A COMMITTEE waited on the Right Rev. Bishop Purcell last week, and in the name of the English Catholics of Cincinnati, presented him with various articles of plate, among which were two large and beautiful silver pitchers, bearing the following inscription :
Presented to the
RT. REV. BISHOP PURCELL, D.D.,
By the Roman Catholics of Cincinnati, as a testimonial of their
gratitude for his late eloquent and triumpJiant vindication
of their Holy Religion.
The following correspondence tdok place on the occasion between Bishop Purcell and the Committee :
RT. REV. DR. PURCELL, Bishop of Cincinnati :
DEAR SIR : The members of the Roman Catholic Church in Cincinnati request you to accept of the accompanying present as a testimonial of their gratitude lor your late triumphant defence of their holy religion. We are well aware that an imperative sense of duty could alone have induced you to depart from the Retirement so congenial to your feelings, and appear as a controvertist before the public eye. You no doubt felt, in common with your Catholic fellow-citizens, that the sacred subject of religion is better suited to private study and meditation than the turmoil and acrimony with which its public discussion is frequently attended. Occasion, however, will arise when Truth may be injured by silence, and forbearance almost cease to be a virtue. Such was your situation previous to the late controversy, into which you were forced by the unjust reproaches with which your faith, and that of an immense majority of Christians, was so recklessly assailed. But Truth, though always modest and unassuming, has an overwhelming power at her command, whenever she chooses to exert it, in vindication of her character. Of this \ve had illustrious proofs during the late discussion.
The gratification which wo feel at the result of the debate is not because a "wanton assailant" has been rebuked, but because Truth lia achieved 8O signal a triumph. To exult over any of our fellow-creature^ would be indicative of feelings as foreign to your heart as they would b to ours : we can pity the advocate of error, and regret his delusions ; bu the feeling which his exposure elicits is the exclusive property of reli gious charity.
Catholics have long endured persecution for conscience' sake. Extraordinary au'l wicked doctrines have been published as a part of thei creed, aud the land has been flooded with fabrications which are sai the foundations of morality, though ostensibly designed to ridicule C'aih licism. Your eloquent and convincing exposition of our doctrin. dis:ibne h'i'nxt minds of their erroneous impressions respecting our rc^ gion. This happy consequence of tin- discussion is already widely diffu?- throughout the community in which we dwell. Even the minister o. , large and respectable body of our dissenting friends has publicly avowed, thut "his charity for the Catholic communion is considerably enlarged." We sincerely trust that similar sentiments will pervade the breasts of our fellow-citizens throughout the western country, and in every place to which the controversy shall extend. We yield to none of our fellowcitizens in love and veneration for our republican institutions, and this devotion to our country you have always cherished and enforced. On this point, notwithstanding the harsh accusations which have been brought against us, we feel that we do not deserve reproach. May God preserve, many years, the '" peace and good-will " so dear to every sincere Christian, and induce the heart which animosity has withered to bloom and flourish with kindlier feelings.
That you may long survive to promote this heavenly harmony, and thus confer new benefits upon society, is the fervent prayer of
YOUR FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS.
BELOTED FRIENDS AND FELLOW-CITIZENS : I receive, with peculiar satisfaction, on the anniversary of the birthday of Washington, this splendid and unsolicited testimonial of your gratitude for my late vindication of the principles and conduct of Roman Catholics. I did not seek the controversy to which you allude. From nature and habit, I am now, as I have ever been, averse to such exhibitions. Religion is not in need of them : and, in my judgment, it is more congenial -with her mild and holy spirit faithfully to practice what we sincerely believe, than to seek to expose the unsoundness of our neighbor's convictions, or to obtrude our own, unbidden and unwelcome, upon him. But there are men who are neither at rest themselves, iu their faith, nor will they, if they can, suffer others to be so. One of these I have lately-met ; and although I take no merit to myself for his humiliation, I think I may say with truth, he by this time sincerely repents of his rashness. Quern Dens milt perdere, prius dementat Whom God intends to destroy, he first dements. How perfectly this maxim has been verified in the failure of my opponent, n, reference to the printed report of the controversy will demonstrate to every candid mind. The present I consider, however, a very suitable occasion for at least an allusion to the prominent points of his defeat. These I reduce, for brevity's sake, to twenty-four. 1st. He pledged himself to prove that the " Institution sometimes called the Holy Apostolic Catholic Church is not now, nor was she ever, Catholic, apostolic, or holy ; but is a sect, in the fair import of that word, older than any other sect now existing, but not the mother and mistress of all churches, but an apostasy from the only true, holy, apostolic and Catholic Church of Christ." He also pledged himself to show the time when (i/id the place wliere her apostasy commenced. This remarkable event, he assigned, in the first instance, to the 10th of July, 1054 ; but when he was ii.sked, which was the true Church of Christ from which the Roman Catholic Church had apostatized, at the period just mentioned, he could only reply by contradicting his previous assertion, and stating that the apostasy took place " some time about the ycai'250 \" When the question was again uryed upon him to name the true church from which the Roman Catholic then apostatized, he had no answer to give, nor has he given one ! I predicted that this would puzzle him, and it has done so most effectually. 