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Les diagrammes suivants iilufttrent la mAthode. by errata fned to lent une pelure, fa^on 6 1 2 3 32X 1 2 3 4 5 6 TllK ROMAN CATHOLIC CHUllCH NOT THE MOTHER CHUUCIl OP ENGLAND; OR, THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND THE CHURCH ORIGINALLY PLANTED IN ENGLAND. Br THli: UEV. THOMAS ]',. FULLER, t.ATK RKOTOK O*" Tlli t)lor!™K OV 1X»»I)NT(). WELLAND: rRlNTKD BY K. U. UKWHURST. •• TKLi;«llArn * OlM'lCK. 1300. ^^■11 3//S Tav BiiltHti atltlresiietl liy Glturcii of Gi liitlierlo littlt duty to prep nermoii uiid < eoiifiijence. a but gfiiernll; Availing liii pwiali, lit* "< iiiiiiietlititvly it t» liim, I patilisk it. An offer M raviied. Su adopted. 8l authorities : not a iiHeitnia Cliuruii " Imi being the ch the boaoin o( History, clai In coininii it! pnrtii or' availed himi only to aiipii Oliurchmen. Tmoro?.d, No PREFACE. r. T«i'innn!t, atldre8iie«I liy tliu nmlior to IiIn {'iiri-sliiMiiPra, on th«f CliriHtinii Miiiiatry ai*-cr. Iiilherlo little nndi'i'sloo.J, fven ainoN«8t Olinrclimfn, lie conceived it to hn Id.i duly to prepare it for a mine I'KteiidiHi iisefuliieNK. He Hccoidin^dy revi8t*d liiii aermoii and coiiHultcd w^veral of hii^ lirethren, in whose jnd^inent he had ^'reat eoiifiu'ence, as lu the propriety of publitihiii;^ it. They all advised hiin to pnhlish • but generally, reconi mended liini to adopt the foriii uf a Tr^ct or small Treatise. Availing himself of the vitiit ot' hia learned and indefaligahle Diocesan to his parish, he snliiiiiUed it fo his Lordship, v^im received it so graciously thai ho iiniiiediiitvly tohl the anthor that, if he would prepare it for the press and su««l it to liitn, 1k> would recoitmiend ttie '* Church Society " uf the Diouesa to puhlisk it. An offer flo kiudly made was gladly arcepted. It has therefore lieen thoroughly revised. Sohm altarations have l>een mttde in it. The Tract form has in»n adopted. Stmtettietits of facta have been testeii by refereace to ackiiowleged authorities: and the whole has been rendered a c«Hicise, but, the author triials, not tL useless Mannal, to those who, in this age of inquiiy, in looking for the Cliurcii " built upon the foundation of the Apovties and l*roplie!s, Jesus Christ being tlie chief corner stone," might, for want of correct inforiualion. be cast into the bosom of that Church which, \in contempt of Scripture and Bcclesiastical History, claims tu be the " Mother Church " of all Christendom. In committing this little treatise to the press, the author does not claim fer nil its parts «)r'giiiality either <«f arrangement or txpression; but, whilst he has availed himself, in some few parts, of the writings of others, he has been studious only to supply what he believes to be a great desideratum amongst Canadian Churchmen. THORnt.D, NlAOARA DISTRICT, Nov. loth, ISr.t. T. B. F. ' Rt Wedi "Non Every times of more coi at Coriiii and at 1 Paul to 1 In lik( Revelati Churhes in Sardi that in lliose se leakin oman£ )reach jranch )el'ore c )y earl^ tion of the utt( in the c verylej self in '. preach It is, Churcl bably Christi the int tries oi mans, surrou Oetuli • Eunel t Stillin tTertu TIIU ROMAN CATIIOiJ(] CHURCH NOT THE MOTHER CHURCH OF ENOLAND. We did not go flut from them ; but "they wont out from ui."— 1 John, ii. 19. "Non cnim noa ab illis, eed illi a nobis rccesscrunt."— Ctpriamb de Ukitatk. Every one who reads his Bible must be aware that in the times of the Apostles there were Churches, or, to speak more correctly, branches of the Church, planted at Rome, at Corinth, in Galatia, at Ephesus, at Phillippi, at Colosse, and at Thessalonica ; for we have epistles addressed by St. Paul to the Christian converts in each of these places. In like manner we find St. John, in the oook of the Revelation, addressing the Angels or Bishops of the Churhes in Ephesus, in Smyrna, m Pergamos, in Thyatira, in Sardis, in l*hiladelphia, and in Laodicea • thus proving that in /j/s time there existed branches of the Church in those seven districts of Asia Minor. We find St. Paul, too, g)eaking of the Chiirch in Macedonia, and writing to the omansofhis intended journey into Spain, doubtless to jreach the gospel there, and establish in that country a )ranch of the Church, as he and his fellow-apostles had )efore done in so many other countries. Now, we are told )y early church historians, that St. Paul did fulfil his inten- tion of preaching the gospel in Spain, and that he went to the uttermost bounds of the west, and the Islands that lie in the ocean.