offered, and as to the priest who offers it, differing in nothing but the manner of offering;* in the one there being a real, and in the other a mystical, effusion of the victim's blood. So far from invalidating the Catholic doctrine on this point, the apostle confirms it in this very epistle; where, quoting and repeating the sublime psalm of the royal prophet concerning the Messiah: Thou art a priest for ever ACCORDING TO THE ORDER OF MELCHISEDECH, Ps. cix. alias cx.: he enlarges on the dignity of this sacerdotal patriarch, to whom Aaron himself, the high priest of the old law, paid tribute, as to his superior, through his ancestor Abraham. Heb. v.-vii. Now in what did this Order of Melchisedech consist? In what, I ask, did this sacrifice differ from those which Abraham himself, and the other patriarchs, as well as Aaron and his sons, offered? Let us consult the sacred text, as to what it says concerning this royal priest, when he came to meet Abraham, on his return from vic. tory: "Melchisedech, the king of Salem, bringing forth BREAD AND WINE, for he was the priest of the Most High God; blessed him." Gen. xiv. 18. It was then in offering up a sacrifice of bread and wine,‡ instead of slaughtered animals, that Melchisedech's sacrifice differed from the generality of those in the old law, and that he prefigured the sacrifice which Christ was to institute in the new law, from the same elements. No other sense but this can be elicited from the Scripture as to this matter; and, accordingly, the holy fathers unanimously adhere to this meaning.§ In finishing this letter, I cannot help, dear sir, making two or three short but important observations. The first regards the deception practised on the unlearned by the above-named bishops, Dr. Hey, and most other Protestant controvertists, in talking on every occasion of the Popish mass, and representing the tenets of the real presence, transubstantiation, and a subsisting true propiatory sacrifice, as peculiar to Catholics; whereas, if they are persons of any learning, they must know that these are, and ever have been held, by all the Christians in the world, except the comparatively few who inhabit the northern parts of Europe. I speak of the Melchite or common Greeks of Turkey, the Armenians, the Muscovites, the Nestorians, the Eutychians, or Jacobites, the Christians of St. Thomas in India, the Cophts and Ethiopians in Africa, all of whom maintain each of those arti *Concil. Trid. Sess. xxii. cap. 2. + Cat. ad. Paroc. P. ii. p. 81. The sacrifice of Cain, Gen. iv. 3, and that ordered in Levit. ii. 1, of flour, oil, and incense, prove that inanimate things were sometimes of old offered in sacrifice. § St. Cypr. Ep. 63. St. Aug. on Ps. xxxiii. St. Chrys. Hom. 35. St. Jerom, Ep. 126, &c. cles, and almost every other on which Protestants differ from Catholics, with as much firmness as we ourselves do. Now as these sects have been totally separated from the Catholic Church, some of them eight hundred, and some fourteen hundred years, it is impossible they should have derived any recent doctrines or practices from her; and, divided as they ever have been among themselves, they cannot have combined to adopt them. On the other hand, since the rise of Protestantism, attempts have been repeatedly made to draw some or other of them to the novel creed, but all in vain. Melancthon translated the Augsburg Confession of Faith into Greek, and sent it to Joseph, Patriarch of Constantinople, hoping he would adopt it; whereas the patriarch did not so much as acknowledge the receipt of the present.* Fourteen years later, Crusius, Professor of Tubigen, made a similar attempt on Jeremy, the successor of Joseph, who wrote back, requesting him to write no more on the subject, at the same time making the most explicit declaration of his belief in the seven sacraments, the sacrifice of the mass, transubstantiation, &c.t-In the middle of the seventeenth century, fresh overtures being made to the Greeks by the Calvinists of Holland, the most convincing evidence of the orthodox belief of all the above-mentioned communions, on the articles in question, were furnished by them: the original of which was deposited in the French king's library at Paris. I have to remark, in the second place, on the inconsistencies of the Church of England, respecting this point: she has priests,§ but no sacrifice! she has altars, but no victim! she has an essential consecration of the sacramental elements, without any the least effect upon them! Not to dive deeper into this chaos, I would gladly ask Bishop Porteus; what hinders a deacon, or even a layman, from consecrating the sacramental