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"Man, of his own nature, is sinful and disobedient to God, WITHOUT
ANY SPARK OF GOODNESS in him, without any virtuous or godly motion."
-Church of England, Hom. Whitsun.

"We can by no means allow-that of our own nature we are WITHOUT
ANY SPARK OF GOODNESS in us, and that man has no ability or disposi-
tion whatever, either to faith or good works."-Dr. Tomline, Bishop of Lincoln.

"To be impugned from without, and BETRAYED FROM WITHIN, is certainly
the worst condition, that either Church or State can fall into:-the Church of
England has had experience of both."-Dr. South.

LONDON:

PRINTED FOR GALE AND CURTIS, PATERNOSTER-ROW.

TO HIS GRACE

THE

LORD ARCHBISHOP OF CANTERBURY,

I

MY LORD,

BEG leave to approach your Grace with all the respect due to your high and important office. To go beyond this, and use language even bordering on adulation, would be equally abhorrent to my feelings to offer, and unbecoming your character to receive.

I am aware that it is unusual for your Grace to be thus addressed through the medium of the press, by an individual who has not the honour of being known to you, either personally or by But I trust the nature of the subject will either furnish a sufficient apology, or render apology altogether unnecessary.

name.

The possession of the same common nature* has ever been considered sufficient to interest every thoughtful and benevolent man in any

* Homo sum: humani nihil a me alienum puto. Terentii Heautontimor.

a

event that can affect the happiness of mankind. And surely, no man who aspires to something beyond the mere name of Christian himself, can think any apology necessary for the meanest of his brethren feeling or expressing the most lively interest in the discussion of any question, or the occurrence of any event, which involves the welfare or injury of the Christian Church in general, or of any considerable portion of it in the nation to which he belongs. Here “the rich and "the poor meet together," invested with similar privileges, endued with similar sympathies, and laid under similar obligations by "the Lord, the "Maker of them all."

If a fortress be assailed from without, and some of the officers within at the same time, whether intentionally or inadvertently, pursue measures calculated to impair the strength of the garrison and to advance the interests of the foe, the governor will not refuse to listen to the suggestions of the meanest individual on the subject of the common safety. And when the Church is in similar danger, no situation is too obscure for any one to sound the alarm; nor on such a subject can any one be more properly addressed than the Primate of all England, next in authority to the sovereign, the first spiritual governor of the Church by law established, the official guardian of the purity of its faith, as well as the regularity of its discipline.

1 Cor. xii. 25, 26.

b Prov. xxii. 2.

When I say the Church is in danger, I refer, not to its civil establishment, but to its religious principles, not to its ample revenues, but to its ancient doctrines. I mean the Church as pourtrayed in the Articles, Homilies, and Liturgy, in perfect consistence with which are the writings of its Fathers and Founders, as ought to be the testimonies of all its subsequent ministers. And is there not cause for this alarm of danger, when one of the Bishops, who has successively filled two Sees, and who, by virtue of another office, occasionally occupies the pulpit in the largest Cathedral in the land, publicly avows and maintains various principles in direct contrariety to the explicit declarations of all the Public Formularies of the Church? When in addition to this, he labours by every effort of argumentation and every manoeuvre of sophistry, to impose upon numerous passages in those formularies a sense altogether different from "the true usual "literal meaning" of the language employed in them; when in defiance of the clearest evidence, he asserts the sentiments of the Compilers of those formularies to have been contrary to what their own writings still extant, as well as the testimony of all contemporary historians, prove them to have been; and moreover attempts to asperse the characters of all who have held the real doctrines of the Church, by representing them as the followers of Simon Magus, and class ing them with the wildest heretics, and insinuat

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