THE

END OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY.

PART III.

"It is a shame to charge men with what they are not guilty of, in order to make the breach wider, already too wide."-Dr. Montague, Bishop of Norwich. Invoc. of Saints, p. 60.

"Let them not lead people by the nose to believe they can prove their supposition, that the Pope is Antichrist, and the Papists idolaters, when they cannot."-Dr. Herbert Thorndyke, Prebendary of Westminster. Just Weights and Measures, p. 11

"The object of their (the Catholics') adoration of the blessed sacrament is the only true and eternal God, hypostatically joined with his holy humanity, which humanity they believe actually present under the veil of the sacramental signs; and if they thought him not present, they are so far from worshipping the bread in this case, that themselves profess it to be idolatry to do so."Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down. Liberty of Prophesying, chap. xx.

ON RECTIFYING MISTAKES CONCERNING THE

CATHOLIC CHURCH.

LETTER XXXI.

FROM JAMES BROWN, ESQ., TO THE RT. REV. JOHN MILNER.

INTRODUCTION.

REVEREND SIR

THE whole of your letters have again been read over in our society, and they have produced important, though diversified effects on the minds of its several members. For my own part, I am free to own that, as your former letters convinced me of the truth of your rule of faith, namely, the entire word of God, and of the right of the true church to expound it in all questions concerning its meaning; so your subsequent letters have satisfied me, that the characters or marks of the true church, as they are laid down in our common creeds, are clearly visible in the Roman Catholic Church, and not in the collection of Protestant churches, nor in any one of them. This impression was, at first, so strong upon my mind, that I could have answered you nearly in the words of King Agrippa to St. Paul:

Almost thou persuadest me to become a Catholic. Acts, xxvi. 28. The same appears to be the sentiments of several of my friends: but when, on comparing our notes together, we considered the heavy charges, particularly of superstition and idolatry, brought against your church by our eminent divines, and especially by the Bishop of London, (Dr. Porteus,) and never, that we have heard of, refuted or denied, we cannot but tread back the steps we have taken towards you, or rather stand still, where we are in suspense, till we hear what answer you will make to them. I speak of those contained in the bishop's well-known treatise, called A brief Confutation of the Errors of the Church of Rome. With respect to certain other members of our society, I am sorry to be obliged to say, that, on this particular subject, I mean the arguments in favor of your religion, they do not manifest the candor and good sense which are natural to them, and which they show on every other subject. They pronounce, with confidence and vehemence, that Dr. Porteus's charges are all true, and that you cannot make any rational answer to them; at the same time that several of these gentlemen, to my knowledge, are very little acquainted with the substance of them. In short, they are apt to load your religion, and the professors of it, with epithets and imputations too gross and injurious for me to repeat, convinced as I am of their falsehood. I shall not be surprised to hear that some of these imputations have been transmitted to you by the persons in question, as I have declined making my letters the vehicle of them; it is a justice, however, which I owe them to assure you, reverend sir, that it is only since they have understood the inference of your arguments to be such, as to imply an obligation on them of renouncing their own respective religions, and embracing yours, that they may have been so unreasonable and violent. Till this period, they appeared to be nearly as liberal and charitable with respect to your communion as to any other. I am, rev. sir, &c.

JAMES BROWN.

LETTER XXXII.—TO JAMES BROWN, ESQ., &c.

ON THE CHARGES AGAINST THE CATHOLIC CHURCH.

DEAR SIR

I SHOULD be guilty of deception, were I to disguise the satisfaction I derived from your and your friends' near approach to the house of unity and peace, as St. Cyprian calls the Catholic

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Church for such I must judge your situation to be, from the tenor of your last letter: by which it seems to me, that your entire reconciliation with this church depends on my refuting Bishop Porteus's objections against it. And yet, dear sir, if I were to insist on the strict rules of reasoning, I might take occasion of complaining of you, from the very concessions which afford me so much pleasure. In fact, if you admit that the church of God, is, by his appointment, the interpreter of the entire word of God, you ought to pay attention to her doctrine on every point of it, and not to the suggestions of Dr. Porteus, or your own fancy, in opposition to it. Again, if you are convinced that the one holy, Catholic and Apostolical Church is the true church of God, you ought to be persuaded that it is utterly impossible that she should inculcate idolatry, superstition, or any other wickedness, and, of course, that those who believe her to be thus guilty, are, and must be, in a fatal error. have proved from reason, tradition, and Holy Scripture, that, as individual Christians cannot of themselves judge with certainty of matters of faith, God has, therefore, provided them with an unerring guide, in his holy church; and hence, that Catholics, as Tertullian and St. Vincent of Lerins emphatically pronounce, cannot strictly and consistently be required, by those who are not Catholics, to vindicate the particular tenets of their belief either from Scripture or any other authority it being sufficient for them to show that they hold the doctrine of the true church, which all Christians are bound to hear. theless, as it is my duty, after the example of the apostle, to become all things to all men, 1 Cor. ix. 22, and as we Catholics are conscious of being able to meet our opponents on their own ground, as well as on ours, I am willing, dear sir, for your satisfaction, and that of your friends, to enter on a brief discussion of the leading points of controversy, which are agitated between the Catholics and the Protestants, particularly those of the Church of England. I must, however, previously stipulate with you for the following conditions, which I trust you will find perfectly reasonable.

