say once more, that whatever discrepancy there may be between his former doctrines and the Church articles, or the opinions of his opponents, it should not be laid to his charge, where latitude of opinion has been always considered a privilege and a right. The Government has been severely blamed for appointing him to a chair, after the University had conferred three successive dignities on him, since his ill-starred Lectures. This censure we think likewise unjust. We think sincerely, that, had the government appointed any of those who signed the Report, or appealed to His Grace of Canterbury, they would have sanctioned a wider departure from the acknowledged principles of Anglicanism than they can possibly have sanctioned now. For the doctrines which that party maintain, however they approximate nearer to what we hold for truth, are as widely dissentient from the very basis of Protestantism, as those of the new Professor.

Do we mean then to join in the clamour which has been raised against them? Assuredly not. We gladly close our eyes to all consideration of personal motives or feelings which have been thought to prevail in this controversy, and we are willing to look upon it solely as a struggle of contending principles. For we believe that sincere regret has been felt by this party, at what they consider the exaltation of opinions hostile to their views of the Church and of its doctrines. But if they would look steadily at their own position, now rendered more manifest by the issue of the contest, they would feel that they are vainly trying to raise their Church to the standard of influence and power which their affections have devised. They would feel that they are only one small section of it, tending to dissent from its essential principles. We can sympathise with their feelings, we can well con ceive the painful disappointment which an ardent spirit must feel, when having fixed its eagerest ambition upon the establishment of a favourite theory, it finds a clog upon its efforts in the very cause it has espoused. We can well imagine a youthful mind after having lived, in spirit, amidst the heroes of ancient christianity, after having studied in the conduct of an Athanasius, how the Church may clothe her arm with thunder, when heresy assails her, after having satisfied himself that the Bible never was the rule of faith, but the Church its teacher, try to apply in practice these lessons and convictions, and sigh to discover that the machinery is broken in pieces, and the springs all relaxed, which then seemed to act with such mighty force. We can conceive the inward regrets of one who has picked out, with beautiful skill, and woven into a golden chain, the few grains of poetic feeling which the torrent of the

*

See "The Arians of the Fourth Century," pp. 49 et seq.

Reformation tore from the ancient Church, and has preserved in the dry and sandy desolation of its "Christian year;" upon seeing how much fit matter for a muse like his has been indiscriminately and unfeelingly swept away, how much nobler and more moving themes he would have possessed, had that touch been gentler which broke off the flowers, when it pretended but to prune the plant.

But only let these ideas be indulged to the utmost; let those who reason, and those who feel upon religion, only boldy pursue their respective trains of thought unto their ends. Let them construct, in mind, "the Church which would realize their conceptions, the religion which would embody their ideas of perfection; and there can be little doubt what the result would be. They would pass from the dreams of theory to a reality which would satisfy their warmest longings, and fill up the measure of their just desires.

ART. XII.-Declaration of the Catholic Bishops, the Vicars Apostolic, and their Coadjutors in Great Britain. 8vo. Lond. 1836.

THIS

HIS declaration of the principles of the Roman Catholic religion was originally drawn up in the year 1826, when it was promulgated, accompanied by an Address from the British Roman Catholics to their Protestant Fellow-countrymen. The “Address” was signed by ten Catholic peers, by nine Catholic baronets, and nearly one hundred Catholic gentlemen of great respectability. Both these documents were circulated by the Defence Committee of the British Catholic Association to a very great extent, and a copy of them, with the original signatures, was deposited in the British Museum, in order that they should remain as a solemn record of the real principles of the Roman Catholic faith, which have been so frequently misunderstood and misrepresented by the opponents of that faith in these kingdoms.

