pealing to any other principle but truth and holiness, will be removed also.

There however have been, in many cases, worldly things, treated of by men of this world: a pernicious principle was admitted; but the source of truth and holy earnestness was not yet poisoned; banter had not yet been employed upon things Divine. This is now inadvertently commenced, and the more dangerously because inadvertently. Hitherto it had scarcely been found except among Infidels.

I would then, Sir, request you for a while to lay aside the thoughts of the amusement which your Letter has caused to yourself or others, and to consider in earnestness some of the evils into which it has betrayed you, and may and must betray others. I will confine myself to three :

1. Irreverent treatment of holy things.

2. Sacrifice of truth.

3. False insinuation, and consequently slandering.

And these I impute, not to yourself: on the contrary, I think that, in your natural character, you would be very far from them. I would speak of them only as inseparable consequences of the line which you have taken.

I. IRREVERENCE.-It may suffice, Sir, to mention some of the subjects which were necessarily brought into your illadvised jest.

1. Persons' belief as to our Lord's presence in the Communion.

2. The mode in which the Commission ordained for the preaching and maintenance of the everlasting Gospel has been continued to this day.

3. The maintenance of the form of our public worship, and the doctrines therein contained.

4. The comfort which the dying Christian obtains from the provisions of our Church.

5. The unity of the Church of Christ.

6. The authority of His bishops, or of His Church.

7. The quiet frame of mind of a simple, undisputing Christian.

It is not here the question, whether any of the writers whom you ridicule, over-stated the truth upon any of these points. I am convinced that they have not. But granting that they had, is ridicule a safe, a Christian, a godly, weapon to employ in such matters? Is it possible that those who should have been thereby made ashamed of, or scared from, any of those statements, would approach the consideration of the truth itself with that deep and considerate earnestness and reverence of mind which the subject requires,—if, indeed, you yet hold that there be any truth at all connected even with these subjects? Is it not too probable that the infection of this ridicule will extend to other truths; some of which, I presume, you would not wish to see thus assailed? since the efficacy of Baptism, the strengthening of the believer's soul by the Body and Blood of his Lord in the holy Eucharist, the Divinity of our Redeemer, and His sacrifice for sin, have been, and still are by some, represented as relics of Popery? The Socinians, and, more recently, the Rationalists of Germany, regarded or represented themselves as carrying on the work of the first Reformers, in purging Christianity from Papal corruptions.

Ridicule cannot be employed with impunity as a test of truth: error and truth often lie so closely together, nay, most religious error has so much of truth mingled up with it, that the very love of truth ought to preclude the use of jesting; not to say that the fearfulness of the subject, and the majesty of Almighty God, might well instinctively awe man into sobriety. For, through this close connexion of truth and error, mire cannot be cast at error, without defiling the truth also. To take the most palpable errors,-Could a man jest at Transubstantiation, and not thereby unfit his mind for the reception of the holy mystery of the Communion? or would not a mocking at the false doctrine of the Mediation of the Saints lower

men's notions of their high and holy state? or has not the jesting, even at the most unreal delusions of the imagination, injured men's faith in the influences of God's Blessed Spirit? Throughout, Sir, we are standing upon holy ground; and it beseems us to pull the shoes from off our feet, and tread reverently. Let error be removed as a disease, gently handling those who suffer under it, or repressing those who wilfully propagate it; but let us not sport with the Enemy of men's souls.

This subject, however, has been handled by one to whose talents you would perhaps pay deference,-Bp. Warburton; and to him I would refer you. He has not indeed the earnestness or depth of the writers of the seventeenth century, yet he states facts which it were well for this age to lay to heart. For we are now reaping the harvest which the infidels of his day sowed; only in his times men yet looked to principles-in these they regard only their practical efficiency in carrying a point: then the evil was without, now it is admitted within the Church. I will now, then, request your attention to a few extracts only from his Address to the Freethinkers, to whom he dedicates the first three books of the Divine Legation. "Your writers offer your considerations to the world, either under the character of petitioners for oppressed and injured truth, or of teachers to ignorant and erring men. These sure are characters that, if any, require seriousness and gravity to support them. But so great strangers are we to decorum on our entry on the stage of life, that, for the most part, we run giddily on, in a mixed and jumbled character; but have most an end, a strong inclination to make a farce of it, and mingle buffoonery with the most serious scenes. Hence, even in religious controversy, while the great cause of eternal happiness is trying, and men and angels, as it were, attending the issue of the conflict, we can find room for a merry story.-"This quality [of making men laugh] causing the writer to be so well received, yours have been tempted to dispense with the solemnity of their character, as thinking it of much importance to get the laugh on their side. Hence ridicule is become their favourite figure of speech.-It is inconceivable what havoc false wit makes in a foolish head. The rabble of mankind,' as an excellent writer [Addison] well observes, apt to think, that every thing which is laughed at, with any mixture of wit, is ridiculous in itself.' Few reflect on what a great wit [Wycherly] has so ingeniously owned, that wit is generally false reasoning.'—

