first given to the world with that designation in 1538, by Johannes Cochlæus. To the two Councils of Lyons and that at Vienne the same objection holds, that there were no representatives of the Eastern churches there, except a few compulsory delegates of the Greek Emperor at the second of Lyons: nor were their decrees received in the East, except those of the second of Lyons compulsorily and uncanonically for the short space of eight years; small store is set upon them by the Romans themselves, and they were all excluded from the collection of Jacobus Merlin. To the Councils of Constance and Basle the same objection applies, that the Eastern churches had no voice in those assemblies, nor ever received their decrees, to which the higher objection (in a Roman's estimation) must be added, that they were hardly recognized by the Bishops of Rome, and almost all their decrees rejected by them. At the Council of Florence there were indeed some Grecian representatives, and an agreement was patched up for the moment. But the agreement was obtained by fraud and bribery, and indignantly and contemptuously rejected by the Great Synod at Constantinople. The little conclave of one hundred and fourteen, called the fifth Lateran, is not received by large portions of the Roman communion. And as for the cabal at Trent, which, from the paucity of its numbers, and the narrow limits from which they came, did not venture to speak of itself as representing the Catholic Church, enough has been already said.

But to return, it were much to be desired, that they who engage in defence of the pure and ancient Catholic Faith as professed by the British Churches, should be careful to bring no charge against those who at present adhere to the papal domination, nor against the faith which, at present, they think it right to profess, which cannot be indisputably made good. The evil consequences of pursuing a different course-in respect of the injury done to truth, without which even victory itself is not to be desired; in the advantage afforded to the proselytizing priests of Rome, who are able to shake the faith of those who rely on unsound arguments, when they can prove such unsoundness; and in the still further estrangement between the disputants-are too obvious to require pointing out. With a view to this we must needs allow the Romans to choose for themselves the expositions by which the genuine doctrines of their Church shall be known; and not attempt to fasten upon them statements which they disclaim. For we should not endure ourselves that our Church should be charged with the expressions of individual writers within its pale, nor that we should be called upon to defend them even though the writers might be men of eminence, and their works used and approved by individual bishops. What possible object can be obtained by attempting to pursue towards our opponents a course which we should not endure if attempted against ourselves?

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But of course this caution must look on both sides of the question, and not only on one. If the Romans require of us, as an act of justice, that we should form our opinion of the tenets of their Church, not from the expositions of individual writers but from the decrees of their councils, they must allow us to reject, not only Harding, and Naclantus, and Bonaventure, and St. Bridget, and others of that class, but Bossuet and Goter, and Kirke, and Berington, and others, whose diluted expositions of the Roman tenets as much fall short of the reality as the others can, possibly, be supposed to exceed it.

In order to ascertain what the genuine doctrines of the Church of Rome are, recourse must be had to the decrees of what are called the General Councils; for the Bishop of Rome, and the other Christian Bishops who submit to his yoke, (and who, together with their flocks, compose what is known as the Church of Rome) having agreed to require an assent to these decrees as a term of communion, are witnesses against themselves, and to the world, that these decrees contain that exposition of doctrine by the soundness or unsoundness of which their character for orthodoxy may and must be ascertained.

Next to understanding what are the genuine doctrines of the Church of Rome, it is desirable to bear distinctly in mind what is the position which the Church of England holds in respect to those doctrines, and also what is the cause of the interruption of the communion between her and Rome.

The case is this: the Church of England contents herself with keeping her own formularies free from the Roman innovations, and in bearing witness against them in her articles; but she neither excludes those who hold them from her communion, nor forbids her members to receive communion in the Churches of France, or Spain, or Italy, which adhere to the Roman tenets. The Church of Rome, on the contrary, carries into practical operation, as far as her power goes, the anathemas with which the Council of Trent has enforced its corrupt additions to the Catholic religion, making an assent to these dogmas an article of faith necessary for salvation, and a term without which communion is not to be had within her pale. Neither will she permit her people to communicate with the clergy of other churches who reject these decrees. The separation and interruption of communion is wholly the act of Rome.

This point deserves to be well considered and had in remembrance; I mean that the English Church has never refused communion to the members of the Church of Rome. An attempt was made during the primacy of Archbishop Tenison, to establish such a refusal; and a form of receiving a convert from the Church of Rome was prepared, in which a denial of Roman errors formed the new term of communion which it was sought to establish in our branch of the Catholic Church; but, through God's mercy, the thing fell to the ground. I say, through God's

mercy; because if the scheme had been carried into effect, the Church of England would have been involved in similar guilt with that which now rests upon the Church of Rome, namely, that of adding to the Catholic Faith; and the only difference would have been that, while the Roman additional articles are affirmative, the English would have been negative but both alike novel, both alike unsanctioned, as terms of communion, by the Catholic Church, and, therefore, both alike indefensible in this respect. Here I cannot forbear from expressing my deep regret that some late writers on the English side, should, in this controversy, have employed the term fundamental in a way which seems to me unsanctioned by ecclesiastical use, and likely to prove very inconvenient. The term has hitherto been used to express those points of Christian belief which are indispensable to salvation according to the Christian covenant, and which the Catholic Church has therefore required as terms of communion. It is in this sense, to speak generally, that Waterland, in his Discourse upon Fundamentals, Works, viii. p. 87; Chillingworth, in his Religion of Protestants. Lond. 1727, p. 148; Claggett, in his Sermons, London, 1690, vol. ii. second sermon; Stillingfleet, in his Chapter on Fundamentals in General. London, 1665, p. 44; Hammond, Works, vol. ii. p. 275. London, 1674, and other writers, have uniformly regarded it and, accordingly, Hammond expressly classes our differences with Rome as differences in the super