and in order that where his poison has reached, an antidote may be soon at hand. It will be found to contain a close examination of both the above works; principally, however, following the text of the "Poor Man's Preservative against Popery." It must be observed, that the plan of both Mr. White's books is much the same; as is the order pursued in each. The latter is little else than a reduction of his larger work to a cheap form, and a more intelligible style for the unlearned; and as might be anticipated, it vilifies the Catholic Faith in terms more undisguised and unsparing. Every thing material in both works shall be noticed in the present publication.

The Poor Man's Preservative" contains four Dialogues between Mr. White. and his reader. The title of the first Dialogue is as follows: "An account of the Author; how the Errors of the Roman Catholic Church made him an Infidel; and how, to avoid her tyranny, he came to England, where the knowledge of the Protestant Religion made him again embrace Christianity." The account which the author gives of himself is extraordinary enough: the reader will do well to attend closely to its outline; and judge if the subject of it can be at all a competent exposer of Catholic Faith or Discipline.

It appears from the account in both works, that Mr. Joseph Blanco White was born in Spain, though of Irish extraction: that at the age of fourteen, he decided on studying for the Church, and was ordained priest at twenty-five. Soon after he was made a chaplain to the King of Spain, and obtained all the other honours enu

merated in the title given above from his larger work. About two years after, or somewhat less, he became an absolute infidel; and though he had renounced Christianity in his heart, as he himself tells us, he continued for ten years to perform all the duties of a priest, to teach with the basest hypocrisy what he did not believe, to receive the confidence of numbers in the sacred tribunal of confession, who gave it, as they thought, to a faithful minister; and, in fine, to carry on a complete system of deception upon innumerable unsuspecting Christians. At last, in 1810, he came to England, where he proceeded by a curious route to the ministry of the loaves and fishes. He tells us that he was first moved by hearing a hymn sung in a church in London, which must have been powerful indeed to move a man who had heard and recited so many hundreds of hymns in the course of his ministry in Spain, and was proof against them all. Then he took a very simple method, as he says, to work round to Christianity again: he said the Lord's Prayer every morning for three years! A simple method truly, and much simpler and lighter to flesh and blood than having to say the same Lord's Prayer more than a dozen times a day in his Breviary; besides a great number of hymns, psalms, lessons, prayers, and antiphons. In three years then, about the year 1814, he became a Clergyman of the Church of England, subscribed the Articles, and became tutor to the son of a Nobleman. What Catholic will envy the Church of England the possession of such a man? what Ca tholic will not rejoice that such a deceitful shepherd should cast off the sheep's clothing, and

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thereby an end be put to his cruel imposition and devastation among the unsuspecting faithful? The Church of England, however, was losing this precious prize; for, after professing himself a Protestant, this very consistent man tells us, that he was again strongly tempted in his faith, and inclined to Unitarianism; and in such a degree that "he feared his Christian faith. had been extinguished." However, he settled again to the Church of England, and this is the outline of the history of this valuable acquisition to the establishment.*

Mr. White is very anxious to make it appear, that immorality and levity did not prepare the way for his renunciation of Christianity. "I declare" he says, "most solemnly, that my rejection of Christianity took place at a period when my conscience could not reproach me with any open breach of duty, but those committed several years before." What is this but an acknowledgment that vice did prepare the way for his infidelity? He has told us that, at the age of fourteen, he was very pious and virtuous: he rejected Christianity about the age of twentyseven; so if he had committed open breaches of duty several years before, it is clear from his own account, that during the important years of collegiate retirement and preparation for the sacred ministry, he was guilty of open sins; and it is easy enough to understand how so unworthy a preparation might justly deserve a subtraction of

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*What would Swift have said of such a Popery"? His usual remark was: I wish, when the Pope weeds his garden, he would not throw his nettles over our wall!"

divine Grace, and might cause him to fall, by little and little, into the gulf of infidelity. The most deplorable falls from Faith are not always immediately consequent upon immorality; but. the secret judgments of God are often working their slow but certain vengeance; and those open breaches, which Mr. White acknowledges to have committed before his ordination (to say nothing of secret sins, which he does not disown), may. indeed have deserved, by an ordinary judgment of the Almighty, the loss of the precious gift of Faith soon after it. Faith, as Mr. White knows and declares, is a supernatural gift, and he will never persuade us that the God of goodness and justice would have deprived him of that precious gift, and left him to fall into infidelity, if he had been as immaculate in morals as he would have us believe. His own evidence condemns him clearly on this head, and places it beyond all doubt, that his progress to unbelief was not different from that of so many before him; who (as F. O'Leary used to say) "never laughed at their Catechisms till they had lost their innocence." He tells us that he read the works of able French authors, against infidelity, and other works of the same kind, and that he preached an elaborate. Sermon against unbelief; yet all in vain-he soon after bordered on

*The occasion of this Sermon, Mr. White tells us, was the coming of a Royal Brigade to worship the body of Saint Ferdinand. Why did Mr. White employ this word, which he knew is usually understood of supreme adoration due to God alone, and never paid by Catholics to the Saints? This is a fair specimen of the disingenuousness and insidious misrepresentation of the Catholic Religion throughout the two works.

Atheism. Can any one believe, that a man of sincere piety and upright moral conduct, would have been left thus to sink into the absolute denial of Christianity?

At page 11 of his Preservative, Mr. White, speaking of a neighbour who boasts of being an infidel, says, that he feels quite assured, that if the man would "abstain from open sin, and pray daily to his Maker to lead him into the Truth, he would soon become a sincere Christian." How comes it then, that the same means did not preserve Mr. White from leaving Christianity? Probably he found that it is not enough to abstain from open sin; if he even did so much. The grace of God is too fatally lost by secret sins, which do not openly appear to men, but are avenged by Him "who searcheth the reins and the heart.'

To extenuate his own apostacy, Mr. White would have it believed that a great portion of the Spanish clergy are unbelievers in their hearts. There was a Judas among the Apostles; and it is no wonder if there are bad Priests among the Clergy of any country. It is in the economy of Providence to suffer tares among his corn, and to "let both grow till the harvest" but it will not be believed on the testimony of an apostate, that a great portion of the Clergy are tainted with infidelity. The assertion only shews what kind of company Mr. White kept in Spain.

But it is time to examine what were the weighty arguments which overturned the belief of Mr. Blanco White. The Catholic will be surprised and amused to find, that the grave and important reasoning which shook this writer