the Church, especially of any Protestant. It is hard to conceive any Protestant who could not know what the Church teaches, if he wished. His very Protestantism brings the Church to his notice, and in its history and doctrines tells him so much of her, that he is inexcusable, if he do not go farther, and ascertain what she is and what she requires. If he does go farther, and ascertains what she teaches, he is not in ignorance; and if he then does not believe her, he is a heretic; and heresy, the blessed Apostle assures us, is a deadly sin. At any rate, whatever may be said in the case of some, the plea of invincible ignorance cannot avail our young friend. He is an educated man ; has studied theology; and he professes to be a minister of the Gospel; he knows there is a church called the Catholic Church, and he has had ample means of knowing what she teaches. His position outside of her, then, if she be the true Church, as she most assuredly is, must be not a little perilous, and altogether unjustifiable.

3. Our young Protestant minister says, it is "utterly wicked and absurd to denounce any penalty beforehand upon any result deliberately and candidly arrived at"; for there must be in "reasoning, between man and man, no threats introduced, or any extraneous element whatever, to influence the determination." In reasoning between man and man, we concede it ; but this is not a question between man and man, but between man and his Maker; and the threats or consequences of believing or not believing are intrinsic, not extraneous, elements of the question to be decided. Between man and man, all reasoning, all faith even, is free, and no man has the right to call another to an account for his faith, whatever it may be; for we recognize no human authority in matters of faith. Before God, too, man is free to believe or not to believe, as it seems to him good; but not free to hope the same recompense, whether he believes or disbelieves. Almighty God has promised eternal life to the believer, and threatened the unbeliever with eternal death. "He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; but he that believeth not shall be condemned." St. Mark, xvi. 16. You can believe or not, as you choose. If you choose not to believe, eternal death will be your doom; if you choose to believe, you may aspire to eternal life. This is an integral part of that very word you are to believe or not believe, into the credibility or incredibility of which you are to inquire. Where is the wickedness in proposing such a word, or in us in telling you that God has revealed such a word, and in urging

you to inquire if we are not right in telling you so? Here is no extraneous element introduced to influence the determination, for nothing is introduced not integral in the question itself. The indignation expressed, then, is misplaced.

Moreover, our correspondent proceeds on a supposition which we cannot grant him. He supposes that men may deliberately and candidly inquire into the authority of the Church and come to different results, or that the authority of the Church is a matter about which men may honestly differ in opinion. We do not concede this. Faith is not a matter of opinion; and there can be, after proper examination, no honest difference of opinion about it. The Almighty has not committed the indiscretion of making a revelation for us, and of leaving it so uncertain and doubtful, that men may honestly differ from one another as to what it is. Such indiscretion, or such want of foresight and proper adaptation of means to ends, we might look for in weak and imprudent men, but not in the all-wise and all-powerful God. He, if he has made a revelation at all, must have made it to be believed; and also have made the means of believing it so accessible, so certain and sure, that no one, with ordinary prudence, can honestly seek and not find. If you examine honestly, meekly, candidly, in an humble and reverential spirit, the only proper spirit in which to inquire at all, you will infallibly find that the Catholic Church is the living and authoritative Church of God; for, if you so inquire, you will be submissive to the grace which is given you, and that will subdue your moral repugnance to the Church, and open the eyes of your understanding to her claims. We tell you this, and you have no right to dispute us till you have so inquired, or till you bring us an instance of some one having so inquired, and failed. But if you inquire with a proud and contracted spirit, with haughty reliance on your own infallibility and self-sufficiency, resolutely resisting divine grace, you will not find, and will not deserve to find; for you will inquire amiss, in a disposition, not to receive, but to reject the truth. And here is the reason why so many who think they are honest inquirers do not find. At bottom you will always find exorbitant pride, an overweening self-conceit, though, it may be, aping the form of humility. There is a want of perfect ingenuousness, of true earnestness, of a loving and reverential disposition. Then, again, thousands who say they inquire do not inquire. How many of those Protestants who condemn Catholicity in such unmeasured terms have ever sat one hour for instruction at the

feet of those authorized to give it? He who would know the Catholic faith should always seek instruction from the living teacher authorized by the Church to teach, and he will never have inquired properly till he has done so.

4. The writer of the letter professes himself to hold to the Catholic Church; so firmly rooted in all men is that article of the creed, "I believe in the holy Catholic Church," and so difficult is it for any one even to conceive the possibility of being a Christian without acknowledging the Catholic Church. The Church hovers over them; and in their wildest extravagances some shadow of her majesty is always present to their hearts and imaginations,—a fact worth meditating long and well. The writer says, the "Catholic Church comprises all who share the faith and salvation of Jesus Christ." Another precious admission, which involves the whole doctrine of exclusive salvation; for if the Church comprises all who share that faith and salvation, then none whom the Church does not comprise do or can share the faith and salvation of Jesus Christ,— and what more do we say, when we say faith and salvation are not possible out of the communion of the Catholic Church?

