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7
Accession No. ^...i^.'/AjA. .^...K
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Catalogued by
Revised by
Memoranda.
BISHOP HOPKINS'
SE COND LE TTER
TO BISHOP KENRICK.
SECOND LETTER
TO THE
HIGHT REV. FRANCIS PATRICK KENRICK,
ROMAN CATHOLIC BISHOP OF PHILADELPHIA.
BY JOHN HENRY HOPKINS, D, D
BISHOP OF THE DIOCESE OF VERMONT.
BURLINGTON, VT:
PRINTED BY STILMAN FLETCHER.
1S43.
Entered according to Act of Congress, in me year 1843, by
CHAUNCEY GOODRICH,
in the Clerk's Office of the District Court, for the District of Vermont.
A SECOND LETTER, &c.
Right Reverend Sir:
Your answer to my letter, I must frankly confess, has dis-
appointed me. Considering your Address to the whole body
of our bishops, however well intended, as a serious assault
upon our ecclesiastical integrity, impeaching, alike, our con-
sistency as Christians, and our honesty as men, I invited you
to an open and public discussion of the doctrines contained
in the well-known Thirty-nine Articles, which involve not
only the profession of our faith, but the condemnation, in
many important points, of yours. And I proposed this
course, because I thought it was the most direct and effect-
ive mode of defending those principles, to which we stand
so solemnly pledged, and thus — so far as my humble agency
was concerned — of freeing the Church from a most injurious
and unjust aspersion. On the other hand, it secured to you
an equal opportunity to substantiate your charge, and con-
vict us, if you could, first, of having undertaken to reform
what needed no reformation, and next, of having become
weary of our task, and covertly desirous to return to the
Roman Communion.
Placed, therefore, as I conceived you to be, in the position
of a public accuser, my desire was to bring your accusation,
in the fairest manner, to the test of public proof. And I did
not see how, according to the usual maxims of justice, you
could, with propriety, decline the appeal.
But you have declined it, and in terms which substantially
repeat the accusation ; totally regardless of the denial so dis-
tinctly expressed not only by myself, but by many of my
more worthy colleagues. And you seem to think that enough
is conceded by your proposing the substitute of a written
discussion, offering the columns of your organ, the Catholic
Herald, for my communications, on condition that yours
shall be printed in the Churchman, a periodical belonging to
another diocese, and over which you must surely be aware
that I have no control. This proposal on your part demands
an explicit answer, and I shall avail myself of the occasion
to notice the other points, whether of alleged fact or of ar-
gument, presented by your letter.
You commence by re-iterating your views of the Oxford
Tracts, as a perfect justification of your strange and extrava-
gant call upon us to forsake our principles and our ordina-
tion vows, in order to unite with the Church of Rome.
" There had arisen," you say, " in a leading University in
England, a class of divines, in communion with the Estab-
lished Church, who, in the re-examination of the topics of
former controversy, had yielded, one by one, almost every
ground of dispute; and there had just appeared a pamphlet,
professing to reconcile the Thirty-nine Articles with the
doctrinal decisions of the Council of Trent, and styling the
Pope, Head of the Catholic world. The influence of
that class of divines was known to be felt very widely
throughout the ministry of the Establishment, and their ef-
forts had met with marked encouragement from the laity.
Astonishment seized all at the rapid strides ivith which
they had advanced towards the ancient faith, and it was
thought that they could not stop at the portals of the tem-
ple. On this side of the Atlantic, their views had found
favor, and a leading hebdomadal, on the first news of the
appearance of Tract No. 90, had ventured to provide for
contingencies, by stating that the Articles could not be di-
rected against the definitions of Trent, because they were
composed before the close of that Council. There was clearly
manifested hy some a strong sympathy with Oxford, and the
Thirty-nine Articles did not appear to bo an insuperable bar-
rier. Paley had taught me that the English Legislature, in
requiring subscription to them, never could have meant to
bind the conscience to assent, since it was not to be expect-
ed that a countless succession of men should implicitly as-
sent to a number of Articles embracing so many details. It
had been said that they were Articles of peace, and not of
faith ; that they were not enjoined on the laity as terms of
receiving baptism or communion ; and that the ministrj/.
without scruple and without censure, preached doctrines
either manifestly opposed to the Articles, or in themselves
conflicting, and grounded on a two-fold interpretation of
them." You proceed to state that " there had not been, as
yet, any general expression of the views of American Epis-
copalians on the subject of the Oxford doctrines, but several
dignitaries were known to cherish them, and already, in va-
rious quarters, disciplinary improvements had been intro-
duced, in harmony with them." Under these circumstan-
ces, you '^ respectfully submit that it was not altogether ex-
travagant to solicit the bishops of our communion seriously
to review the grounds of controversy, and generously to make
those advances which might secure for so large a number of
our fellow-Christians, the inestimable blessing of unity."
Now here, Right Reverend Sir, although the proposition
which you made to us in your first Address appears under a
very favorable modification, yet even in its present shape, I
must call it unauthorized and unfair. Not, however, because
we have the slightest objections '' seriously to review the
grounds of controversy,^^ or ^' to make those advances^^
towards unity which belong to the exhibition of truth, in
contradistinction from error. On the contrary, we are always
ready to review the principles which we maintain, in the firm
consciousness that they will bear, and amply reward, the
closest examination. But while we are both willing and pre-
6
pared to confer and to discuss, in the service of what we hold
to be the undefiled Gospel of Christ, we cannot be insensi-
ble of the gross injustice which assumes that we have already
deserted our profession, and asks us to join your standard
upon the very ground that w^e are traitors to our own.
That such is the plain and unsophisticated meaning of the
passage which I have just quoted from your letter, is too
manifest for equivocation. You charge the Oxford divines
with having yielded, one by one, almost every ground of dis-
pute. You say that they have published a pamphlet reconcil-
ing the 39 Articles with the Council of Trent, and calling
the Pope the Head of the catholic world. You assert that
on this side of the Atlantic, those views have found favor,
and that several dignitaries are known to cherish them. And
you state it as if it were the settled doctrine of the Church,
that the Articles are not Articles of faith but of peace only,
and that our ministry, without scruple and without censure,
preach in opposition to them. Let me first, then, disprove
those charges by some counter-statements from the writings of
these much-calumniated Oxford divines. Next, I shall adduce
your own favorite Bishop Milner's authority against you, on
the subject of the 39 Articles. And after I shall have ex-
hibited my proofs on thus much of your letter, you will un-
derstand why I regard you as a public accuser, and why I
sought to repel, in the most direct form, the charges which
you have thought fit to bring against us, not only without,
but in the face of all competent evidence.
I shall commence by quoting from the Oxford Tract No.
Tl, (page 76 of the Am. Ed.) what may be termed a general
statement of the design with which a large portion of those
Tracts was written. ^* This, be it observed," saith the
author, "is proposed as the chief object of this series, viz. to
erect safe and substantial bulwarks for the Anglican believer
against the Church of Rome, to draw clear and intelligible
lines, which may allow him securely to expatiate in the rich
pastures of Catholicism, without the reasonable dread, that
he, as an individual, may fall into that great snare which
has bewildered the whole Latin Church, the snare of Pope-
ry. And it is conceived that the foregoing citation from
Usher proves thus much at least, that Romanism is not the
pure creed of antiquity, and that the tenet of Purgatory,
in particular, is but the gradual creation of centuries, and has
no claim on our consideration."
From Tract No. 38, (Vol. 1. of Am. Ed. p. 281,) I shall
next transcribe a list of what the author terms "irreconcilea-
ble differences with Rome as she is."
" I consider," says the writer of this Tract, " that it is un-
scriptural to say with the Church of Rome that we are justi-
fied by inherent righteousness."
" That it is unscriptural that the good works of a man jus-
tified do truly merit eternal life."
'' That the doctrine of transubstantiatiottj as not being re-
vealed, but a theory of man's devising, is profane and impi-
ous."
" That the denial of the cup to the laity, is a bold and un-
warranted encroachment on their privileges as Christ's peo-
ple.'^
*^ That the sacrifice of masses, as it has been practised in
the Roman Church, is without foundation in Scripture or an-
tiquity : and therefore is blasphemous and dangerous."
*' That the honor paid to images is very full of peril in the
case of the uneducated, that is, of the greater part of Chris-
tians."
'^That indulgences, as in use, are a gross, monstrous in-
vention of later times."
•' That the received doctriae of purgatory is at variance
with Scripture, cruel to the better sort of Christians, and ad-
ministering deceitful comfort to the irreligious."
" That the practice of celebrating divine service in an un»
known tongue is a great corruption."
8
'' That forced confession is an unauthorized and dangerous
practice."
'• That the invocation of saints is a dangerous practice,
as tending to give, often actually giving, to creatures, the
honor and reliance due to the Creator alone."
''That there are not seven Sacraments."
''• That the Romish doctrine of tradition is unscriptural."
''That the claim of the Pope to be universal Bishop is
against Scripture and antiquity."
" I might add," says the writer, "other points, in which also
I protest against the Churcii of Rome." And then he pro-
ceeds to ask the significant question, " Which uses the
stronger language against Popery, the Articles, or I ?"
In Tract No. 20, (Am. Ed. I, p. 136,) we read as follows,
viz. With Rome, " alas ! A union is impossible. Their
communion is infected with heresy ; we are hound to flee
it as a pestilence. They have established a lie in the place
of God's truth ; and by their claim of immutability in
doctrine, cannot undo the si7i they have committed. They
cannot repent. Popery must be destroyed ; it cannot
BE reformed."
From the writings of Rev. Dr. Pusey, whose name has
been so absurdly attached to the whole system of the Oxford
Tracts, I transcribe the following extracts.
" From the time that the Church of Rome began to for-
sake the pi'inciples of the Church Catholic, and grasp after
human means, she began also to take evil means for good
ends, and, incurring the apostolic curse on those who do
evil that good may come, took at last evil means for evil
ends. She, the Apostolic Church of the West, consecrated
by Apostolic blood, shewed herself rather the descendant of
them who slew the Apostles, and ' thought they did God ser-
vice,' stained herself with the blood of the saints, that on her
might come all the righteous blood which was shed within
her ; even of the Apostles who had shed blood for her.
There is not an enormity which has been practised against
people or kings by miscreants, in the name of God, but the
divines of that unhappy Church have abetted or justified, ^^
(See Pusey's sermon on the Fifth of November, p. 29.)
And again, in the same discourse, p. 31, we read as fol-
lows, viz. *' The principle of the Roman Church was expedi-
ency ; it was a plotting, scheming, worldly spirit, having at
first God's glory for its end, but seeking it by secular means,
and at last in punishment, left to seek its own glory, and set
itself up in the j)lace of God.''''
And yet again, in his work on Baptism, p. 201, the same
writer uses the following language: '* Alexandria, the bul-
wark of the faith in the Holy Trinity, and North Africa, of
the unmeritedness of God's free grace, a desolation ! Rome,
once characterized for steady practical adherence to sound
doctrine, a seat of Antichrist J" ,^ o-^r^^eti-
Nor does the Rev. J. H. Newman, considered by many as
the very chief of the Oxford school, display a more indulgent
spirit of forgetfulness towards the characteristics of your
Church, as may be plainly shewn by the following nervous
passage in his work on Romanism, p. 102. " We must take
and deal with things as they are, not as they pretend to be.
