proofreading team. conditions in utah. speech of hon. thomas kearns, of utah, in the senate of the united states, tuesday, february , . washington. . speech of hon. thomas kearns. * * * * * polygamous marriages and plural cohabitation. the president pro tempore. the chair lays before the senate the resolution submitted by the senator from idaho [mr. dubois], which will be read. the secretary read the resolution submitted yesterday by mr. dubois, as follows: _resolved_, that the committee on the judiciary be, and it is hereby, authorized and instructed to prepare and report to the senate within thirty days after the beginning of the next session of congress a joint resolution of the two houses of congress proposing to the several states amendments to the constitution of the united states which shall provide, in substance, for the prohibition and punishment of polygamous marriages and plural cohabitation contracted or practiced within the united states and in every place subject to the jurisdiction of the united states; and which shall, in substance, also require all persons taking office under the constitution or laws of the united states, or of any state, to take and subscribe an oath that he or she is not, and will not be, a member or adherent of any organization whatever the laws, rules, or nature of which organization require him or her to disregard his or her duty to support and maintain the constitution and laws of the united states and of the several states. mr. kearns. mr. president, i will not permit this occasion to pass without saying, with brevity and such clearness as i can command, what it seems to me should be said by a senator, under these circumstances, before leaving public life. something is due to the state which has honored me; something is due to the record which i have endeavored to maintain honorably before the world and something, by way of information, is due to the senate and the country. utah, the newest of the states, to me the best beloved of all the states, appears to be the only one concerning which there is a serious conflict with the country. i was not born in utah, but i have spent all the years of my manhood there, and i love the commonwealth and its people. in what i say there is malice toward none, and i hope to make it just to all. if the present day does not accept my statements and appreciate my motives, i can only trust that time will prove more gentle and that in the future those who care to revert to these remarks will know that they are animated purely by a hope to bring about a better understanding between utah and this great nation. utah was admitted to statehood after, and because of, a long series of pledges exacted from the mormon leaders, the like of which had never before been known in american history. except for those pledges, the sentiment of the united states would never have assented to utah's admission. except for the belief on the part of congress and the country that the extraordinary power which abides in that state would maintain these pledges, utah would not have been admitted. there is every reason to believe that the president who signed the bill would have vetoed it if he had not been convinced that the pledges made would be kept. the pledges. as a citizen of the state and a witness to the events and words which constitute those pledges, as a senator of the united states, i give my word of honor to you that i believed that these pledges consisted of the following propositions: first. that the mormon leaders would live within the laws pertaining to plural marriage and the continued plural marriage relation, and that they would enforce this obligation upon all of their followers, under penalty of disfellowship. second. that the leaders of the mormon church would no longer exercise political sway, and that their followers would be free and would exercise their freedom in politics, in business, and in social affairs. as a citizen and a senator i give my word of honor to you that i believed that these pledges would be kept in the spirit in which congress and the country accepted them, and that there would never be any violation, evasion, denial, or equivocation concerning them. i appeal to such members of this body as were in either house of congress during the years to , if it was not their belief at that time that the foregoing were the pledges and that they would be kept; and i respectfully insist that every senator here who was a member of either house at that time would have refused to vote for utah's admission unless he had firmly believed as i have stated. . utah, secured her statehood by a solemn compact made by the mormon leaders in behalf of themselves and their people. . that compact has been broken willfully and frequently. . no apostle of the mormon church has publicly protested against that violation. i know the gravity of the utterances that i have just made. i know what are the probable consequences to myself. but i have pondered long and earnestly upon the subject and have come to the conclusion that duty to the innocent people of my state and that obligation to the senate and the country require that i shall clearly define my attitude. religion not involved. this is no quarrel with religion. this is no assault upon any man's faith. this is rather the reverence toward the inherent right of all men to believe as they please, which separates religious faith from irreligious practice. the mormon people have a system of their own, somewhat complex, and gathered from the mysticisms of all the ages. it does not appeal to most men; but in its purely theological domain it is theirs, and i respect it as their religion and them as its believers. the trouble arises now, as it has frequently arisen in the past, from the fact that some of the accidental leaders of the movement since the first zealot founder have sought to make of this religion not only a system of morals, sometimes quite original in themselves, but also a system of social relation, a system of finance, a system of commerce, and a system of politics. the social aspect. i dismiss the religion with my profound respect; if it can comfort them, i would not, if i could, disturb it. coming to the social aspect of the society, it is apparent that the great founder sought first to establish equality among men, and then to draw from those equal ranks a special class, who were permitted to practice polygamy and to whom special privileges were accorded in their association with the consecrated temples and the administration of mystic ordinances therein. the polygamous group, or cult as it may be called, soon became the ruling factor in the organization; and it may be observed that ever since the founding of the church almost every man of prominence in the community has belonged to this order. it was so in the time of the martyrs, joseph and hyrum smith, who were killed at carthage jail in illinois, and both of whom were polygamists, although it was denied at the time. there were living until recently, and perhaps there are living now, women who testified that they were married in polygamy to one or the other of these two men, joseph having the larger number. it has been so ever since and is so to-day that nearly every man of the governing class has been or is a polygamist. brigham young succeeded joseph smith, and he set up a kind of kingly rulership, not unbecoming to a man of his vast empire-building power. the mormons have been taught to revere joseph smith as a direct prophet from god. he saw the face of the all father. he held communion with the son. the holy ghost was his constant companion. he settled every question, however trivial, by revelation from almighty god. but brigham was different. while claiming a divine right of leadership, he worked out his great mission by palpable and material means. i do not know that he ever pretended to have received a revelation from the time that he left nauvoo until he reached the shores of the dead sea, nor through all the thirty years of his leadership there. he seemed to regard his people as children who had to be led through their serious calamities by holding out to them the glittering thought of divine guardianship. so firmly did brigham establish the social order in utah that all of the people were equal, except the governing body. this may be said to consist of the president and his two counsellors, they three constituting the first presidency; the twelve apostles; the presiding bishopric, consisting of three men, the chief bishops of the church but much lower in rank than the apostles; the seven presidents of seventies, who are, under the apostles, the subordinate head of the missionary service of the church; and the presiding patriarch. these altogether constitute a body of twenty-six men. there are local authorities in the different stakes of zion, as they are called, corresponding to counties in a state, but with these it is not necessary to deal. practically all of these men under brigham young were polygamists. they constituted what one of their number once called the "elite class" of the community. to attain this rank one usually had to show ability, and attaining the rank he was quite certain to enter into or extend his already existing plural-marriage relations. these rulers were looked upon with great reverence. brigham young, besides being a prophet of god, as they believed, had led them through the greatest march of the ages. his nod became almost superhuman in its significance. his frown was as terrible to them as the wrath of god. he upheld all the members of the polygamistic and governing class by his favoritism toward them. he supremely, and they subordinately, ruled the community as if they were a king and a house of peers, with no house of commons. not elsewhere in the united states, and not in any foreign country where civilization dwells, has there been such a complete mastery of man over modern men. the subordinates and the mass would perform the slightest will of brigham young. when he was not present the mass would perform the will of any of the subordinates speaking in his name. below this privileged class stood the common mass. it had its various gradations of title, but, with the exception of rare instances of personal power, there was equality in the mass. for instance, as business was a part of their system, the local religious authority in some remote part might be the business subordinate of some other man of less ecclesiastical rank, with the result that this peculiar intermingling kept them all practically upon one level of social order; and the man who made adobes under the hot sun of the desert through all the week might still be the religious superior of the richest man in the local community, and they met on terms of equality and friendship. their children might intermarry, the difference in wealth being countervailed by a difference in ecclesiastical authority. it was a strange social system, this, with brigham young and his coterie of advisers, to the number of twenty-six, standing at the head, self-perpetuating, the chief being able to select constantly to fill the ranks as they might be depleted by death; and all these ruling over one solid mass of equal caste who thought that the rulers were animated by divine revelation, holding the right to govern in all things on earth and with authority extending into heaven. so firmly intrenched was their social system that when brigham young passed away his various successors who came in time to his place by accident of seniority of service found ample opportunity without difficulty to perpetuate this system and to maintain their social autocracy. as the matter has appeared so fully before the country, i will not speak further of the method of succession, but will merely call to your minds that after brigham young came john taylor, then wilford woodruff, then lorenzo snow, then joseph f. smith, the present ruler. under these several men the social autocracy has had its varying fortunes, but at the present time it is probably at as high a point as it ever reached under the original joseph or under brigham young. the president of the church, joseph f. smith, affects a regal state. his home consists of a series of villas, rather handsome in design, and surrounded by such ample grounds as to afford sufficient exclusiveness. in addition to this he has an official residence of historic character near to the office which he occupies as president. when he travels he is usually accompanied by a train of friends, who are really servitors. when he attends social functions he appears like a ruler among his subjects. and in this respect i am not speaking of mormon associations alone, for there are many gentiles in and out of utah who seem to take delight in paying this extraordinary deference. if i have seemed to speak at length upon this mere social phase it has not been without a definite purpose. i want you to know how this religion, claiming to recognize and secure the equality of men, immediately established and has maintained for the mass of its adherents that social equality, but has elevated a class of its rulers to regal authority and splendor. understanding how the chief among them has the dignity of a monarch in their social relations, you will better understand the business and political autocracy which he has been able to establish. in all this social system each apostle has his great part. he is inseparable from it. he wields now, as does a minister at court, such part of the power as the monarch may permit him to enjoy, and it is his hope and expectation that he will outlive those who are his seniors in rank in order that he may become the ruler. therefore, if there be evil in this social relation as i have portrayed it, every apostle is responsible for a part of that evil. they enjoy the honors of the social class; they help to exert the tyranny over the subjugated mass. those of you who do me the honor to follow my remarks will realize how close is the relation between the apostles and the president, and that the apostle is a responsible part of the governing power. while i may speak of the president of the church segregated from his associates and as the monarch, it must be understood constantly that he maintains his power by the support of the apostles, who keep the mass in order and in subjugation to his will, expressed through them. the business monopoly. whatever may have been its origin or excuse, the business power of the president of the church and of the select class which he admits into business relations with him is now a practical monopoly, or is rapidly becoming a monopoly, of everything that he touches. i want to call your attention to the extraordinary list of worldly concerns in which this spiritual leader holds official position. the situation is more amazing when you are advised that this man came to his presidency purely by accident, namely, the death of his seniors in rank; that he had never known any business ability, and that he comes to the presidency and the directorship of the various corporations solely because he is president of the church. he is already reputed to be a wealthy man, and his statement would seem to indicate that he has large holdings in the various corporations with which he is associated, although previous to his accession to the presidency of the church he made a kind of proud boast among his people of his poverty. he conducts railways, street-car lines, power and light companies, coal mines, salt works, sugar factories, shoe factories, mercantile houses, drug stores, newspapers, magazines, theaters, and almost every conceivable kind of business, and in all of these, inasmuch as he is the dominant factor by virtue of his being the prophet of god, he asserts indisputable sway. it is considered an evidence of deference to him, and good standing in the church, for his hundreds of thousands of followers to patronize exclusively the institutions which he controls. and this fact alone, without any business ability on his part, but with capable subordinate guidance for his enterprises, insures their success, and danger and possible ruin for every competitive enterprise. independent of these business concerns, he is in receipt of an income like unto that which a royal family derives from a national treasury. one-tenth of all the annual earnings of all the mormons in all the world flows to him. these funds amount to the sum of $ , , annually, or per cent upon $ , , , which is one-quarter of the entire taxable wealth of the state of utah. it is the same as if he owned, individually, in addition to all his visible enterprises, one-quarter of all the wealth of the state and derived from it per cent of income without taxation and without discount. the hopelessness of contending in a business way with this autocrat must be perfectly apparent to your minds. the original purpose of this vast tithe, as often stated by speakers for the church, was the maintenance of the poor, the building of meetinghouses, etc. to-day the tithes are transmuted, in the localities where they are paid, into cash, and they flow into the treasury of the head of the church. no account is made, or ever has been made, of these tithes. the president expends them according to his own will and pleasure, and with no examination of his accounts, except by those few men whom he selects for that purpose and whom he rewards for their zeal and secrecy. shortly after the settlement of the mormon church property question with the united states the church issued a series of bonds, amounting approximately to $ , , , which were taken by financial institutions. this was probably to wipe out a debt which had accumulated during a long period of controversy with the nation. but since, and including the year , which was about the time of the issue of the bonds, approximately $ , , have been paid as tithes. if any of the bonds are still outstanding, it is manifestly because the president of the church desires for reasons of his own to have an existing indebtedness. it will astound you to know that every dollar of united states money paid to any servant of the government who is a mormon is tithed for the benefit of this monarch. out of every $ , thus paid he gets $ to swell his grandeur. this is also true of money paid out of the public treasury of the state of utah to mormon officials. but what is worst of all, the monarch dips into the sacred public school fund and extracts from every mormon teacher one-tenth of his or her earnings and uses it for his unaccounted purposes; and, by means of these purposes and the power which they constitute, he defies the laws of his state, the sentiment of his country, and is waging war of nullification on the public school system, so dear to the american people. no right-thinking man will oppose any person as a servant of the nation or the state or as a teacher in the public schools on account of religious faith. as i have before remarked, this is no war upon the religion of the mormons; and i am only calling attention to the monstrous manner in which this monarch invades all the provinces of human life and endeavors to secure his rapacious ends. in all this there is no thought on my part of opposition to voluntary gifts by individuals for religious purposes or matters connected legitimately with religion. my comment and criticism are against the tyranny which misuses a sacred name to extract from individuals the moneys which they ought not to spare from family needs, and which they do not wish to spare; my comment and criticism relate to the power of a monarch whose tyranny is so effective as that not even the moneys paid by the government are considered the property of the government's servant until after this monarch shall have seized his arbitrary tribute, with or without the willing assent of the victim, so that the monarch may engage the more extensively in commercial affairs, which are not a part of either religion or charity. with an income of per cent upon one-quarter of the entire assessed valuation of the state of utah to-day, how long will it take this monarch, with his constantly increasing demands for revenue, to so absorb the productive power that he shall be receiving an income of per cent upon one-half the property, and then upon all of the property of the state? this is worse than the farming of taxes under the old french kings. will congress allow this awful calamity to continue? the view which the people of the united states entertained on this subject forty years ago was shown by the act of congress in , in which a provision, directed particularly against the mormon church, declared that no church in a territory of the united states should have in excess of $ , of wealth outside of the property used for purposes of worship. it is evident that as early as that time the pernicious effects of a system which used the name of god and the authority of religion to dominate in commerce and finance were fully recognized. this immense tithing fund is gathered directly from mormons, but the burden falls in some degree upon gentiles also. gentiles are in business and suffer by competition with tithe-supported business enterprises. gentiles are large employers of mormon labor; and as that labor must pay one-tenth of its earnings to support competitive concerns, the gentile employer must pay, indirectly at least, the tithe which may be utilized to compete with, and even ruin, him in business. and in return it should be noted that mormon institutions do not employ gentiles except in rare cases of necessity. the reason is obvious: gentiles do not take as kindly to the tithing system as do the mormons. the mormon citizen of utah has additional disadvantages. after paying one-tenth of all his earnings as a tithe offering, he is called upon to erect and maintain the meetinghouses and other edifices of the church; he is called upon to donate to the poor fund in his ward, through his local bishop; he is called upon to sustain the women's relief society, whose purpose is to care for the poor and to minister to the sick; he is called upon to pay his share of the expense for the , missionaries of the church who are constantly kept in the field without drawing upon, the general funds of the church. when all this is done, it is found that, in defiance of the old and deserved boast of the predecessors of the present president, there are some mormons in the poorhouses of utah, and these are sustained by the public taxes derived from the gentiles and mormons alike. broadly speaking, the gentiles compose per cent of the population and pay one-half of the taxes of utah. in the long run they carry their share of all these great charges. the almost unbearable community burden which is thus inflicted must be visible to your minds without argument from me. let it be sufficient on this point for me to say that all the property of utah is made to contribute to the grandeur of the president of the church, and that at his instance any industry, any institution, within the state, could be destroyed except the mining and smelting industry. even this industry his personal and church organ has attacked with a threat of extermination by the courts, or by additional legislation, if the smelters do not meet the view expressed by the church organ. mr. president, i ask to have read at this point an editorial from the deseret evening news of october , , which i send to the desk. the president pro tempore. the secretary will read as requested. the secretary read as follows: deseret evening news. [organ of the church of jesus christ of latter-day saints.] salt lake city, _october , _. away with the nuisance. the people of salt lake city are waking up to the realization of the trouble of which our cousins out in the country are complaining. the sulphurous fumes which have been tasted by many folks here, particularly late at night, are not only those of a partisan nature emanating from the smokestacks of the slanderers and maligners, but are treats bestowed upon our citizens by the smelters, and are samples of the goods, or rather evils, which farmers and horticulturists have been burdened with so long. complaints have come to us from some of the best people of the city, of different faiths and parties, that the air has been laden with sulphurous fumes that can net only be felt in the throat, but tasted in the mouth, and they rest upon the city at night, appearing like a thin fog. the fact is this smelter smoke will have to go; there is no mistake about that. if the smelters can not consume it, they will have to close up. this fair county must not be devastated and this city must not be rendered unhealthful by any such a nuisance as that which has been borne with now for a long time. the evasive policy that has been pursued, the tantalizing treatment toward the farmers who have vainly sought for redress, the destruction that has come upon vegetation and upon live stock, and now the choking fumes that reach this city all demand some practical remedy in place of the shilly-shally of the past. the deseret news has counseled peace, consideration for the smelter people in the difficulties that they have to meet, favor toward a valuable industry that should be encouraged on proper lines, and arbitration instead of litigation. but it really seems now as though an aggressive policy will have to be pursued, or ruin will come to the agricultural pursuits of salt lake county, while the city will not escape from the ravages of the smelter fiend. if the companies that control those works will not or can not dispose of the poisonous metallic fumes that pour out of their smokestacks, the fires will have to he banked and the nuisance suppressed. we do not believe the latter is the necessary alternative. we are of opinion that the evil can be disposed of, and we are sure that efforts ought to be made to effect it without further delay. it looks as if the courts will have to be appealed to to obtain compensation for damages already inflicted. also that they will have to be applied to for injunctions against the continuance of the cause of the trouble. we think there is law enough now to proceed under. but if that is not the case, then legislation must be had to fully cover the ground. litigation will have to come first, legislation afterwards. however that may be, temporizing with the evil will not do. patience has ceased to be a virtue in this matter. the conviction is fastening itself upon the public mind that no active steps are intended by the responsible parties, but simply a policy of delay. they must be taught that this will not answer the purpose, and that the injured people will not be fooled in that way. the smelter smoke must go. and it must not go in the old way. the proposition to put the matter in the hands of experts chosen by the complainants is not to be seriously considered. the onus is upon the smelter men; they are the offenders, and they must take the steps necessary to remove the cause of complaint, and also reimburse those who have been injured. we do not ask anything unreasonable. we join with those of our citizens who intend that this beautiful part of our lovely state shall not be laid waste, even if the only cure is the suppression of the destroying cause. this may as well be understood first as last. useless practical measures are adopted to abate the evil, active proceedings will have to be taken and pushed to the utmost to remove entirely the root and branch and trunk and body of this tree of destruction. the people affected are deeply in earnest, and they certainly mean business. mr. kearns. mr. president, i must not burden you with too many details, but in order for you to see how complete is the business power of this man i will cite you to one case. the great salt lake is estimated to contain , , , tons of salt. probably salt can be made cheaper on the shores of this lake than anywhere else in the world. nearly all its shore line is adaptable for salt gardens. the president of the church is interested in a large salt monopoly which has gathered in the various smaller enterprises. he is president of a railroad which runs from the salt gardens to salt lake city, connecting there with trunk lines. it costs to manufacture the salt and place it on board the cars cents per ton. he receives for it $ and $ per ton. his company and its subsidiary corporation are probably capitalized at three-quarters of a million dollars, and upon this large sum he is able to pay dividends of or per cent. not long since two men, who for many years had been tithe payers and loyal members of the church, undertook to establish a salt garden along the line of a trunk railway. one of them was a large dealer in salt, and proposed to extend his trade by making the salt and reaching territory prohibited to him by the church price of salt; the other was the owner of the land upon which it was proposed to establish the salt garden. these men formed a corporation, put in pumping stations and flumes, and the corporation became indebted to one of the financial institutions over which the church exercised considerable influence. then the president of the church sent for them. there is scarcely an instance on record where a message of this kind failed of its purpose. these men went to meet the prophet, seer, and revelator of god, as they supposed, but he had laid aside his robes of sanctity for the moment and he was a plain, unadorned, aggressive, if not an able, business man. he first denounced them for interfering with a business which he had made peculiarly his own; and, when they protested that they had no intention to interfere with his trade, but were seeking new markets, he declared in a voice of thunderous passion that if they did not cease with their projected enterprise, he would crush them. they escaped from his presence feeling like courtiers repulsed from the foot of a king's throne, and then surveyed their enterprise. if they stopped, they would lose all the money invested and their enterprise would possibly be sold out to their creditors; if they went on and invested more money, the president had the power, as he had threatened, to crush them. not only could he ruin their enterprise, but he could ostracise them socially and could make of them marked and shunned men in the community where they had always been respected. is there menace in this system? to me it seems like a great danger to all the people who are now affected, and therefore of great danger to the people of the united states, because the power of this monarchy within the republic is constantly extending. if it be an evil, every apostle is in part responsible for this tyrannical course. he helped to elect the president; he does the president's bidding, and shares in the advantages of that tyranny. i did not call the social system a violation of the pledges to the country, but i do affirm that the business tyranny of mormon leaders is an express violation of the covenant made, for they do not leave their followers free in secular affairs. they tyrannize over them, and their tyranny spreads even to the gentiles. in all this i charge that every apostle is a party to the wrong and to the violation. although i speak of the president of the church as the leader, the monarch in fact, every apostle is one of his ministers, one of his creators, and also one of his creatures, and possibly his successor; and the whole system depends upon the manner in which the apostles and the other leaders shall support the chief leader. as no apostle has ever protested against this system, but has, by every means in his power, encouraged it, he can not escape his share of the responsibility for it. it is an evil; they aid it. it is a violation of the pledge upon which statehood was granted; they profit by it. the political autocracy. i pass now to the political aspect of this hierarchy, as some call it, but this monarchy as i choose to term it. i have previously called your attention to the social and business powers, monopolies, autocracies, exercised by the leaders. through these channels of social and business relations they can spread the knowledge of their political desires without appearing obtrusively in politics. when the end of their desire is accomplished, they affect to wash their hands of all responsibility by denying that they engaged in political activities. superficial persons, and those desiring to accept this argument, are convinced by it. but never, in the palmy days of brigham young, was there a more complete political tyranny than is exercised by the present president of the mormon church and his apostles, who are merely awaiting the time when by the death of their seniors in rank they may become president, and select some other man to hold the apostleship in their place--as they now hold it in behalf of the ruling monarch. in this statement i merely call your attention to what a perfect system of ecclesiastical government is maintained by these presidents and apostles; and i do not need to more than indicate to you what a wonderous aid their ecclesiastical government can be, and is, in accomplishing their political purposes. parties are nothing to these leaders, except as parties may be used by them. so long as there is republican administration and congress, they will lead their followers to support republican tickets; but if, by any chance, the democratic party should control this government, with a prospect of continuance in power, you would see a gradual veering around under the direction of the mormon leaders. when republicans are in power the republican leaders of the mormon people are in evidence and the democratic leaders are in retirement. if the democracy were in power, the republican leaders of the mormon people would go into retirement and democrats would appear in their places. no man can be elected to either house of congress against their wish. i will not trespass upon your patience long enough to recite the innumerable circumstances that prove this assertion, but will merely refer to enough instances to illustrate the method. in , at the session of the legislature which was to elect a senator, and which was composed of sixty democrats and three republicans, moses thacher was the favored candidate of the democracy in the state. he had been an apostle of the mormon church, but had been deposed because he was out of harmony with the leaders. the hon. jos. l. rawlins was a rival candidate, but not strongly so at first. he was encouraged by the church leaders in every way; and finally, when his strength had been advanced sufficiently to need but one vote, a mormon republican was promptly moved over into the democratic column and he was elected by the joint assembly. i do not charge that hon. joseph l. rawlins, who occupied a seat with distinguished honor in this great body for six years, had any improper bargain with the church, or any knowledge of the secret methods by which his election was being compassed; but he was elected under the direction of the leaders of the church because they desired to defeat and further humiliate a deposed apostle. i will not ignore my own case. during nearly three years i have waited this great hour of justice in which i could answer the malignant falsehood and abuse which has been heaped upon a man who is dead and can not answer, and upon myself, a living man willing to wait the time for answer. lorenzo snow, a very aged man, was president of the church when i was elected to the senate. he had reached that advanced time of life, being over eighty, when men abide largely in the thoughts of their youth. he was my friend in that distant way which sometimes exists without close acquaintanceship, our friendship (if i may term it such) having arisen from the events attendant upon utah's struggle for statehood. for some reason he did not oppose my election to the senate. every other candidate for the place had sought his favor; it came to me without price or solicitation on my part. the friends and mouthpieces of some of the present leaders have been base enough to charge that i bought the senatorship from lorenzo snow, president of their own church. here and now i denounce the calumny against that old man, whose unsought and unbought favor came to me in that contest. that i ever paid him one dollar of money, or asked him to influence legislators of his faith, is as cruel a falsehood as ever came from human lips. so far as i am concerned he held his power with clean hands, and i would protect the memory of this dead man against all the abuse and misrepresentation which might be heaped upon him by those who were his adherents during life, but who now attack his fame in order that they may pay the greater deference to the present king. you must know that in that day we were but five years old as a state. our political conditions were and had been greatly unsettled. the purpose of the church to rule in politics had not yet been made so manifest and determined. lorenzo snow held his office for a brief time--about two years. what he did in that office pertaining to my election i here and now distinctly assume as my burden, for no man shall with impunity use his hatred of me to defame lorenzo snow and dishonor his memory to his living and loving descendants. as for myself, i am willing to take the senate and the country into my confidence, and make a part of the eternal records of the senate, for such of my friends as may care to read, the vindication of my course to my posterity. i had an ambition, and not an improper one, to sit in the senate of the united states. my competitors had longer experience in polities and may have understood more of the peculiar situation in the state. they sought what is known as church influence. i sought to obtain this place by purely political means. i was elected. after all their trickery my opponents were defeated, and to some extent by the very means which they had basely invoked. i have served with you four years, and have sought in a modest way to make a creditable record here. i have learned something of the grandeur and dignity of the senate, something of its ideals, which i could not know before coming here. i say to you, my fellow senators, that this place of power is infinitely more magnificent than i dreamed when i first thought of occupying a seat here. but were it thrice as great as i now know it to be, and were i back in that old time of struggle in utah, when i was seeking for this honor, i would not permit the volunteered friendship of president snow to bestow upon me, even as an innocent recipient, one atom of the church monarch's favor. my ideals have grown with my term of service in this body, and i believe that the man who would render here the highest service to his country must be careful to attain to this place by the purest civic path that mortal feet can tread. i have said enough to indicate that for my own part i never countenanced, nor knowingly condoned, the intrusion of the church monarchy into secular affairs. and i have said enough to those who know me to prove for all time that, so far as i am concerned, my election here was as honorable as that of any man who sits in this chamber; and yet i have said enough that all men may know that rather than have a dead man's memory defamed on my account, i will make his cause my own and will fight for the honor which he is not on earth to defend. this will not suit the friends and mouthpieces of the present rulers, but i have no desire to satisfy or conciliate them; and in leaving this part of the question, i avenge president snow sufficiently by saying that these men did not dare to offend his desire nor dispute his will while he was living, and only grew brave when they could cry: "lorenzo, the king, is dead! long live joseph, the king!" as a senator i have sought to fulfill my duty to the people of this country. i am about to retire from this place of dignity. no man can retain this seat from utah and retain his self-respect after he discovers the methods by which his election is procured and the objects which the church monarchy intends to achieve. some of my critics will say that i relinquished that which i could not hold. i will not pause to discuss that point further than to say that if i had chosen to adopt the policy with the present monarch of the church, which his friends and mouthpieces say i did adopt with the king who is dead, it might have been possible to retain this place of honor with dishonor. every apostle is a part of this terrible power, which can make and unmake at its mysterious will and pleasure. early in warning had been publicly uttered in the state against the continued manifestation of church power in politics. the period of unsettled conditions during which i was elected had ended and we had opportunity to see the manner in which the church monarch was resuming his forbidden sway; and we had occasion to know the indignant feelings entertained by the people of the united states when they contemplated the flagrant breaking of the pledge given to the country to secure the admission of utah. i myself, after conference with distinguished men at washington, journeyed to utah and presented a solemn protest and warning to the leaders of the church against the dangerous exercise of their political power. i did it to repay a debt which i owed to utah, and not for any selfish reason. i knew that from the day i uttered that warning the leaders of the mormon church would hate and pursue me for the purpose of wreaking their vengeance. but as the consequences of their misconduct, their pledge breaking would fall upon all of the people of the state, upon the innocent more severely than upon the guilty, i felt that i must assert my love and gratitude to the state, even though my warning should lead to my own destruction by these autocrats. if there had been one desire in my heart to effect a conjunction with this church monarchy, if i had been willing to retain office as its gift, i would not have taken this step, for i knew its consequences. i began in that hour my effort to restore to the people of utah the safety and the political freedom which are their right, and i shall continue it while i live until the fight is won. the disdain with which that message was received was final proof of the contempt in which that church monarchy holds the senate and the people of the united states, and of the disregard in which the church monarchy holds the pledges which it made in order to obtain the power of statehood. they do not need to utter explicit instructions in order to assert their demand. the methods of conveying information of their desire are numerous and sufficiently effective, as is proved by results. to show how completely all ordinary political conditions, as they obtain elsewhere in the united states, are without account in utah, i have but to cite you to the fact that after the recent election, which gave members out of on joint ballot to the republican party, and when the question of my successor became a matter of great anxiety to numerous aspirants for this place, the discussion was not concerning the fitness of candidates, nor the political popularity of the various gentlemen who composed that waiting list, nor the pledges of the legislators, but was limited to the question as to who could stand best with the church monarchy; as to whom it would like to use in this position; as to who would make for the extension of its ambitions and power in the united states. the mormon marriage relation. and now i come to a subject concerning which the people of the united states are greatly aroused. it is known that there have been plural marriages among the mormon people, by sanction of high authorities in this church monarchy, since the solemn promise was made to the country that plural marriages should end. it is well known that the plural marriage relations have been continued defiantly, according to the will and pleasure of those who had formerly violated the law, and for whose obedience to law the church monarchy pledged the faith and honor of its leaders and followers alike in order to obtain statehood. the pledge was made repeatedly, as stated in an earlier part of these remarks, that all of the mormon people would come within the law. they have not done so. the church monarch is known to be living in defiance of the laws of god and man, and in defiance of the covenant made with the country, upon which amnesty by the president, and statehood by the president and the congress, were granted. i charge that every apostle is in large part responsible for this condition, so deplorable in its effects upon the people of utah and so antagonistic to the institutions of this country. every apostle is directed by the law-breaking church monarch. every apostle teaches by example and precept to the mormon people that this church monarch is a prophet of god, to offend or criticise whom is a sin in the sight of the almighty. every apostle helps to appoint to office and sustain the seven presidents of seventies, who are below them in dignity, and they are directly responsible for them and their method of life. it is quite evident that the church monarchy is endeavoring to reestablish the rule of a polygamous class over the mass of the mormon people. of the apostles not practicing polygamy there is at most only three or four men constituting the quorum of which this could be truthfully said. special reasons may exist in some particular case why a man in this class has not entered into such relation. the general situation. briefly reviewing the matters which i have offered here, and the logical deductions therefrom, i maintain the following propositions: we set aside the religion of the mormon people as sacred from assault. outside of religion the mormons as a community are ruled by a special privileged class, constituting what i call the church monarchy. this monarchy pledged the country that there would be no more violations of law and no more defiance of the sentiment of the united states regarding polygamy and the plural marriage relation. this monarchy pledged the united states that it would refrain from controlling its subjects in secular affairs. every member of this monarchy is responsible for the system of government and for the acts of the monarchy, since (as shown in the cases of the deposed apostle, moses thatcher, and others) the man who is not in accord with the system is dropped from the ruling class. this monarchy sets up a regal social order within this republic. this monarchy monopolizes the business of one commonwealth and is rapidly reaching into others. this monarchy takes practically all the surplus product of the toil of its subjects for its own purpose, and makes no account to anyone on earth of its immense secret fund. this monarchy rules all politics in utah, and is rapidly extending its dominion into other states and territories. this monarchy permits its favorites to enter into polygamy and to maintain polygamous relations, and it protects them from prosecution by its political power. lately no effort has been made to punish any of these people by the local law. on the contrary, the ruling monarch has continued to grow in power, wealth, and importance. he sits upon innumerable boards of directors, among others that of the union pacific railway, where he joins upon terms of fraternity with the great financial and transportation magnates of the united states, who hold him in their councils because his power to benefit or to injure their possessions must be taken into account. i charge that no apostle has ever protested publicly against the continuation of this sovereign authority over the mormon kingdom. within a few months past the last apostle elected to the quorum was a polygamist--charles w. penrose--and his law-breaking career is well known. previous to penrose was living publicly with three wives. under false pretenses to president cleveland he obtained amnesty for his past offenses. he represented that he had but two wives, and that he married his second wife in , while it was generally known that he took a third wife just prior to . he promised to obey the law in the future, and to urge others to do so; yet after that amnesty, obtained by concealing his third marriage from president cleveland, he continued living with his three wives. his action in this matter has been notorious. he has publicly defended this kind of lawbreaking on the false pretense that there was a tacit understanding with the american congress and people, when utah was admitted, that these polygamists might continue to live as they had been living. and it was this traitor to his country's laws, this unrepentant knave and cheat of the nation's mercy, this defamer of congress and the people, that was elected to the apostleship to help govern the church, and through the church the state. is it not demonstrated that utah is an abnormal state? our problem is vast and complex. i have endeavored to simplify it so that the senate and the country may readily grasp the questions at issue. the remedy. will this great body, will the government of the united states, go on unheedingly while this church monarchy multiplies its purposes and multiplies its power? has the nation so little regard for its own dignity and the safety of its institutions and its people that it will permit a church monarch like joseph f. smith to defy the laws of the country, and to override the law and to overrule the administrators of the law in his own state of utah? what shall the americans of that commonwealth do if the people of the united states do not heed their cry? the vast majority of the mormon people are law-abiding, industrious, sober, and thrifty. they make good citizens in every respect except as they are dominated by this monarchy, which speaks to them in the name of god and governs them in the spirit of mammon. any remedy for existing evils which would injure the mass of the mormon people would be most deplorable. i believe that they would loosen the chains which they wear if it were possible. i think that many of them pay blood-money tithes simply to avoid social ostracism and business destruction. i believe that many of them do the political will of the church monarch because they are led to believe that the safety of the church monarchy is necessary in order that the mass may preserve the right to worship god according to the dictates of their conscience. the church monopoly, by its various agencies, is usually able to uprear the injured and innocent mass of the mormon people as a barrier to protect the members of that monarchy from public vengeance. it is the duty of this great body--the senate of the united states--to serve notice on this church monarch and his apostles that they must live within the law; that the nation is supreme; that the institutions of this country must prevail throughout the land; and that the compact upon which statehood was granted must be preserved inviolate. may heaven grant that this may be effective and that the church monarchy in utah may be taught that it must relinquish its grasp. i would not, for my life, that injury should come to the innocent mass of the people of utah; i would not that any right of theirs should be lost, but that the right of all should be preserved to all. if the senate will apply this remedy and the alien monarchy still proves defiant, it will be for others than myself to suggest a course of action consistent with the dignity of the country. in the meantime we of utah who have no sympathy with the now clearly defined purpose of this church monopoly will wage our battle for individual freedom; to lift the state to a proud position in the sisterhood, to preserve the compact which was made with the country, believing that behind the brave citizens in utah who are warring against this alien monarchy stands the sentiment and power of eighty-two millions of our fellow-citizens. [transcriber's note: the following typographical errors were corrected: tryanny to tyranny, autocracts to autocrats, monorchy to monarchy.] a discourse for the time delivered january in the first congregational unitarian church by w. h. furness pastor * * * * * philadelphia c. sherman printer * * * * * discourse. rom. : . 'none of us liveth to himself.' in speaking from these words last sunday morning, and in endeavoring to enforce the great truth which they express, i began with referring to certain facts which characterize that most brutal and ruthless military revolution which has just commenced in france, and the recent news of which made every heart, that cherishes any regard for freedom and humanity, burn with indignation. the first statements to which i alluded have been more than confirmed. unarmed, unoffending citizens, utterly ignorant of what was going on, and taking no part in it, were shot down by hundreds in the streets, and then transfixed with bayonets. if but a window was opened, a shower of bullets was poured into it. cannon were brought to bear upon whole blocks of private dwellings. in one instance, a woman who rushed out of the house to the help of her husband, who had fallen under the fire of the soldiery, was instantly despatched and laid dead at his side. bloodshed and terror filled the place, and scenes were enacted, so eyewitnesses report, that baffle description, and that can find a parallel only when cities are sacked. now, i refer to these facts, not to harrow up your feelings, my hearers, but because these facts, and such as these, speak trumpet-tongued, as to the vital interest and the sacred religious duty which every private man, no matter how humble and obscure,--nay, which every woman has, in those great questions that agitate nations, in what are designated as matters of public concern and the public welfare. i know very well that there are those who deplore it, and consider it a great grievance, that here, in this country, there is so much agitation of public matters in private circles, and by private, unofficial persons. to be sure, one would like to have quiet, if he could. but there is no help for it. we must take our lot as we find it. and such is the nature of our social fabric; drawing all the power of the government from the people, from the individuals that compose the people, that it is made the direct and plain duty of every man and woman of us to know about those things, which are public, for this very reason, because they concern the many,--the high and the low, the rich and the poor, the security, the happiness, the improvement, the civil and the religious liberties of every man in the land. a necessity is upon us; and if we have been accustomed to confine our ideas of duty and religion to the church and the sabbath, the sooner we get our minds sufficiently enlarged to see the religious obligation which binds us to the great public of mankind, the better for us, for our neighbors, and for all men. so, then, the fact that private men are interested in public affairs, even though it be attended with a good deal of excitement,--that is not the thing to be deplored. but what is to be lamented is, that false way of thinking, out of place in this country, out of time in this age, by which thousands justify themselves in continuing ignorant and indifferent to things of a vital private concern, simply because they are of a public and general character. what is more common than to hear men say, in reference to such matters, 'they are no concerns of ours. we care nothing about them. let those busy themselves about them who are so disposed. as for us, we are not going to perplex our brains, and fret and worry ourselves. we will mind our own business.' and, in the proud consciousness of this virtuous resolution, they wrap themselves up in their comforts, and keep aloof and indifferent, and flatter themselves that they are the wise and the prudent, they are the enlightened, judicious ones. they are no meddlers. they do not trouble themselves about what does not concern them. but though we will not meddle with public affairs, who shall answer for it that public affairs will not meddle with us? with such facts as i began with mentioning, glaring in our faces, sickening our very hearts with horror and indignation, who will say that public affairs may not interfere with us, with our very lives, yes, and with what ought to be dearer to us than our lives? let them take their own course, as you say. and then, as surely as we breathe, bad men will gain the ascendency,--ignorant, unprincipled, ambitious men, despisers of human life and human rights, ready to shed blood to any extent to gratify the devilish lust of power. into such hands will public affairs fall. and then there is no man--there is no woman, so retired but she shall find to her cost, that she has an interest, the very deepest,--that her all is involved in these things,--that they may tear from her her father, her husband, her brother or her son, aye, and her own life also, which she is pampering so delicately. there is some excuse for the people of france, ground down as they have been by ages of oppression, denied the right to think, to judge, to act for themselves, made to believe that their rulers held their power by the grace of god--there is some excuse for them. but, whatever may be their excuse, there can be no doubt that it is the ignorance, the indifference, the cowardice, the selfishness of the people at large that have caused their public affairs to wade so often towards a settlement, through such frightful streams of innocent and unoffending blood. here, in our land, the peace and security of private life are as fully and extensively insured as they are, precisely for this reason, because of the lively and general interest which the people in their private capacity take in things of public concern. in this country more than in any other, the people keep a watchful and commanding eye upon public matters. and, with all the excitement and agitation which it involves, it is the great pledge of our private and personal security. but if the indifference to public affairs, which is now confined only to a class--only to a portion of the people--to too large a portion, indeed, but still only to a portion,--if it were to become general, if things were allowed to go on their way, without any interest taken in them by private persons, by those whose intelligence goes to create a commanding public opinion, then you would soon find your private interests, the comfort and lives of individuals, threatened and assailed. if your public affairs, as they are directed in your public councils, were uncontrolled by the sentiments of private men, they would soon be coming down into our streets and into our private dwellings with a most disastrous influence. they would make their appearance in the shape of armed men. they would be heard in the rattle of musketry and the roar of cannon; and the door-posts of the humblest and of the richest homes of the people might be spattered with the blood of inoffensive men, women, and children,--of the very persons who maintain that they have nothing to do with public matters. already, well off as we may be in comparison with other nations, have not our public concerns, through the criminal neglect and insensibility of the people, taken such a direction as, if it does not put us in peril of having our blood spilt in the streets, yet endangers the sacred rights of free thought and free speech, and makes it hazardous to property and to personal liberty to obey the plainest dictates of humanity? there are things, as i have already intimated, which ought to be dearer to us than life, which may be exposed to suffer loss; and which are exposed to harm at this very hour by the bad administration of our public concerns. no doubt, these quiet people who have been so savagely butchered in the streets of paris, little dreamed, when they left their homes that day, that they would be shot down as the enemies of the government. they had nothing to do with the government. they had no thought of crossing its path. they were pursuing the even tenor of their own quiet way. they desired only to mind their own business. and yet, had they been taking the most active interest in public affairs, they could not possibly have come to so miserable an end, as i will presently show. the simple, religious truth is, and the sooner every man accepts it, and makes up his mind and his life to it, the better for him, for our country, and for the world--the plain truth is, that '_no man liveth or can live to himself_'--that the interests, the highest interests, the personal character and salvation, the very life of the individual, in the most obvious and in the profoundest sense of the word, life, is wrapt up with the interests of the whole; in other words, with the public interest, with public affairs. we cannot--no man can separate himself and stand apart, and insist upon being ignorant and indifferent. it lies within our own will to say, whether we will meet and endeavor to answer the claims which the welfare of the whole has upon us, whether we will take a lively interest in the public interest; but it is not a matter of our own will whether we shall suffer or not. we may choose whether or not we will act; but the consequences, and they may be most deadly,--the consequences of our action or our no-action we cannot escape. they may fall upon us with a crushing power at our very firesides, and ruin our private and domestic peace for ever. so long as we live in society, and build our houses near our neighbors, we may or may not take an interest in the public provision which is made against fire, but we cannot avoid the danger and the consequences of a conflagration. because a man keeps himself retired, never reading, never thinking about what is going on on the public theatre of the world, he has no security against being shot down like a dog in the streets, as the case of those unfortunate citizens of paris shows. certainly then, since we are liable to suffer from public affairs taking a wrong direction, whether we take an interest in them or not, it is worth our while to suffer for a cause. there is small comfort in incurring danger and in losing one's life for nothing. if we must suffer, when public events go wrong, it is best by far to suffer for something. for in times of universal alarm and disorder, when property and life are put in peril, they suffer the least, though they lose everything, who are inspired by the conviction that they have tried to be faithful and to do their duty. they have a life in them which bullets and bayonets and cannon-balls cannot reach. when men perish for a cause to which they were utterly indifferent, for which they cared nothing, of which they knew nothing, then they perish as the brutes perish. then death comes to them as a fatal accident; and the only moral that can be drawn from their fate, is that it is folly for men to think to live unto themselves. no glory shines from their graves; no renown immortalizes their memories. but when men suffer and die for a cause, into which they have thrown their whole souls, when they perish for a principle, then their death is noble, and they do not die like the brutes, but like men. then they are heroes and martyrs, and though dead, they speak with mighty angel voices; and their blood hallows for ever the spot on which it is shed, 'down to earth's profound, and up to heaven,' and they become immortal in the affection and reverence of mankind, and in the influence which they exert upon the course of human affairs. for this reason it is, that i said just now, that those quiet people who have been killed in the streets of paris, could not have perished so miserably had they taken an active interest in the great public question of liberty. then they would have had a spring of life in their own hearts; then they would have suffered for a cause for which it is worth any man's while to suffer, and die any death that a relentless power might inflict. i know that it is a very wise injunction, that every man should mind his own business; and that, if every man would only do that, the world would go on as well as heart could wish. i believe this, firmly. but then, since, in the very constitution of things, every man's 'own business' is inextricably interwoven with every other man's 'own business,' who shall draw the line? who shall define the circle and the sphere of the private individual? has not our creator defined it already in our very being, inasmuch as, by the indestructible ties of human sympathy and a common nature, he has bound up the life, the interests, the business of the individual, with the life, the interests, the business of the whole? by his very nature, then, is it not every man's own business to know what the world is busy about, and to take an interest in the world's affairs, because they are his own? is it not a truth written in the constitution of every individual man, the well-known declaration of the roman slave: 'i am a man, and i hold nothing human foreign to me?' and does not our common christianity teach over and over again in a thousand ways, that we are all members one of another, and that no man lives for himself? and is there any one fact, which the progress of events is now making, more manifest than the oneness of all mankind? why, my hearers, it is because this simple and indestructible fact is not seen; because individuals are for ever trying to live, and work, and enjoy, not with and for, but at the expense of, their fellow-men, that things are so continually getting out of joint, and the world is so full of uproar and misery. my brothers, we are all one; and if we are resolved to mind each his own business, we must attend to the business which god and nature have given to us. we must interest ourselves in the cause of our common humanity. i do not say, that we must make this great cause our business. it is made our business already by our maker. consider then how the case stands. if we fling our whole hearts with a generous ardor into the conflict for the welfare of our brother, seeing to it with all vigilance that public affairs go wisely and justly, then if the fortunes of this good cause prosper, it is well with us; we triumph with it. but if it should be defeated, and we should be involved in its defeat, and suffer danger, loss, and even death itself, still how powerfully should we be sustained by the consciousness of suffering in so grand a behalf, for such a glorious reason! who would not rather suffer with the right than prosper with the wrong? but if we will not fling our hearts into anything of a general and generous interest, if we insist that we will keep at a distance from all such matters, that we will be ignorant and insensible, we gain no additional security. still our private lot is inextricably bound up with the public interest; and when those interests suffer, we must suffer with them, but with no sustaining power in our own minds. we may be shot down with the heroes and martyrs of humanity without the heroes' joy or the martyrs' radiant crown. 'no man liveth to himself.' since such is the simple bible truth, and since it is a truth, which it becomes us to look at fully, and adopt as a fundamental principle and law of our thinking and of our living, let no one turn a deaf ear, and say i am talking politically now, because i refer to considerations of a public, and if you please, of a political character, to urge home upon your reason and your consciences your sacred duty as men, and as christians, to take a hearty, intelligent, self-sacrificing interest in what is going on on the public theatre of the nation to which you belong, and of the world to which you belong as well, and in whose fortunes, we are every one of us so deeply interested. but this is no hour for apologies. this is no time for grown-up men to be dodging and hiding, and evading a great duty, under words and phrases. political! what if i am political? what if every pulpit in the land should be ringing in these days with political events? god knows there is need. we should be lost to the ordinary feelings of men, if we could remain silent when political events are arresting and absorbing public attention, and threatening to rouse all the passions of the human heart, and to shake the earth out of its place. this present time, in which we are living, is no holiday, when a man can throw himself down in the shade, and dream his soul away. the fires, that are kindling on the earth, flash their portentous light into the inmost retirement of private life. the world is resounding with great events. and cold indeed must be our hearts, we are not worthy to live at so momentous, so unprecedented a period, if we refuse to be reminded of those indissoluble ties of a common nature and a common interest, which the course of things is laying bare to all men's view. as you are men, human beings, your hearts must beat with a new and stirring sympathy for the great public of christendom, of which you are each an inseparable portion, when you see the second great nation of europe, after all the terrible experience of the last three-quarters of a century, again falling prostrate in the dust beneath the blow of a base usurper, with no great exploits at his back to extenuate the insolence of the brutal deed; again laid low beneath a despot's feet by that vulgar instrument of power, a standing army. i think there can hardly be found in modern history any parallel to this outrage upon truth, freedom, and humanity--to this implied contempt for human rights and human nature. a robber-hand has seized the great french nation, and flung it down into the dust to be trampled upon at pleasure. at such startling tidings, what man is there so humble or so weak, who can repress the solemn appeal to god, which must rise instinctively from every heart of flesh? who can help having his attention arrested and engrossed? who does not long to be saying something, doing something, or suffering something, for the outraged rights, the imperilled interests of our common humanity, our one nature? but above all, who that has seen, who that has heard the great hungarian exile, who has come to us, bringing his unhappy country in his heart, that does not feel his kindred to his oppressed brethren everywhere? i have looked full into those large, sad eyes, in which one seems to look into the great deep of a nation's sorrows. i have heard that voice, coming from his inmost soul, with which he pleaded for his dear native land, and i cannot so much as try to tell you of the profound impression which he made on me. i can set no limits to the power of such a man as i have just seen and heard. it may be (god grant it!) that it is not a mere transitory emotion of enthusiasm that he is awakening among the people of this land. it may be that the influence he is exerting is yet to penetrate the rock of our selfishness and insensibility, and call forth, in full flood, like one of our own great rivers, the mighty stream of our sympathy that shall sweep away from our land and from the earth, every vestige of oppression. such a thing seems almost possible, when we observe how the advocates of slavery on our own soil tremble at his approach, and fear to welcome him. most devoutly do i hope that he may exert such an influence. it is my fervent prayer. it is yours, too, brethren, i do not doubt. but i cannot resist the conviction that he must fail of achieving the object so near his heart, and for which he is spending the strength of a giant, wearing away his life, if indeed a life, so deep and so intense, capable of so much labour, can be worn away. yes, friends, he must fail. and happy will it be for him, great, wonderful as he is, if he comes out unscathed from the fiery and searching trial of his principles, upon which he entered the moment he stept upon our soil. yes, he must fail. how can it be otherwise? he must fail; not because this people are averse to the possibility of war, for they have just come out from a war waged, not to extend freedom you know. he must fail, not because we revere the counsels of the father of our country. but he must fail because there is a tremendous obstacle in his way to our free, unfettered sympathy, upon which that fond hope of his, that great heart of his, the treasury of a nation's woes, must be broken at last. when he spoke in this city the other evening, he repeated what he had said more than once before, that he had come hither resolved to interfere with no domestic concern of ours, with none of our party questions. but there is one 'domestic concern,' one 'party question,' which, while it is, in an obvious sense, a 'domestic concern,' does, in fact, necessarily and vitally involve those rights of humanity for which this great man pleads, and which he is considered as representing when he urges upon us the claims of his oppressed country. in reason, and in the nature of things, it is connected with him and with his great purpose. so clearly is this so, that they, who see what a monstrous wrong our 'domestic concern' is, what a world of evil it has done and is doing, have watched our illustrious guest with trembling solicitude. for his own sake they are appalled lest he should waver from a faithful application of his own cherished faith; not that they desire him to join them, but they justly expect from him as a true man, that he should allow no shadow of doubt to rest upon his principles and his position. for myself, i cannot help thinking, that he looks upon american slavery as a thing, which we, ourselves, are at this moment busily engaged in abolishing. he finds men, eminent in office and in ability, ranked on the anti-slavery side. he knows that they are backed by the great authority of our declaration of independence, and assisted by the powerful influence of the freest institutions on the face of the earth; and he naturally regards it as needless and arrogant to interfere in the affairs of so mighty a nation--a nation so vigorous as to be able, one would think, to settle any difficulties that may lie in its way, without assistance from abroad. but, although he has expressed his determination not to meddle with our domestic institutions, our domestic institutions threaten to meddle with him. scarcely had he landed on our shores, when a voice was heard in our national councils, proposing his arrest for incendiary speech; a proposal, the gross insult of which, not only to him, but to us all, was only relieved by its unutterable folly. this is not the only hint of the insolent interference in his concerns, with which the upholders of oppression on this side of the world have menaced him. he looks, i believe, upon american slavery as an affair which he, he especially who helped to elevate the peasantry of his own country, knows that we have the power to settle. but, however much he may have heard about it, he does not yet know that we have not the will to settle it. he does not yet know how deep-seated it is, and how mighty and extensive its influence is in deadening our hearts, and controlling our national action. although he is a man of profound sagacity, yet, with all the information that may have been furnished him, it can only be by degrees, and by actual observation, that his mind will win its way to a true and terrible conviction of the actual state of the case. but he will--he must see how the matter stands; and he will declare, most fervently do i trust, what he cannot help seeing. the fact must become as plain to him as noonday, that there is no one thing in which the oppressed nations of europe have a deeper interest, than in the abolition of american slavery; because this is the one thing which prevents the full expression of our sympathy in their behalf, and neutralizes that moral aid, which, if we rendered it to the full extent of our power, would make all material aid entirely superfluous. some of his words the other evening were very significant. having said that he had done nothing, and would do nothing to interfere with our domestic affairs, he added that remarkable declaration:--'i more and more perceive, in the words of hamlet, that there are more things in heaven and earth, than _were_ dreamed of in _my_ philosophy.' how could he have dreamed that a people who had made such a solemn declaration of human rights before all the world, a people so lavish in the praise of liberty, were clinging with such desperation to oppression, as if it were the very life and soul of their union and their power. no matter how much he may have been told, and he is in nothing more remarkable than in the extent of his information, he has not yet known--he cannot know--it could not have entered into his generous heart to imagine, that this domestic institution of ours is the one thing that exerts the most marked and predominating influence on our domestic and our foreign policy. he does not see, but he must, that it is the one thing that will make his appeal to our national government utterly in vain, and that his silence in regard to it will avail him nothing. it must become plain to him that we are ready enough to intervene when the slave power requires it for the increase and extension of its own strength. for that we are ready to go to war with our neighbors, and rob them of their territory. in that behalf our statesmen have sought to enlist the interests and sympathies of foreign nations. and that it is, whose interests will prevent us from a full and generous expression of our interest in the downtrodden of other lands. we are interfering with human rights at home, we are constitutionally bound to interfere with them, and we hold it for our advantage to do so; and we cannot intervene to prevent interference with them abroad. on this account alone, could a man of such rare power, of such wonderful eloquence, coming among us upon such a mission, fail. yes, this favorite domestic institution, corrupting the whole administration of our government at home and abroad,--this it is that will disappoint and defeat the hungarian patriot's idolised hope. he has come hither as to the very temple of freedom, and he finds coiled up under her very altar, as its guardian, the serpent of oppression, and already its deadly hiss has rung in his surprised ear. american slavery has much to answer for; but if it adds this to the mountain of its iniquities, if it is the cause why the hope of bleeding and fettered europe is blasted, if it break the noble heart of hungary's devoted servant and chief, and more than all, if it cause him to falter in the cause of universal humanity, what tongue now silent will not join in execrating it? what heart, hitherto cold, will not consecrate itself to the work of its abolition? the nations of the old world, degraded, trampled upon, and bleeding under the relentless feet of arbitrary power, long and pray for emancipation. the glorious vision of liberty flits before their aching sight. they stretch out their hearts and hands to us. but the supporters of the old and oppressive forms of government sneer at our boasted universal freedom, as well they may, and point to our millions of bondmen. they can say, with truth, that liberty does not exist here or anywhere as a realized fact; that it is a chimera and an abstraction, utterly impracticable; that the people are longing for a dream that has never been and can never be fulfilled. neither the foreign oppressor, nor the foreign oppressed have any foundation in fact for the faith and the hope of liberty; and much i fear we should do little for the deliverance of other nations, even if, as we now stand, clinging to slavery, we were actually to intervene in their behalf. if we saw any chance of strengthening and extending our 'domestic institution,' we might in that case be ready enough to give them our help. o how plain is it that the one thing which the world claims of us, the one thing that the great hungarian has to ask of us, for his own people and for all europe, is that we should prove that _liberty without slavery_ is a practicable thing. let this fact be realized, and the world's redemption is sure. show mankind twenty-five millions of human beings, living together under such free and simple institutions as ours, with not a single slave among them, and then all that we need do is done, and our simple existence as a nation becomes an irresistible intervention against the violation of human rights. to induce us to do this, the hungarian patriot may well go down on those knees which he would not bend to emperor or czar, and adjure us for the love of god and man, by all the dearest hopes and interests of the human race, by the great name of the holy jesus, to make our liberty complete, to redeem our long-violated pledge, to wipe away the blot that eclipses the sun of our freedom, and prove, as we may, that all men are children of one father, brethren of one household, born to the glorious liberty of the sons of the living god. if, in any way, he should be the means in the hands of a gracious providence of inducing us to do this, he will do more for us than we could do for him, though we were to place all the gold of the east, and of the west, at his disposal. occasional papers selected from the guardian, the times, and the saturday review - by the late r.w. church, m.a., d.c.l. sometime rector of whatley, dean of st. paul's, honorary fellow of oriel college in two vols.--vol. ii london macmillan and co., limited new york: the macmillan company _first edition february_ _reprinted april_ contents i mr. gladstone on the royal supremacy ii joyce on courts of spiritual appeal iii privy council judgments iv sir john coleridge on the purchas case v mr. gladstone's letter on the english church vi disendowment vii the new court viii mozley's bampton lectures ix ecce homo x the author of "robert elsmere" on a new reformation xi renan's "vie de jÉsus" xii renan's "les apÔtres" xiii renan's hibbert lectures xiv renan's "souvenirs d'enfance" xv life of frederick robertson xvi life of baron bunsen xvii coleridge's memoir of keble xviii maurice's theological essays xix frederick denison maurice xx sir richard church xxi death of bishop wilberforce xxii retirement of the provost of oriel xxiii mark pattison xxiv pattison's essays xxv bishop frazer xxvi newman's "apologia" xxvii dr. newman on the "eirenicon" xxviii newman's parochial sermons xxix cardinal newman xxx cardinal newman's course xxxi cardinal newman's naturalness xxxii lord blachford i mr. gladstone on the royal supremacy[ ] [ ] _remarks on the royal supremacy, as it is defined by reason, history, and the constitution_. a letter to the lord bishop of london, by the right hon. w.e. gladstone, m.p. for the university of oxford. _guardian_, th july . mr. gladstone has not disappointed the confidence of those who have believed of him that when great occasions presented themselves, of interest to the church, he would not be found wanting. a statesman has a right to reserve himself and bide his time, and in doubtful circumstances may fairly ask us to trust his discretion as to when is his time. but there are critical seasons about whose seriousness there can be no doubt. one of these is now passing over the english church. and mr. gladstone has recognised it, and borne himself in it with a manliness, earnestness, and temper which justify those who have never despaired of his doing worthy service to the church, with whose cause he so early identified himself. the pamphlet before us, to which he has put his name, is the most important, perhaps, of all that have been elicited by the deep interest felt in the matter on which it treats. besides its importance as the expression of the opinion, and, it must be added, the anxieties of a leading statesman, it has two intrinsic advantages. it undertakes to deal closely and strictly with those facts in the case mainly belonging to the period of the reformation, on which the great stress has been laid in the arguments both against our liberty and our very being as a church. and, further, it gives us on these facts, and, in connection with them, on the events of the crisis itself, the judgment and the anticipations of a mind at once deeply imbued with religious philosophy, and also familiar with the consideration of constitutional questions, and accustomed to view them in their practical entanglements as well as in their abstract and ideal forms. it is, indeed, thus only that the magnitude and the true extent of the relations of the present contest can be appreciated. the intrinsic greatness, indeed, of religious interests cannot receive addition of dignity here. but the manner of treating them may. and mr. gladstone has done what was both due to the question at issue, and in the highest degree important for its serious consideration and full elucidation, in raising it from a discussion of abstract principles to what it is no less--a real problem of english constitutional law. the following passage will show briefly the ground over which the discussion travels:-- the questions, then, that i seek to examine will be as follow:-- . did the statutes of the reformation involve the abandonment of the duty of the church to be the guardian of her faith? . is the present composition of the appellate tribunal conformable either to reason or to the statutes of the reformation, and the spirit of the constitution as expressed in them? . is the royal supremacy, according to the constitution, any bar to the adjustment of the appellate jurisdiction in such a manner as that it shall convey the sense of the church in questions of doctrine? all these questions i humbly propose to answer in the negative, and so to answer them in conformity with what i understand to be the principles of our history and law. my endeavour will be to show that the powers of the state so determined, in regard to the legislative office of the church (setting aside for the moment any question as to the right of assent in the laity), are powers of restraint; that the jurisdictions united and annexed to the crown are corrective jurisdictions; and that their exercise is subject to the general maxim, that the laws ecclesiastical are to be administered by ecclesiastical judges. mr. gladstone first goes into the question--what was done, and what was the understanding at the reformation? all agree that this was a time of great changes, and that in the settlement resulting from them the state took, and the church yielded, a great deal. and on the strength of this broad general fact, the details of the settlement have been treated with an _a priori_ boldness, not deficient often in that kind of precision which can be gained by totally putting aside inconvenient or perplexing elements, and having both its intellectual and moral recommendations to many minds; but highly undesirable where a great issue has been raised for the religion of millions, and the political constitution of a great nation. men who are not lawyers seem to have thought that, by taking a lawyer's view, or what they considered such, of the reformation acts, they had disposed of the question for ever. it was, indeed, time for a statesman to step in, and protest, if only in the name of constitutional and political philosophy, against so narrow and unreal an abuse of law-texts--documents of the highest importance in right hands, and in their proper place, but capable, as all must know, of leading to inconceivable absurdity in speculation, and not impossibly fatal confusion in fact. the bulk of this pamphlet is devoted to the consideration of the language and effect, legal and constitutional, of those famous statutes with the titles of which recent controversy has made us so familiar. mr. gladstone makes it clear that it does not at all follow that because the church conceded a great deal, she conceded, or even was expected to concede, indefinitely, whatever might be claimed. she conceded, but she conceded by compact;--a compact which supposed her power to concede, and secured to her untouched whatever was not conceded. and she did not concede, nor was asked for, her highest power, her legislative power. she did not concede, nor was asked to concede, that any but her own ministers--by the avowal of all drawing their spiritual authority from a source which nothing human could touch--should declare her doctrine, or should be employed in administering her laws. what she did concede was, not original powers of direction and guidance, but powers of restraint and correction;--under securities greater, both in form and in working, than those possessed at the time by any other body in england, for their rights and liberties--greater far than might have been expected, when the consequences of a long foreign supremacy--not righteously maintained and exercised, because at the moment unrighteously thrown off--increased the control which the civil government always must claim over the church, by the sudden abstraction of a power which, though usurping, was spiritual; and presented to the ambition of a despotic king a number of unwarrantable prerogatives which the separation from the pope had left without an owner. on the trite saying, meant at first to represent, roughly and invidiously, the effect of the reformation, and lately urged as technically and literally true--"the assertion that in the time of henry viii. the see of rome was both 'the source and centre of ecclesiastical jurisdiction,' and therefore the supreme judge of doctrine; and that this power of the pope was transferred in its entireness to the crown"--mr. gladstone remarks as follows:-- i will not ask whether the pope was indeed at that time the supreme judge of doctrine; it is enough for me that not very long before the council of constance had solemnly said otherwise, in words which, though they may be forgotten, cannot be annulled.... that the pope was the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction in the english church before the reformation is an assertion of the gravest import, which ought not to have been thus taken for granted.... the fact really is this:--a modern opinion, which, by force of modern circumstances, has of late gained great favour in the church of rome, is here dated back and fastened upon ages to whose fixed principles it was unknown and alien; and the case of the church of england is truly hard when the papal authority of the middle ages is exaggerated far beyond its real and historical scope, with the effect only of fastening that visionary exaggeration, through the medium of another fictitious notion of wholesale transfer of the papal privileges to the crown, upon us, as the true and legal measure of the royal supremacy. it appears to me that he who alleges in the gross that the papal prerogatives were carried over to the crown at the reformation, greatly belies the laws and the people of that era. their unvarying doctrine was, that they were restoring the ancient regal jurisdiction, and abolishing one that had been usurped. but there is no evidence to show that these were identical in themselves, or co-extensive in their range. in some respects the crown obtained at that period more than the pope had ever had; for i am not aware that the convocation required his license to deliberate upon canons, or his assent to their promulgation. in other respects the crown acquired less; for not the crown, but the archbishop of canterbury was appointed to exercise the power of dispensation in things lawful, and to confirm episcopal elections. neither the crown nor the archbishop succeeded to such papal prerogatives as were contrary to the law of the land; for neither the th of henry viii. nor the nd of elizabeth annexed to the crown all the powers of correction and reformation which had been actually claimed by the pope, but only such as "hath heretofore been or may lawfully be exercised or used." ... the "ancient jurisdiction," and not the then recently claimed or exercised powers, was the measure and the substance of what the crown received from the legislature; and, with those ancient rights for his rule, no impartial man would say that the crown was the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction according to the statutes of the reformation. but the statutes of the reformation era relating to jurisdiction, having as statutes the assent of the laity, and accepted by the canons of the clergy, are the standard to which the church has bound herself as a religious society to conform. the word "jurisdiction" has played an important part in the recent discussions; whether its meaning, with its various involved and associated ideas, by no means free from intricacy and confusion, have been duly unravelled and made clear, we may be permitted to doubt. a distinction of the canonists has been assumed by those who have used the word with most precision--_assumed_, though it is by no means a simple and indisputable one. mr. gladstone draws attention to this, when, after noticing that nowhere in the ecclesiastical legislation of elizabeth is the claim made on behalf of the crown to be the source of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, he admits that this _is_ the language of the school of english law, and offers an explanation of the fact. that which acts of parliament do not say, which is negatived in actual practice by contradictory and irreconcilable facts, is yet wanted by lawyers for the theoretic completeness of their idea and system of law. the fact is important as a reminder that what is one real aspect, or, perhaps, the most complete and consistent representation of a system on paper, may be inadequate and untrue as an exhibition of its real working and appearance in the world. to sum up the whole, then, i contend that the crown did not claim by statute, either to be of right, or to become by convention, the _source_ of that kind of action, which was committed by the saviour to the apostolic church, whether for the enactment of laws, or for the administration of its discipline; but the claim was, that all the canons of the church, and all its judicial proceedings, inasmuch as they were to form parts respectively of the laws and of the legal administration of justice in the kingdom, should run only with the assent and sanction of the crown. they were to carry with them a double force--a force of coercion, visible and palpable; a force addressed to conscience, neither visible nor palpable, and in its nature only capable of being inwardly appreciated. was it then unreasonable that they should bear outwardly the tokens of that power to which they were to be indebted for their outward observance, and should work only within by that wholly different influence that governs the kingdom which is not of this world, and flows immediately from its king? ... but while, according to the letter and spirit of the law, such appear to be the limits of the royal supremacy in regard to the _legislative_, which is the highest, action of the church, i do not deny that in other branches it goes farther, and will now assume that the supremacy in all causes, which is at least a claim to control at every point the jurisdiction of the church, may also be construed to mean as much as that the crown is the ultimate source of jurisdiction of whatever kind. here, however, i must commence by stating that, as it appears to me, lord coke and others attach to the very word jurisdiction a narrower sense than it bears in popular acceptation, or in the works of canonists--a sense which excludes altogether that of the canonists; and also a sense which appears to be the genuine and legitimate sense of the word in its first intention. now, when we are endeavouring to appreciate the force and scope of the legal doctrine concerning ecclesiastical and spiritual jurisdiction, it is plain that we must take the term employed in the sense of our own law, and not in the different and derivative sense in which it has been used by canonists and theologians. but canonists themselves bear witness to the distinction which i have now pointed out. the one kind is _jurisdictio coactiva proprie dicta, principibus data_; the other is _jurisdictio improprie dicta ac mere spiritualis, ecclesiae ejusque episcopis a christo data_.... properly speaking, i submit that there is no such thing as jurisdiction in any private association of men, or anywhere else than under the authority of the state. _jus_ is the scheme of rights subsisting between men in the relations, not of all, but of civil society; and _jurisdicto_ is the authority to determine and enunciate those rights from time to time. church authority, therefore, so long as it stands alone, is not in strictness of speech, or according to history, jurisdiction, because it is not essentially bound up with civil law. but when the state and the church came to be united, by the conversion of nations, and the submission of the private conscience to christianity--when the church placed her power of self-regulation under the guardianship of the state, and the state annexed its own potent sanction to rules, which without it would have been matter of mere private contract, then _jus_ or civil right soon found its way into the church, and the respective interests and obligations of its various orders, and of the individuals composing them, were regulated by provisions forming part of the law of the land. matter ecclesiastical or spiritual moulded in the forms of civil law, became the proper subject of ecclesiastical or spiritual jurisdiction, properly so called. now, inasmuch as laws are abstractions until they are put into execution, through the medium of executive and judicial authority, it is evident that the cogency of the reasons for welding together, so to speak, civil and ecclesiastical authority is much more full with regard to these latter branches of power than with regard to legislation. there had been in the church, from its first existence as a spiritual society, a right to govern, to decide, to adjudge for spiritual purposes; that was a true, self-governing authority; but it was not properly jurisdiction. it naturally came to be included, or rather enfolded, in the term, when for many centuries the secular arm had been in perpetual co-operation with the tribunals of the church. the thing to be done, and the means by which it was done, were bound together; the authority and the power being always united in fact, were treated as an unity for the purposes of law. as the potentate possessing not the head but the mouth or issue of a river, has the right to determine what shall pass to or from the sea, so the state, standing between an injunction of the church and its execution, had a right to refer that execution wholly to its own authority. there was not contained or implied in such a doctrine any denial of the original and proper authority of the church for its own self-government, or any assertion that it had passed to and become the property of the crown. but that authority, though not in its source, yet in its exercise, had immersed itself in the forms of law; had invoked and obtained the aid of certain elements of external power, which belonged exclusively to the state, and for the right and just use of which the state had a separate and independent responsibility, so that it could not, without breach of duty, allow them to be parted from itself. it was, therefore, i submit, an intelligible and, under given circumstances, a warrantable scheme of action, under which the state virtually said: church decrees, taking the form of law, and obtaining their full and certain effect only in that form, can be executed only as law, and while they are in process of being put into practice can only be regarded as law, and therefore the whole power of their execution, that is to say, all juris diction in matters ecclesiastical and spiritual, must, according to the doctrine of law, proceed from the fountain-head of law, namely, from the crown. in the last legal resort there can be but one origin for all which is to be done in societies of men by force of legal power; nor, if so, can doubt arise what that origin must be. if you allege that the church has a spiritual authority to regulate doctrines and discipline, still, as you choose to back that authority with the force of temporal law, and as the state is exclusively responsible for the use of that force, you must be content to fold up the authority of the church in that exterior form through which you desire it to take effect. from whatsoever source it may come originally, it comes to the subject as law; it therefore comes to him from the fountain of law.... the faith of christendom has been received in england; the discipline of the christian church, cast into its local form, modified by statutes of the realm, and by the common law and prerogative, has from time immemorial been received in england; but we can view them only as law, although you may look further back to the divine and spiritual sanction, in virtue of which they acquired that social position, which made it expedient that they should associate with law and should therefore become law. but as to the doctrine itself, it is most obvious to notice that it is not more strange, and not necessarily more literally real, than those other legal views of royal prerogative and perfection, which are the received theory of all our great jurists--accepted by them for very good reasons, but not the less astounding when presented as naked and independent truths. it was natural enough that they should claim for the crown the origination of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, considering what else they claimed for it. mr. allen can present us with a more than chinese idea of royal power, when he draws it only from blackstone:-- they may have heard [he says, speaking of the "unlearned in the law"] that the law of england is founded in reason and wisdom. the first lesson they are taught will inform them, that the law of england attributes to the king absolute perfection, absolute immortality, and legal ubiquity. they will be told that the king of england is not only incapable of doing wrong, but of thinking wrong. they will be informed that he never dies, that he is invisible as well as immortal, and that in the eye of the law he is present at one and the same instant in every court of justice within his dominions.... they may have been told that the royal prerogative in england is limited; but when they consult the sages of the law, they will be assured that the legal authority of the king of england is absolute and irresistible ... that all are under him, while he is under none but god.... if they have had the benefit of a liberal education, they have been taught that to obtain security for persons and property was the great end for which men submitted to the restraints of civil government; and they may have heard of the indispensable necessity of an independent magistracy for the due administration of justice; but when they direct their inquiries to the laws and constitution of england, they will find it an established maxim in that country that all jurisdiction emanates from the crown. they will be told that the king is not ony the chief, but the sole magistrate of the nation; and that all others act by his commission, and in subordination to him.[ ] [ ] _allen on the royal prerogative_, pp. - . "in the most limited monarchy," as he says truly the "king is represented in law books, as in theory an absolute sovereign." "even now," says mr. gladstone, "after three centuries of progress toward democratic sway, the crown has prerogatives by acting upon which, within their strict and unquestioned bounds, it might at any time throw the country into confusion. and so has each house of parliament." but if the absolute supremacy of the crown _in the legal point of mew exactly the same over temporal matters and causes as over spiritual_, is taken by no sane man to be a literal fact in temporal matters, it is violating the analogy of the constitution, and dealing with the most important subjects in a mere spirit of narrow perverseness, to insist that it can have none but a literal meaning in ecclesiastical matters; and that the church _did_ mean, though the state _did not_ to accept a despotic prerogative, unbounded by custom, convention, or law, and unchecked by acknowledged and active powers in herself. yet such is the assumption, made in bitterness and vexation of spirit by some of those who have lately so hastily given up her cause; made with singular assurance by others, who, liberals in all their political doctrines, have, for want of better arguments, invoked prerogative against the church. what the securities and checks were that the church, not less than the nation, contemplated and possessed, are not expressed in the theory itself of the royal prerogative; and, as in the ease of the nation, we might presume beforehand, that they would be found in practice rather than on paper. they were, however, real ones. "with the same theoretical laxity and practical security," as in the case of parliaments and temporal judges, "was provision made for the conduct of church affairs." making allowance for the never absent disturbances arising out of political trouble and of personal character, the church had very important means of making her own power felt in the administration of her laws, as well as in the making of them. the real question, i apprehend, is this:--when the church assented to those great concessions which were embodied in our permanent law at the reformation, had she _adequate securities_ that the powers so conveyed would be exercised, upon the whole, with a due regard to the integrity of her faith, and of her office, which was and has ever been a part of that faith? i do not ask whether these securities were all on parchment or not--whether they were written or unwritten--whether they were in statute, or in common law, or in fixed usage, or in the spirit of the constitution and in the habits of the people--i ask the one vital question, whether, whatever they were in form, they were in substance sufficient? _the securities_ which the church had were these: first, that the assembling of the convocation was obviously necessary for the purposes of taxation; secondly and mainly, that the very solemn and fundamental laws by which the jurisdiction of the see of rome was cut off, assigned to the spiritualty of the realm the care of matters spiritual, as distinctly and formally as to the temporalty the care of matters temporal; and that it was an understood principle, and (as long as it continued) a regular usage of the constitution, that ecclesiastical laws should be administered by ecclesiastical judges. these were the securities on which the church relied; on, which she had a right to rely; and on which, for a long series of years, her alliance was justified by the results. and further:-- the church had this great and special security on which to rely, that the sovereigns of this country were, for a century after the reformation, amongst her best instructed, and even in some instances her most devoted children: that all who made up the governing body (with an insignificant exception) owned personal allegiance to her, and that she might well rest on that personal allegiance as warranting beforehand the expectation, which after experience made good, that the office of the state towards her would be discharged in a friendly and kindly spirit, and that the principles of constitutional law and civil order would not be strained against her, but fairly and fully applied in her behalf. these securities she now finds herself deprived of. this is the great change made in her position--made insensibly, and in a great measure, undesignedly--which has altered altogether the understanding on which she stood towards the crown at the reformation. it now turns out that that understanding, though it might have been deemed sufficient for the time, was not precise enough; and further, was not sufficiently looked after in the times which followed. and on us comes the duty of taking care that it be not finally extinguished; thrown off by the despair of one side, and assumed by the other as at length abandoned to their aggression. mr. gladstone comes to the question with the feelings of a statesman, conscious of the greatness and excellence of the state, and anxious that the church should not provoke its jealousy, and in urging her claims should "take her stand, as to all matters of substance and principle, on the firm ground of history and law." it makes his judgment on the present state of things more solemn, and his conviction of the necessity of amending it more striking, when they are those of one so earnest for conciliation and peace. but on constitutional not less than on other grounds, he pronounces the strongest condemnation on the present formation of the court of appeal, which, working in a way which even its framers did not contemplate, has brought so much distress into the church, and which yet, in defiance of principle, of consistency, and of the admission of its faultiness, is so recklessly maintained. feeling and stating very strongly the evil sustained by the church, from the suspension of her legislative powers,--"that loss of command over her work, and over the heart of the nation, which it has brought upon her,"--so strongly indeed that his words, coming from one familiar with the chances and hazards of a deliberative assembly, give new weight to the argument for the resumption of those powers,--feeling all this, he is ready to acquiesce in the measure beyond which the bishops did not feel authorised to go, and which mr. gladstone regards as "representing the extremest point up to which the love of peace might properly carry the concessions of the church":-- that which she is entitled in the spirit of the constitution to demand would be that the queen's ecclesiastical laws shall be administered by the queen's ecclesiastical judges, of whom the bishops are the chief; and this, too, under the checks which the sitting of a body appointed for ecclesiastical legislation would impose. but if it is not of vital necessity that a church legislature should sit at the present time--if it is not of vital necessity that all causes termed ecclesiastical should be treated under special safeguards--if it is not of vital necessity that the function of judgment should be taken out of the hands of the existing court--let the church frankly and at once subscribe to every one of these great concessions, and reduce her demands to a _minimum_ at the outset. laws ecclesiastical by ecclesiastical judges, let this be her principle; it plants her on the ground of ancient times, of the reformation, of our continuous history, of reason and of right. the utmost moderation, in the application of the principle, let this he her temper, and then her case will be strong in the face of god and man, and, come what may, she will conquer.... if, my lord, it be felt by the rulers of the church, that a scheme like this will meet sufficiently the necessities of her case, it must be no small additional comfort to them to feel that their demand is every way within the spirit of the constitution, and short of the terms which the great compact of the reformation would authorise you to seek. you, and not those who are against you, will take your stand with coke and blackstone; you, and not they, will wield the weapons of constitutional principle and law; you, and not they, will be entitled to claim the honour of securing the peace of the state no less than the faith of the church; you, and not they, will justly point the admonitory finger to those remarkable words of the institutes:-- "and certain it is, that this kingdom hath been best governed, and peace and quiet preserved, when both parties, that is, when the justices of the temporal courts and the ecclesiastical judges have kept themselves within their proper jurisdiction, without encroaching or usurping one upon another; and where such encroachments or usurpations have been made, they have been the seeds of great trouble and inconvenience." because none can resist the principle of your proposal, who admit that the church has a sphere of proper jurisdiction at all, or any duty beyond that of taking the rule of her doctrine and her practice from the lips of ministers or parliaments. if it shall be deliberately refused to adopt a proposition so moderate, so guarded and restrained in the particular instance, and so sustained by history, by analogy, and by common reason, in the case of the faith of the church, and if no preferable measure be substituted, it can only be in consequence of a latent intention that the voice of the civil power should be henceforward supreme in the determination of christian doctrine. we trust that such an assurance, backed as it is by the solemn and earnest warnings of one who is not an enthusiast or an agitator, but one of the leading men in the parliament of england, will not be without its full weight with those on whom devolves the duty of guiding and leading us in this crisis. the bishops of england have a great responsibility on them. reason, not less than christian loyalty and christian charity, requires the fairest interpretation of their acts, and it may be of their hesitation,--the utmost consideration of their difficulties. but reason, not less than christian loyalty and charity, expects that, having accepted the responsibilities of the episcopate, they should not withdraw from them when they arrive; and that there should be neither shrinking nor rest nor compromise till the creed and the rights of the church entrusted to their fidelity be placed, as far as depends on them, beyond danger. ii joyce on courts of spiritual appeal[ ] [ ] _ecclesia vindicata; a treatise on appeals in matters spiritual_. by james wayland joyce. _saturday review_, nd october . nothing can be more natural than the extreme dissatisfaction felt by a large body of persons in the church of england at the present court of final appeal in matters of doctrine. the grievance, and its effect, may have been exaggerated; and the expressions of feeling about it certainly have not always been the wisest and most becoming. but as the church of england is acknowledged to hold certain doctrines on matters of the highest importance, and, in common with all other religious bodies, claims the right of saying what are her own doctrines, it is not surprising that an arrangement which seems likely to end in handing over to indifferent or unfriendly judges the power of saying what those doctrines are, or even whether she has any doctrines at all, should create irritation and impatience. there is nothing peculiar to the english church in the assumption, either that outsiders should not meddle with and govern what she professes to believe and teach, or that the proper and natural persons to deal with theological questions are the class set apart to teach and maintain her characteristic belief. whatever may ultimately become of these assumptions, they unquestionably represent the ideas which have been derived from the earliest and the uniform practice of the christian church, and are held by most even of the sects which have separated from it. to any one who does not look upon the english church as simply a legally constituted department of the state, like the army or navy or the department of revenue, and believes it to have a basis and authority of its own, antecedent to its rights by statute, there cannot but be a great anomaly in an arrangement which, when doctrinal questions are pushed to their final issues, seems to deprive her of any voice or control in the matters in which she is most interested, and commits them to the decision, not merely of a lay, but of a secular and not necessarily even christian court, where the feeling about them is not unlikely to be that represented by the story, told by mr. joyce, of the eminent lawyer who said of some theological debate that he could only decide it "by tossing up a coin of the realm." the anomaly of such a court can hardly be denied, both as a matter of theory and--supposing it to matter at all what church doctrine really is--as illustrated in some late results of its action. it is still more provoking to observe, as mr. joyce brings out in his historical sketch, that simple carelessness and blundering have conspired with the evident tendency of things to cripple and narrow the jurisdiction of the church in what seems to be her proper sphere. the ecclesiastical appeals, before the reformation, were to the ecclesiastical jurisdiction alone. they were given to the civil power by the tudor legislation, but to the civil power acting, if not by the obligation of law, yet by usage and in fact, through ecclesiastical organs and judges. lastly, by a recent change, of which its authors have admitted that they did not contemplate the effect, these appeals are now to the civil jurisdiction acting through purely civil courts. it is an aggravation of this, when the change which seems so formidable has become firmly established, to be told that it was, after all, the result of accident and inadvertence, and a "careless use of terms in drafting an act of parliament"; and that difficult and perilous theological questions have come, by "a haphazard chance," before a court which was never meant to decide them. it cannot be doubted that those who are most interested in the church of england feel deeply and strongly about keeping up what they believe to be the soundness and purity of her professed doctrine; and they think that, under fair conditions, they have clear and firm ground for making good their position. but it seems by no means unlikely that in the working of the court of final appeal there will be found a means of evading the substance of questions, and of disposing of very important issues by a side wind, to the prejudice of what have hitherto been recognised as rightful claims. an arrangement which bears hard upon the church theoretically, as a controversial argument in the hands of dr. manning or mr. binney, and as an additional proof of its erastian subjection to the state, and which also works ill and threatens serious mischief, may fairly be regarded by churchmen with jealousy and dislike, and be denounced as injurious to interests for which they have a right to claim respect. the complaint that the state is going to force new senses on theological terms, or to change by an unavowed process the meaning of acknowledged formularies in such a body as the english church, is at least as deserving of attention as the reluctance of conscientious dissenters to pay church-rates. mr. joyce's book shows comprehensively and succinctly the history of the changes which have brought matters to their present point, and the look which they wear in the eyes of a zealous churchman, disturbed both by the shock given to his ideas of fitness and consistency, and by the prospect of practical evils. it is a clergyman's view of the subject, but it is not disposed of by saying that it is a clergyman's view. it is incomplete and one-sided, and leaves out considerations of great importance which ought to be attended to in forming a judgment on the whole question; but it is difficult to say that, regarded simply in itself, the claim that the church should settle her own controversies, and that church doctrine should be judged of in church courts, is not a reasonable one. the truth is that the present arrangement, if we think only of its abstract suitableness and its direct and ostensible claims to our respect, would need swift himself to do justice to its exquisite unreasonableness. it is absurd to assume, as it is assumed in the whole of our ecclesiastical legislation, that the church is bound to watch most jealously over doctrine, and then at the last moment to refuse her the natural means of guarding it. it is absurd to assume that the "spiritualty" are the only proper persons to teach doctrine, and then to act as if they were unfit to judge of doctrine. it is not easy, in the abstract, to see why articles which were trusted to clergymen to draw up may not be trusted to clergymen to explain, and why what there was learning and wisdom enough to do in the violent party times and comparative inexperience of the reformation, cannot be safely left to the learning and wisdom of our day for correction or completion. if churchmen and ecclesiastics may care too much for the things about which they dispute, it seems undeniable that lawyers who need not even be christians, may care for them too little; and if the churchmen make a mistake in the matter, at least it is their own affair, and they may be more fairly made to take the consequences of their own acts than of other people's. a strong case, if a strong case were all that was wanted, might be made out for a change in the authority which at present pronounces in the last resort on church of england doctrine. but the difficulty is, not to see that the present state of things, which has come about almost by accident, is irregular and unsatisfactory, and that in it the civil power has stolen a march on the privileges which even tudors and hanoverians left to the church, but to suggest what would be more just and more promising. a mixed tribunal, composed of laymen and ecclesiastics, would be in effect, as mr. joyce perceives, simply the present court with a sham colour of church authority added to it; and he describes with candid force the confusion which might arise if the lawyers and divines took different sides, and how, in the unequal struggle, the latter might "find themselves hopelessly prostrate in the stronger grasp of their more powerful associates." his own scheme of a theological and ecclesiastical committee of reference, to which a purely legal tribunal might send down questions of doctrine to be answered, as "experts" or juries give answers about matters of science or matters of fact, is hardly more hopeful; for even he would not bind the legal court, as of course it could not be bound, to accept the doctrine of the ecclesiastical committee. he promises, indeed, on the authority of lord derby, that in ninety-nine cases out of a hundred the lawyers would accept the answer of the divines; but whatever the scandal is now, it would be far greater if an unorthodox judgment were given in flat contradiction to the report of the committee of reference. as to a purely ecclesiastical court of appeal, in the present state of the church both in england and all over the world, it ought to console those who must be well aware that here at least it is hardly to be looked for, to reflect how such courts act, after all, where they have the power to act, and how far things would have gone in a better or happier fashion among us if, instead of the privy council, there had been a tribunal of divines to give final judgment. the history of appeals to rome, from the days of the jansenists and fénelon to those of lamennais, may be no doubt satisfactory to those who believe it necessary to ascribe to the pope the highest wisdom and the most consummate justice; but to those who venture to notice the real steps of the process, and the collateral considerations, political and local, which influenced the decision, the review is hardly calculated to make those who are debarred from it regret the loss of this unalloyed purity of ecclesiastical jurisdiction. and, as regards ourselves, it is true that an ecclesiastical tribunal would hardly have been ingenious enough to find the means of saying that messrs. wilson and williams had not taught in contradiction to the doctrines of the english church, and that they actually, under its present constitution, possessed the liberty which, under a different--and, as some people think, a better--constitution, they might possess. but it ought also to be borne in mind what other judgments ecclesiastical tribunals might have given. an ecclesiastical tribunal, unless it had been packed or accidentally one-sided, would probably have condemned mr. gorham. an ecclesiastical tribunal would almost certainly have expelled archdeacon denison from his preferments. indeed, the judgment of the six doctors on dr. pusey, arbitrary and unconstitutional as it may be considered, was by no means a doubtful foreshadowing of what a verdict upon him would have been from any court that we can imagine formed of the high ecclesiastical authorities of the time. it undoubtedly seems the most natural thing in the world that a great religious body should settle, without hindrance, its own doctrines and control its own ministers; but it is also some compensation for the perversity with which the course of things has interfered with ideal completeness, that our condition, if it had been theoretically perfect, would have been perfectly intolerable. it would be highly unwise in those who direct the counsels of the church of england to accept a practical disadvantage for the gain of a greater simplicity and consistency of system. the true moral to be deduced from the anomalies of ecclesiastical appeals seems to be, to have as little to do with them as possible. the idea of seeking a remedy for the perplexities of theology in judicial rulings, and the rage for having recourse to law courts, are of recent date in our controversies. they were revived among us as one of the results of the violent panic caused by the oxford movement, and of the inconsiderate impatience of surprised ignorance which dictated extreme and forcible measures; and as this is a kind of game at which, when once started, both parties can play, the policy of setting the law in motion to silence theological opponents has become a natural and favourite one. but it may be some excuse for the legislators who, in , in constructing a new court of appeal, so completely forgot or underrated the functions which it would be called to discharge in the decision of momentous doctrinal questions, that at the time no one thought much of carrying theological controversies to legal arbitrament. the experiment is a natural one to have been made in times of strong and earnest religious contention; but, now that it has had its course, it is not difficult to see that it was a mistaken one. there seems something almost ludicrously incongruous in bringing a theological question into the atmosphere and within the technical handling of a law court, and in submitting delicate and subtle attempts to grasp the mysteries of the unseen and the infinite, of god and the soul, of grace and redemption, to the hard logic and intentionally confined and limited view of forensic debate. theological truth, in the view of all who believe in it, must always remain independent of a legal decision; and, therefore, as regards any real settlement, a theological question must come out of a legal sentence in a totally different condition from any others where the true and indisputable law of the case is, for the time at least, what the supreme tribunal has pronounced it to be. people chafed at not getting what they thought the plain broad conclusions from facts and documents accepted; they appealed to law from the uncertainty of controversy, and found law still more uncertain, and a good deal more dangerous. they thought that they were going to condemn crimes and expel wrongdoers; they found that these prosecutions inevitably assumed the character of the old political trials, which were but an indirect and very mischievous form of the struggle between two avowed parties, and in which, though the technical question was whether the accused had committed the crime, the real one was whether the alleged crime were a crime at all. accordingly, wider considerations than those arising out of the strict merits of the case told upon the decision; and the negative judgment, and resolute evasion of a condemnation, in each of the cases which were of wide and serious importance, were proofs of the same tendency in english opinion which has made political trials, except in the most extreme cases, almost inconceivable. they mean that the questions raised must be fought out and settled in a different and more genuine way, and that law feels itself out of place when called to interfere in them. as all parties have failed in turning the law into a weapon, and yet as all parties have really gained much more than they have lost by the odd anomalies of our ecclesiastical jurisprudence, the wisest course would seem to be for those who feel the deep importance of doctrinal questions to leave the law alone, either as to employing it or attempting to change it. controversy, argument, the display of the intrinsic and inherent strength of a great and varied system, are what all causes must in the last resort trust to. lord westbury will have done the church of england more good than perhaps he thought of doing, if his _dicta_ make theologians see that they can be much better and more hopefully employed than in trying legal conclusions with unorthodox theorisers, or in busying themselves with inventing imaginary improvements for a final court of appeal. iii privy council judgments[ ] [ ] _a collection of the judgments of the judicial committee of the privy council in ecclesiastical cases relating to doctrine and discipline; with a preface by the lord bishop of london, and an historical introduction_. edited by the hon. g. brodrick, barrister-at-law, and rev. the hon. w.h. fremantle, chaplain to the bishop of london. _guardian_, th february . the bishop of london has done a useful service in causing the various decisions of the present court of appeal to be collected into a volume. there is such an obvious convenience about the plan that it hardly needed the conventional reason given for it, that "the knowledge generally possessed on the subject of the court is vague, and the sources from which accurate information can be obtained are little understood; and that people who discuss it ought in the first place to know what the court is, and what it does." this is the mere customary formula of a preface turned into a rhetorical insinuation which would have been better away; most of those who care about the subject, and have expressed opinions about it, know pretty well the nature of the court and the result of its working, and whatever variations there may be in the judgment passed upon it arise not from any serious imperfection of knowledge but from differences of principle. it was hardly suitable in a work like this to assume a mystery and obscurity about the subject where there is really none, and to claim superior exactness and authenticity of information about a matter which in all its substantial points is open to all the world. and we could conceive the design, well-intentioned as it is, carried out in a way more fitting to the gravity of the occasion which has suggested it. the bishop says truly enough that the questions involved in the constitution of such a court are some of the most difficult with which statesmen have to deal. therefore it seems to us that a collection of the decisions of such a court, put forth for the use of the church and nation under the authority of the bishop of london, ought to have had the dignity and the reserve of a work meant for permanence and for the use of men of various opinions, and ought not to have had even the semblance, as this book has, of an _ex parte_ pamphlet. the bishop of london is, of course, quite right to let the church know what he thinks about the court of final appeal; and he is perfectly justified in recommending us, in forming our opinion, to study carefully the facts of the existing state of things; but it seems hardly becoming to make the facts a vehicle for indirectly forcing on us, in the shape of comments, a very definite and one-sided view of them, which is the very subject of vehement contradiction and dispute. it would have been better to have committed what was necessary in the way of explanation and illustration to some one of greater weight and experience than two clever young men of strong bias and manifest indisposition to respect or attend to, or even to be patient with, any aspect of the subject but their own in this complicated and eventful question, and who, partly from overlooking great and material elements in it, and partly from an imperfect apprehension of what they had to do, have failed to present even the matters of fact with which they deal with the necessary exactness and even-handedness. it seems to us that in a work intended for the general use of the church and addressed to men of all opinions, they only remember to be thoroughgoing advocates and justifiers of the court which happens to have grown into such important consequence to the english church. the position is a perfectly legitimate one; but we think it had better not have been connected with a documentary work like the present, set forth by the direction and under the sanction of a bishop of london. in looking over the cases which have been brought together into a connected series, the first point which is suggested by the review is the great and important change in the aspect and bearing of doctrinal controversies, and in the situation of the church, as affected by them, which the creation and action of this court have made. from making it almost a matter of principle and boast to dispense with any living judge of controversies, the church has passed to having a very energetic one. up to the gorham judgment, it can hardly be said that the ruling of courts of law had had the slightest influence on the doctrinal position and character of the church. keen and fierce as had been the controversies in the church up to that judgment, how often had a legal testing of her standards been seriously sought for or seriously appealed to? there had been accusations of heresy, trials, condemnations, especially in the times following the reformation and preceding the civil war; there had been appeals and final judgments given in such final courts as existed; but all without making any mark on the public mind or the received meaning of doctrines and formularies, and without leaving a trace except in law reports. they seem to have been forgotten as soon as the particular case was disposed of. the limits of supposed orthodox belief revived; but it was not the action of judicial decisions which either narrowed or enlarged them. bishop marsh's calvinists never thought of having recourse to law. if the church did not do entirely without a court of final appeal, it is simply a matter of fact that the same weight and authority were not attached to the proceedings of such a court which are attached to them now. but since the gorham case, the work of settling authoritatively, if not the meaning of doctrines and of formularies, at any rate the methods of interpreting and applying them, has been briskly going on in the courts, and a law laid down by judges without appeal has been insensibly fastening its hold upon us. the action of the courts is extolled as being all in the direction of liberty. whatever this praise may be worth, it is to be observed that it is, after all, a wooden sort of liberty, and shuts up quite as much as it opens. it may save, in this case or that, individual liberty; but it does so by narrowing artificially the natural and common-sense grounds of argument in religious controversy, and abridging as much as possible the province of theology. before the gorham case, the formularies in general were the standard and test, free to both sides, about baptismal regeneration. both parties had the ground open to them, to make what they could of them by argument and reason. discipline was limited by the articles and formularies, and in part by the authority of great divines and by the prevailing opinion of the church, and by nothing else; these were the means which each side had to convince and persuade and silence the other, and each side might hope that in the course of time its sounder and better supported view might prevail. but now upon this state of things comes from without a dry, legal, narrow stereotyping, officially and by authority, of the sense to be put upon part of the documents in the controversy. you appeal to the prayer-book; your opponent tells you, oh, the court of appeal has ruled against you there: and that part of your case is withdrawn from you, and he need give himself no trouble to argue the matter with you. against certain theological positions, perhaps of great weight, and theological evidence, comes, not only the doctrine of theological opponents, but the objection that they are bad law. the interpretation which, it may be, we have assumed all our lives, and which we know to be that of fathers and divines, is suddenly pronounced not to be legal. the decision does not close the controversy, which goes on as keenly and with perhaps a little more exasperation than before; it simply stops off, by virtue of a legal construction, a portion of the field of argument for one party, which was, perhaps, supposed to have the strongest claim to it. the gorham case bred others; and now, at last, after fifteen years, we have got, as may be seen in messrs. brodrick and fremantle's book, a body of judicial _dicta_, interpretations, rules of exposition, and theological propositions, which have grown up in the course of these cases, and which in various ways force a meaning and construction on the theological standards and language of the church, which in some instances they were never thought to have, and which they certainly never had authoritatively before. besides her articles and prayer-hook, speaking the language of divines and open to each party to interpret according to the strength and soundness of their theological ground, we are getting a supplementary set of legal limitations and glosses, claiming to regulate theological argument if not teaching, and imposed upon us by the authority not of the church or even of parliament but of the judges of the privy council. this, it strikes us, is a new position of things in the church, a new understanding and a changed set of conditions on which to carry on controversies of doctrine; and it seems to us to have a serious influence not only on the responsibility of the church for her own doctrine, but on the freedom and genuineness with which questions as to that doctrine are discussed. the court is not to blame for this result; to do it justice, it has generally sought to decide as little as it could; and the interference of law with the province of pure theology is to be rather attributed to that mania for deciding, which of late has taken possession pretty equally of all parties. but the indisputable result is seen to be, after the experience of fifteen years, that law is taking a place in our theological disputes and our theological system which is new to it in our theological history; law, not laid down prospectively in general provisions, but emerging indirectly and incidentally out of constructions and judicial rulings on cases of pressing and hazardous exigency; law, applying its technical and deliberately narrow processes to questions which of course it cannot solve, but can only throw into formal and inadequate, if not unreal, terms; and laying down the limits of belief and assertion on matters about which hearts burn and souls tremble, by the mouth of judges whose consummate calmness and ability is only equalled by their profound and avowed want of sympathy for the theology of which their position makes them the expounders and final arbiters. a system has begun with respect to english church doctrine, analogous to that by which lord stowell made the recent law of the sea, or that by which on a larger scale the rescripts and decrees of the popes moulded the great system of the canon law. this is the first thing that strikes us on a comparative survey of this set of decisions. the second point is one which at first sight seems greatly to diminish the importance of this new condition of things, but which on further consideration is seen to have a more serious bearing than might have been thought. this is, the odd haphazard way in which points have come up for decision; the sort of apparent chance which has finally governed the issue of the various contentions; and the infinitesimally fine character of the few propositions of doctrine to which the court has given the sanction of its ruling. knowing what we all of us cannot help knowing, and seeing things which lawyers and judges are bound not to allow themselves to see or take account of, we find it difficult to repress the feeling of amazement, as we travel through the volume, to see mr. gorham let off, mr. heath deprived, then dr. williams and mr. wilson let off, and to notice the delicate technical point which brought to nought the laborious and at one time hopeful efforts of the worthy persons who tried to turn out archdeacon denison. and as to the matter of the decisions, though undoubtedly _dicta_ of great importance are laid down in the course of them, yet it is curious to observe the extremely minute and insignificant statements on which in the more important cases judgment is actually pronounced. the gorham case was held to affect the position of a great party; but the language and theory actually examined and allowed would hardly, in legal strictness, authorise much more than the very peculiar views of mr. gorham himself. and in the last case, the outside lay world has hardly yet done wondering at the consummate feat of legal subtlety by which the issue whether the english church teaches that the bible is inspired was transmuted into the question whether it teaches that every single part of every single book is inspired. it might seem that rulings, of which the actual product in the way of doctrinal propositions was so small, were hardly subjects for any keen interest. but it would be shortsighted to regard the matter in this way. in the first place, whatever may have happened as yet, it is manifestly a serious thing for church of england doctrine to have been thrown, on a scale which is quite new, into the domain of a court of law, to lie at the mercy of the confessed chances and uncertainties of legal interpretation, with nothing really effective to correct and remedy what may possibly be, without any fault in the judges, a fatally mischievous construction of the text and letter of her authoritative documents. in the next place, no one can fail to see, no one in fact affects to deny, that the general result of these recent decisions, capricious as their conclusions look at first sight, has been to make the formularies mean much less than they were supposed to mean. the tendency of every english court, appealed to not as a court of equity but one of criminal jurisdiction, is naturally to be exacting and even narrow in the interpretation of language. the general impression left by these cases is that the lines of doctrine in the english church are regarded by the judicial mind as very faint, and not much to be depended upon; and that these judgments may be the first steps in that insensible process by which the unpretending but subtle and powerful engine of interpretation has been applied by the courts to give a certain turn to law and policy; applied, in this instance, to undermine the definiteness and certainty of doctrine, and in the end, the understanding itself which has hitherto existed between the church and the state, and has kept alive the idea of her distinct basis, functions, and rights. this is the view of matters which arises from an examination of the proceedings contained in this volume. what is the argument urged in the historical introduction to justify or recommend our acquiescence in it? it seems to us to consist mainly in a one-sided and exaggerated statement of the supremacy claimed and brought in by henry viii., and of the effect in theory and fact which it ought to have on our notion of the church and of church right. the complaint of the present state of things is, that those who may be taken to represent the interests of the church in such a matter as the character of her teaching are practically excluded from having any real influence in the decision of questions by which the character of that teaching is affected. the answer is that she has no right to claim a separate interest in the matter, and that the doctrine of the royal supremacy was meant to extinguish, and has extinguished, any pretence to such a claim. the _animus_ which pervades the work, and which is not obscurely disclosed in such things as footnotes and abridgments of legal arguments, is thus given--more freely, of course, than it would be proper to introduce in a book like this--in some remarks of mr. brodrick, one of the editors, at a recent discussion of the question of ecclesiastical appeals in a committee of the social science association. he is reported to have spoken as follows:-- the church of england being established by law, could not be allowed any independence of action; and those who wished for it were like people who wanted to have their cake and eat it. as to the privy council, he had never heard its decisions charged with error. what was complained of was that it had declined to take the current opinions of theologians and make them part of the thirty-nine articles. there was no need whatever for the privy council to possess any special theological knowledge. the only case where that knowledge was necessary was when it was alleged that doctrines had been held in the church without censure. that was a case in which considerable theological lore was required; but it was within the province of counsel to supply it. divines had now discovered, what lawyers could have told them long ago, and what he knew some of them had been told--namely, that it would not do to treat the thirty-nine articles as penal statutes; because, if that were done, a coach might be easily driven through them. if they had wished to maintain the authority of the articles, they would have done best to have kept quiet. the present court of appeal is deduced, in the historical introduction, as a natural and logical consequence, from henry viii.'s supremacy. undoubtedly it is scarcely possible to overstate the all-grasping despotism of henry viii., and if a precedent for anything reckless of all separate rights and independence should be wanted, it would never be sought in vain if looked for in the policy and legislation of that reign. so far the editors are right; the power over religion claimed by henry viii. will carry them wherever they want to go; it will give them, if they need it, as a still more logical and legitimate development of the supremacy, the court of high commission. only they ought to have remembered, as fair historians, that even in the days of the supremacy the distinct nature and business of the church and of churchmen was never denied. laymen were given powers over the church and in the church which were new; but the distinct province of the church, if abridged and put under new control, was not abolished. side by side with the facts showing the supremacy and its exercise are a set of facts, for those who choose to see them, showing that the church was still recognised, even by henry viii., as a body which he had not created, which he was obliged to take account of, and which filled a place utterly different from every other body in the state. henry viii. played the tyrant with his churchmen as he did with his parliament and with everybody else; and churchmen, like everybody else, submitted to him. but the "imperialism" of henry viii., though it went beyond even the imperialism of justinian and charlemagne in its encroachments on the spiritual power, as little denied the fact of that power as they did. he recognised the distinct place and claims of the spiritualty; and, as we suppose that even the editors of this volume hardly feel themselves bound to make out the consistency of henry, they might have spared themselves the weak and not very fair attempt to get rid of the force of the remarkable words in which this recognition is recorded in the first statute of appeals ( henry viii. c. ). the words would, no doubt, be worth but little, were it not that as a matter of fact a spiritualty did act and judge and lay down doctrine, and even while yielding to unworthy influence did keep up their corporate existence. but when the ecclesiastical legislation of henry viii. is referred to, not merely as the historical beginning of a certain state of things which has undergone great changes in the course of events, but as affording a sort of idea and normal pattern to which our own arrangements ought to conform, as supplying us with a theory of church and state which holds good at least against the church, it seems hard that the church alone should not have the benefit of the entire alteration of circumstances since that theory was a reality. those who talk about the supremacy ought to remember what the supremacy pretended to be. it was over _all_ causes and _all_ persons, civil as well as ecclesiastical. it held good certainly in theory, and to a great extent in practice, against the temporalty as much as against the spiritualty. why then are we to invoke the supremacy as then understood, in a question about courts of spiritual appeals, and not in questions about other courts and other powers in the nation? if the supremacy, claimed and exercised as henry claimed and exercised it, is good against the church, it is good against many other things besides. if the church inherits bonds and obligations, not merely by virtue of distinct statutes, but by the force of a general vague arbitrary theory of royal power, why has that power been expelled, or transformed into a mere fiction of law, in all other active branches of the national life? unless the church is simply, what even henry viii. did not regard it, a creation and delegate of the national power, without any roots and constitution of its own, why should the church be denied the benefit of the common sense, and the change in ideas and usage, which have been so largely appealed to in civil matters? why are we condemned to a theory which is not only out of date and out of harmony with all the traditions and convictions of modern times, hut which was in its own time tyrannous, revolutionary, and intolerable? arguments in favour of the present court, drawn from the reason of the thing, and the comparative fitness of the judges for their office, if we do not agree with them, at least we can understand. but precedents and arguments from the supremacy of henry viii. suggest the question whether those who use them are ready to be taken at their word and to have back that supremacy as it was; and whether the examples of policy of that reign are seemly to quote as adequate measures of the liberty and rights of any set of englishmen. the question really calling for solution is--how to reconcile the just freedom of individual teachers in the church with the maintenance of the right and duty of the church to uphold the substantial meaning of her body of doctrine? in answering this question we can get no help from this volume. it simply argues that the present is practically the best of all possible courts; that it is a great improvement, which probably it is, on the courts of delegates; and that great confidence ought to be felt in its decisions. we are further shown how jealously and carefully the judges have guarded the right of the individual teacher. but it seems to us, according to the views put forward in this book, that as the price of all this--of great learning, weight, and ability in the judges--of great care taken of liberty--the church is condemned to an interpretation of the royal supremacy which floats between the old arbitrary view of it and the modern liberal one, and which uses each, as it happens to be most convenient, against the claim of the church to protect her doctrine and exert a real influence on the authoritative declaration of it. we all need liberty, and we all ought to be ready to give the reasonable liberty which we profess to claim for ourselves. but it is a heavy price to pay for it, if the right and the power is to be taken out of the hands of the church to declare what is the real meaning of what she supposes herself bound to teach. iv sir john coleridge on the purchas case[ ] [ ] _remarks on some parts of the report of the judicial committee in the case of "elphinstone against purchas."_ a letter to canon liddon, from the right hon. sir j.t. coleridge. _guardian_, th april . no one has more right to speak with authority, or more deserves to be listened to at a difficult and critical moment for the church, than sir j.t. coleridge. an eminent lawyer, and a most earnest and well-informed churchman, he combines in an unusual way claims on the attention of all who care for the interests of religion, and for those, too, which are so deeply connected with them, the interests of england. the troubles created by the recent judgment have induced him to come forward from his retirement with words of counsel and warning. the gist of his letter may be shortly stated. he is inclined to think the decision arrived at by the judicial committee a mistaken one. but he thinks that it would be a greater and a worse mistake to make this decision, wrong as it may be, a reason for looking favourably on disestablishment as a remedy for what is complained of. we are glad to note the judgment of so fair an observer and so distinguished a lawyer, himself a member of the privy council, both on the intrinsic suitableness and appropriateness of the position[ ] which has been ruled to be illegal, and on the unsatisfactoriness of the interpretation itself, as a matter of judicial reading and construction. a great deal has been said, and it is plain that the topic is inexhaustible, on the unimportance of a position. we agree entirely--on condition that people remember the conditions and consequences of their assertion. every single outward accompaniment of worship may, if you carry your assertion to its due level, be said to be in itself utterly unimportant; place and time and form and attitude are all things not belonging to the essence of the act itself, and are indefinitely changeable, as, in fact, the changes in them have been countless. kneeling is not of the essence of prayer, but imagine, first prohibiting the posture of kneeling, and then remonstrating with those who complained of the prohibition, on the ground of postures being unimportant. it is obvious that when you have admitted to the full that a position is in itself unimportant, all kinds of reasons may come in on the further question whether it is right, fitting, natural. there are reasons why the position which has been so largely adopted of late is the natural and suitable one. sir john coleridge states them admirably:-- [ ] the eastward position at the celebration of the holy communion. as to the place of standing at the consecration, my _feeling_ is with them. it seems to me not desirable to make it essential or even important that the people should see the breaking of the bread, or the taking the cup into the hands of the priest, and positively mischievous to encourage them in gazing on him, or watching him with critical eyes while so employed. i much prefer the _spirit of_ the rubric of --first book of edward vi.--which says, "these words before rehearsed are to be said turning still to the altar, without any elevation, or showing the sacraments to the people." the use now enforced, i think, tends to deprive the most solemn rite of our religion of one of its most solemn particulars. surely, whatever school we belong to, and even if we consider the whole rite merely commemorative, it is a very solemn idea to conceive the priest at the head of his flock, and, as it were, a shepherd leading them on in heart and spirit, imploring for them and with them the greatest blessing which man is capable of receiving on earth; he alone uttering the prayer--they meanwhile kneeling all, and in deep silence listening, not gazing, rather with closed eyes--and with their whole undistracted attention, joining in the prayer with one heart and without sound until the united "amen" breaks from them at the close, and seals their union and assent. but, of course, comes the further question, whether, an english clergyman is authorised to use it. he is not authorised if the prayer book tells him not to. of that there is no question. but if the prayer book not only seems to give him the liberty, but, by the _prima facie_ look of its words, seems to prescribe it, the harshness of a ruling which summarily and under penalties prohibits it is not to be smoothed down by saying that the matter is unimportant. sir john coleridge's view of the two points will be read with interest:-- you will understand, of course, that i write in respect of the report recently made by the judicial committee in the purchas case. i am not about to defend it. no one, however, ought to pronounce a condemnation of the solemn judgment of such a tribunal without much consideration; and this remark applies with, special force to myself, well knowing as i do those from whom it proceeded, and having withdrawn from sharing in the labours of the committee only because age had impaired, with the strength of my body, the faculties also of my mind; and so disabled me from the proper discharge of any judicial duties. with this admission on my part, i yet venture to say that i think mr. purchas has not had justice done to him in two main points of the late appeal; i mean the use of the vestments complained of and the side of the communion-table which he faced when consecrating the elements for the holy communion. before i state my reasons, let me premise that i am no ritualist, in the now conventional use of the term. i do not presume to judge of the motives of those to whom that name is applied. from the information of common but undisputed report as to some of the most conspicuous, i believe them entitled to all praise for their pastoral devotedness and their laborious, self-denying lives; still, i do not shrink from saying that i think them misguided, and the cause of mischief in the church. so much for my _feeling_ in regard to the vestments. i prefer the surplice at all times and in all ministrations. this is _feeling_--and i see no word in the sober language of our rubric which interferes with it--but my _feeling_ is of no importance in the argument, and i mention it only in candour, to show in what spirit i approach the argument. now mr. purchas has been tried before the committee for offences alleged to have been committed against the provisions of the "act of uniformity"; of this act the common prayer book is part and parcel. as to the vestments, his conduct was alleged to be in derogation of the rubric as to the ornaments of the church and the ministers thereof, which ordains that such shall be retained and be in use as were in the church of england by the authority of parliament in the second year of the reign of king edward vi. the act of uniformity is to be construed by the same rules exactly as any act passed in the last session of parliament. the clause in question (by which i mean the rubric in question) is perfectly unambiguous in language, free from all difficulty as to construction; it therefore lets in no argument as to intention otrier than that which the words themselves import. there might be a seeming difficulty in _fact_, because it might not be known what vestments were in use by authority of parliament in the second year of the reign of king edward vi.; but this difficulty has been removed. it is conceded in the report that the vestments, the use of which is now condemned, were in use by authority of parliament in that year. having that fact, you are bound to construe the rubric as if those vestments were specifically named in it, instead of being only referred to. if an act should be passed to-morrow that the uniform of the guards should henceforth be such as was ordered for them by authority and used by them in the st george i., you would first ascertain what that uniform was; and, having ascertained it, you would not inquire into the changes which may have been made, many or few, with or without lawful authority, between the st george i. and the passing of the new act. all these, that act, specifying the earlier date, would have made wholly immaterial. it would have seemed strange, i suppose, if a commanding officer, disobeying the statute, had said in his defence, "there have been many changes since the reign of george i.; and as to 'retaining,' we put a gloss on that, and thought it might mean only retaining to the queen's use; so we have put the uniforms safely in store." but i think it would have seemed more strange to punish and mulct him severely if he had obeyed the law and put no gloss on plain words. this case stands on the same principle. the rubric indeed seems to me to imply with some clearness that in the long interval between edward vi. and the th charles ii. there had been many changes; but it does not stay to specify them, or distinguish between what was mere evasion and what was lawful; it quietly passes them all by, and goes back to the legalised usage of the second year of edward vi. what had prevailed since, whether by an archbishop's gloss, by commissions, or even statutes, whether, in short, legal or illegal, it makes quite immaterial. i forbear to go through the long inquiry which these last words remind one of--not, i am sure, out of any disrespectful feeling to the learned and reverend authors of the report, but because it seems to me wholly irrelevant to the point for decision. this alone i must add, that even were the inquiry relevant, the authorities on which they rely do not appear to me so clear or cogent, nor the analogies relied on so just, as to warrant the conclusion arrived at. for it should never be forgotten that the defendant in a criminal case, acquitted as to this charge by the learned judge below, was entitled to every presumption in his favour, and could not properly be condemned but by a judgment free from all reasonable doubt. and this remark acquires additional strength because the judgment will be final not only on him but on the whole church for all time, unless reversed by the legislature. on the second point he thus speaks, in terms which for their guarded moderation are all the more worth notice:-- upon the second point i have less to say, though it is to me much the most important. the report, i think, cannot be shown conclusively to be wrong here, as it may be on the other; still it does not seem to me to be shown conclusively to be right. you have yourself given no reason in your second letter of the th march for doubting at least. let me add that, in my opinion, on such a question as this, where a conclusion is to be arrived at upon the true meaning of rubrics framed more than two centuries since, and certainly not with a view to any such minute criticism as on these occasions is and must be applied to them, and where the evidence of facts is by no means clear, none probably can be arrived at free from reasonable objection. what is the consequence? it will be asked, is the question to receive no judicial solution? i am not afraid to answer, better far that it should receive none than that injustice should be done. the principles of english law furnish the practical solution: dismiss the party charged, unless his conviction can be based on grounds on which reasonable and competent minds can rest satisfied and without scruple. and what mighty mischief will result to countervail the application of this rule of justice? for two centuries our church has subsisted without an answer to the question which alone gives importance to this inquiry, and surely has not been without god's blessing for that time, in spite of all much more serious shortcomings. let us remember that charity, or to use perhaps a better word, love, is the greatest of all; if that prevail there need be little fear for our faith or our hope. having said this much, sir john coleridge proceeds to the second, and indeed the main object of his letter--to remonstrate against exaggeration in complaint, both of the particular decision and of the court which gave it:-- i now return to your letter. you proceed to attempt to show that the words of keble to yourself, which you cite, are justified by remarks in this report and some previous judgments of the same tribunal, which appear to you so inconsistent with each other as to make it difficult to believe that the court was impartial, or "incapable of regarding the documents before it in the light of a plastic material, which might be made to support conclusions held to be advisable at the moment, and on independent grounds." i wish these words had never been written. they will, i fear, be understood as conveying your formed opinions; and coming from you, and addressed to minds already excited and embittered, they will be readily accepted, though they import the heaviest charges against judges--some of them bishops--all of high and hitherto unimpeached character. a very long experience of judicial life makes me know that judges will often provoke and bitterly disappoint both the suitors before them and the public, when discharging their duty honestly and carefully, and a man is scarcely fit for the station unless he can sit tolerably easy under censures which even these may pass upon him. yet, imputations of partiality or corruption are somewhat hard to bear when they are made by persons of your station and character. when the judicial committee sits on appeals from the spiritual courts, it _may_ certainly be under god's displeasure, the members _may_ be visited with judicial blindness, and deprived of the integrity which in other times and cases they manifest. against such a supposition there is no direct argument, and i will not enter into such a disputation. i have so much confidence in your generosity and candour, on reflection, as to believe you would not desire i should. in the individual case i simply protest against the insinuation. i add a word or two by way of general observation. no doubt you have read the judgments in all the cases you allude to carefully; but have you read the pleadings and arguments of the counsel, so as to know accurately the points raised for the consideration of those who were to decide? to know the offence charged and the judgment pronounced may suffice in some cases for an opinion by a competent person, whether the one warranted the other; but more is required to warrant the imputation of inconsistency, partiality, or indirect motives. he who takes this on himself should know further how the pleadings and the arguments presented the case for judgment, and made this or that particular relevant in the discussion. every one at all familiar with this matter knows that a judgment not uncommonly fails to reflect the private opinion of the judge on the whole of a great point, because the issues of law or fact actually brought before him, and which alone he was bound to decide, did not bring this before him. and this rule, always binding, is, of course, never more so than in regard to a court of final appeal, which should be careful not to conclude more than is regularly before it. let me add that a just and considerate person will wholly disregard the gossip which flies about in regard to cases exciting much interest; passing words in the course of an argument, forgotten when the judgment comes to be considered, are too often caught up, as having guided the final determination. such words are a just rebuke to much of the inconsiderate talk which follows on any public act which touches the feelings, perhaps the highest and purest feelings of men with deep convictions. perhaps mr. liddon's words were unguarded ones. but at the same time it is necessary to state without disguise what is the truth in this matter. it is necessary for the sake of justice and historical truth. the court of final appeal is not like other courts. it is not a pure and simple court of law, though it is composed of great lawyers. it is doubtless a court where their high training and high professional honour come in, as they do elsewhere. but great lawyers are men, partisans and politicians, statesmen, if you like; and this is a court where they are not precluded, in the same degree as they are in the regular courts by the habits and prescriptions of the place, from thinking of what comes before them in its relation to public affairs. it is no mere invention of disappointed partisans, it is no idle charge of wilful unfairness, to say that considerations of high policy come into their deliberations; it has been the usual language, ever since the gorham case, of men who cared little for the subject-matter of the questions debated; it is the language of those who urge the advantages of the court. "it is a court," as the bishop of manchester said the other day, speaking in its praise, "composed of men who look at things not merely with the eyes of lawyers, but also with the eyes of statesmen." precisely so; and for that reason they must be considered to have the responsibilities, not only of lawyers, but of statesmen, and their acts are proportionably open to discussion. sir john coleridge urges the impossibility of any other court; and certainly till we could be induced to trust an ecclesiastical court, composed of bishops or clergymen, in a higher degree than we could do at present, we see no alternative. but to say that a clerical court would be no improvement is not to prove that the present court is a satisfactory one. it may be difficult under our present circumstances to reform it. but though we may have reasons for making the best of it, we may be allowed to say that it is a singularly ill-imagined and ill-constructed court, and one in which the great features of english law and justice are not so conspicuous as they are elsewhere. suitors do not complain in other courts either of the ruling, or sometimes of the language of judges, as they complain in this. but when this is made a ground for joining with the enemies of all that the english church holds dear, to bring about a great break-up of the existing state of things, we agree with sir john coleridge in thinking that a great mistake is made; and if care is not taken, it may be an irreparable one. he writes:-- i hasten to my conclusion too long delayed, but a word must still be added on a subject of not less consequence than any i have yet touched on. you say, "churchmen will to a very great extent indeed find relief from the dilemma in a third course, viz. _co-operation with the political forces_, which, year by year, more and more steadily are working towards disestablishment. this is not a menace; it is the statement of a simple fact." i am bound to believe, and i do believe, you do not intend this as a menace; but such a statement of a future course to depend on a contingency cannot but read very much like one--and against your intention it may well be understood as such. you do not say that _you_ are one who will co-operate with the political party which now seeks to disestablish the church in accomplishing its purpose, and i do not suppose you ever will. but on behalf, not so much of the clergy as of the laity--on behalf of the worshippers in our churches, of the sick to be visited at home--of the poor in their cottages, of our children in their schools--of our society in general, i entreat those of the clergy who are now feeling the most acutely in this matter, not to suffer their minds to be so absorbed by the present grievance as to take no thought of the evils of disestablishment. i am not foolishly blind to the faults of the clergy--indeed i fear i am sometimes censorious in regard to them--and some of their faults i do think may be referable to establishment; the possession of house and land, and a sort of independence of their parishioners, in some cases seems to tend to secularity. i regret sometimes their partisanship at elections, their speeches at public dinners. but what good gift of god is not liable to abuse from men? taken as a whole, we have owed, and we do owe, under him, to our established clergy more than we can ever repay, much of it rendered possible by their establishment. i may refer, and now with special force, to education--their services in this respect no one denies--and but for establishment these, i think, could not have been so effectively and systematically rendered. we are now in a great crisis as to this all-important matter. concurring, as i do heartily, in the praise which has been bestowed on mr. forster, and expecting that his great and arduous office will be discharged with perfect impartiality by him, and with a just sense of how much is due to the clergy in this respect, still it cannot be denied that the powers conferred by the legislature on the holder of it are alarmingly great, even if necessary; and who shall say in what a spirit they may be exercised by his successor? for the general upholding of religious education, in emergencies not improbable, to whom can we look in general so confidently as to the parochial clergy? i speak now specially in regard to parishes such as i am most familiar with, in agricultural districts, small, not largely endowed, sometimes without resident gentry, and with the land occupied by rack-renting farmers, indifferent or hostile to education. in what sir john coleridge urges against the fatal step of welcoming disestablishment under an impatient sense of injustice we need not say that we concur most earnestly. but it cannot be too seriously considered by those who see the mischief of disestablishment, that as sir john coleridge also says, the english churrh is, in one sense, a divided one; and that to pursue a policy of humiliating and crippling one of its great parties must at last bring mischief. the position of the high church party is a remarkable one. it has had more against it than its rivals; yet it is probably the strongest of them all. it is said, probably with reason, to be the unpopular party. it has been the stock object of abuse and sarcasm with a large portion of the press. it has been equally obnoxious to radical small shopkeepers and "true blue" farmers and their squires. it has been mobbed in churches and censured in parliament. things have gone against it, almost uniformly, before the tribunals. and unfortunately it cannot be said that it has been without its full share of folly and extravagance in some of its members. and yet it is the party which has grown; which has drawn some of its antagonists to itself, and has reacted on the ideas and habits of others; its members have gradually, as a matter of course, risen into important post and power. and it is to be noticed that, as a party, it has been the most tolerant. all parties are in their nature intolerant; none more so, where critical points arise, than liberal ones. but in spite of the dean of westminster's surprise at high churchmen claiming to be tolerant, we still think that, in the first place, they are really much less inclined to meddle with their neighbours than others of equally strong and deep convictions; and further, that they have become so more and more; and they have accepted the lessons of their experience; they have thrown off, more than any strong religious body, the intolerance which was natural to everybody once, and have learned, better than they did at one time, to bear with what they dislike and condemn. if a party like this comes to feel itself dealt with harshly and unfairly, sacrificed to popular clamour or the animosity of inveterate and unscrupulous opponents, it is certain that we shall be in great danger. v mr. gladstone's letter on the english church[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th october . mr. gladstone's letter, read at the st. asaph diocesan conference, will not have surprised those who have borne in mind his deep and unintermitted interest in the fortunes and prospects of the church, and his habit of seeking relief from the pressure of one set of thoughts and anxieties by giving full play to his mental energies in another direction. its composition and appearance at this moment are quite accounted for; it is a contribution to the business of the conference of his own diocese, and it was promised long before an autumn session on a great question between the two houses was in view. still the appearance of such a document from a person in mr. gladstone's position must, of course, invite attention and speculation. he may put aside the questions which the word "disestablishment"--which was in the thesis given him to write upon--is likely to provoke--"will it come? ought it to come? must it come? is it near, or somewhat distant, or indefinitely remote?" on these questions he has not a word to say. but, all the same, people will naturally try to read between the lines, and to find out what was in the writer's thoughts about these questions. we cannot, however, see that there is anything to be gathered from the letter as to the political aspect of the matter; he simply confines himself to the obvious lesson which passing events sufficiently bring with them, that whatever may come it is our business to be prepared. his anxieties are characteristic. the paper shows, we think, that it has not escaped him that disestablishment, however compensated as some sanguine people hope, would be a great disaster and ruin. it would be the failure and waste to the country of noble and astonishing efforts; it would be the break-up and collapse of a great and cheap system, by which light and human kindliness and intelligence are carried to vast tracts, that without its presence must soon become as stagnant and hopeless as many of the rural _communes_ of france; the blow would at the moment cripple and disorganise the church for its work even in the towns. but though "happily improbable," it may come; and in such a contingency, what occupies mr. gladstone's thoughts is, not the question whether it would be disastrous, but whether it would be disgraceful. that is the point which disturbs and distresses him--the possibility that the end of our later church history, the end of that wonderful experiment which has been going on from the sixteenth century, with such great vicissitudes, but after every shock with increasing improvement and hope, should at last be not only failure, but failure with dishonour; and this, he says, could only come in one of two ways. it might come from the church having sunk into sloth and death, without faith, without conscience, without love. this, if it ever was really to be feared, is not the danger before us now. activity, conviction, energy, self-devotion, these, and not apathetic lethargy, mark the temper of our times; and they are as conspicuous in the church as anywhere else. but these qualities, as we have had ample experience, may develop into fierce and angry conflicts. it is our internal quarrels, mr. gladstone thinks, that create the most serious risk of disestablishment; and it is only our quarrels, which we have not good sense and charity enough to moderate and keep within bounds, which would make it "disgraceful." the main feature of the letter is the historical retrospect which mr. gladstone gives of the long history, the long travail of the later english church. hardly in its first start, under the tudors, but more and more as time went on, it instinctively, as it were, tried the great and difficult problem of christian liberty. the churches of the continent, roman and anti-roman, were simple in their systems; only one sharply defined theology, only the disciples and representatives of one set of religious tendencies, would they allow to dwell within their borders; what was refractory and refused to harmonise was at once cast out; and for a certain time they were unvexed with internal dissensions. this, both in the case of the roman, the lutheran, and the calvinistic churches of the continent, requires to be somewhat qualified; still, as compared with the rival schools of the english church, puritan and anglican, the contrast is a true and a sharp one. mr. gladstone adopts from a german writer a view which is certainly not new to many in england, that "the reformation, as a religious movement, took its shape in england, not in the sixteenth century but in the seventeenth." "it seems plain," he says, "that the great bulk of those burned under mary were puritans"; and he adds, what is not perhaps so capable of proof, that "under elizabeth we have to look, with rare exceptions, among the puritans and recusants for an active and religious life." it was not till the restoration, it was not till puritanism had shown all its intolerance, all its narrowness, and all its helplessness, that the church was able to settle the real basis and the chief lines of its reformed constitution. it is not, as mr. gladstone says, "a heroic history"; there is room enough in the looseness of some of its arrangements, and the incompleteness of others, for diversity of opinion and for polemical criticism. but the result, in fact, of this liberty and this incompleteness has been, not that the church has declined lower and lower into indifference and negation, but that it has steadily mounted in successive periods to a higher level of purpose, to a higher standard of life and thought, of faith and work. account for it as we may, with all drawbacks, with great intervals of seeming torpor, with much to be regretted and to be ashamed of, that is literally the history of the english church since the restoration settlement. it is not "heroic," but there are no church annals of the same time more so, and there are none fuller of hope. but every system has its natural and specific danger, and the specific english danger, as it is the condition of vigorous english life, is that spirit of liberty which allows and attempts to combine very divergent tendencies of opinion. "the church of england," mr. gladstone thinks, "has been peculiarly liable, on the one side and on the other, both to attack and to defection, and the probable cause is to be found in the degree in which, whether for worldly or for religious reasons, it was attempted in her case to combine divergent elements within her borders." she is still, as he says, "working out her system by experience"; and the exclusion of bitterness--even, as he says, of "savagery"--from her debates and controversies is hardly yet accomplished. there is at present, indeed, a remarkable lull, a "truce of god," which, it may be hoped, is of good omen; but we dare not be too sure that it is going to be permanent. in the meantime, those who tremble lest disestablishment should be the signal of a great break up and separation of her different parties cannot do better than meditate on mr. gladstone's very solemn words:-- the great maxim, _in omnibus caritas_, which is so necessary to temper all religious controversy, ought to apply with a tenfold force to the conduct of the members of the church of england. in respect to differences among themselves they ought, of course, in the first place to remember that their right to differ is limited by the laws of the system to which they belong; but within that limit should they not also, each of them, recollect that his antagonist has something to say; that the reformation and the counter-reformation tendencies were, in the order of providence, placed here in a closer juxtaposition than anywhere else in the christian world; that a course of destiny so peculiar appears to indicate on the part of the supreme orderer a peculiar purpose, that not only no religious but no considerate or prudent man should run the risk of interfering with such a purpose; that the great charity which is a bounden duty everywhere in these matters should here be accompanied and upheld by two ever-striving handmaidens, a great reverence and a great patience. this is true, and of deep moment to those who guide and influence thought and feeling in the church. but further, those in whose hands the "supreme orderer" has placed the springs and the restraints of political movement and of change, if they recognise at all this view of the english church, ought to feel one duty paramount in regard to it. never was the church, they tell us, more active and more hopeful; well then, what politicians who care for her have to see to is that she shall have _time_ to work out effectually the tendencies which are visible in her now more than at any period of her history--that combination which mr. gladstone wishes for, of the deepest individual faith and energy, with forbearance and conciliation and the desire for peace. she has a right to claim from english rulers that she should have time to let these things work and bear fruit; if she has lost time before, she never was so manifestly in earnest in trying to make up for it as now. it is not talking, but working together, which brings different minds and tempers to understand one another's divergences; and it is this disposition to work together which shows itself and is growing now. but it needs time. what the church has a right to ask from the arbiters of her temporal and political position in the country, if that is ultimately and inevitably to be changed, is that nothing precipitate, nothing impatient, should be done; that she should have time adequately to develop and fulfil what she now alone among christian communities seems in a position to attempt. vi disendowment[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th october . this generation has seen no such momentous change as that which has suddenly appeared to be at our very doors, and which people speak of as disestablishment. the word was only invented a few years ago, and was sneered at as a barbarism, worthy of the unpractical folly which it was coined to express. it has been bandied about a good deal lately, sometimes _de coeur léger_; and within the last six months it has assumed the substance and the weight of a formidable probability. other changes, more or less serious, are awaiting us in the approaching future; but they are encompassed with many uncertainties, and all forecasts of their working are necessarily very doubtful. about this there is an almost brutal clearness and simplicity, as to what it means, as to what is intended by those who have pushed it into prominence, and as to what will follow from their having their way. disestablishment has really come to mean, in the mouth of friends and foes, simple disendowment. it is well that the question should be set in its true terms, without being confused with vague and less important issues. it is not very easy to say what disestablishment by itself would involve, except the disappearance of bishops from the upper house, or the presence of other religious dignitaries, with equal rank and rights, alongside of them. questions of patronage and ecclesiastical law might be difficult to settle; but otherwise a statute of mere disestablishment, not easy indeed to formulate, would leave the church in the eyes of the country very much what it found it. perhaps "my lord" might be more widely dropped in addressing bishops; but otherwise, the aspect of the church, its daily work, its organisations, would remain the same, and it would depend on the church itself whether the consideration paid to it continues what it has been; whether it shall be diminished or increased. the privilege of being publicly recognised with special marks of honour by the state has been dearly paid for by the claim which the state has always, and sometimes unscrupulously, insisted on, of making the true interests of the church subservient to its own passing necessities. but there is no haziness about the meaning of disendowment. property is a tangible thing, and is subject to the four rules of arithmetic, and ultimately to the force of the strong arm. when you talk of disendowment, you talk of taking from the church, not honour or privilege or influence, but visible things, to be measured and counted and pointed to, which now belong to it and which you want to belong to some one else. they belong to individuals because the individuals belong to a great body. there are, of course, many people who do not believe that such a body exists; or that if it does, it has been called into being and exists simply by the act of the state, like the army, and, like the army, liable to be disbanded by its master. but that is a view resting on a philosophical theory of a purely subjective character; it is as little the historical or legal view as it is the theological view. we have not yet lost our right in the nineteenth century to think of the church of england as a continuous, historic, religious society, bound by ties which, however strained, are still unbroken with that vast christendom from which as a matter of fact it sprung, and still, in spite of all differences, external and internal, and by force of its traditions and institutions, as truly one body as anything can be on earth. to this church, this body, by right which at present is absolutely unquestionable, property belongs; property has been given from time immemorial down to yesterday. this property, in its bulk, with whatever abatements and allowances, it is intended to take from the church. this is disendowment, and this is what is before us. it is well to realise as well as we can what is inevitably involved in this vast and, in modern england, unexampled change, which we are sometimes invited to view with philosophic calmness or resignation, as the unavoidable drift of the current of modern thought, or still more cheerfully to welcome, as the beginning of a new era in the prosperity and strength of the church as a religious institution. we are entreated to be of good cheer. the church will be more free; it will no longer be mixed up with sordid money matters and unpopular payments; it will no longer have the discredit of state control; the rights of the laity will come up and a blow will be struck at clericalism. with all our machinery shattered and ruined we shall be thrown more on individual energy and spontaneous originality of effort. our new poverty will spur us into zeal. above all, the church will be delivered from the temptation, incident to wealth, of sticking to abuses for the sake of gold; of shrinking from principle and justice and enthusiasm, out of fear of worldly loss. it will no longer be a place for drones and hirelings. it is very kind of the revolutionists to wish all this good to the church, though if the church is so bad as to need all these good wishes for its improvement, it would be more consistent, and perhaps less cynical, to wish it ruined altogether. yet even if the church were likely to thrive better on no bread, there are reasons of public morality why it should not be robbed. but these prophecies and forecasts really belong to a sphere far removed from the mental activity of those who so easily indulge in them. these excellent persons are hardly fitted by habit and feeling to be judges of the probable course of divine providence, or the development of new religious energies and spiritual tendencies in a suddenly impoverished body. what they can foresee, and what we can foresee also is, that these _tabulae novae_ will be a great blow to the church. they mean that, and that we understand. it is idle to talk as if it was to be no blow to the church. the confiscation of wesleyan and roman catholic church property would be a real blow to wesleyan or roman catholic interests; and in proportion as the body is greater the effects of the blow must be heavier and more signal. it is trifling with our patience to pretend to persuade us that such a confiscation scheme as is now recommended to the country would not throw the whole work of the church into confusion and disaster, not perhaps irreparable, but certainly for the time overwhelming and perilous. people speak sometimes as if such a huge transfer of property was to be done with the stroke of a pen and the aid of a few office clerks; they forget what are the incidents of an institution which has lasted in england for more than a thousand years, and whose business extends to every aspect and degree of our very complex society from the highest to the lowest. resources may be replaced, but for the time they must be crippled. life may be rearranged for the new circumstances, but in the meanwhile all the ordinary assumptions have to be changed, all the ordinary channels of activity are stopped up or diverted. and why should this vast and far-reaching change be made? is it unlawful for the church to hold property? other religious organisations hold it, and even the salvation army knows the importance of funds for its work. is it state property which the state may resume for other uses? if anything is certain it is that the state, except in an inconsiderable degree, did not endow the church, but consented in the most solemn way to its being endowed by the gifts of private donors, as it now consents to the endowment in this way of other religious bodies. does the bigness of the property entitle the state to claim it? this is a formidable doctrine for other religious bodies, as they increase in influence and numbers. is it vexatious that the church should be richer and more powerful than the sects? it is not the fault of the church that it is the largest and the most ancient body in england. there is but one real and adequate reason: it is the wish to disable and paralyse a great religious corporation, the largest and most powerful representative of christianity in our english society, to exhibit it to the nation after centuries of existence at length defeated and humbled by the new masters' power, to deprive it of the organisation and the resources which it is using daily with increasing effect for impressing religious truth on the people, for winning their interest, their confidence, and their sympathy, for obtaining a hold on the generations which are coming. the liberation society might go on for years repeating their dreary catalogue of grievances and misstatements. doubtless there is much for which they desire to punish the church; doubtless, too, there are men among them who are persuaded that they would serve religion by discrediting and impoverishing the church. but they are not the people with whom the church has to reckon. the liberationists might have long asked in vain for their pet "emancipation" scheme. they are stronger men than the liberationists who are going in now for disendowment. they are men--we do them no wrong--who sincerely think christianity mischievous, and who see in the power and resources of the church a bulwark and representative of all religion which it is of the first importance to get rid of. this is the one adequate and consistent reason for the confiscation of the property of the church. there is no other reason that will bear discussion to be given for what, without it, is a great moral and political wrong. in such a settled society as ours, where men reckon on what is their own, such a sweeping and wholesale transfer of property cannot be justified, on a mere balance of probable expediency in the use of it. unless it is as a punishment for gross neglect and abuse, as was alleged in the partial confiscations of the sixteenth century, or unless it is called for as a step to break down what can no longer be tolerated, like slavery, there is no other name for it, in the estimate of justice, than that of a deep and irreparable wrong. this is certainly not the time to punish the church when it never was more improving and more unsparing of sacrifice and effort. but it may be full time to stop a career which may render success more difficult for schemes ahead, which make no secret of their intention to dispense with religion. this, however, is not what most englishmen wish, whether liberals or conservatives, or even nonconformists; and without this end there is no more justice in disendowing a great religious corporation like the church, than in disendowing the duke of bedford or the duke of westminster. of course no one can deny the competence of parliament to do either one or the other; but power does not necessarily carry with it justice, and justice means that while there are great and small, rich and poor, the state should equally protect all its members and all its classes, however different. revolutions have no law; but a great wrong, deliberately inflicted in times of settled order, is more mischievous to the nation than even to those who suffer from it. history has shown us what follows from such gratuitous and wanton wrong in the bitter feeling of defeat and humiliation lasting through generations. but worse than this is the effect on the political morality of the nation; the corrupting and fatal consciousness of having once broken through the restraints of recognised justice, of having acquiesced in a tempting but high-handed wrong. the effects of disendowment concern england and its morality even more deeply than they do the church. vii the new court[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th may . the claim maintained by the archbishop in his judgment, by virtue of his metropolitical authority and by that alone, to cite, try, and sentence one of his suffragans, is undoubtedly what is called in slang language "a large order." even by those who may have thought it inevitable, after the watson case had been so distinctly accepted by the books as a precedent, it is yet felt as a surprise, in the sense in which a thing is often a surprise when, after being only talked about it becomes a reality. we can imagine some people getting up in the morning on last saturday with one set of feelings, and going to bed with another. bishops, then, who in spite of the alleged anarchy, are still looked upon with great reverence, as almost irresponsible in what they say and do officially, are, it seems, as much at the mercy of the law as the presbyters and deacons whom they have occasionally sent before the courts. they, too, at the will of chance accusers who are accountable to no one, are liable to the humiliation, worry, and crushing law-bills of an ecclesiastical suit. whatever may be thought of this now, it would have seemed extravagant and incredible to the older race of bishops that their actions should be so called in question. they would have thought their dignity gravely assailed, if besides having to incur heavy expense in prosecuting offending clergymen, they had also to incur it in protecting themselves from the charge of being themselves offenders against church law. the growth of law is always a mysterious thing; and an outsider and layman is disposed to ask where this great jurisdiction sprung up and grew into shape and power. in the archbishop's elaborate and able judgment it is indeed treated as something which had always been; but he was more successful in breaking down the force of alleged authorities, and inferences from them, on the opposite side, than he was in establishing clearly and convincingly his own contention. considering the dignity and importance of the jurisdiction claimed, it is curious that so little is heard about it till the beginning of the eighteenth century. it is curious that in its two most conspicuous instances it should have been called into activity by those not naturally friendly to large ecclesiastical claims--by low churchmen of the revolution against an offending jacobite, and by a puritan association against a high churchman. there is no such clear and strong case as bishop watson's till we come to bishop watson. in his argument the archbishop rested his claim definitely and forcibly on the precedent of bishop watson's case, and one or two cases which more or less followed it. that possibly is sufficient for his purpose; but it may still be asked--what did the watson case itself grow out of? what were the precedents--not merely the analogies and supposed legal necessities, but the precedents--on which this exercise of metropolitical jurisdiction, distinct from the legatine power, rested? for it seems as if a formidable prerogative, not much heard of where we might expect to hear of it, not used by cranmer and laud, though approved by cranmer in the _reformatio legum_, had sprung into being and energy in the hands of the mild archbishop tenison. watson's case may be good law and bind the archbishop. but it would have been more satisfactory if, in reviving a long-disused power, the archbishop had been able to go behind the watson case, and to show more certainly that the jurisdiction which he claimed and proposed to exercise in conformity with that case had, like the jurisdiction of other great courts of the church and realm, been clearly and customarily exercised long before that case. the appearance of this great tribunal among us, a distinctly spiritual court of the highest dignity, cannot fail to be memorable. it is too early to forecast what its results may be. there may be before it an active and eventful career, or it may fall back into disuse and quiescence. it has jealous and suspicious rivals in the civil courts, never well disposed to the claim of ecclesiastical power or purely spiritual authority; and though its jurisdiction is not likely to be strained at present, it is easy to conceive occasions in the future which may provoke the interference of the civil court. but there is this interest about the present proceedings, that they illustrate with curious closeness, amid so much that is different, the way in which great spiritual prerogatives grew up in the church. they may have ended disastrously; but at their first beginnings they were usually inevitable, innocent, blameless. time after time the necessity arose of some arbiter among those who were themselves arbiters, rulers, judges. time after time this necessity forced those in the first rank into this position, as being the only persons who could be allowed to take it, and so archbishops, metropolitans, primates appeared, to preside at assemblies, to be the mouthpiece of a general sentiment, to decide between high authorities, to be the centre of appeals. the papacy itself at its first beginning had no other origin. it interfered because it was asked to interfere; it judged because there was no one else to judge. and so necessities of a very different kind have forced the archbishop of canterbury of our day into a position which is new and strange to our experience, and which, however constitutional and reasonable it may be, must give every one who is at all affected by it a good deal to think about. viii mozley's bampton lectures[ ] i [ ] _eight lectures on miracles: the bampton lectures for _. by the rev. j.b. mozley, b.d. _the times_, th and th june . the way in which the subject of miracles has been treated, and the place which they have had in our discussions, will remain a characteristic feature of both the religious and philosophical tendencies of thought among us. miracles, if they are real things, are the most awful and august of realities. but, from various causes, one of which, perhaps, is the very word itself, and the way in which it binds into one vague and technical generality a number of most heterogeneous instances, miracles have lost much of their power to interest those who have thought most in sympathy with their generation. they have been summarily and loosely put aside, sometimes avowedly, more often still by implication. even by those who accepted and maintained them, they have often been touched uncertainly and formally, as if people thought that they were doing a duty, but would like much better to talk about other things which really attracted and filled their minds. in the long course of theological war for the last two centuries, it is hardly too much to say that miracles, as a subject for discussion, have been degraded and worn down from their original significance; vulgarised by passing through the handling of not the highest order of controversialists, who battered and defaced what they bandied about in argument, which was often ingenious and acute, and often mere verbal sophistry, but which, in any case, seldom rose to the true height of the question. used either as instruments of proof or as fair game for attack, they suffered in the common and popular feeling about them. taken in a lump, and with little realising of all that they were and implied, they furnished a cheap and tempting material for "short and easy methods" on one side, and on the other side, as it is obvious, a mark for just as easy and tempting objections. they became trite. people got tired of hearing of them, and shy of urging them, and dwelt in preference on other grounds of argument. the more serious feeling and the more profound and original thought of the last half century no longer seemed to give them the value and importance which they had; on both sides a disposition was to be traced to turn aside from them. the deeper religion and the deeper and more enterprising science of the day combined to lower them from their old evidential place. the one threw the moral stress on moral grounds of belief, and seemed inclined to undervalue external proofs. the other more and more yielded to its repugnance to admit the interruption of natural law, and became more and more disinclined even to discuss the supernatural; and, curiously enough, along with this there was in one remarkable school of religious philosophy an increased readiness to believe in miracles as such, without apparently caring much for them as proofs. of late, indeed, things have taken a different turn. the critical importance of miracles, after for a time having fallen out of prominence behind other questions, has once more made itself felt. recent controversy has forced them again on men's thoughts, and has made us see that, whether they are accepted or denied, it is idle to ignore them. they mean too much to be evaded. like all powerful arguments they cut two ways, and of all powerful arguments they are the most clearly two-edged. however we may limit their range, some will remain which we must face; which, according to what is settled about them, either that they are true or not true, will entirely change all that we think of religion. writers on all sides have begun to be sensible that a decisive point requires their attention, and that its having suffered from an old-fashioned way of handling is no reason why it should not on its own merits engage afresh the interest of serious men, to whom it is certainly of consequence. the renewed attention of theological writers to the subject of miracles as an element of proof has led to some important discussions upon it, showing in their treatment of a well-worn inquiry that a change in the way of conducting it had become necessary. of these productions we may place mr. mozley's _bampton lectures_ for last year among the most original and powerful. they are an example, and a very fine one, of a mode of theological writing which is characteristic of the church of england, and almost peculiar to it. the distinguishing features of it are a combination of intense seriousness with a self-restrained, severe calmness, and of very vigorous and wide-ranging reasoning on the realities of the case with the least amount of care about artificial symmetry or scholastic completeness. admirers of the roman style call it cold, indefinite, wanting in dogmatic coherence, comprehensiveness, and grandeur. admirers of the german style find little to praise in a cautious bit-by-bit method, content with the tests which have most affinity with common sense, incredulous of exhaustive theories, leaving a large margin for the unaccountable or the unexplained. but it has its merits, one of them being that, dealing very solidly and very acutely with large and real matters of experience, the interest of such writings endures as the starting-point and foundation for future work. butler out of england is hardly known, certainly he is not much valued either as a divine or a philosopher; but in england, though we criticise him freely, it will be a long time before he is out of date. mr. mozley's book belongs to that class of writings of which butler may be taken as the type. it is strong, genuine argument about difficult matters, fairly facing what _is_ difficult, fairly trying to grapple, not with what _appears_ the gist and strong point of a question, but with what really and at bottom _is_ the knot of it. it is a book the reasoning of which may not satisfy every one; but it is a book in which there is nothing plausible, nothing put in to escape the trouble of thinking out what really comes across the writer's path. this will not recommend it to readers who themselves are not fond of trouble; a book of hard thinking cannot be a book of easy reading; nor is it a book for people to go to who only want available arguments, or to see a question apparently settled in a convenient way. but we think it is a book for people who wish to see a great subject handled on a scale which befits it and with a perception of its real elements. it is a book which will have attractions for those who like to see a powerful mind applying itself without shrinking or holding back, without trick or reserve or show of any kind, as a wrestler closes body to body with his antagonist, to the strength of an adverse and powerful argument. a stern self-constraint excludes everything exclamatory, all glimpses and disclosures of what merely affects the writer, all advantages from an appeal, disguised and indirect perhaps, to the opinion of his own side. but though the work is not rhetorical, it is not the less eloquent; but it is eloquence arising from a keen insight at once into what is real and what is great, and from a singular power of luminous, noble, and expressive statement. there is no excitement about its close subtle trains of reasoning; and there is no affectation,--and therefore no affectation of impartiality. the writer has his conclusions, and he does not pretend to hold a balance between them and their opposites. but in the presence of such a subject he never loses sight of its greatness, its difficulty, its eventfulness; and these thoughts make him throughout his undertaking circumspect, considerate, and calm. the point of view from which the subject of miracles is looked at in these lectures is thus stated in the preface. it is plain that two great questions arise--first, are miracles possible? next, if they are, can any in fact be proved? these two branches of the inquiry involve different classes of considerations. the first is purely philosophical, and stops the inquiry at once if it can be settled in the negative. the other calls in also the aid of history and criticism. both questions have been followed out of late with great keenness and interest, but it is the first which at present assumes an importance which it never had before, with its tremendous negative answer, revolutionising not only the past, but the whole future of mankind; and it is to the first that mr. mozley's work is mainly addressed. the difficulty which attaches to miracles in the period of thought through which we are now passing is one which is concerned not with their evidence, but with their intrinsic credibility. there has arisen in a certain class of minds an apparent perception of the impossibility of suspensions of physical law. this is one peculiarity of the time; another is a disposition to maintain the disbelief of miracles upon a religious basis, and in a connection with a declared belief in the christian revelation. the following lectures, therefore, are addressed mainly to the fundamental question of the credibility of miracles, their use and the evidences of them being only touched on subordinately and collaterally. it was thought that such an aim, though in itself a narrow and confined one, was most adapted to the particular need of the day. as mr. mozley says, various points essential to the whole argument, such as testimony, and the criterion between true and false miracles, are touched upon; but what is characteristic of the work is the way in which it deals with the antecedent objection to the possibility and credibility of miracles. it is on this part of the subject that the writer strikes out a line for himself, and puts forth his strength. his argument may be described generally as a plea for reason against imagination and the broad impressions of custom. experience, such experience as we have of the world and human life, has, in all ages, been really the mould of human thought, and with large exceptions, the main unconscious guide and controller of human belief; and in our own times it has been formally and scientifically recognised as such, and made the exclusive foundation of all possible philosophy. a philosophy of mere experience is not tolerant of miracles; its doctrines exclude them; but, what is of even greater force than its doctrines, the subtle and penetrating atmosphere of feeling and intellectual habits which accompanies it is essentially uncongenial and hostile to them. it is against the undue influence of such results of experience--an influence openly acting in distinct ideas and arguments, but of which the greater portion operates blindly, insensibly, and out of sight--that mr. mozley makes a stand on behalf of reason, to which it belongs in the last resort to judge of the lessons of experience. reason, as it cannot create experience, so it cannot take its place and be its substitute; but what reason can do is to say within what limits experience is paramount as a teacher; and reason abdicates its functions if it declines to do so, for it was given us to work upon and turn to account the unmeaning and brute materials which experience gives us in the rough. the antecedent objection against miracles is, he says, one of experience, but not one of reason. and experience, flowing over its boundaries tyrannically and effacing its limits, is as dangerous to truth and knowledge as reason once was, when it owned no check in nature, and used no test but itself. mr. mozley begins by stating clearly the necessity for coming to a decision on the question of miracles. it cannot remain one of the open questions, at least of religion. there is, as has been said, a disposition to pass by it, and to construct a religion without miracles. the thing is conceivable. we can take what are as a matter of fact the moral results of christianity, and of that singular power with which it has presided over the improvement of mankind, and alloying and qualifying them with other elements, not on the face of the matter its products, yet in many cases indirectly connected with its working, form something which we may acknowledge as a rule of life, and which may satisfy our inextinguishable longings after the unseen and eternal. it is true that such a religion presupposes christianity, to which it owes its best and noblest features, and that, as far as we can see, it is inconceivable if christianity had not first been. still, we may say that alchemy preceded chemistry, and was not the more true for being the step to what is true. but what we cannot say of such a religion is that it takes the place of christianity, and is such a religion as christianity has been and claims to be. there must ever be all the difference in the world between a religion which is or professes to be a revelation, and one which cannot be called such. for a revelation is a direct work and message of god; but that which is the result of a process and progress of rinding out the truth by the experience of ages, or of correcting mistakes, laying aside superstitions and gradually reducing the gross mass of belief to its essential truth, is simply on a level with all other human knowledge, and, as it is about the unseen, can never be verified. if there has been no revelation, there may be religious hopes and misgivings, religious ideas or dreams, religious anticipations and trust; but the truth is, there cannot be a religion in the world. much less can there be any such thing as christianity. it is only when we look at it vaguely in outline, without having before our mind what it is in fact and in detail, that we can allow ourselves to think so. there is no transmuting its refractory elements into something which is not itself; and it is nothing if it is not primarily a direct message from god. limit as we may the manner of this communication, still there remains what makes it different from all other human possessions of truth, that it was a direct message. and that, to whatever extent, involves all that is involved in the idea of miracles. it is, as mr. mozley says, inconceivable without miracles. if, then, a person of evident integrity and loftiness of character rose into notice in a particular country and community eighteen centuries ago, who made these communications about himself--that he had existed before his natural birth, from all eternity, and before the world was, in a state of glory with god; that he was the only-begotten son of god; that the world itself had been made by him; that he had, however, come down from heaven and assumed the form and nature of man for a particular purpose--viz. to be the lamb of god that taketh away the sins of the world; that he thus stood in a mysterious and supernatural relation to the whole of mankind; that through him alone mankind had access to god; that he was the head of an invisible kingdom, into which he should gather all the generations of righteous men who had lived in the world; that on his departure from hence he should return to heaven to prepare mansions there for them; and, lastly, that he should descend again at the end of the world to judge the whole human race, on which occasion all that were in their graves should hear his voice and come forth, they that had done good unto the resurrection of life, and they that had done evil unto the resurrection of damnation,--if this person made these assertions about himself, and all that was done was to make the assertions, what would be the inevitable conclusion of sober reason respecting that person? the necessary conclusion of sober reason respecting that person would be that he was disordered in his understanding. what other decision could we come to when a man, looking like one of ourselves, and only exemplifying in his life and circumstances the ordinary course of nature, said this about himself, but that when reason had lost its balance a dream of extraordinary and unearthly grandeur might be the result? by no rational being could a just and benevolent life be accepted as proof of such astonishing announcements. miracles are the necessary complement then of the truth of such announcements, which without them are purposeless and abortive, the unfinished fragments of a design which is nothing unless it is the whole. they are necessary to the justification of such announcements, which, indeed, unless they are supernatural truths, are the wildest delusions. the matter and its guarantee are the two parts of a revelation, the absence of either of which neutralises and undoes it. a revelation, in any sense in which it is more than merely a result of the natural progress of the human mind and the gradual clearing up of mistakes, cannot in the nature of things be without miracles, because it is not merely a discovery of ideas and rules of life, but of facts undiscoverable without it. it involves _constituent_ miracles, to use de quincey's phrase, as part of its substance, and could not claim a bearing without _evidential_ or _polemic_ ones. no other portion or form of proof, however it may approve itself to the ideas of particular periods or minds, can really make up for this. the alleged sinlessness of the teacher, the internal evidence from adaptation to human nature, the historical argument of the development of christendom, are, as mr. mozley points out, by themselves inadequate, without that further guarantee which is contained in miracles, to prove the divine origin of a religion. the tendency has been of late to fall back on these attractive parts of the argument, which admit of such varied handling and expression, and come home so naturally to the feelings of an age so busy and so keen in pursuing the secrets of human character, and so fascinated with its unfolding wonders. but take any of them, the argument from results, for instance, perhaps the most powerful of them all. "we cannot," as mr. mozley says, "rest too much upon it, so long as we do not charge it with more of the burden of proof than it is in its own nature equal to--viz. the whole. but that it cannot bear." the hard, inevitable question remains at the end, for the most attenuated belief in christianity as a religion from god--what is the ultimate link which connects it directly with god? the readiness with which we throw ourselves on more congenial topics of proof does not show that, even to our own minds, these proofs could suffice by themselves, miracles being really taken away. the whole power of a complex argument and the reasons why it tells do not always appear on its face. it does not depend merely on what it states, but also on unexpressed, unanalysed, perhaps unrealised grounds, the real force of which would at once start forth if they were taken away. we are told of the obscure rays of the spectrum, rays which have their proof and their effect, only not the same proof and effect as the visible ones which they accompany; and the background and latent suppositions of a great argument are as essential to it as its more prominent and elaborate constructions. and they show their importance sometimes in a remarkable and embarrassing way, when, after a long debate, their presence at the bottom of everything, unnoticed and perhaps unallowed for, is at length disclosed by some obvious and decisive question, which some person had been too careless to think of, and another too shy to ask. we may not care to obtrude miracles; but take them away, and see what becomes of the argument for christianity. it must be remembered that when this part of christian evidence comes so forcibly home to us, and creates that inward assurance which it does, it does this in connection with the proof of miracles in the background, which though it may not for the time be brought into actual view, is still known to be there, and to be ready for use upon being wanted. the _indirect_ proof from results has the greater force, and carries with it the deeper persuasion, because it is additional and auxiliary to the _direct_ proof behind it, upon which it leans all the time, though we may not distinctly notice and estimate this advantage. were the evidence of moral result to be taken rigidly alone as the one single guarantee for a divine revelation, it would then be seen that we had calculated its single strength too highly. if there is a species of evidence which is directly appropriate to the thing believed, we cannot suppose, on the strength of the indirect evidence we possess, that we can do without the direct. but miracles are the direct credentials of a revelation; the visible supernatural is the appropriate witness to the invisible supernatural--that proof which goes straight to the point, and, a token being wanted of a divine communication, is that token. we cannot, therefore, dispense with this evidence. the position that the revelation proves the miracles, and not the miracles the revelation, admits of a good qualified meaning; but, taken literally, it is a double offence against the rule that things are properly proved by the proper proof of them; for a supernatural fact _is_ the proper proof of a supernatural doctrine, while a supernatural doctrine, on the other hand, is certainly _not_ the proper proof of a supernatural fact. so that, whatever comes of the inquiry, miracles and revelation must go together. there is no separating them. christianity may claim in them the one decisive proof that could be given of its divine origin and the truth of its creed; but, at any rate, it must ever be responsible for them. but suppose a person to say, and to say with truth, that his own individual faith does not rest upon miracles, is he, therefore, released from the defence of miracles? is the question of their truth or falsehood an irrelevant one to him? is his faith secure if they are disproved? by no means; if miracles were, although only at the commencement, necessary to christianity, and were actually wrought, and therefore form part of the gospel record and are bound up with the gospel scheme and doctrines, this part of the structure cannot be abandoned without the sacrifice of the other too. to shake the authority of one-half of this body of statement is to shake the authority of the whole. whether or not the individual makes _use_ of them for the support of his own faith, the miracles are there; and if they are there they must be there either as true miracles or as false ones. if he does not avail himself of their evidence, his belief is still affected by their refutation. accepting, as he does, the supernatural truths of christianity and its miracles upon the same report from the same witnesses, upon the authority of the same documents, he cannot help having at any rate this negative interest in them. for if those witnesses and documents deceive us with regard to the miracles, how can we trust them with regard to the doctrines? if they are wrong upon the evidences of a revelation, how can we depend upon their being right as to the nature of that revelation? if their account of visible facts is to be received with an explanation, is not their account of doctrines liable to a like explanation? revelation, then, even if it does not need the truth of miracles for the benefit of their proof, still requires it in order not to be crushed under the weight of their falsehood.... thus miracles and the supernatural contents of christianity must stand or fall together. these two questions--the _nature_ of the revelation, and the _evidence_ of the revelation--cannot be disjoined. christianity as a dispensation undiscoverable by human reason, and christianity as a dispensation authenticated by miracles--these two are in necessary combination. if any do not include the supernatural character of christianity in their definition of it, regarding the former only as one interpretation of it or one particular traditional form of it, which is separable from the essence--for christianity as thus defined the support of miracles is not wanted, because the moral truths are their own evidence. but christianity cannot be maintained as a revelation undiscoverable by human reason, a revelation of a supernatural scheme for man's salvation, without the evidence of miracles. the question of miracles, then, of the supernatural disclosed in the world of nature, is the vital point for everything that calls itself christianity. it may be forgotten or disguised; but it is vain to keep it back and put it out of sight. it must be answered; and if we settle it that miracles are incredible, it is idle to waste our time about accommodations with christianity, or reconstitutions of it. let us be thankful for what it has done for the world; but let us put it away, both name and thing. it is an attempt after what is in the nature of things impossible to man--a revealed religion, authenticated by god. the shape which this negative answer takes is, as mr. mozley points out, much more definite now than it ever was. miracles were formerly assailed and disbelieved on mixed and often confused grounds; from alleged defect of evidence, from their strangeness, or because they would be laughed at. foes and defenders looked at them from the outside and in the gross; and perhaps some of those who defended them most keenly had a very imperfect sense of what they really were. the difficulty of accepting them now arises not mainly from want of external evidence, but from having more keenly realised what it is to believe a miracle. as mr. mozley says-- how is it that sometimes when the same facts and truths have been before men all their lives, and produced but one impression, a moment comes when they look different from what they did? some minds may abandon, while others retain, their fundamental position with respect to those facts and truths, but to both they look stranger; they excite a certain surprise which they did not once do. the reasons of this change then it is not always easy for the persons themselves to trace, but of the result they are conscious; and in some this result is a change of belief. an inward process of this kind has been going on recently in many minds on the subject of miracles; and in some with the latter result. when it came to the question--which every one must sooner or later put to himself on this subject--did these things really take place? are they matters of fact?--they have appeared to themselves to be brought to a standstill, and to be obliged to own an inner refusal of their whole reason to admit them among the actual events of the past. this strong repugnance seemed to be the witness of its own truth, to be accompanied by a clear and vivid light, to be a law to the understanding, and to rule without appeal the question of fact.... but when the reality of the past is once apprehended and embraced, then the miraculous occurrences in it are realised too; being realised they excite surprise, and surprise, when it comes in, takes two directions--it either makes belief more real, or it destroys belief. there is an element of doubt in surprise; for this emotion arises _because_ an event is strange, and an event is strange because it goes counter to and jars with presumption. shall surprise, then, give life to belief or stimulus to doubt? the road of belief and unbelief in the history of some minds thus partly lies over common ground; the two go part of their journey together; they have a common perception in the insight into the real astonishing nature of the facts with which they deal. the majority of mankind, perhaps, owe their belief rather to the outward influence of custom and education than to any strong principle of faith within; and it is to be feared that many, if they came to perceive how wonderful what they believed was, would not find their belief so easy and so matter-of-course a thing as they appear to find it. custom throws a film over the great facts of religion, and interposes a veil between the mind and truth, which, by preventing wonder, intercepts doubt too, and at the same time excludes from deep belief and protects from disbelief. but deeper faith and disbelief throw off in common the dependence on mere custom, draw aside the interposing veil, place themselves face to face with the contents of the past, and expose themselves alike to the ordeal of wonder. it is evident that the effect which the visible order of nature has upon some minds is, that as soon as they realise what a miracle is, they are stopped by what appears to them a simple sense of its impossibility. so long as they only believe by habit and education, they accept a miracle without difficulty, because they do not realise it as an event which actually took place in the world; the alteration of the face of the world, and the whole growth of intervening history, throw the miracles of the gospel into a remote perspective in which they are rather seen as a picture than real occurrences. but as soon as they see that, if these miracles are true, they once really happened, what they feel then is the apparent sense of their impossibility. it is not a question of evidence with them: when they realise, e.g., that our lord's resurrection, if true, was a visible fact or occurrence, they have the seeming certain perception that it is an impossible occurrence. "i cannot," a person says to himself in effect, "tear myself from the type of experience and join myself to another. i cannot quit order and law for what is eccentric. there is a repulsion between such facts and my belief as strong as that between physical substances. in the mere effort to conceive these amazing scenes as real ones, i fall back upon myself and upon that type of reality which the order of nature has impressed upon me." the antagonism to the idea of miracles has grown stronger and more definite with the enlarged and more widely-spread conception of invariable natural law, and also, as mr. mozley points out, with that increased power in our time of realising the past, which is not the peculiarity of individual writers, but is "part of the thought of the time." but though it has been quickened and sharpened by these influences, it rests ultimately on that sense which all men have in common of the customary and regular in their experience of the world. the world, which we all know, stands alone, cut off from any other; and a miracle is an intrusion, "an interpolation of one order of things into another, confounding two systems which are perfectly distinct." the broad, deep resistance to it which is awakened in the mind when we look abroad on the face of nature is expressed in emerson's phrase--"a miracle is a monster. it is not one with the blowing clouds or the falling rain." who can dispute it? yet the rejoinder is obvious, and has often been given--that neither is man. man, who looks at nature and thinks and feels about its unconscious unfeeling order; man, with his temptations, his glory, and his shame, his heights of goodness, and depths of infamy, is not one with those innocent and soulless forces so sternly immutable--"the blowing clouds and falling rain." the two awful phenomena which kant said struck him dumb--the starry heavens, and right and wrong--are vainly to be reduced to the same order of things. nothing can be stranger than the contrast between the rigid, inevitable sequences of nature, apparently so elastic only because not yet perfectly comprehended, and the consciousness of man in the midst of it. nothing can be stranger than the juxtaposition of physical law and man's sense of responsibility and choice. man is an "insertion," an "interpolation in the physical system"; he is "insulated as an anomaly in the midst of matter and material law." mr. mozley's words are striking:-- the first appearance, then, of man in nature was the appearance of a new being in nature; and this fact was relatively to the then order of things miraculous; no more physical account can be given of it than could be given of a resurrection to life now. what more entirely new and eccentric fact, indeed, can be imagined than a human soul first rising up amidst an animal and vegetable world? mere consciousness--was not that of itself a new world within the old one? mere knowledge--that nature herself became known to a being within herself, was not that the same? certainly man was not all at once the skilled interpreter of nature, and yet there is some interpretation of nature to which man as such is equal in some degree. he derives an impression from the sight of nature which an animal does not derive; for though the material spectacle is imprinted on its retina, as it is on man's, it does not see what man sees. the sun rose, then, and the sun descended, the stars looked down upon the earth, the mountains climbed to heaven, the cliffs stood upon the shore, the same as now, countless ages before a single being existed who _saw_ it. the counterpart of this whole scene was wanting--the understanding mind; that mirror in which the whole was to be reflected; and when this arose it was a new birth for creation itself, that it became _known_,--an image in the mind of a conscious being. but even consciousness and knowledge were a less strange and miraculous introduction into the world than conscience. thus wholly mysterious in his entrance into this scene, man is _now_ an insulation in it; he came in by no physical law, and his freewill is in utter contrast to that law. what can be more incomprehensible, more heterogeneous, a more ghostly resident in nature, than the sense of right and wrong? what is it? whence is it? the obligation of man to sacrifice himself for right is a truth which springs out of an abyss, the mere attempt to look down into which confuses the reason. such is the juxtaposition of mysterious and physical contents in the same system. man is alone, then, in nature: he alone of all the creatures communes with a being out of nature; and he divides himself from all other physical life by prophesying, in the face of universal visible decay, his own immortality. and till this anomaly has been removed--that is, till the last trace of what is moral in man has disappeared under the analysis of science, and what ought to be is resolved into a mere aspect of what is, this deep exception to the dominion of physical law remains as prominent and undeniable as physical law itself. it is, indeed, avowed by those who reduce man in nature, that upon the admission of free-will, the objection to the miraculous is over, and that it is absurd to allow exception to law in man, and reject it in nature. but the broad, popular sense of natural order, and the instinctive and common repugnance to a palpable violation of it, have been forged and refined into the philosophical objection to miracles. two great thinkers of past generations, two of the keenest and clearest intellects which have appeared since the reformation, laid the foundations of it long ago. spinoza urged the uselessness of miracles, and hume their incredibility, with a guarded subtlety and longsighted refinement of statement which made them in advance of their age except with a few. but their reflections have fallen in with a more advanced stage of thought and a taste for increased precision and exactness, and they are beginning to bear their fruit. the great and telling objection to miracles is getting to be, not their want of evidence, but, prior to all question of evidence, the supposed impossibility of fitting them in with a scientific view of nature. reason, looking at nature and experience, is said to raise an antecedent obstacle to them which no alleged proof of fact can get over. they cannot be, because they are so unlike to everything else in the world, even of the strangest kind, in this point--in avowedly breaking the order of nature. and reason cannot be admitted to take cognizance of their claims and to consider their character, their purpose, their results, their credentials, because the mere supposition of them violates the fundamental conception and condition of science, absolute and invariable law, as well as that common-sense persuasion which everybody has, whether philosopher or not, of the uniformity of the order of the world. ii to make room for reason to come in and pronounce upon miracles on their own merits--to clear the ground for the consideration of their actual claims by disposing of the antecedent objection of impossibility, is mr. mozley's main object. whatever difficulty there is in believing in miracles in general arises from the circumstance that they are in contradiction to or unlike the order of nature. to estimate the force of this difficulty, then, we must first understand what kind of belief it is which we have in the order of nature; for the weight of the objection to the miraculous must depend on the nature of the belief to which the miraculous is opposed. his examination of the alleged impossibility of miracles may be described as a very subtle turning the tables on hume and the empirical philosophy. for when it is said that it is contrary to reason to believe in a suspension of the order of nature, he asks on what ground do we believe in the order of nature; and hume himself supplies the answer. there is nothing of which we have a firmer persuasion. it is the basis of human life and knowledge. we assume at each step, without a doubt, that the future will be like the past. but why? hume has carefully examined the question, and can find no answer, except the fact that we do assume it. "i apprehend," says mr. mozley, accepting hume's view of the nature of probability, "that when we examine the different reasons which may be assigned for this connection, i.e. for the belief that the future will be like the past, they all come at last to be mere statements of the belief itself, and not reasons to account for it." let us imagine the occurrence of a particular physical phenomenon for the first time. upon that single occurrence we should have but the very faintest expectation of another. if it did occur again once or twice, so far from counting on another recurrence, a cessation would come as the more natural event to us. but let it occur a hundred times, and we should feel no hesitation in inviting persons from a distance to see it; and if it occurred every day for years, its recurrence would then be a certainty to us, its cessation a marvel. but what has taken place in the interim to produce this total change in our belief? from the mere repetition do we know anything more about its cause? no. then what have we got besides the past repetition itself? nothing. why, then, are we so certain of its _future_ repetition? all we can say is that the known casts its shadow before; we project into unborn time the existing types, and the secret skill of nature intercepts the darkness of the future by ever suspending before our eyes, as it were in a mirror, a reflection of the past. we really look at a blank before us, but the mind, full of the scene behind, sees it again in front.... what ground of reason, then, can we assign for our expectation that any part of the course of nature will the _next_ moment be like what it has been up to _this_ moment, i.e. for our belief in the uniformity of nature? none. no demonstrative reason can be given, for the contrary to the recurrence of a fact of nature is no contradiction. no probable reason can be given, for all probable reasoning respecting the course of nature is founded _upon_ this presumption of likeness, and therefore cannot be the foundation of it. no reason can be given for this belief. it is without a reason. it rests upon no rational ground and can be traced to no rational principle. everything connected with human life depends upon this belief, every practical plan or purpose that we form implies it, every provision we make for the future, every safeguard and caution we employ against it, all calculation, all adjustment of means to ends, supposes this belief; it is this principle alone which renders our experience of the slightest use to us, and without it there would be, so far as we are concerned, no order of nature and no laws of nature; and yet this belief has no more producible reason for it than a speculation of fancy. a natural fact has been repeated; it will be repeated:--i am conscious of utter darkness when i try to see why one of these follows from the other: i not only see no reason, but i perceive that i see none, though i can no more help the expectation than i can stop the circulation of my blood. there is a premiss, and there is a conclusion, but there is a total want of connection between the two. the inference, then, from the one of these to the other rests upon no ground of the understanding; by no search or analysis, however subtle or minute, can we extract from any corner of the human mind and intelligence, however remote, the very faintest reason for it. hume, who had urged with great force that miracles were contrary to that probability which is created by experience, had also said that this probability had no producible ground in reason; that, universal, unfailing, indispensable as it was to the course of human life, it was but an instinct which defied analysis, a process of thought and inference for which he vainly sought the rational steps. there is no absurdity, though the greatest impossibility, in supposing this order to stop to-morrow; and, if the world ends at all, its end will be in an increasing degree improbable up to the very last moment. but, if this whole ground of belief is in its own nature avowedly instinctive and independent of reason, what right has it to raise up a bar of intellectual necessity, and to shut out reason from entertaining the question of miracles? they may have grounds which appeal to reason; and an unintelligent instinct forbids reason from fairly considering what they are. reason cannot get beyond the actual fact of the present state of things for believing in the order of nature; it professes to find no necessity for it; the interruption of that order, therefore, whether probable or not, is not against reason. philosophy itself, says mr. mozley, cuts away the ground on which it had raised its preliminary objection to miracles. and now the belief in the order of nature being thus, however powerful and useful, an unintelligent impulse of which we can give no rational account, in what way does this discovery affect the question of miracles? in this way, that this belief not having itself its foundation in reason, the ground is gone upon which it could be maintained that miracles as opposed to the order of nature were opposed to reason. there being no producible reason why a new event should be like the hitherto course of nature, no decision of reason is contradicted by its unlikeness. a miracle, in being opposed to our experience, is not only not opposed to necessary reasoning, but to any reasoning. do i see by a certain perception the connection between these two--it _has_ happened so, it _will_ happen so; then may i reject a new reported fact which has _not_ happened so as an impossibility. but if i do not see the connection between these two by a certain perception, or by any perception, i cannot. for a miracle to be rejected as such, there must, at any rate, be some proposition in the mind of man which is opposed to it; and that proposition can only spring from the quarter to which we have been referring--that of elementary experimental reasoning. but if this experimental reasoning is of that nature which philosophy describes it as being of, i.e. if it is not itself a process of reason, how can there from an irrational process of the mind arise a proposition at all,--to make which is the function of the rational faculty alone? there cannot; and it is evident that the miraculous does not stand in any opposition whatever to reason.... thus step by step has philosophy loosened the connection of the order of nature with the ground of reason, befriending, in exact proportion as it has done this, the principle of miracles. in the argument against miracles the first objection is that they are against _law_; and this is answered by saying that we know nothing in nature of law in the sense in which it prevents miracles. law can only prevent miracles by _compelling_ and making necessary the succession of nature, i.e. in the sense of causation; but science has itself proclaimed the truth that we see no causes in nature, that the whole chain of physical succession is to the eye of reason a rope of sand, consisting of antecedents and consequents, but without a rational link or trace of necessary connection between them. we only know of law in nature in the sense of recurrences in nature, classes of facts, _like_ facts in nature--a chain of which, the junction not being reducible to reason, the interruption is not against reason. the claim of law settled, the next objection in the argument against miracles is that they are against _experience_; because we expect facts _like_ to those of our experience, and miracles are _unlike_ ones. the weight, then, of the objection of unlikeness to experience depends on the reason which can be produced for the expectation of likeness; and to this call philosophy has replied by the summary confession that we have _no_ reason. philosophy, then, could not have overthrown more thoroughly than it has done the order of nature as a necessary course of things, or cleared the ground more effectually for the principle of miracles. nor, he argues, does this instinct change its nature, or become a necessary law of reason, when it takes the form of an inference from induction. for the last step of the inductive process, the creation of its supposed universal, is, when compared with the real standard of universality acknowledged by reason, an incomplete and more or less precarious process; "it gets out of facts something more than what they actually contain"; and it can give no reason for itself but what the common faith derived from experience can give, the anticipation of uniform recurrence. "the inductive principle," he says, "is only the unreasoning impulse applied to a scientifically ascertained fact, instead of to a vulgarly ascertained fact.... science has led up to the fact, but there it stops, and for converting the fact into a law a totally unscientific principle comes in, the same as that which generalises the commonest observations in nature." the scientific part of induction being only the pursuit of a particular fact, miracles cannot in the nature of the case receive any blow from the scientific part of induction; because the existence of one fact does not interfere with the existence of another dissimilar fact. that which _does_ resist the miraculous is the _un_scientific part of induction, or the instinctive generalisation upon this fact.... it does not belong to this principle to lay down speculative positions, and to say what can or cannot take place in the world. it does not belong to it to control religious belief, or to determine that certain acts of god for the revelation of his will to man, reported to have taken place, have not taken place. such decisions are totally out of its sphere; it can assert the universal as a _law_, but the universal as a law and the universal as a proposition are wholly distinct. the one asserts the universal as a fact, the other as a presumption; the one as an absolute certainty, the other as a practical certainty, when there is no reason to expect the contrary. the one contains and includes the particular, the other does not; from the one we argue mathematically to the falsehood of any opposite particular; from the other we do not.... for example, one signal miracle, pre-eminent for its grandeur, crowned the evidence of the supernatural character and office of our lord--our lord's ascension--his going up with his body of flesh and bones into the sky in the presence of his disciples. "he lifted up his hands, and blessed them. and while he blessed them, he was parted from them, and carried up into heaven. and they looked stedfastly toward heaven as he went up, and a cloud received him out of their sight." here is an amazing scene, which strikes even the devout believer, coming across it in the sacred page suddenly or by chance, amid the routine of life, with a fresh surprise. did, then, this event really take place? or is the evidence of it forestalled by the inductive principle compelling us to remove the scene _as such_ out of the category of matters of fact? the answer is, that the inductive principle is in its own nature only an _expectation_; and that the expectation, that what is unlike our experience will not happen, is quite consistent with its occurrence in fact. this principle does not pretend to decide the question of fact, which is wholly out of its province and beyond its function. it can only decide the fact by the medium of a universal; the universal proposition that no man has ascended to heaven. but this is a statement which exceeds its power; it is as radically incompetent to pronounce it as the taste or smell is to decide on matters of sight; its function is practical, not logical. no antecedent statement, then, which touches my belief in this scene, is allowed by the laws of thought. converted indeed into a universal proposition, the inductive principle is omnipotent, and totally annihilates every particular which does not come within its range. the universal statement that no man has ascended into heaven absolutely falsifies the fact that one man has. but, thus transmuted, the inductive principle issues out of this metamorphose, a fiction not a truth; a weapon of air, which even in the hands of a giant can inflict no blow because it is itself a shadow. the object of assault receives the unsubstantial thrust without a shock, only exposing the want of solidity in the implement of war. the battle against the supernatural has been going on long, and strong men have conducted it, and are conducting it--but what they want is a weapon. the logic of unbelief wants a universal. but no real universal is forthcoming, and it only wastes its strength in wielding a fictitious one. it is not in reason, which refuses to pronounce upon the possible merely from experience of the actual, that the antecedent objection to miracles is rooted. yet that the objection is a powerful one the consciousness of every reflecting mind testifies. what, then, is the secret of its force? in a lecture of singular power mr. mozley gives his answer. what tells beforehand against miracles is not reason, but imagination. imagination is often thought to favour especially the supernatural and miraculous. it does do so, no doubt. but the truth is, that imagination tells both ways--as much against the miraculous as for it. the imagination, that faculty by which we give life and body and reality to our intellectual conceptions, takes its character from the intellectual conceptions with which it is habitually associated. it accepts the miraculous or shrinks from it and throws it off, according to the leaning of the mind of which it is the more vivid and, so to speak, passionate expression. and as it may easily exaggerate on one side, so it may just as easily do the same on the other. every one is familiar with that imaginative exaggeration which fills the world with miracles. but there is another form of imagination, not so distinctly recognised, which is oppressed by the presence of unchanging succession and visible uniformity, which cannot shake off the yoke of custom or allow anything different to seem to it real. the sensitiveness and impressibility of the imagination are affected, and unhealthily affected, not merely by strangeness, but by sameness; to one as to the other it may "passively submit and surrender itself, give way to the mere form of attraction, and, instead of grasping something else, be itself grasped and mastered by some dominant idea." and it is then, in one case as much as in the other, "not a power, but a failing and weakness of nature." the passive imagination, then, in the present case exaggerates a practical expectation of the uniformity of nature, implanted in us for practical ends, into a scientific or universal proposition; and it does this by surrendering itself to the impression produced by the constant spectacle of the regularity of visible nature. by such a course a person allows the weight and pressure of this idea to grow upon him till it reaches the point of actually restricting his sense of possibility to the mould of physical order.... the order of nature thus stamps upon some minds the idea of its immutability simply by its repetition. the imagination we usually indeed associate with the acceptance of the supernatural rather than with the denial of it; but the passive imagination is in truth neutral; it only increases the force and tightens the hold of any impression upon us, to whatever class the impression may belong, and surrenders itself to a superstitious or a physical idea, as it may be. materialism itself is the result of imagination, which is so impressed by matter that it cannot realise the existence of spirit. the great opponent, then, of miracles, considered as possible occurrences, is not reason, but something which on other great subjects is continually found on the opposite side to reason, resisting and counteracting it; that powerful overbearing sense of the actual and the real, which when it is opposed by reason is apt to make reason seem like the creator of mere ideal theories; which gives to arguments implying a different condition of things from one which is familiar to present experience the disadvantage of appearing like artificial and unsubstantial refinements of thought, such as, to the uncultivated mind, appear not merely metaphysical discussions, but what are known to be the most certain reasonings of physical and mathematical science. it is that measure of the probable, impressed upon us by the spectacle; to which we are accustomed all our lives long, of things as we find them, and which repels the possibility of a break or variation; that sense of probability which the keenest of philosophers declares to be incapable of rational analysis, and pronounces allied to irrational portions of our constitution, like custom, and the effect of time, and which is just as much an enemy to invention, to improvement, to a different state of things in the future, as it is to the belief and realising of a different state of things in the past. the antecedent objection to the miraculous is not reason, but an argument which limits and narrows the domain of reason; which excludes dry, abstract, passionless reason--with its appeals to considerations remote from common experience, its demands for severe reflection, its balancing and long chains of thought--from pronouncing on what seems to belong to the flesh and blood realities of life as we know it. against this tyrannical influence, which may be in a vulgar and popular as in a scientific form, which may be the dull result of habit or the more specious effect of a sensitive and receptive imagination, but which in all cases is at bottom the same, mr. mozley claims to appeal to reason:-- to conclude, then, let us suppose an intelligent christian of the present day asked, not what evidence he has of miracles, but how he can antecedently to all evidence think such amazing occurrences _possible_, he would reply, "you refer me to a certain sense of impossibility which you suppose me to possess, applying not to mathematics but to facts. now, on this head, i am conscious of a certain natural resistance in my mind to events unlike the order of nature. but i resist many things which i know to be certain: infinity of space, infinity of time, eternity past, eternity future, the very idea of a god and another world. if i take mere resistance, therefore, for denial, i am confined in every quarter of my mind; i cannot carry out the very laws of reason, i am placed under conditions which are obviously false. i conclude, therefore, that i may resist and believe at the same time. if providence has implanted in me a certain expectation of uniformity or likeness in nature, there is implied in that very expectations resistance to an _un_like event, which resistance does not cease even when upon evidence i _believe_ the event, but goes on as a mechanical impression, though the reason counterbalances it. resistance, therefore, is not disbelief, unless by an act of my own reason i _give_ it an absolute veto, which i do _not_ do. my reason is clear upon the point, that there is no disagreement between itself and a miracle as such." ... nor is it dealing artificially with ourselves to exert a force upon our minds against the false certainty of the resisting imagination--such a force as is necessary to enable reason to stand its ground, and bend back again that spring of impression against the miraculous which has illegally tightened itself into a law to the understanding. reason does not always prevail spontaneously and without effort even in questions of belief; so far from it, that the question of faith against reason may often be more properly termed the question of reason against imagination. it does not seldom require faith to believe reason, isolated as she may be amid vast irrational influences, the weight of custom, the power of association, the strength of passion, the _vis inertiae_ of sense, the mere force of the uniformity of nature as a spectacle--those influences which make up that power of the world which scripture always speaks of as the antagonist of faith. the antecedent questions about miracles, before coming to the question of the actual evidence of any, are questions about which reason--reason disengaged and disembarrassed from the arbitrary veto of experience--has a right to give its verdict. miracles presuppose the existence of god, and it is from reason alone that we get the idea of god; and the antecedent question then is, whether they are really compatible with the idea of god which reason gives us. mr. mozley remarks that the question of miracles is really "shut up in the enclosure of one assumption, that of the existence of god"; and that if we believe in a personal deity with all power over nature, that belief brings along with it the possibility of his interrupting natural order for his own purposes. he also bids us observe that the idea of god which reason gives us is exposed to resistance of the same kind, and from precisely the same forces, in our mental constitution, as the idea of miracles. when reason has finished its overwhelming proof, still there is a step to be taken before the mind embraces the equally overwhelming conclusion--a step which calls for a distinct effort, which obliges the mind, satisfied as it may be, to beat back the counteracting pressure of what is visible and customary. after reason--not opposed to it or independent of it, but growing out of it, yet a distinct and further movement--comes faith. this is the case, not specially in religion, but in all subjects, where the conclusions of reason cannot be subjected to immediate verification. how often, as he observes, do we see persons "who, when they are in possession of the best arguments, and what is more, understand those arguments, are still shaken by almost any opposition, because they want the faculty to _trust_ an argument when they have got one." not, however, that the existence of a god is so clearly seen by reason as to dispense with faith; not from any want of cogency in the reasons, but from the amazing nature of the conclusion--that it is so unparalleled, transcendent, and inconceivable a truth to believe. it requires trust to commit oneself to the conclusion of any reasoning, however strong, when such as this is the conclusion: to put enough dependence and reliance upon any premisses, to accept upon the strength of them so immense a result. the issue of the argument is so astonishing that if we do not tremble for its safety, it must be on account of a practical principle in our minds which enables us to _confide_ and trust in reasons, when they are really strong and good ones.... faith, when for convenience' sake we do distinguish it from reason, is not distinguished from reason by the want of premisses, but by the nature of the conclusions. are our conclusions of the customary type? then custom imparts the full sense of security. are they not of the customary, but of a strange and unknown type? then the mechanical sense of security is wanting, and a certain trust is required for reposing in them, which we call faith. but that which draws these conclusions is in either case reason. we infer, we go upon reasons, we use premisses in either case. the premisses of faith are not so palpable as those of ordinary reason, but they are as real and solid premisses all the same. our faith in the existence of a god and a future state is founded upon reasons as much so as the belief in the commonest kind of facts. the reasons are in themselves as strong, but, because the conclusions are marvellous and are not seconded and backed by known parallels or by experience, we do not so passively acquiesce in them; there is an exertion of confidence in depending upon them and assuring ourselves of their force. the inward energy of the reason has to be evoked, when she can no longer lean upon the outward prop of custom, but is thrown back upon herself and the intrinsic force of her premisses. which reason, not leaning upon custom, is faith; she obtains the latter name when she depends entirely upon her own insight into certain grounds, premisses, and evidences, and follows it though it leads to transcendent, unparalleled, and supernatural conclusions.... indeed, does not our heart bear witness to the fact that to believe in a god is an exercise of faith? that the universe was produced by the will of a personal being, that its infinite forces are all the power of that one being, its infinite relations the perceptions of one mind--would not this, if any truth could, demand the application of the maxim, _credo quia impossibile_? look at it only as a conception, and does the wildest fiction of the imagination equal it? no premisses, no arguments therefore, can so accommodate this truth to us as not to leave the belief in it an act of mental ascent and trust, of faith as distinguished from sight. _divest_ reason of its trust, and the universe stops at the impersonal stage--there is no god; and yet, if the first step in religion is the greatest, how is it that the freest and boldest speculator rarely declines it? how is it that the most mysterious of all truths is a universally accepted one? what is it which guards this truth? what is it which makes men shrink from denying it? why is atheism a crime? is it that authority still reigns upon one question, and that the voice of all ages is too potent to be withstood? but the progress of civilisation and thought has impressed this amazing idea on the general mind. it is no matter-of-course conception. the difficulties attending it were long insuperable to the deepest thought as well as to popular belief; and the triumph of the modern and christian idea of god is the result not merely of the eager forwardness of faith, but of the patient and inquiring waiting of reason. and the question, whether we shall pronounce the miraculous to be impossible as such, is really the question whether we shall once more let this belief go. the conception of a limited deity then, i.e. a being really circumscribed in power, and not verbally only by a confinement to necessary truth, is at variance with our fundamental idea of a god; to depart from which is to retrograde from modern thought to ancient, and to go from christianity back again to paganism. the god of ancient religion was either not a personal being or not an omnipotent being; the god of modern religion is both. for, indeed, civilisation is not opposed to faith. the idea of the supreme being in the mind of european society now is more primitive, more childlike, more imaginative than the idea of the ancient brahman or alexandrian philosopher; it is an idea which both of these would have derided as the notion of a child--a _negotiosus deus_, who interposes in human affairs and answers prayers. so far from the philosophical conception of the deity having advanced with civilisation, and the poetical receded, the philosophical has receded and the poetical advanced. the god of whom it is said, "are not five sparrows sold for two farthings, and not one of them is forgotten before god; but even the very hairs of your head are numbered," is the object of modern worship. nor, again, has civilisation shown any signs of rejecting doctrine. certain ages are, indeed, called the ages of faith; but the bulk of society in _this_ age believes that it lives under a supernatural dispensation, and accepts truths which are not less supernatural, though they have more proof, than some doctrines of the middle ages; and, if so, _this_ is an age of faith. it is true that most people do not live up to their faith now; neither did they in the middle ages. has not modern philosophy, again, shown both more strength and acuteness, and also more faith, than the ancient? i speak of the main current. those ancient thinkers who reduced the supreme being to a negation, with all their subtlety, wanted strength, and settled questions by an easier test than that of modern philosophy. the merit of a modern metaphysician is, like that of a good chemist or naturalist, accurate observation in noting the facts of mind. is there a contradiction in the idea of creation? is there a contradiction in the idea of a personal infinite being? he examines his own mind, and if he does not see one, he passes the idea. but the ancient speculators decided, without examination of the true facts of mind, by a kind of philosophical fancy; and, according to this loose criterion, the creation of matter and a personal infinite being were impossibilities, for they mistook the inconceivable for the impossible. and thus a stringent test has admitted what a loose but capricious test discarded, and the true notion of god has issued safe out of the crucible of modern metaphysics. reason has shown its strength, but then it has turned that strength back upon itself; it has become its own critic; and in becoming its own critic it has become its own check. if the belief, then, in a personal deity lies at the bottom of all religious and virtuous practice, and if the removal of it would be a descent for human nature, the withdrawal of its inspiration and support, and a fall in its whole standard; the failure of the very breath of moral life in the individual and in society; the decay and degeneration of the very stock of mankind;--does a theory which would withdraw miraculous action from the deity interfere with that belief? if it would, it is but prudent to count the cost of that interference. would a deity deprived of miraculous action possess action at all? and would a god who cannot act be a god? if this would be the issue, such an issue is the very last which religious men can desire. the question here has been all throughout, not whether upon any ground, but whether upon a religious ground and by religious believers, the miraculous as such could be rejected. but to that there is but one answer--that it is impossible in reason to separate religion from the supernatural, and upon a religious basis to overthrow miracles.... and so we arrive again by another route at the old turning question; for the question whether man is or is not the _vertex_ of nature, is the question whether there is or is not a god. does free agency stop at the human stage, or is there a sphere of free-will above the human, in which, as in the human, not physical law but spirit moves matter? and does that free-will penetrate the universal frame invisibly to us, an omnipresent agent? if so, every miracle in scripture is as natural an event in the universe as any chemical experiment in the physical world; if not, the seat of the great presiding will is empty, and nature has no personal head; man is her highest point; he finishes her ascent; though by this very supremacy he falls, for under fate he is not free himself; all nature either ascends to god, or descends to law. is there above the level of material causes a region of providence? if there is, nature there is moved by the supreme free agent; and of such a realm a miracle is the natural production. two rationales of miracles thus present themselves to our choice; one more accommodating to the physical imagination and easy to fall in with, on a level with custom, common conceptions, and ordinary history, and requiring no ascent of the mind to embrace, viz. the solution of miracles as the growth of fancy and legend; the other requiring an ascent of the reason to embrace it, viz. the rationale of the supremacy of a personal will in nature. the one is the explanation to which we fall when we dare not trust our reason, but mistake its inconceivable truths for sublime but unsubstantial visions; the other is that to which we rise when we dare trust our reason, and the evidences which it lays before us of the existence of a personal supreme being. the belief in a personal god thus bringing with it the possibility of miracles, what reason then has to judge is whether it can accept miracles as such, or any set of miracles, as worthy of a reasonable conception of the divine nature, and whether it can be fairly said that such miracles have answered a purpose which approves itself to our reason. testimony will always speak at a disadvantage till we are assured on these points. into the subject of testimony mr. mozley enters only in a general way, though his remarks on the relation of testimony to facts of so exceptional a nature as miracles, and also on the distinct peculiarities of christian evidence as contrasted with the evidence of all other classes of alleged miracles, are marked by a characteristic combination of acuteness, precision, and broad practical sobriety and moderation. he rebukes with quiet and temperate and yet resolute plainness of statement the misplaced ingenuity which, on different sides, to serve very different causes, has tried to confuse and perplex the claims of the great christian miracles by comparisons which it is really mere wantonness to make with later ones; for, be they what they may, it is certain that the gospel miracles, in nature, in evidence, and in purpose and result, are absolutely unique in the world, and have nothing like them. and though the book mainly confines itself to its proper subject, the antecedent question of credibility, some of the most striking remarks in it relate to the way in which the purpose of miracles is visible in those of christianity, and has been served by them. a miracle is an instrument--an instrument without which revelation is impossible; and mr. mozley meets spinoza's objection to the unmeaning isolation of a miracle by insisting on the distinction, which spinoza failed to see, between a miracle simply as a wonder for its own sake, and as a means, deriving its use and its value simply from the end which it was to serve. he observes that all the stupendous "marvels of nature do not speak to us in that way in which one miracle does, because they do not tell us that we are not like themselves"; and he remarks on the "perverse determination of spinoza to look at miracles in that aspect which does not belong to them, and not to look at them in that aspect which does." he compares miracles with nature, and then says how wise is the order of nature, how meaningless the violation of it; how expressive of the almighty mind the one, what a concealment of it the other! but no one pretends to say that a miracle competes with nature, in physical purpose and effectiveness. that is not its object. but a miracle, though it does not profess to compete with nature upon its rival's own ground, has a ghostly force and import which nature has not. if real, it is a token, more pointed and direct than physical order can be, of another world, and of moral being and will in that world. thus, regarding miracles as means to fulfil a purpose, mr. mozley shows what has come of them. his lecture on "miracles regarded in their practical result" is excelled by some of the others as examples of subtle and searching thought and well-balanced and compact argument; but it is a fine example of the way in which a familiar view can have fresh colour and force thrown into it by the way in which it is treated. he shows that it is impossible in fact to separate from the miracles in which it professed to begin, the greatest and deepest moral change which the world has ever known. this change was made not by miracles but by certain doctrines. the epistle to the romans surveyed the moral failure of the world; st. paul looked on the chasm between knowledge and action, the "unbridged gulf, this incredible inability of man to do what was right, with profound wonder"; but in the face of this hopeless spectacle he dared to prophesy the moral elevation which we have witnessed, and the power to which he looked to bring it about was the christian doctrines. st. paul "takes what may be called the high view of human nature--i.e. what human nature is capable of when the proper motive and impulse is applied to it." he sees in christian doctrine that strong force which is to break down "the _vis inertiae_ of man, to set human nature going, to touch the spring of man's heart"; and he compares with st. paul's doctrines and hopefulness the doctrinal barrenness, the despair of mohammedanism:-- if one had to express in a short compass the character of its remarkable founder as a teacher, it would be that that great man had no faith in human nature. there were two things which he thought man could do and would do for the glory of god--transact religious forms, and fight; and upon those two points he was severe; but within the sphere of common practical life, where man's great trial lies, his code exhibits the disdainful laxity of a legislator who accommodates his rule to the recipient, and shows his estimate of the recipient by the accommodation which he adopts. did we search history for a contrast, we could hardly discover a deeper one than that between st. paul's overflowing standard of the capabilities of human nature and the oracular cynicism of the great false prophet. the writer of the koran does, indeed, if any discerner of hearts ever did, take the measure of mankind; and his measure is the same that satire has taken, only expressed with the majestic brevity of one who had once lived in the realm of silence. "man is weak," says mahomet. and upon that maxim he legislates.... the keenness of mahomet's insight into human nature, a wide knowledge of its temptations, persuasives, influences under which it acts, a vast immense capacity of forbearance for it, half grave half genial, half sympathy half scorn, issue in a somewhat horatian model, the character of the man of experience who despairs of any change in man, and lays down the maxim that we must take him as we find him. it was indeed his supremacy in both faculties, the largeness of the passive nature and the splendour of action, that constituted the secret of his success. the breadth and flexibility of mind that could negotiate with every motive of interest, passion, and pride in man is surprising; there