the part of God, somewhat is to be promised and performed on ours also. If you hope for the divine blessings, you must not be unmindful of the promises to the performance whereof those blessings were annexed. And forasmuch as such promises were made in your name by your godfathers and godmothers at a time when you were unable to make them yourselves, or to understand the force and meaning of them, it is fit that, now you are grown up, you should take them upon yourselves. And though your assent hath been often implied and declared by the repetitions of creeds and catechisms, yet it is highly expedient for the more full, open, and solemn declaration thereof that you do in the face of the Church renew your baptismal vow, and manifest your entire assent to all that which your sureties had before promised in your name and on your behalf.

This declaration will most solemnly engage you to the performance of three things: first, that you shall renounce the devil and all his works, the pride of life, and the sinful lusts of the flesh; secondly, that you shall believe all the articles of the Christian faith, which are summed up in the Apostles' Creed; and in the third place, that you shall conform your lives to the will and commandments of Almighty God.

All those things which your sureties have undertaken for you, and which the faith you have hitherto professed doth already oblige you to perform, doth the present public deliberate renewal of your vow, at this time and place in your own proper persons, after a more especial manner bind upon your consciences. And that you may be the better enabled to discharge these obligations, you must pray to God for the assistance of His grace and Holy Spirit.

I have thought it fit to insist on these particulars, not only for the instruction of those who present themselves to be confirmed, but also for the sake of all who hear me, to the end that all such who having before received confirmation, might nevertheless not have hitherto reflected duly thereon, being made sensible of the great concern and importance of the engagements they have entered into, may seriously think of fulfilling them for the future, which God of His infinite mercy grant.

A LETTER

TO SIR JOHN JAMES, BART.

ON THE

DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE ROMAN

AND ANGLICAN CHURCHES

WRITTEN IN 1741

First published in 1850

NOTE

SIR JOHN JAMES was an intimate friend of Berkeley's, one of those who accompanied him to Rhode Island in September, 1728. He succeeded to the title in 1736, and about that time he returned from America. In 1741 Sir John made known to him his intention to join the Church of Rome. This letter, found among the Berkeley MSS., was Berkeley's reply. It was first published in 1850 by the Rev. James Anderson, of Brighton. It is almost the only expression we have of his views upon points of difference between the Roman and Anglican Churches. The MS. is unfortunately defective in some places. Notwithstanding, it deserves preservation, as a luminous exposition, charged with his spirit of Christian toleration and charity.

Sir John James, who was the last baronet of his line, died about three months after this Letter was written. Berkeley says that he was of 'a thoughtful and noble nature; one who lived above what is called the world, making the pursuit of truth, and the unum necessarium his chief business.' See chapter viii of my Life and Letters of Berkeley.

A LETTER

ΤΟ

SIR JOHN JAMES, BART.

DEAR SIR,

CLOYNE, June 7, 1741.

I WOULD not defer writing, though I write in no small confusion and distress; my family having many ill of an epidemical fever that rages in these parts, and I being the only physician to them and my poor neighbours. You have my sincere thanks for the freedom and friendship with which you are so good to communicate your thoughts. Your making the unum necessarium your chief business sets you above the world. I heartily beg of God that He would give me grace to do the same; a heart constantly to pursue the truth, and abide in it, wherever it is found. No divine could say, in my opinion, more for the Church of Rome than you have done :

'Si Pergama dextrâ Defendi possent, etiam hâc defensa fuissent.'

[Virg. Æneid II. 291.]

The Scriptures and Fathers, I grant, are a much better help to know Christ and His Religion than the cold and dry writings of our modern divines. Many who are conversant in such books, I doubt, have no more relish for the things of the Gospel, than those who spend their time in reading the immense and innumerable tomes of Scholastic Divinity, with which the Church of Rome abounds. The dry polemical theology was the growth of Rome, begun from Peter Lombard, the Master of the Sentences1; and grew and spread among the Monks and Friars, under the Pope's eye. The Church of England is

So named from his Liber Sententiarum, the standard book of

Scholastic Theology, which appeared in 1172.

522

not without spiritual writers of her own. Taylor, Ken, Beveridge, Scott, Lucas, Stanhope, Nelson, the author of the works falsely ascribed to the writer of the Whole Duty of Man, and many more, whom I believe you will find not inferior to those of the Church of Rome. But I freely own to you that most modern writings smell of the age, and that there are no books so fit to make a soul advance in spiritual perfection, as the Scriptures and ancient Fathers.

I think you will find no Popery in St. Augustine, or St. Basil, or any writers of that antiquity. You may see, indeed, here and there, in the Fathers a notion borrowed from Philosophy (as they were originally philosophers); for instance, something like a Platonic or Pythagorean Purgatory. But you will see nothing like indulgences, or a bank of merits, or a Romish purgatory, whereof the Pope has the key. It is not simply believing even a Popish tenet, or tenets, that makes a Papist, but believing on the Pope's authority. There is in the Fathers a divine strain of piety, and much of the spiritual life. This, we acknowledge, all should aspire after, and I make no doubt is attainable, and actually attained, in the communion of our Church, at least as well as in any other.

You observe very justly that Christ's religion is spiritual, and the Christian life supernatural; and that there is no judge of spiritual things but the Spirit of God. We have need, therefore, of aid and light from above. Accordingly, we have the Spirit of God to guide us into all truth. If we are sanctified and enlighted by the Holy Ghost and by Christ, this will make up for our defects without the Pope's assistance. And why our Church and her pious members may not hope for this help as well as others, The Author of our faith tells us, He I see no reason. that 'will do the will of God, shall know of the doctrine, whether it be of God.' (St. John vii. 17.) I believe this extends to all saving truths.

There is an indwelling of Christ and the Holy Spirit; there is an inward light. If there be an ignis fatuus that misleads wild and conceited men, no man can thence infer There must be a proper there is no light of the sun. disposition of the organ, as well as a degree of daylight, Where these concur nobody doubts of to make us see.