REV. SIR. LETTER XLIV. To the Rev. ROBERT CLAYTON, M. A. EXTREME UNCTION. THE Council of Trent terms the sacrament of extreme unc tion, the Consummation of Penance, and therefore, as bishop Por teus makes this the subject of a charge against our church, hers is the proper place for me to answer it. His lordship writes a long chapter upon it, because his business is to gloss over the clear testimony which the apostle St. James bears to the reality of this sacrament: in return, I shall write a short letter in refutation of his chapter, because I have little more to do than to cite that testimony, as it stands in the New Testament: it is this: Is any man sick among you, let him bring in the priests of the church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man; and the Lord shall raise him up, and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him, James v. 14, 15. Here we see all that is requsite, according to the English Frotestant Catechism, to constitute a sacrament,* for there is an outward visible sign," namely, the anointing with oil: there" is an inward spiritual grace, given unto us," namely, the saving of the sick and the forgiveness of his sins. Lastly, there is the Ordination of Christ, as the means by which the same is received;" unless the bishop chooses to allege, that the holy apostle fabricated a Sacrament, or means of grace, without any authority for this purpose from his heavenly Master. What then does his lordship say, in opposition to this divine warrant for our Sacrament? He says, that the anointing of the sick by elders or old men, was the appointed method of miraculously curing them in primitive times, which would imply, that no Christian died in those times, except when either oil or old men were not to be met with? He adds, that the forgiveness of the sick man's sins, means the cures of his corporal diseases! And after all this, he boasts of building his religion on mere Scripture, in its plain, unglossed meaning! In reading all this, I own I cannot help revolving in my mind the above quoted profane parody of Luther, on the first words of Scripture, in which he ridicules the distortion of it by many Protestants of his time. With the In the Book of Common Prayer. + P. 59. In principio Deus creavit cœlum et terram" In the cuckoo devoured the sparrow and its feathers. + P. 69. beginning the samne confidence his lordship adds: "Our laying asle a cere mony (the anointing) which has long been useless, &c. can be no loss, while every thing that is truly valuable in St. James's di rection is preserved in our office for visiting the sick."* Exactly in this manner our friends, the Quakers, undertake to prove, that, in laying aside the ceremony of washing catechumens with water, they "have preserved every thing that is truly valuable" in the sacrament of Baptism! But where shali we find an end of the inconsistencies and impieties of deluded Christians, who refuse to hear that church which Christ has appointed to explain to them the truths of religion? There is not more truth in the prelate's assertion, that there is no mention of anointing with oil, among the primitive Christians, except in miraculous cures, during the first 600 years. for the celebrated Origen, who was born in the age next to that of the apostles, after speaking of an humble confession of sins, as a means of obtaining their pardon, adds to it, the anointing with oil, prescribed by St. James. St. Chrysostom, who lived in the fourth century, speaking of the power of priests in remitting sin, says, they exert it when they are called in to perform the rite mentioned by St. James, &c. The testimony of Pope Innocent I. in the same age, is so express as to the warrant for this sacrament, the matter, the minister, and the subjects of it that though the bishop alluded to the testimony, he does not choose to grapple with it, or even to quote it. I pass over the irrefragable authorities of St. Cyril of Alexandria, Victor of Antioch, St. Gregory the Great, and our Venerable Bede, in order once more to recur to that short but convincing proof, that the Catholic church has not invented those sacraments and doctrines in latter ages, which Protestants assert were unknown in the primitive ages. The Nestorians then broke off from the communion of the church in 431, and the Eutychians in 451: these rival sects exist, in numerous congregations, throughout the east, at the present day, and they both, as well as the Greeks, Armenians, &c. maintain, in belief and practice, Extreme Juction as one of the seven sacraments. Nothing can so satis factorily vindicate our church from the charge of imposition of innovation, in the particulars mentioned, as these facts du How much more consistently has the impious Friar, Martin Lu ther, acted in denying at once the authority of St. James'a Epistle, and condemning it as "a chaffy composition, and un+ Barclay's Apology, Prop. 12. § De Sacerd. 1. iii. P. 61. Hom. ii. in Levit. 1. P. 61. worthy an apostle," than Bp. Porteus, with his confederates do, who attempt to explain away the clear proofs of extreme unction, contained in it? In the mean time, in spite of them all, pious Catholics will continue to reap inestimable consolation and grace, in the time of man's greatest need, for the sake of which this and the other helps of their church, were provided by our Saviour Jesus Christ. REV. SIR, LETTER XLV. I am, &c. J. M. To the Rev. ROBERT CLAYTON, M. A. WHETHER THE POPE BE ANTICHRIST. THERE remains but one more question of doctrine to be discussed between me and your favourite controvertist, bishop Porteus, which is concerning the character and power of the Pope; and this he compresses into a narrow compass, among a variety of miscellaneous matters, in the latter part of his book. However, as it is a doctrine of first-rate importance, against which I make no doubt but several of your Salopian Society have been early and bitterly prejudiced, I propose to treat it, at some length, and in a regular way. To do this, I must begin with the inquiry, whether the Pope be really and truly, the man of sin, and the son of perdition, described by St. Paul, 2 Thess. ii. 1, 10, in short, the Antichrist spoken of by St. John, 1 John ii. 18, and called by him, A beast with seven heads and ten horns, Revel. xiii. 1, whose See or church