Butl 
 
 938 
 P19 
 
 staxl 
 
 6 
 
 
^ THE \ 
 r? L5BRARt£S S 
 
PAMPHLETS 
 
 FOR 
 
 
 THE PEOPLE 
 
 IN ILLUSTRATION OF THE CLAIMS OF THE 
 CHURCH AND METHODISM. 
 
 BY A PRESBYTER OE MISSISSIPPI. 
 
 PHILADELPHIA: 
 PUBLISHED BY H. HOOKER, 
 
 COR. OF CHESTNUT AND EIGHTH STS. 
 18 5 4. 
 
OiT.%* 
 
 Q\ 
 
 <*. 
 
ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 Tiie Author having been prevented by illness from 
 furnishing a Prefatory Note, which he had intended, 
 in due season, it is deemed proper to say, that " The 
 Pamphlets for the People" were written with an aim 
 to plainness and the avoidance of every thing like 
 literary ambition or scholastic and learned references. 
 In certain sections of our country the high preten- 
 sion of the Methodists is not a little remarkable, and 
 sometimes, as in the present instance, issues in violent 
 attacks upon the Church. It is a little curious, while 
 there is no sect that can be so easily and conclusively 
 shown to be without an Apostolic ministry ; to have 
 been of so recent an origin ; to have derived all that 
 bears any semblance to Gospel order and truth from 
 the Church of England ; the Methodist should still be 
 so much the enemy of the order and authority of that 
 
 o Church. There is something in the system, we fear, 
 that leads on to boasting and self-satisfaction, right or 
 
 * "* wrong. It is a wild fire that always finds enough in 
 a waste world to keep it burning and fretting for 
 
 (3) 
 
 
4 ADVERTISEMENT. 
 
 conquest. If we mistake not, much of this spirit will 
 be seen in these pages ; and the hollowness of such 
 pretensions is exposed in a manner that must take 
 effect with fair minds. 
 
 Methodism must be sounder before it can be 
 stable, and the good it seems to do must stand on 
 trial better, if it will prove in the end any thing but 
 a spectacle of good overcome of evil. 
 
. > » 
 
 PAMPHLETS EOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER OXE. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHCRCff, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 In the spirit of your and my beloved master's touch- 
 ing injunction, " Love one another/' I take up my pen to 
 address you. In obedience, also, to his divine command, 
 " If ye are reviled revile not again/' I trust every line that 
 I shall write will be conceived and penned. 
 
 I have read your book. 
 
 I beg to ask wherefore you wrote it ? 
 
 Either the Episcopal Church, against which it is aimed, is 
 a church of Christ, or it is not. If it be, you have directed 
 what you believed would be a vital blow at a part of* Christ's 
 own body ! Eighteen hundred years after his crucifixion 
 you have taken up the Roman spear and pierced his side ! 
 
 If the Episcopal Church is not a church of Christ, you, 
 my brother, have done a noble duty, for which your own 
 conscience and God, the judge of all consciences, will com- 
 mend you ! If it be a church of Christ, both will one day 
 condemn you. 
 
 Your book, were its statements, its reasoning, its alleged 
 facts, its assertions true, ought to inflict so fatal a wound 
 upon the Episcopal Church, that, bleeding in every vein, 
 like her crucified Lord, she must hang her smitten and spit- 
 ten-upon head, and, " forsaken by her God," die amid the 
 insults of her foes. 
 
 If your book be true, my brother, the Episcopal Church 
 1* (7) 
 
8 TAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 is a practical falsehood, and the millions of pious men and 
 women who have " gone to rest" in the embraces of its faith 
 are lost, and the " few" who, living, hope to die therein are 
 evidently " without hope and without God in the world !" 
 
 If your book be true, the Bishops, in this country and in 
 England, of the Episcopal communion, are Impostors, hold- 
 ing up to the world an Imposture, and are " deserving of 
 damnation," with all who follow their teaching. 
 
 If your book be true, my brother, there is no punishment 
 that God holds in reserve for " greater transgressors," that 
 ought not to be visited upon the heads of the Bishops and 
 Clergy of the Episcopal Church for assuming to be " called 
 of God," when they are not. 
 
 If your book, therefore, be true, the Episcopal Church is 
 false; if, on the contrary, the Episcopal Church, which your 
 book seems to have been conceived and written purposely 
 "to destroy, if possible, from the face of the earth," be 
 proved to be a church of God, though with human imperfec- 
 tions interwoven, you are guilty before God, before the 
 Christian world, and especially before the few " little ones" 
 within this church whom your book has " offended," of 
 attacking a Branch of Christ's Church, of wounding his elect 
 members, and of acting with the enemies to his name ; of 
 crucifying your, and my, and their Lord afresh, and before 
 the scoffing Sadducee and Pharisee of the day, putting Him 
 and the "few" who hope "to be saved" in her communion 
 to open shame. Either, therefore, you have done " God 
 service," my brother, or you have "borne false witness 
 against your neighbor." If you have done God service, the 
 Episcopal Church is no church "of God," and you will 
 hereafter have your reward for your zealous efforts to destroy 
 the enemies of God; but if you have borne "false witness 
 against your neighbor," your judgment I safely may leave with 
 Him who, if He will not let " a sparrow fall to the ground" 
 without his notice, will not look with indifference upon the 
 
NUMBER ONE. 9 
 
 " little ones" who believe in Jesus, whose faith and hopes, 
 whose holy trust and confidence in God, (as united to him 
 through the union that is in his church,) your book may have 
 stricken down to the dust ! Ah, my brother, may God in 
 his mercy forgive you all the mischief your book is calculated 
 to produce upon the minds of the unlearned and timid- 
 hearted in the Episcopal Church, upon the young and the 
 pious females therein, and for all the opprobrium that the 
 ignorant and prejudiced, taking courage by it, in other de- 
 nominations will heap upon its devoted ministers. If, as I 
 trust, and wish to believe, you are a Christian man, who 
 seriously loves Christ and the souls of men, you will, if not 
 in this world, in the world after this, deeply regret your zeal 
 in persecuting what m ay prove to be the church of God; 
 but in that, like Saul of Tarsus, you did it ignorantly, 
 through unbelief — like him, I hope, you will, in " that Day," 
 be forgiven. 
 
 As I have said, I have read your book. It has awakened 
 in me no other emotions than painful sorrow, that one who 
 wears the name of Christ, and holds the office of a teacher 
 of that religion of love and charity which "thinketh no 
 evil," should write such a book, in such a spirit, against a 
 body of Christians who worship the same God, believe in 
 the same Saviour, look to the same Heaven, and are par- 
 takers of the same hope with yourself and your brethren. 
 / am a minister, also, of Christ, and serve at the altars of 
 that Branch of Christ's Church which you have so earnestly 
 labored to bring into contempt, by holding it up, in your 
 pages, to the eyes of men as an Ecclesiastical Imposture. 
 Though one of the youngest Presbyters, by ordination, in 
 this church, and though you are as it were Goltaii among 
 your own "hosts," yet, taking example of David, I will, with 
 a few smooth stones in my sling, and trusting in God, go 
 forth to meet you. 
 
 You commence your attack upon the Episcopal Church 
 
10 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 by saying, you wish for nothing but to find the truth. I re- 
 gret that your search went no deeper than your work evinces, 
 or you would have been successful. The plumb-line that 
 would sound the depths of the church must penetrate the 
 strata of eighteen centuries. 
 
 You seem to have read ecclesiastical history, not so much 
 to find the truth, as for the confirmation of certain pre-con- 
 ceived opinions ! You know that, by private interpretation, 
 one may make the Bible seem to support almost any pre- 
 conceived creed ; so history may be so read as to seem to 
 give its testimony in favor of every sect that, at this day, 
 divides the church of God. 
 
 It is not my intention, my brother, to say aught bitterly 
 against you. I do not attack, but defend ! I wish only to 
 counteract, so far as I may, some of the evils your book is 
 likely to do — evils among your own people, by increasing 
 their uncharitableness ; evils among our own people, by lead- 
 ing them into doubts; and evils among sinners, by giving 
 them cause for deriding religion — for, in an attack of this 
 kind, it is not the religious party attacked that suffers alone, 
 but piety and religion — Christianity at large suffers; and 
 the conversion of the world is retarded. 
 
 I have said I am a minister in the Episcopal Churoii. My 
 object in writing is not to answer your book (I leave that 
 to abler pens, if there need be), but to protest, in a fraternal 
 spirit, against its teachings and conclusions. Let us reason 
 together. 
 
 As a clergyman of the Episcopal Church, which you have 
 publicly and openly attacked, with a bitterness and hostility 
 that has had no parallel since Thomas Paine attacked the 
 Bible, and said, " He had at length silenced it for ever." 
 I, of course, hold my " Orders" from a Bishop in the church — 
 from one of the same rank with that of the estimable minister 
 and pastor of Christ's flock, for whom and his office you have 
 so heartily shown your contempt. 
 
M HLBEB ONE. 11 
 
 In your book, you have striven with all your learning 
 and ingenuity, aided by a very extraordinary Christian 
 hatred of heart breathing through every LETTER, to destroy 
 the validity of the Episcopal orders of the Bishop of Missis- 
 sippi ; and in your anxiety to secure this end, you have ef- 
 fectually overthrown your own right to the ministerial 
 office. 
 
 You labor to show that it was impossible that the here- 
 ditary right of ordination could have come down, unbroken, 
 through a line of successive consecrated Bishops. To cause 
 this assertion to appear to be verified by facts, you make 
 many historical references, and then assume sequiture which 
 do not, of necessity, follow. 
 
 If, however, all you desire to prove be admitted, the issue 
 reached by you is, that there is no valid Christian ministry 
 on the earth ! that the Episcopal Ministry being incapable 
 of tracing an hereditary descent, all other ministry is equally 
 so — for the same causes, your " dark ages," with its ignorance 
 and vice of the clergy," were exactly as hostile to the due 
 transmission of presby terial orders as of Episcopal ; therefore 
 there is no ministry that can actually prove itself originally 
 established by the Apostles ! If, therefore, your premises be 
 admitted, then the church which the Apostles organized is 
 not to be found to-day in Christendom. But, if it i3 not to 
 be found, then u the gates of hell have prevailed against 
 it j" and the words of Jesus have been falsified by the fact. 
 He, moreover, said he would he with his church u to the end 
 of the world." If his church is not to be found, then he 
 cannot be with it ! Either, therefore, the church which 
 Christ promised " to be with," and against which he said 
 "the gates of hell should not prevail," is now on earth, and 
 visible and recognizable, or Christ has promised what he has 
 not performed, and cannot perform. If then the church of 
 Christ, founded on the Apostles and Prophets, was to con- 
 tinue, it must now exist; and as Christ promised to be with 
 
12 PAMPHLET FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 it, his presence consequently is in it. The Episcopal Church 
 professes and clearly proves that it is a branch of this Apos- 
 tolic Church, and that, therefore, Christ, ipse facto, is with 
 it, and that it is in Christ. It proves its claim to this union 
 with the divine Head, by tracing the unbroken succession of 
 its ministry from the Apostles ; and it strikes me, reverend 
 brother, that every real branch of this one apostolic and 
 ancient church is bound to make good its claim to union with 
 Christ, the Tree, by unbroken ecclesiastical lineage. For 
 instance, I happen to know that your people do not filiate 
 with the new sect called the Campbellites, asserting that they 
 have no valid orders or ministry. You deny to them the 
 conditions necessary to a lawful Christian communion. And 
 wherefore ? Because they have no hereditary or transmitted 
 ministry. Hence, you admit, that an hereditary ministry 
 is necessary to make the Christian sacraments valid, in 
 effects, to recipients. Yet, your arguments being admitted, 
 in your book you have demolished, by many mortal blows 
 struck upon different portions of the apostolical succession 
 chain, all valid ministerial succession. Your own orders, 
 therefore, with all others, begin in mid air, tejudice, floating 
 unsecured in the abyss of " the dark ages ;" as I have seen 
 the spider's broken thread, when torn from its support, tossed 
 hither and thither on every breeze — a bridge that hath an 
 ending but no beginning. If, therefore, the hereditary trans- 
 mission of " Episcopal" orders in the Episcopal Church fail to 
 reach these times unbroken, yet those of " the ministry" of 
 the " 01 rtoxxoi," which you think form their " greater num- 
 ber," may stand some better chance (as if our Lord Christ 
 left aught to chance) of transmitting this virtue of " orders," 
 may have come down safely. But, my brother, you over- 
 look the fact that if the Bishop's consecrations are doubtful, 
 and not to be proven legal and strictly canonical, those of the 
 ministry whom they always ordained are equally so. There- 
 fore, if the Episcopate has not transmitted unbroken the 
 
NUMBER ONE. 13 
 
 succession " tactual/' (to use a word you seem to hold with 
 favor,) the ministry receiving their orders from this doubtful 
 source, could not communicate to our day the tactual inherit 
 ance of valid orders. Hence, if you destroy the Bishop's 
 line, you destroy the integrity of the presbyterial, and you 
 place the Christian Churches of to-day without a valid 
 ministry. If you destroy the Bishops, you ruin yourselves ; 
 for all the vitality, and every "condition" whereby the 
 Evangelical Methodist Society is a Church, it receives through 
 the Episcopal Church, of which it was, less than seventy 
 years ago, a living part — " bone of its bone and flesh of its 
 flesh." Destroy the Episcopal succession in this your mater- 
 nal church, and you destroy your own ministry, and ini-church 
 the whole of your communion ; for whatsoever life you have 
 in you as a Church, whatsoever authority, whatsoever orders, 
 whatsoever sacraments, all of which I confess you do have in 
 a certain manner, my brother, you have them because you 
 derived them ! and it was from the Episcopal Church 
 that you derived them. If, therefore, she has no authority, 
 you have none. You rise or fall with her ! Your ecclesi- 
 astical honor, the validity of your minister's orders, the sacra- 
 mental efficacy of your baptism and holy communion, depend 
 upon the honor, orders, and sacraments of the English Epis- 
 copal Church, your and our " mother." The Spirit of 
 Christ she received as the Church, and — grateful thanks 
 to our dear Lord for the fulfillment of his promise ever 
 to be with his Church, was not withdrawn, even under the 
 prostrating incubus of Rome's usurpation of her altars — 
 a portion of that Spirit of Christ went icith you when you 
 left her, and remains in you still, as the tree's life continu- 
 eth for a time to remain in the severed branch ; and this life 
 is the sole basis on which you can found any claims to be a 
 living church. If you deny this, (as I think you will not,) 
 then you must admit that the Campbellite " orders," author- 
 ity, and sacraments are equal with your own. In therefore 
 
14 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 endeavoring to weaken, and if possible to destroy the here- 
 ditary succession of ministerial authority through the Epis- 
 copate, you have destroyed also that through the *pscT;3t>T'£pot, 
 and virtually ignored the Christian ministry of to-day, by 
 separating it from all connection with that of the apostolic 
 age. By thus cutting off the streams from the fountain, you 
 have made, not so many more fountains, but only stagnant, 
 standing pools. You have also tried to prove to " the world 
 lying in wickedness," that as there is no particular authority 
 for ministerial acts, there is no authority ; and your book will 
 have the tendency not only, it may be, of keeping sinners 
 out of the Episcopal Church, but out of your own and all 
 other churches. The tendency of your book is therefore to 
 increase infidelity. 
 
 Having now endeavored briefly to show you in a brotherly 
 way, the true character and issue of such a book as you have 
 thought it best to write, and how that it does not only mili- 
 tate against the integrity of your own orders, but the " life- 
 power" of your own extensive communion, and how that it 
 gives the world fresh vigor to run the race of transgression, 
 and to " despise the church of God," under all its denomina- 
 tional names ; and having hinted how deeply it will wound 
 many a lowly believer in the Church, for we have the meek 
 and lowly of heart in our Church, my brother, I desire (firmly 
 but kindly, "for the servant of God must not strive") to 
 meet a few of your arguments. Observe that this is no reply 
 to your book. The learned and judicious man of God, 
 against whom and whose holy office it is written, is well able 
 to answer you, if his charity will cover the multitude of 
 offences which it contains against him of a personal kind. 
 The bitterness of your language, and extraordinary style of 
 your declamation, perhaps, should keep him silent. It is 
 true you preface your attack by saying, with somewhat of 
 self-laudation I fear, that you "are afflicted with a plain, 
 blunt, uncouth matter-of-fact way of expressing yourself;" 
 
NUMBER ONE. 15 
 
 and, as if this confession would authorize and excuse all sub- 
 sequent rudeness, your language afterwards is not only 
 " harsh, but disrespectful," to quote some of your own words. 
 It is as if a man given to much tobacco-chewing should enter 
 my parlor, saying: " Sir, I am a great chewer, and my friends 
 say that I spit 'amber' on all sides, no matter where I may 
 be, and do a deal of mischief thereby, and that sometimes I 
 stain and injure the furniture, when 'I never thought of 
 such things;' and, sir, 'I mean no such thing.' <I have 
 no such sentiment within me.' If any spit should fall from 
 my lips upon your wife's carpet or curtains, I beg you will 
 consider that I don't intend any injury." lie ends this 
 preface, perhaps, by discharging, in the space of a few 
 minutes, the liquid contents of his mouth upon my books, 
 then upon my table, over the white curtains, and finally into 
 my face ! Am I to consider his prefatory apology license for 
 such conduct ? Is not the spitting quite as bad in itself, and 
 in its effects, as if no such prefatory warning had been intro- 
 duced ? The Bishop whom you have spit upon so freely, 
 good brother, may, therefore, or may not answer you. I 
 have not seen him since your book has appeared. He does 
 not know I have seen it. He is just now following the ex- 
 ample of his predecessor, St. Paul, in an apostolical journey, 
 " visiting the churches of God" planted in the north parts 
 of his Diocese, so lately " a wilderness," and probably 
 your book has not crossed his path to wound his heel as he 
 journeys. I write, simply from a desire to do what lies in my 
 humble power (as it will be some time yet to his return) to 
 counteract the influence of a book which I feel you will ere 
 long begin to regret ever having written, at least in the 
 spirit with which it is penned. Be assured, my brother, 
 " your dealing will come down upon your own pate" with a 
 force that will eventually do you and the cause for which you 
 have written irreparable loss ; but in the meanwhile we mus f 
 see that the poison go not deeper in the hearts of our own 
 
 2 
 
16 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 people, into which you have assayed to infuse it. But I will 
 not longer detain you from a consideration of some of your 
 arguments, which I shall review in the order in which they 
 occur to me. 
 
 You have asserted that Holy Scripture shows no ground 
 on which the Apostolical (or ministerial, for this is virtually 
 the position you take) succession can stand; and refer, in 
 proof of your declaration, to certain texts which you call the 
 " sum of scripture authority for the" Bishop " succession." 
 These verses, although unquestionably involving the inten- 
 tion of succession, are not to be insisted upon. I will quote 
 another which, though Paul speaketh it, you will acknow- 
 ledge to be the voice of Christ. 2 Corinth, v. 20: "Now 
 then we are ambassadors for Christ." 
 
 This is a figure drawn from the state. An ambassador 
 receives a commission to do certain acts from a higher power, 
 and truly represents this power. It is " authority" to act 
 that makes the acts of an ambassador, so commissioned and 
 sent, to differ from the same acts done by a simple citizen. 
 A true and lawful ambassador must, therefore, be sent by a 
 superior Power; must be lawfully commissioned with author- 
 ity to act for that power; and, in case of death, authorized to 
 convey and transmit his commission and seal of office to a 
 successor as charge d' affairs; who shall hold and stand in 
 Ms place with equal authority, ex-officio, and during the term 
 that he retains these delegated powers. 
 
 Thus Paul to Timothy says : " The things thou hast heard 
 of me among many witnesses, the same commit thou to 
 faithful men, who shall be able to teach others also." Here 
 we have the beginning of the transmission of the ambassado- 
 rial commission of teaching the gospel and extending the 
 church, which being fully committed to Paul by his King 
 and Lord, is here conveyed by the apostle to Timothy, who 
 is commanded to convey it in his turn to " faithful men," 
 who, when they depart this life, must teach others also. 
 
NUMBER ONE. 17 
 
 These are the beginnings of the succession of the ministry, 
 not only through Paul, but in parity of power through all 
 the other apostles, within the several branches of the one 
 Church apostolic planted by them ; which branches remain 
 to this day, in more or less integrity, in Europe, Asia, and 
 Africa; for we " Episcopalians" do not assert nor claim, let 
 me say, in passing, to be the only true Church. We are but 
 a hranch, or, if it please you, a " tendril" of the living tree 
 of the Church apostolic, which comprises the Church in Eng- 
 land ; the Greek Church (the daughter of the Apostolic 
 Church of Corinth and Macedonia, planted by Paul) ; the 
 Asia Minor and Nestorian Branch, planted by St. John and 
 Paul; the Eastern Churches, lately visited by Layard, 
 planted by Thomas; the Abyssinian and Egyptian Churches, 
 planted by Mark, &c. ; in all of which is retained the here- 
 ditar} r commission of the apostolic ministry through a suc- 
 cessive Episcopate.* As you are a reader, you must be 
 familiar with the narrative given by the talented and learned 
 dissenting minister, the Rev. Joseph Wolff, who, a few years 
 ago, traveling in the East, the fountain of our common 
 faith, called on the Arminian Apostolic Bishop. He says, in 
 his Journal : " When I called on this Bishop, informing him 
 that I was a missionary, he asked me l What Bishop sent me 
 out r 
 
 " The same question was put to me," he adds, " by the 
 Christian Archbishop of the Arminian nations ; by the whole 
 body of the Bishops of the ( Apostolic Churches' of Asia 
 Minor; and by the head Bishop of the Greek Church at 
 Constantinople : ' What Bishop sent you out V 
 
 11 1 replied to them, ' My internal voice sent me forth V 
 " Upon this they answered, ' Moses heard the voice of 
 God upon Horeb; but God added thereto miracles, in order that 
 Pharoah might be forced to acknowledge him as sent by God 
 
 * I will purposely omit the Roman Episcopate in all my arguments. 
 
18 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 to him. Hast thou miracles ? The Levites had to receive 
 their commission from Moses ; and Christ made the same 
 provision in his church. He imparted the gift of miracles 
 to the apostles in sending them forth ; but they instituted 
 Bishops by the imposition of hands j* and the apostles ap- 
 pointed them to ordain ministers in like manner. If you, 
 Joseph "Wolff, are an extraordinary minister, PROVE it by 
 miracles! If an ordinary one, WHO laid hands on you and 
 made you such f Your internal voice may be evidence to 
 you, but not to us V " 
 
 To this candid narrative, Kev. Dr. Wolff has the honesty 
 to add : — 
 
 " The very fact that all the Eastern Churches, (where 
 the gospel first arose,) without one single exception, have 
 Bishops, Priests, and Deacons, and the very fact that any 
 other church is not hnoion, is, to me, a sufficient proof that 
 Episcopacy is of divine origin ; and that the doctrine of the 
 ' Apostolic succession' is a spiritual doctrine." 
 
 u Credimns apostolo, sed non credimus in apostolum" has 
 been the doctrine of the church in all ages upon this sub 
 ject, my brother, and will continue to be "to the end of the 
 world." Fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
 * A fountain may be produced by a direct miracle; but miracles are not 
 afterwards necessary to create the streams. The one primary miracle is 
 in perpetual activity in the streams ; which yet flow by natural laws. So 
 is the apostolic office, which in miracles began. 
 
