103
— Thus have they closed their eyes, lest at any time," &c. There is a passage of so much point and accuracy in Meagher's own work, that although I have seen it quoted in some place before, I am tempted to repeat it. It refers to Purgatory. "Upon the whole, then, it is evident, that the doctrine of Purgatory is of heathen original; that the fire of it is, like the thunder of the Vatican, a harmless thing which no wise man would be afraid of, were it not too often attended with Church — thunderbolts, persecutions, and massacres; and that it only serves to cheat the simple and ignorant out of their money, by giving them bills of exchange upon the other world, for cash paid in this, without any danger of the bills returning protested." — P. 90.
VI. The honest and acute O'Conor, D.D. (we might perhaps call him another convert), in his Historical Address, &c. Part I., 1810, p. 128, has strikingly corroborated the fact of the submission to Papal literary proscriptions in Ireland. "Can we wonder at it," (the disappearance of fugitive pamphlets at a particular period), "when we find the learned Lynch expressing scruples, whether he can read Sir Richard Belling's excellent defence of the
