ANSWER, &c.

MY DEAR SIR,

You have so earnestly requested me to reply to the work lately published by the Rev. G. S. Faber, B. D. against my Discussion Amicale, that I should be truly deserving of reproach if I refused to comply. The only difficulty attending your request arose from my finding it impossible to reconcile the labour required with the occupations of governing a diocese. My necessary resolve was to interrupt the latter for a time, when I reflected on the one hand that the refutation had appeared to you peremptory and conclusive, and understood on the other that my silence would be interpreted by your countrymen as the tacit avowal of a defeat. You assure me that the attack directed in my person against the doctrine I profess, issued from a celebrated

B

pen, from the first even of

your controvertists.

Well, Sir, I congratulate you upon it: the reputation and talents of such an antagonist will only add greater splendour to the truth. I trust that ere long you will see the arguments of your renowned theologian fall before you, one after another, without force or effect; and the proofs developed in my work remained still unshaken after the appearance of his. And then I hope you will yourself conclude that the Faith of the Catholic Church is impenetrable to the shafts of its enemies.

In the first letter you did me the honour to address to me, I was informed that your learned friend had engaged to refute my work; that he purposed following me step by step, and shewing on each point that I had uniformly built upon a vain illusion, by believing myself always supported by the Scriptures and the Primitive Church. This plan was certainly the only methodical one, and at the same time the fairest and best calculated to exhibit the truth with the strongest evidence. You assured me that such was the plan to be adopted by my antagonist. Imagine then my surprise, my dear Sir, when as I looked over his refutation, I found

that instead of proceeding step by step after me, instead of adhering to the arrangement which I had adopted for the various questions, he had preferred abandoning it altogether, displacing the questions, and putting those in front, which ought only to have appeared in the rear. A writer of the penetration you profess to find in him, ought undoubtedly to have been sensible how much strength is acquired by proofs when properly connected with each other, and how much they lose by being separated.

Although Mr. Faber and myself are widely divided in opinion, the same motive has led each to take up the pen-that of convincing your countrymen our great opposition is in our respective objects. Mine was to make them sensible of the reasons which ought to lead them back to unity; his, on the contrary, was to exhibit those which might still farther remove them from it. I strive to persuade to re-union: he endeavours to perpetuate dissension. I consider that you would gain every thing by becoming again what you once were; he thinks, on the other hand, that you have every thing to lose, if you do not remain what you are. Which of us has the more effec

tually pleaded his cause, or rather your cause?

Our judges are those for whom we have written. Our books are the cause to be tried. Let them not consider their authors, but weigh well their respective arguments.

In the comparison I solicit, I see at once that my antagonist has a powerful advantage over me; he expresses himself in the language of the interested party, while I write in a language to which the greater number are strangers. I entreat those nevertheless who understand both, to compare the Discussion Amicale with the Dif ficulties of Romanism, and impartially to weigh our proofs. This labour will no doubt cost them application and patience. I solicit them to bestow it for the honour of truth, in the name of their dearest interests, of their happiness in this world and the next.

Do not expect me, Sir, to enter at length upon all the questions which divide us; upon the motives which establish the truth of the Catholic faith; its conformity, whether with the natural light of human reason, or with the text of Holy Scripture, or the doctrine and practice of the primitive Church: consequently the necessity of adopting it, namely, of renouncing a pretended reformation, equally null in its establish

ment, and erroneous in its doctrine. This would be a labour far exceeding the leisure allowed by my habitual occupations; and would be to recommence what I have already published, and transcribe the Discussion Amicale almost throughout. It is a more simple plan to refer you to that work, by pointing out the volume and page.* You will there find the proofs I have developed on the contested points; I make bold to assure you that they still remain in all their strength, and that the Difficulties of Romanism, however specious it may have appeared to you, has not made any real attack upon them.

I shall confine myself, therefore, to placing again before your view some of the more important articles, with an analysis of the proofs and objections which the Rev. Mr. Faber brings against them. To this I shall dedicate the first and second parts of this Reply: they will suffice, I conceive, to justify my assertions, to rectify the judgment you have formed of them, and to confirm the triumph of the Catholic Creed. In the third part, I shall take a review

*These will be cited from the more correct edition, pnblished in Paris, by Potey, No. 46. Rue du Bac. 1824.