PAMPHLETS POR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER TWO. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEV, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHTRCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 From what I have written and quoted at the close of 
 my last Pamphlet, you perceive that you err in the suppo- 
 sition that the American Episcopal Church claims to be the 
 only true Church; and that therefore its claims, from the 
 apparent insignificancy of its numbers compared with your 
 own large communion, compared with " the Thousands of 
 Judah," are not to be listened to. If you have heard Epis- 
 copalians assert the exchisiveness of the " Episcopal Church 
 in America/' you were unfortunate in your authorities ; but 
 it strikes me with surprise that one so deeply read, ecclesi- 
 astically, as you appear to be, should have been led astray 
 by uninformed churchmen. The Episcopal Church in the 
 United States is indeed the "few" compared with "the 
 many" who are not of her communion. But she is not alone 
 the Episcopal Church, as I have shown you in my former 
 Pamphlet. To the 33 Bishops and 1650 Clergymen, and 
 111,000 of her communicants, add the 28 Bishops and 
 16,000 Clergy of the English branch, and the 40,000 of the 
 Greek Clergy in Russia, and her millions of communicants; 
 the 30 Bishops of the kingdom of Greece, and of Clergy and 
 of communicants more than one million; add the millions of 
 the Clergy and communicants of the church in Asia Minor, 
 in Armenia, in Persia, in Syria, in Egypt, in Cyprus and 
 Crete ; and you must perceive that by no means insignificant 
 2* (19) 
 
 
20 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 are the Episcopalians — by which defining term all intelli- 
 gent churchmen mean churches that are governed by here- 
 ditary Bishops.* 
 
 It is an error much prevailing in this country among a 
 large portion of the community, that there are no Christians 
 in the world but they who speak the English tongue ! But 
 such persons should be kindly reminded, that before the 
 English tongue was a language of the earth, the Christian 
 Church was full of Christians on the continent and in foreign 
 lands ; and that those foreign Churches do still hold (more 
 or less pure) the Christian faith. It is the impression of 
 men, who pass for intelligent ones, that the Kussians are 
 Pagans, and if not Pagans, at least Mohammedans; and I 
 heard an " intelligent lady" express her surprise that Jenny 
 Lind " could be a Christian, coming from Sweden." Such 
 persons, and they are not a few, therefore, count the whole 
 world, out of the United States, as out of Christ; and adding 
 up the Presbyterians, and Baptists, and Methodists, " with 
 their variations," put them against the only other denomina- 
 tion they charitably recognize as "Christian," (the few 
 Episcopalians) and say, " amid this teeming multitude of 
 Christians — this great army of the Lord of hosts — where is 
 your Church ?"f 
 
 But, my brother, God likes not much to have his people 
 numbered. You have read when " Satan provoked David to 
 number Israel," how that " God was greatly displeased with 
 this thing ;" and David, trembling and repentant, and 
 clothed in sackcloth, confessed that he had done evil in look- 
 ing to the strength of numbers rather than to the presence 
 
 * Episcopus gave us the word Bishop, not by translation, but by -pvo- 
 gcbSsivQ pronunciation. 1st, Piscopus; 2d, Biscopus ; 4th, Eishcop ; 5th 
 and last change, Bishop. An Episcopal Church is, therefore, properly, 
 a church with governing Bishops. Henco the interpolation of " Episco- 
 pal," to cover your own " Bishops," in your nomen Ecclesiasticus. 
 
 f "Abbey on Apostolic Succession," pp. 180. Mr, Abbey, numbering 
 his people^ makes 1,319,171 souls in Methodisdom, 
 
NUMBER TWO. 21 
 
 of God, and cried : " Is it not I that commanded the people 
 to be numbered '( even I it is that have sinned and done 
 evil indeed." 
 
 God, my brother, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for 
 ever j and what he dislikes at one time equally offends him 
 at another. But if you make great numbers an argument 
 that you are " the Church," the true Israel of God, then it 
 is fair to make use of your own arguments by which to judge 
 you. " If might be right, then the mightier one the 
 tighter" 
 
 To increase " the tale of bricks" that you wish to throw at 
 the two powerful mitres, you fraternally add in your Bap- 
 tist neighbors and the Presbyterians ; thus you state your 
 figures : 
 
 Baptists of all organizations, 090,S57 
 
 Presbyterians, 659,2J8 
 
 Methodists, 1,319,171 
 
 Other Orthodox Churches, 337,689 
 
 " The few" Episcopalians, 111,600 
 
 Making a total of . . . . 3,306,975 
 
 " This is the numbering of Israel. " 
 
 It is pleasant, let me remark by the way, to observe this 
 fellowship between you and your Presbyterian and Baptist 
 brethren, whom usually you love not mainly well, I imagine. 
 if your newspapers and monthlies and their newspapers and 
 monthly publications are any test of your mutual love. In 
 your and their publications I see that very loving blows are 
 dealt, in a fraternal, Christian-like way — kisses of peace, 
 doubtless, between your Churches. In one, a Presbyterian 
 editor is shocked at the " irregularity of the orders" of the 
 Methodists, and their presumptive and prelatical pride u in 
 calling their Superintendents ' Bishops/ " In a Methodist 
 paper, the learned editor taps, with the velvet softness of a 
 leopard's paw, his " brother" Presbyterian editor for his 
 M predestination, his synodical system, his deficiency of re- 
 
22 PAMPHLETS POR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 vival graces;" while one of your Baptist brothers, after 
 abusing your church polity, says that he had as lief have his 
 children spit upon, as sprinkled as the Methodists baptize. 
 "War with each other, but union against the Episcopa- 
 lians'" seems to be your motto, brother. Your fellowship 
 for this time reminds me of three boys named John Calvin, 
 Ezekiel Rogers Holliman, and John Wesley Asbury, who, 
 though orphans, were constantly at quarrel-ends about their 
 ancestors, wealth, respectability, and importance. One day 
 they got fairly to blows, and began dealing right hard 
 knocks upon one another's heads. Ezekiel, who was a 
 strong-backed lad, at last got them both by the collar, and 
 was dragging them to souce them into the mill-pond ; but 
 John Asbury picked up a piece of an anxious seat that for- 
 tunately was lying near, and would have knocked him 
 bodily down with it, when a pale youth named William 
 Canterbury White, coming up, affectionately interfered. 
 Now this lad had a father living, and could, as they well 
 knew, trace his ancestry up to the very establishment of the 
 kingdom by the first king of it; consequently his arrogance 
 and claims equally offended them. They felt therefore on 
 common ground when he was present. Hence John Calvin 
 no sooner saw who it was that was interposing, than he caught 
 up a fragment of a great rock, broken off from an inaccessi- 
 ble cliff, called " Frail Perseverance/' and would there- 
 with incontinently have broken his head in ; while Ezekiel 
 Holliman, catching him by the nape of the neck cried, " Duck 
 him ! he hates water !" Moreover, Wesley Asbury turning 
 the fragment of the anxious seat against him, forced him to 
 retreat; thereby clearly proving that this Wflliam White 
 had no ancestors ; " for," saith Cromwell's great Captain, 
 " three round drubbing knocks are better than one argumen- 
 tation; and these strong men, if they are i'the wrong, are 
 likelier to be right than one weak rogue." 
 
 But, my brother, as I said before introducing my little. 
 
M MBER TWO. 23 
 
 illustration, if you count truth by noses, then I must use the 
 same mode of reasoning against you. If 3,306,975, small 
 and great, make you right, then 3,306,976 on the Episcopal 
 side would make you wrong. Now I can show you very 
 easily, by parity of reasoning, that you have affixed, indelli- 
 bly, the seal of error to your side. The Episcopal Branch 
 of the Church, in the United States, numbers but little more 
 than 111,000 members as you state; here, therefore, you are 
 " The church/' as you please to argue. In England the 
 number of Episcopalians is 9,000,000, small and great, and 
 of Episcopalian clergymen more than 10,000. (May God, 
 who punished David for numbering Israel, pardon this enu- 
 meration on my part ; but, brother, you have forced me to 
 resort to it, and yours be the sin. "They that take the 
 sword must perish by the sword.") In Scotland and Ireland, 
 the Episcopal Church numbers 2,300,000 communicants. I 
 will here, as I have hitherto done, omit the Roman commu- 
 nion entirely. In Russia the Greek Church far exceeds the 
 English, and in the Turkish empire alone, are 8,000,000 of 
 Episcopal Christians, descendants of the very churches to 
 which Paul wrote his Greek Epistles — the Thessalonian, 
 Corinthian, and Ephesian Churches. Ah, my brother, if 
 numbers make right, and Christian truth can be reached by 
 slate and pencil, you perceive that you are not the Church 
 after all. You are out-counted by many millions of Episco- 
 palian noses. All the Methodists in the world do not reach 
 3,000,000. Even the Roman Catholic Church outnumhers 
 you — therefore, you being judge, that Church is the true 
 Church of God. You perceive, therefore, the fallacy of your 
 mode of argumentation, my brother; it being, as you 
 know, a bad rule that worketh not both ways. 
 
 And here let me say that you do not treat us fairly — our 
 little 111,650 ! You know well we constitute not the whole 
 Episcopal Church — the Protestant Episcopal Church alone — 
 but that we are in communion with that of Canada, of Eng- 
 
24 PAMPHLET FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 land, of Ireland, of Scotland, and the Colonial Churches of 
 the East Indies ; which alone, without going out of the 
 English tongue, far transcend in numbers your quaternion 
 affiliation of 3,306,975. It would have been very easy, 
 doubtless, for three Ishmaelites to have whipped " little" 
 Benjamin alone ; but when the other brethren are added to 
 his side, the eagle of victory would be likely to perch on 
 Benjamin's standard. 
 
 But bear with me a little farther, touching this argument 
 of yours upon figures. The great synagogue of Jews dwell- 
 ing in Borne, in the year 69, A. D., ought to have rejected 
 the Church of Christ, formed of a few " in the house of 
 Priscilla and Aquilla," because the Jews only outnum- 
 bered them, " thirty to one;" nay, the Christians in Borne, 
 or in the whole world, compared with the Jews, were not 
 " one in forty," while the number of the Jews was 3,200,000. 
 According to your reasoning the Christian Church, because 
 few and despised, was not, therefore, to be regarded as the 
 Church of God. On the contrary, the Jews would honestly 
 believe that to revile it, and attempt to destroy it, for its ar- 
 rogant pretensions to be the Church, were to do God service ; 
 just as you, my brother, misled by counting beards, and 
 finding you had " thirty to one" on your side, honestly 
 thought you were doing God service in writing your book to 
 try and destroy it. 
 
 There is another parallel which occurs to me as I am dis- 
 posing of this part of your argument " of numbers," and it 
 is this : You are well read in the Bible, I doubt not, and 
 need not to be taught, only reminded, that God had but one 
 Church in Judea when Behoboam behaved very unwisely, 
 and there was a schism in the Church. Ten tribes withdrew 
 bodily, and set up another worship and another temple upon 
 an opposition Mount Zion. Jeroboam was the John Wesley 
 of this movement. Now, here we behold a church actually 
 divided — ten tribes on one side and hut two left on the other. 
 
NUMBER TWO. 25 
 
 By your chosen mode of argument, the Ten-tribe schism 
 ought to be theCuTTB.es j inasmuch as it outnumbered the other 
 side not quite thirty to one; but as the number of Israel, or 
 of the Methodist party, (pardon me, but suffer this appella- 
 tion for the sake of argument,) you know, my brother, was 
 2,900,000, and the number of Judah and Benjamin less than 
 500,000, the disparity was quite enough, where numbers 
 decide, to give to Israel's side all the distinctive marks of the 
 true Church, viz. : the priesthood, the sacrifices, the shechinah 
 of glory, and, above all, the dazzling promises concerning 
 Messias. Doubtless, many years afterward, when the men 
 of Judah spoke of their " high claims/' as holding the suc- 
 cession of tbe Aaronic priesthood, the presence of God in 
 the shechinah, the true altar of incense and lamb of sacri- 
 fice, and that therefore Messias would come of them, they 
 were mocked and scorned by the men of Samaria, and met 
 with such words as these : " You the true Church of God 
 and his Messias ! Your claims are too high. We number 
 nearly 3,000,000 of the children of Abraham, and you but a 
 handful in Jerusalem and its suburbs ! You 'the Church/ 
 I sympathize with your modesty."* 
 
 Nevertheless, in the fullness of time, God recognized, be- 
 fore the world, that Judah and little Benjamin were his 
 Church, by honoring it with the divine incarnation therein 
 of his Son ; while the ten tribes, corrupting their worship, 
 had been long before scattered to the four winds of heaven, 
 and to this day are not. 
 
 Numbers, therefore, my brother, are no criterion for de- 
 ciding upon claims of being the Church of God. I mean 
 large numbers are not a test as to where lies the truth. On 
 the contrary, if numbers are to be taken into consideration 
 at all, it is the smaller number that is more likely to be 
 u God's peculiar choice." In Acts, chapter xx. verse 20, 
 you will read these words : 
 
 * Page 150 of Abbey's Apostolical Succession. 
 
26 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 "For many are called but few are chosen." 
 
 Here our 111,650 have no small advantage over your 
 1,319,171, my brother. 
 
 In the seventh chapter of Matthew you may also read : 
 
 " Strait is the gate and few there be that find it." 
 
 This verse is clearly on our side. 
 
 You also smile (pleasantly, no doubt, as I believe you are 
 a man " of cheerful countenance") at the small figure our 
 1,650 clergymen make, compared with your Tens of Thou- 
 sands. Verily, my brother, does not our blessed Master say 
 that in his vineyard " the laborers are /etc." Your thou- 
 sands not possibly coming under this designation, cannot 
 (would that I could get around this fatal issue for you) be 
 laborers in the vineyard of which he speaks. 
 
 Moreover, the Church of God which was saved in the 
 ark was a few church — considerably smaller than the Epis- 
 copal Church in America, seeing that St. Peter says that 
 only eight persons constituted its communion ! This is a 
 somewhat greater disparity, compared with the Episcopal 
 Church, than " one in forty." 
 
 " I have a few names even in Sardis," said Jesus, " and 
 they shall walk with me in white, for they are worthy." 
 
 Our being " few in number," therefore, brother, will not 
 cause our blessed Lord to despise us. This is our abiding 
 consolation. If we are few and despised, we remember that 
 Jesus has said, that though " wide is the gate and broad is 
 the way that leadeth unto death, and many go in thereat ; yet 
 narrow is the gate that leadeth unto life," and it is the few 
 that find it. For safety, therefore, my brother, and from 
 other considerations, I should prefer to take my choice with 
 the 111,650,* than with the one million, three hundred 
 
 AND NINETEEN THOUSAND, ONE HUNDRED AND SEVENTY- 
 ONE Fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
 * See p. 156, of Mr. Abbey's Book. 
 
PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER THREE. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHDRCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 In my last number I think that I proved, that, hy 
 your own reasoning, the Episcopalians are The Church. 
 With your permission I will now examine your argument 
 against the Apostolic Succession, based upon Paul, " the 
 last and least of the Apostles." 
 
 You very justly say, that if the "succession" be built 
 upon the Apostles, it is not built upon thirteen ; and as 
 Paul was not of " the Twelve," he was not one of the Twelve 
 Foundations of the Christian Church. This is, without 
 doubt, a correct mode of reasoning; and from it you deduce 
 this conclusion, viz. : that if Paul was not one of " the 
 Twelve" — and as only the Twelve could establish the Chris- 
 tian Church — the churches founded by Paul are not apostoli- 
 cal in their origin ) and as he was instrumental in founding 
 nearly all the Gentile Churches, then these churches (includ- 
 ing that of Britain, if Paul, as we doubt not, planted that) 
 are not apostolical, in the sense in which the word is applied, 
 in connection with direct u succession" from the Twelve, 
 whom Jesus commissioned to preach the Gospel. This, I 
 believe, is a clear statement of your arguments and infer- 
 ences. 
 
 Now, in replying to you upon this point, permit me to be- 
 gin by asking you — On what did the commission of " the 
 Twelve" depend for its validity ? "What was the ground of 
 3 (27) 
 
28 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 their authority for commencing to build up the structure of 
 the visible Christian Church on earth ? If some one — 
 Sergius Paulus, or Felix, or King Agrippa, or Csesar — had 
 asked either of them, and said : "By what authority doe&t 
 thou these things — and icho gave thee this authority to declare 
 to men forgiveness of sin on repentance, and demand of them 
 faith and baptism to attain the life immortal ? By what 
 authority doest thou this ? Who gave thee this authority V y 
 Their answer clearly would have been — 
 
 " Jesus of Nazareth, the Son of God/' 
 
 Each one of the twelve would have answered alike, that 
 they were commissioned by their crucified and ascended 
 Lord. Matthias, the twelfth, as I shall show you, would have 
 answered in the same way, giving precisely the same authority 
 as the " Eleven/' 
 
 Hence, we perceive that the validity of their commission 
 would lie in the simple fact that Christ sent them forth. 
 Suppose now, my brother, that Matthias had been indivi- 
 dually questioned by some doubting Christians, by what 
 authority he baptized, since he was not of the number of the 
 Twelve who were present when Jesus issued his commission, 
 and, therefore, his baptism and his churches could not be 
 apostolic. What would have been his reply, think you? 
 
 " Jesus, who on Earth commissioned the Eleven, from 
 Heaven commissioned me. The Eleven did not choose me 
 and ordain me an apostle of themselves ; but they prayed to 
 the ever-present Jesus, our Lord, and said : * Thou, Lord, 
 who knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these 
 two Thou bast chosen ; that he may take part in this minis- 
 try, from which Judas by transgression fell/ I, therefore, 
 am also chosen by my Lord as one of his apostles, as well as 
 the Eleven I" Such would have been his answer to cavilers, 
 you must admit. If he could not so answer, he had no com- 
 mission, except from men, to be an apostle, and therefore 
 was not one of the Apostolical College, and hence not an 
 
NUMBER THREE. 29 
 
 apostle! granting which, there never were but "Eleven" 
 apostles — a conclusion which, I think, you will not assent to. 
 
 Either, therefore, the commission of Matthias was of equal 
 value with that of the Eleven. Either he was in all respects 
 their peer, or there were but Eleven. This issue cannot be 
 reached, however, without denying that Jesus ruled, and 
 Whs present with, to direct and control, his little Church, as 
 well after his ascension as before} and without questioning 
 his power and right after his ascension to do those acts of 
 government and authority which he did before it — without 
 placing a commission, conferred by him from Heaven, be- 
 neath, in dignity and force, those he had given while on 
 Earth ! If you cannot admit this, you are then forced to 
 admit that Matthias, although called after the ascension, has 
 as full, perfect, and authoritative commission as the Eleven 
 called before his ascension ! Nay, my brother, it strikes me 
 inevitably that Matthias had more abundant honor than they 
 all ; and his case was eminently distinguished also, as being 
 the first instance of the official interposition, and guiding and 
 directing pretence of that ascended Lord, who, on taking leave 
 of his little tearful flock on Bethany, promised that lie would 
 il be with them to the end of the world." Matthias, there- 
 fore, was an apostle, though called by Jesus to the apostle- 
 ship after his ascension. 
 
 Now, my brother, a similar simple process of reasoning 
 will apply to the case of Paul, only with this eminent differ- 
 ence — Saul saw the ascended Jesus face to face ; for, says 
 this humble man of God, speaking with the deepest sense 
 of self-abasement, that such an honor should be vouchsafed 
 to him : "And last of all he was seen of me, also, as of one 
 born out of due time ; for I am the least of the apostles." 
 Paul, therefore, was u called" to be an apostle, as Matthias 
 was also after the ascension ; but infinitely with more honor, 
 inasmuch as the call of Matthias was only by a divine inti- 
 mation of Christ's choice, by directing the lot to fall upon 
 
SO PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 him; while Paul was called amid the sublimest visible 
 manifestations of the God-like glory, power, and splendor of 
 the ascended Jesus ! amid the dazzling radiance of celestial 
 light that shone above the sun in brightness ! The sight of 
 the transfigured and glorified countenance of him " whom 
 he persecuted" struck him blind, and, overwhelmed by the 
 terror of the Lord, he sunk trembling and helpless to the 
 earth. He also heard the voice of the Son of God from the 
 midst of the ineffable glory, who said to him : 
 
 " I am Jesus whom thou persecutest. Kise, and stand 
 upon thy feet; for I have appeared unto thee for this pur- 
 pose to make thee a minister, and a witness both of these things 
 which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I 
 will appear unto thee ; delivering thee from the people, and 
 from the Gentiles, unto whom now 1 send thee, to open their 
 eyes, and to turn them from darkness unto light, and from 
 the power of Satan unto God." 
 
 Here, my brother, you read Paul's commission. It is 
 given from the same lips which gave it to the Eleven ; and 
 is far more honorable in its attending circumstances than 
 even that given to Matthias. Either, therefore, Matthias 
 was not an apostle — was not one of the Twelve — or Paul is 
 also an apostle, of equal honor ; nay, of greater honor. Of 
 himself he says, possibly to some doubting ones, that " he is 
 not a ichit behind the chiefest apostles !" Paul and Mat- 
 thias fall or stand together ! 
 
 But you will be likely to object, judging from some pas- 
 sages in your book, that the Apostolic succession must 
 begin with, and flow from, the Twelve, (granted there be 
 such a succession,) as twelve streams flow from twelve foun- 
 tains ! But, my brother, are you confident that Paul made 
 a thirteenth apostle? are you sure that none of the apostles 
 had deceased during the persecution that preceded Paul's con- 
 version ? I shall be compelled to force upon you the proof 
 that there were Twelve apostles living when Paul was u called 
 
NUMBER THREE. 51 
 
 to bean apostle ?" His commission took place in the thirty- 
 sixth year of our Lord, between two and three years after 
 his ascension ! In that interval of fierce war against all who 
 called upon the name of Christ, and of unrelenting persecu- 
 tion, can you show me from Scripture that none of the apos- 
 tles, like Stephen the martyr, fell ? If you can do so, I will 
 then admit that Paul was called to be the thirteenth apostle ; 
 but until you can prove there was no vacancy in the " Apos- 
 tolic College," which he filled, I have a right to maintain 
 that Scripture shows no reason why Paul was not one of the 
 Twelve. 
 
 But I will not insist upon this necessity, viz. : that Paul, 
 in order to transmit the Apostolical Succession, must have 
 been one of u the Twelve." The Lord of the Church, in 
 •organizing it, personally commissioned eleven men only — not 
 twelve ! If, therefore, from these eleven alone, because he 
 commissioned them before his ascension, the future Church 
 ought to spring, then it could not legitimately spring from 
 twelve ; the number " eleven" — present when Christ com- 
 manded them to preach and baptize all nations — could have 
 no inclusion whatever of Matthias. Yet to Matthias, you 
 and all Christians of every name admit the commission was 
 also given, and "he was numbered with the Eleven, 
 making the Twelfth. This fact, therefore, proves clearly 
 that Jesus did not intend to limit the apostolic commission 
 to the original eleven. That he did not so limit it, the sub- 
 sequent call of Matthias shows. Now, if after his ascension 
 he adds one to the number of those whom he commissioned 
 before he ascended, and this one more is in all points equally 
 an apostle with the first eleven, why may he not add another 
 and one more still ? But the sacred history (Acts ix.) 
 shows that He did add another — Saul of Tarsus ! Paul, 
 therefore, was equally an Apostle with the whole twelve, not 
 a whit behind the chwfest Apostles." 
 
 But I hear you object and say, that there is no authority 
 
32 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 for Thirteen Apostles ! Will you show me where there is any 
 command that limits the Apostolic College " to twelve men ? 
 Prove to me from Scripture, my brother, that there must of 
 necessity be just Twelve. You are skillful in figures. But 
 if you can prove this, then you perceive that you will prove 
 too much ; for you will prove that when there were only 
 Eleven they were not Apostles at all, if, to be an Apostle, it 
 is necessary to be one of " Twelve." Either way, my brother, 
 you see that you are obliged to yield the point, and recognize 
 Paul's claim to be an Apostle ; or you must deny that of 
 Matthias also. If, therefore, the ministerial acts of Matthias 
 were lawfully apostolical, so also were those of Paul. If Mat- 
 thias could establish a church and perpetuate " the succession," 
 (admitting, for the sake of argument, that there is such a thing,) 
 Paul could also do equally valid ministerial and apostolical 
 acts. If, therefore, the Episcopal Churches of the world 
 may trace their succession, legitimately, to Matthias, (always 
 providing that there is such a dogma as the " succession," 
 my brother,) they can, by equal steps, and with equal 
 authority and lawfulness, trace it to Paul. Now, as we do 
 believe in the succession, (we Episcopalians,) we think we 
 may as legitimately derive it from St. Paul as from St. Mat- 
 thias. Your argument upon Paul's case, therefore, seems to 
 me to be unfortunately chosen. As for Barnabas and Tim- 
 othy, and others whom you number with the apostles, they 
 were not chosen and u called of Jesus," personally, as Paul 
 and Matthias were ; though evidently " called of God," by 
 His Spirit. I hope you will note this distinction, for it is 
 not one witJwut a difference. Their call was from Paul, as 
 the "representative of Christ," with authority to do such 
 acts ; while his own was from the voice of the lips of Jesus 
 himself ! Paul, therefore, was an apostle in a different sense 
 from Timothy, and Titus, and Barnabas, also called apostles. 
 Calling by men does not always give the reality ; as instance 
 your chief presbyters, whom you " call" Bishops, though 
 
NUMBER THREE. 33 
 
 they are but chosen superintendents. There was, doubtlesp, 
 as wide a difference between the apostles Timothy, Bgrnabas, 
 Titus, and St. Paul the apostle, as between your Bishops (I 
 say it in love and reverence, my brother, for I know they are 
 pious and evangelical men, and do honor to Christianity,) 
 and the Episcopal Bishops. 
 
