Sarpi, to notorious Jansenists and radical infidels, to rabid old-fashioned Protestant polemics, including Barlow's Brutum Fulmen, Lathbury's State of Popery and Jesuitism in England, Trautmansdorf On Toleration, and somebody else on Foxes and Firebrands.

We shall try to give a brief outline of our author's argument against the Roman Catholic Church in favor of Episcopalianism, disincumbering it of the endless flings at popery, the Jesuits, the Inquisition, John Henry Newman, Romish superstition, &c., in which he indulges as he proceeds on the slightest opportunity, and at the shortest notice.

His object is to establish a bond of union between the Episcopalian denomination in the United States of which he is a minister and the Christian Church founded by our Lord and his Apostles in Jerusalem. He does not limit himself to the assertion of the Apostolic succession of Episcopal ministers, and in fact he lays so little stress upon this consideration that it does not appear whether he deems such succession essential or not.

He endeavors to make out a continuity of inheritance, so to speak, showing that Christianity was introduced into Britain as early as it was into Italy, and there transmitted from father to son, that the later Christian people of Britain received the observances and customs of their religious discipline from the primitive ages, and thus lived on obeying their pastors, worshipping in their temples, and reading their Bibles as Episcopalians do now, until Saxon invaders, Italian monks, and Papal innovations disturbed and finally destroyed the British Church. This continuity of Christian life, gushing forth from the Apostolic era and flowing on in an unbroken stream through long and happy ages to the epoch when it was rudely broken and scattered by Gregory and Augustine, kept on, our author avers, without any assistance from Rome. Any thing like a claim on the part of the Bishop of Rome to supremacy over other Churches was unheard of among the Christians of Britain for ages; when mooted in later times it was at first ignored, and then rejected with scorn and contempt. They were in this respect like the Episcopalians, that they repudiated many things which Roman Catholics believe, but were consistently inflexible above all things in refusing to acknowledge the supremacy of the Papal See. But we must let our author speak for himself:

"Such an episcopacy as the Pope's (an imperial and œcumenical pontificate) when presented to the view of the bishops of the ancient Church of Britain was, as you saw by their reply to Augustine in council, a perfect novelty and a completely inadmissible innovation. They protested against it, and repudiated it with unbending, unconquerable aversion. They disowned it amid anathemas and threats of the direst vengeance, and this may satisfy you that while the ancient British Christians were as decided Episcopalians as ourselves, they were just as decided opponents as ourselves of the monarchical or, rather, imperial episcopacy of the popedom, which makes all authority tend to and end in a single point of concentration. You could not have a more striking proof than this that they were what we now call Protestants; for they dissented, and resisted, and rebelled, and confronted all sorts of curses, the moment that this, which is the very corner-stone of popery, was presented openly to their inspection and urged upon their allowance, nay, forced upon their allegiance.

"This supremacy our British forefathers resisted as completely and as energetically as their children of the days of the Reformation. And there, to a theologian, I might leave the subject of the striking unlikeness of the ancient British Church to popery, and what popery most loves, most assiduously maintains, most inflexibly puts forward, as a test, as a rule of ecclesiastical fealty. But such a treatment of a subject will not satisfy a promiscuous audience, and I must therefore go on to show that, not only in the grandest point of all, but in subsidiary ones also, our British forefathers by no means built up their Church after the style of Roman architecture. They," (the historical points dwelt upon by the lecturer,) "show how thoroughly the ancient British Church (so to speak) disresembled the Roman; and what a slavish subjection to itself the Roman Church insisted on even at that comparatively early day."--Lecture iv., pp. 107-111.

We believe that we have stated fairly our author's line of argument, and the conclusion which he desires his hearers to draw from it. In quoting his fourth lecture, we have omitted portions of it in which he labors to prove that the doctrine of the supremacy of the Pope is a cardinal point with Catholic theologians. There is no necessity for insisting upon this, since we fully admit it, and we know of no way in which an Episcopalian can become a Catholic unless he is prepared to believe that the Bishop of Rome is the successor of St. Peter and the Vicar of Jesus Christ upon earth. No one is a Catholic who does not admit his primacy, not of honor merely, but of authority and jurisdiction over the whole Church. We are not bound, however,

by our faith to admit that he has the power to rule mankind in matters of worldly interest which belong purely to the temporal order, and therefore we are falsely accused by Dr. Coit of upholding despotism.

Nor do we maintain that the Pope as visible head of the Church upon earth is ever separated from the Church, or acts outside of her or against her, and we are therefore wrongfully accused of upholding Papal usurpation in matters of a spiritual nature. The Church is a living organism; and we teach that while a body cannot live if it is deprived of its head, so also a head cannot be a living head which has no body attached to it. The promise of our Lord, that he would abide with his Church forever, binds him to take care of its head as well as of its members, and to ensure rightful direction on the one hand and due obedience on the other. We object to the Protestant fashion of making us speak of our Chief Pastor as if he were or could be separated from the Church, or as if his authority were different from or opposed to the authority of the Church. It is the same authority having for its source and guide the Holy Spirit who abides forever with the Church, that is to say, with the head of the Church and with all the members that remain in living communion with their head. We cannot allow the divinely-appointed and commissioned Chief Pastor of the Church to be placed in the position of a mere spokesman or representative; but while we protest against the Church being spoken of as if she were a collec tion of scattered members without a head, we also object to the Supreme Pontiff being spoken of as if he were an iso lated head without members. We can no more see the practical use of a bodiless head than we can of a headless. body.

