Chapter XIX: Front Matter (19)

We cannot exceed the limits of a notice by adding more extracts or giving the cardinal’s proofs and reasons. We trust our readers will seek for them in the book itself. As there is no one more intelligently and consistently Catholic and Roman in all his ideas than the cardinal, so there is no one who can so well explain and interpret the same to the English-speaking world. He is not only a prince of the Roman Church by his purple, but an intellectual and moral legate of the Holy See, by his wisdom, eloquence, and gentleness of manner, to all men speaking the English language, a sure teacher and guide to all Catholics, whose words they will do well to read and ponder attentively.

Before closing we cannot omit indicating one paper quite different from anything we have before seen from the cardinal’s pen. It is the one on Kirkman’s _Philosophy without Assumptions_, in which the eminent writer shows how much he has studied and how acutely he is able to discuss metaphysical questions. We may remark that this volume has been republished in a very handsome style and form, and we cannot too emphatically recommend it to an extensive circulation. The appendix, containing in Latin and English the late splendid allocution of Pius IX, whose thunder has shaken Europe, adds much to its value. This great document is one of the most sublime utterances which has ever proceeded from the Holy See. St. Peter never had a more worthy successor than Pius IX. He watches by the tomb of the Prince of the Apostles, by God’s command, as the angels watched by the sepulchre of Christ. What better guarantee could we desire that the sovereignty and splendor of the Papacy will come forth in glory from the tomb of St. Peter when the long watch is ended?

BIBLIOTHECA SYMBOLICA ECCLESIÆ UNIVERSALIS. THE CREEDS OF CHRISTENDOM.
With a History and Critical Notes. By Philip Schaff, D.D., LL.D.,
Professor of Biblical Literature in the Union Theological Seminary,
New York. In three volumes. New York: Harper & Brothers. 1877.

In respect to the literary and typographical style of execution, this is a work worthy of commendation. Its intrinsic value for students of theology is chiefly to be found in the contents of the second and third volumes, where the author has collected the principal symbolical documents of the Catholic Church, both ancient and modern, of the Orthodox Orientals, and of the Protestant denominations classed under the generic term “Evangelical.” The original text is given, with English translations of documents from other languages. Among these documents, those appertaining to the Eastern Christians have a special interest and importance, because more rare and not so easily obtained as the others. As a book of reference, therefore, the _Bibliotheca Symbolica_ deserves a place in every Catholic theological library. The author is a scholar of extensive erudition, and a very painstaking, accurate compiler, after the manner of the Germans, and he has fulfilled a laborious and serviceable task in gathering together and editing with so much thoroughness and accuracy the collection of authentic documents contained in these two bulky volumes, so well arranged and clearly printed as to make them most convenient and easy for reading or reference.

The first volume is not without some value as a historical account of the origin and formation of the symbolical documents contained in the other parts of the work, especially so far as relates to those emanating from Orientals and Protestants. One important service his scholarly accuracy has rendered to the cause of truth deserves to be particularly noted—the distinct light in which he has placed the agreement of the orthodox confessions of the East with the doctrine of the Catholic Church, _exceptis excipiendis_, and their diversity from the specific doctrines of Protestantism.

In his treatment of topics relating to the Catholic Church the partisan polemic appears, as we might expect. The author professes to follow the maxim that “honest and earnest controversy, conducted in a Christian and catholic spirit, promotes true and lasting union. Polemics looks to irenics—the aim of war is peace.” He expresses the wish to promote by his work “a better understanding among the churches of Christ.” He declares his opinion that “the divisions of Christendom bring to light the various aspects and phases of revealed truth, and will be overruled at last for a deeper and richer harmony of which Christ is the key-note” (preface). This sounds very well in general terms; yet when the author descends to particulars and practical questions, it is evident that whatever meaning his terms have is only equivalent to the truism that increase of knowledge is favorable to the cause of truth alone, and that the prevalence of truth over error through genuine science, sincere conviction, and conscientious obedience to known truth produces peace, harmony, and charity by uniting the minds of men in one faith. “Irenics,” in any proper sense, can refer only to parties who agree in substantials, but, through mutual or one-sided misunderstanding, are not aware of it, or to those who are in controversy about matters which do not really break unity of essential doctrine between the contending sides, but are carried on with too little moderation and candor by vehement disputants. There is no “irenics” in matters essential and obligatory between the right side and the wrong side, except the irenics of combat, and no peace except that which follows the victory of the one over the other. That an advocate of the truth of Christ should be honest and candid in his argumentation against error, and charitable toward the persons whose errors he attacks, is of course indisputable. Practically, when Dr. Schaff finds himself in face of the Roman Church, he is obliged to recognize that this view of the case is the only one possible. If the Catholic hierarchy, and all the heads or representatives of the different bodies of the so-called orthodox Christians, would consent to meet together and adopt a confession in which all should agree as embracing the essentials of Christianity, with a law and order which all should likewise consent to establish, a visionary believer in progress and the church of the future might with some plausibility argue that the evolution of a higher form of Christianity would be the result. But Dr. Schaff’s historical mind is too much accustomed to look at facts to be deluded by such a chimera. “The exclusiveness and anti-Christian pretensions of the Papacy, especially since it claims infallibility for its visible head, make it impossible for any church to live with it on terms of equality and sincere friendship.” We suppose that the view of these pretensions which claims for them a divine origin and sanction, and that which considers them “anti-Christian,” can hardly be called “various aspects and phases of revealed truth.” The “exclusiveness” of the claims is a point in which we both take the same view. The ecclesiastical friendship to which the doctor alludes he justly regards and proclaims an impossibility. While the Roman Church, and any other church not in her obedience, co-exist, there must be polemics. Irenics can succeed only when the Roman Church abdicates her supremacy, or any other church or churches, refusing submission to it, yield to her claims. The practical issue, therefore, is reduced to this: the old and long-standing controversy between Rome and Protestantism. Dr. Schaff comes forward as a champion of Protestantism and an assailant of what he is too wary to call by its legitimate name of Catholicism, and therefore nicknames after the manner of his predecessors in past ages, calling it “Romanism” and “Vatican Romanism.”

