the Bible to be the Rule of Faith, | favouring gale that could move it how is it that he permitted any one onward, that ever-blessed, everparticle of it to be irretrievably lost ? heavenly book, the Bible, comes How is it that your celebrated bishop floating majestically down the full of Llandaff was obliged to confess in and uninterrupted tide of time; his letter, written with the view of aimed at, indeed, on the right hand silencing that Protestant-nurtured and on the left by the darts of innpest to society, Tom Payne, that merable heretics at one time, and the Epistle to St. Paul from Lao-Deists at another; but still, thank dicca, which, in the fourth chapter God, as fresh, as vigorous in its to the Colossians and sixteenth course, as pure, as unmutilated, as verse, that apostle commands to be entire, as it was the very day when read by the Colossians, is irrecover-it first issued forth with the stamp ably lost and buried in oblivion? of canonicity on its head, from the Believe me, my friends, the more third Council of Carthage, in the sedulously and solicitously ye search, year of our Lord 398-from the the more ye will be convinced that third Council of Carthage, I say, true consistency of doctrine is to be from the hands, the venerable hands found alone within the precincts of of the assembled bishops and guar the Catholic Church. Unpropped by dians of Christianity, in the year, the grand testimony of the Catholic not 1839, but 398. [Sensation.] As Church, ye will find, my friends, to any verification of the inspired apon investigation, that the Bible volume from the tongues of Proitself has no rational ground whereon testantism, it is in vain to look for to stand-nothing of an argumen- it; they can give no rule to discritative nature to support it, save and minate inspired writings from those except that which is supplied to it which are apocryphal, but that by that deadly antagonist to sound which is given by the Roman poet, logic, wild and ranting enthusiasm ; wherein he teaches the method of in other words, and my learned op- discriminating good verses from the ponent shall supply them, that bad ones, to wit:which is supplied to it by the gathering up of the glorious inspiration of Protestantism. On the other hand, ye will find that, led and disciplined by the living instructress of all ages and all nations, the Catholic Church, every page, every line of that sacred volume teems with evidence of its And now, my friends, you may inspiring God, conducted to it by remember that some evenings ago, the ever-sounding voice of tradition, my learned antagonist, who has echoed and re-echoed from age to taken great pains in ransacking age by its apostolically-ordained every Catholic writer that has said ministers; all within it we shall find a word against us, came with coto be beautiful consistency and har- pious extracts from Cardinal Baromonious order, all bright and ra- nius, an excellent Catholic, whom diant as the sun-without it all is my friend ingeniously tries to indisorder, confusion, and impenetra-sinuate I threw "overboard," though ble darkness! Yes, my friends, my he (the cardinal) has most decidedly respected Protestant friends, wafted thrown all Calvinists overboard. by the breath of tradition, the only My friend endeavoured to persuade

"Legitimumque sonum digitis callemus et

aure."

That is, if I may adapt it paraphras
tically to the subject in hand :—
"A well-tuned ear is the sole test to know,

What sounds are earthly-what of hea-
venly flow."

eandem (sı sapis) fuisse dixeris sine Christo ecclesiam, aut sine ecclesia Christum, sed quod sit in Christo semper ecclesia, et in ecclesia Jesus Christus, heri et hodie ipse et in mille sæcula.-Heb. xiii." Baronius, Annales Ecclesiastici, vol. xvi. Lucæ, p. 399.-King's Library, British Museum.

you that Cardinal Baronius had tenebris obscurari, nunquam tamen actually acknowledged that the Church of God had gone to sleep, and that there was a cessation of all pure teaching in the Church of God during the tenth century. I took the pains of consulting his work (the work of Baronius), to see if there was any period of time when the Catholic Church did not abound, and superabound, with bright ornaments, in point of sanctity and purity of life, of true piety, and exemplary virtue; and I find his books replete with the names of saints even in the very age when the Pope was bad, and when many of the cardinals were corrupted. I find saints there, such as I will oppose before the whole world, and such as shall put to the blush all the saints of the Covenant, that ramble over your Scotch boasted mountains. [Laughter.] Saints, my friends, in Catholic annals, such as John Wesley, the father of one of your sects of Methodism, has described, where he says, in his book called "Popery Calmly Considered:"

"Several of them (the Papists) have attained to as high a pitch of sanctity as human nature is capable of arriving at."