is boundless sagacity; what is wanting is hope, a belief in the capabilities of human nature. there is no upward flight in the teacher's idea of man. instead of which, the notion of the power of earth, and the impossibility of resisting it, depresses his whole aim, and the shadow of the tomb falls upon the work of the great false prophet. the idea of god is akin to the idea of man. "he knows us," says mahomet. god's _knowledge_, the vast _experience_, so to speak, of the divine being, his infinite acquaintance with man's frailties and temptations, is appealed to as the ground of confidence. "he is the wise, the knowing one," "he is the knowing, the wise," "he is easy to be reconciled." thus is raised a notion of the supreme being, which is rather an extension of the character of the large-minded and sagacious man of the world than an extension of man's virtue and holiness. he forgives because he knows too much to be rigid, because sin universal ceases to be sin, and must be given way to. take a man who has had large opportunity of studying mankind, and has come into contact with every form of human weakness and corruption; such a man is indulgent as a simple consequence of his knowledge, because nothing surprises him. so the god of mahomet forgives by reason of his vast knowledge. in contrast with the fruit of this he observes that "the prophecy in the epistle to the romans has been fulfilled, and that doctrine has been historically at the bottom of a great change of moral practice in mankind." the key has been found to set man's moral nature in action, to check and reverse that course of universal failure manifest before; and this key is christian doctrine. "a stimulus has been given to human nature which has extracted an amount of action from it which no greek or roman could have believed possible." it is inconceivable that but for such doctrine such results as have been seen in christendon would have followed; and were it now taken away we cannot see anything else that would have the faintest expectation of taking its place. "could we commit mankind to a moral deism without trembling for the result?" can the enthusiasm for the divinity of human nature stand the test of clear, unsparing observation? would it not issue in such an estimate of human nature as mahomet took? "a deification of humanity upon its own grounds, an exaltation which is all height and no depth, wants power because it wants truth. it is not founded upon the facts of human nature, and therefore issues in vain and vapid aspiration, and injures the solidity of man's character." as he says, "the gospel doctrine of the incarnation and its effects alone unites the sagacious view of human nature with the enthusiastic." and now what is the historical root and basis from which this one great moral revolution in the world's history, so successful, so fruitful, so inexhaustible, has started? but if, as the source and inspiration of practice, doctrine has been the foundation of a new state of the world, and of that change which distinguishes the world under christianity from the world before it, miracles, as the proof of that doctrine, stand before us in a very remarkable and peculiar light. far from being mere idle feats of power to gratify the love of the marvellous; far even from being mere particular and occasional rescues from the operation of general laws,--they come before us as means for accomplishing the largest and most important practical object that has ever been accomplished in the history of mankind. they lie at the bottom of the difference of the modern from the ancient world; so far, i.e., as that difference is moral. we see as a fact a change in the moral condition of mankind, which marks ancient and modern society as two different states of mankind. what has produced this change, and elicited this new power of action? doctrine. and what was the proof of that doctrine, or essential to the proof of it? miracles. the greatness of the result thus throws light upon the propriety of the means, and shows the fitting object which was presented for the introduction of such means--the fitting occasion which had arisen for the use of them; for, indeed, no more weighty, grand, or solemn occasion can be conceived than the foundation of such a new order of things in the world. extraordinary action of divine power for such an end has the benefit of a justifying object of incalculable weight; which though not of itself, indeed, proof of the fact, comes with striking force upon the mind in connection with the proper proof. it is reasonable, it is inevitable, that we should be impressed by such a result; for it shows that the miraculous system has been a practical one; that it has been a step in the ladder of man's ascent, the means of introducing those powerful truths which have set his moral nature in action. of this work, remarkable in so many ways, we will add but one thing more. it is marked throughout with the most serious and earnest conviction, but it is without a single word, from first to last, of asperity or insinuation against opponents; and this, not from any deficiency of feeling as to the importance of the issue, but from a deliberate and resolutely maintained self-control, and from an overruling ever-present sense of the duty, on themes like these, of a more than judicial calmness. ix ecce homo[ ] [ ] _ecce homo: a survey of the life and work of jesus christ. guardian_, th february . this is a dangerous book to review. the critic of it, if he is prudent, will feel that it is more than most books a touchstone of his own capacity, and that in giving his judgment upon it he cannot help giving his own measure and betraying what he is himself worth. all the unconscious guiding which a name, even if hitherto unknown, gives to opinion is wanting. the first aspect of the book is perplexing; closer examination does not clear up all the questions which present themselves; and many people, after they have read it through, will not feel quite certain what it means. much of what is on the surface and much of what is inherent in the nature of the work will jar painfully on many minds; while others who begin to read it under one set of impressions may by the time they have got to the end complain of having been taken in. there can be no doubt on which side the book is; but it may be open to debate from which side it has come. the unknown champion who comes into the lists with barred vizor and no cognisance on his shield leaves it not long uncertain for which of the contending parties he appears; but his weapons and his manner of fighting are not the ordinary ones of the side which he takes; and there is a force in his arm, and a sweep in his stroke, which is not that of common men. the book is one which it is easy to take exception to, and perhaps still easier to praise at random; but the subject is put before us in so unusual a way, and one so removed from the ordinary grooves of thought, that in trying to form an adequate estimate of the work as a whole, a man feels as he does when he is in the presence of something utterly unfamiliar and unique, when common rules and inferences fail him, and in pronouncing upon which he must make something of a venture. in making our own venture we will begin with what seems to us incontestable. in the first place, but that it has been questioned, we should say that there could be no question of the surpassing ability which the book displays. it is far beyond the power of the average clever and practised writer of our days. it is the work of a man in whom thought, sympathy, and imagination are equally powerful and wealthy, and who exercises a perfect and easy command over his own conceptions, and over the apt and vivid language which is their expression. few men have entered so deeply into the ideas and feelings of the time, or have looked at the world, its history and its conditions, with so large and piercing an insight. but it is idle to dwell on what must strike, at first sight, any one who but opens the book. we go on to observe, what is equally beyond dispute, the deep tone of religious seriousness which pervades the work. the writer's way of speaking is very different from that of the ascetic or the devotee; but no ascetic or devotee could be more profoundly penetrated with the great contrast between holiness and evil, and show more clearly in his whole manner of thinking the ineffaceable impression of the powers of the world to come. whatever else the book may be, this much is plain on the face of it--it is the work of a mind of extreme originality, depth, refinement, and power; and it is also the work of a very religious man: thomas à kempis had not a more solemn sense of things unseen and of what is meant by the imitation of christ. what the writer wishes his book to be understood to be we must gather from his preface:-- those who feel dissatisfied with the current conceptions of christ, if they cannot rest content without a definite opinion, may find it necessary to do what to persons not so dissatisfied it seems audacious and perilous to do. they may be obliged to reconsider the whole subject from the beginning, and placing themselves in imagination at the time when he whom we call christ bore no such name, but was simply, as st. luke describes him, a young man of promise, popular with those who knew him, and appearing to enjoy the divine favour, to trace his biography from point to point, and accept those conclusions about him, not which church doctors or even apostles have sealed with their authority, but which the facts themselves, critically weighed, appear to warrant. this is what the present writer undertook to do for the satisfaction of his own mind, and because, after reading a good many books on christ, he felt still constrained to confess that there was no historical character whose motives, objects, and feelings remained so incomprehensible to him. the inquiry which proved serviceable to himself may chance to be useful to others. what is now published is a fragment. no theological questions whatever are here discussed. christ, as the creator of modern theology and religion, will make the subject of another volume, which, however, the author does not hope to publish for some time to come. in the meanwhile he has endeavoured to furnish an answer to the question, what was christ's object in founding the society which is called by his name, and how is it adapted to attain that object? thus the book comes before us as a serious facing of difficulties. and that the writer lays stress on its being so viewed appears further from a letter which he wrote to the _spectator_, repeating emphatically that the book is not one "written after the investigation was completed, but the _investigation_ itself." the letter may be taken to complete the statement of the preface:-- i endeavoured in my preface to describe the state of mind in which i undertook my book. i said that the character and objects of christ were at that time altogether incomprehensible to me, and that i wished to try whether an independent investigation would relieve my perplexity. perhaps i did not distinctly enough state that _ecce homo_ is not a book written after the investigation was completed, but the _investigation_ itself. the life of christ is partly easy to understand and partly difficult. this being so, what would a man do who wished to study it methodically? naturally he would take the easy part first. he would collect, arrange, and carefully consider all the facts which are simple, and until he has done this, he would carefully avoid all those parts of his subject which are obscure, and which cannot be explained without making bold hypotheses. by this course he would limit the problem, and in the meanwhile arrive at a probable opinion concerning the veracity of the documents, and concerning the characteristics, both intellectual and moral, of the person whose high pretensions he wished to investigate. this is what i have done. i have postponed altogether the hardest questions connected with christ, as questions which cannot properly be discussed until a considerable quantity of evidence has been gathered about his character and views. if this evidence, when collected, had appeared to be altogether conflicting and inconsistent, i should have been saved the trouble of proceeding any further; i should have said that christ is a myth. if it had been consistent, and had disclosed to me a person of mean and ambitious aims, i should have said, christ is a deceiver. again, if it had exhibited a person of weak understanding and strong impulsive sensibility, i should have said christ is a bewildered enthusiast. in all these cases you perceive my method would have saved me a good deal of trouble. as it is, i certainly feel bound to go on, though, as i say in my preface, my progress will necessarily be slow. but i am much engaged and have little time for theological study. but pray do not suppose that postponing questions is only another name for evading them. i think i have gained much by this postponement. i have now a very definite notion of christ's character and that of his followers. i shall be able to judge how far he was likely to deceive himself or them. it is possible i may have put others, who can command more time than i, in a condition to take up the subject where for the present i leave it. you say my picture suffers by my method. but _ecce homo_ is not a picture: it is the very opposite of a picture; it is an analysis. it may be, you will answer, that the title suggests a picture. this may perhaps be true, and if so, it is no doubt a fault, but a fault in the title, not in the book. for titles are put to books, not books to titles. thus it appears that the writer found it his duty to investigate those awful questions which every thinking man feels to be full of the "incomprehensible" and unfathomable, but which many thinking men, for various reasons both good and bad, shrink from attempting to investigate, accepting on practical and very sufficient grounds the religious conclusions which are recommended and sanctioned by the agreement of christendom. and finding it his duty to investigate them at all, he saw that he was bound to investigate in earnest. but under what circumstances this happened, from what particular pressure of need, and after what previous belief or state of opinion, we are not told. whether from being originally on the doubting side--on the irreligious side we cannot suppose he ever could have been--he has risen through his investigation into belief; or whether, originally on the believing side, he found the aspect so formidable, to himself or to the world, of the difficulties and perplexities which beset belief, that he turned to bay upon the foes that dogged him--must be left to conjecture. it is impossible to question that he has been deeply impressed with the difficulties of believing; it is impossible to question that doubt has been overborne and trampled under foot. but here we have the record, it would not be accurate to say of the struggle, but of that resolute and unflinching contemplation of the realities of the case which decided it. such plunging into such a question must seem, as he says, to those who do not need it, "audacious and perilous"; for if you plunge into a question in earnest, and do not under a thin disguise take a side, you must, whatever your bias and expectation, take your chance of the alternative answers which may come out. it is a simple fact that there are many people who feel "dissatisfied with the current conceptions" of our lord--whether reasonably and justly dissatisfied is another question; but whatever we think of it they remain dissatisfied. in such emergencies it is conceivable that a man who believes, yet keenly realises and feels what disturbs or destroys the belief of others, should dare to put himself in their place; should enter the hospital and suffer the disease which makes such ravages; should descend into the shades and face the spectres. no one can deny the risk of dwelling on such thoughts as he must dwell on; but if he feels warmly with his kind, he may think it even a duty to face the risk. to any one accustomed to live on his belief it cannot but be a hard necessity, full of pain and difficulty, first to think and then to speak of what he believes, as if it _might not_ be, or _could be_ otherwise; but the changes of time bring up ever new hard necessities; and one thing is plain, that if ever such an investigation is undertaken, it ought to be a real one, in good earnest and not in play. if a man investigates at all, both for his own sake and for the sake of the effect of his investigation on others, he must accept the fair conditions of investigation. we may not ourselves be able to conceive the possibility of taking, even provisionally, a neutral position; but looking at what is going on all round us, we ought to be able to enlarge our thoughts sufficiently to take in the idea that a believing mind may feel it a duty to surrender itself boldly to the intellectual chances and issues of the inquiry, and to "let its thoughts take their course in the confidence that they will come home at last." it may be we ourselves who "have not faith enough to be patient of doubt"; there may be others who feel that if what they believe is real, they need not be afraid of the severest revisal and testing of the convictions on which they rest; who feel that, in the circumstances of the time, it is not left to their choice whether these convictions shall be sifted unsparingly and to the uttermost; and who think it a venture not unworthy of a christian, to descend even to the depths to go through the thoughts of doubters, if so be that he may find the spell that shall calm them. we do not say that this book is the production of such a state of mind; we only think that it may be. one thing is clear, wherever the writer's present lot is cast, he has that in him which not only enables him, but forces him, to sympathise with what he sees in the opposite camp. if he is what is called a liberal, his whole heart is yet pouring itself forth towards the great truths of christianity. if he is what is called orthodox, his whole intellect is alive to the right and duty of freedom of thought. he will therefore attract and repel on both sides. and he appears to feel that the position of double sympathy gives him a special advantage, to attract to each side what is true in its opposite, and to correct in each what is false or inadequate. what, then, is this investigation, and what course does it follow? at the first aspect, we might take it for one of those numerous attempts on the liberal side, partly impatient, partly careless of christianity, to put a fresh look on the christian history, and to see it with new eyes. the writer's language is at starting neutral; he speaks of our lord in the language indeed of the new testament, but not in the usual language of later christian writers. all through, the colour and tone is absolutely modern; and what would naturally be expressed in familiar theological terms is for the most part studiously put in other words. persons acquainted with the writings of the late mr. robertson might be often reminded of his favourite modes of teaching; of his maxim that truth is made up of two opposites which seem contradictories; of the distinction which he was so fond of insisting upon between principles and rules; above all, of his doctrine that the true way to rise to the faith in our lord's divine nature was by first realising his human life. but the resemblance is partial, if not superficial, and gives way on closer examination before broad and characteristic features of an entirely different significance. that one which at first arrests attention, and distinguishes this writer's line of thought from the common liberal way of dealing with the subject, is that from the first page of the book to its last line the work of christ is viewed, not simply as the foundation of a religious system, the introduction of certain great principles, the elevation of religious ideas, the delivery of divine truths, the exhibition of a life and example, but as the call and creation of a definite, concrete, organised society of men. the subject, of investigation is not merely the character and history of the person, but the person as connected with his work. christ is regarded not simply in himself or in his teaching, as the founder of a philosophy, a morality, a theology in the abstract, but as the author of a divine society, the body which is called by his name, the christian church universal, a real and visible company of men, which, however we may understand it, exists at this moment as it has existed since his time, marked by his badges, governed by his laws, and working out his purpose. the writer finds the two joined in fact, and he finds them also joined in the recorded history of christ's plan. the book might almost be described as the beginning of a new _de civitate dei_, written with the further experience of fourteen centuries and from the point of view of our own generation. this is one remarkable peculiarity of this investigation; another is the prominence given to the severe side of the person and character of whom he writes, and what is even more observable, the way in which both the severity and the gentleness are apprehended and harmonised. we are familiar with the attempts to resolve the christianity of the new testament into philanthropy; and, on the other hand, writers like mr. carlyle will not let us forget that the world is as dark and evil as the bible draws it. this writer feels both in one. no one can show more sympathy with enlarged and varied ideas of human happiness, no one has connected them more fearlessly with christian principles, or claimed from those principles more unlimited developments, even for the physical well-being of men. no one has extended wider the limits of christian generosity, forbearance, and tolerance. but, on the other hand, what is striking is, that all this is compatible, and is made to appear so, with the most profound and terrible sense of evil, with indignation and scorn which is scathing where it kindles and strikes, with a capacity and energy of deliberate religious hatred against what is impure and false and ungodly, which mark one who has dared to realise and to sympathise with the wrath of jesus christ. the world has been called in these later days, and from opposite directions, to revise its judgments about jesus christ. christians, on the one hand, have been called to do it by writers of whom m. ernest renan is the most remarkable and the most unflinching. but the sceptical and the unbelieving have likewise been obliged to change their ground and their tone, and no one with any self-respect or care for his credit even as a thinker and a man would like to repeat the superficial and shallow flippancy and irreligion of the last century. two things have been specially insisted on. we have been told that if we are to see the truth of things as it is, we must disengage our minds from the deeply rooted associations and conceptions of a later theology, and try to form our impressions first-hand and unprompted from the earliest documents which we can reach. it has been further urged on us, in a more believing spirit, that we should follow the order by which in fact truth was unfolded, and rise from the full appreciation of our lord's human nature to the acknowledgment of his divine nature. it seems to us that the writer of this book has felt the force of both these appeals, and that his book is his answer to them. here is the way in which he responds to both--to the latter indirectly, but with a significance which no one can mistake; to the former directly and avowedly. he undertakes, isolating himself from current beliefs, and restricting himself to the documents from which, if from any source at all, the original facts about christ are to be learned, to examine what the genuine impression is which an attempt to realise the statements about him leaves on the mind. this has been done by others, with results supposed to be unfavourable to christianity. he has been plainly moved by these results, though not a hint is given of the existence of renan or strauss. but the effect on his own mind has been to drive him back on a closer survey of the history in its first fountains, and to bring him from it filled more than ever with wonder at its astonishing phenomena, to protest against the poverty and shallowness of the most ambitious and confident of these attempts. they leave the historical character which they pourtray still unsounded, its motives, objects, and feelings absolutely incomprehensible. he accepts the method to reverse the product. "look at christ historically," people say; "see him as he really was." the answer here is, "well, i will look at him with whatever aid a trained historical imagination can look at him. i accept your challenge; i admit your difficulties. i will dare to do what you do. i will try and look at the very facts themselves, with singleness and 'innocence of the eye,' trying to see nothing more than i really see, and trying to see all that my eye falls on. i will try to realise indeed what is recorded of him. and _this_ is what i see. this is the irresistible impression from the plainest and most elementary part of the history, if we are to accept any history at all. a miracle could not be more unlike the order of our experience than the character set before us is unique and unapproachable in all known history. further, all that makes the superiority of the modern world to the ancient, and is most permanent and pregnant with improvement in it, may be traced to the appearance of that character, and to the work which he planned and did. you ask for a true picture of him, drawn with freedom, drawn with courage; here, if you dare look at it, is what those who wrote of him showed him to be. renan has tried to draw this picture. take the gospels as they stand; treat them simply as biographies; look, and see, and think of what they tell, and then ask yourself about renan's picture, and what it looks like when placed side by side with the truth." this, as we have ventured to express it in our own words, seems to be the writer's position. it is at any rate the effect of his book, to our minds. the inquiry, it must always be remembered, is a preliminary one, dealing, as he says, with the easiest and obvious elements of the problem; and much that seems inadequate and unsatisfactory may be developed hereafter. he starts from what, to those who already have the full belief, must appear a low level. he takes, as it will be seen, the documents as they stand. he takes little more than the first three gospels, and these as a whole, without asking minute questions about them. the mythical theory he dismisses as false to nature, in dealing with such a character and such results. he talks in his preface of "critically weighing" the facts; but the expression is misleading. it is true that we may talk of criticism of character; but the words naturally suggest that close cross-questioning of documents and details which has produced such remarkable results in modern investigations; and of this there is none. it is a work in no sense of criticism; it is a work of what he calls the "trained historical imagination"; a work of broad and deep knowledge of human nature and the world it works in and creates about it; a work of steady and large insight into character, and practical judgment on moral likelihoods. he answers strauss as he answers renan, by producing the interpretation of a character, so living, so in accordance with all before and after, that it overpowers and sweeps away objections; a picture, an analysis or outline, if he pleases, which justifies itself and is its own evidence, by its originality and internal consistency. criticism in detail does not affect him. he assumes nothing of the gospels, except that they are records; neither their inspiration in any theological sense, nor their authorship, nor their immunity from mistake, nor the absolute purity of their texts. but taking them as a whole he discerns in them a character which, if you accept them at all and on any terms, you cannot mistake. even if the copy is ever so imperfect, ever so unskilful, ever so blurred and defaced, there is no missing the features any more than a man need miss the principle of a pattern because it is rudely or confusedly traced. he looks at these "biographies" as a geologist might do at a disturbed series of strata; and he feeds his eye upon them till he gets such a view of the coherent whole as will stand independent of the right or wrong disposition of the particular fragments. to the mind which discerns the whole, the regulating principle, the general curves and proportions of the strata may be just as visible after the disturbance as before it. the gospels bring before us the visible and distinct outlines of a life which, after all efforts to alter the idea of it, remains still the same; they present certain clusters of leading ideas and facts so embedded in their substance that no criticism of detail can possibly get rid of them, without absolutely obliterating the whole record. it is this leading idea, or cluster of ideas, to be gained by intent gazing, which the writer disengages from all questions of criticism in the narrow sense of the word, and sets before us as explaining the history of christianity, and as proving themselves by that explanation. that the world has been moved we know. "give me," he seems to say, "the character which is set forth in the gospels, and i can show how he moved it":-- it is in the object of the present treatise to exhibit christ's career in outline. no other career ever had so much unity; no other biography is so simple or can so well afford to dispense with details. men in general take up scheme after scheme, as circumstances suggest one or another, and therefore most biographies are compelled to pass from one subject to another, and to enter into a multitude of minute questions, to divide the life carefully into periods by chronological landmarks accurately determined, to trace the gradual development of character and ripening or change of opinions. but christ formed one plan and executed it; no important change took place in his mode of thinking, speaking, or acting; at least the evidence before us does not enable us to trace any such change. it is possible, indeed, for students of his life to find details which they may occupy themselves with discussing; they may map out the chronology of it, and devise methods of harmonising the different accounts; but such details are of little importance compared with the one grand question, what was christ's plan, and throw scarcely any light upon that question. what was christ's plan is the main question which will be investigated in the present treatise, and that vision of universal monarchy which we have just been considering affords an appropriate introduction to it.... we conclude then, that christ in describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the kingdom of god--in other words as a king representing the majesty of the invisible king of a theocracy--claimed the character first of founder, next of legislator; thirdly, in a certain high and peculiar sense, of judge, of a new divine society. in defining as above the position which christ assumed, we have not entered into controvertible matter. we have not rested upon single passages, nor drawn upon the fourth gospel. to deny that christ did undertake to found and to legislate for a new theocratic society, and that he did claim the office of judge of mankind, is indeed possible, but only to those who altogether deny the credibility of the extant biographies of christ. if those biographies be admitted to be generally trustworthy, then christ undertook to be what we have described; if not, then of course this, but also every other account of him falls to the ground. we have said that he starts from a low level; and he restricts himself so entirely at the opening to facts which do not involve dispute, that his views of them are necessarily incomplete, and, so to say, provisional and deliberate understatements. he begins no higher than the beginning of the public ministry, the baptism, and the temptation; and his account of these leaves much to say, though it suggests much of what is left unsaid. but he soon gets to the proper subject of his book--the absolute uniqueness of him whose equally unique work has been the christian church. and this uniqueness he finds in the combination of "unbounded personal pretensions," and the possession, claimed and believed, of boundless power, with an absolutely unearthly use of his pretensions and his power, and with a goodness which has proved to be, and still is, the permanent and ever-flowing source of moral elevation and improvement in the world. he early comes across the question of miracles, and, as he says, it is impossible to separate the claim to them and the belief in them from the story. we find christ, he says, "describing himself as a king, and at the same time as king of the kingdom of god"; calling forth and founding a new and divine society, and claiming to be, both now and hereafter, the judge without appeal of all mankind; "he considered, in short, heaven and hell to be in his hands." and we find, on the other hand, that as such he has been received. to such an astonishing chain of phenomena miracles naturally belong:-- when we contemplate this scheme as a whole, and glance at the execution and results of it, three things strike us with astonishment. first, its prodigious originality, if the expression may be used. what other man has had the courage or elevation of mind to say, "i will build up a state by the mere force of my will, without help from the kings of the world, without taking advantage of any of the secondary causes which unite men together--unity of interest or speech, or blood-relationship. i will make laws for my state which shall never be repealed, and i will defy all the powers of destruction that are at work in the world to destroy what i build"? secondly, we are astonished at the calm confidence with which the scheme was carried out. the reason why statesmen can seldom work on this vast scale is that it commonly requires a whole lifetime to gain that ascendency over their fellow-men which such schemes presuppose. some of the leading organisers of the world have said, "i will work my way to supreme power, and then i will execute great plans." but christ overleaped the first stage altogether. he did not work his way to royalty, but simply said to all men, "i am your king." he did not struggle forward to a position in which he could found a new state, but simply founded it. thirdly, we are astonished at the prodigious success of the scheme. it is not more certain that christ presented himself to men as the founder, legislator, and judge of a divine society than it is certain that men have accepted him in these characters, that the divine society has been founded, that it has lasted nearly two thousand years, that it has extended over a large and the most highly-civilised portion of the earth's surface, and that it continues full of vigour at the present day. between the astonishing design and its astonishing success there intervenes an astonishing instrumentality--that of miracles. it will be thought by some that in asserting miracles to have been actually wrought by christ we go beyond what the evidence, perhaps beyond what any possible evidence, is able to sustain. waiving, then, for the present, the question whether miracles were actually wrought, we may state a fact which is fully capable of being established by ordinary evidence, and which is actually established by evidence as ample as any historical fact whatever--the fact, namely, that christ _professed_ to work miracles. we may go further, and assert with confidence that christ was believed by his followers really to work miracles, and that it was mainly on this account that they conceded to him the pre-eminent dignity and authority which he claimed. the accounts which we have of these miracles may be exaggerated; it is possible that in some special cases stories have been related which have no foundation whatever; but on the whole, miracles play so important a part in christ's scheme, that any theory which would represent them as due entirely to the imagination of his followers or of a later age destroys the credibility of the documents not partially but wholly, and leaves christ a personage as mythical as hercules. now, the present treatise aims to show that the christ of the gospels is not mythical, by showing that the character those biographies portray is in all its large features strikingly consistent, and at the same time so peculiar as to be altogether beyond the reach of invention both by individual genius and still more by what is called the "consciousness of an age." now, if the character depicted in the gospels is in the main real and historical, they must be generally trustworthy, and if so, the responsibility of miracles is fixed on christ. in this case the reality of the miracles themselves depends in a great degree on the opinion we form of christ's veracity, and this opinion must arise gradually from the careful examination of his whole life. for our present purpose, which is to investigate the plan which christ formed and the way in which he executed it, it matters nothing whether the miracles were real or imaginary; in either case, being believed to be real, they had the same effect. provisionally, therefore, we may speak of them as real. without the belief in miracles, as he says, it is impossible to conceive the history of the church:-- if we suppose that christ really performed no miracles, and that those which are attributed to him were the product of self-deception mixed in some proportion or other with imposture, then no doubt the faith of st. paul and st. john was an empty chimera, a mere misconception; but it is none the less true that those apparent miracles were essential to christ's success, and that had he not pretended to perform them the christian church would never have been founded, and the name of jesus of nazareth would be known at this day only to the curious in jewish antiquities. but he goes on to point out what was the use which christ made of miracles, and how it was that they did not, as they might have done, even impede his purpose of founding his kingdom on men's consciences and not on their terrors. in one of the most remarkable passages perhaps ever written on the gospel miracles as they are seen when simply looked at as they are described, the writer says:-- he imposed upon himself a strict restraint in the dse of his supernatural powers. he adopted the principle that he was not sent to destroy men's lives but to save them, and rigidly abstained in practice from inflicting any kind of damage or harm. in this course he persevered so steadily that it became generally understood. every one knew that this _king_, whose royal pretensions were so prominent, had an absolutely unlimited patience, and that he would endure the keenest criticism, the bitterest and most malignant personal attacks. men's mouths were open to discuss his claims and character with perfect freedom; so far from regarding him with that excessive fear which might have prevented them from receiving his doctrine intelligently, they learnt gradually to treat him, even while they acknowledged his extraordinary power, with a reckless animosity which they would have been afraid to show towards an ordinary enemy. with curious inconsistency they openly charged him with being leagued with the devil; in other words, they acknowledged that he was capable of boundless mischief, and yet they were so little afraid of him that they were ready to provoke him to use his whole power against themselves. the truth was that they believed him to be disarmed by his own deliberate resolution, and they judged rightly. he punished their malice only by verbal reproofs, and they gradually gathered courage to attack the life of one whose miraculous powers they did not question. meantime, while this magnanimous self-restraint saved him from false friends and mercenary or servile flatterers, and saved the kingdom which he founded from the corruption of self-interest and worldliness, it gave him a power over the good such as nothing else could have given. for the noblest and most amiable thing that can be seen is power mixed with gentleness, the reposing, self-restraining attitude of strength. these are the "fine strains of honour," these are "the graces of the gods"-- to tear with thunder the wide cheeks o' the air. and yet to charge the sulphur with a bolt that shall but rive an oak. and while he did no mischief under any provocation, his power flowed in acts of beneficence on every side. men could approach near to him, could eat and drink with him, could listen to his talk and ask him questions, and they found him not accessible only, but warmhearted, and not occupied so much with his own plans that he could not attend to a case of distress or mental perplexity. they found him full of sympathy and appreciation, dropping words of praise, ejaculations of admiration, tears. he surrounded himself with those who had tasted of his bounty, sick people whom he had cured, lepers whose death-in-life, demoniacs whose hell-in-life, he had terminated with a single powerful word. among these came loving hearts who thanked him for friends and relatives rescued for them out of the jaws of premature death, and others whom he had saved, by a power which did not seem different, from vice and degradation. this temperance in the use of supernatural power is the masterpiece of christ. it is a moral miracle superinduced upon a physical one. this repose in greatness makes him surely the most sublime image ever offered to the human imagination. and it is precisely this trait which gave him his immense and immediate ascendency over men. if the question be put--why was christ so successful?--why did men gather round him at his call, form themselves into a new society according to his wish, and accept him with unbounded devotion as their legislator and judge? some will answer, because of the miracles which attested his divine character; others, because of the intrinsic beauty and divinity of the great law of love which he propounded. but miracles, as we have seen, have not by themselves this persuasive power. that a man possesses a strange power which i cannot understand is no reason why i should receive his words as divine oracles of truth. the powerful man is not of necessity also wise; his power may terrify and yet not convince. on the other hand, the law of love, however divine, was but a precept. undoubtedly it deserved that men should accept it for its intrinsic worth, but men are not commonly so eager to receive the words of wise men nor so unbounded in their gratitude to them. it was neither for his miracles nor for the beauty of his doctrine that christ was worshipped. nor was it for his winning personal character, nor for the persecutions he endured, nor for his martyrdom. it was for the inimitable unity which all these things made when taken together. in other words, it was for this that he whose power and greatness as shown in his miracles were overwhelming denied himself the use of his power, treated it as a slight thing, walked among men as though he were one of them, relieved them in distress, taught them to love each other, bore with undisturbed patience a perpetual hailstorm of calumny; and when his enemies grew fiercer, continued still to endure their attacks in silence, until, petrified and bewildered with astonishment, men saw him arrested and put to death with torture, refusing steadfastly to use in his own behalf the power he conceived he held for the benefit of others. it was the combination of greatness and self-sacrifice which won their hearts, the mighty powers held under a mighty control, the unspeakable condescension, the _cross_ of _christ_. and he goes on to describe the effect upon the world; and what it was that "drew all men unto him":-- to sum up the results of this chapter. we began by remarking that an astonishing plan met with an astonishing success, and we raised the question to what instrumentality that success was due. christ announced himself as the founder and legislator of a new society, and as the supreme judge of men. now by what means did he procure that these immense pretensions should be allowed? he might have done it by sheer power, he might have adopted persuasion, and pointed out the merits of the scheme and of the legislation he proposed to introduce. but he adopted a third plan, which had the effect not merely of securing obedience, but of exciting enthusiasm and devotion. he laid men under an immense _obligation_. he convinced them that he was a person of altogether transcendent greatness, one who needed nothing at their hands, one whom it was impossible to benefit by conferring riches, or fame, or dominion upon him, and that, being so great, he had devoted himself of mere benevolence to their good. he showed them that for their sakes he lived a hard and laborious life, and exposed himself to the utmost malice of powerful men. they saw him hungry, though they believed him able to turn the stones into bread; they saw his royal pretensions spurned, though they believed that he could in a moment take into his hand all the kingdoms of the world and the glory of them; they saw his life in danger; they saw him at last expire in agonies, though they believed that, had he so willed it, no danger could harm him, and that had he thrown himself from the topmost pinnacle of the temple he would have been softly received in the arms of ministering angels. witnessing his sufferings, and convinced by the miracles they saw him work that they were voluntarily endured, men's hearts were touched, and pity for weakness blending strangely with wondering admiration of unlimited power, an agitation of gratitude, sympathy, and astonishment, such as nothing else could ever excite, sprang up in them; and when, turning from his deeds to his words, they found this very self-denial which had guided his own life prescribed as the principle which should guide theirs, gratitude broke forth in joyful obedience, self-denial produced self-denial, and the law and lawgiver together were enshrined in their inmost hearts for inseparable veneration. it is plain that whatever there is novel in such a line of argument must depend upon the way in which it is handled; and it is the extraordinary and sustained power with which this is done which gives its character to the book. the writer's method consists in realising with a depth of feeling and thought which it would not be easy to match, what our lord was in his human ministry, as that ministry is set before us by those who witnessed it; and next, in showing in detail the connection of that ministry, which wrought so much by teaching, but still more by the divine example, "not sparing words but resting most on deeds," with all that is highest, purest, and best in the morality of christendom, and with what is most fruitful and most hopeful in the differences between the old world and our own. we cannot think we are wrong when we say that no one could speak of our lord as this writer speaks, with the enthusiasm, the overwhelming sense of his inexpressible authority, of his unapproachable perfection, with the profound faith which lays everything at his feet, and not also believe all that the divine society which christ founded has believed about him. and though for the present his subject is history, and human morality as it appears to have been revolutionised and finally fixed by that history, and not the theology which subsequent in date is yet the foundation of both, it is difficult to imagine any reader going along with him and not breaking out at length into the burst, "my lord and my god." if it is not so, then the phenomenon is strange indeed; for a belief below the highest and truest has produced an appreciation, a reverence, an adoration which the highest belief has only produced in the choicest examples of those who have had it, and by the side of which the ordinary exhibitions of the divine history are pale and feeble. to few, indeed, as it seems to us, has it been given to feel, and to make others feel, what in all the marvellous complexity of high and low, and in all the divine singleness of his goodness and power, the son of man appeared in the days of his flesh. it is not more vivid or more wonderful than what the gospels with so much detail tell us of that awful ministry in real flesh and blood, with a human soul and with all the reality of man's nature; but most of us, after all, read the gospels with sealed and unwondering eyes. but, dwelling on the manhood, so as almost to overpower us with the contrast between the distinct and living truth and the dead and dull familiarity of our thoughts of routine and custom, he does so in such a way that it is impossible to doubt, though the word incarnation never occurs in the volume, that all the while he has before his thoughts the "taking of the manhood into god." what is the gospel picture? and let us pause once more to consider that which remains throughout a subject of ever-recurring astonishment, the unbounded personal pretensions which christ advances. it is common in human history to meet with those who claim some superiority over their fellows. men assert a pre-eminence over their fellow-citizens or fellow-countrymen and become rulers of those who at first were their equals, but they dream of nothing greater than some partial control over the actions of others for the short space of a lifetime. few indeed are those to whom it is given to influence future ages. yet some men have appeared who have been "as levers to uplift the earth and roll it in another course." homer by creating literature, socrates by creating science, caesar by carrying civilisation inland from the shores of the mediterranean, newton by starting science upon a career of steady progress, may be said to have attained this eminence. but these men gave a single impact like that which is conceived to have first set the planets in motion; christ claims to be a perpetual attractive power like the sun which determines their orbit. they contributed to men some discovery and passed away; christ's discovery is himself. to humanity struggling with its passions and its destiny he says, cling to me, cling ever closer to me. if we believe st. john, he represented himself as the light of the world, as the shepherd of the souls of men, as the way to immortality, as the vine or life-tree of humanity. and if we refuse to believe that he used those words, we cannot deny, without rejecting all the evidence before us, that he used words which have substantially the same meaning. we cannot deny that he commanded men to leave everything and attach themselves to him; that he declared himself king, master, and judge of men; that he promised to give rest to all the weary and heavy-laden; that he instructed his followers to hope for life from feeding on his body and blood. but it is doubly surprising to observe that these enormous pretensions were advanced by one whose special peculiarity, not only among his contemporaries but among the remarkable men that have appeared before and since, was an almost feminine tenderness and humility. this characteristic was remarked, as we have seen, by the baptist, and christ himself was fully conscious of it. yet so clear to him was his own dignity and infinite importance to the human race as an objective fact with which his own opinion of himself had nothing to do, that in the same breath in which he asserts it in the most unmeasured language, he alludes, apparently with entire unconsciousness, to his _humility_. "take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; _for i am meek and lowly of heart_." and again, when speaking to his followers of the arrogance of the pharisees, he says, "they love to be called rabbi; but be not you called rabbi: _for one is your master, even christ_." who is the humble man? it is he who resists with special watchfulness and success the temptations which the conditions of his life may offer to exaggerate his own importance.... if he judged himself correctly, and if the baptist described him well when he compared him to a lamb, and, we may add, if his biographers have delineated his character faithfully, christ was one naturally contented with obscurity, wanting the restless desire for distinction and eminence which is common in great men, hating to put forward personal claims, disliking competition and "disputes who should be greatest," finding something bombastic in the titles of royalty, fond of what is simple and homely, of children, of poor people, occupying himself so much with the concerns of others, with the relief of sickness and want, that the temptation to exaggerate the importance of his own thoughts and plans was not likely to master him; lastly, entertaining for the human race a feeling so singularly fraternal that he was likely to reject as a sort of treason the impulse to set himself in any manner above them. christ, it appears, was this humble man. when we have fully pondered the fact we may be in a condition to estimate the force of the evidence which, submitted to his mind, could induce him, in direct opposition to all his tastes and instincts, to lay claim, persistently, with the calmness of entire conviction, in opposition to the whole religious world, in spite of the offence which his own followers conceived, to a dominion more transcendent, more universal, more complete, than the most delirious votary of glory ever aspired to in his dreams. and what is it that our lord has done for man by being so truly man? this then it is which is wanted to raise the feeling of humanity into an enthusiasm; when the precept of love has been given, an image must be set before the eyes of those who are called upon to obey it, an ideal or type of man which may be noble and amiable enough to raise the whole race and make the meanest member of it sacred with reflected glory. did not christ do this? did the command to love go forth to those who had never seen a human being they could revere? could his followers turn upon him and say, how can we love a creature so degraded, full of vile wants and contemptible passions, whose little life is most harmlessly spent when it is an empty round of eating and sleeping; a creature destined for the grave and for oblivion when his allotted term of fretfulness and folly has expired? of this race christ himself was a member, and to this day is it not the best answer to all blasphemers of the species, the best consolation when our sense of its degradation is keenest, that a human brain was behind his forehead, and a human heart beating in his breast, and that within the whole creation of god nothing more elevated or more attractive has yet been found than he? and if it be answered that there was in his nature something exceptional and peculiar, that humanity must not be measured by the stature of christ, let us remember that it was precisely thus that he wished it to be measured, delighting to call himself the son of man, delighting to call the meanest of mankind his brothers. if some human beings are abject and contemptible, if it be incredible to us that they can have any high dignity or destiny, do we regard them from so great a height as christ? are we likely to be more pained by their faults and deficiencies than he was? is our standard higher than his? and yet he associated by preference with the meanest of the race; no contempt for them did he ever express, no suspicion that they might be less dear than the best and wisest to the common father, no doubt that they were naturally capable of rising to a moral elevation like his own. there is nothing of which a man may be prouder than of this; it is the most hopeful and redeeming fact in history; it is precisely what was wanting to raise the love of man as man to enthusiasm. an eternal glory has been shed upon the human race by the love christ bore to it and it was because the edict of universal love went forth to men whose hearts were in no cynical mood, but possessed with a spirit of devotion to a man, that words which at any other time, however grandly they might sound, would have been but words, penetrated so deeply, and along with the law of love the power of love was given. therefore also the first christians were enabled to dispense with philosophical phrases, and instead of saying that they loved the ideal of man in man, could simply say and feel that they loved christ in every man. we have here the very kernel of the christian moral scheme. we have distinctly before us the end christ proposed to himself, and the means he considered adequate to the attainment of it.... but how to give to the meagre and narrow hearts of men such enlargement? how to make them capable of a universal sympathy? christ believed it possible to bind men to their kind, but on one condition--that they were first bound fast to himself. he stood forth as the representative of men, he identified himself with the cause and with the interests of all human beings; he was destined, as he began before long obscurely to intimate, to lay down his life for them. few of us sympathise originally and directly with this devotion; few of us can perceive in human nature itself any merit sufficient to evoke it. but it is not so hard to love and venerate him who felt it. so vast a passion of love, a devotion so comprehensive, elevated, deliberate, and profound, has not elsewhere been in any degree approached save by some of his imitators. and as love provokes love, many have found it possible to conceive for christ an attachment the closeness of which no words can describe, a veneration so possessing and absorbing the man within them, that they have said, "i live no more, but christ lives in me." and what, in fact, has been the result, after the utmost and freest abatement for the objections of those who criticise the philosophical theories or the practical effects of christianity? but that christ's method, when rightly applied, is really of mighty force may be shown by an argument which the severest censor of christians will hardly refuse to admit. compare the ancient with the modern world: "look on this picture and on that." the broad distinction in the characters of men forces itself into prominence. among all the men of the ancient heathen world there were scarcely one or two to whom we might venture to apply the epithet "holy." in other words, there were not more than one or two, if any, who, besides being virtuous in their actions, were possessed with an unaffected enthusiasm of goodness, and besides abstaining from vice, regarded even a vicious thought with horror. probably no one will deny that in christian countries this higher-toned goodness, which we call holiness, has existed. few will maintain that it has been exceedingly rare. perhaps the truth is that there has scarcely been a town in any christian country since the time of christ, where a century has passed without exhibiting a character of such elevation that his mere presence has shamed the bad and made the good better, and has been felt at times like the presence of god himself. and if this be so, has christ failed? or can christianity die? the principle of feeling and action which christ implanted in that divine society which he founded, or in other words, his morality, had two peculiarities; it sprang, and it must spring still, from what this writer calls all through an "enthusiasm"; and this enthusiasm was kindled and maintained by the influence of a person. there can be no goodness without impulses to goodness, any more than these impulses are enough without being directed by truth and reason; but the impulses must come before the guidance, and "christ's theocracy" is described "as a great attempt to set all the virtues of the world on this basis, and to give it a visible centre and fountain." he thus describes how personal influence is the great instrument of moral quickening and elevation:-- how do men become for the most part "pure, generous, and humane"? by personal, not by logical influences. they have been reared by parents who had these qualities, they have lived in a society which had a high tone, they have been accustomed to see just acts done, to hear gentle words spoken, and the justness and the gentleness have passed into their hearts, and slowly moulded their habits and made their moral discernment clear; they remember commands and prohibitions which it is a pleasure to obey for the sake of those who gave them; often they think of those who may be dead and say, "how would this action appear to him? would he approve that word or disapprove it?" to such no baseness appears a small baseness because its consequences may be small, nor does the yoke of law seem burdensome although it is ever on their necks, nor do they dream of covering a sin by an atoning act of virtue. often in solitude they blush when some impure fancy sails across the clear heaven of their minds, because they are never alone, because the absent examples, the authorities they still revere, rule not their actions only but their inmost hearts; because their conscience is indeed awake and alive, representing all the nobleness with which they stand in sympathy, and reporting their most hidden indecorum before a public opinion of the absent and the dead. of these two influences--that of reason and that of living example--which would a wise reformer reinforce? christ chose the last he gathered all men into a common relation to himself, and demanded that each should set him on the pedestal of his heart, giving a lower place to all other objects of worship, to father and mother, to husband or wife. in him should the loyalty of all hearts centre; he should be their pattern, their authority and judge. of him and his service should no man be ashamed, but to those who acknowledged it morality should be an easy yoke, and the law of right as spontaneous as the law of life; sufferings should be easy to bear, and the loss of worldly friends repaired by a new home in the bosom of the christian kingdom; finally, in death itself their sleep should be sweet upon whose tombstone it could be written "obdormivit in christo." in his treatment of this part of the subject, the work of christ as the true creator, through the christian church, of living morality, what is peculiar and impressive is the way in which sympathy with christianity in its antique and original form, in its most austere, unearthly, exacting aspects, is combined with sympathy with the practical realities of modern life, with its boldness, its freedom, its love of improvement, its love of truth. it is no common grasp which can embrace both so easily and so firmly. he is one of those writers whose strong hold on their ideas is shown by the facility with which they can afford to make large admissions, which are at first sight startling. nowhere are more tremendous passages written than in this book about the corruptions of that christianity which yet the writer holds to be the one hope and safeguard of mankind. he is not afraid to pursue his investigation independently of any inquiry into the peculiar claims to authority of the documents on which it rests. he at once goes to their substance and their facts, and the person and life and character which they witness to. he is not afraid to put faith on exactly the same footing as life, neither higher nor lower, as the title to membership in the church; a doctrine which, if it makes imperfect and rudimentary faith as little a disqualification as imperfect and inconsistent life, obviously does not exclude the further belief that deliberate heresy is on the same level with deliberate profligacy. but the clear sense of what is substantial, the power of piercing through accidents and conditions to the real kernel of the matter, the scornful disregard of all entanglement of apparent contradictions and inconsistencies, enable him to bring out the lesson which he finds before him with overpowering force. he sees before him immense mercy, immense condescension, immense indulgence; but there are also immense requirements--requirements not to be fulfilled by rule or exhausted by the lapse of time, and which the higher they raise men the more they exact--an immense seriousness and strictness, an immense care for substance and truth, to the disregard, if necessary, of the letter and the form. the "dispensation of the spirit" has seldom had an interpreter more in earnest and more determined to see meaning in his words. we have room but for two illustrations. he is combating the notion that the work of christianity and the church nowadays is with the good, and that it is waste of hope and strength to try to reclaim the bad and the lost:-- once more, however, the world may answer, christ may be consistent in this, but is he wise? it may be true that he does demand an enthusiasm, and that such an enthusiasm may be capable of awakening the moral sense in hearts in which it seemed dead. but if, notwithstanding this demand, only a very few members of the christian church are capable of the enthusiasm, what use in imposing on the whole body a task which the vast majority are not qualified to perform? would it not be well to recognise the fact which we cannot alter, and to abstain from demanding from frail human nature what human nature cannot render? would it not be well for the church to impose upon its ordinary members only ordinary duties? when the bernard or the whitefield appears let her by all means find occupation for him. let her in such cases boldly invade the enemy's country. but in ordinary times would it not be well for her to confine herself to more modest and practicable undertakings? there is much for her to do even though she should honestly confess herself unable to reclaim the lost. she may reclaim the young, administer reproof to slight lapses, maintain a high standard of virtue, soften manners, diffuse enlightenment. would it not be well for her to adapt her ends to her means? no, it would not be well; it would be fatal to do so; and christ meant what he said, and said what was true, when he pronounced the enthusiasm of humanity to be everything, and the absence of it to be the absence of everything. the world understands its own routine well enough; what it does not understand is the mode of changing that routine. it has no appreciation of the nature or measure of the power of enthusiasm, and on this matter it learns nothing from experience, but after every fresh proof of that power, relapses from its brief astonishment into its old ignorance, and commits precisely the same miscalculation on the next occasion. the power of enthusiasm is, indeed, far from being unlimited; in some cases it is very small.... but one power enthusiasm has almost without limit--the power of propagating itself; and it was for this that christ depended on it. he contemplated a church in which the enthusiasm of humanity should not be felt by two or three only, but widely. in whatever heart it might be kindled, he calculated that it would pass rapidly into other hearts, and that as it can make its heat felt outside the church, so it would preserve the church itself from lukewarmncss. for a lukewarm church he would not condescend to legislate, nor did he regard it as at all inevitable that the church should become lukewarm. he laid it as a duty upon the church to reclaim the lost, because he did not think it utopian to suppose that the church might be not in its best members only, but through its whole body, inspired by that ardour of humanity that can charm away the bad passions of the wildest heart, and open to the savage and the outlaw lurking in moral wildernesses an entrancing view of the holy and tranquil order that broods over the streets and palaces of the city of god.... christianity is an enthusiasm or it is nothing; and if there sometimes appear in the history of the church instances of a tone which is pure and high without being enthusiastic, of a mood of christian feeling which is calmly favourable to virtue without being victorious against vice, it will probably be found that all that is respectable in such a mood is but the slowly-subsiding movement of an earlier enthusiasm, and all that is produced by the lukewarmness of the time itself is hypocrisy and corrupt conventionalism. christianity, then, would sacrifice its divinity if it abandoned its missionary character and became a mere educational institution. surely this article of conversion is the true _articulus stantis aut cadentis ecclesiae_. when the power of reclaiming the lost dies out of the church, it ceases to be the church. it may remain a useful institution, though it is most likely to become an immoral and mischievous one. where the power remains, there, whatever is wanting, it may still be said that "the tabernacle of god is with men." one more passage about those who in all churches and sects think that all that christ meant by his call was to give them a means to do what the french call _faire son salut_:-- it appears throughout the sermon on the mount that there was a class of persons whom christ regarded with peculiar aversion--the persons who call themselves one thing and are another. he describes them by a word which originally meant an "actor." probably it may in christ's time have already become current in the sense which we give to the word "hypocrite." but no doubt whenever it was used the original sense of the word was distinctly remembered. and in this sermon, whenever christ denounces any vice, it is with the words "be not you like the actors." in common with all great reformers, christ felt that honesty in word and deed was the fundamental virtue; dishonesty, including affectation, self-consciousness, love of stage effect, the one incurable vice. our thoughts, words, and deeds are to be of a piece. for example, if we would pray to god, let us go into some inner room where none but god shall see us; to pray at the corner of the streets, where the passing crowd may admire our devotion, is to _act_ a prayer. if we would keep down the rebellious flesh by fasting, this concerns ourselves only; it is acting to parade before the world our self-mortification. and if we would put down sin let us put it down in ourselves first; it is only the actor who begins by frowning at it in others. but there are subtler forms of hypocrisy, which christ does not denounce, probably because they have sprung since out of the corruption of a subtler creed. the hypocrite of that age wanted simply money or credit with the people. his ends were those of the vulgar, though his means were different christ endeavoured to cure both alike of their vulgarity by telling them of other riches and another happiness laid up in heaven. some, of course, would neither understand nor regard his words, others would understand and receive them. but a third class would receive them without understanding them, and instead of being cured of their avarice and sensuality, would simply transfer them to new objects of desire. shrewd enough to discern christ's greatness, instinctively believing what he said to be true, they would set out with a triumphant eagerness in pursuit of the heavenly riches, and laugh at the short-sighted and weak-minded speculator who contented himself with the easy but insignificant profits of a worldly life. they would practise assiduously the rules by which christ said heaven was to be won. they would patiently turn the left cheek, indefatigibly walk the two miles, they would bless with effusion those who cursed them, and pray fluently for those who used them spitefully. to love their enemies, to love any one, they would certainly find impossible, but the outward signs of love might easily be learnt. and thus there would arise a new class of actors, not like those whom christ denounced, exhibiting before an earthly audience and receiving their pay from human managers, but hoping to be paid for their performance out of the incorruptible treasures, and to impose by their dramatic talent upon their father in heaven. we have said that one peculiarity of this work is the connection which is kept in view from the first between the founder and his work; between christ and the christian church. he finds it impossible to speak of him without that still existing witness of his having come, which is only less wonderful and unique than himself. this is where, for the present, he leaves the subject:-- for the new jerusalem, as we witness it, is no more exempt from corruption than was the old.... first the rottenness of dying superstitions, their barbaric manners, their intellectualism preferring system and debate to brotherhood, strangling christianity with theories and framing out of it a charlatan's philosophy which madly tries to stop the progress of science--all these corruptions have in the successive ages of its long life infected the church, and many new and monstrous perversions of individual character have disgraced it. the creed which makes human nature richer and larger makes men at the same time capable of profounder sins; admitted into a holier sanctuary, they are exposed to the temptation of a greater sacrilege; awakened to the sense of new obligations, they sometimes lose their simple respect for the old ones; saints that have resisted the subtlest temptations sometimes begin again, as it were, by yielding without a struggle to the coarsest; hypocrisy has become tenfold more ingenious and better supplied with disguises; in short, human nature has inevitably developed downwards as well as upwards, and if the christian ages be compared with those of heathenism, they are found worse as well as better, and it is possible to make it a question whether mankind has gained on the whole.... but the triumph of the christian church is that it is _there_--that the most daring of all speculative dreams, instead of being found impracticable, has been carried into effect, and when carried into effect, instead of being confined to a few select spirits, has spread itself over a vast space of the earth's surface, and when thus diffused, instead of giving place after an age or two to something more adapted to a later time, has endured for two thousand years, and at the end of two thousand years, instead of lingering as a mere wreck spared by the tolerance of the lovers of the past, still displays vigour and a capacity of adjusting itself to new conditions, and lastly, in all the transformations it undergoes, remains visibly the same thing and inspired by its founder's universal and unquenchable spirit. it is in this and not in any freedom from abuses that the divine power of christianity appears. again, it is in this, and not in any completeness or all-sufficiency.... but the achievement of christ in founding by his single will and power a structure so durable and so universal, is like no other achievement which history records. the masterpieces of the men of action are coarse and common in comparison with it, and the masterpieces of speculation flimsy and insubstantial. when we speak of it the commonplaces of admiration fail us altogether. shall we speak of the originality of the design, of the skill displayed in the execution? all such terms are inadequate. originality and contriving skill operated indeed, but, as it were, implicitly. the creative effort which produced that against which, it is said, the gates of hell shall not prevail, cannot be analysed. no architects' designs were furnished for the new jerusalem, no committee drew up rules for the universal commonwealth. if in the works of nature we can trace the indications of calculation, of a struggle with difficulties, of precaution, of ingenuity, then in christ's work it may be that the same indications occur. but these inferior and secondary powers were not consciously exercised; they were implicitly present in the manifold yet single creative act. the inconceivable work was done in calmness; before the eyes of men it was noiselessly accomplished, attracting little attention. who can describe that which unites men? who has entered into the formation of speech which is the symbol of their union? who can describe exhaustively the origin of civil society? he who can do these things can explain the origin of the christian church. for others it must be enough to say, "the holy ghost fell on those that believed." no man saw the building of the new jerusalem, the workmen crowded together, the unfinished walls and unpaved streets; no man heard the chink of trowel and pickaxe; it descended _out of heaven from god_. and here we leave this remarkable book. it seems to us one of those which permanently influence opinion, not so much by argument as such, as by opening larger views of the familiar and the long-debated, by deepening the ordinary channels of feeling, and by bringing men back to seriousness and rekindling their admiration, their awe, their love, about what they know best. we have not dwelt on minute criticisms about points to which exception might be taken. we have not noticed even positions on which, without further explanation, we should more or less widely disagree. the general scope of it, and the seriousness as well as the grandeur and power with which the main idea is worked out, seem to make mere secondary objections intolerable. it is a fragment, with the disadvantages of a fragment. what is put before us is far from complete, and it needs to be completed. in part at least an answer has been given to the question _what_ christ was; but the question remains, not less important, and of which the answer is only here foreshadowed, _who_ he was. but so far as it goes, what it does is this: in the face of all attempts to turn christianity into a sentiment or a philosophy, it asserts, in a most remarkable manner, a historical religion and a historical church; but it also seeks, in a manner equally remarkable, to raise and elevate the thoughts of all, on all sides, about christ, as he showed himself in the world, and about what christianity was meant to be; to touch new springs of feeling; to carry back the church to its "hidden fountains," and pierce through the veils which hide from us the reality of the wonders in which it began. the book is indeed a protest against the stiffness of all cast-iron systems, and a warning against trusting in what is worn out. but it shows how the modern world, so complex, so refined, so wonderful, is, in all that it accounts good, but a reflection of what is described in the gospels, and its civilisation, but an application of the laws of christ, changing, it may be, indefinitely in outward form, but depending on their spirit as its ever-living spring. if we have misunderstood this book, and its cautious understatements are not understatements at all, but represent the limits beyond which the writer does not go, we can only say again it is one-of the strangest among books. if we have not misunderstood him, we have before us a writer who has a right to claim deference from those who think deepest and know most, when he pleads before them that not philosophy can save and reclaim the world, but faith in a divine person who is worthy of it, allegiance to a divine society which he founded, and union of hearts in the object for which he created it. x the author of "robert elsmere" on a new reformation[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th march . mrs. ward, in the _nineteenth century_, develops with warmth and force the theme and serious purpose of _robert elsmere_; and she does so, using the same literary method which she used, certainly with effect, in the story itself. every age has its congenial fashion of discussing the great questions which affect, or seem to affect, the fate of mankind. according to the time and its circumstances, it is a _summa theologiae_, or a _divina commedia_, or a _novum organum_, or a calvin's _institutes_, or a locke _on the understanding_, or an _encyclopedia_, or a _candide_, which sets people thinking more than usual and comparing their thoughts. long ago in the history of human questioning, plato and cicero discovered the advantages over dry argument of character and easy debate, and so much of story as clothed abstractions and hard notions with human life and affections. it is a weighty precedent. and as the prophetess of a "new reformation" mrs. ward has reverted to what is substantially the same method. she is within her right. we do not blame her for putting her argument into the shape of a novel, and bringing out the points of her case in the trials and passionate utterances of imaginary persons, or in a conversation about their mental history. but she must take the good with the bad. such a method has its obvious advantages, in freedom, and convenience, and range of illustration. it has its disadvantages. the dealer in imagination may easily become the unconscious slave of imagination; and, living in a self-constructed world, may come to forget that there is any other; and the temptation to unfairness becomes enormous when all who speak, on one side or the other, only speak as you make or let them speak. it is to imagination that _robert elsmere_ makes its main appeal, undoubtedly a powerful and pathetic one. it bids us ask ourselves what, with the phenomena before us, we can conceive possible and real. it implies, of course, much learning, with claims of victory in the spheres of history and science, with names great in criticism, of whom few readers probably can estimate the value, though all may be affected by the formidable array. but it is not in these things, as with a book like _supernatural religion_, that the gist of the argument lies. the alleged results of criticism are taken for granted; whether rightly or wrongly the great majority of readers certainly cannot tell. but then the effect of the book, or the view which it represents, begins. imagine a man, pure-minded, earnest, sensitive, self-devoted, plunged into the tremendous questions of our time. bit by bit he finds what he thought to be the truth of truths breaking away. in the darkness and silence with which nature covers all beyond the world of experience he thought he had found light and certainty from on high. he thought that he had assurances and pledges which could not fail him, that god was in the world, governed it, loved it, showed himself in it he thought he had a great and authentic story to fall back upon, and a sacred book, which was its guaranteed witness, and by which god still spoke to his soul. he thought that, whatever he did not know, he knew this, and this was a hope to live and die in; with all that he saw round him, of pain and sin and misery, here was truth on which he could rest secure, in his fight with evil. like the rest of us, he knew that terrible, far-reaching, heart-searching questions were abroad; that all that to him was sacred and unapproachable in its sanctity was not so to all--was not so, perhaps, to men whom he felt to be stronger and more knowing than himself--was not so, perhaps, to some who seemed to him to stand, in character and purpose, at a moral height above him. still he thought himself in full possession of the truth which god had given him, till at length, in one way or another, the tide of questioning reached him. then begins the long agony. he hears that what he never doubted is said to be incredible, and is absolutely given up. he finds himself bin-rounded by hostile powers of thought, by an atmosphere which insensibly but irresistibly governs opinion, by doubt and denial in the air, by keen and relentless intellect, before which he can only he silent; he sees and hears all round the disintegrating process going on in the creeds and institutions and intellectual statements of christianity. he is assured, and sees some reason to believe it, that the intellect of the day is against him and his faith; and further, that unreality taints everything, belief and reasoning, and profession and conduct step by step he is forced from one position and another; the process was a similar and a familiar one when the great roman secession was going on fifty years ago. but now, in robert elsmere, comes the upshot. he is not landed, as some logical minds have been, which have gone through the same process, in mere unbelief or indifference. he is too good for that. something of his old christianity is too deeply engrained in him. he cannot go back from the moral standard to which it accustomed him. he will serve god in a christian spirit and after the example of christ, though not in what can claim to be called a christian way. he is the beginner of one more of the numberless attempts to find a new mode of religion, purer than any of the old ones could be--of what mrs. ward calls in her new paper "a new reformation." in this paper, which is more distinctly a dialogue on the platonic model, she isolates the main argument on which the story was based, but without any distinct reference to any of the criticisms on her book. _robert elsmere_ rests on the achievements of historic criticism, chiefly german criticism. from the traditional, old-fashioned christian way of regarding and using the old records which we call the bible, the ground, we are told, is hopelessly and for ever cut away by german historical criticism. and the difference between the old and the modern way of regarding and using them is expressed by the difference between _bad translation_ and _good_; the old way of reading, quoting, and estimating ancient documents of all kinds was purblind, lifeless, narrow, mechanical, whereas the modern comparative and critical method not only is more sure in important questions of authenticity, but puts true life and character and human feeling and motives into the personages who wrote these documents, and of whom they speak. these books were entirely misunderstood, even if people knew the meaning of their words; now, at last, we can enter into their real spirit and meaning. and where such a change of method and point of view, as regards these documents, is wholesale and sweeping, it involves a wholesale and sweeping change in all that is founded on them. revised ideas about the bible mean a revised and reconstructed christianity--"a new reformation." mrs. ward lays more stress than everybody will agree to on what she likens to the difference between _good translation_ and _bad_, in dealing with the materials of history. doubtless, in our time, the historical imagination, like the historical conscience, has been awakened. in history, as in other things, the effort after the real and the living has been very marked; it has sometimes resulted, as we know, in that parading of the real which we call the realistic. the mode of telling a story or stating a case varies, even characteristically, from age to age, from macaulay to hume, from hume to rapin, from rapin to holinshed or hall; but after all, the story in its main features remains, after allowing for the differences in the mode of presenting it. german criticism, to which we are expected to defer, has its mode. it combines two elements--a diligent, searching, lawyer-like habit of cross-examination, laborious, complete and generally honest, which, when it is not spiteful or insolent, deserves all the praise it receives; but with it a sense of the probable, in dealing with the materials collected, and a straining after attempts to construct theories and to give a vivid reality to facts and relations, which are not always so admirable; which lead, in fact, sometimes to the height of paradox, or show mere incapacity to deal with the truth and depth of life, or make use of a poor and mean standard--_mesquin_ would be the french word--in the interpretation of actions and aims. it has impressed on us the lesson--not to be forgotten when we read mrs. ward's lists of learned names--that weight and not number is the test of good evidence. german learning is decidedly imposing. but after all there are germans and germans; and with all that there has been of great in german work there has been also a large proportion of what is bad--conceited, arrogant, shallow, childish. german criticism has been the hunting-ground of an insatiable love of sport--may we not say, without irreverence, the scene of the discovery of a good many mares' nests? when the question is asked, why all this mass of criticism has made so little impression on english thought, the answer is, because of its extravagant love of theorising, because of its divergences and variations, because of its negative results. those who have been so eager to destroy have not been so successful in construction. clever theories come to nothing; streams which began with much noise at last lose themselves in the sand. undoubtedly, it presents a very important, and, in many ways, interesting class of intellectual phenomena, among the many groups of such inquiries, moral, philosophical, scientific, political, social, of which the world is full, and of which no sober thinker expects to see the end. if this vaunted criticism is still left to scholars, it is because it is still in the stage in which only scholars are competent to examine and judge it; it is not fit to be a factor in the practical thought and life of the mass of mankind. answers, and not merely questions, are what we want, who have to live, and work, and die. criticism has pulled about the bible without restraint or scruple. we are all of us steeped in its daring assumptions and shrewd objections. have its leaders yet given us an account which it is reasonable to receive, clear, intelligible, self-consistent and consistent with all the facts, of what this mysterious book is? meanwhile, in the face of theories and conjectures and negative arguments, there is something in the world which is fact, and hard fact. the christian church is the most potent fact in the most important ages of the world's progress. it is an institution like the world itself, which has grown up by its own strength and according to its own principle of life, full of good and evil, having as the law of its fate to be knocked about in the stern development of events, exposed, like human society, to all kinds of vicissitudes and alternations, giving occasion to many a scandal, and shaking the faith and loyalty of many a son, showing in ample measure the wear and tear of its existence, battered, injured, sometimes degenerate, sometimes improved, in one way or another, since those dim and long distant days when its course began; but showing in all these ways what a real thing it is, never in the extremity of storms and ruin, never in the deepest degradation of its unfaithfulness, losing hold of its own central unchanging faith, and never in its worst days of decay and corruption losing hold of the power of self-correction and hope of recovery. _solvitur ambulando_ is an argument to which mrs. ward appeals, in reply to doubts about the solidity of the "new reformation." it could be urged more modestly if the march of the "new reformation" had lasted for even half of one of the christian centuries. the church is in the world, as the family is in the world, as the state is in the world, as morality is in the world, a fact of the same order and greatness. like these it has to make its account with the "all-dissolving" assaults of human thought. like these it has to prove itself by living, and it does do so. in all its infinite influences and ministries, in infinite degrees and variations, it is the public source of light and good and hope. if there are select and aristocratic souls who can do without it, or owe it nothing, the multitude of us cannot. and the christian church is founded on a definite historic fact, that jesus christ who was crucified rose from the dead; and, coming from such an author, it comes to us, bringing with it the bible. the fault of a book like _robert elsmere_ is that it is written with a deliberate ignoring that these two points are not merely important, but absolutely fundamental, in the problems with which it deals. with these not faced and settled it is like looking out at a prospect through a window of which all the glass is ribbed and twisted, distorting everything. it may be that even yet we imperfectly understand our wondrous bible. it may be that we have yet much to learn about it. it may be that there is much that is very difficult about it. let us reverently and fearlessly learn all we can about it. let us take care not to misuse it, as it has been terribly misused. but coming to us from the company and with the sanction of christ risen, it never can be merely like other books. a so-called christianity, ignoring or playing with christ's resurrection, and using the bible as a sort of homer, may satisfy a class of clever and cultivated persons. it may be to them the parent of high and noble thoughts, and readily lend itself to the service of mankind. but it is well in so serious a matter not to confuse things. this new religion may borrow from christianity as it may borrow from plato, or from buddhism, or confucianism, or even islam. but it is not christianity. _robert elsmere_ may be true to life, as representing one of those tragedies which happen in critical moments of history. but a christianity which tells us to think of christ doing good, but to forget and put out of sight christ risen from the dead, is not true to life. it is as delusive to the conscience and the soul as it is illogical to reason. xi renan's "vie de jÉsus"[ ] [ ] _histoire des origines du christianisme_. livre i.--_vie de jésus_. par ernest renan. _guardian_, th september . unbelief is called upon nowadays, as well as belief, to give its account of the origin of that undeniable and most important fact which we call the christian religion. and if it is true that in some respects the circumstances under which the controversy is carried on are, as it has been alleged, more than heretofore favourable to unbelief, it is also true that in some other respects the case of unbelief has difficulties which it had not once. it has to accept and admit, if it wishes to gain a favourable hearing from the present generation, the unique and surpassing moral grandeur, depth, and attractiveness of christianity. the polemic method which set christianity in broad contrast with what was supposed to be best and highest in human nature, and therefore found no difficulty in tracing to a bad source what was itself represented to be bad, is not a method suited to the ideas and feelings of our time; and the sneers and sarcasms of the last century, provoked by abuses and inconsistencies which have since received their ample and memorable punishment, cease to produce any effect on readers of the present day, except to call forth a passing feeling of repugnance at what is shallow and profane, mixed, it may be, sometimes, with an equally passing admiration for what is witty and brilliant. even in m. renan's view, voltaire has done his work, and is out of date. those who now attack christianity have to attack it under the disadvantage of the preliminary admission that its essential and distinguishing elements are, on the whole, in harmony and not in discordance with the best conceptions of human duty and life, and that its course and progress have been, at any rate, concurrent with all that is best and most hopeful in human history. first allowing that as a fact it contains in it things than which we cannot imagine anything better, and without which we should never have reached to where we are, they then have to dispute its divine claims. no man could write persuasively on religion now, _against_ it any more than _for_ it, who did not show that he was fully penetrated not only with its august and beneficent aspect, but with the essential and everlasting truths which, in however imperfect shapes, or whencesoever derived, are embodied in it and are ministered by it to society. that christianity is, as a matter of fact, a successful and a living religion, in a degree absolutely without parallel in any other religion, is the point from which its assailants have now to start. they have also to take account of the circumstance, to the recognition of which the whole course of modern thought and inquiry has brought us, that it has been successful, not by virtue merely of any outward and accidental favouring circumstances, but of its intrinsic power and of principles which are inseparable from its substance. this being the condition of the question, those who deny its claim to a direct divine origin have to frame their theory of it so as to account, on principles supposed to be common to it and other religions, not merely for its rise and its conquests, but for those broad and startling differences which separate it, in character and in effects, from all other known religions. they have to show how that which is instinct with never-dying truth sprang out of what was false and mistaken, if not corrupt; how that which alone has revealed god to man's conscience had no other origin than what in other instances has led men through enthusiasm and imposture to a barren or a mischievous superstition. such an attempt is the work before us--a work destined, probably, both from its ability and power and from its faults, to be for modern france what the work of strauss was for germany, the standard expression of an unbelief which shrinks with genuine distaste from the coarse and negative irreligion of older infidelity, and which is too refined, too profound and sympathetic in its views of human nature, to be insensible to those numberless points in which as a fact christianity has given expression to the best and highest thoughts that man can have. strauss, to account for what we see, imagined an idea, or a set of ideas, gradually worked out into the shape of a history, of which scarcely anything can be taken as real matter of fact, except the bare existence of the person who was clothed in the process of time with the attributes created by the idealising legend. such a view is too vague and indistinct to satisfy french minds. a theory of this sort, to find general acceptance in france, must start with concrete history, and not be history held in solution in the cloudy shapes of myths which vanish as soon as touched. m. renan's process is in the main the reverse of strauss's. he undertakes to extract the real history recorded in the gospels; and not only so, but to make it even more palpable and interesting, if not more wonderful, than it seems at first sight in the original records, by removing the crust of mistake and exaggeration which has concealed the true character of what the narrative records; by rewriting it according to those canons of what is probable and intelligible in human life and capacity which are recognised in the public whom he addresses. two of these canons govern the construction of the book. one of them is the assumption that in no part of the history of man is the supernatural to be admitted. this, of course, is not peculiar to m. renan, though he lays it down with such emphasis in all his works, and is so anxious to bring it into distinct notice on every occasion, that it is manifestly one which he is desirous to impress on all who read him, as one of the ultimate and unquestionable foundations of all historical inquiry. the other canon is one of moral likelihood, and it is, that it is credible and agreeable to what we gather from experience, that the highest moral elevation ever attained by man should have admitted along with it, and for its ends, conscious imposture. on the first of these assumptions, all that is miraculous in the gospel narratives is, not argued about, or, except perhaps in one instance--the raising of lazarus--attempted to be accounted for or explained, but simply left out and ignored. on the second, the fact from which there is no escape--that he whom m. renan venerates with a sincerity which no one can doubt as the purest and greatest of moral reformers, did claim power from god to work miracles--is harmonised with the assumption that the claim could not possibly have been a true one. m. renan professes to give an historical account of the way in which the deepest, purest, most enduring religious principles known among men were, not merely found out and announced, but propagated and impressed upon the foremost and most improved portions of mankind, by the power of a single character. it is impossible, without speaking of jesus of nazareth as christians are used to do, to speak of his character and of the results of his appearance in loftier terms than this professed unbeliever in his divine claims. but when the account is drawn out in detail, of a cause alleged to be sufficient to produce such effects, the apparent inadequacy of it is most startling. when we think of what christianity is and has done, and that, in m. renan's view, christ, the christ whom he imagines and describes, is all in all to christianity, and then look to what he conceives to have been the original spring and creative impulse of its achievements, the first feeling is that no shifts that belief has sometimes been driven to, to keep within the range of the probable, are greater than those accepted by unbelief, in its most enlightened and reflecting representations. to suppose such an one as m. renan paints, changing the whole course of history, overturning and converting the world, and founding the religion which m. renan thinks the lasting religion of mankind, involves a force upon our imagination and reason to which it is not easy to find a parallel. his view is that a galilean peasant, in advance of his neighbours and countrymen only in the purity, force, and singleness of purpose with which he realised the highest moral truths of jewish religious wisdom, first charming a few simple provincials by the freshness and native beauty of his lessons, was then led on, partly by holy zeal against falsehood and wickedness, partly by enthusiastic delusions as to his own mission and office, to attack the institutions of judaism, and perished in the conflict--and that this was the cause why christianity and christendom came to be and exist. this is the explanation which a great critical historian, fully acquainted with the history of other religions, presents, as a satisfactory one, of a phenomenon so astonishing and unique as that of a religion which has suited itself with undiminished vitality to the changes, moral, social, and political, which have marked the eighteen centuries of european history. there have been other enthusiasts for goodness and truth, more or less like the character which m. renan draws in his book, but they have never yet founded a universal religion, or one which had the privilege of perpetual youth and unceasing self-renovation. there have been other great and imposing religions, commanding the allegiance for century after century of millions of men; but who will dare assert that any of these religions, that of sakya-mouni, of mahomet, or that of the vedas, could possibly be the religion, or satisfy the religious ideas and needs, of the civilised west? when m. renan comes to detail he is as strangely insensible to what seem at first sight the simplest demands of probability. as it were by a sort of reaction to the minute realising of particulars which has been in vogue among some roman catholic writers, m. renan realises too--realises with no less force and vividness, and, according to his point of view, with no less affectionate and tender interest. he popularises the gospels; but not for a religious set of readers--nor, we must add, for readers of thought and sense, whether interested for or against christianity, but for a public who study life in the subtle and highly wrought novels of modern times. he appeals from what is probable to those representations of human nature which aspire to pass beyond the conventional and commonplace, and especially he dwells on neglected and unnoticed examples of what is sweet and soft and winning. but it is hard to recognise the picture he has drawn in the materials out of which he has composed it. the world is tolerably familiar with them. if there is a characteristic, consciously or unconsciously acknowledged in the gospel records, it is that of the gravity, the plain downright seriousness, the laborious earnestness, impressed from first to last on the story. when we turn from these to his pages it is difficult to exaggerate the astounding impression which his epithets and descriptions have on the mind. we are told that there is a broad distinction between the early galilean days of hope in our lord's ministry, and the later days of disappointment and conflict; and that if we look, we shall find in galilee the "_fin et joyeux moraliste_," full of a "_conversation pleine de gaieté et de charme_," of "_douce gaieté et aimables plaisanteries_," with a "_prédication suave et douce, toute pleine de la nature et du parfum des champs_," creating out of his originality of mind his "_innocents aphorismes_," and the "_genre d'élicieux_" of parabolic teaching; "_le charmant docteur qui pardonnait à tous pourvu qu'on l'aimât_." he lived in what was then an earthly paradise, in "_la joyeuse galilée_" in the midst of the "_nature ravissante_" which gave to everything about the sea of galilee "_un tour idyllique et charmant_." so the history of christianity at its birth is a "_délicieuse pastorale_" an "_idylle_," a "_milieu enivrant_" of joy and hope. the master was surrounded by a "_bande de joyeux enfants_," a "_troupe gaie et vagabonde_," whose existence in the open air was a "perpetual enchantment." the disciples were "_ces petits comités de bonnes gens_," very simple, very credulous, and like their country full of a "_sentiment gai et tendre de la vie_," and of an "_imagination riante_." everything is spoken of as "delicious"--"_délicieuse pastorale," "délicieuse beauté," "délicieuses sentences," "délicieuse théologie d'amour_." among the "tender and delicate souls of the north"--it is not quite thus that josephus describes the galileans--was set up an "_aimable communisme_." is it possible to imagine a more extravagant distortion than the following, both in its general effect and in the audacious generalisation of a very special incident, itself inaccurately conceived of?-- il parcourait ainsi la galilée au milieu _d'une fête perpétuelle_. il se servait d'une mule, monture en orient si bonne et si sûre, et dont le grand oeil noir, ombragé de longs cils, a beaucoup de douceur. ses disciples déployarent quelquefois autour de lui une pompe rustique, dont leurs vêtements, tenant lieu de tapis, faisaient les frais. ils les mettaient sur la mule qui le portait, ou les étendaient à terre sur son passage. history has seen strange hypotheses; but of all extravagant notions, that one that the world has been conquered by what was originally an idyllic gipsying party is the most grotesque. that these "_petits comités de bonnes gens_" though influenced by a great example and wakened out of their "delicious pastoral" by a heroic death, should have been able to make an impression on judaean faith, greek intellect, and roman civilisation, and to give an impulse to mankind which has lasted to this day, is surely one of the most incredible hypotheses ever accepted, under the desperate necessity of avoiding an unwelcome alternative. m. renan is willing to adopt everything in the gospel history except what is miraculous. if he is difficult to satisfy as to the physical possibility or the proof of miracles, at least he is not hard to satisfy on points of moral likelihood; and he draws on his ample power of supposing the combination of moral opposites in order to get rid of the obstinate and refractory supernatural miracle. to some extent, indeed, he avails himself of that inexhaustible resource of unlimited guessing, by means of which he reverses the whole history, and makes it take a shape which it is hard to recognise in its original records. the feeding of the five thousand, the miracle described by all the four evangelists, is thus curtly disposed of:--"il se retira au désert. beaucoup de monde l'y suivit. _grâce à une extrème frugalité_ la troupe sainte y vécut; _on crut naturellement_ voir en cela un miracle." this is all he has to say. but miracles are too closely interwoven with the whole texture of the gospel history to be, as a whole, thus disposed of. he has, of course, to admit that miracles are so mixed up with it that mere exaggeration is not a sufficient account of them. but be bids us remember that the time was one of great credulity, of slackness and incapacity in dealing with matters of evidence, a time when it might be said that there was an innocent disregard of exact and literal truth where men's souls and affections were deeply interested. but, even supposing that this accounted for a belief in certain miracles growing up--which it does not, for the time was not one of mere childlike and uninquiring belief, but was as perfectly familiar as we are with the notion of false claims to miraculous power which could not stand examination--still this does not meet the great difficulty of all, to which he is at last brought. it is undeniable that our lord professed to work miracles. they were not merely attributed to him by those who came after him. if we accept in any degree the gospel account, he not only wrought miracles, but claimed to do so; and m. renan admits it--that is, he admits that the highest, purest, most divine person ever seen on earth (for all this he declares in the most unqualified terms) stooped to the arts of simon magus or apollonius of tyana. he was a "thaumaturge"--"tard et à contre-coeur"--"avec une sorte de mauvaise humeur"--"en cachette"--"malgré lui"--"sentant le vanité de l'opinion"; but still a "thaumaturge." moreover, he was so almost of necessity; for m. renan holds that without the support of an alleged supernatural character and power, his work must have perished. everything, to succeed and be realised, must, we are told, be fortified with something of alloy. we are reminded of the "loi fatale qui condamne l'idée à déchoir dès qu'elle cherche à convertir les hommes." "concevoir de bien, en efifet, ne suffit pas; il faut le faire réussir parmi les hommes. pour cela, des voies moins pures sont nécessaires." if the great teacher had kept to the simplicity of his early lessons, he would have been greater, but "the truth would not have been promulgated." "he had to choose between these two alternatives, either renouncing his mission or becoming a 'thaumaturge.'" the miracles "were a violence done to him by his age, a concession which was wrung from him by a passing necessity." and if we feel startled at such a view, we are reminded that we must not measure the sincerity of orientals by our own rigid and critical idea of veracity; and that "such is the weakness of the human mind, that the best causes are not usually won but by bad reasons," and that the greatest of discoverers and founders have only triumphed over their difficulties "by daily taking account of men's weakness and by not always giving the true reasons of the truth." l'histoire est impossible si l'on n'admet hautement qu'il y a pour la sincerite plusieurs mesures. toutes les grandes choses se font par le peuple, or on ne conduit pas le peuple qu'en se prétant à ses idées. le philosophe, qui sachant cela, s'isole et se retranche dans sa noblesse, est hautement louable. mais celui qui prend l'humanité avec ses illusions et cherche à agir sur elle et avec elle, ne saurait être blamé. césar savait fort bien qu'il n'était pas fils de vénus; la france ne serait pas ce qu'elle est si l'on n'avait cru mille ans à la sainte ampoule de reims. il nous est facile à nous autres, impuissants que nous sommes, d'appeler cela mensonge, et fiers de notre timide honnêteté, de traiter avec dédain les héros qui out accepté dans d'autres conditions la lutte de la vie. quand nous aurons fait avec nos scrupules ce qu'ils firent avec leurs mensonges, nous aurons le droit d'être pour eux sévères. now let m. renan or any one else realise what is involved, on his supposition, not merely, as he says, of "illusion or madness," but of wilful deceit and falsehood, in the history of lazarus, even according to his lame and hesitating attempt to soften it down and extenuate it; and then put side by side with it the terms in which m. renan has summed up the moral greatness of him of whom he writes:-- la foi, l'enthousiasme, la constance de la première génération chrétienne ne s'expliquent qu'en supposant à l'origine de tout le mouvement un homme de proportions colossales.... cette sublime personne, qui chaque jour préside encore au destin du monde, il est permis de l'appeler divine, non en ce sens que jésus ait absorbé tout le divin, mais en ce sens que jésus est l'individu qui a fait faire à son espèce le plus grand pas vers le divin.... au milieu de cette uniforme vulgarité, des colonnes s'élèvent vers le ciel et attestent une plus noble destinée. jésus est la plus haute de ces colonnes qui montrent à l'homme d'où il vient et où il doit tendre. en lui s'est condensé tout ce qu'il y a de bon et d'élevé dans notre nature.... quels que puissent être les phénomènes inattendus de l'avenir, jésus ne sera pas surpassé.... tous les siècles proclameront qu'entre les fils des hommes il n'en est pas né de plus grand que jésus. and of such an one we are told that it is a natural and reasonable view to take, not merely that he claimed a direct communication with god, which disordered reason could alone excuse him for claiming, but that he based his whole mission on a pretension to such supernatural powers as a man could not pretend to without being conscious that they were delusions. the conscience of that age as to veracity or imposture was quite clear on such a point. jew and greek and roman would have condemned as a deceiver one who, not having the power, took on him to say that by the finger of god he could raise the dead. and yet to a conscience immeasurably above his age, it seems, according to m. renan, that this might be done. it is absurd to say that we must not judge such a proceeding by the ideas of our more exact and truth-loving age, when it would have been abundantly condemned by the ideas recognised in the religion and civilisation of the first century. m. renan repeatedly declares that his great aim is to save religion by relieving it of the supernatural. he does not argue; but instead of the old familiar view of the great history, he presents an opposite theory of his own, framed to suit that combination of the revolutionary and the sentimental which just now happens to be in favour in the unbelieving schools. and this is the result: a representation which boldly invests its ideal with the highest perfections of moral goodness, strength, and beauty, and yet does not shrink from associating with it also--and that, too, as the necessary and inevitable condition of success--a deliberate and systematic willingness to delude and insensibility to untruth. this is the religion and this is the reason which appeals to christ in order to condemn christianity. xii renan's "les apÔtres"[ ] [ ] _histoire des origines du christianisme_. livre ii.--_les apôtres_. par ernest renan. _saturday review_, th july . in his recent volume, _les apôtres_, m. renan has undertaken two tasks of very unequal difficulty. he accounts for the origin of the christian belief and religion, and he writes the history of its first propagation. these are very different things, and to do one of them is by no means to do the other. m. renan's historical sketch of the first steps of the christian movement is, whatever we may think of its completeness and soundness, a survey of characters and facts, based on our ordinary experience of the ways in which men act and are influenced. of course it opens questions and provokes dissent at every turn; but, after all, the history of a religion once introduced into the world is the history of the men who give it shape and preach it, who accept or oppose it. the spread and development of all religions have certain broad features in common, which admit of philosophical treatment simply as phenomena, and receive light from being compared with parallel examples of the same kind; and whether a man's historical estimate is right, and his picture accurate and true, depends on his knowledge of the facts, and his power to understand them and to make them understood. no one can dispute m. renan's qualifications for being the historian of a religious movement. the study of religion as a phenomenon of human nature and activity has paramount attractions for him. his interest in it has furnished him with ample and varied materials for comparison and generalisation. he is a scholar and a man of learning, quick and wide in his sympathies, and he commands attention by the singular charm of his graceful and lucid style. when, therefore, he undertakes to relate how, as a matter of fact, the christian church grew up amid the circumstances of its first appearance, he has simply to tell the story of the progress of a religious cause; and this is a comparatively light task for him. but he also lays before us what he appears to consider an adequate account of the origin of the christian belief. the christian belief, it must be remembered, means, not merely the belief that there was such a person as he has described in his former, volume, but the belief that one who was crucified rose again from the dead, and lives for evermore above. it is in this belief that the christian religion had its beginning; there is no connecting christ and christianity, except through the resurrection. the origin, therefore, of the belief in the resurrection, in the shape in which we have it, lies across m. renan's path to account for; and neither the picture which he has drawn in his former volume, nor the history which he follows out in this, dispense him from the necessity of facing this essential and paramount element in the problem which he has to solve. he attempts to deal with this, the knot of the great question. but his attempt seems to us to disclose a more extraordinary insensibility to the real demands of the case, and to what we cannot help calling the pitiable inadequacy of his own explanation, than we could have conceived possible in so keen and practised a mind. the resurrection, we repeat, bars the way in m. renan's scheme for making an intelligible transition, from the life and character which he has sought to reproduce from the gospels, to the first beginnings and preaching of christianity. the teacher, he says, is unique in wisdom, in goodness, in the height of his own moral stature and the divine elevation of his aims. the religion is, with all abatements and imperfections, the only one known which could be the religion of humanity. after his portraiture of the teacher, follows, naturally enough, as the result of that teacher's influence and life, a religion of corresponding elevation and promise. the passage from a teaching such as m. renan supposes to a religion such as he allows christianity to be may be reasonably understood as a natural consequence of well-known causes, but for one thing--the interposition between the two of an alleged event which simply throws out all reasonings drawn from ordinary human experience. from the teaching and life of socrates follow, naturally enough, schools of philosophy, and an impulse which has affected scientific thought ever since. from the preaching and life of mahomet follows, equally naturally, the religion of islam. in each case the result is seen to be directly and distinctly linked on to the influences which gave it birth, and nothing more than these influences is wanted, or makes any claim, to account for it. so m. renan holds that all that is needed to account for christianity is such a personality and such a career as he has described in his last volume. but the facts will not bend to this. christianity hangs on to christ not merely as to a person who lived and taught and died, but as to a person who rose again from death. that is of the very essence of its alleged derivation from christ. it knows christ only as christ risen; the only reason of its own existence that it recognises is the resurrection. the only claim the apostles set forth for preaching to the world is that their master who was crucified was alive once more. every one knows that this was the burden of all their words, the corner-stone of all their work. we may believe them or not. we may take christianity or leave it. but we cannot derive christianity from christ, without meeting, as the bond which connects the two, the resurrection. but for the resurrection, m. renan's scheme might be intelligible. a teacher unequalled for singleness of aim and nobleness of purpose lives and dies, and leaves the memory and the leaven of his teaching to disciples, who by them, even though in an ill-understood shape, and with incomparably inferior qualities themselves, purify and elevate the religious ideas and feelings of mankind. if that were all, if there were nothing but the common halo of the miraculous which is apt to gather about great names, the interpretation might be said to be coherent. but a theory of christianity cannot neglect the most prominent fact connected with its beginning. it is impossible to leave it out of the account, in judging both of the founder and of those whom his influence moulded and inspired. m. renan has to account for the prominence given to the resurrection in the earliest christian teaching, without having recourse to the supposition of conscious imposture and a deliberate conspiracy to deceive; for such a supposition would not harmonise either with the portrait he has drawn of the master, or with his judgment of the seriousness and moral elevation of the men who, immeasurably inferior as they were to him, imbibed his spirit, and represented and transmitted to us his principles. and this is something much more than can be accounted for by the general disposition of the age to assume the supernatural and the miraculous. the way in which the resurrection is circumstantially and unceasingly asserted, and made on every occasion and from the first the foundation of everything, is something very different from the vague legends which float about of kings or saints whom death has spared, or from a readiness to see the direct agency of heaven in health or disease. it is too precise, too matter-of-fact, too prosaic in the way in which it is told, to be resolved into ill-understood dreams and imaginations. the various recitals show little care to satisfy our curiosity, or to avoid the appearance of inconsistency in detail; but nothing can be more removed from vagueness and hesitation than their definite positive statements. it is with them that the writer on christianity has to deal. m. renan's method is--whilst of course not believing them, yet not supposing conscious fraud--to treat these records as the description of natural, unsought visions on the part of people who meant no harm, but who believed what they wished to believe. they are the story of a great mistake, but a mistake proceeding simply, in the most natural way in the world, from excess of "idealism" and attachment. unaffected by the circumstance that there never were narratives less ideal, and more straightforwardly real--that they seem purposely framed to be a contrast to professed accounts of visions, and to exclude the possibility of their being confounded with such accounts; and that the alleged numbers who saw, the alleged frequency and repetition and variation of the instances, and the alleged time over which the appearances extended, and after which they absolutely ceased, make the hypothesis of involuntary and undesigned allusions of regret and passion infinitely different from what it might be in the case of one or two persons, or for a transitory period of excitement and crisis--unaffected by such considerations, m. renan proceeds to tell, in his own way, the story of what he supposes to have occurred, without, of course, admitting the smallest real foundation for what was so positively asserted, but with very little reproach or discredit to the ardent and undoubting assertors. he begins with a statement which is meant to save the character of the teacher. "jesus, though he spoke unceasingly of resurrection, of new life, had never said quite clearly that he should rise again in the flesh." he says this with the texts before him, for he quotes them and classifies them in a note. but this is his point of departure, laid down without qualification. yet if there is anything which the existing records do say distinctly, it is that jesus christ said over and over again that he should rise again, and that he fixed the time within which he should rise. m. renan is not bound to believe them. but he must take them as he finds them; and on this capital point either we know nothing at all, and have no evidence to go upon, or the evidence is simply inverted by m. renan's assertion. there may, of course, be reasons for believing one part of a man's evidence and disbelieving another; but there is nothing in this case but incompatibility with a theory to make this part of the evidence either more or less worthy of credit than any other part. what is certain is that it is in the last degree weak and uncritical to lay down, as the foundation and first pre-requisite of an historical view, a position which the records on which the view professes to be based emphatically and unambiguously contradict. whatever we may think of it, the evidence undoubtedly is, if evidence there is at all, that jesus christ did say, though he could not get his disciples at the time to understand and believe him, that he should rise again on the third day. what m. renan had to do, if he thought the contrary, was not to assume, but to prove, that in these repeated instances in which they report his announcements, the evangelists mistook or misquoted the words of their master. he accepts, however, their statement that no one at first hoped that the words would be made good; and he proceeds to account for the extraordinary belief which, in spite of this original incredulity, grew up, and changed the course of things and the face of the world. we admire and respect many things in m. renan; but it seems to us that his treatment of this matter is simply the _ne plus ultra_ of the degradation of the greatest of issues by the application to it of sentiment unworthy of a silly novel. in the first place, he lays down on general grounds that, though the disciples had confessedly given up all hope, it yet _was natural_ that they should expect to see their master alive again. "mais i'enthousiasme et l'amour ne connaissent pas les situations sans issue." do they not? are death and separation such light things to triumph over that imagination finds it easy to cheat them? "ils se jouent de l'impossible et, plutôt que d'abdiquer l'espérance, ils font violence à toute réalité." is this an account of the world of fact or the world of romance? the disciples did not hope; but, says m. renan, vague words about the future had dropped from their master, and these were enough to build upon, and to suggest that they would soon see him back. in vain it is said that in fact they did not expect it. "une telle croyance était d'ailleurs si naturelle, que la foi des disciples aurait suffi pour la créer de toutes pièces." was it indeed--in spite of enoch and elias, cases of an entirely different kind--so natural to think that the ruined leader of a crushed cause, whose hopeless followers had seen the last of him amid the lowest miseries of torment and scorn, should burst the grave? il devait arriver [he proceeds] pour jésus ce qui arrive pour tous les hommes qui ont captivé l'attention de leurs semblables. le monde, habitué a leur attribuer des vertus surhumaines, ne peut admettre qu'ils aient subi la loi injuste, révoltante, inique, du trépas commun.... la mort est chose si absurde quand elle frappe l'homme de génie ou l'homme d'un grand coeur, que le peuple ne croit pas à la possibilité d'une telle erreur de la nature. les héros ne meurent pas. the history of the world presents a large range of instances to test the singular assertion that death is so "absurd" that "the people" cannot believe that great and good men literally die. but would it be easy to match the strangeness of a philosopher and a man of genius gravely writing this down as a reason--not why, at the interval of centuries, a delusion should grow up--but why, on the very morrow of a crucifixion and burial, the disciples should have believed that all the dreadful work they had seen a day or two before was in very fact and reality reversed? we confess we do not know what human experience is if it countenances such a supposition as this. from this antecedent probability he proceeds to the facts. "the sabbath day which followed the burial was occupied with these thoughts.... never was the rest of the sabbath so fruitful." they all, the women especially, thought of him all day long in his bed of spices, watched over by angels; and the assurance grew that the wicked men who had killed him would not have their triumph, that he would not be left to decay, that he would be wafted on high to that kingdom of the father of which he had spoken. "nous le verrons encore; nous entendrons sa voix charmante; c'est en vain qu'ils l'auront tué." and as, with the jews, a future life implied a resurrection of the body, the shape which their hope took was settled. "reconnaître que la mort pouvait être victorieuse de jésus, de celui qui venait de supprimer son empire, c'était le comble de l'absurdité." it is, we suppose, irrelevant to remark that we find not the faintest trace of this sense of absurdity. the disciples, he says, had no choice between hopelessness and "an heroic affirmation"; and he makes the bold surmise that "un homme pénétrant aurait pu annoncer _dès le samedi_ que jésus revivrait." this may be history, or philosophy, or criticism; what it is _not_ is the inference naturally arising from the only records we have of the time spoken of. but the force of historical imagination dispenses with the necessity of extrinsic support. "la petite société chrétienne, ce jour-là, opéra le véritable miracle: elle ressuscita jésus en son coeur par l'amour intense qu'elle lui porta. elle décida que jésus ne mourrait pas." the christian church has done many remarkable things; but it never did anything so strange, or which so showed its power, as when it took that resolution. how was the decision, involuntary and unconscious, and guiltless of intentional deception, if we can conceive of such an attitude of mind, carried out? m. renan might leave the matter in obscurity. but he sees his way, in spite of incoherent traditions and the contradictions which they present, to a "sufficient degree of probability." the belief in the resurrection originated in an hallucination of the disordered fancy of mary magdalen, whose mind was thrown off its balance by her affection and sorrow; and, once suggested, the idea rapidly spread, and produced, through the christian society, a series of corresponding visions, firmly believed to be real. but mary magdalen was the founder of it all:-- elle eut, en ce moment solennel, une part d'action tout à fait hors ligne. c'est elle qu'il faut suivre pas à pas; car elle porta, ce jour-là, pendant une heure, tout le travail de la conscience chrétienne; son témoignage décida la foi de l'avenir.... la vision légère s'écarte et lui dit: "ne me touche pas!" peu a peu l'ombre disparait. mais le miracle de l'amour est accompli. ce que céphas n'a pu faire, marie l'a faite; elle a su tirer la vie, la parole douce et pénétrante, du tombeau vide. il ne s'agit plus de conséquences à déduire ni de conjectures à former. marie a vu et entendu. la résurrection a son premier témoin immédiat. he proceeds to criticise the accounts which ascribe the first vision to others; but in reality mary magdalen, he says, has done most, after the great teacher, for the foundation of christianity. "queen and patroness of idealists," she was able to "impose upon all the sacred vision of her impassioned soul." all rests upon her first burst of entbusiasm, which gave the signal and kindled the faith of others. "sa grande affirmation de femme, 'il est ressuscité,' a été la base de la foi de l'humanité":-- paul ne parle pas de la vision de marie et reporte tout l'honneur de la première apparition sur pierre. mais cette expression est très~inexacte. pierre ne vit que le caveau vide, le suaire et le linceul. marie seule aima assez pour dépasser la nature et faire revivre le fantome du maitre exquis. dans ces sortes de crises merveilleuses, voir après les autres n'est rien; tout le mérite est de voir pour la première fois; car les autres modèlent ensuite leur vision sur le type reçu. c'est le propre des belles organisations de concevoir l'image promptement, avec justesse et par une sorte de sens intime du dessin. la gloire de la résurrection appartient donc à marie de magdala. après jésus, c'est marie qui a le plus fait pour la fondation du christianisme. l'ombre créée par les sens délicats de madeleine plane encore sur le monde.... loin d'ici, raison impuissante! ne va pas appliquer une froide analyse à ce chef-d'oeuvre de l'idéalisme et de l'amour. si la sagesse renonce à consoler cette pauvre race humaine, trahie par le sort, laisse la folie tenter l'aventure. où est le sage qui a donné au monde autant de joie, que la possédée marie de magdala? he proceeds to describe, on the same supposition, the other events of the day, which he accepts as having in a certain very important sense happened, though, of course, only in the sense which excludes their reality. no doubt, for a series of hallucinations, anything will do in the way of explanation. the scene of the evening was really believed to have taken place as described, though it was the mere product of chance noises and breaths of air on minds intently expectant; and we are bidden to remember "that in these decisive hours a current of wind, a creaking window, an accidental rustle, settle the belief of nations for centuries." but at any rate it was a decisive hour:-- tels furent les incidents de ce jour qui a fixé le sort de l'humanité. l'opinion que jésus était ressuscité s'y fonda d'une manière irrévocable. la secte, qu'on avait cru éteindre en tuant le maître, fut dès lors assurée d'un immense avenir. we are willing to admit that christian writers have often spoken unreally and unsatisfactorily enough in their comments on this subject. but what christian comment, hard, rigid, and narrow in its view of possibilities, ever equalled this in its baselessness and supreme absence of all that makes a view look like the truth? it puts the most extravagant strain on documents which, truly or falsely, but at any rate in the most consistent and uniform manner, assert something different. what they assert in every conceivable form, and with distinct detail, are facts; it is not criticism, but mere arbitrary license, to say that all these stand for visions. the issue of truth or falsehood is intelligible; the middle supposition of confusion and mistake in that which is the basis of everything, and is definitely and in such varied ways repeated, is trifling and incredible. we may disbelieve, if we please, st. paul's enumeration of the appearances after the resurrection; but to resolve it into a series of visions is to take refuge in the most unlikely of guesses. and, when we take into view the whole of the case--not merely the life and teaching out of which everything grew, but the aim and character of the movement which ensued, and the consequences of it, long tested and still continuing, to the history and development of mankind--we find it hard to measure the estimate of probability which is satisfied with the supposition that the incidents of one day of folly and delusion irrevocably decided the belief of ages, and the life and destiny of millions. without the belief in the resurrection there would have been no christianity; if anything may be laid down as certain, this may. we should probably never have even heard of the great teacher; he would not have been believed in, he would not have been preached to the world; the impulse to conversion would have been wanting; and all that was without parallel good and true and fruitful in his life would have perished, and have been lost in judaea. and the belief in the resurrection m. renan thinks due to an hour of over-excited fancy in a woman agonized by sorrow and affection. when we are presented with an hypothesis on the basis of intrinsic probability, we cannot but remember that the power of delusion and self-deception, though undoubtedly shown in very remarkable instances, must yet be in a certain proportion to what it originates and produces, and that it is controlled by the numerous antagonistic influences of the world. crazy women have founded superstitions; but we cannot help thinking that it would be more difficult than m. renan supposes for crazy women to found a world-wide religion for ages, branching forth into infinite forms, and tested by its application to all varieties of civilisation, and to national and personal character. m. renan points to la salette. but the assumption would be a bold one that the la salette people could have invented a religion for christendom which would stand the wear of eighteen centuries, and satisfy such different minds. pious frauds, as he says, may have built cathedrals. but you must take christianity for what it has proved itself to be in its hard and unexampled trial. to start an order, a sect, an institution, even a local tradition or local set of miracles, on foundations already laid, is one thing; it is not the same to be the spring of the most serious and the deepest of moral movements for the improvement of the world, the most unpretending and the most careless of all outward form and show, the most severely searching and universal and lasting in its effects on mankind. to trace that back to the teacher without the intervention of the belief in the resurrection is manifestly impossible. we know what he is said to have taught; we know what has come of that teaching in the world at large; but if the link which connects the two be not a real one, it is vain to explain it by the dreams of affection. it was not a matter of a moment or an hour, but of days and weeks continually; not the assertion of one imaginative mourner or two, but of a numerous and variously constituted body of people. the story, if it was not true, was not delusion, but imposture. we certainly cannot be said to know much of what happens in the genesis of religions. but that between such a teacher and such teaching there should intervene such a gigantic falsehood, whether imposture or delusion, is unquestionably one of the hardest violations of probability conceivable, as well as one of the most desperate conclusions as regards the capacity of mankind for truth. few thoughts can be less endurable than that the wisest and best of our race, men of the soberest and most serious tempers, and most candid and judicial minds, should have been the victims and dupes of the mad affection of a crazy magdalen, of "ces touchantes démoniaques, ces pécheresses converties, ces vraies fondatrices du christianisme." m. renan shrinks from solving such a question by the hypothesis of conscious fraud. to solve it by sentiment is hardly more respectful either to the world or to truth. we have left ourselves no room to speak of the best part of m. renan's new volume, his historical comment on the first period of christianity. we do not pretend to go along with him in his general principles of judgment, or in many of his most important historical conclusions. but here he is, what he is not in the early chapters, on ground where his critical faculty comes fairly into play. he is, we think, continually paradoxical and reckless in his statements; and his book is more thickly strewn than almost any we know with half-truths, broad axioms which require much paring down to be of any use, but which are made by him to do duty for want of something stronger. but, from so keen and so deeply interested a writer, it is our own fault if we do not learn a good deal. and we may study in its full development that curious combination, of which m. renan is the most conspicuous example, of profound veneration for christianity and sympathy with its most characteristic aspects, with the scientific impulse to destroy in the public mind the belief in its truth. xiii m. renan's hibbert lectures[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th april . i the object of m. renan's lectures at st. george's hall is, as we understand him, not merely to present a historical sketch of the influence of rome on the early church, but to reconcile the historical imagination with the results of his own and kindred speculations on the origin of christianity. he has, with a good faith which we do not question, investigated the subject and formed his conclusions upon it. he on the present occasion assumes these investigations, and that he, at any rate, is satisfied with their result. he hardly pretends to carry the mixed popular audience whom he addresses into any real inquiry into the grounds on which he has satisfied himself that the received account of christianity is not the true one. but he is aware that all minds are more or less consciously impressed with the broad difficulty that, after all attempts to trace the origin of christianity to agencies and influences of well-understood human character, the disproportion between causes and effects still continues to appear excessive. the great christian tradition with its definite beliefs about the conditions of man's existence, which has shaped the fortunes and determined the future of mankind on earth, is in possession of the world as much as the great tradition of right and wrong, or of the family, or of the state. how did it get there? it is most astonishing that it should have done so, what is the account of it? of course people may inquire into this question as they may inquire into the basis of morality, or the origin of the family or the state. but here, as on those subjects, reason, and that imagination which is one of the forces of reason, by making the mind duly sensible of the magnitude of ideas and alternatives, are exacting. m. renan's task is to make the purely human origin of christianity, its origin in the circumstances, the beliefs, the ideas, and the moral and political conditions of the first centuries, seem to us _natural_--as natural in the history of the world as other great and surprising events and changes--as natural as the growth and the fall of the roman empire, or as the reformation, or the french revolution. he is well qualified to sound the depths of his undertaking and to meet its heavy exigencies. with a fuller knowledge of books, and a closer familiarity than most men with the thoughts and the events of the early ages, with a serious value for the idea of religion as such, and certainly with no feeble powers of recalling the past and investing it with colour and life, he has to show how these things can be--how a religion with such attributes as he freely ascribes to the gospel, so grand, so pure, so lasting, can have sprung up not merely _in_ but _from_ a most corrupt and immoral time, and can have its root in the most portentous and impossible of falsehoods. it must be said to be a bold undertaking. m. renan has always aimed at doing justice to what he assailed; christians, who realise what they believe, will say that he patronises their religion, and naturally they resent such patronage. such candour adds doubtless to the literary effect of his method; but it is only due to him to acknowledge the fairness of his admissions. he starts with the declaration that there never was a nobler moment in human history than the beginnings of the christian church. it was the "most heroic episode in the annals of mankind." "never did man draw forth from his bosom more devotion, more love of the ideal, than in the years which elapsed between the sweet galilean vision and the death of marcus aurelius." it was not only that the saints were admirable and beautiful in their lives; they had the secret of the future, and laid down the lines on which the goodness and hope of the coming world were to move." never was the religious conscience more eminently creative, never did it lay down with more authority the law of future ages." now, if this is not mere rhetoric, what does it come to? it means not merely that there was here a phenomenon, not only extraordinary but unique, in the development of human character, but that here was created or evolved what was to guide and form the religious ideas of mankind; here were the springs of what has reached through all the ages of expanding humanity to our own days, of what is best and truest and deepest and holiest. m. renan, at any rate, does not think this an illusion of christian prepossessions, a fancy picture of a mythic age of gold, of an unhistorical period of pure and primitive antiquity. put this view of things by the side of any of the records or the literature of the time remaining to us; if not st. paul's epistles nor tacitus nor lucian, then virgil and horace and cicero, or seneca or epictetus or marcus aurelius. is it possible by any effort of imagination to body forth the links which can solidly connect the ideas which live and work and grow on one side, with the ideas which are represented by the facts and principles of the other side? or is it any more possible to connect what we know of christian ideas and convictions by a bond of natural and intelligible, if not necessary derivation, with what we know of jewish ideas and jewish habits of thought at the time in question? yet that is the thing to be done, to be done rigorously, to be done clearly and distinctly, by those who are satisfied to find the impulses and faith which gave birth to christianity amid the seething confusions of the time which saw its beginning; absolutely identical with those wild movements in origin and nature, and only by a strange, fortunate accident immeasurably superior to them. this question m. renan has not answered; as far as we can see he has not perceived that it is the first question for him to answer, in giving a philosophical account of the history of christianity. instead, he tells us, and he is going still further to tell us, how rome and its wonderful influences acted on christianity, and helped to assure its victories. but, first of all, what is that christianity, and whence did it come, which rome so helped? it came, he says, from judaism; "it was judaism under its christian form which rome propagated without wishing it, yet with such mighty energy that from a certain epoch romanism and christianity became synonymous words"; it was jewish monotheism, the religion the roman hated and despised, swallowing up by its contrast all that was local, legendary, and past belief, and presenting one religious law to the countless nationalities of the empire, which like itself was one, and like itself above all nationalities. this may all be true, and is partially true; but how did that hated and partial judaism break through its trammels, and become a religion for all men, and a religion to which all men gathered? the roman organisation was an admirable vehicle for christianity; but the vehicle does not make that which it carries, or account for it. m. renan's picture of the empire abounds with all those picturesque details which he knows so well where to find, and knows so well, too, how to place in an interesting light. there were then, of course, conditions of the time more favourable to the christian church than would have been the conditions of other times. there was a certain increased liberty of thought, though there were also some pretty strong obstacles to it. m. renan has imperial proclivities, and reminds us truly enough that despotisms are sometimes more tolerant than democracies, and that political liberty is not the same as spiritual and mental freedom, and does not always favour it. it may be partially true, as he says, that "virgil and tibullus show that roman harshness and cruelty were softening down"; that "equality and the rights of men were preached by the stoics"; that "woman was more her own mistress, and slaves were better treated than in the days of cato"; that "very humane and just laws were enacted under the very worst emperors; that tiberius and nero were able financiers"; that "after the terrible butcheries of the old centuries, mankind was crying with the voice of virgil for peace and pity." a good many qualifications and abatements start up in our minds on reading these statements, and a good many formidable doubts suggest themselves, if we can at all believe what has come down to us of the history of these times. it is hard to accept quite literally the bold assertion that "love for the poor, sympathy with all men, almsgiving, were becoming virtues." but allow this as the fair and hopeful side of the empire. yet all this is a long way from accounting for the effects on the world of christianity, even in the dim, vaporous form in which m. renan imagines it, much more in the actual concrete reality in which, if we know anything, it appeared. "christianity," he says, "responded to the cry for peace and pity of all weary and tender souls." no doubt it did; but what was it that responded, and what was its consolation, and whence was its power drawn? what was there in the known thoughts or hopes or motives of men at the time to furnish such a response? "christianity," he says, "could only have been born and spread at a time when men had no longer a country"; "it was that explosion of social and religious ideas which became inevitable after augustus had put an end to political struggles," after his policy had killed "patriotism." it is true enough that the first christians, believing themselves subjects of an eternal king and in view of an eternal world, felt themselves strangers and pilgrims in this; yet did the rest of the roman world under the caesars feel that they had no country, and was the idea of patriotism extinct in the age of agricola? but surely the real question worth asking is, what was it amid the increasing civilisation and prosperous peace of rome under the first emperors which made these christians relinquish the idea of a country? from whence did christianity draw its power to set its followers in inflexible opposition to the intensest worship of the state that the world has ever known? to tell us the conditions under which all this occurred is not to tell us the cause of it. we follow with interest the sketches which m. renan gives of these conditions, though it must be said that his generalisations are often extravagantly loose and misleading. we do indeed want to know more of those wonderful but hidden days which intervene between the great advent, with its subsequent apostolic age, and the days when the church appears fully constituted and recognised. german research and french intelligence and constructiveness have done something to help us, but not much. but at the end of all such inquiries appears the question of questions, what was the beginning and root of it all? christians have a reasonable answer to the question. there is none, there is not really the suggestion of one, in m. renan's account of the connection of christianity with the roman world. ii[ ] [ ] _guardian_, st april . m. renan has pursued the line of thought indicated in his first lecture, and in his succeeding lectures has developed the idea that christianity, as we know it, was born in imperial rome, and that in its visible form and active influence on the world it was the manifest product of roman instincts and habits; it was the spirit of the empire passing into a new body and accepting in exchange for political power, as it slowly decayed and vanished, a spiritual supremacy as unrivalled and as astonishing. the "legend of the roman church--peter and paul," "rome the centre in which church authority grew up," and "rome the capital of catholicism," are the titles of the three lectures in which this thesis is explained and illustrated. a lecture on marcus aurelius, at the royal institution, though not one of the series, is obviously connected with it, and concludes m. renan's work in england. except the brilliant bits of writing which, judging from the full abstracts given in translation in the _times_, appear to have been interspersed, and except the undoubting self-confidence and _aplomb_ with which a historical survey, reversing the common ideas of mankind, was delivered, there was little new to be learned from m. renan's treatment of his subject. perhaps it may be described as the roman catholic theory of the rise of the church, put in an infidel point of view. it is roman catholic in concentrating all interest, all the sources of influence and power in the christian religion and christian church, from the first moment at rome. but for rome the christian church would not have existed. the church is inconceivable without rome, and rome as the seat and centre of its spiritual activity. everything else is forgotten. there were christian churches all over the empire, in syria, in egypt, in africa, in asia minor, in gaul, in greece. a great body of christian literature, embodying the ideas and character of christians all over the empire, was growing up, and this was not roman and had nothing to do with rome; it was greek as much as latin, and local, not metropolitan, in its characteristics. christianity was spreading here, there, and everywhere, slowly and imperceptibly as the tide comes in, or as cells multiply in the growing tissues of organised matter; it was spreading under its many distinct guides and teachers, and taking possession of the cities and provinces of the empire. all this great movement, the real foundation of all that was to be, is overlooked and forgotten in the attention which is fixed on rome and confined to it. as in the roman catholic view, m. renan brings st. paul and st. peter together to rome, to found that great imperial church in which the manifold and varied history of christendom is merged and swallowed up. only, of course, m. renan brings them there as "fanatics" instead of apostles and martyrs. we know something about st. peter and st. paul. we know them at any rate from their writings. in m. renan's representation they stand opposed to one another as leaders of factions, to whose fierce hatreds and jealousies there is nothing comparable. "all the differences," he is reported to say, "which divide orthodox folks, heretics, schismatics, in our own day, are as nothing compared with the dissension between peter and paul." it is, as every one knows, no new story; but there it is in m. renan in all its crudity, as if it were the most manifest and accredited of truths. m. renan first brings st. paul to rome. "it was," he says, "a great event in the world's history, almost as pregnant with consequences as his conversion." how it was so m. renan does not explain; but he brings st. peter to rome also, "following at the heels of st. paul," to counteract and neutralise his influence. and who is this st. peter? he represents the jewish element; and what that element was at rome m. renan takes great pains to put before us. he draws an elaborate picture of the jews and jewish quarter of rome--a "longshore population" of beggars and pedlars, with a ghetto resembling the alsatia of _the fortunes of nigel_, seething with dirt and fanaticism. these were st. peter's congeners at rome, whose ideas and claims, "timid trimmer" though he was, he came to rome to support against the hellenism and protestantism of st. paul. and at rome they, both of them, probably, perished in nero's persecution, and that is the history of the success of christianity. "only fanatics can found anything. judaism lives on because of the intense frenzy of its prophets and annalists, christianity by means of its martyrs." but a certain clement arose after their deaths, to arrange a reconciliation between the fiercely antagonistic factions of st. peter and st. paul. how he harmonised them m. renan leaves us to imagine; but he did reconcile them; he gathered in his own person the authority of the roman church; he lectured the corinthian church on its turbulence and insubordination; he anticipated, m. renan remarked, almost in words, the famous saying of the french archbishop of rouen, "my clergy are my regiment, and they are drilled to obey like a regiment." on this showing, clement might almost be described as the real founder of christianity, of which neither st. peter nor st. paul, with their violent oppositions, can claim to be the complete representative; at any rate he was the first pope, complete in all his attributes. and in accordance with this beginning m. renan sees in the roman church, first, the centre in which church authority grew up, and next, the capital of catholicism. in rome the congregation gave up its rights to its elders, and these rights the elders surrendered to the single ruler or bishop. the creation of the episcopate was eminently the work of rome; and this bishop of rome caught the full spirit of the caesar, on whose decay he became great; and troubling himself little about the deep questions which exercised the minds and wrung the hearts of thinkers and mystics, he made himself the foundation of order, authority, and subordination to all parts of the imperial world. such is m. renan's explanation of the great march and triumph of the christian church. the roman empire, which we had supposed was the natural enemy of the church, was really the founder of all that made the church strong, and bequeathed to the church its prerogatives and its spirit, and partly its machinery. we should hardly gather from this picture that there was, besides, a widespread catholic church, with its numerous centres of life and thought and teaching, and with very slight connection, in the early times, with the church of the capital. and, in the next place, we should gather from it that there was little more in the church than a powerful and strongly built system of centralised organisation and control; we should hardly suspect the existence of the real questions which interested or disturbed it; we should hardly suspect the existence of a living and all-engrossing theology, or the growth and energy in it of moral forces, or that the minds of christians about the world were much more busy with the discipline of life, the teaching and meaning of the inspired words of scripture, and the ever-recurring conflict with perverseness and error, than with their dependent connection on the imperial primacy of rome, and the lessons they were to learn from it. disguised as it may be, m. renan's lectures represent not history, but scepticism as to all possibility of history. pictures of a jewish ghetto, with its ragged mendicants smelling of garlic, in places where christians have been wont to think of the saints; ingenious explanations as to the way in which the "club" of the christian church surrendered its rights to a _bureau_ of its officers; exhortations to liberty and tolerance; side-glances at the contrasts of national gifts and destinies and futures in the first century and in the nineteenth; felicitous parallels and cunning epigrams, subtle combinations of the pathetic, the egotistical, and the cynical, all presented with calm self-reliance and in the most finished and distinguished of styles, may veil for the moment from the audience which such things amuse, and even interest, the hollowness which lies beneath. but the only meaning of the lectures is to point out more forcibly than ever that besides the obvious riddles of man's life there is one stranger and more appalling still--that a religion which m. renan can never speak of without admiration and enthusiasm is based on a self-contradiction and deluding falsehood, more dreadful in its moral inconsistencies than the grave. we cannot help feeling that m. renan himself is a true representative of that highly cultivated society of the empire which would have crushed christianity, and which christianity, vanquished. he still owes something, and owns it, to what he has abandoned--"i am often tempted to say, as job said, in our latin version, _etiam si occident me, in ipso sperabo_. but the next moment all is gone--all is but a symbol and a dream." there is no possibility of solving the religious problem. he relapses into profound disbelief of the worth and success of moral efforts after truth. his last word is an exhortation to tolerance for "fanatics," as the best mode of extinguishing them. "if, instead of leading _polyeucte_ to punishment, the magistrate, with a smile and shake of the hand, had sent him home again, _polyeucte_ would not have been caught offending again; perhaps, in his old age, he would even have laughed at his escapade, and would have become a sensible man." it is as obvious and natural in our days to dispose of such difficulties in this way with a smile and a sneer as it was in the first century with a shout--_"christiani ad leones."_ but corneille was as good a judge of the human heart as m. renan. he had gauged the powers of faith and conviction; he certainly would have expected to find his _polyeucte_ more obstinate. xiv renan's "souvenirs d'enfance"[ ] [ ] _souvenirs d'enfance et de jeunesse_. par ernest renan. _guardian_, th july . the sketches which m. renan gives us of his early life are what we should have looked for from the writer of the _vie de jésus_. the story of the disintegration of a faith is supposed commonly to have something tragic about it. we expect it to be a story of heart-breaking disenchantments, of painful struggles, of fierce recoils against ancient beliefs and the teachers who bolstered them up; of indignation at having been so long deceived; of lamentation over years wasted in the service of falsehood. the confessions of st. augustine, the biography of blanco white, the letters of lamennais, at least agree in the witness which they bear to the bitter pangs and anxieties amid which, in their case, the eventful change came about. even cardinal newman's _apologia_, self-restrained and severely controlled as it is, shows no doubtful traces of the conflicts and sorrows out of which he believed himself to have emerged to a calmer and surer light. but m. renan's story is an idyl, not a tragedy. it is sunny, placid, contented. he calls his life the "_charmante promenade_" which the "cause of all good," whatever that may be, has granted him through the realities of existence. there are in it no storms of passion, no cruelties of circumstances, no deplorable mistakes, no complaints, no recriminations. his life flows on smoothly, peacefully, happily, with little of rapids and broken waters, gradually and in the most natural and inevitable way enlarging itself, moving in new and wider channels and with increased volume and force, but never detaching itself and breaking off from its beginnings. it is a spectacle which m. renan, who has lived this life, takes a gentle pleasure in contemplating. he looks back on it with thankfulness, and also with amusement it makes a charming and complete picture. no part could be wanting without injuring the effect of the whole. it is the very ideal of the education of the rousseau school--a child of nature, developing, amid the simplest and humblest circumstances of life, the finest gifts and most delicate graces of faith and reverence and purity--brought up by sages whose wisdom he could not in time help outrunning, but whose piety, sweetness, disinterestedness, and devoted labour left on his mind impressions which nothing could wear out; and at length, when the time came, passing naturally, and without passion or bitterness, from out of their faithful but too narrow discipline into a wider and ampler air, and becoming, as was fit, master and guide to himself, with light which they could not bear, and views of truth greater and deeper than they could conceive. but every stage of the progress, through the virtues of the teachers, and the felicitous disposition of the pupil, exhibits both in exactly the due relations in which each ought to be with the other, with none of the friction of rebellious and refractory temper on one side, or of unintelligent harshness on the other. he has nothing to regret in the schools through which he passed, in the preparations which he made there for the future, in the way in which they shaped his life. he lays down the maxim, "on ne doit jamais écrire que de ce qu'on aime." there is a serene satisfaction diffused through the book, which scarcely anything intervenes to break or disturb; he sees so much poetry in his life, so much content, so much signal and unlooked-for success, that he has little to tell except what is delightful and admirable. and then he is so certain that he is right: he can look down with so much good-humoured superiority on past and present, alike on what he calls "l'effroyable aventure du moyen âge," and on the march of modern society to the dead level of "americanism." it need not be said that the story is told with all m. renan's consummate charm of storytelling. all that it wants is depth of real feeling and seriousness--some sense of the greatness of what he has had to give up, not merely of its poetic beauty and tender associations. it hardly seems to occur to him that something more than his easy cheerfulness and his vivid historical imagination is wanted to solve for him the problems of the world, and that his gradual transition from the catholicism of the seminary to the absolute rejection of the supernatural in religion does not, as he describes it, throw much light on the question of the hopes and destiny of mankind. the outline of his story is soon told. it is in general like that of many more who in france have broken away from religion. a clever studious boy, a true son of old brittany--the most melancholy, the most tender, the most ardent, the most devout, not only of all french provinces, but of all regions in europe--is passed on from the teaching of good, simple, hard-working country priests to the central seminaries, where the leaders of the french clergy are educated. he comes up a raw, eager, ignorant provincial, full of zeal for knowledge, full of reverence and faith, and first goes through the distinguished literary school of st. nicolas du chardonnet, of which dupanloup was the founder and the inspiring soul. thence he passed under the more strictly professional discipline of st. sulpice: first at the preparatory philosophical school at issy, then to study scientific theology in the house of st. sulpice itself at paris. at st. sulpice he showed special aptitudes for the study of hebrew, in which he was assisted and encouraged by m. le hir, "the most remarkable person," in his opinion, "whom the french clergy has produced in our days," a "savant and a saint," who had mastered the results of german criticism as they were found in the works of gesenius and ewald. on his faith all this knowledge had not made the faintest impression; but it was this knowledge which broke down m. renan's, and finally led to his retiring from st. sulpice. on the one side was the bible and catholic theology, carefully, scientifically, and consistently taught at st. sulpice; on the other were the exegesis and the historical criticism of the german school. he came at length to the conclusion that the two are incompatible; that there was but a choice of alternatives; and purely on the ground of historical criticism, he says, not on any abstract objections to the supernatural, or to miracles, or to catholic dogma, he gave up revealed religion. he gave it up not without regrets at the distress caused to friends, and at parting with much that was endeared to him by old associations, and by intrinsic beauty and value; but, as far as can be judged, without any serious sense of loss. he spent some time in obscurity, teaching, and studying laboriously, and at length beginning to write. michel lévy, the publisher, found him out, and opened to him a literary career, and in due time he became famous. he has had the ambiguous honour of making the bible an object of such interest to french readers as it never was before, at the cost of teaching them to find in it a reflection of their own characteristic ways of looking at life and the world. it is not an easy thing to do with such a book as the bible; but he has done it. as a mere history of a change of convictions, the _souvenirs_ are interesting, but hardly of much importance. they are written with a kind of epicurean serenity and dignity, avoiding all exaggeration and violence, profuse in every page in the delicacies and also in the reticences of respect, not too serious to exclude the perpetual suggestion of a well-behaved amused irony, not too much alive to the ridiculous and the self-contradictory to forget the attitude of composure due to the theme of the book. he warns his readers at the outset that they must not look for a stupid literalness in his account. "ce qu'on dit de soi est toujours poésie"--the reflection of states of mind and varying humours, not the exact details of fact. "tout est vrai dans ce petit volume, mais non de ce genre de verité qui est requis pour une _biographie universelle_. bien des choses ont été mises, afin qu'on sourie; si l'usage l'eût permis, j'aurais dû écrire plus d'une fois à la marge--_cum grano salis_". it is candid to warn us thus to read a little between the lines; but it is a curious and unconscious disclosure of his characteristic love of a mixture of the misty and the clear. the really pleasant part of it is his account, which takes up half the volume, of breton ways and feelings half a century ago, an account which exactly tallies with the pictures of them in souvestre's writings; and the kindliness and justice with which he speaks of his old catholic and priestly teachers, not only in his boyish days at tréguier, but in his seminary life in paris. his account of this seminary life is unique in its picturesque vividness. he describes how, at st. nicolas, under the fiery and irresistible dupanloup, whom he speaks of with the reserved courtesy due to a distinguished person whom he much dislikes, his eager eyes were opened to the realities of literature, and to the subtle powers of form and style in writing, which have stood him in such stead, and have been the real secret of his own success. le monde s'ouvrit pour moi. malgré sa prétention d'être un asile fermé aux bruits du dehors, saint-nicolas était a cette époque la maison la plus brillante et la plus mondaine. paris y entrait à pleins bords par les portes et les fenêtres, paris tout entier, moins la corruption, je me hâte de le dire, paris avec ses petitesses et ses grandeurs, ses hardiesses et ses chiffons, sa force révolutionnaire et ses mollesses flasques. mes vieux prêtres de bretagne savaient bien mieux les mathématiques et le latin que mes nouveaux maîtres; mais ils vivaient dans des catacombes sans lumière et sans air. ici, l'atmosphère du siècle circulait librement.... au bout de quelque temps une chose tout à fait inconnue m'etait révélée. les mots, talent, éclat, réputation eurent un sens pour moi. j'étais perdu pour l'idéal modeste que mes anciens maîtres m'avaient inculqué. and he describes how dupanloup brought his pupils perpetually into direct relations with himself and communicated to them something of his own enthusiasm. he gained the power over their hearts which a great general gains over his soldiers. his approval, his interest in a man, were the all-absorbing object, the all-sufficient reward; the one punishment feared was dismissal, always inflicted with courtesy and tact, from the honour and the joy of serving under him:-- adoré de ses élèves, m. dupanloup n'était pas toujours agréable à ces collaborateurs. on m'a dit que, plus tard, dans son diocèse, les choses se passèrent de la même manière, qu'il fut toujours plus aimé de ses laïques que de ses prêtres. il est certain qu'il écrasait tout autour de lui. mais sa violence même nous attachait; car nous sentions que nous étions son but unique. ce qu'il était, c'était un éveilleur incomparable; pour tirer de chacun de ses élèves la somme de ce qu'il pouvait donner, personne ne l'égalait. chacun de ses deux cents élèves existait distinct dans sa pensée; il était pour chacun d'eux l'excitateur toujours présent, le motif de vivre et de travailler. il croyait au talent et en faisait la base de la foi. il répétait souvent que l'homme vaut en proportion de sa faculté d'admirer. son admiration n'était pas toujours assez éclairée par la science; mais elle venait d'une grande chaleur d'âme et d'un coeur vraiment possédé de l'amour du beau.... les défauts de l'éducation qu'il donnait étaient les défauts même de son esprit. il était trop peu rationnel, trop peu scientifique. on eût dit que ses deux cents élèves étaient destinés à être tous poètes, écrivains, orateurs. st. nicolas was literary. issy and st. sulpice were severely philosophic and scientific, places of "_fortes études_"; and the writer thinks that they were more to his own taste than the more brilliant literary education given under dupanloup. in one sense it may be so. they introduced him to exactness of thought and precision of expression, and they widened his horizon of possible and attainable knowledge. he passed, he says, from words to things. but he is a writer who owes so much to the form into which he throws his thoughts, to the grace and brightness and richness of his style, that he probably is a greater debtor to the master whom he admires and dislikes, dupanloup, than to the modest, reserved, and rather dull sulpician teachers, whom he loves and reveres and smiles at, whose knowledge of theology was serious, profound, and accurate, and whose characteristic temper was one of moderation and temperate reason, joined to a hatred of display, and a suspicion of all that seemed too clever and too brilliant. but his witness to their excellence, to their absolute self-devotion to their work, to their dislike of extravagance and exaggeration, to their good sense and cultivation, is ungrudging and warm. of course he thinks them utterly out of date; but on their own ground he recognises that they were men of strength and solidity, the best and most thorough of teachers; the most sincere, the most humble, the most self-forgetting of priests:-- beaucoup de mes jugements étonnent les gens du monde parcequ'ils n'out pas vu ce que j'ai vu. j'ai vu à saint-sulpice, associés à des idées étroites, je l'avoue, les miracles que nos races peuvent produire en fait de bonté, de modestie, d'abnégation personelle. ce qu'il y a de vertu à saint-sulpice suffirait pour gouverner un monde, et cela m'a rendu difficile pour ce que j'ai trouvé ailleurs. m. renan, as we have said, is very just to his education, and to the men who gave it. he never speaks of them except with respect and gratitude. it is seldom, indeed, that he permits himself anything like open disparagement of the men and the cause which he forsook. the shafts of his irony are reserved for men on his own side, for the radical violences of m. clémenceau, and for the exaggerated reputation of auguste comte, "who has been set up as a man of the highest order of genius, for having said, in bad french, what all scientific thinkers for two hundred years have seen as clearly as himself." he attributes to his ecclesiastical training those excellences in his own temper and principles on which he dwells with much satisfaction and thankfulness. they are, he considers, the result of his christian and "sulpician" education, though the root on which they grew is for ever withered and dead. "la foi disparue, la morale reste.... c'est par le caractère que je suis resté essentiellement l'élève de mes anciens maîtres." he is proud of these virtues, and at the same time amused at the odd contradictions in which they have sometimes involved him:-- il me plairait d'expliquer par le détail et de montrer comment la gageure paradoxale de garder les vertus cléricales, sans la foi qui leur sert de base et dans un monde pour lequel elles ne sont pas faites, produisit, en ce que me concerne, les rencontres les plus divertissantes. j'aimerais à raconter toutes les aventures que mes vertus sulpiciennes m'amenèrent, et les tours singuliers qu'elles m'ont joués. après soixante ans de vie sérieuse on a le droit de sourire; et où trouver une source de rire plus abondante, plus à portée, plus inoffensive qu'en soimême? si jamais un auteur comique voulait amuser le public de mes ridicules, je ne lui demanderais qu'une chose; c'est de me prendre pour collaborateur; je lui conterais des choses vingt fois plus amusantes que celles qu'il pourrait inventer. he dwells especially on four of these virtues which were, he thinks, graven ineffaceably on his nature at st. sulpice. they taught him there not to care for money or success. they taught him the old-fashioned french politeness--that beautiful instinct of giving place to others, which is perishing in the democratic scramble for the best places, in the omnibus and the railway as in business and society. it is more curious to find that he thinks that they taught him to be modest. except on the faith of his assertions, the readers of his book would not naturally have supposed that he believed himself specially endowed with this quality; it is at any rate the modesty which, if it shrinks into retirement from the pretensions of the crowd, goes along with a high and pitying sense of superiority, and a self-complacency of which the good humour never fails. his masters also taught him to value purity. for this he almost makes a sort of deprecating apology. he saw, indeed, "the vanity of this virtue as of all the others"; he admits that it is an unnatural virtue. but he says, "l'homme ne doit jamais se permettre deux hardiesses à la fois. le libre penseur doit être réglé en ses moeurs." in this doctrine it may be doubted whether he will find many followers. an unnatural virtue, where nature only is recognised as a guide, is more likely to be discredited by his theory than recommended by his example, particularly if the state of opinion in france is such as is described in the following passage--a passage which in england few men, whatever they might think, would have the boldness to state as an acknowledged social phenomenon:-- le monde, dont les jugements sont rarement tout à fait faux, voit une sorte de ridicule à être vertueux quand on n'y est pas obligé par un devoir professionnel. le prêtre, ayant pour état d'être chaste, comme le soldat d'être brave, est, d'après ces idées, presque le seul qui puisse sans ridicule tenir à des principes sur lesquels la morale et la mode se livrent les plus étranges combats. il est hors de doute qu'en ce point, comme en beaucoup d'autres, mes principes clericaux, conservés dans le siècle, m'ont nui aux yeux du monde. we have one concluding observation to make. this is a book of which the main interest, after all, depends on the way in which it touches on the question of questions, the truth and reality of the christian religion. but from first to last it docs not show the faintest evidence that the writer ever really knew, or even cared, what religion is. religion is not only a matter of texts, of scientific criticisms, of historical investigations, of a consistent theology. it is not merely a procession of external facts and events, a spectacle to be looked at from the outside. it is, if it is anything, the most considerable and most universal interest in the complex aggregate of human interests. it grows out of the deepest moral roots, out of the most characteristic and most indestructible spiritual elements, out of wants and needs and aspirations and hopes, without which man, as we know him, would not be man. when a man, in asking whether christianity is true, leaves out all this side of the matter, when he shows that it has not come before him as a serious and importunate reality, when he shows that he is unaffected by those deep movements and misgivings and anxieties of the soul to which religion corresponds, and treats the whole matter as a question only of erudition and criticism, we may acknowledge him to be an original and acute critic, a brilliant master of historical representation; but he has never yet come face to face with the problems of religion. his love of truth may be unimpeachable, but he docs not know what he is talking about. m. renan speaks of giving up his religion as a man might speak of accepting a new and unpopular physical hypothesis like evolution, or of making up his mind to give up the personality of homer or the early history of rome. such an interior attitude of mind towards religion as is implied, for instance, in bishop butler's _sermons on the love of god_, or the _de imitatione_ or newman's _parochial sermons_ seems to him, as far as we can judge, an unknown and unattempted experience. it is easy to deal with a question if you leave out half the factors of it, and those the most difficult and the most serious. it is easy to be clear if you do not choose to take notice of the mysterious, and if you exclude from your consideration as vague and confused all that vast department of human concerns where we at best can only "see through a glass darkly." it is easy to find the world a pleasant and comfortable and not at all perplexing place, if your life has been, as m. renan describes his own, a "charming promenade" through it; if, as he says, you are blessed with "a good humour not easily disturbed "; and you "have not suffered much"; and "nature has prepared cushions to soften shocks"; and you have "had so much enjoyment in this life that you really have no right to claim any compensation beyond it." that is m. renan's experience of life--a life of which he looks forward to the perfection in the clearness and security of its possible denials of ancient beliefs, and in the immense development of its positive and experimental knowledge. how would descartes have rejoiced, he says, if he could have seen some poor treatise on physics or cosmography of our day, and what would we not give to catch a glimpse of such an elementary schoolbook of a hundred years hence. but that is not at any rate the experience of all the world, nor does it appear likely ever to be within the reach of all the world. there is another aspect of life more familiar than this, an aspect which has presented itself to the vast majority of mankind, the awful view of it which is made tragic by pain and sorrow and moral evil; which, in the way in which religion looks at it, if it is sterner, is also higher and nobler, and is brightened by hope and purposes of love; a view which puts more upon men and requires more from them, but holds before them a destiny better than the perfection here of physical science. to minds which realise all this, it is more inconceivable than any amount of miracle that such a religion as christianity should have emerged naturally out of the conditions of the first century. they refuse to settle such a question by the short and easy method on which m. renan relies; they will not consent to put it on questions about the two isaiahs, or about alleged discrepancies between the evangelists; they will not think the claims of religion disposed of by m. renan's canon, over and over again contradicted, that whether there can be or not, there _is_ no evidence of the supernatural in the world. to those who measure and feel the true gravity of the issues, it is almost unintelligible to find a man who has been face to face with christianity all his life treating the deliberate condemnation of it almost gaily and with a light heart, and showing no regrets in having to give it up as a delusion and a dream. it is a poor and meagre end of a life of thought and study to come to the conclusion that the age in which he has lived is, if not one of the greatest, at least "the most amusing of all ages." xv life of frederick robertson[ ] [ ] _life and letters of frederick w. robertson_. edited by stopford a. brooke. _guardian_, th november . if the proof of a successful exhibition of a strongly marked and original character be that it excites and sustains interest throughout, that our tastes are appealed to and our judgments called forth with great strength, that we pass continuously and rapidly, as we read, from deep and genuine admiration to equally deep and genuine dissent and disapprobation, that it allows us to combine a general but irresistible sense of excellence growing upon us through the book with an under-current of real and honest dislike and blame, then this book in a great measure satisfies the condition of success. it is undeniable that in what it shows us of mr. robertson there is much to admire, much to sympathise with, much to touch us, a good deal to instruct us. he is set before us, indeed, by the editor, as the ideal of all that a great christian teacher and spiritual guide, all that a brave and wise and high-souled man, may be conceived to be. we cannot quite accept him as an example of such rare and signal achievement; and the fault of the book is the common one of warm-hearted biographers to wind their own feelings and those of their readers too high about their subject; to talk as if their hero's excellences were unknown till he appeared to display them, and to make up for the imperfect impression resulting from actual facts and qualities by insisting with overstrained emphasis on a particular interpretation of them. the book would be more truthful and more pleasing if the editor's connecting comments were more simply written, and made less pretension to intensity and energy of language. yet with all drawbacks of what seem to us imperfect taste, an imperfect standard of character, and an imperfect appreciation of what there is in the world beyond a given circle of interests, the book does what a biography ought to do--it shows us a remarkable man, and it gives us the means of forming our own judgment about him. it is not a tame panegyric or a fancy picture. the main portion of the book consists of mr. robertson's own letters, and his own accounts of himself; and we are allowed to see him, in a great degree at least, as he really was. the editor draws a moral, indeed, and tells us what we ought to think about what we see; but we can use our own judgment about that. and, as so often happens in real life, what we see both attracts and repels; it calls forth, successively and in almost equal measure, warm sympathy and admiration, and distinct and hearty disagreement. at least there is nothing of commonplace--of what is commonplace yet in our generation; though there is a good deal that bids fair to become commonplace in the next. it is the record of a genuine spontaneous character, seeking its way, its duty, its perfection, with much sincerity and elevation of purpose, and many anxieties and sorrows, and not, we doubt not, without much of the fruits that come with real self-devotion; a record disclosing a man with great faults and conspicuous blanks in his nature, one with whose principles, taste, or judgment we constantly find ourselves having a vehement quarrel, just after having been charmed and conciliated by some unexpectedly powerful or refined statement of an important truth. we cannot think, and few besides his own friends will think, that he had laid his hand with so sure an accuracy and with so much promise upon the clue which others had lost or bungled over. but there is much to learn in his thoughts and words, and there is not less to learn from his life. it is the life of a man who did not spare himself in fulfilling what he received as his task, who sacrificed much in order to speak his message, as he thought, more worthily and to do his office more effectually, and whose career touches us the more from the shadow of suffering and early death that hangs over its aspirations and activity. a book which fairly shows us such a life is not of less value because it also shows us much that we regret and condemn. mr. robertson was brought up not only in the straitest traditions of the evangelical school, but in the heat of its controversial warfare. his heart, when he was a boy, was set on entering the army; and one of his most characteristic points through life, shown in many very different forms, was his pugnacity, his keen perception of the "_certaminis gaudia_":-- "there is something of combativeness in me," he writes, "which prevents the whole vigour being drawn out, except when i have an antagonist to deal with, a falsehood to quell, or a wrong to avenge. never till then does my mind feel quite alive. could i have chosen my own period of the world to have lived in, and my own type of life, it should be the feudal ages, and the life of a cid, the redresser of wrongs." "on the other hand," writes his biographer, "when he met men who despised christianity, or who, like the roman catholics, held to doctrines which he believed untrue, this very enthusiasm and unconscious excitement swept him sometimes beyond himself. he could not moderate his indignation down to the cool level of ordinary life. hence he was wanting at this time in the wise tolerance which formed so conspicuous a feature of his maturer manhood. he held to his own views with pertinacity. he believed them to be true; and he almost refused to allow the possibility of the views of others having truth in them also. he was more or less one-sided at this period. with the roman catholic religion it was war to the death, not in his later mode of warfare, by showing the truth which lay beneath the error, but by denouncing the error. he seems invariably, with the pugnacity of a young man, to have attacked their faith; and the mode in which this was done was startlingly different from that which afterwards he adopted." he yielded, after considerable resistance, to the wishes and advice of his friends, that he should prepare for orders. "with a romantic instinct of self-sacrifice," says his biographer, "he resolved to give up the idea of his whole life." this we can quite understand; but with that propensity of biographers to credit their subject with the desirable qualities which it may be supposed that they ought to have, besides those which they really have, the editor proceeds to observe that this would scarcely have happened had not mr. robertson's "_characteristic self-distrust_ disposed him to believe that he was himself the worst judge of his future profession." this is the way in which the true outline of a character is blurred and confused, in order to say something proper and becoming. self-distrust was not among the graces or weaknesses of mr. robertson's nature, unless indeed we mistake for it the anxiety which even the stoutest heart may feel at a crisis, or the dissatisfaction which the proudest may feel at the interval between attempt and achievement. he was an undergraduate at brasenose at the height of the oxford movement. he was known there, so far as he was known at all, as a keen partisan of the evangelical school; and though no one then suspected the power which was really in him, his party, not rich in men of strength or promise, made the most of a recruit who showed ability and entered heartily into their watchwords, and, it must be said, their rancour. he was conspicuous among the young men of his standing for the forwardness with which he took his side against "tractarianism," and the vehemence of his dislike of it, and for the almost ostentatious and defiant prominence which he gave to the convictions and social habits of his school he expressed his scorn and disgust at the "donnishness," the coldness, the routine, the want of heart, which was all that he could see at oxford out of the one small circle of his friends. he despised the oxford course of work, and would have nothing more to do with it than he could help--as he lived to regret afterwards. yet even then he was in his tastes and the instinctive tendencies of his mind above his party. he was an admiring reader of wordsworth and shelley; he felt the strength of aristotle and plato; he is said to have appreciated mr. newman's preaching, and to have gallantly defended what he admired in him and his friends. his editor, indeed, mr. brooke, appears to be a little divided and embarrassed, between his wish to enforce mr. robertson's largeness of mind and heart, and his fear of giving countenance to suspicions that he was ever so little inclined to "high churchism"; between his desire to show that mr. robertson estimated the high church leaders as much as an intelligent man ought, and disliked their system as much as a sound-thinking christian ought. we should have thought that he need not be so solicitous to "set at rest the question about mr. robertson's high church tendencies." "i hate high churchism," was one of his latest declarations, when professing his sympathy with individual high churchmen. one thing, however, is quite clear--that in his early life his partisanship was thoroughgoing and unflinching enough to satisfy the fiercest and most fanatical of their opponents. such a representation as this is simply misleading:-- the almost fierceness with which he speaks against the tract school is proof in him of the strength of the attraction it possessed for him, just as afterwards at brighton his attacks on evangelicalism are proof of the strength with which he once held to that form of christianity, and the force of the reaction with which he abandoned it for ever. out of these two reactions--when their necessary ultra tendencies had been mellowed down by time--emerged at last the clearness and the just balance of principles with which he taught during and the following years, at brighton. he had probed both schools of theological thought to their recesses, and had found them wanting. he spoke of what he knew when he protested against both. he spoke also of what he knew when he publicly recognised the spirit of all good moving in the lives of those whose opinions he believed to be erroneous. it is absurd to say, because he sometimes spoke of the "danger" he had been in from "tractarianism," that he had felt in equal degree the "strength of attraction" towards the one school and towards the other, and it is equally absurd to talk of his "having probed both to their recesses." he read, and argued, and discussed the pamphlets of the controversy--the "replies," mr. brooke says, with more truth probably than he thought of in using the word--like other undergraduates who took interest in what was going on, and thought themselves fit to choose their side. with his tutor and friend, mr. churton, he read taylor's _ancient christianity_, carefully looking out the passages from the fathers. "i am reading the early church history with golightly," he says, "which is a very great advantage, as he has a fund of general information and is a close reader." but we must doubt whether this involved "probing to the recesses" the "tractarian" side of the question. and we distrust the depth and the judgment, and the impartiality also of a man who is said to have read newman's sermons continually with delight to the day of his death, and by whom no book was more carefully studied and more highly honoured than _the christian year_, and who yet to the last could see nothing better in the church movement as a whole than, according to the vulgar view of it, a revival of forms partly useful, partly hurtful it seems to us the great misfortune of his life, and one which exercised its evil influence on him to the end, that, thrown young into the narrowest and weakest of religious schools, he found it at first so congenial to his vehement temperament, that he took so kindly to certain of its more unnatural and ungenerous ways, and thus was cut off from the larger and healthier influences of the society round him. those were days when older men than he took their side too precipitately; but he found himself encouraged, even as an undergraduate, to dogmatise, to be positive, to hate, to speak evil. he learnt the lesson too well. this is the language of an undergraduate at the end of his university course;-- but i seem this term to have in a measure waked out of a long trance, partly caused by my own gross inconsistencies, and partly by the paralysing effects of this oxford-delusion heresy, for such it is i feel persuaded. and to know it a man must live here, and he will see the promising and ardent men sinking one after another in a deadly torpor, wrapped up in self-contemplation, dead to their redeemer, and useless to his church, under the baneful breath of this accursed upas tree. i say accursed, because i believe that st. paul would use the same language to oxford as he did to the galatian church, "i would they were even cut off which trouble you"; accursed, because i believe that the curse of god will fall on it he has denounced it on the papal hereby, and he is no respecter of persons, to punish the name and not the reality. may he forgive me if i err, and lead me into all truth. but i do not speak as one who has been in no clanger, and therefore cannot speak very quietly. it is strange into what ramifications the disbelief of external justification will extend; _we will_ make it internal, whether it be by self-mortification, by works of evangelical obedience, or by the sacraments, and that just at the time when we suppose most that we are magnifying the work of the lord. mr. brooke rather likes to dwell, as it seems to us, in an unreal and disproportionate way, on mr. robertson's sufferings, in the latter part of his life, from the bitter and ungenerous attacks of which he was the object. "this is the man," he says in one place, "who was afterwards at brighton driven into the deepest solitariness of heart, whom god thought fit to surround with slander and misunderstanding." he was, we doubt not, fiercely assailed by the evangelical party, which he had left, and which he denounced in no gentle language; he was, as we can well believe, "constantly attacked, by some manfully, by others in an underhand manner, and was the victim of innuendoes and slander." we cannot, however, help thinking that mr. brooke unconsciously exaggerates the solitariness and want of sympathy which went with all this. mr. robertson had, and knew that he had, his ardent and enthusiastic admirers as well as his worrying and untiring opponents. but what we remark is this. it was the measure which he had meted out to others, in the fierceness of his zeal for evangelicalism, which the evangelicals afterwards meted out to him. they did not more talk evil of what they knew not and had taken no real pains to understand, than he had done of a body of men as able, as well-instructed, as deep-thinking, as brave, as earnest as himself in their war against sin and worldliness. the stupidity, the perverse ill-nature, the resolute ignorance, the audacious and fanatical application of scripture condemnations, the reckless judging without a desire to do justice, which he felt and complained of so bitterly when turned against himself, he had sanctioned and largely shared in when the same party which attacked him in the end attacked the earlier revivers of thoughtful and earnest religion. nor do we find that he ever expressed regret for a vehemence of condemnation which his after-knowledge must have shown him that he had no business to pass, because, even if he afterwards adhered to it, he had originally passed it on utterly false and inadequate grounds. he only became as fierce against the evangelicals as he had been against the followers of mr. newman. he never unlearnt the habit of harsh reprobation which his evangelical friends had encouraged. he only transferred its full force against themselves. he left oxford and began his ministry, first at winchester, and then at cheltenham, full of evangelical _formulae_ and evangelical narrow zeal. it does not appear that, except as an earnest hard-working clergyman, he was in any way distinguished from numbers of the same class, though we are quite willing to believe that even then his preaching, in warmth and vigour, was above the average. but as he, or his biographer, says, he had not yet really begun to think. when he began to think, he did so with the rapidity, the intensity, the impatient fervid vehemence which lay all along at the bottom of his character. his evangelical views appear to have snapped to pieces and dissolved with a violence and sudden abruptness entirely unaccounted for by anything which these volumes show us. he read carlyle; but so did many other people. he found the religious world at cheltenham not so pure as he had imagined it; but this is what must have happened anywhere, and is not enough to account for such a complete revolution of belief. he had a friend deeply read in german philosophy and criticism who is said to have exercised influence on him. still, we repeat, the steps and processes of the change from the evangelicalism of cheltenham to a condition, at first, of almost absolute doubt, are very imperfectly explained:-- these letters were written in . in the following year doubts and questionings began to stir in his mind. he could not get rid of them. they were forced upon him by his reading and his intercourse with men. they grew and tortured him. his teaching in the pulpit altered, and it became painful to him to preach. he was reckoned of the evangelical school, and he began to feel that his position was becoming a false one. he felt the excellence and earnestness, and gladly recognised the work of the nobler portion of that party, but he felt also that he must separate from it. in his strong reaction from its extreme tendencies, he understood with a shock which upturned his whole inward life for a time, that the system on which he had founded his whole faith and work could never be received by him again. within its pale, for him, there was henceforward neither life, peace, nor reality. it was not, however, till almost the end of his ministry at cheltenham that this became clearly manifest to him. it had been growing slowly into a conviction. an outward blow--the sudden ruin of a friendship which he had wrought, as he imagined, for ever into his being--a blow from which he never afterwards wholly recovered--accelerated the inward crisis, and the result was a period of spiritual agony so awful that it not only shook his health to its centre, but smote his spirit down into so profound a darkness that of all his early faiths but one remained, "it must be right to do right." this seems to have been in , and in the beginning of the next year he had already taken his new line. the explanation does not explain much. we have no right to ask for more than his friends think fit to tell us of this turning-point of his life. but we observe that this deeply important passage is left with but little light and much manifest reticence. that the crisis took place we have his own touching and eloquent words to assure us. it left him also as firm in his altered convictions as he had been in his old ones. what caused it, what were its circumstances and characteristics, and what affected its course and results, we can only guess. but it was decisive and it was speedy. he spent a few months in germany in the end of , and in the beginning of the bishop of oxford was willing to appoint him to st. ebbe's. but his stay there was short. three months afterwards he accepted the chapel at brighton which he held till his death in august . he was now the robertson whom all the world knows, and the change was a most remarkable one. it seems strictly accurate to say that he started at once into a new man--new in all his views and tastes; new in the singular burst of power which at once shows itself in the keen, free, natural language of his letters and his other writings; new in the deep concentrated earnestness of character with which he seemed to grasp his peculiar calling and function. all the conventionalities of his old school, which hung very thick about him even to the end of his cheltenham life, seem suddenly to drop off, and leave him, without a trace remaining on his mind, in the full use and delight of his new liberty. we cannot say that we are more inclined to agree with him in his later stage than in his earlier. and the rapid transformation of a most dogmatic and zealous evangelical into an equally positive and enthusiastic "broad churchman" does not seem a natural or healthy process, and suggests impatience and self-confidence more than self-command and depth. but we get, without doubt, to a real man--a man whose words have a meaning, and stand for real things; whose language no longer echoes the pale dreary commonplaces of a school, but reveals thoughts which he has thought for himself, and the power of being able "to speak as he will." his mind seems to expand, almost at a bound, to all the manifold variety of interests of which the world is full. his letters on his own doings, on the books and subjects of the day, on the remarks or the circumstances of his friends, his criticism, his satire, his controversial or friendly discussions, are full of energy, versatility, refinement, boldness, and strength; and his remarkable power of clear, picturesque, expressive diction, not unworthy of our foremost masters of english, appears all at once, as it were, full grown. it is difficult to believe, as we read the later portions of his life, that we are reading about the same man who appeared, so short a time before, at the beginning, to promise at best to turn into a popular evangelical preacher, above the average, perhaps, in taste and power, but not above the average in freedom from cramping and sour prejudices. mr. robertson had hold of some great truths, and he applied them, both in his own thoughts and self-development and in his popular teaching, with great force. he realised two things with a depth and intensity which give an awful life and power to all he said about religion. he realised with singular and pervading keenness that which a greater man than he speaks of as the first and the great discovery of the awakened soul--" the thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, himself and the creator." "alone with god," expresses the feeling which calmed his own anxieties and animated his religious appeals to others. and he realised with equal earnestness the great truth which is spoken of by mr. brooke, though in language which to us has an unpleasant sound, in the following extract: yet, notwithstanding all this--which men called while he lived, and now when he is dead will call, want of a clear and well-defined system of theology--he had a fixed basis for his teaching. it was the divine-human life of christ. it is the fourth principle mentioned in his letter, "that belief in the human character of christ must be antecedent to belief in his divine origin." he felt that an historical christianity was absolutely essential; that only through a visible life of the divines in the flesh could god become intelligible to men; that christ was god's idea of our nature realised; that only when we fall back on the glorious portrait of what has been, ran we be delivered from despair of humanity; that in christ "all the blood of all the nations ran," and all the powers of man were redeemed. therefore he grasped as the highest truth, on which to rest life and thought, the reality expressed in the words, "the word was made flesh." the incarnation was to him the centre of all history, the blossoming of humanity. the life which followed the incarnation was the explanation of the life of god, and the only solution of the problem of the life of man. he did not speak much of loving christ; his love was fitly mingled with that veneration which makes love perfect; his voice was solemn, and he paused before he spoke his name in common talk; for what that name meant had become the central thought of his intellect and the deepest realisation of his spirit. he had spent a world of study, of reverent meditation, of adoring contemplation, on the gospel history. nothing comes forward more frequently in his letters than the way in which he had entered into the human life of christ. to that everything is referred--by that everything is explained. in bringing home these great truths to the feelings of those who had lived insensible to them lay the chief value of his preaching. he awakened men to believe that there was freshness and reality in things which they had by use become dulled to. there are no doubt minds which rise to the truth most naturally and freely without the intervention of dogmatic expressions, and to these such expressions, as they are a limit and a warning, are also felt as a clog. mr. robertson's early experience had made him suspicious and irritable about dogma as such; and he prided himself on being able to dispense with it, while at the same time preserving the principle and inner truth which it was intended to convey. but in his ostentatious contempt of dogmatic precision and exactness, none but those who have not thought about the matter will see any proof of his strength or wisdom. dogma, accurate, subtle, scientific, does not prevent a mind of the first order from breathing freshness of feeling, grandeur, originality, and the sense of reality, into the exposition of the truth which it represents. it is no fetter except to those minds which in their impulsiveness, their self-confidence, and their want of adequate grasp and sustained force, most need its salutary restraint. and no man has a right, however eloquent and impressive his speech may be, to talk against dogma till he shows that he does not confound accuracy of statement with conventional formalism. mr. robertson lays down the law pretty confidently about the blunders of everybody about him--tractarian, evangelical, dissenter, romanist, and rationalist. we must say that the impression of every page of his letters is, that clear and "intuitive" as he was, he had not always understood what he condemned. he was especially satisfied with a view of baptism which he thought rose above both extremes and took in the truth of both while it avoided their errors. but is it too much to say that a man who, not in the heat of rhetoric, but when preparing candidates for confirmation, and piquing himself on his freedom from all prejudice, deliberately describes the common church view of baptism as implying a "magical" change, and actually illustrates what he means by the stories of magical changes in the _arabian nights_--who knowing, or able to read, all that has been said by divines on the subject from the days of augustine, yet commits himself to the assertion that this is in fact what they hold and teach--is it too much to say that such a man, whatever may be his other gifts, has forfeited all claim to be considered capable of writing and expressing himself with accuracy, truth, and distinctness on theological questions? and if theological questions are to be dealt with, ought they not to be dealt with accurately, and not loosely? but we have lingered too long over these volumes. they are very instructive, sometimes very elevating, almost always very touching. the life which they describe greatly wanted discipline, self-restraint, and the wise and manly fear of overrating one's own novelties. but we see in it a life consecrated to duty, fulfilled with much pain and self-sacrifice, and adorned by warm and deep affections, by vigour and refinement of thought, and earnest love for truth and purity. no one can help feeling his profound and awful sense of things unseen, though in the philosophy by which he sought to connect things seen and things unseen, we cannot say that we can have much confidence. we have only one concluding remark to make, and that is not on him but on his biographer. an exaggerated tone, as we have said, seems to us to pervade the book. there is what seems to us an unhealthy attempt to create in the reader an impression of the exceptional severity of the sufferings of mr. robertson's life, of his loneliness, of his persecutions. but in this point much may fairly be pardoned to the affection of a friend. what, however, we can less excuse is the want of good feeling with which mr. brooke, in his account of mr. robertson's last days, allows himself to give an _ex parte_, account of a dispute between mr. robertson and the vicar of brighton, about the appointment of a curate, and not simply to insinuate, but distinctly declare that this dispute with its result was the fatal stroke which, in his state of ill-health, hastened his death. we say nothing about the rights of the story, for we never heard anything of them but what mr. brooke tells us. but there is an appearance of vindictiveness in putting it on record with this particular aspect which nothing in the story itself seems to us to justify. in describing mr. robertson's departure from cheltenham, mr. brooke has plainly thought right to use much reticence. he would have done well to have used the same reticence about these quarrels at brighton. xvi life of baron bunsen[ ] [ ] _a memoir of baron bunsen_. by his widow, baroness bunsen. _saturday review_, nd may . bunsen was really one of those persons, more common two centuries ago than now, who could belong as much to an adopted country as to that in which they were born and educated. a german of the germans, he yet succeeded in also making himself at home in england, in appreciating english interests, in assimilating english thought and traditions, and exercising an important influence at a critical time on one extremely important side of english life and opinion. he was less felicitous in allying the german with the englishman, perhaps from personal peculiarities of impatience, self-assertion, and haste, than one who has since trodden in his steps and realised more completely and more splendidly some of the great designs which floated before his mind. but few foreigners have gained more fairly, by work and by sympathy, the _droit de cité_ in england than bunsen. it is a great pity that books must be so long and so bulky, and though bunsen's life was a very full and active one in all matters of intellectual interest, and in some of practical interest also, we cannot help thinking that his biography would have gained by greater exercise of self-denial on the part of his biographer. it is altogether too prolix, and the distinction is not sufficiently observed between what is interesting simply to the bunsen family and their friends, and what is interesting to the public. one of the points in which biographers, and the present author among the number, make mistakes, is in their use of letters. they never know when to stop in giving correspondence. if we had only one or two letters of a remarkable map, they would be worth printing, even if they were very much like other people's letters. but when we have bundles and letter-books without end to select from, selection, in a work professedly biographical, becomes advisable. we want types and specimens of a man's letters; and when the specimen has been given, we want no more, unless what is given is for its own sake remarkable. a great number of bunsen's early letters are printed. some of them are of much interest, showing how early the germs were formed of ideas and plans which occupied his life, and what were the influences by which he was surrounded, and how he comported himself in regard to them. but many more of these letters are what any young man of thought and of an affectionate nature might have written; and we do not want to have it shown us, over and over again, merely that bunsen was thoughtful and affectionate. a wise and severe economy in this matter would have produced at least the same effect, at much less cost to the reader. bunsen was born in , at corbach, in the little principality of waldeck, and grew up under the severe and simple training of a frugal german household, and with a solid and vigorous german education. he became in time heyne's pupil at göttingen, and very early showed the qualities which distinguished him in his after life--restless eagerness after knowledge and vast powers of labour, combined with large and ambitious, and sometimes vague, ideas, and with depth and fervour of religious sentiment. he entered on life when the reaction against the cold rationalistic theories of the age before him was stimulated by the excitement of the war of liberation; and in his deep and supreme interest in the bible he kept to the last the stamp which he then received. more interesting than the recollections of a distinguished man's youth by his friends after he has become distinguished--which are seldom quite natural and not always trustworthy--are the contemporary records of the impressions made on _him_ in his youth by those who were distinguished men when he was young. in some of bunsen's letters we have such impressions. thus he writes of heyne in :-- poor and lonely did i arrive in this place [göttingen]. heyne received me, guided me, bore with me, encouraged me, showed me in himself the example of a high and noble energy, and indefatigable activity in a calling which was not that to which his merit entitled him. he might have superintended and administered and maintained an entire kingdom without more effort and with yet greater efficiency than the university for which he lived; he was too great for a mere philologer, and in general for a professor of mere learning in the age into which he was cast, and he was more distinguished in every other way than in this.... and what has he established or founded at the cost of this exertion of faculties? learning annihilates itself, and the most perfect is the first submerged; for the next age scales with ease the height which cost the preceding the full vigour of life. yet two things remain of him and will not perish--the one, the tribute left by his free spirit to the finest productions of the human mind; and what he felt, thought, and has immortalised in many men of excellence gone before. read his explanations of tischbein's engravings from homer, his last preface to virgil, and especially his oration on the death of müller, and you will understand what i mean. i speak not of his political instinct, made evident in his survey of the public and private life of the ancients. the other memorial which will subsist of him, more warm in life than the first, is the remembrance of his generosity, to which numbers owe a deep obligation. and of schelling, about the same time, whom he had just seen in munich:-- schelling before all must be mentioned as having received me well, after his fashion, giving me frequent occasions of becoming acquainted with his philosophical views and judgments, in his own original and peculiar manner. his mode of disputation is rough and angular; his peremptoriness and his paradoxes terrible. once he undertook to explain animal magnetism, and for this purpose to give an idea of time, from which resulted that all is present and in existence--the present as existing in the actual moment; the future, as existing in a future moment. when i demanded the proof, he referred me to the word _is_, which applies to existence, in the sentence that "this _is_ future." seckendorf, who was present (with him i have become closely acquainted, to my great satisfaction), attempted to draw attention to the confounding the subjective (i.e. him who pronounces that sentence) with the objective; or, rather, to point out a simple grammatical misunderstanding--in short, declared the position impossible. "well," replied schelling drily, "you have not understood me." two professors (his worshippers), who were present, had meanwhile endeavoured by their exclamations, "only observe, all _is_, all _exists_" (to which the wife of schelling, a clever woman, assented), to help me into conviction; and a vehement beating the air--for arguing and holding fast by any firm point were out of the question--would have arisen, if i had not contrived to escape by giving a playful turn to the conversation. i am perfectly aware that schelling _could_ have expressed and carried through his real opinion far better--i.e. rationally. i tell the anecdote merely to give an idea of his manner in conversation. at göttingen he was one of a remarkable set, comprising lachmann, lücke, brandis, and some others, thought as much of at the time as their friends, but who failed to make their way to the front ranks of the world. like others of his countrymen, bunsen began to find "that the world's destinies were not without their effect on him," and to feel dissatisfied with the comparatively narrow sphere of even german learning. the thought grew, and took possession of him, of "bringing over, into his knowledge and into his fatherland, the solemn and distant east," and to "draw the east into the study of the entire course of humanity (particularly of european, and more especially of teutonic humanity)," making germany the "central point of this study." vast plans of philological and historical study, involving, as the only means then possible of carrying them out, schemes of wide travel and long sojourn in the east, opened on him. indian and persian literature, the instinctive certainty of its connection with the languages and thought of the west, and the imperfection of means of study in europe, drew him, as many more were drawn at the time, to seek the knowledge which they wanted in foreign and distant lands. with bunsen, this wide and combined study of philology, history, and philosophy, which has formed one of the characteristic pursuits of our time, was from the first connected with the study of the bible as its central point. in came a decisive turning-point in his life--his acquaintance, and the beginning of his close connection, with niebuhr, at berlin; and from this time he felt himself a prussian. "that state in northern germany," he writes to brandis in , "which gladly receives every german, from wheresoever he may come, and considers every one thus entering as a citizen born, is _the true germany_":-- that such a state [he proceeds, in the true bismarckian spirit] should prove inconvenient to others of inferior importance, which persist in continuing their isolated existence, regardless of the will of providence and of the general good, is of no consequence whatever; nor even does it matter that, in its present management, there are defects and imperfections.... we intend to be in berlin in three weeks; and there (in prussia) am i resolved to fix my destinies. after reading persian for a short time in paris with de sacy, and after the failure of a plan of travel with mr. astor of new york, bunsen joined niebuhr at florence in the end of , and went on with him to rome, where niebuhr was prussian envoy. there, enjoying niebuhr's society, "equally sole in his kind with rome," he took up his abode, and plunged into study. he gave up his plans of oriental travel, finding he could do all that he wanted without them. too much a student, as he writes to a friend, to think of marrying, which he could not do "without impairing his whole scheme of mental development," he nevertheless found his fate in an english lady, miss waddington, who became his wife. and, finally, when the health of his friend brandis, niebuhr's secretary in the prussian legation, broke down, bunsen took his place, and entered on that combined path of study and diplomacy in which he continued for the greater part of his life. it may be questioned whether bunsen's career answered altogether successfully to what he proposed to himself, or was in fact all that his friends and he himself thought it; but it was eminently one in which from the first he had laid down for himself a plan of life which he tenaciously followed through many changes and varieties of work, without ever losing sight of the purpose with which he began. he piqued himself on having early seen that a man ought to have an object to which to devote his whole life--"be it a dictionary like johnson's or a history like gibbon's"--and on having discerned and chosen his own object. and at an early time of his life in rome he draws an outline of thought and inquiry, destined to break off into many different labours, in very much the same language in which he might have described it in the last year of his life:-- _the consciousness of god in the mind of man, and that which in and through that consciousness he has accomplished, especially in language and religion_, this was from the earliest time before my mind. after having awhile fancied to attain my point, sometimes here, sometimes there, at length (it was in the christmas holidays of , after having gained the prize in november) i made a general and comprehensive plan. i wished to go through and represent heathen antiquity, in its principal phases, in three great periods of the world's history, according to its languages, its religious conceptions, and its political institutions; first of all in the east, where the earliest expressions in each are highly remarkable, although little known; then in the second great epoch, among the greeks and romans; thirdly, among the teutonic nations, who put an end to the roman empire. at first i thought of christianity only as something which every one, like the mother tongue, knows intuitively, and therefore not as the object of a peculiar study. but in january , when i for the last time took into consideration all that belonged to my plan, and wrote it down, i arrived at this conclusion, that as god had caused the conception of himself to be developed in the mind of man in a twofold manner, the one through revelation to the jewish people through their patriarchs, the other through reason in the heathen; so also must the inquiry and representation of this development be twofold; and as god had kept these two ways for a length of time independent and separate, so should we, in the course of the examination, separate knowledge from man, and his development from the doctrine of revelation and faith, firmly trusting that god in the end would bring about the union of both. this is now also my firm conviction, that we must not mix them or bring them together forcibly, as many have done with well-meaning zeal but unclear views, and as many in germany with impure designs are still doing. the design had its interruptions, both intellectual and practical. the plan was an ambitious one, too ambitious for bunsen's time and powers, or even probably for our own more advanced stage of knowledge; and bunsen ever found it hard to resist the attractions of a new object of interest, and did not always exhaust it, though he seldom touched anything without throwing light on it. thus he was drawn by circumstances to devote a good deal of time, more than he intended, to the mere antiquarianism of rome. by and by he found himself succeeding niebuhr as the diplomatic representative of prussia at rome. and his attempt to meet the needs of his own strong devotional feelings by giving more warmth and interest to the german services at the embassy, "the congregation on the capitoline hill," led him, step by step, to those wider schemes for liturgical reform which influenced so importantly the course of his fortunes. they brought him, a young and unknown man, with little more than niebuhr's good word, into direct and confidential communication with the king of prussia, who was then intent on plans of the same kind, and who recognised in bunsen, after some preliminary jealousy and misgivings, the man most fitted to assist in carrying them out. but though bunsen, who started with the resolve of being both a student and a scholar, was driven, as he thought against his will, into paths which led him deeper and deeper into public life and diplomacy, his early plans were never laid aside even under the stress of official employment. perhaps it may be difficult to strike the balance of what they lost or gained by it. the account of his life at rome contains much that is interesting. there is the curious mixture of sympathy and antipathy in bunsen's mind for the place itself; the antipathy of a german, a protestant, and a free inquirer, for the roman, the old catholic, the narrow, timid, traditional spirit which pervaded everything in the great seat of clerical and papal government; and the sympathy, scarcely less intense, not merely, or in the first place, for the classical aspects of rome, but for its religious character, as still the central point of christendom, full of the memorials and the savour of the early days of christianity, mingling with what its many centuries of history have added to them; and for all that aroused the interest and touched the mind of one deeply busy with two great religious problems--the best forms for christian worship, and the restoration, if possible, of some organisation and authority in protestant germany. for a long time bunsen, like his master niebuhr, was on the best terms with cardinals, monsignori, and popes. the roman services were no objects to him of abhorrence or indifference. he saw, in the midst of accretions, the remains of the more primitive devotion; and the architecture, the art, and the music, to be found only in rome, were to him inexhaustible sources of delight. as may be supposed, letters like bunsen's, and the recollections of his biographer, are full of interesting gossip; notices of famous people, and of things that happened in rome in the days of the emancipation and reform bills, revolutions of naples in ' and france in ' , during the twenty years, from to , in which the men of the great war and the restorations were going off the scene, and the men of the modern days--liberals, high churchmen, ultra-montanes--were coming on. those twenty years, of course, were not without their changes in bunsen's own views. the man who had come to rome, in position a poor and obscure student, had grown into the oracle of a highly cultivated society, whose acquaintance was eagerly sought by every one of importance who lived at rome or visited it, and into the diplomatic representative of one of the great powers. the scholar had come to have, not merely theories, but political and ecclesiastical aims. the disciple of niebuhr, who at one time had seen all things very much as niebuhr saw them in his sad later days of disgust at revolution and cynical despair of liberty, had come since under the influence of arnold, and, as his letters to arnold show, had taken into his own mind much of the more generous and hopeful, though vague, teaching of that equally fervid teacher of liberalism and of religion. these letters are of much interest. they show the dreams and the fears and antipathies of the time; they contain some remarkable anticipations, some equally remarkable miscalculations, and some ideas and proposals which, with our experience, excite our wonder that any one could have imagined them practicable. every one knows that bunsen's diplomatic career at rome ended unfortunately. he was mixed up with the violent proceedings of the prussian government in the dispute with the archbishop of cologne about marriages between protestants and catholics, and he had the misfortune to offend equally both his own court and that of rome. it is possible that, as is urged in the biography before us, he was sacrificed to the blunders and the enmities of powers above him. but, for whatever reason, no clear account is given of the matter by his biographer, though a good deal is suggested; and in the absence of intelligible explanations the conclusion is natural that, though he may have been ill-used, he may also have been unequal to his position. but his ill-success or his ill-usage at rome was more than compensated by the results to which it may be said to have led. out of it ultimately came that which gave the decisive character to bunsen's life--his settlement in london as prussian minister. on leaving rome he came straight to england he came full of admiration and enthusiasm to "his ithaca, his island fatherland," and he was flattered and delighted by the welcome he received, and by the power which he perceived in himself, beyond that of most foreigners, to appreciate and enjoy everything english. he liked everything--people, country, and institutions; even, as his biographer writes, our rooks. the zest of his enjoyment was not diminished by his keen sense of what appear to foreigners our characteristic defects--the want of breadth of interest and boldness of speculative thought which accompanies so much energy in public life and so much practical success; and he seems to have felt in himself a more than ordinary fitness to be a connecting link between the two nations--that he had much to teach englishmen, and that they were worth teaching. he thoroughly sympathised with the earnestness and strong convictions of english religion; but he thought it lamentably destitute of rational grounds, of largeness of idea and of critical insight, enslaved to the letter, and afraid of inquiry. but, with all drawbacks, his visit to england made it a very attractive place to him; and when he was appointed by his government envoy to the swiss confederation, with strict injunctions "to do nothing," his eyes were oft on turned towards england. in the king of prussia died, and bunsen's friend and patron, the crown prince, became frederic william iv. he resembled bunsen in more ways than one; in his ardent religious sentiment, in his eagerness, in his undoubting and not always far-sighted self-confidence and self-assertion, and in a combination of practical vagueness of view and a want of understanding men, with a feverish imperiousness in carrying out a favourite plan. in he sent bunsen to england to negotiate the ill-considered and precipitate arrangement for the jerusalem bishopric; and on the successful conclusion of the negotiation, bunsen was appointed permanently to be prussian minister in london. the manner of appointment was remarkable. the king sent three names to lord aberdeen and the english court, and they selected bunsen's. thus bunsen, who twenty-five years before had sat down a penniless student, almost in despair at the failure of his hopes as a travelling tutor, in orgagna's _loggia_ at florence, had risen, in spite of real difficulties and opposition, to a brilliant position in active political life; and the remarkable point is that, whether he was ambitious or not of this kind of advancement--and it would perhaps have been as well on his part to have implied less frequently that he was not--he was all along, above everything, the student and the theologian. what is even more remarkable is that, plunged into the whirl of london public life and society, he continued still to be, more even than the diplomatist, the student and theologian. the prussian embassy during the years that he occupied it, from to , was not an idle place, and bunsen was not a man to leave important state business to other hands. the french revolution, the german revolution, the frankfort assembly, the question of the revival of the empire, the beginnings of the danish quarrel and of the crimean war, all fell within that time, and gave the prussian minister in such a centre as london plenty to think of, to do, and to write about. yet all this time was a time of intense and unceasing activity in that field of theological controversy in which bunsen took such delight. the diplomatist entrusted with the gravest affairs of a great power in the most critical and difficult times, and fully alive to the interest and responsibility of his charge, also worked harder than most professors, and was as positive and fiery in his religious theories and antipathies as the keenest and most dogmatic of scholastic disputants, he was busy about egyptian chronology, about cuneiform writing, about comparative philology; he plunged with characteristic eagerness into english theological war; and such books as his _church of the future_, and his writings on ignatius and hippolytus, were not the least important of the works which marked the progress of the struggle of opinions here. but they represented only a very small part of the unceasing labour that was going on in the early morning hours in carlton house terrace. all this time the foundations were being laid and the materials gathered for books of wider scope and more permanent aim, too vast for him to accomplish even in his later years of leisure. it is an original and instructive picture; for though we boast statesmen who still carry on the great traditions of scholarship, and give room in their minds for the deeper and more solemn problems of religion and philosophy, they are not supposed to be able to carry on simultaneously their public business and their classical or scientific studies, and at any rate they do not attack the latter with the devouring zeal with which bunsen taxed the efforts of hard-driven secretaries and readers to keep pace with his inexhaustible demands for more and more of the most abstruse materials of knowledge. the end of his london diplomatic career was, like the end of his roman one, clouded with something like disgrace; and, like the roman one, is left here unexplained. but it was for his happiness, probably, that his residence in england came to a close. he had found the poetry of his early notions about england, political and theological at least, gradually changing into prose. he found less and less to like, in what at first most attracted him, in the english church; he and it, besides knowing one another better, were also changing. he probably increased his sympathies for england, and returned in a measure to his old kindness for it, by looking at it only from a distance. the labour of his later days, as vast and indefatigable as that of his earlier days, was devoted to his great work, which was, as it were, to popularise the bible and revive interest in it by a change in the method of presenting it and commenting on it. to the last the bible was the central point of his philosophical as well as his religious thoughts, as it had been in his first beginnings as a student at gottingen and rome. after a life of many trials, but of unusual prosperity and enjoyment, he died in the end of . the account of his last days is a very touching one. we do not pretend to think bunsen the great and consummate man that, naturally enough, he appears to his friends. we doubt whether he can be classed as a man in the first rank at all. we doubt whether he fully understood his age, and yet it is certain that he was confident and positive that he did understand it better than most men; and an undue confidence of this kind implies considerable defects both of intellect and character. he wanted the patient, cautious, judicial self-distrust which his studies eminently demanded, and of which he might have seen some examples in england. no one can read these volumes without seeing the disproportionate power which first impressions had with him; he was always ready to say that something, which had just happened or come before him, was the greatest or the most complete thing of its kind. wonderfully active, wonderfully quick and receptive, full of imagination and of the power of combining and constructing, and never wearied out or dispirited, his mind took in large and grand ideas, and developed them with enthusiasm and success, and with all the resources of wide and varied knowledge; but the affluence and ingenuity of his thoughts indisposed him, as it indisposes many other able men, to the prosaic and uninteresting work of calling these thoughts into question, and cross-examining himself upon their grounds and tenableness. he tried too much; the multiplicity of his intellectual interests was too much for him, and he often thought that he was explaining when he was but weaving a wordy tissue, and "darkening counsel" as much as any of the theological sciolists whom he denounced. people, for instance, must, it seems to us, be very easily satisfied who find any fresh light in the attempt, not unfrequent in his letters, to adapt the lutheran watchword of justification by faith to modern ideas. he was very rapid, and this rapidity made him hasty and precipitate; it also made him apt to despise other men, and, what was of more consequence, the difficulties of the subject likewise. others did not always find it easy to understand him; and it may fairly be questioned if he always sufficiently asked whether he understood himself. he was generous and large-spirited in intention, though not always so in fact. doubtless so much knowledge, so much honest and unsparing toil, such freshness and quickness of thought, have not been wasted; there will always be much to learn from bunsen's writings. but his main service has been the moral one of his example; of his ardent and high-souled industry, of his fearlessness in accepting the conclusions of his inquiries, of his untiring faith through many changes and some disappointments that there is a way to reconcile all the truths that interest men--those of religion, and those of nature and history. the sincerity and earnestness with which he attempted this are a lesson to everybody; his success is more difficult to recognise, and it may perhaps be allowable to wish that he had taken more exactly the measure of the great task which he set to himself. his ambition was a high one. he aspired to be the luther of the new which he so often dwelt upon, and to construct a theology which, without breaking with the past, should show what christianity really is, and command the faith and fill the opening thought of the present. it can hardly be said that he succeeded. the church of the future still waits its interpreter, to make good its pretensions to throw the ignorant and mistaken church of the past into the shade. xvii coleridge's memoir of keble[ ] [ ] _a memoir of the rev. john keble_. by the right hon. sir j.t. coleridge. _saturday review_, th march . mr. keble has been fortunate in his biographer. there have been since his death various attempts to appreciate a character manifestly of such depth and interest, yet about which outsiders could find so little to say. professor shairp, of st. andrews, two or three years ago gave a charming little sketch, full of heart and insight, and full too of noble modesty and reverence, which deserves to be rescued from the danger of being forgotten into which sketches are apt to fall, both on account of its direct subject, and also for the contemporary evidence which it contains of the impressions made on a perfectly impartial and intelligent observer by the early events of the oxford movement. the brilliant dean of westminster, in _macmillan's magazine_, has attempted, with his usual grace and kindliness, to do justice to keble's character, and has shown how hard he found the task. the paper on keble forms a pendant to a recent paper on dean milman. the two papers show conspicuously the measure and range of dr. stanley's power; what he can comprehend and appreciate in religious earnestness and height, and what he cannot; in what shapes, as in dean milman, he can thoroughly sympathise with it and grasp it, and where its phenomena, as in mr. keble, simply perplex and baffle him, and carry him out of his depth. sir john coleridge knew keble probably as long and as intimately as any one; and on the whole, he had the most entire sympathy with his friend's spirit, even where he disagreed with his opinions. he thoroughly understood and valued the real and living unity of a character which mostly revealed itself to the outer world by what seemed jerks and discordant traits. from early youth, through manhood to old age, he had watched and tested and loved that varied play and harmony of soul and mind, which was sometimes tender, sometimes stern, sometimes playful, sometimes eager; abounding with flashes of real genius, and yet always inclining by instinctive preference to things homely and humble; but which was always sound and unselfish and thorough, endeavouring to subject itself to the truth and will of god. to sir john coleridge all this was before him habitually as a whole; he could take it in, not by putting piece by piece together, but because he saw it. and besides being an old and affectionate and intelligent friend, he was also a discriminating one. in his circumstances he was as opposite to keble as any one could be; he was a lawyer and man of the world, whose busy life at westminster had little in common with the studies or pursuits of the divine and the country parson. such an informant presents a picture entirely different in kind from the comments and criticisms of those who can judge only from mr. keble's writings and religious line, or from the rare occasions in which he took a public part. these appearances, to many who willingly acknowledge the charm which has drawn to him the admiration and affection of numbers externally most widely at variance with him, do not always agree together. people delight in his poetry who hate his theology. they cannot say too much of the tenderness, the depth, the truth, the quick and delicate spirit of love and purity, which have made his verses the best interpreters and soothers of modern religious feeling; yet, in the religious system from which his poetry springs, they find nothing but what seems to them dry, harsh, narrow, and antiquated. he attracts and he repels; and the attraction and repulsion are equally strong. they see one side, and he is irresistible in his simplicity, humbleness, unworldliness, and ever considerate charity, combined with so much keenness and freshness of thought, and such sure and unfailing truth of feeling. they see another, and he seems to them full of strange unreality, strained, exaggerated, morbid, bristling with a forced yet inflexible intolerance. at one moment he seems the very ideal of a christian teacher, made to win the sympathy of all hearts; the next moment a barrier rises in the shape of some unpopular doctrine or some display of zealous severity, seeming to be a strange contrast to all that was before, which utterly astonishes and disappoints. mr. keble was very little known to the public in general, less so even than others whose names are associated with his; and it is evident that to the public in general he presented a strange assemblage of incoherent and seemingly irreconcilable qualities. his mind seemed to work and act in different directions; and the results at the end seemed to be with wide breaks and interruptions between them. but a book like this enables us to trace back these diverging lines to the centre from which they spring. what seemed to be in such sharp contradiction at the outside is seen to flow naturally from the perfectly homogeneous and consistent character within. many people will of course except to the character. it is not the type likely to find favour in an age of activity, doubt, and change. but, as it was realised in mr. keble, there it is in sir john coleridge's pages, perfectly real, perfectly natural, perfectly whole and uniform, with nothing double or incongruous in it, though it unfolded itself in various and opposite ways. and its ideal was simply that which has been consecrated as the saintly character in the christian church since the days of st. john--the deepest and most genuine love of all that was good; the deepest and most genuine hatred of all that was believed to be evil. the picture which sir john coleridge puts before us, though deficient in what is striking and brilliant, is a sufficiently remarkable and uncommon one. it is the picture of a man of high cultivation and intellect, in whom religion was not merely something flavouring and elevating life, not merely a great element and object of spiritual activity, but really and unaffectedly the one absorbing interest, and the spring of every thought and purpose. whether people like such a character or not, and whether or not they may think the religion wrong, or distorted and imperfect, if they would fairly understand the writer of the _christian year_ they must start from this point. he was a man who, without a particle of the religious cant of any school, without any self-consciousness or pretension or unnatural strain, literally passed his clays under the quick and pervading influence, for restraint and for stimulus, of the will and presence of god. with this his whole soul was possessed; its power over him had not to be invoked and stirred up; it acted spontaneously and unnoticed in him; it was dominant in all his activity; it quenched in him aims, and even, it may be, faculties; it continually hampered the free play of his powers and gifts, and made him often seem, to those who had not the key, awkward, unequal, and unintelligible. but for this awful sense of truth and reality unseen, which dwarfed to him all personal thoughts and all present things, he might have been a more finished writer, a more attractive preacher, a less indifferent foster-father to his own works. but it seemed to him a shame, in the presence of all that his thoughts habitually dwelt with, to think of the ordinary objects of authorship, of studying anything of this world for its own sake, of perfecting works of art, of cultivating the subtle forces and spells of language to give attractiveness to his writings. abruptness, inadequacy, and obscurity of expression were light matters, and gave him little concern, compared with the haunting fear of unreal words. this "seeking first the kingdom of god and his righteousness," as he understood it, was the basis of all that he was; it was really and unaffectedly his governing principle, the root of his affections and his antipathies, just as to other men is the passion for scientific discovery or political life. but within these limits, and jealously restrained by these conditions, a strongly marked character, exuberant with power and life, and the play of individual qualities, displayed itself. there were two intellectual sides to his mind--one which made him a poet, quickness and delicacy of observation and sympathetic interpretation, the realising and anticipating power of deep feeling and penetrative imagination; the other, at first sight, little related to poetry, a hard-headed, ingenious, prosaic shrewdness and directness of common sense, dealing practically with things as they are and on the whole, very little curious about scientific questions and precision, argumentative in a fashion modelled on bishop butler, and full of logical resource, good and, often it must be owned, bad. it was a mind which unfolded first under the plain, manly discipline of an old-fashioned english country parsonage, where the unshowy piety and strong morality and modest theology of the middle age of anglicanism, the school of pearson, bull, and wilson, were supreme. and from this it came under the new influences of bold and independent thought which were beginning to stir at oxford; influences which were at first represented by such men as davison, copleston, and, above all, whately; influences which repelled keble by what he saw of hardness, shallowness, and arrogance, and still more of self-sufficiency and intellectual display and conceit in the prevailing tone of speculation, but which nevertheless powerfully affected him, and of which he showed the traces to the last sir john coleridge is disappointing as to the amount of light which he throws on the process which was going on in keble's mind during the fifteen years or so between his degree and the _christian year_; but there is one touch which refers to this period. speaking in of alexander knox, and expressing dislike of his position, "as on the top of a high hill, seeing which way different schools tend," and "exercising a royal right of eclecticism over all," he adds:-- i speak the more feelingly because i know i was myself inclined to eclecticism at one time; and if it had not been for my father and my brother, where i should have been now, who can say? but he was a man who, with a very vigorous and keen intellect, capable of making him a formidable disputant if he had been so minded, may be said not to have cared for his intellect. he used it at need, but he distrusted and undervalued it as an instrument and help. goodness was to him the one object of desire and reverence; it was really his own measure of what he respected and valued; and where he recognised it, and in whatever shape, grave or gay, he cared not about seeming consistent in somehow or other paying it homage. people who knew him remember how, in this austere judge of heresy, burdened by the ever-pressing conviction of the "decay" of the church and the distress of a time of change, tenderness, playfulness, considerateness, the restraint of a modesty which could not but judge, yet mistrusted its fitness, marked his ordinary intercourse. overflowing with affection to his friends, and showing it in all kinds of unconventional and unexpected instances, keeping to the last a kind of youthful freshness as if he had never yet realised that he was not a boy, and shrunk from the formality and donnishness of grown-up life, he was the most refined and thoughtful of gentlemen, and in the midst of the fierce party battles of his day, with all his strong feeling of the tremendous significance of the strife, always a courteous and considerate opponent. strong words he used, and used deliberately. but those were the days when the weapons of sarcasm and personal attack were freely handled. the leaders of the high church movement were held up to detestation as the oxford malignants, and they certainly showed themselves fully able to give their assailants as good as they brought; yet mr. keble, involved in more than one trying personal controversy, feeling as sternly and keenly as any one about public questions, and tried by disappointment and the break up of the strongest ties, never lost his evenness of temper, never appeared in the arena of personal recrimination. in all the prominent part which he took, and in the resolute and sometimes wrathful tone in which he defended what seemed harsh measures, he may have dropped words which to opponents seemed severe ones, but never any which even they could call a scornful one or a sneer. it was in keeping with all that he was--a mark of imperfection it may be, yet part of the nobleness and love of reality in a man who felt so deeply the weakness and ignorance of man--that he cared so little about the appearances of consistency. thus, bound as he was by principle to show condemnation when he thought that a sacred cause was invaded, he was always inclining to conciliate his wrath with his affectionateness, and his severity with his consideration of circumstances and his own mistrust of himself. he was, of all men holding strong opinions, one of the most curiously and unexpectedly tolerant, wherever he could contrive to invent an excuse for tolerance, or where long habitual confidence was weighed against disturbing appearances. sir john coleridge touches this in the following extract, which is characteristic:-- on questions of this kind especially [university reform], his principles were uncompromising; if a measure offended against what he thought honest, or violated what he thought sacred, good motives in the framers he would not admit as palliation, nor would he be comforted by an opinion of mine that measures mischievous in their logical consequences were never in the result so mischievous, or beneficial measures so beneficial, as had been foretold. so he writes playfully to me at an earlier time:-- "hurrell froude and i took into consideration your opinion that 'there are good men of all parties,' and agreed that it is a bad doctrine for these days; the time being come in which, according to john miller, 'scoundrels must be called scoundrels'; and, moreover, we have stigmatised the said opinion by the name of the coleridge heresy. so hold it any longer at your peril." i think it fair to set down these which were, in truth, formed opinions, and not random sayings; but it would be most unfair if one concluded from them, written and spoken in the freedom of friendly intercourse, that there was anything sour in his spirit, or harsh and narrow in his practice; when you discussed any of these things with him, the discussion was pretty sure to end, not indeed with any insincere concession of what he thought right and true, but in consideration for individuals and depreciation of himself. and the same thing comes out in the interesting letter in which the solicitor-general describes his last recollections of keble:-- there was, i am sure, no trace of failing then to be discerned in his apprehension, or judgment, or discourse. he was an old man who had been very ill, who was still physically weak, and who needed care; but he was the same mr. keble i had always known, and whom, for aught that appeared, i might hope still to know for many years to come. little bits of his tenderness, flashes of his fun, glimpses of his austerer side, i seem to recall, but i cannot put them upon paper.... once i remember walking with him just the same short walk, from his house to sir william's, and our conversation fell upon charles i., with regard to whose truth and honour i had used some expressions in a review, which had, as i heard, displeased him. i referred to this, and he said it was true. i replied that i was very sorry to displease him by anything i said or thought; but that if the naseby letters were genuine, i could not think that what i said was at all too strong, and that a man could but do his best to form an honest opinion upon historical evidence, and, if he had to speak, to express that opinion. on this he said, with a tenderness and humility not only most touching, but to me most embarrassing, that "it might be so; what was he to judge of other men; he was old, and things were now looked at very differently; that he knew he had many things to unlearn and learn afresh; and that i must not mind what he had said, for that in truth belief in the heroes of his youth had become part of him." i am afraid these are my words, and not his; and i cannot give his way of speaking, which to any one with a heart, i think, would have been as overcoming as it was to me. this same carelessness about appearances seems to us to be shown in keble's theological position in his later years. a more logical, or a more plausible, but a less thoroughly real man might easily have drifted into romanism. there was much in the circumstances round him, in the admissions which he had made, to lead that way; and his chivalrous readiness to take the beaten or unpopular side would help the tendency. but he was a man who gave great weight to his instinctive perception of what was right and wrong; and he was also a man who, when he felt sure of his duty, did not care a straw about what the world thought of appearances, or required as a satisfaction of seeming consistency. in him was eminently illustrated the characteristic strength and weakness of english religion, which naturally comes out in that form of it which is called anglicanism; that poor anglicanism, the butt and laughing-stock of all the clever and high-flying converts to rome, of all the clever and high-flying liberals, and of all those poor copyists of the first, far from clever, though very high-flying, who now give themselves out as exclusive heirs of the great name of catholic; sneered at on all sides as narrow, meagre, shattered, barren; which certainly does not always go to the bottom of questions, and is too much given to "hunting-up" passages for _catenas_ of precedents and authorities; but which yet has a strange, obstinate, tenacious moral force in it; which, without being successful in formulating theories or in solving fallacies, can pierce through pretences and shams; and which in england seems the only shape in which intense religious faith can unfold itself and connect itself with morality and duty, without seeming to wear a peculiar dress of its own, and putting a barrier of self-chosen watchwords and singularities between itself and the rest of the nation. it seems to us a great advantage to truth to have a character thus exhibited in its unstudied and living completeness, and exhibited directly, as the impression from life was produced on those before whose eyes it drew itself out day by day in word and act, as the occasion presented itself. there is, no doubt, a more vivid and effective way; one in which the dean of westminster is a great master, though it is not the method which he followed in what is probably his most perfect work, the _life of dr. arnold_--the method of singling out points, and placing them, if possible, under a concentrated light, and in strong contrast and relief. thus in keble's case it is easy, and doubtless to many observers natural and tempting, to put side by side, with a strange mixture of perplexity and repulsion, _the christian year_, and the treatise _on eucharistical adoration_; to compare even in keble's poetry, his tone on nature and human life, on the ways of children and the thoughts of death, with that on religious error and ecclesiastical divergences from the anglican type; and to dwell on the contrast between keble bearing his great gifts with such sweetness and modesty, and touching with such tenderness and depth the most delicate and the purest of human feelings, and keble as the editor of fronde's _remains_, forward against dr. hampden, breaking off a friendship of years with dr. arnold, stiff against liberal change and indulgent to ancient folly and error, the eulogist of patristic mysticism and bishop wilson's "discipline," and busy in the ecclesiastical agitations and legal wranglings of our later days, about jerusalem bishoprics and courts of final appeal and ritual details, about gorham judgments, _essays and reviews_ prosecutions, and colenso scandals. the objection to this method of contrast is that it does not give the whole truth. it does not take notice that, in appreciating a man like keble, the thing to start from is that his ideal and model and rule of character was neither more nor less than the old christian one. it was simply what was accepted as right and obvious and indisputable, not by churchmen only, but by all earnest believers up to our own days. given certain conditions of christian faith and duty which he took for granted as much as the ordinary laws of morality, then the man's own individual gifts or temper or leanings displayed themselves. but when people talk of keble being narrow and rigid and harsh and intolerant, they ought first to recollect that he had been brought up with the ideas common to all whom he ever heard of or knew as religious people. all earnest religious conviction must seem narrow to those who do not share it. it was nothing individual or peculiar, either to him or his friends, to have strong notions about defending what they believed that they had received as the truth; and they were people who knew what they were about, too, and did not take things up at random. in this he was not different from hooker, or jeremy taylor, or bishop butler, or baxter, or wesley, or dr. chalmers; it may be added, that he was not different from dr. arnold or archbishop whately. it must not be forgotten that till of late years there was always supposed, rightly or wrongly, to be such a thing as false doctrine, and that intolerance of it, within the limits of common justice, was always held as much part of the christian character as devotion and charity. men differed widely as to what was false doctrine, but they did not differ much as to there being such a thing, and as to what was to be thought of it. keble, like other people of his time, took up his system, and really, considering that the ideal which he honestly and earnestly aimed at was the complete system of the catholic church, it is an abuse of words to call it, whatever else it may be called, a narrow system. there may be a wider system still, in the future; but it is at least premature to say that a man is narrow because he accepts in good faith the great traditional ideas and doctrines of the christian church; for of everything that can yet be called a religious system, in the sense commonly understood, as an embodiment of definite historical revelation, it is not easy to conceive a less narrow one. and, accepting it as the truth, it was dearer to him than life. that he was sensitively alive to whatever threatened or opposed it, and was ready to start up like a soldier, ready to do battle against any odds and to risk any unpopularity or misconstruction, was only the sure and natural result of that deep love and loyalty and thorough soundness of heart with which he loved his friends, but what he believed to be truth and god's will better than his friends. but it is idle and shallow to confuse the real narrowness which springs from a harsh temper or a cramped and self-sufficient intellect, and which is quite compatible with the widest theoretical latitude, and the inevitable appearance of narrowness and severity which must always be one side which a man of strong convictions and earnest purpose turns to those whose strong convictions and earnest purpose are opposite to his. mr. keble, saintly as was his character, if ever there was such a character, belonged, as we all do, to his day and generation. the aspect of things and the thoughts of men change; enlarging, we are always apt to think, but perhaps really also contracting in some directions where they once were larger. in mr. keble, the service which he rendered to his time consisted, not merely, as it is sometimes thought, in soothing and refining it, but in bracing it. he was the preacher and example of manly hardness, simplicity, purpose in the religious character. it may be that his hatred of evil--of hollowness, impurity, self-will, conceit, ostentation--was greater than was always his perception of various and mingled good, or his comprehension of those middle things and states which are so much before us now. but the service cannot be overrated, to all parties, of the protest which his life and all his words were against dangers which were threatening all parties, and not least the liberal party--the danger of shallowness and superficial flippancy; the danger of showy sentiment and insincerity, of worldly indifference to high duties and calls. with the one great exception of arnold--keble's once sympathetic friend, though afterwards parted from him--the religious liberals of our time have little reason to look back with satisfaction to the leaders, able and vigorous as some of them were, who represented their cause then. they owe to keble, as much as do those who are more identified with his theology, the inestimable service of having interpreted religion by a genuine life, corresponding in its thoroughness and unsparing, unpretending devotedness, as well as in its subtle vividness of feeling, to the great object which religion professes to contemplate. xviii maurice's theological essays[ ] [ ] _theological essays_. by f.d. maurice. _guardian_, th september . the purpose of this volume of essays is to consider the views entertained by unitarians of what are looked upon by christians generally as fundamental truths; to examine what force there is in unitarian objections, and what mistakes are involved in the popular notions and representations of those fundamental truths; and so, without entering into controversy, for which mr. maurice declares himself entirely indisposed, and in the utility of which he entirely disbelieves, to open the way for a deeper and truer, and more serious review, by all parties, of either the differences or the misunderstandings which keep them asunder. it is a work, the writer considers, as important as any which he has undertaken: "no labour i have been engaged in has occupied me so much, or interested me more deeply;" and with his estimate of his subject we are not disposed to disagree. we always rise from the perusal of one of mr. maurice's books with the feeling that he has shown us one great excellence, and taught us one great lesson. he has shown us an example of serious love of truth, and an earnest sense of its importance, and of his own responsibility in speaking of it. most readers, whatever else they may think, must have their feeling of the wide and living interest of a theological or moral subject quickened by mr. maurice's thoughts on it. this is the excellence. the lesson is this--to look into the meaning of our familiar words, and to try to use them with a real meaning. not that mr. maurice always shows us how; but it is difficult for conscience to escape being continually reminded of the duty. and it is in these two things that the value of mr. maurice's writings mainly consists. the enforcing of them has been, to our mind, his chief "mission," and his most valuable contribution to the needs of his generation. in this volume they are exhibited, as in his former ones; and in this he shows also, as he has shown before, his earnest desire to find a way whereby, without compromising truth or surrendering sacred convictions of the heart, serious men of very different sides might be glad to find themselves in some points mistaken, in order that they might find themselves at one. this philosophy, not of comprehension but of conciliation, the craving after which has awakened in the church, whenever mental energy has been quickened, the philosophy in which clement of alexandria and origin, and, we may add, st. augustine, made many earnest essays, is certainly no unworthy aim for the theologian of our days. he would, indeed, deserve largely of the church who should show us a solid and safe way to it. but while we are far from denouncing or suspecting the wish or the design, we are bound to watch jealously and criticise narrowly the execution. for we all know what such plans have come to before now. and it is for the interest of all serious and earnest people on all sides, that there should be no needless and additional confusion introduced into theology--such confusion as is but too likely to follow, when a design of conciliation, with the aim of which so many, for good reasons or bad ones, are sure to sympathise, is carried out by hands that are not equal to it. with the fullest sense of the serious truthfulness of those who differ from us, of the real force of many of their objections and criticisms on our proceedings, our friends, and our ideas, it is far better to hold our peace, than from impatience at what we feel to be the vulnerable point of our own side, to rush into explanations before we are sure of our power adequately to explain. and to this charge it seems to us that mr. maurice is open. there is sense and manliness in his disclaimer of proselytism; and there is a meaning in which we can agree with his account of truth. "if i could persuade all dissenters," he says, "to become members of my church to-morrow, i should be very sorry to do it. i believe the chances are they might leave it the next day. i do not wish to make them think as i think. but i want that they and i should be what we pretend to be, and then i doubt not we should find that there is a common ground for us all far beneath our thinkings. for truth i hold not to be that which every man troweth, but to be that which lies at the bottom of all men's trowings, that in which those trowings have their only meeting-point." he would make as clear as can be that deep substructure, and leave the sight of it to work its natural effect on the honest heart. a noble aim; but surely requiring, if anything can, the clear eye, the steady hand, the heart as calm as earnest. surely a work in which the greatest exactness and precision, as well as largeness of thought, would not be too much. for if we but take away the "trowings" without coming down to the central foundation, or lose ourselves, and mistake a new "trowing" of our own for it, it is hardly a sufficient degree of blame to say that we have done no good. and in these qualities of exactness and precision it does seem to us that mr. maurice is, for his purpose, fatally deficient. his criticisms are often acute, his thrusts on each side often very home ones, and but too full of truth; his suggestions often full of thought and instruction; his balancings and contrasts of errors and truths, if sometimes too artificial, yet generally striking. but when we come to seek for the reconciling truth, which one side has overlaid and distorted, and the other ignorantly shrunk back from, but which, when placed in its real light and fairly seen, is to attract the love and homage of both, we seem--not to grasp a shadow--mr. maurice is too earnest and real a believer for that--but to be very much where we were, except that a cloud of words surrounds us. his positive statements seem like a running protest against being obliged to commit himself and come to the point; like a continual assertion of the hopelessness and uselessness of a definite form of speaking about the matter in hand. take, for instance, the following short statement:-- "my object," he says, speaking of the words which he has taken as the subject of his essays, "has been to examine the language with which we are most familiar, and which has been open to most objections, especially from unitarians. respecting the conception i have been purposely silent; not because i have any doubt about that article, or am indifferent to it, but because i believe the word '_miraculous_,' which we _ordinarily connect with it, suggests an untrue meaning; because i think the truth is conveyed to us most safely in the simple language of the evangelists_; and because that language taken in connection with the rest of their story, offers itself, i suspect, to a majority of those who have taken in the idea of an incarnation, as the _only natural and rational_ account of the method by which the eternal son of god could have taken human flesh." now, would not mr. maurice have done better if he had enounced the definite meaning, or shade of meaning, which he considers short of, or different from, our _ordinary_ meaning of _miraculous_, as applied to this subject, and yet the same as that suggested by the gospel account? we have no doubt what mr. maurice does believe on this sacred subject. but we are puzzled by what he means to disavow, as an "_untrue meaning_" of the word _miraculous_, as applied to what he believes. and the unitarians whom he addresses must, we think, be puzzled too. we have quoted this passage because it is a short one, and therefore a convenient one for a short notice like this. but the same tormenting indistinctness pervades the attempts generally to get a meaning or a position, which shall be substantially and in its living force the same as the popular and orthodox article, yet convict it of confusion or formalism; and which shall give to the unitarian what he aims at by his negation of the popular article, without leaving him any longer a reason for denying it. the essay on inspiration is an instance of this. mr. maurice says very truly, that it is necessary to face the fact that important questions are asked on the subject, very widely, and by serious people; that popular notions are loose and vague about it; that it is a dangerous thing to take refuge in a hard theory, if it is an inconsistent and inadequate one; that if doubts do grow up, they are hardly to be driven away by assertions. he accepts the challenge to state his own view of inspiration, and devotes many pages to doing so. in these page's are many true and striking things. so far as we understand, there is not a statement that we should contradict. but we have searched in vain for a passage which might give, in mr. maurice's words, a distinct answer to the question of friend or opponent, what do you mean by the "inspiration of the bible?" mr. maurice tells us a most important truth--that that same great person by whose "holy inspiration" all true christians still hope to be taught, inspired the prophets. he protests against making it necessary to say that there is a _generic_ difference between one kind of inspiration and the other, or "setting up the bible as a book which encloses all that may be lawfully called inspiration." he looks on the bible as a link--a great one, yet a link, joining on to what is before and what comes after--in god's method of teaching man his truth. he cares little about phrases like "verbal inspiration" and "plenary inspiration"--"forms of speech which are pretty toys for those that have leisure to play with them; and if they are not made so hard as to do mischief, the use of them should not be checked. but they do not belong to business." he bids us, instead, give men "the book of life," and "have courage to tell them that there is a spirit with them who will guide them into all truth." great and salutary lessons. but we must say that they have been long in the world, and, it must be said, are as liable to be misunderstood as any other "popular" notions on the subject. if there is nothing more to say on the subject--if it is one where, though we see and are sure of a truth, yet we must confess it to be behind a veil, as yet indistinct and not to be