The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1841-12-07 00:00:00

LETTER 111

GENTLEMEN,—" Faithful are the reproofs of a friend, but
the kisses of an enemy are deceitful." There are deceitful
enemies endeavouring to kiss you into a compromise ; listen
then, once more, to the voice of your old and trusty Achates,
who writes with the unembarrassed liberty of conscious
kindness and unaffected respect.
It is known to you, Gentlemen, that when the Christian
Church in England, under the government of her legitimate
rulers, purified herself from the corruptions in doctrine and

practice which commenced upon the continent of Europe,
and were gradually introduced into England, obscuring the
fair face of her primitive Christianity ; there were certain
schismatics who, adhering to those corruptions and recogni-
zing the primacy of Rome, as opposed to that of Canterbury,
separated themselves from the Christian Church Catholic in
England. The descendants of those schismatics adhered to
the schism, and perpetuated the corruptions of their forefa-
thers. The ecclesiastics of those separatists have, it seems,
addressed you, modestly calling themselves "the Catholic
Clergy of Liverpool,"and announcing, respectfully of course,
that they cannot concur in an arrangement which it was un-
derstood to be in your contemplation to introduce into your
schools.

They complain—" that it is in contemplation to discard
the Douay version of the Bible entirely from the schools, and
to require that all the children shall use the authorised ver-
sion of the Established Church."
This is skilfully worded, as if their objection lay not to the
use of the Holy Scripture as such, but only to the exclusive
use of one translation of the Scripture rather than the other :
and an impression is conveyed by it to the minds of unwary
and uninstructed readers, that these gentlemen have no ob-
jection to the use of the Bible in a translation of which they
approve.

This seems fair and reasonable, but this is not the question
at issue. In rejecting the Douay Bible, Christians are not
influenced by the mere matter of translation, (although in
many passages they cannot approve of it,) but by the doc-
trines and traditions of men which have never yet been sepa-

rated from it.
There is, I believe, no such thing as a Douay Bible bona
fide without notes or comments of man, and also purified
from those apochryphal books which were never received as
Scripture by the Jews, nor enrolled in the sacred canon by
the primitive Christian Church. When such a copy of the
Douay Bible shall be prepared for general use, the question
between it and our authorised version will be narrowed into
a question of translation. As matters now stand, it is im-
portant that it should be clearly seen and known, that to
plead for the use of the Douay Bible, with its notes and
interspersed apochryphal books, is to plead for the distin-
guishing peculiarities of the Roman schism.
To give one instance. St. Matt. iii, 2. Our authorised
version is " Repent ye ; for the kingdom of heaven is at
hand." The Douay version is, "Do penance: for the king-
dom of heaven is at hand." Such is the difference in transla-
tion ; but this is not all ; it is magnified into an irreconcileable
breach by the Douay note, which is this—
" Which word according to the use of the Scriptures and
the holy Fathers does not only signify repentance, and amend-
ment of life, but also punishing past sins by fasting, and such
like penitential exercises."
On this I wish you to observe, in the first place, the utter
hopelessness of combining, in any educational system, the
Christian Church and the Roman schismatics. The letter
above quoted is an official declaration that by enforcing the
use of the Sacred Scriptures upon all the children, and the
practice of prayer in the school, you will exclude the
schismatics. And you are already in possession of sufficient
proof, that, by NOT enforcing these things you will exclude
the Christian clergy of the town. In my last letter I quoted
for you the bold and manly declarations made in the Amphi-
theatre Meeting by the Rev. Jonathan Brooks and the Rev.
Augustus Campbell. I might have quoted largely similar
declarations made upon the same occasion, and on other oc-
casions, by the Rev. Hugh M`Neile. These men may be
said in a general way to represent all the clergy of the town.
These are not men to say one thing on such a subject as
this in 1836, and another thing in 1841, and therefore I think
you may feel assured that they will remain in their present
dignified distance from your schools, and reiterate their
Christian protests against the system, unless you do what
the Romish priests say they cannot concur in, and more also.
Thus, gentlemen, it appears that the alternative you have
to determine, is not whether you will, or can, combine all
parties in one system—that is impossible—but you have to
choose which you will have. Five years ago the council
chose the Roman schism : we have confidence that now you
will choose the Christian Church.
Our confidence is indeed somewhat shaken by what
took place in your meeting of last Wednesday. 'We were
grieved to see your Education Committee betray their
own weakness and disunion, and still more so to see so
many of you (without any explanation of why you did
it) joining your common adversaries to defeat that com-
mittee, though it be but for a time. There is an ap-
pearance, at least, of indecision about it, which arms your
opponents with the hope that by skilful management and
professions of moderation, they may succeed in continuing,
perhaps increasing, your disunion ; so as practically to neu-
tralise your ostensible majority, so far as this great question
is concerned. True, the report of the Education Committee
recommended a sweeping measure : true, they were con-
victed of not having formally read for the purpose the reso-
lutions which they proposed to rescind : true, they were shewn
to be disunited What then ? That political opponents
should avail themselVes of such topics for embarrassment is
natural enough ; but that political friends should at such
a moment join their opponents, and affirm by a majority that
they have no confidence in their own committee, is painfully
unnatural, and excites serious apprehensions for the future.
That it was done with good intentions, I do not for a mo-
ment doubt ; but this increases the alarm, because equally
disastrous measures may be carried with equally good inten-
tions ; and, when our friends have injured us, it will be but
poor consolation to be told that they were all the while con-
scientiously intending to do us good.
If you could not conscientiously support your own com-
mittee, neither retire before a division : but if, on the con-

trary, you were conscientiously constrained to oppose your
committee ; it must, one may fairly suppose, have been for
very strong reasons : and surely, gentlemen, those reasons
should have Leen distinctly stated at the time, and the ne-
cessity, in your judgment, for, such a step made plain to all.
But no reasons were stated, and, consequently, the division
was well calculated, not only to embarrass your friends, but,
also, to encourage your opponents. Hence, we arc not sur-
prised to find, upon the summons for the meeting of the
council, for Wednesday next, the following motion, of which
notice has been given by Mr. Councillor Bolton :
" That it be an instruction to the Education Committee,
that the children of Roman Catholics shall not, in the cor-
poration schools, be required to use or read any book what-
ever, against which their parents or guardians may have

conscientious objections."
Can you wonder, gentlemen, that we should be grieved
that a majority, returned, as you have been, should have so
acted and spoken as to leave yourselves still open to such
an assault as this, with the slightest hope of success ?
Excuse this bold remonstrance. It is the boldness of faith-
ful affection, and the exigency of the crisis seems at once to
demand and to justify it. I conclude for the present, as I
began—" Faithful are the reproofs of a friend, but the kisses
of an enemy are deceitful."—Yours,

FIDUS ACHATES

Liverpool, Dec. 4, 1841.

TO THE EDITOR OF THE LIVERPOOL
STANDARD.

Liverpool, 6th Dec., 1841

Slll,—The Editor of the Journal having refused to insert
the following, in answer toa letter of Mr. Rathbone's, I take
this opportunity to forward it to von, trusting you will find
romn for it in the Standard of Tuesday next.
AN OLD SCHOOLMASTER.