But now, let us listen to Baronius, who bursts out at the end of his narrative of the tenth century, into the following eloquent apostrophe to the reader!

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"Thus are we enabled, in one clear view, to contemplate the Church of God circling its orbit of a thousand years, like the transit of a single day, during which whole period it was never even for the space of a single moment forsaken of the Sun of Justice, Christ, who, in the same manner as the sun above was created in order to rule the day, so was the Word made flesh, in order to rule over the Church; ay, and still more evidently, inasmuch as he says, "The heavens and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away.' Whether, therefore, you have seen the Church beaming with splendour or obscured by darkness, yet never, if thou art wise, wilt thou say, that the Church was ever without Christ, or that Christ was ever without the Church; but, on the contrary, you will exclaim, 'That in Christ the Church always was, and in the Church Jesus Christ, the same yesterday, and today, and for ever.'-Heb. xiii. 8."

But the grand question, after all, for you to ponder upon, my ProtesIta planè contemplari licet Dei tant friends, is, “Are you members ecclesiam hujus millenari curriculo of the Catholic Church mentioned circumductam unius instar diei, in so emphatically in the Apostles' quo ne ad momentum quidem re- Creed?" You that have permitted liquerit eam sol justitiæ, Christus, your minds to be whirled along qui sicut ille sol ad hoc creatus est so delightfully by the oratorical ut præsit dici, ad hoc factum est flourishes of my very ingenious Verbum Caro, ut præsit ecclesiæ; sed opponent, the grand question, I say, fortius istud, siquidem dicit, Cœlum for you to consider is, Whether et terra transibunt, verba autem we, when we go home this evenmea non transibunt. Sive igitur ing, when prostrate on our knees ecclesiam vidisti luce clarescere, sive before God, can say, "I believe in

say

the Holy Catholic Church?" I shall | Oxford-street, and say, “Sir, I a it this evening with a safe and a stranger in London; have quiet conscience. May yours give kindness to direct me to the Carboyou no remorse, my friends, when lic chapel?" “Oh, certainly 1 you say, "I believe in the Holy will;" and he accordingly directs Catholic Church." It is a plain him to the nearest chapel. Thus," argument, which I have put over says Augustine, "the Carbohr and over again, and I must repeat it Church will ever be distinguished once more, in order that it may sink from all heretics-and why? Be the more deeply into your hearts cause we are called Catholics by before we part this evening. My ourselves and by our enemies." Oh, friend tells me that all sects say my friends, I have known the holiest theirs is the Catholic Church. Well, men and women, that abominated so I say of my Church. But why our Church, converted merely by does not then the claim of any one deep reflection on that one sige of them correspond to the test article. And there is another c which in the fourth century Augus- cumstance which I have observed tine gave of the Catholic Church? my friends: What is the reason ti He tells you that the Donatists this extraordinary virulence against overspread all Africa, and were al- the Catholic Church? Why are most equally numerous with the societies formed to suppress its proCatholics; they had churches and gress, and to denounce its "idolatry chapels in every part of the world, and its blasphemy?" If my friend and when you ask them their title, has truth on his side, and were they all call themselves the Catholic really "panting for the salvation of Church. "Now," says he, "I will his benighted fellow Catholics," show you a test, whereby you may would he taunt and reproach ther prove the genuineness of the Catho- in such a satiric flood of Scotch lic religion-prove that that glorious virulence? [Confusion.]

title appertains to you alone, to JOHN KENDAL, Esq., Cathode whatever quarter of the world for-chairman, rose to order.

tune may direct your steps. It is It is nothing else, gentlemen: this: Upon entering any city where I am accustomed to plain language, the Donatists have churches or I declare that if it were possible chapels, and where Catholics have them also, inquire, as a stranger to the place, of any Donatist you may meet, the way to the Catholic Church; and, strange to say," observes the saint, "though they all maintain, in theological disputation, theirs to be the Catholic Church, yet, without hesitation, they immediately point out the true Catholic walls."

