its suppression, in 1773, with a stigma, which is indelible, adorning the columns of the Bullarium. A schismatical and a heretical power still gave it shelter.

In 1814 it was thought, by the papacy, expedient that the valid rowers, who had been thrown overboard, and continued floundering in the deep for forty years, should be recalled, and put to fresh service for the safety of the Apostolic bark. And now, or the next year, as if in just and providential retaliation, the Russian, who had fostered the serpent, was compelled to eject him. Pius VII., though directly contravening the most deliberate act of a predecessor, a sentence eminently ex cathedra, did not, however, venture to impugn a single ground of that act; but was contented with a feeble, compendious, and perfunctory annulment.* Circumstances, however, favoured the measure, and, in the face of predictions of eminent wiseacres among ourselves, the Jesuits were restored. They were restored: they have, from charity, found an asylum in this country; and, from about the decemvirate with which the original Society began in France, what are they now in England? They are completely incorporated with the parent body, and, together, they constitute the normal school from which every papal and anti-Protestant institution in the empire will be supplied with policy, organization, and trained instructors, as may be needed. Much, we have reason to know, has already been done in this way; but a great deal remains to be done. Agents of all descriptions and powers; spies and informers of all and varied talents, will be dexterously located in positions and families, especially the influential, for the more effectual advancement of the cause. All, however, will be conducted on the principle of exciting as little attention, or rather alarm, as possible. Nothing, or little, will appear in sight, or with noise: all will be quiet, conciliating, soporific. Sapping and mining will be the practice for some time-as long indeed as is expedient or profitable; although the pulse of the public still being watched, such things as processions will be gently attempted; but nothing precipitated or over done. At all events, an explosion must be avoided. The time may come, if eager spirits be not curbed, that the dormant Christianity of the country may be roused; and, as the Parliaments of France rose in a body against the

more remarkable passage than that occurring at p. 649, where Francis Borgia, third General, is represented as having obtained of God, by prayer, that, for the first three hundred years, no member of the Society should be damned: ut trecentis primaanis nemo qni ineâ ad mortem usque perseveraverit damnetur. It will behove the aspirants to this benefit to lose no time, for the term expires in the year 1840.

* This bull deserves to be put by the side of Pius II.'s retractation of a work of his own, and Paul IV.'s condemnation of his own consilium, sanctioned by a preceding pontiff, Paul III. See Prohib. Indexes of Rome.

iniquity and encroachments of this pestilence, the single Parliament of this United Empire may find it expedient, for its temporal as well as spiritual preservation, that a cordon sanitaire should be established, and Jesuitism put out of the power of doing mischief: the legislature, recovering its Christian or Protestant character, may discover that it is necessary to provide, ne quid Respublica Christiana detrimenti capiat. There was a time, in this country, when the Jesuitic section and the general body of the Roman church were at war, not intentionally open, but so violent as not to admit of concealment, among themselves; and regulars and seculars with us, as afterwards Jesuits and Jansenists in France, wasted their strength and mightily obstructed the general cause by their mutual hostilities. The history of the faction at Wisbeach affords an edifying example of the rise of such civil commotions in a religious community, and to what an extent of aggression and defamation the ambition of one side, and the impatient resentment of the other, might transport those who had so many secular motives, added to the point of honour, to merge their internal differences, and maintain, in the face of the world, particularly, as in England, an heretical one, the semblance at least of the proclaimed unity of their church About thirty priests of the more respectable character assembled in a state prison, under such easy confinement as to allow of familiar intercourse with the inhabitants of the place, dividing into two parties, one of which endeavours to separate itself from the other, on the charge against the other of sensual crime, involving either the truth of the charge or the guilt of gross calumnysuch is the picture given by a party (the calumniated, as we believe,) of an assemblage of the more respectable of the Roman Catholic community of the sacred order in the time of Elizabeth.* The

