Chapter X: A Despairing Chapter (8)

Logicians, at least those we have had for masters, tell us that of contradictories one must be false. If there were ever two terms each the contradictory of the other, they are _Catholic_ and _Protestant_. One cannot be a Catholic without denying Protestantism, or a Protestant without denying Catholicity. "Protestant Catholicity" or "Catholic Protestantism" is as plainly a contradiction in terms as a square circle or a circular square. If Catholicity is true, Protestantism is false, for it is simply the denial of Catholicity; and if the Protestant denial of Catholicity is true or warranted, then is there nothing catholic, no catholicity, and consequently no catholic Protestantism. Dr. Krauth has, we doubt not, a truth floating before his mind's eye, but he fails to grasp it, or to consider to what it is applicable. "The history of Christianity," he says, page vii., "in common with all genuine history, moves under the influence of two generic ideas: the conservative, which desires to secure the present by fidelity to the results of the past; the progressive, which looks out in hope to a better future. Reformation is the great harmonizer of the true principles. Corresponding with conservatism, reformation, and progress, are the three generic types of Christianity; and under these _genera_ all the species are but shades, modifications, or combinations, as all hues arise from three primary colors. Conservatism without progress produces the Romish and Greek type of the church; progress without conservatism runs into revolution, radicalism, and sectarianism; reformation is antithetical to both--to passive persistence in wrong or passive endurance of it, and to revolution as a mode of relieving wrong." That is, reformation preserves its subject while correcting its aberrations, and effects its progress without its destruction, which, if the subject is corruptible and reformable, and the reform is effected by the proper authorities and by the proper means, is no doubt true; and in this case reformation would stand opposed alike to immobility and revolution or destruction.

But is the learned and able professor aware of what he does when he assumes that Christianity is corruptible and reformable, that it is or can be the subject either of corruption or of reformation? Intentionally or not, by so assuming, he places it in the category of human institutions, or natural productions, left to the action of the natural laws or of second causes, and withdraws it from the direct and immediate government and protection of God. Not otherwise could its history be subject to the laws that govern the movement of all genuine history, be either perfectible or corruptible, or ever stand in need of being reformed, or of intrinsically advancing. Christianity itself is a revelation from God, the expression of his eternal reason and will, and therefore his law, which like himself is perfect and unalterable. The terms the professor applies, can apply, then, only to men's views, theories, or judgments of Christianity, not to Christianity itself, either as a doctrine or an institution, either as the faith to be believed, or as the law to be obeyed--a fact which, in the judgment of some, Dr. Newman's theory of development overlooks Christianity embodied in the church is the kingdom of God on earth, founded immediately by the Incarnate Word to manifest the divine love and mercy in the redemption and salvation of souls, and to introduce and maintain the authority of God and the supremacy of his law in human affairs. It is not an abstraction, and did not come into the world as a "naked idea," as Guizot maintains, nor is it left to men's wisdom and virtue to embody it; but it came into the world embodied in an institution, concreted in the church, which the blessed apostle assures us is "the body of Christ," who is himself Christianity, since he says, "I am the way, the truth, and the life." Neither as the end nor as the divine institution, neither as the law nor as the authority to keep, declare, and apply it, then is the church imperfect, therefore progressive or corruptible, and therefore reformable. This is the Catholic doctrine, which must be retained by Protestantism if Protestantism is to be Catholic.

The learned professor either overlooks or virtually denies the divine origin, character, and authority of the church, or else he supposes that the divine founder failed to adapt his means to his end, and left his work incomplete, imperfect, to be finished by men. From first to last, he treats the church not as the kingdom of God on earth, but as an institution formed by men to realize or embody their conceptions or views of his kingdom, its principles, laws, and authority. He thus makes it a human institution, subject to all the vicissitudes of time and space. As men can never embody in their institutions the entire kingdom of God, the church must be progressive; as whatever is defective may be corrupted by the errors and corruptions of the faithful, as what is subject to growth must also be subject to decay, the church may from time to time become corrupt, and men must be free, as she has need, to reform her. This manifestly supposes the church is not divine, but simply an attempt, as is every false religion of men, to realize or embody their variable conceptions of the divine. If this were not the professor's view, he could not talk of conservatism, progress, and reformation in connection with Christianity, nor the correspondence of these with "the three generic types of Christianity," for these terms are inapplicable to anything divine and perfect, and can be logically applied only to what is imperfect and human, to what is perfectible, corruptible, and reformable. As there is but one God, one Christ, the mediator of God and men, there can be but one Christianity, and that must be catholic, one and the same in all times and places. To suppose three generic types of Christianity is as absurd as to suppose three Christs or three Gods, generically distinguished one from another, that is--three Christs or three Gods of three different types or genera.