 I have now done with St. Paul and Matthias, and sincerely 
 beg pardon of the memories of these excellent and holy 
 men, for using their venerated names so freely and frequently 
 in this connection. Allow me, however, to add that you are 
 in error, my brother, on page 59 of your book, in supposing 
 Paul to have been ordained by the quadrangular ordina- 
 tion of " Barnabas, Simon, Lucius and Manean," and if you 
 desire to have any other ordainer traced back to, " I must, 
 of necessity, you perceive, name Jesus, as I have previously 
 argued. Paul received his ordination with his commission, 
 " in the way to Damascus," at the same time with the 
 " authority" for his apostleship. The " setting apart," 
 which you call an ordination, was but a specific selection of 
 Paul, in Acts, xiii. 2 ; was, as any plain man, reading the 
 passage, may perceive, but a special appointing and solemn 
 dedication of the two men to a particular work. That it was 
 not Barnabas's ordination is very clearly shown from the 
 verse preceding, wherein he is already denominated both " a 
 prophet and teacher." Paul, in the same verse, also 
 previously termed " a prophet and teacher." Hence this act 
 was not his ordination. Indisputably, therefore, he was 
 already " in orders," previous to his " separation." And 
 where and when he received his orders, which were apostolic, 
 like those of the whole twelve, I have already shown you. 
 
 Fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 K UMBER FOUR. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 There are other points in your book, which I am re- 
 viewing, that I should cheerfully examine in order to try and 
 set you right where you have fallen into errors of fact and 
 of inference ; doubtless from misreading, or not " drinking 
 deep" enough into the Ecclesiastical spring. Bat I have 
 already written farther than I contemplated, and if I extend 
 my articles, I fear that you may take them for a reply to 
 your book ; when I am conscious that they are but the smooth 
 stones of David's scrip, compared with Groliah's mighty spear 
 and sword wielded by yourself. I am merely glancing at 
 your chief arguments to show you how easy it will be for the 
 more learned in my Church to destroy your book, dispersing 
 its arguments as the cool winds of the autumn scatter the 
 dried leaves of the forest before it. My little review of your 
 attack is hut a review — no more.. As I have said, I am one of 
 the youngest in the ministry, and have too much diffidence, 
 or ought to have, to presume to put myself fairly forward to 
 cope with as experienced a controversialist as I am told you 
 are. I leave the proper handling of your book to the Bishop 
 to whom it is addressed, if, perchance, he deem, it worthy of 
 his special regard. 
 
 Nevertheless, I cannot lay down my pen without touching 
 
 (35) 
 
86 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 upon some other subjects which your book forces upon my 
 attention. 
 
 I perceive, my brother, that you have a favorite mode of 
 putting a strong case hypothetically, and then (assuming the 
 fact to have occurred actually) argue, conclude, denounce, 
 and stamp the whole with Q. E. D., as if you had really been 
 making deductions from facts or positive dogmas, and then 
 with a revolver, charged with your " ifs," press us Episco- 
 palians home to the death. To such mode of arguing I can 
 make no adequate reply, and pass briefly by, untouched, your 
 " suppositive" cases of what potentially would, could, should 
 and might happen if such and such and such things did occur 
 (see Letter XII.) in the " dark ages." 
 
 You ask, however, very plausibly, what can prevent them 
 from occurring when they might under given circumstances 
 occur, the " succession' ' being in human hands? Now I do 
 not object to the question, but I do strongly object to your 
 inference, "that because they might occur they have oc- 
 curred ! Because wicked men might neglect the proper or- 
 dination rites, they did neglect them ; because the succession 
 might be vitiated, ergo, it was vitiated/' 
 
 This is not logical argumentation, my brother, you must 
 be aware as well as I. By such reasoning I might prove you 
 to be a mitred Bishop — videlicet, you might, under given cir- 
 cumstances, that is, if you learnedly examined the subject of 
 the Episcopacy without prejudice and prejudication of the 
 facts, get to be a prelate, but this might does not positively 
 place upon your head the mitre ; nor would I be justified by 
 you in asserting, on this hypothesis, that you were a Bishop. 
 
 But you ask what could have prevented the breaking of the 
 chain, or at least its vitiation, so far as to destroy the in- 
 tegrity of the sacraments and ministry ; the validity of which, 
 according to Episcopalians/' hangs on the unbroken continuity 
 of this chain ? 
 
 To this I answer simply and briefly in the words of Him 
 
NUMBER FOUR. 37 
 
 who established the ministry of the Church, and gave to its 
 keeping the sacraments and all the promises : 
 
 " I will be with you to the end of the world ! The gates 
 of hell shall not prevail against (it) my Church." 
 
 It is this divine and sure promise, my brother, of Jesus 
 himself, the great head of the Church, that secured and still 
 secures the integrity of the " succession" in the Apostolic 
 ministry ! It is true that the chain might have been broken, 
 links might have been lost, the continuity might have been 
 vitiated, but I deny that it was, and challenge you to the proof. 
 
 If you can prove that the chain of succession is broken, 
 then you establish, and are compelled to prove more than you 
 anticipate, viz : to prove, also, that Jesus, our blessed Mas- 
 ter, promised to his Church what he failed to perform. This 
 is the inevitable issue ! Proof that the line of the Apostolic 
 ministry, divinely instituted by Christ, cannot be distinctly 
 traced from the Apostles' day to this, proves that there is no 
 continuous ministry j and to prove that no Church of to-day 
 can reach the first Church by a continuous chain of ordina- 
 tion, is to prove that no Church of to-day is the Church in- 
 stituted by Christ himself! Now, if no Church of to-day be 
 a continuation of the Church which the Apostles founded ', the 
 Church which they founded has ceased to exist. If that Church 
 has ceased to exist, then Christ cannot be with it to the end 
 of the world, as he promised; and if he is not and cannot be 
 with the Apostolic Church (supposing it to have ceased to 
 be), and as that was the Church which he promised to be 
 with, it follows, as an irresistable issue, that CJirist u not 
 with either of the Christian Churches on earth to-day ; be- 
 cause, if the Churches of to-day cannot reach up to the Apos- 
 tolic, by continuity of ordination, but begin someichcrc this 
 side of it, then they were not in existence in Christ's day, 
 and, consequently, were not the Church with which Christ 
 pledged himself, in the person of its founders, to be ever 
 present. 
 
38 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 If, therefore, my brother, it were possible to destroy 
 the " Apostolic Succession/' it would be the death-knell to 
 all the Christian Churches of to-day. Not being Churches 
 by continuity of ministry from the original foundation, they 
 would not be the Church of Christ at all ; only something 
 like it, and called by his name, instituted after the cessation 
 of the existence of the original Apostolic Church ! Christ, 
 therefore, would not be with any of us ; and if there be no 
 traceable connection between us and the Apostolic Church, 
 we have no claim to expect his presence ; for his promise was 
 not made to possible Churches in the womb of the future, 
 but to one in esse, " founded upon the apostles and prophets, 
 Jesus Christ himself being the chief corner-stone. " 
 
 It is true, the succession passes through many bad men, 
 for fallen men are its instruments of conveyance, and in this 
 imperfect world the noblest and purest things, nay the holiest 
 things, of necessity, pass through vile and unworthy hands. 
 In its progress from the wheat-field to the mill, and into 
 flour, to the kneading-trough, and to the oven, and finally 
 to be set apart for a memorial of the blessed body of our 
 crucified Lord, the sacred bread of the holy table passes 
 through many vile and ignoble hands ere it touches our sin- 
 ful lips ! Will you reject that proffered bread for this 
 reason ? The sacraments both have come down to us through 
 the same wicked men, whose office you imagine vitiates the 
 " success n." It would equally destroy the validity of the 
 Lord's Supper and Baptism ! 
 
 In spite of these wicked priests and prelates who have 
 served at the Church's altars, Christ has kept his promise to 
 his church, that " the gates of hell should not prevail against 
 it." If the wickedness of some of the ministers, through 
 whom the succession has come down to our day, has de- 
 stroyed the validity of our modern ministry, then wickedness 
 has succeeded against the Church, and " the gates of hell," 
 in truth, "have prevailed against it." Either, therefore, 
 
NUMBER FOUR. 39 
 
 the integrity of the original Church, to which Jesus made 
 this promise, exists to-day on the earth, with its apostoli- 
 cally-begun ministry, with its sacraments, and full authority, 
 as a Church, or " the gates of hell" have prevailed to de- 
 stroy it. If they have prevailed, then Christ has not 
 guarded his Church as he promised to do. But let Jesus be 
 true, and every man a liar. If he be true, and has ever 
 been with his Church to defend it, then the continuation of 
 the original ministry has evidently come down to our day, 
 and the Church to which he gave the promise still exists to 
 claim and receive it. The virtue of the apostolical succes- 
 sion has not, therefore, been vitiated or impaired by the 
 wickedness of the hands through which it has passed. Christ 
 has guarded its integrity, and will continue to unfold from 
 his throne these lengthening steps of a successive ministry, 
 until upon its last round stands the last Priest who shall 
 serve at the last Christian altar at the close of time. 
 
 Destroy the succession, and you perceive that you destroy 
 the validity and divine authority of all human orders; and 
 you and I are both usurpers (ministers of the gospel, but not 
 ministers of Christ) of £ nthority, which those who gave it us 
 had no lawful authority to convey, and which we are dis- 
 honest to retain another hour. 
 
 The seeming discrepancies (to touch another subject of 
 your book) in the several printed catalogues of the apostolic 
 line, are easily removed on a critical examination ; and I 
 shall take pleasure in mailing to your address a copy of a 
 work which will approve itself to your better judgment; for 
 I know you are not unready to be convinced on a "fair show- 
 ing" of evidence ; as you confess you seek only, and are open 
 to, the truth. It is because I respect your candor and frank- 
 ness that I write what I do ; not a line of which is penned 
 otherwise than with that spirit of " hoping all things" 
 which Christ, our beloved Master, commands us to entertain 
 one toward another, u owing no man anything but love." 
 4 
 
40 PAMPHLET FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 In connection with the subject of " wickedness in the min- 
 istry of the succession/' which you argue must for ever bar 
 it, suffer me to direct your attention to the Jewish Priest- 
 hood, which, though divinely instituted, and made here- 
 ditary, was, at certain periods of the Jewish history, dis- 
 tinguished for the corruption of its Priests. This fact is well 
 known. Nevertheless, they were made use of by God (com- 
 pared with whom all agents are unholy) as the instruments, 
 not only of conveying " the Aaronic succession/' but of 
 standing as sacrificers between the people and Himself. 
 They were still the keepers of the Law, and the guardians 
 of the Church, and teachers of the people ; and to one of 
 these (whose predecessors and fathers had so sinned) the 
 holy babe, Christ, was presented for circumcision. Accord- 
 ing to your reasoning, my brother, there could have followed 
 no circumcision of the heart — no spiritual virtue ! that is, 
 Christ's circumcision would not have been valid. Wicked as 
 these men were in their " succession/' we see they were 
 allowed to perform the most sacred rites of their Church to 
 the incarnate body of the Son of God ! Jesus subsequently 
 fully recognized the holy office of wicked cotemporary 
 priests, actually asserting that, bad as they were, " the 
 Scribes sat in Moses' seat." " All, therefore, whatever they 
 bid you observe," said he, u that observe and do ; but do ye 
 not after their works." 
 
 Here is a marked distinction made between the man and 
 his office. The wicked works of the man invalidated not the 
 official acts of the priestly office. Thus the evil lives of the 
 clergy of the " dark ages/' or of the light ages, stop not the 
 continuous flow of the divine authority of the ministry from 
 God. Therefore, the evil of some ministers in " the succes- 
 sion" of the Christian priest-hood, who " sit in the Apostles' 
 seat," invalidate not the integrity of the succession, as you 
 appear to conceive. Lamentable, indeed, it is that such men, 
 sitting in " the gates of hell" while they serve at the altars 
 
NUMBER FOUR. 41 
 
 of the Church, should be link* in the chain ; but as Christ 
 promised " the gates of hell" should not prevail, they have 
 not prevailed. At this day, eighteen hundred years after 
 Christ, a minister, (bishop or priest,) duly authorized as such, 
 can convey (instrumentally) the same divine gifts to the bap- 
 tized and the confirmed, which Paul, John, Matthias, and 
 Peter conveyed to those they baptized and confirmed. The 
 "gift of Christ," like a well of living water, "flowing fast 
 by the oracles of God," wells ever up within the Church con- 
 veying, through his Apostolic ministry, life and immortality 
 to the farthest ages yet unborn. 
 
 One word more, my brother, touching the conveyance of 
 God's gifts. If a bad man's life ignores and can destroy the 
 validity of his official acts, so that they convey no grace to 
 others in ordinations, it must be equally the case in the sacra- 
 ments. But if we receive the sacraments by faith, (our own 
 faith, and not that of the conveyer of them,) then the pre- 
 sence or absence of faith in his heart (where only God can 
 look in to see) will not ignore the sacrament you or I re- 
 ceive — its validity and spiritual efficacy dependiug on God's 
 promise and our faith, not on the state of mind of the re- 
 ceiver. Now, no man knows " what is in man" but God. 
 All ice can judge by, is the " official" position. Has he due 
 authority to be the conveyer to me, according to Christ's 
 ordinance, of this water of baptism, of this bread and wine ?" 
 is what ice must ask. "If so, and I have on my part" the 
 required " faith," that " I then receive it effectually, to its 
 proper end," is what we arc forced to conclude. On the other 
 hand, if the validity of sacraments depended not on our faith 
 and God's promised grace, but upon the moral character of 
 the conveyer, then we could never know whether we had ever 
 duly received these holy sacraments ! The conveyer of the 
 bread and wine to you may have committed adultery, or a 
 secret murder, the night before ! In this case, according to 
 your reasoning, the conveyance itself would be deprived of 
 
42 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 its virtues, and it would be no sacrament to you. You there- 
 fore perceive at once that, were your arguments sound, there 
 would be a distressing uncertainty and doubt always prevailing 
 in the minds of recipients upon the subject so vital to us all. 
 The comfort which the Lord's supper is ordained to convey 
 to the soul, would give no certain comfort, for want of as- 
 surance that the heart of the conveyer was at the moment of 
 conveying, right with God — which no man can know, but 
 God only. What Christ instituted as the chiefest privilege 
 of his children would be rendered nugatory through doubts of 
 the state of mind and heart, and secret moral condition of the 
 conveyer. So no one would be certain he had ever been duly 
 baptized ; no one would be sure that he had ever duly re- 
 ceived God's holy mysteries; for any sin unknown to the 
 world, and unrepented of in the heart of the minister, would 
 ignore the sacraments. 
 
 But, thanks be to God, who hath given us a more sure 
 ground of confidence, that we " duly receive his holy mys- 
 teries," than the moral state of the conveyer, which we never 
 certainly can know, as God alone knoweth man's heart. This 
 view, however, of sacramental efficacy, ought not by any 
 means to prevent the open and prompt ejectment from the 
 ministry of the Church of all evil-livers — she should, verily, 
 " spue them out of her mouth;" but so long as they continue 
 to act officially, their acts are clearly valid, and convey the 
 graces in the Gospel sacraments to all who receive them from 
 their hands. The purest waters may be conveyed from the 
 fountain through the basest conduits of clay or wood, without 
 defilement, as well as of silver and gold. A slave may bring to 
 you a title of nobility from an emperor, yet the honor and 
 value thereof not be lessened in your eyes. We must care- 
 fully distinguish between what is conveyed and him who con- 
 veys ! A diamond loses none of its purity or value by being 
 preserved in a soiled casket. In a word, the conveyer is not 
 the conveyance ! The priest is not the sacrament; the ef- 
 
NUMBER FOLK. 43 
 
 ficacy of the latter depending, as I have before argued, upon 
 the promises of God, upon the divine veracity and divine 
 constitution of the Church, and not upon the cotemporal 
 moral status of the officiating minister. This is an important 
 truth, my brother, and full of all consolation and hope ; and 
 I trust that, upon reflection, instead of again attacking a 
 Christian doctrine so full of comfort, you will be inclined to 
 embrace it as being the only ground upon which the integrity 
 and efficacy of the sacraments can stand unmoved by " the 
 gates of hell," or the wickedness of men. 
 
 Fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
 4* 
 
PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER FIVE. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 There is another subject which attracts my attention 
 in your book, which I desire to ask your leave to occupy a 
 few moments merely to glance at. 
 
 It is the ironical charge which you make against the Ameri- 
 can and English Episcopal Church of being " anxious to 
 avoid Rome." In one sense, in that of erroneous and 
 strange doctrines and of a superstitious ritual, I admit that we 
 are " anxious to avoid Rome," and are pleased that you are 
 willing to admit " the existence of the anxiety *" for in 
 another part of your book you roundly charge us with wish- 
 ing to go to Rome, or with a strong tendency in the direc- 
 tion of the Papal city. 
 
 Now, my brother, if you have ever read, as it becomes you 
 as a respectable controversialist to do, the Common Prayer 
 Book of the Episcopal Church, you would discover therein 
 that this Church is in the most positive antagonism to Rome. 
 ^The doctrine of the American Episcopal Church is to be 
 learned from the " Creed" and Thirty-nine Articles ; and the 
 sense of the Churcii drawn from her Public " Offices" and 
 from her Rubrics, and not from the sentiments of individuals. 
 The Prayer Book is the way the Church interprets to her 
 own children the Bible ; exemplifying thereby her distinc- 
 tive doctrines ; in other words, it is the Written Law of 
 the Church. It is the Bible arranged for our use. 
 
 (45) 
 
46 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The Church knows no Laws as authoritative for her in- 
 ternal police and government but her Constitution and 
 Canons. 
 
 The Church knows no Formularies of Faith but her 
 Creed and Articles. 
 
 The Church knows no rites, ceremonies, or prayers to be 
 practiced by her, or publicly allowed, except those contained 
 in the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 If, therefore, you had carefully examined our Prayer Book, 
 
 as you ought to have done, before condemning the Church 
 
 f which it is the literal expression, you would have found 
 
 that there is no Rome there I Let me quote from Article 
 
 XIX. for your private eye : 
 
 " As the Church of Hierusalem, Alexandria, and Antioch 
 have erred, so also the Church of Rome hath erred ; not only 
 in their living and manner of ceremonies, but also in matters 
 of faith." 
 
 Article XXII. reads thus : 
 
 " The Romish doctrine concerning Purgatory, pardons, 
 worshipping and adoration, as well of images as of relics, and 
 also invocation of saints, is a fond thing vainly invented, and 
 grounded upon no warranty of Scripture, but rather repug- 
 nant to the word of God." 
 
 So Articles XXV, XXVIII, XXX, XXXI, XXXII, are 
 all aimed at the errors and superstitions of the Church of 
 Rome.* 
 
 Yet, my brother, in the face of these declarations against 
 Rome, you charge us with being no better than Papists. 
 Your words are, and may God pardon them as I do, and as all 
 good churchmen, I hope, will do, "Your face is toward 
 Rome ! You are the hope of Popery in this country I" 
 
 Why, my brother, Rome has not a greater foe to fear than 
 the English Protestant Episcopal Church and its branches ! 
 
 * For these Articles, look into any Prayer Book, next after " The Psal- 
 ter," or Psalms of David. 
 
NUMBER FIVE. 47 
 
 Ask them, and their priests will tell you so. u Destroy the 
 Anglican Church/' they will say, "and the world's neck lies 
 presently beneath the heel of the Iloman Pontiff." 
 
 Your reasons for so boldly asserting the tendency of the 
 Church to Rome arc given by you: 1st. " The succession," 
 you say, must take us there. 2d. Our Clergy affect Romish 
 customs, and preach Romish doctrines. 3d. One of our 
 BishopL has gone to Rome. 4th. In England they are going by 
 hundreds — and you offer, as a fifth reason, their wicked lives, 
 which, if true, would rather argue that they were going to 
 the devil ; and I believe these terms are, with you, logically 
 synonymous. 
 
 Now, my brother, hear me upon these points. 
 
 Touching the 1st, the succession I have already sufficiently 
 argued, and cannot see that you can make good your asser- 
 tions. Your strong argument is, that we receive the succes- 
 sion through Rome, and must be partaker of her sins ; 
 further, that the doctrine of succession leads to that of the 
 Infallibility of the Church; which doctrine, you contend, 
 virtually lords it over the Scriptures, which it usurps the 
 exclusive authority of interpreting for individuals. This 
 subject covers a wide field, and can barely be handled in the 
 brief space and time I desire to occupy with your book; but 
 I will say a few words upon it. 
 
 That " succession" renders the Church infallible, the 
 Prayer Book teaches not, and no Churchman pretends to 
 believe or assert as much. If you can detect any one of the 
 Thirty-nine Articles, or the Creed, asserting the Church's 
 infallibility, in or out of her councils, I will admit the fact. 
 If they do not, neither her constitution nor canons lay down 
 the doctrine of Infallibility — as the Church of Rome interprets 
 the term, it is not a doctrine of the Church; and, as a fair 
 arguer, you should not charge her with holding it. If Epis- 
 copalian ministers have, individually, given you to under- 
 stand that it is, they have led you into error, and are in error 
 
48 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 themselves; but the Church, as I have before said, is not 
 responsible for the " sentiments of individuals/' " Where, 
 then," you will demand, " shall I find what your Church 
 doctrines are ?" I point you to her Articles and Creed — 
 those are the hedges that shut in the walks of all true 
 Churchmen, lay or clerical. If you find in our Prayer 
 Book, that we teach Infallibility of the Councils or of Bi- 
 shops; that we teach there are Seven Sacraments* viz., be- 
 sides Baptism and the Lord's Supper, — Confirmation, Penance, 
 Orders, Matrimony, and Extreme Unction ; that we can law- 
 fully establish doctrines from the Apochrypha; that we 
 ought to invoke departed Saints ; that we ought to worship 
 the Virgin Mary ; pay divine honors to Martyrs ; that we 
 can do works of supererogation to eke out what lacks in 
 Christ's atonement; that we can atone for sins by voluntary 
 personal suffering; that the substance of the bread and wine 
 of the holy Communion is changed by the prayer and bene- 
 diction of the priest officiating into the veritable and real 
 fibres and flesh, bones and blood of the slain Jesus, son of 
 Mary ; that the wine of the sacraments ought to be denied 
 to all but the clergy, giving the bread only to the lay-people ; 
 that the wafer of communion-bread, being the very body of 
 Jesus, ought to be elevated and worshiped by all the con- 
 gregation kneeling; that bishops, priests and deacons ought 
 not to marry; that the traditions of the Church are of equal 
 authority with the Bible; that the Bishop or Pope of Rome 
 is the supreme Lord Bishop over all other earthly bishops, 
 ministers, and Christian people; that his decision, in ques- 
 tions of doctrine or faith, is " Yea and Amen," the voice of 
 God ; that the Mother of Jesus (as well as her divine Son) 
 was conceived by the Holy Ghost; that there is an interme- 
 diate Purgatory between death and heaven, where the souls 
 
 * A sacrament is defined an outward visible sign of an inward spiritual 
 grace given therein, and is, gonerally, essential to salvation. 
 
