At the conclusion of this discourse all knelt, and the Holy Father

again intoned the _Veni Creator Spiritus_. The choir took it up, and

the members of the council responded in the alternate strophes. The

pope sang the versicles and prayer that follow it, and all again were

seated.

The secretary now mounted the pulpit and read aloud the first

proposed decree, "That this Holy Vatican Council be, and is now

opened." The fathers all answered, _Placet_; the pope gave his

sanction; the formal decree was passed and proclaimed, and the

notaries instructed to make an official record of it.

A second decree was similarly proposed, voted, and sanctioned, fixing

the second public session for the festival of the Epiphany, January

6th, 1870. The first general congregation was announced for Friday,

December 10th, in the same hall of the council.

This closed the proceedings of the first public session, which

necessarily were purely formal. The Holy Father arose and intoned the

solemn _Te Deum_ of thanksgiving. The choir--the unrivalled one of

the Sixtine chapel--took up the strain, intertwining the melody with

subdued but artistic harmonies. The assembled bishops, the clergy

without, thousands of the laity, familiar from childhood with the

varying strains of its Gregorian chant, responded with one accord,

in the second verse of the grand old Ambrosian hymn. The choir sang

the third verse as before, the crowd responded with the fourth, and

so on they alternated to the end. It is impossible to tell in words

the thrilling power of such a union of voices. It moved, overcame,

subdued one. It was impossible to resist it if you would. Tears came

unbidden to the eye, and the lip quivered as you instinctively united

your voice to that of the multitude. No one sought to make himself

heard, all united in those subdued, thrilling tones in which the

heart speaks. Catholic and Protestant all felt it. Even the infidel

for the time believed, and, bowing his head, joined in this praise

and thanksgiving to God.

At half-past two, the _Te Deum_ was finished, and the services

closed. The Holy Father unrobed, and withdrew with his attendants.

But it was past three ere all the bishops could issue from the hall

and leave the church. The crowds looked on as they slowly departed,

their own numbers long remaining seemingly undiminished. Many could

not tear themselves away from the hallowed spot. The shades of

evening found hundreds still lingering there, contemplating the place

where they had seen the hierarchy of the church gathered around the

chief pastor, or kneeling in prayer at the tomb of the great apostle

to whom our Lord said, "On this rock I will build my church."

Since the day of the opening session, two general congregations have

been held. The chief work has been to organize and elect members

for the various committees. Where all are desirous of having the

best men on these committees, the bishops seem to consider it well

to proceed slowly, until they gain an acquaintance with each other,

which will enable them to act with greater knowledge. Meanwhile

they are evidently studying up the matters before them. What those

subjects are, no one outside their body appears as yet to know. They

are remarkably reticent, and so far have not been "interviewed" by

newspaper reporters.

It is thought the council must last several months. But at the

present stage not even the prelates themselves can form more than

a vague conjecture on this head. It may be that a month will throw

light on the subject. In that case, we may be able to speak more

definitely in our next article on the council.

ROME, Dec. 15, 1869.

FOOTNOTE:

[170] An example has just come under our notice. The special

correspondent of the _London Times_, writing from Rome on the 8th

of December, has a long story of a mysterious bull prepared to be

promulgated on the 8th, in the grand ceremony, and secretly confided

only to a trusty few. Somehow, within twenty-four hours of the time

appointed, that is, on the 7th of December, some bishops got wind

of it beforehand, and so great a storm of opposition arose that the

bull was kept back, perhaps suppressed. The writer actually got sight

of a copy, and makes an extract. This was taking a little too much

rope. For the extract is from this apostolic letter, which was dated

November 27th, was soon after printed, was distributed on December

2d, to all the bishops then in Rome--further copies of which were

carefully supplied to the bishops arriving later; and which is in

full force, regulating the procedure of the council, not only without

a murmur, but to the perfect satisfaction of all the prelates. A

"special correspondent" of the _Times_, who had retired from business

after years of service, defined the chief qualification of such a

correspondent to be, the ability to write frankly and boldly about

persons and things as if he knew every thing about them, even though,

as was generally the case, he knew nothing at all. For doing this

_acceptably_, he would get £600 a year, and travelling expenses paid.

FOREIGN LITERARY NOTES.

