The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1838-01-16 00:00:00

THE PRIESTS BROUGH"1"r0 THE TEST.

TO MR. THOMAS MAGUIRE, ROMAN CATHOLIC PRIEST.
Dublin, January 3d, 1838.
_

Sin,—Although your conduct, your malicious personal slan-
ders, your disingenuous evasions, and your blasphemies, have
totally disentitled you to notice from any fair controversialist,
from a Christian or a gentleman, vet, having pledged myself to
call you to account for your speech delivered in July, at Glas-
gow, as soon as my convenience permitted ; and still more,
being anxious, according to my moderate ability, to use every
faithful effort to deliver my Roman Catholic fellow-subjects
from the awful system of tyranny and imposture under which
they are unconsciously bowed down—l now address you to
redeem my pledge, and to put you, for the last time I shall
ever hold any communication with you, to the test before the
people, who shall see now where real evasion lay, at the time
when you skulked away, from my public and repeated chal-
lenges.

You know your tact well, sir, and I know mine. You want
to mystify and cloud all truth from the people—l want to try and
make it plain before them. I have sent you challenges from
which you have fled. You have shuffled, quibbled, and evaded,
and tried to change them to others, knowing well that you dare
not stand upon the Bible; and you have tried to taunt and in-
veigle me to follow you where you know you could entangle the
minds of the people among all the sophistries and quibbles in
which you are so well trained. You have fled like a hunted fox
to a rabbit warren, where he knows he can pop into a thousand
holes and baffle his pursuers, from whom, with all his wiles,
he cannot escape in the open plain. But I mean not to say that
it is a trial of skill between us. No, sir, lam not the power
with whom you have to contend; If I felt I were, I would
shrink from contest with you or any other man. You have to
contend with your maker; it is His truth, His eternal word that
is arrayed against you. It is with that word, sir, I seek to bring
you into collission, that if it be the will of God, when you feel
your impotence to encounter it, you may repent and tremble to
think how you shall appear at his awful tribunal; or, if you
shall continue hardened in your apostacy, that if it please God,
the, people may be rescued from the cruel bondage in which
they are enslaved. Mark, sir, my object is to obtain liberty
of conscience and salvation for Roman Catholics. If their
consciences are not to be oppresssed by Protestants, neither
are they to he blinded by tyrannical priests. If it is not just
that they should be made civil slaves by us, neither is it just
they should be made spiritual slaves by you. The Roman
Catholic laity are sincere—they really and honestly believe in
the existence of the authority by which their priests govern
them—the priests are all deceiving them—they know it to be all
a cheat; the people submit, believing the delusion; the priests
practice on their credulity, knowing the imposture. The peo-
ple are the persons aggrieved—the priests are the oppressors;
the people are all the victims—the priests the wilful tyrants.
Let the people fix their eyes now on you and all the priests. If
you prove yourselves honest men—if you prove that you are
sincere--if you prove that you do not know you are imposing on
the people, then let me bear the blame, and do you go on and
prosper, and the Roman Catholics will know whether you or
I have been mocking them.
I have laid the principle on which I challenge you in the
columns of the Scotti,h Guardian, before the Protestant Associ-
ation. at Glasgow. My brethren of the Church of Scotland will
hold a public meeting on the 24th or 25th of this month, if it
pleases God to spare us; if you and your brethren will answer
the challenge, and meet the case, then you shall have half the
tickets for Roman Catholics, who shall hear for themselves;
they shall see how far their honest, unsuspecting confidence is
mocked, and how far the priests will attempt to bring to the
proof the imposition they practice on the people. I challenged
you, sir, befhre on several points; now, for the sake of brevity,
I reduce these points to one. I take one single article of your
' creed of Pope Pius IV., which the people implicitly believe,
but which you well know to be an imposition The article 1
allude to is this—" I also admit the Holy Scriptures according to
that sense in which our Holy Mother, the Church, has held and
does hold them, to whom it belongs to judge of the true sense and
interpretation of the Scriptures, and I will serer take and inter-
pret them otherwise than according to the unanimous consent of
the Fathers.''

