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LETTERS FROM A LAYMAN

ONE WHO HAS LEFT THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
FOR THAT OF ROME.

BY TUB
HON. FRANCIS SCOTT
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LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, READER AND DYER.
1869.

PRICE ONE SHILLING.

LETTERS FROM A LAYMAN

ONE WHO HAS LEFT THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND
FOR THAT OF ROME.

HON. FRANCIS SCOTT.

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LONDON:
LONGMANS, GREEN, READER, AND DYER.
1869.

The following Letters, loritten in much sorrow, are pub
lished by request, and in the anxious hope that they may be
of service in opening the eyes not only of him to whom they
are addressed, but of others who, belonging to the Church of
England and knowing little of that of Borne, are attracted by
her forms and ceremonials, and fail to perceive the essential
differences between the two.

I

LETTER I.

Cannes, Alpes Maritimes,
March 1868.
Mt dear Francis,
I SOMEWHAT blame myself for not having spoken
freely with you while here on the subject of your
leaving the Church of England to adopt that of
Rome. For whether you may heed my remarks or
not, I have a duty to discharge. I have known and
loved you all your life : I am your near relation and
your Godfather, and therefore I ought not to remain
silent. Moreover, we both believe in the same God
we both trust in the same Mediator, Jesus Christ
we both pray for grace from the same Comforter
and we both hope for a joyful resurrection in the
world to come. Whether you concede to me these
privileges and blessings or not, I concede them all to
you ; and I pray fervently that God may guide you
and me aright.
As you were resolved to adopt the Romish Church,
I rejoice that you go to Rome at once, for then and
there you must ask yourself many serious questions,
— Is this right 1 is this true % is this honest before
God and man 1 in regard to proceedings and observ
ances which you will see and in which you may
be called to take a part. Also, is there any warrant
in Holy Writ for what you are doing, and what you
see done by those who have taken vows to instruct

4 LETTER I.
in Religion and Christianity 1 I say Religion and
Christianity, because you must ask yourself, Is this
the Religion which Christ taught 1
I have no doubt that you have both read and
prayed much on the subject; and, as you say,
"praying is better than thinking." True — but what
has been your course of reading 1 what has been
your intercourse with religious men 1 to what
influences have you almost exclusively subjected your
self 1 have you " searched the Scriptures "* in order
there to find the guidance of the Word of God ; or
have you not rather taken the ordinances of man \ have
you taken Holy Writ, and that alone, as the ground
work of the Church and the Church's teaching'? Of late
years have you not leant more to other teaching? have
you of late years argued or consulted on the subject
with any except those whose tendencies were towards
extreme ceremonial and outward show % have you not
avoided discussion with men who had not that bias %
The step you have taken, I infer from your remark,
is the result of prayer. The man who takes his boat
into the middle of the stream and prays instantly that
it may not drift downwards, will remain as stationary
as you were likely to do under similar circumstances
in the Church of England.
Our daily prayer is not " Lead us into temptation
and take care of us when there," but " Lead us not
into temptation." I cannot wonder that, having
volunteered to expose yourself to the attractions of
a system which I consider a masterpiece of human
mechanism, you should have yielded to the charm as
others have done before you. But ask yourself again,
Does Christ teach this 1 is there any warrant for this
a St John v. 39.

LETTER 1. 5
in either Gospels or Epistles ? or is not the warrant
quite the other way % Your doctrine is, that the
Church of Rome is ihe Church, and you do not,
because she does not, allow salvation out of her pale.
In Holy Writ we hear of the Church at Jerusalem,
at Antioch where the disciples were first called Chris
tians, at Corinth, and elsewhere, as well as at
Rome. Your doctrine and her3 is, that the Church of Rome
cannot err. Well, if St Peter could err himself, and
be rebuked by our Lord " for savouring the things that
be of men and not of God,"b even while the Lord was
present with him, the successors of St Peter have had
little chance to escape error. If St Peter could thrice
deny his Lord on that dread night, there is much fear
that those who pretend to inherit His faith may
" crucify the Son of God afresh, and put Him to an
open shame." e If even after the day of Pentecost St
Peter could so err as to compel his brother apostle St
Paul " to withstand him to the face because he was to
be blamed," a can you expect the Papacy to escape
blame, or to possess that infallibility or security from
error which did not belong to St Peter %
On that beautiful address by our Lord to St Peter,
" Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I build My
Church ; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against
it. And I will give unto thee the keys of the king
dom of heaven : and whatsoever thou shalt bind on
earth shall be bound in heaven : and whatsoever thou
shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven;"6 on
this, which has no reference to primacy, and on that
other saying (like St Peter's denial, thrice repeated),
* St Matt. xvi. 23. c Heb. vi. 6.
d QnL ii. 11. e St Matt. xvi. 18.

6 LETTER I.
"Feed My sheep," f does Rome rest her whole claim
to supremacy. It is indifferent to me whether that
" rock " meant St Peter, or the faith that " Thou art
the Christ, the Son of the living God."s The Church
of God is founded on a rock, and the gates of hell
shall not prevail against it — and what has that to do
with Rome, whither it is doubtful if St Peter ever
went 1 It is a noble tribute to, that great apostle to
whom the remark is personally made, as was that
other affecting prophecy addressed to him, " When
thou shalt be old thou shalt stretch forth thy hands,
and another shall gird thee, and carry thee whither
thou wouldest not."h He too, the "apostle of the
Circumcision," in his own person fulfilled the prophecy
of unlocking " the kingdom of heaven " ' by opening it
to Cornelius and his household,11 and by preaching the
Gospel to the "lost sheep" of the house of Israel
(vide note, p. 30): he was commissioned to bind and
loose, but so were all the apostles.1
No construction of these passages, either singly or
collectively, can give supremacy to Rome over other
Churches. If, however, Rome assume this address to St Peter
as applicable to herself, she must also equally assume
the address to St Peter five verses lower in the same
sixteenth chapter of St Matthew : " Get thee behind
Me, Satan ; thou art an offence (or stumbling-block)
unto Me ; for thou savourest not the things that be of
God, but those that be of men." m
Do you remember that Christ called the Twelve
before Him in consequence of their dispute about
superiority, and said to them, " If any man desire to
f St John xxi. 16. e St Matt. xvi. 16. h St John xxi. 18.
1 St Matt. xvi. 19. k Acts x. 34. 1 St Matt, xviii. 18.
m St Matt. xvi. 23.

LETTER I. 7
be first, the same shall be last of all, and servant of
all 1 " n And have you never turned to that beautiful
description by St John at Patmos of the "twelve
foundations of the wall, and in them the names of the
twelve apostles of the Lamb 1 " °
All this reference to other Churches you ignore.
Confounding a part with the whole, you contend that
the Church of Rome is the whole Church. All Scrip
ture is against this perversion of truth. Have you
also forgotten the Revelation of St John, where, in
the last verse but five of the whole Bible, it is pro
claimed, " I Jesus have sent Mine angel to testify unto
you these things in the Churches V'p You contend
that the sound doctrines of Christianity can only be
truly and safely taught in and by the Church of
Rome ; where do you find that laid down in Holy
Writ % We perceive that the first and greatest
apostles erred; and we learn that they differed or
quarrelled; for we find "St Paul withstanding St
Peter to the face ;" "Barnabas carried away with dis
simulation" (Gal. ii 11-13), and then the contention
was so sharp between Paul and Barnabas that they
parted, one going one way, the other the other, Paul
taking with him Silas, and Barnabas taking Mark.
It is, however, a significant fact that we are not
informed who was right ; and therefore it may appear
that, in matters not set forth in Scripture, the right of
private judgment rested with these fishers and tent-
makers who inculcated Christ and Him crucified as
the Captain of Salvation, and who taught that " there
is none other name under Heaven given among men
whereby we must be saved."q
n St Mark ix. 35. ° Rev. xxi. 14
p Rev. xxii. 16. * Acts. iv. 12.

8 LETTER I.
At Rome you will be able to judge whether there
is any resemblance between the primitive proceedings
and simple faith of the apostles, and the military
parade and princely pomp of him who styles himself
the Vicegerent of God upon earth. You will see the
Holy Father, " servus servorum Dei," with the triple
tiara on his head, signifying, as was assumed eight
centuries ago, that he is crowned king of heaven,
earth, and hell.
The teaching to which you subscribe being that
the Roman Church cannot err, her pretensions where
opposed to Scripture are right, and Scripture wrong.
If it cannot err, and with it rest the infallible de
positories of Divine truth, all that it has ever done or
asserted, to that it must still adhere ; for in ceasing
to maintain what it has once asserted, it convicts
itself of error or of falsehood.
You lament, and so do I, the unseemly differences
in the Churcli of England, and the lack of authority
to control, or order to decide, what is right in matters
of discipline and doctrine too. I believe that these
discords in the Church you have left had much weight
in inducing you to leave it, and to seek a refuge, as it
were, where discipline was more strict; and that
finding this enforced at Rome, you have gone thither
thinking there you discover uniformity. The uni
formity you adhere to is the uniformity of infallibility.
If, therefore, the Romish Church cannot maintain
every iota or tittle of doctrine or assumption which
it has ever in the course of ages asserted, you have
united yourself to the uniformity of error. Be not
shocked, the inference is logical, the sequence is
necessary. You will reply to me that in regard to questions of

LETTER I. 9
doctrine and of discipline there are many matters of
minor importance which are left open ; and if one
only belongs to the Church there is ample latitude
afforded. We will consider these minor matters
shortly. Do you say it is not necessary to invoke saints, it
is not an article of faith to address prayers to the
Virgin ?
I know the way they nurse you and lead you
on ; — milk to young babes. You are not yet fit to-
receive the whole faith. Thus you are drawn onward
until you adopt and advocate the entire system of
the present priestly power of granting indulgences
for sin in the living, of pardoning men when they
have sinned ; of redeeming- — literally re-d-emption
or buying out souls after death by priests' prayers
granted for money paid ; of purgatory ; of mediation
by the merits of dead men, sinners like ourselves,
in behalf of the dead with the "only Mediator
between God and men, the Man Christ Jesus."r
The discipline which you have adopted as the cure
for want of discipline here, compels you to adopt
not only all this, but far more than all this in
your search not for unity but for uniformity. There
is just as much want of unity in doctrine among the
Jesuits, Dominicans, and Franciscans as there is
among members of the Church of England on
points on which their differences are lamentable ;
but you have found uniformity at the awful
sacrifice of abandoning Divine truths as laid down
in the Old and New Testament for the doctrines
adopted in later ages by the Church of Rome.
I have referred to the difference which arose be-
r 1 Tim. ii. 5.

10 LETTER L.
tween Paul and Barnabas when they separated ;s
I have alluded to several churches named by the
apostles : but your doctrine being that the Pope's
is the only true Church, and that the Church of
Rome cannot err, let me ask you to refer to the
Epistles and tell me if the Church of the Galatians
could not also be a true Church 1
Tell me too if St Peter must have been right in
giving way to those who insisted on the circumcision
of the Gentiles ; and, if so, why his followers do not
adopt the rite \
It would really appear as if warning were given
us against the very customs, practices, and doctrines
to which you are subscribing, by the following facts,
such as the enumeration, amongst others, of the
many churches, assigning to none the superiority —
in the declaration that " a man is justified by faith,
without the deeds of the law,"' — in the remark of
our Lord to His mother at the feast of the marriage
in Cana — in His observation that those who obey
His Word are His mother, and sister, and brother —
in the exclamation from the Cross addressed as much
to St John as to the Virgin — in the silence of
Scripture as to the Virgin afterwards, the one
incidental notice of " the mother of Jesus with His
brethren " being present after mentioning each of the
apostles by name, " and the women " forming the sole
exception — in the contentions which existed between
St Peter, St Paul, and the other apostles — in the
declaration that he that would be greatest shall be
least — in the rebuke given to St Peter on one occa
sion — in the narrative of his fall and denial of his
Lord at the awful scene of the judgment hall — in
8 Acts xv. * Rom. iii. 20 ; Gal. ii. 16.

LETTER I. 11
the desertion of their Master by the disciples at
His crucifixion. All these events are recorded for
our learning, and ought to humiliate us : and these
records and other matters to which I shall allude
presently, ought to make you pause, and pray, and
think, and tremble.
Your reading, your hearing, your intercourse gener
ally of late has been of a character to elevate what in
a restricted sense is styled the Church.
Now this word " the Church " as you hear and read
it, is so unlike the Church as written and read in
Scripture, that it neither is nor appears to be the same
thing. When, therefore, you pray to be guided aright, you
must pray direct to God through Him alone who is
the only Mediator between God and man," with your
Bible before you ; and thus praying yourself, you
must on no pretence deny the Bible to others. It will
not do to pray that you may have grace to guide
others into divine truth, and then under the teaching
of a Church, to refuse the light of the gospel to
those you affect and undertake to enlighten and to
teach. Can you expect that prayer will be blessed or duly
answered by God if you leave the oracles of God, to
be guided by the devices of man %
Where is your warrant for those very institutions
on which the Romish Church rests — monasteries,
celibacy, and other things, perhaps originally meant
for good, but unsupported by God's Word 1 Peter,
your " first Pope," had a wife, and our Lord visited her
house ; x and the Epistle to Timothy expressly recog
nises the marriage of the clergy, both bishops and
u i Tim. ii. 5. x St Matt. viii. 14.