Supposing the professor understands at all the meaning of the scholastic terms he uses, it is clear that he understands by Christianity the history of which moves under the influence of two generic ideas--nothing divine, nothing fixed, permanent, and immutable, the law alike for intellect and will, but the views and theories or judgments which men form of the works of God, his word, his law, or his kingdom. Christianity resolved into these may, we concede, not improperly be arranged under the three heads of conservatism, progress, and reformation, but never Christianity as the truth to be believed and obeyed. We do not, however, blame the Lutheran professor for his mistake; for, assuming his position as a Protestant to be at all tenable, he could not avoid it, since Protestants have no other Christianity. They have only their _views_ or judgments of Christianity, not Christianity itself as the objective reality.

There is progress _by_ Christianity; and that is one great purpose for which it is instituted; but none _in_ Christianity, because it is divine and perfect from the beginning. There may be reformation in individuals, nations, and society, for these are all corruptible, but none of Christianity itself, either as the creed or as the body of Christ, for it is indefectible, above and independent of men and nations, and therefore neither corruptible nor reformable by them. Not being corruptible or capable of deterioration, the term conservative, however applicable it may be to states and empires in the natural order or to human institutions and laws subject to the natural laws, has no application to Christianity or the kingdom of Christ, which is supernatural, under the direct and immediate government and protection of God, an eternal and therefore an ever-present kingdom, universal and unalterable, and not subject to the natural laws of growth and decay. Dr. Krauth forgets the law of mechanics, that there is no motion without a mover at rest. The movable cannot originate motion, nor the progressive be the cause of progress, or corruption purify and reform itself. If Christianity or the church were itself movable, or in itself progressive, it could effect no progress in men or nations, individuals or society; and if it could ever become itself corrupt, it could be no principle of reform in the world, or in any department of life.

The office of Christianity is to maintain on earth amidst all the vicissitudes of this world the immutable divine order, to recover men from the effects of the fall, to elevate them above the world, above their natural powers, and to carry them forward, their will consenting and concurring, to a blissful and indissoluble union with God as their supreme good, as their last end or final cause. How could it fulfil this office and effect its divine purpose, if not itself free from all the changes, alterations, and accidents of time and space? Does not the learned professor of theology perceive that its very efficiency depends on its independence, immovableness, and immutability? Then the conceptions of conservatism, progress, and reformation cannot be applied to the church of God, any more than to God himself, and are applicable only to what is human connected with her. In applying these ideas to her, the professor, as every Protestant is obliged to do in principle at least, divests her of her divinity, of her supernatural origin and office, and places her in the natural and human order, and subjects her to the laws which govern the history of all men and nations deprived of the supernatural and remaining under the ordinary providence of God manifested through second causes. The professor's doctrine places Christianity in the same category with all pagan and false religions, and subjects it to the same laws to which they are subjected.

This being the case, Dr. Krauth, who is a genuine Lutheran, has no right to call Luther's Reformation a _conservative_ Reformation. It may or may not be conservative in relation to some other Protestant church or sect, but in relation to the church of God, or to Christianity as the word or the law of God, it is not conservative, but undeniably destructive; for it subverts the very idea and principle on which the church as the kingdom of God on earth is founded and sustained. The church on the principles of Luther's reformation is subject to the authority of men and nations, and, instead of teaching and governing them, is taught and governed by them, and instead of elevating and perfecting them, they perfect, corrupt, or reform it. This is manifestly a radical denial, a subversion of the church of God, of Christ's kingdom on earth if it means anything more than a temperance society or a social club. In this respect, the principle of the Lutheran reformation was the common principle of all the Protestant reformers, as we may see in the fact that Protestantism, under any or all of its multitudinous forms, wherever not restrained by influences foreign to itself, tends incessantly to eliminate the supernatural, and to run into pure rationalism or naturalism. How absurd, then, to talk of "_Protestant_ Catholicity, or of _Catholic_ Protestantism"! The two ideas are as mutually repellent as are Christ and Belial.

The church has, indeed, her human side, and on that side she may at times be corrupt and in need of reform, that is to say, the heavenly treasure is _received_ in earthen vessels, and those earthen vessels, though unable to corrupt or sully the divine treasure itself, may be unclean and impure themselves. Churchmen may become relaxed in their virtue and neglect to maintain sound doctrine and necessary discipline, and leave the people to suffer for the want of proper spiritual nourishment and care, even to fall into errors and vices more in accordance with the heathenism of their ancestors than with the faith and sanctity of the Christian. Moreover, in a world where all changes under the very eye of the spectator, and new forms of error and vice are constantly springing up, the disciplinary canons of the church, and those which regulate the relations of secular society with the spiritual, good and adequate when first enacted, may become insufficient or impracticable in view of the changes always going on in everything human, and fail to repress the growing evil of the times and to maintain the necessary discipline both of clerics and laics, and therefore need amending, or to be aided by new and additional canons. In this legislative and administrative office of the church, not in her dogmas, precepts, constitution, or authority, which, as expressing the eternal reason and will of God, are unalterable, reforms are not only permissible but often necessary. The councils, general, national, provincial, and diocesan, have always had for their only object to assist the Papacy in suppressing errors against faith in enforcing discipline, maintaining Christian morality, and promoting the purity and sanctity of the Christian community.

