under the influence of super and præter-natural beings. To explain it in any other way is impossible. If natural, it would either originate in reason, or in matter; but neither is the truth matter, itself is incapable of opposite results, and remorse or consolation actually prevail, and affect the soul, on the selection of good or evil before reason can deliberate. Add to which, the most mature deliberation often terminates in accepting or adopting what reason condemns, and experience has rejected. Arbitrary and unsought for, as the external light of heaven, this inward monitor urges and solicits our free will, but controls it not.-At intervals extremely violent, after much tepidity and dissipation truly feeble. It is sometimes dormant, but never idle. Occasionally, indeed, passive, at others almost irresistible. Can this be instinct ?-Instinet proceeds directly and immediately to its object:-instinct advances forward, but without a struggle, and without remorse; whereas the influence I am describing is now and then obscure, but never totally removed, never entirely suspended, until sympathy and feeling have entirely been deadened by malignity of temper, obduracy of heart, repetition of crime, and perseverance in sin.—Is this myself? It counteracts my own wishes. Is it society? It acts most vigorously in retirement. So true it is, that irreligion is not the growth of solitude, nor an inmate of the desart:-Savages prefer to take up with sticks and stones for divinities rather than be without.-No, it is your idle spungers on the community-men who are fed and nourished at the expense of their neighbours' blood and sweat-who are atheists, libertines, infidels, and deists! Perhaps it is prejudice, or a compound of all these questions? Impossible. Disagreeable to the senses, it contravenes acknowledged habits, modes, and forms, of civilized and genteel society. In conclusion, is it nature? No; for were it matter it could never be effaced; and if it were reason, once effaced, it would never more return.

It would be difficult, I allow, to define the precise limits, or name the exact point, of religious delicacy, amidst all the disorders and inequalities introduced into our morals by variety of education, variety of example, variety of conversation, and variety of employment. But this only confirms the truth of all I have advanced. Conscience is always on the watch to direct to what is right, and there is still discovered such a

resemblance in the appetites and passions of the species as one would naturally expect should result from the same common nature, affected by external circumstances infinitely varied. Variety of strength will justify variety of discipline; but as there is no royal mode or aristocratic way to virtue, any more than there is to science, what intellectual or moral difference can a diadem or a ribbon, a coronet or a cap, produce in any piece of clay, or whether they are fixed by accident or fortune? In the supposition that by chance, or design, the laws of hu man polity, are broken, let the delinquent only keep his secret, and he will experience neither anguish, fear, or remorse, from the prevarication; whereas the belief that a Divine eye beholds him electrifies the most silent and clandestine culprit, and in the shade of night, or splendour of day, in the privacy of the closet, or publicity of office, is not only productive of moral good, but of a social effect; which, if not defeated by infidelity and irreligion, would supersede the necessity of magistrates and soldiers, laws and prisons, social reformations and revolutions. (To be continued.)

SIR,-I fear that your correspondent, " Conclusionista," has favoured the public, in your last number, with a "conclusion in which nothing is concluded." I did, indeed, discover a major and a minor proposition, and a conclusion in his argument; but, lack-a-day! to discover the conclusion in the premises, nonplussed my poor noddle. I ran over in mind the questions agitated in metaphysics relative to metaphysical and physical essence, primary and secondary possibility, &c. &e. I called to my aid all the common sense I could muster: but still the argument of Conclusionista was too deep for me! He may, however, (thought I, at length) have been in a brown study when he penned it, and " aliquando dormitat Homerus.". If on a second peep at his syllogism, Conclusionista discovers (as I suspect he will discover) that it is sophistical, I trust he will expunge it from your weekly present, which professes to be a Truthteller.

J

"The Church of England (says Conclusionista) has decided, in her articles of religion, that the Church of Rome has erred

