N.
[There is no authority for the insertion of the word "not," that we can find, either in MSS. or commentators. As to the oversight of the printer or editor we cannot speak; but are rather inclined to attribute that and other emendations to the second-sight of one of the parties concerned. Our correspondent will find Dr. Conquest's emandated Bible ably criticised by one of the best Hebrew scholars of the day in the Jewish Intelligencer, vol. ix. p. 84.]
Replies.
BELLARMIN'S MONSTROUS PARADOX.
(Vol. iv., p. 45.)
The defence of Cardinal Bellarmin set up by your correspondent J. W. CT. is not new, and is exceedingly plausible at first sight. Allow me, however, to direct the attention of your readers to the following reply to a similar defence, which I take from the Sequel to Letters to M. Gondon, by Dr. Wordsworth, Canon of Westminster, pp. 10. 11.:
"I would first beg leave to observe that my three reviewers, in their zeal to speak for Cardinal Bellarmine, have not allowed him to speak for himself. They seem not to have remembered that this very passage was severely censured in his life-time, and that in the Review which he wrote of his own works, by way of explanation, he endeavoured to set up a defence for it, which is wholly at variance with their apologies for him. He says, 'When I affirmed that, if the Pope commanded a vice or forbad a virtue, the church would be bound to believe virtue to be evil and vice good, I was speaking concerning doubtful acts of virtue or vice; for if he ordered a manifest vice, or forbad a manifest virtue, it would be necessary to say with St. Peter, We must obey God rather than man.' Recognitio Librorum omnium Roberti Bellarmini ab ipso edita, Ingolstad, 1608, p. 19. 'Ubi diximus quod si Papa præciperet vitium aut prohiberet virtutem, Ecclesia teneretur credere virtutem esse malam et vitium esse bonum, locuti sumus de actibus dubiis virtutum aut vitiorum; nam si præciperet manifestum vitium aut prohiberet manifestam virtutem, dicendum esset cum Petro obedire oportet magis Deo quam hominibus.'
"This is his own defence; let it be received for what it is worth; it differs entirely from that which the reviewers make for him."
It would occupy too much of your valuable space to insert the whole of Dr. Wordsworth's observations, which, however, every one who is desirous of thoroughly investigating the subject, ought to read and consider.
TYRO.
Dublin.