ground in spite of the immense progress which | who, at fourteen, have thought enough c knowledge has made since the days of Queen Elizabeth.

these questions to be fully entitled to the praise which Voltaire gives to Zadig, "Il en savait ce qu'on én a su dans tous les âges, c'est-à-dire, fort peu de chose." The book of Job shows, that long before letters and arts were known to Ionia, these vexing questions were debated with no common skill and eloquence, under the tents of the Idumean Emirs; nor has human reason, in the course of three thousand years, discovered any satisfactory solution of the riddles which perplexed Eliphaz and Zophar.

Indeed, the argument which we are considering seems to us to be founded on an entire mistake. There are branches of knowledge, with respect to which the law of the human mind is progress. In mathematics, when once a proposition has been demonstrated, it is never afterwards contested. Every fresh story is as solid a basis for a new superstructure as the original foundation was. Here, therefore, there is a constant addition to the stock of truth. In the inductive sciences again, the law is progress. Every day furnishes new facts, and thus brings theory nearer and nearer to perfection. There is no chance that either in the purely demonstrative, or in the purely experimental sciences, the world will ever go back or even remain stationary. Nobody ever heard of a reaction against Taylor's theorem, or of a reaction against Harvey's doc-in certain books. It is equally open to all who trine of the circulation of the blood."

Natural theology, then, is not a progressive science. That knowledge of our origin and of our destiny which we derive from revela tion, is indeed of very different clearness, and very different importance. But neither is re vealed religion of the nature of a progressive science. All Divine truth is, according to the doctrine of the Protestant churches, recorded

in any age can read those books; ror can ail But with theology the case is very different. the discoveries of all the philosophers in the As respects natural religion-revelation being world add a single verse to any of these books. for the present altogether left out of the ques-It is plain, therefore, that in divinity there can tion-it is not easy to see that a philosopher not be a progress analogous to that which is of the present day is more favourably situated constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology, than Thales or Simonides. He has before him and navigation. A Christian of the fifth cen just the same evidences of design in the struc- tury with a Bible is on a par with a Christian ture of the universe which the early Greeks of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candour had. We say just the same; for the discove- and natural acuteness being, of course, supries of modern astronomers and anatomists posed equal. It matters not at all that the have really added nothing to the force of that compass, printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vacargument which a reflecting mind finds in cination, and a thousand other discoveries and every beast, bird, insect, fish, leaf, flower, and inventions which were unknown in the fifth shell. The reasoning by which Socrates, in century are familiar to the nineteenth. None Xenophon's hearing, confuted the little atheist of these discoveries and inventions have the Aristodemus, is exactly the reasoning of Pa-smallest bearing on the question whether man ley's "Natural Theology." Socrates makes is justified by faith alone, or whether the invo precisely the same use of the statues of Poly-cation of saints is an orthodox practice. It cletus and the pictures of Zeuxis, which Paley makes of the watch. As to the other great question the question, what becomes of man after death-we do not see that a highly educated European, left to his unassisted reason, is more likely to be in the right than a Blackfoot Indian. Not a single one of the many sciences in which we surpass the Blackfoot Indians, throws the smallest light on the state of the soul after the animal life is extinct. In truth, all the philosophers, ancient and modern, who have attempted, without the help of revelation to prove the immortality of man, from Plato down to Franklin, appear to us to have failed deplorably.

We are

seems to us, therefore, that we have no secu-
rity for the future against the prevalence of
any theological error that has ever prevailed
in time past among Christian men.
confident that the world will never go back to
the solar system of Ptolemy; nor is our confi
dence in the least shaken by the circumstance
that even so great a man as Bacon rejected
the theory of Galileo with scorn; for Bacon
had not all the means of arriving at a sound
conclusion which are within our reach, and
which secure people, who would not have been
worthy to mend his pens, from falling into his
mistakes. But we are very differently affected
when we reflect that Sir Thomas More was
ready to die for the doctrine of transubstantia.
tion. He was a man of eminent talents. He
had all the information on the subject that we
have, or that, while the world lasts, any human
being will have. The text "This is my body,"
was in his New Testament as it is in ours.

