have roused the feelings of the Vicar, and provoked him to challenge a comparison between the burial-service of the Church, which he belongs to, and that of any other Church, whether Latin or Greek. But, after all, Dear Sir, you cannot help observing how the Vicar's affected indignation is nothing else but a polemical artifice, to misrepresent my reflections. In fact, I did not represent the passages from Job, the Psalms, and the New Testament, of which the Established Service chiefly consists, as cold and disconsolate in themselves: I could not signify this, without blaspheming the word of God, and disgracing my own Breviary and Missal, out of which almost all the Funeral Service of the Church of England is taken; I barely spoke of the latter as it regards the benefit of the departed souls, and of consequence the feelings of the living friends, to neither of which it professes to afford aid or consolation, while the whole intent and object of the Catholic funeral liturgy is to administer these to them both.

J.M., D.D.

POSTSCRIPT.

EXTREME UNCTION.

The Vicar writes so little, and that so little to the purpose, on this subject, that I do not find it necessary to write you a separate letter upon it. The laboured attempt of B. Porteus to dis

tort the clear text of St. James, is so unnatural, that the Vicar himself seems to leave it to the exposure and refutation it meets with in The End of Controversy. What the Apostle says is this : Is any man sick among you, let him bring in the Priests of the Church, and let them pray over him, anointing him with oil, in the name of the Lord. And the prayer of faith shall save the sick man, and the Lord shall raise him up; and if he be in sins, they shall be forgiven him. James, v. 14, 15. The following is the gloss of B. Porteus, on this ordinance of the Apostle: He says that the anointing of the sick with oil by old men or elders, was the appointed method in primitive times of miraculously curing them; whence it follows, as I observed, that no Christian died in primitive times, except where old men or oil could not be procured. He adds that "the forgiveness of the sick man's sins, which St. James speaks of, means the cure of his corporal diseases."* The Vicar says little in support of the Bishop; what he chiefly aims at is to elude the strong proofs I brought that this Apostolical ordinance is a Sacrament of the Church, instituted first and principally for the relief of the soul, and secondly, for the relief of the body, if it be for the glory of God and the real good of the patient, and that the ministers of it are not old

men, or any description but as they are here termed, the Priests of the Church. We are agreed as to what constitutes a Sacrament; our definition of one and that in the Church catechism, not being materially different from each other. In short, it is agreed upon that there is an exterior rite prescribed by the Apostle, namely, the anointing the sick person with oil; on the other hand, there is undeniably a spiritual grace, namely, the saving of him by the prayer of faith, together with the forgiveness of his sins, which latter clause the Vicar chooses to suppress, in quoting the words of St. James. In excuse for this omission, or rather in opposition to the Apostle, he says afterwards, that "the forgiveness of sins can be as well had by the absolution of the Priest."* But this, as I have intimated, is denying the Apostle's declaration; and, secondly, it is unsaying all that the Vicar himself has been saying in his ninth chapter about Absolution from Sin. I wonder that, in his distress, he did not avail himself of the authority of his incomparable Selden, who says "that the unction here prescribed for the sick was intended for the dead,"† or rather, that of Patriarch Luther, who calls this Epistle of St. James, " a dry, chaffy Epistle, unworthy of an

Reply, p. 195. + Selden de Syned. L. 2.

Apostle."* In speaking of the three things necessary to constitute a Sacrament, the present writer said, respecting the ordinance in question : "Here we see all that is requisite, according to the English Protestant Catechism, to constitute a Sacrament: for there is an outward visible sign, namely, the anointing with oil; there is an inward spiritual grace, namely, the saving of the sick and the forgiveness of his sins; lastly, there is the ordination of Christ, as the means by which the same is received, unless the Bishop (Porteus) chooses to alledge, that the Holy Apostle fabricated a Sacrament, or means of grace, without any authority from his heavenly Master."† These latter words, which so clearly imply that not even an Apostle could institute a Sacrament, it pleases the Vicar to transform into the very opposite meaning, by making me signify, that

as St. James was ordained to the Apostolic Office, he consequently had the power to institute a Sacrament."t

You have seen, dear Sir, in the above-cited letter in The End of Controversy, the Sacrament of Extreme Unction proved, not only from the

* De Captiv. Babyl. Edit. Jen. The motive of Luther's contempt of this Canonical Epistle, is because it denies the sufficiency of faith alone, and insists on the necessity of good works.

+ End of Controv. Letter xliv. p 116.
+ Reply, p. 296.

Epistle of St. James, but also from the express testimony of Origen, S. Chrysostom and Pope Innocent I., all of whom quote that Epistle as the Scriptural authority for it. You have also seen references to the testimonies of Cyril of Alexandria, S. Gregory the Great, and our Venerable Bede, to the utter discomfiture of Dr. Porteus, who denies its being "mentioned for the first six hundred years of the Church."* And yet the Vicar, pledged as he stands to "deprive me of the adventitious aid of the Fathers," says not a word to all this! I likewise referred to all and every one of the numerous Christian Churches in Europe, Asia and Africa, that had been separated, some for five, others for ten centuries from the Catholic Church, before the existence of Protestantism, all of which acknowledge Extreme Unction to be a Sacrament, all of which are in the habit of administering it to the sick, no less than the Catholic Church. It was certainly incumbent on the Vicar to account for this universal fascination of the Christian world: there is no other way of doing this but the supposition which I suggested before, and with which he is so much offended, namely, that on some night or day they forgot all that they had previously believed, and were bewitched into a new Religion.

*Confut. c. ix. p. 61.