6. The still severer act of the twenty-seventh year of her majesty's reign, enacted, 1. that all jesuits, seminary and other priests, within the realm, should depart out of it, under pain of being judged traitors, and suffering death, as in the case of treason; and jesuits, seminary and other priests, coming into the realm, were subjected to the same penalties: 2. Persons receiving or maintaining them, were to be adjudged felons, without benefit of clergy: 3. Persons sending money to the seminaries, or to any of their inmates, were subjected to the penalties of a premunire: 4. And persons knowing of any such priest, and not discovering him within twelve days, were to be fined and imprisoned at the king's pleasure.-It should be observed, that the punishment of premunire, mentioned in this and the other statutes, to which I have referred, was, that, from the time of conviction, the convict should be out of the protection of the king, and his lands and goods forfeited to him; and that his body should remain at the king's pleasure.

7. To these inflictions we must add, the court of high commission, established by queen Elizabeth, under the provisions of an act passed in the first year of her reign. Agreeing in little else, Hume* and Neale perfectly accord in their accounts of the unconstitutional nature and arbitrary rules of this tribunal, and of the enormities of its proceedings. "It was," says the former of these writers, a real inquisition, attended with all the iniquities * Hist. of England, c. 12.

+ History of the Puritans, vol. 1, p. 10.

"as well as cruelties inseparable from that tribu“nal.” It was aimed against all dissenters from the established religion; but the roman-catholics were the principal sufferers under it. Permit me to express some surprise, that I do not find, in the present chapter of your work, a single word of bitter condemnation of the institution of this unconstitutional, cruel, and iniquitous tribunal.

You say, that "the proceedings of Elizabeth's government, both towards the papists and puri"tans, were grounded upon these principles: that "conscience is not to be constrained, but won by "force of truth, with the aid of time, and use of all แ good means of persuasion; and that cases of conscience, when they exceed their bounds, and grow to be matter of faction, lose their nature; " and however they may be coloured with the pre"tence of religion, are then to be restrained and "punished."

But, had faction been proved against any, when the first laws against recusancy were published; or when the court of high commission was established? Do you not, in this place, to justify the penalties for recusancy, unwaringly adopt the most objectionable tenet of intolerance: that theological opinion is to be the test of civil allegiance? And thus make it just and fair to infer, from a person's holding a theological opinion contrary to the religion of the state, that his allegiance is unsound; and that he should, therefore, be punished for the unsoundness of it, by pains, penalties and disabili

ties? It was in consequence of the adoption of this principle, that the roman-catholics and presbyterians suffered in England during the reign of queen Elizabeth, and her three next successors; and that presbyterians suffered in Scotland during the reign of Charles II. You say the puritans grew to matter of faction: But which preceded the other? did the law precede the faction, or the faction precede the law?

You treat the points in difference between the established church and puritans as trifles; or, as you call them, after Calvin, "tolerable fooleries." But who is to be the judge, in these cases, of what is important, and what is trifling and foolery? If you say the state,-then the Roman magistrate justly punished the christians for what he considered their trifling and foolish non-conformity to the pontifical law of Rome. If you deny this power to the Roman state, but ascribe it to the English parliament, I call upon you to declare the ground of this distinction: if it is, because the latter had the Bible, which the Roman state had not, I ask you, why the puritan interpretation of the Bible should not be thought as good as that of the establishment?

Elizabeth, you intimate, foresaw danger in the principles of the puritans. But do principles, before they come into action, justify actual persecution?-Besides,-did the principle of the puritans amount to more than the principle professed by all protestants as the basis of their religion,—that they acknowledge no divine law but the scriptures; no

interpreter of them but the understanding and conscience of the individual who peruses them?

You mention some calumnies and hearsay stories, printed by two Spanish or Portuguese monks: but what are we to say to the calumnies against the roman-catholics, respecting the fire of London, Oates's plot, and "the hundreds of the ghosts of protestants drowned by the rebels at Portadown "bridge, who," as Temple avers in his history of the Irish rebellion, "were seen in the river, bolt-upright, " and were heard to cry out for revenge on the Irish "rebels. One of them," he says, " was seen with "hands lifted up, and standing in that posture "from the twenty-ninth of December to the latter "end of the following month."

Surely it now is full time that all this laughable, but mischievous trifling and foolery, should have an end!

XV. 3.

Executions of the Roman-catholics under the sanguinary part of the Penal Code of Queen Elizabeth.

I HAVE shortly mentioned their sufferings under the enactments against recusancy, I now proceed to mention the inflictions under the sanguinary provisions of some of these acts.

The total number of those who suffered capitally under them is calculated by Dodd, in his Church History, at one hundred and ninety-one : further inquiries by doctor Milner increase their

number to two hundred and four. Fifteen of these, he says, were condemned for denying the queen's supremacy; one hundred and twenty-six for the exercise of priestly functions; and the others for being reconciled to the catholic faith, or aiding or assisting priests. In this list, no person is included who was executed for any plot, either real or imaginary, except eleven, who suffered for the pretended plot of Rheims, or Rome; a plot, which, as doctor Milner justly observes, was so daring a forgery, that even Camden, the partial biographer of Elizabeth, allows the sufferers to have been political victims.

Such then being the number of sufferers, we must feel some surprise, when we read in Hume's history, that "the severity of death was sparingly "exercised against the priests in the reign of queen "Elizabeth;" or your eulogizing account of her tolerating principles and proceedings.

It is observable, that the punishment of treason, by the law of England, is, that the offender should be drawn to the gallows, hanged by the neck, cut down alive, his entrails taken out while he is yet alive, and his head then cut off. Against the atrocious circumstances attending this punishment, the humanity of the nation has so far interfered, that the offender has been generally permitted to remain hanging till he is de; but this mercy was often denied to the catholics, who suffered under these laws: often they were cut down alive; in that state ripped open, and their entrails torn out.