May I not fairly hope that you will look into the matter? I make the request for truth’s sake and charity’s sake. Some of the lectures delivered before the Islington Protestant Institute are, I know, afterwards published; two delivered by you have been published; I feel sure that I shall not have the pain of seeing this last go forth with the statement, which I have thus taken the liberty of asking you to reconsider, uncorrected.
I am, my dear Sir,
Yours faithfully,
Henry Waller.
Rev. Edward Hoare.
Ramsgate,
Dec. 11, 1851.
My dear Sir,
You need make no apology for writing to me on the subject of my lecture, and I am much obliged to you for so doing, as I cordially desire to elicit truth and nothing else. The passage which I quoted was, as you suppose, the 5th chap. of the 6th part of the Constitutions, and my authority is an edition of the Constitutions published by Rivington in 1838, which I have compared since your note with the extracts given in Taylor’s Loyola, who has evidently used another edition, though differing in no essential particular.
I have also carefully examined the passage with your exposition before me, and submitted it to some of the best scholars that I know; but I confess myself quite at a loss to translate the words in the original so as to force upon them the meaning which you think they are intended to convey. Surely the expression, “Obligationem ad peccatum mortale vel veniale inducere,” makes sin the object of the obligation, and does not merely describe the character of the fault. If the words were, peccati mortalis, &c., instead of “ad peccatum, &c.,” I think that the passage would have borne your interpretation, but as it stands, I must still believe that the version which I gave of it was correct. I cannot therefore expunge it from my lecture; but as I sincerely desire to make no false charge against an opponent, I will subjoin the Latin copy, so that any scholars may be able to decide as to the merits of the question.
I cannot close my note without adding the expression of my deep and heartfelt sorrow that you have been led to abandon the truth in which you were trained, for the, as I believe, unscriptural system of the Church of Rome. Putting all other considerations out of the question, it is enough to my mind to condemn the whole system when I find it adopting the company of Jesuits, of whose morality and mischievous intrigues it had already had, according to Clement XIV., such mournful experience.
Earnestly hoping that the Lord may guide you into the way of truth,
I remain, dear Sir,
Very faithfully yours,
Edward Hoare.