2d. He insulted Protestants, whose champion he affected to be considered, by making a monster-church of ail the jarring, and many of them, impious sects, that rose and fell during the iirst fifteen centuries. These he recommended to their veneration, saying, " Protestants, behold our mother 1" 3d. lie undertook to show when the Church of Rome obtained the primacy of all the churches, and stated that this took place when Gre- j:ry the Great crmcned the usurper, Phocas, king, in the church of t. John tlie Baptiat at Gonttantimople ; and that Gregory received from the gratitude ot Phocas the title of Universal Bishop as a reward for his share in the infamy of the entire procedure. The gentleman quoted Gibbon as his authority for a statemei-t which I venture to assert no man in the assembly, learned or unlearned, had ever heard beiore. I challenged its glaring inaccuracy, and proved from Gibbon, that Gregory had neither lot nor part in the elevation of Phocas ; that he did not go from Rome to Constantinople to crown him ; that this was done by Germauus, the Patriarch of Constantinople, after the abdication of Mauritius ; that Gregory, in all probability, knew nothing of the accession of Phocas until after that event ; finally, that the soldiery and the people, not the Pope, nor the Patriarch, raised Phocaa to the throne I My learned opponent had to confess that " lie might have been mistaken." 4th. He boasted that he could produce a Bible taken from a manuscript copy of the Scriptures " icJtich had never been soiled by the hand of a, monk." To prove this assertion he quoted the Codes Alexandrians preserved in the British Museum, and containing the Old Testament of the Septuagint, and the New Testament, in Greek, with the Apocrypha, which Protestants most unreasonably reject I It happened, however, most unfortunately for his reputation as a scholar, and to his own utter confusion, that in reading from Home's Introduction to the study of the Scriptures, he traced the origin of this manuscript to ONE OF TUK 22 MONASTERIES ON MOUNT ATIIOS 1 It was there that this manuscript was written, and appended to it as a part of the same scroll ia a Psaltery of one of the Acoemets[1]. It was thus the gentleman established this proposition ! 5th. My opponent insisted that it \vas as easy to distinguish genuine from spurious Scriptures, as it was to distinguish the meridian sun in J,he heavens. On this point he was shown to be diametrically opposed to the most learned Protestant divines, who maintain that we can no otherwise determine the books, of Scripture than by the authority of the primitive Church. History attests that the most serious difficulties have been encountered in determining the Canonical books of Scripture, but in the theory of my opponent, the existence of any such difficulty would have been impossible. He forgot that Luther found no such evidence for the Epistle of St. James, which he called " an Epistle of straw," and that, as the learned Protestant Bishop of Kentucky says, " There is not a ' Thus saith the Lord,' to vouch for the authenticity of any book of Scripture." 6th. He charged the Catholic cree.l with immorality, because the priest says. " I absolve thee," not recollecting that the English Episcopal Book of Common Prayer directs the Minister of that Church to say the same and with same intent, viz. : to release the penitent from his sins, in virtue of a divine power. He could not discover any greater immorality or assumption of divine power in the words of the Catholic priest, " I absolve (loose) thee f.om thy sins, or thy sins from thee, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost," than in his own words when he goes into the river with a Campbellite Catechumen, and says, while he immerses him, " I baptize (wash) thee from thy sins, in the name," etc., and coining out of tlie stream says, "The Ohio has carried away his sins !" 7th. He said, in the hearing of nearly 8000 persons, that the Bardstown ' -, and by implication the Catholic Bishop of Bardstown, had admitted that the Jansenist Du Piu was an authentic Catholic historian ; whereas, as I have shown him, so that he had not a word to say for himself by way of excuse, the Bardstown Adcocate, as I shall publish in tho appendix to the controversy, says no such thing, but says the very contrary ! 8th. He asserted that I could not adduce the testimony of a single Catholic historian to prove that Osins presided as the Legate of Pope Silvester at the Council of Nice. I quoted the most explicit and convincing testimony to this effect, from Baronius, Noel, Alexander, Floury, etc.; and thus, before the public, showed his learning at fault, on this point, as on many others. 9th. He confounded the two men named Scotus, both remarkable personages in Ecclesiastical history ; one living in the 9th, the other in the 14th century, one a heretic, the other an orthodox divine ; and when challenged by me to say who Scotus was, he replied, " Ipresume he iras some Father of the Church !" 10th. He denied that there could have been any truth in the Catholic Church, because there were a few bad Popes in the Apostolic succession at Rome ; and I confounded him by showing that the succession of the Saviour's blood was not pure ; that there were murderers and drunkards and adulterers in David's royal line, and among the Patriarchs, whom God had chosen as the sole depositaries of truth, the witnesses of the truth, the heralds of the truth, under the written and the unwritten law! and that his argument was still more subversive of the Bible and of Christianity than of the Catholic Religion ; that her divinity was never more evident than in the fact that the number of those bad Popes was so very email, that none of them ever tonight false doctrine ; that they faithfully spread the linht of the Gospel-truih through Pagan and Infidel climes ; that by a special providence of God, no heresy or defection of any considerable body of Catholics afflicted the Church during their jnmtificates ; that it matters not so much to us, greatly as we desire the ministers of our holy religion to honor their exalted station, and strongly as we condemn them if they do not, whether the conduit that conveys to us the pure and crystal stream of heavenly doctrine be of gold, of silver, or of some baser metal ; finally, that Jesus Christ foretold that such scandals should come, but that THEY SHOULD NOT PREVAIL ; and that in the exemplar, the first tribunal of Ecclesiastical authority in his newly founded Church, in his own College of Cardinals, he allowed us to behold a traitor, a profaner of the sacraments, a suicide, a perjured apostle, and a band ot coward disciples, who fled frotii the stricken shepherd, that when scandals not quite so bad should come to pass, we should not vacillate or waver in faith, for that he was still with us, and that with him we had all things, and could see the power of his grace in hundreds and thousands of the clergy and saints, in the very worst of times who never bowed tho knee to Baal ; that storms are as necessary in the spiritual as in the physical world, to purify the face of Heaven ; that as the d >ctrine of Jesus Christ could never need to be amended, reformation should have taken place in the Church, not oiit of it; that God permitted our faith to be tried like that of Abraham, that we may know that He who