12 LETTER I
deacons, and their taking due care of their children
and families/
Where the warrant for withholding the Bible, in
defiance of the command, " Search the Scriptures ; for
they are they which testify of Me1?"21 Where that
for denying the cup at the Holy Communion, in spite
of the express injunction, "Drink ye all of this" ?a
Where your warrant for prayer in an unknown
tongue, in defiance of the gift of tongues by the Holy
Spirit on the day of Pentecost, and against the
whole fourteenth chapter of St Paul's First Epistle to
the Corinthians 1 He tells you, in so doing, " your
understanding is unfruitful, and cannot edify." b He
in charity says you may "be judged mad" for so
doing ; but if you wilfully persist in doing it, may you
not incur a severer sentence ?
In obedience to the doctrines of the Church of
Rome, you say, there is no salvation in the Church of
England. Where, again, is your or their warrant for
this condemnation 1 Is it of us that the apostle writes
that " The Spirit speaketh expressly, that in the latter
times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to
seducing spirits, and doctrines of devils ; speaking lies
in hypocrisy ; . . . forbidding to marry, and com
manding to abstain from meats, wrhich God hath
created to be received with thanksgiving of them
which believe and know the truth 1 "c
Is it us especially that he bids to " refuse profane
and old wives' fables, and exercise ourselves rather
unto godliness?"3
Would it not be wise on this occasion, before the
sweeping condemnation of the Church of England and
y i Tim. iii. z St John v. 39. a St Matt. xxvi. 27.
b 1 Cor. xiv. c 1 Tim. iv. 1-3. d 2bid. 7.

LETTER I. 13
other Churches, for that of Rome to follow our Lord's
advice, first to take the beam out of its own eye, that
it may see clearly to take the mote out of its brother's
eye?8 You say many matters are minor, and therefore the
Church does not regulate them. Now this is strange,
that it can regulate the greater and not the less. One
would have thought that an infallible Church would
have completed the structure by regulating the whole.
Our Church lays claim to no infallibility ; and
therefore in its omissions, whether right or wrong, in
disputed matters, it is less inexcusable than that which,
assuming infallibility in all matters, asserts or omits
to assert, as from time to time may suit its purposes.
Are things classed minor or otherwise according to
the standard of God's law, or by human regulation ?
What are these minor matters ? Are they such as
mariolatry and hagiolatry \ Is the worship of the
Virgin or of saints in obedience to God's law 1 Minor
are they % How can things enjoined or forbidden in
Holy Writ be minor or indifferent in the eye of any
Church but one which disregards the injunctions or
prohibitions it contains %
If the first commandment teaches to worship God
only/ the second is directed against idolatry. In that
the New Testament can add nothing to the Old.
That is enough. It was never imagined that any
Christian Church could teach, preach, or practise
idolatry. But fearful lest the worship, not of men
but of angels, should creep in, the apostle St Paul
warns lest any man should " beguile into the worship
ping of angels ;"g and St John, in the last chapter of
the Revelation, strikingly forbids the same : " I John
e St Matt. vii. 3, 4'; St Luke vi. f Exod. xx. g Col. ii. 18.

14 LETTER I.
saw these things and heard them. And when I had
heard and seen, I fell down to worship before the
feet of the angel which showed me these things. Then
saith he unto me, See thou do it not: for I am thy
fellow-servant, and of thy brethren the prophets, and
of them which keep the sayings of this book : worship
God."h Again, St Paul cautions the Colossians lest any
man " spoil them through philosophy and vain deceit,
after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the
world, and not after Christ." i
I conjure you to inquire whether, in this regard, the
Church of Rome, which condemns us as unsound, does
not teach for doctrines the commandments of men,
and does not make the commandments of God of none
effect through its traditions.15
You will find that the Church of your adoption
teaches in its Catechism that " the authority of tradi
tion is as great as that of Scripture, because," it says,
"tradition came to us as well as Scripture from the
apostles." Is this a fact 1 What do you gain by
tracing tradition to the apostles'? St John (xxi. 23)
mentions a tradition respecting his own death, "a
saying which went abroad among the brethren," re
garding an expression of our Lord, to " testify " that
reliance cannot be placed even upon apostolic tradition.
While teaching this you will remember that in God's
Word it is said, "Without is whosoever loveth or
maketh a lie." 1
I know it will be insinuated that it is not a positive
doctrine with Rome to worship by adoration the men
whom she has canonised ; that the saints only drop
h Rev. xxii. 8, 9. 1 Col. ii. 8.
k St Matt. xv. 9. 1 Rev. xxii, 15.

LETTER I. 15
into their proper places in the order of devotion, and
only take their due position in the matter of belief,
so that their worship is the worship not of adoration
but of honour.
This casuistry is subtle, but is not in accordance
with your public teaching or public practice. The
tree is known by its fruits.1" Is it, then, worship or
not worship ? Are prayers addressed to the Virgin
and to the saints, or are they not % I care not which.
If worship, how reconcile it with the Bible ? If not
worship, how reconcile it with what, after taking the
Bible from them, you lead or mislead your people to
believe 1
Your prayers, your professions, your proclamations,
your processions all tend to and produce the belief
in the efficacy of the mediation of saints, to the dis
placing of our Lord from His one mediatorial throne,
to the sharing of His power by departed sinners
invoked by others living, to the eclipsing of Christ's
glory, and the doubt of the mercy and justice, the faith
fulness and love of the declared only advocate" with
God the Father, who said, " Corne unto me, all ye
that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you
rest." °
Henceforth you are to learn and to teach to address
the Virgin as the Queen of heaven, and, as all-power
ful with Jesus Christ, to ask her to give you her
patronage and protection with Him. What is this
but a blasphemous mistrust of the three great attri
butes of the Godhead, infinite power, infinite wisdom,
and infinite mercy %
You are also by the process of development in the
system of tradition to believe in and to teach that
m St Matt. vii. 20. n 1 John ii. 1. ° St Matt. xi. 28.

16 LETTER I.
which the infallible Church invented a few years ago,
the immaculate conception of the Blessed Virgin ;.
and you are to pretend that God revealed this fact
in Holy Writ, though no one, not even your Church,
knows when or how it was revealed, or how it was
found out only about ten years ago. This is an
article of your new faith, against which your Church
at Candlemas annually adduces a standing witness
in the " Feast of the Purification." Wherefore, should
Mary, if free from original sin, offer the ordained sin-
offering ?p Why, with nothing to atone for, make an
atonement?11 Thus your Church disproves her own
doctrine. But why do you stop with the Blessed Virgin ?
Do you leave it for a further discovery to find out
that the parents of the Virgin Mary enjoyed the
same immunity ? There is equal scriptural warrant
for believing this of them, and quite as much reason
for the belief that the exception mounted up through
successive generations until it reached the inspired
Psalmist. The Saviour was proclaimed Son of David.
Your Church (as well as ours, which you style
no Church) addresses our Lord by that title. He
Himself claims this address as belonging to Him ;
there is therefore on many grounds reason to assign
this dignity to king David if assignable to the
Virgin ; but you see to what absurdities these im
postures lead.
As the preceding doctrine detracts from the
Saviour's Godhead, so this disparages the Redeemer's
manhood. The former leaves a doubt on the mind of
him who prays, whether the intercessory prayer may
ever reach the Throne of Grace, or reach it in due
p Lev. xii. 8. « St Luke ii.

LETTER I. 17
time. The latter takes from the mourner or the
tempted half his joy ; his comfort or peace in believ
ing. Thus both are not only unholy, but cruel
doctrines. In the first case, the saint, as Elijah said, " may
be talking, or he may be pursuing, or is on a journey,
or peradventure he sleepeth, and must be awaked,"1
or he may be pleading for another, and you must wait.
In the second case, the Messiah being born of
a woman who was free from the condemnation of
our first parents, He could not derive from her or
take upon Him the weakness of our nature, and
therefore could not be subject to our frailties. We
have not [in Christ] an high priest which can be
touched with the feeling of our infirmities, or in
all things tempted like as we are;3 we can not
therefore come boldly unto the Throne of Grace, that
"we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time
of need, as we had hoped to obtain from the " man
Christ Jesus." *
Thus Incarnation defeats its own purpose.
What an awful doctrine is this !
But beyond all this, you proclaim miracles wrought
not only by men canonised by Rome, but by their
effigies, in wood, in stone, in metal, or on canvas.
What is more common than for a particular church
to have a momentary reputation for some miracle
reputed to have been recently wrought there ? I
remember one effigy of the Virgin bringing much
profit to a particular church at Rome while I was there,
and another blessed saint serving his shrine in like
manner. Go and inquire for winking , pictures of the
Virgin. Go and see the waxen figure of the " blessed
r i Kings xviii. 27. " Heb. iv. 15, 16. 4 1 Tim. ii. 5.
B

18 LETTER I.
Lorenzo " at Rome, reported miraculously to be real
undecaying and undecayed flesh. Go also to Naples
and see the annual miraculous liquefaction of the blood
of St Januarius ; and tell me if it be a pure religion
which thus practises a gross idolatry and deceit,
believed by the people whom you therefore keep in
ignorance. May we not say, " They have not known
nor understood : for he hath shut their eyes, that they
cannot see ; and their hearts, that they cannot under
stand. And none considereth in his heart, neither is
there knowledge nor understanding to say, I have
burned part of it in the fire ; yea, also I have baked
bread upon the coals thereof ; I have roasted flesh, and
eaten it : and shall I make the residue thereof an
abomination ? shall I fall down to the stock of a tree ?
He feedeth on ashes : a deceived heart hath turned
him aside, that he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is
there not a lie in my right hand ? " u
It is in vain to tell me these idols are not objects of
veneration and of worship to the Roman and Romish
people — see them " bow down to them, and worship
them." x Go to St Peter's and observe the " molten
image" near the high altar, formerly, they say, a
statue of Jupiter, an object of heathen adoration at
Rome; but now of St Peter, an equal object of worship
among the benighted people. Watch them kiss and
rub the foot with their mouths, their hands, and faces,
as if they perceived that virtue went out of it ; y until
the metal of this molten image is in part actually worn
away by constant devotion. If this be not idolatry, it
is far removed from a pure and holy worship, and can
never be pleasing in the eyes of a "jealous- God." z
u Isa. xliv. 1 8. T Exod. xx. 5.
r St Luke viii. 46. * Exod. xx.

LETTER I. 19
" It must needs be that offences come, but woe to that
man by whom the offence cometh." "
Are not these impostures destroying souls, more
fatal than heathen sacrifices which destroyed bodies ?
What, let me ask, do you intend by the sacrifice of the
Mass ? is it a sacrifice ? was the one oblation " once
made when Christ offered up Himself for the sins of
the whole world," b an insufficient sacrifice ?
" Behold, to obey is better than sacrifice ; and to
hearken than the fat of rams." c
Are you blind guides leading the blind ; or, with
open eyes, do you blind and deceive others ?
If the first, take then the beam from your eyes.
If the second, remember the words, " Scribes and
Pharisees, hypocrites ! ye compass sea and land to
make one proselyte, and when he is made, ye make him
twofold more the child of hell than yourselves : . . . .
ye outwardly appear righteous unto men, but within
ye are full of hypocrisy and iniquity." d
Again, what is the teaching of indulgences ? Is
that, too, minor ? Is that also in accordance with
Divine law? The Church of Rome cannot err ; and
therefore, as you learn and as you teach, all it has
done is right, and may and should be done again.
" Semper eadem." The end justifies the means.
Indulgences sold for money are and have been an
awful but useful source of profit to the Church. The
stately basilica of St Peter at Rome was built in part
from suras obtained by the sale of indulgences. In
this manner and for this purpose indulgences were
sold to those who kept and those who resorted to
taverns, wine-shops, dancing-rooms, and places of
*
a St Matt, xviii. 7. b Heb. vii. 27.
c 1 Sam. xv. 22. d St Matt, xxiii. 15, 28.

20 LETTER I.
worse repute. Was this no error? Were they not
licenses to the devil for the glory and honour of God ?
Yet this was sanctioned and used by the true and
infallible Church.
These, forsooth, are minor matters ! and you profess
obedience. Minor ! Eating an apple was minor !
nay, it was represented as not only of no importance,
but positively good, pleasant, desirable, making wise.
But it was disobedience to God, and was the cause of
all our woe.
See that what you follow or omit as " minor " and
as " desirable to make you wise "e be not equally a
disobedience to the oracles of God, which alone have
the doctrines of salvation.
I have heard it said, " How strange that clergymen
should so often go over to Rome !" I have always
replied, I see nothing more strange in them, but rather
less strange than in other men going over, not because
they read the Scriptures more or less, but because
they read the writings of uninspired ecclesiastical
authors recounting the lives of men canonised during
the dark ages, and admire the history of the Church
invested with vast temporal as well as spiritual power.
There is nothing so dazzling as ambition, so attrac
tive as the possession of authority, or so natural to
young minds as the love of power. No power is so
great as that over the soul ; none so easily attainable
as that dominion which ordination into priests' orders
in your Church is asserted to give over the souls of
men dead or alive.
Such is the teaching, not of the Word of God, but
of the Church of Rome, which therein is directly
autagonistic to God's Word. e Gen. iii. 6.

