NEW PUBLICATIONS.
The Roman Index and its late Proceedings. A Second Letter, etc. By E. S. Ffoulkes. American edition. Pott & Amery.
After the publication of Mr. Ffoulkes's letter, entitled, The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed? he was refused the sacraments, as it was perfectly plain he must be according to the certain rules of moral theology by which priests are guided. Archbishop Manning submitted the letter to the examination of four theologians, who, separately and without mutual consultation, gave in their opinion that it was heretical. The archbishop, with the greatest delicacy and kindness, began to treat with Mr. Ffoulkes, for the purpose of inducing him to make a sufficient retractation, in order that he might repair the scandal he had given and be restored to the enjoyment of his privileges as a member of the church. On the 22d of March, 1869, Mr. Ffoulkes submitted the following letter to the archbishop:
"Having learned from my bishop that a pamphlet, lately published by me, entitled, The Church's Creed or the Crown's Creed? has been examined, and pronounced by him to be heretical, I desire hereby to submit myself to that judgment, and to express my sorrow that I should in any thing have erred from the Holy Catholic and Apostolic faith. Although I trust I have not intentionally erred from the truth, nor wilfully opposed myself to the divine authority of the church, nevertheless I am well aware how easily I may have done so. I therefore hereby, without reserve, retract all and every thing that I have written, there or elsewhere, which is contrary to what the church has defined as of faith.
"Having learned also from him that scandal, offence, and pain have been given by my writings, and especially by the pamphlet above named, to the faithful; and that the same pamphlet has been used by those who are separate from the Catholic and Roman Church as an excuse or argument for not submitting to its divine authority, I hereby desire to explain myself categorically on two points in particular, the most likely to have caused such results of any that occurred to me, from not having been brought out as prominently there as they might have been, but on which it never was my intention that my meaning should be ambiguous.
"1. Whatever I may or may not have been called upon to profess fourteen years ago myself, I nevertheless believe, and believe heartily, in the inerrancy, by perpetual assistance of the Holy Ghost in all ages, of the one Catholic Church in communion with the pope, and of which the pope is head by divine right, 'in fidei ac morum disciplinâ tradendâ,' as the Catechism of the Council of Trent teaches. And 2, as regards matter of fact, my own personal investigations enable me to affirm the verdict of history to be, that the see of Rome, as such, has been preserved in all ages from upholding or embracing heresy. I say this more particularly with reference to the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost, on which I fear my meaning may have been misapprehended. Therefore, negatively, should I have ever seemed to say or imply that the true church has ever ceased to be one visibly, or that the see of Rome was not constituted its centre of unity upon earth, so that communion with the one should be the indispensable condition of participating in the unity of the other, I hereby declare my heartfelt sorrow at having, in any of my writings, so expressed myself on these points as to have offended any or misled any by seeming to say or imply, in language injurious to the Holy See, what I never meant to assert, and hereby repudiate.
"And as the best reparation now in my power, I willingly undertake that this explicit declaration of mine shall be printed and distributed gratuitously by my publisher, and appended as a fly-leaf to all copies of my pamphlet, of which the copyright is not in my own hands, and other published works of mine that may hereafter be sold, should it be desired. Lastly, I freely, and from my heart, renew my assent to what follows, taken from the profession of Pope Pius IV.: 'I acknowledge the Holy, Catholic, Apostolic, Roman Church for the mother and mistress of all churches; and I promise true obedience to the Bishop of Rome, successor to St. Peter, Prince of the Apostles, and Vicar of Jesus Christ.'" (Pages 37, 38.)
On the 18th of December, 1868, a work, entitled Christendom's Divisions, by the same author, had been placed on the Index, and, on the 26th of March, the letter was placed there likewise. The archbishop made some further suggestions to Mr. Ffoulkes on the 2d of May, which he accepted, and, on the 4th, wrote to Mr. F., "I have received with sincere pleasure the declaration as last amended, and I trust it will complete what I have daily prayed may be accomplished." On the 17th of May, Mr. F. wrote to a clergyman of the Church of England, "I would be excommunicated a dozen times a day sooner than retract my pamphlet; and Archbishop Manning, to his credit let it be said, never proposed any such thing. What he proposed, however, I rejected; and substituted for it a declaration of my own, which is merely justificatory.[174] This, slightly altered, he has since accepted; so that my part is over." This letter was made known by the person who received it, and came to the knowledge of Archbishop Manning, who requested Mr. F. to obtain the letter and hand it over to him, a request which the latter gentleman considered as insulting to his "English feelings," and refused. He himself writes to the archbishop, and to the public also, (p. 43,) "Your grace was apprehensive lest this loose statement of a well-known tale-bearer, duly reported to Rome, should give rise to your being inhibited from accepting my declaration. Though I thought this extremely probable, I contented myself with assuring your grace, by letter, that, if the individual in question had reported me to have said, 'I would rather be excommunicated than retract, (sic,)'[175] he had either misrepresented me wilfully, or stated what was not the fact. My English feelings would not allow me to do more." The archbishop may certainly be excused for not accepting this statement, since the Anglican clergyman had read the first paragraph of the letter to the person designated, we hope unjustly, as a "well-known busybody," and had communicated its contents to several other persons "in strict confidence." The archbishop had communicated Mr. F.'s retractation or justification to the Congregation of the Index, and, on the 6th of August, a letter from Mgr. Nardi to the archbishop was read to Mr. F., in which his document was pronounced insufficient, particularly because not containing an expression of submission to the decree of the sacred congregation. A general form of retractation of every thing which the congregation had condemned in his writings, and of submission to its judgment, was sketched out for his guidance in preparing a proper statement, and he was informed that when such a declaration had been sent to Rome and accepted, no public notice would be taken of it except to append to the censure in the Index the words, auctor laudabiliter se subjecit—the author has submitted in a laudable manner. Mr. F. refused to make this submission, and was, accordingly, notified by the archbishop that he could not be admitted to the sacraments. Mr. F. also notified his grace that if any official sentence was pronounced upon him, he should appeal to the civil tribunal. At the conclusion of his pamphlet he says, respecting the "arbitrary sentence of a foreign court," "Please God, I shall live to contribute my quota toward being the death of the system from which it proceeds.... Please God, one of two things—for which I shall continue to labor through life—either that Christianity and Rome may become convertible terms, which it is my sincere wish that they should be; or else that fresh halting-places for sober, ordinary Christians, between Rome and infidelity, maybe developed amongst us, and new life be vouchsafed to those which exist already." Finally says Mr. F., in his last paragraph, "All we of the west are lying under more than one solemn anathema of more than one pope, speaking as head of the church—if popes have ever spoken as heads of the church—for having changed a syllable in the creed authorized by the Fourth Council."
This is Mr. F.'s case. It is evident that he became a member of the Catholic Church under a great misapprehension of her doctrine and law, and has never been any thing more than an Anglican. He is disposed to blame those who received him; but it is plain that they had no reason for suspecting that his misconception of the obvious meaning of the profession he made of submission to the Roman Church was so fundamental, and that he has only his own confused state of mind to blame for it. He has never really believed in the ever-living, supreme, infallible authority of the church, or had any other principle than the Protestant one to guide him. Hence, he has bewildered and lost himself in a maze of historical difficulties which he is unable to understand or remove. His letters are the most conclusive proof possible that the bogus Catholicity of unionists is fit only to complicate instead of solving the controversies among Christians. It shows the necessity of the most explicit teaching of the principle of infallible authority in all its practical applications, and proves that it is only by fully understanding and submitting to the doctrinal supremacy of the Roman pontiff as the vicar of Christ we can have any sufficient and certain criterion by which to distinguish genuine from spurious Catholicity.
One other point remains to be noticed. Mr. F.'s complaint that the sacred congregation violated its own rule, by failing to give him notice of the errors in his writings and the opportunity of explaining himself and making corrections. This is a mistake on his part. When erroneous statements are found in the works of a Catholic author of high repute for learning and orthodoxy, he receives this notification, and, in any case, when a book is placed on the Index merely on account of some particular errors, the phrase donec corrigatur is added. Mr. F. is not an author of high repute for learning and orthodoxy. His writings are thoroughly unsound and mischievous. There was no occasion to cite him for a formal hearing or defence of himself, since the whole question was in reference to his writings, which speak for themselves. The only thing necessary for a judgment was an examination of his books, and that they were not hastily condemned is evident from the fact that the censure was pronounced three years after they were published. M. Renan has just as much reason to demand a hearing as Mr. Ffoulkes.
Across America and Asia. By Raphael Pumpelly, Professor in Harvard University, and sometime Mining Engineer in the service of the Chinese and Japanese Governments. New York: Leypoldt & Holt. 1870.
Mr. Pumpelly has given in this volume an account, some parts of which are interesting even to fascination, of a five years' journey round the world, by way of Arizona, California, Japan, China, Tartary, and Siberia, whence he returned across Europe and the Atlantic to New York. His accounts of what fell immediately under his own observation during his travels are no doubt accurate, and give an excellent idea of the natural features of the regions and people through which he passed—particularly of the former; for the author's profession and tastes made him observe nature closely, and detect and describe things which an ordinary traveller would have left unnoticed. His description of the plateau of Central Asia is specially striking and valuable, and the strictly scientific information contained in this as in the other parts of his work important; but he has, of course, treated purely professional subjects more fully elsewhere.
The work is interspersed with historical sketches and political essays, some of which perhaps are not without value; but the egregious blunders made in the account of the expulsion of Christianity from Japan, on page 97, would lead one to suspect that the author has not always been duly careful in collecting his information. He seems to profess to be a Christian, as he speaks in one place of "our Lord's sermon on the mount;" but was evidently much impressed by what he saw of Buddhism, from the practices of which he wisely says that "western ritualism, and much of the superstition on which it is based," (p. 166,) is derived. The same idea is brought in on page 383. Other forms of heathenism also impressed him favorably, and he thinks well of the Mohammedans, judging from what he says of those at Kazan; but this admiration for, and fascination by every thing except the truth is not unusual among men without faith.