NUMBER FIVK. 49 
 
 of evil-living Christians expiate their sins done after baptism, 
 and out of which the prayers of the Church can hasten their 
 departure, and that this deliverance of their souls ought to 
 be prayed for; that Pio Nino has the keys of heaven and 
 hell, and can open and no man shut, and shut and no man 
 open; when, sir, my brother, you can find, with or without 
 your spectacles, these doctrines, taught or suggested, in the 
 Articles, Creed, Canons, or Constitution of our Church, as laid 
 down in the Prayer Book, then will I consent that you 
 should use such language against us as blot the pages of 
 your book. I appeal to every candid and honest man or wo- 
 man, who may take the trouble to read what I am writing, if 
 you can honestly, and in Christian truth, charge us with Ro- 
 manism, when we not only do not teach, but repudiate with 
 horror all these particular doctrines of Rome, a catalogue of 
 which I have enumerated above. You might as well as- 
 severate that the Declaration of Independence and the Con- 
 stitution of these United States taught the doctrine of sub- 
 mision to kings, as our Constitution, Articles, and Canons 
 teach the doctrine of submision to Rome, yea, in the least of 
 her errors ! If, then, our Church teaches not Romanism at 
 all, how can you aflirm, how dare you, as a Christian man, 
 who must one day give an account to God for every idle 
 word and all false witness borne, how dare you, my brother, 
 affirm that " Romanism looks to us as the hope of Popery in 
 this country V God forgive you as heartily as I do, and give 
 you a better mind. 
 
 But you will, in defence, reiterate that there are Episco- 
 palian ministers who preach Romish doctrines ; and you also 
 point to the Oxford Tracts, and murmur something about 
 Puseyism, and perhaps mention Bishop Ives. 
 
 As to our ministers preaching such doctrines, I dare say 
 there are some weak-minded and romantic young preachers 
 who affect ultra notions in Theology; but if such there be, 
 (though I know not one in the whole American Church since 
 
50 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 those "who went out from us" have gone,) who preach any 
 one of the erroneous doctrines of Rome, above named, he is 
 not an honest Churchman, and should go to Rome, where he 
 properly belongs. But, as I have shown you, the doctrines 
 and sense of the Church are not to be learned from the senti- 
 ments or eccentricities of individuals, but from her Public 
 Offices laid down in the Book of Common Prayer. 
 
 To form an opinion, and sit in judgment upon the Church, 
 upon the irregular opinions advanced by certain individuals, 
 (either "in desk or in book,") would be about as judicious 
 as if you were to say that the Republic of the United States 
 was a Monarchy, because there are under its government 
 men who freely express their opinions in favor of the govern- 
 ment and laws of Great Britain. 
 
 Fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS POP THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER SIX. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 There is another issue which you urge against the 
 " Succession" which, however, you do not reach by argu- 
 ment, but by inference, viz. : that the doctrine of the succes- 
 sion leads to the sole interpretation of Scripture by " the 
 Church." I have already glanced at this objection, but 
 will discuss it here more fully. Your inferential issue is 
 frankly admitted. The doctrine of " the Succession Apos- 
 tolic" does involve that of the interpretation and guardian- 
 ship of the Scriptures! The Church "is the ground and 
 pillar of the truth." The truth evidently is contained in 
 the Bible. Hence the Church is the " pillar and ground" 
 of the Bible. A pillar is that which upholds and supports. 
 John and Cephas are termed " pillars" in the Apostolic 
 Church ; hence all the apostles were pillars. They were 
 pillars of the truth. Upon them, as on pillars of stone, 
 rested the sublime arch of the Gospel promises. The Church 
 visible, " in its ministry" apostolic, was therefore the ordained 
 upholder and keeper of the truth of God. It wore it upon 
 its brows as the blazing mitre rested upon the head of Aaron, 
 and " the holy crown upon the mitre." To these apostolic 
 upholding-pillars was entrusted the weight of the precious 
 treasure of the sacred Gospel which had dropped from Jesus' 
 own lips, and was yet unwritten. 
 
 5 (51) 
 
52 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 The Church, in the beginning of its existence, continued 
 for a whole generation, as you are aware, without a written 
 Gospel; the New Testament not having then been committed 
 to writing, being engraved only in the tablets of the hearts 
 and memories of the apostles. This fact it is very important 
 that you should seriously take cognizance of. Undeniably, the 
 Church is older than the New Testament by a generation ! 
 The Church was planted, established, confirmed; and widely 
 spread over Asia, Northern Africa, and Europe, as far west 
 as Hispania, without the New Testament. The " Church 7 ' 
 and the Church alone, by its ministers, was the guide and 
 council, and supreme law of the early Christians. The 
 apostles and their fellow-laborers were the Church which they 
 were commanded " to hear." That this is true need not be 
 argued to prove, for it is history. But let me refer you for 
 evidence to Acts xvi. 4th and 5th verses. 
 
 " And as they (Paul and Silas) went through the cities, 
 they delivered them the decrees to keep, that were or- 
 dained of the apostles and elders which were at Jeru- 
 salem. And so were the Churches established in the faith." 
 
 Here we learn how, that before the New Testament was 
 penned, the apostles and elders issued Decrees which were 
 sent to the Churches to establish them in their faith. Hence 
 it is clear the original Church was settled in its faith without 
 the New Testament; in other words, that the whole 
 Church in the first generation was governed by the decrees 
 of its councils alone. The early Church, therefore, was not 
 only older than the New Testament, but was superior to it 
 in authority ; for what existed must be of necessity superior 
 to that which did not yet exist. From hence we perceive 
 that the authority of the Church, as represented in its minis- 
 try, in matters of faith and doctrine, is no new thing; 
 and that if any church now holds such authority in reverence, 
 instead of being an argument against said church, even 
 
NUMBER SIX 53 
 
 though it wore the Papal, it ought to be plausible evidence 
 in behalf of its being apostolical, at least, so far. But I do 
 not wish to make use of this argument — I only wish to 
 hint it. 
 
 The New Testament came to be written in this way : After 
 Paul, John, Peter, and James had planted churches, teaching 
 them the Christian faith by word of mouth, in the sub- 
 stance, if not in the very words of " The Apostles' Creed," 
 fwhich was all of the New Testament that was then existing,) 
 they finally addressed to them letters of advice, direction, 
 reproof, instruction, and exhortation, which letters being 
 preserved and read in the congregations, were (after the 
 death of the apostles, when they could no longer hear tliem) 
 collected by the churches, and copied and interchanged from 
 one church to another. It was not until more than one hundred 
 years after Ch'rist that all the Asiatic Churches had copies of 
 all the apostolic letters, which, now that the apostles were 
 dead, they received as their living voice, as " being dead, yet 
 speaking!" Also, previously, Mark, Matthew, Luke, and 
 John had written biographies of the earthly life of Jesus, 
 their ascended Lord, and left these Gospels, at their deaths, 
 as legacies to the churches. It was, however, many years 
 before these inspired apostolic writings were all collected 
 into the present form and canon of the " New Testament." 
 
 It is important now to keep prominently in mind the fact, 
 previously stated, that for many years the Church had no 
 New Testament, but only the apostles to teach, guide, de- 
 cide for it, and rule it ! Not the apostles alone gave u de- 
 crees" to the churches, but the elders also. (Luke xvi., 
 4th again.) These elders were men ordained hy the apostles ; 
 and if to them was committed already a share in the govern- 
 ment of the Church, and in directing and settling its faith, 
 it is clearly established that all " elders," successors of the 
 apostles, when the apostles should die, would be the succes- 
 
54 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 sive u authority of the Church''* for decreeing what were 
 articles of faith — you very well know that the whole canon was 
 not settled and consolidated into one book for all, until long 
 after the apostles were dead. This being admitted, who de- 
 cided upon what were genuine apostolic letters and doctrines ? 
 Who settled matters of faith that u were hard to be under- 
 stood, and which the weak might wrest to their own damna- 
 tion V* Who decided, authoritatively, upon the " canon" 
 but the men who succeeded the apostles in their office of 
 governing the Church, (call them Elders, Presbyters, Bishops, 
 or Overseers, or what you fancy,) and who knew the mind 
 of the apostles. They, equally with the apostles, were the 
 " pillars and ground of the truth." From their decision in 
 full council there was no appeal — could be no appeal — for 
 unquestionably they were the divinely constituted su- 
 preme earthly tribune of the Church. In their apostolic 
 representative office, they were as the apostles, their prede- 
 cessors, had been, the voice of Christ, who said : " He that 
 heareth you, heareth ME V This conclusion is resistless, and 
 must be admitted, or you overturn all rule, and all authority, 
 and ignore all power in the Church of God, undermine the 
 pillars on which his truth stands, and topple over the whole 
 divine fabric of that holy House of Christ and God, of which 
 Jesus is the glorious corner-stone, and the apostles the foun- 
 dation stones. Take from the ministry of the Church (which 
 I have reminded you is older than the New Testament, and 
 first in authority, as to time) the authority to decide upon 
 errors of faith and doctrine among its children, and you level 
 the walls of Zion with the ground, and expose the fair towers 
 of the city of God, the New Jerusalem, to be trodden down, 
 its altars to be overthrown, its sacred things to be defiled, 
 and fill its courts with desolation. It is this systematic re- 
 fusal of men to hear the voice of the Church, as she cries 
 aloud : " This is the way, walk ye in it,"' that leads men to 
 
NUMBER STX. 55 
 
 substitute, like Joseph Wolff, u their own inward voice;" 
 and which has given rise to the " Legion" of sects calling 
 themselves Christians, that to-day overrun Christendom! 
 It is this private monanthropic interpretation of the Scrip- 
 tures, that has given rise to Mormonism, to Unitarianism, 
 and to all the other shapes of dissent which rend the body 
 of Christ as if it had been torn by foes instead of his own 
 household. The conclusion is inevitable that the apostolic 
 ministry of the Church is the legitimate interpreter to the 
 Church (the sense of Scripture,) and settler of faith, inasmuch 
 as the ministry apostolic originally gave the Scriptures to the 
 Church! But such a conclusion inevitably involves the 
 mighty doctrine that Christ is with his Church in its general 
 oecumenical councils, to guide them into all truth in their de- 
 cisions. To doubt this fact, would be to surrender to you 
 all I contend for. It is because Christ is in his Church, 
 through its authoritative ministry, that the councils of its 
 ministers arc autlwrtative in their decisions. To doubt this 
 would be to deny that Christ is within or with his Church at 
 all. If he reigns in it, he reigns in it authoritatively upon 
 the throne of the succession in the personal office of the 
 ministry of the Church, which is the visible Head of " his 
 body Ecclesiastic." 
 
 I hear you object to this doctrine as " Romish," although 
 I perceive that your candor will prompt you to accede to 
 "the probabilities" of its correctness. But sensible men re- 
 ject nothing because it has been abused ! You may, with 
 equal prudence, reject the Sacraments, because Rome has 
 them ! The abuse of a thing does not make the thing itself 
 evil. The office of a judge has often been abused, but this 
 does not of necessity make the office evil! Christianity is 
 daily made the cloak of vice, yet this abuse of it does not 
 make Christianity an evil. The Romish Church has abused 
 the privileges of the " Succession." She has, in the person 
 5* 
 
56 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 of her Popes, wickedly usurped the actual authority and at- 
 tributes of Christ, sitting as God in the Temple of God. But 
 an usurper of powers not allowed by constitutional law, does 
 not invalidate the just rights appertaining to a lawful occupa- 
 tion of the throne. 
 
 Because a gift or bequest is liable to abuse, ought not to be 
 a good and sufficient reason for refusing it. That whatever 
 God bestows on our fallen race is liable to abuse, you need 
 not be told. With his gold, men reward vice and bribe to 
 crime. With his iron, forge swords to slay their fellow men. 
 Property inherited is liable to abuse; but ought this to be given 
 as a reason why estates ought not to descend. The Apos- 
 tolical succession was a gift of Christ to his Church : it has 
 been abused, but ought it, therefor, to be rejected ? I speak 
 as to a man of sense. Christ gave us the Church, be- 
 queathed to us the hereditary ministry, gave us the Holy 
 Scriptures by their hands, and the Blessed Sacraments, and 
 we and the ministry have abused these divine gifts ; yet will 
 you repudiate them, and deny that they came from God! 
 
 The Church is as much from God as the Bible, The 
 former speaks to us ministerially, the latter authoritatively. 
 "As soon as we are conscious of anything, we find the Church 
 with the Holy Scripture in her hands," and a ministry ap- 
 pointed by God to deliver it to us, and to instruct us in its 
 meaning. Whatsoever is novel, she safely presumes to be 
 false, and teaches so. Her doctrine which was received at 
 the first, and has come down to us is true. Her motto is : " Id 
 verius quod prius, id prius quod ab initio." 
 
 I will now proceed to show you wherein the Episcopal or 
 Anglican Church (for the term w Anglican" embraces not 
 only the Church in England, but all its branches in unity 
 with it) not only recognizes this foregoing doctrine, but 
 practices it. The Book oe Common Prayer is her authorita- 
 tive voice in her Apostolic Council. In the office of Baptism 
 
NUMBER SIX. 57 
 
 therein, slie has instructed her children, with authority, how 
 to interpret, and how she interprets, and hew the Church has 
 
 interpreted and practiced, from the Apostolic beginning, the 
 doctrine of baptism, as laid down in the New Testament. 
 In her offices of Confirmation, of the Holy Communion, and 
 of " Orders/' she teaches and authoritatively, not inferentially, 
 directs what ought to be believed and practiced by all in hex 
 communion, whether lay or clerical. Her Common Prayer 
 Book is her interpretation of God's word ! Her Creed and 
 and her Articles teach, with all authority, what a u Chris- 
 tian man" ought to believe to his soul's health? Every- 
 where in its pages the Prayer Book is the voice of the Apos- 
 tolic ministry, in its highest expression of governing power 
 and judicial authority, in council assembled ; majestically 
 vindicating " the Divine Constitution of the ministry of the 
 Church," the efficacy of the sacraments as " channels and 
 means of grace," the use of a scriptural Liturgy as " aids to 
 devotion," and " a perpetual witness and exhibitor" of evan- 
 gelical truth, as received and taught by the Church in all 
 ages, and by the Church handed down to this age. The 
 cardinal doctrines of redemption and grace pervade the Prayer 
 Book, like threads of gold interwoven. 
 
 The Anglican Church, therefore, does authoritatively in- 
 terpret Scripture. The Prayer Book is the Bible ar- 
 ranged by the Church for her children. It says to 
 us all — 
 
 " Thus did the early Church receive and interpret the 
 doctrines of her Master ! Her faith, her formularies, and her 
 practices have been handed down through a successive Apos- 
 tolic ministry. We baptize infants, because infant baptism 
 has come down to us from the Apostolic day, though we can 
 &\so jind full warrant for it in Holy Scripture ; but it was 
 practiced within the Church he/ore the Xcw Testament was 
 given to the Church, and is therefore a die hie institution and 
 an obligation upon men. AVe confirm the baptized, because 
 
58 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 the early Apostolic ministry always confirmed after baptism, 
 and, therefore, though we had no warrant for this rite in the 
 New Testament, we should follow the previous and never 
 changing law and custom in the ancient Apostolic Church." 
 You, my brother, would call this tradition. I call it a 
 perpetual and ever-living LAW. 
 
 Fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS FOE THE PEOPLE. 
 
 MMIJEIt SEVEN. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OP TnE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CnPRCn, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 I now come to your second objection to the succes- 
 sion; that "it leads the Anglican clergy to affect Romish 
 customs and preach Romish doctrines." To this I could 
 answer, that if they do such things they are not Episcopal 
 clergymen, but Romish priests, and were under a grievous 
 mistake in choosing the Episcopal Church ; and usually, 
 favorably for us, when such persons begin to be inoculated 
 with the virus of Papacy, they do leave us, not being able to 
 take the disease in the natural way among us. But to say 
 that the doctrine of the Succession in the Episcopal Church 
 leads to Rome, is as if I were to argue that the Presbyterian 
 doctrine of Predestination leads to Canterbury; because, 
 within some years past, quite Three Hundred of her minis- 
 ters have become Episcopalians, and most of them, even now, 
 pious Apostolic bishops and clergymen in her communion : 
 or that the exclusive doctrine of instantaneous, visible, public 
 conversion, by a miracle of the spirit, apparent as that at 
 Pentecost, held, I believe, in your communion, has a tendency 
 to the Church, because many of your ministers and intelligent 
 laymen come into it. But you are in error touching the 
 number going from our Church to Rome. The whole num- 
 ber of our clergy, dead and living, since the consecration of 
 Bishop White, is upward of five thousand men. Of these, 
 not twenty have perverted to Rome ; in England, since the 
 
 (59) 
 
60 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 reign of Elizabeth, out of, in all, 90,000 clergymen, not 160 
 have " gone to Rome." And of Bishops not one, in Eng- 
 land, in the three hundred years since the Reformation ; and 
 in this country but one, the late Bishop Silliman Ives, has 
 ever transferred himself to the Romish communion. Yet, 
 in the face of these facts, which ought to have been known 
 to you, (and if not known to you, ought you not to have 
 maintained that "silence which never uttereth evil?") in 
 the face of these facts, you write in your Book against us 
 these words : " Your doctrine of succession not only leads 
 you away from Christ, (ah, my brother, it binds us to Christ,) 
 but it leads you toward Rome! The infallibility of the 
 Church, which can only make your doctrine consistent with 
 itself, has now led off one of your distinguished bishops, and 
 he has gone to Rome also. And in England they are going 
 by hundreds."* 
 
 This is your language ! How can a Christian, and a min- 
 ister of the truth, put such words upon paper, to be put into 
 type, to be read by all eyes, and to be brought up in judg- 
 ment at the last day by Him who said : " He that slandereth 
 his neighbor, him will I cut off." You cannot lay your 
 finger on one Bishop in England who has gone to Rome, 
 and but one in the whole Protestant Church, and yet you say 
 they are going " by Hundreds !" 
 
 I will now appeal Ho any unprejudiced mind, if out of 
 nearly one hundred thousand clergymen in the Anglican 
 Church, since the Reformation, not one hundred and fifty 
 have seceded to Rome ; and out of nineteen hundred Bishops, 
 but one (and he asserted by his own brother and family phy- 
 sicians to be a deranged man) gone to Rome; if you have 
 made out your case ! if you are sustained in your assevera- 
 tion ! if, on the contrary, I do not show that the Episcopal 
 Church is not only not Roman, but its integrity unshaken in 
 that direction ; else, also, is the Presbyterian Church Epis- 
 * Abbey's Apostolical Succession, pp. 190, 191. 
 
NUMBER SEVEN. 61 
 
 copaliau ! which if you and your allied Presbyterian friends 
 will not admit, then you cannot assert of us that we are 
 Romanist, except by bearing "false witness against your 
 neighbor."* 
 
 But, my brother, what do you call Romish doctrines? I 
 boldy charge you with preaching Romish doctrines ! You 
 preach faith in Christ, so do the Romish priests; this is 
 therefore a Romish doctrine. You preach a hell — so do they ! 
 You preach repentance and the resurrection of the dead — so 
 do they ! You preach the Holy Ghost as the third person in 
 the Blessed Trinity — so do they ! But I do not believe, 
 brother, you preach a purgatory, or invocation of Saints, or 
 the adoration of the Virgin, or the infallibility of the Pope, 
 or any other doctrine not found in the New Testament. I 
 wish you would be so charitable as to believe the same of us. 
 I assure you we do not preach Romish doctrines, unless they 
 be also Christian doctrines. Believe us so far ! I ques- 
 tion whether you ever heard other doctrines than you 
 preach from an Episcopal pulpit, unless it be that one of the 
 " Succession/' which is a doctrine, I allow, as some are 
 that you preach ; but I believe your pulpits have dropped 
 this doctrine since Mr. Wesley's death. But, because it is 
 Roman, it is not therefore not Christian ; else would you 
 preach to your hearers nothing besides Roman doctrines — 
 nay no Christian doctrines at all ! 
 
 But you say the practices of some of our clergy are Romish. 
 So are those of your own, brother. They pray to God, and 
 so do you. They kneel in prayer and so do you ! They 
 say " Amen," and, I believe, your people do, also ! They 
 preach from pulpits, and, I presume, you do. They preach 
 extempore — so do you. They confess their sins to one 
 another, and so do you in your stated class-meeting " Con- 
 fessions," called " telling experiences." They rule very dic- 
 
 " Bishop Green, of Mississippi, is almost my neighbor." Preface to 
 "Abbey's Apostolical Succession." 
 
62 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 tatorially, and with all authority, (priest-ridden it is called,) 
 especially over the weaker sex ! So do your priests with equal 
 autocracy of ecclesiastical exaction and authority. Lastly, 
 they do not admit the laity into their councils, neither do 
 you! And your Itineracy is but a modification of their 
 Jesuitical system. 
 
 Ah, my brother, painfully do I fear you are tending, im- 
 perceptibly, toward Rome, if all this be true touching your 
 " Romish practices." I assure you, in the sincerest manner, 
 and with my friendly hand confidentially laid on your 
 shoulder, that "if you have nothing to countervail all this 
 catalogue of the Romish practices of your Church, they will 
 be almost indefinitely extended" to the great scandal of all 
 good Christians, and especially of " little Benjamin," your 
 Episcopalian brother. 
 
 Your Romish argument effectually prostrates you, if it does 
 the Christian body at which you have aimed it ! You know 
 the homely Spanish adage : " It is a poor spur that wont fit both 
 flanks." Ah, sir, I begin to fear (the more I dip into your 
 book) that it was written more to do injury to us, and to try 
 to hold us up to the contempt of the world, as in early times 
 " this faith was everywhere spoken against," rather than from 
 (what I hoped to find as I read) a philanthropic desire to 
 purify u the church of your hostility," as now it evidently 
 appears to be. Why, sir, did you write a book against us ? 
 Did not the secret fear creep under your heart, as you replen- 
 ished from time to time your inkstand with honest black ink, 
 all innocent of its destined duty, that, perhaps, after all, you 
 were attaching a church of God ! that you were spitting on 
 Christ's body with his Jewish crucifiers, and crowning Him 
 again with thorns ! scourging once more his naked shoulders 
 with the lash! Did not the shadow of an idea pass through 
 your mind, as you were writing your ecclesiastical phillipics, 
 that you might be sitting in the procuratorial chair of Pontius 
 Pilate, signing a second time the death-warrant of Jesus? 
 
NUMBER SEVEN. G3 
 
 4< For in that ye did it unto the least of these ye did it unto 
 me/' are his words. 
 
 I should like to know. I shall know at that judgment day, 
 " when the secrets of all hearts will be revealed." But, as 
 under the signature of Pilate an eye of faith might have seen 
 inscribed, in living glory, the word, " ResuKGAM," so at the 
 end of your book, of your sentence of death against the church, 
 I have written " Rcsunjam, with hope and faith." Yes, my 
 brother, though you could crucify the American church, which 
 you have so shamefully and wickedly attacked and held up to its 
 neighbors and to the world as an imposture, it would recover its 
 life when you thought it buried forever in the tomb which your 
 hostilities have cut out for it in the rock of your prejudices, 
 and show itself to possess an immortal body, outliving the 
 nails and thrusts of the spear. 
 
 You have done an evil work, my brother; and if my weak 
 effort to undo it prevent the spread of your sinful hostility, 
 and help to recover the faith of any church people whom it 
 may have shaken, you ought to see in me a friend, like him 
 who gently takes the passionate man's weapon from him in 
 his moment of anger, to receive afterwards in his calmer 
 moments, from his grateful lips, heart-felt expressions of 
 gratitude. 
 
 "Faith meetly may blame, 
 For it serves and adores. 
 Thou warnest and smitest — 
 
 Yet Christ must atone 
 For a soul that thou slightest, 
 Thine own !" 
 
 One may be able, I may here remark, to destroy, and yet 
 fail to build up. "The power of demolition and that of 
 sound construction," says an able writer, " are not neces- 
 sarily correlatives. He who goes about to destroy is rarely 
 one upon whose judgment we can rely to lay the solid foun- 
 
 6 
 
64 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 dations of truth, or to perceive their just proportions. " It 
 is easier to frame a theory than to accept one which has the 
 sanction of legitimate authority. 
 
