mind, they impart a strange energy, a strong passion in the guise of a duty that they raise men above the dominion of pain and pleasure that obloquy becomes glory, that death itself is contemplated only as the beginning of a higher and happier life. She knows that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment and selfcommand, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her applause. He exhorts his neighbours; and, if he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears, and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow-creatures, pleasure in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, impel him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment, no objection to its formularies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted among its humblest ministers, but, admitted or rejected, he feels that his vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a long and doubtful series of Arian and Popish bishops, but direct from on high. His commission is the same that on the Mountain of Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author or write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with a desk and benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the Church has lost for ever a hundred families, not one of which entertained the least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her government, or her ceremonies. In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coalheaver hears a sermon or falls in with a tract which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the dark land of gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous beasts. The sunshine is on his path. He ascends the Delectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural and surely not a censurable desire, to impart to others Far different is the policy of Rome. the thoughts of which his own heart is The ignorant enthusiast whom the Anfull, to warn the careless, to comfort glican Church makes an enemy, and those who are troubled in spirit. The whatever the polite and learned may impulse which urges him to devote his think, a most dangerous enemy, the whole life to the teaching of religion is | Catholic Church makes a champion. first General of a new society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church. Place St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the mother of the faithful, holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the Church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter's. She bids him nurse his beard, covers | He is certain to become the head of a him with a gown and hood of coarse formidable secession. Place John Wesdark stuff, ties a rope round his waist, ley at Rome. He is certain to be the and sends him forth to teach in her name. He costs her nothing. He takes not a ducat away from the revenues of her beneficed clergy. He lives by the alms of those who respect his spiritual character, and are grateful for his instructions. He preaches, not exactly in the style of Massillon, but in a way which moves the passions of uneducated hearers; and all his influence is employed to strengthen the Church of which he is a minister. To that church he becomes as strongly attached as any of the cardinals whose scarlet carriages and liveries crowd the entrance of the palace on the Quirinal. In this way the Church of Rome unites in herself all the strength of establishment, and all the strength of dissent. With the utmost pomp of a dominant hierarchy above, she has all the energy of the voluntary system below. It would be easy to mention very recent instances in which the hearts of hundreds of thousands, estranged from her by the selfishness, sloth, and cowardice of the beneficed clergy, have been brought back by the zeal of the begging friars. We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe that of the many causes to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the close of the sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which she used the fanaticism of such persons as St. Ignatius and St. Theresa. The Protestant party was now indeed vanquished and humbled. In France, so strong had been the Catholic reacEven for female agency there is a place tion that Henry the Fourth found it in her system. To devout women she necessary to choose between his religion assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and his crown. In spite of his clear heand magistracies. In our country, if a reditary right, in spite of his eminent noble lady is moved by more than or-personal qualities, he saw that, unless he dinary zeal for the propagation of reli- reconciled himself to the Church of gion, the chance is that, though she may Rome, he could not count on the fidelity disapprove of no doctrine or ceremony even of those gallant gentlemen whose of the Established Church, she will end impetuous valour had turned the tide by giving her name to a new schism. of battle at Ivry. In Belgium, Poland, If a pious and benevolent woman enters and Southern Germany, Catholicism the cells of a prison to pray with the had obtained complete ascendency. The most unhappy and degraded of her own resistance of Bohemia was put down. sex, she does so without any authority The Palatinate was conquered. Upper from the Church. No line of action is and Lower Saxony were overflowed by traced out for her; and it is well if the Catholic invaders. The King of DenOrdinary does not complain of her in-mark stood forth as the Protector of the trusion, and if the Bishop does not Reformed Churches: he was defeated, shake his head at such irregular bene- driven out of the empire, and attacked volence. At Rome, the Countess of in his own possessions. The armies of Huntingdon would have a place in the the House of Austria pressed on, subcalendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry jugated Pomerania, and were stopped would be foundress and first Superior of in their progress only by the ramparts the Blessed Order of Sisters of the Gaols. of Stralsund. Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. And now again the tide turned. Two violent outbreaks of religious feeling in opposite directions had given a character to the whole history of a whole century. Protestantism had at first driven back Catholicism to the Alps and the Pyrenees. Catholicism had rallied, and had driven back Protestantism even to the German Ocean. Then the great southern reaction began to slacken, as the great northern movement had slackened before. The zeal of the Catholics waxed cool. Their union was dissolved. The paroxysm of religious excitement was over on both sides. One party had degenerated as far from the spirit of Loyola as the other from the spirit of Luther. During three generations religion had been the mainspring of politics. The revolutions and civil wars of France, Scotland, Holland, Sweden, the long struggle between Philip and Elizabeth, the bloody competition for the Bohemian crown, had all originated in theological disputes. But a great change now took place. The contest which was raging in Germany lost its religious character. It was now, on one side, less a contest for the spiritual ascendency of the Church of Rome than for the temporal ascendency of the House of Austria. On the other side, it was less a contest for the reformed doctrines than for national independence. Governments began to form themselves into new combinations, in which community of political interest was far more regarded than community of religious belief. Even at Rome the progress of the Catholic arms was observed with mixed feelings. The Supreme Pontiff was a sovereign prince of the second rank, and was anxious about the balance of power as well as about the propagation of truth. It was known that he dreaded the rise of an universal monarchy even more than he desired the prosperity of the Universal Church. At length a great event announced to the world that the war of sects had ceased, and that the war of states had succeeded. A coalition, including Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics, was formed against the House of Austria. At the head of that coalition were the first statesman and the first warrior of the age; the former a prince of the Catholic Church, distinguished by the vigour and success with which he had put down the Huguenots; the latter a Protestant king who owed his throne to a revolution caused by hatred of Popery. The alliance of Richelieu and Gustavus marks the time at which the great religious struggle terminated. The war which followed was a war for the equilibrium of Europe. When, at length, the peace of Westphalia was concluded, it appeared that the Church of Rome remained in full possession of a vast dominion which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed to be on the point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant, except that part which had become thoroughly Protestant before the generation which heard Luther preach had passed away. Since that time there has been no religious war between Catholics and Protestants as such. In the time of Cromwell, Protestant England was united with Catholic France, then governed by a priest, against Catholic Spain. William the Third, the eminently Protestant hero, was at the head of a coalition which included many Catholic powers, and which was secretly favoured even by Rome, against the Catholic Lewis. In the time of Anne, Protestant England and Protestant Holland joined with Catholic Savoy and Catholic Portugal, for the purpose of transferring the crown of Spain from one bigoted Catholic to another. The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued to run almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years' War; nor has Protestantism given any proofs of that "expansive power" which has been ascribed to it. But the Protestant boasts, and boasts most justly, that wealth, civilization, and intelligence, have increased far more on the northern than on the southern side of the boundary, and that countries so little favoured by nature as Scotland and Prussia are now among the most flourishing and best governed portions of the world, while the marble palaces of Genoa are deserted, while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania, while the fertile sea-coast of the Pon The conclu tifical State is abandoned to buffaloes final settlement of the boundary line and wild boars. It cannot be doubted between Protestantism and Catholicthat, since the sixteenth century, the ism, began to appear the signs of the Protestant nations have made decidedly fourth great peril of the Church of greater progress than their neighbours. Rome. The storm which was now The progress made by those nations in rising against her was of a very difwhich Protestantism, though not finally ferent kind from those which had presuccessful, yet maintained a long strug- ceded it. Those who had formerly gle, and left permanent traces, has attacked her had questioned only a generally been considerable. But when part of her doctrines. A school was we come to the Catholic Land, to the now growing up which rejected the part of Europe in which the first spark whole. The Albigenses, the Lollards, of reformation was trodden out as the Lutherans, the Calvinists, had a soon as it appeared, and from which positive religious system, and were proceeded the impulse which drove strongly attached to it. The creed of Protestantism back, we find, at best, a the new sectaries was altogether negavery slow progress, and on the whole tive. They took one of their premises a retrogression. Compare Denmark from the Protestants, and one from the and Portugal. When Luther began to Catholics. From the latter they borpreach, the superiority of the Portu- rowed the principle, that Catholicism guese was unquestionable. At pre- was the only pure and genuine Chrissent, the superiority of the Danes is no tianity. With the former, they held less so. Compare Edinburgh and Flo- that some parts of the Catholic system rence. Edinburgh has owed less to were contrary to reason. climate, to soil, and to the fostering sion was obvious. Two propositions, care of rulers than any capital, Pro- each of which separately is compatible testant or Catholic. In all these re- with the most exalted piety, formed, spects, Florence has been singularly when held in conjunction, the