Then, again, all the great enigmas which perplex the natural theclogian are the same in all ages. The ingenuity of a people just emerging from barbarism is quite sufficient to propound them. The wisdom of Locke or Clarke is quite unable to solve them. It is a mistake to imagine that subtle speculations The absurdity of the literal interpretation touching the Divine attributes, the origin of evil, was as great and as obvious in the sixteenth the necessity of human actions, the foundation century as it is now. No progress that sciof moral obligation, imply any high degree of ence has made or will make can add to what intellectual culture. Such speculations, on seems to us the overwhelming force of the arthe contrary, are in a peculiar manner the de-gument against the real presence. We are light of intelligent children and of half-civil- therefore unable to understand why what Sir ized men. The number of boys is not small Thomas More believed respecting transubstan

than to the first, or to London than to the wild-
est parish in the Hebrides. It is true that, in
those things which concern this life and this
world, man constantly becomes wiser. But it
is no less true that, as respects a higher power
and a future state, man, in the language of
Goethe's scoffing fiend,

tiation may not be believed to the end of time
by men equal in abilities and honesty to Sir
Thomas More. But Sir Thomas More is one
of the choice specimens of human wisdom and
virtue, and the doctrine of transubstantiation
is a kind of proof charge. A faith which stands
that test will stand any test. The prophesies
of Brothers and the miracles of Prince Hohen-
lohe sink to trifles in the comparison. One re-
"bleibt stets von gleichem schlag,
Und ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten tag."
servation, indeed, must be made. The books
and traditions of a sect may contain, mingled The history of Catholicism strikingly illus-
with propositions strictly theological, other pro- trates these observations. During the last
positions purporting to rest on the same autho- seven centuries the public mind of Europe has
rity which relate to physics. If new discover-made constant progress in every department
ies should throw discredit on the physical pro- of secular knowledge. But in religion we can
positions, the theological propositions, unless trace no constant progress. The ecclesiasti
they can be separated from the physical pro- cal history of that long period is the history
positions, will share in their discredit. In this of movement to and fro. Four times since the
way, undoubtedly, the progress of science may authority of the Church of Rome was esta
indirectly serve the cause of religious truth. blished in Western Christendom has the hu
The Hindoo mythology, for example, is bound man intellect risen up against her yoke. Twice
up with a most absurd geography. Every she remained completely victorious. Twice she
young Brahmin, therefore, who learns geogra- came forth from the conflict bearing the marks
phy in our colleges, learns to smile at the Hin- of cruel wounds, but with the principle of life
doo mythology. If Catholicism has not suffer- still strong within her. When we reflect on
ed to an equal degree from the Papal decision the tremendous assaults which she has sur
that the sun goes round the earth, this is be-vived, we find it difficult to conceive in what
cause all intelligent Catholics now hold, with way she is to perish.

Pascal, that in deciding the point at all the The first of these insurrections broke out in
Church exceeded her powers, and was, there- the region where the beautiful language of O
fore, justly left destitute of that supernatural was spoken. That country, singularly favour-
assistance which, in the exercise of her legiti-ed by nature, was, in the twelfth century, the
mate functions, the promise of her Founder
authorized her to expect.

most flourishing and civilized part of Western
Europe. It was in nowise a part of France.
This reservation affects not at all the truth It had a distinct political existence, a distinct
of our proposition, that divinity, properly so national character, distinct usages, and a dis
called, is not a progressive science. A very tinct speech. The soil was fruitful and well
common knowledge of history, a very little ob-cultivated; and amidst the cornfields and vine
servation of life, will suffice to prove that no
learning, no sagacity, affords a security against
the greatest errors on subjects relating to the
invisible world. Bayle and Chillingworth, two
of the most skeptical of mankind, turned Ca-
tholics from sincere conviction. Johnson, in-
credulous on all other points, was a ready
believer in miracles and apparitions. He
would not believe in Ossian, but he believed
in the second sight. He would not believe in
the earthquake of Lisbon, but he believed in
the Cock Lane Ghost.