 Having now considered the four chief objections, or 
 rather assertions, which you advance against "the Succession/' 
 viz. : that it takes us to Rome and the authoritative interpre- 
 tation of the word of God; that it tempts the Clergy to 
 teach and affect Romish doctrines and practices ; that it sent 
 Bishop Ives to Rome ; that it takes " hundreds" of Bishops 
 of the Church of England there ; I will now notice the fifth, 
 viz. : that " it inclines the Clergy of the Church to loose 
 and immoral lives." This is the grossest charge of all, and 
 evidently incapable of being maintained by the facts. You 
 seem to infer that the doctrine of the Succession communi- 
 cates to the members of a " Succession Church," both priest 
 and people, such a calm consciousness of safety, that they do 
 not feel at all anxious touching their soul's ultimate salva- 
 tion ; that being in " the Church" so assures them prima 
 facie of salvation, that ; live as they choose, they will 
 assuredly be saved. 
 
 I believe I have correctly stated your propositions. 
 
 But just now you did put me upon the defence of my be- 
 loved Church against tendencies to Rome. Now, in plain 
 words, you do verily place me upon its defence against ten- 
 dencies to hell. Your whole language in your seventeenth 
 letter is of such a denunciatory character, that were you 
 chosen to attack a Church set up by Satan, in order to try 
 and overthrow it, you have need only to make use of the 
 same vocabulary you have selected to attack the branch of 
 the Church of Christ called Episcopal. Not content with 
 attacking its divine doctrines, its holy faith, its venerable 
 practices, its sacred orders, its inimitable and Scriptural 
 Liturgy, which the united " voices of millions have swelled 
 to Heaven," and which is enriched with the pious minds of 
 ages ; not content with attacking her venerable Bishops and 
 
NUMBER PEVKX. 65 
 
 their apostolic office ; not satisfied with assailing her in her 
 
 formularies and rites, in her articles and in her prayers, in 
 her preaching and in her usages, you now launch your arrows 
 of hatred mortal, of untiring hostility, of quenchless sec- 
 tarian prejudice against the moral character of her Clergy, 
 and of her faithful members. You write, sir, not like a con- 
 troversialist, but like a man who has some deep personal 
 wrong to avenge ! Your pen creeps with the unceasing tread 
 of the sleuth-hound, following in and out all the paths of 
 the fugitive upon whose track it is put j and it ceases not, 
 flags not, tires not, until it has reached its victim, dragged it 
 to the ground, and drank its blood. Your animosity to the 
 Church is p< rsonal! It is too violent, too bitter, to be 
 simply prompted by difference of religious faith. 
 
 They tell me you are a Christian minister, and, I believe, 
 you say so in your book. If I am to have, by you, a favor- 
 able opinion of the Christian character of ministers which 
 your Church produces, I should not be far behind you in de- 
 nouncing it. But I have seen too much of men, and of tho 
 Churches among men, to judge of the ministry by the excep- 
 tions. I know that your Church contains thousands of pious, 
 zealous, and good men, truly apostolic men in spirit and in 
 vast labors — modern Pauls and Johns, by hundreds ! I 
 knoic that your Bishops are pious, and wise, and correct men 
 of God, that they would do honor to the early Church 
 itself, when men counted not " their lives dear for the love 
 of Christ/' that they might win souls ! I have known 
 these your Bishops and your Clergy personally. I have seen 
 them live, and I have seen some of them die, and I have 
 then said this prayer in my heart : " May my last end be like 
 theirs I" I have seen your laity, and especially your female 
 members, in afflictions and sorrows that tried their faith to its 
 utmost, and I then thought of " the holy women" of Paul's 
 day, of Eunice and Lois, and of the blessed women who 
 administered to the disciples, and stood at the cross' foot in 
 
66 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 tears, and said in my heart, " Such were the Christian 
 women of Scripture." Sir, I do full justice to your Church, 
 to its zeal, to its purity, and its good works ; and it has 
 been my prayer, and is this day, that the bonds of unity and 
 union between us might be drawn closer and closer, instead 
 of wider and wider severed, and that we all might be one in 
 the unity of the Spirit and in the bond of peace ! Once of 
 us, We have never ceased to regard you with fraternal affec- 
 tion ; and although your book will, for a time, widen farther 
 still the two communions, yet I trust the time is not far off 
 when, by mutual advances — charitable concessions on both 
 sides — this grievous bleeding wound in Christ's body may be 
 healed, and we shall all be one in him as he is one in the 
 Father. 
 
 Your book can do no good. It can effect no beneficial re- 
 sult. It will, on the contrary, increase hatred and malice, 
 and all uncharitableness, wherever it goes. It will be a root 
 of bitterness in many a neighborhood and household, where 
 before there was at least Christian forbearance, if not peace. 
 
 Yours, fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS TOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 KUMIII2K EIGHT. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF TnE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 Now to the question of morals in the ministry of our 
 Church. You speak the truth when you say that two Bishops 
 in the Episcopal Church have fallen ! Alas, that it were not 
 true ! But, if you can charge the Church with retaining 
 them in its service after their guilt was known and proven, you 
 can fasten upon it their sins. But if she cast them out, then 
 she cannot be charged with present accountability. They 
 were both degraded in full council, sir, as you well know, 
 and therefore the Church declares to the world that she does 
 not recognize or wink at immorality in high places, or in low — 
 that her garments are clean from this iniquity. If they still 
 were with us, then she might blush with shame ; but now it 
 is the blood of indignation that mounts to her brow. If a 
 State let its criminals go free in society, then you can charge 
 the State with being corrupt; but if it hang them or punish 
 them, you cannot do so without moral turpitude. The Church 
 therefore tt is clear when she is judged" on such grounds of 
 wrong, and charged on such reasons with impurity. She re- 
 pudiated even suspicion of collusion, sir, by her act of de- 
 gradation promptly issued against the offenders. So with 
 Bishop Ives. His diocese has unanimously repudiated his 
 late acts, and therefore declares her disapproval of them ! 
 Can Romanism be made out of resolutions of censure against 
 a man for going to Rome ? We have a fourth Bishop ar- 
 6* (G7) 
 
68 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 raigned for alleged malfeasance. You know, sir, a court of the 
 Church is already summoned to sit in trial upon him. If he 
 is found guilty, be assured that he will not escape ! 
 
 Does this purification of the Church of impurity, Roman- 
 ism, and peculation — does this prompt decapitation of the 
 heads of the hydra, when they appear above her altars, look 
 like taking part with the monster sin ? Judge you, my 
 brother. 
 
 For our sins, doubtless, God has suffered this scandal of 
 our then Bishops to come upon us, and your Book ! I trust 
 that both calamities will lead us to purify our spirits and 
 search our hearts, and humble ourselves before God. So, if 
 your Book produce these good effects, it will be to us a bless- 
 ing, and so far defeat your intentions, my brother. You 
 will then still more nearly resemble Balaam, who, going forth 
 to curse Israel, left a blessing upon the camp of God instead. 
 Will you point to a single Bishop in the Church, sir, who 
 lives a " loose and wicked life." You know that you cannot — 
 none such can remain in her bosom. But you say the clergy 
 are not pious ; that, "as a general thing, men do not look into 
 our pulpits for fervent exhortations to piety, or bold denun- 
 ciations against sin. Your preaching/ 7 you add, " is smooth, 
 popular, and moral. The subject matter of it is not f the 
 Gospel V Who ever heard you warn sinners, denounce sin, 
 or entreat men to be reconciled to God ? No one looks for 
 the preaching of the Gospel truly from your pulpits." 
 
 It strikes me that I have only to leave the above quotation 
 here, and let it speak to truth-loving men for itself ! I will not 
 revile, or vocatively use emphatic nouns to express my sense 
 of the total destitution of fact contained in the above quota- 
 tion, from the 173d page of your book. You have been 
 peculiarly unfortunate in the Episcopal clergymen you have 
 heard preach, if you report correctly. My own experience 
 clearly contradicts yours; and if any judicious right-minded 
 Methodists read this pamphlet, they cannot but say you have 
 
NUMBER EIGHT. G9 
 
 gone a little too far ! I will let the common sense of the 
 community judge you herein, and leave this point with theim 
 with you and Grod, to consider your charge against the morals 
 of the clergy. If an immoral minister is preaching in our 
 pulpits he ought not to he there, and with my consent should 
 be unfrocked to-day. But I know a great many of the Church's 
 clergy; I know the private characters of more of them; I 
 have by me a list of nearly 1700 clergymen, and I cannot, 
 nor can you, lay your hand upon the name of one who " games 
 or drinks," or leads a worldly life, or walks in ways unbecom- 
 ing his sacred office. As in learning and in evangelical zeal, 
 so in piety and blameless lives, they will favorably compare 
 with any clergymen of any denomination. Perhaps you do 
 know two or three bad men among them. Is it fair to judge 
 the whole church by their characters. Yet this is your style 
 of arguing. I have a right to turn your own arguments upon 
 you. You have heard mo give already my sentiments in re- 
 ference to your Church, its worthy Bishops, and zealous preach- 
 ers and pious Laity. I did not allude, and would not now, 
 if I did not wish to show you how unkindly you reason against 
 the Episcopal Church to the sins in your own body. If I 
 had taken up your mode of argumentation, I should not have 
 spoken as I have done of the holy and pious and evangelical 
 men among you, but on your principles I would have expressed 
 my opinion of your communion from the evil men in it. I 
 would have said that I knew three Methodist preachers to be 
 in the Tennessee Penitentiary at the same time for crimes ; 
 that there was scarcely a prison in the Union, south of New 
 York, that had not had preachers under penance in them ! 
 Hence on your principles I should have said your preachers 
 were only fit for the penitentiary, and your Church was a den 
 of thieves ; just as you say our Church consists of " gamesters, 
 drinkers, betters, dancers, play-goers, and in England, fox-hun- 
 ters," &c. But, sir, I should not dare to meet my great judge 
 with such charges against your Church, based upon such 
 
70 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 worthless exceptions ; and I shrink with Christian reluctance 
 even from making this suggestive allusion that way. Also, 
 if I had had such hatred of jour Church as you have of mine 
 (hatred exists not in hearts fnll of the love of God), I should 
 from the fact, that two of your leading revival preachers, not 
 very long ago, were detected in a brothel and put into a cala- 
 boose, and who are not yet expelled from the ministry ; and 
 from the fact that another, a "star" of genius in your eccle- 
 siastical constellation, visited a masquerade ball in Mobile and 
 was not degraded from his office ; from these individual cases 
 I would have condemned your whole ministry as " loose and 
 immoral," as you have done ours from individual instances, 
 declaring us to be horse-jockeys, whoremongers, thieves and 
 dancers ! But God forbid ! I reject your principles of reason- 
 ing. I hasten to re-assert that your Church is pure and evan- 
 gelical, though in it are men who degrade the sacred office 
 and dishonor Christ. It will not do, sir, you see, to judge 
 a Church in this way ; and may God forgive you for denounc- 
 ing the Episcopal Church in the slanderous manner you have 
 done before the world — which world will not sustain you, 
 nor will your own Bishops and more moderate and pious 
 clergy. 
 
 You also assert of our laity, that vital piety is not exacted 
 of them, nor expected from them. This is a sad error into 
 which you have fallen, my brother. I will make use here 
 of the same arguments I have just advanced in reference to 
 our Clergy. You must not judge the whole from the excep- 
 tions. I can go to every town in Tennessee or Mississippi, 
 and find " Methodists" who do not " walk as becometh 
 saints 3" but I do not covet the occupation of an ecclesiasti- 
 cal scavenger, looking up your Church's offal. Your book 
 will draw the world's eyes to your own people more closely 
 than heretofore, to see if there are any beams in their eyes 
 as well as in those of the Episcopalians. There are " them 
 that walk disorderly" in all Churches, as you who are a 
 
NUMBER EIGIIT. 71 
 
 minister ought to know. But it is wholly a gratuitous 
 charge for you to assert that men of the world do not scruple 
 to invite members of the Episcopal Church to engage in 
 gaming, drinking, betting, dancing, and theatre-going. It is 
 not so, my brother. There are worldly Church members, 
 tares in the wheat, who give scandal; and would to God 
 they would walk as becometh the Gospel of Christ. And if 
 they will not, and are beyond reformation, it is the duty 
 of the Church to cast them out. But to assert that the 
 Church allows these things in her members, is wholly incor- 
 rect. It is the duty of all Clergymen to suspend such from 
 the Holy Communion, until they repent, and firmly resolve, 
 with God's grace, to lead a new life. I, sir, would never 
 administer the holy bread and wine to any parishioner that 
 I knew was bringing reproach upon his or her Christian pro- 
 fession. The Church does not allow dancing,* horse-racing, 
 gaming, drinking, and theatre-going, in her communicants ; 
 and if they do these things they are not Christians, and will 
 be judged of Him who will one day separate the tares from 
 the wheat in the harvest field of his Church. 
 
 [And here let me earnestly urge all worldly churchmen 
 who read this pamphlet; and who by their lives have given 
 
 * If the Episcopal Church he amenable to these charges, she is not 
 alone. At a meeting of the New School General Assembly, held at Buffalo, 
 May 10, last, "An overture, reprehending promiscuous dancing, by Church 
 members, was answered by re-affirming the stringent condemnation of a 
 former Assembly." 
 
 Herein are /nothings to be noted: that only "promiscuous" dancing 
 was reprehended, thus leaving room for the inference that private unpro- 
 miscuous dancing was not deemed " reprehensible" by the New School 
 Presbyterians. 2d. That "promiscuous dancing" was common among 
 their " Church members;" or otherwise there would have been no 
 sity for the motion to be made. I bring forward this fact, because in your 
 attack you join the Presbyterians with you as allies against us. More- 
 over, John Calvin played dice incontinently, as history will tell you; and 
 devout Martin Luther was great at nine-pins. A " ten strike" delighted 
 him as greatly as if he had upset as many Papists. 
 
72 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 cause for wounds to be inflicted upon Christ u in the house 
 of his friends/' to remember that God will more severely 
 condemn them for thus bringing his Church into shame, than 
 the unbaptized sinners who have never professed his name. 
 It is your lives, ye few gay and worldly churchmen and 
 churchwomen, that have caused the face of Christ to be again 
 spit upon, and his back scourged, and severe reproach to be 
 brought upon the Church which he purchased with his most 
 precious blood; and to which it is his pride and glory 
 to point the Father when its members walk humbly with 
 Him, and cultivate holiness of heart with spiritual lives. 
 Your "union with Christ" will be of no avail to you; but 
 like dead limbs he w*ill cut you off and cast you forth to be 
 burned.] 
 
 Sir, I do confess, with conscious shame, that some of our 
 more wealthy and young Episcopalians are worldly; but I 
 also assert, with pride, that the large majority are pious, 
 practical Christians. This fact cannot be denied. I appeal 
 "to all the towns," if the majority of the Episcopalians do 
 not, by their lives, show themselves to be the children of 
 God! 
 
 Your book will do good ! For one, I thank you for it ! 
 It will lead to self-examination in our communion ; but I 
 protest against your sweeping condemnation of it for the 
 gins of a small yet perhaps a prominent minority. 
 
 There is one point in your objections to the Succession 
 which I wish to refer to before I quit this subject, viz. : that 
 this doctrine " leads to assurance of salvation," and hence 
 the " careless lives" of some church people. In reply, allow 
 me to give you a brief outline of our faith : 
 
 We believe that Christ established a Church, with a 
 divinely organized ministry, to which he committed the 
 sacraments, the ordinances, and the promises of the Gospel; 
 that this Church, so organized, is to-day authoritative 
 through its ministry in all conditions that constituted the 
 
NUMBER EIGHT. 73 
 
 original Church. We believe that this visible Church re- 
 presents the body of Christ; nay, is his body mystically; 
 and that to be made members of this body, baptism upon re- 
 pentance is necessary, wheti it can be had ; and where there 
 arc no sins to be repeutcd of, as in infants, simply baptism 
 alone. That this union brings us into a relation to Christ 
 which wc held not before, and can only hold by baptism ; 
 and that if we cultivate holiness, the spirit of prayer, love 
 to God and our neighbor, and try to keep God's holy com- 
 mandments, commemorating his dying love at his table, and 
 " looking for the life of the world to come, through faith in 
 the atonement of Christ," we shall not fail hereafter of an 
 eternal union with his Church triumphant in Heaven. 
 
 Our baptism into the Church on earth, followed by a Chris- 
 tian life of faith and obedience, is the ground of our hope! 
 If we, thus united to Christ, continue to love God and " keep 
 his coniniandnients," we have no " doubts," because we are 
 incorporated with and are in Christ's Church by our bap- 
 tism ; and as he promised to present his Church as a whole 
 to the Father, and as its parts are composed of believers, we 
 also, as parts of the whole, shall be presented with it and in 
 it to the Father. 
 
 But if, after baptism, we do not follow after holiness, and 
 lead pure and pious lives, loving God and our neighbor, and 
 cultivating the graces of the Spirit, we do not expect to be 
 saved with the Church, but to be cast out of it, as in it but 
 not of it; as dead branches, as " hay and stubble/' as un- 
 profitable servants, as the worthless tares of his field, fit only 
 to be burned. "We do not place any confidence in mere 
 tactual union with the visible Church, through its ministry, 
 and in its sacraments, unless we love God and keep his com- 
 mandments ; but rather shall suffer the greater condemna- 
 tion. But to the pious churchman, the consciousness that he 
 is in tactual union, his body united to the visible body of 
 Christ in the sacraments, is a great and abiding comfort. 
 
74 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Under all gloom, depression, darkness, and temptations, this 
 consciousness and full assurance of faitb is an anchor to his 
 soul, sure and steadfast. Though storms beat and billows 
 roll, he knows that he will be safe at last; for he is in Christ's 
 ark, which he built with his own hands, and at the helm of 
 which he stands to guide it, " ever with it to the end of the 
 world." 
 
 There are uninformed Church people who presume igno- 
 rantlj upon their privilege as being " sons of God," and by 
 careless lives unquestionably do wreck forever their eternal 
 hopes. They forget that to be heirs is not actually and cer- 
 tainly inheritance. No, sir, we allow in the Church no sin, 
 nor permit it to exist where we know it. 
 
 There is another subject which I wish to say a few words 
 upon. You sneer at our " few," at our Bethlehem-Eph- 
 ratha, " the least among the thousands of Judah," and then 
 ask for our revivals ? and how many members are added to 
 the Church a year ! and then point to the Baptist and Metho- 
 dist and Presbyterian accessions with the triumph of David 
 when he numbered Israel. You should be aware that God 
 is displeased with this boasting confidence in numbers ! " Five 
 shall chase a hundred," He says. But I have before argued 
 this question of estimating truth by enumeration. I must 
 confess our numbers compared with your vast accessions are 
 very small. Paul was several days at Phillippi and only 
 made one convert, a certain Lydia, a seller of purple j and 
 was three whole years in a city of Greece and collected but 
 a very small church, a " mere Episcopal congregation," in 
 all that time. John Maffit preached a few days in Troy, 
 New York, and 604 converts "joined the Church" on pro- 
 bation ! 
 
 But look at the result — Paul's Church by and bye grew 
 apace, till it included all Greece, all Macedonia, Thessaly, 
 Byzantium, and covered the whole Eastern empire, and, in 
 the year 315, the Emperor of the East was among its con- 
 
NUMBER ETC ITT. 75 
 
 verts, with all his vast empire. AVe arc not Apostles it is 
 true j and the Church in Mississippi is but thirty years old. 
 Twenty-six years ago there was but one Church in the State. 
 Now there are thirty-one, and twenty-three clergymen ; and, 
 perhaps, in 300 years hence the Church may effect something 
 more; for it is for all time, and it is fully and clearly under- 
 stood that we work for the future as well as for to-day. In 
 the life of the Church, time is but a vouching point. 
 
 Fraternally yours, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER MXE. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO TIIE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 It is true that we do not have Revivals in " your way." 
 We are taught in God's Holy Word to consider every day a 
 day for conversion, and in which to hear the voice of the Son 
 of God. We regard every day as suitable for offering the 
 Gospel to sinners, and that the Spirit is with "two or three" 
 whenever met together in his name, as well as with the 
 multitude. We consider " now," not next Revival, or the 
 next camp-meeting, but noic, " the accepted time and day of 
 Salvation." We try to make every Sunday a revival by 
 winning souls on that day ! We work on week-days steadily, 
 constantly, quietly, and with desire to warn men to turn to 
 God and be saved. When the world's people do come to us 
 in sincerity, they seldom go back. " Back-sliding" is a term 
 incorporated with the revival and probation method ! Your 
 statistics, I fear, count all who are " converted," but do not 
 subtract all who " backslide." I have spoken of Mr. Maffit's 
 visit to Troy, and his success there, quite casting, as many of 
 your revivalists do, St. Paul into the shade. A few months, 
 perhaps ten, after Mr. Maffit's departure, I saw in a northern 
 Methodist Journal an article to this purport : — 
 
 " What is the defect in our system ? Our revival statistics 
 fall off strangely and unaccountably. The Methodist de- 
 nomination has decreased in the whole State upward of 4000 
 since the last estimate. When Mr. Maffit preached here, 
 
 (77) 
 
78 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 six hundred and four persons were converted, and joined the 
 Church on probation ; and at the end of the six months not 
 above twenty remained true." 
 
 And similar, I apprehend, my brother, would be the issue 
 of nearly all your great revivals and camp-meetings, if the 
 statistics of conversion were revised and corrected at the end 
 of the six months' probation. As an illustration of this, I 
 refer you to the life of George Shadford, one of your great 
 Revivalists, who says, (Methodist Magazine, 1818,) " We 
 added 1800 members, and we had good reason to believe that 
 a thousand of them were converted to God." Here, then, 
 your revival system admits 800 members who are unconverted 
 to God ! Can you bring a charge at all like this against the 
 Episcopal Church, of admitting as members 8 unconverted 
 persons out of every 18 members ? 
 
 The system of "revivals, which forms so important a 
 feature of your Church, without doubt contributes, in an ex- 
 traordinary degree, to increase the large figure of members 
 upon which you pride yourself. But as religion u got" under 
 high nervous excitement must, by the well known laws of 
 physiology and of psychology, be often evanescent, passing 
 away with the immediate agency which produced it, leaving 
 in the mind of the convert no solid " reason for the faith" 
 that was in him, it is not surprising that your Church counts 
 up so largely in members, since it counts all who " get re- 
 ligion ;" and I doubt not if you will enumerate all who have 
 been " converted" and are " backslidden" to the world, your 
 1,319,171 would be doubled, if not quadrupled : that is, you 
 lose more than you gain. This fact cannot be questioned, I 
 think, by any who are familiar with the history and statistics 
 of your denomination. But, in your attack upon us, you 
 speak of our " few" communicants, as given in our statistics, 
 viz., 111,650 souls.* Now, my brother, if you would make 
 
 The absurdity of arguing in defence of truth and right by numbers, 
 is strikingly shown in the following extract from the Report of Rev. W. H. 
 
NUMBER NINE. 79 
 
 out a tabic of statistics, giving only those who habitually at- 
 tend "class meetings," attendance on which is, among good 
 Methodists, considered the true test of spiritual membership, 
 T am sure ice need not hide our heads ! I have reason to 
 know that in towns in Mississippi and Tennessee, and other- 
 wheres, that the class-meetings are attended by but a small 
 fraction of each Church in the town. I can name one that I 
 am in daily cognizance with, where the " professors" are 
 over two hundred, but of whom attend the " class-meeting" 
 but two or three pious women, and one devout old man per- 
 haps ; and this habitually from week to week. Now, sir, as 
 your class-meeting is the touch-stone of sincere Methodism, 
 and as you call all those who stay away from class-meeting 
 " worldly," I pray you which Church has the greatest num- 
 ber of Christians ? Since we number only our regular com- 
 municants ; not the pew-holders, who have not been con- 
 firmed, and do not commune, though they may have been bap- 
 tized into the Church. We distinguish them as the con- 
 gregation. 
 
 Revise your figures, my brother, and give me the number 
 of your people who attend class-meeting, and you will see 
 
 Brett to the Missionary Society, London. Mr. Brett was making efforts 
 to convert to Christianity the Mohammedans of Guiana. He says : — 
 
 " These poor people were so ignorant, that they asserted that Christ 
 appeared after Mohammed. On my correcting their chronology, they sent 
 for a Koran to prove that they were right, but being of course unable to 
 do so, became very angry and quarrelled fiercely with each other. On my 
 entreaty they at length gave over the dispute, and listened to such an 
 outline of Christian religion as I thought they could best understand. The 
 Resurrection of Jesus evidently gave our religion an advantage over that 
 of Mon.VMMED, whose body, as they acknowledged, still lies at Medina. 
 But the most violent Mussulman, fearing the effects of this, told his com- 
 panions not to listen to a religion, whose followers (as he asserted) were/ew 
 compared with the multitudes of believers in Mohammed who dwell in 
 India, Bagdad, Scham (Damascus), and all other cities of the East ; and 
 finally broke up tho conference by declaring that I should be cast into the 
 third hell." 
 
