itu Angelorum natura puterior, formosior et ameni praedicandæ cælestes et terrenæ linguæ Afficiunt. Quem usum ad sanctissimæ quoque a monumenta atque Ecclesiastica officia sua veluti isse traductum, et in illis passim recurrere, amplitodominari nemo ignorat, cum in illis Deipara invoCt prædicetur veluti una incorrupta pulcritudinis ara, veluti rosa semper vigens, et undequaque purisOnnocentia, quae numquam fuit læsa, et altera Heva, oaet semper immaculata semperque beata ac celebretur

Emmanuelem perperit. il igitur mirum si de Immaculata Deiparæ Virginis Sceptione doctrinam judicio Patrum divinis litteris signatam, tot gravissimis eorundem testimoniis tradim, tot illustribus venerandæ antiquitatis monumentis pressam et celebratam, ac maximo gravissimoque Ecclee judicio propositam et confirmatam tanta pietate, reliione et amore ipsius Ecclesiæ Pastores, populique fideles uotidie magis profiteri sint gloriati, ut nihil iisdem ulcius, nihil caríus, quam ferventissimo affectu Deiparam Virginem absque labe originali conceptam ubique colere, renerari, invocare, et prædicare. Quamobrem ab antiquis emporibus Sacrorum Antistites, Ecclesiastici viri, reguares Ordines, ac vel ipsi Imperatores et Reges ab hac Apostolica Sede enixe efflagitarunt, ut Immaculata sanctissimæ Dei Genitricis Conceptio veluti catholicæ fidei dogma definiretur. Quae postulationes hac nostra quoque ætate iteratæ fuerunt ac potissimum felicis recordationis Gregorio XVI. Prædecessori Nostro, ac Nobis ipsis oblatæ sunt tum ab Episcopis, tum a Clero sæculari, tum a Religiosis Familiis, ac summis Principibus et fidelibus populis.

Nos itaque singulari animi Nostri gaudio hæc omnia probe noscentes, ac serio considerantes, vix dum licet immeriti arcano divinæ Providentia consilio ad hanc sublimem Petri Cathedram evecti totius Ecclesiæ gubernacula tractanda suscepimus, nihil certe antiquius habuimus, quam pro summa Nostra vel a teneris annis erga sanctissimam Dei Genitricem Virginem Mariam veneratione, pietate et affectu ea omnia peragere, quæ adhuc in Ecclesiæ votis esse poterant, ut Beatissimæ Virginis honor augeretur, ejusque prærogative, uberiori luce niterent. Omnem autem maturitatem adhibere volentes constituimus peculiarem VV. FF. NN. S. R. E. Cardinalium religione, consilio, ac divinarum rerum scientia illustrium Congregationem, et viros ex clero tum sæculari, tum regulari, theologicis disciplinis apprime excultos selegimus, ut ea omnia, quæ Immaculatam Virginis Conceptionem respiciunt, accuratissime perpenderent, propriamque sententiam ad Nos deferrent. Quamvis autem Nobis ex receptis postulationibus de definienda tandem aliquando Immaculata Virginis Conceptione perspectus esset plurimorum Sacrorum Antistitum sensus, tamen Encyclicas Litteras die 2 Februarii anno 1849 Cajeta datas ad omnes Venerabiles Fratres totius catholici orbis Sacrorum Antistites "misimus, ut, adhibitis ad Deum precibus, Nobis scripto etiam significarent, quæ esset suorum fidelium ferga Immaculatam Deipara Conceptionem pietas, ac devotio, et quid ipsi præsertim Antistites de hac ipsa definitione ferenda sentirent, quidve exoptarent, ut, quo fieri solemnius posset, supremum Nostrum judicium proferremus.

Non mediocri certe solatio affecti fuimus ubi eorundem Venerabilium Fratrum ad Nos responsa venerunt. Nam iidem incredibili quadam jucunditate, lætitia, ac studio Nobis rescribentes non solum singularem suam, et proprii cujusque cleri, populique fidelis erga Immaculatum Beatissimæ Virginis Conceptum pietatem, mentemque denuo confirmarunt, verum etiam communi veluti voto a Nobis expostularunt, ut Immaculata ipsius Virginis Conceptio supremo Nostro judicio et auctoritate definiretur. Nec minori certe interim gaudio perfusi sumus, cum VV. FF. NN. S. R. E. Cardinales commemoratæ peculiaris Congregationis, et prædicti Theologi Consultores a Nobis electi pari alacritate et studio post examen diligenter adhibitum hanc de Immaculata Deipare Conceptione definitionem a

FORMERLY RECTOR OF TRINITY, NATCHEZ, LATE DOMESTIC
CHAPLAIN TO THE EARL OF SHREWSBURY.

