1829 Spring Assizes, Iverk Barony
To the Hon. and Rev. George Bourke, the Rev. Thomas T. Cuffe, Arthur Fleming, William Shearman, Esqrs. and Stephen Walshe, to fill ruts on 800 perches of the road from Kilkenny to Waterford, between Dangan bridge and Granny bridge, at 6d. per perch, 20l., wages 1l., stamps 6s. 2d. £21/6/2

This challenge was made in the presence of the interloper, who, during the delivery of Mr Cuffe's speech, made frequent interruptions;  and, therefore, unless this challenge be accepted, it will shew that the Papists attend Protestant Meetings exclusively for the purpose of disturbance, and not to obtain truth.
 I am, Sir, Yours very obediently, W. Pearce.

POPERY UNCHANGEABLE AND UNCHANGED
SIR, — Popery is the same in all ages, whether in the sixteenth or nineteenth century, unchangeable and unchanged; being based in error, it is supported by fraud and strengthened by treachery. A case that occurred in Kennington, November 18th and 19th, prove that the Romish system deserves this character. Early in October last, the Rev. G. Chute, Curate of St. Mark's, Kennington, was called on by Captain Wills, of Regent's-street, Lambeth, to sign a pension certificate for his aged mother, Mrs. Chapman. When he saw her, he signed the document, and promised to call in about two hours to read and pray with her. In the mean time, the priest was forced into her room by her son, Captain Wills. She showed so much reluctance to his visit, that the man went away. Mr. Chute, at her request, administered the Lord's supper, and continued his visits regularly to October 13th, when he asked me to take his place; and in five weeks I visited her eight times; and being absent eight days during the five weeks, I was sent for. November 7th, Miss Wills was in the room while I read and prayed; and Sunday, the 15th, Captain Wills was present. So far, there was no opposition to my visits; but when the time of death approached, it was the time for Papists to put forth their strength. November 18th, I called on Mrs. Chapman, and on entering the room found the four Miss Wills present. The elder rudely thrust a Missal in my face, saying, These are the prayers we are using with grand-mama; and on repeating this, I told her, that  I did not use a form of prayer. While reading and praying, the four ladies were sneering and making offensive remarks. When I was leaving the room, the ladies asked their grandmother some question I did not hear; but her answer was, Then now let me alone, when they all four laughed. I thought it my duty to rebuke them, outside the door, for levity in a sick room before a dying lady. They replied, by calling me the most opprobrious names, and using the vilest language.

The next day, I called on Mrs. Wood, the lady of the house, and learning that Dr. Doyle, priest of the London-road Chapel, had been with her; and feeling satisfied as to the state of mind of the dying lady, and not wishing to create a disturbance, I did not go up. When leaving the house, Captain Wills, his son, and four daughters, attacked me most violently in Billingsgate vocabulary, the Captain shaking his stick in my face, and threatening to use it. Next day I applied to the magistrate at Lambeth Police Court for a summons: but the law does not interfere where the offence is committed within doors. Had he spoken thus outside the house, he could impose a fine, and direct him to procure bail. The case dropped on my part. The report of my application appeared in the Daily News, Nov. 21st. On November 30th, Captain Wills and his daughter go to the same Police Court, and state, that the old lady was a Roman Catholic for some time; that Mr. Cuffe knew it; that he was never sent for; that he (Captain Wills) did not use threatening language to Mr. Cuffe, but acted with the greatest mildness &c. &c.

This will impose, for a time, on unsuspecting English Protestants. The theory and practice of Popery is always to deceive: such is the teaching of that depraved and demoralized system. Read the teaching of Liguori on the subject of oaths.* He says, It is a certain and common opinion amongst all divines, that for a just cause it is lawful to use equivocation, and to confirm it with an oath. It is a just cause to attack Protestantism through one of its ministers. Captain and Miss Wills' statement is a tissue of falsehood from beginning to end, and is only an example of what Popery will be on a larger scale, should that system gain the ascendancy they look for.