grasped, let us manfully say so, and wait till god reveal even this unto us. but it is not a wise or a right course to raise expectations of being able to say something, not perhaps new, but satisfactory, when the questions which are really being asked, which are the professed occasion of the answer, remain, in their intellectual difficulty, entirely unresolved. mr. maurice is no trifler; when he throws hard words about,--when at the close of this essay he paints to himself the disappointment of some "unitarian listener, who had hoped that mr. maurice was going to join him in cursing his enemies, and found that he had blessed them these three times,"--he ought to consider whether the result has not been, and very naturally, to leave both parties more convinced than before of the hollowness of all professions to enter into, and give weight to, the difficulties and the claims of opposite sides. mr. maurice has not done justice, as it seems to us, in this case, to the difficulty of the unitarian. in other cases he makes free with the common belief of christendom, and claims sacrifices which are as needless as they are unwarrantable. if there is a belief rooted in the minds of christians, it is that of a future judgment. if there is an expectation which scripture and the creed sanction in the plainest words, it is that this present world is to have an end, and that then, a time now future, christ will judge quick and dead. say as much as can be said of the difficulty of conceiving such a thing, it really amounts to no more than the difficulty of conceiving what will happen, and how we shall be dealt with, when this familiar world passes away. and this belief in a "_final_ judgment, _unlike any other that has ever been in the world_," mr. maurice would have us regard as a misinterpretation of bible and creed--a "dream" which st. paul would never "allow us" to entertain, but would "compel" us instead "to look upon everyone of what we rightly call 'god's judgments' as _essentially resembling it in kind and principle_." "our eagerness to deny this," he continues, "to make out an altogether peculiar and unprecedented judgment at the end of the world, has obliged us first _to practise the most violent outrages upon the language of scripture_, insisting that words cannot really mean what, according to all ordinary rules of construction, they must mean." it really must be said that the "outrage," if so it is to be called, is not on the side of the popular belief. and why does this belief seem untenable to mr. maurice? because it seems inconsistent to him with a truth which he states and enforces with no less earnestness than reason, that christ is every moment judging us--that his tribunal is one before which we in our inmost "being are standing now--and that the time will come when we shall know that it is so, and when all that has concealed the judge from us shall be taken away." doubtless christ is always with us--always seeing us--always judging us. doubtless "everywhere" in scripture the idea is kept before us of judgment in its fullest, largest, most natural sense, as "importing" not merely passing sentence, and awarding reward or penalty, but "discrimination and discovery. everywhere that discrimination or discovery is supposed to be exercised over the man himself, over his internal character, over his meaning and will." granted, also, that men have, in their attempts to figure to themselves the "great assize," sometimes made strange work, and shown how carnal their thoughts are, both in what they expected, and in the influence they allowed it to have over them. but what of all this? correct these gross ideas, but leave the words of scripture in their literal meaning, and do not say that all those who receive them as the announcement of what is to be, under conditions now inconceivable to man, _must_ understand "the substitution of a mere external trial or examination" for the inward and daily trial of our hearts, as a mere display of "earthly pomp and ceremonial"--a resumption by christ "of earthly conditions"; or that, because they believe that at "some distant unknown period they shall be brought into the presence of one who is now" not "far from them," but out of sight--how, or in what manner they know not--therefore they _must_ suppose that he "is not now fulfilling the office of a judge, whatever else may be committed to him." mr. maurice is aiming at a high object. he would reconcile the old and the new. he would disencumber what is popular of what is vulgar, confused, sectarian, and preserve and illustrate it by disencumbering it. he calls on us not to be afraid of the depths and heights, the freedom and largeness, the "spirit and the truth," of our own theology. it is a warning and a call which every age wants. we sympathise with his aim, with much of his positive teaching, with some of his aversions and some of his fears. we do not respect him the less for not being afraid of being called hard names. but certainly such a writer has need, in no common degree, of conforming himself to that wise maxim, which holds in writing as well as in art--"know what you want to do, then do it." xix frederick denison maurice[ ] [ ] _saturday review_, th april . this easter week we have lost a man about whom opinions and feelings were much divided, who was by many of the best and most thoughtful among us looked on as the noblest and greatest of recent english teachers, and who certainly had that rare gift of inspiring enthusiasm and trust among honest and powerful minds in search of guidance, which belongs to none but to men of a very high order. professor maurice has ended a life of the severest and most unceasing toil, still working to the utmost that failing bodily strength allowed--still to the last in harness. the general public, though his name is familiar to them, probably little measure the deep and passionate affection with which he was regarded by the circle of his friends and by those whose thoughts and purposes he had moulded; or the feeling which his loss causes in them of a blank, great and not to be filled up, not only personally for themselves, but in the agencies which are working most hopefully in english society. but even those who knew him least, and only from the outside, and whose points of view least coincided with his, must feel that there has been, now that we look back on his course, something singularly touching and even pathetic in the combination shown in all that he did, of high courage and spirit, and of unwearied faith and vigour, with the deepest humility and with the sincerest disinterestedness and abnegation, which never allowed him to seek anything great for himself, and, in fact, distinguished and honoured as he was, never found it. for the sake of his generation we may regret that he did not receive the public recognition and honour which were assuredly his due; but in truth his was one of those careers which, for their own completeness and consistency, gain rather than lose by escaping the distractions and false lights of what is called preferment. the two features which strike us at the moment as characteristic of mr. maurice as a writer and teacher, besides the vast range both of his reading and thought, and the singularly personal tone and language of all that he wrote, are, first, the combination in him of the most profound and intense religiousness with the most boundless claim and exercise of intellectual liberty; and next, the value which he set, exemplifying his estimate in his own long and laborious course, on processes and efforts, as compared with conclusions and definite results, in that pursuit of truth which was to him the most sacred of duties. there is no want of earnest and fervent religion among us, intelligent, well-informed, deliberate, as well as of religion, to which these terms can hardly be applied. and there is also no want of the boldest and most daring freedom of investigation and judgment. but what mr. maurice seemed to see himself, and what he endeavoured to impress on others, was that religion and liberty are no natural enemies, but that the deepest and most absorbing forms of historical and traditional religion draw strength and seriousness of meaning, and binding obligation, from an alliance, frank and unconditional, with what seem to many the risks, the perilous risks and chances, of freedom. it was a position open to obvious and formidable criticism; but against this criticism is to be set the fact, that in a long and energetic life, in which amidst great trials and changes there was a singular uniformity and consistency of character maintained, he did unite the two--the most devout christianity with the most fearless and unshrinking boldness in facing the latest announcements and possibilities of modern thought. that he always satisfactorily explained his point of view to others is more than can be said; but he certainly satisfied numbers of keen and anxious thinkers, who were discontented and disheartened both by religion as it is presented by our great schools and parties, and by science as its principles and consequences are expounded by the leading philosophical authorities of the day. the other point to which we have adverted partly explains the influence which he had with such minds. he had no system to formulate or to teach. he was singularly ready to accept, as adequate expressions of those truths in whose existence he so persistently believed, the old consecrated forms in which simpler times had attempted to express them. he believed that these truths are wider and vaster than the human mind which is to be made wiser and better by them. and his aim was to reach up to an ever more exact, and real, and harmonious hold of these truths, which in their essential greatness he felt to be above him; to reach to it in life as much as in thought. and so to the end he was ever striving, not so much to find new truths as to find the heart and core of old ones, the truth of the truth, the inner life and significance of the letter, of which he was always loth to refuse the traditional form. in these efforts at unfolding and harmonising there was considerable uniformity; no one could mistake mr. maurice's manner of presenting the meaning and bearing of an article of the creed for the manner of any one else; but the result of this way of working, in the effect of the things which he said, and in his relations to different bodies of opinion and thought both in the church and in society, was to give the appearance of great and important changes in his teaching and his general point of view, as life went on. this governing thought of his, of the immeasurably transcendent compass and height of all truths compared with the human mind and spirit which was to bow to them and to gain life and elevation by accepting them, explains the curious and at present almost unique combination in him, of deep reverence for the old language of dogmatic theology, and an energetic maintenance of its fitness and value, with dissatisfaction, equally deep and impartially universal, at the interpretations put on this dogmatic language by modern theological schools, and at the modes in which its meaning is applied by them both in directing thought and influencing practice. this habit of distinguishing sharply and peremptorily between dogmatic language and the popular reading of it at any given time is conspicuous in his earliest as in his latest handling of these subjects; in the pamphlet of , _subscription no bondage_, explaining and defending the old practice at oxford; and in the papers and letters, which have appeared from him in periodicals, on the athanasian creed, and which are, we suppose, almost his last writings. the world at large thought mr. maurice obscure and misty, and was, as was natural, impatient of such faults. the charge was, no doubt, more than partially true; and nothing but such genuine strength and comprehensive power as his could have prevented it from being a fatal one to his weight and authority. but it is not uninstructive to remember what was very much at the root of it. it had its origin, not altogether, but certainly in a great degree, in two of his moral characteristics. one was his stubborn, conscientious determination, at any cost of awkwardness, or apparent inconsistency, or imperfection of statement, to say out what he had to say, neither more nor less, just as he thought it, and just as he felt it, with the most fastidious care for truthful accuracy of meaning. he never would suffer what he considered either the connection or the balance and adjustment of varied and complementary truths to be sacrificed to force or point of expression; and he had to choose sometimes, as all people have, between a blurred, clumsy, and ineffective picture and a consciously incomplete and untrue one. his choice never wavered; and as the artist's aim was high, and his skill not always equally at his command, he preferred the imperfection which left him the consciousness of honesty. the other cause which threw a degree of haze round his writings was the personal shape into which he was so fond of throwing his views. he shrunk from their enunciation as arguments and conclusions which claimed on their own account and by their own title the deference of all who read them; and he submitted them as what he himself had found and had been granted to see--the lessons and convictions of his own experience. sympathy is, no doubt, a great bond among all men; but, after all, men's experience and their points of view are not all alike, and when we are asked to see with another's eyes, it is not always easy. mr. maurice's desire to give the simplest and most real form to his thoughts as they arose in his own mind contributed more often than he supposed to prevent others from entering into his meaning. he asked them to put themselves in his place. he did not sufficiently put himself in theirs. but he has taught us great lessons, of the sacredness, the largeness, and, it may be added, the difficulty of truth; lessons of sympathy with one another, of true humility and self-conquest in the busy and unceasing activity of the intellectual faculties. he has left no school and no system, but he has left a spirit and an example. we speak of him here only as those who knew him as all the world knew him; but those who were his friends are never tired of speaking of his grand simplicity of character, of his tenderness and delicacy, of the irresistible spell of lovableness which won all within its reach. they remember how he spoke, and how he read; the tones of a voice of singularly piercing clearness, which was itself a power of interpretation, which revealed his own soul and went straight to the hearts of hearers. he has taken his full share in the controversies of our days, and there must be many opinions both about the line which he took, and even sometimes about the temper in which he carried on debate. but it is nothing but the plainest justice to say that he was a philosopher, a theologian, and, we may add, a prophet, of whom, for his great gifts, and, still more, for his noble and pure use of them, the modern english church may well be proud. xx sir richard church[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th march . general sir richard church died last week at athens. many english travellers in the east find their way to athens; most of them must have heard his name repeated there as the name of one closely associated with the later fortunes of the greek nation, and linking the present with times now distant; some of them may have seen him, and may remember the slight wiry form which seemed to bear years so lightly, the keen eye and grisled moustache and soldierly bearing, and perhaps the antique and ceremonious courtesy, stately yet cordial, recalling a type of manners long past, with which he welcomed those who had a claim on his attentions or friendly offices. five and forty years ago his name was much in men's mouths. he was prominent in a band of distinguished men, who represented a new enthusiasm in europe. less by what they were able to do than by their character and their unreserved self-devotion and sacrifice, they profoundly affected public opinion, and disarmed the jealousy of absolutist courts and governments in favour of a national movement, which, whether disappointment may have followed its success, was one of the most just and salutary of revolutions--the deliverance of a christian nation from the hopeless tyranny of the turks. he was one of the few remaining survivors of the generation which had taken part in the great french war and in the great changes resulting from it--changes which have in time given way to vaster alterations, and been eclipsed by them. he began his military life as a boy-ensign in one of the regiments forming part of the expedition which, under sir ralph abercromby, drove the french out of egypt in ; and on the shores of the mediterranean, where his career began, it was for the most part continued and finished. his genius led him to the more irregular and romantic forms of military service; he had the gift of personal influence, and the power of fascinating and attaching to himself, with extraordinary loyalty, the people of the south. his adventurous temper, his sympathetic nature, his chivalrous courtesy, his thorough trustworthiness and sincerity, his generosity, his high spirit of nobleness and honour, won for him, from italians and greeks, not only that deep respect which was no unusual tribute from them to english honesty and strength and power of command, but that love, and that affectionate and almost tender veneration, for which strong and resolute englishmen have not always cared from races of whose characteristic faults they were impatient. his early promise in the regular service was brilliant; as a young staff-officer, and by a staff-officer's qualities of sagacity, activity, and decision, he did distinguished service at maida; and had he followed the movement which made spain the great battle-ground for english soldiers, he had every prospect of earning a high place among those who fought under wellington. but he clung to the mediterranean. he was employed in raising and organising those foreign auxiliary corps which it was thought were necessary to eke out the comparatively scanty numbers of the english armies, and to keep up threatening demonstrations on the outskirts of the french empire. it was in this service that his connection with the greek people was first formed, and his deep and increasing interest in its welfare created. he was commissioned to form first one, and then a second, regiment of greek irregulars; and from the ionian islands, from the mainland of albania, from the morea, chiefs and bands, accustomed to the mountain warfare, half patriotic, half predatory, carried on by the more energetic greek highlanders against the turks, flocked to the english standards. the operations in which they were engaged were desultory, and of no great account in the general result of the gigantic contest; but they made colonel church's name familiar to the greek population, who were hoping, amid the general confusion, for an escape from the tyranny of the turks. but his connection with greece was for some time delayed. his peculiar qualifications pointed him out as a fit man to be a medium of communication between the english government and the foreign armies which were operating on the outside of the circle within which the decisive struggle was carried on against napoleon; and he was the english military commissioner attached to the austrian armies in italy in and . at the peace, his eagerness for daring and adventurous enterprise was tempted by great offers from the neapolitan government. the war had left brigandage, allied to a fierce spirit of revolutionary freemasonry, all-powerful in the south of italy; and a stern and resolute, yet perfectly honest and just hand, was needed to put it down. he accepted the commission; he was reckless of conspiracy and threats of assassination; he was known to be no sanguinary and merciless lover of severity, but he was known also to be fearless and inexorable against crime; and, not without some terrible examples, yet with complete success, he delivered the south of italy from the scourge. but his thoughts had always been turned towards greece; at last the call came, and he threw himself with all his hopes and all his fortunes into a struggle which more than any other that history can show engaged at the time the interest of europe. his first efforts resulted in a disastrous defeat against overwhelming odds, for which, as is natural, he has been severely criticised; his critics have shown less quickness in perceiving the qualities which he displayed after it--his unshaken, silent fortitude, the power with which he kept together and saved the wrecks of his shattered and disheartened volunteer army, the confidence in himself with which he inspired them, the skill with which he extricated them from their dangers in the face of a strong and formidable enemy, the humanity which he strove so earnestly by word and example to infuse into the barbarous warfare customary between greeks and turks, the tenacity with which he clung to the fastnesses of western greece, obtaining by his perseverance from the diplomacy of europe a more favourable line of boundary for the new nation which it at length recognised. to this cause he gave up everything; personal risks cannot be counted; but he threw away all prospects in england; he made no bargains; he sacrificed freely to the necessities of the struggle any pecuniary resource that he could command, neither requiring nor receiving any repayment. he threw in his lot with the people for whom he had surrendered everything, in order to take part in their deliverance. since his arrival in greece in he has never turned his face westwards. he took the part which is perhaps the only becoming and justifiable one for the citizen of one state who permits himself to take arms, even in the cause of independence, for another; having fought for the greeks, he lived with them, and shared, for good and for evil, their fortunes. for more than forty years he has resided at athens under the shadow of the great rock of the acropolis. distinguished by all the honours the greek nation could bestow, military or political, he has lived in modest retirement, only on great emergencies taking any prominent part in the political questions of greece, but always throwing his influence on the side of right and honesty. the course of things in greece was not always what an educated englishman could wish it to be. but whatever his judgment, or, on occasion, his action might be, there never could be a question, with his friends any more than with his opponents--enemies he could scarcely be said to have--as to the straightforwardness, the pure motives, the unsullied honour of anything that he did or anything that he advised. the greeks saw among them one deeply sympathising with all that they cared for, commanding, if he had pleased to work for it, considerable influence out of greece, the intimate friend of a minister like sir edmund lyons, yet keeping free from the temptation to make that use of influence which seems so natural to politicians in a place like athens; thinking much of greece and of the interests of his friends there, but thinking as much of truth and justice and conscience; hating intrigue and trick, and shaming by his indignant rebuke any proposal of underhand courses that might be risked in his presence. the course of things, the change of ideas and of men, threw him more and more out of any forward and prominent place in the affairs of greece. but his presence in athens was felt everywhere. there was a man who had given up everything for greece and sought nothing in return. his blameless unselfishness, his noble elevation of character, were a warning and a rebuke to the faults which have done so much mischief to the progress of the nation; and yet every greek in athens knew that no one among them was more jealous of the honour of the nation or more anxious for its good. to a new political society, freshly exposed to the temptations of party struggles for power, no greater service can be rendered than a public life absolutely clear from any suspicion of self-seeking, governed uninterruptedly and long by public spirit, public ends, and a strong sense of duty. such a service general church has rendered to his adopted country. during his residence among them for nearly half a century they have become familiar, not in word, but in living reality, with some of the best things which the west has to impart to the east. they have had among them an example of english principle, english truth, english high-souled disinterestedness, and that noble english faith which, in a great cause, would rather hope in vain than not hope at all. they have learned to venerate all this, and, some of them, to love it. xxi death of bishop wilberforce[ ] [ ] _guardian_, rd july . the beautiful summer weather which came on us at the beginning of this week gives by contrast a strange and terrible point to the calamity, the announcement of which sent such a shock through the whole country on monday last. summer days in all their brilliance seemed come at last, after a long waiting which made them the more delightful. but as people came down to breakfast on that morning, or as they gathered at railway stations on their way to business, the almost incredible tidings met them that the bishop of winchester was dead; that he had been killed by a fall from his horse. in a moment, by the most trivial of accidents, one of the foremost and most stirring men of our generation had passed away from the scene in which his part was so large a one. with everything calm and peaceful round him, in the midst of the keen but tranquil enjoyment of a summer evening ride with a friend through some of the most charming scenery in england, looking forward to meeting another friend, and to the pleasure which a quiet sunday brings to hard-worked men in fine weather, and a pleasant country house, the blow fell. the moment before, as lord granville remarks, he had given expression to the fulness of his enjoyment. he was rejoicing in the fine weather, he was keenly noticing the beauty of the scenery at every point of the way; with his characteristic love of trees he was noticing the different kinds and the soils which suited them; especially he was greatly pleased with his horse. there comes a slight dip in the smooth turf; the horse stumbles and recovers himself unhurt; but in that short interval of time all has vanished, all things earthly, from that quick eye and that sensitive and sympathetic mind. it is indeed tragic. he is said to have thought with distress of a lingering end. he was spared it. he died as a soldier dies. a shock like this brings with it also a shock of new knowledge and appreciation of things. we are made to feel with a new force what it is that we have lost, and to understand more exactly what is the proportion of what we have lost to what we still retain. to friends and opponents the bishop of winchester could not but be, under any circumstances, a person of the greatest importance. but few of us, probably, measured fully and accurately the place which he filled among us. we are better aware of it now when he has been taken away from us. living among us, and acting before us from day to day, the object of each day's observation and criticism, under each day's varying circumstances and feelings, within our reach always if we wanted to see him or to hear him, he was presented to our thoughts in that partial disclosure, and that everyday homeliness, which as often disguise the true and complete significance of a character, as they give substance and reality to our conceptions of it. as the man's course moves on, we are apt to lose in our successive judgments of the separate steps of it--it may be stops of great immediate interest--our sense of its connection and tendency, of the true measure of it as a whole, of the degree in which character is growing and rising, or, on the other hand, falling or standing still. the bishop of winchester had many admirers--many who deeply loved and trusted him--many who, in the face of a good deal of suspicion and hostile comment, stoutly insisted on the high estimate which they had formed of him. but even among them, and certainly in the more indifferent public, there were few who had rightly made it clear to their own minds what he had really grown to be both in the church and the country. for it is obvious, at the first glance now that he is gone, that there is no one who can fill the place which he filled. it seems to us beyond dispute that he has been the greatest bishop the english church has seen for a century and a half. we do not say the greatest man, but the greatest bishop; the one among the leaders of the english church who most adequately understood the relations of his office, not only to the church, but to his times and his country, and who most adequately fulfilled his own conception of them. we are very far from saying this because of his exuberant outfit of powers and gifts; because of his versatility, his sympathetic nature, his eager interest in all that interested his fellows, his inexhaustible and ready resources of thought and speech, of strong and practical good sense, of brilliant or persuasive or pathetic eloquence. in all this he had equals and rivals, though perhaps he had not many in the completeness and balance of his powers. nor do we say anything of those gifts, partly of the intellect, but also of the soul and temper and character, by which he was able at once to charm without tiring the most refined and fastidious society, to draw to him the hearts of hard-working and anxious clergymen, and to enchain the attention of the dullest and most ignorant of rustic congregations. all these are, as it seems to us, the subordinate, and not the most interesting, parts of what he was; they were on the surface and attracted notice, and the parts were often mistaken for the whole. nor do we forget what often offended even equitable judges, disliking all appearance of management and mere adroitness--or what was often objected against his proceedings by opponents at least as unscrupulous as they wished him to be thought. we are far from thinking that his long career was free from either mistakes or faults; it is not likely that a course steered amid such formidable and perplexing difficulties, and steered with such boldness and such little attempt to evade them, should not offer repeated occasions not only for ill-natured, but for grave and serious objections. but looking over that long course of his episcopate, from to the present year, we see in him, in an eminent and unique degree, two things. he had a distinct and statesmanlike idea of church policy; and he had a new idea of the functions of a bishop, and of what a bishop might do and ought to do. and these two ideas he steadily kept in view and acted upon with increasing clearness in his purpose and unflagging energy in action. he grasped in all its nobleness and fulness and height the conception of the church as a great religious society of divine origin, with many sides and functions, with diversified gifts and ever new relations to altering times, but essentially, and above all things, a religious society. to serve that society, to call forth in it the consciousness of its calling and its responsibilities, to strengthen and put new life into its organisation, to infuse ardour and enthusiasm and unity into its efforts, to encourage and foster everything that harmonised with its principle and purpose, to watch against the counteracting influences of self-willed or ignorant narrowness, to adjust its substantial rights and its increasing activity to the new exigencies of political changes, to elicit from the church all that could command the respect and win the sympathy and confidence of englishmen, and make its presence recognised as a supreme blessing by those whom nothing but what was great and real in its benefits would satisfy--this was the aim from which, however perplexed or wavering or inconsistent he may have been at times, he never really swerved. in the breadth and largeness of his principle, in the freedom and variety of its practical applications, in the distinctness of his purposes and the intensity of his convictions, he was an example of high statesmanship common in no age of the church, and in no branch of it. and all this rested on the most profound personal religion as its foundation, a religion which became in time one of very definite doctrinal preferences, but of wide sympathies, and which was always of very exacting claims for the undivided work and efforts of a lifetime. when he became bishop he very soon revolutionised the old notion of a bishop's duties. he threw himself without any regard to increasing trouble and labour on the great power of personal influence. in every corner of his diocese he made himself known and felt; in all that interested its clergy or its people he took his part more and more. he went forth to meet men; he made himself their guest and companion as well as their guide and chief; he was more often to be found moving about his diocese than he was to be found at his own home at cuddesdon. the whole tone of communication between bishop and people rose at once in freedom and in spiritual elevation and earnestness; it was at once less formal and more solemnly practical. he never spared his personal presence; always ready to show himself, always ready to bring the rarer and more impressive rites of the church, such as ordination, within the view of people at a distance from his palace or cathedral, he was never more at his ease than in a crowd of new faces, and never exhausted and worn out in what he had to say to fresh listeners. gathering men about him at one time; turning them to account, assigning them tasks, pressing the willing, shaming the indolent or the reluctant, at another; travelling about with the rapidity and system of an officer inspecting his positions, he infused into the diocese a spirit and zeal which nothing but such labour and sympathy could give, and bound it together by the bands of a strong and wise organisation. what he did was but a very obvious carrying out of the idea of the episcopal office; but it had not seemed necessary once, and his merit was that he saw both that it was necessary and practicable. it is he who set the standard of what is now expected, and is more or less familiar, in all bishops. and as he began so he went on to the last. he never flagged, he never grew tired of the continual and varied intercourse which he kept up with his clergy and people. to the last he worked his diocese as much as possible not from a distance, but from local points which brought him into closer communication with his flock. london, with its great interests and its great attractions, social and political, never kept away one who was so keenly alive to them, and so prominent in all that was eventful in his time, from attending to the necessities and claims of his rural parishes. what his work was to the very last, how much there was in him of unabated force, of far-seeing judgment, of noble boldness and earnestness, of power over the souls and minds of men in many ways divided, a letter from dr. monsell[ ] in our columns shows. he had a great and all-important place in a very critical moment, to which he brought a seriousness of purpose, a power and ripeness of counsel, and a fearlessness distinctly growing up to the last. it is difficult to see who will bend the bow which he has dropped. [ ] ... the shock that the sudden announcement of an event so solemn must ever give, was tenfold great to one who, like myself, had been, during the past week, closely associated with him in anxious deliberations as to the best means of meeting the various difficulties and dangers with which the church is at present surrounded. he had gathered round him, as was his annual wont, his archdeacons and rural deans, to deliberate for the church's interests; and in his opening address, and conduct of a most important meeting, never had he shone out more clearly in intellectual vigour, in theological soundness, in moral boldness, in christian gentleness and love. ... he spoke upon the gravest questions of the day--questions which require more than they generally receive, delicate handling. he divided from the evil of things, which some in the spirit of party condemn wholesale, the hidden good which lies wrapt up in them, and which it would be sin as well as folly to sweep away. he made every man who heard him feel the blessing of having in the church such a veteran leader, and drew forth from more than one there the openly expressed hope that as he had in bygone days been the bold and cautious controller of an earlier movement in the right direction, so now he would save to the church some of her precious things which rude men would sweep away, and help her to regain what is essential to her spiritual existence without risking the sacredness of private life, the purity of private thoughts, the sense of direct responsibility between god and the soul, which are some of the most distinctive characteristics of our dear church of england. from his council chamber in winchester house i went direct with him to the greater council chamber of st. stephen's to hear him there vindicate the rights and privileges of his order, and beat back the assaults of those who, in high places, think that by a speech in, or a vote of, either house they can fashion the church as they please. never did he speak with more point and power; and never did he seem to have won more surely the entire sympathy of the house. to gather in overwhelming numbers round him in the evening his london clergy and their families, to meet them all with the kind cordiality of a real father and friend, to run on far into the middle of the night in this laborious endeavour to please--was "the last effort of his toilsome day." xxii retirement of the provost of oriel[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th november . dr. hawkins, the provost of oriel, has resigned the provostship. he has held it from , within four years of half a century. the time during which he has presided over his college has been one of the most eventful periods in the history of the university; it has been a time of revolt against custom, of reform, of keen conflict, of deep changes; and in all connected with these he has borne a part, second to none in prominence, in importance, and we must add, in dignity. no name of equal distinction has disappeared from the list of heads of houses since the venerable president of magdalen passed away. but dr. routh, though he watched with the keenest intelligence, and not without sympathy, all that went on in the days into which his life had been prolonged, watched it with the habits and thoughts of days long departed; he had survived from the days of bishop horne and dr. parr far into our new and strange century, to which he did not belong, and he excited its interest as a still living example of what men were before the french revolution. the eminence of the provost of oriel is of another kind. he calls forth interest because among all recent generations of oxford men, and in all their restless and exciting movements, he has been a foremost figure. he belongs to modern oxford, its daring attempts, its fierce struggles, its successes, and its failures. he was a man of whom not only every one heard, but whom every one saw; for he was much in public, and his unsparing sense of public duty made him regularly present in his place at council, at convocation, at the university church, at college chapel. the outward look of oxford will be altered by the disappearance in its ceremonies and gatherings of his familiar form and countenance. he would anywhere have been a remarkable man. his active and independent mind, with its keen, discriminating, practical intelligence, was formed and disciplined amid that company of distinguished scholars and writers who, at oxford, in the second decade of the century were revolted by the scandalous inertness and self-indulgence of the place, with its magnificent resources squandered and wasted, its stupid orthodoxy of routine, its insensibility to the questions and the dangers rising all round; men such as keble, arnold, davison, copleston, whately. these men, different as they were from one another, all represented the awakening but still imperfect consciousness that a university life ought to be something higher than one of literary idleness, given up to the frivolities of mere elegant scholarship, and to be crowned at last by comfortable preferment; that there was much difficult work to be seriously thought about and done, and that men were placed at oxford under heavy responsibilities to use their thoughts and their leisure for the direct service of their generation. clever fops and dull pedants joined in sneering at this new activity and inquisitiveness of mind, and this grave interest and employment of intellect on questions and in methods outside the customary line of university studies and prejudices; but the men were too powerful, and their work too genuine and effective, and too much in harmony with the temper and tendencies of the time, to be stopped by impertinence and obstructiveness. dr. hawkins was one of those who made the oriel common-room a place of keen discussion and brilliant conversation, and, for those days, of bold speculation; while the college itself reflected something of the vigour and accomplishments of the common-room. dr. newman, in the _apologia_, has told us, in touching terms of acknowledgment, what dr. hawkins was when, fifty years ago, the two minds first came into close contact, and what intellectual services he believed dr. hawkins had rendered him. he tells us, too, how dr. hawkins had profoundly impressed him by a work in which, with characteristic independence and guarded caution equally characteristic, he cuts across popular prejudices and confusions of thought, and shows himself original in discerning and stating an obvious truth which had escaped other people--his work on _unauthoritative tradition_. his logical acuteness, his habits of disciplined accuracy, abhorrent and impatient of all looseness of thinking and expression, his conscientious efforts after substantial reality in his sharpest distinctions, his capacity for taking trouble, his serious and strong sense of the debt involved in the possession of intellectual power--all this would have made him eminent, whatever the times in which he lived. but the times in which we live and what they bring with them mould most of us; and the times shaped the course of the provost of oriel, and turned his activity into a channel of obstinate and prolonged antagonism, of resistance and protest, most conscientious but most uncompromising, against two great successive movements, both of which he condemned as unbalanced and recoiled from as revolutionary--the tractarian first, and then the liberal movement in oxford. of the former, it is not perhaps too much to say that he was in oxford, at least, the ablest and most hurtful opponent. from his counsels, from his guarded and measured attacks, from the power given him by a partial agreement against popular fallacies with parts of its views, from his severe and unflinching determination, it received its heaviest blows and suffered its greatest losses. he detested what he held to be its anti-liberal temper, and its dogmatic assertions; he resented its taking out of his hands a province of theology which he and whately had made their own, that relating to the church; he thought its tone of feeling and its imaginative and poetical side exaggerated or childish; and he could not conceive of its position except as involving palpable dishonesty. no one probably guided with such clear and self-possessed purpose that policy of extreme measures, which contributed to bring about, if it did not itself cause, the break-up of . then succeeded the great liberal tide with its demands for extensive and immediate change, its anti-ecclesiastical spirit, its scarcely disguised scepticism, its daring philosophical and critical enterprises. by degrees it became clear that the impatience and intolerance which had purged the university of so many churchmen had, after all, left the church movement itself untouched, to assume by degrees proportions scarcely dreamed of when it began; but that what the defeat of the tractarians really had done was, to leave the university at the mercy of liberals to whom what had been called liberalism in the days of whately was mere blind and stagnant conservatism. one war was no sooner over than the provost of oriel found another even more formidable on his hands. the most dauntless and most unshaken of combatants, he faced his new antagonists with the same determination, the same unshrinking sense of duty with which he had fought his old ones. he used the high authority and influence which his position and his character justly gave him, to resist or to control, as far as he could, the sweeping changes which, while bringing new life into oxford, have done so much to break up her connection of centuries with the church. he boldly confronted the new spirit of denial and unbelief. he wrote, he preached, he published, as he had done against other adversaries, always with measured and dignified argument, but not shrinking from plain-spoken severity of condemnation. never sparing himself labour when he thought duty called, he did not avail himself of the privilege of advancing years to leave the war to be carried on by younger champions. it is impossible for those who may at times have found themselves most strongly, and perhaps most painfully, opposed to him, not to admire and revere one who, through so long a career has, in what he held to be his duty to the church and to religion, fought so hard, encountered such troubles, given up so many friendships and so much ease, and who, while a combatant to the last, undiscouraged by odds and sometimes by ill-success, has brought to the weariness and disappointment of old age an increasing gentleness and kindliness of spirit, which is one of the rarest tokens and rewards of patient and genuine self-discipline. a man who has set himself steadily and undismayed to stem and bring to reason the two most powerful currents of conviction and feeling which have agitated his times, leaves an impressive example of zeal and fearlessness, even to those against whom he has contended. what is the upshot which has come of these efforts, and whether the controversies of the moment have not in his case, as in others, diverted and absorbed faculties which might have been turned to calmer and more permanent tasks, we do not inquire. perhaps a life of combat never does all that the combatant thinks it ought to accomplish, or compensates for the sacrifices it entails. in the case of the provost of oriel, he had, with all his great and noble qualities, one remarkable want, which visibly impaired his influence and his persuasiveness. he was out of sympathy with the rising aspirations and tendencies of the time on the two opposite sides; he was suspicious and impatient of them. he was so sensible of their weak points, the logical difficulties which they brought with them, their precipitate and untested assumptions, the extravagance and unsoundness of character which often seemed inseparable from them, that he seldom did justice to them viewed in their complete aspect, or was even alive to what was powerful and formidable in the depth, the complexity, and the seriousness of the convictions and enthusiasm which carried them onwards. in truth, for a man of his singular activity and reach of mind, he was curiously indifferent to much that most interested his contemporaries in thought and literature; he did not understand it, and he undervalued it as if it belonged merely to the passing fashions of the hour. this long career is now over. warfare is always a rude trade, and men on all sides who have had to engage in it must feel at the end how much there is to be forgiven and needing forgiveness; how much now appears harsh, unfair, violent, which once appeared only necessary and just. a hard hitter like the provost of oriel must often have left behind the remembrance of his blows. but we venture to say that, even in those who suffered from them, he has left remembrances of another and better sort. he has left the recollection of a pure, consistent, laborious life, elevated in its aim and standard, and marked by high public spirit and a rigid and exacting sense of duty. in times when it was wanted, he set in his position in the university an example of modest and sober simplicity of living; and no one who ever knew him can doubt the constant presence, in all his thoughts, of the greatness of things unseen, or his equally constant reference of all that he did to the account which he was one day to give at his lord's judgment-seat. we trust that he may be spared to enjoy the rest which a weaker or less conscientious man would have claimed long ago. xxiii mark pattison[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th august . the rector of lincoln, who died at harrogate this day week, was a man about whom judgments are more than usually likely to be biassed by prepossessions more or less unconscious, and only intelligible to the mind of the judge. there are those who are in danger of dealing with him too severely. there are also those whose temptation will be to magnify and possibly exaggerate his gifts and acquirements--great as they undoubtedly were,--the use that he made of them, and the place which he filled among his contemporaries. one set of people finds it not easy to forget that he had been at one time closer than most young men of his generation to the great religious leaders whom they are accustomed to revere; that he was of a nature fully to understand and appreciate both their intellectual greatness and their moral and spiritual height; that he had shared to the full their ideas and hopes; that they, too, had measured his depth of character, and grasp, and breadth, and subtlety of mind; and that the keenest judge among them of men and of intellect had pirlud him out as one of the most original and powerful of a number of very able contemporaries. those who remember this cannot easily pardon the lengths of dislike and hitterness to which in after life pattison allowed himself to be carried against the cause which once had his hearty allegiance, and in which, if he had discovered, as he thought, its mistakes and its weakness, he had once recognised with all his soul the nobler side. and on the other hand, the partisans of the opposite movement, into whose interests he so disastrously, as it seems to us, and so unreservedly threw himself, naturally welcomed and made the most of such an accession to their strength, and such an unquestionable addition to their literary fame. to have detached such a man from the convictions which he had so professedly and so earnestly embraced, and to have enlisted him as their determined and implacable antagonist--to be able to point to him in him maturity and strength of his powers as one who, having known its best aspects, had deliberately despaired of religion, and had turned against its representatives the scorn and hatred of a passionate nature, whose fires burned all the more fiercely under its cold crust of reserve and sarcasm--this was a triumph of no common order; and it might conceivably blind those who could rejoice in it to the comparative value of qualities which, at any rate, were very rare and remarkable ones. pattison was a man who, in many ways, did not do himself justice. as a young man, his was a severe and unhopeful mind, and the tendency to despond was increased by circumstances. there was something in the quality of his unquestionable ability which kept him for long out of the ordinary prizes of an oxford career; in the class list, in the higher competition for fellowships, he was not successful. there are those who long remembered the earnest pleading of the latin letters which it was the custom to send in when a man stood for a fellowship, and in which pattison set forth his ardent longing for knowledge, and his narrow and unprosperous condition as a poor student. he always came very near; indeed, he more than once won the vote of the best judges; but he just missed the prize. to the bitter public disappointments of were added the vexations caused by private injustice and ill-treatment. he turned fiercely on those who, as he thought, had wronged him, and he began to distrust men, and to be on the watch for proofs of hollowness and selfishness in the world and in the church. yet at this time, when people were hearing of his bitter and unsparing sayings in oxford, he was from time to time preaching in village churches, and preaching sermons which both his educated and his simple hearers thought unlike those of ordinary men in their force, reality, and earnestness. but with age and conflict the disposition to harsh and merciless judgments strengthened and became characteristic. this, however, should be remembered: where he revered ho revered with genuine and unstinted reverence; where he saw goodness in which he believed he gave it ungrudging honour. he had real pleasure in recognising height and purity of character, and true intellectual force, and he maintained his admiration when the course of things had placed wide intervals between him and those to whom it had been given. his early friendships, where they could be retained, he did retain warmly and generously even to the last; he seemed almost to draw a line between them and other things in the world. the truth, indeed, was that beneath that icy and often cruel irony there was at bottom a most warm and affectionate nature, yearning for sympathy, longing for high and worthy objects, which, from the misfortunes especially of his early days, never found room to expand and unfold itself. let him see and feel that anything was real--character, purpose, cause--and at any rate it was sure of his respect, probably of his interest. but the doubt whether it was real was always ready to present itself to his critical and suspicious mind; and these doubts grew with his years. people have often not given pattison credit for the love that was in him for what was good and true; it is not to be wondered at, but the observation has to be made. on the other hand, a panegyrie, like that which we reprint from the _times_, sets too high an estimate on his intellectual qualities, and on the position which they gave him. he was full of the passion for knowledge; he was very learned, very acute in his judgment on what his learning brought before him, very versatile, very shrewd, very subtle; too full of the truth of his subject to care about seeming to be original; but, especially in his poetical criticisms, often full of that best kind of originality which consists in seeing and pointing out novelty in what is most familiar and trite. but, not merely as a practical but as a speculative writer, he was apt to be too much under the empire and pressure of the one idea which at the moment occupied and interested his mind. he could not resist it; it came to him with exclusive and overmastering force; he did not care to attend to what limited it or conflicted with it. and thus, with all the force and sagacity of his university theories, they were not always self-consistent, and they were often one-sided and exaggerated. he was not a leader whom men could follow, however much they might rejoice at the blows which he might happen to deal, sometimes unexpectedly, at things which they disliked. and this holds of more serious things than even university reform and reconstruction. and next, though every competent reader must do justice to pattison's distinction as a man of letters, as a writer of english prose, and as a critic of what is noble and excellent and what is base and poor in literature, there is a curious want of completeness, a frequent crudity and hardness, a want, which is sometimes a surprising want, of good sense and good taste, which form unwelcome blemishes in his work, and just put it down below the line of first-rate excellence which it ought to occupy. morally, in that love of reality, and of all that is high and noble in character, which certainly marked him, he was much better than many suppose, who know only the strength of his animosities and the bitterness of his sarcasm. intellectually, in reach, and fulness, and solidity of mental power, it may be doubted whether he was so great as it has recently been the fashion to rate him. xxiv pattison's essays[ ] [ ] _essays by the late mark pattison, sometime rector of lincoln college_. collected and arranged by henry nettleship, m.a., corpus professor of latin in the university of oxford. _guardian_, st may . this is a very interesting but a very melancholy collection of papers. they are the remains of the work of a man of first-rate intellect, whose powers, naturally of a high order, had been diligently and wisely cultivated, whose mind was furnished in a very rare degree with all that reading, wide and critical, could give, and which embraced in the circle of its interest all that is important to human life and society. mr. pattison had no vulgar standard of what knowledge is, and what goodness is. he was high, sincere, exacting, even austere, in his estimates of either; and when he was satisfied he paid honour with sometimes unexpected frankness and warmth. but from some unfortunate element in his temperament, or from the effect upon it of untoward and unkindly circumstances at those critical epochs of mental life, when character is taking its bent for good and all, he was a man in whose judgment severity--and severity expressing itself in angry scorn--was very apt to outrun justice. longing for sympathy and not ill-fitted for it, capable of rare exertions in helping those whom he could help, he passed through life with a reputation for cynicism which, while he certainly exhibited it, he no less certainly would, if he had known how, have escaped from. people could easily tell what would incur his dislike and opposition, what would provoke his slow, bitter, merciless sarcasm; it was never easy to tell what would satisfy him, what would attract his approval, when he could be tempted to see the good side of a thing. it must not be forgotten that he had gone through a trial to which few men are equal. he had passed from the extreme ranks and the strong convictions of the oxford movement--convictions of which the translation of aquinas's _catena aurea_, still printed in the list of his works, is a memorial--to the frankest form of liberal thought. as he himself writes, we cannot give up early beliefs, much less the deep and deliberate convictions of manhood, without some shock to the character. in his case the change certainly worked. it made him hate what he had left, and all that was like it, with the bitterness of one who has been imposed upon, and has been led to commit himself to what he now feels to be absurd and contemptible, and the bitterness of this disappointment gave an edge to all his work. there seems through all his criticism, powerful as it is, a tone of harshness, a readiness to take the worst construction, a sad consciousness of distrust and suspicion of all things round him, which greatly weakens the effect of his judgment. if a man will only look for the worst side, he will only find the worst side; but we feel that we act reasonably by not accepting such a teacher as our guide, however ably he may state his case. there is a want of equitableness and fairness in his stern and sometimes cruel condemnations; and yet not religion only, but the wisest wisdom of the world tells of the indispensable value of this equitableness, this old greek virtue of [greek: epieikeia], in our views of men and things. it is not religion only, but common sense which says that "sweetness and light," kindliness, indulgence, sympathy, are necessary for moral and spiritual health. scorn, indignation, keenly stinging sarcasm, doubtless have their place in a world in which untruth and baseness abound and flourish; but to live on these is poison, at least to oneself. these fierce antipathies warped his judgment in strange and unexpected ways. among these papers is a striking one on calvin. if any character in history might be expected to have little attraction for him it is calvin. dogmatist, persecutor, tyrant, the proud and relentless fanatic, who more than any one consecrated harsh narrowness in religion by cruel theories about god, what was there to recommend him to a lover of liberty who had no patience for ecclesiastical pretensions of any kind, and who tells us that calvin's "sins against human liberty are of the deepest dye"? for if laud chastised his adversaries with whips, calvin chastised his with scorpions. perhaps it is unreasonable to be suprised, yet we are taken by surprise, when we find a thinker like mr. pattison drawn by strong sympathy to calvin and setting him up among the heroes and liberators of humanity. mr. pattison is usually fair in details, that is, he does not suppress bad deeds or qualities in those whom he approves, or good deeds or qualities in those whom he hates: it is in his general judgments that his failing comes out. he makes no attempt to excuse the notorious features of calvin's rule at geneva; but mr. pattison reads into his character a purpose and a grandeur which place him far above any other man of his day. to recommend him to our very different ways of thinking, mr. pattison has the courage to allege that his interest in dogmatic theology was a subordinate matter, and that the "renovation of character," the "moral purification of humanity," was the great guiding idea of him who taught that out of the mass of human kind only a predestined remnant could possibly be saved. it is a singular interpretation of the mind of the author of the _institutes_:-- the distinction of calvin as a reformer is not to be sought in the doctrine which now bears his name, or in any doctrinal peculiarity. his great merit lies _in his comparative neglect of dogma. he seized the idea of reformation as a real renovation of human character_. the moral purification of humanity as the original idea of christianity is the guiding idea of his system.... he swept away at once the sacramental machinery of material media of salvation which the middle-age church had provided in such abundance, and which luther frowned upon, but did not reject. he was not satisfied to go back only to the historical origin of christianity, but would found human virtue on the eternal antemundane will of god. again:-- calvin thought neither of fame or fortune. the narrowness of his views and the disinterestedness of his soul alike precluded him from regarding geneva as a stage for the gratification of personal ambition. this abegnation of self was one great part of his success. and then mr. pattison goes on to describe in detail how, governed and possessed by one idea, and by a theory, to oppose which was "moral depravity," he proceeded to establish his intolerable system of discipline, based on dogmatic grounds--meddlesome, inquisitorial, petty, cruel--over the interior of every household in geneva. what is there fascinating, or even imposing, in such a character? it is the common case of political and religious bigots, whether jacobin, or puritan, or jesuit, poor in thought and sympathy and strong in will, fixing their yoke on a society, till the plague becomes unbearable. he seeks nothing for himself and, forsooth, he makes sacrifices. but he gets what he wants, his idea carried out; and self-sacrifice is of what we care for, and not of what we do not care for. and to keep up this supposed character of high moral purpose, we are told of calvin's "comparative neglect of dogma," of his seizing the idea of a "real reformation of human character," a "moral purification of humanity," as the guiding idea of his system. can anything be more unhistorical than to suggest that the father and source of all western puritan theology "neglected dogma," and was more of a moralist than a divine? it is not even true that he "swept away at once the sacramental machinery" of mediaeval and lutheran teaching; calvin writes of the eucharist in terms which would astonish some of his later followers. but what is the reason why mr. pattison attributes to the historical calvin so much that does not belong to him, and, in spite of so much that repels, is yet induced to credit him with such great qualities? the reason is to be found in the intense antipathy with which mr. pattison regarded what he calls "the catholic reaction" over europe, and in the fact that undoubtedly calvin's system and influence was the great force which resisted both what was bad and false in it, and also what was good, true, generous, humane. calvinism opposed the "catholic reaction" point-blank, and that was enough to win sympathy for it, even from mr. pattison. the truth is that what popery is to the average protestant, and what protestant heresy is to the average roman catholic, the "catholic reaction," the "catholic revival" in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and in our own, is to mr. pattison's final judgment. it was not only a conspiracy against human liberty, but it brought with it the degradation and ruin of genuine learning. it is the all-sufficing cause and explanation of the mischief and evil doings which he has to set before us. yet after the violence, the ignorance, the injustice, the inconsistencies of that great ecclesiastical revolution which we call by the vague name of reformation, a "catholic reaction" was inevitable. it was not conceivable that common sense and certain knowledge would submit for ever to be overcrowed by the dogmas and assertions of the new teachers. like other powerful and wide and strongly marked movements, like the reformation which it combated, it was a very mixed thing. it produced some great evils and led to some great crimes. it started that fatal religious militia, the jesuit order, which, notwithstanding much heroic self-sacrifice, has formed a permanent bar to all possible reunion of christendom, has fastened its yoke on the papacy itself, and has taught the church, as a systematic doctrine, to put its trust in the worst expedients of human policy. the religious wars in france and germany, the relentless massacres of the low countries and the st. bartholomew, the consecration of treason and conspiracy, were, without doubt, closely connected with the "catholic reaction." but if this great awakening and stimulating influence raised new temptations to human passion and wickedness, it was not only in the service of evil that this new zeal was displayed. the council of trent, whatever its faults, and it had many, was itself a real reformation. the "catholic revival" meant the rekindling of earnest religion and care for a good life in thousands of souls. if it produced the jesuits, it as truly produced port royal and the benedictines. europe would be indeed greatly the poorer if it wanted some of the most conspicuous products of the catholic revival. it is mr. pattison's great misfortune that through obvious faults of temper he has missed the success which naturally might have seemed assured to him, of dealing with these subjects in a large and dispassionate way. scholar, thinker, student as he is, conversant with all literature, familiar with books and names which many well-read persons have never heard of, he has his bitter prejudices, like the rest of us, protestants or catholics; and what he hates is continually forcing itself into his mind. he tells, with great and pathetic force, the terrible story of the judicial murder of calas at toulouse, and of voltaire's noble and successful efforts to bring the truth to light, and to repair, as far as could be repaired, its infamous injustice. it is a story which shows to what frightful lengths fanaticism may go in leading astray even the tribunals of justice. but unhappily the story can be paralleled in all times of the world's history; and though the toulouse mob and judges were catholics, their wickedness is no more a proof against the catholic revival than titus oates and the george gordon riots are against protestantism, or the jacobin tribunals against republican justice. but mr. pattison cannot conclude his account without an application. here you have an example of what the catholic revival does. it first breaks calas on the wheel; and then, because voltaire took up his cause, it makes modern frenchmen, if they are catholics, believe that calas deserved it:-- it is part of that general catholic revival which has been working for some years, and which like a fog is spreading over the face of opinion.... the memory of calas had been vindicated by voltaire and the encyclopedists. that was quite enough for the catholics.... it is the characteristic of catholicism that it supersedes reason, and prejudges all matters by the application of fixed principles. it is no use that m. coquerel flatters himself that he has set the matter at rest. he flatters himself in vain; he ought to know his catholic countrymen better:-- we have little doubt that as long as the catholic religion shall last their little manuals of falsified history will continue to repeat that jean calas murdered his son because he had become a convert to the catholic faith. are little manuals of falsified history confined only to one set of people? is not john foxe still proof against the assaults of dr. maitland? the habit of _à priori_ judgments as to historical facts is, as mr. pattison truly says, "fatal to truth and integrity." it is most mischievous when it assumes a philosophic gravity and warps the criticism of a distinguished scholar. this fixed habit of mind is the more provoking because, putting aside the obtrusive and impertinent injustice to which it leads, mr. pattison's critical work is of so high a character. his extensive and accurate reading, the sound common sense with which he uses his reading, and the modesty and absence of affectation and display which seem to be a law of his writing, place him very high. perhaps he believes too much in books and learning, in the power which they exert, and what they can do to enable men to reach the higher conquests of moral and religious truth--perhaps he forgets, in the amplitude of his literary resources, that behind the records of thought and feeling there are the living mind and thought themselves, still clothed with their own proper force and energy, and working in defiance of our attempts to classify, to judge, or to explain: that there are the real needs, the real destinies of mankind, and the questions on which they depend--of which books are a measure indeed, but an imperfect one. as an instance, we might cite his "essay on the theology of germany"--elaborate, learned, extravagant in its praise and in its scorn, full of the satisfaction of a man in possession of a startling and little known subject, but with the contradictions of a man who in spite of his theories believes more than his theories. but, as a student who deals with books and what books can teach, it is a pleasure to follow him; his work is never slovenly or superficial; the reader feels that he is in the hands of a man who thoroughly knows what he is talking about, and both from conscience and from disposition is anxious above all to be accurate and discriminative. if he fails, as he often seems to us to do, in the justice and balance of his appreciation of the phenomena before him, if his statements and generalisations are crude and extravagant, it is that passion and deep aversions have overpowered the natural accuracy of his faculty of judgment. the feature which is characteristic in all his work is his profound value for learning, the learning of books, of documents, of all literature. he is a thinker, a clear and powerful one; he is a philosopher, who has explored the problems of abstract science with intelligence and interest, and fully recognises their importance; he has taken the measure of the political and social questions which the progress of civilisation has done so little to solve; he is at home with the whole range of literature, keen and true in observation and criticism; he has strongly marked views about education, and he took a leading part in the great changes which have revolutionised oxford. he is all this; but beyond and more than all this he is a devotee of learning, as other men are of science or politics, deeply penetrated with its importance, keenly alive to the neglect of it, full of faith in the services which it can render to mankind, fiercely indignant at what degrades, or supplants, or enfeebles it. learning, with the severe and bracing discipline without which it is impossible, learning embracing all efforts of human intellect--those which are warning beacons as well those which have elevated and enlightened the human mind--is the thing which attracts and satisfies him as nothing else does; not mere soulless erudition, but a great supply and command of varied facts, marshalled and turned to account by an intelligence which knows their use. the absence of learning, or the danger to learning, is the keynote of a powerful but acrid survey of the history and prospects of the anglican church, for which, in spite of its one-sidedness and unfairness, churchmen may find not a little which it will be useful to lay to heart. dissatisfaction with the university system, in its provision for the encouragement of learning and for strengthening and protecting its higher interests, is the stimulus to his essay on oxford studies, which is animated with the idea of the university as a true home of real learning, and is full of the hopes, the animosities, and, it may be added, the disappointments of a revolutionary time. he exults over the destruction of the old order; but his ideal is too high, he is too shrewd an observer, too thorough and well-trained a judge of what learning really means, to be quite satisfied with the new. the same devotion to learning shows itself in a feature of his literary work, which is almost characteristic--the delight which he takes in telling the detailed story of the life of some of the famous working scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. these men, whose names are known to the modern world chiefly in notes to classical authors, or occasionally in some impertinent sneer, he likes to contemplate as if they were alive. to him they are men with individual differences, each with a character and fortunes of his own, sharers to the full in the struggles and vicissitudes of life. he can appreciate their enormous learning, their unwearied labour, their sense of honour in their profession; and the editor of texts, the collator of various readings and emendations, the annotator who to us perhaps seems but a learned pedant appears to him as a man of sound and philosophic thought, of enthusiasm for truth and light--perhaps of genius--a man, too, with human affections and interests, with a history not devoid of romance. there is something touching in mr. pattison's affection for those old scholars, to whom the world has done scant justice. his own chief literary venture was the life of one of the greatest of them, isaac casaubon. we have in these volumes sketches, not so elaborate, of several others, the younger scaliger, muretus, huet, and the great french printers, the stephenses; and in these sketches we are also introduced to a number of their contemporaries, with characteristic observations on them, implying an extensive and first-hand knowledge of what they were, and an acquaintance with what was going on in the scholar world of the day. the most important of these sketches is the account of justus scaliger. there is first a review article, very vigorous and animated. but mr. pattison had intended a companion volume to his casaubon; and of this, which was never completed, we have some fragments, not equal in force and compactness to the original sketch. but sketch and fragments together present a very vivid picture of this remarkable person, whose temper and extravagant vanity his biographer admits, but who was undoubtedly a marvel both of knowledge and of the power to use it, and to whom we owe the beginning of order and system in chronology. scaliger was to mr. pattison the type of the real greatness of the scholar, a greatness not the less real that the world could hardly understand it. he certainly leaves scaliger before us, with his strange ways of working, his hold of the ancient languages as if they were mother tongues, his pride and slashing sarcasm, and his absurd claim of princely descent, with lineaments not soon forgotten; but it is amusing to meet once more, in all seriousness, mr. pattison's _bête noire_ of the catholic reaction, in the quarrels between scaliger and some shallow but clever and scurrilous jesuits, whom he had provoked by exposing the false decretals and the false dionysius, and who revenged themselves by wounding him in his most sensitive part, his claim to descent from the princes of verona. doubtless the religious difference envenomed the dispute, but it did not need the "catholic reaction" to account for such ignoble wrangles in those days. these remains show what a historian of literature we have lost in mr. pattison. he was certainly capable of doing much more than the specimens of work which he has left behind; but what he has left is of high value. wherever the disturbing and embittering elements are away, it is hard to say which is the more admirable, the patient and sagacious way in which he has collected and mastered his facts, or the wise and careful judgment which he passes on them. we hear of people being spoilt by their prepossessions, their party, their prejudices, the necessities of their political and ecclesiastical position; mr. pattison is a warning that a man may claim the utmost independence, and yet be maimed in his power of being just and reasonable by other things than party. as it is, he has left us a collection of interesting and valuable studies, disastrously and indelibly disfigured by an implacable bitterness, in which he but too plainly found the greatest satisfaction. mr. pattison used in his later years to give an occasional lecture to a london audience. one of the latest was one addressed, we believe, to a class of working people on poetry, in which he dwelt on its healing and consoling power. it was full of mr. pattison's clearness and directness of thought, and made a considerable impression on some who only knew it from an abstract in the newspapers; and it was challenged by a working-man in the _pall mall gazette_, who urged against it with some power the argument of despair. perhaps the lecture was not written; but if it was, and our recollection of it is at all accurate, it was not unworthy of a place in this collection. xxv bishop frazer[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th october . every one must be deeply touched by the bishop of manchester's sudden, and, to most of us, unexpected death; those not the least who, unhappily, found themselves in opposition to him in many important matters. for, in spite of much that many people must wish otherwise in his career as bishop, it was really a very remarkable one. its leading motive was high and genuine public spirit, and a generous wish to be in full and frank sympathy with all the vast masses of his diocese; to put himself on a level with them, as man with man, in all their interests, to meet them fearlessly and heartily, to raise their standard of justice and large-heartedness by showing them that in their life of toil he shared the obligation and the burden of labour, and felt bound by his place to be as unsparing and unselfish a worker as any of his flock. indeed, he was as original as bishop wilberforce, though in a different direction, in introducing a new type and ideal of episcopal work, and a great deal of his ideal he realised. it is characteristic of him that one of his first acts was to remove the episcopal residence from a mansion and park in the country to a house in manchester. there can be no doubt that he was thoroughly in touch with the working classes in lancashire, in a degree to which no other bishop, not even bishop wilberforce, had reached. there was that in the frankness and boldness of his address which disarmed their keen suspicion of a bishop's inevitable assumption of superiority, and put them at their ease with him. he was always ready to meet them, and to speak off-hand and unconventionally, and as they speak, not always with a due foresight of consequences or qualifications. if he did sometimes in this way get into a scrape, he did not much mind it, and they liked him the better for it. he was perfectly fearless in his dealings with them; in their disputes, in which he often was invited to take a part, he took the part which seemed to him the right one, whether or not it might be the unpopular one. very decided, very confident in his opinions and the expression of them, there yet was apparent a curious and almost touching consciousness of a deficiency in some of the qualities--knowledge, leisure, capacity for the deeper and subtler tasks of thought--necessary to give a strong speaker the sense of being on sure ground. but he trusted to his manly common sense; and this, with the populations with which he had to deal, served him well, at least in the main and most characteristic part of his work. and for his success in this part of his work--in making the crowds in manchester feel that their bishop was a man like themselves, quite alive to their wants and claims and feelings, and not so unlike them in his broad and strong utterances--his episcopate deserves full recognition and honour. he set an example which we may hope to see followed and improved upon. but unfortunately there was also a less successful side. he was a bishop, an overseer of a flock of many ways of life and thought, a fellow-worker with them, sympathetic, laborious, warm-hearted. but he was also a bishop of the church of christ, an institution with its own history, its great truths to keep and deliver, its characteristic differences from the world which it is sent to correct and to raise to higher levels than those of time and nature. there is no reason why this side of the episcopal office should not be joined to that in which bishop frazer so signally excelled. but for this part of it he was not well qualified, and much in his performance of it must be thought of with regret. the great features of christian truth had deeply impressed him; and to its lofty moral call he responded with conviction and earnestness. but an acquaintance with what he has to interpret and guard which may suffice for a layman is not enough for a bishop; and knowledge, the knowledge belonging to his profession, the deeper and more varied knowledge which makes a man competent to speak as a theologian, bishop frazer did not possess. he rather disbelieved in it, and thought it useless, or, it might be, mischievous. he resented its intrusion into spheres where he could only see the need of the simplest and least abstruse language. but facts are not what we may wish them, but what they are; and questions, if they are asked, may have to be answered, with toil, it may be, and difficulty, like the questions, assuredly not always capable of easy and transparent statement, of mathematical or physical science; and unless christianity is a dream and its history one vast delusion, such facts and such questions have made what we call theology. but to the bishop's practical mind they were without interest, and he could not see how they could touch and influence living religion. and did not care to know about them; he was impatient, and even scornful, when stress was laid on them; he was intolerant when he thought they competed with the immediate realities of religion. and this want of knowledge and of respect for knowledge was a serious deficiency. it gave sometimes a tone of thoughtless flippancy to his otherwise earnest language. and as he was not averse to controversy, or, at any rate, found himself often involved in it, he was betrayed sometimes into assertions and contradictions of the most astounding inaccuracy, which seriously weakened his authority when he was called upon to accept the responsibility of exerting it. partly for this reason, partly from a certain vivacity of temper, he certainly showed himself, in spite of his popular qualities, less equal than many others of his brethren to the task of appeasing and assuaging religious strife. the difficulties in manchester were not greater than in other dioceses; there was not anything peculiar in them; there was nothing but what a patient and generous arbiter, with due knowledge of the subject, might have kept from breaking out into perilous scandals. unhappily he failed; and though he believed that he had only done his duty, his failure was a source of deep distress to himself and to others. but now that he has passed away, it is but bare justice to say that no one worked up more conscientiously to his own standard. he gave himself, when he was consecrated, ten or twelve years of work, and then he hoped for retirement. he has had fifteen, and has fallen at his post. and to the last, the qualities which gave his character such a charm in his earlier time had not disappeared. there seemed to be always something of the boy about him, in his simplicity, his confiding candour and frankness with his friends, his warm-hearted and kindly welcome, his mixture of humility with a sense of power. those who can remember him in his younger days still see, in spite of all the storms and troubles of his later ones, the image of the undergraduate and the young bachelor, who years ago made a start of such brilliant promise, and who has fulfilled so much of it, if not all. these things at any rate lasted to the end--his high and exacting sense of public duty, and his unchanging affection for his old friends. xxvi newman's "apologia"[ ] [ ] _apologia pro vitâ suâ_. by john henry newman, d.d. _guardian_, nd june . we have not noticed before dr. newman's _apologia_, which has been coming out lately in weekly numbers, because we wished, when we spoke of it, to speak of it as a whole. the special circumstances out of which it arose may have prescribed the mode of publication. it may have been thought more suitable, in point of form, to answer a pamphlet by a series of pamphlets rather than at once by a set octavo of several hundred pages. but the real subject which dr. newman has been led to handle is one which will continue to be of the deepest interest long after the controversy which suggested it is forgotten. the real subject is the part played in the great church movement by him who was the leading mind in it; and it was unsatisfactory to speak of this till all was said, and we could look on the whole course described. such a subject might have well excused a deliberate and leisurely volume to itself; perhaps in this way we should have gained, in the laying out and concentration of the narrative, and in what helps to bring it as a whole before our thoughts. but a man's account of himself is never so fresh and natural as when it is called out by the spur and pressure of an accidental and instant necessity, and is directed to a purpose and quickened by feelings which belong to immediate and passing circumstances. the traces of hurried work are of light account when they are the guarantees that a man is not sitting down to draw a picture of himself, but stating his case in sad and deep earnest out of the very fulness of his heart. the aim of the book is to give a minute and open account of the steps and changes by which dr. newman passed from the english church to the roman. the history of a change of opinion has often been written from the most opposite points of view; but in one respect this book seems to stand alone. let it be remembered what it is, the narrative and the justification of a great conversion; of a change involving an entire reversal of views, judgments, approvals, and condemnations; a change which, with all ordinary men, involves a reversal, at least as great, of their sympathies and aversions, of what they tolerate and speak kindly of. let it be considered what changes of feeling most changes of religion compel and consecrate; how men, commonly and very naturally, look back on what they have left and think they have escaped from, with the aversion of a captive to his prison; how they usually exaggerate and make absolute their divergence from what they think has betrayed, fooled, and degraded them; how easily they are tempted to visit on it and on those who still cling to it their own mistakes and faults. let it be remembered that there was here to be told not only the history of a change, but the history of a deep disappointment, of the failure of a great design, of the breakdown of hopes the most promising and the most absorbing; and this, not in the silence of a man's study, but in the fever and contention of a great struggle wrought up to the highest pitch of passion and fierceness, bringing with it on all sides and leaving behind it, when over, the deep sense of wrong. it is no history of a mere intellectual movement, or of a passage from strong belief to a weakened and impaired one, to uncertainty, or vagueness, or indifference; it is not the account of a change by a man who is half sorry for his change, and speaks less hostilely of what he has left because he feels less friendly towards what he has joined. there is no reserved thought to be discerned in the background of disappointment or a wish to go back again to where he once was. it is a book which describes how a man, zealous and impatient for truth, thought he had found it in one church, then thought that his finding was a delusion, and sought for it and believed he had gained it in another. what it shows us is no serene readjustment of abstract doctrines, but the wreck and overturning of trust and conviction and the practical grounds of life, accompanied with everything to provoke, embitter, and exasperate. it need not be said that what dr. newman holds he is ready to carry out to the end, or that he can speak severely of men and systems. let all this be remembered, and also that there is an opposition between what he was and what he is, which is usually viewed as irreconcilable, and which, on the ordinary assumptions about it, is so; and we venture to say that there is not another instance to be quoted, of the history of a conversion, in which he who tells his conversion has so retained his self-possession, his temper, his mastery over his own real judgment and thoughts, his ancient and legitimate sympathies, his superiority to the natural and inevitable temptations of so altered a position; which is so generous to what he feels to be strong and good in what he has nevertheless abandoned, so fearless about letting his whole case come out, so careless about putting himself in the right in detail; which is so calm, and kindly, and measured, with such a quiet effortless freedom from the stings of old conflicts, which bears so few traces of that bitterness and antipathy which generally--and we need hardly wonder at it--follows the decisive breaking with that on which a man's heart was stayed, and for which he would once have died. there is another thing to be said, and we venture to say it out plainly, because dr. newman himself has shown that he knows quite well what he has been doing. while he has written what will command the sympathy and the reverence of every one, however irreconcilably opposed to him, to whom a great and noble aim and the trials of a desperate and self-sacrificing struggle to compass it are objects of admiration and honour, it is undeniable that ill-nature or vindictiveness or stupidity will find ample materials of his own providing to turn against him. those who know dr. newman's powers and are acquainted with his career, and know to what it led him, and yet persist in the charge of insincerity and dishonesty against one who probably has made the greatest sacrifice of our generation to his convictions of truth, will be able to pick up from his own narrative much that they would not otherwise have known, to confirm and point the old familiar views cherished by dislike or narrowness. this is inevitable when a man takes the resolution of laying himself open so unreservedly, and with so little care as to what his readers think of what he tells them, so that they will be persuaded that he was ever, even from his boyhood, deeply conscious of the part which he was performing in the sight of his maker. those who smile at the belief of a deep and religious mind in the mysterious interventions and indications of providence in the guidance of human life, will open their eyes at the feeling which leads him to tell the story of his earliest recollections of roman catholic peculiarities, and of the cross imprinted on his exercise-book. those who think that everything about religion and their own view of religion is such plain sailing, so palpable and manifest, that all who are not fools or knaves must be of their own opinion, will find plenty to wonder at in the confessions of awful perplexity which equally before and after his change dr. newman makes. those who have never doubted, who can no more imagine the practical difficulties accompanying a great change of belief than they can imagine a change of belief itself, will meet with much that to them will seem beyond pardon, in the actual events of a change, involving such issues and such interests, made so deliberately and cautiously, with such hesitation and reluctance, and in so long a time; they will be able to point to many moments in it when it will be easy to say that more or less ought to have been said, more or less ought to have been done. much more will those who are on the side of doubt, who acquiesce in, or who desire the overthrow of existing hopes and beliefs, rejoice in such a frank avowal of the difficulties of religion and the perplexities of so earnest a believer, and make much of their having driven such a man to an alternative so obnoxious and so monstrous to most englishmen. it is a book full of minor premisses, to which many opposite majors will be fitted. but whatever may be thought of many details, the effect and lesson of the whole will not be lost on minds of any generosity, on whatever side they may be; they will be touched with the confiding nobleness which has kept back nothing, which has stated its case with its weak points and its strong, and with full consciousness of what was weak as well as of what was strong, which has surrendered its whole course of conduct, just as it has been, to be scrutinised, canvassed, and judged. what we carry away from following such a history is something far higher and more solemn than any controversial inferences; and it seems almost like a desecration to make, as we say, capital out of it, to strengthen mere argument, to confirm a theory, or to damage an opponent. the truth, in fact, is, that the interest is personal much more than controversial. those who read it as a whole, and try to grasp the effect of all its portions compared together and gathered into one, will, it seems to us, find it hard to bend into a decisive triumph for any of the great antagonist systems which appear in collision. there can be no doubt of the perfect conviction with which dr. newman has taken his side for good. but while he states the effect of arguments on his own mind, he leaves the arguments in themselves as they were, and touches on them, not for the sake of what they are worth, but to explain the movements and events of his own course. not from any studied impartiality, which is foreign to his character, but from his strong and keen sense of what is real and his determined efforts to bring it out, he avoids the temptation--as it seems to us, who still believe that he was more right once than he is now--to do injustice to his former self and his former position. at any rate, the arguments to be drawn from this narrative, for or against england, or for or against rome, seem to us very evenly balanced. of course, such a history has its moral. but the moral is not the ordinary vulgar one of the history of a religious change. it is not the supplement or disguise of a polemical argument. it is the deep want and necessity in our age of the church, even to the most intensely religious and devoted minds, of a sound and secure intellectual basis for the faith which they value more than life and all things. we hope that we are strong enough to afford to judge fairly of such a spectacle, and to lay to heart its warnings, even though the particular results seem to go against what we think most right. it is a mortification and a trial to the english church to have seen her finest mind carried away and lost to her, but it is a mortification which more confident and peremptory systems than hers have had to undergo; the parting was not without its compensations if only that it brought home so keenly to many the awfulness and the seriousness of truth; and surely never did any man break so utterly with a church, who left so many sympathies behind him and took so many with him, who continued to feel so kindly and with such large-hearted justice to those from whom his changed position separated him in this world for ever. the _apologia_ is the history of a great battle against liberalism, understanding by liberalism the tendencies of modern thought to destroy the basis of revealed religion, and ultimately of all that can be called religion at all. the question which he professedly addresses himself to set at rest, that of his honesty, is comparatively of slight concern to those who knew him, except so far that they must be interested that others, who did not know him, should not be led to do a revolting injustice. the real interest is to see how one who felt so keenly the claims both of what is new and what is old, who, with such deep and unusual love and trust for antiquity, took in with quick sympathy, and in its most subtle and most redoubtable shapes, the intellectual movement of modern times, could continue to feel the force of both, and how he would attempt to harmonise them. two things are prominent in the whole history. one is the fact of religion, early and deeply implanted in the writer's mind, absorbing and governing it without rival throughout. he speaks of an "inward conversion" at the age of fifteen, "of which i was conscious, and of which i am still more certain than that i have hands and feet." it was the religion of dogma and of a definite creed which made him "rest in the thought of two, and two only, supreme and luminously self-evident beings, myself and my creator"--which completed itself with the idea of a visible church and its sacramental system. religion, in this aspect of it, runs unchanged from end to end of the scene of change:-- i have changed in many things; in this i have not. from the age of fifteen dogma has been the fundamental principle of my religion; i know no other religion. i cannot enter into the idea of any other sort of religion; religion, as a mere sentiment, is to me a dream and a mockery. as well can there be filial love without the fact of a father, as devotion without the fact of a supreme being. what i held in i held in , and i hold in . please god i shall hold it to the end. even when i was under dr. whately's influence i had no temptation to be less zealous for the dogmas of the faith. the other thing is the haunting necessity, in an age of thought and innovation, of a philosophy of religion, equally deep, equally comprehensive and thorough, with the invading powers which it was wanted to counteract; a philosophy, not on paper or in theory, but answering to and vouched for by the facts of real life. in the english church he found, we think that we may venture to say, the religion which to him was life, but not the philosophy which he wanted. the _apologia_ is the narrative of his search for it. two strongly marked lines of thought are traceable all through, one modern in its scope and sphere, the other ancient. the leading subject of his modern thought is the contest with liberal unbelief; contrasted with this was his strong interest in christian antiquity, his deep attachment to the creed, the history, and the moral temper of the early church. the one line of thought made him, and even now makes him, sympathise with anglicanism, which is in the same boat with him, holds the same principle of the unity and continuity of revealed truth, and is doing the same work, though, as he came to think in the end, feebly and hopelessly. the other, more and more, carried him away from anglicanism; and the contrast and opposition between it and the ancient church, in organisation, in usage, and in that general tone of feeling which quickens and gives significance and expression to forms, overpowered more and more the sense of affinity, derived from the identity of creeds and sacraments and leading points of church polity, and from the success with which the best and greatest anglican writers had appropriated and assimilated the theology of the fathers. but though he urges the force of ecclesiastical precedents in a startling way, as in the account which he gives of the effect of the history of the monophysites on his view of the tenableness of the anglican theory, absolutely putting out of consideration the enormous difference of circumstances between the cases which are compared, and giving the instance in question a force and importance which seem to be in singular contrast with the general breadth and largeness of his reasoning, it was not the halting of an ecclesiastical theory which dissatisfied him with the english church. anglicanism was not daring enough for him. with his ideas of the coming dangers and conflicts, he wanted something bold and thoroughgoing, wide-reaching in its aims, resolute in its language, claiming and venturing much. anglicanism was not that. it had given up as impracticable much that the church had once attempted. it did not pretend to rise so high, to answer such great questions, to lay down such precise definitions. wisely modest, or timidly uncertain--mindful of the unalterable limits of our human condition, _we_ say; forgetful, _he_ thought, or doubting, or distrustful, of the gifts and promises of a supernatural dispensation--it certainly gave no such complete and decisive account of the condition and difficulties of religion and the world, as had been done once, and as there were some who did still. there were problems which it did not profess to solve; there were assertions which others boldly risked, and which it shrunk from making; there were demands which it ventured not to put forward. again, it was not refined enough for him; it had little taste for the higher forms of the saintly ideal; it wanted the austere and high-strung-virtues; it was contented, for the most part, with the domestic type of excellence, in which goodness merged itself in the interests and business of the common world, and, working in them, took no care to disengage itself or mark itself off, as something distinct from them and above them. above all, anglicanism was too limited; it was local, insular, national; its theory was made for its special circumstances; and he describes in a remarkable passage how, in contrast with this, there rung in his ears continually the proud self-assertion of the other side, _securus judicat orbis terrarum_. what he wanted, what it was the aim of his life to find, was a great and effective engine against liberalism; for years he tried, with eager but failing hope, to find it in the theology and working of the english church; when he made up his mind that anglicanism was not strong enough for the task, he left it for a system which had one strong power; which claimed to be able to shut up dangerous thought. very sorrowful, indeed, is the history, told so openly, so simply, so touchingly, of the once promising advance, of the great breakdown. and yet, to those who still cling to what he left, regret is not the only feeling. for he has the nobleness and the generosity to say what he _did_ find in the english church, as well as what he did not find. he has given her up for good, but he tells and he shows, with no grudging frankness, what are the fruits of her discipline. "so i went on for years, up to . it was, in a human point of view, the happiest time of my life.... i did not suppose that such sunshine would last, though i knew not what would be its termination. it was the time of plenty, and during its seven years i tried to lay up as much as i could for the dearth which was to follow it." he explains and defends what to us seem the fatal marks against rome; but he lets us see with what force, and for how long, they kept alive his own resistance to an attraction which to him was so overwhelming. and he is at no pains to conceal--it seems even to console him to show--what a pang and wrench it cost him to break from that home under whose shadow his spiritual growth had increased. he has condemned us unreservedly; but there must, at any rate, be some wonderful power and charm about that which he loved with a love which is not yet extinguished; else how could he write of the past as he does? he has shown that he can understand, though he is unable to approve, that others should feel that power still. dr. newman has stated, with his accustomed force and philosophical refinement, what he considers the true idea of that infallibility, which he looks upon as the only power in the world which can make head against and balance liberalism--which "can withstand and baffle the fierce energy of passion, and the all-corroding, all-dissolving scepticism of the intellect in religious inquiries;" which he considers "as a provision, adapted by the mercy of the creator, to preserve religion in the world, and to restrain that freedom of thought which is one of the greatest of our natural gifts, from its own suicidal excesses." he says, as indeed is true, that it is "a tremendous power," though he argues that, in fact, its use is most wisely and beneficially limited. and doubtless, whatever the difficulty of its proof may be, and to us this proof seems simply beyond possibility, it is no mere power upon paper. it acts and leaves its mark; it binds fast and overthrows for good. but when, put at its highest, it is confronted with the "giant evil" which it is supposed to be sent into the world to repel, we can only say that, to a looker-on, its failure seems as manifest as the existence of the claim to use it. it no more does its work, in the sense of _succeeding_ and triumphing, than the less magnificent "establishments" do. it keeps _some_ check--it fails on a large scale and against the real strain and pinch of the mischief; and they, too, keep _some_ check, and are not more fairly beaten than it is, in "making a stand against the wild living intellect of man." without infallibility, it is said, men will turn freethinkers and heretics; but don't they, _with_ it? and what is the good of the engine if it will not do its work? and if it is said that this is the fault of human nature, which resists what provokes and checks it, still that very thing, which infallibility was intended to counteract, goes on equally, whether it comes into play or not. meanwhile, truth does stay in the world, the truth that there has been among us a divine person, of whom the church throughout christendom is the representative, memorial, and the repeater of his message; doubtless, the means of knowledge are really guarded; yet we seem to receive that message as we receive the witness of moral truth; and it would not be contrary to the analogy of things here if we had often got to it at last through mistakes. but when it is reached, there it is, strong in its own power; and it is difficult to think that if it is not strong enough in itself to stand, it can be protected by a claim of infallibility. a future, of which infallibility is the only hope and safeguard, seems to us indeed a prospect of the deepest gloom. dr. newman, in a very remarkable passage, describes the look and attitude of invading liberalism, and tells us why he is not forward in the conflict. "it seemed to be a time of all others in which christians had a call to be patient, in which they had no other way of helping those who were alarmed than that of exhorting them to have a little faith and fortitude, and 'to beware,' as the poet says, 'of dangerous steps.'" and he interprets "recent acts of the highest catholic authority" as meaning that there is nothing to do just now but to sit still and trust. well; but the _christian year_ will do that much for us, just as well. people who talk glibly of the fearless pursuit of truth may here see a real example of a life given to it--an example all the more solemn and impressive if they think that the pursuit was in vain. it is easy to declaim about it, and to be eloquent about lies and sophistries; but it is shallow to forget that truth has its difficulties. to hear some people talk, it might be thought that truth was a thing to be made out and expressed at will, under any circumstances, at any time, amid any complexities of facts or principles, by half an hour's choosing to be attentive, candid, logical, and resolute; as if there was not a chance of losing what perhaps you have, as well as of gaining what you think you need. if they would look about them, if they would look into themselves, they would recognise that truth is an awful and formidable goddess to all men and to all systems; that all have their weak points where virtually, more or less consciously, more or less dexterously, they shrink from meeting her eye; that even when we make sacrifice of everything for her sake, we find that she still encounters us with claims, seemingly inconsistent with all that she has forced us to embrace--with appearances which not only convict us of mistake, but seem to oblige us to be tolerant of what we cannot really assent to. she gives herself freely to the earnest and true-hearted inquirer; but to those who presume on the easiness of her service, she has a side of strong irony. you common-sense men, she seems to say, who see no difficulties in the world, you little know on what shaky ground you stand, and how easily you might be reduced to absurdity. you critical and logical intellects, who silence all comers and cannot be answered, and can show everybody to be in the wrong--into what monstrous and manifest paradoxes are you not betrayed, blind to the humble facts which upset your generalisations, not even seeing that dulness itself can pronounce you mistaken! in the presence of such a narrative as this, sober men will think more seriously than ever about charging their most extreme opponents with dishonesty and disregard to truth. as we said before, this history seems to us to leave the theological question just where it was. the objections to rome, which dr. newman felt so strongly once, but which yielded to other considerations, we feel as strongly still. the substantial points of the english theory, which broke down to his mind, seem to us as substantial and trustworthy as before. he failed, but we believe that, in spite of everything, england is the better for his having made his trial. even liberalism owes to the movement of which he was the soul much of what makes it now such a contrast, in largeness of mind and warmth, to the dry, repulsive, narrow, material liberalism of the reform era. he, and he mainly, has been the source, often unrecognised and unsuspected, of depth and richness and beauty, and the strong passion for what is genuine and real, in our religious teaching. other men, other preachers, have taken up his thoughts and decked them out, and had the credit of being greater than their master. in looking back on the various turns and vicissitudes of his english course, we, who inherit the fruits of that glorious failure, should speak respectfully and considerately where we do not agree with him, and with deep gratitude--all the more that now so much lies between us--where we do. but the review makes us feel more than ever that the english church, whose sturdy strength he underrated, and whose irregular theories provoked him, was fully worthy of the interest and the labours of the leader who despaired of her. anglicanism has so far outlived its revolutions, early and late ones, has marched on in a distinct path, has developed a theology, has consolidated an organisation, has formed a character and tone, has been the organ of a living spirit. the "magnetic storms" of thought which sweep over the world may be destructive and dangerous to it, as much as, but not more than, to other bodies which claim to be churches and to represent the message of god. but there is nothing to make us think that, in the trials which may be in store, the english church will fail while others hold their own. xxvii dr. newman on the "eirenicon"[ ] [ ] _the times_, st march . dr. pusey's appeal has received more than one answer. these answers, from the roman catholic side, are--what it was plain that they would be--assurances to him that he looks at the question from an entirely mistaken point of view; that it is, of course, very right and good of him to wish for peace and union, but that there is only one way of peace and union--unconditional submission. he may have peace and union for himself at any moment, if he will; so may the english church, or the greek church, or any other religious body, organised or unorganised. the way is always open; there is no need to write long books or make elaborate proposals about union. union means becoming catholic; becoming catholic means acknowledging the exclusive claims of the pope or the roman church. in the long controversy one party has never for an instant wavered in the assertion that it could not, and never would, be in the wrong. the way to close the controversy, and the only one, is to admit that dr. pusey shall have any amount of assurance and proof that the roman position and roman doctrine and practice are the right ones. his misapprehensions shall be corrected; his ignorance of what is roman theology fully, and at any length, enlightened. there is no desire to shrink from the fullest and most patient argument in its favour, and he may call it, if he likes, explanation. but there is only one practical issue to what he has proposed--not to stand bargaining for impossible conditions, but thankfully and humbly to join himself to the true church while he may. it is only the way in which the answer is given that varies. here characteristic differences appear. the authorities of the roman catholic church swell out to increased magnificence, and nothing can exceed the suavity and the compassionate scorn with which they point out the transparent absurdity and the audacity of such proposals. the holy office at rome has not, it may be, yet heard of dr. pusey; it may regret, perhaps, that it did not wait for so distinguished a mark for its censure; but its attention has been drawn to some smaller offenders of the same way of thinking, and it has been induced to open all the floodgates of its sonorous and antiquated verbiage to sweep away and annihilate a poor little london periodical--"_ephemeridem cui titulus, 'the union review_.'" the archbishop of westminster, not deigning to name dr. pusey, has seized the opportunity to reiterate emphatically, in stately periods and with a polished sarcasm, his boundless contempt for the foolish people who dare to come "with swords wreathed in myrtle" between the catholic church and "her mission to the great people of england." on the other hand, there have been not a few roman catholics who have listened with interest and sympathy to what dr. pusey had to say, and, though obviously they had but one answer to give, have given it with a sense of the real condition and history of the christian world, and with the respect due to a serious attempt to look evils in the face. but there is only one person on the roman catholic side whose reflections on the subject english readers in general would much care to know. anybody could tell beforehand what archbishop manning would say; but people could not feel so certain what dr. newman might say. dr. newman has given his answer; and his answer is, of course, in effect the same as that of the rest of his co-religionists. he offers not the faintest encouragement to dr. pusey's sanguine hopes. if it is possible to conceive that one side could move in the matter, it is absolutely certain that the other would be inflexible. any such dealing on equal terms with the heresy and schism of centuries is not to be thought of; no one need affect surprise at the refusal. what dr. pusey asks is, in fact, to pull the foundation out from under the whole structure of roman catholic pretensions. dr. newman does not waste words to show that the plan of the _eirenicon_ is impossible. he evidently assumes that it is so, and we agree with him. but there are different ways of dispelling a generous dream, and telling a serious man who is in earnest that he is mistaken. dr. newman does justice, as he ought to do, to feelings and views which none can enter into better than he, whatever he may think of them now. he does justice to the understanding and honesty, as well as the high aims, of an old friend, once his comrade in difficult and trying times, though now long parted from him by profound differences, and to the motives which prompted so venturous an attempt as the _eirenicon_ to provoke public discussion on the reunion of christendom. he is capable of measuring the real state of the facts, and the mischiefs and evils for which a remedy is wanted, by a more living rule than the suppositions and consequences of a cut-and-dried theory. rightly or wrongly he argues--at least, he gives us something to think of. perhaps not the least of his merit is that he writes simply and easily in choice and varied english, instead of pompously ringing the changes on a set of _formulae_ which beg the question, and dinning into our ears the most extravagant assertions of foreign ecclesiastical arrogance. we may not always think him fair, or a sound reasoner, but he is conciliatory, temperate, and often fearlessly candid. he addresses readers who will challenge and examine what he says, not those whose minds are cowed and beaten down before audacity in proportion to its coolness, and whom paradox, the more extreme the better, fascinates and drags captive. to his old friend he is courteous, respectful, sympathetic; where the occasion makes it fitting, affectionate, even playful, as men are who can afford to let their real feelings come out, and have not to keep up appearances. unflinching he is in maintaining his present position as the upholder of the exclusive claims of the roman church to represent the catholic church of the creeds; but he has the good sense and good feeling to remember that he once shared the views of those whom he now controverts, and that their present feelings about the divisions of christendom were once his own. such language as the following is plain, intelligible, and manly. of course, he has his own position, and must see things according to it. but he recognises the right of conscience in those who, having gone a long way with him, find that they can go no further, and he pays a compliment, becoming as from himself, and not without foundation in fact, to the singular influence which, from whatever cause, dr. pusey's position gives him, and which, we may add, imposes on him, in more ways than one, very grave responsibilities:-- you, more than any one else alive, have been the present and untiring agent by whom a great work has been effected in it; and, far more than is usual, you have received in your lifetime, as well as merited, the confidence of your brethren. you cannot speak merely for yourself; your antecedents, your existing influence, are a pledge to us that what you may determine will be the determination of a multitude. numbers, too, for whom you cannot properly be said to speak, will be moved by your authority or your arguments; and numbers, again, who are of a school more recent than your own, and who are only not your followers because they have outstripped you in their free speeches and demonstrative acts in our behalf, will, for the occasion, accept you as their spokesman. there is no one anywhere--among ourselves, in your own body, or, i suppose, in the greek church--who can affect so vast a circle of men, so virtuous, so able, so learned, so zealous, as come, more or less, under your influence; and i cannot pay them all a greater compliment than to tell them they ought all to be catholics, nor do them a more affectionate service than to pray that they may one day become such.... i recollect well what an outcast i seemed to myself when i took down from the shelves of my library the volumes of st. athanasius or st. basil, and set myself to study them; and how, on the contrary, when at length i was brought into catholicism, i kissed them with delight, with a feeling that in them i had more than all that i had lost, and, as though i were directly addressing the glorious saints who bequeathed them to the church, i said to the inanimate pages, "you are now mine, and i am now yours, beyond any mistake." such, i conceive, would be the joy of the persons i speak of if they could wake up one morning and find themselves possessed by right of catholic traditions and hopes, without violence to their own sense of duty; and certainly i am the last man to say that such violence is in any case lawful, that the claims of conscience are not paramount, or that any one may overleap what he deliberately holds to be god's command, in order to make his path easier for him or his heart lighter. i am the last man to quarrel with this jealous deference to the voice of our conscience, whatever judgment others may form of us in consequence, for this reason, because their case, as it at present stands, has as you know been my own. you recollect well what hard things were said against us twenty-five years ago which we knew in our hearts we did not deserve. hence, i am now in the position of the fugitive queen in the well-known passage, who, "_haud ignara mali_" herself, had learned to sympathise with those who were inheritors of her past wanderings. dr. newman's hopes, and what most of his countrymen consider the hopes of truth and religion, are not the same. his wish is, of course, that his friend should follow him; a wish in which there is not the slightest reason to think that he will be gratified. but differently as we must feel as to the result, we cannot help sharing the evident amusement with which dr. newman recalls a few of the compliments which were lavished on him by some of his present co-religionists when he was trying to do them justice, and was even on the way to join them. he reprints with sly and mischievous exactness a string of those glib phrases of controversial dislike and suspicion which are common to all parties, and which were applied to him by "priests, good men, whose zeal outstripped their knowledge, and who in consequence spoke confidently, when they would have been wiser had they suspended their adverse judgment of those whom they were soon to welcome as brothers in communion." it is a trifle, but it strikes us as characteristic. dr. newman is one of the very few who have carried into his present communion, to a certain degree at least, an english habit of not letting off the blunders and follies of his own side, and of daring to think that a cause is better served by outspoken independence of judgment than by fulsome, unmitigated puffing. it might be well if even in him there were a little more of this habit. but, so far as it goes, it is the difference between him and most of those who are leaders on his side. indirectly he warns eager controversialists that they are not always the wisest and the most judicious and far-seeing of men; and we cannot quarrel with him, however little we may like the occasion, for the entertainment which he feels in inflicting on his present brethren what they once judged and said of him, and in reminding them that their proficiency in polemical rhetoric did not save them from betraying the shallowness of their estimate and the shortness of their foresight. when he comes to discuss the _eirenicon_, dr. newman begins with a complaint which seems to us altogether unreasonable. he seems to think it hard that dr. pusey should talk of peace and reunion, and yet speak so strongly of what he considers the great corruptions of the roman church. in ordinary controversy, says dr. newman, we know what we are about and what to expect; "'_caedimur, et totidem plagis consumimus hostem_.' we give you a sharp cut and you return it.... but we at least have not professed to be composing an _eirenicon_, when we treated you as foes." like archbishop manning, dr. newman is reminded "of the sword wreathed in myrtle;" but dr. pusey, he says, has improved on the ancient device,--"excuse me, you discharge your olive-branch as if from a catapult." this is, no doubt, exactly what dr. pusey has done. going much further than the great majority of his countrymen will go with him in admissions in favour of the roman catholic church, he has pointed out with a distinctness and force, never, perhaps, exceeded, what is the impassable barrier which, as long as it lasts, makes every hope of union idle. the practical argument against rome is stated by him in a shape which comes home to the consciences of all, whatever their theological training and leanings, who have been brought up in english ways and ideas of religion. but why should he not? he is desirous of union--the reunion of the whole of christendom. he gives full credit to the roman communion--much more credit than most of his brethren think him justified in giving--for what is either defensible or excellent in it. dr. newman must be perfectly aware that dr. pusey has gone to the very outside of what our public feeling in england will bear in favour of efforts for reconciliation, and he nowhere shows any sign that he is thinking of unconditional submission. how, then, can he be expected to mince matters and speak smoothly when he comes to what he regards as the real knot of the difficulty, the real and fatal bar to all possibility of a mutual understanding? if his charges are untrue or exaggerated in detail or colouring, that is another matter; but the whole of his pleading for peace presupposes that there are great and serious obstacles to it in what is practically taught and authorised in the roman church; and it is rather hard to blame him for "not making the best of things," and raising difficulties in the way of the very object which he seeks, because he states the truth about these obstacles. we are afraid that we must be of dr. newman's opinion that the _eirenicon_ is not calculated to lead, in our time at least, to what it aims at--the reunion of christendom; but this arises from the real obstacles themselves, not from dr. pusey's way of stating them. there may be no way to peace, but surely if there is, though it implies giving full weight to your sympathies, and to the points on which you may give way, it also involves the possibility of speaking out plainly, and also of being listened to, on the points on which you really disagree. does dr. newman think that all dr. pusey felt he had to do was to conciliate roman catholics? does it follow, because objections are intemperately and unfairly urged on the protestant side, that therefore they are not felt quite as much in earnest by sober and tolerant people, and that they may not be stated in their real force without giving occasion for the remark that this is reviving the old cruel war against rome, and rekindling a fierce style of polemics which is now out of date? and how is dr. pusey to state these objections if, when he goes into them, not in a vague declamatory way, but showing his respect and seriousness by his guarded and full and definite manner of proof, he is to be met by the charge that he does not show sufficient consideration? all this may be a reason for thinking it vain to write an eirenicon at all. but if one is to be attempted, it certainly will not do to make it a book of compliments. its first condition is that if it makes light of lesser difficulties it should speak plainly about greater ones. but this is, after all, a matter of feeling. no doubt, as dr. newman says, people are not pleased or conciliated by elaborate proofs that they are guilty of something very wrong or foolish. what is of more interest is to know the effect on a man like dr. newman of such a display of the prevailing tendency of religious thought and devotion in his communion as dr. pusey has given from roman catholic writers. and it is plain that, whoever else is satisfied with them, these tendencies are not entirely satisfactory to dr. newman. that rage for foreign ideas and foreign usages which has come over a section of his friends, the loudest and perhaps the ablest section of them, has no charms for him. he asserts resolutely and rather sternly his right to have an opinion of his own, and declines to commit himself, or to allow that his cause is committed, to a school of teaching which happens for the moment to have the talk to itself; and he endeavours at great length to present a view of the teaching of his church which shall be free, if not from all dr. pusey's objections, yet from a certain number of them, which to dr. newman himself appear grave. after disclaiming or correcting certain alleged admissions of his own, on which dr. pusey had placed a construction too favourable to the anglican church, dr. newman comes to a passage which seems to rouse him. a convert, says dr. pusey, must take things as he finds them in his new communion, and it would be unbecoming in him to criticise. this statement gives dr. newman the opportunity of saying that, except with large qualifications, he does not accept it for himself. of course, he says, there are considerations of modesty, of becomingness, of regard to the feelings of others with equal or greater claims than himself, which bind a convert as they bind any one who has just gained admission into a society of his fellow men. he has no business "to pick and choose," and to set himself up as a judge of everything in his new position. but though every man of sense who thought he had reason for so great a change would be generous and loyal in accepting his new religion as a whole, in time he comes "to have a right to speak as well as to hear;" and for this right, both generally and in his own case, he stands up very resolutely:-- also, in course of time a new generation rises round him, and there is no reason why he should not know as much, and decide questions with as true an instinct, as those who perhaps number fewer years than he does easter communions. he has mastered the fact and the nature of the differences of theologian from theologian, school from school, nation from nation, era from era. he knows that there is much of what may be called fashion in opinions and practices, according to the circumstances of time and place, according to current politics, the character of the pope of the day, or the chief prelates of a particular country; and that fashions change. his experience tells him that sometimes what is denounced in one place as a great offence, or preached up as a first principle, has in another nation been immemorially regarded in just a contrary sense, or has made no sensation at all, one way or the other, when brought before public opinion; and that loud talkers, in the church as elsewhere, are apt to carry all before them, while quiet and conscientious persons commonly have to give way. he perceives that, in matters which happen to be in debate, ecclesiastical authority watches the state of opinion and the direction and course of controversy, and decides accordingly; so that in certain cases to keep back his own judgment on a point is to be disloyal to his superiors. so far generally; now in particular as to myself. after twenty years of catholic life, i feel no delicacy in giving my opinion on any point when there is a call for me,--and the only reason why i have not done so sooner or more often than i have, is that there has been no call. i have now reluctantly come to the conclusion that your volume _is_ a call. certainly, in many instances in which theologian differs from theologian, and country from country, i have a definite judgment of my own; i can say so without offence to any one, for the very reason that from the nature of the case it is impossible to agree with all of them. i prefer english habits of belief and devotion to foreign, from the same causes, and by the same right, which justifies foreigners in preferring their own. in following those of my people, i show less singularity, and create less disturbance than if i made a flourish with what is novel and exotic. and in this line of conduct i am but availing myself of the teaching which i fell in with on becoming a catholic; and it is a pleasure to me to think that what i hold now, and would transmit after me if i could, is only what i received then. he observes that when he first joined the roman catholic church the utmost delicacy was observed in giving him advice; and the only warning which he can recollect was from the vicar-general of the london district, who cautioned him against books of devotion of the italian school, which were then just coming into england, and recommended him to get, as safe guides, the works of bishop hay. bishop hay's name is thus, probably for the first time, introduced to the general english public. it is difficult to forbear a smile at the great oxford teacher, the master of religious thought and feeling to thousands, being gravely set to learn his lesson of a more perfect devotion, how to meditate and how to pray, from "the works of bishop hay"; it is hardly more easy to forbear a smile at his recording it. but bishop hay was a sort of symbol, and represents, he says, english as opposed to foreign habits of thought; and to these english habits he not only gives his preference, but he maintains that they are more truly those of the whole roman catholic body in england than the more showy and extreme doctrines of a newer school. dr. pusey does wrong, he says, in taking this new school as the true exponent of roman catholic ideas. that it is popular he admits, but its popularity is to be accounted for by personal qualifications in its leaders for gaining the ear of the world, without supposing that they speak for their body. though i am a convert, then, i think i have a right to speak out; and that the more because other converts have spoken for a long time, while i have not spoken; and with still more reason may i speak without offence in the case of your present criticisms of us, considering that in the charges you bring the only two english writers you quote in evidence are both of them converts, younger in age than myself. i put aside the archbishop of course, because of his office. these two authors are worthy of all consideration, at once from their character and from their ability. in their respective lines they are perhaps without equals at this particular time; and they deserve the influence they possess. one is still in the vigour of his powers; the other has departed amid the tears of hundreds. it is pleasant to praise them for their real qualifications; but why do you rest on them as authorities? because the one was "a popular writer"; but is there not sufficient reason for this in the fact of his remarkable gifts, of his poetical fancy, his engaging frankness, his playful wit, his affectionateness, his sensitive piety, without supposing that the wide diffusion of his works arises out of his particular sentiments about the blessed virgin? and as to our other friend, do not his energy, acuteness, and theological reading, displayed on the vantage ground of the historic _dublin review_, fully account for the sensation he has produced, without supposing that any great number of our body go his lengths in their view of the pope's infallibility? our silence as regards their writings is very intelligible; it is not agreeable to protest, in the sight of the world, against the writings of men in our own communion whom we love and respect. but the plain fact is this--they came to the church, and have thereby saved their souls; but they are in no sense spokesmen for english catholics, and they must not stand in the place of those who have a real title to such an office. and he appeals from them, as authorities, to a list of much more sober and modest writers, though, it may be, the names of all of them are not familiar to the public. he enumerates as the "chief authors of the passing generation," "cardinal wiseman, dr. ullathorne, dr. lingard, mr. tierney, dr. oliver, dr. rock, dr. waterworth, dr. husenbeth, mr. flanagan." if these well-practised and circumspect veterans in the ancient controversy are not original and brilliant, at least they are safe; and dr. newman will not allow the flighty intellectualism which takes more hold of modern readers to usurp their place, and for himself he sturdily and bluffly declines to give up his old standing-ground for any one:-- i cannot, then, without remonstrance, allow you to identify the doctrine of our oxford friends in question, on the two subjects i have mentioned, with the present spirit or the prospective creed of catholics; or to assume, as you do, that because they are thoroughgoing and relentless in their statements, therefore they are the harbingers of a new age, when to show a deference for antiquity will be thought little else than a mistake. for myself, hopeless as you consider it, i am not ashamed still to take my stand upon the fathers, and do not mean to budge. the history of their time is not yet an old almanac to me. of course i maintain the value and authority of the "schola," as one of the _loci theologici_; still i sympathise with petavius in preferring to its "contentious and subtle theology" that "more elegant and fruitful teaching which is moulded after the image of erudite antiquity." the fathers made me a catholic, and i am not going to kick down the ladder by which i ascended into the church. it is a ladder quite as serviceable for that purpose now as it was twenty years ago. though i hold, as you remark, a process of development in apostolic truth as time goes on, such development does not supersede the fathers, but explains and completes them. is he right in saying that he is not responsible as a roman catholic for the extravagances that dr. pusey dwells upon? he is, it seems to us, and he is not. no doubt the roman catholic system is in practice a wide one, and he has a right, which we are glad to see that he is disposed to exercise, to maintain the claims of moderation and soberness, and to decline to submit his judgment to the fashionable theories of the hour. a stand made for independence and good sense against the pressure of an exacting and overbearing dogmatism is a good thing for everybody, though made in a camp with which we have nothing to do. he goes far enough, indeed, as it is. still, it is something that a great writer, of whose genius and religious feeling englishmen will one day be even prouder than they are now, should disconnect himself from the extreme follies of his party, and attempt to represent what is the nobler and more elevated side of the system to which he has attached himself. but it seems to us much more difficult for him to release his cause from complicity with the doctrines which he dislikes and fears. we have no doubt that he is not alone, and that there are numbers of his english brethren who are provoked and ashamed at the self-complacent arrogance and childish folly shown in exaggerating and caricaturing doctrines which are, in the eyes of most englishmen, extravagant enough in themselves. but the question is whether he or the innovators represent the true character and tendencies of their religious system. it must be remembered that with a jealous and touchy government, like that of the roman church, which professes the duty and boasts of the power to put down all dangerous ideas and language, mere tolerance means much. dr. newman speaks as an englishman when he writes thus:-- this is specially the case with great ideas. you may stifle them; or you may refuse them elbow-room; or you may torment them with your continual meddling; or you may let them have free course and range, and be content, instead of anticipating their excesses, to expose and restrain those excesses after they have occurred. but you have only this alternative; and for myself, i prefer much, wherever it is possible, to be first generous and then just; to grant full liberty of thought, and to call it to account when abused. but that has never been the principle of his church. at least, the liberty which it has allowed has been a most one-sided liberty. it has been the liberty to go any length in developing the favourite opinions about the power of the pope, or some popular form of devotion; but as to other ideas, not so congenial, "great" ones and little ones too, the lists of the roman index bear witness to the sensitive vigilance which took alarm even at remote danger. and those whose pride it is that they are ever ready and able to stop all going astray must be held responsible for the going astray which they do not stop, especially when it coincides with what they wish and like. but these extreme writers do not dream of tolerance. they stoutly and boldly maintain that they but interpret in the only natural and consistent manner the mind of their church; and no public or official contradiction meets them. there may be a disapproving opinion in their own body, but it does not show itself. the disclaimer of even such a man as dr. newman is in the highest degree guarded and qualified. they are the people who can excite attention and gain a hearing, though it be an adverse one. they have the power to make themselves the most prominent and accredited representatives of their creed, and, if thoroughgoing boldness and ability are apt to attract the growth of thought and conviction, they are those who are likely to mould its future form. sober prudent people may prefer the caution of dr. newman's "chief authors," but to the world outside most of these will be little more than names, and the advanced party, which talks most strongly about the pope's infallibility and devotion to st. mary, has this to say for itself. popular feeling everywhere in the roman communion appears to go with it, and authority both in rome and in england shelters and sanctions it. nothing can be more clearly and forcibly stated than the following assertions of the unimpeachable claim of "dominant opinions" in the roman catholic system by the highest roman catholic authority in england. "it is an ill-advised overture of peace," writes archbishop manning, to assail the popular, prevalent, and dominant opinions, devotions, and doctrines of the catholic church with hostile criticism.... the presence and assistance of the holy ghost, which secures the church within the sphere of faith and morals, invests it also with instincts and a discernment which preside over its worship and doctrines, its practices and customs. we may be sure that whatever is prevalent in the church, under the eye of its public authority, practised by the people, and not censured by its pastors, is at least conformable to faith and innocent as to morals. whosoever rises up to condemn such practices and opinions thereby convicts himself of the private spirit which is the root of heresy. but if it be ill-advised to assail the mind of the church, it is still more so to oppose its visible head. there can be no doubt that the sovereign pontiff has declared the same opinion as to the temporal power as that which is censured in others, and that he defined the immaculate conception, and that he believes in his own infallibility. if these things be our reproach, we share it with the vicar of jesus christ. they are not our private opinions, nor the tenets of a school, but the mind of the pontiff, as they were of his predecessors, as they will be of those who come after him.--archbishop manning's _pastoral_, pp. - , . to maintain his liberty against extreme opinions generally is one of dr. newman's objects in writing his letter; the other is to state distinctly what he holds and what he does not hold, as regards the subject on which dr. pusey's appeal has naturally made so deep an impression:-- i do so, because you say, as i myself have said in former years, that "that vast system as to the blessed virgin ... to all of us has been the special _crux_ of the roman system" (p. ). here, i say, as on other points, the fathers are enough for me. i do not wish to say more than they, and will not say less. you, i know, will profess the same; and thus we can join issue on a clear and broad principle, and may hope to come to some intelligible result. we are to have a treatise on the subject of our lady soon from the pen of the most rev. prelate; but that cannot interfere with such a mere argument from the fathers as that to which i shall confine myself here. nor, indeed, as regards that argument itself, do i profess to be offering you any new matter, any facts which have not been used by others,--by great divines, as petavius, by living writers, nay, by myself on other occasions. i write afresh, nevertheless, and that for three reasons--first, because i wish to contribute to the accurate statement and the full exposition of the argument in question; next, because i may gain a more patient hearing than has sometimes been granted to better men than myself; lastly, because there just now seems a call on me, under my circumstances, to avow plainly what i do and what i do not hold about the blessed virgin, that others may know, did they come to stand where i stand, what they would and what they would not be bound to hold concerning her. if this "vast system" is a _crux_ to any one, we cannot think that even dr. newman's explanation will make it easier. he himself recoils, as any englishman of sense and common feeling must, at the wild extravagances into which this devotion has run. but he accepts and defends, on the most precarious grounds, the whole system of thought out of which they have sprung by no very violent process of growth. he cannot, of course, stop short of accepting the definition of the immaculate conception as an article of faith, and, though he emphatically condemns, with a warmth and energy of which no one can doubt the sincerity, a number of revolting consequences drawn from the theology of which that dogma is the expression, he is obliged to defend everything up to that. for a professed disciple of the fathers this is not easy. if anything is certain, it is that the place which the blessed virgin occupies in the roman catholic system--popular or authoritative, if it is possible fairly to urge such a distinction in a system which boasts of all-embracing authority--is something perfectly different from anything known in the first four centuries. in all the voluminous writings on theology which remain from them we may look in vain for any traces of that feeling which finds words in the common hymn, "_ave, marls stella_" and which makes her fill so large a space in the teaching and devotion of the roman church. dr. newman attempts to meet this difficulty by a distinction. the doctrine, he says, was there, the same then as now; it is only the feelings, behaviour, and usages, the practical consequences naturally springing from the doctrine, which have varied or grown:-- i fully grant that the _devotion_ towards the blessed virgin has increased among catholics with the progress of centuries. i do not allow that the _doctrine_ concerning her has undergone a growth, for i believe it has been in substance one and the same from the beginning. there is, doubtless, such a distinction, though whether available for dr. newman's purpose is another matter. but when we recollect that modern "doctrine," besides defining the immaculate conception, places her next in glory to the throne of god, and makes her the queen of heaven, and the all-prevailing intercessor with her son, the assertion as to "doctrine" is a bold one. it rests, as it seems to us, simply on dr. newman identifying his own inferences from the language of the ancient writers whom he quotes with the language itself. they say a certain thing--that mary is the "second eve." dr. newman, with all the theology and all the controversies of eighteen centuries in his mind, deduces from this statement a number of refined consequences as to her sinlessness, and greatness, and reward, which seem to him to flow from it, and says that it means all these consequences. mr. ruskin somewhere quotes the language of an "eminent academician," who remarks, in answer to some criticism on a picture, "that if you look for curves, you will see curves; and if you look for angles, you will see angles." so it is here. the very dogma of the immaculate conception itself dr. newman sees indissolubly involved in the "rudimentary teaching" which insists on the parallelism between eve and mary:-- was not mary as fully endowed as eve?... if eve was (as bishop bull and others maintain) raised above human nature by that indwelling moral gift which we call grace, is it rash to say that mary had a greater grace?... and if eve had this supernatural inward gift given her from the moment of her personal existence, is it possible to deny that mary, too, had this gift from the very first moment of her personal existence? i do not know how to resist this inference:--well, this is simply and literally the doctrine of the immaculate conception. i say the doctrine of the immaculate conception is in its substance this, and nothing more or less than this (putting aside the question of degrees of grace), and it really does seem to me bound up in that doctrine of the fathers, that mary is the second eve. it seems obvious to remark that the fathers are not even alleged to have themselves drawn this irresistible inference; and next, that even if it be drawn, there is a long interval between it and the elevation of the mother of jesus christ to the place to which modern roman doctrine raises her. possibly, the fathers might have said, as many people will say now, that, in a matter of this kind, it is idle to draw inferences when we are, in reality, utterly without the knowledge to make them worth anything. at any rate, if they had drawn them, we should have found some traces of it in their writings, and we find none. we find abundance of poetical addresses and rhetorical amplification, which makes it all the more remarkable that the plain dogmatic view of her position, which is accepted by the roman church, does not appear in them. we only find a "rudimentary doctrine," which, naturally enough, gives the blessed virgin a very high and sacred place in the economy of the incarnation. but how does the doctrine, as it is found in even their rhetorical passages, go a step beyond what would be accepted by any sober reader of the new testament? they speak of what she was; they do not presume to say what she is. what protestant could have the slightest difficulty in saying not only what justin says, and tertullian copies from him, and irenaeus enlarges upon, but what dr. newman himself says of her awful and solitary dignity, always excepting the groundless assumption which, from her office in this world takes for granted, first her sinlessness, and then a still higher office in the next? we do not think that, as a matter of literary criticism, dr. newman is fair in his argument from the fathers. he lays great stress on justin martyr, tertullian, and irenaeus, as three independent witnesses from different parts of the world; whereas it is obvious that tertullian at any rate copies almost literally from justin martyr, and it is impossible to compare a mere incidental point of rhetorical, or, if it be so, argumentative illustration, occurring once or twice in a long treatise, with a doctrine, such as that of the incarnation itself, on which the whole treatise is built, and of which it is full. the wonder is, indeed, that the fathers, considering how much they wrote, said so little of her; scarcely less is it a wonder, then, that the new testament says so little, but from this little the only reason which would prevent a protestant reader of the new testament from accepting the highest statement of her historical dignity is the reaction from the development of them into the consequences which have been notorious for centuries in the unreformed churches. protestants, left to themselves, are certainly not prone to undervalue the saints of scripture; it has been the presence of the great system of popular worship confronting them which has tied their tongues in this matter. yet anglican theologians like mr. keble, popular poets like wordsworth, broad churchmen like mr. robertson, have said things which even roman catholics might quote as expressions of their feeling. but dr. newman must know that many things may be put, and put most truly, into the form of poetical expression which will not bear hardening into a dogma. a protestant may accept and even amplify the ideas suggested by scripture about the blessed virgin; but he may feel that he cannot tell how the redeemer was preserved from sinful taint; what was the grace bestowed on his mother; or what was the reward and prerogative which ensued to her. but it is just these questions which the roman doctrine undertakes to answer without a shadow of doubt, and which dr. newman implies that the theology of the fathers answered as unambiguously. but from what has happened in the history of religion, we do not think that protestants in general who do not shrink from high language about abraham, moses, or david, would find anything unnatural or objectionable in the language of the early christian writers about the mother of our lord, though possibly it might not be their own; but the interval from this language to that certain knowledge of her present office in the economy of grace which is implied in what dr. newman considers the "doctrine" about her is a very long one. the step to the modern "devotion" in its most chastened form is longer still. we cannot follow the subtle train of argument which says that because the "doctrine" of the second century called her the "second eve," therefore the devotion which sets her upon the altars of christendom in the nineteenth is a right development of the doctrine. what is wanted is not the internal thread of the process, but the proof and confirmation from without that it was the right process; and this link is just what is wanting, except on a supposition which begs the question. it is conceivable that this step from "doctrine" to "devotion" may have been a mistake. it is conceivable that the "doctrine" may have been held in the highest form without leading to the devotion; for dr. newman, of course, thinks that athanasius and augustine held "the doctrine," yet, as he says, "we have no proof that athanasius himself had any special devotion to the blessed virgin," and in another place he repeats his doubts whether st. chrysostom or st. athanasius invoked her; "nay," he adds, "i should like to know whether st. augustine, in all his voluminous writings, invokes her once." what has to be shown is, that this step was not a mistake; that it was inevitable and legitimate. "this being the faith of the fathers about the blessed virgin," says dr. newman, "we need not wonder that it should in no long time be transmuted into devotion." the fathers expressed a historical fact about her in the term [greek: theotokos]; therefore, argues the later view, she is the source of our present grace now. it is the _rationale_ of this inference, which is not an immediate or obvious one, which is wanted. and dr. newman gives it us in the words of bishop butler:-- christianity is eminently an objective religion. for the most part it tells us of persons and facts in simple words, and leaves the announcement to produce its effect on such hearts as are prepared to receive it. this, at least, is its general character; and butler recognises it as such in his _analogy_, when speaking of the second and third persons of the holy trinity:--"the internal worship," he says, "to the son and holy ghost is no farther matter of pure revealed command than as the relations they stand in to us are matters of pure revelation; but the relations being known, the obligations to such internal worship are _obligations of reason arising out of those relations themselves_." we acknowledge the pertinency of the quotation. so true is it that "the relations being known," the obligations of worship arise of themselves from these relations, that if the present relation of the blessed virgin to mankind has always been considered to be what modern roman theology considers it, it is simply inconceivable that devotion to her should not have been universal long before st. athanasius and st. augustine; and equally inconceivable, to take dr. newman's remarkable illustration, that if the real position of st. joseph is next to her, it should have been reserved for the nineteenth century, if not, indeed, to find it out, at least to acknowledge it; but the whole question is about the fact of the "relations" themselves. if we believe that the second and third persons are god, we do not want to be told to worship them. but such a relation as dr. newman supposes in the case of the blessed virgin does not flow of itself from the idea contained, for instance, in the word [greek: theotokos], and even if it did, we should still want to be told, in the case of a creature, and remembering the known jealousy of religion of even the semblance of creature worship, what _are_ the "religious regards," which, not flowing from the nature of the case, but needing to be distinctly authorised, are right and binding. the question is of a dogmatic and a popular system. we most fully admit that, with dr. newman or any other of the numberless well-trained and excellent men in the roman church, the homage to the mother does not interfere with the absolutely different honour rendered to the son. we readily acknowledge the elevating and refining beauty of that character, of which the virgin mother is the type, and the services which that ideal has rendered to mankind, though we must emphatically say that a man need not be a roman catholic to feel and to express the charm of that moral beauty. but here we have a doctrine as definite and precise as any doctrine can be, and a great system of popular devotion, giving a character to a great religious communion. dr. newman is not merely developing and illustrating an idea: he is asserting a definite revealed fact about the unseen world, and defending its consequences in a very concrete and practical shape. and the real point is what proof has he given us that this is a revealed fact; that it is so, and that we have the means of knowing it? he has given us certain language of the early writers, which he says is a tradition, though it is only what any protestant might have been led to by reading his bible. but between that language, taken at its highest, and the belief and practice which his church maintains, there is a great gap. the "second eve," the [greek: theotokos], are names of high dignity; but enlarge upon them as we may, there is between them and the modern "regina coeli" an interval which nothing but direct divine revelation can possibly fill; and of this divine revelation the only evidence is the fact that there is the doctrine. so awful and central an article of belief needs corresponding proof. in dr. newman's eloquent pages we have much collateral thought on the subject--sometimes instinct with his delicacy of perception and depth of feeling, sometimes strangely over-refined and irrelevant, but always fresh and instructive, whether to teach or to warn. the one thing which is missing in them is direct proof. he does not satisfy us, but he does greatly interest us in his way of dealing with the practical consequences of his doctrine, in the manifold development of devotion in his communion. what he tells us reveals two things. by this devotion he is at once greatly attracted, and he is deeply shocked. no one can doubt the enthusiasm with which he has thrown himself into that devotion, an enthusiasm which, if it was at one time more vehement and defiant than it is now, is still a most intense element in his religious convictions. nor do we feel entitled to say that in him it interferes with religious ideas and feelings of a higher order, which we are accustomed to suppose imperilled by it. it leads him, indeed, to say things which astonish us, not so much by their extreme language as by the absence, as it seems to us, of any ground to say them at all. it forces him into a championship for statements, in defending which the utmost that can be done is to frame ingenious pleas, or to send back a vigorous retort. it tempts him at times to depart from his generally broad and fair way of viewing things, as when he meets the charge that the son is forgotten for the mother, not merely by a denial, but by the rejoinder that when the mother is not honoured as the roman church honours her the honour of the son fails. it would have been better not to have reprinted the following extract from a former work, even though it were singled out for approval by the late cardinal. the italics are his own:-- i have spoken more on this subject in my _essay on development_, p. , "nor does it avail to object that, in this contrast of devotional exercises, the human is sure to supplant the divine, from the infirmity of our nature; for, i repeat, the question is one of fact, whether it has done so. and next, it must be asked, _whether the character of protestant devotion towards our lord has been that of worship at all_; and not rather such as we pay to an excellent human being.... carnal minds will ever create a carnal worship for themselves, and to forbid them the service of the saints will have no tendency to teach them the worship of god. moreover, ... great and constant as is the devotion which the catholic pays to st. mary, it has a special province, and _has far more connection with the public services and the festive aspect of christianity_, and with certain extraordinary offices which she holds, _than with what is strictly personal and primary in religion_". our late cardinal, on my reception, singled out to me this last sentence, for the expression of his especial approbation. can dr. newman defend the first of these two assertions, when he remembers such books of popular protestant devotion as wesley's hymns, or the german hymn-books of which we have examples in the well-known _lyra germanica_? can he deny the second when he remembers the exercises of the "mois de marie" in french churches, or if he has heard a fervid and earnest preacher at the end of them urge on a church full of young people, fresh from confirmation and first communion, a special and personal self-dedication to the great patroness for protection amid the daily trials of life, in much the same terms as in an english church they might be exhorted to commit themselves to the redeemer of mankind? right or wrong, such devotion is not a matter of the "festive aspect" of religion, but most eminently of what is "personal and primary" in it; and surely of such a character is a vast proportion of the popular devotion here spoken of. but for himself, no doubt, he has accepted this _cultus_ on its most elevated and refined side. he himself makes the distinction, and says that there is "a healthy" and an "artificial" form of it; a devotion which does not shock "solid piety and christian good sense; i cannot help calling this the english style." and when other sides are presented to him, he feels what any educated englishman who allows his english feelings play is apt to feel about them. what is more, he has the boldness to say so. he makes all kinds of reserves to save the credit of those with whom he cannot sympathise. he speaks of the privileges of saints; the peculiarities of national temperament; the distinctions between popular language and that used by scholastic writers, or otherwise marked by circumstances; the special characters of some of the writers quoted, their "ruthless logic," or their obscurity; the inculpated passages are but few and scattered in proportion to their context; they are harsh, but sound worse than they mean; they are hardly interpreted and pressed. he reminds dr. pusey that there is not much to choose between the oriental churches and rome on this point, and that of the two the language of the eastern is the most florid; luxuriant, and unguarded. but, after all, the true feeling comes out at last, "and now, at length," he says, "coming to the statements, not english, but foreign, which offend you, i will frankly say that i read some of those which you quote with grief and almost anger." they are "perverse sayings," which he hates. he fills a page and a half with a number of them, and then deliberately pronounces his rejection of them. after such explanations, and with such authorities to clear my path, i put away from me as you would wish, without any hesitation, as matters in which my heart and reason have no part (when taken in their literal and absolute sense, as any protestant would naturally take them, and as the writers doubtless did not use them), such sentences and phrases as these:--that the mercy of mary is infinite, that god has resigned into her hands his omnipotence, that (unconditionally) it is safer to seek her than her son, that the blessed virgin is superior to god, that he is (simply) subject to her command, that our lord is now of the same disposition as his father towards sinners--viz. a disposition to reject them, while mary takes his place as an advocate with the father and son; that the saints are more ready to intercede with jesus than jesus with the father, that mary is the only refuge of those with whom god is angry; that mary alone can obtain a protestant's conversion; that it would have sufficed for the salvation of men if our lord had died, not to obey his father, but to defer to the decree of his mother, that she rivals our lord in being god's daughter, not by adoption, but by a kind of nature; that christ fulfilled the office of saviour by imitating her virtues; that, as the incarnate god bore the image of his father, so he bore the image of his mother; that redemption derived from christ indeed its sufficiency, but from mary its beauty and loveliness; that as we are clothed with the merits of christ so we are clothed with the merits of mary; that, as he is priest, in like manner is she priestess; that his body and blood in the eucharist are truly hers, and appertain to her; that as he is present and received therein, so is she present and received therein; that priests are ministers as of christ, so of mary; that elect souls are, born of god and mary; that the holy ghost brings into fruitfulness his action by her, producing in her and by her jesus christ in his members; that the kingdom of god in our souls, as our lord speaks, is really the kingdom of mary in the soul--and she and the holy ghost produce in the soul extraordinary things--and when the holy ghost finds mary in a soul he flies there. sentiments such as these i never knew of till i read your book, nor, as i think, do the vast majority of english catholics know them. they seem to me like a bad dream. i could not have conceived them to be said. i know not to what authority to go for them, to scripture, or to the fathers, or to the decrees of councils, or to the consent of schools, or to the tradition of the faithful, or to the holy see, or to reason. they defy all the _loci theologici_. there is nothing of them in the missal, in the roman catechism, in the roman _raccolta_, in the imitation of christ, in gother, challoner, milner, or wiseman, so far as i am aware. they do but scare and confuse me. i should not be holier, more spiritual, more sure of perseverance, if i twisted my moral being into the reception of them; i should but be guilty of fulsome frigid flattery towards the most upright and noble of god's creatures if i professed them--and of stupid flattery too; for it would be like the compliment of painting up a young and beautiful princess with the brow of a plato and the muscle of an achilles. and i should expect her to tell one of her people in waiting to turn me off her service without warning. whether thus to feel be the _scandalum parvulorum_ in my case, or the _scandalum pharisaeorum_, i leave others to decide; but i will say plainly that i had rather believe (which is impossible) that there is no god at all, than that mary is greater than god. i will have nothing to do with statements, which can only be explained by being explained away. i do not, however, speak of these statements, as they are found in their authors, for i know nothing of the originals, and cannot believe that they have meant what you say; but i take them as they lie in your pages. were any of them, the sayings of saints in ecstasy, i should know they had a good meaning; still i should not repeat them myself; but i am looking at them, not as spoken by the tongues of angels, but according to that literal sense which they bear in the mouths of english men and english women. and, as spoken by man to man in england in the nineteenth century, i consider them calculated to prejudice inquirers, to frighten the unlearned, to unsettle consciences, to provoke blasphemy, and to work the loss of souls. of course; it is what might be expected of him. but dr. newman has often told us that we must take the consequences of our principles and theories, and here are some of the consequences which meet him; and, as he says, they "scare and confuse him." he boldly disavows them with no doubtful indignation. but what other voice but his, of equal authority and weight, has been lifted up to speak the plain truth about them? why, if they are wrong, extravagant, dangerous, is his protest solitary? his communion has never been wanting in jealousy of dangerous doctrines, and it is vain to urge that these things and things like them have been said in a corner. the holy office is apt to detect mischief in small writers as well as great, even if these teachers were as insignificant as dr. newman would gladly make them. taken as a whole, and in connection with notorious facts, these statements are fair examples of manifest tendencies, which certainly are not on the decline. and if a great and spreading popular _cultus_, encouraged and urged on beyond all former precedent, is in danger of being developed by its warmest and most confident advocates into something of which unreason is the lightest fault, is there not ground for interfering? doubtless roman writers maybe quoted by dr. newman, who felt that there was a danger, and we are vaguely told about some checks given to one or two isolated extravagances, which, however, in spite of the checks, do not seem to be yet extinct. but allocutions and encyclicals are not for errors of this kind. dr. newman says that "it is wiser for the most part to leave these excesses to the gradual operation of public opinion,--that is, to the opinion of educated and sober catholics; and this seems to me the healthiest way of putting them down." we quite agree with him; but his own church does not think so; and we want to see some evidence of a public opinion in it capable of putting them down. as it is, he is reduced to say that "the line cannot be logically drawn between the teaching of the fathers on the subject and our own;" an assertion which, if it were true, would be more likely to drag down one teaching than to prop up the other; he has to find reasons, and doubtless they are to be found thick as blackberries, for accounting for one extravagance, softening down another, declining to judge a third. but in the meantime the "devotion" in its extreme form, far beyond what he would call the teaching of his church, has its way; it maintains its ground; it becomes the mark of the bold, the advanced, the refined, as well as of the submissive and the crowd; it roots itself under the shelter of an authority which would stop it if it was wrong; it becomes "dominant"; it becomes at length part of that "mind of the living church" which, we are told, it is heresy to impugn, treason to appeal from, and the extravagance of impertinent folly to talk of reforming. it is very little use, then, for dr. newman to tell dr. pusey or any one else, "you may safely trust us english catholics as to this devotion." "english catholics," as such,--it is the strength and the weakness of their system,--have really the least to say in the matter. the question is not about trusting "us english catholics," but the pope, and the roman congregation, and those to whom the roman authorities delegate their sanction and give their countenance. if dr. newman is able, as we doubt not he is desirous, to elevate the tone of his own communion and put to shame some of its fashionable excesses, he will do a great work, in which we wish him every success, though the result of it might not really be to bring the body of his countrymen nearer to it. but the substance of dr. pusey's charges remain after all unanswered, and there is no getting over them while they remain. they are of that broad, palpable kind against which the refinements of argumentative apology play in vain. they can only be met by those who feel their force, on some principle equally broad. dr. newman suggests such a ground in the following remarks, which, much as they want qualification and precision, have a basis of reality in them:-- it is impossible, i say, in a doctrine like this, to draw the line cleanly between truth and error, right and wrong. this is ever the case in concrete matters which have life. life in this world is motion, and involves a continual process of change. living things grow into their perfection, into their decline, into their death. no rule of art will suffice to stop the operation of this natural law, whether in the material world or in the human mind.... what has power to stir holy and refined souls is potent also with the multitude, and the religion of the multitude is ever vulgar and abnormal; it ever will be tinctured with fanaticism and superstition while men are what they are. a people's religion is ever a corrupt religion. if you are to have a catholic church you must put up with fish of every kind, guests good and bad, vessels of gold, vessels of earth. you may beat religion out of men, if you will, and then their excesses will take a different direction; but if you make use of religion to improve them, they will make use of religion to corrupt it. and then you will have effected that compromise of which our countrymen report so unfavourably from abroad,--a high grand faith and worship which compels their admiration, and puerile absurdities among the people which excite their contempt. it is like dr. newman to put his case in this broad way, making large admissions, allowing for much inevitable failure. that is, he defends his church as he would defend christianity generally, taking it as a great practical system must be in this world, working with human nature as it is. his reflection is, no doubt, one suggested by a survey of the cause of all religion. the coming short of the greatest promisee, the debasement of the noblest ideals, are among the commonplaces of history. christianity cannot be maintained without ample admissions of failure and perversion. but it is one thing to make this admission for christianity generally, an admission which the new testament in foretelling its fortunes gives us abundant ground for making; and quite another for those who maintain the superiority of one form of christianity above all others, to claim that they may leave out of the account its characteristic faults. it is quite true that all sides abundantly need to appeal for considerate judgment to the known infirmity of human nature; but amid the conflicting pretensions which divide christendom no one side can ask to have for itself the exclusive advantage of this plea. all may claim the benefit of it, but if it is denied to any it must be denied to all. in this confused and imperfect world other great popular systems of religion besides the roman may use it in behalf of shortcomings, which, though perhaps very different, are yet not worse. it is obvious that the theory of great and living ideas, working with a double edge, and working for mischief at last, holds good for other things besides the special instance on which dr. newman comments. it is to be further observed that to claim the benefit of this plea is to make the admission that you come under the common law of human nature as to mistake, perversion, and miscarriage, and this in the matter of religious guidance the roman theory refuses to do. it claims for its communion as its special privilege an exemption from those causes of corruption of which history is the inexorable witness, and to which others admit themselves to be liable; an immunity from going wrong, a supernatural exception from the common tendency of mankind to be led astray, from the common necessity to correct and reform themselves when they are proved wrong. how far this is realised, not on paper and in argument, but in fact, is indeed one of the most important questions for the world, and it is one to which the world will pay more heed than to the best writing about it there are not wanting signs, among others of a very different character, of an honest and philosophical recognition of this by some of the ablest writers of the roman communion. the day on which the roman church ceases to maintain that what it holds must be truth because it holds it, and admits itself subject to the common condition by which god has given truth to men, will be the first hopeful day for the reunion of christendom. xxviii newman's parochial sermons[ ] [ ] _parochial and plain sermons_. by john henry newman, b.d., formerly vicar of st. mary's, oxford. edited by w.j. copeland, b.d. _saturday review_, th june . dr. newman's sermons stand by themselves in modern english literature; it might be said, in english literature generally. there have been equally great masterpieces of english writing in this form of composition, and there have been preachers whose theological depth, acquaintance with the heart, earnestness, tenderness, and power have not been inferior to his. but the great writers do not touch, pierce, and get hold of minds as he does, and those who are famous for the power and results of their preaching do not write as he does. his sermons have done more perhaps than any one thing to mould and quicken and brace the religious temper of our time; they have acted with equal force on those who were nearest and on those who were farthest from him in theological opinion. they have altered the whole manner of feeling towards religious subjects. we know now that they were the beginning, the signal and first heave, of a vast change that was to come over the subject; of a demand from religion of a thoroughgoing reality of meaning and fulfilment, which is familiar to us, but was new when it was first made. and, being this, these sermons are also among the very finest examples of what the english language of our day has done in the hands of a master. sermons of such intense conviction and directness of purpose, combined with such originality and perfection on their purely literary side, are rare everywhere. remarkable instances, of course, will occur to every one of the occasional exhibition of this combination, but not in so sustained and varied and unfailing a way. between dr. newman and the great french school there is this difference--that they are orators, and he is as far as anything can be in a great preacher from an orator. those who remember the tones and the voice in which the sermons were heard at st. mary's--we may refer to professor shairp's striking account in his volume on keble, and to a recent article in the _dublin review_--can remember how utterly unlike an orator in all outward ways was the speaker who so strangely moved them. the notion of judging of dr. newman as an orator never crossed their minds. and this puts a difference between him and a remarkable person whose name has sometimes been joined with his--mr. f. robertson. mr. robertson was a great preacher, but he was not a writer. it is difficult to realise at present the effect produced originally by these sermons. the first feeling was that of their difference in manner from the customary sermon. people knew what an eloquent sermon was, or a learned sermon, or a philosophical sermon, or a sermon full of doctrine or pious unction. chalmers and edward irving and robert hall were familiar names; the university pulpit and some of the london churches had produced examples of forcible argument and severe and finished composition; and of course instances were abundant everywhere of the good, sensible, commonplace discourse; of all that was heavy, dull, and dry, and of all that was ignorant, wild, fanatical, and irrational. but no one seemed to be able, or to be expected, unless he avowedly took the buffoonery line which some of the evangelical preachers affected, to speak in the pulpit with the directness and straightforward unconventionality with which men speak on the practical business of life. with all the thought and vigour and many beauties which were in the best sermons, there was always something forced, formal, artificial about them; something akin to that mild pomp which usually attended their delivery, with beadles in gowns ushering the preacher to the carpeted pulpit steps, with velvet cushions, and with the rustle and fulness of his robes. no one seemed to think of writing a sermon as he would write an earnest letter. a preacher must approach his subject in a kind of roundabout make-believe of preliminary and preparatory steps, as if he was introducing his hearers to what they had never heard of; make-believe difficulties and objections were overthrown by make-believe answers; an unnatural position both in speaker and hearers, an unreal state of feeling and view of facts, a systematic conventional exaggeration, seemed almost impossible to be avoided; and those who tried to escape being laboured and grandiloquent only escaped it, for the most part, by being vulgar or slovenly. the strong severe thinkers, jealous for accuracy, and loathing clap-trap as they loathed loose argument, addressed and influenced intelligence; but sermons are meant for heart and souls as well as minds, and to the heart, with its trials and its burdens, men like whately never found their way. those who remember the preaching of those days, before it began to be influenced by the sermons at st. mary's, will call to mind much that was interesting, much that was ingenious, much correction of inaccurate and confused views, much manly encouragement to high principle and duty, much of refined and scholarlike writing. but for soul and warmth, and the imaginative and poetical side of the religious life, you had to go where thought and good sense were not likely to be satisfied. the contrast of mr. newman's preaching was not obvious at first. the outside form and look was very much that of the regular best oxford type--calm, clear, and lucid in expression, strong in its grasp, measured in statement, and far too serious to think of rhetorical ornament. but by degrees much more opened. the range of experience from which the preacher drew his materials, and to which he appealed, was something wider, subtler, and more delicate than had been commonly dealt with in sermons. with his strong, easy, exact, elastic language, the instrument of a powerful and argumentative mind, he plunged into the deep realities of the inmost spiritual life, of which cultivated preachers had been shy. he preached so that he made you feel without doubt that it was the most real of worlds to him; he made you feel in time, in spite of yourself, that it was a real world with which you too had concern. he made you feel that he knew what he was speaking about; that his reasonings and appeals, whether you agreed with them or not, were not the language of that heated enthusiasm with which the world is so familiar; that he was speaking words which were the result of intellectual scrutiny, balancings, and decisions, as well as of moral trials, of conflicts and suffering within; words of the utmost soberness belonging to deeply gauged and earnestly formed purposes. the effect of his sermons, as compared with the common run at the time, was something like what happens when in a company you have a number of people giving their views and answers about some question before them. you have opinions given of various worth and expressed with varying power, precision, and distinctness, some clever enough, some clumsy enough, but all more or less imperfect and unattractive in tone, and more or less falling short of their aim; and then, after it all, comes a voice, very grave, very sweet, very sure and clear, under whose words the discussion springs up at once to a higher level, and in which we recognise at once a mind, face to face with realities, and able to seize them and hold them fast. the first notable feature in the external form of this preaching was its terse unceremonious directness. putting aside the verbiage and dulled circumlocution and stiff hazy phraseology of pulpit etiquette and dignity, it went straight to its point. there was no waste of time about customary formalities. the preacher had something to say, and with a kind of austere severity he proceeded to say it. this, for instance, is the sort of way in which a sermon would begin:-- hypocrisy is a serious word. we are accustomed to consider the hypocrite as a hateful, despicable character, and an uncommon one. how is it, then, that our blessed lord, when surrounded by an innumerable multitude, began, _first of all_, to warn his disciples against hypocrisy, as though they were in especial danger of becoming like those base deceivers the pharisees? thus an instructive subject is opened to our consideration, which i will now pursue.--vol. i. serm. x. the next thing was that, instead of rambling and straggling over a large subject, each sermon seized a single thought, or definite view, or real difficulty or objection, and kept closely and distinctly to it; and at the same time treated it with a largeness and grasp and ease which only a full command over much beyond it could give. every sermon had a purpose and an end which no one could misunderstand. singularly devoid of anything like excitement--calm, even, self-controlled--there was something in the preacher's resolute concentrated way of getting hold of a single defined object which reminded you of the rapid spring or unerring swoop of some strong-limbed or swift-winged creature on its quarry. whatever you might think that he did with it, or even if it seemed to escape from him, you could have no doubt what he sought to do; there was no wavering, confused, uncertain bungling in that powerful and steady hand. another feature was the character of the writer's english. we have learned to look upon dr. newman as one of the half-dozen or so of the innumerable good writers of the time who have fairly left their mark as masters on the language. little, assuredly, as the writer originally thought of such a result, the sermons have proved a permanent gift to our literature, of the purest english, full of spring, clearness, and force. a hasty reader would perhaps at first only notice a very light, strong, easy touch, and might think, too, that it was a negligent one. but it was not negligence; real negligence means at bottom bad work, and bad work will not stand the trial of time. there are two great styles--the self-conscious, like that of gibbon or macaulay, where great success in expression is accompanied by an unceasing and manifest vigilance that expression shall succeed, and where you see at each step that there is or has been much care and work in the mind, if not on the paper; and the unconscious, like that of pascal or swift or hume, where nothing suggests at the moment that the writer is thinking of anything but his subject, and where the power of being able to say just what he wants to say seems to come at the writer's command, without effort, and without his troubling himself more about it than about the way in which he holds his pen. but both are equally the fruit of hard labour and honest persevering self-correction; and it is soon found out whether the apparent negligence comes of loose and slovenly habits of mind, or whether it marks the confidence of one who has mastered his instrument, and can forget himself and let himself go in using it. the free unconstrained movement of dr. newman's style tells any one who knows what writing is of a very keen and exact knowledge of the subtle and refined secrets of language. with all that uncared-for play and simplicity, there was a fulness, a richness, a curious delicate music, quite instinctive and unsought for; above all, a precision and sureness of expression which people soon began to find were not within the power of most of those who tried to use language. such english, graceful with the grace of nerve, flexibility, and power, must always have attracted attention; but it had also an ethical element which was almost inseparable from its literary characteristics. two things powerfully determined the style of these sermons. one was the intense hold which the vast realities of religion had gained on the writer's mind, and the perfect truth with which his personality sank and faded away before their overwhelming presence; the other was the strong instinctive shrinking, which was one of the most remarkable and certain marks of the beginners of the oxford movement, from anything like personal display, any conscious aiming at the ornamental and brilliant, any show of gifts or courting of popular applause. morbid and excessive or not, there can be no doubt of the stern self-containing severity which made them turn away, not only with fear, but with distaste and repugnance, from all that implied distinction or seemed to lead to honour; and the control of this austere spirit is visible, in language as well as matter, in every page of dr. newman's sermons. indeed, form and matter are closely connected in the sermons, and depend one on another, as they probably do in all work of a high order. the matter makes and shapes the form with which it clothes itself. the obvious thing which presents itself in reading them is that, from first to last, they are a great systematic attempt to raise the whole level of religious thought and religious life. they carry in them the evidence of a great reaction and a scornful indignant rising up against what were going about and were currently received as adequate ideas of religion. the dryness and primness and meagreness of the common church preaching, correct as it was in its outlines of doctrine, and sober and temperate in tone, struck cold on a mind which had caught sight, in the new testament, of the spirit and life of its words. the recoil was even stronger from the shallowness and pretentiousness and self-display of what was popularly accepted as earnest religion; morally the preacher was revolted at its unctuous boasts and pitiful performance, and intellectually by its narrowness and meanness of thought and its thinness of colour in all its pictures of the spiritual life. from first to last, in all manner of ways, the sermons are a protest, first against coldness, but even still more against meanness, in religion. with coldness they have no sympathy, yet coldness may be broad and large and lofty in its aspects; but they have no tolerance for what makes religion little and poor and superficial, for what contracts its horizon and dwarfs its infinite greatness and vulgarises its mystery. open the sermons where we will, different readers will rise from them with very different results; there will be among many the strongest and most decisive disagreement; there may be impatience at dogmatic harshness, indignation at what seems overstatement and injustice, rejection of arguments and conclusions; but there will always be the sense of an unfailing nobleness in the way in which the writer thinks and speaks. it is not only that he is in earnest; it is that he has something which really is worth being in earnest for. he placed the heights of religion very high. if you have a religion like christianity--this is the pervading note--think of it, and have it, worthily. people will differ from the preacher endlessly as to how this is to be secured. but that they will learn this lesson from the sermons, with a force with which few other writers have taught it, and that this lesson has produced its effect in our time, there can be no doubt. the only reason why it may not perhaps seem so striking to readers of this day is that the sermons have done their work, and we do not feel what they had to counteract, because they have succeeded in great measure in counteracting it. it is not too much to say that they have done more than anything else to revolutionise the whole idea of preaching in the english church. mr. robertson, in spite of himself, was as much the pupil of their school as mr. liddon, though both are so widely different from their master. the theology of these sermons is a remarkable feature about them. it is remarkable in this way, that, coming from a teacher like dr. newman, it is nevertheless a theology which most religious readers, except the evangelicals and some of the more extreme liberal thinkers, can either accept heartily or be content with, as they would be content with st. augustine or thomas à kempis--content, not because they go along with it always, but because it is large and untechnical, just and well-measured in the proportions and relative importance of its parts. people of very different opinions turn to them, as being on the whole the fullest, deepest, most comprehensive approximation they can find to representing christianity in a practical form. their theology is nothing new; nor does it essentially change, though one may observe differences, and some important ones, in the course of the volumes, which embrace a period from to . it is curious, indeed, to observe how early the general character of the sermons was determined, and how in the main it continues the same. some of the first in point of date are among the "plain sermons"; and though they may have been subsequently retouched, yet there the keynote is plainly struck of that severe and solemn minor which reigns throughout. their theology is throughout the accepted english theology of the prayer-book and the great church divines--a theology fundamentally dogmatic and sacramental, but jealously keeping the balance between obedience and faith; learned, exact, and measured, but definite and decided. the novelty was in the application of it, in the new life breathed into it, in the profound and intense feelings called forth by its ideas and objects, in the air of vastness and awe thrown about it, in the unexpected connection of its creeds and mysteries with practical life, in the new meaning given to the old and familiar, in the acceptance in thorough earnest, and with keen purpose to call it into action, of what had been guarded and laid by with dull reverence. dr. newman can hardly be called in these sermons an innovator on the understood and recognised standard of anglican doctrine; he accepted its outlines as bishop wilson, for instance, might have traced them. what he did was first to call forth from it what it really meant, the awful heights and depths of its current words and forms; and next, to put beside them human character and its trials, not as they were conventionally represented and written about, but as a piercing eye and sympathising spirit saw them in the light of our nineteenth century, and in the contradictory and complicated movements, the efforts and failures, of real life. he took theology for granted, as a christian preacher has a right to do; he does not prove it, and only occasionally meets difficulties, or explains; but, taking it for granted, he took it at its word, in its relation to the world of actual experience. utterly dissatisfied with what he found current as religion, dr. newman sought, without leaving the old paths, to put before people a strong and energetic religion based, not on feeling or custom, but on reason and conscience, and answering, in the vastness of its range, to the mysteries of human nature, and in its power to man's capacities and aims. the liberal religion of that day, with its ideas of natural theology or of a cold critical unitarianism, was a very shallow one; the evangelical, trusting to excitement, had worn out its excitement and had reached the stage when its formulas, poor ones at the best, had become words without meaning. such views might do in quiet, easy-going times, if religion were an exercise at will of imagination or thought, an indulgence, an ornament, an understanding, a fashion; not if it corresponded to such a state of things as is implied in the bible, or to man's many-sided nature as it is shown in shakspeare. the sermons reflect with merciless force the popular, superficial, comfortable thing called religion which the writer saw before him wherever he looked, and from which his mind recoiled. such sermons as those on the "self-wise enquirer" and the "religion of the day," with its famous passage about the age not being sufficiently "gloomy and fierce in its religion," have the one-sided and unmeasured exaggeration which seems inseparable from all strong expressions of conviction, and from all deep and vehement protests against general faults; but, qualify and limit them as we may, their pictures were not imaginary ones, and there was, and is, but too much to justify them. from all this trifling with religion the sermons called on men to look into themselves. they appealed to conscience; and they appealed equally to reason and thought, to recognise what conscience is, and to deal honestly with it. they viewed religion as if projected on a background of natural and moral mystery, and surrounded by it--an infinite scene, in which our knowledge is like the andes and himalayas in comparison with the mass of the earth, and in which conscience is our final guide and arbiter. no one ever brought out so impressively the sense of the impenetrable and tremendous vastness of that amid which man plays his part. in such sermons as those on the "intermediate state," the "invisible world," the "greatness and littleness of human life," the "individuality of the soul," the "mysteriousness of our present being," we may see exemplified the enormous irruption into the world of modern thought of the unknown and the unknowable, as much as in the writers who, with far different objects, set against it the clearness and certainty of what we do know. but, beyond all, the sermons appealed to men to go back into their own thoughts and feelings, and there challenged them; were not the preacher's words the echoes and interpreting images of their own deepest, possibly most perplexing and baffling, experience? from first to last this was his great engine and power; from first to last he boldly used it. he claimed to read their hearts; and people felt that he did read them, their follies and their aspirations, the blended and tangled web of earnestness and dishonesty, of wishes for the best and truest, and acquiescence in makeshifts; understating what ordinary preachers make much of, bringing into prominence what they pass by without being able to see or to speak of it; keeping before his hearers the risk of mismanaging their hearts, of "all kinds of unlawful treatment of the soul." what a contrast to ordinary ways of speaking on a familiar theological doctrine is this way of bringing it into immediate relation to real feeling:-- it is easy to speak of human nature as corrupt in the general, to admit it in the general, and then get quit of the subject; as if, the doctrine being once admitted, there was nothing more to be done with it. but, in truth, we can have no real apprehension of the doctrine of our corruption till we view the structure of our minds, part by part; and dwell upon and draw out the signs of our weakness, inconsistency, and ungodliness, which are such as can arise from nothing but some strange original defect in our original nature.... we are in the dark about ourselves. when we act, we are groping in the dark, and may meet with a fall any moment. here and there, perhaps, we see a little; or in our attempts to influence and move our minds, we are making experiments (as it were) with some delicate and dangerous instrument, which works we do not know how, and may produce unexpected and disastrous effects. the management of our hearts is quite above us. under these circumstances it becomes our comfort to look up to god. "thou, god, seest me." such was the consolation of the forlorn hagar in the wilderness. he knoweth whereof we are made, and he alone can uphold us. he sees with most appalling distinctness all our sins, all the windings and recesses of evil within us; yet it is our only comfort to know this, and to trust him for help against ourselves.--vol. i. serm. xiii. the preacher contemplates human nature, not in the stiff formal language in which it had become conventional with divines to set out its shortcomings and dangers, but as a great novelist contemplates and tries to describe it; taking in all its real contradictions and anomalies, its subtle and delicate shades; fixing upon the things which strike us in ourselves or our neighbours as ways of acting and marks of character; following it through its wide and varying range, its diversified and hidden folds and subtle self-involving realities of feeling and shiftiness; touching it in all its complex sensibilities, anticipating its dim consciousnesses, half-raising veils which hide what it instinctively shrinks from, sending through it unexpected thrills and shocks; large-hearted in indulgence, yet exacting; most tender, yet most severe. and against all this real play of nature he sets in their full force and depth the great ideas of god, of sin, and of the cross; and, appealing not to the intelligence of an aristocracy of choice natures, but to the needs and troubles and longings which make all men one, he claimed men's common sympathy for the heroic in purpose and standard. he warned them against being fastidious, where they should be hardy. he spoke in a way that all could understand of brave ventures, of resolutely committing themselves to truth and duty. the most practical of sermons, the most real and natural in their way of dealing with life and conduct, they are also intensely dogmatic. the writer's whole teaching presupposes, as we all know, a dogmatic religion; and these sermons are perhaps the best vindication of it which our time, disposed to think of dogmas with suspicion, has seen. for they show, on a large scale and in actual working instances, how what is noblest, most elevated, most poetical, most free and searching in a thinker's way of regarding the wonderful scene of life, falls in naturally, and without strain, with a great dogmatic system like that of the church. such an example does not prove that system to be true, but it proves that a dogmatic system, as such, is not the cast-iron, arbitrary, artificial thing which it is often assumed to be. it is, indeed, the most shallow of all commonplaces, intelligible in ordinary minds, but unaccountable in those of high power and range, whether they believe or not, that a dogmatic religion is of course a hard, dry, narrow, unreal religion, without any affinities to poetry or the truth of things, or to the deeper and more sacred and powerful of human thoughts. if dogmas are not true, that is another matter; but it is the fashion to imply that dogmas are worthless, mere things of the past, without sense or substance or interest, because they are dogmas. as if dante was not dogmatic in form and essence; as if the grandest and worthiest religious prose in the english language was not that of hooker, nourished up amid the subtleties, but also amid the vast horizons and solemn heights, of scholastic divinity. a dogmatic system is hard in hard hands, and shallow in shallow minds, and barren in dull ones, and unreal and empty to preoccupied and unsympathising ones; we dwarf and distort ideas that we do not like, and when we have put them in our own shapes and in our own connection, we call them unmeaning or impossible. dogmas are but expedients, common to all great departments of human thought, and felt in all to be necessary, for representing what are believed as truths, for exhibiting their order and consequences, for expressing the meaning of terms, and the relations of thought. if they are wrong, they are, like everything else in the world, open to be proved wrong; if they are inadequate, they are open to correction; but it is idle to sneer at them for being what they must be, if religious facts and truths are to be followed out by the thoughts and expressed by the language of man. and what dogmas are in unfriendly and incapable hands is no proof of what they may be when they are approached as things instinct with truth and life; it is no measure of the way in which they may be inextricably interwoven with the most unquestionably living thought and feeling, as in these sermons. jealous, too, as the preacher is for church doctrines as the springs of christian life, no writer of our time perhaps has so emphatically and impressively recalled the narrow limits within which human language can represent divine realities. no one that we know of shows that he has before his mind with such intense force and distinctness the idea of god; and in proportion as a mind takes in and submits itself to the impression of that awful vision, the gulf widens between all possible human words and that which they attempt to express:-- when we have deduced what we deduce by our reason from the study of visible nature, and then read what we read in his inspired word, and find the two apparently discordant, _this_ is the feeling i think we ought to have on our minds;--not an impatience to do what is beyond our powers, to weigh evidence, sum up, balance, decide, reconcile, to arbitrate between the two voices of god,--but a sense of the utter nothingness of worms such as we are; of our plain and absolute incapacity to contemplate things _as they really are_; a perception of our emptiness before the great vision of god; of our "comeliness being turned into corruption, and our retaining no strength"; a conviction that what is put before us, whether in nature or in grace, is but an intimation, useful for particular purposes, useful for practice, useful in its department, "until the day break and the shadows flee away"; useful in such a way that both the one and the other representation may at once be used, as two languages, as two separate approximations towards the awful unknown truth, such as will not mislead us in their respective provinces.--vol. ii. serm. xviii. "i cannot persuade myself," he says, commenting on a mysterious text of scripture, "thus to dismiss so solemn a passage" (i.e. by saying that it is "all figurative"). "it seems a presumption to say of dim notices about the unseen world, 'they only mean this or that,' as if one had ascended into the third heaven, or had stood before the throne of god. no; i see herein a deep mystery, a hidden truth, which i cannot handle or define, shining 'as jewels at the bottom of the great deep,' darkly and tremulously, yet really there. and for this very reason, while it is neither pious nor thankful to explain away the words which convey it, while it is a duty to use them, not less a duty is it to use them humbly, diffidently, and teachably, with the thought of god before us, and of our own nothingness."--vol. iii. serm. xxv. there are two great requisites for treating properly the momentous questions and issues which have been brought before our generation. the first is accuracy--accuracy of facts, of terms, of reasoning; plain close dealing with questions in their real and actual conditions; clear, simple, honest, measured statements about things as we find them. the other is elevation, breadth, range of thought; a due sense of what these questions mean and involve; a power of looking at things from a height; a sufficient taking into account of possibilities, of our ignorance, of the real proportions of things. we have plenty of the first; we are for the most part lamentably deficient in the second. and of this, these sermons are, to those who have studied them, almost unequalled examples. many people, no doubt, would rise from their perusal profoundly disagreeing with their teaching; but no one, it seems to us, could rise from them--with their strong effortless freedom, their lofty purpose, their generous standard, their deep and governing appreciation of divine things, their thoroughness, their unselfishness, their purity, their austere yet piercing sympathy--and not feel his whole ways of thinking about religion permanently enlarged and raised. he will feel that he has been with one who "told him what he knew about himself and what he did not know; has read to him his wants or feelings, and comforted him by the very reading; has made him feel that there was a higher life than this life, and a brighter world than we can see; has encouraged him, or sobered him, or opened a way to the inquiring, or soothed the perplexed." they show a man who saw very deeply into the thought of his time, and who, if he partly recoiled from it and put it back, at least equally shared it. dr. newman has been accused of being out of sympathy with his age, and of disparaging it. in reality, no one has proved himself more keenly sensitive to its greatness and its wonders; only he believed that he saw something greater still. we are not of those who can accept the solution which he has accepted of the great problems which haunt our society; but he saw better than most men what those problems demand, and the variety of their often conflicting conditions. other men, perhaps, have succeeded better in what they aimed at; but no one has attempted more, with powers and disinterestedness which justified him in attempting it. the movement which he led, and of which these sermons are the characteristic monument, is said to be a failure; but there are failures, and even mistakes, which are worth many successes of other sorts, and which are more fruitful and permanent in their effects. xxix cardinal newman[ ] [ ] _guardian_, st may . it is not wonderful that people should be impressed by the vicissitudes and surprises and dramatic completeness of cardinal newman's career. it is not wonderful that he should be impressed by this himself. that he who left us in despair and indignation in should have passed through a course of things which has made him, roman catholic as he is, a man of whom englishmen are so proud in , is even more extraordinary than that the former fellow of oriel should now be surrounded with the pomp and state of a cardinal. there is only one other career in our time which, with the greatest possible contrasts in other points, suggests in its strangeness and antecedent improbabilities something of a parallel. it is the train of events which has made "disraeli the younger" the most powerful minister whom england has seen in recent years. but lord beaconsfield has aimed at what he has attained to, and has fought his way to it through the chances and struggles of a stirring public life. cardinal newman's life has been from first to last the life of the student and recluse. he has lived in the shade. he has sought nothing for himself. he has shrunk from the thought of advancement. the steps to the high places of the world have not offered themselves to him, and he has been content to be let alone. early in his course his rare gifts of mind, his force of character, his power over hearts and sympathies, made him for a while a prominent person. then came a series of events which seemed to throw him out of harmony with the great mass of his countrymen. he appeared to be, if not forgotten, yet not thought of, except by a small number of friends--old friends who had known him too well and too closely ever to forget, and new friends gathered round him by the later circumstances of his life and work. people spoke of him as a man who had made a great mistake and failed; who had thrown up influence and usefulness here, and had not found it there; too subtle, too imaginative for england, too independent for rome. he seemed to have so sunk out of interest and account that off-hand critics, in the easy gaiety of their heart, might take liberties with his name. then came the first surprise. the _apologia_ was read with the keenest interest by those who most differed from the writer's practical conclusions; twenty years had elapsed since he had taken the unpopular step which seemed to condemn him to obscurity; and now he emerged from it, challenging not in vain the sympathy of his countrymen. they awoke, it may be said--at least the younger generation of them--to what he really was; the old jars and bitternesses had passed out of remembrance; they only felt that they had one among them who could write--for few of them ever heard his wonderful voice--in a way which made english hearts respond quickly and warmly. and the strange thing was that the professed, the persistent denouncer of liberalism, was welcomed back to his rightful place among englishmen by none more warmly than by many liberals. still, though his name was growing more familiar year by year, the world did not see much more of him. the head of a religious company, of an educational institution at birmingham, he lived in unpretending and quiet simplicity, occupied with the daily business of his house, with his books, with his correspondence, with finishing off his many literary and theological undertakings. except in some chance reference in a book or newspaper which implied how considerable a person the world thought him, he was not heard of. people asked about him, but there was nothing to tell. then at last, neglected by pius ix., he was remembered by leo xiii. the pope offered him the cardinalship, he said, because he thought it would be "grateful to the catholics of england, and to england itself." and he was not mistaken. probably there is not a single thing that the pope could do which would be so heartily welcomed. after breaking with england and all things english in wrath and sorrow, nearly thirty-five years ago, after a long life of modest retirement, unmarked by any public honours, at length before he dies dr. newman is recognised by protestant england as one of its greatest men. it watches with interest his journey to rome, his proceedings at rome. in a crowd of new cardinals--men of eminence in their own communion--he is the only one about whom englishmen know or care anything. his words, when he speaks, pass _verbatim_ along the telegraph wires, like the words of the men who sway the world. we read of the quiet oxford scholar's arms emblazoned on vestment and furniture as those of a prince of the church, and of his motto--_cor ad cor loquitur_. in that motto is the secret of all that he is to his countrymen. for that skill of which he is such a master, in the use of his and their "sweet mother tongue," is something much more than literary accomplishment and power. it means that he has the key to what is deepest in their nature and most characteristic in them of feeling and conviction--to what is deeper than opinions and theories and party divisions; to what in their most solemn moments they most value and most believe in. his profound sympathy with the religiousness which still, with all the variations and all the immense shortcomings of english religion, marks england above all cultivated christian nations, is really the bond between him and his countrymen, who yet for the most part think so differently from him, both about the speculative grounds and many of the practical details of religion. but it was natural for him, on an occasion like this, reviewing the past and connecting it with the present, to dwell on these differences. he repeated once more, and made it the keynote of his address, his old protest against "liberalism in religion," the "doctrine that there is no positive truth in religion, but one creed is as good as another." he lamented the decay of the power of authority, the disappearance of religion from the sphere of political influence, from education, from legislation. he deplored the increasing impossibility of getting men to work together on a common religious basis. he pointed out the increasing seriousness and earnestness of the attempts to "supersede, to block out religion," by an imposing and high morality, claiming to dispense with it. he dwelt on the mischief and dangers; he expressed, as any christian would, his fearlessness and faith in spite of them; but do we gather, even from such a speaker, and on such an occasion, anything of the remedy? the principle of authority is shaken, he tells us; what can he suggest to restore it? he under-estimates, probably, the part which authority plays, implicitly yet very really, in english popular religion, much more in english church religion; and authority, even in rome, is not everything, and does not reach to every subject. but authority in our days can be nothing without real confidence in it; and where confidence in authority has been lost, it is idle to attempt to restore it by telling men that authority is a good and necessary thing. it must be won back, not simply claimed. it must be regained, when forfeited, by the means by which it was originally gained. and the strange phenomenon was obviously present to his clear and candid mind, though he treated it as one which is disappearing, and must at length pass away, that precisely here in england, where the only religious authority he recognises has been thrown off, the hold of religion on public interest is most effective and most obstinately tenacious. what is the history of this? what is the explanation of it? why is it that where "authority," as he understands it, has been longest paramount and undisputed, the public place and public force of religion have most disappeared; and that a "dozen men taken at random in the streets" of london find it easier, with all their various sects, to work together on a religious basis than a dozen men taken at random from the streets of catholic paris or rome? indeed, the public feeling towards himself, expressed in so many ways in the last few weeks, might suggest a question not undeserving of his thoughts. the mass of englishmen are notoriously anti-popish and anti-roman. their antipathies on this subject are profound, and not always reasonable. they certainly do not here halt between two opinions, or think that one creed is as good as another. what is it which has made so many of them, still retaining all their intense dislike to the system which cardinal newman has accepted, yet welcome so heartily his honours in it, notwithstanding that he has passed from england to rome, and that he owes so much of what he is to england? is it that they think it does not matter what a man believes, and whether a man turns papist? or is it not that, in spite of all that would repel and estrange, in spite of the oppositions of argument and the inconsistencies of speculation, they can afford to recognise in him, as in a high example, what they most sincerely believe in and most deeply prize, and can pay him the tribute of their gratitude and honour, even when unconvinced by his controversial reasonings, and unsatisfied by the theories which he has proposed to explain the perplexing and refractory anomalies of church history? is it not that with history, inexorable and unalterable behind them, condemning and justifying, supporting and warning all sides in turn, thoughtful men feel how much easier it is to point out and deplore our disasters than to see a way now to set them right? is it not also that there are in the christian church bonds of affinity, subtler, more real and more prevailing than even the fatal legacies of the great schisms? is it not that the sympathies which unite the author of the _parochial sermons_ and the interpreter of st. athanasius with the disciples of andrewes, and ken, and bull, of butler and wilson, are as strong and natural as the barriers which outwardly keep them asunder are to human eyes hopelessly insurmountable? xxx cardinal newman's course[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th august . the long life is closed. and men, according to their knowledge and intelligence, turn to seek for some governing idea or aspect of things, by which to interpret the movements and changes of a course which, in spite of its great changes, is felt at bottom to have been a uniform and consistent one. for it seems that, at starting, he is at once intolerant, even to harshness, to the roman church, and tolerant, though not sympathetic, to the english; then the parts are reversed, and he is intolerant to the english and tolerant to the roman; and then at last, when he finally anchored in the roman church, he is seen as--not tolerant, for that would involve dogmatic points on which he was most jealous, but--sympathetic in all that was of interest to england, and ready to recognise what was good and high in the english church. is not the ultimate key to newman's history his keen and profound sense of the life, society, and principles of action presented in the new testament? to this new testament life he saw, opposed and in contrast, the ways and assumptions of english life, religious as well as secular. he saw that the organisation of society had been carried, and was still being carried, to great and wonderful perfection; only it was the perfection of a society and way of life adapted to the present world, and having its ends here; only it was as different as anything can be from the picture which the writers of the new testament, consciously and unconsciously, give of themselves and their friends. here was a church, a religion, a "christian nation," professing to be identical in spirit and rules of faith and conduct with the church and religion of the gospels and epistles; and what was the identity, beyond certain phrases and conventional suppositions? he could not see a trace in english society of that simple and severe hold of the unseen and the future which is the colour and breath, as well as the outward form, of the new testament life. nothing could be more perfect, nothing grander and nobler, than all the current arrangements for this life; its justice and order and increasing gentleness, its widening sympathies between men; but it was all for the perfection and improvement of this life; it would all go on, if what we experience now was our only scene and destiny. this perpetual antithesis haunted him, when he knew it, or when he did not. against it the church ought to be the perpetual protest, and the fearless challenge, as it was in the days of the new testament. but the english church had drunk in, he held, too deeply the temper, ideas, and laws of an ambitious and advancing civilisation; so much so as to be unfaithful to its special charge and mission. the prophet had ceased to rebuke, warn, and suffer; he had thrown in his lot with those who had ceased to be cruel and inhuman, but who thought only of making their dwelling-place as secure and happy as they could. the church had become respectable, comfortable, sensible, temperate, liberal; jealous about the forms of its creeds, equally jealous of its secular rights, interested in the discussion of subordinate questions, and becoming more and more tolerant of differences; ready for works of benevolence and large charity, in sympathy with the agricultural poor, open-handed in its gifts; a willing fellow-worker with society in kindly deeds, and its accomplice in secularity. all this was admirable, but it was not the life of the new testament, and it was _that_ which filled his thoughts. the english church had exchanged religion for civilisation, the first century for the nineteenth, the new testament as it is written, for a counterfeit of it interpreted by paley or mr. simeon; and it seemed to have betrayed its trust. form after form was tried by him, the christianity of evangelicalism, the christianity of whately, the christianity of hawkins, the christianity of keble and pusey; it was all very well, but it was not the christianity of the new testament and of the first ages. he wrote the _church of the fathers_ to show they were not merely evidences of religion, but really living men; that they could and did live as they taught, and what was there like the new testament or even the first ages now? alas! there was nothing completely like them; but of all unlike things, the church of england with its "smug parsons," and pony-carriages for their wives and daughters, seemed to him the most unlike: more unlike than the great unreformed roman church, with its strange, unscriptural doctrines and its undeniable crimes, and its alliance, wherever it could, with the world. but at least the roman church had not only preserved, but maintained at full strength through the centuries to our day two things of which the new testament was full, and which are characteristic of it--devotion and self-sacrifice. the crowds at a pilgrimage, a shrine, or a "pardon" were much more like the multitudes who followed our lord about the hills of galilee--like them probably in that imperfect faith which we call superstition--than anything that could be seen in the english church, even if the salvation army were one of its instruments. and the spirit which governed the roman church had prevailed on men to make the sacrifice of celibacy a matter of course, as a condition of ministering in a regular and systematic way not only to the souls, but to the bodies of men, not only for the priesthood, but for educational brotherhoods, and sisters of the poor and of hospitals. devotion and sacrifice, prayer and self-denying charity, in one word sanctity, are at once on the surface of the new testament and interwoven with all its substance. he recoiled from a representation of the religion of the new testament which to his eye was without them. he turned to where, in spite of every other disadvantage, he thought he found them. in s. filippo neri he could find a link between the new testament and progressive civilisation. he could find no s. filippo--so modern and yet so scriptural--when he sought at home. his mind, naturally alive to all greatness, had early been impressed with the greatness of the church of rome. but in his early days it was the greatness of anti-christ. then came the change, and his sense of greatness was satisfied by the commanding and undoubting attitude of the roman system, by the completeness of its theory, by the sweep of its claims and its rule, by the even march of its vast administration. it could not and it did not escape him, that the roman church, with all the good things which it had, was, as a whole, as unlike the church of the new testament and of the first ages as the english. he recognised it frankly, and built up a great theory to account for the fact, incorporating and modernising great portions of the received roman explanations of the fact. but what won his heart and his enthusiasm was one thing; what justified itself to his intellect was another. and it was the reproduction, partial, as it might be, yet real and characteristic, in the roman church of the life and ways of the new testament, which was the irresistible attraction that tore him from the associations and the affections of half a lifetime. the final break with the english church was with much heat and bitterness; and both sides knew too much each of the other to warrant the language used on each side. the english church had received too much loyal and invaluable service from him in teaching and example to have insulted him, as many of its chief authorities did, with the charges of dishonesty and bad faith; his persecutors forgot that a little effort on his part might, if he had been what they called him, and had really been a traitor, have formed a large and compact party, whose secession might have caused fatal damage. and he, too, knew too much of the better side of english religious life to justify the fierce invective and sarcasm with which he assailed for a time the english church as a mere system of comfortable and self-deceiving worldliness. but as time went over him in his new position two things made themselves felt. one was, that though there was a new testament life, lived in the roman church with conspicuous truth and reality, yet the roman church, like the english, was administered and governed by men--men with passions and faults, men of mixed characters--who had, like their english contemporaries and rivals, ends and rules of action not exactly like those of the new testament. the roman church had to accept, as much as the english, the modern conditions of social and political life, however different in outward look from those of the sermon on the mount. the other was the increasing sense that the civilisation of the west was as a whole, and notwithstanding grievous drawbacks, part of god's providential government, a noble and beneficent thing, ministering graciously to man's peace and order, which christians ought to recognise as a blessing of their times such as their fathers had not, for which they ought to be thankful, and which, if they were wise, they would put to what, in his phrase, was an "apostolical" use. in one of the angelical hymns in the _dream of gerontius_, he dwells on the divine goodness which led men to found "a household and a fatherland, a city and a state" with an earnestness of sympathy, recalling the enumeration of the achievements of human thought and hand, and the arts of civil and social life--[greek: kai phthegma kai aenemoen phronaema kai astynomous orgas]--dwelt on so fondly by aeschylus and sophocles. the force with which these two things made themselves felt as age came on--the disappointments attending his service to the church, and the grandeur of the physical and social order of the world and its divine sanction in spite of all that is evil and all that is so shortlived in it--produced a softening in his ways of thought and speech. never for a moment did his loyalty and obedience to his church, even when most tried, waver and falter. the thing is inconceivable to any one who ever knew him, and the mere suggestion would be enough to make him blaze forth in all his old fierceness and power. but perfectly satisfied of his position, and with his duties clearly defined, he could allow large and increasing play, in the leisure of advancing age, to his natural sympathies, and to the effect of the wonderful spectacle of the world around him. he was, after all, an englishman; and with all his quickness to detect and denounce what was selfish and poor in english ideas and action, and with all the strength of his deep antipathies, his chief interests were for things english--english literature, english social life, english politics, english religion. he liked to identify himself, as far as it was possible, with things english, even with things that belonged to his own first days. he republished his oxford sermons and treatises. he prized his honorary fellowship at trinity; he enjoyed his visit to oxford, and the welcome which he met there. he discerned how much the english church counted for in the fight going on in england for the faith in christ. there was in all that he said and did a gentleness, a forbearance, a kindly friendliness, a warm recognition of the honour paid him by his countrymen, ever since the _apologia_ had broken down the prejudices which had prevented englishmen from doing him justice. as with his chief antagonist at oxford, dr. hawkins, advancing years brought with them increasing gentleness, and generosity, and courtesy. but through all this there was perceptible to those who watched a pathetic yearning for something which was not to be had: a sense, resigned--for so it was ordered--but deep and piercing, how far, not some of us, but all of us, are from the life of the new testament: how much there is for religion to do, and how little there seems to be to do it. xxxi cardinal newman's naturalness[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th august . every one feels what is meant when we speak of a person's ways being "natural," in contrast to being artificial, or overstrained, or studied, or affected. but it is easier to feel what is meant than to explain and define it. we sometimes speak as if it were a mere quality of manner; as if it belonged to the outside show of things, and denoted the atmosphere, clear and transparent, through which they are viewed. it corresponds to what is lucid in talk and style, and what ethically is straightforward and unpretentious. but it is something much more than a mere surface quality. when it is real and part of the whole character, and not put on from time to time for effect, it reaches a long way down to what is deepest and most significant in a man's moral nature. it is connected with the sense of truth, with honest self-judgment, with habits of self-discipline, with the repression of vanity, pride, egotism. it has no doubt to do with good taste and good manners, but it has as much to do with good morals--with the resolute habit of veracity with oneself--with the obstinate preference for reality over show, however tempting--with the wholesome power of being able to think little about oneself. it is common to speak of the naturalness and ease of cardinal newman's style in writing. it is, of course, the first thing that attracts notice when we open one of his books; and there are people who think it bald and thin and dry. they look out for longer words, and grander phrases, and more involved constructions, and neater epigrams. they expect a great theme to be treated with more pomp and majesty, and they are disappointed. but the majority of english readers seem to be agreed in recognising the beauty and transparent flow of his language, which matches the best french writing in rendering with sureness and without effort the thought of the writer. but what is more interesting than even the formation of such a style--a work, we may be sure, not accomplished without much labour--is the man behind the style. for the man and the style are one in this perfect naturalness and ease. any one who has watched at all carefully the cardinal's career, whether in old days or later, must have been struck with this feature of his character, his naturalness, the freshness and freedom with which he addressed a friend or expressed an opinion, the absence of all mannerism and formality; and, where he had to keep his dignity, both his loyal obedience to the authority which enjoined it and the half-amused, half-bored impatience that he should be the person round whom all these grand doings centred. it made the greatest difference in his friendships whether his friends met him on equal terms, or whether they brought with them too great conventional deference or solemnity of manner. "so and so is a very good fellow, but he is not a man to talk to in your shirt sleeves," was his phrase about an over-logical and over-literal friend. quite aware of what he was to his friends and to the things with which he was connected, and ready with a certain quickness of temper which marked him in old days to resent anything unbecoming done to his cause or those connected with it, he would not allow any homage to be paid to himself. he was by no means disposed to allow liberties to be taken or to put up with impertinence; for all that bordered on the unreal, for all that was pompous, conceited, affected, he had little patience; but almost beyond all these was his disgust at being made the object of foolish admiration. he protested with whimsical fierceness against being made a hero or a sage; he was what he was, he said, and nothing more; and he was inclined to be rude when people tried to force him into an eminence which he refused. with his profound sense of the incomplete and the ridiculous in this world, and with a humour in which the grotesque and the pathetic sides of life were together recognised at every moment, he never hesitated to admit his own mistakes--his "floors" as he called them. all this ease and frankness with those whom he trusted, which was one of the lessons which he learnt from hurrell froude, an intercourse which implied a good deal of give and take--all this satisfied his love of freedom, his sense of the real. it was his delight to give himself free play with those whom he could trust; to feel that he could talk with "open heart," understood without explaining, appealing for a response which would not fail, though it was not heard. he could be stiff enough with those who he thought were acting a part, or pretending to more than they could perform. but he believed--what was not very easy to believe beforehand--that he could win the sympathy of his countrymen, though not their agreement with him; and so, with characteristic naturalness and freshness, he wrote the _apologia_. xxxii lord blachford[ ] [ ] _guardian_, th nov. . lord blachford, whose death was announced last week, belonged to a generation of oxford men of whom few now survive, and who, of very different characters and with very different careers and histories, had more in common than any set of contemporaries at oxford since their time. speaking roughly, they were almost the last product of the old training at public school and at college, before the new reforms set in; of a training confessedly imperfect and in some ways deplorably defective, but with considerable elements in it of strength and manliness, with keen instincts of contempt for all that savoured of affectation and hollowness, and with a sort of largeness and freedom about it, both in its outlook and its discipline, which suited vigorous and self-reliant natures in an exciting time, when debate ran high and the gravest issues seemed to be presenting themselves to english society. the reformed system which has taken its place at oxford criticises, not without some justice, the limitations of the older one; the narrow range of its interests, the few books which men read, and the minuteness with which they were "got up." but if these men did not learn all that a university ought to teach its students, they at least learned two things. they learned to work hard, and they learned to make full use of what they knew. they framed an ideal of practical life, which was very variously acted upon, but which at any rate aimed at breadth of grasp and generosity of purpose, and at being thorough. this knot of men, who lived a good deal together, were recognised at the time as young men of much promise, and they looked forward to life with eagerness and high aspiration. they have fulfilled their promise; their names are mixed up with all the recent history of england; they have filled its great places and governed its policy during a large part of the queen's long reign. their names are now for the most part things of the past--sidney herbert, lord canning, lord dalhousie, lord elgin, lord cardwell, the wilberforces, mr. hope scott, archbishop tait. but they still have their representatives among us--mr. gladstone, lord selborne, lord sherbrooke, sir thomas acland, cardinal manning. it is not often that a university generation or two can produce such a list of names of statesmen and rulers; and the list might easily be enlarged. to this generation frederic rogers belonged, not the least distinguished among his contemporaries; and he was early brought under an influence likely to stimulate in a high degree whatever powers a man possessed, and to impress a strong character with elevated and enduring ideas of life and duty. mr. newman, with mr. hurrell froude and mr. robert wilberforce, had recently been appointed tutors of their college by dr. copleston. they were in the first eagerness of their enthusiasm to do great things with the college, and the story goes that mr. newman, on the look-out for promising pupils, wrote to an eton friend, asking him to recommend some good eton men for admission at oriel. frederic rogers, so the story goes, was one of those mentioned; at any rate, he entered at oriel, and became acquainted with mr. newman as a tutor, and the admiration and attachment of the undergraduate ripened into the most unreserved and affectionate friendship of the grown man--a friendship which has lasted through all storms and difficulties, and through strong differences of opinion, till death only has ended it. from mr. newman his pupil caught that earnest devotion to the cause of the church which was supreme with him through life. he entered heartily into mr. newman's purpose to lift the level of the english church and its clergy. while mr. newman at oxford was fighting the battle of the english church, there was no one who was a closer friend than rogers, no one in whom mr. newman had such trust, none whose judgment he so valued, no one in whose companionship he so delighted; and the master's friendship was returned by the disciple with a noble and tender, and yet manly honesty. there came, as we know, times which strained even that friendship; when the disciple, just at the moment when the master most needed and longed for sympathy and counsel, had to choose between his duty to his church and the claims and ties of friendship. he could not follow in the course which his master and friend had found inevitable; and that deepest and most delightful friendship had to be given up. but it was given up, not indeed without great suffering on both sides, but without bitterness or unworthy thoughts. the friend had seen too closely the greatness and purity of his master's character to fail in tenderness and loyalty, even when he thought his master going most wrong. he recognised that the error, deplorable as he thought it, was the mistake of a lofty and unselfish soul; and in the height of the popular outcry against him he came forward, with a distant and touching reverence, to take his old friend's part and rebuke the clamour. and at length the time came when disagreements were left long behind and each person had finally taken his recognised place; and then the old ties were knit up again. it could not be the former friendship of every day and of absolute and unreserved confidence. but it was the old friendship of affection and respect renewed, and pleasure in the interchange of thoughts. it was a friendship of the antique type, more common, perhaps, even in the last century than with us, but enriched with christian hopes and christian convictions. lord blachford, in spite of his brilliant oxford reputation, and though he was a singularly vigorous writer, with wide interests and very independent thought, has left nothing behind him in the way of literature. this was partly because he very early became a man of affairs; partly that his health interfered with habits of study. it used to be told at oxford that when he was working for his double first he could scarcely use his eyes, and had to learn much of his work by being read to. the result was that he was not a great reader; and a man ought to be a reader who is to be a writer. but, besides this, there was a strongly marked feature in his character which told in the same direction. there was a curious modesty about him which formed a contrast with other points; with a readiness and even eagerness to put forth and develop his thoughts on matters that interested him, with a perfect consciousness of his remarkable powers of statement and argument, with a constitutional impetuosity blended with caution which showed itself when anything appealed to his deeper feelings or called for his help; yet with all these impelling elements, his instinct was always to shrink from putting himself forward, except when it was a matter of duty. he accepted recognition when it came, but he never claimed it. and this reserve, which marked his social life, kept him back from saying in a permanent form much that he had to say, and that was really worth saying. like many of the distinguished men of his day, he was occasionally a journalist. we have been reminded by the _times_ that he at one time wrote for that paper. and he was one of the men to whose confidence and hope in the english church the _guardian_ owes its existence. his life was the uneventful one of a diligent and laborious public servant, and then of a landlord keenly alive to the responsibilities of his position. he passed through various subordinate public employments, and finally succeeded mr. herman merivale as permanent under-secretary for the colonies. it is a great post, but one of which the work is done for the most part out of sight. colonial secretaries in parliament come and go, and have the credit, often quite justly, of this or that policy. but the public know little of the permanent official who keeps the traditions and experience of the department, whose judgment is always an element, often a preponderating element, in eventful decisions, and whose pen drafts the despatches which go forth in the name of the government. sir frederic rogers, as he became in time, had to deal with some of the most serious colonial questions which arose and were settled while he was at the colonial office. he took great pains, among other things, to remove, or at least diminish, the difficulties which beset the _status_ of the colonial church and clergy, and to put its relations to the church at home on a just and reasonable footing. there is a general agreement as to the industry and conspicuous ability with which his part of the work was done. mr. gladstone set an admirable example in recognising in an unexpected way faithful but unnoticed services, and at the same time paid a merited honour to the permanent staff of the public offices, when he named sir frederic rogers for a peerage. lord blachford, for so he became on his retirement from the colonial office, cannot be said to have quitted entirely public life, as he always, while his strength lasted, acknowledged public claims on his time and industry. he took his part in two or three laborious commissions, doing the same kind of valuable yet unseen work which he had done in office, guarding against blunders, or retrieving them, giving direction and purpose to inquiries, suggesting expedients. but his main employment was now at his own home. he came late in life to the position of a landed proprietor, and he at once set before himself as his object the endeavour to make his estate as perfect as it could be made--perfect in the way in which a naturally beautiful country and his own good taste invited him to make it, but beyond all, as perfect as might be, viewed as the dwelling-place of his tenants and the labouring poor. a keen and admiring student of political economy, his sympathies were always with the poor. he was always ready to challenge assumptions, such as are often loosely made for the convenience of the well-to-do. the solicitude which always pursued him was the thought of his cottages, and it was not satisfied till the last had been put in good order. the same spirit prompted him to allow labourers who could manage the undertaking to rent pasture for a few cows; and the experiment, he thought, had succeeded. the idea of justice and the general welfare had too strong a hold on his mind to allow him to be sentimental in dealing with the difficult questions connected with land. but if his labourers found him thoughtful of their comfort his farmers found him a good landlord--strict where he met with dishonesty and carelessness, but open-minded and reasonable in understanding their points of view, and frank, equitable, and liberal in meeting their wishes. disclaiming all experience of country matters, and not minding if he fell into some mistakes, he made his care of his estate a model of the way in which a good man should discharge his duties to the land. his was one of those natures which have the gift of inspiring confidence in all who come near him; all who had to do with him felt that they could absolutely trust him. the quality which was at the bottom of his character as a man was his unswerving truthfulness; but upon this was built up a singularly varied combination of elements not often brought together, and seldom in such vigour and activity. keen, rapid, penetrating, he was quick in detecting anything that rung hollow in language or feeling; and he did not care to conceal his dislike and contempt. but no one threw himself with more genuine sympathy into the real interests of other people. no matter what it was, ethical or political theory, the course of a controversy, the arrangement of a trust-deed, the oddities of a character, the marvels of natural science, he was always ready to go with his companion as far as he chose to go, and to take as much trouble as if the question started had been his own. where his sense of truth was not wounded he was most considerate and indulgent; he seemed to keep through life his schoolboy's amused tolerance for mischief that was not vicious. no one entered more heartily into the absurdities of a grotesque situation; of no one could his friends be so sure that he would miss no point of a good story; and no one took in at once more completely or with deeper feeling the full significance of some dangerous incident in public affairs, or discerned more clearly the real drift of confused and ambiguous tendencies. he was conscious of the power of his intellect, and he liked to bring it to bear on what was before him; he liked to probe things to the bottom, and see how far his companion in conversation was able to go; but ready as he was with either argument or banter he never, unless provoked, forced the proof of his power on others. for others, indeed, of all classes and characters, so that they were true, he had nothing but kindness, geniality, forbearance, the ready willingness to meet them on equal terms. those who had the privilege of his friendship remember how they were kept up in their standard and measure of duty by the consciousness of his opinion, his judgment, his eagerness to feel with them, his fearless, though it might be reluctant, expression of disagreement it was, indeed, that very marked yet most harmonious combination of severity and tenderness which gave such interest to his character. a strong love of justice, a deep and unselfish and affectionate gentleness and patience, are happily qualities not too rare. but to have known one at once so severely just and so indulgently tender and affectionate makes a mark in a man's life which he forgets at his peril. the end _printed by_ r. & r. clark, limited, _edinburgh_. act, declaration, and testimony, for the whole of our covenanted reformation, as attained to, and established in britain and ireland; particularly betwixt the years and , inclusive. as, also, against all the steps of defection from said reformation, whether in former or later times, since the overthrow of that glorious work, down to this present day: by the reformed presbytery. * * * * * psalm ix, .--thou hast given a banner to them that fear thee: that it may be displayed because of the truth. isaiah viii, .--bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. jude, verse .--that ye should earnestly contend for the faith which was once delivered to the saints. revelation iii, .