We agree, then, on both sides, that the polemics and controversy must be carried on. Yet, on the part of Dr. Schaff and those who fight with him, it appears that a considerable part of the ground we have been heretofore contending for is evacuated and given up to our possession. “And yet we should never forget the difference between Popery and Catholicism.” The issues, it appears, are a good deal narrowed, and that will facilitate our coming to close quarters and to decisive, polemical discussion, which we desire above all things. Dr. Schaff continues: “nor between the system and its followers. It becomes Protestantism, as the higher form of Christianity, to be liberal and tolerant even toward intolerant Romanism” (p. 209). Probably the collective terms in this clause are used distributively, as required to make it agree with the preceding sentence. This is graceful and dignified in Dr. Schaff. Our exclusiveness is indeed something hard to bear; we freely admit it. Our apology for it is that we are acting under orders from above and have no discretionary powers. Our own personal and human feelings would incline us to open the doors of heaven to all mankind indiscriminately, and give all those who die in the state of sin a purgatory of infallible efficacy to make them holy and fit for everlasting beatitude. Yet as we have not the keys of heaven, which were given to St. Peter with strict orders to shut as well as to open its gates, we can do nothing for the salvation of our dear friends and fellow-men, except to persuade them to take the king’s highway to the gate of the celestial city, and not follow the example of green-headed Ignorance in the _Pilgrim’s Progress_, who came by a by-road to the gate, and, on being asked by the Shining Ones for his certificate, “fumbled in his bosom and found none.”

We consider that we have not only the higher but the only genuine form of Christianity. Dr. Schaff thinks Protestantism is the higher form simply, and, therefore, that Protestants ought to be tolerant of our intolerance. This is the most dignified attitude he could assume. On our part, we agree with Ozanam that, in a certain sense, we ought to be tolerant of error—_i.e._, in the concrete, subjective sense, equivalent to tolerant of those who are in error, charitable, and, to those especially who are themselves honorable and courteous in their warfare, respectful.

Dr. Schaff himself evidently intends to act upon his own principles. Toward individuals whom he mentions he is careful to observe the rules of courtesy. In respect to his historical and polemical statements and arguments on Catholic matters in his first volume, we presume he speaks according to his opinion and belief; and if that were correct, his strong expressions would be justifiable, even though they might sometimes, on the score of rhetoric and good taste, lie open to criticism. To call the Papacy “a colossal lie” is not very elegant or even forcible, and is irreconcilable with the author’s own statements regarding mediæval Catholicism, as well as with the views of history presented by such men as Leo and other enlightened Protestants. All the efforts of the Jesuits to bring back schismatics to their former obedience to the Holy See are called “intrigues.” The author relies a great deal on strong language, vehement assertion, and a vague style of depreciation of the mental and moral attitude of Catholics, which is not sustained by reasoning, and, in our view, indicates the presence of much prejudice, as well as a want of adequate knowledge and consideration. Men who have a great aptitude for history and what may be called book-knowledge, among whom Dr. Döllinger is a notable instance, frequently fail signally in treating of matters where logic, philosophy, and accurate theology are required. Dr. Schaff seems out of his proper line when he leaves his purely literary work and begins to reason. His polemical argument against infallibility and the Immaculate Conception is a pretty good _résumé_ of what has been said by others on that side, and of what can be said. It is all to be found in Catholic theologies, under the head of objections, and has all been answered many times over. The author adds nothing to his own cause by his own reasoning, and requires no special confutation. On the contrary, he weakens his cause and detracts from its plausibility by the futility of his assertions. We will cite one instance of this as an example. Speaking of the Immaculate Conception, he says: “This extraordinary dogma lifts the Virgin Mary out of the fallen and redeemed race of Adam, and _places her on a par with the Saviour_. For, if she is really free from all hereditary as well as actual sin and guilt, she is above the need of redemption. Repentance, forgiveness, regeneration, conversion, sanctification are as inapplicable to her as to Christ himself” (p. 111). This is one of the most illogical sentences we have ever met with. Let it be given, though not conceded as true, that the dogma places the Virgin Mary above the need of redemption. The illusion that she is therefore placed _on a par with the Saviour_ is illogical and false. Adam, before the fall, was above the need of redemption, and the angels are above it. Are they _on a par with the Saviour_? He is God, they are creatures. Whatever he possesses, even in his humanity, he has by intrinsic, personal right; they possess nothing except by a free gift. Moreover, it would not follow that regeneration would be as inapplicable to her as to Christ himself. By the hypostatic union the human nature of Christ shares with the divine nature the relation of strict and proper filiation toward the Father, for he is the natural and only-begotten Son of God. But angels and men are only made sons by adoption, and by a supernatural grace which in men is properly called regeneration, because the human generation precedes, which merely gives them human nature. The Virgin Mary received only her human nature by her natural generation, and therefore needed to be born of God by spiritual grace to make her a child of God, and a partaker with Christ in that special relation to the Father which belonged to him as man by virtue of his divine personality. Moreover, sanctification is not inapplicable even to Christ, whose soul and body were made holy by the indwelling Spirit, and therefore, _à fortiori_, not to Mary, on the hypothesis that she needed no redemption. Repentance, forgiveness, conversion, are indeed inapplicable to her. They are, likewise, inapplicable to the angels, were so to Adam and Eve before the fall, and would have been so to their posterity, if the state of original justice had continued, unless they sinned personally and were capable of restoration to grace.

