clared his adhesion to the Sixth General Council, and, by a perpetual anathema, asserted that he held Honorius accursed. Nay more, this condemnation of Honorius for heretical teaching was formally included in the Roman breviary, and continued there till the beginning of the seventeenth century. The result of all this is either that Pope Honorius was a heretic, or that three (Ecumenical Councils, twenty Popes, and the whole Church, for centuries, have been holding, as an accursed heretic, writings, and a man, that man a Pope, who was perfectly orthodox. Well may Gratry exclaim, “Je dis donc qui'il n'y a plus ici ni science, ni raison, ni discussion, ni attention, ni operation intellectuelle quiconque. C'est un vertige, c'est une ivresse qui ne sait plus discerner les objets."

It seems that in the modern Roman breviary, in the lesson for June 28, the feast of St. Leon, the name of Honorius has disappeared. Upon this omission Père Garnier, in his preface to his edition of the Liber Diurnus, has with quiet irony observed, “Nunc aliter ista, brevius quæ leguntur." Upon another such mutilation of the ancient Roman breviary, Bellarmine has remarked that the change was made by the inspiration of God. Père Gratry replies that, on a similar principle, “On pourra changer l'Evangile ;” and rising up in indignation, thunders forth, “Num quid indiget Deus mendacio vestro ut pro eo loquamini dolos?"

We have no space to follow him throughout the relentless exposure which he makes of the whole system of fraud and imposture on which the Papal system, and notably the doctrines of Papal infallibility and the temporal power, are built up. Much of what he says is familiar to those who have studied the controversy ; but they will find his statements are so lucid and forcible, that even by them they will be read with pleasure; and those who are comparatively unacquainted with the questions broached, will be well nigh bewildered in the mass of delusion which is confuted so ably. We repeat again, whoever reads Dr. Manning's Pastoral without supplementing it with Père Gratry's Letters, deprives himself of a gratification of no ordinary kind.*

What he has thus stated in the most pungent manner, is so well enforced in the Letters of Quirinus, that, at the risk of multiplying extracts, we must add the following testimony :

“To quote a significant phrase in constant use here during this winter, "the dogma must conquer history. A contest has arisen, 'not of dogma but of a theological opinion against history, that is against truth ; the end sanctifies the means. It was held allowable

* Père Gratry's Letters have been translated into English, and published by Hayes.

in order to save the Church and for the interest of souls to commit what would in any other case have been acknowledged to be sin. Not only was history falsified, but the rules of Christian morality were no longer held applicable where the credit of the hierarchy was at stake. The very sense of truth and error, right and wrong,-in a word, the conscience,—was thrown into confusion. Thus, e.g., when Pius V. demanded that the Huguenot prisoners should be pat to death, he did right, for he was Pope, and a saint to boot. Since Charles Borromeo approved the murdering of Protestants by private persons, it is better to approve it than to call his canonization in question. Or one moral aberration is got rid of by another. Many of the leading Catholic writers of this century deny that Gregory XIII. approved the massacre of St. Bartholomew, or that heretics have ever been put to death at Rome.

“ This spirit, which falsifies bistory and corrupts morals, is the crying sin of modern Catholicism.” (Quirinus, pp. 443, 414.)

We have left ourselves too little space to notice adequately the remaining work upon our list, “L'Histoire Politique des Papes.” It is a very useful, well written volume, on the point on which it treats, by an author whose writings have been recently attracting much attention in France. It shows, in a very marked way, the bitter hostility which the Papacy, from the earliest times, has exhibited to the creation of a kingdom of Italy, and how much more obnoxious it has been to the Popes than even the Holy Roman Empire. This topic is ably elucidated throughout the volume, and the whole question of the temporal power is argued in a popular but convincing manner. We wish we had room for M. Lanfrey's description of that government which fills Dr. Manning and Sir George Bowyer with so much satisfaction, and which Mr. Gladstone does not venture to uphold.

We have thought it well to retrace, and place on record in our pages, the accounts furnished from Catholic sources, of this memorable Council. To us, as Protestants, it is of little moment, individually, what were the decrees which it passed, or how monstrous were the figments which it has imposed upon the credulity of Romanists; nor again, by what sophistical quibbles they may juggle with the dogmas of their Church, and so manage to reconcile them, not, it may be, with the facts of history-a hopeless effort-but with fantastic limitations and evasions, suggested by hair-splitting logic.

So long as we stand fast in the liberty wherein Christ has made us free, and neither meddle nor muddle with the superstitious absurdities ratified by its decrees, it is well for us, and with humble thankfulness we may rejoice in the freedom which we possess. But if even a heathen could admit the force of the solemn thought, “ Homo sum : humani nihil a me alienum puto," it is impossible to look without deep and genuine sympathy on those who have been aptly compared, in the letters we

Vol. 70.–No. 397.

have been reviewing, to Laocoon enfolded in the coils of serpents. In such cries of agony as we have been listening to, elicited by anguish beyond human endurance, we have some imperfect revelation of the mental torture endured in the Romish Church by men of high intellect and holy aspirations. The saddest feature of it all is, that the curtain falls once more upon the scene, and no means of escape offer to the victims. We turn away from those who have prostituted their powers and their influence for the relentless accomplishment of this mystery of iniquity, whatever may have been their motives, to listen yet once more to a mournful utterance, the cry of him whose name was once a watchword, and who, like Fairfax at the trial of Charles I., found he had no place in the midst of recent events at Rome.

“As to myself personally, please God, I do not expect any trial at all; but I cannot help suffering with the many souls that are suffering, and I look with anxiety at the prospect of having to defend decisions which may not be difficult to my own private judgment, but may be most difficult to maintain logically in the face of historical facts.

