NOTES ON BOOKS, OLD AND NEW, IN THE AUCKLAND CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE SOCIETY'S LIBRARY.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume I, Issue 15, 9 August 1873, Page 14

NOTES ON BOOKS, OLD AND NEW, IN THE AUCKLAND CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE SOCIETY'S LIBRARY.

An occasional short notice of some of the more popular and important books in thia library may possibly be useful. It may induce some Catholics and inquiring Protestants to subscribe to the library or purchase the books noticed. The Ohubch of the Fathebs, by Dr Newman. This small book must have had a great sale. A fourth edition was issued in' 1868. It consists of short sketches of certain eminent and snmtly persona of the fourth century— Basil the Great, Gregory, Anthony, Augustine, and three others ; one of them a Roman lady of the highest family and great wealth. The sketches were first published in 1833, and are the earliest compositions of what is called the Oxford or Tractarian school. They were written,, as the author himself tells us, "to illustrate as far as they go the tone and modes of thought, the habits and manners of the early times of the Church " We now know that it was partly such studies as these which under God. led the distinguished author, and so many others of the learned and pious English Protestant clergy and laity into the Catholic Church. Then began that movement towards the Catholio Church in England which has been going forward ever since, and is now so prominent a feature of the age in which we live. Dr Newman and- his friends beheld in the lives of these early fathers of the Catholic church such a degree of sanctity and heroic self-denial as they looked for in vain in the Protestant Church of England, or any other Protestant Church. They saw also in the Church of that early age real « unity," a thing which never has existed in any Protestant Church for any length of time, and which certainly is not to be found in the Churches of England or Scotland. Heresies, indeed, of a most pernicious kind, did exist in those early ages, but these only exhibited in a more striking hght the unity and power of the Church, which cast out all heretics from her communion, and condemned their doctrines in a bold and straightforward manner, acting as an institution invested with divine authority. Where are the powerful and numerous sects of proud and defiant Avians of those times now, and where are their doctrines ? They are where the Protestants of our day and their heresies will in due time, according to God's appointment, be— blotled out of existence ; while the Church of the Fathers and her pure doctrines, will, as now, flourish in immortal youth. Strange as it may seem, there are at this hour English Protestants of the highest social position, even ministers of State such as Mr Home-Secretary Bruce, who actually do not know that such a movement as that referred to is now going on. They say, and no doubt believe, that any accessions to the Catholic body in England are mere Catholic natives of Ireland who come over to England. People are often fain to remain in ignorance of what they are afraid to know. I oould have sent Mr Bruce a copy of the Auckland ' Daily Southern. Cross' containing a long list of English Protestant clergy and English Protestant nobility and gentry, who within the last few years have entered the Catholic Church. He might even have known that the late venerable Duchess of Kent, the honored mother of our beloved Queen, was received iuto the Catholic church ou her deathbed, or shortly before. This fact is chronicled in the Catholic ' Register,' published by authority, and has never, so far as I know, been contradicted. — Yours, A Membeb op the Auckland Christian Doctrine Society.