yards arose many rich cities, each of which was a little republic; and many stately castles, each of which contained a miniature of an im perial court. It was there that the spirit of chivalry first laid aside its terrors, first took a humane and graceful form, first appeared as the inseparable associate of art and literature, of courtesy and love. The other vernacular dialects which, since the fifth century, had sprung up in the ancient provinces of the Ro man empire, were still rude and imperfect. The sweet Tuscan, the rich and energetic Eng For these reasons we have ceased to wonder at lish, were abandoned to artisans and shepany vagaries of superstition. We have seen men, herds. No clerk had ever condescended to not of mean intellect or neglected education, use such barbarous jargon for the teaching of but qualified by their talents and acquirements science, for the recording of great events, or to attain eminence either in active or speculative for the painting of life and manners. But the pursuits, well-read scholars, expert logicians, language of Provence was already the lan keen observers of life and manners, prophe-guage of the learned and polite, and was emsying, interpreting, talking unknown tongues, ployed by numerous writers, studious of all the working miraculous cures, coming down with arts of composition and versification. messages from God to the Houses of Commons. We have seen an old woman, with no talents beyond the cunning of a fortune-teller, and with the education of a scullion, exalted into a prophetess, and surrounded by tens of thousands of devoted followers, many of whom were, in station and knowledge, immeasurably her superiors; and all this in the nineteenth century, and all this in London. Yet why not? For of the dealings of God with man no more has been revealed to the nineteenth century

A literature rich in ballads, in war-songs, in satire, and, above all, in amatory poetry, amused the leisure of the knights and ladies whose fortified mansions adorned the banks of the Rhone and Garonne. With civilization had come freedom of thought. Use had taken away the horror with which misbelievers were elsewhere regarded. No Norman or Breton ever saw a Mussulman, except to give and re ceive blows on some Syrian field of battle. But the people of the rich countries which lay un

1

Ger the Pyrenees lived in habits of courteous great European family. Rome, in the mean and profitable intercourse with the Moorish time, warned by that fearful danger from which kingdoms of Spain, and gave a hospitable wel- the exterminating swords of her crusaders had come to skilful teachers and mathematicians, narrowly saved her, proceeded to revise and who, in the schools of Cordova and Granada, to strengthen her whole system of polity. Ar had become versed in all the learning of the this period were instituted the order of Francis Arabians. The Greek, still preserving, in the the order of Dominic, the tribunal of the Inqui midst of political degradation, the ready wit sition. The new spiritual police was every and the inquiring spirit of his fathers, still able where. No alley in a great city, no hamlet on to read the most perfect of human composi- a remote mountain, was unvisited by the beg tions, still speaking the most powerful and ging friar. The simple Catholic, who was flexible of human languages, brought to the content to be no wiser than his fathers, found, marts of Narbonne and Toulouse, together with wherever he turned, a friendly voice to encou the drugs and silks of remote climates, bold and rage him. The path of the heretic was beset subtle theories, long unknown to the ignorant by innumerable spies; and the Church, lately and credulous West. The Paulician theology in danger of utter subversion, now appeared -a theology in which, as it should seem, many to be impregnably fortified by the love, the of the doctrines of the modern Calvinists were reverence, and the terror of mankind. mingled with some doctrines derived from the A century and a half passed away, and then ancient Manichees,-spread rapidly through came the second great rising up of the human Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the intellect against the spiritual domination of Catholic Church were regarded with loathing Rome. During the two generations which foland contempt. "Viler than a priest,"-"I lowed the Albigensian crusade, the power of the would as soon be a priest,"-became prover- Papacy had been at the height. Frederick II. bial expressions. The Papacy lost all autho-—the ablest and most accomplished of the long rity with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil.

line of German Cæsars--had in vain exhausted all the resources of military and political skill in the attempt to defend the rights of the civil power against the encroachments of the Church. The vengeance of the priesthood had pursued his house to the third generation. Manfred had perished on the field of battle; Conradin on the scaffold. Then a turn took place. The secular authority, long unduly depressed, regained the ascendant with startling rapidity. The change is doubtless to be ascribed chiefly to the general disgust excited by the way in which the Church had abused its power and its success.

