be evident that more clerical sanction is necessary to impart to the Association the only character which can permanently secure public confidence, and give weight to its movements against the popish attacks on the Church. Of this sanction, we hope the Association in its past operations has proved itself worthy; nor, in the present times, should it be denied to any useful body without great reason, or withdrawn without adequate considerations. We believe we may assert that hitherto those among our clerical friends who have given their aid, have never seen any cause to regret the step, and have witnessed no compromise of the principle of the Establishment by the Committee. We know that that body is anxious to receive clerical co-operation, and to act, as far as possible, on the advice of those clerical members by whom their movements have been assisted; and we therefore recommend the matter to the attention of our readers, earnestly recommending them to regard with care the signs of the times, and to weigh with seriousness the necessity for combinations against the inroads and the political power of the Popish party. Unhappily in the country, and not less among the clergy as a class, great apathy has existed, and the result has been seen in the incessant conspiracies against the Church and the Constitution, and in the success of many of the plans for the advancement of Popery. But we sincerely trust and believe that this apathy is now departing, and that the people are commencing to rouse themselves in defence of ancient principles and time-honoured institutions. And if this belief be well grounded, we shall confidently expect success, and fear no evil. Nothing more is needed than that those who value our Protestant Constitution, should be true to their cause and to themselves. If they be, their opponents of all sorts, political dissenters, papists, and infidels, and treacherous and pretended Churchmen may confederate, and agitate, and clamour; but certain it is that they will fail in their efforts, and be conquered in the struggle. Yet combination must be opposed to combination, and union to union. If that be done, we repeat, that the cause of Protestantism will triumph, and that the great bulwarks of Christianity in this land, the ecclesiastical institutions, will roll back the assailing flood designed to overturn and destroy them.

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PROTESTANT WORKS.

ART. VII.-1. The Churches of Rome and England compared in their declared Doctrines and Practices. By RICHARD MANT, D.D., Bishop of Down and Connor. London: Parker. 1838.

2. The Church of England a Faithful Witness against the Errors and Corruptions of the Church of Rome. By the Rev. R. MEEK. London: Hatchard. 1834.

3. Protestantism the Old Religion-Popery the New; or Protestantism as old as the Bible, and Popery the Corruption of the Seventh Century. By the Rev. THOMAS LATHBURY, M.A. Bath. 1838.

4. The Variations of Popery. By SAMUEL EDGAR. Second Edition. London: Seeley. 1838.

ROMAN CATHOLIC WORKS.

1. The Grounds of the Catholic Doctrines contained in the Profession of Faith published by Pope Pius IV. London: Cuddon.

2. An Abstract of the Douay Catechism: revised, improved, and recommended, by authority, for the use of the Faithful, in the four districts of England. London: 1837.

3. An Essay on the Principles and Practices of the Catholic Church. London: Booker. 1838.

THE following Article contains an imaginary conversation between a Clergyman of the Church of England, and a Roman Catholic Priest, and is intended to be carried on through several numbers of this Periodical, and then reprinted in a separate form for distribution, under the title of The Protestant Tracts. The discussion will embrace the leading topics of difference existing between the Anglican and Roman Churches. To avoid all misrepresentations of the faith and practices of the Church of Rome, the voice of her own creed, settled by the Council of Trent, as the acknowledged and authoritative standard, relative to doctrines, shall be heard, and her professions of faith shall be introduced on acknowledged authorities. In many discussions, especially those which have taken place between Protestants and Roman Catholics, the latter have complained that the former impute doctrines and practices which do not belong to them; but the plan, which the author of these dialogues has fixed upon, will preclude such accusations. All shall be genuine, all shall be fairly and candidly discussed, noț

in an evil spirit, but in the spirit of love and Christian charity, and with the sole desire of extending the blessings of the Gospel, which we as Protestants enjoy, to those whose faith, in very many respects, differs from the faith delivered by Christ himself to the saints, and of uniting men in the bond of peace and love, which are the pure and characteristic fruits of Christianity.

After a formal introduction and a short conversation upon some topics of an ordinary nature, the following dialogue is supposed to have taken place.

