Imatges de pàgina
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prefer, I presume, their own separate communities, from what they deem sufficient reasons: hence, as we conceive that we have quite as good reason to prefer the Church of England, I see not why we need dissemble our satisfaction, that she is taking her proper place as the main bulwark of Protestantism; an honour, which was always con ceded to her in the days of our Elizabeth and our third William.

Go forth, then, and prosper in the name of the Lord. Lift high the blazing torch of revelation to the benighted stock of Abraham. And doubt not, that, in God's own good time, your labour shall not be in vain in the Lord.

"The vision is yet for an appointed time, but at the end it shall speak and not lie; though it tarry, wait for it; because it will surely come, it will not tarry.'

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TO THE EDITOR OF THE GOSPEL ADVOCATE.

I was pleased to see the following fact stated in the Church Record, of December 14, 1822.†

"A physician and an apothecary lately paid into the treasury of the New Castle presbytery, for the education fund, fifteen dollars, as the avails of their Sunday practice. This is not, indeed, the first and only instance of so just an appropriation of the income of the Lord's day; but it is to be wished that so good an example might be more generally followed."

In this wish, I most heartily unite; and I am persuaded, that nothing more than a suggestion of this kind is needful, to ensure such an appropriation from many of our pious physicians. I have often heard it lamented, by gentlemen of that profession, that they cannot have the privilege, common to all other classes of Christians, of being undisturbed in the performance of their religious duties. It is one of those cases of extreme exigency, which alone can justify absence from publick worship. But there is great danger that an excuse which satisfies the conscience, the habit of absence which becomes the necessary consequent, and the temptation of a gainful practice, may insensibly diminish the influence of religious principles on the heart. It appears to me, therefore, that if our physicians would make it a rule to devote the proceeds of their Sunday practice to religious purposes, it would present a powerful check to its corrupting influence on their own hearts. It would prevent the excuse from appearing too satisfactory, and being too easily admitted. It would effectually destroy themptation. And as to the habit, though it might not entirely prevent, it would certainly retard its formation. The pious physician

*Habak. ii. 3.

[+ The Church Record is a small periodical paper, published in Philadelphia, in which are contained the official notices of proceedings of the general missionary society. We have been prevented from giving extracts from it under the head of religious intelligence, because it has been very irregularly received. Ed.]

who thus, from a principle of faith, devotes the produce of his labour to the Lord, may confidently rely upon God's acceptance of his. offering; and, though absent in body from the temple, yet, being present in spirit, he may be truly said to devote his soul, with all its powers and faculties, to the service of his Maker.

PHILO MEDICUS.

FOR THE GOSPEL ADVOCATE.

ON THE PAPAL DISPENSATION OF OATHS.

IN our Number for October, 1822, we inserted a communication on this subject, sent us from Charleston, South Carolina, under the signature of "One of the People of the South." For the occasion of this communication, we refer our readers to the article itself. We were ignorant that it had occasioned any animadversions, till we received a second paper from the same writer, from which it appeared that a reply to it had been published in the Roman Catholick Miscellany, of Nov. 20, 1822. As we have studiously avoided making our work a vehicle for protracted controversy, we were desirous to see the reply, (which we understand is from the pen of Dr. England, the Roman Catholick bishop of Charleston,) before we consented to the admission of the answer from "One of the People of the South." It was not till the month of January, that we obtained a sight of this paper, and to our surprise we find that the reply was an editorial article addressed to the Editor of the Gospel Advocate with a request that it might be inserted in our pages. We find also that it was continued in the Miscellany of Nov. 27, Dec. 4, and Dec. 18, forming in the whole twelve closely printed columns. This would at least have occupied sixteen pages of our work; and as some concluding remarks are promised in the 30th number of the Miscellany, which we have not yet seen, we may set the whole down at twenty pages. We cannot, therefore, suppose Dr. England was serious in this request; for in the first place he took no pains to send us his Miscellany; at least we never received a single number. And in the next place, if a communication of four pages is to be visited by an answer of twenty, we should soon be obliged to devote our work to the discussion of a question which cannot be very interesting to our readers, and which, in the present weak and degraded state of the papal power, is happily a subject of very little consequence. We have no fear that popery will ever prevail in the United States, and the very conduct of Dr. England is to us an additional, and a very convincing proof, that our security is well founded. The whole design of his work is to rub down the asperities of his system, to conceal every thing that is offensive, to whiten the sepulchre, or to prove that the corruption has been removed, and that now it is only a cenotaph. He begins by very roundly asserting, that "It is no article of the Roman Catholick faith that the pope is infallible. It never was an article of the Roman Catholick faith that the pope is infallible."