scrupulous, equally prepared for violence and for chicanery, and surrounded by a devoted band of men of the sword, and of men of law. The fiercest and most high-minded of the Ro

The danger to the hierarchy was indeed formidable. Only one transalpine nation had emerged from barbarism, and that nation had thrown off all respect for Rome. Only one of the vernacular languages of Europe had yet been extensively employed for literary purposes, and that language was a machine in the hands of heretics. The geographical position of the sectaries made the danger peculiarly formidable. They occupied a central region communicating directly with France, with Italy, and with Spain. The provinces which were still untainted were separated But something must be attributed to the from each other by this infected district. Un- character and situation of individuals. The der these circumstances, it seemed probable man who bore the chief part in effecting this that a single generation would suffice to spread revolution was Philip IV. of France, surnamed the reformed doctrine to Lisbon, to London, the Beautiful-a despot by position, a despot and to Naples. But this was not to be. Rome by temperament, stern, implacable, and un cried for help to the warriors of northern France. She appealed at once to their superstition and to their cupidity. To the devout believers she promised pardons as ample as those with which she had rewarded the deliver-man Pontiffs, while bestowing kingdoms, and ers of the holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious citing great princes to his judgment-seat, was and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile seized in his palace by armed men, and so plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the in- foully outraged that he died mad with rage genious and polished inhabitants of the Lan- and terror. "Thus," sang the great Florenguedocian provinces were far better qualified tine poet, "was Christ in the person of his to enrich and embellish their country than to vicar, a second time seized by ruffians, a se. defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, un-cond time mocked, a second time drenched rivalled in the "gay science," elevated above many vulgar superstitions, they wanted that iron courage, and that skill in martial exercises, which distinguished the chivalry of the region beyond the Loire, and were ill-fitted to face enemies, who, in every country from Ireland to Palestine, had been victorious against tenfold odds. A war, distinguished even among wars of religion by its merciless atrocity, destroyed the Albigensian heresy; and with that heresy the prosperity, the civilization, the literature, the national existence, of what was once be most ovulent and enlightened part of the

with the vinegar and the gall." The seat of the Papal court was carried beyond the Alps, and the Bishops of Rome became dependants of France. Then came the great schism of the West. Two Popes, each with a doubtful title, made all Europe ring with their mutual invectives and anathemas. Rome cried out against the corruptions of Avignon; and Avig non, with equal justice, recriminated on Rome The plain Christian people, brought up in the belief that it was a sacred duty to be in com.

* Purgatorio, xx. 87.

before. All ranks, all varieties of character, joined the ranks of the innovators. Sove reigns impatient to appropriate to themselves the prerogatives of the Pope-nobles desirous to share the plunder of abbeys-suitors exasperated by the extortions of the Roman Camera

munion with the Head of the Church, were unable to discover, amidst conflicting testimonies and conflicting arguments, to which of the two worthless priests who were cursing and reviling each other, the headship of the Church rightfully belonged. It was nearly at this juncture that the voice of John Wickliffe-patriots impatient of a foreign rule-good began to make itself heard. The public mind of England was soon stirred to its inmost depths; and the influence of the new doctrines was soon felt, even in the distant kingdom of Bohemia. In Bohemia, indeed, there had long been a predisposition to heresy. Merchants from the Lower Danube were often seen in the fairs of Prague; and the Lower Danube was peculiarly the seat of the Paulician theology. The Church, torn by schism, and fiercely assailed at once in England and the German empire, was in a situation scarcely less perilons than at the crisis which preceded the Albigensian crusade.

But this danger also passed by. The civil power gave its strenuous support to the Church; and the Church made some show of reforming itself. The council of Constance put an end to the schism. The whole Catholic world was again united under a single chief, and rules were laid down which seemed to make it improbable that the power of that chief would be grossly abused. The most distinguished teachers of the new doctrine were put to death. The English government put | down the Lollards with merciless rigour; and, | in the next generation, no trace of the second great revolt against the Papacy could be found, except among the rude population of the mountains of Bohemia.

