"consider some temporal punishment to await the sinner in purgatory, by way of satisfaction for his sins. If, as it is plain he and the compiler of the Catechism did mean, it is meant to assert that every sinner who is saved must, previously to entering heaven, pass through purgatory, we hold no such doctrine. We believe that several of the saints now in heaven never were in purgatory. Even your curious correspondent feels that this assertion of his was not true; for he immediately adds: "Protestants may, perhaps, err in saying that every sinner, in order to make satisfaction to God for his sins, must suffer some temporal punishment in purgatory." Yet he did say it, and reasoned upon the supposition of its truth; and when I denied that we held any such doctrine, he stated that I was deceiving my readers, and he undertook to show that I was not warranted in making the denial. But the next blunder which he makes is so glaring that I can scarcely believe he did not write the nonsense, in order to try and create a feeling of ridicule against us. "Sinners only whose offences are venial, may, perhaps, by the Romanist doctrine of purgatory, be doomed to its torments; whilst those whose sins are mortal may be thoroughly absolved and pardoned before they die." Thus he would exhibit us as believing that the greater sinner suffers less, and the lesser sinner suffers more!!!-If he thought this was our doctrine, he is extremely ignorant as a divine; if he knew our doctrine, he is criminally dishonest. Which he is, I cannot say.

As some well disposed Protestant might read this, I shall more explicitly state our doctrine; and his gross inaccuracy will be seen, and his many blunders will be easily counted up.

We believe, 1. That sin is a violation of God's law. 2. The sinner becomes guilty upon its violation. 3. The consequence of guilt is penalty. 4. A serious violation is called mortal sin. 5. A slight violation is called venial sin. 6. Persons guilty of mortal sin are liable to eternal punishment in hell. 7. Persons guilty of venial sin are liable to temporal punishment. 8. No person can enter heaven with the stain. of guilt upon him. 9. The guilt is removed only by the mercy of God, upon the application of the merits of Christ, after the repentance of the sinner. 10. When God remits the guilt of the punishment, he does not always remit all the temporal punishment, though he always remits the eternal punishment. 11. Persons who have true contrition, arising from perfect charity, have the guilt and the eternal and temporal punishment wholly and fully remitted, and without any application of an indulgence. 12. The temporal punishment might, through the merits of Christ and the mercy of God, be removed by satisfactory works of penance, performed in this life by the repentant sinner, who has ob

tained pardon of guilt and remission of eternal punishment. 13. Should he die before he has fully suffered what God had allotted, or been able to obtain its remission, he will suffer the unremitted or unsatisfied part in purgatory; after which, being free from guilt, and not liable to punishment of any description, he will, through the mercy of God and the merits of Christ, enter heaven. 14. Because of their being in our communion, and their being free from guilt, and in regard to the merits of the Saviour, of which they are partakers, and by which our prayers are enriched, God will alleviate the sufferings of those who may be detained in purgatory, upon the prayers of those who with proper dispositions intercede for them.

Such is our doctrine, which your correspondent has grossly misrepresented; whether wilfully or not matters nothing to us, but much to him. As to the suffeing being by fire or not, we have no certain knowledge of faith, neither are we bound to believe without stronger evidence than we possess, that such is the mode of suffering; but such is the general opinion of the western division of the Roman Catholic Church. Others, fully in our communion, are of the opinion that the suffering is by darkness: in the estimation of each, this is a topic of opinion, not of faith. A Roman Catholic is bound only to believe "that there is a purgatory, and that the souls therein detained are helped by the suffrages of the faithful."

The forty-second and forty-third paragraphs, as they relate to penance, are but unbecoming rant and illogical inference. In the fortysecond your correspondent states, that in ours, as in every other human society, there are hypocrites, fools, and knaves; and that abuses of which some of our own good members complain, have been introduced and are continued by such persons, under the alleged warrant of the church's teaching, and the Pope's permitting. Is, then, the allegation of a knave, of a fool, or of a hypocrite, the evidence upon which a church of nearly two hundred millions of Christians is to be condemned as holding doctrine which she disavows, and which her upright and intelligent members "indignantly disclaim," to use his own expressions? Gentlemen, is your case so desperate as to require your retreat to this disgraceful citadel? Is this the accurate reasoning-this the high-minded honourthis the generous liberality-this the dignified demeanour of members of the Protestant Episcopal Church? I would say, it is impossible, but that it is a fact!!!

Of all the miserable shifts of a disappointed sophister, that which is least honourable is, after avowing that "many virtuous and enlightened Roman Catholics, especially in England and the United States, in

dignantly refuse to recognise in them (the imputed doctrines and practices) anything belonging to their system of institutions;" still, with the knowledge that their doctrine is the same as that of every other Catholic in the world; to assert without evidence, that those doctrines are held elsewhere, and to assert against evidence that they are those of the Roman Catholic Church. Yet such is the conduct of your correspondent. He makes groundless assertions of "pious, faithful, and pure" priests now to be found, deploring the fact of such abuses. Why not name those pious and good men? I must avow, that to me this is news indeed. I know of no such fact as he states: yet he assertts that they may be everywhere found. Can he name one person, or one place? I willingly admit that he might find in many places, pious and faithful priests deprecating the evil and shame of such misconduct as his, the unfounded imputation of such doctrines to our Church!

