The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1839-08-16 00:00:00

TO DANIEL O'CONNELL, ESQ., M.P.

LETTER No. II

" Now the spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter times some
shall depart from the faith, giving heed to seducing spirits and doc-
trines of devils—speaking lies in hypocrisy. having their conscience
seared with a hot iron." 1 Tim. iv. 1, 2.

SlR,—Though your letter to the Methodists might afford
scope for a small volume, if the principles were examined
seriatim, and brought to the test of truth, I have promised
but to write on your Bibles ; and time only permits me to
redeem the pledge on this subject.
You attack the Methodists for objecting " to use versions
of the Holy Scriptures notoriously corrupt and unfaithful,
and accompanied by notes which they consider contain most
absurd and pernicious doctrines."
Your first point of attack is the notes, and on this you
say—" It is quite true that there was an edition of the
Rhemish or Douay Bible that contained notes, in which the
civil power was sought to be justified in inflicting persecu-
tion for religious dissent. But there are, indeed, very few
copies in existence containing such notes, and all the copies
in use by the clergy, or in use in Catholic schools, colleges,
or private houses, are quite free from any such notes."
There is not, I believe, one other man in the British em-
pire that would have the public effrontery, deliberately to
condense so many falsehoods into one single sentence. You
begin that sentence with the words—" It is quite true," and
you know as well as I know that there is not one syllable
of truth from beginning to end of it. You pretend to make
a concession to the Methodists, that there was " an edition"
of this Bible with these notes—while you know in your heart,
that within these fifty years there have been no less than
three editions of that infamous book published in this
country. You know there was one printed in Liverpool for
Patrick Wogan, of Dublin, in the year 1789. You know
there was another commenced in the year 1810, under the
patronage of nine of your bishops ; and as they dared not to
publish it openly, lest it might injure their efforts to gain
temporal power, you know they had it distributed among
subscribers through all Ireland in numbers and parts from
1813, till it was discontinued through the bankruptcy of the
printer in 1814. You know that five hundred copies of the
unfinished work were completed and published by Mr. Cum-
ming in 1816. You know that the patronage of your bishops
in general for the work was not then fully detected, and that
it came out nominally under the approbation of Dr. Troy.
You know that this edition being then published, and its
villainy exhibited, Dr. Troy, abjured it, as you yourself also
pretended to do, in 1817. You know that Richard Coyne,
in vindication of his own character, was obliged to convict
Dr. Troy, openly of direct falsehood. You know that while
Dr. Troy was thus abjuring it before the public, he and
eleven other of your bishops, (of whom his coadjutor, Dr.
Murray, was one,) were patronising a fresh edition of this
same book, then printing in Cork, which was completed in
1818, and distributed, as before, among subscribers, amount-
ing to more than 3000, through all Ireland. You know this
process was going on, and this work successfully distributed
and concealed till the year 1836, while Dr. Murray was
giving in evidence before the committee of the House of
Commons in 1825, that it was not circulated under the
patronage of any bishop or priest in Ireland! You know
every syllable of this. You dared not, when publicly chal-
lenged, as I now challenge you again, to meet or disprove
one tittle of the evidence for these facts ; and with all this
full in your view you have the impudence to write to the
Methodists. "It is quite true that there was an edition,"
&c. Has not God justly branded on the brow of that guilty
apostacy, which you are labouring to defend, the character
that belongs to her—" speaking lies in hypocrisy, having
their conscience seared with a hot iron,"
Again, Sir, you say of these notes that in them " the civil
power was sought to be justified in inflicting persecution for
religious dissent." Now, you know, as well as you know
your existence, that this is totally untrue. You try by this
pretended admission to get rid of the truth that the spiritual
tyranny of your intolerant superstition is the real author and
agent of persecution and murder, and to make it appear as if
it was merely the civil power that was to bear the crime :
whereas, you know, while it is true that your church calls the
secular arm to her aid when she can do so, still in these notes
the spiritual power is set up as above all temporal authority,
and goads it on to persecution, and that the spiritual power is
to command the secular power. You know this, Sir—it is
your religion to believe it.
And on December 4th, 1817, when it was your interest to
give another version of this story, your own words were,
that you "would not remain a Catholic an hour longer if
you thought it essential to the profession of the Catholic
faith to believe that it was lawful to murder Protestants, or
that faith might be conveniently broken with heretics. " Yet
such," said you, " are the doctrines laid down in the notes
to the Rhemish Testament." Such was your own statement
as to these notes in 1817, and let the Methodists compare it
with the smooth, lying gloss that you try to put upon them
now.

