THE assertion is often made, first, that Rome has received large accessions from the ranks of the Clergy of the Church and secondly, that all who have thus passed over to the embraces of Popery came from the ranks of those who are popularly termed "High Churchmen." These assertions are too often made from sheer ignorance; but oftener they are made by those Sects about us, who themselves have lost so many of their ministers, to our gain; and by party men among ourselves, who lose no opportunity to express their sympathy with Sectism, and their dislike of positive and strongly defined Church views.

To sift this matter thoroughly, we have taken pains to make out a complete Catalogue of all the Clergy of the Church, who, from the settlement of Jamestown in 1608, the beginning of the American Church, have joined the Roman Schism, and to ascertain the antecedents and particularities of each individual case. It has been found, that not one apostatized to Papacy until the year 1815; that, out of a body of more than five thousand Clergy, only thirty-eight, in all, have been guilty of such disgrace. It will be seen, that while the instances of defection are much fewer than is generally believed; that by far the greater number were originally trained in bodies not Protestant Episcopal; or that that they were known, while in the Church, as party "Low Churchmen," and were characterized by loose notions and loose practices, before their adoption of the ultraisms through which they finally lost their balance, and went over to Rome. And as the tide is beginning to set pretty strongly toward the Church just now, it would not be strange if a good deal of drift-wood floated along with it. Yet the Church, most assuredly, is not to be held responsible for all the crooked sticks that may be borne upon the current, though she may well be a little cautious as to the use she makes of them. We throw out this hint for the benefit of our Standing Committees. The strength of the Church does not consist in numbers. There is no real growth where there is no true assimilation.

To add to the value of the Catalogue for future historical reference, asterisks are prefixed to the names of those who have entered the Romish priesthood, and notes are appended to the list, by way of indicating facts and idiosyncrasies, which had their bearing in individual cases.

Of these, Nos. 1, 2, 8, 10, 12, 18, and probably 27, were originally Congregationalists.

Nos. 4, 5, 7, 15, 29, 31, 32, 37, and probably 13, 33, and 34, were originally Presbyterians.

Nos. 11, 14, 20, 22, 30, were Methodists originally, and Nos. 3 and 5 subsequently so.

Nos. 1, 3, 8, 11, 16, 19, 25, 38, were noted "Evangelicals," who afterwards, without sufficient substratum, adopted other views.

No. 3, was first a Romanist; then a Methodist; afterwards a decided "Low Churchman," as Rector of St. George's Church, New York.

Nos. 7, 11, 16, 19, 23 have since returned to the Church.

Nos. 11, 38 were of the Virginia Theological Seminary. The fact that others were of the General Seminary, is not to our purpose, which is to refute the assertion, that sound, positive Church principles lead men to Rome. They never have led a man there, and they never will. The later "Oxford Tracts," after they became imbued with Romish Medievalism, prepared, too, for the most part, by men once Ultra Low Churchmen, and the writings of these men after the Tracts were suppressed, undoubtedly were instruments in the perversion of some morbid, visionary young men and old men, at the General Theological Seminary and elsewhere; but neither the Seminary, nor sound Church principles, are to be held responsible for their folly and disgrace. We shall now take up the above list of perverts, and examine each case individually.

No. 1. At first a Congregationalist; then a noted "Evangelical;" was perverted by Archbishop Cheverus, of Boston. His disposition was restless, ever after fancies and idealities. His perversion was followed by his divorce, contrary to the law of God; his wife assumed the Vows of Sisterhood.

No. 2. Father of No. 1. Also a Congregationalist; an aged and weak man, of no positive views in theology. Introduced Romanism into Claremont, N. H., as the instrument of Cheverus.

No. 3. Educated at St. Omers; was a Jesuit lay-brother and physician; professing to renounce, Romanism, he became, first, a Methodist preacher; then, in 1804, was ordered Deacon by Bishop Claggett; was the eloquent Rector of St. George's Church, New York; afterwards became a Roman Priest in Italy. Was either of unfixed mind and habits, or else was, throughout, playing the deep game of a Jesuit.

No. 4. Originally a Presbyterian of the ultra Calvinistic School.

