does or does not appear in that principal and primeval stock of Christianity, called the Catholic church. In case this church, spread, as it is, throughout the various nations of the earth, and subsisting, as it has done, through all ages, since that of Christ and his apostles, should have maintained that religious unity, which the modern sects, confined to a single people, have been unable to preserve, you will allow that it must have been framed by a consummate Wisdom and protected by an mnipotent Providence. Now, sir, I maintain it, as a notorious fact, that this original and great church is, and ever has been, strictly ONE in all the above-mentioned particulars, and first in her faith and terms of communion. The same creeds, namely, the Apostles' Creed, the Nicene Creed, the Athanasian Creed, and the Creed of Pope Pius IV. drawn up in conformity with the definitions of the Council of Trent, are every where recited and professed, to the strict letter; the same articles of faith and morality are taught in all our catechisms; the same rule of faith, namely, the revealed Word of God, contained in Scripture and tradition, and the same expositor and interpreter of this rule, the Catholic church speaking by the mouth of her pastors, are admitted and proclaimed by all Catholics throughout the four quarters of the globe, from Ireland to Chili, and from Canada to India. You may convince yourself of this any day, at the Royal Exchange, by conversing with intelligent Catholic merchants, from the several countries in question. You may satisfy yourself respecting it, even by interrogating the poor illiterate Irish, and other Catholic foreigners, who traverse the country in various directions. Ask them their belief as to the fundamental articles of Christianity, the unity and trinity of God, the incarnation and death of Christ, his divinity, and atonement for sin by his pas sion and death, the necessity of baptism, the nature of the blessed sacrament; question them on these and other such points, but with kindness, patience, and condescension, particularly with respect to their language and delivery, and, I will venture to say, you will not find any essential variation in the answers of most of them; and much less such as you will find by proposing the came questions to an equal number of Protestants, whether learned or unlearned, of the self-same denomination. At all events, the Catholics, if properly intorrogated, will confess their belief in one comprehensive article; namely, this, I believe whatever the holy Catholic church believes and teaches. Protestant divines, at the present day, excuse their dissent from the Articles w ich they subscribe and swear to, by reason * of their alleged antiquity and obsoleteness, though none of them are yet quite two centuries and a half old,† and they feel no difficulty in avowing that "a tacit reformation," since the first pretended reformation, has taken place among them. This alone is a confession that their church is not one and the same; whereas all Catholics believe as firmly in the doctrinal decisions of the council of Nice, passed fifteen hundred years ago, as they do in those of the council of Trent, confirmed in 1564, and other still more recent decisions; because the Catholic church, like its divine Founder, is the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever. Heb. xiii. 8. Nor is it in her doctrine only, that the Catholic church is ona and the same; she is also uniform in whatever is essential in her liturgy. In every part of the world, she offers up the same unbloody sacrifice of the holy mass, which is her chief act of divine worship; she administers the same seven sacraments, provided by infinite wisdom and mercy for the several wants of the faithful; the great festivals of our redemption are kept holy on the same days, and the apostolical fast of Lent is every where proclaimed and observed. In short, such is the unity of the Catholic church, that when Catholic priests or laymen, landing at one of the neighbouring ports, from India, Canada, or Brazil, come to my chapel,§ I find them capable of joining with me in every essential part of the divine service. Lastly, as a regular, uniform, ecclesiastical constitution and government, and a due subordination of its members, are requisite to constitute a uniform church, and to preserve unity of doctrine and liturgy in it, so these are undeniably evident in the Catholic church, and in her alone. She is, in the language of St. Cyprian, “The habitation of peace and unity," and in that of the inspired text, like an army in battle array ¶ Spread, as the Catholics are, over the face of the earth, according to my former observation, and disunited, as they are in every other respect, they form one uniform body in the order of religion. Whether roaming in the plains of Paraguay, or confined in the palaces of Pekin, each simple Catholic, in point of ecclesiastical economy, is subject to his pastor; each pastor submits to his bishop, and each bishop acknowledges the supremacy of the successor of St. Peter, in matters of faith, morality, and spiritual jurisdiction. In case of error, or insubordination, which, from the frailty and * Dr. Hey's Lectures on Divinity, vol ii. pp. 49, 50, 51, &c. + The 39 Articles were drawn in 1562, and confirmed by the queen and the bishops in 1571. + Hey, p. 48. At Winchester, where the writer res led when this letter was written malice of the human heart, must, from time to time, disturb her there are found canons and ecclesiastical tribunals, and judges. to correct and put an end to the evil, while similar evils in other religious societies are found to be interminable. I have said little or nothing of the varieties of Protestants in regard to their liturgies and ecclesiastical governments, because these matters being very in ricate and obscure, as well as diversified, would lead me too far a-field for my present plan. It is sufficient to remark, that the numerous Protestant sects expressly disclaim any union with each other in these points. That a great proportion of them reject every species of liturgy and ecclesiastical government whatever, and that, in the church of England herself, very many of her dignitaries, and other distinguished members, express their pointed disapprobation of certain parts of her liturgy, no less than of her Articles,* and that none of them appear to stand in awe of any authority, except that which