Again, Sir, you proceed—" But there are, indeed, very
few eopies in existence containing such notes." The whole
body of subscribers, whose names and residences are given
in the book itself, with twelve of your bishops, and some
hundreds of your priests at their head, rise up as one man to
prove the utter falsehood of your assertion. I have had
myself in my own possession, within these last three years,
no less than eleven copies of this Bible and Testament,
printed at Cork in 1818. There are in the city of Dublin
alone three hundred and fifty subscribers' names, with your
Primate of that day, Dr. O'Reilly, Dr. Troy, and Dr. Mur-
ray at their head, and you have the audacity to write in the
face of these facts to the Methodists, that " there are, in-
deed, few copies in existence containing such notes !! !"
What is it that possesses you to sit down and write such un-
blushing, deliberate, inconceivable falsehoods ? Is it that
you flatter yourself hey will not be detected? or that if they
are the exposure will never be commensurate with the ex-
tended circulation of the lie, so that you gain thereby the
advantage that ten will believe the lie for one that will ever
see the truth ? Is it that you feel a genuine pleasure in the
commission of the crime ?—ls it that like the use of opium,
spirits, or tobacco, the inveteracy of the habit has made it
necessary to your existence ? Is it that you are so thoroughly
drilled by that " best guide," which Dr. Murray has given
his priests to direct your conscience in the confessional, that
the principles of your education have become the instincts
of your nature ? or is it that you so expect the prayers and
blessings of the church in proportion to your zeal in main-
taining her principles, that provided she is to be benefited by
the falsehood, you are equally ready to assert it in the press,
to affirm it on the platform, or to swear it in the House of
Commons.
You proceed—" All the copies in use by the clergy, or in
use in Catholic schools, colleges, or private houses, are quite
free from any such notes."
Here, again, you knew as well as you knew you had a pen
in your hand when you wrote that sentence, that it was a
pure, deliberate untruth. As to your clergy—you knew
your bishops and priests had patronised, subscribed to, and
propagated these notes not only as true, but as the infallible
interpretation of the church, while you assert that "all the
copies in use among your clergy are free from them."
Then as to private houses—again the list of subscribers
convicts you of falsehood in this.
Then as to your colleges—you have the effrontery to make
a statement which I suppose even the porters at Exeter-
Hall, are by this time too well informed not to know to be
destitute of truth ? What, sir, is not the commentary of
Menochius, the class-book of your students at Maynooth ?
Is it not printed for your college? Does it not lay down the
murder of heretics, and refer its readers to Maldonatus, for
more specific directions for the slaughter of them ? Is there
even in the Rheimish Testament one single note so atrocious
in murder and treason against heretics and heretical princes,
as the one note in Maldonatus on Matthew xiii., the parable
of the wheat and tares ? and with these books, the standard
authority and class-books of the College of Maynooth, re-
turned as such by your own professors—(for they could have
no course of theology to return as taught in your church, that
is not a course of cruelty and crime)—with all this which you
know to be so true, that you dare not meet one tittle of the
proof, you have the impudence to tell the Methodists, in
your letter, that " all the copies in use in your colleges are
quite free from such notes ;" and you have the still more
unblushing audacity to write to them about the people of the
British empire contributing to the support and propagation
of popery, as if it were not at this moment an outrage on all
religion, principle, justice, and common sense—that the
Protestant population of the country should be actually taxed
to maintain a college for educating men not only in idolatry
and superstition, for the destruction of the souls of our coun-
trymen, but in principles for the invasion of our religion, for
the subversion of our throne, for our own slavery, or our own
extermination. Sir, I tell you the government of England
is both weak and wicked for permitting one shilling of the
public money to be expended to educate either priests or
people in popery. It is their duty to maintain schools and
colleges with God's Holy Word as the foundation of all public
instruction, and let the people profit by them, if they please.
But it is utterly false and absurd to say that it is the duty of
a government to prevent or punish the crimes of an unfortu-
nate and guilty people, while they pay the public money to
educate a set of priests to train that people for the perpetra
tion of them.

