however, the reader will be entirely disappointed. Not one single line from any one of the Protestant confessions is adduced by the learned Doctor, in support of this grievous charge. Not an iota of proof, in fact, is furnished, in support of this most extraordinary accusation! What kind of conduct is this in one who professes to receive as the command of God, the precept,' Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.'

But by what shew of evidence, then, does the Doctor support his accusation? By the following: seven short quotations, of three or four lines each, from Luther; four from Calvin; one from Beza; one from Fuller; one from Strype; one from Brandt; and one from Bossuet. Now of these it may be sufficient to observe, that some are the mere misrepresentations of enemies; others prove nothing whatever to the question; while the remainder are merely the unguarded and strong expressions of two or three good but fallible men, writing in the heat of controversy.

Dr. Milner knows very well, that in the matter of predestination, free will, &c., these Protestant writers agreed entirely with Augustine, one of the greatest of the early fathers, to whose name the church of Rome pays the highest honour. He knows full well that the very passages he quotes from Luther and Calvin might be easily matched by others from the works of this great saint of his own calendar. He knows, too, that if whole churches are to be judged of by single expressions, culled from the writings of individual fathers, the church of Rome may be proved guilty of Montanism by the works of Tertullian, and of Platonism by those of Origen. But he

H

knows also, that all such attempts at crimination are nothing else than the merest folly. He is well aware that a church can only be convicted by its own acts and confessions. He opens his accusation by charging the chief Protestant communions' with grounding their doctrine on the pernicious and impious principle, that God is the author and necessitating cause, as well as the avenging punisher of sin ;'-he then alludes to the confessions of the Protestant churches' as containing this doctrine ;-but he does not produce a single line from any one of them in support of the charge! The reason is, that he could never find, among them all, a single word bearing any such meaning; in other words, the whole charge is utterly and entirely false; and this he could not but have known at the time he made it!

But after thus calumniating the whole body of Protestant churches, and yet failing to establish one iota against them, the Doctor naturally comes to speak of his own church. And here we might have expected him to be a little more diffuse, and better prepared with proofs. Instead of which, though he has now to prove the more important part of his case, that the Romish church is peculiarly the HOLY Catholic church,-he glances over the subject in little more than two pages! In fact, his whole argument, over and above some general assertions, is confined to this, that If the doctrine of the Catholic church was once holy, namely, in the apostolic age, it is holy still; because the church never changes her doctrine, nor suffers any person in her communion to change it, or to question any part of it.'

A bolder defiance to truth than this never was penned. It supposes the whole history of the past

to have been blotted out of men's memories. What were all the doctrinal contests of so many successive councils caused by, if the doctrine of the Catholic church ever remained the same,-unaltered and unimpugned? Look at pope Zozimus and his synod at Rome; see the council of Frankfort in A. D. 794; both approving the heresy of Pelagius; and then behold various other councils, ending with that of Trent, anathematizing that same doctrine, and all who held it. Nay, the yet more fatal error of Arius was first condemned by the council of Nice, then accepted by the council of Sirmium; the synods of Ariminum and Seleucia subsequently confirmed the adhesion of the church to this heresy, and the words of Jerome himself are, the whole world groaned to find itself become Arian.' Yet after the lapse of years this error waned and became nearly extinct, and has since been condemned by as many councils as had previously supported it. An equal changeability was exhibited by popes and councils in the cases of the Eutychian and Monothelan heresies. But enough has been said to show that this absurd boast, that the (Romish) church never changes its doctrine,' is one of the most groundless vaunts that ever came from the pen of a human being.

It may, however, be answered, that these heresies have now long since been subdued, and that the existing doctrine of the Romish church is free from such stains. This may be admitted; but still the argument of Dr. Milner, that if the doctrine of the Catholic church was holy in the apostolic age, it must be so now, because it is never permitted to be altered or impugned,' is clearly gone, is entirely destroyed, and we have only to deal with the doc

trinal standard of the Romish church as we now

find it.

What, then, is the real state of the case, as to the alleged holiness of doctrine of the church of Rome?

It is this: in so far as she holds, in common with Protestants, the ancient creeds or professions of faith, called the Apostles', the Nicene, and the Athanasian,—she possesses the true and orthodox doctrine. But inasmuch as she has added to that faith the whole accumulation of error contained in the creed of pope Pius the IVth, she has thereby alloyed and defiled the true faith with a mixture of many and great errors. And error in religion is never innoxious. It always leads to sin. Every single particle, therefore, of these additions to the ancient faith, is opposed to sanctity or holiness. The words of Christ exactly apply to her: Ye have made the commandment of God of none effect by your tradition. For instance,

1. The doctrine of Purgatory removes the salutary dread of eternal woe, and encourages men in the false hope of compensating for the sins they may commit in this world, by a merely temporary punishment in the next:

2. The doctrine of Indulgences, and of Masses for the dead, evidently aids this delusion. By this latter figment, a man revelling in sinful pleasures during his whole life-time, may console himself with the hope, that by a sufficient legacy to the priests, for masses to be said after his death, he may escape even the temporary inflictions of purgatory. And the former falsehood teaches the sinner that he may go on in the indulgence of his lusts throughout the year, so that he reserves a sufficient sum to purchase, at Christmas or

Easter, an indulgence, or oblivion, from the church, for the entire cancelling of his debt of sin.

3. By the erection of the saints and the Virgin into minor mediators, the resort of the sinner to Christ is greatly hindered. But neither the saints nor the Virgin can so much as hear the prayers of their worshippers, much less answer them;-meanwhile Christ, the only fountain of grace and of holiness, is hidden from the sinner's view, and consequently no aid is obtained in his daily warfare against sin and the devil.

4. The enforced celibacy of the clergy has, in all ages, and to a fearful extent, been productive of the most dreadful immorality.

5. The seclusion of men and women under monastic vows has likewise led to the most revolting crimes.

Under the last two heads we shall merely adduce one or two testimonies, which will indicate the presence of a wide-spread evil.

Erasmus, himself a Romanist, confesses, of his own day, that

A number of monasteries are so degenerated, that the stews are more chaste, sober, and modest than they.''

Blanco White, himself also formerly a Romish priest, says,

Crime makes its way into those recesses, in spite of spiked walls and prison gates. This I know, with all the certainty which the self-accusation of the guilty can give.'

6. The practice of confession, as actually carried on under the rules laid down by the highest authori

In Epist. Grynaco.