The Online Library of Liberty

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• To the Earl of S———-, &c. &c.
• Preface.
• The Independent Whig.
• Number I.: A View of the Romish Church, In Her Heads, Theology, Canons, Miracles, and Saints; Taken Chiefly From Her Own Writers and Champions.
• Number II.: An Idea of the French Government. the Spirit of Popery, How Terrible to Protestants.
• Number III.: Further Observations Upon the French Government. the Excellence of Our Own, Confess’d By French Writers.
• Number IV.: Persecution and Cruelty, Marks of Apostasy From Christianity. the Doctrine of Transubstantiation, How Impious and Impossible. the Inconsistency, Impotence, and Absurdity of All Popish Miracles.
• Number V.: The Natural and Dreadful Consequences Attending the Success of the Rebellion.
• Number VI.: The Views of the Pretender Not to Be Disguised. His Defence an Insult.
• Number VII.: The Norman Invasion, How Sanguinary and Fatal to England. the Invader How Faithless and Barbarous to Englishmen.
• Number VIII.: The Curious Speech of a Fugitive Protestant - Popish - Jacobite Priest to Lewis the Well-beloved.
• Number IX.: The Loyalty of Papists Never to Be Trusted By Protestants. Religion and Liberty Inevitable Sacrifices to a Popish Revolution.
• Number X.: Remarks Upon the Appeal of the Pretender (young Or Old) to the People.
• Number XI.: Popery Tried By Christianity and Reason, and Proved an Enemy to Both.
• Number XII.: Warning to Britons, Upon the Present Rebellion Supported By France.
• Number XIII.: The Shocking Antipathy of Popery to Common Sense and Christian Charity.
• Number XIV.: Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XV.: Continuation of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVI.: Continuation of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVII.: Remainder of a Dialogue Between a Noble Convert and His Late Confessor.
• Number XVIII.: King James II. His Disgraceful Reign. His Impotence and Cruelty. He Exposes and Deposes Himself.
• Number XIX.: How Boldly the Popish Clergy Abuse Their Followers, By Teaching Them to Deny With a Curse, the Most Obvious Impieties of Their Church.
• Number XX.: The Same Subject Continued.
• Number XXI.: The Following Quotation Is Taken From One of the Political Discourses Upon Sallust the Roman Historian: It Is the Fourth Section of the Discourse, of the Mutability of Government. the Passage Is Extremely Curious, And, I Think, Seasona
• Number XXII.: The Quaker’ S Advice to the Young Pretender.
• Number XXIII.: The Intimate Resemblance Between the Popish Clergy, and Those of Modern Paganism In the East.
• Number XXIV.: Of the Many Good Sermons Preached and Published Against the Rebellion. a Sermon of Singular Tendency, By an Eminent Hand: the Strange Doctrines Advanced, and the Observable Omissions, In It.
• Number XXV.: Our National Sins No Wise Analogous to Those of the Jews, Nor Meriting Equal Punishment. the Rashness and Danger of Ascertaining and Applying Divine Judgments.
• Number XXVI.: The Free Use of Reason the Best Cure For Bigotry, and the Violence of Enthusiasm.
• Number XXVII.: To What I Have Said Above Upon the Excesses and Unchristian Spirit of the Clergy In the Reign of King Charles I. I Shall Add the Following Observations Upon Their Incredible Canon, Injoining an Oath to an Et Cætera.
• Number XXVIII.: Considerations Upon the Mischievous Tendency of Libels; Chiefly Public Libels.
• Number XXIX.: The Subject of Libels Continued.
• Number XXX.: The Subject of Libels Continued and Concluded.
• Number XXXI.: The Absurdity of Jacobitism, the Impiety of Popery, and the Enthusiasm of Party.
• Number XXXII.: The Letter of Monsieur D’argenson to Mynheer Van Hoey, and That of the Mynheer to the Duke of Newcastle, Paraphrased.

Number XVI.

Continuation of a Dialogue between a Noble Convert and his late Confessor.

Conf.

WE do maintain that ours is the Catholic, that is, the Universal Church of Christ.

Lord.

Another false Light as obvious and shameless as the rest.

C.

It is what your Lordship once believed.

L.

The more Fool I. I may thank you; I took your Word for all Things, and trusted in you implicitly: I heard nothing but what you told me; I read nothing but what you permitted me.

C.

Surely I put the best Books into your Hands.

L.

