sions. Methinks I now hear some epicure Dives or elegant libertine retorting on these liberal, charitable, divines, in their own words, Pedantic theologues, narrow minded bigots, who stint the Omnipotent in the exercise of his mercy, and bar the doors of heaven against me, for following the impulse which he himself has planted in me! The same language may, with equal justice, be put into the mouth of Nero, Judas Iscariot, and of the very demons themselves. Thus, in pretending to magnify God's mercy, these men would annihilate his justice, his sanctity, and his veracity! Our business, then, is, not to form arbitrary theories concerning the divine attribute, but to attend to what he himself has revealed concerning them and the exercise of them What words can be more express than those of Christ, on this point, He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved, but he that believeth not shall be damned! Mark xvi. 16, or than those of St. Paul: Without faith it is impossible to please God, Heb. xi. 6. Conformably to this doctrine, the same apostle classes heresies with murder and adultery; concerning which he says, they who do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God, Gal. v. 20, 21. Accordingly, he orders that a man, who is a heretic, shall be rejected, Tit. iii. 10, and the apostle of charity, St. John, forbids the faithful to receive him into their houses; or even to bid him God speed who bringeth not this doctrine of Christ, 2 John i. 10. This apostle acted up to his rule, with respect to the treatment of persons out of the church, when he hastily withdrew from a public building, in which he met the heretic Cerinthus, "lest," as he said, "it should fall down upon him."* I have given, in a former letter, some of the numberless passages in which the holy fathers speak home to the present point, and, as these are far more expressive and emphatical than what I myself have said upon it, I presume they have chiefly contributed to excite the bile of the Rev. prebendary. However he may slight these venerable authorities, yet, as I am sure that you, sir, reverence them, I will add two more such quotations, on account of their peculiar appositeness to the present point, from the great doctor of the fifth century, St. Augustine. He says: "All the assemblies, or rather divisions, who call themselves churches of Christ, but which, in fact, have separatel themselves from the congregation of unity, do not belong to the true church. They might indeed belong to her, if the Holy Ghost could be divided against himself: but as this is impossible, they do not belong to her." In like manner, addressing himself • S. Iren. 1. iii. Euseb. Hist. 1. iii. + De Verb. Dom. Serm ii. to certain sectaries of his time, he says: "If our communion is the church of Christ, yours is not so: for the church of Christ is one, whichsoever she is; since it is said of her, My dove, my undefiled is one; she is the only one of her mother." Cantic. vi. 9. But, setting aside Scripture and tradition, let us consider this matter, as bishop Watson and his associates effect to do, on the side of natural reason alone. These modern philosophers think it absurd to suppose that the Creator of the Universe concerns himself about what we poor mortals do or do not believe; or, as the bishop expresses himself, that he "accommodates his judgments to the wrangling of pedantic theologues." With equal plausibility certain ancient philosophers have represented it as unworthy the Supreme Being to busy himself about the actions of such reptiles as we are in his sight; and thus have opened a door to an unrestrained violation of his eternal and immutable laws! In opposition to both these schools, I maintain, as the clear dictates of reason, that as God is the author, so he is necessarily the supreme Lord and Master of all beings, with their several powers and attributes, and therefore of those noble and distinguishing faculties of the human soul, reason and free will, that he cannot divest himself of this supreme dominion, or render any being or any faculty independent of himself or of his high laws, any more than he can cease to be God; that, of course, he does and must require our reason to believe in his divine revelations, no less than our will to submit to his supreme commands; that he is just, no less than he is merciful, and therefore that due atonement must be made to him for every act of disobedience to him, whether by disbelieving what he has said, or by disobeying what he has ordered. I advance a step further, in opposition to the Hoadley and Watson school, by asserting, as a self-evident truth, that there being a more deliberate and formal opposition to the Most High, in saying, I will not believe what thou hast revealed that in saying, I will not practice what thou hast commanded, so, cæteris paribus, WILFUL infidelity and heresy involve greater guilt than immoral frailty. You will observe, dear sir, that in the preceding passage, I have marked the word wilful; because Catholic divines and the holy fathers, at the same time that they strictly insist on the necessity of adhering to the doctrine and communion of the Ca. tholic church, make an express exception in favour of what is termed invincible ignorance, which occurs, when persons out of the true church are sincerely and firmly resolved, in spite of all worldly allurements on one hand and opposition to the contrary on the other, to enter into it if they could find it out, and wher This exception they use their best endeavours for this purpose. in favour of the invincibly ignorant, is made by the same St. Austin who so strictly insists on the general rule. His words are these: "The apostle has told us to reject a man that is a heretic but those who defend a false opinion, without pertinacious obstinacy, especially if they have not themselves invented it, but have derived it from their parents, and who seek the truth with anxious solicitude, being sincerely disposed to renounce their error as soon as they discover it, such persons are not to be deemed heretics."* Our great controvertist, Bellarmine, asserts, that such Christians, "in virtue of the disposition of their hearts, belong to the Catholic church."