Second Letter to Bev. J?xanei«. p.. Kenrlck ^opkine - 1843. CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE SAGE ENDOWMENT FUND GIVEN IN 1891 BY HENRY WILLIAMS SAGE A SECOND LETTER TO THE RIGHT REV. FRANCIS P. KENRICK, ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF PHILADELPHtA. BY JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D. D. BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE- OF VERMONT. SECOND EDITION, WITH A POSTSCRIPT. BURLINGTON, VT: CHAUNCEY GOODRICH. 1843. The original of tiiis book is in tine Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029406539 SECOND LETTER TO THE RIGHT REV. FRANCIS PATRICK KENRICK, BOHAir CATHOLIC BISHOP OF FaiLADELFHIA. BY JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D. D. BI9H07 OF THE DIOC]ES£ OF VERMONT. SECOND EDITION. BURLINGTON, YT: PUBLISHED BY C. GOOODRICH. S. FLETCHER, PRINTER. 1843. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1843, by CHAUNCEY GOODRICH, in the Clerk's office of the District Court, for the District of Vermont. A SECOND LETTER, &c. Right Reverend Sir: Your answer to my letter, I must frankly confess, has dis- appointed me. Considering your Address to the whole body of our bishops, however well intended, as a serious assault upon our ecclesiastical integrity, impeaching, alike, our con- sistency as Christians, and our honesty as men, I invited you to an open and public discussion of the doctrines contained in the well-known Thirty-nine Articles, which involve not only the profession of our faith, but the condemnation, in many important points, of yours. And I proposed this course, because I thought it was the most direct and effect- ive-mode of defending those principles, to which we stand so solemnly pledged, and thus — so far as my humble agency was concerned — of freeing the Church from a most injurious and unjust aspersion. On the other hand, it secured to you an equal opportunity to substantiate your charge, and con- vict us, if you could, first, of having undertaken to reform what needed no reformation, and next, of having become weary of our task, and covertly desirous to return to the Roman Communion. Placed, therefore, as I conceived you to be, in the position of a public accuser, my desire was to bring your accusation, in the fairest manner, to the test of public proof. And I did not see how, according to the usual maxims of justice, you could, with propriety, decline the appeal. 4 But you have declined it, and in terms which substantially repeat the accusation ; totally regardless of th6 denial so dis- tinctly expressed not only by myself, but by many of my more worthy colleagues. And you seem to think that enough is conceded by your proposing the substitute of a written discussion, offering the columns of your organ, the Catholic Herald, for my communications, on condition that yours shall be printed in the Churchman, a periodical belonging to another diocese, and over which you must surely be aware that I have no control. This proposal on your part demands an explicit answer, and I shall avail myself of the occasion to notice the other points, whether of alleged fact or of ar- gument, presented by your letter. You commence by re-iterating your views of the Oxford Tracts, as a perfect justification of your strange and extrava- gant call upon us to forsake our principles and our ordina- tion vows, in order to unite with the Church of Rome. " There had arisen," you say, " in a leading University in England, a class of divines, in communion with the Estab- lished Church, who, in the re-examination of the topics of former controversy, had yielded, one by one, almost everi/\. ground of dispute; and there had just appeared a pamphlet, professing to reconcile the Thirty-nine Articles with the doctrinal decisions of the Council of Trent, and styling the Pope, Head of the Catholic world. The influence of that class of divines was known to be felt very widely throughout the ministry of the Establishment, and their ef- forts had met with marked encouragement from the laity. Astonishment seized all at the rapid strides with which they had advanced towards the ancient faith, and it was thought that they could not stop at the portals of the tem- ple. On this side of the Atlantic, their views had found favor, and a leading hebdomadal, on the first news of the' appearance of Tract No. 90, had ventured to provide for contingencies, by stating that the Articles could not be di- rected against the definitions of Trent, because they were composed before the close of that Council. There was clearly manifested by some a strong sympathy with Oxford, and the Thirty-nine Articles did not appear to be an insuperable bar- rier. Paley had taught me that the English Legislature, in requiring subscription to them, never could have meant-to bind the conscience to assent, since it was not to be expect- ed that a countless succession of men should implicitly as- sent to a number of Articles embracing so many details. It had been said that they were Articles of peace, and not of faith ; that they were not enjoined on the laity as terms of receiving baptism or communion ; and that the ministri/, ■without scruple and without censure, preached doctrines either manifestly opposed to the Articles, or in themselves conflicting, and grounded on a two-fold interpretation of them." You proceed to state that " there had not been, as yet, any general expression of the views of American Epis- copaHans on the subject of the Oxford doctrines, but several dignitaries were known to cherish them, and already, in va- rious quarters, disciplinary improvements had been intro- duced, in harmony with them." Under these circumstan- ces, you " respectfully submit that it was not altogether ex- travagant to solicit the bishops of our communion seriously to review the grounds of controversy, and generously to make those advances which might secure for so large a number of our fellow-Christians, the inestimable blessing of unity." Now here, Right Reverend Sir, although the proposition, which you made to us in your first Address appears under a very favorable modification, yet even in its preseiit shape, I must call it unauthorized and unfair. Not, however, because we have the slightest objections "seriously to review the grounds of controversy," or "to make those advances" towards unity which belong to the exhibition of truth, in contradistinction from error. On the contrary, we are always ready to review the principles which we maintain, in the firm consciousness that they will bear, and amply reward, the closest examination. But while we are both willing and pre- pared to confer and to discuss, in the service of what we hold to be the undefiled Gospel of Christ, we cannot be insensi- ble of the gross injustice which assumes that we have already deserted our profession, and asks us to join your standard upon the very ground that we are traitors to our own. That such is the plain and unsophisticated meaning of the passage which I have just quoted from your letter, is too manifest for equivocation. You charge the Oxford divines with having yielded, one by one, almost every ground of dis- pute. You say that they have published a pamphlet reconcil- ing the 39 Articles with the Council of Trent, and calling the Pope the Head of the catholic world. You assert that on this side of the Atlantic, those views have found favor, and that several dignitaries are known to cherish them. And you state it as if it were the settled doctrine of the Church, that the Articles are not Articles of faith but of peace only, and that our ministry, without scruple and without censure, preach in opposition to them. Let me first, then, disprove those charges by some counter-statements from the writings of these much-calumniated Oxford divines. Next, I shall adduce your own favorite Bishop Milner's authority against you, on the subject of the 39 Articles. And after I shall have ex- hibited my proofs on thus much of your letter, you will un- derstand why I regard you as a public accuser, and why I sought to repel, in the most direct form, the charges which ^ou have thought fit to bring against us, not only without, but in the face of all competent evidence. I shall commence by quoting from the Oxford Tract No. 71, (page 76 of the Am. Ed.) what may be termed a general statement of the design with which a large portion of those Tracts was written. " This, be it observed," saith the author, " is proposed as the chief object of this series, viz. to erect safe and substantial bulwarks for the Anglican believer against the Church of Romfi, to draw clear and intelligible lines, which may allow him securely to expatiate in the rich pastures of Catholicism, without the reasonable dread, that he, as an individual, may fall into that great snare which has bewildered the whole Latin Church, the snare of Pope- ry. And it is conceived that the foregoing citation from Usher proves thus much at least, that Romanism is not the pure creed of antiquity, and that the tenet of Purgatory, in particular, is but the gradual creation of centuries, and has no claim on our consideration." From Tract No. 38, (Vol. 1. of Am. Ed. p. 281,) I shall next transcribe a list of what the author terms "irreconcile- able differences with Rome as she is." "I consider," says the writer of this Tract, "that it is unscriptural to say with the Church of Rome that we are justified by inherent righteousness." " That it is unscriptural that the good works of a man justified do truly merit eternal life." "That the doctrine of transubstantiation, as not being revealed, but a theory of man's devising, is profane and impious." " That the denial of the cup to the laity, is a bold and unwarranted encroachment on their privileges as Christ's people." " That the sacrifice of masses, as it has been practised in the Roman Church, is without foundation in Scripture or an- tiquity : and therefore is blasphemous and dangerous." " That the honor paid to images is very full of peril in the case of the uneducated, that is, of the greater part of Chris- tians." " That indulgences, as in use, are a gross, monstrous in- vention of later times." " That the received doctrine of purgatory is at variance with Scripture, cruel to the better sort of Christians, and ad- ministering deceitful comfort to the irreligious." " That the practice of celebrating divine service in an un- known tongue is a great corruption." " That forced confession is an unauthorized and dangerous practice." 8 " That the invocation of saints is a dangerous practice, as tending to give, often actually giving, to creatures, the honor and reliance due to the Creator alone." " That there are not seven Sacraments." " That the Romish doctrine of tradition is unscriptural." " That the claim of the Pope to be universal Bishop is against Scripture and antiquity." " I might add," says the writer, "other points^ in which also I protest against the Church of Rome." And then he pro- ceeds to ask the significant question, " Which uses the stronger language against Popery, the Articles, or I ?" In Tract No. 20, (Am. Ed. I, p. 136,) we read as follows, viz. With Rome, " alas ! A union is impossible. Their communion is infected with heresy ; we are bound to flee it as a pestilence. They have established a lie in the place of God's truth; and by their claim of immutability in doctrine, cannot undo the sin they have committed. They cannot repent. Popery must be destroyed ; it cannot BE reformed." From the writings of Rev. Dr. Pusey, whose name has been so absurdly attached to the whole system of the Oxford Tracts, I transcribe the following extracts. " From the time that the Church of Rome began to for- sake the principles of the Church Catholic, and grasp after human means, she began also to take evil means for good ends, and, incurring the apostolic curse on those who do evil that good may come, took at last evil means for evil ends. She, the Apostolic Church of the West, consecrated by Apostolic blood, shewed herself rather the descendant of them who slew the Apostles, and ' thought they did God ser- vice,' stained herself with the blood of the saints, that on her might come all the righteous blood which was shed within her; even of the Apostles who had shed blood for her. There is not an enormity which has been practised against people or kings by miscreants, in the name of God, but the 9 divines of that unhappy Church have abetted or justified." (See Pusey's sermon on the Fifth of November, p. 29.) And again, in the same discourse, p. 31, we read as fol- lows, viz. " The principle of the Roman Church was expedi- ency ; it was a plotting, scheming, worldly spirit, having at first God's glory for its end, but seeking it by secular means, and at last, in punishment, left to seek its own glory, and set itself up in the place of God." ' And yet again, in his work on Baptism, p. 201, the same writer uses the following language : " Alexandria, the bul- wark of the faith in the Holy Trinity, and North Africa, of the unmeritedness of God's free grace, a desolation ! I^ome, once characterized for steady practical adherence to sound doctrine, a seat of Antichrist ! " Nor does tlie Rev. J. H. Newman, considered by many as the very chief of the Oxford school, display a more indulgent spirit of forgetfulness towards the characteristics of your Church, as may be plainly shewn by the following nervous passage in his work on Romanism, p. 102. " We must take and deal with things as they are, not as they pretend to be. If we are induced to believe the professions of Rome, and make advances towards her, as if a sister or a mother Church, which in theory she is, we shall find too' late that we are in the arms of a pitiless unnatural relation, who will but triumph in the acts which have inveigled us within her reach. No ; dismissing the dreams which the romance of early Church history, and the high doctrines of Catholicism will raise in the inexperienced mind, let us be sure that she is our enemy, and will do us a mischief if she can. For in truth she is a Church beside herself, abounding in noble gifts and rightful titles, but unable to use them religiously ; crafty, obstinate, wilful, malicious, cruel, unnatural, as madmen are : or ra- ther, she may be said to resemble a demoniac, ....ruZed within by an inexorable spirit." Nay, Mr. Froude himself, when further observation and reflection had corrected his earlier views, writes thus : " The 2 10 Romanists are wretched Tridentines every where," — " I NEVER COULD BE A RoMANiST." The Council of Trfint he calls " the atrocious Council," and says, " it has altogether chang- ed my notions of the Roman Catholics, and made me wish for a total overthrow o/" their system." (Remains, vol. 1, p. 34, p. 308.) I shall close these brief extracts by a quotation from Tract No. 90, (Am. ed. p. 79,) taken from the same page on which occurs the phrase, " the Bishop of Rome, the head of the Catholic world," marked in your letter by capitals, as pre-eminently worthy of observation. " The Gospel ministry," says the writer, " began in Christ and his Apostles : and what they began, they only can end. The Papacy began in the exertions and passions of man ; and what man can make, man can destroy. Its ju- risdiction, while it lasted, was ' ordained of God ; ' when it ceased to be, it ceased to claim our obedience, and it ceased to be, at the Reformation. The Reformers, who could not destroy a ministry which the Apostles began, could des- troy a dominion which the Popes founded." The writer proceeds to state, in the following lucid terms, the true idea of Church unity. " The Anglican view of the Church has ever been this : that its portions need not otherwise have been united together for their essential completeness, than as being descended from one original. They are like a num- ber of colonies sent out from a mother country. — Each dio- cese is a perfect independent