always in danger, as having a powerful enemy to encounter." The design of this is, that she may constantly alarm the State for her safety, and thus secure her ill-got and enormous wealth, preserve her arrogant exclusiveness, and give vent to her cold, calculating, yet furious intolerance.

The principal enemy' by which she is now beleaguered is 'liberality, the parent and the patron of modern infidelity,' who is the great leader of the hosts of Romanism so busily employed at this moment, some in sapping the foundation, and others in carrying the citadel.

As there is some ingenuity in getting up this fiction, which, in proportion as it is believed, becomes in the eyes of many a tremendous reality, it may not be amiss, so far as it is the work of Mr. Irons, to unravel the device. Let us approach the formidable monster; for, however appalling in the distance, its terrors vanish before a nearer approximation.

To the monstrous evils inherent in the Church of Rome, and to the withering power with which infidelity, where it prevails, throws its desolating blight over the fairest fruits of human virtue and happiness, we cannot be insensible; nor do we wish to abate the salutary horror with which they ought to be regarded. But is this indeed the time for their creating serious alarm? Is the era of light the season most favourable to the perpetration of the works of darkness? What is Romanism, as a religion? In this view, what hold has it upon the popular mind? What is it as a Church? Should we be aware of its existence, if the political and civil wrongs of the Irish Catholics were redressed? So far as the Church of England prevents the fair and equitable settlement of the momentous questions which these wrongs involve, Romanism is opposed to her; or rather, Roman Catholics, feeling themselves despoiled by her rapacity, and degraded by her arrogant ascendancy, will never rest satisfied till, as men and Britons, they obtain for themselves just and true liberty, ---equal and impartial liberty. Our holy religion' (meaning Christianity, and not the prelatical, tithe-loving, and rate-demanding hierarchy of England) has nothing to dread from the subtlety or the zeal of Rome; and so far as the Church of England is really Protestant and not political, she is equally secure. What she holds by injustice and maintains by violence, will be wrested from her grasp by the spirit of the age and the force of public opinion. But Romanism and Deism, as such, will have nothing to do in achieving the glorious victory. And after it is achieved, what interest can either the one or the other possibly have, in seeking the destruction of a Church which will then no longer stand between them and the enjoyment of their rights and privileges as men and citizens? Romanism can have no quarrel with her corruptions of doctrine, her ceremonies, in so many respects identical

with its own, her opus-operatum sacraments, and the apostolical descent of her absolving and denouncing priesthood, the dispensers of the Holy Ghost, and the arbiters of human destiny. Indeed, so nearly does the semi-papistical Church of England approximate in spirit and character to the Church of Rome, that if either Church possessed wealth enough to satisfy the luxury, pride, and pomp of both, there exists little, we apprehend, of just cause or impediment to prevent their union. "Liberalism', Mr. Irons tells us, is the parent and the patron of 'modern infidelity." We have been accustomed to trace it to another origin. Liberalism, meaning latitudinarian opinions and an equal indifference to all creeds, is not the precursor of infidelity; it usually succeeds some violent conflict between this power and superstition, and, as a moral calm, is probably more dangerous than the tempest in its utmost fury. This, we imagine, is not the liberalism intended by Mr. Irons: what he means by it is the searching and uncompromising spirit of the age, which refuses to tolerate the venerable abuses of the Church of England, which will not admit the exclusiveness of her claims, which would compel her to draw her support from her own resources, to abandon the tithes and rates, the one ruinous to the commercial and agricultural prosperity of the country, and the other founded in injustice, and fraught with every evil which threatens the disorganization of society;-the liberalism which maintains that the Bible, the Bible alone, is the religion of Protestants, and which will not allow any Church to deprive the members of other com munions, whether Catholic or Protestant, of their civil and social equality. With this liberalism, infidels, or the rejectors of the Christian Revelation, are far more at variance than they can be with any secular establishment of Christianity. These are the institutions which supply them with their strongest arguments against religion, nor would they willingly consent to the removal of one of their abuses. The Gallican Church gave to France and to Europe her Voltaires, D'Alemberts, and Diderots, while she retained among her highest dignitaries their admirers and disciples. Atheism is bred in religious establishments; and if these establishments have large prizes to awaken the cupidity of ambition, and if these be at the disposal of mere worldly and political patronage, we can see nothing in the principles of infidelity that would deter infidels from wearing the clerical and even prelatical habits. Nor would they be the first or the only wolves that have appeared in sheep's clothing. We put it to Mr. Irons, whether he does not believe, that thousands of infidels are nominal members of his Church; and whether, if that Church were to reform herself into a spiritual institution, he is of opinion that one of them would remain. Infidelity is a parasite; it is not in its nature to stand alone. It finds its best support and most

congenial nourishment among the sacred nooks and crevices of temples and altars, where the presiding deity is Mammon. Edifices, ostensibly reared to the honour of the Christian Redeemer, but really dedicated to the god of this world, and built by his votaries, engender, in their very foundations, the seeds of a most prolific infidelity, which at length not only covers the walls, but penetrates through the entire mass.

If there be at this moment among our people a species of infidelity which assumes the attitude of hostility to true religion and the Divine mission and character of Christ, and which at the same time renounces all connexion with every portion of his visible church, then we may be perfectly sure that it is not for Romanism, as the antagonist of the Church of England, that such avowed infidels contend. All churches are alike to them; and they only so far act in concert with the Romanist, as his views on civil and political questions are in accordance with theirs.