The freedom from original sin does not, however, imply that the Virgin Mary was above the need of redemption. The covenant of the first Adam was abolished, and therefore no right to grace could be transmitted from him to his descendant, the Virgin Mary. The attainder by which he and all his descendants were excluded from the privileges of children and the inheritance of the kingdom of heaven was reversed only by the redemption. If Christ had not redeemed mankind from the fall, the kingdom of heaven could not have been open to Mary. She owes, therefore, all her privileges as a child of God and an inheritor of the kingdom of heaven to the redemption. Some of these are special and peculiar to herself, and one of these special privileges is that she was prevented from incurring the guilt of original sin by receiving sanctifying grace simultaneously with her conception and the creation of her soul. She was, therefore, redeemed in a more sublime mode than others, and is more indebted to the cross and Passion of Christ and the free grace of God than any other human being, and not at all on a par with Christ, who is indebted to no one but himself. Let this suffice in respect to the polemics of Dr. Schaff’s work. The reunion of all who profess Christianity on a new basis is as far off as ever—as remote as the discovery of a way of transit to the fixed stars. The learned doctor has prepared a valuable collection of documents useful to the student, but he has not proposed any substitute for the faith and law of the Catholic Church which is likely to supplant them, or even to prove acceptable to any large number of Christians under any name. Nevertheless, we regard amicably both himself and his work, and we are confident that it will have the good effect of promoting a wider and more catholic range of investigation among Protestant students of theology.

THE STANDARD ARITHMETIC, FOR SCHOOLS OF ALL GRADES AND FOR BUSINESS
PURPOSES. No. 1. By James E. Ryan. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society Co.

Important changes have been made in arithmetical text-books within the last twenty years. Each new series of books presented a special claim for patronage. One contained several chapters previously omitted; another divided the subject into mental and written arithmetic; others followed the inductive to the exclusion of the analytic method. Each series may have been an improvement in some respects; but the gain has been theoretic and artistic rather than practical. The result has been to separate oral from written arithmetic; to increase the average number of books in a series to five; and to load the elementary works with intricate detail and useless puzzles.

As a rule, a child spends an hour a day of school-life in the study of arithmetic. This amount of time should suffice to teach the arithmetical processes necessary in ordinary business. Yet the majority of pupils never advance beyond the ground rules. This results from making the text-book the guide. So general is this custom that few teachers desire to run the risk of changing it, and the pupil is compelled to leave school before fractions have been reached. He carries with him the belief that there are two kinds of arithmetic, one mental, the other written; and while he may be able to explain an oral example, he can simply tell how the written example is done. The small number of pupils who reach the higher branches suffer from an overdose of commercial economy which can only be mastered when they come face to face with business affairs.

The text-books prepared by Mr. James E. Ryan afford a remedy for most of these defects. The elementary course contains all that can be taught to the mass of pupils. It includes the fundamental rules, fractions, decimals, denominate numbers, and percentage. Each division contains oral and written work, the same analysis being used in both cases. The mode of treatment is excellent. The book includes no more practice work than is absolutely necessary to secure facility and accuracy in calculation, while the analysis of each step is so clear that any pupil can easily comprehend it.

The chapters treating of fractions are cleared of obscure subdivisions, thereby dispensing with a mass of unnecessary rules for special cases. In addition to this improvement the rules for common and decimal fractions are made to correspond. Denominate numbers are treated with marked ability. Obsolete weights and measures are excluded. The various tables of the metric system are introduced in connection with the English standards.

A close examination of Mr. Ryan’s treatise will convince the most exacting teacher that it is an excellent arithmetic.

THE STANDARD ARITHMETIC, FOR SCHOOLS OF ALL GRADES AND FOR BUSINESS
PURPOSES. No. 2. By James E. Ryan. New York: The Catholic Publication
Society Co., 9 Barclay St.

This volume begins with simple numbers and carries the pupil through the commercial rules. The amount of arithmetical knowledge requisite for business purposes has grown with the enormous growth of insurance, annuities, etc., so that it has become necessary to define the limits of school instruction. The author includes percentage, interest, discount, partial payments, exchange, profit and loss, commission or brokerage, insurance, duties, taxes, equation of payments, proportion, involution, evolution, mensuration, and progression in the regular course. The discussion of the equation, mechanics, specific gravity, builders’ measurements, gauging, alligation, life insurance, annuities, stocks and bonds, freights and storage, etc., is reserved for the appendix.