Church, sufficient for itself; and the communion of Christians one with another, and the unity of them altogether, lie not in a mutual understanding, intercourse, and combination ; not in what they do in com- mon, but in what they are and have in common : in their pos- session of the Succession, their Episcopal form, their Apos- tolic faith, and the use of the Sacraments. Mutual intercourse is but an accident of the Church, not of its essence." Now these extracts from the very writings of the men to whom you appeal, are more than sufficient to show the utter 11 extravagance of your assertion, that in the re-examina- tion of the controversy with Rome, they had yielded, one by one, almost every ground of dispute, and had proposed to reconcile the Articles with the Council of Trent, styling the Pope the head of the catholic world. This last phrase does, indeed, occur, in the latter part of Tract No. 90 ; but taken in connexion with the rest of the argument, on the same page, I am unable to conceive how any candid mind could have been misled by it for a moment into the idea, that the author held your doctrine of the papacy. Hence I maintain that the Oxford divines themselves, so far from having yielded, one by one, almost every ground of dispute with the Church of Rome, have recorded in the strongest language — the stronger from its calmness — their condemnation of Popery, and the impossibility of uniting with it, under any conceivable circumstances. For they are even hopeless of its reformation. Their language is : " Popery cannot be reformed, it must be destroyed." If you are willing to accept such declarations, as the voice of praise, it passes my ingenuity to imagine what you would call the voice of censure. I am, indeed, aware that the Oxford Tracts have created no small alarm throughout the Church of England, on ac- count of the tendency which many of them were believed to have displayed towards Romanism ; a tendency very na- turally exaggerated by the extreme sensitiveness of the Dis- senters, as well as of a large proportion of the Church itself, to the slightest movement in that direction. I grant, too, most willingly, that there has been a warm sympathy in this alarm amongst a highly esteemed class in our own ranks. And for myself, I must add, that while I cherish a deep and cordial admiration of those Tracts in many respects, and have no doubt of their extensive usefulness, particularly in England, yet I dissent from several of the opinions which they maintain, and should be obliged, in a variety of instan- ces, to modify, before I could adopt, their statements of doc- 12 trine. For the fears entertained of their soundness, among Protestants, however, it is easy to account. You cannot be ignorant that few amongst us apply ourselves to a thorough examination of the papal system, and therefore great allow- ances should in justice be made for apprehensions, which, even when unfounded, are at least thought to be on the safe side. But the apology which justice would suggest for the accusations of Dissenters, and of that class of our own cler- gy who have expressed the same disapprobation, can have no proper application to a case like yours. A Roman Cath- olic Bishop must know Popery too well to suppose, for a mo- ment, that the tone of the Oxford Tracts indicated a readi- ness in the Church in England, much less in the United States, to unite with the Church of Rome. And therefore, while, on my own part, there has been an earnest effort to give you credit for sincerity, I cannot wonder that the pre- vailing impression with others should be the very reverse. For it cannot be denied that both your Address and your letter seem to harmonize, in perfect concord, with the subtle policy which has marked the course of your European brethren ; affecting to patronize the views of the Oxford divines, in or- der to inflame the accusing spirit against them, and thus de- rive as much advantage as possible from the old maxim Divide and conquer. Your views of the authority which we attach to our own accredited system, as contained in the 39 Articles, next de- mand a brief consideration. You make no difficulty of charg- ing us roundly with being so recklessly indifferent to these, that we not only regard them simply as Articles of peace, but even violate that very peace by preaching contrary doctrines without scruple and without censure. The exceeding cool- ness with which you cast this gross aspersion upon our wfTole body of divines, merits especial admiration. Let the an- swer be given to it by your own favorite, the Roman Catho- lic Dr. Milner, where, in his well known "Letters to a Preben- dary," he strenuously defends the authority of the Articles, 13 and on that very ground triumphantly exposes the unprinci- pled latitudinarianism of Hoadly. For as that highly gifted, but dangerous man, had openly maintained that nothing more was required of the clergy than to declare their assent and consent to the use of the Book of Common I'rayer, &c., whatever might be their opinion of the contents of it, Milner assserts most justly that there was no pretence for such an evasion, and quotes the Act of -Uniformity as well as the work of Burnet on the 39 Articles against him. And then Milner goes on to argue as follows : " Supposing, how- ever, that nothing more were required of a subscriber than barely to make use of the Book of Common Prayer, with what conscience could he, for example, read the several pas- sages in the Communion Service, and teach the Catechism contained in it, concerning the mysterious efficacy of the Sacraments, believing in his own conscience at the same time, that they are mere positive rites, productive of no such effect at all as is there ascribed to them ? And when all this is got over, what will Hoadly and his disciples say to the subscription they are required to make unfeignedly and ex animo, that all and every one of the 39 Articles are agree- able to the word of God." (p. 339 of Am. Ed.) Again, after referring in a note, to the 5th Canon of the English Church, which declares : " Whoever shall affirm that any of the 39 Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, let him be excommunicated ipso facto," he asserts, in capital letters, that " Bishop Hoadly had, by his doctrines, un- dermined THE Church, of which he was a prelate." I can hardly suppose you ignorant of the victorious opposition which the celebrated William Law, a divine of the same communion, conducted against Hoadley. The Bangorian controversy, as it was called, from the diocese which the Bishop occupied at the time, was of sufficient importance to fill a space on the page of secular history. You must also be aware that the Convocation of the English Church had re- solved to publish its solemn censure upon her unworthy prelate, and that nothing but its sudden dissolution, by a high-handed act of Royal authority, prevented his disgrace. While I admit, therefore, that a few inconsistent and preva- ricating men in our mother Church have espoused the un- worthy sentiments which you impute to us, I prove to you, by your own witness, that they were such men as the Church of England herself condemned, and such as he consistently and honorably pronounced to have undermined the Church of which they were the ministers. What renders the hon- est judgment of Dr. Milner the more conclusive against you on this point, is not merely the circumstance that his con- troversial zeal and ability gained for him the papal appoint- ment of Bishop of Castaballa, but the still more pertinent fact that you have singled him out as a " distinguished Catholic Prelate," to whose " learned and profound work " you refer us, in order to perfect our supposed conversion to Popery. Were it possible, however, that a doubt could re- main on any candid mind, upon the binding obligations of the Articles in our mother Church, the question amongst us has been distinctly settled before either you or I began the study of divinity. For you ought to know that Burnet on the Articles is the standard in all our seminaries of Theology, by express canonical provision. And your favor- ite, Dr. Milner, might have taught you, that Burnet pronoun- ces the subscription of the clergy to be " declaratory of THEIR OWN OPINION, and not a bare consent to articles of peace, or an engagement to silence and submission." I put it, therefore, to your own good sense to say, whether your charge against us, in this important particular, is not plainly liable to the reproach, either of wilful ignorance, or of the most deliberate, because twice repeated, misrepresen- tation. I come, now, to that part of your letter, in which you are pleased to say, that my invitation of yourself and your epis- *See Letters to a Prebendary, note to p. 339, Am. Ed. 15 copal brethren to a public discussion of the whole contro- versy between our respective Churches — which you chuse to call by the invidious name of a challenge — " after the state- ment of your views in regard to such exhibitions, resembles a message to one who is professedly opposed to duelling." Now here I am totally at a loss to understand what you mean by the statement of your views in regard to such exhibi- tions. If you allude to your first Address to myself and my colleagues, I find nothing there which intimates the slightest distinction in your mind between oral and written contro- versy. You tell us, on page 6, that you " disclaim, most sincerely, all tvish to provoke a controversy." And, on page 7, you say, " that you do not conceive discussion, either oral or written, the means most likely to bring about a union of the Churches." Assuredly no ordinary mind could dis- cover, from these words, that you were professedly riiore opposed to one sort of controversy than to the other. We all know that you seem perfectly ready, not to say inclined, to engage in written discussion ; and your last letter has given me the first intimation that you were not equally prepared for oral discussion, if the opportunity were fairly afforded you. I must frankly say, therefore, that in comparing my invitation to " a message sent to one who is professedly op- posed to duelling," you have only exhibited another instance of your unfortunate facility in making disreputable charges against others, without seeming to trouble yourself about the evidence of their tiuth. But I must take the liberty of pointing your attention to a circumstance, which ought to have shewn you the absurdity as well as the injustice of your imputation. And this is the fact, that my invitation was not only to you, individually, but also to AS^MANY OF YOUR EPISCOPAL BRETHREN AS YOU MIGHT THINK FIT. You surely do not imagine that all your colleagues are professedly opposed to oral discussion, even if you should be. You know, as well as I do, if not much better, that several of them have been actually engaged in 16 public oral discussions within a very few years, and I believe with a large measure of credit and applause. In extending my invitation, therefore, to the whole, subject only to your own unlimited selection, I gave you the strongest possible proof that I knew myself to be addressing those amongst whom there were men already pledged and practised ; and therefore I could not have anticipated the slightest reluct- ance towards the course proposed, on account of your per- sonal antipathies against the oral method of controversy, even if you had given me — what you certainly had not — any intelligible notice of your private opinion. • I proceed, next, to consider your several reasons against this species of discussion. 1. " That we live far apart, and it might not be convenient for either to pass to the resi- dence of the other, or to spend sufficient time at any inter- mediate point." To this you will permit me to answer by referring you to my letter, in which the very last sentence provided that " the place and time should be arranged to suit YOUR convenience." You next object that " the discus- sion would be necessarily limited to a few topics, or would be prolonged beyond a reasonable time." The answer is obvious : that previous arrangement, as in all similar cases, could and should have obviated both these difficulties. Your third argument is that " Documentary evidence, so impor- tant in such investigations, might not always be at hand, and assertions might remain unproved." My reply is, that WRITTEN assertions, as you have abundantly shewn, may be made without proof as well as oral ones, and that in both the same rule applies, viz. that assertion without proof, if to the discredit of the opposite party, should be considered as so much slander, only operating to the prejudice of him that publishes it. It would, therefore, merely result, that the party who intended to make assertions, would be obliged to provide himself with the evidence, or take the consequences of his own want of foresight. Your fourth reason states that " the number of our hearers would be necessarily 17 limited, and the public must trust to Reporters for the sub- stance of our discussion, with danger of being misled on points in which they might easily be mistaken ; or we must revise, and, perhaps, remodel the reports." To all this I answer affirmatively, but cannot possibly discover how it yields any objection to oral, when contrasted with written discussion. For certainly if the hearers are necessarily limited in the one case, the readers must be more limited in the other. And if the public could only be rightly informed by our revising, or even remodeling the reports, it is but a question of comparative labor, in which it is at least doubt- ful whether there is any advantage on the side of those who prefer written controversy. And this for a twofold reason : because the public make every allowance for faults of style in the one case, not expecting that polished accuracy which they have a right to demand in the other ; and because the animation and interest of an oral debate extend themselves, in a good degree, even to the report ; and thereby confer upon it a really higher value in the scale of public feeling. Your last objection yet remains, which I presume, ac- cording to the rules of rhetoric, you esteem one of the strongest. You know not, as you say, " whether it would entirely comport with the sacred character of a Catholic Bishop to appear on the arena." Here, again, however, I profess myself exceedingly at a loss to understand your mean- ing. Is it beneath your official dignity to speak, what it is not beneath that dignity to have written ? Or does your sacred character shrink from accusation in the most public form, lest your own people might hear the public correction of the error ? The object of controversial discus- sion is, to establish truth ; and it is certainly new to me that the oral method is unfit for the sacred character of a bishop, when it is the only method practised, since the world began, in the administration of government, in the decisions of jus- tice, in the enacting of laws, in the establishment of the Gospel, in a word, in all the concerns of humanity. I take 3 18 for granted that you do not mean to set the sacredness of your character above that of the Redeemer of mankind, and yet — to say nothing of his commencement at the age of twelve years, when he was found disputing with the doctors in the temple — it is certain that through the whole period of his blessed ministry, public oral discussion was his frequent work. If HE condescended to bear the contradictions of his sinful and rebellious creatures, it seems somewhat unaccount- able that your sacred character should revolt from a system- atic discussion with your fellow man, and one who. also claims, however unworthily, to be a bishop, in the catholic, though not in the Roman Church. Nay, let me refer you to the language of the Almighty, saying to Israel, through the prophet Isaiah, " Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." And