If we are induced to believe the professions of Rome, and
make advances towards her, as if a sister or a mother Church,
which in theory she is, we shall find too late that we are in
the arms of a pitiless unnatural relation, who will but triumph
in the acts which have inveigled us within her reach. No ;
dismissing the dreams which the romance of early Church
history, and the high doctrines of Catholicism will raise in the
inexperienced mind, let us be sure that she is our enemy,
and will do us a mischief if she can. For in truth she is a
Church beside herself, abounding in noble gifts and rightful
titles, but unable to use them religiously ; crafty, obstinate,
wilful, malicious, cruel, unnatural, as madmen are : or ra-
ther, she may be said to resemble a demoniac,. ...rwM within
by an iifiexorable spirit, ^^
2
10
Nay, Mr. Froude himself, when further observation and
reflection had corrected his earher views, writes thus : " The
Romanists are wretched Tridentines every where," — " I
NEVER COULD BE A RoMANiST." The Council of Trent he calls
" the atrocious Council,^' and says, " it has altogether chang-
ed my notions of the Roman Catholics, and made me luishfor
a total overthrow of their system.^' (Remains, vol. 1, p.
34, p. 308.)
I shall close these brief extracts by a quotation from Tract
No. 90, (Am. ed. p. 79,) taken from the same page on
which occurs the phrase, " the Bishop of Rome, the head
of the Catholic world/^ marked in your letter by capitals,
as pre-eminently worthy of observation.
" The Gospel ministry," says the writer, '^ began in Christ
and his Apostles : and what they began, they only can
end. The Papacy began in the exertions and passio7is of
man ; and what man can make, man can destroy. Its ju-
risdiction, while it lasted, was 'ordained of God;' when
it ceased to be, it ceased to claim our obedience, and it
ceased to be, at the Reformation. The Reformers, who could
not destroy a ministry which the Apostles began, could des-
troy a dominion which the Popes founded." The writer
proceeds to state, in the following lucid terms, the true idea
of Church unity. *' The Anglican view of the Church has
ever been this : that its portions need not otherwise have
been united together for their essential completeness, than
as being descended from one original. They are like a num-
ber of colonies sent out from a mother country — Each dio-
cese is a perfect independent Church, suflicient for itself;
and the communion of Christians one with another, and the
unity of them altogether, lie not in a mutual understanding,
intercourse, and combination ; not in what they do in com-
mon, but in what they are and have in common : in their pos-
session of the Succession, their Episcopal form, their Apos-
tolic faith, and the use of the Sacraments. Mutual intercourse
is but an accident of the Church, not of its essence^
11
Now these extracts from the very writings of the men to
whom you appeal, are more than sufficient to show the utter
extravagance of your assertion, that in the re-examina-
tion of the controversy with Rome, they had yielded, one
by one, almost every ground of dispute, and had jn^oposed
to reconcile the Articles with the Council of Trent, styling
the Pope the head of the catholic world. This last phrase
does, indeed, occur, in the latter part of Tract No. 90 ;
but taken in connexion with the rest of the argument, on
the same page, I am unable to conceive how any candid
mind could have been misled by it for a moment into the
idea, that the author held your doctrine of the papacy.
Hence I maintain that the Oxford divines themselves, so
far from having yielded, one by one, almost every ground of
dispute with the Church of Rome, have recorded in the
strongest language — the stronger from its calmness — their
condemnation of Popery, and the impossibility of uniting
with it, under any conceivable circumstances. For they
are even hopeless of its reformation. Their language is :
*' Popery cannot he 7'eformed, it must be destroyed.'' If
you are willing to accept such declarations, as the voice of
praise, it passes my ingenuity to imagine what you would
call the voice of censure.
I am, indeed, aware that the Oxford Tracts have created
no small alarm throughout the Church of England, on ac-
count of the tendency which many of them were believed
to have displayed towards E^omanism ; a tendency very na-
turally exaggerated by the extreme sensitiveness of the Dis-
senters, as well as of a large proportion of the Church itself,
to the slightest movement in that direction. I grant, too,
most wilHngly, that there has been a warm sympathy in this
alarm amongst a highly esteemed class in our own ranks.
And for myself, I must add, that while I cherish a deep and
cordial admiration of those Tracts in many respects, and
have no doubt of their extensive usefulness, particularly in
England, yet I dissent from several of the opinions which
12
they maintain, and should be obliged, in a variety of instan-
ces, to modify, before I could adopt, their statements of doc-
trine. For the fears entertained of their soundness, among
Protestants, however, it is easy to account. You cannot be
ignorant that few amongst us apply ourselves to a thorough
examination of the papal system, and therefore great allow-
ances should in justice be made for apprehensions, which
even when unfounded, are at least thought to be on the safe
side. But the apology which justice would suggest for the
accusations of Dissenters, and of that class of our own cler-
gy who have expressed the same disapprobation, can have
no proper application to a case like yours. A Roman Cath-
olic Bishop must know Popery too well to suppose, for a mo-
ment, that the tone of the Oxford Tracts indicated a readi-
ness in the Church in England, much less in the United
States, to unite with the Church of Rome. And therefore,
while, on my own part, there has been an earnest effort to
give you credit for sincerity, I cannot wonder that the pre-
vailing impression with others should be the very reverse.
For it cannot be denied that both your Address and your letter
seem to harmonize, in perfect concord, with the subtle policy
which has marked the course of your European brethren ;
affecting to patronize the views of the Oxford divines, in or-
der to inflame the accusing spirit against them, and thus de-
rive as much advantage as possible from the old maxim,
JJivide and conquer.
Your views of the authority which we attach to our own
accredited system, as contained in the 39 Articles, next de«
mand n brief consideration. You make no difliculty of charg-
ing us roundly with being so recklessly indifferent to these,
that we not only regard them simply as Articles of peace, but
even violate that very peace by preaching contrary doctrines
without scruple and without censure. The exceeding cool-
ness with which you cast this gross aspersion upon our whole
body of divines, merits especial admiration. Let the an-
swer be given to it by your own favorite, the Roman Catho*
18
lie Dr. Milner, where, in his well known '-'Letters to a Preben-
dary," he strenuously defends the authority of the Articles,
and on that very ground triumphantly exposes the unprinci-
pled latitudinarianism of Hoadly. For as that highly gifted,
but dangerous man, had openly maintained that nothing
more was required of the clergy than to declare their assent
and consent to the use of the Book of Common Prayer,
&c., whatever might be their opinion of the contents of it,
Milner assserts most justly that there was no pretence for
such an evasion, and quotes the Act of Uniformity as well
as the work of Burnet on the 39 Articles against him. And
then Milner goes on to argue as follows : " Supposing, how-
ever, that nothing more were required of a subscriber than
barely to make use of the Book of Common Prayer, with
what conscience could he, for example, read the several pas-
sages in the Communion Service, and teach the Catechism
contained in it, concerning the mysterious efficacy of the
Sacraments, believing in his own conscience at the same
time, that they are mere positive rites, productive of no such
effect at all as is there ascribed to them ? And when all this
is got over, what will Hoadly and his disciples say to the
subscription they are required to make unfeignedly and ex
aninio, that all and every one of the 39 Articles are agree-
able to the word of God." (p. 339 of Am. Ed.) Again,
after referring in a note, to the 5th Canon of the English
Church, which declares : '' Whoever shall affirm that any of
the 39 Articles are in any part superstitious or erroneous, let
him be excommunicated ipso fado,^^ he asserts, in capital
letters, that " Bishop Hoadly had, by hts doctrines, un-
dermined THE Church, of which he was a prelate." I
can hardly suppose you ignorant of the victorious opposition
which the celebrated William Law, a divine of the same
communion, conducted against Hoadley. The Bangorian
controversy, as it was called, from the diocese which the
Bishop occupied at the time, was of sufficient importance to
fill a space on the page of secular history. You must also
14
be aware that the Convocation of the English Church had re-
solved to publish its solemn censure upon her unworthy pre-
late, and that nothing but its sudden dissolution, by a high-
handed act of Royal authority, prevented his disgrace.
While I admit, therefore, that a few inconsistent and preva-
ricating men in our mother Church have espoused the un-
worthy sentiments which you impute to us, I prove to you,
hy your own witness, that they were such men as the Church
of England herself condemned, and such as he consistently
and honorably pronounced to have undermined the Church
of which they were the ministers. What renders the hon-
est judgment of Dr. Milner the more conclusive against you
on this point, is not merely the circumstance that his con-
troversial zeal and ability gained for him the papal appoint-
ment of Bishop of Castaballa, but the still more pertinent
fact that you have singled him out as a " distinguished
Catholic Prelate,'^ to whose '' learned and profound work "
you refer us, in order to perfect our supposed conversion to
Popery. Were it possible, however, that a doubt could re-
main on any candid mind, upon the binding obligations of
the Articles in our mother Church, the question amongst
us has been distinctly settled before either you or I began
the study of divinity. For you ought to know that Burnet
on the Articles is the standard in all our seminaries of
Theology, by express canonical provision. And your favor-
ite, Dr. Milner, might have taught you that Burnet pronoun-
ces the subscription of the clergy to be " declaratory of
THEIR OWN OPINION, and not a hare consent to articles of
peace, or an engagement to silence and submission^' I put
it, therefore, to your own good sense to say, whether your
charge against us, in this important particular, is not plainly
liable to the reproach either of wilful ignorance, or of the
most dehberate, because twice repeated, misrepresen-
tation.
♦See Letters to a Prebendary, note to p. 339, Am. Ed.
15
I come, now, to that part of your letter, in which you are
pleased to say, that my invitation of yourself and your epis-
copal brethren to a public discussion of the whole contro-
versy between our respective Churches — which you chuse to
call by the invidious name of a challenge — '•' after the state-
ment of your vieivs in regard to such exhibitions, resembles
a message to one who is professedly opposed to duelling J^
Now here I am totally at a loss to understand what you mean
by the statement of your views in regard to such exhibi-
tions. If you allude to your first Address to myself and my
colleagues, I find nothing there which intimates the slightest
distinction in your mind between oral and written contro-
versy. You tell us, on page 6, that you " disclaim, most
sincerely, all ivish to provoke a controversy.^^ And, on page
7, you say, " that you do not conceive discussion, either oral
or ivritten, the means most likely to bring about a union
of the Churches.''^ Assuredly no ordinary mind could dis-
cover, from these words, that you were professedly more
opposed to one sort of controversy than to the other. We all
know that you seem perfectly ready, not to say inclined, to
engage in written discussion ; and your last letter has given
me the first intimation that you were not equally prepared
for oral discussion, if the opportunity were fairly afforded
you. I must frankly say, therefore, that in comparing my
invitation to " a message sent to one who is professedly op-
posed to duelling,^^ you have only exhibited another instance
of your unfortunate facility in making disreputable charges
against others, without seeming to trouble yourself about the
evidence of their truth.