LETTER I. 21
Nothing is so subtle as the argument used ; nothing
so fascinating as the result reached ; and I assure you
that if in my conscience I could only in part bring
myself to believe that there was any truth or sound
ness in these doctrines, there is something so comfort
ing, so consoling, so delightfully enjoyable in the idea,
that I should at once become a Romish priest, or at
least a Romanist. I should hope, if rich enough, to
enjoy a life of pleasure here and compound for it with
the priest hereafter.
It would be preferable to be a priest, because I
should not only take care of myself, but be paid for
taking care of others.
If that assertion appear broad, I could at any rate
obtain from the men ordained to officiate for the
purpose, that relief here and redemption hereafter
which the Church that cannot err alone awards. Is
the Psalmist then in error, wThen he says that this
cannot be done by money or by man ? Have you
forgotten the 49th Psalm, " There be some that put
their trust in their goods, and boast themselves in the
multitude of their riches : but no man may deliver
his brother, nor make agreement unto God for him :
for it cost more to redeem their souls, so that he must
let that alone for ever."f
No wonder that the Church of Rome, claiming
freedom from error, selling indulgences and granting
absolution, should keep back from the people the
Word of God which thus condemns the word of man.
I said I was glad you had gone to see Rome, and
I particularly urge you not to miss seeing all the
imposing ceremonies of Easter.
You will remember that St John says that our
f Ps. xlix. 6-8.

22 LETTER J.
Saviour at the Passover, after supper, "laid aside His
garments, and took a towel and girded Himself, and
washed His disciples' feet, and wiped them with the
towel wherewith He was girded."8 This remains to
us an example of the humility of the Man-God, our
Master and Lord.
I beg you to go and see the representation of this
in the present day. The effect is dramatic if not
reverential ; and you will judge in what guise this
mark of our Lord's humility is perpetuated every
Easter in Rome to beggars wrho come into a church at
night for the purpose ; and then ask yourself if it be
not a mockery rather than a mark of respect, and an
example of the pride which apes humility.
You have asserted the Church of England to be,
according to the teaching of Rome, no Church, and
therefore having no salvation. But our doctrines are
without exception the early doctrines of the primitive
Christian Church as professed and practised at Rome
and elsewhere in purer days. Generally our morning
and evening service, our collects and prayers, are those
used in the Church of Rome ; — and, in accepting the
negative term Protestant, we indicate "our protest
against tenets, or formularies, introduced in later ages,
and which Scripture neither warrants nor supports.
Christianity being founded on the Word of God,
Christian Churches other than that of Rome adhere to
the command, " Search the Scriptures ; — they are they
which testify of Me." Rome forbids this search ; but
other Churches, finding therein the mandate " Him
only shalt thou serve,"h as to the worship of God and
the prohibition to worship others, object to the teach
ing of a Church which, in defiance of God's Word, can
g St John xiii. 4, 5. b St Matt. iv. 10.

LETTER I. 23
lengthen the Creed or shorten the Commandments.
The Church of Rome does both, and boasts of the
power to do so, under the unfounded doctrine of
infallibility ; — a doctrine, like many others of ^purely
human invention, supported by the plausible argument
of development. That which nineteen centuries ago
was good enough for the ignorant fishermen on the
shores of the Sea of Tiberias, or the illiterate converts
of Greece or Rome, is totally unsuited to the advanced
period of education in which we live. Men forget
what the Messiah quoted to the Scribes and Pharisees
of that day, " Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings
Thou hast perfected praise." '
The Church of Rome, and" you as a conscientious
and dutiful member of the same, boast that you are
followers of St Peter. It would be a nobler aim to
boast that members of His Church were followers
of Christ.
The apostle St Paul appears to have anticipated and
foreshadowed such a following of others rather than
of Christ, when he remarks, " You say, I am of Paul,
I am of Apollos, I am of Cephas, and I of Christ ; "
and then asks, "Is Christ divided ?"k showing that the
Church should be a Christian Church, as under Christ
and not as under man.
I know that you declare that "devotion to God
claims an obedience above devotion to anything else,"
and you act on the declaration. It is an admirable
sentiment, and, rightly directed, a noble duty. For
this obedience you have left kindred, have deserted
friends, have avoided acquaintance, and given up
society ; for this you have shunned advice from others,
and concealed from them your own opinions ; you
i St Matt. xxi. 1 6. k I Cor. i. 12.

24 LETTER I.
have subjected yourself to strict rules and obser
vances ; you have yielded up to your superiors your
right of private judgment, and allowed your private
correspondence to be opened and read by them.
You have done more than this. For this sentiment,
you, a priest of the Church of England, of mature age,
baptized into Christ in that faith, and having baptized
others, have abjured it, — have admitted that neither
you nor I nor those before you were Christians, — have
been baptized afresh, having fresh sponsors at this
your new baptism.
How noble, if right : how sad and terrible, if in all
things you, fancying you are obeying God, are only
subjecting yourself to the ordinances of men ! You
have done all this for the doctrine of obedience.
Obedience to whom or to what ? To God — to God's
Word ? No ! Obedience to man ! obedience to the
Bishop of Rome, God's Vicegerent on earth, as he
blasphemously says ; devotion and obedience to a man,
the self-styled representative of God, of whose doc
trines we may say, that when the Word of God is at
variance with the Church of Rome, it is not the
Church of Rome but the Word of God that must give
way. You hold all teaching but that of Rome to be
false ; all her teaching to be true.
You, as a Romanist, hold that man's truest and
divine life flows alone through yourselves ; as sap
through the tree or blood supplying the human body.
This we do not deny you, though you deny it us.
You proceed to say that I am spiritually dead,
withered as a branch cut from the tree, lopped from
the true Vine,1 hopeless, helpless, and lost to salva
tion ; not because I fail to believe in Christ through
1 St Jobn xv. 6.

LETTER L 25
the apostle's word, or to hold the doctrines of the
Bible and perform the duties of Christianity, or
because not baptized into Christ in the name of the
Trinity; — but because I am not joined to the Church
of Rome. I ask, is that charity, or is there any scrip
tural authority for such condemnation ? No ! but it
is the true doctrine and consistent conduct of that
Church which cannot err.
In proof of this,, go to the Pope's mint at the
Vatican, and buy a copy of the medal struck and pre
served in commemoration of the event so worthy to be
remembered in Romish history — the massacre of St
Bartholomew, when many thousand Protestants were
murdered ; having an appropriate obverse and legend,
" Strages Ugonottorum," Slaughter of the Huguenots.
I got the medal there, and I have it still.
Go also to the vestibule of that most sacred part
of the palace of God's Vicegerent, the Sistine Chapel,
and behold in the life-like, life-sized fresco, this treach
erous massacre, with the murdered Coligni depicted.
The inscription which was beneath it, and described it,
has of late years been erased on account of the scandal
it afforded to many who visited the place. (Vide
note, p. 30).
You may hear, you may believe, and say that in
these respects, if the doctrines of the Church of Rome
be not changed, her practice is modified, that she no
longer denies the Bible, nor persecutes those who read
it, or who differ from her.
I remember on one night an armed band of soldiers,
sent at the instigation of the bishop of the diocese,
passing my house, to a quiet, peaceable village,
situated in a remote mountainous district about ten
miles off. They arrived there at midnight, and

26 LETTER I.
directed by the priest's servant, the soldiers sur
rounded the several houses ; they broke in, took the
peasants from their beds, bound them savagely with
thongs and cords, and tearing them from their families
hurried them off by night, and casting them into a dark
filthy prison, put with common malefactors these
men, whose only alleged crime or cause for persecu
tion was the possession of and hearing and reading
the Holy Scriptures. I heard the charge, I saw their
homes outraged and plundered by the soldiery, I learnt
the sad tale from the anxious and terror-stricken; women
in the desolate village, and I visited the men in
gaol. This happened under the authority of the Romish
Church in the nineteenth century, in one of the most
devoted, if not devout, countries in her dominions.
So do not tell me that when she has the power, and
thinks she can do so with impunity, the Church of
Rome is not the same everywhere as she has for
ages been.
" Ex uno disce omnes : " — but if you are told this
is exceptional, take another very simple test which
is normal and universal, and in which you can be
deceived neither as to the practice or effect of ex
cluding and ignoring the Bible in countries belonging
to the Latin Church. You know in England and
most Protestant countries there is scarcely a book
seller's shop, however humble, in town or village
where you may not buy a Bible or Testament.
Try to procure one in Romish countries. Go as I
have done in Italy, France, and other places, ask of
the principal booksellers in capitals and large towns,
and you will ask in vain, and perhaps be met with
the reply " Je ne tiens pas ces articles la ! " articles

LETTER I. 27
of which there is neither supply nor demand 1 You
may find the biography of some unknown saint, but
a Testament or a portable Bible never. By what doc
trine of development do you explain this inferiority
of the Word of God ?
Explain also to yourself, to me it would be more
difficult, the meaning and value of the announcement,
" Altare privilegiatum quotidianum," which you see
written up constantly. Has a particular altar greater
virtue than another ? In what respect? and whence
derived? The Bible and a true Church inculcate what is
right and true. A public inscription at Rome will
tell you that, by authority of a certain Pope, whoever
devoutly kisses a certain wayside cross " will obtain
release from purgatory for many hundred (I think
three hundred) years." Likewise, in another quarter,
you learn that you may receive a like release from
purgatory for, I think, some thousand years, through
the merits of a dead man canonized by Rome.
This is cheap, and worth doing, if right ; if wrong,
it is a shameless imposture : but whether right or
wrong, it is the doing of the Church of Rome at
Rome, and I am glad you go there to see the system
in full perfection.
Do not tell me I must look elsewhere than to the
inscriptions in churches for the formularies of the
Church, — that they may vary as is expedient. This,
and far more than this, is its public practice, this its
outwTard teaching. These are the practical doctrines
which are intended to affect, and do affect the people
and impose upon the laity, as the substitute for that
Word of God which the Church forbids them to read.
May I not then say that your " obedience " to such

28 LETTER I.
a system is not obedience to God, but obedience to
man against God ?
Want of charity condemns as heretics the members
of another Church ; want of truth releases from pains
after death, on payment of a fee or kissing of a cross, a
member of your own. Can you believe this ?
I have some misgivings whether you may be per
mitted to read this letter ; but I entreat you to give it
such attention as you think a letter written from such
a quarter on such a subject in true love and affection
may deserve, and ask yourself how it is that, believing
in the Author and Finisher of our faith, and trusting
to Him as bearing the burden of our transgressions, I,
striving with fear and trembling, have mistaken the
grounds of my salvation.1"
It is quite possible that you are somewhat influenced
in your appreciation of the propriety of your joining
the Church of Rome by the amount of sacrifice you
made in so doing.
It is even probable that you may measure the duty
by the sincerity of your present conviction.
I do not doubt that you have acted conscientiously ;
but I should fail in my duty if I did not bid you
beware how you trust to the soundness of these im
pressions. You will find many who will flatter and
encourage you, who will praise you for what you have
done, who will extol you for the sacrifice you have
made. This letter will find you surrounded with such adula
tion as will almost elevate you to martyrdom, or at
least to the merit of one whose " good works " have
made him suffer in the cause, I cannot say of Christ,
but in the cause of the Church of Rome.
m Phil. ii. 12.

LETTER I. 29
Beware of reliance on that which is called " good
works," the satisfaction at which may be akin to
spiritual pride. The definition, too, of that word " the
Church " is dangerously elastic ; often meaning the
supremacy of temporal and spiritual power ; some
times the clergy without the laity ; sometimes "docens ; "
sometimes " discens ; " sometimes the sacred building ;
as may suit the casuist : — but rarely at Rome the con
gregation of faithful Christians. A subtle flexibility
this in the mouths of Jesuits !
My letter will find you in the midst of learned and
able divines, used to the casuistry of Bellarmine, versed
in the doctrines of Romanism. I pretend to no know
ledge on the subject beyond that which is open to all
the laity in other Churches, — which is shut by the
priesthood to the laity in yours.
I have been taught, and am still content to believe,
that whether " Paul has planted, or Apollos watered,
it is God that giveth the increase." " This you have
been taught, and have taught the same to others. You
are- now forbidden to teach or preach this simple
primitive faith, this apostolic doctrine ; but I fervently
pray that God in His great mercy may open your
eyes, may hold you to the faith, which I am satisfied
you still believe though prohibited to preach, and may
give you boldness, even now returning to God's Gospel,
to make a sacrifice for Christ greater, nobler, and
worthier far than that which you have made for the
Church of Rome. I am,
Yours with the sincerest affection,
FRANCIS SCOTT.
n i Cor. iii. 6.

