ministry while he was on the earth; and the Church teaching, which we have called the Apostolic ministry, was, while he was on earth, in him. But in him its authority to teach is not established by the commission to the Apostles, but by the miracles he wrought. We take the authority of the Church teaching in him while he was on earth, proved by miracles to be of God, to establish the Divine authority of the commission to the Apostles. Consequently, we neither deny the Apostolic ministry to be the only witness, nor do we fall into the absurdity of assuming the divine authority of the witness as the condition of proving its divine authority. Will the Observer tell us on which horn of his imagined dilemma we now hang?

The commission to the Apostles created no new ministry, but simply provided for the continuance, unto to the consummation of the world, of the visible ministry our blessed Saviour had himself exercised while on the earth. "As my' Father had sent me, so send I you." When he was on earth the witness was visible in him, now it is visible in the body of the pastors and teachers of the Roman Catholic Church, but, though visible under other conditions, it is one and the same; "For, behold," says our blessed Saviour, “I am with you all days unto the consummation of the world." He is the witness, and testifies through them. Does the Observer ask a better witness? If it does, it must find him, for we never pledged ourselves to produce a better.

One point more we notice, and then take our leave of this Episcopal Observer, till we hear from him again. Our readers will recollect the argument we used to identify the Ecclesia docens, or Church teaching, with the Roman Catholic ministry.

'It is the Roman Catholic ministry. It can be no other. It cannot be the Greek Church. The Greek Church was formerly in communion with the Church of Rome, and made one corporation with it. The Church of Rome was then the true church, Ecclesia docens, or it was not. If not, the Greek Church is false, in consequence of having communed with a false church. If it was, the Greek Church is false, because it separated from it. So take either horn of the dilemma, the Greek Church is

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false, and its ministry not the Apostolic ministry which inherits the promises. The same reasoning will apply with equal force to any of the Oriental sects not in communion with the see of Rome; and, a fortiori, to all the modern Protestant sects. Therefore, the Roman Catholic ministry is the Apostolic corporation, because this corporation can be no other."

Upon this the Episcopal Observer remarks:

"It is one of the easiest things in the world to make out a false conclusion, if one can be allowed to slip a false premise into the process of induction. There are so many violations of the rules of logic in the above paragraph, that the reader would hardly have patience to follow us in their exposure. Precisely the same reasoning, in the same words, with only a slight interchange of terms, will best show its absurdity. "It is the ministry of the Greek Church. It can be no other. It cannot be the Roman Catholic Ministry. The Roman Catholic Church was formerly in communion with the Greek Church, and made one corporation with it. The Greek Church was then the true church, Ecclesia docens, or it was not.

If not, the Church of Rome is false, in consequence of having communed with a false church. If it was, the Church of Rome is false, because it separated from it. So, take either horn of the dilemma, the Church of Rome is false, and its ministry not the Apostolic ministry which inherits the promises,' &c."—p. 141.

Now, will it be credited that we anticipated this retort and replied to it? Yet such is the fact. Here is what we said :

"You object, in behalf of the Greek Church, that Rome separated from her, not she from Rome. This we deny. It is historically certain, that the Greek Church, prior to the final separation, agreed with the Church of Rome on the matters (the supremacy of the Pope and the Procession of the Holy Ghost) which were made the pretexts for separation. In the separation, the Greek Church denied what she had before asserted, while Rome continued to assert the same doctrine after as before. Therefore the Greek Church was the dissentient party. Prior to the separation, the Greek Church agreed with the Roman in submitting to the Papal authority. In the separation, the Greek Church threw off this authority, while the Roman continued to submit to it. Therefore the Greek Church was the separatist.

"You insist, that, though the act of separation may, indeed, have been formally the act of the Greek Church, yet the separation was really on the part of Rome, who had corrupted the faith, and rendered separation from her necessary to the purity of the Christian Church. But, if this be so, whatever the corruptions of the faith Rome had been guilty of, the Greek Church participated in them during her communion with Rome. If they vitiated the Latin Church, they equally vitiated the Greek. Then both had failed, and the true Church, which we have seen is indefectible, must have been somewhere else. Then the Greek Church could become a true Church by separating from the communion of the Latin Church only on condition of coming into communion with the true Church. But it came into communion with no Church. Therefore, the Greek Church, at any rate, is false.”

