Christ, and hold for Him and Him alone, we plainly say to you, that, if the Bishop of Rome, our fellow-bishop, be your superior, you may choose what name or place you will, but Bishops, in the Catholic sense, as we are, we allow you not to be.

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God forbid, that the "impulse" given in these last few years to the "religious mind" should be resisted! Far be it from us to strive to check it! It is an impulse from on high. It bears us towards the source of truth. And it will carry with it, to save or to destroy, whatever, in opposing it, resists the truth. Under "its glorious banner," multitudes are rallying, more will rally. It is the banner of THE CROSS, and, when it beams on faithful hearts, the very waving of its folds is victory. Not for a moment, from its lofty and triumphant march, will men be turned aside, by the poor grudgings of the Puritan, called by whatever name, or by the specious flatteries of Papists. "The camp of Catholicity," so called, at Arath, lies not in its path; or, if it does, but to be swept away at its approach, as the retiring wave swept Pharaoh and his host. Even now the Lord takes off their chariot wheels, that they go heavily. Even now they grudge and murmur that the host increases not among us, as they would. And such an artifice, employed at such a time, betokens men at their wit's end," and so perplexed as to forget not only courtesy but policy. A flimsier, thinner subterfuge was never used. A child sees through it. And, if "the Father of the faithful" does not call the writer home from Arath, and reprove him, his right hand forgets its cunning. Were a deacon of this diocese to perpetrate so gross a blunder, he should feel the fullest force of my rebuke. I would tell him that the occasion he had taken was unworthy of a generous heart. I would tell him that the spirit which pervaded every line was the spirit of a partisan, and not the spirit of a Catholic Churchman. I would tell him that while I blushed for the unskilfulness of the piece, unworthy of the contrivance even of a school boy, I was shocked at the impiety which could so mix up unworthiness of motive and unfairness of occasion with the professions of peace and the phrases of piety. I would tell him, in a word, that "the wisdom that is from above, is first pure, then peaceable, gentle, and easy to be entreated, full of mercy and good fruits, without partiality, and without hypocrisy."

For the chair of Rome, occupied once by an Apostle; for the Church of Rome, where apostles preached and died, and to which Paul addressed a letter, which is now to us the word of God; we entertain, as such, a holy reverence. It is Papal Rome, not Apostolic Rome, from which we shrink, as from a body spotted with the plague; or, but approach her, should God give the opportunity, and then cheerfully, if at our lives' cost, to purify and heal. The chair of Peter, as the chair of John, or Titus, we may well regard with wonder and adoring awe, as the expressive emblem of that divine Episcopacy which has survived, through generation after generation, and will sur vive the world, which it was sent to bless and save, through faith which is in Christ. But speak not of the Pope of Rome, as sitting ir VOL. I.-28

"the chair of unity." Speak not of Rome as one. Rome is not one. And the approach to oneness, that is in her is the oneness of compulsion and constraint; the unity of mere indifference, the dull, dead level of infidelity. Rome never yet agreed, to specify no more, as to the resting place of that infallibility, on which alone her claim to unity reposes; nor does she yet agree. Well has Mr. Newman saidwould that he would add to all his other service to the Church a work, well worthy of his talents and his learning, THE VARIATIONS OF POPERY!" the theologians of Romanism have been able dexterously to smooth over a thousand inconsistencies, and to array the heterogeneous precedents of a course of centuries, in the semblance of design and harmony. But they cannot complete their system in its most important and essential point. They can determine in theory the nature, degree, extent, and object of the infallibility which they claim; they cannot agree among themselves where it resides. As in the building of Babel, the Lord hath confounded their language; and the structure stands half-finished, a monument at once of human daring and its failure."

The Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church, addressed by Bishop Kenrick, must doubtless deem it highly complimentary to them, that, in selecting from the works of St. Augustin, a concluding extract, to enforce his argument, one should be taken from his Hymn against the Donatists: "composed," as we are needlessly informed by the historian Dupin, "in vulgar and popular terms, to teach the most unlearned the state of the question betwixt the Catholics" (not Romanists)" and the Donatists, and to exhort these to a re-union with the Catholics-a writing, as Augustin himself observes, "proper for none but very ordinary people." Such as it is, there is no candidate for orders, much less any deacon in all our dioceses, who will not see at once, that, whether as to the occasion of the writing, or the meaning of the lines extracted, they have no bearing on the subject. Between the Donatists and the communion, favoured, through their Bishops, with this letter, there is not even the agreement of Macedonia with Monmouth, that there are "rivers in both :" and the appeal of the quotation starts, not from the chair of Peter strictly, but from the unbroken line of Bishops in the Catholic Church, from which they had gone out, beginning from that chair. "Enumerate the Bishops even from Peter's chair, and in that line of fathers mark the due succession that is the Rock against which even the gates of hell shall not prevail." A question this, in whose discussion it might not suit the Bishop of Arath and his colleagues to engage; since it might prove them, in the expressive phrase of their own Champney, but "probable Bishops," after all. The Council of Nice decrees (Canon IV.) "It is most fitting that a Bishop be appointed by all the Bishops in the province. But if this be difficult, by reason of any urgent necessity, or through the length of the way, three must by all means meet together." It was decreed by the Synods of Arles, Nice, Antioch, Laodicea, Carthage, Orange, that at least three Bishops should consecrate. Now, Dr. John Carroll, the first titular Bishop of Baltimore, was consecrated by Dr. Walmsley, alone; and it is believed,

*

*

*

* * *

with good reason, that Dr. Walmsley himself was consecrated by but one Bishop. "Now an ordination," says one of their chief writers," which is merely probable, or only probably sufficient and valid, only makes a probable Bishop, or one who is merely probably a Bishop. * But he who is only probably a Bishop, is not validly and sufficiently appointed to the Episcopal degree and power; nor has he Episcopal vocation; for true and valid Episcopal vocation is not merely probable, but certain and undoubted. But otherwise, whatever the Pastors and Bishops of the Church should perform, as Bishops, would be so uncertain as to be probably null and invalid." This is mentioned only for the benefit of "whom it may concern:" it being observable that one looks in vain to "the Metropolitan Catholic Almanac and Laity's Directory," for any details of the succession-"quis cui successit"-of these "probable Bishops."

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"Gregory XVI. invites you to return to the Church with the same authority and affection wherewith the first Gregory called your ancestors to the Communion."-To any proper communication which the Bishop of Rome shall ever make to the Bishops of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States of America, his office and their own will be a certain guaranty of due reception and respectful answer. To such an invitation as the Bishop of Arath undertakes to make for him, we reply not at all. We respect our order, we revere the Catholic doctrine, we reverence the word of God, too much. We place ourselves, at once, upon the ground of Ephesus, and utterly repudiate an interference so insulting. We are freemen, born free. We cherish, as a sacred trust, for those that shall come after us, that liberty wherewith our Lord Jesus Christ, the Deliverer of all men, has endowed us by his own blood." We are Bishops of the Church of God; and recognizing no higher office in the Church, save His, who is the Shepherd and the Bishop of our souls," we "give place" to the Bishop of Rome, " by subjection, no, not for an hour." When he calls home from among our flocks his vagrant Apostolic Vicars; when he addresses us, as brethren, put in trust, in the same Church, with the same Gospel; when he proposes to confer with us, touching the points in which we differ, with the reference of all of them to Holy Scripture, interpreted by Catholic antiquity, as represented in the first four General Councils; when he retracts his awful curses; and, "forbearing threatening," gives a brother's hand to brothers; kneeling with us at the one altar, where the Body and the Blood, that bought us all from everlasting death, are freely offered to whoever will receive them, in true penitence and faith, as pledges of salvation: then shall the hand of brethren grasp, with living love, a brother's hand; then shall the hearts of brethren burn and melt within them, with adoring gratitude; then shall Ephraim no more envy Judah, and Judah shall no more vex Ephraim; then shall the past be all forgotten; and the only struggle for the future, who shall love each other and all men the most, and so best serve the gracious Lover of us all; then shall the sorest hindrance to the progress of the kingdom of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ be taken away; and then, to

His own Banner of the Cross, borne forward by a nobler host than ever gathered yet beneath its flaming folds, "God, even our own God," shall graciously vouchsafe the victory. "Hasten it, Lord, in thine own time." "Even so, come, Lord Jesus, come quickly!"

