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. It is of the utmost importance, wherever clear and distinct conceptions are required, to make out in the first instance whether the term in question, or the main terms of the question in dispute, represents or represent a fact or class of facts simply, or some self-established and previously known idea or principle, of which the facts are instances and realizations, or which is introduced in order to explain and account for the facts. Now the term 'merits,' as applied to Abraham and the saints, belongs to the former. It is a mere 'nomen appellativum' of the facts. Ib. c. 5. p. 252. The Papists and we agree that original sin is the privation of original righteousness; but they suppose there was in nature without that addition of grace, a power to do good, &c. Nothing seems wanting to this argument but a previous definition and explanation of the term, 'nature.' Field appears to have seen the truth, namely, that nature itself is a peccant (I had almost said an unnatural) state, or rather no State at all, [Greek: ou stásis all' apóstasis]. Ib. c. 6. p. 269.