--behold, i come quickly: hold that fast which thou hast, that no man take thy crown. * * * * * to which is now added, a historical and declaratory supplement. . introduction. the presbytery, soon after their erection, being convinced of the expediency and necessity of emitting a judicial testimony, to discover to the world the principles upon which, as a judicatory of the lord jesus christ, they stood, in opposition to the different, so called, judicatories in the land; together with the agreeableness of these principles to the word of god, the only rule of faith and practice, and to the covenanted constitution of the church of scotland in her purest periods; did therefore, after a proposal for said effect, agree in appointing one of their number to prepare a draft of this kind to be laid before them, who, after sundry delays, to their grief of mind, at once cut off their hopes of all assistance from him, in that or any other particular, by laying himself obnoxious to the censures of the church; which the presbytery, in duty both to him, to god, and to his people, were obliged to put in execution against him, while he, in contempt of that ordinance, and other means used for his conviction and recovery, obstinately persists in his impenitency and defection. and although the presbytery, few in number, were thus diminished, yet, being still resolved to prosecute their former design, they renewed their appointment upon another brother, who, in consequence of his undertaking, was allowed a cessation from his other public work, in order to expedite the proposed draft: and now, when nothing was expected that should retard the finishing of such a necessary work, the lamentable fire of division, that had long been smothered, unhappily broke forth into a violent flame, whereby the presbytery was rent asunder, and that brother, on whom the appointment was formerly laid, happening to be of the separating party, a second stop was not only put to the publication of this testimony, but the presbytery, from the absence of a brother removed to a distant part of the world, together with the paucity of their number, were almost wholly discouraged from attempting again what they had been oftener than once disappointed in. but notwithstanding of the above, with many other difficulties which we shall not at present take notice of, the presbytery, still considering, that, even in their present circumstances, when their number is few and despicable, their adversaries many, and such as are in repute in the world, whereby the opposition made to them, and the conspiracy formed against the covenanted testimony of the church of scotland maintained by them, must needs be strong; there is yet a gracious door of opportunity left open for them to attempt, in their judicative capacity, the prosecution and accomplishment of the necessary work formerly proposed; and which they could not but judge the lord still called them unto, while after all the above-mentioned breaches made upon them, he still continued to give them a nail in his holy place, and a wall in judah and jerusalem, _ezra_ ix, , , they therefore again laid their appointments upon some others to prepare a draft of _an act, declaration, and testimony_, &c., and which, under the favor of divine providence, has at length been finished and laid before the presbytery. we only need to observe further with reference to this, that the long delay of what is now agreed upon did not proceed from any design in the presbytery, of depriving either the people of their particular inspection, or the generation, of any benefit that might be obtained by a work of this nature, but partly from the fewness of their number, and great extent of their charge, and partly from the great distance of members' residence from each other, whereby they can seldom have access to meet all together, for expediting this or any other work of public concern they have in hand. it is, therefore, with an eye to the wonderful counselor (when zion's faithful counselors are so few) for light and direction in the management of this great and important work, that the presbytery have resolved upon the publication hereof at this time, for the reasons which follow: . because this duty of bearing witness for truth, and declaring against all error, and defection from it, and transmitting the same uncorrupted to posterity, is expressly enjoined on the church by the spirit of god in the scriptures of truth. _psal._ lxxviii, : "for he hath established a testimony in jacob, and appointed a law in israel, which he commanded our fathers that they should make them known to their children." _isaiah_ xliii, : "ye are my witnesses, saith the lord." _matth._ x, : "whosoever, therefore, shall confess me before men, him will i also confess before my father who is in heaven." _john_ xv. : "ye also shall bear witness." _acts_ i, : "and ye shall be witnesses unto me." . because, in agreeableness to the above scripture warrant, it has been the constant practice of the church in all ages, when in such capacity, judicially to assert, and declare their approbation of the truths of the everlasting gospel, and attainments of the church, joined with the condemnation of all contrary error, as appears from their harmonious confessions: and particularly, this has been the honorable practice of the once famous church of scotland, witness her excellent confessions, covenants, &c., whose posterity we are, and, therefore, in duty bound to homologate, and approve her scriptural form and order, by a judicial asserting of her attainments, as saith the apostle, _philip._ iii, : "nevertheless whereunto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing." _rev._ iii, : "remember, therefore, how thou has received, and heard, and hold fast, and repent." . that, notwithstanding many, both ministers and private christians, have been honored faithfully to publish their testimonies and declarations, and to seal them with their blood, in opposition to the growing defections in the land, being through the tyranny of the times prevented from acting in any other capacity: yet never, since the national overthrow of the glorious structure of reformation, has any church judicatory; constituted purely on the footing of our covenanted establishment, appeared in a judicial vindication of our redeemer's interest and injured rights. . the unspeakable loss sustained by the present generation, through the want of a full and faithful declaration of the covenanted principles of the church of scotland, which they in the loins of their ancestors were so solemnly engaged to maintain; whereby, as ignorance must be increased, so prejudices are also gradually begotten in their winds against the truth in the purity thereof. and this, through the many mistaken notions at present prevailing among the different contending parties of professors in these nations, concerning the distinct ordinances of divine institution, viz., the ministry and magistracy, or ecclesiastical and civil government; and, more especially, the presbytery reckon themselves, and all professing their allegiance unto christ and his cause, obliged to maintain the testimony of our ancestors for the divine institution and right constitution of civil government, according to the law of god, as what they found to be, and still is, indispensably necessary for the outward defense and preservation of righteousness and true religion; and because the very foundation and ends of this ordinance have been doctrinally subverted, and the generation taught the most licentious principles concerning it, by a body of professed witnesses among ourselves: and this they design to do, without (as they are slanderously reported of by some) laying aside themselves, or withdrawing others, from the study of internal and habitual or practical holiness. . to wipe off the reproach of that odium cast upon the presbytery and community belonging thereto, by some who invidiously call them a headless mob, whose principles cannot be known, anti-government men, men of bloody principles, &c., than which nothing can be more unjust: seeing, as a body distinct from all others, they have still stood upon the footing of the covenanted establishment, as has been frequently declared to the world, and as the constitution of the presbytery bears; so that they can no more be said ever to have wanted a proper testimony exhibiting their principles to the world, than the reformed church of scotland, whereof they are a part. . the present broken and divided situation of the members of christ's mystical body, together with the abounding of error, seems necessarily to require it as a proper mean, under the divine blessing, for gathering again the scattered flock of christ, the chief shepherd, to the one sheepfold, and putting a stop to the current of prevailing apostasy and defection. for these reasons (with more that might be adduced) the presbytery find themselves in duty bound, to god, the present and succeeding generations, to throw in their small mite of a testimony, against the manifold avowed backslidings and defections of all degrees of men, both in the former and present times, from the precious truths of christ, and purity of his ordinances; unto the maintenance whereof, not only they, but all in these lands, are solemnly bound by covenant engagements. and, to conclude, let none mistake the presbytery's aim and intention, in the whole or any part of the following testimony, as if they minded nothing else but magistracy, &c., and that to have civil government, and governors established, according to the rule of god's word, was all the religion they intended, without regarding or opposing any other of the prevailing evils and iniquities of the present time. so some are pleased to allege, as has been hinted above; but such might do well to consider, that, as the sovereign and distinguishing goodness of god is clearly evidenced in giving his statutes and judgments unto his israel, in all ages, while he has not dealt so with the other nations of the world, wherein his will is manifestly revealed, determining his people's duty in all their regulations; so his glory is equally concerned, that they receive, observe, keep pure and entire, all the ordinances he hath appointed in his word. the sinful prostitution of any of these, or breaking over the boundaries which jehovah hath set is an evident contempt of his sovereign authority, and violation of the moral law. god requires of his people an universal respect to all his ordinances and commandments. hence what is designed by them in this undertaking, is equally to testify their adherence unto, and approbation of the doctrine, worship, discipline and government of the house of god; and to signify their opposition to, and dissatisfaction with, all the apostatizing, backsliding courses in principle and practice, from that reformation purity, both in church and state (which, as the attainment of the nations of britain and ireland, was by them accounted their chief ornament and glory), that have taken place, especially in this kingdom, since our woful decline commenced: whereby the witnesses for scotland's covenanted reformation, have been deprived of any legal benefit, as well, since as before the late revolution; in which the reformation, neither in civil nor ecclesiastical constitutions, was adopted. the intent, therefore, of this work is of very great importance; no less being proposed, than the right stating of the testimony for the covenanted interest of christ in these lands, and judicial vindication of all the heads thereof, after such a long and universal apostasy therefrom: a work that must needs be attended with great difficulties, and labor under manifold disadvantages, as in other respects, so particularly from the consideration of the temper of this age, wherein nothing almost is pleasing, but what is adapted to the taste, not of the best, but of the greatest: and naked truth without the varnish of flattery, and painting of carnal policy, is generally treated with contempt, and exposed to ridicule. and therefore, to remove as much as possible the prejudice of a critical age, who are ready to reject every thing as new, which is in some respects singular, and not suited to their favorite sentiments; the presbytery have endeavored, in this work, to conform, as much as possible, to the faithful contendings of former honest contenders for the truths and testimony of jesus, and that, both as to matter and manner: and as the grounds of this testimony are not any needless scrupulosities, or strange novelties, but precious and weighty truths, of the greatest value and importance, and of nearest affinity unto the continued series and succession of the testimonies of the church of scotland, in former and more ancient periods; so it is the presbytery's ambition, that nothing, as to the subject matter of what is here contained, be looked upon as theirs, but may be regarded as an ancient plea, wherein is nothing but what has been maintained and confirmed by authors of the greatest fame and reputation in the church; has been asserted by the greatest confessors, and sealed by the best blood of the honored and faithful martyrs of jesus: so that it may appear, the cause and truths here judicially stated and vindicated, are not of yesterday's date, but the same old paths and good way, that we are commanded to ask for, and walk in, though paths that are not now much trodden, a way that is not much paved by the multitude of professors walking therein. act, declaration, and testimony. part i. containing a brief historical narration of the several periods of the testimony of the church of scotland, and of the faithful contendings of the witnesses for christ, particularly from the commencement of the reformation in these lands, down to the late revolution; with the presbytery's approbation thereof. ploughlandhead, june , . the which day and place, the reformed presbytery being met, and taking into their most serious consideration, the deplorable situation of the interest of christ and religion at present, in these sinning lands wherein so few are asking for the old path, saying, where is the good way, that we may walk therein? but, on the contrary, an avowed apostasy and backsliding from the right ways of the lord, is by the generality carried on, with a secret undermining of reformation interests, by some, under more specious pretenses; and, further, considering the general deluge of error and heresy, that has overrun these lands, and the swarm of erroneous heretics that has overspread the same, making very impious attacks upon the most part of revealed religion, who, notwithstanding, have found such shelter under the wings of a laodicean church, and almost boundless state toleration, that they walk on without fear in the foresaid broad way of sin and error. and, moreover, all kinds of sin and wickedness so universally abound and pass, without any suitable check, that he who departs from iniquity maketh himself a prey; together with the woful insensibility, and deep security of all, under our spiritual plagues and impending temporal strokes. and yet, while the land so evidently groans under its inhabitants, very few either acknowledge themselves guilty, or turn from the evil of their ways, saying, what have we done? also, considering the horrid breach and contempt of sacred vows unto the most high, the great effusion of the saints' blood, shed in our late persecution under prelacy (which is yet to be found in our skirts), and the faithful testimony they therewith sealed, remains buried under the gravestones, both of ecclesiastical and civil deeds of constitution, unto this day. so that we may rather admire, that the lord hath not made such inquisition for blood, as to make our land an aceldama, than that we are yet under a dispensation of divine forbearance. all which is followed with a deep oblivion of most or all of the memorable instances of the lord's goodness, mercy and power, manifested unto his church, in these lands; the remembrance whereof ought still to be retained, and the same acknowledged with thankfulness, by all the children of zion, unto the latest ages. wherefore the presbytery, amidst their many difficulties, partly noticed in the introduction, as a court of the true presbyterian covenanted church of christ in scotland, constituted in the name of the lord jesus christ, the alone king and head of his church, judicially to commemorate: likeas, they did, and hereby do acknowledge, with the utmost gratitude, the great goodness and tender mercy of our god unto our church and land; who, in consequence of that early new covenant grant, made by jehovah to his eternal son, to give him the heathen for his inheritance and the uttermost parts of the earth for his possession, caused the day spring from on high to visit us. our glorious redeemer, that bright and morning star, having, by his almighty power, shaken oft the fetters of death, wherewith it was impossible that he could be held, and, as a victorious conqueror, leading captivity captive, ascended into the highest heavens, and there sat down on the right hand of god, did very soon discover his cordial acceptance of, and superlative delight in, possessing his father's extensive grant, by stretching forth the lines of his large and great dominion unto the distant nations of the world, involved in the thickest darkness of stupidity and idolatry; and, in a particular manner, did, as the glorious sun of righteousness, graciously illuminate this remote and barbarous isle, causing the refulgent beams of gospel light to dissipate the gross darkness that, covered the people, which prevailed so far (according to very authentic historical accounts), that, about the beginning of the third century, those of the highest dignity in the nation, voluntarily enlisted themselves under the displayed banner of christ, the captain of salvation, and became nursing fathers and nursing mothers to his church, employing their power to root out pagan idolatry, and bring their subjects under the peaceful scepter of the son of god. this plant of christianity having once taken root, did, under all the vicissitudes of divine providence, grow up unto a spreading vine, which filled the land, and continued to flourish, without being pressed down with the intolerable burden of prelatical or popish superstition: the truths and institutions of the gospel being faithfully propagated and maintained in their native purity and simplicity by the culdees some hundreds of years before ever that man of sin and son of perdition, by the door of prelacy, stepped into the temple of god in scotland. those early witnesses for christ, having no other ambition but that of advancing piety and the doctrines which were according to godliness, were therefore called _culdees_, that is, _cultores dei_, or worshipers of god. the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the house of god being thus established, continued for many years, taught and exorcised, according to divine institution. but, in process of time, the church of christ in this land came to be assaulted with the corruptions of the see of rome, by means of palladius, the pope's missionary to the britons, who made the first attempt to bring our fathers' necks under the anti-christian yoke, which gradually increasing by little and little, clouded the sunshine of prosperity the church then enjoyed, till about the eleventh century, when the romish fraternity fully established themselves, by usurping a diocesan supremacy over the house of god; after which a midnight darkness of popish error and idolatry overwhelmed the nation, for near the space of five hundred years. yet, even in this very dark period, the lord left not himself altogether without some to bear witness for him, whose steadfastness in defense of the truth, even unto death, vanquished the inhuman cruelty of their savage enemies. the honor of the church's exalted head being still engaged to maintain the right of conquest he had obtained over this remote isle, and raise up his work out of the ruins, under which it had lain so long buried; he, about the beginning of the th century, animated some valiant champions (messrs. hamilton, wishart, and others) with a spirit of truth and heroic courage, to contend against the abominations of the babylonish whore, whose labors, by the blessing of heaven, were rendered successful, to open the eyes of some to see, and engage many others to inquire after, and espouse the truth as it is in jesus. these, not regarding the fear of man, nor the cruelty of their enemies, but as good soldiers of jesus christ, enduring hardness, chose, rather than desert their master's cause, to offer their bodies to be devoured by the tormenting flames, no more merciless than their hellish persecutors; while in that fiery chariot, through the serial regions, their souls ascended to the celestial country. and herein, also, did god frustrate the expectation of that monster of iniquity, cardinal beaton (whose memory let it for ever perish), and his wicked accomplices, and turned their counsel into foolishness, who, by the death of a few zealous contenders for the faith, intended the total suppression of christ's truth for ever; but god having purposed the contrary, made the effusion of their blood the occasion of rousing many from the deep sleep of gross ignorance, by putting them to search into the truth of those doctrines, which these martyrs sealed with their blood; so that jesus christ, the only true light in the orb of the gospel, began again to shine forth within this realm. upon this begun revival of reformation, the glory of the lord went remarkably before his people, and the god of israel was their reward, uniting the hearts, and strengthening the hands, both of noble and ignoble, to a vigorous and active espousing of his gospel, and concerns of his glory, in opposition to the tyranny of the lordly bishops, persecuting rage, and masked treachery of the two bloody marys, the mother and daughter, who then successively governed, or rather tyrannized, in scotland. their number, as well as their zealous spirit, still increasing, they, for the more effectual management of this noble enterprise, entered into covenants to advance that begun work of reformation, and to defend the same and one another in the maintenance thereof, against all opposition whatsoever. several such covenants our early reformers solemnly entered into at edinburgh, perth and leith, in the years , ' , ' and ' . in , _the confession of the faith, and doctrine believed and professed by the protestants within, the realm of scotland_, was compiled and civilly ratified, or allowed of, in free and open parliament, afterward sworn to in the national covenant _annis_ , and . at the same time, some other acts were passed, in favor of reformation; one against the mass and abuse of the sacraments; another, abolishing the pope's jurisdiction and authority with this realm, &c. in the above mentioned year , the first book of policy and discipline, containing the form and order of presbyterial church government, was composed, approven and subscribed by the ministry, and a great part of the nobility. thus, by the wisdom and power of god, who takes the wise in their own craftiness, by means, especially, of the indefatigable labors of the renowned mr. knox (whose memory is still savory in the churches), was this surprising work of reformation advanced, until it obtained the authority of a law; whereby, was not only the presbyterian protestant interest ratified, but anti-christian supremacy and superstition abolished. the church, gradually increasing in beauty and perfection, did, with much painfulness and faithful diligence, labor after a more full establishment of the house of god, in all its privileges, until, by perfecting the second book of discipline, they completed the exact model of presbytery, which, though they had enjoyed national assemblies for a considerable time, yet was not brought to such an entire conformity to the divine pattern, nor so generally acquiesced in until now, that it was unanimously approven by the assembly , and particularly enjoined to be subscribed by all who did bear office in the church; and, at last, they prevailed to get it publicly voted and approven in parliament, june, ; and also at the same time, obtained by act of parliament, the ratification of all the privileges and liberties of the church, in her assemblies, synods, presbyteries, &c. and here we may observe, that while this church and nation contended for the obtaining of a legal establishment of the ecclesiastical polity, they were no less concerned to have that other distinct ordinance of god, civil magistracy, unalterably settled, in agreeableness to the rule of god's word. this appears, not only by their earnest contendings against the abuse of that ordinance among them; but also, by the public acts of parliament, obliging prince and people to be of one perfect religion, and wholly incapacitating all persons, for bearing any office, supreme or subordinate, who refused, by their solemn oath, to approve of, and, to the utmost of their power, engage to defend the true religion, as contained in the word of god, and confession of faith founded thereon, then believed, and publicly professed within the realm, ratified and generally sworn to in the national covenant, during the whole course of their lives, in all their civil administrations. see _acts parl. st_, james vi, . thus the hand of god was remarkably seen, and his powerful arm evidently revealed, in delivering this nation both from pagan darkness and popish idolatry, the memory whereof ought not to be lost, but thankfully acknowledged, to the honor of god's great name, by all such as favor the dust of zion, for her sake, and long to see her breaches, now wide as the sea, repaired. but to proceed: the church's grand foe envying her growing prosperity, did soon disturb her peace, by insinuating himself upon those of superior dignity, who were intrusted with the administration of civil affairs, both supreme and subordinate, blowing up into a flame that inbred and rooted enmity, which they still retained, at the simplicity, strictness and scriptural purity of the reformation in scotland. the then supreme civil ruler, king james vi, formed a scheme for ruining the church of scotland, and stripping her of those comely and beautiful ornaments of reformation purity, in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, which she had now put on, by introducing episcopacy, and establishing bishops. "this he did for no other reason (says one), but because he believed them to be useful and pliable instruments for turning a limited monarchy into absolute dominion, and subjects into slaves; that which of all other things he affected most:" and for this purpose (after several subtle and cunningly devised steps, previously taken, with design to do by degrees what could not be done at once) he makes an open attack upon the general assembly, robbing them of their power and liberty to meet, judge and determine, in all ecclesiastical concerns (well knowing, that so long as assemblies might convene in freedom, he would never get the estate of bishops established in scotland), and imprisoning and banishing many faithful ministers, members of the general assembly, who opposed him, testified and protested against his wicked invasion, and sacrilegious robbery of the church's rights and privileges. and, having at last obtained the supremacy and headship over the church, which was granted him by an impious act of a pretended parliament, of his own stamp, called by him for that purpose, proceeded with his design, until he had again established prelacy, and razed presbytery almost to the very foundations, notwithstanding all the opposition made to it by the faithful in the land, both ministers and people. thus, after several former attempts to this effect, was episcopacy again established, and prelates lording over god's heritage advanced, imposing their popish ceremonies, which in that pretended assembly convened at perth, anno , were enacted, and afterward ratified in a subsequent parliament in the year . and as the father had thus violated his solemn professions, declarations and engagements, to maintain the covenanted interest; so likewise, upon the accession of the son to the throne, there was no amendment nor redress had: but he followed the same iniquitous course, walking in the way of his father, and in the sin wherewith he made israel to sin. and further, obtruded upon the church a service book, a book of popish and prelatical canons, which was followed with a violent prosecution of the faithful contenders for the former laudable constitutions of the church, carried on by that monstrous erastian high-commission court, patched up of statesmen and clergymen: and hereby was the church again brought under the yoke of anti-christian prelacy, and tyrannical supremacy; which lese-majesty to zion's king was also ratified with the sanction of civil authority. to this yoke, oppressing christ's loyal subjects, many of his professed servants submitted their necks, and, issachar-like, became servants to tribute for a considerable time. but when the lord's set time to favor zion came, he made the long despised dust thereof again to be more pleasant and precious than ever unto his servants and people, and the long night season and thick clouds of adversity under which his church labored, amid some day-sky, and sun-blinks of prosperity, she at times enjoyed, to issue in the dawning of a day of clearer light wherein the glorious sun of righteousness shone in his meridian splendor, with greater brightness both in this and the neighboring nations, than at his first arising therein, in a gospel dispensation; whose benign influences caused the small grain of good seed, sown by the skill of the great husbandman, to grow up to a fruitful plant, the tender twig to spread itself into a noble vine, and the little cloud, like a man's hand, to cover the whole hemisphere of the visible church of scotland, which long ago, as a church and nation, had enlisted themselves under the lord jesus christ, as their royal prince; whose peaceful and righteous scepter being now also extended to england and ireland, they soon submitted themselves thereto, in a religious association and union with scotland in covenant engagements, for reformation from prelacy, as well as popery, which they had never hitherto yielded to. upon this gracious return of divine favor, and discovery of almighty power manifested against the mighty agents for prelatical superstition, both in church and state, when, from the paucity of those who appeared in favor of truth, in the year , small opposition unto its enemies could be expected; yet their magnanimity in witness-bearing was so followed by manifestations of the divine countenance and favor, that both their number and courage daily increased. the national covenant was again, after mature deliberation, anent both the lawfulness, expediency and seasonableness thereof, with great solemnity renewed in _march_, , with the general concurrence of the ministry, noblemen, gentlemen, and others, humbling themselves before the lord for their former defections and breach of covenant; though, at the same time, the court faction, and many temporising ministers, continued in their opposition, but which was indeed too weak to make resistance unto the cause of god, and force of truth carried home with suitable conviction upon the conscience. the covenant being first renewed at edinburgh, they provided next, that it should also be renewed through the kingdom; and for this purpose, copies thereof were sent with all convenient speed to the several presbyteries, together with suitable exhortations, and instructions for renewing of the same in every parish of their bounds; and by this means it came to pass, through the good hand of their god upon them, that in a little time almost every parish through scotland did, with much solemnity, cheerfulness and alacrity, renew the same, and publicly with uplifted hand avouch the lord to be their god. and as this solemn action was everywhere accompanied with remarkable evidences of divine power and presence in a plentiful effusion of a spirit of grace and supplication; so the joy of the lord herein became their strength, and greatly increased the faith and hopes of all the church's real friends, that as the lord had begun, so he would also make an end, and carry on his work to perfection, amid the terrible threatenings both of king and court; his majesty being highly displeased that his authority was contemned, and no concurrence of his royal pleasure sought in the renovation of the covenant: but their righteousness in this particular was brought forth as the light, when the legality of this and their other proceedings was afterward attested to the king by the ablest lawyers in the kingdom. the zealous contenders for the church's liberties, by supplications, reasonings, and proposed articles, for enjoying what they much longed for, at last obtained, before the foresaid year expired, a lawful and free general assembly (constituted in the name of the lord jesus christ, the alone king and head of his church), consisting of able members, both ministers and elders, who would not suffer an infringement upon their regular manner of procedure, or right to act as unlimited members of a free court of christ, notwithstanding the constant attacks made upon their freedom by the king's commissioner, and protestations by him taken against their regular procedure, which issued in his erastian declaration of the king's prerogative, as supreme judge in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, and renewing all his former protestations in his royal master's name; further protesting in his own name, and in the name of the lords of the clergy, that no act passed by them should imply his consent, or be accounted lawful, or of force to bind any of the subjects; and, then in his majesty's name dissolving the assembly, discharging their proceeding any further, and so went off. but the assembly judging it better to obey god than man; and to incur the displeasure of an earthly king, to be of far less consequence than to offend the prince of the kings of the earth, entered a protestation against the lord commissioner's departure without any just cause, and in behalf of the intrinsic power and liberty of the church; also assigning the reasons why they could not dissolve the assembly until such time as they had gone through that work depending upon them. this was given in to the clerk by lord rothes, and part of it read before his grace left the house, and instruments taken thereupon. then, after several moving and pathetic speeches delivered on that occasion, for the encouragement of the brethren to abide by their duty, by the moderator, mr. alexander henderson, and others, ministers and elders, exhorting them to show themselves as zealous for christ their lord and master, in his interests, as he had shewed himself zealous for his master; they unanimously agreed that they should continue and abide by their work until they had concluded all things needful, and that on all hazards. and so they proceeded to the examination of that complaint against the bishops, who, on account of their, tyranny, superstition, and teaching of popish, arminian, and pelagian errors, were all laid under the sentence of deposition; and many of them, for their personal profaneness, wickedness and debauchery proven against them, together with their contumacy, were also excommunicated with the greater excommunication, for the destruction of the flesh, that the spirit might be saved in the day of the lord jesus. they gave their approbation of the national covenant; and prelacy, with the five articles of perth, were found and declared to be abjured by it, together with the civil places and power of kirkmen, their sitting on the bench as justices of the peace, sitting in council, and voting in parliament. subscription of the confession of faith, or covenant, was also enjoined, presbyterian church government justified and approven, and an act made for holding yearly general assemblies; with many other acts and constitutions tending to the advancement of that begun reformation, and purging the church of christ of those sinful innovations, crept into it, which may be seen more at large in the printed acts of that assembly. the lawful and just freedom which the church now claimed and stood upon, so highly incensed the court, because their erastian encroachments were not yielded to, that all warlike preparations were speedily made for having them again reduced, by force of arms, to their former slavery. yet, what evil seemed intended against the church by the king, with his popish and prelatical accomplices, was by her exalted king and head happily prevented, and they obliged, at least, to feign subjection, and yield to a pacification. in which it was concluded, that an assembly be holden at edinburgh, _august th_, , and the parliament the th of the same month, that same year, for healing the wide breaches, and redressing the grievances both of church and state; that what was determined by the assembly, might be ratified by the parliament. in this assembly, the covenant was ratified and subscribed by the commissioner, and an injunction laid upon the body of the kingdom for subscribing the same, with an explication, wherein the five articles of perth, government of bishops, the civil places and power of kirkmen were expressly condemned. hereby the hopes of the prelates again being in a great measure lost, and they receiving fresh assistance from the king (who seemed to have little conscience in making laws, and found small difficulty in breaking them), recruited themselves the year following, and took the field, but with no better success than formerly, which obliged them to yield to another pacification, wherein both religious and civil liberties were ratified; and in , these were further confirmed by the oaths, promises, laws, and subscriptions of both king and parliament, whereat the king was personally present, and gave the royal assent to all acts made for the security of the same; while at the same time he was concurring in the bloody tragedy acted upon the protestants in the kingdom of ireland. the gracious countenance and abundant evidence of divine approbation wherewith the lord vouchsafed to bless his contending, reforming and covenanting church in scotland, in a plentiful effusion of his holy spirit on the judicatories and worshiping assemblies of his people, proved a happy means to excite and provoke their neighbors in england and ireland, to go and do likewise. for in the year , when the beginning of a bloody war between the king and parliament of england threatened the nation with a series of calamity and trouble; the parliament having convocated an assembly of divines to sit at westminster for consulting about a reformation of religion in that kingdom, sent commissioners, consisting of members of both houses and assembly, to treat with the assembly of the church of scotland, and convention of estates about these things. in the month of _august_, they presented their proposals to the convention of estates and assembly, desiring, that because the popish prelatical faction is still pursuing their design of corrupting and altering the religion through the whole island, the two nations might be strictly united for their mutual defense against them and their adherents, and not to lay down arms until those, their implacable enemies, were disarmed, &c. commissioners were deputed from the estates, and assembly, to convene with those from england, in order to consider their proposals. and, at the first conferences, it was agreed that the best and speediest means for accomplishing the union and assistance desired, was for both nations to enter into a mutual league and covenant for reformation and defense of religion and liberty against its enemies. which being drawn up, and affectionately embraced, was unanimously approved by the general assembly and sent up to england by the hands of the ministers and elders, sent commissioners from the church of scotland to the synod at westminster, where (being proposed by the parliament to the consideration of the synod), after the interpolation of an explanatory note in the second article, it was approven, and with public humiliation, and all other religious and answerable solemnity, taken and subscribed by them (the synod), and by both honorable houses of parliament and by their authority taken and subscribed by all ranks in england and ireland that same year, ratified by act of the parliament of scotland, _anno_ , and afterward renewed in scotland, with an acknowledgment of sins, and engagement to duties by all ranks in the year , and by the parliament, . thus, to the rejoicing of all true lovers of the prosperity and beauty of the church, who longed for christ the salvation of israel, his coming forth out of zion, these three churches and nations combined and embarked together in the same honorable and glorious cause of reformation, and solemnly bound themselves by the oath of god, to maintain and defend the same against all its enemies and opposers whatever; thereby publicly professing their subjection to christ, and their preferring of pure and undefiled religion, the advancement of the interest, kingdom and glory of jesus christ, to their nearest and dearest interests in this world. and the lord was with us while we were with him, and steadfast in his covenant; but when we forsook him, and broke his covenant, he also forsook us, and delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemies' hand. in the next place, the assembly at westminster, with the assistance of commissioners from the general assembly of the church of scotland, proceeded to conclude on what was needful for furthering and completing this intended and covenanted uniformity in religion, that the lord might be one, and his name one in the three lands. and for this purpose, a confession of faith was composed, and agreed upon by that venerable assembly, together with catechisms larger and shorter, propositions concerning church government, ordination of ministers, and directory for worship; all which were received and approved by the general assembly, and convention of estates in scotland. the lord thus prospering his work in the hands of his servants employed in ecclesiastical affairs, gave no less countenance unto the parliament of england, with the assistance they received from scotland, in defeating all the wicked attempts of the popish, prelatical and malignant party in england, overthrowing their tyranny, and reducing the supporters thereof. a like victory was at length obtained over montrose in scotland, who commanded the royalist, or malignant party there, and had for some time carried all before him. and so the king being worsted at all hands, and despairing of overtaking his designs, his army having been almost all cut to pieces, and himself obliged to fly, resigned himself over to the scots army at newark, in the year , and marched along with them to newcastle; and they, upon the frequent solicitations of the english parliament, and their engaging for the king's honorable treatment, delivered him over to them. afterward, he falling into the hands of cromwell and the english army, a number in this nation violated the oath of god, which they had lately come under, by engaging in an unlawful war with england, commonly called the duke's engagement, in order to rescue the king from his captivity (notwithstanding that he still persisted in his opposition to the just claims, both of the church and nation, and after all that was come upon him, could not be reconciled to the covenants and work of reformation); where they were in _july_ , totally routed by oliver cromwell; and duke hamilton, their general, being made prisoner, was incarcerated, and afterward beheaded. this engagement was remonstrated against, and judicially condemned by the general assembly of the church of scotland; and the sinfulness of it was publicly acknowledged as a breach of the covenant-union between the two nations, by all ranks in scotland that same year, at the renovation of the solemn league and covenant therein. at last the king being seized upon by cromwell and his sectarian army, was, notwithstanding all the remonstrances both of church and state, removed by a violent death. upon which the parliament of scotland, on the _ th_ of _february_, , caused proclaim his son charles ii, king of great britain, france, and ireland (which title he had assumed himself at the hague, as soon as the report of his father's death came to his ears), promising their fidelity and defence of his person and authority, according to the national covenant, and the solemn league and covenant. and at the same time declaring, that before he be admitted to the exercise of the royal power, he shall give security for the preservation and maintenance of the true reformed religion, and unity of the kingdoms, now established, by laws both civil and ecclesiastical, according to the covenants: which security for religion and liberty, at the first proposed treaty at the hague, he deferred to grant, and afterward postponed the signing of the treaty at breda, when everything was agreed upon, from the great hopes he entertained of accomplishing his design, without acquiescing with their demand from montrose's expedition, whom he had sent into scotland with an army, in order to prepare his way into that kingdom, by devastation with fire and sword. but this intrigue not succeeding, he found himself obliged to comply with all their proposals, and signed the treaty. this treaty the king did in effect break, before he left breda, by communicating after the episcopal manner, contrary to the express warning and remonstrance of the commissioners from the church of scotland, who went to him, and showed him his sin in so doing, and how inconsistent it was with his own concessions in the present treaty; and an evidence that he had no intention to perform what he had agreed to, but dissembled with god and man; and he, on the other hand, put them off with sham excuses and professions; and so, from their too much credulity to his fraudulent professions and promises all along, they brought him over to scotland, and before his landing in this kingdom, he takes the covenant at spey, on the _ rd_ of _june_, , by his oath subjoined in allowance and approbation of the covenants national, and solemn league, obliging himself faithfully to prosecute the ends thereof in his station and calling; and for himself and successors, he shall agree to all acts of parliament enjoining the same, and establishing presbyterial church government the directory for worship, confession of faith and catechisms, in the kingdom of scotland, as approven by the general assemblies of this kirk, and parliament of this kingdom. and for their further satisfaction, according to the act of the west kirk, edinburgh, _august th_, , approven the same day by the committee of estates, he emitted a declaration at dunfermline, by profession, fully and heartily acquiescing with all their demands, all which afterward served for nothing but as a lasting monument of his horrid perjury, wicked dissimulation, and mockery of god and man. and even then, when this declaration was published, he had formed a design for bringing in the enemies of the covenant, and work of reformation, both into the army and judicatories, and for dividing the presbyterians among themselves. and this he effectually managed for both foresaid ends, by the public resolutions, on the _ th_ of _december_, that same year . this woful and prime step of defection, so contrary to the word, and injurious to the work of god, was faithfully testified against by many, both ministers, and whole presbyteries, who were sensible of the present sinfulness and evil of it, and foresaw the bitter and dismal consequences that followed upon it. in the meantime, notwithstanding this, and other shrewd evidences, the king gave of his double dealing and hypocrisy, he was crowned at scoon, on the first of _january_, , and had the covenants national and solemn league again administered unto him, by the reverend mr. douglas, after a sermon from _kings_ xi, , , which he, in a most solemn manner renewed, before the three estates of parliament, the commissioners of the general assembly, and a numerous congregation, in the words of his former oath at spey; with the coronation oath, as contained in the th _act, parl._ st, james vi, to all which he engaged before his coronation; and on these terms, and no other, were the oaths of fidelity to him, as the lawful supreme magistrate, taken, at his receipt of the royal authority. and consequently, these covenant engagements became fundamental constitutions, both in church and state, and the door of access into office-bearing in either, and formal ground of the people's subjection. then was the church's appearance "beautiful as tirzah, comely as jerusalem, and terrible as an army with banners." from what is noticed above, the presbytery cannot but declare their hearty approbation of the zeal, courage, and faithfulness of our honored ancestors, in their valiant contendings for the valuable liberties and privileges of the spiritual kingdom of the messiah, until they got the same established, and the nations brought under the most solemn, sacred, and inviolable engagements, to maintain every branch of this glorious reformation; a reformation, not only from the more gross errors, and idolatries of popery, but from the more refined superstition of prelacy, and all that antichristian and erastian supremacy, that in former times had been exercised on the heritage of the lord; a reformation of both the divine ordinances of ministry and magistracy, from all the abuses and corruptions thereof, by the inventions of men, joined with the above mentioned establishment of them, in some measure of agreeableness unto their scriptural institution. likeas, the presbytery did, and hereby do declare their approbation of, and adherence unto foresaid reformation, in all the different parts and branches thereof, attained from to inclusive, and sworn to in the national and solemn league and covenant, not exclusive of such parts of reformation as were attained unto prior to this, but as a further advance on this foundation, and as being much more pure and agreeable to the infallible standard of scripture, than any formerly arrived at in these nations. the daughter of zion, thus going forth in the perfection of her beauty, when all ranks and degrees voluntarily subjected themselves unto the royal scepter of the son of god, was most comely in the eyes of her beloved; but oh! how is the gold become dim, and the most fine gold changed; the stones of the sanctuary are poured out on the top of every street, so that the house that was called of all people the house of prayer, is now become a den of thieves, being no less infamously despicable for deformation, than formerly, for purity of reformation, highly admired. this, at first, began with the public resolutions of the commission of the general assembly , above noticed, for taking into places of power and trust, in judicatories and armies, such persons as were known malignants, and in heart disaffected to the work, and people of god, putting it in their power to destroy and pull down the lord's work at their pleasure; a practice manifestly inconsistent with their covenant engagements, and the word of god, _deut._ xxiii, , _chron._ xix, . those that were then called protestors (from their opposing and protesting against these resolutions), continued steadfastly to witness against the same, as the first remarkable step, to make way for that bloody catastrophe, that afterward befell the church. the lord, then, in his righteous displeasure and controversy with the nation, for betraying of his cause and interest into the hands of his enemies, sold them into the hand of that conquering usurper, oliver cromwell, who, having stript them of their civil liberties, as the most effectual method to rob the church of her spiritual privileges, and nullify the forcible obligation of the sacred covenants (which, when preserved, serve as a strong barrier against all such usurpations), framed a hellish and almost unbounded toleration in scotland, of heretical and sectarian errors, for gratification of the abettors thereof, which was followed with a deluge of irreligion and impiety, drowning the nation in a still deeper apostasy. in this hour of temptation, the witnesses for christ, endeavoring to keep the word of his patience, testified against these evils, as contrary to the word and oath of god, and destructive of the church's former glory. and charles ii, who had lately, by all the confirmations of word, writ, and solemn oath, obliged himself for the maintenance and defense of religion and liberty, having cast off the thing that was good, the enemy did pursue him so, that he, instead of being able to stand as a head of defense to the nations, narrowly escaped with life from the enemies' hands, being obliged to abscond and fly before the sectaries into france; where, and in other parts, he remained an exile for the space of ten years, and there discovered, he had no regard to the principles he had lately professed and sworn to maintain: but breaking his professed wedlock with christ, is said, at that juncture, to have joined hands with the romish whore, laying aside his cloak of professed godliness, and again taking up with the mystery of iniquity. during the ten years' usurpation of cromwell, those who endeavored faithfulness, had a fight of affliction to keep their ground; yet, after this came to a period, they had a far more fierce encounter, and of longer duration, to engage in, in the cruel and bloody tragedy acted upon them, for the space of years. as, by the public resolutions, and foresaid unbounded toleration, the bounds fixed by jehovah, and homologated and sworn to, in our national attainments and constitution, were greatly altered, so the parliament of england prepared the tools, whereby the carved work of the sanctuary (as far as human craft and cruelty could invent), was broken down, in restoring charles ii, without any conditions required, or express limitations set. and sharp being sent from the church of scotland, to stand up for her rights and privileges, fraudulently sold her into the hands of her enemies; upon which, many of the professed disciples of christ, who followed him in the sunshine of prosperity and reformation, forsook him, and fled into the enemies' camp. thus our decline began; but, oh! to what a dreadful height erastianism, tyranny, and bloodshed arrived, before the lord, in his providence, put a stop to it. although the presbytery cannot be supposed, in a consistency with their present design, to reckon up all, yet they would endeavor to take notice of some of the most remarkable instances of backsliding, treachery and oppression, bloodshed, &c, acted in those nations during the late persecuting period, together with the faithful contendings, and patient sufferings unto death of the saints and servants of christ, in this hot furnace of affliction into which they were cast. as, , the unhappy restoration of charles ii, in manner before mentioned commencing. the faithful declarations and testimonies given in favor of the covenanted reformation and uniformity, were all on a sudden given up with; the viper received into our bosom, and again advanced unto the regal dignity, who soon discovered himself to be of the serpentine seed, and by his wicked agency imped the dragon his master, by casting out of his mouth a flood of persecution after the church, that he might cause her to be destroyed therewith. to this effect the anti-christian yoke of abjured prelacy, with all its tyrannical laws, and canonical train of observances, service book, ceremonies, &c., was speedily wreathed about england's neck, and scotland soon felt part of its weight. for, in the month of _august_, , when some of her most zealous and faithful ministers met upon this emergency, in order to send an address to the king, reminding him of his duty, and solemn obligations to perform the same; the committee appointed by the parliament, _anno_ , for exercise of government, until another parliament should meet, who then showed themselves zealous for the reformation, yet now acted a counter-part, by incarcerating the foresaid ministers, and emitting a proclamation, prohibiting all such meetings without the king's authority, and all petitions and remonstrances, under pretense that they were seditious. this was the first beginning of those sorrows and calamities that ensued in the many sanguinary laws afterward made and executed upon the true friends of zion. . when the ministry, by means of the foresaid prohibitions, were much dispirited from their duty, dreading such usage as they had lately met with, the parliament which met in scotland in _december_, , falls upon breaking down the carved work of the sanctuary effectually, and robbing our church of that depositum committed unto her by her glorious head. thus did they wickedly combine and gather themselves together to plot against the lord, and against his anointed, that they might break his bands, and cast his cords from them. for which intent, after besmearing the consciences of most of the members with the guilt of that abominable and wicked oath of allegiance and supremacy, that they might be secured to the court and king's interest, and ready to swallow down whatever might be afterward proposed, they passed an act rescissory, declaring all the parliaments, and acts of parliament made in favor of reformation, from the year to , null and void. the king's supremacy over all persons, and in all causes, is asserted. all meetings, assemblies, leagues, and covenants, without the king's authority, are declared unlawful and unwarrantable. the renewing of the solemn league and covenant, or any other covenants or public oaths, without the king's special warrant and approbation, is discharged. besides these, another heinous act was framed by the same parliament, for observing every th of _may_ as an anniversary thanksgiving, in commemoration of the unhappy restoration of this ruiner of religion and reformation. . in the second session of the pretended parliament, _anno_ diocesan erastian prelacy is established, and the king solemnly invested with the church's headship, by act of parliament; wherein it is blasphemously declared, "that the ordering and disposal of the external government and policy of the church, doth properly belong unto his majesty as an inherent right of the crown, by virtue of his royal prerogative and supremacy in all causes ecclesiastical." all such acts of parliament or council are rescinded, which might be interpreted (as their acts bear) to give any church power, jurisdiction, or government, to the office-bearers of the church, other than that which acknowledges a dependence upon, and subordination to, the sovereign power of the king as supreme. and although the lordly prelates were hereby promoted to all the privileges and dignities they possessed before the year , yet must they be all accountable to the king, in all their administrations, and in subordination to him, as universal bishop of all england, scotland, and ireland. by which the fountain of church power and authority is lodged in the king's person, and christ is exauctorated and dethroned as king and head in zion. and further, by the second act of that perfidious parliament, the covenanted reformation, and all that was done in favor thereof, from to , was declared treasonable, and rebellious. alike treasonable it was reckoned for subjects, on pretense of reformation, or any other pretense whatsoever, to enter into any federal association, or take up arms against the king. they also declared, that the national covenant, as sworn in the year , and the solemn league and covenant, were, and are in themselves unlawful oaths, and that they were imposed upon, and taken by the subjects of this kingdom, contrary to the fundamental laws and liberties thereof. and to complete all, they repealed all acts, ecclesiastical and civil, approving the covenants, particularly the acts of the venerable assembly at glasgow , declaring it an unlawful and seditious meeting. and thereafter, by a wicked act of the council of glasgow, more than three hundred ministers were illegally thrust from their charges, for their non-conformity, in discountenancing a diocesan meeting, or synod, appointed by the archbishop of glasgow, and not observing the anniversary thanksgiving, _may_ th, enjoined by the parliament. the rest were violently ejected from the lawful exercise of their ministry in their several parishes, and were afterward commanded by act of parliament to remove themselves and their families twenty miles distant from their respective flocks, and not to reside within six miles of any of their (so called) cathedrals, or three miles of a burgh. by these means, many of those poor persecuted ministers, with their families, were brought into great hardships and wants, being so far removed from their beloved and affectionate flocks, that they were deprived of that help from them, that doubtless they would cheerfully have ministered, for relieving them in their necessities and straits. all this was done at the instigation of the prelates, who could not endure to have a godly presbyterian minister near them, and were resolved to make them as miserable as possible. as the observation of that anniversary holy day, _may_ th, was again enjoined by this parliament , with certification, the non-observance of which was one main cause of the sufferings of the ministers above noticed, we cannot pass over without mentioning that most abhorred and heaven-daring ignominy and contempt put upon our solemn and sacred covenants, and upon god the great party in them, at linlithgow on that day, by a theatrical exposing, and presumptuous committing them to the flames, together with _the causes of god's wrath, lex rex_, acts of parliament, acts of committees of estates, and acts of assemblies made, during what they called the twenty-two years' rebellion, that is, from to , done by the authority of the pretended magistrates there; one of which, and the minister ramsay, were formerly zealous and active covenanters, and consequently now publicly avowed and proclaimed their perjury in the face of the sun, and left an indelible stain upon their memory. hitherto, although many, both ministers, gentlemen and others, had endured unexpressible hardships and severities, yet few or none suffered to the death, save that noble peer, the marquis of _argyle_, who was condemned by the parliament , and beheaded _may_ th; and the reverend mr. _james guthrie_, who suffered five days thereafter. these two were singled out--the one in the state, the other in the church--to fall a victim to the resentment and fury of the enemies of that covenanted work of reformation, which they had both, in an eminent manner, been honored of god to support and advance; and also as a specimen of what was afterward to be the fate of all that should adhere to the same glorious cause, and stand up for god against these workers of iniquity. and, as the foundation of that anti-christian and wicked hierarchy in the church, and of arbitrary power and absolute tyranny in the state, was laid in the blood of these two proto-martyrs for the covenant and cause of god, so they now (_july_, ,) proceeded to build it up with the blood of another noble and worthy patriot, the eminently religious and learned lord _warriston_. he having before, in , when _argyle_ was apprehended, been ordered, together with several others, to be secured and committed to prison, fled beyond sea, to escape the fury of his enemies, and even there did their crafty malice reach him; for, having sent out one of their blood-thirsty emissaries in quest of him, he was apprehended by him at roan, in france, brought over to london, and sent thence to edinburgh, where he was executed on a former unjust sentence of forfeiture and death, passed upon him in his absence. thus they built up zion with blood, and jerusalem with iniquity. but all this was nothing to the cruelty that followed, and the righteous blood afterward shed in that quarrel. . although the faithful servants of christ gave too silent submission for a time to these encroachments made upon their sacred functions, yet, as they received not their mission from men, so they resolved not to become the servants of men, but to hazard the loss of every thing that was dear to them in this world, that they might show themselves faithful unto their lord and master, and valiant for his truth upon the earth, in going forth without the camp, bearing his reproach. when they could no longer, with a safe conscience, enjoy their benefices and churches, and the lord so expressly called for their service, in feeding the starving souls of his people, they betook themselves to the open fields, setting their faces to all the storms to which they were exposed by that high commission court that was erected; wherein the bishops were chief agents, being made therein necessary members for putting the former, with what subsequent wicked laws were made against the servants of christ, in execution. and, by this time, that deceiving, cruel, perjured, apostate bishop, _sharp_, had obtained the presidency in this and all other public courts in the kingdom. the proceedings of this court were very unjust, cruel and arbitrary, similar to its preposterous and illegal constitution. persons were, without any accusation, information, witness or accuser, arraigned before them, to answer _super inquirendis_ to whatever interrogatories they were pleased to propose, without license to make any lawful defense, or, upon their offering so to do, were required to take the oath of supremacy, their refusal of which was accounted cause sufficient for proceeding against them. and although taking order with papists was first in their commission, yet last, or rather not at all, in execution; while their infernal rage was principally set on presbyterians, in fining, confining and imprisoning them, for the non-conformity of ministers, and their disregarding their pretended sentences of deposition, and the people's refusing to countenance the authority and ministry of these prelatic wolves, who came in to scatter and tear the flock of christ, but endeavoring to cleave to their lawful pastors, have equal friends and foes with them, and hear christ's law of kindness from their mouth. the idol of jealousy was thus set up in the house of god, and our lord jesus christ sacreligiously robbed of his incommunicable supremacy and headship over his church by the state; whereby the pope's supremacy was well nigh claimed, and spanish inquisition cruelty almost acted, by this abominable court; and all at the instigation and for the gratification of these monsters of iniquity, the prelates, who still agitated the court to exercise more cruelty than even of themselves they were inclined to. . upon the decline of this rigorous court, new measures were again fallen upon for the oppression, suppression and extirpation, of the true reformed religion, and the professors of it. the council being very diligent and careful to deprive the lord's people of every thing which might contribute to their establishment and confirmation in the righteousness and equity of the cause and covenant of god for which they suffered, and which tended to expose their tyranny and treason against god, ordered the famous mr. brown's _apologetical relation_ to be burnt in the high street of edinburgh, on february th, , by the hand of the common hangman; and all persons who had copies of said book were required to give them up, and such as concealed them to be fined £. _scots_, if discovered. such was their hellish enmity and spite against our covenanted reformation, and every thing written in defense thereof, and in vindication of those that suffered for their adherence to it. about the same time, _sharp_, for the more effectual accomplishment of his wicked designs (the high commission being now dissolved, and his guilty conscience, it seems, suggesting fears of an insurrection of the oppressed, to relieve themselves from their cruel oppressors), obtains an order from the king for raising an additional number of forces, for the security and establishment of himself and his associates in their thrones of iniquity, by destroying all the faithful in the land, oppressing and wearing out the saints of the most high, and burning up and dispersing all the synagogues of god in the nation. in consequence of this, about three thousand foot, and eight troops of dragoons were got together, and the command of them given to _dalziel_ of _binns_, a wicked, fierce, cruel man. these were the instruments of that unprecedented barbarity, cruelty and oppression, committed in the west, after the defeat of colonel wallace and his little army of covenanters, at pentland hills, _november_ th, . the occasion and cause of which rising was, in short, this: sir _james turner_ had been sent the year before into the south-west shires of dumfries and kirkcudbright, in order to suppress conventicles (so they called the assemblies of god's people for public worship and other religious exercises), levy the fines appointed by the parliament, and oblige the people to conform and submit to the bishops and curates by force of arms. turner, in pursuance of these cruel orders, committed great severities, dreadfully oppressed, robbed and spoiled the country. in the parish of dalry, in galloway, three or four of his blackguard crew, seizing upon a poor countryman, carried him to his own house, and were going to torture him in a cruel manner, by setting him naked on a red-hot gridiron; which four of the persecuted party hearing of, they repaired to the house, disarmed the soldiers (upon their refusing to be entreated in behalf of the poor man), and delivered their fellow sufferer. and lest the rest of the soldiers quartered in the parish (to force people to keep their parish church), should fall upon them, being joined with seven or eight more of their friends, they attacked them early next morning, being about twelve in number, and disarmed them, killing one that made resistance. whereupon, the country being alarmed, and being apprehensive, from sad experience, of the revenge sir james would take upon the whole country for this affront, without distinction of age or sex, they determined to stand in their own defense. and, getting together a good number of horse and foot, they march to dumfries, surprise turner himself, take him prisoner, and disarm his soldiers, without any further violence. being thus by providence engaged, without any hope of retreat, and being joined by many more of their brethren in the same condition with themselves, some ministers, and colonel wallace (afterward chosen general), they come to lanerk, where they renew the covenant, _november_ th, , and thence to pentland hills, where, being attacked by dalziel and his blood-hounds, they were, notwithstanding their bravery in repulsing the enemy twice, at last totally routed, many killed and taken prisoners, most of the prisoners treacherously executed (notwithstanding they were taken upon solemn promise to have their lives spared), of whom the lord was graciously pleased, not only to accept of a testimony, by sufferings, but also countenanced them, even to admiration, in sealing the same with their blood. after this, there were severe edicts issued out against all who had any hand in this appearance for god's cause and covenant (called by them rebellion, a horrible conspiracy, and what not); all the subjects were strictly charged not to harbor, reset, supply, or in any manner of way correspond with any that were concerned in this engagement, but that they pursue and deliver them up to justice, or otherwise be esteemed and punished as favorers of it. this appearance for religion and liberty became, for a time, the principal crime of which those were indicted who were prosecuted by this wicked council, and other merciless enemies, to whom they committed the management of their affairs. . although the cruelty of the court had hitherto been very great, yet they had not wholly effectuated their wicked design of exterminating and destroying true religion, and the professors thereof, both ministers and people; but, like israel under pharaoh's yoke, the more they oppressed them, and suppressed their meetings, the more numerous and frequent they grew, so that their enemies were obliged to alter their course a little from cruelty into craft. this appeared in the first indulgence, granted _anno_ , with design to divide presbyterians among themselves, that they might the more easily destroy them. hereby a pretended liberty was given to several ministers ejected by the act of glasgow, (especially public resolutioners, who had formerly served the court interest in that matter), under certain restrictions, destructive of their ministerial freedom and faithfulness, to preach and exercise the other functions of the ministry in vacant churches. in this fraudulent snare many were taken; and even such of them as did accept of the indulgence, but did not keep by the instructions given them by the council, and observe the wicked anniversary, &c, were afterward prosecuted, fined, and some turned out. and those who refused compliance therewith, and testified against it, as flowing from that blasphemous supremacy and absolute power, which the king had assumed, were most severely handled, and their assemblies for public worship interdicted under the highest pains. a second indulgence was framed in the year , in which net they expected to inclose such as the first had not caught. by this, liberty was granted to a number of non-conformed ministers, named by the council, not yet indulged, to exercise their ministry in such places as the council thought fit to ordain and appoint them, conforming themselves to the rules given by the council to those that were formerly indulged, besides other restrictions, wherewith this new liberty was clogged. and, as one special design of the court, in granting both the first and this second indulgence, was to put an effectual stop to the meetings of the lord's people, ludicrously called by them field conventicles, so they took occasion, on account of their contempt of this their indulgence and liberty, to prosecute all such as kept, or attended on, these meetings, in a more merciless and furious manner. this indulgence was accepted by many ministers; and part thereof, by others, represented as a grievance, and redress required. but although nothing of this kind was obtained, yet it was fallen in with and accepted by most of those who subscribed the remonstrance against it; and those few who rejected it, and continued faithfully to discharge their official trust in the open fields, without coming under any of these sinful restrictions, became, more especially, the butt of their enemies' malice and tyranny, were more vigorously prosecuted, and such as were suspected or convicted of attending on their field meetings, were fined in an exorbitant manner, and ministers imprisoned, when they could be apprehended. and because these field meetings, the great eye-sore of the prelates, still increased, they prevailed with the council , to take more special notice of the preachers at said meetings, who appointed a committee for that effect, and ordered their chancelor to send out parties to apprehend certain of them, according to their direction. and the same year, a bond was imposed, binding and obliging tenants, that if they, their wives, or any of their children, cottars or servants, should keep or be present at any conventicles, either in houses or fields, that every tenant laboring land be fined for each house conventicle in £. _scots_; each cottar in _£. scots_; each servant man in a fourth part of his year's fee, and husbands the half of these fines for such of their wives and children as shall be at house conventicles; and the double of these respective fines for each of the said persons who shall be at any field conventicles, &c. and upon refusal of said bond, they were to be put to the horn, and their escheat or forfeiture given to their masters. they likewise, at the same time, issued forth another proclamation, for apprehending the holders of, and repairers to, field meetings, by them designed rebels, and whoever should seize such should have the fines, so unjustly imposed, for their reward; with a particular sum offered for apprehending any of the conventicle preachers, and this sum doubled for some that were more eminent among them, and diligent in working the work of him that sent them, against whom their malice was more especially turned. these rigorous measures they continued to prosecute; and in the year , letters of intercommuning were given out against several ministers and private christians, by name, both denouncing them rebels, and secluding them from all society in the kingdom of scotland; further requiring, that no accommodation should be given, or communication any manner of way held with them, under the pain of being (according to them) accounted _socii criminis_, and pursued as guilty, with them, of the same crimes. these inhuman and unprecedented methods reduced the sufferers to many wanderings and great hardships. it is impossible to recite the miseries these faithful confessors underwent--wandering about in deserts, in mountains, in dens, and in caves of the earth, destitute, afflicted, tormented; besides the other severe impositions upon the country in general, the bonds imposed, and rage of the _highland_ host then raised, which, together with the soldiers, greatly spoiled and robbed the west country especially, by which means, poor people were brought to very low circumstances. . notwithstanding of all the tyranny and treachery hitherto exercised, the word of god grew, and converts unto christ, and the obedience of the gospel, were daily multiplied; ministers being forward and willing to preach, and the people willing to hear and receive the law from their mouth, on all hazards. and the lord jesus, following his word and ordinances with his blessing, showed himself as mighty and powerful in the open fields, whither they were driven, as ever he had done in their churches, from whence they were driven, and which were now shut against them, and filled with time-servers, and antichrist's vassals. but against christ's standard and banner thus displayed, the tyrant charles ii erected his opposite standard for the utter destruction of christ's true servants and subjects. and having declared their lawful meetings for the worship of god, according to his word, execrable rendezvouses of rebellion; a convention of estates, _anno_ , was called and met, by which a large cess was imposed to maintain an additional army, for the suppression of the true religion and liberty, and securing tyranny and arbitrary government. on account of the imposition of this cess, and the rigorous exaction of it, together with the cruelties and ravages of this new army maintained by it (the soldiers having commission to dismiss and disperse their meetings, disarm, imprison and kill preachers and people, in case of resistance; and a price being put upon the heads of several faithful ministers if brought to the council dead or alive), both ministers and people were laid under the necessity of carrying arms for their own defense when dispensing and attending upon gospel ordinances. and it was no wonder that, finding themselves thus appointed as sheep for the slaughter, they looked upon this as their duty, and accordingly provided themselves with arms for their necessary defense against the wicked violence of those who thirsted after their blood, and (which was to them much more dear and precious) the ruin and destruction of the cause, interest, and gospel of christ in the land. unto these severe and hellish measures fallen upon at this time, for the more effectual suppression and extirpation of the gospel of christ, and professors of it, the managers were principally instigated by that arch-apostate _sharp_; though a bad preparative for his exit out of this world, which soon came to pass, _anno_ , in the dispensation of adorable providence and righteous judgment of god, executed upon such a notorious traitor, who, having first betrayed the church, and all along deeply imbrued his hands in the blood of god's saints and servants; had blood given him to drink because he was worthy. . that the land might be more deeply soaked with blood, and made more heavily to groan under the inhabitants thereof, "who had transgressed the laws, changed the ordinances, and broken the everlasting covenant;" that the scene of cruel suffering might be more widely opened, and the bloody tragedy more effectually acted; the primate's death must now be added to the other pretended crimes of the sufferers. many were terribly harrassed on that account, who were no ways concerned in the action; and some were cruelly tortured and butchered by them for the same cause, though innocent thereof (for none of the actors did ever fall into their hands). these enemies were hereby rendered more rude, barbarous and hard-hearted to all the sufferers who afterward fell into their hands, and breathed out threatenings and slaughter against the whole body of the persecuted presbyterians through the nation. all this, however, did not dispirit these zealous witnesses, or discourage them from attending to their work and duty; for we find them on the th of _may_, , publishing their testimony at _rutherglen_, against the wicked anniversary, on the same day appointed by the court for its celebration, and against all that had been done publicly by these enemies of christ for the overthrow of his work and interest in the lands. they likewise committed their acts rescissory, supremacy, act restoring abjured prelacy, act of _glasgow_, , the presumptuous act for appointing _may_ th for an unholy anniversary, indulgences, &c., all to the flames, their just desert, in retaliation of the impious treatment given unto our solemn and sacred covenants, and other good and laudable acts and laws for reformation, by their sacrilegious enemies in sundry cities of these covenanted kingdoms. and so, after extinguishing the bonfires, a part of the unholy solemnity of the enemies' anniversary day, and concluding what they had done with prayer and praise, as they had begun (mr. _douglas_, one of their ministers being along with them), they withdrew. this christian valor was followed with the lord's appearance for them, in a remarkable manner, on the following _sabbath_ at _drumclog_ near _lowdonhill_, where being attacked by _claverhouse_, when attending on public worship, they completely routed him and his troops, rescued mr. _john king_, and a number of other prisoners, whom _claverhouse_ had seized that morning, from their hands. afterward they declared the grounds and causes of their present defensive posture, in that short manifesto, or declaration, published at _glasgow, june th_, . but when their numbers multiplied, their divisions increased, and lawful means for honestly defending the cause were by the majority refused. mr. _welsh_ and that erastian party with him, being by this time come up, did in their declaration at _hamilton_, take in the tyrant's interest; against which, those who were honest and faithful to the interest of zion's king contended, and protested, that in conscience they could not take in the interest of one into the state of the quarrel who had manifestly stated himself in opposition to the interest of christ; that it was inconsistent with the covenant, which could not bind them to espouse the interest of its destroyers, and the destroyers of all that adhered to it; and also contrary to their testimony and declaration for the covenants and work of reformation at _rutherglen, glasgow, &c._, and against all defection from the same. thus, when the most part in a great measure forsook the lord, he was justly provoked to forsake them, and their great divisions landing them in such confusion, they became an easy prey to the enemy, by whom they were totally routed at _bothwell, june. d_, , where they felt the dismal fruits and consequences of joining at all with that erastian faction, after they had openly declared and discovered what they were. this was so far from proving any defense to them, notwithstanding the numbers of that party, that it proved their destruction. and those whose hearts were upright and honest in the cause of god, by their means, in holy sovereignty, were made to fall a sacrifice to their enemies' wrath. the slain on that day were many, and the after-cruelty to prisoners great; they being carried into and kept for a long time in the _gray-friars_ church yard of _edinburgh_, exposed, defenseless, night and day, to tempests of all kinds. by this inhuman usage (with design to wear out the saints of the most high), together with the insinuations and persuasions of some of the indulgence favorers, their faith failing them in this hour of temptation, and fear prevailing, a number of these prisoners were persuaded to take the insnaring bond of peace, whereby they were engaged to own their rising at _bothwell_ to be rebellion, and to oblige themselves never to rise in arms against the king, and to live peaceably, &c., while others of them were tortured, not accepting deliverance. . although this defeat and dispersion of the espousers of the truth and cause of christ, in opposition both to its avowed enemies and secret betrayers, brought the remnant that were left into very melancholy circumstances, their enemies having in a great measure extinguished the light of the gospel, by apprehending and shedding the blood of their faithful pastors, who used to hold forth the word of life unto them, as a light whereby they might discern between sin and duty; and others who had formerly been helpful unto them, in strengthening their hands, and encouraging their hearts, in the way of their duty, were overtaken and overborne with fainting and discouragement; so that, in respect of public guides, they wore at this time as sheep without a shepherd. yet, in this disconsolate and scattered state and condition, christ, the chief shepherd, had compassion on them, and raised up those two faithful ministers and zealous contenders for the faith once delivered to the saints, messrs. _richard cameron_ and _donald cargill_, to come forth for the help of the lord against the mighty, and to jeopard their lives along with his people in the high places of the field, in bearing faithful testimony for his noble truths and cause, and against all the sins and defections of the time. the first of these, soon after he had showed his activity and zeal in that banner displayed against the church's enemies, in the declaration published at _sanquhar, june d_, , did honorably and bravely finish his course, among many others of zion's true friends, in the defeat they again sustained at _airsmoss_, where, in imitation of his princely master, he valiantly fought his way to the incorruptible crown. the latter afterward narrowly escaped his enemies' hands (by means of mr. _henry hall_, of _haughhead_, that honest sufferer for truth, who, to save his minister's life, lost his own; on whom the _queensferry_ paper, a draft of a covenant engagement unto certain duties, was found), and was, by the power and providence of god, preserved, until he accomplished that signal piece of generation work in drawing forth the sword of excommunication against the tyrant _charles_ ii, and some others of the chief actors in that bloody tragedy. and that, because of their bloodshed, perjury, heaven-daring profaneness, debauchery, inhuman and savage cruelty acted upon the people of god. the which sentence stuck fast in the hearts of these enemies of zion's king unto the day of their death, and, by some of their own acknowledgments, would through eternity. shortly after this, that faithful minister crowned his work with martyrdom, and entered into his master's joy. this murdering period spared neither pastor nor people, age nor sex; while gross transgressors, and deluded enthusiasts, as _gib_ and his faction, were screened from condign punishment, though some of them had arrived at that prodigious length in wickedness as to commit the holy scriptures and confession of faith to the flames. . so many of these once living and lively witnesses for christ being, now slain, and what was yet surviving of the scattered flock deprived of their painful shepherds, and not being able to drink of the sanctuary waters, so muddied by their former pastors, who had defiled the same by sinful compliance with the time's defections, they resolved, under divine direction, to gather themselves together into a general meeting, for advising and informing one another anent their duty, in such critical times of common danger, that so whatever concerned the whole, might be done with due deliberation and common consent. the which general meetings afterward afforded them both good comfort amidst their discouragements, and also good counsel amidst their perplexities and doubts, and proved an excellent expedient for preserving the remnant from the destruction and contagion of the times, propagation of the testimony, and keeping alive the public spirit of zeal and concern for the cause and interest of christ; and for these ends they have been kept up ever since. in the meantime, that evil instrument, _james_, duke of _york_, receiving commission from his perjured brother to preside in the whole administration of _scots'_ affairs, upon his arrival for this effect, held a parliament, which began _july_ th, ; wherein, besides other of his wicked acts, that detestable, blasphemous, and self-contradictory test was framed, which, in the first part thereof, contains the swearer's solemn declaration, by oath, of his sincere profession of the true protestant religion, contained in the first confession of faith, ratified by _parl. st, james vi_, (which confession asserts, in the strongest terms, christ's alone headship and supremacy as lawgiver and king in his church, without copartner or competitor), and that he shall adhere thereunto all the days of his life, and renounce all doctrines, principles, or practices contrary thereto, and inconsistent therewith; while, in manifest contradiction thereto, the blasphemous supremacy, in the utmost extent thereof, is asserted--the covenants national and solemn league, the chief barriers against popery, erastianism, and arbitrary power, are renounced, and unlimited allegiance unto the occupant is enjoined and sworn to, and the prelatical government of the church confirmed. this oath was at first administered to those in public trust only, and thereby all were turned out of their places who had any principles of common honesty remaining in them; but afterward it was imposed on all persons of all ranks. against which sinful encroachments on religion and liberty, the witnessing persecuted remnant accounted themselves bound in duty to emit their testimony, which they published at _lanerk, january_ th, , adhering to, and confirming their former at _sanquhar_, and giving reasons at length for their disowning the unlawful authority of _charles ii_. upon intelligence hereof, this declaration, with those at _rutherglen_ and _sanquhar_, were, by order of the council, with great solemnity, burnt at the cross of _edinburgh_, by the magistrates in their robes, together with the solemn league and covenant, which had been burnt formerly: but now they would give new demonstrations of their rage against it, in conjunction with these declarations, which they saw and acknowledged were evidently conformed to, and founded upon it. after the publication of this testimony, the sufferings of that poor people that owned it were sadder and sharper than ever before, by hunting, pursuing, apprehending, imprisonment, banishment, death, and torture; this increasing rage, oppression, cruelty, and bloodshed, being no more than what they might look for, agreeable to the spirit and principles of that popish incendiary, to whom such trust was committed. . the poor wrestling remnant, besides their other grievous calamities and sufferings, being now obnoxious to much censure, in their appearances for truth reproached, and invidiously misrepresented, both at home and abroad, by those that were at ease in zion, as having forsaken the right way, and run into wild, extravagant, and unhappy courses; and, withal, being at this time destitute and deprived of their public standard bearers; their series of witnesses (since the death of messrs. _cameron_ and _cargill_) maintaining the testimony against the public national defections being in all appearance interrupted, except by martyrdom and sufferings; they were obliged to exert themselves, both for their vindication from those calumnies and slanders, wherewith they were loaded by their enemies, to foreign protestant churches especially, and for obtaining a supply of gospel ministers. wherefore, sending some of their number abroad, to represent the righteousness of their cause to the churches there, and crave their sympathy, in helping them to a supply of gospel ministers; the lord was graciously pleased to countenance and bless their endeavors so, that they obtained access for the instruction and ordination of young men for the ministry, at a university in the _united provinces_; and, in process of time, gave them a great reviving in their bondage, by sending forth his faithful embassador, mr. _james renwick_, who, while he stood on zion's watch-tower, ceased not night and day to give faithful warning of the danger approaching the city of god, evidently discovering his being clothed with his master's commission, in bearing faithful testimony and witness, both against the avowed enemies of truth and backsliders from it. and notwithstanding all the malicious rage of deadly foes, ranging and keenly pursuing him, through open or more secret places, the reproach of tongues and cruel mockings he endured, by the divine blessing, on his painful labors, amidst his many hardships, the number of zion's friends were greatly increased, by the incoming and joining of many to the fellowship of their settled societies, who resolutely chose rather to suffer affliction with the people of god than to enjoy the pleasures of sin, which are but for a season. upon this further attack upon satan's interest, his emissaries issue forth fresh orders, and give commission to soldiers, foot and dragoons, to hunt, search, and seek them out of all their most secret dens, caves, and lurking places, where they might hide themselves, in the most remote and wildest glens and recesses in the mountains and deserts, allowing them to kill, slay, destroy, and any way to make an end of them, wherever they might be found; commanding the whole country, at their peril, to assist them, and raise the hue and cry after the poor wanderers, and not to reset, harbor, succor, or correspond with them any manner of way, under the highest pains, but to do their utmost in informing against them. thus, without regard to any of their unlawful forms of legal procedure, they defiled and besmeared the high places of the field with innocent blood. these unprecedented methods and measures obliged the sufferers, for their own preservation, stopping the deluge of blood, and to deter the insolence of intelligencers and informers, to publish the apologetic declaration, which they affixed on several market crosses, and parish church doors, upon the th of _october_, ; wherein they declare their firm resolution of constant adherence to their covenanted engagements; and to the declaration disowning the authority of _charles stuart_, warning all bloody doegs and flattering ziphites, to expect to be dealt with as they deal with them; to be regarded as enemies to god, and the covenanted reformation, and according to their power, and the degree of their offense, punished as such, &c. after this declaration, these enemies were still more enraged, and their fury flamed more than ever formerly. they framed an oath, commonly called the oath of abjuration, renouncing and abjuring the same, and by a venomous bloody proclamation, enjoined this oath to be taken by all universally, from sixteen years and upward, women as well as men, under pain of death; and many prisoners who having the oath tendered them, refused or declined it, were sentenced, and executed all in one day, according to the tenor of their proclamation. and, moreover, they, on this occasion, renewed their orders and commission to the soldiers, for pursuing and chasing after the rebels (as they designed them) more vigorously and violently, and to shoot, or otherwise put them to death wherever they did light upon them. in the midst of this confusion of slaughter and bloodshed, god cut off by death, _february_ th, , that vile person, the author and authorizer of all this mischief, _charles ii_, who, _antiochus_ like, came in peaceably, and obtained the kingdom by flattery (_dan._ xi), reigned treacherously and bloodily, and like that wicked king, _jehoram_ ( _chron._ xxi), died without being desired or lamented, poisoned, as was thought, by his unnatural popish brother. and, notwithstanding of all his bastards, begotten in adultery and fornication, at home and abroad, he died without any to succeed him, save him that was said to have murdered him. god pursued him with the curse of _hiel_ the _bethelite_, for his rebuilding of that cursed _jericho_, prelacy; and of that impious and wicked tyrant, _coniah_ (_jer._ xxii), for his treachery and cruelty; "thus saith the lord, write ye this man childless, a man that shall not prosper in his days, for no man of his seed shall prosper, sitting any more upon the throne of _israel_." . notwithstanding the abundant proof that the duke of _york_ had given, in many instances, and in both kingdoms, of his being a vassal of antichrist, and notwithstanding of his open and public profession of papistry, upon his brother's death, fairly warning all what they might expect, yet were not those, who sat at the helm of affairs, deterred from committing the reins of government into his hands; but contrary to the word of god, and fundamental laws of the lands, this professed and excommunicate papist _james_, duke of _york_, was, _anno_ , proclaimed king of these once covenanted, but now treacherous and apostate lands, whereby they appointed themselves a captain to return into their anti-christian bondage. to this grievous yoke our infamous, perjured, and apostate state and council in _scotland_, heartily and voluntarily subjected themselves and the nation, while others did it with reluctancy, caressing and embracing with their dearest and best affections, this enemy to god, and christ, and his church, swearing implicit and unlimited obedience unto him, and asserting his absolute power and supremacy, indefeasible and hereditary right, without ever so much as requiring him to take the coronation oath, or give the least security for, any thing civil or religious (a depth of degeneracy, parallel to that eminency in reformation purity, from which they were fallen!) but laid the reins on his own neck, that he might have full freedom for the satisfying of his lusts, and fulfilling his wicked designs. this laid religion, liberty, and all, at the mercy of absolute power and popish tyranny; and still more and more cut off the people of god from having any hopes of mercy from their bloody enemies; on the contrary, the duke of _york_, in his letter to his first parliament, recommends and requires them to leave no means unattempted, for the extirpation of the poor wandering sufferers, whom he brands with the odious names of murderers and assassins, wild and inhuman traitors, &c. and these his ready servants and bloody executioners, came nothing short of his orders in the execution of them; so that there were more murdered in cold blood in the open fields, without all shadow of law, trial or sentence, more banished and sold as slaves, condemned and executed, &c., in the time of this usurper, than in all the time of the former tyrant. as the honest sufferers, consistent with their testimony for truth, in opposition both to the secret and open subvertors of the cause and state of zion's quarrel with her enemies, could not concur in _argyle's_ declaration (although there were many things in it materially good, and commend-worthy), nor join in a military association with him, on account (among other things) of the too promiscuous admission of persons to trust in that party, who were then, and afterward discovered themselves to be, enemies to the cause. yet, against this usurpation of a bloody papist, advancing himself to the throne in such a manner, they published another declaration at _sanquhar, may_ , ; wherein, approving of, and adhering to all their former, and considering that _james_, duke of _york_, a professed and excommunicated papist, was proclaimed: they protest against said proclamation, with reasons subjoined at length for their so doing--against all kinds of popery, general and particular heads, as abjured by the national covenant--against its entry again into this land, and every thing that doth, or may directly or indirectly, make way for the same, &c. after this, mr. _renwick_ and his followers were exposed to the greater fury of their adversaries; more cruel edicts were given forth against them, approving and ratifying of former acts, for raising the hue and cry, &c., whereby their calamities were very much increased, besides the slanders of professed friends, on account of their not associating and joining with them in their compliances, although, to the conviction of all unbiassed minds, they fully vindicated themselves from all their injurious reflections. the extirpation of the presbyterian interest--nay, the suppression of the protestant religion in general, the reintroduction of popery, and plunging the nations in anti-christian darkness and tyranny, being the long concerted design of this popish bigot now got into the throne; he resolves to lose no time, and leave no stone unturned, for the prosecution and accomplishment thereof. and having made tolerable progress in the execution of this his favorite scheme (although not without opposition), in _england_, he turns himself to _scotland_, expecting an entire acquiescence in his pleasure there, having found the first parliament, which began, d _may_, , so much according to his own heart, in their hearty and sincere offer of their lives and fortunes, to assist, defend, and maintain him in his rights, prerogatives, sacred, supreme, and absolute power and authority, &c. wherefore, the parliament being to meet again _april_ , , in his letter to them, "he heartily recommends to their care his innocent roman catholic subjects, to the end, that as they have given good experience of their true loyalty and peaceable behavior, they may have the protection of his laws, without lying under obligations their religion could not admit of; that all penal laws made against them might be repealed, &c." but though many were for obliging their king in this particular, yet it could not be carried without debates and strong objections; so that, dissolving the parliament, what he could not obtain there, with any show or face of law, he effectuates, by virtue of the prerogative royal and absolute power, in a letter to his privy council, and proclamation inclosed, bearing date _february_ , , granting a royal toleration to moderate presbyterians, clogged with a number of grievous erastian conditions and restrictions, as usual. secondly, to quakers and other enthusiasts. thirdly, to papists, abrogating all penal statutes made against them, and making them in all respects free. and so devoted were the privy council to his interests, that without demur they published the proclamation, and wrote back to the king, "that his orders were punctually obeyed, thanking him for this further proof of his favors to all his subjects." thus, this champion for satan and antichrist proceeded with his wicked design, and so far succeeded; all kinds of papistry were publicly practiced, and many churches converted to mass chapels. for, before this, by the king's letter to his privy council, of _august_ st, , papists were allowed the free exercise of their religion, the council required to support and maintain them therein, and the royal chapel at _holyrood-house_ ordered to be repaired for popish service. by which means a door was opened for that swarm of jesuits and priests, ascending as locusts out of the bottomless pit, which quickly overspread the lands. but notwithstanding of all this indulgence and royal toleration granted to these three forementioned parties, yet there is no favor nor mercy for the honest and faithful sufferers, and honorable contenders for the interests and prerogatives royal of jesus christ, against his sacrilegious and blasphemous usurpation of the same. but while he thinks fit to give ease (as himself says) by this means, to tender consciences, he at the same time signifies his highest indignation against those enemies of christianity (he means popery) as well as government, and human society, the field-conventiclers, whom he recommends to the council to root out, with all the severity of the laws, and the most rigorous persecution of the forces, it being equally his, and his people's concern to get rid of them. in consequence of this, all their artillery is directed against the rev. mr. _james renwick_ only, and that poor, afflicted, and persecuted people that adhered to him (all others being comprehended in the pretended liberty granted), so that they were prosecuted with fire and sword, and according to the utmost severity of their wicked laws made against them, and a reward of a hundred pounds _sterling_ offered by the bloody council to any that should bring in mr. _renwick_ to them, either dead or alive. but he having his generation work allotted and cut out for him by god, was preserved and kept from falling into their hands, until that he had finished the work his master had given him to do, notwithstanding all this hellish and anti-christian rage and fury wherewith they did pursue him. about the beginning of the year , he, in conjunction with mr. _alexander shields_, who had lately joined him, wrote the informatory vindication, by way of reply to various accusations in letters, informations and conferences, given forth against them and their people, wherein they vindicate, clear and justify themselves from the heavy and false charges, slanders and reproaches, cast upon them by their enemies, as may be seen in said book. about this time, also, mr. _shields_ set about writing his _hind let loose_ (which was published next year), or, a historical representation of the testimonies of the church of _scotland_ for the interest of christ, with the true state thereof in all its periods; wherein he also solidly, soundly, and judiciously vindicates the present testimony, in all the principles thereof, as stated, against the popish, prelatical, and malignant enemies of that church, for the prerogatives of christ, privileges of the church and liberties of mankind, and sealed by the sufferings of a reproached remnant of presbyterians there, witnessing against the corruptions of the time. whilst these two loving and faithful fellow-laborers were thus industriously exerting themselves for the propagation and vindication of the persecuted gospel, and cause of christ; that fiery jesuit, popish tyrant, and enemy to god and man, the duke of _york_, and his popish party, were equally industrious on the other hand, to promote their grand design of utterly extinguishing the light of the gospel, and bringing in antichrist, with all his poisonous and hellish vermin, and abominable idolatries; and that, with all the murdering violence, diabolical subtilty and malignant rage that hell and _rome_ could invent and exert. he had formerly published a proclamation (as is noticed above), granting a lawless liberty to several sorts of persons therein specified, called his first indulgence; but breathing nothing but threatenings and slaughter against the people of god, who stood firm to his cause. but withal, this proclamation, enjoined an oath in the room of all oaths formerly imposed, to be taken by all that minded to share in his royal favor; wherein they swore, not only absolute subjection and passive obedience, never to resist him, not only on any pretense, but for any cause, let him do, or command to be done what he would; but also, absolute, active obedience, without reserve: "that they shall, to the utmost of their power, assist, defend, and maintain him, his heirs and successors, in the exercise of their absolute power and authority, against all deadly." this was so palpably gross and odious, that it was disdained and abhorred by all that had common sense. wherefore, finding that this proposal did not take, nor answer his design, in a letter to the council, bearing date about a month after the former, he endeavors to mend the matter, and set it out in another dress, pretending that they had mistaken his meaning in the former, and so lets them know, that it is his pleasure now, that if the presbyterian preachers do scruple to take the oath (contained in the proclamation), or any other oath whatsoever, they, notwithstanding, have the benefit of his indulgence (without being obliged to take the oath), provided they observe the conditions on which it was granted. but this not having the desired effect neither, it is followed with the third indulgence or toleration, emitted by proclamation, dated th _june_, , excellently well calculated for obtaining his end; wherein, after a solemn declaration of his intention to maintain his archbishops and bishops, he does, by his sovereign authority, prerogative royal, and absolute power, suspend, stop and disable, all penal and sanguinary laws, made against any for non-conformity to the religion established by law--granting liberty to all the subjects to meet and serve god, after their own way, in private houses or chapels, or places purposely hired or built for that use, with an injunction to take care that nothing be preached or taught, that might any way tend to alienate the hearts of the people from him and his government: but, notwithstanding the premises, strictly prohibiting all field meetings, against all which all his laws and acts of parliament are left in full force and vigor; and all his judges, magistrates and officers of forces, commanded to prosecute such as shall be guilty of said field conventicles, with the utmost rigor; and all this under pretense, that now, after this his royal grace and favor, there is not the least shadow of excuse left for these meetings. wherefore, he is confident, that none will, after these liberties and freedoms given to all, to serve god in their own way, further presume to meet in these assemblies, except such as make a pretense of religion, to cover their treasonable designs against his royal person, and peace of his government. the most of the presbyterian ministers in _scotland_ took the benefit of this wicked and boundless toleration, chiefly designed in favor of papists. and a large number of them, being met at _edinburgh_, agreed upon, and, in name of all the rest, sent an address of thanks to the tyrant for his toleration, stuffed with the most loathsome and blasphemous flatteries, to the dishonor of god, the reproach of his cause, and betraying of his church. for, in this address, dated _july_ st, , designating themselves the loyal subjects of this true religion and liberty destroyer, they offer him their most humble and hearty thanks for his favor bestowed, and bless the great god who put it into his heart to grant them this liberty, which they term a great and surprising favor, professing a fixed resolution still to maintain an entire loyalty, both in their doctrine and practice (consonant to their known, principles, which, according to the holy scriptures, are contained in the _confession of faith_); and they humbly beseech, that any who promote disloyal principles and practices (as they disown them) may not be looked upon as any of theirs, whatever name they may assume to themselves; and that, as their address comes from the plainness and sincerity of loyal and thankful hearts, so they were much engaged by his royal favor, to continue their fervent prayer to the king of kings, for divine illumination and conduct, and all other blessings, both spiritual and temporal, ever to attend his person and government. thus these men made themselves naked to their shame, and declared to the world, that they did only presumptuously arrogate to themselves the name of presbyterians; whereas, in reality, they were quite another kind of creatures, acting diametrically opposite to presbyterian principles, in congratulating, extolling and justifying a tyrant, for assuming to himself a blasphemous, absolute power, whereby he suspends and disables all penal laws against idolators, and gives a toleration for all errors. but while these pretended presbyterians, who all along loved peace better than truth, and preferred their own ease before the concerns of their master's glory, were thus sheltering themselves under this refuge of lies; true presbyterians, who kept by presbyterian principles, and acted a faithful part for christ, refusing to bow down to the idol of supremacy, which the tyrant had set up, or pay any regard to his blasphemous toleration, were pursued, persecuted, and slain, without pity or compassion, all the engines of the court being leveled against them for their destruction, because they would still reserve to themselves the liberty wherewith christ had made his people free, and not exchange it for one from antichrist, restricted with his reserves and limitations; so that (as mr. _shields_ tells us in his account of mr. _james renwick's_ life), in less than five months after the toleration, there were fifteen most desperate searches particularly for him, both of foot and horse: and, that all encouragement might be given to any who would apprehend him, a proclamation was issued, dated _october_ th, "authorizing all officers, civil and military, to apprehend and secure in firmance his person, with some others; and for encouragement, insuring the sum of _ £ sterling_ for taking him, or them, dead or alive." in the midst of all these hazards, this unwearied and faithful laborer did notwithstanding continue at his work, in preaching, catechising, &c., and the lord still preserved him from falling into the enemy's hand, until he had finished that piece of generation work, in drawing up a full and faithful testimony against _york's_ toleration, and for the covenants and work of reformation, &c., which he gave in to a meeting of presbyterian ministers at _edinburgh_, on the th _january_, ; and going thence to _fife_, whither he was called to preach, in his return, was apprehended at _edinburgh_, and called to seal his above testimony, with all his other contendings against popery, prelacy, erastianism, and all defection from the land's attainments in reformation, with his blood, which he did in the _grass market_ of _edinburgh_, th of _february_, , with a remarkable and extraordinary measure of the lord's gracious presence and spirit, not only in this part of his sufferings, but all the time of his imprisonment. the lord hereby bearing witness, both to the truth of that cause for which he suffered, and also testifying his gracious acceptance of his sufferings, and of the free-will-offering of his life, which he laid down for his sake. and as neither the violence nor flattery of enemies could prevail with this faithful confessor and martyr himself, to quit with one hair or hoof of what belonged to christ, so he recommended to the poor scattered remnant which he left, as part of his dying counsel, to keep their ground, and not to quit nor forego one of these despised truths, which he was assured the lord, when he returned to bind up the breach of his people, and heal them of their wound, would make glorious in the earth. thus that worthy minister, and now glorified martyr of jesus, through a chain of sufferings, and train of enemies, fought his way unto an incorruptible and immortal crown of endless glory. he was the last that sealed the testimony for religion and liberty, and the covenanted work of reformation, against popery, prelacy, erastianism, and tyranny, in a public manner, on the scaffold, with his blood. after the death of this renowned martyr, he was succeeded by the eminent mr. _alexander shields_, who carried on, and maintained, the testimony, as it was stated, in all the heads and clauses thereof, continuing to preach in the fields. on which account, he, and the people who attended his ministry, were exposed for some time longer to the fury and resentment of their enemies. but their power, which they had so long perverted and abused, quickly came to a period. for in a few months, god, in his righteous judgment and adorable providence, overturned that throne of iniquity on which they depended, and expelled that inhuman, cruel monster, from his tyrannical and usurped power, upon the prince of orange's coming over into _england_, in the beginning of _november_ that same year. but, although the lord at this juncture, and by this means, rescued and delivered our natural and civil rights and privileges in a national way from under the oppression and bondage of anti-christian tyranny, arbitrary and absolute power, yet the revolution, at this time, brought no real deliverance to the church of god. but christ's rights,[ ] formerly acquired for him by his faithful servants, lay still buried under the rubbish of that anti-christian building of prelacy, erected on the ruins of his work in this land; and the spiritual liberties and privileges of his house remained, and do still remain under the bondage of erastianism, supremacy, toleration, &c. for it is well known, that although this man, jehu-like, "destroyed _baal_ out of _israel_, yet he departed not from the sins of _jeroboam_, wherewith he made _israel_ to sin." about this time, the united societies (having no actual minister since mr. _renwick's_ death, mr. _shields_ being only preacher) sent over some commissioners from their general meeting to _embden_, one of the united provinces, to bring over mr. _thomas linning_, a young man whom they had sent thither some years before in mr. _renwick's_ time, to the university there, and for ordination. in consequence hereof, the said mr. _linning_ came home, with testimonials of his ordination to the ministry by the classes at _embden_; and in conjunction with mr. _shields_ and mr. _william boyd_ (another of their ministers, who had also come from holland about this time), renewed the covenants national and solemn league, and dispensed the sacrament of the lord's supper near lesmahago, in clydesdale, and continued to preach to the people for about four months, until the first general assembly (so called) met at edinburgh - . at which time, he, with his two brethren, in their own name, and the name of their people, presented a paper to that assembly, bearing on what terms they and their people would join in communion with them; only craving that they might all join in humbling themselves before the lord, and acknowledge and bewail their fathers', their own, and the land's many and heinous iniquities, and breaches of covenant, before they proceeded to any other business, and so have their public sins and scandalous compliances washed away by repentance, and calling upon the name of the lord jesus. that they would purge out from among them, all ignorant, insufficient, heterodox, and notoriously scandalous ministers, such as, by information, accusation, or otherways, were guilty of the blood of the saints, &c. but these proposals were reckoned unseasonable and impracticable, tending rather to kindle contention, than compose division, and so were thrown over their bar. the generality of these men were so plunged and puddled in the ditch of defection and apostasy, that they could not think of the drudgery of cleansing themselves in god's way, by a particular and public confession of, and humiliation for their own and the land's public sins, but chose rather to sit down filthy and polluted as they were, and presume, in the midst of their abominations unrepented of, to approach god's holy things, which, how provoking to heaven, let god in his word be judge, _isa._ lii, ; _hag._ ii, , ; _chr._ xxx, ; _ezek._ xliv, . nay, it is but too, too evident, that for this cause, god then laid them under that awful sentence, _rev._ xxii, : "him that is filthy, let him be filthy still;" or that, _isa._ xxii, . for as their hearts were then hardened against god's call by his word and providence to that important and most necessary duty; so, ever since, they, have been so much the more so, and have gone on from evil to worse. but to return to our purpose: the two brethren, messrs. _linning_ and _boyd_, upon the rejection of the above said paper of proposals, intending to unite with them at any rate, gave in another, importing their submission to the assembly; which paper, mr. _shields_ also, through their influences, insinuations, and persuasions, was drawn in to subscribe and adhere to; which he had never done, had he not fallen by the means of these false brethren, and which, it is said, he sadly repented afterward. thus, the poor people were again left destitute of ministers, and public gospel ordinances, until the rev. mr. _john, mcmillan_ acceded to them, from the public judicatories of the revolution church, in the year . and their kind friend, mr. _linning_, to make amends for all his misdemeanors, and in return for the charges the societies were at about his education, at home and abroad, did them that good office, to write, and load them with calumnies and slanders, to the universities in the _netherlands_, whither they had recourse formerly in like cases; so that all access for having their loss retrieved from that quarter, was blocked up. what is thus briefly hinted above, may suffice to afford some cursory view of the rise and progress of religion and reformation in these lands, especially in _scotland_; until, as a church and nation, our kingdom became the lord's, by the strictest and most intimate federal alliance, and the name almost of every city, was, _the lord is there_: together with the general state and condition of the church and land, from the fatal juncture of our woful decline, unto the end of the above mentioned bloody period; the faithfulness of some, in this time of trial and temptation: the defection and backsliding course of others; and the great and avowed wickedness of the rest, extended unto an exhorbitant hight of savage inhumanity, irreligion and impiety. upon all which, the presbytery, in duty to god, the present and succeeding generations find themselves obliged to testify: , their hearty approbation of the faithfulness of such ministers and others, who opposed, and faithfully testified against the public resolutions of church and state, framed in the year , for receiving into places of power and trust, malignant enemies to the work of reformation, contrary to the word of god, _exod._ xviii, ; _deut._ i, ; _ chron._ xix, ; and to all acts of assembly and parliament in the reforming period; the assembly disclaiming the resolutions, as appears from their act, _june th_, , session th, entitled, _act for censuring the compilers with the public enemies of this church and kingdom_: and their seasonable and necessary warning _june th_, , session th; where "they judge it a great and scandalous provocation, and grievous defection from the public cause, to comply with, these malignants, &c." as also, _act th_, triennial parliament of, charles i, entitled, _act for purging the army of disaffected persons to the covenant and work of reformation_. and the faithful warnings, given by general assemblies and parliament, even against the admission of charles ii to the regal dignity, when so evidently discovering his disingenuity, until once he should give more satisfying proof of hid sincerity; see act of the commission at the _west kirk, august_ th, , where the commission of the general assembly, considering, that there may be just ground of stumbling, from the king's majesty's refusing to emit the declaration offered him by the committee of estates, and the commission of the general assembly, concerning his former carriage, and resolution for the future, in reference to the cause of god, and enemies and friends thereof; doth therefore declare "that this kirk and kingdom do not espouse any malignant party, quarrel, or interest, but that they fight merely upon their former grounds and principles, and in the defense of the cause of god, and of the kingdom, as they have done these twelve years past: and therefore as they disclaim all the sin and guilt of the king and of his house, so they will not own him nor his interest, otherwise than with a subordination to god, and so far as he owns and prosecutes the cause of god, and disclaims his, and his father's opposition to the work of god and to the covenant," &c. the which declaration being seen and considered by the committee of estates, was the same day approven by them. thus, both church and state exerted themselves in the discharge of their duty, in order to obtain a settlement, according to the word of god, and the covenants, which were now become the _magna charta_ of the privileges and liberties of the nations, both civil and religious; and therefore, were sworn to and subscribed by charles ii, as was also the coronation oath, for the security and preservation of the true religion, at his receipt of the royal power. . the presbytery testify and declare their approbation of the conduct of the faithful, before the restoration, who, adhering to the aforesaid fundamental constitutions of the nations, both refused subjection unto, and testified against, the usurpation of _oliver cromwell_ and his accomplices, his invading the land, his anti-christian toleration of all sectarian errors and heresies, threatening the ruin and destruction of the true religion, as well as liberty. this was particularly testified against by the synod of _fife_, and others in conjunction with them, as wicked and intolerable; as opposite unto, and condemned by, the scriptures of truth, _job_ xxxiv, ; _deut._ xiii, - ; _zech._ xiii, ; contrary to acts of assembly and parliament, made against malignants, their being received into places of power and trust, with whom these sectarians were compliers, such as _act_ th, of _assemb._ , _sess._ th; _act_ th, _sess._ d, parliament _charles_ i, &c. . the presbytery do hereby heartily approve and homologate the testimony borne unto the truths and royal prerogatives of christ, as king of zion, by the witnesses and martyrs for the same, from the restoration, _anno_ , to the late revolution, by protestations, declarations, confiscation of goods, bonds, imprisonment, banishment, all kinds of cruelty and suffering, even unto the death (as noticed above), by the impious revolters from the righteous laws of god, and overturners of the just and equitable laws of men, both sacred and civil; to the maintenance whereof, the greatest part of these transgressors had bound themselves by the most sacred and inviolable obligations, which made their wickedness the more daring and aggravated, and the testimony of the saints against such as had made themselves so vile in the sight of god and all good men, the more justifiable. _psalm_ cxix, : "my zeal hath consumed me, because mine enemies have forgotten thy words." and as the doers of the law have the promise of justification by the great legislator, _rom._ ii, , so they ought to have the approbation of his people for doing his will. and as the spirit discovers the church's duty not to consist only in bearing witness unto the truth, and justifying christ's confessors and martyrs, in their faithful adherence unto it, but also in testifying against sin, and condemning the wicked for their wickedness; for which, also, we have the precedent of the reformed and covenanted church of _scotland_, both before and during the defection and wickedness of the forementioned period. likeas, the presbytery did, and hereby do declare and testify particularly: . against that prime and leading step of defection, the public resolutions, a scheme projected by that arch hypocrite and traitor to god, charles ii, for the reintroduction of men of the same wicked and malignant spirit with himself, into places of public trust in the nation--men, the most of whom had been formerly excommunicated by the church, and excluded from all office-bearing in the commonwealth, by the states, in their act of classes, as being avowed and obstinate enemies to god and to their country. which scheme, approven of and put in execution, with the consent of a corrupt part of the ministry of the church, called afterward resolutioners, made way for that sad and bloody catastrophe, which after befel the poor church of christ in this land. . they declare and testify against the usurpation of _oliver cromwell_, with those who subjected themselves unto, and owned, his authority; against his treacherous invasion of this land, contrary to the public oaths and vows, and covenant union of the nations; together with his sectarian principles, and wicked toleration, then obtruded upon them. . they declare and testify against the restoration of _charles_ ii, , unto the government of these covenanted lands, after he had so plainly discovered his spirit and designs, in the matter of the public resolutions. on account of which treacherous and double dealing with god and man, he was, in the lord's holy and adorable providence, justly secluded from the government, and lived an exile for the space of ten years; but, by means of his malignant public resolution friends, he was again, by might, though not of right, restored, without so much as his adherence sought to those oaths, which he had formerly so solemnly sworn. add to this the church's sinful silence, through the influence of the backslidden resolution party therein, so that, at the convention of the pretended parliament, _anno_ , consisting mostly of persons of known disaffection to the true religion, elected of purpose to serve the king's traitorous designs, there was not so much as a protestation for civil or religious liberties and privileges offered thereunto; but the vile person (as be afterward fully declared himself) was peaceably, though illegally, exalted. . as the presbytery find themselves in duty bound to testify against this most unhappy restoration of _charles_ ii, so, of necessary and just consequence, they declare against the whole of his usurped and tyrannical administration--particularly against his blasphemous and heaven-daring ecclesiastical supremacy; against the act rescissory, declaring null and void the covenants, presbyterian church government, and all the laws made in favor of the true religion since the year ; the wicked anniversary thanksgiving day, in memory of the restoration; the re-establishment of diocesan and erastian prelacy; his publicly and ignominiously burning of our solemn covenants, after pretending to nullify their obligation; with all his cruelty, tyranny, oppression and bloodshed, under color, and without form, of law, exercised upon the lord's people, during the whole of his reign. . they again testify against the treachery of these covenanted lands, in their advancing (contrary to our solemn covenants and all law and reason) _james_, duke of _york_, a professed papist, and avowed malignant to the throne of these realms. as also, they testify against his christ-dethroning supremacy, and anti-christian indulgences and toleration, flowing from that wicked fountain; his horrid and cruel massacreing and murdering of the saints and servants of the most high; with all his other wickedness briefly specified in the foregoing narrative. upon the whole, the presbytery declare and testify against all the affronts done unto the son of god, and open attacks made upon his crown and kingdom; all the different steps of apostasy from a work of reformation, and all the hellish rage and cruelty exercised against the people of god during the foresaid period of persecution, carried on by these two impious brothers. part ii. containing the grounds of the presbytery's testimony against the constitutions both civil and ecclesiastical at the late revolution, anno : as also, against the gross erastianism and tyranny that has attended the administration both of church and state, since that memorable period: with various instances thereof, &c. after the lord, for the forementioned space of twenty-eight years, had, because of their manifold sins, sorely plagued this church and nation with the grievous yoke of prelatical tyranny, bloodshed, oppression and fiery persecution, and thereby had covered the daughter of zion with a cloud in his anger, and cast down from heaven unto the earth the beauty of israel, and had thrown down in his wrath the strong holds of the daughter of judah, yea, brought them down even to the ground; he was pleased, in his holy sovereignty, to put a stop to that barbarous cruelty that was exercised upon his people, at the last national revolution, by the instrumentality of the prince and princess of _orange_; which is the more remarkable, in that those whom the lord employed as the rod of his anger, to strike off that monstrous tyrant _james_ duke of _york_ from the _british_ throne, were natural branches sprung up from the same stock: and this at a juncture when not only the church of christ was in the greatest danger of being totally extirpated, but the whole land in hazard of being again overwhelmed with popish darkness and idolatry. but although a very fit opportunity was then offered the nations for reviving the long buried work of a covenanted reformation both in church and state, and re-establishing all the ordinances of god in purity, according to their scriptural institution: yet, alas! how deeply is it to be lamented, that, instead thereof, the multitude of his tender mercies being forgotten, there was a returning, but not to the most high; yea, a turning aside like a deceitful bow; so that, in many respects, our national guilt is now increased above what it was in former times: wherefore, as the presbytery desire with the utmost gratitude to acknowledge the divine goodness, in giving a respite from the hot furnace of persecution; so they likewise find themselves, in duty to their princely master and his people, obliged to testify and declare against foresaid revolution settlement, in a variety of particulars, with the many defections and backslidings flowing therefrom. likeas they hereby do testify against the constitutions, both civil and ecclesiastic, at the revolution, _anno_ , in those respects, and for these reasons: . because that in the civil constitution, these nations once united together in a scriptural and covenanted uniformity, unmindful of their former establishment upon a divine footing, wherein king and people were to be of one perfect religion, and the supreme magistrate obliged by solemn oath to maintain and preserve the same inviolable, did call and invite _william_ and _mary_, prince and princess of _orange_, unto the possession of the royal power in these lands, in a way contrary to the word of god, as _deut._ xvii, : "thou shalt in any wise set him king over thee whom the lord thy god shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee: thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, which is not thy brother." _ sam._ xxiii, : "the god of israel said, the rock of israel spake to me, he that ruleth over men, must be just, ruling in the fear of god." in opposition to these clear precepts, the nations did choose the foresaid persons to sway the civil scepter over them, who were neither brethren by birth, nor religious profession, being educated in a church where erastianism prevails, as appears from their ascribing such an extensive power to the civil magistrate, as is inconsistent with the intrinsic power of the church. accordingly, by these principles, said prince of _orange_ did regulate his conduct, in the assumption of his regal authority, consenting to swear two distinct oaths, whereby he obliged himself to preserve and maintain the two distinct and contrary religions (or modes of religions worship), presbytery and prelacy, and so betrayed both to god and man his politic, worldly views, and proclaimed himself destitute of that truth and religious fear, which is the essential character of every person who may warrantably be invested with supreme authority over the israel of god. and as they wanted scriptural, so likewise covenant qualifications, namely, known integrity, approven fidelity, constant affection, and zeal to the cause and true church of god; and therefore could not in a consistency with the covenanted constitution, and fundamental laws of the crown, be set up as king and queen of these covenanted lands. again, as during the persecuting period the nations generally were involved in the guilt of perjury and deep apostasy, by the many sinful contradictory tests, oaths and bonds then imposed; so, in a particular manner, those who, by virtue of their birth and dignity, ought to have been the defenders of the nation's privileges, both sacred and civil, on the contrary, as privy councilors to the two impious brothers in their rage against the lord and his anointed, and as members of their iniquitous parliaments (where perverting equity and justice, they framed the most heaven-daring and abominable mischiefs into a law, and then with the utmost cruelty prosecuted the same), had many of them brought themselves under the fearful guilt of these atrocious crimes of murder, perjury, tyranny and oppression, and thereby, according to the law both of god and man, not only forfeited their lives, had the same been duly executed; but also divested themselves of all just right and title to act the part of the nations' representatives, in choosing and installing any in the office of supreme civil governor, until at least they had given suitable evidence of their repentance. yet such were the constituent members of that committee of estates, and first parliament, employed in the revolution settlement, without so much as making any suitable public acknowledgment of their wickedness in the active hand the generality of them had in the former bloody persecution, as appears from a comparative view of the lists of the members of parliament, and particularly the duke of _york's_ last parliament, with act second of the acts and orders of the meeting of estates, _anno_ . yea, by viewing the lists of _james_ vii, his privy council, annexed by _wodrow_ to the second volume of his history, it is evident, that a great number of the nobility alone, members of that bloody council, were also members of foresaid convention of estates, the members of which convention (seven bishops excepted) were exactly the same with the members of the first parliament at the revolution. for this, compare second act of the meeting of estates, with act first, parliament first, of _william_ and _mary_. by all which it is evident, that from princes who had thus removed the bound, and discovered no just remorse for their sins, there was little ground left to expect a happy establishment of religion, in restoring the flock of christ to the full possession of those valuable privileges and liberties wherewith he had made them free. the character of the constituent members being considered, the constitution itself, and wherein it is inconsistent with our covenanted establishment, and is therefore hereby testified against, comes next to be considered. although the declaration of the meeting of estates in this kingdom, containing their claim of right, comprehended much more of their civil liberties, and formal rights of government, than was enjoyed under the former monstrous tyranny, yet by no means sufficiently provided for the legal establishment of our former happy reformed constitution, which necessarily obliged the civil rulers to employ their power to maintain and defend, not only the doctrine, but also the presbyterian worship, discipline and government, as the only and unalterable form instituted by christ in his house. whereas this craves the abolition of prelacy, and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters in _scotland_, simply as it hath been a great and insupportable grievance and trouble to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation from popery, without regarding the divine right of presbytery, and the contrariety of prelacy to scripture revelation. in agreeableness to which demand, when the first parliament met in _scotland_ immediately after the revolution, which began the ____ day of _april_, , in _act_ d, _sess._ st, entitled _act abolishing prelacy_, they abolished prelacy for the foresaid reason, and further declare, that they will settle by law that church government in this kingdom, which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people. accordingly, in the second session of the same parliament, _act_ th, _june_ th, , the parliament establishing the presbyterian church government and discipline, as it had been ratified and established by the th _act, james_ vi, _parl._ th, _anno_ , reviving, renewing and confirming the foresaid act of parliament, in the whole heads thereof, except that part of it relating to patronages, afterward to be considered of. likewise, in the above mentioned act at the revolution, the thirty-three chapters of the _westminster_ confession of faith (exclusive of the catechisms, directory for worship, and form of church government formerly publicly authorized, and covenants national and solemn league) were ratified and established by the parliament. and the said confession being read in their presence, was voted and approven by them, as the public and avowed confession of this church, without taking any notice of its scriptural authority. and further, in the same session of parliament, by the royal power allenarly, the first meeting of the general assembly of this church, as above established, was appointed to be held at _edinburgh_, the third _thursday_ of _october_ following, the same year, . and by the same civil authority and foresaid act, many of the churches in _scotland_ were declared vacant. . the presbytery testify against the ecclesiastical constitution at the revolution; particularly, in regard, st--that the members composing the same were no less, if not much more exceptionable, than those of whom the state consisted; the whole of them one way or other being justly chargeable with unfaithfulness to christ, and his covenanted cause, by sinful and scandalous compliance with the public defections of the former times, or actively countenancing the malignant apostasy of the lands, which will appear evident, by considering, that the revolution church consisted of such office-bearers, as had, in contradiction to their most solemn covenant engagements, fallen in with, and approven of the public resolutions. and these public resolutioners, who had betrayed the lord's cause, which they had in the most solemn manner sworn to maintain, were, without any public acknowledgement demanded or offered, or adequate censure inflicted (even, after that the lord had remarkably testified his displeasure against that leading step of defection, by suffering these vipers, which we thus took into our bosom, to sting us almost to death) for this their scandalous defection and perjury, admitted and sustained members of the revolution church. again, the revolution assembly consisted of such ministers as had shamefully changed their holding of christ, and sinfully submitted, in the exercise of their ministry, to an exotic head, _charles_ ii, who had, by virtue of his blasphemous supremacy, and absolute power, taken the power of the keys from christ's ministers, and afterward returning only one of them (viz.: the key of doctrine) to such as accepted his anti-christian, church-destroying, and christ-dethroning indulgences, attended with such sinful limitations and restrictions, as were utterly inconsistent with ministerial freedom and faithfulness, declaring the acceptors to be men-pleasers, and so not the servants of christ (of which above). of this stamp were the most of them, who, without any public acknowledgment of that horrid affront they had put upon the church's true head, dared to constitute and act as the supreme judicatory of the church of christ, _anno_ . again, the foresaid assembly was almost wholly formed of such as had petitioned for, accepted of, and pretended to return a god-mocking letter of thanks for that blasphemous unbounded toleration, which that popish tyrant, the duke of _york_ (as is noticed formerly), granted, with a special view to reintroduce abjured popery; and therefore while it extended its protection to every heresy, did exclude the pure preaching of the gospel in the fields; which toleration (according to _wodrow_) was joyfully embraced by all the presbyterian ministers in scotland, the honored mr. renwick only excepted, who faithfully protested against the same. but further, the revolution assembly did partly consist of such members as, contrary to our solemn covenants, had their consciences dreadfully polluted, by consenting unto, subscribing, and swearing some one or other of the sinful wicked oaths, tests and bonds, tyrannically imposed in the persecuting period, or by persuading others to take them, and declining to give warning of the danger of them, or by approving the warrantableness of giving security to the bloody council, not to exercise their ministry, but according to their pleasure. moreover, they were all, generally, manifestly guilty of the sin of carrying on and maintaining schism and defection from the covenanted church of christ in _scotland_. as also (which from the history of these times is evident), the ruling elders in that assembly, being generally noblemen, gentlemen, and burgesses, were mostly such as had an active hand in the tyranny and persecution that preceded, and in one respect or other, were stained with the blood of the martyrs of jesus. thus, that assembly was packed up, chiefly, of such blacked compilers, as, one way or other, were deeply involved in the apostasy, bloodshed and cruelty of the preceding period, yet had not broke off their iniquities, by a public confession of these crying sins, before that meeting; nor can it be found, that any adequate censure was inflicted on any of them for the same. therefore, the presbytery testify against the revolution church, as consisting mostly of such scandalous schismatical members, as could not, in a consistency with the scriptural rule, and laudable acts of this reformed church, have been admitted to church privileges, far less to bear office in the house of god; until, at least, they had been duly purged from their aggravated scandals, and given evident signs of a real repentance, according to the word of god, _chron._ xxx, : "for they could not keep the passover at that time, because the priests had not sanctified themselves sufficiently." and _ezek._ xliv, : "and the levites that are gone away far from me, when israel went astray, which went astray away from me after their idols, they shall even bear their iniquity;" v. : "and they shall not come near unto me, to do the office of a priest unto me, nor to come near to any of my holy things, in the most holy place; but they shall bear their shame, and their abominations which they have committed." next, the presbytery declare and testify against the revolution church, because plainly erastian, and utterly inconsistent with the covenanted constitution of the reformed church of _scotland, anno_ : the truth of which charge will appear obvious, from considering the act of parliament, on which the civil power settled the constitution of the revolution church, viz., _act_ , _james_ vi, _parl._ th; where, _inter alia_, it is expressly declared, "that it shall be lawful to the kirk ministers, every year at least, and oftener, _pro re nata_, as occasion and necessity sall require, to hald and keepe general assemblies, providing that the king's majesty, or his commissioner with them, to be appointed be his highness to be present at ilk general assembly, before the dissolving thereof, nominate and appoynt time and place, quhen and quhair the next general assemblie sall be halden: and in case neither his majesty nor his said commissioner beis present for the time, in that town, quhair the said general assemblie beis halden, then, and in that case, it shall be lesum for the said general assembly be themselves, to nominate and appoint time and place, quhair the next general assembly of the kirk sall be keeped and halden, as they have been in use to do these times by-past." here, in this act, a manifest invasion and traitorous attack is made upon the headship and supremacy of christ, as a son in, and over his own house. he who is god's annotated king in zion, and sits on the throne of his holiness, is hereby robbed of his crown rights; the intrinsic power, the spiritual liberty and freedom, granted by christ to his church, is encroached upon. it is a received opinion among all true presbyterians, that the church hath an intrinsic power to meet in the courts of christ's house, from the lowest to the highest, by virtue of the power committed to her by the lord jesus christ, without dependence on the civil power. this is agreeable to scripture, _matth._ xvi, , and xviii, , , where the apostles receive the keys immediately from the hands of christ their lord and master. and as one principal part of that trust christ has committed to his church, this has been the constant plea of the reforming and reformed presbyterian church of _scotland_. let us hear what that renowned and faithful minister, and venerable confessor for christ, the rev. mr. john welsh, says to this particular, in his letter to the countess of _wigton_ from _blackness_, , when a prisoner for this same truth. having asserted the independence of the church, the spiritual kingdom of christ, upon any earthly monarch, and her freedom to meet and judge of all her affairs; he adds, "these two points, st, that christ is head of his church; d, that she is free in her government from all other jurisdictions, except christ's. these two points, i say, are the special causes of our imprisonment, being now convicted as traitors for maintaining thereof. we have been ever waiting with joyfulness to give the last testimony of our blood in confirmation thereof, if it should please our god to be so favorable as to honor us with that dignity. yea, i do affirm, that these two points above written, and all other things that do belong to christ's crown, scepter and kingdom, are not subject, nor cannot be, to any other authority, but to his own altogether: so that i would be glad to be offered up as a sacrifice for so glorious a truth." so far he. but now this assembly of _treacherous_ men, by settling themselves upon such a constitution have openly given up this scriptural truth and presbyterian principle handed down to us, sealed with the sufferings and dearest blood of the faithful confessors and martyrs of christ, and have consented that it is unlawful for the office-bearers in the lord's house to exert their proper power in calling and appointing general assemblies, however loudly the necessity of the church may call for them, unless the king authorize their diet of meeting, which he may, or may not do, according to his pleasure. again, it is evident, that the revolution church is constituted in the same erastian manner with the late prelacy in _scotland_. for proof of which, observe, that as prelacy was never ecclesiastically asserted to be of divine authority, neither has presbytery, by any explicit and formal act of assembly, at or since the revolution. as the prelates' high ecclesiastical court was called, adjourned and dissolved, in the king's name, so likewise are the assemblies of the revolution church. as the episcopalians owned the king, in the exercise of his erastian supremacy over them, so the revolution church, instead of opposing, did take up her standing under the covert of that anti-christian supremacy, and has never since declined the exercise thereof. and, as the civil power prescribed limits unto, and at pleasure altered, the prelatic church, so this church has accepted of a formula, prescribed by the civil power, requiring that all the ordinances within the same be performed by the ministers thereof, as they were then allowed them, or should thereafter be declared by their authority, as _act_ d, _sess._ th, _parl._ st, , expressly bears. by what is said above, it may appear, that this church is erastian in her constitution. but it is further to be observed, that the present constitution is no less inconsistent with the scriptural and covenanted constitution of the church of _scotland_, in regard that the retrograde constitution, to which the church fled back, and on which she was settled at the revolution, was but an infant state of the church, lately after her first reformation from popery, far inferior to her advanced state betwixt and inclusive. it was before the church had shaken off the intolerable yokes of erastian supremacy and patronages; before she had ecclesiastically asserted, and practically maintained, her spiritual and scriptural claim of right, namely, the divine right of presbytery, and intrinsic power of the church, the two special gems of christ's crown, as king on his holy hill of zion; before the explanation of the national covenant, as condemning episcopacy, the five articles of _perth_, the civil power of churchmen; before the solemn league and covenant was entered into; before the _westminster_ confession of faith, the catechisms, larger and shorter, the directory for worship, form of presbyterian church government and ordination of ministers, were composed; and before the acts of church and state, for purging judicatories, ecclesiastical and civil, and armies from persons disaffected to the cause and work of god, were made; and all these valuable pieces of reformation ratified with the full and ample sanction of the supreme civil authority, by the king's majesty and honorable estates of parliament, as parts of the covenanted uniformity in religion, betwixt the churches of christ in _scotland, england_ and _ireland_. and therefore, this revolution constitution amounts to a shameful disregarding--yea, disclaiming and burying--much (if not all) of the reformation attained to in that memorable period, and is a virtual homologation and allowance of the iniquitous laws at the restoration, _anno_ , condemning our glorious reformation and sacred covenants as rebellion; and is such an aggravated step of defection and apostasy, as too clearly discovers this church to be fixed upon a different footing, and to be called by another name, than the genuine offspring of the true covenanted church of christ in _scotland_. besides what has been already noticed, respecting the sinfulness both of the members constituent, and the constitutions at the revolution, it is to be further observed, as just matter of lamentation, that, at this period, when such a noble opportunity was offered, no suitable endeavors were made for reviving the covenanted cause and interest of our redeemer; no care taken that the city of the lord should be built upon her own heap, and the palace remain after the manner thereof; but, on the contrary, a religion was then established, not only exceedingly far short of, but in many particulars very inconsistent with, and destructive of, that blessed uniformity in religion, once the glory of these now degenerate isles. the presbytery, therefore, in the next place, do testify against the settlement of religion made at the revolution, and that in these particulars following: . instead of abolishing prelacy in _england_ and _ireland_, as it had been abjured in the solemn league and covenant, and stands condemned by the word of god, and fundamental laws of the nations, conform to the divine law, it was then, with all its popish ceremonies, anew secured, confirmed and established, in both these kingdoms, as the true religion, according to the word of god, to be publicly professed by all the people; and the supreme civil magistrate solemnly sworn, at his inauguration, both that he himself shall be of the episcopal communion, and that he shall maintain inviolably the settlement of the church of _england_, in the kingdoms of _england_ and _ireland_, and territories thereunto belonging. thus the revolution has ratified the impious overthrow, and ignominious burial, of the covenanted reformation in these two kingdoms, that was made in the persecuting period, and has fixed a legal bar in the way of their reformation, in agreeableness to the sacred oath the three nations brought themselves under to god almighty. . as to the settlement of religion in _scotland_, the presbytery testify against it: because it was a settlement, which, instead of homologating and reviving the covenanted reformation between and , in profession and principle, left the same buried under the infamous act rescissory, which did, at one blow, rescind and annul the whole of the reformation, and authority establishing the same, by making a retrograde motion, as far back as , without ever coming one step forward since that time, and herein acted most contrary to the practice of our honored reformers, who always used to begin where former reformations stopped, and after having removed what obstructed the work of reformation, went forward in building and beautifying the house of the lord. that this backward settlement at the revolution, was a glaring relinquishment of many of our valuable and happy attainments, in the second and most advanced reformation (as said is), and consequently, an open apostasy and revolt from the covenanted constitution of the church of _scotland_, is sufficiently evident, from the foresaid act of settlement ; where (after having allowed of the _westminster_ confession) they further add, "that they do establish, ratify and confirm, the presbyterian church government and discipline, ratified and established by the th _act, james_ vi, _parl._ th, _anno_ ." so that this settlement includes nothing more of the covenanted uniformity in these lands, than only the thirty-three articles of the confession of faith, wanting the scripture proofs. again, that the revolution settlement of religion did not abolish the act rescissory, nor ratify and revive any act, between and , authorizing and establishing the work of reformation, is clear from the same act: wherein, after abolishing some acts anent the late prelacy in _scotland_, they declare: "that these acts are abolished, so far allenarly, as the said acts, and others, generally and particularly above mentioned, are contrary or prejudicial to, inconsistent with, or derogatory from, the protestant religion, or presbyterian church government, now established." where observe, that this general clause is restricted to acts and laws, in so far only, as they were contrary to the religion settled in this act; and therefore, as this act includes no part of the covenanted reformation between and , so this rescissory clause abolishes laws, not as against foresaid reformation, but only in so far as they strike against the revolution settlement, which the act rescissory could not do. again, in another clause of the same act, it is added: "therefore, their majesties do hereby revive and ratify, and perpetually confirm, all laws, statutes and acts of parliament, made against popery and papists." the only reason that can be given for the revival of laws, not against prelacy, but popery, when abolishing prelacy, is, that the parliament, excluding the covenanted reformation from this settlement of religion, resolved to let the whole of it lie buried under the act rescissory. for as, in reality, there were no laws made expressly against prelacy before , but against popery and papists; so, had they said, laws against prelacy and prelates, they thereby would have revived some of the laws made by the reforming parliaments, between and ; wherein bishops and all other prelates, the civil places and power of kirkmen, &c., are expressly condemned. again, in the foresaid act, they confirm all the article of the th _act_, , except the part of it anent patronages, which is to be afterward considered. now, had the revolution parliament regarded the reforming laws to have been revived, and so the act rescissory to be rescinded, by their _act_ th, , they would not have left this particular to be again considered of, seeing patronages were entirely abolished by an act of parliament ; but, having the ball at their foot, they now acted as would best suit with their political and worldly views. once more observe, that when the revolution parliament ratified the act , they take no notice of its having been done before, by a preceding parliament in . all which plainly says, that the reforming laws and authority of the parliaments by which they were made, are not regarded as now in force. to conclude this particular, if the settlement of religion, made in , had revived and ratified the authority of our reforming parliaments, and laws made by them; then, as these obliged the king to swear the covenants before his coronation, and all ranks to swear them, and obliged to root out malignancy, sectarianism, &c., and to promote uniformity in doctrine, worship, discipline and government, in the three nations, so the revolution settlement would have obliged all to the practice of the same duties, and that, before ever king, or any under him, could have been admitted to any trust; while all that would not comply therewith, would have been held as enemies, not only to religion, but to their king and country also, as was the case when reformation flourished. but, as the very reverse of this was authorized and practised at the revolution, it convincingly discovers, that the settlement of religion, made in , left the whole of the reformation attained to, ratified and established by solemn oaths and civil laws between and , buried under that scandalous and wicked act rescissory, framed by that tyrant, _charles_ ii, after his restoration. nor is there to be found, in all the acts, petitions, supplications and addresses, made by the assemblies at or since the revolution, any thing importing a desire to have that blasphemous act rescinded, which stands in full force, to the perpetual infamy and disgrace of the revolution settlement of religion, so much gloried in, by the greatest part, as happily established. . the presbytery testify against the revolution settlement of religion, not only as including avowed apostasy from the covenanted constitution of the reformed church of _scotland_, and a traitorous giving up of the interests and rights of christ, our lord and redeemer, in these, and especially in this land; but also, as it is an erastian settlement, which will appear, by considering _st_. the scriptural method then taken, in establishing religion: instead of setting the church foremost in the work of the lord, and the state coming after, and ratifying by their civil sanction what the church had done; the revolution parliament inverted this beautiful order, both in abolishing prelacy, settling presbytery, and ratifying the confession of faith, as the standard of doctrine to this church; _d_, in abolishing prelacy, as it was not at the desire of the church, but of the estates of _scotland_, so the parliament did it in an erastian manner, without consulting the church, or regarding that it had been abolished by the church, _anno_ , and by the state, , in confirmation of what the church had done. thus, _act_ d, , 'tis said, "the king and queen's majesties with the estates of parliament, do hereby abolish prelacy." again, when establishing presbytery, _act_ th, , they act in the same erastian manner, whereby the order of the house of god was inverted in the matter of government; in regard that the settlement of the government of the church in the first instance, properly belongs to an ecclesiastical judicatory, met and constituted in the name of the lord jesus christ; and it is afterward the duty of the state to give the sanction of their authority to the same. this erastianism further appears in the parliament's conduct with respect unto the confession of faith: see _act_ th, _sess._ d, _parl._ st, wherein thus they express themselves: "likeas they, by these presents, ratify and establish the confession of faith, now read in their presence, and voted and approven by them, as the public and avowed confession of this church." hence it is obvious, that the parliament, by sustaining themselves proper judges of doctrine, encroached upon the intrinsic power of the church: they read, voted, and approved the confession of faith, without ever referring to, or regarding the act of the general assembly , or any other act of reforming assemblies, whereby that confession was formerly made ours, or even so much as calling an assembly to vote and approve that confession of new. that the above conduct of the state, without regarding the church in her assemblies, either past or future, is gross erastianism, and what does not belong, at first instance, to the civil magistrate, but to the church representative, to whom the lord has committed the management of the affairs of his spiritual kingdom, may appear from these few sacred texts, besides many others, namely, _numb._ i, , : "but thou shalt appoint the levites over the tabernacle of testimony, and over all the vessels thereof, and over all the things that belong to it: they shall bear the tabernacle and all the vessels thereof, and they shall minister unto it, and shall encamp round about the tabernacle; and when the tabernacle setteth forward, the levites shall take it down, and when the tabernacle is to be pitched, the levites shall set it up, and the stranger that cometh nigh shall be put to death." see also chapters iii, and iv, throughout; also _deut._ xxxiii, , ; _chron._ xv, ; _chron._ xix, ; _ezra_ x, . so _david_, when he had felt the anger of the lord, for not observing his commandments in this particular, says, _chron._ xv, , , to the _levites_, "sanctify yourselves that ye may bring up the ark of the lord god of israel. for because ye did it not at the first, the lord our god made a breach upon us, for that we sought him not after the due order." likewise hezekiah, a reforming king, did not himself, at first instance, set about reforming and purging the house of god; but having called together the priests and levites, says to them, _chron._ xxix, : "sanctify yourselves and sanctify the house of the lord god of your fathers, and carry forth the filthiness out of the holy place;" compared with _ver._ ; _mal._ ii, ; _matth._ xvi, . "i will give unto thee the keys of the kingdom of heaven." and xxviii, , , : "all power is given unto me, go ye therefore and teach all nations, teaching them to observe all things whatsoever i have commanded you." from all which it may safely be inferred, that as the lord jesus christ, the king and lawgiver of his church, has committed all the power of church matters, whether respecting the doctrine or government thereof, to church officers, as the first, proper receptacles thereof; so, for civil rulers, at first instance, by their own authority, to make alterations in the government of the church, and to settle and emit a standard of doctrine to the church, is a manifest usurpation of ecclesiastical authority, and tyrannical encroachment upon the ministerial office. it needs only to be added, that this revolution conduct stands condemned by the confession of faith itself, in express terms (as well as in the holy scriptures), _chap._ xxiii, _sect._ , "the civil magistrate may not assume to himself the administration of the word or the keys." and also, by the beautiful practice of our reformers, betwixt and , who observed the scriptural order, the church always going foremost, in all the several pieces of reformation attained to, and then the state coming after, by exerting their authority, in ratification and defense of the church's acts and deeds, in behalf of reformation. . the erastianism of this settlement of religion, appears plain from the act of parliament , noticed above, upon which the revolution parliament did found it, as in _act_ th, _sess._ , , by which the forementioned act , is ratified, revived, renewed and confirmed, in all the heads thereof, patronage excepted. now, in regard that act contains an invasion upon the headship of christ, and intrinsic power of the church, and ascribes an erastian power to the civil magistrate over the church, making it unlawful for the church to convocate her superior judicatories, but in dependence upon the king for his licence and authority; and in regard the revolution parliament did revive and renew this clause in foresaid act , as well as other heads thereof, it must needs follow, that this settlement of religion cannot be freed of the charge of erastianism. nor is it very strange that statesmen, who had been educated in the principles of erastianism, should be fond of reviving an act that robbed christ of his crown rights, and the church of her spiritual liberty; but most surprising, that professed presbyterian ministers should so greedily embrace and approve of erastianism, as a valuable and glorious deliverance to the church of christ! in agreeableness to this erastian article of the above act the parliament, in their act , indicted and appointed the first general assembly, as a specimen of their erastian power over their newly constituted church; and it has ever since been the practice of the sovereign, to call, dissolve and adjourn her assemblies at his pleasure, and sometimes to an indefinite time. it is further observable, that the king's commission to his representative in assembly, runs in a style that evidently discovers, that he looks upon the assembly's power and right of constitution as subordinate to him. thus it begins, "_seeing by our decree that an assembly is to meet_," &c. yet notwithstanding of this, the assembly (nor any after them, so far as was ever known to the world) did not by any one formal act and statue expressly condemn erastianism, and explicitly assert the alone headship of christ, and the intrinsic, independent power of the church, in opposition to these encroachments made thereupon, and therefore may be justly construed consenters thereto. to conclude this particular, of the erastianism of the present settlement of religion, it may be observed that although the revolution parliament, from political views, did by _act_ st, _sess._ d, rescind the first act of the second parliament of charles ii. entitled _act asserting his majesty's supremacy over all persons and in all causes ecclesiastical_; yet, from what is above hinted, it may be inferred, that the revolution state has still preserved the very soul and substance of that blasphemous supremacy (though possibly they may have transferred it from the person of the king, abstractly considered, and lodged it in the hand of the king and parliament conjunctly, as the more proper subject thereof): for, in the words of mr. john burnet, in his testimony against the indulgence, quoted by mr. brown in his history of the indulgence, "to settle, enact and emit constitutions, acts and orders, concerning matters, meetings and persons ecclesiastical, according to royal pleasure (and parliamentary is much the same), is the very substance and definition of his majesty's supremacy, as it is explained by his estates of parliament." but the revolution act of parliament settling religion, is just to settle, enact and emit such constitutions, acts and orders concerning matters, meetings and persons ecclesiastical, according to parliamentary, instead of mere royal pleasure: and therefore the act authorizing the revolution settlement of religion, is the very substance and definition of a royal parliamentary supremacy. the truth of this will further appear by the sequel. . the presbytery testify against the revolution constitution and settlement of religion, as it is not a religious, but a mere civil and political one; "not built upon the foundation of the apostles and prophets, jesus christ himself being the chief corner stone;" but upon the fluctuating inclinations of the people, as the formal foundation thereof. for proof of which, consider the acts of parliament relative to the abolition of prelacy, and the establishment of presbytery. in consequence of an article of the claim of right made by the estates of scotland, the _act_ d, _sess._ st, _parl._ , declares, "that whereas the estates of this kingdom, in their claim of right, declared that prelacy, and the superiority of any office in the church above presbyters, is and hath been a great and insupportable grievance to this nation, and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people ever since the reformation, they having been reformed from popery by presbyters, and therefore to be abolished: our sovereign lord and lady, with advice and consent of the estates of parliament, do hereby abolish prelacy, and all superiority of any office in the church in this kingdom above presbyters; and do declare, that they, with advice aforesaid, will settle by law that church government in this kingdom, which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people." agreeable to this, one of king william's instructions to the parliament , is, "you are to pass an act establishing that church government which is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people." accordingly we have the _act_ th, _sess._ d, , settling presbyterian church-government in the same form, and on the same footing. and so much king william, who, doubtless, was perfectly acquainted with the true intent and meaning of that act, declares in his letter to the assembly indicted by him that same year. from all which (without noticing the erastian form of these acts, &c.) it may be observed, that there is somewhat done that is materially good; but then there is nothing importing the contrariety of prelacy to the scriptures of truth, nor the divine right of presbyterian church government, so that the whole of this settlement is purely political, done for the pleasure of the good subjects of scotland: for, st, the only reason why prelacy is complained of and abolished, is, because it was grievous and contrary to the inclinations of the generality of the people. it is not so much as declared contrary to law, though well known that it was condemned by many of the reforming laws; far less is it declared contrary to the word of god, and reformation principles founded thereupon. neither is it said to be a grievance to the nations, though it is manifest, by the nations entering into a solemn covenant to extirpate it, that it was an insupportable burden to all the three. and the great reason assigned for the people's dissatisfaction to prelacy, is _antiquity_, "they having been reformed from popery by presbyters," as if our reformers had only contended for a church government merely human; whereas they strenuously maintained the divine right of presbytery, and condemned prelacy as contrary to the word of god. this reason would be equally strong against presbytery, on supposition that prelates had got the start of presbyters in the reformation from popery. again, d, upon the same, and no better ground, was presbytery established, namely, because it was more agreeable to the inclinations of the people, and as it was of a more ancient standing in scotland than prelacy. further, that the divine right of presbytery is not acknowledged in this settlement, appears from the express words of the act itself, wherein it is designated, "the only government of christ's church in the nation;" not the only government of christ's church laid down in the word of god, received and sworn to by all the three nations, ratified by both civil and ecclesiastical authority. a clear evidence, that church government was regarded as ambulatory only, and what might be altered at pleasure. hence, while the king was settling presbytery in scotland, he was also maintaining, as bound by oath, prelacy in england, &c. and so presbytery, for peace's sake, as most agreeable to the inclinations of the people, was settled in scotland as the government of christ's church there. thus, there is a settlement of religion, and yet not one line of scripture authority, or reformation principles legible therein: and, as one said (though a strenuous defender of the settlement), "the glory of that church is at a low pass, which hangs upon the nail of legal securities by kings and parliaments, instead of the nail which god has fastened in a sure place;" which, alas! is the case with the church of scotland at this day. it is true, that the parliament call their settlement, "agreeable to god's word;" but it is as true, that, from their conduct toward both (abolishing prelacy, and establishing presbytery, from these political motives above mentioned), it is abundantly plain, that they believed neither of them to be formally and specifically agreeable to, and founded upon the word of god; but that they regarded all forms of church government as indifferent, and thought themselves at liberty to pick and choose such a particular form as best suited the humors and inclinations of the people, and their own worldly advantage. accordingly, we find the parliament , appointing a committee to receive all the forms of government that should be brought before them, to examine them for this purpose, and then report their opinions of them to the house. that the parliament at this time, or the king and parliament conjunctly, acted from the above latitudinarian principle, is further evident, from their establishing and consenting to the establishment of these two different and opposite forms of church government, presbytery in _scotland_, and prelacy in _england_ and _ireland_, and both of them considered as agreeable to the word of god, and the only government of christ's church in the several kingdoms, where they were espoused; which, as it is self-contradictory and absurd, so it is impossible they could ever have done this, if they had believed the divine right of either of them. and finally, by this conduct of theirs, the state declared their approbation thereof, and resolution to copy after the th _act, sess._ d _parl._ st of _charles_ ii (yet in force), which ascribes an erastian power to the king, of settling church government as he shall think proper. by all which it appears quite inconsistent with the revolution settlement, to consider church power in any other light, than as subordinate to the power of the state. and yet with this political and erastian settlement of religion, the revolution church have declared themselves satisfied; they have not condemned episcopacy, as contrary to the word of god, nor positively asserted the divine right of presbytery, and disclaimed the claim of right and act of settlement, as their right of constitution; but, on the contrary, approved of both, as appears from the commission's act, , and their address to the parliament, , both homologated by the succeeding assemblies. whereby they declare, that they have dropped a most material part of the testimony of the reformed church of _scotland_, and are not faithful to the lord jesus christ, in maintaining the rights of his crown and kingdom. from the whole, it may too justly be concluded concerning the revolution settlement of religion, what the prophet _hosea_ declares of the calf of _samaria, hos._ viii, : "for from israel was it also, the workman made it, therefore it is not god; the calf of _samaria_ shall be broken in pieces." it is not a divine institution founded upon the word of god, and regulated by his revealed law; but a human invention, owing its original in both kingdoms to the inclinations of the people, and governed by laws opposite to the laws of christ in the word. hence we have the idolatrous institutions of prelacy, established in the one nation, and erastianism, under the specious pretext of presbytery, in the other; and both under an exotic head of ecclesiastical government. from what is said above, respecting the revolution constitutions, and settlement of religion in the nations, it will appear, that the same are opposite to the word of god, and covenanted constitutions of both church and state, and to the reforming laws, between and , ratifying and securing the doctrine, worship, discipline, and government of the church, and all divine ordinances, sacred and civil, according to scripture revelation; and therefore cannot be acknowledged as lawful, by any that make the law of god their rule, and desire to go out by the footsteps of the flock of christ. the presbytery proceed now to consider the administration since the late revolution, as standing in immediate connection with the forementioned constitutions and settlement: only, in the entry, it may be observed, that as the mal-administrations, civil and ecclesiastical, are increased to almost an innumerable multitude, so that it would be next to an impossibility to reckon them all; the presbytery propose only to observe so many of the most remarkable instances, as shall be sufficient to justify a condemnation of the present course of the nations, although the constitutions could not, be excepted against as sinful. and, . the presbytery declare and testify against the gross erastianism that has attended the administrations of both church and state, since the revolution. as the constitutions of both (above noticed) were erastian and anti-scriptural, so their conduct ever since has been agreeable thereto, tending evidently to discover that, while the state is robbing out redeemer of his crown, and his church of her liberties, this church, instead of testifying against, gives consent to these impieties. particularly, , as at the forementioned period, so ever since, the king has continued, by his own authority, to call, dissolve, and adjourn the national assemblies of this church. the first revolution assembly was held, by virtue of an erastian indictment, and by the same power dissolved. the nest was, by royal authority, appointed to be at _edinburgh_ , but by the same power, adjourned to , and then dissolved, without passing any act; and though again indicted to meet , yet was not allowed to sit until _march_ , near a year after the parliament had made an humble address to the sovereign for granting that privilege. but it would be endless to attempt an enumeration of all the instances of the exercise of erastianism in this particular, which is annually renewed. how often, alas! have the assemblies been prorogued, raised, and dissolved, by magistratical authority, and sometimes without nomination of another diet? how frequently also, have they been restricted in their proceedings, and prelimited as to members, and matters to be treated of, and discussed therein; depriving some members of their liberty to sit and act as members, though regularly chosen, merely, because such had not taken the oaths appointed by law? all which exercise of erastian supremacy natively results from the parliamentary settlement . and when no adequate testimony was ever given by the church against such erastian usurpations, but they are still crouched under and complied with, it may justly be constructed a tame subjection and woful consent to this supremacy. that this is no forced inference from the continued practice of this church, appears from this (besides other evidences that might be adduced), viz., that as the revolution parliament, when ratifying the confession of faith, entirely left out the act of assembly , approving and partly explaining the same (wherein these remarkable words are, "it is further declared, that the assembly understands some parts of the second article of the st chapter, only of kirks not settled or constituted in point of government") as being inconsistent with the erastian impositions of the magistrate. so this church, when they cause intrants into the ministry subscribe the confession, do not oblige them to subscribe it with this explanatory act (which does by no means admit of a privative power in the magistrate, destructive of the church's intrinsic power), but they only do it as the parliament ratified it. . another instance of erastianism practiced by both church and state, is, that when the king and parliament did bind down episcopal curates upon congregations, forbidding church judicatories the exercise of discipline upon the impenitent, and enjoining the assembly to admit such, without any evidence of grief or sorrow for their former apostasy, upon their swearing the oath of allegiance, and subscribing a _formula_, homologating the revolution settlement, substituted in the room of the covenants; the church approved of this settlement, and protection granted by the civil powers to such curates all their lifetime in their churches and benefices, who yet were not brought under any obligation to subject themselves to the government and discipline of the church. the truth of this is manifest, from sundry of king _william's_ letters to the assemblies, together with after acts of parliament, relative thereto. in his letter, dated _february_ th, , to the commission of the assembly, he says, "whereas there has been humble application made to us by several ministers, for themselves and others, who lately served under episcopacy; we have thought good to signify our pleasure to you, that you make no distinction of men, otherwise well qualified for the ministry, though they have formerly conformed to the law, introducing episcopacy, and that ye give them no disturbance or vexation for that cause, or for that head: and it is our pleasure, that, until we give our further directions, you proceed to no more process, or any other business." in another letter, dated _june_ th, , he says, "we are well pleased with what you write, to unite with such of the clergy, who have served under episcopacy; and that you are sufficiently instructed by the general assembly to receive them; from all which, we do expect a speedy and happy success, that there shall be so great a progress made in this union betwixt you, before our return to _britain_, that we shall then find no cause to continue that stop, which at present we see necessary; and that neither you, nor any commission or church meeting, do meddle in any process or business, that may concern the purging out of the episcopal ministers." and in a letter to the episcopal clergy, he says, "we doubt not of your applying to, and concurring with, your brethren the presbyterian ministers, in the terms which we have been of pains to adjust for you; the _formula_ will be communicated to you by our commissioners," &c. see also the th _act, parl._ , where it is declared, "that all such as shall duly come in and qualify themselves, shall have and enjoy his majesty's protection, as to their respective kirks and benefices, they always containing themselves within the limits of their pastoral charge, within their said parishes, without offering to exercise any part of government, unless they be first duly assumed by a competent church judicatory; providing, nevertheless, that as the said ministers are left free to apply, or not, to the foresaid church judicatories," &c. to which agree, _act_ d, _parl._ ; _act_ d, _parl._ ; _act_ d, _parl._ , &c. behold here the civil magistrate, exercising the supremacy in matters ecclesiastical, in that he both establishes the old _scots_ curates in their respective parishes, upon their former footing, limits them in the exorcise of their function, discharging them from exercising any part of ecclesiastical polity, but upon their uniting with the presbyterians, on the terms he had adjusted for them. and further, by his authority stops the exercise of church discipline against these curates (though the most of them were notoriously scandalous); nay, even discharges the assembly from proceeding to any other business, until they received other directions from the throne. which palpable instance of erastianism in the state, was not only peaceably submitted to, but heartily acquiesced in by the church: for as they had declared they would censure no prelatical incumbent for his principles anent church government, however much disaffected to a covenanted reformation, and had given frequent discoveries of their readiness to receive into communion the episcopal curates, according to the terms prescribed by the parliament (as appears from the assembly records); so the assembly , _act_ th, having framed a sham _formula_, for receiving in the curates, containing no such thing as any renunciation of abjured prelacy, the abominable test, and other sinful oaths these creatures had taken, but only an acknowledgment of the revolution settlement of religion, as established by law, by the foresaid act, appointed their commission to receive all the episcopal clergy who applied, and being qualified according to law, would also subscribe their _formula_, and that without requiring the least show of repentance for their scandalous public sins, and their deep guilt of the effusion of the blood of god's faithful saints and witnesses during the tyranny of the two brothers. these instructions to the commission and other judicatories (as appears by their acts), were successively renewed by the assembly upward of twenty times, from to , and were indeed attended with good success, as is evident from their address to the queen, recorded _act_ th, ; where they declare, as an instance of their moderation, "that since the revolution, there had been taken in, and continued, hundreds of the episcopal curates upon the easiest terms," viz., such as were by the royal prerogative adjusted to them. which practice, as it declares this church homologators of erastianism, so is directly opposite to presbyterian principles, the discipline and practice of our reformed church of _scotland_, and to the laws of christ, the supreme lawgiver, _ezek._ xliv, - ; _ cor._ vi, , , &c. . a _third_ instance of the erastianism practiced since the revolution, is, that the king and parliament have taken upon them to prescribe and lay down, by magistratical authority, conditions and qualifications, _sine qua non_, of ministers and preachers. for proof of which, see _act_ th, _sess._ th, _parl._ st, , where it is enacted, "that the said oath of allegiance be sworn the same with the foresaid assurance, be subscribed by all preachers and ministers of the gospel whatever--certifying such of the foresaid persons as are, or shall be, in any public office, and shall own and exercise the same without taking the said oath and assurance in manner foresaid,--ministers provided to kirks shall be deprived of their benefices or stipends, and preachers shall be punished with banishment, or otherwise, as the council shall think fit." also, _act_ d, , it is ordained, "that no person be admitted or continued to be a minister, or preach within this church, unless that he have first taken and subscribed the oath of allegiance, and subscribed the oath of assurance in manner appointed. and further statute and ordain, that uniformity of worship be observed by all the said ministers and preachers, as the same are at present performed and allowed therein, or shall hereafter be declared by the authority of the same: and that no minister or preacher be continued and admitted hereafter, unless that he subscribe to observe, and do actually observe, the foresaid uniformity." the erastianism in these acts seems screwed up yet a little higher, by _act_ th, _sess._ th, _parl._ st, ; where, after appointing a new day to such ministers as had not formerly obeyed, it is ordained: "with certification that such of the said ministers as shall not come in between and said day, are hereby, and by the force of this present act, _ipso facto_, deprived of their respective kirks and stipends, and the same declared vacant, without any further sentence." the erastianism in these acts is so manifest at first sight, that it is needless to illustrate the same; only it may be remarked, that, by these acts, the civil magistrate prescribes new ministerial qualifications, viz., the oaths of allegiance and assurance; and these imposed instead of an oath of allegiance to zion's king, viz., the oaths of the covenants. as also, that ministers are hereby restricted from advancing reformation, being bound down to observe that uniformity at present allowed, or that shall hereafter be declared by authority of parliament. and further, erastianism is here advanced to the degree of wresting the keys of government out of the hands of the church altogether--taking to themselves the power of deposing all such ministers as shall not submit to their anti-christian impositions, and of declaring and ascertaining, by their own authority, what mode of worship or government shall take place in the church hereafter. this erastian appointment of ministerial qualifications, &c., is evidently injurious, both to the headship of christ in his church, and to the church's intrinsic power. it pertains to the royal prerogative of christ, to appoint all the qualifications of his officers, which he has done in the word. and it pertains to the church representative, by applying the laws of christ in his word, to declare who are qualified for the ministry, and who are not. but here the civil power, without any regard to church judicatories, by a magisterial authority, judges and determines, the qualifications that gospel ministers must have, otherwise they cannot be acknowledged ministers of this church. at the same time, it must be regretted, that the church, instead of faithfully discovering the sinfulness of foresaid conduct, and testifying against it, as an anti-christian usurpation, have declared their approbation thereof, by taking the above named illimited oaths, according to the parliament's order; and also by the assembly's enjoining their commission to act conform to the parliament's directions respecting ministerial qualifications, in their admission of those that had formerly conformed to episcopacy, and refusing to admit any into their communion without having these new ministerial qualifications. . a fourth piece of erastianism exercised since the commencement of the revolution settlement, against which the presbytery testify, is, the civil magistrate, by himself and his own authority, without consulting the church, or any but his parliament, privy council, and diocesan bishops, his appointing diets and causes of public fasting and thanksgiving. a number of instances might here be condescended on. so an act of the states, _anno_ , for public thanksgiving. an act of parliament , appointing a monthly fast, declares, "that their majesties, with advice and consent of the said estates of parliament, do hereby command and appoint, that a day of solemn fasting and humiliation be religiously and strictly observed, by all persons within this kingdom, both in church and meeting-houses, upon the third _thursday_ of the month of _may_, and, the third _thursday_ of every month thereafter, until intimation of forbearance be made by the lords of their majesties' privy council; and ordains all ministers to read these presents a _sunday_ before each of these fast days, nominated, by authority; and ordains all disobeyers to be fined in a sum not exceeding £., and every minister who shall not obey, to be processed before the lords of their majesties' privy council; and requiring sheriffs to make report of the ministers who shall fail of their duty herein, to the privy council." but it is to no purpose to multiply instances of this kind, seeing it has been the common practice of every sovereign since the revolution, to appoint and authorize national diets of fasting, with civil pains annexed. and as the state has made these encroachments upon the royalties of christ, so this church, instead of bearing faithful testimony against the same, have finally submitted thereto. in agreeableness to the royal appointment, they observed the monthly fast for the success of the war against _lewis_ xiv (of which above), and in favor of the pope, which king _william_ was bound to prosecute by virtue of a covenant made with the allies at the _hague, february_, , to be seen in the declaration of war then made against _france_, wherein it is expressly said, "that no peace is to be made with _lewis_ xiv, till he has made reparation to the holy see for whatsoever he has acted against it, and till he make void all these infamous proceedings (viz., of the parliament of _paris_) against the holy father, _innocent_ xi." behold here the acknowledgment of the pope's supremacy, and his power and dignity, both as a secular and ecclesiastical prince; and in the observation of these fasts, the church did mediately (_tell it not in gath_--) pray for success to the _man of sin_--a practice utterly repugnant to protestant, much more to presbyterian, principles, and which will be a lasting stain upon both church and state. as this church did then submit, so since she has made a resignation and surrender of that part of the church's intrinsic right to the civil power, see _act_ th, _assem._ : "all ministers and members are appointed religiously to observe all fasts and thanksgivings whatever, appointed by the church or supreme magistrate; and the respective judicatories are appointed to take particular notice of the due observation of this, and _act_ th, , _act_ th, ." from which acts it is manifest, that the revolution church has not only declared the power and right of authoritative indicting public fasts and thanksgivings for ordinary, even in a constituted settled national church, to belong, at least equally, to the civil magistrate, as to the church; but, by their constant practice, have undeniably given up the power of the same to the civil power altogether--it being fact, that she never, by her own power, appoints a national diet of fasting, but still applies to the king for the nomination thereof. and further, as a confirmation of this surrender, it appears from their public records, that when some members have protested against the observation of such diets, the assembly would neither receive nor record such protest. now, the sinfulness of this erastian practice still persisted in, is evident from the scriptures of truth, where the glorious king of zion assigns the power of appointing fasts, not to the civil magistrate, but to the spiritual office-bearers in his house. _jer._ xiii, : "say unto the king and queen, humble yourselves." here it is the office of the prophets of the lord, to enjoin humiliation work upon those that are in civil authority, contrary to the present practice, when kings and queens, usurping the sacred office, by their authority, say to ministers, "humble yourselves." see also, _joel_ i, , , and ii, , , compared with _numb._ x, - . here whatever pertains to these solemnities, is entrusted to, and required of, the ministers of the lord, without the intervention of civil authority. the same is imported in _matth._ xvi, , and xviii, ; _john_ xx, --it being manifestly contained in the power of the keys committed, by the church's head, to ecclesiastical officers. moreover, this erastianism, flowing from a spiritual supremacy exercised over the church, is peculiarly aggravated by these particulars: . that commonly these fasts have been appointed on account of wars, in which the nations were engaged, in conjunction with gross anti-christian idolaters, who have been most active in their endeavors to root out protestantism. now, it cannot but be most provoking to the majesty of heaven for professed presbyterians to observe fasts, the professed design of which, includes success to the interest of the avowed enemies of our glorious redeemer. again, the above practice is aggravated, from this consideration, that these diets of fasting, with civil pains annexed to them, are sent by public proclamation, directed to their sheriffs and other subordinate civil officers, who are authorized to dispatch them to the ministers, and inspect their observation thereof. and while professed ministers of christ tamely comply with all this, it amounts to no less, than a base subjection of the worship of god, in the solemnity of fasting in a national way, to the arbitrament of the civil powers, when whatever time and causes they appoint, must be observed. from all which, in the words of the ministers of _perth_ and _fife_, in their testimony to the truth, &c., , the presbytery testify against the above erastian conduct, as being, in its own nature, introductory to greater encroachments, and putting into the hands of the civil powers, the modeling of the worship of god, and things most properly ecclesiastical. . another piece of erastianism, respecting the present administration, which the presbytery testify against, is the king and parliament their arbitrarily imposing several of their acts and statutes upon ministers and preachers, under ecclesiastical pains and censures; while this revolution church, by their silent submission and compliance therewith, have, at least, interpretatively given their consent thereto. thus, as the oaths of allegiance and assurance were enjoined upon all in ecclesiastical office, under the pain of church censure (of which above), so likewise, _act_ th, , ordains, "that no professors and principals, bearing office in any university, be capable, or be admitted to continue in the exercise of their said functions, but such as shall own the civil government, in manner prescribed, or to be prescribed by acts of parliament." in consequence of which, there is an _act_ , an act in the first year of king _george_ i, and another in the fifth year of his reign; by all which statutes, ecclesiastical persons are enjoined to take the oath of abjuration, with the other oaths, under pain of having ecclesiastical censures inflicted upon them. and they ordain, "that no person be admitted to trials, or licensed to preach, until they have taken the public oaths, on pain of being disabled." the foresaid act, in the fifth year of _george_ i, ordains, "all ministers and preachers to pray in express words for his majesty and the royal family, as in former acts." the king and parliament at their own hand prescribe a set form of prayer for the church of _scotland_, and that under erastian penalties, upon the disobeyers. again, by an act of , framed for the more effectual bringing to justice the murderers of captain _porteous_, it is enacted, "that this act shall be read in every parish church throughout _scotland_, on the first lord's day of every month, for one whole year, from the first day of _august_, , by the minister of the parish, in the morning, immediately before the sermon; and, in case such ministers shall neglect to read this act, as is here directed, he shall, for the first offense, be declared incapable of sitting or voting in any church judicatory; and for the second offense, be declared incapable of taking, holding or enjoying any ecclesiastical benefice in that part of _great britain_ called _scotland_." the erastianism of this act is very plain, the penalties thereof are ecclesiastical, and infer a kind of deposition; seeing the disobeyers are hereby disabled from exercising and enjoying what is essential to their office. moreover, the wickedness of this act appears, in that it was appointed to be read on the sabbath day, and in time of divine service; whereby ministers being constituted the magistrates' heralds to proclaim this act, were obliged to profane the lord's day, and corrupt his worship, by immixing human inventions therewith, which was directly a framing mischief into a law. yet, with all these impositions above noticed, this church has generally complied; and thereby declared that they are more studious of pleasing and obeying men, than god, seeing their practice therein infers no less, than a taking instructions in the ministerial function, and matters of divine worship, from another head than christ. . the last piece of erastian administration in church and state, the presbytery take notice of, and testify against, is that of patronages. when the parliament , had changed the form of patronages, by taking the power of presentations from patrons, and lodging it in the hands of such heritors and elders as were qualified by law, excluding the people from a vote in calling their ministers, this erastian act, spoiling the people of their just privilege, was immediately embraced by the church, as is evident from their overtures for church discipline, , where they declare that only heritors and elders have a proper right to vote in the nomination of a minister. also their overtures, and , do lodge the sole power of nomination of ministers in the hands of the majority of heritors, by giving them a negative over the eldership and congregation. but, as if this had not been a sufficient usurpation of the people's right, purchased to them by the blood of christ, by an act of parliament, , the above act, , is repealed, and patrons fully restored to all their former anti-christian powers over the heritage of the lord; which yoke still continues to oppress the people of god. while again, this church, as if more careful to please the court, and court parasites, than christ and his people, have not only peaceably fallen in with this change, daily practicing it in planting vacant congregations, but, as fond of this child of _rome_, have further established and confirmed the power of patrons, by the sanction of their authority, as appears from several acts of assembly, thereby declaring their resolutions to have this epidemic evil continued, though it should terminate in the utter ruin of the church. patronage was always by the church of _scotland_ since the reformation, accounted an intolerable yoke; and therefore she never ceased contending against it until it was at last utterly abolished by acts both of reforming assemblies and parliaments; and that as one of the inventions of the whore of _rome_. as this anti-christian practice was unknown to the church in her primitive and purest times, until gradually introduced with other popish corruptions, so it has not the least vestige of any warrant in the word of truth: nay, is directly opposite thereto, and to the apostolical practice: acts i, - ; chap. vi, - : as also, xiv, , and xvi, , with other passages therein;--a book, intended to give us the apostolical practice and pattern, in the settlement of the christian church: and cor. iii, , &c. wherefore the presbytery testify against this erastian usurpation, as most sinful in itself, most injurious to the church of christ, and inconsistent with the great ends of the ministry; and against this church, for not only submitting unto, but even promoting this wickedness; which is evident, from her deposing some of her members, for no other reason but because they could not approve of this pernicious scheme. witness mr. _gallespie_, minister at carnock, who was deposed may, : and against all violent intruders, who, not entering by the door, can be regarded only as thieves and robbers; john x, . these are a few of the many instances of the erastian usurpations of the headship of christ, as a son, in and over his own house, and of the church's intrinsic power assumed by the state, and consented to by this church since the revolution.[ ] and without condescending upon any more, the presbytery concludes this part, with observing upon the whole, that when henry viii of england did cast off the authority of the see of rome, and refused to give that subjection to the pope formerly paid by him and his predecessors; he did, at the same time, assume to himself all that power in his dominions, which the pope formerly claimed; and soon afterward procured to have himself acknowledged and declared, by act of parliament, to be head of the church--head over all persons, and in all causes, civil and ecclesiastical. and which anti-christian supremacy has, ever since, continued an essential part of the english constitution, and inherent right of the crown; so that all the crowned heads there, have ever since been as little popes over that realm: and that all such still appropriate unto themselves that blasphemous anti-christian title of the head of the church, and supreme judge in all causes, is undeniably evident from the known laws and canons of england: and further appears from a declaration made by king george i, june th, , where he styles himself _defender of the faith, and supreme governor of the church in his dominions_; declaring, that before the clergy can order or settle any differences about the external policy of the church, they must first obtain leave under his broad seal so to do. which title or authority for man, or angel, to assume, is a downright dethroning and exauctorating of christ, the only and alone head and supreme governor of his church. from this spiritual anti-christian supremacy, granted by english laws to the king of england, confirmed and established, by virtue of the incorporating union, in british kings, by acts of british parliament, do flow all the forementioned acts imposed upon the revolution church of scotland. and as these acts and laws declare, that the british monarch confines not his spiritual supremacy to the church of england, but it extends it also over the church of scotland: so this revolution church, having never either judicially or practically lifted up the standard of a public, free and faithful testimony, against these sinful usurpations, flowing from the fountain of said supremacy, and clothed with the authority of an anti-christian parliament, where abjured bishops sit constituent members, but, on the contrary, has submitted to every one of them; therefore, this church may justly be constructed, as approvers and maintainers of erastian supremacy. and hereby, indeed, the revolt of these degenerate lands from their sworn subjection and obedience to the lord jesus christ, as supreme in his own house, is completed, when they have these many years substituted another in his place, and framed supremacy into a standing law, to be the rule, according to which their kings must lord it over the house and heritage of the living god. again: the presbytery testify against the manifold, and almost uninterrupted opposition to the ancient glorious uniformity in religion between the nations, that has appeared in the administrations of both church and state, since the last revolution. the revolution constitution and settlement of religion, as has been already observed, laid our solemn covenants and work of reformation, sworn to therein, in a grave, and many stones have since been brought and cast upon them: many ways and measures have both church and state taken to make sure the revolution sepulcher of a covenanted work of reformation, and prevent, if possible, its future resurrection: against all which, the presbytery judge themselves bound to lift up their testimony. particularly, . the presbytery testify against the incorporating union of this nation with _england_; and as being an union founded upon an open violation of all the articles of the solemn league and covenant, still binding upon the nations; and consequently, destructive of that uniformity in religion, once happily attained to by them: which will at first view appear, by comparing the articles of the union with those of the solemn league. all associations and confederacies with the enemies of true religion and godliness, are expressly condemned in scripture, and represented as dangerous to the true _israel_ of god: _isa._ viii, ; _jer._ ii, ; _psal._ cvi, ; _hos._ v, , and vii, , ; _cor._ vi, , . and if simple confederacies with malignants and enemies to the cause of christ are condemned, much more is an incorporation with them, which is an embodying of two into one, and, therefore, a straiter conjunction. and taking the definition of malignants, given by the declaration of both kingdoms joined in arms, _anno_ , to be just, which says, "such as would not take the covenant, were declared to be public enemies to their religion and country, and that they are to be censured and punished, as professed adversaries and malignants;" it cannot be refused, but that the prelatical party in _england_, now joined with, are such. further, by this incorporating union, this nation is obliged to support the idolatrous church of _england_; agreeable whereto, the _scottish_ parliament, in their act of security, relative to the treaty of union, declares, "that the parliament of _england_ may provide for the security of the church of _england_, as they think expedient." accordingly, the _english_ parliament, before entering upon the treaty of union with _scotland_, framed an act for securing the church of _england's_ hierarchy and worship, as by law established. which act, they declare, "shall be inserted, in express terms, in any act of parliament which shall be made for settling and ratifying any treaty of union, and shall be declared to be an essential fundamental part thereof." hence, the act of the _english_ parliament for the union of the two kingdoms, contains the above act for securing the church of _england_. which act being sent down to _scotland_, stands recorded among the acts of the last _scottish_ parliament. moreover, the last article of said union contains, that all laws and statutes in either kingdom, so far as they are contrary to, or inconsistent with the terms of these articles, or any of them, shall, from and after the union, cease and become void; which, as in the act of exemplification, was declared to be, by the parliaments of both kingdoms. thus, this nation, by engrossing the _english_ act, establishing prelacy, and all the superstitious ceremonies, in the act of the union parliament, and by annulling all acts contrary to the united settlement, have sealed, as far as men can do, the gravestones formerly laid upon the covenanted uniformity of the nations. to all which the revolution church, by consenting, and practically approving this unhallowed union, have said amen; though, at first, some of the members opposed and preached against it, yet afterward changed, and (if some historians may be credited) by the influence of gold, were swayed to an approbation. this church's consent to the union is evident, from their accepting of the act of security, enacted by the _scots_ parliament, as the legal establishment and security of the church of _scotland_; and from the assembly , utterly rejecting a proposal to make a representation to the king, that the incorporating union was a grievance to the church of _scotland_; though it ought still to be regarded as such, by all the lovers of reformation principles, because it is a disclaiming of our sworn duty, to endeavor the reformation of _england_ and _ireland_. it is a consenting to the legal and unalterable establishment of abjured prelacy in them, obliges the sovereigns of _great britain_ to swear to the preservation of the prelatical constitution, and idolatrous ceremonies of the episcopal church, and join in communion therewith; and, therefore, for ever secludes all true presbyterians from the supreme rule. this union establishes the civil, lordly power of bishops, obliging the church of _scotland_ to acknowledge them as their lawful magistrates and ministers, to pray for a blessing upon them in the exercise of their civil power, and is therefore a solemn ratification of anti-christian erastianism. it has formally rescinded, and for ever made void any act or acts, in favor of a covenanted uniformity in religion, that might be supposed to be in force before this union: and therefore, while it stands, it is impossible there can be a revival of that blessed work, which was once the glory of the nations of _scotland, england_ and _ireland_. . the presbytery testify against the sinful practice of imposing oaths upon the subjects, contradictory to presbyterian principles in general, and the oath of the covenants in particular, as the allegiance, and particularly the abjuration; all which oaths, imposed by a _british_ parliament, exclude our covenanted uniformity, and homologate the united constitution. but, to prevent mistakes, let it be here observed, that the presbytery do not testify against any of these oaths, out of the remotest regard to the spurious pretended right of a popish pretender to the throne and crown of these kingdoms; for they judge and declare, that, by the word of god, and fundamental laws of the nations, he can have no right, title or claim, to be king of these covenanted kingdoms--seeing, by our covenants and laws, establishing the covenanted reformation, which are well founded on the divine law, all papists, as well as prelatists, are forever excluded from the throne of these, and especially of this land. so that it is utterly inconsistent with the principles maintained by this presbytery, constituted upon the footing of the covenanted church of _scotland_, and the oath of god they, with the nations, are under, ever to acknowledge and own the popish pretender, or any of that cursed race, as their king; but they testify against these oaths, because they bind to the acknowledgment of the lawfulness of a prelatic erastian constitution of civil government, and homologate the incorporating union, in one article whereof, it is declared, that these words, "this realm, and the crown of this realm, &c," mentioned in the oaths, shall be understood of the crown and realm of _great britain_, &c.; and that in that sense the said oaths shall be taken and subscribed, and particularly the oath of abjuration, which whosoever takes, swears to maintain erastian supremacy, prelacy, and _english_ popish ceremonies; and so, at least, by native and necessary consequence, the swearing thereof is an abjuring of our sacred covenants. but that which puts it beyond all dispute, that the oath of abjuration, in the literal sense thereof, obliges to maintain the prelatic constitution of _england_, both in church and state, as by law established, and secured by the union act, is the express words of that act of parliament, by which this oath was imposed, and to which it expressly refers, viz., the act of further limitation, where it is said: "on which said acts (viz., of limitation, and further limitation), the preservation of your majesty's royal person and government, and the maintaining of the church of _england_, as by law established, do, under god, entirely depend. to the intent therefore, that these acts may be forever inviolably preserved, it is hereby enacted, that magistrates and ministers shall take the following oath," namely, of abjuration. the above act, then, declaring that said oath was directly intended for the support and establishment of the prelatic church of _england_, it follows, that this oath is a solemn abjuration of the covenanted reformation, as it is also expressly repugnant to presbyterian principles. but though the above oath is so manifestly sinful, yet the ministers of this church did neither faithfully warn others of the sin and danger thereof, nor faithfully oppose it when imposed on themselves; but, agreeing that every one should act therein as he thought proper, they who refused it may be reputed _socii criminis_ with the generality, who, contrary to their professed principles, did take and subscribe the same, and that (as says the oath) heartily and willingly; whereby they not only engaged to maintain a prelatic government, prelacy, with all its popish ceremonies, but to maintain _only_ a prelatic government, and to oppose all others, even though presbyterian, in their accession to the throne; and this by virtue of the sinful limitations and conditions, wherewith the oath is clogged. and hereby, these nominal presbyterians discover that they are not possessed of a zeal for the advancement of the true presbyterian cause and principles, proportionable to that which the _english_ discover for their will worship and superstition. . the presbytery testify against a sinful and almost boundless toleration, granted _anno_ , a woful fruit of the union; by which toleration act, not only those of the episcopal communion in _scotland_ have the protection of authority, but a wide door is cast open, and ample pass given to all sects and heretics (popish recusants and antitrinitarians some way excepted, who yet are numerous in the nation), to make whatever attacks they please upon the kingdom and interest of our glorious redeemer, in order to the advancement of their own and the devil's, and all with impunity. the foresaid act warrants the episcopal clergy publicly to administer all ordinances, and perform their worship after their own manner, with all the popish canons and ceremonies thereof, and obliges all magistrates to protect and assist them, while it destroys the hedge of church discipline against the scandalous and profane, and is, therefore, a settling and establishing of prelacy in _scotland_, giving it a security, little, if anything, inferior to that which the established church has. again, by a clause in the toleration bill, the security given by former laws to presbyterian church government and discipline, is undermined and taken away, at least rendered ineffectual, and made the subject of ridicule to the openly profane, by the civil magistrate's withdrawing his concurrence, in as much as it declares the civil pain of excommunication to be taken away, and that none are to be compelled to appear before church judicatories. there is nothing in religion of an indifferent nature; "for whosoever [saith christ] shall break one of the least of these commandments, and shall teach men so, shall be called least in the kingdom of heaven." it must, then, be the most daring wickedness, and an affronting of the majesty of heaven in the highest manner, for an earthly monarch to pretend to enact a toleration of religions, and thereby give a liberty where the divine law has laid a restraint; it implies an exalting of himself, not only to an equality with, but to a state of superiority above, the god of glory. whatever principles are of divine authority require no toleration from man; it is wickedness to pretend to do it, seeing whatever comes under the necessity of a toleration, properly so called, falls, at the same time, under the notion of a crime. and no less wicked is it for a magistrate to protect, by a promiscuous toleration, all heretics, heresies and errors; yea, it is a manifest breach of trust, and plain perverting the end of his office, seeing he is appointed to be _custos et vindex utriusque tabulae_, intrusted with the concerns of god's glory, as well as the interests of men. experience has, in every age, taught, that a toleration of all religions is the cut-throat and ruin of all true religion. it is the most effectual method that ever the policy of hell hatched, to banish all true godliness out of the world. but however manifold the evils be that toleration is big with, this church, instead of opposing, seems to have complied therewith, and to be of toleration principles; which is evident, not only from their receiving into communion the _scots_ curates, of which above; but from their joining in communion with mr. _whitefield (an english_ curate and member of that church, and ring-leader of the methodists there), when he is in _scotland_. again, it is known, that when the _scots_ gentlemen are sent to attend the _british_ parliament, or at any time in _england_, they do, many of them, join in communion with the prelatic church--nay, are guilty of taking the sacramental test (that is, taking the sacrament after their superstitious manner, to qualify them for any public post); yet this church receives them into the closest communion, without requiring any satisfaction for these evils; whereby they act contrary to christ's example, in purging and keeping his house pure, and contrary to the scripture; _rev._ ii, , , . . in like manner, the presbytery testify against the tyranny that has frequently appeared in the administration since the revolution, both in church and state. the civil powers have discovered not a little of tyrannical and arbitrary power, in imposing their laws, statutes and injunctions, upon the church, as in the instances of the particulars formerly noticed. but further, it has appeared in their fining and imprisoning persons, because (though endeavoring to live peaceably, as far as possible, with all men) they could not, in conscience, and in a due regard to the covenanted cause, own the lawfulness of their authority, by swearing fidelity to the present constitution. again, in their dispensing with, and counteracting, the law of god in a variety of instances. thus, while, without any divine warrant, the crime of theft is capitally punished, yet the grossest adulterers, who are capitally punishable by the divine law, pass with impunity. and frequently reprieves, and sometimes pardons (as in the case of _porteous_), have been granted to murderers, expressly contrary to the law of god, which declares that "whosoever sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." another astonishing and full evidence of the above charge, is in the act repealing the penal statutes against witches, &c., , where it is enacted, "that no prosecution, suit or proceeding, shall be carried on against any person or persons, for witchcraft, sorcery, enchantment or conjuration," &c. this act, in plain terms, flatly contradicts and opposes the law of god, in the very letter thereof. see _levit._ xx, , ; _deut._ xviii, - ; _exod._ xxii, . not only has the state, in these and other instances (as the imposing almost intolerable taxations upon the impoverished subjects, for supporting the grandeur of useless and wicked pensioners, and for carrying on wars, often not only sinful in respect of their rise and causes, but in their nature and tendency unprofitable to the nations), been guilty of this evil, but also the revolution church has exercised a most tyrannical government. as many of the constituent members of the revolution church had shown a persecuting, tyrannizing spirit, against the faithful contenders for the truth, in the matter of the public resolutions, so the same spirit has still continued since the revolution, and frequently exerted itself in a most arbitrary manner, against all who have made any appearance for a covenanted work of reformation. accordingly, soon after the revolution, this church raised some processes against mr. _john hepburn_, minister at _orr_, under pretense of some irregularities, but in reality, for his making some appearance against their abounding defection, and for a covenanted work of reformation, and continued their prosecution to suspension and deposition; and further, applied to the civil magistrate, to apprehend said mr. _hepburn_, who accordingly was imprisoned in _edinburgh_, and then, because of his preaching to the people out of a window, was carried to _stirling_ castle, and kept close prisoner there for a considerable time, as a book, entitled _humble pleadings_, fully discovers. they likewise exercised their tyranny against messrs. _gilchrist_ in _dunscore_, and _taylor_ in _wamphray_, whom they prosecuted, not only to deposition, but even excommunication, for no reason but their bearing testimony against that ensnaring oath of abjuration, and a number of other defections. again, this church, still fond of suppressing the good old cause and owners thereof, framed and prosecuted a libel, most unjustly (some even of themselves being judges), against mr. _john mcmillan_, minister in _balmaghie_, for presenting, in a regular manner, a paper of real and acknowledged grievances; and, because he would not resile from it, but continued to plead for a redress, was at last deposed. as also mr. _john mcneil_, preacher, for the same reason, had his license taken from him; and, by the authority of the assembly, both of them were prosecuted and censured, not for scandal, insufficiency or negligence, error in doctrine, &c., but only on account of their pleading for the covenanted reformation of the church of _scotland_, and maintaining a necessary testimony against the prevailing corruptions and defections of former and present times, as appears from their paper of grievances and joint declinature, printed . nay, such was their mad zeal against reformation principles, that, by the _act_ th of _assem._ , the commission was not only empowered to censure all the forementioned persons, but also enjoined to apply to the civil magistrate for suppressing and punishing them; and accordingly sundry of them were proclaimed rebels over public market crosses, only for their continued adherence to reformation. and besides other instances, their magisterial and lordly power exercised over the flock of christ, in the violent intrusion of ministers into vacant churches over the belly of the people, and then excommunicating from sealing ordinances such as cannot in conscience submit to the ministry of these intruders, is a most glaring one; while at the same time, severe censures are inflicted upon such ministers as have the honesty to oppose these anti-christian measures. loud complaints have likewise been made against their arbitrary and tyrannical conduct, with reference to mr. _ebenezer erskine_, and others with him, designated by the name of the _associate presbytery_, because of their remonstrating against, and endeavoring to rectify, some of the forementioned evils in the church; the justness of which grievances and complaints may be instructed from their own writings on that head. it must not be here omitted to remark, that as this church is justly charged with tyranny in government, so she is equally guilty of partiality in discipline. though all that discover any measure of faithfulness in the concerns of christ's glory, are sure to meet with most severe treatment, yet the loose, profane and erroneous, have seldom any church censures put in execution against them. this church never made any suitable inquiry into the sinful compliances, and sad defections of her members and office-bearers, during the persecuting period: and that unfaithfulness in the exercise of church discipline is still copied after. how few, guilty of the most gross scandals, are censured, such as notorious drunkenness, blasphemy, cursing, swearing, sabbath-breaking, uncleanness, especially among the rich, who are capable to give pecuniary mulcts to free them from church censure? (thus, in conformity to the prelatical and anti-christian example, setting to sale the censures of the church, and dispensing with the laws of christ for money.) nay, not only are such overlooked, but many guilty of these gross sins, together with oppression, neglecters of family worship, and the grossly ignorant, are without any public acknowledgement of these sins, admitted to the highest and most solemn ordinances, viz., both sacraments. and this may be thought the less strange, when persons chargeable with most of these sins, are admitted, and continued to be office-bearers in the house of god. persons, and even teachers maintaining most dreadful blasphemous errors connived at, patronized, or but slightly censured, and still kept in communion, without any open renunciation of these heresies. play-houses, the seminaries of vice and impiety, erected in the principal cities of the nation, and stage players, commonly among the most abandoned of mankind, escape with impunity. yea, this pagan entertainment of the stage is countenanced by the members and office-bearers of this church, and that to such a degree, that one of the ministers thereof has commenced author of a most profane play, called _the tragedy of douglas_, wherein immorality is promoted, and what is sacred exposed to ridicule. oh! how astonishing! that a minister in the once famous church of scotland should be guilty of such abominations, and yet not immediately sentenced to bear the highest of all church censure! . the presbytery testify against this established church, for unfaithfulness of doctrine; which will appear by a few instances: although before the revolution, the lord jesus was openly, as far as human laws could do, divested of his headship and sovereignty in and over his church; although the divine right of presbytery had been publicly and nationally exploded, derided and denied, yet this church has never by any formal act, declared that our lord jesus christ is sole king, the alone supreme head of his church--nor in the same manner declared that the presbyterian form of church government is of divine right, and condemned all other forms as contrary to the word. such a testimony was the more necessary, when the civil powers have arrogated christ's power to themselves, and continue to exercise it over his church; and the want of it is an evidence of the church's unsoundness in the doctrine of government, and of christ's kingly office. this church's error in doctrine further appears from their condemnation of a book entitled _the marrow of modern divinity_, as containing gross antinomian errors; whereby they condemned many great gospel truths as errors, particularly, that believers are altogether set free from the law, as a covenant of works, both from its commanding and condemning power, together with others; whereby they have made way for, and encouraged that legal, moral way of harranguing, exclusive of christ and his most perfect righteousness (which is so common and frequent in all parts of the land), and opened a door for introducing _baxterian_ principles, which, in consequence hereof, have since very much prevailed. another evidence of this church's unsoundness and unfaithfulness in doctrine, is their excessive, sinful lenity toward the most gross heretics. notwithstanding _arminian_ and _pelagian_ heresies, and _arian_ blasphemies, have been publicly taught; and although true godliness, and the effectual working of the spirit on the souls of men have been publicly exposed as enthusiasm, and many other damnable heresies vented, yet this church has never lifted up the faithful standard of a judicial testimony, in condemnation of these heresies, and in vindication of the precious truths of christ thereby impugned. and when the ministers and members of this church have been processed before her assemblies, and convicted of maintaining many gross errors, no adequate censure has been inflicted. this particularly appears in the case of mr. simpson, professor of divinity in the college of glasgow, when processed before the judicatories of this church, in the years and , for several gross errors; such as, "that regard to our own happiness, in the enjoyment of god, ought to be our chief motive in serving him, and that our glorifying of god is subordinate to it: that adam was not our federal head;" and other _arminian, socinian_ and _pelagian_ heresies, all to be found in his answers to mr. webster's libel given in against him, and clearly proven: yet was he dismissed with a very gentle admonition. which sinful lenity encouraged him, not only to persist in the same errors, but also to the venting of _arian_ heresies among his students. accordingly, he was again arraigned before the assembly's bar in the years - - , when it was found clearly proven that he had denied the necessary existence of our lord jesus christ, and the numerical oneness of the three persons of the trinity in substance and essence, with other damnable tenets. yet when these articles, whereby he had attempted to depose the son of god from his supreme deity, were proven, and when (as one of the members of this church, in his protest against the assembly's sentence, said) the son of god was, as it were, appearing at the bar of that assembly, craving justice against one who had derogated from his essential glory, and blasphemed his name, at which every knee should bow. yet such was the corruption and unfaithfulness of this church, that the blasphemer was dismissed without any adequate censure passed upon him, and still continued in the character of a minister and member of this church. again, when mr. campbell, professor of church history at st. andrews, was processed before the judicatories of this church, for maintaining a scheme of dangerous and most pernicious principles, which he published to the world, having a manifest tendency to subvert revealed religion, and expose the exercise of serious godliness, under the notion of enthusiasm; to advance self-love, as the leading, principle and motive in all human actions whatever, and to destroy the self-sufficiency of god, making him a debtor to his creatures: yet though these, with a number of god-dishonoring, creature-exalting, and soul-ruining errors, were notorious from his books, and were defended by him; the heretic, instead of being duly censured, was countenanced and carressed: whereby this church has given a most deep wound to some of the most important truths of the christian religion, and becomes chargeable with the guilt of all the errors maintained by that erroneous professor. a third instance of this church's unfaithfulness, appears in the case of mr. glas, and others, who openly vented, by preaching and printing, independent schemes of church government, with some new improvements; attacked our confession of faith and covenants, unhinging all order and government in the church, pulled up the hedge of discipline, to introduce all errors in doctrine, and corruption in worship; and, at last, openly renounced presbytery, name and thing (denying that there is any warrant for national churches under the new testament), and asserted, that our martyrs, who suffered for adhering to the covenanted reformation, were so far in a delusion, with many other sectarian tenets: for which, the church at first suspended, and then deposed some of them. but afterward, as if this church repented of doing so much in favor of presbytery, they were reponed, to the great danger of the church: for having discovered no remorse for their errors, they immediately employed all their parts to shake presbytery, by setting up independent churches and ordaining several mechanics to be their ministers; and nothing done by the church for putting a stop to these errors, and for reviving and vindicating the precious truths they had impugned. likewise, when mr. wishart was staged for error vented by him in some of his sermons, with respect to the influence of arguments taken from the awe of future rewards and punishments, and other erroneous notions; he was dismissed without any renunciation of his heterodox principles, and assoilzied by the judicatories of this church: and, as easy absolutions encourage error, so no sooner was he assoilzied, but he had the assurance to recommend erroneous books, such as doctor whitchcot's sermons, to his students. it is indeed no small evidence of the unsoundness of this church, when the heads of colleges are suffered, _impune_, to recommend such books for students and probationers to form upon. again, when professor leechman was quarreled with for his deistical sermon on prayer, by the presbytery of _glasgow_, and afterward carried before the assembly; yet although in all his sermons, he presents god as the object of prayer, merely as our creator, without any relation to christ, as mediator; but recommends to his hearers, as the only acceptable disposition of mind, an assured confidence in the goodness and mercy of their creator: not only has that christless sermon been very much extolled, but the author dismissed from the assembly's bar in such a manner, as if thereby he had merited their applause. from all which it sufficiently appears, that this church is unsound and unfaithful, in point of doctrine; especially, if it is considered, that she has been frequently addressed by representations, declaring the necessity of an assertory net, affirming and ascertaining the precious truths injured and impuned, and that publicly, by the above mentioned errors; and that a solemn warning should be emitted, discovering the evil and danger of them: yet that necessary duty has still been contemned and disregarded. the great truths of god, have, for many years, lain wounded and bleeding in our streets, trampled upon by their open and daring enemies; while this church has entirely forgotten and slighted the divine command, to contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints. and though the _westminster_ confession of faith continues to be subscribed by intrants into the ministry (the covenants owned by the reformed church of _scotland_, as a part of her confession, being abstracted from the confession of this present church), yet how little of that system and order of doctrine is now taught? the generality having just as much of christ, and the doctrines of his cross, in most of their discourses, as is to be found in the writings of _plato, epictetus_ and _seneca_, and the rest of the pagan moralists. so that this church appears orthodox, in little (or no) other sense than the church of _england_ is so, viz., by subscribing the thirty-nine articles, which are _calvinistical_ in the doctrinal parts; while yet the _arminian_ system of doctrine is generally received and taught by her clergy. add to what is above, that this church maintains no suitable testimony against sins of all sorts, in persons of all stations; neither emits faithful warnings anent the snares and dangers of the nation, nor full and free declarations of present duty, as church judicatories, like faithful watchmen did in former times. but such faithfulness in god's matters is not now, alas! to be expected; seeing this church has made a formal concert, or mutual paction, binding up one another from preaching against, and applying their doctrines to the sins, corruptions and scandals of the times: see _acts of assem._ th, th, _anno_ ; _act_ th, ; _act_ th, ; _act_ th, . the presbytery cannot also here omit observing, and that with deep regret, that although the most damnable principles, which have a direct tendency to deny the being of god, and so to propagate opinionative atheism, to subvert all religion, to extol the power of corrupt nature, and exalt popery, as the best form of religion, to deny the subjection of the world to the providence of god, to destroy all distinction between virtue and vice, and consequently affirm, that there is no moral evil in the world, and to ridicule christianity, as destitute of divine authority, have been lately vented by _david hume_, esq.; and another designated by the name of _sopho_: yet this church has passed no suitable censure upon the authors of these impious and blasphemous principles, though they justly deserve the very highest: nor have they done anything to testify their dislike, or put an effectual stop to the spreading of these abominable tenets. the presbytery therefore, as they declare their abhorrence of these, and the other errors formerly mentioned, so testify against the church's notorious unfaithfulness, in suffering these wretches to pass with impunity; and as being, on all these accounts noticed, unsound and corrupt, in the matter of doctrine, &c. it may also be here remarked, as an undoubted evidence of the corruptness of the state, that, although there are civil laws presently in being, which declare the maintaining of antitrinitarian, atheistical principles, to be not only criminal, but capital; yet the civil powers in the nation have not so much regard to god, and the son of god, as to punish treason openly acted against them. . the presbytery testify against both church and state, for their sinful associations with malignants: as declared enemies to the covenanted interest have engrossed the civil power wholly to their hands, since the public resolutions, that a door was opened for their admission; so such is the nature of the laws presently extant and in force, that one cannot be admitted to any office, civil or military, but by swearing away all friendship to a covenanted reformation. and, moreover, all along since the late revolution, the nations have been the most earnest pursuing after friendship with the grossest idolators; and, in express contradiction to the word of god, have confederated in the closest alliance with god's declared enemies abroad; nay, have exhausted their strength and substance, in maintaining the quarrel of such as have been remarkable for their hatred at, and persecution of the protestant interest. the revolution church has also said a confederacy with such as have, on all occasions, shewed a rooted enmity and hatred at reformation principles: which appears from their admitting such (noticed above) to be office-bearers in the church: from their observing fasts, and praying for success to the allied armies, though almost wholly composed of such, and many of them oftentimes gross popish idolaters: from their going in with, and approving of the sinful incorporating union with _england_: from their acknowledging the civil power of church men as lawful: from their joining in religious communion with mr. _whitefield_; and in many other instances. not to insist further in enumerating particulars, the presbytery finally testify against church and state, for their negligence to suppress impiety, vice, and superstitious observance of holy days, &c. the civil powers herein acting directly contrary to the nature and perverting the very ends of the magistrate's office, which is to be _custos et vindex utriusque tabulae_; the minister of god, a revenger, to execute wrath on him that doeth evil. transgressors of the first table of the law may now sin openly with impunity; and, while the religious observation of the sabbath is not regarded, the superstitious observation of holy-days, even in _scotland_, is so much authorized, that on some of them the most considerable courts of justice are discharged to sit. stage-plays, masquerades, balls, assemblies, and promiscuous dancings, the very nurseries of impiety and wickedness, are not only tolerated, but even countenanced by law. and as these, with other evils, are permitted by the civil powers; so this church seems to have lost all zeal against sin. no suitable endeavors are used to prevent the growth of atheism, idolatry and superstition: and though prelacy, as well as popery, is growing apace in the lands, and organs publicly used in that superstitious worship; yet no testimony is given against them, but new modes introduced into the worship of god, for carnal ends, as a gradual advance toward that superstition. yea, so unconcerned about suppressing vice and extravagant vanity, &c, that not only are the forementioned nurseries of sin frequented by ministers' children, but ministers themselves have countenanced them by their presence, to the great scandal of their office, and manifest encouragement of these seminaries of immorality. and notwithstanding that by the late proclamation, the penal laws against vice and profanity seem to be revived (which is in itself so far good), yet this cannot supersede or remove the ground of the presbytery's testimony against church and state complexly, on the above account, or even against the thing itself, in the manner that it is gone about. for besides that, notwithstanding of all former endeavors of this kind, since the overthrow of our scriptural and covenanted reformation, immorality and wickedness have still increased and overflowed all these banks; partly, because, after all their pretenses, the laws were not vigorously put in execution (and as good, no law nor penalty, as no execution), and partly, because these law-makers, being also themselves the law-breakers, have entrusted the execution to such as are generally ringleaders in a variety of gross immoralities; it is not likely, that ever god will countenance and bless such attempts, whereby (contrary to scripture and all good order) the ecclesiastical power is subjected to the civil, and ministers made the bare inspectors of men's manners, and informers to inferior judges, without having it in their power to oblige such transgressors (if obstinate) to compear before church judicatories, and conform and submit to the laws of christ's house. nay, so far will god be from approving such erastian methods of reformation, that he will certainly visit for this, among all our other iniquities, and in his own due time make a breach upon us, because we sought him not in the due order. wherefore, and for all these grounds, the presbytery testify against both church and state, as in their constitutions erastian and anti-scriptural, including the substitution and acknowledgement of another head and governor over the church than christ, as may be sufficiently evident from proofs above adduced. and particularly, because the british united constitution is such as involves the whole land, and all ranks therein, in the dreadful guilt of idolatry, communicating with idolators, apostasy, perjury, &c.[ ] they declare they can have no communion therewith; but that it is such an association as that god's call to his people, concerning it, is, "come out from among them. be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and i will receive you, saith the lord." * * * * * supplement to part second. for as much as a good number of people in the north of _ireland_ have acceded, and submitted themselves to the presbytery, and one of their number is fixed among them as their proper pastor; the presbytery intended to have subjoined something by way of appendix to the above testimony, with relation to the state of religion in that kingdom, especially with regard to the settlement of the presbyterian religion there. but as diocesan episcopacy is the religion there established by law, against which the presbytery has declared and testified (as above) as an anti-scriptural, anti-covenanted and merely a human and political settlement (whether considered abstractly or complexly with that in the kingdom of _scotland_), there needs nothing be further said anent it. and as those called presbyterians in _ireland_, are equally enemies to the true covenanted presbyterian cause with those of the revolution church of _scotland_; so the above testimony equally strikes against them with the other. there seems, however, to be this considerable difference betwixt the presbyterians in _scotland_ and _ireland, viz._, that although the settlements the same as to the matter of it, yet so it is not as to the form or manner of it, the presbyterians in _ireland_ neither having, nor claiming any other security or foundation for their different mode of religious worship than the royal indulgence, or toleration act. and therefore, as the presbytery did and do testify against toleration, and toleration principles, disclaiming such an anti-scriptural shelter; they therein, of consequence, bear witness and testimony against all such as do in these lands (where god has given his people a claim of another kind) professedly dwell under such a shadow. but besides, the presbytery view them (complexly considered) as unworthy of their regard or notice in these papers, as to engaging in any particular or explicit testimony against them, in as much as they have denuded themselves of almost any pretense to the presbyterian name, by not only disclaiming and opposing the true presbyterian cause, but having also fallen from the belief and profession of the most important and fundamental truths of christianity; thereby plainly discovering themselves to be creatures of quite another species and spirit, than the ministers of jesus christ, and friends to the blessed spiritual bridegroom; deserving rather to be termed a synagogue of _libertines_, a club of _socinians, arians, pelagians_ &c., banded together against christ, and the doctrines of his cross than a synod of the ministers of the gospel. therefore, as the presbytery testify and remonstrate against them, their toleration, or indulgence footing, on which they professedly stand, together with their poisonous jumble and medley of errors, commonly called _newlight_, adopted, and with the greatest warmth and diligence, spread and propagated by most of them, and connived at and tolerated by the rest and all their books or prints written by them, or others of the like spirit with them in defense of these dangerous and damnable tenets so they do hereby judicially warn and exhort all the people under their inspection there, to beware of such men, and such books, however they may varnish over the doctrines they bring, with fine words fair speeches and pretenses, in order to deceive the hearts of the simple; and this, as they would not incur the displeasure of a holy and jealous god, and have their souls defiled and destroyed by these error's. on the contrary to endeavor to have their minds and understandings enlightened with the knowledge of the truths of christ, and mysteries of his gospel, and their hearts warmed with the love of them; so that being through grace established in the belief of the truth, they may not "be as children tossed to and fro, and carried about with every wind of doctrine, by the sleight of men, and cunning craftiness, whereby they lie in wait to deceive;" _eph._ iv, , . "but speaking the truth in love may grow up in all things unto him, which is the head even christ;" and striving to refrain and keep themselves from every wicked, offensive and backsliding course, and to live soberly, righteously and godly, blameless and harmless as the sons of god, without rebuke, adorning the gospel of christ with a conversation becoming the same; so shall they thereby glorify god, and transmit a faithful testimony for the despised truths of christ to posterity, that so there may be a seed to do service unto him in these lands, and make his name to be remembered through all generations. part iii. the principles of some parties, who have made the most specious appearances for the reformation, considered.--particular grounds of testimony against that body of ministers and people known by the name of the secession, wherein their partiality and unfaithfulness in their profession of the covenanted testimony of the church of scotland is discovered in various instances,--their loose and immoral doctrine about civil society and government--their corruption in worship, sinful terms of communion, &c., &c. the presbytery having in the preceding pages exhibited their testimony against both church and state, as now established in these isles of the sea, and therein discovered the reasons, why they are obliged to disapprove of both, proceed, next, to take notice of some of the parties that have made the most specious appearances for reformation in this land since the revolution, of which that party commonly known by the name of the _secession_, are not the least remarkable. it is vast pity, and it is with grief and lamentation, that the presbytery find themselves, in point of duty, obliged to lift up a testimony against the forementioned party; considering, that they have made a professed appearance under a judicial banner displayed for truth, and a covenanted work of reformation, and have, in reality, showed much zeal in opposing a variety of errors in doctrine, corruption in discipline and government, most prevalent in the national church of _scotland_; have contributed to vindicate some of the most important truths and doctrines of the christian faith, that have been openly impugned in this day of blasphemy, and may have been instrumental in turning many to righteousness, and reviving the exercise of practical godliness among not a few. but as _paul_ withstood _peter_ to the face, and testified against his dissimulation, though both of them apostles of our common lord and savior; so it still remains duty to testify against the most godly, and such as may have been very useful to the church in many respects, in so far as they have not showed themselves _earnest contenders for the faith once delivered to the saints_, but have dealt treacherously with god in the concerns of his glory. it is therefore with just regret they proceed to observe, that they are obliged, to testify against this party designated, first, by the title of _the associate presbytery_ (and then that of _the associate synod_)--and that particularly, for their error in doctrine, treachery in covenant, partiality and tyranny in discipline and government. it may at first seem strange, to see a charge of error advanced against those who made the countenancing of error in the judicatories of the established church, one principal ground of their secession therefrom. but by taking a narrower view of the principles and doctrines which they have roundly and plainly asserted, and endeavored to justify in their printed pamphlets anent civil government, the reception and belief of which they zealously inculcate upon their followers, it will appear, that their scheme is so far from tending to promote the declarative glory of god, and the real good of human and religious society, or the church of god, which are the very ends of the divine ordinance of magistracy, that it is not only unscriptural, but anti-scriptural, contrary to the common sentiments of mankind, and introductive of anarchy and confusion in every nation, should it be thoroughly adopted, and therefore ought to be testified against. the sum of their principles anent civil magistracy, may be collected from these few passages, to be found in a print entitled, _answers by the associate presbytery to reasons of dissent, &c.--page_ . "this divine law, not only endows men in their present state with a natural inclination to civil society and government, but it presents unto them an indispensable necessity of erecting the same into some form, as a moral duty, the obligation and benefit whereof no wickedness in them can lose or forfeit.--_page_ . whatever magistrates any civil state acknowledged, were to be subjected to throughout the same.--_page_ . such a measure of these qualifications (viz., scriptural) and duties cannot be required for the being of the lawful magistrate's office, either as essential to it, or a condition of it _sine qua non_: i. it cannot be required as essential thereunto; for then it would be the same thing with magistracy, which is grossly absurd, and big with absurdities. in the _next_ place, it cannot be a condition of it _sine qua non_, or, without which one is not really a magistrate, however far sustained as such by civil society; for then no person could be a magistrate, unless he were so faultlessly. the due measure and performance of scriptural qualifications and duties belong not to the being and validity of the magistrate's office, but to the well-being and usefulness thereof.--_p._ . the precepts, already explained, are a rule of duty toward any who are, and while they are acknowledged as magistrates by the civil society. nothing needs be added for the clearing of this, but the overthrow of a distinction that has been made of those that are acknowledged as magistrates by the civil society, into such as are so by the preceptive will of god, and such as are so by his providential will only; which distinction is altogether groundless and absurd: all providential magistrates are also preceptive, and that equally in the above respect (viz., as to the origin of their office) the office and authority of them all, in itself considered, does equally arise from, and agree unto the preceptive will of god.--_p._ . the precepts already explained (_prov._ xxiv, ; _eccl._ x, ; _luke_ xx, ; _rom._ xiii, - ; _tit._ iii, ; _ pet._ ii, - ), are a rule of duty equally toward any who are, and while they are acknowledged as magistrates by the civil society; they are, and continue to be a rule of duty in this matter, particularly, to all the lord's people, in all periods, places, and cases." these few passages, containing the substance of seceders' principles on the head of civil government, may be reduced to the following particulars: . they maintain the people to be the ultimate fountain of magistracy, and that as they have a right to choose whomsoever they please to the exercise of civil government over them; so their inclinations, whether good or bad, constitute a lawful magistrate, without regard had to the divine law. . that the law of god in the scriptures of truth, has no concern with the institution of civil government, but only adds its precept in forcing obedience upon the conscience of every individual, under the pain of eternal damnation, to whomsoever the body politic shall invest with the civil dignity; and that, without any regard to the qualifications of person or office. . whomsoever the _primores regni_, or representatives of a nation, do set up, are lawful magistrates, and that not only according to the providential, but according to the preceptive will of god also, in regard that god, the supreme governor, has prescribed no qualifications in his word, as essential to the being of a lawful magistrate, nor told what sort of men they must be, that are invested with that office over his professing people, though it is confessed there are many that are necessary to the well-being and usefulness of that office: and therefore, . that no act, or even habitual series of the greatest wickedness and mal-administration can forfeit the person's right to the people's subjection, for conscience sake, considered as individuals, while the majority of a nation continue to recognize and own his authority. the absurdity of this scheme of principles may obviously appear at first view to every unbiassed mind that is blessed with any competent measure of common sense and discretion, and tolerable knowledge of divine revelation. that magistracy is a divine ordinance, flowing originally from jehovah, the supreme and universal sovereign of heaven and earth, as the ultimate fountain thereof, cannot be denied. neither is it to be doubted, but that the lord has lodged a power and right in the people, of choosing and setting up those persons that shall exercise civil government over them, and to whom they will submit themselves. but then, while god has lodged this power in the people, of conveying the right of civil authority to their magistrates, he has at the same time given them positive and unalterable laws, according to which they are to proceed, in setting up their magistrates; and, by the sovereign authority of the great lawgiver, are they expressly bound to act in agreeableness to these rules, without any variation, and that, under the pain of rebellion against him, who is king of kings, and lord of lords. the presbytery, therefore, testify against this scheme of seceding principles, calculated, in order to inculcate a stupid subjection and obedience to every possessor of regal dignity, at the expense of trampling upon all the laws of god, respecting the institution, constitution, and administration of the divine ordinance of magistracy. particularly, this opinion is, . contrary to the very nature of magistracy, as described in the scriptures of truth, where we are taught, that all authority to be acknowledged of men, must be of god, and ordained of god. the divine ordination of magistracy is the alone formal reason of subjection thereto, and that which makes it a damnable sin to resist. so the apostle teacheth, _rom._ xiii, , &c.: "there is no power but of god; the powers that be, are ordained of god." not only is it the current sentiment of orthodox divines upon the place, but the text and context make it undeniably evident, that by _power_ here, is understood, not a natural, but a moral power, consisting not only in an ability, but in a right to command. which power is said to be ordained of god, as importing, not merely the proceeding of the thing from god providentially, but such a being from god, as carries in it his instituting or appointing thereof, by the warrant of his word, law, or precept. so that that power which is to be owned as of god, includes these two particulars, without which, no authority can be acknowledged as god's ordinance, viz., institution and constitution, so as to possess him, who is god's minister, with a moral power. in the divine institution of magistracy is contained, not only the appointment of it, but the defining the office in its qualifications and form, in a moral sense, prescribing what shall be the end, and what the measure of its authority, and how the supreme power shall rule and be obeyed. again, the constitution of the power, or the determination of the form, and investiture of the particular person with the government, is of god: hence our savior, _john_ x, , in his application of these words in the _psalms_, "i said, ye are gods," to magistrates, shows how they were gods, "because unto them the word of god came;" that is, by his word and warrant he authorized them; his constitution is passed upon them, who are advanced by men, according to his law in his word. when therefore a nation acts according to divine rule, in the molding of government, and advancing of persons to the exercise of it; there the government and governors may be said to be ordained of god. but that government that is not consonant to the divine institution, and those governors, that are not advanced to the place of supreme rule, in a christian land, by the people, regulating themselves by the divine law, cannot be said to be the powers ordained of god. it is not merely the conveying the imperial dignity by men unto any particular person, that constitutes the power to be of god; but because, and in so far as this is done by virtue of a warrant from god and in agreeableness to his law that the action has the authority of god upon it. hence, if in this matter there is a substantial difference from, or contrariety to the divine rule, then there is nothing but a contradiction to god's ordinance: this must needs be granted, unless it is maintained that god has wholly left the determination of this ordinance to men, absolutely and unlimitedly, giving them an unbounded liberty to act therein, according to their own pleasure, which is most absurd. from the whole, it follows, that more is requisite than the inclinations of any people, to constitute a lawful magistrate, such as can be acknowledged god's ordinance. that power which in its institution and constitution is of god, by his law, can alone challenge subjection, not only for wrath, but for conscience sake. . the presbytery testify against this scheme of principles, as being anti-scriptural, and what, in its tendency, is destructive to the authority of the sacred oracles. _seceders_ maintain, that the people, without regard to scriptural qualifications, have an essential right to choose whom they please to the exercise of civil government, and that whomsoever they choose are lawful magistrates; and thus make the great ordinance of magistracy dependent on the uncertain and corrupt will of man. but that this annarchical system is not of divine authority, but owes its origin to their own invention, appears from the following texts of holy writ, besides others, _exod._ xviii. : "moreover, thou shalt provide out of all the people, able men, such as fear god, men of truth, hating covetousness; and place such over them to be rulers." this counsel of jethro, was god's counsel and command to moses, in the choice of magistrates, supreme and subordinate; and discovers, that people are not left to their own will in this matter. it is god's direction, that the person advanced to rule, must be _a man in whom is the spirit; numb._ xxvii, ; which _deut._ xxxiv, , interprets to be _the spirit of wisdom_, (i.e.) the spirit of government, fitting and capacitating a man to discharge the duties of the magistratical office, to the glory of god and the good of his people; without this, he ought not to be chosen. _deut._ i, : "take ye wise men and understanding, and known among your tribes, and i will make them rulers over you." here is a precept, directing the people in their choice: they must not be children nor fools; if so, they are plagues and punishments, instead of scriptural magistrates, who are always a blessing. and they must be men of known integrity and affection to the real welfare of _israel_, not such as are known to be haters of, and disaffected to the _israel_ of god. again, the express law of the king, is, that he must be one of the lord's chosing; _deut._ xvii. , : "when thou art come unto the land which the lord thy god giveth thee, and shalt possess it, and shalt dwell therein, and shalt say, i will set a king over me, like as all the nations about me: thou shalt in anywise set him king over thee, whom the lord thy god shall choose: one from among thy brethren shalt thou set king over thee, thou mayest not set a stranger over thee, who is not thy brother." here, though christians have a right to set a king over them, yet, it is evident, they are not left at liberty to choose whom they please, but are, in the most express and positive terms, limited and circumscribed in their choice to him, whom the lord their god shall choose: and this divine choice must certainly be understood (in a large sense) of a person of such a character, temper of mind, and qualifications, as god pointed out to them in his law, particularly in the text before cited (for whatever god's word approves of and chooses, that god himself chooses). and in the text before, as the person is further described, both negatively and positively, he must be a brother; which relation is not to be confined to that of kindred or nation, but especially respects religion. he must not be a stranger and enemy to the true religion, but a brother, in respect of a cordial embracing, and sincere profession (so far as men can judge) of the same cause of religion, and so one, of whom it may be expected that he will employ his power and interest to advance the kingdom of jesus christ. this precept respects the office, and points at the very deed of constitution, and in the most positive manner, restricts not only the people of the _jews_, but every nation blessed with the light of divine revelation, in their setting up of civil rulers, pointing forth on whom they may, and on whom they may not confer this honorable office. the same truth is confirmed by _sam._ xxiii, , , : "the spirit of the lord spake by me--the god of _israel_ said,--he that ruleth over men must be just, ruling in the fear of god."--so _job_ xxxiv, , : "shall even he that hateth right govern?--is it fit to say to a king, thou art wicked? and to princes, ye are ungodly?" in which words, while _elihu_ is charging _job_ with blasphemy, in accusing god of injustice, declaring that if he made god a hater of right and impeached him of injustice, he did, in effect, blasphemously deny his government, universal dominion and sovereignty in the world. it is not only supposed, but strongly asserted and affirmed, that he that hateth right should not govern. again, _cor._ vi, , , : "if then ye have judgments of things pertaining to this life, set them to judge--is it so, that there is not a wise man among you? no, not one that is able to judge between his brethren?" all these texts, which are plain, positive, moral precepts, whereby god hath set boundaries about his own ordinance; that it be not corrupted by men, as they demonstrate what magistrates ought to be, and prove that they cannot be of god's ordaining who have not these qualifications: so they evince, that scriptural qualifications are nothing less necessary and essential to the being of a lawful scriptural magistrate, than the consent of the people; and consequently, do sufficiently overturn this anti-scriptural scheme. _seceders_ indeed grant, that god hath declared his will, concerning the choice of magistrates in the above, and such like precepts; but, from their granting these scriptural qualifications to be only advantageous to those that have them, and necessary to the well-being and usefulness of lawful magistrates, and at the same time denying them to be necessary to the being thereof; it necessarily follows, as the consequence of their sentiments, that they allow civil society a negative over the supreme lawgiver in this matter; and in so doing, exalt the will and inclination of the creature above the will of the creator, which is the very definition of sin. say they in the fore-quoted pamphlet, page th, "it is manifest, that the due measure and performance of scriptural qualifications and duties, belong not to the being and validity of the magistrate's office, but to the well-being and usefulness thereof." how easy is it here to turn their own artillery against themselves, and split their argument with a wedge of its own timber? for if, as is granted, scriptural qualifications are essential to the usefulness of the magistrate's office, they must also be necessary to the being thereof, otherwise it is in itself quite useless. and if in itself useless, with respect to the great ends thereof, without the due measure of scriptural qualifications, it cannot then be the ordinance of god, in regard it must not be supposed, that a god of infinite wisdom and goodness, who does nothing in vain, has instituted an ordinance for the good of his people, in subserviency to his glory, which yet, in itself (as to its being and essence), is useless, and of no profit nor advantage to them. and as for their comparison of the magistrate's office to other common and ordinary places and relations among men, the parallel will not hold, no not for illustration, far less for a proof of their doctrine. nor is there any comparison, unless they can prove, that god in his word has as plainly and positively required men to be so and so qualified, before it is lawful for them to enter into, or for others to put them in such places and relations, as he has done, with regard to magistracy. this is indeed the scope and end of their whole scheme, to derogate from, degrade and lessen the dignity of this great ordinance of magistracy, allowing it no more than what is common to men in general, in other inferior states and ordinary business of life, alleging, "that these qualifications (which they grant god has prescribed in his word) are only advantageous to them that have them;" and that at the hazard of evidently opposing and contradicting the intention of the spirit of god, in the above texts of scripture, which imply a specialty, and particular appropriation to kings and rulers in their office. again, this principle either, as above said, denies magistracy to be god's ordinance instituted in his word; or then says, that he hath instituted ordinances in his revealed will, without prescribing any qualifications as essential to their being, but entirely left the constitution of them to the will of man. but how absurd is this, and derogatory to the glory of god, in all his perfections, who is a god of order, once to imagine, that he hath set any of his ordinances, either as to matter or manner, upon the precarious footing of the pure will of wicked and ungodly men? the smallest acquaintance with divine revelation will readily convince, that he hath not. it may as well, and with the same parity of reason, be refused, that there are any qualifications requisite, as essential to the being and validity of the office of the ministry, but only necessary to its well-being and usefulness; and therefore, is as lawful (in its exercise) in the want of these qualifications, as the ordinance of magistracy is accounted to be. but how contrary is this to scripture, _tit._ i, , ; _tim._ iii, , , , , , , &c. now, comparing these with the above-cited texts, respecting the qualifications of magistrates, it appears, that the qualifications of the magistrate are required in the same express and as strong terms (if not also somewhat more clearly,) as the qualifications of the minister; and seeing a holy god hath made no difference, as to the essentiality of the qualifications pertaining to these distinct ordinances, it is too much presumption for any creature to attempt doing it. both magistrate and minister are, in their different and distinct spheres, clothed with an equal authority from the law of god,--have subjection and obedience equally, under the same pains, required to them respectively, (as _deut_. xvii. to ; _chron_. xix, to ; _heb_. xiii, , &c.)