But who are these who share the faith and salvation of Jesus Christ? The members of the Catholic Church. Agreed. Are they members because they share the faith and salvation, or do they share the faith and salvation because members? If you say the latter, you must determine the Church, and become a member of it, before you can share the faith and salvation, or be truly a Christian; which is the Catholic doctrine. Then what, where, or which is the Catholic Church, or church of which you must be a member in order to share the faith and salvation of Jesus Christ? Here is a very significant question, and which must be answered first of all. If you say the former, that you are members because you share the faith and salvation, which is what we suppose you would say, then you must hold that you get the faith and salvation without the Church. Now, how without the Church do you contrive to get the faith and salvation? How do you determine what they are? How do you determine what are the means of eliciting the faith and securing the salvation? These, you will perceive, are for you, as well as for us, fundamental questions, and must be answered in some way. How do you answer them? and how establish the soundness and sufficiency of your answer? Here is a difficulty you must not evade, but one which you must meet at the very threshold.

You may answer us, as your Liberal Christian friends in general do, that Christianity is a life, the life of Christ; and that he who truly lives this life has all that is or can be required of him. Agreed, again. We say Christianity is a life, — the life of Christ, and that all who truly live it have all that they need, either for this world or for that which is to come. But can this life be begotten and lived out of the communion of the Catholic Church? Here is the question. You assume it can, and that you or some of you live it, and by virtue of the fact of living it are brought into the Church. This is a very pretty theory, but will you just favor us with its proofs? You demand of us proofs; do not take it unkindly, then, if we demand proofs of you. We suspect, however, that this is a point on which you do not happen to have any proofs to adduce. You make an assumption, which is demanded by the exigencies of your condition, we admit, but for which you have not the shadow of any authority. You reason in this way: “We who are out of the Church do or may live the true life, and therefore we do or may live the true life out of the Church; and by living it out of the Church, come, ipso facto, into the Church." This is Liberal Christian logic, and yet it is the best you have. We utterly deny your assumption. None of you who are outside the Roman Catholic Church do live, approach, or even truly conceive the Christian life. The Christian life is not in the natural order; it is the supernatural life of justice, which places him who lives it on the plane of a supernatural destiny; and it is not and cannot be lived without supernatural faith, "the just shall live by faith," and supernatural faith is not possible without the Church. Faith is not, as our Liberalist divines hold, something in addition to the Christian life, but that in which the Christian life begins, and without which it cannot be. We have seen that the proper natural human life begins and must begin in an act of faith, in a pure simple affirmation; so in the order of grace, or the supernatural order, the proper Christian life can begin only by a primitive act of supernatural faith, a pure affirmation, which affirms in one and the same act both the antecedent and consequent. For remark well - the Christian life is not a continuation and development of our natural human life, but a new life, which for the individual begins absolutely de novo, and therefore demands necessarily a “new birth," properly a birth; and therefore all the necessary conditions of birth in general, inconceivable in the special case of the Christian birth without the Church, the Immaculate Bride of the Lamb, the joyful MOTHER of all the faithful.

Nothing is more absurd than to make the children anterior to the mother, and to assume that the spiritual children procreate their own spiritual mother, as is assumed when it is assumed the Christian life may be begotten and lived without the Church, and that the Church is simply the offspring of those in whom it is so begotten, and who so live it. This reverses the whole order of both nature and grace. We cannot, then, accept your Catholic Church, nor concede that you, in the remotest degree, while out of the Roman Catholic Church, live the Christian life, or share the faith and salvation of Jesus Christ. We concede you many amiable qualities, many natural virtues, which in their place are respectable; we grant that many of you do all that can be really expected of simple human nature, wounded as it has been by the Fall; we even concede you all the real worth of character you claim for yourselves; but we see in it no approach to the Christian life; and it is because you cannot be born again and live the Christian life out of the Church that you are so earnestly entreated to come into her communion. It is not that we underrate your virtues, but that you underrate the Christian life, when you imagine that you are or can be living it.

Our correspondent thinks that the epithet "Roman" applied to the Church neutralizes the epithet Catholic. We think differently. Unity is essential to catholicity; for that thing which you call catholic must be one, or it cannot be catholic or universal, but will be multiple, and therefore particular. The unity must be predicable in the same order, too, as the catholicity or universality. If you assume a church, catholic in the visible order, as you do when you speak of it as extended or capable of extension in space, you must predicate unity of it in the same order, or what you term catholic will not be catholic, but a collection or aggregate of particulars. We commend this fact to the learned and metaphysical New York Churchman, and to our "Reformed Catholics" of the Anglican and Protestant Episcopal sect generally, who pronounce the word catholic with so much emphasis, and who would fain persuade us that they are so innocent as really to believe that the world will recognize the Catholic Church in an aggregation of particular communions, each distinct and independent of the other, and bound together by no visible bond of unity. If your unity is invisible, your catholicity must also be invisible, and to assert a visible catholic church with no visible unity is nothing more nor less than a simple contradiction in terms. These "Reformed Catholics," who would be much more effectually