In the advanced portions of the work analysis and synthesis, or induction, as it is now called, are combined. The treatment of each subdivision is so unique that it is hardly fair to single out one for special praise. Equation of payments, however, is made somewhat conspicuous by the amount of condensation it has undergone. In six pages we obtain the information which is usually spread over twenty. It is safe to say that the best scholars leave school without a clear comprehension of this subject, partly because of the senseless rules laid down, but chiefly because of the number of them. The chapter on mensuration is remarkable. By it the author proves that a student may obtain all the knowledge of mensuration requisite for surveying without studying geometry.

Oral and written exercises are given under every rule, and the examples are so shaped as to test the pupil’s knowledge of principles. The appendix contains a mass of important work of the highest value to students qualifying themselves for active business. For this reason the volume is well adapted to the wants of high-schools and academies.

RECUEIL DE LECTURES, A L’USAGE DES ECOLES. Par une Sœur de St. Joseph.
New York: The Catholic Publication Society Co. 1877.

This is a very useful addition to the Catholic Publication Society’s excellent series of school literature. There is probably no living language from which so much pleasure and profit can be derived as the French. Even if a person does not speak it with ease and fluency, it requires no vast amount of study to be able to read it as readily as one’s native tongue. The first requisite towards a knowledge of French is a good text-book and grammar. The little volume before us answers admirably the first of these requirements. It is interesting, clear, and constructed on an intelligent plan. The instructions for pronunciation at the beginning are short but excellent, and likely to rest in the memory. The exercises begin in a very simple manner. They are always sensible, and do not confuse words and phrases, and jumble them together after the Ollendorff plan, although they effect the same end, so far as the interchange of words, phrases, and ideas goes. As the lessons proceed, they gradually increase in difficulty, as they do in interest, the simpler exercises giving place to extracts from the best French authors.

We think the book in every way well adapted for youthful students of French who have a teacher.

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THE

CATHOLIC WORLD.

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VOL. XXVI., No. 153.—DECEMBER, 1877.

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MR. FROUDE ON THE “REVIVAL OF ROMANISM.”[66]

“Why is Protestantism standing still while Rome is advancing? Why does
Rome count her converts from among the evangelicals by tens, while
she loses to them, but here and there, an exceptional and unimportant
unit?” (“Revival of Romanism,” sect. i. p. 95).

These questions, asked by Mr. Froude in his latest-published volume, are not new. They have been asked by many any time within the last quarter of a century. They are being asked with more urgency, if not more alarm, every day. They are questions worthy of an answer, if an answer can be given to them; worthy, certainly, of all consideration from serious-minded men. For, if founded in fact, they point towards a reversal of the three centuries of Protestant history; to the failure of Protestantism as a satisfactory system of belief; and, if not to a general return of Protestant nations to the Catholic Church, at least to the speedy and final approach to what keen writers and observers have long seen coming—to wit, the general recognition that between Catholicity and infidelity there stands no debatable ground for Christian men.

The suspicion has been gradually growing up in the Protestant thinking world—a suspicion that is fast hardening into a certainty—that Catholicity is advancing with giant strides, while Protestantism is surely, if sullenly, receding; worse still, that in spite of all Protestantism can do, in the pulpit, in the press, in the government, in the world at large, Catholicity is bound to advance, and the process of damming it up and shutting it off seems hopeless. “How to compete with the aggressions of Romanism” was, in various forms, one of the chief subjects of debate before the Evangelical Alliance assembled a few years back in this city. A similar subject excited the recent Pan-Presbyterian assembly at Glasgow. Indeed, it is safe to say that, wherever a Protestant assembly of any kind meets for amicable consultation and discussion, that everlasting skeleton in the closet, “Romanism,” will be exposed to view to remind the pleasant gentlemen assembled that they are doomed to die.

This is only a sign of the times. The times were, half a century ago, when such a sign was not visible; when Catholicity, as a real, living, active power, was, so far as Protestant countries were concerned, dead and damned beyond hope of redemption. There was a horror at the very mention of the name of Rome; a universal Protestant shudder at the thought of the pope; but Rome and the pope were things exploded with the Gunpowder Plot and other dark horrors of a by-gone day. In England the chief vestige of Catholicity and Catholic memories left showed itself in the annual celebration of Guy Fawkes’ day and the loyal burning of the pope in effigy.