No. 5. First a Presbyterian; then a Methodist; an inoffensive, but worthy man, who changed some three or four times: he lived to an advanced age, and, during the latter years of his life, often attended upon the Services of our Church. He finally ceased doing so, under the remonstrance of the Romish priesthood. His heart was never wholly estranged from the Church, nor his mind convinced of our loss of Catholicity.

No. 6. Nothing certainly known of him; save that after entering the Church, he remained content with the unfixed teaching of unstudious men; it is believed that he had previously been a Baptist.

No. 7. Was moved to his defection by a "horror of the restless spirit of democracy in the Church and State" and an apparent possession by Rome of proper control over its adherents. First a Presbyterian; of aspiring views; separated from his wife after his apostacy; she assumed "the vows," became "Mother Superior;" and he, Chaplain of the Romish Earl of Shrewsbury. This case, like that of Barber, shows with what facility Popery violates the Divine law of Marriage. He has since (in 1849) returned to the Church.

No. 8. Originally a Congregationalist; then an "Evangelical;" a restless Churchman, and visionary; thought, himself not appreciated, &c. A fair pulpit orator; ordered Deacon in 1829; in ten years went literally to Borne, and became a member of the Order of Jesuits.

No. 9. Was consecrated a Bishop (of Newark) under the Roman intrusion, Oct. 30, 1853, by the notorious Bedini, the Pope's Nuncio; the libertine and debauchee, the butcher of Ugo Bassi, by whose order one hundred and thirty-three victims were murdered at Bologna, and who sneaked out of our country between two days, in 1854.

No. 10. Originally a Congregationalist; son of an eminent Puritan preacher; was re-baptized but a year or two before his defection.

No. 11. First a Methodist; then a Low Churchman; became a Romish editor; returned to the Church; then again went back to Popery.

No. 12. Originally a Congregationalist; before his defection to Rome he was officially censured by his Bishop for Romish practices.

No. 13. Not by birth a Churchman, and while in the Church a thorough Mediaevalist.

No. 14. Originally a Methodist; always when in the Church a languid Churchman; his ministerial duties were laid aside for those of a secular teacher.

No. 15. A Presbyterian in origin; young, enthusiastic, full of Medievalism; wrote "The Voice of the Anglican Church on Confession," fortified with garbled extracts from English divines; was Penitentiary of the Religious Order of the Holy Cross at Valle Crucis, of which Bishop Ives was Superior; afterwards became a Romanist in Switzerland.

No. 16. Began his Ministry in the Church as a Calvinist and "Evangelical;" was entrapped, in 1849, by those false notions of Church Unity and Authority, which the later Tract writers put forth, and by garbled Romish quotations from the Fathers; his Christian conscience and manliness have proved too strong for his Romish experience; in 1859 he returned to the true Branch of Christ's One Catholic Church.

No. 17. Was assistant to, and seceded with Dr. Forbes; now Chancellor to Archbishop Hughes, who doubtless keeps a sharp eye on him. Before his apostacy, he complained that he could not carry out in the Church what he called the "Catholic System," but which was nothing more or less than the symbolism of Mediaeval Romanism.

No. 18. Originally a Congregationalist; was "converted," and joined that "Church;" became skeptical, and adopted very queer notions generally, at last got into the Church, and was for several years without employ in the Ministry, but preached Auricular Confession and other Romish doctrines, and was author of an infamous Tract on the Sacrament of Penance. After he went over to Rome, he wrote an indelicate book, "Lady Alice, or the New Una," intended to reconcile Romanism and Catholicism. He also wrote "Alban," supposed to be an autobiography, a strange book, in which the hero of the story professed a belief in Moses, a denial of Christ, and talked of being circumcised. He also wrote other Romish works.

No. 19. Originally, and for twenty-five years, an English Unitarian; then a Low Churchman; afterwards, having tried Romanism, he returned to the Church in 1857.

No. 20. First a Methodist; then a languid Churchman; of no stability or well-grounded theological views.

No. 21. First a Romanist; then German Reformed; associated with the Nevin School of theology; then a Romanist again, connected with the Notre Dame; University. Very unpractical; had reached Deacon's Orders only.