what is a regulated public dispu- tation but a REASONING TOGETHER OH solemu iuvitatiou, the principle of which, when its object is the confirmation of religious truth, is thus dignified and consecrated by the gracious adoption of the Most High ? Leaving all this, however, out of the question, let us come to a more appropriate range of examples. Beginning, then, with the Apostles, we find them constantly occupied in public oral controversy. The litigated question about the ceremonial law was settled by their appointing a day to come together, and there was " much disputing " before the ul- timate decision. St. Paul is especially recorded as conduct- ing his ministry in the mode of public disputation. Thus at Athens, he "disputed in the Synagogue with the Jews, and with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them that met with him." (Acts, 17.) Again, at Ephesus, " he tvent into the Synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of three months, disputing and persuading the things con- cerning the kingdom of God." And again, " he disputed daily in the school of one Tyrannus." Then, after the Apostolic era, we have the regular oral controversy between 19 the bishop Archelaus and the heretic Manes,* another be- tween the orthodox bishops and the Arian philosopher at the Council of Nice, another between Augustin and his fellows upon the one side, and the Donatists upon the other ; in a word, the history of the early Church is filled with instances, to prove that oral discussion was a regular part of the Apos- tolic and Episcopal office, in the purest and best days of Christian simplicity. But it is enough for me to advert to the late example of several of your colleagues, and to set their judgment against yours in this matter. They could not have " doubted," I presume, " whether it would en- tirely comport with the sacred character of a Catholic Bishop to appear on the arena," as you term it, or they would not have thus appeared. I cannot, therefore, attach the slight- est weight to this last of your objections. It is opposed to reason, to analogy, to the example of Christ and his apostles, to that of the primitive bishops, to the current practice of the whole theological world for centuries together, when public oral disputation was the scholastic custom throughout all the universities of Europe, and, lastly, to the recent precedents amongst yourselves. And my only apology for spending so much time on so plain a matter, is, that your objection is of a character which is apt to find more favor, by far, than it deserves, in the artificial dignity and fastid- ioiis apprehensiveness of the day we live in. There is yet, however, another reason, which, as you have thought fit to add it to the rest, should have a passing no- tice. By proposing a discussion of the whole ground of coNTiiovEHSY, you Say that I "do not appear to intend discussing the merits of it, but rather to show to you, and to the various Protestant sects, that we still adhere to the principles of what we call the Reformation." Now it is true that I specified this latter object, as one to which I at- tached a leading importance ; because I considered the char- * Epiph. de hser. 61. Fleur. Hist. Ecc. Tom. 2, p. 4ia. 20 acter of the Church and her bishops wantonly assailed in your Address, and felt it to be my solemn duty to raise my humble voice in their vindication. But so far was I from designing to exclude the merits of the controversy, that I used the language which you quote for the very opposite purpose of shewing that they were to hold their fit place in the proposed discussion. And 1 pray you to determine, at your convenience, if only for your own satisfaction, how any rational man could propose to discuss the whole ground of a religious controversy, and yet mean to leave the merits OF IT out of question. You are next pleased to cite a sentence from my book on the Church of Rome, in which I asked your Hierarchy, why you should not propose to meet the various Christian de- nominations for the sake of friendly and aflfectionate dis- cussion, instead of casting down the gauntlet of proud de- fiance, and challenging each other to the public war of words ? And you say that I can doubtless " reconcile this to my invitation to a public oral discussion." I fear. Right Reverend Sir, that you have here spoken ironically, and yet I believe that you have said the plain and sober truth. For in that passage, I endeavored to point out the path of what I then thought, and still think, your interest and duty. It would be a happy day for the peace and unity of Christen- dom, if the prelates of the Roman Church, which forms so large a majority in Europe, and is constantly increased by immigration, in the United States, should be disposed to fol- low the course to which you have referred. A proposal from such a body to meet the various Christian denomina- tions for the sake of friendly and affectionate discussion, would come upon the broken and distracted world, like the first ray of sunshine after a night of storms. It would in- dicate the return of the Spirit of peace and love, before whose mighty influence all things would become possible. And assuredly it would be generically opposite to the proud and bitter temper of modern controversy, in which the 21 object gf the parties is simply belligerent, and therefore far removed from the hope or promise of the Divine blessing. But it does not result from this vision of what might be, if Rome were animated by a different spirit, that our own reformed branch of the ancient Catholic Church must be publicly slandered and defamed, without our inviting the accuser to the ordeal of a public investigation. You cannot suppose that there is any contrariety between the sentiment of my book, and my invitation of yourself and your col- leagues to an open discussion of the imputations which you have thought fit to cast upon us, unless you confound it with "a casting down the gauntlet of proud defiance, and challenging you to the public war of words." You must permit me, however, to say, that this aspect of the case is ygur work, not mine. You may find it expedient to speak of it under the name of a challenge, and talk of the arena, and compare it with the sending of a message to one professedly opposed to duelling, as you have done. But I have used no such language, and I do not admit the pro- priety of its application. The true comparison would be drawn from the case of one, who hears his parent assailed in the tenderest point of character, and under a strong sense of filial duty, soberly and temperately calls on the defamer to justify his accusation if he can ; while, feeling conscious that the slander cannot abide the test, he desires that the public may witness the trial, in order that the public may know the truth. In such a proceeding, I confess myself un- able to see the air of a gladiator. You have been the as- sailant: I seek only to defend. And the defence which I have undertaken is not that of myself, but of the Church of Christ — the spiritual mother that bore me. This moderate and just appeal, however, you have declin- ed. Well 1 be it so. Your objections I have already ex- amined, and shall not recur to them again. The substitute you offer is a written discussion, and for this you tender to me the use of the paper called the Catholic Herald, on 22 condition that I procure the insertion of your letters in the Chukchman of New York. To this proposition I cannot accede, for many reasons. First, because, as you must be quite aware, the condition on which you make it is beyond my control. The Churchman is published in another dio- cese. Its columns are devoted to a select variety, suited to the views of its numerous subscribers ; and if I had — what I have not — either authority or influence in the matter, I should doubt the propriety of asking its able editor to pledge himself to the insertion of what might become a long and wearisome discussion. In the second place I object, because the interruption of several weeks, which must necessarily in- tervene between the publication of your letters and that of my replies, would effectually destroy the continuity of the argument; and few readers would take the trouble of going back, in order to compare their respective force and consis- tency. In the third place, such a mode of conducting a con- troversy might suit your location, but would be exceedingly inexpedient in mine ; since the distance of my residence would deprive me oP the opportunity of correcting the press, and expose me to the accidents of frequent mis- representation. I could assign many other reasons, but these may suffice. If I must write controversy, I prefer go- ing on as I began, in the form of books, rather than in the pages of a periodical. And this brings me to that part of your letter in which you speak of your Treatise on the Primacy, published in an- swer to my volume on the Church of Rome. Thus, in one passage, (p. 8.) you recommend me to begin my labors with a review of yoy,r book, and in another (p. 6.) you say that you " disproved my charges, pointed out mistakes in my quotations, played with some literary trifles, and sustained the claims of the Holy See, by the very witnesses which I summoned to overturn them." And yet a little farther on, (p. 11.) you talk of my "offering to decide the quarrel in single combat, as if to ketrieve mv literary honor !" 23 I am sorry, Right Reverend Sir, that you have pressed this perfectly irrelevant topic into notice, and have even thought fit to give it an offensive prominence by assigning it as the true motive of my letter, as if my literary honor had been sacrificed by your triumphant answer to my book, and my only hope of retrieving it lay in " offering to decide the quarrel in single combat ;" whereas, in point of fact, the whole of what you are pleased to call the quarrel has been pro- duced by your wanton attack upon the Church, addressed to all our Bishops, and repelled by several of them before I made my late appeal ; and the single combat, as it is your choice to consider it, was tendered solely in justification of the char- acter of the Church, without the slightest reference to any point involving the merits of my humble volume, or the lit- erary honor of its author. But since you are determined that whatever subject is to be discussed, the claims of your book shall make a part of it, and it is highly probable that this is the last occasion on which I shall have the honor of addressing you, I shall follow the tracli laid down by your last letter, however devi- ous it may be. You will blame yourself, I trust, if it leads to conclusions less agreeable than yoiir pardonable self-esteem appears to have anticipated. - In the first place, then, with regard to my work on the Church of Rome, it was published as the commencement of a series, which, if the reception of it should seem to warrant, was to be subsequently put forth, until all the subjects pro- perly belonging to the Roman controversy should have been discussed in their order. This design has been suspended by untoward circumstances, as briefly stated in the first para- graph of my late letter, but has never been abandoned ; and, if it please an all-wise Providence, may be resumed at the earliest convenient season. Of the plan, the temper, the learning, or the literary merits of that book, it becomes not me to speak. I should be un- grateful, however, if I did not acknowledge, that as well the 24 first edition of it in this country, as the second published in London, was received with a measure of applause which sur- passed my most sanguine expectations, and certainly reliev- ed me from all inducement to sound my own praise. That author is greatly to be pitied who thinks himself compelled to sin against the divine precept ; " Let another praise thee, and not thy own mouth ; a stranger, and not thy own lips." It was perhaps about six months after my book appeared, when you honored it by an elaborate reply, in the form of letters, addressed to myself, and forming a volume considera- bly larger than mine. I lost no time, as you may well sup- pose, in obtaining a copy, which came, (I think) from a Bos- ton bookseller; and in the month of January, 1838, — render- ed memorable to me by a long confinement to a sick room, — I gave it a careful perusal. The result, to my judgment, was satisfactory indeed. Out of three hundred and sixteen dis- tinct quotations, chiefly from the fathers, the councils, and other authorities which your Church acknowledges, (forming upwards of sixty pages of solid Latin and Greek, collect- ed from more than' seventy folio volumes during many years of study, transcribed from the originals with my own hand, and translated by my own solitary labor,) your critical acumen cavilled at the rendering of some ten lines, and in two or three of these I was quite willing to accept your aid, and improve my version. But in a greater number of in- stances, I had been called on to rectify the translation of your most profound scholars, with this difference, however, that their errors were manifestly the result of design, to exalt the claims of the papacy, while mine, after they were corrected, left the argument precisely where it was before. I was de- voutly thankful, therefore, that my humble production had passed so safely through the ordeal ; and although I felt as- sured, before I published it, that it was faithful to the truth, yet after I perused your answer, I thought my confidence was based upon a two-fold demonstration. From the beginning to the end of it, I had not found your reasoning able to 25 subvert the evid&nce I had set forth, nor to evade, in logical fairness, the inference deduced from it, I was well aware, however, — to use the words of my letter, — that it was expected I should make some reply. The cus- tom of theologians, the desire of friends, and my own char- acter for perseverance and consistency, all seemed to demand that I should go forward in the course which I had undertak- en. But to write another book, merely to expose what I coyld not help regarding as a failure, seemed to me a task both selfish and unnecessary. And after much reflection, I at length concluded, that the only notice which your work required would be best taken in the introduction to the next volume of my projected series, and in some additional notes to a second American edition of the book which you had pro- fessed to answer, in case the demand should warrant its re- publication. Having thus dismissed the idea of any immediate action, the month of May brought to me the unexpected intelli- gence that your book, though printed in Philadelphia, was not to be found in Baltimore, and that one of the very per- sons set forth on its title-page as publishers, disavowed all knowledge of it. My correspondent added the conjecture, that the volume had perhaps been quietly suppressed, from some reason best known to its author. The month of Octo- ber following led me to Philadelphia, and then I determined to satisfy myself by inquiry of your principal publishers. I went to their establishment accordingly, and asked for your book. The answer I received was, that a considerable period had elapsed since the whole remaining part of the edition had been sent to your own house, and that if I wanted a copy I must apply to you. To these singular facts, the next month of July (1839) added the information, that one of my breth- ren from the South had applied at the Roman Catholic book- store in New York for a copy, and was told that there was no such work in being. Here, then, I had the strongest pre- sumptive evidence that the conjecture of my Baltimore friend 26 was the truth ; and that the state of the matter was such as would render any notice on my part altogether nugatory ; for why should I trouble myself about a book which its own au- thor, before