But I must take the liberty of pointing your attention to
a circumstance, which ought to have shewn you the absurdity
as well as the injustice of your imputation. And this is the
fact, that my invitation was not only to you, individually,
but also to AS MANY OF YOUR EPISCOPAL BRETHREN AS YOU
MIGHT THINK FIT. You surcly do HOt imagine that all your
colleagues are professedly opposed to oral discussion, even
16
if you should be. You know, as well as T do, if not much
better, that several of them have been actually engaged in
public oral discussions within a very few years, and I believe
with a large measure of credit and applause. In extending
my invitation, therefore, to the whole, subject only to your
own unlimited selection, I gave you the strongest possible
proof that I knew myself to be addressing those amongst
whom there were men already pledged and practised ; and
therefore I could not have anticipated the slightest reluct-
ance towards the course proposed, on account of your per-
sonal antipathies against the oral method of controversy,
even if you had given me — what you certainly had not — any
intelligible notice of your private opinion.
I proceed, next, to consider your several reasons against
this species of discussion. 1. " That we live far apart, and
it might not be convenient for either to pass to the resi-
dence of the other, or to spend sufficient time at any inter-
mediate point.^' To this you will permit me to answer by
referring you to my letter, in which the very last sentence
provided that ^' the place and time should be arranged to
suit YOUR convenience." You next object that '' the discus-
sion would be necessarily limited to a few topics, or would
be prolonged beyond a reasonable timeJ^ The answer is
obvious : that previous arrangement, as in all similar cases,
could and should have obviated both these difficulties. Your
third argument is that " Documentary evidence, so impor-
tant in such investigations, might not always be at hand,
and assertions might remain unproved.^^ My reply is, that
WRITTEN assertions, as you have abundantly shewn, may be
made witliout proof as well as oral ones, and that in both
the same rule applies, viz. that assertion without proof, if to
the discredit of the opposite party, should be considered as
so much slander, only operating to the prejudice of him that
pubHshes it. It would, ther^foro, merely result, that the
party who intended to makeassert ions, would be obliged to
provide himself with the evidence, or take the consequences
17
of his own want of foresight. Your fourth reason states
that '' the number of our hearers would he necessarily lim-
ited, and the public must trust to reporters for the sub-
stance of our discussion, with danger of being misled on
points in which they might easily be mistaken ; or we
must revise^ and, perhaps, remodel the repor^ts.^^ To all
this I answer affirmatively, but cannot possibly discover how
it yields any objection to oral, when contrasted with written
discussion. For certainly if the hearers are necessarily
limited in the one case, the readers must be more limited in
the otheri And if the public could only be rightly informed by
our revising, or even remodeling the reports, it is but a
question of comparative labor, in which it is at least doubt-
ful whether there is any advantage on the side of those who
prefer written controversy. And this for a twofold reason :
because the public make every allowance for faults of style
in the one case, not expecting that polished accuracy which
they have a right to demand in the other ; and because the
animation and interest of an oral debiate extend themselves,
in a good degreej even to the report ; and thereby confer
upon it a really higher value in the scale of public feeling.
Your last objection yet remains, which I presume, ac-
cording to the rules of rhetoric, you esteem one of the
strongest. You know not, as you say, '' whether it would
entirely comport with the sacred character of a Catholic
Bishop to appear on the arena.^^ Here, again, however, I
profess myself exceedingly at a loss to understand your mean-
ing. Is it beneath your official dignity to speak, what it is
not beneath that dignity to have written ? Or does your
sacred character shrink from accusation in the most
pubhc form, lest your own people might hear the public
correction of the error ? The object of controversial discus-
sion is to establish truth ; and it is certainly new to me that
the oral method is unfit for the sacred character of a bishop,
when it is the only method practised, since the world began,
in the administration of government, in the decisions of jus-
3
18
tice, in the enacting of laws, in the establishment of the
Gospel; in a word, in all the concerns of humanity. I take
for granted that you do not mean to set the sacredness of
your character above that of the Redeemer of mankind, and
yet — to say nothing of his commencement at the age of
twelve years, when he was found disputing with the doctors
in the temple — it is certain that through the whole period of
his blessed ministry, public oral discussion was his frequent
work. If HE condescended to bear the contradictions of his
sinful and rebellious creatures, it seems somewhat unaccount-
able that your sacred character should revolt from a system-
atic discussion with your fellow man, and one who also
claims, however unworthily, to be a bishop, in the catholic,
though not in the Roman Church. Nay, let me refer you
to the language of the Almighty, saying to Israel, through
the prophet Isaiah, " Come now, and let us reason together,
saith the Lord.'''' And what is a regulated public dispu-
tation but a REASONING TOGETHER ou solcmu iuvitatiou, the
principle of which, when its object is the confirmation of
religious truth, is thus dignified and consecrated by the
gracious adoption of the Most High ?
Leaving all this, however, out of the question, let us
come to a more appropriate range of examples. Beginning,
then, with the Apostles, we find them constantly occupied
in public oral controversy. The litigated question about the
ceremonial law was settled by their appointing a day to come
together, and there was ^' much disputing " before the ul-
timate decision. St. Paul is especially recorded as conduct-
ing his ministry in the mode of public disputation. Thus
at Athens, he '^disputed in the Synagogue with the Jews, and
with the devout persons, and in the market daily with them
that met with him." (Acts, 17.) Again, at Ephesus, ^' he
went into the Synagogue, and spake boldly for the space of
three months, disputing and persuading the things con-
cerning the kingdom of God." And again, " he disputed
daily in the school of one Tyrannus." Then, after the
19
Apostolic era, we have the reguiar oral controversy between
the bishop Archelaus and the heretic Manes,* another be-
tween the orthodox bishops and the Arian philosopher at the
Council of Nice, another between Augustin and his fellows
upon the one side, and the Donatists upon the other; in a
word, the history of the early Church is filled with instances,
to prove that oral discussion was a regular part of the Apos-
tolic and Episcopal office, in the purest and best days of
Christian simplicity. But it is enough for me to advert to
the late example of several of your colleagues, and to set
their judgment against yours in this matter. They could
not have '• doubted,^' I presume, '' whether it would en-
tirely comport luith the sacred character of a Catholic Bishop
to appear on the arena,^^ as you term it, or they would not
have thus appeared. I cannot, therefore, attach the slight-
est weight to this last of your objections. It is opposed to
reason, to analogy, to the example of Christ and his apostles,
to that of the primitive bishops, to the current practice of
the whole theological world for centuries together, when
public oral disputation was the scholastic custom throughout
all the universities of Europe, and, lastly, to the recent
precedents amongst yourselves. And my only apology for
spending so much time on so plain a matter, is because your
objection is of a character which is apt to find more favor,
by far, than it deserves, in the artificial dignity and fastid-
ious apprehensiveness of the day we live in.
There is yet, however, another reason, which, as you have
thought fit to add it to the rest, should have a passing no-
tice. By proposing a discussion of the whole ground of
CONTROVERSY, you Say that I '-'do not appear to intend
discussing the merits of it, but rather to show to you, and
to the various Protestant sects, that we still adhere to the
principles of what we call the Reformation." Now it is
true that I specified this latter object, as one to which I at-
* Epiph. de haer. 61. Fleur. Hist. Ecc. Tom. 2, p. 412.
20
tached a leading importance ; because I considered the char-
acter of the Church and her bishops wantonly assailed in
your Address, and felt it to be my solemn duty to raise my
humble voice in their vindication. But so far was I from
designing to exclude the merits of the controversy, that I
used the language which you quote for the very opposite
purpose of shewing that they were to hold their fit place in
the proposed discussion. And I pray you to determine, at
your convenience, if only for your own satisfaction, how any
rational man could propose to discuss the whole ground of
a religious controversy, and yet mean to leave the merits
OF IT out of question.
You are next pleased to cite a sentence from my book on
the Church of Rome, in which I asked your Hierarchy, why
you should not propose to meet the various Christian de-
nominations for the sake of friendly and affectionate dis-
cussion, instead of casting down the gauntlet of proud de-
fiance, and challenging each other to the public war of
words ? And you say that I can doubtless " reconcile this
to my invitation to a jmblic oral discussion. ^^ I fear, Right
Reverend Sir, that you have here spoken ironically, and yet
I believe that you have said the plain and sober truth. For
in that passage, I endeavored to point out the path of what I
then thought, and still think, your interest and duty. It
would be a happy day for the peace and unity of Christen-
dom, if the prelates of the Roman Church, which forms so
large a majority in Europe, and is constantly increased by
immigration, in the United States, should be disposed to fol-
low the course to which you have referred. A proposal
from such a body to meet the various Christian denomina-
tions for the sake of friendly and aftectionate discussion,
would come upon the broken and distracted world, like the
first ray of sunshine after a night of storms. It would in-
dicate the return of the Spirit of peace and love, before
whose mighty influence all things would become possible.
And assuredly it would be generically opposite to the proud
21
and bitter temper of modern controversy, in which tlie ob-
ject of the parties is simply belligerent, and therefore far re-
moved from the hope or promise of the Divine blessing.
But it does not result from this vision of what might be,
if Rome were animated by a different spirit, tliat our own
reformed branch of the ancient Catholic Church must be
publicly slandered and defamed, without our inviting the
accuser to the ordeal of a public investigation. You cannot
suppose that there is any contrariety between the sentiment
of my book, and my invitation of yourself and your col-
leagues to an open discussion of the imputations which you
have thought fit to cast upon us, unless you confound it
with " a casting down the gauntlet of inoud defiance,
and challenging you to the public ivar of loordsJ^ You
must permit me, however, to say, that this aspect of the case
is your work, not mine. You may find it expedient to
speak of it under the name of a challenge, and talk of the
arena, and compare it with the sending of a message to one
professedly opposed to duelling, as you have done. But I
have used no such language, and I do not admit the pro-
priety of its application. The true comparison would be
drawn from the case of one, who hears his parent assailed
in the tenderest point of character, and under a strong sense
of filial duty, soberly and temperately calls on the defamer
to justify his accusation if he can ; while, feeling conscious
that the slander cannot abide the test, he desires that the
public may witness the trial, in order that the public may
know the truth. In such a proceeding, I confess myself un-
able to see the air of a gladiator. You have been the as-
sailant : I seek only to defend. And the defence which I
have undertaken is not that of myself, but of the Church of
Christ — the spiritual mother that bore me.
This moderate and just appeal, however, you have declin-
ed. Well ! be it so. Your objections I have already ex-
amined, and shall not recur to them again. The substitute
you offer is a written discussion, and for this you tender to
22
me the use of the paper called the Catholic Herald, on
condition that I procure the insertion of y^ur letters in the
Churchman of New York. To this proposition I cannot
accede, for many reasons. First, because, as you must be
quite aware, the condition on which you make it is beyond
my control. The Churchman is published in another dio-
cese. Its columns are devoted to a select variety, suited to
the views of its numerous subscribers ; and if I had — what
I have not — either authority or influence in the matter, I
should doubt the propriety of asking its able editor to pledge
himself to the insertion of what might become a long and
wearisome discussion. In the second place I object, because
the interruption of several weeks, which must necessarily in-
tervene between the publication of your letters and that of
my replies, would effectually destroy the continuity of the
argument; and few readers would take the trouble of going
back, in order to compare their respective force and consis- ,
tency. In the third place, such a mode of conducting a con-
troversy might suit your location, but would be exceedingly
inexpedient in mine ; since the distance of my residence
would deprive me of the opportunity of correcting the
press, and expose me to the accidents of frequent mis-
representation. I could assign many other reasons, but
these may suffice. If I must write controversy, I prefer go-
ing on as I began, in the form of books, rather than in the
pages of a periodical.
