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THE

CHURCH OF ROME,

AND HER MEMBERS

THE ROMAN CATHOLICS.

NAMES. By a Roman Catholic, the members of this Church understand one who, being in communion with the Pope,* believes every truth revealed by God, and proposed to him as such by the Church, because God, the unerring truth, has revealed them. Popery and Papists were the names by which the Roman Catholic religion and its professors were distinguished by the first reformers, and the law, in this country, designated them afterwards by the same names. But these appellations were considered by themselves as nicknames, or terms of reproach, intended to hold forth to popular

For the term Pope, see above, Vol. I. p. 403. note. N. B. To all the author's references and notes in the course of this and the other articles not written by himself, an index, or hand, will be prefixed, as here, to distinguish them from those of the writer of the respective articles.

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odium their communion with the Pope, as the fundamental article of their religion, and to obliterate that of Catholic, to which they claimed an exclusive right, and by which they had always and every where been known.*

In law, they are now called Roman Catholics, as may be seen from the title of the acts of Parliament passed in their favour at different times in the end of the last century, and the oaths of allegiance prescribed to them by the same, one of which will be found below.

RISE, PROGRESS, &c.-It is impossible to compress any satisfactory history of this religion, within the narrow limits which must be assigned to it, in

Many readers will no doubt be apt to hesitate in regard to this and various other assertions and opinions in the course of this article; but the author does not conceive it to be so much his province to controvert what may be advanced by those who have thus taken the trouble of writing an account of their own church or denomination for insertion here, as to add such remarks and references as he shall judge necessary for further illustration, and with a view more effectually to promote the object of his work. He would, therefore, observe here, that, in the strict sense of the word, there is no Catholic Church in being, i. e. no Universal Christian Communion; and therefore, when, in rehearsing the Apostles' Creed, we profess to believe in the Holy Catholic Church, we must mean, as Mr. Chillingworth expresses it, "the right that the Church of Christ, or rather, to speak properly, the Gospel of Christ, hath to be universally believed. And therefore the article may be true, though there were no Christian Church in the world." Mr. CHILLINGWORTH's Works, Fol. p. 196.

2

a work of this nature: it is blended and intimately connected with the history of every civilised kingdom in the world; and there has been no nation as yet, since the apostolic age, converted from infidelity to Christianity, which has not been brought to the light of faith by men, either sent by the Pope of Rome for that purpose, or in communion with him. Witness, in the second age, the great conversions in Africa, Gaul, and Britain, by missionaries from Rome; in the third, the conversions of the Goths, and of the Ethiopians and Iberians in the fourth ;3 in the 5th age, St. Palladius sent by Pope Celestine, converted the Scots, and St. Patrick sent by the same, converted the Irish, and the Saints Remigius and Vedastus, the French. St. Ninianus in the 6th century, converted the Southern, and St. Columba the Northern Picts," St. Rupert the Bavarians, St. Columbanus and St. Gallus, the Swabians; and St. Augustin, sent by Pope Gregory the Great, brought over to the Christian faith, the English Saxon King Ethelbert with his people. In the 7th century, the East Angles

1 Innoc. I. Ep. ad Victr. Usher, Antiq. Brit. c. iv. and

c. iii.

2 Sozomen, b. 2. c. vi.

Ep. 338.

Philostorg. b. 2. c. v. St. Basil See BUTLER'S note on. St. Sabas the Goth.

3 See BUTL. Life of St. Frumentius, Ap. of Æthiopia. A St. PROS. adv. Coll. Cent. of Mag. Cent. 5.

5 Idem. Cent. 5 and 6.

6 Bed. Hist. 1. 3. c. iv.

7 Bed. ibid.

8 Heyl. Cosm. p. 431. Atlas. Geog, vol. i. 9 Bed. Hist. 1. 1. c. xxv. xxvi.

f

were converted by St. Felix, and the West Saxons by St. Birinus;1 and the Duke of Franconia with his people by St. Kilianus, who was sent to preach the gospel by Pope Conon.2 St. Boniface, ordained and sent by Pope Gregory the Second, in the 8th century converted Hesse, Thuringia, Westphalia, and Saxony; and in the 9th century, St. Cyril and St. Methodius, sent by Pope Hadrian the Second, brought the Sclavonians, Moravians, and Bohemians, to the light of faith, and St. Ansgarius, the people of Holstein." The Danes, in the 10th century, were converted by St. Poppo," the Goths in Swedeland by St. Sigifred," and the Poles and Prussians in part by St. Adelbert; while St. Bruno and St. Bonifacius laboured with great fruit in the conversion of the Russians of Poland, and the Muscovites were brought over to the fold of Christ by the Greeks, whose patriarch at that time was joined in communion with the Church of Rome. The Icelanders, in the 11th century, were added to the Roman Catholic Church by Olaus Trugger the Pious,1o and the Hungarians and Norwegians

10

1 See the Lives of St. Felix and St. Birin. by Butler. 2 Atlas Geog. p. 438. 2.

Ibid.

4 Mart. Pol. ad ann. 859. Æneas Syl. Hist. Boem. 1. 1. c. xiii. Mart. Chrom. de Reb. Pol. 1. 3.

5 Heyl. Cosm. p. 484. 501.

6 Ibid, 484.

"Atlas Geog. v. 1. p. 208.

Idem, p. 229. 248.

LE BRUN'S Dissert. on the Liturgies, T. 2. p. 421. 10 Atlas Geog. p. 145.

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