have escaped me, I regret it; and pray you, gentlemen, to believe that none such was intended to annoy you, or your fellow-religionists.

In the spirit of charity, peace, and truth,

Your obedient, humble servant,

B. C.

CHARLESTON, S. C., Sept. 11.

To the Editors of the United States Catholic Miscellany:

Gentlemen:-In the number of the Gospel Messenger for the present month, I have read the following paragraph, which is satisfactory evidence of the candour and honesty with which the editors conduct that press:

"The quotation which was made by a writer, whose numbers appeared in our work, under the signature of a 'Protestant Catholic,' from the translated Missal used in this city, in connexion with his remarks on the Roman Catholic worship of saints and angels, was made, we are satisfied, in perfect fairness, and without the least intention of applying to his purpose an error of the translator, or of the press. That the comma at the words 'make intercession for us,' instead of a period, is an error of the press, or of the translator, we are since perfectly satisfied. The Latin Missal, and other translations which we have seen, of the part of the Roman Catholic Offices referred to, have, make intercession for us. The prayer here addressed to the men and women saints, is for their intercession, and not for their mercy. The prayer to canonized saints, for their intercession in behalf of supplicants at their shrines, in the same office with prayer addressed to God, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, remains admitted, and we should suppose is enough for the purpose of our correspondent: who, we are sure, will not disapprove of the notice we have felt it proper to take of his error, in using against Roman Catholics, a wrong translation of a passage of their Missal.''

Had the "Protestant Catholic" correspondent taken the trouble to instruct himself on what he wrote, I would have been spared considerable labour, and you, sirs, would have been relieved from loading your pages with the weekly refutations of insipid and often refuted charges against our doctrine.

I have, gentlemen, to make my acknowledgments to you, for the facility which you have given to the publication of my humble defence of the principles of our holy faith, as well on the present, as on former occasions. In a few more letters, I will dismiss the "Protestant Catholic," in the hope that he will, in future, study and prepare himself on Catholic doctrine, before he shall again hazard such charges against

us.

Yours, sincerely,

B. C.

[From the United States Catholic Miscellany of July 5, 1828. Referred to in the preceding Letters.]

To the Right Reverend Doctor England, Bishop of Charleston:

Right Reverend Sir:-The Editors of the United States Catholic Miscellany, beg leave to call your attention to a curious and extraordinary piece of information of which they have been put in possession, and hope you will have the kindness before they proceed to make any further use of it, to elucidate the circumstances in such a manner as to remove the unfavourable impressions which such a report is calculated to make on the minds of persons unacquainted with the doctrines of the Catholic Church.

They have heard it asserted as a fact, and they know it is believed by many, that you, Right Reverend Sir, had advertised indulgences for sale, and that the advertisement was placed on the door of your church. From the character of one person, who, it seems, says he saw it there, they have reason to think it was not a tale forged by him, but that he might have seen something else there which he mistook for it. Such is the substance of a report that is currently circulated; and anxiously waiting your explanation on the subject.

We remain, Right Reverend Sir,

Your most obedient, humble servants,

EDITORS of the United States Catholic Miscellany.

WENTWORTH STREET, July 1, 1828.

To the Editors of the United States Catholic Miscellany:

Gentlemen: You had, indeed, good cause to designate as curious. and extraordinary the piece of information which you convey to me. But how am I to correct the evil? I know, and I surely need not inform you, that the entire statement is as unqualified an untruth as was ever whispered about. However wealthy, or aristocratically descended, or gifted with talents, or otherwise correct in his deportment, the person whom you accuse and excuse might be, or whatever the situation he might fill, I cannot so far mock truth as to admit that it would be even charitable to suppose that he did see upon the church door any advertisement which he could mistake for one notifying the sale of indulgences by me. I cannot surmise to what individual you allude, nor do I wish to know, because I should prefer not being aware of who has thus far degraded himself, to being obliged to estimate him as I should after the discovery. May he repent and be forgiven! The only notice concerning indulgences that has ever been published by advertisement on the

church doors by me, or by my authority, or with my knowledge, is that of the Jubilee-you have the copy and can use that and this letter as you please.

I have been the instrument of communicating indulgences to thousands of persons during the twenty years that I have been in the ministry, and have known hundreds of clergymen similarly circumstanced, and I never have myself received, nor have I known one of them to receive. directly or indirectly the value of one cent for such ministerial duty. Yet my denial is of little value as regards those who have made up their minds that things must be, as unprincipled writers have stated them to be. I cannot wonder at the belief of stories imported from Europe and Asia, when stories like this are believed by the very persons in whose society I am daily found.