The renowned Captain Dugald Dalgetty, that redoubtable man of war,

orthodoxy, and _provant_, firmly held and was known occasionally to

express the opinion that Gustavus Adolphus, King of Sweden, was the

Lion of the North and the _bulwark of Protestantism_. In so far as

the 'bulwark' was concerned, that clever soldado merely reflected

the estimate of the Swedish hero held by the contemporary Protestant

world--an estimate still clung to by the same world of the nineteenth

century. That opinion and that estimate have lately received fatal

injury in the house of their friends. For thus has it come about.

Catholic historians have never hesitated to state that the facts bore

them out in claiming that the governing motive of Gustavus Adolphus

in taking the important part he did in the Thirty Years' War, was

not religious enthusiasm, nor even a religious motive; but on the

contrary one that was far from possessing any greater elevation

than self-interest and political advantage. So thought and wrote

Hurter and other Catholic authors. Of course these authors were not

listened to in the Protestant world any more than were vindications

of Mary, Queen of Scots, until they began to come from Protestant

pens. But in the course of a few succeeding years no less than

four distinguished Protestant historians--Klopp, Barthold, Leo, and

Gfrörer, (who afterward became a Catholic,) fully confirmed all

that Hurter had advanced. And now, within the past three months

we have a new historical work on Gustavus Adolphus, from the pen

of another Protestant--Professor G. Droysen--an eminent name in

German literature--which certainly appears to place the question of

motive on the part of the king of Sweden beyond further controversy.

Professor Droysen's work is written not so much as a biography as

with special reference to the political necessities and ambition

of the Swedish king when he interfered in the German struggle, and

is written, also, mainly with materials from the Swedish archives.

The result of Professor Droysen's research is not only to more than

confirm the position assumed by Hurter, but to leave no room for

serious discussion. Professor Droysen expressly denies that the

interference of Gustavus Adolphus in the affairs of Germany was in

favor of the liberty of conscience and religion, and he quite as

explicitly asserts that motives purely political decided and even

forced him to put forward those pretexts.

* * * * *

_Aux Incrédules et aux Croyants. L'Athée redevenu Chrétien. Ouvrage

posthume de M. Delauro Dubez, Conseiller à la Cour de Montpellier._

Paris, 1869. The author was judge of the court of appeals at

Montpellier, and until his sixty-fourth year lived an irreligious

life. His conversion was the result of reflection, and he wrote this

book solely for the sake of one of his relatives who had refused to

read any thing favorable to Christianity. The work is preceded by an

opinion of Rev. M. Foulquier, Superior of the Seminary of Rodez, and

by a letter from a Polish officer brought back to the Catholic faith

by its perusal.

* * * * *

A late number of the _Theologisches Literaturblatt_, published at

Bonn, contains an excellent review by Professor Aberle of Tübingen

of a remarkable work on the year of our Saviour's birth--_Das

Geburtsjahr Christi. Geschichtlich-Chronologische Untersuchungen

von A. M. Zumpt._ The same number also has an admirable notice,

by Professor Hefele, of Kampschulte's new work on Calvin, _Johann

Calvin. Seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf._

* * * * *

_San Tommaso, Aristotele, e Dante, ovvexo della prima filosofia

Italiana._ Firenze, 1869. In 4to. The Marquis Palermo in this work

shows philosophy and science traversing the middle ages under

the protection of the clergy, and particularly of St. Thomas.

He specially dwells upon the purely Christian character of the

philosophy set forth by Dante in his divine comedy.

* * * * *

_Le Monde et l'Homme Primitif selon la Bible, par Monseigneur

Meignan, Evêque de Chalons sur Marne._ The right reverend author

expresses the opinion that, in our day, one of the causes of the

weakening of faith in divine revelation is certainly the false

idea formed of the Bible in connection with the sciences. In this

respect times have greatly changed, and opinion has passed from one

extreme to the other. Formerly, no important discovery was made

without seeking to confirm its truth by Scripture testimony. The

support of a text, of a word, was then necessary, even if they had

to be slightly wrested from their received acceptation. Galileo

undertook to prove his theory by Bible texts badly interpreted. But

the contrary course now prevails to such an extent that there exists

almost an affectation of contradicting the Scriptures. The author

takes up the six days of the Mosaic account of the creation, the six

days being six indeterminate periods of time--illustrating each day

with modern scientific views of the unity of the human race, the

primitive unity of language, Chaldean and Egyptian chronology, etc.