30 LETTER I.

NOTE to p. 6.
There is no certain evidence that St Peter, the Apostle " of the Cir
cumcision," ever visited Rome. His last date is from Babylon, and
all his allusions and references indicate that he addressed persons
acquainted with Jewish history and Hebrew customs.
NOTE to p. 25.
Bunsen's work on Rome, vol. ii., on the Vatican, thus describes it: —
" The painting to the right of the entrance of tbe Sistine Chapel refers,
as well as the two on the wall opposite the Pauline Chapel, to the
massacre of St Bartholomew. On the first, one sees the corpse of the
murdered Ooligny, but who has here the appearance of a living person
dragged through the streets of Paris. The second represents the
general massacre of the Protestants in that city, and on the right
appears Charles IX. in Parliament for the purpose of justifying this,
and confirming the condemnation of Coligny." The following were the
inscriptions — 1 . " Massacre of the Huguenots ; " 2. " The King ap
proves the Death of Coligny ; " 3. " Gaspar Admiral Coligny is carried
home wounded. Gregory XIII. Sovereign Pontiff, mdlxxii."

LETTER II.
Sendhurst Grange, Guildford,
June 1868.
Mt dear Francis,
AS regards myself, I cannot fail to be pleased alike
with the earnest tone and affectionate temper of
your reply to the letter I wrote on your adoption of
the Church of Rome. We both feel that neither the
subject nor the mode of treating it should be taken up
or set down lightly. I am therefore disposed to offer
some remarks on your observations. In doing this, I
cannot conceal from you the pain which your letter
has given me. It conveys to my mind the impression
that you have written under the advice, and perhaps
the dictation, of the priests who have for a time
gained an influence over your mind, and who have
succeeded in blinding your eyes to such an extent,
that you cannot see the fallacies which to any unpre
judiced mind are transparent in your letter.
This is one of the unhappy marks of the lamentable
apostasy of later times ; the delusion is so strong
that a lie is believed. Had you been as one of those
silly women or effeminate men who, ignorant of Holy
Scriptures and carried away by pompous ceremonial,
have lately joined the Church of Rome, as many of
the like station in society did in the time of Charles
the First, I should not have been surprised ; but that
one brought up in the knowledge of God's Holy Word,

32 LETTER IT.
ordained to the ministry of the reformed Church of
England, pledged by solemn oath to its doctrines and
principles, should have rushed precipitately into the
superstition of idolatry and the Papacy, is to me, and
to all who know you, a subject of amazement and of
unutterable grief.
I cannot undertake to follow you through the de
tected platitudes and exploded commonplaces of the
controversy, of which you have adduced so many,
every one of which has again and again triumphantly
been answered by converts from Popery at the time of
the Reformation, and by converts of later and quite
modern date. Some, however, I cannot pass over in
silence, and especially two subjects upon which you lay
great stress. The first, the Infallibility, the second,
the Idolatry, of the Church of Rome. Can you in
your conscience really believe the pretensions which
the Church of Rome makes for the first, or can you
possibly defend her practice as regards the second ?
For example, as to infallibility. I have in vain
searched through your arguments for proof that the
Church of Rome is infallible. I desire to find the
practical and tangible point where it is supposed to
exist. Is it in the Pope ?— if so, how comes it to pass
that Popes have been declared to be fallible by other ,
Popes, by most learned theologians, and by Councils ?
Is it in Councils ? — how is it then, by the common
consent of history that Councils have erred in matters
of faith ? Is it in the Church ? — then you must de
fine what you mean by the Church, which, if it be
composed of clergy and laity, is not likely to have ever
given, or ever to be in a position to give, a united,
undivided, and infallible opinion upon any subject.
You say, the Church gives authority to the Scrip-

LETTER II. 33
tures. Be it so for argument's sake. But the Church
of Rome has not given more authority to the Scrip
tures than the Church of the Jews to the Old Testa
ment, and yet no one would say that the Jews were
infallible interpreters of Scripture. Critics may pro
nounce upon the authenticity of Thucydides or Aris
totle, but differ widely in their interpretation of them.
Rome may possess the Scriptures, and yet make
them of none effect by the traditions of men.
You and Rome say, " If the Church of Rome be
fallible, the New Testament is fallible ; if the Church
be infallible, the New Testament is infallible," and you
infer the converse. You say, " It is and must be so,
because the Church of Rome testifies to Holy Writ."
The authenticity of Scripture rests on accumulated
original, external, and internal evidence, from genuine
sources of greatest antiquity more than all the works
of Greek classical literature together can command.
You mean that those who testify to the truth of the
Bible, must be true and correct in all else that they
assert. The Jesuitry is ingenious, but the sophistry is trans
parent. By your rule, if you bear conclusive evidence
to my title to an estate, you prove your own claim to
another. By this rule, if you establish my hair to be
one colour, you prove your own to be the same.
" Who drives fat oxen must himself be fat." The
truth is, that when this absurd claim to infallibility is
analysed the Papist has not advanced one single step
nearer to the idea of infallibility than the Protestant ;
on the contrary, he has left the fountain of living
waters for broken cisterns which will hold no water,
and is exposed to the peril of trusting to an arm of
flesh rather than to the Spirit of God. Let it be

34 LETTER II.
tested by our experience in times of bitter conviction
of sin, in humiliation under the heavy hand of chasten^
ing, in the prospect of death and judgment, whether
on our bended knees and in our broken hearts we find
any comfort from the decisions and decretals of a
worldly-minded Pope, such as Hildebrand or Leo X.,
or in the verbal absolution of some poor sinful priest
who perhaps himself has never experienced the powers
of the new birth and found peace with God through
Jesus Christ our Lord. Surely at such a moment the
witness of the Holy Ghost, and the unchangeable
Word of God is the only infallible source of comfort.
The infallibility of Rome is like the hypothesis of
perpetual motion : no one has yet made the discovery
where it is. The Church of Rome claims to be in
fallible, and asserts that the Holy Scriptures belong to
her, that she has the sole charge of them, and the ex
clusive right to interpret them. Let us see how she
has discharged her duty, executed her trust, and treated
God's Word.
The Council of Trent, professing to act under Divine
inspiration, and certainly acting with the sanction of
the infallible Pope, declared the Vulgate Latin Trans
lation authentic ("pro authentica habeatur" — Cone.
Trid. 4 Sess.), and on no pretence to be rejected by
any one. An edition was published in 1590, under
Pope Sixtus V., and this edition is infallible and to be
received as an article of faith.
In 1593, or three years afterwards, another infal
lible Pope, Clement VIII., published another authentic
edition differing from the preceding.
How do you reconcile these contradictions ? I will
not stop to ask you to compare any passages, e.g., 1
Cor. iv. 6 in the Greek and Vulgate, nor will I refer to

LETTER II. 35
St Augustine, who forbade St Jerome's Vulgate to be
read in his churches, because it differed from the Sep
tuagint. Martini, a good Catholic authority, Archbishop of
Florence, translated the New Testament in the last
century, and states in his original edition, and in
that of 1782-92, that in the authentic Vulgate 975
passages vary from the original Greek. The same
admission of 975 errors in the Vulgate translation
of the New Testament is repeated in the edition of
1854, printed with the approbation of Minucci, Arch
bishop of Florence. These are your own admissions,
nor are these errors accidental. Cardinal Bellarmine
thus answered a theologian (Luke of Bruges), who
wrote to advise him of errors in the Vulgate whicii
had escaped his notice and should be corrected :
" I beg you to know that we have not most accu
rately corrected the Vulgate Bible, for we have
carefully (or purposely), for good reasons (de in-
dustria justis de causis), passed over many passages
which seemed to require correction." What excuse
can be made for such allowance of error by such
high authority ? Now follows the admission of the
Chief Bishop, who would not err or mislead, and could
not, if he would. It occurs in the Preface of the
Vatican edition of the authentic Vulgate Bible of
Pope Clement VIII. : " As some passages have been
altered on purpose, so some which seemed to require
alteration have on purpose been left unchanged"
 « Sicut nonnulla consulto mutata, in etiam alia
quae mutanda videbantur, consulto immutata relicta
sunt." (Vide note, p. 75-)
The Romish Church claims to have the right to use
the Scriptures which belong to her, and altering Holy

36 LETTER II.
Writ under the holy authority of the Divine Spirit, she
proceeds to disparage its value.
You assign reasons which affect to show that there
would be no great harm if Rome did deny the Bible
to her people, and that there is little or no need to
read. Yet you betray an uncomfortable doubt as to
whether, if she had so acted, Rome would not have
made at least one mistake, and you proceed accord
ingly to assert that it is not true. In proof of your
assertion, you assure me that you, a Protestant priest,
who went over to Rome with the Bible in your hand,
are permitted to keep it, and that it is daily read among
you ; as if its possession by you, a convert from the
Church of England, or its reading in your cloisters,
were any proof that it is not buried there, and generally
withheld from members of the Church of Rome. In
what language do you read it ?
You say the Bible is not prohibited. But Popes
and Councils are infallible, and, so long ago as 1229,
we have the decree of the Council of Toulouse, under
Gregory IX. : " We prohibit to the laity the books of
the Old and New Testament, unless some one for devo
tion desires perhaps a Psalter or Breviary for divine
offices, and the Hours of the Blessed Virgin ; but these
they may not have translated." (Vide note, p. 75.)
You may say that is a long while ago. Is it
changed ? Rome never changes ; and, alas ! she can
not change until she surrenders her unfounded claim
to infallibility.
It is possible that you may cavil with the Council
of Toulouse as being a Provincial Council and there
fore not infallible. As to infallibility, I will give you
the benefit of the doubt. But that does not raise any
question either on the commencement or the continu-

LETTER II. 37
ance of the practice of proscribing the Bible, for reading
which Rome burnt persons alive in Spain, in France,
in Germany, in England, in the Low Countries, and
elsewhere. The Church of Rome, in the heading to the fourth
Rule of the Index Expurgatorius, states that " from the
reading of the Bible comes more harm than good."
I refer you to pages 30, 94, 177, 258, 269, 272, and
273 of the Index under the pretended authority of
the Holy Ghost, to see whether Rome permits or pro
hibits the Bible.
The celebrated Papal Bull Unigenitus, of Clement
XL, in 1 71 3, which is in force in these dominions,
certainly in Ireland, declares, among other things, that
reading the Bible is neither useful nor necessary, and
that laymen ought not to read the Bible on Sundays, or
that to take the Gospel from the hands of the people,
or give it them closed, i.e., in unknown tongue, is not
shutting the mouth of Jesus Christ. (80-4.)
Where reading the Bible could not be entirely pre
vented, Pope Benedict XIV., in 1757, nominally
relaxed the prohibition ; or as your divine, Dens (Theol.
de Virtu tibus, N. 64, t. ii. p. 103), expresses it, " Only
where Catholics have to live among heretics has greater
license been allowed."
The persecution of the Bishop of Pistoia, who de
sired to reform the Church, is well known. The Bull
of 28th August 1 794, of Pius VI., entitled, " Auctorem
Fidei," against Bishop Ricci of Pistoia and his synod,
condemns as " false and rash the doctrine that the
union of the voice of the people with that of the
Church was in accordance with God's counsels or
apostolic practice," and that "nothing but weakness
could excuse the reading of the Holy Scriptures." Is

38 LETTER II.
this enough % If not, hear this. Clement VIII. and
Gregory XIII. approved a translation by a Roman
Catholic Jesuit priest, under an archbishop's direction ;
an archbishop allowed this approved version of the
Bible to be read by the people ; whereof another in
fallible Pope, Pius VII., successor to Clement and
Gregory, thus writes, on 29th June 18 16. Censuring
the archbishop's conduct, he says, the version of the
Bible in the vulgar tongue is " a most malignant inven
tion, a pest, destructive of faith, the greatest danger
for souls — a new kind of tares sown by the enemy, an
impious conspiracy of innovators, the ruin of our holy
religion." Were Clement VIII. and Gregory XIII.
right when they approved and allowed, or was Pius
VII. when he disapproved and disallowed, this one and
the same version of the Bible ? and which Pope is infal
lible ? This was of an authorised version. No wonder,
then, that the same Pope, Pius VII., in the same year,
on 23d September 18 16, should thus write to another
archbishop, who had permitted in his diocese Bibles of
the Bible Society: "We are greatly and deeply grieved
at learning the fatal project, unknown in past time, of
disseminating everywhere the Bible translated into the
vulgar tongues ; but our affliction was infinitely greater
at seeing some letters, written in your name, exhorting
the people to buy or accept these new versions of the
Bible, and study them with attention and assiduity.
Certainly nothing could occur more lamentable than to
see you become a stone of offence — you, who ought to
ask grace to show to others the way of righteousness."
Pope Leo XII., in the first year of his pontificate
(3d May 1824), addressed to all archbishops and
bishops of the Catholic Church his Encyclical Letter,
saying, " To avert the plague of this most wicked