We do not deny that reforms of this sort were needed at the epoch of the Protestant revolt and rebellion, and the Holy Council of Trent was convoked and held for the very purpose of effecting such as were needed, as well as for the purpose of condemning the doctrinal errors of the reformers; but we cannot concede that they were more especially needed at that epoch, than they had been at almost any time previous, since the conversion of the barbarians that overthrew the Roman empire, and of their pagan brethren that remained in the old homesteads. Long, severe, and continuous had been the struggle of the church to tame, humanize, and christianize these fierce and indocile barbarians, especially those who remained beyond the frontiers of the empire, and to whom the Roman name never ceased to be hateful, as it is even to this day with the bulk of the northern Germanic races. The evils which for eight centuries had grown out of the intractable and rebellious spirit of these races in their old homes, and their perpetual tendency to relapse into the paganism of their ancestors, and which had so tried the faith and patience of the church, had been in a great measure overcome before the opening of the sixteenth century, and their morals and manners brought into close conformity with the Christian ideal. The church, through her supreme pontiffs and saintly bishops, zealous and hard-working priests and religious, had struggled successfully against them; and was even getting the better of the polished Greek and Roman heathenism, partially revived in the so-called Revival of Letters, or the Renaissance, and was pursuing, never more steadily or more successfully, her work of evangelization and civilization; and we can point to no period in her history since the conversion of Clovis, king of the Franks, the missionary labors of St. Columbanus and his colonies of Irish monks in Eastern Gaul and Italy, and of St. Boniface and his Anglo-Saxon companions and successors in central Germany and the Netherlands, when reforms were less necessary, or the bonds of discipline were less relaxed, than at the epoch of the rise of Protestantism.

But, granting that reforms of this sort were especially needed in the sixteenth century, who had the right, on conservative and orderly principles, to propose or to effect them? Certainly not private individuals on their own authority, except so far as it concerned their own personal faith and morals, but to the ecclesiastical authorities of the time, as we see in the Holy Council of Trent. Reforms, even if needed and proper in themselves, if attempted by unauthorized individuals on their own responsibility, and carried out without, and especially in opposition to, the supreme authority of the church, are irregular, disorderly, and unlawful. A reform attempted and effected in church or state by unauthorized persons, and especially against the constituted authorities of either, is unquestionably an attempt at revolution, if words have any meaning. Now, was Luther's reformation effected by the church herself, or by persons authorized by her to institute and carry it on? Was it done by the existing authorities of the church in accordance with her constitution and laws, or was it done in opposition to her positive prohibition, and in most cases by violence and armed force against her?

There is no question as to the fact. Luther had no authority or commission from the church to attempt and carry out the reforms or changes he declared to be necessary; and, in laboring to effect them, he proceeded not only without her authority, but against it, just as he does who conspires to overthrow the state or to subvert the constitution and laws of his country. Luther, then, was not a conservative reformer, but a decided revolutionist, a radical, a sectarian, a destructive, and Dr. Krauth counts too much on the ignorance or credulity of his readers in expecting them to accept Lutheranism as "conservative reformation." A conservative reformation, as distinguished from or opposed to revolution, is a legal, constitutional reformation, effected under the proper authorities and by constitutional and legal means. Dr. Krauth himself would despise us or laugh at us if we should concede that such was Luther's reformation. It was effected by persons unauthorized to reform the church, against her constitution and laws existing at the time, and to which they themselves owed strict fidelity and unreserved obedience. They were conspirators against lawful authority, against their spiritual sovereign, and their pretended reform was a revolt, a rebellion, and, as far as successful, a revolution. It is idle to deny it, or to attempt to defend Luther and his associates on legal and constitutional principles. The reform or movement he attempted was without and against law, against the constitution and canons of the church, and was condemned and prohibited by the supreme spiritual authority. This is undeniable, and Dr. Krauth knows it as well as we do, and yet he has the hardihood to call it a "conservative reformation"!