--and the qualifications of both, as above, stated and determined with equal peremptoriness, making them no less essential to the being and validity of the one than the other. and this being the case, it is not easy to understand how _seceders_ will reconcile their principles anent civil government, with their principle and practice, in separating from an established church or ministry, whose constitution they acknowledge to be good; and who being presbyterially ordained, are also still countenanced by the body of the people. sure, had they dealt fairly, honestly and impartially in the matters of god, they would have acted in this case agreeably to their declared principle, page th of their pamphlet, viz.: "the passages holding forth these qualifications and duties of magistrates, do not by the remotest hint imply, that, if in any wise they be deficient in, or make defection from the same, their authority and commands, even in matters lawful, must not be subjected unto and obeyed," &c. certainly, according to this, all the deficiencies, defections, and mal-administrations in the church, could never have been a warrantable ground (which yet they make the only ground) of their separation from her. "but on the contrary," they should still have continued in communion with her, and subjection to her in matters lawful, in a way of testifying "against the same, and essaying their reformation, by all means that were habile for them." _seceders_ must either grant, that such was their duty, and so of themselves condemn their separation as unwarrantable; or else deny, that the qualifications of the magistrate and minister are required in the same express terms in scripture; that both are clothed with an equal (though distinct) authority; and that subjection and obedience are under the same pains enjoined to both, and consequently say, that it is less dangerous to cast off, contemn and disregard the authority of a church, than that of the state; while yet (according to their scheme) civil authority is entirely resolved into, and depends purely upon the changeable will of civil society. but, it is presumed, they will allow, that ecclesiastical authority is derived, and flows from, and depends entirely upon the lord jesus christ alone, the glorious judge, lawgiver, and king of his church; so that (according to them) this being of a far more noble extract and original, it must be of far more dangerous consequence, to contemn and cast off it, than the other. again, as this doctrine gives unto men a negative over the holy one of israel, it also opens a wide door for introducing and enforcing the cause of deism, already too prevalent: for, if all who are set up by civil society, however wicked, and void of the qualifications god has required, while they are acknowledged and submitted to by their constituents, must be equally regarded as god's ordinance, with those who have those qualifications; then it will follow, that the corrupt will of wicked men legitimates the magistrate's office and authority, not only without, but in contradiction to the preceptive will of god; and what is this (_absit blasphemia_), but to exalt man above god, in giving unto the universal sovereign and supreme lawgiver, only a consultative power in the constitution of magistracy, while it ascribes unto man an absolute and definitive power, whereby they have power to receive or reject the law of god (at least respecting magistracy) at pleasure, and their deed of constitution be equally valid, when opposite, as when agreeable unto, and founded upon his righteous law. and sure, by the same reason, that man may take a liberty to dispense with the authority of god, in one point of his commanding will; he may also in another, until at last every part of it is rejected. it is but a contempt of the same authority, and he that offends in one point, is guilty of all. such are the absurdities that this their scheme leads to, though it is hoped the authors do not intend so. it may here be only necessary further to observe, that among the other desperate shifts _seceders_ are driven to in defense of their favorite notion, they say, that scriptural qualifications cannot be essential to god's ordinance of magistracy, or necessarily required as a condition of it _sine qua non_; for then it would be the same thing with magistracy; nor can these qualifications be the condition (_sine qua non_, or), without which one could not be a magistrate; for then it would be necessary, that every one were possessed of them faultlessly, before he could be owned as a lawful magistrate; either of which they allege would be grossly absurd. but this plausible and fair-set argument of theirs, if it prove any thing, will prove more than it is supposed they themselves will grant, and consequently proves nothing at all. for the same gross absurdity may, with equal reason, be inferred from a maintaining, that a due measure and performance of scripture qualifications and duties are essential to any other of god's ordinances, and so that these are the ordinance itself. for instance, they might as well reason (as some have justly observed already), that scriptural qualifications are not essential to a lawful gospel minister, for then it would be the same thing with the ministry, itself; nor can it be a condition, without which one is not really a minister, unless he were so faultlessly. and thus they have at once stripped, not only all of the race of _adam_, that ever exercised that office, but themselves also, of any real mission, as ministers, unless they have assumed the pope's infallibility, and are advanced to the _moravian_ perfection. so, although the scripture declares it essential to the true church, that she hold the head, yet by their childish reasoning, this would infer a conclusion big with absurdities, even that this qualification of a true church, is the church itself. and, in like manner, it can no longer be admitted, that faith in christ, and holiness, are essential to the being of a true christian; for that would be to make faith the same thing with a christian, and would infer, that as in heaven only holiness is in perfection, so there alone christians are to be found. upon the whole, as the lord has given an indispensable law, respecting the constitution of kings, showing what conditions and qualifications are required of them; it undeniably follows, as an established truth, that christianized nations must invest none with that office, but in a way agreeable to that law, and those alone according to scripture, are magistrates of god's institution, who are in some measure possessed of these qualifications. it is therefore an anti-scriptural tenet, that nothing is requisite to constitute a lawful magistrate, but the inclinations and choice of the civil society. . the presbytery testify against this system of principles, because it has a direct tendency to destroy the just and necessary distinction that ought to be maintained between the perceptive and providential will of god, and necessarily jumbles and confounds these together, in such a manner, as a man is left at an utter uncertainty to know when he is accepted and approven of god in his conduct, and when not. that this is the scope of their principles, is confessed, p. , of their book of principles: "nothing needs be added [say they] for the clearing of this, but the overthrow of a distinction that has been made of those who are acknowledged as magistrates by civil society, into such as are so by the preceptive will of god, and such are so by his providential will only; which distinction is altogether groundless and absurd. it will not be refused, that all such preceptive magistrates are also providential. but, moreover, all such providential magistrates are also preceptive. the office and authority of them all, in itself considered, does equally arise from, and agrees to the preceptive will of god." a doctrine most shocking in itself! how strange! that christians, from any consideration, will obstinately maintain a favorite opinion, which is confessedly built upon, and cannot be established but at the expense of blending and confounding the preceptive and providential will of god, while the distinction thereof is clearly and inviolably established in the word of god! although divine providence, which is an unsearchable depth, does many times, and, in many cases, serve as a commentary to open up the hidden mysteries of scripture revelation; yet, where the law of god in the scriptures of truth is silent, there providence regulates not, is neither institutive, nor declarative of god's will to be done by us; and where the said divine law does ordain or deliver a rule to us in any case, there providence gives no relaxation, allowance or countermand to the contrary. (see _gee_ on magistracy, in his excellent discourse on providence.) that an overthrow of this necessary distinction, for the sake of the above dangerous scheme, cannot be admitted of, in a consistency with a due regard to the authority of revealed religion, and that therefore the right and lawfulness of magistracy is not founded upon the providential will of god, though they are countenanced and supported by the majority of a nation, will partly appear from the following considerations: . if there is no distinction to be made between the preceptive and providential will of god, then is providence equally in all respects the rule of duty, as much as the precept is, and so man should be left at an utter uncertainty, what is duty, in regard of the opposition that is many times between providential dispensations and the precept. nay, then it is impossible that man can be guilty of sin, in transgressing the divine will, because god infallibly brings to pass, by his holy and over-ruling providence, whatever he has decreed by his eternal purpose. _rom._ ix, . and thus the jews, in murdering the son of god, should be acquitted from the charge of guilt, and could not be said to transgress the divine will. . if no distinction is to be made between the preceptive and providential will of god, but providence is declarative of the precept, then is providence a complete rule without the written word. and this at once supersedes the necessity of divine revelation, and derogates from the sufficiency and perfection of the scriptures of truth. the written word is affirmed to be _perfect_: _psal._ xix, . sinners are reproved for doing that which the word gave no command for, _jer._ vii, , and xix, ; and challenged for following the promising appearances: _isa._ xxx. , , , . it is therefore daring presumption to set up providence for a rule in opposition to the written law of god. hence it must be concluded, either that the preceptive will of god in the scriptures is imperfect, or the laws therein repealable by providence; or then that providence cannot be the rule of human actions. . if the distinction between the preceptive and providential will of god is to be overthrown, then providence must be expressive of god's approbative ordination, equally as his revealed will is. for, without this (viz. the divine approbation), there can be no lawful title to what is possessed. but this is what providence of itself cannot do; it cannot without the precept discover either god's allowance or disallowance. if then this distinction is denied, and the providential will of god asserted to be declarative of his preceptive, and so of his approbative will; it remains to be manifested, where and how it has been appointed of god for such an end, an end that is by the spirit of god denied unto it: _eccl._ ix, , , . if this distinction is to be overthrown, then either the providential will of god, without any regard to the precept, in every case, and in every sort of tenure, gives a just and lawful right and title; or god has declared in his word that it shall be so in the matter of civil government only, viz. that whosoever gains the ascendancy in the inclinations of the people, by whatever sinful methods this is obtained, it matters not, and so is by the hand of providence raised up above all his rivals to the regal dignity, he is the lawful magistrate, god's ordinance according to his precept. the first cannot be said; it were impious to suppose it; for that would justify all robberies and violences, and legitimate every fraud; not the latter, for where is it to be found in all the book of divine revelation, that god hath made such a law touching magistracy? but how big with absurdities, to say, that a holy god has given to man a plain and positive law to be his governing rule in every particular that concerns him, this of magistracy only excepted. in this great ordinance he hath wholly left him to be guided, or rather misled and bewildered by his own corrupt inclinations: but the contrary of this has been in part discovered, and may further. . if, in order to establish their anti-government scheme, the foresaid distinction is to be destroyed, and all such as are providential powers, and acknowledged by man, are also preceptive, and therefore to be submitted to for conscience sake, then are the kingdoms of men necessarily obliged to own and submit unto the dominion of the devil. the devil not only claims to himself the possession of the power of all the kingdoms of this world, but it is certain that of the most of them he still retains an actual predominancy, hence styled the god of this world. now, it cannot be refused, but that the power he exercises is providential (or a power of permission); and it is most certain, that it is with the consent and good will of all the children of men, while in a natural state. but are men therefore obliged to acknowledge his authority, or submit to that providential power he maintains over them? if every providential power is also preceptive, the answer must be given in the affirmative. the like may be said of the pope of _rome_, the devil's captain-general, to display his hellish banner against the king of kings, and lord of lords, with respect to those nations where he is acknowledged in his diabolical pretensions. it can be to no purpose for _seceders_ to allege that the pope claims a power unlawful in itself, and therefore cannot be owned, in regard the person whom they make a pretended acknowledgment of, as their lawful sovereign, is by the act of his constitution invested with a similar power, a power both civil and ecclesiastical, and declared to be head of the church, as well as the state. nothing, therefore, remains for them, but either to acknowledge this clear distinction between the providential and preceptive will of god, or then profess the lawfulness of both the above mentioned powers. . if the foresaid distinction is too big with absurdities to be received, and if the authority of all providential magistrates does equally arise from, and agree unto the precept, then it would be no sin to resist the powers ordained of god, provided that providence proves auspicious and favorable to the rebel, and advances him to the throne, with the good will of his fellow rebellious subjects, by expelling the lawful sovereign; at least such resistance could not be determined to be sinful, until once the event declared, whether providence would countenance the treasonable attempt or not. thus what the apostle declares a damnable sin, _rom._ xiii, , must be justified and made the foundation of subsequent duty, if patronized by a multitude. this they evidently maintain, as appears from their declaration of principles, page , where, pretending to obviate some difficulties anent their principles, arising from the people of god's disowning anti-scriptural magistrates: "the whole nature of any simple revolt [say they] lies in breaking off immediately from the civil body, by withdrawing from, or withdrawing part of their territories; and then it necessarily follows at the same time, that these revolters break off from the head of the civil body, without ever denying his authority over the members who still cleave unto the same." this, in connection with their grand foundation principle, and the scope of their discourse at the above citation, discovers that they grant, that if the whole civil society should reject the authority they had set up (however agreeable it should have been to the preceptive will of god, and should again set up another, though never so opposite thereto), their doing so would be lawful; but it is not lawful for a few to disown any authority (however wicked and anti-scriptural), unless they can at the same time withdraw from, or withdraw part of his territories. nothing can be more absurd than to say, that a people are bound by the laws of god to give subjection for conscience sake, and yet at the same time are at liberty to cast off and reject the same authority at pleasure. if the magistrate be lawful, it is utterly unlawful to reject him; an attempt to divest him of his office, power and authority, though carried on by the _primores regni_, is rebellion against god. it is most ridiculous to allege, that a people considered as a body politic, are not under the same obligation to their rightful sovereign, as when they are considered as individuals, but may lawfully reject him, and set up another, if they please; so that he who one day is god's minister, next day hath no title to that office, but if he claim it, must be treated as a traitor, whereby all security that can possibly be given to the most lawful magistrate, is at once destroyed. thus, if the chevalier had succeeded in his late attempt, had gained the favor of the _primores regni_, and thereby mounted the _british_ throne; _seceders_ must then, of necessity, either have quit their present principles, or then have subjected to his yoke for conscience sake, under the pain of eternal damnation. his being a professed papist, and enslaved vassal of _rome_, could not have warranted them to leave their place of subjection to him while owned by the civil society, and so they must have treated the present powers as usurpers and enemies to government, though they now flatter them with the pretensions of an ill-grounded loyalty. again, how absurd and self contradictory to grant, that a minor part may not only revolt, but also withdraw part of a prince's territories; and yet that the same party may not, when residing in the nation, refuse to acknowledge the lawfulness of an anti-scriptural power. this is to say, that people are no longer obliged to submit to authority, than they are in capacity to withdraw from, or withdraw part of their prince's territories from him, and so to justify their rebellion, by that which can only be a terrible aggravation of their sin. these, with a number of other absurdities, natively flow from a denial of the distinction between the providential and preceptive will of god, making the title of the lawful magistrate depend solely upon the will of the people. nothing is more evident than this, that if the inclinations of the people, exclusive of all other qualifications, constitute a lawful magistrate, then (though he rules ever so agreeable to god's preceptive will), so soon as this body (though in a most unjust and tyrannical manner) casts him off, he that moment for ever loses all title and claim to the office, and can no longer be regarded as a lawful magistrate. a principle that in its nature and tendency is introductive of all anarchy and confusion, and with the greatest propriety deserves the encomium of the _anti-government scheme_. . this anarchical system of principles, which destroys the above just and necessary distinction, is directly in opposition to the laudable and almost universal practice of all nations, in ordaining and enacting certain fundamental laws, constitutions and provisos, whereby the throne is fenced, the way to it limited, and the property thereof predisposed. the scripture sufficiently discovers those restrictions and rules, which god himself has prescribed and laid down, for directing and determining of his people's procedure about the erection of magistrates. and profane history abounds in discovering certain fundamental laws and conditions to take place, almost in every nation, without conforming to which, none can be admitted to that dignity over them. but to what purpose are any such laws and constitutions, if this vague principle is once admitted, which cancels and disannuls all such provisos and acts? why should _moses_ have been so solicitous about his successor in the government of _israel, numb._ xxvii, - , if god had ordained the inclinations of the people alone should determine? or to what purpose did _israel_, after the death of _joshua_, ask of god, who should be their leader, if their own inclinations alone were sufficient to determine it? if god has declared, that the corrupt will of the people is the alone basis of civil power, then, not only are all state constitutions and fundamental laws useless, because, on every vacancy of the throne, they not only must all give place to the superior obligation, the incontrollable law, of the uncertain inclinations of the body politic, but they are in their nature unlawful; their proper use in every nation being to prevent all invasion upon the government by unqualified persons, and to illegitimate it, if at any time done. so that, if the consent of civil society is the only essential condition of government which god has authorized, not only are all scriptural conditions and qualifications useless and unlawful, but also all human securities, either from intruders or for lawful governors, are unlawful, in regard the very design of them all is to oppose this grand foundation principle, the jure-divinity of which _seceders_ have found out, and do confidently maintain. and thus, by the seceding scheme, is condemned, not only the practice of almost all other nations, determining by law, some indispensable qualifications that their rulers must have; but particularly the practice of these once reformed lands, when reformation had the sanction, not only of ecclesiastic, but also of civil, authority, is hereby condemned. scripture and covenant qualifications were then made essential to the being of a lawful magistrate, by the fundamental laws and constitutions of the nations; so that however the inclinations of the people might run (as it soon appeared they were turned in opposition to these), yet, by these laws, and in a consistency with that constitution, none could be admitted to the place or places of civil authority, but such as professed, and outwardly practiced, according to reformation principles. see _act_ th, _sess._ d, _parl._ . and how happy we had been, if we had constantly acted in conformity to these agreeable laws, experience, both former and latter, will bear witness. how much better had it been for us to have walked in god's statutes, and executed his judgments, than by our abhorrence of them, and apostasy from them, to provoke him to give us statutes that are not good, and judgments whereby we cannot live (_ezek._ xx, ), or have any comfortable enjoyment and possession of the blessings and privileges of his everlasting gospel, as it is with us at this day. and yet, this is what _seceders_ would have us caressing, embracing and (with them) blessing god for, under the notion of a present good; and so bless god for permitting his enemies (in anger against an ungrateful and guilty people) to overturn his work and interest, and establish themselves upon the ruins thereof; to bless him for making our own iniquities to correct us, and our backslidings to reprove us, until we know what an evil and bitter thing it is to depart from the lord god of our fathers; to bless him (for what is matter of lamentation) that the adversaries of _zion_ are the chief, and her enemies prosper, _lam._ i, : and all this abstractly, under the notion, of good, which comes very near the borders of blasphemy. but, moreover, the civil settlement at the revolution is also condemned by this principle of theirs; not because of its opposition to a covenanted reformation, but in regard it includes some essential qualifications required in the supreme civil ruler. the nations are, by that deed of constitution, bound up in their election of a magistrate; and all papists, such as marry with papists, or do not publicly profess the protestant religion, are declared incapable of the throne. so that we see the present law makes some other qualifications, besides the consent of the body politic, essential to the constitution of a lawful sovereign in _britain_. from all which it is plain, that this principle of _seceders_ is neither a reformation nor a revolution principle; let then the impartial world judge whence it came. _seceders_, in consequence of their contradictory and self-inconsistent system of principles, declare they cannot swear allegiance to a lawful government. they maintain the present to be lawful, yet (in dec. of their principles, _page_ th) they say, "the question is not whether it be lawful for us to swear the present allegiance to the civil government, which the presbytery acknowledge they cannot do, seeing there are no oaths to the government in being, but what exclude the oath of our covenants, and homologate the united constitution." but seeing they acknowledge that every constitution of government, that comprehends the will and consent of civil society, were it as wicked and diabolical as can be imagined, is lawful--yea, as lawful as any that is most consonant to the preceptive will of god, having all the essentials of his ordinance; and seeing, because of the will and consent of the people, they own the present to be lawful, it is most surprising why they cannot swear allegiance to it; their reasons cannot, in a consistency with their principle, be sustained as valid. that the present oaths of allegiance and the oath of the covenants are inconsistent, is readily granted; but seeing the oaths of allegiance bind to nothing more than what they confess they are bound to for conscience sake, namely, to own the lawfulness of the government, and to maintain it according to the constitution thereof (which is a duty owed by subjects to every lawful sovereign); and seeing that whatever is in the oaths of allegiance contrary to the covenants, does not flow from them, abstractly considered, but from the constitution to which they bind (which constitution is sanctified by the people's acknowledgement of it). if, therefore, the covenants forbid a duty, to which they are bound for conscience sake, their authority in that ought not to be regarded. but certainly _seceders_, who have found it duty to alter and model the covenants, according to the circumstances of the times they live in, might have found it easy work to reconcile the oath of the covenants with allegiance to a lawful government. the other part of their reason is no less ridiculous and self-contradictory, viz., "they cannot swear allegiance to the present government, because it homologates the united constitution." but is not this constitution according to the will, and by consent of, the body politic? and is it not ordained by the providential will of god? therefore, according to them, has all the essentials of a lawful constitution, which claims their protection, under pain of damnation. how great the paradox! they cannot swear allegiance, because they would bind them to acknowledge and defend a lawful constitution. is not active obedience, is not professed subjection for conscience sake, an homologation of the constitution? certainly they are, and that not in word only, but in deed and in truth. and what is the allegiance, but a promise to persevere in what they do daily, and what they hold as their indispensable duty to do? to grant the one, then, and refuse the other, is, in effect, to homologate or acknowledge the constitution, and not to acknowledge it, at the same time, which is a glaring absurdity. but here, they would have people attend to their chimerical distinction between the king's civil and ecclesiastical authority. they have made a successless attempt (in order to establish their antigovernment scheme) for the overthrow of a distinction, which heaven has irreversibly fixed, between the preceptive and providential will of god; and, for the same purpose, they will impose this distinction on the generation--a mere shift and artifice, which has no foundation nor subsistence any where else, but in their imagination, and serves for no purpose but to cheat their own and others' consciences, and betray the cause of god. it is plain, that as a power, both civil and ecclesiastical, belongs to the essence and constitution of an english diocesan bishop, so the same is declared to belong now to the essence and constitution of an english king, who is the head and chief prelate among them all; and it is their manner to call themselves his bishops (not christ's), as having their power, both ecclesiastical and civil, immediately from him, as the fountain of all power within his dominions so that there is no room for this distinction of _seceders_ here, unless they are such expert logicians, as to distinguish a thing from that which is essential to it, and so from itself; but this is a destruction, not a distinction. _seceders_ indeed presume and depend very much upon their abilities of this kind; for they can distinguish between the magistrate's office and its essential qualifications, which god has inseparably joined together in his word. they can distinctly pray for the head, author, authorizer and prime supporter, of abjured prelacy and prelates, that god would bless him in his government, and yet not pray for the prelates themselves. they can pray very fervently and distinctly for the british and irish parliaments, and yet not at all pray for the bishops, necessary and essential members there. and what is all this but to pray for a nonentity, a mere creature of their own mind? they have neither king nor parliament in their abstracted and imaginary sense, but do clearly distinguish themselves out of both. we might refer them to that famous and faithful embassador, and renowned martyr for the cause and testimony of jesus, mr. _donald cargill_, in his last speech and testimony, and let him determine the controversy (in this particular) between us. they will not be so bold as to say, that this honorable witness died with a lie in his right hand. his words are these: "as to the cause of my suffering, the main is, not acknowledging the present authority as it is now established. this is the magistracy i have rejected, that was invested with christ's power; and seeing that power taken from christ, which is his glory, and made the essential of the crown, i thought it was as if i had seen one wearing my husband's clothes, after he had killed him. and seeing it is made the essential of the crown, there is no distinction we can make, that can free the conscience of the acknowledger from being a partaker of this sacrilegious robbing of god. and it is but to cheat our conscience, to acknowledge the civil power, for it is not the civil power only, that is made the essential of the crown. and seeing they are so express, we must be plain; for otherwise, it is to deny our testimony, and consent to his robbery." from these words it is evident, _first_, that mr. cargill was no _seceder_, or of their mind, in this particular; and _second_, that, at the time, there were some who did cheat and impose upon their own consciences, by distinguishing (where there was no room for distinction) between the king's civil and ecclesiastical authority--which distinction was condemned and testified against by all who were truly faithful to christ and their own consciences, and tender of his honor and glory, by their unanimous rejection of that anti-christian and unlawful power; and that when they had much more reason and temptation to fly to such a subterfuge for their safety, than _seceders_ now have. and, _third_, from these words it is also clear, that mr. _cargill_ and that poor, distressed and persecuted people that adhered to him, rejected and disclaimed the then authority, not so much because of their tyranny and mal-administrations, as on account of the unlawfulness and wickedness of the constitution itself (which was the prime original and spring of all the wickedness in the administration), namely, because the king arrogantly and sacrilegiously assumed to himself that power, which was the sole and glorious prerogative of jesus christ. and as to the difference that _seceders_ make between that and the present time (since the revolution), it is certain, that whatever greater degree of absolute supremacy was then assumed by _charles_ ii, it does not vary the kind of that claimed, or rather conferred on and exercised, by the supreme powers, since the revolution (for _majus et minus non variant speciem_), nor acquit them of the guilt of robbing the son of god, jesus christ, of his incommunicable prerogative and supremacy in and over his church, as the only king and head thereof. nor will the difference of times, while the constitution remains the same, while god remains the same, and truth and duty remain the same, nor yet any distinction that can be made, free the conscience of the acknowledger, more now than then, from being a partaker (art and part) with the civil power, in this sacrilegious robbery. _psal._ l, : "when thou sawest a thief, then thou consentedst with him," &c. but passing this: seeing the above mentioned reasons, which _seceders_ allege why they cannot swear allegiance to the present government, which they assert is lawful and scriptural, cannot be sustained, some others must be sought for them: and they may be either, because they judge allegiance itself unlawful; or rather, because then they would be bound by oath to continue faithful to this government in all changes that can happen. whereas now, they are free, and equally ready, in a full consistency with their principles, to profess their subjection to another, were it even a popish pretender. for according, to them, an infidel or papist may have a just and lawful authority over us, notwithstanding all, both the reformation and revolution laws, to the contrary. if, therefore, the legislature would, in the oaths of allegiance, insert this limitation, viz. so long as the body politic is pleased to acknowledge the supreme magistrate, they would find it easier to come over their other pretended and inconsistent difficulties. for the truth is, they cannot, in a consistency with their anti-government scheme, and with safe consciences, swear to any government, but with such limitation, in regard they cannot be sure, but he that is now owned by civil society may be rejected, and another set up, who must be acknowledged. so they would be brought into an inextricable dilemma; either they must own them both to be god's ordinance, which is absurd; or then be perjured, by rejecting him to whom they had sworn; or then incur damnation, by refusing obedience to him, who is set up by the body politic. such is the labyrinth of confusion and contradiction this anarchical system leads into; a system that cancels all constitutions by god and men anent civil government. . this anti-government seceding principle, destructive of said distinction between the providential and preceptive will of god, is both contrary to, and confuted by many approven scriptural examples; in which the spirit of god testifies, that the actual possession of the throne, under the favor of providence, and by the consent of a majority of a nation, may be in one, while the moral power and right of government is in another. the word of god acknowledges _david_ the rightful sovereign over all _israel_, for the space of forty years ( kings, ii, ; chron. xxix, , ); seven of these he is said to have reigned in _hebron_, and thirty-three in _jerusalem_. during the first seven years of his reign at _hebron_, there is a positive confinement of his actual rule to the tribe of _judah_ only; sam. v, . and at the same time, _ishbosheth_ is said to be made king over all _israel_, and to have reigned two years. in agreeableness to seceding principles, there is no reconciling these different texts. according to their scheme _david_ can with no propriety be said to have reigned forty years over all _israel_, seeing seven of the years were elapsed before he was actually acknowledged by all _israel_, before providence put him in the actual possession of all that extensive power. there is another known example, applicable to the present purpose, in the instance of _david_, during the rebellion of his unnatural son _absalom_. according to the sacred story, sam. chap, xv, xvi, xvii, xviii, xix, it appears, that he was wholly ejected, both out of the hearts and territories of _israel_, and not only the throne, but the will and consent of the people given up to _absalom_. but was _david_ therefore divested of his right and title? though it is most contrary to scripture to suppose it; yet, according to _seceders_, seeing _absalom_ was king, by possession of the throne, and had not only the power providentially put into his hand, but had it also by the consent of the people; it necessarily follows that _absalom_, being a providential magistrate, his office and authority did equally arise from, and agree to the preceptive will of god, and subjection and obedience, for conscience sake, was equally due to him, as to _david_, by the _israelitish_ tribes. and so it was a damnable sin in _david_ to fight against him, as it could be no less than a resisting the ordinance of god. the same may be said with respect to that other revolt, by the instigation, and under the conduct of _sheba_; sam. chap. xx. but although, according to _seceders_, he must also have been their lawful magistrate, the spirit of god discovers the reverse, still acknowledging the right of government in all these changes to be in _david_. another example is in the case of _solomon_, who was ordained or designed by god expressly for the kingdom of _israel_. _adonijah_ had obtained the ascendancy, both in respect of actual possession, and the inclinations and consent of the majority of the nation; the consent was general; kings, i, , , , , , , and ii, . he had all to plead for himself, which _seceders_ make essential to the constitution of a lawful king. he had got to the throne by providence, and had full admission and possession, by the inclinations of the people. if then there is no distinction to be made of those who are acknowledged by civil society, into such as are so by the preceptive will of god, and such as are so by his providential will only--then _solomon_ had no right nor title to the crown; and the enterprise of _david_ and _nathan_, &c., of setting him on the throne, was utterly unlawful. both they and _solomon_ ought to have acquiesced in the duty of subjection to _adonijah_, as being the ordinance of god. but this would have been opposite to the express direction of the lord, appointing the kingdom to _solomon_, "it was his from the lord," as _adonijah_ himself confessed. to the same purpose might be adduced, the instance of _joash_, the son of _akaziah_, who was king _de jure_, even when _athaliah_ had not only the countenance of providence, but the consent of the people, in the possession of the kingdom; chron. xxii, , . again, the practice of nations, in owning those for their lawful sovereigns, who, by providence, were put from the actual exercise of their rule and authority, contributes to confute this absurd notion. thus, the people of _israel_, who had risen up for _absalom_, do even, when _david_ was out of the land, own him for their king. so, during the _babylonish_ captivity, there are several persons noted as princes of _judah_, whom the people owned, as having the right of government over them. with a variety of other instances, all discovering, in opposition to their anarchical system, that it is not by the dispensations of providence, that the right and title of the lawful magistrate is to be determined. moreover, as the associate presbytery have so barefacedly belied the scriptures of truth, as to assert that there cannot be so much as an instance found in all the history of the old testament, of any civil members refusing, either by word or deed, an acknowledgment of, or subjection unto the authority of any magistrate actually in office, by the will of the civil body: besides what have been already adduced, take these few following examples of many. after that _saul_, by his disobedience to the commandment of the lord, had forfeited his title to the kingdom, he was no more honored as king, by _samuel_, the prophet; but, on the contrary, he openly testified to his face, that the lord had rejected him from being king; sam. xv, - . though he mourned over him as one rejected, yet he no more acknowledged him as clothed with the authority as a lawful king; nay, the lord having rejected him, reproves his prophet for mourning for him, sam. xvi, . from which, and the command he received to anoint _david_ in his stead, and that even while the civil society did acknowledge, and was subject unto _saul_, it appears, that the throne of _israel_ was then regarded, both by the lord and his prophet, as vacant, until _david_ was annointed; from which time, in the eye of the divine law, he was the rightful king, and ought, in consequence of the public intimation made by the prophet of _saul's_ rejection, to have been acknowledged as the lord's anointed by the whole kingdom of _israel_. in agreeableness whereto, the scripture informs, that not only _david_ in expectation of the lord's promise, resisted _saul_ as an unjust usurper, but many among the tribes of _israel_, whom the spirit of god honorably mentions, rejected the government of _saul_, and joined themselves to him that was really anointed of the lord; chron. xii, - . now, if the lord did command, under pain of damnation, to give loyal obedience to all in the place of supreme authority, however wicked, while acknowledged by the body politic, he would not reject such, nor command to set up others in their room, nor approve of those who disowned and resisted them. but all this is done in this instance, which of itself, is sufficient to overthrow their scheme. another instance is in chron. xi, , , where the authority of _jeroboam_ is rejected and cast off, even when acknowledged and submitted to by the nation of _israel_, by the priests and _levites_, and after them, by all such as did set their hearts to seek the lord god of _israel_, through all the ten tribes; and this, because of his abominable wickedness. whereby it appears a commendable duty to refuse the lawfulness of the authority of wicked occupants, though acknowledged by the majority of a nation. a similar example there is in the reign of _baasha_, who could not by all his vigilance prevent many from casting off his government; chron. xv, . again, there is an express example of _elisha's_ disowning the king of _israel_, even when the civil society owned him; kings, iii, , . he did not regulate his conduct by providence, and the will of the people, but, in opposition to both, refused him that honor that is due to all that are really kings. to these may be added that notable example of _libnah_, a city of the priests, who could not but have knowledge by the law of their god what was their duty; chron. xxi, . here is an instance of a people's casting off allegiance to a king, properly because of his apostasy and intolerable wickedness, whereby they bore testimony against him, and discovered what was the duty of the whole nation, on account of his apostasy from the lord. their so doing was a most positive, actual and express condemnation, both of _jehoram_ for his wickedness, and of the people for concurring, joining with him, and strengthening his hands in it (even as _noah_ by his faith and obedience is said to have condemned the antediluvian world; heb. ix, .) and this their conduct and testimony the spirit of god justifies, and records to their honor. these few of many that might be adduced, declare the impudence, as well as fallacy and imposture of _seceders_ in this matter, and also justify the principles which they maliciously nick-name the anti-government scheme; and that for no other reason, but because it establishes the ordinance of magistracy among a people favored by god with divine revelation, upon his preceptive will, in opposition to their anarchical notions of setting it wholly upon the tottering basis of the corrupt will of man. and, to conclude this particular, how ridiculously absurd is it in them to insinuate, that, in the examples above, or others to be found in sacred history, those persons did, notwithstanding their own practice in rejecting the authority of wicked rulers, still view it as the duty of the rest of the nation, to acknowledge them? this is pure jargon and nonsense, contrary both to reason and religion. by what law could the opposite practices of those that disowned, and those that still continued to own the authority of unlawful rulers, be justified? it could not by the divine law, which never condemns that as sin in one, which it approves as duty in others in the same circumstances. seeing therefore these, in the instances above, are justified, the practice of those who continued to acknowledge the lawfulness of these wicked rulers, must be regarded as condemned, both by the divine law, and also by the practices of the above persons, which do all jointly concur in witnessing, that they viewed it the duty of all the rest of the nation, to have done as they did. and from the whole, it appears a commendable duty for the lord's people to disown the right and lawfulness of rulers set up in contradiction to the divine law. . the iniquity of attempting to destroy the necessary distinction between the providential and preceptive will of god in the matter of magistracy, appears from god's express disallowance of some whom providence had actually exalted to the supreme command over a people; _ezek._ xxi, : "i will overturn, &c." although this may have an ultimate respect to christ, yet it has also a reference to the rightful governors of _judah_, when disposessed of their right by the providential will of god. and here the lord threatens the execution of his judgments upon the unjust possessor. see also _amos_ vi, ; _hab._ ii, , ; _nah._ iii, , ; and _matth._ xxvi, . by all which it appears, that the supreme lawgiver states a real difference between those who are only exalted by the providential will of god, and not authorized by his preceptive will; and therefore it is impossible that the office and authority of them both can equally arise from, and agree to the precept. again, in _hos._ viii, , "they have set up kings, but not by me; they have made princes, and i knew it not," is this distinction showed, as with the brightness of a sun-beam, so that he that runs may read it. the lord by his prophet here charges this people with horrid apostasy, in changing both the ordinances of the magistracy and the ministry, particularly, although the lord commanded, if they would set up kings, they should set up none but whom he chose; _deut._ xvii, . yet they had no regard to his law. this charge seems to have respect to the civil constitution among the ten tribes after their revolt from the house of david; not simply charging their revolt on them, but that after their secession, they did not consult god, nor act according to his precept, in their setting up of kings. as nothing can happen in the world, but by the course of providence; and as all things are known unto god, in respect of his omniscience, the text cannot respect either of these. the true import of the charge then is, they have set up kings, but not according to the law and preceptive will of god; and therefore he neither did nor would approve either them or their kings. hence the prophet charges this as one cause of their national destruction. here then it is undeniably evident that god himself establishes that distinction pleaded for; and it is therefore most wicked to assert, as _seceders_ do, that it is altogether groundless and absurd. again, this text discovers, that all kings that are set up and acknowledged by civil society, are not agreeable to the preceptive will of god, or, as such, approven by him, as they have falsely asserted: for here the lord declares, that _israel_ had set up kings that were not agreeable to his precept: and the charge respects their authority, the very deed of constitution. to say then, that all providential magistrates are also preceptive, is directly to give the god of truth the lie. moreover, this plainly intimates, that all such providential magistrates as are not set up in agreeableness to the precept; are disallowed and condemned by god, and therefore god commands to put away the carcasses of such kings, as, because of the blind consent of civil society, were little better than adored by the people, _ezek_. xliii, , "that he might dwell in the midst of them forever;" and therefore he declares it the sin, and so the cause of the people's ruin, as in the above text: and also in _hos._ v, , "_ephraim_ is oppressed;" because he willingly walked after the commandment, deliberately and implicitly followed every wicked ruler set up by civil society. it is but a perverting and abusing the above text, to plead that it is only a condemnation of _israel_, for not consulting the lord in making choice of their kings, but no condemnation of them for setting them up, and acknowledging them, in contradiction to the lord's choice, as plainly laid before them in his preceptive will. and it is very contradictory, to acknowledge it a sin, not to consult god, and yet to assert that it is a matter of indifference as to the validity of their office, whether his counsel be followed or not, which it must be, if, as their principle bears, the being of the magistrate's office and authority is equally good and valid, when contrary, as when agreeable to the commanding will of god. but if, as is granted, it be a sin not to consult god in the choice of magistrates, it must needs be a great aggravation thereof, after consulting him, to reject and contemn his counsel, and openly contradict his positive command, by constituting kings in opposition to his declared will, which is evidently the sin charged upon _israel_, and the reason why he disclaims all such; and therefore, according to that known and approven rule, that wherever any sin is forbidden and condemned in scripture, there the contrary duty is commanded and commended; it follows, that the setting up of rulers, in opposition to the express command of god, being here condemned, the contrary duty is commended, namely, a disowning of all such rulers; for, if it be a sin to set up rulers, and not by god, it must also be a sin to acknowledge them when so set up, in regard it is a continuing in, and approving of the sin of that wicked erection; although such an acknowledgment may indeed be agreeable to their principle, which gives to the creature a prerogative above the creator. from the whole it may already appear, what reason the presbytery have for testifying against _seceders_, for maintaining such a corrupt doctrine; a doctrine, which they very justly acknowledge (p. ) cannot be established, but by the overthrow of this distinction between the providential and preceptive will of god; a distinction, that as they shall never be able to overturn by all their impotent and impious attacks: so it will to all ages stand as a strong bulwark, inviolably defending the truth here contended for by the presbytery. . the presbytery testify against this anti-government principle of the _secession_, as being contradictory to, and inconsistent with the reformation principles, and covenanted obligations, whereby these nations, in agreeableness to the law of god, bound themselves to maintain all the ordinances of god in their purity, according to their original institution in the scriptures of truth. the seceding scheme (as has been noticed formerly) is, that whomsoever the bulk of the nation, or body politic, set up, and providence proves auspicious and favorable to, is the lawful magistrate, to be owned and submitted to for conscience sake. the inconsistency of which tenet with reformation principles, may appear from viewing and comparing therewith the coronation oath, _james vi, parl._ , _cap._ , where it is ordained as a condition _sine qua non_, that all kings, princes, and magistrates, shall at their installment solemnly swear to maintain the true religion of jesus christ, and oppose all false religions. so also _james vi, parl. , cap._ th, which ordains, that no person may be a judge or member of any court that professes not the true religion. also _charles i_, _parl._ , _sess_ d, _act._ , it is ordained, that before the king be admitted to the exercise of his royal power, he shall give satisfaction to the kingdom anent the security of religion: and so the same parliament, _act_ th, , express themselves (referring to the coronation oath above mentioned): "the estates of parliament judging it necessary, that the prince and people be of one perfect religion, appoint, that all kings and princes, who shall reign or bear rule within this realm, shall at the receipt of their princely authority, solemnly swear to observe in their own persons, and to preserve the religion, as it is presently established and professed. and they ordain, that before the king's majesty who now is, or any of his successors, shall be admitted to the exercise of his royal power, he shall, by and attour the foresaid oath, declare by his solemn oath, under his hand and seal, his allowance of the national covenant, and of the solemn league and covenant, and obligation to prosecute the ends thereof in his station and calling; and that he shall consent, and agree to acts of parliament, enjoining the solemn league and covenant, and fully establishing presbyterian government, the directory for worship, confession of faith, and catechisms approved by the general assembly of this kirk, and parliament of this kingdom--and that he shall observe these in his own practice and family,--and shall never make opposition to any of these, or endeavor any change thereof. likeas, the estates of parliament discharge all the lieges and subjects of this kingdom to procure or receive from his majesty any commissions or gifts whatsoever, until his majesty shall give satisfaction, as said is, under the pain of being censured in their persons and estates, as the parliament shall judge fitting. and if any such commissions or gifts be procured or received by any of the subjects before such satisfaction, the parliament declares and ordains all such and all that shall follow thereupon, to be void and null." and the same session, _act_ th, it is in short ordained, that none shall bear any place of public trust in the nation, but such as have the qualifications god requires in his word. thus, in the prefatory part of the act, they say, "the estates of parliament taking into consideration, that the lord our god requires that such as bear charge among his people, should be able men, fearing god, hating covetousness, and dealing truly: and that many of the evils of sin and punishment, under which the land groans, have come to pass, because hitherto they have not been sufficiently provided and cared for," &c. (and afterward in the statutory part), "do therefore ordain, that all such as shall be employed in any place of power and trust in this kingdom, shall not only be able men, but men of known affection unto, and of approved fidelity and integrity in the cause of god, and of a blameless christian conversation," &c. to the same purpose, _act_ th, _parl._ d, _sess._ d, entitled _act for purging the army_. see also the coronation oath, of _scotland_, as subscribed by _charles ii_, at _scoon_, . all which, and many other fundamental laws of the like nature, made in time of reformation, show the principles of our reformers to have been quite different from those of _seceders_ anent civil government: and that to constitute lawful magistrates, they must of necessity have scriptural and covenant qualifications, besides the consent of the people. with what face then can they pretend to have adopted a testimony for reformation principles, and to be of the same principles with our late reformers? the vanity of this pretense will further appear, by comparing their principles with the solemn league and covenant, with every article of which they are inconsistent. they profess the moral obligation of the covenants, and yet at the same time maintain the lawfulness of every providential government, whether popish or prelatic, if set up by the body politic. but how opposite this to the _first_ article, obliging constantly to endeavor the preservation of the reformed religion? can it be consistent therewith, to commit the government of the nations to a sworn enemy to the reformation? or, with that sincerity which becomes the professors of christ, to plead the lawfulness of an authority raised upon the overthrow of the reformed religion? no less opposite is it to the _second_ article, which obliges, and that without respect of persons, to endeavor the extirpation of popery, prelacy--to maintain and plead for the lawfulness of that which establishes or supports prelacy or popery in the nations. this appears rather like a sincere endeavor in them to promote whatever is contrary to sound doctrine, and the power of true godliness; and that, because an apostate people approves thereof, contrary to _exod._ xxiii, : "thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil." again, the _third_ article binds to preserve the rights of parliaments, and the liberties of the kingdoms, and the king's authority in the preservation and defense of the true religion. but how inconsistent is it therewith, to own and defend an authority that in its constitution and habitual series of administration, is destructive of all these precious and valuable interests? it is full of contradiction, and a mocking both of god and the world, to pretend to own and defend the destroyers of the true religion, in the defense of religion, as _seceders_ do in their mock acknowledgment of such as are sworn to maintain prelacy, in opposition to the reformed religion. the contradictoriness of this principle of theirs to the _fourth_ article, needs no illustration. again, the owning of an authority, which is reared up and stands upon the footing of the destruction of the covenanted union, and uniformity of the nations in religion can never be consistent with the _fifth_, article, which binds, to an endeavoring, that these kingdoms may remain conjoined in that firm covenanted union to all posterity. in like manner, as the _sixth_ article obliges to a defending of all that enter into that league and covenant, and never to suffer ourselves to be divided, and make defection to the contrary part; it must be a manifest contradiction thereto, not only to defend such as are enemies to that covenant, but even in their opposition thereto. and it is a making defection to the contrary part, and from that cause and covenant with a witness, to plead the lawfulness of the national constitution, which is established upon the ruins of a covenanted work of reformation, as _seceders_ do; whose principle and practice, in opposition to what is professed in the conclusion of the covenant, as well as what was the very design of entering into it, is, instead of a going before others, in the example of a real reformation, a corrupting of the nations more and more, and going before them in the example of a real apostasy and defection from the reformation, so solemnly sworn to be maintained in this covenant; and a teaching of them to appoint themselves a captain, to return to their anti-christian bondage. upon the whole, as the presbytery ought to testify against this new scheme of principles, respecting the ordinance of magistracy; they therefore, upon all the grounds formerly laid down, did, and hereby do declare, testify against, and condemn the same, as what is, indeed, a new and dangerous principle, truly anti-government, introductory of anarchy and confusion, of apostasy and defection from the covenanted work of reformation, the principles by which it was carried on and maintained, and acts and laws, by which it was fenced and established; and what is flatly opposite to, and condemned by the word of divine revelation, in many express and positive precepts, and approven examples, agreeable thereto, as well as by our solemn national covenants, founded upon, and agreeable to the said word of divine revelation. and finally, let this be further observed, that as it was a beautiful branch of our glorious reformation, that the civil government of this nation was modeled agreeable to the word of god; and that the right of regal government was constituted, bounded and fixed by an unalterable law, consonant to the word of god, and sworn to be inviolably preserved both by king and people: so the _associate brethren_, by their doctrine on this head, which is inconsistent with our uncontroverted establishment, and fundamental laws, excluding from the throne all papists and prelatists, have counteracted a most important point of the covenanted reformation, and opened a wide door to _jacobitism_. for, if every one is bound to acknowledge implicitly any government, in fact, that prevails: then, if a party in these nations should rise up, and set a _popish_ pretender on the throne, according to their doctrine, all should be obliged to subject to him; and it would be sinful to impugn the lawfulness of his authority, although that, by being popish, he is destitute of the essential qualifications required of a king, not only by the word of god, but by the national constitution and laws, in order to make him a lawful sovereign to these nations. . the presbytery testify against the associate presbytery, now called synod, for their wronging, perverting and misapplying the blessed scriptures of truth in many texts, in order to support their erroneous tenet: namely, that the word of god requires no qualifications as essential to the being of a lawful christian magistrate: but that whosoever are set up, and while they continue to be acknowledged by civil society, are lawful magistrates, though destitute of scripture qualifications, and acting in a manifest opposition to the revealed will and law of god. the texts of scripture used by them, do prove this general proposition, viz., that it is the duty of the people of god to obey and submit to lawful rulers in their lawful commands: and that it is utterly unlawful and sinful to oppose such lawful authority. but none of these texts quoted by them, prove, that it is the duty of the people of god, blessed with the knowledge of his revealed will, to submit to, and obey, for conscience sake, an authority that is sinful, and opposite to the revealed will of god, both in its constitution and general course of administration. nor do they prove, that a prelatical, erastian or popish government, is a lawful government, either expressly, or by right of necessary consequence, over a people, who either do, collectively considered as a church and nation, or are bound to profess all the parts of the true religion, and to maintain all the divine ordinances in their purity: nor do they prove, that any can be lawful rulers over these christian and covenanted nations, who want the essential qualifications required by the word of god, the covenants, and fundamental laws of the kingdoms: or that it is sinful in the people of god, to say so much, in testifying against the joint and national apostasy from god and the purity of religion. particularly, the first text they adduce is, _prov._ xxvi, : "my son, fear, thou the lord and the king, and meddle not with them that are given to change." it is granted, that this scripture enjoins all those duties that, in a consistency with the fear of the lord, a people owe to their rightful kings. but nothing can be more absurd, than to extend the command to all that bear the name of kings, who are acknowledged by a nation as kings, and while they do so own them, though their constitution should be most anti-christian, and they justly chargeable with unparalleled evils not only in their private character, but in their public conduct: be they idolaters, adulterers, blasphemers, sabbath-breakers, murderers, invaders, and avowed usurpers of the throne, crown and scepter, and incommunicable prerogatives of christ, the glorious king of zion, setting themselves in the temple of god, and exalting themselves above all that is called god, by dispensing with his laws, and, in place thereof, substituting their own wicked laws, whereby they establish iniquity, and enjoin, under severe penalties, the profanation of the name, day and ordinances of the lord. this command must certainly be understood in a consistency with the duty and character of one that is resolved to be an inhabitant of the lord's holy hill, _psal._ xv, "in whose eyes a vile person is contemned." it must be consistent with the fear of the lord, which can stand very well with a fearing and honoring all who are really kings; but a flat contradiction thereto, to fear every vile person, because it is the will of civil society to set him up in the character of king. till therefore seceders prove, either that kings are under no obligation to obey the law of god themselves, and so not liable to its sanction and penalty, in case of disobedience; or then, that the favor and approbation of civil society can justify a dispensing with the law of god, they will never be able to prove from this, nor any other text, that such as are guilty of any crime declared capital in the word of truth have a right and title to that fear, honor and obedience, that is due to lawful kings, even though they are acknowledged by civil society. and so this text makes nothing for, but against their darling tenet; and their explication thereof is evidently a wresting of scripture, making it speak in their favor, contrary to the scope and meaning of the holy spirit therein. and their inviduous insinuation, that all who differ from their opinion, do likewise depart from the fear of the lord, is but a further evidence of their abuse of scripture, while it is at the same time utterly false. see mr. knox's history, p. , st _book of discipline, cap._ , . a _second_ text abused, for supporting their forementioned principle, is _eccles._ x, : "if the spirit of the ruler rise up against thee, leave not thy place, for yielding pacifieth great offenses." as formerly, so here they assert, that this text refers to any rulers presently acknowledged by the civil society, and that the rising of the ruler's spirit must be understood as groundless, and so sinful, and necessarily comprehends any wrath or wrong that a subject may meet with unjustly at the ruler's hand, upon personal or religious accounts. that yet, notwithstanding, the subject (in the use of lawful endeavors for his own vindication) must continue in subjection and obedience to the ruler, in lawful commands, while the civil state continues to acknowledge him; and this, as the only habile mean of convincing the ruler of his error, and preventing further evils. but, as the reason which they there allege, does not necessarily conclude and prove this rising of spirit in the ruler to be sinful; so the whole of their application and gloss built upon it, is invalidated; and, moreover, is a condemnation of the principles and practice of our reformers, and sufferers for the cause and truths of christ, in the late times, when they left their place of subjection, and took up arms in defense of their religion, liberties and lives. their explication is also self inconsistent; for, if this rising of spirit necessarily comprehends any wrath or wrong, on personal or religious accounts, then there must be a yielding, or keeping the place of subjection, not only in lawful commands, but in all matters, whether lawful or not; otherwise, this yielding cannot be supposed to answer the end designed. for though a subject should yield in all other particulars, yet, unless he also yield in that particular, on which the rising of the ruler's spirit is grounded, his yielding cannot pacify the ruler's wrath. so all the subjection, they contend, the sufferers gave, particularly in the beginning of the late persecution, to the then rulers, did not, nor could, pacify their wrath, because they would not give up with their conscience and all religion, which was the very foundation of the rising of his spirit against them; though, according to their explication of the text, this was what they should have done, and so have pacified the ruler's wrath. it is but a mere shift to tell the world, that it is only in lawful matters they are to yield; the yielding must surely correspond to the rising of the spirit spoken of. but with such deceitful shifts are they forced to cover over a doctrine, which, if presented in its native dress, would not meet with such ready reception. but in opposition to their strained interpretation of the text, the ruler must be understood a lawful ruler, who is the minister of god for good--one who has not only moral abilities for government, but also a right to govern. and as a subject may be keeping his place of subjection to a righteous ruler, and yet be guilty, in his private or public character, of what gives just offense, and occasions the ruler's spirit justly, and so not sinfully, to rise against him--thus, one may be guilty of many criminal mismanagements in the discharge of his public trust, guilty of profaning the name of god or his day, or of riot, excessive drinking, &c, without having any thought of casting off the authority of his ruler--so, when a person has hereby provoked the spirit of his ruler, this divine precept teaches the party offending not to aggravate his offense, by attempting (though able) to make good his part, or rebel against his sovereign, but to yield, acknowledge his guilt and trespass, and submit to such punishments as the lawful ruler shall justly inflict, according to the degree and quality of the offense; whereby only, the ruler will be satisfied. agreeable to this, is that parallel text, _eccles._ viii, , : "i counsel thee to keep the king's commandment, and that in regard of the oath of god: be not hasty to go out of his sight; stand not in an evil thing." on the whole, it must be a great abuse of scripture, to wrest a divine precept, which directs subjects to submit to such punishments as their lawful ruler shall justly lay them under for their offenses, to the support of this anti-scriptural notion, viz., that every wicked person, whom the majority of a nation advances to the supreme rule, is the minister of god, to whom obedience is due, under pain of eternal damnation, as is done with this text. a _third_ scripture, perverted to support the above principle, is _luke_ xx, : "render therefore to _caesar_ the things which be _caesar's_, and unto god the things which be god's." from this, _seceders_ imagine strongly to fortify their cause. but, from a just view of the text, it will appear, that the answer given by christ contains no acknowledgment of _caesar's_ title to tribute, or of his authority as lawful. it is beyond doubt, that the question was captious, and that the design of the scribes and pharisees, in proposing it to christ, was to have him ensnared in his words. this they thought themselves sure of, whether he should answer positively or negatively. for if positively, and so recognize and acknowledge _caesar's_ title, then they would have occasion to accuse him to the people, as an enemy to the laws, liberty and honor, of the _jewish_ nation. this is evident from ver. : "and they could not take hold of his words before the people." and then, if he should deny that it was lawful, they would have an opportunity or pretense of delating and delivering him to the _roman_ governor, as an enemy to _caesar_. they seem, however, to have been confident, that he who taught the way of god in truth, without regard to any, would never inculcate it as a duty for them to give tribute to _caesar_, subjection to whom, as their lawful governor, for conscience sake, was so contrary to the divine law given to the _jews_, respecting their magistrates; and if so, they would not miss of sufficient accusation against him. but here infinite wisdom shone forth, in giving such an answer as declared their wisdom to be but folly, and at once disappointed all their malicious hopes; an answer which left _caesar's_ claim unresolved, as to any positive determination whether it belonged to him or not. the question is in direct terms. our lord does not directly answer to the question, in the terms proposed by the wicked spies. he neither expressly says it is lawful or unlawful to pay it, but gave his answer in such terms as they could not from it form an accusation against him, either to the people or to the governor. he, in general, teaches to give _caesar_ all things that, by the law of god, were due to him; at the same time enjoining them that, under pretense of giving to men their demands, they rob not god of what was his due, namely, a conscientious regard to all the laws he had given them, and universal obedience to all his commands, without regard to persons of any station. and it is certain, that _caesar_ was a proud, aspiring, idolatrous and bloody usurper (like the king of _babylon_, hab. ii, , for which causes the lord denounces fearful wrath and judgments against him, hab. ii, - ), having no other right to the most part of his dominions, than the lord's providential disposal, which sometimes makes "the tabernacles of robbers prosper; into whose hand god bringeth abundantly;" job xii, . "and for their sins gives _jacob_ to the spoil, and _israel_ to the robbers;" isa. xiii, . "and giveth power to the beast, to continue forty and two months, and to have power over all nations;" rev. xiii, , . so that, by looking into the divine law, which determines every one's due, according to their just character, and of which they could not be ignorant, they might see that he had a just title to all that was due to an usurper, idolater and murderer. that the _jewish_ coin did bear _caesar's_ image, could be no evidence of his being their lawful sovereign, seeing it is most common for the greatest usurpers and tyrants to stamp their image upon the coin of the nations they tyrannize over. and though it be granted that the _jews_ had, by this time, consented to _caesar's_ usurpation, yet that could not legitimate his title, nor warrant their subjection to him for conscience sake, seeing they could not consent to his authority, but in express contradiction to the many plain and positive scripture precepts, given by god unto them, as has been seen above. it is, therefore, violence done to the text (as also opposite to the sentiments of some eminent divines on the place), to say that it contains a command to pay tribute to _caesar_; and it would appear from luke xxiii, , that the _jews_ themselves did not understand it so. it may be further observed, that this is not the only instance where our lord, in infinite wisdom, declined to give direct answers to the ensnaring questions of his malicious enemies. see john viii, - ; matth. xxi, - ; john xviii, - , where are questions of a similar nature, proposed with the same hellish intention, and all answered by him in like manner. in each of which, _seceders_ might, on as good ground as in the answer to the question anent tribute, say that christ did shift and dissemble the truth. but the least insinuation of such a charge cannot be made from any of these answers, without the greatest blasphemy. a _fourth_ text used by them for maintaining their erroneous scheme, is rom. xiii, - . without animadverting upon every part of their explication of this place of holy writ, it is sufficient to observe: . that the power here spoken of by the apostle, is not a _physical_, but a _moral_ power; a power that is lawful and warranted, in regard of matter, person, title or investiture. a legitimacy in each of these must go to the making of a moral power; and an illegitimacy in any of these is an illegitimacy in the very being and constitution, and so a nullity to the power as moral, a making it of no authority. as the text speaks only of this moral power, so it excludes every unlawful power (see mr. _gee_ on magistracy, on this text). . that the _being_ of god, or the ordination god here spoke of, is not a being of god _providentially_ only, but such a _being of_ god as contains in it his institution and appointment, by the warrant of his law and precept; so that the magistrates to whom the apostle enjoins obedience, are such as are set up according to the preceptive ordination and will of god, as is evinced not only by the author referred to above, and other divines, but what sufficiently appears from the context, where the subjection enjoined, and resistance forbidden, with their respective reasons, are what can only be spoken with respect to powers ordained by the preceptive will of god. again, by considering the office and duty of the powers, and the end of their ordination, as described, ver. , , which by no means agree to any but those moral powers ordained by the preceptive will of god, it appears a manifest abuse of this text, to apply it to every one advanced by providence to the place of supreme rule, not only without any regard, but in direct opposition to the preceptive will of god. it is most absurd and self-contradictory in professed testimony bearers for a covenanted reformation, to apply this text in a way of pleading the lawfulness of an erastian, anti-christian constitution, that is destitute of all those qualifications already mentioned (and always included in the scriptural definition of a lawful magistrate), as necessary to constitute a moral power, viz., in regard of matter, person, title or investiture, &c. but of the power which they so zealously plead for, the matter is unlawful, being erastian, partly civil, partly ecclesiastical, by the united constitution. the person invested with this supreme power, is one who is declared incapable, by the fundamental laws and covenanted constitution of the nations; the manner of investiture, and terms on which the crown is held, sinful--the constitution being in an immediate opposition to the unalterable constitution of the kingdom of the _messias_, and founded on the destruction of the covenanted reformation. and it may be added, that it is unlawful, as to the exercise and application of it, which has been all along in opposition to all _true_ religion, and a grievous oppression of the church, the kingdom of christ, in the liberties thereof. and it must be so; for the tree must be made good, before the fruit can be such. by all which it appears, there is a nullity in the power as moral, being so very opposite to the revealed will of god. and from what is said, it is obvious that this scripture gives no countenance to their corrupt scheme, but furnishes with strong arguments against it. a _fifth_ scripture adduced is, titus iii, : "put them in mind to be subject to principalities and powers," &c. as _seceders_ apply this text to the same purpose, and explain it in the same manner, as they have done those others above mentioned, so what is already said is sufficient to discover the deceit of their use and explication thereof. the powers and magistrates the apostle requires subjection to, are only such as are so in a moral sense; none but such are accounted powers and magistrates in the sense of the text. the apostle must mean the same powers here he describes in rom. xiii, - , &c., otherwise he contradicts himself, which must not be admitted; and the powers he there speaks of, are moral powers, i.e., such as have not only proper abilities for government and rule, but also a right of constitution, impowering them to use their abilities for that purpose. how can one be expected or said to be the _minister_ of god _for good_, or a _terror to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well_, if he is so disposed and inclined, as to love that which is evil, and hate that which is good, and so actually is a praise to evil doers, and a terror to such as do well? to suppose any such thing, is to overthrow the universally established connection between cause and effect, the means and the end. and so much (namely, that the powers there spoken of are moral powers), _seceders_ are forced to grant in their explication of rom. xiii. say they, "the text speaks only of powers in a moral sense." and this concession at once destroys their scheme, and confirms what the presbytery plead for, namely, that none are lawful powers but such as are so according to the preceptive will of god in his word; which certainly, in the judgment of all _who would deal reverently with the oracles of god_, is, in this case, a rule far preferable "to the remainders of natural light, in the moral dictates of right reason," from which _seceders_ fetch the institution of this divine ordinance of magistracy, and on which they settle it, as on (what they call) "the natural and eternal law of god;" preferring that to the plain, perfect and complete, revelation of god's will in his word. the _last_ text used by them, is, pet. ii, to , the import of which, they say, is, that all who have a constitution by consent of the civil society, are to be subjected to for the lord's sake, as having an institution from him: and that, however seldom they were inclined or employed in the discharge of the duties proper to their office. it may suffice to observe, that while the apostle is here speaking, as in the above texts, of moral powers, as above described, it is evident, that by _every ordinance of man_, can only be meant the different kinds and forms of civil government, and governors set up by men, to each of which the apostle exhorts to a submission, providing, that in the setting up of these, they acted agreeably to the general laws and rules appointed by god in his word, both respecting the constitution of government, and the qualifications of governors. then, as they bear the stamp of divine authority, they were to be submitted to for the lord's sake. but what manifest abuse of scripture is it, to allege with them that the inspired apostle exhorts to submit to every monster of iniquity, if only set up by the civil society, though perhaps guilty of a number of crimes that by the law of god, and laws of men founded thereon, are punishable by a severe death? sure, such can never have a title to that obedience which is due to the ordinance of god, who have not so much as a title to live upon the earth. moreover, let it be considered, that in the above cited texts, the spirit of god enjoins either that obedience and subjection that is due to lawful magistrates, or that subjection only which is for a time, by an extraordinary and special command, such as jer. xxix, , given to conquerors and usurpers, having no right but what is providential. if the first, then they cannot intend any but those moral powers who are said to be of god, in respect of his approbative and preceptive will. if the last, then these texts are not the rule of obedience to lawful rulers, who are set up qualified, and govern according to the law of god. but that these texts can only be understood of the first, is evident from this, that in them not only is the office, duty and end of the civil magistrate as particularly described, as the obedience and subjection commanded; but the one is made the foundation, ground, and reason of, and inseparably connected with the other. and therefore it was, that the renowned witnesses for christ and his interest, contended so much for reformation in the civil magistracy and magistrate, in an agreeableness to the original institution of that ordinance, and endured so great opposition on that account. to conclude this: as it is evident these texts give no countenance to the corrupt scheme of _seceders_, but always suppose the power, to which subjection and obedience for conscience sake is enjoined to be lawful, in regard of matter, person, title, &c. so the presbytery cannot but testify against them for perverting and wresting the scriptures of truth, to a favoring of their anarchical and anti-scriptural tenet, and for their so stiffly and tenaciously pleading for avowed apostasy and defection (which is the whole scope and amount of their declared scheme of politics), viz., that it is lawful for posterity to turn back to where their forefathers were, giving up with many precious truths, and further attainments in reformation, valuable and necessary, acquired at the expense of much zeal, faithfulness and treasure, and handed down to us, sealed by the spirit of god upon the souls of his people, as his work and cause; and on public scaffolds and high places of the field, with the dearest blood of multitudes of christ's faithful witnesses, who loved not their lives unto the death. and this, in express contradiction to the land's solemn covenant engagements to the lord, for maintaining and holding fast that whereunto we had attained. for notwithstanding all the regard and deference _seceders_ profess to the covenants and reformation principles, they are, all the while, directly pleading in defense of the same cause, advancing the same arguments to support it, and likewise giving the same corrupt and perverted explication of the above texts of scripture, that the merciless and bloody murderers and persecuters did, in the late tyrannous times, in their stated opposition to the cause and interest of glorious christ, together with the indulged who took part with them, in opposing the kingdom and subjects of zions exalted king. and as [pity it is] _seceders_ have pleaded the cause of malignants, and, rubbing the rust from their antiquated arguments, have presented them with a new lustre; so the presbytery, in opposition thereto, are satisfied to plead the same cause, with the same arguments and to understand these scriptures in the same sense as was done by the witnesses for reformation, whom the lord honored to seal his truths with their blood, as is sufficiently confirmed from the cloud of witnesses; where their concurring testimonies are harmoniously stated, upon their disowning the authority of the then anti-christian and erastian government, even when acknowledged by the bulk and body of the nation, both civil and ecclesiastical. whence also it is evident, that the persecution was not the cause of their casting off that authority; but that authority's assuming and usurping the royal prerogatives of christ, the church's head, was the cause of their disowning it; and then their refusing to acknowledge foresaid authority, was the cause of all their persecution. . the presbytery testify against foresaid associates, on account of their corruption in worship; particularly, in the duty of prayer, both as practiced by their ministers, and by them enjoined upon their people. wherein, in an inconsistency with a faithful testimony against the declared enemies of the church's head and king, they affect to express a superlative loyalty unto the prelatic possessors of power, not much differing from the forms imposed upon, and observed by the erastian church. the presbytery acknowledge it duty to pray for all men, in the various stations of life, as sinners lost, of the ruined family of adam, standing absolutely in need of a savior, that they may be saved and come to the knowledge of the truth; as is enjoined, _tim._ ii, , . which yet must not be understood in an unlimited sense, but with submission to the will of god, if they belong to the election of grace. nay, they acknowledge it indispensable duty, as to pray, that the church may obtain such kings and queens, as shall he nursing fathers and mothers, according to the lord's gracious promise; so, when such are granted to them, it is their duty to make prayers and supplications, in a particular manner, for them. but it is no less than an abuse of scripture, and flat contradiction to many promises and threatenings, to extend foresaid command to every person without distinction whom providence advances to the supreme rule over the people of god, in a way of acknowledging their authority as lawful, and of praying for success and prosperity to them (as seceders do), to pray for success unto, and the continuance of wicked rulers, that are enemies to the lord, and usurpers of his crown, and such whom the lord in anger against a people for their sins, may send as a special punishment upon them, and from whom he has promised deliverance unto his people, as a peculiar blessing, is no less than the slighting of the promises, and deriding of threatenings, and in reality, is a taking part with god's enemies, against him and his cause. as it is impossible, sincerely to pray for the coming of christ's kingdom, and advancement thereof, without also, as a necessary mean conducive thereto, to pray for the downfall and destruction of all his enemies, as such, whatever be their place and station (which is not at all inconsistent with praying for their salvation, as lost sinners); seeing jesus christ no less effectually destroys his enemies, when he makes them to bow in a way of willing subjection to the scepter of his law and grace, than when he breaks them in pieces with his iron rod of wrath; so, how self-contradictory is it in _seceders_, to pray for the coming of christ's mediatory kingdom; and, at the same time to pray for the success and preservation of one, in his kingly character, who themselves acknowledge, has, in that character, made grievous encroachments upon the royal prerogatives of the lord jesus christ, is an usurper of his crown, and therefore, in that view, must be considered as an enemy to his kingdom? that the above is no false charge against _seceders_, is witnessed by a variety of their causes of fasting, concluding with such prayers, which they have emitted, as well as by their daily practice: and particularly, _antiburgher seceders_, have given a late recent proof of this; in what they call, a solemn warning by the _associate synod_, &c. which unfaithful warning concludes with a self-contradictory form of prayer, enjoined upon all under the inspection of said _synod_. among other things, they "exhort all--the people under their inspection, to pour out earnest and incessant supplications before the lord, in a dependence upon the merit and intercession of our great high-priest, that he may--bring about a revival of our covenanted reformation,--removing all the mountains which stand in the way; that he may abundantly bless our sovereign king _george_, and the apparent heir of the crown,--blasting all the plots or efforts of whatever enemies, open or secret,--against the protestant succession to the throne of these kingdoms in the family of _hanover_; that he may be gracious to the high courts of parliament, in this and the neighboring island,--leading them to proper measures for the honor of christ; that he may hasten the enlargement of the mediator's kingdom," &c. on all which, let it suffice to observe, . that as in no part of this prayer they make any exceptions against, so they must be understood therein, approving of the constitution of the king, the establishment, and limitation of the throne of these kingdoms in the _hanoverian_ family, as presently by law established: and also, approving of the _british_ and _irish_, parliaments, in their constitution as by law established, though both of them grossly erastian, and necessarily connected with maintaining _english_ popish ceremonies, the whole _english_ hierarchy, and civil places and power of churchmen; in opposition to the word of god, reforming laws, and covenanted constitutions of the nations. hence, . this pattern of prayer must be understood as containing earnest supplications to the lord, that he may continue and preserve an erastian constitution, that he may perpetuate the limited succession to the throne in the family of _hanover_; and that, in opposition to all attempts whatever, toward any change, however much it might contribute to the glory of god, good of the church, and revival of a covenanted reformation; and also, seems to include a desire that, god may preserve and maintain a parliament in the nations, one of the houses whereof, viz., the house of peers, is composed partly of _spiritual lords_, as essential members thereof,--an anti-christian designation, a title and office, not to be found in the book of divine revelation. so, . this prayer seems to suppose a consistency between the preservation of all these, and the revival of a covenanted reformation in these lands; and also that they, particularly a parliament, thus anti-christian in its constitution, are proper instruments for promoting the honor and declarative glory of christ; although the prelates, constituent members therein, are a generation of men that were never yet known to have a vote for christ's kingdom and interest. and therefore, . this prayer consists of flat contradiction. ( .) in regard the revival of a covenanted reformation, and the flourishing of christ's mediatory kingdom, nationally, must be attended with the overthrow of all constitutions, civil and ecclesiastical, that hinder and oppose the same; _hag._ ii, , , and with the down bringing of all the enemies thereof, from the height of their excellency. ( .) it is a contradiction for them to pray, that the lord would remove all the mountains that stand in the way of the revival of our reformation; and yet, at the same time, pray for the preservation and continuance of the constitution, under which (as they themselves acknowledge, _defense of their princ., page_ ): "there is a mighty bar thrust into the way of our covenanted reformation, both in church and state; yea, a gravestone is laid, and established upon the same." ( .) it is a sinful and glaring contradiction for _seceders_ to rank an approbation of the _english_ hierarchy among our public national sins and steps of defection (as they do, page of their pamphlet); and yet themselves persist and continue in the same sin and guilt, homologating and approving the anti-christian constitution of the _british_ and _irish_ parliaments, by praying (like their forefathers, in their fulsome address to _james_ the papist) for divine illumination and conduct to the prelates in their civil places and power, as necessary members there, as they do in this prayer of theirs. can such be supposed to be either truly sensible of sin, or humbled for it, who, notwithstanding all their confessions, still continue in the love and practice of it? but with such mock acknowledgements (of which a variety of other instances might be given) have they hitherto imposed on the generation. and so, . it is a prayer, that in several parts thereof, has no scripture warrant, no foundation in the promises of god. particularly, on what scriptural warrant, what promise, can _seceders_ build their prayers for, or expectation of the lord's answering them, by blessing an erastian government to themselves or others, which being, in its constitution, contrary to the word of god,--is such, that under it (as they grant, _ibid_, page ), a people cannot truly prosper in their civil concerns, nor be enriched with the blessings of the gospel? from what scriptural promise are they warranted to pray, that god may perpetuate the succession to the throne in any one family, and especially, when that succession is circumscribed and limited, in a way opposite to the laws of god, and mediatory kingdom of christ? and therefore, a prayer that cannot be made in faith, and so cannot be acceptable to god in its complex form. no person can have faith in the merit and intercession of christ, for obtaining anything in prayer, but what christ has priorly merited, and does actually intercede for. but it would savor too much of blasphemy, to apply some of the particulars already noticed in this form of prayer, to the merit and intercession of our _great high-priest_. sure it cannot be thought, that he makes intercession for the prosperity and success of his enemies, in their stated opposition to his kingdom and interest in this world; neither can it be consistent with fidelity to christ, as a king, for his professed subjects to pray for it. what a fearful trifling with god in the duty of prayer, is it to pray that the lord may bring down popery and prelacy; and next breath to pray that the lord may continue, prosper, and preserve the erastian head, and great bulwark of prelacy? . again, the presbytery testify against the associate party for their treachery in covenant. this is a sin that is in scripture, and even by the common voice of mankind, declared very heinous; but which, by what is already discovered anent said party, appears too, too justly chargeable upon them. it is notorious, and what themselves boast much of, that they professedly maintain the moral and perpetual obligation of the covenants, both the national covenant of _scotland_, and the solemn league and covenant of _scotland, england_, and _ireland_, entered into for reformation and defense of religion, and bringing the churches of god in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, according to the word of god. they also do in the most public manner profess, that they are the only true faithful witnesses for a covenanted reformation. but the consistency of such a profession with maintaining principles that are diametrically opposite to these covenants, and the cause of truth, sworn to in them (as has been made evident they do) is altogether unintelligible. is it possible strenuously to maintain the lawfulness of a prelatical government abjured in the covenants, and yet at the same time sincerely and honestly, according to the profession made by the church, _psal._ xliv, , , to contend for the moral obligation of the covenants, and the work of reformation sworn to in them? but further, the necessity of lifting up a testimony against _seceders_ for their treachery and unfaithfulness in the matter of the covenants, will appear by considering that they, after making a very solemn profession of renewing the national covenant of _scotland_, and the solemn league and covenant of the three lands, in place of practicing accordingly, have, in reality, made a new and very different bond or covenant, both in form and substance, which they have not only sworn themselves, but also imposed upon many honest people: and this as a renewing, nay, as the only right way of renewing said covenants according to the circumstances, of the times. that this bond entered into by _seceders_ (however good it may be, considered in an abstract sense) is not a renovation of the national covenants, as they assert it to be, but a treacherous and deceitful burying of these covenants, as to their sum and substance, is abundantly evident from their industrious keeping out, and omitting the most part of them out of their new and artificial bond. particularly, although they pretend to a renovation both of the national and solemn league and covenant, yet they have almost entirely left out, and passed over the national covenant of _scotland_; and satisfying themselves with simply testifying against popery, have omitted all the particular errors, and branches thereof expressly contained in the national covenant. as to the solemn league, of which they pretend their bond is also a renovation, there is very little of it to be found therein, as appears from a comparison of the one with the other. thus they have left out that remarkable and necessary clause in the first article, viz., "against our common enemies:" and in place of endeavoring to bring the churches of god in the three kingdoms to the nearest conjunction and uniformity in religion, confession of faith, form of church government, directory for worship and catechizing, as in said article, there is an unintelligible clause or jumble of words brought in, viz., to promote and advance our covenanted conjunction and uniformity in religion, just as if that conjunction and uniformity had a present existence (in its native and original state and form) in the three lands; when, on the contrary, presbytery is established in _scotland_, yet not on the footing of the word of god and the covenants, and episcopacy is established in _england_ and _ireland_, in contradiction to the word of god and the covenants. . they have kept out that necessary clause in the d article, viz., "without respect of persons, endeavor the extirpation," &c, and instead thereof say, "testify against popery and prelacy;" where appears not only a difference in expression, but a substantial difference. . they have altogether omitted and kept out the d and th articles. . they have kept out that material and necessary clause in the th article, viz., "that justice may be done on the willful opposers thereof," in manner expressed in the preceding article. . they have left out all the th article, excepting these words: "we shall not give ourselves up to a detestable neutrality and indifference in the cause of god." and . they have wholly omitted that material paragraph of the conclusion of the solemn league. it is therefore evident, that the model of the covenants agreed to by _seceders_, is different in substance, as well as form, from our ancient covenants; so that, under pretense of renovation, they have made a new bond. but, again, that their pretended renovation is a real burying of the covenanted reformation, appears from their overlooking, casting by, and keeping out the national covenant, as it was renewed in the year , and the solemn league and covenant, as renewed in the year , and going back to the years and , as the pattern they propose to follow in carrying on of their covenanted testimony. and what can be the reason of this? can it be, because prelacy, and the civil places and power of churchmen, were, by the explication and application of the covenant, _anno_ , expressly and explicitly condemned, while they were formerly only implicitly, and by way of consequence? so they have at least, by this step back, both tacitly condemned our reformers, of giving themselves needless trouble in their explanation of the covenant, as condemning and abjuring episcopacy; and also, do overlook, despise, and disgracefully bury the many advanced steps of reformation attained to in these covenanted lands between and (particularly the church of _scotland's_ testimony against prelacy) in which time reformation arrived to a greater height of purity than ever was attained in any foregoing period of this church and nation. however, whatever their reasons were for so doing, that they have so done is clear, from their act _edinburgh, february_ d, , where they conclude with a _nota bene_, lest it should not otherwise have been observed that they do so, and thereby declare their sin as _sodom_, as if the publishing of it would make an atonement for it. "n.b. only the national covenant, as it was entered into, _annis_ , (without the bond wherein it was renewed _anno_ ) and the solemn league and covenant (without the solemn acknowledgment of sins, and engagement to duties, _anno_ ), are hereby prefixed unto the following act, agreeably unto the design of said act": and for this they pretend the example of our reformers, _anno_ , who renewed the national covenant by a new bond, in place of that new bond wherewith it was renewed and sworn, , which they omitted--wherein their deceit and unfaithfulness is very obvious from the following observations: . hereby they have cast a most injurious calumny and reproach upon our honored reformers, and in their pretending to imitate their practice, in renovation of the covenants, are guilty of a most dreadful and deceitful imposition on the generation; for though our reformers did renew the covenants with a new bond, and perhaps very seldom swear them without some additions, yet they never went back from any part of reformation, espoused, and sworn to in the renovations that were before them, under a pretense, that such points of reformation formerly attained, were unsuitable, or not adapted to their circumstances, as _seceders_ have done. on the contrary, our reformers, in all the different renovations of the covenants, not only included all that was formerly attained to, binding themselves in strict adherence to all the articles priorly in the oath and covenant of god (at the same time solemnly acknowledging all former breaches thereof; and obliging themselves, in the strength of grace to the performance of the contrary, and consequential duties), but also, still went forward in explaining and more explicitly applying the covenants against the sins of the day, and more expressly binding themselves to the opposite duties, as is clear from the bond wherewith our reformers renewed the covenants , and the solemn acknowledgment of sins, and engagement to duties, ; both which the _seceders_ have barefacedly cast by and exploded in their alleged renovation of the covenants; whereby, as it is manifest that our reformers always went forward to further degrees of reformation, so it is no less manifest, that foresaid party acting contrary to them, have gone backward. but d. they have not only rejected the renovations of the covenants by our ancestors and ; but even when they pretended to follow the renovation of the covenant, and , they have kept out and perverted almost the whole of the national covenants, as was already observed; particularly in their new bond, they have cast away the civil part of the covenants altogether. for what reason they do so, is indeed hard to say. true, they allege it would be a blending of civil and religious matters together; and that it is not proper (or competent for them, as a church judicatory) to meddle in these matters that are of a civil nature. but seeing infinite wisdom has not judged it a (sinful) blending of civil and religious concerns together, to deliver the duties both civil and religious in one and the same moral law unto mankind; it is difficult to conceive, how the people of god their binding themselves in a covenant of duties to the conscientious performance of all the duties god required of them in his word, whether civil or religious, according to their respective or immediate objects, can be reputed a blending of them together; or that this has the remotest tendency to destroy that distinction which god in his revealed will has stated between what is immediately civil in its nature, and what is properly religious. this, therefore, is a mere groundless pretense and evasion; and if it has any force at all, as a reason, it strikes against the reformers who compiled these covenants. they are the proper objects at whom through the sides of others it thrusts; for they, at the framing of sundry of their covenants, and afterward at the renovation of their covenant, did it both without the ecclesiastical authority, and also without, and contrary unto, yea, at the hazard of suffering the greatest severities from the civil authority on that account. and yet the ecclesiastical judicatories of the church of _scotland_ afterward found it competent for them, as such, to approve of these covenants, both as to the matter and form of them, without branding and exploding them as a blending of matters civil and religious together, as _seceders_ have done. again, as the covenants require no other than a lawful magistrate; and seeing _seceders_ acknowledge the present as lawful, and that it is their duty to be subject to, and support them as such, it is impossible to conceive any reason, why they have not honored the present rulers with a place in their new and artificial bond: unless perhaps this, that they were aware that would have been so glaring a contradiction to these covenants they were pretending to renew, as would doubtless have startled and driven away from them a good many honest people, whom they have allured and led aside by their good words and fair-set speeches; and yet it is pretty obvious they have included the present rulers in their bond, and taken them in an oblique and clandestine way, by swearing to the relative duties contained in the fifth commandment, seeing they acknowledge them as their civil parents. again, as their bond is supposed to reduplicate upon the national covenants, and so to bind to every article in them, by native consequence, they swear to a prelatical government: for seeing they have made no exception in their bond, it must be applied to no other, but the government, which presently exists; and this, in flat contradiction to the covenants, by which such a government is abjured. so that their new bond is no less opposite to the national covenants, and is much mere deceitful, than if they had plainly and explicitly sworn allegiance to the present government therein; only the generality of their implicit followers do not so readily observe it. upon the whole, how strange is it, that they should have the assurance to father their deceitful apostasy, and wretched burying of the covenants upon our reformers, so injuriously to their character, and at the hazard of imposing a heinous and base cheat upon the world, while, notwithstanding all their vain pretensions, it is undeniably evident to those who will impartially, and without prejudice, examine the method and order whereby our ancestors renewed our covenants, that in this they have been so far from following their example, that they have directly contradicted the same, and, in reality, buried much of the covenants and work of reformation sworn to in them. for though a people may very lawfully, by a new bond, enlarge and add to their former obligations that they brought themselves under; yet they can never, without involving themselves in the guilt of perjury, relax or cancel former obligations by any future bond. accordingly, our worthy ancestors, by all the new bonds they annexed to former obligations, were so far from attempting to loose themselves from any covenanted duty that either they or their fathers were priorly bound unto, that they thereby still brought themselves under straighter bonds to perform all their former and new obligations of duty to god. but, as has been discovered, _seceders_, by their artificial bond, have cast out the very substance and spirit of the covenants, by their rumping and hewing them at pleasure, to reduce them to the sinful circumstances of the time: and this, in opposition to their own public profession, that these covenants are moral in their nature and obligation upon these nations to the latest posterity. how surprising it is then, that after such a profession, they dare cast out of their bond the greatest parts of the covenants! this is not only to break these obligations, but it is to make a public declaration, that different times and circumstances do free men from their obligation to keep their most solemn vows to the most high. to this, as very applicable, may be subjoined the words of mr. _case_, in a sermon relative to the covenants: "others have taken it (viz., the covenant) with their own evasions, limitations and reservations: such a jesuitical spirit has got in among us, by which means it comes to pass, that by that time that men have pared off and left out, and put what interpretation they frame to themselves, there is little left worth the name of a covenant." and, indeed, so many are the self-inconsistencies and gross contradictions attending this new bond, that it would have been much more for the honor both of the covenants, and of _seceders_ themselves, rather never to have attempted such a work, than to have done it in a way of tearing to pieces our solemn national vows. wherefore the presbytery cannot but, in testifying against them for their unfaithfulness, obtest all the lovers of truth, to beware of joining in this course of treachery, and apostasy from god and his covenanted cause. . the presbytery testify against foresaid party, for their unfaithfulness and partiality in point of testimony-bearing to a covenanted, work of reformation; while yet they not only profess to be witnesses, but the only true and faithful contenders for the said work and cause. the justness of this charge manifestly appears from the scope of their act and testimony, which seems to be principally leveled against the corruptions of the present church judicatories, and not equally against the corruptions of both church and state, in agreeableness to the faithful testimonies of the lord's people in former times, and in a consistency with the reformation that was jointly carried on in both church and state, and solemnly sworn and engaged to in the covenants. they appear never to have fully adopted the testimony of the church of _scotland_ in her purest times, when the profession of the true religion was by law made a necessary qualification of every one that should be admitted to places of civil trust and power in the nation. nor are the faithful testimonies of the valiant sufferers and contenders, even unto death, for the precious truths of god in the late persecuting period, as stated against both church and state, fully stated, and judicially approven by them; much less have they fully adopted the testimony, as stated against the revolution constitution, both civil and ecclesiastical, which they did not in their testimony condemn as sinful; but, on the contrary, acknowledged the civil constitution lawful, notwithstanding of their complaining of some defects and omissions therein. of which error in the foundation, it may be said, in respect of all the mal-administrations since, it was _fons et origo mali_. and seeing, in and by the revolution constitution, the nation was involved in the guilt of apostasy and treachery, in subverting and overturning the good and laudable laws for true religion and right liberty, a faint declaring against some omissions cannot be accounted sufficient; especially when what is thus partly complained of, is at the same time complexly extolled, as a great and glorious deliverance to the church and nation. their testimony further appears to be partial and unfaithful, considering that their secession was not from the constitution of the revolution church, but in a partial and limited way, from a prevailing corrupt party in the judicatories of the church: upon which footing it was, that some of greatest note among them made their accession after their first secession, expressly declaring so much; whereby they have injured the true state of the testimony which the lord honored his covenanted church of _scotland_ to bear; which is stated against all lukewarm and _laodicean_ professors, as well as open enemies, and against all erastian usurpation, and sectarian invasion on the cause of christ. moreover, their unfaithfulness in point of testimony, convincingly appears from their bitter contentions, and almost endless disputes among themselves, after their breach, upon the religious clause of some burgess oaths, anent the true state of their own testimony, whether lifted up against the revolution constitution of the church, and settlement of religion, or not. had necessary and real faithfulness been studied, in stating their testimony clearly and plainly, against all the defection, and apostasy of the day from a covenanted reformation, there had been no occasion for such a dispute among them. and now, when the one party have more openly avowed their unfaithfulness, in receding from almost everything that had the least appearance of faithfulness to the cause and covenant of god, in their former testimony, and professedly adopted the revolution settlement, as theirs, acknowledging the constitutions, both civil and ecclesiastical, as lawful, in an open contradiction to any testimony for reformation work: the other party, _to wit, antiburghers_, have now indeed professedly cast off the revolution constitution of the church (at the same time continuing to make their partial act and testimony the basis of their distinguished profession); but yet, in an inconsistency therewith, and in contradiction to the covenanted testimony of the church of _scotland_, continue to adopt the constitution of the state, as being, however defective, yet agreeable to the precept and so lawful. hence, they are still most partial in their testimony, of which they have given a fresh and notable proof, in forementioned warning published by them: wherein though there are a variety of evils condescended upon, as just grounds of the lord's controversy with the nations, yet there is not that faithfulness used therein, in a particular charging home of the several sins mentioned, upon every one in their different ranks, as, in agreeableness to the word of god, is requisite to work a conviction in every one, that they may turn from their sins, and as might correspond to the title given that performance. thus, passing other instances that might also have been observed, they justly remark, _page_ st, "the glorious sovereignty of our lord jesus christ, as the alone king and head of his church, is sadly encroached upon and opposed by the royal supremacy, in causes ecclesiastical. the king is acknowledged as supreme head, or governor on earth, of the churches of _england_ and _ireland_. the civil sovereign is thus declared to be the head or fountain of church power, from whence all authority and ministrations in these churches do spring, is vested with all powers of government and discipline, and constituted the sole judge of controversies within the same." "the established church of _scotland_ have also, by some particular managements, subjected and subordinated their ecclesiastical meetings to the civil power." but while they acknowledge this to be the sin of the church, and an high provocation against the lord; yet, as to the particular sin of the civil power, in assuming and usurping this erastian supremacy unto itself, they are quite silent. they have not the faithfulness to say, in their warning, to the robber of christ, in this matter, as once the prophet of the lord said to the king of _israel_, in another case, _thou art the man_. on the contrary (which cannot but have a tendency to ward off any conviction of his sin that this warning, should it come into his hands, might be expected to work), they are guilty of the basest flattery, used by court parasites, stiling him, "the best of kings, of the mildest administration," as in _page_ th; and acknowledge it, as a particular effect of the lord's goodness, that we are privileged with such an one. but is he indeed deserving of such a character? better than which could not be given to the most faithful ruler, devoting all his power, as in duty bound, to the support and advancement of the kingdom and interest of jesus christ, that over reigned. does he really merit such an encomium, who sacrilegiously usurps and wears the crown, that alone can flourish on the head of _zion's_ king? and is this such a blessing to the church, that an enemy to her lord and head rules over her? oh! may not the lord say? "i hearkened and heard, but they spake not aright." . the presbytery testify against said seceding party, because of the sinfulness of their terms of ministerial and christian communion, as being partly destructive of that liberty wherewith christ has made his people free. by which they have both imposed upon themselves, and shut the door of access unto the privileges of the church, upon all such, as, in a consistency with their adherence to truth and duty, cannot accept of their unwarrantable restrictions. of this, they gave early discoveries, as appears from the known instance of that notable, backslider, mr. _andrew clarkson_, whom they obliged, before license, to make a public and solemn renunciation of his former principles and profession, respecting the covenanted reformation.[ ] as also, their rejecting all accessions from his _laodicean_ brethren, wherein was contained an explicit adherence to the same, until they did drop their former testimony. this blind zeal in _seceders_, against a testimony for truth in its purity, did gradually increase, until it hurried them on to a more particular and formal stating of their terms of communion, whereby were totally excluded all the free and faithful of the land from their communion, who could not approve of, nor swear the bond, whereby they pretended to renew the covenants: as in their act at _edinburgh_, ; wherein they did resolve and determine, "that the renovation of the national covenant of _scotland_, and the solemn league and covenant of the three nations, in the manner now agreed upon, and proposed by the presbytery, shall be the terms of ministerial communion with this presbytery, and likewise of christian communion, in admission of people to sealing ordinances; secluding therefrom all opposers, contemners, and slighters of the said renovation of our solemn covenants." by this act, _seceders_ have obliged their adherents to consent to their infamous burial of our national covenants with the lord, and reformation therein sworn to, particularly as they were renewed, both and . and that they might further evince their resolution to bear down the foresaid work, they afterward proceeded to subjoin unto their _formula_ of questions to be put to candidates before license, and to probationers before ordination, the following questions, viz., "are you satisfied with, and do you propose to adhere unto, and maintain the principles about the present civil government, which are declared and maintained in the _associate presbytery's_ answers to mr. _nairn_, with their defense thereunto subjoined?" whereby, in opposition to the professed endeavors for the revival of a covenanted reformation in the lands, they expressly bind down all their intrants into the office of the ministry, to an explicit acknowledgement of their anti-government scheme of principles anent the ordinance of magistracy; and thereby to an acknowledging of the lawfulness of a government, which themselves confess has not only departed from, and neglected their duty of espousing and supporting the covenanted principles of this church, but also opposed, contradicted and overthrown the glorious reformation once established in these nations. a government, under which, as they profess, the nations cannot be enriched by the blessings of the gospel; and that, because it does not, in all the appurtenances of its constitution and administration, run in agreeableness to the word of god. by all which it appears that although they refuse formally to swear any oaths of allegiance to the powers in being; yet they do materially, and with great solemnity, engage themselves to be true and faithful to a government, under which, and while it stands, they are certain, if their concessions hold true, that they shall never see the nations flourish, either in their temporal or spiritual interests. it is only needful further to observe, that _seceders_ in the terms of their communion, by debarring from the table of the lord, all who impugn the lawfulness of a prelatic, erastian government (as is notourly known they do), make subjection and loyalty to such an authority, a necessary, and, to them, commendatory qualification of worthy receivers of the lord's supper, although none of those qualifications--required by god in his word. while (as has been already observed) they, with the most violent passion, refuse to admit the professing and practicing the true religion, a necessary qualification of lawful civil rulers over a people possessed of and professing the true religion, which is in effect to deny the necessity of religion altogether as to civil rulers, than which nothing can be more absurd. _lastly_, not to multiply more particulars, the presbytery testify against the scandalous abuse, and sinful prostitution of church discipline, and tyranny in government, whereby the forementioned party have remarkably signalized themselves; and which, in a most precipitant and arbitrary manner, they have pretended to execute against such as have discovered the smallest degree of faithfulness, in endeavoring to maintain the principles of our reformation, in agreeableness to the true state of the covenanted testimony of the church of _scotland_; which has not only appeared in the case of _david leslie_, and some others, on account of a paper of grievances given in to said associates; against whom they proceeded to the sentence of excommunication, without using those formalities and means of conviction required and warranted by the church's head, even in the case of just offenses done by any of the professed members of his mystical body; or so much as allowing that common justice to the sentenced party, that might be expected from any judicatory, bearing the name of presbyterian. (though the presbytery are not hereby to be understood as approving every expression contained in foresaid paper.) but particularly, they have given notable proof of their fixed resolution, to bear down all just appearances in favor of _zion's_ king and cause, in the case of mr. _nairn_, once of their number, because of his espousing the principles of this presbytery, especially, respecting god's ordinance of magistracy, against whom they proceeded to the highest censures of the church, upon the footing of a pretended libel; in which libel, they did not so much as pretend any immorality in practice, or yet error in principle, as the ground of their arbitrary procedure, further than his espousing the received principles of this church in her best times, and what stood in necessary connection with such a profession: although, in adorable providence, he has since been left to fall into the practice of such immorality, as has justly rendered him the object of church censure by this presbytery. as also in the case of messrs. _alexander marshall_, and _john cuthbertson_, with some others, elders and private christians, against whom they proceeded in a most unaccountable, anti-scriptural, and unprecedented manner, and upon no better foundation, than that noticed in the case above, pretended to depose and cast such out of the communion of their church, as never had subjected to their authority, nor formerly stood in any established connection with them. and further, besides these instances condescended upon, they habitually aggravate their abuse of the ordinances of christ's house, in pretending to debar and excommunicate from the holy sacrament of the supper, many of the friends and followers of the lamb, only because they cannot conscientiously, and in a consistency with their fidelity to their head and savior, acknowledge the authority of the usurpers of his crown as lawful. from all which, and every other instance of their continued prostitution of the discipline instituted by christ in his church, and of that authority, which he, as a son over his own house, has given unto faithful gospel ministers, to the contempt and scorn of an ungodly generation; the presbytery cannot but testify against them, as guilty of exercising a tyrannical power over the heritage of the lord; and to whom may too justly be applied, the word of the lord, spoken by his prophet, _isa._ lxvi, : "your brethren that bated you, that cast you out for my name's sake, said, let the lord be glorified: but he shall appear to your joy, and they shall be ashamed." wherefore, and for all the foresaid grounds, the presbytery find and declare, that the pretended _associate presbytery_, now called _synod_, whether before or since, in their separate capacity, claiming a parity of power, neither were, nor are lawful and rightly constituted courts of the lord jesus christ, according to his word, and to the testimony of the true presbyterian covenanted church of christ in _scotland_: and therefore ought not, nay cannot, in a consistency with bearing a faithful testimony for the covenanted truths, and cause of our glorious redeemer, be countenanced or submitted to in their authority by his people. again, the presbytery find themselves in duty obliged to testify against these brethren who some time ago have broken off from their communion, for their unwarrantable separation, and continued opposition to the truth and testimony, in the hands of this presbytery, even to the extent of presuming, in a judicial capacity, to threaten church censure against the presbytery, without alleging so much as any other reason for this strange procedure, than their refusing to approve as truth, a point of doctrine, that stands condemned by the standards of the reformed church of _scotland_, founded on the authority of divine revelation. but, as the presbytery have formerly published a vindication of the truth maintained by them, and of their conduct, respecting the subject matter of difference with their _quondam_ brethren, they refer to said vindication, for a more particular discovery of the error of their principle, and extravagance of their conduct in this matter. and particularly, they testify against the more avowed apostasy of some of these brethren, who are not ashamed to declare their backslidings in the streets, and publish them upon the house tops; as especially appears from a sermon entitled, _bigotry disclaimed_--together with the vindication of said sermon; wherein is vented such a loose and latitudinarian scheme of principles, on the point of church communion, as had a native tendency to destroy the scriptural boundaries thereof, adopted by this church in her most advanced purity; and which is also inconsistent with the ordination vows, whereby the author was solemnly engaged. this, with other differences, best known to themselves, occasioned a rupture in that pretended presbytery, which for some years subsisted: but this breach being some considerable time ago again cemented, they constituted themselves in their former capacity, upon terms (as appears from a printed account of their agreement and constitution, which they have never yet disclaimed as unjust) not very honorable nor consistent with their former principles and professed zeal for maintaining the same. which agreement was made up, without any evidence of the above author's retracting his lax principles, contained in the foresaid sermon. whatever was the cause, whether from the influence of others (as was said by the publisher of their agreement), or from a consciousness of dropping part of formerly received principles, is not certain; but one of these brethren, for a time, gave up with further practical communion with the other, namely, mr. _hugh innes_, late of the _calton, glasgow_; while yet it was observed, that both used a freedom, not formerly common to them, anent the present authority, in their public immediate addresses to the object of worship; which, together with their apparent resiling from part of their former testimony occasioned stumbling to some of their people, and terminated in the separation of others. foresaid latitudinarianism and falling away, is also sadly verified, in the conduct of another principal member of their pretended presbytery, who has professedly deserted all testimony bearing for the reformation principles of the covenanted church of _scotland_.[ ] at last, after their declared interviews for that purpose, these brethren have patched up a mank agreement, which they have published, in a paper entitled _abstract of the covenanted principles of the church of scotland, &c._, with a prefixed advertisement in some copies, asserting the removal of their differences, which arose from a sermon on _psal._ cxxii, , published at _glasgow_,--by a disapprobation of what is implied in some expressions hereof, viz., "that all the members of christ's mystical body may, and ought to unite in visible church communion." here is, indeed, a smooth closing of the wound that should have been more thoroughly searched, that, by probing into the practical application of said sermon, the corrupt matter of communion with the revolution church, in the gospel and sealing ordinance thereof, might have been found out; but not one word of this in all that abstract, which contains their grounds of union, and terms of communion. nothing of the above author's recanting his former latitudinarian practices of hearing, and thereby practically encouraging, that vagrant episcopalian, _whitefield_; his communicating, which natively implies union, with the revolution church, in one of the seals of the covenant; nor his public praying for an erastian government, in a way, and for a reason, that must needs be understood as an homologation of their authority. on which accounts, the presbytery testify against said union, as being inconsistent with faithfulness in the cause of christ; and against said abstract, as, however containing a variety of particulars very just and good, yet bearing no positive adherence to, nor particular mention of, faithful wrestlings and testimonies of the martyrs and witnesses for _scotland's_ covenanted cause. as also, they testify against the notorious disingenuity of their probationer, who, after a professed dissatisfaction on sundry occasions, with the declining steps of said brethren, particularly with the declaimer against bigotry, has overlooked more weighty matters, and embraced a probability of enjoying the long grasped for privilege of ordination, though it should be observed at a greater expense than that of disappointing the expectation of a few dissatisfied persons, who depended upon his honesty, after they had broken up communion with those he continues still to profess his subjection unto. and further, the presbytery testify against the adherents of foresaid brethren, in strengthening their hands in their course of separation from the presbytery, rejecting both their judicial and ministerial authority, and the ordinances of the gospel dispensed by them. and more especially, the presbytery condemn the conduct of such of them as, professedly dissatisfied with the above said left-hand extremes, and other defections of foresaid brethren, have therefore broken off from their communion; yet, instead of returning to their duty in a way of subjecting themselves to the courts of christ, and ordinances instituted by him in his church, have turned back again to their own right-hand extremes of error, which once they professedly gave up, but now persist in, an obstinate impugning the validity of their ministerial authority and protestative mission, undervalue the pure ordinances of the gospel dispensed by them, and live as if there were no church of christ in the land, where they might receive the seals of the covenant, either to themselves or their children; and therefore, in the righteous judgment of god, have been left to adopt such a dangerous and erroneous system of principles, as is a disgrace to the profession of the covenanted cause.[ ] advertisement. the following supplement, having been a competent length of time before the church in _overture_, was adopted in logan county, ohio, may, . and, although without the formality of a judicial sanction, we trust it will not be found destitute of divine authority. the design of it is to show the application of the principles of our testimony to society, as organized in the united states. for although conventional regulations, civil and ecclesiastical, in this land, are very different from the condition of society in great britain, where our testimony was first emitted, yet the corruptions of human nature, embodied in the combinations of society, are not less visible in this than in other lands, nor less hostile to the supreme authority of the lord and his anointed. "the beast and the false prophet" continue to be the objects of popular devotion: rev. xix, . _cincinnati_, nov. th, . supplement to part iii, containing an application of the principles of our covenanted testimony to the existing condition of society in these united states. the controversy which arose between the associate and reformed churches, on the doctrine of civil magistracy, was the occasion of greater divergency between them, on collateral subjects. from false principles, consistent reasoning must produce erroneous conclusions. assuming that the son of god, as mediator, has nothing to do with the concerns of god's moral government beyond the precincts of the visible church, it would follow, that church members, as citizens of the "kingdoms of this world," neither owe him allegiance nor are bound to thank him for "common benefits." the assumption is, however, obviously erroneous, because, as mediator, he is "head over all things to the church," eph. i, , consequently, all people, nations and languages, are bound to obey and serve him, in this office capacity, and to thank him for his mercies. while this controversy was keenly managed by the respective parties in the british isles, the lord christ interposed between the disputants, as it were, to decide the chief point in debate. by the rise of the british colonies west of the atlantic, against the parent country, and their successful struggle to gain a national independence, a clear commentary was furnished on the long-contested principle, that, in some cases, it is lawful to resist existing civil powers. seceders, forgetting, for the time, their favorite theory, joined their fellow colonists in casting off the yoke of british rule. those who vehemently opposed reformed presbyterians, for disowning the british government, joined cheerfully in its overthrow. how fickle and inconsistent is man! during the revolutionary struggle might be witnessed the singular spectacle--humbling to the pride of human reason, revolting to the sensibilities of the exercised christian--brethren of the same communion, on opposite sides of the atlantic, pleading with the god of justice to give success to the respective armies! east of the ocean the petition would be, "lord, prosper the british arms;" on the west, "lord, favor the patriots of these oppressed colonies!" such are the consequences natively resulting from a theory alike unscriptural and absurd--a principle deep-laid in that system of opposition to the lord and his anointed, emphatically styled "the antichrist." great national revolutions are special trials of the faith and patience of the saints. no firmness of character will be proof against popular opinion and example at such a time, without special aid from on high. reformed presbyterians in the colonies rejoiced in the success of the revolution, issuing in the independence of the united states. their expectation of immediate advantage to the reformation cause was too sanguine. a new frame of civil polity was to be devised by the colonies, now that they were independent of the british crown. this state of things called forth the exercise of human intellect, in more than ordinary measure, to meet the emergency. frames of national policy are apt to warp the judgment of good men. even christian ministers are prone to substitute the maxims of human prudence for the precepts of inspiration. many divines conceived the idea of conforming the visible church to the model of the american republic. the plan was projected and advocated, of bringing all evangelical denominations into one confederated unity, while the integral parts should continue independent of each other. this plan would have defeated its own object, the unity of the visible church, and subverted that form of government established by zion's king. upon trial by some of the new england independents and presbyterians, the plan has proved utterly abortive. prior to the revolutionary war, a presbytery had been constituted in america, upon the footing of the covenanted reformation. the exciting scenes and active sympathies, attendant on the revolutionary war, added to a hereditary love of liberty, carried many covenanters away from their distinctive principles. the reformed presbytery was dissolved, and three ministers who belonged to it, joining some ministers of the associate church, formed that society, since known by the name of the associate reformed church. the union was completed in the year , after having been five years in agitation. these ministers professed, as the basis of union, the westminster standards; but the abstract of principles, which they adopted as the more immediate bond of coalescence, discovered, to discerning spectators, that the individuals forming the combination, were by no means unanimous in their views of the doctrines taught in those standards. indeed, there were certain sections of the confession _reserved_ for future discussion, which, in process of time, were wholly rejected. this attack upon a document, venerable not so much for its age as its scriptural character, gave rise to zealous opposition by some in the body, and ultimately resulted in a rupture. two ministers dissented from the majority, left their communion, and proceeded to erect a new organization, styled "the reformed dissenting presbytery." this was in the year . at this date, there were four denominations, in the united states, claiming to be the legitimate successors of the british reformers, viz., the associate, reformed, associate reformed, and reformed dissenting presbyterians. three of these professedly appear under the banner of a standing judicial testimony, which they severally emitted to the public. the associate reformed church, by judicial declaration and uniform practice, is opposed to this method of testimony-bearing. the reformed presbytery, which had been dissolved by the defection of the ministry, during the revolutionary war, was reorganized toward the close of the eighteenth century. the troubles in ireland, when the inhabitants united for the purpose of gaining independence of the british crown, were the occasion of bringing strength to the church in america. reformed presbyterians, feeling sensibly with others the arm of british tyranny, joined interests hastily with papists and others, in one sworn association, for the purpose of overturning the existing government by force of arms. the enterprise, as might have been expected, was unsuccessful; isa. viii, , ; obadiah ; cor. vi, . many fled to the asylum which god had provided, shortly before, in america. among the refugees were some of the covenanters, by which the church was strengthened in her ministry and membership. early in the nineteenth century, measures were taken by the reformed presbytery, in the united states, for re-exhibiting the principles of a covenanted reformation, in a judicial way. accordingly, in the year , the presbytery published, as adopted, a work entitled "reformation principles exhibited"--a book which has ever since been popularly called the american testimony. the familiar designation, _testimony_, the general complexion of the book, the orthodox aspect of terms, and even most of the leading sentiments of the work, gave it currency, and rendered it generally acceptable to pious and intelligent covenanters. and however it seemed to the unsuspecting to sustain, it eventually and effectually supplanted the scottish testimony. the men who had the principal hand in giving shape and direction to the principles and practice of covenanters in the united states, at that time, were located in some of the most populous and commercial cities on the atlantic coast, where temptations to conform to this world were many and pressing. a disposition to temporize was manifested in these localities, soon after their principles had been judicially exhibited. the last war between the united states and england, subjected covenanters to new trials in america. as aliens, they were deemed unsafe residents at the seaboard, and were ordered, by the government, to retire a certain distance to the interior (much like the course pursued by claudius caesar toward the jews, acts xviii, ). to meet the exigency, a deputation of the church was appointed to repair to washington, in , and offer a pledge that they would defend the integrity of the country against all enemies. this measure was, however, never carried out. the church increased in numbers and influence, and began to be noticed with respect and professions of esteem among surrounding denominations. some of her members had ventured to act in the capacity of citizens of the united states, by serving on juries. this was of course managed for a time clandestinely. at length, waxing confident by success, they began to act more openly. this gave rise to a petition addressed to the supreme judicatory of the church. the petitioners were answered by instructing them to apply for direction to the inferior judicatories--thus shunning the duty of applying their own acknowledged principles. this was in the year . this course did not satisfy the petitioners, and application was again made to synod in , to explain the import of their former act. the reply was--"this synod never understood any act of theirs, relative to their members sitting on juries, or contravening the old common law of the church on that subject;" a response obviously as equivocal as the preceding. as early as , a motion was made in the synod to open a correspondence with the judicatories of other denominations. this motion was resisted, and for the time proved abortive. at next meeting of synod, however, the measure was brought before that body, by a proposal from the general assembly to correspond by delegation. this proposal found many, and some of them able, advocates in the reformed. p. synod. the measure was, however, again defeated; but immediately after the failure, a number of ministers forsook the reformation ranks and consorted with the general assembly. in the year , the synod gave its sanction and lent its patronage to the colonization society, which was continued till the year , when its patronage was transferred to the cause of abolition. the spirit of declension became manifest at the session of synod in , when some of the most prominent and practical principles of the reformed church were openly thrown into debate, in the pages of a monthly periodical, under the head of "free discussion." through the pernicious influence of that perfidious journal, sustained by the patronage of ministers of eminent standing in the church, a large proportion--neatly one-half--of the ministry were prepared, by the next meeting of synod in , to renounce the peculiar principles and long known usages of the reformed covenanted church. organizing themselves as a separate body, yet claiming their former ecclesiastical name, they deliberately incorporated with the government of the united states, and some of the senior ministers, more fully to testify their loyalty, in their old age, took the oath of naturalization!--thus breaking down the carved work which they had for many years assiduously labored to erect. it was hoped that the severe trial to which the professing witnesses of christ were subjected at that time, would have taught them a lesson not soon to be forgotten. it was thought by many that the church was now purged from the leaven which had almost leavened the whole lump. the synod met in , when a perverse spirit was evident in the midst of its members. the colonization and abolition societies, with other associations--the exfoliations of antichrist--had evidently gained an ascendency in the affections of many of the members. the altercation and bitterness with which the claims of these societies were discussed, evidenced to such as were free from their infection, that some of those present viewed these popular movements as transcending in importance, the covenanted testimony of the church. as the practice of occasional hearing was on the increase in some sections of the church, synod was memorialized on that subject, but refused to declare the law of the church. the old spirit of conformity to the world was still more manifest in , when synod was importuned by her children, from the eastern and western extremes of the church, by petition, memorial, protest and appeal--growing out of the practice then generally prevalent of incorporating with the voluntary associations of the age. the response of the supreme judicatory was in this case as ambiguous as on any former occasion. the backsliding course of the factious majority was but feebly counteracted by dissent from only two members of synod; a respectable minority having been outwitted by the carnal wisdom of those who were prompt in applying the technicalities of law. hope was, however, cherished, that this check so publicly given, together with the practical workings of the system of moral amalgamation, would induce even reckless innovators to pause--to consider their ways and their doings. this hope, however rational and sanguine, was totally disappointed in , when the table of the supreme judicatory might be said to be crowded with petitions, letters, remonstrances, memorials, protests and appeals. the just grievances of the children of witnessing and martyred fathers, were treated with contempt--"laid on the table," "returned," with the cry "let them be kicked under the table," &c. and when some attempted to urge their right to be heard, they were called to order, treated with personal insult, or subjected to open violence. a few of these, having thus experienced the tyranny and abuse of the ruling faction, declined the authority and communion of synod, and established a separate fellowship. when the synod again met in , the same measures which had been carried by mob violence at the preceding meeting, were pressed as before; but with less tumult--leaders having learned caution from the consequences following their former outrageous conduct. matters had now come to a crisis, when a reclaiming minority were reduced to this dilemma--either to acquiesce in the almost total subversion of the covenanted constitution of the church; or, by separating from an irreclaimable majority, attempt, by an independent organization, to make up the breach. it is easy to see which alternative was duty, not only from the nature of the case, but from the well defined footsteps of the flock. reformation has been effected in the church of god in all ages, by the protestation and separation of a virtuous minority. at this juncture a paper was laid upon the table of synod, of which the following is a true copy: "preamble and resolutions. "whereas, it is the province and indispensable duty of this synod, when society is in a state of agitation as at present, to know the signs of the times and what israel ought to do: and whereas it is also the duty of this synod, to testify in behalf of truth, to condemn sin and testify against those who commit it; to acquaint our people with their danger, and search into the causes of god's controversy with them and with us: and whereas it is the duty of synod further, to point out to the people of god the course to be pursued, that divine judgments may be averted or removed--therefore, " . _resolved_, that uniting with, or inducing to fellowship, by the members of the reformed presbyterian church, in the voluntary and irresponsible associations of the day--composed of persons of all religious professions and of no profession--be condemned, as unwarranted by the word of god, the subordinate standards of the church, and the practice of our covenant fathers. " . that an inquiry be instituted, in order to ascertain the grounds of god's controversy with us, in the sins of omission and commission, wherewith we are chargeable in our ecclesiastical relations. " . that the sins thus ascertained, be confessed, mourned over and forsaken, and our engagement to the contrary duties renewed; that the lord may return, be entreated of his people and leave a blessing behind him." this paper was instantly "laid on the table;" and when, at a subsequent session of the court, it was regularly called up for action, it was again and finally "laid on the table!" ever since that transaction, this paper has been diligently misrepresented, as consisting only of _one_ resolution, and that the _first_, contrary to its own evidence. after the final adjournment of synod, those individuals who, as a minority, had opposed the innovations and backslidings of their brethren, embraced an opportunity for consultation. it appeared that without preconcert, they were unanimous that all legal means having failed to reclaim their backsliding brethren, who constituted a large majority of synod; both duty and necessity required them to assume a position independent _of_ former organizations, that they might, untrammeled, carry out practically their testimony. accordingly two ministers and three ruling elders proceeded to constitute a presbytery on constitutional ground, declaring in the deed of constitution, adherence to all reformation attainments. this transaction took place in the city of alleghany, june th, . the declining majority continued their course of backsliding, following those who had relinquished their fellowship with slanderous imputations and pretended censure, as is usual in such cases. since that time, there are no evidences given by them either of repentance or reformation. the synod of scotland has for many years been in a; course of declension, in many respects very similar to that of america. as early as the year , some ministers of that body began to betray a disposition to accommodate their profession to the taste of the world. the judicial testimony emitted by their fathers was represented as too elaborate and learned to be read and understood by the common reader, and too severe in its strictures upon the principles and practice of other christian denominations. the abstract of terms of communion was viewed as too strict and uncharitable, especially the auchensaugh covenant became particularly obnoxious. by a persevering importunity for a series of years this degenerating party prevailed so far in the synod as to have the auchensaugh deed expunged from the symbols of their profession. this was accomplished in ; and, taken in connection with other movements indicating a prevailing spirit of worldly conformity, this outrage upon the constitution of the reformed presbyterian church, gave rise to a secession from the body, by the oldest minister in the connection, and a considerable number of others, elders and members. at the above date, the rev. james reed declined the fellowship of the scottish synod; and he maintained the integrity of the covenanted standards in a separate communion till his death: declaring at his latter end, that "he could not have laid his head upon a dying pillow in peace, if he had not acted as he did in that matter." deaf to the remonstrances of this aged and faithful minister, his former brethren pursued their perverse and downward course, until their new position became apparent by the adoption of a testimony and terms of communion adapted to their taste. their testimony was adopted in . this document ostensibly consists of two parts, historical and doctrinal; but really only of the latter as _authoritative_. this will appear from the preface to the history, as also that it is without the _formal_ sanction of the synod, which appears prefixed to the doctrinal part of the book. a considerable time before they ventured to obtrude this new testimony on the church; they had prepared the way for its introduction, by supplanting the authoritative "rules of society," framed and adopted by their fathers. this was done by issuing what they called a "guide to social worship," which the scottish synod sent forth under an ambiguous _recommendation_, and the spurious production was republished by order of synod, in america, , with the like equivocal expression of approbation. what has been just related of the ref. pres. church in scotland, will apply substantially to that section of the same body in ireland. on the doctrine of the magistrate's power _circa sacra_, however, there was a controversy of several years' continuance and managed with much asperity, in which rev. messrs. john paul, d.d., and thomas houston were the most distinguished disputants. their contendings issued in breach of organic fellowship in . indeed the sister-hood which had subsisted for many years among the synods east and west of the atlantic ocean, was violated in ; when the rupture took place in the synod of america, by the elopement of the declining party, who are since known by alliance with the civil institutions of the united states. among these five synods, the principle called _elective affinity_ has been strikingly exemplified; while what the scripture denominates _schism_, has been as visibly rampant as perhaps at any period under the christian dispensation. this brief historical sketch may serve to show the outlines of the courses respectively pursued by the several parties in the british isles and america, who have made professions of attachment to that work in the kingdom of scotland especially, which has been called the second reformation. but the duty of fidelity to zion's king, and even the duty of charity to these backsliding brethren; together with the informing of the present and succeeding generations, require, that we notice more formally some of the more prominent measures of these ecclesiastical bodies and so manifest more fully our relation to them. it is not to be expected however, that we are about to condescend upon _all_ the erroneous sentiments or steps of defection, supplied by the history of these communities. to direct the honest inquiries of the lord's people, and assist them in that process of reasoning by which facts are compared with acknowledged standards, supreme and subordinate, that their moral character may be tested, is all that is proposed in the following sections. section i. the secession from the revolution church of scotland in that country assumed a position in relation to the civil institutions of great britain, which their posterity continue too occupy until the present time in the united states without material alteration. . they cooperate practically with all classes in the civil community, in maintaining national rebellion against the lord and his anointed. they give their suffrages toward the elevation of vile persons to the highest places of civil dignity in the american confederacy--knowing the candidates to be strangers or enemies to immanuel. and although they have recently lifted a testimony against that system of robbery called slavery, which is so far right; yet this fact only goes to render their professed loyalty to an unscriptural frame of civil government, as manifestly inconsistent as it is impious. . the have all along in the united states renounced the civil part of the british covenants, declaring that they "neither have nor ever had anything to do with them." truth is not local, nor does the obligation of the second table of the moral law, on which that part of our covenants is plainly founded, depend on the permanency of our residence in a particular portion of the world. "the earth is the lord's and the fullness thereof." it follows, that however solemnly or frequently they profess to renew their fathers' covenants; the whole transaction displays their unfaithfulness to the lord, who is a party in the covenants; and is calculated to mislead the unwary. . their unsteadfastness is further evidenced, by conforming to other ecclesiastical communities in the loose practice of occasional or indiscriminate hearing; and even in some instances of ministerial intercommunion--the law of their church on that matter having become obsolete. against these courses, in some of which that body has obstinately persevered for more than a hundred years, we deem it incumbent on us to continue an uncompromising testimony. many comments the moral governor of the nations has furnished in his providence within the last century, making still more intelligible the righteous claims of his word: but seceders seem to have their moral vision obscured by a vail of hereditary prejudice. we trust the lord is on his way to destroy the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations; is. xxv, . sec. ii. our testimony against the unfaithfulness of the associate reformed church, continues also without material change since the rise of that body. the following among others may here be noticed, as constituting just grounds of opposition in a way of testimony-bearing, by all who would be found faithful to the lord, and their covenant engagements. . their very origin was unwarranted by scripture. all the scriptural attainments to which they profess to adhere, were already incorporated in the standards of the organic bodies, from whose fellowship they seceded. they did therefore make a breach without a definite object, and multiply divisions in the visible body of christ without necessity. thus they did violence to the royal law of love; for while under a profession of charity they invited to their new fellowship their former brethren; the nature of the case evinces a disposition to unmitigated tyranny. this state of things we think has not been generally understood. we shall here endeavor to render it intelligible. the fact of organizing that church (the associate reformed) said to both covenanters and seceders "it is your duty to dissolve your respective organizations, and join us." this is undeniable. the covenanter or seceder replies by asking--"what iniquity have you or your fathers found in us, that you forsook our communion?" &c. "not any," replies the associate reformed church; "only some trifling opinions peculiar to you severally which we deem unworthy of contending about. only join our church, and we will never quarrel with you, relative to your singularities." "ah," replies the other party, "the matters about which we differ, are trifling in your account; how then could they be of such magnitude as to warrant your breaking fellowship with us? what you call _trifles, peculiarities_, &c, we cannot but still judge important principles, sealed by the precious blood of martyrs: must we deny these or bury them in silence, to gain membership in your new church? is this the nature and amount of your professed charity? this is not that heaven-born principle 'that rejoiceth not in iniquity, but rejoiceth in the truth.' you break fellowship for what you esteem mere trifles--you propose to us a new term of communion, with which it is morally impossible that we should comply, without doing violence to our consciences. is this charity or tyranny?" . although covenanting was declared by this body at their origin, to be an "important duty," they never recognized the solemn deeds of their fathers as binding on them; nor have they ever attempted the acknowledged duty in a way supposed to be competent to themselves. nay, the obligation of the british covenants has been denied both openly and frequently from the pulpit and the press; and even attempts have been made, not seldom, by profane ridicule, to bring them into contempt. the very duty of public, social covenanting, either in a national or ecclesiastical capacity, has been often opposed in the polemic writings of the ministers of this body, however often inculcated and exemplified in the word of god. the moral nature of the duty taken in connection with prophetic declarations, to be fulfilled only under the christian dispensation, demonstrates the permanency of this divine ordinance until the end of the world. . this church set out with unsound views of church fellowship, as has been already in part made appear. but when their position came to be more pointedly defined, they made the novel distinction between _fixed_ and _occasional_ communion. the practical tendency of this unscriptural experiment was necessarily to _catholic_ communion, which theory was soon advocated by some of the most prominent of the ministry; and accordingly eventuated in the merging of a large number of her ministry and membership, in the communion of the general assembly. . on the doctrine of the divine ordinance of civil government, this church has all along been unsound; as is fully evidenced in the practice of her members, which has been similar to that of seceders. our testimony against the latter is, in this particular, equally directed against the former. . this church has appeared as the advocate of a boundless toleration, conforming her views and policy in a most servile manner to the infidel model presented in the civil constitutions of republican america. it would seem, indeed, that this body aimed at conforming their ecclesiastical polity to that standard, from the fact that the very symbol of their profession as a corporate body, is designated the "constitution of the associate reformed church"--a designation which might be considered as militating against the supremacy of the holy scriptures. in this constitution a sphere is assigned to conscience, which is incompatible with due subjection to the supreme lawgiver. as well might the _will_, or any other faculty of the soul of man, be invested with this impious supremacy, and immunity from control, by any authority instituted on earth by the only lord of conscience. jehovah will rule the _consciences_ of his creatures, as well as their _judgments_ and _wills_, by his holy law, in the civil commonwealth, in the church and in the family. . the unfaithfulness of this body appears further, in shunning to declare the _divine right_ and unalterableness of presbyterial church government, she testifies not against prelacy or independency. if this church is presbyterial in practice, it is on no better footing than that of the revolution church of scotland. . the purity of divine worship is not guarded by the terms of fellowship in this church. it is true, "no hymns merely of human composure, are allowed in her churches." but what mean these guarded terms and phrases, "merely;" "churches?" the best interpretation of these cunningly contrived expressions is supplied by the practice of those ministers of the body, who scruple not to offer unto god "hymns merely of human composure" when occupying pulpits of other denominations, or sojourning for a night in families where these hymns are statedly used. it is known that this part of the order of public worship has been submitted in some instances, to the voice of the congregation by their pastor; thus manifesting in the same act, latitudinarianism in regard both to the government and worship of the house of god. lastly, to specify no further--laxity of discipline is observable in this church. she has always admitted to her fellowship, and to a participation in her special privileges (the seals of the covenants), persons who openly deny the divine warrant for a fast in connection with the celebration of the lord's supper; yea, who ridicule that part of the solemnity as _superstitious_! the same privileges are granted in this church to such as habitually neglect the worship of god in the family. nor does this church inculcate or enjoin, as a part of christian practice, fellowship meetings for prayer and conference. we must, as witnesses for the cause of christ, solemnly protest against these sentiments and correspondent practices, as inconsistent with the scripture and the reformation attainments of our covenant fathers. sec. iii. the reformed dissenting church embraced more of the peculiar principles of the covenanted reformation than either of the two preceding. on the doctrines of magistracy and toleration, abstractly considered, they have manifested commendable fidelity. nevertheless, in the practical application of these doctrines and in other respects, we are constrained to continue a testimony against them. . what has been remarked of the origin of the associate reformed body, is partly true also of the party which dissented from them: their organization was uncalled for, there being no scriptural attainment embraced by them, which was not already exhibited under a judicial banner. those who erected the reformed dissenting presbytery may have been harshly treated by ministers of the reformed presbytery, when attempting negotiations for union, as public fame has often rumored: yet supposing this to have been the case, multiplying separate fellowships was not a happy expedient for effecting union in the truth. . this body of christians have been all along unfaithful in applying their own avowed principles relative to magistracy. their innovation in this respect would seem to have been a carnal expedient to reach a two-fold object: the one, to retaliate on the reformed church for supposed indignities offered; the other, to render themselves more popular in the eyes of other communities. they admit that a constitution of civil government may be so immoral, that it cannot be considered as god's ordinance; that in such a case "no christian can, without sinning against god, accept any office supreme or subordinate, where an oath to support such a constitution is made essential to his office." these admissions are equally just and important; yet these concessions are wholly neutralized in practice by these people, for they claim it as their privilege to choose others to fill those offices, which they say, they themselves cannot fill "without sinning against god." we must continue our earnest testimony against this attempt to separate in law, between the representative and his constituents, involving as it does, if consistently carried out, the total overthrow of the covenants of works and grace, and ultimately of god's moral government by his annotated son! the effort made to sustain their practice in this matter, from the examples of the marquis of argyle and lord warriston, is very disingenuous; simply because the church of scotland had not at the date referred to, reached the measure of her attainments on that head. indeed, the whole drift of their argument goes to justify the position, that in some cases, it is expedient to do evil that good may come. . on the doctrine of faith this church has, we think, darkened counsel, by words without knowledge. their distinctions and caveats relative to _assurance_, are calculated rather to bewilder than enlighten the mind of the general reader. "receiving and resting on christ as offered in the gospel," amounts to "appropriation, certainty, assurance," &c. there is evidence of a tendency to "vain jangling" here, against which, even suppose there be no error couched in the terms, we ought to testify. . this church evinces a disposition to intercommunion, in the practice both of ministers and members, wholly inconsistent with steadfastness, and at war with her own declared views of toleration. occupying pulpits in common with more corrupt communities, doing this in connection with the celebration of the lord's supper, and attendance and co-operation with others in conventional proceedings among those who style themselves "reformed churches," are practices among these people, on which we feel constrained to animadvert with decided disapprobation. as also their violation of the form of presbyterian church government by one minister with ruling elders presuming to set apart candidates to the office of the holy ministry. sec. iv. to speak thus publicly against those who may be the precious sons of zion, is a painful duty. that charity, however, which rejoiceth in the truth, requires of christ's witnesses that they censure and rebuke, in a way competent to them, those of the household of faith whom they see and know to be in a course of error or of sin; _isa._ lviii, ; _tit._ i, . many of those with whom we were wont to take pleasure in displaying a banner jointly, and in a judicial capacity, are now, alas! arrayed against us. to the real friend of jesus, and the truth as it is in jesus, there cannot be a more lamentable spectacle than the _professed witnesses_ of the lamb disposed in rank under hostile colors as the company--not of two, but of many armies, ready to engage in mutual destruction! and indeed those who bite and devour one another, are in danger of being consumed one of another. the lord is righteous in all that is come upon us; for we have sinned against him--both we and our fathers. we know not how to avert more wrath from the lord, reclaim backsliders, confirm the wavering, direct sincere inquirers, apprise the unsuspecting of their danger, and exonerate our own consciences, otherwise than by giving open, candid and honest testimony for christ and truth, against those, even once brethren by covenant bonds, who have dishonored him, and caused the way of truth to be evil spoken of. against those who separated from us in philadelphia, , erecting a rival judicatory, and dishonestly claiming the name reformed presbyterian church, we bear our feeble testimony for the following among other reasons: . they did then openly enter on a course subversive of our whole covenanted system of doctrine and order, by withdrawing their dissent from the civil institutions of the united states, and incorporating with the national society--knowing the same to be, by the terms of the national compact, opposed in many respects, both to godliness and honesty. . this party had, in a clandestine way, exerted their influence to seduce and draw away disciples after them for a series of years. this is evident from the petitions addressed to synod on the jury law, issuing from those who are known to have been in correspondence with some of the leaders in that defection. . this party are chargeable with mutilating the judicial testimony emitted in scotland, ; and also with changing the terms of communion, and obtruding a mutilated formula upon an unsuspecting people, contrary to due order. _history_ and _argument_ are excluded from the terms of church fellowship, on the very face of "reformation principles exhibited;" and the auchensaugh covenant expunged from the formula of terms of communion, without submitting them in overture to the people for inspection. we say these steps of defection and apostasy are chargeable to the account of those who made the breach in : _first_, because the senior and leading ministers in that separation were the men who framed the american testimony and terms of communion; and so had many years before laid the platform and projected the course on which they violently entered at that date. _second_, these separatists, in the edition of these symbols of their profession lately published, have consistently left out of the volume, the historical part, and also remodeled the formula of terms of communion. . this body continues to wax worse and worse, against all remonstrance from their former connections and others, as also in the face of providential rebukes;--losing, because forfeiting, the confidence of conscientious and honorable men, exemplified in the frequent meetings, and to them, disastrous results, of the convention of, so called, reformed churches. sec. v. with the foregoing party may be classed those different and conflicting fellowships in scotland and ireland, whose recent terms of communion and judicial testimony, substantially identify with those mentioned in the preceding section. . public fame charges the eastern synod of ireland, and the synod of scotland, with connivance at the members and officers under their inspection, in co-operating with the immoral and anti-christian government of great britain. they are therefore guilty of giving their power and strength to that powerful and blood-thirsty horn of the beast. we are inclined to give more credit to public fame in this than we would in many other cases, because: . these synods have opened a door in their new testimony for such sinful confederacies. "what!" will the simple and uninitiated reader of the testimony ask, "does not that testimony declare, often and often, that the british constitution is anti-christian?" we answer, the _book_ declares so; but we caution the reader to be on his guard, lest he judge and take for granted, without a careful examination, that the book and the testimony are the same thing. let the honest inquirer consult the _preface_ to the _historical_ part of the book, and then the preface to the doctrinal part: the latter, he will find, on due examination, to constitute the testimony. true, in page of the preface to the volume, it is said, "the testimony, as now published, consists of two parts, the one _historical_ and the other _doctrinal_." this sounds orthodox; but, in the same page, when these two parts come to be defined, it is said, "when the church requires of those admitted into her fellowship, an acknowledgement of a work like the present, the approbation expressed has a reference to the _principles_ embodied in it, and _the proper application_ of them," &c. "so they wrap it up"--better than our fathers succeeded in a similar enterprise in america. the truth is what they call the _historical_ part is largely _argumentative_; and both these parts are carefully and covertly excluded from the _terms of fellowship_! we shall have occasion to recur to this subject, as there are many others likeminded with these innovators. . these people are also deeply involved in the popular, so called, benevolent associations of the world, sunday schools, bible societies, temperance reforms, missionary enterprise, &c, evidencing a wide departure from our covenanted uniformity, based upon our covenanted testimony. sec. vi. those who in , on account of sensible tyranny, growing out of defection on the part of the majority, declined the authority of synod, have shared all along in our sympathies; and it has been our desire that they and we could see eye to eye in the doctrines and order of the house of god. although this party promised fair for a time, and apparently contended for "all the attainments of a covenanted reformation," in process of time it became apparent that they possessed not intelligence sufficient to manage a consistent testimony for that cause. they seem to have been under the influence of temporary impulse, arising from the experience of _mal-administration_; rather than to have discovered any _constitutional_ defection in the body from which they separated. this is apparent indeed if we have access to any credible source of information relative to the principles they profess, and their christian practice. more particularly, . although that paper which they designate "safety league," has the sound of orthodoxy; yet, as originated, and since interpreted by them, there is a lamentable falling off from the attainments and footsteps of the flock. _first_, so far as we can ascertain, that instrument had clandestine origin being framed and subscribed by those _who were yet in fellowship with the synod_! this might be earnest, but, we think, not honorable contending for the truth. _second_, when this paper comes to be interpreted by its framers and signers, it seems to cover only the american testimony and terms, as remodeled by breach of presbyterial order. at other times, it will conveniently extend to the scottish testimony, , and the auchensaugh deed, ! from which we infer that these people have no settled standards. . we testify against these people for unwarrantable separation from us. one of their elders co-operated in organizing the reformed presbytery in ; this in official, and, as then distinctly understood, representative capacity. yet, some time afterward, he and his brethren withdrew from said presbytery, without assigning justifiable reasons. . efforts are known to have been made, by some then in their fellowship, to have social corresponding meetings established among them, but without success; in opposition to the well-defined example of our witnessing fathers, whose example they affect to imitate. lastly, these quondam brethren are not, to this day, distinguishable, in the symbols of their profession, from any party who have more evidently and practically abandoned the distinctive principles and order of a covenanted ancestry. there is no constitutional barrier in the way of their coalescence with any party, whom interest or caprice may select. sec. vii. against that party usually, but improperly, styled the old lights, are we obliged to testify more pointedly than against any other party now claiming to be reformed presbyterians. _first_, because we believe there are among them still, real covenanters; and, in proportion to the whole body, a greater number of such than in any other fellowship. these we would undeceive, if the lord will; for we earnestly desire renewed fellowship with all such on original ground. _second_, because the leaders among these make the fairest show in the flesh, and, calculating on spiritual sloth and the force of confirmed habit, hope to lead honest people insensibly after them back into egypt. _third_, because they are more numerous, and, from habit, more exemplary than other parties; and therefore more likely to influence honest christians unwittingly to dishonor christ, and gainsay his precious truth. . these former brethren acted, in , very similar to the policy of the revolution church of scotland in . instead of repairing the breaches made, and going on to fortify our new testament jerusalem, against the assaults of enemies in future, they rested in their present position, providing only for a new edition of reformation principles exhibited, with a continuance of the history to that date. it was urged, at the time, that the argumentative part of our testimony should be hastened to completion, but without effect. as the apostate assembly of scotland, , admitted unsound ministers, curates, &c., to seats in court; so, with the like politic design, members were admitted to seats in synod, , who claimed "a right to withdraw to another party, if they should see cause"--yea, one of these was called to the moderator's chair! . at next meeting, , when the continuation of the historical part of the testimony was read, and referred to a committee for publication in the forthcoming edition of reformation principles exhibited, it was directed that the terms of communion should be inserted, supplying the deficiency in the first term, in these words: "and the alone infallible rule of faith and manners." in the new edition these important words were omitted, as before! several ministers seemed to be influenced in social relations, at that time, more by public opinion, than by the infallible rule. no further progress was made with the argumentative part of the testimony, and a petition from greenfield, to have synod's mind relative to occasional hearing, was returned. against these steps of unfaithfulness we lift our protest. . against the tyranny manifested at the next meeting, there were some to stand up at the time; but the spirit of the world prevailed in all the important transactions. we testify against those who refused to permit petitions, memorials, and other papers addressed to that court, to be read. especially do we protest against that satanical spirit evidenced in misrepresenting certain respectful and argumentative papers, as being "abusive," "insulting," &c.: also the unrighteous attempt, by some guilty members of that court, to stop the mouth of petitioners; and we condemn the reason assigned for so doing, viz., "they had no right to petition, because they were under suspension"! this reason is worthy of double condemnation, as coming from the mouth of him who, in this instance, acted the ecclesiastical tyrant, and who would come down from zion's walls to the plains of ono, mingle in political strife, that he might open his mouth for the dumb; and because a brother in covenant bonds would demur, censure him, and then make the fact of censure a reason why he should not be heard when petitioning for relief from such tyranny! "revolters are profound to make slaughter." . as papers were numerous on the table of synod in , so they furnished occasion for displays of character and conduct, humiliating to all lovers of zion, who witnessed the transactions of that meeting of the supreme judicatory. this was the first time, so far as we know, when that body was called upon formally to review and rectify, in a way competent to them, some parts, both of the constitutional law and administration of the reformed presbyterian synod and church in america. for a series of years, and chiefly through the influence of leaders in that faction which separated from the body in , high-handed measures of tyranny had transpired: and some of the subjects of that tyranny were yet writhing under a sense of accumulated wrongs; others had, by death, been released from this species of persecution. some thought it dutiful to call synod's attention to these matters, and a _petition_ was laid before them, from rev. robert lusk, requesting that certain cases of discipline, which the petitioner specified, be reviewed; and especially asking, that "the term _testimony_ be restored to its former ecclesiastical use." as this was, in our deliberate opinion, the most important measure brought under the cognizance of the church representative in america, during the current of the nineteenth century, it was thought the court would take the matter under deliberate consideration. whether through ignorance of the matter proposed, or that sectional interests engrossed the attention of parties, or that the prevailing majority desired to be untrammeled in their future course, the petition was smuggled through and shuffled by, under the cognomen of a "letter," which a member of synod answered on behalf of the court, as though it were a matter of the smallest importance imaginable! we solemnly testify against this manner of disposing of a weighty matter at that time, whether through inattention or design. we protest also against the violent conduct of those ministers, and others on the same occasion, who made the place of solemn worship and judicial deliberation, a scene of confusion, by vociferations, gesticulations and physical force, in violation of god's law, ordination vows, and the first principle of presbyterian church government. . here we can advert only to a tithe of the fruits of darkness, which had been increasing in quantity and bitterness, since the meeting of synod in new york, . to carry out measures of worldly policy, in , diligent electioneering was carried on during the intermediate time, that the court might be what is technically called a _packed synod_. that court was chiefly composed of such ministers and elders as were known to favor innovations; and some who were known to be disposed to resist defection, were excluded from seats in court. against this dishonest, partial and unjust measure, we protest. and here we lift our testimony against this course, as having greatly retarded the lord's work for many years before, and as having facilitated the introduction of error, disorder and open tyranny, in manifold instances, during the same period. . we testify against the tyranny exercised upon james mckinney, of coldenham, who was not allowed to read his vindication and justification, when he asked permission to do so, from the published sentiments of some of those who condemned him!!! also the cruelty practiced toward miss king, an absent member, whose representation of her case to the synod, could not so much as be heard. we bear testimony against those who in that synod would interrupt, call to order--in violation of order--those members who were appearing in defense of injured truth, and who were often silenced by tumult, or the call of order by an obsequious moderator. especially do we testify against the dishonesty and unfaithfulness of that body, displayed by them in disposing of the paper inserted (see p. ), calling synod's attention to what we firmly believe to be the source of all the error, guilt and distractions incident or attending to that body for many years. on the practice of confederating with the enemies of god, we testify against this party, not only for the _fact_ of so confederating, but also, and chiefly, for resisting the evidence of god's word, often adduced in condemnation of the practice--refusing to hear the testimonies, experience, and reasoning of christ's witnesses and martyr's when cited from the cloud of witnesses, informatory vindication, gillespie on confederacies, &c; and for obstinately going on in this trespass, in the face of manifold convictions from living witnesses and providential rebukes. as it respects ecclesiastical relations, we testify against these former brethren for having wittingly, perseveringly, and presumptuously fostered _schism_ in the visible church, manifestly for carnal ends, during many years. it is notorious that five synods are in organic fellowship, while hardly two of them will hold ministerial or sacramental communion! what a picture does this state of things in the professing church of christ present to the infidel; how hardening to the self-righteous and the openly profane! and although conventional regulations be lightly looked upon by many, not being based upon express words of scripture; yet when framed and engaged to, according to the general rules of scripture, much sin is the result of violating them, and trampling them under foot, as has often been done by this body of people. this has been the case in presbyteries, subordinate synods, and especially in the general synod. subordinate synods have been dissolved by the action of the general synod after they had ceased to be; and without consulting the presbyteries, who alone were competent to decree or dissolve the delegation form of the general synod, that court dissolved itself, after having many years trampled upon the law of presbyteries fixing the ratio of delegation. against such reckless, disorderly procedure we testify as being the cause or occasion of much sin against zion's king, and much suffering to his precious people. finally--we solemnly enter our protestation against this church, as having taken the lead of most others in razing the very foundation stone of the covenanted structure. all the evils that have befallen the professed friends of a work of reformation on both sides of the atlantic are traceable to a _setting aside_ the _footsteps_ of the flock from being terms of ecclesiastical communion. it is now more than ten years since this important matter was expressly submitted to the old light synod's consideration, and during the subsequent period, in various forms, the same has been pressed, but without effect; except as manifesting more fully their obduracy. they refuse still to return, ephraim-like, going on frowardly in the way of their own heart. that uninspired history ought to be incorporated among the terms of communion in the church of christ, is a proposition which we firmly believe, on the evidence both of reason and scripture, although denied, condemned, and rejected by all pretenders to reformation attainments. that _history_ and _argument_ are so rejected by all parties affecting to be _reformed_ churches, will appear from the following citations from their own authoritative judicial declarations: "authentic history and sound argument are always to be highly valued; but they should not be incorporated with the confession of the church's faith." "the declaratory part is, the church's _standing testimony_."--ref. prin. exhibited, preface--edition, . here history and argument are both excluded, not only from the church's _testimony_ but also from her confession! this is the declared sentiment of old and new light covenants, together with the safety league people--evidencing to all who are free from party influence, that however they differ in practice, on this all important point they perfectly harmonize in principle. east of the atlantic, among the three synods professing to follow the footsteps of the flock, the declared sentiment is the same, but then they differ from their brethren in practice--mingling with the heathen and learning their works without scruple. in this respect they are more consistent than the other parties, though more visibly corrupt. the reformed dissenters "prefix a _narrative_ to their testimony," thus rejecting _history_ from _testimony_. some advocates for union in conventions of reformed churches, have plead for a historical introduction to their proposed _testimony_; but they have carefully assured the public that this introduction shall constitute no _term_ of union or communion. thus, it is evident, that all the professed followers of the british reformers around us, have cast off this reformation attainment from the standards of their professions severally. we condemn this church-rending and soul-ruining sentiment, and testify against all who maintain it, for the following reasons: _first_, on their part it is inconsistent and self-contradictory. they all say they are following the footsteps and holding the attainments of the scottish reformers. but how do they discover these footsteps, or how ascertain these attainments? are they recorded in the bible? no. are they to be found elsewhere but in _uninspired history_? certainly no where else. yet all these parties absurdly reject uninspired history from their bonds of fellowship! and still venture to tell the world, they are holding fast these attainments!! this is solemn trifling, profane mockery. _second_. this position is unsound and false in the light of reason. all civilized nations, as well as the jews, have it written in their laws, "that the testimony of two men is true." the witnesses do not need to be inspired to be credible. "we receive the witness of men," although a "false witness will utter lies." no society can exist without practical recognition of the credibility of human testimony; and this is especially true of the "church of the living god, which is the pillar and ground of the truth;" for, _third_. in the light of scripture, her members cannot perform some of their most important duties, either to god or to one another if they irrationally and wickedly relinquish this principle. god's people are charged "not to forget his mighty works;" psa. lxxviii. . are these works all written in the bible? they are required to confess their fathers' sins, as well as their own. since the divine canon was closed, many sins have been, and now are chargeable against professing christians. are these recorded in the scriptures? and thus the reader may ask himself of sin and duty to any extent, in relation to god as a party. and the same is true of the second table of the moral law. for example: in reference to "the first commandment with promise," should the christian minor be asked as the jew did his lord, "who is your father?" how shall he answer? is he warranted to appeal to god to manifest his earthly sonship? no; but he is required by god's law to "honor his father;" and his obedience to this command is grounded on human testimony as to the object to whom this honor is due. thus consistency, reason and scripture combine, to accuse and fasten guilt--the guilt of apostasy upon all who have renounced that fundamental principle of our glorious covenanted reformation--_that history and argument belong to the bond of ecclesiastical fellowship_. with any who hold the theory here condemned, however exemplary or even conscientious in morals and religion they may appear, we can have no ecclesiastical fellowship; for, however ardent their attachment or strong their expressions of affection to confession, catechisms, covenants, &c.; they give no guarantee of competent intelligence or probable stability; as alas! we see in the present declining course of many in our day. we would earnestly and affectionably beseech all well wishers to a covenanted work of reformation: that they would take into their serious consideration whether these things are, or are not connected inseparably with the wellfare of zion. especially would we expostulate with such as have any regard for the judicial testimony adopted at ploughlandhead, scotland, in : that they conscientiously compare it with the book called reformation principles exhibited, and also with the new scottish testimony, where it is practicable, and all these with the supreme standard, the holy scriptures. they will find on examination, that these are wholly irreconcilable in the very form of testimony-bearing. particularly, let the reader notice that our fathers in , considered _history_ and _argument_ as constituting their testimony: and did not look upon _doctrinal declaration_ as formal testimony at all. look at the very title page of their testimony; where you read, "act, declaration and testimony," plainly distinguishing between _declaration_ and _testimony_. now, all innovators make doctrinal declaration their testimony, reversing our fathers' order; yea, we would add god's order, for he distinguishes between his law and testimony; ps. lxxviii, - ; cv, - . god's special providences toward his covenanted people constitute his testimony by way of eminence; exod. xx, , &c., and their conduct under his providences constitute their testimony, which must consist of history; and by this and the blood of the lamb, christ's witnesses are destined to overcome all anti-christian combinations. in attempting thus to follow the approved example of our covenant fathers, whose practice it was to testify not only against the corruptions of ecclesiastical, but also of civil constitutions, where their lot was cast, we deem it incumbent on us to continue our testimony first published in , against the immoralities incorporated with the government of these united states. believing that a nation as such, is a proper subject of god's government, and that those nations favored with his law as revealed in the holy scriptures, are peculiarly required to regard the authority of the lord and his anointed, therein made fully known: it is with deep regret that we feel constrained to designate and testify against evils in the constitution of this nation. notwithstanding numerous excellencies embodied in this instrument, there are moral evils contained in it also, of such magnitude, that no christian can consistently give allegiance to the system. there is not contained in it any acknowledgment of the christian religion, or professed submission to the kingdom of messiah. it gives support to the enemies of the redeemer, and admits to its honors and emoluments jews, mohammedans, deists and atheists--it establishes that system of robbery by which men are held in slavery, despoiled of liberty, and property, and protection. it violates the principles of representation, by bestowing upon the domestic tyrant who holds hundreds of his fellow creatures in bondage, an influence in making laws for freemen proportioned to the number of his own slaves. this constitution is, in many instances, inconsistent, oppressive and impious. much guilt, and of long standing, is chargeable against this nation, for its cruel treatment of the colored race, in subjecting them ever since to hopeless bondage; its unjust transactions with the indian race, and more recently waging an unjust war with a neighboring republic, as would appear, for the wicked purpose of extending the iniquitous system of slavery. "arise o god, judge the earth: for thou shalt inherit all nations." part iv. a brief declaration or summary of the principles maintained by the presbytery, as to doctrine, worship, discipline, and government, in agreeableness to the word of god, our confession of faith and catechisms, and whole covenanted testimony of the church of scotland.--the contrary doctrines condemned. unto what has been more generally laid down in the preceding pages, with respect to the principles and practice of this church and nation, both in former and present times; the presbytery proceed to subjoin a positive and explicit declaration of their principles anent the truths of our holy religion, whether by the generality agreed unto, or by some controverted. i. of god.--the presbytery did, and hereby do acknowledge and declare, that there is one infinite, eternal, self-existent, and independent being; and that this only true and living god, absolutely all-sufficient, having all being, perfection, glory, and blessedness, in and of himself, subsists in three distinct, divine persons, the father, son, and holy spirit (in one and the same undivided essence and godhead), all equally the same in substance, power, and glory, although distinguished by their personal properties; according to deut. vi, ; cor. viii, ; tim. i, ; acts xvii, , ; john v, ; matth. xxviii, ; confession of faith, chap. ; larger catechism, quest. -- ; shorter catechism, quest. -- . ii. of the holy scriptures.--again, they confess and declare, that although the light of nature discovers unto us that there is a god, yet of itself it is absolutely insufficient to teach us the saving knowledge of the invisible being and his will; and therefore god of his infinite condescension has given us a most perfect revelation of himself and of his will in the scriptures of truth, contained in the sacred books of the old and new testament; which scriptures the presbytery assert to be of divine authority, and not to be believed and received because of any other testimony, than that of god their author, who is truth itself. which word of god is the alone perfect and complete rule, both of faith and practice, containing a full and ample revelation of the whole counsel of god, both respecting his own glory and the salvation of men; by which all spirits are to be tried, and to which all doctrines and controversies in religion are to be brought, as to the supreme judge, in whose sentence alone we are to acquiesce; according to rom. i, , ; cor. ii, , ; heb. i, ; tim. iii, ; pet. i, , ; tim. iii, ; gal. i. , ; eph. ii, , and our standards, confess. chap. ; larger cat. quest. - ; shorter cat. quest. , . iii. of the decrees of god.--again, they assert and maintain, that jehovah, according to his own most wise counsel, and for his own glory, has, by one immanent act of his will from eternity, purposed and decreed all events in time; and particularly, that by his absolute sovereignty, he has unchangeably determined the final state of all intelligent beings, visible and invisible. that god of his mere good pleasure, abstracting from all other causes whatever, for the praise of his glorious grace to be manifested in time, has from all eternity predestinated a certain definite number of mankind sinners, in and through jesus christ, to eternal life, together with all the means leading thereunto. and also, by the same sovereign will, has passed by, and left others in their sins, foreordaining them to bear the just punishment of their own iniquities; as is evident from rom. ix, , , , , ; eph. i, , , , ; jude verse ; and according to confess, chap. ; larger cat. quest. , ; shorter catechism quest. . iv. of creation.--in like manner they acknowledge and declare, that as god, from the infinity of his being and goodness, has communicated a finite created existence to all other beings, framing them with natures wisely suited and adapted to the different ends of their creation; so by the same all-powerful word whereby they were at first created, he preserves and upholds all his creatures in their beings, and by the incessant care and invariable conduct of his divine providence, does constantly direct and overrule them and all their actions unto his own glory; according to divine revelation, gen. i, throughout; col i, ; rom. xi, ; psal, cxlv, , and xxxiii, ; and cxix, ; heb. i, , ; confess, chap. , ; larger cat. quest. ; short. cat. quest. . likewise they profess and declare, that god, as the last and finishing part of his workmanship in this lower world, created man an intelligent being, endued with a living, reasonable and immortal soul, whose greatest glory consisted in his having the gracious image of his god and creator drawn upon his soul, chiefly consisting in that knowledge, righteousness and inherent holiness wherewith he was created. and further, that god, in his favor and condescension to man, was pleased to enter into a covenant with him, as the public head and representative of all his posterity, wherein god promised unto him eternal life and blessedness with himself in glory, upon condition of personal, perfect and perpetual obedience; to the performance whereof, he furnished him with full power and ability, and threatened death upon the violation of his law and covenant, as is evident from the sacred text; gen. i, , ; eccl. vii, ; gen. ii, ; rom. x, , and according to our confess, chap. , § ; chap, , § , ; chap. , § ; larger cat. quest. ; short. cat. quest. , . v. of the fall of man.--they again assert and maintain, that the first and common parents of mankind, being seduced by the subtilty of satan, transgressed the covenant of innocency, in eating the forbidden fruit; whereby they lost the original rectitude of their nature, were cut off from all gracious intercourse with god, and became both legally and spiritually dead; and therefore they being the natural root of all mankind, and the covenant being made with _adam_, not as a private, but a public person, all his descendants by ordinary generation, are born under the guilt of that first sin, destitute of original righteousness, and having their nature wholly depraved and corrupted; so that they are by nature children of wrath, subjected unto all the penal evils contained in the curse of a broken law, both in this life, and in that which is to come; gen. iii, , ; eccl. vii. ; rom. v, from to ; rom. iii, - ; eph. ii, ; confess, chap. : larger cat. quest. , , short. cat. question to . in like manner they assert and declare, that all mankind, by their original apostasy from god, are not only become altogether filthy and abominable in the eyes of god's holiness; but also, are hereby utterly indisposed, disabled, and entirely opposite to all good, the understanding become darkness, and the will enmity and rebellion itself against god; so that man, by his fall, having lost all ability of will to what is spiritually good, cannot in his natural state, and by his own strength, convert himself (being dead in trespasses and sins), nor can he in less or more contribute to his own salvation, or in the least prepare himself thereunto; neither is there any natural, necessary or moral connection between the most diligent and serious use of the means, and obtaining salvation thereby. although the presbytery maintain, that as a god of grace has promised the converting influences of his spirit to be showered down upon dead souls, in the use of means of his own appointment; they are therefore to be attended to with the utmost care and diligence; as appears from rom. v, ; john vi, , ; tit. iii, - ; job xiv, ; confess. chap. , § ; larger cat. quest. . vi. of the covenant of grace.--likewise they assert and declare, that jehovah, in the person of the father, having purposed to save a certain number of the ruined family of _adam_, did from all eternity enter into a covenant transaction with jesus christ, his eternal and only begotten son, who contracted as the second _adam_, in the name of all his spiritual seed. in which covenant, the father promising to confer eternal life upon a select number given unto christ, upon condition of his fulfilling all righteousness for them; the lord jesus christ did again stipulate and engage, as the condition of the covenant by him to be fulfilled, that in the fullness of time, assuming the human nature into a personal union with the divine, he would therein, and in the elect's name fulfill, not only the preceptive part of the law, but also bear the whole punishment contained in the threatening thereof: which covenant, that it might be absolutely free to sinners, and that the salvation therein provided for them, might not be of debt, but of grace, was unto jesus christ a covenant of redemption, nothing being therein promised to him, but upon his paying a full price, adequate to the most extensive demands of law and justice; according to psal. lxxxix, , , , , ; tit. i, ; isa. liii, , ; matth. v, ; confess. chap. , § ; larg. cat. quest. , ; short. cat. quest. . vii. of the mediator.--in like manner they profess, assert, and declare, that the lord jesus christ, the second person in the glorious and adorable trinity, being by the father's appointment constituted mediator and surety of the new covenant, did, in the fullness of time, assume the human nature, consisting of a true body and reasonable soul, into a personal union with his divine; which two natures, in the one person of our immanuel, god-man, remain distinct, without conversion, composition, or confusion. and being every way completely qualified and furnished for executing his mediatory offices of prophet, priest, and king, was called to the exercise thereof, by god the father, who put all power and judgment into his hand, and gave him commandment to execute the same; prov. viii, ; heb. ii, ; tim. ii, ; john vi, , and v, ; confess. chap. throughout; larg. cat. quest. - ; short. cat. quest, , . again, they acknowledge and declare, that the lord jesus christ our redeemer, the only begotten son of god, by eternal and ineffable generation, is most properly a divine person, true and very god, one in essence, equal and the same in power, eternity, glory, and all divine perfections with the father and holy ghost: and that therefore it is most blasphemous to assert, that the terms, _necessary existence_, and _supreme deity_, and the title of _the only true god_, do not belong to the son equally with the father, as the same in substance, being expressly contrary to these texts of sacred writ which assert the opposite truth; john i, - ; phil, ii, ; john x, ; john v, , and to our standards, confess. chap. , § ; larg. cat. quest. ; short. cat. . they likewise further acknowledge, assert, and declare, that the lord jesus christ, the eternal son of god, and only mediator between god and man, being designed from everlasting the redeemer of his people, and having all fullness, power, and authority lodged in him for the execution of his mediatory trust, has, ever since the fall of mankind, as the great and good shepherd of _israel_, undertaken the care, government, protection, and instruction of the church of god, in agreeableness to the above said trust: which he did all along under the old testament, and still continues faithfully to discharge in all the parts thereof; so that whatever revelation god made unto his church since the fall, was by jesus christ as the great prophet and preacher of righteousness. particularly, it was he that first appeared unto lapsed man, and as the great revealer of the council of peace, called upon him in the voice of mercy, saying, "_adam_, where art thou?" it was he that, pleasing himself in the forethoughts of his future incarnation, and as a prelude thereto, condescended at different times to appear in a human form, and speak unto the fathers. by him, as the messenger of the covenant, were the lively oracles delivered to the israelitish church; and by his spirit in the prophets, successively raised up to instruct his church in the knowledge of the divine will, was signified and foretold the grace that should come, until the fullness of the time appointed in the council of heaven, when it was promised he should come, and by his personal presence fill his house with glory. then did god in these last days speak unto men by his son, whom he has appointed heir of all things; who, not only by himself, but also, after his ascension, by his evangelists and apostles filled with the spirit, has made known all things that he heard of his father. and now, after the canon of scripture is completed, and no new revelation to be expected to the end of time, continues by his word and spirit to instruct sinners in the knowledge of all things necessary for their sanctification and salvation; according to acts x, , and iii, ; luke iv, , ; john i, ; pet. i, - ; heb. i, , ; eph. iv, - ; confess. chap. , § ; larg. cat. quest. ; short. cat. quest. . in like manner, they profess and declare, that the lord jesus christ, being called of him that said unto him, "thou art my son, this day have i begotten thee," unto the honorable office of high priest over the house of god, and confirmed therein by all the solemnities of the oath of god, he did most willingly undertake this work, saying, _lo, i come to do thy will, o god!_ and that he might finish and fulfill the same, in agreeableness to his eternal engagements to the father, to the old testament types and sacrifices, promises and prophecies, wherein he was foresigned and revealed to be the seed of the woman, that should bruise the serpent's head, did, in the fullness of time, humble himself to be made of a woman, made under the law, in the form of a bond servant to jehovah. in which character, he not only fulfilled the preceptive part of the law, but also, with the most unparalleled meekness, patience and resignation, submitted to the most grievous and dreadful sufferings, both in body and soul, even all that divine wrath, indignation and punishment, wrapped up in the terrible curse of a broken covenant of works. by which obedience of his unto the death, through the eternal spirit offering himself without spot unto god, a proper, real and expiatory sacrifice for sin, he has fully satisfied divine justice, made reconciliation for the iniquities of his people, and purchased an eternal inheritance for them in the kingdom of glory. the saving benefits of which redemption, by the spirit's effectual application thereof, he does, by his intercession at the father's right hand, as an arisen, living, and now glorified savior, constantly and certainly communicate unto all those whom the father has given him. further, the presbytery declare, that however they acknowledge the standing of the world, as a theater to display the riches of divine grace, the preaching of the gospel indefinitely to mankind sinners, and all the common favors of life indifferently enjoyed by them, do all result, as native, necessary and determined consequences, from the interposition of christ in behalf of his spiritual seed, and have their ultimate foundation in the infinite sufficiency, fullness and perfection, of the blood and sacrifice of christ, god-man: yet they affirm, that, as a certain elect and select number were given unto christ, to be redeemed from among men, so, for their sakes alone, he engaged his heart to approach unto god. for their sakes, he sanctified himself; in their name, i.e., in their law-room and stead, and for their good, as the surety of the better covenant, he became obedient unto death, and endured the whole of that punishment threatened by the law, and incurred by the transgression of it. he subjected himself to that very curse, bore that wrath and died that death, which they themselves should have undergone. and hereby, by his doing and dying, he made a proper, real, full and expiatory satisfaction to the justice of god for their sins. wherefore it is impossible but that to all those for whom christ has purchased this complete redemption, and for whose sins he has given this full satisfaction accepted of god, he will certainly and effectually apply and communicate the same in the saving benefits thereof; seeing that it is his will who has merited it, that all those who are the father's choice by election, and his purchase by redemption, should be _ever with him where he is, that they may behold his glory_; and since, as he is thus willing, he is also able, to save them to the uttermost that come to god by him. so that all for whom christ died, all that are redeemed by his blood, are, in consequence hereof; effectually called, justified, sanctified and glorified; according to psal. xl, , ; heb. x, - ; phil. ii, ; gal. iv, , ; heb. ix, , ; dan. ix, ; psal. lxxv, ; isa. xlix, ; john vi, , , chap. x, , ; eph. i, ; rom. viii, , and ver. , ; john xvii throughout; john xi, ; confess, chap. vii, § , , ; larg. cat. quest. ; sh. cat. quest. . they also acknowledge, assert and declare, that the lord jesus christ is, by the appointment of god the father, set as king upon his holy hill of zion; over which, as his special kingdom, he is invested with an absolute power and supremacy, as the sole and only head thereof, to appoint offices, officers, laws and ordinances. and that accordingly, by virtue of this solemn investiture, the same lord jesus christ has, in all ages, called out of the world, and maintained therein, a church unto himself, which he visibly governs by a complete system of laws, officers and censures, instituted in his word, and has not left the affairs of his church, in which (as a son over his own house) he peculiarly presides, to be regulated and modeled by the carnal policy and invention of men. also, that, as king in _zion_, he powerfully and irresistibly, in a day of efficacious grace, subdues the perverse hearts and wills of sinners unto his obedience, persuading and enabling as many as were appointed to obtain salvation through him, to believe in his name, in order thereunto. all whom he either preserves from, or supports under, the various temptations, trials and afflictions, they are liable to in this mortal life; till at last, completing a work of grace in their souls, he advances them to a state of perfection and glory. further, the presbytery declare and maintain, that, in subserviency to this his special mediatory kingdom, the lord jesus christ has a supreme and sovereign power given unto him, in heaven and in earth, and over the infernal powers of darkness--angels, authorities and powers being put in subjection to him; that he has the management of all the wheels of providence put into his hand, whereby he restrains, disappoints, and at last totally destroys, all the enemies of his interest and glory; and by which he orders and overrules all the events that fall out in time, for the accomplishment of the great and glorious ends of his incarnation, and lasting good of those that love him: according to psal. ii, ; isa. ix, , ; isa. xxxiii, ; matth. xxi, ; isa. lv, , ; gen. xlix, ; heb. iii, ; psal. cx, , ; matth. xxviii, ; john vii, ; pet. iii, ; phil, ii, - ; confess, chap, viii § ; larg. cat. quest. ; sh. cat. quest. . they again declare and assert, that as the light of nature is absolutely insufficient to give a just discovery, either of the grievous malady of sin, or the blessed remedy provided for sinners, so none, however diligent they may be to frame their lives according to the dictates of nature's light, can possibly attain to salvation, while they remain without any objective revelation of jesus christ, as the great propitiation and peace-maker, who has abolished death, and brought life and immortality to light, by the gospel. and further, that there is no other name, doctrine or religion, whereby any can be saved, but in the name, doctrine and religion of the lord jesus christ, of which he is the great author and institutor; in the profession and faith whereof, he leads his people through this world into the possession of endless felicity and glory in the world to come. viii. of the gospel offer.--they further declare, that, as god the father, out of his unbounded love, has, on the footing of the infinite sufficiency of the death and sacrifice of christ, made a free and unhampered gift and grant of him, as an all-sufficient savior, unto sinners of mankind lost, as such, in the word: so the ministers and embassadors of christ (according as they are expressly authorized and commanded by him) are to publish this gospel, these glad tidings of great joy to all the world, wherever they may be called or cast, in the providence of god, and make a full, free and unhampered offer of christ and his whole salvation to sinners, without distinction, assuring them of god's mercy and grace, through christ, in whom he proclaims himself well pleased; of christ's omnipotent power and ability to save to the uttermost all that come unto god by him; and that there are no impediments, bars or hinderances, _ab extra_, between jesus christ, as held forth in the offer of the gospel, and sinners lost, why they, even every one of them, may not receive and appropriate him, as the lord their righteousness. and the above said frank and unhampered gift of christ, and him crucified, by god the father, as a full and all-sufficient savior unto lost and ruined sinners, the presbytery view as the great and prime foundation, both of the ministerial offer, and of, faith in the lord jesus, for life and salvation: as is clear from rom. x, ; cor. i, - ; isa. lv, ; mark xvi, ; john iii, ; confess, chap, vii, § ; larg. cat. ques. ; sh. cat. ques. , &c. ix. of justification.--again, they profess and declare, that the active and passive obedience, or the complete mediatory righteousness, of the lord jesus christ, is the only meritorious cause of a sinner's justification, pardon of sin, and acceptance of his person and services with a holy god; and that true and saving faith, which is also the gift of god, is the alone instrumental cause of the sinner's justification in his sight; or that evangelical condition, or internal mean, in and by which the soul is interested in christ, and the whole of his righteousness and salvation. which righteousness, received and rested on by faith, is the only foundation of a sinner's title to eternal life and glory; as appears evident from rom. iii, - ; rom. v, - ; jer. xxiii, ; gal. ii, ; acts x, ; col. i, ; acts viii, ; rom. x, ; mark v, ; eph. ii, ; confess, chap. , ; larg. cat. ques. , ; sh. cat. ques. . they likewise profess and maintain, that believers, by the righteousness of christ being justified from all things, from which they could not be justified by the law of moses, are by jesus christ perfectly delivered from the law, as a covenant of works, both as commanding and condemning; so as that thereby they are neither justified nor condemned, it being dead to them, and they to it, by the body of christ, to whom they are married. however, notwithstanding of this freedom, they are still servants unto god; still under the moral law, as a rule of life in the hand of their glorious mediator and new covenant head, directing them how they are to walk, so as to please god; the obligation whereof, as such, remains perpetual and indissoluble; and that this privilege is peculiar to believers only, all others being still under the old covenant obligation, both as to the debt of obedience and punishment; according to rom. vi, , and vii, , ; gal. iv, , , and ii, ; rom. viii, ; gal. iii, ; confess, chap, xix, § , ; larg. cat. ques. ; sh. cat. ques. , . x. of good works.--again, they assert and declare, that as no works are truly and spiritually good, but those that are performed by a person united to the lord jesus christ by faith, and under the influence of his holy spirit; and consequently, that none of the actions of the unregenerate, however in themselves materially agreeable unto the letter of the law, are either pleasing or acceptable to god; nor can they dispose or prepare their souls for receiving his grace, though their omission and neglect of these is still more displeasing unto god, and destructive unto themselves. so likewise they declare, that even the best works of obedience performed by the regenerate, can neither merit the pardon of any one sin, nor procure them the smallest measure or god's grace or favor, because of the manifold sins and imperfections they are still attended with, and because of the infinite distance between god and them, with respect to whom, when they have done all that they can, they are but unprofitable servants. neither is their ability to do them at all of themselves, but wholly from the spirit dwelling in them. and further, that the spring and principle motive of true love to god, and acceptable obedience to him, is not self-interest or love to our own felicity, nor yet a slavish fear of punishment; but the glorious perfections and transcendent excellencies of the deity, manifested in the face of jesus christ, who is the brightness of the father's glory, and express image of his person, are the prime and chief motives both of love, fear and obedience unto god; all who really love god loving him principally for himself. as also, that all acceptable service to god, performed by believers, is principally influenced by the authority of a god of grace, stamped upon his word, springs from faith in jesus christ, as an animating and active principle in their souls, and is ultimately directed to the glory of god in christ, as the great end thereof. hence, therefore, although god has graciously connected his own glory and his people's felicity inseparably together, that yet no actions, however good in themselves or beneficial to others, which arise only from a principle of self-interest, love to one's own bliss, or fear of hell, are evidential of saving grace in the soul, or any more than what one in a state of nature may perform; according to gen. iv, ; heb. xi, , ; matth. vi, , , ; hag. ii, ; amos, v, , ; tit. i, , and iii, ; rom. iii, , and iv, , , ; job xxii, , ; eph. i, ; pet. ii, ; exod. xxviii, ; confess, chap. throughout; larg. cat. ques. , ; sh. cat. ques. . xi. of assurance of grace.--in like manner they declare and assert, that although there may be much darkness, and manifold doubts and fears, seated in the same soul where true and saving faith is: and although true believers may wait long before they know themselves to be believers, and be assured that they are really in a state of grace; and even, after they have arrived at a subjective assurance of their salvation, may have it much shaken, clouded and intermitted; that yet there is no doubting, no darkness, in the saving acts of a true and lively faith: but in all the appropriating acts of saving faith, there is an objective assurance, an assured confidence and trust in jesus christ, and the promise of life in which he is revealed to the soul; according to isa. , ; mark ix, ; john v, ; psal. lxxvii, to ; psal. lxxxviii, throughout; gal. ii, ; mark xi, ; confess, chap. throughout; larg. cat. ques. , , ; short. cat. question . xii. of the perseverance of the saints.--they further assert and declare, that whosoever, of any of the children of men, in all ages, have attained salvation, did believe in, and receive the lord jesus christ, the promised messiah, and only savior from sin, to whom all the prophets bear witness, in whom all the promises and lines of salvation do center; and particularly, that however much the faith of the disciples and apostles of our lord and savior jesus christ in him, as their only redeemer, might be at any time overclouded, yet it was never totally subverted; and that the noble grace of faith in the souls of believers cannot be totally lost; but that such is the immutability of god's decrees, and his unchangeable love; such the efficacy of their redeemer's merit, and constant abiding of the spirit of holiness in them; and such the nature of the new covenant, that, notwithstanding of various temptations and afflictions, the prevailing of remaining corruption in them, they must all and every one of them, certainly and infallibly persevere in a state of grace unto the end, and be at last saved with an everlasting salvation; as appears from heb. xi, ; john iv, ; phil. i, ; john x, , ; pet. ii, ; jer. xxxiv, ; confess, chap. , § , chap. , § , and chap. throughout. xiii. of liberty of conscience.--they further assert and declare, that the noble faculty of conscience, god's deputy in the soul of man, over which he alone is absolute lord and sovereign, is not subjected unto the authority of man; neither are any human commands further binding upon the consciences of men, than they are agreeable unto, and founded upon the revealed will of god, whether in matters of faith or practice. and although the lord jesus christ has purchased a glorious liberty unto believers from sin, and all the bitter fruits thereof, and of access to a throne of grace with boldness; and has procured unto his church freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law, with a more abundant communication of gospel influences: yet, inasmuch as conscience is the rule ruled, not the rule, ruling, none can, without manifest sin, upon pretense of conscience or christian liberty, cherish any forbidden lust in their souls, nor are left at freedom to reject any of the divine ordinances instituted in the word, to change or corrupt their scriptural institution, by immixing human inventions therewith, or in the least deviating from the punity thereof. and that therefore, all who vent or maintain tenets or opinions, contrary to the established principles of christianity, whether in the matter of doctrine, divine worship, or practice in life, which are contrary to, and inconsistent with the analogy of faith, and power of true godliness, or destructive to that pure peace and good order established by christ in his church, are accountable unto the church; and upon conviction, ought to be proceeded against, by inflicting ecclesiastical censures or civil pains, in a way agreeable unto the divine determination in the word concerning such offenses. and further, they declare, that it is most wicked, and what manifestly strikes against the sovereign authority of god, for any power on earth to pretend to tolerate, and, by sanction of civil law, to give license to men to publish and propagate with impunity, whatever errors, heresies, and damnable doctrines, satan, and their own corrupt and blinded understandings, may prompt them to believe and embrace; toleration being destructive of all true religion, and of that liberty wherewith christ has made his people free; and the great end thereof, which is, "that being delivered out of the hands of our enemies, we may serve the lord--in holiness and righteousness, all the days of our lives." agreeable to james iv, ; rom. xiv, ; acts iv, , and v, ; cor. vii, ; matth. xxiii, ; john , ; cor. i, ; matth. xv, ; col. ii, , , ; gal. ii, , , and v, , ; isa. viii, ; acts xvii, ; hosea v, ; cor. v, , , , ; tit. i. , , , and iii, ; matth. xviii, - ; deut. xiii, - ; ezek. vii, , , ; zech. xiii, , ; rev. ii, , , , ; confess, chap. ; larg. cat. quest. , ; sh. cat. quest. , . xiv. of testimony-bearing.--again, they declare and assert, that all true believers, members of the church invisible, are by the indissoluble bond of the spirit, and true faith in christ, their head, savingly united unto, and have communion with him in grace and in glory, in this life and the life to come. in all their afflictions he is afflicted, and shares with them in their sufferings and trials, is with them in and through death, exalteth them at last over all their enemies, receiving them into glory and blessedness with himself, that they may behold and share in his glory with him through eternity: and that all of them being knit and joined together in holy love and affection, do participate mutually of each others gifts and graces; and are indispensably bound to exercise themselves in the practice of all commanded duties, for preserving the love of god, and life of grace, in their own, and one another's souls. and further, they declare that the visible church, and the members thereof, are externally in covenant with christ their head, have one and the same lord, profess the same faith in doctrine and worship, receive the same seals of god's covenant, baptism, and the lord's supper: and are thereby bound to hold fast the head, to be subject to his authority, keep the faith they have received, and maintain an holy communion and fellowship in the worship of god; closely abiding by the standard of christ, their captain and leader, and lifting up the banner of divine truth, in opposition unto, and holy contempt of all their enemies of every kind. and further, they affirm, that as the visible church in general, is bound to be faithful to christ, their head and lord, and to preserve inviolate, the whole of that sacred _depositum_ of truth wherewith she is intrusted by him, not quitting with, nor willfully apostatizing from the same, in profession or practise: so no particular subject of this spiritual kingdom of christ can recede from any part of divine truth, which they have received, and whereof they have made profession, without lese-majesty unto the son of god, and violation of their obligations they have come under, at receiving the seals of the covenant, with whatever other lawful vows they have made unto the most high; according to john i, , ; eph. iii, - ; john i, ; heb. x, , ; acts ii, , ; eph. iv, - ; phil. iii, ; rev. ii, , and iii, ; confess, chap. , ; larg. cat. quest. ; short. cat. quest. . xv. of church government.--they likewise affirm and declare, that the lord jesus christ, our exalted immanuel, the sole and supreme head, lawgiver and king of his church, which is his spiritual and absolutely free and independent kingdom, has herein warranted, instituted and appointed certain office-bearers (who derive their mission and authority from him alone) to regulate, administer, judge and determine in all the affairs of his house, to whom alone the keys of the kingdom of heaven are by him committed. particularly, they are intrusted with the key of doctrine, to discover the mind of god, and preach christ crucified unto sinners; the key of government for preserving that beauty of order, purity and power in the house of god, which he has enjoined should take place therein; the key of discipline, to inflict ecclesiastical censures upon such as turn aside after their _crooked ways_, or continue obstinate in their offenses; the key of ordination and mediate mission, in ordinary circumstances of the church, solemnly to set apart and send forth church officers unto that sacred function and official trust in the house of god, on the regular trial of the suitableness of their gifts and qualifications for that spiritual service and ministration; according to cor. xii, ; eph. iv, ; matth. xviii, ; john xx, ; matth. xviii, ; acts xv, throughout, and xvi, ; matth. xxviii, , ; mark xvi, ; acts vi, ; tim. iv, , and iii, ; confess, chap , § , and ; § . form of church government, books of discipline, and the several laudable acts and constitutions of this church; particularly, _act_ of _assem._ at _edinburgh, august_ th, , _sess._ , entitled, _directory for electing of ministers_. they likewise assert and maintain, that the lord jesus christ, the church's glorious head, hath appointed a certain form of government therein, distinct from civil government, and not at all subordinate to civil rulers. and that the only ecclesiastical government warranted by christ is his word, and to continue in his church unalterable, is presbyterial church government, exclusive of all superior dignity above a teaching presbyter, and consisting in her judicative capacity of kirk-sessions, in subordination to presbyteries; of presbyteries, in subordination to provincial synods; of provincial synods, in subordination to national; and national to ecumenical assemblies, or general councils. and further, they assert, that the office-bearers of the lord's house, are, according to the command, and in the name and authority of the lord jesus christ, the only lawgiver and king of his church, and by virtue of the church's intrinsic power derived from christ, to assemble, constitute and adjourn these several courts of his house, nominate the fixed or occasional times of their subsequent meetings, as the church's condition or exigencies require; although they grant that the christian magistrate may, in extraordinary cases, or otherwise, call together a synod of ministers, and ether fit persons, for consultation and advice in religious matters: but in which they have no power to judge or determine in matters of faith; but only discretively to examine, whether the synod's determinations and decisions be consonant and agreeable to scripture, and accordingly to acquiesce therein; isa. ix, , ; ezek. xliii, , ; acts xv, , , ; tim. v, ; heb. xiii, ; chron. xix, - ; acts xvii, ; confess, chap. , § and chap. , § , , and conform to act of assembly, anno ; § , ; d book of discipline, and propositions for church government. they likewise assert and maintain, that the office-bearers in the church of christ, according to their different places and stations therein, must give evidence of their being possessed in some suitable measure of the qualifications which god in his word requires to be in any that are to be placed in such stations or offices, particularly that of devotedness to the cause and honor of christ. and they further assert, that ministers of the gospel, and other church officers, must enter into the exercise of their office, at the door of christ's appointment, by the call and choice of the christian people, who are capable with judgment to give their consent; tim. iii, from verse to ; tit. i, , , ; acts vi, to ; chap, xiv, ; john x, , , and agreeable to the laudable acts and ordinances of this church and state, in favor of reformation principles, books of discipline, &c. xvi. of civil government.--in like manner they assert and maintain, that god almighty, the sovereign lord of all things, and special protector and preserver of his professed subjects in this lower world, hath for his own glory and the public good, authorized and instituted in his word the office and ordinance of civil government and governors, for the preservation of external peace and concord, administration of justice, defense and encouragement of such as are, and do good, and punishment of evil doers, who transgress either table of the law. for all which ends, subordinate unto that of his own glory, god, the alone supreme fountain of all power, has instituted and appointed this ordinance. and further they maintain, that a due measure of those qualifications which god, the great lawgiver requires in his word, together with what other stipulations according to the same unerring rule, a christian people, who are blessed with the light of divine revelation, have made the fundamental conditions of civil government among them, are essentially necessary to the constitution and investiture of lawful authority over such a people. no other but such a constitution and investiture, can either be approven of by god, or answer the ends, ultimate or subordinate, of this ordinance, unto the honor of the great institutor, as appears from prov. viii, , ; psa. cxlvii, , , and cxlix, g, , , ; isa. xlix, ; rom. xiii, , , , ; deut. xvii, , ; sam. xxiii, , , ; exod. xviii, . confess, chap. , § . seasonable warning by the general assembly, july , . act , sess. , parl. , . they further assert and maintain, that the constituting of the relation betwixt rulers and ruled, is voluntary and mutual; and that the lawful constitution of civil magistrates, is, by the mutual election of the people (in whom is the radical right, or intermediate voice of god, of choosing and appointing such as are to sway the scepter of government over them) and consent of those who are elected and chosen for the exercise of that office, with certain stipulations according to scripture and right reason, obliging each other unto the duty of their different stations and relations. and further they affirm that when magistrates are so constituted, christians are bound by the law of god to pray for the divine blessing upon their persons and government, reverence and highly esteem them, yield a conscientious subjection and obedience to their lawful commands, defend and support them in the due exercise of their power; which power magistrates are especially to exert for the outward defense of the church of god, against all her external enemies, restraining or otherwise punishing, as the case may require, all open blasphemers, idolaters, false-worshipers, heretics, with all avowed contemners of the worship and discipline of the house of god; and by his civil sanction to corroborate all the laws and ordinances of christ's house, providing and enjoining that every thing in the house of the god of heaven, be done according to the law of the god of heaven; deut. xvii, ; kings xi, ; sam. xi, ; tim. ii, , ; peter ii, ; rom xiii, to ; kings xviii, , and xxiii, to ; chron. xxix, and xxx, chapters throughout; ezra vii, . confess. chap. , § , coronation oath of scotland, sworn and subscribed by charles ii. at scone, january st, , and oath of fidelity by the people. xvii. of corruptions in the two preceding ordinances.--but, with respect to these two great ordinances of divine institution, the magistracy and ministry, with the qualifications of the persons and duty of the people, as before asserted, the presbytery reject, like as they did, and hereby do reject and condemn the following contrary errors, tenets and opinions, whether of older or later date, vented either by open enemies or professed friends to the reformation cause. and, . they reject and condemn that loose latitudinarian tenet and opinion of opening the door of communion with the church in her judicative capacity, or sealing ordinances, unto the grossly ignorant, loose, careless, profane and scandalous: and to the anti-christian deist, blasphemous heretic, or any who maintain doctrines, principles and opinions contrary to, and eversive of the cardinal and fundamental doctrines of christianity, or such principles and practices as oppose, obscure or darken the church's beauty and purity, and spoil her of her power, and particularly that of the church of _scotland_, in her attainments in reformation; this being evidently destructive and ruinous to truth and holiness, the only foundation and basis of external union and concord in the church, and consequently of all durable, harmonious and comfortable communion among the ministers and members of christ's mystical body: see eph. v, ; isa. viii, ; amos iii, ; cor. vi, ; heb. xii, ; rev. xxii, , ; cor. vi, , ; and conform to the acts and practice of this church, in her best and purest times, in excluding from her communion, and refusing to unite with any chargeable as above. again, they hereby reject that false and ungodly principle and opinion, that a god of infinite wisdom has left his professing people destitute of any declaration of his will (which they are absolutely bound to regard) concerning both the institution, administration and qualifications of such persons as should administer these two distinct ordinances, government, civil and ecclesiastical; or that these two different species of government have not their foundation and institution, as the ordinances of god, in his revealed will; but that either (with the corrupt revolution church) he hath left the government of his house a matter of indifference, and the pattern thereof to be moulded by the discretion of the wise men of this world, and according to the corrupt will and fluctuating inclination of the people; or, with their public resolution-brethren, the _seceders_, exchanging the clear scriptural and covenanted basis of civil government, with the obscure foundation of the law and light of nature, or the more dissolute basis of mere election and acknowledgment of whomsoever the _primores regni_, though never so wicked and licentious, choose and set up as magistrates. which notion contains an injurious and impious impeachment of divine revelation, as a rule imperfect and insufficient to guide christians into the knowledge of the will of god, and their duty, as the peculiar and professed subjects of the king of kings, and supreme lawgiver, concerning all his ordinances; and is contrary to tim. iii, ; rom, ii, ; ezek. xliii, ; and xliv, ; lev. xviii, , , , ; matt, xxviii, . confess, chap. , § . they in like manner reject and condemn the ecclesiastical headship of the church, blasphemously arrogated by that man of sin, and son of perdition the pope of _rome_; with all that superiority of dignity and office in the house of god, claimed by anti-christian prelates, together with the whole of their hierarchical order, and the civil places and power of churchmen, by both usurped; which is a most wicked attempt to overturn god the father's deed, constituting his son christ, sole king and head of his church, an exauctorating of jesus christ from his throne, and headship in his church, an elevation of his ministers, contrary to his will, and the nature and ends of their office; and an anti-scriptural and confused blending together of different and distinct ordinances. psa. ii, ; isa. ix, , and xxii, ; col. i, ; mark x, , ; luke xxii, , ; i pet. v, ; chron. xix, ; cor. vii, . confess. chap. , § , and contrary to our solemn covenants, and many acts and ordinances of both church and state, in times of reformation. they likewise reject and condemn that gross erastian principle, that the civil magistrate is supreme head over all persons, and in all causes, ecclesiastical as well as civil, whether in more ancient and later times of tyranny and persecution, openly and blasphemously usurped, or at and since the revolution, more craftily yet too manifestly claimed; as appears from the th article of the church of _england_, and king's declaration prefixed to the said articles: and is further evident from the many encroachments made upon the royal dignity and headship of christ, by the usurpers of his throne, practically vesting themselves with power and authority to convene and adjourn at their pleasure, and give laws and ordinances to the church, which is a daring attack on the prerogative, sovereignty, wisdom and power of her absolute king and lord, on whom, as a nail fastened in a sure place, his father has hung all the glory of his house, and vested him with the sole supremacy over the same, being filled abundantly with the spirit of wisdom and understanding, with the spirit of counsel and of might, to direct and preside in the management of all her concerns, and to preserve from and overcome all her enemies; isa. xxii, , and xi, , , and ix, ; col. i, ; eph. i, ; chr. xxvi, ; heb. v, ; confess. chap. , § . they also reject and condemn that erastian tenet and opinion, that the whole or any part of the power, mission, qualifications, or administration of ecclesiastical officers, or ministers of the church of christ, depends upon the authority and dictation of the civil magistrate, because it is manifestly destructive of the church's power and authority, under christ her head, and derived from him, and likewise of the ministerial freedom and faithfulness of christ's embassadors: and particularly they reject and condemn, as gross erastianism (whether practiced before or since the revolution, and especially since the incorporating union with _england_ on terms diametrically opposite to our covenant union), the civil magistrate's limiting the mission of office-bearers in the church, according to his will; prescribing certain qualifications, and restricting to certain limitations; such as the test, indulgences, allegiance, assurance, and abjuration oaths, act restoring patronages, and the act anent _porteous_, together with the threatened deprivation of office and benefice, upon non-compliance; cor. xii, ; matt, xviii, , ; john xx, . they further reject and condemn that erastian opinion, that the external government of christ's house is left unto the precarious determination of sinful men, or hath either its immediate or mediate dependence upon the will and pleasure of the civil magistrate, according to the import of the claim of right, the anti-scriptural basis of the revolution settlement. this being evidently an impious reflection on the perfect wisdom of the church's head, subversive of the beauty of his house, and fertile of disorder therein, laying the kingdom of christ obnoxious to spiritual tyranny and oppression, when strangers, enemies, or such as have no call or warrant to build the house of the lord, put to their hand to model the form of her government as best suits their perverse inclinations and secular views, in express contradiction to the will and law of the god of heaven, exod xxv, , and xxvi, ; ezek. xliii, ; chron. xv, , ; neh. ii, , with many other texts above cited. again they reject and condemn that latitudinarian tenet, that the lord jesus christ, the alone head of the church, hath left his house void of any particular form of government, of divine institution exclusive of all other, under the new testament dispensation: which, is a manifest reflection upon his fidelity to him who appointed him, and most absurd to suppose of him who is true and faithful, as a son over his own house, and contrary to isa. ix, , ; tim. v, ; heb. iii, , , ; cor. xii, ; rom. xii , , ; acts xx, , ; matt, xxviii, . confess. chap. , § , and to the propositions for church government. they further reject and condemn that sectarian principle and tenet, whether in former or latter times maintained, that a kirk session, or particular congregational eldership, is vested with equal ecclesiastical power and authority, with any superior judicatory, and is neither subordinate nor accountable to them (in the lord) in their determinations. they likewise reject as sectarian, that the community of the faithful or professing christians, in a private station hath any scriptural warrant for public teaching, or judicative determination in the church; both which opinions are not only expressly contrary to scripture, acts xv, throughout, and xvi, ; i cor. v, ; tim: v, ; heb. v, , and xiii, , &c, but also have been found hitherto most hurtful and dangerous to the church of god, depriving her ministers and members of just and necessary recourse to superior judgment and decision in matters difficult, discrediting and prostituting the sacred office of the ministry, and tending to overthrow a standing ministry in the church of christ, and subvert that comely and beautiful order he hath prescribed therein. in like manner they reject and condemn that gross invasion and encroachment upon the church's liberties, by the intrusion of popish patronages, whether imposed as a law by civil, or executed by ecclesiastical powers. of the latter of these, the ministers and judicatories of the now corrupt, harlot church of _scotland_, cannot but be more egregiously guilty. the nature of their sacred function and trust obliges them to preserve inviolate the church's freedom and liberties: but in place of this, their hands are _chief in the trespass_, in an authoritative and active enforcement of this wicked act--an act evidently destructive of the very nature and essence of that mutual relation between pastor and people, and which has the native and necessary tendency to schism in the church, spiritual leanness, and starving of the flock, by thrusting in idle, idol shepherds upon them, such as serve not our lord jesus christ, but their own bellies; feed themselves, but not the flock; and seek not them, but theirs, contrary to john x, , ; heb. v, ; tim. iii, ; cor. xii, , with many more; and to acts of both church and state, in times of reformation in these covenanted lands. but, on the other hand, that the presbytery, when thus condescending on particulars, pass not over in sinful silence, what stands opposite to the word of god and their declared principles, as above concerning civil authority, the administrators thereof, and subjection of the people thereto: they reject, likeas they hereby reject and condemn that anti-scriptural principle and opinion, that the divine scriptural ordinance of magistracy has not its foundation in the moral preceptive law of god (wherein alone his will is revealed and declared unto his people, concerning the nature, use, and ends of all his ordinances), but in the subjective light of nature (even as corrupted), so confused and dark in its discoveries, so gross and selfish in its principles, motives, and ends, that neither the true nature of this, nor any other of the ordinances of jehovah, as revealed in his word, can hereby be known, or the true use and ends thereof sufficiently discovered or obtained. they likewise testify against, and reject that equally absurd opinion, as a stream flowing from the foresaid corrupt fountain, that the office, authority, and constitution of lawful magistrates, does not solely belong to professing christians, in a christian reformed land, but that the election and choice of any one whosoever, made by the civil body (whether pagan, papist, atheist, deist, or other enemy to god, to man, and to true religion), makes up the whole of what is essential to the constitution of a lawful magistrate according to god's ordinance. a tenet contrary to the light and dictates both of reason and scripture. and they hereby also disclaim that corrupt notion, that all providential magistrates, who are, and while they are acknowledged by any civil society especially in an apostate backsliding land and people from the scriptural standard (in respect of the origin of their office), are also preceptive; and that the office and authority of all so constituted and acknowledged, in itself considered, does equally arise from, and agree unto the preceptive will of god, contrary to scriptural precepts, deut. xvii, ; what falls under scriptural reproof, hos. viii, ; and what greatly depreciates the valiant contendings of our honored ancestors for civil reformation, and tends to invalidate their deeds of constitution thereanent. again the presbytery testifies against, and condemns that principle, that the christian people of god ought to give explicit acknowledgment of, implicit subjection and obedience to, whatever civil authority (though most wicked and unlawful) the lord in his holy providence, may, for the trial and punishment of his church, permit a backsliding people to constitute and set up, without regard to the precept of his word. and they hereby reject whatever in opposition to the covenanted principles of the church of _scotland_, does justly, and in its own nature imply a voluntary and real acknowledgment of the lawfulness of the title and authority of an anti-scriptural, anti-covenanted, and erastian government, constituted upon the ruins of our scriptural covenanted reformation. particularly, they testify against praying for success and prosperity to such, in their stated opposition to the lord and his anointed, or in any form implying a homologation of their title as lawful, swearing oaths of fidelity and allegiance to such, accepting any office from such, and executing these in their name and authority under them, military associations with such, by a voluntary enlisting under their banner, and fighting for their support and establishment. and that in regard these are actions, as they express a proper and explicit owning of the lawfulness of that authority, which they immediately respect, so they are such as cannot be obtained without the actual consent of the party performing, and must therefore imply a deliberate approbation of foresaid iniquitous authority. further, they testify against a direct and active, free and voluntary paying of tribute and other dues, unto such, and that for conscience sake, as unto the ordinance of god, according to his precept; and particularly, when these dues are required as a tessera of loyalty to such; or when required, as an evidence of a person's active contributing to the accomplishment of some wicked action, expressly declared to be the immediate end of the imposition. thus the case was in the time of persecution, when the declared end of the additional cess, was the immediate suppression of the pure preaching of the gospel in the fields. as also, not only against professed witnesses for reformation principles, their prosecuting of their witnessing brethren at law before the courts of anti-scriptural, unqualified judges; but generally, against all law processes, in a way of direct counteracting any part of reformation attainments, or express homologating the authority of an unlawful judge. and, in fine, against all voluntary subjection, for conscience sake, unto such powers as are not the ordinance of god, according to his revealed preceptive will, as contrary to scripture; sam. ii, ; kings xi, , ; chron. xix, ; isa. viii, and lxv, ; rom. xiii, to ; cor. vi, to , contrary to the acts of this church approving, and ordinances of the state, establishing the civil authority upon its scriptural foundation, and thereby discovering the proper object of a christian people's voluntary and conscientious subjection; and particularly, to the act of classes. while in the meantime, it must be acknowledged, that the state and condition of presbyterian covenanters in these lands, continuing, as a community, to witness and contend for reformation of both church and state, that obtained, and was established, between and , cannot be regarded as that of a free people enjoying their ancient privileges and liberties, but as that of an oppressed people, brought under the power of a conqueror, and no better than captives in their own land. as this was evidently the state of the suffering remnant under the persecuting period, when, by the force of the sword, they were robbed of their former liberties, and reduced to the most deplorable condition. so, however the revolution did alter some circumstances in the condition of covenanters; yet, in regard it was established upon, and did homologate the overthrow of the reformation, to which that people do still adhere, it could make no substantial change in their condition, from what it formerly was. and moreover, as it is necessarily requisite to the constituting of the relation between magistrate and people, that there be a mutual and voluntary consent; and as the community of presbyterian covenanters did never, at or since the revolution, give such consent; but, on the contrary, have, in the most public manner, protested against the constitution and installment of rulers in agreeableness thereto, as being contrary to the word of god, covenanted constitution, and fundamental laws of the nations; as is evident from their printed testimonies and declarations. it follows, that their state is that of an oppressed people, in passive subjection to a conquering power, whose duty is, to wait with patience upon _israel's_ god for his return to revive his work, and recall the bondage of his _zion_. and while they are to take care to do nothing that justly implies their consent to the continued opposition made unto the covenanted reformation, yet they ought to observe a proper difference between such actions and things as are necessary, and in themselves just and lawful, by a moral obligation, and those that are not so. as also, between that which cannot be had, nor the value or equivalent of it, unless the person actually give it; and that which may be obtained, whether he actually contribute to it or not.[ ] most applicable to this our present condition, are the words of the _levites_, expressing the distressed state of _israel_, which they had brought themselves into by their sins, as recorded by neh. ix, , : "behold we are servants this day; and for the land thou gavest unto our fathers, to eat the fruit thereof, and the good thereof, behold we are servants in it: and it yieldeth much increase unto the kings which thou hast set over us, because of our sins; also they have dominion over our bodies, and over our cattle, at their pleasure, and we are in great distress." likewise the presbytery testify against all ministerial or church communion with such, who, though they may occupy the place of office-bearers in the church of christ, yet are destitute of those qualifications indispensably required by the church's head, or enter not into their office by the door he has appointed in his word, own another head than christ, or apostatize and fall from the truth and cause of christ, formerly espoused and sworn to by them in a church capacity; against all active owning and countenancing of such, by attending upon any of their corrupt official ministrations, or receiving any ordinances from such, to whom the lord has denied his blessing. against all voluntary contracting with prelates, curates, or such officers of human invention in the church, for paying tithes or other dues unto them, as unto lawful, scriptural parish ministers. for besides that there is nothing due unto them, their office having no divine authority; so there being under the new testament a change of the priesthood, there is also a change of the law, respecting tithes; according to cor. vi, ; rev. ii, , &c. by all which it appears, from what is above asserted and declared concerning these two divine distinct ordinances, the ministry and magistracy, that the principles maintained thereanent by the presbytery, are nothing else than an endeavor, as a judicatory of the lord jesus christ, constituted in his name, to hold fast the church of _scotland's_ testimony, agreeable to the scriptures of truth, for confession and covenants, fundamental acts and constitutions both of church and state and this, according to the command of the church's sole king and head; rev. ii, , and iii, . and what is testified against, is, in the nature of it, an homologation of the church's faithful opposition to backsliders, in their course of defection, from the national, attainments in religion and reformation, resisting even unto blood, striving against sin. xviii. of oaths and vows.--the presbytery further assert and declare, that oaths and vows are a part of religious worship, warranted in the word of god, and under the new testament dispensation, and may be lawfully taken and entered into by the lord's people. that such oaths and vows only are warrantable, as are lawful both for the matter and the manner of them; and those that are so, when once engaged in, must not be violated on any consideration, and that, because of the authority of the awful name of god interposed in them. and further, they declare, that the right of administering oaths is competent only to those vested with such authority as is agreeable to the word of truth. as also, that it is the incumbent duty of christians, by solemn oath to bind themselves to maintain and defend the persons of righteous rulers, in the lawful exercise of their authority; and to such only, it is lawful to swear oaths of allegiance and fidelity. and hereby, they disapprove the principle of refusing allegiance to lawful authority. at the same time, the presbytery testify against, as above, all the oaths of allegiance in being, to an erastian prelatical government. and further, they reject and detest that sinful, idolatrous and superstitious form of swearing, in laying the hand upon, and kissing the gospels, practiced by the prelatical churches of _england_ and _ireland_, and even introduced into _scotland_, as a gross profanation of that holy ordinance, and contrary to the scripture examples thereof. hereby they also testify against all sinful swearing, whereby the name of god, his titles, perfections, or graces of his holy spirit, are profaned in ordinary discourse. as also, the unnecessary oaths of customhouse, trade, &c., as a reiterated and fearful profanation of the name of god. and moreover, they testify against, and condemn that ungodly and superstitious oath, practiced by that unhallowed club, called _free masons_: according to deut. x, ; exod. xx, ; neh. xiii, ; ezra x, ; deut. vi, ; matth. iv, , ; ezek. xvii, , , , ; rev. x, , ; jer. iv, . and v, ; confess. chap. . again, they testify and declare, that the work of solemn covenanting with a god in christ, is a duty warranted in the scriptures of the old and new testament, and by the examples of the godly, agreeable thereto; and that not only to individuals in particular, but to churches and nations in general. which covenants once entered into, and being for the matter of them lawful, are most sacred, and therefore inviolably binding; and what cannot be broken or transgressed, without manifest guilt, and incurring the dreadful resentment of a holy and jealous god, who has severely threatened to punish covenant-breakers. and hence they assert, that the national covenant of _scotland_, and the solemn league and covenant entered into by the three nations, for reformation and defense of religion, and for the maintainance and preservation of the truths and ordinances of god in purity, and sworn by our honored ancestors, not only for themselves, but including also their posterity, are of divine authority, as having their foundation upon the word of god; therefore moral, and so perpetually binding upon the nations, and every individual of them, to the latest posterity. wherefore, the presbytery testify against the principle of refusing the lawfulness of national covenanting, particularly, under the new testament dispensation, and all principles and practices that strike against the moral obligation of these covenants; see deut. vi, , isa. ix, , and xliv, ; jer. , ; deut. xxix, to , , ; lev. xxvi, , ; josh, ix, , , , ; sam. xxi, ; ezek. xvi, , and xvii, , , , ; hos. x, ; gal. iii, ; cor. viii, . see also acts and ordinances both of church and state in times of reformation, respecting the taking, and binding obligation, of the covenants. again, the presbytery hereby testify and declare their approbation of, and adherence unto, all the different steps of reformation, that ever, in any period, were attained unto in this church and land: particularly, besides what has been mentioned above, they declare their adherence to the westminster confession of faith, as it was approven by act of the general assembly of the church of _scotland, anno_ : catechisms, larger and shorter; form of church government, directory for worship, and books of discipline, as agreeable to, and extracted from the sacred oracles. and with respect to the fourth article of the d chapter of our confession, the presbytery hereby declare, that they reject that corrupt sense and gloss which has been imposed upon it, whether by open enemies, or false friends to our covenanted reformation in former or latter times, viz., that a reformed christian people, having generally received, and publicly professing the true religion; and more especially, having expressly and solemnly bound themselves by public national vows to the most high, for the preservation of it, may warrantably set over them an infidel, or one of a religion differing from the true religion, and thereupon acknowledge and submit themselves unto him, as their lawful civil ruler for conscience sake. and moreover, they declare that they understand said articles, as principally relating to the condition of a people emerging out of the darkness and superstition of paganism or popery, &c., before that religion has obtained the sanction of civil authority; when, although the major part or bulk of a people should embrace the true religion, yet that does not dissolve or loose the relation subsisting between them and their civil rulers, prior to their conversion, agreeable to, and founded upon the just and reasonable laws of the realm. in this case only, it is granted, that an infidel, or one of a different religion, may have authority just and legal over a people partly converted to the knowledge and gospel of christ. thus it was with the primitive christians, and thus it was particularly with our ancestors in _scotland_, at the beginning of the reformation; and this perfectly well agrees to the apostolic precept and determination in a case similar to the above; cor. vii, , and , and cor. vi, . as also, they further declare their approbation of, and adherence to all the faithful testimonies, declarations and protestations, emitted by the witnesses for the work of reformation, whether before or under the late times of tyranny and persecution, in prisons, scaffolds, or in the fields, by land or sea; or by such, as since that time have succeeded. them in the self same testimony, as they are founded upon, and agreeable to the word of truth, and as a just and proper vindication of foresaid covenanted cause. and particularly with the above proviso and limitation, they declare their adherence to the _rutherglen, sanquhar_ and _lanerk_ declarations, _annis_ , , ; as also to the declarations published at _sanquhar_, , , , and , , ; to the _informatory vindication_, and _cloud of witnesses_; to the _covenants national_ and _solemn league_, sworn at _auchensaugh_, near _douglas_, in the year , at _crawfurd-john_ ; with the additional acknowledgments of sins, and engagements to duties at these times; to the declarations published at _sanquhar_, , and at _montherrick_, , . and in like manner, they testify their adherence to the _act_ formerly emitted by this presbytery, in condemnation of the universal scheme. and they do hereby testify against, and disapprove all partiality and unfaithfulness, whether in respect of right or left hand extremes, in any testimonies, published in a way of professed adherence to reformation principles; particularly, they reject the testimony published by those designated the _associate presbytery_, as no adequate testimony for truth, because of the partiality and unfaithfulness, both to god and the generation, discovered therein; being, instead of a faithful vindication, no better than a burial of some of the most important attainments in reformation of this church and land. and they likewise reject, detest and abhor that spurious brat, stuffed with gross error, blasphemy and nonsense, most falsely and unjustly designated, "a testimony for the word of christ's patience," by that sacrilegious usurper of the ministry, _william dunnet_, who, being once plunged into the depths of enthusiasm, such is his madness, that under pretense of an immediate mission from heaven, he not only daringly usurps the whole of the ministerial function, but also wickedly claims an erastian exercise of the office of the civil magistrate, in a stupid unaccountable declaration of war, offensive and defensive, against all mankind, himself, and his blind-folded confederates only excepted; having probably had these anti-scriptural notions instilled into him by the industry of some unstable heads, who, after they had made a professed subjection to this presbytery, in the lord, did, with some others of the same stamp, in a most unwarrantable and schismatical manner, break off from their communion, without so much as discovering any shadow of reason, in justification of their rash, ungrounded and precipitate separation. upon the whole, the presbytery, protesting that they have been influenced to this necessary work of displaying a judicial banner for the covenanted cause and interest of our exalted redeemer, purely out of a regard to the glory of god, a desire that christ's kingdom may be advanced, and his buried truths revived, as also a concern for the welfare and happiness of the present and succeeding generations, do earnestly, in the bowels of our lord jesus christ, beseech and obtest all and every one, into whose hands this testimony may come, that, without considering the insignificancy of the instruments, and laying aside prejudice and carnal selfish considerations, they receive the truth as it is in jesus, not only in the notion, but in the love and power of it; that they take with the many just and highly aggravated grounds of the lord's controversy, and causes of his wrath against us, not only on account of private and personal wickedness come to a very great height, but particularly on account of the general opposition to the public concerns of his glory, in what respects the doctrine, worship, government and discipline of his house. alas! our public abominations are both obstinately persisted in and publicly justified. that they lay to heart the great and terrible wickedness of the day and generation, with deep humiliation before the lord, while he waits to, be gracious, and is calling all ranks to humble themselves, and saying, "rend your heart and not your garments, and turn unto the lord your god, for he is gracious and merciful;" joel ii, . that, in the way of flying under the covert of the atoning blood of the son of god, by faith in his name, for the remission of sins, and endeavoring after personal reformation, as to all the impiety and irreligion, all the detestable indifferency, lukewarmness and hypocrisy, in the matters of god, which universally prevail; they also study and set about public reformation, every one in their several stations, according to our solemn national engagements, concurring to restore the lord's ruined and buried work, and rebuild his house, which is now lying as a desolate heap, covered over with the rubbish of manifold errors, corruptions and human inventions. if we still hold fast our abominations, and will not, by repentance and reformation, return and give glory to the lord our god before he cause darkness, then, when he returns for the salvation of _zion_, "he will come treading down the people in his anger, and making them drunk in his fury, and bringing down their strength to the earth;" isa. lxiii, . "but is there no hope in _israel_ concerning this thing? is there no balm in _gilead_? is there not a physician there?" is there not virtue in christ's blood for the most desperate cases, that churches, as well as particular persons, can be in? is there not ground to hope, that the lord will not altogether forsake these sinful lands, which were given to him of old for an inheritance, and wherein he has so long maintained his possession, but that he will yet build up our _zion_, and appear in his glory therein, will plead his own cause, revive his own work, a covenanted work of reformation, and remove all the contempt and ignominy which it presently lies under? sure the continuance of his gracious calls and invitations to return to him, gives ground to hope, that our "_israel_ hath not been forsaken, nor _judah_ of his god, of the lord of hosts, though their land was filled with sin against the holy one of _israel_;" jer. li, . and though, while so much of error, prejudice and carnal interest, lie as impassable mountains in the way, there is little appearance of the nations taking this course yet the lord seems still to bespeak us in that endearing language, jer. iii, , "go and proclaim these words towards the north, and say, return thou backsliding _israel_, saith the lord, and i will not cause mine anger to fall upon you; for i am merciful, saith the lord, and i will not keep anger forever." though we have nationally torn our marriage contract with heaven, and taken away our names, yet the lord has not. _turn, o backsliding children, saith the lord, for i am married unto you._ let all, then, _repent, and turn themselves from all their transgressions, so iniquity shall not be their ruin_; but if not, then let all the impenitent despisers of the repeated calls of mercy know, that abused patience will at length turn into fury, and the lord jehovah, who has already furbished his sword, and prepared the instruments of death, will speedily give that dreadful commission to the executioners of his wrath: "put ye in the sickle, for the harvest is ripe; come, get you down, for the press is full, the fats overflow, for their wickedness is great:" joel iii, . "but because god will do this to _israel_, let us prepare to meet our god." further, the presbytery invite and entreat all who tender the glory of god, the removal of the causes of his wrath and indignation, and who desire the continuance of his tabernacle and gracious presence among us, to come and join in a harmonious, zealous and faithful testimony for the precious truths and interest of _zion's_ glorious king, and against every course that has a tendency to heighten, and at last to lay on the copestone of our defections. consider it is the lord's call and command to every one, even in their most private station, _contend earnestly for the faith once delivered to the saints_. it is the burden he, at this day, lays on his church and people: _hold fast what thou hast till i come, that no man take thy crown_; hold fast by our former attainments in reformation. and finally, the presbytery exhort all with whom they are more particularly connected, _to stand fast in one spirit, with one mind, striving together for the faith of the gospel, and in nothing terrified by your adversaries_. let the flame of fervent and true love to god, his truths, and to one another, prevent and extinguish the wild fire of unnecessary and hurtful mutual animosities; and _endeavoring to keep the unity of the spirit in the bond of peace_, study oneness in promoting the lord's opposed work, and in walking in the good old way, without turning aside to the right hand or to the left, because of the lion that is therein, and without laying other foundations than what were laid. let none of christ's true and faithful witnesses suffer their hearts to sink into despondency; the cause is the lord's, and assuredly he will thoroughly plead that cause which is his own. it will outlive all its enemies, and yet have a glorious resurrection; and this will be the crown and comfort of all such as continue, amidst all trials and sufferings, contending for him, in the blessed expectation of the conqueror's everlasting reward. therefore, _lift up the hands that hang down, and strengthen the feeble knees_; greater afflictions have been accomplished in those that are gone before, and are now inheriting the promises, than any wherewith the lord is presently trying his church. and as the god of all grace, after they had suffered awhile, made them perfect, and put them in possession of that eternal glory to which they were called by jesus christ, so shall he establish, strengthen and keep his people still from falling, and, after all their sorrows and sufferings, present them faultless before the presence of his glory, with exceeding joy. "return, we beseech thee, o god of hosts; look down from heaven, and behold and visit this vine; and the vineyard which thy right hand hath planted, and the branch that thou madest strong for thyself, it is burnt with fire, it is cut down, they perish at the rebuke of thy countenance. let thy hand be upon the man of thy right hand, upon the son of man whom thou madest strong for thyself, so will not we go back from thee; quicken us, and we will call upon thy name; turn us again, o lord of hosts, cause thy face to shine, and we shall be saved: let god arise, let _zion's_ immortal and omnipotent king jesus reign, and let all his enemies be scattered; but let them that love him be as the sun, when he goeth forth in his might." extracted by jo. thorburn, pr. clk. addenda. in addition to what is said (from page to preceding, respecting the establishment of popery in canada), the presbytery deeply lament, that, in the present edition of their testimony, they are furnished with fresh matter to animadvert upon the continued tendency of the british administration in favor of the religion of antichrist. not long after the civil establishment of popery in canada, new privileges, civil and religious, were bestowed upon the professors of that religion at home, both in england and ireland, by which catholics have received toleration, under the sanction of law, openly to profess and practice their idolatry, to open seminaries of learning for the public instruction of youth in their own religion, and to purchase and transfer estates to their popish relations, in direct opposition to the established laws of the land, framed by our protestant ancestors, under the sense of felt necessity, whereby catholics were laid under disabilities, as to the enjoyment of those privileges, which they saw to be inconsistent with the peace of the state and safety of the protestant religion, on account of the barbarous massacres committed by catholics upon protestants, and the numerous hostile attempts made to overturn, by violence, the protestant religion within these lands, as proceeding from the sanguinary spirit of popery. the modern plea set up in favor of those privileges being conferred upon popery, that the catholics of this day have candidly renounced the whole of their old principles which they held, as inimical to a protestant country, never can be admitted, while they still retain the most dangerous of all their principles, viz., implicit faith in the doctrines of supreme councils, and the dispensing authority of the pope. against this sinful indulgence granted to popery, the presbytery testified at the time, in a separate piece, entitled, a testimony and warning against the blasphemies and idolatries of popery, &c., to which they still refer the reader. an attempt also was made to extend a similar indulgence to catholics in scotland, but which was happily frustrated through the zealous exertions of the people, who, pleading the established laws of the land, boldly reclaimed against the measure, which produced the desired effect of compelling the government to desist. but alas! no sooner, was the popular zeal cooled, than government sowed tares by enlarging the privileges of catholics with regard to civil property. the deplorable fact now is, that popery, basking in the sunshine of legislative power, advanced to the legal possession of new privileges, and shielded by a formal toleration in the neighboring kingdoms, may be considered as enjoying the actual protection of government in scotland. in ireland, privileges of a still more exalted nature are bestowed upon popery, while the catholic is so far enfranchised, that, in conjunction with the protestant, he may give his voice for members to serve in the legislature of the country. what greatly adds to the evil is, the lamentable alteration of public opinion, so lately displayed against the measures of government in former indulgences bestowed upon the catholic interest; but which has now changed into an entire approbation thereof, both by the great body of the people and the minority in the two houses of parliament; and the only complaint against government on that score is, that, stopping short of meeting just claims of catholics, they have not ingrafted them into all the privileges of british subjects, and for ever done away the odious distinction between protestant and catholic, as to privilege. when we open our eyes to the measures of the present day, we behold still more abominations. the government so far from remembering whence they are fallen, repenting and doing their first works, have started again in the cause of antichrist, by leaguing themselves in a military expedition with a group of popish despots on the continent, who have long given their power to the beast; of this expedition one object evidently appears to be the re-establishment and support of popery in france, where under the administration of the omnipotent, and avenging holy providence of god, in the pouring out of the vials of his wrath upon the beast, that false religion has received a sore and bleeding wound, and where the people, long crushed under the tyranny of a despotic throne, and usurpation of an imposing priesthood, have risen to extricate themselves from the accumulated oppression, and by their astonishing efforts have shaken off the papal yoke, by renouncing their accustomed allegiance to the head of the antichristian states at rome, have withdrawn their wonted supplies from his treasures, and completely overthrown the temporal power of his religion in their own country, which had for many ages kept them in fetters. if any doubt should be entertained with regard to the support afforded to the sinking cause of popery in france by this expedition, the declaration published by the brother of the late king of france, stiling himself louis xviii, at the head of the emigrants in arms, exhibits the fact in the clearest point of view, while he plainly and unequivocally says, in that declaration, that their designs are the erection of the throne and altar, by which are meant the civil government and the catholic religion, as they existed in france prior to the revolution. britain, not satisfied with sending forth numerous hosts to the field abroad, and lavishing her treasures to supply the exhausted finances of the coalesced powers, has opened her arms at home to receive flying emigrants, caressed by her, as if they had been sufferers in the cause of genuine christianity. by the voice of episcopal dignitaries the popish clergy have been extolled, as men of the most eminent piety, while places have been furnished by government, to accommodate them in their mass service; and a branch of the bloody house of bourbon, whom divine vengeance has reduced to the abject state of a wandering exile, is admitted among us, with all marks of honor, and, with his train, provided for, as if he were a zealous supporter of the protestant cause, seeking an asylum from the rage of papal persecution in this reformed land. it cannot escape the notice of the attentive observer, how closely the crown of britain has become allied to this false religion, in consequence of the conquest of the island of corsica, and the accession of the crown of that island to the crown of britain. according to the new constitution of corsica, the king of great britain, as represented by his viceroy, makes an essential branch of the parliament, all the acts whereof must be assented to by him, in order, to give them the force of law. now, it is to be remarked, that in this constitution popery is expressly declared to be the only established religion in the island; it is therefore agreed to be divided into districts, to be filled up with ministers of the catholic religion, endowed with legal maintenance. so the king of britain, as wearing the corsican crown, engages to unite this constitutional establishment of the catholic religion, the king of great britain, as the king of corsica, gives his firm assent. moreover, to provide for the more extensive propagation of popery in corsica, the legislature stipulate to consult with the see of rome; here, also, he engages to join the wisdom of his counsels to those of the pope, for the express purpose of giving a wider spread to popery. if the prophet jehu accused jehoshaphat, though a good prince, when he was returning from a military expedition with ahab, king of israel, in such cutting language; chron. xix, , _shouldst thou help the ungodly, and love them that hate the lord? therefore, is wrath upon thee from the lord_: in what words shall we pronounce upon this conduct of britain, in mixing with her politics and wars, active measures to raise again the falling dagon of popery from the threshold, and to help forward the interests of a religion which the lord has solemnly declared he will destroy with the judgments of his hand and the brightness of his coming. besides the iniquity of the thing itself, in giving direct aid to this religion; our guilt derives great aggravations from a view of the present dispensations of providence in visibly sending down terrible judgments (no matter through what rough hands) upon that anti-christian power, that has long, sat upon many waters; and the loud voice of jehovah is uttering, on the awful crisis of its downfall, to all the fearers of his name to escape a share in its judgments, by flying away from all communion with its evils; rev. xviii, , _come out of her, my people, that ye be not partakers of her sins, and that ye receive not of her plagues._ but, blind to his avenging hand, and deaf to this summons, great britain, once without, is now again returning into a most unlawful communion to support this adjudged power, by which she constitutes herself a partner in its sins, and thereby exposes herself to a portion of its plagues. in vain will it be urged as a plea of justification, that the authors of the revolution in france, having overturned the constitution of their own country, and spread desolation through the wide extent of it, menaced other nations, and us also; and that, therefore, britain, acting on the first principle of nature's law, self-preservation, joined the allied powers for her own defense. though the presbytery are by no means to be understood as giving their suffrage for the lawfulness and justice of the war on our side; yet, for the sake of argument, allowing the plea--what then? will this sanctify the measures adopted by britain, in recovering, supporting and propagating the cause of popery, that the conquest of the enemy, and her own safety are the ends ultimately to be gained by them? the christian maxim, that evil is not to be done that good may come, binds as strongly nations as individuals. popery is not a local evil; it is still the mystery of iniquity, as much in france, and in corsica, as it is in great britain; it is everywhere the forbidden fruit, not to be touched. if the security of a protestant country is to be sought for, in dependence upon, or in any state of connection with the co-existence and maintenance of antichrist, we have indeed a feeble pillar to rest upon, for, as sure as god himself has spoken it, the papal kingdoms are the babylon to fall and to rise no more again at all. perhaps, our allies would not be pleased with another mode of conduct; and shall we run the hazard of displeasing the god of all our salvation, to gratify, in sin, the friends of the man of sin? if the crown of corsica cannot be worn, but upon the condition of supporting popery, and joining in councils with the church of rome, to advance her interest there, we are afraid the weight of it, like a millstone, will sink us deep in the gulf of god's wrath. but popery was the former religion of that island, and the people wished no change. if the wretched inhabitants, loving darkness rather than the light, refused to be reclaimed, leave them to themselves, but why should we have fellowship with them in their unfruitful works of darkness. the presbytery would not wish to be understood as if they meant that protestants ought to raise a crusade, in order to exterminate catholics in foreign lands, as catholics have attempted to do against protestants, for the weapons of our warfare, in propagating religion are not carnal. but it certainly is the incumbent duty of all protestant nations to abstain from anything, that has a tendency to uphold and propagate their religion; and as no positive countenance should be given to it, so it is highly proper that catholics should be kept in such a state of restraint, as they may not again have it in their power to repeat those bloody scenes, which popery had acted upon us. with a view to deliver themselves from the guilt of participating in the evil, the presbytery do lift up a judicial testimony against the present anti-christian courses of administration; as, also, against those state fasts, proceeding from an erastian supremacy, which have been appointed to be observed by all persons, in order to engage by prayer the almighty to crown their measures with success. likewise, the presbytery do testify against the national church, particularly her ministers, who from their station ought to act as spiritual watchmen, and give pointed warning of sin and danger on the present occasion; but, who, instead of faithfully discharging this duty, sanction all these measures of government, which cannot fail to produce a hardening effect upon the generation. n.b. since writing the above, by a reverse in the war, britain has lost possession of corsica, but while this does not acquit her of the guilt of her anti-christian administration there, neither will it supersede the necessity of our testimony against it. * * * * * advertisement. the late reformed presbytery, june d, , adopted the following doctrinal and practical declarations. they have therefore a judicial sanction; and having been in overture before the people prior to the action of presbytery, we subjoin them as a suitable supplement. _cincinnati, nov. th_, . judicial declarations. . man is a free agent, unconscious of restraint in his volitions by the execution of the immutable decree of god; and it is not possible for him, in any instance, to avoid fulfilling that decree: yet the law of god--not his decree--is the rule of man's conduct, and the standard of final judgment. . it is the duty of a christian to pray for the church of christ--to inquire diligently into her scriptural character, and to seek covenant blessings in her communion. . if the majority should violate the terms upon which church members were united, it is lawful for the minority to testify against the defection, and to walk by the rule of their former attainments. and when any community assuming to be the church of christ, imposes sinful terms of communion--when the constitution is anti-scriptural--when the administration is corrupt, and attempts at its reformation have proved ineffectual--it is the duty of christians to separate from it: "_come out of her, my people_," &c.; rev. xviii, . . no member of the reformed presbyterian church can, without contracting guilt, in the present state of society, take the oath of allegiance to the government of these united states, hold office, exercise the elective franchise, act as a juror, or hold communion in other ecclesiastical bodies, by what is commonly styled _occasional hearing_; rev. xi, - . terms of ministerial and christian communion in the reformed presbyterian church. * * * * * . an acknowledgment of the old and new testament to be the word of god, and the alone infallible rule of faith and practice. . an acknowledgement that the whole doctrine of the westminster confession of faith, and the catechisms, larger and shorter, are agreeable unto, and founded upon the scriptures. . an acknowledgment that presbyterian church government is of divine right, and unalterable: and that the most perfect model as yet attained, is exhibited in the form of government and directory for worship, as adopted by the church of scotland, in the second reformation. . an acknowledgment that public, social covenanting, is an ordinance of god, and obligatory on churches and nations under the new testament dispensation: and that the national covenant of scotland, and the solemn league and covenant of scotland, england and ireland, were an exemplification of this divine institution: and that these solemn deeds are of perpetual obligation upon the moral person, as continued by representation and accession: and in consistency with this, acknowledging the renovation of these covenants at auchensaugh, , to be agreeable to the word of god. . an approbation of the faithful contendings of the martyrs of jesus, against paganism, popery, prelacy, malignancy, and sectarianism; and against immoral constitutions of civil government--erastian tolerations and persecutions which flow therefrom: the judicial act, declaration and testimony, emitted by the reformed presbytery in north britain, , together with the historical and declaratory supplements adopted by the reformed church in north america, --as containing an noble example for their posterity to follow, in contending for all divine truth, and in testifying against all corruptions embodied in the constitutions of either church or state. . practically adorning the doctrine of god our savior, by walking in all his commandments and ordinances blamelessly. footnotes: [footnote : _christ's rights, &c._ by these are not meant the rights of christ personal. it is not in the power of mortals, or any creature, to acquire and secure these to him; but the rights of christ mystical, that is, of the church, or, of his truth, true worship, and religion, and professors of it as such.] [footnote : besides the above instances of that unholy, tyrannical, and church-robbing policy, which has been exercised by the supreme civil powers in these nations with reference to religion and the worship of god, all of which existed when the presbytery first published their testimony, there has, of late, a very singular instance of the same kind occurred, in the course of administration, which the presbytery cannot forbear to take notice of, but must embrace the present opportunity to declare their sense of, and testify against; and especially, as it is one that carries a more striking evidence than any of the former, of our public national infidelity and licentiousness, and of our being judicially infatuated in our national counsels, and given up of heaven to proceed from evil to worse, in the course of apostasy from the cause and principles of the reformation. we particularly mean the instance of a late bill or act, which has been agreed upon by both houses of parliament, and which also, june, , was sanctioned with the royal assent, entitled "an act for making more effectual provision for the government of the province of quebec in north america." by which act, not only is french despotism, or arbitrary power, settled as the form of civil government, but, which is still worse, popery, the _religion of antichrist_, with all its idolatries and blasphemies, has such security and establishment granted it, as to be taken immediately under the legal protection of the supreme civil authority of these nations in that vast and extensive region of _canada_, lately added to the british dominions in north america--a province so large and fertile, that it is said to be capable of containing, if fully peopled, not less than thirty millions of souls. this infamous and injurious bill, before it passed into a law, was publicly reprobated and declaimed against by sundry members of both houses. it has been petitioned and remonstrated against by the most respectable civil body corporated in britain, or its dominions, the city of london; by all the provinces of north america south of quebec; and even by the inhabitants of the city of quebec itself. it has been, in the most public manner, in open parliament, declared to be "a most cruel, oppressive, and odious measure--a child of inordinate power," &c. all which are sufficient indications how scandalous, offensive, and obnoxious this act was. there was afterward, in the month of may, , a bill brought into the house of lords, in order to effectuate the repeal of the foresaid disgraceful act, when, in the course of public debate, it was represented by those few members of the house who appeared in the opposition, as "one of the most destructive, most despotic, most nefarious acts that ever passed the house of peers." but all in vain--the repeal could not be effected. and moreover, let it be further observed here, that the bench of bishops in the house of peers, who assume the anti-christian title of _spiritual lords_, and pretend to claim a seat in parliament for the care of religion, during the whole course of this contest, instead of appearing for the protestant interest, have, to their lasting infamy, publicly distinguished themselves in opposition to it, by--"standing forth the avowed supporters of popery." the presbytery, therefore, find themselves in duty obliged, in their judicative capacity, principally in behalf of the rights and interests of the great god and of his son jesus christ our redeemer--that is to say, in behalf of the rights of truth, true religion, and righteousness among men, which he ever owns as his, to add, as they hereby do, their public testimony against this nefandous national deed, so manifestly injurious to all these. the presbytery do not, as some others, found their testimony against this extravagant act establishing popery, &c., in canada, solely or simply on its injuriousness to the private interests of men--their bodily lives, goods, or outward privileges; nor do they declare against and condemn it merely because _that_ religion which is sanctioned with this national decree and engagement for its defense is a sanguinary one: "has deluged our island in blood, and dispersed impiety, persecution, and murder, &c., through the world." (see an address from the general congress to the people of great britain.) these are all indeed incontestable proofs that it is not the religion of the divine jesus, but of antichrist. nevertheless, the same have been known to be the staple and constant fruits of prelacy too, which, to the extent of its reach and influence, has as much christian blood wrapped up in its skirts as popery, if not more. nor yet is it merely on account that it is greatly injurious, as indeed it is, and a notorious breach of the public faith to the british protestant settlers in that province. the presbytery's particular objections against this extraordinary measure are of a different quality. they are briefly such as follow: . the _iniquity_ of it against god. it is certainly a deed highly provoking and dishonoring to the god of heaven. for ( ), it is a giving that public protection and countenance to a _lie_, i.e. to idolatry and false worship (and to anti-christian idolatry, the worst of all other), which is only due to the truth of god. it is a devoting and giving our national power to the preservation of the life of the romish beast, after the deadly wound given it by the reformation. and therefore ( ), a most wretched prostitution of the ordinance of civil power, sacred by its divine institution, to be _a terror_ and restraint _to evil doers, and a praise to them that do well_, rom. xiii,--to the quite contrary purposes. what right have open idolaters and blasphemers to be protected and supported by any ordinance of god in the public acts of their idolatry? and how awful is it to think ( ), that it is a setting ourselves openly to fight against god, in a national engagement to support and defend what god has declared and testified to us in his word, he will have destroyed; and wherein he expressly forbids giving the least countenance to idolatry. and shall we thus harden ourselves against god and prosper? ( ), as this last instance of our profane national policy is a still more open discovery of our incorrigibleness in our apostasy, so it is also the most striking of all the former of that erastianism and spiritual supremacy exercised by the civil powers in these lands over the church and kingdom of christ. herein we have an open and avowed justification of that anti-scriptural right and power claimed by them to settle and establish whatever mode of religion they please, or is most agreeable to the inclinations of the people, or which best answers their worldly political purposes, although it should be the religion of satan in place of that of christ. this has been the great leading principle all along since the revolution, but never more openly discovered than in this instance. upon all which it may appear how sinful and provoking to the divine majesty this act must be. . the _folly and shamefulness_ of it as to ourselves. how disgraceful and dishonorable is this public act in favor of popery, even to the nation itself, and its representatives, who me the authors of it. how palpably inconsistent is it with our national character and profession as protestant, and with our national establishments, civil and ecclesiastical (both which are professedly built upon reformation from popery), to come to take that idolatrous religion under our national protection, and become _defenders_ of the _anti-christian_ faith; nay, were it competent for the presbytery as a spiritual court, and spiritual watchmen, to view this act in a civil light, they might show at large, that it is a violation of the fundamental national constitutions of the kingdom, and reaches a blow to the credit of the legal security granted to the protestant religion at home. we need not here mention how contrary this act is to the fundamental laws and constitutions of the kingdom of scotland, which are now set aside. but it is contrary to, and a manifest violation of the revolution and british constitution itself; contrary to the claim of right, yea, to the oath solemnly sworn by every english and british sovereign upon their accession to the throne, as settled by an act of the english parliament in the first year of william iii. by which they are obliged to "profess, and to the utmost of their power maintain, in all their dominions, the laws of god, the true profession of the gospel, and the true reformed religion established by law." but these things the presbytery leave to such whom it may more, properly concern. let it, however, be observed that the presbytery are not here to be interpreted as approving of the abovesaid oath, as it designedly obliges to the maintenance of the abjured english hierarchy and popish ceremonies, which might better be called _a true reformed lie_, than the true reformed religion. nevertheless, this being the british coronation oath, it clearly determines that all legal establishments behoove to be protestant, and that without a violation of said oath, no other religion can be taken under protection of law but what is called protestant religion only. the presbytery conclude the whole of this additional remark with observing, that as in the former instances of the exercise of this erastian power above mentioned, the present church of scotland never gave evidence of her fidelity to christ, so far as to testify against them; so their assembly has, in a like supine, senseless manner, conducted themselves with reference to this last and most alarming instance. notwithstanding all that has been remonstrated against it, and in favor of the reformed religion, they have remained mute and silent, which indeed evidences them not to be truly deserving of the character of _venerable_ and _reverend_, which they assume to themselves, but rather that of an association; or, in the words of the weeping prophet, _an assembly of treacherous men_: jer. ix, .] [footnote : see pages , , preceding.] [footnote : mr. _andrew clarkson_ originally belonged to the community of old dissenters under the pastoral inspection of the rev. mr. _john mcmillan_ senior; was educated and lived in communion with them, till upwards of the age of thirty years; during which time he wrote and published a book, entitled, _plain reasons, &c._, setting forth the grounds why presbyterian dissenters refused to hold communion with the revolution, church and state; but, having no prospect of obtaining license and ordination among them, in regard they had then no ordained minister belonging to them but old mr. _mcmillan_ alone, it appeared that, from a passionate desire after these privileges, he left his old friends, and made his application to the associate presbytery, who treated him as above narrated.] [footnote : mr. _john cameron_, then a probationer and clerk to their presbytery.] [footnote : these people, referred to above, very unjustly designate themselves such _who adhere to the testimony for the kingly prerogative of christ_. they did at first, before their agreement with the presbytery, and ever since their elopement, do still profess to appear for what they call _an active testimony_, conform to the rude draft of a paper commonly known by the name of the _queensferry paper_ or _covenant_ (see _cloud of witnesses_, appendix, page ). after their _activity_ had carried them the length of avouching the most inconsistent anti-predestinarian, arminian schemes of universal redemption, and not only to a total separation from the presbytery, and rejection of their judicial authority, but even to an open denial of the protestative mission of the ministers therein, and of all others; the most part of them were, in god's holy and righteous justice, left to receive and submit to the pretended authority and ministrations of _william dunnet_, a deceiver, destitute of all mission and authority, whom they were afterward obliged to abandon in , they published a pamphlet entitled, _a short abstract of their principles and designs_. in this they cunningly evade the acknowledgment of our confession of faith and catechisms, decline to own the doctrine of the holy trinity in _unity_, and do professedly adopt and avow the hypothesis of the famous modern socinian, dr. _taylor, of norwich_, anent the person of christ. according to which he is no more than "a glorious being, truly created by god before the world." this pre-existent creature they call a _superangelic_ spirit; which spirit, coming in time to be united to a human body, makes according to them, the person of christ. a person neither truly god nor truly man, but a sort of being different from both. the absurdity and blasphemy of this hypothesis needs no elucidation. thus they idolatrously worship _another_ god than the scripture reveals, and blasphemously substitute and trust in _another_ savior than the gospel offers unto sinners. in the same pamphlet they declare and publish their resolution to take some of their number under formal trials, whom, upon being approved, they might appoint and send forth to preach the gospel and administer the ordinances of it. and all which they have accordingly done, to the great dishonor of god, reproach of religion, and the profession of it. and now, from the above principles and practices, the reader may justly conclude how unworthily these christians (if they may be called such) profess to stand up for the royal prerogatives of christ. what an arrogant and presumptuous invasion upon, and usurpation of, the powers and prerogatives of this glorious king, for any mortal to assume "to appoint and call men," not to the _work_ (which yet is all that the church of christ, according to the will of god, and her privileges from christ her head, ever claimed), but to the very _power_ and _office_ of the holy ministry, "and to _install_ them in it." besides, that their doctrine as to christ's person, which denies his divine nature and sonship, saps the very foundations of _that_ and all his other offices. we would, therefore, yet beseech them, by the mercies of god, "to repent them of all their wickedness, and to pray god, if perhaps the thoughts of their heart may be forgiven them."] [footnote : it has been complained by some, that the sense of both the members of this particular paragraph is obscure, and not so intelligible as it should be to many readers; but this complaint seems rather to arise from the want of proper attention and consideration, than from any other cause. as to the first branch of the sentence, among--"such actions and things as are necessary, and in themselves just and lawful by a moral obligation"--may be reckoned the payment of county tolls on highways and bridges, for the benefit of an easy and commodious passage--keeping watch in cities which have no settled or regular guard, to prevent public damage by fire or otherwise. in like manner, the payment of custom in public markets or fairs, or of town dues, all of which, being intended for the benefit of public corporations, are given or paid as the price of liberty and privilege of trade and commerce. and to this may be added, such necessary instances of _self-defense_ as a person may be obliged to, when maliciously and villanously attacked in his character or goods, by persons perhaps designedly taking advantage of his christian temper, or profession. or when perhaps a person may be maliciously charged with, and prosecuted for crimes not only peculiarly dishonorable to religion, but even capital, as has been the case with some individuals. in all such cases, self-defense at law becomes necessary before the ordinary courts and judges of any nation, or place of the world whatever, when such defenses are admitted without the formal and explicit acknowledgment of the lawfulness of unjust or usurped authority (when such happens to be in place, as in the instance of paul's appeal to caesar, acts xxv), or acting any otherwise contrary to justice and charity. and with regard to the other branch of the sentence where it is observed--"that a difference ought to made between those things that cannot be had, nor yet the value and equivalent of them, unless the person actually give it," &c.: this is sufficiently explained in a paragraph, page , near the foot. prayers for god's blessing on any government--enlisting and bearing arms in their service--accepting offices and places of power from them--swearing oaths of fidelity to them, &c.