LETTER II. 39
novelty to both faith and morals," his predecessor,
of "blessed memory, had sent the two briefs above
mentioned to the archbishops;" and continues, "In
conformity with our apostolic duty, we exhort you
to turn away your flock by all means from these
poisonous pastures. Reprove, beseech, be instant in
season and out of season, that the faithful intrusted
to you be persuaded that if the Sacred Scriptures be
everywhere indiscriminately published, more evil than
advantage will arise thence, on account of the rashness
of men."
Twenty-seven Irish archbishops and bishops com
mended these infallible instructions of the Holy Father,
" which prohibit the perusal of the Holy Scriptures in
the vulgar tongue without the sanction of the com
petent authorities" (your "proper dispositions"), to
the attention " of the faithful," as " replete with truth
and wisdom ;" adding, " such books have been and ever
will be execrated by the Catholic Church ; " hence
" she has frequently ordered them to be committed to
the flames." These instructions were directed to be
" read at times of Mass to the faithful by the clergy
on successive Sundays."
Among those who signed the above were Arch
bishops Murray and Doyle. They stated, before a
Committee of the House of Lords, that they had been
educated, one in Spain and the other in Portugal, and
that neither of them had ever seen a Spanish or Portu
guese Bible ; one had heard of the existence of one, and
that was all he knew. Dr Doyle, in his examination,
replied that, " he would refuse the Sacrament to a man
who persisted in reading a Bible after prohibition ; "
that " he would be highly amused at a man who
buried the Word of God ; " and " he would reward

40 LETTER II.
the man for his proof of being filled with the right
faith." St Jerome, a.d. 384, wrote his " Vulgate " for the
vulgar in the then vulgar tongue. In 1564, when
Latin was no longer a living language, your Church
pronounced that it alone should be read.
If the Bible was forbidden to be read in known
languages, why was Jerome's, or the "innumerable
translations" he mentions, made into known languages ?
Why did the Holy Ghost at Pentecost bestow the gift
of tongues on the Church to impart Holy Writ, if Holy
Writ in those tongues were by the Church to be denied,
rejected, and proscribed ?
Here I have brought down an unbroken chain of
" infallible " and unimpeachable Roman Catholic evi
dence against reading the Bible, from the Council of
Toulouse, in 1229, directed against theWaldenses and
Albigenses, when Rome first began her war with the
Bible, through the Council of Trent and massacre of
the Huguenots to the present day, when the thunders
of the Church are generally not always confined to
anathemas. You gave me your evidence to the contrary by
stating that you had permission to have a Bible in
your own cloisters, and you challenged me to the
proof. I accepted the challenge on your own terms,
i.e., to use the weapons which you should furnish.
Surely in thus locking up the pure Word of God, and
withholding Divine .truth from her members, Rome has
proved herself not infallible, but in error !
Persons may be disposed to ask, " What can be the
reason why the Court of Rome thus objects to the
perusal of the Bible ? The latest authority I know
in this country giving Rome's reasons, occurs (vide

LETTER II. 41
Tablet, 4th April) in 1864, in the statement of
Roman Catholic Bishop Goss of Liverpool, that " ihe
Bible is one of the most dangerous books that can be
placed in the hands of ihe young."
My difficulty in adopting this is, that, if that be so,
whether the devil was right or not, Jesus was clearly
wrong when He answered and said, " Man shall live
by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of
God" (Matt. iv. 4).
But the following reasons of " Christ's " ambitious
"Vicar," to whom (vide Bull, "Unam Sanctam") "every
human creature must be subject in order to be
saved," are still more authoritative, and " savour "
(Matt. v. 1 3) of the " tempter " (iv. 9), who said,
" All these kingdoms of the world and the glory of
them will I give thee " — on one condition.
The remarkable document which contains these
reasons is to be found in the Imperial Library at
Paris (folio B, No. 1038, vol. ii. pp. 641-650), also
Brit. Mus. 7 c. 10, 1 1 " Fasciculus rerum," &c, (London,
1690, fob), and is entitled " Advice of certain Bishops,
assembled at Bologna, as to the mode of strengthening
the Romish Church." It is difficult to understand
how the cautious Court of Rome should suffer such a
paper to see the light ; though in the sixteenth
century the connexion between the Court of France,
under Catherine of Medici, with that of Rome, was
very close. Catherine de Medici, you remember,
instigated the massacre of 70,000 Protestants, which
occurred within twenty years, viz., 1572. Besides, in
the interval, the sacking and burning alive the
inhabitants of Merindol and numerous atrocities, in
celebration of which I possess a. Papal medal with the
inscription, " Solum in Belluas pius Bellator ferit"

42 LETTER II.
The paper is a carefully-drawn answer to Pope Julius
III., by three learned prelates whose counsel had been
asked. It is dated "Bologna, 23d Oct. 1553," and
signed "Vincentius de Durantibus, Episc. Thermu-
lorum Brixiensis ; Egidius Falceta, Episc. Caprulen. ;
Gherardus Busdragus, Episc. Thessal." They conclude
their statement thus — " Lastly, of all the advice we
can give your Beatitude, we have reserved to the end
the most important, viz., that as little as possible of
the Gospel (especially in the vulgar tongue) be read
in all countries subject to your jurisdiction. That
little whicii is usually read at Mass is sufficient, and
beyond that no one whatever must be permitted to
read. While men were contented with that little,
your interests prospered, but when they read more,
they began to decay. To sum all : that Book is the
one which, more than any other, has raised against
us those whirlwinds and tempests whereby we were
almost swept away ; and, in fact, if any one examines
it diligently, and then confronts therewith the prac
tices of our Church, he will perceive the great dis
cordance, and that our doctrine is utterly different
from, and often even contrary to it ; which thing, if
the people understand, they will not cease their
clamour against us till all is divulged, and then we
shall become an object of universal scorn and hatred.
Wherefore, even those few pages must be put away,
but with considerable wariness and caution, lest so
doing should raise greater uproars and tumults."
Your reading " permitted in the vulgar tongue,"
while you were a member of a pure Christian Church,
will enable you to " confront " this " advice " of your
hierarchy to your chief Pontiff, how, with " craft "
and " subtilty, for fear of the people," to quench the

LETTER II. 43
" Light of the World," with that memorable occasion
when, with scarcely greater impiety, " assembled
together the Chief Priests and the Scribes to the
Palace of the High Priest," and " consulted that they
might take Jesus by subtilty and kill Him," " not on
the feast-day, lest there be an uproar of the people."
I think you will be satisfied with these weapons
from your own armoury, and will not desire me to go
either further or elsewhere for more. I have shown
you, on what you will accept as sufficient authority,
how your holy Church, acting always, as she must,
under the guidance, as you say, of the Holy Spirit,
treats God's Word.
Can the doctrine propounded by your Roman
theologians and cardinals be correct, viz., that " God
andthe Pope make one consistory"? or that "the
Pope is more than God," or "another God upon
earth"? (Vide note, p. 75.) Can this be correct?
Be this as it may, in spite of God's commandments,
against the authority of theologians, doctors, and fathers
of the Christian Church, the infallible Pope forbids the
reading of God's Word.
The faithful of Berea (Acts xvii. 11) were praised
by the " Holy Spirit for comparing the word of the
apostle with the word of God ;" God's representative,
who claims His Holy Spirit, condemns those who
dare to confront the word of his Holiness, the
apostles' pretended successor, with God's own Holy
Word. St Peter and St John (Acts iv.), and the
other apostles (Acts v.), told the high priest at
Jerusalem, "We ought to obey God rather than
men;" the high priest at Rome reverses the command,
and says, " We ought to obey man more than God."
Rome claims the support of St Augustine against

44 LETTER II.
reading the Bible ; St Augustine exhorts in various
places to read it, and in his fifty-sixth Sermon states,
" Be assured that as the body becomes when without
food for some days, such becomes the soul wdien it
does not feed often enough on the Word of God.
Continue thus as usual to listen in the church, but
read it also in your own houses."
Rome and you claim St Augustine's support when
you observe that " the heretics say, ' Search the Scrip
tures.'" Have you forgotten ? You can scarcely ignore,
still less denounce as " heretic," Christ, who enjoined
(John v. 39) to " Search the Scriptures," which you
forbid. In an edition of the works of St Augustine
published at Venice in 1584, public confession is
made in the preface "that all those passages are
removed which might favour the doctrines of the
Protestants " — " in qua curavimus removeri ea omnia
quae fidelium mentes haeretica pravitate possent in-
ficere." The confession, at least, is candid.
The fact is, that the authority of all the fathers
for twelve centuries (beginning with Clement of
Rome, Polycarp, Irenaeus, down to St Bernard in the
twelfth) is in favour of the Bible.
You justify your keeping the Bible in an unknown
tongue by reference to the Jews, who in their syna
gogues read the Old Testament in Hebrew. Hebrew
is their language ; Latin is not yours. Their Bible
was written in Hebrew ; yours was not written in
Latin. Theirs is original ; yours a translation. They
read the Bible in their houses, in the language where
they are dispersed, and they learn Hebrew, and hope
to be restored to Jerusalem. But if you accept the
authority of the Jews as to the language of the books

LETTER II

45

of Scripture, why do you reject their authority as to
the books themselves ? They are the keepers of the
Old Testament : " To them (Rom. iii. 2) were
intrusted the oracles of God." They retain, you reject,
the Ten Commandments as God delivered them.
They reject, you retain, the books of the Apocrypha.
Your reason is manifest. You think therein to find,
and forcibly though falsely extract, Divine authority
for some of the worst but most lucrative abuses of
your Church — Indulgences, Purgatory, Sec.
Under Rome's claim to Infallibility, she both
lengthens the Creed and shortens the Commandments.
You object to that statement. I will prove it.
Do you know the Creed of Pope Pius IV. in 1564?
That added to the Apostolic Creed the following
articles, all unknown for six, most for twelve centuries
of the Christian Church : —

Traditions authorised in .
Constitutions and observances in the
Church .....
Five additional Sacraments (Council of
Florence) ....
Doctrines of Sin and Justification .
Transubstantiation (Council of Lateran)
Communion (forbidding the cup to laity)
(Council of Constance) .
Purgatory (Council of Florence)
Indulgences, begun in 1 200, confirmed
Supremacy of Rome
Obedience to Pope ....
Invocation of Virgin and Saints
Veneration of Images
Veneration of Relics

15451564
M39 15641225 141414391500 600 600
1545 786
786

46 LETTER II.

CIRCA A.D.

Whatsoever Councils have declared or
condemned . . . . .1564
Lastly, the Immaculate Conception of the
Virgin, added by present Pope, Pius
IX 
Surely this authoritative catalogue is a satisfactory
proof of your lengthening the Creed.
In order to satisfy me that Rome does not shorten
the Commandments, you send me a Catechism con
taining them as we have them, only differently divided,
published under the authority of Cardinal Wiseman.
Now this only proves the justice of the remark that
Rome has double weights and double measures,
one for show to Protestants, another for use to
Catholics. I possess another, headed " The Short Catechism, or
what every Christian must know, containing exactly
what the Church commands every one to know — Con
fession, Laws of God and of the Church, Rule of Life,
Good Works, Sins, Conscience," and "published at
one penny, under the authority of Cardinal Cullen, by
Richardson and Sons, 147 Strand." It contains the
Ten Commandments, not as in the Bible, but precisely
as they are given in " The Most Complete Declaration
of Christian Doctrine," composed by order of Pope
Clement VII., .an infallible authority, by Cardinal
Bellarmine, revised and approved at Rome in 1841;
and as this is a text-book for the instruction of those,
like yourself, preparing for the priesthood, you will
accept it as authentic.
It professes to give the Two Tables as they were
delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai.
The Divine truth is conveyed as follows : —

LETTER II. 47
" Disciple. Let us now come to these very Com
mandments, and first teach me the identical words
(istesse parole) in which they were written on those
Tables by God.
^ " Master. The words are these :—
i. I am the Lord thy God, who brought thee out
of the land of Egypt, and from the house of
bondage. Thou shalt have no other God but
me.
2. Thou shalt not take the name of the Lord
thy God in vain.
3. Remember thou keep holy the festivals.
4. Honour thy father and thy mother.
5. Kill not.
6. Thou shalt not commit adultery.
7. Steal not.
8. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy
neighbour.
9. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife.
10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's goods."
This, you observe, is no summary. They are pro
mulgated as the " very words " your Church declares
to be those contained in the 20th chapter of Exodus.
Talk of mutilation by Protestants !
1. I would refer you to pp. 8-24 for a full ex
planation, which follows the Commandments in the
Catechism, and to the " Moral Doctrines," which it
states are from St Alphonso Liguori ; and as no saint
can err in his writings, else Rome would not canonise
him, these doctrines are infallibly correct.
In the two pages of explanation there is no allu
sion to devotion to idols, or to images ; but the
" Christian " is told by St Alphonso Liguori " he must
not go to prayers or sermons in Protestant places of

