fall down much
lower than the lowness from which he attempted to rise. The attempt to
steal away from us and appropriate to the use of a fraction of the
Church of England that glorious title of Catholic is proved to be an
usurpation by every monument of the past and present--by the coronation
oath of your sovereigns--by all the laws which have established your
Church--even by the recent answer of your University of Oxford to the
lay address against Dr. Pusey, &c., where the Church of England is
justly styled the Reformed Protestant Church. The question then is, have
you, the Church of England, got the picture for your frame? have you got
the truth, the one truth; the same truth as the men of the middle ages.
The Camden Society says yes; but the whole Christian world, both
Protestant and Catholic, says no; and the Catholic world adds that there
is no truth but in unity, and this unity you most certainly have not.
One more; every Catholic will repeat to you the words of Manzoni, as
quoted by M. Faber: 'The greatest deviations are none if the main point
be recognised; the smallest are damnable heresies, if it be denied. That
main point is the infallibility of the Church, or rather of the Pope.'_

No one desires to be eternally punished; and, therefore, if any one
embrace a false faith, it is because he makes the mistake of supposing
it the true one. The three sets of Christians, just adverted to, may all
be equally sincere, but cannot all have the true faith. Protestant
principles, as taught by the Dublin Operative Association, may be true.
Anglo-Catholic principles, as taught by the Oxford Tractmen, may be
true. Roman Catholic principles, as taught by the Count de Montalembert,
may be true; but they cannot ALL be true. It is impossible to reconcile
that orthodox Papists' 'main point,' _i.e._ the infallibility of the
(Romish) Church, or rather of the Pope, with the 'main point' of
orthodox Protestants, who denounce 'the great harlot of Babylon,' that
'scarlet lady who sitteth upon the seven hills,' in the most unmeasured
and virulent terms. Anti-Christ is the name they 'blasphemously' apply
to the actual 'old chimera of a Pope.' Puseyite Divines treat his
Holiness with more tenderness, but even _they_ boggle at his
infallibility, and seem to occupy a position between the rival churches
of Rome and England analogous to that of Captain Macheath when singing
between two favourite doxies--

How happy could I be wit