He could not, of course, avoid noticing the failure of Protestant missions, whose converts he regards as hypocrites, influenced solely by the hope of soup, and frequently shows an appreciation of the genius, devotedness, and success of Catholic missionaries.
The author appears to be a man of undaunted courage, great humanity, and a high sense of both honor and morality. His exposure of the villainous conduct of white men toward the Indians in our own country, and the dark races of Asia, deserves our cordial thanks. His remarks on the question of the effect of Sclavonian advancement in the old world and Chinese immigration in the new, on the destinies of the coming age, are fitted to awaken many deep and anxious thoughts. The chapter on Japanese art by Mr. John La Farge is worthy of that accomplished artist. On the whole, with the exceptions above noted, this is one of the best books which has appeared from the American press.
The Pope and the Council. By Janus. Authorized translation from the German. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1870.
This is not a book which can be reviewed as to its contents in a critical notice, or in any thing less than a volume. It goes over the entire field of the relation of the papacy to the church, considered historically, and is a work of some show of learning. We cannot, therefore, touch on the question of its intrinsic truth or falsity at present, but simply on the point of its orthodoxy, as judged by the criterion according to which doctrine is to be judged by the canons actually making the law of the Catholic Church at the present moment. According to this criterion, it is heretical, and therefore to be rejected by every Catholic, as much as Dr. Pusey's Eirenicon, or Guettée's Papacy Schismatic. The review of this last-named book in The Catholic World for July and August, 1867, written by one of the ablest of our contributors, will furnish ad interim a sufficient refutation of the anti-Catholic principles on which it rests. We cite a few passages in proof of the statement we have made. In the preface it is stated that the book is "a protest, based on history, against a menacing future, against the programme of a powerful coalition." This "programme" means the whole preparatory work of the body of theologians summoned to Rome by the pope to prepare for the council. Again, that "a great and searching reformation of the church is necessary and inevitable." Speaking of those who follow the teaching of the supreme pontiff in all things as their authoritative rule, the authors say, "While in outward communion with them, we are inwardly separated by a great gulf from those," etc. "The papacy, such as it has become, presents the appearance of a disfiguring, sickly, and choking excrescence on the organization of the church, hindering and decomposing the action of its vital powers, and bringing manifold diseases in its train." They say that there has been a development "of the primacy into the papacy, a transformation more than a development, the consequences of which have been the splitting up of the previously united church into three great ecclesiastical bodies, divided and at enmity with each other." These extracts prove the attitude of open rebellion against the pontifical authority assumed by the authors. The following shows their utter defiance of the authority of the Council of the Vatican:
"An œcumenical assembly of the church can have no existence, properly speaking, in presence of an ordinarius ordinariorum (equivalent to bishop of bishops) and infallible teacher of faith.... Bishops who have been obliged to swear 'to maintain, defend, increase, and advance the rights, honors, privileges, and authority of their lord the pope'—and every bishop takes this oath—cannot regard themselves, or be regarded by the Christian world, as free members of a free council; natural justice and equity require that. These men neither will nor can be held responsible for decisions or omissions which do not depend on them.
"With abundant reason were the two demands urged throughout half Europe in the sixteenth century, in the negotiations about the council—first, that it should not be held in Rome, or even in Italy; and, secondly, that the bishops should be absolved from their oath of obedience. The recently proclaimed council is to be held not only in Italy, but in Rome itself; and already has it been announced that, as the sixth Lateran council, it will adhere faithfully to the fifth. That is quite enough—it means this, that whatever course the synod may take, one quality can never be predicated of it, namely, that it has been a really free council. Theologians and canonists declare that without complete freedom the decisions of a council are not binding, and the assembly is only a pseudo-synod. Its decrees may have to be corrected." (Pp. 343-345.)
Such is the harsh, dissonant cry of discord which interrupts the harmonious accord of voices from all the world, rising in responsive welcome to the call of the vicar of Christ, summoning together the whole church around the tomb of the apostles. Naturally, it gives great delight to the enemies of the church, who see no hope for their cause except in dissension among her own rulers and members, and who welcome these faithless Catholics, applaud them, and disseminate their writings, as allies of their own within our camp. Their rejoicing, however, is premature. The number banded together in this clique is extremely small. Neither Mgr. Maret, Mgr. Dupanloup, or the so-called Liberal Catholics, represented by Le Correspondant, hold the extreme opinions of Janus, which has been placed on the Index in company with Mr. Ffoulkes's productions. Gallicans and liberals acknowledge the supreme authority of the Council of the Vatican, and will readily give up any private opinions which may be condemned by its judgment. Although the disciples of Bossuet's school maintain that the papal decretals do not become irreformible until they have received the at least tacit assent of the bishops, yet they admit their binding and obligatory force over all the faithful and over each bishop, taken singly, as soon as legally promulgated. All the pontifical decretals which are proposed as dogmatic judgments by the Roman Church have received at least the tacit assent of the bishops, and are, therefore, now irreformible, even by a council, on Gallican principles.
Janus is in open rebellion against the authority of these decretals, and against the Council of the Vatican itself. The persons concerned in its publication, and all ecclesiastics who share their sentiments, will be interdicted from all exercise of sacerdotal functions in the church, and excluded from her communion, unless they retract their heresy and submit to the authority of the council, or else hide themselves under the cloak of anonymous secrecy. The only importance which brochures of this sort have, comes from the supposed fact that their authors maintain a tenable position in the Catholic Church. When they are cut off from her communion, as they certainly will be if they prove contumacious, they mix with the great mass of unbelievers, and are of no account. We have had a succession of these traitors, from Judas to Gavazzi, and it is quite probable that the Council of the Vatican will prove the occasion of a certain number of apostasies. The departure from her outward communion of those who have already lost the faith is, however, an advantage rather than an injury to the church, and the places of these deserters will be better filled by the new converts who will be gained.
Life of Daniel Webster. By George Ticknor Curtis, one of his literary executors. Volume I. New York: D. Appleton & Co., 90, 92, and 94 Grand street. 1870.
Among the numerous regrets caused by the death of Edward Everett, many felt a disappointment because he had not added to our literature and to his own memoir of Mr. Webster a complete biography of that distinguished statesman. As far as we can judge from the present volume of Mr. Curtis's work, there is little cause, however, to regret that the task of writing it should have devolved on him. Its typography and paper deserve special praise; while the elegant yet modest appearance of the book is in harmony with the dignity of its subject, the style of the author, and the taste of that portion of the community who will constitute its most attentive readers.
The story of Mr. Webster's rustic boyhood, of the fireside legends of Indian and British warfare, whence he drew the patriotism of his riper years, the history of his struggle with poverty, and of the warm ties which bound him to his elder brother, are all told in a vividly interesting manner, and will recall similar scenes to the mind of many a reader. The successful career at school and college of the poorly-clad, sensitive lad, developing gradually into his splendid manhood and growing daily in the esteem of all is also graphically portrayed. In his habits of toil and deep study we see the foundations of that solidity of character, that grasp of intellect, which gave to his eloquence its commanding force, and to many of his forensic efforts their present character of legal authority.
The rising generation will admire the record of Mr. Webster's entrance into public life, and the independence, integrity, and loyalty which marked his course therein. From his youth he seemed to know of no other policy than right. Though party lines are nowadays more sharply defined than in his time, we think this broad and true American spirit is still the surest guide to lasting political influence. And the young politician who will place patriotism and devotion to principle before private ambition will secure the highest triumph for both, and need never fear the lash of party despotism.
In the present state of political affairs, which proves in so many ways and on so many points the correctness of Mr. Webster's views, and the deep, far-seeing genius of his statesmanship, we heartily approve the moderation and historical calmness with which Mr. Curtis records the exciting scenes of the "nullification" and "expunging" times, and also Mr. Webster's views on the hushing up of discussion on the abolition petitions of '36 and '37.
We have evidences, in portions of his correspondence brought into the work, of the true place which Mr. Webster assigned to principles, and of his contempt for openly immoral men. Writing to Mr. Ticknor in 1830, he says of a certain eminent literary character, whose sins have not been left to disappear with his ashes:
"Many excellent reasons are given for his being a bad husband, the sum of which is that he was a very bad man. I confess, I was rejoiced then, I am rejoiced now, that he was driven out of England by public scorn; for his vices were not in his passions, but in his principles."
On the whole, there are few biographies of public men more healthful to the moral system of the reader than that of Mr. Webster. We see his acknowledgment of true principles, and if in his private life he at any time afterward lost sight of them, this weakness has not the sanction of his genius, but stands condemned by it.
As an orator, his natural powers rank him with Demosthenes, with Chatham, with O'Connell. The legal profession will look upon him as one of its lights and ornaments. And all who love America will honor in him one whose heart beat in unison with the mighty pulse of this nation. We venture to hope that the rest of the work will equal the present volume, and that it will be read by every intelligent young man in the United States.
Missale Romanum. Tours Edition. Royal quarto. 1869. New York and Cincinnati: Benziger Bros.
This is a very fine edition of the Roman Missal. It is carefully bound in morocco, tastefully ornamented, and opens easily. The page is pleasant to the eye, the type being large and clear, and the paper very good. All the recent masses will be found at their proper places in this edition, which is in itself both a convenience and recommendation. At the commencement of the canon there is a very good steel-plate engraving of the Crucifixion. We recommend this missal to the notice of the reverend clergy and members of altar societies.
The History of Rome. By Theodor Mommsen. Translated by the Rev. W. P. Dickson, D.D. With a preface by Dr. Leonhard Schmitz. New edition, in four volumes. Vol. I. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870.
