HARVARD COLLEGE APR 25 1888 LIBRARY John Harvey Treat. Entered according to Act of Congress, in the Year 1844, in the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the Southern District of New-York. STEREOTYPED BY VINCENT L. DILL, EDITOR'S PREFACE. No words are here needed to justify the republication of a book, so valuable in itself, so urgently demanded by the exigences of the time, as the "Apology" for the one Catholic Church, from the able pen of the late Bishop of New-York, which first appeared in 1807. The republication has been delayed in the hope that some skilful hand might be found to divest it somewhat of its personalities without diminishing its force; a task, which, upon examination, has proved impracticable. The circumstance, however, is hardly to be regretted, as the "strictures and denunciations" which called forth this triumphant defence of the truth, have recently been given to the public, in all the offensiveness of their original forms. No alteration, therefore, has been made in this second edition of the "Apology;" and no other addition than a few notes and an index by the Editor. New-York, Nov. 8th. 1843. L. S. I. PREFACE. THE writer of the following letters and his opinions having been pointedly and violently assailed in the Christian's Magazine, he is reluctantly compelled to obtrude himself upon the public attention. He thinks he has a particular claim upon all those who have taken up unfavourable views of those opinions which that Magazine assails, for a candid perusal of his defence. In that work he has been solemnly arraigned "at the bar of public criticism." The readers of that publication cannot, therefore, he conceives, consistently with their regard to justice, their love of truth, or the claims of duty, refuse to hear him in his defence. It is the first dictate of justice, to give an accused person a patient and candid hearing before judgment is passed on him. The impartial pursuit of truth cannot be compatible with an examination of only one side of a disputed question. And they who will place themselves for a moment in the situation of the individual whom that Magazine denounces as holding opinions of "deep-toned horror," will at once feel it a sacred duty to admit him to repel the accusation. They are required so to do by that law of supreme obligation, "Do unto others as ye would that they should do unto you." The writer of these letters disclaims from the heart all feelings of hostility to the many pious and respectable individuals, some of whose religious principles may differ from his own. Difference of opinion on important religious topics ought not to break the ties |