Again, Sir, you say—" The Catholics, one and all, have
repudiated these notes and the doctrines they contain,"
Now, there is not one living man that knows the falsehood,
the, thorough falsehood of that assertion so well as you do
yourself; and this, because while you have had the effron-
tery to assert it befo.ie, the falsehood of your own assertion
has made you appear contemptible and ridiculous.

You made this same assertion in the year 1817. Do
you remember your pretence to get your committee to
disclaim these notes? Do you remember your resolu-
tions? Do you remember your amendments? Do you
remember your bluster about getting up an aggregate meet-
ing? Do you remember all your parade and all your mock-
ery, and how neither meeting nor committee, nor one single
Roman Catholic was ever produced to join in your imposture
on the Protestant public ; and how you sneaked off into an
adoption of the address, drawn up by Mr. Eneas M'Don.
nell ? If you wish to see the detaiLof yout.own contenaptibig
shuffiings, equivocations, professions, pretences, deceits and
falsehoods on the subject, I refer you to your own confes-
sions, under your own hand, in that miserable exhibition of
weakness and folly which you addressed to the Rev. Mr,
Page, in the shape of a letter, dated July 30, 1836. You will
find it in the Morning Chronicle of August 2d that year ; or
if the editor has had sufficient compassion for you to cancel
that paper on his file, you will find it carefully preserved in
my preface to the notes of this same Bible and Testament,
page lviii.
But it was not only at that time that you were rendered so
ridiculous by your impotent efforts to get the Roman Ca-
tholics to verify your assertion, but even three years ago, in
1836, when you attempted to write a review of the proceed-
ings at Exeter Hall, and when the exhibition of the treachery
and v illainy of your bishops made it necessary for you to at-
tempt something in their defence and your own. What an
example did the editor of the London and Dublin orthodox
journal, himself a Roman Catholic, make of your duplicity
and folly that year, in his number for August ! He says your
" feelings got the better of your reason."
He says, after quoting your statements as to those notes,
that " he must stop to breathe, and cool the indignation that
boils within his veins "—that he has " proved your positions
to be false and libellous"—and so far from admitting, that
he rejects or repudiates these notes, he says, speaking of this
last edition of 1818—" The notes were designated by the
modern publisher, and truly so too, the eloquent, copious,
and instructive notes or annotations." They have been the
text book of Catholics for two centuries and a half; and is
it to be one moment supposed, that this learned and elabo-
rate work would have been allowed to circulate without con-
demnation by the proper authorities, if the exposition of the
sacred and mysterious word had been other than sound and
orthodox, and neither atrocious nor damnable, as they are
termed in another place of this review ?
He quotes Dr. Milner's authority to corroborate his state-
ments as to the character of these notes, and he says " They
were written to defend and maintain the orthodox Catholic
faith and the pure principles of morality, and if the language
used is grating to the ears of modern liberals, it is because
it speaks plainly and calls things by their right names."
Such is the language of this Roman Catholic writer. This
fellow is an honest son of the church ; he confesses her text

book ; and though it is perfectly true, and though you know'
it to be true, and though it places you in a position so tho-
roughly contemptible, yet you have the impudence to repeat
the falsehood for which you have been so properly chastised,
and to tell the Methodists that "the Catholics, one and all,

have repudiated these notes and the doctrines they contain.'
When you add, " No man ever repudiated and condemned
them more loudly than I do." True—most true ; I admit
the fact of your denunciation ; but you do not suppose the
Methodists such fools as to believe it, even though you have
not thrown the additional doubt of having given your oath
upon the subject. I wonder at the editor of the orthodox

journal—if he was indeed such a simpletonato-suppose
you sincere in your attack upon the notes, and not to see
that your devotion to the church led you to labour for her
interests, which were involved at the time—by denying in