And this brings me to that part of your letter in which
you speak of your Treatise on the Primacy, published in an-
swer to my volume on the Church of Rome. Thus, in one
passage, (p. 8.) you recommend me to begin my labors with
a review of your book, and in another (p. 6.) you say that
you " disproved my charges, pointed out mistakes in my
quotations, played with some litera7^y trifles, and sustained
the claims of the Holy See, by the very toitnesses which I
summoned to overturn them^ And yet a little farther on,
23
(p. 11.) you talk of my '^offering to decide the quarrel in
single combat, as if to retrieve my literary honor !"
I am sorry, Right Reverend Sir, that you have pressed
this perfectly irrelevant topic into notice, and have even
thought fit to give it an offensive prominence by assigning it
as the true motive of my letter, as if my literary honor had
been sacrificed by your triumphant answer to my book, and
my only hope of retrieving it lay in " offering to decide the
quarrel in single combat f^ whereas, in point of fact, the
whole ofwhat you are pleased to call the quarrel has been pro-
duced by your wanton attack upon the Church, addressed to
all our Bishops, and repelled by several of them before I made
my late appeal ; and the single combat, as it is your choice
to consider it, was tendered solely in justification of the char-
acter of the Church, without the slightest reference to any
point involving the merits of my humble volume, or the lit-
erary honor of its author.
But since you are determined that whatever subject is to
be discussed, the claims of your book shall make a part of it,
and it is highly probable that this is the last occasion on
which J shall have the honor of addressing you, I shall
follow the track laid down by your last letter, however devi-
ous it may be. You will blame yourself, I trust, if it leads to
conclusions less agreeable than your pardonable self-esteem
appears to have anticipated.
In the first place, then, with regard to my work on the
Church of Rome, it was published as the commencement of
a series, which, if the reception of it should seem to warrant,
was to be subsequently put forth, until all the subjects pro-
perly belonging to the Roman controversy should have been
discussed in their order. This design has been suspended by
untoward circumstances, as briefly stated in the first para-
graph of my late letter, but has never been abandoned ; and,
if it please an all-wise Providence, may be resumed at the
earliest convenient season.
Of the plan, the temper, the learning, or the literary merits
/ 24
of that book, it becomes not me to speak. I should be un^
grateful, however, if I did not acknowledge, that as well the
first edition of it in this country, as the second published in
London, was received with a measure of applause which sur-
passed my most sanguine expectations, and certainly reliev-
ed me from all inducement to sound my own praise. That
author is greatly to be pitied who thinks himself compelled to
sin against the divine precept ; " Let another praise thee, and
not thy own mouth ; a stranger, and not thy own lips."
It was perhaps about six months after my book appeared,
when you honored it by an elaborate reply, in the form of
letters, addressed to myself, and forming a volume considera-
bly larger than mine. I lost no time, as you may well sup-
pose, in obtaining a copy, which came, (I think) from a Bos-
ton bookseller; and in the month of January, 1838, — render-
ed memorable to me by a long confinement to a sick room, —
I gave it a careful perusal. The result, to my judgment, was
satisfactory indeed. Out of three hundred and sixteen dis-
tinct quotations, chiefly from the fathers, the councils, and
other authorities which your Church acknowledges, (forming
upwards of sixty pages of solid Latin and Greek, collect-
ed from more than seventy foho volumes during many
years of study, transcribed from the originals with my own
hand, and translated by my own solitary labor.) your critical
acumen cavilled at the rendering of some ten lines, and in
two or three of these I was quite wilHng to accept your aid,
and improve my version. But in a greater number of in-*
stances, I had been called on to rectify the translation of your
most profound scholars, with this difference, however, that
their errors were manifestly the result of design, to exalt the
claims of the papacy, while mine, after they were corrected,
left the argument precisely where it was before. I was de-
voutly thankful, therefore, that my humble production had
passed so safely through the ordeal ; and although I felt as-
sured, before I published it, that it was faithful to the truth, yet
after I perused your answer, I thought my confidence was
25
based upon a two-fold demonstration. From the beginning
to the end of it, I had not found your reasoning able to sub-
vert the evidence I had set forth, nor to evade, in logical
fairness, the inference deduced from it.
I was well aware, however, — to use the words of my letter,
— that it was expected I should make some reply. The cus-
tom of theologians, the desire of friends, and my own char-
acter for perseverance and consistency, all seemed to demand
that I should go forward in the course which I had undertak-
en. But to write another book, merely to expose what I
could not help regarding as a failure, seemed to me a task
both selfish and unnecessary. And after much reflection, I
at length concluded, that the only notice which your work
required would be best taken in the introduction to the next
volume of my projected series, and in some additional notes
to a second American edition of the book which you had pro-
fessed to answer, in case the demand should warrant its re-
publication.
Having thus dismissed the idea of any immediate action,
the month of May brought to me the unexpected intelli-
gence that your book, though printed in Philadelphia, was
not to be found in Baltimore, and that one of the very per-
sons set forth on its title-page as publishers, disavowed all
knowledge of it. My correspondent added the conjecture,
that the volume had perhaps been quietly suppressed, fronr
some reason best known to its author. The month of Octo-
ber following led me to Philadelphia, and then I determined
to satisfy myself by inquiry of your principal publishers. I
went to their establishment accordingly, and asked for your
book. The answer I received was, that a considerable period
had elapsed since the whole remaining part of the edition
had been sent to your own house, and that if I wanted a copy
I must apply to you. To these singular facts, the next month
of July (1839) added the information, that one of my breth-
ren from the South had applied at the Roman Catholic book-
store in New York for a copy, and was told that there was
4
26
no such work in being. Here, then, I had the strongest pre-
sumptive evidence that the conjecture of my Baltimore friend
was the truth ; and that the state of the matter was such as
would render any notice on my part altogether nugatory ; for
why should I trouble myself about a book which its own au-
thor, before it was one year old, had thought proper to with-
draw from public circulation ?
From the summer of 1839 to the fall of 1841, I saw no
further mention of your Treatise on the Primacy. Then, in-
deed, I found you had adverted to it, in the extraordinary
call which you thought fit to send to our bishops, and which
has given rise to the present correspondence. In my former
letter to you, I replied to that part of your Address, by sim-
ply stating that I had been withheld from prosecuting my
controversial labors by a long and weary course of disap-
pointment, loss, and trial, but still hoped to resume them at
a more propitious season. And I should have been much
better content if you had accepted this general answer, in-
stead of obliging me to enter into details, by openly proposing
that I should review your book, proclaiming your supposed
atchievements in ' disproving my charges, pointing out mis^
takes in my quotations, playing with some literary trifles,
and sustaining the claims of the Holy See by the very wit-
nesses which I had summoned to overturn them.^ Nay,
•Jnore than all, by telling me that I '^offered to decide our
quarrel by single combat, as if to retrieve my literary
HONOR !"
Now, I am desirous. Right Reverend Sir, to make all
reasonable allowances for parental partiality. There is some-
thing amiable and respectable even in the weakness of an
author's affection for his intellectual progeny ; and I am the
more solicitous to indulge it in the case of those, who, like
yourself, can have no other offspring by whom their name
and memory may be transmitted to mankind. But really
you must pardon my obtuseness if I cannot see the propriety
of reviewing your work at all ; especially after the strange
27
process of withdrawing it from circulation. If it has as
much merit in the eyes of others as it happily possesses in
your own, there must be many abler pens than mine, ready
to do it justice. I trust, therefore, that you will excuse my
declining an office from which I could derive neither inter-
est nor pleasure ; and that you will forgive my incredulity if
I doubt whether my literary honor has been lost, at least un-
til I have some better evidence of the fact than the opinion
of the interested party.
But this peculiar strain of courtesy, on your part, brings
me to a remarkable passage, in which you charge me with a
violation of courtesy in calling you the Roman Bishop of
Arath, on the title-page of my letter. " The laws of good
society t^equire,^' you say, " that each one should receive his
official designation, lohatever may he the sentiment of the
individual addressing him with regard to his claims to
the titleJ^ And on this principle it 25— as you proceed
to assure me — that you have given myself and all my
colleagues our official titles, although it can be no secret
to me in what light you view our claims to the episcopal
character. In this singular passage, there are two topics to
be examined. The first, my want of courtesy in calling yoQ
a Roman Bishop, and the second, your intimation, that al-
though you have given us the title of bishops, on the prin-
ciple of courtesy, it is a title which you do not think we can
justly claim.
As to the first of these topics, I must frankly confess that
I do not see any real ground of complaint, although I should
be loth to dispute about so small a matter. In the title-page
of your treatise on the Primacy, as well as in your subscrip-
tion to your late Address, you have called yourself the Bishop
of Arath, and Co-adjutor to the Bishop of Philadelphia.
These titles I have given you just as I found them, merely
adding the word Roman, as a proper note of distinction
between the Bishops of your Communion and those of others.
I can discover no just occasion, here, for the charge of a
28
want of courtesy. For surely you do not claim to be a Greek
Bishop, nor yet a Russian, nor a Maronite, nor a Syrian,
nor an English, nor a Protestant Episcopal Bishop. You
must be a Roman Bishop, as it seems to me, even on your
own ground of fact and principle, because your appointment
is derived solely from the Pope of Rome, to whom you are
under a solemn oath of fealty and obedience ; and, as Bishop
of Arath, its whole validity depended upon the papal
power to create, in the middle ages, a new kind of bishop,
whose diocese should be in partibus injidelium ; that is to
say, purely nominal, or, in plain terms, no diocese at all. I
beg leave to congratulate you upon your advancement to a
real diocese, since I perceive, by your last letter, that you
now write yourself, " Bishop of Philadelphia." But your for-
mer office was destitute even of the shadow of Catholicity.
The ancient Catholic Church would have anathematized the
attempt to make bishops, such as the late Bishop of Arath ; for
the accredited doctrine of the Church has always been that
the bishop must be consecrated for the service of his diocese,
whereas you know, full well, that you were never meant to
serve the diocese of Arath ; nay, that in point of fact there
was no such diocese, so that for all practical purposes you
might just as well have taken your title from the moun-
tains in the moon. Now it may be seriously doubted whether
such an episcopate be not simply void, as manifestly in con-
flict with the very nature of the office, and with every
rule sanctioned either bv the Canons or Councils — in a
word, totally and emphatically uncatholic, and entitled to
no epithet higher than that which I bestowed upon it —
Roman — the utmost concession that courtesy itself could
make, unless at the cost of all true ecclesiastical principle.*
* I add a few authorities upon this important subject, worthy of the
highest respect from every lover of Catholicity.
" Episcopus Graecc idem est ac inspector, speculator, superintendens.