bread and wine, as validly as a priest or a bishop can do, agreeably to his system of consecration? There is evidently no obstacle at all, except such as the mutable law of the land interposes. In the last place, I think it right to quote some of the absurd and irreligious invectives of the renowned Dr. Hey against the holy mass, because they show the extreme ignorance of our religion which generally prevails among the most learned Protestants who write + Sheffmac. tom. ii. p. 7. Perpetuit. de la Foi. + Ibid. § See the Rubrics of the Communion Service. See ditto, in Sparrow's Collec. p. 20. "If the consecrated bread or wine be all spent, before all have communicated, the priest is to consecrate more." Rubrics. N. B. Bishop Warburton and Bishop Cleaver earnestly contend, that the eucharist is a feast upon a sacrifice; but as, in their dread of Popery, they admit no change, nor even the reality of a victim, their feast is proved to be an imaginary banquet on an ideal viand. 66 against it. The doctor first describes the mass as blasphemous, in dragging down Christ from heaven," according to his expression; 2dly, as "pernicious in giving men an easy way," as he pretends, "of evading all their moral and religious duties;" 3dly, "as promoting infidelity;" in conformity with which latter assertion, he maintains, that “most Romanists of letters and science are infidels." He next proceeds seriously to advise Catholics to abandon this part of their sacred liturgy, namely, the adorable sacrifice of the new law; and he then concludes his theological farce with the following ridiculous threats against this sacrifice: "If the Romanists will not listen to our brotherly exhortations, let them fear our threats. The rage of paying for masses will not last for ever; as men improve (by the French revolution) it will continue to grow weaker: as philosophy (that of Atheism) rises, masses will sink in price, and superstition pine away."* I wish I had an opportunity of telling the learned professor, that I should have expected, from the failure of Patriarch Luther, counselled and assisted as he was by Satan himself, in his attempts to abolish the holy mass, he would have been more cautious in dealing prophetic threats against it! In fact, he has lived to see this divine worship publicly restored in every part of Christendom where it was proscribed, when he vented his menaces; for as to the private celebration of mass, this was never intermitted, not even in the depth of the gloomiest dungeons, and where no pay could be had by the Catholic priesthood. What other religious worship, I ask, could have triumphed over such a persecution? The same will be the case in the latter days, when the man of sin shall have indignation against the covenant of the sanctuary—and shall take away the continual sacrifice, Dan. xi. 30, 34; for even then, the mystical woman who is clothed with the sun, and has the moon under her feet-shall fly into the wilderness, Rev. xii. 1, 6, and perform the divine mysteries of a God incarnate in caverns and catacombs, as she did in early times; till that happy day, when her heavenly Spouse, casting aside those sacramental veils under which his love now shrouds him, shall shine forth in the glory of God the Father, the Judge of the living and the dead. I am, &c. JOHN MILNER. * Dr. Hey's Theol. Lectures, vol. iv. p. 385. The professor tells us in a note, that this lecture was delivered in the year 1792, the hey-day of that antichristian and anti-social philosophy, which attempted, through an ocean of blood, to subvert every altar and every throne. LETTER XLI.—TO THE REV. ROBERT CLAYTON, M. A. ON ABSOLUTION FROM SIN. REVEREND SIR I PERCEIVE that, in selecting objections against the church, although you chiefly follow Bishop Porteus, who mixes, in the same chapter, the heterogeneous subjects of the mass and the forgiveness of sins, you adopt some others from the Tracts of Bishop Watson, and even from writers of such little repute as the Rev. C. De Coetlogan. This preacher, in venting the hor rid calumnies which a great proportion of other Protestant preachers and controvertists of different sects, equally with himself, instil into the minds of their ignorant hearers and readers, expresses himself as follows: "In the Church of Rome, you may purchase not only pardon for sins already committed, but for those that shall be committed; so that any one may promise himself impunity, upon paying the rate that is set upon any sin he hath a mind to commit.-And so truly is Popery the mother of abominations, that if any one hath wherewithal to pay, he may not only be indulged in his present transgressions, but may even be permitted to transgress in future."