FL14372774

TO THE CLERGY AND LAITY OF THE DIOCESE OF SYDNEY.

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One of the unhappy effects of the recent secession of two Clergymen to the Church
of rome having been to involve those who were previously connected with them by ties of
friendship or acquaintance in suspicion and mistrust; and having myself, in consequence of
long and intimate friendship with one of the seceders, fallen under a degree of imputa-
tion and misconception which seemed likely to be (through me) prejudicial to the interests
of the Church of England, I thought it right, at the sacrifice of strong personal feelings,
to declare in a letter to the Sydney Morning herald what I believed to be the origin of the
calumnies which were in most active circulationn; showing them to have been in various
ways propagated by Roman Catholics, and to be traceable, amongst other sources, to
assertions of Mr. Sconce himself. I thought it right at the same time to state very
precisely what my course had been with respect to him both before and after his
secession. This drew forth the following reply: -

TO THE EDITORS OF THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD,

GENTLEMEN, - If M. Walsh had not been to me as a brother for many years, I shold have replied to his letter at some length,
not for my own sake, but as a duty to the Church of which I am a member. As it is, I have nothing to say but that he has been
hasty in believing a lie. He has heard that I have made "a very industrious effort to put forth the notion that he was only held
by fear of consequences" from following my example in joining the Catholic Church. That he did not reject the falsehood with
the scorn it deserved I can only attritube to the temporary blindness of excitement. He knows me, however, too well to accuse
me of insincerity, and he will believe when he believed to be right, be the "consequences" what they might. It is because of this
very conviction that I entertain, and of course have not hesistated, to express my hope of his eventual conversion. I esteem him an
earnest Christian man, and in this sense, and no other, a "Catholic at heart." I saw deliberately in no other, for although he once*
held truths which would assuredly have led him on towards the Church, I have reason to think he has changed his views, and fallen
back, at least for a time, into ultra-Protestantism. On reflection, he will see, I am persuaded, the grevious inuustice he has done
me in crediting, without close enquiry, the reports on which he founeded his strange letter, - and then, perhaps he may suspect
that he has injured others also.

The readers of Mr. Walsh's letter will hardly believe that the seeking of intercourse with members of the Church of England
to which he alludes has consisted solely in one or two affectionate messages and notes to himself, and a very few of my most
intimate friends; yet so it is. Bitter indeed must be the hatred of Catholic truth in the heart of one who could see in the natural

*For one who has fallen into that very error of adding to the truth, from which the Church of England happily was reformed,
and who now from the side of Romanism looks back upon truths he once held apart from his present tenets as a Roman Catholic,
it is easy to say that there was a natural tendency in such truths to lead to the subsequent tenets. It is as easy to say that there
is a natural tendency in the perverse heart of man to corrupt all truth, yet need not all truth necessarily be corrupted. So it is
scarcely reasonable, or under the particular circumstances, fair and generous, for one to say that because he has gone on by an
apparently easy transition from holding some doctrines to accept others, therefore his friend with whom, as to some of the
originally held doctrines, he was at the time in perfect unity of faith, would "assuredly" be led on in the same direction and to the
same conclusions. it is in fact for such an one to assume that his own mind must necessrily be a type of pattern of all other
rightly judging minds; and that nothing but moral imperfection, or intellectual inferiority, can possibly keep others from taking
exactly the same course as himself. Does my belief, for instance, in the "Holy Catholic Church," according to the doctrine of
the Church of England on that Article of the Creed, "assuredly lead" to the belief that there is no Holy Catholic Church apart
from "the See of St. Peter-the Holy See," and of which the Bishop of Rome is not acknowledged as Pope, supreme and only
head? Does my beleif that "our Lrod was born of the Virgin Mary" lead to the heretical assumption that she has distrinct
authority as an intercessor for men with God the Son? Does my belief "in the communion of saints" "assuredly lead" to the
acknowledgement that the saints departed have power to hear my prayers, and to intercede for me with God? If such be the
necessary consequences of such belief of the Apostles' Creed, we are to suppose that the whole church of England is "assuredly"
gradually to un-reform herself, and that not only I, but all the Bishops, clergy, and orthodox laity must do and think exactly
what this one individual, like a few other individuals, has done and thought on these points. However, as a matter of fact, let
me claim against the imputatiion which this letter has thrown out as a handle for my enemies and accusers, to have earnestly,
and steadfastly, and unwaveringly, and unchangedly counted for the Church of England's truths as such, against this very
tendency which I saw in individuals about me to exaggerate and corrupt them into the errors of Romanism. By word-stern
and undecided-I have all along expressed my sens of acts or principles tending to involve unfaithfulness to the doctrine and
discipline of the Church of England. By ect, i.e. by manner, by less frequent intercourse, by evidence of desire for dissociation,
which gave only too much pain because they could not be mistakes, I had for some time past expressed my consciousness of
tendencies and opinions with which I had no sumpathy. This, in the face of the most unequivocal disavowals of altered or abated
attachments to the Church of England, made to myself and others on his part, was all that I had a right or was in a position to
do; serving, as those disvowals did, for the time to remove my fears, and even to induce me to indicate him from the suspicions
of others. And when the final step was to be taken, and "my daily companion for several years, the friend of my bosom," was
to renounce my brotherhood and fellowship in the Church of England, I too, for the Church's sake, for my flock's sake, and
for my own sake, renounced at once the intercourse of friendship; not in "bitterness" of anger, but of sorrow, wuch as I pray
God may never wring my heart again; and every day's experience and reflection strengthen the conviction that this was the
right course. Having acted on principle of duty, and against my feelings, I must bear to be thought ungentle by those who had
no such course to take; and, if it must be so, for my lack of sympathy with a seceder to the Church of Rome, even to be called
an "ultra-Protestant."