48 LETTER II.
"worship ; and it would be a great sin to go when it is
strictly forbidden ; " and as " a rule of life every day, if
he can, he should visit (p. 38) some picture or image
of the Blessed Virgin."
2. In explaining the Second Commandment, under
the head of Oaths : " If you call God to witness that
what you say is the truth, for example, 'I swear
on the Book, or by the name of God, or the Holy
Name — By heaven — On my soul — So help me God,'
— if you do not mean to take an oath, then these
words are no oath."
" It is not an oath to say, ' On my life — On my
conscience — True as I stand here — True as Gospel
— God's truth — God knows — I declare to God,' unless
you mean these words for an oath."
This is the teaching of a Catechism for the young,
for the uninstructed, the unconverted, prepared by
a Catholic Priest (Rev. J. Furniss, Priest of Con
gregation of the M. H. Redeemer) under Cardinal
Cullen, professing moral doctrines of a saint in the
Romish Calendar, conveying God's " own words " to
the laity from whom the Bible is withdrawn, and ex
plaining the laws of God " exactly."
I cannot extract the whole, but under the head of
" Murder " it teaches that " It is not a sin to desire
some temporal misfortune to another, because it will
make him cease to give scandal, or be converted or
not persecute the good."
Under the " Seventh" (our Eighth) Commandment,
p. 20, we find — " 1. It is a sin to steal, except in some
cases of most grievous distress. . . . 2. It is a venial
sin to steal a little. 3. It is a mortal sin to steal
much. For example, to steal from a workman a day's
wages, or to steal less from a poorer man, or more

LETTER II. 49
from a richer man. (If you steal from different
persons, it needs half as much again for a mortal sin,
and the same if you steal at different times. If you
steal from different persons as well as at different
times, it needs double the sum.)"
And under " Bargains or Contracts," — " It is a sin
to keep pieces which remain, except people are quite
sure it is not against the will of the employer, or there
is a common custom of doing it, and it is necessary in
order to gain a reasonable profit. It is a sin to mix
anything with what you sell, for example, water with
any liquor, except there is a common custom of doing it,
and it is necessary in order to gain a reasonable profit."
The Bible you forbid, commands to keep your word
even to your own hurt or hindrance (Ps.'xv.) The
morality of your Catechism teaches that " a promise
does not oblige at all when things change so much
afterwards that if you had foreseen it you would not
have made the promise."
Few can credit how you are bound in chains, how
you dread and hate the light ! " To go to hear a
sermon in a Protestant Church is in itself Excommuni
cation." " Ingressus in Protestantium templum animo
concionis audiendi," is " Excommunicatio ipso facto "
(vide printed Lists of Crimes in confessionals in Italian
Churches), a crime reserved for the Bishop which the
Priest cannot absolve.
Dr Newman, once a Protestant, now Professor of
the Popish College in Ireland, gazetted by Fame as
the next Cardinal, Prince of the Church (vide
"Newman's Discourses," Longman, 1850, pp. 230-377),
says, " The Church is the oracle of religious truth, and
dispenses what the Apostles committed to her," and
that " to open the Bible" (in the spirit of the Bereans
D

50 LETTER II.
commended (Acts xvii.) by the Apostle) "is to dis
believe her ; " " who doubts her teaching has fallen
from grace and lost his faith ; " " hence she cannot allow
her children the liberty of doubting the truth of her
word ;" and adds, " Cease then to examine, or cease
to call yourself her child."
Do you call this teaching scriptural ? Your Church,
to keep your calendar of saints select, employs at
canonisation the officer quaintly termed the " Devil's
Advocate," "Avocato del Diavolo." His client is "the
Father of lies, and a Murderer from the beginning."
The Advocate surely must have thought his client's
interests would be advanced by admitting into heaven
a candidate whose writings had the tendency of those
of Alphonso de Liguori, d. 1787.
Your infallible Church sainted him in 1839. A
saint cannot err in his works. Liguori suborns per
jury, justifies false oaths, palliates fraud and treachery,
excuses theft and robbery, allows injury to your neigh
bour, and even justifies self-murder, all " for ecclesias
tical utility," and implies the greater the crime the
higher the merit.
In your youth you learnt, and I know you still
retain the following : —
Thou shalt do no murder.
Thou shalt not steal.
Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neigh
bour. Thou shalt not covet anything that is his (Exod. xx.),
and " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself."
These you know are " The Laws of God."
"The Laws op the Church," contained in the
Catechism, are opposed to the Laws of God, but they
are binding on you, and to doubt is infidelity.

LETTER II. 51
St Alphonso's works are designed especially for the
ignorant ; they are pubUshed and widely circulated by
authority of your Church as most excellent for the
young, and are strongly recommended by Cardinal
Wiseman. The memory of good Christians deserves honour, and
their lives to be recorded for example; but to my mind,
this canonisation is simply blasphemously prejudging
God's day of judgment.
Your " infallible" Pope enrols in Heaven a St Lucia
or St Liguori, as demi-goddess or demi-god, by whose
merit and influence you hope to be saved.
To mistrust your Church's decision, is the sin of
infidelity, beyond other crimes and sins — and hereby
God's throne is usurped, nor can God's decree reverse
yours — else' what becomes of your "infallibility?"
Where is your ground of faith, of hope, of confidence,
but in your Church ? You annul the appeal to God,
and it is no longer true that "we must all appear
before the judgment-seat of Christ" (2 Cor. v. 10). ,
This, then, is the way in which the infallible
Church of Rome abuses the Word of God, and falsely
accusing others of the crime, herself first mutilates the
laws, and then perverts their meaning.
I have always pitied the Roman Catholic laity who
are prohibited by the priesthood to inquire or to exer
cise private judgment, and who have no means of com
paring or controlling the teaching of their Church ; but
in proportion to my compassion for them is my con
tempt for those false teachers who have taken away
the key of knowledge : and amid many trials not the
least grief is that you should be found mixed up with
those who palliate and propagate such dangerous and
delusive doctrines.

52 LETTER II.
It did require courage on your part to go to Rome,
but that was a leap in the dark ; it may require
courage to leave her and come out from her, but far
more courage will it need to remain attached to such
teaching. Were I in a court of justice thus to ad
minister human laws, and from the bench to utter
such monstrous doctrines of morality as those I have
extracted from your authorised teaching, I know you
would scorn and spurn me as an unjust judge. What
then must be the inward feelings of your own con
science, not at reading but at venturing to approve,
disseminate, and act upon such unholy doctrines of the
holy Church ?
The teaching of Rome, as you declare it, is that she
exults in possessing exclusively the right and the power
of infallible decision.
Rome, which has mutilated the Scriptures, which
has torn the Second Commandment from the Deca
logue, which has placed creatures on the throne of
heaven beside the Creator, which has falsified the Law
given to Moses on Mount Horeb, ventures to copy and
to travesty that glorious passage where on the same
Mount Horeb " there was a wind that rent the moun
tains and brake in pieces the rocks, and after the wind
an earthquake and a fire, and after the fire a still small
voice, and when Elijah heard it he wrapped his face
in his mantle."
Thus Rome declares, as you say — " The earth may
quake, but let the still small voice of God be heard
speaking through His chief representative, and each
Catholic is hushed, he leaves his former thoughts, he
rises up and " (as Elijah went and stood before the
cave) " comes forth to listen in meekness and humility,
he hears and he obeys in reverence and in silence."

LETTER II 53
The flesh creeps, shuddering and shivering, at this
mockery. The matchless audacity, the unblushing
hypocrisy, the blasphemy of this perversion of Holy
Writ fill one with astonishment.
Is it to "God's Vicegerent on earth" you address the
daily petition, " Thy will be done on earth " ? You
think, and will say, " No " — you practise " Yes."
On Mount Horeb the Law was given in the hearing
of the whole nation of Israel, and afterwards written
upon the tables of stone by the finger of God. To
Mount Horeb Rome and you refer when you break
that law ; to the voice of God you allude when you
disobey His voice. And with this solemn and most
holy authority you do not shrink to compare the
fallible and unscriptural utterances of him you falsely
call " God's chief representative."
In testimony you invoke the power of numbers ;
you say Catholics double the Protestants.
Elijah said, "The prophets of Baal are four hundred
and fifty men, and I, even I only, remain a prophet of
the Lord."
According to Rome and you, Baal's prophets were
right and Elijah false.
Elijah said, " I have been very jealous for the Lord
God of Hosts."
Can you, dare you, when breaking the tables of
stone, obliterating that very Law where the Lord says
He is "a jealous God," appeal to Mount Horeb and
say you fear God, you love God, or that you observe
His statutes to keep them ?
" I know you are incapable."
I have shown many inconsistencies in your Church,
but any one inconsistency, any single error, established
and brought home to the Pope and Church of Rome,

54 LETTER II
is fatal to her claim to Infallibility, and if that fall,
the whole system follows.
Next, I charge the Church of Rome and her fol
lowers with the sin of Idolatry. Let us not mince
the matter. Here she is like the woman taken in
adultery, in the very act. It is in vain for casuists
to draw the refined distinction between latreia and
duleia. You have only to visit a Roman Catholic
Church to satisfy yourself that the sin of idolatry is
committed every day by nine out of ten of the wor
shippers. They bow down and fix their eyes upon the
work of men's hands, images and pictures in which
they believe a divine and miraculous power to exist ;
in other words, where the Divinity actually is. Hence
all the worship is formal, ceremonial, sensual. And
is not this just what the Hindoo, the Buddhist, and
the idolater of Africa go through in their forms of
worship ? They require some material object in order
that they may offer prayer to it.
Hard words do no good, but there are some points
on which the truth, however painful, ought to be told.
Pagans have the excuse of heathen darkness. Rome
has the greater crime of putting out the light in order
to commit the sin. I charge Rome plainly with idola
try — gross, wilful idolatry — alike in doctrine and in
practice. I cannot describe to you how inexpressibly distress
ing it is to me thus to address you, exceeded only by
the pain of seeing you thus drawn into the vortex into
which it will be your duty to decoy and lead others
from the religion of Jesus to nothing short of idolatry,
under the guise of the religion of Mary and the wor
ship of the saints. And this in disobedience to God,
in obedience to His "chief representative," your "Vice-

LETTER II 55
gerent of God upon earth," your "Alter Deus'' (other
God), as one theologian, your " plusquam Deus " (more
than God), as another blasphemously styled him ;
your Pope, " Moses in authority, Peter in dignity,
Christ himself in office " (Pius VI., Brev. Rom. Paris,
I775)> who when elected is seated not on St Peter's
pretended chair, but literally enthroned (like God)
upon God's high altar in the chief cathedral of St
Peter, and who thence is borne aloft in triumph, after
adoration ("Adorant quem creant," Papal medal) of
the cardinals, princes of the Church, around the sacred
building, shrouded with feathered screens like seraphs'
wings, emblematic of that high and holy Being who
inhabiteth eternity, in whose sight the very heavens
are not clean, and whom angels worship with folded
wings. 1 know you are incapable of designedly deceiving
on any point, much less on a subject so solemn as an
article of belief ; and therefore, like very many others,
you are yourself, though honest, deceived in regard to
the Virgin-worship not being latreia or adoration,
equal and like that offered to God Himself, I know
you term it the mediation of intercession ; and to such
an extent do your bishops carry this doctrine, that
they teach that the tempest on the Sea of Tiberias
was calmed by our Saviour, not at the request of the
disciples, but at the instigation of His mother. Dr
Grant, R. C. Bishop of Southwark, in his recent Pas
toral Letter, said : " Mary could again urge her Divine
Son to rise up and bid the winds and the waves be
calm." I see on highest authority, and by daily custom,
that ,the real practice of worship to the saints, and
especially the Virgin, is to give them, and her in par-

56 LETTER II.
ticular.more praise and greater worship than is given to
God. Throughout Italy, whether in churches, chapels,
shrines, or wayside crosses, it is ever the Virgin who
is most prominent ; it is to her almost exclusively, and
not to God, that prayers are directed to be addressed.
The business of the people is, as they are shown and
taught, not with God, but with the Virgin and with the
saints. The other day at Pisa I read on the door of a
principal church a proclamation in which God was
neither named nor alluded to, calling on the people
" to pay especial worship to the Virgin, because she
[not Almighty God], as Queen of Heaven, had last
year saved the city from the cholera, when so many
fell victims to it in the neighbouring town of Leghorn."
And this is the prevailing custom. When the cholera
arrived in Europe above thirty years since, a prayer was
written f orthe use of the members of the Gallican Church
at Lyons, containing no mention of the providence of
Almighty God, but supplications only to the Blessed
Virgin to save the town by her " sweet breath."
You direct me to the Litany to the Virgin and the
Office to the Virgin, to show that it is honour, not
worship — intercession, not mediation — respect, not
prayer — which is offered to the Virgin, and that I only
exhibit my own ignorance, not the tenets of you and
your Church, by calling the Virgin "mediatrix." If
it be ignorance, it is that I did not assert more' and
place the Virgin still higher, actually as Queen of
Heaven, for to her is offered the highest kind of wor
ship, to her are dedicated the most direct prayer and
supplication, and her position eclipses the Creator and
Redeemer. I find these words in the "Officium par-vum B.
Marise," " Deliver us always from all dangers, glorious