The best to blind my Eyes: The Lives of your crazy Saints, and their ridiculous Miracles; Panegyricks upon Popery, and Invectives against Protestants. Don’t you remember, when I had a mind to look into the Works of Locks and Tillotson, and Hoadly, as Writers remarkable for sound Reasoning and Candor, you told me that Tillotson was an Atheist, Locke a Hobbist, and Hoadly a Presbyterian, a Name that you had taught me to detest. And when I was curious to see Milton, and asked you about him, you said he had a Devil.

C.

I spoke but the Sense of the Church.

L.

The Universal Church?

C.

Yes, my Lord. That she is Universal, is as true as that her being so is a Proof that she is the only Church of God.

L.

mahomet may offer the same Proof for his Church. His hath more Members, and more Unity, than yours; and is less bloody. She tolerates all Sects, even all Sects of Christians; and you destroy all, or terrify them into Hypocrites, many into Atheism; such especially, who judging of all Religion by yours, rather than believe such a Chaos of Nonsense, Contradictions, Pride, Lust and Rapine, Fraud and Cruelty, to be from God, conclude that there is none.

C.

My Lord, there are Men of Parts and Learning in our Church; if they saw or thought her such a Monster, would they continue in her?

L.

Yes, they must, or be undone and destroyed. Besides, Learning is often found accompanied with Enthusiasm, as well as with other Weakness and Follies. Monsieur Paschal, a learned, candid, and acute Writer, as any of his Age, to prove the Church of Rome the true Church, from her possessing the pretended Power of Miracles, is so simple as to urge the Blood of Januarius melting annually upon the Anniversary of his Martyrdom.

C.

O my Lord! Is not that wonderful?

L.

It is wonderfully alleged. Father, I have seen that false Miracle, which is work’d to no End but to cheat the People, and to feed Monks. None are suffered to examine it, and all the rest believed it before. It is like all the rest of yours, a ridiculous Forgery!

C.

What! All our Miracles Forgeries, my Lord?

L.

Father, I have but one Rule to guide me: As there is no Use of Miracles, but to convince Unbelievers, they ought to be worked chiefly, if not only, before Unbelievers. Strange Feats, said to be done, but done in Hugger-mugger, amongst interested Men and Bigots, will always pass for Cheats amongst Men of Sense. The Vial said to contain the Blood of Januarius, is carefully and leisurely heated with the warm Hands of the officiating Friars; and sometimes, with all that Help, the Miracle is very dilatory in appearing.

C.

My Lord, Heretics are so hardened as not to see, and even disown what they really see.

L.

Theymust see what is done before their Eyes, unless they put them out. Besides, their Curiosity would prompt them to fee, to say nothing of their Interest. Father, work me but one fair Miracle, and I will return to you again, without another Argument.

C.

My Lord, did I ever pretend to work any?

L.

You are for ever urging those of your Church, and they are one of the great Topicks of your Reasoning with the Wretches you convert; and, whilst you mislead them with what is false, you conceal from them, and utterly deny, what is notoriously true.

C.

My Lord, what do we deny that is true?

L.

Every Thing that shews the Deformity and cruel Spirit of your Church. I shall not repeat your many and continued Misrepresentations to myself; but I cannot forget your Behaviour to my Servants, as I have since learned.

C.

I hope, my Lord, I have done my Duty towards your Servants.

L.

Yes, the Duty of a Romish Emissary. When you were converting my Postillion Natt (for John the Coachman was too hard for you, and laughed at your precious Relique of a Cord from St. Peter’s Drag net, by which you would fain have convinced him that all Protestants were damned) as poor Natt, who was of Irish Protestant Parents, abhorred the Irish Massacre, you assured him solemnly, that it was all a vile Forgery, maliciously framed to blacken the Catholics. You wept for the poor persecuted Catholic Church, herself the most merciful, the most charitable, Church in the whole World, and an utter Enemy to all Persecution.

C.

I gave him a true Account.

L.

A moving one you did, and by it melted the Heart of Natt. This, with your pious Kindness in rescuing his poor Soul from Damnation, finished his Conversion.

C.

I bless God, he perseveres in it.

L.