 7* 
 
80 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 that you have little reason to take the triumphant attitude 
 you have done. 
 
 Ah ! this is an unpleasant task, both for my head and heart 
 — this recrimination — and my pen loathes the duty that is 
 forced upon it in defence of that branch of Christ's Church 
 which you have assailed. I would gladly refrain and keep 
 back from making one charge ; but I must show you how er- 
 roneously you reason, and how unfairly you have taken ground 
 against us. 
 
 In corroboration of what I say, I will quote from the Nash- 
 ville Advocate, your Church's own organ, of July 7 : — 
 
 " What FAITH is to our system of doctrines, CLASS MEET 
 ings are to our system of practice, the mainspring of the whole 
 movement." 
 
 " This," says the editor, " is a self-evident and important 
 truth ;" and upon it he remarks, if the " mainspring of the 
 whole movement of itinerant Methodism be broken, lost, or 
 weakened, what becomes of the ' system of practice V Nay, 
 what becomes of a distinctive and essential feature of Method- 
 ism?" The " remark," of "a worthy and influential mem- 
 ber of the Methodist Episcopal Church, south," seems 
 strongly to indicate danger. 
 
 " The chief cause of class-meeting delinquencies among us 
 lay at the door of the Ministry, and might be found in their 
 neglect of pastoral visitations, and of not attending and meet 
 ing the class occasionally themselves-" 
 
 Is not this a grave charge ? " It surely is well-founded," 
 continues the writer. " Neglect," of " meeting the classes," 
 is therefore criminal in the eye of the Discipline. " More- 
 over, it has a tendency to weaken or destroy the force of the 
 mainspring of the whole movement." The kind and chari- 
 table editor, " at first, thought of dispelling the charge as un- 
 founded ; but upon reflection, was afraid there might be some 
 truth in it." Yes, my brother, it is a melancholy fact, that 
 there is too much truth in it. To what extent this fatal and 
 
NUMBER NINE. 81 
 
 11 chief cause of class-meeting delinquencies" may " lay at tho 
 door of the Ministry," I am not prepared to say. Occupy- 
 ing a superannuated, and consequently a limited sphere of 
 action, I can only speak what I know, and testify what I have 
 seen. For five or six years I have resided in the midst of a 
 large and respectable society, and I doubt whether that class 
 has been met or examined in the usual way, by a traveling 
 preacher, during that time. The class paper is rarely seen, 
 and no account is taken of delinquencies. 
 
 "The time was, when disciplinary rules were enforced, allow- 
 ing of no exempt case — when faithful admonition and plain- 
 dealing, as prescribed in the Discipline, and even in the Band 
 Rules, were submitted to, and scrupulously regarded by tho 
 preachers and members. But if the time has not come when 
 they will not endure sound doctrine, the time has come when 
 many, very many, will not endure sound discipline. Class 
 meeting and week-day preaching are almost entirely given up 
 in this country; the rules on dress, and other rules, are a 
 dead letter — a tendency to congregational preaching, in place 
 of itinerancy, prevails. The spirit of the world — avarice, 
 pride, extravagance in dress, and gay equipage — predominates ; 
 and, to use the language of the good Fletcher, ' The lines that 
 divide the Lord's vineyard from the Devil's commons/ are 
 well nigh obliterated. Is there not a cause ? Does that cause 
 'lay at the door of the Ministry V Let none cry Croaker — 
 to heal the wound slightly, to daub with untempered mortar, 
 to cry peace ! peace ! when there was no peace, was long 
 ^ since deemed censurable." 
 
 Such, my brother, are the accounts of your own people, of 
 your leading men in the Church, and they prove what I have 
 advanced. 
 
 If, then, Class meetings are the test of the vital piety in 
 the Methodist Church, and " vital piety," is to be known by 
 figures, I would not shrink, but for fear of God's displeasure 
 who likes not " numbering his people," to go to work with 
 
82 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 slate and pencil, and see whether the Episcopalians or Metho- 
 dists have the greatest amount of piety. 
 
 Your ministers are also taken to task in the above article 
 for not visiting their people. You will find but very few 
 Episcopalian clergymen amenable to this charge. Our system 
 is peculiarly one of clerical visiting. We not only visit our 
 own people, but we visit the world's sinners, and " reason with 
 them out of the Scriptures," upon the necessity of repentance, 
 faith and baptism, "of righteousness and the judgment to 
 come/' We daily seek to win souls to Christ, believing and 
 teaching that every day is a day for the conversion and sal- 
 vation of men. 
 
 On the other hand, your system, brother, is to leave the 
 world of sin to settle upon its lees, until the annual revival 
 and camp-meeting seasons, and then you go to work delibe- 
 rately and systematically to convert souls. This season is 
 usually in the time of harvest ; and you so follow up this 
 plan of harvesting in souls every year, that it is become a 
 settled article of faith in your Church, at least among the 
 masses who go to your preaching, that there can be no " get- 
 ting religion," as the phrase runs, except at a revival ; and 
 hence there prevails at all other times an habitual indiffer- 
 ence to the ordinary ministrations of the pulpit. Sometimes, 
 as I see by a late paper printed in the north part of the 
 State, you unite a barbecue with these pentecostal scenes, in 
 order to bring together the surrounding population — an ad- 
 junct probably suggested, I charitably hope, by the miracu- 
 lous feeding of the five thousand who came far to hear our 
 Lord preach in the wilderness. Here is the advertisement 
 to which I allude. I give it you to reflect upon : — 
 
 Public Meeting. — The citizens of Monroe and Lowndes counties are 
 respectfully invited to attend a Barbecue to be given at the New Church, 
 near Vinton, in Lowndes county, on the 16th July inst., at which time and 
 place the ceremonies of the dedication of the Church will take place by 
 Bishop R. Paine, at half-past 10 o'clock, A. M. Preaching will continue 
 two days, and full attendance is solicited. 
 
NUMBER NINE 83 
 
 Perhaps I ought to record here what has often been re- 
 marked, and which the fact clearly bears out, that the numer- 
 ous conversions to your Church have chiefly been from the 
 humbler and less educated portion of the community; and as 
 these constitute the great mass of society, hence your widely 
 extended influence. Such persons, for the most part, " em- 
 brace Methodism, not from investigation of evidence," not 
 with the understanding enlightened by reasoning from the 
 Scriptures, and on grounds of rational conviction, but by de- 
 liberately giving themselves up to the guidance of feeling 
 and imagination. The Episcopal Church is mainly made up 
 of the educated classes, who join it by admitting the evidences 
 for Christianity, and deliberately choosing what appeals to 
 their understanding as well as to their hearts. Argumentative 
 powers, weighing evidence, appeals to the reason and judg- 
 ment, your system utterly decries. It places the virtue of 
 Christian faith in feeling, rather than in a reasonable convic- 
 tion of the truth of the Gospel. Your converts are led by 
 a craving for excitement, and excitement is the test of their 
 possession of faith. " Preferring what affords them the most 
 scope for the exercise of their feelings, and the gratification 
 of their fancy, they find the Methodist Church the one which 
 best affords them all that they can desire." 
 
 This last quotation I have taken from a recent " Charge of 
 the Archbishop of Dublin," which I find extracted into 
 " The New York Church Journal," July 7th, of the present 
 year, referring to converts to the Roman communion \ but I 
 have taken the liberty only to change the words " Church of 
 Rome," in the last line but one, to " Methodist Church." 
 
 If then the same mental condition in converts is a feature 
 in both Churches, how very near Rome (reasoning, of course, 
 as I have all along done, with your own arguments,) your 
 Church is, my brother. 
 
 And I may here, in passing, introduce another extract 
 taken from the remarks of " The New York Daily Times," 
 
84 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 upon the Bill called the " Catholic Trust Bill/' lately intro- 
 duced into the New York Senate. 
 
 " This Bill proposes," says the editor, " by the formal 
 act of the people of this State, to invest the Archbishop of 
 the diocese of the Roman Catholic Church with all the pro- 
 perty belonging to the body ; not only the colleges, theologi- 
 cal seminaries, schools, convents, and nunneries, which may 
 be considered its public property, but also the particular 
 property of every individual congregation of that body will, 
 should this Law be passed, become vested in the person of 
 the Bishop; and that, too, whether the people so elect or not. 
 There is nothing like this in any Protestant body, that wc 
 know of, unless it be the Methodist Episcopal Church, where 
 the Conference sometimes assumes the position which this 
 Bill assigns to the Roman Catholic Archbishop." 
 
 It is with great reluctance that I resort, in exposing your 
 principles of reasoning, to so unamiable a process as you have 
 forced upon me. I do it not out of malice or revenge, far 
 from it, and gladly would I be silent, or only praise ; but I 
 desire to show you how morally wrong it is for you to adopt 
 against us the mode of argument you have pursued, and to 
 render manifest to those who may be our readers that your 
 reasoning is of no force toward proving what you seem to 
 aim at, unless you admit that the same mode of reasoning, 
 of necessity, establishes the same thing of yourselves, which, 
 I think, I have sufficiently shown to be the case. 
 
 As I am not writing a full answer to your book, brother, 
 but merely reviewing it, I have not touched upon all your ob- 
 jections, although I have considered the chief arguments 
 which I find in it. I shall therefore conclude this pamphlet 
 by noticing a few miscellaneous subjects which you mention, 
 and by making a few remarks upon the doctrines of the book 
 at large. 
 
 You say we do not preach the gospel. This assertion I 
 deny, with indignation. It reminds me of a Methodist 
 
NUMBER NINE. 85 
 
 Minister, who said we did not read the Bible to our people. 
 And when he was convinced that we read Holy Scripture five 
 times in the morning service, and three times in the evening 
 service, eight times a day, he was confounded ; and of course 
 could only plead his ignorance of what we did.* And not long 
 since I was asked by the head of a Methodist family, " If 
 the Episcopalians believed in the Trinity V In reply, I 
 showed him, in the Prayer Book, that we asserted our faith 
 therein in Morning Prayers — not only once in the creed, but 
 that four times the ascription to the glory of the Father, 
 Son, and Holy Ghost, was interwoven with our sublime and 
 holy service ; and in the afternoon, four times, making nine 
 public and vocal confessions of the Trinity on each Sunday. 
 And yet we do not believe in the Trinity? And yet we 
 do not read the Bible 1 Sir, I doubt not that there is more 
 Holy Scripture read in our Churches on one Sunday, than in 
 all your Churches put together in four. 
 
 Of similar value is your gratuitous and uncharitable asser- 
 tion, that " we do not preach the Gospel." I place it there- 
 fore with them, and there and upon your conscience leave it. 
 
 You say that there were never so many Bishops as 600 in 
 the Christian world at one time; and that therefore the 
 Bishops of the Nicene and Chalcedon councils were simply 
 Presbyters. This assertion simply shows that you have not 
 diligently read history, and made yourself acquainted with 
 the social and political features at that period of Europe, 
 "Western Asia, and Northern Africa, whence those Bishops 
 came. I cannot argue against involuntary ignorance, but 
 simply direct you to the usual scholastic sources of Ecclesi- 
 astical history ; reminding you, however, that you will not 
 probably find all the works that would give you information 
 
 • The Prayer Book so arranges the reading of Scripture in the public 
 services of the Church, that the Old Testament is read through, in daily 
 service, once, the Now Testament three times, and the Psalms of David 
 twelve times a year. 
 
86 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 rendered into an English dress. The works most valuable 
 to scholars, you are aware, remain untranslated. There are 
 Bishops enough existing to-day in the several branches of the 
 Christian Catholic Church, not counting the Roman Bishops, 
 to out number either of those councils. 
 
 You boast in the numbers of your clergy, and mock at our 
 " few." But you are pleased to overlook what among us is 
 a condition of the clerical office, besides u piety and aptness 
 to teach," viz. : that our clergy have to go through a severe 
 course of theological study; while yours, like Joseph Wolff, 
 are often fitted, sur le champ, for the field by the call of an 
 inward voice; and this " voice" coming to the smith at his 
 anvil, the joiner at his bench, the plowman at mid-furrow, or 
 the clerk at his desk, is incontinently obeyed; and hundreds 
 of men are set to work in your itineracy, who, but a few 
 weeks before they were licensed, were at work in some re- 
 spectable trade. The trade is nought against them ; but that 
 it should be deemed necessary for them to learn by years of 
 toil some handicraft, but require no preparation for the minis- 
 try, is what I object to. 
 
 " Poeta nascitur, non fit" you thereby convert into 
 
 "Methodist minister nascitur, non fit." 
 
 I am aware it is a part of your Ecclesiastical creed, that 
 scholastic learning is not necessary for a minister " inspired 
 to preach by an inward call." How much ignorance, will 
 you answer me, does your system require to make a preacher 
 of the highest character ? 
 
 It is because you require comparatively no previous study, 
 that you can crowd your ministry as you do, and number your 
 thousands. 
 
 I might, were it not savoring of uncharitableness, remind 
 you here of the Four Hundred Priests of Baal against Elijah, 
 the single servant of the most High God, since you have faith 
 in the proponderancy of figures. 
 
 But, sir, shall the Church obey the people f Shall the ira- 
 
NUMBER NINE. 87 
 
 pious adage, vox Populi, vox Dei, be inscribed on the banner 
 of Him who was crucified by a mob of the people? the victim 
 of a majority ? 
 
 If, in altered tones, the people, who would have sacrificed to 
 Paul and Barnabas, have proclaimed Baal, shall Baal be God? 
 shall Paul and Barnabas be gods ? 
 
 • Hark ! Baal's praiso resounds from countless choirs, 
 
 See gladdening nations hail his festal day, 
 While round the Lord's high shrine, the Levites' fires, 
 
 Some seven poor thousands with Elijah stay ! 
 But who shall judge a people f Who deny 
 
 The 'people's' privilege to choose their God? 
 Speak ye of right ? What right in reason's eye 
 
 Outweighs the sanction of a nation's nod, 
 Whether they how to Baal, or how to God ! 
 The 'voice of many' is the ' voice of God.' " 
 
 This brief quotation answers all your arguments as to the 
 the virtue of numbers in ascertaining where truth dwells. 
 
 But, as I have just remarked, the severe course of study 
 bars many of the indolent and insincere from entering the 
 ministry of the Church. Three years hard study, and four 
 rigorous examinations by Bishops and clergymen, appointed 
 for the purpose, and the necessity of having a knowledge 
 (only with extraordinary exceptions) of the languages in 
 which the original Scriptures were written. But for this 
 learning in our Church, but for this scholarly preparation, 
 which you affect to despise, and which keeps the number of 
 our clergy less than the great needs of the Church demand, 
 (for men, and these are the few, must be in earnest for 
 Christ to labor so hard at preparation for his work,) but for 
 this learning, which you deride, you would have had no Bible 
 in your Church, unless you used the Greek or Boman Vul- 
 gate, and you know Paul forbids using " other tongues than 
 one's own in God's house. To the learning of forty-eight 
 English Bishops and clergymen, " Ecclesiastical tyrants and 
 8 
 
88 PAMPHLETS FOR THS PEOPLE. 
 
 coxcombs/' as you term them, you and your people owe the 
 Gospel of your salvation. You took it with you from the 
 English Church, with a great part of the Prayer Book, when 
 you withdrew yourselves to set up your purer faith ! Now, 
 sir, as the Church of the Succession gave you your Bible, so 
 it offers to you, but you reject it, the Succession. Now, if 
 you can take our translation of the Bible, and the sacraments, 
 and Mr. Wesley's orders from the Church, why not the Suc- 
 cession. The Church's authority is as good for the one as 
 the other ! Moreover, who gave you authority to substitute 
 the First day of the week for the Seventh day, as God's Sab- 
 bath? You have no authority for it in Scripture. It was 
 the Church which has transmitted it from age to age with the 
 Apostolical Succession. Both institutions stand on the same 
 evidence, and have the same authority. 
 
 If we would lessen the lingual and educational requisitions 
 for orders in our ministry, we, also, might be crowded with 
 preachers of the cross, "men full of zeal, but void of under- 
 standing." 
 
 Yours, fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
rAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER TEN. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 You allude to Mr. Wesley frequently as authority. 
 Mr. Wesley, sir, is not the author of, nor responsible for, the 
 American Methodist Church, as I shall show you in a sequel 
 to this review. He had nothing to do with its organization ; 
 but repudiated it in his last hours ; and died in the full com- 
 munion of tlie Episcopal Church ! I italicise, not for your 
 information, but for that of others of your communion who 
 may read what I am writing, and who, like a great many of 
 the uninformed Methodists, are especially ignorant of this 
 one fact, viz. : that Mr. Wesley was ever in the Church — 
 nay, blissfully know nothing of the origin of their Church. 
 It is proper, since you have given motion to the ball, that it 
 should roll on awhile, and let the people see all sides of it, 
 and where the moss grows upon it. Strong in the conscious- 
 ness of the complete defensibility of her position, the Church 
 fears not investigation, (though she loves not detraction and 
 false witness borne against her,) nor does she fear, when once 
 drawing the sword, to parry blows aimed at her bosom — to 
 thrust, if need be, for her safety and honor. 
 
 We love not to attack. The Clergyman of the Church 
 does not think it necessary u to analyze every system of dis- 
 sent," and expose every defect of schismatics; he seeks to 
 put the system of the Church on true foundations ; to unfold 
 its established principles ; to show the general application of 
 
 (89) 
 
90 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 its doctrines to convert and reform men — well knowing, that 
 if they are thoroughly grounded in the elements of her faith 
 and discipline, they will abhor every false system, and guard 
 against every irregular teacher. He will resist error, not so 
 much by attacking it, " as by a fearless presentation of the 
 truth." But when the Church of his love is attacked in the 
 manner presented to the world by your book, when taking 
 advantage of your superior learning, reading, and talents, 
 compared with your own peoples', you teach them that the 
 Episcopal Church is " an imposition and a fraud/'* and un- 
 worthy of the confidence of honest men, it is time he should 
 point out to your people the beam in your own eye. A 
 simple history of your origin is all the ease requires, and all 
 it will receive. Your people shall learn what the Methodist 
 communion really owes to the Church you have defamed, 
 and how uncalled-for and unjust your matricidal attack is 
 upon her. They can investigate evidence, and weigh testi- 
 mony, and exercise judgment upon facts as well as their 
 preachers. 
 
 It is true, by denying your laity a voice in your councils, 
 you ignore their intelligence — ignore them as an integral part 
 of the Body and Church of Christ, and treat them with 
 priestly contempt. Herein you again follow the Roman 
 Catholics, who, in their councils, or conferences, exclude all 
 but the priesthood. So your conferences, in excluding all 
 but the priesthood, affiliate closely with Romanism. Ah, my 
 brother, you ought not to have said " Rome" to us, you per- 
 ceive. I can write a book, proving Methodism and Rome to 
 be the long celebrated extremes tliat meet, far more plausible 
 in its deductions than yours, and more honestly argued from 
 facts. But I do not wish to attack. I take up my pen only 
 to defend, and guard the truth. 
 
 Now I come to " the chief grief of your book, and which 
 
 * See "W. S. Grayson's book against the Succession, pp. 100, note. 
 
NUMBER TEN. 91 
 
 seems to give you all aloDg the most trouble, arid this is, that 
 the Right Rev. Bishop Green, of Mississippi, at whom you 
 level your eighteen epistles, (ah, how vnlikc those of the 
 apostles,) should presume to maintain this succession u apos- 
 tolic," which entitles your pamphlet, as personal in himself. 
 
 We are told, that " it is distance lends enchantment to the 
 view." It is recent proximity to a "mitred prelate," who is 
 11 almost your neighbor," that has, doubtless, given you such 
 a holy horror of the succession, which, when at a distance, 
 did not cast so evidently the shadow of its mitre upon your 
 path. Now, like Diogenes, you tell the Bishop not to stand 
 between you and the sun ; or as Mr. Shakespere, the player, 
 says, u between the wind and your nobility." 
 
 I am inclined to surmise, my brother, that half a scruple 
 of envy at not being able to be a bishop yourself also, or 
 without prospect of being one, (for you are an ambitious 
 man,) unless your book obtain you " the honor," has led you 
 to write your eighteen epistles. Certainly there is nothing 
 in your antecedents that can have so warmly raised your 
 ire against mitres, nor in the personal character of the Bishop 
 of Mississippi, whom you justly term "a gentleman of dis- 
 tinguished learning, talents, character, and abilities." You 
 even in the preface, very inconsistently, however, with the 
 spirit of your whole book afterward, give him credit for ex- 
 emplary piety and zealous labors as a minister of the Gospel; 
 though you qualify this praise afterward by defining, what 
 you consider to be, the Gospel which he preaches, viz. : 
 11 that the Methodist Church is the daughter, and that tho 
 Episcopal Church is the mother." 
 
 If the Bishop's "gospel" be always as true as this, I do 
 not think that he can be very far from preaching evangelical 
 truth. But this is no place, nor have I time, in this mere 
 review of your book, written during a week that both fore- 
 noon and afternoon called me to duties that have kept me 
 for hours from my pen, to discuss this relationship, and to 
 8* 
 
92 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 prove that you are not only the daughter, but a very un- 
 filial and indiscreet one, to defame your maternity as you 
 do ; knowing, as you ought to know, that the hard names a 
 child calls its parent usually rebound against the child. If 
 the mother is unclean, so is the daughter ; for, saith the 
 Scripture, "who can bring a clean thing out of an unclean." 
 This relationship, so far as I can advance the knowledge of 
 it, I mean the world shall be fully convinced of, that they 
 may see how, at every blow you strike at her moral charac- 
 ter and integrity of orders, you and your Church share in 
 the results. It is, perhaps, a providential thing, after all, 
 that you have written '* the book," as this matter will now 
 be likely to be set right ; not only before your own people, 
 but of your brethren of the numerical triangle, the Pres- 
 byterian and Baj)tist communions. 
 
 But to the particular subject of the Bishop of Mississippi's 
 apostolic authority through orders. You have denied that 
 there is any such thing as hereditary orders ; while, in meet- 
 ing your assertions and arguments, I have shown that, if 
 there be not, there ought to be, for the honor of Christ's 
 word of promise, and for the unity of " the one Lord, one 
 faith, one baptism," and for the unquestionable conveyance of 
 the sacraments tactually from Christ to you and me. If there 
 were no need of touch to originate the conveyance, then why 
 did Christ take into his hands the bread, and break it, and 
 manually give it to his disciples ? Why not tell them to 
 take it, and eat it from the table or dish ? But I have 
 already discussed this question, and shown that the integrity, 
 oneness, unity, continuity, self-sameness, and identity of the 
 Church of to-day with the Church Apostolic depends upon 
 the unbroken, tactual transmission of the sacraments, through 
 a continuous inheritance (priests from Bishops, as Timothy 
 from Paul) of " orders." 
 
 Now if there be no apostolic line traceable, then none ex* 
 ists. If none esistj then it is an imposition and deception to 
 
NUMBER TEN. 93 
 
 assert and teach the doctrine. If none exist, there is no 
 one man on earth who has any more authority to baptize and 
 administer the holy communion, confirm, and preach, than 
 any other man. Hence there is no exclusive and particular 
 Christian ministry set apart by God, chosen from among 
 men. In this issue, where then is the source whence 
 authority to baptize or to preach is to come ? Do you say 
 from Keverend John Wesley, Dr. Coke, and Mr. Asbury ? 
 for these evidently constitute and are the foundation head of 
 your " orders ?" But I know you do not stop here; but you 
 defend the validity of the orders of Dr. Coke, and of Mr. 
 Wesley, and assert that, as presbyters, they had authority to 
 ordain. 
 