† Who the individuals, exteriorly of other communions, but by the sincerity of their dispositions, belonging to the Catholic church, who, and in what numbers they are, it is for the Searcher of hearts, our future Judge, alone to determine far be it from me, and from every other Catholic, to "deal damnation" on any person in particular: still thus much, on the grounds already stated, I am bound, not only in truth, but also in charity, to say and to proclaim, that nothing short of the sincere disposition in question, and the actual use of such means as Providence respectively affords for discovering the true church to those who are out of it, can secure their salvation; to say nothing of the Catholic sacraments and other helps for this purpose, of which such persons are necessarily deprived. : I just mentioned the virtue of charity; and i must here add, that on no one point are latitudinarians and genuine Catholics more at variance than upon this. The former consider themselves charitable, in proportion as they pretend to open the gate of heaven to a greater number of religionists of various descriptions but, unfortunately, they are not possessed of the keys of that gate; and when they fancy they have opened the gate as wide as possible, it still remains as narrow, and the way to it as strait, as our Saviour describes these to be in the Gospel, Matt. vii. 14. Thus they lull men into a fatal indifference about the truths of revelation, and a false security as to their salvation. Genuine Catholics, on the other hand, are persuaded, that as there is but one God. one faith, and one baptism, Ephes. iv. 5. so there is but ONE SHEEP-FOLD, namely, ONE CHURCH. Hence, they omit no opportunity of alarming their wandering brethren on the danger they are in, and of bringing them into this one fold of the one Shepherd, John x. 16. To form a right judgment in this case, we need but ask, Is it charitable or unchar Epist. ad Episc. Donat. * Controv. tom. ii. lib. iii c. 6 itable in the physician, to warn his patient of his danger in eat ing unwholesome food? Again, is it charitable or uncharitable in the watchman who sees the sword coming to sound the trumpet of alarm? Ezech. xxxiii. 6. But to conclude, the Rev. prebendary, with most modern Protestants, may continue to assign his latitudinarianism, which admits all religions to be right, thus dividing truth, that is essentially indivisible, as a mark of the truth of his sect; in the meantime, the Catholic church ever will maintain, as she ever has maintained, that there is only one faith and one true church, and that this her uncompromising firmness, in retaining and professing this unity, is the first mark of her being this church. The subject admits of being illustrated by the well known judgment of the wisest of men. Two women dwelt together, each of whom had an infant son; but, one of these dying, they both contended for possession of the living child, and carried their cause to the tribunal of Solomon. He, finding them equally conter ⚫ tious, ordered the infant they disputed about to be cut in two and one-half of it to be given to each of them; which order the pretended mother agreed to, exclaiming, Let it be neither mine nor thine, but divide it. Then spake the woman, whose the living child was, unto the king; for her bowels yearned upon her son, and she said, O, my lord, give her the living child, and in no wise slay it. Then the king answered and said, Give her the living child, and in no wise slay it; SHE IS THE MOTHER THEREOF! 1 Kings iii. 26, 17. DEAR SIR, I am, Dear Sir, &c. J M. LETTER XIX. To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c. ON SANCTITY OF DOCTRINE. THE second mark by which you, as well as I, describe the church in which you believe, when you repeat the Apostles' Creed, is that of SANCTITY: we, each of us, say, I believe in the HOLY Catholic Church. Reason itself tells us, that the God of purity and sanctity could not institute a religion destitute of this character; and the inspired apostle asures us, that Christ loved the church, and gave himself for it; that he might santify and cleanse it, with the washing of water, by the Word; that he might present it to himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkie. Ephes. v. 25. 27. The comparison which I am going to institute between the Catholic church and the leading Protestant societies in he article of sanctity, will be made on these four heads: 1st. The doctrine of holiness; 2dly. The means of holiness; 3dly. The fruits of holiness; and, lastly, The divine testimony of holiness. To consider, first, the doctrine of the chief Protestant communions this is well known to have been originally grounded in the pernicious and impious principles, that God is the author and necessitating cause, as well as the everlasting punisher, of sin; that man has no free will to avoid sin; and that justification and salvation are the effects of an enthusiastic persuasion, under the name of faith, that the person is actually justified and saved, without any real belief in the revealed truths, without hope, charity, repentance for sin, benevolence to our fellowcreatures, loyalty to our king and country, or any other virtues, all which were censured by the first reformers, as they are by the strict Mothodists still, under the name of werks, and by many of them declared to be even hurtful to salvation. It is asserted, in the Harmony of Confessions, a celebrated work, published in the early times of the Reformation, that "all the confessions of the Protestant churches teach this primary article (of justifica tion) with a holy consent;" which seems to imply, says arch. deacon Blackburn, "that this was the single article in which they all did agree."* Bishop Warburton expressly declares, that Protestantism was built upon it:" and yet, "what implety can be more execrable," we may justly exclaim with Dr. Balguy "than to make God a tyrant!" And what lessons can be taught more immoral, than that men are not required to repent of their sins to obtain their forgiveness, nor to love either God or man to be sure of their salvation! To begin with the father of the Reformation, Luther teaches that "God works the evil in us as well as the good," and that "the great perfection of faith consists in believing God to be just, although, by his own will, he necessarily renders us worthy of damnation, so as to seem to take pleasure in the torments of the miserable." Again he says, and repeats it, in his work De Servo Arbitrio, and his other works, that "free will is an empty name;" adding, "If God foresaw that Judas would be a traitor Judas necessarily became a traitor: nor was it in his power to be otherwise."|| "Man's will is like a horse: if God sit upo it. * Archdeacon Blackburn's Confessional, p. 16. + Doctrine of Grace, cited by Overton, p. 31. § Luth. Opera, ed. Wittemb. tom. ii. fol. 437. De Serv. Arbit. fol. 460. .. # Discourses, 59 |