questions which concern our peace and salvation. We must have a guide, but do not mock us with a fallible guide. Talk not to us of a church, unless you have an infallible church to offer us. We have followed a fallible guide long enough. We believe Christ did found an infallible church, rendered infallible by his perpetual presence and supervision. To that church we willingly yield obedience. But your church is not it, for yours, by your confession, is fallible. We have therefore been obliged to look beyond Anglicanism, to a church which at least claims to be infallible and which demands our obedience only on the ground that it is infallible.

"Nor have we any sympathy with the war of The Churchman against the Papacy. . . . We find Anglicanism more objectionable in its rejection of the papacy than in anything else. This was its primal sin, its mother error, from which has come, as a natural progeny, its whole brood of errors. Had it not been for the Papacy, the Church, humanly speaking, had failed long ere this. In the institution and preservation of the Papacy, we see the especial providence of God. We shrink not from the abused name of Papist; and we only regret that the ambition and wickedness of civil rulers have been able to prevent the Papacy from doing all the good it has attempted. No man must think

to frighten us by the cry of 'Popery.' Happy are we to acknowledge the authority of the Holy Father; more happy shall we be, if we can so live as to secure his blessing."

To Brownson's arraignment, Seabury made no reply, in spite of the explicit request and demand for an answer contained in the article. His High Church partisans waited long and anxiously for their champion's response; but it never came, and the subject was not alluded to again in the columns of The Churchman.

This incident had a powerful effect in clarifying Mr. Richards' mind. He had become heartily sick of the endless divisions of Protestantism and the uncertainty and confusion of doctrine in the Episcopal Church. He longed for unity and for certainty of faith. He found himself, by this time, possessed, on his own judgment, of a certain number of Catholic doctrines, or rather opinions; but he saw around him every conceivable variety of belief, the Bishops themselves hopelessly at variance, and no authority competent, or even claiming to be competent, to settle these disputes with final and unerring certainty. He was rapidly coming to realize that the Roman Catholic Church possessed not only a definite, fixed system of doctrine, Unity of Faith, but also an organ for the preservation of that unity.

The Branch Theory, that spurious makeshift

devised to retain anxious souls in heresy and schism, and actually to this day retaining so many hundreds who would otherwise find refuge in the true Fold, had no attractions for his frank and straightforward mind. He thus writes concerning it: "I shall never forget the surprise with which I first read a full and able statement of the Branch Theory. The true Church is composed of all who retain the Apostolic Succession, and is divided into three great branches, the Eastern or Greek, the Western or Roman, and the Anglican. 'Anglo-Catholic' was a favorite designation at this time. These great branches had become 'temporarily alienated' from one another. It was a useless task to undertake to determine where the principal fault of the alienation lay. There was undoubtedly fault on all sides. The true policy now was to cease quarreling, to let by-gones be bygones, and all unite in a grand effort for union. The tone of controversialists in the 'AngloCatholic' party toward the Catholic Church was entirely changed. The Romanists were no longer the horrible monsters they had uniformly been represented to be by the old Iconoclasts and Fathers of the Reformation. The Roman

was a true branch, a Sister Church, having lawful jurisdiction in her own territory. Sometimes they even spoke of wooing their Roman Sister to a more fraternal intercourse.

Said Keble, the sweet singer, the poet of the

party:

"And oh! by all the pangs and fears

Fraternal spirits know,

When for an elder's shame the tears

Of wakeful anguish flow,
Speak gently of our Sister's fall;
Who knows but gentle love
May win her at our patient call
The surer way to prove!'

"The question naturally arose, admitting the Branch Theory, when was it probable that the alienation would cease? The Greek Schism occurred about one thousand years ago, the Anglican three hundred. What new ground of hope had they that the obstacles which had so long stood in the way of reconciliation would be removed? The greatest obstacle of all was the Roman Catholic doctrine of the Supremacy of the Pope and the essential headship of the See of Peter. The Anglicans were ready to admit the Primacy of Peter, but denied the Supremacy, or in other words, the divine institution of the Papacy and its consequent necessity to the very constitution of the Church. What reason had they to suppose Catholics would yield this principle, which they have held from the very beginning and which is to them the very bulwark of orthodoxy? They made very earnest attempts at fraternizing with the Greek Church, but were given the cold shoulder

by the Greek ecclesiastics. Still with wonderful pertinacity they adhered to their favorite theory and displayed the most remarkable ingenuity in sustaining it. It did not satisfy me. I had at a quite early period of my upward progress got a glimpse of the Catholic idea of the Unity of the Church, with a Head and Centre of Unity in the Papacy, and of the arguments from reason and scripture in support of it, and it made a permanent lodgment in my mind. I could not get rid of it. It staid with me. It haunted me. I could see no satisfactory answer to it, and the more I reflected on the subject, the more I was convinced that that was just what Protestantism lacked, just what we all needed and must have in order to attain to Unity of Faith or Unity of Organization. I came to despise Protestantism as such and to deplore the so-called Reformation. I was haunted by the idea that the See of Peter was the Rock on which the Church was built and which had the promise of our Lord that the gates of hell should never prevail against it. For a wonder, I had never been much of an Anti-Popery man. With my antecedents and surroundings, I should have been a good Popery hater and should have had much to say against the abominations of Sodom and all that. But I am thankful that the mercy of God preserved me from that species of fanaticism, so that I