him to death, in stronger or more unequivocal terms than I have done;-I must however be permitted to ask, whether, during the last six or ten days of his life, the archbishop was not either a sincere Roman Catholic, or a Protestant hypocrite?

*

Mr. Todd writes as follows:-" Mr. Butler charitably says, that Cranmer and his associates "wished Mary and her associates to be exposed to "their projected persecutions." Why this sneer? Have I not proved their wish by demonstrative proof? Is it not indubitable, that the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum would, if it had passed, have exposed Mary to its persecuting enactments? Is it not equally indubitable, that Cranmer and his associates framed its horrid provisions, and laboured to have them passed? Horrid as they are, do not Strype and Burnet eulogize them?

X.

Cranmer's Opinion upon the Necessity for Ecclesiastical Ordination.

I MUST now beg leave to refer you to the "Re"solutions of several Bishops and Divines to some "Questions concerning the Sacraments," inserted by Bishop Burnet among the Records to his History.†

In answer to the 10th question,-Cranmer says, that "the bishops and priests are at one time, and

* Page 343.

+ Book III. Records xxi. Vol. I. p. 201, 2d Ed.

"have no two things, but both one office in the beginning of the Christian religion."

In answer to the 11th question,-Cranmer says, that " a bishop may make a priest by the scrip

ture, and so may princes and governors also,-~ "and that by the authority of God committed to them; and the people also by their elections:"

In answer to the 12th question,-Cranmer says,--that "he, that is appointed to be a bishop or priest, needeth not consecration by the scripture, for election or appointing thereto is "sufficient."

On the death of Henry VIII. Cranmer acted up to the doctrine thus laid down by him, by surrendering his archepiscopal authority to the infant monarch, and receiving it back from him.

I ask you, I ask Mr. Todd,-if it has entered into the heart of man to propound or practise, a doctrine of more deadly hostility to the Episcopal Church of England, or more fundamentally subversive of it, than that expressed in these answers,and intimated by Cranmer's practical comment on them?

XI.

Mr. Todd's Omissions.

I HAVE NOW considered all the reverend gentle'man's criminations of me; he has circulated them over England, in two impressions of his works. This has made it necessary for me to defend myself against them.

But, has he not been unjust to me on other grounds?

1.-Both, in my "History of the English, Irish " and Scottish Catholics," and my "Book of the "Roman Catholic Church," I have explicitly, as you have seen in this letter, declared my opinion, "that the sentence, which, after the treason of "Cranmer had been pardoned, condemned him "to the flames, was execrable; that his encourage"ment of literature, his protection of the princess "Mary from the fury of her father; his exertions

to save Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher and "Lord Cromwell, and his long resistance to the "passing of the act of the Six Sanguinary Arti"cles,--were entitled to an high degree of praise,"

-I have held out, in strong language, his firmness in his last hour,-I have expressed my wish that his failings should be interred with his bones.Surely Mr. Todd, as a gentleman, owed it to me, to notice these expressions.

2.-In my "Reminiscences," I published, from a private letter, with which the late Dr. Parr honoured me, the passages, in which he commented, with great severity, upon what I had said of Archbishop Cranmer, in "the Historical Memoirs of the English, Irish and Scottish Roman Catholics."

In a note to this transcription*, I signified that, "if a new edition of the Memoirs should be called 66 for, I would re-consider with all the attention due "to every thing which fell from Dr. Parr, what is

*P. 33.

"said in them,-of the unfortunate and wickedly" treated prelate”—and I state that, "in the mean "time, I wished both the descendants of the pre"late, and the members of the church of which "the prelate was a distinguished founder, to be "in possession of Dr. Parr's spirited, acute and "amiable vindication, of what might be thought "vulnerable in the prelate's character."

In Mr. Todd's representation of this passage, he totally conceals, that I myself was the publisher of Dr. Parr's severities, and the motives,-certainly not dishonourable,-which induced me to publish them; and he cites my expression, wickedly"treated prelate," as the expression of Dr. Parr.

66

3. My opinion of Archbishop Cranmer's general character, is expressed in that part of my first letter to you, which relates to Mr. Todd's publication; I sincerely believe every candid and well informed Protestant, will admit that it is written with as much allowance for the infirmity of human nature, and as much unwillingness to dwell on the blameable part of a public character, when it has parts which are praiseworthy, as historic truth admits.

XII.

Conclusion.

I AVAIL myself with great pleasure of this opportunity to acknowledge the justness of Mr. Todd's criticism of what I have said † of Bishop Gunning :-but I must still contend that the passage cited by Mr. Todd † from Bishop Taylor's Dissuasive, is not a contradiction of that cited by me from the same prelate's Liberty of Prophesying.

Mr. Todd observes, that the former was composed by the prelate at a maturer age, and should be preferred, on this account, to the latter:-but, which, in universal opinion, is this prelate's best work? often and often have I seen the "Liberty of Prophesying," cited and praised; even the existence of the "Dissuasive" was unknown to me, till Mr. Todd's observations brought it to my knowledge.

UNTIL Dr. Southey shall again force me into the field, by his promised Second Part of his VINDICIA, I retire from the controversy. I owed it to my Catholic brethren, to vindicate them against the charges brought against them in Dr. Southey's "Book of the Church." I feel that the time I have spent in it was taken from pleasanter pursuits; but, as this sacrifice was due from me, I do not regret it.

Preface to the 2d edition of his " Vindication of Arch"bishop Cranmer, p. x. xi. xii."

+ Vindication," pp. 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29.