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are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and they shall hear my voice, and there shall be ONE FOLD, and one Shepherd. John x. 16. To the same effect, addressing his heavenly Father, previously to his passion, he says, I pray for all that shall believe in me, that THEY MAY BE ONE, as thou, Father, art in me and I in thee. John xvii. 20, 21. In like manner St. Paul emphatically inculcates the Unity of the Church, where he writes: We being many are ONE BODY in Christ, and every one members one of another. Rom. xii. 5. Again he writes: There is ONE BODY and one spirit, as you are called in one hope of your calling; one Lord, ONE FAITH, and one Baptism. Ephes. iv. 4, 5. Conformably with this doctrine, respecting the necessary Unity of the Church, this Apostle reckons HERESIES among the sins which exclude from the kingdom of God, Gal. v. 20, and he requires that a man who is a heretic, after the first and second admonition, be rejected. Titus iii. 10.

The Apostolical Fathers, St. Polycarp and St. Ignatius, in their published Epistles, hold precisely the same language on this subject with St. Paul; as does also their disciple, St. Irenæus, who writes thus: "No Reformation can be so 'advantageous as the evil of schism is perni'cious. (1) The great light of the third century, St. Cyprian, has left us a whole book on the Unity of the Church, in which, among other similar passages, he writes as follows: There is but one God and one Christ, and one faith, and a people joined in one solid body with the cement of concord. This unity cannot suffer a division, 'nor this one body bear to be disjointed.-He 6 cannot have God for his Father, who has not the Church for his mother. If any one could escape the deluge out of Noah's ark, he who is out of the Church may also escape.-To aban'don the Church is a crime, which blood cannot

(1) De Hær. 1. i, c. 3.

'wash away. Such an one may be killed, but he 'cannot be crowned.' (1) In the fourth century, the illustrious St. John Chrysostom writes thus: 'We know that salvation belongs to the Church alone, and that no one can partake of Christ, nor can be saved out of the Catholic Church and 'faith.' (2) The language of St. Augustin, in the fifth century, is equally strong on this subject, in numerous passages. Among others, the synodical Epistle of the Council of Zerta, in 412, drawn up by this Saint, tells the Donatist schismatics: Whoever is separated from this Catholic Church, however innocently he may think he lives, for 'this crime alone, that he is separated from the 'unity of Christ, will not have life, but the anger of God remains upon him.' (3) To the same effect and not less emphatical are the testimonies of St. Fulgentius and St. Gregory the Great, in the sixth century, in various passages of their writings. I shall content myself with citing one of them. Out of this Church,' says the former Father, neither the name of Christian avails, 'nor does baptism save, nor is a clean sacrifice 'offered, nor is there forgiveness of sins, nor is 'the happiness of eternal life to be found.' (4) In short, such has been the language of the Fathers and the Doctors of the Church in all ages, concerning her essential Unity, and the indispensable obligation of being united to her.

(1) Cypr. de Unit. Oxon, p. 109. (3) Concil. Labbe, tom. ii, p. 1520.

(2) Hom. 1. in Pasc.

(4) Lib. de Remiss. Peccat. c. 23.-N. B. This doctrine concerning the Unity of the Church, and the necessity of adhering to it, under the pain of damnation, which appears so rigid to modern Protestants, was almost universally taught by their predecessors: as, for example, by Calvin, 1. iv. Instit. 1, and Beza, Confes. Fid. c. v.; by the Huguenots in their Catechism; by the Scotch in their Profession of 1568; by the Church of England, Art. 18; by the celebrated Bishop Pearson, &c. The last named writes thus: Christ never appointed two ways to 'heaven; nor did he build a Church to save some, and make another 'institution for other men's salvation.-As none were saved from the ' deluge but such as were within the ark of Noah-so none shall ever escape the eternal wrath of God, which belong not to the Church of 'God-Exposit, of Creed, p. 349.

Such also have been the formal declarations of the Church herself, in those decrees by which she has condemned and anathematized the several heretics and schismatics that have dogmatized in succession, whatever has been the quality of their errors, or the pretext for their disunion. I am, Dear Sir, &c.

J. M.

LETTER XV.

To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c.

DEAR SIR,

PROTESTANT DISUNION.

