Entroduction.

Ir is hoped that the following pages may be deemed worthy of the examination and study of thoughtful men, be they Roman Catholics or Protestants.

They relate to events, the consequences of which are still felt, and the true character of which it is indispensable for an honest politician to know, for a wise statesman to be in a condition to master, and for a sincere christian to comprehend.

This work is not published with the intention of wantonly reviving bad and bitter feelings, of recalling evils that are irremediable, and crimes that have triumphed for a season over truth and justice, that have passed apparently unpunished, or left behind them no seeds of mischief.

The Penal-Law enormities abound with the latter. In the hope that a fearless and impartial history of this code might tend to wiser, kindlier, and more just legislation for the future, that good men might learn to respect the conscientious convictions of those who differ from them in faith, as to matters affecting the things of another world, and unfitted to be made subjects of party contention, or the objects of political control by the state, the task of undertaking this work, was pressed on the author by the late Thomas Davies.

The tendency of such a work he hoped would be to separate the interests of religion from those of mere pretenders to it, and to show the great care and caution that was required in making laws, so that neither the ferocious passions of fanaticism, nor the fell designs of sordid hypocrisy, were ministered to or encouraged.

With such views the work was undertaken, and the moral that the lamented friend of the author would have drawn from it, the reader, it is hoped, will find in its pages.

They are not written for the purpose of establishing any peculiar theory, nor of pleasing any particular party. The author knows that the faith and discipline of his Church are never to be confounded with the mistakes, the errors, or the offences of churchmen, and therefore he boldly and candidly exposes them when they have failed in their duty, or brought scandal upon the faith. He has dealt with equal freedom towards those who failed not only in their duty to man, but in their fealty to God and to His Church.

Impartiality is aimed at in this work, and with the honest desire to slur over no important fact, to conceal no interesting circumstance, and to evade no grave event, it is hoped that such impartiality is attained; and that where a work is written, which eschews, as if it were a poisonous ingredient, the spirit of controversy, the Roman Catholic may learn why "the Reformation" made progress in these countries, and the Protestant may reflect upon the means employed to advance, uphold, and perpetuate it.

These pages are committed to the press, at a time when the author is about to take his departure for a far distant country; so distant, that the public opinion in these countries can only reach him in faint echoes and by few intervals. Should his work be favourably received, its popularity will probably have passed away, before the letter of a friend can tell him of its success; and should its fate be otherwise, then he can patiently bear the misfortune; because he has the conviction that he has laboured in the cause of truth, and has done his utmost to make it known and render it respected.

THE HISTORY

OF THE

Operation of the Penal Laws

ENACTED

AGAINST ROMAN CATHOLICS.

CHAPTER I.

THE REFORMATION.THE EVILS THAT LED TO IT, AND THE OCCURRENCES THAT PRECEDED IT. THE EXECUTION OF JOHN HUSS AND JEROME OF PRAGUE.-THE CAREER OF SAVONAROLA. THE PROGRESS OF LUTHER AS A REFORMER.-THE USES AND ABUSES OF RELIGION CONFOUNDED IN THE STRUGGLE

WITH ROME.-REPORT OF THE CARDINALS IN 1538, ON THE EVILS AFFECTING THE CHURCH, AND THE MEANS OF REMOVING THEM.

THE evils that beset the Church at the close of the 15th century were deplored, denounced, and over and over again rung into the ears of Alexander the 6th, from the year 1488 to 1498, A.D., by a Dominican monk, who brought all the intrepidity, fervour, and ability of the Augustinian friar of Wirtemberg to the contest with ecclesiastical abuses, but who brought also to it fidelity to his church and heroism in defence of its holy doctrines, that the latter unfortunately did not manifest. The struggle Savonarola was engaged in was a reformation-Luther a revolt. The efforts of the former failed. He had to do with an Alexander the 6th, not with a Paul the 3rd.

1

Had Paul been Pontiff when Savonarola laboured, preached, and prayed for the regeneration of the Church, the later efforts to establish a religion with new doctrines would perhaps have been unsuccessful.

Savonarola endeavoured to force on the attention of Alexander the necessity of a reform; he pointed out the evils that would overwhelm the Church if that reform were not made. His remonstrances were ill received, perhaps ill understood. The Pontiff depreciated the author of one of the holiest books that was ever written in defence of religion, ، Triumphus Crucis," and of another, “Simplicitatis vitae Christianæ," which is only inferior to it, and to another of a similar scope and tendency, "The Imitation of Christ." He treated that holy man as an enemy of religion, who was an enemy only of Satan and of his agents in this world, who are the oppressors of their fellow-men, despots, wrongdoers, and workers of all evil. He favoured the enemies of Savonarola, and encouraged their enmity till their victim was persecuted to the death. But Paul the Third, when attempts were made to call in question the orthodoxy of his writings, gave honourable testimony to their piety when he rebuked the maligners of the martyr's memory.* He would look with a suspicion of heresy on whosoever would dare to accuse Savonarola. This intrepid champion of religion and of liberty perished on the scaffold, and his memory is hardly known in Europe, to laymen at least, except as that of a fanatic and an impostor. Nevertheless, he was one of the greatest men of his time-great in point of Christian heroism; in respect to the intrepidity of his efforts to battle with grievous abuses, to stay the torrent of evils that beset his Church; and above all things, great in the maintenance of his unshaken religious principles, in the midst of his boldest efforts for reform, and most formidable struggles with ecclesiastical abuses. Like all men who achieve or attempt great things, he was an enthusiast, and like many of them at the close of his career, his enthusiasm exalted his sentiments almost beyond the height of

reason.

He was, if not the founder, at least the first propounder

* Hist. des Hommes Illustres de l'ordre de I. Dom. Tom. 3. p. 647. "Quin potius suspectum de hæresi illum habituri sumus quicumque Hieronymum impugnare audebit."—Ap. Brovi, p. 520, col. 1.