the supreme dominion, and the infhiite power and goodness of God, than any N\ords whatsoever can do. In short, M'C worship God by sacrifice, as his ser- vants were ever accustomed and taught to do, both under the law of nature, and under the written law. Our sacrifice, however, is as much superior to theirs, as the divine Victim upon our 263 altars excels, in dignity and merit, the animals which were immolated by the patriarchs and priests of the old law in memory of him. Now, for the due performance of a worship of this na- ture, it is easily conceived that a sanctuary of a sufficient size, and one removed to a proper dis- tance from the people, is requisite; yet still so that they may be able to see the action that is going forward, and to hear the priest in his pray- ers to God, and his addresses to them. In a word, the oblong form of building is that which has ge- nerally been approved of and adopted, not only by Catholics, but likewise by those different de- nominations of eastern Christians, whose chief worship, like ours, consists in sacrifice. To determine the best relative proportions of a catholic chapel, is a difficult, or rather an im- possible thing, as these must vary, more or less, according to different circumstances : but, after examining many ancient chapels, and plans of chapels, it appears to me, that one third part of the whole inside length is in general a good pro- portion for its inside breadth (where there are no galleries or, side aisles), as likewise for its interior height ; though certainly a few Feet more added to the height would be gained in the grandeur of the chapel*. Still, as the people ought, • It may not be amiss to insert here the proportions of some of the most celebrated churches, ancient and modern. Winchester Cathedral Ft. In. Total inside length from West to East, — 53' 3 264 ■ : by all^ieans, to see and hear what is going for- ward at the altar, as I said before, and likewise to hear distinctly the sermon, hence, to prevent carrying the nave to a length incompatible with rt. In. Breadth of the nave and side aisles, —^ 86 Heisht of the vaulting, — — 7^ T^ength of the transept or cross aisle from North to Soutli, 208 Length of the choir and sanctuary, — 13S Breadth of the choir, — — 41 S York. Minster. Totallength, — — 49^ Breadth of tlie nave and aisles, — 109 Height of the vaulting, — — 99 Lincoln Cathedral. Total length, — — 49 8 Breadth of nave and aisles> — — 83 Height of vaulting, — — 83 St. Paul's, London. Totnl length, — — — 500 Breadth ofthc nave and side aisles, — 107 Lengthof transept or cross aisle, — 248 Height of vaulting, — — 83 St. Peter's, at Rome. Total length of the church, — Palms 970 722 Interior length, — — 829 594 Length of transept, — — 225 Height of vaulting, — — 200 It is, however, to be observed that a large cathedral is not intended to unite a single congregation in one and the same service ; it is evi- dently too vast for this purpose ; but it was meant to be a basilic, or corps of building for various religious purposes. This idea has never once found place in the brain of any of our modern cathedral reform- ers : no wonder, then, they have made so many blunders and so much havoc in them. It is from the comparative length and breadth of the choir, which is the part particularly destined to tUe principal service, that these proportions are to be taken. 265 these purposes, you act with perfect jadgment in your principal new built chapels in Ireland, by adding a transept to them. Thus they are built in the form of a cross ; a form which, though un- known to pagan antiquity, has been adopted by christian architects, as well in the circular as in the pointed style, both for its conveniency and its analogy with the christian worship. Next to the rule of proportion, undoubtedly stands that of symmetry,or a due correspondence of the parts. Your columns, windows, and doors, then, ought perfectly to correspond with each other from end to end, and from side to side, except that the East *, or altar end, requires to be fitted up in a more rich and elegant manner than the rest of the chapel, as I am going to ex- plain, though undoubtedly in the same style and order with it. Hence, in fixing upon the site of your intended chapel, you must, if possible, choose a spot not encumbered, and not likely to be encumbered with other buildings close to it, in order that you may have windows on both sides, and those facing each other. Hence also, should there be a necessity of forming the en- trance door of the chapel at one of the sides, in- * It was a primitive practice of tlie Church to pray towards the East, on which account the ancit-nt churches are almost always foand to be built from East to West, and the altars to be placed at the East end of them. The custom is so general, that when, from particular circumstances, there is a necessity of building a church or chapel in a. different direction, it is usual to call the altar end the East end, and the opposite the West end of the sacred edifice. 