time? The gentleman charges me with having dared to change the gender of the word signifying these, from neuter to masculine. Does he not know that the word TOUTv is both masculine and neuter? It is generally applied to persons, though I do not deny that it may be applied to things. The Greek therefore leaves us as much in the dark

as ever.

We find a parallel passage in the new Testament. "He that loveth father and mother more than me is not worthy of me." Matth. x. 37. Here the words are ineg que (more than me). E is in the accusative case TOUTOV is in the genitive case. But, my friends, this has nothing to do with the question at issue; it does not make for or against my argument, whether we adopt the natural, or the gross interpretation. Christ said to Peter, "lovest thou me." He demands an assurance of his faithful attachment. Peter three times replies in the affirmative, and thrice the command is repeated to him, “feed my lambs," "feed my sheep." The argument is entirely independent of either construction referred to. Hence I maintain that Peter was established, head of the church by Jesus Christ. The "rock," the "keys," the prayer, the prophecy of the place and manner of Peter's death, which we read in the same chapter, all prove it.

The gentleman says that a doctrine should be so clear, that it could not possibly be contested. This is really too soft for a man of Mr. C.'s strong mind. What is there so clear that it could not possibly be contested. Does not the universe tell as clearly as Genesis, that God created the heavens and the earth, and is not that contested? What doctrine more clearly revealed in the bible, or more important than the divinity of Christ? and is not that contested? and by one of the most learned societies of christians in the United States, I mean the Unitarians. They read the bible and they think it impiety and blas phemy to call Jesus Christ God!

It was essential in the Jewish institution that there should be a high priest. If the old institution was a type of the new, where is the anti-type? And if the headship of the high priest of the Jews derogated not from the authority of God the Father, who was pleased to be their special ruler, neither does the headship of the pope derogate from the supreme authority of God the Son, Jesus Christ, who acquired the church by his blood and established Peter its visible head on earth, to exercise the office during his natural life, and by his successors for ever.

My friend flies from scripture to tradition, and from a father of the early age to a modern historian. I will pledge myself to this enlightened assembly that the supremacy of Peter and of Peter's successors in the Roman see can be abundantly attested by an appeal to tradition and I may here observe that Baronius has been misrepresented. He does not say it is not improbable that Peter fixed his see at Rome of this he knew there was no doubt; but that it was not improbable he fixed his see there by the express command of Christ, which is, the intelligent hearer will perceive, quite a different proposition. Peter acted as the other apostles did, under the guidance of inspiration, in the choice of the scene of his pastoral toils; but Baronius thinks it not improbable that Christ expressly commanded him to select Rome for his-There he could "TEACH ALL NATIONS." Mr. C. asserts that for a thousand years there is not a voice heard to attest

this fact. My friends, not one voice, but five hundred attest it. There is one loud chorus of testimony among the fathers and historians, giving almost universal consent to the doctrine. Some obscure individuals may have doubted, or denied it in late years. They are but motes on the surface of the overwhelming stream of testimony. Again my friend went back to the bible. He read of the high priest-but he cannot open the bible without seeing his own refutation written there— almost the first words that struck my ears were, the dresses and anointing of the priests. Where are such things done among Protestants? Do they not make void the scriptures? Anointing the clergy and the sick, commanded by the bible-rejected by Protestants-superseded by the fashions of the day! Again: Aaron was separated that he should bless and sanctify-and yet if the pope bless or sanctify, he is an impious assumer of what belongs to God alone!!

The case of Korah, Dathan and Abiram was mentioned. God really appears to me to extort from the adversaries of his church the most striking proof of her authority, vindicated in the Type, from the sacrilegious contradictions of the schismatics of the old law. The ground opened and swallowed them up! So have all the sects, that in the early ages opposed the church, perished. The grave has hidden their guilt from the earth, too happy if they bear not its penalty in the world that expands beyond the grave! Again 250 priests perished for opposing the ordinance of God! the ecclesiastical guide he had appointed!

My friend asks, if the headship of Peter and his successors were as certainly divine as the high priesthood of the old law, would it not have been established by proof as plain? Why, he emphatically demanded, cannot the Roman pontiff, like Aaron, shew his authority by an equally convincing miracle? My friends, I take the gentleman at his word. He that has eyes to see let him see. Has not God wrought a similar miracle-I will fearlessly say-a far more splendid miracle, to attest the preeminence of the see of Peter? Has not the night of Mahommedanism and infidelity thrown its sable pall over the once flourishing churches of Africa and Asia? Has not the bright light of the gospel become extinct in the most celebrated of the sees founded by the other apostles-Crete, Corinth, Ephesus, Antioch, Alexandria, Philippi, Jerusalem? Where is the hymn of praise to Christ intoned, the voice of pure confession heard, the TABERNACLE OF THE TESTIMONY seen in any of these famous churches, where St. Paul had formed such a multitude of adorers in spirit and in truth? which he visited with so much solicitude, prayed for with so much fervor, and loved with so much tenderness. Returning to visit these churches, not on the following day as Moses did the rods of the twelve tribes, but after eighteen hundred years, we see that the rod of Aaron, the church formed by the high priest appointed by Jesus Christ in the New Law, has budded and blossomed, and produced fruit of which all the nations have participated, while the churches formed by the other apostles have been stricken with a melancholy sterility, and have utterly withered! The murmuring of the children of Israel against Moses and Aaron ceased when they beheld the prodigy related in the book of Numbers; is it too much to expect that we will be less insensible to an equally authentic declaration in favor of the church and pontiff, the special objects of the divine protection and care?