^ It has therefore been believed by some very learned men, that the Apostle St. Paul was either him- self in Britain, or that he sent some of his companions to preach there the unsearchable riches of Christ.f It is, however, certain, that a branch of the Christian Church was founded at a very early period in Britain, pro- bably as early as the Apostles' time; for Tertullian, a Christian Father who flourished A. D. 190, thus testifies to the introduction of Christianity into Britain : - " Some coun- tries of the Britons, which proved inaccessible to the Ro- mans, are subject to Christ."t And again,— " Britain lies surrounded by the ocean: the Mauri and the barbarous Getnlians are blocked up by the Romans, lest they should * Euneb. Domonfltrnt. EvntiRcl. Lib. iii. c. 7. p. 3. t StillinKfleot. Orifrines Britannica;, chap. 1. $ 3. t TertuUian adv. Judwos, ch. viii. ^ f I I I V 4»xten(l tho limits of their couiitrii'y. And what shall \v»» Hay of the Romans themselves who se(;un' their empire only by the power of their armies ? Neither are they able, with all their force, to extend their empires beyond these nalioiis: whereas the kinlo, Willi onalions: i(^h much lippod by the third tho com- ^"t This re known of Chris- In the estiiies to yond the jver of the tars erect- hou shalt lis. or tho : John de- brother's anches of it branch, the Couu- London ; 'f Lincoln, our Lord led, along ca, in 347, J likewise svident to it branch mi's time : Corinth, I, as it is eir Arch- thn>c, of Church had not 3re in all er. Thus tho mid- in, of tho ioch and Alexandria, luul the satno aulhority in nome of the eastern provinces. There was no liishop, whether at Ivome or olsewhere, who, nt tliis period, jiretended to any authority beyond his own diocese or province. The evidcnices of the Church's existence in Britain crowd upon us as we advance down the stream of history. The Picts and Scots had, however, made frequent incursions into the country, and had made sad liavoc of the Church, though they had by no means been able to destroy it. Tho Saxons, who were heathens, had been invited by the Bri- tons to assist them against these dreaded enemies ; but had, in their turn, conquered some parts of the country.* At length, in 50(5, centuries aft«3r the lirst establishment of the Church in Britain, - (J-regory, surnamed the (J-reat, Bishop of Rome, sent the celebrated Augustine to preach the Gos- pel to the Anglo-Saxons. Augustine found Bertha, Queen ofEthelbert, King of Kent, a Christian; and by her his mission was iavored. lilthelbert himself was converted, and many of his subjects were baptized by Augustine and his followers. Some years after liis arrival in England, Augustine took a journey towards the western counties, whitheT the British Church had been driven ; and haying asked for a conference with it, was met on the banks of the River Severn by seven Bishops, their most learned men from Bangor, Isceod, the chief nursery of the Church, and Binoth, their Abbot. He made i)roposals to them to unite with him and his followers in the work in which they were engaged. But the teriiip of his proposal were such as they could not accede to. He proi)osed to them to give up many of their established customs, and to put themselves in subjection to the Bishop of Rome. To this Dinoth an- swered in these words : "Be it known without doubt unto you, that we all are, and (n'^ery one of us, obedient and subjects to the Church of God, and to the Pope of Rome, and to every one in his degree, in perfect charity, and to helpe every one of them, by worde and deed to be the chil- dren of God : and other obedience than this I do not know due to him whom you name to be Pope ; nor to be Father of Fathers; to be claimed and to be demanded; and thi» obedience w^e are ready to give and to pay to him and to every Christian continually. Besides, we are under the government of the Bishop of Kaerleon-upon-bake, who i» to oversee under God over us, and to cause us to keep the way spiritual ."t This surely is the language of one be- longiii«j to an independent branch of the Churjjh, owning no sub.iection whatever to Rome, Bede also intorms u» that "they (the British Bishops) would not own Augustine as Archbishop over them." J Augustine is said to have shewni much disappointment at this unfavorable close of a scheme oi union, for whicli he had taken so much pains. t Spcliiiiin. Concilfa. vol 1, p. ;!. t iScdc. Lib. ii. l-ui>. 