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PERCEVAL STOCKDALE - BELLARMINE.

zealously defend them against all opposers: he may think justly concerning the incarnation of our Lord, concerning the ever blessed Trinity, and every other doctrine, contained in the oracles of God: he may assent to all the three Creeds; that called the Apostles, the Nicene, and the Athanasian: and yet it is possible he may have no religion at all, no more than a Jew, Turk, or Pagan. He may be almost as orthodoxas the devil; though indeed, not altogether. For every man errs in something; whereas we cannot well conceive him to hold any erroneous opinion, and may, all the while, be as great a stranger as he to the religion of the heart."-SOUTH, vol. 7, p. 92.

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[Christian Intercession.]

1676, April 14. “THE Church met at the pastor's house at Tallentyre, where some hours were spent in prayer for the Churches of Christ in New England, upon the account of the nation setting upon them. Lord hear the petitions made for them, and be thou their protector and defender. Amen.

June 9. "The Church had a day of prayer for the afflicted people of God in New England, warred upon by the Indians. Sept. 22. "A day of thanksgiving was kept according to appointment. The same day there was an account given of God's appearing for his poor people in New England according to their request, June 9th before. Blessed be the Lord, who is a God hearing prayer. Lord compleat this deliverance of thy people in that part of the earth." Amen.-MSS. Extracts from a Record of the Church gathered in and about Cockermouth.

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in 1775. 'The duty of a clergyman,' says he, 'was very seldom required of me. One day, however, when I met my naval commander in a street of Portsmouth, and payed my respects to him, he proposed that I should do duty on the ensuing Sunday, on board. I replied, it was my wish to receive such a command more frequently. At all events, replied he, I think it is right that these things should be done sometimes, as long as Christianity is on foot."" Memoirs, vol. 1, p. 457.

[St. Patrick and the Spirit.]

"ST. PATRICK used to hear the Spirit praying in his own inside. Hear him in what are said to be his own words: Aliâ

nocte, nescio, Deus scit, in me, an juxta me, verbis peritissimis audiebam quosdam ex spiritu psallentes intra me, et nesciebam qui essent quos ego audivi et non potui intelligere, nisi ad postremum orationis sic affatus est; Et sic evigiqui dedit pro te animam suam. lavi. Et iterum audivi in me ipsum orantem; et erat quasi intra corpus meum, et audivi super me, hoc est, super interiorem hominem, et ibi fortiter orabat cum gemitibus. Et inter hæc stupebam, et admirabar, et cogitabam, quis esset qui oraret in me? sed ad postremum orationis dixit, se esse Spiritum; et recordatus sum Apostoli dicentes, Spiritus adfessio S. PATRICII de Vitâ et Conversatione juvat infirmitatem orationis nostræ."—Con

suâ.

535.

Acta Sanctorum, Martii, tom. 2, p.

[Fides Catholica.]

66

BELLARMINE in his 4th book and 5th chapter De Pontifice Romano, has this monstrous passage, that if the Pope should through error or mistake command vices and prohibit virtues, the Church would be Gar-bound in conscience to believe vice to be good and virtue evil." I shall give you whole passage in his own words to a

[Naval Chaplain.] "PERCEVAL STOCKDALE through rick's interest was appointed chaplain to the Resolution 74, Capt. Sir Chaloner Ogle

the

tittle:

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SOUTH-SIR THOMAS MORE - SCOTT.

[Anticks in the Pulpit.]

'Fides Catholica docet omnem virtutem esse | babelynge of theyr dyspycyons, buyldynge Bonam, omne vitium esse Malum. Si autem all uppon reason, which rather gyveth blynderraret Papa, præcipiendo vitia vel prohi- nesse than any lyght. For man, he sayd, bendo virtutes, teneretur Ecclesia credere vi- had noo lyght, but of holy scrypture. And tia esse Bona, et virtutes Malas nisi vellet therefore, he sayd, that besyde the Latyn contra conscientiam peccare. Good God! tonge, he had ben (whiche I moche comthat any thing that wears the name of a mende) studyouse in holy scrypture, whiche Christian, or but of a man, should venture was, he sayd, lernynge ynough for a crysten to run such a villanous, impudent and man, with whiche the appostles helde themblasphemous assertion in the face of the selfe contente."-ff. 5. Rastell's edition. world, as this! Did Christ himself ever assume such a power, as to alter the morality of actions, and to transform vice into virtue, and virtue into vice by his bare word? Certainly never did a grosser paradox, or a wickeder sentence drop from the mouth or pen of any mortal man, since reason or religion had any being in the world. And I must confess I have often with great amazement wondered how it could possibly come from a person of so great a reputation both for learning and virtue too, as the world allows Bellarmine to have been. But when men give themselves over to the defence of wicked interests and false propositions, it is just with God to smite the greatest abilities with the greatest infatuations." -SOUTH'S Sermons, vol. 2, p. 441.

