an unrestricted perusal and interpretation of the Scriptures, with respect to all sorts of persons, it is certain, that many of the wisest and most learned divines of his church have lamented this, as one of her greatest misfortunes. I will quote the words of one of them: "Aristarchus, of old, could hardly find seven wise men in all Greece: but, amongst us, it is difficult to find the same number of ignorant persons. They are all doctors and divinely inspired. There is not a fanatic or a mountebank, from the lowest class of the people, who does not vent his dreams for the word of God. The bottomless pit seems to be opened, and there come out of it locusts with stings; a swarm of sectaries and heretics, who have renewed all the heresies of former ages, and added to them numerous and monstrous errors of their own." 99 Since the above was written, the Bibliomania, or rage for the letter of the Bible, has been carried, in this country, to the utmost possible length, by persons of almost every description, Christians and Infidels; Trinitarians, who worship God in three persons, and Unitarians, who hold such worship to be idolatrous; Pædobaptists who believe they became Christians by baptism; Anabaptists, who plunge such Christians into the water, as mere Pagans; and Quakers, who ridicule all baptism, except that of their own imagination; Arminian Methodists, who believe themselves to have been justified without repentance, and Antinomian Methodists, who maintain, that they shall be saved without keeping the laws either of God or man; Churchmen, who glory in having preserved the whole orders and part of the missal and ritual of the Catholics; and the countless sects of Dissenters, who join in condemning these things as Antichristian Popery all these have forgotten, for a time, their characteristical tenets, and united in enforcing the reading of the Bible, as the only thing necessary! The Bible Societies are content, that all these contending religionists should affix whatever meaning they please to the Bible, provided only they read the text of the Bible? Nay, they are satisfied if they can but get the Hindoo worshippers of Juggernaut, the Thibet adorers of the Grand Lama, and the Taboo cannibals of the Pacific Ocean to do the same thing, vainly fancying, that this lecture will reform the vicious, reclaim the erroneous, and convert the Pagans. In the mean time, the experience of fourteen years proves, that theft, forgery, robbery, murder, suicide, and other crimes go on increasing with the most alarming rapidity; that every sect clings to its original errors, that not one Pagan is converted to Chris * Walton's Polyglot Prolegom. tianity, nor one Irish Catholic persuaded to exchange his faith for a Bible Book. When will these Bible enthusiasts comprehend, what learned and wise Christians of every age have known and taught, that the word of God consists not in the letter of Scripture, but in the meaning of it! Hence it follows, that a Catholic child, who is grounded in his short but comprehensive First Catechism, so called, knows more of the revealed word of God, than a Methodist preacher does, who has read the whole Bible ten times over. The sentiment expressed above is not only that of St. Jerom* and other Catholic writers, but also of the learned Protestant bishop, whom I have already quoted. He says, "The word of God does not consist in mere letters, but in the sense of it, which no one can better interpret than the true church, to which Christ committed this sacred deposite."t I am, &c. J. M. DEAR SIR, LETTER XLVIII. To JAMES BROWN, Jun. Esq. ON VARIOUS MISREPRESENTATIONS. THE learned prelate, who is celebrated for having concentrated the five sermons of his patron, archbishop Secker, and the more diffusive declamation of primate Tillotson against Popery; having gone through his regular charges on this topic, tries, in the end, to overwhelm the Catholic cause, with an accumulation of petty, or, at least, secondary objections, in a chapter which he entitles: various corruptions and superstitions of the church of Rome. The first of these is, that Catholics "equal the apocryphal with the canonical books" of Scripture to which I answer, that the same authority, namely, the authority of the Catholic church, in the fifth century, which decided on the canonical character of the Epistle to the Hebrews, the Revelations, and five other books of the New Testament, on the character of which till that time, the Fathers and ecclesiastical writers were not agreed, decided also on the cannonicity of the Books of Toby, Judith, and five other books of the Old Testament, being those which the prelate alludes to as apocryphal. If the church of the fifth century deserves to be heard in one part of her testimony, she evidently deserves to be heard in the other part.-His second objection is, that "The Romish church," as he calls the Catholic church, has made 68 a · Cap. 1 ad Galat. + Walton's Proleg. + P. 70. modern addition of five new sacraments, to the two appointed by Christ; making also the priest's intention necessary to the benefit of them." I have, in the course of these letters, vindicated the divine institution of these five sacraments, and have shown, that they are acknowledged to be sacraments no less than the other two, by the Nestorian and Eutychian heretics, &c. who separated from the church almost 1400 years ago, and in short, by all the Christian congregations of the world, except a comparatively few modern ones, called Protestants, in the north of Europe. It is from ignorance, or wilful misrepresentation, that the bishop of London charges "the Romish church with the modern addition of five new sacraments?" With respect to the intention of the minister of a sacrament, I presume there is no sensible person who does not see the essential difference there is between an action that is seriously performed, and the mimicking or mockery of it by a comedian or buffoon. Luther, indeed, wrote, that "the Devil himself would perform a true sacrament, if he used the right matter and form:" but I trust, that you, sir, and my other friends, will not subscribe to such an extravagance. I have also discussed the subjects of relics and miracles, which the prelate next brings forward; so that it is not necessary for me to say any thing more about them, than that the church, instead of "venerating fictitious relics, and inventing lying miracles," as he most calumniously accuses her of doing, is strict to an excess, in examining the proofs of them both, as he would learn, if he took pains to inquire. In short, there are but about two or three articles in his lordship's accumulated charges against his mother church, which seem to require a particular answer from me at present. One of these is the following: "Of the same bad tendency is their (the Catholics) engaging such multitudes of people in vows of celibacy and useless retirement from the world, their obliging them to silly austerities and abstinences, of no real value, as matters of great merit."