divines of his party, that he determined upon embracing the catholic religiou; for when the most able ministers acknowledged to him that he could also work out his salvation in this Church, he exclaimed; "Then I will take the safest side." (a) M. de Sully had not only declared to him that he held it as certain that men might be saved being Catholics, but moreover mentioned to this Prince five of the principal ministers who were not opposed to this sentiment.

Formerly, when in England, I read the declaration made by the Duchess of York before her death, under Charles II. of the reasons that had induced her to embrace the catholic religion. I have now nothing but the translation before me; (b) I have reason to believe it faithful. "I was desirous (says she,) of conferring upon these matters with the two most talented bishops that we "have in England, and both of them candidly acknowledged to me, that there are many things in the Church of Rome, which "it were desirable that the Church of England had always pre"served, such as, confession, which they cannot deny that God "himself commanded, and praying for the dead, which is one of "the most fauthentic and most ancient practices of the Christian "religion; that, as for themselves, they still made use of them in private, without making profession of them in public.

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"As I was pressing one of these bishops upon the other points "of controversy, and principally upon the real presence of Jesus "Christ in the adorable sacrament upon the altar, he frankly replied "to me, that, if he were a Catholic, he would not change his "religion; but that having been brought up in the Church in which "he believed himself to enjoy all that was necessary for salvation, " and having been baptized in it, he thought he could not leave "it without great scandal." O! but unity and schism! did they névér enter your mind, my Lord?

Elizabeth Christina, Queen of Charles VI, and mother of the immortal Maria Theresa, was desirous before she accepted the imperial crown, of securing the most important of all affairs, her salvation. She consulted upon the subject the most able protestant divines, and they declared to her, by an authentic and public document, that the catholic religion also conducted to salvation.

On occasion of the projected marriage (afterwards ratified), of the Princess of Wolfenbuttel with Charles III. King of Spain, the faculty of theology at Helmstadt were consulted upon the follow

(a) Mom. de Sully, ch. XXXVIII.—(b) See the end of vol. II. of the Hist. of Calvin, by Maimbourg.

ing question. Can a Protestant Princess, destined to marry Catholic Prince, embrace the Catholic religion, with safe conscience? The professors unanimously gave an affirmative opinion in a long and argumentative reply, which they all signed, the 28th of April, 1707. You may read it at the end of a small work entitled: The Duke of Brunswick's fifty reasons for leaving the Lutheran communion to enter into the Catholic Church. (a)

To these decisions, I could join the testimonies of your own instructors, such as Barrow, Hooker, Cowel, Bunny, Some, Morton, Montague, Heylin, Potter, Laud, Stillingfleet, &c. Of these I shall only cite one, who is of great weight." I declare, and am bound "candidly to declare (says Thorndyke) I know not of any article necessary to salvation, that is prohibited by the Church of nor of any incompatible with salvation, that is pro"pounded by her."(b)

"Rome;

What shall we say of so many individuals who, being born and brought up in protestant communions, accustomed to hear of nothing but the errors, superstitions, and idolatry of the Church of Rome, induced afterwards by circumstances to examine more closely its doctrine, its principles, and its worship; have acknowledged their purity and conformity with the primitive faith and practice, have thrown aside their hatred of it together with the prejudices that had only been recommended to their belief by misrepresentations and calumnious imputations, and have concluded by ranking themselves among the number of her children, and by defending and vindicating her from the errors and crimes, which they themselves had so long been accustomed to lay to her charge. Such, among others, in my country, were the celebrated Cardinal Duperron, the grave and sensible Desmahis, the eloquent Pelisson, the learned Morin, priest of the Oratoire, and Papin, long a zealous minister of Calvinism, and who, after preaching his errors in France, England, and Germany, came to renounce and abjure them in the hands of the great bishop of Meaux; and in your country, Challoner, Gother, the two Hays, and the anonymous author of an excellent work which does no less honour to his heart than to his head. (c) All these distinguished

(a) Sold by Keating, Duke-street, Grosvenor-square, London. 1814.(b) Thorndyke in Epilog. p. 146.—(c) An Essay towards a proposal for Catholic Communion. This is an excellent work, that cannot be sufficiently recommended to the English, who wish to become acquainted with the true Church. It was re-printed in London some few years back at the expense of the late M. Sheldon Constable, of Burton.

Aud to cite more recent examples, I will here call to your recollection two

men, to whom many more might have been added, have left behind them admirable works, equally useful to those who seek the truth and to those who are carried on by their zeal to defend it.

I can personally assure you, Sir, that, having often had occasion, during my long residence in your country, to converse upon the difference of our religions with English bishops and divines, and even with well instructed laies, I have always found them of the same opinion and almost employing the same words. They would say to me that "their religion and mine were equally good; that "the greatest part of the differences turned upon ceremonies and "points of discipline, and some also upon opinions superadded (would they say), to the ancient belief by our Church, and which "theirs had thought proper to retrench; they considered the Churches "of France and England as two sisters, in whom were discoverable 66 a family likeness and the leading features of resemblance."