Never

1st. I require that Catholics should be permitted to lay down their own principles of belief and practice; and, of course, to distinguish between their articles of faith, in which they must all agree, and mere scholastic opinions, of which every individual may judge for himself; as, likewise, between the authorized liturgy and discipline of the church and the unauthorized devotions and practices of particular persons. I insist upon this preliminary, because it is the constant practice of your controversialists to dress up a hideous figure, composed of their own misrepresentations, or else of those undefined opinions and un

authorized practices, which they call Popery; and then to amuse their readers or hearers with exposing the deformity of it, and pulling it to pieces. And I have the greater right to insist upon this preliminary, because our creeds and professions of faith, the acts of our councils and our approved expositions and catechisms, containing the principles of our belief and practice, from which no real Catholic, in any part of the world, can ever depart, are before the public, and upon constant sale among booksellers.

2dly. It being a notorious fact that certain individual Christians, or bodies of Christians, have departed from the faith and communion of the church of all nations, under pretence that they had authority for so doing; it is necessary that their alleged authority should be express and incontrovertible. Thus, for example, if texts of Scripture are brought for this purpose, it is evidently necessary that such texts should be clear in themselves, and not contrasted by any other texts seemingly of an opposite meaning. In like manner, when any doctrine or practice appears to be undeniably sanctioned by a father of the church, for example, of the third or the fourth century, without an appearance of contradiction from any other father, or ecclesiastical writer, it is unreasonable to affirm that he or his contemporaries were the authors of it, as Protestant divines are in the habit of affirming. On the contrary, it is natural to suppose that such father has taken up this, with the other points of his religion, from his predecessors, who received them from the apostles. This is the sentiment of that bright luminary St. Augustin, who says: "Whatever is found to be held by the universal church, and not to have had its beginning in bishops and councils, must be esteemed a tradition from those by whom the church itself was founded."*

You judged right in supposing that I have received some letters, containing virulent and gross invectives against the Catholic religion, from certain members of your society; these do not surprise or hurt me, as the writers of them have probably not yet had an opportunity of knowing much more of this religion, than what they could collect from fifth of November sermons, and others of the same tendency; or from circulated pamphlets expressly calculated to inflame the population against it and its professors. But what truly surprises and afflicts me is, that so many other personages in a more elevated rank of life, whose education and studies enable them to form a more just idea of the religious and moral principles of their ances tors, benefactors, and founders; in short, of their acknow

* Lib. ii. De Bapt.

ledged fathers and saints, should combine to load these fathers and saints with calumnies and misrepresentations, which they must know to be utterly false. But, a bad cause must be supported by bad means. They are unfortunately implicated in a revolt against the true church; and not having the courage and self-denial to acknowledge their error, and return to her communion, they endeavor to justify their conduct, by interposing a black and hideous mask before the fair countenance of this their true mother, Christ's spotless spouse. This is so far true, that when, as it often happens, a Protestant is, by dint of argument, forced out of his errors and prejudices against the true religion, if he be pressed to embrace it, and want grace to do it, he is sure to fly back to those very calumnies and misrepresentations, which he had before renounced. The fact is, he must fight with these, or yield himself unarmed to his Catholic opponent.

That you and your friends may not think me, dear sir, to have complained without just cause of the publications and sermons of the respectable characters I have alluded to, I must inform you that I have now lying before me a volume called Good Advice to the Pulpits, consisting of the foulest and most malignant falsehoods, against the Catholic religion and its professors, which tongue or pen can express, or the most envenomed heart conceive. It was collected from the sermons and treatises of prelates and dignitaries, by that able and faithful writer, the Rev. John Gother, soon after the gall of calumnious ink had been mixed up with the blood of slaughtered Catholics; a score of whom were executed as traitors, for a pretended plot to murder their friend and proselyte Charles II.; for a plot, which was hatched by men, who themselves were soon after convicted of a real assassination plot against the king. At that time, the Parliaments were so blinded, as repeatedly to vote the reality of the plot in question. Hence it is easy to judge with what sort of language the pulpits would resound against the poor devoted Catholics at that period. But without quoting from former records, I need only refer to a few of the publications of the present day, to justify my complaint.-To begin with some of the numberless slanders contained in the No Popery tract of the Bishop of London, Dr. Porteus: He charges Catholics with "senseless idolatry, to the infinite scandal of religion:" with trying to make the ignorant think that indulgences deliver the dead from hell; and that by means of zeal for holy church, the worst man may be secured from future misery:"* and the Bishop of St. Asaph, Dr. Halifax, charges Catholics with

* Confutation, pp. 39, 53, 55, edit. 1796.