A

LETTER

TO THE

RIGHT REV. DR. MILNER;

OCCASIONED BY SOME PASSAGES CONTAINED IN HIS BOOK,

INTITULED,

"THE END OF RELIGIOUS CONTROVERSY."

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.

are,

The adamantine and imperishable work of Hooker, in his Ecclesiastical Polity, and the controversial writings of Jeremy Taylor, fraught, as they 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