Vindiciae ecclesiae anglicanae Author:Robert Southey Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 14 PROPER STYLE OF CONTROVERSY. I Pursue your arrangement, Sir, because my intention of making this volume an answer to yours in all its parts, may be faci... more »litated by making it as far as possible its counterpart. That order leads me to notice your remarks upon the spirit in which controversies of this nature ought to be conducted. Just as I had come to this part of the subject, the British Catholic Association passed its vote of " thanks to Mr. Charles Butler, for his able refutation of the calumnies heaped upon the (Roman) Catholic Church by the Poet Laureate, Mr. Southey,inhis Book of the Church." The thanks of that body, Sir, you have well deserved : but it is somewhat premature to decree a triumph before the field is won, and while too the antagonist is in full heart and strength. As to thecharge of calumny, whether that will rest upon the Book of the Church, or the Roman Catholic Association, remains to be proved. Dr. Milner is included in the same vote of thanks : whatever notice I may think proper to bestow upon his observations, will be included therefore in this reply; but I must premise that the Titular Bishop is not included in those acknowledgements of courtesy and expressions of respect, which are made with perfect sincerity towards you. You state, Sir, in the words of Father Jones, " a Benedictine, called in religion Father Le- ander a Sancto Martino," the points both of discipline and doctrine wherein the Church of England and that of Rome agree: and upon this you observe that, " when there is so near an approximation in religious creeds, there certainly should be an equal approximation in Christian and moral charity ; an equal wish to soothe, to conciliate, to find the real points of difference very few, and to render them still fewer; and an equal unwillin...« less