266 stead of the West end, I slioiilcl recommend, by all means, a sham door to be made opposite to it, for the purpose of preserving symmetry. What the head is to the human body, the Altar is to a church or chapel of Catholics, or of other Christians, whose supreme worship con- sists in sacrifice. The \vord "ALTAR," says Johnson, " is received with Christianity into " all European languages. *" But where is the scriptural or the proper meaning of the M^ords altar 2.nd priest without a sacrifice ? Not to proceed, however, into this subject, you will judge from the importance of that member, the altar, with respect to the whole body of an ancient church, and the obvious reference M'hich all the other members have to it, of the ignorance and folly of our modern church improvers, who always begin their depredations with sweeping away the altars and altar screens ! In case these men have not taste enough to perceive that all their gutting, and levelling, and scraping, and paint- ing, and varnishing, tend to nothing else but to turn an awful place of Avorsliip into a mere hall, or promenade, they ought at least to have learn - ino-enouo-h to read the first Rubric in their Com- mon Prayer Book, which pointedly condemns their practice^. Whatever magnificence then, or appropriate de- corations your fund will afford, this is the part * Dictionar}' t This requires that " The chancels shall remain as they have <* done in times past."— See Dissertation on theModern Style, &c. '267 ' - - of the chapel on M'hicli to bestow tlieui. The expense, however, of a complete marble altar, may, I think, well be spared in these damp cli- mates assLich altars are found to be alwaysexceed- ingly cold and clammy to the hand, and to keep the altar-linen in a perpetual state of moisture. On the other hand, I do not apjjrove of the parsimony of substituting a mere wooden altar, painted in imitation of marble, with a plain cross of Malta in the front, for the rich and varying antependiums of our ancestors. If vou will have a tomb altar '^ let it be made in imitation of that most exquisite tomb altar at Wardour chapel, or of the equally beautiful one at Lulworth chapel. Should this be impracticable, you might place on the front of your altar a carved and gilt relievo of the mysti- cal Lamb, resting on the sealed volume, or of the pelican feeding its young, or of the chalice and host, with angels in the act of adoration, or of the monogram of JESUS*, or of CHRIST, surrounded with rays. If the altar is square, the figure of a dead Christ, with those of the Blessed Virgin, St John, &c. painted in light and shade, so as to represent carved work, would have an exceeding good effect in that situation. I need * The letters}. 11. S. which are so frequently seen, do not mean Jesus Hominum Salvator, as is generally supposed ; but they are the Greek monogram, or cypher of the sacred name, being the three first letters of it, viz. of IHSOTE. In like manner tlie X, with the p (which in Greek has the power of R) inserted in it, is the monogram of the word CHRIST, being the two first letters of XPISTOE. :m m not mention that the altar ought to be raised above tlie level of the chapel, by a proper number of steps, in proportion to the height and length of the latter. The tabernacle upon the middle of the altar, you well know', is to us what its type, the Ark of tbe Covenant, was to the ancient people of God, and therefore ought, like that, to be the richest and most ornamented article in the whole sanc- tuary. Its form should be that of a regular building, and it may, with great propriety, be a model of the west end of your own chapel. It, however, admits of being decorated with niches, statues, vases, and other appropriate ornaments, in carving and gilding. But with respect to gilding, however, it is proper to observe, that this shoidd be used with great caution. A proper quantity of it helps the effect of ornaments in a verv great de- gree : but too much of it is tavydry and conternpti- ble. The crucifix which surmounts the tabernacle, ought certainly to be the best executed one you can procure. It ought also, in the situation which it holds, to be elegantly ornamented, and proportioned in size to it. If in any article there is room for fancy, it is in the form of the can- dlesticks ; for those intended for domestic use are of such various shapes that it is not easy to find out a new one, and on the other hand, it is de-? sirable that nothing appertaining to the divine worshipshouldhave a vulgar and household appear- ance. Neither the candlesticks, nor the flowers, reliquaries, or other ornaments about the altar, • '269 ' > shoiikl be too numerous, bulky, or gorgeous. The Simplex Munditiis is a universal rule in de- corations of every sort. A beautiful altar-piece, proportioned to the size of the altar end, is obviously so essential an ornament that I hardly need mention it, except by way of observing that there are many excellent pictures proper for altar-pieces now upon sale at reasonable prices in various parts of London: as, Rmong the loads of paintings, which have been brought into England of late years from abroad^ those which represent the most pious subjects are in the least request. I must say, however, that the most pious of all subjects, namely, the crucifixion, is the one which I am least partial to