rowed from the Catholic Missal and Ritual. Of this any one may satisfy himself who will compare the prayers, lessons and Gospels, in these Catholic hooks, with those in the Book of Common Prayer. But, though our service has been thus purloined, it has, by no means been preserved entire on the contrary, we find it, in the latter, eviscerated of its noblest parts; particularly with respect to the principal and essential worship of all the ancient churches, the holy mass, which, from a true propitiatory sacrifice, as it stands in all their Missals, is cut down to a mere verbal worship in The Order for Morning Prayer. Hence, our James I. pronounced of the latter, that it is an ill-said mass. The servants of God had, by his appointment, SACRIFICE both under the law of nature and the written law; it would then be extraordinary, if under the law of grace they were left destitute of this the most sublime and excellent act of religion, which man can offer to his Creator. But we are not left destitute of it: on the contrary, that prophecy of Malachy is fulfilled, Mal. i. 11. In every place from the rising to the setting of the sun, sacrifice is offered and a pure oblation; even Christ himself, who is really present and mystically offered on our altars in the sacrifice of the mass. Never I pass over the solemnity, the order and the magnificence of our public worship and ritual in Catholic countries, which most candid Fiotestants, who have witnessed them, allow to be exceedingly impressive, and great helps to devotion, and which, certainly, in most particulars, find their parallel in the worship and ceremonies of the Old law, ordained by God himself. theless, is a gross calumny to assert that the Catholic church does, or ever did make the essence of religion to consist in these externals; and we challenge them to our councils and doctrinal books in refutation of the calumny. In like manner, I pass over the many private exercises of piety which are generally practised in regular Catholic families and by individuals, such as daily meditation and spiritual reading, evening prayers and examination of the conscience, &c. These, it will not be denied, must be helps to obtain sanctity for those who are desirous of it-But I have said more than enough to convince your friends in which of the rival communions the means of sanctity are chiefly to be found. I am, Dear Sir, &c. J M. 150 DEAR SIR, LETTER XXI. To JAMES BROWN, Esq. ON THE FRUITS OF SANCTITY. THE fruits of sancity are the virtues practised by those whe are possessed of it. Hence the present question is, whether these are to be found, for the most part, among the members of the ancient Catholic church, or among the different innovators, who undertook to reform it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries? In considering the subject, the first thing which strikes me is, that all the saints, and even those who are record. ed as such in the calendar of the church of England, and in whose names their churches are dedicated, lived and died strict members of the Catholic church, and zealously attached to her doctrine and discipline.* For an example, in this calendar, we meet with a Pope Gregory, March 12, the zealous assertor of the papal supremacy,† and other Catholic doctrines; a St. Benedict, March 21, the patriarch of the western monks and nuns; a St. Dunstan, May 19, the vindicator of clerical celibacy; a St. Augustine of Canterbury, May 26, the introducer of the whole system of Catholicity into England, and a venerable Bede, May 27, the witness of this important fact. It is sufficient to mention the names of other Catholic saints, for example, David, Chad, Edward, Richard, Elphege, Martin, Swithun, Giles, Lambert, Leonard, Hugh, Etheldreda, Remigius, and Edmund, all of which are inserted in the calendar, and give names to the churches of the establishment. Besides these, there are very many of our other saints, whom all learned and candid Protestants unequivocally admit to have been such, for the extraordinary purity and sanctity of their lives. Even Luther acknowledges St. Anthony, St. Bernard, St. Dominic, St. Francis, St. Bonaventure, &c. to have been saints, though avowed Catholics, and defenders of the Catholic church against the heretics and schis * I must except king Charles I. who is rubricated as a martyr on Jan 30: nevertheless, it is confessed that he was far from possessing either the purity of a saint or the constancy of a martyr: for he actually gave up Episcopacy, and other essentials of the established religion, by his last treaty in the isle of Wight. + Many Protestant writers pretended that St. Gregory disclaimed the supremacy, because he asserted against John of C. P. that neither he nor any other prelate ought to assume the title of Universal Bishop; but that he claimed and exercised the supremacy, his own works and the history of Bede incontrovertibly demonstrate. matics of their times. But, independentry of this and of every other testimony, it is certain that the supernatural virtues and heroical sanctity of a countless number of holy personages of different countries, ranks, professions, and sexes, have illustrated the Catholic church in every age, with an effulgence which cannot be disputed or withstood. Your friends, I dare say, are not much acquainted with the histories of these brightest ornaments of Christianity: let me then invite them to peruse them; not in the legends of obsolete writers, but in a work which, for its various learning and luminous criticism, was commended even by the Infidel Gibbon. I mean The Saints' Lives, in twelve octavo volumes, written by the late Rev. Alban Butler, president of St. Omer's college. Protestants are accustomed to paint in the most frightful colours the alleged depravity of the church, when Luther erected his standard, in order to justify him and his followers' defection from it: but to form a right judgment in the case, let them read the works of the contemporary writers, an à Kempis, a Gerson, an Antoninus, &c. or let them peruse the lives of Vincent Ferrer, St. Laurence Justinian, St. Francis Paula, St. Philip Neri, St. Cajetan, St. Teresa, St. Francis Xavier, and of those other saints, who illuminated the church about the period in question; or let them, from the very accounts of Protestant historians, compare, as to religion and morality, archbishop Crammer with his rival bishop Fisher; protector Seymour with chancellor More, Ann Bullen with Catharine of Arragon, Martin Luther and Calvin with Francis Xavier and cardinal Pole, Beza with