“I now entreat you to tell me one of your arguments why this act is unlawfull, viz., to inquire by this black art (as I am sure it is, though I am told some preachers allow it), whether such or such a suspected person has stolen a thing; viz., by putting a key into the midst of a Bible, and clasping or tying the Bible on it, and then hanging the key upon some man’s finger put into the hollow of the handle; and then one of the company saying these words—Ps. 1. 19, 20, ‘When thou a thief dost see,’ &c., to these words, ‘To use that life most vile.’ If the Bible turn upon the finger (holding it by the key) when such or such a person is named, then he is judged to be the thief. Some persons that dined at the same table with me had an humour to try this trick. I declared it was very wicked, &c., but, however, they would do it. And a gentleman of great acquaintance in the world said that a learned divine asserted it was no hurt, &c. I thought it might not be a sin for me to stay in the room, after I had made that profession of my dissent, &c. They tried what would be done; and, upon the naming of one or two, the key did not move, but on the naming of one (who afterwards was known to be an accomplice in the theft) the Bible turned on the finger very plainly in the sight of divers persons, myself being one. The gentleman that was most eager to have the experiment holds that there never were any apparitions, &c. I told him that this was equivalent to an apparition; for here was an ocular demonstration of the existence and operation of an intelligent invisible being, &c.”
[4] In his “Exposition of the Church Catechism.”
[5] Remarks upon a late “Discourse of Free-Thinking,” 1743, p. 47.
THE FIRST JESUITS IN ENGLAND.
The fate of the English Protestants, exiles under the Marian administration, was, as the day arrived, to be the lot of the English Papists under the government of Elizabeth. These opposing parties, when cast into the same precise position, had only changed their place in it; and in this revolution of England, in both cases alike, the expatriated were to return, and those at home were to become the expatriated.
During the short reign of Edward, conformity was not pressed; and notwithstanding two statutes, the one to maintain the queen’s supremacy, and the other strictly to enjoin the use of the Book of Common Prayer, through the first ten or twelve years of Elizabeth Romanist and Protestant entered into the same parish church. “The old Marian priests,” whom the rigid papists indeed afterwards scornfully decried, were wont to inquire of any one, to use their own term, “whether they were settled?” and were satisfied to lure from the seduction of a protestant pulpit some lonely waverer, if by chance they found an easy surrender. There were, indeed, many who would neither “settle” nor “waver,” and these were called “Occasionalists;” they insisted that “Occasional conformity” had nothing per se malum—that human laws might be complied with or neglected according to circumstances; so learned doctors had opined! The old religion seemed melting into the new, when the Romanists, of another temper than “the old Marian priests,” protested against this pacific toleration, and procured from the fathers of the Council of Trent a declaration against schismatics and heretics: this was but the prelude of what was to come from a final authority; but this was sufficient to divide the Romanists of England, and to alarm the Protestants, yet tender in their reformation.
The sterner Romanists gradually seceded from their preferments in the church or their station in the universities, and at length forsook the land. Two eminent persons effected a revolution among their brother-exiles, of which our national history bears such memorable traces. These extraordinary men were Dr. Allen, of Oriel College, a canon in the cathedral of York, and who subsequently was invested with the purple as the English cardinal, and Robert Parsons, of Baliol, afterwards the famous Jesuit. They left England at different periods, but when they met abroad, their schemes were inseparable—and possibly some of their writings; though it may be doubted whether the subtile and daring genius of Parsons, which Cardinal Allen declared equalled the greatest whom he had known, ever acted a secondary part.
Allen abandoned his country for ever in 1565. He soon projected the gathering of his English brothers, scattered in foreign lands; he conceived the formation for the fugitive Romanists of England of another Oxford, ostensibly to furnish a succession of Romish priests to preserve the ancient papistry of England, which was languishing under “the old Marian priests.” In 1568 an English college was formed at Douay; in twenty years Allen witnessed his colleges rise at Rheims, at Rome,[1] at Louvain and St. Omer, and at Valladolid, at Seville, and at Madrid. From these cradles and nurseries of holiness to Rome, and of revolt to England, issued those seminary priests whose political religionism elevated them into martyrdom, and involved them in inextricable treason.[2]