Mr. URBAN, THE April 1. HE village of Stapleton is situated North-east of Bristol, has a good church and many pleasant houses. The prison is at some distance from the town, and inclosed by high walls; on which at convenient intervals are erected double sentryboxes, where pairs of centinels are constantly on duty. The vigilance with which this place is guarded prevented closer observation; and it was not without some slight apprehensions that the inclosed drawing (See Plate I.) was made, within hearing of the most vociferous noises of more than 2000 Frenchmen in their amusements or disputes in the court-yard. Yours, &c. Mr. URBAN, THE A TRAVELLER. March 24. HE Letters of C. B. (p. 25-30. 121-126.) are curious. He dates them from "Stonor Park;" but whether "Stonor Park" means Lincoln's inn fields, or whether the "town" and " shops of French booksellers," with which he is presently surrounded (p. 27. b.) are in Stonor Park, wherever it may be on this side of the moon, I do not know. He informs us, that he “formerly took much pleasure in Biblical literature,” but has "for several years past abandoned" this "branch of study." "What he recollects of the little knowledge of it that he once possessed, enables him to cominit to paper the following miscellaneous observations." And so what follows, for many a long column, we are to suppose he threw off, stans pede in uno, from memory alone though he favours us with abundance of quotations from authors French, English, and Latin, together with a history of versions of the Holy Scriptures, into various languages, and at various times, from the 15th to the 18th century: a tenth part of which, if the details are accurate (which I have not the means of examining) I will venture to say it was impossible for him to write, unless he was in the shop of one of his "French booksellers," or had the use of his own or some other library. These mis-statements and inconsistencies, which appear on the surface of these memorable letters, are not GENT. MAG. May, 1814. otherwise of moment, than as they shew how impossible it is to write consistently in defence of error or falsehood; and Popery is a predicted "falsehood" (2 Thess. ii. 11. 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2.) from beginning to end. I will advert only to a small part of what C. B. has advanced. His chief aim seems to be to "shew the earnest wish of the Church of Rome to promote the circulation of the Scriptures," p. 25. and to correct the mistakes of Protestants" on this head, among whom it is said to be "nearly the universal belief, that the withholding the Bible from the general body is the rule, and the liberty to read it the exception; whereas it is much nearer the truth to say, that the withholding of it is the exception, and the liberty the rule." p. 30. b. This is the conclusion of the first Letter; and the first step, no doubt, had the subsequent parts the same tendency, leads prosperously towards it. For Fenelon is quoted with applause, when he says, it" is ineontestable, that in the first ages of the Church, the laity read the Holy Scrip tures. It is clear as daylight, that all people read the Bible and Liturgy in their native languages; that, as a part of good education, children were made to read them." p. 25. b. This primitive practice we Protestants hold to be laudable, and studiously adhere to it. Why has the Church of Rome deviated from it? "It should seem that the Waldenses and Albigenses obliged the Church to have recourse to her strict authority, in refusing the perusal of the Sacred Scripture to all persons who were not disposed to read it to their advantage.” (ib.)—and to many who were disposed so to read it. But how did the Waldenses and Albigenses constrain the Church of Rome to abandon the universal practice of the primitive Churches ? "These Sectaries," it is said, propa gated their doctrines among the Laity, principally by a misapplication of the Sacred Text." (p. 26.) "After the way which they call heresy (said St. Paul) so worship I the God of my fathers." We are obliged however The to C. B. for the concession. truth will now and then escape, when little intended. It seems these same Waldenses and Albigenses, many thousands thousands of whom the Church of Rome massacred, made the Scriptures the rule of their faith; and in them they did not find transubstantiation, purgatory, adoration of saints, nor many other precious doctrines of the Church of Rome. Henceforth therefore," it [the Gospel] should be given to those only, who seek for nothing in it but the sense of the Church" of Rome. The secret is disclosed! The Church of Rome is the paramount and infallible guide; whatever there is in Scripture repugnant to her sense" and doctrine (as there is almost in every page of the New Testament) that is to be withheld from all, who will not believe, if the Church of Rome asserts it, that black is white, and "all our senses are deceived!" 