To-day how changed is the position of Catholicity, not in England only, but in all English-speaking peoples; not in all English-speaking peoples only, but throughout the civilized world! Catholicity has experienced a vast “revival,” to use Mr. Froude’s expression; and to any one who has read Mr. Froude it will be easy to imagine how that writer would handle such a theme. Mr. Froude dislikes many things in this world, but of all things he dislikes Catholicity. It is hard for him to write calmly on any subject; on this particular subject he raves, even if he raves eloquently. His admirers, among whom for many things—particularly for the good service his peculiarly violent temper has done the Catholic cause—we beg to be numbered, will scarcely accuse him of that passionless tone that is supposed to belong to blindfolded and even-balanced justice. It is not passing beyond the bounds of fair criticism, but simply stating what ought now to be a sufficiently-established fact, to say that whenever Catholicity or anything belonging to it crosses Mr. Froude’s vision that vision is seared; the man is at once attacked by a species of literary insanity—a _Popomania_, so to say—that renders him incapable of cool judgment, and leads him to play havoc with all the instincts of good sense, the laws of logic, the impulses of good nature, and, we are sorry to add, the rules of honesty. Indeed, no man better than he affords an example of the remark of a keen French writer that “it is the happiness and the glory of Catholicity to be always served by its adversaries; by those who do not believe in it; ay, by those who pursue it with the bitterest animosity.”[67]

These, however, are only so many assertions on our part. Mr. Froude will afford us ample opportunity of justifying them.

We have no desire to be unjust to Mr. Froude. Indeed, he is so unjust to himself that an avowed enemy could wish for no better weapons of attack than those supplied by Mr. Froude against himself. It is singularly true that Mr. Froude is generally the best refutation of Mr. Froude. Still, to a man of his way of thinking, the questions set at the head of this article, which he so boldly puts and honestly attempts to face, must be in the last degree not only exasperating but seriously alarming. To a man who can see nothing more fatal in this world than Catholicity, the confessed advance of Catholicity, in face of, in spite of, and over all obstacles, must seem like the spread of a pestilence of the deadliest kind—a mental and moral pestilence: a darkness of the understanding, a deadening of the heart, a numbing of all man’s fine, free, and ennobling qualities, a wilful renouncing of

“The mighty thoughts that make us men.”

Of course we laugh at so preposterous an idea; but Mr. Froude has persuaded himself that Catholicity is all this, and we are trying our best to regard him honestly and as being honest. Nor does he stand alone in his persuasion. There are many who go with him in his estimate of Catholicity, and we have them in view quite as much as he in whatever we may have to say. And the first thing we have to say is this: Is there really a “revival of Romanism”? In what and where is it reviving? Of course we reject the term Romanism, as applied to Catholicity. Still, a wilful man may as well have his way, especially where his wilfulness costs nothing. We have a more important controversy with Mr. Froude than a quarrel over names and a haggling over words. If Romanists we must be from his point of view, why Romanists, in the name of peace, let us be, to the extent at least of an article. Some statisticians estimate us at 200,000,000. We can afford to be called names once in a while.

Surely Mr. Froude is mistaken. If it be true, as a very high authority[68] assured us a few years ago, that “in the kingdom of this world the state has dominion and precedence,” Catholicity, as a whole, fares very badly in the kingdom of this world, however high it may rank in the next. And strange as it may appear to Mr. Froude and to Prince Bismarck, Catholics have a singular liking for their own place in this world; they lay claim to at least as lawful a share of the things of this world as do Protestants; and they utterly and stubbornly refuse to live on sufferance. The attempt to make Catholics exist on sufferance, go a-begging for their lives, so to say, and eat and drink, and work and sleep, and play and pray by the gracious favor of certain princes of this world, occasions all the trouble between Catholics and the states governed by such princes. So when a “revival of Romanism” is talked about we naturally look to see how Catholics stand in the world; and the look is not encouraging.

The “kingdoms of this world” are all, or mostly all, dead-set against Catholicity. The Catholic Church is proscribed in Germany; proscribed in Russia; tied down in Austria and Italy; hounded in Switzerland; vexed and tormented in Spain and the states of South America. Looked at with the eyes of ordinary common sense, and from a merely worldly standipoint, the Catholic Church, under these governments, which are so strong and powerful, and play so large and important a part in the world, is in about as bad a condition as its worst wisher could desire. By the governments mentioned, with some inequality in the degree of severity, Catholicity is regarded and treated as at once a secret and an open foe, whom it requires every device and strain of the law and the resources of government to put down. What Emerson, in one of his latest and best utterances, has said of the assertion of “moral sentiment” is here exactly true of Catholicity: “Cities go against it; the college goes against it; the courts snatch at any precedent, at any vicious forms of law to rule it out; legislatures listen with appetite to declamations against it, and vote it down. Every new assertion of the right surprises us, like a man joining the church, and we hardly dare believe he is in earnest.”[69]

The press is not only against it of its own accord, but is suborned to be against it. Its supreme Pastor has literally scarcely a roof to cover him in the states that through almost all the centuries of the Christian era belonged to the church, and such a roof as he has hangs on the word of a royal[70] robber, who, in turn, holds what he has and what he has so ill-gotten by the slenderest of tenures—the breath of a mob. The city that witnessed the divinization of paganism, its awful and just overthrow, the long agony of the Catacombs, the building up of Christendom on the pagan ruins, the glories of the “ages of faith,” is to-day one of the chief centres of the new paganism, which has for its deity nihilism. In all the world to-day no royal crusader is to be found to draw his sword for Christ and Christ’s cross. The race of Charles Martel, of Pepin, of Charlemagne, of Pelayo, of Godfrey de Bouillon, of St. Louis of France, of Scanderbeg, of Sobieski, of Don Juan of Austria, the race of heroes whose swords wrought miracles at Poitiers, at Jerusalem, at Acre, at Rhodes, at Malta, at Vienna, at Lepanto, seems to have died out, though a foe as terrible to Christianity as was ever the old pagan North and the Moslem South and East besieges and threatens now the citadel of the city of God. It is, perhaps, characteristic of the age that the only one to assume the title of royal champion of the cross should be the present Russian emperor. It is, perhaps, equally characteristic of the wicked assumption that it should have met with so fearful and unexpected a response at the hands of the wretched remnant of a power that true Christianity had crippled, and would have smote to the dust had not the division of Christendom lent allies from within the camp to the ancient foe. Does it not look like a just retribution?