But the Protestant pretence is that Luther and his associates acted in obedience to a higher authority than that of popes and councils, and were justified in what they did by the written word of God and Christian antiquity. An appeal of this sort, on Protestant principles, from the decisions of a Protestant sect, might be entertained, but not on Catholic principles from the decision of the Catholic Church, for she is herself, at all times and places, the supreme authority for declaring the sense of the written as well as of the unwritten word, for declaring and applying the divine law, whether naturally or supernaturally promulgated, and for judging what is or is not according to Christian antiquity. Their appeal was irregular, revolutionary even, and absurd and not to be entertained for a moment. She authorized no appeal of the sort, and the appeal could have been only from her judgment to their own, which at the lowest is as high authority as theirs at the highest. Luther and his associates did not appeal to a higher law or authority against the popes and councils, but to a lower, as Döllinger has done in asking permission to appeal from the judgment of a general council, to that of a national or rather a provincial council. The appeal to Christian antiquity was equally unavailable, for it was only setting up their private judgment against the judgment of the supreme court. The church denied that she had departed from the primitive church, and her denial was sufficient to rebut their assertion. In no case, then, did they or could they appeal to or act on a higher law or authority than hers. They opposed and could oppose to her judgment, rendered by popes and councils, of the law or word of God, written or unwritten, or of Christian antiquity, only their own judgment, which at the best was no better than hers at the worst.

The simple fact is, there is no defence of the so-called Reformation on catholic, church, or conservative principles. It sought to reform the faith, and to change the very constitution of the church, and wherever it was successful, it proved to be the subversion of the church, and the destruction of her faith, her authority, and her worship. Dr. Krauth says that this was not originally intended by the reformers, and that they had in the beginning no clear views, or fixed and determined plan of reform, but were carried forward by the logic of their principles and events to lengths which they did not foresee, and from which they would at first have recoiled. But this only proves that they were no divinely illumined and God-commissioned reformers, that they knew not what manner of spirit they were of, that they took a leap in the dark, and followed a blind impulse. If the spirit they obeyed, or the principle to which they yielded, led them or pushed them step by step in the way of destruction, to the total denial of the authority of the church, or to transfer it from the pope and hierarchy to Cæsar or the laity, which we know was universally the fact, it is clear proof that the spirit or principle of the Reformation was radical, revolutionary, destructive, not conservative.

That conservative men among Protestants abhor the radicalism and sectarianism which the whole history of the Protestant world proves to be the natural and inevitable result of the principles and tendencies of the so-called Reformation, we are far from denying; but whatever of resistance is offered in the Protestant world to these results is due not to Protestantism itself, but either to Catholic reminiscences and the natural good sense of individuals, to the control of religious matters assumed by the civil government, which really has no authority in spirituals, or to the presence and constant teaching of the Catholic Church. "What is bred in the bones will out in the flesh." Everywhere the Protestant spirit, the Protestant tendency, is to remove farther and farther from Catholicity, to eliminate more and more of Catholic dogma, Catholic tradition, Catholic precepts, and to approach nearer and nearer to no-churchism, to the rejection of all authority in spiritual matters, and the reduction of the whole supernatural order to the natural. Faith in the Protestant mind is only a probable opinion, sometimes fanatically held indeed, and enforced by power, but none the less a mere opinion for that. The conception of religion as a divine institution, of the church as a living organism, as a teaching and governing body, as the kingdom of God, placed in the world as the medium of divine grace and of the divine government in human affairs, is really entertained by no class of Protestants, but disdainfully rejected by all as spiritual despotism, _Romish_ usurpation, or Popish superstition.

It is useless to say that this is a departure from or an abuse of the principle of the Protestant Reformation. It is no such thing; it is only the logical development of the radical and revolutionary principles which the reformers themselves avowed and acted on, and which carried them to lengths which, in the outset, they did not dream of, and from which Dr. Krauth says truly they would, had they foreseen them, have shrunk with horror. We do not find that Lutheranism, when left by the civil magistracy to itself, and suffered to follow unchecked its own inherent law, is any more conservative or less radical in its developments and tendency than Calvinism or Anglicanism, that prolific mother of sects, or any other form of Protestantism. Every revolution must run its course and reach its goal, unless checked or restrained by a power or influences foreign to itself, and really antagonistic to it. The reformers rejected the idea of the church as a kingdom or governing body, or as a divine institution for the instruction and government of men, and substituted for it, in imitation of the Arabian impostor, a book which, without the authority of the church to declare its sense, is a dead book, save as quickened by the intelligence or understanding of its readers. Their followers discovered in the course of time that the book in itself is immobile and voiceless, and has no practical authority for the understanding or the will, and they cast it off, some, like George Fox and his followers, for a pretended interior or spiritual illumination, the reality of which they can prove neither to themselves nor to others; but the larger part, for natural reason, history, erudition, and the judgment of learned or _soi-disant_ learned men. Their work has gone on till, with the more advanced party, all divine authority is rejected, and as man has and can have in his own right no authority over man, reason itself has given way, objective truth is denied, and truth and falsehood, right and wrong, it is gravely maintained, are only what each man for himself holds them to be. The utmost anarchy and confusion in the intellectual and moral world have been reached in individuals and sects said to have "advanced views."

