THE TERMS " CATHOLIC " AND "ROMAN CATHOLIC."
[To THE EDITOR OF TUC "SPECTATOR.")
Si,—The enclosed extract from time Quarterly Review of June, 1839, may relieve the minds of some of your readers as to the term " Protestant."—I am, Sir, &c., F. J. J.
"A higher Churchman than the great Archbishop Laud can hardly be named, and yet he was not ashamed to defend the name Protestant, or to protest against the Popish calumny which represents Protestantism as a bare negation. The Protestants.' says he to Fisher, did not get that name by protesting against the Church of Rome, but by protesting (and that when nothing else would serve) against her errors and superstitions. Do you but remove them from the Church of Rome, and our protestation is ended, and the separation too. Nor is protestation itself such an unheard-of thing in the very heart of religion. For the sacraments both in the Old and the New Testament are called by your own school, risible signs protesting the faith. Now if the sacraments be protestantia, signs protesting, why not men also and without all offence, be called Protestants, since by receiving the true sacra- ments and by refusing them which are corrupted, they do but protest the sincerity of their faith against the doctrinal corruption which bath invaded the great sacrament of the Eucharist and other parts of religion? Especially since they are men which must protest their faith by these visible signs and sacraments.'"
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