With respect to the doctrines which Calvin disapproves, they had already been denied and combated by a multitude of discordant sects. These sects had, in their turn, been all condemned in proportion as they attracted notice. Their errors, however, had been transmitted down to the sixteenth century, either by the unconnected remnants of the sects themselves, or through the medium of church history. Those of the Donatists, of the Predestinarians, of Vigilantius, Berengarius and the Iconoclasts, &c. reappeared in the Albigenses, the Valdenses, the Beguardæ, the Fratricelli, in Wicklef; Huss and the brethren of Bohemia; and finally-in Luther, the Anabaptists, Carlostadius, Zuinglius, &c.; great part of them Calvin adopted and modelled into his own not less heterodox system of religion, the various articles of which we have refuted under the heads of REFORMATION, LuTHER, ICONOCLASTS, BERENGARIUS, VIGILANTIUS, &c. &c.

CAP-MEN-SO called from their wearing a white cap, to which they attached a small plate of lead as the distinctive badge of their association, the purport of which was, they said,-to compel those at war to live in peace. With this view they formed a schism both in civil and religious matters, and separated from all society with other men. The first author of this sect was a certain visionary, who about the year 1186 pretended, that the blessed Virgin had appeared to him, and had shown him her image together with that of her Divine Son-on which were inscribed the following words, Lamb of God who takest away the sins of the world, grant us peace: that she had commanded him to form an association, whose members should always wear the image and a white cap-the symbol of peace and of innocence; should oblige themselves by oath to keep peace with one another, and force their neighbours to do the same.

The general discontent occasioned by the endless divisions, intestine broils and universal anarchy of this unhappy age, helped to keep in countenance this humorous conceit of the Cap-men. They did not fail to meet with patrons, and every where gained proselytes to the cause, particularly in the provinces of Burgundy and Berry. Unfortunately, these pacific brethren, to propagate the work of peace, began by making war, and maintained themselves by pillaging those that hesitated to join their party. The bishops and nobility, compelled to oppose force with force, quickly repressed the fanatical banditti. But their spirit of insubordination and revolt was soon revived in the Stadhingi, the Circumcellions, the Albigenses, the Valdenses; who were guilty of the like and worse disorders. In the succeeding century, there appeared in England Cap-men of a different species: they were the sectaries of Wicklef, who made it a matter of scruple and very conscientiously refused, to uncover their heads in presence of the most holy sacrament. These enthusiastics may be consi

dered as the predecessors of George Fox, and his disciples called Quakers.

CARPOCRATIANS-the disciples of Carpocrates, a pretended convert and an ignorant philosopher of Alexandria in the second age. His morals were licentious; and he fell into the same errors with Basilides and Saturninus, who were nearly his contemporaries; and also added other strange ideas of his own. He and his adherents abandoned themselves to every kind of debauchery and excess; reprobated fasting and mortification, and sought in all things the gratification of their lawless passions. The honesty or dishonesty, innocence or criminality of an action, consisted, according to these immoral casuists, merely in the imagination.

Carpocrates had a son-a youth of extraordinary parts-called Epiphanius. He wrote in justification of his father's principles, and soon became the idol of the sect. Dying at the age of seventeen he was worshipped as a god, and had a temple erected to him at Samé, a town of Cephalonia; where the Cephalonians assembled every first day in the month to celebrate the feast of his apotheosis. They offered sacrifice to this new divinity, instituted rejoicing days, and chaunted hymns to his honor.

The Carpocratians regarded Jesus Christ simply as a human being, although more perfect than the rest of his fellow mortals; believed him to be the son of Joseph and Mary, and acknowledged his miracles, and the reality of his sufferings and death. Nor were they accused of denying his resurrection, but only that of other men at the last day; and of affirming that only the soul of Jesus Christ ascended into heaven.