Such have been the results of Dr. Krauth's "conservative reformation" in the spiritual order, in Christianity or the church. It introduced the revolutionary principle, the principle of individualism, of private judgment, and insubordination into the religious order, and, as a necessary consequence, it has introduced the same principle into the political and social order, which depends on religion, and cannot subsist without it. Hence, the great and damning charge against the church in our day is that by her unchangeableness, her immovable doctrines, her influence on the minds and hearts, and hold on the consciences of the faithful, she is the great supporter of law and order--despots and despotism, in the language of the liberal journals--and the chief obstacle to the enlightenment and progress of society, in the same language; but radicalism and revolution in ours. Hence, the whole movement party in our times, with which universal Protestantism sympathizes and is closely allied, is moved by hostility to the church, especially the Papacy. Hence, it and the Protestant journals of the Old World and the New are unable to restrain their rage at the declaration of the Papal supremacy and infallibility by the Council of the Vatican, or their exultation at the invasion of the States of the Church, their annexation to the Subalpine kingdom, and the spoliation of the Holy Father by the so-called King of Italy. Why do we see all this, but because the revolutionary principle, which the reformers asserted in the church, is identically the principle defended by the political radicals and revolutionists?

Having thrown off the law of God, rejected the authority of the church, and put the faithful in the place of the pope and hierarchy, what could hinder the movement party from applying the same subversive principle to the political and social order? The right to revolutionize the church, and to place the flock above the shepherd, involves the right to revolutionize the state, and the assertion of the right of the governed to resist and depose their governors at will, or at the dictation of self-styled political and social reformers. Protestantism has never favored liberty, as it claims, and which it is impotent either to found or to sustain; but its claims to be the founder and chief supporter of modern liberalism, which results naturally and necessarily from the fundamental principle of the reformers, that of the right of the people to resist and depose the prelates placed over them, cannot be contested. If no man is bound, against his own judgment and will, to obey the law of God, how can any one be bound in conscience to obey the law of the state? and if the people may subvert the constitution of the church, and trample on her divine authority, why may they not subvert the constitution of the republic, and trample under foot the human authority of the civil magistrate, whether he be called king or president? It is to Protestantism we owe the liberalistic doctrine of "the sacred right of insurrection," or of "revolution" assumed to be inherent in and persistent in every people, or any section of any people, and which justifies Mazzini and the secret societies in laboring to bring about in every state of Europe an internal conflict and bloody war between the people and their governments. It deserves the full credit of having asserted and acted on the principle, and we hold it responsible for the consequences of its subversive application; for it is only the application in the political and social order of the principle on which the reformers acted, and all Protestants act, in the religious order against the church of God.

The principle of revolution, asserted and acted on as a Christian principle by the reformers, has not been inoperative, or remained barren of results, on being transferred to modern political and civil society. If the reformation, by drawing off men's attention and affections from the spiritual order, and fixing them on the material order, has promoted a marvellous progress in mechanical inventions and the applications of science to the industrial and productive arts, it has at the same time undermined the whole political order, shaken every civil government to its foundation, and, in fact, revolutionized nearly every modern state. It has loosened the bonds of society, destroyed the Christian family, erected disobedience into a principle, a virtue even, and reduced authority to an empty name. It has taught the people to be discontented with their lot, filled them with an insane desire for change, made them greedy of novelties, and stirred them up to a chronic war with their rulers. Everywhere we meet the revolutionary spirit, and there is not a government in Europe that has any strong hold on the consciences of the governed, or that can sustain itself except by its army. Even Russia, where the people are most attached to their emperor, is covered over with a network of secret societies, which are so many conspiracies against government, laboring night and day to revolutionize the empire. Prussia, which has just succeeded in absorbing the greater part of Germany, and is flushed with her recent triumph over the French empire and the improvised French republic, may seem to be strong and stable; but she has the affections of the people in no part of Germany, which she has recently annexed or confederated under her headship, and the new empire is pervaded in all directions by the revolutionary spirit to which it owes its existence, and which may be strong enough to resist its power, and reduce the ill-compacted body to its original elements to-morrow.

