happened since the world began, actually took place; or who were the authors, and who the opposers of it; or by what strange means these authors prevailed on so many millions of people of different nations, languages, and interests, throughout Christendom, to give up the supposed pure religion, which they had learned from their fathers, and to embrace a new and false system, which its adversaries now call Popery! In a word, there is no way of accounting for the pretended change of Religion, at whatever period this may be fixed, but by supposing, as I have said, that the whole collection of Christians on some one night went to bed Protestants, and awoke the next morning Papists. That the Church in communion with the See of Rome is the original, as well as the most numerous Church, is evident in several points of view. The stone cries out of the wall, as the prophet expresses it, (1) in testimony of this. I mean that our vẹnerable cathedrals and other stone churches, built by Catholic hands and for the Catholic worship, so as to resist, in some sort, that which is now performed in them, proclaims that ours is the ancient and original Church. This is still more clear from the ecclesiastical historians of our own as well as other nations. Venerable Bede, in particular, bears witness (2) that the Roman Missionary, St. Augustin of Canterbury, and his companions, converted our Saxon ancestors, at the end of the sixth century, to the belief of the Pope's Supremacy, Transubstantiation, the Sacrifice of the Mass, Purgatory, the Invocation of Saints, and the other Catholic Doc(2) Hist. Eccles, (1) Habak, ii. 11. trines and practices; as learned Protestants in general agree. (1) Now, as these Missionaries were found to be of the same faith and Religion, not only with the Irish, Picts, and Scots, who were converted almost two centuries before them, but also with the Britons or Welch, who became Christians in the second century, so as only to differ from them about the time of keeping Easter, and a few other unessential points, this circumstance alone proves the Catholic Religion to have been that of the Church at that early age. Still the most demonstrative proofs of the antiquity and originality of our Religion, are gathered from comparing it with that contained in the works of the ancient Fathers. An attempt was made, during a certain period, by some eminent Protestants, especially in this country, to press the Fathers into their service. Among these, Bishop Jewel of Sarum was the most conspicuous. He not only boasted that those venerable witnesses of the primitive doctrine were generally on his side, but also published the following challenge to the Catholics: Let them show me one only Father, one Doctor, one sentence, two lines, and the field is theirs.' (2) However, this his vain boasting, or rather deliberate impugning the known truth, only served to scandalize sober and learned Protestants, and among others his biographer, Dr. Humphreys, who complains that he thereby' gave a scope to the Papists, and spoiled himself and the Protestant (1) Bishop Bale. Dr. Humphreys, the Centur. of Magdeb. &c. (2) See Jewel's Sermon at St. Paul's Cross, likewise his Answers to Dr. Cole. Church.' (1) In fact, this hypocrisy, joined with his shameful falsifications of the Fathers, in quoting them, occasioned the conversion of a beneficed clergyman, and one of the ablest writers of his age, Dr. W. Reynolds.' (2) Most Protestant writers of later times (3) follow the late Dr. Middleton, and Luther himself, in giving up the ancient Fathers to the Catholics without reserve, and thereby the faith of the Christian Church during the six first centuries, of which faith these Fathers were the witnesses and the teachers. Among other passages to this purthe above-named Doctor writes as follows: Every one must see what a resemblance the principles and practice of the fourth century bear to the present rites of the Popish Church.' (4) Thus, by the confession of her most learned adversaries, our Church is not less CATHOLIC or Universal, as to time, than she is with respect to name, locality, and numbers. pose, I am, &c. J. M. (1) Life of Jewel, quoted by Walsingham, in his invaluable Search into Matters of Religion, p. 172. (2) Dodd's Church Hist. vol. ii. (3) See the acknowledgment on this head of the learned Protestants, Obretcht, Doumoulin, and Causabon. (4) Inquiry into Miracles, Introd, p. 45. LETTER XXVII. To JAMES BROWN, Esq. &c. DEAR SIR, OBJECTIONS ANSWERED. I HAVE received the letter written by your visitor, the Rev. Joshua Clark, B. D., at the request, as he states, of certain members of your Society, animadverting on my last to you; an answer to which letter I am requested to address to you. The Reverend Gentleman's arguments are by no means consistent one with another; for like other determined controvertists, he attacks his adversary with every kind of weapon that comes to his hand, in the hope per fas et nefas of disabling him. He maintains, in the first place, that though Protestantism was not visible before it was unveiled by Luther, it subsisted in the hearts of the true faithful, ever since the days of the Apostles, and that the believers in it constituted the real primitive Catholic Church. To this groundless assumption I answer, that an invisible Church is no Church at all; that the idea of such a Church is at variancé with the predictions of the prophets respecting Jesus Christ's future Church, where they describe it as a Mountain on the top of mountains, Is. ii. 2., Mich. iv. 2., and as a city, whose watchmen shall never hold their peace, Is. lxii. 6., and, indeed, with the injunction of our Lord himself, to tell the Church, Matt. xviii. 17., in the case which he mentions. It is no less repugnant to the declaration of Luther, who says of himself, At first I stood alone;' (1) and to that of Calvin, who says, The first Protestants were obliged to break off from the whole world;' (2) as also to that of the Church of England in her Homilies, where she says: Laity and Clergy, learned and unlearned, all ages, sects, and degrees, have been drowned in abominable idolatry, most detested by God and damnable to man, for 800 years and more.' (3) As to the argument in favour of an invisible Church, drawn from 1 Kings, xix. 18., where the Almighty tells Elijah: I have left me 7,000 in Israel, whose knees have not been bowed to Baal; our divines fail not to observe, that however invisible the Church of the Old Laws was in the schismatical kingdom of Israel, at the time here spoken of, it was most conspicuous and flourishing in its proper seat, the kingdom of Judah, under the pious King Josaphat. Mr. Clark's second argument is borrowed from Dr. Porteus, and consists in a mere quibble. In answer to the question; Where was the Protes tant Religion before Luther?' this Prelate replies; 'It was just where it is now: only that then it was corrupted with many sinful errors, from which it is now reformed.' (4)—But this is to fall back into the refuted system of an invisible Church and to contradict the Homilies, or else it is to confess the real truth, that Protestancy had no existence at all before the sixteenth century. The Reverend Gentleman next maintains, on quite opposite grounds, that there have been large and visible societies of Protestants, as he calls them, who have stood in opposition to the Church of Rome, (1) Opera. Pref. (2) Epist. 171. |