When Pius, VI. died at Valence, in France, it was said that quick lime was thrown on his corpse, that no vestige of it might remain, and infidelity boasted that christianity was buried in the same grave with its pontiff. But a successor was soon beheld to ascend into the chair of Peter-alas! he too, is doomed to suffer contumely for the name of Jesus. He is seized with violence, by a ruthless soldiery, and carried off from Rome, an exile and a prisoner, to Fontainebleau. The doom of his persecutor is written: he is precipitated from the giddy heights of his ambition, and the meek, but invincible heir of Peter's sacred power, contrary to all human foresight, is reinstated by a Protestant government, by 30,000 Protestant bayonets, in the peaceful exercise of his duties, as the chief pastor of the Catholic world. England, with all thy faults I love thee still. You are Protestants, but you can be just. Rome, changeless amid change, Rome, free among the dead, unaffected by earthly revolutions, by earthly conquests unsubdued, why have the nations raged, and the people devised vain things against thee? The Lord is thy protector still. He hath wonderfully sustained thee, amidst all the vicissitudes of human institutions. "He that dwelleth in heaven," to use the language of the Psalmist," hath laughed at them that stood up against thee, and the Lord shall deride them." My friend would call it "morbid" in England, to sympathise with the Catholics, as he has called your generous sym pathies for your persecuted fellow-citizens; but it is not morbid, it is magnanimous, it is just to confess an error, to abjure an unfounded prejudice, and to side with the wrongfully oppressed.

I quoted scripture to prove that Christ was the corner stone, on which the whole building securely rests-and that Peter is the rock of the foundation, deriving whatever strength it has thus exhibited from Christ. There is no contradiction in this. I am compelled to follow the zigzag course of my friend. The reader of the printed controversy will be at no loss to bring together the diverging rays of evidence and to find my answers to objections, where they may be, apparently out of place. There is no distinction of persons in Syriac. In Greek it is once Tapos, and again but this change of gender is merely to avoid a repetition of the same word in the same sentence. This is reason sufficient, to account for the difference. I give my friend thanks for proving that Peter was not Satan. It is the correct reading, and therefore, I agree with his interpretation of the text; when Christ says to Peter, "get thee behind me Satan," that is you, who differ from me on this particular subject. This text has been much abused.

Again: Peter did think, that he loved Jesus more than the rest, and Christ knew that he did. Do you remember, my friends, the scene which took place shortly before the Savior suffered? When he told his apostles, with a holy melancholy on his sacred heart, that one of them would betray him-that the shepherd should be stricken, and the sheep dispersed? Ah! is there not something in the noble hearted enthusiasm of Peter, which is at once the cause of his offence and its palliation ? 66 Although all shall be scandalized in thee, yet not I." This proves an impulsiveness, an ardor, and a strength of attachment to the person of Christ, which Peter, too confidently it may be, but yet sincerely, believed to be greater than the other disciples felt for their divine master.

Jesus knew this, but he warns him not to be presumptuous. "Amen,

I

say to thee, to-day, even in this night, before the cock crow twice, thou shalt deny me thrice," Mark xiv. 30. From this, and other texts, Peter's ardor, and the Savior's knowledge of his confidence in his own steadfastness are perfectly plain. Why, then, deny them both ?

I quoted the vulgate, not through ignorance of Greek, on which I have shewn as much knowledge as my friend; but not to boast of a little learning on the words, Iov Toulav. The Greek, the Latin, and the English, as verbal criticism is necessary to elucidate the meaning of the text, are by a singular coincidence, in this case, equally ambiguHow can an unlettered Protestant understand the text?

ous.

The popes do not claim to be lords, spiritual, and temporal. But very few of them exercised any temporal power beyond the limits of their own principality, where they rule, as Gibbon told you, by the voice of a free people whom they have redeemed from slavery. Their throne is established in the affections of their people, who, with reason, prefer their pontiff's mild sway to kingly usurpation-the crosier, to the sceptre. The popes have never taken the title of kings of Rome. I can shew from Waddington and Southey, both Protestant historians of the church, that through centuries of darkness and doubt and civil commotion, while the Turk was ravaging the southern regions of Europe and the northern hordes were pouring down in swarms from their ice-bound regions, desolating the blooming fields, and destroying all that was useful and beautiful of the works of civilization, the pope was the only savior of Europe, from their barbarian ravages. He gave to science and to letters the only refuge which could then have availed them-the refuge of an altar-and the now calumniated monks who reproduced in more auspicious times, the intellectual ray. They handed us the works of the sages, and heroes, the poets, historians and orators of Greece and Rome across the isthmus of the "dark ages" so called. They preserved for us a better gift-the Bible.