IN the inquiry I am about to make respecting the Church or Society of Christians, to which this mark of Unity belongs, it will be sufficient for my purpose to consider, that of Protestants on one hand, and that of Catholics on the other. To speak properly, however, it is an absurdity to talk of the Church or Society of Protestants; for the term PROTESTANT expresses nothing positive, much less any union or association of persons: it barely signifies one who protests, or declares, against some other person or persons, thing or things; and in the present instance it signifies those who protest against the Catholic Church. Hence, there may be and there are numberless sects of Protestants, divided from each other in every thing, except in opposing their true Mother, the Catholic Church. St Augustin reckons up 90 heresies which had protested against the Church before his time, that is, during the first four hundred years of her existence; and ecclesiastical writers have counted about the same number, who rose up since that period, down to the æra of Luther's Protestation,

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which took place early in the sixteenth century, whereas, from the last mentioned æra, to the end of the same century, Staphylus and Cardinal Hosius, enumerated 270 different sects of Protestants: and, alas! how have Protestant sects, beyond reckoning and description, multiplied during the last 200 years! Thus has the observation of the above-cited holy Father been verified in modern no less than it was in former ages, where he exclaims, Into how many morsels have those sects been broken who have divided 'themselves from the unity of the Church.'(1) You are not ignorant that the illustrious Bossuet has written two considerable volumes on the Variations of the Protestants, chiefly on those of the Lutheran and the Calvinistic progenies. Numerous other variations, dissentions and mutual persecutions, even to the extremity of death, (2) which have taken place among them, I have had occasion to mention in my former letters, and other works.(3) I have also quoted the lamentations of Calvin, Dudith, and other heads of the Protestants, on the subject of these divisions. You will recollect in particular, what the latter

(1) St. Aug. contra Petolian.

(2) Luther pronounced the Sacramentarians, namely, the Calvinists, Zuinglians, and those protestants, in general, who denied the Real Presence of Christ in the Sacrament, heretics and damned souls, for whom it is not lawful to pray. Epist. ad Arginten. Catech. Parv. Comment. in Gen. His followers persecuted Bucer, Melancthon's nephew, with imprisonment, and put Crellius to death, for endeavouring to soften their master's doctrine in this point. Mosheim by Maclaine, vol. iv. p. 341-353. Zuinglius, while he deified Hercules, Theseus, &c. condemned the Anabaptists to be drowned, pronouncing this sentence on Felix Mans: Qui iterum mergunt mergantur; which sentence was accordingly executed at Zurich. Limborch. Introd. 71. Not content with anathematizing and imprisoning those Reformers, who dissented from his system, John Calvin caused two of them, Servetus and Gruet, to be put to death. The Presbyterians of Holland and New England were equally intolerant with respect to other denominations of Protestants. The latter hanged four Quakers, one of them a woman, on account of their Religion. In England, itself, frequent executions of Anabaptists and other Protestants took place, from the reign of Edward VI. till that of Charles I. and other severe, though less sanguinary persecutions of Protestants continued till the time of James II. (2) LETTERS TO A PREBENDARY, &c.

writes concerning those differences: Our people are carried away by every wind of doctrine. If you know what their belief is to-day, you cannot tell what it will be to-morrow. Is there 'one article of religion, in which these Churches, who are at war with the Pope, agree together? If you run over all the articles, from the first to the last, you will not find one, which is not held by some of them to be an article of faith, ' and rejected by others, as an impiety.'(1)

With these and numberless other historical facts, of the same nature, before his eyes, would it not, Dear Sir, I appeal to your own good sense, be the extremity of folly, for any one to lay the least claim to the mark of unity in favour of Protestants, or to pretend that they, who are united in nothing but in their hostility towards the Catholic Church, can form The One Church we profess to believe in the Creed! Perhaps, however, you will say that the mark of unity, which is wanting among the endless divisions of Protestants in general, may be found in the Church to which you belong, the Established Church of England.-I grant, Dear Sir, that your communion has better pretensions to this, and the other marks of the Church, than any other Protestant Society has She is, as our controversial Poet sings, The 'least deform'd, because reform'd the least.' (2) You will recollect the account I have given, in a former letter, (3) of the material changes which this Church has undergone, at different times, since her first formation in the reign of the last Edward, and which place her at variance with herself. You will also remember the proofs of Hoadlyism, in other words, of Socinianism, that damnable and cursed heresy, as this Church termed it in her last Synod, (4) which I brought against

(1) Epist. ad Capiton. inter Epist. Bezme.

(2) Dryden's Hind and Panther. (4) Constitutions and Canons, A. D 1640,

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(3) Letter viii. Sparrow's Collect. p. 355.

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