ad them to withdraw from all other instructions. Not
being Papists, the men will become practically infidels. But the case is
far otherwise for the Irish people. Government is not summoned to provide
any part of an improved equipage for an Irish religious establishment.
That is done, or done sufficiently. Whether as Protestant or Catholic,
every man has access to religious instructions and religious consolations.
There is no call to improve the quality of the priestly ministrations;
for, considering the quality of the doctrines and usages which are
essential to Popery, we do not believe that the Irish priesthood is much
open to improvement as a machinery for carrying out its own indefeasible
purposes. To raise the standard of respectability at Maynooth, would not
alter the character of the creed which Maynooth teaches. And when it is
said that, with a higher education, the Romish priesthood would be more
likely to breed schism or incipient reformation within their own order, we
doubt greatly as to the interpretation of the facts upon which that
speculation is grounded. The Reformation, which shook the sixteenth
century, did not arise, (as we see it alleged,) because Luther or
Melanchthon was so much above the standard of monkish education. Men quite
as extensively learned as they, and even more highly endowed by nature,
had but the more passionately undertaken the cause of Papal Rome in
consequence of those great advantages. Luther was strong in the strength
of his forerunners. The men of Luther's age _inherited_ the zeal and the
light kindled by three centuries of growing truth. And what put the crest
and plumage upon the aspiring hopes of that period, was the providential
madness of Rome, and the towering altitude of her corruptions, which just
then, from mercenary causes, soared aloft more audaciously than ever
before. In the present state of the Papal church, and under the new hopes
which we shall point out further on, as just now opening upon her, it is
more than ever improbable that any laxity of discipline at Maynooth, or in
the general government internally of the Irish church, will be suffered to
leave openings for heresies to arise. Essentially, Rome is aware that, for
the next half century, beyond all the churches of earth, she will be a
church militant. Escaping decay during that critical period from the
immense diffusion of _general_ knowledge, [but of knowledge not by any
means concurrently connected with spi