* See the interesting and very instructive "True Relation of the faction begun at Wisbich, by Fa. Edmonds, alias Weston, a Jesuite, 1595, and continued since by Fa. Walley, alias Garnet, the Provincial of the Jesuits in England, and by Fa. Parsons, in Rome, with their adherents, against us, the secular priests," &c., assigned by Dodd principally to Christopher Bagshaw. Newly imprinted, 1601," pp. 90. We should exceedingly like to see this scarce tract reprinted. Perhaps our Roman Catholic friends will indulge us. They might likewise reprint, to the great elucidation of the history of their church, some of the pieces of W. Watson, particularly his Quodlibets, which must be scarce even to them, and his Dialogue (his Important Considerations have lately seen the light). As an additional illustration of Dodd's Ecclesiastical History, which is forthcoming, under the editorial inspection of the Rev. M. Å. Tierney, Constable's Amendments, and the Historian's Apology, will hardly fail to be republished, particularly as Alethes, who appeared in the accredited catalogue of Keating and Brown, in the Laity's Directory of 1812, has subsequently disappeared. The History of the English College at Doway, 1713, anonymous, but C. Butler says, by Dodd, will throw some frosh light upon Roman Catholic affairs; and the observations relative to

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dissensions did not end here. But the contending parties, or their posterity, are now too wise to continue a quarrel to the advantage only of their opponents. And indeed they have little temptation so to do all the temptation is in the contrary direction. It is now one combined, undivided effort to injure, and, if possible, destroy their common enemy, the Protestant religion of this empire; and for this laudable end they refuse not, but court and accept, and that most gratefully, the alliance of Protestant dissenters (so professing), Socinians, Deists, Profligates, Atheists. All are brethren in so righteous a cause !*

But as they are wiser, we are wiser too. History has lost a great deal of instruction upon us if we are not so. Besides, some improvement in general knowledge and principle, we can look back upon some of the acts, both of Popery and of Jesuitism. Neither of them are an untried thing. They have both exhibited themselves, and to some little effect. The five years' reign of Mary I. is a lesson for perpetuity to this country. Jesuitism in the reign of Elizabeth, providentially not by its success, is another. Their aim, their efforts, their professions, yet extant in bulls of Popes, in the works of Allen, of Parsons, of Sanders, of Rishton, of Stapleton-not to go to foreign enemies are a standing proof of the spirit which breathes and burns in undying and unchanging Popery. It is war to the scaffold, war to the dagger, war to the fagot, with

the valuable author in Berington's Preface to his Decline and Fall of the Roman Catholic Religion in England, 1813, which first appeared under the title of Memoirs of Gregorio Panzani, will much assist the editor of Dodd in his laudable undertaking. He will perhaps inform his readers how Watson came to escape the honours of martyrdom, which were bestowed upon Garnet, that miraculous "man of straw." Perhaps he and Berington, are not much esteemed among Catholics! The charge of the Jesuitic faction, at Wisbich, against the other priests, or their pretence for separation, was "thereby the better to avoid such sins as whoredom, drunkenness, and dicing, the same being too ordinary with some in this house."-P. 8.

* Dr. Charles O'Conor, who well knew the constitution of Modern Rome, both secular and ecclesiastic, has described the policy of its Court in terms equally, and indeed more intensely, applicable to the spritual department of the system, even to its extrenie ramifications. "There is," he writes in his Columbanus, No. VII., p. 59, "perhaps no Court in the world that better deserves the attention of a statesman than the Roman, for this obvious reason, that there is no Court which has so many emissaries under such plausible appearances, and no place where the interests of other states are better understood. It is a notorious fact, and has been so since the days of Petrarch, that most of the Roman Prelates are better skilled in politics than in divinity," &c. The whole of this distinguished writer's discussion respecting "the Veto and the Vicars," pp. 44. and onward, shews how completely the British Ministry of the time were gulled by the spiritual politicians of Italy.

the Christianity of Protestantism. We do not despair of the issue of the coming contest, but it will be a fierce one; and woe to those who do not take the right side decisively, and in time. The convulsive struggles of the dying apostate will be terrific: but let us not fear them; the victory will be with the pure Church.

We heartily thank the editor and translator of the Jesuitic Constitutions for having called the attention of the British Protestant public to this, which will be an all-absorbing subject. We have added some other books at the head of our article, in order to assist the same object, and shall be sufficiently rewarded if our recommendation and suggestion are of any service in this way.