The Catholic Church stands between two revolutions—the revolution from above and the revolution from below. Both alike have decreed its death. The Herods, the Pilates, and the rabble, foes in all else, are friends in this. _Delenda est Roma Catholica!_

This is no fancy picture. We are not speaking now of the church in herself—that consideration will come later—but of the church as she stands towards governments, or rather as they stand towards her. Even where some comparative freedom is allowed her it is doled out gingerly and grudgingly, or given under silent or open protest. The erection of a free Catholic university in France—that is, a university independent of the government: a government accused, too, of “clericalism”—is the signal for the French “republicans,” as writers on this side of the water insist on calling them, to be up in arms. Men laugh to-day at the English Ecclesiastical Titles Act and the turmoil created by it. Yet it moved liberal England in 1850 till the country rocked with the tumult of it. Its author was a liberal leader. He is still living, we believe, though it is hard to think of Earl Russell living and not using his well-remembered voice. At all events he was living a few years ago, and we heard him then—liberal as ever. He had promised to preside at a meeting at Exeter Hall, London, to express sympathy with Prince Bismarck and the German government in their contest with the Catholic Church—a contest that we shall have occasion to refer to in another place. At the last moment Earl Russell “caught a bad cold” and could not appear, but his place as chief speaker was nobly taken—by whom? By a free American citizen, the Rev. Joseph P. Thompson, D.D., formerly of the Church of the Tabernacle in this city; and his closing advice to Prince Bismarck—an advice thrice repeated—was to “stamp out” Catholicity.

These individual instances are only straws, but straws that betoken a great deal of wind somewhere. Such liberty as the Catholic Church has is only conceded to it when and where the very character and stability of the governments necessitate its concession. Under such circumstances, then, does it not sound strange and startling to be alarmed at a “revival of Romanism”?

So much for the dark side of the picture; and there is no denying that it is dark indeed. There is light, however, and the light is very strong and lovely. If the race of royal men and heroes whose swords were ever ready to be drawn in the cause of Christ seems to have quite died out, the race of true Catholics has not died with them. Royalty, at its best even, was generally and almost necessarily a treacherous ally to the church. The kings have gone from the church, but the people remain. In face of this universal, protracted, bitter, and resolute opposition to Catholicity on the part of so many great states, we find the church, as in the days of the apostles, adding daily to her number “those that should be saved.” Here, too, we find, as in all Christian history, the greatest and sharpest contrasts—those contrasts that it baffles human ingenuity to explain. The Catholic Church is to-day strongest where, according to human calculation, she ought to be weakest, and weakest where she ought to be strongest. She flourishes best in what three centuries of almost total estrangement have made to her foreign soil. This it is that so puzzles Mr. Froude.

“The proverb which says that nothing is certain but the
unforeseen was never better verified than in the resurrection,
as it were out of the grave, during the last forty years of the
Roman Catholic religion. In my own boyhood it hung about some
few ancient English families like a ghost of the past. They
preserved their creed as an heirloom which tradition rather than
conviction made sacred to them. A convert from Protestantism to
Popery would have been as great a monster as a convert to
Buddhism or Odin worship. ‘Believe in the Pope!’ said Dr.
Arnold. ‘I should as soon believe in Jupiter’” (p. 93).

This is undoubtedly, in the main, a true picture of the result of three centuries of apostasy in England. As for Dr. Arnold, that learned gentleman probably understated his belief. He would, if anything, much sooner have believed in Jupiter than in the Pope. It would be interesting to know what he thought of, say, George IV., as the supreme head of the church of which Dr. Arnold was so distinguished an ornament, or of Queen Victoria. He is as good an example as any of modern refined and intellectual paganism, and his distinguished son is but the natural outcome of the influence of such a man’s character and teachings, as in another way was John Stuart Mill of _his_ father.