groundhappy. Yet whoever knows what Flo- work of a system of irreligion. rence and Edinburgh were in the ge- doctrine of Bossuet, that transubstanneration preceding the Reformation, tiation is affirmed in the Gospel, and and what they are now, will acknow- the doctrine of Tillotson, that transubledge that some great cause has, during stantiation is an absurdity, when put the last three centuries, operated to together, produced by logical necessity raise one part of the European family, the inferences of Voltaire. and to depress the other. Compare the history of England and that of Spain during the last century. In arms, arts, sciences, letters, commerce, agriculture, the contrast is most striking. The distinction is not confined to this side of the Atlantic. The colonies planted by England in America have immeasurably outgrown in power those planted by Spain. Yet we have no reason to believe that, at the beginning of the sixteenth century, the Castilian was in any respect inferior to the Englishman. Our firm belief is, that the North owes its great civilization and prosperity chiefly to the moral effect of the Protestant Reformation, and that the decay of the southern countries of Europe is to be mainly ascribed to the great Catholic revival. About a hundred years after the The Had the sect which was rising at Paris been a sect of mere scoffers, it is very improbable that it would have left deep traces of its existence in the institutions and manners of Europe. Mere negation, mere Epicurean infidelity, as Lord Bacon most justly observes, has never disturbed the peace of the world. It furnishes no motive for action. It inspires no enthusiasm. It has no missionaries, no crusaders, no martyrs. If the Patriarch of the Holy Philosophical Church had contented himself with making jokes about Saul's asses and David's wives, and with criticizing the poetry of Ezekiel in the same narrow spirit in which he criticized that of Shakspeare, Rome would have had little to fear. But it is due to him and to his compeers to say that the real secret of their strength Every lay in the truth which was mingled at the sacraments, but ready to enwith their errors, and in the generous counter principalities and powers in enthusiasm which was hidden under the cause of justice, mercy, and toletheir flippancy. They were men who, ration. with all their faults, moral and intel- Irreligion, accidentally associated lectual, sincerely and earnestly desired with philanthropy, triumphed for a the improvement of the condition of time over religion accidentally assothe human race, whose blood boiled at ciated with political and social abuses. the sight of cruelty and injustice, who Every thing gave way to the zeal and made manful war, with every faculty activity of the new reformers. In which they possessed, on what they France, every man distinguished in letconsidered as abuses, and who on ters was found in their ranks. many signal occasions placed them-year gave birth to works in which the selves gallantly between the powerful fundamental principles of the Church and the oppressed. While they as- were attacked with argument, invecsailed Christianity with a rancour and tive, and ridicule. The Church made an unfairness disgraceful to men who no defence, except by acts of power. called themselves philosophers, they Censures were pronounced: books were yet had, in far greater measure than seized: insults were offered to the retheir opponents, that charity towards mains of infidel writers; but no Bosmen of all classes and races which suet, no Pascal, came forth to encounter Christianity enjoins. Religious per- Voltaire. There appeared not a single secution, judicial torture, arbitrary im- defence of the Catholic doctrine which prisonment, the unnecessary multipli- produced any considerable effect, or cation of capital punishments, the which is now even remembered. A delay and chicanery or tribunals, the bloody and unsparing persecution, like exactions of farmers of the revenue, that which put down the Albigenses, slavery, the slave trade, were the con- might have put down the philosophers. stant subjects of their lively satire and But the time for De Montforts and eloquent disquisitions. When an in- Dominics had gone by. The punishnocent man was broken on the wheel ments which the priests were still able at Toulouse, when a youth, guilty only to inflict were sufficient to irritate, but of an indiscretion, was beheaded at not sufficient to destroy. The war was Abbeville, when a brave officer, borne between power on one side, and wit on down by public injustice, was dragged, the other; and the power was under with a gag in his mouth, to die on the far more restraint than the wit. Place de Grêve, a voice instantly went thodoxy soon became a synonyme for forth from the banks of Lake Leman, ignorance and stupidity. It was as which made itself heard from Moscow necessary to the character of an accom. to Cadiz, and which sentenced the plished man that he should despise the unjust judges to the contempt and de- religion of his country, as that he testation of an Europe. The really should know his letters. The new efficient weapons with which the phi- doctrines spread rapidly through Chrislosophers assailed the evangelical faith tendom. Paris was the capital of the were borrowed from the evangelical whole continent. French was every morality. The ethical and dogmatical where the language of polite circles. parts of the Gospel were unhappily The literary glory of Italy and Spain turned against each other. On one side had departed. That of Germany had was a Church boasting of the purity not dawned. That of England shone, of a doctrine derived from the Apos- as yet, for the English alone. The tles, but disgraced by the massacre of teachers of France were the teachers of St. Bartholomew, by the murder of the Europe. The Parisian opinions spread best of kings, by the war of Cevennes, fast among the educated classes beyond by the destruction of Port-Royal. On the Alps: nor could the vigilance of the other side was a sect laughing at the Inquisition prevent the contraband the Scriptures, shooting out the tongue importation of the new heresy into Or |