Hulme, January 31st, 1850.

tendency to turn the religion of Christ into mockery. | with solemn mockery in the teeth of his declaration, that Messrs. Stowell and Co. attain a high point in the scale of the Bible is self-evidential,” referring us to "Lardner, their ambition when they have raised a laugh at the Paley, Horne, &c." Pray sir, who were these men? There doctrines, or ceremonies, or clergy of the Catholic Church. is a notorious blackguard named Lardner in America, coDr. Cummins is an admirable pseudo-religious Punch, but habiting with Mrs. Heavyside, whose husband is still living. without the truthfulness and reverence of his grotesque Is that the man you mean? However, if it be the same prototype. He has all the waggery and ridicule, and that person, or a relation of his, or a mere namesake, (for in is what he aims at. Their audiences and congregations truth it matters not who he may be), surely you don't mean to refer us to him, and to the others, as infallible appreciate the jokes, and endeavour to repeat them. Hence Catholics generally have to say that they are guides. If not, why waste so much paper and time in such "teazed" about their religion. There is nothing too sacred, a frivolous dispute. You began the controversy in order, nothing too venerable, for the buffoonery of these men, as you pretended, to reply to our silly question; you from the day of the Reformation to the present. Yet it is boasted that you could answer it, nay, towards the close of only a manifestation of the old spirit which ruled their the article you assert, with the most cool and deliberate predecessors. The Lord of Life himself was made a lying, that you have actually answered it. You also in mockery of. "And they laughed Him to scorn," says St. various parts of your Witness, since its first publication, Mark, c. 5, v. 40, when He went into the house of Jairus. have attempted to prove that Tradition ought not to be And the Divine Wisdom himself was clothed in a white received,-and here, by a just judgment of God, you are garment, and sent through the streets of Jerusalem by permitted for your greater confusion, not only to plead Herod, to be laughed at and mocked as a fool, by the guilty to the charge of "lying"-you are also forced to maintain the very doctrine against which you sat down to rabble of Stowells and Cumminses of that time. O ye poor Catholics, who are "teazed" and annoyed, tormented write. But, in order to stamp the greater condemnation and persecuted, for your religion, through the buffoonery upon your religious system, to shew it up for public inand malice of these men, bear it patiently for His sake, spection, as it were, for the purposes of a nearer scrutiny, who has beforehand borne it for you. The sufferings of you indecently omit all mention whatever of those great this life are short when compared with the glory which doctors of the primitive ages, and you refer us to men who, shall be revealed to us hereafter. If you will reign with if their lives were pure, and we doubt they were so, could your Lord in heaven, you must be content to suffer with have no weight, to men, who if they were orthodox TrinitaHim here. Hear his own words, when he wished to pre rian Christians, and we are prepared to prove that some of them were not so, could not, and ought not, to receive pare his apostles for the persecution of such men:"Remember the word that I said unto you, the servant is that respect and veneration, and credit, I will not say from not greater than his Lord; if they have persecuted me, the Catholic people, but even from sound, judicious, and they will persecute you also; if they have kept my saying, learned Protestant critics, which all Christians in every age they will keep yours also. But all these things will they and country, since their time, have willingly paid to those do unto you for my name's sake, because they know not pure and holy lights, those eminent and illustrious doctors Him that sent me." St. John, c. 15, v. 20, 21.-I am and guides of the early church, whose glory and whose THE CATHOLIC WITNESS. crown it was, to be always found as renowned for their atyours, &c. &c. tachment to unity, and their abhorrence of schism, as they were remarkable for the sanctity of their lives, and the humility of their whole deportment. Away with such unmeaning cant; it is impious, it is unnatural, it is base, it is ungrateful; piety abhors it, faith disowns it, truth detests it, and charity cannot associate with it! And why is it that you are so unwilling to appeal to the ancient Fathers? The reason is obvious-they all, without exception, belonged to one religion, and you belong to another. If they were right, you must be wrong; and if you be right, they must have been wrong. But they were right, you, Protestants, being the judges. For you 'all admit the Church was pure in their time, and consequently her doctrines must then have been heavenly. You know full well that your doctrines and theirs are not alike, and that the faith which they defended, both orally and by their writings, is identically the same which the Catholic Church, the only true Church, now holds, and has ever held, in every age of her existence. How impudent and daring is your conduct! You have slanderously asserted, on many occasions, that the Catholic Church in the time of Pius IV. (1564), added twelve new articles to the Apos tles' Creed; a lie so gross and so palpable, that every school-boy, but slightly acquainted with the history of Europe during the 16th century, could easily detect it. For how could Pius IV. in 1564 have forged twelve new articles of faith, and appended them to the Creed, if in 1517 Martin Luther commenced reformer by attacking those pretended novelties which are attributed to the Pope? This is Protestant logic with a vengeance! And yet we So are condemned to hear this nonsensical sophistry, even from the lips of otherwise sensible and learned men. when we put to the writer in the Witness, to M'Neile, Stowell, and the minor candidates for polemical fame, this trite, unanswerable question, How can you prove the Divinity of the Bible upon exclusively Protestant principles? we are met, by what? a solid answer? nothing of the kind; but we are told by Stowell, that Protestants must not answer the question, because he has published fourteen puzzlers! By the Witness we are told it is an

