But let us follow Mr. White to England, and see how he profited of his escape from the horrors of Popery. He tells us that the unmeaning ceremonies of Catholics had made him sick of Churches and Church Service. If Mr. -White had ever done his duty as a Priest, he would have examined the ceremonies of our Church more closely, and would have found that no one of them is without meaning. Very many have produced the most striking effects upon strangers who witnessed them, and have proved the beginning of far more valuable conversions than Addison's Hymn caused in Mr. Blanco White. Why, then, does he thus condemn our venerable ceremonies by wholesale, when he knows that the greater part of them are of the highest antiquity, and are only unmeaning to those who have "said in their hearts, there is no God?" He affects to have been moved with the "beautiful simplicity" and "warm heartiness" of the Book of Common Prayer. Did he not know that whatever beauty that Book contains, belongs to the Catholic Missal, Ritual and Breviary, from which it is often literally translated? Yes, he knew all this; but his studied malevolence against the Catholic Church prompted him to conceal it.

After saying the Lord's Prayer every morning for three years, and reading Paley's Evidences, Mr. White tells us that he was enabled "with humble sincerity to receive the Sacrament according to the manner of the Church of England, which appeared to him to be, of all human establishments, the most suited in her discipline, to promote the ends of the Gospel; and in her doctrines, as pure and orthodox as those which

were founded by the Apostles themselves." This sentence owns a great deal more, probably, than Mr. White meant to acknowledge. The Church of England may be the best of human establishments; and if Mr. White was in search of nothing higher, he did well to turn in there. The Catholic Church is no human establishment; it claims a divine foundation, and to have been built by the Apostles themselves, which Mr. White here admits that the Church of England was not, as indeed all the world knows.

When Mr. White, soon after, was wavering between the Church of England Doctrines and Unitarianism, he tells us that, in the midst of all his doubts, he presented himself at the Sacramental Table. We should be glad to know what dispositions he possessed for receiving that which, whatever the Church of England believe it to be, she considers Faith at least quite necessary to receive. In fact Faith is the whole of a Protestant's Communion; for if he expects to receive Christ at all in his Sacrament, it is only by Faith that he considers himself to partake of His body and blood-so that Mr. White, in the judgment of a Protestant, must have had glorious dispositions for Communion, with his mind full of doubts about the Divinity of the Son of God. However, this communion wrought wonders, if we are to believe Mr. White; for after it he found himself stronger than ever in the Creed of the Church of England.

After detailing his various fluctuations in religion, Mr. White is forced to give testimony to the truth in these remarkable words: "Happy, indeed, are those millions of humble Christians,

who from the publication of the Gospel to our own times, have received the doctrines of the Bible by the simple means of their Catechism, and the instructions imparted by their Christian Pastors, and so ordered their lives as not to wish those doctrines to be false! How infinitely more happy is the lot of these humble Christians, than mine!"* This is a true Catholic sentence. Our Church has ever proceeded upon the simple method here commended: and if Mr. White still thinks well of it, why has he joined a communion, which by extolling private interpretation, and making every man independent of pastoral instruction, acts completely at variance with the plan, which Mr. White here pronounces to be best calculated to make millions happy? But let the candid reader mark well the avowal contained in the words we have put in italics; and say if they do not refute his whole book, and if it be not just to exclaim: "De ore tuo te judico!"†

He

Towards the close of the First Dialogue in Mr. White's "Preservative," he is asked this question: "Do you believe then, sir, that the Roman Catholics are not Christians?" answers, that though he has known most sincere followers of Christ amongst them, he is convinced that Catholicism, by laying another foundation than Christ, by making the Pope, with his Church, if not the author, certainly the finisher of their Faith, exposes its members to the most imminent danger from the arguments of infidelity. If Mr. White has known most sincere followers of Christ

* Preservative, pages 19 and 20.

+ St. Luke, xix. 22.

amongst Catholics, our religion cannot be so bad as he otherwise labours hard to represent it; if it were possible for him to have been a sincere follower of Christ in our communion, he need not have left; nor is there any room for the exultation he affects to feel at his change from it. There cannot be any thing radically bad in a communion, which is capable of forming sincere followers of Christ;* and therefore the charge of making the Pope the finisher of our faith, and building upon another foundation than Christ, is as contradictory and inconsequent as it is false and malevolent. How will Mr. White attempt

* Hebrews, xii. 2.

†This question which Mr. White puts to himself in the Dialogue, is as embarrassing as the celebrated one which St. Francis, of Sales, put to Theodore Beza; and Mr. White will find it as difficult as that reformer did to avoid its overwhelming consequence. St. Francis, of Sales, asked Beza, whether salvation was attainable in the Catholic Church? Beza left the room to consider; and after walking about in an agitated manner for a quarter of an hour, he returned to St. Francis, and said: “We are alone; I can expose my real sentiments; yes, I believe salvation to be there attainable." St. Francis, availing himself of an answer which gave him such a manifest advantage over Beza, observed, that he must then believe that the Catholic Church was the true Church; because if it were not the Church established by Christ, salvation could no more be attainable out of it, than security from destruction could be found out of the ark in the deluge. Beza made no reply; and St. Francis asked, why then he had left the Catholic Church; for, he observed, nothing but the absolute impossibility of being saved in the Catholic Church could justify such a separation from its communion. Beza was extremely embarrassed by this and other questions of the holy prelate, and became towards the end very violent and even insolent. But the immoveable

to prove so odious an accusation against the Catholic Church? In what book of Divinity, or in what profession of Faith did he ever find Catholics holding doctrines which by any perversion, but his own, could be construed into a blasphemous opposition to the words of the great Apostle, who directs us ever to look "on Jesus, the author and finisher of Faith?" Mr. White knows very well that we have ever believed Christ Jesus our Lord to be the supreme head of our Church that we only obey and reverence the Pope as his vicar and representative on earth: that in submitting to the authority of the Church, we believe ourselves submitting to Divine authority delegated to the Church by those memorable words, to the latter part of which Mr. White would do well to attend: "he that heareth you, heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me."* How, then, can the monstrous charge be substantiated, that we blasphemously make the Pope with his Church the finisher of our Faith? Our Church proposes nothing to our Faith but what she received from the Apostles, and was

meekness of St. Francis made him ashamed of his violence, and he at last made a handsome apology.

Libertinism contributed not a little to the apostacy of this unhappy man. When he was asked in confidence by Deshayes what was the leading reason which connected him with the Calvinists, Beza called in a beautiful young woman who lived with him, and said: "That is the principal reason which convinces me of the excellence of my religion." Deshayes was struck with horror at such an answer, especially as Beza was then advanced in years. See a full account of St. Francis's conferences with Beza, in the life of the Saint, by Marsollier, vol. 1. book 3d.

St. Luke, c. x. 16.