Oh! my Lord, as you value His glory who is a jealous God, cease from such refuges of lies as Popery holds out to you.—As you value the Salvation of your soul continue not to serve the creature beside, yea more than, the Creator who is blessed for evermore. Pray to him whose attribute it is that He hears prayer, and whose gracious promise is that He will answer it. Dare to show yourself inconsistent, by flinging off the trammels by which you are bound. And may God direct you by his blessed Spirit to the frame of mind of him who cried—“Whom have I in heaven but Thee, and there is none upon earth that I desire in comparison of Thee.” Ceasing to look to Saints or Angels or deified men and women, may you be directed to the one mediator between God and man, the man Christ Jesus, and may your attitude be, while here below, not looking to Saint Mary, or any other creature, but “looking unto Jesus.” [10c]
Our next “point” will be, “respect for images.” Bishop Doyle worded this very cautiously. But do you pay no more than “respect” to your images? My Lord, if words have any meaning, Romanists worship images—they give them religious service. Let us see for a moment. The Second Council of Nice says—“The honor paid to the image passes to the prototype: and he who adores the image, adores in it the person of him whom it represents.” Labb: vol. vii. p. 556.—Here is an evident assertion of the “adoration of images.” While you cannot, my Lord, fail to observe the striking identity of language of this so called Christian Council with that of the heathen idolaters—“not that gold and silver”—say they,—“when fashioned into statues are gods, but that through these images the invisible Gods are honoured and worshipped.” [11a] And Cardinal Bellarmine, if I remember rightly—says, that “it is most certain that the Nicene Council decreed that images are to be adored with the highest worship.” Now, my Lord, this Council is one of your eighteen General Councils. Oh how, then, shall I characterise this idolatry? We pity the poor heathen who bow down to stocks and stones, but what is their guilt when compared with that of members of Christ’s baptized family committing the same crime? I may be threatened by those who know no better with the anathema of your “holy Æcumenical Council,”—for verily it does curse enough,—“cursed be the breakers of images,”—“cursed be they who refuse to salute the holy and venerable images.” But, my Lord, this antiscriptural and irrational anathema will only turn tenfold into the bosoms of its impious pronouncers, while I would with all earnestness call your Lordship’s attention to a curse which I pray God you may never experience, although you are in the fair way for earning it—viz.—Deut xxvii. 15. “Cursed be the man that maketh any graven or molten image, an abomination unto the Lord, the work of the hands of the craftsman, and putteth it in a secret place. And all the people shall answer and say, Amen.”
The next “point” is—“Prayers for the Dead.” Your lately appointed Cardinal—Dr. Wiseman—connects this “point” with the doctrine of Purgatory thus—“the practice is essentially based on the belief in Purgatory.” Lec. ii. Now although it is quite evident that Dr. W.’s learning is to a great extent second hand, [11b] there can be no question of his learning by any one who has read his “profoundly learned work,” as I think Mr. Hartwell Horne calls his Horæ Syriacæ; yet it does appear strange that he should, as here, completely confuse things so very different. Dr. Wiseman must be aware, as every tyro in such matters is, that prayers were offered for the dead long before a Purgatory was dreamed of. One of the Doctor’s own references proves this, viz.—1 Maccabees xii. 43.—where we read that that prayer was made in reference to the resurrection,—not to release from purgatory. On the contrary, it is said, that if Judas had not hoped that the dead should rise again, it had been a “superfluous thing to pray for the dead.” Prayer for the dead in the early Christian Church had a reference to the same, or to an augmentation of their glory—for they prayed even for the saints and martyrs. Such prayers for the dead, then, could have had no reference to the doctrine of Purgatory, the fire of which, Bellarmine, if I remember, states to be the same as that of hell, differing only in duration. I therefore dismiss such a PRACTICE, and will say a little on the doctrine upon which, according to Dr. Wiseman, it is founded. That is—the doctrine of Purgatory.
On this “point” I will first observe, that your most able men have declared it utterly incapable of proof from the holy Scripture, and also that it is in opposition to the doctrine of the ancient Church. Let us hear a few on each statement. It is incapable of proof from holy Scripture. As to this general statement we have the following among others. “Purgatory was for a long time unknown, and either never, or very seldom mentioned among the ancient fathers.” Bishop Fisher—in refut: Luther.—And, a Romish Bishop whose “discussion amicale” you are no doubt well acquainted with, observes, that, “Jesus Christ has not revealed the knowledge of Purgatory, so that we can, therefore, only form conjectures on the subject, more or less probable.” Vol. ii. p. 242. As to the Scripture proofs alleged by Dr. Wiseman, and others, your own writers plainly assert their insufficiency. The places usually quoted are: Matt. v. 25, 26. and Matt. xii. 32., 1 Cor. iii. 15. [13a] and 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19. Now, my Lord, without at all entering into an examination of those places, which my limits will prevent, and which has been unanswerably done a thousand times, I simply remark—That St. Matt. v. 25, 26. has been given up as a proof by your great Maldonatus who says the prison spoken of is hell. St. Matt. xii. 32. has been abandoned by Card: Bellarmine who confesses that the sin there spoken of was never to be forgiven. He also confesses that the fire spoken of in 1 Cor. iii. 13. is not meant of Purgatory,—by what process he extracts it, then, from the 15 v. was perhaps best known to himself: and 1 Pet. iii. 18, 19.—has been given up by Father Maguire, a great champion among you. [13b] This being the case, may we not well conclude that there is no foundation in holy Scripture for the doctrine of Purgatory—the acknowledged foundation of prayers for the dead, according to Dr. Wiseman,—and which, therefore, fall with it. I am happy in adding the testimony of your celebrated Picherellus that St. John by the one text—Rev. xiv. 13.—“put out the fire of Purgatory.” In fact, my Lord, as Meagher observes—“The doctrine of Purgatory is of heathen origin, intended to cheat the simple out of their money, by giving them bills of exchange upon another world for cash paid in this, without any danger of the bills returning protested.”
