case, what would be thought of a lawyer, who being employed by the dispossessed nobleman, should argue the point by proving, that there were documents in the hands of his client's family, by which it appeared, that some methods of cultivation which many of the insurgent farmers now rejected, had been practised at an early period in several parts of the district: that since the farmers had questioned the rights of the lord of the manor, and demanded his titles, there were few of them who agreed in one complete system of husbandry: that some of the first leaders of this insurrection, were known to have frequented public houses, and other places, not creditable to their reputation: that on the other hand, those farmers who had remained under their lord, and over whom the old penalties for deviations from the hereditary system of husbandry were still hanging, did not trouble their heads about improvements, and were to all appearance unanimous. What should we think of the reasoner who, on such grounds, would contend that it was clear, that the family of so

and so, had an unquestionable right to the whole manor, as well as to the labour of its inhabitants, under the directing whip of the owner? Is not the Irish Gentleman's pleading exactly like this?

But it is time to fix the true notion of Protestantism; a notion which, if the Traveller himself takes the trouble to examine, we may hope he will, in common honesty, be moved to help many an ignorant and unthinking person, out of the snare which, with more talent than respect for religious truth, he has contrived for his country. Protestants, we will tell him, without fear of contradiction, are Christians who reject the claim of the Church of Rome to regulate the faith of all other Churches. This rejection and nothing else constitutes Protestantism. The unity of Protestants upon this point is greater than the unity which exists in the Church of Rome upon any point whatever. In the denial which Protestants give to Rome, there is not a single point of dissension. In the assertion of Roman Supremacy and Infallibility, there is nothing but an apparent concord. The

Council of Trent carefully avoided any kind of declaration concerning the depositaries and the extent of Church infallibility. Not even a definition of the Church itself is found in the elaborate string of the would-be infallible decrees of the Council. And the reason is clear. Whoever has consulted the writings of Roman Catholic divines is aware, that such of them as attempt a description or definition of the oracle which cannot err in matters of Christian faith, are at variance with each other. Some identify it with the person of the pope speaking excathedra i. e. solemnly in virtue of his office: others require the express consent of a majority of bishops: others again content themselves with the silence of that majority, in regard to the pope's declaration: a fourth class (a very recent one indeed, who find the old doctrines untenable) make Church infallibility consist in an infallible recollection of unwritten tradition. We are irresistibly tempted to apply to Roman infallibility a slightly altered couplet in genuine modern Roman language:

É l'oracolo di Roma

Come l' Arabe Fenice:

Che ci sia ciascum lo dice:
Dove sia nessum lo sa.

Her never-erring oracle

To Arabia's phoenix well may Rome compare :
All say the phoenix lives; but nobody knows where.

But to proceed the Irish Traveller has searched for Protestantism in the ecclesiastical writers as far up as the first century; but can find nothing like it. Here let it be observed, that during this search, our Traveller takes Protestantism in the sense of a sect, of whose very essence it is to profess certain positive doctrines. The creed of the supposed sect, Protestantism, by a strange contradiction, he makes up out of the points on which the Reformers opposed each other. Having missed in the Fathers, for instance, Calvinism, i. e. the speculations on fatalism, which theologians have disguised under Christian language, he discovers it in Simon Magus. He might, indeed, have gone a little farther up, and traced it to Cicero,

and the ancient stoics. He might have looked downwards a little more carefully, and he would have found abundant Calvinism in the writings of Augustin. To a true Protestant, however, it is a matter of perfect indifference whether the scholastic speculations of any one Reformer are found in the writings of the Fathers, or in their reports of the creeds of defeated Church parties, to whose unfortunate members the name heretic has been always applied. Heresy, of course, like treason, (and from the same well-known cause) can never prosper. But much less had heresy any chance, even with posterity, when the orthodox, i. e. the conquering party took care to destroy all the writings of their opponents, and traduce them, moreover, by all manner of falsehoods, in the descriptions which they gave of their characters and doctrines.* Let it be remembered that not a work of the ancient heretics has been allowed by the orthodox to reach us.

* Whoever doubts this would do well to read Beausobre's Histoire du Manicheisme, and honestly decide for himself.