“The singular change which we have witnessed and are still witnessing,” pursues Mr. Froude, “is not due to freshly-discovered evidence of the truth of what had been abandoned as superstition” (p. 93). In this, of course, we quite agree with Mr. Froude, though, perhaps, not exactly in the manner he would wish. The truth is the same to-day as it ever was. Superstition is the same to-day as it ever was. Without going into the matter very deeply just here, we merely hint that Mr. Froude’s “singular change” may not be quite so singular as he imagines. The change to which he alludes is the return of a great body of the English-speaking people to or towards what for three centuries England and England’s colonies had been educated to consider superstition, darkness, idolatry even. Certainly Rome has not changed within this period, as it will be seen Mr. Froude, with passionate vehemence, insists. We only throw out the hint, then, that possibly what was abandoned as superstition turns out on closer inspection not to have been superstition at all. Truth may be slow in coming, but once come it is very hard to close one’s eyes to it. For men who have eyes there is no exercise so healthy and manful as honestly to face a great difficulty. The modern keen spirit of investigation we are far from considering an unmixed evil, if, indeed, it be an evil at all. The closest inquiry is compatible with the firmest and most whole-hearted faith. The objections of sceptics to the doctrines of the church are, when not borrowed from the objections of the doctors of the church, puny in comparison with them. On men, however, who do not believe at all, the spirit of inquiry, when united to earnestness of purpose, is working good. Many nowadays, who have every whit as profound a distrust of Catholicity as Mr. Froude, are not content with taking for granted all that they have been taught to believe of Catholics and Catholicity. They go to Rome; walk about in it, read it, study it, much as they would enter upon the investigation of a disputed question in science; and, having examined to their hearts’ content, many of them stay in Rome, while most come back with at least respect for what they formerly detested and abhorred.

It is impossible even to mention a few of the names of distinguished Catholics within the century, many of them converts, and not be struck by their mental and moral eminence. The world cannot afford to sneer at men like Görres, Count von Stolberg, Frederic Schlegel, Hürter, Ozanam, Lacordaire, Montalembert, Louis Veuillot, Balmez, O’Connell, Brownson, Ives, Anderson, Bayley, Wiseman, Newman, Manning, Faber, Ward, Marshall, Allies, Mivart, and a host of others almost equally eminent, who were born leaders of men or of thought, who came from many lands, who filled every kind of position, and who, led by many different lights, traversing many stormy and dark and difficult ways, came at last to Rome, to rest there to the end as loyal and faithful children of the church. It is men like these who ennoble the human race and who leave a rich legacy of thought and act to all peoples and to all time. To say that such men, most of whom came from without, went deliberately over to the old “superstition” because it was superstition will not do. They found what they had esteemed darkness to be light.

This modern spirit of investigation has done and is doing another great service to the Catholic cause: it is helping to unravel the tangled skein of history, to explore dark places and drag buried truth to light. Lingard’s _History of England_, for instance, really worked, or more properly began, a revolution in English thought—a revolution which, unconsciously, Scott’s novels and poems helped greatly to popularize. The work set on foot by Lingard and the method adopted have been well followed up by others, and by non-Catholics. Men came to try and look at things dispassionately and fairly. The result was that certain rooted English opinions and prejudices began slowly to give way. The “glorious Reformation,” for instance, and the “great Reformers” in England appeared on closer inspection to be neither quite so “glorious” nor quite so “great” as before. It requires very exceptional mental, not to say moral, courage nowadays to present Henry VIII. as a reformer of religion, or “good Queen Bess” as really good, or as one whose “lordly nature was the pride of all true-hearted Englishmen.”[71] And like in character to the leaders were those who went with them in their measures of reform. The Reformation itself has come to be regarded by all intelligent minds, whatever be their estimate of Catholicity, as at least not an unmixed good. “The religious reform,” says Guizot,[72] “which was the revolution of the sixteenth century has already been submitted to the test of time, and of great social and intellectual perils. It brought with it much suffering to the human race, it gave rise to great errors and great crimes, and was developed amidst cruel wars and the most deplorable troubles and disturbances. These facts, which we learn both from its partisans and opponents, cannot be contested, and they form the account which history lays to the charge of the event.” The constant revelations coming to light through the publication of secret papers and such like make it perfectly plain that reform, to have been at all effectual, should have begun with the “Reformers” themselves. As an evidence of how thoroughly the sham and rottenness of the Reformation have been exposed, we find Sanders’ much-derided _Rise and Growth of the Anglican Schism_ now accepted on all sides as only too true.

Certain it is that a great idol of English Protestantism, if not quite overthrown, has been very much battered and bruised of late by iconoclasts who in other days would have knelt and worshipped before it. Protestant England is built on the Protestant Reformation; but if that turns out to have been on its religious side so very bad an affair, what becomes of those who pinned their faith to it? That is a thought that is working in men’s minds, and working good. That reform was needed in the church and kingdom of England prior to the Reformation no man will dispute. But real reformation should not be a sweeping out of one devil to introduce seven more unclean.

While the truth of history was thus slowly forcing its way out, there came a sudden shock to the mind of the English people—a shock so severe and stunning in its first effects as almost to lead to a reaction and a turning again into the old ruts. This was the deliberate desertion of all pretensions to alliance with the early church by some of the leaders—“the ablest” Mr. Froude styles them—of the Tractarian movement. These became converts to the Catholic faith, and, in the slang of the day, “went over to Rome.”

The falling away of these men from the Anglican Church can only be likened to a revolution, a yielding of some buttress of the British Constitution, which was thought to be as impregnable, as solid, as lasting as England itself. And yet “the intellect which saw the falsehood of the papal pretensions in the sixteenth century sees it only more clearly in the nineteenth,” says Mr. Froude. Possibly enough; a distinction, however, is to be drawn at “intellect.”

“More than ever the assumptions of the Holy See are perceived to rest on error or on fraud. The doctrines of the Catholic Church have gained only increased improbability from the advance of knowledge. Her history, in the light of critical science, is a tissue of legend woven by the devout imagination.”