V.

TO THE CATHOLICS

OF MANCHESTER AND SALFORD.

Brethren and Friends,

Where are now the great boasters? What has become of the "No Popery" shouters? They were exceedingly noisy and clamorous whilst we were asleep,-but when at length we are aroused from our apathy and begin to shew signs of life and activity, then it would appear they begin to grow shy, -to shun the public gaze.-And finding the tables turned, and that instead of being any longer permitted to insolently attack us,-they are now themselves placed upon the defensive, they are completely confounded. Being, for the first time, called upon publicly to vindicate their own principles they are found incompetent for the task; and thus is clearly established the truth of the charge, which we have frequently brought against them, viz., that their religion is merely a negative one,-and that it chiefly consists in their hatred of Catholicity, and in their aversion to its professors. But, as we wish to get rid of this controversy as speedily as possible, let us proceed to quote from the Witness. He says, "Of the evidences of Christianity, both external and internal, we have only now to remark, that they are contained in the voluminous writings of Lardner, Paley, Horne, and a host of other Protestant Biblical critics, &c." Here we have a man talking nonsense,-drawing out very fine-spun distinctions between Catholicism and Romanism, (the folly of which conduct we forcibly exposed in our last letter), irreverently laughing at the Catholic world for consulting the great lights and Doctors of the primitive Church, the Cyprians, the Clements, the Athanasiuses, the Jeromes, the Ambroses, the Basils, the Gregories, the Austins, and those other great luminaries, their cote poraries; and at length

No. 9, Vol. I.

AND GENERAL CATHOLIC RECORD.

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1850.

ST. JOHN NEPOMUCEN, M.-A.D. 1383.

(Continued from our last.)

Every one resorted thither to kiss the hands and feet of the glorious martyr, to recommend himself to his prayers, and to procure, if possible, some relic of his clothes, or what else had belonged to him. The emperor being informed of this, sent an order to the religious Penitents to hinder any tumults in their church, and secretly to remove the body. They obeyed; but the treasure was discovered, and as soon as the Canons had made everything ready for its magnificent reception in the cathedral, it was conveyed thither with the utmost pomp by the clergy and whole city, and interred with this epitaph, which is yet read engraved on a stone upon his tomb, "Under this stone lies the body of the most venerable and most glorious Thaumaturgus John Nepomucen, doctor, canon of this church, and confessor of the empress, who, because he had faithfully kept the seal of confession, was cruelly tormented and thrown from the bridge of Prague into the river Muldaw, by the orders of Wenceslas IV. emperor and king of Bohemia, son of Charles IV. 1383." Many miraculous cures of the sick under the most desperate disorders, during the translation and interment of his relics, and at his tomb, through his intercession, were public testimonies of his favour with God. The empress, after this accident, led a weak languishing life till the year 1387, when she closed it by a holy and happy death. The emperor stayed some months in the castle of Zebrac, some leagues from Prague, hardening himself against the voices of heaven, fearing at first a sedition of the people; but religion taught the virtuous part their duty to their sovereign. Seeing therefore the things remain quiet in the city, he returned to it, and wallowed in his former slothful voluptuous life. But he soon felt that the punishment of a notorious sinner follows close upon his crime. The empire was torn with civil wars in all its parts. The Switzers revolting from Albert of Austria, set up their commonwealth without opposition; the emperor himself sold to John Galeas the duchy of Milan for one hundred thousand florins, and for money alienated many others of the richest provinces, one after another. The princes and states, in the very year 1383, sent to entreat the tyrant to leave Bohemia and reside in the empire, to put a stop to the growing evils. He laughed at the deputies, and said, if there were any malcontents among them, it was their duty to come to him. The states and princes of the empire at length entered into a general confederacy at Mentz, and deposed him from the imperial throne in 1400; and meeting at Laenstein in the archbishopric of Triers, chose first Frederic duke of Brunswic and Lunenbourg, and he dying in a few days, substi