it was one year old, had thought proper to with- draw from public circulation ? From the summer of 1839 to the fall of 1841, I saw no further mention of your Treatise on the Primacy. Then, in- deed, I found you had adverted to it, in the extraordinary call which you thought fit to send to our bishops, and which has given rise to the present correspondence. In my former letter to you, I replied to that part of your Address, by sim- ply stating that I had been withheld from prosecuting my controversial labors by a long and weary course of disap- pointment, loss, and trial, but still hoped to resume them at a more propitious season. And I should have been much better content if you had accepted this general answer, in- stead of obliging me to enter into details, by openly proposing that I should review your book, proclaiming your supposed atchievements in ' disproving my charges, pointing out mis- takes in my quotations, playing with some literary trifles, and sustaining the claims of the Holy See by the very wit- nesses which I had summoned to overturn them.' Nay, more than all, by telling me that I " offered to decide our quarrel by single combat, as if to ketrieve my literary HONOR 1" Now, I am desirous. Right Reverend Sir, to make all reasonable allowances for parental partiality. There is some- thing amiable and respectable even in the weakness of an author's affection for his intellectual progeny ; and I am the more solicitous to indulge it in the case of those, who, like yourself, can have no other offspring by whom their name and memory may be transmitted to mankind. But really you must pardon my obtuseness if I cannot see the propriety of reviewing your work at all ; especially after the strange process of withdrawing it from circulation. If it has as much merit in the eyes of others as it happily possesses in 27 your own, there must be many abler pens than mine, ready to do it justice. I trust, therefore, that you will excuse my declining an office from which I could derive neither inter- est nor pleasure ; and that you will forgive my incredulity if I doubt whether my literary honor has been lost, at least un- til I have some better evidence of the fact than the opinion of the interested party. But this peculiar strain of courtesy, on your part, brings me to a remarkable passage, in which you charge me with a violation of courtesy in calling you the Roman Bishop of Arath, on the title-page of my letter. " The laws of good society require" you say, " that each one should receive his official designation, lohatever may be the sentiment of the individual addressing him with regard to his claims to the title." And on this principle it is — as you proceed to assure me — that you have given myself and all my colleagues our official titles, although it can be no secret to me in what light you view our claims to the episcopal character. In this singular passage, there are two topics to be examined. The first, my want of courtesy in calling you a Roman Bishop, and the second, your intimation, that al- though you have given us the title of bishops, on the prin- ciple of courtesy, it is a title which you do not think we can justly claim. As to the first of these topics, I must frankly confess that I do not see any real ground of complaint, although I should be loth to dispute about so small a matter. In the title-page of your treatise on the Primacy, as well as in your subscrip- tion to your late Address, you have called yourself the Bishop of Arath, and Co-adjutor to the Bishop of Philadelphia. These titles I have given you just as I found them, merely adding the word Roman, as a proper note of distinction between the Bishops of your Communion and those of others. I can discover no just occasion, here, for the charge of a want of courtesy. For surely you do not claim to be a Greek Bishop, nor yet a Russian, nor a Maronite, nor a Syrian, 28 nor an English, nor a Protestant Episcopal Bishop. You must be a Roman Bishop, as it seems to me, even on your own ground of fact and principle, because your appointment is derived solely from the Pope of Rome, to whom you are under a solemn oath of fealty and obedience ; and, as Bishop of Arath, its whole validity depended upon the papal power to create, in the middle ages, a new kind of bishop, whose diocese should be in partibus infidelium ; that is to say, purely nominal, or, in plain terms, no diocese at all. I beg leave to congratulate you upon your advancement to a real diocese, since I perceive, by your last letter, that you now write yourself, " Bishop of Philadelphia." But your for- mer office was destitute even of the shadow of Catholicity. The ancient Catholic Church would have anathematized the attempt to make bishops, such as the late Bishop of Arath ; for the accredited doctrine of the Church has always been that the bishop must be consecrated for the service of his diocese, whereas you know, full well, that you were never meant to serve the diocese of Arath ; nay, that in point of fact there was no such diocese, so that for all practical purposes you might just as well have taken your title from the moun- tains in the moon. Now it may be seriously doubted whether such an episcopate be not simply void, as manifestly in con- flict with the very nature of the office, and with every rule sanctioned either by the Canons or Councils— in a word, totally and emphatically uncatholic, and entitled to no epithet higher than that which I bestowed upon it — Roman — the utmost concession that courtesy itself could make, unless at the cost of all true ecclesiastical principle.* * I add a few authorities upon this important subject, worthy of the highest respect from every lover of Catholicity. " Episcopus Grtecii idem est ac inspector, speculator, superintendens. Hinc apud profanos scriplores inditum Episcopis noraen turn Diis ab Ho- mero, quia humano generi ; turn summo Pontifici a Plutarcho, quia ves- talibus; turn ab Aristophane iis maglstratibus, qui jubente Atheniensium Senatu Provincias peragrabunt, quia civium bono invigilarent." (Prffilec. 29 Nor is the difficulty confined to your former appoint- ment, for I think it a grave question how far it affects your present office, as bishop of Philadelphia. Your diocese, indeed," is no longer a mere name — vox et preeterea nihil — and that, in itself, is a very important matter. But if, as I take for granted, you were supposed to be already conse- crated, as bishop of Arath, you could not have been conse- crated again as bishop of Philadelphia ; and therefore the doubt resting on your first episcopate, attaches itself to the other also. The only sufficient mode of surmounting this Theolog. Hon. Tournely, De ordine, Tom. 1, p. 50. Ed. Ven. 1751.) See also Is. 60, 17, Septuagint version, xal ddiaoj rovg a^/orrti? aov 'ev 'EiQtjvti, xai rovg 'inioxorcovg aov 'ev Sixaioavvrt, and the New Testament, passim. A bishop or overseer consecrated to a diocese which he is not to oversee, is a contradiction in terms. So fundamental was this principle considered in the Catholic Church, that all elections of bishops were made by the people in the diocese. Thus the same author, with the reputation of whom, in your Church, you must be familiar, in his 2d vol. p. 359, gives us the following authorities. — " Ipsa plebs," inquit Cyprianus, Epist. 67, alias 68, " maxime habet po- testatem vel eligendi dignos sacerdotes, vel indignos recusandi." Et infra, "De traditione divina et apostolica observatione servanduTn est et tenendum, quod apud nos quoque, et fere per universas Provincias tenetur, ut ad ordi- nationes rite celebrandas, ad earn plehem, cui propositus ordinatur, Epis- copi ejusdem Provincia proximi quique conveniant, et Episcopus deligatur plebe praesenti, quae singulorum vitam plenissime novit." Here, you perceive, Cyprian expressly calls this mode of election a divine and apos- tolical tradition. Again, in the 5th century, hear St. Leo, one of your most celebrated popes. "S.Leo, Epist. 12, alias 84, ad Anastasium, Thessalonicem Epis- copum adstruit, cum de summi sacerdotis electione tractabitur, ille omni- bus praeponatur, quem cleri populique consensus conoorditer postularit. . . . ne civitas Episcopum non optatum aut contemnat, aut oderit." (I'i.) It was your Council of Lateran, A. D. 1215, which deprived the people and the comprovincial bishops of all their power in elections, and devolved it altogether on the " Capitulum," after which you may find the rise of the yet more gross abuse of bishops in partihus, amongst the extravagancies of papal supreinacy. What a consistent catholic would say of an episcopate like this, your own judgment can easily determine. 30 difficulty, as it seems to me, is to recur to that highest theory of papal power, which it has long laeen the effort of your doctors to disavow and explode. This, truly, will cure all defects, since it makes the pope ecclesiastically omnipo- tent, as well as temporally supreme. As, however, it has become your policy to abjure that unpalatable doctrine since the days of Bossuet, [ am at a loss to discover how you will defend the claim of bishops in partibus on any consistent scheme ; although I would not for a moment deny your ability to settle the point, at least to your own satisfaction. But now I have to deal with your display of courtesy, in calling us bishops, and then, because I prefixed the word Roman to your title, plainly giving me to understand that we have no just claim to our office. From this, I presume, you design me to infer, that you patronize the silly and ab- surd tale of the Nag's head ordination : by which it was attempted to cast doubt on the consecration of the English bishops at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and vvhich I have been told has lately been republished in your city. In reply to this old and oft refuted slander, it is enough for me to remind you that men belonging to your own Church, of the highest character, and most perfect means of informa- tion, have admitted it to be a sheer fabrication, again and again. The celebrated Bossuet, decidedly the first divine which your Church has produced since the Reformation, Dr. Courayer, who wrote a book upon the very point, and within a few years, your distinguished historian, Dr. Lingard, with many others, have pronounced the clear vindication of our mother Church from this paltry calumny. The latter author, especially, who composed his elaborate and volumin- ous History of England with a zealous regard to the inter- ests of the Church of Rome, has published a subsequent essay in support of his historical statement, in which the most indisputable evidence, from records, documents, and co-temporary witnesses, is distinctly set forth ; so that he amongst you who now pretends to doubt the canonical regu- 31 larity and completeness of the English episcopal succession, may as well go on to deny the whole truth of history. I must needs say, therefore, that this is one of those points, in which we can afford to dispense with courtesy, if we can on- ly have simple justice. And I trust that on a fair and care- ful reconsideration of our respective claims, even you will not think that my language has afforded you any reason to com- plain. The rest of your communication consists of a short but comprehensive charge against three of my colleagues, who, as you say, forgot in your regard, the charity of Christians, and the courtesy of gentlemen. Then you favor me with an ingenious enumeration of our discordant opinions ; and after erroneously claiming for Pope Gregory the great, the work of England's first Apostle, you repeat your former invitations to unity and peace. I shall endeavour to take a respectful notice of all these topics, and so conclude. As to my colleagues, they are abundantly competent to their own defence, and wield a pen with which, whether it be in point or in power, my humbler skill pretends to no comparison. But inasmuch as you have introduced the topic in your let- ter, I must take leave to say, that your Address, when stript of all disguise, deserved to be treated as a wanton attack up- on our principles, as Christians and as men ; and therefore I cannot think it a matter of just surprise, if some of those whom you assailed retorted with severity. You assumed the extravagant hypothesis that our whole body were already pre- pared to yield up almost every point of our distinctive doc- trines, and pour disgrace upon the reformers who died in their defence. You advised us to complete our conversion by reading Milner's End of Controversy, and then to come over, unconditionally, without even the formality of any previous discussion, to the embrace of Rome. You urged us to hasten our recantation, lest our flocks should abandon their pastors, and go before us. You assured us, in good set terms, that we did not believe our own Articles of religion, that our subscrip- 32 tion did not bind our consciences, that our declaration of assent ex animo meant nothing, — in a word, Right Rever- end Sir, you gave us to understand, that in your judgment we were a band of hypocrites, without sincerity or truth, without knowledge to discern our duty, or without hon- esty to practise it. And after an assault like this, does it really become you to complain, that those whom you at- tacked /orgof, in your regard, the charity of Christians and the courtesy of gentlemen, merely because learning and elo- quence were united with a measure of rightful indignation and caustic sarcasm, to repel the shameful imputation ? We all know that the courtesy of the gentleman is not expected to endure the lightest charge which presumes to question his veracity. And although the far nobler spirit of Christian principle is taught to turn the left cheek when the right is smitten, yet is it also taught to rebuke sharply, when the subject involves the interests of the Church of God. Courtesy, therefore, is only to be accounted a virtue, when it is exer- cised in accordance with the higher law of truth. Who ever thought of censuring St. Paul's want of courtesy, in saying to the magician Elymas, " O thou full of all guile, and of all deceit, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, thou dost not cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord ?" Or who, on the other hand, ever praised the courtesy of Joab, because he took hold of Amasa's chin with his right hand to kiss him, in the guise of kindness, saying, " God save thee, my brother !" while his left hand grasped the concealed weapon, to inflict the mortal blow ?* But I come now to one of the most subtle and ingeniously managed passages in your letter, in which, disclaiming any design of impeaching our honesty, you take occasion to re- proach us with our differences of opinion. And in order that I may not run the slightest risk of misrepresenting you, I shall transcribe the whole at length, in its own integrity. "I formed," you say, (p. 6.) "no unfavorable estimate of • Acts, 13, 10, and 2 Ki. 20, 9. Doway Version. 