is the great harlot, the mother of the fornications and abominations of the earth, Ibid. xvii. 5. I shudder to repeat these blasphemies, and I blush to hear them uttered by my fellow Christians and countrymen, who derive their liturgy, their ministry, their Christianity, and civilization, from the Pope and the church of Rome; but they have been too generally taught by the learned, and believed by the ignorant, for me to pass them by in silence on this occasion. One of hishop Porteus's colleagues bishop of Hallifax, speaks of this doctrine concerning the Pope and Rome, as long being "the_common symbol of Protestantism." Certain it is, that the author of it, the outrageous Martin Luther, may be said to have established Protestantis'n upon this principle: he had at first submitted his "Stramminosa." Prefat. in Ep. Jac. Jenæ de Captiv. Babyl + Sermons by bishop Hallifax, preached at the Lecture founded by the late bishop Warburton, to prove the apostacy of Papai Rome, p. 27. religious controversies to the decision of the Pope, protesting to him thus: "Whether you give life or death, approve or reprove, as you may judge best, I will hearken to your voice, as to that of Christ himself:"* but no sooner did Pope Leo condemn his doc. trine, than he published his book "Against the execrable Bull of Antichrist," as he qualified it. In like manner, Melancthon, Bullinger, and many others of Luther's followers, publicly maintained, that the Pope is Antichrist, as did afterwards Calvin, Beza, and the writers of that party in general. This party considered this doctrine so essential, is to vote it an article of faith, in their synod of Gap, held in 1603. The writers in defence of this impious tenet in our island, are as numerous as those of the whole continent put together, John Fox, Whitaker, Fulke Willet, sir Isaac Newton, Mede, Lowman, Towson, Bicheno, Kett, &c. with the bishops, Fowler, Warburton, Newton, Hallifax, Hurd, Watson, and others, too numerous to be here mentioned. One of these writers, whose work has but just appeared, has collected a new and quite whimsical system from the Scriptures concerning Antichrist. Hitherto, Protestant expositors have been conient to apply the character and attributes of Antichrist to a succession of Roman pontiffs; but the Rev. H. Kett professes to have discovered, that the said Antichrist is, at the same time, every Pope who has filled the See of Rome since the year 756, to the number of one hundred and sixty, together with the whole of what he calls "the Mahometan power," from a period more remote by a century and a half, and the whole of infidelity, which he traces to a still more ancient origin than even Mahometanism.§ That the first Pope, St. Peter, on whom Christ declared, that he built his church, Mat. xvi. 18, was not Antichrist, I trust I need not prove, nor, indeed, his third successor in the Popedom, St. Clement, since St. Paul testifies of him, that his name is written in the book of life, Phil. iv. 3. In like manner, there is no need of my demonstrating, that the See of Rome was not the harlot of Revelations, when St. Paul certified of its members, that their faith was spoken of throughout the whole world, Rom i. 8. At what particular period, then, I now ask, as I asked Mr. Brown, in one of my former letters, did the grand Epist. ad Leon X. A. D. 1518. + Tom. ii. Bossuet's Variat P. ii. B. 13. § History of the Interpreter of Prophecy, by H. Kett, B. D. This wri er's attempt to transform the great supporters of the Pope, St. Jerom, Pope Gregory I, St. Bernard, &c. into witnesses that the Pope is Antichrist, because they condemn certaiu acts as Antichristian, is truly ridiculous. postasy take place, by which the head pastor of the church of Christ, becanie his declared enemy, in short, the Antichrst, and by which the church, whose faith had been divinely authenticated, became the great harlot, full of the names of blasphemy? This revolution, had it really taken place, would have been the greatest and the most remarkable that ever happened since the deluge hence, we might expect, that the witnesses, who profess to bear testimony to its reality, would agree, as to the time of its taking place. Let us now observe how far this is the act. The Lutheran Braunbom, who writes the most copiously, and the most confidently of this event, tells us, that the Popish Antichrist was borne in the year of Christ 86, that he grew to his full size in 376, that he was at his greatest strength in 636, that he began to decline in 1086, that he would die in 1640, and that the world would end in 1711.* Sebastian Francus af firms, that Antichrist appeared immediately after the apostles, and caused the external church, with its faith and sacraments, to disappear. The Protestant church of Transylvania pub lished that Antichrist first appeared A. D. 200. Napper declared that his coming was about 313, and that Pope Silvester was the man. Melancthon says, that Pope Zozimus, in 420, was the first Antichrist, while Beza transfers this character to the great and good St. Leo, A. D. 440.¶ Fleming fixes on the year 606 as the year of this great event, Bp. Newton on the year 727; but all agree, says the Rev. Henry Kett," that .he Antichristian power was fully established in 757, or 758.”* Notwithstanding this conident assertion, Cranmer's brother-inlaw, Bullinger, had, long before, assigned the year 763 as the era of this grand revolution,ff and Junius had put it off to 1073. Musculus could not discover Antichrist in the church till about 1200, Fox not till 1300,‡‡ and Martin Luther, as we have seen, not till his doctrine was condemned by Pope Leo in 1520. Such are the inconsistencies and contradictions of those learned Protestants, who profess to see so clearly the verification of the prophecies concerning Antichrist in the Roman pontiffs. I say contradictions, because those among them who pronounce Pope Gregory, or Leo the Great, or Pope Silvester, to have been Antichrist, must contradict those others, who admit them to have been respectively Christian pastors and saints. Now what credit do men of sense give to an account of any Bayle's Dict. Braunbom. De Abolend. Christ. per Antichris In locis postremo edit. ** Vol. il p. 58. tt In Apoc. † De Alvegand. Stat. Eccles. S Upon the Revel. ¶ In Confess General. In Eandem. |