PRICE ONE PENNY

tuted Robert or Rupert of Bavaria, count palatine of the Rhine. Wenceslas, drowned in debaucheries, seemed insensible at this affront. The nobility of Bohemia, by the advice of his brother Sigismund king of Hungary, confined him twice; but he found means to escape, and died of an apoplexy, without having time, in appearance, to think of repentance. This indolence fortified the Hussite heresy, broached in his reign by John Huss, rector of the university, and his disciple Jerom of Prague, which for above one hundred years filled the kingdom with civil wars, bloodshed, plunder, sacrileges, the ruin of families, and every other calamity.

(To be concluded in our next.)

TRUTH.

ST. PETER.

(Concluded from our last.)

The great progress which the faith made in Rome, by the miracles and preaching of the apostles, was the cause of the persecution which Nero raised against the Church, as Lactantius mentions. Other fathers say, the resentment of the tyrant against the apostles was much inflamed by the misfortune of Simon Magus; and he was unreasonable enough to make this credible. But he had already begun to persecute the Christians from the time of the conflagration of the city, in 64. St. Ambrose tells us that the Christians entreated St. Peter to withdraw for a while. The apostle, though unwillingly, yielded to their importunity, and made his escape by night; but, going out of the gate of the city, he met Jesus Christ, or what in a vision appeared in his form, and asked him, "Lord, whither art St. Peter readily understood this thou going?" Christ answered, "I am going to Rome to be crucified again." vision to be meant of himself, and taking it for a reproof of his cowardice, and a token that it was the will of God he should suffer, returned into the city, and being taken, was put into the Mamertine prison with St. Paul. The two apostles are said to have remained there eight months, during which time they converted SS. Processus and Martinian, the captains of their guards, with forty-seven others. It is generally asserted that when they were condemned, they were both scourged before they were put to death. If St. Paul might have been exempted on account of his dignity of a Roman citizen, it is certain St. Peter must have undergone that punishment, which according to the Roman laws was always inflicted before crucifixion. It is an ancient tradition in Rome, that they were both led together out of the city by the Ostian gate. St. Prudentius says, that they suffered both together in the same field, near a swampy ground, on the banks of the Tiber. Some say St. Peter suffered on the same day of the month, but a year before St. Paul. But Eusebius, St. Epi. phanius, and most others affirm, that they suffered the same year, and on the 29th of June. St. Peter, when he

was come to the place of execution, requested of the officers that he might be crucified with his head downwards, alleging that he was not worthy to suffer in the same manner his divine Master had died before him. He had preached the cross of Christ, had bore it in his heart, and its marks in his body, by sufferings and mortification, and he had the happiness to end his life on the cross. His Lord was pleased not only that he should die for his love, but in the same manner himself had died for us, by expiring on the cross, which was the throne of his love. Only the apostle's humility made a difference, in desiring to be crucified with his head downward. His Master looked toward heaven, which by his death he opened to men: but he judged that a sinner formed from dust, and going to return to dust, ought rather in confusion to look on the earth, as unworthy to raise his eyes to heaven. St. Ambrose, St. Austin, and St. Prudentius, ascribe this his petition partly to his humility, and partly to his desire of suffering more for Christ. Seneca mentions that the Romans sometimes crucified men with their heads downward; and Eusebius testifies that several martyrs were put to that cruel death. Accordingly the executioners easily granted the apostle his extraordinary request. St. Chrysostom, St. Austin, and St. Asterius say he was nailed to the cross; Tertullian mentions that he was tied with cords. He was probably both nailed and bound with ropes. F. Pagi places the martyrdom of these two apostles in the year 65, on the 29th of June.