Now, Sir, I challenge you before the inhabitants of Glasgow,
(this letter shall appear, if it please Providence, in their press,)
explicitly and distinctly to answer these plain questions :—First
—I challenge you to answer, directly to the question, Is that
article true, or is it false? Answer distinctly—lt is tine, or con-
fess it is false. Secondly—lf you say it is true, then I challenge
youY to pledge yourself to appear, with any nuntber of priests
you please, not exceeding six—(Bishop Murdock and all the
Priests of Scotland shall be specially invited to send you help)
—I challenge you and all your brethren, to take the Epistle of
St. Paul to the ancient Church at Rome, and give to the people
" the sense in which your Holy Mother the Church has held and
does hold" that epistle, and it) which sense you declare you re-
ceive it. If there is no such sense, your article is false; if you
are unable to give the sense of your church—if you never saw
or knew of such a sense; but if you know it has no existence,
then you know the article is false—you and your fraternity de-
liberately impose on the people, and while the unfortunate laity
of the Church of Rome surrender their right, as rational beings,
to judge of the word of God being taught—that it is impious or
even dangerous to do so, instead of submitting to the judgment
of the Church, and white they think that you, Priests, know the
judgMent of the church, and teach them according to it; and
that Yin hearing you, they hear the church, you, Priests, all know
that it is.an imposition on the people; you know you have no
sense of your church for yourselves, and none for the people;
but you keep this bugbear, this base pretence, this cruel impos-
ture over them, as a mighty power to fright them lest they
read the Holy Scriptures, and thus be emancipated front your
trammels. Thirdly—Sir, if you admit that the article is false—
that you are unable to stand before the people, and give your
church's sense and interpretation of this epistle—then, since
yowcannot stand as a priest of the Church of Rome, to give
your church's interpretation, I challenge you, and any number
of your fellow priests, to stand forward and give an interpreta-
tion on your private judgments which is all you have to give of
that portion of the Word nt. God--I challenge youto find iu theancient religion of that Holy Church, as taught by the apostle
Paul, any of the superstitions which the Council of Trent added
to the Nicene Creed. Prove your church conformable in her
principles to
i that epistle, as a priest, by your church's interpre-
tation; or, f you are unable to do this, prove it as a private in-
dividual, by your own.
Now let the people mark, that they may see the imposture of
their priests; let them keep, the point clearly in view • let theta
mark to what you are challenged, and let them mark' what you
dare not answer, and what von dare not do. Your are chal-
lenged toanswer—Question-lst.—ls it true that you receive the
Holy Scriptures according to that sense in which your holy
mother the church has held and does hold them ? Answer
this—l do receive them so, or Ido not. Challenged to answer
question 2d.—lf you hold them according to the sense of the
church, will you pledge yourself to stand forward with any
priest or priests on the platform at Glasgow, on the day speci-
fied, and give to the people the sense of the Apostolic Epistle
to the ancient church of Rome, which your church holds, and
in which you receive it. Answer this—l will pledge myself to
do so, or I will not. Challenged to answer question 3d.—lf
you cannot give the sense of your church of this Epistle, will
you pledge yourself to stand forward with any priest or priests,
and give your own interpretation of it to the people ? If you
are compelled, as you must be, to confess that the sense of your
i
church s a mere imposture on the people, then dare you pledge
yourself to give an interpretation on your own private judge-
ment or not ? Answer now distinctly—l will pledge myself to
give, my own interpretation, or I will not.
Now, I tell you, Sir, you shall be held, with the blessing of
God, to this challenge, as closely as ever man was held to any
principle. No quibble, no lie, no sophistry, no evasion shall
avail you—no chanae of terms or challenge shall profit you;
answer it distinctly and directly you must and shall ; or, if
