human
When I was in Paris some time since, and was challenged to express an opinion as to the enforcement of the law against the religious orders of France, I, not to the pleasure of many of my friends, spoke out very freely that in matters of religion I would use the law against none; but your persecuting spirit may provoke intemperate men even farther than you dream. In this country, by the 10th George IV., cap. 7, secs. 28 and 29, 31, 32, and 34, you are criminally indictable, Cardinal Archbishop of Westminster. You only reside here without police challenge by the merciful forbearance of the community. And yet you parade in political contest your illegal position as 'a member of a religious order of the Church of Rome,' and have the audacity to invoke outlawry and legal penalty against me.
gpt
In the current number of the _Nineteenth Century_ you fire your last shot, and are coarse in Latin as well as in the vulgar tongue. Perhaps the frequenting Philip Callan has spoiled your manners. It also seems impossible that one who was once a cultured scholar and a refined gentleman could confuse with legitimate argument the abuse of his opponents as 'cattle.' But who are you, Henry Edward Manning, that you should throw stones at me, and should so parade your desire to protect the House of Commons from contamination? At least, first take out of it the drunkard and the dissolute of your own Church. You know them well enough. Is it the oath alone which stirs you? Your tenderness on swearing comes very late in life. When you took orders as a deacon of the English Church, in presence of your bishop, you swore 'so help me God,' that you did from your 'heart abhor, detest, and abjure,' and with your hand on the 'Holy Gospels' you declared 'that no foreign prince, person, prelate, state, or potentate hath, or ought to have, any jurisdiction, power, superiority, pre-eminence, or authority, ecclesiastical or spiritual, within this realm.' You may now well write of men 'whom no oath can bind.' The oath you took you have broken; and yet it was because you had, in the very church itself, taken this oath, that you for many years held more than one profitable preferment in the Established Church of England. You indulge in innuendoes against my character in order to do me mischief, and viciously insinuate as though my life had in it justification for good men's abhorrence. In this you are very cowardly as well as very false. Then, to move the timid, you suggest 'the fear of eternal punishment' as associated with a broken oath. Have you any such fear? or have you been personally conveniently absolved from the 'eternal' consequences of your perjury? Have you since sworn another oath before another bishop of another church, or made some solemn vow to Rome, in lieu of, and in contradiction to, the one you so took in presence of your bishop, when, 'in the name of the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost,' that bishop of the Church by law established in this country accepted your oath, and gave you authority as a deacon in the Church you have since forsaken. I do not blame you so much that you are forsworn; there are, as you truly say, 'some men whom no oath can bind;' and it has often been the habit of the cardinals of your Church to take an oath and break it when profit came with the breach; but your remembrance of your own perjury might at least keep you reticent in very shame. Instead of this, you thrust yourself impudently into a purely political contest, and shout as if the oath were to you the most sacred institution possible. You say 'there are happily some men who believe in God and fear Him.' Do you do either? You, who declared, 'so help me God,' that no foreign 'prelate ... ought to have any jurisdiction or authority ecclesiastical or spiritual within this realm'? And you who, in spite of your declaration on oath, have courted and won, intrigued for and obtained, the archbishop's authority and the cardinal's hat from the Pope of Rome--you rebuke Lord Sherbrooke for using the words 'sin and shame' in connection with oath-taking: do you hold now that there was no sin and no shame in your broken oath? None in the rash taking or the wilful breaking? Have you no personal shame that you have broken your oath? Or do the pride and pomp of your ecclesiastical position outbribe your conscience? You talk of the people understanding the words 'so help me God.' How do you understand them of your broken oath? Do they mean to you: 'May God desert and forsake me as I deserted and forsook the Queen's supremacy, to which I so solemnly swore allegiance'? You speak of men being kept to their allegiance by the oath 'which binds them to their sovereign.' You say such men may be tempted by ambition or covetousness unless they are bound by 'the higher and more sacred responsibility' involved in the 'recognition of the law-giver in the oath.' Was the Rector of Lavington and Graffham covetous of an archbishopric that he broke his oath? Was the Archdeacon of Chichester ambitious of the Cardinal's hat that he became so readily forsworn?