--are such things as can by no means be got, nor yet the equivalent of them, unless the party actually consents and grants them. these, therefore, and, such like, are the only instances of action which, the presbytery judge, do, in their own nature, contain and express a proper and explicit acknowledgment of the lawfulness of that authority which they immediately respect.] http://www.archive.org/details/danteessaytowhic chur.) [transcriber's note: spelling and punctuation have been retained as they appear in the original, but obvious printer errors have been corrected without note. printer errors in italian passages from _the divine comedy_ have been corrected using the italian-english princeton university press edition (trans. charles s. singleton, ). a table of contents has been added for the reader's convenience. the original contains a separate contents of de monarchia at the end of de monarchia.] dante and de monarchia. [illustration] dante. _an essay._ by r. w. church, m.a., d.c.l. dean of st. paul's, and honorary fellow of oriel college, oxford. _to which is added_ a translation of de monarchia. by f. j. church. _london:_ macmillan and co. . charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. contents notice dante de monarchia contents of de monarchia publisher's catalogue notice. the following essay first appeared in the "christian remembrancer" of january, , and it was reprinted in a volume of "essays and reviews," published in . it was written before the appearance in germany and england of the abundant recent literature on the subject. with the exception of a few trifling corrections, it is republished without change. by the desire of mr. macmillan, a translation of the _de monarchia_ is subjoined. i am indebted for it to my son, mr. f.j. church, late scholar of new college. it is made from the text of witte's second edition of the _de monarchia_, . the _de monarchia_ has been more than once translated into italian and german, in earlier or later times. but i do not know that any english translation has yet appeared. it is analysed in the fifteenth chapter of mr. bryce's "holy roman empire." witte, with much probability, i think, places the composition of the work in the first part of dante's life, before his exile in , while the pretensions and arguments of boniface viii. ( - ) were being discussed by guelf and ghibelline partisans, but before they were formally embodied in the famous bull _unam sanctam_, . the character of the composition, for the most part, formal, general, and scholastic, sanguine in tone and with little personal allusion, is in strong contrast with the passionate and despairing language of resentment and disappointment which marks his later writings. as an example of the political speculation of the time, it should be compared with the "_de regimine principum_," ascribed to thomas aquinas. the whole subject of the mediæval idea of the empire is admirably discussed in mr. bryce's book referred to above. r.w.c. st. paul's, _november_, . dante.[ ] [jan. .] [footnote : _dante's divine comedy, the inferno; a literal prose translation, with the text of the original._ by j.a. carlyle, m.d., london: . i have never quite forgiven myself for not having said more of the unpretending but honest and most useful volume which stood at the head of this essay when it first appeared as an article. it was placed there, according to what was then a custom of article writers, as a peg to hang remarks upon which might or might not be criticisms of the particular book so noticed. it did not offer itself specially to my use, and my attention was busy with my own work. but this was no excuse for availing myself of a good book, and not giving it the notice which it deserved. to an english student beginning dante, and wishing to study him in a scholarly manner, it is really more useful than a verse translation can be; and i have always greatly regretted that the plan of translating the whole work was dropped for want of the appreciation which the first instalment ought to have had. ( .)] the _divina commedia_ is one of the landmarks of history. more than a magnificent poem, more than the beginning of a language and the opening of a national literature, more than the inspirer of art, and the glory of a great people, it is one of those rare and solemn monuments of the mind's power, which measure and test what it can reach to, which rise up ineffaceably and for ever as time goes on, marking out its advance by grander divisions than its centuries, and adopted as epochs by the consent of all who come after. it stands with the _iliad_ and shakspere's plays, with the writings of aristotle and plato, with the _novum organon_ and the _principia_, with justinian's _code_, with the parthenon and s. peter's. it is the first christian poem; and it opens european literature, as the _iliad_ did that of greece and rome. and, like the _iliad_, it has never become out of date; it accompanies in undiminished freshness the literature which it began. we approach the history of such works, in which genius seems to have pushed its achievements to a new limit, with a kind of awe. the beginnings of all things, their bursting out from nothing, and gradual evolution into substance and shape, cast on the mind a solemn influence. they come too near the fount of being to be followed up without our feeling the shadows which surround it. we cannot but fear, cannot but feel ourselves cut off from this visible and familiar world--as we enter into the cloud. and as with the processes of nature, so it is with those offsprings of man's mind, by which he has added permanently one more great feature to the world, and created a new power which is to act on mankind to the end. the mystery of the inventive and creative faculty, the subtle and incalculable combinations by which it was led to its work, and carried through it, are out of the reach of investigating thought. often the idea recurs of the precariousness of the result; by how little the world might have lost one of its ornaments--by one sharp pang, or one chance meeting, or any other among the countless accidents among which man runs his course. and then the solemn recollection supervenes, that powers were formed, and life preserved, and circumstances arranged, and actions controlled, that thus it should be: and the work which man has brooded over, and at last created, is the foster-child too of that "wisdom which reaches from end to end, strongly and sweetly disposing all things." it does not abate these feelings, that we can follow in some cases and to a certain extent, the progress of a work. indeed, the sight of the particular accidents among which it was developed--which belong perhaps to a heterogeneous and widely discordant order of things, which are out of proportion and out of harmony with it, which do not explain it, which have, as it may seem to us, no natural right to be connected with it, to bear on its character, or contribute to its accomplishment, to which we feel, as it were, ashamed to owe what we can least spare, yet on which its forming mind and purpose were dependent, and with which they had to conspire--affects the imagination even more than cases where we see nothing. we are tempted less to musing and wonder by the _iliad_, a work without a history, cut off from its past, the sole relic and vestige of its age, unexplained in its origin and perfection, than by the _divina commedia_, destined for the highest ends and most universal sympathy, yet the reflection of a personal history, and issuing seemingly from its chance incidents. the _divina commedia_ is singular among the great works with which it ranks, for its strong stamp of personal character and history. in general we associate little more than the name--not the life--of a great poet with his works; personal interest belongs more usually to greatness in its active than its creative forms. but the whole idea and purpose of the _commedia_, as well as its filling up and colouring, are determined by dante's peculiar history. the loftiest, perhaps, in its aim and flight of all poems, it is also the most individual; the writer's own life is chronicled in it, as well as the issues and upshot of all things. it is at once the mirror to all time of the sins and perfections of men, of the judgments and grace of god, and the record, often the only one, of the transient names, and local factions, and obscure ambitions, and forgotten crimes, of the poet's own day; and in that awful company to which he leads us, in the most unearthly of his scenes, we never lose sight of himself. and when this peculiarity sends us to history, it seems as if the poem which was to hold such a place in christian literature hung upon and grew out of chance events, rather than the deliberate design of its author. history indeed here, as generally, is but a feeble exponent of the course of growth in a great mind and great ideas. it shows us early a bent and purpose--the man conscious of power and intending to use it--and then the accidents among which he worked: but how that current of purpose threaded its way among them, how it was thrown back, deflected, deepened, by them, we cannot learn from history. it presents but a broken and mysterious picture. a boy of quick and enthusiastic temper grows up into youth in a dream of love. the lady of his mystic passion dies early. he dreams of her still, not as a wonder of earth, but as a saint in paradise, and relieves his heart in an autobiography, a strange and perplexing work of fiction--quaint and subtle enough for a metaphysical conceit; but, on the other hand, with far too much of genuine and deep feeling. it is a first essay; he closes it abruptly as if dissatisfied with his work, but with the resolution of raising at a future day a worthy monument to the memory of her whom he has lost. it is the promise and purpose of a great work. but a prosaic change seems to come over this half-ideal character. the lover becomes the student--the student of the th century--struggling painfully against difficulties, eager and hot after knowledge, wasting eyesight and stinting sleep, subtle, inquisitive, active-minded and sanguine, but omnivorous, overflowing with dialectical forms, loose in premiss and ostentatiously rigid in syllogism, fettered by the refinements of half-awakened taste, and the mannerisms of the provençals. boethius and cicero, and the mass of mixed learning within his reach, are accepted as the consolation of his human griefs: he is filled with the passion of universal knowledge, and the desire to communicate it. philosophy has become the lady of his soul--to write allegorical poems in her honour, and to comment on them with all the apparatus of his learning in prose, his mode of celebrating her. further, he marries; it is said, not happily. the antiquaries, too, have disturbed romance by discovering that beatrice also was married some years before her death. he appears, as time goes on, as a burgher of florence, the father of a family, a politician, an envoy, a magistrate, a partisan, taking his full share in the quarrels of the day. at length we see him, at once an exile, and the poet of the _commedia_. beatrice reappears--shadowy, melting at times into symbol and figure--but far too living and real, addressed with too intense and natural feeling to be the mere personification of anything. the lady of the philosophical canzoni has vanished. the student's dream has been broken, as the boy's had been; and the earnestness of the man, enlightened by sorrow, overleaping the student's formalities and abstractions, reverted in sympathy to the earnestness of the boy, and brooded once more on that saint in paradise, whose presence and memory had once been so soothing, and who now seemed a real link between him and that stable country, "where the angels are in peace." round her image, the reflection of purity, and truth, and forbearing love, was grouped that confused scene of trouble and effort, of failure and success, which the poet saw round him; round her image it arranged itself in awful order--and that image, not a metaphysical abstraction, but the living memory, freshened by sorrow, and seen through the softening and hallowing vista of years, of beatrice portinari--no figment of imagination, but god's creature and servant. a childish love, dissipated by study and business, and revived in memory by heavy sorrow--a boyish resolution, made in a moment of feeling, interrupted, though it would be hazardous to say in dante's case, laid aside, for apparently more manly studies, gave the idea and suggested the form of the "sacred poem of earth and heaven." and the occasion of this startling unfolding of the poetic gift, of this passage of a soft and dreamy boy, into the keenest, boldest, sternest of poets, the free and mighty leader of european song, was, what is not ordinarily held to be a source of poetical inspiration,--the political life. the boy had sensibility, high aspirations, and a versatile and passionate nature; the student added to this energy, various learning, gifts of language, and noble ideas on the capacities and ends of man. but it was the factions of florence which made dante a great poet. but for them, he might have been a modern critic and essayist born before his time, and have held a high place among the writers of fugitive verses; in italy, a graceful but trifling and idle tribe, often casting a deep and beautiful thought into a mould of expressive diction, but oftener toying with a foolish and glittering conceit, and whose languid genius was exhausted by a sonnet. he might have thrown into the shade the guidos and cinos of his day, to be eclipsed by petrarch. but he learned in the bitter feuds of italy not to trifle; they opened to his view, and he had an eye to see, the true springs and abysses of this mortal life--motives and passions stronger than lovers' sentiments, evils beyond the consolations of boethius and cicero; and from that fiery trial which without searing his heart, annealed his strength and purpose, he drew that great gift and power, by which he stands pre-eminent even among his high compeers, the gift of being real. and the idea of the _commedia_ took shape, and expanded into its endless forms of terror and beauty, not under the roof-tree of the literary citizen, but when the exile had been driven out to the highways of the world, to study nature on the sea or by the river or on the mountain track, and to study men in the courts of verona and ravenna, and in the schools of bologna and paris--perhaps of oxford. the connexion of these feuds with dante's poem has given to the middle age history of italy an interest of which it is not undeserving in itself, full as it is of curious exhibitions of character and contrivance, but to which politically it cannot lay claim, amid the social phenomena, so far grander in scale and purpose and more felicitous in issue, of the other western nations. it is remarkable for keeping up an antique phase, which, in spite of modern arrangements, it has not yet lost. it is a history of cities. in ancient history all that is most memorable and instructive gathers round cities; civilisation and empire were concentrated within walls; and it baffled the ancient mind to conceive how power should be possessed and wielded, by numbers larger than might be collected in a single market-place. the roman empire indeed aimed at being one in its administration and law; but it was not a nation, nor were its provinces nations. yet everywhere but in italy, it prepared them for becoming nations. and while everywhere else parts were uniting and union was becoming organisation--and neither geographical remoteness, nor unwieldiness of numbers, nor local interests and differences, were untractable obstacles to that spirit of fusion which was at once the ambition of the few and the instinct of the many; and cities, even where most powerful, had become the centres of the attracting and joining forces, knots in the political network--while this was going on more or less happily throughout the rest of europe, in italy the ancient classic idea lingered in its simplicity, its narrowness and jealousy, wherever there was any political activity. the history of southern italy indeed is mainly a foreign one, the history of modern rome merges in that of the papacy; but northern italy has a history of its own, and that is a history of separate and independent cities--points of reciprocal and indestructible repulsion, and within, theatres of action where the blind tendencies and traditions of classes and parties weighed little on the freedom of individual character, and citizens could watch and measure and study one another with the minuteness of private life. two cities were the centres of ancient history in its most interesting time. and two cities of modern italy represent, with entirely undesigned but curiously exact coincidence, the parts of athens and rome. venice, superficially so unlike, is yet in many of its accidental features, and still more in its spirit, the counterpart of rome, in its obscure and mixed origin, in its steady growth, in its quick sense of order and early settlement of its polity, in its grand and serious public spirit, in its subordination of the individual to the family, and the family to the state, in its combination of remote dominion with the liberty of a solitary and sovereign city. and though the associations and the scale of the two were so different--though rome had its hills and its legions, and venice its lagunes and galleys--the long empire of venice, the heir of carthage and predecessor of england on the seas, the great aristocratic republic of years, is the only empire that has yet matched rome in length and steadiness of tenure. brennus and hannibal were not resisted with greater constancy than doria and louis xii.; and that great aristocracy, long so proud, so high-spirited, so intelligent, so practical, who combined the enterprise and wealth of merchants, the self-devotion of soldiers and gravity of senators, with the uniformity and obedience of a religious order, may compare without shame its giustiniani, and zenos, and morosini, with roman fabii and claudii. and rome could not be more contrasted with athens than venice with italian and contemporary florence--stability with fitfulness, independence impregnable and secure, with a short-lived and troubled liberty, empire meditated and achieved, with a course of barren intrigues and quarrels. florence, gay, capricious, turbulent, the city of party, the head and busy patroness of democracy in the cities round her--florence, where popular government was inaugurated with its utmost exclusiveness and most pompous ceremonial; waging her little summer wars against ghibelline tyrants, revolted democracies, and her own exiles; and further, so rich in intellectual gifts, in variety of individual character, in poets, artists, wits, historians--florence in its brilliant days recalled the image of ancient athens, and did not depart from its prototype in the beauty of its natural site, in its noble public buildings, in the size and nature of its territory. and the course of its history is similar and the result of similar causes--a traditional spirit of freedom, with its accesses of fitful energy, its periods of grand display and moments of glorious achievement, but producing nothing politically great or durable, and sinking at length into a resigned servitude. it had its peisistratidæ more successful than those of athens; it had, too, its harmodius and aristogeiton; it had its great orator of liberty, as potent and as unfortunate as the antagonist of philip. and finally, like athens, it became content with the remembrance of its former glory, with being the fashionable and acknowledged seat of refinement and taste, with being a favoured dependency on the modern heir of the cæsars. but if to venice belongs a grander public history, florentine names and works, like athenian, will be living among men, when the brenta shall have been left unchecked to turn the lagunes into ploughland, and when rome herself may no longer be the seat of the popes. the year of dante's birth was a memorable one in the annals of florence, of italy, and of christendom.[ ] the year was the year of that great victory of benevento, where charles of anjou overthrew manfred of naples, and destroyed at one blow the power of the house of swabia. from that time till the time of charles v., the emperors had no footing in italy. further, that victory set up the french influence in italy, which, transient in itself, produced such strange and momentous consequences, by the intimate connexion to which it led between the french kings and the popes. the protection of france was dearly bought by the captivity of avignon, the great western schism, and the consequent secularisation of the papacy, which lasted on uninterrupted till the council of trent. nearly three centuries of degradation and scandal, unrelieved by one heroic effort among the successors of gregory vii., connected the reformation with the triumph of charles and the pope at benevento. finally, by it the guelf party was restored for good in florence; the guelf democracy, which had been trampled down by the uberti and manfred's chivalry at monteaperti, once more raised its head; and fortune, which had long wavered between the rival lilies, finally turned against the white one, till the name of ghibelline became a proscribed one in florence, as jacobite was once in scotland, or papist in england, or royalist in france. [footnote : may, . (pelli.) benevento: feb. , / . the florentine year began march .] the names of guelf and ghibelline were the inheritance of a contest which, in its original meaning, had been long over. the old struggle between the priesthood and the empire was still kept up traditionally, but its ideas and interests were changed: they were still great and important ones, but not those of gregory vii. it had passed over from the mixed region of the spiritual and temporal into the purely political. the cause of the popes was that of the independence of italy--the freedom and alliance of the great cities of the north, and the dependence of the centre and south on the roman see. to keep the emperor out of italy--to create a barrier of powerful cities against him south of the alps--to form behind themselves a compact territory, rich, removed from the first burst of invasion, and maintaining a strong body of interested feudatories, had now become the great object of the popes. it may have been a wise policy on their part, for the maintenance of their spiritual influence, to attempt to connect their own independence with the political freedom of the italian communities; but certain it is that the ideas and the characters which gave a religious interest and grandeur to the earlier part of the contest, appear but sparingly, if at all, in its later forms. the two parties did not care to keep in view principles which their chiefs had lost sight of. the emperor and the pope were both real powers, able to protect and assist; and they divided between them those who required protection and assistance. geographical position, the rivalry of neighbourhood, family tradition, private feuds, and above all private interest, were the main causes which assigned cities, families, and individuals to the ghibelline or guelf party. one party called themselves the emperor's liegemen, and their watchword was authority and law; the other side were the liegemen of holy church, and their cry was liberty; and the distinction as a broad one is true. but a democracy would become ghibelline, without scruple, if its neighbour town was guelf; and among the guelf liegemen of the church and liberty the pride of blood and love of power were not a whit inferior to that of their opponents. yet, though the original principle of the contest was lost, and the political distinctions of parties were often interfered with by interest or accident, it is not impossible to trace in the two factions differences of temper, of moral and political inclinations, which though visible only on a large scale and in the mass, were quite sufficient to give meaning and reality to their mutual opposition. these differences had come down, greatly altered of course, from the quarrel in which the parties took their rise. the ghibellines as a body reflected the worldliness, the licence, the irreligion, the reckless selfishness, the daring insolence, and at the same time the gaiety and pomp, the princely magnificence and generosity and largeness of mind of the house of swabia; they were the men of the court and camp, imperious and haughty from ancient lineage or the imperial cause, yet not wanting in the frankness and courtesy of nobility; careless of public opinion and public rights, but not dead to the grandeur of public objects and public services. among them were found, or to them inclined, all who, whether from a base or a lofty ambition, desired to place their will above law[ ]--the lord of the feudal castle, the robber-knight of the apennine pass, the magnificent but terrible tyrants of the cities, the pride and shame of italy, the visconti and scaligers. that renowned ghibelline chief, whom the poet finds in the fiery sepulchres of the unbelievers with the great ghibelline emperor and the princely ghibelline cardinal--the disdainful and bitter but lofty spirit of farinata degli uberti, the conqueror, and then singly and at his own risk, the saviour of his country which had wronged him, represents the good as well as the bad side of his party. [footnote : "maghinardo da susinana (_il demonio_, purg. ) fu uno grande e savio tiranno ... gran castellano, e con molti fedeli: savio fu di guerra e bene avventuroso in più battaglie, e al suo tempo fece gran cose. ghibellino era di sua nazione e in sue opere; ma co' fiorentini era guelfo e nimico di tutti i loro nimici, o guelfi o ghibellini che fossono."--g. vill. vii. . a ghibelline by birth and disposition; yet, from circumstances, a close ally of the guelfs of florence.] the guelfs, on the other hand, were the party of the middle classes; they rose out of and held to the people; they were strong by their compactness, their organisation in cities, their commercial relations and interests, their command of money. further, they were professedly the party of strictness and religion, a profession which fettered them as little as their opponents were fettered by the respect they claimed for imperial law. but though by personal unscrupulousness and selfishness, and in instances of public vengeance, they sinned as deeply as the ghibellines, they stood far more committed as a party to a public meaning and purpose--to improvement in law and the condition of the poor, to a protest against the insolence of the strong, to the encouragement of industry. the genuine guelf spirit was austere, frugal, independent, earnest, religious, fond of its home and church, and of those celebrations which bound together church and home; but withal very proud, very intolerant; in its higher form intolerant of evil, but intolerant always to whatever displeased it. yet there was a grave and noble manliness about it which long kept it alive in florence. it had not as yet turned itself against the practical corruptions of the church, which was its ally; but this also it was to do, when the popes had forsaken the cause of liberty, and leagued themselves with the brilliant tyranny of the medici. then savonarola invoked, and not in vain, the stern old guelf spirit of resistance, of domestic purity and severity, and of domestic religion, against unbelief and licentiousness even in the church; and the guelf "_piagnoni_" presented, in a more simple and generous shape, a resemblance to our own puritans, as the ghibellines often recall the coarser and worse features of our own cavaliers. in florence, these distinctions had become mere nominal ones, confined to the great families who carried on their private feuds under the old party names, when frederick ii. once more gave them their meaning. "although the accursed guelf and ghibelline factions lasted amongst the nobles of florence, and they often waged war among themselves out of private grudges, and took sides for the said factions, and held one with another, and those who called themselves guelfs desired the establishment of the pope and holy church, and those who called themselves ghibellines favoured the emperor and his adherents, yet withal the people and commonalty of florence maintained itself in unity, to the well-being and honour and establishment of the commonwealth."[ ] but the appearance on the scene of an emperor of such talent and bold designs revived the languid contest, and gave to party a cause, and to individual passions and ambition an impulse and pretext. the division between guelf and ghibelline again became serious, involved all florence, armed house against house, and neighbourhood against neighbourhood, issued in merciless and vindictive warfare, grew on into a hopeless and deadly breach, and finally lost to florence, without remedy or repair, half her noble houses and the love of the greatest of her sons. the old badge of their common country became to the two factions the sign of their implacable hatred; the white lily of florence, borne by the ghibellines, was turned to red by the guelfs, and the flower of two colours marked a civil strife as cruel and as fatal, if on a smaller scale, as that of the english roses.[ ] [footnote : g. villani, vi. .] [footnote : g. villani, vi. , ; _parad._ .] it was waged with the peculiar characteristics of italian civil war. there the city itself was the scene of battle. a thirteenth century city in italy bore on its face the evidence that it was built and arranged for such emergencies. its crowded and narrow streets were a collection of rival castles, whose tall towers, rising thick and close over its roofs, or hanging perilously over its close courts, attested the emulous pride and the insecurity of italian civic life. there, within a separate precinct, flanked and faced by jealous friends or deadly enemies, were clustered together the dwellings of the various members of each great house--their common home and the monument of their magnificence and pride, and capable of being, as was so often necessary, their common refuge. in these fortresses of the leading families, scattered about the city, were the various points of onset and recovery in civic battle; in the streets barricades were raised, mangonels and crossbows were plied from the towers, a series of separate combats raged through the city, till chance at length connected the attacks of one side, or some panic paralysed the resistance of the other, or a conflagration interposed itself between the combatants, burning out at once guelf and ghibelline, and laying half florence in ashes. each party had their turn of victory; each, when vanquished, went into exile, and carried on the war outside the walls; each had their opportunity of remodelling the orders and framework of government, and each did so relentlessly at the cost of their opponents. they excluded classes, they proscribed families, they confiscated property, they sacked and burned warehouses, they levelled the palaces, and outraged the pride of their antagonists. to destroy was not enough, without adding to it the keenest and newest refinement of insult. two buildings in florence were peculiarly dear--among their "_cari luoghi_"--to the popular feeling and the guelf party: the baptistery of st. john, "il mio bel s. giovanni," "to which all the good people resorted on sundays,"[ ] where they had all received baptism, where they had been married, where families were solemnly reconciled; and a tall and beautiful tower close by it, called the "torre del guardamorto," where the bodies of the "good people," who of old were all buried at s. giovanni, rested on their way to the grave. the victorious ghibellines, when they levelled the guelf towers, overthrew this one, and endeavoured to make it crush in its fall the sacred church, "which," says the old chronicler, "was prevented by a miracle." the guelfs, when their day came, built the walls of florence with the stones of ghibelline palaces.[ ] one great family stands out pre-eminent in this fierce conflict as the victim and monument of party war. the head of the ghibellines was the proud and powerful house of the uberti, who shared with another great ghibelline family, the pazzi, the valley of the upper arno. they lighted up the war in the emperor's cause. they supported its weight and guided it. in time of peace they were foremost and unrestrained in defiance of law and in scorn of the people--in war, the people's fiercest and most active enemies. heavy sufferers, in their property, and by the sword and axe, yet untamed and incorrigible, they led the van in that battle, so long remembered to their cost by the guelfs, the battle of monteaperti ( )-- lo strazio, e 'l gran scempio che fece l'arbia colorata in rossa.--_inf._ . [footnote : g. villani, vi. , iv. ; _inf._ ; _parad._ .] [footnote : g. villani, vi. , .] that the head of their house, farinata, saved florence from the vengeance of his meaner associates, was not enough to atone for the unpardonable wrongs which they had done to the guelfs and the democracy. when the red lily of the guelfs finally supplanted the white one as the arms of florence, and the badge of guelph triumph, they were proscribed for ever, like the peisistratidæ and the tarquins. in every amnesty their names were excepted. the site on which their houses had stood was never again to be built upon, and remains the great square of florence; the architect of the palace of the people was obliged to sacrifice its symmetry, and to place it awry, that its walls might not encroach on the accursed ground.[ ] "they had been," says a writer, contemporary with dante, speaking of the time when he also became an exile; "they had been for more than forty years outlaws from their country, nor ever found mercy nor pity, remaining always abroad in great state, nor ever abased their honour, seeing that they ever abode with kings and lords, and to great things applied themselves."[ ] they were loved as they were hated. when under the protection of a cardinal one of them visited the city, and the chequered blue and gold blazon of their house was, after an interval of half a century, again seen in the streets of florence; "many ancient ghibelline men and women pressed to kiss the arms,"[ ] and even the common people did him honour. [footnote : g. villani, vi. , viii. ; vasari, _arnolfo di lapo_, i. (fir. ).] [footnote : _dino compagni_, p. .] [footnote : _dino compagni_, p. .] but the fortunes of florentine factions depended on other causes than merely the address or vigour of their leaders. from the year of dante's birth and charles's victory, florence, as far as we shall have to do with it, became irrevocably guelf. not that the whole commonalty of florence formally called itself guelf, or that the guelf party was co-extensive with it; but the city was controlled by guelf councils, devoted to the objects of the great guelf party, and received in return the support of that party in curbing the pride of the nobles, and maintaining democratic forms. the guelf party of florence, though it was the life and soul of the republic, and irresistible in its disposal of the influence and arms of florence, and though it embraced a large number of the most powerful families, is always spoken of as something distinct from, and external to, the governing powers, and the whole body of the people. it was a body with a separate and self-constituted existence;--in the state and allied to it, but an independent element, holding on to a large and comprehensive union without the state. its organisation in florence is one of the most curious among the many curious combinations which meet us in italian history. after the final expulsion of the ghibellines, the guelf party took form as an institution, with definite powers, and a local existence. it appears with as distinct a shape as the jacobin club or the orange lodges, side by side with the government. it was a corporate body with a common seal, common property, not only in funds but lands--officers, archives, a common palace,[ ] a great council, a secret committee, and last of all, a public accuser of the ghibellines; of the confiscated ghibelline estates one-third went to the republic, another third to compensate individual guelfs, the rest was assigned to the guelf party.[ ] a pope, (clement iv., - ) had granted them his own arms[ ]; and their device, a red eagle clutching a serpent, may be yet seen, with the red lily, and the party-coloured banner of the commonalty, on the battlements of the palazzo vecchio. [footnote : giotto painted in it: vasari, _vit. di giotto_, p. .] [footnote : g. villani, vii. , .] [footnote : _ibid._ vii. .] but the expulsion of the ghibellines did but little to restore peace. the great guelf families, as old as many of the ghibellines, had as little reverence as they for law or civic rights. below these, the acknowledged nobility of florence, were the leading families of the "people," houses created by successful industry or commerce, and pushing up into that privileged order, which, however ignored and even discredited by the laws, was fully recognised by feeling and opinion in the most democratic times of the republic. rivalries and feuds, street broils and conspiracies, high-handed insolence from the great men, rough vengeance from the populace, still continued to vex jealous and changeful florence. the popes sought in vain to keep in order their quarrelsome liegemen; to reconcile guelf with guelf, and even guelf with ghibelline. embassies went and came, to ask for mediation and to proffer it; to apply the healing paternal hand; to present an obsequious and ostentatious submission. cardinal legates came in state, and were received with reverential pomp; they formed private committees, and held assemblies, and made marriages; they harangued in honeyed words, and gained the largest promises; on one occasion the great square was turned into a vast theatre, and on this stage one hundred and fifty dissidents on each side came forward, and in the presence and with the benediction of the cardinal kissed each other on the mouth.[ ] and if persuasion failed, the pope's representative hesitated not to excommunicate and interdict the faithful but obdurate city. but whether excommunicated or blessed, florence could not be at peace; however wise and subtle had been the peace-maker's arrangements, his departing _cortège_ was hardly out of sight of the city before they were blown to the winds. not more successful were the efforts of the sensible and moderate citizens who sighed for tranquillity within its walls. dino compagni's interesting though not very orderly narrative describes with great frankness, and with the perplexity of a simple-hearted man puzzled by the continual triumph of clever wickedness, the variety and the fruitlessness of the expedients devised by him and other good citizens against the resolute and incorrigible selfishness of the great guelfs--ever, when checked in one form, breaking out in another; proof against all persuasion, all benefits; not to be bound by law, or compact, or oath; eluding or turning to its own account the deepest and sagest contrivances of constitutional wisdom. [footnote : g. villani, vii. .] a great battle won against ghibelline arezzo[ ] raised the renown and the military spirit of the guelf party, for the fame of the battle was very great; the hosts contained the choicest chivalry of either side, armed and appointed with emulous splendour. the fighting was hard, there was brilliant and conspicuous gallantry, and the victory was complete. it sealed guelf ascendancy. the ghibelline warrior-bishop of arezzo fell, with three of the uberti, and other ghibelline chiefs. it was a day of trial. "many that day who had been thought of great prowess were found dastards, and many who had never been spoken of were held in high esteem." it repaired the honour of florence, and the citizens showed their feeling of its importance by mixing up the marvellous with its story. its tidings came to florence--so runs the tale in villani, who declares what he "heard and saw" himself--at the very hour in which it was won. the priors of the republic were resting in their palace during the noonday heat; suddenly the chamber door was shaken, and the cry heard: "rise up! the aretini are defeated." the door was opened, but there was no one; their servants had seen no one enter the palace, and no one came from the army till the hour of vespers, on a long summer's day. in this battle the guelf leaders had won great glory. the hero of the day was the proudest, handsomest, craftiest, most winning, most ambitious, most unscrupulous guelf noble in florence--one of a family who inherited the spirit and recklessness of the proscribed uberti, and did not refuse the popular epithet of "_malefami_"--corso donati. he did not come back from the field of campaldino, where he had won the battle by disobeying orders with any increased disposition to yield to rivals, or court the populace, or respect other men's rights. those rivals, too--and they also had fought gallantly in the post of honour at campaldino--were such as he hated from his soul--rivals whom he despised, and who yet were too strong for him. his blood was ancient, they were upstarts; he was a soldier, they were traders; he was poor, they the richest men in florence. they had come to live close to the donati, they had bought the palace of an old ghibelline family, they had enlarged, adorned, and fortified it, and kept great state there. they had crossed him in marriages, bargains, inheritances. they had won popularity, honour, influence; and yet they were but men of business, while he had a part in all the political movements of the day. he was the friend and intimate of lords and noblemen, with great connexions and famous through all italy; they were the favourites of the common people for their kindness and good nature; they even showed consideration for ghibellines. he was an accomplished man of the world, keen and subtle, "full of malicious thoughts, mischievous and crafty;" they were inexperienced in intrigue, and had the reputation of being clumsy and stupid. he was the most graceful and engaging of courtiers; they were not even gentlemen. lastly, in the debates of that excitable republic he was the most eloquent speaker, and they were tongue-tied.[ ] [footnote : _campaldino_, in . g. vill. vii. ; _dino comp._ p. .] [footnote : _dino comp._ pp. , , , .] "there was a family," writes dino compagni, "who called themselves the cerchi, men of low estate, but good merchants and very rich; and they dressed richly, and maintained many servants and horses, and made a brave show; and some of them bought the palace of the conti guidi, which was near the houses of the pazzi and donati, who were more ancient of blood but not so rich; therefore, seeing the cerchi rise to great dignity, and that they had walled and enlarged the palace, and kept great state, the donati began to have a great hatred against them." villani gives the same account of the feud.[ ] "it began in that quarter of scandal the sesta of porta s. piero, between the cerchi and donati, on the one side through jealousy, on the other through churlish rudeness. of the house of the cerchi was head messer vieri de' cerchi, and he and those of his house were people of great business, and powerful, and of great relationships, and most wealthy traders, so that their company was one of the greatest in the world; men they were of soft life, and who meant no harm; boorish and ill-mannered, like people who had come in a short time to great state and power. the donati were gentlemen and warriors, and of no excessive wealth.... they were neighbours in florence and in the country, and by the conversation of their jealousy with the peevish boorishness of the others, arose the proud scorn that there was between them." the glories of campaldino were not as oil on these troubled waters. the conquerors flouted each other all the more fiercely in the streets on their return, and ill-treated the lower people with less scruple. no gathering for festive or serious purposes could be held without tempting strife. a marriage, a funeral, a ball, a gay procession of cavaliers and ladies--any meeting where one stood while another sat, where horse or man might jostle another, where pride might be nettled or temper shown, was in danger of ending in blood. the lesser quarrels meanwhile ranged themselves under the greater ones; and these, especially that between the cerchi and donati, took more and more a political character. the cerchi inclined more and more to the trading classes and the lower people; they threw themselves on their popularity, and began to hold aloof from the meetings of the "parte guelfa," while this organised body became an instrument in the hands of their opponents, a club of the nobles. corso donati, besides mischief of a more substantial kind, turned his ridicule on their solemn dulness and awkward speech, and his friends the jesters, one scampolino in particular, carried his gibes and nicknames all over florence. the cerchi received all in sullen and clogged indifference. they were satisfied with repelling attacks, and nursed their hatred.[ ] [footnote : g. vill. viii. .] [footnote : _dino compagni_, pp. , , .] thus the city was divided, and the attempts to check the factions only exasperated them. it was in vain that, when at times the government and the populace lost patience, severe measures were taken. it was in vain that the reformer, gian della bella, carried for a time his harsh "orders of justice" against the nobles, and invested popular vengeance with the solemnity of law and with the pomp and ceremony of a public act--that when a noble had been convicted of killing a citizen, the great officer, "standard-bearer," as he was called, "of justice," issued forth in state and procession, with the banner of justice borne before him, with all his train, and at the head of the armed citizens, to the house of the criminal, and razed it to the ground. an eyewitness describes the effect of such chastisement:--"i, dino compagni, being gonfalonier of justice in , went to their houses, and to those of their relations, and these i caused to be pulled down according to the laws. this beginning in the case of the other gonfaloniers came to an evil effect; because, if they demolished the houses according to the laws, the people said that they were cruel; and if they did not demolish them completely, they said that they were cowards; and many distorted justice for fear of the people." gian della bella was overthrown with few regrets even on the part of the people. equally vain was the attempt to keep the peace by separating the leaders of the disturbances. they were banished by a kind of ostracism; they departed in ostentatious meekness, corso donato to plot at rome, vieri de' cerchi to return immediately to florence. anarchy had got too fast a hold on the city, and it required a stronger hand than that of the pope, or the signory of the republic, to keep it down. yet florence prospered. every year it grew richer, more intellectual, more refined, more beautiful, more gay. with its anarchy there was no stagnation. torn and divided as it was, its energy did not slacken, its busy and creative spirit was not deadened, its hopefulness not abated. the factions, fierce and personal as they were, did not hinder that interest in political ideas, that active and subtle study of the questions of civil government, that passion and ingenuity displayed in political contrivance, which now pervaded northern italy, everywhere marvellously patient and hopeful, though far from being equally successful. in venice at the close of the thirteenth century, that polity was finally settled and consolidated, by which she was great as long as cities could be imperial, and which even in its decay survived the monarchy of louis xiv. and existed within the memory of living men. in florence, the constructive spirit of law and order only resisted, but never triumphed. yet it was at this time resolute and sanguine, ready with experiment and change, and not yet dispirited by continual failure. political interest, however, and party contests were not sufficient to absorb and employ the citizens of florence. their genial and versatile spirit, so keen, so inventive, so elastic, which made them such hot and impetuous partisans, kept them from being only this. the time was one of growth; new knowledge, new powers, new tastes were opening to men--new pursuits attracted them. there was commerce, there was the school philosophy, there was the science of nature, there was ancient learning, there was the civil law, there were the arts, there was poetry, all rude as yet, and unformed, but full of hope--the living parents of mightier offspring. frederick ii. had once more opened aristotle to the latin world; he had given an impulse to the study of the great monuments of roman legislation which was responded to through italy; himself a poet, his example and his splendid court had made poetry fashionable. in the end of the thirteenth century a great stride was made at florence. while her great poet was growing up to manhood, as rapid a change went on in her streets, her social customs, the wealth of her citizens, their ideas of magnificence and beauty, their appreciation of literature. it was the age of growing commerce and travel; franciscan missionaries had reached china, and settled there;[ ] in , marco polo returned to venice, the first successful explorer of the east. the merchants of florence lagged not; their field of operation was italy and the west; they had their correspondents in london, paris, and bruges; they were the bankers of popes and kings.[ ] and their city shows to this day the wealth and magnificence of the last years of the thirteenth century. the ancient buildings, consecrated in the memory of the florentine people, were repaired, enlarged, adorned with marble and bronze--or san michele, the badia, the baptistery; and new buildings rose on a grander scale. in was begun the mausoleum of the great florentine dead, the church of s. croce. in the same year, a few months later, arnolfo laid the deep foundations which were afterwards to bear up brunelleschi's dome, and traced the plan of the magnificent cathedral. in he began to raise a town-hall worthy of the republic, and of being the habitation of its magistrates, the frowning mass of the palazzo vecchio. in , the third circle of the walls was commenced, with the benediction of bishops, and the concourse of all the "lords and orders" of florence. and giotto was now beginning to throw cimabue into the shade--giotto, the shepherd's boy, painter, sculptor, architect, and engineer at once, who a few years later was to complete and crown the architectural glories of florence by that masterpiece of grace, his marble campanile. [footnote : see the curious letters of _john de monte corvino_, about his mission in cathay, - , in wadding, vi. .] [footnote : _e.g._ the _mozzi_, of greg. x.; _peruzzi_, of philip le bel; _spini_, of boniface viii.; _cerchi del garbo_, of benedict xi. (g. vill. vii. , viii. , ; _dino comp._ p. ).] fifty years made then all that striking difference in domestic habits, in the materials of dress, in the value of money, which they have usually made in later centuries. the poet of the fourteenth century describes the proudest nobleman of a hundred years before "with his leathern girdle and clasp of bone;" and in one of the most beautiful of all poetic celebrations of the good old time, draws the domestic life of ancient florence in the household where his ancestor was born: a così riposato, a così bello viver di cittadini, a così fida cittadinanza, a così dolce ostello maria mi diè, chiamata in alte grida.--_par._ c. .[ ] [footnote : florence, confined within that ancient wall, whence still the chimes at noon and evening sound, was sober, modest, and at peace with all. myself have seen bellincion berti pace the street in leathern belt; his lady come forth from her toilet with unpainted face. * * * * oh happy wives! each soon to lay her head in her own tomb; and no one yet compelled to weep deserted in a lonely bed. * * * * to such pure life of beauty and repose-- such faithful citizens--such happy men-- the virgin gave me, when my mother's throes forced her with cries to call on mary's name.--wright.] there high-born dames, he says, still plied the distaff and the loom; still rocked the cradle with the words which their own mothers had used; or working with their maidens, told them old tales of the forefathers of the city, "of the trojans, of fiesole, and of rome." villani still finds this rudeness within forty years of the end of the century, almost within the limits of his own and dante's life; and speaks of that "old first people," _il primo popolo vecchio_, with their coarse food and expenditure, their leather jerkins, and plain close gowns, their small dowries and late marriages, as if they were the first founders of the city, and not a generation which had lasted on into his own.[ ] twenty years later, his story is of the gaiety, the riches, the profuse munificence, the brilliant festivities, the careless and joyous life, which attracted foreigners to florence as the city of pleasure; of companies of a thousand or more, all clad in white robes, under a lord, styled "of love," passing their time in sports and dances; of ladies and knights, "going through the city with trumpets and other instruments, with joy and gladness," and meeting together in banquets evening and morning; entertaining illustrious strangers, and honourably escorting them on horseback in their passage through the city; tempting by their liberality, courtiers, and wits, and minstrels, and jesters, to add to the amusements of florence.[ ] nor were these the boisterous triumphs of unrefined and coarse merriment. how variety of character was drawn out, how its more delicate elements were elicited and tempered, how nicely it was observed, and how finely drawn, let the racy and open-eyed story-tellers of florence testify. [footnote : g. vill. vi. ( ).] [footnote : g. vill. vii. ( ).] not perhaps in these troops of revellers, but amid music and song, and in the pleasant places of social and private life, belonging to the florence of arts and poetry, not to the florence of factions and strife, should we expect to find the friend of the sweet singer, casella, and of the reserved and bold speculator, guido cavalcanti; the mystic poet of the _vita nuova_, so sensitive and delicate, trembling at a gaze or a touch, recording visions, painting angels, composing canzoni and commenting on them; finally devoting himself to the austere consolations of deep study. to superadd to such a character that of a democratic politician of the middle ages, seems an incongruous and harsh combination. yet it was a real one in this instance. the scholar's life is, in our idea of it, far separated from the practical and the political; we have been taught by our experience to disjoin enthusiasm in love, in art, in what is abstract or imaginative, from keen interest and successful interference in the affairs and conflicts of life. the practical man may sometimes be also a _dilettante_; but the dreamer or the thinker, wisely or indolently, keeps out of the rough ways where real passions and characters meet and jostle, or if he ventures, seldom gains honour there. the separation, though a natural one, grows wider as society becomes more vast and manifold, as its ends, functions, and pursuits are disentangled, while they multiply. but in dante's time, and in an italian city, it was not such a strange thing that the most refined and tender interpreter of feeling, the popular poet, whose verses touched all hearts, and were in every mouth, should be also at once the ardent follower of all abstruse and difficult learning, and a prominent character among those who administered the state. in that narrow sphere of action, in that period of dawning powers and circumscribed knowledge, it seemed no unreasonable hope or unwise ambition to attempt the compassing of all science, and to make it subserve and illustrate the praise of active citizenship.[ ] dante, like other literary celebrities of the time, was not less from the custom of the day, than from his own purpose, a public man. he took his place among his fellow-citizens; he went out to war with them; he fought, it is said, among the skirmishers at the great guelf victory of campaldino; to qualify himself for office in the democracy, he enrolled himself in one of the guilds of the people, and was matriculated in the "art" of the apothecaries; he served the state as its agent abroad; he went on important missions to the cities and courts of italy--according to a florentine tradition, which enumerates fourteen distinct embassies, even to hungary and france. in the memorable year of jubilee, , he was one of the priors of the republic. there is no shrinking from fellowship and co-operation and conflict with the keen or bold men of the market-place and council-hall, in that mind of exquisite and, as drawn by itself, exaggerated sensibility. the doings and characters of men, the workings of society, the fortunes of italy, were watched and thought of with as deep an interest as the courses of the stars, and read in the real spectacle of life with as profound emotion as in the miraculous page of virgil; and no scholar ever read virgil with such feeling--no astronomer ever watched the stars with more eager inquisitiveness. the whole man opens to the world around him; all affections and powers, soul and sense, diligently and thoughtfully directed and trained, with free and concurrent and equal energy, with distinct yet harmonious purposes, seek out their respective and appropriate objects, moral, intellectual, natural, spiritual, in that admirable scene and hard field where man is placed to labour and love, to be exercised, proved, and judged. [footnote : _vide_ the opening of the _de monarchia_.] in a fresco in the chapel of the old palace of the podestà[ ] at florence is a portrait of dante, said to be by the hand of his contemporary giotto. it was discovered in under the whitewash, and a tracing made by mr. seymour kirkup has been reproduced in fac-simile by the arundel society. the fresco was afterwards restored or repainted with no happy success. he is represented as he might have been in the year of campaldino ( ). the countenance is youthful yet manly, more manly than it appears in the engravings of the picture; but it only suggests the strong deep features of the well-known traditional face. he is drawn with much of the softness, and melancholy pensive sweetness, and with something also of the quaint stiffness of the _vita nuova_--with his flower and his book. with him is drawn his master, brunetto latini,[ ] and corso donati. we do not know what occasion led giotto thus to associate him with the great "baron." dante was, indeed, closely connected with the donati. the dwelling of his family was near theirs, in the "quarter of scandal," the ward of the porta s. piero. he married a daughter of their house, madonna gemma. none of his friends are commemorated with more affection than the companion of his light and wayward days, remembered not without a shade of anxious sadness, yet with love and hope, corso's brother, forese.[ ] no sweeter spirit sings and smiles in the illumined spheres of paradise, than she whom forese remembers as on earth one, che tra bella e buona non so qual fosse più--[ ] and who, from the depth of her heavenly joy, teaches the poet that in the lowest place among the blessed there can be no envy[ ]--the sister of forese and corso, piccarda. the _commedia_, though it speaks, as if in prophecy, of corso's miserable death, avoids the mention of his name.[ ] its silence is so remarkable as to seem significant. but though history does not group together corso and dante, the picture represents the truth--their fortunes were linked together. they were actors in the same scene--at this distance of time two of the most prominent; though a scene very different from that calm and grave assembly, which giotto's placid pencil has drawn on the old chapel wall. [footnote : the bargello, a prison ( ); a museum ( ). _v._ vasari, p. .] [footnote : he died in . g. vill. viii. .] [footnote : _purgat._ c. .] [footnote : _ibid._ c. . my sister, good and beautiful--which most i know not.--wright.] [footnote : _parad._ c. .] [footnote : _purg._ c. , - .] the outlines of this part of dante's history are so well known that it is not necessary to dwell on them; and more than the outlines we know not. the family quarrels came to a head, issued in parties, and the parties took names; they borrowed them from two rival factions in a neighbouring town, pistoia, whose feud was imported into florence; and the guelfs became divided into the black guelfs who were led by the donati, and the white guelfs who sided with the cerchi.[ ] it still professed to be but a family feud, confined to the great houses; but they were too powerful and florence too small for it not to affect the whole republic. the middle classes and the artisans looked on, and for a time not without satisfaction, at the strife of the great men; but it grew evident that one party must crush the other, and become dominant in florence; and of the two, the cerchi and their white adherents were less formidable to the democracy than the unscrupulous and overbearing donati, with their military renown and lordly tastes; proud not merely of being nobles, but guelf nobles; always loyal champions, once the martyrs, and now the hereditary assertors, of the great guelf cause. the cerchi with less character and less zeal, but rich, liberal, and showy, and with more of rough kindness and vulgar good-nature for the common people, were more popular in guelf florence than the "parte guelfa;" and, of course, the ghibellines wished them well. both the contemporary historians of florence lead us to think that they might have been the governors and guides of the republic--if they had chosen, and had known how; and both, though condemning the two parties equally, seemed to have thought that this would have been the best result for the state. but the accounts of both, though they are very different writers, agree in their scorn of the leaders of the white guelfs. they were upstarts, purse-proud, vain, and coarse-minded; and they dared to aspire to an ambition which they were too dull and too cowardly to pursue, when the game was in their hands. they wished to rule; but when they might, they were afraid. the commons were on their side, the moderate men, the party of law, the lovers of republican government, and for the most part the magistrates; but they shrank from their fortune, "more from cowardice than from goodness, because they exceedingly feared their adversaries."[ ] boniface viii. had no prepossessions in florence, except for energy and an open hand; the side which was most popular he would have accepted and backed; but "he would not lose," he said, "the men for the women." "_io non voglio perdere gli uomini per le femminelle._"[ ] if the black party furnished types for the grosser or fiercer forms of wickedness in the poet's hell, the white party surely were the originals of that picture of stupid and cowardly selfishness, in the miserable crowd who moan and are buffeted in the vestibule of the pit, mingled with the angels who dared neither to rebel nor be faithful, but "_were for themselves_;" and whoever it may be who is singled out in the "setta dei cattivi," for deeper and special scorn--he, che fece per viltà il gran rifiuto--[ ] the idea was derived from the cerchi in florence. [footnote : in . g. villani, viii. , .] [footnote : _dino comp._ p. .] [footnote : _ibid._ p. .] [footnote : _inf._ c. , .] a french prince was sent by the pope to mediate and make peace in florence. the black guelfs and corso donati came with him. the magistrates were overawed and perplexed. the white party were, step by step, amused, entrapped, led blindly into false plots, entangled in the elaborate subtleties, and exposed with all the zest and mockery, of italian intrigue--finally chased out of their houses and from the city, condemned unheard, outlawed, ruined in name and property, by the pope's french mediator. with them fell many citizens who had tried to hold the balance between the two parties: for the leaders of the black guelfs were guilty of no errors of weakness. in two extant lists of the proscribed--condemned by default, for corruption and various crimes, especially for hindering the entrance into florence of charles de valois, to a heavy fine and banishment--then, two months after, for contumacy, to be burned alive if he ever fell into the hands of the republic--appears the name of dante alighieri; and more than this, concerning the history of his expulsion, we know not.[ ] [footnote : pelli, _memorie per servire alla vita di dante._ fir. , pp. , .] of his subsequent life, history tells us little more than the general character. he acted for a time in concert with the expelled party, when they attempted to force their way back to florence; he gave them up at last in scorn and despair: but he never returned to florence. and he found no new home for the rest of his days. nineteen years, from his exile to his death, he was a wanderer. the character is stamped on his writings. history, tradition, documents, all scanty or dim, do but disclose him to us at different points, appearing here and there, we are not told how or why. one old record, discovered by antiquarian industry, shows him in a village church near florence, planning, with the cerchi and the white party, an attack on the black guelfs. in another, he appears in the val di magra, making peace between its small potentates: in another, as the inhabitant of a certain street in padua. the traditions of some remote spots about italy still connect his name with a ruined tower, a mountain glen, a cell in a convent. in the recollections of the following generation, his solemn and melancholy form mingled reluctantly, and for awhile, in the brilliant court of the scaligers; and scared the women, as a visitant of the other world, as he passed by their doors in the streets of verona. rumour brings him to the west--with probability to paris, more doubtfully to oxford. but little certain can be made out about the places where he was an honoured and admired, but it may be, not always a welcome guest, till we find him sheltered, cherished, and then laid at last to rest, by the lords of ravenna. there he still rests, in a small, solitary chapel, built, not by a florentine, but a venetian. florence, "that mother of little love," asked for his bones; but rightly asked in vain.[ ] his place of repose is better in those remote and forsaken streets "by the shore of the adrian sea," hard by the last relics of the roman empire--the mausoleum of the children of theodosius, and the mosaics of justinian--than among the assembled dead of s. croce, or amid the magnificence of s. maria del fiore.[ ] [footnote : see dr. barlow's _sixth centenary festivals of dante_. ( .)] [footnote : these notices have been carefully collected by _pelli_, who seems to have left little to glean (_memorie_, &c. ed. da, ). a few additions have been made by _gerini_ (_mem. stor. della lunigiana_), and _troya_ (_veltro allegorico_), but they are not of much importance. _arrivabene_ (_secolo di dante_) has brought together a mass of illustration which is very useful, and would be more so, if he were more careful, and quoted his authorities. _balbo_ arranges these materials with sense and good feeling; though, as a writer, he is below his subject. a few traits and anecdotes may be found in the novelists--as sacchetti.] the _commedia_, at the first glance, shows the traces of its author's life. it is the work of a wanderer. the very form in which it is cast is that of a journey, difficult, toilsome, perilous, and full of change. it is more than a working out of that touching phraseology of the middle ages, in which "the way" was the technical theological expression for this mortal life; and "_viator_" meant man in his state of trial, as "_comprehensor_" meant man made perfect, having attained to his heavenly country. it is more than merely this. the writer's mind is full of the recollections and definite images of his various journeys. the permanent scenery of the _inferno_ and _purgatorio_, very variously and distinctly marked, is that of travel. the descent down the sides of the pit, and the ascent of the sacred mountain, show one familiar with such scenes--one who had climbed painfully in perilous passes, and grown dizzy on the brink of narrow ledges over sea or torrent. it is scenery from the gorges of the alps and apennines, or the terraces and precipices of the riviera. local reminiscences abound:--the severed rocks of the adige valley--the waterfall of s. benedetto--the crags of pietra-pana and s. leo, which overlook the plains of lucca and ravenna--the "fair river" that flows among the poplars between chiaveri and sestri--the marble quarries of carrara--the "rough and desert ways between lerici and turbia," and those towery cliffs, going sheer into the deep sea at noli, which travellers on the corniche road some thirty years ago may yet remember with fear. mountain experience furnished that picture of the traveller caught in an alpine mist and gradually climbing above it; seeing the vapours grow thin, and the sun's orb appear faintly through them; and issuing at last into sunshine on the mountain top, while the light of sunset was lost already on the shores below: ai raggi, morti già nei bassi lidi:--_purg._ . or that image of the cold dull shadow over the torrent, beneath the alpine fir-- un'ombra smorta qual sotto foglie verdi e rami nigri sovra suoi freddi rivi, l'alpe porta:--_purg._ .[ ] or of the large snow-flakes falling without wind, among the mountains-- d'un cader lento piovean di fuoco dilatate falde come di neve in alpe senza vento.--_inferno_, .[ ] [footnote : a death-like shade-- like that beneath black boughs and foliage green o'er the cool streams in alpine glens display'd.--wright.] [footnote : o'er all the sandy desert falling slow, were shower'd dilated flakes of fire, like snow on alpine summits, when the wind is low.--ibid.] he delights in a local name and local image--the boiling pitch, and the clang of the shipwrights in the arsenal of venice--the sepulchral fields of arles and pola--the hot-spring of viterbo--the hooded monks of cologne--the dykes of flanders and padua--the maremma, with its rough brushwood, its wild boars, its snakes, and fevers. he had listened to the south wind among the pine tops, in the forest by the sea, at ravenna. he had watched under the carisenda tower at bologna, and seen the driving clouds "give away their motion" to it, and make it seem to be falling; and had noticed how at rome the october sun sets between corsica and sardinia.[ ] his images of the sea are numerous and definite--the ship backing out of the tier in harbour, the diver plunging after the fouled anchor, the mast rising, the ship going fast before the wind, the water closing in its wake, the arched backs of the porpoises the forerunners of a gale, the admiral watching everything from poop to prow, the oars stopping altogether at the sound of the whistle, the swelling sails becoming slack when the mast snaps and falls.[ ] nowhere could we find so many of the most characteristic and strange sensations of the traveller touched with such truth. everyone knows the lines which speak of the voyager's sinking of heart on the first evening at sea, and of the longings wakened in the traveller at the beginning of his journey by the distant evening bell[ ]; the traveller's _morning_ feelings are not less delicately noted--the strangeness on first waking in the open air with the sun high; morning thoughts, as day by day he wakes nearer home; the morning sight of the sea-beach quivering in the early light; the tarrying and lingering, before setting out in the morning[ ]-- noi eravam lunghesso 'l mare ancora, come gente che pensa al suo cammino, che va col cuore, e col corpo dimora.[ ] [footnote : _inf._ , .] [footnote : _ibid._ , , ; _purg._ ; _par._ ; _inf._ ; _purg._ ; _par._ ; _inf._ .] [footnote : _purg._ . "era già l'ora," &c.] [footnote : _purg._ , , , .] [footnote : by ocean's shore we still prolonged our stay like men, who, thinking of a journey near, advance in thought, while yet their limbs delay.--wright.] he has recorded equally the anxiety, the curiosity, the suspicion with which, in those times, stranger met and eyed stranger on the road; and a still more characteristic trait is to be found in those lines where he describes the pilgrim gazing around in the church of his vow, and thinking how he shall tell of it: e quasi peregrin che si ricrea nel tempio del suo voto riguardando, e spera già ridir com'ello stea:--_parad._ .[ ] or again, in that description, so simple and touching, of his thoughts while waiting to see the relic for which he left his home: quale è colui che forse di croazia viene a veder la veronica nostra, che per l'antica fama non si sazia, ma dice nel pensier, fin che si mostra; signor mio gesù cristo, dio verace, or fu sì fatta la sembianza vostra?--_parad._ .[ ] [footnote : and like a pilgrim who with fond delight surveys the temple he has vow'd to see, and hopes one day its wonders to recite.--ibid.] [footnote : like one who, from croatia come to see our veronica (image long adored), gazes, as though content he ne'er could be-- thus musing, while the relic is pourtray'd-- "jesus my god, my saviour and my lord, o were thy features these i see display'd?"--wright. quella imagine benedetta la quale gesù cristo lasciò a noi per esempio della sua bellissima figura.--_vita nuova_, p. . he speaks of the pilgrims going to rome to see it; compare also the sonnet to the pilgrims, p. : deh peregrini, che pensosi andate forse di cosa, che non v'è presente, venite voi di sì lontana gente, com'alla vista voi ne dimostrate.] of these years then of disappointment and exile the _divina commedia_ was the labour and fruit. a story in boccaccio's life of dante, told with some detail, implies indeed that it was begun, and some progress made in it, while dante was yet in florence--begun in latin, and he quotes three lines of it--continued afterwards in italian. this is not impossible; indeed the germ and presage of it may be traced in the _vita nuova_. the idealised saint is there, in all the grace of her pure and noble humbleness, the guide and safeguard of the poet's soul. she is already in glory with mary the queen of angels. she already beholds the face of the everblessed. and the _envoye_ of the _vita nuova_ is the promise of the _commedia_. "after this sonnet," (in which he describes how beyond the widest sphere of heaven his love had beheld a lady receiving honour, and dazzling by her glory the unaccustomed spirit)--"after this sonnet there appeared to me a marvellous vision, in which i saw things which made me resolve not to speak more of this blessed one, until such time as i should be able to indite more worthily of her. and to attain to this, i study to the utmost of my power, as she truly knows. so that, if it shall be the pleasure of him, by whom all things live, that my life continue for some years, i hope to say of her that which never hath been said of any woman. and afterwards, may it please him, who is the lord of kindness, that my soul may go to behold the glory of her lady, that is, of that blessed beatrice, who gloriously gazes on the countenance of him, _qui est per omnia secula benedictus_."[ ] it would be wantonly violating probability and the unity of a great life, to suppose that this purpose, though transformed, was ever forgotten or laid aside. the poet knew not indeed what he was promising, what he was pledging himself to--through what years of toil and anguish he would have to seek the light and the power he had asked; in what form his high venture should be realised. but the _commedia_ is the work of no light resolve, and we need not be surprised at finding the resolve and the purpose at the outset of the poet's life. we may freely accept the key supplied by the words of the _vita nuova_. the spell of boyhood is never broken, through the ups and downs of life. his course of thought advances, alters, deepens, but is continuous. from youth to age, from the first glimpse to the perfect work, the same idea abides with him, "even from the flower till the grape was ripe." it may assume various changes--an image of beauty, a figure of philosophy, a voice from the other world, a type of heavenly wisdom and joy--but still it holds, in self-imposed and willing thraldom, that creative and versatile and tenacious spirit. it was the dream and hope of too deep and strong a mind to fade and come to naught--to be other than the seed of the achievement and crown of life. but with all faith in the star and the freedom of genius, we may doubt whether the prosperous citizen would have done that which was done by the man without a home. beatrice's glory might have been sung in grand though barbarous latin to the literati of the fourteenth century; or a poem of new beauty might have fixed the language and opened the literature of modern italy; but it could hardly have been the _commedia_. that belongs, in its date and its greatness, to the time when sorrow had become the poet's daily portion, and the condition of his life. [footnote : _vita nuova_, last paragraph. see _purg._ ; _parad._ , , - .] the _commedia_ is a novel and startling apparition in literature. probably it has been felt by some, who have approached it with the reverence due to a work of such renown, that the world has been generous in placing it so high. it seems so abnormal, so lawless, so reckless of all ordinary proprieties and canons of feeling, taste, and composition. it is rough and abrupt; obscure in phrase and allusion, doubly obscure in purpose. it is a medley of all subjects usually kept distinct: scandal of the day and transcendental science, politics and confessions, coarse satire and angelic joy, private wrongs, with the mysteries of the faith, local names and habitations of earth, with visions of hell and heaven. it is hard to keep up with the ever-changing current of feeling, to pass as the poet passes, without effort or scruple, from tenderness to ridicule, from hope to bitter scorn or querulous complaint, from high-raised devotion to the calmness of prosaic subtleties or grotesque detail. each separate element and vein of thought has its precedent, but not their amalgamation. many had written visions of the unseen world, but they had not blended with them their personal fortunes. s. augustine had taught the soul to contemplate its own history, and had traced its progress from darkness to light;[ ] but he had not interwoven with it the history of italy, and the consummation of all earthly destinies. satire was no new thing; juvenal had given it a moral, some of the provençal poets a political turn; s. jerome had kindled into it fiercely and bitterly even while expounding the prophets; but here it streams forth in all its violence, within the precincts of the eternal world, and alternates with the hymns of the blessed. lucretius had drawn forth the poetry of nature and its laws; virgil and livy had unfolded the poetry of the roman empire; s. augustine, the still grander poetry of the history of the city of god; but none had yet ventured to weave into one the three wonderful threads. and yet the scope of the italian poet, vast and comprehensive as the issue of all things, universal as the government which directs nature and intelligence, forbids him not to stoop to the lowest caitiff he has ever despised, the minutest fact in nature that has ever struck his eye, the merest personal association which hangs pleasantly in his memory. writing for all time, he scruples not to mix with all that is august and permanent in history and prophecy, incidents the most transient, and names the most obscure; to waste an immortality of shame or praise on those about whom his own generation were to inquire in vain. scripture history runs into profane; pagan legends teach their lesson side by side with scripture scenes and miracles; heroes and poets of heathenism, separated from their old classic world, have their place in the world of faith, discourse with christians of christian dogmas, and even mingle with the saints; virgil guides the poet through his fear and his penitence to the gates of paradise. [footnote : see _convito_, , .] this feeling of harsh and extravagant incongruity, of causeless and unpardonable darkness, is perhaps the first impression of many readers of the _commedia_. but probably as they read on, there will mingle with this a sense of strange and unusual grandeur, arising not alone from the hardihood of the attempt, and the mystery of the subject, but from the power and the character of the poet. it will strike them that words cut deeper than is their wont; that from that wild uncongenial imagery, thoughts emerge of singular truth and beauty. their dissatisfaction will be chequered, even disturbed--for we can often bring ourselves to sacrifice much for the sake of a clear and consistent view--by the appearance, amid much that repels them, of proofs undeniable and accumulating of genius as mighty as it is strange. their perplexity and disappointment may grow into distinct condemnation, or it may pass into admiration and delight; but no one has ever come to the end of the _commedia_ without feeling that if it has given him a new view and specimen of the wildness and unaccountable waywardness of the human mind, it has also added, as few other books have, to his knowledge of its feelings, its capabilities, and its grasp, and suggested larger and more serious thoughts, for which he may be grateful, concerning that unseen world of which he is even here a member. dante would not have thanked his admirers for becoming apologists. those in whom the sense of imperfection and strangeness overpowers sympathy for grandeur, and enthusiasm for nobleness, and joy in beauty, he certainly would have left to themselves. but neither would he teach any that he was leading them along a smooth and easy road. the _commedia_ will always be a hard and trying book; nor did the writer much care that it should be otherwise. much of this is no doubt to be set down to its age; much of its roughness and extravagance, as well as of its beauty--its allegorical spirit, its frame and scenery. the idea of a visionary voyage through the worlds of pain and bliss is no invention of the poet--it was one of the commonest and most familiar medieval vehicles of censure or warning; and those who love to trace the growth and often strange fortunes of popular ideas, or whose taste leads them to disbelieve in genius, and track the parentage of great inventions to the foolish and obscure, may find abundant materials in the literature of legends.[ ] but his own age--the age which received the _commedia_ with mingled enthusiasm and wonder, and called it the divine, was as much perplexed as we are, though probably rather pleased thereby than offended. that within a century after its composition, in the more famous cities and universities of italy, florence, venice, bologna, and pisa, chairs should have been founded, and illustrious men engaged to lecture on it, is a strange homage to its power, even in that time of quick feeling; but as strange and great a proof of its obscurity. what is dark and forbidding in it was scarcely more clear to the poet's contemporaries. and he, whose last object was amusement, invites no audience but a patient and confiding one. o voi che siete in piccioletta barca, desiderosi di ascoltar, seguiti dietro al mio legno che cantando varca, tornate a riveder li vostri liti: non vi mettete in pelago, chè forse perdendo me rimarreste smarriti. l'acqua ch'io prendo giammai non si corse: minerva spira, e conducemi apollo, e nuove muse mi dimostran l'orse. voi altri pochi, che drizzaste 'l collo per tempo al pan degli angeli, del quale vivesi qui, ma non si vien satollo, metter potete ben per l'alto sale vostro navigio, servando mio solco dinanzi all'acqua che ritorna eguale. que gloriosi che passaro a colco, non s'ammiraron, come voi farete, quando jason vider fatto bifolco.--_parad._ .[ ] [footnote : _vide_ ozanam, _dante_, pp. , _sqq._ ed.] [footnote : o ye who fain would listen to my song, following in little bark full eagerly my venturous ship, that chanting hies along, turn back unto your native shores again; tempt not the deep, lest haply losing me, in unknown paths bewildered ye remain. i am the first this voyage to essay; minerva breathes--apollo is my guide; and new-born muses do the bears display. ye other few, who have look'd up on high for angels' food betimes, e'en here supplied largely, but not enough to satisfy,-- mid the deep ocean ye your course may take, my track pursuing the pure waters through, ere reunites the quickly-closing wake. those glorious ones, who drove of yore their prow to colchos, wonder'd not as ye will do, when they saw jason working at the plough. wright's _dante_.] the character of the _commedia_ belongs much more, in its excellence and its imperfections, to the poet himself and the nature of his work, than to his age. that cannot screen his faults; nor can it arrogate to itself, it must be content to share, his glory. his leading idea and line of thought was much more novel then than it is now, and belongs much more to the modern than the medieval world. the _story of a life_, the poetry of man's journey through the wilderness to his true country, is now in various and very different shapes as hackneyed a form of imagination, as an allegory, an epic, a legend of chivalry were in former times. not, of course, that any time has been without its poetical feelings and ideas on the subject; and never were they deeper and more diversified, more touching and solemn, than in the ages that passed from s. augustine and s. gregory to s. thomas and s. bonaventura. but a philosophical poem, where they were not merely the colouring, but the subject, an _epos_ of the soul, placed for its trial in a fearful and wonderful world, with relations to time and matter, history and nature, good and evil, the beautiful, the intelligible, and the mysterious, sin and grace, the infinite and the eternal--and having in the company and under the influences of other intelligences, to make its choice, to struggle, to succeed or fail, to gain the light, or be lost--this was a new and unattempted theme. it has been often tried since, in faith or doubt, in egotism, in sorrow, in murmuring, in affectation, sometimes in joy--in various forms, in prose and verse, completed or fragmentary, in reality or fiction, in the direct or the shadowed story, in the _pilgrim's progress_, in rousseau's _confessions_, in _wilhelm meister_ and _faust_, in the _excursion_. it is common enough now for the poet, in the faith of human sympathy, and in the sense of the unexhausted vastness of his mysterious subject, to believe that his fellows will not see without interest and profit, glimpses of his own path and fortunes--hear from his lips the disclosure of his chief delights, his warnings, his fears--follow the many-coloured changes, the impressions and workings, of a character, at once the contrast and the counterpart to their own. but it was a new path then; and he needed to be, and was, a bold man, who first opened it--a path never trod without peril, usually with loss or failure. and certainly no great man ever made less secret to himself of his own genius. he is at no pains to rein in or to dissemble his consciousness of power, which he has measured without partiality, and feels sure will not fail him. "fidandomi di me più che di un altro"[ ]--is a reason which he assigns without reserve. we look with the distrust and hesitation of modern days, yet, in spite of ourselves, not without admiration and regret, at such frank hardihood. it was more common once than now. when the world was young, it was more natural and allowable--it was often seemly and noble. men knew not their difficulties as we know them--we, to whom time, which has taught so much wisdom, has brought so many disappointments--we who have seen how often the powerful have fallen short, and the noble gone astray, and the most admirable missed their perfection. it is becoming in us to distrust ourselves--to be shy if we cannot be modest; it is but a respectful tribute to human weakness and our brethren's failures. but there was a time when great men dared to claim their greatness--not in foolish self-complacency, but in unembarrassed and majestic simplicity, in magnanimity and truth, in the consciousness of a serious and noble purpose, and of strength to fulfil it. without passion, without elation as without shrinking, the poet surveys his superiority and his high position, as something external to him; he has no doubts about it, and affects none. he would be a coward, if he shut his eyes to what he could do; as much a trifler in displaying reserve as ostentation. nothing is more striking in the _commedia_ than the serene and unhesitating confidence with which he announces himself the heir and reviver of the poetic power so long lost to the world--the heir and reviver of it in all its fulness. he doubts not of the judgment of posterity. one has arisen who shall throw into the shade all modern reputations, who shall bequeath to christendom the glory of that name of poet, "che più dura e più onora," hitherto the exclusive boast of heathenism, and claim the rare honours of the laurel: sì rade volte, padre, se ne coglie per trionfare o cesare o poeta, (colpa e vergogna dell'umane voglie), che partorir letizia in su la lieta delfica deità dovrìa la fronda peneia quando alcun di sè asseta.--_parad._ .[ ] [footnote : _convito_, , .] [footnote : for now so rarely poet gathers these, or cæsar, winning an immortal praise (shame unto man's degraded energies), that joy should to the delphic god arise when haply any one aspires to gain the high reward of the peneian prize.--wright.] he has but to follow his star to be sure of the glorious port:[ ] he is the master of language: he can give fame to the dead--no task or enterprise appals him, for whom spirits keep watch in heaven, and angels have visited the shades--"tal si partì dal cantar alleluia:"--who is virgil's foster child and familiar friend. virgil bids him lay aside the last vestige of fear. virgil is to "crown him king and priest over himself,"[ ] for a higher venture than heathen poetry had dared; in virgil's company he takes his place without diffidence, and without vain-glory, among the great poets of old--a sister soul.[ ] [footnote : brunetto latini's prophecy, _inf._ .] [footnote : see the grand ending of _purg._ . tratto t'ho qui con ingegno e con arte; lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce: fuor se' dell'erte vie, fuor se' dell'arte. vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce. vede l'erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli che questa terra sol da sè produce. mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno; libero, dritto, sano è tuo arbitrio, e fallo fora non fare a suo senno: perch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio.] [footnote : _purg._ c. .] poichè la voce fu restata e queta, vidi quattro grand'ombre a noi venire: sembianza avean nè trista nè lieta: * * * * così vidi adunar la bella scuola di quel signor dell'altissimo canto che sovra gli altri come aquila vola. da ch'ebber ragionato insieme alquanto volsersi a me con salutevol cenno e 'l mio maestro sorrise di tanto. e più d'onore ancora assai mi fenno: ch'essi mi fecer della loro schiera, sì ch'io fui sesto tra cotanto senno.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : ceased had the voice--when in composed array four mighty shades approaching i survey'd;-- nor joy, nor sorrow did their looks betray. * * * * assembled thus, was offered to my sight the school of him, the prince of poetry, who, eagle-like, o'er others takes his flight. when they together had conversed awhile, they turned to me with salutation bland, which from my master drew a friendly smile: and greater glory still they bade me share, making me join their honourable band-- the sixth united to such genius rare.--wright.] this sustained magnanimity and lofty self-reliance, which never betrays itself, is one of the main elements in the grandeur of the _commedia_. it is an imposing spectacle to see such fearlessness, such freedom, and such success in an untried path, amid unprepared materials and rude instruments, models scanty and only half understood, powers of language still doubtful and suspected, the deepest and strongest thought still confined to unbending forms and the harshest phrase; exact and extensive knowledge, as yet far out of reach; with no help from time, which familiarises all things, and of which, manner, elaboration, judgment, and taste are the gifts and inheritance;--to see the poet, trusting to his eye "which saw everything"[ ] and his searching and creative spirit, venture undauntedly into all regions of thought and feeling, to draw thence a picture of the government of the universe. [footnote : "dante che tutto vedea."--_sacchetti_, nov. .] but such greatness had to endure its price and its counterpoise. dante was alone:--except in his visionary world, solitary and companionless. the blind greek had his throng of listeners; the blind englishman his home and the voices of his daughters; shakspere had his free associates of the stage; goethe, his correspondents, a court, and all germany to applaud. not so dante. the friends of his youth are already in the region of spirits, and meet him there--casella, forese;--guido cavalcanti will soon be with them. in this upper world he thinks and writes as a friendless man--to whom all that he had held dearest was either lost or embittered; he thinks and writes for himself. and so he is his own law; he owns no tribunal of opinion or standard of taste, except among the great dead. he hears them exhort him to "let the world talk on--to stand like a tower unshaken by the winds."[ ] he fears to be "a timid friend to truth," "--to lose life among those who shall call this present time antiquity."[ ] he belongs to no party. he is his own arbiter of the beautiful and the becoming; his own judge over right and injustice, innocence and guilt. he has no followers to secure, no school to humour, no public to satisfy; nothing to guide him, and nothing to consult, nothing to bind him, nothing to fear, out of himself. in full trust in heart and will, in his sense of truth, in his teeming brain, he gives himself free course. if men have idolised the worthless, and canonised the base, he reverses their award without mercy, and without apology; if they have forgotten the just because he was obscure, he remembers him: if "monna berta and ser martino,"[ ] the wimpled and hooded gossips of the day, with their sage company, have settled it to their own satisfaction that providence cannot swerve from their general rules, cannot save where they have doomed, or reject where they have approved--he both fears more and hopes more. deeply reverent to the judgment of the ages past, reverent to the persons whom they have immortalised for good and even for evil, in his own day he cares for no man's person and no man's judgment. and he shrinks not from the auguries and forecastings of his mind about their career and fate. men reasoned rapidly in those days on such subjects, and without much scruple; but not with such deliberate and discriminating sternness. the most popular and honoured names in florence, farinata e 'l tegghiaio, che fur sì degni, jacopo rusticucci, arrigo, e 'l mosca e gli altri, ch'a ben far poser gl'ingegni; have yet the damning brand: no reader of the _inferno_ can have forgotten the shock of that terrible reply to the poet's questionings about their fate: ei son tra le anime più nere.[ ] [footnote : _purg._ .] [footnote : la luce in che rideva il mio tesoro ch'io trovai lì, si fe' prima corrusca, quale a raggio di sole specchio d'oro; indi rispose: coscienza fusca o della propria o dell'altrui vergogna pur sentirà la tua parola brusca; ma nondimen, rimossa ogni menzogna, tutta tua vision fa manifesta, e lascia pur grattar dov'è la rogna: che se la voce tua sarà molesta nel primo gusto, vital nutrimento lascerà poi quando sarà digesta. questo tuo grido farà come vento che le più alte cime più percuote: e ciò non fia d'onor poco argomento. però ti son mostrate, in queste ruote, nel monte, e nella valle dolorosa, pur l'anime che son di fama note. che l'animo di quel ch'ode non posa, nè ferma fede, per esemplo ch'aja la sua radice incognito e nascosa, nè per altro argumento che non paja.--_parad._ .] [footnote : non creda monna berta e ser martino per vedere un furare, altro offerere, vederli dentro al consiglio divino: chè quel può surger, e quel può cadere.--_ibid._ .] [footnote : _inf._ .] if he is partial, it is no vulgar partiality: friendship and old affection do not venture to exempt from its fatal doom the sin of his famous master, brunetto latini;[ ] nobleness and great deeds, a kindred character and common wrongs, are not enough to redeem farinata; and he who could tell her story bowed to the eternal law, and dared not save francesca. if he condemns by a severer rule than that of the world, he absolves with fuller faith in the possibilities of grace. many names of whom history has recorded no good, are marked by him for bliss; yet not without full respect for justice. the penitent of the last hour is saved, but he suffers loss. manfred's soul is rescued; mercy had accepted his tears, and forgiven his great sins; and the excommunication of his enemy did not bar his salvation: per lor maladizion sì non si perde che non possa tornar l'eterno amore mentre che la speranza ha fior del verde.--_purg._ . [footnote : che in la mente m'è fitta, ed or m'accuora, _la cara buona imagine paterna._--_inf._ .] yet his sin, though pardoned, was to keep him for long years from the perfection of heaven.[ ] and with the same independence with which he assigns their fate, he selects his instances--instances which are to be the types of character and its issues. no man ever owned more unreservedly the fascination of greatness, its sway over the imagination and the heart; no one prized more the grand harmony and sense of fitness which there is, when the great man and the great office are joined in one, and reflect each other's greatness. the famous and great of all ages are gathered in the poet's vision; the great names even of fable--geryon and the giants, the minotaur and centaurs, and the heroes of thebes and troy. but not the great and famous only: this is too narrow, too conventional a sphere; it is not real enough. he felt, what the modern world feels so keenly, that wonderful histories are latent in the inconspicuous paths of life, in the fugitive incidents of the hour, among the persons whose faces we have seen. the church had from the first been witness to the deep interest of individual life. the rising taste for novels showed that society at large was beginning to be alive to it. and it is this feeling--that behind the veil there may be grades of greatness but nothing insignificant--that led dante to refuse to restrict himself to the characters of fame. he will associate with them the living men who have stood round him; they are part of the same company with the greatest. that they have interested him, touched him, moved his indignation or pity, struck him as examples of great vicissitude or of a perfect life, have pleased him, loved him--this is enough why they should live in his poem as they have lived to him. he chooses at will; history, if it has been negligent at the time about those whom he thought worthy of renown, must be content with its loss. he tells their story, or touches them with a word like the most familiar names, according as he pleases. the obscure highway robber, the obscure betrayer of his sister's honour--rinier da corneto and rinier pazzo, and caccianimico--are ranked, not according to their obscurity, but according to the greatness of their crimes, with the famous conquerors, and "scourges of god," and seducers of the heroic age, pyrrhus and attila, and the great jason of "royal port, who sheds no tear in his torments."[ ] he earns as high praise from virgil, for his curse on the furious wrath of the old frantic florentine burgher, as if he had cursed the disturber of the world's peace.[ ] and so in the realms of joy, among the faithful accomplishers of the highest trusts, kings and teachers of the nations, founders of orders, sainted empresses, appear those whom, though the world had forgotten or misread them, the poet had enshrined in his familiar thoughts, for their sweetness, their gentle goodness, their nobility of soul; the penitent, the nun, the old crusading ancestor, the pilgrim who had deserted the greatness which he had created, the brave logician, who "syllogised unpalatable truths" in the quartier latin of paris.[ ] [footnote : charles of anjou, his guelf conqueror, is placed above him, in the valley of the kings (_purg._ ), "colui dal maschio naso"--notwithstanding the charges afterwards made against him (_purg._ ).] [footnote : see the magnificent picture, _inf._ .] [footnote : _ibid._ .] [footnote : cunizza, piccarda, cacciaguida, roméo. (_parad._ , , , , .) ----la luce eterna di sigieri che leggendo nel vico degli strami sillogizzò invidiosi veri---- in company with s. thomas aquinas, in the sphere of the sun. ozanam gives a few particulars of this forgotten professor of the "rue du fouarre," pp. - .] there is small resemblance in all this--this arbitrary and imperious tone, this range of ideas, feelings, and images, this unshackled freedom, this harsh reality--to the dreamy gentleness of the _vita nuova_, or even the staid argumentation of the more mature _convito_. the _vita nuova_ is all self-concentration--a brooding, not unpleased, over the varying tides of feeling, which are little influenced by the world without; where every fancy, every sensation, every superstition of the lover is detailed with the most whimsical subtlety. the _commedia_, too, has its tenderness--and that more deep, more natural, more true, than the poet had before adapted to the traditionary formulæ of the "courts of love,"--the eyes of beatrice are as bright, and the "conquering light of her smile;"[ ] they still culminate, but they are not alone, in the poet's heaven. and the professed subject of the _commedia_ is still dante's own story and life; he still makes himself the central point. and steeled as he is by that high and hard experience of which his poem is the projection and type--"ben tetragono ai colpi di ventura"--a stern and brief-spoken man, set on objects, and occupied with a theme, lofty and vast as can occupy man's thoughts, he still lets escape ever and anon some passing avowal of delicate sensitiveness,[ ] lingers for a moment on some indulged self-consciousness, some recollection of his once quick and changeful mood--"io che son trasmutabil per tutte guise"[ ]--or half playfully alludes to the whispered name of a lady,[ ] whose pleasant courtesy has beguiled a few days of exile. but he is no longer spell-bound and entangled in fancies of his own weaving--absorbed in the unprofitable contemplation of his own internal sensations. the man is indeed the same, still a florentine, still metaphysical, still a lover. he returns to the haunts and images of youth, to take among them his poet's crown; but "with other voice and other garb,"[ ] a penitent and a prophet--with larger thoughts, wider sympathies, freer utterance; sterner and fiercer, yet nobler and more genuine in his tenderness--as one whom trial has made serious, and keen, and intolerant of evil, but not sceptical or callous; yet with the impressions and memories of a very different scene from his old day-dreams. [footnote : vincendo me col lume d'un sorriso.--_parad._ .] [footnote : for instance, his feeling of distress at gazing at the blind, who were not aware of his presence-- a me pareva andando fare oltraggio vedendo altrui, non essendo veduto:--_purg._ . and of shame, at being tempted to listen to a quarrel between two lost spirits: ad ascoltarli er'io del tutto fisso, quando 'l maestro mi disse: or pur mira, che per poco è, che teco non mi risso. quando io 'l senti' a me parlar con ira volsimi verso lui con tal vergogna, ch'ancor per la memoria mi si gira, &c.--_inf._ . and the burst, o dignitosa coscienza e netta, come t'è picciol fallo amaro morso.--_purg._ .] [footnote : _parad._ .] [footnote : _purg._ .] [footnote : _parad._ .] after that it was the pleasure of the citizens of that fairest and most famous daughter of rome, florence, to cast me forth from her most sweet bosom (wherein i had been nourished up to the maturity of my life, and in which, with all peace to her, i long with all my heart to rest my weary soul, and finish the time which is given me), i have passed through almost all the regions to which this language reaches, a wanderer, almost a beggar, displaying, against my will, the stroke of fortune, which is ofttimes unjustly wont to be imputed to the person stricken. truly, i have been a ship without a sail or helm, carried to divers harbours, and gulfs, and shores, by that parching wind which sad poverty breathes; and i have seemed vile in the eyes of many, who perchance, from some fame, had imagined of me in another form; in the sight of whom not only did my presence become nought, but every work of mine less prized, both what had been and what was to be wrought.--_convito_, tr. i. c. . thus proved, and thus furnished--thus independent and confident, daring to trust his instinct and genius in what was entirely untried and unusual, he entered on his great poem, to shadow forth, under the figure of his own conversion and purification, not merely how a single soul rises to its perfection, but how this visible world, in all its phases of nature, life, and society, is one with the invisible, which borders on it, actuates, accomplishes, and explains it. it is this vast plan--to take into his scope, not the soul only in its struggles and triumph, but all that the soul finds itself engaged with in its course; the accidents of the hour, and of ages past; the real persons, great and small, apart from and without whom it cannot think or act; the material world, its theatre and home--it is this which gives so many various sides to the _commedia_, which makes it so novel and strange. it is not a mere personal history, or a pouring forth of feeling, like the _vita nuova_, though he is himself the mysterious voyager, and he opens without reserve his actual life and his heart; he speaks, indeed, in the first person, yet he is but a character of the drama, and in great part of it with not more of distinct personality than in that paraphrase of the penitential psalms, in which he has preluded so much of the _commedia_. yet the _commedia_ is not a pure allegory; it admits, and makes use of the allegorical, but the laws of allegory are too narrow for it; the real in it is too impatient of the veil, and breaks through in all its hardness and detail, into what is most shadowy. history is indeed viewed not in its ephemeral look, but under the light of god's final judgments; in its completion, not in its provisional and fragmentary character; viewed therefore but in faith;--but its issues, which in this confused scene we ordinarily contemplate in the gross, the poet brings down to detail and individuals; he faces and grasps the tremendous thought that the very men and women whom we see and speak to, are now the real representatives of sin and goodness, the true actors in that scene which is so familiar to us as a picture--unflinching and terrible heart, he endures to face it in its most harrowing forms. but he wrote not for sport, nor to give poetic pleasure; he wrote to warn; the seed of the _commedia_ was sown in tears, and reaped in misery: and the consolations which it offers are awful as they are real. thus, though he throws into symbol and image, what can only be expressed by symbol and image, we can as little forget in reading him this real world in which we live, as we can in one of shakspere's plays. it is not merely that the poem is crowded with real personages, most of them having the single interest to us of being real. but all that is associated with man's history and existence is interwoven with the main course of thought--all that gives character to life, all that gives it form and feature, even to quaintness, all that occupies the mind, or employs the hand--speculation, science, arts, manufactures, monuments, scenes, customs, proverbs, ceremonies, games, punishments, attitudes of men, habits of living creatures. the wildest and most unearthly imaginations, the most abstruse thoughts take up into, and incorporate with themselves the forcible and familiar impressions of our mother earth, and do not refuse the company and aid even of the homeliest. this is not mere poetic ornament, peculiarly, profusely, or extravagantly employed. it is one of the ways in which his dominant feeling expresses itself--spontaneous and instinctive in each several instance of it, but the kindling and effluence of deliberate thought, and attending on a clear purpose--the feeling of the real and intimate connexion between the objects of sight and faith. it is not that he sees in one the simple counterpart and reverse of the other, or sets himself to trace out universally their mutual correspondences; he has too strong a sense of the reality of this familiar life to reduce it merely to a shadow and type of the unseen. what he struggles to express in countless ways, with all the resources of his strange and gigantic power, is that this world and the next are both equally real, and both one--parts, however different, of one whole. the world to come we know but in "a glass darkly;" man can only think and imagine of it in images, which he knows to be but broken and faint reflections: but this world we know, not in outline, and featureless idea, but by name, and face, and shape, by place and person, by the colours and forms which crowd over its surface, the men who people its habitations, the events which mark its moments. detail fills the sense here, and is the mark of reality. and thus he seeks to keep alive the feeling of what that world is which he connects with heaven and hell; not by abstractions, not much by elaborate and highly-finished pictures, but by names, persons, local features, definite images. widely and keenly has he ranged over and searched into the world--with a largeness of mind which disdained not to mark and treasure up, along with much unheeded beauty, many a characteristic feature of nature, unnoticed because so common. all his pursuits and interests contribute to the impression, which, often instinctively it may be, he strives to produce, of the manifold variety of our life. as a man of society, his memory is full of its usages, formalities, graces, follies, fashions--of expressive motions, postures, gestures, looks--of music, of handicrafts, of the conversation of friends or associates--of all that passes, so transient, yet so keenly pleasant or distasteful, between man and man. as a traveller, he recalls continually the names and scenes of the world;--as a man of speculation, the secrets of nature--the phenomena of light, the theory of the planets' motions, the idea and laws of physiology. as a man of learning, he is filled with the thoughts and recollections of ancient fable and history; as a politician, with the thoughts, prognostications, and hopes, of the history of the day; as a moral philosopher he has watched himself, his external sensations and changes, his inward passions, his mental powers, his ideas, his conscience; he has far and wide noted character, discriminated motives, classed good and evil deeds. all that the man of society, of travel, of science, of learning, the politician, the moralist, could gather, is used at will in the great poetic structure; but all converges to the purpose, and is directed by the intense feeling of the theologian, who sees this wonderful and familiar scene melting into, and ending in another yet more wonderful, but which will one day be as familiar--who sees the difficult but sure progress of the manifold remedies of the divine government to their predestined issue; and, over all, god and his saints. so comprehensive in interest is the _commedia_. any attempt to explain it, by narrowing that interest to politics, philosophy, the moral life, or theology itself, must prove inadequate. theology strikes the key-note; but history, natural and metaphysical science, poetry, and art, each in their turn join in the harmony, independent, yet ministering to the whole. if from the poem itself we could be for a single moment in doubt of the reality and dominant place of religion in it, the plain-spoken prose of the _convito_ would show how he placed "the divine science, full of all peace, and allowing no strife of opinions and sophisms, for the excellent certainty of its subject, which is god," in single perfection above all other sciences, "which are, as solomon speaks, but queens, or concubines, or maidens; but she is the 'dove,' and the 'perfect one'--'dove,' because without stain of strife--'perfect,' because perfectly she makes us behold the truth, in which our soul stills itself and is at rest." but the same passage[ ] shows likewise how he viewed all human knowledge and human interests, as holding their due place in the hierarchy of wisdom, and among the steps of man's perfection. no account of the _commedia_ will prove sufficient, which does not keep in view, first of all, the high moral purpose and deep spirit of faith with which it was written, and then the wide liberty of materials and means which the poet allowed himself in working out his design. [footnote : _convito_, tr. , c. , .] doubtless, his writings have a political aspect. the "great ghibelline poet" is one of dante's received synonymes; of his strong political opinions, and the importance he attached to them, there can be no doubt. and he meant his poem to be the vehicle of them, and the record to all ages of the folly and selfishness with which he saw men governed. that he should take the deepest interest in the goings on of his time, is part of his greatness; to suppose that he stopped at them, or that he subordinated to political objects or feelings all the other elements of his poem, is to shrink up that greatness into very narrow limits. yet this has been done by men of mark and ability, by italians, by men who read the _commedia_ in their own mother-tongue. it has been maintained as a satisfactory account of it--maintained with great labour and pertinacious ingenuity--that dante meant nothing more by his poem than the conflicts and ideal triumph of a political party. the hundred cantos of that vision of the universe are but a manifesto of the ghibelline propaganda, designed, under the veil of historic images and scenes, to insinuate what it was dangerous to announce; and beatrice, in all her glory and sweetness, is but a specimen of the jargon, cant, and slang of ghibelline freemasonry. when italians write thus, they degrade the greatest name of their country to a depth of laborious imbecility, to which the trifling of schoolmen and academicians is as nothing. it is to solve the enigma of dante's works, by imagining for him a character in which it is hard to say which predominates, the pedant, mountebank, or infidel. after that we may read voltaire's sneers with patience, and even enter with gravity on the examination of father hardouin's historic doubts. the fanaticism of an outraged liberalism, produced by centuries of injustice and despotism, is but a poor excuse for such perverse blindness.[ ] [footnote : in the _remains of arthur henry hallam_ is a paper, in which he examines and disposes of this theory with a courteous and forbearing irony, which would have deepened probably into something more, on thinking over it a second time.] dante was not a ghibelline, though he longed for the interposition of an imperial power. historically he did not belong to the ghibelline party. it is true that he forsook the guelfs, with whom he had been brought up, and that the white guelfs, with whom he was expelled from florence, were at length merged and lost in the ghibelline party[ ]; and he acted with them for a time.[ ] but no words can be stronger than those in which he disjoins himself from that "evil and foolish company," and claims his independence-- a te fia bello _averti fatto parte per te stesso_.[ ] [footnote : _dino comp._ pp. - .] [footnote : his name appears among the white delegates in . pelli, p. .] [footnote : _parad._ .] and it is not easy to conceive a ghibelline partisan putting into the mouth of justinian, the type of law and empire, a general condemnation of his party as heavy as that of their antagonists;--the crime of having betrayed, as the guelfs had resisted, the great symbol of public right-- omai puoi giudicar di que' cotali ch'io accusai di sopra, e de' lor falli che son cagion di tutti i vostri mali. l'uno al pubblico segno i gigli gialli oppone, e _quel s'appropria l'altro a parte_, sì ch'è forte a veder qual più si falli. _faccian li ghibellin, faccian lor arte sott'altro segno; chè mal segue quello sempre chi la giustizia e lui diparte._[ ] [footnote : _ibid._ .] and though, as the victim of the guelfs of florence, he found refuge among ghibelline princes, he had friends among guelfs also. his steps and his tongue were free to the end. and in character and feeling, in his austerity, his sturdiness and roughness, his intolerance of corruption and pride, his strongly-marked devotional temper, he was much less a ghibelline than like one of those stern guelfs who hailed savonarola. but he had a very decided and complete political theory, which certainly was not guelf; and, as parties then were, it was not much more ghibelline. most assuredly no set of men would have more vigorously resisted the attempt to realise his theory, would have joined more heartily with all immediate opponents--guelfs, black, white, and green, or even boniface viii.,--to keep out such an emperor as dante imagined, than the ghibelline nobles and potentates. dante's political views were a dream; though a dream based on what had been, and an anticipation of what was, in part at least, to come. it was a dream in the middle ages, in divided and republican italy, the italy of cities--of a real and national government, based on justice and law. it was the dream of a real _state_. he imagined that the roman empire had been one great state; he persuaded himself that christendom might be such. he was wrong in both instances; but in this case, as in so many others, he had already caught the spirit and ideas of a far-distant future; and the political organisation of modern times, so familiar to us that we cease to think of its exceeding wonder, is the practical confirmation, though in a form very different from what he imagined, of the depth and farsightedness of those expectations which are in outward form so chimerical--"_i miei non falsi errori_." he had studied the "infinite disorders of the world" in one of their most unrestrained scenes, the streets of an italian republic. law was powerless, good men were powerless, good intentions came to naught; neither social habits nor public power could resist, when selfishness chose to have its way. the church was indeed still the salt of the nations; but it had once dared and achieved more; it had once been the only power which ruled them. and this it could do no longer. if strength and energy had been enough to make the church's influence felt on government, there was a pope who could have done it--a man who was undoubtedly the most wondered at and admired of his age, whom friend or foe never characterised, without adding the invariable epithet of his greatness of soul--the "_magnanimus peccator_,"[ ] whose roman grandeur in meeting his unworthy fate fascinated into momentary sympathy even dante.[ ] but among the things which boniface viii. could not do, even if he cared about it, was the maintaining peace and law in italian towns. and while this great political power was failing, its correlative and antagonist was paralysed also. "since the death of frederic ii.," says dante's contemporary, "the fame and recollections of the empire were well-nigh extinguished."[ ] italy was left without government--"come nave senza nocchiero in gran tempesta"--to the mercies of her tyrants: che le terre d'italia tutte piene son di tiranni, e un marcel diventa ogni villan, che parteggiando viene.--_purg._ . [footnote : benvenuto da imola.] [footnote : veggio in alagna entrar lo fiordaliso, e nel vicario suo cristo esser catto; veggiolo un'altra volta esser deriso; veggio rinnovellar l'aceto e 'l fele, e tra vivi ladroni essere anciso.--_purg._ . g. villani, viii. . come magnanimo e valente, disse, _dacchè per tradimento, come gesù cristo, voglio esser preso e mi conviene morire, almeno voglio morire come papa_; e di presente si fece parare dell'ammanto di s. piero, e colla corona di constantino in capo, e colle chiavi e croce in mano, e in su la sedia papale si pose a sedere, e giunto a lui sciarra e gli altri suoi nimici; con villane parole lo scherniro.] [footnote : _dino compagni_, p. .] in this scene of violence and disorder, with the papacy gone astray, the empire debased and impotent, the religious orders corrupted, power meaning lawlessness, the well-disposed become weak and cowardly, religion neither guide nor check to society, but only the consolation of its victims--dante was bold and hopeful enough to believe in the divine appointment, and in the possibility, of law and government--of a state. in his philosophy, the institutions which provide for man's peace and liberty in this life are part of god's great order for raising men to perfection;--not indispensable, yet ordinary parts; having their important place, though but for the present time; and though imperfect, real instruments of his moral government. he could not believe it to be the intention of providence, that on the introduction of higher hopes and the foundation of a higher society, civil society should collapse and be left to ruin, as henceforth useless or prejudicial in man's trial and training; that the significant intimations of nature, that law and its results, justice, peace, and stability, ought to be and might be realised among men, had lost their meaning and faded away before the announcement of a kingdom not of this world. and if the perfection of civil society had not been superseded by the church, it had become clear, if events were to be read as signs, that she was not intended to supply its political offices and functions. she had taught, elevated, solaced, blessed, not only individual souls, but society; she had for a time even governed it: but though her other powers remained, she could govern it no longer. failure had made it certain that, in his strong and quaint language, "_virtus authorizandi regnum nostræ mortalitatis est contra naturam ecclesiæ; ergo non est de numero virtutum suarum_."[ ] another and distinct organisation was required for this, unless the temporal order was no longer worthy the attention of christians. [footnote : _de monarch._ lib. iii. p. , ed. fraticelli.] this is the idea of the _de monarchia_; and though it holds but a place in the great scheme of the _commedia_, it is prominent there also--an idea seen but in a fantastic shape, encumbered and confused with most grotesque imagery, but the real idea of polity and law, which the experience of modern europe has attained to. he found in clear outline in the greek philosophy, the theory of merely human society; and raising its end and purpose, "_finem totius humanæ civilitatis_," to a height and dignity which heathens could not forecast, he adopted it in its more abstract and ideal form. he imagined a single authority, unselfish, inflexible, irresistible, which could make all smaller tyrannies to cease, and enable every man to live in peace and liberty, so that he lived in justice. it is simply what each separate state of christendom has by this time more or less perfectly achieved. the theoriser of the middle ages could conceive of its accomplishment only in one form, as grand as it was impossible--a universal monarchy. but he did not start from an abstraction. he believed that history attested the existence of such a monarchy. the prestige of the roman empire was then strong. europe still lingers on the idea, and cannot even yet bring itself to give up its part in that great monument of human power. but in the middle ages the empire was still believed to exist. it was the last greatness which had been seen in the world, and the world would not believe that it was over. above all, in italy, a continuity of lineage, of language, of local names, and in part of civilisation and law, forbad the thought that the great roman people had ceased to be. florentines and venetians boasted that they were romans: the legends which the florentine ladies told to their maidens at the loom were tales of their mother city, rome. the roman element, little understood, but profoundly reverenced and dearly cherished, was dominant; the conductor of civilisation, and enfolding the inheritance of all the wisdom, experience, feeling, art, of the past, it elevated, even while it overawed, oppressed, and enslaved. a deep belief in providence added to the intrinsic grandeur of the empire a sacred character. the flight of the eagle has been often told and often sung; but neither in livy or virgil, gibbon or bossuet, with intenser sympathy or more kindred power, than in those rushing and unflagging verses in which the middle-age poet hears the imperial legislator relate the fated course of the "sacred sign," from the day when pallas died for it, till it accomplished the vengeance of heaven in judæa, and afterwards, under charlemagne, smote down the enemies of the church.[ ] [footnote : _parad._ c. .] the following passage, from the _de monarchia_, will show the poet's view of the roman empire, and its office in the world: to the reasons above alleged, a memorable experience brings confirmation: i mean that state of mankind which the son of god, when he would for man's salvation take man upon him, either waited for, or ordered when so he willed. for if from the fall of our first parents, which was the starting-point of all our wanderings, we retrace the various dispositions of men and their times, we shall not find at any time, except under the divine monarch augustus, when a perfect monarchy existed, that the world was everywhere quiet. and that then mankind was happy in the tranquillity of universal peace, this all writers of history, this famous poets, this even the scribe of the meekness of christ has deigned to attest. and lastly, paul has called that most blessed condition, the fulness of time. truly time, and the things of time, were full, for no mystery of our felicity then lacked its minister. but how the world has gone on from the time when that seamless robe was first torn by the claws of covetousness, we may read, and would that we might not also see. o race of men, by how great storms and losses, by how great shipwrecks hast thou of necessity been vexed since, transformed into a beast of many heads, thou hast been struggling different ways, sick in understanding, equally sick in heart. the higher intellect, with its invincible reasons, thou reckest not of; nor of the inferior, with its eye of experience; nor of affection, with the sweetness of divine suasion, when the trumpet of the holy ghost sounds to thee--"behold, how good is it, and how pleasant, brethren, to dwell together in unity."--_de monarch._ lib. i. p. . yet this great roman empire existed still unimpaired in name--not unimposing even in what really remained of it. dante, to supply a want, turned it into a theory--a theory easy to smile at now, but which contained and was a beginning of unknown or unheeded truth. what he yearns after is the predominance of the principle of justice in civil society. that, if it is still imperfect, is no longer a dream in our day; but experience had never realised it to him, and he takes refuge in tentative and groping theory. the divinations of the greatest men have been vague and strange, and none have been stranger than those of the author of the _de monarchia_. the second book, in which he establishes the title of the roman people to universal empire, is as startling a piece of mediæval argument as it would be easy to find. as when we cannot attain to look upon a cause, we commonly wonder at a new effect, so when we know the cause, we look down with a certain derision on those who remain in wonder. and i indeed wondered once how the roman people had, without any resistance, been set over the world; and looking at it superficially, i thought that they had obtained this by no right, but by mere force of arms. but when i fixed deeply the eyes of my mind on it, and by most effectual signs knew that divine providence had wrought this, wonder departed, and a certain scornful contempt came in its stead, when i perceived the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the roman people:--when i see the people imagining a vain thing, as i once used to do; when, moreover, i grieve over kings and princes agreeing in this only, to be against their lord and his anointed roman emperor. wherefore in derision, not without a certain grief, i can cry out, for that glorious people and for cæsar, with him who cried in behalf of the prince of heaven, "why did the nations rage, and the people imagine vain things; the kings of the earth stood up, and the rulers were joined in one against the lord and his anointed." but (because natural love suffers not derision to be of long duration, but, like the summer sun, which, scattering the morning mists, irradiates the east with light, so prefers to pour forth the light of correction) therefore to break the bonds of the ignorance of such kings and rulers, to show that the human race is free from _their_ yoke, i will exhort myself, in company with the most holy prophet, taking up his following words, "let us break their bonds, and cast away from us their yoke."--_de monarch._ lib. ii. p. . and to prove this pre-eminence of right in the roman people, and their heirs, the emperors of christendom, he appeals not merely to the course of providence, to their high and noble ancestry, to the blessings of their just and considerate laws, to their unselfish guardianship of the world--"_romanum imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis_;"--not merely to their noble examples of private virtue, self-devotion, and public spirit--"those most sacred victims of the decian house, who laid down their lives for the public weal, as livy--not as _they_ deserved, but as _he_ was able--tells to their glory; and that unspeakable sacrifice of freedom's sternest guardians, the catos;" not merely to the "judgment of god" in that great duel and wager of battle for empire, in which heaven declared against all other champions and "co-athletes"--alexander, pyrrhus, hannibal, and by all the formalities of judicial combat awarded the great prize to those who fought, not for love or hatred, but justice--"_quis igitur nunc adeo obtusæ mentis est, qui non videat, sub jure duelli gloriosum populum coronam totius orbis esse lucratum?_"--not merely to arguments derived "from the principles of the christian faith"--but to _miracles_. "the roman empire," he says, "was, in order to its perfections, aided by the help of miracles; therefore it was willed by god; and, by consequence, both was, and is, of right." and these miracles, "proved by the testimony of illustrious authorities," are the prodigies of livy--the ancile of numa, the geese of the capitol, the escape of clelia, the hail-storm which checked hannibal.[ ] [footnote : _de monarch._ lib. ii. pp. , , , , , - , , - .] the intellectual phenomenon is a strange one. it would be less strange if dante were arguing in the schools, or pleading for a party. but even henry of luxemburg cared little for such a throne as the poet wanted him to fill, much less can grande and the visconti. the idea, the theory, and the argument, are of the writer's own solitary meditation. we may wonder. but there are few things more strange than the history of argument. how often has a cause or an idea turned out, in the eyes of posterity, so much better than its arguments. how often have we seen argument getting as it were into a groove, and unable to extricate itself, so as to do itself justice. the everyday cases of private experience, of men defending right conclusions on wrong or conventional grounds, or in a confused form, entangled with conclusions of a like yet different nature;--of arguments, theories, solutions, which once satisfied, satisfying us no longer on a question about which we hold the same belief--of one party unable to comprehend the arguments of another--of one section of the same side smiling at the defence of their common cause by another--are all reproduced on a grander scale in the history of society. there too, one age cannot comprehend another; there too it takes time to disengage, subordinate, eliminate. truth of this sort is not the elaboration of one keen or strong mind, but of the secret experience of many; "_nihil sine ætate est, omnia tempus expectant_." but a counterpart to the _de monarchia_ is not wanting in our own day; theory has not ceased to be mighty. in warmth and earnestness, in sense of historic grandeur, in its support of a great cause and a great idea, not less than in the thought of its motto, [greek: heis koiranos estô], de maistre's volume _du pape_, recalls the antagonist _de monarchia_; but it recalls it not less in its bold dealing with facts, and its bold assumption of principles, though the knowledge and debates of five more busy centuries, and the experience of modern courts and revolutions, might have guarded the piedmontese nobleman from the mistakes of the old florentine. but the idea of the _de monarchia_ is no key to the _commedia_. the direct and primary purpose of the _commedia_ is surely its obvious one. it is to stamp a deep impression on the mind, of the issues of good and ill doing here--of the real worlds of pain and joy. to do this forcibly, it is done in detail--of course it can only be done in figure. punishment, purification, or the fulness of consolation are, as he would think, at this very moment, the lot of all the numberless spirits who have ever lived here--spirits still living and sentient as himself: parallel with our life, they too are suffering or are at rest. without pause or interval, in all its parts simultaneously, this awful scene is going on--the judgments of god are being fulfilled--could we but see it. it exists, it might be seen, at each instant of time, by a soul whose eyes were opened, which was carried through it. and this he imagines. it had been imagined before; it is the working out, which is peculiar to him. it is not a barren vision. his subject is, besides the eternal world, the soul which contemplates it; by sight, according to his figures--in reality, by faith. as he is led on from woe to deeper woe, then through the tempered chastisements and resignation of purgatory to the beatific vision, he is tracing the course of the soul on earth, realising sin and weaning itself from it--of its purification and preparation for its high lot, by converse with the good and wise, by the remedies of grace, by efforts of will and love, perhaps by the dominant guidance of some single pure and holy influence, whether of person, or institution, or thought. nor will we say but that beyond this earthly probation, he is not also striving to grasp and imagine to himself something of that awful process and training, by which, whether in or out of the flesh, the spirit is made fit to meet its maker, its judge, and its chief good. thus it seems that even in its main design, the poem has more than one aspect; it is a picture, a figure, partially a history, perhaps an anticipation. and this is confirmed, by what the poet has himself distinctly stated, of his ideas of poetic composition. his view is expressed generally in his philosophical treatise, the _convito_; but it is applied directly to the _commedia_, in a letter, which, if in its present form, of doubtful authenticity, without any question represents his sentiments, and the substance of which is incorporated in one of the earliest writings on the poem, boccaccio's commentary. the following is his account of the subject of the poem: for the evidence of what is to be said, it is to be noted, that this work is not of one single meaning only, but may be said to have many meanings ("_polysensuum_"). for the first meaning is that of the letter--another is that of things signified by the letter; the first of these is called the literal sense, the second, the allegorical or moral. this mode of treating a subject may for clearness' sake be considered in those verses of the psalm, "_in exitu israel_." "when israel came out of egypt, and the house of jacob from the strange people, judah was his sanctuary, and israel his dominion." for if we look at the _letter_ only, there is here signified, the going out of the children of israel in the time of moses--if at the _allegory_ there is signified our redemption through christ--if at the _moral_ sense there is signified to us the conversion of the soul from the mourning and misery of sin to the state of grace--if at the _anagogic_ sense,[ ] there is signified the passing out of the holy soul from the bondage of this corruption to the liberty of everlasting glory. and these mystical meanings, though called by different names, may all be called _allegorical_ as distinguished from the literal or historical sense.... this being considered, it is plain that there ought to be a twofold subject, concerning which the two corresponding meanings may proceed. therefore we must consider first concerning the subject of this work as it is to be understood literally, then as it is to be considered allegorically. the subject then of the whole work, taken literally only, is the state of souls after death considered in itself. for about this, and on this, the whole work turns. but if the work be taken allegorically, its subject is man, as, by his freedom of choice deserving well or ill, he is subject to the justice which rewards and punishes.[ ] [footnote : _litera_ gesta refert, quid credas _allegoria_, _moralis_ quid agas, quid speres _anagogia_. de witte's note from _buti_.] [footnote : ep. ad _kan grand._ § , .] the passage in the _convito_ is to the same effect; but his remarks on the _moral_ and _anagogic_ meaning may be quoted: the third sense is called _moral_; that it is which readers ought to go on noting carefully in writings, for their own profit and that of their disciples: as in the gospel it may be noted, when christ went up to the mountain to be transfigured, that of the twelve apostles, he took with him only three; in which morally we may understand, that in the most secret things we ought to have but few companions. the fourth sort of meaning is called _anagogic_, that is, above our sense; and this is when we spiritually interpret a passage, which even in its literal meaning, by means of the things signified, expresses the heavenly things of everlasting glory: as may be seen in that song of the prophet, which says, that in the coming out of the people of israel from egypt, judah was made holy and free; which although it is manifestly true according to the letter, is not less true as spiritually understood; that is, that when the soul comes out of sin, it is made holy and free, in its own power.[ ] [footnote : _convito_, tr. , c. .] with this passage before us there can be no doubt of the meaning, however veiled, of those beautiful lines, already referred to, in which virgil, after having conducted the poet up the steeps of purgatory, where his sins have been one by one cancelled by the ministering angels, finally takes leave of him, and bids him wait for beatrice, on the skirts of the earthly paradise: come la scala tutta sotto noi fu corsa e fummo in su 'l grado superno, in me ficcò virgilio gli occhi suoi, e disse: "il temporal fuoco, e l'eterno veduto hai, figlio, e se' venuto in parte ov'io per me più oltre non discerno. tratto t'ho qui con ingegno e con arte: lo tuo piacere omai prendi per duce; fuor se' dell'erte vie, fuor se' dell'arte. vedi il sole che 'n fronte ti riluce: vedi l'erbetta, i fiori, e gli arboscelli che quella terra sol da sè produce. mentre che vegnon lieti gli occhi belli che lagrimando a te venir mi fenno, seder ti puoi e puoi andar tra elli. non aspettar mio dir più nè mio cenno: libero, dritto, sano è tuo arbitrio, e fallo fora non fare a suo senno:-- perch'io te sopra te corono e mitrio."[ ] [footnote : when we had run o'er all the ladder to its topmost round, as there we stood, on me the mantuan fix'd his eyes, and thus he spake: "both fires, my son, the temporal and the eternal, thou hast seen: and art arrived, where of itself my ken no further reaches. i with skill and art, thus far have drawn thee. now thy pleasure take for guide. thou hast o'ercome the steeper way, o'ercome the straiter. lo! the sun, that darts his beam upon thy forehead: lo! the herb, the arborets and flowers, which of itself this land pours forth profuse. till those bright eyes with gladness come, which, weeping, made me haste to succour thee, thou mayest or seat thee down, or wander where thou wilt. expect no more sanction of warning voice or sign from me, free of thine own arbitrement to choose, discreet, judicious. to distrust thy sense were henceforth error. i invest thee then with crown and mitre, sovereign o'er thyself." _purg._ c. --cary.] the general meaning of the _commedia_ is clear enough. but it certainly does appear to refuse to be fitted into a connected formal scheme of interpretation. it is not a homogeneous, consistent allegory, like the _pilgrim's progress_ and the _fairy queen_. the allegory continually breaks off, shifts its ground, gives place to other elements, or mingles with them--like a stream which suddenly sinks into the earth, and after passing under plains and mountains, reappears in a distant point, and in different scenery. we can, indeed, imagine its strange author commenting on it, and finding or marking out its prosaic substratum, with the cold-blooded precision and scholastic distinctions of the _convito_. however, he has not done so. and of the many enigmas which present themselves, either in its structure or separate parts, the key seems hopelessly lost. the early commentators are very ingenious, but very unsatisfactory; they see where we can see, but beyond that they are as full of uncertainty as ourselves. it is in character with that solitary and haughty spirit, while touching universal sympathies, appalling and charming all hearts, to have delighted in his own dark sayings, which had meaning only to himself. it is true that, whether in irony, or from that quaint studious care for the appearance of literal truth, which makes him apologise for the wonders which he relates, and confirm them by an oath, "on the words of his poem,"[ ] he provokes and challenges us; bids us admire "doctrine hidden under strange verses;"[ ] bids us strain our eyes, for the veil is thin: aguzza, qui, lettor, ben l'occhi al vero: chè il velo è ora ben tanto sottile, certo, che il trapassar dentro è leggiero.--_purg._ c. . but eyes are still strained in conjecture and doubt. [footnote : sempre a quel ver, ch'ha faccia di menzogna, de' l'uom chiuder le labbra, quanto puote, però che senza colpa fa vergogna. ma qui tacer nol posso; e per le note di questa _commedia_, lettor, ti giuro s'elle non sien di lunga grazia vote, &c.--_inf._ .] [footnote : _inf._ .] yet the most certain and detailed commentary, one which assigned the exact reason for every image or allegory, and its place and connexion in a general scheme, would add but little to the charm or to the use of the poem. it is not so obscure but that every man's experience who has thought over and felt the mystery of our present life, may supply the commentary--the more ample, the wider and more various has been his experience, the deeper and keener his feeling. details and links of connexion may be matter of controversy. whether the three beasts of the forest mean definitely the vices of the time, or of florence specially, or of the poet himself--"the wickedness of his heels, compassing him round about"--may still exercise critics and antiquaries; but that they carry with them distinct and special impressions of evil, and that they are the hindrances of man's salvation, is not doubtful. and our knowledge of the key of the allegory, where we possess it, contributes but little to the effect. we may infer from the _convito_[ ] that the eyes of beatrice stand definitely for the _demonstrations_, and her smiles for the _persuasions_ of wisdom; but the poetry of the paradiso is not about demonstrations and persuasions, but about looks and smiles; and the ineffable and holy calm--"_serenitatis et æternitatis afflatus_"--which pervades it, comes from the sacred truths, and holy persons, and that deep spirit of high-raised yet composed devotion, which it requires no interpreter to show us. [footnote : _convito_, tr. , c. .] figure and symbol, then, are doubtless the law of composition in the _commedia_; but this law discloses itself very variously, and with different degrees of strictness. in its primary and most general form, it is palpable, consistent, pervading. there can be no doubt that the poem is meant to be understood figuratively--no doubt of what in general it is meant to shadow forth--no doubt as to the general meaning of its parts, their connexion with each other. but in its secondary and subordinate applications, the law works--to our eye at least--irregularly, unequally, and fitfully. there can be no question that virgil, the poet's guide, represents the purely human element in the training of the soul and of society, as beatrice does the divine. but neither represent the whole; he does not sum up all appliances of wisdom in virgil, nor all teachings and influences of grace in beatrice; these have their separate figures. and both represent successively several distinct forms of their general antitypes. they have various degrees of abstractness, and narrow down, according to that order of things to which they refer and correspond, into the special and the personal. in the general economy of the poem, virgil stands for human wisdom in its widest sense; but he also stands for it in its various shapes, in the different parts. he is the type of human philosophy and science.[ ] he is, again, more definitely, that spirit of imagination and poetry, which opens men's eyes to the glory of the visible, and the truth of the invisible; and to italians, he is a definite embodiment of it, their own great poet, "_vates, poeta noster_."[ ] in the christian order, he is human wisdom, dimly mindful of its heavenly origin--presaging dimly its return to god--sheltering in heathen times that "vague and unconnected family of religious truths, originally from god, but sojourning without the sanction of miracle or visible home, as pilgrims up and down the world."[ ] in the political order, he is the guide of law-givers, wisdom fashioning the impulses and instincts of men into the harmony of society, contriving stability and peace, guarding justice; fit part for the poet to fill, who had sung the origin of rome, and the justice and peace of augustus. in the order of individual life, and the progress of the individual soul, he is the human conscience witnessing to duty, its discipline and its hopes, and with yet more certain and fearful presage, to its vindication; the human conscience seeing and acknowledging the law, but unable to confer power to fulfil it--wakened by grace from among the dead, leading the living man up to it, and waiting for its light and strength. but he is more than a figure. to the poet himself, who blends with his high argument his whole life, virgil had been the utmost that mind can be to mind--teacher, quickener and revealer of power, source of thought, exemplar and model, never disappointing, never attained to, observed with "long study and great love:" tu duca, tu signor, e tu maestro.--_inf._ . [footnote : "o tu ch'onori ogni scienza ed arte."--_inf._ . "quel savio gentil che tutto seppe."--_inf._ . "il mar di tutto 'l senno."--_inf._ .] [footnote : _de monarchia._] [footnote : newman's _arians_.] and towards this great master, the poet's whole soul is poured forth in reverence and affection. to dante he is no figure, but a person--with feelings and weaknesses--overcome by the vexation, kindling into the wrath, carried away by the tenderness, of the moment. he reads his scholar's heart, takes him by the hand in danger, carries him in his arms and in his bosom, "like a son more than a companion," rebukes his unworthy curiosity, kisses him when he shows a noble spirit, asks pardon for his own mistakes. never were the kind, yet severe ways of a master, or the disciple's diffidence and open-heartedness, drawn with greater force, or less effort; and he seems to have been reflecting on his own affection to virgil, when he makes statius forget that they were both but shades: or puoi la quantitate comprender dell'amor ch'a te mi scalda, quando _dismento la nostra vanitate trattando l'ombre come cosa salda_.--_purg._ . and so with the poet's second guide. the great idea which beatrice figures, though always present, is seldom rendered artificially prominent, and is often entirely hidden beneath the rush of real recollections, and the creations of dramatic power. abstractions venture and trust themselves among realities, and for the time are forgotten. a name, a real person, a historic passage, a lament or denunciation, a tragedy of actual life, a legend of classic times, the fortunes of friends--the story of francesca or ugolino, the fate of buonconte's corpse, the apology of pier delle vigne, the epitaph of madonna pia, ulysses' western voyage, the march of roman history--appear and absorb for themselves all interest: or else it is a philosophical speculation, or a theory of morality, or a case of conscience--not indeed alien from the main subject, yet independent of the allegory, and not translateable into any new meaning--standing on their own ground, worked out each according to its own law; but they do not disturb the main course of the poet's thought, who grasps and paints each detail of human life in its own peculiarity, while he sees in each a significance and interest beyond itself. he does not stop in each case to tell us so, but he makes it felt. the tale ends, the individual disappears, and the great allegory resumes its course. it is like one of those great musical compositions which alone seem capable of adequately expressing, in a limited time, a course of unfolding and change, in an idea, a career, a life, a society--where one great thought predominates, recurs, gives colour and meaning, and forms the unity of the whole, yet passes through many shades and transitions; is at one time definite, at another suggestive and mysterious; incorporating and giving free place and play to airs and melodies even of an alien cast; striking off abruptly from its expected road, but without ever losing itself, without breaking its true continuity, or failing of its completeness. this then seems to us the end and purpose of the _commedia_;--to produce on the mind a sense of the judgments of god, analogous to that produced by scripture itself. they are presented to us in the bible in shapes which address themselves primarily to the heart and conscience, and seek not carefully to explain themselves. they are likened to the "great deep," to the "strong mountains"--vast and awful, but abrupt and incomplete, as the huge, broken, rugged piles and chains of mountains. and we see them through cloud and mist, in shapes only approximating to the true ones. still they impress us deeply and truly, often the more deeply because unconsciously. a character, an event, a word, isolated and unexplained, stamps its meaning ineffaceably, though ever a matter of question and wonder; it may be dark to the intellect, yet the conscience understands it, often but too well. in such suggestive ways is the divine government for the most part put before us in the bible--ways which do not satisfy the understanding, but which fill us with a sense of reality. and it seems to have been by meditating on them, which he certainly did, much and thoughtfully--and on the infinite variety of similar ways in which the strongest impressions are conveyed to us in ordinary life, by means short of clear and distinct explanation--by looks, by images, by sounds, by motions, by remote allusion and broken words, that dante was led to choose so new and remarkable a mode of conveying to his countrymen his thoughts and feelings and presentiments about the mystery of god's counsel. the bible teaches us by means of real history, traced so far as is necessary along its real course. the poet expresses his view of the world also in real history, but carried on into figure. the poetry with which the christian church had been instinct from the beginning, converges and is gathered up in the _commedia_. the faith had early shown its poetical aspect. it is superfluous to dwell on this, for it is the charge against ancient teaching that it was too large and imaginative. it soon began to try rude essays in sculpture and mosaic: expressed its feeling of nature in verse and prose, rudely also, but often with originality and force; and opened a new vein of poetry in the thoughts, hopes, and aspirations of regenerate man. modern poetry must go back, for many of its deepest and most powerful sources, to the writings of the fathers, and their followers of the school. the church further had a poetry of its own, besides the poetry of literature; it had the poetry of devotion--the psalter chanted daily, in a new language and a new meaning; and that wonderful body of hymns, to which age after age had contributed its offering, from the ambrosian hymns to the _veni, sancte spiritus_ of a king of france, the _pange lingua_ of thomas aquinas, the _dies iræ_, and _stabat mater_, of the two franciscan brethren, thomas of celano, and jacopone.[ ] the elements and fragments of poetry were everywhere in the church--in her ideas of life, in her rules and institutions for passing through it, in her preparation for death, in her offices, ceremonial, celebrations, usages, her consecration of domestic, literary, commercial, civic, military, political life, the meanings and ends she had given them, the religious seriousness with which the forms of each were dignified--in her doctrine, and her dogmatic system--her dependence on the unseen world--her bible. from each and all of these, and from that public feeling, which, if it expressed itself but abruptly and incoherently, was quite alive to the poetry which surrounded it, the poet received due impressions of greatness and beauty, of joy and dread. then the poetry of christian religion and christian temper, hitherto dispersed, or manifested in act only, found its full and distinct utterance, not unworthy to rank in grandeur, in music, in sustained strength, with the last noble voices from expiring heathenism. [footnote : trench, sacred latin poetry, .] but a long interval had passed since then. the _commedia_ first disclosed to christian and modern europe that it was to have a literature of its own, great and admirable, though in its own language and embodying its own ideas. "it was as if, at some of the ancient games, a stranger had appeared upon the plain, and thrown his quoit among the marks of former casts, which tradition had ascribed to the demi-gods."[ ] we are so accustomed to the excellent and varied literature of modern times, so original, so perfect in form and rich in thought, so expressive of all our sentiments, meeting so completely our wants, fulfilling our ideas, that we can scarcely imagine the time when this condition was new--when society was beholden to a foreign language for the exponents of its highest thoughts and feelings. but so it was when dante wrote. the great poets, historians, philosophers of his day, the last great works of intellect, belonged to old rome, and the latin language. so wonderful and prolonged was the fascination of rome. men still lived under its influence; believed that the latin language was the perfect and permanent instrument of thought in its highest forms, the only expression of refinement and civilisation; and had not conceived the hope that their own dialects could ever rise to such heights of dignity and power. latin, which had enchased and preserved such precious remains of ancient wisdom, was now shackling the living mind in its efforts. men imagined that they were still using it naturally on all high themes and solemn business; but though they used it with facility, it was no longer natural; it had lost the elasticity of life, and had become in their hands a stiffened and distorted, though still powerful, instrument. the very use of the word _latino_ in the writers of this period, to express what is clear and philosophical in language,[ ] while it shows their deep reverence for it, shows how latin civilisation was no longer their own, how it had insensibly become an external and foreign element. but they found it very hard to resign their claim to a share in its glories; with nothing of their own to match against it, they still delighted to speak of it as "our language," or its writers as "our poets," "our historians."[ ] [footnote : hallam's _middle ages_, c. ix. vol. iii. p. .] [footnote : _parad._ , , . _convit._ p. . "a più _latinamente_ vedere la sentenza letterale."] [footnote : _vid._ the _de monarchia_.] the spell was indeed beginning to break. guido cavalcanti, dante's strange, stern, speculative friend, who is one of the fathers of the italian language, is characterised in the _commedia_[ ] by his scornful dislike of latin, even in the mouth of virgil. yet dante himself, the great assertor, by argument and example, of the powers of the vulgar tongue, once dared not to think that the vulgar tongue could be other to the latin, than as a subject to his sovereign. he was bolder when he wrote _de vulgari eloquio_: but in the earlier _convito_, while pleading earnestly for the beauty of the italian, he yields with reverence the first place to the latin--for nobleness, because the latin is permanent, and the vulgar subject to fluctuation and corruption; for power, because the latin can express conceptions to which the vulgar is unequal; for beauty, because the structure of the latin is a masterly arrangement of scientific art, and the beauty of the vulgar depends on mere use.[ ] the very title of his poem, the _commedia_, contains in it a homage to the lofty claims of the latin. it is called a comedy, and not tragedy, he says, after a marvellous account of the essence and etymology of the two, first, because it begins sadly, and ends joyfully; and next, because of its language, that humble speech of ordinary life, "in which even women converse."[ ] [footnote : _inf._ , and compare the _vit. n._ p. , ed. fraticelli.] [footnote : _convito_, i. .] [footnote : ep. ad kan grand. § ,--a curious specimen of the learning of the time: "sciendum est, quod _comoedia_ dicitur a [greek: kômê], _villa_ et [greek: ôdê], quod est _cantus_, unde _comoedia_ quasi _villanus cantus_. et est _comoedia genus quoddam poeticæ narrationis_, ab omnibus aliis differens. differt ergo a tragoedia in materia per hoc, quod tragoedia in principio est admirabilis et quieta, in fine foetida et horribilis; et dicitur propter hoc a [greek: tragos], i.e. _hircus_, et [greek: ôdê], quasi _cantus hircinus_, i.e. foetidus ad modum hirci, ut patet per senecam in suis tragoediis. _comoedia_ vero inchoat asperitatem alicujus rei, sed ejus materia prospere terminatur, ut patet per terentium in suis _comoediis_.... similiter differunt in modo loquendi; elate et sublime tragoedia, _comoedia_ vero remisse et humiliter sicut vult horat. in poët.... et per hoc patet, quod _comoedia_ diciter præsens opus. nam si ad materiam respiciamus, a principio horribilis et foetida est, quia _infernus_: in fine prospera, desiderabilis et grata, quia _paradisus_. si ad modum loquendi, remissus est modus et humilis, quia locutio vulgaris, in qua et mulierculæ communicant. et sic patet quia _comoedia_ dicitur." cf. de vulg. eloq. , , _parad._ . he calls the Æneid, "_l'alta tragedia_," _inf._ , . compare also boccaccio's explanation of his mother's dream of the _peacock_. dante, he says, is like the peacock, among other reasons, "because the peacock has coarse feet, and a quiet gait;" and "the vulgar language, on which the _commedia_ supports itself, is coarse in comparison with the high and masterly literary style which every other poet uses, though it be more beautiful than others, being in conformity with modern minds. the quiet gait signifies the humility of the style, which is necessarily required in _commedia_, as those know who understand what is meant by _commedia_."] he honoured the latin, but his love was for the italian. he was its champion, and indignant defender against the depreciation of ignorance and fashion. confident of its power and jealous of its beauty, he pours forth his fierce scorn on the blind stupidity, the affectation, the vain glory, the envy, and above all, the cowardice of italians who held lightly their mother tongue. "many," he says, after enumerating the other offenders, "from this pusillanimity and cowardice disparage their own language, and exalt that of others; and of this sort are those hateful dastards of italy--_abbominevoli cattivi d'italia_--who think vilely of that precious language; which, if it is vile in anything, is vile only so far as it sounds in the prostituted mouth of these adulterers."[ ] he noted and compared its various dialects; he asserted its capabilities not only in verse, but in expressive, flexible, and majestic prose. and to the deliberate admiration of the critic and the man, were added the homely but dear associations, which no language can share with that of early days. italian had been the language of his parents--"_questo mio volgare fu il congiugnitore delli miei generanti, che con esso parlavano_"--and further, it was this modern language, "_questo mio volgare_," which opened to him the way of knowledge, which had introduced him to latin, and the sciences which it contained. it was his benefactor and guide--he personifies it--and his boyish friendship had grown stronger and more intimate by mutual good offices. "there has also been between us the goodwill of intercourse; for from the beginning of my life i have had with it kindness and conversation, and have used it, deliberating, interpreting, and questioning; so that, if friendship grows with use, it is evident how it must have grown in me."[ ] [footnote : _convito_, i. .] [footnote : _convito_, i. .] from this language he exacted a hard trial;--a work which should rank with the ancient works. none such had appeared; none had even advanced such a pretension. not that it was a time dead to literature or literary ambition. poets and historians had written, and were writing in italian. the same year of jubilee which fixed itself so deeply in dante's mind, and became the epoch of his vision--the same scene of roman greatness in its decay, which afterwards suggested to gibbon the _decline and fall_, prompted, in the father of italian history, the desire to follow in the steps of sallust and livy, and prepare the way for machiavelli and guicciardini, davila, and fra paolo.[ ] poetry had been cultivated in the roman languages of the west--in aquitaine and provence, especially--for more than two centuries; and lately, with spirit and success, in italian. names had become popular, reputations had risen and waned, verses circulated and were criticised, and even descended from the high and refined circles to the workshop. a story is told of dante's indignation, when he heard the canzoni which had charmed the florentine ladies mangled by the rude enthusiasm of a blacksmith at his forge.[ ] literature was a growing fashion; but it was humble in its aspirations and efforts. men wrote like children, surprised and pleased with their success; yet allowing themselves in mere amusement, because conscious of weakness which they could not cure. [footnote : g. villani was at rome in the year of jubilee , and describes the great concourse and order of the pilgrims, whom he reckons at , , in the course of the year. "and i," he proceeds, "finding myself in that blessed pilgrimage in the holy city of rome, seeing the great and ancient things of the same, and reading the histories of the great deeds of the romans, written by virgil, and by sallust, and lucan, and titus livius, and valerius, and paulus orosius, and other masters of histories, who wrote as well of the smaller matters as of the greater, concerning the exploits and deeds of the romans; and further, of the strange things of the whole world, for memory and example's sake to those who should come after--i, too, took their style and fashion, albeit that, as their scholar, i be not worthy to execute such a work. but, considering that our city of florence, the daughter and creation of rome, was in its rising, and on the eve of achieving great things, as rome was in its decline, it seemed to me convenient to bring into this volume and new chronicle all the deeds and beginnings of the city of florence, so far as i have been able to gather and recover them; and for the future, to follow at large the doings of the florentines, and the other notable things of the world briefly, as long as it may be god's pleasure; under which hope, rather by his grace than by my poor science, i entered on this enterprise: and so, in the year , being returned from rome, i began to compile this book, in reverence towards god and st. john, and commendation of our city of florence."--_g. vill._ viii. .] [footnote : _sacchetti_, nov. .] dante, by the _divina commedia_, was the restorer of seriousness in literature. he was so, by the magnitude and pretensions of his work, and by the earnestness of its spirit. he first broke through the prescription which had confined great works to the latin, and the faithless prejudices which, in the language of society, could see powers fitted for no higher task than that of expressing, in curiously diversified forms, its most ordinary feelings. but he did much more. literature was going astray in its tone, while growing in importance; the _commedia_ checked it. the provençal and italian poetry was, with the exception of some pieces of political satire, almost exclusively amatory, in the most fantastic and affected fashion. in expression, it had not even the merit of being natural; in purpose it was trifling; in the spirit which it encouraged, it was something worse. doubtless it brought a degree of refinement with it, but it was refinement purchased at a high price, by intellectual distortion, and moral insensibility. but this was not all. the brilliant age of frederick ii., for such it was, was deeply mined by religious unbelief. however strange this charge first sounds against the thirteenth century, no one can look at all closely into its history, at least in italy, without seeing that the idea of infidelity--not heresy, but infidelity--was quite a familiar one; and that side by side with the theology of aquinas and bonaventura, there was working among those who influenced fashion and opinion, among the great men, and the men to whom learning was a profession, a spirit of scepticism and irreligion almost monstrous for its time, which found its countenance in frederick's refined and enlightened court. the genius of the great doctors might have kept in safety the latin schools, but not the free and home thoughts which found utterance in the language of the people, if the solemn beauty of the italian _commedia_ had not seized on all minds. it would have been an evil thing for italian, perhaps for european literature, if the siren tales of the _decameron_ had been the first to occupy the ear with the charms of a new language. dante has had hard measure, and from some who are most beholden to him. no one in his day served the church more highly, than he whose faith and genius secured on her side the first great burst of imagination and feeling, the first perfect accents of modern speech. the first-fruits of the new literature were consecrated, and offered up. there was no necessity, or even probability in italy in the fourteenth century that it should be so, as there might perhaps have been earlier. it was the poet's free act--free in one, for whom nature and heathen learning had strong temptations--that religion was the lesson and influence of the great popular work of the time. that which he held up before men's awakened and captivated minds, was the verity of god's moral government. to rouse them to a sense of the mystery of their state; to startle their commonplace notions of sin into an imagination of its variety, its magnitude, and its infinite shapes and degrees; to open their eyes to the beauty of the christian temper, both as suffering and as consummated; to teach them at once the faithfulness and awful freeness of god's grace; to help the dull and lagging soul to conceive the possibility, in its own case, of rising step by step in joy without an end--of a felicity not unimaginable by man, though of another order from the highest perfection of earth;--this is the poet's end. nor was it only vague religious feelings which he wished to excite. he brought within the circle of common thought, and translated into the language of the multitude, what the schools had done to throw light on the deep questions of human existence, which all are fain to muse upon, though none can solve. he who had opened so much of men's hearts to themselves, opened to them also that secret sympathy which exists between them and the great mysteries of the christian doctrine.[ ] he did the work, in his day, of a great preacher. yet he has been both claimed and condemned, as a disturber of the church's faith. [footnote : _vide_ ozanam.] he certainly did not spare the church's rulers. he thought they were betraying the most sacred of all trusts; and if history is at all to be relied on, he had some grounds for thinking so. but it is confusing the feelings of the middle ages with our own, to convert every fierce attack on the popes into an anticipation of luther. strong language of this sort was far too commonplace to be so significant. no age is blind to practical abuses, or silent on them; and when the middle ages complained, they did so with a full-voiced and clamorous rhetoric, which greedily seized on every topic of vilification within its reach. it was far less singular, and far less bold, to criticise ecclesiastical authorities, than is often supposed; but it by no means implied unsettled faith, or a revolutionary design. in dante's case, if words have any meaning--not words of deliberate qualification, but his unpremeditated and incidental expressions--his faith in the divine mission and spiritual powers of the popes was as strong as his abhorrence of their degeneracy, and desire to see it corrected by a power which they would respect--that of the temporal sword. it would be to mistake altogether his character, to imagine of him, either as a fault or as an excellence, that he was a doubter. it might as well be supposed of aquinas. no one ever acknowledged with greater seriousness, as a fact in his position in the world, the agreement in faith among those with whom he was born. no one ever inclined with more simplicity and reverence before that long communion and consent in feeling and purpose, the "_publicus_ sensus" of the christian church. he did feel difficulties; but the excitement of lingering on them was not among his enjoyments. that was the lot of the heathen; virgil, made wise by death, counsels him not to desire it: "matto è chi spera, che nostra ragione possa trascorrer la 'nfinita via che tiene una sustanzia in tre persone. state contenti, umana gente, al _quia_; chè se potuto aveste veder tutto, mestier non era partorir maria: e disiar vedeste senza frutto tai, che sarebbe lor disio quetato, ch'eternamente è dato lor per lutto; i' dico d'aristotile e di plato, e di molti altri:"--e qui chinò la fronte, e più non disse, e rimase turbato.--_purg._ c. .[ ] [footnote : "insensate he, who thinks with mortal ken to pierce infinitude, which doth enfold three persons in one substance. seek not then, o mortal race, for reasons--but believe, and be contented; for had all been seen, no need there was for mary to conceive. men have ye known, who thus desired in vain; and whose desires, that might at rest have been, now constitute a source of endless pain; plato, the stagirite; and many more, i here allude to;"--then his head he bent, was silent, and a troubled aspect wore.--wright.] the christian poet felt that it was greater to believe and to act. in the darkness of the world one bright light appeared, and he followed it. providence had assigned him his portion of truth, his portion of daily bread; if to us it appears blended with human elements, it is perfectly clear that he was in no position to sift them. to choose was no trial of his. to examine and seek, where it was impossible to find, would have been folly. the authority from which he started had not yet been seriously questioned; there were no palpable signs of doubtfulness on the system which was to him the representative of god's will; and he sought for none. it came to him claiming his allegiance by custom, by universality, by its completeness as a whole, and satisfying his intellect and his sympathies in detail. and he gave his allegiance--reasonably, because there was nothing to hope for in doubting--wisely, because he gave it loyally and from his heart. and he had his reward--the reward of him who throws himself with frankness and earnestness into a system; who is not afraid or suspicious of it; who is not unfaithful to it. he gained not merely power--he gained that freedom and largeness of mind which the suspicious or the unfaithful miss. his loyalty to the church was no cramping or blinding service; it left to its full play that fresh and original mind, left it to range at will in all history and all nature for the traces of eternal wisdom, left it to please itself with all beauty, and pay its homage to all excellence. for upon all wisdom, beauty, and excellence, the church had taught him to see, in various and duly distinguished degrees, the seal of the one creator. she imparts to the poem, to its form and progressive development, her own solemnity, her awe, her calm, her serenity and joy; it follows her sacred seasons and hours; repeats her appointed words of benediction and praise; moulds itself on her belief, her expectations, and forecastings.[ ] her intimations, more or less distinct, dogma or tradition or vague hint, guide the poet's imagination through the land where all eyes are open. the journey begins under the easter moon of the year of jubilee, on the evening of good friday; the days of her mourning he spends in the regions of woe, where none dares to pronounce the name of the redeemer, and he issues forth to "behold again the stars," to learn how to die to sin and rise to righteousness, very early in the morning, as it begins to dawn, on the day of the resurrection. the whole arrangement of the _purgatorio_ is drawn from church usages. it is a picture of men suffering in calm and holy hope the sharp discipline of repentance, amid the prayers, the melodies, the consoling images and thoughts, the orderly ritual, the hours of devotion, the sacraments of the church militant. when he ascends in his hardiest flight, and imagines the joys of the perfect and the vision of god, his abundant fancy confines itself strictly to the limits sanctioned by her famous teachers--ventures into no new sphere, hazards no anticipations in which they have not preceded it, and is content with adding to the poetry which it elicits from their ideas, a beauty which it is able to conceive apart altogether from bodily form--the beauty, infinite in its variety, of the expression of the human eye and smile--the beauty of light, of sound, of motion. and when his song mounts to its last strain of triumph, and the poet's thought, imagination, and feeling of beauty, tasked to the utmost, nor failing under the weight of glory which they have to express, breathe themselves forth in words, higher than which no poetry has ever risen, and represent, in images transcending sense, and baffling it, yet missing not one of those deep and transporting sympathies which they were to touch, the sight, eye to eye, of the creator by the creature--he beholds the gathering together, in the presence of god, of "all that from our earth has to the skies returned," and of the countless orders of their thrones mirrored in his light-- mira quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole-- under a figure already taken into the ceremonial of the church--the mystic rose, whose expanding leaves image forth the joy of the heavenly jerusalem, both triumphant and militant.[ ] [footnote : see an article in the _brit. critic_, no. , p. .] [footnote : see the form of benediction of the "rosa d'oro." _rituum ecclesiæ rom. libri tres._ fol. xxxv. venet. . form of giving: "accipe rosam de manibus nostris ... per quam designatus gaudium utriusque hierusalem triumphantis scilicet et militantis ecclesiæ per quam omnibus christi fidelibus manifestatur flos ipse pretiosissimus qui est gaudium et corona sanctorum omnium." he alludes to it in the _convito_, iv. . o isplendor di dio, per cu' io vidi l'alto trionfo del regno verace, dammi virtù a dir com'io lo vidi. lume è lassù, che visibile face lo creatore a quella creatura, che solo in lui vedere ha la sua pace: e si distende in circular figura in tanto, che la sua circonferenza sarebbe al sol troppo larga cintura. * * * * e come clivo in acqua di suo imo si specchia quasi per vedersi adorno, quanto è nel verde e ne' fioretti opimo; sì soprastando al lume intorno intorno vidi specchiarsi in più di mille soglie, quanto di noi lassù fatto ha ritorno. e se l'infimo grado in sè raccoglie sì grande lume, quant'è la larghezza di questa rosa nell'estreme foglie? * * * * nel giallo della rosa sempiterna, che si dilata, rigrada, e redole odor di lode al sol, che sempre verna, qual'è colui, che tace e dicer vuole, mi trasse beatrice, e disse; mira quanto è 'l convento delle bianche stole! vedi nostra città quanto ella gira! vedi li nostri scanni sì ripieni, che poca gente omai ci si disira. * * * * in forma dunque di candida rosa mi si mostrava la milizia santa, che nel suo sangue cristo fece sposa.--_parad._ , .] but this universal reference to the religious ideas of the church is so natural, so unaffected, that it leaves him at full liberty in other orders of thought. he can afford not to be conventional--he can afford to be comprehensive and genuine. it has been remarked how, in a poem where there would seem to be a fitting place for them, the ecclesiastical legends of the middle ages are almost entirely absent. the sainted spirits of the _paradiso_ are not exclusively or chiefly the saints of popular devotion. after the saints of the bible, the holy women, the three great apostles, the virgin mother, they are either names personally dear to the poet himself, friends whom he had loved, and teachers to whom he owed wisdom--or great men of masculine energy in thought or action, in their various lines "compensations and antagonists of the world's evils"--justinian and constantine, and charlemagne--the founders of the orders, augustine, benedict, and bernard, francis and dominic--the great doctors of the schools, thomas aquinas, and bonaventura, whom the church had not yet canonized. and with them are joined--and that with a full consciousness of the line which theology draws between the dispensations of nature and grace--some rare types of virtue among the heathen. cato is admitted to the outskirts of purgatory; trajan, and the righteous king of virgil's poem, to the heaven of the just.[ ] [footnote : chi crederebbe giù nel mondo errante, che rifèo trojano[a] in questo tondo fosse la quinta delle luci sante? ora conosce assai di quel, che 'l mondo veder non può della divina grazia; benchè sua vista non discerna il fondo.--_parad._ c. .] [footnote a: rhipeus justissimus unus qui fuit in teucris, et servantissimus æqui.--_Æn._ ii.] without confusion or disturbance to the religious character of his train of thought, he is able freely to subordinate to it the lessons and the great recollections of the gentile times. he contemplates them with the veil drawn off from them; as now known to form but one whole with the history of the bible and the church, in the design of providence. he presents them in their own colours, as drawn by their own writers--he only adds what christianity seems to show to be their event. under the conviction, that the light of the heathen was a real guide from above, calling for vengeance in proportion to unfaithfulness, or outrage done to it--"he that nurtureth the heathen, it is he that teacheth man knowledge--shall not he punish?"--the great criminals of profane history are mingled with sinners against god's revealed will--and that, with equal dramatic power, with equal feeling of the greatness of their loss. the story of the voyage of ulysses is told with as much vivid power and pathetic interest as the tales of the day.[ ] he honours unfeignedly the old heathen's brave disdain of ease; that spirit, even to old age, eager, fresh, adventurous, and inquisitive. his faith allowed him to admire all that was beautiful and excellent among the heathen, without forgetting that it fell short of what the new gift of the gospel can alone impart. he saw in it proof that god had never left his will and law without their witness among men. virtue was virtue still, though imperfect, and unconsecrated--generosity, largeness of soul, truth, condescension, justice, were never unworthy of the reverence of christians. hence he uses without fear or scruple the classic element. the examples which recall to the minds of the penitents, by sounds and sights, in the different terraces of purgatory, their sin and the grace they have to attain to, come indiscriminately from poetry and scripture. the sculptured pavement, to which the proud are obliged ever to bow down their eyes, shows at once the humility of s. mary and of the psalmist, and the condescension of trajan; and elsewhere the pride of nimrod and sennacherib, of niobe, and cyrus. the envious hear the passing voices of courtesy from saints and heroes, and the bursting cry, like crashing thunder, of repentant jealousy from cain and aglaurus; the avaricious, to keep up the memory of their fault, celebrate by day the poverty of fabricius and the liberality of s. nicolas, and execrate by night the greediness of pygmalion and midas, of achan, heliodorus, and crassus. [footnote : _inf._ c. .] dante's all-surveying, all-embracing mind, was worthy to open the grand procession of modern poets. he had chosen his subject in a region remote from popular thought--too awful for it, too abstruse. he had accepted frankly the dogmatic limits of the church, and thrown himself with even enthusiastic faith into her reasonings, at once so bold and so undoubting--her spirit of certainty, and her deep contemplations on the unseen and infinite. and in literature, he had taken as guides and models, above all criticism and all appeal, the classical writers. yet with his mind full of the deep and intricate questions of metaphysics and theology, and his poetical taste always owning allegiance to virgil, ovid, and statius--keen and subtle as a schoolman--as much an idolator of old heathen art and grandeur as the men of the _renaissance_--his eye is as open to the delicacies of character, to the variety of external nature, to the wonders of the physical world--his interest in them as diversified and fresh, his impressions as sharp and distinct, his rendering of them as free and true and forcible, as little weakened or confused by imitation or by conventional words, his language as elastic, and as completely under his command, his choice of poetic materials as unrestricted and original, as if he had been born in days which claim as their own such freedom, and such keen discriminative sense of what is real, in feeling and image;--as if he had never felt the attractions of a crabbed problem of scholastic logic, or bowed before the mellow grace of the latins. it may be said, indeed, that the time was not yet come when the classics could be really understood and appreciated; and this is true, perhaps fortunate. but admiring them with a kind of devotion, and showing not seldom that he had caught their spirit, he never _attempts_ to copy them. his poetry in form and material is all his own. he asserted the poet's claim to borrow from all science, and from every phase of nature, the associations and images which he wants; and he showed that those images and associations did not lose their poetry by being expressed with the most literal reality. but let no reader of fastidious taste disturb his temper by the study of dante. dante certainly opened that path of freedom and poetic conquest, in which the greatest efforts of modern poetry have followed him--opened it with a magnificence and power which have never been surpassed. but the greatest are but pioneers; they must be content to leave to a posterity, which knows more, if it cannot do as much, a keen and even growing sense of their defects. the _commedia_ is open to all the attacks that can be made on grotesqueness and extravagance. this is partly owing, doubtless, to the time, in itself quaint, quainter to us, by being remote and ill-understood; but even then, weaker and less daring writers than dante do not equally offend or astonish us. so that an image or an expression will render forcibly a thought, there is no strangeness which checks him. barbarous words are introduced, to express the cries of the demon or the confusion of babel--even to represent the incomprehensible song of the blessed;[ ] inarticulate syllables, to convey the impression of some natural sound--the cry of sorrowful surprise: alto sospir, che duolo strinse in _hui_;--_purg._ . or the noise of the cracking ice: se tabernicch vi fosse sù caduto, o pietra-pana non avria pur da l'orlo fatto _cricch_;--_inf._ . even separate letters--to express an image, to spell a name, or as used in some popular proverb.[ ] he employs without scruple, and often with marvellous force of description, any recollection that occurs to him, however homely, of everyday life;--the old tailor threading his needle with trouble (_inf._ );--the cook's assistant watching over the boiling broth (_inf._ );--the hurried or impatient horse-groom using his curry-comb (_inf._ );--or the common sights of the street or the chamber--the wet wood sputtering on the hearth: come d'un stizzo verde che arso sia dall'un de' capi, che dall'altro geme e cigola per vento che va via;--_inf._ .[ ] the paper changing colour when about to catch fire: come procede innanzi dall'ardore per lo papiro suso un color bruno che non è nero ancora, e 'l bianco muore:--_inf._ .[ ] the steaming of the hand when bathed, in winter: fuman come man bagnata il verno:-- or the ways and appearances of animals--ants meeting on their path: lì veggio d'ogni parte farsi presta ciascun'ombra, e baciarsi una con una senza restar, contente a breve festa: così per entro loro schiera bruna _s'ammusa l'una con l'altra formica_, forse a spiar lor via e lor fortuna;--_purg._ .[ ] the snail drawing in its horns (_inf._ );--the hog shut out of its sty, and trying to gore with its tusks (_inf._ );--the dogs' misery in summer (_inf._ );--the frogs jumping on to the bank before the water-snake (_inf._ );--or showing their heads above water: come al orlo dell'acqua d'un fosso stan gli ranocchi _pur col muso fuori_, sì che celano i piedi, e l'altro grosso.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : _parad._ , - .] [footnote : to describe the pinched face of famine;-- parean l'occhiaje annella senza gemme. chi nel viso degli uomini legge omo ben avria quivi conosciuto l'_emme_ (m).--_purg._ . again, quella reverenza che s'indonna di tutto me, pur per b e per ice.--_parad._ . nè o sì tosto mai, nè i si scrisse, com'ei s'accese ed arse.--_inf._ .] [footnote : like to a sapling, lighted at one end, which at the other hisses with the wind, and drops of sap doth from the outlet send: so from the broken twig, both words and blood flow'd forth.--wright.] [footnote : like burning paper, when there glides before the advancing flame a brown and dingy shade, which is not black, and yet is white no more.--ibid.] [footnote : on either hand i saw them haste their meeting, and kiss each one the other--pausing not-- contented to enjoy so short a greeting. thus do the ants among their dingy band, face one another--each their neighbour's lot haply to scan, and how their fortunes stand.--wright.] [footnote : as in a trench, frogs at the water side sit squatting, with their noses raised on high, the while their feet, and all their bulk they hide-- thus upon either hand the sinners stood. but barbariccia now approaching nigh, quick they withdrew beneath the boiling flood. i saw--and still my heart is thrill'd with fear-- one spirit linger; as beside a ditch, one frog remains, the others disappear.--ibid.] it must be said, that most of these images, though by no means all, occur in the _inferno_; and that the poet means to paint sin not merely in the greatness of its ruin and misery, but in characters which all understand, of strangeness, of vileness, of despicableness, blended with diversified and monstrous horror. even he seems to despair of his power at times: s'io avessi le rime e aspre, e chiocce, come si converrebbe al tristo buco, sovra 'l qual pontan tutte l'altre rocce; io premerrei di mio concetto il suco più pienamente; ma perch'io non l'abbo, non senza tema a dicer mi conduco: che non è 'mpresa da pigliare a gabbo descriver fondo a tutto l'universo, nè da lingua, che chiami mamma, o babbo.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : had i a rhyme so rugged, rough, and hoarse as would become the sorrowful abyss, o'er which the rocky circles wind their course, then with a more appropriate form i might endow my vast conceptions; wanting this, not without fear i bring myself to write. for no light enterprise it is, i deem, to represent the lowest depth of all; nor should a childish tongue attempt the theme.--wright.] feeling the difference between sins, in their elements and, as far as we see them, their baseness, he treats them variously. his ridicule is apportioned with a purpose. he passes on from the doom of the sins of incontinence--the storm, the frost and hail, the crushing weights--from the flaming minarets of the city of dis, of the furies and proserpine, "donna dell'eterno pianto," where the unbelievers lie, each in his burning tomb--from the river of boiling blood--the wood with the harpies--the waste of barren sand with fiery snow, where the violent are punished--to the malebolge, the manifold circles of falsehood. and here scorn and ridicule in various degrees, according to the vileness of the fraud, begin to predominate, till they culminate in that grim comedy, with its _dramatis personæ_ and battle of devils, draghignazzo, and graffiacane, and malacoda, where the peculators and sellers of justice are fished up by the demons from the boiling pitch, but even there overreach and cheat their tormentors, and make them turn their fangs on each other. the diversified forms of falsehood seem to tempt the poet's imagination to cope with its changefulness and inventions, as well as its audacity. the transformations of the wildest dream do not daunt him. his power over language is nowhere more forcibly displayed than in those cantos, which describe the punishments of theft--men passing gradually into serpents, and serpents into men: due e nessun l'imagine perversa parea.--_inf._ . and when the traitor, who murdered his own kinsman, was still alive, and seemed safe from the infamy which it was the poet's rule to bestow only on the dead, dante found a way to inflict his vengeance without an anachronism:--branca d'oria's body, though on earth, is only animated by a fiend, and his spirit has long since fled to the icy prison.[ ] [footnote : ed egli a me: come 'l mio corpo stea nel mondo sù, nulla scienzia porto. cotal vantaggio ha questa tolommea, che spesse volte l'anima ci cade innanzi, ch'atropòs mossa le dea. e perchè tu più volontier mi rade le 'nvetriate lagrime dal volto, sappi, che tosto che l'anima trade, come fec'io, il corpo suo l'è tolto da un dimonio, che poscia il governa, mentre che 'l tempo suo tutto sia volto. ella ruina in sì fatta cisterna; e forse pare ancor lo corpo suso dell'ombra, che di qua dietro mi verna. tu 'l dei saper, se tu vien pur mo giuso: egli è ser branca d'oria, e son più anni poscia passati, ch'ei fu sì racchiuso. io credo, diss'io lui, che tu m'inganni, che branca d'oria non morì unquanche, e mangia, e bee, e dorme, e veste panni. nel fosso sù, diss'ei, di malebranche, là dove bolle la tenace pece, non era giunto ancora michel zanche; che questi lasciò 'l diavolo in sua vece nel corpo suo, e d'un suo prossimano, che 'l tradimento insieme con lui fece.--_inf._ .] these are strange experiments in poetry; their strangeness is exaggerated as detached passages; but they are strange enough when they meet us in their place in the context, as parts of a scene, where the mind is strung and overawed by the sustained power, with which dreariness, horror, hideous absence of every form of good, is kept before the imagination and feelings, in the fearful picture of human sin. but they belong to the poet's system of direct and forcible representation. what his inward eye sees, what he feels, that he means us to see and feel as he does; to make us see and feel is his art. afterwards we may reflect and meditate; but first we must see--must see what he saw. evil and deformity are in the world, as well as good and beauty; the eye cannot escape them, they are about our path, in our heart and memory. he has faced them without shrinking or dissembling, and extorted from them a voice of warning. in all poetry that is written for mere delight, in all poetry which regards but a part or an aspect of nature, they have no place--they disturb and mar; but he had conceived a poetry of the whole, which would be weak or false without them. yet they stand in his poem as they stand in nature--subordinate and relieved. if the grotesque is allowed to intrude itself--if the horrible and the foul, undisguised and unsoftened, make us shudder and shrink, they are kept in strong check and in due subjection by other poetical influences; and the same power which exhibits them in their naked strength, renders its full grace and glory to beauty; its full force and delicacy to the most evanescent feeling. dante's eye was free and open to external nature in a degree new among poets; certainly in a far greater degree than among the latins, even including lucretius, whom he probably had never read. we have already spoken of his minute notice of the appearance of living creatures; but his eye was caught by the beautiful as well as by the grotesque. take the following beautiful picture of the bird looking out for dawn: come l'augello intra l'amate fronde, posato al nido de' suoi dolci nati, la notte, che le cose ci nasconde, che per veder gli aspetti desiati, e per trovar lo cibo, onde li pasca, in che i gravi labor gli sono aggrati, previene 'l tempo in su l'aperta frasca, e con ardente affetto il sole aspetta, fiso guardando, pur che l'alba nasca.--_parad._ .[ ] [footnote : e'en as the bird that resting in the nest of her sweet brood, the shelt'ring boughs among while all things are enwrapt in night's dark vest-- now eager to behold the looks she loves, and to find food for her impatient young (whence labour grateful to a mother proves), forestalls the time, high perch'd upon the spray, and with impassion'd zeal the sun expecting, anxiously waiteth the first break of day.--wright.] nothing indeed can be more true and original than his images of birds; they are varied and very numerous. we have the water-birds rising in clamorous and changing flocks: come augelli surti di riviera _quasi congratulando a lor pasture_, fanno di sè or tonda or lunga schiera;--_parad._ .[ ] the rooks, beginning to move about at daybreak: e come per lo natural costume, le pole insieme, al cominciar del giorno si muovono a scaldar le fredde piume, poi altre vanno via senza ritorno, altre rivolgon sè onde son mosse ed altre roteando fan soggiorno;--_parad._ .[ ] the morning sounds of the swallow: nell'ora che comincia i tristi lai la rondinella presso alla mattina, forse a memoria de' suoi primi guai;--_purg._ .[ ] the joy and delight of the nightingale's song (_purg._ ); the lark, silent at last, filled with its own sweetness: qual lodoletta, che 'n aere si spazia, prima cantando, e _poi tace contenta dell'ultima dolcezza che la sazia_;--_parad._ .[ ] the flight of the starlings and storks (_inf._ , _purg._ ); the mournful cry and long line of the cranes (_inf._ , _purg._ ); the young birds trying to escape from the nest (_purg._ ); the eagle hanging in the sky: con l'ale aperte, e a calare intesa;-- the dove, standing close to its mate, or wheeling round it: sì come quando 'l _colombo si pone presso al compagno_, l'uno e l'altro pande _girando e mormorando_ l'affezione;--_parad._ .[ ] or the flock of pigeons, feeding: adunati alla pastura, queti, _senza mostrar l'usato orgoglio_.--_purg._ . [footnote : and as birds rising from a stream, whence they their pastures view, as though their joy confessing, now form a round, and now a long array.--ibid.] [footnote : and as with one accord, at break of day, the rooks bestir themselves, by nature taught to chase the dew-drops from their wings away; some flying off, to reappear no more-- others repairing to their nests again-- some whirling round--then settling as before.--wright.] [footnote : what time the swallow pours her plaintive strain, saluting the approach of morning gray, thus haply mindful of her former pain.--ibid.] [footnote : e'en as the lark high soaring pours its throat awhile, then rests in silence, as though still it dwelt enamour'd of its last sweet note.--ibid.] [footnote : as when unto his partner's side, the dove approaches near--both fondly circling round, and cooing, show the fervour of their love; so these great heirs of immortality receive each other; while they joyful sound the praises of the food they share on high.--wright.] hawking supplies its images: the falcon coming for its food: il falcon che prima a piè si mira, indi si volge al grido, e si protende, per lo disio del pasto, che là il tira;--_purg._ .[ ] or just unhooded, pluming itself for its flight: quasi falcon, ch'esce del cappello, muove la testa, e con l'ale s'applaude, _voglia mostrando, e facendosi bello_;--_parad._ .[ ] or returning without success, sullen and loath: come 'l falcon ch'è stato assai su l'ali, che senza veder logoro, o uccello, fa dire al falconiere: oimè tu cali! discende lasso onde si muove snello per cento ruote, _e da lungi si pone_ dal suo maestro, _disdegnoso e fello_.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : and, as a falcon, which first scans its feet, then turns him to the call, and forward flies, in eagerness to catch the tempting meat.--ibid.] [footnote : lo, as a falcon, from the hood released, uplifts his head, and joyous flaps his wings, his beauty and his eagerness increased.--wright.] [footnote : e'en as a falcon, long upheld in air, not seeing lure or bird upon the wing, so that the falconer utters in despair "alas, thou stoop'st!" fatigued descends from high; and whirling quickly round in many a ring, far from his master sits--disdainfully.--ibid.] it is curious to observe him taking virgil's similes, and altering them. when virgil describes the throng of souls, he compares them to falling leaves, or gathering birds in autumn: quam multa in silvis auctumni frigore primo lapsa cadunt folia, aut ad terram gurgite ab alto quam multæ glomerantur aves, ubi frigidus annus trans pontum fugat, et terris immittit apricis-- dante uses the same images, but without copying: come d'autunno si levan le foglie, l'una appresso dell'altra, infin che 'l ramo rende alla terra tutte le sue spoglie; similemente il mal seme d'adamo: gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una per cenni, com'augel per suo richiamo. così sen vanno su per l'onda bruna, ed avanti che sien di là discese, anche di qua nuova schiera s'aduna.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : as leaves in autumn, borne before the wind, drop one by one, until the branch laid bare, sees all its honours to the earth consign'd: so cast them downward at his summons all the guilty race of adam from that strand-- each as a falcon answering to the call.--wright.] again--compared with one of virgil's most highly-finished and perfect pictures, the flight of the pigeon, disturbed at first, and then becoming swift and smooth: qualis spelunca subito commota columba, cui domus et dulces latebroso in pumice nidi, fertur in arva volans, plausumque exterrita pennis dat tecto ingentem, mox aere lapsa quieto radit iter liquidum, celeres neque commovet alas-- the italian's simplicity and strength may balance the "ornata parola" of virgil: quali colombe dal disio chiamate, con _l'ali aperte e ferme_ al dolce nido volan per l'aer dal voler portate.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : as doves, by strong affection urged, repair with firm expanded wings to their sweet nest, borne by the impulse of their will through air.--ibid. it is impossible not to be reminded at every step, in spite of the knowledge and taste which mr. cary and mr. wright have brought to their most difficult task, of the truth which dante has expressed with his ordinary positiveness. he is saying that he does not wish his canzoni to be explained in latin to those who could not read them in italian: "che sarebbe sposta la loro sentenzia colà dove elle _non la potessono colla loro bellezza portare_. e però sappia ciascuno che nulla cosa per legame musaico (_i.e._ poetico) armonizzata, si può della sua loquela in altra trasmutare senza rompere tutta la sua dolcezza e armonia. e questa è la ragione per che omero non si mutò mai di greco in latino, come l'altre scritture che avemo da loro."--_convito_, i. c. , p. . dr. carlyle has given up the idea of attempting to represent dante's verse by english verse, and has confined himself to assisting englishmen to read him in his own language. his prose translation is accurate and forcible. and he has added sensible and useful notes.] take, again, the _times of the day_, with what is characteristic of them--appearances, lights, feelings--seldom dwelt on at length, but carried at once to the mind, and stamped upon it sometimes by a single word. the sense of _morning_, its inspiring and cheering strength, softens the opening of the _inferno_; breathes its refreshing calm, in the interval of repose after the last horrors of hell, in the first canto of the _purgatorio_; and prepares for the entrance into the earthly paradise at its close. in the waning light of _evening_, and its chilling sense of loneliness, he prepared himself for his dread pilgrimage: lo giorno se n'andava, e l'aer bruno toglieva gli animai che sono 'n terra dalle fatiche loro; ed io sol uno m'apparechiava a sostener la guerra sì del cammino, e sì della pietate.--_inf._ . indeed there is scarcely an hour of day or night, which has not left its own recollection with him;--of which we cannot find some memorial in his poem. evening and night have many. evening, with its softness and melancholy--its exhaustion and languor, after the work, perhaps unfulfilled, of day--its regrets and yearnings--its sounds and doubtful lights--the distant bell, the closing chants of compline, the _salve regina_, the _te lucis ante terminum_--with its insecurity, and its sense of protection from above--broods over the poet's first resting-place on his heavenly road--that still, solemn, dreamy scene--the valley of flowers in the mountain side, where those who have been negligent about their salvation, but not altogether faithless and fruitless, the assembled shades of great kings and of poets, wait, looking upwards, "pale and humble," for the hour when they may begin in earnest their penance. (_purg._ and .) the level, blinding evening beams (_purg._ ); the contrast of gathering darkness in the valley or on the shore with the lingering lights on the mountain (_purg._ ); the rapid sinking of the sun, and approach of night in the south (_purg._ ); the flaming sunset clouds of august; the sheet-lightning of summer (_purg._ ); have left pictures in his mind, which an incidental touch reawakens, and a few strong words are sufficient to express. other appearances he describes with more fulness. the stars coming out one by one, baffling at first the eye: ed ecco intorno di chiarezza pari nascer un lustro sopra quel che v'era, a guisa d'orizzonte, che rischiari. _e sì come al salir di prima sera comincian per lo ciel nuove parvenze, sì che la cosa pare e non par vera_;--_parad._ .[ ] or else, bursting out suddenly over the heavens: quando colui che tutto il mondo alluma, de l'emisperio nostro si discende, e 'l giorno d'ogni parte si consuma; lo ciel che sol di lui prima s'accende, subitamente si rifà parvente per molte luci in che una risplende;--_parad._ .[ ] or the effect of shooting-stars: quale per li seren tranquilli e puri discorre ad ora ad or subito fuoco movendo gli occhi che stavan sicuri, e pare stella che tramuti loco, se non che dalla parte onde s'accende nulla sen perde, ed esso dura poco;--_parad._ .[ ] or, again, that characteristic sight of the italian summer night--the fire-flies: quante il villan che al poggio si riposa, nel tempo che colui che 'l mondo schiara la faccia sua a noi tien men ascosa, come la mosca cede alla zenzara, vede lucciole giù per la vallea forse colà dove vendemmia ed ara.--_inf._ .[ ] [footnote : and lo, on high, and lurid as the one now there, encircling it, a light arose, like heaven when re-illumined by the sun: and as at the first lighting up of eve the sky doth new appearances disclose, that now seem real, now the sight deceive.--wright.] [footnote : when he, who with his universal ray the world illumines, quits our hemisphere, and, from each quarter, daylight wears away; the heaven, erst kindled by his beam alone, sudden its lost effulgence doth repair by many lights illumined but by one.--ibid.] [footnote : as oft along the pure and tranquil sky a sudden fire by night is seen to dart, attracting forcibly the heedless eye; and seems to be a star that changes place, save that no star is lost from out the part it quits, and that it lasts a moment's space.--wright.] [footnote : as in that season when the sun least veils his face that lightens all, what time the fly gives place to the shrill gnat, the peasant then, upon some cliff reclined, beneath him sees fire-flies innumerous spangling o'er the vale, vineyard or tilth, where his day-labour lies.--cary.] noon, too, does not want its characteristic touches--the lightning-like glancing of the lizard's rapid motion: come il ramarro sotto la gran fersa ne' dì canicular cangiando siepe folgore par, se la via attraversa;--_inf._ .[ ] the motes in the sunbeam at noontide (_par._ ); its clear, diffused, insupportable brightness, filling all things: e tutti eran già pieni dell'alto dì i giron del sacro monte.--_purg._ . and veiling the sun in his own light: io veggio ben sì come _tu t'annidi nel proprio lume_. * * * * sì come 'l sol che si cela egli stessi per troppa luce, quando 'l caldo ha rose le temperanze de' vapori spessi.--_parad._ . [footnote : as underneath the dog-star's scorching ray the lizard, darting swift from fence to fence, appears like lightning, if he cross the way.--wright.] but the sights and feelings of morning are what he touches on most frequently; and he does so with the precision of one who had watched them with often-repeated delight: the scented freshness of the breeze that stirs before daybreak: e quale annunziatrice degli albori aura di maggio muovesi ed olezza tutta impregnata dall'erba e da' fiori; tal mi senti' un vento dar per mezza la fronte;--_purg._ .[ ] the chill of early morning (_purg._ ); the dawn stealing on, and the stars, one by one, fading "infino alla più bella" (_parad._ ); the brightness of the "trembling morning star"-- par tremolando mattutina stella;-- the serenity of the dawn, the blue gradually gathering in the east, spreading over the brightening sky (_parad._ ); then succeeded by the orange tints--and mars setting red, through the mist over the sea: ed ecco, qual sul presso del mattino per li grossi vapor marte rosseggia giù nel ponente, sopra 'l suol marino, cotal m'apparve, s'io ancor lo veggia, un lume per lo mar venir sì ratto che 'l muover suo nessun volar pareggia;--_purg._ .[ ] the distant sea-beach quivering in the early light: l'alba vinceva l'ora mattutina che fuggia innanzi, sì che di lontano conobbi _il tremolar della marina_;--_purg._ .[ ] the contrast of east and west at the moment of sunrise, and the sun appearing, clothed in mist: io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno la parte oriental tutta rosata e l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno; e la faccia del sol nascere ombrata sì che per temperanza di vapori l'occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata;--_purg._ .[ ] or breaking through it, and shooting his beams over the sky: di tutte parti saettava il giorno lo sol ch'avea con le saette conte di mezzo 'l ciel cacciato 'l capricorno.--_purg._ .[ ] [footnote : as when, announcing the approach of day, impregnated with herbs and flowers of spring, breathes fresh and redolent the air of may-- such was the breeze that gently fann'd my head; and i perceived the waving of a wing which all around ambrosial odours shed.--wright.] [footnote : when lo! like mars, in aspect fiery red seen through the vapour, when the morn is nigh far in the west above the briny bed, so (might i once more see it) o'er the sea a light approach'd with such rapidity, flies not the bird that might its equal be.--wright.] [footnote : now 'gan the vanquish'd matin hour to flee; and seen from far, as onward came the day, i recognised the trembling of the sea.--ibid.] [footnote : erewhile the eastern regions have i seen at daybreak glow with roseate colours, and the expanse beside all beauteous and serene: and the sun's face so shrouded at its rise, and temper'd by the mists which overhung, that i could gaze on it with stedfast eyes.--wright.] [footnote : on every side the sun shot forth the day, and had already with his arrows bright from the mid-heaven chased capricorn away.--ibid.] but _light_ in general is his special and chosen source of poetic beauty. no poet that we know has shown such singular sensibility to its varied appearances--has shown that he felt it in itself the cause of a distinct and peculiar pleasure, delighting the eye apart from form, as music delights the ear apart from words, and capable, like music, of definite character, of endless variety, and infinite meanings. he must have studied and dwelt upon it like music. his mind is charged with its effects and combinations, and they are rendered with a force, a brevity, a precision, a heedlessness and unconsciousness of ornament, an indifference to circumstance and detail; they flash out with a spontaneous readiness, a suitableness and felicity, which show the familiarity and grasp given only by daily observation, daily thought, daily pleasure. light everywhere--in the sky and earth and sea--in the star, the flame, the lamp, the gem--broken in the water, reflected from the mirror, transmitted pure through the glass, or coloured through the edge of the fractured emerald--dimmed in the mist, the halo, the deep water--streaming through the rent cloud, glowing in the coal, quivering in the lightning, flashing in the topaz and the ruby, veiled behind the pure alabaster, mellowed and clouding itself in the pearl--light contrasted with shadow--shading off and copying itself in the double rainbow, like voice and echo--light seen within light, as voice discerned within voice, "_quando una è ferma, e l'altra va e riede_"--the brighter "nestling" itself in the fainter--the purer set off on the less clear, "_come perla in bianca fronte_"--light in the human eye and face, displaying, figuring, and confounded with its expressions--light blended with joy in the eye: luce come letizia in pupilla viva; and in the smile: vincendo me col lume d'un sorriso; joy lending its expression to light: quivi la donna mia vid'io sì lieta-- che più lucente se ne fè il pianeta. e se la _stella si cambiò, e rise_, qual mi fec'io;--_parad._ . light from every source, and in all its shapes, illuminates, irradiates, gives its glory to the _commedia_. the remembrance of our "serene life" beneath the "fair stars" keeps up continually the gloom of the _inferno_. light, such as we see it and recognise it, the light of morning and evening growing and fading, takes off from the unearthliness of the _purgatorio_; peopled, as it is, by the undying, who, though suffering for sin, can sin no more, it is thus made like our familiar world, made to touch our sympathies as an image of our own purification in the flesh. and when he rises beyond the regions of earthly day, light, simple, unalloyed, unshadowed, eternal, lifts the creations of his thought above all affinity to time and matter; light never fails him, as the expression of the gradations of bliss; never reappears the same, never refuses the new shapes of his invention, never becomes confused or dim, though it is seldom thrown into distinct figure, and still more seldom _coloured_. only once, that we remember, is the thought of colour forced on us; when the bright joy of heaven suffers change and eclipse, and deepens into red at the sacrilege of men.[ ] [footnote : _parad._ .] yet his eye is everywhere, not confined to the beauty or character of the sky and its lights. his range of observation and largeness of interest prevent that line of imagery, which is his peculiar instrument and predilection, from becoming, in spite of its brightness and variety, dreamy and monotonous; prevent it from arming against itself sympathies which it does not touch. he has watched with equal attention, and draws with not less power, the occurrences and sights of italian country life; the summer whirlwind sweeping over the plain--"_dinanzi polveroso va superbo_" (_inf._ ); the rain-storm of the apennines (_purg._ ); the peasant's alternations of feeling in spring: in quella parte del giovinetto anno che 'l sole i crin sotto l'aquario tempra, e già le notti al mezzo dì sen vanno; quando la brina in su la terra assempra l'imagine di sua sorella bianca, ma poco dura alla sua penna tempra, lo villanello a cui la roba manca si leva e guarda, e vede la campagna biancheggiar tutta; ond'ei si batte l'anca; ritorna a casa, e qua e là si lagna come 'l tapin che non sa che si faccia: poi riede e la speranza ringavagna veggendo 'l mondo aver cangiata faccia in poco d'ora, e prende il suo vincastro e fuor le pecorelle a pascer caccia:--_inf._ .[ ] the manner in which sheep come out from the fold: come le pecorelle escon del chiuso _a una a due a tre, e l'altre stanno, timidette atterrando l'occhio e' l muso; e ciò che fa la prima, e l'altre fanno, addossandosi a lei s'ella s'arresta_ semplici e quete, e lo 'mperchè non sanno: sì vid'io muover a venir la testa di quella mandria fortunata allotta, pudica in faccia e nell'andare onesta. come color dinanzi vider rotta la luce.... ristaro, e trasser sè indietro alquanto, e tutti gli altri che veniano appresso, non sappiendo il perchè, fero altrettanto.--_purg._ . [footnote : in the new year, when sol his tresses gay dips in aquarius, and the tardy night divides her empire with the lengthening day-- when o'er the earth the hoar-frost pure and bright assumes the image of her sister white, then quickly melts before the genial light-- the rustic, now exhausted his supply, rises betimes--looks out--and sees the land all white around, whereat he strikes his thigh-- turns back--and grieving--wanders here and there, like one disconsolate and at a stand; then issues forth, forgetting his despair, for lo! the face of nature he beholds changed on a sudden--takes his crook again, and drives his flock to pasture from the folds.--wright.] so with the beautiful picture of the goats upon the mountain, chewing the cud in the noontide heat and stillness, and the goatherd, resting on his staff and watching them--a picture which no traveller among the mountains of italy or greece can have missed, or have forgotten: quali si fanno ruminando manse le capre, _state rapide e proterve sopra le cime_ avanti che sien pranse, _tacite al ombra mentre che 'l sol ferve, guardate dal pastor_ che 'n su la verga poggiato s'è, e lor poggiato serve.--_purg._ .[ ] [footnote : like goats that having over the crags pursued their wanton sports, now, quiet pass the time in ruminating--sated with their food, beneath the shade, while glows the sun on high-- watched by the goatherd with unceasing care, as on his staff he leans, with watchful eye.--_ibid._] so again, with his recollections of cities: the crowd, running together to hear news (_purg._ ), or pressing after the winner of the game (_purg._ ); the blind men at the church doors, or following their guide through the throng (_purg._ , ); the friars walking along in silence, one behind another: taciti, soli, e senza compagnia n'andavam, _l'un dinanzi, e l'altro dopo come i frati minor vanno per via_.--_inf._ . he turns to account in his poem, the pomp and clamour of the host taking the field (_inf._ ); the devices of heraldry; the answering chimes of morning bells over the city;[ ] the inventions and appliances of art, the wheels within wheels of clocks (_par._ ), the many-coloured carpets of the east (_inf._ ); music and dancing--the organ and voice in church: --voce mista al dolce suono che or sì or no s'intendon le parole,--_purg._ . the lute and voice in the chamber (_par._ ); the dancers preparing to begin,[ ] or waiting to catch a new strain.[ ] or, again, the images of domestic life, the mother's ways to her child, reserved and reproving--"che al figlio par superba"--or cheering him with her voice, or watching him compassionately in the wandering of fever: ond'ella, appresso d'un pio sospiro gli occhi drizzò ver me, con quel sembiante che madre fa sopra figliuol deliro.--_parad._ . [footnote : indi come orologio che ne chiami nell'ora che la sposa di dio surge a mattinar lo sposo perchè l'ami, che l'una parte e l'altra tira ed urge tin tin sonando con sì dolce nota che 'l ben disposto spirto d'amor turge; così vid'io la gloriosa ruota muoversi e render voce a voce, in tempra ed in dolcezza ch'esser non può nota se non colà dove 'l gioir s'insempra.--_parad._ .] [footnote : e come surge, e va, ed entra in ballo vergine lieta, sol per farne onore alla novizia, e non per alcun fallo.--_ibid._ .] [footnote : donne mi parver, non da ballo sciolte, ma che s'arrestin tacite ascoltando fin che le nuove note hanno ricolte.--_ibid._ .] nor is he less observant of the more delicate phenomena of mind, in its inward workings, and its connexion with the body. the play of features, the involuntary gestures and attitudes of the passions, the power of eye over eye, of hand upon hand, the charm of voice and expression, of musical sounds even when not understood--feelings, sensations, and states of mind which have a name, and others, equally numerous and equally common, which have none--these, often so fugitive, so shifting, so baffling and intangible, are expressed with a directness, a simplicity, a sense of truth at once broad and refined, which seized at once on the congenial mind of his countrymen, and pointed out to them the road which they have followed in art, unapproached as yet by any competitors.[ ] [footnote : for instance:--_thoughts upon thoughts, ending in sleep and dreams_: nuovo pensier dentro de me si mise, dal qual più altri nacquero e diversi: _e tanto d'uno in altro vaneggiai che gli occhi per vaghezza ricopersi, e 'l pensamento in sogno trasmutai_.--_purg._ . _sleep stealing off when broken by light_: come si frange il sonno, ove di butto nuova luce percuote 'l viso chiuso, _che fratto guizza pria che muoja tutto_.--_ibid._ . _the shock of sudden awakening_: come al lume acuto si disonna, * * * * _e lo svegliato ciò che vede abborre,_ sì nescia è la subita vigilia, finchè la stimativa nol soccorre.--_parad._ . _uneasy feelings produced by sight or representation of something unnatural_: come per sostentar solajo o tetto per mensola talvolta una figura si vede giunger le ginocchia al petto, _la qual fa del non ver vera rancura nascer a chi la vede_; così fatti vid'io color.--_purg._ . _blushing in innocent sympathy for others_: e come donna onesta che permane di sè sicura, e _per l'altrui fallanza pure ascoltando timida si fane_: così beatrice trasmutò sembianza.--_par._ . _asking and answering by looks only_: volsi gli occhi agli occhi al signor mio; ond'elli m'assentì con lieto cenno ciò che chiedea la vista del disio.--_purg._ . _watching the effect of words_: posto avea fine al suo ragionamento l'alto dottore, ad attento guardava nella mia vista s'io parea contento. ed io, cui nuova sete ancor frugava, di fuor taceva e dentro dicea: forse lo troppo dimandar ch'io fo, li grava. ma quel padre verace, che s'accorse del timido voler che non s'apriva, parlando, di parlare ardir mi porse.--_ibid._ . _dante betraying virgil's presence to statius, by his involuntary smile_: volser virgilio a me queste parole con viso che tacendo dicea: "taci;" ma non può tutto la virtù che vuole; che riso e pianto son tanto seguaci alla passion da che ciascun si spicca, _che men segnon voler ne' più veraci. io pur sorrisi, come l'uom ch'ammicca: perchè l'ombra si tacque, e riguardommi negli occhi ove 'l sembiante più si ficca._ e se tanto lavoro in bene assommi, disse, perchè la faccia tua testeso _un lampeggiar a' un riso_ dimostrommi?--_purg._ . _smiles and words together_: per le _sorrise parolette brevi_.--_parad._ . _eye meeting eye_: gli occhi ritorsi avanti dritti nel lume della dolce guida che sorridendo ardea negli occhi santi.--_ibid._ . come si vede qui alcuna volta l'affetto nella vista, s'ello è tanto che da lui sia tutta l'anima tolta: così nel fiammeggiar del fulgor santo a cui mi volsi, conobbi la voglia in lui di ragionarmi ancora alquanto.--_ibid._ . _gentleness of voice_: e cominciommi a dir soave e piana con angelica voce in sua favella.--_inf._ . e come agli occhi miei si fe' più bella, così con voce più dolce e soave, ma non con questa moderna favella, dissemi;--_parad._ . _chanting_: _te lucis ante_ sì divotamente le uscì di bocca e con sì dolce note, che fece me a me uscir di mente. e l'altre poi dolcemente e divote seguitar lei per tutto l'inno intero, avendo gli occhi alle superne ruote.--_purg._ . _chanting blended with the sound of the organ_: io mi rivolsi attento al primo tuono, e _te deum laudamus_ mi parea udire in voce mista al dolce suono. tale imagine appunto mi rendea ciò ch'io udiva, qual prender si suole _quando a cantar con organi si stea; ch'or sì, or no, s'intendon le parole_.--_purg._ . _voices in concert_: e come in voce voce si discerne _quando una è ferma, e' l altra va e riede_.--_parad._ . _attitudes and gestures: e.g. beatrice addressing him_, con atto e voce di spedito duce.--_ibid._ . _sordello eyeing the travellers_: venimmo a lei: o anima lombarda, come ti stavi altera e disdegnosa, e nel muover degli occhi onesta e tarda. ella non ci diceva alcuna cosa, ma lasciavane gir, solo guardando, a guisa di leon quando si posa.--_purg._ . _the angel moving "dry-shod" over the stygian pool_: _dal volto rimovea quell'aer grasso menando la sinistra innanzi spesso_, e sol di quell'angoscia parea lasso. ben m'accorsi ch'egli era del ciel messo, e volsimi al maestro; e quei fe' segno ch'io stessi cheto ed inchinassi ed esso. ahi quanto mi parea pien di disdegno. * * * * poi si rivolse per la strada lorda, e non fe' motto a noi, ma fe' sembiante d'uomo cui altra cura stringa e morda che quella di colui che gli è davante.--_inf._ .] and he has anticipated the latest schools of modern poetry, by making not merely nature, but science tributary to a poetry with whose general aim and spirit it has little in common--tributary in its exact forms, even in its technicalities. he speaks of the mediterranean sea, not merely as a historian, or an observer of its storms or its smiles, but as a geologist;[ ] of light, not merely in its beautiful appearances, but in its natural laws.[ ] there is a charm, an imaginative charm to him, not merely in the sensible magnificence of the heavens, "in their silence, and light, and watchfulness," but in the system of ptolemy and the theories of astrology; and he delights to interweave the poetry of feeling and of the outward sense with the grandeur--so far as he knew it--of order, proportion, measured magnitudes, the relations of abstract forces, displayed on such a scene as the material universe, as if he wished to show that imagination in its boldest flight was not afraid of the company of the clear and subtle intellect. [footnote : _la maggior valle_, in che l'acqua si spandi.--_parad._ .] [footnote : _e.g._ _purg._ .] indeed the real never daunts him. it is his leading principle of poetic composition, to draw out of things the poetry which is latent in them, either essentially, or as they are portions, images, or reflexes of something greater--not to invest them with a poetical semblance, by means of words which bring with them poetical associations, and have received a general poetical stamp. dante has few of those indirect charms which flow from the subtle structure and refined graces of language--none of that exquisitely-fitted and self-sustained mechanism of choice words of the greeks--none of that tempered and majestic amplitude of diction, which clothes, like the folds of a royal robe, the thoughts of the latins--none of that abundant play of fancy and sentiment, soft or grand, in which the later italian poets delighted. words with him are used sparingly, never in play--never because they carry with them poetical recollections--never for their own sake; but because they are instruments which will give the deepest, clearest, sharpest stamp of that image which the poet's mind, piercing to the very heart of his subject, or seizing the characteristic feature which to other men's eyes is confused and lost among others accidental and common, draws forth in severe and living truth. words will not always bend themselves to his demands on them; they make him often uncouth, abrupt, obscure. but he is too much in earnest to heed uncouthness; and his power over language is too great to allow uncertainty as to what he means, to be other than occasional. nor is he a stranger to the utmost sweetness and melody of language. but it appears, unsought for and unlaboured, the spontaneous and inevitable obedience of the tongue and pen to the impressions of the mind; as grace and beauty, of themselves, "command and guide the eye" of the painter, who thinks not of his hand but of them. all is in character with the absorbed and serious earnestness which pervades the poem; there is no toying, no ornament, that a man in earnest might not throw into his words;--whether in single images, or in pictures, like that of the meadow of the heroes (_inf._ ), or the angel appearing in hell to guide the poet through the burning city (_inf._ )--or in histories, like those of count ugolino, or the life of s. francis (_parad._ )--or in the dramatic scenes like the meeting of the poets sordello and virgil (_purgat._ ), or that one, unequalled in beauty, where dante himself, after years of forgetfulness and sin, sees beatrice in glory, and hears his name, never but once pronounced during the vision, from her lips.[ ] [footnote : io vidi già nel cominciar del giorno la parte oriental tutta rosata, e l'altro ciel di bel sereno adorno, e la faccia del sol nascere ombrata, sì che per temperanza di vapori l'occhio lo sostenea lunga fiata; così dentro una nuvola di fiori, che dalle mani angeliche saliva, e ricadeva giù dentro e di fuori, sovra candido vel cinta d'oliva donna m'apparve sotto verde manto vestita di color di fiamma viva. e lo spirito mio, che già cotanto tempo era stato che alla sua presenza non era di stupor, tremando, affranto. senza degli occhi aver più conoscenza, per occulta virtù, che da lei mosse, d'antico amor senti' la gran potenza. * * * * volsimi alla sinistra col rispitto, col quale il fantolin corre alla mamma, quando ha paura, o quando egli è afflitto, per dicere a virgilio: men che dramma di sangue m'è rimasa, che non tremi: conosco i segni dell'antica fiamma. ma virgilio n'avea lasciati scemi di sè, virgilio dolcissimo padre, virgilio, a cui per mia salute diemi: * * * * dante, perchè virgilio se ne vada, non piangere anche, non piangere ancora chè pianger ti convien per altra spada. * * * * regalmente nell'atto ancor proterva continuò, come colui che dice, e il più caldo parlar dietro reserva, guardami ben: ben son, ben son beatrice: come degnasti d'accedere al monte? non sapei tu, che qui è l'uom felice?--_purg._ . but extracts can give but an imperfect notion of this grand and touching canto.] but this, or any other array of scenes and images, might be matched from poets of a far lower order than dante: and to specimens which might be brought together of his audacity and extravagance, no parallel could be found except among the lowest. we cannot, honestly, plead the barbarism of the time as his excuse. that, doubtless, contributed largely to them; but they were the faults of the man. in another age, their form might have been different; yet we cannot believe so much of time, that it would have tamed dante. nor can we wish it. it might have made him less great: and his greatness can well bear its own blemishes, and will not less meet its due honour among men, because they can detect its kindred to themselves. the greatness of his work is not in its details--to be made or marred by them. it is the greatness of a comprehensive and vast conception, sustaining without failure the trial of its long and hazardous execution, and fulfilling at its close the hope and promise of its beginning; like the greatness--which we watch in its course with anxious suspense, and look back upon when it is secured by death, with deep admiration--of a perfect life. many a surprise, many a difficulty, many a disappointment, many a strange reverse and alternation of feelings, attend the progress of the most patient and admiring reader of the _commedia_; as many as attend on one who follows the unfolding of a strong character in life. we are often shocked when we were prepared to admire--repelled, when we came with sympathy; the accustomed key fails at a critical moment--depths are revealed which we cannot sound, mysteries which baffle and confound us. but the check is for a time--the gap and chasm does not dissever. haste is even an evidence of life--the brief word, the obscure hint, the unexplained, the unfinished, or even the unachieved, are the marks of human feebleness, but are also among those of human truth. the unity of the whole is unimpaired. the strength which is working it out, though it may have at times disappointed us, shows no hollowness or exhaustion. the surprise of disappointment is balanced--there is the surprise of unimagined excellence. powers do more than they promised; and that spontaneous and living energy, without which neither man nor poet can be trusted, and which showed its strength even in its failures, shows it more abundantly in the novelties of success--by touching sympathies which have never been touched before, by the unconstrained freshness with which it meets the proverbial and familiar, by the freedom with which it adjusts itself to a new position or an altered task--by the completeness, unstudied and instinctive, with which it holds together dissimilar and uncongenial materials, and forces the most intractable, the most unaccustomed to submission, to receive the colour of the whole--by its orderly and unmistakable onward march, and its progress, as in height, so in what corresponds to height. it was one and the same man, who rose from the despair, the agony, the vivid and vulgar horrors of the _inferno_, to the sense and imagination of certainty, sinlessness, and joy ineffable--the same man whose power and whose sympathies failed him not, whether discriminating and enumerating, as if he had gone through them all, the various forms of human suffering, from the dull, gnawing sense of the loss of happiness, to the infinite woes of the wrecked and ruined spirit, and the coarser pangs of the material flesh; or dwelling on the changeful lights and shades of earnest repentance, in its hard, but not unaided or ungladdened struggle, and on that restoration to liberty and peace, which can change even this life into paradise, and reverse the doom which made sorrow our condition, and laughter and joy unnatural and dangerous--the penalty of that first fault, which in pianto ed in affanno cambiò onesto riso e dolce giuoco: or rising finally above mortal experience, to imagine the freedom of the saints and the peace of eternity. in this consists the greatness of his power. it is not necessary to read through the _commedia_ to see it--open it where we please, we see that he is on his way, and whither he is going; episode and digression share in the solemnity of the general order. and his greatness was more than that of power. that reach and play of sympathy ministered to a noble wisdom, which used it thoughtfully and consciously for a purpose to which great poetry had never yet been applied, except in the mouth of prophets. dante was a stern man, and more than stern, among his fellows. but he has left to those who never saw his face an inheritance the most precious; he has left them that which, reflecting and interpreting their minds, does so, not to amuse, not to bewilder, not to warp, not to turn them in upon themselves in distress or gloom or selfishness; not merely to hold up a mirror to nature; but to make them true and make them hopeful. dark as are his words of individuals, his thoughts are not dark or one-sided about mankind; his is no cherished and perverse severity--his faith is too large, too real, for such a fault. he did not write only the _inferno_. and the _purgatorio_ and the _paradiso_ are not an afterthought, a feebler appendix and compensation, conceived when too late, to a finished whole, which has taken up into itself the poet's real mind. nowhere else in poetry of equal power is there the same balanced view of what man is, and may be; nowhere so wide a grasp shown of his various capacities, so strong a desire to find a due place and function for all his various dispositions. where he stands contrasted in his idea of human life with other poets, who have been more powerful exponents of its separate sides, is in his large and truthful comprehensiveness. fresh from the thought of man's condition as a whole, fresh from the thought of his goodness, his greatness, his power, as well as of his evil, his mind is equally in tune when rejoicing over his restoration, as when contemplating the ruins of his fall. he never lets go the recollection that human life, if it grovels at one end in corruption and sin, and has to pass through the sweat and dust and disfigurement of earthly toil, has throughout, compensations, remedies, functions, spheres innumerable of profitable activity, sources inexhaustible of delight and consolation--and at the other end a perfection which cannot be named. no one ever measured the greatness of man in all its forms with so true and yet with so admiring an eye, and with such glowing hope, as he who has also portrayed so awfully man's littleness and vileness. and he went farther--no one who could understand and do homage to greatness in man, ever drew the line so strongly between greatness and goodness, and so unhesitatingly placed the hero of this world only--placed him in all his magnificence, honoured with no timid or dissembling reverence--at the distance of worlds, below the place of the lowest saint. those who know the _divina commedia_ best, will best know how hard it is to be the interpreter of such a mind; but they will sympathise with the wish to call attention to it. they know, and would wish others also to know, not by hearsay, but by experience, the power of that wonderful poem. they know its austere, yet subduing beauty; they know what force there is, in its free and earnest and solemn verse, to strengthen, to tranquillise, to console. it is a small thing that it has the secret of nature and man; that a few keen words have opened their eyes to new sights in earth, and sea, and sky; have taught them new mysteries of sound; have made them recognise, in distinct image or thought, fugitive feelings, or their unheeded expression, by look, or gesture, or motion; that it has enriched the public and collective memory of society with new instances, never to be lost, of human feeling and fortune; has charmed ear and mind by the music of its stately march, and the variety and completeness of its plan. but, besides this, they know how often its seriousness has put to shame their trifling, its magnanimity their faintheartedness, its living energy their indolence, its stern and sad grandeur rebuked low thoughts, its thrilling tenderness overcome sullenness and assuaged distress, its strong faith quelled despair and soothed perplexity, its vast grasp imparted the sense of harmony to the view of clashing truths. they know how often they have found, in times of trouble, if not light, at least that deep sense of reality, permanent, though unseen, which is more than light can always give--in the view which it has suggested to them of the judgments and the love of god.[ ] [footnote : it is necessary to state, that these remarks were written before we had seen the chapter on dante in "italy, past and present, by l. mariotti." had we become acquainted with it earlier, we should have had to refer to it often, in the way of acknowledgment, and as often in the way of strong protest.] de monarchia. book i. i.--it very greatly concerns all men on whom a higher nature has impressed[ ] the love of truth, that, as they have been enriched by the labour of those before them, so they also should labour for those that are to come after them, to the end that posterity may receive from them an addition to its wealth. for he is far astray from his duty--let him not doubt it--who, having been trained in the lessons of public business, cares not himself to contribute aught to the public good. he is no "tree planted by the water-side, that bringeth forth his fruit in due season." he is rather the devouring whirlpool, ever engulfing, but restoring nothing. pondering, therefore, often on these things, lest some day i should have to answer the charge of the talent buried in the earth, i desire not only to show the budding promise, but also to bear fruit for the general good, and to set forth truths by others unattempted. for what fruit can he be said to bear who should go about to demonstrate again some theorem of euclid? or when aristotle has shown us what happiness is, should show it to us once more? or when cicero has been the apologist of old age, should a second time undertake its defence? such squandering of labour would only engender weariness and not profit. [footnote : "_in quos veritatis amorem natura superior impressit._" on the ancient idea (aug. _de trin._ iii. ; aquin. _summ._ , , ) of the influence or impression of higher natures on lower, cf. _parad._ i. , x. .] but seeing that among other truths, ill-understood yet profitable, the knowledge touching temporal monarchy is at once most profitable and most obscure, and that because it has no immediate reference to worldly gain it is left unexplored by all, therefore it is my purpose to draw it forth from its hiding-places, as well that i may spend my toil for the benefit of the world, as that i may be the first to win the prize of so great an achievement to my own glory. the work indeed is difficult, and i am attempting what is beyond my strength; but i trust not in my own powers, but in the light of that bountiful giver, "who giveth to all men liberally, and upbraideth not." ii.--first, therefore, we must see what is it that is called temporal monarchy, in its idea, so to speak, and according to its purpose. temporal monarchy, then, or, as men call it, the empire, is the government of one prince above all men in time, or in those things and over those things which are measured by time. three great questions are asked concerning it. first, there is the doubt and the question, is it necessary for the welfare of the world? secondly, did the roman people take to itself by right the office of monarchy? and thirdly, does the authority of monarchy come from god directly, or only from some other minister or vicar of god? now, since every truth, which is not itself a first principle, becomes manifest from the truth of some first principle, it is therefore necessary in every inquiry to have a knowledge of the first principle involved, to which by analysis we may go back for the certainty of all the propositions which are afterwards accepted. and since this treatise is an inquiry, we must begin by examining the first principle on the strength of which deductions are to rest. it must be understood then that there are certain things which, since they are not subject to our power, are matters of speculation, but not of action: such are mathematics and physics, and things divine. but there are some things which, since they are subject to our power, are matters of action as well as of speculation, and in them we do not act for the sake of speculation, but contrariwise: for in such things action is the end. now, since the matter which we have in hand has to do with states, nay, with the very origin and principle of good forms of government, and since all that concerns states is subject to our power, it is manifest that our subject is not in the first place speculation, but action. and again, since in matters of action the end sought is the first principle and cause of all (for that it is which first moves the agent to act), it follows that all our method concerning the means which are set to gain the end must be taken from the end. for there will be one way of cutting wood to build a house, and another to build a ship. that therefore, if it exists, which is the ultimate end for the universal civil order of mankind, will be the first principle from which all the truth of our future deductions will be sufficiently manifest. but it is folly to think that there is an end for this and for that particular civil order, and yet not one end for all. iii.--now, therefore, we must see what is the end of the whole civil order of men; and when we have found this, then, as the philosopher[ ] says in his book to nicomachus,[ ] the half of our labour will have been accomplished. and to render the question clearer, we must observe that as there is a certain end for which nature makes the thumb, and another, different from this, for which she makes the whole hand, and again another for which she makes the arm, and another different from all for which she makes the whole man; so there is one end for which she orders the individual man, and another for which she orders the family, and another end for the city, and another for the kingdom, and finally an ultimate one for which the everlasting god, by his art which is nature, brings into being the whole human race. and this is what we seek as a first principle to guide our whole inquiry. [footnote : the common title for aristotle from the first half of the thirteenth century. _vide_ jourdain, _recherches sur les traductions d'aristote_, p. , note.] [footnote : arist. _ethics_, i. .] let it then be understood that god and nature make nothing to be idle. whatever comes into being, exists for some operation or working. for no created essence is an ultimate end in the creator's purpose, so far as he is a creator, but rather the proper operation of that essence. therefore it follows that the operation does not exist for the sake of the essence, but the essence for the sake of the operation. there is therefore a certain proper operation of the whole body of human kind, for which this whole body of men in all its multitudes is ordered and constituted, but to which no one man, nor single family, nor single neighbourhood, nor single city, nor particular kingdom can attain. what this is will be manifest, if we can find what is the final and characteristic capacity of humanity as a whole. i say then that no quality which is shared by different species of things is the distinguishing capacity of any one of them. for were it so, since this capacity is that which makes each species what it is, it would follow that one essence would be specifically distributed to many species, which is impossible. therefore the ultimate quality of men is not existence, taken simply; for the elements share therein. nor is it existence under certain conditions;[ ] for we find this in minerals too. nor is it existence with life; for plants too have life. nor is it percipient existence; for brutes share in this power. it is to be percipient[ ] with the possibility of understanding, for this quality falls to the lot of none but man, either above or below him. for though there are other beings which with him have understanding, yet this understanding is not, as man's, capable of development. for such beings are only certain intellectual natures, and not anything besides, and their being is nothing other than to understand; which is without interruption, otherwise they would not be eternal. it is plain, therefore, that the distinguishing quality of humanity is the faculty or the power of understanding. [footnote : "_esse complexionatum._"] [footnote : "_apprehensivum per intellectum possibilem._" _v. aquin._ i. , , , .] and because this faculty cannot be realised in act in its entirety at one time by a single man, nor by any of the individual societies which we have marked, therefore there must be multitude in the human race, in order to realise it: just as it is necessary that there should be a multitude of things which can be brought into being,[ ] so that the capacity of the primal matter for being acted on may be ever open to what acts on it. for if this were not so, we could speak of a capacity apart from its substance, which is impossible. and with this opinion averroes, in his comment on [aristotle's] treatise on the soul, agrees. for the capacity for understanding, of which i speak, is concerned not only with universal forms or species, but also, by a kind of extension, with particular ones. therefore it is commonly said that the speculative understanding becomes practical by extension; and then its end is to do and to make. this i say in reference to things which may be _done_, which are regulated by political wisdom, and in reference to things which may be _made_, which are regulated by art; all which things wait as handmaidens on the speculative intellect, as on that best good, for which the primal goodness created the human race. hence the saying of the politics[ ] that those who are strong in understanding are the natural rulers of others. [footnote : "_generabilium._"] [footnote : arist. _polit._ i. , .--(w.)] iv.--it has thus been sufficiently set forth that the proper work of the human race, taken as a whole, is to set in action the whole capacity of that understanding which is capable of development: first in the way of speculation, and then, by its extension, in the way of action. and seeing that what is true of a part is true also of the whole, and that it is by rest and quiet that the individual man becomes perfect in wisdom and prudence; so the human race, by living in the calm and tranquillity of peace, applies itself most freely and easily to its proper work; a work which, according to the saying; "thou hast made him a little lower than the angels," is almost divine. whence it is manifest that of all things that are ordered to secure blessings to men, peace is the best. and hence the word which sounded to the shepherds from above was not riches, nor pleasure, nor honour, nor length of life, nor health, nor strength, nor beauty; but peace. for the heavenly host said: "glory to god in the highest, and on earth, peace to men of goodwill." therefore also, "peace be with you," was the salutation of the saviour of mankind. for it behoved him, who was the greatest of saviours, to utter in his greeting the greatest of saving blessings. and this custom his disciples too chose to preserve; and paul also did the same in his greetings, as may appear manifest to all. now that we have declared these matters, it is plain what is the better, nay the best, way in which mankind may attain to do its proper work. and consequently we have seen the readiest means by which to arrive at the point, for which all our works are ordered, as their ultimate end; namely, the universal peace, which is to be assumed as the first principle for our deductions. as we said, this assumption was necessary, for it is as a sign-post to us, that into it we may resolve all that has to be proved, as into a most manifest truth. v.--as therefore we have already said, there are three doubts, and these doubts suggest three questions, concerning temporal monarchy, which in more common speech is called the empire; and our purpose is, as we explained, to inquire concerning these questions in their given order, and starting from the first principle which we have just laid down. the first question, then, is whether temporal monarchy is necessary for the welfare of the world; and that it is necessary can, i think, be shown by the strongest and most manifest arguments; for nothing, either of reason or of authority, opposes me. let us first take the authority of the philosopher in his politics.[ ] there, on his venerable authority, it is said that where a number of things are arranged to attain an end, it behoves one of them to regulate or govern the others, and the others to submit. and it is not only the authority of his illustrious name which makes this worthy of belief, but also reason, instancing particulars. [footnote : arist. _polit._ i. .] if we take the case of a single man, we shall see the same rule manifested in him: all his powers are ordered to gain happiness; but his understanding is what regulates and governs all the others; and otherwise he would never attain to happiness. again, take a single household: its end is to fit the members thereof to live well; but there must be one to regulate and rule it, who is called the father of the family, or, it may be, one who holds his office. as the philosopher says: "every house is ruled by the oldest."[ ] and, as homer says, it is his duty to make rules and laws for the rest. hence the proverbial curse: "mayst thou have an equal at home."[ ] take a single village: its end is suitable assistance as regards persons and goods, but one in it must be the ruler of the rest, either set over them by another, or with their consent, the head man amongst them. if it be not so, not only do its inhabitants fail of this mutual assistance, but the whole neighbourhood is sometimes wholly ruined by the ambition of many, who each of them wish to rule. if, again, we take a single city: its end is to secure a good and sufficient life to the citizens; but one man must be ruler in imperfect[ ] as well as in good forms of the state. if it is otherwise, not only is the end of civil life lost, but the city too ceases to be what it was. lastly, if we take any one kingdom, of which the end is the same as that of a city, only with greater security for its tranquillity, there must be one king to rule and govern. for if this is not so, not only do his subjects miss their end, but the kingdom itself falls to destruction, according to that word of the infallible truth: "every kingdom divided against itself shall be brought to desolation." if then this holds good in these cases, and in each individual thing which is ordered to one certain end, what we have laid down is true. [footnote : _ibid._ i. , , quoting hom. _od._ ix. .--(w.)] [footnote : ficinus translates: "uno proverbio che quasi bestemmiando dice, _abbi pari in casa_."] [footnote : "_obliqua_" = [greek: parekbaseis]. _v._ arist. _eth._ viii. ; _pol._ iii. .--(w.)] now it is plain that the whole human race is ordered to gain some end, as has been before shown. there must, therefore, be one to guide and govern, and the proper title for this office is monarch or emperor. and so it is plain that monarchy or the empire is necessary for the welfare of the world. vi.--and as the part is to the whole, so is the order of parts to the order of the whole. the part is to the whole, as to an end and highest good which is aimed at; and, therefore, the order in the parts is to the order in the whole, as it is to the end and highest good aimed at. hence we have it that the goodness of the order of parts does not exceed the goodness of the order of the whole, but that the converse of this is true. therefore we find a double order in the world, namely, the order of parts in relation to each other, and their order in relation to some one thing which is not a part (as there is in the order of the parts of an army in relation to each other, and then in relation to the general); and the order of the parts in relation to the one thing which is not a part is the higher, for it is the end of the other order, and the other exists for the sake of it. therefore, if the form of this order is found in the units of the mass of mankind, much more may we argue by our syllogism that it is found in mankind considered as a whole; for this latter order, or its form, is better. but as was said in the preceding chapter, and it is sufficiently plain, this order is found in all the units of the mass of mankind. therefore it is, or should be, found in the mass considered as a whole. and therefore all the parts that we have mentioned, which are comprised in kingdoms, and the kingdoms themselves ought to be ordered with reference to one prince or princedom, that is, with reference to a monarch or monarchy. vii.--further, the whole human race is a whole with reference to certain parts, and, with reference to another whole, it is a part. for it is a whole with reference to particular kingdoms and nations, as we have shown; and it is a part with reference to the whole universe, as is manifest without argument. therefore, as the lower portions of the whole system of humanity are well adapted to that whole, so that whole is said to be well adapted to the whole which is above it. it is only under the rule of one prince that the parts of humanity are well adapted to their whole, as may easily be collected from what we have said; therefore it is only by being under one princedom, or the rule of a single prince, that humanity as a whole is well adapted to the universe, or its prince, who is the one god. and it therefore follows that monarchy is necessary for the welfare of the world. viii.--and all is well and at its best which exists according to the will of the first agent, who is god. this is self-evident, except to those who deny that the divine goodness attains to absolute perfection. now, it is the intention of god that all created things should represent the likeness of god, so far as their proper nature will admit. therefore was it said: "let us make man in our image, after our likeness." and though it could not be said that the lower part of creation was made in the image of god, yet all things may be said to be after his likeness, for what is the whole universe but the footprint of the divine goodness? the human race, therefore, is well, nay at its best state, when, so far as can be, it is made like unto god. but the human race is then most made like unto god when most it is one; for the true principle of oneness is in him alone. wherefore it is written: "hear, o israel; the lord thy god is one god." but the race of man is most one when it is united wholly in one body, and it is evident that this cannot be, except when it is subject to one prince. therefore in this subjection mankind is most made like unto god, and, in consequence, such a subjection is in accordance with the divine intention, and it is indeed well and best for man when this is so, as we showed at the beginning of this chapter. ix.--again, things are well and at their best with every son when he follows, so far as by his proper nature he can, the footsteps of a perfect father. mankind is the son of heaven, which is most perfect in all its works; for it is "man and the sun which produce man," according to the second book on natural learning.[ ] the human race, therefore, is at its best when it imitates the movements of heaven, so far as human nature allows. and since the whole heaven is regulated with one motion, to wit, that of the _primum mobile_, and by one mover, who is god, in all its parts, movements, and movers (and this human reason readily seizes from science); therefore, if our argument be correct, the human race is at its best state when, both in its movements, and in regard to those who move it, it is regulated by a single prince, as by the single movement of heaven, and by one law, as by the single motion. therefore it is evidently necessary for the welfare of the world for there to be a monarchy, or single princedom, which men call the empire. and this thought did boethius breathe when he said: "oh happy race of men, if your hearts are ruled by the love which rules the heaven."[ ] [footnote : arist. _phys. ausc._ ii. .--(w.)] [footnote : _de consol. phil._ ii. met. .--(w.)] x.--wherever there is controversy, there ought to be judgment, otherwise there would be imperfection without its proper remedy,[ ] which is impossible; for god and nature, in things necessary, do not fail in their provisions. but it is manifest that there may be controversy between any two princes, where the one is not subject to the other, either from the fault of themselves, or even of their subjects. therefore between them there should be means of judgment. and since, when one is not subject to the other, he cannot be judged by the other (for there is no rule of equals over equals), there must be a third prince of wider jurisdiction, within the circle of whose laws both may come. either he will or he will not be a monarch. if he is, we have what we sought; if not, then this one again will have an equal, who is not subject to his jurisdiction, and then again we have need of a third. and so we must either go on to infinity, which is impossible, or we must come to that judge who is first and highest; by whose judgment all controversies shall be either directly or indirectly decided; and he will be monarch or emperor. monarchy is therefore necessary to the world, and this the philosopher saw when he said: "the world is not intended to be disposed in evil order; 'in a multitude of rulers there is evil, therefore let there be one prince.'"[ ] [footnote : "_sine proprio perfectivo._"] [footnote : arist. _metaphys._ xii. , who quotes from hom. _il._ ii. .--(w.)] xi.--further, the world is ordered best when justice is most paramount therein: whence virgil, wishing to celebrate that age, which in his own time seemed to be arising, sang in his _bucolics_:[ ] "now doth the virgin return, and the kingdom of saturn." for justice was named "the virgin," and also astræa. the kingdom of saturn was the good time, which they also called the golden age. but justice is paramount only in a monarchy, and therefore a monarchy, that is, the empire, is needed if the world is to be ordered for the best. for better proof of this assumption it must be recognised that justice, considered in itself, and in its proper nature, is a certain rightness or rule of conduct, which rejects on either side all that deviates from it. it is like whiteness considered as an abstraction, not admitting of degrees. for there are certain forms of this sort which belong to things compounded, and exist themselves in a simple and unchanging essence, as[ ] the master of the six principles rightly says. yet qualities of this sort admit of degrees on the part of their subjects with which they are connected, according as in their subjects more or less of their contraries is mingled. justice, therefore, is strongest in man, both as a state of mind and in practice, where there is least admixture of its opposite; and then we may say of it, in the words of the philosopher, that "neither the star of morning nor of evening is so admirable."[ ] for then is it like phoebe, when she looks across the heavens at her brother from the purple of the morning calm. [footnote : _ecl._ iv. .] [footnote : gilbert de la porrée, [dagger symbol] . the "six principles" were the last six of the ten categories of aristotle, and the book became one of the chief elementary logic-books of the middle ages. _vide_ hauréau, _philosophie scolastique_, e partie, p. .] [footnote : from arist. _ethics_, v. .--(w.)] now justice, as a state of mind,[ ] has a force which opposes it in the will; for where the will of a man is not pure from all desire, then, though there be justice, yet there is not justice in all its ideal brightness; for there is in that man, however little, yet in some degree, an opposing force; and therefore they, who would work on the feelings[ ] of a judge, are rightly repelled. but, in practice,[ ] justice finds an opposing force in what men are able to do. for, seeing that it is a virtue regulating our conduct towards other men, how shall any act according to justice if he has not the power of rendering to all their due? therefore it is plain that the operation of justice will be wide in proportion to the power of the just man. [footnote : "_quantum ad habitum._"] [footnote : "_passionare._"] [footnote : "_quantum ad operationem._"] from this let us argue: justice is strongest in the world when it is in one who is most willing and most powerful; only the monarch is this; therefore, only when justice is in the monarch is it strongest in the world. this pro-syllogism goes on through the second figure, with an involved negative, and is like this: all b is a; only c is a; therefore only c is b: or all b is a; nothing but c is a; therefore nothing but c is b. our previous explanation makes the first proposition apparent: the second is proved thus, first in regard to will, and secondly in regard to power. first it must be observed that the strongest opponent of justice is appetite, as aristotle intimates in the fifth book to nicomachus.[ ] remove appetite altogether, and there remains nothing adverse to justice; and therefore it is the opinion of the philosopher that nothing should be left to the judge, if it can be decided by law;[ ] and this ought to be done for fear of appetite, which easily perverts men's minds. where, then, there is nothing to be wished for, there can be no appetite, for the passions cannot exist if their objects are destroyed. but the monarch has nothing to desire, for his jurisdiction is bounded only by the ocean; and this is not the case with other princes, whose kingdoms are bounded by those of their neighbours; as, for instance, the kingdom of castile is bounded by the kingdom of aragon. from which it follows that the monarch is able to be the purest embodiment of justice among men. [footnote : _eth._ v. .--(w.)] [footnote : _rhetoric_, i. .--(w.)] further, as appetite in some degree, however small, clouds the habit of justice, so does charity, or rightly-directed affection, sharpen and enlighten it. in whomsoever, therefore, rightly-directed affection may chiefly dwell, in him may justice best have place: and of this sort is the monarch. therefore where a monarch reigns justice is, or at least may be, strongest. that rightly-directed affections work as we have said, we may see thus: appetite, scorning[ ] what in itself belongs to man, seeks for other things outside him; but charity sets aside all else, and seeks god and man, and consequently the good of man. and since of all the good things that men can have the greatest is to live in peace (as we have already said), and as it is justice which most chiefly brings peace, therefore charity will chiefly make justice strong, and the more so in proportion to its own strength. [footnote : "_perseitas hominum_" = "_facultas per se subsistendi_."--ducange.] and it is clear that right affections ought to exist in a monarch more than in any other man for this reason: the object of love is the more loved the nearer it is to him that loves; but men are nearer to a monarch than they are to other princes; therefore it is by a monarch that they are, or ought to be, most loved. the first proposition is manifest if the nature of activity and passivity are considered. the second is manifest because men are brought near to a monarch in their totality,[ ] but to other princes only partially; and it is only by means of the monarch that men are brought near other princes at all. thus the monarch cares for all primarily and directly, whereas other princes only care for their subjects through the monarch, and because their care for their subjects descends from the supreme care of the monarch. [footnote : "_secundum totum._"] again, a cause has the nature of a cause in proportion as it is more universal; for the lower cause is such only on account of the higher one, as appears from the treatise on causes.[ ] and, in proportion as a cause is really a cause, it loves what it effects; for such love follows the cause by itself. now monarchy is the most universal cause of men living well, for other princes work only through the monarch, as we have said; and it therefore follows that it is the monarch who will most chiefly love the good of men. but that in practice the monarch is most disposed to work justice, who can doubt, except indeed a man who understands not the meaning of the word? for if he be really a monarch he cannot have enemies. [footnote : a compilation from the arabians, or perhaps aristotle or proclus, which, under various names, passed for a work of aristotle, and is ascribed by albert the great to a certain david the jew. it is quoted in the twelfth century, and was commented on by albert and thomas aquinas. _vide_ jourdain, _recherches sur les traductions d'aristote_ ( ), pp. , , , , ; _philosophie de s. thomas_ ( ), i. .] the principle assumed being therefore sufficiently explained, the conclusion is certain, to wit, that a monarch is necessary that the world may be ordered for the best. xii.--again, the human race is ordered best when it is most free. this will be manifest if we see what is the principle of freedom. it must be understood that the first principle of our freedom is freedom of will, which many have in their mouth, but few indeed understand. for they come so far as to say that the freedom of the will means a free judgment concerning will. and this is true. but what is meant by the words is far from them: and they do just as our logicians do all day long with certain propositions which are set as examples in the books of logic, as that, "the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles."[ ] [footnote : cf. arist. _magna moral._ i. : "it would be absurd if a man, wishing to prove that the angles of a triangle were equal to two right angles, assumed as his principle that the soul is immortal."--witte.] therefore i say that judgment is between apprehension and appetite. first, a man apprehends a thing; then he judges it to be good or bad; then he pursues or avoids it accordingly. if therefore the judgment guides the appetite wholly, and in no way is forestalled by the appetite, then is the judgment free. but if the appetite in any way at all forestalls the judgment and guides it, then the judgment cannot be free: it is not its own: it is captive to another power. therefore the brute beasts cannot have freedom of judgment; for in them the appetite always forestalls the judgment. therefore, too, it is that intellectual beings whose wills are unchangeable, and souls which are separate from the body, which have gone hence in peace, do not lose the freedom of their wills, because their wishes cannot change; nay, it is in full strength and completeness that their wills are free.