a crown which he might have preserved if he would have renounced the Catholic faith. In short, every where on the Protestant side we see languor; every where on the Catholic side we see ardour and devotion. Not only was there, at this time, a much more intense zeal among the Catholics than among the Protestants; but the whole zeal of the Catholics was directed against the Protestants, while almost the whole zeal of the Protestants was directed against each other. Within the Catholic Church and unbelief, between zeal and apathy, | again, rather than make the smallest between energy and indolence, between concession to the spirit of religious seriousness and frivolity, between a innovation. Sigismund of Sweden lost pure morality and vice. Very different was the war which degenerate Protestantism had to wage against regenerate Catholicism. To the debauchees, the poisoners, the atheists, who had worn the tiara during the generation which preceded the Reformation, had succeeded Popes who, in religious fervour and severe sanctity of manners, might bear a comparison with Cyprian or Ambrose. The order of Jesuits alone could show many men not inferior in sincerity, constancy, courage, and austerity of life, to the apostles of the Reformation. But while there were no serious disputes on danger had thus called forth in the points of doctrine. The decisions of bosom of the Church of Rome many the Council of Trent were received; of the highest qualities of the Re- and the Jansenian controversy had not formers, the Reformers had contracted yet arisen. The whole force of Rome some of the corruptions which had was, therefore, effective for the purpose been justly censured in the Church of of carrying on the war against the ReRome. They had become lukewarm formation. On the other hand, the force and worldly. Their great old leaders which ought to have fought the battle of had been borne to the grave, and had the Reformation was exhausted in civil left no successors. Among the Pro- conflict. While Jesuit preachers, Jesuit testant princes there was little or no confessors, Jesuit teachers of youth, hearty Protestant feeling. Elizabeth overspread Europe, eager to expend herself was a Protestant rather from every faculty of their minds and every policy than from firm conviction. James drop of their blood in the cause of the First, in order to effect his favourite their Church, Protestant doctors were object of marrying his son into one of confuting, and Protestant rulers were the great continental houses, was ready punishing, sectaries who were just as to make immense concessions to Rome, good Protestants as themselves. and even to admit a modified primacy "Cumque superba foret BABYLON spolianda in the Pope. Henry the Fourth twice tropæis, abjured the reformed doctrines from interested motives. The Elector of Saxony, the natural head of the Pro- In the Palatinate, a Calvinistic prince testant party in Germany, submitted persecuted the Lutherans. In Saxony, to become, at the most important crisis a Lutheran prince persecuted the Calof the struggle, a tool in the hands of vinists. Every body who objected to the Papists. Among the Catholic any of the articles of the Confession of sovereigns, on the other hand, we find Augsburg was banished from Sweden. a religious zeal often amounting to In Scotland, Melville was disputing fanaticism. Philip the Second was a with other Protestants on questions of Papist in a very different sense from ecclesiastical government. In England that in which Elizabeth was a Protest- the gaols were filled with men, who, ant. Maximilian of Bavaria, brought though zealous for the Reformation, up under the teaching of the Jesuits, did not exactly agree with the Court was a fervent missionary wielding the on all points of discipline and docpowers of a prince. The Emperor trine. Some were persecuted for denyFerdinand the Second deliberately put ing the tenet of reprobation; some for his throne to hazard over and over not wearing surplices. The Irish Bella geri placuit nullos habitura triumphos." people might at that time have been, | Church was preaching, catechising, in all probability, reclaimed from Po- confessing, beyond the Niemen. pery, at the expense of half the zeal and activity which Whitgift employed in oppressing Puritans, and Martin Marprelate in reviling bishops. It is impossible to deny that the polity of the Church of Rome is the very master-piece of human wisdom. In truth, nothing but such a polity could, against such assaults, have borne up such doctrines. The experience of twelve hundred eventful years, the ingenuity and patient care of forty generations of statesmen, have improved that polity to such perfection that, among the contrivances which have been devised for deceiving and oppressing mankind, it occupies the highest place. The stronger our conviction As the Catholics in zeal and in union had a great advantage over the