Another century went by; and then began the third and the most memorable struggle for spiritual freedom. The times were changed. The great remains of Athenian and Roman genius were studied by thousands. The Church had no longer a monopoly of learning. The powers of the modern languages had at length been developed. The invention of printing had given new facilities to the intercourse of mind with mind. With such auspices commenced the great Reformation.

We will attempt to lay before our readers, in a short compass, what appears to us to be the real history of the contest, which began with the preaching of Luther against the indulgences, and which may, in one sense, be said to have been terminated, a hundred and thirty years later, by the treaty of Westphalia. In the northern parts of Europe, the victory of Protestantism was rapid and decisive. The dominion of the Papacy was felt by the nations of Teutonic blood as the dominion of Italians, of foreigners, of men alien in language, manners, and intellectual constitution. The large jurisdiction exercised by the spiritual tribunals of Rome seemed to be a degrading badge of servitude. The sums which, under a thousand pretexts, were exacted by a distant court, were regarded both as a humiliating and as a ruinous tribute. The character of that court excited the scorn and disgust of a grave, earnest, sincere, and deyout people. The new the logy spread with a rapidity never known

men scandalized by the corruptions of the Church-bad men desirous of the license inseparable from great moral revolutions-wise men eager in the pursuit of truth-weak men allured by the glitter of novelty-all were found on one side. Alone, among the northern nations, the Irish adhered to the ancient faith; and the cause of this seems to have been, that the national feeling which, in happier countries, was directed against Rome, was in Ireland directed against England. In fifty years from the day in which Luther publicly renounced communion with the Church of Rome, and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendency-an ascendency which it soon lost, and which it never regained. Hundreds, who could well remember Brother Martin a devout Catholic, lived to see the revolution of which he was the chief author, victorious in half the states of Europe. In England, Scotland, Denmark, Sweden, Livonia, Prussia, Saxony, Hesse, Würtemberg, the Palatinate, in several cantons of Switzerland, in the Northern Netherlands, the Reformation had completely triumphed; and in all the other countries on this side of the Alps and the Pyrenees, it seemed on the point of triumphing.

But while this mighty work was proceeding in the north of Europe, a revolution of a very different kind had taken place in the south. The temper of Italy and Spain was widely dif ferent from that of Germany and England. As the national feeling of the Teutonic nations impelled them to throw off the Italian supremacy, so the national feeling of the Italians impelled them to resist any change which might deprive their country of the honour and advantage of being the seat of the government of the Universal Church. It was in Italy that the tributes were spent, of which foreign nations so bitterly complained. It was to adorn Italy that the traffic in indulgences had been carried to that scandalous excess which had roused the indignation of Luther. There was among the Italians both much piety and much impiety; but with very few exceptions, neither the piety nor the impiety took the turn of Protestantism. The religious Italians desired a reform of morals and discipline, but not a reform of doctrine, and least of all a schism. The irreligious Italians simply disbelieved Christianity, without hating it. They looked at it as artists, or as statesmen; and so looking at it, they liked it better in the established form than in any other. It was to them what the Pagan worship was to Trajan and Pliny. Neither the spirit of Savanarola, nor that of Machiavelli, had any thing in common with that of the religious or political Protestants of the north.

Spain again was, with respect to the Cathoue Church, in a situation very different from that