On the unity of the human race the right reverend author insists with

some emphasis--as indeed he well may, recognizing in it, as we all

must, the well-established doctrine of the Catholic Church--and takes

occasion to address himself specially to Americans of the United

States on the subject of the man of dusky hue. "Let us not forget,"

he says, "that he is a child of the same God, a descendant of Adam,

having the same faculties, the same soul, the same heart; that the

unity of the human species has made him our equal, and the Gospel our

brother." The work evidences great research and learning, especially

on the subject of the primitive unity of language, where the author

shows entire familiarity with all the results of modern treatise and

investigation from Bopp down to Ewald and Delitsch.

* * * * *

We are aware that Bohemian and Hungarian literature has but few

attractions for the very great majority of readers in the United

States. Nevertheless, it may not be uninteresting to note that in

Bohemia, as in Hungary, there exists a general awakening of interest

in their respective national literatures. In both these countries

many talented authors are coming into notice, who confine their

literary labors to their mother tongue. Palacky in Bohemia has lately

won high praise as a historian, even in Germany and France. Besides

his _History of Bohemia_, he has lately written several works on the

historical period of John Huss.

Of these the most important is Palacky's _Documenta mag. Joannis Hus

vitam, doctrinam, causam spectantia_. Divided into four parts, the

first includes all the letters of Huss in Latin and in Tcheck, the

latter accompanied by a Latin translation by Professor Kviezala;

the second part gives the trial of Huss; the third, an account of

his trial and death by a contemporary, Peter Mladenowicz; and the

fourth, the largest, all the documents relative to the religious

controversies of Bohemia from 1403 to 1418. In all cases the Tcheck

documents are accompanied by Latin translations. While on the subject

of Bohemian literature, it may be well to mention that the best

general work upon it is that of M. Hanusch,[171] late librarian of

the University of Prague. For the bibliography of the literature,

the most complete work is that of Jungmann, written in Tcheck.

For literature proper, the best is perhaps that of Sabina, which,

however, only comes down to the seventeenth century. Sabina's work

may be said to be completed by that of M. Sembera--_Histoire de la

langue et de la littérature Tcheque_, the third edition of which is

lately published at Vienna.

FOOTNOTE:

[171] _Quellenkunde und Bibliographie der boehmische-slavonischen

Literatur-Geschichte._

* * * * *

On the subject of baptism, or baptismal water, Dr. Heino

Pfaffenschmid publishes a work[172] in which he undertakes to show

that baptism was a custom of both Jewish and pagan rites before the

introduction of Christianity.

FOOTNOTE:

[172] _Das Weihwasser im heidnischen und christlichen Cultus_, etc.

* * * * *

We see announced a work by Dr. J. H. Tomassen on the age of the

human race, _Enthüllungen aus der Urgeschichte; oder, Existirt

das Menschengeschlecht nur 6000 Jahre?_ There is a slight dash of

charlatanism in the title, calculated to make one suspicious of the

book.

* * * * *

Professor Döllinger, of Munich, has in press a new work, entitled,

_The Religious Sects of the Middle Ages_.

* * * * *

The _Chronology of the Roman Pontiffs during the last three

Centuries_, by Professor Lipsius, of Kiel, is announced as nearly

ready for publication.

* * * * *

Volumes xiii. xiv. and xv. of the reprint of the continuation of the

_Histoire Littéraire de France_, commenced by the Benedictines, are

lately published by Palmé, Paris.

* * * * *

The following important works are announced as soon to appear: Volume

xviii. of the reprint of the _Annales Ecclesiastici_ of Cardinal

Baronius, issued under the direction of Father Theiner. The first

volume of a magnificent edition of the Bible, printed at Rome, at

the expense of the Propaganda. This edition reproduces textually,

with a _fac-simile_, the famous _Codex Vaticanus_. The present volume

contains the Pentateuch and the Book of Joshua. The fifth volume,

containing the New Testament, was printed last year.

* * * * *

The work of Cardinal Jacobatius, entitled _De Concilio_, is also in

press at Rome, and will be printed as an introduction to the great

work forming a collection of all the councils.

