THE Letters which I have received from you, and some others of your Religious Society, satisfy me that I have not altogether lost my labour in endeavouring to prove to you, that the Private Interpretation of Holy Scripture is not a more certain Rule of Faith, than an imaginary Private Inspiration is; and, in short, that the Church of Christ is the only sure expounder of the doctrine of Christ. Thus much you, Sir, in particular, candidly acknowledge: but you ask me, on the part of some of your friends as well as yourself, why, in case you must rely on authority, as Bishop Porteus confesses

the un

'learned must,' that is to say, the great bulk of man

kind, you should not, as he advises you, rely on the ' authority of that Church, which God's Providence ' hath placed you under, rather than that of another ' which you have nothing to do with (1),' and why you may not trust to the Church of England, in particular, to guide you in your road to heaven, with equal security as to the Church of Rome ?Before I answer you, permit me to congratulate with you on your advance towards the clear sight of the whole truth of revelation. As long as you professed to hunt out the several articles of this, one by one, through the several books of Scripture, and under all the difficulties and uncertainties which I have clearly shewn to attend this study, your task was interminable, and your success hopeless: whereas, now, by taking the Church of God for your guide, you have but one simple inquiry to make: Which is this Church? a question that admits of being solved by men of good will with equal certainty and facility. I say, there is but one inquiry to be made: Which is the true Church? because if there is any one religious truth more evident than the rest from reason, from the Scriptures, both Old (2)

(1) Confutation of Errors of Popery, p. 20.

(2) Speaking of the future Church of the Gentiles, the Almighty promises, by Isaiah: Sing, O barren, thou that didst not bear, &c.: as I have sworn that the waters of Noah should no more go over the earth, so I have sworn that I would not be wroth with thee, nor rebuke thee. For the mountains shall depart and the hills be removed, but my kindness shall not depart from thee, &c. liv. See also lix. lx. lxiii. Jerem. xxxiii, Exech. xxxvii. Dan. ii. Psalm lxxxix.

and New (1), from the Apostles' Creed (2), and from constant tradition it is this, that the Catholic Church preserves the true worship of the Deity; she being "the fountain of truth, the house of faith, and the "temple of God,' as an ancient Father of the Church expresses it (3). Hence it is as clear as the noon-day light, that by solving this one question: Which is the True Church? you will at once solve every question of religious controversy that ever has, or that ever can be agitated. You will not need to spend your life in studying the Sacred Scriptures in their original languages, and their authentic copies, and in confronting passages with each other, from Genesis to Revelations, a task by no means calculated, as is evident, for the bulk of mankind: you will only have to hear what the Church teaches upon the several articles of her faith, in order to know with certainty what God revealed concerning them. Neither need you hearken to contending sects, and doctors of the present, or of past times you will need only to hear the Church,

(1) Upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it. Matt. xvi. 18. I am with you all days even until THE END OF THE WORLD. Matt. xxviii. 20. I will pray the Father and he will give you another comforter, that he may abide with you FOR EVER, even the Spirit of Truth-he will teach you ALL TRUTH. John xiv. 16. &c. The House of God, which is the Church of the living God, THE PILLAR AND GROUND OF TRUTH. 1 Tim. iii. 14.

(2) I BELIEVE IN THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHURCH. Art. ix, (3) Lactan. De Divin. Instit. l. 4.

which indeed Christ commands you to hear under pain of being treated as a heathen or a publican. Matt. xviii. 17.

I now proceed, Dear Sir, to your question; why, admitting the necessity of being guided by the Church, may not you and your friends submit to be guided by the Church of England, or any other Protestant Church to which you respectively belong ?-My answer is; because no such Church professes, nor, consistently with the fundamental Protestant rule of private judgment, can profess to be a guide in matters of Religion. If you admit, but for an instant, Church-authority, then Luther, Calvin, and Cranmer, with all the other founders of Protestantism, were evidently heretics, by rebelling against it. In short, no other Church but the Catholic can claim to be a religious guide, because evidently she alone is the True Church of Christ. This assertion leads me to the proof of what I asserted above, respecting the facility and certainty with which persons of good will may solve that most important question: Which is the True Church?

Luther (1), Calvin (2), the Church of England (3), assign as the characteristics, or marks of the true Church of Christ, Truth of Doctrine, and the right Administration of the Sacraments. But to follow this method.

De Concil. Eccles. (2) Instit. l. 41. (3) Art. 19.