not, then I trust that my reverend brethren and I will be able
plainly and faithfully to show the reason why you do not do so
to the Roman Catholic laity on the platform at Glasgow.—
I will, if it pleases God to spare me, read this challenge
there; and if you do not answer it explicitly, and stand forth
pledged to maintain your answer, then I hope the people will
see whether their true friends are those who wilfully and deli-
berately impose on them, and not meet facts in their presence,
or those who, through all reproach, and slander, and male-
vrilence, come forward determined, in God's strength, to tell
them the truth of the gospel of their salvation. Now, Sir, fur
preliminaries. You must appear at least with one priest, or it'
you please with half-a-dozen. You shall exhibit to the people
the unity of the church, whether in her interpretation or your
own. Again, Sir, as to your speech at Glasgow. Before you
commence your interpretation, you shall have one quarter of
an hour to repeat in my presence, on the public platform, if you
dare, the personal slanders of me and my profession, and my
ordination, which you presumed to utter in my absence. You
shall have one half hour to repeat and prove from Dens's
Theology, the deliberate and intentional misstatements which
you both made in Dublin in your pulpit, and in Glasgow at
your public dinner, as to Protestants not being counted heretics,
and which yon had the impudence to say I suppressed.
I shall take the same time (three quarters of an hour) to an-
swer
you on both, and my answer and your charge shall
i go be-
fore the public. Again, sir, you put forth a challenge n your
speech at Glasgow thus :—" Dare any of the holy trio," (meaning
Mr. M‘Neill, Mr. O'Sullivan, and myself,) "who have jalready
come here to cheat the public,. to nourish their prejudices by '
abasing their credulity, meet me in Glasgow to canvass or gain-
say my arguments in favour of confession, of sacramental con-
fession ? "Phis is my challenge to their foul, lying, slanderous
accusations. (Immense cheering.) Now, sir, I distinctly and
explicitly accept your challenge if you dare to accept mine, and
to place the proof on its true and solid basis. I assert that your
sacramental confession, as you call it, is a lie in principle, and
a damnable tyranny in practice. I say it was not instituted by
Christ—l say it was not preached by the Apostles—l say it was
not practised in the ancient holy apostolic Chula at Route, no
nor in any other Christian church; and if you dare to give your
church's interpretation of that Epistle, or if you admit your
creed to be false, as it is, and dare to give your own in regular
consecutive order, I say you can neither find such an imposture
as sacramental confession, nor prove it from beginning to end of
that Epistle; and I will undertake to prove, not only that it is I
not there, but totally irreconcilable to the Gospel of Christ, and
the glorious scheme of man's redemption, through our Lord
and Saviour, as taught by the holy Apostles. Finally, sir,
choose your associates—you must have one, you may have six.
I shall be happy to take my stand with my brethren of the
Church of Scotland in Glasgow— you shall see the difference
between Protestant unity and Papal unity. We will give you
and your priests an hour each if you like to give, alternately,
sour church's exposition; or, if you cannot do so, your own.
We shall give our expositions alternately after you. and prove
s our ignorance of the Gospel,of Christ, and the lying refuges
which Popery 'substitutes for man's salvation instead of the
righteousness and hind of the Redeemer. We shall prove the
loctrines of salt in the Church of Scotland true, and in
•he Church of En and true; and we shall prove they agree
t nit the Word of Gml, and with each other--and your confes-
4i/sus, your masses, penances, unctions, purgatories. to be lying
fictions for the profit of the priest, and the slavery and ruin of
'he souls of the people. Trusting that God will bless ibis and
ill efforts to vindicate His Sacred Truth against the falsehoods
ind tyranny of the Papal Anti-christ, I am, sir, a sincere and ;
itldul friend to the best interests of my Roman Catholic'
countrymen, R. .1. 11`ilt-11,E.

The black lead mine, near Keswick, has lately bees more
productive than for many months previous, and some very
choice pieces of metal have been brought to the surface.