[ ] [footnote : cf. _purgatorio_, xviii. .--witte.] it is therefore again manifest that this liberty, or this principle of all our liberty, is the greatest gift bestowed by god on mankind: by it alone we gain happiness[ ] as men: by it alone we gain happiness elsewhere as gods.[ ] but if this is so, who will say that human kind is not in its best state, when it can most use this principle? but he who lives under a monarchy is most free. therefore let it be understood that he is free who exists not for another's sake but for his own, as the philosopher, in his treatise of simple being, thought.[ ] for everything which exists for the sake of some other thing, is necessitated by that other thing, as a road has to run to its ordained end. men exist for themselves, and not at the pleasure of others, only if a monarch rules; for then only are the perverted forms of government set right, while democracies, oligarchies, and tyrannies, drive mankind into slavery, as is obvious to any who goes about among them all; and public power[ ] is in the hands of kings and aristocracies, which they call the rule of the best, and champions of popular liberty. and because the monarch loves his subjects much, as we have seen, he wishes all men to be good, which cannot be the case in perverted forms of government:[ ] therefore the philosopher says, in his _politics_:[ ] "in the bad state the good man is a bad citizen, but in a good state the two coincide." good states in this way aim at liberty, that in them men may live for themselves. the citizens exist not for the good of consuls, nor the nation for the good of its king; but the consuls for the good of the citizens, and the king for the good of his nation. for as the laws are made to suit the state, and not the state to suit the laws, so those who live under the laws are not ordered for the legislator, but he for them;[ ] as also the philosopher holds, in what he has left us on the present subject. hence, too, it is clear that although the king or the consul rule over the other citizens in respect of the means[ ] of government, yet in respect of the end of government they are the servants of the citizens, and especially the monarch, who, without doubt, must be held the servant of all. thus it becomes clear that the monarch is bound by the end appointed to himself in making his laws. therefore mankind is best off under a monarchy, and hence it follows that monarchy is necessary for the welfare of the world. [footnote : "_felicitamur._"] [footnote : "_ut dii_;" cf. _paradiso_, v. .--witte.] [footnote : _i.e._ _metaphys._ , .--(w.)] [footnote : "_politizant reges._"] [footnote : "_oblique politizantes._"] [footnote : _polit._ iii. .] [footnote : _ibid._ iii. , .--(w.)] [footnote : "_respectu viæ ... respectu termini._"] xiii.--further, he who can be best fitted to rule can best fit others. for in every action the main end of the agent, whether acting by necessity of nature or voluntarily, is to unfold his own likeness; and therefore every agent, so far as he is of this sort, delights in action. for since all that is desires its own existence, and since the agent in acting enlarges his own existence in some way, delight follows action of necessity; for delight is inseparable from gaining what is desired. nothing therefore acts unless it is of such sort as that which is acted on ought to be; therefore the philosopher said in his _metaphysics_,[ ] "everything which becomes actual from being potential, becomes so by means of something actual of the same kind," and were anything to try to act in any other way it would fail. hence we may overthrow the error of those who think to form the moral character of others by speaking well and doing ill; forgetting that the hands of jacob were more persuasive with his father than his words, though his hands deceived and his voice spake truth. hence the philosopher, to nicomachus: "in matters of feeling and action, words are less to be trusted than deeds."[ ] and therefore god said to david in his sin, "what hast thou to do to declare my statutes?" as though he would say, "thou speakest in vain, for thou art different from what thou speakest." hence it may be gathered that he needs to be fitted for his work in the best way who wishes to fit others. [footnote : _metaphys._ ix. .--(w.)] [footnote : arist. _eth._ x. .--(w.)] but the monarch is the only one who can be fitted in the best possible way to govern. which is thus proved: each thing is the more easily and perfectly qualified for any habit, or actual work, the less there is in it of what is contrary to such a disposition. therefore, they who have never even heard of philosophy, arrive at a habit of truth in philosophy more easily and completely than those who have listened to it at odd times, and are filled with false opinions. for which reason galen well says: "such as these require double time to acquire knowledge."[ ] a monarch then has nothing to tempt appetite, or, at least, less than any other man, as we have shown before; whereas other princes have much; and appetite is the only corrupter of righteousness, and the only impediment to justice. a monarch therefore is wholly, or at least more than any other prince, disposed to govern well: for in him there may be judgment and justice more strongly than in any other. but these two things are the pre-eminent attributes of a maker of law, and of an executor of law, as that most holy king david testified when he asked of god the things which were befitting the king, and the king's son, saying: "give the king thy judgment, o god, and thy righteousness unto the king's son."[ ] [footnote : _de cognosc. animi morbis_, c. .--witte.] [footnote : cf. _parad._ xiii. .--(w.)] we were right then when we assumed that only the monarch can be best fitted to rule. therefore only the monarch can in the best way fit other men. therefore it follows that monarchy is necessary for the best ordering of the world. xiv.--and where a thing can be done by one agent, it is better to do it by one than by several, for this reason: let it be possible to do a certain thing by means of a, and also by means of a and b. if therefore what is done by a and b can be done by a alone, it is useless to add b; for nothing follows from the addition; for the same end which a and b produced is produced also by a. all additions of this kind are useless and superfluous: all that is superfluous is displeasing to god and nature: and all that is displeasing to god and nature is bad, as is manifest. it therefore follows not only that it is better that a thing should be done by one than by many agents, if it is possible to produce the effect by one; but also that to produce the effect by one is good, and to produce it by many is simply bad. again, a thing is said to be better by being nearer to the best, and the end has the nature of the best. but for a thing to be done by one agent is better, for so it comes nearer to the end. and that so it comes nearer is manifest; for let c be the end which may be reached by a, or by a and b together: plainly it is longer to reach c by a and b together than by b alone. but mankind may be governed by one supreme prince, who is, the monarch. but it must be carefully observed that when we say that mankind may be ruled by one supreme prince, we do not mean that the most trifling judgments for each particular town are to proceed immediately from him. for municipal laws sometimes fail, and need guidance, as the philosopher shows in his fifth book to nicomachus, when he praises equity.[ ] for nations and kingdoms and states have, each of them, certain peculiarities which must be regulated by different laws. for law is the rule which directs life. thus the scythians need one rule, for they live beyond the seventh climate,[ ] and suffer cold which is almost unbearable, from the great inequality of their days and nights. but the garamantes need a different law, for their country is equinoctial, and they cannot wear many clothes, from the excessive heat of the air, because the day is as long as the darkness of the night. but our meaning is that it is in those matters which are common to all men, that men should be ruled by one monarch, and be governed by a rule common to them all, with a view to their peace. and the individual princes must receive this rule of life or law from him, just as the practical intellect receives its major premiss from the speculative intellect, under which it places its own particular premiss, and then draws its particular conclusion, with a view to action. and it is not only possible for one man to act as we have described; it is necessary that it should proceed from one man only to avoid confusion in our first principles. moses himself wrote in his law that he had acted thus. for he took the elders of the tribes of the children of israel, and left to them the lesser judgments, reserving to himself such as were more important, and wider in their scope; and the elders carried these wider ones to their tribes, according as they were applicable to each separate tribe. [footnote : _eth._ v. .--(w.)] [footnote : ptolemy, the mediæval authority on geography, divided the known world into [greek: klimata], zones of slope towards the pole, or belts of latitude, eight of which from the equinoctial to the mouths of the tanais and the riphæan mountains. the seventh "clima" passed over the mouths of the borysthenes. see mercator's map in bertius' _theatrum geographiæ veteris_ ( ), art. "ptolemy" in smith's _dictionary of biography_, p. . dictionary of antiquities, art. "clima."] therefore it is better for the human race to be ruled by one than by many, and therefore there should be a monarch, who is a single prince; and if it is better, it is more acceptable to god, since god always wills what is best. and since of these two ways of government the one is not only the better, but the best of all, it follows not only that this one is more acceptable to god as between one and many, but that it is the most acceptable. therefore it is best for the human race to be governed by one man; and monarchy is necessary for the welfare of the world. xv.--i say also that being, and unity, and the good come in order after the fifth mode of priority.[ ] for being comes by nature before unity, and unity before good. where being is most, there unity is greatest; and where unity is greatest, there good is also greatest; and in proportion as anything is far from being in its highest form, is it far from unity, and therefore from good. therefore in every kind of things, that which is most one is best, as the philosopher holds in the treatise about simple being. therefore it appears that to be one is the root of good, and to be many the root of evil. therefore, pythagoras in his parallel tables placed the one, or unity, under the line of good, and the many under the line of evil; as appears from the first book of the _metaphysics_.[ ] hence we may see that to sin is nothing else than to pass on from the one which we despise and to seek many things, as the psalmist saw when he said: "by the fruit of their corn and wine and oil, are they multiplied."[ ] [footnote : arist. _categ._, _e.g._: priority is said in five ways-- . first in _time_. . first in _pre-supposition_. . first in _order_. . first in _excellence_. . first in _logical sequence_.] [footnote : _v._ arist. _metaph._ , ; _ethics_ i. ; cf. ritter and preller, _hist. philos._ sec. .] [footnote : ps. iv. (vulg.).] hence it is plain that whatever is good, is good for this reason, that it consists in unity. and because concord is a good thing in so far as it is concord, it is manifest that it consists in a certain unity, as its proper root, the nature of which will appear if we find the real nature of concord. concord then is the uniform motion of many wills; and hence it appears that a unity of wills, by which is meant their uniform motion, is the root of concord, nay, concord itself. for as we should say that many clods of earth are concordant, because that they all gravitate together towards the centre; and that many flames are concordant because that they all ascend together towards the circumference, if they did this of their own free will, so we say that many men are in concord because that they are all moved together, as regards their willing, to one thing, which one thing is formally in their wills just as there is one quality formally in the clods of earth, that is gravity, and one in the flame of fire, that is lightness. for the force of willing is a certain power; but the quality of good which it apprehends is its form; which form, like as others, being one is multiplied in itself, according to the multiplication of the matters which receive it, as the soul, and numbers, and other forms which belong to what is compound.[ ] [footnote : on the scholastic doctrine of forms, _v._ thom. aquin. _summ._ i. , art. .] to explain our assumption as we proposed, let us argue thus: all concord depends on unity which is in wills; the human race, when it is at its best, is a kind of concord; for as one man at his best is a kind of concord, and as the like is true of the family, the city, and the kingdom; so is it of the whole human race. therefore the human race at its best depends on the unity which is in will. but this cannot be unless there be one will to be the single mistress and regulating influence of all the rest. for the wills of men, on account of the blandishments of youth, require one to direct them, as aristotle shows in the tenth book of his _ethics_.[ ] and this cannot be unless there is one prince over all, whose will shall be the mistress and regulating influence of all the others. but if all these conclusions be true, as they are, it is necessary for the highest welfare of the human race that there should be a monarch in the world; and therefore monarchy is necessary for the good of the world. [footnote : arist. _eth._ x. .--(w.)] xvi.--to all these reasons alleged above a memorable experience adds its confirmation. i mean that condition of mankind which the son of god, when, for the salvation of man, he was about to put on man, either waited for, or, at the moment when he willed, himself so ordered. for if, from the fall of our first parents, which was the turning point at which all our going astray began, we carry our thoughts over the distribution of the human race and the order of its times, we shall find that never but under the divine augustus, who was sole ruler, and under whom a perfect monarchy existed, was the world everywhere quiet. and that then the human race was happy in the tranquillity of universal peace, this is the witness of all writers of history; this is the witness of famous poets; this, too, he who wrote the story of the "meekness and gentleness of christ" has thought fit to attest. and last of all, paul has called that most blessed condition "the fulness of the times." for then, indeed, time was full, and all the things of time; because no office belonging to our felicity wanted its minister. but how the world has fared since that "seamless robe" has suffered rending by the talons of ambition, we may read in books; would that we might not see it with our eyes. oh, race of mankind! what storms must toss thee, what losses must thou endure, what shipwrecks must buffet thee, as long as thou, a beast of many heads, strivest after contrary things. thou art sick in both thy faculties of understanding; thou art sick in thine affections. unanswerable reasons fail to heal thy higher understanding; the very sight of experience convinces not thy lower understanding; not even the sweetness of divine persuasion charms thy affections, when it breathes into thee through the music of the holy ghost: "behold, how good and how pleasant a thing it is, brethren, to dwell together in unity."[ ] [footnote : ps. cxxxii. .--(w.)] book ii. i.--"why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? the kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together against the lord and against his anointed, saying: 'let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their cords from us.'"[ ] as we commonly wonder at a new effect, when we have never been face to face with its cause; so, as soon as we understand the cause, we look down with a kind of scorn on those who remain in wonder. i, myself, was once filled with wonder that the roman people had become paramount throughout all the earth, without any to withstand them; for when i looked at the thing superficially i thought that this supremacy had been obtained, not by any right, but only by arms and violence. but after that i had carefully and thoroughly examined the matter, when i had recognised by the most effectual signs that it was divine providence that had wrought this, my wonder ceased, and a certain scornful contempt has taken its place, when i perceive the nations raging against the pre-eminence of the roman people; when i see the people imagining a vain thing, as i of old imagined; when, above all, i grieve that kings and princes agree in this one matter only, in opposing their lord, and his one only roman emperor. wherefore in derision, yet not without a touch of sorrow, i can cry on behalf of the glorious people and for cæsar, together with him who cried on behalf of the prince of heaven: "why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? the kings of the earth stand up, and the rulers take counsel together against the lord and against his anointed." but the love which nature implants in us allows not scorn to last for long; but, like the summer sun that when it has dispersed the morning clouds shines with full brightness, this love prefers to put scorn aside, and to pour forth the light which shall set men right. so, then, to break the bonds of the ignorance of those kings and princes, and to show that mankind is free from _their_ yoke, i will comfort myself in company with that most holy prophet, whom i follow, taking the words which come after: "let us break their bonds asunder, and cast away their yoke from us." [footnote : ps. ii. - .--(w.)] these two things will be sufficiently performed, if i address myself to the second part of the argument, and manifest the truth of the question before us. for thus, if we show that the roman empire is _by right_, not only shall we disperse the clouds of ignorance from the eyes of those princes who have wrongly seized the helm of public government, falsely imputing this thing to the roman people; but all men shall understand that they are free from the yoke of these usurpers. the truth of the question can be made clear not only by the light of human reason, but also by the ray of god's authority; and when these two coincide, then heaven and earth must agree together. supported, therefore, by this conviction, and trusting in the testimony both of reason and of authority, i proceed to settle the second question. ii.--inquiry concerning the truth of the first doubt has been made as accurately as the nature of the subject permitted; we have now to inquire concerning the second, which is: whether the roman people assumed to itself _of right_ the dignity of the empire? and the first thing in this question is to find the truth, to which the reasonings concerning it may be referred as to their proper first principle. it must be recognised, then, that as there are three degrees in every art, the mind of the artist, his instrument, and the material on which he works, so we may look upon nature in three degrees. for nature exists, first, in the mind of the first agent, who is god; then in heaven; as in an instrument, by means of which the likeness of the eternal goodness unfolds itself on shapeless[ ] matter. if an artist is perfect in his art, and his instrument is perfect, any fault in the form of his art must be laid to the badness of the material; and so, since god holds the summit of perfection, and since his instrument, which is heaven, admits of no failure of its due perfection (which is manifest from our philosophy touching heaven), it follows that whatever fault is to be found in the lower world is a fault on the part of the subject matter, and is contrary to the intention of god who makes nature,[ ] and of heaven; and if in this lower world there is aught that is good, it must be ascribed first to the artist, who is god, and then to heaven, the instrument of god's art, which men call nature; for the material, being merely a possibility, can do nothing of itself.[ ] [footnote : "_fluitantem._"] [footnote : "_dei naturantis._"] [footnote : witte refers to _parad._ xiii. , xxix. , i. - . cf. thom. aquin. _summ._ i., q. , art. - ; q. , art. ; q. , art. - . this view satisfied thinkers to the time of hooker (_e.p._ i. iii.), but was criticised by bacon, _nov. org._ i. .] hence it is apparent that, since all right[ ] is good, it therefore exists first in the mind of god; and since all that is in the mind of god is god, according to the saying, "what was made, in him was life;"[ ] and as god chiefly wishes for what is himself, it follows that right is the wish of god, so far as it is in him. and since in god the will and the wish are the same, it further follows that this right is the will of god. again it follows that right in the world is nothing else than the likeness of the will of god, and therefore whatever does not agree with the divine will cannot be right, and whatever does agree with the divine will is right itself. therefore to ask if a thing be by right is only to ask in other words if it is what god wills. it may therefore be assumed that what god wills to see in mankind is to be held as real and true right. [footnote : "_jus._"] [footnote : st. john i. .--(w.)] besides we must remember aristotle's teaching in the first book of his _ethics_, where he says: "we must not seek for certitude in every matter, but only as far as the nature of the subject admits."[ ] therefore our arguments from the first principle already found will be sufficient, if from manifest evidence and from the authority of the wise, we seek for the right of that glorious people. the will of god is an invisible thing, but "the invisible things of god are seen, being understood by the things which are made." for when the seal is out of sight, the wax, which has its impression, gives manifest evidence of it, though it be unseen; nor is it strange that the will of god must be sought by signs; for the human will, except to the person himself who wills, is only discerned by signs.[ ] [footnote : _eth._ i. , from thom. aq. _lect._ xi.--(w.)] [footnote : the image of the wax and seal was a favourite one. v. _parad._ vii. , viii. , xiii. - , quoted by witte, who also refers to the _epist. ad reges_, § , p. , ed. fraticelli.] iii.--my answer then to the question is, that it was by right, and not by usurpation, that the roman people assumed to itself the office of monarchy, or, as men call it, the empire, over all mankind. for in the first place it is fitting that the noblest people should be preferred to all others; the roman people was the noblest; therefore it is fitting that it should be preferred to all others. by this reasoning i make my proof; for since honour is the reward of goodness, and since to be preferred is always honour, therefore to be preferred is always the reward of goodness. it is plain that men are ennobled for their virtues; that is, for their own virtues or for those of their ancestors; for nobleness is virtue and ancestral wealth, according to aristotle in his politics; and according to juvenal, "there is no nobleness of soul but virtue,"[ ] which two statements refer to two sorts of nobleness, our own and that of our ancestors.[ ] [footnote : arist. _pol._ iii. ; juv. viii. .--(w.)] [footnote : witte refers to dante's commentary on his own canzone in the _convito_ iv. , and the _parad._ xvi. .] to be preferred, therefore, is, according to reason, the fitting reward of the noble. and since rewards must be measured by desert, according to that saying of the gospel, "with what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again;" therefore to the most noble the highest place should be given. the testimonies of the ancients confirm our opinion; for virgil, our divine poet, testifies throughout his _Æneid_, that men may ever remember it, that the glorious king, Æneas, was the father of the roman people. and this titus livius, the famous chronicler of the deeds of the romans, confirms in the first part of his work, which takes its beginning from the capture of troy. the nobleness of this most unconquerable and most pious ancestor not only in regard to his own great virtue, but also to that of his forefathers and of his wives, the nobleness of whom was combined in their descendant by the rightful law of descent, i cannot unfold at length; "i can but touch lightly on the outlines of the truth."[ ] [footnote : "sed summa sequar vestigia rerum." virg. _Æn._ i. ("fastigia" in all good mss. and edd.).] for the virtue then of Æneas himself, hear what our poet tells us when he introduces ilioneus in the first _Æneid_, praying thus: "Æneas was our king; in justice and piety he has not left a peer, nor any to equal him in war." hear virgil in the sixth _Æneid_, when he speaks of the death of misenus, who had been hector's attendant in war, and, after hector's death, had attached himself to Æneas; for there virgil says that misenus "followed as good a man;" thus comparing Æneas to hector, whom[ ] homer ever praises above all men, as the philosopher witnesses in his _ethics_, in what he writes to nicomachus on habits to be avoided. [footnote : _Æn._ i. , vi. . _il._ xxiv. , quoted in aristotle, _ethics_, vii. .--(w.)] but, as for hereditary virtue, he was ennobled from all three continents both by his forefathers and his wives. from asia came his immediate ancestor, assaracus, and others who reigned in phrygia, which is a part of asia. therefore virgil writes in the third _Æneid_: "after that it had seemed good to heaven to overthrow the power of asia, and the guiltless race of priam." from europe came the male founder of his race, who was dardanus; from africa his grandmother electra, daughter of the great king atlas, to both which things the poet testifies in the eighth _Æneid_, where Æneas says to evander: "dardanus, the father of our city, and its founder, whom the greeks call the son of atlas and electra, came to the race of teucer--electra, whose sire was great atlas, on whose shoulders rests the circle of heaven." but in the third _Æneid_ virgil says that dardanus drew his origin from europe. "there is a land which the greeks have named hesperia, an ancient land, strong and wealthy, where the Ænotrians dwell; it is said that now their descendants have named the country italy, from the name of their king. there is our rightful home; from that land did dardanus come." that atlas came from africa, the mountain called by his name, which stands in that continent, bears witness; and orosius says that it is in africa in his description of the world, where he writes: "its boundary is mount atlas, and the islands which are called 'the happy isles.'" "its"--that is, "of africa," of which he was speaking.[ ] [footnote : _Æn._ iii. , viii. , iii. ; oros. i. .--(w.)] likewise i find that by marriage also Æneas was ennobled; his first wife, creusa, the daughter of king priam, was from asia, as may be gathered from our previous quotations; and that she was his wife our poet testifies in the third _Æneid_, where andromache asks Æneas: "what of the boy ascanius, whom creusa bore to thee, while the ruins of troy were yet smoking? lives he yet to breathe this air?"[ ] the second wife was dido, the queen and foundress of carthage in africa. that she was the wife of Æneas our poet sings in his fourth _Æneid_, where he says of dido: "no more does dido think of love in secret. she calls it marriage, and with this name she covers her sin." the third wife was lavinia, the mother of albans and romans alike, the daughter of king latinus and his heir, if we may trust the testimony of our poet in his last _Æneid_, where he introduces turnus conquered, praying to Æneas thus: "thou hast conquered, and the ausonians have seen me lift my hands in prayer for mercy; lavinia is thine."[ ] this last wife was from italy, the noblest region of europe. [footnote : iii. . the best mss. of virgil omit "peperit fumante creusa."] [footnote : _Æn._ xii. .--(w.)] and now that we have marked these things for evidence of our assertion, who will not rest persuaded that the father of the romans, and therefore the romans themselves, were the noblest people under heaven? who can fail to see the divine predestination shown forth by the double meeting of blood from every part of the world in the veins of one man? iv.--again, that which is helped to its perfection by miracles is willed by god, and therefore it is of right. this is manifestly true, for as thomas says in his third book against the gentiles, "a miracle is something done by god beyond the commonly established order of things."[ ] and so he proves that god alone can work miracles; and his proof is strengthened by the authority of moses; for on the occasion of the plague of lice, when the magicians of pharaoh used natural principles artfully, and then failed, they said: "this is the finger of god."[ ] a miracle therefore being the immediate working of the first agent, without the co-operation of any secondary agents, as thomas himself sufficiently proves in the book which we have mentioned, it is impious to say where a miracle is worked in aid of anything, that that thing is not of god, as something well pleasing to him, which he foresaw. therefore it is religious to accept the contradictory of this. the roman empire has been helped to its perfection by miracles; therefore it was willed by god, and consequently was and is by right.[ ] [footnote : _contra gent._ iii. .--(w.)] [footnote : exod. vii. - .--(w.)] [footnote : witte refers to the _ep. ad reges_, § , for the same thought.] it is proved by the testimony of illustrious authors that god stretched forth his hand to work miracles on behalf of the roman empire. for livy, in the first part of his work, testifies that a shield fell from heaven into the city chosen of god in the time of numa pompilius, the second king of rome, whilst he was sacrificing after the manner of the gentiles. lucan mentions this miracle in the ninth book of his pharsalia, when he is describing the incredible force of the south wind. he says: "surely it was thus, while numa was offering sacrifices, that the shield fell with which the chosen patrician youth moves along. the south wind, or the north wind, had spoiled the people that bore our shields."[ ] and when the gauls had taken all the city, and, under cover of the darkness, were stealing on to attack the capitol itself, the capture of which was all that remained to destroy the very name of rome, then as livy, and many other illustrious writers agree in testifying, a goose, which none had seen before, gave a warning note of the approach of the gauls, and aroused the guards to defend the capitol.[ ] and our poet commemorates the event in his description of the shield of Æneas in the eighth book. "higher, and in front of the temple stood manlius, the watchman of the tarpeian keep, guarding the rock of the capitol. the palace stood out clear, rough with the thatch which romulus had laid; here the goose, inlaid in silver, fluttered on the portico of gold, as it warned the romans that the gauls were even now on the threshold."[ ] [footnote : luc. ix. .--(w.)] [footnote : v. liv. v. , and the _convito_, iv. .--(w.)] [footnote : _Æn._ viii. .--(w.)] and when the nobility of rome had so fallen under the onset of hannibal, that nothing remained for the final destruction of the roman commonwealth, but the carthaginian assault on the city, livy tells us in the course of his history of the punic war, that a sudden dreadful storm of hail fell upon them, so that the victors could not follow up their victory.[ ] [footnote : liv. xxvi. ; oros. iv. .--(w.)] was not the escape of cloelia wonderful, a woman, and captive in the power of porsenna, when she burst her bonds, and, by the marvellous help of god, swam across the tiber, as almost all the historians of rome tell us, to the glory of that city?[ ] [footnote : liv. ii. ; oros. ii. .--(w.)] thus was it fitting that he should work who foresaw all things from the beginning, and ordained them in the beauty of his order; so that he, who when made visible was to show forth miracles for the sake of things invisible, should, whilst invisible, also show forth miracles for the sake of things visible. v.--further, whoever works for the good of the state, works with right as his end. this may be shown as follows. right is that proportion of man to man as to things, and as to persons, which, when it is preserved, preserves society, and when it is destroyed, destroys society.[ ] the description of right in the digest does not give the essence of right, but only describes it for practical purposes.[ ] if therefore our definition comprehends well the essence and reason of right, and if the end of any society is the common good of its members, it is necessary that the end of all right is the common good, and it is impossible that that can be right, which does not aim at the common good. therefore cicero says well in the first book of his _rhetoric_: "laws must always be interpreted for the good of the state."[ ] if laws do not aim at the good of those who live under them, they are laws only in name; in reality they cannot be laws. for it behoves them to bind men together for the common good; and seneca therefore says well in his book "on the four virtues:" "law is the bond of human society."[ ] it is therefore plain that whoever aims at the good of the state, aims at the end of right; and therefore, if the romans aimed at the good of the state, we shall say truly that they aimed at the end of right. [footnote : cf. aristotle, _ethics_, v. .] [footnote : "jus est ars boni et æqui." l. , fr. _dig. de justitia et jure_, i. .--(w.)] [footnote : _de invent._ i. .--(w.)] [footnote : not seneca, but martin, bp. of braga, [dagger symbol] .--(w.) v. _biog. univ._] that in bringing the whole world into subjection, they aimed at this good, their deeds declare. they renounced all selfishness, a thing always contrary to the public weal; they cherished universal peace and liberty; and that sacred, pious, and glorious people are seen to have neglected their own private interests that they might follow public objects for the good of all mankind. therefore was it well written: "the roman empire springs from the fountain of piety."[ ] [footnote : "_romanum imperium de fonte nascitur pietatis._"--(witte.) he has not been able to trace the saying.] but seeing that nothing is known of the intention of an agent who acts by free choice to any but the agent himself, save only by external signs, and since reasonings must be examined according to the subject matter (as has already been said), it will be sufficient on this point if we set forth proofs which none can doubt, of the intention of the roman people, both in their public bodies and individually. concerning those public bodies by which men seem in a way to be bound to the state, the authority of cicero alone, in the second book of the _de officiis_, will suffice. "so long," he says, "as the empire of the republic was maintained not by injustice, but by the benefits which it conferred, we fought either for our allies or for the empire. our wars brought with them an ending which was either indulgent, or else was absolutely necessary. all kings, peoples, and nations found a port of refuge in the senate. our magistrates and generals alike sought renown by defending our provinces and our allies with good faith and with justice. our government might have been called not so much empire, as a protectorate of the whole world." so wrote cicero.[ ] [footnote : _de off._ ii. .--(w.)] of individuals i will speak shortly. shall we not say that they intended the common good, who by hard toil, by poverty, by exile, by bereavement of their children, by loss of limb, by sacrifice of their lives, endeavoured to build up the public weal? did not great cincinnatus leave us a sacred example of freely laying down his office at its appointed end, when, as livy tells us, he was taken from the plough and made dictator? and after his victory, after his triumph, he gave back his imperator's sceptre to the consuls, and returned to the ploughshare to toil after his oxen.[ ] well did cicero, arguing against epicurus, in the volume _de finibus_, speak in praise of him, mindful of this good deed.[ ] "and so," he says, "our ancestors took cincinnatus from the plough, and made him dictator." [footnote : liv. vi. , ; oros. ii. .--(w.)] [footnote : ii. .--(w.)] has not fabricius left us a lofty example of resisting avarice, when, poor man as he was, for the faith by which he was bound to the republic, he laughed to scorn the great weight of gold which was offered him, and refused it, scorning it with words which became him well. his story too is confirmed by our poet in the sixth _Æneid_,[ ] where he speaks of "fabricius strong in his poverty." [footnote : vi. .--(w.)] has not camillus left us a memorable example of obeying the laws instead of seeking our private advantage? for according to livy he was condemned to exile, and then, after that he had delivered his country from the invaders, and had restored to rome her own roman spoils, he yet turned to leave the sacred city, though the whole people bade him stay; nor did he return till leave was given him to come back by the authority of the senate. this high-souled hero also is commended in the sixth _Æneid_, where our poet speaks of "camillus, that restored to us our standards."[ ] [footnote : liv. v. ; _Æn._ vi. .--(w.)] was not brutus the first to teach that our sons, that all others, are second in importance to the liberty of our country? for livy tells us how, when he was consul, he condemned his own sons to death, for that they had conspired with the enemy. his glory is made new in our poet's sixth book, where he sings how "the father shall summon the sons to die for the sake of fair liberty, when they seek to stir fresh wars."[ ] [footnote : _Æn._ vi. .--(w.)] has not mucius encouraged us to dare everything for our country's sake, when after attacking porsenna unawares, he watched the hand which had missed its stroke being burnt, though it was his own, as if he were beholding the torment of a foe? this also livy witnesses to with astonishment. add to these those sacred victims the decii, who laid down their lives by an act of devotion for the public safety, whom livy glorifies in his narrative, not as they deserve, but as he was able. add to these the self-sacrifice, which words cannot express, of marcus cato, that staunchest champion of true liberty. these were men of whom the one, that he might save his country, did not fear the shadow of death; while the other, that he might kindle in the world the passionate love of liberty, showed how dear was liberty, choosing to pass out of life a free man, rather than without liberty to abide in life.[ ] the glory of all these heroes glows afresh in the words of cicero in his book _de finibus_; of the decii he speaks thus: "publius decius, the head of the decii, a consul, when he devoted himself for the state, and charged straight into the latin host, was he thinking aught of his pleasure, where and when he should take it;--when he knew that he had to die at once, and sought that death with more eager desire than, according to epicurus, we should seek pleasure? and were it not that his deed had justly received its praise, his son would not have done the like in his fourth consulship; nor would his grandson, again, in the war with pyrrhus, have fallen, a consul, in battle; and, a third time in continuous succession in that family, have offered himself a victim for the commonwealth." but in the _de officiis_,[ ] cicero says of cato: "marcus cato was in no different position from his comrades who in africa surrendered to cæsar. the others, had they slain themselves, would perhaps have been blamed for the act, for their life was of less consequence,[ ] and their principles were not so strict. but for cato, to whom nature had given incredible firmness and who had strengthened this severity by his unremitting constancy to his principles, and who never formed a resolution by which he did not abide, he was indeed bound to die rather than to look on the face of a tyrant." [footnote : witte quotes the _convito_, iv. , where all these examples are recounted, almost in the same language. he compares _parad._ vi. (cincinnatus), _purgat._ xx. (fabricius), _parad._ vi. (decii), _purg._ i. where cato guards the approach to purgatory.] [footnote : i. (w.), carelessly quoted.] [footnote : "_levior_" al. "_lenior_."] vi.--two things therefore have been made clear: first, that whoever aims at the good of the state aims at right;[ ] and secondly, that the roman people in bringing the world into subjection, aimed at the public weal. therefore let us argue thus: whoever aims at right, walks according to right; the roman people in bringing the world into subjection aimed at right, as we have made manifest in the preceding chapter. therefore in bringing the world into subjection the roman people acted according to right, consequently it was by right that they assumed the dignity of empire. [footnote : "_finem juris intendit._"] we reach this conclusion on grounds which are manifest to all. it is manifest from this, that whosoever aims at right, walks according to right. to make this clear, we must mark that everything is made to gain a certain end, otherwise it would be in vain, and as we said before this cannot be. and as everything has its proper end, so every end has some distinct thing of which it is the end. and therefore it is impossible that any two things, spoken of as separate things,[ ] and in so far as they are two, should have the same end as their aim, for so the same absurdity[ ] would follow, that one of them would exist in vain. since, then, there is a certain end of right, as we have explained, it necessarily follows that when we have decided what that end is, we have also decided what right is; for it is the natural and proper effect of right. and since in any sequence it is impossible to have an antecedent without its consequent, for instance, to have "man" without "animal," as is evident by putting together and taking to pieces the idea,[ ] so also it is impossible to seek for the end of right without right, for each thing stands in the same relation to its proper end, as the consequent does to its antecedent; as without health it is impossible to attain to a good condition of the body. wherefore, it is most evidently clear that he who aims at the end of right must aim in accordance with right; nor does the contradictory instance which is commonly drawn from aristotle's treatment of "good counsel" avail anything.[ ] he there says: "it is possible to obtain what is the right result from a syllogism, which is incorrect, but not by an argument which is right, for the middle term is wrong." for if sometimes a right conclusion is obtained from false principles, this is only by accident, and happens only in so far as the true conclusion is imported in the words of the inference. truth never really follows from falsehood; but the signs of truth may easily follow from the signs of falsehood. so also it is in matters of conduct. if a thief helps a poor man out of the spoils of his thieving, we must not call that charity; but it is an action which would have the form of charity, if it had been done out of the man's own substance. and so of the end of right. if anything, such as the end of right, were gained without right, it would only be the end of right, that is, the common good, in the same sense that the gift, made from evil gains, is charity. and so the example proves nothing, for in our proposition we speak, not of the apparent but of the real end of right. what was sought, therefore, is clear. [footnote : "_per se loquendo._"] [footnote : "_inconveniens._"] [footnote : "_construendo et destruendo._" technical terms of the conditional syllogism, _constructive_ and _destructive_.] [footnote : [greek: euboulia]. _ethics_, vi. .] vii.--what nature has ordained is maintained of right. for nature in its providence does not come short of men's providence; for if it were to come short, the effect would excel the cause in goodness, which is impossible. but we see that when public bodies are founded, not only are the relations of the members to each other considered, but also their capacities for exercising offices; and this is to consider the end of right in the society or order which is founded, for right is not extended beyond what is possible. nature then, in her ordinances, does not come short in this foresight. therefore it is clear that nature, in ordaining a thing, has regard to its capacities; and this regard is the fundamental principle of right which nature lays down. from this it follows that the natural order of things cannot be maintained without right; for this fundamental principle of right is inseparably joined to the natural order of things. it is necessary, therefore, that it is of right that this order is preserved. the roman people was ordained for empire, by nature, and this may be shown as follows: the man would come short of perfection in his art, who aimed only to produce his ultimate form, and neglected the means of reaching it; in the same way, if nature only aimed at reproducing in the world the universal form of the divine likeness, and neglected the means of doing so, she would be imperfect. but nature, which is the work of the divine intelligence, is wholly perfect; she therefore aims at all the means by which her final end is arrived at. since then mankind has a certain end, and since there is a certain means necessary for the universal end of nature, it necessarily follows that nature aims at obtaining that means. and therefore the philosopher, in the second book of _natural learning_,[ ] well shows that nature always acts for the end. and since nature cannot reach this end through one man, because that there are many actions necessary to it, which need many to act, therefore nature must produce many men and set them to act. and besides the higher influence,[ ] the powers and properties of inferior spheres contribute much to this. and therefore we see not only that individual men, but also that certain races are born to govern, and certain others to be governed and to serve, as the philosopher argues in the _politics_;[ ] and for the latter, as he himself says, subjection is not only expedient, but just, even though they be forced into subjection. [footnote : arist. _phys. ausc._ ii. .--(w.)] [footnote : _i.e._ of the heavens. witte quotes _parad._ viii. , _purg._ xiv. .] [footnote : i. , ; , .--(w.)] and if this is so, it cannot be doubted that nature ordained in the world a country and a nation for universal sovereignty; if this were not so, she would have been untrue to herself, which is impossible. but as to where that country is, and which is that nation, it is sufficiently manifest, both from what we have said and from what we shall say, that it was rome and her citizens or people; and this our poet very skilfully touches on in the sixth _Æneid_, where he introduces anchises prophesying to Æneas, the ancestor of the romans: "others may mould the breathing bronze more delicately--i doubt it not; they may chisel from marble the living countenance; they may surpass thee in pleading causes; they may track the course of the heavens with the rod, and tell when the stars will rise; but thou, roman, remember to rule the nations with thy sway. these shall be thy endowments--to make peace to be the custom of the world; to spare thy foes when they submit, and to crush the proud."[ ] and again, virgil skilfully notes the appointment of the _place_, in the fourth _Æneid_, when he brings in jupiter speaking to mercury concerning Æneas: "his fair mother did not promise him to us to be such as this: it was not for this that twice she rescues him from grecian arms; but that there should be one to rule over italy, teeming with empires, tempestuous with wars." it has, therefore, sufficiently been shown that the roman people was by nature ordained to empire. therefore it was of right that they gained empire, by subduing to themselves the world. [footnote : _Æn._ vi. , iv. .--(w.)] viii.--but in order properly to discover the truth in our inquiry, we must recognise that the judgment of god is sometimes made manifest to men, and sometimes hidden from them. it may be made manifest in two ways, namely, by reason and by faith. there are some judgments of god to which the human reason, by its own paths, can arrive; as, that a man should risk death to save his country. for a part should always risk itself to save its whole, and each man is a part of his state, as is clear from the philosopher in his _politics_.[ ] therefore every man ought to risk himself for his country, as the less good for the better; whence the philosopher says to nicomachus: "the end is desirable, indeed, even for an individual, but it is better and more divine for a nation and state."[ ] and this is the judgment of god, for if it were not so, right reason in men would miss the intention of nature, which is impossible. [footnote : arist. _pol._ i. , .--(w.)] [footnote : _ethics_, i. .] there are also some judgments of god to which, though human reason cannot reach them by its own powers, yet, by the aid of faith in those things which are told us in holy scripture it can be lifted up: as, for instance, that no one, however perfect he may be in moral and intellectual virtues, both in habit and in action, can be saved without faith; it being supposed that he never heard aught of christ. for human reason cannot of itself see this to be just, yet by faith it can. for in the epistle to the hebrews it is written, "without faith it is impossible to please god;"[ ] and in leviticus, "what man soever there be of the house of israel that killeth an ox, or lamb, or goat in the camp, or that killeth it out of the camp, and bringeth it not to the door of the tabernacle to offer an offering unto the lord, blood shall be imputed to that man."[ ] the door of the tabernacle stands for christ, who is the door of the kingdom of heaven, as may be proved from the gospel: the killing of animals represents men's actions.[ ] [footnote : cf. _parad._ xix. .--(w.)] [footnote : heb. ii. ; levit. xvii. , .--(w.).] [footnote : witte quotes from isidore of seville, a writer much used in the middle ages, the following: "in a moral sense, we offer a calf when we conquer the pride of the flesh; a lamb, when we correct our irrational impulses; a kid, when we master impurity; a dove, when we are simple; a turtle-dove, when we observe chastity; unleavened bread, 'when we keep the feast not in the leaven of malice, but in the unleavened bread of sincerity and truth.'"] but the judgment of god is a hidden one, when man cannot arrive at the knowledge of it either by the law of nature or by the written law, but only occasionally by a special grace. this grace comes in several ways: sometimes by simple revelation, sometimes by revelation assisted by a certain kind of trial or debate. simple revelation, too, is of two kinds: either god gives it of his own accord, or it is gained by prayer. god gives it of his own accord in two ways, either plainly, or by a sign. his judgment against saul was revealed to samuel plainly; but it was by a sign that it was revealed to pharaoh what god had judged touching the setting free of the children of israel. the judgment of god is also given in answer to prayer, as he knew who spoke in the second book of chronicles:[ ] "when we know not what we ought to do, this only have we left, to direct our eyes to thee." [footnote : chron. xx. (vulg.).] revelation by means of trial is also of two kinds. it is given either by casting lots, or by combat; for "to strive" (_certare_), is derived from a phrase which means "to make certain" (_certum facere_). it is clear that the judgment of god is sometimes revealed to men by casting lots, as in the substitution of matthias in the acts of the apostles. again the judgment of god is revealed to men by combat in two ways: either it is by a trial of strength, as in the duels of champions who are called "_duelliones_," or it is by the contention of many men, each striving to reach a certain mark first, as happens in the contests of athletes who run for a prize. the first of these methods was prefigured among the gentiles by the contests between hercules and antæus, which lucan mentions in the fourth book of his _pharsalia_, and ovid in the ninth book of his _metamorphoses_. the second is prefigured by the contest between atalanta and hippomenes, described in the tenth book of ovid's _metamorphoses_.[ ] [footnote : _phars._ iv. ; _metam._ ix. , x. .--(w.).] moreover, it ought not to pass unnoticed concerning these two kinds of strife, that while in the first each champion may fairly hinder his antagonist, in the second this is not so; for athletes must not hinder one another in their strife, though our poet seems to have thought differently in the fifth _Æneid_ where euryalus so receives the prize.[ ] but cicero has done better in forbidding this practice in the third book of the _de officiis_, following the opinion of chrysippus.[ ] he there says: "chrysippus is right here, as he often is, for he says that he who runs in a race should strive with all his might to win, but in no way should he try to trip up his competitor." [footnote : v. --(w.)] [footnote : iii. .--(w.)] with these distinctions, then, we may assume that there are two ways in which men may learn the judgment of god, as we have on this point stated; first by the contests of athletes, and secondly by the contests of champions. these ways of discovering the judgment of god i will treat of in the chapter following. ix.--that people then, which conquered when all were striving hard for the empire of the world, conquered by the will of god. for god cares more to settle a universal strife than a particular one; and even in particular contests the athletes sometimes throw themselves on the judgment of god, according to the common proverb: "to whom god makes the grant, him let peter also bless."[ ] it cannot, then, be doubted that the victory in the strife for the empire of the world followed the judgment of god. the roman people, when all were striving for the empire of the world, conquered; it will be plain that so it was, if we consider the prize or goal, and those who strove for it. the prize or goal was the supremacy over all men; for it is this that we call the empire. none reached this but the roman people. not only were they the first, they were the only ones to reach the goal, as we shall shortly see. [footnote : witte only gives a query (?). the saying expresses the ghibelline view of the relation of the empire to the pope; it may have originated with the coronation of charles the great.] the first man who panted for the prize was ninus, king of the assyrians; but although for more than ninety years (as orosius tells[ ]) he, with his royal consort semiramis, strove for the empire of the world and made all asia subject to himself, nevertheless he never subdued the west. ovid mentions both him and his queen in the fourth book of the _metamorphoses_, when he says, in the story of pyramus:[ ] "semiramis girdled the round space with brick-built walls;" and, "let them come to ninus' tomb and hide beneath in its shade." [footnote : i. .--(w.)] [footnote : _metam._ iv. , .--(w.)] secondly, vesoges, king of egypt, aspired to this prize; but though he vexed the north and south of asia, as orosius relates,[ ] yet he never gained for himself one-half of the world; nay, when, as it were, between the judges[ ] and the goal, the scythians drove him back from his rash enterprise. [footnote : oros. i. .--(w.)] [footnote : "athlothetæ." the judges or umpires in the greek games, whose seats were opposite to the goal at the side of the stadium. _vide_ smith's _dictionary of antiquities_, s.v. "stadium."] then cyrus, king of the persians, made the same attempt; but after the destruction of babylon, and the transference of its empire to persia, he did not even reach the regions of the west, but lost his life and his object in one day at the hands of tamiris, queen of the scythians.[ ] [footnote : oros. ii. .--(w.)] but after that these had failed, xerxes, the son of darius and king among the persians, assailed the world with so great a multitude of nations, with so great a power, that he bridged the channel of the sea which separates asia from europe, between sestos and abydos. and of this wonderful work lucan makes mention in the second book of his _pharsalia_:[ ] "such paths across the seas, made by xerxes in his pride, fame tells of." but finally he was miserably repulsed from his enterprise, and could not attain the goal. [footnote : _phars._ ii. .--(w.)] besides these kings, and after their times, alexander, king of macedon, came nearest of all to the prize of monarchy; he sent ambassadors to the romans to demand their submission, but before the roman answer came, he fell in egypt, as livy[ ] tells us, as it were in the middle of the course. of his burial there, lucan speaks in the eighth book of his _pharsalia_,[ ] where he is inveighing against ptolemy, king of egypt: "thou last of the lagæan race, soon to perish in thy degeneracy, and to yield thy kingdom to an incestuous sister; while for thee the macedonian is kept in the sacred cave...." [footnote : not livy. cf. ix. , , where, speaking of alexander and the romans, he says: "quem ne famâ quidem illis notum arbitror fuisse." the story is greek in origin, coming from cleitarchus (according to pliny, _hist. nat._ iii. ), who accompanied alexander on his asiatic expedition. cf. niebuhr, _lectures on the history of rome_, lect. , grote, _history of greece_, vol. xii. p. , note, who argue for its truth, and mommsen, _history of rome_, vol. i. p. , who argues against it. dante, says witte, used legends about alexander now lost. cf. _inf._ xiv. .] [footnote : viii. .] "oh the depth of the riches both of the wisdom and knowledge of god!" who will not marvel at thee here? for when alexander was trying to hinder his roman competitor in the race, thou didst suddenly snatch him away from the contest that his rashness might proceed no further. but that rome has won the crown of so great a victory is proved on the testimony of many. our poet in his first _Æneid_ says:[ ] "hence, surely, shall one day the romans come, as the years roll on, to be the leaders of the world, from the blood of teucer renewed; over the sea and over the land they shall hold full sway."[ ] and lucan, in his first book, writes: "the sword assigns the kingdom; and the fortune of that mighty people that rules o'er sea and land and the whole earth, admitted not two to rule." and boethius, in his second book,[ ] speaking of the roman prince says: "with his sceptre he ruled the nations, those whom phoebus beholds, from his rising afar to where he sinks his beams beneath the waves; those who are benumbed by the frosty seven stars of the north, those whom the fierce south wind scorches with his heat, parching the burning sands." and luke, the scribe of christ, bears the same testimony, whose every word is true, where he says: "there went out a decree from cæsar augustus that all the world should be taxed;" from which words we must plainly understand that the romans had jurisdiction over the whole world. [footnote : i. .--(w.)] [footnote : i. .--(w.)] [footnote : _de consol. phil._ ii. .--(w.)] from all this evidence it is manifest that the roman people prevailed when all were striving to gain the empire of the world. therefore it was by the judgment of god that it prevailed; consequently its empire was gained by the judgment of god, which is to say, that it was gained by right. x.--and what is gained as the result of single combat or duel is gained of right. for whenever human judgment fails, either because it is involved in the clouds of ignorance, or because it has not the assistance of a judge, then, lest justice should be left deserted, we must have recourse to him who loved justice so much that he died to fulfil what it required by shedding his own blood. therefore the psalmist wrote: "the righteous lord loveth righteousness." this result is gained when, by the free consent of the parties, not from hatred but from love of justice, men inquire of the judgment of god by a trial of strength as well of soul as of body. and this trial of strength is called a duel, because in the first instance it was between two combatants, man to man. but when two nations quarrel they are bound to try in every possible way to arrange the quarrel by means of discussion; it is only when this is hopeless that they may declare war. cicero and vegetius agree on this point, the former in his _de officiis_,[ ] the latter in his book on war. in the practice of medicine recourse may only be had to amputation and cauterising when every other means of cure have been tried. so in the same way, it is only when we have sought in vain for all other modes of deciding a quarrel that we may resort to the remedy of a single combat, forced thereto by a necessity of justice. [footnote : _de off._ i. ; _de re milit._ iii. _prol._--(w.)] two formal rules, then, of the single combat are clear, one which we have just mentioned, the other, which we touched on before, that the combatants or champions must enter the lists by common consent, not animated by private hatred or love, but simply by an eager desire for justice. therefore cicero, in touching on this matter, spoke well when he said: "wars, which are waged for the crown of empire, must be waged without bitterness."[ ] [footnote : "imperii _gloria_," not "_corona_," in _cic. de off._ i. .--(w.)] but, if the rules of single combat be kept when men are driven by justice to meet together by common consent, in their zeal for justice (and if they are not, the contest ceases to be a single combat), do not they meet together in the name of god? and if it is so, is not god in the midst of them, for he himself promises us this in the gospel? and if god is there, is it not impious to suppose that justice can fail?--that justice which he loved so much, as we have just seen. and if single combat cannot fail to secure justice, is not what is gained in single combat gained as of right? this truth the gentiles, too, recognised before the trumpet of the gospel was sounded, when they sought for a judgment in the fortune of single combat. so pyrrhus, noble both in the manners and in the blood of Æacidæ, gave a worthy answer when the roman envoys were sent to him to treat for the ransom of prisoners. "i ask not for gold; ye shall pay me no price, being not war-mongers, but true men of war. let each decide his fate with steel, and not with gold. whether it be you or i that our mistress wills to reign, or what chance she may bring to each, let us try by valour. hear ye also this word: those whose valour the fortune of war has spared, their liberty will i too spare. take ye them as my gift."[ ] so spoke pyrrhus. by "mistress" he meant fortune, which we better and more rightly call the providence of god. therefore, let the combatants beware that they fight not for money; then it would be no true single combat in which they fought, for they would strive in a court of blood and injustice; and let it not be thought that god would then be present to judge; nay, for it would be that ancient enemy who had been the instigator of the strife. if they wish to be true combatants, and not dealers in blood and injustice, let them keep pyrrhus before their eyes when they enter the arena, the man who, when he was striving for empire, so scorned gold, as we have said. [footnote : ennius in _cic. de off._ i. (w.) "war-monger" is spenser's word. _f.q._ , , .] but, if men will not receive the truth which we have proved, and object, as they are wont, that all men are not equal in strength, we will refute them with the instance of the victory of david over goliath; and if the gentiles seek for aught more, let them repel the objection by the victory of hercules over antæus. for it is mere folly to fear that the strength which god makes strong should be weaker than a human champion. it is, therefore, now sufficiently clear that what is acquired by single combat is acquired by right. xi.--but the roman people gained their empire by duel between man and man; and this is proved by testimonies that are worthy of all credence; and in proving this, we shall also show that where any question had to be decided from the beginning of the roman empire, it was tried by single combat. for first of all, when a quarrel arose about the settling in italy of father Æneas, the earliest ancestor of this people, and when turnus, king of the rutuli, withstood Æneas, it was at last agreed between the two kings to discover the good pleasure of god by a single combat, which is sung in the last book of the _Æneid_. and in this combat Æneas was so merciful in his victory, that he would have granted life and peace to the conquered foe, had he not seen the belt which turnus had taken on slaying pallas, as the last verses of our poet describe. again, when two peoples had grown up in italy, both sprung from the trojan stem, namely, the romans and the albans, and they had long striven whose should be the sign of the eagle,[ ] and the penates of troy, and the honours of empire; at last by mutual consent, in order to have certain knowledge of the case in hand, the three horatii, who were brethren, and the three curatii, who were also brethren, fought together before the kings and all the people anxiously waiting on either side; and since the three alban champions were killed, while one roman survived, the palm of victory fell to the romans, in the reign of hostilius the king. this story has been diligently put together by livy, in the first part of his history, and orosius also gives similar testimony.[ ] [footnote : "_il sacrosanto segno._" v. _parad._ vi. .] [footnote : liv. i. ; oros. ii. .] next they fought for empire with their neighbours the sabines and samnites, as livy tells us; all the laws of war were kept; and though those who fought were very many in number, the war was in the form of a combat between man and man. in the contest with the samnites, fortune nearly repented her of what she had begun, as lucan instances in the second book of his _pharsalia_:[ ] "how many companies lay dead by the colline gate then, when the headship of the world and universal empire well-nigh were transferred to other seats, and the samnite heaped the corpses of rome beyond the numbers[ ] of the caudine forks." [footnote : ii. .] [footnote : "romanaque samnis ultra caudinas superavit vulnera furcas." another reading is "speravit."] but after that the intestine quarrels of italy had ceased, and while the issue of the strife with greece and carthage was not yet made certain by the judgment of god--for both greece and carthage aimed at empire--then fabricius for rome, and pyrrhus for greece, fought with vast hosts for the glory of empire, and rome gained the day. and when scipio for rome, and hannibal for carthage, fought man to man, the africans fell before the italians, as livy and all the other roman historians strive to tell. who then is so dull of understanding as not to see that this glorious people has won the crown of all the world, by the decision of combat? surely the roman may repeat paul's words to timothy: "there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness," laid up, that is, in the eternal providence of god. let, then, the presumptuous jurists see how far they stand below that watch-tower of reason whence the mind of man regards these principles: and let them be silent, content to show forth counsel and judgment according to the meaning of the law. it has now become manifest that it was by combat of man against man that the romans gained their empire: therefore it was by right that they gained it, and this is the principal thesis of the present book. up to this point we have proved our thesis by arguments which mostly rest on principles of reason; we must now make our point clear by arguments based on the principles of the christian faith. xii.--for it is they who profess to be zealous for the faith of christ who have chiefly "raged together," and "imagined a vain thing" against the roman empire; men who have no compassion on the poor of christ, whom they not only defraud as to the revenues of the church; but the very patrimonies of the church are daily seized upon; and the church is made poor, while making a show of justice they yet refuse to allow the minister of justice to fulfil his office. nor does this impoverishment happen without the judgment of god. for their possessions do not afford help to the poor, to whom belongs as their patrimony the wealth of the church; and these possessions are held without gratitude to the empire which gives them. let these possessions go back to whence they came. they came well; their return is evil: for they were well given, and they are mischievously held. what shall we say to shepherds like these? what shall we say when the substance of the church is wasted, while the private estates of their own kindred are enlarged? but perchance it is better to proceed with what is set before us; and in religious silence to wait for our saviour's help. i say, then, that if the roman empire did not exist by right, christ in being born presupposed and sanctioned an unjust thing. but the consequent is false; therefore the contradictory of the antecedent is true; for it is always true of contradictory propositions, that if one is false the other is true. it is not needful to prove the falsity of the consequent to a true believer: for, if he be faithful, he will grant it to be false; and if he be not faithful, then this reasoning is not for him. i prove the consequence thus: wherever a man of his own free choice carries out a public order, he countenances and persuades by his act the justice of that order; and seeing that acts are more forcible to persuade than words (as aristotle holds in the tenth book of his _ethics_),[ ] therefore by this he persuades us more than if it were merely an approval in words. but christ, as luke who writes his story, says, willed to be born of the virgin mary under an edict of roman authority, so that in that unexampled census of mankind, the son of god, made man, might be counted as man: and this was to carry out that edict. perhaps it is even more religious to suppose that it was of god that the decree issued through cæsar, so that he who had been such long years expected among men should himself enroll himself with mortal man. [footnote : _eth._ x. .] therefore christ, by his action, enforced the justice of the edict of augustus, who then wielded the roman power. and since to issue a just edict implies jurisdiction, it necessarily follows that he who showed that he thought an edict just, must also have showed that he thought the jurisdiction under which it was issued just; but unless it existed by right it were unjust. and it must be noted that the force of the argument taken to destroy the consequent, though the argument partly holds from its form, shows its force in the second figure, if it be reduced as a syllogism, just as the argument based on the assumption of the antecedent is in the first figure. the reduction is made thus: all that is unjust is persuaded to men unjustly; christ did not persuade us unjustly; therefore he did not persuade us to do unjust things. from the assumption of the antecedent thus: all injustice is persuaded to men unjustly: christ persuaded a certain injustice to man, therefore he persuaded unjustly. xiii.--and if the roman empire did not exist by right, the sin of adam was not punished in christ. this is false, therefore its contradictory is true. the falsehood of the consequent is seen thus. since by the sin of adam we were all sinners, as the apostle says:--"wherefore, as by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin, and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned,"--then, if christ had not made satisfaction for adam's sin by his death, we should still by our depraved nature be the children of wrath. but this is not so, for paul, speaking of the father in his epistle to the ephesians, says: "having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by jesus christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved, in whom we have redemption by his blood, the forgiveness of sins according to the riches of his grace, wherein he has abounded towards us." and christ himself, suffering in himself the punishment, says in st. john: "it is finished;" for where a thing is finished, naught remains to be done. it is convenient that it should be understood that punishment is not merely penalty inflicted on him who has done wrong, but that penalty inflicted by one who has penal jurisdiction. and therefore a penalty should not be called punishment, but rather injury, except where it is inflicted by the sentence of a regular judge.[ ] therefore the israelites said unto moses: "who made thee a judge over us?" [footnote : "_ab ordinario judice._"] if, therefore, christ had not suffered by the sentence of a regular judge, the penalty would not properly have been punishment; and none could be a regular judge who had not jurisdiction over all mankind; for all mankind was punished in the flesh of christ, who "hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," as saith the prophet isaiah. and if the roman empire had not existed by right, tiberius cæsar, whose vicar was pontius pilate, would not have had jurisdiction over all mankind. it was for this reason that herod, not knowing what he did, like caiaphas, when he spoke truly of the decree of heaven, sent christ to pilate to be judged, as luke relates in his gospel. for herod was not the vicegerent of tiberius, under the standard of the eagle, or the standard of the senate; but only a king, with one particular kingdom given him by tiberius, and ruling the kingdom committed to his charge under tiberius. let them cease, then, to insult the roman empire, who pretend that they are the sons of the church; when they see that christ, the bridegroom of the church, sanctioned the roman empire at the beginning and at the end of his warfare on earth. and now i think that i have made it sufficiently clear that it was by right that the romans acquired to themselves the empire of the world. oh happy people, oh ausonia, how glorious hadst thou been, if either he, that weakener of thine empire, had never been born, or if his own pious intention had never deceived him?[ ] [footnote : constantine the great.--(w.)] book iii. i.--"he hath shut the lions' mouths and they have not hurt me, forasmuch as before him justice was found in me."[ ] at the beginning of this work i proposed to examine into three questions, according as the subject-matter would permit me. concerning the two first questions our inquiry, as i think, has been sufficiently accomplished in the preceding books. it remains to treat of the third question; and, perchance, it may arouse a certain amount of indignation against me, for the truth of it cannot appear without causing shame to certain men. but seeing that truth from its changeless throne appeals to me--that solomon too, entering on the forest of his proverbs, teaches me in his own person "to meditate on truth, to hate the wicked;"[ ] seeing that the philosopher, my instructor in morals, bids me, for the sake of truth, to put aside what is dearest;[ ] i will, therefore, take confidence from the words of daniel in which the power of god, the shield of the defenders of truth, is set forth, and, according to the exhortation of st. paul, "putting on the breast-plate of faith," and in the heat of that coal which one of the seraphim had taken from off the altar, and laid on the lips of isaiah, i will enter on the present contest, and, by the arm of him who delivered us by his blood from the powers of darkness, drive out from the lists the wicked and the liar, in the sight of all the world. why should i fear, when the spirit, which is co-eternal with the father and the son, saith by the mouth of david: "the righteous shall be had in everlasting remembrance, he shall not be afraid of evil tidings"?[ ] [footnote : dan. vi. . vulg.--(w.)] [footnote : prov. vii. . vulg.--(w.)] [footnote : arist. _eth._ i. .--(w.)] [footnote : ps. cxii. .--(w.)] the present question, then, concerning which we have to inquire, is between two great luminaries, the roman pontiff and the roman prince: and the question is, does the authority of the roman monarch, who, as we have proved in the second book, is the monarch of the world, depend immediately on god, or on some minister or vicar of god; by whom i understand the successor of peter, who truly has the keys of the kingdom of heaven? ii.--for this, as for the former questions, we must take some principle, on the strength of which we may fashion the arguments of the truth which is to be expounded. for what does it profit to labour, even in speaking truth, unless we start from a principle? for the principle alone is the root of all the propositions which are the means of proof. let us, therefore, start from the irrefragable truth that that which is repugnant to the intention of nature, is against the will of god. for if this were not true its contradictory would not be false; namely, that what is repugnant to the intention of nature is not against god's will, and if this be not false neither are the consequences thereof false. for it is impossible in consequences which are necessary, that the consequent should be false, unless the antecedent were false also. but if a thing is not "_against the will_" it must either be willed or simply "not willed," just as "not to hate" means "to love," or "not to love;" for "not to love" does not mean "to hate," and "not to will" does not mean "to will not," as is self-evident. but if this is not false, neither will this proposition be false; "god wills what he does not will," than which a greater contradiction does not exist. i prove that what i say is true as follows: it is manifest that god wills the end of nature; otherwise the motions of heaven would be of none effect, and this we may not say. if god willed that the end should be hindered, he would will also that the hindering power should gain its end, otherwise his will would be of none effect. and since the end of the hindering power is the non-existence of what it hinders, it would follow that god wills the non-existence of the end of nature which he is said to will. for if god did not will that the end should be hindered, in so far as he did not will it, it would follow as a consequence to his not willing it, that he cared nought about the hindering power, neither whether it existed, nor whether it did not. but he who cares not for the hindering power, cares not for the thing which can be hindered, and consequently has no wish for it; and when a man has no wish for a thing he wills it not. therefore, if the end of nature can be hindered, as it can, it follows of necessity that god wills not the end of nature, and we reach our previous conclusion, that god wills what he does not will. our principle is therefore most true, seeing that from its contradictions such absurd results follow. iii.--at the outset we must note in reference to this third question, that the truth of the first question had to be made manifest rather to remove ignorance than to end a dispute. in the second question we sought equally to remove ignorance and to end a dispute. for there are many things of which we are ignorant, but concerning which we do not quarrel. in geometry we know not how to square the circle, but we do not quarrel on that point. the theologian does not know the number of the angels, but he does not quarrel about the number. the egyptian is ignorant of the political system of the scythians, but he does not therefore quarrel concerning it.[ ] but the truth in this third question provokes so much quarrelling that, whereas in other matters ignorance is commonly the cause of quarrelling, here quarrelling is the cause of ignorance. for this always happens where men are hurried by their wishes past what they see by their reason; in this evil bias they lay aside the light of reason, and being dragged on blindly by their desires, they obstinately deny that they are blind. and, therefore, it often follows not only that falsehood has its own inheritance, but that many men issue forth from their own bounds and stray through the foreign camp, where they understand nothing, and no man understands them; and so they provoke some to anger, and some to scorn, and not a few to laughter. [footnote : "_scytharum civilitatem._" cf. arist. _ethics_, iii. , where [greek: to bouleuton] is discussed, and thence come the first and the third example, a little altered, the egyptian being substituted for the spartan.] now three classes of men chiefly strive against the truth which we are trying to prove. first, the chief pontiff, vicar of our lord jesus christ and the successor of peter, to whom we owe, not indeed all that we owe to christ, but all that we owe to peter, contradicts this truth, urged it may be by zeal for the keys; and also other pastors of the christian sheepfolds, and others whom i believe to be only led by zeal for our mother, the church. these all, perchance from zeal and not from pride, withstand the truth which i am about to prove. but there are certain others in whom obstinate greed has extinguished the light of reason, who are of their father the devil, and yet pretend to be sons of the church. they not only stir up quarrels in this question, but they hate the name of the most sacred office of prince, and would shamelessly deny the principles which we have laid down for this and the previous questions. there is also a third class called decretalists,[ ] utterly without knowledge or skill in philosophy or theology, who, relying entirely on their decretals (which doubtless, i think, should be venerated), and hoping, i believe, that these decretals will prevail, disparage the power of the empire. and no wonder, for i have heard one of them, speaking of these decretals, assert shamelessly that the traditions of the church are the foundation of the faith. may this wickedness be taken away from the thoughts of men by those who, antecedently to the traditions of the church, have believed in christ the son of god, whether to come, or present, or as having already suffered; and who from their faith have hoped, and from their hope have kindled into love, and who, burning with love, will, the world doubts not, be made co-heirs with him. [footnote : _parad._ ix. .--(w.)] and that such arguers may be excluded once for all from the present debate, it must be noted that part of scripture was _before_ the church, that part of it came _with_ the church, and part _after_ the church. _before_ the church were the old and the new testament--the covenant which the psalmist says was "commanded for ever," of which the church speaks to her bridegroom, saying: "draw me after thee."[ ] [footnote : ps. cxi. . cant. i. .--(w.)] _with_ the church came those venerable chief councils, with which no faithful christian doubts but that christ was present. for we have his own words to his disciples when he was about to ascend into heaven: "lo, i am with you always, even unto the end of the world," to which matthew testifies. there are also the writings[ ] of the doctors, augustine and others, of whom, if any doubt that they were aided by the holy spirit, either he has never beheld their fruit, or if he has beheld, he has never tasted thereof. [footnote : "_scripturæ._"] _after_ the church are the traditions which they call decretals, which, although they are to be venerated for their apostolical authority, yet we must not doubt that they are to be held inferior to fundamental scripture, seeing that christ rebuked the pharisees for this very thing; for when they had asked: "why do thy disciples transgress the tradition of the elders?" (for they neglected the washing of hands), he answered them, as matthew testifies: "why do ye also transgress the commandment of god by your tradition?" thus he intimates plainly that tradition was to have a lower place. but if the traditions of the church are _after_ the church, it follows that the church had not its authority from traditions, but rather traditions from the church; and, therefore, the men of whom we speak, seeing that they have nought but traditions, must be excluded from the debate. for those who seek after this truth must proceed in their inquiry from those things from which flows the authority of the church. further, we must exclude others who boast themselves to be white sheep in the flock of the lord, when they have the plumage of crows. these are the children of wickedness, who, that they may be able to follow their evil ways, put shame on their mother, drive out their brethren, and when they have done all will allow none to judge them. why should we seek to reason with these, when they are led astray by their evil desires, and so cannot see even our first principle? therefore there remains the controversy only with the other sort of men who are influenced by a certain kind of zeal for their mother the church, and yet know not the truth which is sought for. with these men, therefore--strong in the reverence which a dutiful son owes to his father, which a dutiful son owes to his mother, dutiful to christ, dutiful to the church, dutiful to the chief shepherd, dutiful to all who profess the religion of christ--i begin in this book the contest for the maintenance of the truth. iv.--those men to whom all our subsequent reasoning is addressed, when they assert that the authority of the empire depends on the authority of the church, as the inferior workman depends on the architect, are moved to take this view by many arguments, some of which they draw from holy scripture, and some also from the acts of the supreme pontiff and of the emperor himself. moreover, they strive to have some proof of reason. for in the first place they say that god, according to the book of genesis, made two great lights, the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night; this they understand to be an allegory, for that the lights are the two powers,[ ] the spiritual and the temporal. and then they maintain that as the moon, which is the lesser light, only has light so far as she receives it from the sun, so the temporal power only has authority as it receives authority from the spiritual power. [footnote : "_regimina._"] for the disposing of these, and of other like arguments, we must remember the philosopher's words in his book on sophistry, "the overthrow of an argument is the pointing out of the mistake."[ ] [footnote : _soph. el._ ii. .--(w.)] error may arise in two ways, either in the matter, or in the form of an argument; either, that is, by assuming to be true what is false, or by transgressing the laws of the syllogism. the philosopher raised objections to the arguments of parmenides and melissus on both of these grounds, saying that they accepted what was false, and that they did not argue correctly.[ ] i use "false" in a large sense, as including the inconceivable,[ ] that which in matters admitting only of probability has the nature of falseness. if the error is in the form of an argument, he who wishes to destroy the error must do so by showing that the laws of the syllogism have been transgressed. if the error is in the matter, it is because something has been assumed which is either false in itself, or false in relation to that particular instance. if the assumption is false in itself, the argument must be destroyed by destroying the assumption; if it is false only in that particular instance, we must draw a distinction between the falseness in that particular instance and its general truth. [footnote : aristotle, _phys._ i. .--(w.)] [footnote : "_inopinabili._"] having noted these things, to make it more clear how we destroy this and the further fallacies of our adversaries, we must remark that there are two ways in which error may arise concerning the mystical sense, either by seeking it where it is not, or by accepting it in a sense other than its real sense. on account of the first of these ways, augustine says, in his work _of the city of god_,[ ] that we must not think that all things, of which we are told, have a special meaning; for it is on account of that which means something, that that also which means nothing is woven into a story. it is only with the ploughshare that we turn up the earth; but the other parts of the plough are also necessary. [footnote : dante does not quote st. augustine's words, but gives his meaning, xvii. .--(w.)] on account of the second way in which error touching the interpretation of mysteries may arise, augustine, in his book "_concerning christian doctrine_," speaking of those who wish to find in scripture something other than he who wrote the scripture meant,[ ] says, that such "are misled in the same way as a man who leaves the straight path, and then arrives at the end of the path by a long circuit." and he adds: "it ought to be shown that this is a mistake, lest through the habit of going out of the way, the man be driven to going into cross or wrong ways." and then he intimates why such precautions must be taken in interpreting scripture. "faith will falter, if the authority of scripture be not sure." but i say that if these things happen from ignorance, we must pardon those who do them, when we have carefully reproved them, as we pardon those who imagine a lion in the clouds, and are afraid. but if they are done purposely, we must deal with those who err thus, as we do with tyrants, who instead of following the laws of the state for the public good, try to pervert them for their own advantage. [footnote : i. , . dante writes: "per gyrum." the benedictine text has: "per agrum."] oh worst of crimes, even though a man commit it in his dreams, to turn to ill use the purpose of the eternal spirit. such an one does not sin against moses, or david, or job, or matthew, or paul, but against the eternal spirit that speaketh in them. for though the reporters of the words of god are many, yet there is one only that tells them what to write, even god, who has deigned to unfold to us his will through the pens of many writers. having thus first noted these things, i will proceed, as i said above, to destroy the argument of those who say that the two great lights are typical of the two great powers on earth: for on this type rests the whole strength of their argument. it can be shown in two ways that this interpretation cannot be upheld. first, seeing that these two kinds of power are, in a sense, accidents of men, god would thus appear to have used a perverted order, by producing the accidents, before the essence to which they belong existed; and it is ridiculous to say this of god. for the two great lights were created on the fourth day, while man was not created till the sixth day, as is evident in the text of scripture. secondly, seeing that these two kinds of rule are to guide men to certain ends, as we shall see, it follows that if man had remained in the state of innocence in which god created him, he would not have needed such means of guidance. these kinds of rule, then, are remedies against the weakness of sin. since, then, man was not a sinner on the fourth day, for he did not then even exist, it would have been idle to make remedies for his sin, and this would be contrary to the goodness of god. for he would be a sorry physician who would make a plaster for an abscess which was to be, before the man was born. it cannot, therefore, be said that god made these two kinds of rule on the fourth day, and therefore the meaning of moses cannot have been what these men pretend. we may also be more tolerant, and overthrow this falsehood by drawing a distinction. this way of distinction is a gentler way of treating an adversary, for so his arguments are not made to appear consciously false, as is the case when we utterly overthrow him. i say then that, although the moon has not light of its own abundantly, unless it receives it from the sun, yet it does not therefore follow that the moon is from the sun. therefore be it known that the being, and the power, and the working of the moon are all different things. for its being, the moon in no way depends on the sun, nor for its power, nor for its working, considered in itself. its motion comes from its proper mover, its influence is from its own rays. for it has a certain light of its own, which is manifest at the time of an eclipse; though for its better and more powerful working it receives from the sun an abundant light, which enables it to work more powerfully. therefore i say that the temporal power does not receive its being from the spiritual power, nor its power which is its authority, nor its working considered in itself. yet it is good that the temporal power should receive from the spiritual the means of working more effectively by the light of the grace which the benediction of the supreme pontiff bestows on it both in heaven and on earth. therefore we may see that the argument of these men erred in its form, because the predicate of the conclusion is not the predicate of the major premiss. the argument runs thus: the moon receives her light from the sun, which is the spiritual power. the temporal power is the moon. therefore the temporal power receives authority from the spiritual power. "light" is the predicate of the major premiss, "authority" the predicate of the conclusion; which two things we have seen to be very different in their subject and in their idea. v.--they draw another argument from the text of moses, saying that the types of these two powers sprang from the loins of jacob, for that they are prefigured in levi and judah, whereof one was founder of the spiritual power, and the other of the temporal. from this they argue: the church has the same relation to the empire that levi had to judah. levi preceded judah in his birth, therefore the church precedes the empire in authority. this error is easily overthrown. for when they say that levi and judah, the sons of jacob, are the types of spiritual and temporal power, i could show this argument, too, to be wholly false; but i will grant it to be true. then they infer, as levi came first in birth, so does the church come first in authority. but, as in the previous argument, the predicates of the conclusion and of the major premiss are different: authority and birth are different things, both in their subject and in their idea; and therefore there is an error in the form of the argument. the argument is as follows: a precedes b in c; d and e stand in the same relation as a and b; therefore d precedes e in f. but then f and c are different things. and if it is objected that f follows from c, that is, authority from priority of birth, and that the effect is properly substituted for the cause, as if "animal" were used in an argument for men, the objection is bad. for there are many men, who were born before others, who not only do not precede those others in authority, but even come after them: as is plain where we find a bishop younger than his archpresbyters. therefore their objection appears to err in that it assumes as a cause that which is none. vi.--again, from the first book of kings they take the election and the deposition of saul; and they say that saul, an enthroned king, was deposed by samuel, who, by god's command, acted in the stead of god, as appears from the text of scripture. from this they argue that, as that vicar of god had authority to give temporal power, and to take it away and bestow it on another, so now the vicar of god, the bishop of the universal church, has authority to give the sceptre of temporal power, and to take it away, and even to give it to another. and if this were so, it would follow without doubt that the authority of the empire is dependent on the church, as they say. but we may answer and destroy this argument, by which they say that samuel was the vicar of god: for it was not as vicar of god that he acted, but as a special delegate for this purpose, or as a messenger bearing the express command of his lord. for it is clear that what god commanded him, that only he did, and that only he said. therefore we must recognise that it is one thing to be another's vicar, and that it is another to be his messenger or minister, just as it is one thing to be a doctor, and another to be an interpreter. for a vicar is one to whom is committed jurisdiction with law or with arbitrary power, and therefore within the bounds of the jurisdiction which is committed to him, he may act by law or by his arbitrary power without the knowledge of his lord. it is not so with a mere messenger, in so far as he is a messenger; but as the mallet acts only by the strength of the smith, so the messenger acts only by the authority of him that sent him. although, then, god did this by his messenger samuel, it does not follow that the vicar of god may do the same. for there are many things which god has done and still does, and yet will do through angels, which the vicar of god, the successor of peter, might not do. therefore we may see that they argue from the whole to a part, thus: men can hear and see, therefore the eye can hear and see: which does not hold. were the argument negative, it would be good: for instance, man cannot fly, therefore man's arm cannot fly. and, in the same way, god cannot, by his messenger, cause what is not to have been,[ ] as agathon says; therefore neither can his vicar. [footnote : as quoted by aristotle, _ethics_, vi. .--(w.)] vii.--further, they use the offering of the wise men from the text of matthew, saying that christ accepted from them both frankincense and gold, to signify that he was lord and ruler both of things temporal and of things spiritual; and from this they infer that the vicar of christ is also lord and ruler both of things temporal and of things spiritual; and that consequently he has authority over both. to this i answer, that i acknowledge that matthew's words and meaning are both as they say, but that the inference which they attempt to draw therefrom fails, because it fails in the terms of the argument. their syllogism runs thus: god is the lord both of things temporal and of things spiritual, the holy pontiff is the vicar of god; therefore he is lord both of things temporal and of things spiritual. both of these propositions are true, but the middle term in them is different, and _four_ terms are introduced, by which the form of the syllogism is not kept, as is plain from what is said of "the syllogism simply."[ ] for "god" is the subject of the major premiss, and "the vicar of god" is the predicate of the minor; and these are not the same. [footnote : arist. _anal. prior._, or rather, the _summulæ logicæ_, l. iv., of petrus hispanus.--(w.)] and if anyone raises the objection that the vicar of god is equal in power to god, his objection is idle; for no vicar, whether human or divine, can be equal in power to the master whose vicar he is, which is at once obvious. we know that the successor of peter had not equal authority with god, at least in the works of nature; he could not make a clod of earth fall upwards, nor fire to burn in a downward direction, by virtue of the office committed to him. nor could all things be committed to him by god; for god could not commit to any the power of creation, and of baptism, as is clearly proved, notwithstanding what[ ] the master says in his fourth book. [footnote : peter lombard, "magister sententiarum," iv. dist. , f. .--(w.)] we know also that the vicar of a mortal man is not equal in authority to the man whose vicar he is, so far as he is his vicar; for none can give away what is not his. the authority of a prince does not belong to a prince, except for him to use it; for no prince can give to himself authority. he can indeed receive authority, and give it up, but he cannot create it in another man, for it does not belong to a prince to create another prince. and if this is so, it is manifest that no prince can substitute for himself a vicar equal to himself in authority respecting all things, and therefore the objection to our argument has no weight. viii.--they also bring forward that saying in matthew of christ to peter: "whatsoever thou shalt bind on earth shall be bound in heaven; and whatsoever thou shalt loose on earth shall be loosed in heaven;" which also, from the text of matthew and john, they allow to have been in like manner said to all the apostles. from this they argue that it has been granted by god to the successor of peter to be able to bind and to loose all things; hence they infer that he can loose the laws and decrees of the empire, and also bind laws and decrees for the temporal power; and, if this were so, this conclusion would rightly follow. but we must draw a distinction touching their major premiss. their syllogism is in this form. peter could loose and bind all things; the successor of peter can do whatever peter could do; therefore the successor of peter can bind and can loose all things: whence they conclude that he can bind and can loose the decrees and the authority of the empire. now i admit the minor premiss; but touching the major premiss i draw a distinction. the universal "everything" which is included in "whatever" is not distributed beyond the extent of the distributed term. if i say "all animals run," "all" is distributed so as to include everything which comes under the class "animal." but if i say "all men run," then "all" is only distributed so as to include every individual in the class "man;" and when i say "every grammarian runs," then is the distribution even more limited. therefore we must always look to see what it is that is to be included in the word "all," and when we know the nature and extent of the distributed term, it will easily be seen how far the distribution extends. therefore, when it is said "whatsoever thou shalt bind," if "whatsoever" bore an unlimited sense, they would speak truly, and the power of the pope would extend even beyond what they say; for he might then divorce a wife from her husband, and marry her to another while her first husband was yet alive, which he can in no wise do. he might even absolve me when impenitent, which god himself cannot do. therefore it is manifest that the distribution of the term in question is not absolute, but in reference to something. what this is will be sufficiently clear if we consider what power was granted to peter. christ said to peter: "to thee will i give the keys of the kingdom of heaven"--that is, "i will make thee the doorkeeper of the kingdom of heaven." and then he adds: "whatsoever," which is to say "all that"--to wit, all that has reference to this duty--"thou shalt have power to bind and to loose." and thus the universal which is implied in "whatsoever" has only a limited distribution, referring to the office of the keys of the kingdom of heaven. and in this sense the proposition of our opponents is true, but, taken absolutely, it is manifestly false. i say, then, that although the successor of peter has power to bind and to loose, as belongs to him to whom the office of peter was committed, yet it does not therefore follow that he has power to bind and to loose the decrees of the empire, as our opponents say, unless they further prove that to do so belongs to the office of the keys, which we shall shortly show is not the case. ix.--they further take the words in luke which peter spake to christ, saying: "behold, here are two swords;" and they understood that by these two swords the two kinds of rule were foretold. and since peter said "here," where he was, which is to say, "with him," they argue that the authority of the two kinds of rule rests with the successor of peter. we must answer by showing that the interpretation, on which the argument rests, is wrong. they say that the two swords of which peter spake mean the two kinds of rule which we have spoken of; but this we wholly deny, for then peter's answer would not be according to the meaning of the words of christ; and also we say that peter made, as was his wont, a hasty answer, touching only the outside of things. it will be manifest that such an answer as our opponents allege would not be according to the meaning of the words of christ, if the preceding words, and the reason of them, be considered. observe, then, that these words were spoken on the day of the feast, for a little before luke writes thus: "then came the day of unleavened bread, when the passover must be killed;" and at this feast christ had spoken of his passion, which was at hand, in which it was necessary for him to be separated from his disciples. observe, too, that when these words were spoken the twelve were assembled together, and therefore, shortly after the words which we have just quoted, luke says: "and when the hour was come he sat down, and the twelve apostles with him." and continuing his discourse with them, he came to this: "when i sent you, without purse, and scrip, and shoes, lacked ye anything? and they said, nothing. then said he unto them: but now, he that hath a purse, let him take it, and likewise his scrip; and he that hath no sword, let him sell his garment, and buy one." from these words the purpose of christ is sufficiently manifest; for he did not say: "buy, or get for yourselves, two swords," but rather "twelve swords," seeing that he spake unto twelve disciples: "he that hath not, let him buy," so that each should have one. and he said this to admonish them of the persecution and scorn that they should suffer, as though he would say: "as long as i was with you men received you gladly, but now you will be driven away; therefore of necessity ye must prepare for yourselves those things which formerly i forbade you to have." and therefore if the answer of peter bore the meaning which our opponents assign to it, it would have been no answer to the words of christ; and christ would have rebuked him for answering foolishly, as he often did rebuke him. but christ did not rebuke him, but was satisfied, saying unto him: "it is enough," as though he would say: "i speak because of the necessity; but if each one of you cannot possess a sword, two are enough." and that it was peter's wont to speak in a shallow manner is proved by his hasty and thoughtless forwardness, to which he was led not only by the sincerity of his faith, but also, i believe, by the natural purity and simplicity of his character. all the evangelists bear testimony to this forwardness. matthew writes that when jesus had asked his disciples: "whom say ye that i am?" peter answered before them all and said: "thou art christ, the son of the living god." he writes also that when christ was saying to his disciples that he must go up to jerusalem and suffer many things, peter took him and began to rebuke him, saying: "be it far from thee, lord; this shall not be unto thee." but christ turned and rebuked him, and said: "get thee behind me, satan." matthew also writes that in the mount of transfiguration, on the sight of christ, and of moses and elias, and of the two sons of zebedee, peter said: "lord, it is good for us to be here; if thou wilt, let us make here three tabernacles, one for thee, one for moses, and one for elias." he also writes that when the disciples were in a ship, in the night, and christ went unto them walking on the sea, then peter said unto him: "lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water." and when christ foretold that all his disciples should be offended because of him, peter answered and said: "though all men shall be offended because of thee, yet will i never be offended;" and then: "though i should die with thee, yet will i not deny thee." and to this saying mark bears witness also. and luke writes that peter had said to christ, a little before the words touching the swords which we have quoted: "lord, i am ready to go with thee, both into prison and to death." and john says of him, that, when christ wished to wash his feet, peter answered and said: "lord, dost thou wash my feet?" and then: "thou shalt never wash my feet." the same evangelist tells us that it was peter who smote the high priest's servant with a sword, and the other evangelists also bear witness to this thing. he tells us also how peter entered the sepulchre at once, when he saw the other disciple waiting outside, and how, when christ was on the shore after the resurrection, when peter had heard that it was the lord, he girt his fisher's coat unto him (for he was naked) and did cast himself into the sea. lastly, john tells that when peter saw john, he said unto jesus: "lord, and what shall this man do?" it is a pleasure to have pursued this point about our chief shepherd,[ ] in praise of his purity of spirit; but from what i have said it is plain that when he spake of the two swords, he answered the words of christ with no second meaning. [footnote : "archimandrita nostro." cf. _parad._ xi. , of st. francis.--(w.)] but if we are to receive these words of christ and of peter typically, they must not be explained as our adversaries explain them; but they must be referred to that sword of which matthew writes: "think not that i am come to send peace on the earth; i come not to send peace, but a sword. for i am come to set a man at variance against his father," &c. and this comes to pass not only in words, but also in fact. and therefore luke speaks to theophilus of all "that jesus began both to do and to teach." it was a sword of that kind that christ commanded them to buy; and peter said that it was already doubly there. for they were ready both for words and for deeds, by which they should accomplish what christ said that he had come to do by the sword. x.--certain persons say further that the emperor constantine, having been cleansed from leprosy by the intercession of sylvester, then the supreme pontiff, gave unto the church the seat of empire which was rome, together with many other dignities belonging to the empire.[ ] hence they argue that no man can take unto himself these dignities unless he receive them from the church, whose they are said to be. from this it would rightly follow, that one authority depends on the other, as they maintain. [footnote : on the donation of constantine, witte refers to _inf._ xxxviii. ; xix. ; _purg._ xxxii. ; _parad._ xx. ; _suprà_ ii. .] the arguments which seemed to have their roots in the divine words, have been stated and disproved. it remains to state and disprove those which are grounded on roman history and in the reason of mankind. the first of these is the one which we have mentioned, in which the syllogism runs as follows: no one has a right to those things which belong to the church, unless he has them from the church; and this we grant. the government of rome belongs to the church; therefore no one has a right to it unless it be given him by the church. the minor premiss is proved by the facts concerning constantine, which we have touched on. this minor premiss then will i destroy; and as for their proof, i say that it proves nothing. for the dignity of the empire was what constantine could not alienate, nor the church receive. and when they insist, i prove my words as follows: no man on the strength of the office which is committed to him, may do aught that is contrary to that office; for so one and the same man, viewed as one man, would be contrary to himself, which is impossible. but to divide the empire is contrary to the office committed to the emperor; for his office is to hold mankind in all things subject to one will: as may be easily seen from the first book of this treatise. therefore it is not permitted to the emperor to divide the empire. if, therefore, as they say, any dignities had been alienated by constantine, and had passed to the church, the "coat without seam"--which even they, who pierced christ, the true god, with a spear, dared not rend--would have been rent.[ ] [footnote : each side in the controversy used the type of the "seamless robe," one of the empire (_suprà_ i. ), the other of the church; _e.g._, in the bull of boniface viii., "_unam sanctam_."] further, just as the church has its foundation, so has the empire its foundation. the foundation of the church is christ, as paul says in his first epistle to the corinthians: "for other foundation can no man lay than that which is laid, which is jesus christ."[ ] he is the rock on which the church is built; but the foundation of the empire is human right. now i say that, as the church may not go contrary to its foundation--but must always rest on its foundation, as the words of the canticles say: "who is she that cometh up from the desert, abounding in delights, leaning on her beloved?"[ ]--in the same way i say that the empire may not do aught that transgresses human right. but were the empire to destroy itself, it would so transgress human right. therefore the empire may not destroy itself. since then to divide the empire would be to destroy it, because the empire consists in one single universal monarchy, it is manifest that he who exercises the authority of the empire may not destroy it, and from what we have said before, it is manifest that to destroy the empire is contrary to human right. [footnote : cor. iii. .--(w.)] [footnote : cant. viii. .--(w.)] moreover, all jurisdiction is prior in time to the judge who has it; for it is the judge who is ordained for the jurisdiction, not the jurisdiction for the judge. but the empire is a jurisdiction, comprehending within itself all temporal jurisdiction: therefore it is prior to the judge who has it, who is the emperor. for it is the emperor who is ordained for the empire, and not contrariwise. therefore it is clear that the emperor, in so far as he is emperor, cannot alter the empire; for it is to the empire that he owes his being. i say then that he who is said to have conferred on the church the authority in question either was emperor, or he was not. if he was not, it is plain that he had no power to give away any part of the empire. nor could he, if he was emperor, in so far as he was emperor, for such a gift would be a diminishing of his jurisdiction. further, if one emperor were able to cut off a certain portion of the jurisdiction of the empire, so could another; and since temporal jurisdiction is finite, and since all that is finite is taken away by finite diminutions, it would follow that it is possible for the first of all jurisdictions to be annihilated, which is absurd. further, since he that gives is in the position of an agent, and he to whom a thing is given in that of a patient, as the philosopher holds in the fourth book to nicomachus,[ ] therefore, that a gift may be given, we require not only the fit qualification of the giver, but also of the receiver; for the acts of the agent are completed in a patient who is qualified.[ ] but the church was altogether unqualified to receive temporal things; for there is an express command, forbidding her so to do, which matthew gives thus: "provide neither gold, nor silver, nor brass in your purses." for though we find in luke a relaxation of the command in regard to certain matters, yet i have not anywhere been able to find that the church after that prohibition had licence given her to possess gold and silver. if therefore the church was unable to receive temporal power, even granting that constantine was able to give it, yet the gift was impossible; for the receiver was disqualified. it is therefore plain that neither could the church receive in the way of possession, nor could constantine give in the way of alienation; though it is true that the emperor, as protector of the church, could allot to the church a patrimony and other things, if he did not impair his supreme lordship, the unity of which does not allow division. and the vicar of god could receive such things, not to possess them, but as a steward to dispense the fruits of them to the poor of christ, on behalf of the church, as we know the apostles did. [footnote : _eth._ iv. .--(w.)] [footnote : "_dispositio; dispositus; indisposita._"] xi.--our adversaries further say that the pope hadrian[ ] summoned charles the great to his own assistance[ ] and to that of the church, on account of the wrongs suffered from the lombards in the time of their king desiderius, and that charles received from that pope the imperial dignity, notwithstanding that michael was emperor at constantinople. and therefore they say that all the roman emperors who succeeded charles were themselves the "advocates" of the church, and ought by the church to be called to their office. from which would follow that dependence of the empire on the church which they wish to prove. [footnote : a.d. .--(w.)] [footnote : "_advocavit._"] but to overset their argument, i reply that what they say is nought; for a usurpation of right does not make right; and if it were so, it might be proved in the same way that the church is dependent on the empire; for the emperor otto restored the pope leo, and deposed benedict, leading him into exile to saxony.[ ] [footnote : otto i. ( ) deposed benedict v. and restored leo viii.] xii.--but from _reason_ they thus argue: they take the principle laid down in the tenth book of "_philosophia prima_,"[ ] saying that all things which belong to one genus are to be brought under one head, which is the standard and measure of all that come under that genus. but all men belong to one genus: therefore they are to be brought under one head, as the standard and measure of them all. but the supreme pontiff and the emperor are men; therefore if the preceding reasoning be true, they must be brought under one head. and since the pope cannot come under any other man, the result is that the emperor, together with all other men, must be brought under the pope, as the measure and rule of all; and then, what those who argue thus desire follows. [footnote : arist. _metaph._ x. .--(w.)] to overset this argument, i answer that they are right when they say that all the individuals of one genus ought to be brought under one head, as their measure; and that they are again right when they say that all men belong to one genus, and that they are also right when they argue from these truths that all men should be brought under one head, taken from the genus man, as their measure and type. but when they obtain the further conclusion concerning the pope and the emperor, they fall into a fallacy touching accidental attributes. that this thing may be understood, it must be clearly known that to be a man is one thing, and to be a pope or an emperor is another; just as to be a man is different from being a father or a ruler. a man is that which exists by its essential form, which gives it its genus and species, and by which it comes under the category of substance. but a father is that which exists by an accidental form, that is, one which stands in a certain relation which gives it a certain genus and species, and through which it comes under the category of relation. if this were not so, all things would come under the category of substance, seeing that no accidental form can exist by itself, without the support of an existing substance; and this is not so. seeing, therefore, that the pope and the emperor are what they are by virtue of certain relations: for they owe their existence to the papacy and the empire, which are both relations, one coming within the sphere of fatherhood, and the other within that of rule; it manifestly follows that both the pope and the emperor, in so far as they are pope and emperor, must come under the category of relation; and therefore that they must be brought under some head of that genus. i say then that there is one standard under which they are to be brought, as men; and another under which they come, as pope and emperor. for in so far as they are men, they have to be brought under the best man, whoever he be, who is the measure and the ideal of all mankind; under him, that is, who is most one in his kind,[ ] as may be gathered from the last book to nicomachus.[ ] when, however, two things are relative, it is evident that they must either be reciprocally brought under each other, if they are alternately superior, or if by the nature of their relation they belong to connected species; or else they must be brought under some third thing, as their common unity. but the first of these suppositions is impossible: for then both would be predicable of both, which cannot be. we cannot say that the emperor is the pope, or the pope the emperor. nor again can it be said that they are connected in species, for the idea of the pope is quite other than the idea of the emperor, in so far as they are pope and emperor. therefore they must be reduced to some single thing above them. [footnote : "_ad existentem maxime unum in genere suo._"] [footnote : _eth._ x. , .--(w.)] now it must be understood that the relative is to the relative as the relation to the relation. if, therefore, the papacy and the empire, seeing that they are relations of paramount superiority, have to be carried back to some higher point of superiority from which they, with the features which make them different,[ ] branch off, the pope and emperor, being relative to one another, must be brought back to some one unity in which the higher point of superiority, without this characteristic difference, is found. and this will be either god, to whom all things unite in looking up, or something below god, which is higher in the scale of superiority, while differing from the simple and absolute superiority of god. thus it is evident that the pope and the emperor, in so far as they are men, have to be brought under some one head; while, in so far as they are pope and emperor, they have to be brought under another head, and so far is clear, as regards the argument from reason. [footnote : "_cum differentialibus suis._"] xiii.--we have now stated and put on one side those erroneous reasonings on which they, who assert that the authority of the roman emperor depends on the pope of rome, do most chiefly rely. we have now to go back and show forth the truth in this third question, which we proposed in the beginning to examine. the truth will appear plainly enough if i start in my inquiry from the principle which i laid down, and then show that the authority of the empire springs immediately from the head of all being, who is god. this truth will be made manifest, either if it be shown that the authority of the empire does not spring from the authority of the church; for there is no argument concerning any other authority. or again, if it be shown by direct proof that the authority of the empire springs immediately from god. we prove that the authority of the church is not the cause of the authority of the empire in the following manner. nothing can be the cause of power in another thing when that other thing has all its power, while the first either does not exist, or else has no power of action.[ ] but the empire had its power while the church was either not existing at all, or else had no power of acting. therefore the church is not the cause of the power of the empire, and therefore not of its authority either, for power and authority mean the same thing. let a be the church, b the empire, c the authority or power of the empire. if c is in b while a does not exist, a cannot be the cause of c being in b, for it is impossible for an effect to exist before its cause. further, if c is in b while a does not act, it cannot be that a is the cause of c being in b; for, to produce an effect, it is necessary that the cause, especially the efficient cause of which we are speaking, should have been at work first. the major premiss of this argument is self-evident, and the minor premiss is confirmed by christ and the church. christ confirms it by his birth and his death, as we have said; the church confirms it in the words which paul spake to festus in the acts of the apostles: "i stand at cæsar's judgment-seat, where i ought to be judged," and by the words which an angel of god spake to paul a little afterwards: "fear not, paul; thou must be brought before cæsar;" and again by paul's words to the jews of italy: "but when the jews spake against it, i was constrained to appeal unto cæsar; not that i had aught to accuse my nation of," but "to deliver my soul from death." but if cæsar had not at that time had the authority to judge in temporal matters, christ would not have argued thus; nor would the angel have brought these words; nor would he, who spake of himself as "having a desire to depart and to be with christ," have made an appeal to a judge not having authority.[ ] [footnote : "_non virtuante._"] [footnote : "_incompetentem._" acts xxv. ; xxvii. ; xxviii. . phil. i. .--(w.)] and if constantine had not had the authority over the patronage of the church, those things which he allotted from the empire he could not have had the right to allot; and so the church would be using this gift against right; whereas god wills that offerings should be pure, as is commanded in leviticus: "no meat offering that ye shall bring unto the lord shall be made with leaven." and though this command appears to regard those who offer, nevertheless it also regards those who receive an offering. for it is folly to suppose that god wishes to be received that which he forbids to be offered, for in the same book there is a command to the levites: "ye shall not make yourselves abominable with any creeping thing that creepeth; neither shall ye make yourselves unclean with them, that ye shall be defiled thereby."[ ] but to say that the church so misuses the patrimony assigned to her is very unseemly; therefore the premiss from which this conclusion followed is false. [footnote : levit. ii. ; xi. .--(w.)] xiv.--again, if the church had power to bestow authority on the roman prince, she would have it either from god, or from herself, or from some emperor, or from the universal consent of mankind, or at least of the majority of mankind. there is no other crevice by which this power could flow down to the church. but she has it not from any of these sources; therefore she has it not at all. it is manifest that she has it from none of these sources; for if she had received it from god, she would have received it either by the divine or by the natural law: because what is received from nature is received from god; though the converse of this is not true. but this power is not received by the natural law; for nature lays down no law, save for the effects of nature, for god cannot fail in power, where he brings anything into being without the aid of secondary agents. since therefore the church is not an effect of nature, but of god who said: "upon this rock i will build my church," and elsewhere: "i have finished the work which thou gavest me to do," it is manifest that nature did not give the church this law. nor was this power bestowed by the divine law; for the whole of the divine law is contained in the bosom of the old or of the new testament, and i cannot find therein that any thought or care for worldly matters was commanded, either to the early or to the latter priesthood. nay, i find rather such care taken away from the priests of the old testament by the express command of god to moses,[ ] and from the priests of the new testament by the express command of christ to his disciples.[ ] but it could not be that this care was taken away from them, if the authority of the temporal power flowed from the priesthood; for at least in giving the authority there would be an anxious watchfulness of forethought, and afterwards continued precaution, lest he to whom authority had been given should leave the straight way. [footnote : numbers xviii. . cf. _purg._ xvi. .--(w.)] [footnote : matt. x. .--(w.)] then it is quite plain that the church did not receive this power from herself; for nothing can give what it has not. therefore all that does anything, must be such in its doing, as that which it intends to do, as is stated in the book "of simple being."[ ] but it is plain that if the church gave to herself this power, she had it not before she gave it. thus she would have given what she had not, which is impossible. [footnote : arist. _metaph._ ix. .--(w.)] but it is sufficiently manifest from what we have previously made evident that the church has received not this power from any emperor. and further, that she had it not from the consent of all, or even of the greater part of mankind, who can doubt? seeing that not only all the inhabitants of asia and africa, but even the greater number of europeans, hold the thought in abhorrence. it is mere weariness to adduce proofs in matters which are so plain. xv.--again, that which is contrary to the nature of a thing cannot be counted as one of its essential powers; for the essential powers of each individual follow on its nature, in order to gain its end. but the power to grant authority in that which is the realm of our mortal state is contrary to the nature of the church.[ ] therefore it is not in the number of its essential powers. for the proof of the minor premiss we must know that the nature of the church means the form [or essence][ ] of the church. for although men use the word nature not only of the form of a thing, but also of its matter, nevertheless, it is of the form that they use it more properly, as is proved in the book "of natural learning."[ ] but the [essence or] form of the church is nothing else than the life of christ, as it is contained both in his sayings and in his deeds. for his life was the example and ideal of the militant church, especially of its pastors, and above all of its chief pastor, to whom it belongs to feed the sheep and the lambs of christ. and therefore when christ left his life unto men for an example he said in john's gospel: "i have given you an example that ye should do as i have done to you." and he said unto peter specially, after that he had committed unto him the office of shepherd, the words which john also reports: "peter, follow me." but christ denied before pilate that his rule was of this sort, saying: "my kingdom is not of this world: if my kingdom were of this world, then would my servants fight, that i should not be delivered to the jews; but now is my kingdom not from hence."[ ] [footnote : "_virtus auctorizandi regnum nostræ mortalitatis est contra naturam ecclesiæ._"] [footnote : "_forma._"] [footnote : arist. _phys. ausc._ ii. .--(w.)] [footnote : john xiii. ; xxi. ; xviii. .--(w.)] but this saying must not be understood to mean that christ, who is god, is not the lord of this kingdom, for the psalmist says: "the sea is his, and he made it, and his hands formed the dry land."[ ] we must understand it to mean that, as _the pattern of the church_, he had not the care of this kingdom. it is as if a golden seal were to speak of itself, and say: "i am not the standard for such and such a class of things;" for in so far as it is gold, this saying is untrue, seeing that gold is the standard of all metals; but it is true in so far as it is a sign capable of being received by impression. [footnote : ps. xcv. .--(w.)] it belongs, then, to the very form of the church always to speak the same, always to think the same; and to do the opposite of this is evidently contrary to its essential form--that is to say, to its nature. and from this it may be collected that the power of bestowing authority on this kingdom is contrary to the nature of the church; for contrariety which is in thought or word follows from contrariety which is in the thing thought and the thing said; just as truth and falsehood in speech come from the being or the not-being of the thing, as we learn from the doctrine of the _categories_. it has then become manifest enough by means of the preceding arguments, by which the contention of our opponents has been shown to lead to an absurd result, that the authority of the empire is not in any way dependent on the authority of the church. xvi.--although it has been proved in the preceding chapter that the authority of the empire has not its cause in the authority of the supreme pontiff; for we have shown that this argument led to absurd results; yet it has not been entirely shown that the authority of the empire depends directly upon god, except as a result from our argument. for it is a consequence that, if the authority comes not from the vicar of god, it must come from god himself. and therefore, for the complete determination of the question proposed, we have to prove directly that the emperor or monarch of the world stands in an immediate relation to the king of the universe, who is god. for the better comprehending of this, it must be recognised that man alone, of all created things, holds a position midway between things corruptible and things incorruptible; and therefore[ ] philosophers rightly liken him to a dividing line between two hemispheres. for man consists of two essential parts, namely, the soul and the body. if he be considered in relation to his body only, he is corruptible; but if he be considered in relation to his soul only, he is incorruptible. and therefore the philosopher spoke well concerning the incorruptible soul when he said in the second book "of the soul:" "it is this alone which may be separated, as being eternal, from the corruptible."[ ] [footnote : in the _de causis_ (_v._ above, i. ), propos. : "intelligentia comprehendit generata et naturam, et horizontem naturæ, scilicet animam; nam ipsa est supra naturam."--(w.)] [footnote : arist. _de anim._ ii. .--(w.)] if, therefore, man holds this position midway between the corruptible and the incorruptible, since every middle nature partakes of both extremes, man must share something of each nature. and since every nature is ordained to gain some final end, it follows that for man there is a double end. for as he alone of all beings participates both in the corruptible and the incorruptible, so he alone of all beings is ordained to gain two ends, whereby one is his end in so far as he is corruptible, and the other in so far as he is incorruptible. two ends, therefore, have been laid down by the ineffable providence of god for man to aim at: the blessedness of this life, which consists in the exercise of his natural powers, and which is prefigured in[ ] the earthly paradise; and next, the blessedness of the life eternal, which consists in the fruition of the sight of god's countenance, and to which man by his own natural powers cannot rise, if he be not aided by the divine light; and this blessedness is understood by the heavenly paradise. [footnote : see _purg._ xxviii.: and mr. longfellow's note ad loc.] but to these different kinds of blessedness, as to different conclusions, we must come by different means. for at the first we may arrive by the lessons of philosophy, if only we will follow them, by acting in accordance with the moral and intellectual virtues. but at the second we can only arrive by spiritual lessons, transcending human reason, so that we follow them in accordance with the theological virtues, faith, hope, and charity. the truth of the first of these conclusions and of these means is made manifest by human reason, which by the philosophers has been all laid open to us. the other conclusions and means are made manifest by the holy spirit, who by the mouth of the prophets and holy writers, and by jesus christ, the co-eternal son of god, and his disciples, has revealed to us supernatural truth of which we have great need. nevertheless human passion would cast them all behind its back, if it were not that men, going astray like the beasts that perish,[ ] were restrained in their course by bit and bridle, like horses and mules. [footnote : "_sua bestialitate vagantes._" _v._ ps. xxxii. .] therefore man had need of two guides for his life, as he had a twofold end in life; whereof one is the supreme pontiff, to lead mankind to eternal life, according to the things revealed to us; and the other is the emperor, to guide mankind to happiness in this world, in accordance with the teaching of philosophy. and since none, or but a few only, and even they with sore difficulty, could arrive at this harbour of happiness, unless the waves and blandishments of human desires were set at rest, and the human race were free to live in peace and quiet, this therefore is the mark at which he who is to care for the world, and whom we call the roman prince, must most chiefly aim at: i mean, that in this little plot of earth[ ] belonging to mortal men, life may pass in freedom and with peace. and since the order of this world follows the order of the heavens, as they run their course, it is necessary, to the end that the learning which brings liberty and peace may be duly applied by this guardian of the world in fitting season and place, that this power should be dispensed by him who is ever present to behold the whole order of the heavens. and this is he who alone has preordained this, that by it in his providence he might bind all things together, each in their own order. [footnote : cf. _parad._ xxii. . "_l'ajuola che ci fa tanto feroci._"] but if this is so, god alone elects, god alone confirms: for there is none higher than god. and hence there is the further conclusion, that neither those who now are, nor any others who may, in whatsoever way, have been called "electors," ought to have that name; rather they are to be held as declarers and announcers of the providence of god. and, therefore, it is that they to whom is granted the privilege of announcing god's will sometimes fall into disagreement; because that, all of them or some of them have been blinded by their evil desires, and have not discerned the face of god's appointment.[ ] [footnote : _v._ hallam, _middle ages_, c. v. bryce, _roman empire_, c. xiv. witte, _præf._ p. xxxiv. xlv.] it is therefore clear that the authority of temporal monarchy comes down, with no intermediate will, from the fountain of universal authority; and this fountain, one in its unity, flows through many channels out of the abundance of the goodness of god. and now, methinks, i have reached the goal which i set before me. i have unravelled the truth of the questions which i asked: whether the office of monarchy was necessary to the welfare of the world; whether it was by right that the roman people assumed to themselves the office of monarchy; and, further, that last question, whether the authority of the monarch springs immediately from god, or from some other. yet the truth of this latter question must not be received so narrowly as to deny that in certain matters the roman prince is subject to the roman pontiff. for that happiness, which is subject to mortality, in a sense is ordered with a view to the happiness which shall not taste of death. let, therefore, cæsar be reverent to peter, as the first-born son should be reverent to his father, that he may be illuminated with the light of his father's grace, and so may be stronger to lighten the world over which he has been placed by him alone, who is the ruler of all things spiritual as well as temporal. the end. contents of de monarchia. book i. whether a temporal monarchy is necessary for the well-being of the world? chap. page i.--introduction ii.--what is the end of the civil order of mankind? iii.--it is to cause the whole power of the human intellect to act in speculation and operation iv.--to attain this end, mankind needs universal peace v.--when several means are ordained to gain an end, one of them must be supreme over the others vi.--the order which is found in the parts of mankind ought to be found in mankind as a whole vii.--kingdoms and nations ought to stand in the same relation to the monarch as mankind to god viii.--men were made in the image of god; but god is one _ib._ ix.--men are the children of heaven, and they ought to imitate the footprints of heaven x.--there is need of a supreme judge for the decision of all quarrels xi.--the world is best ordered when justice is strongest therein xii.--men are at their best in freedom xiii.--he who is best qualified to rule can best order others xiv.--when it is possible, it is better to gain an end by one agent than by many xv.--that which is most one is everywhere best xvi.--christ willed to be born in the fulness of time, when augustus was monarch book ii. whether the roman people assumed to itself by right the dignity of empire? chap. page i.--introduction ii.--that which god wills in human society is to be held as right iii.--it was fitting for the romans, as being the noblest nation, to be preferred before all others iv.--the roman empire was helped by miracles, and therefore was willed by god v.--the romans, in bringing the world into subjection, aimed at the good of the state, and therefore at the end of right vi.--all men, who aim at right, walk according to right vii.--the romans were ordained for empire by nature viii.--the judgment of god showed that empire fell to the lot of the romans ix.--the romans prevailed when all nations were striving for empire x.--what is acquired by single combat is acquired as of right xi.--the single combats of rome xii.--christ, by being born, proves to us that the authority of the roman empire was just xiii.--christ, by dying, confirmed the jurisdiction of the roman empire over all mankind book iii. whether the authority of the monarch comes directly from god, or from some vicar of god? chap. page i.--introduction ii.--god wills not that which is repugnant to the intention of nature iii.--of the three classes of our opponents, and of the too great authority which many ascribe to tradition iv.--the argument drawn by our opponents from the sun and the moon v.--the argument drawn from the precedence of levi over judah vi.--the argument drawn from the crowning and deposition of saul by samuel vii.--the argument drawn from the oblation of the magi viii.--the argument drawn from the power of the keys given to peter ix.--the argument drawn from the two swords x.--the argument drawn from the donation of constantine xi.--the argument drawn from the summoning of charles the great by pope hadrian xii.--the argument drawn from reason xiii.--the authority of the church is not the cause of the authority of the empire xiv.--the church has power to bestow such authority neither from god, nor from itself, nor from any emperor xv.--the power of giving authority to the empire is against the nature of the church xvi.--the authority of the empire comes directly from god * * * * * charles dickens and evans, crystal palace press. bedford street, strand, london, w.c. _may_, . _macmillan & co.'s catalogue of works in the departments of history, biography, travels, critical and literary essays, politics, political and social economy, law, etc.; 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(for other works by the same author, see educational and philosophical catalogues.):-- the theory of political economy. second edition, revised, with new preface and appendices. vo. _s._ _d._ primer of political economy. mo. _s._ methods of social reform, and other papers. demy vo. _s._ _d._ investigations in currency and finance. edited, with an introduction, by h.s. foxwell, m.a., fellow and lecturer of st. john's college, cambridge, and professor of political economy at university college, london. illustrated by diagrams. demy vo. _s._ laveleye.--primitive property. by emile de laveleye. translated by g.r.l. marriott, ll.b., with an introduction by t.e. cliffe leslie, ll.b. vo. _s._ lightwood.--the nature of positive law. by john m. lightwood, m.a., of lincoln's inn, barrister-at-law, fellow of trinity hall, cambridge. demy vo. _s._ _d._ lubbock.--addresses, political and educational. by sir john lubbock, bart., m.p., &c., &c. vo. _s._ _d._ macdonell.--the land question, with special reference to england and scotland. by john macdonell, barrister-at-law. vo. _s._ _d._ maitland.--pleas of the crown for the county of gloucester, before the abbot of reading and his fellow justices itinerant, in the fifth year of the reign of king henry the third and the year of grace, . edited by f.w. maitland. vo. _s._ _d._ marshall.--the economics of industry. by a. marshall, m.a., professor of political economy in the university of cambridge, late principal of university college bristol, and mary paley marshall, late lecturer at newnham hall, cambridge. extra fcap. vo. _s._ _d._ monahan.--the method of law: an essay on the statement and arrangement of the legal standard of conduct. by j.h. monahan, q.c. crown vo. _s._ paterson.--works by james paterson, m.a., barrister-at-law, sometime commissioner for english and irish fisheries, &c. the liberty of the subject and the laws of england relating to the security of the person. commentaries on. cheaper issue. crown vo. _s._ the liberty of the press, of speech, and of public worship. being commentaries on the liberty of the subject and the laws of england. crown vo. _s._ phear.--international trade, and the relation between exports and imports. a paper read before the exmouth liberal association, on july , . by sir john b. phear. crown vo. _s._ _d._ phillimore.--private law among the romans, from the pandects. by john george phillimore, q.c. vo. _s._ pollock (f.).--essays in jurisprudence and ethics. by frederick pollock, m.a., ll.d., corpus christi professor of jurisprudence in the university of oxford; late fellow of trinity college, camb. vo. _s._ _d._ practical politics.--issued by the national liberal federation. complete in one volume. vo. _s._ or:-- i. the tenant farmer: land laws and landlords. by james howard. vo. _s._ ii. foreign policy. by right hon. m.e. grant duff, m.p. vo. _s._ iii. freedom of land. by g. shaw lefevre, m.p. vo. _s._ _d._ iv. british colonial policy. by sir david wedderburn, bart., m.p. vo. _s._ richey.--the irish land laws. by alexander g. richey, q.c., ll.d., deputy regius professor of feudal and english law in the university of dublin. crown vo. _s._ _d._ sidgwick.--works by henry sidgwick, m.a., ll.d., knightbridge professor of moral philosophy in the university of cambridge, &c.: the principles of political economy. demy vo. _s._ the methods of ethics. third edition, revised and enlarged. demy vo. _s._ a supplement to the second edition. containing all the important additions and alterations in the third edition. demy vo. _s._ statesman's year-book, the: a statistical and historical annual of the states of the civilized world, for the year . twenty-second annual publication. revised after official returns. edited by j. scott keltie. crown vo. _s._ _d._ stephen (c.e.)--the service of the poor: being an inquiry into the reasons for and against the establishment of religious sisterhoods for charitable purposes. by caroline emilia stephen. crown vo. _s._ _d._ stephen.--works by sir james fitzjames stephen, k.c.s.i., d.c.l. a judge of the high court of justice, queen's bench division. a digest of the law of evidence. fourth edition, with new preface. crown vo. _s._ a history of the criminal law of england. three vols. demy vo. _s._ a digest of the criminal law. 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with rhythmical scheme and commentary. by dr. j.h. schmidt. translated from the german by j.w. white, d.d. vo. _s._ _d._ taylor.--works by the rev. isaac taylor, m.a.:-- etruscan researches. with woodcuts. vo. _s._ words and places; or, etymological illustrations of history, ethnology and geography. by the rev. isaac taylor. third edition, revised and compressed. with maps. globe vo. _s._ greeks and goths: a study on the runes. vo. _s._ trench.--works by r. chenevix trench, d.d. (for other works by the same author, _see_ theological catalogue.) synonyms of the new testament. ninth edition, enlarged. vo. cloth. _s._ on the study of words. lectures addressed (originally) to the pupils at the diocesan training school, winchester. eighteenth edition, enlarged. fcap. vo. _s._ english past and present. eleventh edition, revised and improved. fcap. vo. _s._ a select glossary of english words used formerly in senses different from their present. fifth edition, enlarged. fcap. vo. _s._ vincent and dickson.--a handbook to modern greek. by edgar vincent, m.a., and t.g. dickson. second edition revised and enlarged. with an appendix on the relation of modern greek to classical greek. by professor r.c. jebb. crown vo. _s._ whitney.--a compendious german grammar. by w.d. whitney, professor of sanskrit and instructor in modern languages in yale college. crown vo. _s._ whitney and edgren.--a compendious german and english dictionary, with notation of correspondences and brief etymologies. by professor w.d. whitney, assisted by a.h. edgren. crown vo. _s._ _d._ the german-english part may be had separately. price _s._ wright (aldis).--the bible word-book: a glossary of archaic words and phrases in the authorised version of the bible and the book of common prayer. by w. aldis wright, m.a., fellow and bursar of trinity college, cambridge. second edition, revised and enlarged. crown vo. _s._ _d._ zechariah.--the hebrew student's commentary on hebrew and lxx. with excursus on several grammatical subjects. by w.h. lowe, m.a., hebrew lecturer at christ's college, cambridge. demy vo. _s._ _d._ * * * * * the golden treasury series. uniformly printed in mo., with vignette titles by j.e. millais, t. woolner, w. holman hunt, sir noel paton, arthur hughes, &c. engraved on steel by jeens. bound in extra cloth, _s._ _d._ each volume. "messrs. macmillan have, in their golden treasury series, especially provided editions of standard works, volumes of selected poetry, and original compositions, which entitle this series to be called classical. nothing can be better than the literary execution, nothing more elegant than the material workmanship."--british quarterly review. the golden treasury of the best songs and lyrical poems in the english language. selected and arranged, with notes, by francis turner palgrave. the children's garland from the best poets. selected and arranged by coventry patmore. the book of praise. from the best english hymn writers. selected and arranged by the right hon. the earl of selborne. _a new and enlarged edition._ the fairy book; the best popular fairy stories. selected and rendered anew by the author of "john halifax, gentleman." 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"a well-selected volume of sacred poetry."--spectator. a book of golden deeds of all times and all countries. gathered and narrated anew. by the author of "the heir of redclyffe." "... to the young, for whom it is especially intended, as a most interesting collection of thrilling tales well told; and to their elders as a useful handbook of reference, and a pleasant one to take up when their wish is to while away a weary half-hour. we have seen no prettier gift-book for a long time."--athenÆum. the adventures of robinson crusoe. edited, from the original edition, by j.w. clark, m.a., fellow of trinity college, cambridge. the republic of plato, translated into english, with notes by j. ll. davies, m.a., and d.j. vaughan, m.a. "a dainty and cheap little edition."--examiner. the song book. words and tunes from the best poets and musicians. selected and arranged by john hullah, late professor of vocal music in king's college, london. "a choice collection of the sterling songs of england, scotland, and ireland, with the music of each prefixed to the words. how much true wholesome pleasure such a book can diffuse, and will diffuse, we trust, through many thousand families."--examiner. la lyre franÇaise. selected and arranged, with notes, by gustave masson, french master in harrow school. "we doubt whether even in france itself so interesting and complete a repertory of the best french lyrics could be found."--notes and queries. tom brown's school days. by an old boy. "a perfect gem of a book. the best and most healthy book about boys for boys that ever was written."--illustrated times. a book of worthies. gathered from the old histories and written anew by the author of "the heir of redclyffe." "an admirable addition to an admirable series."--westminster review. guesses at truth. by two brothers. _new edition._ the cavalier and his lady. selections from the works of the first duke and duchess of newcastle. with an introductory essay by edward jenkins, author of "ginx's baby," &c. "a charming little volume."--standard. scotch song. a selection of the choicest lyrics of scotland. compiled and arranged, with brief notes, by mary carlyle aitkin. "the book is one that should find a place in every library, we had almost said in every pocket."--spectator. deutsche lyrik: the golden treasury of the best german lyrical poems. selected and arranged, with notes and literary introduction, by dr. buchheim. "a book which all lovers of german poetry will welcome."--westminster review. herrick: selections from the lyrical poems. arranged, with notes, by f.t. palgrave. "for the first time the sweetest of english pastoral poets is placed within the range of the great world of readers."--academy. poems of places. edited by h.w. longfellow. england and wales. two vols. "a very happy idea, thoroughly worked out by an editor who possesses every qualification for the task."--spectator. matthew arnold's selected poems. "a volume which is a thing of beauty in itself."--pall mall gazette. the story of the christians and moors in spain. by c.m. yonge, author of the "heir of redclyffe." with vignette by holman hunt. charles lamb's tales from shakespeare. edited by the rev. a. ainger, m.a., reader at the temple. poems of wordsworth. chosen and edited, with preface by matthew arnold. (also a large paper edition. crown vo. _s._) "a volume, every page of which is weighted with the golden fruit of poetry."--pall mall gazette. shakespeare's sonnets. edited by f.t. palgrave. poems from shelley. selected and arranged by stopford a. brooke, m.a. (also a large paper edition. crown vo. _s._ _d._) "full of power and true appreciation of shelley."--spectator. essays of joseph addison. chosen and edited by john richard green, m.a., ll.d. "this is a most welcome addition to a most excellent series."--examiner. poetry of byron. chosen and arranged by matthew arnold. (also a large paper edition, crown vo.) _s._ "it is written in mr. arnold's neatest vein, and in mr. arnold's most pellucid manner."--athenÆum. selections from the writings of walter savage landor.--arranged and edited by professor sidney colvin. sir thomas browne's religio medici; letter to a friend, &c., and christian morals. edited by w.a. greenhill, m.d. "dr. greenhill's annotations display care and research to a degree rare among english editors. the bibliographical details furnished leave nothing to be desired."--athenÆum. the speeches and table-talk of the prophet mohammad.--chosen and translated, with an introduction and notes, by stanley lane-poole. selections from cowper's poems.--with an introduction by mrs. oliphant. letters of william cowper.--edited, with introduction. by the rev. w. benham, b.d., editor of the "globe edition" of cowper's poetical works. the poetical works of john keats.--reprinted from the original editions, with notes. by francis turner palgrave. lyrical poems. by alfred, lord tennyson. selected and annotated. by francis turner palgrave. [asterism symbol] _other volumes to follow._ * * * * * _now publishing, in crown vo. price s. d. each._ _the english citizen._ a series of short books on his rights and responsibilities. edited by henry craik, m.a. (oxon.); ll.d. (glasgow). this series is intended to meet the demand for accessible information on the ordinary conditions, and the current terms, of our political life. ignorance of these not only takes from the study of history the interest which comes from a contact with practical politics, but, still worse, it unfits men for their place as intelligent citizens. the series will deal with the details of the machinery whereby our constitution works, and the broad lines upon which it has been constructed. _the following volumes are ready:--_ central government. by h.d. traill, d.c.l., late fellow of st. john's college, oxford. the electorate and the legislature. by spencer walpole, author of "the history of england from ." the national budget; the national debt; taxes and rates. by a.j. wilson. the poor law. by rev. t.w. fowle, m.a. the state and its relation to trade. by sir t.h. farrer, bart. the state in relation to labour. by w. stanley jevons, ll.d., f.r.s. the state and the church. by the hon. a. arthur elliott, m.p. foreign relations. by spencer walpole, author of "the history of england from ." local government. by m.d. chalmers, m.a. the state in its relation to education. by henry craik, m.a., ll.d. the land laws. by frederick pollock, m.a., late fellow of trinity college, cambridge, corpus christi professor of jurisprudence in the university of oxford. colonies and dependencies.--i. india. by j.s. cotton, m.a., late fellow of queen's college, oxford. ii. the colonies. by e.j. payne, m.a., fellow of university college, oxford. justice and police. by f.w. maitland. _in preparation:--_ the penal system. by sir edmund du cane, k.c.b. the national defences. by lieut.-colonel maurice, r.a. * * * * * london: richard clay and sons, printers. monks, popes, and their political intrigues by john alberger "like lambs have we crept into power; like wolves have we used it; like dogs have we been driven out; like eagles shall we renew our youth."--st. francis borgia. "eternal vigilance is the price of liberty."--washington. in one volume baltimore . preface. the object of the present work is to show the political nature of the catholic church, and its treasonable designs with regard to the american republic. in the course of the following pages the author has endeavored to show that the catholic church is intrinsically a gigantic conspiracy against the liberties of the world; ingenious in its construction, opulent in its resources, extensive in its ramifications, and formidable in its character. in proof of this assertion he submits to the consideration of the reader a mass of irrefragable authority, and indisputable historical incidents. the authorities on which he chiefly relies are papal bulls, briefs, and encyclical letters; the canons of catholic councils; catholic periodicals under the supervision of priests, such as the _civita cattolica, bronsoris review, the boston pilot, the toilet, the rambler, the shepherd of the valley, the paris univers_; also the works of dens, the author of the catholic system of divinity; of llorente, the secretary of the spanish inquisition; of bellarmine, the celebrated catholic controversialist; of ferraris, the author of the catholic ecclesiastical dictionary; of fra paola, the catholic ecclesiastical historian; of st. thomas aquinas, entitled by the church "_the angelic doctor" "the angel of the school," "the fifth doctor_" of st. bernard, called "_the honeyed teacher_" and his works "_streams from paradise_;" of labbeus, of st. liquori, of moscovius, and of a host of other oracles of catholicism. by means of these authorities the veil of piety which conceals and decorates the papal church is partly drawn aside, and her monarchial character, political organization, despotic nature, ambitious designs and treasonable principles, are distinctly presented to view. the author pretends to no originality. the diction and logic are, of course his own, but the facts and principles upon which he bases his charges are the avowals of the church, the records of history, and the official affirmations of civilized nations. the infidels, as faithful sentinels on the watch tower of liberty, have often uttered the cry of warning; the protestant pulpit has at intervals startled from its drowsy slumbers, and echoed the same alarm; but neither the one nor the other has been able to arouse the people from their profound slumber. gavazzi has lectured, hogan, colton, hopkins have written, but so profound and death-like is the torpidity which holds the senses of americans in indifference, that the warnings of writers and speakers have died away with the tones in which they were uttered. but americans must awake--they will awake--if not soon enough to avert the impending doom overhanging their country and their posterity, yet soon enough! alas, too soon! to weep in despair over their present apathy and indifference, amid the ruins of their republic. john alberger. baltimore, md. july th, . monks, popes, and their political intrigues chapter i. catholicism a political organization guizot, speaking of the christian church, says: "i say the christian church, and not christianity, between which a broad distinction is to be made." (gen. hist. civilization, lecture , p. .) the catholic church has little except the name of christianity, while it is secretly a political organization to establish "the supremacy of the pope over all persons and things," which, according to bellarmine's view, "is the main substance of christianity." if we have recourse to the lexicon to ascertain the signification of the term religion, we may arrive at a definite conclusion respecting its classical use: but if we are guided in our inquiry by the popular acceptation, we will discover that its definitions are as numerous as the inhabitants of the globe, and as various as their features. we have natural religion, pagan religion, hindoo religion, jewish religion, christian religion, and mahometan religion. among christian sects some believe religion to consist in individual feeling, some in baptism, some in reverence for the clergy, some in problematical creeds and dogmas, some in observances of church ordinations, some in rhapsodies, and some in a species of sentimentalism. the boston pilot says: "there can be no religion without an inquisition;" but thomas paine, with nobler philosophy, thinks "religious duties consist in doing justice, loving mercy, and endeavoring to make our fellow creatures happy." the diversity and discordance which have arisen respecting the import of this term, originate from its compound nature adapting it to designate one idea, or a variety of ideas. but while we rarely encounter two persons exactly concurring in an opinion of what is religion, we find all readily admitting that it essentially consists in just principles and correct conduct. principles are the fountains of thought and feeling; to be just, they must be formed in accordance with truth and reason. conduct to be correct must be in harmony with the rights of others, and the principles and designs of the human organism. according to this definition, religion may exist with or without ceremonial observances. all forms are merely external appendages, unessential to the nature of religion, and as distinct from it as the casket is from the gem, or the body from the vital principle. if this definition should be construed into a definition of mere morality, it cannot invalidate any objection founded on it to catholicism, as every such objection will then become demonstrative proof that the catholic church is not only destitute of religion, but even of morality. the signification of a corporate organization is well understood, but how shall we ascertain its principles and designs? not from the tenor of its professions; but from the nature of its constitution, the tendency of its measures, the sanctions which it has given, the recognitions which it has made in its official capacity; and above all, from the avowals it has uttered, under such a prosperous condition of affairs as made disguise unnecessary. in courting popular favor, an organization concocted to subvert the rights and interests of the people, would, from motives of policy, be prompted to conceal its nature and design; but when wealth and power had sufficiently fortified its security to enable it to scorn and defy public opinion, it would then as naturally unfold its latent principles, as a summer's sun would hatch an innocently looking cluster of eggs into a nest of poisonous asps. if among the members of an organization, which professes to be of an exclusively religious character, men should be found who are unquestionably religious or moral, this fact would no more prove it to be a religious or moral institution, than would the membership of the same persons to a railroad or municipal corporation prove such a corporation to be a religious and not a secular organization. but if at periods in its history, its most irreproachable and credible members should denounce it as a political power, and labor to transform it into a purely religious institution, and for such a "damnable heresy" were burnt alive, and their ashes thrown into a river to prevent the people from worshipping them, what would be the legitimate inference from such facts? would it not be that it claimed to be a political organization? that it was high treason in its estimation to question its right to this character? and that to utter such a question in its domains was to provoke its heaviest penalty? did not all these facts occur in home respecting arnold of brecia? and in catholic history have not similar facts, from his time down to the reformation, been incarnadined in human blood too deeply for audacity to deny or time to obliterate? but what is a religious organization? if religion is moral goodness, a religious organization must be an embodiment of its principles, a practical exemplification of its maxims, and a scheme in measures and policy adapted to extend the observance of its obligations. such an organization must be consistent with itself, and in harmony with the natural principles of man. in integrity it must be invulnerable; in adherence to right inflexible; in hostility to wrong, uncompromising. it must be the champion of the rights of human nature; the friend of freedom, equality and liberality; the enemy of bigotry, intolerance, and despotism. its claims must be commended by truth; its measures sanctioned by reason and conscience; its triumphs won by argument and persuasion. its hands must be unstained with blood. it must never perpetrate a fraud, nor descend to intrigue, nor dissemble, nor cherish malice, nor slander an opponent, nor traffic for self-aggrandizement, nor prostitute its principles to political objects, nor accommodate itself to the vices of any age or country. amid general corruption it must always be pure, amid bigotry it must always be tolerant, amid oppression it must always advocate the cause of justice, and amid ignorance the cause of education. such are some of the essential characteristics of a religious or moral organization. any departure from them in an institution, proves its secularism. no church in which they form not a distinguishing feature, has any claims to be a religious or moral corporation. now when we see an institution, professing to be of an exclusively religious character, organizing its departments upon a financial basis; enjoining on its members the vow of unconditional obedience, in order to subject them to its despotic domination; the vow of absolute poverty, in order to enable them more successfully to administer to the increase of its wealth; the vow of celibacy, in order to prevent them from having legitimate heirs, to divert the ecclesiastical possessions from the church; when we see it establishing schools to select and mould to its designs the most promising among youth, instituting universities to enrich itself by the sale of their honors, absolving sins for money, selling indulgences for the commission of premeditated crime, erecting missionary stations among pagans for the purpose of traffic and emolument, manufacturing evidence, committing forgeries, and corrupting and interpolating the text of ancient authors, denouncing reason, crushing liberty, circumscribing knowledge, anathematizing those who disbelieve in its arbitrary dogmas, torturing those who question its supreme authority, burning those who oppose its pretensions; having a national cabinet, ministerial offices, accredited ambassadors, maintaining a standing army, a naval force, religious military orders to extend and enlarge its domains, carrying a national banner, wearing a political crown, declaring war, concluding national covenants, coining money, and exercising all the rights of an acknowledged independent monarchy, it is more than credulity can admit, to concede that such an organization is not a corrupt, cruel, despotic, and political institution. that such is the constitution of the catholic church is a fact, attested by the existing papal government, and by the spirit and acts of its past history; and that it is now what in the past it has been, is established by the unanimous testimony of its acknowledged expounders. simplicity has been amused by modern catholic apologists, who assert that the papal monarch has resigned his former pretensions to universal temporal sovereignty, and that he now merley maintains his right to supreme spiritual authority. but this subterfuge can mislead only a superficial, ignorant mind. as spiritual sovereignty is absolute dominion over reason and conscience, it unavoidably involves temporal sovereignty; nay, temporal sovereignty of the most despotic and unlimited authority reason and conscience lay at the foundation of all political power; and if catholicism is adapted to govern them, it transcends in despotism the most ingeniously contrived monarchy that tyranny has ever elaborated, or by which the faculties of man have ever been enthralled. spain, russia, or any other government is less tyrannical in its constitution than is the catholic church. he who would establish the contrary opinion, must first obliterate the papal bulls, the decrees of the councils, and the authorities of the catholic church; he must go to rome and convert the present pope and his college of cardinals; nay, he must attend the coming ecumenical council and induce it to annul the canons of all the previous councils, and to declare that all the preceding popes were "damnable heretics," and have them accordingly excommunicated. these preliminary steps must be taken before he can avoid absurdity or the imputation of wilful prevarication. but the papal see has never resigned its preposterous claim to universal temporal sovereignty. the bulls and canons asserting this pretension have never been annulled. they still form the canon law of the church. no official declaration has announced an abrogation of them. the pope's reiterated and blasphemous claim to infallibility precludes the possibility of such a sensible act. infallibility is inconsistent with change of principle or error of conduct, and when the church of rome arrogates such a divine attribute, she avers that her past history indicates her present character and future intentions. in this opinion all her authorities concur. bishop kendrick says: "all doctrine of definitions already made by general councils and former pontiffs _are marks which no man can remove_." (primacy, p. ). brownson says: "what the church has done, what she has expressly or tacitly approved in the past, is exactly what she will do, expressly or tacitly approve, in the future, if the same circumstances occur." (review, jan. ). again: "the catholic dogma, in regard to every subject whatever, has always been the same from the beginning, remains always unchangeably the same, and will always continue in every part of the world immutable." (review, jan., ). again: "catholicity, as long as it continues catholicity, cannot be carried to excess. it will be all or nothing." (review, jan., ). the editors of the _civilita cattolica_, the pope's organ at rome, say: "from the darkness of the catacombs she (the catholic church) dictated laws to the subjects of emperors, abrogating decrees, whether plebeian, senatorial or imperial, when in conflict with catholic ordinances. to-day, as in all time, the church commands the spiritual part of man; and, in ruling over the spirit, she rules the body, rules over riches, over science, over affections, over interests, over associations--rules, in fine, over monarchs and their ministers." the dublin tablet, feb. , , the accredited organ of romanism in the british realm, says: "the pope is at this moment interfering in piedmont, defending one class of citizens against the government; and in the house of representatives of the united states, a christian, mr. chandler, in his speech, jan., ), denies the right! governments may and do prohibit good works, and the pope interferes. they also commit evil, and the pope interferes; and good christians (catholics) _prefer the pope's authority to that of the state_. the godless (non-catholic ) colleges of ireland, the troubles of piedmont, all bear witness against the unchristian opinion." the paris _univers_ says: "a heretic examined and convicted by the church, used to be delivered over to the secular authority to be punished with death. nothing has appeared to us more necessary. more than , persons perished in consequence of the heresy of wickliffe, and a still greater number for that of john huss; and it would be impossible to count the bloodshed caused by luther, _and it is not yet over_." de pratt, formerly an abbe of the pope, says: "the pope is chief of , , of followers. catholicism cannot have less than , ministers. the pope commands more subjects than any sovereign--more than many sovereigns together. these have subjects only on their own territory, _the pope commands subjects on the territory of all sovereigns_" (flag of the union.) but the testimony is voluminous, and i forbear further quotations on this point. to understand, then, the past history of the catholic church, is of paramount importance to every freeman. what is it? it is the development of her nature. it is the unfolding of her treason to the world. it is uncovering the cruelty and despotism concealed under her religious profession. it is the revelation of her animosity to the rights of men, to the progress of society, and to the exercise of reason and conscience. it shows her to be a secret political organization, skilfully constructed for the acquisition of supreme political power, and hypocritically disguised under the semblance of religion. if in her infancy she did not always avow her ambitious designs, she always secretly cherished them; and, if in her adversity she has moderated her tone, she has not her natural thirst for secular power. as she grew in strength, she grew in arrogance and despotism; and when, by a system of artful intrigues and bold usurpations, she had created a colossal power that overawed the united monarchies of christendom, she unsheathed the double sword, the symbol of ecclesiastical and political power, and asserted her right, as vicar of christ, to rule with or in preference to princes, invaded the rights and liberties of independent nations, crowned and uncrowned monarchs, destroyed freedom everywhere, anathematized, shackled, tortured and burnt all who opposed her monarchical pretensions. her triumphal processions have been the most magnificent when her hands were the bloodiest, and her _te deum_ was chaunted with the most fervor when the smoke of her stakes ascended in the thickest volumes, and the gore shed by the double sword streamed in the broadest and deepest currents. when time, the avenger, hurled her from her despotic throne, she supplicated, because she could not command, and moderated her pretensions, because she dare not assert them. but if she presumes not now to tear the crown from the head of the mighty, who would annihilate her for her audacious attempt; if she does not now absolve subjects from allegiance to their governments, whose artillery, to avenge the insult would be marshalled against her; if she does not now attempt to burn at the stake those who reject her absurdities, and who would burn her for an attempt--the reason of the extraordinary change in her infallible holiness is palpable. it is not because she has discarded the doctrines consecrated by so many bulls, battles and treaties, but because she cannot carry them out without peril to her existence. but let brownson, whom pope pius ix., in a letter dated april , , blessed with an apostolic benediction for services rendered, solve this point. he says: "_the church, who possesses an admirable gift of discretion_, has prudently judged that she would not declare all things explicitly from the beginning, but at a given time, and in suitable circumstances, would bring into light something which was hitherto in concealment, and _covered with a certain obscurity_." (review, january, ). chapter ii. the political machinery of the papal power that the holy catholic church is artfully constituted to subjugate all secular and ecclesiastical power under its authority, and that its object is not to advance the interests of moral goodness, but to acquire temporal dominion, must be admitted by every one that fully comprehends the principles upon which its religious orders are organized. these orders were founded by catholic saints and bishops. they have been confirmed by popes and councils. and though they have been suppressed, on account of their corrupt tendency and political intrigues, in kingdom after kingdom, yet in pontifical bulls they have been defended as being the most useful and pious class of the catholic community. they may therefore be regarded as having been authoratively acknowledged to be constituted in harmony with the principles and designs of the catholic church. in fact they form the body of its organization, as the pope does its head, and the councils do its members. in investigating the intrinsic nature of these orders, we are naturally led back to that period of their history which allowed them an unembarrassed development. as they are sanctioned by a church which claims the attribute of infallibility, whatever changes the advance of civilization has effected in them, must be regarded as a mere prudent accommodation to existing circumstances, to be tolerated no longer than they are imperative. if in the catholic church gain the supremacy in the united states which she hopes to gain, she will restore the despotism and superstition which characterized her domination during the dark ages. pope gregory xvi. in his encyclical epistle of , says: "ever bearing in mind, the universal church suffers from every novelty, as well as the admonition of pope st. agatho, that from what has been regularly defined nothing can be taken away--no innovation introduced there, no addition made, but that it must be preserved untouched as to words and meaning." the religious orders consist of anchorites, monks, nuns and knights. the anchorites in general lived separately, but sometimes in communities. the nuns lived in perpetual solitude, as also did the monks, with the exception of such as devoted themselves to the administration of the public affairs of the church. the knights were soldiers of the cross, instituted to defend and propagate the romish faith by the force of arms. the orders differed from one another chiefly in the style of their dress, in degrees of rigidness of discipline, and in the assumption of additional vows. they all assumed the vow of absolute poverty, of perpetual celibacy, and of unconditional obedience to the rules of their order, and to the commands of their superior. each member was subject to the absolute authority of his superior, who resided in the monastery; each superior to the absolute authority of his general, who resided at rome, and each general to the absolute authority of the pope, who was the head and the chief engineer of the whole machine. by means of this machinery the monarchical power of the pope has been, and is still, although the machinery in some places is somewhat damaged, exerted in every kingdom, in every republic, in every city, and over every catholic mind in christendom. when a novice assumed the monastic vows, he became the absolute property, or chattel, of the institution which he entered, as irreversibly as if he had signed, sealed, and delivered a deed conveying to it his soul and body. by this act of piety he yielded up his personal freedom, and became ironed with the shackles of an eternal slavery. a culprit might hope for liberty when his time would expire, but the recluse could only expect disenthralment by death. if disappointed in finding the holiness which he fancied to hallow the place, or if, relieved of the misanthropic gloom, the isolating superstition, or the delusive representations which had induced him to enter the monastic walls, he should escape, he was pursued, and if captured remanded back by the civil authorities to the cold solitude of his prison house. not only have these cruel deeds been perpetrated in the dark ages, but in this age of civilization--not only in despotic europe, but in free america. true, the civil authority in. protestant countries has not interfered, but catholic ingenuity has discovered means equally efficacious. how many escaped nuns have unaccountably disappeared from society? what infamous means have catholic priests adopted to fill their nunneries? a young girl in baltimore, who had just passed her sixteenth year, was carried to a nunnery, and although her mother and relatives invoked the interposition of the civil authorities, yet they were unable to reclaim her, because she had arrived at age. who that has any conception of the numerous applications of distracted mothers at the police station-houses of some of our large cities, for their children, who have mysteriously disappeared; or that has read the account recently published in the new york papers, (of the recovery of the body of a young female who had been drowned, when in one day eight mothers called at the dead-house to see if the corpse was not that of a daughter whom each had missed), can avoid believing that if the nunneries were open to public inspection, some of these mysteries might be resolved? after the ceremonies were concluded which sepulchred the novice forever in his monastic cloister, his thoughts, feelings, and desires were henceforth to be regulated, not by the operations of the brain, but by the rules of his order. the most secret recesses of his mind were to be opened to the inspection of his confessor. for the intrusion of a natural thought he was liable to the infliction of the severest penalty; and the voice of the superior was the only reason, the only conscience, the only instinct he was at liberty to obey. subjected to a systematic course of rigid discipline adapted to paralyze reason, suppress conscience and stifle instinct, he became a passionless, soulless, mechanical automaton, as well formed to bless, pray and preach, as to curse, forge and murder, and equally ready to do either at the mandate of his superior. when the superstition of the masses, the ignorance of princes, the ambition of politicians, and the intrigues of the priesthood had favored or cultivated the growth of catholicism until it was matured into a colossal monarchy, it was discovered that while its centre was in rome, its branches extended to every section of christendom. its monasteries conveniently and strategetically located in different parts of the world, its confessors penetrating the secret designs and wishes of statesmen and princes, its spiritual advisers scrutinizing the conduct of opulent and distinguished personagas, its spies, under the license of papal indulgences, professing all opinions, and entering all associations and societies, and its agents in constant communication with their superiors, their superiors with their generals, and their generals with the pope, and all acting in concert in every part of christendom toward the accomplishment of one grand design; the see of rome became the receptacle of accurate accounts of the condition, events and characters of the various sections of the globe, and was capable of improving every occurrence to its best advantage, and of commanding in its support the power of every locality. as nothing was too great to transcend its aspirations, so nothing was too minute to escape its scrutiny. monarchs, legislators, judges, jurists, statesmen, generals, bankers, merchants, actors, schools, colleges, men, women, children--all were objects which its spiritual machinery sought to control. invisible, but omniscient, the pope was seen nowhere, while his power was felt everywhere. he touched the secret springs of his machinery and the world was roused to arms or silenced to submission; kings were astounded with applauding subjects, or sat powerless on their thrones; armies rushed to battle or grounded their arms; statesmen were blasted, none could tell for what crime; miscreants were ennobled, none could tell for what virtue; men's business or domestic affairs were disarranged, none could tell for what cause. so sudden, secret and terrible were the revolutions wrought in the fate of individuals and nations, that they seemed like the vengeful interposition of providence, and the mystery which concealed the hidden cause led the ignorant and stupefied world to interpret them, under the instruction of a crafty priesthood, as the manifestations of divine wrath. when we calmly consider the disposition of the catholic organization, it seems that all the inventions of ancient tyranny were condensed in it with improved malignancy. the ambition of caesar, which hurried him on to the destruction of the liberties of his country, while he imagined the cold hand of his departed mother clasped his heart; the jealousy of commodus, who never spared what he could suspect; the cruelty of mithridates, who fed on poison to escape the secret revenge of his injured subjects; the inhumanity of caligula, who wished the world had but one neck, that he might cut off its disobedient head at one blow, are, indeed, terrible examples of despotism, but they were limited to one nation, and left reason and conscience unshackled. but in the papal organization we find a scrutiny which penetrated all secrets, a despotism that ironed reason and conscience, an ambition that grasped heaven and earth, a malignity that blasted for time and eternity--a policy in which all the elements of bigotry, terror, malice, duplicity and obduracy were incorporated in their most frightful proportion. before this conception we might well shudder, for its irons are secretly manacling our own limbs. its triumphs, written in the blood of the millions it has butchered, commemorated by the monuments of ecclesiastical rubbish which it has erected, seen in the gloom of superstition it has cast upon the world, utter a solemn admonition to the freemen of america. think not that the present attainment in civilization is proof against this all-blasting tree, whose sap is poison and whose fruit is death. think of egyptian, asiatic, grecian civilization, and tremble lest their fate become your own. let not confidence beget an apathy that may close the eye of vigilance, or enervate the powers of resistance. listen to pope pius ix. when he declares that "the catholic religion, with its rights, ought to be exclusively dominant, in such sort that every other worship shall be banished and interdicted." listen to father hecker, who says: "the catholic church now numbers one-third of the american population, and if its membership increase for the next thirty years, as it has for the thirty years past, in rome will have a majority, and be bound to take the country and keep it." read the statistics and learn the fearful probability of the fulfillment of hecker's prophesy. then dream no more that your liberties are safe. chapter iii. the monastic vow of perpetual solitude the religious orders were the fundamental principle of the growth of the papal monarchy. these orders assumed certain vows, the nature and tendency of which we will proceed to investigate in the spirit of candid inquiry. the first vow to which we will invite attention, is the vow of perpetual solitude and seclusion. although at the first introduction of these monastic orders into the church, this vow, and those which we shall hereafter examine, were not formally assumed, yet they were invariably observed; and in the year , under the auspices of st. benedict, the express assumption of them became an indispensable condition of membership. until the tenth century, the hermits and the benedictine monks and nuns were the only catholic orders that existed; the former generally, and the latter entirely, lived in solitary seclusion. the devout misanthropy of the hermits induced them to select for their habitations the most gloomy, cheerless, and inhospitable regions they could hunt up. piously scorning the salubrious and magnificent localities, so prodigally furnished by nature, they constructed their huts at the bottom of dismal pits, among the cliffs of rugged rocks, in barren deserts, and in solitary wildernesses. some lived under trees, others under shelving rocks, some on the top of poles, and others in the deserted caverns of wild beasts. some buried themselves in the gloomy depth of trackless forests, isolated from human contiguity, and assimilated in aspect and habits to the brute creation. their bodies divested of decent apparel, and covered with a profusion of hair, and their aspect horrid and revolting beyond description, the hermits sought to acquire the reputation of saints by attaining the nearest possible approximation to wild beasts. another class of these eccentric devotees constructed a number of contiguous dungeons, and formed themselves into a sort of monastic community. in these vaults they imprisoned themselves for life, the door being locked, and sometimes walled up, a small window only was allowed, through which to receive aliment and give pious advice. in these dungeons they manacled their limbs with ponderous chains, encircled their necks with massive collars, and clothed their legs with heavy greaves. in the depth of winter they would immerse themselves in icy water, and sing psalms. to make themselves revolting; to imitate the habits of wild animals, until they became more horrible, because more unnatural; to subject themselves to voluntary torture, severe and bloody flagellations, were deemed the highest acts of piety. whatever conspired to comfort they considered profane; whatever was pleasurable they avoided as sinful; and whatever was absurd, filthy, and disgusting, they imagined allied them to gods and angels. st. anthony, who was so holy that he never washed himself, nor wore any apparel except a shirt, was canonized by the catholic church for his extraordinary attainment in sanctification. the approbation which the church so readily conferred on oddity and singularity might at the first appear surprising, but when we recollect the immense pecuniary and political advantage she derived from them, we will no longer doubt her motive, nor avaricious sagacity. a singular custom suggested by this ludicrous institution may be worthy of a passing notice. the abbots of the monasteries, in order to dispose of a brother abbot, whose celebrity surpassed their own, or whose circumventive genius they feared, or who had excited their suspicion, jealousy or revenge, would congregate together, and declare that the fated brother had arrived at a degree of sanctification that better qualified him for the hermit's cell than for an abbotship of a monastery, and that to protect him from the contamination of the world, and to enable him to perfect his holiness, it was necessary to wall him up in eternal seclusion. in accordance with this pious regard for their brother's sanctity, they adepted summary measures for its forcible execution. silence, gloom and solitude, according most congenially with the designs of the monastic institutions, they were generally located in sterile wastes, dense and trackless forests, and other localities adapted to excite the sensation of loneliness, dreariness and desolation; but when secular considerations suggested they occupied picturesque and luxuriant localities, commanding the sublimest prospects of nature. these edifices, which often rivalled gorgeous palaces, were nothing but religious penitentiaries, in which the inmates endured all the privations, and were shackled with all the irons with which criminals are punished in ordinary penal institutions; and though they were ostensibly constructed for religious purposes, they were really designed for the infliction of punishment, in accordance with the ecclesiastical code. with regard to this code guizot says: "the catholic church did not draw up a code like ours, which took account only of those crimes that are at the same time offensive to morals and dangerous to society, and punishing them only because they bore this two-fold character; but prepared a catalogue of all those actions, criminal more particularly in a moral point of view, and punished all under the name of sins." (gen. hist. civil., lee. x., p. ). in what light these religious penitentiaries have been regarded by their inmates their eternal seclusion has prevented them from publicly divulging, but the few who have broken their enthralment, and the "heretics" who have been confined in them, have described them as the most intolerable of dungeons. in fact the modern penitentiary system has originated from them. guizot thinks this is one of the great blessings which catholicism has bestowed on society--(see gen. hist. civil., lect. vi., p. ). the vow of perpetual seclusion comprises a renunciation of the pleasures and business of life, an abnegation of the claims of consanguinity, friendship and society; and an abjuration of all filial, parental and natural affection. this vow is in contravention of the obligations imposed on man by nature, to improve society by contributing to the advancement of its financial, social, political and scientific welfare. it precludes the exercise, and consequent development, of the varied powers of the human organism. it surrenders the personal refinement and moral strength which may be acquired by social intercourse, and conflict with opposing habits and principles. it ignores the imperative duty of understanding and judiciously relieving human want and misery, and of aiding the execution of efficient schemes of public utility and philanthropy. it is not only in violation of the obligations of humanity, and the noblest principles of human enjoyment, but it debars the recluse from correcting any error into which he may have been betrayed by false representations, or an overheated fancy; or, of modifying his condition according to the change which experience and reflection may have effected in his opinion and feelings. yet, although such are the absurd nature and injurious consequences of the vow of perpetual seclusion, it is proposed by the church of rome, as the surest means of obtaining the sanctification of the soul and the crown of eternal happiness. if to bury our talents, to wall ourselves up in a dungeon; to sit for years upon a pole; to scorn the society of human beings; to reject the comforts of civilized life; to retrograde into barbarism; to assume the habits, and acquire the aspect of wild animals; to imprison ourselves where we can never respond to the demands of consanguinity, society, friendship and patriotism: where we can never contribute to the knowledge, wealth or prosperity of the country of our nativity--if this is religion, then catholicism has the honor of confirming the most revolting condensation of these monstrosities that has ever disgusted the spirit of civilization. but if religion really consists in fair dealing, in noble deeds, in moral integrity amid moral turpitude, in individual purity amid general corruption, in unwavering virtue among the strongest incentives to guilt, then the organization that sanctions vows subversive of these attainments cannot be admitted, consistently with the most indulgent liberality, to be of a religious character. thus far in our judgment, we have presumed that the novices, in assuming their vow, were actuated by the laudable desire of obtaining the highest degree of moral purity. this worthy ambition was doubtless the governing motive of a proportion of them. either from the instigations of moral insanity, or from the vagaries of a distempered fancy, or from the misrepresentation of artful and designing priests, or from the despondency which misfortune is apt to engender in weak, or too sensitive minds, or from a misconception of the natural tendency of solitude, men and women have at times been led to assume the vows, and submit to the penance prescribed by the religious orders. but there were other motives equally, and perhaps more generally, active. ludicrous as were their holy isolation and penance, still the sanctity which the monks imitated, and the tortures which they self-imposed, were rewarded by a credulous and superstitious world with profound homage and admiration. by undergoing sufferings which appeared intolerable to human fortitude, they acquired the reputation of being sustained by divine agency; and, as their popularity increased in proportion to their wretchedness, they labored to extend their fame by adding to their misery. their sufferings and fortitude alike incomprehensible to human reason, an awe-struck fancy betrayed the public into the delusion that what it beheld was the results of superhuman sanctity; of a sublime elevation above ordinary humanity; and of the interposition of divine power. these misconceptions, artfully cultivated by the priesthood, extended the fame of the self-tormentors beyond the celebrity of heroes, poets and philosophers. kings and queens visited them with superstitious reverence; statesmen consulted them on abstruse questions of governmental policy; peace and war were made at their mandates; and pilgrims from remote regions bowed at their feet and begged their blessing. thus favored by the profound homage of all classes of christendom, they were enabled with more facility than any other profession to become opulent bishops, royal cardinals, or monarchical popes. such being their eligibility to the honors and emoluments of the spiritual dignities of the church, vanity was quick to perceive that the anchorite's hut and the monk's cloister were the surest paths to universal adulation; religion, that they were the most respectable methods of becoming honored in life, and worshipped after death; avarice, that they were the most available means of obtaining lucrative positions; and ambition, that thay were the shortest roads to dignity and power. with these attractive facts glaring on the eye of sacred aspirants, it requires but little knowledge of human nature to conceive with what avidity the ambitious would crowd into the most repulsive cloisters; with what eagerness they would adopt the revolting habits and ludicrous privations of the recluse; and with what ingenuity they would indurate and torture the body, in order to win the applause of the world, and the privilege of selecting its most advantageous positions. accordingly, monastery after monastery arose with sudden and astonishing rapidity, and their cells became supplied--not with aspirants after holiness and heaven--but with aspirants after secular and ecclesiastical dignities, and the indolence, luxury, and licentiousness which they afforded. the pious flattery that was lavished on voluntary suffering, and the distinguished rewards which recompensed it, strongly tempted the feeble conscience of monks and hermits, to task their ingenuity in inventing contrivances for magnifying the apparent and diminishing the real sufferings of their self-imposed torture. by the aid of an improved invention an artful hypocrite could procure a greater reputation for sanctity than a contrite penitent, and become more eligible to the worldly honors and emoluments of the church. st. simeon stylltes, who sat upon a pole for thirty years, convinced christendom, by his wonderful absurdity, that he was miraculously supported; while living he enjoyed its profoundest respect, and when dead was canonized by the catholic church. but an observer by describing the numerous gesticulations of this sainted mountebank, disclosed the secret of his artifice. by means of a system of gymnastics, he kept up a vigorous circulation of blood through his frame, and thus acquired a health and longevity which would have been incompatible with a state of inactivity. but it appears that he was tormented with an ulcer on the thigh, inflicted by the devil, who had tempted him to imitate elijah in flying to heaven, but who maliciously smote him upon his raising his foot to make the ascension. his mystical gesticulations not healing, but probably inflaming the wound, may have shortened the natural term of his miserable existence. as he had gradually arisen from a pole of seven feet high to one of fifty feet high, if had not been for his vanity and his evil company he might have gained a still higher position; but whether by this means he would ever have reached heaven may be questioned by astronomy and heresy: but there is no doubt he acquired by his folly and artifice the beatification of the catholic church. the apathy with which the self-tormenters endured their excruciating penance and the severe rigors of the seasons, was chiefly the effect of artificial callousness, induced by an ingenious discipline, calculated to destroy the susceptibility of the nervous system to the influence of external agents. a similar course of training has always been practiced by the religious orders of the hindoos and the mohametans, who, like those of the catholic church, endure self-imposed torture which seems to surpass human fortitude, and acquire by this species of ambition unbounded popularity. even the uncleanness of the holy brotherhood was an artifice. it formed a protecting incrustation on the surface of the skin, which, by covering the the papillae, the sentient, organs, or destroying their capacity for sensation, enable the hermits to endure without apparent emotion the cold winters and bleak winds of inhospitable forests. this secret is known and practised by some african tribes, upon whom washing is consequently inflicted as a penalty for crimes. to the eye of superstition, clouded with ignorance, and fascinated by the _ignes fatui_ of sacred fiction, the calmness of the monks and hermits under torments and exposures which seemed insufferable to humanity, appeared a palpable demonstration of miraculous interposition, and consecrated them in its estimation. their acts, however, were as much tricks as are the mysterious capers of a conjurer. as the more artful and callous could endure the severity of penitential acts with greater indifference than the candid and sensitive they acquired a higher reputation for holiness, advanced to the enjoyment of more distinguished honors, and finally became canonized as paragons of virtue and objects of adoration. such are the nature and consequences of the vow of perpetual seclusion. such is a portion of the "doctrinal definition already made by the general councils and former pontiffs," which, according to bishop kendrick, "are landmarks which no man can remove." (primacy, p. ). such are some of the catholic dogmas, which, "in regard to every subject whatever," according to brownson "have been always the same from the beginning, remain always unchangeably the same, and will always continue in every part of the world immutable." (review, january, ). such is in part "what the church has done, what she has tacitly or expressly approved in the past," and according to the same authority "is exactly what she will tacitly or expressly approve in the future, if the same circumstances occur." (review, january, ). "the same circumstances" is the universal church, which jesuit hecker, in his recent speech in chicago, thinks the united states needs, and which the people (catholics) will at no distant day proclaim. chapter iv. the monastic vow of perpetual silence a vow of perpetual silence was assumed by several religious orders; but it was observed with different degrees of austerity. some monks passed their whole lives in profound silence; others spoke on certain days of the week; and others at particular hours of specified days. the modern penitentiary regulations respecting the conversation of prisoners seem to have been derived from the singular customs of the dumb brotherhood. the members of the mute orders, perpetually concealing their features with their cowls, and their thoughts by their silence, appear to have concluded that secrecy was the substance of religion. he who could conceal the best, and preserve silence the longest, obtained among the devout the useful credit of possessing the most grace. the effusion of the holy ghost, which, by a prodigal distribution of tongues, and their clashing jargon, had set the primitive ecclesiastical council in an uproar, and which, by its powerfully stimulating qualities had turned so many cities upside down, had a very different effect on the silent orders of the catholic church. while to the former it communicated intuitive knowledge of all languages, to the latter it interdicted as profane the use of any. to pass an entire life without uttering a word, was considered by the dumb friars, as an unquestionable evidence of their having received the unutterable fulness of the holy ghost. whether the primitive church and the catholic orders were blest with the influence of the same holy ghost, or whether the divine spirit politely accommodates the nature of his unction to the demands of particular ecclesiastical exigencies, seems to require some proof, before it can be rationally admitted that profound silence and distracting discord are effects of the same cause. but the question of truth and error is of a less intricate nature. truth is candid, open and fearless; error is hidden, intolerant and cowardly. the one challenges investigation; the other denounces it; the one opens its breast to the scrutinizing gaze of the world; the other conceals its features from the most intimate associate. if such is the fearlessness of truth, and such the cowardice of error, the secrecy of the silent orders commends them less to the confidence which candor inspires, than to the suspicion which secrecy begets. secrecy is most generally adopted to cover objectionable designs; and, the profounder the former is, the more objectionable are the latter. i speak not of the secret signs by which benevolent societies recognize their members, but of those associations which, while they are professedly designed for religious purposes, conceal their principles and projects from public view. although in some other respects secrecy may sometimes be suggested by discretion, yet it is often suggested by guilt. all that offend against the natural sentiments of propriety, shrink from the public gaze. robbery, murder, and every other infraction of civil ordinations seek to shroud their intentions and machinations in the greatest secrecy. the traitor and the highwayman, afar from the searching scrutiny of the inquisitive, retire to solitary forests, inaccessible retreats, and dismal caverns, to hold their conclaves and plot schemes of blood and depredation. evasion, prevarication and disguise are the inseparable concomitants of guilt. so secret is crime that its perpetration can generally only be established by circumstantial evidence. secrecy is, therefore, naturally calculated to excite suspicion; it seldom means good; it generally means evil; sometimes robbery, frequently murder, often treason, always some plot so antagonistical to reason and the welfare of society that its projectors are conscious that publicity would endanger, and perhaps defeat its execution. the shocking crimes which the pious monasteries concealed have frequently been divulged by those who have escaped from their cloisters, but what unutterable deeds the taciturnity of the mute monks sanctioned may not be so clearly proved as naturally imagined. that it was exceedingly profitable will appear evident upon a moment's reflection. these dumb friars were confessors, and as they never uttered a word, they acquired the confidence of the most desperate criminals. the jesuits, who could not disclose the startling secrets of their order without alarming the fears of temporal princes, confessed to none but to the silent monks. all the devout who contemplated the commission of the crimes of murder, sedition, or treason, preferred to unbosom their designs to the taciturn fraternity, and receive through their agency the absolution and indulgence of the holy roman catholic church. but the connivance of the church at criminal deeds could be commanded only by the power of gold; and the amount requisite for expiation was always in proportion to the atrociousness of the crime. now, as the commission of the highest misdemeanors most imminently endangered the life and liberty of the perpetrators; it is as easy to see the munificent pecuniary advantages which perpetual silence obtained for the monks, as it is to see that the most flagitious criminals would prefer disclosing their intentions to the most silent lips. it may here be remarked, by way of explanation, that confessors are not bound, as is generally supposed, to inviolate secrecy. the secrets of the confessional may be communicated from one priest to another; and, when a confessor desires to make public use of any information which has been confessed to him, he adopts the artifice of requesting the informer to communicate the matter to him out of the confessional. the dumb friars, not less artful than secret, elaborated a system of sacred gesticulations, by which they managed to express their wants and desires with as much force as they could have done with their tongues. although grimace and gesticulation were more clumsy and less varied in their signs than is vocal articulation, yet by this means the dumb monks contrived, as occasion suggested, to describe, command, supplicate, scorn, imprecate, curse or bless. this odd device was well adapted to the non-committal policy of the religious orders, as it enabled them to affirm, deny, impugn, slander; to threaten any dignity, anathematize any power, and commit any crime of which language is capable, without incurring responsibility, violating any legal enactment, rendering themselves amenable to any tribunal, or answerable for the breach of any code of honor. the adoption of this ingenious device to avoid compliance with unnatural obligations, affords an instance of the singular duplicity into which the subtilty of pious craft may betray human nature. the misfortune of being born a mute is justly classed among the most deplorable calamities that can afflict a human being. the natural privations of such a person elicit in his favor the condoling sympathies of all considerate persons. yet in order to accomplish secret purposes of ambition or cupidity, the dumb monks resigned the most important advantages with which nature had enriched them, and gratuitously assumed all the disadvantages that the greatest calamity could have imposed. if there was nothing reprehensible in the taciturn fraternity but this curious departure from the natural use of the human faculties, it alone would be sufficient to subject them to the suspicion of the candid, and the aversion of the prudent. the tongue, it must be confessed, is sometimes an unruly member, but it is also the noblest blessing of the human organism. it is among the most prominent characteristics that distinguish the human from the brute creation. it is mostly by the means of the judicious employment of speech that the ignorant are instructed, the afflicted consoled, and the cause of truth and freedom defended. it is by it that error is detected, vice intimidated, and superstition and despotism are exposed. the interchange of opinion, the animating power of debate, the searching inquisition of truth, the spontaneous sallies of wit, the exhilarating effusions of humor, the burst of eloquence, the lore of philosophy, art, science, all the natural overflowing of the soul, find in the varied and expressive functions of speech their most available avenues for the outlet of their respective treasures. speech is a reflective blessing; it blesses him who exercises it, and him upon whom it is exercised. none can use with propriety their vocal powers without improving them; none can instruct without being instructed; none can advocate truth without being enlightened by its beams. it is a means which all possess of imparting consolation; which enriches the more prodigally it is dispensed; which the poorest may bestow on the richest; which is always the cheapest, often the most valuable, and sometimes the only one that can avail. when speech is free and un-trammeled by the fetters of intolerance, it is the most efficacious mode of improving the moral and intellectual tone of society. it is more powerful than legal enactments, and has been more successful than dungeons, racks, and all the prescriptions of tyranny combined. laws may interdict and gibbets terrify, but neither can convince the understanding, nor purify the sources of action. but freedom of speech enters the soul, converses with the intellect, sifts opinions, and moulds the nature of man into order and justice. she enters the halls of legislation and erects right into law. she enters the court and gives equity to judicial proceedings. she enters a community and breaks the iron of slavery, bestows equality on all, and enthrones in power public opinion. she enters a nation of slaves and makes them a nation of sovereigns. she is the great redeemer of the moral world. her touch has healed its disorders; her voice has calmed its storms; her spirit has reanimated its dead. such being her mission, none but impostors need fear her scrutiny; none but bigots need dread her vengeance; none but tyrants need tremble at her approach. yet, notwithstanding the immense advantages the power of speech confers on its possessors, the silent monks have resigned all right to its use and sought an equality with dumb brutes. whatever motives of religion may have mingled with the consummation of this atrocious folly, it atones not for the good it has prohibited the monks from doing, nor the luxurious pleasure it has obliged them to forego. if it is consistent with the secret designs of any religious order to iron the faculties of speech in eternal silence, it is not consistent with the designs of nature, the dictate of reason, nor the progress of man. if it is consistent with the obligations of any religious organization to prohibit the exercise of those powers by which error is checked, truth promoted, virtue fortified, and the world enlightened, it is not consistent with the obligations of man, the purest instincts of his being, and the noblest virtues of his nature. if it is consistent with the principles of any version of religion to view with dumb indifference the errors it might correct, or the sorrows it might heal, it is not consistent with the instinctive prompting of knowledge or of natural sympathy. and if such designs, obligations and principles are consistent with the faith and practice of the catholic church, she is a curse to the world, at variance with the general interests of society, opposed to the most sacred rights of man, an enemy to human knowledge, to human progress, and to human sympathy. a slavery so abject, an absurdity so gross, and a despotism so monstrous, as that which she sanctions, should consign her reverence to contempt, and her holiness to the scorn and ridicule of all enlightened nations and ages. chapter v. the monastic vow of silent contemplation first. meditation not the source of knowledge. similar in nature to the vow of seclusion and silence, and equally incompatible with a fulfilment of the obligations of reason and humanity, was the vow of silent contemplation assumed by many of the religious orders. meditation, abstractly considered, is neither a virtue nor a vice. it derives its merit or demerit from the objects on which it dwells, and the manner in which it employs its faculties. the mind receiving its impression from external objects, and their vividness and profundity being in proportion to the constancy with which they are contemplated, we as naturally become enlightened by what is true, expanded by what is liberal, and animated by what is pleasing, as we are misguided by what is erroneous, contracted by what is illiberal, and depressed by what is gloomy. amid objects of reality, amid scenes of grandeur, where the subjects are the most numerous and varied, and where the faculties are awakened to their severest and most rigid scrutiny, is the great college in which the understanding is invigorated and improved; in which the fancy is ennobled and chastened; in which the mind acquires those maxims of wisdom, and that ascendency over impulse and illusion which enable it to act in conformity with the principles of happiness and of the human organism. the process of meditation is the act of comparing facts, deducing conclusions, analyzing compounds, and tracing the chain of cause and effect. knowledge is the material with which it works; and, in proportion to its accuracy and extent, will be the value and greatness of our elaborations. but the processes of meditation are not adapted to the acquisition of knowledge. none are so absurd as to expect to obtain a knowledge of grammar, arithmetic, history, astronomy, or of the laws and properties of matter, by the mere exercise of the contemplative powers. to retire into solitude, and endeavor by the guess-work of meditation to acquire even a knowledge of the alphabet, would be as ridiculous as to attempt to make our feet perform the office of our hands. not less absurd would it be, were we to immure ourselves in the gloom and silence of perpetual confinement, avoiding the objects of nature and an intercourse with society, with the expectation that by such means, though we possessed the penetration of a locke, the intellect of a gibbon, or the versatility of a voltaire, to acquire anything but profound ignorance; or any ideas but what were unnatural, distorted and misshapen. to obtain knowledge we must exercise the perceptive faculties. the senses of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting and touching are the only avenues by which knowledge can reach the mind. he whose observation has been the most comprehensive, and whose investigations have been the most thorough and accurate, is enabled to exercise the contemplative powers with the greatest pleasure and advantage. the distinct and graphic imagery of men, scenes, events, objects and their properties, with which he has stored his mind, will give correctness to his ideas, variety to his mental operations, comprehensiveness to his intellectual view, clearness to his judgment, and truth to his conclusions. possessing the elements of correctness, he will also possess the elements of happiness and success. he is enabled to open the volume of nature, and read, in her pages of rocks and stars, sublimer periods than the pen of superstition ever recorded. he stands perpetually in the vestibule of truth, opening on the fields of immensity, strewed with objects of reality, before the blaze of whose overpowering grandeur the throne and empire of fancy dwindle into insignificance. he is enabled to imbibe the fervor, inhale the inspiration, and enjoy the ecstatic delights which scientific truth alone can confer, and which in intensity and purity so far transcend the fanatic's wildest excitement. he is inducted into the secret by which science has achieved all her victories, and by which she has erected in such solid grace and grandeur those literary and philosophical structures which stand like imperishable columns amid the ruin of temples and kingdoms. but the acquisition of these exalted attainments embraces the exercise of all the intellectual power on appropriate objects. the mental, like the corporeal powers, are various; they are differently organized and adapted to deal with objects of different natures; and, all require to be exercised judiciously, in order to be kept in a healthy tone. if any member of the body is disused, it will be deprived of its natural energy; if any faculty of the mind is disused, it will lose its natural strength. it is only when each faculty of mind and body is properly exercised that the health and vigor of the whole organism can be maintained. the physiological cause of the enervating effects of indolence, and the invigorating consequences of exercise, are found in those laws of the human organism, whereby the blood is increased in a member by exercise, and decreased by inertia, and a proportionable degree of strength imparted by one and, subtracted by the other. now, the faculties employed in the process of meditation, comprehend but a small number of the mental powers; and if they are exclusively exercised, a superabundant volume of blood will be distributed to them, and they will absorb the aliment necessary for the subsistence of the others. the establishment of this inequality in the distribution of the blood will derange the harmonious condition of the cerebral organs; some will be overcharged, and either inflamed or constipated, and others impoverished or enervated. one class of the mental powers thus becoming over-excited, another class enfeebled, and a third paralyzed, the ideas which the mind, in this condition, is capable of elaborating, must necessarily be partial, defective, disjointed and grotesque; resembling those nightmares that flit in our sleep, or those monsters which are born without limbs, and marked with deformity and distortion. but when all the moral faculties are properly employed, they will all receive their appropriate nourishment and maintain their natural vigor. in consequence of a harmony, equality, unity and reciprocity of mental action, thus induced, all the powers will be preserved in healthy action--the perceptives in furnishing the mind with knowledge, memory in storing it up, order in classifying it, analogy in comparing it, judgment in deducing conclusions from it, taste in selecting what is most appropriate, fancy in adorning it; and all proceeding as naturally as the vital organ elaborates and vitalizes the blood, and the reproductive system transforms it into animal fluids and solids. but the partial exercise of the mental faculties, embraced in the act of meditation, not only disproportionately develops the cerebral organs; but deranges those which it labors to keep in incessant activity. a period of rest after labor is indispensable to the maintenance of the health and vigor of the cerebral organs. exercise increases the flow of blood to their parts; repose, by inducing the process of recuperation, not only restores their vigor but increases their healthy volume. the invigorating effect of sleep is derived from the profound slumber into which all the faculties are calmed, except those whose functions are destined to recuperate and vitalize the entire system. to labor to keep the meditative faculties in constant action is to interrupt the process of recuperation; and, consequently, to prevent them from becoming vitalized. the man who attempts to lift a weight beyond the capacity of his muscular vigor, may never afterward be enabled to raise the tenth part of what was within his former ability; and sir isaac newton, whose powers of contemplation seemed almost superhuman, after he had enervated his facilities by impelling them to constant and excessive exercise, has furnished the world with an illustration of the imbecility it engendered, by his works on the prophecies. but the principle of self-preservation inherent in the human mind, rebels against the destruction of its faculties. habitually to exercise the contemplative faculties on one class of objects is a superhuman task. in spite of resistance the blood will pursue its natural course to the different organs of the brain, and by virtue of this fact, in conjunction with the natural condition of the system, instinct will prompt, thought intrude, emotion arise, appetite crave, passion yearn, distraction ensue; and under the external semblance of sanctity, a moral volcano will burn and heave. we may, by means of the theological subterfuge that the involuntary actions of the cerebral functions are the suggestion of impure and malignant fiends, apologize to our conscience for the intrusion of profane and worldly thoughts, but this device will not exorcise them. we shall find that in the effort to become automata, we are men; and that in the attempt to exercise one class of faculties and to concentrate: them perpetually on one class of objects, we have grappled with a giant, over whom, if we triumph it will be in our death-struggle. it is impossible to think and feel by rule. neither particular trains of thought, nor particular kinds of emotion are at the command of the will. belief or unbelief, the sensations of contrition, of devotion, of hope, or any other sentiment or feeling can no moro be created by an act of volition, than can storms and earthquakes.. there is a secret power acting on the nervous system, over which the will has no control. the state of the atmosphere, the sanity of the system, the unconscious power of imbibed principles, the recollections of the past, the circumstances of the present, and the prospects of the future, all like unseen spirits stir the soul's depths with ideas and passions, always involuntary, and sometimes as abruptly as an electrical flash. to attempt to subject the laws by which ideas and emotions are created to the power of the will, so that they may be conjured and shaped by its mandates, is to war, not only against the constitution of the human mind, but against the powers and elements of nature. second. the natural effects of the monastic vow of silent contemplation. let us consider the character and products of the mind which the monastic vow of silent contemplation is calculated to create. when liberal education has disciplined the intellectual powers, and study has enriched the mind with the facts and principles of science and literature, a philosopher may find in solitude an influence congenial to his high pursuits; and with his scientific instruments enlarging his field of vision, he may discover new secrets in the realms of nature, and come forth from retirement a more useful member and a brighter ornament of society. but if with distinguished abilities, and the valuable results of an erudite industry, he should maintain perpetual silence, and continue for life in a secluded abode, he would be of no benefit to mankind, and neither win nor deserve the homage which they accord to scientific benefactors. but the monks were very far from being philosophers. they were in general exceedingly illiterate. some of their orders actually interdicted as profane any attempt to cultivate the intellectual powers, or to acquire either scientific or literary information. filled with abject and obscene pilgrims, with slaves who knew of nothing but manual labor, with mechanics whose scanty wages had precluded the possibility of a rudimental education, with soldiers who had no knowledge but that of war, and who had fled before the victorious barbarian into obscurity for safety, it could not be expected that the monasteries with such material, imprisoned in solitude, deprived of social communion, enervated in mental capacity, and restricted in the exercise of their intellectual powers, could ever give birth to philosophers, or to anything but mental imbecility and moral monstrosities. it has been alleged in favor of monastic institutions that they have originated and were sustained from a pious intention of affording the devout an asylum, where, secluded from the distractions of life, and occupied in silent contemplation on death and judgment, they might fit themselves for the society of god and angels. that such a motive has at times mingled with the causes which have induced individuals to assume the monastic vow, is undoubtedly true; but had it been in every instance the only incentive it would not have made the act less irrational, unnatural and pernicious. such a plea, in fact, would only prove that monastic piety was identical with pagan piety. long before the origin of christianity, religious orders existed in india, which sought by means of the destruction of all corporeality and intellectual activity, an incorporation with the nature of god, and the realization of a state of perfect happiness. but an act may be absurd and pernicious, while its motive is pure; and it is always absurd when its objects are imaginary, and pernicious when they are in violation of the dictate of reason. the monastic vows and regulations were ill calculated to make men either happy, enlightened, or useful. encaverned in solitude, the monks could not become extensively acquainted with the objects of nature; preserving perpetual silence, they could not materially enlarge each others' information; exercising but one class of the mental organs, they could not form the numerous order of conceptions perfected only by the review of all the faculties. isolated from human contiguity, walled up in a dungeon, or incarcerated in a monastic cell, the mind overtasked with labor, broken down by fatigue, prostrated yet urged to action, one class of the faculties paralyzed, another inflamed to frenzy, and all concentrated in silent contemplation on terrible and incomprehensible subjects, partial or complete insanity would ensue; incongruity would become tasteful, exaggerations natural, impossibilities credible, shadows realities, and visions, fiends, and angels take possession of the mind. the productions of such a mind, being a transcript of its impressions, would present nothing as real or symmetrical; but everything as disfigured, indistinct, shadowy, inharmoniously blended, or superlatively gigantic. misshapen dwarfs, huge giants, beings that were neither men, nor beasts, nor birds, nor fishes, nor angels, nor demons, but an incongruous mixture of them all, would be its natural offspring. men with birds' wings, beasts with human heads, women with fishes' scales, and animals variously compounded of the limbs, claws, and beaks, all in violation of the natural order of nature, and incompatible with the laws of life, would spring in horrible profusion from the distorted imagination of the monks. all ideas of proportion, adaptation and utility would be transgressed in their creations. they might regale credulity with an account of cities fifteen hundred miles high, with asses reproving prophets, with snakes conversing with women, with immaterial beings fluttering on ponderable pinions, and with angels whose heads reached the stars, but whose forms were so hugely disproportioned, that while one foot rested on an insignificant portion of the isle of patmos, the other would rest on a like portion of the mediterranean sea. the scenery, caught from the gloom of forests, caves or cloisters, would naturally wear an infernal aspect, where there would be shape, but no symmetry; color but no contrast nor harmony; where immaterial beings would be represented as tormented with the flames and suffocating effects of liquid brimstone; where they would shriek and groan without vocal organs, war and wound with material swords, and where corporeality and incorporeality would be compounded in every variety and degree of inconsistency. if in the intervals of the monk's gloomy ravings he should attempt a more cheerful picture, the scene which he would probably portray might glitter with gold and gems where they would be of no service; but it would be pervaded by an awfulness which would be depressing, and by a splendor which would be terrifying. the music might be loud enough to shake nature to its foundation, but it would naturally be monotonous, perhaps consisting of one tone and one song, eternally sung by beings without throats, assisted by the trumpets and harps invented by mortals; and had pianos, fiddles and accordians been early enough invented, they too, would probably have chimed in the grand chorus. beside the music of the operatic troupe, the other recreations would probably be so incompatible with the principles of human enjoyment, and make the monk's very heaven so awfully repulsive, that common sense would prudently shrink from partaking of its glory. thus the conceptions of virtue and of vice, of perfect happiness and of perfect misery, of metaphysical and of theological dogmas, formed by the distempered brains of hermits and monks, while they might be awfully effulgent or in-supportably horrible, would be conflicting in their parts, inconsistent with pure ideas of men, of phantoms, or of things; and such a strange commingling of incongruities as might remind reflections of the huts and palaces of christian rome, which are constructed of the tombs, alters, temples and palaces of pagan rome. what reason would naturally deduce from the character of the monastic vows and rules, is amply confirmed by the facts of history. housed with silent, ignorant and gloomy companions, the monks contemplated not the realities of truth, but the fictions of a distempered fancy; and while they scorned the first as profane, they trembled before the second as a dread reality. conceiving the deity as a monarch, they thought of him as a tyrant; and believing their nature depraved, they punished themselves as criminals. as they imagined freedom of thought sinful, they acquired the temper of a slave; and as they were incapable of reasoning themselves, they accepted as truth whatever their ecclesiastical tyrants dictated. impressed with the fancy that demons had taken possession of their bodies, they attempted to dislodge them by making their abode as uncomfortable as possible. after having manacled their limbs with the heaviest chains, and lacerated their bodies in the most horrible manner, they were surprised at finding that they had not yet destroyed their constitutional principles and appetites; and regarding themselves still as objects of divine wrath, they trembled as if a fiery and bottomless pit yawned at their feet. while they labored by monastic rules and exercises to fit themselves for the society of god and angels, they rendered themselves unfit for the society of human beings. the perceptive powers uninformed, and inflamed by disease, furnishing nothing but extravagant and perverted ideas, and the fancy combining them only into monstrous and hideous shapes, the mind became perpetually filled with the most horrible images. the superabundant volume of blood consequent on overwrought excitement, distending the blood vessels of the visual and auditory organs, and causing them unnaturally to press against these organs, gave a vivid distinctness to the impressions, and so brought out the mental perspective as to give the complexion and distinctness of reality. in consequence of the condition of mind thus induced, the sights and sounds conceived by fancy were recognized as real by the perceptive organs. the senses thus recognizing visions as realities, the life of the recluse was doomed to become an incessant struggle, not only with real disease, but with imaginary demons. less refined in their mythology than the pagans, who regarded the earth, air and water as peopled with genii, naiads and fairies, they conceived them inhabited by malignant fiends. the monks often fancied that they saw the misshapen forms of demons, and heard their diabolical whispers. too illiterate or obtuse to account for natural phenomena, they supposed that they had a hand in regulating the operations of nature; and, too unacquainted with the habits of the brute creation to understand their mechanical capacity, they regarded the contrivances of animals as the undoubted fruit of a nocturnal adventure of the infernal inhabitants. they often conceived that they saw his satanic majesty, with all his distinguishing appendages, such as his cloven foot, his sooty aspect, his peculiar horns, and sulphurous odor. although his visitations were most formidable in the shape of a woman, yet they frequently had the uncommon fortitude of sustaining long conversations with him. the more pious a monk was, the more frequently he was honored with the company of demons. this fact is not surprising, for it is certain that the more successfully he warred against nature and himself, the more diseased would become his brain, the more extravagant his conceptions, the more discordant his imagination, the more susceptible his senses to false impressions, the more frequent and terrible would apparitions appear, and the better he would be suited for the company of fiends and spirits. if in the vigorous and wholesome bustle of life, the visual organs may recognize images which have no real existence, the auditory, sounds which are imaginary, and the olfactory, odors which are the mere products of fancy, how much more vividly would analogous deceptions be likely to occur in the minds of monks and anchorites, whose condition was replete with causes calculated to create, them. such was the melancholy condition of those monks, who, aspiring after superhuman sanctification, had with sincerity of purpose assumed the monastic obligation; but there were others who, more ambitious of fame than of internal purity, had assumed the same obligations. professedly despising pleasure and fortune, but secretly laboring to acquire their possession, they manufactured with more facility diabolical apparitions, than those which spontaneously sprang from the overwrought brain of the sincere. sanctification having become the passport to worldly honors, and its degree orthodoxly estimated by the degrees of personal familiarity with the devil, the aspiring were too frail to resist the temptation of increasing their celebrity by multiplying the number of satanic visits; and as they could draw on an inexhaustible mine of conscienceless inventions, and deliberately adorn them with the terrific and interesting incidents of romance, they far outstripped the reputation of the sincere, and with greater facility obtained the emoluments of ecclesiastical sinecures. the sense of touch not being equally susceptible of false impressions with the other senses, while the sincere might see demons and hear their voices, they could not so well recognize them by means of contact. but the hypocritical, untrammeled by this limitation, would create by their inventive faculties any number of personal encounters and terrific battles with the armies of the infernal regions. although the monks sometimes relate how completely they vanquished the devil by their eloquence and the ingenuity of their arguments, yet they oftener tell how valorously they triumphed over him after a desperate struggle with his superhuman strength; and not seldom, how alone and single-handed they encountered him in command of a battalion of fiends, inflicting on the spiritual bodies of the demons such deep gashes, and cutting up their impalpable substances in such a horrible manner that, wounded, bleeding and demoralized, they retreated in wild disorder. as the monkish cell, like the human brain, could accommodate any number of devils, it was as convenient a hall of audience in which to receive his satanic majesty, as it was an area for the scientific manoeuvering of his legions. the crown of sanctification being awarded to the most unscrupulous inventor of pious fictions, a hypocrite was encouraged to labor to outrival the fame of an antagonist by the boldness of his assertions, the extravagance of his fables, and the incredibleness of his fabrications. under such circumstances we are not astonished to find that some claimed to have obtained a perfection in holiness that enabled them to see the devil anywhere, and to look upon hell at any time. even at the period of the reformation, the popular belief recognized the devil and his imps as often visible. martin luther, while engaged in translating the bible, conceived that he saw the devil enter his study, for the purpose of embarrassing him in the execution of his useful design. annoyed at this unceremonious and impertinent intrusion, he threw at his satanic majesty an inkstand, which, passing through the dusky form and striking the wall beyond, left a stain which is visible to this day. third. the ignorance and corruption induced by the monastic vow of silent contemplation. the profound homage won by the monks from ignorance and superstition, gave such credit to their extravagant productions, that history has sometimes been led into the error of recording them as real events; and the craft or credulity of the church in incorporating them in her devotional books has so deepened and perpetuated reverence for them, that, even at the present day, they continue still to govern in a measure the superstition, and to contaminate the creed and ritual of reformed churches. it has been alleged, with apparent plausibility, in favor of monastic institutions, that they were during the middle ages the protectors of learning. but, unfortunately, this noble virtue can be justly claimed for only a few of them; and for that few in but a limited sense. some of the inmates being unfit for more remunerative employment were subjected to the drudgery of copying manuscript; sometimes the task was imposed on others as a penance. the aged and infirm of the benedictine monks were thus employed; and, as the multiplication of manuscripts is the most efficient mode of preserving what is written on the perishable material of paper and parchment, these monks have contributed to the preservation of learning. but inveterate prejudice, obstinate bigotry, gross ignorance, and abject servitude were ill qualified to render correct versions, while they were well adapted to the perpetration of fraud and corruption. transcribing manuscripts, not to produce accurate copies, but to consume time or do penance, and governed by the misleading principles of their order, it is not as likely that the monks would furnish authentic and reliable transcripts, as that they would mar them with errors, embellish them with fancies, and interpolate them with forgeries and wilful corruptions. while such was the literary honesty of the religious orders, and such likely to be the character of their manuscripts, the ignorance and superstition of the age favored rather than obstructed the perpetration of any pious fraud they might contemplate. a few facts will illustrate the incredible ignorance of the catholic clergy during the dark ages. a jew, converted to christianity but not to truth, having persuaded the emperor maximilian that the hebrew works, the old testament excepted, were all of pernicious tendency, the latter, at the horrible revelation, ordered them to to be burnt. the learned reuchlen earnestly remonstrated against the imperial decree, and succeeded in having its execution postponed until the matter of the allegation could be critically examined. a controversy of ten years ensued. so grossly ignorant were the clergy that not one of them with whom reuchlen debated had ever seen a greek testament, and as for the hebrew bible, they denounced its alphabetical characters as the diabolical invention of some profane sorcerer. so obstinate was their opposition to hebrew literature that they declared their readiness to support their cause at the point of the sword. neither the pope nor the cardinals having sufficient learning to decide on the merits of the question, the former was induced to appoint as umpire the archbishop of spires, whose decision happily rescued oriental literature from the flames of the stake. pope sylvester ii., whose literary attainments were superior to those of the clergy of his age, was regarded as a magician who held unhallowed converse with infernal demons. st. augustin, who was ignorant of the greek tongue, and whose learning was sufficiently superficial to prepare him for canonization, pronounced the doctrine of the antipodes a blasphemous heresy; and pope zachariah degraded a friar for indorsing it, and excommunicated all catholics who should believe it. the patriarch cyrille declared that neither he, nor the vandal clergy, nor the african clergy understood the latin language. st. hilary asserts from his personal knowledge that but few of the prelates in the ten provinces of asia preserved the knowledge of the true god. (_hilar, de synodis_. c. , p. ). it might reasonably be supposed that the ecclesiastical councils, composed of the most influential bishops, priests and abbots, would comprehend among their members many distinguished scholars, yet according to the authority of pope gregory ii., the councils at his time were composed of men, not only ignorant of letters, but of the scriptures. according to the testimony of sabinus, bishop of heraclea, the nicene bishops were "a set of illiterate, simple creatures that understood nothing," and cassian charges the egyptian monks of having ignorantly preached epicurean paganism as the gospel of christ. among the crowd of slaves, soldiers, lords and priests that thronged the convents, the sign of the cross, the sign of ignorance, was a general mode of executing contracts, as all could make it, though few could write their names. that the literary progress of the church has not kept pace with the progress of the world, will be attested by a few extracts from a work written by william hogan, formerly a catholic priest of philadelphia, comprising an essay entitled, "a synopsis of popery, as it was and as it is," and another entitled, "auricular confession and popish nunneries," published at hartford, by silas andrew and son, in --a work that may be profitably consulted by parents who educate their daughters at nunnery schools, and by gentlemen who contemplate forming matrimonial alliances with ladies who have been accomplished at such institutions. speaking of the ecclesiastical canons the author says: "these canons are inaccessible to the majority of the american people, even of theologians, and with the purport or meaning of them none but those who have been educated catholic priests have much or any acquaintance. he who argues with catholic priests must have had his education with them, he must be of them and from among them. he must know from experience that they will stop at no falsehood where the good of the church is concerned; he must know that they will scruple at no forgery when they desire to establish any point of doctrine, fundamentally or not fundamentally, which is not taught by the church; he must be aware that it is a standing rule with the popish priests, in all their controversies with protestants, to admit nothing and deny everything, and that if still driven into difficulty they will have recourse to the archives of the church, where they keep piles of decretals, canons, receipts, bulls, excommunications and interdicts, ready for all such emergencies, some of them dated from to years before they were written or thought of, showing more clearly than perhaps anything else the extreme ignorance of mankind between the third and ninth century, when these forgeries were palmed on the world." (synopsis, p. , ). again, he observes: "the majority of catholics in this country know nothing of the religion which they profess, and for which they are willing to fight, contend, and shed the blood of their fellow beings. i am not even hazarding an assertion when i say there is not one of them that has read the gospel through, or that knows any more about the religion he professes than he does about the koran of mohammed. he is told by the priest that christ established a church on earth; that it is infallible, and that he must submit implicitly to what its popes, priests and bishops teach, under pain of 'damnation.' this is all the great mass of catholics know of religion; this is all they are required to learn; and hence it is that these people are unacquainted with the pretensions of the pope, the intrigues of the jesuits, and the imposition practised on them by their bishops and priests." (_synopsis_, p. ). speaking of the theological education of the priests, he says: "during the four years i spent in the college of maynooth, they (the scriptures) formed no portion of the education of the students. it is my firm conviction, that out of the large number of students there for the ministry, there was not one who read the gospels through, nor even portions of them, except such as are found in detached passages, in works of controversy between catholics and protestants. until i went to college i scarcely ever heard of a bible. i know not of one in any parish of munster, except it may be a latin one, which each priest may or may not have, as he pleases. but i studied closely the holy fathers of the church; so did most of the students. we were taught to rely upon them as our sole guide in morals, and the only correct interpreters of the bible. a right of private judgment was entirely denied us, and represented as the source of multifarious errors. the bible, in fact, we had no veneration for. it was, in truth, but a dead letter in the college; it was a sealed book to us, though there were not an equal number of students who were obliged to study more closely the sayings, the sophistry, the metaphysics and mystic doctrines of those raving dreamers called holy fathers; many of whom, if now living would be deemed mad, and dealt with accordingly." (auric. confess., vol. , p. , ). but to return to the consideration of the monks. the pen of transcribers, so generally ignorant, and so grossly superstitious, could not render authentic manuscripts even when actuated by the best intention; and when we recollect that the task which required the exercise of an enlightened and vigorous intellect was devolved on the most diseased and infirm of the religious orders, the impossibility of its effectual performance will appear without a doubt. as ignorance could not transcribe masterly, so superstition would pervert intentionally. conscience paralyzed by bigotry, and the love of truth supplanted by a careful regard to the interests of the church, the copyists would esteem it a christian duty to omit such parts of a manuscript as militated against the truth of their religion; to corrupt such parts as might by perversion be made to administer to its support; and to interpolate such parts with occurrences and apparent incidental allusions to events, the omission of which was fatal to its credibility; and thus by a system of typographical frauds, deliberate falsehoods and artful perversions, contrive to make it appear that all jewish and pagan literature concurred in establishing catholicism. the classics, unlike the canonical scriptures, have been subjected to the purifying process of rigid criticism, and the monkish corruptions which once perverted the meaning, are in a great measure eradicated from modern editions. had the new testament been subjected to a similar ordeal, such for instance as the learned strauss, in his life of christ, instituted, infidels might have fewer objections to the gospels, and the credit of these sacred books be far better sustained than it has been by voluminous commentaries, declamatory sermons and conflicting polemical works, defending the grossest frauds and the boldest interpolations. the bigotry or fear of the church, which induced it to corrupt the works of ancient authors, led it also to wage an exterminating war against those profane productions which it could not satisfactorily answer. for this purpose the secular power was invoked, and laws were framed prescribing the severest penalty for those who should read or possess a pagan production. the persecution against philosophers and their libraries was carried on with such pious insanity that besides its causing piles of manuscripts to be destroyed, men of letters burned their elegant libraries, lest some volume contained in them should jeopardize their lives. young chrysostom, happening once to find a proscribed volume, gave himself up for lost. st. jerome, in order to deter his readers from perusing any of the heathen authors, declared he had been scourged by an angel for reading the productions of virgil. the orthodox theodosius, in the destruction of the alexandrian library, consigned to the flames the literary treasures of antiquity. the bare thought of the existence of works which baffled the talent and learning of the church to refute, irritated the sensitive piety of the monks beyond endurance. they pursued the masterly productions of celsus and porphery with an unscrupulousness which seemed to indicate that the annihilation of them was indispensable to the existence of christianity. after malice had ferreted every crevice where a proscribed volume could be secreted, and vengance had not left a vestige of any of them remaining, except what was quoted or perverted in the works of christian apologists, the church boasted that god had not left a work of hostile literature in existence. with not less blasphemy and bigotry has the same absurdity been echoed by dishonest, ignorant theologians of all ages. so wide and unsparing was the monkish war against classic literature, that it has left no work in existence belonging to the period of christ; and hence where knowledge is the most needed the historian finds the least; and where the facts might be expected to be the most abundant and of the clearest description, the wildest and most ridiculous fancies are presented. the necessity for this destruction proves the power of the works destroyed, and the alarm and weakness of the faith that destroyed them. beside the destructive hostility of the monks to the formidable literary obstacles which embarrassed the vindication of their theological subtleties, their zeal led them to perpetrate the grossest forgeries in order to manufacture historical data in their favor. prominent among the numerous instances of this disregard to truth, are the following passages conceded by all scholars to be entire fabrications. the passage in the works of phlegon, in which he is made to speak of a total eclipse of the sun and a simultaneous earthquake; a passage in macrobius, which represents the author as incidentally referring to the death of a son of his as having occurred in consequence of a jealous order issued by herod for the massacre of all children under two years old; the epistle of lentulus, prefect of judaea at the time of christ, who is represented as describing the person and character of christ, in a governmental despatch, which according to prefectorial custom was encumbent on him, in transmitting to rome a report of all important events occurring within the limits of his jurisdiction; the legend of the veronica handkerchief in which it is related how abgarus, king of edessa, sent ambassadors to christ to solicit the favor of his portrait, and how wiping his face with a handkerchief, and thereby impressing his features on it, politely accommodated the legation; the epistle of pontius pilate to the emperor tiberius, in which he is made to relate the alleged circumstances of the death and resurrection of christ; the fabulous inscriptions on two fabulous columns, said to be situated near tangiers, relating to a robber called joshua, son of nun; and all the passages found in josephus in reference to christ. origen, who wrote in the second century, complains that his own works had been altered; and the practice of this base species of dishonesty seems to have fearfully increased with the growth of the church. the monk jerome, in the fourth century, finding the versions of the scriptures which were received by the churches as authentic exceedingly conflicting, undertook to abate the scandal it caused, by compiling a bible with genuine text. the product of this laborious exertion was, however, so unsatisfactory to the theological tastes of the churches, or to the results of their critical examinations, that but few of them adopted it. although jerome's labors were but imperfectly appreciated during his life, yet, as he had materially approximated toward furnishing a catholic desideratum, the vulgate, which is a modification of his bible, was declared by the council of trent, in , to be "authentic in all lectures, disputations, sermons and expositions, and no one shall presume to reject it under any pretense whatever." but in attempting to execute this decree startling fact became evident that the copies of the vulgate, in consequence of the liberty which translators had taken with the text, essentially differed from one another; that each church believed in a different bible; that it was impossible to determine which divine book was the least corrupted; and that as the council, inspired by the holy ghost, had forgotten to designate which copy of the vulgate was the genuine one, it only increased the confusion it had attempted to remedy. if disbelief in the bible is infidelity, the greater number of the churches were actually in a situation which made them unconscious infidel conclaves. to relieve them from this perilous predicament, the pope appointed a learned committee to prepare a bible which should have genuine text. but the bible elaborated by this committee, not according with the pope's theological fancies or secret designs, was rejected. pope pius iv. next tried his hand at perfecting and correcting the scriptural text; but the task exceeding his learning and ingenuity, his efforts were alike unproductive of satisfactory results. he was followed by pope pius v., who also labored in vain. in pope sixtus v. made a bible which his judgment or prejudice pronounced to be authentic. determined that christendom should be reduced to the alternative of accepting his version, or having none, he anathematized all who should alter its text or reject his authority. but pope clement viii., not having the fear of his infallible predecessor's anathema before his eyes, made another bible, and promulgated it from his throne as genuine and authoritative, amid a heavy storm of vatican thunder, in which he consigned to the care of the devil and his angels all who should presume to correct the work of his infallible hands. a year had, however, scarcely elapsed when he was obliged to correct its glaring inconsistencies himself; incurring the vengeance of his own anathemas. notwithstanding an incessant tinkering for ages by the ablest theologians, to mend the numerous flaws in the catholic word of god, every well-informed romanist admits, that while all the previously received versions of the vulgate are too grossly corrupted to be defended, the one in present use is far from being perfect. cardinal bellarmine, who was deeply versed in biblical erudition, and who in life had obtained such an eminent degree of popularity for sanctity, that when he died a guard had to be placed over his corpse, to prevent the devout from robbing it of its garments--who wished to preserve or vend them as relics--declares that the most that can be said in favor of the received version is, that it is the best that has been made. the authorized english version of the holy scriptures, known as james' bible, is the product of forty-seven celebrated biblical scholars, after three years' labor. the manuscripts from which they made their translations being exceedingly corrupted and discordant, the renderings consequently were so conflicting and irreconcilable on any principle of philological or exegetical criticism, that in order to effect any agreement, and prevent the production of as many bibles as there were translators, they put the question concerning a disagreement to vote, and decided which was the correct rendering by the authority of a majority of suffrages. but this logic was not appreciated by dr. smith and bishop belson, to whose joint scrutiny the bible thus manufactured was afterwards submitted, and they accordingly subjected it to a further process of purification. while philological criticism, and investigations concerning the genuineness of the sacred text, have wrung from catholics the reluctant concession that the vulgate needs a revision, they have equally extorted from protestants the unwilling admission that their version is corrupted with undoubted forgeries. the doxology at the conclusion of the lord's prayer, the story of the pool of bethsaida, the story of the rich man and lazarus, and the story of the adulteress, are universally conceded by scholars to be wilful fabrications. the most distinguished among biblical scholars go further. bretschneider, the friend and confident of joseph ii. of austria, rejects the gospel of st. john. dr. lardner rejects the epistle to the hebrews, the epistle of st. james, the second epistle of st. peter, the second epistle of st. john, the epistle of st. jude, and the book of revelations. dr. evanson rejects the gospel of st. matthew, the gospel of st. mark, the gospel of st. luke, the epistle to the ephesians, the epistle to the colossians, the epistle to the romans, the first epistle of st. peter and the first epistle of st. john. the greek testament comprehends , words, yet such is the number of mistakes, perversions, forgeries and interpolations in the existing manuscripts, that in comparing the documents together , various readings are detected; showing that the manuscripts from which the new testament is translated, are not correct in one word out of six. these discrepancies, affecting the mere spelling of a word in some instances, and, in others, the sense of a passage, are of all degrees of importance. in tischendorf's new testament, published by tauchnitz, at leipzig, in english, and for sale by the new york booksellers, we find the following: "but the greek text of the apostolic writings, since its origin in the first century, has suffered many a mischance at the hands of those who have used and studied it.... the authorized version, like luther's, was made from a greek text which erasmus in , and robert stephens in , had formed from manuscripts of later date than the tenth century.... since the sixteenth century greek manuscripts have been discovered, of far greater antiquity than those of erasmus and stephens; as well as others in latin, syriac, coptic and gothic, into which languages the sacred text was translated, between the second and fourth centuries.....scholars are much divided in opinion as to the readings which most exactly convey the word of god." (_introduction_, p. , ). when mistakes in a manuscript arise, from the ignorance or incompetency of the copyist, they invalidate its authority; when they arise from his carelessness, they are proofs that he entertained no reverence for it; and when they occur from a deliberate intention on his part to corrupt and to interpolate it, they are demonstrations that he did not believe in its divine inspiration. that the religious orders did not believe in the divine inspiration of the holy scriptures, is as undeniable as it is that they deliberately and intentionally marred all the biblical manuscripts that passed through their hands. the conviction is equally irresistible that those who sanction the corruptions of the sacred text by using them as authority, and those who defend them in defiance of the irrefragable proof of their spurious character, forfeit all claim to a reputation of common honesty. there is another class of forgeries perpetrated for the good of the church, to which i will briefly advert. of this description is the decretal epistle of constantine the elder, addressed to pope sylvester--the foundation of the pope's claim to temporal sovereignty; and also the creed of athanasius, forged two hundred years after his death, and which gennadius, patriarch of constantinople, upon first reading, pronounced to be the work of a drunken man. all ranks of the church seemed to have become infatuated with an ambition to be forgers. pope stephen ii. forged a letter, and attributed its authorship to the spirit of st. peter. in this document, according to gibbon, "the apostle assures his adopted sons, the king, the clergy, and the nobles of france, that dead in the flesh, he is still active in the spirit; that they now hear and must obey the voice of the founder and guardian of the roman church; that the virgins, the saints, and all the host of heaven, unanimously urge the request, and will confess the obligation; that riches, victory and paradise will crown their pious enterprise, and that eternal damnation will be the penalty if they suffer his tomb, his temple, and his people to fall into the hands of the perfidious saracens." (_dec_. vol. v., chap, xlix., p. .) the evidences of similar frauds are numerous. all the letters and decretals of clementine are spurious. but few of the numerous works ascribed to pope gregory the great are genuine. the first epistle of clement to the corinthians is egregeously corrupted and interpolated; his second epistle to the corinthians, is so much mutilated that but a fragment of it remains; his autobiography, in which he is made to take a journey with st. peter; and all his apostolic canons, are entire fabrications. the apocalypse was rejected as spurious at the council of laodicea, by the seven churches to which it was addressed, and the sentence was almost universally confirmed by the churches of christendom. sirmund shows that the nicene canons have been corrupted, altered, abridged, and forged to accommodate them to the designs of the church. (_tom_. iv., p. - ). to establish a historical basis for some pious imposition, the the letters of bishops, decrees of councils, and bulls of popes have been forged, distorted, marred, interpolated or destroyed. volume after volume has been written and falsely attributed to the pen of some distinguished author, in order to obtain respect and authority for an absurd ecclesiastical claim or arbitrary usurpation. without moral principle, and intent only on supporting the ambitious pretensions of the pope, the religious orders, at the suggestion of interest, scrupled not to destroy the finest models of literary taste, and to perpetrate the most audacious forgeries. what could not militate against the credit of their dogmas, or obstruct the consummation of their designs, or what might, by an artful adulteration be made accessory to them, they might piously spare; but whatever was in its nature too inflexibly inimical to the success of them, they labored to annihilate. the unavoidable deduction from the existence of the monkish forgeries is, that every doctrine for which they have been fabricated to prove, is false; and that every doctrine and event for which they have been manufactured to disprove, is true. the mutilation and destruction of ancient authors by the religious orders is a positive admission that such works were fatal to their claims; the attempt to manufacture artificial proof by corrupting and interpolating them, is an acknowledgment that the successful vindication of their creed and pretensions required proof which did not exist; and the cargoes of their forgeries, each instance of which being a demonstration of these assertions, and consequently an undeniable objection to the validity of the authority upon which they rest their claims, show the vast amount of labor the monks have undergone to disprove their own doctrines, and destroy their own credibility. in the revival of learning, inaugurated by profane genius, the monastic orders, which possessed the treasures of classic literature, took, in general, no active part. the literary fires which smouldered in their institutions cast but a sickly glare upon the darkness within, and the feeble rays could not be expected to penetrate the massive walls of these huge castles of ignorance. resembling more a taper placed under a bushel than a light set upon a hill, they left the surrounding region enveloped in midnight gloom. the manuscripts transcribed or perverted by the monks were stowed away as useless rubbish. at length the holy charm which, for ages, had bound the church in stupid ignorance, was happily dissolved. pope nicholas v., catching a spark of the fire which burned in the breast of his lay associates, such as cosmo medici, his own, too, became ignited. unconscious or regardless of the liberalizing tendency of classical literature, he became enthusiastic in its cause, and inaugurated a pursuit which has exposed the forgeries and legends of the catholic church to scorn and contempt. whatever were his private views, his public example and assertions indicate that he had arrived at a firm conviction that the papal chair would not soon again be filled with another friend to the classics. diligently improving the auspicious moment, he collected the dusky and mouldering manuscripts from the monasteries, while his coadjutors sent vessels to gather them from abroad. by the united labors of the pope and his opulent laymen, respectable libraries were formed, and the world was enlightened by recovered versions of xenophon, diodorus, polybius, thuycidides and other eminent authors. the apprehensions of nicholas, suggested probably by his knowledge of the nature and past conduct of the church, were too well founded not to be confirmed by subsequent history. the pagan authors of greece and rome, speaking in the clear tones of reason and philosophy, could not subserve the purposes of ecclesiastical fraud and intolerance. the dark conspiracy to deceive and enslave mankind, and the systematized measures to keep the world in ignorance, which constitutes a permanent feature of catholic polity, could derive no aid from a liberal diffusion of pagan erudition. hence leo x., who is ranked among the most generous of the pontifical patrons of the classics, prohibited the translation of them into the vernacular language. but it may be alleged as an exception to the usual hatred manifested by the church to the cause of education, that the pope did, at times, establish colleges and universities. this fact is undeniably true. pope six-tus iv. established several universities; but he required from each, for a charter, , ducats; and for each collegiate title and office, from , to , ducats, pope innocent iii. also founded a university; but it was on condition that he received , scudi for its charter. he also very generously created twenty-six secretaryships, and a host of other offices, to assist the labors of education, but he sold appointments to them at very exorbitant prices. pope alexander vi. also founded a university, but it was in consideration of a magnificent bonus; and he even further displayed his magnanimity by nominating eighty writers of popish briefs, and selling the appointments at scudi each. but after all what was the object of these institutions? was it to advance the capacities of individual man? was it to enlighten society at large? not at all. guisot says: "for the development of the clergy, for the instruction of the priesthood, she [the church] was actively alive; to promote these she had her schools, her colleges, and all other institutions which the deplorable state of society would permit. these schools and colleges, it is true, were all theological, and destined for the clergy; and, though from the intimacy between the civil and religious orders they could not but have some influence on the rest of the world, it was very slow and indirect." (_gen. hist. civ_., sect, vi., p. ). guizot might have added with truth, that even for her own clergy the church never tolerated an educational institution without receiving an exorbitant pecuniary consideration, nor appointed a professor, or any other officer, without receiving pay for it. dens, in his "_systematic theology_" reasons thus: "because forgers of money, and other disturbers of the state, are justly punished with death, therefore also are heretics, who are forgers of the faith, and, as experience shows, greatly disturb the state." ( dens, , , ). if this logic is sound, it is difficult to perceive how popes, cardinals, monks and priests can avoid conceding justice the right of putting _them_ to death, as by the universal testimony of history and the acknowledgment of the ablest catholic authors, they have been forgers of the faith; and, as they have been greater forgers than protestants, they may, according to their own logic, be more justly put to death. but this we should be sorry to witness. the efforts of the church to manufacture evidence in support of gratuitous assumptions, which so clearly disproves what it asserts at every step; sinks its character and authority into such utter insignificance; and in proportion to the warmth of its zeal adds weight to the contempt it has earned, might be considered unworthy the notice of sober reason, and left to the crushing jeer of its own ludicrousness. yet when its polluting finger presumes to touch the sacred page of history; when it would annihilate all historical authority by base interpolations, and load the shelves of libraries with its spurious trash, it has invaded a province sacred to the rights of the world; a province in which truth, reason, and human progress have a deep interest, and which must be protected against the intrusion of malignant feet. from the monastic vows and regulations, we might be agreeably surprised if the literary productions of those who were governed by them were anything but models of absurdity and puerility. it would naturally be suspected that the ideas of the monks would be shaded by the gloom of their melancholy abode, contracted by the influence of their solitary confinement, and rendered misshapen by the habit of conversing exclusively with their own meditations; and that their literary productions would be rife with all the inventions to which bigotry and superstition could prompt, and with all the craft and unscrupulousness that could serve the purposes of unpolished and unnatural fraternities, isolated from society, absolved from the ties and obligations of humanity, and exclusively devoted to the defense and aggrandizement of an organization which aimed at monopolizing all secular rights, immunities and privileges, in order to command the dominion and luxuries of the world. this reasonable presumption we shall find too well confirmed for the credit of human nature, in those legends and theological disquisitions which have often puzzled the credulous, but much oftener curled the lips of the more enlightened into a smile of philosophical contempt. palpably fictitious, rarely possessing the merit of ingenuity, and, in general, absolutely puerile, yet have the monkish legends been consecrated as divine in the catholic mass-book, enforced upon the acceptance of the obstinate by the terrors of the inquisition, and sometimes mistaken by history for actual events. this ludicrous mass consists in part of magnified and distorted events of true history, and in part of personages and details entirely spurious. it is elaborately ornamented, or degraded with circumstancial accounts of miracles which were never performed, with reports of debates which never took place, and with details of battles which were never fought. faithful only in transcribing their own vitiated taste and unscrupulous conscience; and decorating their narratives with coarse scenes of blood and bigotry, of death and horror, of hell and demons, they have furnished a record of absurdities, of a depth of hypocrisy, of an audacity in fabrication, and of a total depravity in principle unparalleled in the history of deception and imposition. had they, like sir thomas moore, in his description of eutopia, or no place, described a people which were no people, a city which was invisible, and a river which was waterless, they could scarcely have been less imaginary, though it must be conceded that they are less entertaining and instructive. passing over the polemical rubbish, the absurd topics of discussion and the ludicrous logic of the monastic orders, which would be too tedious for a reader of the nineteenth century, we will briefly allude to some of their amusing legends, which have been consecrated as sacred history in the devotional books of the church. the actual sufferings and deaths of the primitive christians, they have grotesquely magnified, and invented fanciful modes of torture, which never could have entered the more cultivated brain of a roman emperor. according to the story of these visionists, when a pagan female embraced christianity, she was often compelled to decide whether she valued her virtue higher than she did her religion; and, when the inflexibility of her faith imperiled her innocence, a divine power always interposed, and miraculously rescued her from a dangerous predicament. the male converts were subjected to similar modes of ingenious torture, a young saint, in the passion of his first love, according to their authority, was once chained naked to a bed of flowers, and in this hapless and exposed condition, wontonly assaulted by a beautiful courtezan; but he saved his chastity by biting off his tongue, st. cecilia made a vow of perpetual