founded the Church was able to preserve her, and that, as in past times, no cloud had ever lowered orcr the Church, that tJtc ruiuhmr (,f , /,t shine through the gl->"Ht, so neither would His mercy fail us, till we reached the consummation of ages, in the unity or faith. " The heavens and the earth shall pass away, but His word shall never pass away." 11th. lie held up a strip of soiled and smoked 'newspaper, which after years of safe-keeping some enlightened friend of the gentleman produced " to do battle" in this debate ; and he was so ignorant that he told the audience, with an air of triumph, that he held in his hand the actual form of ii'fsing used in the Catholic Church, aye, by the Bishopot Philadelphia in the United States, against a fallen priest. Now, what were tlie facts of tho case ? Why that a Catholic never wrote the like ; that the Catholic Church never used the like ; that a Protestant minister, Sterne, wrote it; tinit it it. all to be found in Tristram Shandy, one of the most obscene bonks in the English language, which, however, I procured from a bookstore before the gentleman had finished his speech, exhibited and in part read to the audience, with the LILLIBULLARO of his hero, Dr. Slop, at the beginning of tlie^e curses, until the whole assembly was convulsed, at the expense of my fnend and to the glory of truth (quid vetat ridentemdicere verum ?) with inextinguishable laughter. He did not intentionally, but by a mistake, honor the Catholic Church with this decent composition. The whole is an injurious caricature of the curses in the 28th ch. of Dent. 3. 12th. He produced, as an authentic and approved Catholic Testament, an edition thereof with notes, published by a band of Protestant parsons in New-York (who no doubt, like the Maria Monk coterie, are condemned by their brethren). I exposed this fraud, read the names of some of the parsons aloud, and the condemnation of those very notes by the Archbishop of Dublin. 13th. He quoted the Veu. and sainted Liguori, translated by a New- York religious changeling1 , for a charge of the most indecent kind against the Catholic Church. Mr. Alex. Kinmont, an honorable man, a scholar, and, as I have learned, u Swedenborgian, generously, at the solicitation, I may presume to say, of the entire meeting, came on the platform and showed there was nothing of it in the place of Liguori's works to which Smith referred ; that the contrary was in another place, with a citation of the chapter in the Council of Trent, which Mr. Kinmont translated for the house, which condemns and denounces, in the strongest language it could employ, the imputed immorality. 14th. He quoted a work "decorrupto Ecclesia? Statu," for a description of Catholic immoralities, and gave into the stale slander, as if it had been written by a Catholic Archdeacon, Nicholas de Clemangis, whereas the author was never known, being ashamed to put his name to the infamous production. All critics agree that the Archdeacon had nothing to do with the work. John de Chelin and John of Bavaria, not to Bpeak of many others, have had successively the honor or shame of its authorship. 15th. He quoted Bellarmine, as saying that St. Peter was " probably" Bishop of Rome, thus making this universally acknowledged fact a mere probability ; whereas Bellarmine says positively that he was Bishop of Rome, and that it was very probable that he transferred his See from Antioch to that city by the express command of Jtsus Christ, which, you perceive, is a very different proposition. 16th. He charged Catholics with being hostile to civil and religious liberty ; whereas, as I proved to him. Catholics werethe first tliat ever proclaimed Libert;/ of Conwioice in the Western Hemisphere, viz., the Catholic colony of Maryland, ttmomj irhmn Protestants, when persecuted by Protesta nix, for conscience' sake, souyht and found a refuge. I told him of Venice for so many centuries a Catholic and a glorious republic the commercial Britain of former ages San Marino South- American Republics, William. Tell, Kosciusko, and the free Cantons of Switzerland. 17th. He accused the Catholic Church with holding persecuting doctrine-', the Inquisition, etc. , etc. I refuted this oft-repeated charge by showing him that no general council had eoi.r enacted a single canon authorizing persecution ; that Catholics would not be bound by their religion to obey it. if it did, for that such legislation would be a manifest transcending, on the part of the Church, of the powers granted ber by Jesus Christ ; that it is, consequently, no part of Catholic faith. That we acknowledge no doctrine as an article of Catholic faith but what has been believed " ALWAYS, EVERYWHERE, AND BY ALL," and that the Inquisition was unknown and has tu'<:< r been received in many parts of the Catholic Church, which could not be the case if it were Catholic doctrine ; that, where the <'i>:il pmcer established it, as iu the instance of Spain against the desolating ravages of Mohammedans and Moors, by whom that rich and luxuriant country had been so oiten swept, as with the besom of destruction, it did not altn/ys exUt and never was held to be so much as a frnr/ment of Catholic faith ; that a Protestant country has had, and lias still, as bloody, if not a bloodier, Inquisition and other persecuting enactments, tribunals, institutions, and laws, as ever disgraced the annals of Spain. To prove these allegata, I quoted, not Catholic historians, but Hume, in his account of the Star-Chamber, Taylor in his history of Ireland, Cobbitt's Protestant Reformation, Dewey, a Unitarian, etc., etc. From these incontrovertible evidences, and would to God theie were no others, it is clearly seen that there was an Inquisition, and that there now is persecuiion under the Protestant Government of England, not to mention others, which have slain their tens of thousands, and keep EIGHT MILLIONS of people in a state of galling slavery to which death itself would, until late partial mitigations, have been mercy ! There, still, that system of making the poor Catholic peasantry pay the tithe of all they possess to support the luxurious, foxhunting preachers of a different religion, for defaming their own, subsists in all its blushing horrors. My friend called it a dying system ; and so it is. It has dyed the green fiehis red, over which I have strayed, as he has done, in boyhood's careless hour; it has made a icidoic irantic for the death of her last, her only son ! It has made her kneel down, a maniac, in that sou's blood, and having drunk it, curse, with ensanguined lips, his Reverend murderer ! This is but a solitary case. Can the annals of cruelty furnish a parallel? 