Mrs. Chapman was a member of my congregation, and received the sacrament often in my chapel, and declared to me, that it was a serious trouble to her that her son had become a Roman Catholic. The lady of the house she lodged in, and others, can prove that she was a Protestant. Should not the clergy of each religious denomination be up and doing? Too long have we rested on our oars; we should be alive to the great evils of the unhallowed apostasy. What brought the priest into the old lady's room, to administer an idolatrous rite to an unconscious person? I hold it, that a Romish priest has no right to teach or minister within this realm, not being duly called of God for that purpose.

I wrote this to the priest, and also offered to prove, that the Romish system never saved any person, was not invented for that purpose, and had not salvation for its end. I challenged him to produce one individual whose moral character was improved by leaving the Church of England and joining the Church of Rome. Who were the leaders of the Irish Rebellion, in 1798? Who was the leader of the Carrickshock massacre, in 1831? Apostates. What causes Ireland to be as she is, degraded, disreputable, and immoral? Popery. What is lowering the moral character of England, and bringing her down to the level of the Continental nations? Popery. What has brought the present fearful calamity of famine and disease in Ireland? Popery. Our God has shown his anger; but let us prove our sorrow by an amendment of life. Let the clergy of the Establishment preach steadily against the soul-destroying system of Popery. It is a shame for us to be still and let our hands hang down amidst so much evil. The clergy should carry out the excellent advice given by that most exemplary Prelate, the Bishop of Winchester, in his luminous charge to his clergy in 1844. The advancement of Popery, and consequent lowering of religion, demands our earnest attention; and my clerical brethren will excuse the appeal made by an humble clergyman to their consciences.

I am, Sir, Your obedient servant,
TENISON CUFFE, Minister of Carlisle Episcopal Chapel, Kennington.                                                                                 December 15.

* I can strongly recommend a work lately published by the Reformation Society, Extracts from the Moral Theology of Liguori, By the Rev. R. P. Blakeney, B.A,

REASONS FOR SECESSION; or Objections to remaining in the Established Church
By the Rev. T. TENISON CUFFE, M.A., lately Minister of Carlisle Episcopal Chapel, Kennington Lane, and Incumbent of Colney Heath, St. Alban's.
London: Partridge and Oakey, pp.59

The secession of a Clergyman from the Church in which he has laboured for many years, and which incloses his former beloved congregations, social advantages, and status, is an important and responsible act, and should not be performed without reasons to justify it. Not that these reasons should always be obtruded on the public; they may be placed in foro conscientiæ only; but in many instances friends and the community left, as well as that which may be joined, have a right to look for the motives which have induced such a decision.

The question, too, of conformity is one of growing importance, and the minister who has seceded at an expense of feeling and worldly interest which proves his sincerity, and which must have been the result of reading, and thought, and prayer, is the very person who has a right to speak to this question, and to expect to be heard. Such was Mr. Noel [the Hon. the Rev. Baptist Wriothesley Noel (1799-1873) who had been minister of St John's Bedford Row, a proprietory chapel, for over 20 years and seceded in 1848, publishing his apologia An Essay on the Union of Church and State the following year - after a 'period of hesitation' he received adult baptism and ministered at John Street Baptist Chapel in Holborn, close by his former church], and such is Mr. Cuffe.

There are three leading objections which have influenced the writer of these pages for one [step] that he has taken, and justify him in his own conscience.
1st. The obligation to declare in baptism what he well knew, is not warranted by Scripture, or can be supported by a reference to the Word of God.
2nd. The character of the laws by which the Church is governed are, in his view, unjust in principle, and restrictive in operation.
3rd. The union of Church and State, which he regards as one so unhallowed, as to be a barrier to true religion.

Baptism was adopted as the initiatory rite to the Christian Church. Baptizw means 'dip', 'immerse', or 'wash'; it is twice used in the latter sense, in Mark vii. 4. Cleanliness is considered a type of purity; the person using baptism signified that he was cleansed from the impurity of the flesh, and fitted to enter the service of God.

Profession of faith is all that is needed, in order to receive Christian Baptism. The instances in the Word of God, where baptism is mentioned, is that of professors. "Therefore many who were baptised went back, proving that they had neither part nor lot in the matter; that they were in the gall of bitterness and the bond of iniquity." Such as Simon Magnus, Demas, Hymeneus, Alexander, and Philetus. Baptism is never mentioned in Scripture as regenerating the recipient. It is nothing more nor less than an inititatory ordinance. The doctrine of Baptismal Regeneration leads away from Christ, causes man to depend on his fellow man, and thus to become superstitious and idolatrous.

