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5. That, down to the very eve of the Reformation, and even after its morning twilight, the Romanists themselves, of the more eminent class, would have nothing to do with. Dr. Schaff's "sense" of Matt. xvi. ; steered wide and clear of the rock of laying on a man the foundation of the church."

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What then are we to think, what are we to expect of a Historian of the Universal Church, who begins by falsifying with one stroke of his pen, the testimony of that church for fifteen centuries?

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We can have no room for doubt, then, in what system we are to have a History of the Christian Church" from Dr. Schaff. He has laid the base-course on which the whole structure is to rest," the primacy of Peter,"-no other structure than the papacy can stand on that foundation. Of all communities calling themselves Christian, none but the Roman church has ever asserted that doctrine, and she only after she had conceived and avowed the design of establishing a universal despotic monarchy on the ruins of individual thought and freedom and popular rights, over all Christendom.

The Greek, Syrian, Armenian, and other ancient churches, deplorably as they have fallen away from Christ, by ignorance, formality, and superstition, have never assailed the kingly majesty of their Redeemer. They have declined. from Christ, but they have not renounced him. They have not claimed his attributes and prerogatives to help them to the erection of a human and worldly tyranny. This the church of Rome has done, and she only. "The Roman church," says Dr. Schaff, "has chosen to found herself on Peter." She has thus denied, forsaken, and built off from the one foundation other than which can no man lay. The Roman church has acknowledged Peter as her ruler (rector). She thus holds not the head from which the whole body (of the true church), fitly framed together, groweth." She assumes to her "Peter," her pope, herself, all the divine prerogatives of Christ,-infallibility, immutability, universal government, origination of doctrine and rites, communica

* Ap. Ch., P. 377.

tion of life and grace. This is what renders her position and history entirely peculiar. This is what shows her to be the great "apostasy" of "the last times;" while her "lying wonders," her enforced abstinences and celibacy, her ferocious persecution of the saints of the Most High, complete the fearful identity.

The greatest crime which can be committed under any government is "læsa majestas "-treason. The church of Rome has committed it. She has denied the sovereignty of her Lord, and appropriated his royal attributes to "Peter,” in order, from that shadowy source, to derive them, by her fictitious "succession," to herself. She alone, of all the nominal churches of Christ, has done this, and a heavy reckoning she will have for it.

Dr. Schaff has taken his position in this system so boldly and distinctly, that he quite spares us the invidious office of giving him or his theory an odious name.

Adversarii negant (says Bellarmine) Petrum esse fundamentum ecclesiæ.

Catholici docent, &c.*

"Peter," says Dr. Schaff, "here" (Matt. xvi.) "appears to us as the foundation of that wonderful edifice." "Peter, the rock of the church." Nothing but blind party spirit can explain, without, however, by any means justifying the denial of it." Now, is Dr. Schaff an" adversarius" or a " Catholicus?"

Bellarmine again says, that this fundamental article of papal faith signifies that Peter is "rector ecclesiæ."

"The sense," says Dr. Schaff, of Matt. xvi. 18, " is, I endow thee with all the powers of its (my church's) government under me."

Dr. Schaff has, then, fully "chosen to found" himself and his "apostolic church" "on Peter." He has fully cast in his lot with the desperate fortunes of the papacy.

He has determined, too, to write a "history of the Christian church" on this system. He has thus laid the foundation of it. We shall have occasion to see hereafter that he carries up the whole building plumb and true to the ground

* See quotation from Bellarmine above.

plan, and "after the pattern showed him" by the most approved masters of papal church-building.

That such a work should have proceeded from the bosom of the Protestant church, and from a chair of ecclesiastical history in a church especially renowned of old for its learned and powerful champions of reformed Christianity, is a portentous fact. It is, to say the least, not less so, that it has somehow gained the strongest testimonials from several of the most respectable and influential Protestant journals. The papacy has never won a victory but by stealing a march. Her tacties have fairly been successful this time. This book is circulating through the Protestant church with an imprimatur from authorities which no American Protestant has been in the habit of questioning.* One of them goes so far as to recommend that Dr. Schaff's book (then only published in German) be translated and introduced as a text-book into our theological seminaries. It would be well, as a preparatory measure, in case that were done, to apply to the "General of the order of Jesus" to send us over professors to teach it. Our Protestant professors would (till properly initiated and trained) betray some awkwardness in laying down the primacy of Peter as the foundation of the church of Christ, drawing the waters of history from such sources as bulls of the popes, and weaving together beautiful legends and oral traditions into an osier work of church history, instead of piling up, as heretofore, the solid granite of historical fact, and the pure marble of Christian doctrine. Our students of divinity, too, for whose "benefit"+ Dr. Schaff's work is especially intended, would be sorely puzzled when set to learn "beautiful legends" by heart, to search among "bulls of the Popes" for "doctrine and government"‡ and to take, for the first lesson in Church History, "the Primacy of Peter." A sad change must come over our Theological Schools when this "broad road leading Rome-ward"§ is sub

