LETTER IX.

The Reverend RABSHAKEH GATHERCOAL to the Reverend AUGUSTUS O'NEIL.

REVEREND AND DEAR SIR,

Ir is a pleasure to correspond with a clergyman who, though unfortunately not in communion with the Church of England, has undeniable claims to respect in his clerical character, and whose ordination has been by laying on of hands by the Bishops, the undoubted successors of the Apostles. Our Church acknowledges your ordination as valid: it is, therefore, my duty, as well as my pleasure, to address you as a clergyman, and to reply with candour to your well-intentioned letter. The error of your argument is to be found in the idea that the Church of England was not established before the days of Augustine,

and, indeed, it is too generally thought that the Church of England had no existence in this country previously to the time of Augustine, whom Gregory the Great, then Pope of Rome, sent into this country to propagate the Christian faith."* And this idea forms the basis of your argument used in support of the notion, that the Roman Catholic Letters of L. S. E.

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religion was the first form of the Christian religion introduced into this country; and that at the glorious Reformation the Church of England separated or dissented from the Church of Rome. "But all this is as far from the truth as the poles from each other; for the Church of England existed in Britain hundreds of years before St. Augustine set his foot in this country. Every one knows that Pelagius, the father of the Pelagian heresy, was a native of Britain, and lived two hundred years before the arrival of the Popish missionary. Hume, the great historian, when introducing the mission of Augustine to the idolatrous Saxons, says, that the constant hostilities which the Saxons maintained against the Britons would naturally indispose them for receiving the Christian faith, when preached to them by such inveterate enemies; and perhaps the Britons, as is objected to them by Gildas and Bede, were not over fond of communicating to their cruel invaders the doctrine of eternal life and salvation!' Hume also mentions a battle which was fought at Chester between the Saxons and the native Britons, at which were present twelve hundred monks, and fifty British monks from a large monastery at Bangor, which contained no less than 2100, who there maintained themselves by their own labour. Thus it is evident that the Church of England existed in Britain long before the times of Saint Augustine, entirely independent of the See of

Rome.' You, therefore, will perceive that our pious and venerable Reformers, in whom churchmen so justly glory, were not, as Dissenters diligently endeavour to inculcate, the founders, but the Reformers, the purifiers of the Church. SHE WAS THE VERY SAME CHURCH AFTER THE REFORMATION AS SHE WAS BEFORE; just as a man is the very same person after he has washed his face as he was before. The Reformers merely cleared away the rubbish of Popery which was obstructing her utility, and obscuring her glory, and restored her to her pristine purity and perfection; and thus left her to us, their children, a RICH and glorious inheritance. As our Church is constituted according to the Apostolic model, and as our Bishops and Clergy have been regularly and properly ordained by the laying on of the hands of those who received their commission and authority in a direct and unbroken line of succession from the Apostles and our Lord, she is a true branch of the one Catholic and Apostolic Church; for there is not a Bishop, Priest, or Deacon amongst us, who cannot, if he please, trace his own spiritual descent from Saint Peter and Saint Paul*." These remarks I think a sufficient reply to your letter, and subscribe myself,

Dear Sir,

Your faithful servant,

RABSHAKEH GATHERCOAL.

* Letters of L. S. E., p. 98-100.

LETTER X.

The Reverend AUGUSTUS O'NEIL to the
Reverend RABSHAKEH GATHERCOAL.

DEAR SIR,

YOUR answer to my letter is as little satisfactory to me, as I am persuaded it must be to yourself; for what, after all, is your reply to my arguments? That the Church of England existed in Britain before the mission of Augustine; and that afterwards, being freed from the additions to Popery," she was the very same Church after the Reformation she was before."

Had I not been acquainted with the fact that some of your Clergy, to avoid the charge of schism, have had recourse to this preposterous theory, I should not easily have credited that men of character would have ventured on such a mode of defence. It certainly proves one thing, that they suppose the public to be sunk in excessive ignorance and credulity, otherwise they would not have hazarded so desperate a fable.

If, however, your present Established Church existed before the mission of Augustine, where, I pray you, was your Prayer Book ; and where your Thirty-nine Articles; your homilies; your temporal

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head of the Church; your tithes ; and your Parliamentary Prelates? If all these things were taken away, the Church of England would be taken away; but who will be so hardy as to say that any one of these things existed amongst the British tribes, before the mission of Augustine? Is not a very important part of your Prayer Book translated from the Roman missal and breviary ? Were the missal and breviary in use amongst the Britons? If you answer yes, then it is clear that they were Roman Catholics: if you answer no, then it is clear that your Prayer Book is not derived from your British Churches, but from the manufactory of Rome. By either answer you are in a dilemma; either your British Churches were Roman Catholic, and you are schismatics for departing from their faith, or you are schismatics for dissenting from the Church of Rome.

I observe, however, that you furnish me with abundant proof that the British Church then existing was not what your Established Church now is; for you tell me, that, in these primitive days of your establishment, long before the coming of Augustine, there were 2100 monks in a monastery at Bangor! Where are these monks in your Church now? What has the Bishop of Bangor done with them? What! had your Church ever monasteries and monks and nuns, and that long before Popery came to the island? Truly this is a droll proof furnished by yourself of the existence of your