for an altar-piece, because it is a repetition of what is exhibited immediately beneath it on the taber- nacle. To be brief, the whole east end of the chapel ought to present an interior facade, or piece of finisheil architecture. Four pillars, or pilasters, of the order you have previously chosen should support a cornice, or rather en- tablature, which should finish in a closed or open pediment. The tympanum of the latter admits of any of the devices mentioned above, as proper for the front of the altar, in relievo, painting, or stained glass. The open space also between the columns on each side, and directly over the credence table, is well adapted to a niche and statue, or a well proportioned pic- ture, and the cornice may, with great propriety, be crowned with urns or other vases. M ma 270 Supposing, liowevcr, the chapel to he huilt in the form of a cross, as I have said is the case with some of your best chapels in Ireland, and that the altar is placed in the centre of the intersec- tion, you will ask how the latter is to he orna- mented, so as to preserve its character of su- perior magnificence and importance ? I grant the difficulty there is, in this case, to gain the desired effect, at least if there be an eastern shaft to the church or chapel extending beyond the altar, and of the same height with it. Our ancestors shut up their high altars to the east with those exquisite altar screens, cither of open work, as at Durham, or of close work, as at St. Albans and Winchester, which are the most astonishing of all their beautiful works *. But^then, the eastern shafts of the cross, beyond the alt;u-, in these churches, had no communica- tion with the worship performed at it. In St. Peter's Church at Home, a most splendid and beautiful canopy |, formed of the bronze which heretofore covered the cupola of the Pantheon, and gilt, is raised over the high altar, on rich * This particularly holds good with respect to tlie two last-men- tioned altar screens The carved work in them, though executed in stone, is so delicate as to baffle the eftbrts of. the most laborious iirtisis barely to make a drawing of it. ■ + Notwithstanding the richness and elegance of this large and beautiful canopy, executed after a design of the celebrated Bernini, it must be admitted that if this wonder of the world, St. Peter's of Rome, is deficient in any thing, it is in the iinportance of its high altar. Tlie great Michael Angelo had a plan for correcting this, one part of which required that the altar should be raised 50 feet .high. 271 ' ' twisted pillars of the same metal, to the height of 87 feet. This oives the altar as much tlionity as it well admits of in that situation. In case, how- ever, there should be no eastern shaft in your new chapel, or only one with a low roof, for the purpose of a private chapel, or a sacristy, like the Lady chapels in most of our cathedrals, your altar will then admit of all the above- mentioned decorations, and even of a painted east window instead of an altar-piece. I come now to speak of the body of the cha- pel ; and first with respect to galleries. Indeed every canon of architectural taste must yield to necessary convenience and economy. Hence if galleries are requisite to contain your numbers, they must certainly be erected ; otherwise be as- sured that these encumbrances take off from the beauty and solemnity of your sacred edifice, but much more those which run along the sides of it, than when there is barely one at the west end. With respect to your ceiling, if you leave this to the plasterer, he will give you ornament enough, in circles, festoons, flowers, and such other ornaments as he is accustomed to form in drawing-rooms ; but on this very account, if there were no better reason, they ought to be pro- scribed from the house of sacrifice and prayer. To make short of the matter, as there is no kind of ceiling for churches in the pointed style equal in beauty to groining, so there is none for those in the Grecian style to be compared with circular arching. If, for want of sufficient pecuniary funds, or of sufficient space in lyour chapel, you cannot adopt the bold semicircular arch, you must be content M'ithan elliptical one, and at all events you must restrain your plasterers from in- troducing the common ornaments with M'hicli they are accustomed to decorate their drawing- rooms, and square modern chapels. In case your circular or elliptical ceiling is supported with broad ornamented ribs, resting upon the cor- nices of pillars or pilasters, as in the vaulting of St. Peter's at Rome, and of Wardour Chapel, which is the St. Peter of modern English places of M^orship, I can conceive nothing in the Gre- cian style more appropriate or beautiful. The pillars themselves, or the pilasters, in chapels, Avhere there are no side galleries, and where the congregation is decent and orderly, should be continued down to the floor of the building;, but where the people are of a different descrip- tion, and the pillars or pilasters are not of a firmer texture than plaster or deal wood, it will be ad- visable to make the latter terminate in consoles or brackets, at one third of the distance from the