Now, this test of St. Augustine holds good at the present day, and will hold good to the consummation of this world. Let a Catholic foreigner, upon his arrival in London, stop a Protestant, meeting him in

that he had used strong argument likely to shake the faith of any Catholic, I should have been afrai of my own feeble defence; whereas I have told him before, and I repest it again, I have burned up all his arguments like chaff; I have left them neither root nor branch; yea I have dashed all his arguments, in succession, one after another, or the rock of ages, the Catholic Church. I have scattered them, and broken them to pieces. [Renewed confusion.] But I say, my friends, if he had had power of argument sufficient to make an impression on the heart of any unenlightened

Catholic, still every tone of his with such a statement concerning voice, every gesture, every look, the illustrious Cyprian; but as I would have alienated that Catholic have brought a little pocket volume from that sect which he professes to of mine, which constitutes one of belong to." Keep me from the house my delights in this earthly pilgrimof gall," would have been the ex-age, the letters of that glorious clamation of the Catholic; keep me saint and martyr, St. Cyprian, I from that deadly, unmitigably viru- shall therefrom read, for the benefit lent sect; keep me from those mon- of my learned opponent, a few short sters of hypocrisy, who, whilst they extracts, to see whether St. Cyprian, pretend to be solicitous for my con- who flourished A.D. 248, acknowversion and salvation, are mocking ledged the supremacy of the Church and galling me by every oppro- or not. But, my friends, is it posbrious epithet which their malig-sible, let me ask you, that in the nant imaginations can suggest to them.

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chair founded by the voice of the Lord upon a rock;' he does not say founded on Peter." In reply to this frivolous surmise, let Cyprian speak himself:

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'Christ addresses Peter (Matt. xvi. 18)—‘I say to thee, Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my Church, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.' He that doth not hold this unity of the Church, can he think that he holds the faith? He that opposes and withstands the Church, can he think that he is in the Church?"-St. Cyp. de Unit. Ecc. pp. 194, 195. Ed. Bened. Paris, 1726.

But really, now that I am upon this topic, it is worth while to consult the learned Mr. Kirk, in order to see whether these fathers, whom my friend describes as perpetually knocking their heads against one another, but who, as I contend, are in one Catholic indivisible body, for ever knocking their heads against him (Mr. Cumming) and all the advocates of many-headed Protestantism; it is worth while, I say, to ask, What say they on the primacy of Peter?

St. Irenæus, A.D. 177, says, "For to this Church (of Rome) on account of its superior headship, propter poother tiorem principalitatem, every must have recourse; that is, the faithful of all countries."

Eusebius, the ecclesiastical his torian, and who ought consequently to have known something about the polity of the Church, tells us in the year 313

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"The kind providence of God conducts Peter to Rome, that power ful and great apostle, and, by his deserts, the chief of all the rest."Hist. Eccl., lib. ii. c. xiv. p. 63, Cantabrigiæ, 172; and yet, if we listen to the ecclesiastical Mr. Cumming, anno Domini 1840, St. Peter never was at Rome!!! [Laughter.]

St. Basil, A.D. 369, writes thus te Pope Damasus, on the distressed state of his Church

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"We ask nothing new; wherefore, if you are not at this time induced to aid us soon, all being subjected to the heretics, none wi be found to whom you may stretch out your hand."-Ep. Damasus.com. iii. p. 164. Ed. Bened. Paris, 1721, 22, 30.

Again-and most remarkable is the passage-I wish my Calvinistic opponent could show something of his Church half so old as the year 369-I should look at him with an eye of reverence. [A laugh.]

"Eustachius of Sebaste, being deposed at Melita, devised himself the means whereby to procure his restoration. What was proposed to him by the Roman bishop, and to what he agreed, we know not. We know only that he brought a letter, which when he had shown to the synod of Thyana, he was reinstated in his see!"-Ep. 293, at 74, tom. iii. p. 406.

But if St. Basil be not sufficiently clear upon the primacy of Peter, listen to the great St. Chrysostom, in the year 397. He writes to Innocent, the Roman bishop, after many proceedings against himself:

"I beseech you to direct, that what has wickedly been done against me while I was absent, and did not decline a trial, should have no effect, and that they who have thus proceeded may be subjected to ecclesias tical punishment, and allow me, who have been convicted of no offence, to enjoy the consolation of your letters, and the society of m former friends."-Ep. 1 ad. Innoc. tom. iii. p. 520, Ed. Monfauçon, Paris, 1718-34.

Really, my reverend friend, Mr. Kirk, is a splendid benefactor to the Catholics of this country, in furnishing such valuable documents to crush