Clergyman. It is indeed a point of very serious importance, that so wide a disagreement should exist between men who have or ought to have one common object in view. Ever since the period of the Reformation, when the separation took place, between your Church and my Church, that disagreement has been marked in your separate practice. It may not be uninteresting to us to examine in what that difference consists. The result of such an enquiry is of extreme importance. For if that difference be small-if the Churches of England and Rome agree together in all the fundamental articles of Christianity-the Reformation of Religion in this kingdom is justly chargeable with folly and impiety; our Reformers have shed their blood for a chimera; and our Church has been guilty of establishing, and is at this time guilty of maintaining, an unchristian schism, which it would be her duty to acknowledge and to repair; but if the difference be well founded, and we are authorized in it by the Scriptures, it behoves us all, whether clerical or lay members of our reformed Church, the United Church of England and Ireland, to cherish the memory of the Reformation as a signal blessing from the good providence of God; to hallow our Reformers in our remembrance as martyrs to the truth of God's holy word; and to be ready on all fit occasions, with Christian moderation and charity indeed, but nevertheless with Christian simplicity and firmness, to plead and contend earnestly for the faith of the Church, as transmitted to us from our forefathers, and to set forth the true character of that Church from which they were, and we still are, constrained to live in a state of separation.*

Rom. Cat. Priest.-With you, I admit the differences existing between our Churches to be very great, and the existence of those differences I conceive with you to be a point of the most serious importance; I therefore gladly avail myself of the oppor

See the Churches of Rome and England compared. By Bishop Mant.

tunity of discussing them, in the hopes that some good effects may be elicited from the observations and arguments we each may be inclined to use. Although I am a Roman Catholic, I do not profess to be bigoted to that faith which I have been taught in my youth, and which I have cherished in my age. That faith I conceive to be founded both on the Holy Scriptures and upon Tradition: that faith has forbidden me from attending to the zealous persuasions of many of your brethren to become a Protestant.

Clergyman. Before we enter upon the discussion of the fundamental articles of our Churches, will you first be kind enough to state your reasons why you could not conform to the Protestant religion.

Rom. Cat. Priest.-I entertain many reasons, each of which I will candidly offer to your consideration; and if you please, we will discuss them individually.

1st. Because the Protestant religion is a new religion, which had no being in the world till 1500 years after Christ: therefore, it came 1500 years too late to be the true Church of Christ. Martin Luther laid the first foundation of the Protestant religion, in the year 1517; and his followers took the name of Protestants in the year 1529, before which time, neither the name nor the religion was ever heard of in the Christian world. And I defy all the learned men amongst them to name so much as one single name before Luther, who held throughout either the thirty-nine articles of your Church, or any other entire system of Protestancy, as it is now professed in any country upon earth. Now, how can that be Christ's Church, which for so many ages had no being in the world; since all Christians are obliged to acknowledge, that the true Church of Christ can only be that which dates its beginning from Christ, that which he promised should stand for ever?

Clergyman. The first point of difference is certainly immense. And the difference appears to rest upon the antiquity of our two Churches. Now before we proceed to argument, one of us must be prepared to yield; and the palm must be given to him who can establish the antiquity of his Church; for upon that antiquity the present point must fest.

Rom. Cat. Priest. Decidedly; I agree to your proposition.
Clergyman.-Propound then your arguments.

Rom. Cat. Priest.-Both of us must admit that a body of teaching men was established by the Saviour, and that positive authority to decide controversies is a necessary consequence of their mission; if so, it must be the exclusive privilege of that Church, which can trace its priesthood and doctrine from the

Apostles, and at once proves, that the pretensions of all others to teach in opposition to it, are without the slightest foundation.

Clergyman. To that I readily assent.

Rom. Cat. Priest.-This exclusive authority the Church, of which the Pope is the acknowledged head, claims and refers to the continued existence of its priesthood and doctrine from the Apostles as evidence of such right; and declares that the Churches in communion with the see of Rome alone constitute the true Catholic or Universal Church established by the Saviour.

Clergyman.-Now then we arrive at one of the main points of the difference between us; but proceed.

Rom. Cat. Priest.-I am quite aware that this claim is denied by those who oppose the authority, of the (Roman) Catholic Church, by whom it is charged with errors in doctrine and pretension to authority, for which there is no foundation in the sacred writings; they also maintain that all the reformed Churches are branches of the true Church, and that at the Reformation they only separated from the corrupt Church of Rome, and not from the true Church of Christ.

But the Church is necessarily a society composed of teachers and followers of the doctrine of the Saviour, and not an imaginary union of distinct bodies, whose sole standard of doctrine is their own individual conviction.

Either then the Church in communion with the see of Rome (from which all who deny its authority acknowledge they parted) is the true Church or it is not. If it be the true Church, then why did you separate from it? If not, where then is the true Church? And did you on leaving the Church of Rome, join a particular society, or did you not rather separate yourselves from all other societies, declaring yourselves equally independent of them all?-unless, indeed, we have recourse to the hypothesis of an invisible Church, or an imaginary union of all professing belief in the Saviour.

The only mode, by which this dilemma is sought to be refuted, is the assertion that the Church of Rome preserved the essentials of Christianity, though it also inculcated as terms of communion errors in faith and practice, which alone they rejected; but to say that it erred in any one point, is to declare the Church of Rome was not the true Church at the time of their separation; whereas, what is required is to shew another visible society of Christians, which was the true Church on earth at that time; and that is required without having recourse to the expedient of an invisible Church, which is opposed not only to