Here is another valuable contribution to the philosophy of this controversy. There are few positions more relied on by Roman Catholics, or more thoroughly unsound and fallacious, than the assertion that there are no essential differences between the position of Roman Catholics and of Protestants as regards the state and the English established church.
"If we had to deal simply with a form of worship and theology, there would be no ground for distinguishing between the case of the Catholics and that of the Dissenters." And practically perhaps, in the actual condition of Europe, the question now in agitation might be permitted to rest there. But, in fairness to the Protestant feeling, it should never be forgotten that the Roman Catholic system presents a feature absent from every other variety of nonconformity. It is not a religion only, but a polity; and this in a very peculiar sense. Other systems also—as the Presbyterian—include among their doctrines an opinion in favor of some particular church government; which opinion, however, professing to be derived from Scripture by use of private judgment, stands, in their case, on the same footing with every other article of their creed. You might differ from John Knox about synods, without prejudice to your agreement in all else. But with the Romish church it is different. It is not that her religion contains a polity; but that her polity contains the whole religion. The truths she publishes exist only as in its keeping, and rest only on its guarantee; and if you invalidate it, they would vanish, like the promissory notes of a corporation whose charter was proved false. Christianity, in her view, is not a doctrine, productive of institutions through spontaneous action on individual minds; but an institution, the perpetual source of doctrine for individual obedience and trust. Revelation is not a mere communication of truth, not a transitory visit from heaven to earth, ascertained by human testimony, and fixed in historical records; but a continuous incarnation of Deity, a permanent real presence of the Infinite in certain selected persons and consecrated objects. The same divine epiphany which began with the person of the Saviour has never since abandoned the world: it exists, in all its awfulness and power, only embodied no longer in a redeeming individual, but in a redeeming church. The word of inspiration, the deed of miracle, the authority to condemn and to forgive, remain as when Christ taught in the temple, walked on the sea, denounced the Pharisee, and accepted the penitent. These functions, as exercised by him, were only in their incipient stage; he came,—to exemplify them indeed, but chiefly to incorporate them in a body which should hold and transmit them to the end of time. From his person they passed to the College of the Twelve, under the headship of Peter; and thence, in perpetual apostleship, to the bishops and pastors, ordained through legitimate hands, for the governance of disciples. These officers are the sole depositaries, the authorized trustees of divine grace; whose decision, whether they open or shut the gate of mercy, is registered in heaven and is without appeal. Not that they can play with this power, and dispose of it by arbitrary will. The media through which it is to flow have been divinely appointed: its channels are limited to certain physical substances and bodily acts or postures, selected at first hand for the purpose:—water at one time, bread at another, oil at a third, handling of the head at a fourth. But the infusion of the supernatural efficacy into these "alvei" depends on an act of the appointed official; through whom alone the divine matter—no longer choked up—can have free currency into the persons of believers. To this inheritance of miracle is added a stewardship of inspiration. The episcopate is keeper of the Christian records: and as those records are only the first germ of an undeveloped revelation, with the same body is left the exclusive power of unfolding their significance, and directing the growth and expansion of their ever fertile principles. Whatever interpretation the hierarchy may put upon the Scriptures, whatever doctrine or discipline they may announce as agreeable with the mind of God, must be accepted as infallible and authoritative. The same spirit of absolute truth which spoke in the living voice of Christ, which guided the pen of evangelists, still prolongs itself in the thought and counsels of bishops, and renders their collective decisions binding as divine oracles. The people who form the obedient mass of the Catholic body are not without a share of this miraculous light in the soul; not indeed for the discernment of any new truth, but for the apprehension of the old. The moment the disciple is incorporated in the church, faith bursts into sight; he passes from opinion into knowledge; he perceives the objects of his worship, and the truth of his creed, with more than the certainty of sense; and as he bows before the altar, or commits himself to the "Mother of God," the real presence and the invisible world are as immediately with him as the breviary and the crucifix. Through the whole Catholic atmosphere is diffused a preternatural medium of clairvoyance, which at every touch of its ritual vibrates into activity, and opens to adoring view mysteries hid from minds without.[16]
"Now, with the spiritual aspects of this theory we are not here concerned. Reason has no jurisdiction over the inspiration that transcends it. But there is a humbler task to which the common intellect is not incompetent. We may plant this system in a political community, set it down beside the state, imagine it surrounded by families, and schools, and municipalities, and parliaments, by the prison and the court of justice; within the shadow of law and in the presence of sovereignty; and we may ask how it will work amid these august symbols of a nation's life, and how adjust itself in relation to them? Will it leave them to their free development? Can it tranquilly coexist with them, and be content to see them occupy the scope which English traditions and English usage have secured for them? We are convinced it cannot; that every step it may make is an encroachment upon wholesome liberty; that it is innocent only where it is insignificant, and where it is ascendant will neither part with power, nor use it well; and that it must needs raise to the highest pitch the common vice of tyrannies and of democracies—the relentless crushing of minorities."