This is a philosophical history. It is difficult to do justice to the depth and accuracy of the erudition it displays. The style is also singularly happy—especially for a translation. We accept the author's facts, but not all his theories. Some of the latter would account for certain religious beliefs and practices by ignoring, on the one hand, primitive tradition, and attributing, on the other, to peoples but just emerging from barbarism the sublimest poesy and the keenest wisdom. Rationalism will never succeed in accounting for what was true in the religions of Greece and Rome, any more than for Christianity. The great philosophical historian of our age is Professor Leo, of Halle, whose account of Rome is especially admirable. Those who read German will probably find in Leo and Mommsen, together with Niebuhr, all they need to know of the principles, constitution, origin, and historical development of pagan Rome. For a correct and condensed narrative of events, Cantu's Universal History is the best.
Women's Suffrage: a Reform Against Nature. By Horace Bushnell. New York: Scribner & Co. 1869. 12mo, pp. 184.
We agree with Dr. Bushnell, as our readers are aware, in opposing female suffrage and eligibility as repugnant to the law of God, the natural relations of the sexes, and the interests of the family, of society, and indeed of woman herself; but in the course of his essay he uses so many weak arguments, and concedes so much to the women's rights folks, that his conclusions, though just, are not well sustained, and are not likely to carry conviction to the minds of those women who aspire to be men. We do not believe the lot of woman in society as it is can be truly said to be harder than that of men. The curse of our age is its femineity, its want of manliness, its sentimentalism, and its pruriency; and it could only be aggravated by female suffrage and eligibility. "The reigns of queens," said a queen of France to a duchess of Burgundy, "are conceded to be more successful than those of kings." "True," responded the duchess; "but it is because queens follow the counsel of men, and kings the counsel of women." The age, or what is called the age, needs reforming, we grant; for it has been formed by Protestantism, which is simply in principle a resuscitation of gentilism; but not more for woman than for man, and reformed it cannot be without faith in the doctrine and obedience to the commands of the church of God.
The modern economical and industrial system, which enriches the few at the expense of the many, and which is boasted as the grand achievement of modern progress, is the source of most of the evils which our political and social reformers seek to redress. This system, which sees in man only an instrument of producing, distributing, and consuming the material goods of this life, and takes no account of the divine sovereignty, or of man's moral and spiritual wants, we are quite willing to concede is a natural product of the Reformation. It creates wants beyond its power to satisfy, tastes and habits of life which demand for their gratification great wealth, and great wealth can be the lot of only the few. It creates a large class of men and women, especially of women, for whom it does and can make no provision, and who suffer just in proportion to their cultivated and refined habits and tastes. The system is in fault, is based on the false principle that the more wants you can stimulate or develop in a man or a woman the better. Hence, it creates a large class who are ill at ease, misplaced, discontented, and maddened by wants that they cannot satisfy, and prepared to be not reformers, but revolutionists.
There is no way of curing the evil, which was as great in ancient Greece and Rome as it is in modern Britain or America, but by returning to the Christian principle of self-denial, and following the admonition of our Lord, "Seek first the kingdom of God and his justice, and all things shall be added unto you." Would you make a man happy, study not to increase his possessions, but to diminish his desires. While material riches are held up as the supreme good, and poverty is treated as a disgrace, if not as a crime, there is no remedy for individual, domestic, or social evils, as the history of all heathen nations amply proves. Let the poor be held in honor as our Lord and his church held them, let voluntary poverty for Christ's sake be counted highly meritorious, and the evils our radicals feel, and our women's rights people complain of, will soon disappear, and woman will find her proper place, and man his. No political or social revolution is needed; none will do any good; all that is needed is to substitute the Christian economy for the pagan that now governs modern society.
Nidworth and His Three Magic Wands. By E. Prentiss. Boston: Roberts Bros.
A beautiful allegorical story, the moral of which is that riches and knowledge are worthless if not accompanied by the love of your neighbor. Brotherly love is the great lesson of this little volume, without which no one can be happy, and with which every one may be happy, even though one's home be only a cabin. It is the best book of the kind we have read in a long time, and should be placed in the hands of the ambitious youth of our country, whose God seems to be riches and unlimited power.
Bible Animals: Being a Description of every living Creature mentioned in the Scriptures, from the Ape to the Coral. By the Rev. J. G. Wood, M.A., F.L.S., etc. New York: Charles Scribner & Co. 1870. Pp. 652.
This book merits unqualified praise. It is so complete that it will probably become the standard authority upon this branch of biblical literature. Indeed, it appears almost to exhaust the subject; so that, although the work was written more especially to aid biblical students, yet the scientific exactness of Mr. Wood's explanations and descriptions will make the volume extremely valuable to all who are interested in natural history. The identification of the animals and birds mentioned in Leviticus and Deuteronomy is particularly useful. Many of the words used in the ordinary translations do not really designate the creatures that are intended. Mr. Wood seems to have brought good sense and great fairness to this difficult portion of his task. Where he is unable to decide with probability, he is not ashamed to say that he "is lost in uncertainty, and at the best can only offer conjectures." But this uncertainty refers principally to the smaller and less conspicuous species. The larger animals and birds are nearly all identified with tolerable certainty. The illustrations of the volume are numerous and finely executed. They are mostly taken from living animals, while the accessory details have been obtained from Egyptian and Assyrian monuments, and from the photographs and drawings of modern travellers. In every respect the book offers a rich and varied treat to those who feel an interest in knowing something of the land and the people which our divine Saviour chose for his own.
Art Thoughts: The Experiences and Observations of an American Amateur in Europe. By James Jackson Jarves. 12mo, pp. 379. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
Mr. Jarves is one of the few American writers on art whose works are worth reading and preserving. He has devoted to the subject the study and travel of many years, and has gathered one of the finest collections of genuine masters ever brought to this country. To a certain extent, his verdict upon painting and sculpture is entitled to the greatest weight; for it is founded upon intelligent study and a natural artistic appreciation. For the antique and the modern schools we may cheerfully accept him as a guide; but in the great realm of Christian art, which lies glorious and beautiful between these two extremes, he is but a blind leader of the blind—a pagan of the nineteenth century, unable to comprehend true religious inspiration, or to feel the artistic value of religious symbolism; and for whom much of the sublimity of the Renaissance, as well as the ruder but sincere and often eloquent art of the earlier Christian period, is therefore covered with an impenetrable veil. It is one of the canons of Mr. Jarves's criticism that every species of asceticism, either in life or in art, is a violation of nature and of truth. That is false art, therefore, which deals with representations of physical suffering, and the Apollo is a nobler subject than the crucified Saviour. What a wealth of spiritual beauty is shut out by this sensual conception, we need not stop to say. It is no wonder that, with such views, Mr. Jarves, while he admires the enraptured saints of Fra Angelico, cannot feel the divine pathos and sublimity of Michael Angelo's "Pieta." It is no wonder that he believes that "every religion in the form of a creed restricts and narrows art;" that he hates the Roman Church for its inculcation of the virtue of self-mortification; denounces our worship as rank idolatry of the most degrading kind; and can hardly speak with decent moderation his contempt for the crucifix and his detestation of the uncomfortable doctrine of eternal punishment. To Catholics, indeed, almost every page of his book conveys offence, and the blasphemy of some passages is too horrible for quotation.
The book is manufactured with due regard to magnificence of exterior, and many typographical niceties appropriate to a work on the fine arts. There is so much care, in fact, evident in its print and binding that we have a right to complain of there not being a little more, and especially to protest against the constant disfigurement of proper names—partly through the fault of the author, and partly through insufficient proof-reading. "Giusti," for instance, is printed "Guisti," "Giuliano" appears as "Guliano" and "Giulano," never, we believe, in its proper form. We have also "Guliana," and "Lucca" della Robbia uniformly, instead of "Luca." St. Simeon Stylites is called sometimes "St. Stylus," (which is nonsense,) and sometimes "St. Simone;" and sometimes, we may add, "that filthy fanatic." The union of Italian forms of common Christian names, like Simone and Francesco, with the English prefix "St.," is another common fault. For the words "King Caudaules," "Soubriquet," and "Casa" as the Italian for "thing," we must hold the proof-readers alone to blame.
Among the Trees: A Journal of Walks in the Woods, and Flower-Hunting through Field and by Brook. By Mary Lorimer. Sq. 8vo, pp. 153. New York: Hurd & Houghton.
This is a pleasant, readable, feminine sort of book, written by an ardent and intelligent lover of nature, and quite equal to inspiring almost any body with more or less enthusiasm for the pursuit to which it is devoted. The writer catalogues minutely the botanical charms of all the different seasons—midwinter as well as the depth of summer; describes the flowers of each month, and tells where to look for them; and gives practical instructions for making miniature conservatories of wild flowers, and doing various other pretty things such as young ladies delight in. The book is written for the latitude of New York. Excellent wood-cuts accompany the text, and the paper and binding are suitable for the holiday season.
Christ and the Church. Lectures delivered during Advent, by the Rev. Thomas S. Preston. New York: The Catholic Publication Society, 126 Nassau Street. 1870.
This volume is by far the most original and the best in every respect of several excellent volumes by the reverend author. The style and method of treating the subject remind us of Archbishop Manning. The discourses here published were preached to overflowing congregations, on the Sunday evenings during the last Advent. They develop a most important and interesting line of argument, not frequently handled, but likely to be most useful to the best class of Protestants. They are intended to show how those doctrines of the church and sacraments which are distinctively Catholic flow necessarily from the doctrines of original justice, the fall, the incarnation and redemption. They address, therefore, directly, and in the most conclusive manner, those Protestants who are called orthodox or evangelical, in common parlance. They cannot be too strongly recommended to those persons who believe in the true divinity of Jesus Christ and seek to know his doctrine and law. Pious Catholics, also, will derive great instruction and edification from this volume. It is published in the neatest and most attractive form, and is especially to be welcomed at a moment when so much glittering but counterfeit coin is in circulation.
