DR. ULLATHORNE'S PASTORAL LETTER. [From the "Times," November 28]

New Zealander, Volume 7, Issue 525, 26 April 1851, Page 3

DR. ULLATHORNE'S PASTORAL LETTER. [From the " Times," November 28]

Another pastoral! Another of those singular documents by which the members of the new-fangled Roman Catholic hierarchy, while they seek to deny their arrogant pretensions and intolerant spiut, afford the surest anil most conclusive evidence ol both ! We are sorry to observe that the author of the composition we are now adverting to, the Key. Dr. Ull.uh.orne, styling himseUißibhop of Birmingham and Administrator oi the diocese of Nottingham, has allowed many drops of the vinegar ot contioversy to mingle with the oil which he lately sought, through the medium of our columns, to pour upon the troubled waters. Nothing, certainly, can be better than the advice he gives to the inhabitants of the dioceses of Nottingham and Birmingham. Confide in God, he saya, stand firm, return not evil for evil, endure with patience, pray for them that persecute you, and a good deal mote in the same style, which is never wanting to lound oft an ecclesiastical peroration. We confess ourselves, however, somewhat fearful that the matter of the uastotulwiU

scarcely be likely to promote those amiable feeling! which it is avoweilly designed to produce. Feelings aid impulses, love and haired, patience and impatience, calmness and fmy, are, after all, far more likely to result from the topics dwelt on, nnd the manner of treating them, than from mere exhortation or dehorta* tion. It is very well to tell people to be calm and patient, but it is to be feared that the effect of the admonition may be somewhat more than cancelled by surh observations as the following, — " The rage of unbelief is unchained against us. We hae seen our holiest, our dearest, our moit saving truthi, blasphemed befoie the ignorant crowd ;" alluding, we suppose, to the tinderbnx of Guy Fawkes, the red stockings of the Cardinal, and the triple tiara of the Pope. For what else hai been blasphemed by deed', we really do not know. But to proceed. '' We have heard the First Minister of the Crown pouring; out snch contempt as a frail mortal can against the most holy and sanctifying gifts of our dearest Saviour." So far at we can understand Lord John Russell's letter, these " gifts" must mean the assumption of power in this realm by the Popp, for that is the only Roman Catho'ic practice he censures. The "mummeries of superstition" spoken of in the concluding sentence clearly refer to Tractarian practices, which, being attempts to force the ritual of the Church of England to a lame and imperfect imitation of the Church of Rome, are justly despised as miserable nrd meaningless counterfeits by the sincere members of both. But there is one more topic of conciliation which this holy man suggests, doubtles-. with the view which he professes of moving his flock to calmness, long suffering, and charity. Tho Jews, he says, insisted that Jesus was a King, and in vain did He reply, His kingdom was not of this world. They insisted He had confused His spiritual with their temporal power, and on this plea they crucified Him. We had thought that the temporal power of Judea was at that time in the hands of the Romans, and that the Jews, being aveiss, to the spiritual teaching of the Founder of Christianity, induced Pilate to put Him to death, by a false accusation that He aimed at temporal sovereignty. But, he this as it may, can anything be imagined mure calculated to arouse evil and rerengeful passions than what we will not scruple to call a blasphemous parallel of this natme, which teaches the Roman Catholics to regard their ca>e as similar to that of the Redeemer of mankind, and the conduct of the unanimous nobility, e'ergy, and people of England as only to he paralleled by that of His picked and relentless murderers 1 This writer seems to use the mo-t holy mysteries and the most awful events to give point to his most scurrilous invectives, with the same course indifference as he would parade their representions in our streets. We do not believe since the time of the Reformation there as ever appeared in this country a document so scandalous bearing the signature of a Christian bishop. It is no trifling aggravation of the insult which our country has received that, instead of the calm, decorous, and orderly documents in which we have been wont to receive from time to time, the solemn warnings of our venerable and learned prelates, we have the mortification to see aflKed to furious invectives and flimsy misstafements, — to libels on our nation and our faith, the names of persons claiming to derive their dignity, as ecclesiastical princes, from our most venerable and historical localities. The argument of this pastoral has nothing new in it. It is vadem versibus iisdem. We will not weary our readers with refuting what we have already sufficiently answered when put forward by a far abler hand. It is one of the expudients of this writer, in order, we snppose, to allay irritating feelings, to treat the question as if the Roman Catholics were exposed to persecution, and he is at some paini to prove, from, history, that peisecution only consolidates the faith against which it is levelled. Unhappily, the history of his own church affords but too clear a proof that this hacknied remark is not true. The first attempt to reform the Catholic Church was effectually put down for two centuries by the murderous decrees of the Lateran Council against the Albigenses. The bright dawn of the Reformation in Italy was checked, even to this day, by the burning of Savonarola and many of its other leaders. The Inquisition so thoroughly put down Protestantism in Spain, that the greatest part of the population (according to Mr. Burrow,) have heard of no Reformation since the time of Luther, and beliere Protestantism to ha a species of Judaism. In France, the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, which the Church of Rome, not then of Dr.Ullathorne's way of thinking, commemorated by a medal, and the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, have effectuully put down Protestantism. Nor has the Roman Catholic Church any great reason to exult at being herself proof against that persecution of which she has been ho liberal to others. The cimeter of the Moslem has severed her hold on Asia and Africa. The Greek Church has wrested from her the vast countries of Eaitern Europe, and the sword of her own Cardinal Richelieux emancipated from her contiol Prussia and the North. Let not then Dr. Ullathorne put his trust in his ability to defy persecution, but rather in the notorious fact that from persecution in this happy lslaud he has nothing to fear. Equal civil rights to all of his faith, the freedom to teach what doctrines and perform what ceremonies he will, will be secured to him by the generosity of the nation which he has foully libelled, but from that species of what he calU persecution, which consists in vindicating our Crown from the insult of a foreign Prince, in freeing the dominion of our church from the intrusion of unauthorized strangers, and in wiping" off from our land the reproach of yielding to foreign influence, which the very signature of his inauifeito conveys — horn such so-called persecution as this we warn him he is not secure : the stake, the rack, the dagger, we leave to those " infallible" hands which, having once employed them, are bound to maintain the continual lawfulness of their employment ; but we will not suffer our toleration to be misconstrued into indifference, or the spirit and genius of our constitution tobe frittered away byaggiession, which threats liberality as supineness. Let Dr. UUathnrne imagine, if he can, on the faith of history, which he dare not quote, that the foundations of his episcopal chair will only be consolidated by the intet ference of the State. We tell him that the days o( his episcopate are numbered ; that it is not because bis chair is built upon a rook, but merely because his appointment has been adrotly made during the recess of Pailmtneni, that he is in the enjuyment of that seat the foundations of which he dreams are eternal, and that, though it be not in the power of our Leeislature to prevent him fiom having been the first Roman Catholic Bishop of Birmingham, it will most assuredly be their will, and be completely in their power, to provide that he *hall be the last.

At the late rnniversaiy of Robert Burns' dinner at New York, Mr. Bryant, the poet, contributed a sentiment:— •' The Popular Poetiy of Scotland— a perennial fountain at which the genius of Modern Eughbh poetry drinks, and is refreshed."

False Rkasoning Illustrate d.— " Sambo, whar you get dat watch you weal to meetin' last Sunday ?" " How do you know I hah watcli." " Bekase I seed de chain han£ out de pocket in front." "Go 'way, niggei ! Spose you see halter 'round my neok, you tmk d,,r is hoise'inside ob me V'-N<w York Journal