needful for our good, there is no question made by us.

To have placed this question in its true light, so as to have allowed
the full force to the Scriptures asserting the communion of Saints and
the efficacy of their intercession without undue concessions to the
'hierolatria' of the Romish church, would have implied an
acquaintance with the science of transcendental analysis, and an insight
into the philosophy of ideas not to be expected in Field, and which was
then only dawning in the mind of Lord Bacon. The proper reply to Brerely
would be this: the communion and intercession of Saints is an idea, and
must be kept such. But the Romish church has changed it away into the
detail of particular and individual conceptions, and imaginations, into
names and fancies.

N.B. Instead of the 'Roman Catholic' read throughout in this and all
other works, and everywhere and on all occasions, unless where the
duties of formal courtesy forbid, say, the 'Romish anti-Catholic
Church;' Romish--to mark that the corruptions in discipline, doctrine
and practice do for the worst and far larger part owe both their origin
and their perpetuation to the court and local tribunals of the city of
Rome, and are not and never have been the catholic, that is, universal
faith of the Roman empire, or even of the whole Latin or Western church;
and anti-Catholic,--because no other Church acts on so narrow and
excommunicative a principle, or is characterized by such a jealous
spirit of monopoly and particularism, counterfeiting catholicity by a
negative totality and heretical self-circumscription, cutting off, or
cutting herself off from, all the other members of Christ's Body.

12th March, 1824.