Protestants, so had they also an infinitely superior organization. In truth, Protestantism, for aggressive purposes, had no organization at all. The Reformed Churches were mere national Churches. The Church of England existed for England alone. It was an institution as purely local as the Court of Common Pleas, and was utterly that reason and scripture were dewithout any machinery for foreign cidedly on the side of Protestantism, operations. The Church of Scotland, the greater is the reluctant admiration in the same manner, existed for Scot- with which we regard that system of land alone. The operations of the tactics against which reason and scripCatholic Church, on the other hand, ture were employed in vain. took in the whole world. Nobody at If we went at large into this most inLambeth or at Edinburgh troubled teresting subject we should fill volumes. himself about what was doing in Po- We will, therefore, at present, advert to land or Bavaria. But Cracow and only one important part of the policy Munich were at Rome objects of as of the Church of Rome. She thoroughly much interest as the purlieus of St. John understands, what no other Church has Lateran. Our island, the head of the ever understood, how to deal with enProtestant interest, did not send out a thusiasts. In some sects, particularly in single missionary or a single instructor infant sects, enthusiasm is suffered to be of youth to the scene of the great spiri- rampant. In other sects, particularly in tual war. Not a single seminary was esta- sects long established and richly enblished here for the purpose of furnish-dowed, it is regarded with aversion. ing a supply of such persons to foreign The Catholic Church neither submits to countries. On the other hand, Ger- enthusiasm nor proscribes it, but uses many, Hungary, and Poland were filled it. She considers it as a great moving with able and active Catholic emissa- force which in itself, like the muscular ries of Spanish or Italian birth; and col- | power of a fine horse, is neither good leges for the instruction of the northern nor evil, but which may be so directed youth were founded at Rome. The as to produce great good or great evil; spiritual force of Protestantism was a and she assumes the direction to hermere local militia, which might be use- self. It would be absurd to run down a ful in case of an invasion, but could horse like a wolf. It would be still more not be sent abroad, and could there- absurd to let him run wild, breaking fore make no conquests. Rome had fences, and trampling down passengers. such a local militia; but she had also The rational course is to subjugate his a force disposable at a moment's notice will without impairing his vigour, to for foreign service, however dangerous teach him to obey the rein, and then to or disagreeable. If it was thought at urge him to full speed. When once he head-quarters that a Jesuit at Palermo knows his master, he is valuable in prowas qualified by his talents and charac-portion to his strength and spirit. Just ter to withstand the Reformers in such has been the system of the Church Lithuania, the order was instantly of Rome with regard to enthusiasts. She given and instantly obeyed. In a knows that, when religious feelings have month, the faithful servant of the obtained the complete empire of the mind, they impart a strange energy, a strong passion in the guise of a duty. that they raise men above the dominion of pain and pleasure, that obloquy becomes glory, that death itself is contemplated only as the beginning of a higher and happier life. She knows that a person in this state is no object of contempt. He may be vulgar, ignorant, visionary, extravagant; but he will do and suffer things which it is for her interest that somebody should do and suffer, yet from which calm and sober-minded men would shrink. She accordingly enlists him in her service, assigns to him some forlorn hope, in which intrepidity and impetuosity are more wanted than judgment and selfcommand, and sends him forth with her benedictions and her applause. In England it not unfrequently happens that a tinker or coalheaver hears a sermon or falls in with a tract which alarms him about the state of his soul. If he be a man of excitable nerves and strong imagination, he thinks himself given over to the Evil Power. He doubts whether he has not committed the unpardonable sin. He imputes every wild fancy that springs up in his mind to the whisper of a fiend. His sleep is broken by dreams of the great judgment-seat, the open books, and the unquenchable fire. If, in order to escape from these vexing thoughts, he flies to amusement or to licentious indulgence, the delusive relief only makes his misery darker and more hopeless. At length a turn takes place. He is reconciled to his offended Maker. To borrow the fine imagery of one who had himself been thus tried, he emerges from the Valley of the Shadow of Death, from