To receive such information as yours, is no novelty to me: I have yesterday been told by a respectable Protestant lady, that she had to defend me from the charge of trafficking in the sale of indulgences upon my arrival here, but that finding the people too well informed, and the profits small, I thought proper to lay aside the commerce. You can well conceive how mortifying it must be to me to know that frequently the religion of our blessed Saviour, and even my humble self should be thus treated in the highest circles of our society; and by persons whose information on other subjects I respect and admire, but who, where our Church is concerned, speak unmeasuredly and mercilessly of what they have never studied, and therefore do not understand. I assure you, gentlemen, that the hardihood of assertion and absence of information upon the subject of our religion is so great as to have at first excited my extreme astonishment: but custom is the best mode of removing admiration. I can now calmly hear what I once thought no person would venture to assert, and I have long been enabled patiently to know myself described as guilty of such acts as if perpetrated by me would stamp my character as that of an unprincipled, sacrilegious, dishonest, simonaical deceiver, and my flock as the most egregious simpletons. I have been insensibly led on, without feeling that I have far exceeded the limits within which I intended to confine myself. I regret to find that your statement of public report is considerably under what I know to be the fact. But we must have patience and persevere. The people of America will examine and though slowly, will finally discover the truth. Yours, JOHN, Bishop of Charleston.

This unqualified disavowal is nothing more or less than we expected, so perfectly satisfied were we in our mind, from the general

character of the prelate upon whom this strange and malignant charge was attempted to be fastened, that he would not be guilty of an act which his religion not only forbids, but the perpetration of which would expose him to the heaviest penalties which that Church, of which he is a minister, could inflict upon him. But our duty as Journalists, responsible to the public for the truth of each and every statement we make, compelled us, however disagreeable to our own, or hurtful to the feelings of the respectable individual concerned, to lay before him the information we received, and thus afford him an opportunity of vindicating his character and his religion, before the tribunal of public opinion, and of covering with merited confusion, an injudicious, careless being, who reported as a fact, what he never examined, or having axamined, circulated as truth what he knew to be a falsehood. We are well aware the trafficked indulgence alluded to, is the one which was published together with the Jubilee in the Cathedral Church of this city, on the 5th of November, 1826. Now, we ourselves have conversed with hundreds, who to the best of their powers, endeavoured to perform the conditions upon which the benefits derivable from that indulgence could be obtained; we have heard these conditions distinctly and audibly published from more than four altars in this Diocess; we have seen manuscript copies of them, sanctioned by the signature of the Bishop of Charleston, we have seen printed ones of them confirmed by the same authority, and signature; and from all that we could gather from those with whom we have spoken, from all we could hear, from all we could see, and from all we could read, we could learn nothing of money, or bartering, or traffic; we never could ascertain that Bishop England proposed changing the temple of the living God into a simoniacal counting-house, the altar of his penniless Master, into a vile money-table, nor the Missal of his creed into a mercenary ledger. We fortunately have lying before us on our table a printed copy of these conditions; we gladly insert them for the gratification of our readers, and if they, or our trust-worthy reporter, can extract anything in the shape of money from the duties here prescribed, we despair not, that in a short time, by some other unheard of experiment, they may be able to discover the maximum desideratum, or the philosopher's stone.

"Conditions to be fulfilled in order to obtain the benefit of the Indul.gence of the Jubilee, at present in the City of Charleston.

"1st. To make a good confession and communion.

"2d. To visit at least four times within the space of one week,

at any time of the day which may be most convenient, each of the following three altars, viz.: that of the Church of Hassell Street, the large altar at the Cathedral, and the small altar at the Cathedral, repeatin at each of them, at least, the Lord's prayer and the Hail Mary, each five times, and the Creed once, at each visit, to beseech God for the conversion of all those who are in error of faith, or in habits of immorality, and that he would vouchsafe to enlighten the understandings of men to see truth, and incline their hearts to its belief and to reduce its principles to practice.

"3d. To attend during the said week at least at three masses and three instructions, in Hassell Street Church; or if there is a serious obstacle to prevent attendance at the mass, either the five decades of the Rosary, or the Litany of Saints may be substituted therefor.

"4th. In any special case in which, through sickness or infirmity, or other reasonable cause, it will not be in the power of the person desirous of obtaining the benefits of the Indulgence to comply with either of the conditions No. 2, No. 3, the confessor is empowered to substitute some other condition which may be performed.

ORDER OF PROCEEDING DAILY.

"Meditation read after morning prayer, which prayer shall commence at 6 o'clock-Mass at 7 o'clock.

"Ten o'clock, Mass, and exhortation.

"Half-past 6 o'clock, p. m. short prayer, short instruction, longer prayer and sermon, after will be a hymn and music. These exercises to continue during this week.

Nov. 5, 1826.

*JOHN, Bishop of Charleston.