No. 22. Originally a Methodist; when in the Church, morbidly jealous; complained of neglect; altered in his Prayer-Book the 185th Hymn, and introduced irregularities into the Services; thoroughly Mediaeval in his tastes and theology.

No. 23. Born in the Church; unsuccessful in the Ministry, and peddled books of the American Sunday School Union; reduced to the most abject poverty and went over to Rome; has already returned to the Communion of the Church.

No. 24. A young man, thoroughly disloyal to the Church from the outset; disgustingly silly and puerile in his Ministrations, e. g., advising his Communicants to wash their mouths and brush their teeth before receiving the Communion, &c., &c., &c.; positively denied all intention to go over to Rome, although his arrangements to do so were already made.

No. 25. Originally a "Low" Churchman, of the, lowest sort; temperament morbid; prostrated by loss of health.

No. 27. Not a Churchman by birth; believed to be Congregational; a moody ascetic and dyspeptic; a thorough-going Mediaevalist, a young and kindly man.

No. 28. Unemployed for several years.

No. 29. A Presbyterian revivalist originally; ardent, impetuous, impatient of results; became mentally disordered, if not insane. His father was also subject to constitutional disease, which affected his brain to derangement.

No. 30. Originally a Methodist; educated in a Romish Seminary; three brothers of his became Romanists before their death; a simple-hearted, credulous man, easily duped; continued to officiate up to the moment of his defection.

No. 31. A Presbyterian by origin; of musical and imaginative tastes; Mediaeval in learning; impractical in his Ministry.

No. 32. An Irish Presbyterian originally; a languid, inefficient man; had attained to Deacon's Orders only.

No. 33. Not brought up in the Church; a retiring, sensitive man, of many virtues; given to reading that sentimental Church literature which whines but does not work; lives in retirement.

No. 34. Not a Churchman originally; probably a Presbyterian; little known of him.

No. 35. His fantastic tricks in ritualism led to the adoption of a Canon on Ritual Uniformity, in the diocese of Wisconsin, to which he belonged. He was young, ardent, impatient of results, and excessively fond of Mediaeval restorations. With increasing wisdom, he may return to the Church of his family and friends.

No. 36. Young and ardent; had just passed his majority; had reached Deacon's Orders only; was influenced by imagination; acted in violation of filial duty, taking the final step in resistance to his father's pleading, that he should act by reason and not by self-will, in despite of reason. A spoiled child.

No. 37. A Presbyterian originally; not ten years in the Ministry before his defection.

No. 38. A languid "Evangelical;" a graduate of the Virginia Theological Seminary.

Here then we have the whole list. During the last two hundred and fifty years, and from the ranks of over five thousand Clergy, only thirty-eight in all have thus proved treacherous to their Ordination vows. And when we remember the sources from which the ranks of our Ministry have been filled, we are far from being surprised that this number is as large as it is. Of the thirty-eight Clergymen who have gone over to Rome, twenty-five certainly, and probably more, came from one or other of the Sects about us. Eight were known, previous to their conversion, as party men of the self-styled "Evangelical" stamp. Of the very few on the list before us who were born in the Church, we are able to say confidently, in nearly every instance, that constitutional temperament, or physical disease, or moral obliquity, (and we have not, for obvious reasons, specified these cases,) fully accounts for their erratic course. There are one or two names remaining unnoticed; but their subsidence into the depths whither they have sunk, has left not a ripple even to excite observation; and we have been able as yet to learn nothing respecting them. So that we may safely challenge the world to point out a single instance in which a Minister of the American Church, thoroughly imbued with the old-fashioned sound Church views, has ever abandoned the Faith, and gone over to the Church of Rome. They are not the men who become Romanists, or are capable of becoming so. The very foundation on which they stand, Holy Scripture and Primitive Antiquity, is as utterly and thoroughly anti-Romish as it can be.
It is also equally certain, and for the same reason, that as these men do not become Romanists, so they do not become Rationalists; and we have both facts and arguments to sustain us in this position; but we do not enter into that examination now; we may do it on another occasion. The only hope and security for an Evangelical Faith lies, in the long run, in its union with strong, positive views on the Institutions of the Gospel. That it should be so, is a matter of the strongest probability; that it is so, is an absolute and undeniable fact.

