P BUTLER.

(Vol. vii., p. 528.)

"Charity thinketh no evil;" but we must feel both surprise and regret that
any one should, in 1853, consider it a doubtful question whether Bishop
Butler died in the communion of the Church of England. The bishop has now
been in his grave more than a hundred years; but Warburton says truly, "How
light a matter very often subjects the best-established characters to the
suspicions of posterity--how ready is a remote age to catch at a low
revived slander, which the times that brought it forth saw despised and
forgotten almost in its birth."

X. Y. Z. says he would be glad to have this charge (originally brought
forward in 1767) _sifted_. He will find that it has been sifted, and in the
most full and satisfactory manner, by persons of no less distinction than
Archbishop Secker and Bishop Halifax. The strong language employed by the
archbishop, when refuting what he terms {573} a "gross and scandalous
falsehood," and when asserting the bishops "abhorrence of popery," need not
here be quoted, as "N.& Q." is not the most proper channel for the
discussion of theological subjects; but it is alleged that every man of
sense and candour was convinced _at the time_ that the charge should be
retracted; and it must be a satisfaction to your correspondent to know,
that as Bishop Butler lived so he _died_, in full communion with that
Church, which he adorned equally by his matchless writings, sanctity of
manners, and spotless life.[4]

J. H. MARKLAND.

Bath.

[Footnote 4: Your correspondent may be referred to _Memoirs of the Life of
Bishop Butler_, by a connexion of his own, the Rev. Thomas Bartlett, A.M.,
published in 1839; and to a review of the same work in the _Quarterly
Review_, vol. lxiv. p. 331.]

In reference to the Query by X. Y. Z., as to whether Bishop Butler died in
the Roman Catholic communion, allow me to refer your correspondent to the
contents of the letters from Dr. Forster and Bishop Benson to Secker, then
Bishop of Oxford, concerning the last illness and death of the prelate in
question, deposited at Lambeth amongst the private MSS. of Archbishop
Seeker, "as negative arguments against the calumny of his dying a Papist."

Than the allegations that Butler died with a Roman Catholic book of
devotion in his hand, and that the last person in whose company he was seen
was a priest of that persuasion, nothing can be more unreasonable, if at
least it be meant to deduce from these unpr