of the Teutonic nations. Italy was, in fact, a jed. Everywhere old religious communities part of the empire of Charles V.; and the were remodelled, and new religious communicourt of Rome was, on many important occa- ties called into existence. Within a year after sions, his tool. He had not, therefore, like the the death of Leo, the order of Camaldoli was distant princes of the north, a strong selfish purified. The Capuchins restored the old motive for attacking the Papacy. In fact, the Franciscan discipline-the midnight prayer very measures which provoked the Sovereign and the life of silence. The Barnabites and of England to renounce all connection with the society of Somasca devoted themselves to Rome, were dictated by the Sovereign of Spain. the relief and education of the poor. To the The feelings of the Spanish people concurred Theatine order a still higher interest belongs. with the interest of the Spanish government. Its great object was the same with that of our The attachinent of the Castilian to the faith of early Methodists-to supply the deficiencies his ancestors was peculiarly strong and ardent. of the parochial clergy. With that faith were inseparably bound up the The Church of Rome, wiser than the Church institutions, the independence, and the glory of of England, gave every countenance to the his country. Between the day when the last good work. The members of the new brotherGothic king was vanquished on the banks of hood preached to great multitudes in the streets the Xercs, and the day when Ferdinand and and in the fields, prayed by the beds of the sick, Isabella entered Granada in triumph, nearly and administered the last sacraments to the eight hundred years had elapsed; and during dying. Foremost among them in zeal and dethose years the Spanish nation had been en-votion was Gian Pietro Caraffa, afterwards gaged in a desperate struggle against misbe- Pope Paul the Fourth. In the convent of the lievers. The crusades had been merely an Theatines at Venice, under the eye of Caraffa, episode in the history of other nations. The a Spanish gentleman took up his abode, tended existence of Spain had been one long crusade. the poor in the hospitals, went about in rags, After fighting Mussulmans in the Old World, starved himself almost to death, and often salshe began to fight heathens in the New. It was lied into the streets, mounted on stones, and, under the authority of a Papal bull that her waving his hat to invite the passers-by, began children steered into unknown seas. It was to preach in a strange jargon of mingled under the standard of the cross that they march- Castilian and Tuscan. The Theatines were ed fearlessly into the heart of great kingdoms. among the most zealous and rigid of men ; but It was with the cry of "Saint James for Spain!" to this enthusiastic neophyte their discipline that they charged armies which outnumbered seemed lax, and their movements sluggish; for them a hundredfold. And men said that the his own mind, naturally passionate and ima Saint had heard the call, and had himself in ginative, had passed through a training which arms, on a gray war-horse, led the onset before had given to all his peculiarities a morbid in which the worshippers of false gods had given tensity and energy. In his early life he had way. After the battle, every excess of rapa- been the very prototype of the hero of Cercity or cruelty was sufficiently vindicated by vantes. The single study of the young Hidalgo the plea that the sufferers were unbaptized. had been chivalrous romance; and his existAvarice stimulated zeal. Zeal consecrated ence had been one gorgeous day-dream of prinavarice. Proselytes and gold mines were cesses rescued and infidels subdued. He had sought with equal ardour. In the very year in chosen a Dulcinea, “no countess, no duchess" which the Saxons, maddened by the exactions these are his own words-" but one of far of Rome, broke loose from her yoke, the Spa-higher station;" and he flattered himself with niards, under the authority of Rome, made themselves masters of the empire and of the treasures of Montezuma. Thus Catholicism, which, in the public mind of Northern Europe, was associated with spoliation and oppression, was, in the public mind of Spain, associated with liberty, victory, dominion, wealth, and glory.

the hope of laying at her feet the keys of Moorish castles and the jewelled turbans of Asiatic kings. In the midst of these visions of martial glory and prosperous love, a severe wound stretched him on a bed of sickness. His constitution was shattered, and he was doomed to be a cripple for life. The palm of strength, grace, and skill in knightly exercises, was no It is not, therefore, strange that the effect of longer for him. He could no longer hope to the great outbreak of Protestantism in one part strike down gigantic soldans, or to find favour of Christendom should have been to produce in the sight of beautiful women. A new vision an equally violent outbreak of Catholic zeal in then arose in his mind, and mingled itself with another. Two reformations were pushed on his old delusions in a manner which, to most at once with equal energy and effect-a refor- Englishmen, must seem singular; but which mation of doctrine in the North-a reformation those who know how close was the union be. of manners and discipline in the South. In tween religion and chivalry in Spain, will be the course of a single generation, the whole at no loss to understand. He would still be a spirit of the Church of Rome underwent a soldier-he would still be a knight-errant; but change. From the halls of the Vatican to the the soldier and knight-errant of the spouse of most secluded hermitage of the Apennines, the Christ. He would smite the Great Red Dragon. great revival was everywhere felt and seen. He would be the champion of the Woman All the institutions anciently devised for the clothed with the Sun. He would break the propagation and defence of the faith, were fur- charm under which false prophets held the bished up and made efficient. New engines souls of men in bondage. His restless spirit of still more formidable power were construct-led him to the Syrian deserts, and to the chape