* In the first place, the church never engages any person whomsoever in a vow of celibacy; on the contrary, she exerts her utmost power and severest censures, to prevent this obligation from being contracted rashly, or under any undue influence.t True it is, she teaches, that continency is a state of greater perfection than matrimony; but so does St. Paulț and Christ himself, in words too explicit and forcible to admit of controversy on the part of any sincere Christian. True it is, also, that having the choice of her sacred • P. 70. + Concil. Trid. Sess. xxv. De Reg. cap. 15, 16, 17, 18. See the whole chapter vii. of 1 Cor. 6 Mat. xix. 12. ministers, she selects those for the service of her altar, and for assisting the faithful in their spiritual wants, who voluntarily embrace this more perfect state:* but so has the Establishment expressed her wish to do also, in that very act which allows her clergy to marry. In like manner, I need go no further than the homily on fasting, or the "table of Vigils, fasts, and days of abstinence, to be observed in the year," prefixed to The Common Prayer Book, to justify our doctrine and practice, which the bishop finds fault with, in the eyes of every consistent ChurchProtestant. I believe the most severe austerities of our saints never surpassed those of Christ's precursor, whom he so much commended, clothed as he was with hair-cloth, and fed with the locusts of the desert. In a former letter to your society, I have replied to what the bishop here says concerning the deposing of kings by the Roman pontiff, and have established facts by which it appears, that more princes were actually dispossessed of the whole, or a large part, of their dominions, by the pretended gospel-liberty of the Reformation, within the first fifty years of this being proclaimed, than the Popes had attempted to depose during the preceding fifteen hundred years of their supremacy. To this accusation another of a more alarming nature is tacked, that of our "annulling the most sacred promises and engagements, when made to the prejudice of the church." These are other words for the vile hackneyed calumny of our not keeping faith with hereties." In refutation of this, I might appeal to the doctrine of our Theologians, and to the oath of the British Catholics; b I choose rather to appeal to historical facts, and to the practical lessons of the leading men by whom these have been conducted. I have mentioned, that when the Catholic * The second Council of Carthage, can. 3, and St. Epiphanius Hær. 48, 59, trace the discipline of sacerdotal continence up to the Apostles. +"Although it were not only better for the estimation of priests and other ministers, to live chaste, sole, and separated from wamen, and the bond of marriage, but also they might thereby the better attend to the administration of the Gospel; and it were to be wished that they would willingly endeavour themselves to a life of chastity, &c." 2 Edw. vi. c. 21. See the injunction of queen Elizabeth against the admission of women into colleges, cathedrals, &c. in Strype's Life of Parker See likewise a remarkable instance of her rudeness to that archbishop's wife. Ibid. and in Nichol's Progresses, A. D. 1561. + Mat. xi. 9. § P. 71. In the Protestant Charter-school Catechism, which is taught by authority, the following question and answer occur, p. 9. "Q. How do Papists treat those whom they call heretics ?-A. They hold that faith is not to be kept with heretics, and that the Pope can absolve subjects from their oath of allegiance to their Sovereigns.' See in particular the Jesuit Becanus De Fide Hæreticis prestanda. queen Mary came to the throne, a Protestant usurper, lady Jane, was set up against her, and that the bishops Cranmer, Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, Rogers, Poynet, Sandys, and every other Protestant of any note, broke their allegiance and engagements to her, for no other reason than because she was a Catholic, and the usurper a Protestant. On the other hand, when Mary was succeeded by her Protestant sister, Elizabeth, though the Catholics were then far more numerous and powerful than the Protestants, not a hand was raised, nor a seditious sermon preached against her. In the mean time, on the other side of the Tweed, where the new Gospellers had deposed their sovereign, and usurped her power, their apostle Knox, publicly preached, that "neither promise nor oath can oblige any man to obey or give assistance to tyrants against God ;"* to which lesson his colleague, Goodman, added: "If govenors fall from God, to the gallows with them." A third fellow-labourer in the same Gospel cause, Buchanan, maintained, that "princes may be deposed by their people, if they be tyrants against God and his truth, and that their subjects are free from their oaths and obedience." The same, in substance, were the maxims of Calvin, Beza, and the Huguenots of France, in general: the temporal interest of their religion was the ruling principle of their morality. But, to return to our own country: the enemies of church and state having hunted down the earl of Strafford, and procured him to be attainted of high treason, the king, Charles I, declared that he could not, in conscience, concur to his death, when the case being referred to the archbishops, Usher, and Williams, and three other Anglican bishops, they decided (in spite of his majesty's conscience, and his oath to administer justice in mercy) that he might, in conscience, send this innocent peer to the block, which he did accordingly. I should like to ask bishop Porteus, whether this decision of his * In his book addressed to the nobles and people of Scotland. † De Obedient. History of Scotland.-The same was the express doctrine of the Ge neva Bible, translated by Coverdale, Goodman, &c. in that city, and in common use among the English Protestants, till king James' reign: for in a note on verse 12 of 2d Mat. these translators expressly say, "A promise ought not to be kept, where God's honour and preaching of his truth is injured." Hist. Account of Eng. Translations, by A. Johnson, in Watson's Collect. vol. iii. p. 93. § Collier's Church History, vol. ii. p. 801.-On the other hand, when several of the Parliament's soldiers, who had been taken prisoners at Brentford, had sworn never again to bear arms against the king, they were "absolved from that oath," says Clarendon, " by their divines." Neal's Hist. by Grey, vol. iii. p. 10. ΙΔΟ Exam. of |