the Church belongs to the ecclesiastical authority, and the Church in Apostolic times administered her own goods, and for this purpose appointed proper officers of her own.

The Jurist is a queer reasoner. Some monks wear a white habit, some black, some gray, some woollen, and some linen, therefore the Church of Rome is neither primitive nor apostolic. There is no refuting such a reasoner. He says he cannot find any early authority for monastic rules, therefore he concludes the Church of Rome has departed from the word of God, is condemned by Holy Writ, and is not the primitive or Apostolic Church. "St. Augustine condemned idle monks." Very likely, and yet St. Augustine lived according to a monastic rule, and founded a monastic order which still subsists. Suppose Cardinal Pole did recommend the abolition of all the monastic orders; he was not Pope, and the Pope does not appear to have approved his recommendation. Because there were idle or vicious monks, therefore the Church of Rome is not apostolic. Because Judas Iscariot betrayed our Lord, therefore our Lord was not the Son of God and the true Messias, is an argument equally conclusive. Have there been no unholy bishops or ministers in the Anglican establishment? The Church is responsible for those only who obey her laws and follow her precepts.

"But let us glance for a moment at auricular confession. I do not mean to argue that our Saviour and his apostles did not direct us to confess our sins, but where do you find in the gospels, acts, and letters of the apostles, or apostolic canons, a rule for females to confess in private to the priest, their sins, in thought, word, or deed? And permit me to ask, whether, down to A. D, 1560, it was not a question in the Church of Rome, on what authority rested auricular confession, the canonists saying it was appointed by the positive law of man,' and the schoolmen urging it was appointed by the law of God. Has not the practice been shamefully abused by dissolute priests and friars, and when we find the doctors of the Church of Rome disagree as to the sanction for such a practice, and gross abuses attendant, are we not safe in its rejection ?"—p. 61.

We do not accept Mr. Derby as the expounder of the rules and canons of the Church. It seems he does not like auricular confession. He is not alone in that. Even many Catholics have a very great repugnance to it, so strong a repugnance that we are sure that if it had not been estab

lished by Divine authority, it never could have been established at all. The author is very much disturbed at the idea of females confessing in private to a priest. We did not know that they did confess in private, and certain we are that there is no canon requiring them to do so. The confession is private of course, but not therefore must they be in private when they make it. Private confession has been abused, says the author, and we know few good things that have not been or may not be abused. But how does he explain a well-known fact that those Catholic mothers who frequent the confessional themselves, and are the most anxious to preserve the purity of their daughters, are precisely those who are the most anxious to send their daughters to confession? There is, no doubt, corruption in many Catholics, but it is precisely the greatest among those Catholics who the most neglect confession. There is, however, little propriety in a New England Protestant jurist talking about the corrupting influence of the confessional. Within the memory of persons now living, grown-up men and women wishing to join the Congregational churches were required to walk up the broad aisle, and make a public confession before the whole congregation, of the sins of impurity they had committed, and their confession was entered upon the Church records, and preserved in its archives. These old Church Records of New England tell some queer tales, and prove, with regard to our Puritan ancestors, that all is not gold that glisters, and that nature revenged herself not unfrequently for the outrages she received. The Gospel morality is impracticable without the grace of the sacraments.

"Did our Saviour or his Apostles or their successors, the earliest bishops, or the canons of the primitive Church, for centuries, require the applicant for baptism, as a condition precedent, to swear obedience to a temporal prince ?"(p. 61.) Most likely not, for nothing of the sort is required of an applicant for baptism now. "Or to the bishops of Rome ?" No oath of the sort is exacted now, except in the case of adults who have grown up in heresy or unbelief; yet we suppose in the earliest ages as now the candidate for baptism, either personally or through his sponsors, was required to profess the Catholic faith, to renounce the devil, and promise to keep the commandments of God; and obedience

to the Pope, as visible head of the Church, is included in those commandments he promises to keep. If no special promise of obedience to the successor of Peter was exacted of adults, it was because no one in those early ages doubted the Primacy of Peter, or questioned the authority of his successor. But did the early Church impose on the Christian the oath of supremacy imposed now in England upon Anglicans? What is there more improper in taking an oath to obey in spiritual matters the spiritual head of the Church, than in taking the oath which Mr. Derby himself as a lawyer has taken of fidelity to the Constitution of the United States and to that of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts ?

"With these prefatory remarks, cited from standard Catholic authorities, I recur to your two positions: that the Church of Rome has always preserved her unity, and that there were no dissenters from her authority before the time of Luther.

"If the church claims a derivation from the primitive church, was not that unity broken, by her abandonment of her Eastern churches, with at least two-thirds of all the bishops, churches, presbyters, and Christians, to which I have already referred? Is there any unity between the Greek and Roman churches at the present moment? Is there any unity between the Church of Rome and the Maronites, Nestorians, Armenians, or Abyssinian churches, which have existed for more than ten centuries. I would refer you also to Gibbon, where he shows the prevalence of the Arian doctrines in the churches of the Roman Empire at the accession of Theodosius, 'who claimed the merit of subduing the Arian heresy, and was in fact the first emperor baptized in the faith of the trinity.' When he ascended the throne, A. D. 379, just after the death of Athanasius, the Arians, encouraged by the Emperor Valens, himself an Arian, held all the churches of Constantinople, more than one hundred in number."--pp. 63, 64.