is enforced by the civil power. Upon a review of the whole matter of Protestant disunion and Catholic unity, I am forced to repeat with Tertullian, "It is the character of error to vary; but when a tenet is found to be one and the same among a great variety of people, it is to be considered not as an error but as a divine tradition."t I am, dear sir, &c. J. M. LETTER XVII. From JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c. OBJECTIONS TO THE CLAIM OF EXCLUSIVE SALVATION. REVEREND SIR, I AM too much taken up myself with the present subject of your letters, willingly to interrupt the continuation of them: but * Archdeacon Paley very naturally complains, that "the doctrine of the Articles of the church of England," which he so pointedly objects to." are interwoven, with much industry, into her forms of Public worship.” I have not met with a Protestant bishop, or other eminent divine, from archbishop Tillotson down to the present bishop of Lincoln, who approves altogether of the Athanasian Creed, which, however, is appointed to be said or sung on thirteen chief festivals in the year. + De Præscrip. contra Hær. The famous bishop Jewel, in excuse for the acknowledged variations of his own church, objects to Catholics that there are varieties in theirs; namely, some of the friars are dressed in black, and some in white, and some in blue: that some of them live on meat, and some on fish, and some on herbs: they have also disputes in their schools, as Dr. Porteus also remarks; but they ooth omit to mention, tha these disputes are not about articles of faith.. cme of the gentlemen, who frequent New Cottage, having.communicated your three last to a learned dignitary who is upon a visit in our neighbourhood, and he having made certain remarks upon them, I have been solicited by those gentic:nen to forward them to you. The terms of our correspondence render an apology from me unnecessary, and still more the conviction that I believe you entertain of my being, with sincere respect and regard, Rev. Sir, &c. JAMES BROWN. Extract of a Letter from the Rev. N. N. Prebendary of N. to Mr. N. It is well known to many Roman Catholic gentlemen, with whom I have lived in habits of social intercourse, that I was always a warm advocate for their emancipation, and that, so far from having any objections to their religion, I considered their hopes of future bliss as well founded as my own. In return, I thought I saw in them a corresponding liberality and charity. But these letters which you have sent me from the correspondent of your society at Winchester, have quite disgusted me with their bigotry and uncharitableness. In opposition to the Chrysostomes and Augustines, whom he quotes so copiously, for his doctrine of exclusive salvation, I will place a modern bishop of my church, no way inferior to them, Dr. Watson, who says, "Shall we never be freed from the narrow-minded contentions of bigots, and from the insults of men who know not what spirit they are of, when they stint the Omnipotent in the exercise of his mercy, and bar the doors of heaven against every sect but their own? Shall we never learn to think more humbly of ourselves and less despicably of others; to believe that the Father of the Universe accommodates not his judgments to the wretched wranglings of pedantic theologues; but that every one, who, with an honest intention, and to the best of his abilities, seeketh truth, whether he findeth it or not, and worketh righteousness, will be accepted of by him?"* These, sir, are exactly my sentiments, as they were those of the illustrious Hoadley, in his celebrated sermon, which had the effect of stifling most of the remaining bigotry in the established church. There is not any prayer which I more frequently or fervently repeat than that of the * Bishop Watson's Theolog Tracts, Pref. p. 17. + Bishop Hoadley's Sermon on the Kingdom of Christ. This made the choice of religions a thing indifferent, and subjected the whole business of religion to the civil power. Hence sprung the famous Bangorian Contro versy, which, when on the point of ending in a censure upon Hoadley from the Convocation, the latter was interdicted by ministry, and has never since, in the course of a hundred years, been allowed to meet again. liberal minded poet, who himself passed for a Roman Catholic particularly the following stanza of it : "Let not this weak and erring hand And deal damnation round the land I hope your society will require its Popish correspondent, before he writes any more letters to it on other subjects, to answer what our prelate and his own poet have advanced against the bigotry and uncharitableness of excluding Christians of any de nomination from the mercies of God and everlasting happiness. He may assign whatever marks he pleases of the true church, but I, for my part, shall ever consider charity as the only sure mark of this, conformably with what Christ says: By this shal all know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another John xiii. 35. DEAR SIR, LETTER XVIII. To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c. OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. IN answer to the objections of the Reverend prebendary to my letters on the mark of unity in the true church, and the ne cessity of being incorporated in this church, I must observe, in the first place, that nothing disgusts a reasoning divine more than vague charges of bigotry and intolerance, inasmuch as they have no distinct meaning, and are equally applied to all sects and individuals, by others, whose religious opinions are more lax than their own. These odious accusations which your churchmen bring against Catholics, the Dissenters bring against you, who are equally loaded with them by Deists, as these are, in their turn, by Atheists and Materialists. Let us then, dear sir, in the serious discussions of religion, confine ourselves to language of a defined meaning, leaving vague and tinsel terms to poets and novelists. It seems, then, that bishop Watson, with the Rev. N. N. and other fashionable latitudinarians of the day, are indignant at the idea of "stinting the Omnipotent in the exercise of his mercy, and barring the doors of heaven against any sect," however heterodox or impious. Nevertheless, in the very passage which I have quoted, they themselves stint this mercy to those who "work righteousness," which implies a restraint on men's pas Pope's Universal Prayer |