operate like poison; and this, sooner or later, will be found true in the consequences of Mr. Newman's conversion. The importance of that conversion is not to be denied. In the union of deep feeling and intellectual strength with force of character, it would be hard to find Mr. Newman's equal, and with these there is a sympathetic power peculiar to himself, which at Oxford is well known to have captivated every generous nature with which his own came into contact. Infinite, and never to be known before the Great Day, were the sorrows caused by his change. But, sincere as that change was, and permanent as it may be, it is still evident that he is infusing a certain rationalistic poison into that old church, which must hasten her destruction. One may gather from the "Tracts for the Times," how his mind must have traversed through all that cold region of German rationalism off to the very edge of the atheistic abyss, and then swept back like a comet in search of the central heat, and still overshot it. He has used the experience so gathered to temper afresh an old weapon of the Jesuits, which can do a good deal in the way of destruction, but is of no use for anything else. His habitual argument is, that if you do not stay on his side of the centre, you must go off into darkness, and this is wielded with great skill, but so as to make sad havoc with the convictions of many minds, especially young healthy English ones which have a strong appetite for reality and truth; for, of the two, they prefer the dark alternative. He may be able to drive them to give up the miracles of the New Testament, but they will not believe that of the saint floating upon his cloak. With full allowance, therefore, for the elasticity of Catholicism, the result must be that its old bottles will be broken by this new and fiery wine.

The Church of Rome should not argue.

The Roman Catholic Church, as De Maistre tells us, is not naturally argumentative. He might have said that she never

X

can be argumentative without being inconsistent. For the use of argument acknowledges the jurisdiction of that private judgment to which it appeals. But if private judgment has any right to deal with controversial questions, there is an end of church authority and church infallibility. The Church of Rome, therefore, takes Protestant ground whenever she condescends to reason. In the days of her strength she used the tone of command. The bulk of her controversial theology belongs to her declining age. It is the work of the followers of Loyola, whose indefatigable learning and logic worked out every imaginable line of defence, and whose zeal shrank from the use of no weapon which seemed capable of damaging an adversary. But it is a continuous exhibition of rationalism eating its way more and more into her vitals. Voltaire was not, as has been sometimes said, the spiritual child of Pascal, but of Pascal's opponents. It was natural, indeed, that the second of the great masters of French prose should snatch some graces from the inimitable style of the first; but not only in the literal, but the most comprehensive sense, Voltaire was the pupil of the Jesuits, and he transmitted their fatal lessons to those "architects of ruin" who applied his philosophy to practice. It was the same acute and remorseless casuistry which, in the sixteenth century, was suffered to play against the natural and instinctive defences of virtue, and which excused deceit and tyrannicide on behalf of the church-that, in the eighteenth, was used by unbelievers to justify every crime that could be committed in the name of the people.

But, notwithstanding the boasted unchangeableness of the Church of Rome, the Catholicism of the sixteenth century is not the Catholicism of the nineteenth, and least of all the Catho licism of any body of Englishmen. It is unfair to assume without proof, that any Roman Catholic now holds the doctrines of Sanchez and Escobar. Whatever may be the case with respect to the moral character of society at large, its moral perceptions have certainly been progressive. No Lutheran divine would now follow Luther, in giving leave to the Land

grave of Hesse to have two wives at a time. Exeter Hall would not imitate Calvin in sending Servetus to the stake; and the people of Scotland, however much inclined, would not literally subscribe to the judgment of John Knox, that it was a godly deed to assassinate Cardinal Beaton'.

The Papal Government.

In another important respect the Catholicism of the books is very different from Catholicism in fact. The Catholic theory implies that whatever spiritual vitality belongs to the Church of Rome should be found in its highest intensity at the centre, whereas in reality there seems to be only death at the centre, and life chiefly at the extremities. The moral vigour of every religious body is improved by severe trial. The Roman Catholic Church, both in Ireland and in England, has been saved from many corruptions of practice by poverty and hard treatment. In England alone, of all the countries of Europe, it has recently