Hinc apud profanos scriptores inditum Episcopis nomen turn Diis ab Ho-
raero, quia humano generi ; turn summo Pontifici a Plutarcho, quia ves-
29
Nor is the difficulty confined to your former appoint-
ment, for I think it a grave question how far it affects
your present office, as bishop of Philadelphia. Your diocese,
indeed, is no longer a mere name — vox et pr^ceterea nihil —
and that, in itself, is a very important matter. But if, as I
take for granted, you were supposed to be already conse-
crated, as bishop of Arath, you could not have been conse-
crated again as bishop of Philadelphia ; and therefore the
doubt resting on your first episcopate, attaches itself to the
other also. The only sufficient mode of surmounting this
talibus; turn ab Aristophane iis magistratibus, qui jubente Atheniensium
Senatu Provincias peragrabunt, quia civium bono invigilarent." (Praolec.
Theolog. Hon. Tournely, De ordine, Tom. 1, p. 50. Ed. Ven. 1751.) See
also Is. 60, 17, Septuagint version, y.al Sioacj rovg uo/ovtw? oov 'sv '««5>/v»j,
xai rovg 'tmoxonovg oov 'tv diy.uioovvy], and the New Testament, passim.
A bishop or overseer consecrated to a diocese which he is not to oversee, is
a contradiction in terms.
So fundamental was this principle considered in the Catholic Church,
that all elections of bishops were made by the people in the diocese. Thus
the same author, with the reputation of whom, in your Church, you must
be familiar, in his 2d vol. p. 359, gives us the following authorities. —
" Ipsa plebs," inquit Cyprianus, Epist. 67, alias 68, " maxime habet po-
testatem vel eligendi dignos sacerdotes, vel indignos recusandi." Et infra,
^^De traditione divina et apostolica observatione servandum est et tenendum^
quod apud nos quoque, et fere per vniversas Provincias tenetur^ ut ad ordi-
nationes rite celebrandas^ ad earn, plehem^ cui propositus ordinatur, Epis-
copi ejusdem Provincice proximi quique conveniant, et Episcopus deligatur
plebe praesenti, quce singulorum vitam plenissime novit." Here, you
perceive, Cyprian expressly calls this mode of election a divine and apos-
tolical tradition.
Again, in the 5th century, hear St. Leo, one of your most celebrated
popes. "S.Leo, Epist. 12, alias 84, ad Anastasium, Thessalonicem Epis-
copum adstruit, cum de summi sacerdotis electione tractabitur, ille omni-
bus prseponatur, quem cleri populique consensus concorditer postularit. , . .
ne civitas Episcopum non optatum aut contemnat, aut oderit." (ib.)
It was your Council of Lateran, A. D. 1215, which deprived the people
and the comprovincial bishops of all their power in elections, and devolved
it altogether on the " Capitulum," after ichick yon may find the rise of the
yet more gross abuse of bishops in partibus, amongst the extravagancies
of papal supremacy. What a consistent catholic would say of an episcopate
like this, your own judgment can easily determine.
so
difficulty, as it seems to me, is to recur to that highest
theory of papal power, which it has long been the effort of
your doctors to disavow and explode. This, truly, will cure
all defects, since it makes the pope ecclesiastically omnipo-
tent, as well as temporally supreme. As, however, it has
become your policy to abjure that unpalatable doctrine since
the days of Bossuet, [ am at a loss to discover how you will
defend the claim of bishops in partibus on any consistent
scheme ; although I would not for a moment deny your ability
to settle the point, at least to your own satisfaction.
But now I have to deal with your display of courtesy, in
calling us bishops, and then, because I prefixed the word
Roman to your title, plainly giving me to understand that
we have no just claim to our office. From this, I presume,
you design me to infer that you patronize the silly and ab-
surd tale of the Nag^s head ordination : by which it was
attempted to cast doubt on the consecration of the English
bishops at the accession of Queen Elizabeth, and which I
have been told has lately been republished in your city. In
reply to this old and oft refuted slander, it is enough for me
to remind you that men belonging to your own Church, of
the highest character, and most perfect means of informa-
tion, have admitted it to be a sheer fabrication, again and
again. The celebrated Bossuet, decidedly the first divine
which your Church has produced since the Reformation,
Dr. Courayer, who wrote a book upon the very point, and
within a few years, your distinguished historian. Dr. Lingard,
with many others, have pronounced the clear vindication of
our mother Church from this paltry calumny. The latter
author, especially, who composed his elaborate and volumin-
ous History of England with a zealous regard to the inter-
ests of the Church of Rome, has published a subsequent
essay in support of his historical statement, in which the
most indisputable evidence, from records, documents, and
co-temporary witnesses, is distinctly set forth ; so that he
amongst you who now pretends to doubt the canonical regu-
31
larity and completeness of the English episcopal succession,
may as well go on to deny the whole truth of history. I
must needs say, therefore, that this is one of those points, in
which we can afford to dispense with courtesy, if we can on-
ly have simple justice. And I trust that on a fair and care-
ful reconsideration of our respective claims, even you will not
think that my language has aff'orded you any reason to com-
plain.
The rest of your communication consists of a short but
comprehensive charge against three of my colleagues, who, as
you say, forgot in your regar^d, the charity of Christians,
and the courtesy of gentlemen. Then you favor me with an
ingenious enumeration of our discordant opinions ; and after
erroneously claiming for Pope Gregory the great, the work of
England's first Apostle, you repeat your former invitations to
unity and peace. I shall endeavour to take a respectful
notice of all these topics, and so conclude.
As to my colleagues, they are abundantly competent to their
own defence, and wield a pen with which, whether it be in
point or in power, my humbler skill pretends to no comparison.
But inasmuch as you have introduced the topic in your let-
ter, I must take leave to say, that your Address, when stript
of all disguise, deserved to be treated as a wanton attack up-
on our principles, as Christians and as men ; and therefore I
cannot think it a matter of just surprise, if some of those
whom you assailed retorted with severity. You assumed the
extravagant hypothesis that our whole body were already pre-
pared to yield up almost every point of our distinctive doc-
trines, and pour disgrace upon the reformers who died in their
defence. You advised us to complete our conversion by
reading Milner's End of Controversy, and then to come over,
unconditionally, without even the formality of any previous
discussion, to the embrace of Rome. You urged us to hasten
our recantation, lest our flocks should abandon their pastors,
and go before us. You assured us, in good set terms, that we
did not believe our own Articles of religion, that our subscrip-
32
tion did not bind our consciences, that our declaration of
assent ex animo meant nothing, — in a word, Right Rever-
end Sir, you gave us to understand, that in your judgment
V we were a band of hypocrites, without sincerity or truth,
without knowledge to discern our duty, or without hon-
esty to practise it. And after an assault like this, does
it really become you to complain, that those whom you at-
tacked /or^o^, in your regard, the charity of Christiaris and
the courtesy of gentlemen, merely because learning and elo-
quence were united with a measure of rightful indignation
and caustic sarcasm, to repel the shameful imputation ? We
all know that the courtesy of the gentleman is not expected
to endure the lightest charge which presumes to question his
veracity. And although the far nobler spirit of Christian
principle is taught to turn the left cheek when the right is
smitten, yet is it also taught to rebuke sharply, when the
subject involves the interests of the Church of God. Courtesy,
therefore, is only to be accounted a virtue, when it is exer-
cised in accordance with the higher law of truth. Who ever
thought of censuring St. Paul's want of courtesy, in saying
to the magician Elymas, " O thou full of all guile, and of all
deceit, son of the devil, enemy of all justice, thou dost not
cease to pervert the right ways of the Lord ?" Or who, on
the other hand, ever praised the courtesy of Joab, because he
took hold of Amasa's chin with his right hand to kiss him, in
the guise of kindness, saying, " God save thee, my brother !'*
while his left hand grasped the concealed weapon, to inflict
the mortal blow ?*
But I come now to one of the most subtle and ingeniously
managed passages in your letter, in which, disclaiming any
design of impeaching our honesty, you take occasion to re-
proach us with our differences of opinion. And in order that
I may not run the slightest risk of misrepresenting you, I shall
transcribe the whole at length, in its own integrity.
"I formed," you say, (p. 6.) "no unfavorable estimate of
* Acts, 13, 10, and 2 Ki. 20, 'J. Doway Version.
33
"your honesty. I gave you full credit for honest adherence
" to the Religious Society in which you hold so eminent a
"station ; but as you do not harmonize in your teaching, some
" opposing the Oxford views as heretical, while others defend
" them as the genuine doctrines of the Church ; some holding
" that you possess a real effective episcopacy, such as the an-
" cient Church enjoyed ; while others among you consider
" that even the pastoral relation in reference to the laity is
" but the shadow of a name : some maintaining the existence
"of a true priesthood and sacrifice, and raising altars on
" which it may be offered ; whilst others deny that there is
" properly priesthood, sacrifice, or altar : I thought that
" your adherence did not imply a settled conviction of mind
" on the doctrines, or on the nature of your worship. From
" the perusal of Anglican and American divines, I perceived
" that the divine origin of episcopacy, and its need for the
" essential constitution of the Church, were disputable points.
" This latitude of belief might determine you to remain in
" your stations, as long as you saw no fair prospect of uniting
" the various Christian sects in faith and communion, but you
"might feel it your duty to abandon them, if by the sacrifice
" you could secure the unity of Christendom."
To this quotation, I shall add a short sentence on page 10,
where you say, " In return for your polite invitation to us to
"restore our Church to primitive purity, in order to enjoy
" your communion, I invited you to return to the faith which
" Augustin preached in England, and to the worship which
" he practised, as clearly testified by the venerable Bede, that
" you might be under the paternal government of him who
" worthily inherits the name and authority of England's |)n-
" mary Apostle. "^^
Now I trust. Right Reverend Sir, that you will bear with
me, while I shall endeavor to deal candidly and justly with
the many interesting and important topics presented in these
lines. To act fairly towards them, I shall speak first of our
alleged divisions, and of your proposed remedy. I shall
5
34
then have some remarks to offer on your position in our pre-
sent controversy, and on the historical accuracy of your
reference to England's primary apostle.
It is, then, most true, that there is considerable diversity of
sentiment amongst us, and if we include our mother Church
of England, and sister Church of Scotland, that diversity will
extend to a greater variety of points, and occupy a still wider
range of disputation. The leading difference of opinion is
that which is so commonly expressed by the terms High and
Loiv Churchman ; besides which, there are I know not how
many, who dislike these names, discourage their application,
and prefer calling themselves simple Churchmen, symbolizing
in all respects with neither party, and therefore exposed, as a
matter of course, to be thought quite too High by the one,
and quite too Low by the other. Such, if you will pardon
the egotism, is my own position. It is not the position of a
leader, nor is it that of a follower of those who lead. My
feelings and my moderate capacity are alike unsuited to the
one; my habits of independent thought are unfavorable to
the other. A contented mediocrity seems therefore to be
my appointed lot ; happy, if I can only assist my abler
brethren, to '' keep the unity of the spirit, in the bond of
peace.