We need not speak of Austria; she may become hereafter once more a power in Europe, but she is now nothing. Voltairianism, and the spirit generated by the Reformation, have prostrated her, and sunk her so low that no one deigns to do her reverence. In England the government itself seems penetrated with the revolutionary spirit, or at least believes that spirit is so strong in the people that it is unsafe to resist it, and that it is necessary to make large and continual concessions to it. It is a maxim with the liberals and most English and American statesmen, or politicians rather, for our age has no statesmen, that a government is strengthened by timely and large concessions to popular demands. The government is undoubtedly strengthened by just laws and wise administration, but in our times, when the old respect for authority has gone, and governments have little or no hold on consciences, there is no government existing strong enough to make concessions to popular demands, or to the clamors of the governed, without endangering its power, and even its existence. The Holy Father, Pius IX., in the beginning of his pontificate, tried the experiment, and was soon driven from his throne, and found safety only in flight and exile. Napoleon III. tried it in January of last year, was driven by his people into a war for which he was unprepared, met with disasters, was defeated and taken prisoner, declared deposed and his empire at an end by a Parisian mob, before the end of September of the same year. The policy of concession is a ruinous policy; one concession leads to the demand for another and a larger concession, and each concession strengthens the disaffected, and weakens the power of authority to resist. But England has adopted the policy, is fully committed to it, as she is to many false and ruinous maxims, and it will go hard but she yields to her democracy, and reaps in her own fields the fruits of the liberalism and revolutionism which she has, especially when under Whig influence, so industriously sown broadcast throughout Europe.

We need not speak of our own country. Everybody knows its intense devotion to popular sovereignty, its hatred of authority, and its warm sympathy--in words at least--with every insurrection or uprising of the people, or any portion of the people, to overthrow the established authority, whether in church or state, they can hear of, without any inquiry into the right or wrong of the case. The insurrection or revolutionary party, it is assumed, is always in the right. There is no more intensely Protestant people on the globe than the American, and none more deeply imbued with the revolutionary spirit, in which it is pretended our own institutions originated, and which nearly the whole American press mistake for the spirit of liberty, and cherish as the American spirit. What will come of it, time will not be slow in revealing.

But France, so long the leader of modern civilization, and which she has so long led in a false direction, shows better than any other nation the workings of the revolutionary spirit introduced by the Reformers. She, indeed, repelled, after some hesitation and a severe struggle, the Reformation in the religious order; but through the indomitable energy of the princely Guises and their brave Lorraine supporters, whom every French historian and publicist since takes delight in denouncing, she was retained in the communion of the church; but with Henry IV. the _parti politique_ came into power, and Protestantism was adopted and acted on in the political order. On more occasions than one, France became the diplomatic and even the armed defender of the Reformation against the Catholic sovereigns of Europe. She was the first Christian power to form an alliance with the Grand Turk, against whom Luther declared to be against the will of God for his followers to fight, even in defence of Christendom; she aided the Low Countries in their rebellion against Catholic Spain, Protestant Sweden, and Northern Germany in their effort to crush Catholic Austria, and protestantize all Germany; and saw, without an effort to save her, Catholic Poland struck from the list of nations. Twice has she with armed force dragged the Holy Father from his throne, and secularized and appropriated the States of the Church, and set the example which the Italian Liberals have but too faithfully followed. Rarely, if ever, has she since the sixteenth century, by her foreign policy, consulted the interests of the church any further than they happened to be coincident with her own. In an evil hour, she forgot the principles which made the glory of the French sovereigns, and on which Christendom was reconstructed after the downfall of the Roman Empire of the West, and severed her politics from her religion. At first asserting with the reformers and the Lutheran princes the independence of the secular order of the spiritual, afterwards the superiority of the secular power, and finally the sovereignty of the people or the governed in face of their governers, as the reformers asserted the sovereignty of the faithful in face of the pope and hierarchy, she made her world-famous revolution of 1789, inaugurated the mob, and has been weltering in anarchy and groaning under despotism ever since.

The accession of Henry IV., the beau ideal of a king with the French people, marks a compromise between Catholicity and Protestantism, by which it was tacitly agreed that France should in religion profess the Catholic faith and observe the Catholic worship, while in politics, both at home and abroad, she should be Protestant, and independent of the spiritual authority. It was hoped the compromise would secure her both worlds, but it has caused her to lose both, at least this world as every one may now see. It is worse than idle to attempt to deny the solidarity of the French revolution with Luther's rebellion; both rest on the same principle and tend to the same end; and it is the position and influence of France as the leader of the civilized world, that has given to the revolutionary principle its popularity, diffused it through all modern nations, and made it the _Weltgeist_, or spirit of the age. The socialistic insurrection in Paris, and which we fear is only "scotched, not killed," is only the logical development of '93, as '93 was of '89, and '89 of Luther's revolt against the church in the sixteenth century. Its success would be only the full realization in church and state, in religion and society, of what Dr. Krauth calls "the conservative reformation." The communists deny the right of property, indeed, but not more than did Protestants in despoiling the church and sacrilegiously confiscating the possessions of religious houses and the goods of the clergy. No more consistent and thoroughgoing Protestants has the world seen than these French socialists or communists, who treat property as theft and God as a despot.