and does err, in matters of faith; but the Church of England, by her own principles, is fallible; therefore the Church of England may have erred in deciding that the Church of Rome has erred, and does err, in matters of faith." So far so good; the reasoning there is just, and that the inference is legitimately drawn none will dispute. Again. "If the Church of England (says he) may, by a possibility, have erred, in declaring that the Church of Rome has erred, and does err, in matters of faith, the Church of Rome may, by a possibility, have not erred, and actually may not err, in matters of faith; but if, by a possibility, the Church of Rome may have not erred, and may actually not err in matters of faith, the Church of England has actually erred in her declaration concerning the Church of Rome." The substance of that argument, I conjecture, is this: if the Church of Rome has not been in error in matters of faith, and is not now in error, the fallible Church of England actually erred, when she decided that the Church of Rome had erred and actually does err. Thus understood, that proposition is correct and true. But now comes the poser, in which sophistry seems to lurk. "Truth is immutable (continues Conclusionista) and necessary; that is, what may be true, cannot be false; otherwise, falsehood might be truth; but it is strictly true, and cannot be false, that, according to the principles of the Church of England, the Church of Rome may not have erred, and may not actually err; therefore, according to the nature of Truth, and ac cording to the principles of the Church of England, the Church of Rome neither has erred, nor does err actually." Thon jumpest well, friend Conclusionista! "Truth is immutable and necessary." Granted: and, therefore, what is essentially true cannot be false. From eternity it was metaphysically true, that a part is less than the whole: it never can, then, be false to say, that a part is less than the whole: from eternity it was metaphysically true, that if a fallible tribunal accuses an individual of error, the accused may still not be in error. The only justifiable conclusion from Conclusionista's grounds of reasoning is this: according to the nature of truth, and the principles of the Church of England, the Church of Rome may not have erred, and may not now actually err; though, from his premises, he jumps to the inference," the Church of Rome neither has erred nor does err actually.”

Wranglers might here, perchance, create an endless logomachy, which the undersigned will know how to avoid. If Conclusionista will devote these winter evenings to a perusal of some solid treatise on metaphysics, and will leisurely ponder the little words "may" and " do," his future arguments will be more lucid. And however much some of your readers, Mr. Editor, may be puzzled by the above argument of Conclusionista, I trust they will not imitate the ancient noodle, who drowned himself because he could not penetrate the paradox called pseudomenos: “ when a man says he lies; does he lie or does he not? If he lies, he tells the truth: if he tells the truth, he lies!" Yours, Mr. Editor, SIGMA.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE TRUTOTELIER.

SIR,-Perhaps you can spare a corner of your valuable journal for the following abstract of a curious, but pithy, dialogue between Paddy and John Bull, as it took place in consequence of the excellent Q. E. D. of your correspondent CONCLUSIONISTA. I humbly presume that it will encourage him to proceed and furnish him with amusement.

John Bull.-I say, Pat, we Protestants are English, and you are but Roman Catholics.

Paddy.—Where then was your Catholicity before Luther? John.-In the Bible.

Pat.—And where was the Bible before it was written?

John.-In the Church of Christ.

Pat.-And where was the Church of Christ when Luther

Pat. And when he said, "I believe in the Holy Catholic -Church," did he mean himself?

John.-No, Sir, but in the Church which was in the Bible. Pat.-And what Church was in the Bible?

John.-Why, Sir, the Church of England.

Pat. And sure now is the Church of England the Church of Christ?

John.-Yes, Sir, it is.

Pat. And had the Church of Christ then an existence before its own name?..

John. What do you mean?

Pat.-I mean that the land you live in was not called England before the reign of Edgar, 800 years, at least, after Christ. John. And what then?

Pat. Why that if your Church of England be the Church of Christ, it must have had a name before it was christened. John. But have not we Protestants retained the fundamental articles of Christianity?

Pat. Do you mean your Thirty-nine?

John.-Yes.

Pat.-And where did they exist before Edward and Pope Bess made them English?

John. Did you wash your face this morning?

Pat. And sure I did.

John. And where was your face before it was washed? Pat.-On my own shoulders, my honey, and you are welcome to the dirt.

This was a poser, and I would only beg leave to add in con-` clusion with honest Pat, that if Harry, Bess, Luther, and Calvin had only washed their faces, they would have been Catholic saints, not Protestant sinners. Yours, BOB SHORT.

1

(FROM THE LIMERICK EVENING POST.)

"

We have seen in the Chronicle of yesterday, a letter from Michael Quinlan, one of the seven abjurors, whose abjuration of the errors of Popery, in the Church of Adare, was sent to that paper, a post or two before; the letter is addressed to the Rev. Mr. Foley, and as its import is more fully explained in a letter we annex from the same individual, to the Rev. Dr. Ryan, it is unnecessary for us to copy that to Mr. Foley. There is something about those kind of Conversions, not at all singular, in the present state of society in Ireland, where the good things of this world are held up as temptations, to seduce or scare the feelings of a numerous and distressed population. It is laughable enough to read the pompous gravity, with which the one or two cases out of a thousand exaggerations are put forward to grace the chariot wheel of the Biblical system, and Quinlan's letter is pretty satisfactory on this head. But, what