architrave to the ground. As no circumstance is more favourable to aw- ful and sublime sensations than the " dim reli- " gious light" which poets have celebrated*, and philosophers have remarked upon f? (at the same * Milton's II Penseroso. f Burke on the Sublime. '273 time that sufficient light must be had for all necessary purposes) it is advisable, in case you cannot procure a sufficient quantity of painted or stained glass, to place your windows very high ; that is to say, M'ithin a few feet of the ceiling. At Wardour no windows at all are to be seen in the body of the chapel, which contri- butes greatly to the awe which the stranger feels at his entrance into it. Nevertherless there is quite sufficient light from the sky to read a book, or to view distinctly the beautiful pic- tures, one of which adorns every vacant space be- tween the pilasters. The fact is, there are windows of a sufficient size, one over each picture, but the sight of them is happily intercepted by the pro- jecting cornice beneath them. In chapels, liav- ing side galleries, there must necessarily be win- dows, or portions of windows in the aisles be- low them. In this case, if painted or stained glass is not to be had, the desired effisct may be partly obtained by glazing the windows with rough glass, M'hich is nothing more than com- mon glass, one side of which has been rubbed with sand and water till it becomes impossible to see through it, whilst it transmits the light as well as ever. Perhaps you will say it is owing to my Gothic taste that I prefer casements to sashes • but, leaving this out of the question, the plumber can dispose his lead into any shape that is desired, with much greater facility than the joiner can his wood. Thus it is easy in a case- ll 74 ment window to have a border all round each of the hghts, and a circle in the upper part of it to contain stained oi painted glass, v.hen the pro- prietor is not able to glaze the whole window in that manner, I could wish that every window in your chapel, had a contrivance to open part of it, and that there were also certain apertures in the ornamental work of the ceiling, yet so as not to disligure it, to answer the purpose of ventilators. It is hardly possible to procure too much fresh air in chapels crowded as yours are : and the up- per region is the proper place to introduce it, because thither the heat and vapours ascend, and air thus introduced does not flow in a current upon any part of the congregation, to the danger of their health. There are two pieces of furniture in most cha- pels which it is difficult to dispose ofproperly, the organ and the pulpit. The former generally finds its place in a gallery at the west end of the cha- pel. Sometimes, however, the choir, who must be near the organ, object to that situation. In other instances, it cannot be so placed without obstructing a beautiful west window. In these circumstances, I would not indeed sacrifice the organ itself, but I would sacrifice the case of it by requiring the builder to dispose of his pipes horizontally, or in some such manner as should neither spoil symmetry, nor conceal beauty. At the chapel of New College, Oxford, the pipes of the organ are so placed along the muliions of the grand west window, as ratlier to help its 275 effect than to obstruct it. The pulpit cannot be stationary, without both injuring symmetry, and taking up a great deal of space where it is most wanted. Why, then, should not the preacher be contented with a light moveable pulpit, which can be wheeled from the vestry di- rectly before the altar, or, if the chapel is small, with a large and firm reading-desk, covered with a suitable veil ? It is evident, that in this situa- tion he best commands the whole of his audi- ence : whereas, when the pulpit is placed, in the ordinary way, on one side of the chapel, he can never see the whole of his flock at once, and ge- nerally is overlooked by apart of it. I would not, in erecting a new chapel, be in- different as to the form and colour of the benches, nor even of the cushions. The former should be as light in their construction as is consistent with a proper degree of strength. Nothing can injure the effect of a chapel more than those clumsy boxes and enclosed sheep-pens, called pews, which the Catholics of late years have bor- rowed from the Protestants. I am speaking here of England, and particularly of London, for I never saw any thing of the sort in Ireland. Look at the exquisite stall-work in the choirs of our ancient cathedrals, and even at the plain oaken benches for the common people, which still re- main in many of the parish churches ; you will there see how well our ancestors knew how to combine lightness with strength, and elegance Nn 2/6 with convenience. Tiie benches and cusliions should be perfectly uniform,- and of the same colour, if possible, with the chapel itself, which I suppose to be a giey, a blue, an olive, or a yellow hue. If there must be a variety of co- lours in any instance whatsoever, let there be as little of it as possible, and by all means avoid strong contrasts. Thus, dear Sir, I have executed the task you imposed upon me, by throwing together