66 Again: "Every one may read them the divine books] in the vulgar languages, if he first ask the advice of his Confessor, who will only instruct him in what spirit he is to read them" (26. b.); that is, as we have just been told, "to seek for nothing in them, but the sense of the Church" of Rome, Hitherto, by C. B.'s own shewing, it is evident, that, contrary to his own assertion, the withholding of the Bible from the Laity is the rule, and the liberty to read it the exception. Let us proceed to the second Letter. Here we are given to understand, on the authority of Mr. Gandolphi, a modern champion of Popery, that a late " Advertisement of the Catholicks" on this subject “ did not mean," as many understood it to mean," that the Roman Catholicks should, in future, distribute the Holy Scriptures indiscriminately; but merely that those poor people, to whom their priests thought fit to intrust the Scriptures,published with explanatory notes, should be supplied for nothing," p. 124. b. And the Letter writer confirms this, by observing, "That nothing is better known---than that the Roman Catholicks consider it a part of the discipline of their Church, that the perusal of the Bible, in the vulgar tongue, should not be indiscriminate." p. 125. Such are the proofs of the position, that the liberty of reading the Bible is the rule, and the prohibition the exception! Who could think it possible, that an advocate, in defending the worst cause ever taken in hand (for one worse than the defence of Popery will not easily be found) could so plainly and repeatedly, in both his elaborate Letters, confute and contradict himself? If more direct proof is required, that the Church of Rome does not tolerate the indiscriminate perusal of the Bible, we have it in the known Rule of Pius IV. "Forasmuch as it is manifest from experience," says his Holiness, "that if the Holy Bible in the vulgar tongue is indiscriminately allowed, more harm than benefit thence arises, through human temerity," therefore he goes on to say, it shall not be so read, without a written Licence, first obtained by the party, from his Parish Priest or Confessor: "and whoever, without such a Licence, presumes to read the Bible, or to have it in his possession, cannot receive absolution of his sins, unless he first gives up his Bible to the Ordinary *." Even this concession,however, such as it is, "seemed too much," as the Translators of our Bible observe †, "to Clement VIII.; and therefore he over-ruled and frustrated the grant of Pius IV." But this cassation of the Rule was, if I understand right, set aside by a decree in 1757, under which such versions of the Bible as are approved by the see of Rome, or are published with notes by Catholic Doctors, are allowed as before, that is, with a written Licence. " I revert for a moment to the Letters of C. B. It seems" harsh expressions" occur" in the notes to the Original Rheimish Version of the Bible, and in Dr. Challoner's notes to his edition of it." p. 121. All which C. B. very properly says, "I am far from attempting to defend." p. 123. b. He has, however, offered an apology for the practice; and it is a memora ble one "When the harsh expressions of the Rheimish Annotators are brought forward,---the dungeons too, the racks, the gibbets, the fires, the confiscations, and the various other modes of persecution, in every hideous form, which the Catholicks of those days endured, should not be forgotten. But permit me to ask, * Rule IV. prefixed to Index Libror. Prohibit, ed. Rom. 1758. Observationes Clement. VIII. with Addition, ib. p. vi. † Preface to the English Bible. whether whether the language of their Protestant adversaries (who had no plea of this kind to urge) were more courteous ? With the "harsh expressions," if such there are, in the Rheimish Ver sion, or in Dr. Fulke, or in both, I have at present no concern. But how are we to account for that marvelous assertion, that the Protestants "had no plea of" persecution "to urge?" Did the writer calmly and deliberately assert what he knew to be false? Or did he, in the peaceful bowers of "Stonor Park," never hear of an Institution called the Inquisition, purposely established for the torturing of heretics, with which name, as is well known, Protestants are uniformly honoured by the Church of Rome? Did no tidings ever reach him of the massacre at Paris on St. Bartholomew's day, 1572, when so many thousands of Protestants were murdered, with every mark of barbarous indignity*, every demonstration of public joy? Did he never read of the Duke of Alva's humanity to heretics in the Netherlands? nor of the fires that were lighted up in Smithfield, and in every part of the Kingdom, to burn heretics alive, in the days of " blessed Queen Mary,” as the Papists call her? It has even been calculated, that those, whom the Church of Rome has butchered in cold blood, on account of religion, are more in number than those who have, within the same period, been cut off by the sword of war. Yet Protestants have no plea of persecution to urge!! The plain truth is, that spiritual fornication (that is, idolatry) and the blood of the saints, are the two principal marks of the apostate church of Rome, from the early days of her tyranny, till the mystic Babylon, the mother of abominations, "shall be thrown down with violence, and shall be found no more at all.” Rev. xviii. 2, 21. with xiv. 8. xvii. 5. Wherever "the inhabiters of the earth have been made drunk with the wine of her fornication," (xvii. 2.) they suppress one of the ten commandments; and, the better to carry on their delusions, they withhold the Scriptures from those who have not been first taught to believe the Church of Rome, rather than their own senses, or the written word of God. They rob the Almighty of half his worship, and give it to saints, and angels, and images. They rob the King of half his prerogative, and give it to the Pope; and yet they are indignant, that, in this Protestant country and under a Protestant Government, they are not admitted to the same privileges with those who truly fear God, and honour the King with his due honour, as over all persons and in all causes, as well ecclesiastical as temporal, within these his dominious, Supreme;"...and may this honour, undivided and unimpaired, remain to Him and to His Royal Descendants, while the world endures! Yours, &c. R. C. Mr. URBAN, Hoxton, March 26. HE Letter of