We are a little surprised that policy does not induce the clergy of the Church of England to moderate, rather than to exaggerate their statements on the growth and progress of Popery and Infidelity. What are such statements but bills of indict ment drawn up against themselves? It was when men slept that the enemy sowed tares; and it is because the clergy of a richly endowed Establishment have been notoriously deficient in the discharge of their sacred functions, that Romanism and infidelity have among us a local habitation and a name.' Protestantism, with more wealth at its command than any church in Christendom, with twenty thousand clergy, all paid and employed to enlighten the people, and to root out by the diffusion of religious knowledge every form of delusion and error, and with a clear stage for its operations for three hundred years,-comes forward in the face of Heaven to tell the world of its utter inefficiency. Nor does it shrink from the humiliating confession, that the Cas naanites, that so long since ought to have been driven out of the land, have grown into a formidable host, at whose approach it cannot conceal its terrors.

Mr. Irons is anxious to impress his readers with the belief, that Deism, under the garb of liberalism, is an enemy far more to be dreaded even than Romanism, with which it is in such close alliance; for he more than insinuates, that the greater number of the advocates of liberal measures, both in and out of Parliament, with all the leaders political and literary, are infidels. The war against our holy religion began with the Catholic concessions; and with what fearful catastrophe it will terminate, he does not dare to trust his speculations, though his prophetic soul seems to apprehend the worst:- coming events cast their shadows before.?

The sum and substance of all this Tory balderdash seems to

be this: Justice to Ireland must not be conceded. The people and priests, because they are Catholics, must be regarded as Helots; and every attempt to govern them on the liberal principles to which the union of the two countries entitles them, must be denounced as an infidel movement to subvert the Christian religion, meaning thereby the Protestant Church. Every effort of Catholics to emancipate themselves from the Protestant yoke of bondage must be condemned as a struggle for political and ecclesiastical ascendancy; and every statesman that aids them in the good cause must be stigmatized as an unbeliever, who has not only denied the faith, but is engaged in actual warfare against it. This is Mr. Irons's device to preserve the rankest abuses of his church, and to secure untouched all the ancient sources of her temporalities.

But this is not the avowed design of his Work, which is a Dissertation in three parts, On the whole Doctrine of Final Causes;'—a subject for the consideration of schoolmen and metaphysicians in the quiet seclusion of the study, far apart from the stormy regions of politics and all the scenes which excite and agitate the passions. But what will our readers think, when we assure them, that the leading object of the book, and which is scarcely lost sight of through its successive pages, is to shew up the Deism or the infidelity of Lord Brougham; while the Author frequently adopts his Lordship's principles and arguments, differing from him only on some unimportant points, where he either misunderstands or misrepresents him? If nature is not to be appealed to for the purpose of working out some notices of her Divine Author, and of arriving at some conclusions from the exhibition of so many great and wonderful works, which are profanely baptized with her name, why do the Scriptures so often affirm a Natural Theology, and so much more frequently proceed upon its admitted principles ? If this be indeed no more than a fictitious science,' why has Mr. Irons undertaken the consideration of the whole question of Final Causes, which, in fact, includes the science of which he speaks so disparagingly? It would be well if Mr. Irons were seriously to consider how far Coleridge's Doctrine of Reason, as distinguished from the Understanding, is at variance with some of the assumptions of Lord Brougham. After all Mr. Irons's special pleading against his Lordship's belief in Revelation, will he venture to say, that the noble Author any where insinuates that Natural Theology contains in any proper sense a religion,—or that it renders such a divine system as Christianity unnecessary or improbable? It appears to us, as far as it regards revealed religion, and when politics and party feelings are out of the question, that Mr. Irons and Lord Brougham are equally concerned to press upon their readers, from their different views of final causes, the necessity of a Revelation.

Take Mr. Irons's minimum, so to speak, of Natural Theology, and it shews this necessity take, if you please, Lord Brougham's maximum, and it only carries us a little nearer to the object, and, as we think, adds strength to the conviction, that nature discovering so much and no more, a direct communication to man, revealing his duty and his destiny, is not only indispensable to his happiness, but infinitely probable. Mr. Irons establishes Lord Brougham's infidelity so successfully, that his reasoning fixes the same imputation upon Dr. Paley.

It would have afforded us much pleasure, could we have dwelt on other portions of this very clever, but, we must also add, very pretending publication, at the length which their intrinsic value would seem to justify. The most superficial mind must perceive that Mr. Irons undertakes to treat subjects confessedly beyond the grasp of an ordinary intellect, and which require in their elucidation various and profound learning, great astuteness, much hard thinking, and an extensive acquaintance with the history of metaphysical science. These qualifications Mr. Irons possesses in a degree highly creditable to his talents and industry; and if he has indeed read the authors, ancient and modern, he quotes so copiously, his application at college must have been prodigious. His controversial dexterity appears in the following animadversions on Dr. Paley's well-known illustration of the watch. We have no dispute with him as to the general conclusions which he derives from it in support of his particular argument; while he knows as well as we do, that the principle which Dr. Paley assumes, remains untouched, and is capable of being maintained by any given fact, of a less complex nature, which might awaken the curiosity, and compel the admission even of a savage, that what manifests design leads inevitably to the admission of Creating Intelligence.

'It is supposed, that in passing over a heath a man might strike his foot against a watch, and, though he had never seen one before, might, from an examination of its various and nicely adjusted machinery, conclude, that "its parts are framed and put together for a purpose, e. g., that they are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the day;" &c.

In this case, says Paley, The inference is inevitable, that the watch must have had a maker; that there must have existed, at some time and at some place or other, an artificer, or artificers, who formed it for the purpose, which we find it actually to answer, who comprehended its construction, and designed its use. This case is contrasted triumphantly with the accidental notice of a stone, which, it is presumed, would exhibit no fitness of parts, or adaptation to an end. It is not my intention to dwell on this assumption, further than to remark, that it might on analysis appear, that the parts of the stone had a mutual fitness, as well as those of the watch. A minute investigation might make it appear, that the proportions in which the parts of that stone combined, followed a numerical law of exquisite sim