But permit me to assure you, that if you have inferred,
from this diversity, the existence of any serious dissatisfaction
with the Church as she is, or of any disposition to choose
some other Christian communion as a better or a purer one,
you could not have fallen into a more egregious error. Our
disputes are frequent enough, and pertinacious enough, and
conducted with heat and intemperance enough, God knows !
to alarm, full often, the timid mind, which looks not be-
yond the surface of things, and imagines, in its simplicity,
that ruin must be at hand, when the ministry of Christ begin
to wrangle. Such a mistake, however, I must beg leave to say,
is scarcely pardonable in a theologian. Least of all is it pardon-
able in a Roman theologian, who cannot be supposed igno-
35
rant of the innumerable and interminable disputes which have
agitated his own Church in the ages that are past, and which
still exist, only smothered into external peace, under a political
regard to the risk of '*' Protestant ascendancy."
Let me, tliereforc, rectify your ideas on the subject, by re-
minding you, that all the points which are controverted
amongst us are but speculative opinions, in which the dis-
putants on all sides claim the doctrinal standards of the
Church with equal confidence, as substantially in their favor.
Now so long as this is the case, it is as clear as the light of
day that the existence of controversy argues no discontent
with the Church or her system ; so far from it, indeed, that
it rather seems to increase a love for the Church, in propor-
tion as the litigants are accustomed to appeal to her author-
ity. If you ask, however, that this authority should be so
expressed, that our ministry could not vary from each other
in their speculative interpretations, you must be aware that
you ask what never did exist, and what, in the nature of
things, never can. It is the honest acknowledgment of
your own favorite, Dr. Milner, that '^ the Articles and Creeds
of the Church of Englajid,^^ (which we inherit from her)
^' are not less copious, emphatical, and precise, with respect
to the grand mysteries of the Gospel, than are those of any
OTHER Church that now is, or has existed since the
TIME OF Christ."* All that the Church could do, when it
was truly catholic, to guard by her great Councils the right
interpretation of the Word of God, remains, as you well
know, in our Liturgy and Articles, undiminished by the
frauds of heresy, and unadulterated by the alloys of su-
perstition. With these, you also know that we have the
Apostolic Succession, government, and discipline, as an Epis-
copal Church, secured by the strongest laws of ecclesiasti-
cal authority. Here, then, are all that can be asked to
*^ See Letters to a Prebendary, Am. Ed. p. 329.
SG
keep the minds of men in unity — such unity as is needed for
the earthly communion of saints. Within this range there
will, and there ought to be, a reasonable scope for individ-
ual speculation ; and so long as this is governed by the love
of truth, kept within the limits of kindness and sobriety, and
open to a frank and fraternal rebuke when it passes its proper
bounds, it would be neither wisdom nor charity, in my hum-
ble judgment, to fetter its Christian liberty, in the vain desire
of that perfect unity, which can only be enjoyed by the
Church, after she has passed from her militant state on earth,
to her glorified state in heaven.
As to the low condition of practical discipline amongst
us, I affect not to deny it. On the contrary, I have openly
stated and deplored the degeneracy and worldliness of the
Church, in a late Charge to my own clergy, from which I
perceive you have done me the honor to take some evidence
for your accusation. But surely that man must be wholly
blind who cannot see that this degeneracy is universal. No
body of Christians can truly claim to be an exception.
Above all, the Church of Rome cannot set up for superiori-
ty, since you well know that her only apology for the modern
system of Penance and Indulgences, is rested on the ac-
knowledged decay of the ancient discipline ; and the cry
against her awful abuses brought together the Councils of
Basle and Pisa — for Councils they were, although Rome does
not own them — long before the era of the English Reforma-
tion. It may well be admitted, then, that we are practical-
ly far behind the system of the Church ; but that the blame
rests on the Church, instead of on ourselves, is an idea
which you will find yourself permitted to enjoy, without the
slightest participation from any sa7ie mind belonging to our
Communion.
But whatever our speculations, and disputes, and worldli-
ness may be, we have one blessing for which we are devout-
ly thankful, and that is, their unrestrained publicity.
Free as the air, open as the day, is every thing belonging to
37
us; doctrine, worship, discipline, parties, controversies, life,
and conduct. It was our Lord's command to his Apostles :
" What I tell you in the ear, that preach ye upon the
HOUSE-TOPS," and he compared his Church to a ''City set
upon a hill, which cannot be hid^ We have, therefore, no
scale of Christian perfection, which requires, in order to se-
cure its developement of what you call the interior life, to
be tied fast by vows of human institution, and secured by
bolts and bars, and wrapped carefully up in secresy and se-
clusion. We have no orders of the sexes, who stand aloof
from the social community around them, invested \w'\\\\ the
suspicious mantle of mystery and gloom. We have no va-
riable and politic plan of administration, by wijich the su-
perstitions which we openly preach in one part of the world,
we as openly disavow in another. We are under no oaths
to a foreign prelate, nor are we in danger of finding our-
selves entangled in doubtful constructions, in order to settle
the boundary line between conflicting rights and duties.
The Church, as we acknowledge her, is indeed the spouse of
Christ ; one, undefiled, pure from all the stains of corrupt
human invention, and replenished with gifts and graces from
the bountiful hand of her Creator and her Lord ; transpa-
rent as the light, hating darkness, holding before the eyes
of all the same high and holy standard ; strenuous for form
only so far as is needful for the stability of doctrine, and
the reverent order of the house of God ; strenuous for gov-
ernment only so far as is demanded for the preservation of
peace and unity; and in all respects that are truly impor-
tant, — although, it may be, despoiled of a few primitive or-
naments in the struggle of her escape from bondage, yet —
without spot or blemish, and, as the faithful image of her
glorious Maker, worthy of all fidelity and confidence. Our
acknowledgment of our own defects, therefore, involves no
charge against the Church. God forbid ! On the subject
of her character and claims, there is but one heart and voice
amongst us ; and we should as soon think of suicide in order
38
to remedy the infirmities of life, as think of forsaking the
Church in the hope of improving our rehgion.
Admitting, therefore, Right Reverend Sir, as I do frankly
admit, our individual deficiencies, I have but a few words to
say upon the remedy which you propose, when you urge us
to abandon our present highly favored lot, for the peace and
unity of your communion. And I say to you, in all personal
kindliness, but with sincerity and candor, that if it were pos-
sible for Rome to re-absorb into herself the reformed Catholic
Church to which it is our privilege to belong, I verily believe
that it would not only be ruin irretrievable to ourselves, but
destruction to the best hopes of Christian truth, and emphat-
ically to the very peace which you boast of possessing. For
where, I beseech you, was your peace before the Reforma-
tion ? Is it not notorious to all the world, that every engine
of policy and every weapon of state, fire and sword, crusades
and inquisitions, racks and gibbets, the actual torture of the
body, and the threatened torture of the soul, were unceas-
ingly employed for successive centuries to secure peace and
unity to the papal dominion, and all in vain ? Where is uni-
ty of doctrine amongst you even now, with all the induce-
ments which the hope of conquest and the fear of defeat can
set before you ? You say, for example, that your Church is
infallible ; but you have never settled your theory of this
infalhbility, nor ascertained the tribunal in which it resides.
You say that the pope is the vicar of Christ, and that it is
essential to salvation that every soul should acknowledge him;
but you have never determined the extent of his powers, nor
defined the limits of your obedience. You say that we are
accursed if we do not supplicate the virgin and the saints,
but you have never settled the questions how they can hear
our supplications, nor whether they can hear, or not. You
call the virgin, '"the queen of heaven, the queen of saints, the
queen of angels," with many other epithets which we think
open to the charge of blasphemy ; and yet you have never
39
settled the doubtful point, as to the evidence of her assump-
tion, nor decided the nnuch vexed question, whether she was
free from original sin. Your Council of Trent pronounced
a curse on all who disbelieve in Purgatory, and your Church
grants indulgences from fixed periods of purgatorial pains on
regular days in every year ; and yet you have not agreed
upon the nature of those pains, nor even upon the authority
from whence you derive the doctrine. Some of you say that
the pope is infallible, others deny it flatly. Some say that he
is superior to a general Council, others that a general Council
is superior to him. On the point of episcopacy too, you have
far more unsettled questions than we have ; for some of you
maintain that bishops hold their office jure divino immedi-
ately from God, others, that they have it immediately from
the pope, that he is in fact the only bishop, and that the rest
act merely as his vicars apostolic, having no power but what
they derive from him. You have serious difficulties, also, if
you would but consider them rightly, concerning the ques-
tion of the episcopal succession, in those cases where there
has been but one to consecrate, whereas the canons, from the
apostles down, require three. And the outrageous innova-
tion of bishops without dioceses, or bishops in partibus in-
Jidelium, would of itself give more trouble to my conscience,
if I had the misfortune of being one of them, than all the
debated topics amongst ourselves put together.
These may suffice, I trust. Right Reverend Sir, as a speci-
men of the unity in doctrine which we should obtain, by ex-
changing the pure simpHcity of the ancient Catholic Church,
for the tortuous and complicated system of modern Roman-
ism. And as to your peace, you cannot be ignorant that we
ascribe it all to the effects of the Reformation. You are kept
so occupied by the assaults of Protestants from without, that
you have neither time nor spirit for intestine dissensions.
But we all know that the peace of principle is one thing,
and the peace of policy is another. The first is a spiritual
privilege, resulting from the unity of faith, and the influence
40
of charity. The second is nothing better than a carnal cal-
culation about profit and loss ; yea, so carnal, that it may be
found, to a certain extent, among the very brutes that perish.
For even the lordly lion, whose roar, at times, can make the
forest tremble, understands the policy of being still and quiet,
when he crouches for his prey.
A few words more, upon the sentence in which you say,
that in return for my polite invitation to your hierarchy to
restore your Church to its primitive purity, you invited us
to return to the faith which Augustin preached, alluding to
A. D. 590, when Gregory the great sent Augustin to Eng-
land, and calling that pope expressly, ^^ England's primary
apostle.^''
Now here, you seem to consider your Address to our bish-
ops as a fair return to my book on the Church of Rome, ap-
parently forgetting that your volume on the Primacy was
published in answer to that book, and that your Address,
predicated solely on the Oxford Tracts, was written four
years later. Whether you wrote this sentence for the pur-
pose of making me seem to be the aggressor in our present
controversy or not, is beyond my power to determine. I can
easily shew, however, that not only are the two works per-
fectly distinct in the point of chronology, and in the line of
argument, but they are altogether dift'erent in purpose and in
spirit. I did not ask your prelates, — as you have urged our
bishops — to abandon their Church ! I did not charge them,
— as you have charged our ministry — with disregard to their
professed Articles of faith, and with preaching against them
at their pleasure ! I did not tell them — as you have told our
clergy — that their divines had given up, one by one, almost
every point in controversy ! Nor did I counsel them to come
over to us without loss of time, lest their people should desert,
and come before them ! Far from all this, I presented their
own favorite authors to their consideration, and argued the
duty and expediency of their returning to their own original
Church, by advancing in the work of reformation which they
41
had in part commenced ; but in no one instance implicating
their sincerity, or desiring that they should disregard the best
interests of their own communion. You must permit me,
therefore, Right Reverend Sir, to repel, in the most positive
terms, this attempt to divide the odium of your late assault,
as plainly inconsistent with the time, the facts, and the whole
strain of your argumentation. The responsibility of my
work I shall take with pleasure, but the excitement of the
present discussion is all your own.
