we certainly think it
sufficient to deter him from joining her; and, whatever be the
perplexity and distress of his position in a communion so isolated as
the English, we do not think he would mend the matter by placing himself
in a communion so superstitious as the Roman; especially considering,
agreeably to a remark we have already made, that even if he be
schismatical at present, he is so by the act of Providence, whereas he
would be entering into superstition by his own. Thus an Anglo-Catholic
is kept at a distance from Rome, if not by our own excellences, at least
by her errors.

That this is the state of the Church of Rome, is, alas! not fairly
disputable. Dr. Wiseman has lately attempted to dispute it; but if we
may judge from the present state of the controversy, facts are too clear
for him. It has lately been broadly put forward, as all know, that,
whatever may be said in defence of the _authoritative documents_ of the
faith of Rome, this imputation lies against her _authorities_, that they
have countenanced and established doctrines and practices from which a
Christian mind, not educated in them, shrinks; and that in the number of
these a worship of the creature which to most men will seem to be a
quasi-idolatry is not the least prominent.[20] Dr. Wiseman, for whom we
entertain most respectful feelings personally, and to whom we impute
nothing but what is straight-forward and candid, has written two
pamphlets on the subject, toward which we should be very sorry to deal
unfairly; but he certainly seems to us in the former of them to deny the
fact of these alleged additions in the formal profession of his Church,
and then, in the second, to turn right round and maintain them. What
account is to be given of self-contradiction such as this, but the fact,
that he would deny the additions, if he could, and defends them, because
he can't? And that dilemma is no common one; for, as if to show that
what he holds in excess of our creed is in excess also of primitive
usage, he has in his defence been forced upon citations from the
writings of the Fathers, the chief of which, as Mr. Palmer has shown,
are spurious; thus setting before us vividly what he looks for in
Antiquity, but what he cannot find there. However, it is not our
intention to enter into a controversy which is in Mr. Palmer's hands;
nor need we do more than refer the reader to the various melancholy
evidences, which that learned, though over-severe writer,