FORBES, JoaN MURRAY, an., b. 1807; graduated at Columbia college in 1827, and at the Episcopal theological seminary in 1830. In 1834, he became rector of St. Luke's. church, New York, and was for a time professor of pastoral theology and pulpit elo quence in the pastoral theological seminary. In 1811 17, he was a delegate to the gen eral conference of the church. In 1849, he, about the same time with John Henry Newman and Henry Edward Manning, went over to the Roman Catholic church. Both the Englishmen are now (1880) cardinals. In 1852, Forbes Was appointed by the bishop of South Carolina his theologian in the plenary council of the Roman Catholic church held at Baltimore, and in 1854 he acted in the same capacity for the bishop of Boston in the provincial council held in New York. In 1859, he returned to the Protestant Episcopal church, and gave his reasons for so doing in a letter to archbishop Hughes, of which a portion follows: "It is now nearly ten years since, tinder your auspices, I laid clown my ministry in the Protestant Episcopal church to submit myself to the charchref Rome. Tim interval, as you know, has not been idly spent; each.day has had its responsibility and duty, and with these have come experience, observation, and the knowledge of many things not so well understood before. The result is, that I
feel I have committed a grave error, which, publicly made, should be publicly repaired. When I came to you, it was, as I stated, with a deep and conscientious conviction that it was necessary to be in communion with the see of Rome; but this conviction I have not been able to sustain, in face of the fact that by it the natural rights of man and all individual liberty must be sacrificed; not only so, 'but the, private conscience often vio lated, and one forced, by silence at least, to acquiesce in what is opposed to moral truth and justice. Under these circumstances, when I call to mind how slender is the, foundation in the earliest ages of the church upon which has been reared the present papal power, I can no longer regard it as legitimately imposing obligations upon me or any one else. 1 do now, therefore, by this act, disavow and withdraw myself from its alleged jurisdiction."_ In 1862, was, by special favor, restored to the Protestant Episcopal ministry, and in 1869 was made an officer of the genemkt,hcoWgical seminary.