I will now proceed, in the same cool and dispassionate strain, to institute an enquiry into the origin of that Church from which all other denominations of Christians are known to dissent, and to which the appropriate epithet of Catholic is exclusively applied. And in doing this it is not my intention to enter on an elaborate discussion of all that great variety of topics which obviously present themselves in an undertaking of this description: such as the prayers of liturgies-the decrees of councils-the writings of the fathers—the narratives of early ecclesiastical historians-and the constant and uninterrupted succession of bishops in a variety of dioceses, and particularly in that of Rome, from St. Peter, the first of its Pontiffs, to his present Holiness Pope Gregory the XVI; from which I might make it clearly to appear, that its hierarchy has subsisted, and its doctrines have been maintained in every period of the Christian era; and that thus we are able to trace back the most unequivocal vestiges of its existence through every preceding age, to the first introduction of Christianity into the world. A discussion, so multifarious, would occupy more time than it would at present be convenient to give to it; for which reason, I mean to confine myself to the development of an argument founded on one sole fact; and that fact is the essential connection of every part of the Catholic Church with the See of Rome as the centre of unity: from which I confidently hope to be able to demonstrate to the satisfaction of every impartial mind, the original Connection of the same, through that See, with the

Church of Christ established at Jerusalem on the feast of Pentecost; to which, as we learn from the last verse of the second chapter of the Acts of the Apostles, "the Lord daily added such as should be saved."

For this purpose then, I say, I must first of all lay it down as an established principle, that every individual who professes himself a member of the Catholic Church, in whatever part of the world he may reside, is necessarily united with the See of Rome; in the bishop of which, as the successor of St. Peter, he is bound to acknowledge a supremacy both of honor and of jurisdiction over the whole Church. This principle being once admitted, it must follow from it that if, in the first place, I shall prove the particular Church of Rome to have been originally so connected with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem, as to have been identified in a manner with it; and that connexion, in the second place, never to have been dissevered, I then also shall have proved the same propositions as applied to the whole body of the Catholic Church, every member of which, as I have already observed, is essentially linked with the Church of Rome. Now, that, in the first place, the Church of Rome was so connected originally with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem as to be identified, in a manner, with it, is clearly attested by the Sacred Scripture. For in the catalogue of the canonical books of Scripture is included an epistle of St. Paul to the Romans, or to those Christians who composed the Church of Rome. And in that very epistle, having expressly

G

addressed them as "the called of Christ, as the beloved of God, as persons called to be saints, and whose faith is spoken of in the whole world," he describes their separation from the worship of idols, and their annexation to the society of Jewish believers, under the figure of branches cut off from the wild olive tree, and grafted on the good olive tree, in the following terms: "For if thou wert cut out of the wild olive tree, which is natural to thee, and, contrary to nature, wert grafted into the good olive tree, how much more shall they who are the natural branches be grafted again into their own olive tree?" It is impossible for any one who weighs attentively this striking testimony of holy writ to entertain, for a moment, the smallest degree of doubt of the intimate union, as there described, of the Church of Rome with the Apostolic Church of Jerusalem. The good olive itself, that is, the Jews converted to Christianity, as well as the branches cut from the wild olive, or the Gentiles separated from Paganism, were equally ingrafted on the same common stock. The Church of Jerusalem has long ceased to be. Its candlestick has been removed from its place. But the Church of Rome still exists. Has it ever separated itself or been separated from that Apostolic Church which was originally established both at Jerusalem and at Rome? Most undoubtedly not. For if at any period of time that connexion had been dissolved, some account of so memorable an event in the history of the Church, would unquestionably be upon record. The separ

ations from that Church, of all the various heretics who have arisen at different times are faithfully related; but who ever heard of such a thing as the separation, either by secession or exclusion, of the Roman Christians from the Apostolic Church? May we not hence be fairly allowed to infer that no such occurrence ever took place? So far indeed is such an event from having at any time occurred, that Rome has ever been regarded and appealed to as the great centre and seat of orthodoxy, and its bishops, as the successors of the chief of the Apostles, have never failed to exercise the authority of their jurisdiction over the whole Church. * Hence, as early as the second century of the Christian era, we find St. Victor, bishop of Rome, threatening with excommunication the bishops of Asia, unless they abandoned their practice of celebrating the festival of Easter at a time different from that at which it was generally celebrated in other parts of the Christian world. Hence, in like manner, did St. Stephen, in the third century, menace St. Cyprian, bishop of Carthage, with a similar censure, if he persisted in the custom of baptizing indiscriminantly all persons who had been baptized by heretics: a custom which that great and illustrious prelate had-conscientiously indeed, yet erroneously-had the misfortune to adopt. Hence, in the fourth century, St. Silvester presided by his le

* When the sermon was delivered, this part of it, although composed at the time, was then omitted on account of the length of the ceremony.

gates at the first general council of Nice, in which was condemned the heresy of Arius; as did St. Leo, in the fifth, at those of Ephesus and Chalcedon; in the former of which the Nestorian, and in the latter the Eutychian heresy, was authoritatively condemned. Hence, in the sixth century, did St. Gregory the Great exercise his authority in the Eastern Church by condemning the title of œcumenical assumed by the patriarch of Constantinople. Hence, in the seventh century, St. Agatho presided, by his legates, at the fourth general council at Constantinople, in which was anathematized the heresy of the Monothelites; as did Adrian the I., at the second general council of Nice, in the eighth century, in which the respect due to the images of Christ and his Saints was vindicated and maintained in opposition to the sacrilegious fury of the frantic Iconoclasts. Hence, in the ninth century, Adrian the II. presided also by proxy at the fourth general council of Constantinople, by the authority of which St. Ignatius was restored to the See of that city, from which he had been unjustly expelled, and the intruder Photius deposed and excommunicated. And, hence, even in the tenth cen

tury,

to which the adversaries of the Catholic Church are so fond of referring, as the period at which the Holy See was so shamefully disgraced by the scandalous lives of too many of its Pontiffs ;—hence, even at that melancholy period in the history of the Church, I say, were these very Pontiffs, though so contemptible in themselves, acknowledged neverthe