the doctrine, as attributing to Mary an honor which belonged only to Christ. "We can never enough wonder (he said) that some of you could have the boldness to introduce a feast which the Church has not the least knowledge of, which is neither supported by reason nor backed by tradition." "What if another, for the very same reason, should assert that festal honors should be given to both her parents? (that is, of Mary.) For any one may demand the same thing, for the same reason, for her grandfather and forefather." (Ep. 174.) After St. Bernard, the two great parties in the controversy were the Franciscans and Dominicans, called respectively after their two great leaders, the Scotists and Thomists. So did the contest thicken between these two great monastic orders that, in 1483, Pope Sixtus IV. was constrained to lift up his voice. He forbade any one to call them heretics who denied the Immaculate Conception, “because it had not yet been decided by the Roman Church and the Apostolic See." From which the reader will see that, whether any thing is heresy or not, does not depend on whether it is true or false, a fundamental doctrine of Scripture, or even of the Fathers, or not; but solely on whether it has been so pronounced by the Apostolic See. The account given by Sixtus, of the state of the controversy in his time, is instructive. "Some preachers, of various orders, as we hear, in their sermons to the people, publicly, through various states and territories, have not blushed hitherto to affirm, and do not cease daily to preach, that all those who hold or maintain that the glorious and immaculate Mother of God was conceived with stain of original sin, do sin mortally, or are heretics. . From which preaching heavy scandals have arisen in the minds of the faithful, and greater scandals are with reason feared to arise from day to day." Since the Apostolic See now declares precisely what the Apostolic See then so strongly censured, as productive of great scandals; we suppose that scandals are not to arise, or will be of little consequence.

Bishop Jewel's account of the benefit the Church enjoyed, in those times of dissension, in having "the Centre of Unity," and the infallible Judge of truth to go to, is worth reading. Speaking of this very question, he says: "There were learned men on both sides; parties grew; the schools were inflamed;

the world was troubled; no conference, no doctor, no council was able to quiet the matter. The Scotists alleged for themselves the Council of Basle. The Thomists cried out the Council of Basle was disorderly summoned, and, therefore, unlawful. In the midst of this heat, Pope Sixtus took upon him to be judge between them, and to determine the bottom of the cause. In conclusion, when all the world looked to be resolved and satisfied in the question, the Pope commanded both the Thomists and the Scotists to depart home, and to dispute no more of the matter, but to let all alone; and so left them as doubtful as he found them. This was a resolution for a Pope."*

Thus, the controversy being left in statu quo, the parties continued their struggles till the sitting of the Council of Trent. When that august body was considering its decree of Original Sin, in the discharge of its office, as, in connection with the Pope, the final arbiter of all questions concerning the faith, the Franciscans endeavored to obtain a decision in favor of their favorite point. "They could not contain themselves" (says Father Paul, 174) "from exempting the Virgin, the Mother of God, from the law, (of original sin,) by a special privilege; and the Dominicans labored to comprehend her, by name, under the common law; though the Cardinal Monte" (one of the Pope's legates) "omitted no occasion to make them leave that controversy, saying they were assembled to condemn the heresies, not the opinions of the Catholics."

Fierce as were the dissensions among "the opinions of the Catholics" on this head, the Council declined any part therein except just to refer all inquirers and litigants to the non-committal, the "Know-Nothing" conclusion of Pope Sixtus IV., "of blessed memory," as above given. The Synod confined itself to saying, "This Holy Synod declares that it is not its intention to comprehend in its decree, where original sin is treated of, the blessed and immaculate Virgin Mary," etc., (thus evidently favoring the Franciscans ;) "but that" (now casting a balancing weight in the other scale) "the constitutions of Pope Sixtus IV., which it renews, are to be observed, under the penalties contained in those constitutions," thus adroitly leaving matters as they were. (Sess. v., Sect. 5.)

* Def. of Apol., (P. Soc. Ed.,) 1045, 6.

