"authority delegated to him from God himself, "to absolve and acquit you of your sins*.”

To these testimonies,-which should have so much weight with you,-I shall only add the same observation as I have just made on our doctrine of prayers for the dead; that in the Greek church, and in the numerous oriental churches of the Nestorians, Eutychians. and Monothelites, who separated from the church of Rome in an early age of christianity, auricular confession is retained and practised. Does not this circumstance incontrovertibly prove its early admission into the church? In ecclesiastical doctrine and discipline is not such early antiquity always respectable?

In respect to indulgences.-I flatter myself that, when you see the doctrine of the roman-catholics upon them, divested of the misrepresentations which have too often been made of it, and are yet too often repeated, you will find nothing in it contrary to common sense, or prejudicial to the interests of religion or morality.

The roman-catholic church teaches, that God frequently remits the essential guilt of sin and the eternal punishment incurred by it, but leaves a temporal punishment to be incurred by the sinner; that this temporal punishment may consist either of evil in this life, or of temporal suffering in the next, which temporal suffering in the next life we call purgatory; that the temporal punishment may consist of both these inflictions, and that the

* Serm. vii. Relig. of Prot. pp. 408, 409.

church has received power from God to remit them either wholly or partially. This remission is called an Indulgence. When the temporal punishment is wholly remitted, the indulgence is said to be plenary; when the remission is partial, the indulgence is proportionably limited. Thus, an indulgence of a certain number of days, or of months, or years, is a remission, during that period of time, of the temporal punishment due to the sinner.

To every indulgence conditions are annexed: the first, is sincere repentance. Now, in the understanding of the catholic church, sincere repentance always includes a sincere sorrow for having offended God; and, when a neighbour has been injured, full reparation for the injury, when the circumstances of the penitent allow it; or, when this is not the case, the fullest reparation in his power, with a firm resolution to complete it, if his circumstances should afterwards enable him so to do. This restitution equally extends to injuries in character, as to personal or pecuniary injuries. It is never dispensed with. Will the making of it reduce the penitent to indigence? Will it occasion the loss of his own character? Still the priest insists upon its being made. Such is the doctrine, such the practice of the roman-catholic church respecting indulgences.

I wish you would peruse the sermons of Bourdaloue "Sur la Restitution," and "Sur Le Jubilé.-After you have perused them, I should

you

wish to ask you whether, if should find yourself injured in fortune or character, and learn that the person who had injured you was a romancatholic, you would feel you had a less chance of restitution on account of the catholic doctrine of confession and of indulgences?

You mention the abuses of indulgences. You say indulgences have been too easily granted; and that they have been often sold. It is too true : but what has not been abused? There is not in the universe a territory in which, in every secular, and every ecclesiastical department, some abuse does not exist. Are we, on that account, to conclude with the Lollards, and other Manichean radicals, that all government is evil?

You have seen the "Taxa Cancellarii Romani ;" and you conclude that the sums of money, stated in that document to be paid for absolutions, are the purchase of them at those prices. The real state of the case is as follows:-There are some sins so enormous, that, in order to raise the greater horror of them, the absolution from them is reserved to the holy see. In these cases the priest, to whom the penitent reveals them in confession, states them, without any mention of mention of person, time or place, to the roman see; and the roman see, when it thinks the circumstance of the case renders it proper, grants a faculty to the priest to absolve the penitent from them. All this is attended with expense. An office or tribunal is kept up for the purpose, and, to defray the expenses attending these ap

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plications, a fee is required for the document in which the power of absolution is granted. Thus these sums of money are only fees of office: they are small: the lips of a Roman datary would water at the sight of a bill of an English proctor. When the absolute poverty of the party is stated, no fee is

required.

Does the church of England grant no indulgence or absolution for money? Consult your own

canons

own

In a remonstrance of grievances presented by a committee of the Irish parliament to Charles I. complaint is made that "several bishops "received great sums of money for commutations "of penance, which they had converted to their uset." Has not doctor Glover‡ abundantly shown that commutations of penance for money are, at this time, practised in your church? Do I, then, criminate the church of England upon this account? I only say, that her ministers should be circumspect, in criminating the church of Rome for similar commutations.

* Articuli pro Claro, A. D. 1584, Sparrow, 195. Received by the Synod of London in 1597, Sparrow, 248–252. Canon 14, Sparrow, 368.

† Cited by doctor Curry, in his Historical Memoirs of Ireland, vol. 1, p. 109.

In his Reply to the Bishop of Peterborough.

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X. 4.

St. Augustine and Pelagius.

"BRITAIN," you inform us, "has the credit or "discredit, whichever it may be deemed, of having given birth to Pelagius, the most remarkable "man of whom Wales can boast, and the most "reasonable of all those men, whom the antient "church has branded with the note of heresy." What proofs of superior reason were exhibited by Pelagius, I have yet to learn. By your account, he denied original sin; and this, you justly observe, " is a perilous error." But, by your account also, "he vindicated the goodness of God, by asserting "the free-will of man; and he judged more sanely "than his triumphant antagonist St. Augustine, "who, retaining too much of the philosophy which "he had learned in the Manichean school, in“fected with it the whole church during many "centuries, and afterwards divided both the catho"lic and protestant world." Is this a fair statement of the comparative merit of Pelagius and St. Augustine? Does it give an accurate view of the controversy between them? You add, that, "of "all those ambitious spirits, who have adulterated "the true doctrine of revelation with their own opinions, Augustine, perhaps, is the one who has "produced the widest and most injurious effects."

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Many of the most eminent lights of your church have entertained a very different opinion of this

I