Taking the three offices of baptism, the catechism, and office for confirmation, we find the doctrine of the Church of England to be, that 'infants invariably and always are spiritually regenerated in and by the act of baptism'.

In discussing the first of these objections, we are happy to find the writer so clearly expressing himself on Baptism. Whether it arises out of a sickly fancy, or out of a disposition in persons strongly excited, to conclude that the opposite of error must be truth, that perfection dwells at the antipodes; – so it has proved, that many seceding clergymen have run into the excesses of antinomianism in doctrine, or to Brethrenism, as it is called, in forms and discipline, and especially into the notions of antipædobaptists in administering that sacrament.

The sense of washing which the word Baptism bears, and its application in Mark vii.4, are, had we no other like scriptures, sufficient authority for the application of the cleansing element to the subject of this ordinance, either by pouring or by sprinkling. That Infants are proper subjects for Baptism, our Brother's argument throughout implies.

We cannot do justice to the writer by extracting parts from his argument, on both the other objections, and trust our friends will expend some eighteen pence, to procure this valuable pamphlet, and having themselves read it give it all the circulation in their power. We live in stirring times the sands, are shifting, and it should be our earnest prayer, that the useful channel may not be choked up, and the water which should be a river, giving beauty and life to the scene, overflow into a chilly and pestilential marsh.

The following vindication of Ordination by the hands of the Presbytery, is appropriate:

Prelates have nothing to boast of in their origin. Surely then the proud prelate should pause before he calls the Nonconformist minister an unordained man. The Presbyterian ordination only is found in the New Testament, 1 Timothy iv.14. 'Laying on of the hands of the presbytery' is such ordination. Presbyter and bishop mean the same person. In the primitive Church, there were but two orders, and the Apostle, in writing to Timothy and Titus, gives full instruction to each: bishop and presbyter being one. In Acts xx. Paul sends to Ephesus for the Church, and, in verse 17 he calls the ministers elders; and, 28th verse, overseers; that is, bishops. Paul also addressed the elders as all equal; though the advocates of Episeopacy state that Timothy was the first Bishop of Ephesus, yet the Apostle was silent in giving his last instructions to the elders of Ephesus to look to him as their superior. Timothy might be as well called Bishop of Philippi or Corinth, as he abode in each of these cities, as well as at Ephesus. The Episcopal ordination as observed in the Churches of England and Rome, has no Scriptural foundation, and was not used for the first three centuries. We are therefore justified in saying, that the Presbyterian ordination is in accordance with Scripture and the usage of the first three centuries, which the Episcopalian is not.

We ask, which is right, and has the best claim on us to be received? Certainly the scriptural form of the Presbyterian. We recognise the Episcopal ordination because they unite the presbytery in the act. We must protest against the monstrous assumption of the established Hierachy in England, denying the validity of the Presbyterian orders used by the Independents, Baptists, Wesleyans, and Lady Huntingdon's Connexion. Popery rejects all orders but its own. We reject all that are not in accordance with the Word of God.

There is clearness as well as force in most of Mr. Cuffe's statements, and a spirit as Catholic as it is honest pervades the whole. On the question of Church and State, the work is, of course, more brief than the volume from Mr. Noel's fluent pen; but perhaps equally conclusive. We however, though approving the argument, think real Christians should be aware of the practical difficulties surrounding the subject, and take care not to strengthen the hands of the party in the church, but not of the Church, who are anxious for independent action, and who, with some six millions of annual income at their command, would confuse our country by establishing an imperium in imperio, and sway an iron sceptre over all who are truly evangelical in the establishment, and among Non-conformists. It is quite certain, that if what the Tractarians call the Church, if the present dignitaries could rule all by a majority, near as we now are to the evils of Popery, we should as a National Church, soon be within its vortex.

We return all his expressions of approval of the Countess of Huntingdon's Connexion into which our Brother has been most cordially received by the Conference, and devoutly pray, that he may witness an improvement in it, by the Trustees, Tutors, Ministers and Friends, both official and ordinary, imbibing a fresh spirit, and co operating with renewed vigour, in carrying out the principles of the revered Countess.