18th. He made a mighty bluster about Antichrist, and G66, and monsters, and kingdoms, and eyes and horns, etc., etc., and I proved to him that as one of the most clearly revealed marks of Antichrist is to " <': Father and Ike >$vn," the Pope, who acknowledges both, cannot be Antichrist. That all the prophecies of the downfall of a church, against wi.ich Christ promised that the gates of hell should never prevail, predicated upon the texts referring to this mysterious character, have failed of their accomplishment, although they were excessively eloquent, and very minute in incidents and circumstantial in details. I have not time to show si ill more how ridiculous the whole theory appeared, but particularly the admission that the reign of Antichrist, the mystery of iniquity was int( rin-ily irorkinfi in the time of St. Paul, and that it was to last l^Ot.) years. Whereas the Papacy, as the gentleman calls our holy religion, has lasted eighteen hundred years, and bids fair for a few more hundreds, brf"iv she reach the consummation of ages ! The numerals on which so much stress was laid by my opponent are the product of every one of fourteen names, and among the rest of God him.itlf ; the winged monsters were used by Ezekiel as thr.s into her fold, are plainly enough marked as the forerunners of Antichrist, who, towards the end of all things, is to war more formidably than ever upon the saints. This is the dread time to which Christ alluded when he said, " When, the S-m nf man will come, think you will he find faith upon the earth ?" (Luke xviii. 8.) That coming event casts its shadow before I Opinion "has supplanted faith. Every mountebank, too idle to work, and having just learning enough to deceive, but too proud himself to learn, scales the walls of the sheepfold, usurps the place of pastor over credulous and deluded congregations, and, unsent and uncommissioned, preaches his own crude fancies for the word of God. They proscribe authority and arrogate a power which no Pope has ever yet pretended to, and make dupes of whom no original can be found among the members of the Catholic Church. They believe an isolated, inconsistent, and often ignorant preacher, whose hand is against every sect, and every sect's hand against him, while Catholics hear the Church of all nations and ages, founded by Christ, and perpetually assisted unto the teaching of all truth by his holy Spirit. It is thus that the Methodists of this city, while Mr. Campbell is fighting against Catholics, as the soi-disant champion of Protestantism, are actually exposing himself and " Campbellisin " in stereotype, at the very office where the late discussion is being published. We have seen how the Episcopalians have spurned his advocacy and eschew his errors and yet he is a Bible Christian ; that is to say, he puts it to the rack and makes it say whatever he pleases. This is the antichristian audacity with the words of Scripture, the mystery of iniquity inwardly working, the volcanic liquefaction melting the hills of human pride, and preparing the grave, the catastrophe to which all sectarianism tends, namely, the abyss of infidelity. ''Think you," says Jesus Christ, "when lie comcth, the Son of man will find faith upon the earth?" 19th. Waiving the arguments from the history of the Church, or tradition, and as far as the test of reason could be applied to revealed religion, I defied my opponent to find so many clear texts of scripture against any one of our tenets, as I could allege in its favor, and although he labored hard, and became quite hoarse, he could not do so. He most egregiously failed, and took to talking about "drops of grace and scuttle-fish, and JMi ! f" 20th. He says : " It is then without law, precedent, or authority to say that the passage ' thin is my body' means that bread is converted into flesh ;" that is to say, that Christ means what he says, and that, too, at the most solemn crisis of his mortal life ! This very argument the Unitarian will retort upon him, for the words " this is my beloved Son," and my opponent must either give up the great dogma of the divinity of Christ, or turn Catholic, to be able to defend it. 21st. He says : "St. Clement, St. Ignatius, and St Irenaeus, and all the other saints in the Roman Calendar (did he reflect that the apostles are of the number V) were born too late to sanction any article of faith, or morals, by their vote." And yet We can no otherwise than "by their determine the most important of all questions for a Protestant What, /.y S>'r/f)t>tre f By the side of the foregoing, place the other horn of the dilemma, viz.: "Luther insisted that the epistle of St. James was not inspired Scripture at all, that it was no better than straw ;" and the gentleman will stay sticking on these two horns until doomsday. " The sun and moon and planets " can neither help nor extricate him. Besides, the foregoing language concerning the holy Fathers is offensive to Episcopalians us well as to Catholics. What will they say of their " champion "? Will they not say that Alexander Campbell was born too late to teach Bible-readers the religion of the Bible ? 22d. My opponent borrowed largely from the Sermons published in England on "/,/ " He granted himself a plenary license to appropriate the " oteriilns of thf, furnign tin(n' g'>'l tr<'f;s," in abusing Catholics on this subject,. But does the gentleman not recollect that then- are Catholic divines who furnish us useful hints for despoiling these new-fangled saints of a few of their rays'.'' Mast I tench him a new lesson in theology on Protestant indulgences grunted for money, or something worse, by all the Protestant sects ? Let us come to the proof, and begin with the jolly patriarch Luther. The Scripture says, that they who break their vows Juive damnation, and that it is better not tovow x Dei," should be considered the voice of God. But if, by this adage, he means every separate congregation must settle their doctrines and discipline for themselves, then the voice of one congregation will be the voice of the Devil, and not of God, or they will both be the voice of God, and contradict one another ! ! 