The above are only two paragraphs out of a dozen we had marked, but they will suffice to show the value of this very able and impartial essay.
FOOTNOTES:
[16] Adequate authority for these statements will be found in Dr. Mochler's Symbolism, part i. chap. v., and in Newman's Lectures, iii. p. 66, and Lecture ix. passim.
KILLING OF SIR ALEXANDER BOSWELL.
Among the new books in England is one entitled "Modern State Trials" by William C. Townsend, in two octavos. In the Times of the second of January we find a reviewal of it, characteristically pungent. "Why Mr. Townsend conceived it necessary to dignify his collection with the above solemn title," says the critic, "we are at a loss to conjecture. Madame Tussaud does not invite a curiosity-seeking public to her museum of horrors by disguising the naked hideousness of her groups, or by lending them a factitious grace which it is hardly their interest to borrow. The publication is essentially popular, was meant for general perusal, is made up of any thing but technical details, and gives nothing to, as it receives nothing from, purely professional lore. A batch of interesting trials is very commendable, and need not be afraid of occupying its own ground. That of Courvoisier for the murder of Lord William Russel, of the Wakefields for the abduction of Miss Turner, of Lord Cardigan for shooting in a duel, and of John Ambrose Williams for a libel on the Durham clergy, cannot by any stretch of fancy be converted into state prosecutions, though they fairly enough find admittance into a book which treats of our causes celèbres. The 'state' trials of the volume before us are the ha'porth of bread to the gallons of sack. The legitimate is paraded to call attention from the spurious, the vulgar is to find respectability by walking arm in arm with the classical. There was really no necessity for the 'sham.' A crooked stick on a heath has its picturesqueness as well as the Corinthian column. We may be very interesting rascals though we do not poke our walking-canes into the face of majesty, or go out on a fool's errand against the Queen's lieges with Mr. John Frost." The author's style is described as very unsatisfactory, though full of pretension. He is "very bombastic, very inexact, and strangely independent in the current of his thoughts and in the arrangement of his words." But the Times admits nevertheless the interesting quality of the work, and in its own better language gives the following résumé of one of the most celebrated cases stated in it:—
"Of all the trials contained in these volumes none have a more melancholy interest, perhaps, than that of Mr. Stuart, who was tried on the tenth of June, 1822, before the High Court of Justiciary at Edinburgh, for killing Sir Alexander Boswell in a duel. Mr. Stuart was, of course, acquitted. He had been the aggrieved party; he had found it necessary to the vindication of his honor to call his unfortunate antagonist to account; he had been forced, by the cruel exaction of public opinion, to expose his life to the weapon of a man he had never offended, and who, indeed, in his heart, bore his involuntary murderer no malice; and public opinion, expressed in the verdict of a jury, knew better than to sentence to death the wretched victim of its own brutal and unwarrantable edicts. Fortunately for the interests of humanity, we have at length reached a period when it becomes unnecessary to protest vehemently against the iron rule of an authority more despotic than that of absolute kings, and far more cruel and oppressive than the laws which but a few years ago attached the penalty of death to the commission of almost pardonable offences. Society, with the acquirement of other useful knowledge, has learned to appreciate the iniquitous folly of murder perpetrated in cold blood, without the slightest excuse. The nation which above all the countries of the world takes credit for adapting its laws to the requirements of a rapidly advancing civilization, has had courage to inquire why the savage vestige of an exploded system should still dishonor its history and interfere with its social progress. Duelling, as part and parcel of the national manners, has ceased in England. No doubt random shots will yet from time to time be heard, and weakness in its despair will occasionally seek refuge in cowardice, which it mistakes for valor; but the mind of the majority is made up. Duelling henceforth must be the exception, not the rule. Public opinion will harmonize with the law, and honor it. It will protect the injured, and hand over the offenders to the legitimate consequences of their own misdeeds. It will not call upon a man first to endure wrong, and then to lay bare his breast to the bullet of his aggressors.