As it is not improbable that, in the course of our labours, we shall often have occasion to state the leading articles of our creed, we have deemed it useful, for the facility of reference, to record in this journal the Declaration of the venerable English and Scotch Catholic prelates. In our next number, we shall give the Pastoral Address and Declaration of the Archbishops and Bishops of the Roman Catholic Church in Ireland, which were issued at the same period. By these expositions of our faith, we shall desire to be judged. To these standards we shall uniformly appeal, whenever we find it necessary to say what it is we do, or do not, believe; and we request our fellow-subjects of

every persuasion to feel assured, that whenever they hear or read of any religious tenets which are not conformable to the doctrines laid down in these Declarations, such tenets are not Roman Catholic, and are neither professed nor practised by any of the members of the Roman Catholic Church in this, or indeed in any other country.

"PREAMBLE.—When we consider the misrepresentations of the Catholic religion, which are so industriously and widely propagated in this country, we are filled with astonishment. But our astonishment subsides, when we call to mind, that the character of Christ himself was misrepresented he was charged with blasphemy, with breaking the Sabbath, and with forbidding tribute to be paid to Cæsar:*-that the apostles and disciples of Christ were misrepresented, they were charged with speaking blasphemous words against Moses and against God, with exciting sedition, and with many other grievous offences entirely devoid of proof, and that misrepresentation was the general lot of Christians in the first ages of the church. The primitive Christians were first calumniated and held up to public contempt, and then persecuted and deprived, not only of their civil rights and privileges, but of their property, and even of their very lives. They were charged with idolatry, with horrid cruelties, and other flagitious crimes, even in their religious worship. In a word, their whole religion was described as a system of folly and superstition, grounded on no one rational principle.

"St. Justin and Tertullian, in their Apologies for the Christian Religion, endeavoured to dispel these misrepresentations, by exhibiting the real doctrines and precepts, and explaining some of the sacred rites of the Christian religion. They showed that these injurious misrepresentations were, in many instances, the inventions of men, who, unable to withstand the evidences of the divine establishment of Christianity, endeavoured to excite prejudices against it in the minds of the people, by holding out its doctrines as absurd and impious, and its professors as the causes of every public calamity.

"St. Augustin complained of the calumnies which were circulated against the Catholic church by the Manicheans and Donatists in his age. He humbly confessed and lamented that he himself had employed the same weapons against the church, when he was attached to the former of these sects, and acknowledged that he then blindly and rashly, and falsely, accused the Catholic church of doctrines and opinions which, he was at length convinced, she never taught, believed, or held.

"The Catholics of Great Britain have to lament and to complain that the doctrines and religious rites which, as Catholics, they are taught by their church to believe and observe, have been long grossly misconceived and misrepresented in this country, to the great injury of their religious character and temporal interests.

"They are persuaded that many, who are opposed to them on ac

* Matt. xxvi. 65; Mark iii. 22; John ix. 16; Luke xxiii. 2.

Acts vi. 11; xxiv. 5; xxv. 7.

Gaudens erubui; non me tot annos adversus catholicam fidem sed contra carnalium cogitationum figmenta latrasse.

count of their religion, suppose, without inquiry, that the Catholic church really teaches all that she is reported by her adversaries to teach; and imagine that she is responsible for every absurd opinion entertained, and for every act of superstition performed, by every individual who bears the name of Catholic.

"We hope that all who are animated with a love of truth, and with sentiments of Christian charity, will be disposed willingly to listen to the sincere declarations of their Catholic fellow-countrymen, and will never impute to their religion, principles or practices which, as Catholics, they do not hold or observe, and which their church condemns as errors or abuses.

"In this hope and persuasion, the British Catholics have made repeated declarations of their religious doctrines, and have shewn, they trust to the satisfaction of all who have paid attention to them, that they hold no religious principles, and entertain no opinions flowing from those principles, that are not perfectly consistent with the sacred duties which, as Christians, they owe to Almighty God, with all the civil duties which, as subjects, they owe to their sovereign and the constituted civil government of their country; and with all the social duties which, as citizens, they owe to their fellow-subjects, whatever may be their religious creed.

“They had flattered themselves that the numerous and uniform exposition of their religious doctrine, given in public professions of the Catholic faith, in Catholic catechisms, in various authentic documents, and in declarations confirmed by their solemn oaths, would have abundantly sufficed to correct all misrepresentations of their real tenets.

