martyrs and saints have been highly honored and religiously preserved. There has never been any difficulty in procuring genuine relics in abundance of the contemporary saints. As regards the relics of the cross, and other relics connected with the persons of our Lord, the Blessed Virgin, the apostles, and the most ancient and illustrious saints, we must refer the curious reader to books for information. We can only strike, so to speak, a few random blows at the prejudice which encrusts the Protestant mind, and endeavor to crack it. We merely wish to convince our friends of the absurdity of their hasty and wholesale condemnation of our motives, spirit, doctrines, and practices, that they may think it worth while really to examine the matter with seriousness. So, without going into any general examination of relics universally, we will just take up an instance of a particular case of relics in the house where we are writing, as an example of our ordinary and practical conduct in respect to relics. In an oratory which is used for private devotion, there is placed above the altar a large and ornamental sarcophagus, the front and sides of which are of plate glass. Within is a wax figure of a Roman youth reclining on a crimson couch, dressed in crimson silk, crowned with a chaplet of flowers, and with the eyes closed as if he had just died. Within the breast is a reliquary, with relics of a body taken from the Roman catacombs. In the corner is a phial, marked with a red ribbon, and which once contained blood. These are the relics of Justinus, a young martyr of Rome, which are duly and officially authenticated as having been taken from the Catacombs. Now, whoever knows anything of Roman archæology knows that the most learned and careful
antiquarians give us certain marks by which the remains of martyrs may be identified. The Rev. Mr. Scribner will not hazard his reputation as a scholar, we presume, by classing the folios of De Rossi and other savants of Rome among the impostures of priestcraft. We have, then, the relics of a true martyr, arranged and placed in such a way as to make an object of contemplation to the eye of taste and of Christian faith, which is pleasing, instructive, and fitted to excite pious emotions. What is there disgusting in this?
But then there are the legends about miracles wrought by the relics of the saints, and other miracles. Very true, my dear friend, and, no doubt, very puzzling and startling to one who has been accustomed to believe that the marvellous and miraculous passed away with the age of the Bible. But, reflect for a moment on the full extent of the admission you will have to make to the infidel rationalist, to the enemy of Christianity, who makes our whole religion mythical, if you reject all this portion of the belief of Catholics as founded on the fabulous. Read Bede’s Ecclesiastical History of England, the twenty-third book of St. Augustine’s City of God, St. Ambrose’s description of the discovery of the relics of SS. Gervasius and Protasius, and Isaac Taylor’s Ancient Christianity. You will find that we modern Catholics are in the same boat with the fathers, the prelates, the Christian people of the fifth century. We float or sink together. It seems to us, however, that before one resolves to follow the shallow and sophistical Isaac Taylor and his servile copyist, the translator of the City of God, in condemning our Christian forefathers as the authors or the dupes of a gigantic system of imposture, and before one pronounces
a similar sentence on the whole body of their modern descendants, it would be well to examine somewhat carefully the evidence in the case. For instance, to confine ourselves to modern times, there are: the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius; the ecstatic virgins of the Tyrol, and the recent similar case in Belgium; the miraculous conversion of the Jew Ratisbon; the case of Mrs. Mattingly of Washington; the miracles of Lourdes; the miraculous cure of a young lady at St. Louis, attested by three physicians; the miracles wrought by the relics of F. Olivaint, the martyr of Paris; the miraculous conversion of sixteen Mohammedans at Damascus, one of whom has suffered martyrdom; and many other events, believed by a vast number of intelligent persons, upon grounds of evidence, to be supernatural and miraculous. We do not ask our Protestant friends to believe these things on our word or without evidence. We simply say that it is the part of good sense and necessary for you, if you expect to sustain your own cause against us, that you should examine these things, and, if you deny altogether this whole class of professed facts, should give good reasons for it. Will you rule the whole case out of court by a sweeping principle that these things are in themselves impossible and incredible, and therefore false? We defy you to do it without subverting the whole basis on which rests the belief in the miracles of the Old and New Testaments. Moreover, we defy any one to evade or rebut the evidence of some of the miracles we have mentioned, especially the cure of Bourriette at Lourdes and of Mrs. Mattingly at Washington. We mention these, because we have given the evidence of the former in our own pages, and of the latter in the edition
of the works of Bishop England, prepared for the press by the author of this article more than twenty years ago. The authority of the Roman Church, nevertheless, and the truth of the Catholic faith, do not in any manner rest on any one or all together of the visions, revelations, or miracles in question as their basis, and as the ground of a divine faith. Their highest value, even when fully proved, is to confirm and enliven our faith in truths of which we are previously certain.