24th. But the most astonishing of all the gentleman's forced admissions remains to be told. He, wuo accused Catholics of being hostile-to free governments, declared General Washington and the officers and soldiers of our revolutionary army and all who aided and abetted them, perjurers ! And as nwjJit can never give right, and there is no prescription where there has been fraud, we are still in a state of perjury and damnable revolt against the mother country, according to the theology of my opponent. I do not believe he thinks so but I drove him, step by step, into the abyss, and, down there, have we heard him make this politico-ecclesiastical profession of faith " Quod optanti mild nemo promittere anderet, en diee attulit ultra." I thought, before the debate began, this would be a poser; but I had no idea he would have so committed himself before the American public, in his zeal to criminate my creed. The different situations in which the Pope was placed, when reference was made to him by the Catholics of England and Germany, when their kings had become tyrants, will be found fully stated in its proper place in the debate. I should never end if I undertook to enumerate all the blunders and vices of the gentleman's logic. They are, many of them, transparent to healthy eyes. Such as this logical phenomenon "The Pagan Emperors and Christian Princes sometimes decided who was the true Pope, when a faction strove to oppose to him an Antipope. But these emperors and kings were not infallible," etc. Now, my friends, it so happened that the Pagan and the Catholic historians, who narrate these facts, take care to state at the same time, as if their hand was guided by the Almighty, for our instruction, that those princes snid, "Let him be Pope whom the majority of the Bishops shall agree to accept." They applied the Catholic principle. In the case of an inferior bishop, they answered, " Let the Bishop of Rome and Italy decide! lie shall be bishop whom tJtcy sliall say." In speaking of the vices of Popes, my worthy opponent always took care to exhibit the darkest side of the picture. I notice this, that, from one case, the audience may learn all, in the instance of Vigilius, who resolutely refused, when made Pope, to do the wrong' which ambition had tempted him (for Satan tempted Christ himself by ambition, when he promised to give him all the kingdoms of the earth and the glory thereof) to promise to the Empress of Constantinople. He suffered every kind of persecution and ill-treatment sooner than acquiesce in her wicked designs. Of the justice of the above remark, we have another illustration in the case of Benedict IX. who was obtruded by his father, Albert, Count of Tusculum, into the Papal chair, at the age of twelve years th> a-je t tclii<-li, Jesus CJirist disputed -trith the doctors in the Y'< tuple, for people then, as now, quoted Scripture for every thing. Now, what are the data of history respecting this matter'.' Why, that the Roman people, clergy, and laity drove him from Rome ; that he retired into a monastery, where he died doing penance for his sins. This considerably alters the question. , My friends. I must bring this letter to a conclusion, although I have yet many things to say to you and the public But they are enlightened judges, and they will not shut their eyes to the truths which this discussion was tlic first fair opportunity afforded them of seeing. All their lives, they have had odious misrepresentations of our Holy Religion in their hands, Peter Parley, Fox's Book of Martyrs, Key to Popery, etc., etc. They will now learn how much they have been imposed upon ; and if they do not become, what I earnestly pray God they may become, sound, practical, and pious Catholics, they will, at least, perceive that it is perfectly possible to be attached to Protestantism, and yet allow that tlie Catholics have been grossly slandered. .When such men as Southey and Waddington, and Parr and Johnson, not to speak of many others, do us justice, no orthodox disbeliever in our doctrines need to find them or their professors less good than they ought to be. Tl.is city has had lucid proofs what good people the Catholic Religion makes : old Mr. M. Scott, Mr. Patrick Reily, Dr. Hugh Bonner, whose honesty, kindheartedness, industrious habits, and unblemished morals are embalmed in the memories of all our fellow-citizens. (I was called to the deathbed of the last mentioned exemplary Christian and skilful physician, while writing this letter. Hence I resume and complete it, barely in time for this week's paper.) " By their fruits you shall know them,'' was one of the tests proposed by the Saviour. We appeal to ours. Never has a polemic been allowed more advantages than I have allowed my opponent. The propositions which he brought into the debate were all of his own choosing. The mode and order of their presentation to the public and in which they were afterwards changed to and fro on the very morn ing <>f the first day's debate were, his ; I did not attack his creed, or any other man's. I waived all the advantages of carrying the war, in military phrase, into the "enemies' territory." I received all his fire, and he affected to consider himself " the great gun of Protestantism." If he received a few ghastly wounds, and every one of them fatal to his whole system, it was in the rewound, or because his jnetal was overcharged. His arguments would prove too much. They would annihilate the Bible, because some of its Patriarchs and Kings, and other personages, were bad men. They would destroy Christianity, lor its professors have not always done it credit. They would destroy the Protestant sects, for they included them who are very much like the rest of their frail fellow-creatures. You have heard this discussion with a calm, a dignified, and an imperturbable confidence in the goodness of our cause, which reflect honor upon you, while they have conciliated the esteem of your fellow-citizens, and enhanced my affection for so good a flock. You showed no signs of exultation, hold no meetings, forestalled no man's opinion of the parties, or the questions at issue ! This was as it ought to be. Continue this virtuous, this truly Christian line of conduct Love sincerely and OTdially your neighbors of every denomination give them good example. Be faithful friends, affectionate husbands, fond fathers, upright business men in a word, be always good Catholics. Praying that God may pour down upon you all his choicest blessings, both in this life and that which is to come I am, etc., Your devoted Bishop, + J. B. PUHCELL. [1]The Actemets were a class of monks in the ancient church, who flourished, par'icularly iu the Bast, during the fifth century. They were, so called becau>'.- they had Divine service pei formed without interruption in their churches. They divided themselves inro three bodies, each of which oilimti'd in turn, and relieved" the others. so that their churches \ve-c iieve.railent, eitherday or nijjht. Wetstein adopts the opinion of Casinxir Oudin, iliut the. (,',.;I-\ A! use it contai, "cry hour of the day and uikt. Proleg. in Nov. Te*r. vul. p. 10. (.Home's Introduction, p~. i*J.)
IT appears that there are a few honest minds which have not been able to see through the ntyxtiji'-ntiiin craftily thrown around the Liguori affair, in the account given of it by the seven >ri*e men of New- York. The following letter, and particularly the short but pithy statement of Mr. Kimiiont. will effectually expose the fraud of the fraudulent, and dispel the mist from the eyes of the sincere and the unsuspecting. We ask for both an attentive perusal.