Benefits conferred by the church.-"Yet should we be very unjust to the Roman Catholic church, if we should allow it to be supposed, that she opened no receptacles, for the nurture of true excellence; that in her general institutions, especially in her earlier age, she has overlooked the moral necessities of man-the truth is far otherwise. We have repeatedly observed, how commonly, in seasons of barbarism, religion was employed in supplying the defects of civil government and diffusing consolation and security. The Truce of God mitigated the fury of private warfare, by limiting the hours of vengeance, and interposing a space for the operation of justice and humanity. The name of the church was associated with peace; and it was a prouder position, than when she trampled on the necks of kings, (what she never did by the bye as I shall prove.) The emancipation of the Serfs was another cause, equally sacred, in which her exertions were repeatedly employed. In her interference in the concerns of monarchs and nations, she frequently appeared as the advocate of the weak, and the adversary of arbitrary power. Even the much abused law of Asylum served through a long period, as a check on baronial oppression, rather than an encouragement to crime. The duty of charity, during the better ages of the church, was by no means neglected by the secular clergy, while it was the practice and office of the monastic establishments. And even the discipline, so strictly inculcated by the earlier prelates, however arbitrary in its exercise, and pernicious in its abuse, was not unprofitable in arresting the first steps, and restraining the earliest dispositions to sin. Confession and penance, and the awful censures of the church, when dispensed with discretion, niust have been potent instruments for the improvement of uncivilized society." Waddington's Church Hist. page 546, New York edit. 1835.

We now come to the word says means lot and not clergy.

Kangos (cleros,) which the gentleman
Lot does mean the whole people of

God-clergy and laity. Now if the apostle could not lord it over the whole people, he could not lord it over the clergy. The pope does not lord it over the consciences of either clergy or laity—he believes as they do. The apostles sent Peter and John to Samaria. Peter and John probably offered themselves for the early mission-Peter, to whom God had given superior power-and John, who had leaned on the bosom of Jesus at supper-both pre-eminent apostles, to confirm the people of Samaria.

No man can read the New Testament attentively without seeing, at almost every page, the evidence of Peter's divinely appointed and acknowledged primacy; or the history of the church, without every where discovering the primacy of his successors. Not one council has been received that the pope did not approve. His approbation is in the last resort, the only certain test of a council's orthodoxy.

Peter spoke first in the council at Jerusalem. Peter was justly reprimanded by Paul. The very fact of Paul mentioning his boldness on this occasion, confirms the fact of Peter's supremacy. So did Irenæus remonstrate with pope Victor in the controversy of the Quartodecimans-about the time of observing the Easter-and the pope's sentiments prevailed-although Irenæus' dissuasive did good. So did the controversy about re-baptization terminate between St. Cyprian and the popes Cornelius and Stephen. The popes' decision was every where received.

Now Paul himself did the same for which he blamed Peter. He knew and prized the freedom with which Christ had made him free, yet he says, "If meat scandalize my brother, I will not eat it forever."

He vainly persists in saying there is no good ground for asserting that Peter was ever in Rome, after all the proof I have adduced. Here is Robinson's Calmet, a Protestant dictionary of the Bible, a standard work in Protestant libraries. Calmet was a Roman Catholic. He was a prodigy of learning and ancient literature-and Robinson, a Protestant divine, thought he could not furnish a better gift to the public than this book. "If the reader wishes to see the evidence from antiquity, on which Peter's having been at Rome rests, he will find it fully set forth by Lardner, who concludes his inquiry as follows: This is the general, uncontradicted, disinterested testimony of ancient writers in the several parts of the world, Greeks, Latins, Syrians. As our Lord's prediction concerning the death of Peter, is recorded in one of the four Gospels, it is very likely that christians would observe the accomplishment of it, which must have been in some place. And about this place, there is no difference among christian writers of ancient times. Never any other place was named besides Rome; nor did any other city, ever glory in the martyrdom of Peter. It is not for our honor, nor for our interests, either as christians or Protestants, to deny the truth of events ascertained by early and well attested tradition. If any make an ill use (as he calls it) of such facts, we are not accountable for it. We are not, from a dread of such abuses, to overthrow the credit of all history, the consequence of which would be fatal." Robinson's Calmet, p. 741.

The gentleman has said that not one voice has attested the fact of the succession of the Roman see for a thousand years. I have quoted Eusebius, a Greek father of the fourth century, translated by a Protestant minister, a splendid work. Here is a list of 29 bishops who sat in the chair of St. Peter, all of whom he names in the body of the work; also the succession in the churches of Jerusalem, Antioch, Rome, Laodicea, &c.

OF ST. PETER.

(Simon Magus) "entering the city of Rome, by the co-operation of that ma