has made, or will make, can add to what seems to us the overwhelming force of the argument against the real presence. We are, therefore, unable to understand why what Sir Thomas More believed respecting transubstantiation 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 prophecies of Brothers and the miracles of Prince Hohenlohe sink to trifles in the comparison.

Protestant Churches, recorded in certain books. It is equally open to all who, in any age, can read those books; nor can all the discoveries of all the philosophers in the world add a single verse to any of those books. It is plain, therefore, that in divinity there cannot be a progress analogous to that which is constantly taking place in pharmacy, geology, and navigation. A Christian of the fifth century with a Bible is neither better nor worse situated than a Christian of the nineteenth century with a Bible, candour and natural acuteness being, of course, supposed equal. It matters not at all that the compass, printing, gunpowder, steam, gas, vaccination, and a thousand other dis- One reservation, indeed, must be coveries and inventions, which were un- made. The books and traditions of a known in the fifth century, are familiar sect may contain, mingled with propoto the nineteenth. None of these dis-sitions strictly theological, other procoveries and inventions has the smallest positions, purporting to rest on the bearing on the question whether man same authority, which relate to physics. is justified by faith alone, or whether If new discoveries should throw disthe invocation of saints is an orthodox credit on the physical propositions, the practice. It seems to us, therefore, that theological propositions, unless they can we have no security for the future be separated from the physical propoagainst the prevalence of any theolositions, will share in that discredit. In gical error that ever has prevailed in this way, undoubtedly, the progress of time past among Christian men. We science may indirectly serve the cause are confident that the world will never of religious truth. The Hindoo mygo back to the solar system of Ptolemy; thology, for example, is bound up with nor is our confidence in the least shaken a most absurd geography. Every young by the circumstance, that even so great Brahmin, therefore, who learns geograa man as Bacon rejected the theory of phy in our colleges, learns to smile at Galileo with scorn; for Bacon had not the Hindoo mythology. If Catholicism all the means of arriving at a sound has not suffered to an equal degree conclusion which are within our reach, from the Papal decision that the sun and which secure people who would goes round the earth, this is because all not have been worthy to mend his pens intelligent Catholics now hold, with from falling into his mistakes. But Pascal, that, in deciding the point at when we reflect that Sir Thomas More all, the Church exceeded her powers, was ready to die for the doctrine of and was, therefore, justly left destitute transubstantiation, we cannot but feel of that supernatural assistance which, some doubt whether the doctrine of in the exercise of her legitimate functransubstantiation may not triumph over tions, the promise of her Founder all opposition. More was a man of authorised her to expect. 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. The absurdity of the literal interpretation was as great and as obvious in the sixteenth century as it is now. No progress that science

This reservation affects not at all the truth of our proposition, that divinity, properly so called, is not a progressive science. A very common knowledge of history, a very little observation 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 Chil

lingworth, two of the most sceptical of Rome was established in Western Chrismankind, turned Catholics from sincere tendom, has the human intellect risen conviction. Johnson, incredulous on up against her yoke. Twice that Church all other points, was a ready believer remained completely victorious. Twice in miracles and apparitions. He would she came forth from the conflict bearnot believe in Ossian; but he was wil-ing the marks of cruel wounds, but with ling to believe in the second sight. He the principle of life still strong within would not believe in the earthquake of her. When we reflect on the tremenLisbon; but he was willing to believe dous assaults which she has survived, in the Cock Lane ghost. we find it difficult to conceive in what way she is to perish.

the twelfth century, the most flourishing and civilized portion of Western Europe. It was in nowise a part of France. It had a distinct political existence, a distinct national character, distinct usages, and a distinct speech. The soil was fruitful and well cultivated; and amidst the cornfields and vineyards arose many rich cities, each of which was a little republic, and many stately castles, each of which contained a miniature of an imperial court. It was there that the spirit of chivalry first laid aside its ter

For these reasons we have ceased to wonder at any vagaries of superstition. The first of these insurrections broke We have seen men, not of mean intel-out in the region where the beautiful lanlect or neglected education, but quali-guage of Oc was spoken. That country, fied by their talents and acquirements singularly favoured by nature, was, in to attain eminence either in active or speculative pursuits, well read scholars, expert logicians, keen observers of life and manners, prophesying, interpreting, talking unknown tongues, working miraculous cures, coming down with messages from God to the House 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 know-rors, first took a humane and graceful ledge, 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 than to the first, or to London than to the wildest parish in the Hebrides. It is true that, in those things which concern this life and this world, man constantly becomes wiser and 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,

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 Roman empire, were still rude and imperfect. The sweet Tuscan, the rich and energetic English, were abandoned to artisans and shepherds. No clerk had ever condescended to use such barbarous jargon for the teaching of science, for the recording of great events, or for the painting of life and manners. But the language of Provence was already the language of the learned and polite, and was employed by numerous writers, studious The history of Catholicism strikingly of all the arts of composition and verillustrates these observations. During sification. A literature rich in balthe last seven centuries the public mind lads, in war-songs, in satire, and, above of Europe has made constant progress all, in amatory poetry, amused the leiin every department of secular know- sure of the knights and ladies whose ledge. But in religion we can trace no fortified mansions adorned the banks constant progress. The ecclesiastical of the Rhone and Garonne. With history of that long period is a history civilization had come freedom of of movement to and fro. Four times, thought. Use had taken away the since the authority of the Church of horror with which misbelievers were

"bleibt stets von gleichem Schlag, Und ist so wunderlich als wie am ersten Tag."