2, : ■ ' 8 f ; •f-.ij The British Church contiimod independent of the Anglo- Saxon Church till the reii^n of lIcMiry the First, having a metropolitan of its own at tSt David's. And even the Anglo-Saxon Church differed from the Bishop of Itome, and refused to acknowledge his authorit>^' ; an instance of which we have in the case of Bishop Wilfrid, who, having been ejected from his see for some ilagrant olf ence, applied to Rome and was sustained by the Bishop of that lordly city, who wrote to Ethelred and Alfred, to te-install him in his see. But Alfred, who reigned alone at the time of his arrival in Britain, scorned to receive him, and expressed in no measured terras his contempt for papal rescripts.=it= The Church of England also shewed herself slow to em- brace the innovations adopted from time to time by Rome. Of this I will mention but two instances out ot many that might be given. In the year 792 a w^ork was forwarded from the East to the lilmperor Charlemagne, containing the decrees of a G-reek council in favor of the religious adora* tion of images. Charlemagne sent this work to the Bishops of England, requesting their judgrnent upon it. All the Bishops concurred in condemning this new doctrine, which they declared " the Church of God holds accursed ;" and they engaged Albinus to write to the Emperor against it. He did so : and writing in the name and with the authority of the English Church, and usinj? the soundest scriptural ar* guments, notwithstanaing Adrian, the Pope of that time, had approved of the idolatrous practice, he etfectually en- gaged Charlemagne to use his influence to check it.f In 794 that monarch called together a council, at Frankfort-on the-Maine, in which three hundred Bishops solemnly con- demned the doctrine of the Greek council and the Pope ; and this prevented ibr a long time afterw^ards the progress of the error in Britain. :j: Although the idea of a physical change in the consecra- ted elements of the Lord's tSupper had been broached by the heretic Eutvches as early as the fifth century, it was not till 831 that Paschasius Radbert, a French Monk, first reduced into a compact and well arranged system the doc- trine of Transubstantiation, as it is now taught by the Church of Rome, viz.. that " after the bread and wine have b'^en consecrated in the holy Eucharist, they become the mme body and blood which our blessed Saviour took from the Virgin his mother : that their own substance ischanjjed, and only their new remains ; " for. says Cardinal Bellarmine, *' Paschase^was the first who wrote seriously and copiously concerning the truth of Christ's body in the Eucharist." § Erigena, an English writer, strongly opposed this new doctrine. The Church of England, and King Alfred, who • Bodo, Ecc. Hist. p. 447. t Palmer, part iv. ch. x. § 4. t Ilouoman Opus, Lib. v. c. 20. § Bellarm, as quoted by Fabor in bin " t)ifficuUicH of RuinauiHiii," chup. viii. § 4i V^fts the m doctrine ol \nriters, al same docti was the A Archbisho Relormati his power about the arrived at out occasi which, if Bufficientl feet and ii ftiture pe Early ii of the Chi oflFthe usi nations th ftttthority dependeii of Rome, of oentur: In doin linquestic the Chur mission t ries, long She refui make he which, t< off at th reformec purity w with Ro Church the sami joyed. I a true sc try estal tolical S resumin Catholi( ruptiont Christ. Romfl the Chi Christ ; Church reform* tend, tt the Anijlo having a even the of liome, nstaiice of 10, having ce, applied lat lordly tall him in ime of his pressed in [)ts.# ow to em* hy Rome, tnany that orwarded ainingr the ous adora- le Bishops . All the ine, which •sed;" and igainst it. authority iptural ar- that time, itually en- :k itf In mkfort-on mnlv con- the Pope; J progress consecra- »ached by ry, it was [onk, first 1 the doc* it by the ^iiie have come the ook from chan*red, llarmine, copiously Eirist."§ this new red, who nil. § 4. was the most enlij^htencd member of it, did not receive the doctrine of transubstantiation. Archbishop Elpin and other writers, about one hundred years afterwards, taus?ht the same doctrine as Erigena had done ; and it is said that it was the Archbishop's book which first opened the eyes of Archbishop Cranmer and Bishop Ridley, at the time of the Reformation. Thus we see the Pope 'gradually extended his power over the British Church from age to age, till, about the commencement of the sixteenth century, it hadL arrived at a great and oppressive height, -not indeed with- out occasional remonstrances and successful opposition ; which, if they availed not