33 " your honesty. I gave you full credit for honest adherence " to the Religious Society in which you hold so eminent a " station ; but as you do not harmonize in your teaching, some " opposing the Oxford views as heretical, while others defend " them as the genuine doctrines of the Church ; some holding " that you possess a real effective episcopacy, such as the an- " cient Church enjoyed ; while others among you consider " that even the pastoral relation in reference to the laity is " but the shadow of a name : some maintaining the existence "of a true priesthood and sacrifice, and raising altars on " which it may be offered ; whilst others deny that there is "properly priesthood, sacrifice, or altar: I thought that " your adherence did not imply a settled conviction of mind " on the doctrines, or on the nature of your worship. From " the perusal of Anglican and American divines, I perceived " that the divine origin of episcopacy, and its need for the " essential constitution of the Church, were disputable points. " This latitude of belief might determine you to remain in " your stations, as long as you saw no fair prospect of uniting " the various Christian sects in faith and communion, but you "might feel it your duty to abaindon them, if by the sacrifice " you could secure the unity of Christendom." To this quotation, I shall add a short sentence on page 10, where you say, " In return for your polite invitation to us to " restore our Church to primitive purity, in order to enjoy " your communion, I invited you to return to the faith which " Augustin preached in England, and to the worship which " he practised, as clearly testified by the venerable Bede, that " you might be under the paternal government of him who <' worthily inherits the name and authority of England's pri- " mary Apostle." Now I trust. Right Reverend Sir, that you will bear with me, while I shall endeavor to deal candidly and justly with the many interesting and important topics presented in these lines. To act fairly towards them, I shall speak first of our alleged divisions, and of your proposed remedy. I sha;ll 5 34 then have some remarks to offer on your position in our pre- sent controversy, and on the historical accuracy of your reference to England's primary apostle. It is, then, most true, that there is considerable diversity of sentiment amongst us, and if we include our mother- Church of England, and sister Church of Scotland, that diversity will extend to a greater variety of points, and occupy a still wider range of disputation. The leading difference of opinion is that which is so commonly expressed by the terms High and Loio Churchman ; besides which, there are I know not how many, who dislike these names, discourage their application, and prefer calling themselves simply Churchmen, symbolizing in all respects with neither party, and therefore exposed, as a matter of course, to be thought quite too High by the one, and quite too Low by the other. Such, if you will pardon the egotism, is my own position. It is not the position of a leader, nor is it that of a follower of those who lead. My feelings and my moderate capacity are alike unsuited to the one ; my habits of independent thought are unfavorable to the other. A contented mediocrity seems therefore to be my appointed lot ; happy, if I can only assist my abler brethren, to " keep the unity of the spirit, in the bond of peace." But permit me to assure you, that if you have inferred, from this diversity, the existence of any serious dissatisfaction with the Church as she is, or of any disposition to choose some other Christian communion as a better or a purer one, you could not have fallen into a more egregious error. Our disputes are frequent enough, and pertinacious enough, and conducted with heat and intemperance enough, God knows ! to alarm, full often, the timid mind, which looks not be- yond the surface of things, and imagines, in its simplicity, that ruin must be at hand, when the ministry of Christ begin to wrangle. Such a mistake, however, I musljjeg leave to say, is scarcely pardonable in a theologian. Least of all is it pardon- able in a Roman theologian, who cannot be supposed igno- 35 rant of the innumerable and interminable disputes which have agitated his own Church in the ages that are past, and which still exist, only smothered into external peace, under a political regard to the risk of " Protestant ascendancy." Let me, therefore, rectify your ideas on the subject, by re- minding you, that all the points which are controverted amongst us are but speculative opinions, in which the dis- putants on all sides claim the doctrinal standards of the Church with equal confidence, as substantially in their favor. Now so long as this is the case, it is as clear as the light of day that the existence of controversy argues no discontent with the Church or her system ; so far from it, indeed, that it rather seems to increase a love for the Church, in propor- tion as the litigants are accustomed to appeal to her author- ity. If you ask, however, that this authority should be so expressed, that our ministry could not vary from each other in their speculative interpretations, you must be aware that you ask what never did exist, and what, in the nature of things, never can. It is the honest acknowledgment of your own favorite, Dr. Milner, that " the Articles and Creeds of the Church of England," (which we inherit from her) " are not less copious, emphatical, and precise, with respect to the grand mysteries [of the Gospel,] than are those of ANY OTHER ChURCH THAT NOW IS, OR HAS EXISTED SINCE THE TIME OF Christ."* All that the Church could do, when it was truly catholic, to guard by her great Councils the right interpretation of the Word of God, remains, as you well know, in our Liturgy and Articles, undiminished by the frauds of heresy, and unadulterated by the alloys of su- perstition. With these, you also know that we have the Apostolic Succession, government, and discipline, as an Epis- copal Church, secured by the strongest laws of ecclesiasti- cal authority. Here, then, are all that can be asked to keep the minds of men in unity — such unity as is needed for * See Letters to a Prebendary, Am. Ed.,p. 329. 36 the earthly communion of saints. Within this range there will, and there ought to be, a reasonable scope for individ- ual speculation ; and so long as this is governed by the love of truth, kept within the limits of kindness and sobriety, and open to a frank and fraternal rebuke when it passes its proper bounds, it would be neither charity nor wisdom, in my hum- ble judgment, to fetter its Christian liberty, in the vain desire of that perfect unity, which can only be enjoyed by the Church, after she has passed from her militant state on earth, to her glorified state in heaven. As to the low condition of practical discipline amongst us, I affect not to deny it. On the contrary, I have openly stated and deplored the degeneracy and worldliness of the Church, in a late Charge to my own clergy, from which I perceive you have done me the honor to take some evidence for your accusation. But surely that man must be wholly blind who cannot see that this degeneracy is universal. No body of Christians can truly claim to be an exception. Above all, the Church of Rome cannot set up for superiori- ty, since you well know that her only apology for the modern system of Penance and Indulgences, is rested on the ac- knowledged decay of the ancient discipline ; and the cry against her awful abuses brought together the Councils of Basle and Pisa — for Councils (hey were, although Rome does not own them — ^long before the era of the English Reforma- tion. It may well be admitted, then, that we are practical- ly far behind the system of the Church ; but that the blame rests on the Church, instead of on ourselves, is an idea which you will find yourself permitted to enjoy, without the slightest participation from any sane mind belonging to our Communion. But whatever our speculations, and disputes, and worldli- ness may be, we have one blessing for which we are devout- ly' thankful, and that is, their unrestrained publicity. Free as the air, open as the day, is every thing belonging to us; doctrine, worship, discipline, parties, controversies, life, 37 and conduct. It was our Lord's command to his Apostles : " What I tell you in the ear, that preach ye upon the HOUSE-TOPS," and he compared his Church to a "City set upon a hill, which cannot be hid." We have, therefore, no scale of Christian perfection, which requires, in order to se- cure its developement of what you call the interior life, to be Tied fast by vows of human institution, and secured by bolts and bars, and wrapped carefully up in secresy and se- clusion. We have no orders of the sexes, who stand aloof from the social community around them, invested with the suspicious mantle of mystery and gloom. We have no va- riable and politic plan of administration, by which the su- perstitions which we openly preach in one part of the world, we as openly disavow in another. We are under no oaths to a foreign prelate, nor are we in danger of finding our- selves entangled in doubtful constructions, in order to settle the boundary line between conflicting rights and duties. The Church, as we acknowledge her, is indeed the spouse of Christ ; one, undefiled, pure from all the stains of corrupt human invention, and replenished with gifts and graces from the bountiful hand of her Creator and her Lord ; transpa- rent as the light, hating darkness, holding before the eyes of all the same high and holy standard ; strenuous for form only so far as is needful for the stability of doctrine, and the reverent order of the house of God ; strenuous for gov- ernment only so far as is demanded for the preservation of peace and unity; and in all respects that are truly impor- tant, — although, it may be, despoiled of a few primitive or- naments in the struggle of her escape from bondage, yet — without spot or blemish, and, as the faithful image of her glorious Maker, worthy of all fidelity and confidence. Our acknowledgment of our own defects, therefore, involves no charge against the Church. God forbid ! On the subject of her character and claims, there is but one heart and voice amongst us ; and we should as soon think of suicide in order 38 to remedy the infirmities of life, as think of forsaking the Church in the hope of improving our religion. Admitting, therefore, Right Reverend Sir, as I do frankly admit, our individual deficiencies, I have but a few words to say upon the remedy which you propose, when you urge us to abandon our present highly favored lot, for the peace and unity of your communion. And I say to you, in all personal kindliness, but with sincerity and candor, that if it were pos- sible for Rome to re-absorb into herself the refornied Catholic Church to which it is our privilege to belong, I verily believe that it would not only be ruin irretrievable to ourselves, but destruction to the best hopes of Christian truth, and emphat- ically to the very peace Tvhich you boast of possessing. For where, I beseech you, was your peace before the Reforma- tion ? Is it not notorious to all the world, that every engine of policy and every weapon of state, fire and sword, crusades and inquisitions, racks and gibbets, the actual torture of the body, and the threatened torture of the soul, were unceas- ingly employed for successive centuries to secure peace and uni^y to the papal dominion, and all in vain ? Where is uni- ty of doctrine amongst you even now, with all the induce- ments which the hope of conquest and the fear of defeat can set before you ? You say, for example, that your Church is infallible ; but you have never settled your theory of this infallibility, nor ascertained the tribunal in which it resides. You say that the pope is the vicar of Christ, and that it is essential to salv'ation that every soul should acknowledge him; but you have never determined the extent of his powers, nor defined the limits of your obedience. You say that we are accursed if we do not supplicate the virgin and the saints, but you have never settled the questions how they can hear our supplications, nor whether they can hear, or not. You call the virgin, "the queen of heaven, the queen of saints, the queen of angels," with many other epithets which we think open to the charge of blasphemy ; and yet you have never 39 settled the doubtful point, as to the evidence of her assump- tion, nor decided the much vexed question, whether she was free from original sin. Your Council of Trent pronounced a curse on all who disbelieve in Purgatory, and your Church grants indulgences from fixed periods of purgatorial pains on regular days in every year ; and yet you have not agreed upon the nature of those pains, nor even upon the authority from whence you derive the doctrine. Some of you say that the pope is infallible, others deny it flatly. Some say that he is superior to a general Council, others that a general Council is superior to him. On the point of episcopacy too, you have far more unsettled questions than we have ; for some of you maintain that bishops hold their office jure divino immedi- ately from God, others, that they have it immediately from the pope, that he is in fact the only bishop, and that the rest act merely as his vicars apostolic, having no power but what they derive from him. You have serioUs difficulties, also, if you would but consider them rightly, concerning the ques- tion of the episcopal succession, in those cases where there has been but one to consecrate, whereas the canons, from the apostles down, require three. And the outrageous innova- tion of bishops without dioceses, or bishops in partibus in- fidelium, would of itself give more trouble to my conscience, if I had the misfortune of being one of them, than all the debated topics amongst ourselves put together. These may suffice, I trust, Right Reverend Sir, as a speci- men of the unity in doctrine which we should obtain, by ex- changing the pure simplicity of the ancient Catholic Church, for the tortuous and complicated system of modern Roman- ism. And as to your peace, you cannot be ignorant that we ascribe it all to the eifects of the Reformation. You are kept so occupied by the assaults of Protestants from without, that you have neither time nor spirit for intestine dissensions. But we all know that the peace of principle is one thing, and the peace of policy is another. The first is a spiritual privilege, resulting from the unity of faith, and the influence 40 of charity. The second is nothing better than a carnal cal- culation about profit and loss ; yea, so carnal, that it may be found, to a certain extent, among the very brutes that perish. For even the lordly lion, whose roar, at times, can make the forest tremble, understands the policy of being still and quiet, when he crouches for his prey. A few words more, upon the sentence in which you say, that in return for my polite invitation to your hierarchy to restore your Church to its primitive purity, you invited us to return to the faith which Augustin preached, alluding to A. D. 590, when Gregory the great sent Augustin to Eng- land, and calling that pope expressly, "England's primary ttpostle." Now here, you seem to consider your Address to our bish- ops as a fair return to my book on the Church of Rome, ap- parently forgetting that your volume on the Primacy was published iq answer to that book, and that your Address, predicated solely on the Oxford Tracts, was written four years later. Whether you wrote this sentence for the pur- pose of making me seem to be the aggressor in our present controversy or not, is beyond my power to determine. I can easily shew, however, that not only are the two works per- fectly distinct in the point of chronology, and in the line of argument, but they are altogether difterent in purpose and in spirit. I did not ask your prelates, — as you have urged our bishops — to abandon their Church ! I did not charge them, — as you have charged our ministry — with disregard to their professed Articles of faith, and with preaching against them at their pleasure ! I did not tell them — as you have told our clergy — that their divines had given up, one by one, almost every point in controversy ! Nor did I counsel them to come over to us without loss of time, lest their people should desert, and come before them ! Far from all this, I presented their own favorite authors to their consideration, and argued the duty and expediency of their returning to their own original Church, by advancing in the work of reformation which they 41 had in part commenced ; but in no one instance implicating their sincerity, or desiring that they should disregard the best interests pf their own communion. You must