"WELL, who's for Aldermanbury? You would think a phoenix preached there, but the birds will flock after an owl as fast: and a foot-ball in cold weather is as much followed as Calama by all his rampant dogday zealots. But 'tis worth the crouding to hear the baboon expound like the ape taught to play on the cittern. You would think the church as well as religion, were inversed, and the anticks which were used to be without were removed into the pulpit. Yet these apish tricks must be the motions of the spirit, his whimsie-meagrim must be an ecstasie, and Dr. G. his palsey make him the father of the sanctified shakers. Thus, among Turks, dizziness is a divine trance; changlings and idiots are the chiefest saints; and 'tis the greatest sign of revelation to be out of one's wits.

"Instead of a dumb-shew, enter the sermon dawbers. O what a gracious sight is a silver ink-horn. How blessed a gift is it

[Sir Thomas More and Study.] SIR THOMAS MORE describing the person with whom he held his Dialogues, "touchyng the pestylent secte of Luther and Tyndale, by the tone bygone in Saxony, and by the tother laboryd to be brought in to Eng-to write short hand! what necessary impleland," says, "enquyring of hym to what faculte he had most gyven his study, I understode hym to have gyven dylygence to the Latyn tonge as for other facultyes he sought not of. For he told me meryly that Logycke he rekened but bablynge, musyke to serve for syngers. Arythmetryche mete for marchauntes, Geometry for masons, Astronomy good for no man; and as for Phylosophy, the most vanyte of all; and that it and Logycke had lost all good dyvynyte with the subteltyes of theyr questyons and

ments for a saint are cotton wool and blotting paper. These dablers turn the church into a scrivener's shop. A country fellow last term mistook it for the Six Clerks Office. The parson looks like an offender upon the scaffold, and they penning his confession, or a spirit conjured up by their uncouth characters. By his cloak you would take him for the prologue to a play; but his sermon, by the length of it, should be a taylor's bill; and what treats it of but such buckram, fustion stuff? What a desperate

HERRERA-FATHER CRESSY-CORTES.

green-sickness is the land fallen into, thus to doat on coals and dirt, and such rubbish divinity! must the French cook our sermons too! and are frogs, fungos, and toadstools the chiefest dish in a spiritual collation? Strange Israelites! that cannot distinguish betwixt mildew and manna. Certainly in the brightest sunshine of the Gospel clouds are the best guides; and woodcocks are the only birds of Paradise. I wonder how the ignorant rabbies should differ so much, since most of their libraries consist only of a concordance. The wise men's star doubtless was an ignis fatuus in a church-yard; and it was some such will o' th' whisp steered prophetical saltmarsh, when riding post to heaven, he lost his way in so much of revelation as not to be understood; like the musick of the spheres, which never was heard."-The Loyal Satirist, or Hudibras in Prose. SCOTT's Somers' Tracts, vol. 7, p. 68.

[Incomplete Sign of the Cross.]

"In the original Solemn League and Covenant which is now in the British Museum, there are abundance of marksmen, who from their abhorrence of popery, leave the cross unfinished and sign in the shape of a T."-Nic. and BURNS' Hist. of Cumberland.

[Queen of the Angels.]

FR. ALONSO PEREZ SERAPHINO wrote a poem with this odd title. "The Complaints of Lucifer to the honour and glory of the Queen of the Angels." Queras de Lucifer, en gloria y honra de la Serenissima Reyna de los Angeles de los Remedios."

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pass their hands over them. When the Spaniards laughed at this, they stopt their allowance of food, and an old Indian said to Cabeza de Vaca, that he spake like one who lacked understanding when he said that such mode of curing were no avail. Stones, said he, and other things which we find in the field have a virtue in them; my way of healing is to lay a hot stone upon the stomach: and surely there is in man greater power and virtue than in things insensible. This argument, and the cogent measure of witholding food induced him to try what the sign of the Cross would do, with a Pater Noster and an Ave Maria."-HERRera, vol. 4, p. 5.

[Question of Canonical Ordination.]

FATHER CRESSY observes here that "some Protestant controvertists do unreasonably collect from hence that the Britons before St. Gregory's time did not in their ordinations conform themselves to the Roman Church, and endeavours to prove that they did conform from this very legend. But to prove this he affirms that the defects in St. Kentigern's ordination when he afterwards called them to mind, caused great unquietness and remorse in him, (p. 247.) And he overlooks a question which the Bollandists ask in a note, si toties Romam profectus est St. Kentigernus, cur demum de suâ ordinatione interpellavit S. Gregorium?"

[Purchase of Masses.]

"WHILE Cortes was absent on his expedition against Christoval de Oli, his death

was

reported by men who assumed the government at Mexico; they ordered ceremonies and masses for his soul, and paid for [On Miracles of Healing.] them with his effect. When he returned, "CABEZA DE VACA was persuaded to Juan de Caceres the rich, bought all these work miracles by a remarkable argument. acts of devotion for his own account. ComThe Indians wanted him and his comrades pró los bienes y missas que avian hecho por to heal them, saying nothing more was el alma de Cortes, que fuessen por la de Caneeded than to breathe upon the sick and ceres.”—BERNAL DIAZ, p. 221.

