365 LETTER IX. PROCEEDINGS UPON BECKET'S DEATH.- My task will be easy in this letter, Sir, inasmuch as you have not attempted to impugn any one statement in the chapter to which it relates. You have past over in silence the recital of those artifices and falsehoods, by which Becket's reputation for sanctity was established, and his shrine brought into vogue as the most fashionable mart for miracles. But I must observe that Dr. Milner has touched upon one part of this subject, and represented me as having asserted that the Roman "Catholics transferred their worship of Christ to the martyr Becket."* He has fabricated this statement, with his wonted regard to truth, from the well-known circumstance which I had repeated, that in one year, when more than 600/. was offered at the shrine of St. Thomas, nothing was presented at that of our Saviour in * Strictures, page 21, note. the same Church. Gross and malicious as the misrepresentation is, I should have let it pass, as unworthy of notice, had it not been for the sentence which follows it. I think, Sir, your cheeks will tingle when I remind you of that sentence, as they must have done when you perused it!..If I have felt indignant for the sake of our common religion, of our common nature, what must you have done! What painful emotions of sorrow and shame and mortification must it have caused in you that such a sentence should have proceeded from an advocate in your cause...from a fellow labourer...from one whom you wished to respect, and professed to admire... from one whose name has been associated with your own in a vote of thanks, and for the very publication in which this offence has been committed! What indignation, that a man and a scholar of your communion should have been found who would allude to such a subject... that a member, a priest, a prelate of your Church should introduce the name of Christ in such combination!! I will not trust myself to express what I think of the state of temper and feeling in which that detestable sentence must have been written: nor will I be provoked to use the tremendous recrimination for which he knows the records of the Papacy would supply such damnable materials. "Seriò tibi confirmo, 66 nunquam fore ut obliviscar hominem me esse,neque in certamen adeo turpe sum descensurus. I have even dropt, Sir, the most emphatic words of this quotation, appropriate as they might be. But I will say of him, that he is one of those persons quos, quum literæ quas profitentur, ex feris humaniores efficere debuerint, nihil tamen illorum moribus agrestius, nihil ingeniis inamær ius, nihil scriptis virulentius, nihil verbis atrocius."* "A reprooft cannot be better bestowed than upon an unjust reprover, nor charity more shown than in a just reprehension of those who have none." But I dismiss this person, and return to an opponent in whom urbanity is always found, even when ingenuousness is wanting. Your observations concerning the theoretical utility of such an empiret as the Popes endeavoured to *Scaliger, Epist. 272. p. 520. + South. "We have provided us of a very trim shift," says Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, in a letter to the persecuting prelates of the popish clergy, (one of the Lollard papers which Fox has preserved,)" for instead of the Apostles, and other their adherents, which draw by the same line of theirs as well in manners as doctrines, and are odious enemies unto us, we have caused you to be their successors and put you in their place which be prelates of the Church in these later times, by our great might and subtlety, as Christ hath said of you, they have reigned, erect, are in conformity with what I have said, not in opposition to it. Only this condition is required for making absolute despotism the best of all possible governments, that the Prince should be all-good, omniscient and infallible; who is there, then, that would not wish him to be omnipotent? That great good arose at one time from the papal system, surely, Sir, I have shown as fully and fairly as the most devoted adherent of that system can desire. Are you able either to deny or to extenuate the evils which afterwards arose from it? When you say, that the Popes who claimed the supreme authority in temporal affairs were "lesst blameable than the sovereigns who conceded it, for that the latter were silly, but the former not to be condemned by worldly wisdom," what is this but advancing that the knave is not so censurable as the dupe?..what is it but preferring wickedness to weakness? but not by me.' Once we promised unto him all the kingdoms of the world if he would fall down and worship us; but he would not, saying, my kingdom is not of this world; and went his way, when the multitude would have made him a temporal king. But to you truly, that serve us on the earth, is that my promise fulfilled."-Fox, i. 572. * Book of the Church, i. 283-288. Life of Wesley, i. 308, 9. + Page 96.. Will history bear you out in your assertion, Sir, when you say, that "in the action and reaction of the Pope's aggression and the Monarch's resistance, it must be admitted* that the clergy generally supported the monarch?" Far from making any such admission, I affirm that the secular clergy generally supported the papal usurpations, and the regulars uniformly and always. When you tell me afterwards that we are indebted to the Roman Catholic religion† for Magna Charta, had you forgotten, Sir, that the Pope, as he whom God had appointed over nations and kingdoms, reprobated and condemned that charter; pronounced it, in all its clauses, null and void; forbade the King to observe it; inhibited the Barons (who, being instigated by the Devil, he said, had extorted these concessions in degradation of the crown) from requiring its execution,.. and suspended the Primate Langton for refusing to excommunicate them on this account? To Langton indeed we are deeply indebted for the noble part which he took in obtaining the charter from the King, and for his yet nobler conduct in maintaining it against the Pope. But to the Roman Catholic religion, as acting under its acknow * Page 96. Page 168. BB |