at the time to remove the evil* Bufficiently proved that the Romish dominion was imper- fect and insecure, and gave indications of a return at some fature period to complete independence. Earlv in the sixteenth century, the Bishops and Clergy of the Church, acting in concert with the civil power, threw off the usurped authority of the Pope, and the other inn9* Vations that had been thrust upon her, whilst subject to his Authority, and stood forth to the world, once more, an in- dependent branch of the Church, freed from the thraldom of Rome, and relieved from the accumulated corruptions ofoenturiesw In doing this she only did what she had a perfect and unquestionable right to do. She was a complete branch of the Church before she became subject to Rome, as her ad- mission to various Councils in the fourth and fifth centu- ries, long before Augustine came to England, fully proves. She refused subjection to Rome when Augustine wished to make her subject. She then knew nothing of the errors, which, together with the usurpations of Rome, she threw off at the Reformation. At that memorable period she reformed herself and returned to the independence and the purity which she possessed before she had any connexion with Rome. She was to all intents and purposes the same Church that had from the first existed in Britain. She had the same rights and the same principles she formerly en- joyed* She had, from the first, possessed all the parts of a true scriptural Church* She had the orders of the minis- try established by Christ and his Apostles, and the Apos- tolical Succession. She became again holy, and did not in resuming her rank as an independent branch of the Chui'ch Catholic, and cleansing herself from the accumulated cor- ruptions of centuries, break the unity of the Church of Christ. Roman Catholics do not deny that before the Reforpaation the Church in England was a branch of the Church of Christ ; but they say that she ceased to be a branch of the Church when she threw off the usurpation of Rome and reformed herself. One might, however, just as well con- tend, that when Naaman washed seven times in Jordan ft f. II i'5l I , 10 end was cleansed of his leprosy, he ceased, on that acconnti to be the man he was before,— that he ceased to be a Sy- rian,— that he lost his post and his privileges,-- that he ceased to be " a great man with his master and honorable" —that he ceased to be captain of the host of the king of Syria. One might as well contend that a dissipated magis- trate ceases to be a magistrate when he throws off the tiiraldom of sin and becomes a reformed character. To adopt another kind of illustration : - It is well known that, in his career of conquest. Napoleon Buonaparte overran the freatest part ol Europe, and obtained the dominions of pain, amongst other kingdoms, partly by stratagem and partly by force of arms. The Spaniards ne -er fiked the government of Joseph, whom his brother Napoleon made is King of Spain, when therefore the English, under the immortal- Wellington, came to their assistance, the Span- iards gladly united with them in driving out the usurper and restoring the former royal family to their throne. Now no one contends for a moment, that the kingdom of Spain was not identically the same kingdom, when freed from the presence of the French armies, that it was before they came to Spain, although, in the meanwhile, Spain had been under the usurpation of Buonaparte. Nor would any con- tend that the kingdom of France was not the same king- dom, when Louis the Eighteenth was established on his throne, that it had formerly been when governed by his predecessor, Louis the Sixteenth, although it had seen gretft changes in the meanwhile, and few of the same men lived and acted, that had lived and acted before the bloody French Revolution. Now if this be so,— and it cannot he denied -we may surely beheve the Church oi England to be the same Church that it was when it was represented in the Council of Aries in France by the Bishops of London, York and Lincoln, although the usurpation of Rome and its accompanying errors subsequently prevailed over it for centuries. Length of time makes no difference whatever in vhe principle of the thing. If it be the same Church after an usurpation of ten years, it is the same Church after an usurpation of one thousand years. And if so, we cannot be guilty of schism. Nor can the Roman Catholics with any truth assert, as they have done, that the Church of Rome is " the mother Church " of England, and