We do not exult in the downfall of France, in which there are so many good Catholics and has always been so much to love and admire, any more than, had we lived then, we should have exulted in the downfall of the Roman Empire before the invasion of the barbarians. Like that downfall, it is the breaking up of Christendom, and leaves the Holy Father without a single Christian power to defend his rights or the liberty of the Holy See; but it deprives Protestantism of its most efficient supporter and its great popularizer, and all the more efficient because nominally Catholic. It is not Catholic but Protestant and liberal France that has fallen. The Bonapartes never represented Catholic France, but the principles of 1789--that is, the revolution which created them, and which they sought to use or retain as they judged expedient for their own interests. In the last Napoleon's defeat we see the defeat, we wish we could say the final defeat, of the revolution. Yet so terrible a disaster occurring so suddenly to so great a nation, we think must prove the turning-point in the life and tendencies of the nations of Europe, and pave the way for the reconstruction of Christendom on its old basis of the mutual concord and co-operation of the two powers. We think it must lead the nations to pause and reflect on the career civilization has for three centuries been running, and open their eyes to the folly and madness of attempting to found permanent political and social order, or authority and liberty, on the revolutionary principle of the Reformation or of 1789. We look for a powerful reaction at no distant date against the revolution in favor of the church and her divine authority. It is sometimes necessary to make men despair of the earth in order to turn their attention to heaven.

But to conclude: we have wished to show Dr. Krauth that the Reformation in any or all its phases, in its principle and in its effects, in church and state is decidedly revolutionary. He as a Protestant has not been able to see and set forth the truth; bound by his office and position to defend the Reformation, he has considered what it must have been if defensible, not what it actually was, and has given us his ideal of the Reformation, not the Reformation itself. If it does not, he reasons, maintain all Catholic principles and doctrines it is indefensible; but if it concedes that these principles and doctrines, were held in their purity and integrity in their unity and catholicity, by the church Luther warred against, what need was there of it? Our good doctor must then assume that they were not so held, that the church had erred both in faith and practice, and that the Reformation simply restored the faith, purified practice, re-established discipline, freed the mind from undue shackles, and opened the way for the free and orderly progress of the word. All very fine; only there does not happen to be a word of truth in it. Besides, if it were so, it would only prove that the church had failed, therefore that Christianity had failed, and that Christ was not equal to the work he undertook. If Christ is true, there must always be the true church somewhere, for she is indefectible as he is indefectible. If the church in communion with the See of Rome had become corrupt and false, as the reformers alleged, then some other existing body was the true church, and Luther and his associates, in order to be in the true church, should have ascertained and joined it--a thing which it is well known they did not do, for they joined no other church or organic body, but set furiously at work to pull down the old church which had hitherto sheltered them and to build a new one for themselves on its ruins.

We grant the Reformation should have been conservative in order to be defensible, but it was not so, it was radical and subversive. It rejected the Papacy, the hierarchy, the church herself as a visible institution, as a teaching and governing body, and asserted the liberty of the faithful to teach and govern their prelates and pastors. It is the common principle of all Protestant denominations that the church is constituted by the faithful, holds from them, and the pastor is called not sent. This, we need not say, is the subversion of all church authority, of the kingdom of God founded by our Lord himself, and ruling from above instead of from below. It reduces religion from law to opinion or personal conviction, without light or authority for conscience. This principle, applied to politics, is the subversion of the state, overthrows all government, and leaves every man free to do "what is right in his own eyes." It transfers power from the governors to the governed, and allows the government no powers not held from their assent, which is simply to make it no government at all. It has been so applied, and the effect is seen especially in France, which, since her revolution of '89, has had no settled government, but has alternated, as she alternates to-day, between the mob and the despot, anarchy and military despotism.

We so apply it, theoretically, in this country; and in the recent civil war the North was able to fight for the preservation of the Union only by pocketing for a time its principles and forswearing its logic. The logic was on the side of the South; the force was on the side of the North; on which side was the right or the wrong, it is not our province to decide. We will only add that we do not agree at all with journals that speak of the issues which led to the war as being decided by it. War may make it inexpedient to revive them, but the only issue it ever does or can decide is, on which side is, for the time, the superior force. We deny not the right of the people to resist the prince who makes himself a tyrant, if declared to be such and judicially deposed by the competent authority, but we do deny their right, for any cause whatever, to conspire against or to resist the legitimate government in the legal exercise of its constitutional powers. We recognize the sovereignty of the people in the sense that, if a case occurs in which they are without any government, they have the right, in concert with the spiritual power, to institute or reconstitute government in such way and in such form as they judge wisest and best; but we utterly deny that they remain sovereign, otherwise than in the government, when once they have constituted it, or that the government, when constituted, holds from them and is responsible to their will outside of the constitution; for that would make the government a mere agent of the people and revocable at their will, which is tantamount to no government at all. The doctrine of the demagogues and their journals we are not able to accept; it deprives the people collectively of all government, and leaves individuals and minorities no government to protect and defend them from the ungoverned will and passions of the majority for the time.

