a crowd in State Street, in this city, that the people of Massachu setts should aid him in taking possession of the government by force. Afterward, he confuted the whole argument of Mr. Dorr, showing it to be hostile to all true democracy, and fatal, if it should succeed, to republican institutions. In 1841 he defended Theodore Parker, and declared him to be a Christian, in an article on Mr. Parker's Discourse at South Boston; asserting that he was guilty of no heresy, but only of defects, in his view of Jesus. But in 1845, Parkerism is infidelity, and Mr. Parker stands in the ranks of the disobedient and rebellious, among proud, conceited, and superficial infidels, and is, to all intents and purposes, a rejecter of the Gospel. But especially in relation to the Church question has Mr. Brownson's change of opinion been the most radical and extreme. He labors now with great ingenuity and extraordinary subtilty to show that there must be an infallible church with its infallible ministry, and that out of this church there can be no salvation. But formerly he labored with equal earnestness to show that there could be no such thing as a church at all, no outward priesthood or ministry. His former arguments, then, for aught that we can see, were just as acute, plausible, and effective as his present ones. the year 1840, he wrote a long article, proving, by a subtile chain of reasoning, the exact reverse of his present propositions. He then declared that it was necessary to destroy the Church and abol. ish the priesthood. He said, 'We oppose the Church as an Antichristian institution'; 'because we find no Divine authority for it; because we cannot discover that Jesus ever contemplated such an institution; and because we regard it as the grave of freedom and independence, and the hot-bed of servility and hypocrisy.' 'We object to every thing like an outward, visible church; to every thing that in the remotest degree partakes of the priest.' 'Christianity is the sublimest protest against the priesthood ever uttered.' Jesus instituted no priesthood, and no form of religious worship. He recognized no priest but a holy life. He preached no formal religion, enjoined no creed.' 'The priest is universally a tyrant, universally the enslaver of his brethren. Priests are, in their capacity of priests, necessarily enemies to freedom and equality. The word of God never drops from the priest's lips,' &c., &c." pp. 227-229.

In

If this were true, we ought to be looked upon as an extraordinary man, the marvel of our age and country. But we cannot claim the merit it awards us. The author cannot afford to grant us so much, for his purpose is not, by magnifying our ability, to enhance the merit of his courage in attempting to defend himself against us, but to show, from our frequent changes and alleged ability to reason on one side of a question as well as on

another, that nothing we say can deserve a moment's consideration. But if what he asserts be true, since it must be conceded that, however frequently we may have changed our views, we have never been known to return to a doctrine which we have once held and rejected, it is certain that we did not embrace Catholicity blindly, nor renounce Protestantism without knowing the best that can be said in its favor. This, instead of being a reason for not weighing, would be a good reason for weighing, any argument we might offer for the Church, not only because it would be likely to be a good argument in itself, but because urged by one who knows and has said the best that can be urged against it.

We cannot understand why Protestants should dwell with so much fondness on our alleged changeability and changes, for whatever discredit may attach to them, it attaches to Protestantism, not to Catholicity, to the Protestant minister, not to the Catholic believer. All the changeableness and changes alleged against us were exhibited, if at all, prior to our conversion, and nobody pretends to allege any thing of the sort against us since. We have resided in this community in all about sixteen years, the whole of our life that can be considered of any public interest. During nearly six of these years, we have been a member of the Catholic Church, and have shown no changeableness or symptom of change. If during the previous ten years, while a Protestant, a Unitarian minister even, we were, as you say, in the habit of changing our views and refuting ourselves about once in every three months, how do you account for the fact, that we have as a Catholic remained firm and steadfast for nearly six years? Here is, if you are right, the most remarkable change of all. How do you explain it? You cannot say that it is owing to our ignorance, either of Protestantism or of Catholicity, for you concede that we have said the best things that can be said in favor of, as well as against, each; it cannot be an obstinate attachment to opinions once avowed, for your very accusation implies the total absence of such attachment; it cannot be any fear as to the sort of reception Protestants would give us were we to return to them, for nobody can doubt that they would hail our return as a godsend. Whence, then, comes this remarkable change in personal character? The Examiner suggests the answer (p. 232), in declaring it impossible for a man to disavow what he has once seen to be true, and in asserting that, "When a man tells us that he has changed all his convictions, he tells us that he nev

er had any convictions to change." That, when a Protestant, we had not seen, and did not see, the truth, and therefore had no real faith, or what The Examiner calls convictions, is undoubtedly true, and this fact explains the change. As a Protestant we lacked the truth. We were seeking it without finding it, and therefore were restless, and continually changing; but as a Catholic we have found the truth, have it, are no longer seeking it, and therefore are satisfied, at rest, and change no more. But who, except the founder of the Church of the Disciples, would ever dream of adducing this as a reason why an argument constructed by us for the Church is not worth cousidering?