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Would to God, Sir, that this resemblance might become perfect, as it formerly was, and as it ought never to have ceased to be!

striking conversions, that of M. Nathaniel Thayer, who after being minister of the sect of puritans at Boston, was converted at Rome, in 1783, and has himself published the motives that led him back to catholic unity; that of Miss Elizabeth Pitt, a relation of the immortal ininister, whose talents and eloquence have so long been the admiration and the astonishment of England: she pronounced her vows at the convent of the visitation at Abbeville, the 26th of November, 1787. I present you with the conclusion of the letter which she wrote upon her conversion to the curé de Saint Jacques, of the same town, the 20th of June, 1788: "As for the protestants, who may obtain information of it, I do not consider "myself calculated to instruct them, much less to convert them: but I conjure "them, as my brethren, whose salvation is most dear to me, to follow one piece " of advice; which is, not to reject, without the most serious examination, the " doubts, which must be originated in their minds, if they think deliberately " upon it, by the novelty of their belief and its variations since the reformation, "compared with the antiquity and unity of the catholic doctrine; for the true “faith is one; and must necessarily be traced to the apostles and to Jesus "Christ. May it please God to enlighten them, as he has deigned to enlighten "me, in order to draw me from the errors in which my birth and education had ❝ unfortunately engaged me." Germany presents, in our days, a multitude of enlightened protestants, who have embraced catholicism, such as the learned M. Schlegel and his wife, daughter of the celebrated Mendelsohn: M. le comte de Stolberg, not less illustrious for his profound learning than for his noble birth: M. Werner, who from a poet becomes an humble priest, attracts all Vienna to his eloquent discourses, as he had before drawn Berlin to his dramatic representations: the learned Lutheran minister Barron de Stark, a catholic in private life and still more in his last works; the celebrated jurist M. de Haller, &c. &c,

After the facts and testimonies you have just read, I dare flatter myself, Sir, that you by this time no longer doubt of the injustice of the imputations cast upon the Church of Rome. They have originated in that sourness, malignity, and hatred, which the spirit of party always produces, and from people unfortunately finding it their interest to extend and support the defection. Destitute of reality and proofs, they recoil upon their inventors, and never will they justify the rupture. "It was evil done of them who first "urged such a separation." (a) Calvin therefore was wrong in his conceit, when he wrote to Melanchton in 1552: "We have been "compelled to separate from the whole world." (b)

To prove, however, that all these accusations were inadmissible, it would have been quite sufficient, without the detail, to have made the single observation, with which this note, already too long, shall be concluded. Who are they, that have dared to accuse the Church of innovation in dogma, error in doctrine, superstition in practice, and idolatry in worship? Who are they? The question is important.

At the head of all appears Luther, an Augustinian friar ; next Carlostadtius, an archdeacon; Melanchton, a professor of the Greek language; all three at Wirtemberg; their party is quickly joined by Ecolampadius, a monk of the order of St. Laurence, near Augsburgh; by Munster, a grey friar; by Bucer, a dominican; and by the famous Muncer, who from a disciple, became the infuriated leader of the anabaptists. So much for the first anabaptists. In Switzerland, Zuinglius, the curé of Glaris; at Geneva, in Switzerland and in France, Calvin, the young curé of Pont l'Eveque, near Noyon; Theodore Beza, the Latin poet and prior at Longjumeau; Peter Martyr, a Florentinian, who left the regular chapter of St. Augustine, ran from Italy with Ochin, general of the Capuchins, to dogmatize in Switzerland, then at Strasburgh, then in England, and last of all once more in Switzerland, where he died. So much for the Calvinists. (c)

In Scotland, Knox, a monk, a priest, and afterwards the furious disciple of Calvin, whose principles he conveys to his native country, where he puts every thing into a flame; (d) the Earl Murray, the natural, but unnaturally cruel brother of Mary Stuart, who passed from the convent of St. Andrew to the regency

(a) Bunny's Treatise tending to pacification. p. 109.—(b) “Discessionem facere a mundo toto coacti sumus."-(c) See Appendix II.-(d) "The ruflian of the reformation," said Dr. Samuel Johnson,

of the kingdom: Buchanan, the ungrateful calumniator of Mary Stuart; (a) So much for the presbyterians. In fine, for the reformers of your country, I find a house of lords, with the exception of many lords and of all the bishops; a small majority of the house of commons, together with the Queen and her council. Now what do we discover in the persons I have just named? I touch not here upon selfish motives of ambition, interest, and lust, nor upon the morals and the conduct of these fiery fabricators of the reformation, which present an appearance any thing but apostolic. I pass by the scandalous marriages of the priests, and of religious men with religious women, which, when recurring among us in the midst of our impious revolution, have excited contempt and ridicule. (b) But I ask, what was the character of the personages in the ecclesiastical hierarchy? Were they such as Jesus Christ had in view when be said: "Go, teach all nations .... I am with you to the end of the "world?" Was it to them that he said: "He that heareth you, "heareth me; and he that despiseth you, despiseth me?" Was it to them that he promised the Holy Spirit, to come and instruct them in all truth? But as these lofty and magnificent promises were made to the apostles and their successors, as the apostles, and after them the bishops only, have, at all times, according to the promises and ordinances of Jesus Christ, governed his Church, decided controversies, and declared as judges what was revealed and what not; it was an easy and simple thing to stop the mouths of the innovators, by unanimously replying to them on all sides; "Who are you, that you must meddle with doctrinal points, must decide that such a doctrine is an error, such a point of discipline a corruption, "such a practice idolatrous, and that you must needs produce a "schism in the Church? As for you, you are but mere laies; and

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you others are only ecclesiastics of an inferior order. To decide 66 on these subjects belongs not either to one or the other of you; "the power comes from a higher source. Tell your complaints, lay open your doubts, and welcome; put forth to the world your

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(a)It is said that he retracted on his death-bed all that he had said injurious to the character of Mary.—(b)The bantering of Eramus upon these sacrilegious connections is well known: "Ecolampadius has just married a tolerably pretty "girl; seemingly this is the way he intends to mortify his flesh. They are "mistaken in saying that Lutheranism is a tragical affair; for my part, I am "persuaded that nothing is more comic, for the winding up of the picce is "always a marriage, as in the comedies."