Two or three years ago, an attempt was made to bring reproach upon sound Church principles in England, by charging upon them the origin and cause of the more numerous defections to Rome from the Mother Church. We do not hesitate to say, that there have been, and there are now, in the English. Church, teachings and practices by a class of men, represented in part by the "Union Newspaper" for which no party in the Church, "High" or "Low," is to be held responsible. How numerous in the English Church, these men are, we have no means of estimating. Judging from their writings and their temper, they are Romanists in reality; not unlikely some of them are Jesuits in disguise, acting in connivance with Wiseman, Newman, and the perverts who seem to have lost their honor and their honesty when they lost their Faith; and their object is, palpably, the dastardly one of working in the dark till they shall be unearthed and driven from their hiding places. But the Romanizing movement, in its inception, did not spring from them. They are its victims and its tools, not its originators. We have already called attention to this point, and we repeat here facts which we have quoted once before, and we shall continue to repeat them as often as there is occasion for it.

"A correspondent of the (London) Clerical Journal asks, 'Why it is that High Churchism, or Puseyism, as it is called, has supplied, and is still supplying, so many recruits to the Church of Rome, and why have none gone over to the Church of Rome from the Low Church party, or "Evangelicals," as they are called?'"

"A subsequent Number of the same paper contains several answers to this question. One correspondent says:

"The best and the only honest answer is to deny the truth of such a supposition altogether. Why. the real notorious (net. is, that out of every twelve persons who have gone over to Rome, ten or eleven have been either (1) Low Churchmen, (2) the children of Low Church parents, or (3) Dissenters, or Scotch Presbyterians. True it is, that some of these persons have become nominally High Churchmen for a time before they went over to Rome, and have generally male themselves notorious for their indiscreet zeal as long ns they remained among us: but, beginning with Dr. Newman, (whom I remember as an evangelical leader at Oxford. Secretary to the Missionary Society, and a supporter of the Bible Society,) down to the most recent convert of whom I have heard, Mr. Marshall, son of a popular Presbyterian minister at Edinburgh, and grandson of Legh Richmond, I could give a list of one hundred converts, ninety-nine of whom would fall under one of the three classes above named. For myself, I have had considerable opportunity for observation, and yet I never knew a single solitary instance of a sound Anglican Churchman going over to Rome. Let your correspondent retort the question upon his Low Church or no Church neighbors, and ask why have Recordism, Simeonism, and Dissenterism furnished the greater number of converts to Rome? And he may add another query, why has Low Churchism supplied so many recruits to the Irvingites, besides filling the Agapemone of Mr. Prince, and furnishing forty clergymen to the mischievous sect who call themselves 'Plymouth Brethren.'"

Another correspondent says:

"Dr. Newman himself, it is well known, was originally a Low Churchman, and was Secretary to the Church Missionary Society when at Oxford. I believe it would not be difficult to name other instances. Again, how is it that some of our large towns--Birmingham for instance--where Low Church influence is predominant, are likewise the strongholds of Romanism? The truth seems to be that the old adage, 'extremes meet,' holds good in this case. As a proof of it, let any one compare the favorite hymns of Low Churchmen and Dissenters with the same class of compositions prevalent in the Church of Rome, and observe the mawkish, semi-sensual character of both, the only difference being in the object of worship--the Saviour in the one case, the blessed Virgin in the other. The spirit of both is equally remote from the sober, manly piety of the Church of England, and is symptomatic of that restlessness and craving after novelty and excitement which leads first to Dissent, and then, 'finding no rest for the sole of its foot,' takes refuge in the gorgeous ritual and lulling infallibility of Rome."