the dark land of gins and snares, of quagmires and precipices, of evil spirits and ravenous beasts. The sunshine is on his path. He ascends the Delectable Mountains, and catches from their summit a distant view of the shining city which is the end of his pilgrimage. Then arises in his mind a natural and surely not a censurable desire, to impart to others the thoughts of which his own heart is full, to warn the careless, to comfort those who are troubled in spirit. The impulse which urges him to devote his whole life to the teaching of religion is He exhorts his neighbours; and, if he be a man of strong parts, he often does so with great effect. He pleads as if he were pleading for his life, with tears, and pathetic gestures, and burning words; and he soon finds with delight, not perhaps wholly unmixed with the alloy of human infirmity, that his rude eloquence rouses and melts hearers who sleep very composedly while the rector preaches on the apostolical succession. Zeal for God, love for his fellow-creatures, pleasure in the exercise of his newly discovered powers, impel him to become a preacher. He has no quarrel with the establishment, no objection to its formularies, its government, or its vestments. He would gladly be admitted among its humblest ministers, but, admitted or rejected, he feels that his vocation is determined. His orders have come down to him, not through a long and doubtful series of Arian and Popish bishops, but direct from on high. His commission is the same that on the Mountain of Ascension was given to the Eleven. Nor will he, for lack of human credentials, spare to deliver the glorious message with which he is charged by the true Head of the Church. For a man thus minded, there is within the pale of the establishment no place. He has been at no college; he cannot construe a Greek author or write a Latin theme; and he is told that, if he remains in the communion of the Church, he must do so as a hearer, and that, if he is resolved to be a teacher, he must begin by being a schismatic. His choice is soon made. He harangues on Tower Hill or in Smithfield. A congregation is formed. A license is obtained. A plain brick building, with a desk and benches, is run up, and named Ebenezer or Bethel. In a few weeks the Church has lost for ever a hundred families, not one of which entertained the least scruple about her articles, her liturgy, her government, or her ceremonies. Far different is the policy of Rome. The ignorant enthusiast whom the Anglican Church makes an enemy, and whatever the polite and learned may think, a most dangerous enemy, the Catholic Church makes a champion. She bids him nurse his beard, covers He is certain to become the head of a formidable secession. Place John Wesley at Rome. He is certain to be the first General of a new society devoted to the interests and honour of the Church. Place St. Theresa in London. Her restless enthusiasm ferments into madness, not untinctured with craft. She becomes the prophetess, the mother of the faithful, holds disputations with the devil, issues sealed pardons to her adorers, and lies in of the Shiloh. Place Joanna Southcote at Rome. She founds an order of barefooted Carmelites, every one of whom is ready to suffer martyrdom for the Church; a solemn service is consecrated to her memory; and her statue, placed over the holy water, strikes the eye of every stranger who enters St. Peter's. We have dwelt long on this subject, because we believe that of the many causes to which the Church of Rome owed her safety and her triumph at the close of the sixteenth century, the chief was the profound policy with which she used the fanaticism of such persons as St. Ignatius and St. Theresa. The Protestant party was now indeed vanquished and humbled. In France, so strong had been the Catholic reacEven for female agency there is a place tion that Henry the Fourth found it in her system. To devout women she necessary to choose between his religion assigns spiritual functions, dignities, and his crown. In spite of his clear heand magistracies. In our country, if a reditary right, in spite of his eminent noble lady is moved by more than or- personal qualities, he saw that, unless he dinary zeal for the propagation of reli- reconciled himself to the Church of gion, the chance is that, though she may Rome, he could not count on the fidelity disapprove of no doctrine or ceremony even of those gallant gentlemen whose of the Established Church, she will end impetuous valour had turned the tide by giving her name to a new schism. of battle at Ivry. In Belgium, Poland, If a pious and benevolent woman enters and Southern Germany, Catholicism the cells of a prison to pray with the had obtained complete ascendency. The most unhappy and degraded of her own resistance of Bohemia was put down. sex, she does so without any authority The Palatinate was conquered. Upper from the Church. No line of action is and