permit me, therefore, Right Reverend Sir, to repel, in the most positive terms, this attempt to divide the odium of your late assault, as plainly inconsistent with the time, the facts, and the whole strain of your argumentation. The responsibility of my work I shall take with pleasure, but the excitement of the present discussion is all your own. ^ The last topic presented by your letter, is the total subver- sion of all historical accuracy, in calling pope Gregory the great, England's primary apostle. And as this gross mis- take serves as the foundation of many others, inducing your writers to say a variety of idle things about the debt of grati- tude which England owes to Rome for her conversion, and the consequent impiety of her desertion of her spiritual moth- er, I must beg a little more of your indulgence, for the sake of adducing something better than vague assertion, viz. the irrefragable testimony of your own ancient witnesses, to es- tablish the true origin of the Church from which we descend. The statements of your modern authors are nearly all unanimous in the assumption that the Church of England had its birth and parentage from the Church of Rome, in A. D. 590, when Gregory the great, sent the abbot Augustin with 40 monks, as missionaries into Britain. Now this was the period of the Saxon Heptarchy, and the Saxons were pagans, beyond all doubt. But the body of the nation were Britons still. The Saxons were foreigners from Germany, invited, unhappily, by the advice of the British prince Vortigern, to assist in the protracted contests with the Picts and Scots, but who afterwards used their arms to estabhsh themselves, as masters of the country. And although it is true that the Brit- ons were at last partly compelled to submit, and partly driv- en from their homes, and forced to defend themselves chiefly in Cornwall and Wales, yet all experience proves that such conquests are never so total as to subvert the religion of a 6 42 nation, when the objects of the conquerors are only domin- ion and spoil. The historian Hume, who certainly was under no bias in this particular, places the facts upon fair and reasonable ground, in his account of the state of England previous to the effort of Gregory's missionary zeal. It must be remem- bered, in order to form just ideas upon this subject, that when the Romans left the British to themselves in A. D. 448, after having been in possession of the greater part of the island for nearly four centuries, (Hume, 1 , 8.) the people had become, to a great degree, civilized. Twenty-eight considerable cities, with a great number of towns and vil- lages, bore witness to their advancement in the arts ; the father of the great Constantino had long held his imperial court among them, and at York, where he died, the British legions proclaimed the son his parent's successor. Although, therefore, a long period of war and commotion followed, ending in the establishment of the Saxon Heptarchy, yet, as the historian well observes, " a civilized people, however subdued by arms, still maintain a sensible superiority over barbarous and ignorant nations. All the other northern con- querors of Europe had already been induced to embrace the Christian faith, which they found established in the empire ; and it was impossible but the Saxons, informed of this event, must have regarded with some degree of veneration a doc- trine which had acquired the ascendant over all their brethren. However limited in their views, they could not but have per- ceived a degree of cultivation in the southern counties, be- yond what they themselves possessed ; and it was natural for them to yield to that superior knowledge, as well as zeal, by which the inhabitants of the Christian kingdoms were, even at that time, distinguished." In the order of Providence, however, a favorable opening had been prepared for the conversion of the Saxon invaders, which I shall also describe in the words of this historian. — " Ethelbert," the king^of Kent, " had married Bertha, the 43 Only daughter of Caribert, king of Paris, one of the descen- dants of Clovis, the conqueror of Gaul ; but before he was admitted to this alliance, he was obliged to stipulate, that the princess should enjoy the free exercise of her religion ; a concession not difficult to be obtained from the idolatrous Saxons. Bertha brought over a French bishop to the court of Canterbury, and being zealous for the propagation of her religion, she had been very assiduous in her devotional exer- cises ; had supported the credit of her faith by an irre- proachable conduct, and had employed every art of insinua- tion and address to reconcile her husband to her religious principles. Her popularity in the court, and her influence over Ethelbert, had so well paved the way for the reception of the Christian doctrine, that Gregory, surnamed the great, then Roman pontiff", began to entertain hopes of effecting a project, which he himself, before he mounted the papal throne, had once embraced, of converting the British Saxons." You will have no difficulty, I trust, Right Reverend Sir, in understanding the view which I feel quite sure is the only one consistent with the facts of history. The nation was British, the rulers and the dominant party were Saxons. The very intention of the Pope was limited to these last, who did, indeed, require the work of Christian zeal to convert them to the faith. But the nation had been converted long be- fore, and therefore, granting that the mission of Gregory was successful as to these Saxon marauders, it was neither the beginning of the British Church, nor was it conducted with any just regard to her rights and privileges. I shall now proceed to substantiate these assertions by evidence which you cannot question, I do not, of course, offer you the statement of Hume as proof, in a matter of ecclesiastical history ; but have presented it rather as a preparation for the evidence, which I presume you would find better stated in his words than in mine. First, then, I shall establish the fact that the British Church was in being, perfectly and in- 44 dependently organized, for centuries before the days of pope Gregory. - Secondly, I shall shew how truly his emissary rep- resented the character of his Roman master, in lording it over the national Church, through the power of her Saxon oppressors ; and then you will perceive with how little jus- tice you and your Church have claimed for that pope the name of England's peimary apostle. My first witness is Tertullian, who wrote, as you know, within a century after the death of St. John, about A, D. 200. In his book against the Jews he quotes the prophet Isaiah, predicting the universal preaching of the gospel, and then, referring to the apostles, he cites the text of St. Paul, where he saith, that " their sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the ends of the world." He next reckons up the nations who had believed in Christ, the Parthians, Medes, Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, Arme- nia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Pamphylia, Egypt, Africa, Rome, Jerusalem, the Getuli, the Moors, the Span- iards, the Gauls, and then he adds : " those parts of Britain which were inaccessible to the Romans, but subject to Christ ;"* adding many other nations, which it is beside my purpose to mention. Observe, I beseech you, the connexion here, clearly proving that in the time of Tertullian, the planting of the gospel in Britain was ascribed to the apostles ; though whether it were St. Paul, St. James, or Simon Zelotes, or some other of the thirteen, it is now impossible to ascertain, no early writer having recorded it. The next witness is Origen, who says that " the power of * " Et Britannorum inaccessa Romania looa, Christo vero subdita ; " and a little further on he adds, " In quibus omnibus loois Christi nomen, qui jam venit, regnat : " and again, in a very eloquent passage, still farther onl he recurs to Britain in these words, " Britanni intra Oceani sui ambitum oonolusi, Maurorum gens, et Getulorum barbaries a Romanis obsidentur, ne regionem suarum fines excedant. Quid de Romanis dicam, qui de le- gionum suarum praesidiis imperium suum muniunt, nee trans istas gentes porrigere vires regni sui possent? Christi autem regnum ac nomen ubique porrigitur, ubique creditur, ab omnibus gentibus supra enumeratis colitur," Si,c. Tertul. adv. Judieos, §vii and §viii, p. 188-9. Ed. Paris. 1695. 46 God our Saviour is even with them which in Britain are di- vided from our world."* And this testimony is only about fifty years later than Tertullian. ^ The third witness is the record of the great Council of Aries, summoned by the emperor Constantine in A. D. 314, at which no less than five delegates attended from the Church of Britain, viz. " Eborius, the bishop of York, Restitutus, the bishop of London, Adelfius, the bishop of the city called the colony of London," (which some suppose to be the modern Colchester,) " Sacerdos a priest, and Arminius a deacon," both from the same city as Adelfius.f No proof could be more conclusive to shew the mature and vigorous state of the British Church at this time. The fourth witness is Eusebius, who testifies that the British bishops concurred in the judgment of the Council of Nice.J The fifth witness is Athanasius, who says that the British bishops agreed in his acquittal at the Council of Sardis. The sixth witness is the Council of Rimini, at which were also present a deputation of British bishops. The seventh witness is St. Jerome, who frequently men- tions Britain, in one place saying, that " the court of heaven is open alike from Jerusalem and Britain;" again, he speaks of the Briton, though divided from their world, seeking to increase his piety by going to Bethlehem. And elsewhere he adverts to British Christianity, as to a familiar fact. || * Virtus Domini Salvatoris et cum his est, qui ab orbe noatro in Britannia dividuntur." Orig. in Lucsb, i;. 1. Homil. 6. This citation is from Ful- ler. The original'is not at hand. t Eborius, Episcopus, de oivitate Eboracensi, Provincias Britannia. Restitutus, Episcopus, de ciiritate Liondinensi, Prov. supradicta. Adelfius, Rpiscopus, de civitate Colonise Londinensium, Exinde Sacerdos presbyter, Arminius diaconos. — See Hard. Con. Tom, 1, p. 267. t Euseb. de vita Constant. Lib. iii, c. 19. The next two I have also given from Fuller. 11 " Et de Hierosolymis et de Britannia squaliter patet aula ccelestis. Hieron. Op. Tom. 1, p. 66. G. Epist. 13, ad Paulinum. Diyisus ab orbe nostro Britannus, si in religione processerit, occiduo sole 46 The eighth witness is Pope Gregory Ihimself ; for when his emissary Augustin consulted him in order to know what line of conduct should be adopted in relation to the bishops of Gaul and Britain, the pontiff answers him, that the jurisdic- tion of archbishop over the bishops in Gaul had already been conferred upon the bishop of Aries ; " but we commit to you," continues Gregory, " the care of all the bishops of Britain, that the ignorant may learn, that the weak may be strengthened, and that the obstinate may be corrected by authority." * More might easily be adduced, if necessary, to prove the indisputable fact, that from the days of the Apostles the Church of Christ had beeri established in Britain, and that this Church was still in existence, having many bishops, at the time when the pope sent his emissary Augustin to convert the Saxon king of Kent. I need not detain you by rehearsing the history of the success of Augustin with this royal proselyte, the vast numbers said to be baptized by him, and the miracles supposed to be wrought by his power. But it should be recollected, that on the very spot assigned to him, there was still standing the old British Church _of St. Martin, Canterbury, in which the queen was accustomed to offer up her own worship with the GaUican bishop Luid- hard, long before his arrival.f My next quotation must be from the letter of the pope to the king of Kent, after his dimisso, quaerit locum fama sibi tantura et scripturarura relatione cognitum." ib. p. 82. C. Epist. ad Marcellam. See also Epist. ad Oceanum, p. 130. JC. and Lib. adv. Luciferianos, Tom. 2, p. 97. 9. * Interrogatio Augustini, Postulo etiam qualiter debeamus cum Gallia- rum atqiie Britanniarum episcoprs agere .' Responsio Beati Gregorii Papce. " In Galliarum episcopos nullam tibi auctoritatem tribaimus,quia ab antiquis preedecessorum meorum temporibus pallium Arelatensis episoopus aecepit quem nos privare auctoritate percepta minime debemur Britanniarum vero omnium episcoporum curam tuoe fraternitati committimus : ut indocti doceantur, infirmi persuasione robo- rentur, perversi auctoritate oorrigantur." Hard. Con. Tom. 3, p. 512. 1 See Fuller, p. 56, who cites Bede, Hist. Ecc. lib. 1, c. 25. 47 conversion and the appointment of Augustin to the primacy, in which we have a notable specimen of the policy with which Rome had already learned to wield the spiritual, un- der the authority of the temporal sword. In favor of brevi- ty, however, I shaH only cite a portion of his epistle. The' beginning is of no importance to the subject, and the other part is simply an exhortation to diligence, founded on the pope's idea that the end of the world was at hand ; a plain proof that whatever his other merits may have been, the power of prophetical interpretation was not among them. Addressing himself to Ethelbert, as king of England, the pontiff says, "Therefore, O glorious son, keep the grace which thou hast divinely received, with all diligence. Make haste to extend the Christian faith amongst your subjects, en- large the zeal of thy righteousness in their conversion, over- turn the temples and worship of idols, establish your people in purity of life by exhorting, affrighting, soothing, and correcting, and by showing examples of virtue." * * * " And whatever our most reverend brother Augustin, your bishop, admonishes, hear willingly, perform devoutly, and studiously keep in mind, since if you hear him in that which he delivers on the part of the omnipotent God, the same God will more quickly answer his prayers on your behalf"* My last quotation shall be from the venerable Bede, show- ing the style in which Atigustin proceeded to reduce the British Church to obedience. " " Et ideo, gloriose Fili, earn quam acoepisti divinitus gratiam soUicita mente custodi. Christianam fidem in popniis tibi subditis extendere fes- tina, zeluni rectltudinis tuse in eorum converaione multiplica, idolorum cul- tus insequere, fanorum eediticia everte, subditorum mores in magna vitas munditia exhortando, terrendo, blandiendo, corrigendo, et boni operis exempla monstrando iedifica." " Reverendissimus autem frater noster AugustinuB, episoopus — queeque vos adraonet libenter audite, devote pera- gite, studios^ in memoria reservate ; quia si vos eum in eo quod pro omni- potente Deo loquitur, auditis, idem omnipotens Deus hunc pro vobis exo- rantem celerius exaudit." Greg. Mag. Op. ed. Benedict. Tom. 2, p. 1165, epist. 66. 