To THE EDITORS OP THE CATHOLIC TELEGRAPH : GENTLEMEN : Allow me to take this mode of expressing my sense of your kind attention in placing in my hands the last number of the Millennial Harbinger, conducted by A. Campbell. From it I learn that the mortified pride of my late rival in debate suffers him not to hold his peace. I am not surprised at it. To have come off victorious from eleven battles, if we may rely on a statement which you republished from some of your exchange papers, and been utterly discomfited, in a twelfth encounter, is not a light affliction ; it is not one which a man of genius and sensibility could be expected, without a hard struggle and considerable querulousne-ss, to endure. Hence, in settling an account with poor human nature, knowing, as I do, the little weaknesses of which it is susceptible, I would not " tith' the mint find rue " I would not treat it with too much rigor ; nor shall I quarrel, on any account, with my friend, if he seek relief from the oppressive sense of his defeat in Bobs, complaints, and tears. A fresh and dangerous wound should not be too hastily cicatrised. It is better to keep it open and running for a time ; the cure will be the more effectual in the end. Of this, I have no doubt, the gentleman ia well aware ; and 1 therefore give him credit for the course which he pursues. For my own part, I was perfectly willing to leave the result of the controversy to the unbiased judgment of the public, and felt no apprehension as to the nature of the verdict ; but as the gentleman has most unwarrantably patched a pretended substantiation of the disputed passage from Liguori, at the end of the book, in irhit'!i, c.ri'ept by mutual ctmwnt, i>tliinin;n >, after having been, far more for Mr. C.'s interest than for mine, excluded from the printed report of the debate, call for a large proportion of the censure which it is now my turn to inflict. And 1st. OF THE DISPUTED PASS.UJK FROM LIGUORI. I must confess that I was exceedingly shocked by the coarseness :md indelicacy of the charge made, on the pretended authority of the saint, by Mr. Campbell, in presence of so promiscuous an audience, and of so many ladies. He certainly must have felt that his cause was growing desperate when he resorted to such an ungentlemanly stratagem to hide his overthrow. It is painful for me to proceed in the duty of exposing all its foulness ; but I must not shrink from a task which the gentleman's ignorance, whether sincere or counterfeit, has imposed upon me. On his own head the penalty. I beg the reader to have the patience to examine this matter thoroughly, and for this purpose to refer to the first introduction of the imputed doctrine of Liguori, touching clerical concubinage, as found towards the einl of Mr. Campbell's speech, p 218 of the "Debate." The text and the comment there read as follows: " A bishop, however poor lie may be, cannot appropriate to himself pecuniary fines without the license of the apostolical see. But he ought to apply them to pious uses, which the Council of Trent has laid upon nou-resident clergymen, or upon those clergymen who keep nieces," Ligor. Kp. Doc. Mor. p. 444. (Synopsis, p. 294.) " Now, if a priest should keep a niece, it is a very expiable and trifling offence, but .should he marry a wife he must be excommunicated forever ! Thus the Roman Catholic rule of faith treats the Bible, and annuls at pleasure every law and institution of heaven !" The kccyiny of it niiicc is the horrid crime of INCEST, a species of guilt still more atrocious than concubinage, bad as that most assuredly is. I now ask the reader to look mew at the extract from the Moral Theology of Liguori, as endorsed by the seven New-York pardons, or at any other produced by Mr. Campbell daring or since the debate, and see let, whether there is one ir>>nl to make good the infamous allegation that the Catholic Church allows priests to keep uicns, that is to commit, the enormous crime of Incest, on payment of a, fine? I ask for a " yes" or " no." Is such a word to be found in any of the Extracts? And if not, what must he begin to think of my friend's intentions in subs it u - ing for one base crime another far exceeding it in enormity and moral turpitude ? 2d. Where, in the Extract from Liguori, is it called " n-ry exp cud trifl in;/ offence," I will not say, " to keep a niece," but to be guilty of the sin of (oncubinage ? By a reference to p. 219 of the Debate, it will be seen that I emphatically denied that a solitary passage could be found in any part of the works of Liguori, of which there were three editions in my possession, from which it could be either proved or fairly inferred that the Church allowed priests to keep concubines on payment of a line, or that she considered a single sin of that nature as a very >.r; >i< t!>l<- and trifling offence? I now repeat the declaration, and ask again, where, in the extract purporting to be from Liguori, does it appear that the Church looks on such a crime as a trifling, an expiable, or, under any drc u instances whatsoever, an allowable offence? Professor Biggs having seen at a glance what party was likely to triumph by tiie translation of a passage in Liguori's works, to which I referred him, and apprehensive of that storm of indignation which, as I shall presently show, burst from Mr. Campbell on the intrepid and the honest Kinmont, prudently declined to favor the audience with the English version. None of the other five learned and independent citizens whom I took the liberty of calling upon to decide the issue of the fact, heard or cared to accept the invitation. Mr. Kinmont being a professional teacher, favorably known to the community, and, above all, at least as much opposed to Roman Catholicism as to Campbellism, was, all things considered, the fittest person that could be selected to allay the intense anxiety of the audience by the desired translation. But I prefer to narrate the circumstances under which Mr. K. appeared on the stage, in the words of Mr. Campbell, as I find them in the Harbinger of the present month. A more uncalled-for and wanton outrage than what Mr. C. thus gratuitously offers to a gentleman who, to oblige the audience and the parties interested, assumed a task which I was far from believing to b* congenial to his feelings, has, perhaps, never been paralleled in the annals of literary or religious controversy. It only evinces the uncontrollable character of Mr. Campbell's mind, the violence of his passions, and the feebleness of the restraints which Religion and courtesy have been able to impose upon a man of his pretensions to usher in the new gospel light a Millennium of more than human virtue on a benighted and corrupt world. ' The bishop, for effect, called first on Professor Biggs to examine nine volumes of Liguori for the reference. The pro:cssor seeing a clashing between the pages of the edition of the copy on the table and tliat from which Mr. Smith quoted, prudently declined the examination. He then called upon Mr. Kinmont, of high classical standing, and handed to him the volumes in question. He was to have a day to examine and report. In due time, after an emphatic annunciation or two, on the part of the bishop, Mr. Kinmont appears upon the sstage. An awful silence reigns, the Bishop holds the candle erect by the side of the Roman Oracle. A breathless suspense, as when a judge is about to pronounce sentence of death upon some unfortunate criminal, shows how the public mind can be wrought up to intense feeling, to a glowing heat, by a single spark. What an ebullition ! Mr. Kiuinoiit coughs, throws his eloquent eyes around the crowded galleries, and, before he reads the ratal doom Of ' Smith, Slocura and Co.,' and justifies the St. Liguori from r-uch ].n itanc hands, he, by virtue of the authority with which he was inv.