"But they have to regret, that some grievous misconceptions, regarding certain points of Catholic doctrine, are, unhappily, still found to exist in the minds of many, whose good opinion they value, and whose good-will they wish to conciliate. To their grief they hear, that, notwithstanding all their declarations to the contrary, they are still exhibited to the public as men holding the most erroneous, unscriptural, and unreasonable doctrines-grounding their faith on human authority, and not on the word of God as enemies to the circulation and to the reading of the Holy Scriptures as guilty of idolatry in the sacrifice of the mass, in the adoration, as it is called, of the Virgin Mary, and in the worship of the saints, and of the images of Christ and of the saints; and as guilty of superstition in invoking the saints, and in praying for the souls in purgatory; as usurping a divine power of forgiving sins, and imposing the yoke of confession on the people-as giving leave to commit sin by indulgences as despising the obligation of an oath-as dividing their allegiance between their king and the pope as claiming the property of the church establishment-as holding the uncharitable doctrine of exclusive salvation, and as maintaining that faith is not to be kept with heretics.

"We are at a loss to conceive, why the holding of certain religious doctrines, which have no connexion with civil or social duties, whether those doctrines are taken in the sense in which they are misconstrued by others, or in the sense in which they are uniformly understood by Catholics, should be made a subject of crimination against British Catho

Catholics do solicit the intercession of the angels and saints reigning with Christ in heaven. But in this, when done according to the principles and spirit of the Catholic church, there is nothing of superstition, nothing which is not consistent with true piety. For the Catholic church teaches her children not to pray to the saints, as to the authors or givers of divine grace; but only to solicit the saints in heaven to pray for them, in the same sense as St. Paul desired the faithful on earth to pray for him.

Catholics, according to the faith and pious practice of the Christian church from the age of the Apostles, do pray for the release and eternal rest of departed souls, who may be detained for a time in a state of punishment on account of their sins, but in this we cannot discover even the shadow of superstition.

By invoking the intercession of the saints in heaven, and by praying for the suffering souls in purgatory, Catholics exercise acts of that communion of charity, which subsists between the members of the mystical body of Christ: the principle of which communion they profess to believe, when they say, "I believe the holy Catholic church, the communion of saints.”

After this explanation and declaration, we hope that our countrymen will never be so unjust or so uncharitable, as to charge Catholics with idolatry or superstition, nor be so illiberal as to attempt to give a colour to these injurious charges, by fixing an exclusive meaning to terms, which, in the language of scripture, Christian antiquity, and common usage, bear different senses in different circumstances.

SECTION V. On the power of Forgiving Sins, and the precept of Confession. The Catholic church is charged with impiety, in usurping the power of forgiving sins, and with spiritual tyranny in imposing on the people the yoke of confession.

The Catholic church cannot be charged with impiety, for exercising powers given by Christ to his Apostles, and to their lawful successors; nor with tyranny in enforcing the observance of the precept of Christ.

Catholics believe that Christ granted to his Apostles, and to the Priests of his church, power to forgive sins, by the administration of the sacraments of baptism and penance, to those who are duly disposed to receive this grace. They believe that the sacrament of penance is an institution of Christ, no less than the sacrament of baptism. The belief of both rests on the same foundation.

In both these sacraments, sin is forgiven by the ministry of man. Be baptized every one of you for the remission of sins, Acts ii. 38; whose sins YOU SHALL FORGIVE, they are forgiven, John xx. 23. But no actual sin can be forgiven at the mere will of any Pope, or any priest, or any person whomsoever, without a sincere sorrow for having offended God, and a firm resolution to avoid future guilt, and to atone for past transgressions. Any person who receives absolution without these necessary dispositions, far from obtaining the remission of his sins, incurs the additional guilt of hypocrisy and profanation.

The obligation of sacramental confession to a priest is not an imposition of the church, but a precept of Christ. Without the voluntary