But suppose that our past conduct as a Protestant was altogether unworthy, that we were fickle and vain, as unstable as water, changing once a quarter, or even every month, — what then? The argument of The Examiner is a bad one. Let it be that we have changed too often to be depended upon. It amounts to nothing; for we have never proclaimed ourselves as one who could be depended upon, and we have never asked any one to believe the Church on our personal authority. If we professed to be the founder of our Church, to be ourselves "the ground and pillar of truth," and asked people to believe the Church for the simple reason that we believe her, it would not be amiss to ask who and what we are, and to make a rigid inquiry into our personal character, and our qualifications for arrogating to ourselves the Divine prerogative. But we have ceased to be a Protestant, and therefore do nothing of the sort. The Church was not founded by us, is not ours, and does in no sense rest on our wisdom and virtue. The arguments we have urged are addressed to the common reason of mankind; they speak for themselves, and depend not at all for their conclusiveness or want of conclusiveness on our personal character or personal authority. It is less conclusive than convenient to say, Mr. Brownson has changed his opinions often; therefore the argument he adduces for the Church against no-church is worthless.

We have, however, something to say to these alleged changes themselves. Some of them are fabrications, and others are perversions or exaggerations of very harmless facts. It is not true that we ever defended the course of Mr. Dorr of Rhode Island, or that we ever argued before a crowd in State Street, in this city, that Massachusetts ought to aid him in taking possession of the government by force. We never ad

dressed a crowd in State Street on the subject, either for or against his course. It is not true that we have shown, or ever attempted to show, that no man can be a Christian except he is a Transcendentalist. We never had the honor of being a Transcendentalist, and there never was a time when the fact, that any principle we held involved Transcendentalist consequences, would not have been of itself a sufficient reason for us to reject it as false. The chiefs of Boston Transcendentalism were from the outset Ralph Waldo Emerson and S. Margaret Fuller, and the pages of The Christian Examiner, as well as those of our own Boston Quarterly Review, prove that we always opposed their peculiar views. It is well known by the writer against us, that The Dial, which we ridiculed in public and in private, not our review, was their organ; that we always contended that Transcendentalism was pantheism, and that we held pantheism to be unchristian and false. That we held, as does every Protestant, principles which lead to Transcendentalism, we do not deny; but whenever we discovered such to be the fact, we rejected them as false, and for that reason alone. If we ever defended the Transcendentalists against their enemies, it was not in their peculiar views, but in what they held in common with all of us who at the time were engaged in the war against Cambridge conservatism, and the sensism of Locke. The Examiner knows perfectly well that its statement is not

true.

With regard to Mr. Parker, we own, that, when a Unitarian minister, we defended him, and maintained that his South Boston sermon might bear a Christian sense, and on Unitarian principles we should maintain the same thing to-day. In 1845, after our conversion, we wrote an article, in which we proved that no Unitarian had the right to pronounce his doctrine, all infidel as it is, unchristian. We understand no right in any Unitarian, nay, in any Protestant, to deny Mr. Parker, or any one else, to be a Christian, so long as he professes to be one. Our views of Mr. Parker have undergone no change, but in passing from Unitarianism to Catholicity our views of what is Christianity have of course changed.

That in 1840, while still a Protestant, we maintained nochurchism, as The Examiner alleges, is true, and we should maintain the same to-day, if we assumed, as we did then, that the Protestant movement was a Christian movement. We did it avowedly on Protestant principles, and we have written article after article, since our conversion, to prove that Protestants

have, and can have, on their principles, no church, no priesthood, in the proper sense of the terms. Assume those principles to be Christian, and you must be a pitiable reasoner indeed, if you cannot draw the conclusion, that every thing like a priest or a visible church is unchristian. We did but express, in clear and energetic language, what The Christian Examiner itself and all Unitarians do and must maintain. We were never so dull as not to see that the Protestant movement was directly opposed to every thing like a visible church or priesthood, in the sense in which we then denied them, or now hold them, or that, if there is a visible church or priesthood to be asserted as Christian, it is the Roman Catholic. At any time during the last twenty-five years, if it had been proved to us that our Lord did found a church and institute a priesthood, we should at once have said, as we say now, they are the Roman Catholic; for they obviously can be no other; and prove to us now that the Protestant movement, or Reformation, as it is called, was from God, and is to be held as a Christian movement, and we will repeat the essay on The Laboring Classes, which The Examiner cites, and say again, that "the truth never drops from the priest's lips," that "the priest is universally a tyrant, and the enslaver of his brethren." Doubtless we have changed on the Church question since 1840, but we have undergone on that question no change not necessarily involved in the conversion from Protestantism to Catholicity, and to object the change to us is only objecting, either that when a Protestant we were not a Catholic, or that now we are a Catholic we are not still a Protestant. How in the world were we to become

a Catholic without changing?

The Examiner thinks to overwhelm us, by applying to us prior to our conversion the language we have since employed in describing Protestantism.

"In fact, he has given the best possible description of his own creed before that time in the following passage: -It is in perpetual motion, and exemplifies, so far as itself is concerned, the old heathen doctrine that all things are in a perpetual flux. You can never count on its remaining stationary long enough for you to bring your piece to a rest and take deliberate aim. You must shoot it on the wing; and if you are not marksman enough to hit it flying, you will have, however well charged and well aimed your shot, only your labor for your pains. It is never enough to take note either of its past or its present position; but we must always regard the direction in which it is moving, and the celerity with