being very

of this generation must look to it, lest the fear of avowing their conviction lead to the same result with regard to the sacraments of their Lord; whether they have not already taken the first steps.

II. SACRIFICE OF TRUTH.

This again I would regard as the inevitable result of the use of ridicule; and its ill tendency is the more illustrated by its having corrupted your natural love of fairness. It is part of the character which you have adopted, not of your own. For having once resolved on the fiction which was to be the vehicle of your satire, then the laws of composition required that the fiction should be in keeping, however at variance with the laws of truth. The laws of fiction are indeed stern laws, since they require the sacrifice of whatever is at variance with themselves. Having adopted the fiction of a letter from the Pope to certain members of your Church, as being his emissaries, it became necessary, by disguise, or omission, or perversion, to conceal whatever would have disturbed the unity of the drama. For instance, you play not unfrequently upon the words which one of these writers addresses to the Church of Rome," Cum talis sis, utinam noster esses." And who would not echo the wish? Who,-bearing in mind the holy truths which Rome, amid her corruptions, yet holds, how much of the highest Christian truth, which many Protestant bodies have lost, or are in jeopardy of losing, on the mystery of the Trinity, of the Incarnation, and its consequences; or considering, again, the extent of her Communion,-would not wish, and long, and pray that she might be freed from her antiChristian servitude; that she, as ourselves have been, might be restored to her primeval purity, when she was once the guardian of Christian truth; that God would "break the yoke of her burden, the staff on her shoulder, and the rod of her oppressor?" (Is. ix. 4.) Taken then in their obvious sense, the words are the expression of every Christian heart. Your fiction

however, required that they should express a desire for union with Rome AS SHE IS; and in this sense, accordingly, you quote them. The very next words of the writer contradict this. He proceeds (and to prevent the possibility of a mistake, he has printed these words in capitals),—

"But, alas! AN UNION IS IMPOSSIBLE. Their communion is infected with heterodoxy: we are bound to flee it as a pestilence. They have established a lie in the place of God's truth; and by their claim of immutability in doctrine, cannot undo the sin they have committed. They cannot repent. Popery must be destroyed; it cannot be reformed."

Honesty required the insertion of these words; but they would have spoiled the jest, and so they are omitted.

Again, as a member, to all appearance, of our Church, and so having no prejudice against her, it is hardly probable that you should believe what a recent author' has well termed "The fable of the Nag's Head consecration." Bishop Bull calls it "a putid fable;" and even Lingard, who shrinks not from any plausible fable, discards it". It suited, however, your assumed character, and so, in answer to the words

"As to the fact of Apostolical succession, every link in the chain is known, from St. Peter to our present metropolitans."

You reply:

1 Short's History of the Church of England, chap. viii. § 409.

Strype has been very particular in recording every thing which was done on this occasion, from the most authentic documents, in order to refute the fable of the Nag's Head consecration, which was promulgated by the Roman Catholics about forty years after the event had taken place, when it might have been supposed that all direct testimony had been lost. The story is, that the bishops met at a tavern which bore that sign, and that when Oglethorp refused to consecrate them, Scory laid a Bible on each of their heads, and bade them rise up bishops. The tale has been refuted as often as brought forward."

The following also is the statement of the Calvinist Professor, John Prideaux. "The public acts are still extant in Mason and others, honestly brought forward, and they sufficiently annihilate this transparent lie of the calumniators. Archbishop Abbot caused them to be shown to certain priests, to convince them of the impudence of this fiction, that so they might at length cease from seducing so wickedly their credulous Proselytes." (Controv. de Disciplina Ecclesiæ, p. 248. The Italics are his.) 2 Hist. of England, Vol. vii. Note I.