Imatges de pàgina
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Hay 1700, 20.1if 1862, April 11.

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This cut represents the devil appearing to Thomas Whittle, see page 1 of this sheet.

INTRODUCTORY REMARKS.

EFORE we proceed in the Examination, it will be necessary, in order to elucidate the subject, to take a brief notice of the practice of the Catholic Church, in honouring the memory of the Saints and Martyrs, whose purity of life and heroic fortitude, furnished the most convincing. proofs of the divine essence of the Christian Religion. We will then glance at the motives which produced the strange and incongruous Calendar of Fox, and conclude with a summary of the laws which were passed by the fautors and abettors of the Reformation so called, under which so many of the Catholic Priesthood, with Laymen and Women, suffered martyrdom.

We read in holy scripture that when the apostles of Christ were assembled together, after the resurrection and ascension of their Master, the Holy Ghost, according to the promise made to them by the divine Founder of the Church, descended upon them in form of tongues of fire, and they became as it were new men. Being thus filled with the fire of the Holy Spirit, it was their special province to communicate the same to such as believed in the doctrines they were divinely commissioned to teach; and hence it was a peculiar gift of God to the Catholic or Christian Church, that her children should be endowed with such heavenly fortitude as to offer their lives in defence of their faith

and confession of their Redeemer. The Church had not been established long before many were called to give a proof of their fortitude, and invincible was the courage which they shewed under the most cruel tortures. By a singular instinct of the Holy Ghost, the Church not only honoured these heroical acts with special veneration, but she took the greatest care to collect the names and deeds of the actors, and note the days and places of their sufferings. For this purpose, notaries were appointed to record the circumstances as they occurred, and others were selected, as deacons and subdeacons, by the bishop of each diocess, to watch the accuracy of the records, that no imposition might be practised upon the faithful. These ecclesiastical legends and sacred narrations were carefully preserved in the archives of every Church, and read to the people publicly on the anniversary days and festivals of these holy martyrs, who thus braved death and tortures to gain an immortal crown with Christ in the kingdom of heaven.

Catholics can produce testimonies extant from the very foundation of their Church of the innumerable martyrs immolated by the spirit of error and persecution, down through all ages, for the same faith which they now profess, and for professing which they are excluded in the nineteenth century, and age of enlightened wisdom as it is called, from the exercise of their civil rights, by means of certain tests passed in the 30th year of Charles the second, when the nation was in a state of delirium from the horrible perjuries of Titus Oates and his villanous companions, who had conjured up a supposed Popish Plot, and swore away the lives of innocent men on the most improbable stories ever devised. By these tests, it is declared that the invocation of the Virgin Mary, or any other saint, as now used in the church of Rome is superstitious and icolatrous, though it is incontestibly clear, from their writings, that the most eminent fathers of the Christian or Catholic church invariably followed and maintained the doctrine of invoking and honouring the memory of Saints and Martyrs. It would occupy too large a space to cite the words of all the great doctors upon the subject, we must therefore content ourselves with enumerating some of their names. Of the fathers of the first five centuries, which are called the primitive ages, are Origen, SS. Gregory Nazianzum, Cyprian, Gregory Nyssa, Hilary, Ambrose, Jerom, Augustin, Victor, Leo, and many more, whose practice and knowledge of true Christianity must be undoubted, and whose example is a sufficient warranty for Catholics to follow the same, while the Protestant ought to hesitate before he makes so impious a protest against the universal practice of Christendom, in the awful presence of his God.

The intention of the Catholic church, in thus invocating the Saints and Martyrs, and venerating their memories, may be divided into the five following reasons:-1st. To yield to them and to Christ by them, through whose power and grace they were made saints and martyrs, due honour and respect for their virtues and heroical actions. 2d. To be made partakers of their merits, by way of association and communion with them. 3d. To be helped by their prayers and intercession. 4th. To stir up others to imitate and follow their example. 5th. To confirm thereby the certainty of our faith in the Catholic church, seeing so many witnesses in succession dying in and for one

and the same belief. These were the chief motives which moved the Catholic church, through the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, from her first foundation to the present hour, to celebrate the memories and feasts of the saints and martyrs, and keep a Calendar and Martyrology of their dying days. Accordingly, we find St. Gregory in the fifth century writing thus,-"We have, in our church, the names of almost all martyrs gathered together in one book, and their passions and martyrdoms distinguished, according to the days of each month, and every day, in veneration of them, we do use to say solemn masses." (Greg. 1. vii. Registr. ep. 22. ad Eulog.)