Yet the Observer nowhere notices the fact that we had thus replied in advance, nor even that we were aware of the objection. It has not noticed these replies, express to its objection, and yet it claims to have refuted us! Yes, it has refuted us, by urging the objections we ourselves brought, but without noticing our answers! This may be a refutation in the Protestant sense, but, thank God! it is not in the Catholic sense. The conduct of the Observer, in this respect, we shall not trust ourselves to characterize as it deserves, nor shall we suffer it to surprise uз. Deprived, as the writer is, by the simple fact that he is a Protestant, of the ordinary means of divine grace, nothing better was to be expected of him. He has a cause to maintain, which does not admit of candor and truthfulness, honesty and fair dealing, and we should be more surprised to find him exercising such virtues than we are by finding him sinning against them,

It is worthy of note that this Episcopal writer has passed over the articles in our Review against his own church, and, churchman as he professes to be has entered the lists only against an article the main design of which was to defend the Church against No-Church. It is also worthy of note, that the objections he has brought against us were nearly all brought previously in the Christian Register and Christian World, the two weekly organs of the No-Church Unitarians. What does this

indicate? Are Unitarians and Episcopalians acting in concert? or are we to infer that a common dread of Catholicity is combining all the various Protestant sects against the Catholic Church? This last seems to us not improbable. The signs of the times seem to indicate that the several tribes of Goths, Vandals, Huns, and other barbarians, are forming a league for a new invasion of Rome. Well, be it so. "He that dwelleth in heaven shall laugh at them, and the Lord shall deride them." The Episcopalians may read their destiny in that of the old Donatists, whom, in many respects, they resemble; and all the Protestant sects combined are not so formidable to the Church as were, at one period, the old Arians. The Church triumphed over the Arians; she will triumph over the Protestants. A union whose principle is hatred will not long subsist, but will soon break asunder. Protestantism is doomed. The Devil may be very active and full of wrath, and utter great swelling words, for a season, because he knows that his time is short; but Protestantism must go the way of all the earth. The Lord will remember mercy, and will not much longer afflict the nations, but will recall them to the bosom of his Church.

THORNWELL'S ANSWER TO DR. LYNCH.*

APRIL, 1848.

SOMETIME in 1841, Mr. Thornwell, a Presbyterian minister, and Professor of Sacred Literature and the Evidences of Christianity in the South-Carolina College," published anonymously in a Baltimore journal, a brief essay against the divine inspira

*The Apocryphal Books of the Old Testament proved to be Corrupt Additions to the Word of God.-The Arguments of Romanists from the Infallibility of the Church and the Testimonies of the Fathers in Behalf of the Apocrypha discussed and refuted. By JAMES H. THORNWELL. New York: Leavitt, Trow & Co. Boston: Charles Tappan. 1845. 16mo. pp. 417.

tion of those books of the Old Testament which Protestants exclude from the canon of Scripture. To this essay, as subse quently reprinted with the author's name, the Rev. Dr. Lynch, of Charleston, S. C., replied, in a series of letters addressed to Mr. Thornwell, through the columns of The Catholic Miscel lany. The volume before us is Mr. Thornwell's rejoinder to Dr. Lynch, and contains, in an Appendix, the original essay, and the substance of Dr. Lynch's reply to it. The rejoinder consists of twenty-nine letters, which cover nearly the whole ground of controversy between Catholics and Protestants, and, though written in a Presbyterian spirit, they are respectable for ability and learning. The work, though nothing surprising, is, upon the whole, above the general average of publications of its class. The purpose of the essay was to "assert and endeavor to prove that Tobit, Judith, the additions to the Book of Esther, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus, Baruch, with the Epistle of Jeremiah, the Song of the Three Children, the Story of Susannah, the Story of Bel and the Dragon, and the First and Second Books of Maccabees are neither sacred nor canonical, and of course of no more authority in the Church of God than Seneca's Letters or Tully's Offices." (pp. 339, 340.) In the present work, the author attempts to maintain the same thesis, and to refute the objections urged by Dr. Lynch against it. He professes on his very title-page to have proved the books enumerated "to be corrupt additions to the word of God," and to have discussed and refuted "the arguments of Romanists from the infallibility of the Church and the testimonies of the Fathers in their behalf." The question very naturally arises, Has he done this? Has he proved that these books are uninspired, as he must have done, if he has proved them to be corrupt additions to the word of God; and has he refuted the arguments of Catholics, or rather of Dr. Lynch, in their behalf ?

The arguments which Dr. Lynch adduces for these books are drawn from the infallibility of the Church and the testimony of the Fathers. If the Church is infallible, the testimony of the Fathers is of subordinate importance, for the infallibility alone