nothing of Vitalis, I reject Meletius, I am ignorant of Paulinus: he who does not gather with thee, scatters," &c.* It were useless, after this, to cite the numerous testimonies to the pope's supremacy, which St. Augustin, and all the fathers, doctors, and church historians, and all the general councils bear, down to the present time. However, as the authority of our apostle, Pope Gregory the Great, is claimed by most Protestant divines on their side, and is alluded to by Bishop Porteus,† merely for having censured the pride of John, Patriarch of Constantinople, in assuming to himself the title of œcumenical or universal bishop; it is proper to show, that this pope, like all the others who went before him, and came after him, did claim and exercise the power of supreme pastor, throughout the church. Speaking of this very attempt of John, he says: "The care of the whole church was committed to Peter, and yet he is not called the universal apostle." With respect to the See of Constantinople, he says: "Who doubts but it is subject to the apostolical see?" and again, "When bishops commit a fault, I know not what bishop is not subject to it," (the See of Rome.)§ As no pope was ever more vigilant in discharging the duties of his exalted station, than St. Gregory, so none of them, perhaps, exercised more numerous or widely extended acts of the supremacy, than he did. It is sufficient to cite here his directions to St. Augustin of Canterbury, whom he had sent into this island for the conversion of our Saxon ancestors, and who had consulted him, by letter, how he was to act with respect to the French bishops, and the bishops of this island, namely, the British prelates in Wales, and the Pictish and Scotch in the northern parts? To this question Pope Gregory returns an answer in the following words: "We give you no jurisdiction over the bishops of Gaul, because, from ancient times, my predecessors have conferred the pallium (the ensign of legatine authority) on the Bishop of Arles, whom we ought not to deprive of the authority he has received. But we commit all the bishops of Britain to your care, that the ignorant among them may be instructed, the weak strengthened, and the perverse corrected by your authority." After this, is it possible to believe, that Bishop Porteus and his fellow-writers ever read Venerable Bede's History of the English Nation? But if they could ever succeed in proving, that Christ had not built his church upor St. Peter and his successors, and had not given to them the keys of the kingdom of heaven; it would still remain for them to prove that he had founded any part of it on Henry VIII., EdEp. Greg. 1. v. 20. § L. ix. 59. Spelm. Council, p. 98. * Ep. ad Damas. † P. 78. His. Bed. l. i. c. 27. Resp. 9. ward VI. and their successors, or that he had given the mystical keys to Elizabeth and her successors. I have shown, in a former letter, that these sovereigns exercised a more despotic power over all the ecclesiastical and spiritual affairs of this realm, than any pope ever did, even in the city of Rome; and that the changes in religion, which took place in their reigns, were effected by them and their agents, not by the bishops or any clergy whatever; and yet no one will pretend to show from Scripture, tradition, or reason, that these princes had received any greater power from Christ, over the doctrine and discipline of his church, than he conferred upon Tiberius, Pilate, or Herod, or than he has given, at the present day, to the great Turk or the Lama of Thibet, in their respective dominions. Before I close this letter, I think it right to state the sentiments of a few eminent Protestants, respecting the pope's supremacy. I have already mentioned that Luther acknowledged it, and submissively bowed to it, during the three first years of his dogmatizing about justification; and till his doctrine was condemned at Rome. In like manner, our Henry VIII. asserted it, and wrote a book in defence of it; in reward of which the pope conferred upon him and his successors the new title of Defender of the Faith. Such was his doctrine; till, becoming amorous of his queen's maid of honor, Ann Bullein, and finding the pope conscientiously inflexible, in refusing to grant him a divorce from the former, and to sanction an adulterous connection with the latter, he set himself up as supreme head of the Church of England, and maintained his claim by the arguments of halters, knives, and axes. James I. in his first speech in Parliament, termed Rome "the mother church,' " and in his writings allowed the pope to be "the Patriarch of the West." The late Archbishop Wake, after all his bitter writings against the pope and the Catholic Church, coming to discuss the terme of a proposed union between this church and that of England, expressed himself willing to allow a certain superiority to the Roman pontiff.* Bishop Bramhall had expressed the same sentiment, sensible, as he was, that no peace or order could subsist in the Christian church, any more than in a political state, without a supreme authority. Of the truth of this maxim, two others, among the greatest men whom Protestantism has to boast of, the Lutheran Melancthon, and the Calvinist Hugo Grotius, were deeply persuaded. The former had written to prove the pope to be Antichrist; but seeing the animosities, the divisions, the errors, and the impieties of the pretended reform "Suo gaudeat qualicunque Primatu. See Maclaine's Third Appendix to Mosheim's Eccl. Hist. vol. v. † Answer to Militiere. . ers, with whom he was connected, and the utter impossibility of putting a stop to these evils, without returning to the ancient system, he wrote to Francis I. of France: "We acknowledge, in the first place, that ecclesiastical government is a thing holy and salutary; namely, that there should be' certain bishops to govern the pastors of several churches, and that THE ROMAN PONTIFF should be above all the bishops. For the church stands in need of governors, to examine and ordain those who are called to the ministry, and to watch over their doctrine; so that, if there were no bishops, they ought to be created." The latter great man, Grotius, was learned, wise, and always consistent. In proof of this he wrote as follows, to the minister, Rivet: "All who are acquainted with Grotius, know how earnestly he has wished to see Christians united together in one body. This he once thought might have been accomplished by a union among Protestants; but, afterwards, he saw that this is impossible. Because, not to mention the aversion of Calvinists to every sort of union, Protestants are not bound by any ecclesiastical government, so that they can neither be united at present, nor prevented from splitting into fresh divisions. Therefore Grotius now is fully convinced, as many others are also, that Protestants never can be united among themselves, unless they join those who adhere to the Roman See; without which there never can be any general church government. Hence, he wishes that the revolt and the causes of it may be removed; among which causes, the primacy of the Bishop of Rome was not one, as Melancthon confessed, who also thought that primacy necessary to restore union." I am, yours, &c. JOHN MILNER. LETTER XLVII.