Of his performances in public-his verbose, pulpit declamation -his pompous exhibitions of his rotund and well-cared-for greatness in his metropolitan cathedral-his demands upon the humility and homage of his devotees;-as all these things belong to church-service, in which we never join, we shall not dwell upon them. But his more public efforts, as a defender of his faith, have not been marked either by great vigour or by great success. When, at Bath, the other day, Mr. Hobart Seymour, in his usual happy manner, exposed the mysteries of iniquity with which Rome abounds, the cunning wickednesses of monks and nuns, the secret depravities of conventual houses, the cruelties inflicted upon imprisoned ladies within grim walls and massive iron doors;-could anything be more weak and pitiful, than the four hours' oration of the cardinal, who came down expressly from London to destroy, by his eminent presence, the bold knight who dared to run a tilt with the whole Romish church?

In no instance, probably, since he returned to England, 'with all his blushing honours thick upon him,' has the learned ecclesiastic found himself so hardly driven as on that occasion, in his attempt, by much speaking, to refute his adversary's arguments; and invention must well nigh have exhausted itself to enable him to meet, by counter-statements, his stronglyadduced facts. Mr. Seymour, whose admirable works on Rome and her priests must be well known to our readers, had been in that city, and had examined into many matters which Protestants knew of only through the narratives of travellers. Returning to England, he resolved to make known more and more the mysterious iniquities of that system in which only, according to the Tridentine council, salvation is to be obtained. At Bath, a vast audience was collected to hear the thrilling facts, eloquently told, of imprisoned nuns, conventual obscenities, cenobite abominations, and the dreadful disclosures which were made, during the rule of Mazzini, at the sacking of the Holy Office, of inquisitorial rapacity, cruelty, and murder. Could anything be more unhappy, more pitiful, either in the way of apology for the facts, or of defence against their allegation: that the need for bolts and bars, for massive walls and iron doors, suited to a fortress, in the religious houses in Rome was, to prevent the ingress of the dissolute among the citizens, not to hinder the outgoing of the nuns? and that the alleged discoveries at the buildings of the Holy Office-and, which our readers will remember, were admirably described at the time in the columns of the Daily News'-were wretched fables, the inventions of malignant atheists and deadly enemies of the Italian church—and that, formerly, the spot had been used for

a burying ground; so that, probably, the remains of human hair and flesh and bones which were discovered, were the remnants of some bodies which had been interred there? Now, we ask, with the knowledge that the notorious facts of the cruelties of the Holy Office were already in the minds of his audience, and firmly credited by them, and with the frequent newspaperaccounts of wretched nuns escaping from the convent-prisonscould any defender of the Romish church more fatally mistake his position, than by giving a direct denial to allegations, for the truth of which there is as satisfactory evidence as for any historical facts whatsoever? But, a man may be an excellent philologist, possessed of vast knowledge, an admirable ethnographer, geologist, and physicist and Dr. Wiseman is all this --but a very poor defender, either of an ecclesiastical dogma or of priestly practice. How difficult it is, for a very able and accomplished man to defend an hierarchical system, which is buttressed on all sides by tradition alone, but which has no support from that Divine word which only can teach men how to live and how to die!

The neat little volume, of which we have given the title at the head of this article, is the production of Mr. Sheridan Knowles, the well-known author of ' Virginius,' &c., a dramatist of no mean powers or low standing. It is cheering, in the present day, to find that a gentleman of such high and deserved rank in his profession, enters the lists against the great Catholic knight-cardinal, who demands from all comers submission and reverence to his church; and our gratification is increased by the fact, that Mr. Knowles is not merely a theoretical religious disputant, but that having been happily brought into vital contact with it, he rejoices in the freedom which Divine truth only can give the inquiring soul, and lives daily under its influence. Such a man must be a valuable accession to any religious society, and anything he may write, even on strictly theological subjects, must be worthy of respectful attention. We believe we are correct in asserting, that our zealous and excellent author has not appeared before the public as a theological writer until now, and, therefore, it might have been expected that his work would have had a professional cast; but such is not the case. With much judgment and energy he has combatted Dr. Wiseman's assertions in reference to transubstantiation; and in a right trenchant manner does he strike down the fallacies of the great defender of popish doctrines among us. The formulary of faith, which members of the Romish church generally hold, is the creed of Pius IV. I profess that, in the mass, there is offered to God a true, proper, and propitiatory sacrifice for the living and the dead; and that in the most holy sacrament of

the Eucharist, there is truly, really, and substantially, the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity of our Lord Jesus Christ; and that there is made a change of the whole substance of the bread into the body, and of the whole substance of the wine into the blood, which change the Catholic church calls transubstantiation. I also confess that, under either kind alone, Christ is received whole and entire, and a true sacrament.' It is this dogma which the cardinal maintains and defends; and our accomplished author has utterly demolished the ecclesiastic's defences. Perhaps, Mr. Knowles's style is more brusque than is common in polemical writing generally, and his arguments are occasionally so pointedly ad hominem, as to remind us of the time and style of the ancient disputants, when Aquinas or Occam by turns argued, cuffed and conquered. But it is permitted a zealous advocate to speak strongly, and our accomplished author, by the earnestness and vigour of his writing, assures us of his ardent attachment to the great principles of the Reformation. Our limits permit only a short quotation; but it will be sufficient to show the purpose and style of a work, for which we give Mr. Knowles our hearty thanks, and which we commend to the immediate attention of that class of readers, who wish to be thoroughly informed and guarded on all the great questions of the controversy between ourselves and the Romish church.