* * * * *

A decided success in historic literature is the latest work on Calvin

and his times,[173] by F. W. Kampschulte, professor of history at

the University of Bonn. The first of its three volumes has appeared,

and meets with almost universal approbation. The author appears to

have spared no labor, and has brought to light fresh and valuable

authorities. The manuscripts, mostly for the first time used, far

out-number the printed works referred to. Heretofore, the archives

of Geneva have been considered sufficient to furnish material for

a life of Calvin. But Professor Kampschulte rightly judged that,

in view of the intimate connection between Geneva and Berne during

Calvin's life, the archives of the latter city must be rich in

documents for his purpose. A similar reason induced him to visit

Strasburg, and both places yielded largely in fresh and important

matter. For Calvin's correspondence, previous historians have

contented themselves with Beza's edition of the _Epistolæ et Responsa

Calvini_, or with Bonnet's collection. Professor Kampschulte, with

indefatigable research, has succeeded in gathering a large number of

Calvin's letters, heretofore unpublished, which he found scattered

in every direction. In this he was greatly aided by MM. Reuss,

Cunitz, and Baum, of Strasburg, who for many years past have been

making a collection of the letters of Calvin for a new edition of the

_Epistolæ_ in the _Corpus Reformatorum_. With a liberality deserving

all praise, these scholars generously placed all this valuable

material at Professor Kampschulte's disposition.

Dr. J. B. Abbeloos, professor at the Seminary of Mechlin, assisted

by Canon Lamy, professor of Oriental languages at the University of

Louvain, is preparing for publication an important historical and

literary monument, of which a small portion only has heretofore been

printed. It is the great Syriac chronicle of Bar Hebreus, Primate

of the Oriental Jacobites. The first part of this work was edited

in 1788 at Leipsic, by two well-known oriental scholars, Brusis

and Kirsch. The second and third parts contain the Ecclesiastical

History, and present, as to the beginnings of Christianity in the

East and on the history of the first four ages of the church,

a number of valuable details not elsewhere to be found. The

distinguished Assemanni (Oriental Bible, vol. ii. p. 312) says that

the ecclesiastical history of Bar Hebreus admirably sets forth the

religious history of the Nestorians and of the Jacobites, which is

entirely unknown to the Greeks and Latins.

FOOTNOTE:

[173] _Johann Calvin. Seine Kirche und sein Staat in Genf._ Leipzig.

8vo, 493 pp.

* * * * *

Ever since the period of the fatal and futile attempt of certain

unbelieving astronomers to foist the Zodiac of Denderah upon the

Christian scientific world, infidel and rationalistic writers have

never allowed an occasion to pass to seek to elevate or praise

old pagan manners and systems of morality. The more remote their

field of disquisition, the more positive are they. This attempted

rehabilitation of ancient systems most remarkable for their profound

immorality is thoroughly defeated by M. François Lenormant in his

lately published _Manuel d'histoire Ancienne de l'Orient_, 3 vols.,

_avec un atlas de 24 cartes_. His exposition of ancient paganism

is thorough and learned. M. Lenormant's father was a co-laborer of

Champollion, and he has a European reputation as an oriental scholar.

The work here announced was, in the form of an essay, previously

crowned by the French Academy.

* * * * *

The third and last volume of _Möhler's History of the Church_, edited

by the Rev. Father Gams, has appeared in Germany, and a French

translation of the same by the Abbé Belot at Paris. Wherever it was

practicable, F. Gams has filled voids left by Möhler with review

articles, written by Möhler on the same subject. Möhler has given

special attention to the study of Protestantism, and is convinced

that the "judgments passed on the condition of the church during

the century anterior to the reform itself, greatly need reforming."

He refutes with great force the erroneous opinions of men, either

ignorant of the past or willingly blind, who have attributed to

Luther the honor of bringing the Bible to the light of day. Nothing

can be more false. Immense works on the Bible were produced during

the middle ages, and, rapidly following the discovery of printing,

numerous translations made their appearance. From 1460 to the first

version of Luther in 1521 there were printed in Germany at least

sixteen Bibles in High German and five in Low German. Up to 1524,

there were nine editions in France, not counting those of Italy, the

first of which appeared in 1471.

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.

FOOTNOTES:

[174] The italics are our own.--ED. C. W.

[175] This _sic_ is Mr. Ffoulkes's; what it means is known only to

himself and heaven.--ED. C. W.

* * * * *

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 oecumenical 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 Ca_u_daules," "So_u_briquet," 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, oecumenical. 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 oecumenical; 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 oecumenical, 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.