We accept and maintain loyally, and to the best of our ability, the constitution of our country as originally understood and intended, not indeed as the best constitution for every people, but because it is the best for us, and, above all, because it is for us the law. In itself considered, there is no necessary discord between it and Catholicity, but as it is interpreted by the liberal and sectarian journals, that are doing their best to revolutionize it, and is beginning to be interpreted by no small portion of the American people, or as interpreted by the Protestant principle, so widely diffused among us, and in the sense of European liberalism or Jacobinism, we do not accept it, or hold it to be any government at all, or as capable of performing any of the proper functions of government; and if it continues to be interpreted by the revolutionary principle of Protestantism, it is sure to fail--to lose itself either in the supremacy of the mob or in military despotism--and doom us, like unhappy France, to alternate between them, with the mob uppermost to-day, and the despot to-morrow. Protestantism, like the heathen barbarisms which Catholicity subdued, lacks the element of order, because it rejects authority, and is necessarily incompetent to maintain real liberty or civilized society. Hence it is we so often say, that if the American Republic is to be sustained and preserved at all, it must be by the rejection of the principle of the Reformation, and the acceptance of the Catholic principle by the American people. Protestantism can preserve neither liberty from running into license or lawlessness, nor authority from running into despotism.

If Dr. Krauth wants conservatism without immobility, and progress without revolution or radicalism, as it seems he does, he must cease to look for what he wants in the Lutheran, Calvinistic, Anglican, or any other Protestant reformation, and turn his thoughts and his hopes to that church which converted pagan Rome, christianized and civilized his own barbarian ancestors, founded the Christendom of the middle ages, and labored so assiduously, unweariedly, perseveringly, and successfully to save souls, and to advance civilization and the interests of human society, from the conversion of the pagan Franks in the fifth century down to the beginning of the sixteenth century, and which still survives and teaches and governs, in spite of all the effort of reformers, revolutionists, men, and devils to cover her with disgrace, to belie her character, and to sweep her from the face of the earth. She not only converted the pagan barbarians, but she recovered even the barbarian nations and tribes, as the Goths, Vandals, and Burgundians, that had fallen into the Arian heresy, which like all heresy is a compromise between Christianity and heathenism, and even reconverted the Alemanni, Frieslanders, and others who had once embraced the Gospel, but had subsequently returned to their idols and heathen superstitions. God is with her as of old, and lives, teaches, and governs in her as in the beginning; and she is as able to convert the heathen to-day, to reconvert the relapsed, and to recover the heretical, as she was in the days of St. Remi, St. Amand, St. Patrick, St. Austin, St. Columbanus, St. Willebrod, or St. Boniface. She is the kingdom of God, and like him she cannot grow old, decay, or die. Never had her Supreme Pontiff a stronger hold on the consciences, the love and affections of the faithful throughout the world, than he has at this moment, when despoiled of all his temporalities and abandoned by all earthly powers, nor ever were her pastors and prelates more submissive and devoted to their chief. Never did she more fully prove that she is under the protection of God, as his immaculate spouse, than now when held up to the scorn and derision of a heretical and unbelieving world. Dead she is not, but living.

Let our learned Lutheran professor remove the film from his eyes, and look at her in her simple grandeur, her unadorned majesty, and see how mean and contemptible, compared with her, are all the so-called churches, sects, and combinations arrayed against her, spitting blasphemy at her, and in their satanic malice trying to sully her purity or dim the glory that crowns her. Say what you will, Protestantism is a petty affair, and it is one of the mysteries of this life how a man of the learning, intelligence, apparent sincerity, and good sense of Dr. Krauth can write an octavo volume of eight hundred closely printed pages in defence of the Protestant Reformation.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1871, by REV. I. T. HECKER, in the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington, D. C.

[159] _The Conservative Reformation and its Theology; as Represented in the Augsburg Confession, and in the History and Literature of the Evangelical Lutheran Church._ By Charles V. Krauth, D.D., Norton Professor of Theology in the Evangelical Lutheran Theological Seminary, and Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy in the University of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co. 1871. 8vo, pp. 800.

GENZANO AND FRASCATI.

What is interesting to visitors in Rome, and indeed in all Italy, is not merely their stay in certain known localities, or their sight-seeing within a certain beaten track; it is also the casual observation of less famous and more intimate scenes, and the residence in less crowded and more attractive, because more peculiar, neighborhoods.