Some of these sectaries, however, affected to esteem themselves equal, nay even superior to Christ in miracles and virtue; and, to impose upon the ignorant they practised magic,—a thing very common with the pretended philosophers of those days. As the summit of their perfection was the very depth of vice, we may give them credit for their superior virtue, too. Such is the edifying portrait of these ancient heretics drawn by St Ireneus, (1. 1, c. 24,) than whom no one could be better qualified to give a correct account, contemporary as he was with the sect itself. The rest of the fathers represent them in the same light. The pagans, unable to discriminate between true and false christians, attributed to the whole body the disorders of a few fanatics, and the magical collusions employed by the latter, discredited in their eyes the genuine miracles wrought by the apostles and their disciples. The fathers of the church remarked this inconvenience. (Epiph. Hær, 34, &c.)

CATHARI OF PURITANS-this name was assumed by the Montanists, the Manichees, the Novatians, the Albigenses, and final

ly, in England by the Presbyterians. It is generally under the mask of virtue and a pretended reform, that innovators seduce the simple, and procure patronage. But an affected regularity which originates from a spirit of contumacy and revolt, is commonly of short duration, and often only an artifice to cover real disorders. When once they become the reigning sect, they assume quite a different character, and show what they really are, without disguise. So many examples of this kind of hypocrisy a thousand times renewed from the infancy of the church, ought, one would think, effectually to undeceive mankind. But, unfortunately, they are ever ready to take the bait anew. (Bergier Diction. Theol.)

CATHOLICS are all those christians of whatever nation or description, who live in communion with the see of Rome. The occasional eptihet Roman is totally superfluous, as no denomi nation of christians ever went by the name of catholics but themselves alone. Far, however, from being a discredit to them was not St Paul himself a Roman catholic when he wrote his epistle to the Romans, and commended their faith as already celebrated through every part of the globe where the gospel had yet been announced? St Ireneus, before the year 200, calls the Roman the greatest and the most ancient church, which is known to all, founded at Rome by the two most glorious apostles Peter and Paul:-a church," says he, "which retains the tradition received from them, and derived through a succession of bishops down to us. Showing which," continues this learned and primitive father, we confound all that out of self-conceit, love of applause, blindness or certain false pretences, embrace unorthodox opinions. For, to this church alone, on account of its higher presidentship, it is necessary all other churches, that is, the faithful in every place, should have recourse. In this church the tradition of the apostles is faithfully preserved. By following this tradition, many barbarous nations profess the faith without the use of the written word. These," says he, "would stop their ears against the blasphemies of sectarians, who have nothing but the novelty of their doctrine to recommend them. For the Valentinians were not before Valentinus, nor the Marcionites before Marcion, &c. All these arose much too late." And will not the argument apply with redoubled force against the reformers of these latter times? If Marcion and Valentinus, who appeared so early as the second age, were excepted against by St Ireneus as the teachers of new doctrines, what must be said of those who did not appear before the sixteenth, seventeenth, or even eighteenth centuries? Whereas, the claim of catholics to antiquity can never be contested. The Donatists indeed, who separated from the catholic church at the commencement of the fourth age, like its adversaries of the

present day, maintained, that it had ceased to be the church of Christ. But the great St Augustine demonstrated with invincible force the unreasonableness of their exceptions, and proved against them and against modern reformists,-that the church is composed of both good and bad; but that the good are not to be found out of its pale. He allows indeed, those to be brethren in the eyes of God, who are of the true church in the sincere desire of their hearts, and use their best endeavours to discover it, when deprived of its external communion merely by the circumstance of invincible or inculpable ignorance, though God alone must be the judge of this interior disposition; while the church considers exterior acts or circumstances as the direct object of her laws of discipline. This maxim St Augustine clearly teaches in his letter to Glorius, Eleusius and other Donatists, written about the year 398; where he says: "They who defend their opinion, though false and perverse in itself, yet with no obstinate malice, as having received it from their parents; and diligently seek the truth-in readiness of heart to be reclaimed when they have found it, are by no means to be ranked with heretics." (Ep. 43. ol. 162. T. 2. p. 88.) Did but our protestant brethren reflect, that this is precisely the opinion of catholic divines at the present day, they would not charge them with the want of charity in maintaining the doctrine of what is called exclusive salvation. For did not St Paul maintain this doctrine, when in the list of evil works which exclude their actors from the kingdom of heaven, he numbered heresies and sects? And will any one accuse him of uncharitableness in so doing?

