latitude of thinking with respect to the standard of Faith. This gives you two advantages; the one immediate, the other in prospect. First, you prevail on them, under pretext of liberality, to help you forward in your religious views; and in the next place you may hope that, having cast away all concern for their own faith, they may in due season become more ready recipients of another. I say this under a persuasion, the fruit of long enquiry and reflection, that the Churches of England and Rome, having adopted first principles so different, must ever remain distinct and adverse Neither can gain a religious advantage but at the other's expense. Believe me, Sir, it is not any want of charity, but it is love of truth which leads me to make this assertion. God forbid that we as individuals should not live together in harmony and peace. But I cannot be silent when I find you engaged in an attempt to shake the fidelity of Protestants to their own communion, and to obtain from them a positive effort in favour of yours. I have no disposition to question your right to set off your religion to the best advantage by any exertions of your own and of those who think with you; but I do and must ever object to the enlistment of professed Protestants on your side.

If indeed a man have not made up his mind upon this most momentous controversy, he is not worthy to be called a religious man. He may take part with you or against you as the whim may incline him; but his support or his opposition do not deserve to be attributed to any feeling more respectable than that which I have assigned. But if he, after seriously asking himself the question, "What is truth," shall have decided within himself that truth is to be sought for upon Protestant principles, or from the Scriptures alone, that man, I do say, shews little reverence for the appointments of God, when he takes an active

part in support of a system which according to his own acknowledgment is founded upon error.

To secure myself from the charge of misrepresenting the principles of either Church, I will place them here in contrast with each other; premising only, that if I were acquainted with any more authentic exposition of the principles of the Church of Rome than is contained in the Decrees of the Council of Trent, I would most readily apply to it for information. At the fourth Session of that Assembly, and by its supposed infallible authority, the rule of Faith among Roman Catholics was thus fixed and declared. "This sacred oecumenical and general Council of Trent, lawfully assembled in the Holy Spirit, and presided over by three Legates of the Apostolic See, having this object in view that, errors being removed, the real purity of the Gospel may be preserved in the Church; (which, promised aforetime by the prophets in the Holy Scriptures, our Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, first promulgated by his own mouth, and afterwards ordained to be preached to every creature by the Apostles as being the fountain of all saving truth and discipline of morals; knowing, also, that this truth and discipline is contained in the written books, and in the unwritten traditions which having been received by the Apostles from the mouth of Christ himself, or from the dictates of the Holy Spirit, were handed down and transmitted even to us ;) following the examples of the orthodox Fathers, receives and venerates with equal sentiments of piety and reverence all the books, as well of the Old as of the New Testament, since one God was the author of them both, and also the Traditions relating as well to Faith as to Morals, inasmuch as proceding from the mouth of Christ, or dictated by the Holy Spirit, they have been preserved in an uninterrupted succession in the Catholic Church."

The corresponding declaration of the fundamental principle of the Church of England, in which indeed all the Reformed Churches acquiesce, is set forth in her Sixth Article. "Holy Scripture containeth all things necessary to salvation, so that whatsoever is not read therein, nor may be proved thereby, is not to be required of any man that it should be believed as an article of faith, or be thought requisite or necessary to salvation."

I have placed these contradictory declarations thus directly in contrast, in order that the inconsistency may be made manifest, of a Protestant lending his aid to uphold the Roman Catholic Faith. He is giving his assent at once to adverse propositions. He is affirming with the same breath that Holy Scripture contains all things necessary to salvation; and yet, that some truths necessary to salvation are not contained in Scripture, but are handed down by Tradition only. He acknowledges that nothing is to be required of any man as an article of faith, or to be thought necessary to salvation, unless it be contained in, or may be proved by, Scripture ; and yet he comes forward as the advocate of those who exclude from salvation, and pronounce an anathema upon, himself and all others who will not believe very many things which are confessedly not in the Scriptures, and, we maintain, cannot be proved thereby. How any person can lend his sanction, encouragement, and assistance to obtain the means of propagating what he acknowledges to be à religious error, and yet escape the guilt of prevarication, I confess my own inability to discover. If he be persuaded that that the Scriptures are the word of Truth, and that the Truths which they contain, are the most glorious inheritance of mankind, it must be a miserable sophistry which prevails upon him, for ́ any consideration, to further the views of those who set up a different rule contradictory to the Bible.

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It is, no doubt, very consistent with your principles to say, as you are reported to have done, that "connect your belief of the Scriptures with a faith on the authority of which they rest;" but what proof do you give, that because the authenticity of the Scriptures is proved by testimony, or, if you please, by tradition-tradition is, therefore, of equal authority with the Scriptures, and binds our assent to many points of faith and practice concerning which the Scripture is silent? You adduce the wellknown saying of St. Augustine, that "he would not believe the Gospel unless he were compelled by the authority of the Church." This is one of those pointed sentences into which men of ardent tempers are occasionally betrayed. They dart forth a sentiment which, though true in a certain limited sense, is not true without that limitation. The consequence is, that even with the best intentions, they do much mischief; because the world at large is apt to understand them literally, and nine persons take the maxim in a wrong sense, for one who takes it in the right one. With submission to St. Augustine, I maintain, God has not so left himself without witness, but that an individual possessing the Gospels, might be so impressed with their internal evidence as to embrace and be persuaded of the reality of the things which they testify as pertaining to salvation, even though he had never heard of the Church, or of an assemblage of believers agreeing in the reception of the Gospel from the earliest age. Still, such an individual must be anxious to know what was the origin of such remarkable books; when, or by whom, or unto whom, they were first promulgated; how received, how preserved. Not knowing anything of the history of the Church, he could have no assurance upon these points; and consequently his faith, however sincere, would be imperfect or encum. bered with difficulties. For the prevention or removal of

such dificulties, St. Augustine declares recourse must be had to the Church, to its testimony or authority. Uadoactedly he does. But then, Sir, I must ask you, What Church? I know the inveteracy with which those of your persuasion are accustomed, whenever they hear or read of "The Church," to apply it to the Church of Rome; as if that were the Church or the Catholic Church of Christ. But, indeed, let me assure you, this is a very great error, and the source probably of almost all the other errors into which you have fallen. St. Augustine does not speak of the authority of the Church of Rome, as leading him to put faith in the Gospel; but he refers to the Church in its proper and universal sense, and to its tradition or testimony as the concurrent opinion of all believers every where. And certainly in this sense, the unanimous testimony of the Church does confer upon the Gospels a moral and reasonable assurance of authenticity; such as must determine every candid enquirer to receive them as of divine origin and authority. Such an assurance, may I without offence observe, they never could possess, if the Church by which they are attested were no other than the single Church of Rome. Can you fail besides to perceive what force this very declaration of St. Augustine has, or ought to have, against the reception of tradition? He declares that he could not receive the Gospel except upon the authority of the Church, or of unbroken and universal testimony. Sir, this is the very reason why we Protestants reject tradition; because you have never been able to prove with respect to any one tradition, concerning either faith or morals, that there exists on its behalf any such unbroken and universal acknowledgement, by means of which it could be traced down from the days of the Apostles, to the present age. If you can produce any doctrine so attested I will pledge myself to show that it is either contained in the Scripture, or may be deduced from it; and that it is