The last topic presented by your letter, is the total subver-
sion of all historical accuracy, in calling pope Gregory the
great, England's primary apostle. And as this gross mis-
take serves as the foundation of many others, inducing your
writers to say a variety of idle things about the debt of grati-
tude which England owes to Rome for her conversion, and
the consequent impiety of her desertion of her spiritual moth-
er, I must beg a little more of your indulgence, for the sake
of adducing something better than vague assertion, viz. the
irrefragable testimony of your own ancient witnesses, to es-
tablish the true origin of the Church from which we descend.
The statements of your modern authors are nearly all
unanimous in the assumption that the Church of England
had its birth and parentage from the Church of Rome, in A.
D. 590, when Gregory the great, sent the abbot Augustin with
40 monks, as missionaries into Britain. Now this was the
period of the Saxon Heptarchy, and the Saxons were pagans,
beyond all doubt. But the body of the nation were Britons
still. The Saxons were foreigners from Germany, invited,
unhappily, by the advice of the British prince Vortigern, to
assist in the protracted contests with the Picts and Scots, but
who afterwards used their arms to establish themselves, as
masters of the country. And although it is true that the Brit-
ons were at last partly compelled to submit, and partly driv-
en from their homes, and forced to defend themselves chiefly
in Cornwall and Wales, yet all experience proves that such
conquests are never so total as to subvert the religion of a
6
42
nation, when the objects of the conquerors are only domin-
ion and spoil.
The historian Hume, who certainly was under no bias in
this particular, places the facts upon fair and reasonable
ground, in his account of the state of England previous to
the effort of Gregory's missionary zeal. It must be remem-
bered, in order to form just ideas upon this subject, that
when the Romans left the British to themselves in A. D. 448,
after having been in possession of the greater part of the
island for nearly four centuries, (Hume, 1 , 8.) the people
had become, to a great degree, civilized. Twenty-eight
considerable cities, with a great number of towns and vil-
lages, bore witness to their advancement in the arts ; the
father of the great Constantino had long held his imperial
court among them, and at York, where he died, the British
legions proclaimed the son his parent's successor. Although,
therefore, a long period of war and commotion followed,
ending in the establishment of the Saxon Heptarchy, yet, as
the historian well observes, " a civilized people, however
subdued by arms, still maintain a sensible superiority over
barbarous and ignorant nations. All the other northern con-
querors of Europe had already been induced to embrace the
Christian faith, which they found established in the empire ;
and it was impossible but the Saxons, informed of this event,
must have regarded with some degree of veneration a doc-
trine which had acquired the ascendant over all their brethren.
However limited in their views, they could not but have per-
ceived a degree of cultivation in the southern counties, be-
yond what they themselves possessed ; and it was natural for
them to yield to that superior knowledge, as well as zeal, by
which the inhabitants of the Christian kingdoms were, even
at that time, distinguished."
In the order of Providence, however, a favorable opening
had been prepared for the conversion of the Saxon invaders,
which I shall also describe in the words of this historian. —
" Ethelbert," the king of Kent, " had married Bertha, the
43
only daughter of Caribert, king of Paris, one of the descen-
dants of Clevis, the conqueror of Gaul ; but before he was
admitted to this alliance, he was obliged to stipulate, that
the princess should enjoy the free exercise of her religion ;
a concession not difficult to be obtained from the idolatrous
Saxons. Bertha brought over a French bishop to the court
of Canterbury, and being zealous for the propagation of her
religion, she had been very assiduous in her devotional exer-
cises ; had supported the credit of her faith by an irre-
proachable conduct, and had employed every art of insinua-
tion and address to reconcile her husband to her religious
principles. Her popularity in the court, and her influence
over Ethelbert, had so well paved the way for the reception
of the Christian doctrine, that Gregory, surnamed the great,
then Roman pontiff, began to entertain hopes of effecting
a project, which he himself, before he mounted the papal
throne, had once embraced, of converting the British
Saxons."
You will have no difficulty, I trust, Right Reverend Sir,
in understanding the view which I feel quite sure is the only
one consistent with the facts of history. The nation was
British, the rulers and the dominant party were Saxons. The
very intention of the Pope was limited to these last, who did,
indeed, require the work of Christian zeal to convert them
to the faith. But the nation had been converted long be-
fore, and therefore, granting that the mission of Gregory was
successful as to these Saxon marauders, it was neither the
beginning of the British Church, nor was it conducted with
any just regard to her rights and privileges. I shall now
proceed to substantiate these assertions by evidence which
you cannot question, I do not, of course, offer you the
statement of Hume as proof, in a matter of ecclesiastical
history ; but have presented it rather as a preparation for the
evidence, which I presume you would find better stated in
his words than in mine. First, then, I shall establish the
fact that the British Church was in being, perfectly and in*
44
dependently organized, for centuries before the days of pope
Gregory. Secondly, I shall shew how truly his emissary rep-
resented the character of his Roman master, in lording it
over the national Church, through the power of her Saxon
oppressors ; and then you will perceive with how little jus-
tice you and your Church have claimed for that pope the
name of England's primary apostle.
My first witness is Tertulhan, who wrote, as you know,
within a century after the death of St. John, about A. D.
200. In his book against the Jews he quotes the prophet
Isaiah, predicting the universal preaching of the gospel, and
then, referring to the apostles, he cites the text of St. Paul,
where he saith, that " their sound went into all the earth, and
their words unto the ends of the world." He next reckons
up the nations who had believed in Christ, the Parthians,
Medes, Elamites, and the dwellers in Mesopotamia, Arme-
nia, Phrygia, Cappadocia, Pontus, Asia, Pamphylia, Egypt,
Africa, Rome, Jerusalem, the Getuli, the Moors, the Span-
iards, the Gauls, and then he adds : '' those parts of Britain
which were inaccessible to the Romans, but subject to
Christ;"'^ adding many other nations, which it is beside my
purpose to mention. Observe, I beseech you, the connexion
here, clearly proving that in the time of TertuIIian, the planting
of the gospel in Britain was ascribed to the apostles ; though
whether it were St. Paul, St. James, or Simon Zelotes, or
some other of the thirteen, it is now impossible to ascertain,
no early writer having recorded it.
The next witness is Origen, who says that ^' the power of
* " Et Britannorum inaccessa Romanis loca, Christo vero subdita; " and
a little further on he adds, " In quibus omnibus locis Christi nomen, qui
jam venit, regnat : " and again, in a very eloquent passage, still farther on,
he recurs to Britain in these words, " Britanni intra Oceani sui ambitum
conclusi, Maurorum gens, et Getulorum barbaries a Romanis obsidentur,
ne regionem suarum fines excedant. Quid de Romanis dicam, qui de le-
gionum suarum praesidiis imperium suum muniunt, nee trans istas gentes
porrigere vires regni sui possent ? Christi autem regnum ac nomen ubique
porrigitur, ubique creditur, ab omnibus gentibus supra enumeratis colitur,"
&c. Tertul. adv. Judceos, §vii and §viii, p. 188-9. Ed. Paris, 1695.
45
God our Saviour is even with them which in Britain are di-
vided from our world."* And this testimony is only about
fifty years later than Tertullian.
The third witness is the record of the great Council of
Aries, summoned by the emperor Constantine in A. D. 314,
at which no less than five delegates attended from the Church
of Britain, viz. " EboriuS; the bishop of York, Restitutus, the
bishop of London, Adelfius, the bishop of the city called the
colony of London," (which some suppose to be the modern
Colchester,) ^' Sacerdos a priest, and Arminius a deacon,"
both from the same city as Adelfius.f No proof could be
more conclusive to shew the mature and vigorous state of
the British Church at this time.
The fourth witness is Eusebius, who testifies that the British
bishops concurred in the judgment of the Council of Nice.J
The fifth witness is Athanasius, who says that the British
bishops agreed in his acquittal at the Council of Sardis.
The sixth witness is the Council of Rimini, at which
were also present a deputation of British bishops.
The seventh witness is St. Jerome, who frequently men-
tions Britain, in one place saying, that " the court of heaven
is open alike from Jerusalem ^ Britainf^ again, he speaks
of the Briton^ though divided from their world, seeking to
increase his piety by going to Bethlehem. And elsewhere
he adverts to British Christianity, as to a familiar fact.
* Virtus Domini Salvatoris et cum his est, qui ab orbe nostro in Britannia
dividuntur." Orig. in Lucae, c. ]. Homil. 6. This citation is from Ful-
ler. The original is not at hand.
t Eborius, Episcopus, de civitate Eboracensi, Provinciae Britanniae.
Restitutus, Episcopus, de civitate Londinensi, Prov. supradicta.
Adelfius, Rpiscopus, de civitate Colonise Londinensium.
Exinde Sacerdos presbyter, Arminius diaconos. — See Hard. Con. Tom.
1, p. 267.
X Euseb. de vita Constant. Lib. iii, c. 19. The next two I have also
given from Fuller.
II " Et de Hierosolymis et de Britannia agqualiter patet aula ccelestis,
Hieron. Op. Tom. 1, p. 66. G. Epist. 13, ad Paulinum.
Divisus ab orbe nostro Britannus, si in religione processerit, occiduo sole
46
The eighth witness is Pope Gregory himself; for when his
emissary Augustin consulted him in order to know what line
of conduct should be adopted in relation to the bishops of
Gaul and Britain, the pontiff answers him, that the jurisdic-
tion of Archbishop over the bishops in Gaul had already
been conferred upon the bishop of Aries ; '' but we commit
to you," continues Gregory, " the care of all the bishops of
Britain, that the ignorant may learn, that the weak may be
strengthened, and that the obstinate may be corrected by
authority." *
More might easily be adduced, if necessary, to prove the
indisputable fact, that from the days of the Apostles the
Church of Christ had been established in Britain, and that
this Church was still in existence, having many bishops,
at the time when the pope sent his emissary Augustin to
convert the Saxon king of Kent. I need not detain you by
rehearsing the history of the success of Augustin with this
royal proselyte, the vast numbers said to be baptized by him,
and the miracles supposed to be wrought by his power.
But it should be recollected, that on the very spot assigned to
him, there was still standing the old British Church of St.
Martin, Canterbury, in which the queen was accustomed to
offer up her own worship with the GaUican bishop Luid-
hard, long before his arrival.f My next quotation must
be from the letter of the pope to the king of Kent, after his
dimisso, quserit locum famasibi tantura et scripturarum relatione cognitum.''
ib. p. 82. C. Epist. ad Marcellam. See also Epist. ad Oceanum, p. 130. E.
and Lib. adv. Luciferianos, Tom. 2, p. 97. 9.
* Interrogatio Augustini, Postulo etiam qualiter debeamus cum Gallia-
rum atque Britanniarum episcopis agere .''
Responsio Beati Gregorii Papae. "In Galliarum episcopos nullam tibi
auctoritatem tribuimus,quia ab antiquis praedecessorum meorum temporibus
pallium Arelatensis episcopus accepit quem nos privare auctoritate percepta
minime debemur Britanniarum vero omnium episcoporum curam tuse
fraternitati committimus : ut indocti doceantur, infirmi persuasione robo-
rentur, perversi auctoritate corrigantur." Hard. Con. Tom. 3, p. 512.
t See Fuller, p. 56, who cites Bede, Hist. Ecc. lib. 1, c. 25.