You keep him in it. The like Rhetoric made the Dairy-maid your Convert. You found her one Sunday Morning reading Fox’s Acts and Monuments, and shedding Tears over the Memory of the Protestant Martyrs burned in Queen Mary’s Reign.—You too shed Tears, to see such an innocent Soul so misled: You conceived a passionate Kindness for her Soul, tenderly undertook to save it; then defended the poor, belyed, meek Church, and that pious Queen, who had, sore against her Will, seen her Council condemn so many of her poor Subjects, tho’ Heretics, for Treason against her Person. To confirm the Maid, and effectually to ensure her Salvation, you gave her a Bead of St. Bridget’s, one that the Devil, abhorring its intrinsic Value, had often stole away, but was always forced to bring back again: A further Proof of its Value, from its Power over the Devil.

C.

My Lord, you are pleased to laugh at my poor pious Endeavours to do Good.

L.

I wish I could call them poor. My poor Servants, for you have perverted three or four of them, are so bewitched with the Raree-shews and Symphonies in the Mass, and with your Absolution, which sets their Consciences so much at rest, let them wrong me as much, and commit as great Disorders as they will, in my Family or out of it, that I doubt they have taken leave of our Church (which affords them no such Shews nor Comfort) for ever.

C.

My Lord, you yourself found Comfort amongst us once, and then you disliked the Religion in Fashion.

L.

I own it: You taught me to abhor it, and to adore yours; and you did so, by the same fraudulent Wiles and Misrepresentations. You persuaded me, particularly, that the Pope did not pretend to give away Kingdoms; but studied, like a Father, the Peace of Society. My Parson has since shewn me a Decree of the Council of Lateran, under Innocent III. expresly ordaining, That the Pope shall discharge the Subjects of an heretical Prince from their Allegiance and give away his Kingdom to a Catholic Prince, in order to exterminate Heretics: A devilish Power, which the Pope hath often exerted, and still pretends to.

C.

The Thing has been subject to Dispute—

L.

To a knavish Distinction rather.—“The Pope, says Bellarmin, allows you to obey your King; but when he is a Heretic he is no longer your King.”

C.

My Lord, this is at least fair Warning.

L.

Yes, and we take it—Nor, amongst all the just Prejudices against your Church (and God knows they are many and shocking!) need there be a greater than your treating, as your Head and sovereign Director, an old frail Friar, complimenting him with Infallibility, and the Attributes of God; investing him with the Power of God, to damn and save; and, as the same Bellarmin maintains, to make Virtue to be Vice, and Vice to be Virtue. What Blasphemy! Many Popes have been Monsters in all Wickedness and Pollution, chosen by Harlots, and living in Brothels: All of them subject to common Frailties; some of them downright Changelings; none of them, amidst all this wonderful Power, able to restore a lost Tooth, or to cure his own Cough.

C.

My Lord, the Abuse of Authority doth not infer its Nullity.

L.

Yes certainly, in such extravagant and impious Trusts as cannot but be abused.

C.

Will your Lordship allow no Head to the Church?

L.

Yes surely; Christ and his Word; and, under him, the Christian Heads of Society.

C.

Are such Heads likely to be free from Error?

L.

They will certainly err the less, for not pretending to be free from Error.—No Church in the World has ever produced such tragical Abominations as your infallible Church has produced; but you keep most of these carefully concealed from your poor blind Dupes; I know it by Experience: And such of your Impostures and Fooleries as you cannot conceal, you disguise and adorn as holy Mysteries.

C.

My Lord, I hope it is lawful to revere Mysteries—

L.

Not such as cannot come from God. You may as well bring your Gun-powder Treason out of the Gospel, as your Transubstantiation.

C.

We are unjustly reproached with that Treason.

L.

So you have often told me, and so you are all instructed to tell your Bubbles—Just as, for the Credit of your Church, you persuade most of your Popish Thieves to die innocent—I know something of your Policy in that Matter.

C.

Surely your Lordship knows the Gunpowder Treason to be a Trick of State.

L.

Yes, one of your Tricks of State; so do you. The Evidence was all from those of your own Communion;—many died justifying it; none denied it:—But when it was found that a Design to blow up the Three Estates of the Realm; a Design concerted by Papists, all Men of Condition, some of them of great Quality, and approved by all the Heads of the Papists, brought a horrible Stain upon Popery, then your Preachers, and Confessors, and Writers, were taught boldly to deny it.

C.

My Lord, I always thought it too bad to be probable.

L.

What think you of the Massacre of Paris?

C.

I never justified it.

L.

The Pope did;———therefore you must. Then there is that of which we have spoken, the Inquisition, I think the worst of all. A horrible Tribunal! settled for the constant Execution of Cruelty and Fraud: You are far from giving up that.