A VINDICATION OF THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND: En Reply TO THE RIGHT HON. VISCOUNT FIELDING, ON HIS RECENT SECESSION TO THE CHURCH OF ROME. BY THE Uchard Miliams REV. R. W. MORGAN, PERPETUAL CURATE OF TREGYNON, MONTGOMERYSHIRE, 66 FRANCIS & JOHN RIVINGTON, ST. PAUL'S CHURCH YARD, AND WATERLOO PLACE. HI.25 HARVARD COLLEGE LIBRARY Bykergtangi for Buste Bondtion Find. LONDON: GILBERT & RIVINGTON, PRINTERS, PREFACE. EVERY Christian is understood to declare thus much : "I am fully persuaded, and make a free confession of this as of a necessary and infallible truth, that Christ, by the preaching of the Apostles, did gather unto Himself a Church consisting of thousands of believing persons, and numerous congregations, to which he daily added such as should be saved, and will successively and daily add to the same unto the end of the world: so that by virtue of his all-sufficient promise, I am assured that there was, hath been hitherto, and now is, and hereafter shall be, so long as the sun and moon endure, a Church of Christ one and the same. This Church I believe in general holy 36/ in respect of the Author, end, institution and administration of it. I look upon this Church, not like that of the Jews, limited to one people, confined to one nation; but, by the appointment and command of Christ, and by the efficacy of his assisting power, to be disseminated through all nations, to be extended to all places, to be propagated to all ages, to contain in it all truths necessary to be known, to exact absolute obedience from all men to the commands of Christ, and to furnish us with all graces necessary to make our persons acceptable, and our actions well pleasing in the sight of God. And thus I believe the Holy Catholic Church."-Bishop Pearson, on the Creed. VINDICATION, &c. MY LORD, As one of the Clergy in that Church of England, against which, in your recent Letter to the Lord Bishop of this Diocese, you prefer the very grave charge that "she is not Catholic and that she protests against and denies many of God's most holy truths," I do not think I shall be deemed presumptuous in addressing to you this vindication of her principles, both on behalf of those who, like myself, are ministers of her doctrines and as an appeal to the public mind against your secession from her into the ranks of what she believes to be a corrupt, and in this realm a schismatic, community. In doing so, I desire to avoid every expression which may pain the feelings of your present co-religionists. You and they have as much right to your convictions as we of the Anglican Church have to ours; and though your present Church denies this right to us and other Christians, our principles concede it, in all things not contrary to the Holy Scriptures and the three Catholic Creeds, to every professing member of Christianity. We under B |