my thoughts upon chapel-building. I know very well, that if you shew this letter to our protest- ant friend Mr. P. he will ridicule the whole of these details as superstitious minutite, and he will ask, if it is not possible to be impressed with })roper religious feelings, without all these artifi- cial means of exciting them? — There can be no doubt but I\Ir. P. when he enters within the bare damp walls of his parish church, and views from his enclosed box, the enormous pulpit over his head, and those tremendous beasts, the lion and the unicorn, before his face ; there can be no doubt, I say, but he is struck with as much re- verence and devotion as if he were praying in the modern Vatican at Rome, or in the ancient Ca- thedral of Lincoln, as it existed 300 years ago : but it is not so with you and me. We are so apt to be distracted and tepid in our prayers, that we stand in need of every aid from sensation as well as reflection, to fix our wandering thoughts, and io narm our cold hearts. But what is most to the 'Ill present purpose, let Mr. P. consider, that He who knezvzvhat zvasin man *, judged such exterior means of exciting the attention and piety of his chosen people to be so fit and necessary, that he deigned himself to enter into far more numerous and minute details of this nature in his revealed word, than those contained in the present letterf . But the Waterford packet, which will convey my former letter as well as this to you, is on the point of sailing, and I myself, after calling upon a few friends in Monmouthshire, the Malvern. Hills, and Worcester, must hasten home to my house at Wolverhampton, where I shall be glad to learn your opinion concerning my ideas of Ecclesiastical Architecture. In the mean time, I remain, Dear Sir, yours, &c. J. M. * Jchn ii. 25. t See the details concerning the tabernacle and the temple, in th/? Books of Exodus, Leviticus, Kings, &c. .. LXV, V V « b n' i> V i> » 1' » i) b » v » » I • » v », I, •< ■• II t, fc e "J » * •> fc '■ " • ft «« •1 ti» ■> U t> ADDITIONAI. NOTES, Page 82. N. B, Sir R. Musgrave vindicates the use of those bar- barous tortures which were so generally inflicted to extort confes- sions during the disturbances in Ireland ; at the same time that he acknowledges them to be contrary to law ! This is equivalently saying, that one party is at liberty to violate the laws and constitu- tion, but not the other party. He even vindicates the leading out of prisoners, taken up on mere suspicion, and shooting them by dozens, without even the brief ceremony of a comt-martial !— A friend of mine, about fifteen years ago, published a defence of Nero. It is a pity, for the sake of his cause, that he did not live to witness theconductof Sir Judkin Fitzgerald, and to read the history of Sir Richard MusgrSve. Page 94. N. B. Those writers who, with Bishop Nicholson, bring St. Patrick's biographer, Probus, down to the tenth century, are presumed to be ignorant that he is named among the respect- able authors whose works wfere in the library of York Cathe- dral in the eighth century by the celebrated Aleuin. See De Pontif. ct Sanct. Eborac apud Gale. Ibid. N. B. The British Abbot Nennius, to whom Ledwicli very absurdly ascribes the first invention of the alledged fable of St. Patrick, in his account of this saint appeals to more ancient Irish do- cuments concerning him. See Hist. Brit. c. 60. Printed byKEATlNG,,n^CW,N, ^^iil KEATIt:G, 38, jbuke-strte*. Grcivsnor- squire. ' ERRATA. Page 7, line 2, for Is rend are; — p. 9, 1. 20, for whatever read all the;— p. 12, \. (), for Bohls read Bobbio ;— p. 15, 1. i<^, f>r anti- quarian rend antiquary; — p. 21, 1. ult. read of hope; — p. 30, 2d note, Jo?' Condition of Ireland, read Catholic Question ; — p. 31, 1. 1 6, /or desired read devised ; — p. 33, 1. 4, read dominions," * the ; note 1. 1 5, for Slattery read Scattery ; note 2d, 1. 3, for ce read se ; — p. 34, 1. 19, for he i^eadthey ; — p 43, after note 2d, add See also AlcuindePontif. Ecc. Ebor. ;— p. 58, 1. 10, for on which read at which; — p. 59, 1. 25, dele in question; — p. 65, 1. 3, read will prove, that; — p. 67, 1. 21, fur would read will ;— p. 68, continue the inverted commas before the nine first lines; — p. 70, note 1. 6, read a Catholic, who will hesitate ;— p. 71, 1. 22, for in read into ;— p. 72, 1. i,/o?- for ?T«f/but ; — p. 87, 1. k, for is read are; — p. loi, note 1. 4, for 5th read 7th ; — p. 103, 1. 2, for Laiony read Lanoy ; —p. 104, 1. 3, detections, dele s, — p. 104, 1. 24, read mission, or- ders, and archiepiscopal jurisdictions from Pope; — p. 112, 1. 9, for 3}m\xh read absurd; — p. 118, 1. i^, for ; read, — p. I3S, 1. 21, maintains, dele s ; — p. 1 39, 1. 19,^^' fourth rtar/ fifth ; note 1. penult, ^or inclusorlo re«dJ in clusorio ; — p. 153, note4, 1. <,, Jor eum cen- tissimus, rc«f/ cum centissiniis ; — p. 148, note 2, 1.4)./"'" creatura; read creatura ; — p. 155, 1. 12, after does add keep ; — p. 156, i. 10, ",' • , , , J 1 J ) . . >'•'■',.".•."'', ..... »^, . . . . . , • • . . ... . . X.^^ -% -^/^'^ -f^ •^T'Y TIBF r- COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 0022331000 93(^415 NG3G 00 o o m ^ 1 -t • vO ^0 fO ro nO (T> 2: a: UJ