Lower Saxony were overflowed by traced out for her; and it is well if the Catholic invaders. The King of DenOrdinary does not complain of her in-mark stood forth as the Protector of the trusion, and if the Bishop does not Reformed Churches: he was defeated, shake his head at such irregular bene-driven out of the empire, and attacked volence. At Rome, the Countess of in his own possessions. The armies of Huntingdon would have a place in the the House of Austria pressed on, subcalendar as St. Selina, and Mrs. Fry jugated Pomerania, and were stopped would be foundress and first Superior of in their progress only by the ramparts the Blessed Order of Sisters of the Gaols. of Stralsund. Place Ignatius Loyola at Oxford. And now again the tide turned. Two violent outbreaks of religious feeling in opposite directions had given a character to the whole history of a whole century. Protestantism had at first driven back Catholicism to the Alps and the Pyrenees. Catholicism had rallied, and had driven back Protestantism even to the German Ocean. Then the great southern reaction began to slacken, as the great northern movement had slackened before. The zeal of the Catholics waxed cool. Their union was dissolved. The paroxysm of religious excitement was over on both sides. One party had degenerated as far from the spirit of Loyola as the other from the spirit of Luther. During three generations religion had been the mainspring of politics. The revolutions and civil wars of France, Scotland, Holland, Sweden, the long struggle between Philip and Elizabeth, the bloody competition for the Bohemian crown, had all originated in theological disputes. But a great change now took place. The contest which was raging in Germany lost its religious character. It was now, on one side, less a contest for the spiritual ascendency of the Church of Rome than for the temporal ascendency of the House of Austria. On the other side, it was less a contest for the reformed doctrines than for national independence. Governments began to form themselves into new combinations, in which community of political interest was far more regarded than community of religious belief. Even at Rome the progress of the Catholic arms was observed with mixed feelings. The Supreme Pontiff was a sovereign prince of the second rank, and was anxious about the balance of power as well as about the propagation of truth. It was known that he dreaded the rise of an universal monarchy even more than he desired the prosperity of the Universal Church. At length a great event announced to the world that the war of sects had ceased, and that the war of states had succeeded. A coalition, including Calvinists, Lutherans, and Catholics, was formed against the House of Austria. At the head of that coalition were the first statesman and the first warrior of the age; the former a prince of the Catholic Church, distinguished by the vigour and success with which he had put down the Huguenots; the latter a Protestant king who owed his throne to a revolution caused by hatred of Popery. The alliance of Richelieu and Gustavus marks the time at which the great religious struggle terminated. The war which followed was a war for the equilibrium of Europe. When, at length, the peace of Westphalia was concluded, it appeared that the Church of Rome remained in full possession of a vast dominion which in the middle of the preceding century she seemed to be on the point of losing. No part of Europe remained Protestant, except that part which had become thoroughly Protestant before the generation which heard Luther preach had passed away. Since that time there has been no religious war between Catholics and Protestants as such. In the time of Cromwell, Protestant England was united with Catholic France, then governed by a priest, against Catholic Spain. William the Third, the eminently Protestant hero, was at the head of a coalition which included many Catholic powers, and which was secretly favoured even by Rome, against the Catholic Lewis. In the time of Anne, Protestant England and Protestant Holland joined with Catholic Savoy and Catholic Portugal, for the purpose of transferring the crown of Spain from one bigoted Catholic to another. The geographical frontier between the two religions has continued to run almost precisely where it ran at the close of the Thirty Years' War; nor has Protestantism given any proofs of that "expansive power" which has been ascribed to it. But the Protestant boasts, and boasts most justly, that wealth, civilization, and intelligence, have increased far more on the northern than on the southern side of the boundary, and that countries so little favoured by nature as Scotland and Prussia are now among the most flourishing and best governed portions of the world, while the marble palaces of Genoa are deserted, while banditti infest the beautiful shores of Campania, while the fertile sea-coast of the Pon |
