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reason (p. 6, 7.) That communion, of which the present circumstances of your country have made you, almost unavoidably, members, (p. 11.) While we perceive with delight that you have always spoken, in your own persons, in accordance with our sentiments on this head, you have, at the same time, selected some tracts from early writers of your communion, in which our sentiments are impugned. These old tracts will not be read with much attention, compared, at least, with your own more lively productions: they can too be readily withdrawn when it is expedient: for they are not a pledge of your opinions as strong as your own writings. In the mean time, you may appeal to your republication of them as a proof that you have not leagued yourselves with us."
Now of all this, Sir, you do not believe one syllable; you do not think that, either in the republication of the older, or the protests of the more modern tracts against Popery, their editors or authors were actuated by any such motives; [1]while you impute insincerity, you have reason to believe them as sincere as yourself. It is an ill tree which brings forth fruit thus corrupt.
But is it then a duty to forget that Rome was our mother, through whom we were born to Christ; that she was the instrument chosen by God's good providence to bring the Gospel to the wild Heathen tribes from which most of us are sprung? Are we to be so engrossed with modern controversies, and modern corruptions, as to forget ancient heresies, and those the most deadly, those of Arius and Pelagius, against which she maintained the faith once delivered to the Saints?—are we to forget all past gratitude, all bowels of mercy towards her who was our mother? So to pray against her corruptions as not to pray for her, to cherish no memory of what she was, to Europe and to ourselves? and in her present guilt, to forget our own gratitude? What should we think, if in some future age, New Zealand and Taheite were to cast out our name as evil? She
- ↑ Meanwhile, however, the calumny is spread in real earnest. The anonymous compiler of the 'Specimens of Theological Teaching,' &c. among the very few statements on which he ventures, echoes it, 'Indeed, while these writers profess their love and reverence for the Church of Rome [as it is?], they take care to protest against it, as all Protestants of course must do.' (p. 37.)