St. Gregory writes, that the bodies of the two apostles were buried in the catacombs, two miles out of Rome. The most ancient Roman Calendar, published by Bucherius, marks their festival at the catacombs on the 29th of June. An ancient history read in the Gallican church in the eighth century says, their bodies only remained there eighteen months. From those catacombs where now stands the church of St. Sebastian, the body of St. Paul was carried a little farther from Rome, on the Ostian road; and that of St. Peter to the Vatican hill, probably by the Jewish converts who lived in that quarter. At present the heads of the two apostles are kept in silver bustoes in the church of St. John Lateran. But one-half of the body of each apostle is deposited together in a rich vault in the great church of St. Paul, on the Ostian road; and the other half of both bodies in a more stately vault, in the Vatican church, which sacred place is called from primitive antiquity, "The confession of St. Peter, and Limina Apostolorum," and is resorted to by pilgrims from all parts of Christendom. The great St. Chrysostom never was able to name either of these holy apostles without raptures of admiration and devotion; especially when he mentions the ardent love of St. Peter for his divine Master. He calls him the "mouth of all the apostles, the leader of that choir, the head of that family, the president of the whole world, the foundation of the Church, the burning lover of Christ."

rid of their troubles, saying, "Go into the deep, ye cursed incentives of the passions. I will drown you, lest I be drowned by you." I am too weak to bear your burden. To possess you without defiling my heart, to enjoy you without covetousness, pride, or ambition, is a difficult task, and the work of an extraordinary grace, as truth itself hath assured us. Happy are they who follow the Lord without encumbrance or burden! who make their journey to him without the load of superfluous baggage or hinderance! All are entitled to this present and future hap piness, who repeat these words of St. Peter in their hearts and affections, though they are seated on thrones, or engaged by the order of Providence in secular affairs. They use the world as if they used it not, living in it so as not to be of it, and possess its goods so as to admit them into their houses, not into their hearts. They are solicitous and careful in their temporal stewardship, that they may be able to give an account to their Master, who has intrusted them with it; yet live in their affections as strangers on earth, and citizens of heaven. Those on the other side are of all others most unhappy, who in some measure imitate the hypocrisy of Ananias and Sapphira, whilst they repeat the sacred words of the apostle with lying mouths who renounce the world in body only, and carry in affection its inordinate desires and lusts, its spirit and contagion, into the very sanctuaries which are instituted to shelter souls from its corruption.

FALSEHOOD.

(Continued from our last.)

Almost similar to this was the system constructed by Saturninus, who was cotemporary with Basilider, and resided at Antioch. In the lower world of spirits that had sprung from the nameless God, he taught that there were seven angels who ruled the Universe, the authors of the visible creation, against whom Satan, who considered them as invaders of his rights, stood in perpetual hostility. To retain the light which beamed upon them from the highest heavens, and filled them with a sacred ardour, they formed man, who, however, as the production of imperfect beings, lay like to a worm upon the earth, until the Supreme God animated him by a spark of his vivifying power. Human souls, thus constituted, are destined to return to the kingdom of light. To these heavenly formed souls, there are opposed others, incited by Satan in their hatred. To free the former from the God of the Jews, and to strengthen them against the demons and demoniacal men, the highest Æon, sent by God, descended upon this earth, but only in an apparent body, as he could uot unite himself with any part of this material world.