That there were dissenters from the Catholic Church before Luther, we have conceded, and we have very little patience with those silly Catholics who now and then assert the contrary. There are, no doubt, even Catholics who have a zeal for the Church, which is not according to knowledge, and our task of defending the Church would have been much lighter, if all who have undertaken that defence had been even moderately qualified to do it. Her

* Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Vol. V. pp. 13–23.

esies there have been from the very times of the Apostles, and we know no age which has been free from them. Luther was not the first to deny the authority of the Pope as supreme governor and ruler of the Church. So we let pass what the author says on that point,-a point no intelligent Catholic assumes. The other point, that the Church of Rome has preserved her unity, stands firm, notwithstanding all the learned Jurist alleges. That the Church of Rome has not maintained unity among all who have called themselves Christians, we of course concede, for otherwise we should be obliged to maintain that there have been and are no heresies and schisms in the nominally Christian world. But heretics and schismatics do not break the unity of the Church, save in respect to themselves. They cease from the moment of becoming schismatics and heretics, to be members of the Church, or of Christ's body, and they go out from the Apostles as not of them. There were Arians in the empire, but not Arians in the Church, as we have already shown in a former article. There is unity between the Church of Rome and the Maronites, for the Maronites are Catholics in communion with the Apostolic See. There is unity between Rome and a large portion of the Chaldean Christians, commonly called Nestorians, but none between her and those who adhere to the heresy of Nestorius, for they are not in her communion. The Armenians are in part Catholics and in part schismatics. A large portion of the nation is in communion with the See of Rome, and all acknowledge the Primacy of Peter, and his successor, the Bishop of Rome; but the schismatic portion allege that the Pope gave the plenary authority for their government to Gregory the Illuminator, and therefore that they are not now dependent on Rome. There is no unity of course between Rome and the schismatic Armenians, and none between her and the greater part of the Abyssinian Churches. But what has this to do with the unity of the Church of Rome? Her unity is preserved in the unity of the Apostolic doctrine and Apostolic authority, which she has maintained intact from the first. The Emperor Valens had no authority in the Church, and she is not responsible for his acts.

Mr. Derby, in his tenth Letter, returns to his theory o an independent British Church, founded by St. Paul, and

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continued by the present Anglican Establishment. We cite his argument at length:

"We derive this church from the English, which traces its bishops in direct succession from the apostles, and it will be my effort to prove that the Church of England was planted in Britain in the first century by St. Paul, or his immediate converts, and was for centuries entirely independent of Rome, governed by its own bish. ops and archbishops; that it has through every age struggled to preserve its independence, and in a greater or less degree opposed the errors of Rome, and now, purged of its errors, claims to be the true apostolic and Catholic Church. But before I trace the history and succession of this Church, let me briefly advert to its articles of faith and form of government. Its faith is founded on Holy Writ, the apostolic canons, and in part on the decisions of the earliest councils, including the great Council of Nice. If it has deviated materially from this primitive standard, point out the discrepancy. As respects the form of government, it is overlooked and guided by bishops, who trace their succession from the apostles. During feudal times, some of these were lords temporal in England. But no American bishop wields any temporal power, he bears here only the spiritual sword. As respects the office of bishop, the apostles at first appointed presbyters and deacons to direct the church under their guidance. This was in the infancy of the church. As the disciples increased, and the apostles pursued their mission in different regions, the more distinguished presbyters were selected as angeli or episcopi,' legates or bishops. James, supposed to be the brother of our Lord,* presided at the first council at Jerusalem, and pronounced the decree I judge,' &c., which was confirmed by his associates; and during the lifetime of St. John, in apostolic days, numerous bishops were appointed, for he addresses his Revelation from Patmos to the seven angels or bishops of the churches of Asia, namely, Ephesus, Smyrna, Pergamos, Thyatira, Sardis, Philadelphia, and Laodicea. The English bishops claim a succession from St. John, through Polycarp his disciple, bishop of Smyrna, and the great historian Eusebius, who had access to the early church records, has preserved the succession of the bishops of Jerusalem, Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch, from the apostolic period down to A. D. 305, fifteen years before the Council of Nice, when he wrote his history. In his list, Linus, a friend of St. Paul, a married man, a prince of Britain, appears as first bishop of Rome, Amianus as first of Alexandria, James, presumed to be the brother of our Lord, as first of Jerusalem, and Evodius as first of Antioch; and by the same authority, Linus, bishop of Rome, presided over the church of that city from A.D. 67 to A. D. 79, when he was succeeded by Anacletus, and

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*Acts 15: 12, 28.