LETTER II 57
and blessed Virgin." I commend you also to the fol
lowing Litany in the Catechism published by authority
of Cardinal Cullen : —
" Heart of Jesus, I adore thee ;
Heart of Mary, I implore thee ;
Heart of Joseph, pure and just ;
In these three Hearts I put my trust. Amen."
A Pope is infallible. Pius IX., writing from Gaeta,
February 2, 1849,111 his Encyclic Letter, says- — "You
know full well, venerable brethren, that all ground of
our confidence is placed in the Most Holy Virgin,
since God has placed the fulness of all good in her ;
so that if there be in us any hope, any grace, any sal
vation, we may know that it flows from her, because
such is the will of Him who wills that we should have
all through Mary."
Who is He ? (Luke xi. 2 7, 28.) " A certain woman
of the company lifted up her voice and said unto Him,
Blessed is the womb that bare thee, and the paps
which thou hast sucked. But He said, Yea, rather
blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep
it." You ask my authority for terming Mary a mediatrix.
Pius IX., in his allocution to the Secret Consistory, 2 5
September 1865, writes — "In order that our vows
may be heard, let us pray to our mediatrix with the
all-clement God, the Most Holy Virgin, that Mother
immaculate from her birth, to whom it has been
granted to overthrow the enemies of our Church and
monstrous errors."
Read the following under the picture of the Virgin
at the corner of the Convent of St Sylvester, in Via
d. Mercede, Rome— "Lady, save thy people." Or

58 LETTER II.
the conclusion of the prayer suspended on the rails of
the Chapel of St Mary, " Consoler of the afflicted,"—
" Deliver me from all evil," &c. Or the following
prayer, published at Rome, 1825, with "the license of
superiors," " dispensed gratis by order of Pope Pius
VII.," dated 19th July 1822, " with indulgence to those
reciting it," the order signed by Cardinal GalefE : —
" I adore you, eternal Father, &c.
I adore you, eternal Son, &c.
I adore you, Most Holy Spirit, &c.
I adore you, Most Holy Virgin, &c."
This is not merely invocation, veneration, or inter
cession, but adoration ; there is none of the distinction
you imagine, but actual worship, at least equal to that
of the Trinity. You can hardly believe that it is other
wise, and therefore will not convince me nor try to
persuade others against the fact that the Virgin not
only is worshipped, but worshipped more than God.
Nor is it perceptible or intelligible that this worship is
only intercessorial. The people do not and cannot un
derstand it so. The Queen of Heaven is supreme with
you. You* refer me to the Litany to the Virgin to show
me that you only ask the Virgin to pray for us — ¦" Ora
pro nobis." That is not all. In Prayers to which in
dulgences are attached (Rome, with authority, 1844),
in Missal for Use of Laity, in Roman Breviary, in
Service of the Mass, and, a^ you know well, in numer
ous Offices, forgiveness of sins is asked " through the
merits of " the Virgin.
You know by the Sabbatine Bull of Pope John
XXII., published in March 1822, confirmed by other
apostolic Bulls, the Virgin goes regularly every

LETTER II. 59
" Saturday," and " as soon as possible " on other days,
to "bring out of the flames of purgatory to eternal joy
in paradise those who wear" (on their shoulder her
livery) "her holy scapular." (Vide Indulgences, &c,
conferred on the Order, &c, of the Virgin Mary of
Mount Carmel. Dublin, 1826. Bull re-published by
Gregory XVI. in 1841.) And this the Virgin can do
of her own non-mediatorial power ! ! !
The works of saints are free from error, and " are
written for your learning," and enjoined while the
Bible is forbidden. Read this and shudder. Saint
Bernardine and Saint Alphonso de Liguori, canon
ised 1839, declare, and you are bound to accept and
teach it as free from error, that the Virgin " en
joys the same privileges" as God ; "that power may
be equal between the Son and the Mother;" "that
Jesus rendered Mary omnipotent;" that "as many
creatures serve the glorious Virgin Mary as serve the
Trinity." That is not all, "even God Himself is
subject to the command of the Virgin."
To us this seems incredible ! but if this be right, no
wonder Saint Anselm should assure us " our prayers
will often be more speedily heard by invoking Mary
than calling on Jesus." No wonder that another saint,
whose works are a favourite class-book, Saint
Bonaventura (Psalter to Blessed Virgin), should invert
the Psalms of David and address them to the Virgin.
The CXth Psalm, named by St Matthew, St Mark,
St Luke, and St Paul, and quoted by our Lord as
prophesying the Messiah, is applied to Mary — " The
Lord said unto my Lady, Sit thou on my right hand,"
&c, and so throughout. Thus too the Saint travesties
that glorious Canticle, the Te Deum — "We praise
thee, 0 Mary," &c And in some editions even the

60 LETTER II.
Lord's Prayer itself becomes " Our Lady which art in
heaven, Hallowed be thy nam.e,"k &c. Admitting she
is a creature, you assign to Mary the three attributes
of Godhead, Omnipotence, Omniscience, and Omni
presence. Are not you a Romanist, terrified when you read
that passage in St Matt. iv. io, and that of St Paul
to the Romans (Rom. i. 25), denouncing those "who
changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped
and served the creature more than the Creator"?
Reflect a moment too upon the effect which all this
honour and adulation offered to her must have upon
the Virgin herself. Worthy of the highest reverence,
deserving of the most tender affection as the mother
of our Blessed Saviour, we can meditate upon no
mortal with respect equal to that we owe to the
Virgin. Her humble, modest, lovely character, her
highly-favoured person, her meek and gentle spirit,
claim from us more than is due to any other human
being. Inasmuch as nothing is more characteristic of
meanness and dishonesty than to assume dignity
which does not belong to you, or to take credit for
favours you have not granted, so nothing is more
revolting to a noble mind, or abhorrent to truth or
generous character, than to receive honours to which
it has no right, titles to which it has no claim, and
gratitude for acts not done. Consider, then, the posi
tion in which your adulation places the lowly Mary,
whose own words, "rejoicing in God her Saviour,''
deny and disprove what you pretend (Luke i.)
Can you now say the Virgin in your Church is not
worshipped as a God ? Let that for argument be
granted. Then it is worse. Her worship then is not
as a God, but as a creature.

LETTER II. 61
Your Church does not stop here. Not only the
Virgin is worshipped, but her pictures are endowed
with the power of vision, and of uttering her thoughts
and wishes. " On the 9th of July 1 846 (vide Diario
Romano) was invoked the patronage of the Most
Holy Virgin in memory of the wonderful movement
of the eyes observed in many of her images in the
year 1796." This is announced under the authority
of your Church.
The Bible records two remarks of the Blessed Virgin,
one after the Child Jesus disputed with the doctors,
the other at the marriage at Cana, when our Lord re
plied, " Woman, what have I to do with thee ? " From
the commencement of His ministry, no other saying
is recorded either by holy apostles or holy fathers,
until we come to the conversation which is inscribed
in Latin and in Italian in the church of St Damian at
Rome. The conversation occurred in the church, between the
Virgin and St Gregory, Pope (circa a.d. 720), and is
recorded as follows : " The image which is on the
high altar said to St Gregory, Pope, ' Why do you no
longer salute me, as in passing you were wont to
salute me ? ' The Saint begged pardon, and conceded
to those, who celebrate on that altar, the liberation of
the soul from purgatory, that is of that soul for which
the Mass is celebrated." The Virgin also spoke to
Pope John XXII., about 1320, and told him she
visited Purgatory every Saturday, as narrated infal
libly in the Bull confirmed in 1822.
And in last century the Virgin held frequent con
versations with Alphonso Liguori, but the Saint
unfortunately does not tell us what she said, only that
they were " such sweet things ! "

62 LETTER II.
The heathen mythology, their worship of gods and
goddesses, and their introduction and adoration of
statues of Venus, of Juno, and Diana, was copied
by and remains in Rome. The pagan converts, and
such as would have sacrificed to Paul and Barnabas,
associated with the image an idea of a divinity, and
though (Minutius Felix, 123) it was reproached to
the primitive Christians, as Romanists reproach Pro
testants, that they had no images, and the Councils of
Laodicea (a.d. 352), and Elvira, and Constantinople
condemned the practice, yet Rome adopted and en
joined the idolatry.
What can be more impious than the following,
sanctioned under the eye of the Vicar of God, and
which you probably have seen ? A doll, representing
the infant Saviour, which any day can be seen in its
box by strangers for a few francs, and which is termed
the " Bambino of the Ara Caeli Church," takes its
airing in a procession with two (formerly with four)
horses, and accompanied by footmen. This " image,
enriched with emeralds, sapphires, topazes," I quote a
Catholic authority, " amethysts, diamonds, and other
precious ornaments," is taken from its box when sent
for in certain cases of illness, and placed on the
patient's bed, who on recovery is expected to, and
does, pay well for the performance.
Is not this wicked imposture and gross idolatry
matchless in Christendom ?
Mr Faber, in his recent work on the Lives of Modern
Saints, strongly commended by Cardinal Wiseman,
narrates among innumerable marvels, that when other
medicines had failed, an infusion of powdered or
grated saints' bones taken inwardly, effected a sur
prising cure.

LETTER II.

63

I shall not dwell on relic veneration, of which the
list is endless, and the lucrative imposture, if not
impious, would be ludicrous. I give a few relating
to the Blessed Virgin in some churches at Rome : —

Church of Holy Cross .
St Mary Transpontina
St Cosmo and Damian
St Cecilia Trastevere .

St John Lateran
inter aha

}'

. " One bottle of the milk
of the Most Blessed
Virgin."
. "Some of the milk of
the Blessed Virgin
Mary."
. " One bottle of the milk
of the Blessed Vir
gin Mary."
. " Some milk of ditto,
and great toe of St
Mary Magdalen."
. " Some hair and clothing
of the Blessed Vir
gin Mary ; the veil
of the Virgin with
which the same suc
ceeded with diffi
culty in covering
the nakedness of
her only Son, whilst
He hung on the
wood of the Cross,
still sprinkled with
some drops of
blood."
(Copied from Lists of Relics hung up;] in the
churches.)

64 LETTER II.
I pass over the bones of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob,
and the stone upon which Isaac was offered, which,
along with Aaron's beard, are at Rome, together with
his rod, which is at Rome and also at Paris and
Bologna ; the entire skeletons of several of the apostles
existing both at Rome and at several other churches,
and many of their bones in other places ; but the
following is really so shocking that one blushes to
narrate it. In this century was published, with
approbation at Rome, in 1802, a "Critical Historical
Narrative of the most precious relic of the most sacred
Foreskin of our Lord Jesus Christ, venerated in the
parish church of Calcata." The book relates that the
Virgin, having preserved it, gave it on her ascension
to Mary Magdalen or to St John, and they to others ;
that some angels found it and gave it to Charlemagne ;
that afterwards it came into the possession of a soldier
in the army of the Emperor Charles V., and at length
it discovered itself in a miraculous manner, and it
is now exposed in church for the adoration of the
faithful. I confess Indulgences to be beyond my compre
hension. How any sane man can suppose that with
the Almighty he can have, as it were, a running
account, and by paying a few shillings or saying a few
more Aves or Pater Nosters than usual he can show a
large balance in hand, and spare a portion to place
to the credit of the souls of the dead if he pleases,
surpasses my understanding.
Pope Borgia (Alexander VI.) first, ex caihedrd,
released souls from Purgatory by indulgences (Ranke,
Book I., cap: ii.)
In the " appartamento Borgia " of the palace of God's
Vicegerent, over a doorway, is a "Holy Virgin and

LETTER II

65

Infant Jesus in a glory of angels, with a saint adoring"
Vasari says the " Saint was Pope Borgia," the " lady "
the adored " Julia Farnese," his mistress. Did Caesar
Borgia represent the Saviour in this picture of un
exampled blasphemy and depravity ? Borgia might
well seek power to deliver souls, but can a pure
stream flow from so foul a source ? and you will
hardly welcome this origin of a doctrine now (Council
of Trent, Sess. 25, cap. 21) an article of your new
faith. Indulgences were instituted to decoy, and deceive,
and extract money. They and relics were found to
be such a lucrative traffic for buying and selling souls,
that though, under the direction of the Holy Office,
commissioners have tried to regulate the market, the
infallible Church has found it advantageous to let the
sale go on. I think I am correct in this matter, and
that my understanding of it probably equals yours ;
but I should be glad to know whether the following
table, not of fees, but charges, payable for indulgences
or absolution of crime, at the office of the Supreme
Pontiff, still holds good as it did a short time since : —

£ s.

d.

Pardon of a heretic

.

36 9

O

„ for marrying one

wife after

murder of another .
.
8 2
9
„ for robbery
•
0 12
0
„ „ simony
0 10
6
„ „ seduction
•
0 9
0
„ „ incest
.
0 7
6
„ „ murder
0 7
6
Have the rates been altered? I have extracted
the list from Dr Hook's " Church Dictionary," a work
E
66 LETTER II.
of much research and erudition, but as he gives the
reference you can satisfy yourself at Rome as to the
correctness. The money value, the amount, is of less moment,
the material point is that you, a man, and your priest
claim to have a power, for money, to do what God
declares cannot be done for money, and to do that
which belongs to God alone. Our Lord says how
hard it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of
Heaven ; your Church reverses that doctrine.
There are many other articles of creed, doctrines
and tenets of your Church, equally irreconcilable with
scriptural authority or common sense. They have
often been argued and controverted, and are only
maintained in your Church by the complete system
atic discipline which enforces obedience by blind sub
mission to whatever the Church declares.
You cannot marvel or complain at the charge that
your Church makes what is true appear false, or what
is false appear true. The " Lord's Supper," represented
by the Mass, was not taken fasting, and the cup
denied by you was given to " all after supper."
By your principles and practice, as God's mercy is
not boundless, so is not His power infinite. The
merits of Christ, the mercy of God, are in the hands,
the mind, not of God but of man, dispensed or
reserved, given or withheld, not at God's will, but at
your, or any sinful priest's option, who by fasting or
not fasting after midnight, by intending* or not in
tending it, may make good or make void the Conse
cration of the Element, and make or mar the miracle
of the Mass — all depends on the intention of the
priest — his caprice, his failing, his fraud, nay, even
* Co. Trent on Intention (Sess. 7, cap. 11).

