The reasons for publishing this posthumous work of Dr. Parr have been stated by the Rev. John Lynes, in his Preface.

It was originally intended for the Gentleman's Magazine; but the work grew too bulky for insertion in that useful repository, and on that account was laid aside, at the time, by the author, who has left behind him a large collection of observations on points of controversy between Catholics and Pro

testants.

A

LETTER TO THE REV. DR. MILNER.

REVEREND AND LEARNED SIR,

I HAVE lately read, with the greatest attention, a very interesting and elaborate work, which bears your celebrated name, and to which you have prefixed this title: "The End of Religious Controversy, in a friendly Correspondence between a religious Society of Protestants and a Roman Catholic Divine, addressed to the Right Reverend Dr. Burgess, Lord Bishop of St. David's, in answer to his Lordship's Protestant Catechism."

The contents of that book have not lessened the high opinion which I had long entertained of your acuteness as a polemic, your various researches as a theologian, and your talent for clear and animated composition. I acknowledge, too, that in my judgment you have been successful in your endeavours to vindicate the members of the Church of Rome from the imputations of impiety, idolatry, and blasphemy, in their worship of glorified saints, and in their adoration of the sacramental elements, which they believe to have been mystically transubstantiated into the body and blood of Christ.

The adamantine and imperishable work of Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and the controversial writings of Jeremy Taylor, fraught, as they are, with guileless ardour, with peerless eloquence, and with the richest stores of knowledge, historical, classical, scholastic, and theological, may be considered as irrefragable proofs of their pure, affectionate, and dutiful attachment to the reformed Church of England. Why then should I dissemble that, in the words of these excellent men, as quoted by yourself (in p. 237 and p. 265, part iii. 5th edit.), are contained the opinions which I hold upon a part of the controversy, which has long subsisted between Romanists and Protestants, about the consecrated elements in the Communion? "The object of their (the Catholics') adoration in the Sacrament is the true and eternal God, hypostatically united with his holy humanity, which humanity they believe actually present under the veil of the Sacrament; and if they thought him not present, they are so far from worshipping the bread, that they profess it idolatry to do so."-Dr. Jeremy Taylor, Bishop of Down, Liberty of Prophesying, sect. 20.

"I wish men would give themselves more to meditate with silence on what we have in the Sacrament, and less to dispute on the manner how. Sith we all agree that Christ, by the Sacrament, doth really and truly perform in us his promise, why do we vainly trouble ourselves with so fierce contentions, whether by consubstantiation or else by transubstantiation ?" Eccles. Polit. B. v. 67. (see note, page 274, 5th edit.) Content I am to speak

of your tenets upon the Sacrament as erroneous and unscriptural only; and in truth, Sir, I have often had most sincerely and seriously to disapprove of the acrimonious language which has been unnecessarily and unbecomingly employed by some of your opponents; and, I add, not less unnecessarily and unbecomingly by yourselves.

I leave it, Reverend Sir, with many learned, sagacious, and truly pious members of the Church of England, to discuss the merits of your cause, the accuracy of your statements, and the validity of your arguments, upon the following particulars :

"That Bishop Porteus is to be classed with other bigoted controvertists, who have holden up to the public a caricature of the Church of Rome:" (part iii. p. 373.) "that, when he represents purgatory, in the present Popish sense, as not heard of for four hundred years after Christ; nor universally received for a thousand years; nor almost in any other church than that of Rome to this day:"-" here are no less than three egregious falsities." (Part iii. p. 311.) And "you have often wondered at the confidence with which his Lordship asserts and denies facts of antient church history, in opposition to the known truth." (Part iii. p. 350.) That Bishop Hoadley not only had undermined the church he professed to support in her doctrines and discipline, as you have demonstrated in your Letters to a Prebendary, but that he had founded a school of complete Socinianism, and that Bishop Shipley is to be reckoned in the the first rank of his scholars. (Part ii. 127.) And here, Sir, you will permit me to ob

p.

serve, that, if your accusation against Hoadley be well founded, Dr. Balguy, whom you describe (part i. p. 67,) as "the most clear-headed writer, and renowned defender of the Establishment whom you had the happiness of being acquainted with," and as having Bishop Hoadley for his friend and master, (part i. p. 96,) could hardly have escaped the taint of "the damnable and cursed heresy of Socinianism," as it is termed in Bishop Sparrow's Collection of Canons twice quoted by yourself with approbation. (Part i. p. 92, and part ii. p. 126.). And here, Sir, may I be permitted to ask, whether the venerable Bishop Lowth, who in early life was closely connected with Bishop Hoadley, must, in consequence of that connection, be considered, for a time at least, favourable to Socinianism?

That "Chillingworth, who had been first a Protestant, next became a Catholic, and then returned in part to his former creed, gave, last of all, into Socinianism, which his writings greatly promoted." (Part i. p. 55.) That, "when you were defending the Articles and Liturgy of the Established Church, as well as your own, upon this point," (i. e. as appears from the context, the mysteries of the Trinity and Incarnation,) "you found the religious infection infinitely more extensive than you apprehended; the celebrated professors of divinity in the University delivering Dr. Balguy's doctrine to the young clergy in their public lectures, and the most enlightened Bishops publishing it in their pastoral and other works." That "Dr. Horsley, the great ornament of the episcopal bench, who protected