thoughts and feelings returned when I was seated at this employment in that same pleasant apartment which had formerly been the scene of so many truant and yet most profitable hours: and though, as Ali says in his proverbs, "the remembrance of youth is a sigh," I had the comfort of experiencing that it is not accompanied with regret when we look back upon years which have been neither idly nor ill spent.

PROPER STYLE OF CONTROVERSY.

I PURSUE your arrangement, Sir, because my intention of making this volume an answer to yours in all its parts, may be facilitated by making it as far as possible its counterpart. That order leads me to notice your remarks upon the spirit in which controversies of this nature ought to be conducted. Just as I had come to this part of the subject, the British Catholic Association passed its vote of " thanks to Mr. Charles Butler, for his able refutation of the calumnies heaped upon the (Roman) Catholic Church by the Poet Laureate, Mr. Southey, in his Book of the Church." The thanks of that body, Sir, you have well deserved: but it is somewhat premature to decree a triumph before the field is won, and while too the antagonist is in full heart and strength. As to the charge of calumny, whether that will rest upon the Book of the Church, or the Roman Catholic Association, remains to be proved. Dr. Milner is included in the same vote of thanks: whatever notice I may think proper to bestow upon his obser

vations, will be included therefore in this reply; but I must premise that the Titular Bishop is not included in those acknowledgements of courtesy and expressions of respect, which are made with perfect sincerity towards you.

You state,* Sir, in the words of Father Jones, “a Benedictine, called in religion Father Leander a Sancto Martino," the points both of discipline and doctrine wherein the Church of England and that of Rome agree and upon this you observe that, "when there is so near an approximation in religious creeds, there certainly should be an equal approximation in Christian and moral charity; an equal wish to soothe, to conciliate, to find the real points of difference very few, and to render them still fewer; and an equal unwillingness on each side to say, or to write, any thing unpleasing to the feelings of the other." To the first part of this observation I assent most fully upon the rest I must distinguish.

The points of agreement are so many and so important, that the members of the one Church who will of acknowledge those of the other to be their fellow Christians, show themselves to be deficient in the fundamental virtue of Christian

* Page 2.

charity. In the general dealings of society, and in the intercourse between nation and nation, it behoves us to remember these, and these only. But the points of difference are not less important; under certain circumstances, indeed, they become more so; and therefore in concerns of great moment, whether in private or public life, the points of difference are those which are mainly to be considered:... for example, in case of a proposed marriage between a Roman Catholic and a Protestant,... or of a proposed legislative measure which would give the Roman Catholics political power in a Protestant country. Is it not obvious that in either of these cases the party which has something to gain will endeavour "to conciliate, and to represent the real points of difference as very few?" and is it not a matter, both of duty and of common prudence on the other, to inquire, carefully, whether those differences may not, in their consequences, occasion, in the first case, individual unhappiness, and, in the second, national inconvenience and danger?

With regard to saying or writing anything on either side, unpleasing to the feelings of the other;...how, Sir, upon such a subject is this to be avoided? A conciliatory and unimpassioned tone might easily, as well as fitly, be

maintained, if the controverted matter were merely theological or speculative; but I have to deal with historical facts,... and facts, too, some of them so appalling in themselves and in their consequences, that they cannot take possession of the mind, without calling forth "thoughts that breathe and words that burn." I could wish, earnestly wish, that these letters "might not contain a sentence or expression at which the very amiable and able person to whom they are addressed could take offence;" and as relating to himself, I dare promise that they shall not. But as they regard the subject, no such hope can, without folly, be entertained. Like yourself, Sir, "what* I consider to be truth, I must tell;" and much as, like yourself, I might desire "tot tell it in a manner which may show sincere respect for those whose different notions it opposes," it would be dissembling pitifully, were I to pretend respect for a Church whose corruptions and practices I have been led to investigate and expose. The history of this country, and more especially its ecclesiastical history, is not one of those subjects which a writer may treat and "meddle only with toothless truths." You say, that "superstition and

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