There is sure proof here, of what one, once his opponent, said of him; since he laid his spear in rest and put aside the weapons of the warfare of the world, "No enemy ever conquered him, but death."

It must be imagined, hard as it is to do it, that there are those, who will see more weakness, in the mention of the names of Newman and Manning in the above controversy, than strength, in the truths they once believed and uttered, and in the arguments woven into their statements, by my Father, from Holy Scripture and ancient authors. To all such it is enough to say, that the revived teachings and practices, which my Father defends, are those which live in England and America now, in the wide acceptance of the Catholic verities; baptismal regeneration; the real Presence; the visibility of the Church; the apostolic succession: and in the increasing adoption of Catholic practices; daily services; frequent Eucharists; sisterhoods; houses for the poor and fallen; fasts, and prayers, and works of mercy. Doctrines and practices they are, in which Marriott died; and which, thank God, the Wilberforce, and Pusey, and Keble still advocate with their voices, and exemplify in their lives. That some went from them, to Rome's corrupt additions to the Faith, proves only the weakness of man, and the power of the devil. That the truths they left, have grown and spread, proves equally, the power of truth, and the blessing of God. To say that Newman went to Rome, because of the teaching of the Oxford Tracts; is to make cause and effect, a mere question of time. Men read the Bible, and then sin; men read the Fathers, and then become schismatics. Does the Bible tend to sin; or patristic study, to schism? The common argument runs; "Newman wrote some of the Oxford Tracts, and went to Rome; therefore, the Tracts are Romish." Why, will it not read as well, "Pusey wrote some of the Oxford Tracts, and did not go to Rome; therefore, the Oxford Tracts are not Romish."

CHAPTER VIII.

CHURCH PRINCIPLES-ADVANCED VIEWS-ESTABLISHMENT OF THEM-EN

LARGED SYMPATHIES.

In a brief sketch of my Father's Church principles, I would make only a condensation of what has been already written. Imbued with them, himself, they appear in *all his writings, so that none could ever mistake, or misplace them. And I speak of those distinctive features of the Church, which in the earlier day of his ministry were in abeyance, hidden under vague and weak acts of compromise and conciliation. Of the great fundamental spiritual doctrines of the Gospel, I need not speak of course. Swelling the fulness of the Church's ancient universal voice her faithful sons must utter them through the trumpet which they blow. The channels through which they run; the means of their application; the creeds in which the truths are crystallized; the Sacraments through which the grace is conveyed; the Apostolic ministry, in whose possession are the twelve baskets, that gathered and keep and must dispense the fragments of the Saviour's teachings and the miraculous means of feeding human souls; the Church herself, the Ark of God's eternal and immediate presence; these are the points without which the holding of theoretical truth is alike unprofitable and impossible; these are the points which are as the body to the soul, externally powerless in themselves, but essential to the keeping of life and truth, as truth and life are essential to their quickening. And these my Father guarded with a jealous care, as of old they kept the ark. He was one of those who brought the ark up from its concealment in the house of Obed-edom to the hill of public, open sight, that all men might look to it.

THE GOSPEL IN THE CHURCH.

The Church of the Gospel is that which Jesus Christ established. It was not until He had died for our sins, and risen for our justifica

* In a recent catalogue of the Church Book Society, the letter D, meaning distinctive, stands, before the only one of my Father's writings, they have published. And that one, a child's sermon. It might stand, before every thing he ever wrote, for children or for adults; for he wrote always, distinctly and "distinctively," as a Catholic Bishop, teaching Catholic truth.