Sadlier's Catholic Directory, Almanac, and Ordo, for the year of our Lord, 1870. New York: D. & J. Sadlier & Co. 1870.
We are pleased to see that our suggestion of last year, with regard to the binding of the Almanac, has been acted upon this year; and we now have a work we can at least open without tearing it to pieces. We would suggest other improvements—in the matter of better paper, more margin on the page, less advertisements, and a little more correctness in names and places in next year's issue—all of which would be a great improvement on the present volume, which is in some points superior to former ones.
History of the Church in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries. By K. R. Hagenbach, D.D. Translated by the Rev. I. F. Hurst, D.D. 2 vols. New York: Scribner.
This author, who is a moderately orthodox Protestant, is well acquainted with German Protestantism, and his work will therefore be useful to those who wish to study the phases of that rapidly dissolving view of Christianity.
The Life, Passion, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord Jesus Christ. Being an Abridged Harmony of the Four Gospels in the Words of the Sacred Text. Edited by the Rev. Henry Formby. With an entirely new series of engravings on wood, from designs by C. Clasen, D. Nolen, and others. New York: Catholic Publication Society. 1870.
Fr. Formby is well known as a writer of great taste and remarkable skill in preparing books for children and grown people who require reading that is easily understood. His pictorial series has long been popular in England, and will now be republished, with the author's permission, by the Catholic Publication Society. The present volume is the first of the series. It is a continuous narrative taken from all the four Gospels, according to the Rhemish version, judiciously compiled according to the best harmonies, and abridged in such a way as to simplify without curtailing in any important respect the history. The illustrations are numerous and spirited, and, with one or two exceptions, are pleasing. The book is a charming one, as well as one most useful and important for children. Nothing can be more suitable, also, for good, plain Catholics, who ought by all means to be familiar with the Gospel history, and who will find this arrangement of it much better for their use than the Gospels themselves read separately. This book ought to be in every Catholic family, day-school, and Sunday-school, and to be circulated by the ten thousand.
The Library of Good Example. In twelve volumes. New York: P. O'Shea. 1870.
This series is mainly composed of tales, etc., already before the public in manifold guises. Hence an enumeration of the titles of the several volumes, or a review of their contents, would be to our readers "a thrice-told tale." We will only say that, in our opinion, although they are admirably adapted for the perusal of children, the temper, at least of the juvenile reader, in search of "fresh fields and pastures new," will not be improved by the discovery that, in expending his pocket-money for the Library of Good Example, he has, for the third time, in some instances, purchased the same book. In one respect, however, this series is an improvement on its predecessors—it is not illustrated.
Concilien Geschichte. Hefele. Vol. vii. Part I. Council of Constance. 1869.
This part of the learned bishop's great work is especially interesting at the present moment, on account of the pretence raised by a certain number of persons that the Council of Constance was, in all its sessions, œcumenical. It is, besides this temporary interest, of lasting and intrinsic importance, for reasons well known to every scholar. Dr. Hefele not only gives us a learned and accurate historical work, but also a graphic picture of the intensely exciting and interesting events of the great Council of Constance. We cite the author's concluding sentence on the authority of the decrees of the council: "That (Eugenius IV.) intended to exclude the decrees of Constance respecting the superiority of general councils over the pope from his approbation is indubitable. In accordance with this, and according to modern law, which declares the papal approbation of general councils necessary in order to make them such, there can be no doubt that (a) all the decrees of Constance, which are not prejudicial to the papacy, are to be considered œcumenical; on the other hand, that (b) all which infringe against the jus, the dignitas, and præeminentia of the apostolic see, are to be considered as reprobated." This is in harmony with the sentiment of all the soundest canonists and theologians, namely, that which excludes the Council of Constance from the number of the councils strictly called œcumenical, and relegates it to a second class of general councils some of whose decrees are rejected and others approved.
The Status of the Catholic Clergy in the United States. Bishop McQuaid!—Father O'Flaherty!—The Imbroglio in the Diocess of Rochester.
This vile anonymous pamphlet, printed without any publisher's name and signed, "Priests of the Diocese of Rochester," is a disgrace to its authors, especially if they are really priests. A publication of this kind, which is in itself a grievous offence, cannot claim even a hearing for any thing it may contain. If any priests of the diocese of Rochester have so far lost all sense of sacerdotal duty as to put forth this pamphlet, taking advantage of their bishop's absence, it is evident that a little more application of ecclesiastical discipline in that diocese will prove salutary.
The Byrnes of Glengoulah. A True Tale. By Alice Nolan. New York: P. O'Shea.
Sally Cavanagh; or, The Untenanted Graves. A Tale of Tipperary. By Charles J. Kickham. Boston: Patrick Donahoe.
The foul wrongs to which the existing laws between landlord and tenant expose the peasantry of Ireland are made the ground-work of both these stories of Irish life. While these wrongs are familiar to all, so also are their sad effects, as narrated in the volumes before us. Of these, the former is undoubtedly more racy of the soil; though the latter, we think, will leave a more pleasing impression on the reader. The great fault with Miss Nolan is a talent for exaggeration; her favorites are always right; their enemies are ever harsh in word, cruel in act, and villainous in appearance. The landlord's victims are almost too ethereal for humanity—only a little less than angels; he and his myrmidons too diabolical for fiends.
Great Mysteries and Little Plagues. By John Neal. Boston: Roberts Brothers. 1870.
The author proves that he has fully studied his subject, and that his title-page, though rather mysterious, is still most expressive and true. He shows by nearly three hundred anecdotes that children are really great mysteries and little plagues. His fairy story of "Goody Gracious! and the Forget-me-not" is the very model of a fairy story—plenty of imagination without going into the impossible and improbable.
Acta ex iis decerpta quæ apud Sanctam Sedem geruntur, etc. Baltimore: Kelly & Piet.
This is a fac-simile reprint of the Roman edition. It is a work of the greatest utility to ecclesiastics. We noticed some errors of the press, which suggests the remark that the proofs should invariably be carefully revised by a clergyman.
P. Donahoe, Boston, announces for early publication, Life Pictures of the Passion of Christ, translated from the German of Dr. Veith, by Rev. Father Noethen; The Our Father, translated from the German of the same author; The Monks of the West, by the Count Montalembert, and a Life of Pius IX.
BOOKS RECEIVED.
From P. O'Shea, New York, The Key of Heaven; or, A Manual of Prayer. With the approbation of the Most Rev. John McCloskey, D.D., Archbishop of New York. Revised, corrected, and improved. 1869. Pp. 532.
From J. W. Schermerhorn & Co., New York: Scottish University Addresses by Mill, Froude, Carlyle. Paper.
From E. Cummiskey, Philadelphia: Considerations upon Christian Truths and Christian Duties; digested into Meditations for every day in the year. By Rt. Rev. Richard Challoner. New edition. 1 vol. 12mo. Controversy between Rev. Messrs. Hughes and Breckinridge on the subject, "Is the Protestant Religion the Religion of Christ?" Sixth edition. 1 vol. 12mo.
THE CATHOLIC WORLD.
VOL. X., No. 60.—MARCH, 1870.
CIVIL AND POLITICAL LIBERTY.[176]
That evangelical romancer, M. Merle d'Aubigné, not long since published a discourse having for title, Jean Calvin, un des Fondateurs des Libertés Modernes, or "John Calvin, one of the Founders of Modern Liberty." The discourse, as the Abbé Martin says, is of no importance; but the title is significant. It claims for the Genevan reformer the merit of being one of the founders of liberty in modern society. Mr. Bancroft in his History of the United States does the same. A Lutheran might with equal truth claim as much for Luther, a Scottish Presbyterian as much for John Knox, and an Anglican as much for Henry VIII. and the Virgin Queen Elizabeth. Nearly all Protestant and anti-Catholic writers assume, as an indisputable maxim, that liberty was born of the Reformation. All your Protestant and liberal journals assert it, and the ignorant multitude believe it. Whoever contradicts it is denounced as an ultramontanist, a tool of the clergy, or a Jesuit, and, of course, is silenced. Protestant nations enjoy, even with many Catholics, the prestige of being free nations; and all Catholic nations are set down as despotic, and, owing to the influence of the church, as deadly hostile to every kind of liberty, religious, political, civil, and individual. Protestantism and liberty, or Catholicity and despotism, is adopted as the formula of the convictions of this enlightened age.
This alleged connection of Protestantism and liberty, and of Catholicity and despotism, the Abbé Martin maintains, is what gives to Protestant missions in old Catholic nations the principal part of their success in unmaking Catholics. The Protestant missionaries, seconded by all the liberal journals, proclaim their Protestantism as the liberator of nations, as that which emancipates the people from political despotism, and the mind from spiritual thraldom. The great argument used in this country against the church is her alleged hostility to liberty, and the certainty, if she once gained the ascendency here, she would destroy our free institutions, and reduce the nation to political and spiritual slavery. Such is the allegation; such the argument.
Now, every man who knows anything of history knows that the reverse of what is here alleged is true. The church has, undoubtedly, always opposed lawlessness, and set her face against revolutions for either king or people; but she has never favored slavery or despotism, and has always favored that orderly liberty, the only true liberty, which consists in the reign of law, instead of passion, caprice, or arbitrary will. She has always and everywhere insisted that the laws should be just and supreme, alike for ruler and ruled. She has sometimes submitted to despotic authority, but she has never approved it, or recognized it as legitimate; and when a courtier monk preached before Philip II. of Spain that the king is absolute, and may do whatever he wills, the Spanish Inquisition arraigned him for his false doctrine, and compelled him to retract it publicly from the same pulpit from which he had preached it.