St. Francis of Sales, queen Elizabeth with Mary queen of Scots; these contrasted characters having more or less relation with each other. From such a comparison, I have no sort of doubt what the decision of your friends will be concerning them, in point of their respective holiness. I have heretofore been called upon to consider the virtues and merits of the most distinguished reformers;* and certainly we have a right to expect from persons of this description finish. ed models of virtue and piety. But instead of this being the case, I have shown that patriarch Luther was the sport of his unbridled passions,† pride, resentment, and lust; that he was turbulent, abusive, and sacrilegious, in the highest degree; that he was the trumpeter of sedition, civil war, rebellion, and desolation; and finally, that by his own account, he was the scholar of Satan, in the most important article of his pretended Re • Reflections on Popery, by Dr. Sturges, L. L. D., Letters to a Preb. Let. V. p. 178 &c. formation. I have made out nearly as heavy a charge against his chief followers, Carlostad, Zuinglius, Ochin, Calvin, Beza, and Cranmer. With respect to the last named, who under Edward VI. and his fratricide uncle, the duke of Somerset, was the chief artificer of the Anglican church, I have shown that, from his youthful life in a college, till his death at the stake, he exhibited such a continued scene of libertinism, perjury, hypocrisy, barbarity, (in burning his fellow Protestants,) profli gacy, ingratitude, and rebellion, as is, perhaps, not to be matched in history. I have proved that all his fellow-labourers and fellow-sufferers were rebels like himself, who would have been put to death by Elizabeth, if they had not been executed by Mary I adduced the testimony not only of Erasmus and other Catholics, but also of the gravest Protestant historians, and of the very reformers themselves, in proof that the morals of the people, su far from being changed for the better, by embracing the new religion, were greatly changed for the worse. The pretended Reformation, in foreign countries, as in Germany, the Netherlands, at Geneva, in Switzerland, France, and Scotland, besides producing popular insurrections, sackages, demolitions, sacrileges, and persecution beyond description, excited also open rebellions and bloody civil wars. In England, where our * Letters to a Preb., Let. V. p. 183, where Satan's conference with Lu ther, and the arguments by which he induced this reformer to abolish the mass, are detailed, from Luther's works. Tom. vii. p. 228. + Ibid. 66 The Huguenots in Dauphiny alone, as one of their writers confesses, burnt down 900 towns or villages, and murdered 378 priests or religious, in the course of one rebellion The number of churches destroyed by them throughout France, is computed at 20,000. The history of England's reformation (though this was certainly more orderly than that of other countries) has caused the conversion of many English Protestants: it produced this effect on James II. and his first consort, the mother of queen Mary, and queen Ann. he following is the account which the latter has left of this change, and which is to be found in Dodd's last volume, and in the Fifty Reasons of the duke of Brunswick. Seeing much of the devo tion of the Catholics, I made it my constant prayer that if I were not, I might, before I died, be in the true religion. I did not doubt but that I was so till November last, when reading a book called The History of the Reformation, by Dr. Heylin, which I had heard very much commended, and had been told, if ever I had any doubts in my religion that would settle me⚫ instead of which I found it the description of the horridest sacrileges in the world; and could find no cause why we left the church, but for three, the most abominable ones: 1st, Henry VIII. renounced the Pope, because he would not give him leave to part with his wife and marry another; 2dly, Edward VI. was a child and governed by his uncle, who made his estate out of the church lands: 3dly, Elizabeth not being lawful heiress to the crown, had no way to keep it but by renouncing a church which would not suffer so unlawful a thing. I confess I cannot think the Holy Ghost could ever be in such councils." writers boast of the orderly manner in which the change of religion was carried on, it, nevertheless, most unjustly and sacrilegiously seized upon, and destroyed, in the reign of Henry VIII. six hundred and forty-five monasteries, ninety colleges, and one hundred and ten hospitals, besides the bishopric of Durham; and, under Edward VI. or rather his profligate uncle, it dissolved two thousand three hundred and seventy-four colleges, chapels, or hospitals, in order to make princely fortunes of their property for that uncle and his unprincipled comrades, who, like banditti, quarreling over their spoils, soon brought each other to the block. Such were the fruits of sanctity, every where produced by this Reformation! DEAR SIR, I am, &c. LETTER XXII. To Mr. J. TOULMIN. OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. J. M. I HAVE received your letter, animadverting upon mine to our common friend, Mr. Brown, respecting the fruits of sanctity, as they appear in our respective communions. I observe, you do not contest my general facts or arguments, but resort to objections which have been already answered in these, or in my other letters now before the public. You assert, as a notorious fact, that for several ages, prior to the Reformation, the Catholic religion was sunk into ceremonies and pageantry, and that it sanctioned the most atrocious crimes. In refutation of these calumnies, I have referred to our councils, to our most accredited authors of religion and morality, and to the lives and deaths of our most renowned saints, during the ages in question. I grant, sir, that you hold the same language on this subject that other Protestant writers do; but I maintain that none of them make good their charges, and that their motive for advancing them is to find a pretext for excusing the irreligion of the pre tended Reformation. You next extol the alleged sanctity of the Protestant sufferers, called martyrs, in the unhappy persecution of queen Mary's reign. I have discussed this matter at some length in The Letters to a Prebendary, and have shown, in opposition to John Fox and his copyists, that some of these pretended martyrs were alive when he wrote the history of their death ;* that others of them, and the five bishops in particular, so far from See Letter IV. on Persecution |