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the general order of Providence. Our Lord proffers his grace to all, but he forces no one to accept it. We arraign not the past; "sufficient for the day is the evil thereof." pronounce no judgment on the abstract rights either of the Church or of the state. We ask not what has been, nor what would be, if all rights could be practically asserted and carried out. We look only at what is practicable, men being as they are, and the world as it is. Whatever heated disciples, who know not what manner of spirit they are of, or old men, oppressed by their memories, may demand, persuaded that we can secure freedom for the

we are

Church only by conceding equal freedom to the sects. We can secure liberty for truth only by conceding liberty for error, liberty for good only with liberty for evil. This is all the world will concede, and with this we must be content.

We

With this we for ourselves are content. We have confidence in truth, and certain of having the truth, we fear nothing from the free and open encounter with error. do not want the state to bind and gag our adversaries, or to dispatch them for us. We want no advantage over them but what we have in the intrinsic superiority of our religion, and in this we are true to the spirit of our Church, who asks for her celestial Spouse only free and willing servants, who serve him from choice, from love, not from servile fear or Compulsion. The officiousness of civil government and half pagan disciples insisting on the legislation of ancient Rome where the two powers were united, not separated as under Christian law, has always embarrassed her, obscured

the

her spiritual loveliness, and raised her up innumerable ene

mies.

have

If it had comported with the designs of our Lord to used force to compress error or to advance truth, it

would have cost him nothing to have suppressed at once all error, and left truth no enemy to grapple with. Nay, he could have prevented all error, all sin, all evil. But it pleased him to create man with free will, and it pleases him in his government of man to respect that free will. He leaves man the liberty of error, the liberty of evil, otherwise

there

would be no error, no evil in the world.

The state is

bound to suppress and punish violence, and maintain peace

ably

equality of rights, and when it does so much, it probdoes all that can be of any real service to the cause of

truth and religion. All the Church needs to command intelVOL. II.-No. II.

13

ligence, and to win souls to Christ, is an open field and fair play. If you will neither gag nor bind her, she asks not that you gag or bind her adversaries. Fénelon, when he went on his mission to the Huguenots, stipulated that the dragoons of the king should be withdrawn, and no force be used or displayed. The Church is stronger in her simple vestments, armed only with the sword of the Spirit, than when clad in the armor and armed with the sword and lance of Cæsar. When the stripling David went forth to meet the challenge of Goliath who had defied the armies of Israel, he refused the sword and armor of Saul, and advanced in his simple shepherd's garb, with a shepherd's sling and five smooth stones from the brook; so goes clothed and armed the champion of truth to do battle with the giant Error. He wants not the incumbrance of Saul's armor. He takes nothing from the king. With his sling and smooth stone he smites the giant on his head, and fells him to the earth.

error.

The great fault with us all is our want of confidence in truth. We feel that truth is an infant that cannot stand alone, or a child not to be trusted to itself. We must swathe it, hold it up, and lead it. We fear it cannot sustain itself, much less sustain us. We treat it as if it were But we should know that truth, and that only truth can stand alone, and that truth and only truth can sustain itself or sustain us. Truth is great and will prevail. Of all things truth is the most powerful and the most prolific. He who has the truth and dare trust it, dare confide himself without reserve to it, is omnipotent, and no power on earth or in hell can stand against him. Never yet was a true word honestly spoken that fell to the ground and was absorbed as water in the sand. God himself tells us his word shall prosper in the thing whereunto he sends it, for his word is truth. The truth honestly spoken is sure to reach some heart, to germinate, and in its season to bear fruit. Let us then have confidence in truth, and never fear that truth can be put to the worse in a free and open encounter with error. All heaven and all that is good and powerful on earth fight with it, and for it, and render it invincible. If ever truth fails to ride forth conquering and to conquer, it is because she is bound in the house of her friends, or held back by their untimely fears and miserable cowardice.

We have, then, no wish to see our Church using the state

to suppress dissent, and to force a uniformity which has no foundation in conviction and affection. We believe that for the civil government in our days to do more for her than to maintain her simple freedom to teach and govern according to her own doctrines and laws those who are willing members of her communion, would be to do little good and immense harm. Deprive error of all power to use the state against her, and she can well consent to forego all power to use the state against it. Let her and the sects stand on the same footing before the state. Let the state recognize as before herself the equal rights of her and them, and protect those rights simply as included in the equal political rights of the citizen, which are regarded as anterior to the state, and which the state is instituted to protect and defend under the name of liberty. Under such an order the Church can live and flourish, and better than under a government which professes to favor her, and which is sure to demand a liberal cession of her liberty as the price of the favor it extends to her. But this order can be realized only where political liberty is recognized and constitutionally guarantied. Hence the reason why we wage such unrelenting war against Cæsarism, against all the unmixed forms of government, and contend with what strength and ability God gives us for political liberty, or what in the Englishspeaking world is called "self-government."

