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diously the system of doctrine and practice maintained by the church of Rome.

1. The word popery I was unwilling to employ : both because I have no inclination to give needless offence; and because the marked difference of opinion in regard to the papal authority, which subsists between the Cisalpines and the Transalpines, has rendered that word not universally proper.

2. On the other hand, the word catholicism 1 could not employ: because such a term, when nakedly and exclusively applied to the theological system of the western Latin church, has always appeared to me most singularly incorrect.

That the Latins are catholics in the same sense that the Greeks and the Armenians and the Syrians and the Abyssinians and the English are catholics; in other words, that the Latins constitute one of the many branches of Christ's Universal Church; I am far from wishing to deny: but when a generic name is applied specifically to a single particular branch, this palpable inaccuracy of nomenclature can only produce a correspondent erroneousness of conception.

The name catholic belongs EQUALLY TO ALL the members of Christ's catholic church, wherever dispersed and however distressed. Hence a name, which belongs EQUALLY TO ALL whether oriental or occidental, cannot be correctly employed, as the special and exclusive and descriptive appellation of a PART only because, when the term is thus used, the common character of catholicism is by implication denied to every christian, who happens not to be a member of that provincial western church which is in com

munion with the bishop of Rome, and which acknowledges him as its chief or patriarch.

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3. Rejecting then the two words popery and catholicism for reasons which to myself appeared fully sufficient, I have adopted the unexceptionable term Romanism and I wish to be understood as employing it to designate the peculiar system of doctrine and practice, which the church of Rome in all her branches maintains and inculcates.

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IX. Not ignorant of the impatient indolence of an age which claims to have discovered the long hidden royal road to knowledge, I have laboured to be brief; yet, aware at the same time that in one mode only can the discussion be satisfactorily conducted, I have endeavoured to condense within small space no small quantity of matter.

Should it please God to render this manual for the English laity extensively and permanently useful, I shall have my reward. The opprobrium is at least avoided, that the English clergy, by their silence, have accepted a Latin offer to spare them their embarrassment, and to accomplish their defective ministrations.

LONG-NEWTON RECTORY,

Sept. 17, 1825.

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