The Rev. Mr. Scribner says with great truth that “one great lesson taught by this biography [of Dr. Faber] is the lesson of charity” (p. 531). He is also so obviously correct in his remark that “charity does not require us to admit that to be true which is false,” that we wonder he took the trouble to make it. Moreover, we cannot and do not wish to dispute his right “to pronounce a flaming Roman Catholic professor a child of the devil who shows himself to be one.” But we wish to add to his statement one more, which is that justice requires, as well as charity, that one should not make atrocious charges or apply opprobrious epithets without adequate proofs and motives. Let the reverend gentleman consider, then, coolly and deliberately, and let every Protestant reader of this article consider and judge of the following sentence:
“It would not be enlightened charity which would make us think that, perhaps, after all, the licentious Roman Catholic priests of Spain and Italy, and the brutal priests of Ireland, are Christian men” (p. 531).
Charity! We do not ask your charity. We spurn with indignation any such despicable counterfeit of charity as that which is here repudiated.
The Catholic Church does not need any mantle to throw over any priests who are either “licentious” or “brutal.” Let the jurisdiction over clerical delinquents, which rightfully belongs to her, be admitted and sustained by the civil governments, and she will treat them with the right kind of charity, by restraining them from all power to sin, and giving them an opportunity of doing penance. Civil governments, when they have been engaged in a conflict with the church, and Protestant leaders, have always been ready enough to encourage, to employ, and to reward these outcasts of the priesthood, or impostors who have falsely pretended to be priests. By their suborned testimony, the British government hanged Oliver Plunkett at Tyburn. For the sake of another of the same sort, an English jury fined and imprisoned the most honorable and illustrious writer in England. Examples nearer home are not wanting, and are not, we suppose, quite yet forgotten. All those worthless members of the priesthood who have been disgraced, or who deserve to be, we leave to bear by themselves the judgment both of men and of God. But on what evidence are the priests of Spain and of Italy called in general and unqualified terms “licentious,” and the priests of Ireland “brutal”? We would like to know what opportunity American Presbyterians have of knowing accurately the condition of the Spanish clergy. Blanco White, as Dr. Newman shows, furnishes no testimony which can be used to prove any such assumption as that of our very confident friend Mr. Scribner. In regard to Italy, is there any testimony given by trustworthy, competent witnesses, who have lived there long enough to know what the character of the clergy is, or anything which the violent
enemies of the church in Italy have been able to establish against the clergy, which warrants the opprobrious epithets applied to them in the elegant passage we have cited above? That the busybodies who are trying to make mischief in Italy, and whose proceedings are viewed with intense disgust by some honorable Protestant clergymen, keep some very disreputable company among the Italian clergy, we have no doubt. We suppose there are more than one hundred thousand priests in Italy, and, as we have seen two such specimens as Gavazzi and Achilli, we cannot wonder if there are some scores of similar individuals who are able to keep their places under the protection of so detestable a government as that of Victor Emanuel. These are the men who consort with Protestant emissaries, and who malign the virtue of their brethren, which they hate and envy because of their own wickedness. But, as Dr. Newman remarks, those who leave the Catholic Church, and yet retain some moral probity and gentlemanly honor, do not furnish Protestants with the evidence they want in order to sustain their defamation of the Catholic priesthood. Men like Wharton, Blanco White, Lord Dunboyne, Gioberti,[96] Capes, Hyacinthe, and Döllinger, do not answer the purpose for which they are wanted, because they will not utter the gross calumnies or invent the startling, sensational lies which certain infamous scribblers like Maria Monk, or mountebank lecturers like Leahy and the last new Baron, manufacture for the greedy ears of a credulous public.