“So I think,” said M. du Bellay. “You can tell him I have been here,” continued the ambassador, turning towards Cromwell, “but did not wish to disturb him.”
M. du Bellay then took his leave, and returned by the land route to London. He encountered, not far from Asher, a party of the cardinal’s old domestics, whom the king had sent to carry him several wagon-loads of furniture and other effects. At the head of this convoy rode Cavendish, one of the cardinal’s most faithful servants.
Seeing M. du Bellay, they collected around him, and hastily inquired about their master.
Du Bellay advised them to quicken their speed, and, taking leave, went on his way, thinking that the cardinal would not be restored to favor, and already arranging in his mind another course in which to direct his diplomatic steps for the future.
He was not mistaken: Wolsey escaped death, but only to find himself surrounded by misery and abandoned to despair.
TO BE CONTINUED.
PRIMITIVE CIVILIZATION.[235]
If our modern men of science would not travel out of their sphere, there would be no war between them and the church. In the name of the Catholic religion we invite them to push onward in the path of scientific discovery with the utmost energy and ardor of which they are capable. But if their discoveries are to have any bearing on the truths of the Christian revelation, we can accept nothing less than demonstration, and they must not credit science, as does Mr. Tyndall, with mere theories of speculative philosophy. With this reservation, we wish their labors all possible success. But if poor fallible reason—whose discoveries, after whole millenniums of toil, are little better than a record of the blunders of one generation corrected by the blunders of another; and, even on the supposition that they are all correct, are, by comparison with what is unknown, as a drop of water compared with the limitless ocean—ventures to deny the existence of the soul because it has no lens powerful enough to bring it within the cognizance of the senses, its conclusion is no longer scientific. The doctor has become a quack, the philosopher a fool. If the torch which the Creator has placed at the service of his creature, to help him to grope his way amidst the objects of sense, and to illuminate his faith, is to be flung in his face because it does not reveal the whole infinitude of the majesty of his beauty, we can only compassionate so childish a misuse of a noble gift. If natural philosophy is to rob the sensible creation of a motive and end, and to proclaim it to be merely the result of an unintelligent atomic attraction and evolution of forces, a more intelligent and a more logical philosophy, in harmony with the unquenchable instinct of immortality within the human soul, casts from it such pitiful trifling with indignation and a holy disdain. If, in short, the science of nature would dethrone nature’s Creator and God, we address to it the word which He to whom all true science leads addressed to the ocean he placed in the deep hollows of the earth: “Hitherto thou shalt come, and thou shalt go no farther: and here thou shalt break thy swelling waves.”
Physical science cannot contradict the divine revelation. No discovery hitherto made has done so; and until one such presents itself we are entitled to assume its impossibility as a philosophical axiom. For this reason we are of those who would give full rein to even the speculations of experimental philosophy, so long as they are confined strictly within the domain of secondary causes or natural law, and do not venture into a sphere of thought beyond the reach of experimental science, where they are immediately confronted with the dogmas of the faith.