48 "Using the help of king Ethelbert," says this ancient his- torian, "Augustin called the bishops and doctors of the near- est and greatest British province to a conference, at the place called to this day Augustin's oak, and endeavored to persuade them to unite with him in the common work of evangelizing the nations, to lay aside their mode of keeping Easter, and their other customs which were contrary to the unity of the Church." They declined his proposal, however, although Augustin, as Bede relates the matter, worked a miracle to convince them. A second conference being appointed, " there came seven British bishops, and many learned men, chiefly from that most noble monastery of Bangor, over which the abbot Dinooth is said to have then presided." Disgust- ed, as the historian states, by the pride of Augustin, at this second interview, and partly influenced by the counsels of a celebrated hermit with whom they had previously conferred, they positively refused either to change their customs for those of Rome, or to receive Augustin for their archbishop. On this, saith the historian, "Augustin is reported to have threatened them, predicting that if they would not have peace with their brethren, they should have war with their enemies ; and if they refused to preach to the English the way of life, they should suffer from their hands, the ven- geance of death." This prediction came to pass accordingly. The English king Adelfrid attacked the British at Caarlegeon, or Chester, where he found not only the forces of the Britons, but also their priests, along with a large body of monks, who had as- sembled, after a three days' fast, to oppose him with their prayers. These monks were chiefly frOm the great monas- tery of Bangor, which was so extensive, that it consisted of seven divisions, each containing 300 men, all of them bound to maintain themselves by their own manual labor. The king being told that this assembly of worshippers were pray- ing for his defeat, ordered his soldiers to attack them first , and thus he butchered twelve hundred of them upon the 49 spot, fifty only, out of the whole, escaping. In this way the historian pronounces the prophecy of Augustin to have been fulfilled, although after its author had departed to another world.* Here, then, Right Reverend Sir, I trust that you have abundant proof — satis superque — to justify our denying to pope Gregory or to any other pope, the title of "England's primary apostle." For aught I know, he may be called the chief converter, through his emissary Augustin, of the Sax- ons of Kent, although even there, the GalHcan bishop Luid- hard and the Christian example of queen Bertha preceded him. But granting all you can ask for his influence over the Saxon invaders and usurpers, who had established their wretched Heptarchy, it remains undeniably true that the Brit- ish Church had been in quiet possession of the land from the * " Interea Augustinus, adjutorio usus Edilberthi regis, convocavit ad suum colloquium episc.opos sive doctoresmaximiB et proximse Britonum pro- vinciae, in loco ubi usque hodie lingua Anglorum Augustineizac, id est, robur Augustini appellatur ; coeptique eis fraterna admonitione suadere, ut pace catholica secum habita, communem evangelizandi gentibus pro Do- mino laborem susciperent : non enim Paschse diem dominicum suo tempore, sed a decima quarta usque ad vicesimara lunam observabant — et alia plu- rima unitati ecclesisE contraria faciebant. Qui cum longa disputatione habita, neque preoibus, neque hortamentis, neque increpationibus Augustini acsociorum ejus assensum prtebere voluissent." " Unde postulabant ut secundo synodus pluribus advenientibus fieret. Quod cum esset statutum, venerunt, ut perhibent, septem Britonum episcopi, et plures viri doctissirai, maxime de nobilissimo eorum monasterio, quod vocatur lingua Anglorum BancornaburgjCui tempore illo Dlnooth abbas prsefuisse narratur.'' "Fac- tum est, ut venientibus illis sederet Augustinus in sella. Quod illi viden- tes, mox in iram conversi sunt, eumque notantes superbiffi, cunctis quffi dicebafcontradicere laborabant." "Illi nihil horum se facturos, neque . ilium pro arcliiepiscopo habituros esse respondebant." "Quibua vir Domini Augustinus fertur minitans prsedixisse, quod si pacem cum fratri- bus accipere nollent; bellum ab hostibus forent accepturi : et si nationi Anglorum noluissent viara vitoe prsedicare, per hoium manus ultionem es- sent mortis passuri." (Beda Hist, Ang. Hi. 11. c. 11 ; vel Hard. Cone. Tom. 3. p. 540.) The account of the conferences, the miracle professed to have been wrought by Augustin, the counsel of the hermit, the monas- tery, and the slaughter, are all included in the same extract from Bede, but are too long for insertion. 7 60 times of the apostles, that her bishops had assisted at the great Councils, centuries before either the pope or Augustin were born, and that at the very time of this celebrated mis- sion, the same Church was in fulf being ; oppressed, indeed, and mourning, yet having her bishops, her doctors, her mon- asteries, her customs, variant from those of Rome, and ac- cording more with the oriental Christians. Equally manifest it is, that the papacy in England, like the Saxon dominion, was an assault and an usurpation ; that it was the arm of force which established its supremacy, and that when the an- - cient Church of Britain at last succumbed to the yoke, the conquest was gained by the complex influence of policy and power. Let not Rome, then, complain, if policy and pow- er, which first gave her empire over the Church of Britain, were the first instruments by which, in the person of Henry the eighth, that empire was destroyed. And be not surpris- ed if your invitations to return to the faith which Augustin preached, should remind us of the British bishops who re- fused to own his sway, and of the Saxon sword which mas- sacred the poor monks of Bangor. And now, Right Reverend Sir, I have but little more to add, upon the point of your last suggestion, where you say that if a glimmering of hope should be afforded of union, you should be happy to meet myself, or any of my col- leagues, in private, before a few intelligent friends, to ex- amine calmly and dispassionately, on what basis it could be established. Here you have given me, truly, a most ex- traordinary set of inconsistencies. A public intimation about a private conference ! An attempt to arrange the basis of union, when the parties are known to be at irreconcilable variance on fundamental principles! A proposition to dis- cuss terms from one who claims an unconditional surrender ! An offer to treat, from one who has no diplomatic authority ! A show of independent action, from a prelate who has no in- dependent will, since you are sworn to defend the " royal- 51 ties" of St. Peter, and are quite incompetent to effectuate the slightest modification in your existing system. Ah ! would to God that you and your colleagues were free to use the privileges which even a provincial Church, in catholic days, would have blushed to disclaim. Would that you were at liberty to regard the bishop of Rome with no higher reverence than his predecessor in the third century received from Cyprian, the saint and martyr, with his episcopal breth- ren in the Council of Carthage. But so long as you are bound, hand and foot, to the papal throne, I cannot regard, your language as intended for any thing more than a flight of rhetoric. Whenever you shall have burst your chains,, and stand unfettered on the firm ground of ancient catho- licity., we may be ready to receive such a proposal, but not till then. It is high time, however, to close this letter, and with it, our present correspondence. I trust it may have some effect in vindicating the cause of truth and justice, notwithstand- ing the mediocrity of its author's powers. On that point, I beg you to remember that I hold no dispute with you. I have long ago claimed my place as the least amongst my brethren, and have distinctly granted to yourself all that you can possibly ask, on the score of individual qualification. Willing to practise, as well as I may, the apostolic precept, In lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than him- self, I shall cheerfully yield the palm in any point of merely personal merit. The same concessions I am ready to make, to your book on the Primacy. It shall be admitted, if you please, that so" far as our respective proportions of learning, talent, ingenuity, or eloquence are concerned, it is altogether superior to my humble volume on the Church of Rome. If it be, nowithstanding, a failure, as I assuredly consider it, the fault lies, doubtless, in the subject, rather than in you. The best advocate must fail, who has to defend the wrong side of the question. In the invidious range of personal comparison, therefore, 52 tjiere is nothing which I should think worth the pain and trouble of contention. It is only when the controversy con- cerns the " Church of the Living God, which is the PILLAR AND GROUND OF THE TRUTH," that I conceivc mysclf called to contend, and in the words of the Apostle, to con- tend earnestly. From that solemn responsibility I shall not seek to escape, however conscious I may be of my own de- ficiencies, for I know who has said : " Not by might nor bt POWER, BUT BT MY SPIRIT, SAITH THE LoRD." It is OUr duty, in faithful dependence on that Spirit, to contend for His truth ; it is His incommunicable prerogative to award the final victory. With sentiments of the most respectful consideration, I remain, Right Reverend Sir, Your servant in Christ, JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the diocese of Vermont. Burlington, Vt. St Matthias' day, 1843. POSTSCRIPT, The call for a second edition of the foregoing letter, Right Reverend Sir, presents a fit opportunity for the expression of my regret, that you should have thought it expedient to continue your warfare through the editorial agency of your ecclesiastical organ, The Catholic Herald, instead of pur- suing it openly and frankly in your own name. In consid- ering you accountable for that paper, indeed, I might be doing you great injustice, if you belonged to any other religious community. I am perfectly aware that the freedom claimed and exercised amongst the editors of our own peri- odicals, for example, is commonly quite independent of episcopal control. But in the Church of Rome, which re- proaches us for this very license, and claims so high a pre- eminence on account of her superiqr subordination and discipline, I am bound to presume that they order these matters very differently. At all events I cannot hesitate to believe, that the editor of your own diocesan paper would publish nothing on a subject, in which you are so directly concerned, without your full authority and approbation. It is therefore, under all the circumstances, incumbent on me to consider that editor as being the alter ego of his bishop ; and hence I address to you the remarks called forth by some of his lucubrations, on the familiar legal principle: Qui facit per alium, facit per se. 54 The chief aHegations presented by your Herald, seem to be the following: first, that I have retreated from the discussion to which I invited you ; secondly, that the errors in my translation from the fathers in my work upon the Church of Rome, were such as deservedly in- curred the forfeiture of my literary character ; and thirdly, that I have quite mistaken the facts as to the withdrawing of your book from circulation. A few observations upon each of these topics may be desirable : I will make them as briefly as I can. As to the first of these allegations, namely, that I have retreated from the very discussion to which I invited you and your colleagues, I must confess that I read it with astonish- ment ; and I can only account for the reckless hardihood of the assertion, by supposing that you think yourself justified in the use of any policy which shall maintain your influence with the mass of your own people. You know, as, unhap- pily, we all know, that they will not often take the trouble of inquiring into the merits of any religious controversy ; preferring, for the most part, the easier and more agreeable course, of adopting any statement which their spiritual guides may chuse to offer. But I need not tell you, nor any other man of common sense who has read my letters, that the conference which I proposed was not a newspaper con- troversy. That is a kind of discussion for which — to say nothing of the special reasons assigned in the foregoing let- ter — I have never felt the slightest predilection. I question not, that in this age of newspapers, a religious periodical may have many valuable uses. It is a cheap and convenient vehicle for ecclesiastical intelligence, sketches of biography, and short articles upon various matters of Church-history, doctrine, and practice. It is, on the other hand, open to serious difficulty, on account of the rare mixture of wis- dom, integrity, and talent, required in its editors ; if they would keep its pages pure from intemperance and error. But under the best auspices, I cannot consider it a proper 55 channel for a serious, long, and multiform discussion, involv- ing the grounds of controversy between our respective Churches. The necessity of doling out one's argume'nt by piecemeal, breaking it off at the proper point of length, rather than of logic, and putting it forth in immediate juxtaposition with a desultory mixture of other things, would, of itself, disincline me, if there were no other objection, to the plan of newspaper discussion. My invitation, therefore, was to a very different thing — an oral disputation, according to the example set by apostles, bishops, and martyrs, in the early days of Christian antiquity, and continued by theologians ever since. From that I have not retreated, as you know full well. Nor yet have I held back from written discussion, in its established and accredited form of books or pamphlets, as the past and present may fully testify ; and as the future shall further testify, if divine Providence permit. I utterly deny your right to propose, instead of these, a device of yesterday, which no man capa,ble of writing a book has ever yet adopted as the proper mode of conducting a religious controversy. Nor can I sufficiently admire the Hibernian- ism, that I have retreated from ground that I never occupied. For the unscrupulous boldness of this assertion, doubtless there may be some among yourselves, who have commended the dexterity of its author. But to me it only recalls the morality of that Jesuit school, which the great Pascal re- proached for maintaining, that " it is no mortal sin to slander FALSELT, provided it be for the purpose of preserving one's honor."* As to the second of your Herald's assertions, in which he re-iterates your censures against the fidelity of my translations *11 est constant, dit Caramonel, n. 1151. que c'estune opinfon probable, qu'il n'y a point de peche mortel k ealomnier faussement pour conserver son honneur. Car elle est soutenue par plus de vingt Docteurs graves, par Gaspar Hurtado, et Dicastillus, Jesuites, &c. de sorte que si cette doctrine n'fetoit probable, k peine y en auroit il aucune qui le flit en toute la Thfeologie." Les Provincials, Let. 15. Tom. 3, p. 184, Amsterdam Ed. on735. 66 from the fathers in my book on the Church of Rome, it is quite unnecessary for me to repeat the general reply con- tained in the foregoing letter.* But one of the passages implicated seems to me of sufficient importance to call for a specific defence, and that is my version of the famous testi- mony of Irenseus, in which the true meaning of the word convenio, comes into question. In order, therefore, to place this matter in the clearest light, I shall first set down the original sentence, and then our respective versions, side by side. After which I shall present you with some authorities which I think quite sufficient to settle the question. "Ad hang enim ecclesiam," saith Irenseus, (nempe ecclesiam Romanam) "propter potiorem principalitatem, necesse est omnem convenire ecclesiam, hoc est, eos qui sunt undique fideles, in qua semper ah his, qui sunt undi- que, conservata est ea qua est ab apostolis traditio." Iren. cont. Haeres. L. 3. 