As to the testimony of Protestants who have visited Catholic countries, and which he refers to, I shall probably in my next letter examine the value of the special instances which he adduces, and it is only from the nature of the special testimony a correct general result can be drawn. I shall, however, here make one general remark founded upon my own personal knowledge. Others might have been more fortunate in their acquaintances than I have been; though perhaps, not many have had much more extensive opportunity. I have known some of the bestinformed and most liberal Protestants, men who would have done honour to any circle of society, and many of whom have been conspicious in public and private life, who have visited Catholic countries. Several have had prejudices removed, many have had them extended and confirmed, and others had them scarcely in any respect modified. But of the entire number, I cannot now bring to my recollection a single individual who was fitted to give testimony to others, or to form a correct judgment himself, respecting the ceremonial or practices which came under his observation. This will, to several of my readers, appear strange: but the explanation is simple. Not one of them had previously acquired the necessary information: not one of them knew the principles, the doctrines, or the history of the Church: so far from having the proper information, they had previously misinformed themselves, by reading such works as your writers produce. As well might you expect a correct judgment of our conduct, character and institutions, from an English traveller who had prepared for a visit to these States by reading as a correct and accurate statement Paulding's John Bull in America, and then, with a firm belief in its truth, was driven through our States on a tour of observation. I would just as soon expect a Kal

mue Tartar to comprehend the process of carrying a bill through Congress, or of conducting a suit through our courts, or to comprehend the purport of our festive national celebrations, as to find a well-disposed and well-informed Protestant, who has only the notions which you and yours generally give of our religion, comprehend a single religious celebration of the Catholic Church. I never had to exercise more selfrestraint, than when listening to the incongruous remarks of some of my most kind and respectable friends, who imagined they displayed knowledge and liberality.

What in the name of common sense, can be more ridiculous than for one of those lordlings (Mountcashel I believe) gravely to state, as your correspondent relates, that "Popery was little understood in England," where the premier-earl-marshal, and a number of the aris tocracy, and nearly a million of the people were Roman Catholics? It is true the Protestants did not then know as well as they do now, what that religion is. But was it not more ridiculous for this same nobleman to inform the people of Ireland as he did, that they did not know their own religion as well as he did? He said that he learned it in Spain, Yet the four archbishops of Ireland and two or three of her bishops, at that very period, were prelates who had learned and taught theology in Spain and your curious correspondent has the assurance to tell us that we in America understand very little about our religion. I suppose he means as it exists in the Catholic nations of Europe, though our prelates and clergy and laity, are not only composed of native Americans North and South, but of citizens adopted from Ireland, from England, from France, from Spain, from Italy, from Portugal, from Germany, from Holland, and so forth. He, who, for aught I know, was never in any one of those countries, vouchsafes to inform us who have come from the very spot, that he knows our religion in that place better than we do! This is a degree of modesty to which we do not aspire.

Will your correspondent then account for this extraordinary fact. That there is scarcely a Catholic congregation in the United States in which you will not find blended together, the natives of five or six foreign nations, severed not only by seas and mountains, but by language and customs, and yet they are all found most harmoniously to agree in doctrine and practice!-This is an exhibition which is peculiar to "the Church of all nations;" when he can give me a parallel fact in his society, I shall cease to be amused at his foolish usurpation of the name of "Catholic."

One other remark is perhaps called for by the note to paragraph

42, by Mendham. We desire to be judged by the decisions of the Council of Trent, why do our adversaries fly from its application?-The miserable sophistry, that individuals cannot disclaim, because individuals cannot decide, is too peurile. Though an individual cannot pass an act of Congress, yet he can testify that such an act has been passed; or where he hears it falsely asserted that such a law exists, he can testify that it does not, though he could neither enact nor repeal nor modify it. Our church decides, and we know and can apply its decisions.

In paragraph 43, the writer, who, in the preceding one had the indelicacy to charge us without evidence, and against evidence, with priestcraft and holy immorality, now avows that what he charges "is not our doctrine and practice as required by the highest authority of our church to be taught and inculcated, nor as they are everywhere taught and inculcated;" now his note-writer, Mendham, stated that it was to this faith and discipline one ought to look for the "true and genuine character" of the Roman sect. Thus, your correspondent avoids the very mode which his own associate whom he quotes with approbation, points out. And what mode does he follow? He looks to "what is known and observed to be in some portion of the Roman Catholic communion," and to what might be "anywhere within its limits." That is, as he told us before, "There might be hypocrites and knaves and fools anywhere in your church, and in fact there are some in various portions of it. But your governing authority everywhere teaches and inculcates, and good members adhere to doctrines and practices, opposed to the conduct of those fools and knaves; but you must have the character of your church depicted from the misconduct of the fools and knaves, and not from the uniform teaching of your tribunal."-Such is the avowed principle on which we are calumniated, such the mode in which we are represented! And you do not blush and hide your heads in shame at the avowal!!! There is a point in misconduct at which shame and honour cease to be found! It is not for me to apply the observation.

As to his queries, I for one will pretend to say that the correction of the sinner is attained by the means of the sacrament of penance. I also again charge your correspondent with gross misrepresentation by introducing the word adequate before "satisfaction," because no Roman Catholic asserts that the satisfaction made by the sinner is adequate. He would condemn as heretical the assertion which is here attributed to himself. The adequate satisfaction is made only by Christ. I also assert, that in no country does the Roman Catholic Church permit, nor could she permit the medicinal penance, or medicinal satisfaction imposed in the sacrament of penance by the priest upon the penitent to be