The fact is, not that liberty was born of or with the Reformation, but that the Reformation itself was born of absolute monarchy, despotism, or Cæsarism, revived and confirmed at the epoch of its birth. Prior to the Reformation, which marked the triumph of Cæsarism over feudalism, there was, no doubt, much barbarism in Christian Europe; but there was no absolutism. A reminiscence of Græco-Roman imperialism remained, indeed, and was cherished by the civil lawyers or legists, whose maxim was, Quod placuit principi, legis habet vigorem; but absolutism never succeeded in getting itself established. The German emperors, especially the Hohenstauffen, Cæsarists in principle as well as in name, attempted to revive the Roman empire, but did not succeed. Power was divided. There were free cities and communes that governed themselves as veritable republics under the guardianship, nominal rather than real, of a suzerain. The royal power was limited by the great vassals of the crown, and the authority of these in turn was limited by the lesser nobles, by the estates, and by the laws, and usages which had the force of laws. What characterizes the middle ages is the spirit of liberty. Few men in our time have better understood the middle ages, save as to the action of the church, than Sir Walter Scott, who, if a romancer, was also something more and better. He says in his Anne of Geierstein:
"We may remind our readers that, in all feudalized countries, (that is to say, in almost all Europe during the middle ages,) an ardent spirit of liberty pervaded the constitution; and the only fault that could be found was, that the privileges and freedom for which the great vassals contended did not sufficiently descend to the lower orders of society, or extend protection to those most likely to need it. The two first ranks in the state, the nobles and the clergy, enjoyed high and important privileges, and even the third estate, or citizens, had this immunity in peculiar, that no new duties, customs, or taxes of any kind could be exacted from them save by their own consent."
The fault Sir Walter mentions was not peculiar to the middle ages, and is not less in European countries to-day than it was then. The representatives or delegates of the cities and communes constituted the third estate, and sat in the assembly of the estates as early as the reign of Philip the Fair. If the rural population were not represented in the estates, they were not forgotten. The church had received that population as either slaves or serfs. She had succeeded in completely abolishing slavery in all continental Europe before the fifteenth century, and had made much progress toward putting an end to serfage. The enslaved populations were emancipated in nearly all Catholic Europe before the Reformation, and in the early part of the seventeenth century the French courts decided that "a slave could not breathe the air of France." The maxim of the English courts was plagiarized from the French judges. There may be a question whether the European peasant has gained much since the middle ages; whether his increased wants have not more than kept pace with his increased means of supply; and as for protection, they who most need it never find it under any political régime. The most cruel and heartless landlords could not have been more cruel and heartless than are your cotton-mills and mammoth moneyed corporations, especially when Mammon was not exclusively worshipped.
But be all this as it may, this much is certain: that during the feudal ages there was, under the influence and untiring exertions of the pope and the monastic orders, a constant social amelioration of society going on, and the whole tendency of those marvellous ages, so little understood, and so foully belied, was toward the establishment in every nation of a well-ordered liberty, under the safeguard of the church, and of Christian or Christianized traditions and manners. The fifteenth century came, and brought with it not only the revival of pagan literature, but of pagan politics, which gave to the secular order a predominance over the spiritual, as we have explained in previous articles. The unhappy residence of the popes at Avignon, that "Babylonian captivity," as it has been called, and the great schism of the west, which followed it, in the fourteenth century, had served much to diminish the splendor and to weaken the political power of the papacy. This, coupled with the secular development of the age, and the pagan revival, gave a chance for Cæsarism to raise its head, and for the sovereigns to declare themselves absolute, and responsible to God alone for their exercise of power. The feudal constitution of Europe was crushed, and the pagan empire took its place. Not only the emperor and the mightiest kings, but the pettiest sovereign duke or count became a Cæsar in his own dominions.
At this moment, just as Cæsarism was on the point of winning the victory, the Reformation broke out, not in behalf of the old liberties, but to help abolish them and secure to Cæsar his triumph. So far from founding or even aiding liberty, it interrupted its progress, and gave the movement in its favor, which had from the seventh century been going on, a false and fatal direction. The originators of the Reformation may have been simply heterodox theologians; but they could not sustain themselves without the aid of the princes, and that aid could be obtained only by ministering to their love of power, and submitting to their supremacy alike in spirituals and temporals. The princes that favored the Reformation became each in his own principality absolute prince and pontifex maximus. The prince protects the reformers, and uses his civil and military power to crush their enemies, and to extirpate the old religion from his dominions. Dependent on him, and sustained only as upheld by him, the Reformation was impotent to restrain his arbitrary power. The reformed religion, like gentilism, of which it was in fact only a revival, assumed at once the character of a national religion; and the reformed church was absorbed by the state, and became one of its functions, an instrument of police, which must always be the fate of a national religion.
But the Protestant nations not only helped on Cæsarism, which was the spirit of the age, but they gave up or were despoiled of their old liberties, which they had long possessed and enjoyed under the benign protection of the church. England saw her parliament practically annulled, and the prince governing, under Henry VIII., his daughter Elizabeth, and the first two Stuarts, as a Byzantine Basileus or an oriental despot; and it cost her a century of insurrections, revolutions, and civil wars to recover some portion of the political and civil freedom of which the Reformation had despoiled her. Even the Abbé Martin seems to forget that from 1639 to 1746 England was in a state as unsettled as France has been since 1789. She has not even yet recovered all her old liberties. She has, indeed, depressed the crown to exalt the aristocracy of birth or wealth, and is now entering upon a fearful struggle between aristocracy and democracy, most likely to end either in reviving the pagan republic, or in establishing once more the absolute authority of the crown.
The author very justly maintains that Protestantism has not created liberty, and that it has arrested or falsified it. He recalls that,
"At the breaking out of Protestantism slavery had entirely disappeared, and serfage or villenage, the transition state from slavery to complete liberty, was gradually disappearing, and giving place to free labor and domestic servants. The third estate was everywhere constituted, and nowhere had it more life and vigor than in the neighborhood of the churches and monasteries. This emancipation was the work of the Catholic Church, and never had a more signal service been rendered to liberty. The basis of all liberties, I say not of modern but of Christian liberties, was laid.
"Impartial history testifies that Protestantism has not accelerated this movement in behalf of liberty, but has arrested it. A few facts, gathered at random from the immense number that might be adduced, will sufficiently prove this assertion.
"'In Denmark,' says Berthold, 'the peasant was reduced to serfage as a dog.' The nobility profited by the reform, not only to appropriate to themselves the greater part of the goods of the church, but also the free goods of the peasant.
"'The corvées,' says Allen, the best historian of Denmark, 'were arbitrarily multiplied; the peasants were treated as serfs. It happened frequently that the children of the preachers and sacristans themselves were reduced to serfage. In 1804—mark the late date—personal liberty was granted for the first time to twenty thousand families of serfs. Sweden and Norway fared no better. In Mecklenburg, the oppression of the peasants, who had no one to defend their rights since they had lost the effective and vigilant protection of the Catholic clergy, followed immediately the triumph of the Reformation. At the diet of 1607, they were declared simple tenants at will—colons—who must yield up to the landlords, on their demand, even the lands which they had possessed from time immemorial. Their personal liberty was suppressed by the ordinances of 1633, 1648, and 1654. They sought to escape from this intolerable servitude by flight. The emigration was large. But the severest punishments, the lash, the carcan, even death, could not arrest it, nor prevent the depopulation of the fields. The lot of those miserable creatures hardly differed from that of negro slaves. The only difference was, that the masters were prohibited from separating families, and selling the members to the highest bidder at public auction; but they eluded it by trading off their serfs as horses and cows. Serfage was abolished in Mecklenburg only in 1820.
"The introduction of the Reform into Pomerania gave birth there to all the horrors of slavery. The ordinance of 1616 decreed that all peasants are serfs without any rights.... The ministers were required to denounce the fugitive serf from the pulpit. People are astonished to-day at the emigration from Germany, which nearly doubles that from Ireland. May not the cause be found in that old state of things, which, though recently abolished, has left but too many traces of its existence?
"A single fact will enable us to judge of the magnitude of the evil in Prussia. Under Frederick II., the contemporary and friend of Voltaire, who labored so energetically to make of his infant kingdom an immense barrack, the soldiers themselves, the support and instrument of his power, when discharged, returned to the common lot of serfs, after having fought his battles and won his victories. They were subjected anew to their landlords; and not only they, but also their wives, their widows, and their children, even though born in a state of freedom....
"Calvinism has not produced so sad results of the same kind. Less hierarchical in its nature than Lutheranism, and having taken its rise in Geneva, a free state, it has preserved something of its original constitution. Thus it has prevailed generally in countries organized under a republican form; in France, even, it aspired to a federation. But the liberty it has found, rather than created, it turns into an odious tyranny. It has, above all, no respect for individual liberty. The system which Calvin established at Geneva was even surpassed by that of John Knox in Scotland. The ecclesiastical domination over the faithful, and the inquisition into all their doings, were frightful. Every detail of private life could be brought before the presbyterial forum; nobody could feel himself safe. Espionage and domestic accusation were the soul of the system. The secrets of the family were scrutinized and inventoried; and the terrible arm of excommunication struck without relaxation and without mercy. Woe to him who fell under its blows; for him there was no social right. Will it be believed? The Puritans of England, who, to escape oppression and death, free, and masters of a virgin territory, became only the more rigorous, and their communities in North America were even more exclusive and tyrannical than those of their brethren in Europe." (Pp. 326-330.)
