CATHOLICITY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XL, Issue 12269, 13 May 1903, Page 6

CATHOLICITY.

TO THE EDITOR. Sir,—l greatly regret that Mr. Kelly, in his kindly reply, keeps to the term Catholic. He admits that Ignatius is the first who uses it, and says that it was stolen from the whole body of the faithful, and is now claimed as the exclusive property of a section. I ask him, then, what was the name of the Church from Pentacost to Ignatius? Mr. Kelly's one section I make four. There arc the Greek Catholic, Apostolic Oriental, the Roman, the Anglo-Catholic, and Inning's Catholic and Apostolic Churches. Mr. Kelly says that scholars are agreed that down to A.D. 200 the Church had no uniform constitution. These must bo scholars of a strange school. The New Testament gives the rule, the faith and practice of the Christian Church, its worship and its officers, by which one could become perfect in every good work. Mr. Kelly suggests that I have not read \enough Church history. I find the Church history of the New Testament the most edifying. What I have read in Veander, Mosheim, Milner, and Campbell tells of disorganisation, discontents, divisions, and of human efforts (mostly well meaning) to cure these by some new method, instead of a return to the Divine original. I cannot accept Mr. Kelly's catholicity it is too vague. As a mutter of fact, there is no universal Church, and it is an assumption that any apostle wrote a Catholic epistle. St. John did write of Catholicity in this form: " The whole world both in the evil one," for Christians were few in number.— am, otc -> Edwin Cakr.