Mr. Cayla's pamphlet shows us the danger the Church always has to apprehend from Cæsarism,-dangers in part averted in the Middle Ages, because the Pope was then the chief of the political world, and could form political combinations sufficient to hold Cæsar in check. But that is now no longer practicable, for no political combinations can now be formed for defending the rights or interests of the Church. We hope the pamphlet will open the eyes of our European oscurantisti, and recall the idolaters of Cæsar, or those Catholics who have been so ready to throw both Church and state under his feet, to a sense of their dignity as men, and of their duty as Christians. If it have such a tendency, it will have rendered to society civil and religious far greater service than the author dreamed of rendering. There are people who will not regard the good, till alarmed by the evil of its absence. The Spartans taught their sons temperance by exhibiting before them the disgusting spectacle of their drunken slaves. Mr. Cayla's pamphlet may perform a similar service for the incense-burners to Cæsar,

and lead them to appreciate the benefits and necessity of political freedom. If so, the slave will have performed perhaps the best service of which he was capable, and half gain the forgiveness of those whose sense of justice and decency he has outraged.

ART. III.-Lectures on the Early History of Christianity in England, with Sermons delivered on several occasions. By THOMAS WINTHROP COIT, D.D., LL.D., Rector of St. Paul's Church, Troy, N. Y. New York: Daniel Dana, Jr. 1859. 12mo. pp. 334.

WE are among those who have always appreciated the difficult position of Episcopalians who may be called upon to defend their religion against keen and pressing opposi tion. If a Protestant attacks them, they are forced to stand upon Catholic ground or fail to make good their defence; and if a Catholic attacks them, they are compelled to take Protestant ground in order to meet his objections with any thing like a satisfactory reply. The Catholics of Great Britain have bitter cause to complain of the political and social tyranny under which they have been ground down for three centuries in the name of the established religion, and for the pecuniary benefit of its ministers; but in this country we have had no reason to accuse the Episcopalians as a body of persecution, nor even of an unkind or unfair spirit, since the epoch of our national independence. Although wealthy, as a general thing their inHluence has not been lent to the rich against the poor, or to the strong against the weak.

They have not accomplished as much in favor of the arts in their church buildings as might have been expected from their means, but the material effect of their worship, whether in the expensive temples of the large city or in the pleasant little chapels and parsonages of the country town and village, is to promote neatness, comfort, and order. Our priests will be found always willing to bear testimony to the kindness and charity which are so common among the Episcopalians, and those who know them more closely are well aware how many of them lead spotless lives, and are truly pious (we ask pardon for the phrase) in their own way. As a body too they have always pro

claimed among the Protestant sects the truth of a divinelyestablished Church, as the Jews proclaimed among all nations the unity of God. For the present they are puzzled to discover where the true Church is, yet they look for it earnestly in every direction except the one in which they would be sure to find it.

Dr. Coit's lectures, which fill half the volume cited at the head of this article, and which we purpose reviewing, were composed to tranquillize the conscience of any members of his church who might feel dissatisfied with their religious condition and look for something better in the direction of Rome. They are manly in their tone, pleasantly written, and must have been quite interesting to a friendly audience when delivered by the living voice. The volume is entirely free from those charges of immorality and corruption which are so painfully frequent in works against the Church, and which lead an observant reader to form a very humble opinion of many of their authors. The lecturer seems to be a man who is innocent in his own thoughts and actions, and is therefore not prone to suspect the conduct of his neighbors. We must say of the Doctor, however, that he has a temper of his own. He does not appear to cherish any unchristian hatred toward the Pope and his friends, but he is nettled and stung by what he is pleased to consider the outrageous pretensions of Rome. He upbraids us with the unaccountable absurdities which he has been told we implicitly believe in, he hates despotism, superstition, and treachery, and is so indignant at our supposed love for these things, that he scolds us and calls. us names pretty freely all through his book. His error is the old and constantly-recurring one of mistaking for the Church of God the temporal interests and human passions with which her enemies, and sometimes, alas! her friends too, have chosen to identify her.

The pages of the lectures are rich in foot-notes from an immense variety of controversial works, which the student will readily discern are quoted at second, third, and fourth hand. They prove very clearly that our author has studied us only through our enemies, and that although he has read a great deal about " Popery," he knows very little of Catholicity. He calls us to the foot-note in the midst of a grave discussion, and sends us in the most amusing manner for authorities on points of Catholic teaching and history to the Scotch romancer, Bower, On the Popes, to Fra Paolo

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