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“From this book of their expenses give me leave to make these few observatioms. They ate constantly suppers as well as dinners. Their meals amounted to about three or four shillings: seldom exceeding four. Their bread and ale commonly came to two or three pence. They had constantly cheese and pears for their last dish, both at dinner and supper, and always wine, the price whereof was ever three pence, and no more. The prices of their provisions (it being now an extraordinary dear time) were as follow. A goose 14d. A pig 12d. or 13d. A cony 6d. A woodcock 3d. and sometimes 5d. A couple of chickens 6d. Three plovers 10d. Half a dozen larks 3d. A dozen of larks and two plovers 10d. A breast of veal 11d. A shoulder of mutton 10d. Roast beef 12d.

"The last disbursements (which have melancholy in the reading) were these,

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"It seems the superiors in those days were more zealous to send these three good men to Oxon, and there to serve their ends upon them, and afterwards to burn them, than they were careful honestly to pay the charges thereof. For Winkle and Wells, notwithstanding all their endeavours to get themselves reimbursed of what they had laid out, which came to £63. 10s. 2d. could never get but £20. In 1566 they put up a petition to Archbishop Parker and the other Bishops, that they would among themselves raise and repay that sum which the said Bailiffs were out of purse, in feeding of these three reverend Fathers, otherwise they and their poor wives and children should be utterly undone,' and Laurence Humfrey, President of Magdalen College, wrote a letter in their behalf to Archbishop Parker."-STRYPE's Cranmer, p. 393.

[Protestant Work not to be relied on when Edited by a Roman Catholic.]

I HAD used the edition of De Lery in De Boy's Collection. While I was transcribing this portion of the work for the press, the original French edition was sent me from Norwich, by my old friend Mr. William Taylor. Apprehending that the translation might sometimes be inaccurate, I compared my own narrative with the French, as I

COLUMBANUS-ELLIOTT.

proceeded, to see if any thing material had been mistaken, or overlooked; and it surprized me to find that my references to the chapters were frequently wrong. At length I perceived that my numeration was always one behindhand. This could not be accident; and upon collating the works I discovered that De Boy has omitted the whole chapter in which Villegagnon's conduct is exposed: he has omitted the preface also, and many passages in which the errors of Thevet are pointed out, and his falsehoods confuted. This is worthy of notice, not merely as relating to the book in question; but as it may teach others never to rely upon the work of a Protestant, when published by a Catholic editor, let the subject be what it will, but always to refer, if possible, to the genuine edition.-R. S.

[Pope's Supremacy.]

"THE Pope's supremacy consists in a power given by our Saviour to St. Peter, of inspecting the conduct of all orders of the hierarchy, so as to take care, not that they shall share such church discipline as

he may think proper to impose; not that we shall have bishops of his nomination; but that the faith, which we outwardly profess, shall be conformable with that revelation which was made by our Saviour; and that

our morals shall be conformable with our

faith. It is on this visible agreement of faith and morals, that the unity of the Church is founded, and it is for the preservation of that visible unity that we have a visible Head, whose primacy existed in the days of St. Peter, as fully as in the pompous days of Leo X. In this, and in this only, consists the Pope's supremacy by Divine right. All other powers which have been annexed to his primacy in subsequent ages are of human institution."-COLUMBANUS ad Hibernos, No. 1, p. 87.

[Foundations out of Joint.]

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"I DREAMED I was at church, attending service; the minister was reading the Litany: a sudden noise caught my attention, and looking towards the place from whence it proceeded, I saw a person of bright ap pearance, who beckoned me with his hand. I followed him : he led me to the back part of the church, and descending down a number of steps into a cellar under the church, it seemed as if the foundation of the church were removed, and the superstructure was now supported upon pillars of wood, which were worm-eaten and rotten. I was much astonished. My guide observing this, said, You see the situation of this foundation,' and then, pointing to the place by which we entered, said 'Escape!' I did so, and suddenly awoke. This, and a thousand circumstances which have since happened, have satisfied me that it is inexpedient for me to attend any place of worship where the Gospel is not preached. But I condemn no man in this matter."-Experience of MR. ELLIOTT.

[Baxter's Retrospect.]

"THERE is another thing which I am changed in," says BAXTER, "whereas in my younger days I never was tempted to doubt of the truth of Scripture or Christianity, but all my doubts and fears were exercised at home, about my own sincerity and interest in Christ, and this was it which I called unbelief; since then my sorest assaults have been on the other side, and such they were, that had I been void of internal experience, and the adhesion of love, and the special help of God, and had not discerned more reason for my religion than I did when I was younger, I had certainly apostatized to infidelity, though for atheism or ungodliness my reason seeth no stronger arguments than may be brought to prove that there is no earth or air, or sun. I am

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