But we must proceed to examine our author's chain of continuity, the links of which begin at Jerusalem and reach, as he fondly supposes, to St. Paul's Protestant Episcopal Church in Troy, of which he is the popular rec

tor.

We meet with a difficulty in Dr. Coit's argument at a very early stage of proceedings. He starts from the Christians of Jerusalem, but he has not remembered to disprove the Catholic article of belief that the Church which made them Christians is, by its very design and institution, a Church having a visible head upon earth. There was no one among the Christians of Jerusalem who was not in

formed of the fact that our Lord had singled out St. Peter from his other Apostles, had prayed that his faith might not fail, had told him to confirm his brethren, had appointed him the bearer of the keys of the kingdom of heaven, and had given him the express power to feed the sheep of the divine fold as well as the lambs. Before speaking of what others received from the Christians of Jerusalem, we must determine what they themselves received from the founders of the first Christian congregation. Among the truths they received was that of the primacy of Peter over the Apos tolic College, and over all other Pastors of the Church.

tles.

There is another primeval difficulty in the way, furnished by the necessary condition of the Church of Jerusalem on the day when the first Christian was baptized by the AposIt is, as Dr. Coit must admit, that the authority of the Church was full and complete although not one word of the New Testament had been written. The believers at Jerusalem were not yet called Christians, but they were Catholics, for the Apostles had taught them to say that they believed the Holy Catholic Church.

Now let us place the Doctor, who glories in being a Protestant, in the presence of the Catholic Church of Jerusalem, and what will he say in defence of his belief that the Scriptures and not the authority of the Church are the Christian rule of faith? We speak of the Gospels of course as the inspired word of God, and not merely as a credible historical account of the life and times of our Lord. People

Jerusalem embraced the faith, lived perfect lives for years, and died martyrs for the faith, who had never read a Word of the New Testament. People were born of baptized before the Gospel of St. John, some of the Epistles, and the parents, and grew up to be old men and women, and died Book of Revelations were written.

When the Christian Scriptures were written, they were Work of the Apostles and others whom the Apostles associated with themselves, such as the Evangelists

the

had

Luke and Mark. Those who had authority to write had certainly the authority to explain what they had written.

The

of the Testament, which is merely a record-although an it was written. Is Dr. Coit prepared to admit Church auinspired one-of what we already knew and believed before thority in this sense, excluding as it does the Protestant

authority of the Church, then, is superior to that

right

of private judgment in the interpretation of Holy

Writ? If he admits it he is no Protestant, and if he denies it he is no heir to the faith of the Church of Jerusalem.

But let us go on with our author, and, leaving Jerusalem, consider Christianity at a later day, when its light had already become diffused abroad over the East.

We find the Apostles and the Bishops whom they had appointed placed at the head of flourishing Churches. Sanl of Tarsus had been converted, and had travelled over Judæa and Greece, leaving everywhere behind him the example of his virtues and the fruits of his Apostolic zeal. The Church had begun to become acquainted with that bitter opposition which was to follow her for long centuries of heroic suffering, during which the blood of martyrs was still the seed of Christians, and the hatred of men called forth the manifestation of unceasing love on the part of her heavenly Spouse. The Christian Scriptures were now all written, and learned and holy men began to study and interpret them for the benefit of the people of God, and the refutation of such as dared to mingle Jewish superstitions or heathenish errors with the traditions first received from the founders of the Church. And yet, while the propagation of the Christian faith and the daily increase of the followers of the Crucified were facts of grand and luminous proportions in the East, the little Patriarchate founded by St. Peter or some one else on the banks of the yellow Tiber was a matter, our author assures us, which but few knew or cared about among the daily-spreading crowds of the faithful. He names various epochs, some very early and others later in Church history, when Christianity may have been introduced into Britain. One fact, however, he insists upon strenuously throughout, namely, that by whomsoever introduced, it certainly came not from Rome, nor through her influence or agency.

It is not our purpose here to prove that Britain owed the faith to Rome, or to settle the time when she first received it. Our author would be willing, we presume, to admit that, at what time soever she became Christian, her faith was the One Holy Catholic and Apostolic faith of the Church which Christ established. This faith, we maintain, was not the same as that now held and professed by the Episcopalians. Christians of the Churches founded by the Apostles believed certain things which the Episcopalians reject, even if they rejected not certain things which the Episcopalians believe. These things, moreover, are matters essential to