sisted by the British Bishops in the beginning, and was afterwards accomplished by the hand of power through AngloSaxon domination. That she had a full right to cast off the Roman yoke, when the subsequent corruption of the Papacy, witnessed by the extracts from Fleury, made it intolerable. That in accomplishing the mighty work, she pursued the RULE OF FAITH as laid down by the fathers in the primitive Church, taking THE HOLY SCRIPTURES for her guide, but in accordance with the primitive Catholic interpretation. That this interpretation has been embodied in her Liturgy and Articles, so clearly and distinctly, that every item of real Catholic truth is preserved and secured from the possibility of serious departure. That on the four notes of the Church, Unity, Sanctity, Catholicity, and Apostolicity, her claims are far superior to those of your modern Church of Rome, because she possesses all of which Rome can boast, but purified from her corruptions, and restored to the original standard of true Catholicism. And hence I conclude, in direct opposition to Dr. Milner, that the evidence is sufficient, and much more than sufficient, if fairly weighed, to determine in her favor the choice of all who desire the surest and the safest way of salvation.

My labor, however, is not yet completed, because your favorite author proceeds to defend his Church against the charges of her enemies, and tries to explain and justify her unscriptural tenets with as much disingenuous art and boldness as we have found him using against ourselves. On all of those points, I am prepared to prove his gross perversions of the truth, and to these, accordingly, I shall now ask the serious attention of my readers; confident, in the blessing of Him who is the way, the truth, and the life, that the result will be entirely conclusive and satisfactory.

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The End of Controversy, Controverted.

LETTER XXVIII

MOST REVEREND SIR:

I AM not at all surprised that Dr. Milner, in his 32d letter, takes the ground which has been common to all his colleagues, especially since the time of Bossuet, the famous Bishop of Meaux, namely, that as the Church is the interpreter of the Word of God, her decisions should be accepted implicitly, without any further examination. That if we be convinced that she is the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, it is utterly impossible she should inculcate idolatry, superstition, or any other wickedness; and that. those who believe her to be thus guilty, are, and must be, in a fatal error. That, therefore, his Church cannot, strictly and consistently, be required to vindicate the particular tenets of their faith, either from Scripture or any other authority, it being sufficient for them to show that they hold. the doctrine of the true Church, which all Christians are bound to hear.

This argument, however, has been examined and exposed sufficiently, I trust, in my 22d letter, where I proved, from the Scriptures and the fathers, that just as the Church of Israel was a divine institution, with the promise of perpetuity forever, and continued to retain the doctrines of her. first faith, while yet she became awfully infected with idolatry, false traditions, and licentiousness: even so the Church of Rome, being apostolic and pure in the beginning, continued to retain the true doctrine of the Gospel, and yet became

Preliminary Conditions.

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corrupted from the same causes, and to a greater extent. That, as the Scriptures of the Old Testament prophets, on account of this very union of the false and the true, denounced the Church of Israel as an adulteress: even so the same Scriptures denounce the Church of Rome, in the Apocalypse, by the correspondent name of harlot. That this Church, therefore, is a true Church, so far as she has kept the original faith, and a false Church, so far as she has brought in her corrupt and idolatrous inventions. And that, therefore, the object of the Reformers was not to found a new Church, but to purify the old Church which had come down from the beginning. Hence it is idle and absurd for Dr. Milner to contend that his Church, if it be in any sense a true Church, must therefore be incapable of error. Our duty is to ascertain in what the characters of a true Church consist; and this we can only learn from the WORD OF CHRIST, who alone has power to constitute His Church. And next to this supreme law, we consent to be guided by the decisions of the primitive Church, as she was when she issued, in her purest form, from the teaching of the inspired Apostles. All beyond this is the work of man, and not of God; and therefore it is to be likened to a disease, perilous to her proper constitution, offensive in the sight of the divine Redeemer, and to be abandoned, as soon as it is discovered, by all His faithful people.

It is amusing enough, however, to see the conditions on which your favorite author consents to discuss the claims of Romanism. "I require," saith he, "that Catholics" (i. e., Romanists) "should be permitted to lay down their own principles of belief and practice, and, of course, to distinguish between their Articles of Faith, in which they must all agree, and mere scholastic opinions, of which every individual may judge for himself; as likewise between the authorized Lit

urgy and discipline of the Church, and the unauthorized devo tions and practices of particular persons." But this, it seems, is not a rule which must be allowed "to work both ways." In the whole of his wanton and malicious assaults upon the Church of England, what has he been doing, all along, but this very thing, against which he now guards himself so carefully? How has he confined himself to our Articles of Faith and authorized Liturgy and discipline? How, on the contrary, has he sought to shelter his attacks under Watson, Balguy, and a few other individuals, whom he knew perfectly well to be most untrue exponents of the Church's teaching? How has he labored to prove, from the expressions of these men, that we had no unity at all? How has he boasted that in his Church every priest, all over the world, has always taught, and now teaches, the very same doctrine? Here, then, every reader of common discernment may detect at once the consciousness of a deceiver. And yet, he is welcome to enjoy his conditions, since I shall employ no arguments nor evidence which I do not believe fair and just, according to the universal course of approved and honorable disputation.

Dr. Milner next launches forth into a long list of quotations from the writings of divines of the Church of England, and then gravely informs his readers that the authors themselves did not believe their own assertions! The modesty of this is about equal to its logic. But he undertakes to exemplify it, as he saith, in a note, saying that Archbishop Wake, who had strongly condemned the Church of Rome in his controversial works, accusing it of heresy, schism, and idolatry, yet afterwards, having entered into a correspondence with Dr. Dupin of the Sorbonne, in Paris, for the purpose of uniting their respective Churches, employed the following words in his last letter, viz.: "In dogmatibus

Archbishop Wake and Dr. Dupin.

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prout a te candide proponuntur, non admodum dissentimus, in regimine ecclesiastica minus, in fundamentalibus, sive doctrinam sive disciplinam spectemus, vix omnino." Here he wishes the reader to infer that Archbishop Wake virtually contradicted his own former opinions. Whereas, if he had told the whole story, the absolute contrary would appear. The very words he has quoted show that the Archbishop was not speaking of the doctrines of Rome, but of the sentiments of Dr. Dupin. "In points of faith" (dogmatibus),

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AS THEY ARE CANDIDLY PROPOSED BY YOU, We do not differ greatly, in ecclesiastical order still less, and in fundamentals, whether we regard doctrine or discipline, scarcely at all." The fact was that Dupin, and many others of the French Church, were highly dissatisfied with Romanism at the time, and were seriously meditating the propriety of following the example of the Church of England. In this temper the correspondence was commenced, and the Archbishop, hoping that it might lead to a happy result, encouraged it; being led to believe, from the statements of Dupin's own opinions, that he was in a fair way to see the truth, and to follow it to the point of urging forward a real reformation. It appeared, however, that the French clergy were not prepared to go to the full extent, and therefore the correspondence ended. And this is the kind of evidence which Dr. Milner ventured to impose upon his readers, as an exemplification of his charge, that the English clergy did not believe their own statements concerning the corruptions of the Church of Rome, although he quoted from the appendix to Mosheim's Church History, vol. vi., p. 121, where he had the whole story!

The next observation which Dr. Milner addresses to the controversial writers of our Church is, that their writings never unsettle the faith of a single individual, much less do