"What have we done to be treated as the faithful never were treated before ? When has a definition de fide been a luxury of devotion, and not a stern, painful necessity ? Why should an aggressive, insolent faction be allowed to make the heart of the just sad, whom the Lord hath not made sorrowful'? Why cannot we be let alone when we have pursued peace and thought no evil ?

“I assure you, my Lord, some of the truest minds are driven one way and another, and do not know where to rest their feet-one day determining to give up all theology as a bad job,' and recklessly to believe henceforth almost that the Pope is impeccable, at another tempted to 'believe all the worst which a book like Janus says,'-others doubting about 'the capacity possessed by bishops drawn from all corners of the earth to judge what is fitting for European society,' and then, again, angry with the Holy See for listening to 'the flattery of a clique of Jesuits, Redemptorists, and converts.'

“Then, again, think of the store of Pontifical scandals in the history of eighteen centuries, which have partly been poured forth and partly are still to come. What Murphy inflicted upon us in one way M. Veuillot is indirectly bringing on us in another. And then again the blight which is falling upon the multitude of Anglican ritualists, etc., who themselves perhaps—at least their leaders—may never become Catholics, but who are leavening the various English denominations and parties (far beyond their own range) with principles and sentiments tending towards their ultimate absorption into the Catholic Church.

“With these thoughts ever before me, I am continually asking myself whether I ought not to make my feelings public; but all I do is to pray those early doctors of the Church, whose intercession

would decide the matter (Augustine, Ambrose, and Jerome, Athanasius, Chrysostom, and Basil) to avert this great calamity.

“ If it is God's will that the Pope's infallibility be defined, then is it God's will to throw back the times and moments of that triumph which He has destined for His kingdom, and I shall feel I have but to bow my head to His adorable, inscrutable Providence.” (Quirinus, pp. 356–358.) Now it may be with him, as Wordsworth says, that

“the prison to which we doom

Ourselves no prison is ;" bat it would probably not be easy to estimate the agony of soul which it must have cost John Henry Newman to write and publish that in the face of England; but, perhaps, still more touching, as the utterance of an intellect less sophisticated, and a heart manifestly as honest, is the following protest from a humble parish priest in Germany :

“The Archbishop (of Cologne) demands of the undersigned Parish Priest an unconditional submission to the Vatican dogmatic decree of July 18, though the Apostle says that we should speak according to the law of liberty.' That Christian liberty involves the notion of individual moral responsibility, and therefore excludes the demand of an unwavering and absolute obedience. I am bound, then, in conscience to declare that I can neither believe nor teach the new dogma of the personal infallibility of the Pope ; and if this leaves me no alternative but either to become a hypocrite before God and man, or to lose my office and my bread, I had rather-if it must be sochoose the latter. In humility of heart I bow before the Lord, to whom I have borne testimony in the Church for upwards of twentyfive years, by word and doctrine, and who has not, without some wise purpose, ordained this trial of faith for me.

“Dr. W. TANGERSNAUM, Parish Priest." “Unkel, Oct. 28, 1870.” O si sic Episcopi !

LEATHES' BOYLE LECTURES FOR 1869. The Witness of St. Paul to Christ. Being the Boyle Lectures

for 1869. With an Appendix on the Credibility of the Acts, in reply to the recent Strictures of Dr. Davidson. By the Rev. Stanley Leathes, M.A., Professor of Hebrew, King's College, London, and Preacher-Assistant, St. James's, Piccadilly. Rivingtons. 1869.

Mr. Leathes, in his preface to this volume, states the twofold difficulty which the Boyle Lecturer has to encounter : (1) in that he is required, whilst addressing Christians, to employ only such arguments as those who are not Christians must be constrained to allow; and (2) in that, whereas he is forbidden to meddle with controversies amongst Christians, the modern phase of Infidelity is such that the most vehement assaults upon Christianity have proceeded from the house of its professed friends.

Under these circumstances, we are still of the same opinion which we expressed in our notice of the Boyle Lectures for 1868, that the course obviously pointed out for the adoption of the Lecturer is to adhere rather to the spirit than to the letter of the will of the illustrious founder, and, without regard to the particular source from which the assault proceeds, to grapple fairly, but unshrinkingly, with every form of error the tendency of which, whether avowedly or otherwise, is to under. mine the foundations of the faith which was once delivered to the saints.

Nor have we far to go in quest of proof that the errors against which the Boyle Lectures of 1869 are directed, whatever may be the views of their authors, are, in their very essence, of this character. In a passage quoted by Mr. Leathes in one of the notes which are found in his preface, Dr. Davidson speaks in the following terms of a belief in the doctrine of the resurrection as an open question amongst Christians :

“Feeling the force of objections to the reanimation of a body, of the contradictory statements of the Evangelists, the different points of view taken in Paul's Epistles, and the existence of a predisposition to visions in the first Christian believers, they (i.e. persons of a speculative disposition) will hesitate to accept the literal. But not the less will they maintain that Christianity does not fall with the denial of the resurrection; especially as the fact is reported in a manner so contradictory, and susceptible of different interpretations. A thing surrounded with historical and other difficulties will not be made a corner-stone in the edifice."*

It is, we feel assured, as regards the majority of our readers, altogether superfluous that we should demonstrate at any length how utterly irreconcilable are views such as those which are here expressed, with a belief in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity. It may, however, suffice to suggest some doubts on this subject, even amongst the advocates of views such as those of which Dr. Davidson is the exponent, should our pages fall into such hands, if we present the two short extracts, which we have placed in italics, in parallel columns with two passages of Holy Scripture, which seem to us absolutely conclusive of their true character and tendency. When thus exhibited, the old and the new expositions of Christianity will stand thus :

* Davidson's Introduction to the New Testament, ii. 40, 41. The italics are our own.