1 This case should be studied, as a lesson of Christian charity, in judging of the opinions and characters of other times. Though exempt from the bias, whether religious or national, which may be supposed to influence Scotchmen, I cannot quite exclude from my own mind a certain sympathy in the admiration which John Knox felt for James Melvil, one of the assassins, who, he says, was a man "most gentle and most modest." Melvil seems to have acted purely from religious zeal, and he passed his sword through the Cardinal's body with the calm solemnity of a man executing a decree of divine justice. The Duke of Argyll, in his Essay on the Ecclesiastical History of Scotland, characterizes the murder as it deserves, but says very truly that the deed might have been righteously done by the hands of the public executioner. The leader of the enterprise, however, Norman Lesly, was instigated by private vengeance, and some of his accomplices were hired to do the work by bribes from England. Yet John Knox joined the assassins soon after the crime was committed, and, what is more remarkable, calm Dr. Robertson, whose page seldom warms with a breath of human passion, writing in the middle of the eighteenth century, can hardly speak of the murder except as an act of heroism. He tries to save his cloth by a word or two of the mildest censure, but one may see that his sympathies were with the assassins, almost as strongly as if he had himself seen the cruel and profligate prelate feasting his eyes on the torments of Wishart. Yet a Roman Catholic must look upon those assassins precisely as a Protestant does upon Clément and Ravaillac and Guy Fawkes.

gained an infusion of fresh enthusiasm by the accession of a number of minds, for whom, by a peculiar concurrence of circumstances, its claims had all the zest of a novelty. On the Continent this great church looks like what she is, an ancient mechanism, much the worse for the wear, and revolving under the force of impulses given to it at a former period. But as the observer approaches that centre where, according to the Catholic theory, he should find the highest form of religious life and energy, he sees instead, a group of priests governing a numerous population by a system so detestable and so detested, that the rulers would not be safe amongst their own subjects for a week without a garrison of foreign troops. the Papacy could be made invisible, or hidden under ground, or carried off to Thibet, where, according to those delightful travellers, the reverend fathers Huc and Gabet, it would find itself reflected in the system of the Lamas, the Catholic Church, relieved from its greatest scandal, might become much more formidable. But, unfortunately for that church, she cannot abolish the Pope. He is the keystone in the arch of the Roman Catholic theory, which has no consistency at all, except in its ultramontane or most extravagant form.

This renders it not difficult for a controversialist, who is willing to follow the great teachings of history, to make short work with the claims of the Roman Catholic Church. He may fling overboard at once all the tomes of doctrinal controversy as not needful to decide the issue between that church and common sense, and confine himself to the history of Papacy. If he finds the supposed centre of Catholic unity as abundant in scandals as any temporal court, and if he finds in the proceedings of the ruling power the interests of an Italian principality repeatedly and systematically preferred to the supposed interests of the Christian Church, he will not spend much time in a microscopic examination of those patristic rags and tatters with which laborious antiquaries piece out their theories of apostolical succession and Roman supremacy. The historical character of the papal administration is enough to establish

the conviction, that, if Christianity be the greatest of truths, its chief embodiment is not to be sought amidst the rubbish of that broken-down dominion, which French bayonets alone prevent from being swept away.

When the Caliphs of Bagdad lost their temporal power, the first result was a great improvement in their ecclesiastical character; and if the pontifical court were sent into permanent exile, the church might be the better for it. But the improvement would scarcely be more than temporary, because there seems to be an inveterate tendency in the system to generate abuses. The scandals of Avignon during the residence of the Popes were as great as those of Rome. The Papacy, therefore, is decidedly an encumbrance, though an encumbrance which Catholicism cannot get rid of. All that can be done is, to forget the concrete personality of the supreme pontiff, and to transform him as much as possible into an abstract idea. By this process it is possible for a courageous and consistent disputant like Count Joseph de Maistre to follow out his principles to results which are truly astonishing, but results which, even with the most persuasive eloquence, will only satisfy the mass of educated men that the premises must be false where the conclusions are so incredible.

Roman Catholic Astronomy.

Mr. Newman has shown immense moral courage in facing the consequences of his own logic; but there is an achievement in that line which still remains to be attempted. He has not yet directed any assault against the Newtonian astronomy. Why not? There would be no need to wound any remnant of old Academic pride by the confession of an Oxford error. The popular notion of the solar system might be recanted, without humiliation, as one of the heresies of Cambridge. The credit of the Infallible Authority certainly does seem to require this sacrifice. It may be said, indeed, that the councils of the Vatican have not despised an expedient, which