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Really we are very glad to hear it. When people begin to acknowledge that they can do wrong, there is some hope of their reformation. Our only doubt is, whether, on this point, Dr. England is a very good authority. Let him show that the pope, and the court of Rome, renounce in good faith all such pretensions, and we shall consider it as one step, and as one of some importance too, towards the restoration of that unity which is so desirable in the Christian church.

With regard to the facts adduced by our correspondent, the reply does not attempt to deny them. So far, then, there is no dispute.-We are glad also to perceive a disposition to condemn the arrogant pretensions of several of the popes, in specifick instances. "We freely concede to 'One of the People of the South' that popes did sometimes assume power, which they really had not by law or right; but the assumption of a pope is not the doctrine of the Church." Miscellany, Dec. 4.-So again in the same number are the following remarks on the bull of Pope Adrian IV. by which, though an Englishman, and as such, a liege subject of Henry II. he gave that king authority to conquer and govern Ireland: "Now though we consider that bull worth just as much as a tailor might give for the old parchment, and WORTH NO MORE, yet this was the title upon which the kings of England claimed the sovereignty of Ireland."-We certainly did not expect to hear a Roman Catholick bishop speak of a pope's bull as worth no more than an old piece of parchment to be cut up into tailor's measures. How his present Holiness may relish this degrading comparison when he peruses the Roman Catholick Miscellany, we forbear to inquire. But we think it looks well for the independence of the American bishops.

As an evidence of Dr. England's ingenuity in giving such a colour to facts as will suit his purposes, we give the following extract from the Miscellany of Nov. 20. He is endeavouring to justify Pope Gregory VIII. for deposing the Emperor Henry IV. "We have before seen that by the constitution of the German empire, he could not be recognised as emperor, nor claim allegiance until he had been elected" [N. B. with the consent of the pope] "confirmed" [N. B. by the pope] "and crowned," [N. B. by the pope,]" as yet he was neither validly elected, confirmed, nor crowned, therefore there was no allegiance due to him as emperor. We have also seen that had he been emperor, he violated the liberties of the people by arbitrary taxation, which was unconstitutional; and by simony, which was against the rights of the church, he violated the contract with the pope. Thus he was not legally emperor, and had he been legally invested, he had exposed himself legally to the loss of the title and its appendages, as fully as George III. did to the loss of America.

"His states presented him a list of grievances, and concluded with assuring him that he should be respected, obeyed, and supported, with their lives and fortunes, provided he would comply with those requests, but should he persist in his design to oppress them, they were resolved to defend themselves against violence and despotick power; and they did take arms against him for his misconduct.

In all this we still find a strong resemblance to the conduct of the founders of American freedom, who, in truth, were the descendants of the ancestors of those brave Saxons, who thus proved that their veins still contained blood of the same nature as that which glowed in the hearts of the founders of British liberty. They were sprung from the same fathers; and it must be a gratification to the American of this day to perceive that those popes, whom interested historians misrepresent as the despots of the dark ages, were in truth the allies of the only people who cherished freedom, and who aided that people in preserving it against the attempts of powerful despots. It must also be to them a most gratifying reflection, that the very principles for which those popes contended, and to preserve which they endured such persecution, are the same which, brought from Saxony through Britain, have made America great and happy." The pope, then, under the transmuting influence of Dr. England's alchymy, has become an American patriot! We are sure that our readers are already smiling at this right pleasant and ingenious transformation. From this specimen they may judge whether the sober searcher after truth would derive much benefit from the whole twenty pages of Dr. England's whitewashing labours.

