Under the other aspect, the one is a denial of the first principles of Christianity, and the others are aggregations under the control of party-leaders whose principal object is the destruction of the church of Christ with its dogmas and discipline. Although particular denominations do not avow a hostile intent toward all dogma and discipline, each one professing to maintain whatever it has selected as its constitutive principle out of the entire Christian system, yet the general sum and result of their combined efforts against the Catholic Church tends to the utter demolition of Christianity. This active, anti-Catholic Protestantism in our own day and country is principally confined to a comparatively small fraction of nominal Protestants. It is a wheel within a wheel, an imperium in imperio, a ring, a faction, very impotent, but extremely turbulent. The deadly quarrels of its component members with each other interfere materially with their unity of action against their common enemy. Now and then, however, a common sentiment seems to awaken in them that they had better postpone their private disputes until they have compassed by their united energies the fall of Babylon. Such a phenomenon has appeared quite recently in the ecclesiastical heavens. The newspapers of the principal sects have resounded with a call for united efforts on the part of Episcopalians, Presbyterians, Unitarians, etc., against the progress of the Catholic Church in the United States. Dr. Bellows, who is as restless as if he were pursued by the Eumenides, and who seems to get into a more uncomfortable frame of mind every day as he prosecutes his travels, sends over a loud call showing the necessity of doing something to preserve that Protestantism which it has been the business of his life to overwhelm with ridicule and contempt. The liberal papers, false to their reiterated protestations of hatred against orthodox Protestantism and sympathy with Catholics, re-echo the sound, which is taken up by one and another of the lowing presses in turn, until each one quid lachrymabile mugit. Dear friends, what is the matter? If you will permit the citation of a somewhat trite classical passage, permit us to ask, Tantaene animis coelestibus irae? We have been much at a loss to divine the immediate exciting cause of such a sudden aggravation of symptoms in our domestic "sick man." We think, however, that we have at last discovered that we are the innocent cause ourselves, through a few little harmless tracts, which were intended as a poultice, but have proved, we suppose on account of the extreme irritability of the patient's skin, a violent blister. We made the discovery by reading the following circular, which we publish cheerfully, in order to promote as much as possible that free and lively discussion which our excellent friends at the Bible House desire:
(Private.)
American and Foreign Christian Union,
27 Bible House, New York,
June 17, 1868.
Mr. Editor:
Dear Sir: We are desirous of employing, in your journal, the pen of one of your ablest contributors, in the fair and thorough discussion of the recent publications and pretensions of the Roman Catholic Church.
You have doubtless seen some of the popular tracts of the "Catholic Publication Society." They have been circulated in all parts of the country with great assiduity. They are very ingenious and plausible, and very fallacious. It is matter of common interest to all who love evangelical truth that these fallacies should be promptly and effectively exposed.
We have a proposition to make which seems to us to be for the mutual advantage both of your enterprise and of ours. If you will send us the address of that one of your contributors or collaborators whose papers on this subject will be most acceptable to you and your readers, we will make proposals to him for contributions to your journal, we supplying him with a copy of the series of popular tracts of the "Catholic Publication Society," and such other documents as he may need, and paying for his literary labor at a generous rate of compensation.
If you shall succeed in introducing us to writers on the Roman Catholic controversy who are learned, accurate, and courteous, and at the same time lively and effective in their popular style, we shall hope to continue and renew an arrangement which must be for the advantage of all the parties to it, and of the great cause of Christian truth.
Yours respectfully,
J. Romeyn Berry,
H. C. Riley,
Leonard W. Bacon,
E. F. Hatfield,
Samuel I. Prime,
Committee on Publications of the "American and Foreign Christian Union."
Naturally, we have been on the alert ever since receiving this interesting circular, expecting a rare treat from the articles to be furnished by the learned, courteous, lively, and well-paid contributors to the press who must have jumped at once at this handsome offer. We have not yet gathered in a very ample collection of choice morçeaux as the result of our study of the anti-Catholic press. We have obtained, however, a few gleanings which may be indications of an abundant harvest yet to come. Here is one from The Episcopalian, which no reader of that paper will expect to find either accurate, courteous, or lively, but which, as communicating a piece of rare and recondite information, may fitly prove a sample of the "learned" style:
"It has been suggested—and, we think, not without some reason—that the origin of ritualism in the Protestant Episcopal Church may be traced to the Roman Catholic Church itself; in other words, that the Roman Church, with the view of proselyting the Episcopal Church, has sent among us secret emissaries, of the Jesuit stamp, who, while pretending to be Episcopalians, are really Romanists, and whose mission it is to introduce one Romish novelty after another, until the congregations in which they are introduced are gradually but surely drawn into the communion of the Romish Church.
"To those who have studied the far-seeing policy of the Roman Church, and its secret workings for ages past, this suggestion will not seem strange or far-fetched. That equally subtle means for proselyting have been used by that church in times past no one can doubt who has read its history; and what has been done can be done—or, at least, tried—again.
"Freese.
"Trenton, N.J., June, 1868."