that the Anglican Church was instituted and founded, like the generality of the Protestant sects, by certain Reformers in the sixteenth century. No: at the time of the glorious Reformation. Archbishop Cranmer, and those who aided him in his good work, discovered that all the errors which were in the Church, were innovations gradually and imperceptibly in- troduced, and not originally or essentially belonging to the Church of England. They determined, therefore, as was unquestionably their right and duty, not to overthrow th€ existing CI tractedin beauty. ^ independe of Rome, ^ than the I tinning pi perstitiouj neous doc and re-ar] Liturgy. the same flame brai In Mar to what t erable A Hooper, Deacons, fell victii attested > of pure a Elizabetl its forme schismatk years of C^ ped in t rasters. love for i •way. 1 expected atelv ; bi in the ei after the Fifth iss Elizabel their oa the Kii schism tinned i that tine the Rom nitp, ma which ^ the con be add< the yes land. t< till the have r • state agem and ' fiked the eon made under the the Span- le usurper one. Now of Spain reed from efore they 1 had been d any con- ame kind- led on his led by his had seen same men the bloody caniiot be ilngland to esented in f London, ^ome and over it for whatever urch after 1 after an cannot be with any f Kome is Anglican erafity of sixteenth brmation. I his good re m the ptibly in- ng to the e, as was throuf th€ 11 existing Church, but to correct the abuses which it had con- tracted in the lapse of time, and to re8t9re it to its primitive beauty. And this they did, by assertin*?, first, their own independence, against the usurped authority of the Pope of Rome, who had no more authority of right in En^^land, than the Bishop of Canterbury had in Rome, — by discon- tinuing practices which led evidently to unscriptural su- perstitions, - by protesting against certain prevalent erro- neous doctrines, —by giving the scriptures to the people, and re-arranging and improving the ancient Ritual and Liturgy. But though they did ail this, they still remained the same bishops -the same divines, and members of the same branch of the holy Catholic, Apostolic Church. In Marv's reign, an attempt was made to restore things to what tney had been before the Reformation. The ven- erable Archbishop Cranmer, Bishops Ridley, Latimer, Hooper, and hundreds of others,— Bishops, Presbyters, Deacons, pious men, devout women, and innocent children, fell victims to the ferocity of the Roman Catholics, and attested with their last breath their adherence to the cause of pure and undefiled religion. The accession of Queen Elizabeth was followed by the restoration of the Church to its former state. There was no schism, and consequently no tchismatics or dissenters whatever in England, for the first eleven pears of Queen Elizabeth's reignM All the people worship- ped in the same Churches and acknowledged the same Pastors. It is true that some persons secretly cherished a love for the old superstitions and abuses, and for the R^man iway. This was not to be wondered at. It was not to be expected that all could be brought to think alike immedi- ately ; but more information would have probably removed, in tne end, any such tendency. But in 1569, eleven years after the Queen's accession to the throne, Pope Pius the Fifth issued a bull, in which he excommunicated Queen Elizabeth and her supporters, absolved her subjects from their oaths of alle<;iance, and bestowed her dominions on the King of Spam. It was this bull which caused the schism in England ; for the popish party, which had con- tinued in communion with the Church of England up to that time, now began to separate themselves. The date of the Roman Catholics in J^Jnf^land, as a distinct sect or commu- nity, may therefore he fixed in the year 1570. The same year which witnessed the separation of the Romanists, was also the commencement of tne Puritan separation. It rnay here be added that, with the exception of the short period from the year 1625, when the Pope sent a titular Bisnop to Eng- land, to the year 1629, when his successor went to France, till tne year 1685, since which time Vicars Apostolic only have resided in England, this schismatical body has not • state Trlala, vol. 1, p. 242,-trlaI of IL Oarnot, JcmU ; ani Toinor Vj^Am. lTia.U. p. 212. n 12 oven presoiitotl ihc apponraiico of a l)raiich of the Christian Church.