We have already expressed the opinion that the question respecting the pope's prerogatives can be of little moment to any Christians except to the Roman Catholicks themselves. We are not willing, therefore, to insert more than the second communication from "One of the People of the South," which we shall do in our next number. Our respected and valued correspondent will, we are persuaded, take no exceptions at this determination; because, if he chooses to continue the controversy, the pages of the Roman Catholick Miscellany will doubtless be open to him. Dr. England has already inserted his first; and will probably insert the second: for he is so keen a polemick, that he loves to put game into his park for the pleasure of hunting it, and when he has once tasted blood he seems never to lose the scent. In this way "One of the People of the South" may do some good. The readers of the Miscellany may be led to see that popes can do wrong, and that when they do so, their bulls are equal in value only to the parchment of a tailor's measure. This may lead insensibly to a greater independence of their archbishops, bishops, and clergy, upon the see of Rome. They may begin to perceive that the pope is only the patriarch of the Latin church, and that the patriarchates themselves were only ecclesiastical regulations. Thus the pope may finally be reduced to his proper level, as the bishop of Rome, divested of his power as a temporal sovereign, and considered as having only a precedency among his equals, the bishops of the catholick "universal church. If he would have been content with such a precedency, there would have been no difficulty; for it was accorded to him by the 28th canon of the 4th general council, the council of Chalcedon, (A. D. 451,) and the protestants in general were willing to revert to the order of the church at that period, if, by so doing, the unity of the church could be preserved.

In Europe, at the present day, there is an evident tendency among many of the enlightened Roman Catholicks to conciliatory measures;

and we have lying before us a work published in 1817, which, though. written by a zealous Romanist, under all the hallucinations of his party, contains many remarks that will be read with pleasure by every moderate and candid Protestant. It is entitled "Discussion amicale sur l'établissement et la doctrine de l'église Anglicane, et in général sur la réformation par un licencié de la maison et société de Sorbonne." We extract the following note from vol. i. p. 198, for the gratification of our readers.

"The reformers attacked the exorbitant power which at that day was more generally attributed to the pope in things spiritual and temporal, (dans les choses du ciel, et dans celles de la terre.) If they had confined themselves to prove that these pretensions were of recent date, that they accorded badly with the spirit of the gospel, with the doctrine of the fathers, and with that of the most holy and illustrious sovereign pontiffs, we should have had only to commend their zeal for the maintenance of true principles. But, far from every spirit of wisdom and moderation, they let themselves loose against the successor of St. Peter, with a shameful rudeness, and uttered (ils ont vomi) such base and disgusting insults against the holy see, as we should blush to transcribe, and as would draw upon them the indignation of all men of probity of every nation. Men of God would never have spoken thus ; but to have the manner of an apostle, one must be an apostle. If the reformers were to be reproached for nothing else, who would not judge from their passionate and furious language, that God, in order to reform his church, was unable to raise up any other than brutal and furious men, uttering the language of demons.

2. "If we may judge concerning the sentiments of the Greeks by one of their most able and moderate writers, let us attend to what is said by Helias Meniates, who was bishop of Zerniza about the end of the 17th century. 'I consider the dispute concerning the supreme power of the pope, as the principal cause of our divisions. It is the wall of separation between the two churches. [The Greek and Latin.]—If it were possible to come to an understanding on this single point, it would not be difficult to adjust the rest, and to bring about a perfect reunion.' Then, placing himself between the protestants and the ultramontains, this learned man shows the former that the pope, far from being antichrist, is the legitimate successor of the Apostle, and that he is at the head of the hierarchy of the universal church. Against the latter he maintains that the pope is not an all-powerful monarch in the church, and that the bishops do not derive their authority from him,

*

*It is well known that the several questions respecting the extent of the pope's prerogative still continue to agitate and to divide into parties the churches in his communion. The Italians generally favour the loftiest pretensions of the papacy; while the French are for moderating and restraining its power. The Alps being the boundary between the two countries, the Italians have been called by the French the ultramontain party. Of late years the term has been borrowed by politicians, and we hear of ultra-royalists and ultra-republicans. The term ultramontain is therefore to be considered as denoting that party who acknowledge the personal infallibility of the pope, and his superiority to a general council.

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