* A long and masterly article in the Christian Intelligencer, however, shortly after the appearance of the English translation, exposed the fallacious philosophy and Romanizing tendencies of the work.

Ap. Ch., Pref. p. 5.

Ap. Ch., p. 26.

§ So the Princeton Review (Jan. 1854) justly styles the philosophical theory on which Dr. Schaff's History is based. It further asserts that it is

stituted for the "old path" in which the Livingstons, Masons, Millers, Alexanders, and Cannons were wont to guide our youth to the Holy Ministry. Towards these highly respected authorities, we could take no other attitude than one of absolute dissent. This first volume of Dr. Schaff's History is an attempt to force the growth of the whole papacy within the Apostolic age. The attempt involves him, of course, in the most stupendous contradictions with history and himself. And as to the substance of his work, "learned" though Dr. S. is "in all the wisdom of the Germans,"-as far as the ancient productions of the church are concerned, the contents of his book are mere skimmings from the very surface of secondary sources. Solid learning can no more characterize an apology for the papacy, than sound law or logic a plea for a forger or counterfeiter.

It is quite time that the churches of our country should awake to the extent and tendencies of this movement in the midst of American Protestantism. After a series of advances and retractations, strongly resembling the tactics of the Tractarian party in England, we have at length a bold avowal of "the primacy of Peter," the fundamental and test doctrine of the papacy, followed by a concession of every vital point of Christianity-Church, Ministry, Worship, Sacraments, and the Right of Private Judgment-to Romanism, and that too, while the name and the forms of Protestantism are (as far as possible) studiously retained.

The position already taken by the .Reformed Dutch Church towards this movement, we contemplate with sincere and thankful joy. Of all the other churches, she sustained the most ancient and intimate relations to the German Reformed Church. From those peculiar relations she has withdrawn, accompanying the act with a voice of kind but solemn warning to her faltering sister. Every interest

"pantheistic," and that "no man can hold and carry out this theory of the church, without becoming a Romanist." All this is quite true, and is unanswerably demonstrated in the same article. And yet to our great wonder and sorrow the Reviewer calls it "a noble history," characterized, among other good things, by "a Christian spirit."

within her communion has prospered with a new life since she took that step. She has only proved the truth of the promise, "them that honor me I will honor." Here is a point on which Christ will bear with no tampering in church or individual. If any article of the Christian faith can be called articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiæ, it is that of the sovereignty of Christ in his own Church.

ART. II.-PETER THE HERMIT.

1. The Historie of the Holy Warre. By Thomas Fuller. Fol., Lond., 1639.

2. Geschichte der Kreuzzüge nach Morgenländischen und Abendländischen Berichten. Von Friedrich Wilken, ordentlichen Professor des Geschichte bey der Grossherzoghen Badenschen Universität zu Heidelberg. Leipzig: bey Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, 1807. Six volumes, 8vo. 3. Histoire des Croisades. Par Michaud, de l'Académie Française, et de celle des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres. Sixième edition. Faite d'après les derniers travaux et les dernières intentions de l'auteur, et precédée d'une vie de Michaud. Par M. Poujoulat. Six volumes. Paris: Furne et Cie, Editeurs, 1841.

4. Essai sur l'Influence des Croisades. Traduit de l'Allemand de Heeren, par Charles François Dominique de Villers. Paris Treuttel, 1802. 8vo.

5. History of the Crusades for the Recovery and Possession of the Holy Land. By Charles Mill, Phila., 1844.

THE enthusiastic hermit of Amiens is one of those historical personages sometimes called "representative men," and who are nothing when separated from the scenes wherein they acted. Had he lived an age or two sooner than he did, he would never have risen out of obscurity. But that Divine Providence, which never wants for the proper instrument at the proper time, had fitted him for the juncture, and he served as the firebrand when the pile was ready for combustion.

The fall of the Western Empire left Europe in a broken

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