Of course the war went on. In the seventeenth century, the old parties were still at their old work, and much perplexity did they occasion the Popes, especially Paul V., Gregory XV., and Alexander VII., who, though set in their high place to satisfy inquiring minds seeking the truth, and to keep the unity of the faith in the bond of peace, were exceedingly averse to the trial of their hand in this controversy, and especially when, whatever their decision, one or other, or both, of such powerful bodies as the Franciscans and Dominicans, must be offended. So had Spain become convulsed with the agitations of the question, that Philip III. and Philip IV. sent embassies to Rome, entreating "the Centre of Unity" to end the strife. But still the oracle gave an uncertain sound. If the weight of the Spanish sceptre, placed in the Franciscan scale, tempted the Pope to lean that way; the power of the Dominicans, especially in Italy, turned him back. In medio tutissimus, was still the policy. The time had not come for a Pope to settle such a question. It was safer to endure all the scandals and contentions of the monastic war, than to take the responsibility of standing on either side of the dividing line. The Pope kept his seat "on the fence." All that could be got by the influence of Spain from the troubled Pontiff, was a declaration intimating that the opinion of the Franciscans had a high degree of probability on its side, and forbidding any public opposition to it by the Dominicans; while at the same time, the Franciscans were prohibited from any condemnation of the opinion of the Dominicans. But the seed of a future development was germinating. In 1708, Clement XI. went a step further, and ventured so far to commit the Holy See as to appoint a festival in honor of the Immaculate Conception throughout the Romish Church, which the Dominicans, ever since persisting in the teaching of their ancient doctrine, have always, without censure, refused to keep; denying that they were under any obligation in consequence of the Pope's appointment; a question of conscience which a Protestant may not presume to judge. So the question stood. Bossuet, a few years before the appointment by Clement XI., had said, in the spirit of the Gallican Church, that the Immaculate Conception would never be made an Article of Faith, just as the present

Archbishop of Paris, representing, in a small minority, the old Gallican spirit, now nearly driven out by the Italian school, was one of the three or four who opposed, at Rome, the recent decree. And in similar terms wrote, not many years since, Bishop Milner, in England, whose words we have no doubt the mass of English Romanists devoutly wish were as true now as then "The Church does not decide the controversy concerning the Conception of the Blessed Virgin."

But, nunc tempora mutantur. After so many centuries of contention and scandal, the Oracle has at length found it convenient to speak. What Apostles knew not of; what the Fathers knew not of; what St. Paul denied; what St. Bernard condemned as attributing to Mary an honor of purity and miraculous interposition which belonged only to the Son of God, the Pope's infallibility has developed as a solemn Article of Faith, for all the world and all ages; and that, not because any new arguments for it, any new historical evidence, any new light on old records and traditions have been discovered, but independently of all such humbler means, simply by the official fiat of the crowned head of the Church; as if he whom in this act we can not refrain from indignantly naming, by his true Apostolic name, "That Man of Sin, who as God, sitteth in the temple of God, showing himself that he is God," (2 Thes. 11: 4,) in carrying out his daring pretensions, had attempted, on a small scale, the sublime fiat of the Creator: "Let there be light; and there was light."

Such, then, being the history of the recent production, from germ to maturity, let us form a correct idea of all the Pontiff has achieved. He has not only manufactured a fact of the Jewish dispensation, but he has created a new creed for the Christian dispensation. The way of salvation, since December last, is not the way of salvation by which believers went to heaven before last December. The Rule of Faith that would one year ago have measured a true Catholic, and given him his certificate as one of "the faithful," is no more the sufficient rule; and the Catholic in full standing then, can not pass muster now. A new Article of Faith, which you must believe explicitly or be lost, makes a new Christianity, a new way of life, a new gospel. It is the voice of blasphemy saying, in the

words of God," Behold, I make all things new!" Listen, then, all ye men of scarlet and purple, of mitre and crozier, whose loud acclamations greeted and hailed the sounding of that decree, with pompous expressions of joy for the blessings ye professed to expect from Heaven in reward of such honors, vouchsafed from the Father of the Faithful to the Mother of the Saviour; hear that peal of thunder from the very heaven of heavens: "Though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you, than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed. As we said before, so now we say again. If any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed."* Ye know, reverend dignitaries, from what inspired authority comes those awful, emphatic, words. St. Paul wrote them to those who "would pervert the gospel of Christ." (v. 7.) To pervert the Gospel, therefore, was to preach another gospel. To require of sinners the acceptance of an article of faith, under pain of damnation, which none of you pretend has ever been such before; above all, which none of you pretend is found preached, even as a subsidiary fact, in any line or tradition of the Saviour's, or the Apostles' teaching; what a perversion of the Gospel of Christ is that! what a gospel which Paul never preached is that! How, then, will ye escape that anathema, which comes, not from the imbecility of the Vatican, but from the authority of an inspired Apostle of God? Say not your decree is from "the successor of the Apostles" and the chair of St. Peter. He who, at Antioch, "withstood St. Peter to the face, because he was to be blamed;" the Apostle of the Gentiles, who planted your Church of Rome; whose blood is there; whose relics ye profess there to have and worship, and which, if they had tongues to speak, would cry out against you; he has pronounced that anathema upon you, Pontiff, and all that abet his present gospel. And how will ye escape? Will ye claim that he to whom your predecessors have dared to apply the name of God; to whom a council of your predecessors once said, "All power is given to thee in heaven and in earth," who "is to judge all men, and himself to be judged of no man," who hath said of himself: "To the Vicar of the Creator every creature is subject;" will ye claim

* Gal. 1: 8, 9.