your CorresponTdent C. B. which appeared in the Magazine for January, p. 25. written with the avowed design to establish a belief that the Church of Rome has ever been desirous of circulating the Scriptures, has perhaps excited some surprise in the minds of * Among others this was one: The Admiral Coligni's head was cut off, and presented to the King and Queen Mother; and then embalmed and sent to Rome, to feast the eyes of the Pope and his Cardinals. The medals struck by the Pope, to commemorate the pious deed, are publicly sold at the Pope's mint in Rome to this day; at least they were a few years ago. Some account of these and other medals on the occasion, with engravings, see in Gent. Mag. 1784. p. 831. The History of this Massacre (Brit. Crit. 1811, p. 472.) was published by Mr. Comber in 1810. But this I have not seen, neither, I suppose, has C. B. What "joy” such cruelty "finds" may be seen in your pages for 1801. "Ambrose," said the King to Paræus, I know not how it is with me, but it goes so heavily, that within these three days I am as in a fever. Indeed, I am ill; I am as ill in mind as in body; sleeping or waking, the murdered Hugenots are ever before my eyes, with hideous faces weltering in their blood. Would to God the children and the aged had been spared!" The order for stopping the massacre, which was proclaimed the following day, was the result of this conversation. Gent, Mag. LXXI. p. 422. many many of your Readers, as I confess it has done in mine. In the seventh section of that Letter, your Correspondent professes to "notice a charge often brought against the Catholicks, that they were forced against their will to print versions in vernacular languages of the Sacred Text in consequence of the effects produced by the versions of the Protestants," and for which charge he asserts there is no foundation. As I have from my earliest acquaintance with books been accustomed to consider this charge as well founded, and to believe myself borne out in that opinion by historical facts, I request permission to call those facts to the recollection of your Readers, that they may thereby judge for them selves what attention is due to this assertion of your Correspondent. I pass by the Saxon versions of the Scriptures, whatever they may have been in number or extent, as well as that by the great reformer Wickliff, because the state of society before the invention of the art of Printing precluded the laity, incapable as they were almost universally of reading and writing, from availing themselves of any opportunity of perusing the Sacred Volume even had it been permitted to them. But towards the end of the 15th century printing was introduced into this country; and although all other sorts of books for the service of the Church immediately issued from the press, no English version of the Scriptures appeared with the sanction of the Church of Rome for nearly 100 years afterwards. It is well known that the first English Translation after Wickliff's was the work of a Protestant, William Tindal, who printed it at Antwerp 1526. The circumstances attending the introduction of this Volume are briefly as follows: Tindal sent some of his Testaments to England for sale, where upon their arrival they were presently prohibited by every Bishop in his diocese. The prohibition alleged, that the translation was false; and that the short notes, consisting, I believe, of a preface, and two introductions to the Epistles, were heretical glosses. All copies were therefore ordered to be brought in, within 30 days, under pain of excommunication. Yet was no attempt made to supplant this book by what the Popish clergy might have denominated a true translation. The remainder of Tindal's Testaments were afterwards bought up by Tonstal, bishop of London, and burnt publicly at Paul's Cross. The ludicrous circumstance of a new and more elegant edition, improved in the translation, having been printed by. the Reformer the next year, with the aid of the Bishop's money, does not in the least affect the question as to the obvious motives which led to the destruction of the former. In 1530, a paper was drawn up, and signed by Archbishop Warham, Chancellor More, Bishop Tonstall, and many other Canonists and Divines, which every Incumbent was commanded to read to his parish, setting forth," that the King having called together many of the Prelates, with other learned men out of both Uni versities; and it being proposed to them whether it was necessary to set forth the Scriptures in the vulgar tongue; they were of opinion, that though it had been sometimes done, yet it was not necessary, and that the King did well not to set it out at that time in the English tongue.” The case of Thomas Harding, of Cheynies, in Buckinghamshire, who was burnt for a heretic by order of Longland, bishop of Lincoln, in 1534, for having Testaments in his posses sion, is another important fact, which shows clearly the sentiments of the Popish Clergy in England with respect to the use of the Scriptures by the laity. In 1536, although the Reformation had begun, and Cranmer was then Archbishop, the motion in Convocation for setting forth the Scriptures was not carried without much opposition from Gardner and others of his, that is the popish, party. At length in 1598,Bibles in English, to the number of 1500, were printed by Grafton, and set forth by the King's order, who the next year permitted his subjects the free use of the Sacred Volume by proclamation. In 1541, a new Edition was completed, and ordered by the King to be set up in all churches. But in 1542 the Popish Bishops made a last attempt to suppress the English Scriptures; a fact rendered |