- strd by the Baron Swedenborg, Prince of Corresponding Shadows, kindly says, ' These gentlemen (the bishop and myself) are fighting about shadows.' What a consolation! And by candle-light too! How easy then to find them ! After this free-will offering to the illustrious Baron, Mr. Kinmont read as reported by the bishop." To give to this subject all the connection and continuity to enable the reader, having all the i'acts of the case spread out lucidly before him, to conic to a correct conclusion, I here subjoin the remarks of Mr. Kinmoat. " " Mil. KIXMOXT. I am called in my professional character simply, a:id have no part or lot in this debate. (Mr. K. is understood to be a Swedenborgian.) 1 sincerely believe theyarw disputing about shadows, and that both parties are equally in the wrong ; but I will do what I can to assiso in clearing up the difficulty offact, I find it stated in Samuel Smith's work, and marked as a quotation from Liguori under the article headed ' concubines of clergy. ' '' Mr. K. here read from the Synopsis as translated by Smith, and thus continued : " Tliis is the text and commentary as I find it in Mr. Smith's book. This is marked as Liguori, p. 444. If taken from Liguori at all, it is taken from a different edition. The present purports to be a complete copy of the works of Liguori. It bears no mark of being an expurgated edition. It is said to be an edition of ichdt ic is said and written before with additions. On turning to the place where he treats of fines and punishments inflicted for concubinage, he says that priests guilty of this oifeuee were, after two ineffectual reprimands, to be degraded from their functions, lie refers to the Council of Trent, and states what that council decreed ; Smith throws us on Liguori, and Liguori ou the Council of Trent There is nothing in Liguori relating to that subject but this. The council was called about the year 1342. This edition of the decrees of the council was edited by t'.ie council itself. 1 have had an abstract taken which I will read. It would take some time to read the original, and I have a translation made by one of my scholars. I will read this. " In the records of the decrees of the Council of Trent, Session 23th, chap. 14th, there is described the method of proceeding iu the cases of clergy who are guilty of concubinage. " After showing the scandal and enormity of this sin, especially in clergy, whose integrity of life should recommen 1 and impress the precepts of religion and of the church, the sacred synod forbids that any individual holding the clerical office shall keep at his house, or elsewhere, any mistress or unchaste woman, or cohabit with any such, under the penalty of having enforced against him tae sacred canons and ecclesiastical statutes regarding that matter. It is, then, especially enacted that if, when admonished by their superiors, they shall not desist from all such unlawful and forbidden acts, they shall be deprived of the third pnrt of all their revenues and ecclesiastical dues ; and if, still persevering in their course, they shall not even heed a s(ri>>td admonition, they shall be deprived of (ill their ecclesiastical revenue, and suspended from the administration of ecclesiastical functions ; and if, during this suspension, they shall continue obstinate and incorrigible they shall be declared altogether unfit and incompetent to exercise any spiritual office whatever belonging to the church ; unless after a clear and unequivocal amendment of life, the church should think proper to withdraw the disqualification, and allow them to resume their former station of honor and trust. But if, after the resumption of the duties of their office, they should resort to those impure practices which they had abandoned, besides the infliction of the above-named penalties, an act of excommunication with its sword of justice shall cut them off, as dead branches, from the body of the faithful and church of the living God, And it is farther enacted that no appeal or exemption shall hinder the execution of any of these de -rees, but that they shall be summarily executed, at the will of the bishop, after he has ascertained the existence of the enormities. A similar provision in its effect and spirit is made with relation to bishops themselves, but the order of proceeding is different. " This is in substance the provision of the decree of the Council of Trent, Ses. 2o, chap. 14." Is there in this repert of the horror inspired and the dread penalties d< creed by the Council of Trent, as quoted by Liguori, and translated by Mr. Kinmont, aught to give as much as a shadow of truth to the allegation of Mr. Campbell, thfit the Catholic, Church considers the sin of concubinage to b a veryexpiablt and trifling offence, or allvwtUc on payment J'"fi'te"? Is the deprivation of ecclesiastical revenues and dues; is suspension from ecclesiastical functions and from the exercise of any spiritual office whatever belonging to the church ; is an act of excommunication, with its sword of justice cutting them off as dead branches from the body of the faithful and church of the living God, to be considered as evidence that the Catholic Church regards concubinage " a r ri/ c.rpinble and trifling offence, or alloicable on payment of a fine" ? Can any thing be more opposed to the truth, if we accept the bad faith which has made the assertion? The effect of the denouement acted like au electric .-hock throughout the audience. Mr. Campbell, perceiving how strongly the tide of the people's indignation was setting against him, endeavored, in the midst of some confusion, which then, for the first time fiisiifd, to obtain a hearing. I promised to allow him all the extra time which lie should require on the following day, and the meeting adjourned. The public are aware of the steps which the gentleman has since taken to rally his routed forces, and appear once more with a show of strength upon the field. These may be reduced to two. First, the renihYate procured from the seven New-York parsons. Secondly, the certificate subjoined from Mr. Kinmont. Let us see whether either of these, or both, can bolster his tottering cause. So much ignorance and imbecility as are displayed in the letter from Mr. Smith to Mr. Emmons, containing the certificate of the parsons, could scarcely be displayed in the same quantity of matter, on any other subject. It is verbatim tt litt rotim as follows : "The obnoxious passages, then, which the Ri.mMt Bishop of Cincinnati calls heaven and earth to witness are not to be found in the works of Liguori, is the following : " A Bishop, however poor he may be, cannot appropriate to himself pecuniary fines, without the license of the Apostolical See. But he ought to apply them to pious uses. Much less can he apply those fines to any thing else but pious uses, which the Council of Trent has laid upon nonresident Clergymen, or upon those Clergymen itfio keep Concubines." Ligor. Ep. Doc. Mor. p. 444. This passage I will now give in the Latin, as it stands on the 444th page of the 8th volume of the " MORAL THEOLOGY OF ALPHONSCS DE LIGI OHIO," from whose work the extract was made. The words are as follows : " Mulctas pecuuiarias Episcopus sibi addicere non potest, quantumvis pauper sit, sine licentia Sedis Apostolicse [ut ex pluribus arguments S. Congregar, evincitur in Tract De Syu. Dioec. L. 10 C. 10. X. I.J Sed debent in usus pios expendi. Multo Magis non possunt nisi in pios usus npplicari ill mttlctee, quas Tridentinum inflixit