47
conversion and the appointment of Augustin to the primacy,
in which we have a notable specimen of the pohcy with
which Rome had already learned to wield the spiritual, un-
der the authority of the temporal sword. In favor of brevi-
ty, however, I shall only cite a portion of his epistle. The
beginning is of no importance to the subject, and the other
part is simply an exhortation to diligence, founded on the
pope's idea that the end of the world was at hand ; a plain
proof that whatever his other merits may have been, the
power of prophetical interpretation was not among them.
Addressing himself to Ethelbert, as king of England, the
pontiff says, '' Therefore, O glorious son, keep the grace
which thou hast divinely received, with all diligence. Make
haste to extend the Christian faith amongst your subjects, en-
large the zeal of thy righteousness in their conversion, over-
turn the temples and worship of idols, establish your people
in purity of life by exhorting, affrighting, soothing, and
correcting, and by showing examples of virtue." * * #
*' And whatever our most reverend brother Augustin, your
bishop, admonishes, hear willingly, perform devoutly, and
studiously keep in mind, since if you hear him in that which
he delivers on the part of the omnipotent God, the same
God will more quickly answer his prayers on your behalf."*
My last quotation shall be from the venerable Bede, show-
ing the style in which Augustin proceeded to reduce the
British Church to obedience.
* " Et ideo, gloriose Fill, earn quam accepisti divinltus gratiam sollicita
raente custodi. Christianam fidem in popnlis tibi subditis extendere fes-
tina, zelum rectitudinis tuae in eorum conversione multiplica, idolorum cul-
tus insequere, fanorum aedificia everte, subditorum mores in magna vitae
munditia exhortando, terrendo, blandiendo, corrigendo, et boni operig
exempla monstrando JBdifica." " Reverendissimus autem frater noster
Augustinus, episcopus — quseque vo3 admonet libenter audita, devote pera-
gite, studiose in memoria reservate ; quia si vos eum in eo quod pro omni-
potente Deo loquitur, auditis, idem omnipotens Deus hunc pro vobis exo-
rantem celeriua eraudit, " Greg. Mag. Op. ed. Benedict, Tom. 2, p. 1165,
epis. 66.
48
'^ Using the help of king Ethelbert," says this ancient his-
torian, ^'Augustin called the bishops and doctors of the near-
est and greatest British province to a conference, at the place
called to this day Augustin's oak, and endeavored to persuade
them to unite with him in the common work of evangelizing
the nations, to lay aside their mode of keeping Easter, and
their other customs which were contrary to the unity of the
Church." They declined his proposal, however, although
Augustin, as Bede relates the matter, worked a miracle to
convince them. A second conference being appointed,
" there came seven British bishops, and many learned men,
chiefly from that most noble monastery of Bangor, over which
the abbot Dinooth is said to have then presided." Disgust-
ed, as the historian states, by the pride of Augustin, at this
second interview, and partly influenced by the counsels of a
celebrated hermit with whom they had previously conferred,
they positively refused either to change their customs for
those of Rome, or to receive Augustin for their archbishop.
On this, saith the historian, "Augustin is reported to have
threatened them, predicting that if they would not have
peace with their brethren, they should have war with their
enemies ; and if they refused to preach to the English the
way of life, they should suflfer from their hands, the ven-
geance of death."
This prediction came to pass accordingly. The English
king Adelfrid attacked the British at Caarlegeon, or Chester,
where he found not only the forces of the Britons, but also
their priests, along with a large body of monks, who had as-
sembled, after a three days' fast, to oppose him with their
prayers. These monks were chiefly from the great monas-
tery of Bangor, which was so extensive, that it consisted of
seven divisions, each containing 300 men, all of them bound
to maintain themselves by their own manual labor. The
king being told that this assembly of worshippers were pray-
ing for his defeat, ordered his soldiers to attack them first,
and thus he butchered twelve hundred of them upon the
49
spot, fifty only, out of the whole, escaping. In this way the
historian pronounces the prophecy of Augustin to have been
fulfilled, although after its author had departed to another
world.*
Here, then. Right Reverend Sir, I trust that you have
abundant proof — satis superque — to justify our denying to
pope Gregory or to any other pope, the title of '^England^s
primary apostle J' For aught I know, he may be called the
chief converter, through his emissary Augustin, of the Sax-
ons of Kent, although even there, the Gallican bishop Luid-
hard and the Christian example of queen Bertha preceded
him. But granting all you can ask for his influence over the
Saxon invaders and usurpers, who had established their
wretched Heptarchy, it remains undeniably true that the Brit-
ish Church had been in quiet possession of the land from the
* " Interea Augustinus, adjutorio usus Edilberthi regis, convocavit ad
suum colloquium episcopos sive doctores maximee et proximae Britonum pro-
vincae, in loco ubi usque hodie lingua Anglorura Jlugustineizac^ id est,
robur Augustini appellatur ; coeptique eis fraterna admonitione suadere, ut
pace catholica secum habita, coramunem evangelizandi gentibus pro Do-
mino laborem susciperent : non enim Paschae diem dominicum suo tempore,
sed a decima quarta usque ad vicesimam lunam observabant — et alia plu-
rima unitati ecclesiae contraria faciebant. Qui cum longa disputatione
habita, neque precibus, neque hortamentis, neque increpationibus Augustini
acfociorum ejus assensum prsebere voluissent." " Unde postulabant ut
secundo synodus pluribus advenientibus fieret. Quod cum esset statutum,
venerunt, ut perhibent, septem Britonum episcopi, et plures viri doctissimi,
niaxime de nobilissimo eorum monasterio, quod vocatur lingua Anglorum
Bancornaburg,cui tempore illo Dinooth abbas prsefuisse narratur." "Fac-
tum est, ut venientibus illis sederet Augustinus in sella. Quod illi viden-
tes, mox in iram oonversi sunt, eumque notantes superbise, cunctis quae
dicebat contradicere laborabant. " "Illi nihil horum se facturos, neque
ilium pro archiepiscopo habituros esse respondebant." " Quibus vir
Domini Augustinus fertur minitans praedixisse, quod si pacera cum fratri-
bus accipere nollent } bellum ab hostibus forent accepturi : et si nationi
Anglorum noluissent viara vitae praedicare, per horum manus ultionem es-
sent mortis passuri." (Bedcc Hist, Ang. lib. 11. c. 11 ; vel Hard. Cone.
Tom. 3. p. 540.) The account of the conferences, the miracle professed
to have been wrought by Augustin, the counsel of the hermit, the monas-
tery, and the slaughter, are all included in the same extract from Bede, but
are too long for insertion.
7
50
times of the apostles, that the bishops had assisted at the
great Councils centuries before either the pope or Augustin
were born, and that at the very time of this celebrated mis-
sion, the same Church was in full being ; oppressed, indeed,
and mourning, yet having her bishops, her doctors, her mon-
asteries, her customs, variant from those of Rome, and ac-
cording more with the oriental Christians. Equally manifest
it is, that the papacy in England, like the Saxon dominion,
was an assault and an usurpation ; that it was the arm of
force which established its supremacy, and that when the an-
cient Church of Britain at last succumbed to the yoke, the
conquest was gained by the complex influence of policy and
power. Let not Rome, then, complain, if policy and pow-
er, which first gave her empire over the Church of Britain,
were the first instruments by which, in the person of Henry
the eighth, that empire was destroyed. And be not surpris-
ed if your invitations to return to the faith ivhich Augustin
preached, should remind us of the British bishops who re-
fused to own his sway, and of the Saxon sword which mas-
sacred the poor monks of Bangor.
And now, Right Reverend Sir, I have but little more to
add, upon the point of your last suggestion, where you say
that if a glimnuring of hope should be afforded of union,
you should be happy to meet myself or any of my col-
leagues, in private, before a few intelligent friends, to ex-
amine calmly and dispassionately , on what basis it could
he established. Here you have given me, truly, a most ex-
traordinary set of inconsistencies. A public intimation about
a private conference ! An attempt to arrange the basis of
union, when the parties are known to be at irreconcilable
variance on fundamental principles I A proposition to dis-
cuss terms from one who claims an unconditional surrender !
An offer to treat, from one who has no diplomatic authority !
A show of independent action, from a prelate who has no in-
dependent will, since you are sworn to defend the ^^ royal-
51
ties^^ of St. Peter, and are quite incompetent to effectuate
the slightest modification in your existing system ! Ah !
would to God that you and your colleagues were free to use
the privileges which even a Provincial Church, in catholic
days, would have blushed to disclaim. Would that you
were at liberty to regard the bishop of Rome with no higher
reverence than his predecessor in the third century received
from Cyprian, the saint and martyr, with his episcopal breth-
ren in the Council of Carthage. But so long as you are
bound, hand and foot, to the papal throne, I cannot regard
your language as intended for any thing more than a flight
of rhetoric. Whenever you shall have burst your chains,
and stand unfettered on the firm ground of ancient catho-
licity, we may be ready to receive such a proposal, but not
till then.
It is high time, however, to close this letter, and with it,
our present correspondence. I trust it may have some effect
in vindicating the cause of truth and justice, nothwithstand-
ing the mediocrity of its author's powers. On that point, I
heg you to remember that I hold no dispute with you. I
have long ago claimed my place as the least amongst my
brethren, and have distinctly granted to yourself all that you
can possibly ask, on the score of individual qualification*
Willing to practise, as well as I may, the apostolic precept,
In lowliness of mind, let each esteem other better than him-
self, I shall cheerfully yield the palm in any point of merely
personal merit. The same concessions I am ready to make,
to your book on the Primacy. It shall be admitted, if you
please, that so far as our respective proportions of learning,
talent, ingenuity, or eloquence are concerned, it is altogether
superior to my humble volume on the Church of Rome. If
it be, nowithstanding, a failure, as I assuredly consider it, the
fault lies, doubtless, in the subject, rather than in you. The
best advocate must fail, who has to defend th« wrong side of
the question.
In the invidious range of personal comparison, therefore,
52
there is nothing which I should think worth the pain and
trouble of contention. It is only when the controversy con-
cerns the " Church of the Living God, which is the
PILLAR AND GROUND OF THE TRUTH," that I COnCCivC mySClf
called to contend, and in the words of the Apostle, to con-
tend earnestly. From that solemn responsibility I shall not
seek to escape, however conscious I may be of my own de-
ficiencies, for I know who has said : " Not by might nor by
POWER, BUT BY MY SPIRIT, SAITH THE LoRD." It is OUr duty,
in faithful dependence on that Spirit, to contend for His
truth ', it is His incommunicable prerogative to award the
final victory.
With sentiments of the most respectful consideration, I
remain,
Right Reverend Sir,
Your servant in Christ,
JOHN HENRY HOPKINS,
Bishop of the Protestant Episcopal Church,
in the diocese of Vermont.
Burlington, Vt.
St. Matthias' day, 1843
.1
APR ^ 1929