* Now I trust that it must ))e evidt^it irom what has been advanced, that the Church of En«r:land, so far from bein or any other branch of Christ's Church that has been brought into sub- jection to her and corrupted with her corruption ' repents, that part, or that independent branch ' is by the fact res- tored to primitive privileges. If any member of that Church repent, he takes tne position he would have enjoyed if his Church had never fallen; and that not by virtue of the act of the Church which ordained him, considered as a fallen Church, as the Church of Antichrist - but by virtue of the act of Christ w^hen he constituted the Church origi- nally free In a w^ord, the Church of Home is a fallen Church - a Church, but not fallen. Itepentance aud • Palnior, imrtit. clmp. 2. hch. 11. t riOiuttr's Cburoh uf Christ, vul. i, part 2. chop. 9, p. 505. t Ibid ^ 507. . feith restor What more repentant i independei to her USUI If, in the were to th away the many cent pendent b teaching a mandmen be the slig nnrestrain and Franc civil powt Churches, rast as the between \ Scotland, manner, i ny, and oi simplicity they poss them also and bid t until this them. T and we once deli of men, r The cj strebs ha the poini are^1lno^ It is acki ages of error. 1 lived, th likely to ages of ] refined could hf hanging error. Princes, became and liv came ir head.e^ true, 81 rious." yith some, ice here, is y through ) means of i objection le celebra- ill merely s a corpo- iime of its II hundred about the ig his life- e was un- le lost his 5e that he and what h, and an ipso facto f any part lis ; il she any other into sub- ' repents, fact res- it Church yed if his Lie of the 'red as a by virtue rch origi- Ilome is ance and 13 faith restore her, and so they do any member of her body. What more plain than this T And if this be the case wiUi repentant members of her own body, how much more with inaependent branches of the Church subjected for a time to her usurped authority ! If, in the good providence of Grodj the Church in France were to throw off* the usurpation ot the Pope, and remove away the corruptions which have effaced her beauty for many centuries ; if she were to assert her right as an inde- pendent branch of the Christian Church, and follow the teaching and practices of the Apostles, and not the com- mandments and traditions of fallible men, there would not be the slightest ecclesiastical bar or difficulty to the most unrestrained communion between the Churches of England and France. English clergymen could, if permitted by the civil power, perform all the duties of their office in French Churches, and French Clergymen in English Churches, rast as there is no ecclesiastical bar to this intercommunioxL Detween the Church of England and her sister Church in Scotland, America, and the British Colonies. And in like manner, if the Churches of Spain and Portugal^ of Germa- ny, and of Rome herself, were to return to their primitive simplicity and purity, - to that simplicity and purity which they possessed in the first centuries of Christianity,— to them also we could hold out the right hand of fellowship, and bid them " God speed in the name of the Lord." But until this be the case, there can be no communion witii them. They will continue to look upon us as " heretics " and we must still consider them as fallen from the ftiith once delivered to the saints - as led by the commandments of men, rather than guided by the word of God. The careful reader will not fail to remark that mnch strebs has been laid, in this little treatise, on the fact that the points of difference between us and the Church of Rome are innovations since the three first centuries of Christianity. It is acknowledged on all sides, that these were the purest ages of the Church, conseq^uently those most free from error. Beiu^ nearer the a^e m which the inspired Apostles lived, the writers of those times were consequently more likely to know the minds of the Apostles. These, too, were ages of persecution,— times which tried men's r^inds, and refined their hearts, as it were with tire. We, therefore,, could hardly suppose, that men who saw death constantly hanging over them, would willingly hold and propaeate error. But when Christianity ceased to be persecuted by Princes, but came to be patronized by them ; when Bishoos became temporal princes, and ecclesiastics rolled in wealth, and lived in luxury ana indulgence, we find that error came in as a fiood, and that truth veiled her diminished head, even in the Church of God. '* Whatever is first is true,^' says TertuUian: ''whatever is more recent, i» spii* rious." f li u r> i !