Clericis non residentibus, aut coucubinariis. Ligor. Epit. Doc. Mor. p. 444. The words included in the brackets were not translated merely because I did not wish to encumber the " SYNOPSIS'" (as I have observed in the " PREFACE OF THE SYNOPSIS ") with too many of the authorities quoted by Liguori. I shall now, however, translate the above words in the brackets, muclij I know, to the discomfiture of his Reverence the Romish Bishop of Cincinnati. The words in the brackets, therefore, translated, are as follows : ["as is evident from many arguments of the Holy G>ngregation, in the Treatise respecting the Diocesan Synods, Book 10, Chapter 10, Number 2."] Here, we have not only the authority of St. Liguori, but also that of the " Holy Congregation of Rites." Since the subject is now to be probed to the bottom, we will also translate the contracted words which I transferred into the " Synopsis,"as I found them in the original. The words to which I allude are the terminating ones of the disputed passage, as follows : " Ligor. Ep. Doc. Mor. p. 444," which, translated, stands thus: "From the work of Liguori, under the head of ' An Epitome of the Moral Doctrine,' page 444." In order to render the testimony still more striking, it is important to observe that this " Epitome of the Moral Doctrine," to which Liguori alludes, is an epitome compiled by no less a personage than Pope Benedict XIV. , as we are informed by Liguori himself, in the 301st page of the 8th volume of his " Moral TlMology." That the previous Latin words are truly and faithfully the words of St. Liguori, and fairly extracted from 8th volume, p. 444, is duly certified by the following learned gentlemen. " We, the undersigned, have carefully examined the foregoing extracts from the Moral Theology of St. Liguori, and having compared them with the original Latin copy of that work, now before us, we do hereby certify that the said extracts are verbatim, truly and correctly given by Mr. Smith. " In this certificate, we include, particularly, the passage disputed by Bishop Purcell, which is contained in Mr. Smith's "Synopsis," p. 294, par. 7; headed " Concubines of the Clergy." " DUNCAN BAKU, Pastor of the M'Dougal street Baptist Church. JNO. KENNADAY, Pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church. SPENCER H. CONE, Pastor of the, Oliver street Baptist Church. SAMUEL F. B. MORSE, Prof. etc., in the University of the City of New- York. WM. GREEN, JR., Deacon in the Sixth Free Cong. Church, N. T. C. G. PINNEY, Pastor of the Church in the Broadway Tabernacle." The first sentence of this letter contains a nickname and a fault of grammar, evincing, from the outset, the anger and perturbation of the writer's mind. But let these small matters pass. I now repeat the question, where in these extracts is it said that concubinage is a trifdng offence and allowable on payment of a fine ? Read the letter attentively ; examine it minutely ; is there one word in it that sanctions such an imputation ? " Honor thy father and thy mother, that thou mavest be long-lived upon the land " is a divine commandment, from which ir would be just as fair to conclude that we may dishonor fathers and mothers on the condition of being short-lived in the land, as to force upon the above extracts a signification which they were never intended to convey to which they are diametrically opposite. But I have not yet said what, to most readers, as well as to all who have taken an interest in this controversy, will, probably, appear more startling than all that has preceded it, namely, that Smith and the seven New- York parsons and Mr. Campbell have either deceived or been deceived themselves, in representing this extract as taken from the Moral Theology of St. Liguori. IT is NOT TAKEN FROK IT. Mr. Smith knew tliis, bat unwilling to expose either himself or Mr. Campbell, and yet afraid tlsat I would expose both them and their Rev. accomplices, mark what he does. He gets the seven parsons to sign a certificate that the foregoing extracts are verbatim, truly and correctly given by Mr. Smith, from the Moral Theology of Liguori, and yet, in the inexplicable confusion of hie mind, tells us, on the self-same page, that " it is important to obeerve that this ' Epitome of the Moral Doctrine,' to which Liguori ALLUDES, was not composed by Liguori at all I That it was compiled by Pope Benedict XIV. ! ! and that too we are informed/' says Mr. Smith, " by Ligaori himself (which is utterly incorrect) in the 301st page of the 8th volume of his Moral Theology ! ! ! " Now, the Epitome, or Synopsis, was not composed by Liguori, nor yet was it compiled by Benedict XIV., but from the works of Benedict XIV., by a personage different from either, viz., Mansi, Archbishop of Lucca, as, not Liguori, BUT THE PRINTER, who had this Synopsis stitched to the work of Liguori, to make the* eighth volume of a uniform size with the other volumes of the series, informs us (Typographus Lectori) on the 300th (not 301st) page of the 8th volume. Thus it is seen, 1st, what a dishonorable farce has been played off on the parsons and all concerned ; 2d, that the extract is not from Liguori's Moral Theology ; 3d, that such as it now confessedly is, a fragment of a selection made by Mansi from the works of Benedict XIV., stitched by the printer at the end of the Moral Theology, it does not, EITHER IN LETTER OR IN SPIRIT, give the slightest coloring of truth to the odious representation which none but a polluted mind could make, that the Catholic Church looks 011 clerical concubinage as a very expiable and trifling offence, or ever did permit it on payment of a fine. No ! were the erring individuals as dear to her as Lucifer, the brightest angel in Heaven before his fall, was to God, the Catholic Church would pluck him from the sanctuary which he profaned, and from the administration of sacraments which he dared to consecrate with sacrilegious hand, and cast him, as Michael did the rebel angel, " from the body of the faithful, and Church of the living God." The second certificate is that of Mr. Kinmont. The joy which it gave to Mr. Campbell must have been affected : it cannot last forever. What follows must quickly put an end to it. " Since the publication of the debate on the Roman Catholic Religion, between A. Campbell and Bishop Purcell, many persons have asked me several to make the statement in writing whether the Latin passage quoted from Liguori, in the last page in the book (and a translation of which is given), is to be regarded as a tacit permission of the Council of Trent, that clergymen may keep concubines, on the condition of paying a stipulated fine? Most unquestionably it is not so to be regarded ; and any person may satisfy himself on that point, who will turn to pages 319-20, where, on being called on, I gave an abstract of the decree of the Council here referred to by Liguori. If he finds any thing in the decree in the shape of encouragement or connivance, in regard to the offence, his mind must be strangely warped by prejudice. " It might be surmised by the insulated extract, that the Church drew a revenue from the vices of her priesthood, and therefore winked at them ; but read the extract and the decree together, and you will be convinced that the inference is entirely gratuitous. There is certainly nothing in the passage here quoted, or in any one in Liguori (which I could find), to countenance the allegation, that Priests may keep Concuiines by paying a fine, unless it be considered that to punish an offence is to permit or encourage it. A. KINMONT
Grateful, gentlemen, for the use of your columns, I remain, etc.,
+ JOHN B. PURCELL,
Bishop of Cincinnati.