We have thus far only quoted from the first of fifty-four pages, and already we pause to take breath. Mr. Froude has a peculiar manner of putting things. Such wholesale and sweeping assertions are only to be answered in a volume or by a simple denial. Of course, if the Catholic Church _is_ all that Mr. Froude unhesitatingly sets her down to be, there is an end of the whole question. In that case the “revival of Romanism” is really a grave danger to the world; nay, the very existence of “Romanism”—_i.e._, of Catholicity—is a menace to human society. If the “papal pretensions” are “falsehood”; if “the assumptions of the Holy See” “rest on error and fraud”; if “the doctrines of the Catholic Church have gained only increased improbability from the advance of knowledge”; and if “her history is a tissue of legend,” men who commit themselves to the defence of such a monstrosity set themselves at once beyond the pale of civilization. Were Mr. Froude writing of the Turks or of the Mormons he could scarcely use language more strongly condemnatory. It is probable that, with his generous impulses, he would find “extenuating circumstances,” did he think any needed, for Mormon or Turk, which he could not concede to a Catholic.

When Mr. Froude visited this country recently on his ill-judged and, to him, disastrous mission—for a mission he called it—a critic (in the New York _World_, we believe) described his style, very happily it seemed to us, as feminine. Women are not supposed to sit down to serious questions of wide and general import as calmly and judiciously as men. They argue from the heart rather than the head. They like or they dislike, and woe betide the person or the cause that they dislike! Argument is thrown away on them. They make the most astounding statements with the easiest confidence; they have a happy faculty of inventing facts; they contradict themselves with placid unconsciousness, and everybody else with scornful rigor; for logic they have not so much a disregard as a profound contempt, and take refuge from its assaults in thin-edged satire. This, of course, is only true of them when they are out of their sphere and dealing with matters for which they have a constitutional incapacity.

Mr. Froude, however, is just this. Take any one sentence of those last quoted; look at it calmly; weigh it in the balance, and what do we find? Take this one: “The doctrines of the Catholic Church have gained only increased improbability from the advance of knowledge.” With this confident statement he leaves the matter. There is no doubt, no hesitation, no reservation at all on his part. A reasonable man will ask himself, however: “Is this stupendous statement true?” “The doctrines of the Catholic Church! What! all of them?” Apparently so; Mr. Froude, at least, makes no exception. “I believe in God, the Father Almighty, Creator of heaven and earth,” is the primary article of the Catholic Creed. Has that only “gained increased improbability from the advance of knowledge”? Mr. Froude would hardly say so; indeed, in more places than one he takes occasion to sneer at the modern scientific gospel. Even if Mr. Froude himself said so, his Protestant readers who make any pretensions to Christian faith would scarcely agree with him. Belief in the Trinity of God is another doctrine of the Catholic Church; in Jesus Christ the God-Man, the Redeemer of the world; in the Holy Ghost; in the resurrection of the body and life everlasting. All these are doctrines of the Catholic Church. Does Mr. Froude pretend to say that they have all been swept away by “the advance of knowledge”? If he did not mean to say this—as, indeed, we believe he did not—why did he say it? What are we to think of him? Is this sober writing and a right manner of approaching a serious question? In p. 93 he tells us that “the doctrines of the Catholic Church have gained only increased improbability from the advance of knowledge.” In p. 95 he has already forgotten himself, and tells us that “the Protestant churches are no less witnesses to the immortal nature of the soul, and the awful future which lies before it, _than the Catholic Church_,” which is the strongest kind of concession of what he had just before denied; and forgetting himself again, he tells us in a third place (p. 141) that the Protestant ministers “are at present the _sole_ surviving representatives of true religion in the world.” This is only one of a multitude of instances in which Mr. Froude allows himself to run away with himself. Passion and prejudice narrow his mental vision, until at times it becomes so diseased as to result in moral as well as mental obliquity.

The same thing is observable in the sentence immediately following the passage last quoted: “Liberty, spiritual and political, has thriven in spite of her [the Catholic Church’s] most desperate opposition, till it has invaded every government in the world, and has penetrated at last even the territories of the popes themselves” (p. 94).

Even Mr. Froude cannot absolutely blind himself to facts; at least, he cannot alter them. He may hate the Catholic Church as much as he pleases—and it pleases him to hate her very much—but the fact of his hatred cannot convert the persecution of her children into “liberty, spiritual and political.” Nor are we at all begging the question in giving the name of persecution to the treatment that Catholics are receiving at the hands, if not of “every government of the world,” at least of those previously enumerated. It is the word, as we shall show, applied to the anti-Catholic legislation in Germany by candid Protestants, countrymen of Mr. Froude, too, who hate the church and the Pope just as resolutely as he, but with more apparent show of reason. It is too late in the day to argue about this matter. There is no longer question to an honest mind as to whether the Catholics in Germany are or are not persecuted. There may still be question as to whether or not the persecution be necessary, but there is no dispute as to the fact. To talk of the “spiritual liberty” of Catholics in Germany to-day is simply to talk nonsense. But, lest there should be any possible doubt regarding the matter, it may be as well to freshen men’s memories a little on a point that is intimately connected with our whole subject; for what covers Germany covers every land where the struggle between the Catholic Church and the state is being waged.