The author is too lenient toward Calvinism. It had, indeed, no partiality for monarchy, and just as little for democracy. What it aimed at was an aristocracy of the saints. Only those in grace could be freemen or exercise any authority in the community. The church was composed of the saints alone; and hence, in the colony of Massachusetts, only church members could be selectmen, or magistrates, or vote in elections. Church members had equal rights indeed; but those who were not church members had no rights at all, political, civil, or individual, and no social standing. The church members themselves covenanted to watch over each other, which meant, practically, that every member was to act as a spy upon every other member; and hence that cautiousness in speech, that fear of a mouchard in every neighbor, and that obsequiousness to public opinion, which marks not a few of the descendants of the New England Puritans even to this day. The rights of man in relation to his brother man were undreamed of, and for individual liberty there was no respect whatever. The individual was subject to the congregation, ruled by the pastor and elders or deacons, themselves ruled by two or three venerable spinsters. Calvinism sought, in fact, to govern society, minus celibacy, as a monastery, by converting the evangelical counsels into inflexible laws, and without the assistance of the grace of vocation. We shall never forget the odious tyranny to which Calvinism subjected our own boyhood. Life for us was stern, gloomy, hedged round with terror. We did not dare listen to the joyous song of a bird, nor to inhale the fragrance of an opening flower. Whatever gave pleasure was to be eschewed, and the most innocent pleasures were to be accounted deadly sins. We cannot even now, in our old age, think of our own Calvinistic childhood, which was by no means exceptional, without a shudder.
Thus far the author has spoken of individual liberty, which is the most essential of all, and without which civil and political liberty is a vain mockery. He asserts and proves, as we have seen, that Protestantism has not given to individual liberty a new development, but has arrested it. Well, was it more favorable to political liberty? We have answered this question already, but we cannot forbear citing the author's own reply:
"At the epoch of the outbreak of Protestantism, Christendom was advancing with rapid strides toward the practice of the largest liberty. For centuries the Italian republics had pushed liberty almost to license. They were, no doubt, often disorderly and turbulent; but they were full of sap, overflowing with life and activity, which availed for Italy a power and a glory which she seeks in vain from a factitious unity. Switzerland, by the energy of her patriotism and the wisdom of her government, won the admiration of the whole world. Flanders and the northern provinces of Spain watched with jealous susceptibility over their proud and noble independence; England had her Magna Charta, the basis of the strong constitution which has given her security in the midst of modern political and social convulsions; the cities and communes of France and Germany administered freely their own affairs, as small republics under the guardianship, often more nominal than real, of some few suzerains. The guilds or corporations of the mechanics and tradesmen enjoyed rights the most extended. Power was nowhere despotic, and, though not restrained by scientific and uniform rules, it encountered everywhere a counterpoise to its authority and obstacles to its arbitrary will. Christian monarchy, that creation of the church, unknown in antiquity, approached maturity, and there was room to hope that it would found liberty without opening the door to license, and without having recourse to that enormous centralization which has only too often become a necessity. Catholic theology, always liberal, in the true sense of the word, inclined more to the rights of the people than to the rights of the sovereign. It knew not yet that right divine of kings as it was understood under Louis XIV., a diminutive pagan Cæsarism, which, as we shall show further on, held more strictly than is commonly believed from the principles which the Renaissance and Protestantism caused to prevail." (Pp. 330-332.)
We remark here that the Christian monarchy of which the learned abbé speaks existed in the doctrines of the theologians and in the efforts of the church, rather than in the actual order. There were Christian monarchs or sovereigns, like St. Henry of Germany, St. Ferdinand of Spain, and St. Louis of France; but there was nowhere, that we have been able to discover, a Christian monarchy. The feudal monarchy was of barbarian origin, and was a development of the chief of the tribe or clan. Side by side with this, constantly struggling with it for the mastership of society, was Græco-Roman imperialism, or briefly, Cæsarism, favored by the whole body of the legists, and always opposed by the church, though not always by churchmen become statesmen and courtiers. This pagan Cæsarism, which concentrates in the hands of the prince absolute authority in both temporals and spirituals, survived the fall of the Roman empire, and never for a moment ceased to struggle to recover the mastership; and it was it that was in question in the long struggle between the pope and the emperor. Defeated in the last of the Hohenstauffen, it revived in every petty prince in Christendom. It drove the popes from Rome into the exile of Avignon, and caused the great western schism. Still, the church was for a time able to prevent its complete success. But in 1453 came the taking of Constantinople by the Ottoman Turks, the dispersion of the Greek scholars through the west; and the revival of pagan politics and literature served to reinforce Cæsarism, to weaken the influence of the church, and to give birth to the Protestant Reformation—at bottom nothing more nor less than a revival of the pagan order, against which the church from her birth had struggled.
The movement of which Protestantism was one of the results dates from a period before Luther, Melancthon, and Calvin, from the revival in the fifteenth century, and the successful struggle of Cæsarism against feudalism and the church. Protestantism may have prevented the development of a Christian monarchy; but it was itself a child of Cæsarism. The movement against feudalism, and for the concentration of power in the hands of the monarch, as well as for great centralized states, preceded the birth of Protestantism. Louis XI. in France, Maximilian I. in Germany, Henry VII. of England, the Cardinal Ximenes in Spain, and the de' Medici in Italy, all labored for the centralization of power, and paved the way for the revival and triumph in their respective countries of pagan Cæsarism. The Abbé Martin's statements are correct only in case we count Protestantism, under its social and political aspects, as the continuation and development of the movement in behalf of Cæsarism, or the centralization of power, and against the liberties secured by feudalism.
We are no admirers of feudalism; but we hold it better than the Græco-Roman imperialism it supplanted, or the absolute monarchy which succeeded it in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, of which Bossuet was a conspicuous defender. The Reformation aided the movement in behalf of Cæsarism, by bringing to its support an open rebellion against the papal authority and the faith of the church, and secured it the victory. Cæsarism followed it immediately, not only in the nations that accepted the new religion, but also, to a great extent, in the nations that remained Catholic. On the first point the author asks:
"Who does not know that Lutheranism depended solely on the princes and nobles to overcome and despoil the church, and to triumph over the resistance of the people? Through gratitude, and through necessity, it surrendered itself and the people to the discretionary authority of the princes. In all countries where it became predominant, absolute power prevailed.
"As the result of the revolution in 1661, Frederic III. of Denmark and his successors were declared absolute monarchs. The royal law of 1665 attests that the king was required to take no oath, was under no obligation whatever; but had plenary authority to do whatever he pleased. In Sweden, the violent and surreptitious establishment of Protestantism was done in the interest of royalty and nobility, and, moreover, raised up an antagonism between these two powers which produced a series of revolutions in that country unrivalled in any other European state. But royalty finally triumphed. The estates, in 1680, declared that the king is bound to no form of government. In 1682, they declared it an absurdity to pretend that he was bound by statutes and ordinances to consult, before acting, the estates; whence it follows that the will of the king was the supreme law. 'After that,' says Geijer, the classic historian of Sweden, 'all was interpreted to the advantage of the omnipotence of one alone. The estates were no longer called the estates of the realm, but the estates of his majesty. In 1693, the unlimited absolutism of royalty became the law; the king was free to govern according to his good pleasure, without any responsibility.'
"It would be too long to follow the introduction of the same régime as the consequence of the Reformation into the several states and principalities of Germany, in Mecklenburg, Pomerania, the duchies of Hanover and Brunswick, Brandenburg and Saxony. Everywhere the introduction of the new religion was followed by an augmentation of the power of the prince and nobles, and everywhere the prince finally succeeded in absorbing the power of the nobility. Prussia affords us a striking example of this result. Under the reign of the Elector Frederick William, from 1640 to 1688, the arbitrary and absolute power of the prince was developed according to a regular plan. The General Diet after 1665 ceased to be convoked. Crushing taxes were imposed without the consent and against the protests of the estates, and collected by the military; and so heavy were they, that multitudes of peasants, despoiled of their goods, were driven to brigandage for a living. A great number sought refuge in Poland, and nobles even deserted a country that devoured their children. Lands which were taxed beyond the value of their produce were abandoned, and suffered to run to waste. The country was oppressed by an unprecedented tyranny. Prussia, according to the expression of Stenzel, was in the way of becoming one of those Asiatic countries in which despotism stifles the growth of whatever is beautiful or noble." (Pp. 332-334.)
We have already spoken of the effects of the introduction of Protestantism into England and Scotland. Calvinism, the author considers, caused less grave and less durable damage to liberty; yet it was not less tyrannical by nature, only it was less monarchical. "At Geneva it confiscated all the ancient franchises to the profit of the oligarchy it established, and it was not owing to it that in Holland the stadtholder did not become absolute." Protestant historians are perfectly well aware of these facts, and from time to time they concede them; and yet the best of them continue to assert the impudent falsehood, that Protestantism has created and sustained modern liberty, individual, civil, and political—not, indeed, because it has done so, but because they think it would have been much in its favor if it had.
The other point, that Protestantism is in great measure responsible for the establishment or partial establishment of the pagan monarchy, or Cæsarism, in Catholic nations, we have shown in our previous articles on the work before us; yet we cite the following from the author:
"It is not simply in countries in which it triumphed that the Protestant Reformation has given to liberty a retrograde movement; it has reacted in a most fatal, though generally in an imperceptible, manner on Catholic governments themselves. It was, at its first appearance, a terrible temptation to the princes and sovereigns of Europe. It broke that firm independence of the Catholic clergy which had for so many ages repressed the tyrannical aspirations of secular governments; it gave up the rich spoils of the church to them, reversed their parts, and after having placed the priest, the representative of heaven, at the mercy of the powers of earth, it constituted the prince the master and director of consciences. What could be more seductive? An obstacle to overcome, almost a yoke to break, independence to conquer, vast riches to appropriate, the empire of souls to place by the side of the empire of bodies, the ideal of a power veritably sovereign; is it not the dream of every man who feels himself at the head of a nation? Princes and sovereigns yielded to the temptation. They were, besides, already prepared for it, by the received theories of legists or civil lawyers, inherited from the pagan state; by the ideas propagated by the Renaissance and by the Machiavelian lessons then taught in all the courts of Europe; and if all did not accept Protestantism, it was far less due to their personal repulsion than to the decided opposition of their people. But the new ideal of power germinated in their minds. On the other hand, the church, weakened and her very existence threatened, saw herself reduced to the necessity of relying on them for support against the armed violence of the Reformation. She must purchase their protection, and could do it only at the expense of her independence. In various places she abandoned to them the nomination of bishops and the collation of benefices, giving by this sacrifice, rigorously exacted by circumstances, and by this abandonment of her rights, which afterward proved so fatal, a sufficient satisfaction for the moment to the secret reason which inclined them to Protestantism. She loosened a prey to them, in order not to be devoured herself. Their hunger thus appeased, they consented to sustain her, but without having a common cause with her.