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Roman catholics therefore, we assert, are scriptural catholics, and belong exclusively to that true church which all christians profess with their lips, as often as they recite their creed: I believe the holy catholic church :-Catholic in the commission addressed to her by Christ in the persons of his apostles and their successors in the ministry, with a promise of his personal assistance till the end of time." Go teach all nations.. saith he, and behold I with you all days even to the consummation of the world."Holy, if not in all her members, at least in her doctrine and morality, by which thousands of her children actually do attain to an eminent degree of holiness; and all might do so, were they obedient to her laws. Thus much evidently, our common creed insinuates; and nothing short of this can verify its import. Is it not an insult to religion and a libel upon common sensee-with Luther and the book of Homilies to insist,-that for the long lapse of eight hundred years and more before the times of this reformer, the church of God was buried in idolatry; and that all its members-from the throne to the dunghill-were involved, without exception, in the horrid guilt of so damnable a prevarication? What then became of the promised aid and presence of our Divine Redeemer and his Holy Spirit-to guide its pastors

into all truth?—The church of God, the pillar of truth uphold-ing the most execrable falsehoods and authorising practices the most impious and anti-christian! Oh! strange and worse than fanatic impudence! Were there nothing but this wild sentiment alone in the blasphemous effusions of Luther's pen, this were alone sufficient, completely to discredit in the eyes of good sense, his pretended mission to reform the christian world. From this one instance the intelligent reader will appreciate that authority, which stigmatizes the catholic for practices held by him in sovereign abhorrence, and for wicked doctrines a thousand times with the most solemn asseveration disavowed. See under the various articles LUTHER, WICKLEF, &c. &c., the several controverted points of catholic discipline and dogmas of religious faith, vindicated from the odious and groundless aspersions of our much prejudiced and much misguided brethren.

Catholics, moreover, have the advantage of all other christian societies in point of number. They are in Europe alone computed to amount to near one hundred millions of souls. Consequently, in Europe alone they vastly outnumber the whole collective body of the reformed, with all their multifarious and discordant branches, divisions and subdivisions-of Lutherans, Luthero-Calvinists, Calvinists, Calvino-Lutherans, Anabaptists, Socinians of five hundred different descriptions, Presbyterians, Brownists, Puritans, Independents, Fifth Monarchy-men, Church of England-men, Quakers, Methodists, Swedenburgians, and the Lord knows what countless sects of infatuated enthusiasts-as much at variance among themselves, as they all are with the catholic church. Without speaking of Italy, Spain, Germany, Poland, &c. or of past ages, when England, Scotland, and the other nations now protestant, together with those vast regions of Africa and Asia that are now Mahometan, professed the catholic religion;-down to the late revolution, there were more men of learning, and more universities in France alone, than in all the protestant dominions put together. Hence, as Dr Gibson rightly observes, in his conference with the late Honorable Edmund Burke-if in any single instance the opinion of mankind should have its weight, it preponderates in favour of the catholic religion; this "having had and still having the far greatest number of supporters-of all ranks and denominations,

of bishops, clergymen, kings, and parliaments, &c.; and as it is agreed on all hands, that only one religion is right in itself, it being repugnant that God should reveal opposite truths or contradictions, it is plain as demonstration on what side the balance inclines. The great St Augustine assigning his reasons for adhering to the catholic church, expresses himself in the manner following:-Many motives, says he, keep me in the bosom of the catholic church ;-the general consent of nations and people ;-an authority grounded upon miracles, upheld by