SECOND LETTER ΤΟ N. WISEMAN, D.D. ON THE FOUNDATION OF THE ROMISH DOCTRINES OF SATISFACTIONS, INDULGENCES, PURGATORY, AND SUFFRAGES FOR THE DEAD. BY THE REV. WILLIAM PALMER, M.A. OF WORCESTer college, Oxford. OXFORD, JOHN HENRY PARKER; J. G. F. AND J. RIVINGTON, LONDON. A SECOND LETTER, &c. SIR, You have yourself commenced the present controversy, and can therefore have no reason to complain if I pursue the path which you have opened. You have afforded an opportunity for entering on a discussion and refutation of doctrines commonly and authoritatively taught in your Communion; an an opportunity which seems to bear the impress of a Providential design, and of which I avail myself with the utmost joy, under the expectation that, amidst the excitement which evidently pervades the minds of Romanists in this country, and the spirit of enquiry which exists amongst them, and which cannot in all instances be repressed, the doctrines of Scripture, of Tradition, of the Roman Church herself (rightly understood), may be heard amongst you—heard, it may be, with rage and opposition by some-but still heard, and felt to be unanswered-heard perhaps with docility by others, and made the means of their extrication from a mass of dangerous and pernicious error, if not of their restoration to that way of salvation, the true Church of Christ, from which they are at present, under the mysterious will of God, severed. In the name of Christian truth and sincerity I hope, that no measures may be taken by those who are in authority amongst Romanists, to check the spirit of discussion which has lately so much distinguished them. If Romanism be the truth, it will not shrink from an examination into its merits. If it be conscious of strength, it will courageously meet its opponents in the field of controversy. There will not be any attempt to stifle discussion and enquiry, as was the case lately, when the authorities of your Communion at Oscott, interfered to prevent the continuance of private correspondence between a clergyman in this University of the highest Church principles, and the Hon. and Rev. Mr. Spencer, which was on the point of bringing back the latter unhappy individual to the fold of Christ from which he had strayed. This most valued convert of yours came to this University brimfull of expectation that he should obtain some valuable accessions to your ranks-and he narrowly escaped being converted himself to the very Church he came to assail. There cannot be any impropriety, any spirit of unprovoked aggression, in continuing my comments on the errors and superstitions of your Church, when it is remembered, that the Press has, for years, been teeming with the controversial publications of Romanists, inviting attention to the pretended merits of their religion, and assailing those of the Catholic Church in England; when Societies are instituted with the avowed intention of perverting the faithful to your schism; when you are loud in your boastings of the success of your system of proselytism; when you seem to "live, and move, and have your being" in assailing our Religion by every method temporal as well as spiritual; and when no views, however moderate, however orthodox, however harmonizing with those of Catholic Antiquity, can protect their advocates from your interference, and from your controversial attacks. May it not be justly enquired, Is there "not a cause ?" Is it not time to expose your sophistries, to hold up your contradictions to the world, and to drag your errors and superstitions forth into the face of day, and assail them with the weapons of Truth? You have vainly imagined, that because the study of Catholic Antiquity has recently acquired a new importance-because men are no longer satisfied with superficial and popular systems of divinity, but view Scripture in its own light, reflected in the writings of the holy Martyrs and Saints of old; and because the primitive Church in all its parts has become the object of admiration and the model for imitation-(not always with strict |