More artificial, and more poetical was the system imagined by Valentinus, who taught at Alexandria about the year 133, and later at Rome, where he was three times expelled from the church. From the Bythos, there emanated a series of thirty orders of Eones, of which some were males, others females. These ones are hypostatic ideas, the authors of all natural and spiritual life. The Enthymesis or Achamoth, which was born of the Sophia, the last of the ones, and had fallen from the Pleroma, animated all matter, and produced three orders of beings,-the spiritual, physical. and hylic natures. The natural Demiurgos, formed an imperfect representation of the Pleroma, a new world, of which he is the ruler, while Satan, the king of the hylic natures, governs here upon earth. The Demiurgos, the God of Judaism, promised to his dependants a natural Messias, with which the Eon Jesus, or the Saviour, united himself, at the time of his baptism in the Jordan, and perfected the work of redemption. This was effected by the annunciation of doctrines to the spiritual natures,-by doctrines and miracles to the physical order,-which as it

St. Peter left all things to follow Christ; and in return received from him the promise of life everlasting, and in the bargain a hundred-fold in this present life. "Othrice happy exchange! O magnificent promise!" cries out St. Bernard. O powerful words, which have robbed Egypt, and plundered its richest vessels! which have peopled deserts and monasteries with holy men, who sanctify the earth, and are its purest angels, being con tinually occupied in the contemplation and praises of God, the ever glorious uninterrupted employment of the blessed, which these spotless souls begin on earth to continue for all eternity in heaven. They have chosen with Mary the better part, which will never be taken from them. In this how great is their everlasting reward! How pure their present comfort and joy! and yet how cheap the purchase! For, what have they left? what have they bartered? Only empty vanities; mere nothings; nay, anxieties, dangers, fears, and toils. Goods which by their very possession are a burden; which, by their loss or continual disappoint-possessed not the internal testimony of truth, could be ments, perplex, fret, disturb, and torment; and which, if loved with attachment, defile the soul. Goods which Crates, the heathen philosopher, threw into the sea, to be

brought to faith only by external authority. The sufferings and death of Christ possessed, in the Valentinian system, no real value, as only the natural man suffered, and was

crucified: the Saviour abandoned him when he was tites, or "the Continent." To the same order of Gnostics conducted to Pontius Pilate.

Of these three orders of men, the hylic, or the material, necessarily rejected the doctrines of salvation, as not appertaining to them: the physical were enabled, by their faith and good works, to attain to a lower degree of beatitude; the spiritual, the salt of the earth, the elect, could not be lost, but would infallibly arrive at their happy des tiny, by returning to the Pleroma, when the world should have run through its course. The physical order shall then enjoy, in company with the Demiurgos, a limited felicity; but the material, the gross, and with them all that are evil, shall be deprived of the life which they have usurped the fire which lay concealed within them shall burst forth and destroy them, and they shall return to their ancient nothing.

The disciples of Valentinus adhered not strictly, as we may suppose, to the arbitrary system of their master. They preserved, indeed, the foundation, but introduced various modifications of those doctrines, especially which regarded the Redeemer. Axionicus, of Antioch, alone defended the entire Valentinian system. Secundus deduced that spirit (the Sophia) which fell by its own presumption, not from the thirty Eones, but from a generation of inferior angels, that the Pleroma might be free from all imperfection. There has been preserved an epistle of Ptolemy to a certain Flora, whom he wished to allure to his Valentinian belief. Heracleon composed a Commentary on the Gospel of St. John, from the fragment of which, preserved by Origen, we learn how the Gnostic teachers forced the sacred Scripture to suit their own doctrines. Colorbasus appears to have introduced essential modifications into the system of Valentinus. He admitted the primitive Ogdoas, but taught that it sprung simultaneously, not successively, from the Bythos, and was not permanent in its attributes: so that one and the same spirit was, in one manifestation, the Father; in another, Truth; and in a third, Man. The Valentinian Marcus presumed to penetrate more deeply than any of his predecessors into the nature of the Godhead. He divided the incomprehensible essence, to which no one had dared to attribute the predicate of being, into a Tetras, the ineffable, the most holy, revealed only to the perfect, and from which all the Eones had emanated. The Tetras descended in the form of a female, from the invisible and

belonged the Apotactices, who rejected marriage, and the private possession of wealth; also, the Severians, descended probably from one of the Judaizing sects, who denied authority to the Epistles of St. Paul, and to the Acts of the Apostles. Julius Cassian names Clement as the most conspicuous teacher of Dochetism, and as the author of a book against matrimony.