And now, my Lord, I call on you, as a man of sense, as a man of honesty, as a man wishing the salvation of your neverdying soul, to reject a doctrine “which would rob the believer of his peace, which would throw around the glorious attributes of Heaven’s Sovereign the funereal pall of darkness, and obscurity, which would transform a God of love into a God of terror, mingle our paltry satisfactions with the agonies of Calvary, and attach to the seamless robe of Christ’s righteousness woven from Bethlehem to the Cross, the tattered vestments of personal suffering.”
The Sacraments are another “point” of difference mentioned by Bishop Doyle. You say that there are seven,—we say that there are “two only as generally necessary to salvation.” Our two Sacraments are, as you are aware—“Baptism and the Supper of the Lord.” Your five additional Sacraments are: Confirmation, Penance, Extreme Unction, Holy Orders, and Matrimony. [14] On these, little need be said. The universally received definition of a Sacrament excludes all of them. For what is a Sacrament my Lord? Our Church Catechism defines it thus, in accordance with St. Augustine—“an outward and visible sign of an inward and spiritual grace given unto us, ordained by Christ Himself, as a means whereby we receive the same, and a pledge to assure us thereof.” A like definition is given by your own writers. Thus the Catechismus ad Parochos—de Sac. and Bishop Bossuet—Expos: de la doc. de l’ Egl: Cath. cap. ix.
Confirmation is a sacred rite and of Apostolic origin. But where did Christ institute it? No where. It, therefore, is not a Sacrament. Penance is a godly discipline, if practiced after a godly sort, but it was never instituted by Christ, and consequently is not a Sacrament. One of the parts of Penance, according to your Church, is Confession. And here, one feels a difficulty in addressing a married nobleman of your persuasion, or a bachelor with female relations and friends. Oh my Lord are you aware of the filthy questions to which married ladies are subject in the Confessional of the Church of Rome? They may not yet have been proposed to any of your friends: policy, on the part of the wily party with which you have connected yourselves, may have hitherto prevented it. But you ought to be informed that there is a printed catalogue of the questions which bachelor Priests of your unholy system are in duty bound to propose to married, as well as unmarried, females. Have you read this catalogue, my Lord? If you have, your common decency is for ever obliterated from the annals of your family, if any female friend of your’s, under your control, ever confesses to a Romish Priest. If you have not, as you value even a respectable position in society, read the instructions given to Priests, for hearing Confession, as given in Dens and Baillie, the Maynooth Class books, before you allow any female friend of your’s to attend such Confession. I will not pollute these pages by giving you even an abstract of them. They are filthy—they are loathsome, they are beyond description disgustingly offensive. Break the shackles, my Lord, with which you have voluntarily bound yourself: dare to assert yourself a free man. Were you chained to the plough as a slave, your mind might be free; but your soul is enchained by the Church of Rome.
Extreme Unction is your next Sacrament. The Council of Trent goes no farther—except in its Canon as before shown—than to say that Christ “insinuated” this “as it were” a Sacrament.—“INSINUAVIT”—“TANQUAM”—while their reference to James v. 14. is suicidal, for the words—“the Lord shall raise him up”—εγερει [15a]—show that it has no reference to the dying, which indeed your Cardinal Cajetan confesses—inloco—where he also denies the Tridentine “insinuation” of our Lord. Titular Bishop Doyle informs us also—p. 101.—of his “Abridgement of the Christian Doctrine”—or rather his edition of. Tubbervill’s older work—“the time is uncertain” when Christ “instituted Extreme Unction.” Uncertain! I had thought that nothing could be uncertain to an “infallible” Church.
Your next additional Sacrament is: Holy Orders. Now, my Lord, although “it is evident unto all men diligently reading the holy Scripture and ancient authors that from the Apostles’ time there have been these Orders of Ministers in Christ’s Church—Bishops, Priests, and Deacons,” yet it no where appears that Christ himself instituted them. I call upon you, then, either to reject Holy Orders as, or refuse your definition of, a Sacrament. The last of your additional Sacraments is Matrimony. [15b] I had thought that Matrimony was instituted in the time of man’s innocency; but your infallible Church, by her definition of a Sacrament, and by pronouncing this one, decides the contrary. I will only further remark here, that it is most marvellous that a Church which so honors and exalts Matrimony as to make it a Sacrament, should deem it too polluting for those whom she exclusively calls “Spirituals!”
“Faith and justification” are the only other points of difference alluded to by Bishop Doyle. [16] On these I prefer to give you the decisive statements of the Bible. “He that believeth and is baptised shall be saved, and he that believeth not shall be damned.” Mark xvi. “Believe on the Lord Jesus Christ, and thou shalt be saved.” Acts xvi. 31. “We conclude that a man is justified by faith without the deeds of the law.” Rom. iii. 28. “By the works of the law shall no flesh be justified.” Gal. ii. 16. My Lord, “there is none other name under heaven given among men whereby we must be saved, but the name of Jesus Christ.” He died, the Just One instead of the unjust ones, that he might bring us to God. His blood cleanseth from all sin. And although to you “there be Gods many, and Lords many,” to us there is but One—The Father, the Creator,—the Son, the Redeemer,—the Holy Ghost, the Sanctifier, for “these three are one.” 1 John v. 7.