And another correspondent says:

"As far as the present writer remembers, the first eminent seceder of late years was the Hon. George Spencer, brother to the late Earl Spencer. It was well known in Northants that he was previously a very Low Churchman. Dr. Newman and Dr. Manning began with very Low Church principles. So did Mr. Dodsworth. They were at one time inoculated with High Church principles, but never had them in the natural way. It is the same thing which is continually happening now. Presbyterians, Wesleyans, Jews, and Quakers, have joined the Church of England for a time, and then gone further. Can any instance be found of a seceder who was brought up in the Church of England, and trained in the school of Bishop Home, Jones of Nayland, and their allies and associates?"

Before leaving this list of Perverts, we observe that a much larger number of those who were born and trained in the Roman Schism, some of whom had been recipients of its dignities, have at various times left her Ministry as Converts to our own branch of the Catholic Church. In England and Ireland, this list in later times is already very large, and in the latter country especially, is constantly increasing.

We here append the names of a few, as a specimen only of the list which, as we may have opportunity, we hope at some future time to complete.

ROMISH PRIESTS WHO HAVE PROFESSED THE CATHOLIC FAITH
AND BEEN RECEIVED BY US.

1. Rev. Charles H. Wharton, D. D., 1780, (died 1833,) N. J.

2. Rev. Francis S. Todrig, 1834, Md. Chaplain on Estate of Hon. Charles Carroll, Signer of Declaration of Independence.

3. Rev. Prof. John Fielding, 1840, Ga.

4. Rev. Dr. John Niglas, S. T. D., 1851, Ill.

5. Rev. James Geo. Leasori, 1851, Md.

6. Rev. Dr. Stephen C. Massoch, 1853, Mo.

7. Rev. Dr. John Bapt. M. Pendelupè, 1856, Wis.

8. Rev. Louis D. Rivieccio, 1860, Cal.

Again, in striking this "balance sheet," it may he well to ask how many Protestant Bishops, since the Reformation, have renounced their Protestantism and returned to Popery? Only two; viz:

1. Dr. John Gordon, 1668, Bishop of Galloway, Scotland.

2. Dr. Levi Silliman Ives, 1852, of N. C.

How many Romish Bishops since that era, and unconnected with the Anglican Reform, have renounced Popery? At least fourteen; viz:

1. Peter Paul Vergerio, Bishop of Capo d' Istria, 1546, and Papal Nuncio.

2. His brother, also a Bishop, followed. (See Middleton's Evang. Biography.)

3. Herman de Wida, Archbishop of Cologne, 1548.

4. John A'Lasco, 1549, of Poland. (See Middleton, and Burnet's Reformation.)

5. Dr. John Egidio, 1550, Bishop elect of Tortosa. (See Geddes' Martyrology.)

6. Dr. Barth. Caranza, 1575, Abp. of Toledo. (See Llorente's Inquisition.)

7. Dr. John Bale, (or Bayley,) 1550, Bishop of Ossory.

8. Dr. Alexander Gordon, 1570, Bishop of Galloway, and Archbishop of Athens in partibus. (See Keith's Scottish Bishops.)

9. Spifame, 1557, Bishop of Nevers.

10. Dr. Jo. Ant. Caraccioli, 1560, Bishop of Troyes.

11. Gebhard, 1600, Archbishop of Cologne.

12. John Canute, 1614, a Danish Bishop.

13. Dr. Marc Antonio de Dominis, 1617, Abp. of Spalatro.

14. Lord Dunboyne, 1794, Bishop of Cork.

We might name here also the Jansenist Succession of Bishops, who are excommunicated and cursed by his Holiness on the occasion of every Jansenist Consecration, as a set of incorrigible heretics. Or we might give illustrations of the Infidel set of Papal prelates, to which belonged Huet of Avranches, Talleyrand, &c., but we forbear.

[In partibus Infidelium, Bishops in countries overrun by Infidels. These Bishops are vicars of the Pope, having no proper See of their own; and certainly never visiting the See to which they are named. Archbishop Kenrick, when assistant Bishop of Philada., was named "Bishop of Arath in partibus" and Cardinal Wiseman, when first elevated, was named "Bishop of Melipotamus in partibus." Where is Arath, or where is Melipotamus? These nominal Bishops are but vicars of the Bishop of Rome; our Fathers are Vicars of Christ.]

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