"Profiting adroitly by their position, the sovereigns passed rapidly from the part of defenders of the church to that of guardians and masters, and while respecting the essence of the spiritual power, they labored to subordinate the church and the exercise of her authority to the surveillance of the state. Not content with excluding all control of the church over their own acts, all interventions of the spiritual authority in civil and political affairs, they sought, after the example of the Protestant princes, to penetrate the interior of the church, and make themselves pontiffs; and if we cannot say that they completely succeeded, we cannot any more say that they wholly failed. What is certain is, that thenceforward they ceased to find any serious obstacle in the Catholic clergy or their chief to their designs, and that the legists, imbued with the maxims of the Roman law, and for a long time hostile to the church, coming to their aid, absolute royalty, without much difficulty, prevailed. The indirect influence of Protestantism was there.
"Even the Catholic clergy themselves contributed to this fatal evolution. Whether moved by gratitude, by a monarchical impulse, or, in fine, by necessity, they accepted, at least in the civil and political order, the new pretensions, and acknowledged the new rights of those sovereigns who, in espousing the Catholic religion, had saved it from the greatest danger it had as yet run. Influenced by the tendency of the times, Catholic theologians, especially in France, deserted the highways of the political theology of the middle ages, and proclaimed not only the divine origin of power, but the divine right of the king, his dependence on God alone, and the passive obedience of the people. The idea of the Christian monarchy was perverted, and in Catholic as in Protestant countries it inclined to Cæsarism. The church was the principal victim of this political transformation; she was all but smothered in the cruel embraces of Catholic monarchs, when God himself delivered her by the blow which was intended to extinguish her—the French Revolution. When that revolution broke out, the work of the Renaissance and of the Reform seemed accomplished. Except in England, Holland, and some microscopic Swiss republics, Catholic for the most part, absolutism reigned everywhere. Is it not, then, the strangest falsification of history to attribute to Protestantism the initiation of modern liberty?" (Pp. 339-341.)
Unhappily, Protestants will pay little heed to the fact that the loss of liberty in Catholic nations was due either to Protestantism or to the movement of which Protestantism was simply a development. There can be no reasonable doubt that but for Protestantism the church would have been able to check and roll back the powerful movement for the revival of Cæsarism, which had commenced in the fifteenth century, and have prevented the growth of absolute monarchy in a single Catholic state. The Protestant rebellion so weakened her external power, and detached from her so large a portion of the populations of Europe, that she was no longer able to restrain the absolutist tendencies of all European sovereigns. The sovereigns themselves, almost without exception, were inclined to the movement—were, in fact, its chief supporters; and if they did not all join it, it was because they were held back by their people, whose faith in the old religion was too strong to be given up at the pleasure of their princes, not because they had personally any devotion or attachment to her faith. The French court and most of the higher French nobility openly or secretly favored Protestantism till the conversion of Henry IV.; and even that monarch had formed a league with the Protestant princes, and was preparing for a war against the Catholic powers of Europe, at the very moment he was assassinated. His policy was adopted and carried out under his successors by Cardinals Richelieu and Mazarin, who repressed Protestantism in the interior, but supported it everywhere else. That France remained Catholic, was owing to the concessions made by the pope to her sovereigns, and to the firmness of the French people under the lead of the noble Guises, so calumniated by almost all modern French writers.
Yet the abbé expresses himself too strongly. The triumph of absolutism was never so complete in Catholic as in Protestant nations. In Protestant nations, the sovereigns united both the political and the spiritual powers, as under Greek and Roman gentilism, absorbed the church, and made religion a function of the state. In Catholic nations, although royalty interfered beyond measure in ecclesiastical affairs, the two powers remained distinct, and the church retained, at least in principle, her autonomy, however circumscribed and circumvented in its exercise. This is evident from the concordats she conceded to the sovereigns, and the diplomatic relations of Catholic powers with the holy see. Throughout all her humiliations, the church asserted and maintained, in principle, her independence. In all Protestant countries, the state legislated for the Protestant church; it nowhere treated with it as a separate power, and held, and could hold, no diplomatic relations with it. In all Protestant nations, the church became national and local; but in all Catholic nations she continued to be Catholic, and was always and everywhere some restraint on the absolute power of the sovereign, as both Louis XIV. and Napoleon I. learned by experience, and hence their discreditable quarrels with the holy see, and the imprisonment of the holy father by the latter. Lord Molesworth remarked in 1792, as cited by the author from Döllinger's Church and Churches, that, "in the Roman Catholic religion, with the supreme head of the church at Rome, there is a principle of opposition to unlimited political power. It is not the same with the Lutheran [he might have added the Anglican] clergy, who depend on the crown as their spiritual and temporal superior." This principle opposes the unlimited power of the people no less than of the monarch, and hence the sects all agree, now that the age tends to democratic absolutism, in opposing the church in the name of the people; for Protestantism has the same absolutist instincts always and everywhere.
The author, we think, exaggerates the adoption by the Catholic clergy, even in France, of absolutism in politics. Bossuet, who was a French courtier as well as a Catholic bishop, as tutor to the dauphin, went, no doubt, as far in asserting the divine right of kings, and passive obedience, as the Anglican divines under the Stuarts; and some of the clergy, yielding to court influence and the spirit of the age, followed him; but the noble Fénélon, in no respect his inferior as a theologian, differed from him, held, with the great body of Catholic theologians in all ages, that power is a trust for the public good, and that kings are responsible to the nation for their exercise of it. It was his anti-absolutist doctrine, not his few inaccurate expressions on the doctrine of pure love, in his Maxims of the Saints, that caused him to be stripped of his charges at court, and exiled to his diocese of Cambray. Nor is it true, as the abbé insinuates, that the pope sanctioned the absolutist doctrines which prevailed in France or elsewhere in the seventeenth century. The four articles, dictated by the government, slightly modified by Bossuet, and accepted by a small minority of the French bishops, which contain the very essence of absolutism, were no sooner published by order of the king, and commanded to be taught in all the theological seminaries, and to be conformed to by all the professors and clergy of the realm, than the pope condemned them, annulled the order of the king, and finally compelled him to withdraw it, or at least to pledge himself that he would do so. The pope never failed to assert, and, as far as he could, to cause to be respected, the rights of the church—that is to say, the rights of God, which are the only solid basis of the rights of man.
Every theologian knows that, prior to the rise of Protestantism, and even for a considerable time afterward, Catholic political theology bears no trace of the absolutism taught by Bossuet, and which he had borrowed from contemporary Protestantism. It is worthy of remark that nowhere were the first acts of the French Revolution hailed with more joy than at Rome with the pope and cardinals, and it found no warmer, firmer, or more disinterested supporters than the French clergy as a body, whose representatives were the first to join the Tiers-Etats. Afterward, when the revolution run into horrible excesses, put forth doctrines subversive of all religion, and even of society itself, assumed the right to legislate on spiritual matters, and showed that it only transferred absolutism from the king to the mob, there was undoubtedly a reaction against it in the minds of the pope and clergy, as there was in the minds of all men not incapable of profiting by experience, and who could not prefer license to orderly liberty. The salvation of religion and society made it the duty of the church to sustain with all her power the sovereigns in their efforts to repress the revolutionary spirit, and to restore and maintain social peace and order.
It is this fact, stripped of its reasons, and its real nature misunderstood or misrepresented, that has given rise to the pretence that the church opposes, while Protestantism, which is leagued, if not identical, with the revolution, favors liberty. Protestants never, that we are aware, put forth any pretence of the sort prior to 1792. Up to the moment of this reaction against the French revolution, the contrary charge had been made, and the church condemned for being hostile to the rights of sovereigns, and it was in reply to the speech of Cardinal Duperron, in the states-general in France in 1614, in favor of the rights of the nation and the church against the irresponsibility of the crown, that James I. of England wrote his Remonstrance for the Divine Right of Kings. History as written by Protestants is composed of disjointed facts, misplaced and misrepresented, whenever it is not pure invention.
The author is not quite exact in saying absolutism reigned everywhere at the breaking out of the French revolution, except in England, Holland, and the Swiss cantons. The United States had won their independence and adopted their federal constitution before that event, and certainly the American republic was not founded on the principle of the omnipotence of the state or of the people. It revived neither pagan imperialism nor pagan republicanism, and was in its fundamental principles more nearly a Christian republic than the world had hitherto seen.