LETTER II. 67
his malice may annul the efficacy of the Sacra
ment. Your Pope, your Vicegerent of God upon earth, is
too modest and unassuming in his titles ! Not he
alone, but every miserable priest is not only "alter
Deus in terra," but " plusquam Deus." In daily sig
nificance and application, the primeval Creation
dwindles to nothing beside your mediaeval discovery,
" Sacerdos creat Deum."
You desired me to obtain information of your
practice from your own authorities. The task has
been grievous and loathsome, and for your sake, I
have with heavy heart endeavoured to fulfil what
you bade. I could have extended it, for the work is
endless ; but enough has been done to exhibit a pic
ture of fearful blasphemy and gross idolatry, and to
show that your Church, subversive of infallibility, is
full of error, and destructive of Unity, applies to prac
tice and to profession double weights and double
measures. This may avail for profit here, but I doubt if such
conduct will serve before that Judge who is about
your bed and about your path, and spieth out all your
ways, who searcheth the hearts and who hateth a lie,
in that Court of last resort from which there is no
appeal, where human infallibility is unknown, where
idolatry is condemned, where no more indulgences are
granted, where no earthly penances are counted, and
where the Pope requires, but can no longer offer, ab
solution. I have shown that in profession with Protestants
you pretend to permit the Bible, in practice with your
people you proscribe and prohibit it. Quoting Deut.
xvii. 1 2, " That false Prophets should be slain," St

68 LETTER II.
Thomas Aquinas, your " Angelic Doctor," says,
" Forgers of faith," meaning Protestants, " may be
punished, as forgers of money may be put to death."
Mutilating Scripture and misquoting it, as it was
quoted to our Saviour on the Mount, you proclaim
that we pervert and that you alone preserve Holy
Writ. To clip and deface sterling coin is a great
crime, falsely to charge others with such conduct is a
greater ; to do so in order to withdraw genuine and
forge or utter spurious metal as true is most base, em
phatically infamous in those at the mint who are
charged to ensure its being genuine. Of this we con
vict the Church of Rome. She falsifies the truth and
accuses others of the crime in order with impunity to
commit it herself. With inconceivable blasphemy,
she cites as witness the Holy Ghost, and alleges His
inspiration in attestation of perjury and fraud.
The proofs are drawn from the writings, not of
Reformers, but of divines of your own Church, show
ing your doctrines from your own doctors, arguing
your Creed from your own authorities. If I have
worked with earnestness, I have also with calmness ;
if I have studied with anxiety, I have also with con
sideration ; impressed, indeed, with deep solicitude
and hope for men who, like you, embraced the tenets
of Rome ere you could know her teaching or her prac
tice, but with faint expectations of effect on many who,
reflecting little, are relieved from that little by a
Church excluding thought or reason or right of pri
vate judgment.
It is true that the Papacy has abated nothing since
Rome gave Ireland to Henry II. of England in a.d.
1272, or England to Philip of Spain in a.d. 1587 ; she
still absolves subjects from obedience. Her organ in

LETTER II 69
this country, the Tablet, lately stated that laws affect
ing Catholics which (in addition to the Royal) have
not received the Papal assent are null and void, or, as
it states, " have not the value of a tenpenny nail."
It is true that Archbishop Manning, on opening St
Mary's Chapel at Leeds, Sept. 13, 1866, declared "that
God had given the Pope supremacy of direction and
guidance over all other powers on earth." Statesmen
may pay little regard to religion, but he must be a
careless observer of passing events in England who
does not perceive the recent political progress of
Popery. Romanism admits of connexion with no state
save that of Rome. That state establishment sup
pressed but never extinguished, claims never to have
ceased. You Romanists see and smile, but forbear to
say that Protestantism disestablished is Romanism re
established, as significantly and as surely as a lamp,
unnoticed while daylight fiUs the chamber, becomes
the light when sunshine is excluded. Thus " lanterns
and torches" (John xviii. 3) may burn unseen, and
men only follow their glare when the lamp of heaven,
" the light of the world," is shut out. Unchanging
Rome's claims and pretensions, like her doctrines, are
kept ever alive and ready for use. Thus " the Pope —
(so his legate told the council) — as vicar of Christ, who
is lord of all things, is lord of all temporal domains,
even as domains belong to men under God." Thus
" princes should purge their dominions of all heretics,
and extinguish them to the utmost of their power."
The fourth Lateran council requires this. But the
question with you regards less Rome's temporal than
her spiritual aggression. My charge is that Rome
prefers darkness to light, ignorance to knowledge,
falsehood to truth, human doctrines to Divine laws,

70 LETTER II.
superstition to religion, slavery to freedom, immorality
to purity, idolatry to holy worship, and that you are
bound to have and teach it so.
I appreciate and reciprocate the affectionate earnest
ness with which you warn me, ere it be too late,
to quit a Church in which there is no salvation. The
picture you give is graphic. You write : " If you,
sailing over the ocean in a big ship, see me in a rotten
little boat, in the delusion that I shall come in safety
to the journey's end, it is no charity to cheer me,
but rather it is charity to say to me, 'You cannot be
saved in your boat ; come up hither.' "
No doubt it would be kindly meant, but you might
be mistaken both as to the rottenness of my frail
bark and the seaworthiness of your showy three-
decker. I might reply : "Your ship is very high out of
the water, is beautifully painted, and has plenty
of hands, but your charts are not correct, your
compass is out of order, your Captain is not in
fallible, and it is not always the biggest craft that
is the safest ; and, I confess, frail and tempest-
tossed as may be my little boat, I had rather con
tinue my stormy and anxious passage in her, at
times covered with waves, with the needle pointing
heavenward, with the Cross for my flag, with Jesus
for my pilot, and the fishermen of Galilee for my
mariners, than enjoy the luxuries of your great,
showy, and gaudy ship, assured that when the
storm was at the highest there might yet be a great
calm ; and, listening to the cheering voice, ' Why
are ye fearful ? ' I should trust to reach the haven
without shipwreck."
I always gladly seek the points, not of divergence

LETTER II 71
but of convergence, in the Churches of England and
of Rome. We are too far apart, and if each of us
were nearer Christ we should be nearer each other.
There are in the Anglo-Catholic Church some whom
I may term Roman Catholic call-ducks, who think
that the chief difference is one of ceremonial. Some
favourable to extreme Ritualism, not unfavourable to
Romanism, whose faith is in themselves, who take
mysticism for depth of thought, subtlety for reason,
and outward form for religion ; and others, who are
attracted by the gorgeous display, mistake that for
devotion, and fancy if we adopted your vestments,
your ornaments, and your processions, there would be
small difference between the two Churches. I am
not one of them ! No one desires unity more than
myself, but unity must be second to truth, not truth
to unity, and unity must rest on the basis, not of
fiction or fancy, but of God's Word.
You discourse upon these points with me, nay,
you challenge me to discuss them on your own
terms. I have little more to add ; but before I con
clude I beg you to consider what in your conscience
and behef is really " the one faith divinely revealed,"
and in what position by her doctrine Rome places
God's Word and God's Spirit. God's Spirit is in the
Bible — God's Spirit is in the Pope.
The one says, "Search the Scripture;" the other,
" Search them not."
The one, " Compare them with the Church's teach
ing ;" the other, " Confront them at your peril."
The one, "You shall add nothing thereto;" the
other, " You shall add."
The one, "You shall take nought from the Com
mandments ;" the other, "You shall."

72 LETTER II
Which do you believe ?
The one, " You shall only worship God ; " the other,
" Worship creatures as well as the Creator."
I might multiply these traditions which lead only
to infidelity.
Rome says, "God's Spirit is in the Pope or in
his Councils" (Pope Pius IX., Syllabus, Dec. 8, 1864).
The Laodicean and Chalcedon Councils reject the
Apocrypha ; at Trent the Council cursed him who
rejects it. Yet it is God who lieth not (Titus).
At Constantinople (a.d. 754) the Council denies the
corporeal presence ; at Lateran, at Constance, and at
Basle declares it.
The Pope excommunicated St Augustine, and so
he died ; the Pope made him a Saint.
The Pope excommunicated Cyprian, and so he
died ; the Pope canonised St Cyprian.
Councils condemned image worship in a.d. 754,
and approved it in 787.
Pope Liberius approved of the Arian heresy ;
Pope Vigilius taught the heresy of Eutyches ; Coun
cils of the Church condemned both.
Was the Holy Ghost in the Pope John XXIII.,
and also in the Council of Constance which deposed
him from the Papacy ?
The Councils of Constance and Basle set Councils
above the Pope ; the Council at Lateran set the Pope
above Councils.
Was the Holy Ghost in one Pope at Rome and
in another at Avignon, while each was denouncing
the other as Antichrist ?
Was the Holy Ghost at one moment in three an
tagonistic Popes at once ?
The Bible says no apostle shall be before or after

LETTER II. 73
other; the Pope says St Peter was prince of the
apostles. The Word of God, in the Eucharist, says, " Drink
ye all of this ; " the Pope says, " Save the priests, drink
none of ye of this."
Scripture says, " Feed my sheep ; " the shepherd
says, " Your food is poison."
Scripture says, "I will lead you into green pas
tures ; " the shepherd says, " Your pastures are
deadly." The good Shepherd (John xvii. 1 7) says, " Sanctify
them through thy truth, thy word is truth;" the
Pope, your shepherd, replies, " Your word does more
harm than good."
Your boasted Unity — Unity not in the Church,
much less oneness with Christ — tends to and ends
in this hideous and impious deformity. Amid this
puzzling perplexity and " infallible " confusion, where
both are true, where "under pain of condemnation"
" both must be believed '' (Syllabus of Pope Pius IX.),
which is to be followed — the order, or the counter-
order ? Which is to lie trusted, — what your Church
affirms, or what she denies ? what she commands, or
what she forbids ?
Where nowT is that "one positive, definite be
lief divinely revealed," in search of which you
left us and went to Rome, which you assert Rome
teaches and we do not, which she " positively enforces
as necessary to ' salvation, which it is a sin against
God to doubt, and which was held by all," says
Rome, "till the idea of private judgment," which
you pretend began at the Reformation, but really
approved ab Berea,. " was started " ?

74 LETTER II.
Is it only in your "infallible" Pius IX., your
" Noster Deus Papa," " our God the Pope," as styled at
the Council of Lateran, Sess. 4 ; in your " Earthen
Vessel containing ihe Divine Treasure," as Rome and
you declare ? Truly " of the earth, earthy ! "
You will hardly venture again, as if exclusively pos
sessing our true pure faith, tauntingly and exultingly
to ask me, "What is that body of faith of which
a Church can, like Rome, rise up and say, without
qualification of any kind, ' This I believe ! ' * This is
the faith which has always been held ! ' ' This is the
faith of the apostles ! ' :
Your infallibility has incorporated blasphemy, lies^
fraud, idolatry, and abominations, therefore all these
are right. If wrong, where is your infallibility ?
I am no theologian, much less a Jesuit in argument,
but no argument, no artifice, no Jesuitical casuistry
can reconcile these conflicting " infalhble " truths if
your Church be true, or can justify her if she be not.
Yet many like you in England are now busy in
putting the Breviary in place of the Bible, are now
engaged in uprooting " the tree of life " for that " in
the midst of the garden," and say they are " doing God
service." I pray that the Spirit of God may guide you into
all truth, and may lead you to retrace your steps and
to flee from the judgment which will, as I understand
the apocalyptic vision of St John, surely overtake
those who not only defile and defy His laws but use
them as a means of corrupting those" they undertook
to teach. Though now "joined to idols," you may,
like Ephraim, " be left alone." Remember the fate of
the disobedient Prophet, and the denunciations against
those who took away the key of knowledge, who

LETTER II 75
entered not in themselves nor suffered those to go in
who would. You have driven me to track your
Church's dark and devious course, and vour feeble
efforts to deaden your conscience as to Infallibility and
its consequences.
I have written as I had not intended — painfully,
laboriously, and at length — led on by the intense in
terest of a subject so important, and of the fearful con
sequences to those who err and who mislead.
That God may guide you and me aright is the very
earnest prayer of Your anxiously affectionate FRANCIS SCOTT.

NOTE to p. 35.
Bible printed with authority, 1723.
NOTE to p. 36.
There are many other Papal Decrees against the Bible.
NOTE to p. 43.
Such were the titles ascribed to Popes by Cardinals Cajetan and
Bellarmine.

BAL1ANT1TNE AND COMPANY, PRINTERS. EDINBURGH.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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