ART. III.-The System of National Education in Ireland ;-its Principles and Practice. By J. C. COLQUHOUN, Esq., M.P. Cheltenham: Wright. 1838.

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IT is the fate of most great questions to be so inseparably connected with the bias of political partizanship, as to preclude them, in too many cases, from receiving that calm and dispassionate consideration which their importance demands. Party differences and sectarian jealousies have, in our time, all but superseded the ancient tests of excellence. A hateful expediency has taken the place of principle, and matters of the weightiest moment have ceased to be decided on their own merits. It seldom occurs to your modern philosopher to ask himself" is the plan I am now considering consistent with the eternal and immutable laws of right and wrong?" If he be satisfied that the interests of the party to which may chance to belong will be advanced by adopting it, this is enough for him. It is of greater consequence, in his eyes, that a measure should be expedient, than that it should be right; and his would be a mere waste of time who should seek to prevail with such an one by argument, tending to prove that scheme to be bad and vicious in principle which his own eye for this world's good tells him will in practice be of immediate advantage to himself, or give a momentary triumph to his own particular views. The world has in each succeeding age of its history given but too sad proof of the propensity of its inhabitants to do evil continually, preferring their own devices and their own lusts to the behests of eternal wisdom. Since the moment in which Adam, by the commission of almost the only sin within his reach, damaged and defaced the image in which he was created, error has never been without her representatives among the sons of men. Even since the rising of the bright Sun of the second Revelation, all has not been pure and unmixed light. At one time its rays have been dispersed and deprived of their genial influence by transmission through the false and distorting medium of the haughty pride and rebellious reason of man; at another, the glorious orb itself has been wholly con

cealed from our view by the thick mists of sordid passion and sensual ignorance. Still, though the truth has been more than once reduced as it were to ashes, yet it has passed through the fire of persecution only to rise again from those ashes more glorious than ever. From this consideration of the natural tendency of error to multiply its own deformities, while the fair proportions of truth fade and decline from their pristine beauty, we should be led to feel the deep responsibility which rests upon each succeeding generation to transmit, in all their purity, those truths and principles to their posterity which, as a rich casket of precious jewels, they themselves received from their fathers. Let not any age forget that these valuable treasures are theirs only as they are trustees for others. They are for the use and benefit of the whole Christian family in all time, as an heirloom in the strictest sense of the word. There can be no cutting off of the entail-they belong to the eternal Author of truth and wisdom, and it is only a right of enjoyment, not a power of alienation, which is given to the sons of men. How jealous should we be, therefore, of such treasures--how careful should we be that no rude hand snatch them from our grasp that no polluting touch sully their purity, or mar their loveliness. The first duty of every man is to inquire, in the language of Pontius Pilate, though in a far different spirit-" What is truth?" Having once obtained a satisfactory answer to this question-once assured what truth is, it then becomes his privilege, as well as his duty, to maintain it against all opposition, and in spite of every difficulty. To maintain truth, and to contend for principle, should be the fondest aim, as it unquestionably is the solemn and bounden duty, of every man born into the world.

Let us now bring these general remarks to bear upon the particular subject which we propose to consider in the present article. The members of the Church of England have but little difficulty in ascertaining in what truth consists. For them the Church, as an anxious and faithful mother, has preserved with scrupulous • exactness the doctrines of Holy Scripture in all their native excellence. In her Liturgy and her articles of faith, the Church in England, as a pure branch of the Apostolic and Catholic Church of Christ, has embodied the doctrines which Christ promulged, which his Apostles enforced; for insult offered to which Saints have wept, and in contending for which martyrs have bled and died. The humble inquirer after truth, if he follow the injunction of St. Paul to his son in the faith, Timothy, to "prove* all things," will find that in receiving as truths the assertions of the Church, he is "holding fast that which is good." The Scriptures and the Church speak one and the same thing. That which the Bible

Dissenters would do well to observe, that St. Paul does not recommend them to invent or to reject, but to prove.