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Correspondence. THE CHURCH IN WALES-CATHOLIC. Sir,-I have read with much interest the articles by Mr. Hirsch Davies on "Wales and Catholicism." As one who has made a life study of the problems with which he treats, I trust I may be allowed to offer to your readers some dispassionate consider- ations and criticisms. Taking the articles as a whole I venture to think that they should have had as a leading title the heading: THE ROMANCE OF THE ROMAN POSITION. For they have the two essential qualities that constitute romance-a deft inter- mixture of truth with imagination. History, like art, depends upon a true perspective. If the per- spective is wrong then the result is, not truth, but caricature. Mr. Hirsch Davies takes his stand upon the unhistorical pretensions of the Papacy, and from there he tries to read the history of the ancient British Church. An impossible feat. I.-He begins his real essay by putting forward as a protagonist a Prof. Chevalier. The latter's claims to our high consideration are set forth in a very grandiose way. Note the touch of the big drum:- "Prof. Chevalier, after a searching investigation and a most critical but sympathetic survey of the early records-British, Irish, Armorican, and. Gallican; and not merely the documentary, but other lines of evidence-linguistic, archaeological, topographical, philological, etc. I have no desire to minimise the scholarship of Prof. Chevalier. But what we are evidently meant to deduce from this is that no other scholars have ever previously studied this question from the "linguistic, archaeological, topographical, philological, etc." point of view. Which is of course a manifest absurdity. For my part I am quite content to throw in my lot on early ecclesiastical history with such great English scholars as Freeman, Selbourne, Stubbs, and Dr. William Bright, Regius Professor of History in the University of Oxford-the last two men of world wide repute; men who have shown beyond dispute that the modern pretensions of the Papacy are unhistorical and false. Note further that Mr Hirsch Davies doesn't tell us whether his summaries of Prof. Chevalier are in the latter's own words or not. A most important point. If I am asked to adjudge a man's claims I like to be given his 'ipsissima verba.' If you read sections 2, 3. and 4, you will see that there is nothing in them to which we would not heartily subscribe. For they contain nothing that is not the common heritage of the Christian Church. They make no advocacy for any peculiar Roman claim. The only section with which I join issue is the first. And this is worded in a very vague way, which may mean almost anything. If it means (as it may be intended to mean) that the early British Church was subject to the Papal power in the same way that Britain was subject to the Roman Imperial power, then I say that the contention is absolutely unhistorical. All the pleas of Mr. Hirsch Davies pivot upon one thiug-that the Pope (the Bishop of Rome) holds some special distinctive power in his own right to lord it over all the National Churches of Christen- dom. Now we hold the historical position that the Bishop of Rome is only, as far as Orders are con- cerned, the equal of any other bishop. But in virtue of his being bishop of the seat of the Imperial power he acquired an adventitious great- ness, so that in meetings of Bishops he was accorded the position of 'primus.' But he was only a 'primus inter pares'-a "chief among equals." That his power as patriarch rested herein is plainly seen in this one and illuminating fact-that when Constan- tine shifted the seat of the Imperial power from Rome to Constantinople the bishop there became an 'Ecumenical Bishop,' equal in dignitv to the Bishop of Rome. The ground for this accretion of dignity was stated to be the fact that Constantinople was a 'Nova Roma.' The powers of the Bishops of Rome waxed as the Imperial power waned, and their claims in time out- distanced all historical rights. To square the two things something had to be done. So we find that there were committed two celebrated forgeries— "The Donation of Constantine," and "The Decretals of Isidore." The latter are known to historians as "The False Decretals." Of these Lord Selbourne (a celebrated historian and lawyer) has said: "Upon them the entire edifice of mediaeval and modern Papal supremacy was built up." And "those decretals were the sourse of all the subse- quent encroachments of the spiritual on the civil power, and on the independent rights of National Churches." 2.-To argue, as Mr. Hirsch Davies does, that be- cause the British Church had things in common with the Roman Church therefore the British Church was subject to Rome is surely a delightful 'non sequitur.' The first direct contact (historically) be- tween Britain and Rome from a Church point of view was when Augustin was sent here to Christianise these islands. When he came, Augustin was surprised to find a fully-organised church here already- a Church that had some customs different from those of the Church of Rome. And when he at length had a meeting with the British bishops, and assumed towards them a somewhat arrogantly superior attitude, they rightly resented it. They were not accustomed to outside dictation. For the first mission sent from Rome was six centuries after the foundation of Christianity-a period, it may be interesting to note, that stretches further than from the present day back to 200 years before the Armada sailed The British Church had representatives at the Council of Aries in France nearly 300 years before Augustin and the Roman mission were heard of! The British Church had their representatives there because it was a branch of the Catholic Church -not the Roman Church. Selbourne neatly torpedoes the whole Roman claim when he says: "Nor could the fact that Augustin (who converted the Anglo-Saxons and founded the See of Canter- bury) was a missionary from Rome have for its consequence any merger or necessary incorporation of the Church which he founded in that of Rome, any more than the Church of Rome itself could properlv be described as a 'local branch' of the Eastern Church because the Apostles who founded it came from Jerusalem." 3.-1 have no desire to belittle the glory of the Church of Rome, or to speak with anything but respect of its bishop. Since Rome was the Imperial seat in the West, and since in the ordinary history of human society there must be positions of priority, it is only natural that in cases of dispute its bishop should be given the place of 'primus,' and his award accepted by brothers in the faith. But to argue from those simple natural facts that the Bishop of Rome was a kind of Olympian Jove, who hurled his thunderbolts through the Christian world, and that he had power to excommunicate churches and bishops who obeyed not his decrees is to argue back from the days when Papal pretensions had begun to grow, and later had been accepted on the basis of forgeries, to the simple days when history and truth held sway. 4.— The first Ecumenical Council (a general one of the whole Church), in 325, was called together, not by the Bishop of Rome, but by the Emperor Con- stantine. And the Creed (Nicene) promulgated there owes its authority, not to the Bishop of Rome, but