'But, while you assert that the literal interpretation of our Saviour's words is the true one, and, at the same time, deliberately state that those who interpreted them, literally, did not understand them, how will you maintain that what they did not understand, in these words, was the promise of the "blessed Eucharist?" It is impossible, sir, that our Saviour's language, literally interpreted, could have been intended as the vehicle of any such promise. You insist on the literal interpretation; and, now, I insist on keeping you to it. According to that interpretation, the flesh and blood must be literally flesh and blood. Is it literally flesh and blood that you receive in the blessed Eucharist? If it be, you can show them. Show them!-You show me wine and bread! I see nothing else; and if I partake, I taste nothing else. They are as palpably wine and bread as the bread and wine of which I might have partaken yesterday at dinner! You tell me, they have undergone a total change. Demonstrate the change! You cannot, though your life depended upon your doing so! What is changed becomes a different thing to what it was. Were you put upon your oath to declare if, according to the evidence of your senses, the wine and bread had undergone a particle of change, you must reply that, as far as that evidence goes, they were to all intents and purposes the same after consecration that they were before it or you must forswear yourself-unless you choose to hold your tongue. To assert that, according to the evidence of your senses, they had undergone a particle of change, would be, as you know full well, nothing short of an atro

POPERY: ITS GENIUS AND POLICY.

cious breach of truth, which you would sooner die than utter. But, though you cannot show the real flesh and blood, though you cannot demonstrate any change in the wine and bread, though your senses refuse to bear evidence to the particle of a change, still you believe there is a change; and that your belief is positive belief. What is real, sir, is above even positive belief-is the subject of something far stronger than belief, howsoever positive-admits of proofs that carry us far beyond all descriptions of belief, landing us in absolute knowledge. You believe that a certain metal is gold; but your believing it to be But the metal is real, and being gold does not establish it to be so. You test it, and it proves to be gold, and real it admits of tests. belief is at an end. Now, you know it to be gold, and knowing it to that you believe be so, henceforward it would be absurd in it to be so. Not one jot further than belief go the arguments of your whole church in the defence of transubstantiation; and not one jot further can they go. Did your church receive the real flesh and blood of Christ, she would know, and not merely believe that she received them. She only believes-if, indeed, she does believe that she receives them; therefore, the first proof of her dogma is not to be found in the 6th of John; because, interpreting our Saviour's words literally, it is His real flesh and blood that he promises there; the fulfilment of which promise would totally supersede belief, begetting the absolute demonstrable knowledge that it was indeed His flesh and blood that were communicated.'-pp. 136-8.

you

to say

'The Doctrines and Practices of Popery Examined' is a reprint of eleven admirable lectures delivered, fifteen years ago, by some of the most eminent ministers in Glasgow. Mr. Collins has published them in his well-known series of valuable works. These Lectures show, in a very forcible manner, the 'perverting and corrupting influences of popery on the heart and life of man;' and while they treat the subject in a novel and impressive manner, they contain a vast fund of information on the ethics and statistics of popery, which could be learned only at conWe trust the Lectures have siderable cost from larger works.

obtained a large sale among the industrial classes.

'Romanism in Rome' is an interesting and instructive lecture by the Rev. H. J. Roper, of Bristol, who has recently visited the Eternal City, in order to observe the phases of popery in the place of its power. They, who are unacquainted with the paganism of the popish worship-with the cruel supremacy which the priests exercise in every land in which their church is dominant-with the universal divinity ascribed to the Virgin Mary, in Rome-with the formalism which masks horrible iniquities in priests and people-and with the immense power which Jesuitism exercises over the consciences and lives of papists, will find much to instruct them in this creditable brochure, which we are glad to see has been already extensively circulated.

44

ART. IV.-The History of Wales from the Earliest Times to its Final Incorporation with England. By B. B. Woodward, B.A. London: Virtue, Hall, and Virtue.

MR. WOODWARD informs us in his preface that sixty years have elapsed since the last English History of Wales was published. To the intelligent reader, such a statement will suggest ample justification for the appearance of the present work. The rich discoveries which have rewarded the research of our century, together with the purification and improvement of the various logical methods, have necessitated the revision of all histories, in order that some may receive supplementary illustration, and others undergo thorough reconstruction. If the tale of the past is to retain its relative position as au educational influence, it must be submitted to the crucial operation which in other departments of knowledge has resulted in the substitution of useful deductions for the plausible theories of clever speculation. Through such a process most national records have been passed with more or less damage to their original credibility-but at the same time with manifold increase in their practical value. The scriptural histories alone have left the common furnace unscathed, though, in their case, the flame has been intensified to seven-fold heat.

But while it is necessary and profitable to deal afresh even with the classic histories of mankind, we confess it is at best a difficult and thankless task to canvass with severe impartiality the traditions of a people whose living representatives continue to identify their national glory with the sufferings and triumphs of a distant antiquity, and who cherish with singular tenacity the pride of ancestry and race after centuries of territorial annexation, and notwithstanding their long actual union and political equality with the nations by whom they were vanquished. Such, however, is the task which Mr. Woodward has undertaken, and to its performance he has brought the spirit of benevolence, a well balanced judgment, a keen perception, much general knowledge, and, to crown all, an amount of plodding diligence which, in our country at least, is more likely to meet with open-mouthed astonishment than to secure either just appreciation or general imitation. In addition to these more general qualifications we must mention two that will probably in some measure modify each other. The first is a timidity in applying the caustic and the knife, which often leads him to spare a corruption he is afterwards compelled to remove;