"Bellarmine acknowledged that without the forgeries of the pseudo-Isidore, ... it would be impossible to make out even a semblance of traditional evidence." (P. 319.)
We are sorry to say that we have not been able to discover any such admission on the part of Cardinal Bellarmine; but on the contrary, when answering the objection of the Centuriators concerning the fictitious letters of the first thirty popes to Melchiades, we find the following clear view on this subject:
"Although I do not deny that some errors have slipped into these letters, nor do I dare to claim for them undoubted authority, yet I doubt not but that they are of very ancient origin."[278]
It was not precisely on the faith of the Isidorian collection or its compiler that Bellarmine used any of these documents; but he endeavored to demonstrate their authenticity according to the rules laid down by historical criticism. It is simply false that he made "copious use of the Isidorian fictions." None deserve greater credit for the clear and elaborate elucidation of this great question of pseudo-Isidore than the brothers Ballerini, who have supplied an immense material whence the eminent canonists and historians of our days have been enabled to weigh every thing carefully, and the result has been a glorious one to Catholic learning and science. The attempts which have been made for three hundred years, and more, to create a fictitious foundation for the present constitution of the Catholic Church, and to brand it with the specious appellation of forgery—these inglorious attempts, we say, have in our days been renewed by Janus and his deluded admirers. If Janus hoped to strengthen his position by a novel method, we dare assert his signal failure—indeed, our enemies have secured a poor and feeble leader. Should the present contribution produce further curiosity, and lead to more extended and serious researches on this subject, we are confident enough to express the hope that many unfounded prejudices will be thereby dispelled, and the triumph of ancient and present Catholic doctrine be hastened.[279]
THE SUPERSTITION OF UNBELIEF.
When an age has abandoned God, sensuality delivers it over, like Faust, to the devil, and he becomes its deity. Unbelief is everywhere followed by superstition. Where the gods are not, the demons reign, says a modern German poet. "We are ready to believe every thing when we believe nothing," remarks Chateaubriand. "We have augurs when we have no longer prophets; witchcraft when we have no longer religious ceremonies. When the temples of God are closed, the caves of the sorcerers are opened."
It is certainly a monstrous pairing when, with boasted enlightenment, fortune-telling, card-divining, and the other superstitions of darkness go hand in hand. But it is nevertheless an old and well-known fact-one constantly demonstrated by human experience—that unbelief is invariably associated with the grossest superstition. A rapid glance at the history of peoples in all other essentials most widely differing from each other will readily prove this.
Beginning with the Hindoos, the oldest people on the earth, we find that A. W. Schlegel has already effectually refuted the theories of modern writers on religion by demonstrating to us a steady retrogression from the spiritual to the sensual, from belief to unbelief and superstition. Dubois, who had spent thirty years among the Brahmins, and studied their philosophy, traces the degrading superstition into which the Hindoos have lapsed to their having lost faith in the religion of their ancestors. Once their schools taught the maxim, Before earth, water, air, wind, fire, Brahma, Vishnu, Chieva, sun, and stars, there was the only and eternal God, who had sprung out of himself. These pure ideas of religion have long been abandoned for an atheistic materialism. A superstitious demonology, spirit-raising, sorcery, and magic have grown out of this unbelief, and the same people now adore Kapel, the serpent, and Gamda, the bird. They observe annually a feast in honor of Darhba, an ordinary weed, and offer up sacrifices to spade and pick. To kill a cow is by them considered a crime more heinous than matricide, and their philosophers esteem it a great piece of good luck, a sure passport to paradise, if they can catch hold of a cow by the tail instead of the head, when dying. "Modern materialism," observes Dr. Hæffner, comparing the unbelief of the Hindoos with our own, "has closely approached the abyss of Buddhism." Manifestations like Mormonism, or the spiritualism of New York, Paris, and Berlin, already suggest to us the religious and moral practices of the Hindoos, and we bid fair soon to reach their lowest and vilest forms—the Lamaism of Thibet and Ceylon. As in the opening of the present century, admiration of genius led men to adore the poetical genius of Schiller and Goethe, so, changing their idols, they will eventually worship those who have deified matter. The Buddhas of modern atheism can only be the materialistic notabilities of the day; and for this reason a humorous writer recommends Carl Vogt for Delai-Lama, he being not only a high scientific but a great political authority.
Passing from the east to the west, we find, and especially in Roman history, that the increase of superstition has steadily kept pace with the diminution of faith. The religious decadence of ancient Rome dates from the close of the Punic wars and the domestic commotions of the republic, at which period we first notice that strange hankering after what is obscure and mysterious in paganism, and which attained its zenith under the Cæsars. This remark applies, however, more to the cities than the country; for, from the days of Augustus down to those of the Antonines, the latter had not yet been so generally corrupted as the former. Sulla, the dictator—to cite a few examples—put the utmost confidence in a small image of Apollo, brought from Delphi, which he carried about on his person, and which he embraced publicly before his troops with a prayer for victory. Augustus, who allowed himself to be worshipped as a god in the provinces, regarded it as an evil omen to be handed the left shoe instead of the right when he rose in the morning. He neither set out on a journey after the Nundines nor undertook any thing of importance during the Nones. When one of his fleets had been lost at sea, he punished Neptune by excluding his image from being carried in procession at the Circensian games.