It would seem, as the great mass of the American people were Protestants, and the more influential portion of them intensely Protestant, of the Calvinistic type, that the American republic should be held as an exception to the assertion that Protestantism resulted everywhere in the establishment of absolutism. But it is in reality no exception. It had no existence at the epoch of the Reformation, and Protestantism had no hand in founding it. It was founded by Providence, and the principles which form its basis were derived by the English colonists, not from Protestantism, but from the old constitution of England in Catholic times, and which, though suppressed by the ruling classes, never ceased to live in the traditions of the English people. The revolution in the seventeenth century in England was the struggle of the English people to recover their old rights, of which Protestant royalty and nobility had deprived them. Royalty and nobility did not emigrate; they remained at home, and there were in the Anglo-American colonies no materials from which either could be constructed. The great principle of the Puritans, that the church is independent of the state and superior to it, or that the state has no authority to legislate in religious matters, not even in non-essentials, was a Catholic principle, for which the popes, in their long struggles with the secular power, had uniformly contended. It is the vital principle of liberty; for it interposes the rights of God, represented by the church, as the limits of the rights of the state. The Puritans had asserted this principle in their own defence against the Protestant king and parliament of England, which assumed plenary authority in spirituals as well as in temporals. It was not Protestantism that developed this great principle of all just liberty, and opposed to all absolutism; it was the old Catholic principle, always and everywhere asserted by the Catholic Church.
But taking the Bible, especially the Old Testament, interpreted by a fallible authority, as their criterion of the rights of God, as represented by their Puritan church, the Puritans failed not in asserting, but in applying the principle, and established, in practice, as we have seen, a most odious tyranny. They misapplied the principle, which can be rightly applied only by the Catholic Church. Their Protestantism misled them, and perverted the truth they retained, as was universally the case with Calvinists. It is easy to see now why Protestantism deserves no credit for founding American liberty. It was not of Protestant origin, and we may add Protestantism is busy at work to destroy it, or at least shows itself impotent to sustain it.
The true basis of American liberty is in the assertion of the rights of God, represented by the church, or by religion, as bounding or limiting the power of the state, whether imperial or popular. But under Protestant influences, the rights of God are resolved into the rights of man, and the Christian republic becomes simply a humanitarian republic, which can offer no solid foundation for liberty of any sort. The rights of man are no more sacred and inviolable than the rights of the prince or the state. It is only when the rights of man are resolved into the rights of God in and over man, that they are sacred and inviolable, or inalienable. But the American people have ceased so to resolve them, if, indeed, they ever did it, and recognize no more ultimate basis for liberty than humanity itself. If, as many of them do, they insist on religion as necessary to the maintenance of liberty, it is only as an external prop or support, not as its logical basis, or root, out of which it grows, and from which it derives all its sap and vigor.
No humanitarian republic is or can be a free republic, because, though it recognizes the people as the state, and establishes universal suffrage and eligibility, it has nothing but humanity, nothing above the people, to limit or restrict their power as the state. The people are humanity in the concrete, and a humanitarian republic therefore simply transfers the absolutism from the monarch to the people, and substitutes democratic Cæsarism for monarchical Cæsarism, the pagan republic for the pagan empire. Absolutism is absolutism, whether predicated of the one or of the many. We in the United States are rapidly losing sight of the Catholic principle retained by the Puritans, and rushing into democratic absolutism; we assert the omnipotence of the will of the people, and treat constitutions as simply self-imposed restrictions, which bind no longer than the people will. Demagogues, politicians, and statesmen tell the people that their will is supreme; and vainly would he seek their suffrages who should deny it. The opposition to the extension of the church in this country grows precisely out of the well-known fact, that she does not emanate from the people, is not subject to the will of the people, and would restrict their omnipotence—an opposition that proves that she, not Protestantism, is the defender of liberty. Certainly, if she were to become predominant here, she would soon put an end to the absolutism of the state, sustained by all our leading journals, and reëstablish the Christian republic, in place of the humanitarian or pagan republic, to which we are pushed by the Protestant spirit of the age, the veritable Welt-Geist, or prince of this world, as all Protestant movements amply prove.
The abbé shows a strict alliance between contemporary Protestantism and the revolution, or revolutionary movements in all European nations. With these revolutionary movements we have the authority of the chief magistrate of the Union for saying the American people generally sympathize. We lend, at least, all our moral support to these movements wherever we see them. They owe their origin, in fact, to Protestantism; and, so far at least as they are confined to Catholic nations, are fomented and encouraged by Protestant emissaries and Protestant associations and contributions; yet these movements are, under the name of liberty, purely humanitarian, and their success would simply substitute the absolutism of the people for the absolutism of the monarch—democratic Cæsarism, or rather, demagogic Cæsarism, for imperial Cæsarism. In the sixteenth century, the sovereigns embraced or inclined to the Reformation, because it removed the restraints that the church imposed on their absolute power and arbitrary will; demagogues and revolutionists in the nineteenth century glorify it, because it removes all restrictions on the will of the people as the state. In each case the church is opposed to it, and for the same reason, because she asserts the rights of God as the basis of the rights of man; and, as their divinely constituted guardian and representative, interposes them as a limit to the absolute power of the state, whether monarchical or democratic, the only security possible for the reign of justice, of just laws, and therefore of real liberty, individual, civil, and political.
There is no doubt that Protestantism, since the culmination of monarchical absolutism in the seventeenth century, has agitated for the revival of what it calls liberty, but what we call the humanitarian or pagan republic. The people moved by it have, no doubt, supposed they were marching toward real liberty; but they have nowhere gained it, and have only removed the day of its acquisition. Under its influence we have smothered the principle of liberty, and lost most of the guarantees which Providence gave us in the outset. We have lost not only the principle of liberty, but also its correlative, the principle of authority; and have no basis for either freedom or government, for the basis of neither can be found in humanity. Great Britain, to a certain extent, has popularized her administration; but through all her changes of dynasties and constitutions, she has never ceased to assert the omnipotence of the state as the state, supreme in spirituals as in temporals. On the continent, the revolution, attempted in the name of humanity, has nowhere founded liberty. Its momentary success in France from 1792 to 1795, inclusive, is universally recognized as the Reign of Terror, when religion was suppressed and virtue was punished as a crime. France, after a century of revolutions, is not as free to-day as she was even under her old monarchical institutions. The French are just now trying anew the experiment of parliamentary government which the Anglo-maniacs consider only as another name for liberty; but whether the experiment succeeds or fails, liberty will gain nothing; for the parliamentary government is as absolute as the personal government of Napoleon III., and most likely will have even less regard for the rights of God. The one no more than the other will recognize the spiritual power as a restriction on the power of the temporal.
In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the spirit of the age was for the revival of pagan imperialism; the spirit of the age is now, and has been since the middle of the last century, the pagan republic; but there is just as little liberty under the one as under the other, or, if any difference, there is less under pagan republicanism than under pagan imperialism; for the Roman empire was really an improvement on the Roman republic. Under the one the monarch is the state; under the other the people or the ruling classes are the state; and under both the state is alike supreme, and acknowledges no limit to its power. The republican party is now, here and in all Europe, as hostile to the church as were the sovereigns in the sixteenth century, and for the same reason. The party knows perfectly well that it is impossible for her to approve any form of absolutism in the state. Having decided that the humanitarian republic it seeks to establish, and to which the spirit of the age tends, is liberty, it holds, and public opinion sustains it, that its success depends on sweeping her away, and destroying all religion that does not emanate from the people, or that claims to be a power independent of the state, and authorized to declare the law for the people instead of receiving it from them. Because she resists the madmen of this party, and seeks to save herself and society, they denounce her as opposed to liberty, as the upholder of despots and despotism, as at war with the spirit of the age, and the bitter enemy of modern civilization. "If," said the accusers of our Lord to the Roman procurator, "thou lettest this man go, thou art not Cæsar's friend." "If," said the reformers in the sixteenth century, "thou sparest the pope or the church, thou art no friend, but a traitor to the king;" "if," say their children in this nineteenth century, "thou upholdest the church, thou art no friend, but a traitor to the sovereign people, and false to liberty;" and the nineteenth century believeth them. We disbelieve them, and believe the Lord, who hath bought us with his own precious blood and made us free.
These madmen are animated and carried away by the spirit of the age, and suppose all the time that they are battling for liberty against its most dangerous enemies. They carry the people with them, and induce them to crucify their God as a malefactor. What is to restrain them? The strong arm of power? That were only to establish the reign of force. Reason? What can reason do with madmen, or against the multitude blinded by false lights and moved onward by an unreasoning passion? The intelligence of the age? Are they not carried away by the age, and is it not from the very madness of the age that they need to be saved? When the very light in the age is darkness, how great must be its darkness! It is only a power that draws its light from a source of light above the light of the age, and acts with a wisdom and strength that is above the people, above the world, that can restrain them and convert them into freemen.
If there is any truth in history, or any reliance to be placed on the inductions of reason, the author has amply proved, in opposition to the pretensions of Protestants and revolutionists, that society under the direction and influences of the Catholic Church marches steadily toward a true and regular liberty—a liberty which is grounded in the rights of God, and therefore secures the rights of man. He has also proved conclusively, as experience itself proves, that just in proportion as the influence of the church in society is weakened, liberty disappears, and absolutism, either of king or people, advances. He has shown that the Reformation, instead of founding or aiding liberty, has interrupted it, and prevented the development of the germs of free institutions deposited in society during the much-maligned and little-understood middle ages. Protestantism, even when, as in our own time, professing to labor for liberty, only falsifies it, and interposes insurmountable obstacles to its realization. Protestantism—and we have studied it both as a Protestant and as a Catholic—is made up of false pretences; is, as Carlyle would say, an unveracity, and loses not only the eternal world, but also this present world. The Divine Thought after which the universe is created and governed is one and catholic, and the law by which we gain our final end is one and holy; and without obedience to it there is no good possible, here or hereafter, either for society or for the individual. The present can have its fulfilment only in the future, and the temporal has its origin, medium, and end only in the spiritual, and finds its true support as its true law only in the one eternal law of God, the universal Lawgiver, declared and applied by the one Holy Catholic Church, which he himself has instituted for that purpose, and which is his body, which he animates, and in which he dwells, teaches, and governs.
It remains for us to consider the respective relations of Protestantism and Catholicity to religious liberty, or the freedom of conscience.