 Now, if there be no succession, what is authority ? Where 
 is it ? Whence ? You have just as much right to ordain 
 yourself as to be ordained of another man ; nay, a woman 
 may ordain you ! But if you will not allow this, then you 
 admit some authority for orders to be necessary. Wesley, 
 therefore, must have had authority to lay his hands upon 
 Dr. Coke and his brethren. If he had not, then there is 
 confessedly no authority necessary for your orders, and Dr. 
 Coke might as well have ordained himself. Either therefore 
 you must admit that men can take this office upon them- 
 selves, underived, or that there is a derivable source from 
 whence it originally flows. Question, then, Mr. Wesley, and 
 demand, touching his supreme acts ecclesiastic, " By what 
 authority doest thou these things, and who gave thee this 
 authority V* He will say, " My Bishop, who ordained me a 
 presbyter." And his Bishop, if questioned, will refer to his 
 predecessors in an unbroken continuity to Augustine, the 
 first Archbishop of Canterbury, who was consecrated at 
 Aries, France, by the Bishops of Lyons and of Aries, both 
 being Gallic, and not Roman Bishops. Question the Bishop 
 of Lyons and him of Aries, and demand their authority to 
 consecrate a Bishop for Canterbury, in England, and they 
 
94 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 will point to the line of their predecessors up to Ireneus, 
 Bishop of Lyons, who ; they will tell you, was placed in that 
 see by Polycarp's personal consecration; and that Polycarp's 
 consecration was given by the hands of St. John, the apostle 
 of our blessed Lord. 
 
 Hence, Mr. Wesley either claimed no authority whatever 
 to do what he did, or grounded his authority " to do those 
 things" upon the hereditary Apostolic Succession of authority. 
 If, therefore, you, my brother, have any right to preach and 
 baptize, you derive this right through Mr. "Wesley, from Dr. 
 Coke, and Mr. Asbury, and owe the validity of your ministerial 
 acts to the virtue in the Apostolic Succession ; and, "if there be 
 no virtue in it, and no such Succession, then, sir, you nor no 
 other man can have any lawful authority to preach. If, 
 therefore, you impugn the hereditary Apostolical Orders of 
 the Episcopal Church, you repudiate, as I have already before 
 argued, your own ; and therefore have no right to proclaim 
 pardon to sinners on repentance, promise them heaven on 
 faith and obedience, threaten them with hell, baptize them 
 into Christ's body, his Church, and taking bread and wine, 
 call it authoritatively the "body and blood of Christ." 
 These awful and responsible acts you have no right to do, 
 no more lawful right than your infant child has, without the 
 Succession. Therefore you "hold not the Head from which 
 all the body by joints and bands, having nourishment minis- 
 tered and knit together," increaseth with the increase of God. 
 
 A Church without succession is not a body " holding to 
 the Head," and knit together; but, like a dismembered trunk, 
 its limbs are scattered over the earth, without "bands and with- 
 out having nourishment." It is like a branch lopped from 
 the tree, which, after a while, not holding the root, perishes. 
 
 But you, not wishing to give up all authority, urge that 
 you do believe in the Succession by Presbyters, but not by 
 Bishops. But I have before argued this subject with you, 
 showing you that as the Order of Presbyters derived from 
 
NUMBER TEN. 95 
 
 that of Bishops, at least, usually, if you insist on the quali- 
 fication, so the corruptions of the Episcopate must be conveyed 
 to the Presbytery j for, as already quoted in another place, 
 "a clean thing cannot come out of an unclean/' 
 
 You must therefore either admit the integrity of the Epis- 
 copate, or you destroy the valid succession of the inferior 
 orders. 
 
 Yours, fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS FOll THE PEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER ELEVEN. 
 
 ADDRES9ED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 You will doubtless have demurred at the smooth way 
 in which, in my last Pamphlet, I have given Mr. Wesley an 
 Apostolical ride up the hill of Succession to the very doors of 
 the Episcopal palace of St. John. But there is no historical 
 lineage, royal or priestly, more clearly established than that 
 of the Episcopate of Lyons through St. John, and the Angli- 
 can through that of Lyons. That see remained in hereditary 
 integrity until the beginning of the seventh century, as it 
 does moreover to this day, though acknowledging, at present, 
 unwilling allegiance to the Koman pontiff. But at the time 
 of which I speak, the Gallic Church was one of the purest and 
 most evangelical Churches on earth ; with a ministry of indis- 
 putable Apostolic descent. 
 
 At this period Augustine, a priest of the Church in Italy, 
 being in England, was directed by Pope Gregory to open 
 negotiations with the ancient British Church, there to secure, 
 if possible, its consent to the Papal usurpation ; for Home was 
 then beginning to annex the Sees of Christendom to its ec- 
 cfesms^'co-imperial throne by persuasion, by bribery, and by 
 force lent by the Roman spears. 
 
 You, perhaps, know, for it has been translated from the 
 Latin, the eloquent response of that Apostolic Church to the 
 demands of Rome. " We acknowledge the Bishop of Rome 
 
 (97) 
 
98 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 as a Christian brother, but we owe allegiance to no supreme 
 head but the Lord Jesus Christ. " 
 
 This ancient Church, for its firmness against aggression, 
 was finally nearly crushed by the Bishop of Rome, who, 
 making use of their conqueror, the Saxon Ethelbert's arms, 
 slew twelve hundred of her priests. Her Bishops fled, but 
 not annihilated, from the two-fold war against them of the 
 Saxon and of the crucifix, and the Pope completed his tri- 
 umph by usurping and conferring the authority of the British 
 Church upon Augustine. But as this man was only a priest 
 in rank, and therefore could have no authority to oversee and 
 govern a Church, not even a superintendent, he went to Aries, 
 in Gaul, there to receive Episcopal consecration. Hence, the 
 consecration of Augustine as first Archbishop of Canterbury, in 
 England, was not by Romish hands, but by Gallic; not 
 through the Episcopate of St. Peter, but that of St. John. 
 
 The fact that Augustine was an Italian Presbyter does not 
 touch his orders Episcopalic, nor affect them in the least, as 
 you must clearly perceive. What, as the Archbishop of Can- 
 terbury, was he officially to convey ? The Episcopate alone — 
 the governing power — the Apostolical succession of hereditary 
 authority ! As a priest he could baptize, consecrate the bread 
 and wine, and preach. As a Bishop his office is, with the aid 
 of the two Gallic Bishops, to consecrate the first English 
 Bishops, his cotemporaries and successors. The Episcopate, 
 therefore, the Apostolical succession of English Bishops comes 
 not to the Anglican Church through Rome, but through 
 Gaul. 
 
 Afterward history clearly shows us that certain Romish 
 Bishops, forced upon the British Church and elevated to its Sees 
 by the Pope, assisted at the consecration of English Bishops; 
 but the original thread of succession leading from Augustine 
 to the Gallic Bishops could not thereby be invalidated, broken, 
 or annihilated ; as of necessity it must continue, though inter- 
 woven with Romish. But if you except at all to the Presby- 
 
NUMBER ELEVEN. 99 
 
 terian Orders of Augustine in the Piomish Church, as existing 
 prior to his consecration at Aries, certainly the line of the 
 two Gallic Bishops, which never intermingled with Home, 
 and who assisted Augustine in his subsequent consecrations, 
 must continue. No number of subsequent consecration?, aided 
 by Romish hands, could kill the virtue in the Apostolic line 
 coming through St. John. Suppose, as you are fond of sup- 
 positions, that when you were ordained by the laying on of 
 hands of your Bishop and brethren, an Episcopal clergyman 
 (invited by courtesy) had also put his Apostolic hand upon 
 your head with those of the brethren, would this intermixture 
 of orders have made you an Episcopal clergyman ? Or sup- 
 pose when three Romish Bishops consecrate a priest to elevate 
 him to the Episcopate, an Anglican Bishop should add his 
 hands to the three, would not he virtue of his consecration be 
 as much given as that of the others ; and would it not flow 
 on through centuries, "pari parribus" with theirs; and be 
 conveyed to all who were successively consecrated; and as 
 really and positively so, as if there were no other lines in- 
 termingling ? 
 
 In the same way, and for the same reason, do the orders 
 of the English Church flow through St. John's hand from 
 Christ's; and if one of the streams be tainted, yet she knows 
 that she derives through the purer one all, as if the others 
 were not ! 
 
 The Bishop of Mississippi therefore traces his Episcopal 
 authority to St. John, as he has clearly asserted and shown 
 in the Appendix to his Sermon. Consecrated by four Ame- 
 rican Bishops, who were consecrated by Bishop White, or by 
 those whom that venerable primate of the American Anglican 
 Church consecrated, he received lawful authority to ordain 
 the candidate for priestly orders on the occassion when he 
 preached the sermon which you have made the casus belli 
 against the Episcopal Church. That gentleman was therefore 
 lawfully ordained by the Bishop there, and then, or he was 
 
 
100 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 not. If he is lawfully and validly ordained, he is so because 
 the Bishop of Mississippi, who gave him " Orders/' had 
 authority to do so. These are the words in which our Bishops 
 confer ministerial authority, their hands laid upon the can- 
 didate's head : — 
 
 " Take thou authority to execute the office of a Priest 
 in the Church of God, now committed to thee by the imposi- 
 tion of our hands ; and be thou a faithful dispenser of the 
 word of God and of his holy Sacraments ; in the name of the 
 Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost. Amen." 
 
 Now, either the Bishop had authority to do this, as I have 
 before said, or he had not, If he had not, then he conveyed 
 none to the candidate; and the latter has no more authority 
 to minister at God's altar than he had before, nor is any 
 minister in the Church a whit better situated. If I did not 
 believe that the Bishop, who ordained me to preach and 
 baptize, had really authority successively derived from the 
 "Head," through the members " knit together/' by a chain 
 of succession, " coming down from God," conveying his au- 
 thority, I would, from this day, cease to preach, and wholly 
 abandon the sacred office, "which no man taketh upon him- 
 self," but he that is called of God, as was Aaron and his 
 Levitical succession. Though I took not my orders and 
 authority, indeed, upon myself, after the manner Napoleon 
 placed the iron crown upon his own head, yet, if I receive 
 orders from one who took it upon himself, or who received it 
 from some other more remotely, who took it upon himself, I 
 am not the less unauthorized to preach and baptize; for, 
 ultimately, my orders will be traced to self-institution in their 
 origin, be it in this century or the last, in the "dark ages," 
 or in the age after the Apostles. If I cannot connect the 
 parts "knit together," of ministerial authority, with Christ, 
 who " came not of himself, but was sent by the Father," I 
 have no lawful right to declare, as Christ's ambassador, for- 
 giveness of sins to men, and with all authority to exhort and 
 
NUMBEB r.I.r.YKV 101 
 
 rebuke. It is my undoubted confidence in the authority to 
 ordain me to the work of the ministry of the Bishop from 
 whom I received orders, that alone can authorize me to take 
 upon myself " the ministry of souls j" an office that, in God's 
 Church economy, not even an angel has ever had committed 
 to him, and which no angel, " who hearkens unto the voice 
 of His word," would ever dare to assume without authority 
 from Christ. The office of a minister of the cross is one of 
 fearful responsibility, as well as of infinite dignity. It stands 
 pre-eminently above regal station, and all mere earthly state : 
 for to its authority princes bend and kings obey as unto 
 Christ. At the hand of the humblest deacon the Imperial 
 Autocrat kneels to receive " the cup of blessing" that he has 
 blessed ; before the youthful village curate, Wellington, the 
 hero-warrior of the age, is seen receiving humbly the seal of 
 his mystical union with Christ, his Lord's body. 
 
 And not only in power and in earthly precedence is the 
 ministry of the cross elevated above the sword and sceptre, 
 but in tremendous personal responsibility it is an office which 
 no man should covet even when lawfully instituted into it ; 
 for it is enough for a man to stand and be judged of God for 
 his own soul ; and who may abide the winnowing of his own 
 life. But when to this common responsibility of all is added 
 the responsibility of the souls of others also, then may a man 
 tremble at accepting it. Then may he well and properly 
 shrink from the terrible weight of human endorsement to 
 which he commits himself forever, for weal or for woe. 
 The sacred office, alas ! is no security for the holder's 
 salvation ; for holy Paul shuddered lest, after preaching to 
 others, he should himself become a castaway. No man, ex- 
 officio, is nearer Heaven for being a minister; while his 
 perils are greater than were he not one, both for himself and 
 those for whose souls he becomes responsible to Christ. For 
 God has made the Christian ministry responsible for the souls 
 of those over whom it is set. Hear the solemn words of the 
 
102 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Lord to Ezekiel : a Lo! thou son of man, I have set thee a 
 watchman unto the house of Israel ; therefore thou shalt hear 
 the word at their mouth and warn them from me. When I 
 say unto the wicked, wicked man, thou shalt surely die ; 
 if thou dost not speak to warn the wicked from his way, that 
 wicked man shall die in his iniquity ; hut his hlood will 1 
 require at your hand." 
 
 Such, then, being the dreadful responsibility of the Chris- 
 tian ministry, a sensitive and right-minded man would rather 
 shrink from it like Moses, when he excused himself before 
 God, than rush into it like Korah. The more deeply this 
 responsibility is felt, the more reluctant he will be to take it 
 upon himself. This holy diffidence might well be given as a 
 reason for there being but 1650 men in the ministry of the 
 Church, while you number 16,000. 
 
 Moreover, a man should be conscientiously cautious, that 
 when he does make up his mind to enter the Gospel minis- 
 try, that he has not only the inward call, (which is evidence 
 alone to himself,) but the outward authority, conveyed by the 
 authoritative ministry instituted by Christ, which lawful 
 commission before the world is to stand of equal authority 
 with the evidence of the miracles which Christ withdrew, re- 
 placing them by this " witness of the succession." Thus, 
 though he have " no miracles" to give proof to the world 
 that he is sent of God, he has the equal authority of miracu- 
 lous evidence in his apostolical ordination. The succession, 
 if I may so express myself, was appointed for, and is a con- 
 tinuous miracle of the divine authority to which every law- 
 fully ordained minister can point in testimony that he is 
 sent of God. 
 
 Unless, therefore, my brother, I was sure that I had such 
 ordination, I should sternly question my right to preach, 
 baptize, administer the Lord's Supper, or to receive a dollar for 
 ministerial services. It would be " receiving money under 
 false pretences," and more, offering pardon and heaven to 
 
NUMBER ELEVEN. 103 
 
 men and women, sinners like myself, when, whatever the 
 apostles and their apostolic ministry might do, /, at least, 
 have no right to do. It would be sailing without orders. 
 It would be taking upon myself the office of Justice of the 
 Peace without a commission. I might, indeed, make a very 
 good Justice, be learned, talented, of good character, and be 
 a great lover of justice and of peace ; but my acts would not 
 be valid in the State, nor would my marriage license law- 
 fidli/ marry. I might say that A and B were man and 
 wife, and they might believe so, not knowing that I acted 
 without authority j but the " Powers that be" would not re- 
 cognize the validity of my acts. 
 
 There must be a source of authority, one undivided unity, 
 from which all authority; whether in Church or State, must 
 go forth, and to which it must trace up itself. "Without such 
 a head, the world will say, as some of the unlearned early 
 Christians said, "lam of Paul"— "I of Cephas"— " I of 
 Christ !" Without such a helm of the Church as the seat 
 of authority and the throne of the guiding power, directing 
 the Christian ark through the stormy seas of ecclesiastical 
 disunion, lo ! anarchy, confusion, disorder, and licentious im- 
 patience of all authority would ensue, and every one crying, 
 " Here is Christ !" or " There is Christ !" he would really be 
 found nowhere ; or, which is the same thing, found without 
 a certainty that it is He. Jl priori, by every argument 
 drawn from nature and morals, Jesus must have organized a 
 perpetual ministry — as trees grow, and solar attraction binds 
 the most remote worlds to the sun — or the Church would not 
 have survived two centuries after the apostles' days. Here 
 and there a fragment of the noble wreck, strewn upon the 
 distant shores of the nineteenth century, would reveal to the 
 world the splendor of the mighty ship of the Church, when 
 directed by the apostles; but only fragments, which no art 
 or device of man could reframe as before. 
 
 Sir, you perceive that I believe with all my heart in an 
 9* 
 
104 PAMPHLETS FOR TIIE PEOPLE. 
 
 Apostolic ministry, represented immediately by the Episco- 
 pate. "Would that I could persuade you of the truth of this 
 doctrine, so full of comfort and hope to the sincere Christian, 
 and which sustains me in all my trials. It stamps a dignity 
 and glory upon the Church as such, that no human hand 
 can impress, and gives to believers an assurance of faith that 
 nothing earthly can remove. 
 
 " Too oft the Church is self-election now 
 
 Its creed men's will; 
 And few avow 
 
 That Christ is throned in Christian temple still; 
 A presence and a glory there 
 Receiving praise and hearing prayer." 
 
 This sang Montgomery, the true poet of the Church. Thus 
 teaches Scripture, thus proclaims history, thus respond the 
 holy sacraments, and thus proclaims faith ; and to this divine 
 doctrine every true heart in the Church throbs with joy and 
 hope. Christ is in the Church ! and though he may seem 
 to sleep to the eyes of the timid and fearful of his disciples, 
 he will, assuredly, when dangers threaten, rise in his majesty, 
 and waving his hand above the tempestuous waves of human 
 passions, fiercely beating against the sides of his Church, 
 authoritatively command, " Peace ! be still" 
 
 Yours, fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
r.UiniLETS FOR THE TEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER TWELVE. 
 
 addressed to the rev. r. abbey, of tne metiiodist episcopal church, 
 soctii. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 I shall now proceed to the discussion of one or two 
 more subjects from your Book, and then close my review of it. 
 In bringing to a termination your XVIII Letters against 
 the Bishop of Mississippi and his Orders Apostolical, you 
 say — 
 
 " It is a fixed and settled fact, that the world regards you 
 as the Intermediate CiiURcn, between Protestantism and 
 Romanism. This is the place you occupy," you add, " your 
 position is such that your face is towards Rome." 
 
 My brother, you have written in all your book nothing 
 more true than these words. It is refreshing to see you, at 
 the close of it, admit a fact to our credit, unqualified after- 
 wards by any retrousscment . This is an honor we have long 
 contended was peculiarly our own, and which we still con- 
 tend for, and I am gratified to see that you so frankly admit 
 the fact, and do not take it back. 
 
 "We do stand between Dissent and Papacy. This is our 
 Church's position in the Providence of God. An intermediate 
 position is always, ecclesiastically, one of honor. The pillar 
 of cloud stood between Egypt and Israel, and the Spirit of 
 God was in the cloud ! Our blessed Lord was a " Days-man," 
 who stood between the race of Adam and their Creator, to 
 reconcile both in one body. The Episcopal Church does, 
 indeed and in truth, hold an intermediate position between 
 
 (105) 
 
106 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Protestantism and Papacy. You add, moreover, that " our 
 face is toicards Rome." A brave man between two foes will 
 usually face the most formidable of the two ; therefore we do 
 not fear to face Ptome. We face her as one hostile army 
 faces another ! And with God's help, under the uplifted 
 banner of the Anglican Reformation, we will do battle with 
 her " for the truth once delivered to the Saints." 
 
 Our Church is the very bulwark that stands between Rome 
 and the nations ! But for her conservative ' attitude, Rome 
 would over-run Protestanism, until the very name of Dissent 
 would be washed out, as a sum is wiped from a slate, in 
 blood. The Anglican Church, in God's Providence, is the 
 bulwark of your safety, the very " Keeper of the Truth,"* 
 so long as it holds the intermediate position which it does, 
 Romanism will not achieve the reconquest of Christendom ; 
 
 * You have objected to the doctrine that " the Church" is the keeper and 
 expounder of the Scriptures, and that her voice in council is the true ex- 
 pression of the doctrines of Christ; and that as such, men, casting aside 
 private interpretation, should receive them. 
 
 But, sir, what has your Church substituted for this " voice of the 
 Church." I will quote only two lines from a note to an article, elaborately 
 ■written, on "The Methodist Doctrines," originally appearing in the London 
 Methodist Magazine," in 1818, and copied in the same year into the Ame- 
 rican Methodist Magazine ; consequently it is the doctrine of Methodists 
 both sides of the Atlantic : — 
 
 "It is in general well known to the Ilethodists, tliat his (Mr. "Wesley's) 
 notes on the New Testament and Sermons, are the legal Standard of our 
 Doctrines." 
 
 There seems to be no call for many words of remark upon this extra- 
 ordinary acknowledgment. The wisdom and learning and piety and au- 
 thority of the whole English Church, in council assembled, aside from the 
 divine authority investing their decisions substituted for the "notes on 
 the New Testament and Sermons of Mr. Wesley ! What is this but ig- 
 noring private interpretation in your body, and establishing the most 
 absolute authoritative tribunal, a Bench of Interpretation, only paralelled 
 by the infallible throne of the Pope. The Decrees of Trent are " the legal 
 standard" of Romish doctrines ! the opinions of Wesley in his tt . Xotes 
 and Sermons," the "legal standard" of the doctrines of the Methodists! 
 And yet you charge us with ignoring private interpretation! 
 
NUMBER TWELVE. 107 
 
 nor will Dissent, when it shall be shivered into its destined 
 legion of fragments, be reabsorbed into Papacy; but into 
 the "Intermediate Church/' as its true and proper shelter 
 and house of God. 
 
 You close your attack upon us by an appeal, no doubt very 
 sincerely made, to the Bishop of Mississippi, to cast away the 
 " ball and chain" of succession, and stand side by side with 
 you and your brethren in doing battle for God. M Patheti- 
 cally, " you cry, " I ask you as a brother, will you not drop 
 it and come back to a purer and truer faith, among a more 
 genial and useful ministry, where you may do much good?" 
 
 I perceive, my brother, that you furtively design to bring 
 about a practical working of our "intermediate position," and 
 as one of our Bishops has gone over to the regular troops of 
 the Roman line, you now seek to tempt that u ' distinguished/ 
 ( talented/ 'able/ 'exemplary/ 'pious/ 'zealous/ 'urbane/ 
 ' frank/ ' engaging/ ' friendly/ ' sincere' ' Christian gentle- 
 man/ "* to the volunteer army " in the rear." Like a 
 distinguished officer in the American nation militant, this 
 Apostolic Bishop in the Church-militant, might fear his 
 " enemies in the rear" too far to trust them. At least your 
 Book, and the spirit in which it was conceived, penned, pub- 
 lished and circulated, will hardly give him confidence in the 
 practical Christianity of " the purer faith and truer," to 
 which you invite him. 
 
 But, sir, without raising a question upon your modesty in 
 making this appeal to the courteous amenities and kindly 
 sensibilities of the Bishop of Mississippi, " which are abun- 
 dantly known to every body that knows him," permit me to 
 ask you where you and your Church were before the revolu- 
 tionary war ; yes, before the year 1786 ! Not long since I 
 met with an old man from Virginia, who quaintly said, " why 
 J am older than the Methodist Church myself." 
 
 * See Rev. Mr. Abbey's Preface, including nine lines from tho bottom 
 of first page. 
 
108 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 "Where, then was your Church in the world in the days of 
 this old man's father and mother? "Was heaven's gate shut 
 up until Dr. Coke's Advent ? I can say with truth, and you 
 cannot gainsay it, my brother, that there never went a 
 Methodist to heaven for the first seventeen hundred years 
 after Christ ascended and entered into it ! No, not one ! and 
 for a very good reason, because there was not a Methodist on 
 the earth. 
 
 For centuries ere your Church began, from every green 
 valley in Christian England, from the heart of her populous 
 cities, from the humble hamlets on her hillsides, millions of 
 Christian men and women, old and young, fair and brave, 
 pastors and people, Bishops and priests, went up to God, dying 
 in the Church and in the faith which you have now risen up 
 to spurn and affect to despise ! You, sir, a man of but yester- 
 day, revile, as you have done, in your book, a Church of Christ, 
 " adorned with martyrs and glittering with saints," whose 
 praise is known in heaven and on earth ! " A Church which 
 has translated and given to you the very Bible out of which 
 you and all yours draw the nourishment of the milk of the 
 word of life ! A Church that stands between you and Rome 
 as your bulwark, and which bears in all her lineaments the 
 features of Christ and of his Apostles ! Sir, I cannot but 
 pray God to give you a better mind and to turn your heart. 
 
 Permit me to give you a brief outline of the history of 
 your Church, not, my brother, for your information, per- 
 haps, but for that of some among your people who are little 
 taught by their Clergy, very judiciously I am disposed to 
 think, the antecedents of their communion. 
 