66

elsewhere regarded. No Norman or ration would suffice to spread the reBreton ever saw a Mussulman, except formed doctrine to Lisbon, to London, to give and receive blows on some and to Naples. But this was not to be. Syrian field of battle. But the people Rome cried for help to the warriors of of the rich countries which lay under northern France. She appealed at the Pyrenees lived in habits of cour-once to their superstition and to their teous and profitable intercourse with cupidity. To the devout believer she the Moorish kingdoms of Spain, and gave a hospitable welcome to skilful leeches and mathematicians who, in the schools of Cordova and Granada, had become versed in all the learning of the Arabians. The Greek, still preserving, in the midst of political degradation, the ready wit and the inquiring spirit of his fathers, still able to read the most perfect of human compositions, still speaking the most powerful and flexible of human languages, brought to the marts of Narbonne and Toulouse, together with the drugs and silks of remote climates, bold and subtle theories long unknown to the ignorant and credulous West. The Paulician theology, a theology in which, as it should seem, many of the doctrines of the modern Calvinists were mingled with some doctrines derived from the ancient Manichees, spread rapidly through Provence and Languedoc. The clergy of the Catholic Church were regarded with loathing and contempt. "Viler than a priest," "I would as soon be a priest," became proverbial expressions. The Papacy had lost all authority with all classes, from the great feudal princes down to the cultivators of the soil.

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 from each other by this infected district. Under these circumstances, it seemed probable that a single gene

promised pardons as ample as those with which she had rewarded the deliverers of the Holy Sepulchre. To the rapacious and profligate she offered the plunder of fertile plains and wealthy cities. Unhappily, the ingenious and polished inhabitants of the Languedocian provinces were far better qualified to enrich and embellish their country than to defend it. Eminent in the arts of peace, unrivalled 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 merciless atrocity, destroyed the Albigensian heresy, and with that heresy the prosperity, the civilization, the literature, the national existence, of what was once the most opulent and enlightened part of the great European family. Rome, in the mean time, warned by that fearful danger from which the exterminating swords of her crusaders had narrowly saved her, proceeded to revise and to strengthen her whole system of polity. At this period were instituted the Order of Francis, the Order of Dominic, the Tribunal of the Inquisition. The new spiritual police was every where. No alley in a great city, no hamlet on a remote mountain, was unvisited by the begging friar. The simple Catholic, who was content to be no wiser than his fathers, found, wherever he turned, a friendly voice to encourage him. The path of the heretic was beset by innumerable spies; and the Church, lately in danger of utter subversion, now appeared to be impregnably fortified by the love, the reverence, and the terror of mankind. A century and a half passed away;

peculiarly the seat of the Paulician theology. The Church, torn by schism, and fiercely assailed at once in England and in the German empire, was in a situation scarcely less perilous than at the crisis which preceded the Albigensian crusade.

and then came the second great rising | people, brought up in the belief that it up of the human intellect against the was a sacred duty to be in communion spiritual domination of Rome. During with the head of the Church, were unthe two generations which followed the able to discover, amidst conflicting Albigensian crusade, the power of the testimonies and conflicting arguments, Papacy had been at the height. Fre- to which of the two worthless priests deric the Second, the ablest and most who were cursing and reviling each accomplished of the long line of Ger- other, the headship of the Church man Cæsars, had in vain exhausted all rightfully belonged. It was nearly at the resources of military and political this juncture that the voice of John skill in the attempt to defend the rights Wickliffe began to make itself heard. of the civil power against the encroach- The public mind of England was soon ments of the Church. The vengeance stirred to its inmost depths: and the of the priesthood had pursued his house influence of the new doctrines was soon to the third generation. Manfred had felt, even in the distant kingdom of perished on the field of battle, Con- Bohemia. In Bohemia, indeed, there radin on the scaffold. Then a turn had long been a predisposition to took place. The secular authority, heresy. Merchants from the Lower long unduly depressed, regained the Danube were often seen in the fairs of ascendant with startling rapidity. The Prague; and the Lower Danube was 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. But something must be attributed to the character and situation of individuals. The man who bore the chief part in effecting this revolution was Philip the Fourth of France, surnamed the Beautiful, a despot by position, a despot by temperament, stern, implacable, and unscrupulous, equally prepared for vio- | lence and for chicanery, and surrounded by a devoted band of men of the sword and of men of law. The fiercest and most highminded of the Roman Pontiffs, while bestowing kingdoms and citing great princes to his judgmentseat, was seized in his palace by armed men, and so foully outraged that he died mad with rage and terror. "Thus," sang the great Florentine poet, was Christ, in the person of his vicar, a second time seized by ruffians, a second time mocked, a second time drenched 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 Avignon, with equal justice, recriminated on Rome. The plain Christian

66

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 slaughtered. The English government put down the Lollards with merciless rigour; and, in the next generation, scarcely one 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.

and which is has 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, Wurtemburg, 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 different 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 honours and advantages which she enjoyed as 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 Indul

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 who were aliens 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 devout people. The new theology spread with a rapidity never known before. All ranks, all varieties of character, joined the ranks of the innovators. Sovereigns impatient to appropriate to themselves the prero-gences had been carried to that scangatives of the Pope, nobles desirous to share the plunder of abbeys, suitors exasperated by the extortions of the Roman Camera, patriots impatient of a foreign rule, good 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. Within fifty years from the day on which Luther publicly renounced communion with the Papacy, and burned the bull of Leo before the gates of Wittenberg, Protestantism attained its highest ascendency, an ascendency which it soon lost,

dalous 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 old Pagan worship was to Trajan and Pliny. Neither the spirit of Savonarola nor the spirit of Machiavelli had anything in common with the spirit of the religious or political Protestants of the North.

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