In proportion, however, to the vigilance of the Catholic church in preserving the true history and orthodoxy of her martyrs, the children of error were as assiduous in corrupting or ridiculing their histories; and, in many cases, they opposed martyrs to martyrs, in order to deceive the ignorant. For example, Appollinaris, bishop of Hieropolis, is cited by Eusebius, as complaining that the Marcionists, Montanists, and Cataphrygians did boast of their martyrs against Catholics; so also we have John Fox expunging all the ancient saints and martyrs of the Catholic church who had been held in veneration and respect, some of them for the space of fifteen hundred years, to give room for a motley crew of pretended reformers, whose exploits, as we shall shew, ought to raise a blush on the cheek of every Protestant for the honor of his church. In point of faith and religion many of them were Wickliffites or Hussites; others Waldenses or Albigenses; others Lollards or Lutherans; some were Zuinglians, Calvinists, Puritans, Anabaptists, and any thing but members of the true church. In point of morality, some of them were thieves and murderers; others were traitors and rebels; some were condemned for witchcraft; and others were prostitutes and adulterers; as will be proved in our examination. To class such characters in a Calendar as Saints and Martyrs evinces no great regard for truth and morality, and Fox himself does not presume to think his martyrs worthy that honour which Catholics shew to those who have laid down their lives in defence of the true and apostolic faith. In the acts recorded of the saints and martyrs of the Catholic calendar, we find them eminent for great virtues, holiness of life, and gift of miracles; whereas John Fox, Bale, Hall, Holinshed, and other of our historians, speak of no such merits pertaining to the saints and martyrs in the Protestant calendar. On the contrary we find, that those who rank the highest, such as Luther, Bucer, Peter Martyr, Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Ragers, Ferrar, Taylor, Tindall, and the like, were all married priests and friars; men who had broken their vows of celibacy, to give way to the sensualities of the flesh, and indulge in those pleasures which the religion of Christ exhorts us to restrain and mortify.

In the succeeding pages we shall give the calendar of Fox which he prefixed to his original work, and instead of the Calendar of Saints used by the Catholic church, we shall place parallel with Fox's list, a catalogue of the Catholic martyrs, Bishops, Priests, Religious, Nobility, Gentry, and Commonalty, who suffered for the old religion, from the suppression of the spiritual supremacy of the Pope, by Henry VIII. to the end of the reign of Charles the second, Attached to the Calendar, we

shall, under each month, give a biographical and critical sketch of the respective sufferers, whereby the reader will be able to discover the real merits of the parties, and learn to whom respect and veneration is due. It is not, nor was it ever our intention to justify the many executions that occurred in the reign of queen Mary; but the circumstances under which they took place, and those which led to the punishments inflicted on the Catholics, are so very dissimilar, that we should not do justice to the cause of Truth were we omit pointing them out to the reader. The principal number of the martyrs of Fox suffered under an act passed in the reign of Henry IV. which was enacted to restrain the tumultuous and seditious preachings of the disciples of Wickliffe. This law invented no new species of crime, but empowered the dignitaries of the church to apprehend and examine those who were guilty or suspected of teaching erroneous doctrine and stirring up the ignorant people to acts of outrage and rebellion. Now, if the reader will lay aside all prejudice, and take a clear view of the case, such an act will appear consistent with common sense, and absolutely necessary to the existence of good order and regularity in the community. If it is the duty of a teacher of youth to see that the children placed under his charge follow the right system of education, and if it is allowable that he should punish the obstinate and refractory, it will not surely be denied that the teachers of religion are in duty bound to preserve the true principles of the gospel, and the rulers of the state to maintain the security of property and guard the safety of the person of every individual of the community. Now, previous to the dogmatizing of Wickliffe, the people of England were all of one faith, which faith had been held from the time of its first introduction and triumph over Paganism in the sixth century. It had been preserved by the vigilance of its preachers, nor had any innovation been attempted till Wickliffe, from disappointment and pride, began to sap the pillar of truth, and engraft the subtle poison of error. Ever mindful of their sacred charge, the guardians of truth denounced him as an impostor, and used those means only which had been granted them by divine authority, to preserve the deposit placed under their care. The heresiarch himself remained unmolested. In the course of time the poisonous seeds he had sown made their appearance in open tumult and defiance of the laws. The civil power was threatened with destruction, property was insecure, and therefore to quell the rising storm before the nation should be overwhelmed in ruin, the writ de Hæretico comburendo was passed by the legislature, granting new powers to the bishops, not as members of the church, but as the most competent members of the state, to examine and reclaim those who were infected with WRONG NOTIONS, and in case of obstinacy, to turn them over to the civil magistrate to be dealt with according To LAW. This law, passed in the year 1400, enacts,-"The Catholic faith, and the holy "church amongst all the kingdoms in the world hath been most de"voutly observed in England, and endowed, which hath not been "troubled with heresy, and therefore none shall preach without license "of the diocesan of the same place: none shall preach or write any book, contrary to the Catholic faith, or the determination of the holy "church: none such make any conventicles of such sect, and WICKED "DOCTRINE, nor shall favour such preacher. Every ordinary may

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