-TO JAMES BROWN, JUN., ESQ., ON THE LANGUAGE OF THE LITURGY, AND ON READING THE HOLY SCRIPTURES. DEAR SIR I AGREE with your worthy father, that the departure of the Rev. Mr. Clayton to a foreign country, is a loss to your Salopian Society in more respects than one; and as it is his wish that I should address the few remaining letters I have to write, in an D'Argentre, Collect. Jud. t. i. p. 2.-Bercastle and Feller relate, that Melancthon's mother, who was a Catholic, having consulted him about her religion, he persuaded her to continue in it. swer to Bishop Porteus's book, to you, sir, who, it seems, agree with him in the main, but not altogether, on religious subjects, I shall do so for your own satisfaction and that of your friends, who are still pleased to hear me upon them. Indeed the remaining controversies between that prelate and myself are of light moment, compared with those I have been treating of, as they consist chiefly of disciplinary matters, subject to the control of the church, or of particular facts, misrepresented by his lordship. The first of these points of changeable discipline, which the bishop mentions, or rather declaims upon throughout a whole chapter, is the use of the Latin tongue in the public liturgy of the Latin Church. It is natural enough that the Church of England, which is of modern date, and confined to its own domain, should adopt its own language, in its public worship; and, for a similar reason, it is proper that the Great Western or Latin Church, which was established by the apostles, when the Latin tongue was the vulgar tongue of Europe, and which still is the common language of educated persons in every part of it, should retain this language in her public service. When the bishop complains of our worship being performed in an unknown tongue," and of our "wicked and cruel cunning, in keeping people in darkness," by this means, under pretext that "they reverence what they do not understand," he must be conscious of the irreligious calumnies he is uttering; knowing, as he does, that Latin is, perhaps, still the most general language of Christianity,* and that where it is not commonly understood, it is not the church which introduced a foreign language among the people, but it is the people who have forgotten their ancient language. So far removed is the Catholic Church from "the wicked and cruel cunning of keeping people in ignorance," by retaining her original apostolical languages, the Latin and the Greek; that she strictly commands her pastors everywhere, "to inculcate the word of God, and the lessons of salvation, to the people in their vulgar tongue, every Sunday and Festival throughout the year," and to "explain to them the nature and meaning of her divine worship as frequently as possible." In like manner, we are so far from imagining, that the less our people understand of our liturgy, the more they reverence it, that we are quite sure of precisely the contrary; particularly with respect to our principal liturgy, the adorable sacrifice of the Mass. *The Latin language is vernacular in Hungary and the neighboring countries; it is taught in all the Catholic settlements of the universe and it ap. proaches so near to the Italian, Spanish, and French, as to be understood, in a general kind of way, by those who use these languages. Idem. Sess. xxi. c. 8. + Concil. Trid. Sess. xxiv. c. 7. True it is, that a part of this is performed by the priest in silence; because, being a sacred action, as well as a form of words, some of the prayers which the priest says, would not be proper or rational in the mouths of the people. Thus, the high priest of old went alone into the tabernacle, to make the atonement ;* and thus Zachary offered incense in the temple by himself; while the multitude prayed without. But this is no detriment to the faithful, as they have translations of the liturgy, and other books in their hands, by means of which or of their own devotion, they can join with the priest in every part of the solemn worship; as the Jewish people united with their priests, in the sacrifices above-mentioned. But we are referred by his lordship to 1 Cor. xiv., in order "to see what St. Paul would have judged of the Romanists' practice, in retaining the Latin liturgy;" which, after all, he himself and St. Peter established where it now prevails. I answer, that there is not a word in that chapter which mentions or alludes to the public liturgy, which at Corinth was, as it is still, performed in the old Greek; the whole of it regarding an imprudent and ostentatious use of the gift of tongues in speaking all kinds of languages; which gift many of the faithful possessed at the time, in common with the apostles. The very reason, alleged by St. Paul, for prohibiting extempore prayers and exhortations, which no one understood, namely, that all things should be done decently and according to order, is the principal motive of the Catholic Church for retaining, in her worship, the original languages employed by the apostles. She is, as I before remarked, a universal church, spread over the face of the globe, and composed "of all nations, and tribes, and tongues," Rev. vii. 9, and these tongues constantly changing; so, that instead of the uniformity of worship, as well as of faith, which is so necessary for that decency and order, there would be nothing but confusion, disputes, and changes in every part of her liturgy, if it were performed in so many different languages and dialects; with the constant danger of some alteration or other in the essential forms, which would vitiate the very sacrament and sacrifice. The advantage of an ancient language, for religious worship, over a modern one, in this and other respects, is acknowledged by the Cambridge Professor of Divinity, Dr. Hey. He says, that such a one "is fixed and venerable, free from vulgarity, and even more perspicuous." But to return to Bishop Porteus's appeal to the judgment of St. Paul, concerning “the Romanists' practice, in retaining the language with the substance of their primitive liturgy," I leave you, dear sir, and Lectures, vol. iv. p. 191 *Levit. xvi. 17. + Luke i. 10. |