The sect of the Ophites is remarkable, as it outlived all the other Gnostic parties. Their doctrine coincided in many things with the Valentinian, but differed from it, especially on the subject of the Demiurgos, and his production, Judaism. They taught that the Bythos, and the immoveable dark water, or chaos, had existed together from eternity. From the Bythos arose God, the Father of all things, named also the first man. From him emanated, as a second on, the Enuoia, the son of man; then followed the third, or female Eon, the Holy Ghost, the mother of all living creatures. From this emanation proceeded the human on, Christ, and the weaker female on, Sophia. The first four, the Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost, and Christ, formed, in a sacred union in the Bythos, the Holy Heavenly Church. The Sophia sank into the Hyle, the dark water, and was there surrounded by a gross body, which it threw off as often as it attempted to return to the region of light. Its abode was finally established in the midway between the world of light and the Hyle. In its exile from the higher kingdom it gave birth to Jalbadoath, the son of Chaos, the name by which the Ophites designated the Demiurgos. This Jalbadoath was haughty, ambitious, and wicked, and produced six angels, spirits of the stars, which were in nature like to himself. He and his angels formed for themselves kingdoms, the seven heavens of the planets. They then created man, the representative of themselves, with an ethereal body, which Jalbadoath animated by an infusion of the spirit of life, whence that light which dwelt within him from his birth, descended upon man, and made him no longer a representation of Jalbadoath and his spirits, but of the Supreme God, the first man. (To be concluded in our next.)

THE REBUILDING OF

nameless regions, and revealed to him the mysteries of the THE VATICAN CHURCH OF ST. PETER.

world of ones. One of the most famed of the Gnostics was the Syrian Bardasenes of Edessa, a renowned scholar, and author of many works. He did not separate himself from the Church, for in public he maintained no erroneous tenets, and only in secret assemblies divulged his Gnostic principles. His spiritual hymns and canticles, in which he made known his errors-the sighings of Achamoth, sunk in Chaos, for the divine light-spread his doctrines widely amongst the Syrians. The Syrian Father, St. Ephraim, in a later age, composed Catholic hymns to counteract the effect of those of Bardasenes. The system of this Gnostic appears to have been partly Valentinian, and partly Ophitic.

Tatian, the Assyrian, who once ranked amongst the renowned Christian Apologists, fell into Gnosticism after the death of his master, St. Justin. He founded a system of ons similar to that of Valentinus, and drew from the Gnostic doctrines of the evil nature of matter, a severe asceticism; he rejected marriage, and forbade the use of flesh-meat and wine. It was of him and his followers that St. Paul prophesied, when he wrote thus:-"Now the spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils: speaking lies in hypocrisy; having their consciences seared with a hot iron; forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, which God had created to be received with thanksgiving of them which believe and know the truth. For every creature of God is good, and nothing to be refused, if it be received with thanksgiving; for it is sanctified by the word of God and prayer." I. Tim., iv., 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

His numerous, followers bore the appellation of Encra

(Continued from our last.)

Near this church stand the ruins of the famous amphitheatre, or the Colisee, which contained with ease eighty thousand, and, if crowded, one hundred and fifty thousand spectators. Vespasian, after his triumph over Judea, employed twelve thousand captive Jews in raising this stupendous oval fabric for entertaining the people with shows and public exhibitions. It was completed by Titus, and the outside of the walls was ornamented with a great number of beautiful columns, which the family of the Barberini removed for the purpose of decorating their own palace. This gave occasion to that common saying, "Quod non fecerunt Barbari, fecere Barberini." The inner side round the area contained seats, made of vast polished stones, one above another, that the spectators might have a perfect view of the whole pit, without any hindrance. The Cavea under the walls contained dens for the wild beasts, and dark dungeons for the condemned prisoners, and the porta libitinæ was the gate through which the bodies of the slain were dragged out. The Vomitoria were gates so contrived in the walls, that petsons went in and out without being crowded. The Arena or oval pit was strewed with sand, to suck up the blood, and surrounded with iron rails, on a balustrade about a yard from the lower seats, for a fence, that the beasts might not be able to hurt the spectators. This place, which was bedewed with the blood of great numbers of holy martyrs, is now converted into a religious purpose, and called the Via Crucis, or the station of the holy