tried by great persecution, and that has surmounted great difficulties, obstacles, and discouragements, and, by the kindness of Christian friends in Protestant England, the author hopes to raise such a sum of money, by the sale of his book, as will enable him to endow his church at Birr, to which he purposes returning, and which, he makes no doubt, he will rescue from the grasp of the Dublin Presbytery, who have unjustly obtained possession of it.

PREFACE.

THE object of the following Narrative is to glorify God, and to edify the Christian world, by showing how the Almighty was pleased to call me by his grace, out of the darkness and bondage of popery, into the marvellous light and liberty of the glorious gospel of his Son; whilst thousands of my clerical brethren are still left in the Church of Rome, to perpetuate the errors, superstitions, and, it is much to be feared, the soul-destroying delusions of the new, unscriptural, and anti-catholic Tridentine Creed, on the credulity and simplicity of their too confiding and unsuspecting countrymen, and to die, in all human probability, in the communion of that great apostacy; whose rise and progress have been foretold by St. Paul in the second chapter of his second Epistle to the Thessalonians, and whose final overthrow and destruction St. John has predicted in the 18th chapter of his Revelation. The object of the following humble and unpretending narrative is to show, that popery is still unchanged and unchangeable, (an infallible church can never change)—that it is the same monster of bigotry, persecution, and intolerance, that it was in by-gone days, when it trampled on the necks and rights of kings; and that if it had political power, (and our rulers are enabling it by multiplied concessions to regain its lost ascendancy in this country,) it would rekindle the fires of Smithfield, revive the horrors and sanguinary atrocities of the Marian per

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secution, and again shed the blood of the saints, and the blood of the martyrs of Jesus. The object of the following plain, unvarnished, and undisguised narrative, is, to dissipate the cloud that at present hangs over the Birr reformation, to show how, and by what means, my church and congregation at Birr were put in connexion with the Dublin Presbytery, and to remove all doubt and suspicion from the minds of my Protestant brethren, both in England and Ireland, who are rather surprised, that after having, for the period of fourteen years, earnestly contended for the faith which was once delivered unto the saints, nobly resisted the spiritual despotism and domineering assumptions of the Roman hierarchy, struggled against the inroads and encroachments of arbitrary power, opposed the exercise of opulent oppression, and braved the terrors of the bayonet and the jail, I should at last have deserted my post, fled from the field of honourable danger, abandoned my church and congregation at Birr, and taken a curacy in the Established Church of this country. That in the following narrative all is happily conceived, and accurately polished, that there are not many faults and imperfections, I have not confidence in my abilities sufficient to warrant; but thus much I may be permitted to say without arrogance or presumption, that its statements are established upon unalterable truth, and that, upon a fair and impartial examination, its principles will be found to be in strict accordance with the eternal and infallible word of God. In my remarks and observations on the compulsory celibacy of the Roman Catholic clergy, I have quoted from the Book of the Church, and in vindicating the Birr reformation from the illiberal and malignant charge of schism, I am indebted for assistance to the very able and learned controversialist, Dr. Stillingfleet. In conclusion, to use the words of the great and good Dr. Johnson, “I must remain accountable for all my faults, and submit,

without subterfuge to the censure of criticism, which, however, I shall not endeavour to soften by a formal deprecation, or to overbear by the influence of a patron. The supplications of an author never yet reprieved him a moment from oblivion, and though greatness has sometimes sheltered guilt, it can afford no protection to ignorance or dulness."

Having hitherto defended the cause of truth, I will not now disparage it by the confession of terrors which I do not feel; having laboured to maintain the dignity of virtue, I will not now degrade it by the meanness of dedication.