Lastly, there is actually stronger and more particular evidence of the approbation of the Pope having been given to the Acis of this Council, than to those of any other Council whatsoever, For, in the very volume † from which Dr. Lingard cites his passage from Anastasius, there is a long defence of the Acts of the Council, extending to particulars which occur in every one of the Acts separately, addressed to Charlemagne, by the very Pope Adrian I., who by his Legates presided at it.

I have here done with Dr. Lingard; and am sorry that I have been obliged to detain you so long with this discussion respecting him; a discussion which, I fear, not even the interest excited in you for the reputation of a friend, can have wholly prevented from being tedious. Perhaps, however, you will by this time understand, why I now attend "not to what Dr. Lingard may say, but to what "he may prove : " and that to a history by that writer I do not attend at all.

Let us pass to something else."

Bellarm. de Imag. 1. ii.

p.

806.

+ Labb. Concil. t. vii.

II.

DOCTOR LINGARD'S REPLY

TO THE CHARGE BROUGHT AGAINST HIM IN THE PRECEDING LETTER.

Dear Sir,

In

SEVENTEEN years have rolled away since I met Dr. Phillpotts in the field of controversy. most cases so long a cessation of hostilities would have sufficed to extinguish every angry feeling, if any such had been excited by the preceding contest. But with Dr. Phillpotts it seems to be otherwise. The intemperate attack which that learned divine has been pleased to make upon me, in his letters recently addressed to you, will justify a suspicion that angry feelings are still cherished in his breast, and that still

Hæret lateri lethalis arundo.

During that controversy, in the year 1808, it was my fortune to convict him of having published an unfaithful translation of an ancient document: and now, in 1825, even while he tacitly admits the charge, by adopting in his letters to you a more accurate version (see p. 86), he seeks to retaliate, by accusing me of having made, at the same time, an unfaithful quotation. I was content with pointing out his offence: he goes further, and infers, from the charge against me, that I am totally un

worthy of belief. But I may ask, is he not then bound by his own rule? If the mere charge of unfaithful quotation be sufficient to impair my credit, does it not follow, that the charge of unfaithful translation, not merely made, but proved and admitted, has already destroyed his ?

It is the usual resource of a skilful disputant, when he feels himself too closely pressed, to divert the attack of his adversary by bringing forward new subjects of discussion. Availing himself of this manœuvre, Dr. Phillpotts, in the controversy to which I have alluded, introduced, rather awkwardly, two long disquisitions on the second Council of Nice, and on the opinions of the ancient schoolmen respecting images: the same disquisitions in fact, which he has reprinted in his late publication, as if they were something new, and had never been answered. Yet Dr. Phillpotts knows that I returned an answer, which by many readers was considered satisfactory, and in which I ventured to expose what I deemed his misstatements, to supply his omissions, and to controvert his arguments. But of all this he appears. to remember nothing: his recollection serves him only to refer to a short passage, which I shall now transcribe for the satisfaction of the reader.

Addressing him, I said, "You will probably be "still more surprised, when I venture to inform 6.6 you that the Acts of this Council" (the daily reports of the speeches and proceedings in the second Council of Nice) "are of no authority in the Ca

"tholic Church. We assent, indeed, to the doctri"nal decree passed in the last session, which was

66

approved by the Popes: but in the Acts and "Canons much is contained, to which the Roman "Church would never impart its sanction.

Quæ apud nos nec habentur, nec admittuntur,' says: "Anastatius Bibliothecarius, a Roman writer of "the same age."

This passage was then neglected by Dr. Phillpotts: it is only of late that he has thought it worth his notice. On examining the work of Anastatius, preparatory to the publication of his letters to you, he discovered some discrepancy between the quotation and the original. Immediately his ire against me was rekindled: he sat down to compose a chapter under the head of " Dr. Lingard: his "Unfaithfulness in Quotation;" and spread the puny efforts of his vengeance over the surface of no fewer than a dozen pages. Those who have read the former controversy between us, know how to appreciate the assertions of Dr. Phillpotts: but, as others may be imposed upon by that tone of confidence and superiority which he assumes, I shall here beg leave to notice the principal of his objections.

1. He denies that Anastatius was a writer of the same age. If by the same age we are necessarily left to understand the same century, I must own that the expression was not strictly correct. I conceive that I called him so, because he wrote within a hundred years after the Council, and in

the midst of the contestations to which it gave rise. But, in reality, the later he wrote, the better it is for my argument: since his testimony shows (I shall prove it hereafter), that up to that period the Roman church had refused its sanction to certain things contained in the Acts and Canons of the second Nicene Council.

2o. He next reproaches me with the intentional suppression of the word "interpretata" in the text of Anastatius.-Whence the omission of the word arose, whether from the negligence of the printer, or from my own inadvertence, it is not in my power, at the distance of seventeen years, to discover. That it was not intentional, is most evident. The omission could not strengthen my cause; it could not weaken his. The word had nothing to do with the question between us, which regarded not the translation, but the admission or non-admission of certain Canons by the Roman Church.

"The

3°.-These, however, are but trifles. "head and front of my offending" consists in this; that, according to Dr. Phillpotts, the passage from Anastatius does not bear in the original the meaning which it is made to bear in my pages. Hence, he charges me with "unfairness, with in"tentional garbling, with gross misrepresentation, "with doing that which a man of real veracity "would scorn to do, but which one who halted "between the inclination to mis-state, and the "fear of being exposed in his dishonesty, might