First American Edition.

PHILADELPHIA:

PUBLISHED BY HERMAN HOOKER,

S. W. CORNER OF EIGHTH AND CHESNUT STS.

1852.

A LETTER,

&c.

DEAR LORD SHREWSBURY,

THE friendship with which you have honoured me for more than fifteen years, from the day when your kind courtesy first brought you to my modest apartment in "Via della Croce," and subsequently led you to stand sponsor for me upon entering the Church of Rome, which at last placed me in the confidential relationship of your domestic chaplain and in close intimacy,-a friendship proclaimed so honourably to me in my absence, and ever proved so affectionately at home, and which, on an occasion of great affliction, supported me by a sympathy given with manly frankness, but with all a woman's gentleness, such a friendship, deeply felt and dearly remembered, imposes it on me, almost as a duty, to offer you publicly, if not an apology, at least the reasons, for my renouncing, as much against my feelings as your own, not only a position of much happiness and many worldly advantages, but the religion, which at one-and-thirty years of age I had deliberately chosen, and to which you solemnly took upon you to answer for my fidelity. You doubtless will remember my printed letter to my Bishop, when I gave up my preferment in the Protestant Church in America, long before taking any more decisive step. You will remember the principle which lay at the bottom of all my dissatisfaction with Protestantism, and what dear Bishop Otey called, my horror of the restless spirit of democracy in Church and State.

I am not yet ashamed of that principle, however I may be of the conclusions to which it led me. Nor am I ashamed of having been deluded into thinking purity and charity to be synonymous with morality in a Church which showed me such living examples as Gwendaline Talbot and Carlo Odescalchi.

Hierarchical subordination, whether in State or Church, in a kingdom or in a family, I still consider the only basis for a com

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munity to be built upon; the tranquillity of order, the only tranquillity that deserves the name. And the virtues of the angelic persons I have named, (and of others I could mention, not yet gone to their reward, seen so nearly as I saw them, were enough to establish Rome's claim to sanctity, if they had only been Rome's real coinage. But they were not. They were the pure gold that counterfeiters show you to make their base coin current.

Facts, morcover, so often a fatal source of error, from being misunderstood or imperfectly comprehended, had previously helped to lead me astray in the great matter of religion. I saw the masses of slaves around me apparently beyond the reach of the Protestant Church; while, at no great distance, on the banks of the very same river, the Roman Catholic clergy had over them absolute control, and the pious white laity of their communion thought it no shame to kneel side by side with the negroes at the foot of a common altar. I saw in the Church of Rome not only an ability to conquer, as I supposed, unto God, but an ability to control effectively and to satisfy the spirits of those it conquered. I saw a wonderful unity of dogma and, as I supposed, a logical congruity in the system built upon it.

But what I saw required a constituted "power" as well as a commission, a human Head with a divine authority; and such an authority, an authority which could make doubt, anathema,-to be just or valid, must be infallible. I wanted supernatural attributes embodied visibly. I started with wholly mistaken notions of the Church of Jesus Christ on earth. I was more than half a Romanist before I ever dreamed of Rome. And when, at last, I so avowed myself to myself, it was upon no examination of such dogmas as transubstantiation, the merit of good works, or the like; it was in submission to a polity which I believed to be divinely established upon earth and to stand upon the same level as the highest dogma. I became a Roman Catholic wholly and solely on the ground of there being amongst men a living, infallible interpreter of the mind of God, with divine jurisdiction and with authority to enforce submission to it. Well do I remember the elaborate argument of one of the most distinguished-if not the most distinguished-of the canonists of Rome, which convinced me of the right and duty of papal persecution. And I defy any honest man of ordinary capacity to resist the argument, if he once acknowledge the lowest pretensions of the Papal Church. To burn heretics whenever practicable and expedient, (and it is now inculcated on the Roman Catholic children of England by command of Dr. Wiseman,) is as binding as abstinence upon a Friday.*

*A proposition denying the right of the Papal Church to do so, was solemnly condemned by Pius VI. Thefts, adulteries, murders, committed by

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