3. The Roman Version. "For WITH this church, pn ac- count of the more powerful princi- pality, it is necessary thai every church, that is, the faithful, who are in every direction, should a&ree." &c. The Protestant Episcopal Version. " For TO this church," (namely the Roman) " on account of the more powerful principality, it must needs he that the whole church eesoet, that is, those who are faithful, from all places round about." &c. Now it is plain that the difference here involves a serious point of patristic testimony. If Irenseus, the bishop of Lyons, in the year 170, really published the assertion that it was necessary for every Church to agree with the Church of Rome, on account of its more powerful principality, it would be an important evidence to prove your doctrine of Roman supremacy, and therefore we need not wonder at your strong desire to press him into your service. If, on the other hand, Irenseus meant to say no more than this, that on account of the more powerful principality of ancient Rome, which was the metropolis of the whole civilized world, it was unavoidable that the body of the faithful round about should *See page 24. 67 resort to the Church in that city, it is a very different matter, and one which every mind of common reflection must ap- prove. Because the capital of an immense empire attracts a multitude of people from every quarter, year by year, through the thousand calls of politics, affinity, and business, and therefore there must be a proportionate resort of Chris- tians to the Church which enjoys the temporal advantage of being located there. That this was the true meaning of Irenseus, I have (as I believe) conclusively shown in my book, by a variety of arguments ; and I have also proved his perfect accordance on this point with the chief Christian writers of the first five centuries. Besides this, however, I there asserted what I still maintain, that the correct con- struction of his words, according to strict grammatical accu- racy, required the sense which I had adopted ; and which, by the way, I must remind you, is the same long ago pub- lished by some of the greatest lights of the Church of Eng- land.* I further added, in a note, that when the verb conve- nio refers to place, it is usually followed, as in the passage before us, by the accusative case, but when to sentiment, as when it means to consent or to agree, it generally takes the dative. This statement you have said is " not accurate," " The following extract from the celebrated Dr. Barrow will be found in point. * " To this church, said Irenssus, it is necessary that every church, that is, the faithful who are all ' about, should resort, because of its more powerful principality : what is meant by that resort will be easy to him who con- siders how men here are wont to go up to London, drawn thither by interests of trade^ law, &c. What he did understand by more powerful principality, the words themselves do signify, which exactly do agree to the power and grandeur of the imperial city, but do not well suit to the authority of a church; especially then, when no church did appear to have either principality or paissanqe. And that sense may clearly be evinced by the context, wherein it doth appear, that St. Irenaeus doth not allege the judicial authority of the Roman Church, but its credible testimony, which thereby became more considerable, because Christiana commonly had occasion of recourse to it." Bar. Treat, of the Pope's Supremacy, Oxford Ed. of 1818, p. 266. 8 58 and as you re-iterate this charge in the Herald, and as the point involves the testimony of one of the earliest witnesses after the apostolic age, I shall proceed to .establish my assertion by incontestible evidence, since I profess no par- tiality for the style of argument which puts hardy assertion in the place of proof. I must in candor premise, however, that you are not sin- gular in your judgment about this matter. Perfectly aware of the value of Irenaeus, if they could only make him speak according to their mind, almost all your writers wrest his meaning in the same way ; and in the instance of your learned annalist, Baronius, it is pitiable to see him repeating this poor little sentence, over and over, usque ad nauseam, for want of any other testimony in that early age which could be twisted to his purpose. But still your mode of dealing with it is somewhat original. First you tell us, that " the nearest phrases you can find in the classical authors like that of Irenaeus are : convenit optime ad pedem cothur- nus, and convenit ad eum heec contumelia, both found in Cicero." These two you seem to consider as disproving my assertion, whereas, in truth, they are rather in my favor, because the idea in both is that of locality rather than senti- ment. The boot fits the foot well, and this insult reaches to him, plainly convey no notion corresponding to the sense which you would put upon Irenaeus. You next, therefore^ inform us that " the translator of Irenaeus probably adhered closely to the Greek idiom," and you proceed, forthwith, to SUPPLY THE ORIGINAL WORD IN GREF.K, as if your conjecturc of what the lost Greek might have been, could possibly help us to fix the meaning of the only existing version, the Latin : 'It was it just reproof which your learned Benedictine Massuet admin- istered to our equally learned Grabe, when he, after the example of other celebrated theologians, had exercised his ingenuity upon the passage before UB. "Ea qua Irenao Graca supponit, ac, prout lubet, fabricaiur, non morabor :'inanes luxuriantis ingenii conjectural sunt, qua tam facile ne- gantur, quam gratis proponuntur." — Mas. Dis. in Iren. p. 109. 59 the more especially as our lexicons do not give your word tfuvapfZorrw, to harmonize, as the correspondent to the Latin convenio, but a very different word, (fvvsp-xpii.ai, to come togeth- er* And thus you leave the matter to rest, first, on your dictum that I am inaccurate ; secondly, on two hues from Cicero, which are nothing to your purpose ; and thirdly, on a fanciful suggestion of your own, as to what Irenseus might have said in the Greek original. Now let me refresh your memory. Right Reverend Sir, by a few quotations, which may help, I trust, from henceforth, to fix this point of primitive testimony. In the following list of passages you will find niany instances of the verb convenio, with the accusative, expressing the idea of Irenseus, viz., a local meeting, resorting, or coming together, which is manifestly the grownd-meaning of the word. viz. Quanta multitudo hominum converterit ad hoc judicium, vides. Cic. Ut judices dentur ex his civitatibus, qua; in id forum convenirent. id. Romam Italia tota convenit. id. Convenire in consilium clam inter se. id. Milites ad signa convenire jubet Cebs. Convenire ad aliquem. id. Esse homines, ad quos juventus in ludos conveniat. Sueton. Multte causBB convenisse in unum locum, atque inter se congruere videntur. Cic. Convenire aliquem, signifying to meet one, go to one, visit one, or find one. Cic. Quern sua manu spargentem semen, qui missi erant, convenerunt. Cic. Legates ad eum miserunt, qui, quum eum in itinere convenissmt, &C. CSBS. Neminem conveni (convenio autem quotidie plurimos) quin omnes mihi gratias agant. Cic. Ubi nuptisB fuerint, tunc istam convenibo, (old Latin for conveniam.) Plaut. I shall n^xt cite several passages in which the secondary meaning of convenio, namely, to agree, suit, or correspond, is expressed by the dative case, according to the general rule which I have stated, viz. Posterius priori non convenit. Cic. Q,uam sibi conveniat, ipse viderit. id. 60 Res convenk mihi cum illo. Hsec fratri mecum non conveniunt. Terent. Pacto convenii, ut, &c. Liv. Conveniat mihi tecum, necesse est. Cic. Medicamentum nervorum iensionibus conveniat. S. Larg.' Terra ariorihus convenit. Plin. Cffilum at terram vim suam, si tibi ita conveniat, dimittere. Cic. Neque decet aut convenit nobis, periculo ulli submittere animum nostrum, id. For these examples from the ancient classics, I refer you to Leverett's Lexicon, and now I pass on to the more proper source of interpretation when the fathers are in question, viz., the usus loquendi amongst writers of their own class. And in order to compress these citations into the shortest possible space, I shall set them in opposite columns ; the construction of the verb convenio when it signifies a local meeting, in the first column, and its construction when signi- fying agreement, suitableness, or correspondence, in the other. Convenimus eiquidem, — ad prse- missam ^nobisque designatam ur- bem. (1.) Theodoretum episcopum prsecipi- raus in sanctam synodum minime convenire. (3.) Saepius conveni ad eum pro hac causa. (5.) Bis in mense — apud alias quasli- bet ecclesias vos convenire manda- mus. (7.) Bis in hebdomada ad sacrosanc- tum palatium, — vos convenire man- damus. (9.) Non convenit servis Christi con- tendere. (2.) Et vobis etiam omnino de his silere convenit. (10.) Privilegiis qute sanctissimse sedi conveniunt ecclesise Romanse, aut ipsius antistiti. (11.) Humilitati mese non conveni- unt. (12.) Convenit enim nostro Pontifi- cio. (13.) Convenit nobis, qui clavem casles- tis horrei vicibus apostolis suscepi- mus, &c. (14.) (1.) Hard, Con. Tom. 5. p. 623, E. Con. Sues, (3.) ib. Tom. 2. p. 79; B. Con. Chalc. (5.) ib. p. Ill, D. ib. (7 & 9.) ib. Tom. 6. p. 121,122, B. Constitutio Joannis Paps VIII. (2.) Hard. Con. Tom. 5, p. 1423, B. (10.) ib. Tom. 6, p. 222. (11.) ib. 319, 0. (-12.) ib. 322, B. (13.) ib. 363. (14.) ib. 464. 61 Ad obitum, vel exsequias alicu- jus ex nobis, duo vel tres episcopi convenire possint. (17.) Convenientibus ad concilium, &c. (19.) Episcopos terrffi tuse — ad concili- um suum facias convenire. (21.) Conaideratis omnibus quas utilitati ecclesise convenire videbantur. (15) Auctoritati convenire dicimus, &c. (16.) Convenit apostolico moderamini benevola compassione pie succur- rere, &c. (18.) Pope Leo IX, uses the same form in his epistle to the abbot of Corby. (20.) Similar proofs may be drawn from any good Latin writer, even of our own time. Thus your learned Professor at May- nooth, Delahogue, in his Tractatus de iJeZigione, (Dublin ed. of 1835) p. 64. writes, atqiie hcec nostra definitioni conve- niunt. Again, p. 65, cum id conveniat phanomenis mdg- neticis, &c. ib. Definitio allata convenit omnibus miracu- lis, &c. Again, p. 117, Itaque Enti summe bono conve- nire videtur, &c. And I doubt not, that if I had the pleasure of possessing your own Latin works, I could add the name of Bishop Kenrick to my lists of evidence in the course of a few hours' reading. For we all know, that to a thorough-bred ecclesiastic of the Church of Rome, the Latin language is, of necessity, almost vernacular ; and I seriously doubt whether you would consent to write bad Latin, even if, by doing so, you could save your character for polemic candor. Having now, at much length, proved my assertion by the plainest testimony from all sides, heathen and Christian, ancient and modern, doctors of divinity, councils and popes, I think myself fully authorized, though it were against your whole hierarchy, to insist that I have laid down the general rule of construction with regard to the word convenio (17.) Hard. Con. Tom. 6. 543. D. Con. Tros. (19.) ib. 873, E. Con. Lemov. (21.) Hard. Con. Torh. 6. P. 2. p. 1124. Honor. Papae. ep. ad Regem. (15.) Hard. Con. 6. 477, E. Con. Afiic. (16.) ib. 532. B. Con. Tros. (18.) ib. 601. C. Agapet. Pap. Ep. (20.) ib. 974. E. 62 correctly.* And I am therefore obliged, in all frankness, to aver, that the language of Irenaeus, that ancient and most respectable witness of primitive order, is truly rendered by us, and most untruly by you ; and that you and your con- fraternity have distorted his words in defiance of grammatical propriety, and made him appear to testify, not only against his own meaning, but against the universal sense of Chris- tian antiquity. Alas ! It is but one specimen out of a multitude, to shew how men, endowed with talents, accom- plished as scholars, adorned with eloquence, placed in high official rank, and commanded by the Omniscient and Eternal Judge to use all their faculties in the service of the Al- mighty Giver, may yet be so blinded and bound by their ecclesiastical polity, that papal expediency becomes the guide instead of truth, and the glory of God is resolved into the glory of Roman supremacy. But let me hasten to my last topic, namely, the remarks of your organ, the Herald, upon my statement, that you were supposed to have withdrawn your Treatise on the Primacy, for a long period, from general circulation. I have said that I procured my own copy from Boston in January, 1838, soon after its publication, that in the following month of May it was not to be had in Baltimore, that in October of the same year it had been removed from the bookstore of the pub- lishers in Philadelphia, and that in July, 1839, its very exis- tence was denied at the Roman Catholic Bookstore in New York. Now, of these specific allegations, your Herald seems to contradict only one, namely, that which relates to Balti- more, giving his readers to understand that Mr. Lucas, of that city, always had the work for sale. Of the truth of this, however, any one may easily judge, after perusing a commu- nication from the Right Reverend Dr. Johns, who was Rector * That this, like all other general rules, has its exceptions, I am well aware. But none of these exceptions, (which chiefly occur in connexion with the prepositions cum, and inter,) affect the application of the general rule to the passage in Ireneeus. 63 of Christ's Church in Baltimore at the time, atid has since become the Assistant Bishop of the Diocese of Virginia. It was he who gave me my information of the fact, but I did not think myself at liberty to publish his name until I had his express authority, for which I wrote to him soon after I had learned the course which your organ had taken. The following is his reply. " Richmond, Ap. 28, 1843. " Right Rev'd and Dear Sir, " I recollect perfectly the substance of my letter to you in " the spring of 1888, and do not hesitate to (ppeat what I then commu- " nicated. " An advertisement in one of the papers apprised me that Bishop " Kenrick had prepared an answer to your work on the Church of Rome, " and directed me where it was to be obtained. As soon as I convenient- " ly could, I called at Lucas' (Baltimore) to procure the answer, and " was not a little surprised to find that they had no such book for sale. " My conclusion was, that for some purpose, best known to those con- " cerned, they had deemed it expedient to suppress the volume. " I further recollect that soon afterwards I had a conversation on the " subject with the late Francis S. Key, Esq., who, having read and ap- " preciated very highly your excellent Book, was anxious to know what " could be said in reply, and had therefore searched the city for the " answer. Not being able to find it, he came to me for information. " His inference corresponded precisely with my own. Our impression " was, that second thoughts had led Bishop Kenrick and his friends to " conclude, that though his production had been formally announced, "prudence demanded that it should be quietly withdrawn. This im- " pression was confirmed by learning, what they now concede, that a " similar course had been pursued in Philadelphia. •' You are at perfect liberty to use the preceding statement to substan- tiate that part of your letter to Bishop K. to which it relates," &c. (Signed.) "J. JOHNS." With this distinct warrant for my assertion, from my respected colleague. Bishop Johns, in the only point where your Herald has ventured to impugn it, I shall leave your book to win its way to public confidence, as best it can ; unless compelled, by your future course, to resume the sub- 64 ject. And let me remind you, in conclusion, Right Reverend Sir, that all this controversy is of your own seeking, that you have been the assailant not of myself simply, but W the Church of Christ to which I belong, and of the whole body of her ministry, and that my only object has been to fulfil, as well as my slender ability might allow, a painful but a plain duty, in the temper which became a minister of God. To the gibe, the sneer, the ridicule, the levity, displayed so largely by your agent, I have nothing to say. I can only regret, for your own sake, that y