* And are these shameless calumniators real Christians, who believe in a judgment to come? And do they expect to make us Catholics renounce our religion, by representing it to us as the very reverse of what we know it to be ?-It is true, Bishop Porteus, in his attack upon the Catholic doctrine of absolution and justification, does not go the lengths of the pulpit declaimer above quoted, and of the other controvertists alluded to; still he is guilty of * Abominations of the Church of Rome, p. 13. The preacher goes on to state the sums of money for which, he says, Catholics believe they may commit the most atrocious crimes: "For incest, &c., five sixpences; for debauching a virgin, six sixpences; for perjury, ditto; for him who kills his father, mother, &c., one crown and five groats!"-This curious account is borrowed from the Taxa Cancellariæ Romanæ, a book which has been frequently published, though with great variations both as to the crimes and the prices, by the Protestants of Germany and France, and as frequently condemned by the See of Rome. It is proper that Mr. Clayton and his friend should know, that the pope's court of chancery has no more to do, nor pretends to have any more to do, with the forgiveness of sins, than his majesty's court of chancery does. In case there ever was the least real groundwork for this vile book, which I cannot find there was, the money paid into the papal chancery could be nothing else but the fees of office, on restoring certain culprits to the certain privileges which they had forfeited by their crimes. When the proceedings in Doctors' Commons, in a case of incest, are suspended, (as have known them suspended during the whole life of one of the accused parties,) fees of office are always required; but would it not be a vile calumny to say, that leave to commit incest may be purchased in England for certain sums of money? much gross misrepresentation of it. As his language on the subject is confused, if not contradictory, I will briefly state what the Catholic Church has ever believed, and has solemnly defined in her last general council, concerning it. The Council of Trent teaches, that "All men lost their innocence, and became defiled, and children of wrath, in the prevarication of Adam;"-that, "not only the Gentiles were unable by the force of nature, but that even the Jews were unable, by the law of Moses, to rise, notwithstanding free-will was not extinct in them, however weakened and depraved ;"*—that, "The heavenly Father of mercy and God of all consolation sent his Son, Jesus Christ, to men, in order to redeem both Jews and Gentiles ;"t-that, " Though he died for all, yet all do not receive the benefit of his death; but only those to whom the merit of his passion is communicated;"-that, for this purpose, "Since the preaching of the Gospel, baptism, or the desire of it, is necessary;"-that, "The beginning of justification, in adult persons, (those who are come to the use of reason,) is to be derived from God's preventing grace, through Jesus Christ, by which, without any merits of their own, they are called; so that they who, by their sins, were averse from God, are, by his exciting and assisting grace, prepared to convert themselves to their justification, by freely consenting to, and co-operating with his grace;"--that, "Being excited and assisted by divine grace, and receiving faith from hearing, they are freely moved towards God, believing the things which have been divinely revealed and promised-they are excited to hope that God will be merciful to them for Christ's sake, and they begin to love him, as the fountain of all justice; and therefore are moved to a certain hatred and detestation of sins;"-lastly, "They resolve, on receiving baptism, to begin a new life, and keep God's commandments."-Such is the doctrine of the church concerning the justification of the adult in baptism. With respect to the pardon of sins committed after baptism, the church teaches that, "The penance of a Christian, after his fall, is very different from that of baptism, and that it consists not only in refraining from sins, and sincerely detesting them; that is, in a contrite and humble heart; but also in a sacramental confession of them, in desire at least, and at a proper time; and the priestly absolution. Likewise in satisfaction; by fasting, alms, prayers, and other pious exercises of a spiritual life; not indeed for the eternal punishment, which, together with the crime, is remitted in the sacrament, or the desire of the sacrament, but for the tem * Sess. vi. cap. i. + Cap. ii. Cap. v. + Cap. iii. |