^ We shall try by this test the points of difference between us and the Church of Rome. Invocation of saints,* and worshipping of images, f were scarcely known at the end of the fourth century, and were not generally adopted nor defended by the Popes, till the eighth century.l The title of universal bishop was be- stowed on Boniface the Third, in the year 606, by the Em- I)eror Phocas, whom the historian Mosheim represents as one of the most bloody tyrants that ever disgraced human nature.6 When this title was assumed a few years before by the Bishop of Constantinople, Gregory the Great, Bishop or Rome, ana of course one of Boniface's predecessors, de- claimed against the blasphemy of the assump>tion, and said, "Whoever claims the Universal Episcopate, is the forerun- ner of Antichrist." || Transubstantiation, as we have already seen, was not reduced into a regular system till 831, and was not established, as a doctrine of the Church, till the iburth Council of Lateran, held in the year 1215, only^ four centuries before the Reformation ; for says Tonstal, Bishop of Durham, '* Before the fourth Lateran Council, men were at liberty as to the manner of Christ's presence in the Eu- charist.^ In this same Council, Innocent the Third de- clared auricular confession an indispensable duty.** The celibacy of the Clergy was first enjomed in 1074, by Gregory Vll.tJ" It was in the twelfth century that the ropes mo- noix»l.ized the sale of Indulgences, by which, for money, future as well as present punishments were said by them to be remitted.!! The cup in the Lord's Supper was not denied the'^Laity till the year 1414, only a little more than a century before the Reformation. The Roman Ritual was not imposed on all the Churches till the eleventh century, from which time the service of the Church has been per- formed, in most countries, in a language not understood by the people. And it was not till the Council of Trent, 1546, after the Reformation, that the use of the Vulgate, a Latin translation of the Scriptures, - which of course the common people canhot use,— was enjoined on the faithful sons of Rome. Now these are facts, well known to all acquainted with ecclesiastical history, and attested by the writings of their own divines ; for we find some of their otvn writers condemning as a new and unscriptural practice, §§ the worshipping of images. In the nfth century we find Theodoret and^Gela8ius,|||| Bishop of Rome: in the sixth • Bpiph. Adr. Htsr. Lib. iii. hier. 78. t Ibid. Libar i, hipr. 27. . t Moth. C«nt. riii. part li, ehap. 3, sea. 11. *i Moih. 7th Cent. 2nd eh. 1st SM. . II Oragor. Maam. EdIb. Lib. vi, epiat. 30. IT Tonstal de Euobnr, Lib. i, p. 146. ** Mosheitn, part n, chap. 3, see, 2. ft Mosh. Cent, xi, part ii, chap. 2, soo. 12. It Moih. Cent, ziil, part 2, ohap. iii, see. 4. \i Qng. Motn. Epist. Lib. ix. Epii. 106, and Ep. 13. nil Tbeod. Orat. ii, oper. vol. iv. p. 84, Soot Paris, 1&12. Gelu. de decab. Chriat. Natur. Cootn Neitor. at Butyoh. io Biblioth, Patr. vol. iv. p. 422. centnry.E] Raban Mai writers, op consecrates only exam knowledge constitute then, I do innovatior that at the did not sei slanderoui their own * Contra. Eu ;e between ges,t were and were •es, till the P was be- >y the Em- )resents as ed human ears before eat, Bishop lessors, de- 1, and said, le forerun- tve already II 831, and ch, till the , only four tal. Bishop men were in the Eu- Third de- \^.** The >y Gregory Popes mo- tor money, d by them er was not more than Ritual was h century, been per- erstoott by 'rent, 1546, kte, a Latin le common ul sons of kC(}uainted iTitings of wn writers ice,§$ the '' we find the sixth 1. Ist 8M. i. p. 140. 2, leo. 12. ChriDt. NMtur. 15 centtiry, Ephrem of Antioch ;* and in the ninth century, fiaban Maurus, Archbishop of Mentz,t and a host of othei* writers, opposed to the doctrine of a physical, change in the consecrated elements of the Lord's Supper. These are only examples of the manner in which even their own ac- knowledged writers opposed the various innovations which constitute the difference between us and Rome, Surely, tiien, I do not say too much, when I assert that these are innovations since the first centuries ;;of Christianity, and that at the time of the Reformation the English Reformers did not set up any new religious institutions, as has been slanderously reported, but merely reformed and restored their own Cfhurch to its original independence and parity. * Oontr*. Eutyoh. spud Plot Col. 22S, t Epist mi Heribald, o. uriii. THE END.