 Dr. Coke, and Mr. Asbury were, without dispute, the real 
 founders of the " Methodist Society in America." Mr. 
 "Wesley, as I shall show you, had nothing to do with the 
 organization of the American Methodists, as independent of 
 the Episcopal Church in England. The men whom he set 
 apart to govern the Methodists in the United States, and 
 
NUMBER TWELVE. 100 
 
 who afterwards ambitiously made one another " Bishops/ 1 
 were not satisfied altogether with the validity of their Epis- 
 copal orders, after "Wesley's severe rebuke : " How dare you 
 call yourself Bishops ?" They formally applied, both to 
 Bishop "White, of Pennsylvania, and to Bishop Seabury, of 
 Connecticut, for lawful consecration, to the Episcopate, by 
 the laying on of their hands; and when this application was 
 unsuccessful, because they wished to evade the lawful con- 
 ditions and issues for canonical consecration that obtain in 
 the Church, Dr. Coke, crossing the seas, subsequently applied 
 to the English Church for Consecration, as " Bishop to the 
 East Indies/' which honor was denied to him. 
 
 It is claimed by the lu'yh party in your Church, that 
 although the quasi Episcopal office, received by Mr. Asbury, 
 from Dr. Coke, (who had it not to give,) be acknowledged to 
 be of no value, yet nevertheless your Church and ministra- 
 tions are valid (your low church party, of which I perceive 
 you are a prominent organ, not reverencing hereditary or- 
 ders,) because they are derived from men who were " pres- 
 byterially" ordained in the English Church by lawful author- 
 ity, and therefore had a canonical right and the lawful 
 authority to do what they did in instituting an independent 
 ministry and communion. 
 
 Now, the English Church, as such, does not hold the 
 doctrine of the validity of Presbyterian ordination, whatever 
 the sentiments of individuals in her communion may be. 
 If then the English Church considers such ordinations as un- 
 lawful, they are consequently not her acts. A violation of 
 this rule and doctrine by any number of persons, will consti- 
 tute them, so long as this rule is held by the Church, a new 
 sect ; and they cannot be recognized by the Church as a part 
 of itself. A party of American citizens, leaving the United 
 States, and setting up a colony in Cuba, contrary to the 
 laws and rules of the government at home, is no longer re- 
 cognized as pari of the nation, but as so wholly severed from 
 
110 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 it, as to be treated with only under the laws of outlawry. 
 The President and public officers of this colony would not be 
 "fellowshipped," as the phrase is, by the United States; its 
 diplomatic representative ministers, if sent to Washington, 
 would not be received : nor would its assertion that it came 
 out from the United States, and was therefore a legiti- 
 mate colony, and part of her, be admitted by Congress. 
 The force of this illustration your high church party cannot 
 but see. But, though it could be proved, or the Church were 
 disposed to concede that the Rev. Mr. Wesley was competent 
 to ordain other men to the Christian ministry, and even to 
 create a Bishop by the laying on of his hands, yet u it must 
 be done in the Church and /or the Church/' The minis- 
 terial office of the Church of England could only be lawfully 
 exercised by one of its ministers in "acts" for the Church, 
 and within it. Let me illustrate this subject, as I wish to 
 be perfectly comprehended ; writing not to display learning, 
 by scholarly references to books, but to be understood 
 by the humblest mind, in your Church and mine, that 
 reads. 
 
 Ordination is a power in the Church, given " for the pur- 
 pose of supplying the Church with men for the work of the 
 ministry, for the perfecting of the saints, and for the edifying 
 the body of Christ f all of which is to be done in the Church, 
 by those receiving the Church's ordination, or the ministerial 
 gift of authority thus conveyed is null and void. A governor 
 sent out to the territory of Washington would not be a law- 
 ful governor in the territory of Oregon. His official charac- 
 ter would cease so soon as he began to exercise it out of and 
 beyond the lawful limits to which his commission confined 
 him. Suppose three or four ministers, ordained by the 
 Church of England, should afterwards go forth and preach 
 Mormon doctrines, and by ordaining a ministry among the 
 Mormons, and elevating Brigham Young to the rank of 
 " Bishop," do you think that the Church of England would 
 
NUMBER TWELVE. Ill 
 
 recognize the ordinations; would you fellowship with its 
 ministers in parity ? 
 
 You thus perceive, my brother, that those who receive 
 authority for one purpose, as did Mr. Wesley and Dr. Coke, 
 to exercise it lawfully in the Church of England^ if they ex- 
 ercised it for any other purpose not intended by the Church, 
 " their acts out of the Church would have no validity or 
 force whatever." 
 
 Mr. Wesley himself admitted the truth of this doctrine, 
 and he says : — 
 
 " At the first meeting of all our preachers in conference, 
 in June, 1744, I exhorted them to keep in the Church ; ob- 
 serving that this was our peculiar glory — not to form any new 
 sect, but abiding in our own Church, to do all men all the 
 good we possibly could. But as more ' dissenters' joined 
 us, many of whom were much prejudiced against the Church, 
 these, with or without design, were continually infusing tJteir 
 own prejudices into their brethren.* 
 
 " I saw this," continues Mr. Wesley, u and gave learning 
 of it from time to time, both in private and in public ; and 
 in the year 1758, I resolved to bring the subject to a fair 
 issue. So I desired the point might be considered at large 
 whether it was expedient for the Methodists to leave THE 
 Church. The arguments on both sides were discussed for 
 several days, and at length we agreed without a dissenting 
 voice : — 
 
 " l It is by no means expedient that the Methodists 
 
 SHOULD LEAVE THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND.' " 
 
 In 1778, Mr. Wesley says again : — 
 " The original Methodists were all of the Church of Eng- 
 land, and the more awakened tlicy were the more zealously 
 
 * It is, no doubt, historically true, that the Baptists and Presbyterians.. 
 Brownists, and others, made the Methodists the cat's paw of their hatred 
 of the Church, and are the real authors of the Methodist schism. 
 
 10 
 
112 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 they adhered to it in every point, both of doctrine and dis- 
 cipline." 
 
 You know that March 2d, 1791, Mr. Wesley died. Two 
 years before his decease, in 1789, he said : — 
 
 " I never designed separating from the Church ; Ihave no 
 such design now. I do not believe the Methodists in general 
 design it, when I am no more seen. I do, and will do all 
 that is in my power to prevent such an event. Nevertheless, 
 in spite of all I can do, many will separate from it. In 
 flat opposition to these, I declare once more that I live and 
 die a member or the Church of England ; and that 
 none who regard my judgment or advice will ever separate 
 from it." 
 
 In a sermon, preached in Ireland, not long before the year 
 of his death, he said to the preachers in his connection, that 
 u they had no right to baptize and administer the sacrament 
 of the Lord's Supper." Mr. Wesley's design was "to im- 
 prove the state of religion in the Church." But, as he said, 
 he did not dare to leave the Church ; and on the minutes of 
 the conference in 1770, he had these emphatic words 
 entered : — 
 
 " Let this be well observed — I fear when the Methodists 
 leave the Church, GrOD will leave them." 
 
 Fraternally yours, 
 
 Justus. 
 
PAMPHLETS POR THE TEOPLE. 
 
 NUMBER THIRTEEN. 
 
 ADDRESSED TO THE REV. R. ABBEY, OF TnE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH, 
 SOUTH. 
 
 My Brother : 
 
 If Mr. Wesley be the founder of the Methodist 
 Episcopal Church in the United States, as your high church 
 people contend, he must, in the face of the facts, advanced 
 at the close of my last pamphlet, either be open to a charge 
 of the grossest inconsistency, or have been a masterly hypo- 
 crite ; you cannot escape both issues. But Mr. AVesley was 
 an honest and consistent man ; a conscientious Clergyman of 
 our Church to the last, and is no more responsible for the 
 schism of your Church, than John Calvin or Ezekiel Holli- 
 man; and when your high church preachers refer to Mr. 
 Wesley, as the ground for the validity of their orders, they 
 do but condemn themselves. On the principle sometime 
 above argued, Mr. Wesley's ordinations or u separation" of 
 certain men for governing the American Methodist Society, 
 being made use of for another than the legitimate purpose 
 for which he gave the authority, the ministerial acts of Dr. 
 Coke and of Mr. Asbury, out of the Church of England, are 
 invalid and of no lawful force whatsoever ; just as Mr. Wesley's 
 own official acts, as an Anglican minister, if exerted out of, 
 and in opposition to, the unity of the Church of his ordina- 
 tion, would be of no value. If I authorize a man to sign 
 my name to a subscription paper, and he signs it to a note 
 of hand, the signature is of no recognized value in law, inas- 
 much as it was not used for the specific purpose for which 
 the authority to make use of it was bestowed. 
 
 (113) 
 
114 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 With the low Church party in your Church, which is un- 
 willing to admit that an hereditary ministry (whether of 
 Presbyters or Bishops) is necessary, but thinks that " the 
 people in the pews," have quite as much authority, if they 
 believe they have, to preach to him in the pulpit, as he in 
 the pulpit to preach to them in the pews, with this low 
 Church party, this argument has no weight ; for if Mr. Wes- 
 ley stands in the way of their self-will, they excommunicate 
 and leave AVesley, as promptly as they did the Church. 
 But to the high Church party among you, which embraces 
 the most intelligent members, both clerical and lay, of your 
 communion, the argument is of weight, and must make its 
 full impression upon their minds. 
 
 Thus I have, as you perceive, glanced at the authority and 
 conditions by which the Church, into whose bosom you in- 
 vite the Bishop of Mississippi, is a Church. I have shown 
 that its esse is irregular and without Ecclesiastical order, and 
 if you should invite John Wesley into it, supposing he were 
 to rise from the dead, he would refuse quite as firmly as the 
 Bishop of Mississippi probably will do, for both are members 
 of the same Church, both deriving their authority and priestly 
 orders from the same source. Mr. Wesley, to use his own 
 language, when solicited on earth to leave the Church, would 
 decline the invitation "on the point of conscience;" and 
 so, I think, would the Bishop of Mississippi. It is time, sir, 
 the true status of your Church should be distinctly understood 
 by your own people. Already the better educated are closely 
 investigating its origin, and they not only do not perceive 
 the necessity of the Coke-Asbury schism, nor of its continu- 
 ance ) and thus it is that so many from your communion, re- 
 fusing to endorse the separating act of the Methodist, in 
 1784-85, or to pin their faith to the skirts of Dr. Coke's 
 personal ambition, come in numbers back to the Apostolic 
 communion, from which the prelatical aspirations of Mr. 
 Asbury cut them off. Your reading, and thinking, and right- 
 
NUMBER THIRTEEN. 115 
 
 minded mcn ; have only to understand the true history of 
 their Church, to see that the " old paths" are the best and 
 safest. And in return for your polite invitation to the 
 Bishop of Mississippi, let me anticipate his reciprocative 
 courtesy, by inviting you, in the words of Jeremiah, back to 
 the fold of the Church : — 
 
 " Thus saith the Lord, Stand ye in the way, and ask for 
 the old paths] where is the good way, and walk therein, and 
 ye shall find rest for your souls." Jere. vi. 16. 
 
 Touching the high and low Church " party," which you 
 assert the Episcopal Church is divided into, I assure you 
 there is no such party. In political bodies there exist dif- 
 ferences of opinion upon cardinal doctrines of the party, but 
 these are individual idiosyncracies, and they do not shake the 
 unity of the whole. Such diversity of opinion is wholly 
 compatible with the firmest integral union. 
 
 In the Episcopal Church there are a few men who are 
 ultra in their views of ritual observances ; and upon certain 
 doctrines take views that carry them beyond the actual teach- 
 ing and practices of the Church. But these are individual 
 sentiments; and though these persons write books to dis- 
 seminate their peculiar views, their books are not the " books 
 of the Church/' in so far as they depart from the Common 
 Prayer Book. There are churchmen who think the surplice 
 should alone be worn in the chancel, while others use both the 
 surplice and the black gown : the former would be called " high" 
 Churchmen, perhaps. There are some clergymen who pray 
 with their faces toward the communion table, which they in- 
 sist on calling an " altar," while others can pray with their 
 faces to the people without compunction. The former would 
 be called u high Church," the latter " low." There are 
 some who preserve the ancient custom of bowing at the name 
 of Jesus in the Creed ; others that do not bow. The former 
 would be termed "high," the latter "low." There are others 
 who abide strictly by the Rubric (printed directions in what 
 10* 
 
116 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 manner we snail go through the service), while others are 
 not so punctilious, and sometimes kneel, or do not kneel, at 
 the case may be. There are some who insist that, verily, in 
 artlculo of baptism, the baptized is born again, and de facto, 
 spiritually regenerate. There are others, on the contrary, 
 who think that spiritual regeneration takes place be/ore bap- 
 tism. The former would be denominated " high Church/' 
 the latter " low Church." 
 
 These are the chief points of difference, and they affect 
 mainly external rites ; but do not penetrate beneath the sur- 
 face. They are individual notions, and no more ; as, in your 
 own denomination, you have clergymen who oppose shouting; 
 who love to have every thing done " decently and in order" 
 in God's house ; who desire " women to keep silence" in 
 your Churches, in humble obedience to the positive injunc- 
 tions of the Gospel ; who wish for lay representation ; who 
 think conversions can take place elsewhere than at revivals ; 
 who affect the pew-system; who oppose and advocate steeples 
 and fine architecture ; who love hard seats, and who cushion 
 their pews ; who like organs, and who abhor them ; who 
 believe that in the Episcopal Church there are some good 
 Christians, and that Episcopalians went to heaven before a 
 Methodist was ever known. 
 
 Now, my brother, supposing that, for these individual 
 opinions, I say you have two parties in your Church, and 
 that the Methodists are breaking to pieces, and are on the 
 way to annihilation therefor ! Yet in this manner you rea- 
 son against us. On your own principles I have a just right 
 to argue to these conclusions against you and yours. 
 
 Be assured the high and low Church "parties," as you 
 term this personal expression of individual sentiment in the 
 Episcopal Church, does not begin to menace her peace, unity 
 or concord. It cannot move a pillar of her twelve founda- 
 tions ! The JEgis of the Church protects ever the whole 
 against a part, and division on these points of difference can 
 
NUMBER THIRTEEN. 117 
 
 never touch her vitality. Every where within her holy 
 borders, the clergy of the Church fraternize and dwell together 
 in " unity of spirit and in the bond of peace/' and love one 
 another as Christian brethren should. Wherever I go, in 
 whatever part of the United States I may be, a stranger, if 
 there is an Episcopal clergyman in the place, then do I know 
 I have found a brother and & friend. I ask him not, nor asks 
 he me, whether either be "high" or "low;" we have no such 
 shiboleth in our hosts ! It is enough that we are ministers 
 in the same Apostolic Church; that we have been baptized 
 with the same baptism; that we worship at the same altar; 
 that we have knelt at the same holy Table ; that we derive 
 our sacred office from the same fountain of the living waters 
 of the Succession ; that we worship God with the same an- 
 cient rites ; that we pray the same words ; that we love the 
 same Church, and are partakers of the same gracious pro- 
 mises. 
 
 " Eadem arena, 
 Communis virtus, atque perennis decus." 
 
 To be an Episcopal Clergyman is a passport to the heart 
 and hearth of every Clergyman of the same communion in 
 the world, whether in the valley of the Mississippi, or along 
 the shores of the Atlantic, or in the rural valleys and cities 
 of England, Scotland, and Ireland, or in Canada, or in 
 Nova Scotia, or in the Indies, and the distant isles of the 
 sea, wherever I find an Episcopal Clergyman, I find a brother 
 in him and he in me — or find a Bishop, I find in him an 
 affectionate father in Christ, and he in me a loving and reve- 
 rential son. 
 
 A Church thus bound together in its heavenly ministry, 
 and knit together in the unity of its one communion, " hold- 
 ing the Head, which is Christ," cannot be broken ; and not 
 the gates of hell, powerful as Satan is, aided by the Church's 
 foes, shall ever prevail against it. 
 
118 PAMPHLETS FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
 Whereas your own Church, brother, is broken — ruptured 
 already into two unwieldly masses, and goes by two distinc- 
 tive names ; and each of you claim to be the Church. But 
 the Methodist Church North excommunicates you of the 
 South, and among your own best men are many who do not 
 hesitate to say that " there is no Methodist Church South," 
 that the "authority ministerial," and all the conditions that 
 make a Church, are with that North. And this is not the 
 end. The fragment South, has recently broken again in 
 the Georgia conference, on the question of lay representation ; 
 and the withdrawing party has set up for itself a separate 
 communion. This is but the beginning of the end, my 
 brother. Your Church cannot be perpetual. It had the ele- 
 ments of its own disorganization interwoven with the primary 
 organization. The seeds of its dissolution were, of necessity, 
 inherent in it. The blow which Dr. Coke and Mr. Asbury 
 struck upon the Rock of the Church to break off your schis- 
 matic fragment, flaioed dangerously and fatally the severed 
 portion. The flaws were not at first visible, but time and 
 dust has revealed and opened them, and separation will be 
 added to separation by the irresistible laws of ecclesiastical 
 geology, until the original shape of your schism no longer is 
 apparent ; and out of the fragmentary parts there will arise 
 ambitious men, lesser Cokes and Asburys, who will build 
 upon the ruins new " Churches'' calling them by their own 
 names, or the grace of God, peradventure, may mercifully 
 guide them back to the fold from which they have wandered. 
 Intermediate between the two extremes of Papacy and Dis- 
 sent, the Anglican Church to-day firmly takes her stand ; 
 and lifts up her voice as a witness to the truth : 
 
 " She, like a solid rock by seas enclosed, 
 To raging winds and roaring waves exposed, 
 From Her proud summit looking down disdains 
 All empty menace, and unmoved remains." 
 
NUMBER THIRTEEN. 119 
 
 Undaunted, amid the storm, she gazes with divine com- 
 posure upon her foes and trusts in God. 
 
 And now, in concluding my review, do I heartily pray, 
 my brother, that Almighty God, who built His Church upon 
 the foundation of the apostles and prophets, Jesus Christ 
 himself being the chief corner-stone, may grant " all Chris- 
 tians be so joined together in unity of spirit and in the bond 
 of peace, that they may be a holy temple acceptable unto 
 Him : and especially to you, my dear brother in Christ, 
 (against whom I have written not in anger, but in love, for 
 my Church's defence, to which, and for all seeming severity 
 for the truth, you have compelled me,) and especially to you 
 may He give the abundance of his grace, that with a true 
 and honest heart you may desire the prosperity of his holy 
 Apostolic Church, and profess with your lips the faith once 
 delivered to the saints." 
 
 I am your brother, very fraternally, 
 
 Justus. 
 
 THE END. 
 
DUE DATE 
 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY LIBRARIES 
 
 I II I 
 
 002 
 
 II llll 
 137978 
 
KSX 
 
 sre 
 
 (&ol\xnxbia ©olUflc 
 in tit* Ckttn of JUnxt JJoru 
 
Of- HIT. 
 
 PLAN, OBJECT, AND EFFECTS 
 
 OF THE 
 
 vMt&itmt mimon$ 
 
 IN 
 
 THE ^#ST INDIES, 
 
 { 
 
 London i 
 
 Printed by Joseph Kogen, Red-Lion-Street, Clerkenwell : 
 
 PUBLISHED BY THE COMMITTEE OF THE WESLEYAN 
 METHODIST MISSIONARY SOCIETY. 
 
 1824. 
 
48 
 
 diffusing the light and blessedness of Christianity 
 over the pagan mind of the West Indian negro, 
 we know that it is an object which lies nearest 
 their hearts to render their connection with this 
 class of our fellow-men the means of promoting 
 their spiritual and eternal benefit ; and that to 
 them all information which tends to shew the 
 practicability of their case being reached will be 
 acceptable. 
 
 Called to consider the negro character, and 
 to notice his capabilities, for a long period of 
 time, we have no hesitation in saying, that the 
 slave population of the West Indies are worthy 
 of the Christian sympathies of all who are con- 
 nected with them. Their natural peaceable 
 disposition has been proved in the quiet of the 
 Colonies, so seldom agitated. Where, in the 
 history of states holding great numbers of men 
 in a state of bondage, do we find so few com- 
 motions? revolts so rare? and obedience so im- 
 plicit and cheerful ? We believe in no instance. 
 And this circumstance will not be overlooked 
 by those who now, more intently than ever, 
 propose to promote among them the principles 
 of Christianity. Wherever any degree of moral 
 care, and patient instruction, has been afforded, 
 they have rewarded the toil; and their improve- 
 ment, considering their deep ignorance, the 
 strength of their passions, and the fewness of 
 
19 
 
 their opportunities, has been such as to afibrd 
 the highest gratification to those who have had 
 the work of instructing them, and to those pro- 
 prietors who have encouraged them in it. They 
 are intelligent, grateful, docile, affectionate ; 
 sensible of all kindness, but especially of the 
 kindness which opens to them the fountain of 
 salvation, and puts them in possession of the 
 principles, the comforts, and hopes of religion. 
 Thousands of them, in the morality of their 
 lives, in their respectful submission as servants, 
 in their tenderness as parents, in their filial duty 
 as children, have gladdened the eye and the 
 heart of those who have been connected with 
 them, wherever the eye could be attracted 
 by moral objects, or the heart could be inte- 
 rested in the conversion of a " soul from the 
 error of his way. " They have lived the life, 
 and they have died the death of the righteous. 
 The work of instructing them is not only hope- 
 ful, but its success is certain, under God's 
 blessing. If we will apply the means, the bene- 
 fit must follow ; great, united, and persevering 
 effort is certain in its effect, and will cover the 
 Colonies with those interesting moral scenes, 
 which already, here and there, like Oases in the 
 desart, present their salutary streams ami their 
 living vegetation. An object more noble, more 
 intimately connected with interests at once so 
 
52 
 
 in seasons of excitement, will lead to excesses. 
 Connected as the Colonies are with a country 
 w here the press is free, even to licentiousness, 
 the principles, and the discussions which occur 
 in Parliament, and in the public prints, cannot 
 be kept wholly from them. There are free 
 blacks w ho can read, and w ho inhabit the towns, 
 w ho have the means of all this information ; and 
 on the uninstructed mind evil-disposed persons 
 of this description may produce, and will pro- 
 duce, great mischief. What, then, is the pre- 
 ventive? Nothing, but to treat the negroes as 
 rational and moral beings ; to fill those minds 
 with truth, which wall otherwise receive error ; 
 to provide against the introduction of mis- 
 chievous principles, by occupying the mind 
 with salutary ones ; and to counteract bad 
 examples by encouraging good ones ; and thus 
 to prepare the population for those changes 
 which it is the interest of all parties, and cer- 
 tainly a great national duty, to promote. 
 
 Thus we have laid open, with frankness, the 
 plans of the Society for w hich we act ; and if 
 we offer any agency w hich that Society can sup- 
 ply for promoting the religious instruction of 
 the negro population, we again begleave to say, 
 that neither we, nor any person connected with 
 the Society, have, in any sense whatever, the 
 slightest private interest, or party objects, to 
 
promote. The Wesley an Mission to the West 
 Indies was commenced on a principle of pure 
 benevolence : the funds which support it are the 
 
 voluntary expressions of that feeling. The Mis- 
 sion has grown upon us from year to year, and 
 is still enlarging. It now exhibits, in large, 
 peaceable, and moral religious societies ; in re- 
 gular marriage; in the abolition of polygamy ; 
 in the promotion of the health, and temporal 
 comfort and interest of the slave; what may be 
 effected by large and united exertion. Should 
 the wise and moderate plans of his Majesty's 
 Government be carried into effect, the efficiency 
 of our own, and all other Missionary and other 
 exertions for their improvement, will be greatly 
 promoted. The abolition of Sunday toil, and 
 Sunday markets, will be a public proclamation 
 of the obligation of the Decalogue, and give it 
 sanction ; and time for efficient instruction, and 
 the decent observance of God's worship, w ill be 
 thus obtained. The granting to marriage the sanc- 
 tion of law 7 , will render this difficult branch of the 
 work of a Missionary the more practicable, and 
 close the gate which pours out the most de- 
 structive stream of immorality over the islands. 
 The preventing of those sales which now fre- 
 quently separate man and wife, and parents and 
 children, for ever, must and ought to follow upon 
 marriage, and will add to il another sanction