virginity, but her father disregarding the unnatural obligation, betrothed her to a prince. in spite of all remonstrances to the contrary, the marriage was on the eve of being consummated, when an angel interposed, and, after satisfactorily adjusting matters between the nuptial parties, rewarded the groom for the relinquishment of his bride, and the virgin for the obstinacy of her resolution, by crowning them both with wreaths of spiritual roses and lilies, culled from heaven's flower garden. sometime after the eventful occurences of this wedding party, amachius, a roman prefect, commanded cecilia to sacrifice to the gods. her piety obliging her to disobey the royal injunction, it was determined that the majesty of the law should be vindicated by having her boiled three days and three nights in a pot of water. the coldness of divine grace however sufficiently impregnated her body to protect it from injury. as her piety had rendered her invulnerable to the effects of boiling water, the emperor ordered the executioner to try the virtue of a ponderous axe. accordingly she was laid upon the block; the executioner gave her neck three scientific strokes, but perceiving her head still attached by its integuments, desisted from further effort convinced that the accomplishment of the task exceeded his constitutional vigor. the miraculous feat of this saint in inventing music, a long time after all nations had acquired some proficiency, at least, in its principles, has often been the theme of pious historians, orators and poets. st. george slew a dragon ( a lizard ), which was about to swallow a king's daughter. st. dennis walked two miles after his head had been cut off. st. john of god displayed so much whimsical zeal that he was supposed to be demented, and was placed in a lunatic asylum. st. hubert went on a hunting excursion, and seeing a stag with a cross between its antlers, became converted by the vision into a bishop. he received a key from st. peter, which is still preserved in st. hubert's monastery, at ardennes, and is regarded as an infallible remedy for the hydrophobia. st. patrick found a lost boy, whom the hogs had nearly devoured. on touching the mutilated frame with his holy hand, it recovered the lost flesh which had been digested by the swine, and stood before the saint perfectly proportioned in all its parts, and without a wound. this charitable saint once fed , persons on one cow, two stags, and two wild boars. respecting, however, the rights of property, and perceiving that to be benevolent at another's expense was a suspicious species of morality, he so adroitly contrived the management of his miracle that the cow which had been eaten up by the people, and which belonged to a poor widow, was seen the next day well and hearty, and as comfortably grazing in her usual pastures as if nothing had happened. st. xavier, while traversing the ocean, lost overboard a crucifix. on landing, a crab brought it in his claw, and reverently laid it at his feet. the devil, assuming the shape of a charming woman, once made indelicate proposals to him. this piece of impudence so enraged the saint that he spit into his satanic majesty's angelic face. the devil, being a gentleman, was so disgusted at this coarse vulgarity, that he ever afterward shunned xavier's society. st. anthony of padua, after exhausting the strength of the catholic arguments in favor of consubstantiation, in a debate with a heretic, finally converted his antagonist by an appeal to the understanding of a horse. holding up the host before the animal, he addressed it thus: "in virtue and in the name of thy creator, i command thee, o horse to come, and with humility adore thy god." the horse, at the request of the saint, instantly left the corn which it was eating, advanced to the host and fell upon its knees before it. st. andrew being assaulted by the devil with an axe, and by a company of imps with clubs, called for assistance on st. john, who responded with a regiment of angels; and capturing the devils, chained them to the ground. at this exploit st. andrew laughed. the emperor maximus, having cut st. apia tell into ten pieces, the angel gabriel put him together again. this contest of disintegration and recomposition was carried on with much spirit between maximus and gabriel. ten times a day for ten consecutive days was the saint cut into ten pieces by the malice of the one, and put together again by the anatomical skill of the other. st. martin of tours, the patron saint of drunkards, whose festival was formerly celebrated by the devout with banqueting, hilarity and carousals, once, on a drunken frolic, divided his garments with a poor soldier. at night, in a dream, he beheld christ wearing the identical garment he had given away. his mind became so impressed, probably deranged, that he turned catholic. the face of this saint was so sanctimonious that it once paralyzed the arm of a robber, which was raised to give him a death blow. he wrought many miracles; could raise the dead to life. clovis, after his gothic victory, made him a rich donation; and as the hero's war steed was in the saint's stable, he proposed besides, to redeem it with the generous sum of ducats, but the pious horse refused to move until the sum was doubled. st. anthony saw a centaur in the desert. finding the corpse of the hermit paul in the wilderness, and being too much prostrated through fasting to bury it, two lions seeing his difficulty, politely offered their assistance; and after digging a grave and depositing in it the hermit's corpse, respectfully vanished away. st. athanasius compliments him on account of his holy abhorence of clean water, and for not having suffered his feet to be contaminated with it except in cases of unavoidable necessity. ( _vet. ant_, c. ), st. palladus, seeing a hyena standing near his cave, addressing it, asked: "what's the matter?" "holy father," replied the beast, "the odor of thy sanctity has reached me. i killed a sheep last night, and want to confess and get absolution." st. beuno caused the earth to open and swallow a disappointed lover, who had cut off the head of his mistress for her having refused to marry him. he then, by saying mass over the remains of the unfortunate lady, caused her head and body to reunite, and life to reanimate her frame. st. nepomuk, refusing to disclose the secret confessions of a queen, to her husband who suspected her of infidelity, was doomed to suffer death by drowning. this saint was canonized by pope innocent iii., and his tomb is shown to this day. but unfortunately for the infallibility of his holiness, it has been indisputably proved that no such person as st. nepomuk ever existed. a priest once travelling along a solitary road, heard a most harmonious sound proceeding from a beehive. on approaching it he discovered that the bees were adoring the eucharist, and singing psalms to its honor. a monk residing at the monastery of tebenoe was visited by an angel who dictated to him a liturgy. this divine work is preferred by the learned cassion. st. ambrose, piously inhuman, carefully instilled into the youthful minds of theodosius and gratian the spirit and maxims of religious persecution. he taught them that the worship of idols was a crime against god, and that an emperor is guilty of the crime he neglects to punish. all the intolerant laws and horrible religious butcheries which disgraced the administrations of these princes, and their successors, originated in their catholic education. the same saint justified the conduct of a bishop who had been convicted by the court of setting fire to a jewish synagogue. (_tom_, ii. epistle xl. p. ). st. augustine, whose most conspicuous virtue was an uncompomising hatred of heretics, warmly commended the inhuman edicts of honorius against the donatists, which proscribed and banished several thousands of their priests, stripped them of their possessions, deprived their laymen of the rights of citizens, distracted the land with tumult and blood, and drove a large number of them to seek relief by invoking martyrdom. the inhuman saint rejoiced at the despair and madness which shortened the lives of these unfortunate persons, as it would hereafter lessen their torments in hell. st. jerome justly denounced the disgraceful practice of the clergy in defrauding the natural heirs out of their inheritance, and vindicated the governmental edicts to obstruct this systematic plunder. but his brother monks recriminated; charged him with being the lover of paula, of profanely bestowing on her the title of mother-in-law of god, of assigning himself the chief place in her will, of inducing her to abandon her infant son at rome, of exercising an undue influence on her beautiful daughter, and of inducing the mother to consecrate her to perpetual virginity, so that he might encounter no obstacles in inheriting her immense possessions, in which was comprehended the city of necropolis. to these charges he replied that he was merely the steward of the poor. with the fortune of paula he built four monasteries. he was bitterly opposed to st chrysostom, who boldly denounced the corruption and licentiousness of the clergy and imperial court. readily and maliciously he coincided with the opinion of theophilus, that chrysostom had delivered his soul to the devil to be adulterated; and when zeal in the cause of virtue had brought upon the head of chrysostom the wrath of the emperor and the court, and he was incarcerated in a dungeon, these two lights of the church had the decency to regret that some punishment more adequate to his guilt was not inflicted. st. cyril, of alexandria, piously lusted after temporal power, and, as the patriotic novitians obstructed his designs, he closed their churches, took forcible possession of their sacred utensils, plundered the dwelling of theapentus, their bishop; and then seizing on the jewish synagogue, drove the jews from the city and pillaged their houses. the governor interposed; but five hundred armed monks surrounded him and attempted to murder him. hypatia, a lady celebrated for her personal charms, unblemished character, and extraordinary literary acquirements, was, on account of her novitian proclivities, assaulted by the holy forces of st. cyril, dragged from her carriage, and punctured to death with tiles. the enumeration of the fables of the monks, and of the atrocious acts of canonized saints, might be continued until it filled huge volumes; but well-informed catholics will be thankful that this notice is so brief. the missil, the glories of mary and other catholic compendia, some of which consist of fifty folio volumes, will satisfy the more curious. the profound homage paid to the monks for supposed sanctity, and the inquisitorial terrors which were brought to bear in favor of their frauds, so blunted public perception to truth that the fictitious events and personages invented by one age were believed by the succeeding, until the church became the simple dupe of its own forgeries, and self-cursed by accepting, as matters of fact, the fables and impositions with which it had humbugged former ages. meldegg, catholic professor of the theological faculty of freiburg, affords the following testimony in favor of what has been stated: "the old breviary," says he, "crammed full of fictitious or much-colored anecdotes of saints, with passages of indecorous import, requires a thorough revision.... some masses are founded on stories not sufficiently proved, or palpably ficticious, as the mass of the _lancea christi_, the _inventio orusis, &c_." the ludicrousness of the monastic vow of silent contemplation is visible in the misshapen ideas of the monks; its pernicious tendency, in the frauds, perversions, distortions and interpolation which it has led them to perpetrate; its bigotry, in the wide destruction of ancient literature to which it has incited them; its absurdness, in the puerile and contemptible productions which it has induced them to elaborate; and its immorality, in that coarseness and vulgarity in their literature, so offensive to a sense of propriety, and which sometimes makes an allusion to their works a matter of reluctance. chapter vi. the monastic vow of poverty the monachal vows which we have considered in the foregoing chapters were assumed by all the religious orders prior to the thirteenth century. at that period orders were inaugurated to assist in the administration of the public affairs of the church. as these orders assumed obligations incompatible with the observance of silence and seclusion, the vows imposing them were not enjoined. but the vow of poverty, which will be the subject of the present chapter, and the vow of celibacy and obedience, which will hereafter be considered, were assumed by all the religious orders, both antecedent and subsequent to the thirteenth century. the vow of poverty embraced an unqualified abjuration of all right to acquire or hold individual property, but granted the privilege of owning property in a corporate capacity. this privilege was, however, variously restricted by the terms of different monastic charters. the carmelites and the augustines were permitted to hold such an amount of real estate as would be sufficient for their support; the dominicans were limited to the possession of personal property; while the franciscans were not allowed to hold either real estate or personal property. the vow of poverty assumed by the monks was adopted either from the instigations of an artful policy, to acquire wealth with the reputation of despising it, or from a conviction that poverty was a blessing and wealth an evil. if the first hypothesis is correct, the assumption of the vow was exceedingly reprehensible; if the second, it was absolutely absurd. a condition of poverty, abstractly considered, is a matter of neither praise nor censure. it is sometimes a source of degredation; often of crime, and always of inconvenience and embarrassment. its general tendency is to weaken in man his inborn sense of personal independence; to debase his mind with notions of fictitious inferiority; to degrade his social dignity by inducing sycophantic and obsequious habits; and to lead him to sacrifice his conscious equality to the demands of artificial rank. the incessant toil imposed by poverty on the energies of the poor obdurates their nature; and, allowing no interval for mental culture, permits nothing to interrupt or soften its tendency. the mortifying difficulties experienced by this class of society to obtain, by honest labor, a subsistence for themselves and their natural dependents, have sometimes led them to become depredators upon society, when their constitutional principles, unwarped by indigence, would have secured their obedience to law and their labors for the public good. graces have been lost in brothels, and talents extinguished on scaffolds, which, had tolerable means protected against the cravings of hunger, might have added lustre to the female character, and heroes, statesmen and scholars to the scroll of fame. poverty begetting despair, and despair destroying hope, the incentive to action, the powers of genius sunk into the torpidity of stupefaction, and the strength of a lion slumbered in the inactivity of a sloth. the chill which poverty breathes over the mind is as unfriendly to the unfolding of the intellectual germs, as the icy atmosphere of winter is to the fructification of vegetable seed. the poet or philosopher, hoveled in penury, without books or scientific instruments, with spare meals and gloomy forebodings, never creates his brightest gem, nor solves his profoundest problem. however sweetly burns may sing or otway melt, or however importantly other sons of indigence may have contributed to the augmentation of the volume of science and literature, yet the world has never heard their sweetest song, nor read their brightest period; for the groan of penury has marred the harmony of the one, and the tear of want has dimmed the lustre of the other. as a condition of poverty is, in the abstract, a subject of neither praise nor blame, so also is a condition of wealth. wealth, however, is the ablest means of advancing individual and social progress, as well as the sole remedy for the evils of poverty. if it cannot be adduced as a ground of esteem or of respectability, or as an apology for the ignorance, stupidity, pomposity, vanity and vulgarity with which it may adventitiously be associated, yet, as it amplifies the means of beneficence, and protects the weakness of human nature against temptation arising from indigence, its honest acquisition is always consistent with the severest principles of rectitude; and its pursuit is recommended by the honorable pride of personal responsibility, the motives of prudence and forecast, and the consideration of every domestic and social obligation. without its aid the world would have remained in a state of primal barbarism; the commercial intercourse of nations, the first element of civilization and the principal source of national prosperity, power and greatness, would never have been known; agricultural, manufacturing, mechanical and mining interests, unstimulated by the lucrative traffic of supplying a foreign demand for surplus domestic production, would never have been extensively developed; the knowledge, the exotic luxuries, and the improvements in the comforts and conveniences of civilized life derived from international trade, could never have been obtained; the great bond of the amity of nations, and the power created by the pecuniary advantages of exchanging with one-another the products of their different climates, and which, by dissipating mutual prejudices, suspicion, vanity and self-conceit, has united them in friendly and beneficial intercourse, would never have existed; and, as the first altars were erected for the exposure of merchandise for sale, as the first offerings were the currency by which goods were purchased, penalties satisfied, salaries paid, and amity and friendship expressed; and, as the first temples were market-houses built for the accommodation of the traffic of the caravans, and to protect the goods against plundering barbarians, who understood not the conventional rights of property, had it not been for the fact that in the pursuit of wealth, communities felt the importance of establishing convenient centres of trade and modes of exchange, the ceremonies of religion would never have been invented. ( see heeron's historical researches, translated by bancroft). as neither a condition of poverty nor a condition of wealth is a subject of praise nor censure; but, as the former inflicts on humanity its worst evils, and the latter confers on it incalculable advantages, a vow of poverty can have no innate sanctity to commend it, but must have all constituents that can render it objectionable. when it is further considered that there is a modifying reciprocity incessantly acting between the conditions of the different members of the human family, making the prosperity of one advantageous to all, and the indigence of one disadvantageous to all, we may find not only a selfish, but also a patriotic incentive in availing ourselves of any pecuniary right of our being. no one can be indigent without decreasing the wealth of another, nor opulent without contributing to the subsistence of others, nor industrious without adding to the sum of national wealth, nor indolent without consuming that for which he renders no equivalent. now, as the vow of poverty is inconsistent with the virtues and obligations created by the mutual dependence and reciprocal influence of the condition and circumstances of mankind on each other; as it fosters all the evils that demoralize the social state; as it multiplies the number of paupers, discourages industry, sanctifies pernicious influences, and burdens society with the support of indolent and useless members, it is at variance with the interests of man and the prosperity of government. national wealth is the aggregate of individual wealth. the greater is the amount of individual wealth in a nation, and the more equally it is distributed among the inhabitants, the less are the evils of poverty, the more independent and responsible are the citizens, the more energetically are the agricultural, mineral, manufacturing, and commercial interests developed, the more generally and intimately are the interests of the people interwoven with the fabric of the government, the greater will be the nation's prosperity, the more formidable its arms, the more peaceful its internal condition, and the more durable its prosperity. a reformatory institution, to be efficacious, must be adapted to the nature of man and his social condition. its principles must be his principles. its measures must tend to aid his fullest development. to accomplish this object it must seek to abolish all restrictions on his rights, to remove whatever vitiates his sense of independence, to incite his industry by making labor honorable and its rewards certain, and to annul the immunities, exemptions, privileges and monopolies which degrade the masses by indigence and invidious distinctions, and corrupt the few by luxury and fictitious dignity. but the monachal institution, which sanctions poverty, the most prolific source of crime; which denounces individual wealth, the great element of civilization, and of individual and national improvement; which inculcates indolence, the parasite that feeds on the vitals of society; which discourages the avocations of industry, the parent of personal independence and responsibility; and which aims at a monopoly of wealth, itself the source of political inequality, of despotic government and of popular servitude--can advance no claim to a magnanimous mission. to esteem it a virtue to be poor, pleasing to infinite intelligence to renounce the best means of self-improvement, criminal to protect human integrity against the assaults originating in a condition of poverty, are ideas of such an absurd nature that the inference can scarcely be avoided, that the source whence they originated must have been utterly destitute, not only of moral principle, but of common sense. but whenever conduct becomes enigmatical, and principles are avowed contradictory to human reason, passion and interests, an ordinary knowledge of the craft of ambition is apt to suggest a suspicion, that these singular abnegations have not sprung from a sanctity that has elevated the avowers above human nature, but from the injustice of their designs and the profundity of their dissimulation. conscious that candor would be defeat, they have endeavored to accomplish objects by pretending to oppose them. the church never being too strongly fortified in holiness not to practise the advantageous vices of the world, has invariably been betrayed into the adoption of this crafty policy; but, always fanatical, she has never been discreet. not only has she denied her real designs, but, in order to conceal them, has imposed vows of such an absurd and inconsistent import, as could not fail to reveal the hypocrisy and craft that dictated them. the vow of poverty was not assumed to become indigent, but to become opulent. it was a financial manoeuvre, designed to facilitate the routine of business; and it proved a very efficacious means of self-emolument. it won a reputation for the holy beggars, that humbled imperial dignity at their feet, theodosius refused sustenance until a monk who had anathematized him, nullified it by absolution. the empress of maximus, in her own palace, at her own table, esteemed it a high honor to be permitted to wait as a servant on st. martin of tours. while the assumption of unnatural vows invested the mendicant monks with the credit and importance of supernatural beings, and elevated them above the dignity of emperors and empresses, it opened to their avarice the treasures of the world, and enabled them not only to fill their coffers with the people's money, but to win their blessing in the act of defrauding them. such was the haughty indifference of the abbot pambo, who seemed to imagine, with his church, that he was the owner of the wealth of the world, that when malaria, a rich sinner, presented him a donation of plate for his monastery, and intimated that its weight was about three hundred pounds, replied: "offer you this to me or to god? if to god, who weighs the mountains in a balance, he need not be informed of the weight of your plate." the real design and value of the monastic vows was once forcibly expressed by a benedictine monk, who remarked: "my vow of poverty has given me one hundred thousand crowns a year; my vow of obedience has raised me to the rank of a sovereign prince." an incident occurred in paris, in relation to two ecclesiastical dignitaries which illustrates the cupidity and unapostolic character of the church. innocent ix, and st. thomas aquinas having met together in paris, and a capacious plate, piled with gold, the proceeds of the sale of indulgences, being brought into the room in which they were seated, the enraptured pope exclaimed: "behold, the days are past when the church could say, gold and silver have i none." but the saint truthfully remarked: "the days are also past when the church could say to the paralytic, arise and walk." prætaxtatus, a pagan philosopher, viewing the princely revenues of the church, declared that if he could become bishop of rome, it might even remove his scruples about believing in christianity. assuming the strongest possible obligations to maintain a perpetual condition of absolute poverty, the monks yet found it compatible with the principles and teachings of the church, to convert their religious organizations into a financial corporation, and to conceal its character and design under a veil of angelic piety. the wealth which they apparently scorned, they unscrupulously amassed; the power which they scoffed at as profane, they attempted to monopolize; to whatever they seemed the most indifferent, they the most sedulously labored to acquire; and whatever they professed with their lips they violated in their practice. this consummate hypocrisy might be condemned by the profane sceptic, but the _means_ crowned the _end_ with too high a degree of success not to be justified by the piety of the religious orders. the measures and designs of this false and crafty policy harmonized too well with the pretensions of the pope, and furnished his purposes with too able and ingenious an auxiliary, not to command his fostering care and protection. equal in duplicity and rapaciousness, he exempted the mendicant orders from all secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, privileged them to demand alms without restriction, invested them with the exclusive power of selling indulgences, and conferred on them the lucrative prerogative of accepting legacies under the evasive name of offerings. by this munificent lavishment of spiritual favors, the mendicant orders soon found themselves transported from an apparent condition of pauperism to a real condition of princely wealth and power; enjoying at the same time all the sympathy that indigence could excite, and all the luxury that money could purchase. exempted from secular jurisdiction, they were empowered to plunder, ravish and murder with impunity; privileged to demand alms of all, they were the masters of the fortunes of all; endowed with the exclusive power of vending indulgences, they enjoyed a monopoly of the most lucrative trade that was ever projected; and, allowed to receive legacies, they were enabled, after having wheedled the devout out of their treasure while in health, to take advantage of their dotage, and to stand over their dying pillow, and dictate the terms of their last testament to the advantage of the church, and to the disadvantage of natural heirs. avarice, like the cormorant, is insatiable; the more it is gorged, the keener is its appetite; and this rapacious demon having taken complete possession of the monastic body, every dollar that its craft wrung from the devout only inflamed its greediness the more. when it had exhausted the gold of a penitent, its covetous eye became fascinated by his land; and, what avarice craved, financial sagacity quickly perceived an available method of obtaining. the church possessing no inherent moral vitality, sank with the middle ages into barbarism; her power was then supreme, but insecurity of life and property prevailed, and under her auspices temporal power degenerated to a system of rapine and plunder. had she been divine, she would then have beamed as a lone star on a tempestuous ocean; but being earthy, she resembled the other earthy compounds; nor could she well be distinguished from the barbarians and savages with whom she mingled, except by her imperfect notions of morality and justice, and her superior financial skill in speculating on public calamity. the barons, in the support of their interminable wars, had taxed their subjects to an extent which produced general dissatisfaction. as the monasteries enjoyed inviolability and freedom from taxation, they offered the disaffected a refuge from an oppressive taxation, if they would become lay monastic members, and convey their worldly goods to the church. a wish to inhale the supposed holy atmosphere of the monasteries, to partake of their luxuries, to enjoy the indulgence they accorded to the commission of sin, to evade an impoverishing taxation, and at the same time to retain some degree of personal freedom, induced wealthy persons of both sexes to conclude contracts with the monasteries, by which they became penniless, wholly dependent for subsistence on them, and irrevocably subjected to their despotic domination. beside this shrewd speculation on public calamity, the excitement and irruption of the crusades afforded the monks another opportunity for the exercise of their financial skill. with the instinctive foresight of cupidity, they had perceived the pecuniary advantages which would accrue to their order in the course of the holy war about to be inaugurated; and as they had fanned its first sparks into a general conflagration, they could hardly have any conscientious scruples in remunerating themselves, by concluding such sharp and profitable bargains as occasion presented and vows facilitated. they well knew the commercial art of bartering that which was worthless for that which was valuable; and of advancing the market price of an article by a monopoly of it, or depressing its value by increasing the supply beyond the demand. in consequence of the public excitement real estate became greatly depressed in value, and holy war-horses, clubs, lances, battle-axes, and other sacred instruments of destruction, proportionally advanced in price. the sagacious providence of the monks having in advance accumulated vast military stores, very obligingly accommodated the devout crusader, by exchanging an inconsiderable portion of them for a very considerable tract of his land. by such operations the church obtained very extensive domains in exchange for objects of trifling value, or for very inadequate sums of money. the success of the sacerdotal financiers becoming notorious, land speculation grew into a contagious mania. even kings came into the market to buy up the domains of their deluded vassels. the competition between monks and monarchs was as great as it was amusing; but sacerdotal craft was the more successful negotiator. the oil with which the priests had been anointed at their ordination was supposed to endow them with the power of bestowing blessings and curses at will, and the high reputation for sanctity which they had acquired by vows of absolute poverty, conferred advantages of trade on them which crowns and sceptres could not command. kings could purchase only with money; but the monasteries had an exhaustless bank of indulgences, of parting blessings, of promised prayers, and of promised masses for departed souls. this bogus currency may provoke the levity of the profane, but it was, nevertheless, prized by the saints above the value of silver or gold, and held by the monasteries at its highest marketable price. with the command of such unlimited resources, the monasteries could successfully outbid princes, and purchase without impoverishment what monarchs could not without bankruptcy. with an air of piety and benevolence, but with an unscrupulousness that regarded neither truth nor principle, the monks invented every fiction, and adopted every possible method of augmenting the stores of their wealth. well aware that human piety is more easily inflamed by the prospect of gold than by the prospect of heaven, they manufactured extravagant reports of the wealth of jerusalem; representing it as a vast storehouse of gems and precious metal. so glowing were these descriptions that the piety of the crusaders became excited into frenzy, and their devotion into irrepressible vociferousness; a delightful anticipation rapt them into heavenly ecstacies; and impatience for the glorious results of the coming combat appeared to be the only unpleasant ingredient that marred their happiness. on huts and farms, on palaces and domains, they looked down with scornful indifference; for they felt that wealth surpassing the treasures of the indies, and palaces more gorgeous than europe could build, would inevitably reward their pious adventure. the cool-headed priest, too well informed to partake of the general delusion, deliberately viewed the enthusiasm, and calmly calculated by what means it might be sustained and augmented, and how it could most judiciously be made to administer to the pecuniary advantage of the church. while the coldness with which the reason and conscience of priests secretly regarded the general lunacy, was well disguised, the masses, on the contrary, were all flame and fury, and wrought up to such a pitch of anxiety to wrest the holy land from the infidels and appropriate it to themselves, that they became indifferent to the treasure and land that they already possessed. in this unhealthy state of the public mind, it was an easy task for spiritual advisers to relieve their confiding pupils of their revenues, and ultimately to become the proprietors of many of their domains. the method by which this magnificent object was accomplished, was not only by the treachery of exchanging trumpery for valuables, but also by inducing the soldiers of the cross to devolve, during their absence, the care of their land and revenues on the monasteries, and to make them their heirs-at-law in case of death abroad. as but few of the crusaders of some of the expeditions ever returned, as many of all of them perished abroad, we must accord the credit of extraordinary shrewdness to the calculating cupidity of the monks, who could make the love, devotion, lunacy and enthusiasm of the devout, their life at home and death abroad, equally advantageous to the monastic coffers. as the infatuation, so beneficial to the church, was general; as the convulsions of the times rendered property of all descriptions exceedingly insecure; and, as many of the devout, equally frantic with the crusaders, were restrained, either by infirmity or other circumstances, from embarking in the holy enterprise, it was not difficult for the monks, amid the general frenzy, to induce such persons to become lay members of the monasteries, and to place their domains under the protection of those powerful institutions; an advantageous encumbrance which they always assumed with obliging avidity. with such money-making devices and sharp practices, and many others of a similar nature, the mendicant orders, united in an avaricious and arrogant confederacy, enjoying the protection of the pope, and the confidence and homage of christendom, and released from all secular and ecclesiastical jurisdiction, seemed, while abjuring the possession of property as a crime, and professing poverty as a virtue, to be rapidly monopolizing the wealth of the world--the domains of princes, the traffic of merchants, and the political power of governments. under such circumstances monastic opulence, without the intervention of a miracle, must have prodigiously increased, and their domains augmented to provinces. from the fifth century, in every section of christendom, monastery after monastery continued to rise, generally constructed with stupendous proportions, and in sumptuous style; furnished with every species of luxury, and polluted by every description of vice. st. bernard, who, by the assumption of the vow of absolute poverty, renounced a considerable private inheritance, and who subsequently scorned the proffers of lucrative dignities, could, nevertheless, by means of his monachal power and opulence erect ten monasteries, make nobles and popes tremble at his authority, and even kings submit to his dictation. the jesuits, who enjoyed all the privileges of the mendicant and secular orders, excelled them both in duplicity and rapaciousnes. animated by a crafty and unprincipled zeal for the emolument of their order, they established mission-houses among savage nations, under the pretext of civilizing them and saving their souls. but this specious pretext was but a pious mask, under which was concealed an infamous scheme of swindling the natives abroad out of property, and wheedling the devout at home out of liberal donations, and splendid legacies. their extensive mission-houses were neither designed for temples of devotion, nor for converting idolaters; their walls less frequently witnessed the monks at devotion, than they did at plotting schemes of plunder. like ancient temples, and more recent churches, mosques and fairs, they were designed as centres of trade to facilitate commercial transactions; and, as they were the grand resort of the people for exchange of commodities, they, like the former, gave rise to the numerous villages, towns and cities, whose names they bear. pagan simplicity has never been a match for monkish craft; and no sooner had the gold and gems of the natives inflamed the zeal and sharpened the shrewdness of the monks, than they were wrung from them by some swindling transaction, possessing the arts of civilized society, they were enabled to astonish the natives with miracles, and successfully to impose on their ignorance and simplicity. they boasted of having induced multitudes to embrace christianity; but as their object was not to convert pagans from idolatry, but to defraud them out of their land and gold, they were careful not to offend them by demanding a renunciation of the practice of idolatry, but contented themselves with entreating their converts simply to adore christ and his mother when worshiping the images of their gods. with this ambiguous, but insinuating modification of christianity, they made fortunes out of the devout at home and savages abroad. in , this avaricious sacerdotal order established a mission-house at the island martinique; and so adroitly did they manage their christianizing business operations, that in a short time they monopolized the trade of that island, and of the surrounding islands. their success naturally excited the jealousy of the secular merchants; and as they were generally regarded as destitute of commercial honor, and unprincipled in their ambition, a formidable opposition was easily fomented against them. this opposition, apparently justified by self-preservation, and the necessity of inaugurating a more liberal and enlightened commercial policy, impaired to a considerable extent the interest and popularity of the sacerdotal establishments. at this stage of their history, a circumstance occured which culminated in their disgrace. two valuable cargoes had been consigned to them by their french correspondents. these cargoes were captured by the english, with whom the french were at war. in conformity with maritime usage, the consignors demanded indemnity of the jesuits. the jesuits denied the legality of the demand, and refused to give the satisfaction asked. an appeal was consequently taken to the king of france, who, deciding in favor of the consignors, demanded the jesuits to make the required restitution. but their presumptuous piety led them to scorn his authority in the same temper in which they had rejected the prayer of his mercantile subjects. this insolent and treasonable conduct led the king to investigate the principles of their order; and finally to abrogate it in all the states of france, as a political organization projected for the acquisition of power and riches. by means of their christianizing establishments in paraguay and uruguay, the jesuits ruled the natives with despotic power, and acquired an immense amount of wealth. in , spain having by a commercial treaty ceded to portugal seven districts of these domains, the monks at the head of an army of fourteen thousand men, compelled the contracting nations to annul the treaty; but an attempt being afterwards made to assassinate the king of portugal, the government declared the order of the jesuits to be a treasonable organization, and confiscated all their possessions in the dominion. the order of the catholic knights, incorporated for the defense and propagation of the true faith, by the force of arms, like the monks, rapaciously acquired an incredible amount of riches while under the solemnest obligation to maintain a perpetual condition of absolute poverty. these holy organizations were exclusively military; the sword was the only argument they used. the knights of st. john, with the vow of poverty on their lips, but with the sword of conquest in their hand, amassed such extensive domains, that they gave their chief an annual salary of one million guilders. the knights templars, while they vowed absolute poverty, acquired by arms, forced loans, donations, bequests and other means, such a prodigious amount of wealth that they erected nine thousand vast and princely palaces, each enriched with extensive territory, and all powerful enough to maintain immunity from the jurisdiction of the sovereign in whose kingdom they were located. the teutonic knights, while they abjured the rights of property, and swore never, to allow its possession to tarnish their sanctity, wrung from sweden all the territory that extends from the oder along its banks to the gulf of finland. it is reported by travellers that the shaggians, a barbarous tribe of egypt, when meeting a foe, will exclaim: "peace be with you," and thrust a lance in his heart. the wild mockery of these uncouth savages at avowed principles has been far exceeded by the conduct and profession of the monachal and military orders of the catholic church, whose vows were meant for imposition, and whose life was a scene of perjury. by the aid of magnificent revenues, the various orders of the religious paupers were enabled successfully to negotiate for the most lucrative dignities of the church, and enjoyed the fairest prospects of becoming either bishops, cardinals or popes, and of obtaining the luxurious indolence, idolatrous reverence, and impious adulation they secured. the hypocritical devices of the ancient and modern brahmins, of the hindoo and mohammedan monks, and of the priests and prophets of ancient pagan nations have, in christian countries, where no prejudice pleads in their favor, and where their origin and claims are candidly investigated, been justly exposed to the scoffs and contempt of common sense; and it is possible that under the same circumstances, the monks, priests, ceremonies and dogmas of catholicism, which resemble them as nearly as a type can its prototype, would sink to the same level. when we calmly reflect on the monastic institution, and observe the financial principles on which it is organized, the variety and prodigious traffic which has distinguished its career, the immense treasure and domains it has acquired by fraud and artifice, it seems like some gigantic financial corporation, projected for speculating in land, and for making money by the tricks of trade. when we call to mind the avarice by which it has been actuated, the duplicity it has practised, and the impositions of which it has been guilty, it appears to be a corporation organized to make money, regardless of every maxim of justice, and every principle of honor. when we consider how basely it has prostituted its privileges and immunities; becoming superior to law to violate the principles of rectitude; professing absolute indigence to demand, like a highwayman, a tribute of every one it chanced to meet, if not with a pistol in its hand, yet with an anathema at its disposal more dreaded by the superstitious than thousands of pistols, it looms up before the imagination as a corporation of outlaws, whose right is might, whose object is money, and whose profession is to plunder. when we reflect on its pretention of vending for gold the pardon of sin, the favor of god, immunity for guilt, and protection against the future retribution of heaven, it appears like a corporation of fiends which arrogates the prerogatives of deity, traffic in the hearts and souls of men, sport with their hopes and fears, and merchandise heaven and hell, time and eternity. and when we remember that the roman catholic church has incorporated these infamous religious orders in her constitution, and has officially pronounced them to be her most useful members, and has thus sanctioned and made her own, all their duplicity, all their rapacity, all their swindling operations, all their highway robbery, and all their profanity, immorality and blasphemy, she seems like some black and midnight monster, dripping with human gore, an embodiment of every deformity, an incarnation of every loathsome, hideous and unsightly demon, and a just representation of the character and principles of the arch-fiend. chapter vii. monastic vow of celibacy nature has organized man for the conjugal union. she has endowed him with powers adapted to its requirements; with passions that aspire after its pleasures and benefits, and with sensibilities that can be gratified only by the performance of its obligations. by the reciprocal relations, and the amiable intercourse which it establishes between the sexes, it furnishes an attractive means of mutual improvement, refining the grossness of the sensual propensities, and developing the noblest graces of the human character. by blending masculine boldness with feminine delicacy, it takes rudeness from the one, and imparts energy to the other; and thus contributes, in an eminent degree, to the formation of that equanimity of character which is the happy medium between extremes, and of that agreeable association of strength and urbanity which is best fitted to cope with the difficulties incident to life. by an alliance of mutual affection and interests for life, it secures their highest development, and the most complete and undisturbed enjoyment of their benefits. it identifies the honor and interests of parents and children, securing affectionate protectors for helpless infancy, faithful guardians for inexperienced youth, and interested tutors for fitting the rising generation for the useful and noble stations of society; and while it thus provides for children, it rewards the solicitude of parents with a shelter in adversity, a support in declining age, and a name in posterity. but while such are the inducements of marriage, yet a regard to personal interest and happiness might deter a considerate person from assuming its obligations, when either a suitable companion has not been found, or pecuniary resources are insufficient to meet the domestic demands in a satisfactory manner. pecuniary competency and similarity of taste and disposition are requisites indispensable to connubial felicity. without them marriage would be a source of privation, difficulty and alienation; and family a painful encumbrance. when, therefore, fortune has withheld these essentials of conjugal happiness, celibacy, in either sex, is more honorable than matrimony. but to stifle the instincts that prompt to this union, and ungraciously to spurn the incalculable benefits it proffers, unrestrained by any prudential consideration, is to violate, without motive, the laws of human happiness, and neglect the fulfilment of the most important design of the organism of man. an act so unnatural is, perhaps, seldom contemplated, except under extreme mental depression, or under the singular delusions of which religious fanaticism is so prolific. disappointed love, reverses of fortune, or the hope of becoming insensible to the wants of humanity by acquiring supernatural perfection, has sometimes induced the weak and superstitious to assume the monastic vow of perpetual celibacy. the motive of such conduct has always originated in emotion; and though emotion is always sincere, it is always fluctuating. a cloud that obscures the sun and casts a gloom over earth, soon passes away, leaving the former in its natural brightness, and the latter in its usual attractiveness. not less ephemeral is the mental gloom which adversity or superstition may throw over the human mind. when the energies of acquisitiveness have been prostrated by repeated pecuniary misfortunes; when the warmth of ambition has been chilled by the wounds of reputation; when the currents of love have been frozen by the cold breath of disappointment; the desolated heart may feel that its struggle for subsistence is vain, that its hopes of distinction have perished, and that its ties of love are broken forever. but these despondent sensations are ephemeral; they are the results of a temporary repose of passions which are rooted in the constitution of our nature, and which can be destroyed only with our being. though despair may for a time throw a wintry gloom over the mind, yet hope will again bud and bloom, avarice will again sigh for wealth, ambition will again thirst for distinction, love will again yearn for companionship, and every passion resuming its natural energy will again create the emotions for which it was organized, and compel us to seek its appropriate gratification in the social, conjugal, or political relations which subsist in society. this revulsion is inevitable. it is as certain as the subsidence of a tempestuous torrent after having exhausted its energy, into its ordinary peaceful roll. as all emotions are ephemeral, so must be all the vows and resolutions which they generate. each day brings with it new and unexpected events, which abrogate or modify the emotions and resolves which the circumstances of the preceding day had suggested; nay, more, the antithetical emotions thus created are always proportionally strong to those which they supplant. hence vows assumed by any person under extraordinary mental excitement, will be repudiated when he is under extraordinary mental depression; and obligations assumed under either of these conditions of mind, will be found inconsistent with the ordinary obligations of life, when that usual current of thought and emotion shall set in, which always flows in harmony with human reason, philosophy and happiness, and the regular course of things. if when this condition shall supervene; if when hope shall succeed to despair, and reason and reflection to impulse and fanaticism, and when all the passions and powers of our nature shall resume their natural operation--if then, we shall have placed ourselves by any mistake, however innocently committed, in a situation where we cannot respond to the demands of our nature, we will find that we have doomed ourselves to perpetual misery. nor will any degree of purity or sanctity of motive arrest the evils of mistaken conduct. nature is inexorable; she inflicts punishment on the violators of her laws without regard to the motives by which they have been actuated. she admits no apology; she knows no forgiveness. neither tears nor penitence can mitigate her vengeance; neither pleas of conscientious motives, nor of ignorance of her ordinations, can soften the rigor of her justice. although the desire of perfection is a natural and noble one, yet she has established laws by which alone it is to be obtained, and punishes the aggressors of them with deformity and imbecility. these laws are intelligible, human perfection clearly comprehends the perfect development of all the physical, mental and moral powers of man. exercise is the only means by which these faculties can be developed. the system of exercise adapted to the attainment of this end must embrace a judicious employment of every acuity belonging to the human organism; allowing none to depreciate by indolence; none to become enervated by incessant or overstrained exertion; but to maintain all in that natural and reasonable condition in which, while they are alternately relieved they are mutually strengthened. by the discipline of such a system of exercise knowledge will gradually become the foundation of reason, judgment the guide of fancy, conscience the controller of the passions, the vital or gains the recuperator of the physical and mental faculties; a healthy reciprocity and modifying action will be maintained between all the powers, and that equilibrium engendered which is peace; that condensation which is energy; and that perfection which is essential to genius. the monastic vow of perpetual celibacy is clearly unfavorable to this general exercise of the powers of human nature. it permits the exercise of only a limited number of these powers, and thereby obtrudes an insuperable obstacle to the full development of the human character. it stimulates those which it cultivates to incessant activity, and thereby distorts and deforms their organisms by an abnormal development. it fetters in inactivity the bulk of the human faculties, and thereby lessens the number and variety of the natural sources of the pleasures of life. it reduces activity in the vital system, and thereby saps the fundamental strength of the whole organization, engendering those physical and moral diseases, which render life joyless, and death often the only remedy. it prohibits the exercise of those faculties by which alone the design of the human organism can be accomplished, and permits but a few of them to be exercised in order to attain the highest degree of perfection. it would dry up the springs of a river, in order to increase the volume of its current; it would weaken the foundation of an edifice, in order to protect it against the shocks of earthquakes. but whether these ecclesiastical absurdities are more insane than idiotical, we respectfully submit to the acumen of the ecumenical council, whenever it shall resume its session at home. the monastic vow of celibacy, is as weak in its fundamental principles, as it is absurd in its discipline. it is founded on the ascetic delusion, that the sensual passions are evils; and that human perfection and happiness consist in the attainment of a passive state of mind, untroubled by desire, thought or action. but this is a brahminical absurdity, rusted to its core by the abrasion of ages. even if the propensities were evils, yet wisdom would teach us that as they are a result of our organism, they should be regulated; especially if by a judicious regulation, they can be made to administer to the pleasures of existence. but they are not evils; on the contrary, they are unmeasurable benefits. if they are ever tormentors, it is when prudence has not regulated their gratification, or when abuse has made their cravings unnatural. if they are ever sources of disease, it is when they are exercised in violation of the laws of human nature. if they ever become impotent in the production of pleasure, it is when their possessors have become gluttons, sots, debauchees, misers, or some similar compound of human depravity. but when the animal passions are refined by knowledge, chastened by virtue, directed by reason, governed by conscience, and exercised with a considerate regard to the integrity of the other powers, they become sources of pleasure and vigor, incentives to industry and enterprise, and eminently contribute towards the advancement of the perfection and happiness of our being. another fundamental error of the vow of celibacy, is the delusion that man may by means of solitude and resolution arrest the natural promptings of the propensities. the propensities are constituted by nature essential portions of our being; and accordingly we must carry them with us into whatever solitude we may retire; and as their emotions are naturally irrepressible, their powers must be felt under whatever obligation we may assume. vows, resolutions and solitude are as incapable of arresting the progress of the passions, as they are of stopping the pulsations of the heart. amid the deepest silence and solitude they will still yearn for expression, and yearn the more the deeper is the stillness. amid the bustle and tumult of the world they are excited by innumerable different objects; their attention is divided among a variety of attractions; and each finds its appropriate gratification constantly offered to its taste. but in solitude there is every thing to concentrate, and nothing to divide their power; every thing to inflame, and nothing to appease their appetites; and consequently, under such circumstances, their powers must be the most ungovernable, and the torments of their craving the most unsupportable. the foregoing observations were made on the presumption, that the vow of perpetual chastity was assumed by the catholic orders with sincere intentions of conforming to its requirements; but this was not always the case. whatever sincerity or sanctity may have mingled, in some cases, with the motives that prompted its assumption, neither monks nor nuns, nor priests, nor bishops, nor popes, have in general furnished a reasonable amount of evidence in favor of their chastity. the natural and efficient regulator of the animal passions is marriage. the conjugal union, judiciously formed, is invaluable to man, but almost indispensable to woman. her organization preeminently qualifies her for its conditions and relations. the sensitiveness peculiar to her nervous system, obliges her to shrink from the rude battle of public life; her weakness instructs her in the importance of placing herself under the guardianship of the more muscular power of man, which is noblest employed when it best protects the weak; and her characteristic instincts and capacities lead her to seek her chief employment and happiness in the modest retirement of domestic life, where she finds the temple of which she alone is priestess; the idols which excite her purest devotion; the altars on which she lavishes her choicest gifts; and where, in administering her sacred profession, in dispensing instruction to her children, care to her household, and consolation to the sick and dying, her true dignity and beauty acquires the deepest enchantment. whatever the mental and personal charms of a female may be, the true excellence of her character can never be seen or appreciated, except in the practice of the amiable virtues which constitute the wife and the mother. this, woman knows; this she feels; and to obtain this end the rights of her nature, and the interests of society, concur in authorizing her to adopt every available means. yet, notwithstanding these plain facts, the catholic church has the unpardonable presumption to pronounce a curse on her, if she should prefer a union so essential to her happiness and usefulness to a state of perpetual virginity. every time her common sense teaches her to say that marriage is preferable to virginity, this religious monster, in the name of the holy trinity and all the saints and angels, answers "let her be accursed." every time her nature prompts her to say, that, to be joined in marriage is more blessed than to remain in a state of virginity, this monster in horror at the profane and unorthodox expressions, responds, "let her be accursed." hear it from the lips of the holy mother herself: "whosoever shall say, that the church could not institute impediments annulling marriage, or that in instituting them she has erred, let him be accursed." "whosoever shall say, that the marriage state is preferable to a state of virginity, or celibacy, or that it is not more blessed to remain in a state of virginity or celibacy, than to be joined in matrimony, let him be accursed." "whosoever shall affirm, that matrimonial causes do not belong to the ecclesiastical judges, let him be accursed." ( canon of the council of trent). atrocious as is this decree, it expresses not the full measure of catholic arrogance. for while with palpable inconsistency, the church solemnizes among catholics the rites which she anathematizes them for prefer-ing, she declares that all those whose marriage ceremonies have not been celebrated according to her fantastic requirements, are living in a state of "shameful concubinage." it would seem that by consummating the union which she holds men and women accursed for desiring, she incurs on her own soul the curse she pronounces on others. she requires no _fee_ for her matrimonial services, but accepts _marriage presents_, which may perhaps have softened her malignity to this product of civilization with regard to catholics; but non-catholics who do not conciliate her holy aversion to it by such presents, she pronounces them profligates, their wives prostitutes, and their children bastards. hear this from the lips of pope pius ix. "marriage cannot be given, unless there be, one and at the same time a sacrament, consequently that _any other union_ between man and woman among christians, made in virtue of what civil law soever, is nothing else than _a shameful and miserable concubinage_, so often condemned by the church." (allocution on the state of affairs in new grenada ). so in the judgment of the present pope, the non-catholics in the united states consist of strumpets and bastards. according to the principles of the catholic church, thus officially enunciated, every person, the marriage rites of whose parents have not been performed by a catholic priest, is an illegitimate offspring divested of all legal right to inherit property of his parents. if the church shall ever gain in america the numerical strength for which she is striving, what will be the consequence to non-catholics? will she declare them legitimate, or respect their property titles? have not her priests made this land ring with the assertion, that infidels and protestants have no right where catholicism is triumphant. but who is she that has the audacity to proclaim such principles? a church, which has been dripping with the blood of innocence for ages, yet is thirsting for more. who are they that prate about chastity? a body of the most corrupt, unprincipled, and licentious priests that ever disgraced the name of religion. the cold dissoluteness of the catholic orders is not only undeniable, but it is even frightful. had history been silent, and the real conduct of catholic priests, and the interior of catholic nunneries remained a profound secret, yet, an ordinary knowledge of human nature would have warranted the suspicion that the priests were not models of chastity, nor the nunneries asylums of innocence. but history has not been silent; she has spoken distinctly, and spoken often. a nun escaped from her prison-house, or a priest not yet steeled by hypocrisy to all the pleadings of virtue, or who was disgusted beyond endurance at the corruption that festers in the heart of the catholic church, has furnished history with startling records, and raised the sacred veil, that the superstitious might behold the horrible compound of duplicity, lust, and murder which secretly pollutes the interior of the institutions which they reverence. but these fitful revelations, although appealing to the noblest sympathies of mankind, have seldom produced an effect equal to the exigency. like bursts of unexpected thunder, they have startled for a moment, but soon rumbled into silence and forgetfulness. such is the general infatuation, that people seldom question that around which the sanctions of religion are thrown, and when they do the doubt is soon obliterated. they will reverently bow to a priest without thinking it is possible that under the guise of his chaste and holy profession, avarice, lust and murder may reign supreme. they will heedlessly pass a nunnery without thinking how many broken hearts may there be hopelessly imprisoned; how many gifted and accomplished females may there be pining in anguish and despair, who, while they sought an abode of unsullied chastity, found themselves entrapped in a den of infamy, to be profaned by holy confessors! but reluctantly as charity would believe these statements, they are substantiated beyond the possibility of doubt or denial, by the records of catholic authority of the highest order. an insight into the mysteries of catholicism, and the mode by which priests conceal from publicity their acts of seduction and adultery, may be learned from the following extract from hogan's "auricular confession." "the secular orders," says he? "are composed chiefly of parish priests and their curates, whose duty it is to hear their parishioners. the orders of regulars are composed of friars, who are subdivided into several minor orders, and who have no particular duties to discharge, unless especially deputed to do so by the bishop, or the deputy of the diocese into which they may be divided. it is so managed by the secular priests, that whenever they fail in seducing their penitents, and are detected by them that one of those friars shall immediately be at hand to hear the confessions of all such females, and forgive their sins, on condition that they shall never reveal to moral being the thoughtless peccadillos of their parish priest, who for the moment forgot himself, and whose tears of penitence now moisten the ground on which he walks." (auric. confess, vol. ii. p. ). the adaptation of the confessional to prepare the way for seduction and adultery may be comprehended by the following extract from the "synopsis of popery" by the same author. "do any of these families," asks he, "know the questions which a priest puts to their families at the confessional? do husbands know the questions which priests put to their wives at the confession?.... fathers, mothers, guardians and husbands fancy to yourself the most indelicate, immodest, libidinous questions which the most immoral and profligate mind can conceive,--fancy those ideas put into plain language, and that by way of questions and answers, and you will then have a faint conception of the conversation which takes place between a priest and your hitheto pure daughter. if after two or three examinations, in that sacred tribunal, they still continue virtuous, they are rare examples." (synopsis, p. , ). while the catholic church imposes on the priests and monks the vow of celibacy, it accords them the privilege of acting licentiously with impunity. in the life of bishop scipio de ricci, written by an eminent catholic, the practice of the church in allowing bishops and priests to keep concubines, while it forbids them to marry under pain of excommunication, is asserted and defended. the council of toledo passed a canon forbidding priests to keep more than one concubine in public. william hogan asserts that every priest keeps a concubine, and every teacher in a school attached to a catholic nunnery, has been seduced by her teacher. chamancis says: "the adultery, obscenity and impiety of the priests are beyond description." st. chrysostom thinks the number of them that will be saved, bears a very small proportion to those who will be damned. cardinal conpaggio asserts that "the priest who marries commits a more grievous sin than if he kept many concubines." pope paul protected houses of ill-fame, and acquired great riches by selling them licenses. the council of augsburg ordered that all suspected females should be driven by whips from the dwellings of the clergy, and have their hair cut off. a monk relates that he once made a contract with the devil that if he would cease to fill his mind with lascivious ideas, he would omit some prayers to the saints whose pictures decorated the walls of his cloister, but upon communicating the substance of the agreement to the bishop, he was informed by him, that "rather than abstain from adoring christ and mother in their holy images it would be better to enter every brothel and visit every prostitute in the city." richard of england replied to fulk nuelly, the legate of pope innocent iii., commissioned to blow the trumpet of another crusade: "you advise me to dismiss my three daughters, pride, avarice and incontinence. i bequeath them to the most deserving: my pride to the knights templars; my avarice to the monks of ciste; and, my incontinence to the prelates." pope john xxiii, was deposed by the council of constance for having committed seventy different sorts of crimes, among the number of which was illicit commerce with three hundred nuns. the trappists, a monkish order of highway robbers, were constantly employed in abducting females, confining them in their monastery, and perpetrating the most atrocious rapes. at the council of canterbury king edgar declared that the houses of the clergy were nothing but brothels, petrarch laments over the fact that the clergy at the papal court were shamefully licentious. cardinals lived openly with their concubines; and it became a question of etiquette whether a bishop's concubine should not, at the court of his holiness, precede other ladies. llorente, chief secretary of the spanish inquisition in , relates that the inquisitors having granted permission to the females of a certain locality to denounce their guilty confessors, the number of priests denounced was so great that thirty secretaries were employed for sixty days in taking down depositions, and that the profligacy of the clergy so far exceeded all calculation that it was concluded to suspend investigation, and to destroy the records of the proceedings. the extent and depth of clerical depravity can never be divulged by those who know it, for st. bernard asserts that "bishops and priests commit acts in private which it would be scandalous to express." from nunneries governed and visited by priests of such a character, what is the logical inference? chamancis, an unimpeachable catholic authority, answers this question when he says: "to veil a woman in these convents is synonymous to prostituting her." the seventh general council of nice prohibited the erection of double convents for the accommodation of both sexes; but the prohibition was not regarded. in europe every nunnery has attached to it a foundling asylum; in the united states, a grave-yard. llorente relates a curious account of aquida, an abbess of a carmelite nunnery at liemo. it appears that this female had, on several occasions, professed to have become pregnant with stones, and to have retired for the purpose of giving them birth. she had often exhibited her miraculous progeny to the credulous, and pretended to be enabled, by their divine nature, to cure diseases with them. her success in working miracles by them procured for her the reputation of a saint. but unfortunate for her eventual canonization, a rumor became current that instead of having given birth to stones, she had given birth to children, and strangled them; and that she had obliged the holy nuns under her supervision to practise the same iniquity. the informant, an inmate of the nunnery, pointed out the place where the murdered babes were buried; and subsequent excavation revealed the horrible fact, that half the tale of blood had not been told. the following additional facts, related by william hogan, as having transpired under his personal cognizance, afford further confirmative proof of the general character of priests and nuns, and that it remains as it has always been, in all countries, and at all periods of civilization: "the roman catholics of albany," says he, "had, about three years previous to my coming among them, three irish priests among them, occasionally preaching, but always hearing confessions.... as soon as i got settled in albany i had, of course, to attend to the duty of _auricular confession_, and in less than two months found that the priests, during the time they were there, were the fathers of between sixty and one hundred children, besides having debauched many who had left the place previous to their confinement." (auricular confession, p. ). "a short time previous to my coming to this country, and soon after my being installed as confessor in the romish church, i became intimately acquainted with a family of great respectability. this family consisted of a widowed father and two daughters, and never in my life have i met with more interesting young ladies than the daughters were.... in less than two months after my first visit to this family, at their peaceful and respectable breakfast table, i observed the chair which had been usually occupied by the elder of the two ladies occupied by the younger, and that of the latter to be vacant. i inquired the cause, and was informed by the father that he had just accompanied her to the coach, which had left that morning for dublin, and that she went on a visit to the rev. b. k. it seems that both of the daughters of whom i have spoken went to the school attached to the nunnery of the city of ------. the confessor whose duty it was to hear the duty of the pupils of the institute, was one rev. b. k., a friar of the franciscan order, who, as soon as his plans were properly laid, and circumstances rendered them ripe for execution, seduced the elder lady; and finding the fact could no longer be concealed, arranged matters with a dublin friend.... she was confined at the house of his friend, and her illicit offspring given to the managers of the foundling hospital in dublin.... no sooner was this elder lady provided for, than this incarnate demon, b. k., commenced the seduction of the younger lady. he succeeded, and ruined her too. but there was no difficulty in providing for them. they both became nuns..... i saw them in the convent at mount benedict. they were great favorites of bishop fenton. they were spoken of by some of the females of boston as models of piety." (auricular confession, p. - ). "soon after my arrival in philadelphia,... a roman catholic priest by the name of o. s. called on me, and showed me letters of recommendation which he had from bishop t., of ireland, and countersigned by the roman catholic bishop of new york, to bishop england, of south carolina.... he arrived at charleston, and was well received by bishop england. there lived in the parish to which this reverend confessor was appointed, a gentleman of respectability and wealth. bishop england supplied this new missionary with letters of strong recommendation to this gentleman, advising him to place his children under his charge, assuring him they would be brought up in the fear of god and love of religion.... the rev. popish wretch seduced the eldest daughter of his benefactor, and the father becoming aware of the fact, armed himself with a case of pistols, and determined to shoot the seducer. but there was in the house a good catholic servant [a spy] who advised the seducer to fly. he soon arrived in charleston; the right reverend bishop understood his case, advised him to go to confession, and absolved him from his sins;... sent him on his way to new york.... his victim after a little time, having given birth to a fine boy, goes to confession herself, and sends the child of sin to the sisters of charity residing in ------, to be taken care of as a _nullius filius_. as soon as the child was able to walk a roman catholic lady adopted it as her own. the real mother of the child soon removed to the city of ------, told the whole transaction to the roman catholic bishop of ------, who knowing that she had a handsome property, introduced her to a highly respectable protestant gentleman, who soon married her. he (the bishop ) soon after introduced the gentleman to the sisters of charity who had provided for the illicit offspring of the priest, concealing its parentage, and representing it as having no father living. the gentleman was pleased with the boy, and the holy bishop finally prevailed on him and his wife to adopt it as his own." (auric. confess, p. - ). when quite young and just emerging from childhood, i became acquainted with a protestant family, residing in the neighborhood of my birthplace. it consisted of a mother (a widow), and three interesting children, two sons and one daughter.... in the course of time the sons grew up, and their guardian in compliance with their wishes, and to gratify their ambition, procured them commissions in the army.... as soon as the sons left to join their respective regiments, which were then on the continent, the mother and daughter were much alone.... there was then in the neighborhood only twenty miles from this family, a nunnery of the order of jesuits. to this nunnery was attached a school superintended by the nuns of that order.... the mother yielded, in this case, to the malign influence of fashion;... sent her beautiful daughter, her earthly treasure, to the school of these nuns.... soon after the daughter was sent to school, i entered the college of manooth as a theological student, and in due time was ordained a catholic priest. an interval of some years passed.... there was a large party given, at which among others i happened to be present; and there meeting with my friends and interchanging the usual courtesies on such occasions, she sportingly, as i then imagined, asked me whether i would preach her reception sermon, as she intended becoming a nun and taking the veil.... i heard no more of the affair until about two months, when i received a note from her designating the chapel in which she expected my services.... on the reception of my friend's note a cold chill crept over me, i anticipated and trembled, and felt there must be foul play.... having no connection with the convent in which she was immured, i did not see her for three months following. at the expiration of that time one of the lay sisters delivered me a note.... i found my young friend wished to see me on something important i of course lost no time in calling on her, and being a priest, i was immediately admitted; but never have i forgotten, never can i forget, the melancholy picture of lost beauty and fallen humanity which met my astonished gaze in the person of my once beautiful and virtuous friend.... 'i sent for you, my friend, to see you once before my death..... i am in the family-way and must die.' he then proceeds to relate, that in the course of a conversation which ensued he learned from the nun that she had been seduced by her confessor, (which fact precluded any appeal or redress), and that the lady abbess had proposed to procure an abortion, but that an inmate had informed her that the medicine which the lady abbess would give would contain poison. he promised to renew his visit within a few days; he did so, but the foul deed was done. fiends! monsters! does not the blood curdle in every vein at such recitals? does not man and woman blush at their dishonored nature? is there a god that can allow the use of his name to sanction such execrable depravity; that can look with indifference on women avowing chastity in his name in order to allure the purest of their sex to destruction; or that can be insensible to the imprecations of injured innocence, profaned in holy houses? is god a fiction, or divine retribution a dream? no! while a thunderbolt leaves a monastery or a nunnery in existence, lightning has no avenging power! while either of them exists man may well doubt the existence of retributive justice in human affairs. but it may be said, that god has delegated to society the power to punish offences committed against its moral interests, and therefore does not himself interfere in the matter. but does society exercise its authority in the matter any more visibly than deity? society enacts laws and prescribes penalties respecting murder, rape, brothels, false imprisonment, and irregular interments. she also investigates all alleged infractions of these laws, except when they involve the honor of monastic institutions. but why are these dens exempted from the common law of the land? why are they allowed to bar their doors against the authority which all others must respect? why are they allowed to organize within a government an independent government, nullifying its jurisdiction over them? why are not the interior of monastic institutions constantly and thoroughly inspected, and the authority of the common law maintained over them? is it because they are too pious to violate the law of the land? if this were so, it would do them no harm, but much good, to have the fact week after week attested by an investigating committee composed of their opponents. but is not the contrary the fact? do they not deprive their inmates of personal liberty? do they not imprison them in dungeons? do they not punish them? do they not inflict on them barbarous chastisements? are they not sacerdotal brothels? has not every age and country given its testimony to show that kidnapped men and women have been imprisoned for life in their cells; that there nuns have been poisoned, abortions procured, babes murdered, women outraged by priests, and every law, human or divine violated with impunity? are these sensational declamations? would for the credit of human nature they were. no! they are the true records of monastic history, alleged by kings and statesmen, proved before councils, and acknowledged by monks, nuns, priests, bishops, and popes. with such an array of evidence before society, why does it allow institutions among it where every crime _may_ be committed secretly, and with impunity? why do not grand juries, who visit other jails, penitentiaries, and asylums, inspect also the more secret and suspicious nunneries? we have now described the nature and consequences of the monastic vow of celibacy. this obligation is opposed to the nature, and defeats the object of the human organism. it extinguishes conjugal, filial, and parental affection. it severs the ties that bind the interests of society together. it injures both the present and the future, by abrogating their mutual connection. it strikes at the root of national greatness, by arresting the tide of population. it degrades the dignity of the community, by increasing the number of illegitimate children. it wars against marriage, the noblest incentive to social refinement and civilization; the basis of woman's hope and happiness; the impulse and gratification of her pride of family, love of parental control, and desire to live in posterity. it anathematizes woman's purest aspirations, and man's holiest ties. it converts the ardor of chastity into snares for its seduction. it sanctifies prostitution and adultery. it violates the law of the land. it erects in the most magnificent parts of a city its spacious brothels, with massive walls, secret doors, false floors, guarded windows, grated cloisters, inaccessible to the inspection of law, but accessible at all hours of night or day by priests. within these walls it allures beauty, virtue, and talent, and while pretending to fit them for the society of infinite purity, betrays them into the power of unprincipled priests, and imprisons them in eternal seclusion, where no groan can meet the public ear, where they can never tell the story of their wrong, nor appeal to a heart for sympathy, nor to a law for redress. chapter viii. monastic vow of unconditional obedience another vow which was universally assumed by the religious orders, was the vow of unconditional obedience. by the obligation of this vow the members of the convents were subjected to the absolute authority of the superiors; the superiors to the absolute authority of the generals; the generals to the absolute authority of the pope. the authority of these holy officials strongly resembled that of the oriental despot, who, on being informed by his general that it was impossible to build the bridge over the river, as he had ordered, replied: "i inquired not of thee whether it was impossible or not; i commanded thee to build it; if thou failest thou shalt be strangled." accordingly, at the mandate of a superior a subordinate was obliged to go on any errand, for any purpose, criminal or not, to depart on any mission, to perform any work, to undertake any enterprise, or to occupy any station that he required of him. the superior's decision was final, and from it there was no appeal. the jesuit's general was empowered to inflict and remit punishment at option, and to expel any member of the order without the form of charge or trial. it mattered not whether the task assigned the recluse exceeded, or not, his mental or physical capacity, he was bound to obey the order immediately, and fully; to hesitate, or seem to hesitate was a crime, and by the penal code of some of the monasteries punished by the infliction of one hundred lashes. but to reduce a human being to such an absolute servitude was no easy task. to transform an active being into a spiritless automaton; a sensitive being into a senseless machine; a rational being into an irrational brute, was not the work of a moment, but of years and discipline. in order to subdue and habituate the will to implicit and mechanical obedience, recourse had to be had to penance, to trials, to all that could stifle doubt and inquiry, debilitate the power of resistance, and degrade conscious dignity in the dust. the most menial services, the most loathsome, disgusting, and absurd offices were consequently assigned to the probationists. they were required to suck the putrid sores of invalids, to remove enormous rocks, to walk unflinchingly into fiery furnaces, to cast their infants into ponds of water, to plant staffs in the ground and to water them until they should grow. they were never allowed to be alone, two were always to be together; the one a constant and conscious spy on the emotions of the other. the faithful son who could harden himself into a cold, cruel, and remorseless statue, was commended for his attainments in piety; but the unfaithful son who could not but betray some emotion, or remaining consciousness of the independence of his nature, in defiance of his circumspection, was doomed to suffer the torments of an excruciating penance. the vow of solitude had stifled the social instincts; the vow of silence had paralyzed the powers of speech, and sealed up the lips of wisdom, knowledge and eloquence; the vow of contemplation had subjugated the intellectual faculties to the domination of fancy, and the bewilderments of ignorance; the vow of poverty had shackled the faculties of improvement and enterprise; the vow of celibacy had extinguished connubial and parental affection; and now the vow of unconditional obedience, by subjugating reason, conscience, and the executive powers to the absolute control of a superior, had completed the monk's slavery in the ruin of every noble and valuable attribute of his nature. atrocious as were the other vows, the last exceeded the combined atrocity of them all. it consummated the destruction of his nature. it was the grave of his manhood; the tomb in which he buried himself alive. after its assumption his reason was not to guide him; his knowledge was not to direct him; his conscience was not to admonish him; but in defiance of them all, and even at the risk of his life, he was to tremble, and obey a spiritual despot. his perceptive faculties, his conscious independence, his love of liberty and justice, his sense of obligation and accountability, all the mental, moral, and physical powers which constitute his being, were by this vow, basely surrendered to an absolute lord, to whom he became a slave in mind and body,--and forever. the blind obedience which the pope demands to his despotic will, is antagonistical to the jewish religion, to the christian religion, and to natural religion. it is a nullification of all religion; an abrogation of the authority of the deity; a usurpation of the throne of heaven. the jewish and the christian religion require unconditional obedience to god alone. in their sacred books, the pope is nowhere mentioned, nor is any power referred to analagous to what he claims. natural religion prescribes reason and conscience as the supreme guide of man; and reason and conscience reject the papal authority as absurd and unjust. in the hierophant of the elysian mysteries, in the apostolic successor of buddha, in the grand lama, in the egyptian and persian high priest we may find something analagous to the claims of the pope of rome, but nowhere else. the unconditional obedience required by the pope is inconsistent with all ideas of merit and demerit in human conduct. if man acts not from the independent suggestion of his reason and conscience, but from the secret orders of another, he is no more deserving of commendation for useful acts, than a locomotive is for its obedience to the will of an engineer. the unconditional obedience demanded by the pope is inconsistent with human accountability. it is an abrogation of all obligation, and all law. it assumes that the pope is above all authority; accountable to none; and that he is capable of nullifying all obligations between man and man, between government and subjects, between mankind and their creator. it obtrudes between man and his reason, and forbids him to listen to its voice. it obtrudes between man and his conscience, and forbids him to obey its dictates. it obtrudes between man and his civil obligations, and forbids him to obey the laws of his country. it leaves no sense of duty or obligation existing in the constitution of man. according to it, man is not accountable to reason, nor conscience, nor society, nor god, but to the pope alone. the pope is therefore "more than god," as one of his titles asserts; and god is no god or an inferior one to him. the unconditional obedience enforced by the pope is subversive of the rights of the world. for one man, however good or great, to require the united intelligence of the human family to submit to his arbitrary dictation, is to deny their right to an independent will, reason, conscience, or principle of action, or the privilege of exercising the powers which they have inherited with their being. it is to declare that all men are abject slaves to the pope. it is to deny that any has a right above a brute that is bridled, harnessed, or yoked, to be driven by the spurs and whips of its owner. in short, it is to crush all liberty and the rights of human nature. a claim of absolute authority is always absurd; but the papal claim of absolute dominion over human conscience and reason, surpasses all absurdity recorded in the annals of tyranny and arrogance. even were superiors, generals, and popes as wise and virtuous as humanity permitted, yet such a degree of power entrusted to them would be detrimental to the interests of society. parents whose welfare and honor are so intimately interwoven with the welfare and honor of their children, often regret over the mistakes which they have committed in giving counsel. for a spiritual despot, whose nature has been religiously pruned of human sensibilities, whose mind has been contracted within the bigoted circle of spiritual ideas, whose interest is antagonistical to those of his subjects, and who owns no accountability for the proper exercise of his functions, for such an inhuman monster to be entrusted with exclusive control over the reason, conscience, and interests of another, would as inevitably complete his arrogance and tyranny as it would the misery and slavery of his subordinate. less than such a result could not be expected from the best of superiors, generals, or monks. but when the past history of these holy men has shown that they have invariably labored for their self-aggrandizement, and that as a class, they have been ignorant, immoral, cruel and intriguing, such power, in the hands of such men, would not only extinguish all virtue in the breast of the governed, but render them instruments of the most flagitious purposes. when by means of an ecclesiastical despotism, learning was governed by ignorance, wisdom by folly, virtue by vice, can we wonder that monks, superiors, generals and popes were the basest and most licentious of men; that the convents were rife with prostitution and murder; that the papal court was the most profligate in the world; and that the most prosperous period of catholicism was the darkest age of mankind. but the papal claim of absolute control over reason and conscience refutes itself. it suggests a strong presumption that he is conscious that he can make no successful appeal to either reason or conscience. had it been otherwise would he have denied their authority? were he confident that his pretensions are founded in truth, would he have prohibited investigation'? is not reason the clearest guide to truth, conscience its most powerful advocate, investigation its most formidable ally? and had these noble principles been available in supporting the pretension of the pope, would he have had the stupidity to denounce them? if it is consistent with religion to make automata of human beings, slaves of men, a machine of the world; to harness mankind in the gears of an ecclesiastical despot, that they may be driven under his lash whithersoever his pleasure or interest may require; to obliterate the faculties that distinguish men from brutes; to deny the existence of a god by abrogating his attributes, and blaspheme omnipotence by the ridicule of assuming his prerogatives; then the absolute, implicit, and unhesitating obedience enjoined on the religious orders by the catholic church is in accordance with its spirit and design. but if religion is morality in its highest development, humanity in its purest character, and reason in its freest exercise, then is the papal despotism not only subversive of religion, but destructive of the rights of man, of the obligations of virtue, and dangerous to the liberty and interests of the world. chapter ix. pagan origin of the monastic orders.--concluding remarks. we have shown in the previous chapters that the monastic vows are in conflict, not only with the requirements of moral goodness, but with the dictates of reason, the principles of personal improvement, and the interests and progress of society. we have shown, also, that they were assumed not for the humble purpose of acquiring spiritual perfection, but for the ambitious purpose of obtaining riches, power, and dominion. from these considerations, and from the fact that the monachal orders form an elementary part of the constitution of the catholic church, we have inferred that she is rather a political than a religious institution; and that while politics form her nature and principles, religion is assumed as an ornament and disguise. we will now adduce a few facts tending to show that monkish orders originated, not from christianity; that they existed in pre-historic ages; and that so far as they constitute the catholic church, she is a heathen, and not a christian institution. it is well known that the carmelite monks claim elijah, the prophet, as their founder. among the ancient personages whom they assert belonged to their order, they enumerate pythagoras, the gallic druids, all the prophets and holy men mentioned in the old and new testament, the apostles, the essenes, and the ancient hermits. although amid the wrangling of the monastic orders for preeminence, this claim has rigorously been contested, yet pope benedict iii. allowed the carmelites to erect in the vatican the statue of elijah as the founder of their order. this permission, so far as the concession of the infallible father is authority, places the antiquity of the monachal order remotely beyond that of christianity; acknowledges its institution to have originated from judaism; and grants that its rules and principles were adopted by ancient pagan fraternities. that identical institutions have flourished in asia from the remotest historical periods, admits not of a question. the present sufism of arabia is but a modified form of an ancient system of pantheistical mysticism, which taught that through the observance of ascetic practices the animal passions could be destroyed, the soul purified and assimilated to god, and a beatific state attained whose tranquility nothing could disturb. the gymnosophists, the naked philosophers of india, were an order of monks, who practised the most excruciating penance; and who, in their eagerness to become pure, sometimes burnt themselves alive. the god fo, born in cashmere b. c. , the author of the braminical religion, strenuously advocated monachal institutions. the different orders of the monks and hermits which originated from his allegorical and mystical teaching, assumed the vows of unconditional obedience and absolute poverty. the monks resided in monasteries, and the hermits in deserts. they both practised the most rigorous penance, professed to aspire after absolute purity, but in their conduct and principles they were grovelling, intriguing, profligate and ambitious. buddha, born b. c. , two years after fo, founded the monastic order of the buddhists. his convents were governed by superiors who were subject to the absolute authority of the patriarch, or, as he was officially styled, the apostolic successor. the functions and authority of the buddhistic superiors were similar to those of the catholic orders; and the pretensions and dignity of the patriarch were one and the same with those of the pope of rome. the monks lived in monasteries, assumed the vows of obedience, poverty and celibacy, and admitted virgins to social intercourse. jeseus christna, born b. c. , , the incarnate redeemer of the hindoos, whose birth, life, and miracles resemble those of jesus christ, (see "bible in india,") alludes in his discourses to monks and hermits as being at his time ancient, flourishing and venerated orders. the hindoo and mohammedan fakirs are classes of monks who vow obedience, poverty and celibacy, retire from the world, pass their time in silent contemplation, and acquire the veneration of the populace by the practice of absurd and cruel penance. the essenes, who flourished in egypt and palestine before the christian era, were an organization of monks who derived their theological principles from the god theuth, the founder of the egyptian religious ceremonies. from the above enumerated facts the conclusion is irresistible, that the catholic monastic orders are neither of christian origin, nor inconsistent with the doctrines and worship of paganism. a romish missionary who visited china, observing the similarity which subsisted between the chinese and the catholic religion, declared that the devil must have preceded him, and converted the nation to christianity, in order to cheat the church out of the credit of the enterprise. a more learned but less pious authority concluded from the same analogy, that catholicism did not convert paganism, but that paganism converted catholicism. we will now conclude our examination of the catholic monastic orders, with a few general remarks. the monastic vows are not only a bold abnegation of the authority of reason and conscience, but a crafty device to delude the credulous, and secretly to acquire riches, power and influence. although they were assumed by the monks as perpetual obligations, yet they were evaded, modified, or abrogated as interest and policy suggested. the mendicant orders, which assumed the vow of perpetual and absolute poverty, artfully labored to amass fortunes; and soon betrayed a secret design of acquiring hierachal importance and supremacy. the franciscans, who solemnly obligated themselves to remain forever poor, incessantly grasped after riches. when they had built nunneries, convents, and became the proprietors of extensive domains, they abrogated their vow of perpetual poverty, lest it should invalidate their title to vast possessions which they held. with equal duplicity and ambition, they assumed, upon their first organization, a vow of perpetual ignorance; abjuring the acquisition of any intellectual accomplishment, and consecrating themselves strictly to the preaching of the gospel. but becoming enchanted with the magnificence of the papal crown, and wishing to wield its immense power and lucrative patronage in behalf of their order, and perceiving that literary acquirements would facilitate the accomplishment of this object, they annulled their vow of perpetual ignorance, and began to devote themselves to the acquisition of some degree of profane erudition. having acquired immense wealth and popularity, and removed by art or bribery every obstacle to the success of their ambition, they placed on the apostolic throne, from their own order, nicholas v., alexander v., sixtus iv., and clement xiv. the dominicans, who were established to preach against infidels and heretics, adopted at the commencement of their career the money-making devices of the mendicant orders; but when their revenues had become so great, and their domains so extensive that they had attracted a covetous glance from the secular power, they prudently annulled the vows by which they had been acquired, lest the profane avariciousness of princes should cause their sequestration. the jesuits professed to have a holy abhorrence of riches, but thankfully accepted costly presents, opulent legacies, vast tracts of land, and the pecuniary means of erecting numerous stately structures. while this pious fraternity resolved not to accept any ecclesiastical dignity, it secretly and artfully labored to acquire all the privileges of the mendicant orders, all the advantages of the secular clergy, and to make the members of its order superior to those of any other, and its general next in power and importance to the pope. by hypocrisy, intrigue, and cringing sycophancy, these unscrupulous monks obtained rights and privileges enjoyed by no other ecclesiastical corporation. they not only obtained exemption from all civil and episcopal taxes, and from all amenability to any other power than that of the pope; but also the authority of absolving from all sins and ecclesiastical penalties; of changing the object of the vows of the laity; and of acquiring churches and domains without restriction. they were privileged also to suit their dress to circumstances, their conduct to peculiarities, their profession to the views of others; to be accommodating and complaisant while pursuing a political enterprise, and under the mask of any external appearance to prosecute in secret what might excite opposition if openly avowed. they were allowed to become actual merchants, mechanics, showmen, actors, and to adopt any profession calculated to facilitate the accomplishment of a design, and to throw off the mask whenever they thought expedient. organized on the principles of deception, and unrestricted in their privileges, they secretly labored for their own aggrandizement, while they publicly professed to be sacrificing their interests to the salvation of mankind. they became professors of universities and tutors of schools, that they might select the brightest minds of the rising generation, and mould them to their purposes. they became the spiritual guides of females of rank and opulence, that they might avail themselves of their influence and control their wealth. they became the confessors of princes, that they might penetrate their intentions, ferret out their secrets, watch over their conduct, and enslave and govern their minds. they became the governors of colonies, in order to grasp secular revenues, and to exercise the political power in behalf of their interests. they established seminaries and boarding schools for both sexes, in order to acquire dominion over the young; they sought to occupy the confessional, in order to discover all domestic and governmental secrets; and they labored to monopolize the pulpit, in order to manufacture public opinion, and influence the general tone of society in their favor. the numerous divisions into which the religious orders were divided, and their different degrees of austerity, enabled the church to suit its policy to the corruption or purity, the ignorance or learning of the nation it sought to proselyte and govern. under its direction the monks flattered every power they were ordered to subvert, and blushed at no sycophancy that facilitated the accomplishment of an object. governed by unnatural vows, they sacrificed freedom, the source of natural sentiment, to credulity and blind submission the most absurd and criminal injunctions of a superior or general were obeyed without compunction or remorse. if they aspired after perfection, it was by sacrificing the virtues of life. if they strove to obtain personal purity, it was by violating the laws of their being. they sought to atone for offences by scourging their backs, ironing their limbs, chaining themselves to rocks, passing their lives in caves, in days without food, in nights without sleep, in years without speaking; subsisting without money, propagating without women, acquiring the respect of the world they despised, the riches they contemned, and the dignity they abjured. they were a palpable deception, yet an object of universal veneration. by cunning and obsequiousness they sought and obtained power; by duplicity and fraud they amassed fortunes; by luxury and tyranny they oppressed the world. every species of absurdity, art, hypocrisy, avarice, ambition and despotism, under the guise of sanctity was embodied in their organization, and illustrated in their conduct. the doctrines which they taught were often as pernicious as their professions were false, and their conduct crafty. as the accommodating morality of their religion allowed them to adopt any profession, or any mode of life that would favor the success of a design, so the license of their sophistry enabled them to construe the maxims of virtue according to any standard that would justify the conduct dictated by their interest or sycophancy. by the pliancy of their moral code they consecrated the basest means to pious ends. by the subterfuge of perplexing interpretations, mental reservations, and an artful ambiguity of language, they excused and sanctioned perjury and every other crime. they taught that offences were justified, if, when committed, the criminal thought differently from what he said or done; and that a mental reservation nullified the obligation of any promise, of any contract, or of any treaty. the perversions of the maxims of virtue by which they sought to justify the crimes of others, they applied to their own conduct in the broadest sense. in , when the papal archives were brought to france, the startling fact became public that the holy fathers had been in the habit of availing themselves of pious subterfuges. it then appeared that while they had made contracts, and issued bulls in conformity with the demands of temporal princes, they had at the same time nullified, by virtue of mental reservations, such of them as were obnoxious. the absurdities and perniciousness of their moral code were not exceeded by those of their penal code. according to the doctrines of catholicity the guilt of every crime may be expiated by the performance of penance. to regulate the priest in prescribing this mode of punishment, the church furnished him with an ecclesiastical body of laws, which he as carefully as prudently concealed from the eyes of the intelligent. all priests were enabled, by the use of this code, to understand the true orthodox degree of punishment which had been authoratively decided should be inflicted on penitents, for the commission of any offence of word, thought or deed; and a uniformity in the administration of penal prescriptions was maintained, which harmonized with the divine inspiration by which the confessor pretended to be guided in the matter. fasts, prayers, self-torture, abstinence from business, were, by the authority of the ecclesiastical code, declared to be the divinely appointed methods of expiating the guilt of rape, of fornication, of adultery, of robbery, of murder, and of every degree and species of crime. these offences being very henious in their nature, and very frequently committed by those who believed in the ability of the church to absolve them from their guilt, and time being required for the performance of the atoning penance, it is easy to see that an ordinary catholic sinner was in eminent danger of incurring a debt which would require several centuries of penance to liquidate. here was a dilemma. long fasting would starve him; long abstinence from business would empoverish him; and either expedient would prevent him from being a source of revenue to the church; and, in fact, defeat the object of the holy sacrament of penance. to obviate this difficulty the ingenious method of indulgences was adopted. by this happy expedient provision was made for the relief of all criminals at stipulated prices, graduated according to their pecuniary circumstances. a penance imposed on a rich sinner for one year's indulgence in the commission of a particular offence, was, by this crafty device, allowed to be cancelled by the payment of twenty shillings to the priest; and if the sinner was poor, by the payment of nine shillings. yet even by this indulgence and charitable discrimination, as every separate offence required the atonement of a separate penance, few sinners escaped incurring less than a debt of three hundred years, or of two hundred pounds sterling. the liquidation of such an obligation during the dark ages would consume a small fortune; but the expansive benevolence of the church, touched at the sorrows of her contrite members, graciously accepted their land after she had exhausted their purse. as crime had its degrees of turpitude, the ecclesiastical code prescribed degrees of severity in punishing it. whoever could not pay with their purse had to pay with their body. three thousand lashes, and the repetition of a portion of the psalter, were prescribed as an indispensable satisfaction for any crime whose penance required a year to discharge; and fifteen thousand lashes and the repetition of the whole psalter, for any crime whose penance required five years to discharge. a year's penance was taxed at three thousand lashes, a century's at three hundred thousand lashes, and five centuries at fifteen hundred thousand lashes. these scourgings were always sanctified by the repetition of psalms. as vicarious flagellation did not impair the revenues of the church, it was not objected to; and a sinner would often expiate his guilt by vigorously laying the stripes it demanded on the back of an accommodating friend. the skill and hardihood of st, dominic was able to discharge the penitential lashes of a century in six days; and his pious example was attempted to be imitated even by ladies of fashion and quality. the monasteries were ambiguous, oppressive corporations. if they have at times preserved the literary treasures of the ancients, they have impaired their authority by numerous corruptions and interpolations. if they have sometimes established institutions for the education of youth, they have generally usurped the fortunes of their patrons. if they have ever been places of refuge for the proscribed, they have always been the means of oppressing industry, and restricting freedom. if they have been schools for the correction of error, and improvement in virtue, yet the absurdities and immoralities taught within their sanctuaries, and the crimes notoriously practised therein, have inflicted deeper injury on the cause of truth, and on the interest of public morals, than can be atoned for by any usefulness or virtue which they could possess, or can pretend to claim. their virtues were accidents; their vices natural offsprings. they were financial institutions. the labor performed by their inmates as a penance, was made a lucrative source of revenue. the articles which they manufactured were represented as capable of imparting a peculiar blessing to the purchaser, making them cheap at any price. a simple badge of a religious order, to which were ascribed divine virtue, and an unlimited amount of indulgences, was sold to lay members at the price of a respectable fortune. the tutors with which the monasteries furnished schools, the professors which they gave to colleges, the confessors with which they supplied princes, and the spiritual guides with which they provided the affluent of both sexes, were benevolently granted upon the payment of exorbitant sums of money. gold being the source of power and luxury, it became the governing principle of the church. for it she granted indulgences to violate the laws of heaven and earth; threatened and repealed excommunications; and merchandised every spiritual blessing, all the prerogatives of heaven, and all the privileges of earth. gold supplied the place of contrition, atoned for the offences of criminals, released sinners from purgatory, and opened to guilt the gates of paradise. as it more ably than any thing else increased the power and dominion of the church, it was a more adorable object than the deity, a more precious savior than christ, a more sanctifying possession than the holy ghost. as all had sinned, all had to pay; and as all were totally depraved, all had to be liberal. the confessor was judge; and as he was interested in the amount, he was likely to be exorbitant in the demand. the sin of total depravity, which all had inherited from the forbidden fruit which adam had eaten, empowered a priest to demand of a penitent the surrender of the whole of his fortune. with extraordinary financial ingenuity, the church converted not only the crimes of her members, but the virtues of her departed saints, into a lucrative source of revenue. happily conceiving that the saints, some of whom had been executed as malefactors, had performed more good works than was necessary for the salvation of their souls, she inferred that the superabundant quantity of their goodness might be dealt out to the destitute without detriment to the owners. with more cupidity than reason, the church laid claim to these works of supererogation, and began to vend them at exorbitant prices. the exhaustlessness of the store, and the scarcity of the article among her members, made the enterprise a very profitable speculation. after disposing of a great portion of heaven, and finding it exceedingly remunerative, her inveterate disposition to traffic led her to examine the saints more carefully, and see if they had not other disposable material for the exercise of her commercial ingenuity. she was not long in discovering that the bones of the saints were likely to be deemed as valuable as their virtues had been, and might prove as marketable. this discovery induced an industrious search for their graves, and a careful excavation of them. the bones of samuel, the judge of israel, which had slept for five hundred years in palestine, were exhumed and transported to rome. st. stephen having appeared in a dream to a pious man, and informed him where his corpse reposed, the locality was immediately examined by bishops and priests in company with the dreamer. unmistakable proofs appeared as to the existence of a grave, but some honest doubts arose as to it being the identical one in which st. stephen had been deposited; yet they all vanished upon opening the coffin, for such celestial odors arose from the corpse, and such devout reverence was manifested by the trees and rocks in the vicinity, that the most sceptical was satisfied of the genuineness of the relics. a saint's tomb being equal in value to a gold mine, it was natural for the church to seek for it with great eagerness. but the deep earnestness of her enthusiasm blunted the acuteness of her judgment. it sometimes led her to mistake the bones of cats, of dogs, and of jackals for those of saints; and as there is no difference between the bones of thieves and murderers and those of saints, and as both classes have often been regarded by law as synonymous, and interred together in the same field, the former were frequently gathered up in mistake for the latter. but however mortifying were such errors, they did not prove as unfortunate as might have been expected; for until anatomy and history had rectified them, the bones of pigs, of jackals, and of malefactors, brought as good prices as the veritable bones of saints, were as eagerly sought after; and what is very remarkable, performed as many and as great miracles. we do not pretend to assert that the religious orders, even the most objectionable of them, did not in some instances render valuable aid to the cause of education and humanity the sanctity and disinterestedness with which their profession was invested, though generally assumed, were sometimes real. but the corrupt and pernicious principles which entered into their constitution, were too self-evident to be concealed from the eyes of mankind; and too revolting to escape the animadversion of some of the more noble and courageous members of their fraternity. some of the clergy, and many of the learned men of the age boldly complained of their base immorality. their aversion to reform, and the worldly policy which characterized their religious profession, sunk them in the estimation of the enlightened and philanthropic. their pernicious intermeddling in political affairs, their cunning and obsequiousness, their busy and intriguing spirit, and the powerful confederacy of their orders, made them objects of suspicion to jurists and statesmen. the numerous exemptions which they enjoyed under the protection of the laws, their privileges nullifying the jurisdiction of the civil authority over them, their overgrown power, and the base accommodation of principle to circumstances, by which they labored to advance the pope's pretension to supreme dominion, rendered their existence in a government a political solecism. but notwithstanding these palpable facts, the force of habit and of education, the deep-rooted reverence which existed in the public mind for the spiritual guides, the superstitious dread of their anathemas, and the servile temper which monarchical government engenders in the minds of subjects, all conspired to conciliate christendom to the deep degradation inflicted on society by the monastic orders, until their arrogant conduct towards some powerful monarch had surpassed the limits of his forbearance. it was then that the discontent and indignation which their outrageous conduct had created in the public mind, but which superstition had held in check, broke forth in bold and explicit demands for reformation. reforms, consequently, were not only projected, but peremptorily enforced. the temporal and spiritual powers of the monastic orders were restricted by the abolishment of their exemptions. sov-reigns appropriated many of their rich estates to education and charitable purposes; and sometimes to their own use. even catholic princes obliged the monks to submit to unpleasant restrictions, or to purchase exemption at an enormous rate. the different orders, one after the other, were abrogated on account of some intolerable conduct. the jesuists were abolished in england on account of the political plotting of its members; in holland for having caused the assassination of maurice de nassau; in portugal for an attempt to murder joseph i.; in spain, and its colonies, for conspiring against the government; in italy for licentiousness; and in france, as the decree expresses, because "their doctrine destroys the law of nature, that rule of morals which god has inscribed on the heart of man. their dogmas break all bounds of civil society, authorizing theft, perjury, falsehood, the most inordinate and criminal impiety, and generally all passions and wickedness; teaching the nefarious principle of secret compensation, equivocation and mental reservation; extirpating every sentiment of humanity in their sanction of homicide and parricide; subverting the authority of government, and, in fine, overthrowing the practice and foundation of religion, and substituting in their stead all sorts of superstition, with magic, blasphemy, and adultery." that their conduct and principles are of the most execrable description, the history of all nations affords melancholy evidence. they attempted to dethrone queen elizabeth, but defeated in that, sought to murder her. they caused the assassination of the prince of orange. they endeavored to poison maximillion i., king of austria. they attempted to murder henry iv., and louis xv. they poisoned pope clement xiii., for having attempted to abolish them, and pope clement xix., for having abrogated their order, although he did it with mental reservations. loaded with the crimes of ages, and the curses of nations, they were abolished with different limitations in every part of europe; and as they were the most powerful of the monastic orders, the others rapidly incurred the sentence of the same degradation. but notwithstanding all this, the jesuistical order, so execrable in its principles, so dangerous to public peace and morals, and so justly reprobated by all enlightened men and governments, was restored by pope pius vii., who intimated that it would reappear in the same authority in which it fell. again these monks are traversing the world, arresting the progress of science, demoralizing society, and plotting treason and rebellion in the advancement of the pope's claims to supreme temporal and spiritual dominion, until the foundation of independent government begins to quake; until the pillars of constitutional liberty begin to totter; until despotism dares insult the ears of freemen with the boldness of its prophecies; and until statesmen and patriots turn pale as they view the portentous vapors darkling the political horizon, which may gather into a storm, whose rain will be the blood of nations, and whose thunder will shake governments to atoms. chapter x. popes, their pretensions, elections, character, and administrations that we may not commit the error of attributing to the holy mother absurdities which she repudiates, we will inquire what are her pretensions before arraigning her reason or justice in making them. an unequivocal answer to this inquiry may ba obtained from the import of her titles, from the bulls of her popes, from the canons of her councils, and from the assertions of her acknowledged authorities. some of the pope's accredited titles are the following: "the father of all fathers;" "the chief high priest and prince of god;" "the regent of the house of the lord;" "the oracle of religion;" "our most holy lord god;" "our lord god the pope;" "the divine majesty;" "the victorious god and man in the see of rome;" "the lamb of god that taketh away the sins of the world;" "the bearer of eternal life;" "the most holy father;" "priest of the world;" "god's vicar general on earth;" "the most high and mighty god on earth;" "more than god," &c, &c. "pius v., our reigning pope, is prince over all nations and kingdoms, and he has power to pluck up, scatter, plant, ruin and build."--_canon of the council of trent._ "all mortals are judged by the pope, and the pope by nobody."--_lateran canon_. "it is necessary to salvation that all christians be subject to the pope."--_pope boniface viii_ "ireland, and all the isles on which christ, the holy sun of righteousness hath shone, do belong to the patrimony of. st. peter and the holy catholic church"--_bull of pope adrian_. "he (the pope) alone has the right to assume empire. all nations must kiss his feet. his name is the only one to be uttered in the churches. it is the only name in the world. he has the right to depose emperors. no council can call itself general without the consent of the pope. no chapter, no book can be reputed canonical without his authority. no one can invalidate his sentence; he can abrogate those of all others. he cannot be judged by any. all persons whatsoever are forbidden to condemn him who is called to the apostolic chair. the church of rome is never wrong, and will never fall into error. every roman pontiff when ordained becomes holy."--_bull of gregory vii_. "the pope is supreme over all the world, may impose taxes, and destroy crowns and castles for the preservation of christianity."--_st. thomas aquinas_. "the supremacy of the pope over all persons and things is the main substance of christianity."--bellarmine. "the pope is crowned with a triple crown, and is constituted over his (god's) hand to regulate concerning all inferiors; he opens heaven, sends the guilty to hell, confirms emperors, and orders the clerical orders."--_antonius of florence, dist. , si papa_. "the pope is the only vicar of god; his power is over all the world, pagan as well as christian, the only vicar of god, who has supreme power and empire over all princes and kings of the earth."--_blareus, de rom,. eccl., art. , sec. _. "the pope has supreme power over kings and christian princes; he may remove them from office, and in their place put others."--_browns, de rom. pontiff, cap. , p. _. "the pope is the lord of the whole world. the pope has temporal power; his temporal power is most eminent. all other powers depend on the pope."--_marcinus, jure princep. pom., lib. , cap. , _. "the pope is divine monarch, supreme emperor and king. hence the pope is crowned with a triple crown, as king of heaven, of earth, and of hell. he is also above angels; so that if it were possible that angels could err from the faith, they could be judged and excommunicated by the pope."--_feraris in papa, art. , no. _. "the vicar of god in the place of god, remits to man the debt of a plighted promise."--_dens._ , . "the pope can do all things that he wishes to do, and is empowered by god to do all things that he himself can."--_tiba_. "the pope can transubstantiate sin into duty, and duty into sin."--_durand_. "the bishop of rome cannot even sin without being praised.''--_moscovius_. "god's tribunal and the pope's tribunal are the same."--_moscovius_. from the loftiness of these pretensions, we are involuntarily impelled to look to the holy fathers for corresponding principles, character and conduct. if they possess the moral attributes of the deity, they must possess also his physical attributes; and if they possess his physical attributes, they can much easier create some world out of nothing over which to domineer, than they can create a claim to all the crowns, riches, and territory of the earth, out of the patrimony of st. peter, who was never worth a cent. if, indeed, the pope's tribunal and god's tribunal are the same; if he above all in heaven would be the proper judge, and anathematizer of angels, should any of them fall; if he can annul the obligation of any oath which man is under to his maker, then he must be the associate judge of god almighty, equal to him in dignity, superior to him in jurisdiction, and supereminent to him in authority. if the pope can transubstantiate sin into duty and duty into sin, he can annihilate all distinction between right and wrong, and convert the worship of god into a sin, and the adoration of himself into a duty. but these extraordinary pretensions, if unsupported by irrefragable proofs of divine power and virtue; if the administrative abilities of the popes have not transcended those of infinite wisdom and goodness; and if their monarchy is not such a just embodiment of unquestionable and universally accepted principles as has produced and maintained among their subjects on earth a degree of peace, order, and concord superior to that which subsists among the angels in heaven, then are their pretensions not only presumptuous but ridiculous, not only arrogant but blasphemous; denying the existence of god by claiming equality with him, contemning his authority by usurping his prerogatives, and trampling under foot his name and character, by presuming to exercise a superior degree of executive and judicial authority. in selecting a person among mortals capable of filling a throne so exalted above the thrones of earth and heaven, we perceive the great embarrassment under which those must have labored on whom the difficult task was devolved. they claim, however to have succeeded by the aid of divine inspiration, although it cannot be denied that the persons whom they have selected were in general the weakest and most corrupt men of their age. in the course of time and experience it became the custom of the bishops, on the demise of a pope, to recommend to the suffrages of the college of cardinals a suitable person for his successor. as the populace claimed and enjoyed the prerogative of confirming or rejecting the choice of the bishops, and as nobles, from selfish and ambitious motives, often interfered in the proceedings, the papal elections were always scenes of excitement, and sometimes of disorder. the jealousy of emperors interfered in the matter, also, claiming the right to arbitrate between rival candidates, to interdict the consecration of any pope elect until the forms of his election should be inspected by their deputies, and approved by themselves, and to convene synods for the purpose of trying any of the holy fathers who should be charged with criminal conduct, and to punishing such of them as should be found guilty. but the despotism of the church, naturally increasing with her power, enabled her eventually to relieve herself of these unpleasant restrictions, to assert independence of the secular powers, and to maintain it by force of arms. this papal triumph removing the wholesome check which had hitherto restrained and softened the violence of episcopal ambition, left the claims of rival candidates for the vicarship of christ to be disputed by the anathemas of the clergy and the frenzy of the mob. the knell of a pope's death became the tocsin of war, and the election of his successor a bloody struggle for political interest. rival aspirants appeared in the ecclesiastical arena; acrimonious contests ensued; adherents were bought; competitors insulted; votes extorted by threats; rome polluted with blood; and the peace of christendom endangered. to defeat a hostile or elect a friendly candidate, nobles and princes would appeal to the passions of the mob, and excite them to ungovernable fury. emperors would interpose not only in the election, but in the administration of a pope. they often obliged the inspired college to select such a candidate as suited their interest; sometimes they prevented, and at other times anticipated its action. through the influence and intrigues of two royal harlots, theodora and marozia, the chair of st. peter was filled with their lovers. pope john xii., when he was eighteen years old, and pope benedict ix., when he was twelve years, were, through the wealth and power of those prostitutes, elevated to the papal dignity. pope john xii was deposed for ingratitude and treachery by the emperor otho i., who caused the inspired college to elect leo vii., and placed him by military force on the apostolic throne. pope john xiii. was elected by the inspired college at the command of otho ii., pope clement ii. at the command of henry iii., and pope clement iii. at the command of henry iv. clement ii. was elected to displace benedict ix., clement iii. to displace gregory vii., boniface i. to displace dioscorus, and martin v. to displace john xxii., gregory xii. and benedict xii. three cotemporaneous holy fathers. the antagonistic al popes would mutually denounce each other as anti-popes, and tax their ingenuity to effect each other's destruction. benedict xii. disposed of his rival by violence; john xiv. incarcerated his in a dungeon, in which he starved to death. besides the rivalship which infuriated opposing candidates, and the intermeddling of princes in their elections in order to secure a pliant instrument for their political designs, the inspired college itself was often rent into revengeful and irreconcilable factions. so violent sometimes were these conflicts, that the college became divided into two parties, each of which proceeded to separate churches, and electing its favorite, presented him to the people as having been chosen by divine inspiration. two antagonistical popes thus being elected in accordance with papal usages, divine inspiration, and canonical law, it became difficult, without the aid of another inspired college, to determine which of the two popes was the genuine holy father. sometimes this question was decided by priority in the moment of an election; sometimes popular sanction or imperial preference resolved the difficulty; and at other times different sections of christendom arriving at opposite conclusions, supported different popes. at one period two popes divided the patrimony of st. peter, the one reigning over one portion of it, and the other over another; and at another time three popes asserted jurisdiction over it. these rival holy fathers would incessantly encounter one another with bulls, anathemas, and swords; and invoking foreign arms in their support would distract, not only rome, but all europe, with their irreconcilable controversies. in order to abate the calamity of the papal elections, pope alexander iii., chosen in , abolished the mode of electing a pope in which the clergy and people participated, and invested the sole right in the college of cardinals. this expedient prevented the frequency of double elections, and their tumultuous and bloody schisms. but still the disorderly elements which shook the church could not be entirely eradicated without the abolishment of the papal throne. the passions and private interests of the members of the sacred college; their wish to secure the honors and emoluments of an independent reign; their insidious machinations to become popes themselves; often deprived the church, under the new electoral method, of the benefits of a holy father. an interregnum of months, sometimes of years, would ensue between the death of a pope and the election of his successor, while disgraceful negotiations were always visible. pope clement iv. promised the crown of both of the sicilies to charles of anjou, on condition that he would use his influence with the inspired college in favor of his election to the papal throne; and pope boniface viii., after expending large sums of money on an election, excommunicated the obstinate cardinals who had refused to vote for him. the ambition and corruption of the cardinals having kept the papal throne vacant for three years previous to the election of gregory x., he issued a bull in , requiring the members of the college to assemble in rome nine days after the demise of a pope, and after taking an oath to abjure all previous understanding, to retire with a single attendant into a common apartment, and to remain there until they should be able to agree on a choice. if within three days the influence of the holy ghost should not be sufficiently powerful to enable them to arrive at a canonical agreement, the luxury of their repast was to be abridged to a single dish at dinner and supper; and if within eight days these privations should still be insufficient to quicken the divine influence on the grossness of human nature, the cardinals were then condemned to subsist on a small allowance of bread, water and wine. the stimulus of this regimen has seldom failed to produce a speedy and harmonious agreement. but the corruption of the holy see was the growth of ages, and had carefully been systematized by the hand of experienced craft. it could not therefore be entirely eradicated by any modification in the papal electoral forms; although improvements might be introduced, making them the occasion of less scandal. the fact that an attendant on a cardinal during the session of an electoral college is worth an independent fortune, is significant of the corrupt machinations by which the holy fathers continue still to be elected. the bull of pope gregory x. has, indeed, prevented the former frequency of schisms, but it was insufficient to prevent one of seventy years' duration, which occurred on the death of pope benedict xi, in . the inspired college having assembled in accordance with the requirements of the canon, sworn to abjure all previous understanding, became, nevertheless, divided on the question whether a frenchman or an italian should be elected as the vicar of christ. two-thirds of the cardinals were in favor of a frenchman, but a mob of thirty thousand romans preferred an italian. "death or an italian pope," shouted an infuriated crowd, as it gathered around the vatican, and made preparations for burning any of the inspired college who should vote for a french candidate; while the cathedral bells, in harmony with the discordant clamor of the mob, pealed forth an ominous warning. under the terror of these intimidations, the inspired college submitted to the wishes of the mob; and electing urban vi., an italian, and presenting him to the populace declared, according to usage, that they had been inspired to choose him through the influence of the holy ghost. the disappointed cardinals disguised their mortification under the warmest congratulations to the newly elected pope, but gratified their secret malice by entering into clandestine negotiation with philip iv., king of france, and stipulating with him to accommodate his interest by electing a pope in the place of urban, who should conform to his wishes in all things. after having by flattery, and professions of friendship and allegiance, sufficiently deceived the vicar of christ, they retired to fundi, and, excommunicating him, elected pope clement in his place. the papal monarchy hence became divided into two antagonistical bodies, the one having its capitol at rome, the other at avignon in france. the aspirants to the dignity of the vicarship of christ endeavored, in general, to obtain its holy honors by the employment of artifice and intrigue. they were ready to flatter any power, assume any semblance, agree to any terms, and profess any sentiment that promised to favor their design. at the council of constance, pope martin v. advocated the most liberal ecclesiastical reforms, but recanted his heresy as soon as he obtained the triple crown. pope alexander vi. was elected by bribing cardinals cibo, spozza and rearis. pope alexander vii., while a cardinal, assumed the semblance of great humility and sanctity, but no sooner had he become a successor of st. peter, than he threw off the cumbrous mask by which he gained the honor, and openly began a course of dissipation and luxurious indulgence. sixtus vi. played a deep and crafty game to win the papal crown. in order to deceive the cardinals he assumed the appearance of an infirm old man, deaf, blind, and scarcely able to hobble on a crutch; and who desired nothing but obscurity, devotion and repose. by the agency of the confessional he correctly informed himself of the wishes of princes and the secret designs of cardinals. under a mask of profound dissimulation he gained the confidence of kings and nobles, and evaded the scrutiny of cardinals. having transformed himself into the semblance of such a convenient tool as the members of the college desired to place on the apostolic throne, they chose him unanimously; but repented of it unanimously immediately afterwards. no sooner had the electoral formalities been con-concluded than, in the presence of the cardinals, he raised himself from his former stooping position, contemptuously threw away his crutch, and with a bounding and vigorous step displayed to the horror consternation of the sacred college that it had chosen for a holy father, not a pliant simpleton, but a man of authority, determination, and sagacity. pope celestine was elected solely on account of his ignorance and mental imbecility. for twenty-seven months the disputes of the cardinals had kept the papal throne without an incumbent. to conciliate their differences they finally agreed to elect celestine, who was celebrated for his intellectual deficiency and profound ignorance of the world. when this holy father entered apulea after his consecration, he symbolically rode upon an ass. but his incapability of transacting the ordinary business the holy see, obliged the sacred college to reassemble, and endeavor by the aid of the holy ghost to select a more suitable vicar of christ. it succeeded in electing boniface viii., who possessed more business capacity, but less moral integrity; and who, standing in mortal dread of his simple and unaspiring predecessor, and fearing the instability of the apostolic throne while he was at large, pusillanimously imprisoned him for life. it is a singular fact that while distant potentates trembled at the thunders of the vatican, the subjects of rome scoffed with impunity at its insolent pretensions. the tyranny and corruption of the holy fathers have frequently been met with contempt and insurrection by the populace. the cardinals have at times been stripped, beaten, and trodden under foot. the priests have been caught by mobs, which, after digging out their eyes, and crowning their heads with ludicrous mitres, have sent them as admonitions to the pope. the sacred processions, headed by the holy fathers, have been saluted with showers of stones. the vicegerents of god, while on the apostolic throne, have been seized by the throat, rudely buffeted, torn from their chair and incarcerated in dungeons. laudislaus, king of naples, whom the pope had entitled "_general of the church_" in consideration of services rendered, thrice afterwards entered rome as a master, profaned the churches, violated the virgins, plundered the citizens, and worshipped at the shrine of st. peter. the holy fathers, assailed by subjects at home and princes abroad, were constantly fleeing from the insecure patrimony of st. peter to find refuge in france, anangni, perugia, viterbo, or some other locality. sometimes they retaliated the insults of their catholic subjects, and levied armies to chastise them; and, on one occasion they had, in a friendly conference, eleven deputies of the people murdered in cold blood, and their bodies cast into the streets. when the holy see was transplanted from rome to avignon, the vices, corruption, and tumults which were characteristic were transplanted along with it. the same popular insubordination and papal insecurity prevailed; the people were seditious and the popes insulted. a catholic freebooter at the head of his band, once entered avignon, plundered the people and churches, compelled the pope and cardinals to ransom themselves by the payment of an enormous sum of gold, and to absolve him and his fellow robbers from the guilt of the transaction, and from all their crime. notwithstanding the ostentatious sanctity and gorgeous show with which the church invests her external form, her throne has never been occupied by a distinguised paragon of virtue; nor has it, notwithstanding her liberal indulgence to moral turpitude, often been graced by those whom she dared to canonize for the purity of their conduct. high principled and lofty minded men have scorned to aspire to her dignities; and had they not, they still could not have stooped to the dishonorable means by which they are to be obtained. with pretensions demoralizing her officials by destroying their sense of moral accountability, fostering their vanity, pride and superciliousness, and dissolving all restraints on the instigations of malice, revenge, cupidity, licentiousness, duplicity and tyranny, it would be absurdity to expect to find in their character any exalted degree of moral excellence. look at those whom the inspired college has chosen vicegerent of god. where we might expect to see the solons, cimons, and catos of the age, we always see despotism, generally duplicity, and often profligacy and cruelty. look at pope gregory, the great. was he not an aspiring and unscrupulous despot? while pretending to wish to be unknown, did he not employ every device to become the most notorious man of his age. to pave his way to the pontifical throne, he devoted his patrimony to the use of convents, and immured himself in them. by seeming to resist, he secured his election; and by addressing an artful remonstrance against its confirmation to the emperor, he removed every obstacle in the way of his consecration. to disguise more deeply his ambition, he solicited a merchant, whom he knew could not accommodate him, to convey him secretly from rome; and, finally, overacted his part by secreting himself in a wilderness, and building a fire that his retreat might be discovered. his financial skill was unquestioned. he induced recared, king of spain, to exchange a great amount of gold and a valuable collection of jewels for a few hairs of st. john the baptist, a piece of the true cross, a key which, it was alleged, contained some grains of a chain with which st. peter had been shackled while in a dungeon. he also sanctified the most atrocious assassination that was, perhaps, ever perpetrated. the roman legions having become demoralized, the emperor maurice attempted to reduce them to order by the enforcement of rigorous military discipline. this effort produced a general dissatisfaction among the troops, which culminated in the election of phocus, an obscure soldier, in the place of maurice. the emperor, desirous of restoring tranquility to the nation, magnanimously abdicated the purple. never having heard of the name of phocus before, he inquired of his general who he was. "alas," replied he, "a great coward, and i fear will be a murderer." this prophecy was soon fulfilled. phocus sent to the private dwelling of maurice assassins, who, before the eyes of their father coldly butchered his five sons, and then consummated the horrible tragedy with the murder of the emperor himself. after this barbarous act had been perpetrated, pope gregory, although he owed his elevation to the indulgence of maurice, complimented phocus on his good fortune, and rejoiced that his piety and benignity had raised him to the imperial throne. from this model pope let us turn to pope john xii., elected in . in ambition unprincipled, in cruelty inexorable, in dissoluteness cold and calculating; the annals of history scarcely furnish an equal compound of moral deformity. elevated to the papal throne through the influence of a prostitute, he made the principles of his patroness the maxims of his conduct. he was a drunkard, a profligate, a blasphemer, and a murderer. he passed his time in hunting and gambling. he swore by the pagan gods and goddesses. he lived in public adultery with roman matrons. he converted the papal palace into a brothel, and made it a school for education in the arts of prostitution. his rapes of widows, wives, and virgins were so frequent, that female pilgrims were deterred from visiting the tomb of st. peter, for fear of being violated by the holy father while kneeling at his shrine, to invoke his aid in the practice of chastity and piety. now advert to gregory vii., elected in , and see what baseness, trickery, avarice, and insolence have been consecrated as holy in the character of a vicar of christ. protected from reproach by his claim to infallibility, he presumed to outrage the sense of common decency by living with the countess matilda under suspicious circumstances; and conceiting that he was endowed with supreme power over all kings and governments, and that if they resist his authority he must punish them, he undertook to dethrone henry iv., emperor of germany and italy, because that prince had exercised the right of investiture contrary to the interdiction of the papal bulls. for this insolent proceed-ure the emperor determined to depose him, and drive him from rome. penetrating the emperor's design, he attempted to defeat it by buying the adherence of the italian populace; but this movement was effectually counterpoised by the emperor's purchasing the support of the italian nobility. he also convened a council at by which gregory was deposed; and another at brisen at which clement iii. was elected. to place clement in possession of the papal dignity, henry formed a coalition with the emperor alexius: to defeat this project gregory formed an alliance with robert guiscard, duke of apulia. the arms of robert were victorious, and gregory was delivered from his perilous situation. but victory sometimes is as disastrous as defeat. the formidable allies of the holy father, which success had introduced into the city of rome, comprehended a numerous band of saracens who hated the christian name and capital, although they had for money and the license of war been induced to take up arms in defence of the sacerdotal monarch. a furious sedition happening to arise in the city among the inhabitants, the saracens eagerly availed themselves of the occasion to gratify their hatred of rome and of christianity. they commenced murdering the citizens, plundering dwellings, profaning churches, and firing buildings; nor was their revenge satiated until they had, not only depopulated the city, but reduced the greater portion of it to ashes. this catastrophe completed the disgrace of gregory. finding himself universally detested as its author, he had to flee for safety to salerno, leaving henry to consummate, without opposition, his design of placing clement iii. upon the apostolic throne. from the conduct of this crafty and talented sacerdotal despot, let us turn a glance at pope innocent ii., elected in . the elevation of this pope was the tocsin of a war which, during his administration, kept rome and italy in a state of violent convulsion. the sacred college not being able canonically to concur in his election, became divided into two obstinate factions, each of which elected a vicegerent of god; the one being pope innocent ii., and the other pope anaclitus. two implacable despots being thus authorized to claim the papal throne, a furious holy war was inevitable. anaclitus having the heavier artillery drove innocent from rome; but france and germany espousing the cause of the fugitive, enabled him to secure a sufficient army to effect his return. he was, nevertheless, obliged to limit his papal jurisdiction to one portion of the city; his antagonist being too strongly entrenched in the other to be dislodged. but even from this limited domain he was again driven by the arms of his formidable rival, and again reinstated by the forces of the temporal power. the two holy fathers continued to hate, persecute and anathematize each other, until death settled the sanguinary controversy by the removal of anaclitus. relieved of the terrors of a powerful adversary, innocent ii. convoked the lateran council, in which one thousand bishops condemned the soul of anaclitus, and excommunicated rogers of sicily for having supported the schismatic. on account of this papal insolence, robert declared war against pope innocent; and taking him prisoner, obliged him to absolve him from the sentence of the excommunication, and to invest him with the papal provinces of apulia, capua, and calibria. let us now direct a moment's attention to pope innocent iii, elected in , who, when receiving the triple crown exclaimed: "the church has given me a crown as a symbol of temporalities she has conferred on me a mitre in token of spiritual power;--a mitre for the priesthood; a crown for the kingdom; making me the vicar of him who bears on his garments and thighs, 'the king of kings, and lord of lords.'" inflated with this popular conceit he imagined that he was supreme prince over all nations and kingdoms, and that he had a divine light to pluck up, destroy, scatter, ruin, plant and build whenever a notion happened to inspire his presumptuous brain. he arbitrarily obliged the prefect of rome to swear allegiance to him, demanded royal homage of marguard of romagna, and upon the refusal of that prince to compromise his sov-reignty by submitting to such unwarrantable dictations, deprived him of the duchy of mark ancona. with a despotic hand he wrung spoleto from duke conrad. he excommunicated philip of france for having repudiated his wife, and obliged him to sue for mercy at his feet. he deposed king john, of england, for refusing to confirm the election of a bishop; instigated france to declare war against him, obliged him to resign his kingdom to the see of rome, to pay large sums of money for absolution, and to hold his throne as a papal fief. he exercised an oppressive despotism over the temporal provinces of christendom, established inqisisitorial tribunals, suspended religious worship by interdicts, and urged the cruel persecution of the albigenses. when his military forces were ready for combat, he is said to have exclaimed: "sword, sword, whet thyself for vengeance." turn from this ornament of the papal throne, and consider the character and administration of pope boniface viii., elected in . pliable and revengeful, presumptuous and ambitious, he sought to make tools of princes, and slaves of subjects. on his way to the lateran palace, after his election, the king of hungary and the king of sicily, in token of their inferior rank, held the bridle of his horse; and with crowns on their heads waited on him at table as menials. he boldly excommunicated philip iv., of france, but cowardly sought to escape the penalty by taking refuge in the fortress of anangni. while luxuriating in this sumptuous retreat, in fancied security, william of nosgeret surrounded the palace with three hundred horse, and a scuffle ensued in which the vicegerent of god was rudely seized by the throat, severely kicked and cuffed, and cast into prison. a mob, however, soon released him from confinement. in view of his flagitious and undeniable acts of duplicity, simony, usurpation and profligacy, king philip had resolved to summon a council at lyons for the purpose of deposing him; but the chastisement of incarceration which he had undergone so mortified his pride, that within three days after his liberation he died in a paroxysm of rage and fury. look at the character of pope alexander iii., elected in , who, demoralized and misled by papal pretensions, distracted all europe, and kept the holy see in a state of perpetual insurrection. under the protection of frederic i. the anti-popes victor iii., pascal iii., and calaxtus iii., successively arose against him; repeatedly driving him from rome; sometimes to france; sometimes to anangni; and sometimes to venice. but fortune eventually favoring him, he wreaked the heaviest vengeance on the heads of his antagonists. he obliged frederic to kiss his feet, and to hold the stirrup of his horse. he laid scotland under an interdict. he restored the thrones of england and germany on conditions that augmented his power. and in the exercise of his apostolic authority gave the world calamitous proof that ecclesiastical supremacy is incompatible with the peace of the world. regard for an instant the character of pope alexander vi., elected in , who perfected in his papal character the dissipation which had disgraced his youth. his policy, both domestic and foreign, was base, treacherous and execrable. he undertook to seize on the italian provinces by the most cruel and dishonorable methods. he attempted to extort money from the different sections of christendom by fraud and force. he seduced his own daughter; and gave notorious evidence of the profligacy of his life by five illegitimate children. he conspired with his son, cardinal caesar borgia, to poison four cardinals, but the conspirators drinking the poison themselves, became the victims of their own treachery. look at pope julius ii., elected in , and mark his savage, ferocious, and warlike character. ambitious of military renown, he commanded his army in person, and without regard to the rights of nations or individuals gratified his lust of power and dominion. in the prosecution of the interests of the holy see, he excommunicated the duke of ferrara, gave navara to spain, besieged muandolo, colleagued against the republic of venice, and made war upon louis xii., king of france. behold clement v., elected in , and mark the gross simony, nepotism, and arrogance which disgraced his administration. hear him excommunicating henry vii. of germany, and his allies, for his refusing to mediate between him and robert; and hear him pronouncing a curse on the venitians for their refusing to submit to his dictation; declaring them infamous, confiscating their gold and war vessels, abolishing their governmental offices, and absolving the subjects from obedience to the laws. turn to john xxii., elected in , and see if any vice, public or private, debarred a candidate from the papal throne. in his youth a pirate, the sanctity of his pontifical character neither restrained nor concealed the precocious viciousness which he had manifested. although he may have amused himself with the popish conceit that a holy father cannot sin without being praised, yet the council of constance, on the testimony of thirty-seven good catholic witnesses, found seventy indictments against him, and degraded him from the papal dignity. among the crimes for which he was deposed were simony, murder, rape, sodomy, and illicit intercourse with his brother s wife, and with three hundred nuns. this holy father died in jail. look at julius iii., elected in , whose unnatural licentiousness transcending all bounds of decency, sought its gratification with boys, men, and even cardinals. hear sixtus v., in the college of cardinals, pronouncing a eulogy on the assassinators of henry iii. king of france, and comparing them with judith and eleazer. hear alexander i., as he placed his foot on frederic, king of denmark, exclaim: "thus shalt thou tread upon the lion and the adder." hear pius v., as he excommunicated queen elizabeth, exclaim: "i have this day set thee over the nations, over the kingdoms, to root out, to pull down, to destroy, to build up and to throw down." witness pope leo iii. abruptly crowning charlemagne, and to the astonishment of the world investing him with all the titles, honors, and regal ornaments of the cæsars. witness gregory iv. fomenting discord between charlemagne and his sons, then between the sons themselves, then tampering with the officers of the imperial army, then absolving them from their oath of allegiance, then uttering to louis i., son and successor of charlemagne, that arrogant assertion: "know my chair is above the emperor's throne;" and ultimately see the design of these atrocious acts, in the claim of the subsequent popes to the dominion of the cæsars, by virtue of the donation of charlemagne. look at the two hundred and ninety-seven popes that have filled the papal chair: twenty-four of them were anti-popes; twenty-six were deposed; nineteen were compelled to abandon rome; twenty-eight were kept on their throne only by foreign intervention; fifty-four were obliged to rule over foreign parts; sixty-four died by violence; eighteen were poisoned; one was shut up in a cage; one was strangled; one smothered; one died by having nails driven in his temples; one by a noose around his neck; and only one hundred and fifty-three out of the whole number have proved themselves at all worthy. read the papal annals; hear the frequent and atrocious anathemas of the popes; mark the vices that have continued century after century to disgrace the administrations of the holy fathers, and say if profane history affords a catalogue of monarchs so black with crime, so unprincipled in ambition, so remorseless in revenge. their pretensions were made not from conscious right, but to justify intended usurpations. they claimed to be endowed with power to do whatever god himself could do, in order to forge a plea for governing the world as despots. they claimed the prerogative of absolving subjects from their oaths of allegiance, that they might rule kings with absolute authority. they claimed that they could not sin without being praised, that they might commit any crime without being censured. they claimed the ability of transubstantiating sin into duty, and duty into sin, that they might justify themselves in adopting any means to obtain an end. they claimed all the authority and holiness of heaven, that they might be worshipped and feared as gods. but while they had the audacity to prefer these claims, it is not a supposable case that the dullest of them was such a stupendous fool as to believe in the validity of his own pretensions. with a triple crown on their heads, with the keys of heaven and hell in their hands, with an assertion on their lips that they are the king of kings, and the proprietors of all the thrones, domains, revenues, gold and gems of the earth, they seriously pretend that they are the successors of st. peter, an humble fisherman, who like his master, had not where to lay his head, and whose patrimony, which they claim to inherit, must have consisted at most of but an empty purse, a staff, a suit of unfashionable garments, and, perhaps, some old fishing nets. and while they have been elected by emperors, by mobs, by arms and clubs, by bribery, and by every species of corruption, they affirm that they have been chosen by the inspiration of the holy ghost. the papal monarchy was neither designed nor calculated to foster the growth of either truth, reason or virtue. the policy and measures which it adopted were never intended to correct vice, but to make it administer to the importance of its power, and the wealth of its coffers. its design has always been to reign supreme; and in conformity with a policy dictated by this design, it has destroyed every virtue that obtruded an obstacle to the accomplishment of its purposes, and protected every vice that appeared to favor their success. such being the principles of the papal government, it could not be hoped that the holy fathers would be the friends of truth and reform. in fact they must have been conscious that a rigid system of reform would have swept them from their thrones, and doomed many of them to confinement in the dungeons of a penitentiary. accordingly we see that while temporal princes, some clergymen, and numerous laymen loudly demanded reform in the head and body of the church, the popes strenuously opposed the project as a dangerous innovation. when summons had been issued by temporal princes for the assembling of councils for purposes of reformation, the pontiffs frequently forbid obedience to them. when circumstances have obliged popes to issue orders for the convocation of such assemblages, they have rendered them nugatory by neglecting to fix the time and place to their meeting. when compelled to be more definite in their conduct and language, they have endeavored, by changing the time and place for holding a proposed council, to defeat the object which they were obliged to sanction. when their cautious vacillations have been summarily arrested, and all the obstacles they had obtruded removed, and a council for reform had been assembled, they endeavored by base and corrupt means to control its action, and defeat its usefulness. when in defiance of papal remonstrances, threats and intrigues, reformatory decrees have been passed by councils, the popes have-, nevertheless, attempted to nullify them by evasion, trickery or neglect. pope gregory declared that a council could be useful only under a catholic prince. pius ii. forbid an appeal to a council. julius ii. interdicted the assembling of one after it had been summoned. when the united voice of princes and subjects compelled pius vii. to call a council, he nullified his own summons by neglecting to fit the time for its meeting. when a critical state of public affairs had led pope paul to imagine that he could shape the proceedings of an inspired council according to his private interest, he convoked the council of trent; but finding his intrigues inadequate to his ambition, he induced his legates to exhaust its time in frivolous ceremonies and useless excursions. when the council of pisa obliged alexander vii. to pledge his word to prosecute certain specified reforms, he adopted no measure in compliance with his word. when the council of basle enacted decrees of reform, the artifice of pope eugenius rendered them of no avail. when the council of constance, after deposing three rival popes, elected martin v. in consideration of the zeal with which he had advocated church reform, it was soon apparent that his zeal for reform was his ambition to be elevated to the papal throne, and that it all had expired as soon as his election was secure. pope pius denounced the reforms which joseph ii., of austria, proposed to introduce into his kingdom, and adopted every expedient to counteract them: when the tyranny and profligacy of the monastic orders had awakened the indignation of all christendom, the vicar of christ, by means of bulls, anathemas and intrigues, defended them with ferocious zeal. when the jesuists were banished from england for treasonable machinations, from italy for profligacy, from portugal for attempts at assassination, and from the other parts of europe for execrable conduct, the popes not only defended, but recommended them as the most pious and useful members of the church. when the papal throne was restored by england, a heretic, and russia, a schismatic, in conjunction with the catholic powers, after it had been abolished by france, the pope, in defiance of the wishes and resolutions of his liberators, and in violation of the obligations of honor and gratitude, restored the barbarous inquisition, the obnoxious order of the jesuists, and the superstitious practices of the dark ages. the holy mother, indeed, has given birth to little besides monstrosities. the features and principles of her offspring cast a dark suspicion on her chastity. they usually wear the lineament, if not the cloven foot of the arch-fiend. ambition, duplicity, treachery, viciousness, and immorality are deeply featured in their countenances, and some of them seem to be an incarnation of every crime that could entitle a human being to be considered as the offspring and heir of hell. if there were some honorable exceptions, they were like stars on a stormy night, obscured by the heavy mist through which they shone. some popes, it is true, have been great governors; men of great foresight and enterprise; men who, looking beyond their age, have prepared measures that have successfully met future exegencies; but their sagacity has been quickened by ambition and avarice; and their great talents have been wasted on duplicity and intrigue. the less exceptionable of them have acknowledged and deplored the corruption of the holy see; but they seem to think it is incurable, for their hopes of the future are always darkened by the recollection of the past. hence we hear nicholas v., as he bestowed an office on the worthy, say: "take this, you will not always have a nicholas to bestow a gift on the ground of merit." chapter xi. the papal monarchy section one. the papal crown--banner--cabinet--court--decrees-- jurisprudence--coinage--army and navy--revenues--oaths--and spies. whatever plausibility the creed and ritual of the catholic church may throw around her religious pretensions, the fact is undeniable that she is a temporal power, claiming to be the only legitimate sovereignty on earth, and the right to reduce all governments, by fair or foul means, under her absolute authority. the pope, the head of this unlimited monarchy, is a political prince; his capital is the city of rome, and his domains, until recently, were the states of the church. according to a practice observed at the coronation of princes, the pope is invested with national authority by ascending the chair of state, and receiving a headdress emblematical of temporal sovereignty. these symbolical headdresses were originally garlands, invented by prometheus in imitation of the chains which he had worn for the redemption of mankind, but which in the course of time became applied, by the uranian priestesses to decorate themselves and their altars; by lovers, to adorn the doors of their mistresses: by the devout, to deck the animals which they devoted to sacrifice; by slave owners, to attract attention to the slaves whom the exposed for sale; by relatives, to embellish the corpse of a deceased friend; and finally, in the dark ages, when they were transformed into a variety of fantastical shapes, profusely decorated with gold, gems and pearls, and had become associated with ideas of greatness, power and authority, they were exclusively appropriated by kings to symbolize the regal authority. in the ninth century, this practice having become fashionable among the royal classes, pope alexander iii., who was elected in , aspiring to be considered rather as the successor of kings than of a fisherman, ventured to encircle his sacerdotal mitre with a regal diadem, emblematical of universal spiritual sovereignty. to this crown pope boniface viii., elected in , added a second, to symbolize the pope's universal temporal power; and to this crown pope urban v., elected in , added a third, to denote the pope's supreme spiritual and temporal power over europe, asia and africa. the adoption of these regal emblems by the holy fathers may seem in the eyes of the profane to represent not their rights, but their ambition. they claim, however, to have been moved by the holy ghost in adopting their head decorations; but if this pretension absolves them from the vice of ambition, it limits at the same time their authority to europe, asia and africa. the holy ghost not having intimated the existence of america in his social intercourse with the papal monarchs, nor prescribed to them the adoption of a fourth crown to symbolize their authority over it, it is rational to infer from these facts that he intended to infer by his silence, that the popes have no right whatever of exercising any jurisdiction over its territory. if the pope's regalia have any significance, it is that his government is restricted to europe, asia and africa; and that he has no right to exercise either temporal or spiritual authority over any church, society or institution, on the american continent. but in sight of the pope's monarchical palace, triple crown; and regal ornaments, the statue of st. peter, erected in the seventh century, wearing a simple mitre, stands scoffing at them in eternal derision. the pope as an independent sovereign has not only a temporal crown, but a political banner. this ensign consists of a white flag with a device of cross-keys; its white color may signify peace; the cross-keys the possession of earth and heaven; and, conjointly, these emblems may intimate that there is to be no peace until the claims of the pope to universal spiritual and temporal sovereignty is acknowledged by all nations. apollo, the symbol of the rising sun, and pluto, the symbol of the closing day, are represented with keys in their hands, to denote their office of opening and shutting the gates of day. it is thought by some that the idea of the papal keys was borrowed from these emblems of the pagan gods. but it was the custom of a conquered city to present to the victor the keys of its gates, through its officials, in token of the submission of the inhabitants to his authority. in conformity with this ancient custom, it is affirmed by the popes Â� that pepin, king of france, after he had wrested the exarcate from the possession of the lombards, presented the keys of the subjugated cities to the holy see on the tomb of st. peter. they assert also, that charlemagne presented the pope with a banner, and authorized him to unfurl it in the cause of the church. but if the story of pepin's gift is as empty as the tomb of st. peter, at rome, is and always has been, of the corpse of the apostle; and if charlemagne's donation of cities, most of which he never possessed, and the remainder of which he governed as his own with the most jealous scrupulosity until the day of his death, it is difficult to perceive how the popes, by virtue of these gifts, can have any claim to either keys or banners. the pope, as an independent sovereign, has also a national cabinet. his privy council is the college of cardinals; his minister of internal and foreign affairs is the cardinal secretary; his viceroys are the legates and nuncios which he accredits to foreign powers; his governors and lieutenant-governors are the catholic bishops and archbishops, which are located in different parts of the world; and his ministers of finance and police are the priests of different grades and orders. the civil offices of the papal monarchy have always been filled by members of the sacerdotal orders, and disposed of by the holy father for money. as an independent sovereign the pope has an imperial court. in the grades of this court he himself enjoys the first rank, being placed on an equality with god, and in some respects above him. the cardinals stand next to princes; they wear a purple mantle, the emblem of royalty; formerly they ranked in christendom equal with kings, preceded princes of blood, and sat on the right of kings, or near the throne. the generals of the catholic orders, the abbots, archbishops, bishops and priests, consider their titles as royal, and maintain that in consideration of them they should be exempted from the jurisdiction of civil magistrates. as an independent sovereign the pope has the power to issue absolute decrees. the papal bulls, apostolic briefs, and encyclical letters, are the exercise of sovereign power. from the despotic tone of these documents, sometimes moderated by fear, but never from inclination, the pope evidently claims the right of interfering not only in the ecclesiastical, but also in the political affairs of all nations. as an independent sovereign the pope has a system of jurisprudence and administrative justice. the canonical law by which he governs his monarchy consists of the _concordantia discordantium_ or _decretium gratiani_; the _decratales gregorii noni_; the _liber sextus_, by boniface viii; the _extravagantes johannis xxii_; the _extravagantes communes_, and the _clementinus_; all of which are known under the general name of _cor-pus juris canonica_; and all except the _extravagantes_ have the full authority of law. the papal system of administrative justice consists of a chief court, a civil court, and an apostolical court. the apostolical court regulates the pope's domains and collects the taxes. the members of the court are always bishops, and the presiding officer is generally a cardinal. as an independent sovereign the pope has exercised the governmental prerogative of coining money. the papal coins have various devices. they all have the cross-keys; most of them the triple crown; and some of them are inscribed with the word _dominus_. as an independent sovereign the pope has always maintained, when possible, an army and a navy. pope clement viii. elected in , raised an army of regulars and volunteers of thirty thousand foot and three thousand cavalry. pope leo ix. commanded an army consisting of italian volunteers, several bands of robbers, and seven hundred suabians. pope alexander vi. at the head of a powerful army conquered bologna, ancona, ravenna and ferrara. after the return of the pope to rome from avignon, in , a standing army was formed consisting of cavalry and infantry. the papal military organizations have been of the most formidable description. the dominican knights, the teutonic knights, the knights of st. john, and the knight templars, instituted for the defence and propagation of catholicism by the force of arms, were skilfully organized and rigorously disciplined. they assumed the vows of celibacy, poverty and unconditional obedience. they were interdicted, by the terms of their charter, from acknowledging any protector but the pope, and were made independent of any other authority. upon becoming initiated into their orders, the pope absolved them from all human obligations, and they were required to sunder all human ties. they enjoyed all the immunities and privileges of the religious orders; and in conjunction with them formed a standing army of three hundred thousand men, fully equipped for war, exclusively devoted to the pope's interest, and ready at his call to serve him by land or sea. as an independent sovereign the pope has a national revenue. this revenue is domestic and foreign. from official reports the pope's domestic revenue, in , amounted to , , florins; his foreign revenue is not publicly known. in the dark ages half of the ecclesiastical revenues of europe flowed into the church treasury at rome; but at present the various streams of wealth destined for the church, are diverted to convenient localities, situated in different parts of the world, to be disbursed according to regulations prescribed by the holy father. as the subject is somewhat curious, we are tempted to inquire into some of the sources of the papal revenue. one source of the pope's revenue is the sale of indulgences. st. peter's church, at rome, which cost , , crowns, was chiefly built from the proceeds of this species of traffic. william hogan furnishes some singular facts respecting this ingenious device, by which the church accommodates the wishes of the members in the commission of sin, to her pecuniary advantage. he says: "they (the pope and the propagandi) resolved that indulgences should, in the future, be called _scapulus_, and thus piously enable all catholic priests and bishops to swear on the holy evangelists that no indulgences were sold in the united states..... the scapula costs the purchaser one dollar. the priest who sells it tells him that in order to make it thoroughly efficacious, it is necessary that he should cause some masses to be said.... i may safely say that, on an average, every scapula sold in the united states costs at least five dollars."--_synopsis, pp_. , . the number of catholics in the world is computed, by catholic authority, at , , . some of the papal subjects would not, perhaps, purchase a scapula in a year, while others might purchase a hundred; but at the moderate estimate of one scapula annually to each catholic, the pope would derive from this source an annual revenue of , , dollars. the sale of the scapula would; of course, be in proportion to the wickedness of the church members; the more virtuous they were the less would they be necessitated to contribute to the coffers of the church; and as merchants and traders always scheme to create a demand for their goods, it is not reasonable that either the pope or his priests would encourage their catholic subjects in conduct that would render them of no value to them; and that would injure the sale and lessen the demand of their articles of trade, by which their treasure and luxuries are so much augmented. another source of the pope's revenue are the masses which the church requires to be said for the deliverance of the souls of deceased catholics out of purgatory. these masses were sold before the rebellion at fifty cents a piece; whether they have since risen in value in proportion to other articles, i have not the means of ascertaining. what number of masses are requisite for conjuring a catholic layman's soul up from purgatory, i am not informed; but there is a will of a priest recorded in towsontown, md.. which bequeaths to a brother priest the sum of one hundred dollars to pay for two hundred masses, "to be said for the benefit of his poor soul." if the church will not release the soul of a priest from purgatory for less than one hundred dollars, how much does she demand of a layman for a similar purpose? it would seem that the sanctity of a priest ought enable her to get him out of the purgatorial fire, and release him from the clutches of the devil for a much less sum of money than would be requisite for the same purpose in the case of an un-anointed layman.. this traffic in the souls of dead men by the church, has been prosecuted in such an oppressive manner thai her members have sometimes been provoked to remonstrate. i once knew of a young catholic who charged his priest with having forged a will in order to swindle him out of a great portion of his maternal inheritance. the pretext on which this pious fraud was attempted to be based was a plea that the mother of the youth had bequeathed to the priest a house of hers, in payment of a sufficient number of masses for the release of her soul from purgatory. the annual revenue derived by the pope for his service in opening the gates of purgatory to the devout must be prodigious; but the secrecy with which it is veiled renders a reliable computation exceedingly difficult. if we consider the number of catholics that are in the world, and the probable annual number of deaths that occur among them, and calculate the sum of money which would be necessary to deliver the average number that die yearly out of the flames of purgatory, we may form some conception of the vast-ness of this resource of papal revenue. wars, pestilence, bereavements of friends, which are calamities to families and nations, are pecuniary advantages to the church; and in proportion to the mortality of her members, she has cause to rejoice over the improvement of her finances. another source of the pope's revenue are the proceeds derived from the sale of crosses, amulets, relics, pictures, beads, and articles made by monks and nuns. these articles of pious merchandise are blest by the bishop, and sold sometimes privately, and sometimes at catholic fairs, they are supposed by the purchaser to insure him good luck, and to keep evil from his dwelling; and although they are often an unsightly set of trumpery; yet as they are consecrated by the bishops blessing, which, however, rather depreciates their intrinsic value, they are prized by the cajoled catholics as exceeding in value either gold or gems. we have no data enabling us to calculate the amount of revenue derived by the pope from this source of income; but we may be allowed to conclude from the fact that, as the church has availed herself of its advantages in all countries and ages, it has proved exceedingly remunerative. another source of the papal revenue are the contributions extorted from laborers, female servants, and others of the industrial classes. i know of a servant girl who paid one dollar every autumn towards furnishing the church with winter fuel. what fuel costs the church, i do not know; perhaps little or nothing. the number of catholics in the united states are commuted by catholic authority to amount to , , ; and if each one contributes one dollar annually for the benefit he derives from the church furnaces, (and i am credibly informed he does), the pope receives from this source an annual income of , , dollars. but this is not the only method by which the laboring classes are filched out of their honest gains by the holy mother. on the regular monthly pay-day of contractors for public works, and of mining, manufacturing and mechanical companies, the priest makes his appearance, and exacts a dollar a month from each of the faithful. if there are non-catholics among the employees, who hesitate to contribute the monthly donation, they are insulted, intimidated, and their life threatened to such a degree that they consider it prudent to yield to the demand, or seek employment elsewhere. this system of extortion is engineered among the workmen by some favorite of the catholic priest, who makes it his business to see that he is not disappointed in getting his dollar a month. an engineer of this description, employed on the baltimore and ohio railroad, in his avidity to accommodate the priesthood narrowly escaped being victimized by a secular sharper. a stranger, professing to be a catholic priest, solicited in behalf of his necessities, his charity and influence. promptly heading a subscription list with the generous sum of two dollars and fifty cents, he was soon enabled to exult in the subscription of a very respectable amount by his fellow workmen. the list was, in accordance with usage, handed to the cashier of the establishment; but before any money was paid on its account it was discovered that the priest was a spurious one, and that the money he solicited was not intended for the treasury of the pope, but for the pocket of an unconsecrated impostor. catholic periodicals, with commendable regard to their patrons' interest, have frequently published instances in which pretended priests and monks have successfully gulled the faithful. when we consider the vast proportion of poor to rich catholics in the world, it seems evident that this branch of the pope's financial machinery, by which he wins a dollar a month from each of the industrial classes of the catholic church, must furnish his coffers with an annual revenue exceeding that of any other government. another source of the pope's revenue are alms collected by an order of lay mendicants. the church, instructed by the practice of mendication among all nations and classes, at all periods of history, and under all circumstances, has been enabled to perfect a system of extraordinary comprehensiveness, sharpness and efficiency. organ grinders, bead counters, children, mothers with babes in their arms, men without legs, the blind, the deaf, the cripple, any object that can touch? the tender or religious sympathies of the community, are employed as beggars for the pope of rome. this description of mendicants sometimes openly solicit alms for the holy father, but at other times endeavor to conceal their mission under a mask of profound dissimulation. the eloquence of broken noses, distorted forms, mutilated limbs, and tattered garments, are made to plead with touching pathos in behalf of the papal monarch. the revenue which he derives from his numerous crowd of professional beggars, is one of the secrets of the holy see; but from the liberality with which catholics respond, from a sense of religious duty, and protestants from prudential motives, it may reasonably be presumed that it is not inconsiderable. another source of the pope's revenue is derived, from his foreign possessions. these possessions consist of churches, monasteries, nunneries, mission houses, edifices for schools, colleges, hospitals, asylums, private dwellings, tracts of land, and every other species of property. the papal foreign property is sometimes held in the name of the pope, sometimes in that of a priest, and sometimes in that of a corporation, real or pretended. every priest coming to the united states, in order that he may legally be qualified to hold property for the benefit of the church, is required to take the oath of allegiance, whether he considers it consistent or not with his ordination oath. (see hogan's synopsis, p. ). in the pope claiming to be the proprietor of st. mary's church at philadelphia, leased it to a foreign priest, and sent him over to take charge of it. the trustees, and william hogan, the recognized encumbent, refusing to obey the order of the pope's agents, a suit of ejectment was brought against them in the supreme court of pennsylvania. judge tilghman presided at the trial. he decided that the pope could legally hold no property in the united states, and sustained the action of the defendants. (see hogan's synopsis, pp. , ). in a suit brought by the brothers of the order of hermits of st. augustine, against the county of philadelphia, for the destruction of st. augustine's church by a mob of the american party, it was discovered that the alleged corporation was entirely spurious. the pretended corporators consisted of micheal hurly, pastor of st. augustine's church at philadelphia, prince gallager, pastor at bedford, pa., lewis de barth, pastor of st. mary's church at philadelphia, patrick henry, pastor at coffee run, chester county, pa., and j. b. holland, pastor at lancaster, pa. so profoundly secret was the existence of this company kept, that no laymen or priest outside of the pretended corporators had ever heard of it before the trial, and as the public documents contained no enrolment of it in accordance with the requirement of law, it was pronounced entirely spurious and invalid. the value of the property held in the name of this pretended corporation, in evasion of the laws of the united states, was computed at , , dollars. even in cities where the catholic population is deemed numerically insignificant, millions worth of property of which the inhabitants have not the slightest conception, is owned by the pope, under cover of fictitious names or otherwise. (see hogan's auric. confess., vol. , p. , &c). whenever the church has obtained sufficient power she has made a bequest to the coffers of the church a condition to the validity of a will; and where she has failed to acquire this power, she has still exacted a compliance with it from her members, under pain of her penalties. splendid palaces and gorgeous church edifices alone are not adequate to satisfy the cravings of her avarice, she must have lands and every species of wealth. wherever her priests have effected a pious entering wedge in a block of buildings, by means of a church or an asylum, they must scheme to work out the other proprietors, and monopolize the whole themselves. their covetous eye is always fixed on some magnificent farm, and their active speculation, or deeper craft, has enabled them to become in possession of very desirable tracts of land. i know of a priest who netted ten thousand dollars by a single land speculation. the priests, by means of the confessional, become accurately acquainted with all secrets, with every contemplative movement in the general or state government, or in financial corporations, that can effect the market value of lands or stocks; and it would be exceedingly astonishing if, with this advantage, their speculations should not invariably be successful. in possession of such means, the church has in every age accumulated prodigious wealth. before the secularization of the monastic property in europe, the ecclesiastical domains and revenues were so great that the benefices were bestowed by kings on royal heirs. in california and mexico, previous to the revolution that caused the sequestration of the church domains, her mission-houses owned nearly all the territory of the state. in china, even at this day, there are three bishoprics endowed by the crown of portugal, which hold seven provinces; and the bishops of the apostolic vicars hold several others. the possessions of the catholic priests render them the wealthiest citizens of the country in which they reside; and as no heir can inherit their estates, each succeeding generation is destined to see them augmented until every bishopric, however poor now, has become a princely domain, with a princely revenue, governed by a titled priest. every catholic edifice in the world, and every description of property held by a priest, belongs to the pope; the real title, as lord paramount, being vested in him, whatever ostensible title policy or necessity may have induced the church to adopt. over these possessions he exercises supreme, despotic dominion, sometimes directly, and sometimes indirectly. we have now enumerated some of the sources of the pope's revenue; but we have mentioned but a few of them. in fact the rites of the catholic church partake so plainly of a financial character, that they seem to have been instituted for purposes of ecclesiastical revenue. with a fiscal system principally based on them, extending over christendom, rigorous in its exactions on all classes, the church unites a rapacity so unprincipled, measures so oppressive and unjustifiable, deeds so horrible and arrogations so presumptuous, that were it not for her religious aspect she might be mistaken for the demon of avarice. while rolling in opulence and luxury, she stoops to the basest trickery to filch from laborers and servant girls their wages; to disinherit lawful heirs; taking advantage of ignorance and superstition, and pretending to regulate the condition of the soul in the eternal world. the immense sum of gold which she has, by means of her fiscal system, been piling up in her coffers for ages, has had no visible outlet except what has been expended in the support of her officials, and on bribery, corruption, and political intrigue. the policy that dictates the accumulation and reservation of this vast amount of treasure, must contemplate the undertaking of some gigantic enterprise; and the world may yet be startled from its slumber by the martial assertion of the church to her pretensions of supreme dominion over the world; and by the fact that she is better organized for war, and better furnished with its sinews than any other power. as an independent sovereign the pope has oaths of allegiance which he prescribes to such of his subjects as he judges proper. according to the authority of william hogan, the consecration oath of the jesuistical bishops is as follows: "therefore, to the utmost of my power i shall and "will defend this doctrine, and his holiness's rights and "customs against all usurpers, and heretical and pro- "testant authority whatsoever; especially against, the "new pretended authority of the church of england, "and all adherents, in regard that they and she be "usurpal and heretical, opposing the true mother church "of rome. i do renounce and disown my allegiance "as due to any heretical king, prince, or state named "protestant, or of obedience to any of their inferior "magistrates or officers. i do further declare the doctrine of "the church of england, and of calvinists, "huguenots, and of the other named protestants to be "damnable, and they themselves are damned, and to be "damned, that will not forsake them. i do further declare "that i will help, assist, advise all wherever i "shall be, in england, scotland, ireland, or in any "other kingdom i shall come to, and do my best to ex- "tirpate the heretical protestant doctrines, and destroy "all their pretending powers, regal or otherwise. i "do further promise and declare, that notwithstanding "i am dispensed with, to assume any other religion "heretical for the propagation of the mother church's "interest, to keep secret and private all her agent's "councils from time to time, as they entrust me, and "not to divulge, directly or indirectly, by word, writ- "ing, or circumstance whatever, but to execute all "that shall be proposed; given in charge, or discovered "unto me, by you my ghostly father, or by any of his "sacred convents. all which i, a. b. do swear by the "blessed trinity, and blessed sacraments which i am "now to receive, to perform, and on my part to keep "inviolably, and do call all the heavenly and glorious "hosts to witness these my real intentions to keep this "my oath." the consecration oath of a catholic bishop is as follows: "i do solemnly swear on the holy evangelists, and "before almighty god, to defend the domains of st. "peter against every aggressor; to preserve, augment "and extend the rights, honors, and privileges of the "lord pope and his successors; to observe, and with all "my might to enforce his decrees, ordinances, reserva- "tions, provisions, and all dispositions whatsoever; "to persecute and combat, to the last extremity "heretics and schismatics, and all who will not pay "the sovereign pope all the obedience which he shall "require." the remainder of this oath is similar to the foregoing jesuistical oath. the priests of maynooth, who form the vast majority of catholic priests in this country, assume the following obligation to the church: "i, a. b., do declare not to act or conduct any mat- "ter or thing prejudicial to her, in her sacred orders, "doctrines, tenets, or commands, without leave of its "supreme power, or its authority under her appoint- "ment; being so permitted, then to act, and further "her interests, more than my own earthly good and "earthly pleasures; as she and her head, his holiness "and his successors, have, or ought to have, the supremacy "over all kings, princes, estates, or powers "whatsoever, either to deprive them of their crowns, "or governments, or to set up others in lieu thereof, "they dissenting from the mother church and her com- "mands." it is said that by rescript of pope pius vii., in , the clause relating to "heretics" in the bishop's oath, is omitted by the bishops subject to the british crown. it is also omitted in the following oath, published by the nashville american union, april , : "i, n.. elect of the church n., shall be from this "hour henceforward obedient to blessed peter the "apostle, and to the holy roman catholic church, and "to the most blessed father pope n., and to his succes- "sors canonically chosen. i shall assist them to retain "and defend, against any man whatever, the roman "popedom, without prejudice to my rank; and shall "take care to preserve, defend and promote the rights, "honors, privileges, and authority of the holy roman "church, of the pope, and his successors aforesaid. "with my whole strength i shall observe, and cause to "be observed by others, the rules of the holy fathers, "the decrees, ordinances, or dispositions and mandates "of the apostolic see." the next clause declares the willingness of the bishop to attend synods, give an account to the pope of every thing appertaining to the church and his flock, and obey such apostolic mandate as he shall receive. the oath concludes thus: "i shall not sell, nor give away, nor mortgage, "enfeoff anew, nor in any way alienate the possessions "belonging to my table, without the leave of the ro- "man pontiff. and should i proceed to any alienation "of them, i am willing to contract, by the very fact, "the penalties specified in the constitutions published "on this subject.' the sanfideste's oath, exacted by pope gregory of his military forces, was as follows: "i swear to elevate the altar and the throne upon the "infamous liberals, and to exterminate them without "pity for the cries of their children, or the tears of "their old men." william hogan, speaking of the instructions given him previous to his embarkation for america, by his bishop, describes it as follows: "let it be your first duty to extirpate heretics, but be cautious as to the manner of doing it. do nothing without consulting the bishop of the diocese in which you may be located, and if there be no bishop there, advise with the metropolitan bishop. he has instructions from rome, and he understands the character of the people. be sure not to permit the members of the holy church who may be under your charge to read the bible. it is the source of all heresy. wherever you see an opportunity of building a church, make it known to your bishop. let the land be purchased for the pope, and his successors in office. never yield or give up the divine right which the head of the church has, by virtue of the keys, to the command of north america, as well as every other country. the confessional will enable you to know the people by degrees; with the aid of that _holy_ tribunal, and the bishops, who are guided by the spirit of god, we may expect at no distant day, to bring over north america to our holy church."--_synopsis_, pp. , . the atrocious doctrine that it is proper to equivocate, to dissimulate, and to deceive by mental reservations, is boldly defended by the highest authorities of the catholic church. dens says: "notwithstanding it is not lawful to lie, or to feign what is not, however, it is lawful to dissemble what is, or to cover the truth with words, or other ambiguous or doubtful signs, for a just cause, and when there is not a necessity of confessing."--(theol., vol. , p. ). again, he says: "the vicar of god, in the place of god, remits to man the debt of a plighted promise."--(lb., : , ). st. liqnori says: "it is certain, and a common opinion among all divines, that for a just cause it is lawful to use equivocation, and to confirm it with an oath."--(less. , , ch. , n. ). the obligation of all oaths of allegiance in conflict with the papal clerical oaths, or the interests of the pope, are declared by the universal authority of the church to be null and void. dens says: "all the faithful, also bishops and patriarchs, are bound to obey the roman pontiff. the pope hath also not only directive, but coactive power over the faithful."--(de eccles. no. , p. ). pope urban, elected in , says: "subjects are not bound to observe the fealty which they swear to a christian prince, who withstands god and the saints, and condemns the precepts."--(pithon, p. ). pope gregory ix says: "the fealty which subjects have sworn to a christian king, who opposes god and his saints, they are not bound by any authority to perform."--decret., vol. , p. ). again he says: "an oath contrary to the utility of the church is not to be observed."--vol. , p. .) and again he asserts: "you are not bound by an oath of this kind, but on the contrary you are freely bid good-speed in standing against kings for the rights and honors of that very church, and even in legislatively defending your own peculiar privileges."--(vol. .. p. ). bronson, speaking of the church says: "as the guardian and judge of law she must have power to take cognizance of the state, and to judge whether or not it does conform to the condition and requirement of its trust, and to pronounce sentence accordingly."--(rev. jan. ) pope pius v., in relation to queen elizabeth, said: "we do declare her to be deprived of her pretended right to the kingdom, and of all dominion whatsoever; and also the subjects sworn to her to be forever dissolved from any such oath." pope innocent iii., elected in , "freed all that were bound to those who had fallen into heresy, from all fealty, homage, and obedience."--(pithon, p. ). bronson says: "rome divided her british territory into dioceses, and sends cardinals to london, notwithstanding the laws that england shall not thus be divided."--(rev., april, ). the trustees of the church of st. louis, at buffalo, n. y., having refused to comply with the canons of the council of trent in violating the trust laws of the state of new york, the bishop proceeded to excommunicate them. in consequence of this conduct, the legislature of passed an act defining ecclesiastical tenure. in a letter of bishop hughes, dated march th, , and published in the _freeman's journal_, respecting this law, he says: "now in this it seems to meddle with our religion, as well as our civil rights; and we shall find twenty ways outside the intricate web of its prohibitions for doing, and doing more largely still, the very thing it wishes us not to do." a curious and very objectionable feature of the papal monarchy is, a system of searching espionage which it attempts to establish over society. in addition to the confessors and spiritual guides by which the pope seeks to discover the thoughts, and direct the conduct of his catholic subjects, he employs a set of men and women who, in the capacity of servants scrutinize the domestic affairs of non-catholics, mark, their conversation, and communicate-all important facts through their superior, to him at rome. as an illustration of the disrespectful inquisitiveness, and base incivility of this department of the papal government, we submit the following facts furnished by william hogan: "soon after my arrival in philadelphia," says he, "i became acquainted with a protestant family. i had the pleasure of dining occasionally with them, and could not help noticing a seemingly delicate young man, who waited at the table.... not long after this a messenger called at my room to say that theodore was taken ill, and wished to see me. i was then officiating as a romish priest, and calling to see him was shown up stairs to a garret room, into which, after a loud rap, and announcement of my name, i was admitted.... "he deliberately turned out of his bed, locked the door, and very respectfully handed me a chair, and asked me to sit down as he had something very important to tell me.... 'sir, you have taken me for a young man, but you are mistaken; i am a girl, but not so young as i appeared in my boy's dress. i sent for you because i want to get a character, and confess to you before i leave the city.' i answered, 'you must explain yourself more fully before you can do either.' i moved my chair farther from the bed, and tightened my grasp on a sword-cane which i carried in my hand. 'feel no alarm,' said the now young woman, 'i am armed as well as you are,' taking from under her jacket an elegant poignard. 'i will not hurt you. i am a lay sister belonging to the order of jesuists in stonyhurst, england, and wear this dagger to protect myself. there was no longer any mystery in the matter. i knew now where i was, and the character of the being that stood before me. i discovered from her that she had arrived in new orleans some time previous, with all due recommendation to the priests and nuns of that city.... they received her with all due caution as far as could be seen by the public; but privately in the warmest manner. jesuists are active and diligent in the discharge of duties to their superiors., and of course this lay sister, who was chosen from among many for her zeal and craft, lost no time in entering on her mission. the sisters of charity took immediate charge of her, recommended her as a chambermaid to one of the most respectable protestant families in that city, and having clothed her in an appropriate dress, she entered on her employment.... so great a favorite did she become in the family, that in a short time she became acquainted with all the circumstances and secrets, from those of the father to those of the smallest child. "according to the custom universally in vogue, she kept notes of every circumstance which may tend to elucidate the character of the family, never carrying them about her, but depositing them with the mother abbess especially deputed to take charge of them..... thus did this lay sister continue to go from place to place, from family to family, until she became better acquainted with the politics, the pecuniary means, religious opinions, and whether favorable or not to the propagation of popery in this country, than even the very individuals with whom she associated.... this lay sister, this excellent chambermaid, or lay jesuist sister, wished to come north to a better climate.... "americans can be gulled. the _sisters of charity_ have always in readiness some friend to supply them with the means of performing _corporeal acts of mercy_. this friend went around to the american families where this chambermaid had lived from time to time, told them she wanted to come as far as baltimore, that it was a pity to have her travel as a steerage passenger; a person of her virtue and correct deportment should not be placed in a situation where she might be liable to insult and rude treatment.... a handsome purse was soon made up, a cabin passage was engaged, and the young ladies on whom she waited made her presents of every article of dress necessary for her comfort and convenience. she was the depository of all their love stories; she knew the names of their lovers,... and if there were secrets among them they were known to her; and, having made herself acquainted with the secrets of new orleans, she arrived in baltimore.... she took possession of a place as soon as convenient, and spent several months in that city.... having now become acquainted with the secret circumstances of almost every protestant family of note in baltimore, and made her report to the mother abbess of the nunnery of her order in that city, she returned to the district of columbia, and after advising with the mother abbess of the convent, she determined to change her apparent character and apparel. "by advice of this venerable lady and holy prioress, on whom many of the wives of our national representatives, and even grave senators, looked as an example of piety and chastity, she cut her hair, dressed her in a smart looking waiter's jacket and trowsers, and with the best recommendations for intelligence and capacity, applied for a situation as waiter in gadsby's hotel, in washington city. this smart and tidy looking young man got instant employment.... those senators on whom he waited, not suspecting that he had the ordinary curiosity of servants in general, were entirely thrown off their guard, and in their conversations with one another seemed to forget their usual caution. such, in short, was their confidence in him, that their most important papers and letters were left loose upon the table, satisfied by saying, as they went out: 'theodore, take care of my room and papers.'.... now it was known whether henry clay was a gambler; whether daniel webster was a libertine; whether john c. calhoun was an honest but credulous man.... in fact this lay sister in male uniform, but a waiter in gadsby's hotel, was enabled to give more correct information of the actual state of things in this country, through the general of the jesuist order in rome, than the whole corpse of diplomats from foreign countries then residing at our seat of government.... 'i want a written character from you. you must state in it that i have complied with my duty, and as it is necessary that i should wear a cap for a while, you must say that you visited me in my sick room, that i confessed to you, received the _viaticum_, and had just recovered from a violent fever. my business is not done yet. i must go to new york, where the sisters of charity will find a place for me as a waiting maid."--_auricular confession, volume _: pp. - . through the instrumentality of this execrable system of espionage, the pope becomes acquainted with the character, intentions, and acts of every important private and public personage; with the nature and object of every secret society; with the private intentions of every government; with the incipiency and progress of every seditious and treasonable project; and is prepared at all times, by the accuracy and comprehensiveness of his information, to instruct his generals in the actual state of affairs existing in any part of the world, and to direct their conduct in the advancement of his interest, by the most prudent and enlightened council. section two. the pope's direct authority--his opposition to marriage--to slavery--his claim to temporal power on the forged decretal letter of constantine--on the fictitious gift of pepin--on the pretended donation of charlemagne--on the disputed bequest of matildaf duchess of tuscany--the title of pope a usurpation--the papal artful policy--the state of italy under the papal government. we have now sketched the pope's temporal monarchy, which has its seat in rome, and its subjects in every part of the world. he claims to be invested by divine right with supreme sovereignty over earth, heaven and hell. to question the legitimacy of this claim is condemned, and has been punished as blasphemous by his authority. joseph wolf, of halle, a jew who had been converted to the catholic faith, was, while studying divinity at the _seminarium romanum_, imprisoned for blasphemy for having expressed a doubt of the pope's infallibility. fra paola, who had expressed in a private letter that so far from coveting the dignities of rome he held them in abomination, and who had advocated liberty in a dispute which had occurred between the pope and the venitian government, was summoned to rome to answer for his criminal assertions and conduct; and though acquitted of the allegations preferred against him, narrowly escaped the assassin's dagger. but the "more than god," the pope, is a very jealous "more than god." he allows no master to stand between him and his subjects. his authority over mind and body must be direct, and all influences or institutions that obstruct it must be annihilated.. hence cardinal ballarmine, the distinguished papal controversialist, who was so devout a catholic that when he died he bequeathed one half of his soul to jesus christ and the other half to the virgin mary, provoked the censure of the holy father by asserting in a publication that the pope's influence in temporal matters was not direct but indirect. as husbands obstruct the direct influence of popes on wives, parents on children, and friends on friends, he would nullify the conjugal, parental, filial and social relations. hence in a canon of the council of trent, he pronounces a curse on all who say that marriage is preferable to celibacy. should the prompting of the social instincts be too strong to be repressed by the terrors of canonical anathemas, and should they in natural indifference to them still create the bonds, connections, and institutions of friendship and families, he has a clerical machinery skilfully adapted to moderate their influences and reciprocities, and to maintain the predominence of his direct authority. michelet, the philosophical historian and celebrated controversialist, in a work entitled "priests, women and children," has explained the ingenious method by which this object is effected. by separating as much as possible the husband from the wife, and the children from their parents, the direct papal influence, through the priest, is exerted on the isolated husband abroad, on the lonely wife at home, and the defenceless children in nunnery schools and catholic asylums. examples of a similar policy are portrayed by eugene sue, a catholic, in his "wandering jew." the logical consequence of the dogma of the pope's direct authority has, in fact, made the catholic church a "free love" institution. chastity and marriage she tolerates because she cannot do otherwise; but in the lives of her monks, her priests, her popes, and her saints, she as practically ignores as she consistently hates them. the jealous claim of the pope to a direct influence on the mind of his subjects, has unavoidably made the church an inveterate enemy of human slavery. the pope hates slavery, not because he wishes men free, but because he wishes to exercise a direct authority over their minds. the master nullifies the pope's influence on the slave, and therefore he wishes him removed. no influence is equal to that of a master. the whip he holds over the back of his slave, and the power he has over his life, annihilates all other influences. hence the catholic church has always been opposed to slavery. guizot remarks, respecting feudal slavery: "it cannot be denied, however, that the church has used its influence to restrain it; the clergy in general, and especially several popes, enforced the manumission of slaves as a duty incumbent on laymen, and loudly enveighed against keeping christians in bondage."--(gen. hist., lect. vi., p. ). pope pius ii., in , in a letter addressed to the bishops of eubi; pope paul iii., in , in his apostolic letter to the cardinal bishops of toledo; pope urban vii., in , in an apostolic letter to the collector jurium of the apostolic churches of portugal; pope benedict xiv., in , in his apostolic letter to the clergy of brazil; and pope pius vii., in his official address to his clergy, all denounced the traffic in blacks, and demanded that every species of slavery should cease among christians. pope gregory, in his apostolic letter of says: "we, then, by virtue of our apostolic authority, censure all the aforesaid practices as unworthy the christian name, and by that same authority we strictly prohibit and interdict any ecclesiastic or layman from presuming to uphold, under any pretext or color whatever, that same traffic in blacks, as if it were lawful in its nature, or otherwise to preach, or in any way whatever publicly or privately to teach in opposition to these things which we have made the subject of our admonition in this our apostolic letter." we are aware that african slavery owes its origin to a catholic priest, who, perceiving that the demand for laborers in the west india was likely to subject the indians to bondage, suggested as a less wrong that negroes should be purchased of the portuguese settlements in africa, and held as slaves for life; but whatever were his private opinions respecting the propriety of african slavery, his church has never recognized it as legal. the perversion of public opinion by the catholic church, and the practical beguilement of her warmest friends, effected by the consummate craft with which she plots to achieve her objects, have presented fresh evidence to the world in the singular fact, that while she is radically the most efficient abolition society that ever was projected, and that while in her official mandates to the clergy she has invariably denounced the traffic in human beings as infamous, yet has she commanded the homage of the american slave-holder for her friendly disposition towards the southern institution; and induced her members, while using them as instruments in the accomplishment of her projects for the abolishment of slavery, to hate, denounce, and to anathematize the north for its abolition proclivities. but there were other considerations which probably stimulated the humanity of the church in her labors for the abolition of slavery. the condition of the slave precludes the possibility of his serving her in the capacity of a spy on the opinions and conduct of his master; and as he received no wages she could not assess him for her benefit. the perfection of the pope's system of espionage, and the augmentation of his revenue, were both connected with the slave's disenthralment. these advantages could not be undesirable to the church, and the avidity with which she has improved them, shows how clearly she foresaw them. through accident or jesuistical craft, it has happened, that colored servants have been supplanted to an incredible extent by white catholic servants, who as serviceable spies far excel them. i regret not the abolishment of the revolting traffic in human beings, nor do i censure the catholic church for the important aid she rendered in its achievement; but i hope american freemen will not want the vigilance to prevent her from improving the new condition of things, so much to her advantage as to endanger the liberty of the country. but the "lord god, the pope," who claims by divine right to be lord paramount of the world, has unwarily invalidated his title even to the "patrimony of st. peter," by an attempt to establish it by forged decretal letters. forgeries are criminal acts, and punished by all nations as high misdemeanors. they are prejudicial to the ground of action of a claimant, and as evident proof of an intent to swindle, as they are of a base and contemptible origin. when successful, they may overhang the mind for a while, as clouds in a dead still atmosphere do the earth; but at the slightest breeze they are dissipated, and the superstructure based upon them, though gorgeous as the setting sun, will, like its area! enchantment, break up and dissolve away. yet of such base and flimsy material are the pope's claim to temporal power constructed. innumerable bulls, decretals, receipts, briefs, canons, letters, interdicts, and other documents, have been forged, altered and interpolated by the holy brotherhood, to furnish a legal basis for the pope's temporal power. these documents were prepared between the third and ninth centuries, and carefully treasured up in the papal archives, ready for use as occasion might require. one of the boldest of these pious forgeries is the decretal letter attributed to constantine the great, forged probably by benedict of mentz, in the ninth century. it reads as follows: "we attribute to the chair of st. peter all imperial dignity, and power and glory. we give to pope sylvester, and to his successors, our palace of lateran, one of the finest in the world; we give to him our crown, our mitre, our diadem, all our imperial vestments. we give to the holy pontiff as a free gift the city of rome, and all the cities of western italy, as well as all the cities of other countries. to make room for him we abdicate our authority over these provinces, transferring the seat of our empire to byzantium, since it is not just that a temporal emperor shall retain any power where god has set the head of his church." the reason assigned for the bestowal of this magnificent donation was gratitude on the part of constantine, for having been cured of leprosy through the administration of the rite of baptism at the hands of pope sylvester. but it is historically established that constantine did not receive the rite of baptism until a late hour in his last sickness; that when he did receive it, it did not cure his malady; and that the rite was administered, not by the pope of rome, but by an arian bishop. whatever donations of crowns, kingdoms and cities were bestowed on the bishop who officiated on the occasion, were unquestionably granted to a heretical sectary; and if rome does not wish to confess herself an arian, she cannot consistently claim their gifts. but even had the case been otherwise, how could constantine bestow on the pope all the cities of western italy, and of all other countries, when he did not possess them himself? as the gift of a donor is worthless unless he has an actual right in what he bestows, the pretensions of the pope on the ground of constantine's gift, are an actual nullification of all his claims to temporal sovereignty. it is generally conceded that constantine allowed the pope the use of some buildings in rome; but it is denied that he ever invested him with a title to them as lord paramount. this limited indulgence was the pope's precedent for holding real estate, and formed the basis of his claim to all the crowns and kingdoms of the world. but like the rapacious dog, who, with his mouth full of meat, lost all he had by snapping at the shadow of more in a river, the pope, by attempting through forged documents to grasp at all the world, has lost his title, to any part of it. although the decretal letter attributed to constantino was palpably spurious, yet such was the general ignorance of the times, the respect for the sanctity and infallibility of the pope, and the danger of provoking the wrath of the inquisition by questioning a dogma of the church, that its validity was not called into question. at length, however, in a legal proceedings of a monastery at sabine, its fraudulent character was attempted to be substantiated. the bold criticisms of laurentius valla, in the fifteenth century, gave the first decisive blow to its credibility, and in the succeeding age it sunk into public contempt, beneath the scorn of historians, the ridicule of poets, and the concessions of theologians. but notwithstanding its universally acknowledged spurious character, such is the reluctance of the popes to yield a point, that it still continues to remain a portion of the canon law of the holy catholic church. the alleged gift of pepin to the roman see forms another pretext by which the popes have endeavored to lay a basis for their claim to the right of temporal sovereignty. pope gregory excited a rebellion against the authority of the emperor leo iii., in the course of which the italian exarcate was dismembered from the empire. it was decided by the victors that the government should be administered by two consuls, in which the pope should participate, not in a secular, but in a paternal capacity. for a monarch claiming the world as a just inheritance, and all princes and governors as his menials, to accept such a humble concession to his unlimited authority, and such an ambiguous office, is the most remarkable instance on record of a monarchial condescension. he, however, not only accepted it, but what is still more surprising, accepted it with eagerness and gratitude; and even intrigued to obtain it. but during the administration of pope stephen ii. the victorious sword of the lombards wrung the exarcate from the consular government of rome. the pope, to retrieve his fortunes applied to pepin, mayor of france, who, responding with an adequate force, reconquered the exereate, and expelled the barbarians. grateful for the martial services of pepin, the pope solicited of the civil authority the privilege of appointing him patriarch of rome, a title which was borne by the former exarchs; and by this innocent method initiated a precedent which soon ripened into a prerogative of appointing civil magistrates. having thus advanced the interests of the holy see by complimenting its deliverer, he next ventured to anoint his head with oil, in hopes that in thus imitating the example of samuel in anointing kings, future popes might have a pretext for usurping his prerogatives in acknowledging their right to reign. pepin, who ruled france under the title of mayor, wished to imprison the heir to the throne and usurp the government, and the pope gave him his opinion that it was best for him to do so. in grateful consideration of these extraordinary favors, it is alleged by the popes that pepin bestowed the conquered domains, consisting of the exereate and the pentopolis (five cities) on the see of rome, as supreme absolute lord. it is, nevertheless, certain, that pepin's donations to the holy see were on condition of its vassalage to the frankish power, and that during his life he exercised absolute sovereignty over rome, and over all his conquests, and allowed no pope to be either elected or consecrated without his permission. the right of the monarch of the world to temporal power, which was first founded upon the usurpation of constantine, and next upon the conquests of pepin, was annihilated by the conquests of the lombards. desiderious, their king, wrested the exercate from rome; and wishing to subjugate charlemagne under his authority, proposed to pope adrian i. that he should excite the subjects of that prince to rebellion, declare him a usurper, and crown his nephews in his place. adrian listened to these overtures with seeming friendship, but with malignant delight, and secretly communicating their substance to charlemagne, the sword of the latter was immediately drawn in behalf of the church; the pope revenged; desiderius imprisoned for life in a monastery; and all italy, except the duchy of benevento and the lower italian republics, were reconquered. upon this signal success of his arms, it is alleged by the popes that the blood-stained warrior, to purchase masses for the benefit of his soul, confirmed the holy see in the absolute possession of the former grants of pepin. the only copy ever known of these pretended donations is one received by cancio, the pope's chamberlain, in the twelfth century. the undeniable historical fact that charlemagne asserted, and maintained during his whole life, a jealous and inalienable right to rome, and to every other portion of his dominions, casts a dark shade of suspicion upon the genuineness of these documents. even were they, authenticated, yet as the right of a monarch to annul is equal to his right to grant, and as his practice is the evidence of what he surrenders or annuls, the exclusive sovereignty which charlemagne maintained over his italian conquests, until the day of his death, is a complete nullification of any grant that he had made to the pope, and positive proof that any right or title to rome, or to temporal power, constructed upon them by the holy fathers, is as invalid, futile and ludicrous, as if they were based on a grant from the man in the moon; in whose place of abode a traveller, according to ariosto, once found some of the lost documents upon which the popes base their claim to temporal dominion. besides these laborious but ineffectual efforts to fabricate historical data in support of the papal pretension to temporal sovereignty, gregory vii., in asserted that matilda, duchess of tuscany, had bequeathed to the church her domains. these possessions consisted of tuscany, a part of umbria, a part of mark ancona, and the duchies of spoleto and verona. the validity of these bequests was disputed by the natural heirs; the contest lasted three hundred years, during which italy was distracted, and germany depopulated. frederic i., in vindication of his claims against the pretensions of the pope, invaded italy on three different occasions. henry iv. emperor of germany, thrice crossed the alps to chastise the popes for aggressions on the germanic possessions in italy. during the first campaign pope paschal was made a prisoner; but on the approach of the imperial army a second time he fled from rome. yet amid the disputes of the germanic succession, and during the minority of frederic ii., the arms and intrigues of the pope won the concession of europe to his claim of matilda's estates. the spurious character of the pope's title to temporal power has been exposed by the ablest catholic authors, and rejected with impatient contempt by history. but the arguments which have converted a world, have never been able to convert the popes. they still maintain that the reputed donations of constantine, of pepin, of charlemagne and of matilda, are real and valid. this assertion may appear incredible, but in marino malini, the pope's chamberlain, endeavored to establish the genuineness of the fictitious charters of louis-de-debonnaire, of otho i., and of henry ii., in vindication of the pope's titles of the alleged grants to the see of rome. if the apostolic chair of st. peter is endowed with a divine title to universal temporal sovereignty, a human title is superfluous. the indefatigable exertions of the popes to establish a human title to their temporal possessions, is a concession that they have no divine title to them, and that a human title is necessary to the validity of their claim. but as they have based their title on the authority of forged documents, and endeavored to fortify and maintain it by successive fabrications of the same nature, it is evident that they are fully and alarmingly conscious that they have no title, either by virtue of their office, or by that of any donation whatever, to temporal possession or authority. not only is the holy fathers temporal power a usurpation, but so is also his exclusive claim to the use of the title of pope. every bishop, and even some laymen, in the first centuries of christianity, bore this title. in the ancient greek church it was bestowed upon every clergyman. at the general council of constantinople, in , its adoption was first limited to the four patriarchs. and in the course of the usurpations of the holy fathers, pope gregory vii., by authority of an italian council, finally assumed it as the exclusive title of the bishops of rome. the popes, the monarchs of the world, in vindicating their title to the states of the church, had to maintain a long, bloody and desperate struggle, during which their domains were abridged or enlarged, lost or wont according to the varying fortunes of their arms and intrigues. but as these warlike enterprises of the holy fathers were intimately connected with the convulsions and revolutions of europe, it will prevent repetition by deferring further allusion to them until we arrive at the subsequent chapters, in which we shall consider the papal political intrigues in general. the papal monarchy is certainly one of the most crafty, demoralizing, and oppressive despotisms that has ever disgraced the name of government. its ambition is insatiable, its duplicity inscrutible, and its policy and measures are disgraceful and unprincipled. the popes have converted the courteous indulgence of friendship into inviolable rights, and from the feeblest concession have manufactured the most exorbitant claim. pretending to be spiritual advisers, they became temporal despots. soon as they had acquired the right of owning a farm, they asserted the fight of owning a kingdom; and when the right was conceded of owning a single kingdom, they claimed the right of owning all the kingdoms of the earth. a church, a mission-house, an acre of land they construed into an implication that they had a right to all power, temporal or spiritual, for which their capacious maw could crave. they first founded mission-houses in different parts of the world; next they claimed absolute jurisdiction over them. disputes respecting property arising between the citizens of rome and these foreign mission-houses of the church, the popes claimed the exclusive right to arbitrate between them. the right to arbitrate gave them the power to judge, and the opportunity of adjusting disputes according to their advantage. as ecclesiastical litigation conduced to the extension of their authority, pontiffs were not always too honorable to discourage the causes which favored their mediatorial interposition. from the right to arbitrate between churches, they next claimed the right to arbitrate between subjects, then between cities, then between nobles, and then between monarchs. as their mediation in church or state affairs enabled them to adjust disputes according to their policy, they insidiously labored to multiply the causes which favored their friendly intervention. by a succession of forgeries, usurpations, and skilful manoeuvres the papal government advanced, in the progress of events, from an obscure origin to supreme secular and spiritual jurisdiction. by gradual steps the popes acquired the right to decide on ecclesiastical and matrimonial questions; to dispose of church dignities and benefices; to protect their temporal acquisitions from alienation by the interdiction of the marriage of the clergy; to abridge the investiture of bishoprics by the princes; to reduce the clergy to absolute dependence on their favor by dissolving all bonds of interest which subsisted between the bishops and the princes; to convene at option synods and councils, and to exercise the prerogative of ratifying their decrees; to command the concession of their infallibility; to enforce confessors on princes and statesmen; to introduce the inquisition into kingdoms; and to regulate and superintend schools and colleges. the attainment of these objects was the work of centuries. conceiving a desire in one age, they plotted for its accomplishment through the events and discords of succeeding ages; and when machinations had matured their plan, they consummated their wishes by usurpation. the pretensions to the alleged donation of pepin, of charlemagne, of matilda, and of the gothic princes, were not asserted until long after the death of the pretended donors, nor until art and intrigue had prepared the way for it. the alleged grant of constantine was first announced in by pope adrian i., in an epistle to charlemagne. the claim to the estates of matilda was first made by pope paschal, on the ground that they were granted to the holy see as a fief; and next by pope innocent ii., on the ground that they had been granted to it as lord paramount. the participation of pope leo iii. in the consular government of rome, in a paternal capacity, was the first instance of a pope's exercising temporal authority. the anointing of pepin by pope adrian i., in imitation of the example of samuel, was the first semblance of the pope's usurpation of the prerogatives of that official in acknowledging the right of kings. the victory of nicholas i, over the emperor lothair, was the first papal triumph over the secular authority. the coronation of charles the bold, in , by pope john viii., was the first act of the papal monarch in disposing of crowns. the conquests of robert guiscard, instigated by promises of the popes, furnished the first ground of their feudal claims. the fear of the terrible consequences of their anathemas and interdictions, the ill regulated constitution of the european states, the imperfection of domestic and international law, and the efficient operation of the papal machinery, enabled them to render kingdom after kingdom tributary to the holy see. england, from the period of the introduction of the catholic church into her realm; belgaria and aragon, from the eleventh century; poland and hungary from the thirteenth century; and the kingdom of the two sicilies, from , had been reduced to dependency on the sacerdotal monarchy; and had the crusades been successful, favored by the confusion which it had universally' produced with regard to the rights of citizens and the titles of property, it would have, under the pretext of a zeal to wrest the sepulchre of christ from the possession of the infidels, reduced the world to a state of vassalage. the success of the political measures and intrigues of the holy see havings at the time of gregory vii., raised it to a high degree of power and importance, he attempted to convert it into a theocratical government, with the pope for its head, the priests for its officials, the people for its subjects, and the world for its dominion. under innocent iii, elected in , it acquired almost unlimited spiritual and temporal authority. under sixtus v., in , it contemplated the subjugation of russia and egypt, but the death of bathore, duke of tuscany, frustrated the design. but under pope clement xii., in , its power began to decline. he was obliged to cede naples to germany, the quarters of the pope's embassadors in venice to the venitian government, and the right of investiture in savoy to the secular authority. pope pius vi., elected in , beheld the church property in france confiscated, and the religious orders suppressed; in naples the abolition of the customary tribute of a horse; in germany the interdiction of the nunciature; in italy the dismemberment of romagna, bologna and ferrara; and finally, the french troops entering rome and declaring it a republic. it is evident from the facts that have been adduced, that the catholic church, or the papal monarchy, designates an institution which has politics for its principles, monarchy for its object, and religion for its garb. it is not only political in its nature and design, but it is a political despotism, insulting in its pretensions to the common sense of mankind, and dangerous in its principles to the rights of independent governments. when we consider the monarchial principles with which it is constituted; its blasphemous arrogation of the attributes and prerogatives of the deity; its presumptuous claim to supreme jurisdiction over all other governments; the base forgeries which it has committed in the support of its arbitrary pretensions; its impious scoff at secular promises, contracts, laws, oaths and constitutions; its atrocious sanctions of prevarication, of evasion, and of mental reservation; its disgraceful system of espionage; its system of finance, by which it wrings from beggars their pittance, from the laborer the reward of his toil, from the dying the inheritance of heirs; that it may pile the wealth of the world in secret coffers, to be lavished on bribery, on corruption, on political intermeddling, on fomenting sedition and conspiracies, and ultimately, through the means of their disorganizing agencies, for the subjugation of all governments under its absolute authority. when we behold the blood-stained sword which it has drawn in the support of its frauds and usurpations; the frequent convulsions with which its unprincipled ambition has shaken the world; its triumphs over science, freedom and human right; the rapine, devastated fields, and burning cities which has marked the progress of its career; or when we turn our eyes to its late condition in italy, and see, in the nineteenth century, under its authority, the inquisition at its bloody work; the study of philosophy banished from universities; no book allowed to be published, or imported, except such as meet the approval of bigoted censors; the government sustained only by suppressing insurrection; the prisons crowded with heretics; political offenders cruelly put to death; the nation struggling for freedom, but bound in the fetters of despotism--good heavens! what a scourge is it, and has it been to mankind. bigotry and superstition may chaunt its victories; but a land once prosperous, now choked up and oppressed with the ruins of its former greatness; fields once fertile now turned into barren wastes; a people once the most valiant, polished and civilized, now the most debased, rude and imbecile--with ancestors that governed the world, now not able to govern themselves; a commonwealth of kings, now a commonwealth of slaves; where for liberty cicero plead, brutus stabbed and cato died, now a pope curses, an inquisition murders, and prisons reverberate with the groans of patriots and freemen. these, oh patriots! are the eternal monuments that commemorate the progress and achievements of the papal monarchy. the usurper of all rights, the sanctifier of all wrongs, the shrine of bigotry, the model of despotism: the church now stands reaffirming the crimes and errors of centuries, and is thirsting for an opportunity of repeating its past horrible history. such is the papal monarchy; such is the catholic church; such is the political institution which she claims the divine authority to obtrude, by any means, on the world; and such are the demoralizing, seditious and treasonable principles which she carries in her bosom, scatters in her pathway, and is laboring to implant in the american republic, in order that she may overthrow its structure, that monarchy may supplant its liberal principles, despotic decrees its legislative enactments, arbitrary appointments its popular elections, aristocracy its equality, slavery its freedom, usurpation its guarantees of natural rights, and bigotry, violence, and superstition its tolerance, order and science. chapter xii. papal political intrigues in england papal political machinery--papal political intrigues in england, under the reigns of henry ii--of king john--of henry vii--of charles i--of charles ii--of james ii--of william and mary. the design of ruling nations was clearly indicated by the principles upon which the monastic orders were founded. regarding supremacy to the pope as the main substance of christianity, and obedience to his will as necessary to salvation, their doctrines harmonized with his claim to supreme temporal and spiritual power; and their organization, based strictly on monarchial principles, skilfully adapted to secure unity and concentration of action, formed, together with the military knights, a political machinery in the advancement of the papal interests, which was capable of intimidating the boldest antagonist, and of shaking the power of the strongest government. with the knowledge of this fact we may perceive the origin of some of those mysterious seditions and rebellions which have arisen apparently from trifling causes, and which, from insignificant beginnings have gained such strength and dimensions as to dismay the valor of disciplined arms, and distract every section of the land, and every department of the government. we may also perceive from the same fact, why the struggle of civil and religious liberty has been such a long, bloody, and interminable conflict. that rational beings should trample upon their rights, surrender up their personal sovereignty, kneel in adoration at the feet of a despot, deliberately rivet on their own limbs the irons of slavery, crucify their champions, and deify their enemies, is certainly strange; and without the supposition of the intervention of some secret power by which reason was unseated in such instances, it is not conceivable. but that the pope, by means of his political machinery, is capable of producing identical extraordinary effects, is ft fact supported by the irrefragable testimony of history; and that he has never scrupled to exercise his terrible power whenever his ambitious projects required it, un-awed by the magnitude of the public calamity which it threatened to entail, is a fact written with the blood and tears of nations. the secrecy, extent, and irresistible energy of his power, have sometimes led his unsuspecting subjects to regard him as a magician; and sometimes they have been the cause of his arraignment before councils on the charge of practising magic, and of having dealings with the devil. but although the effects which he produced were as malignant and surprising as those which have been ascribed to the supernatural power of the arch-fiend, yet the only magic he ever had the necessity of using was his political machinery; through which he could charm like the poisonous adder; mislead like the fabled sirens; pervert the public judgment; calm or distract a nation; excite it to rebel against its best governor, or to enthrone in power its bitterest foe. from the hour when first the catholic church planted her foot on the soil of england until the present moment, her emissaries have labored as far as practicable, by every available means, under every garb, in all departments of the government, and at all periods of its history, to subject the nation to the despotism of rome. for a long period the priests were the instructors of her princes, the advisers of her kings, and under the semblance of spiritual guides, the spies on their thoughts and actions. passing by the numerous instances of papal political intrigue in the history of england, we will glance at a few of those which have taken place since the coronation of henry ii., in . the most accomplished prince of his time, and celebrated for the acuteness of his judgment and the equitableness of his decisions, he received at the hands of his regal cotemporaries the distinguished honor of being chosen by them as their arbiter, to settle their matters of dispute. he received also, from the policy or generosity of pope adrian iv., a gift of the kingdom of ireland. the following extract from adrian's bull on that occasion will explain the nature and object of the donation: "no one doubts, and you know the fact yourself, that ireland, and all the isles that have received the christian faith belong to the church of rome. and you have signified to us that you wish to enter this island, in order to subject the people to the laws, and extirpate their vices; to make them pay to st. peter a penny a year for each house, and preserve in all things the rights of the church; which we grant to you with pleasure for the increase of the christian religion."--(labb. , , ). at the dictation of the pope, the irish clergy met at waterford and took the oath of allegiance to henry and his successors. thus by a pretended prerogative of popery, "ireland was blotted from the map, and consigned to the loss of freedom, without a tribunal and without a crime."--(mcgeoghegan, : ). but notwithstanding the munificent bounty of the pope, yet the growing weight of the ecclesiastical establishments--so oppressive to the industry and enterprise of the people--and the continual and insidious encroachments of the clergy on the prerogatives of the crown, determined henry, under the administration of pope alexander iii., to summon a council of nobles and clergy at clarendon, to frame such a constitution as would be adequate for the protection of the prerogatives of the crown and the rights of the subjects. the principles of this constitution, like seeds sown among thorns and brambles, were in danger of being oppressed in their early growth by a heavy encumbrance of catholic ignorance and superstition; and not until intelligence and public spirit had removed the obstruction did they show their native benificent vigor. under the stormy reign of henry ii. they were checked, thwarted, and at times almost extirpated; but under that of king john they produced the "magna charta," under that of charles ii. the "habeas corpus," and under those of succeeding princes the various liberal acts which constitute english liberty. although this liberal and judicious constitution had received the sanction of the council of clarendon, yet it was violently opposed by thomas-a-becket, the oracle of the pope, and the chief engineer of his political machinery in england. denouncing it as a profane infraction of the privileges and immunities of the church, he proceeded to excommunicate all persons who had acquired, or should acquire ecclesiastical property under the authority of its provisions. in savage zeal in behalf of the pope, he had violated his oath of allegiance to the king; and thus imprudently furnished his antagonists with legal authority to retaliate the mischief of revenge by the confiscation of all his property. chagrined at the triumph of his foes, and exasperated at the loss of his temporal possessions, he sought to solace his wounded pride, and vent the ebullitions of his despair and rage in excommunicating the principal officers of the crown, and all who should presume to violate the church prerogatives. but duly impressed with the intrinsic impotence of his own curses, and that neither their sanctity nor potency could protect his insolent tongue from punishment even while uttering them, he fled to france, that he might exercise with impunity his sacred functions in cursing his foes. by the mandates of his anathema the papal machinery was, of course, set in violent operation to destroy the king for the benefit of the church, and to invoke in its cause the insidious but formidable aid of scandal, vituperation and defamation. the brilliant qualities of henry were unfortunately overshaded with the dark vice of un-chastity. as greater rakes are often horrified at the peccadillos of lesser ones, so in this case, the more profligate clergy became exceedingly exasperated upon discovering in the conduct of henry the practice of their own irregularities, modified by less grossness and more refinement. not possessing that charity which covereth a multitude of sins, but that religion which magnifies, distorts and publishes them, they soon managed to startle the sobriety of every hamlet with whispers of the king's incredible depravity. to secure the visitation of divine justice on the head of henry, they profaned the sanctity of his domestic circle by the dissemination of treacherous and extravagant inventions, until the queen was frenzied with jealousy, and geoffry and richard, two sons of henry, were incited to rebellion. the prudence and martial abilities of the king enabled him, however, soon to suppress these afflictive and unnatural seditions. but the papal machinery, more tremendous and pestiferious than the fabled monsters of antiquity, with their poisonous breath, their hundred heads and thousand hands, was still in action in every part of the empire. hence henry's son louis, whom he had crowned as his successor, was induced to demand of him the surrender of the diadem. in anticipation of this demand papal intrigue had secured the support of france and scotland in its favor; and consequently england was suddenly involved in the horrors of a civil and a foreign war. but the coolness and extraordinary military genius of henry was adequate to the terrible emergency. after a desperate contest he repelled the invaders, and restored order to his kingdom. but the moral effluvia which was produced by the action of the papal political machinery, continued still to generate those noxious vapors which had so frequently overclouded the atmosphere of england, and broke in storms of pestilence, blood and death. the peace of his kingdom was consequently again disturbed by the discovery of a conspiracy, at the head of which was richard, henry's third son, and complicated with which was john, his favorite and youngest son. upon the disclosure of this mortifying fact, the king pronounced a curse upon his rebellious children, which was more properly merited by the pope and the father confessors of the princes, to whom the first conception of their treason was known; and if they did not originate, might have blasted it in its bud. but henry was unconsciously dealing with an invisible monster, that in the garb of a holy father was commanding his homage and reverence, while it was profaning his domestic hearth, exciting his subjects to sedition, his children to rebellion, and at the same time inducing him to attribute to his family and subjects the dreadful calamities that had been conjured by the machinations of the monster himself. had henry had the sagacity to penetrate the secrets of the holy see, and had he been able, in defiance of a papal alliance with the united crowned heads of christendom, to have annulled the authority of the pope in his realm, and broken up the machinery of his treasonable machinations, how effectually might he have suppressed the rebellion of his sons, and the disorders of his kingdom; and what a blessing he would have been to england and to mankind. freedom will, however, ever be grateful to the king, who laid the foundation of england's liberty. the cost at which he purchased this invaluable legacy for posterity was as tremendous as are the obligations of gratitude which it imposes. his family converted into a nest of venomous reptiles; his sons, around whom his fondest hopes had clustered, transformed into treacherous foes; his laborious efforts to elevate the importance and improve the condition of his subjects, converted into sources of the deepest of misfortunes; these were the papal demands, outweighing the wealth of worlds, which were imposed on him for having served the cause of justice, of humanity, and of his country; and under the rigorous exactions of these demands, three days after the disclosure of the last conspiracy of his sons, he sunk into an unconsecrated grave, ruined and broken hearted. the papal see governed by an unscrupulous ambition to realize the success of its projects for acquiring unbounded territorial aggrandizement, has, with equal craft and baseness, endeavored to make the vices as well as the power of princes administer to its interests. this policy is illustrated in the schemes of papal policy and intrigue concocted under the reign of king john, youngest son of henry ii., who on the decease of his father in ascended the english throne. this prince had conspired against the most indulgent of fathers, had warred against his brother richard, had murdered his brother arthur, had repudiated his wives, and had exercised regal authority with insolence and tyranny, without provoking the maledictions or interference of the holy see. but as these enormities deprived him of the affections of his subjects, a ruler's chief support; exhausted his coffers, the sinews of war and opposition; made him more dependent on the favor of rome, more entangled in the network of its policy, and admirably prepared the way for the accomplishment of its ulterior designs, its indulgence, and perhaps connivance may be reasonably accounted for. but after a war with france exhausted the resources of john, rendered him less popular, and more irascible and impatient, pope innocent iii. improved the flattering opportunity which crime and misfortune had presented, to provoke a collision with him favorable to the success of the papal designs. john claimed the right of investiture; and in making this claim seems to have been supported by the cooperation of the papal political machinery. the see of canterbury having become vacant, the pope appointed cardinal langston to fill the vacancy. this act john resisted as an unjustifiable encroachment on the prerogatives of the crown. but the arts of the pope had involved the king in a snare; and now having fairly entangled him, proceeded to prepare the way for realizing his temporal project by exercising his spiritual functions. accordingly he suspended the performance of religious worship in the king's dominions, excommunicated him, and absolved his subjects from their allegiance to him. the papal political machinery acting in harmony with the maledictions of the pope, the wildest disorders were excited among the people; anarchy suspended all law; the army refused to obey the king's orders; his friends deserted him; and he found himself without domestics, without alliances, and without the means of resistance. it is an invariable practice of the holy fathers, who claim a right to all the world by virtue of their office, to endeavor to supersede the necessity of this title by acquiring a legal one. hence, innocent iii., seeing the helpless condition to which he had reduced john, and touched at the cruel misfortunes in which he had involved him, now graciously proposed to mitigate the rigors of his adversities, and to restore him to his former authority, if he would cede his kingdom to the pope of rome, and consent to rule it as a vassal of the pope, divested of adherents, arms or alliances, the king submitted unconditionally to the terms dictated by the sacerdotal despot. the design of the papal see of reducing england to a state of vassalage, conceived in ambition, pursued by craft and cruelty, was thus consummated by the most execrable tyranny. this empty title to england and ireland, so full of trick and fraud, is nevertheless still mentioned by the holy see as valid and indisputable. but the benefits of the statesmanship, and of the divinely inspired council of the holy father, by which john was bound in future to be governed in the administration of his kingdom, did not prevent him from exciting the indignation of his subjects, by encroachments on their rights; nor restrain him from the perpetration of such unwarrantable acts as created a popular hatred of him, which finally culminated in open resistance to his authority. so violent were the conflicts that arose between him and his subjects, that in order to save his crown he had to yield to their demand the act of the "magna charta." the pope, however, the natural foe of all constitutional guarantees of popular right and liberty, benevolently interposed in behalf of the imbecile and overawed prince, and absolved him from all obligations to comply with any of the unpleasant concessions which he had made; declaring the magna charta antagonistical to the catholic religion; forbidding the king to observe any of its provisions; and pronouncing sentence of excommunication on all who should obey, or attempt to enforce the heretical act. again the papal machinery was set in violent operation. spies watched, confessors reported, abbots schemed, bishops predicted, priests thundered, monks prowled and assassins murdered, until every city, village and house, was distracted with alarm. in the midst of the consternation which stupefied the public mind the king, through the instrumentality of the papal machinery, suddenly appeared at the head of a formidable army; and as if he were a foreign enemy, commenced butchering his subjects, firing their dwellings and carrying terror and devastation through his own kingdom. so profoundly secret were the papal machinations carried on, and so suddenly and unexpectedly had john appeared with an army fully equipped for war that--no suspicion of such a design having been excited in the minds of the military barons--no preparations were made to meet the emergency. as suddenly, mysteriously, and adroitly as king john's army had sprung into existence, so did the barons resolve, in order to defeat its object, to tender the crown of the realm to france; which proffer being accepted, the intrigues of the pope were thwarted, and philip of france became sovereign of england. the popes claim the divine attribute of infallibility, yet in changing their policy and practice to suit the variations of time, place and circumstance, they seem generally to have descended to the common level of humanity. in order, however, to reconcile the irreconcilable, while they profess to have had communicated to them the incommunicable, they claim to have been endowed with power to change the unchangeable. should a prince resolve to do that which the pope's infallible holiness has declared to be criminal, and should that prince happen to be too powerful to be intimidated, and too dangerous to be provoked into rebellion, in such, delicate cases the pope, with his facilities to accommodate all difficulties, grants a dispensation, whereby the applicant is empowered to violate all the infallible laws of the church without incurring any of their penalties. in the reign of henry vii., who became king of england in , we find an illustration of this policy. that sovereign had married arthur, his eldest son, to catherine, daughter of ferdinand, king of arragon. on the decease of arthur, the king, with the view of retaining the opulent spanish dowery in his family, desired to marry the widow of arthur to his next son. the young prince henry, but fifteen years old, protested against marrying a lady for whom he had no affection, and who was so much his senior. besides this difficulty the contemplated alliance was in violation of the laws of consanguinity, so solemnly established by the authority of the infallible church, and so terrifically armed with all the terrors of anathemas and excommunication. to silence the objection of his son, and the thunders of the vatican, henry applied to the pope for permission to execute his purposes, in violation of the established laws of the church; and the pope, not deeming it prudent to offend so powerful a potentate, granted his request but vain are the pope's pretensions to be able to change the moral law of heaven unless: he can also change the natural course of events. in this attempt to accommodate principle to interest, and the infallible laws of the church to the changing whim of an avaricious monarch, he laid the foundation for the final separation of the kingdom of england from the see of rome. after the death of henry vii. his son, under the title of henry viii., succeeded to the british throne. frank and vain, he became at an early period of his life an object of the subtle policy of rome. naturally generous, his indomitable love of power and dominion often led him to violate the obligations of humanity; and impetuous in passion, and impatient of restraint, he was tempted to annihilate the constitutional restraints which conflicted with his designs, and to make the forms of justice subservient to the gratification of his ambition and interest. happening to become enamored of anne bolyne, he began to suspect the legality of his marriage with catherine; and though he had recognized its obligations by a union of twenty years, yet the oftener he saw his mistress the stronger became his convictions of the heterodoxy and unlawfulness of his matrimonial relations, and the more scrupulous he became about his chastity. the want of male issue, and the disparity of years between him and his wife mingled reflections with these legal and religious scruples, and made them so pungent that henry, in order to get rid of the torment thus inflicted, finally applied to the pope for a divorce. the pope promised to grant his request; but the fear of offending charles v., catherine's nephew, produced strange vacillation in the mind of the infallible holy father. two powerful and crafty princes dictated to him opposite courses; to offend either would be disastrous; he therefore pretended to favor the wishes of both. aware of papal artifice, however, henry became imperious in his demands. the pope appeared to yield, and to soothe the impatient prince with a semblance of compliance, but a means of procrastination, he commissioned cardinals wolsey and campaggio to adjust the difficulty. they cited the queen to appear before them; she appealed to the pope; they declared her contumacious. by these proceedings the controversy becoming more embarrassed than before, and less capable of a speedy solution, henry peremptorily decided the matter by consummating his marriage with anne bolyne. this act astonished the pope, and enraged charles v. to gratify charles, and to punish henry, the holy father proceeded to excommunicate the latter. the despotic character of henry, however, had too much overawed his subjects to allow the papal machinery to give much efficacy to the manifestos of its prime engineer; and placing himself at the head of the catholic church in england, he released his subjects from allegiance to the see of rome, effected a separation from it, and nullified its temporal authority over his dominions. discarding the dogma of the pope's temporal power, henry still strictly adhered to the standard of catholic theology in all other respects; and the pope, at the same time, through the medium of cardinal wolsey, continued to exert considerable indirect influence on his mind. this prelate who, while he was a preacher at limington was put into the stocks for disorderly conduct in a drunken frolic; who afterwards was made domestic chaplain by dean, archbishop of canterbury, and who was finally created cardinal by the pope, obtained such unlimited power over the mind of henry that the pope pensioned him to keep him in his interest. it is not a matter of much surprise that henry's aversion to the reformers, inflamed by the arts of such a vicious counsellor, should have brought so many of them to the stake; nor that the bigotry and intolerance of catholicism should have survived the destruction of its political engine. henry viii. condemned to death lambert, a school teacher, for denying the real presence at intervals during his reign he rigorously persecuted the protestants. catherine parr, his last wife, barely escaped execution for having encouraged the reformers. a warrant had been wrung from the king by the bishop of winchester, for her committal to the tower on the charge of heretical opinions; but having become secretly apprised of the fact in time she sought the king, and satisfied him that when she had objected to his opinions it was from a desire to become enlightened by his superior knowledge and intelligence. while he employed violent means to enforce conformity to the catholic theology, he visited equal vengeance on those who advocated the pope's temporal authority. when he discovered that the monks and friars were guilty of defending the obnoxious heresy of the pope's temporal power, he suppressed their houses; but not wishing to destroy the monastic orders, he applied the sequestered funds to the establishment of other similar institutions; but on perceiving these also to be secretly engaged in machinations to restore the pope's temporal authority, he abolished the religious orders altogether. even cardinal wolsey fell under his suspicion, and was executed for treason by his order. after he had beheaded his wife, catherine howard for unchastity, his severity against those who advocated the pope's temporal sovereignty, and against those who denied the romish theology, was cruel in the highest degree. what papal rapaciousness cannot boldly grasp, it will secretly plot to obtain. kings who control nations, women who may perhaps control kings, and children who are presumptive heirs of empires, are powerful instruments in the accomplishment of political designs, and especial objects of papal intrigue. the inveterate opposition to catholics in england rendered it almost impossible for a catholic to ascend the throne, and eventually interdicted it by positive enactments. to counteract the consequences of this spirit, a scheme was projected by papal craft to have the heirs of the throne educated by catholic mothers, so that future kings might rule as protestants with catholic proclivities, and in course of time, through the demoralization, dissatisfaction, discord and blood effected by the cooperation of its adherents, the supremacy of the pope might be reestablished in england, james i., who on the death of elizabeth succeeded to the crown of england and scotland, a ruler devoid of statesmen-like abilities, without firmness or stability, and bloated up with fanciful notions of royal prerogatives, was the pliant instrument of this subtle policy. an amorous flame having been kindled in him and in henrietta maria, daughter of henry iv., of france, it was stipulated that the union should be consummated, on condition that the heirs which should issue should be subject to the exclusive control of their mother until they were thirteen years of age. this contract secured a catholic education to the heirs of the british throne, and laid the foundations for the dreadful calamities which afflicted the nation during the reigns of charles ii. and james ii. the abolition of papal despotism over the english mind giving freedom to thought and inquiry, could not but enlarge its conceptions of civil and religious liberty. the old system of prerogatives sunk into contempt, and the new system of representative government became more popular as the mind became more comprehensive in its grasp, and more profound in its investigation. hence the puritans, who originally were catholics, and merely advocated a simpler form of worship; the presbyterians and the independents, who at first questioned only the temporal power of the pope, yet driven from those whom they had venerated by the hate which persecution engenders, and disenthralled from the shackles with which custom and superstition enslaves the mind, began fearlessly and candidly to investigate the fundamental principles of faith and practice, and to elaborate theological creeds totally different from those of catholicism, and vastly superior to them. while the people were rapidly advancing in liberal views of religion and government, the heir of the throne was too much absorbed in magnifying his visionary prerogatives to share in the progress of the age, or to study the character of the people over whom he was destined to reign. when in he ascended the english throne, under the title of charles i., the new order of popular sentiment had become an impetuous torrent. common sagacity might have perceived the inevitable destruction that would await him if he should attempt to stem the popular tide of thought; and prudence would have dictated a practicable compromise of differences rather than the certain alternative of civil war. but archbishop laud, a catholic under the disguise of protestantism, and who was the medium of the pope's influence, exercised a despotism over the king's mind too absolute to allow his reason to instruct, or his conscience to admonish him. the religious views and secret designs of this professed protestant bishop cannot be misunderstood. he maintained that the papal authority had always been visible in the realm. he furnished the king with a significant list of the names of all his catholic and protestant subjects. he was also the principal actor in the star chamber, and court of high commission. so well was the pope satisfied with the orthodoxy of this sacerdotal miscreant that he sent him a cardinal's hat, which he declined for the ambiguous reason that the "church of rome was no other than it was!" the king, controlled and ill-advised by such a counsellor, blinded by his own bigotry, and elated with self-conceit, was led to scorn the rising spirit of the nation, and to adopt measures for its suppression. but parliament with prudent foresight, and patriotic boldness, taught him that the commons were the constitutional dispensers and guardians of the public treasury. he next resolved to oblige scotland to conform to the ritual prescribed by the church of england; and as parliament had refused to allow him the use of the public funds for that and other purposes, he attempted to raise means for their accomplishment by unconstitutional methods. by this impolitic course he aroused a lion from its den, with whose strength and fury he could not well cope. the scotch formed a league of covenanters, composed of all classes and factions, for the defence of their religious liberty; and as the king viewed their enthusiastic and formidable array, and compared it with the suspicious material of his own army, he prudently concluded terms of pacification. having frequently called the commons together in parliament, and finding them more disposed to dictate than to obey, and inflexible in their refusal to furnish him with the pecuniary aid necessary to the accomplishment of his design, he finally determined to rule without a parliament, and by a liberal construction of his prerogatives to arrogate monarchial power. an object so consistent with the dogmas of catholicism, and so flattering to the vanity of the episcopal royalists, equally betrayed them into acquiescence. to aid the king in his despotic design the royalists extolled his prerogatives, asserted their divine origin, declared it impious to prescribe any limits to them, and inculcated passive obedience as a christian virtue and imperative duty. the terror of the star chamber, and of the court of high commission, was also called into requisition. but neither the eloquent encomiums lavished on the king's prerogative, nor the atrocities of the star chamber, nor the severity of the court of high commission, nor a rebellion excited in ireland against parliament, nor the arms of the royal troops, produced anything for the king's prerogatives but disgrace and ridicule. dreading the liberalism and inflexibility of the commons, and the uncompromising hostility against his person and measures which his persecution of non-conformists had excited in the majority of them, yet he was obliged, by the critical state of public affairs, to call them together. this parliament proved the memorable "long parliament." as might have been expected, its embittered and exasperated members opened the session with torrents of scorn and contempt poured on the king and his prerogatives. they also adopted every expedient to inflame the public mind, and to make it accessory to their design of reducing the king to unresisting helplessness. they denounced the episcopalians, and other advocates of the king's prerogatives, in whom catholicism and monarchy had disguised themselves under the semblance of protestantism. they attempted to exclude the bishops from the house of lords. they so intimidated the royalists of the house that many of them absented themselves from their seats. they restricted the king's prerogatives, abolished the star chamber, and the court of high commission, passed acts against superstitious practices, executed laud and stafford, and as the king had set the dangerous precedent of liberal construction of law and prerogatives, they availed themselves of the same means to justify their measures. the impetuous tornado of their zeal and wrath swept away all the king's elaborate schemes for the acquisition of monarchial power, and poured upon his unprotected head a pitiless storm of wrath. condemned to be the helpless spectator of the destruction of his hopes of absolute power, which art, tyranny, and usurpation had enabled him to build, he became wild with despair and rage, and, in a desperate attempt to retrieve his fortune by asserting in his extremity his empty prerogatives, he brought his precarious condition to an unfortunate close. entering the house of commons, he personally attempted to arrest some of its members. the house, consequently, broke up in disorder; the king saw his error, but too late; he fled from his capitol in terror; two armies arose; the one under the king, the other under parliament: after several bloody battles, the king lost his crown, and finally his life. parliament now resolved to rule without a king as the king had resolved to rule without a parliament. the spirit of despotism under the form of freedom, still, however, predominated in the national councils. cromwell, a professed republican, but a secret monarchist; as intolerant as he was religious, and crafty as he was ambitious; who, as interest instigated, favored or persecuted catholics, protestants, puritans, and republicans, was this despotic spirit which desecrated the form of freedom, and which induced him while he governed england as a protector, to seek to govern her as a king, and to plot in secret to reestablish her throne. after the termination of his eventful career, and the resignation of his appointed successor, charles ii., son of james i., in was crowned king of england. illiberal in mind, intolerant in disposition, defective in sensibility, and destitute of honor and generosity, he was base as a man, dishonorable as a prince, and a pliable instrument of the papal intrigues. a hypocrite from his birth, he was capable of assuming any guise; and supremely selfish, he tolerated vice and corruption whenever it administered to his interests. by the licentiousness of his court he degraded the moral standing of the british nation in the eyes of the world and of history, and with a despotic and unprincipled set of measures, arrogated power in defiance of constitutional obstructions, and reduced the people to slavery in contempt of their hereditary valor and independence, and the safeguards with which they had protected their liberty. the pathway to his elevation to the throne having been prepared by general monk, he was received with frantic acclamations by conflicting civil and religious sects, and without a struggle succeeded to those danger-our prerogatives which had cost the nation so much blood and treasure. the admonition of past occurrences had induced him to disguise under the cloak of a pacific and accommodating policy, his secret and ulterior designs. but the specious mask fell from his brow when he passed the intolerent act of non-conformity, by which the presbyterians were peremptorily driven from their livings. profligacy, which enfeebles the intellectual powers, and destroys the foundation of public respect, has ever been encouraged in princes or people by the artifice of those whose ambition has plotted to make them subservient to their interest, or dependent on their power. the disgracefulness of this policy has never been too abhorrent to the roman see to cause it to forego the advantages of its adoption. the profligate character of charles ii., and the dissolute manners which he introduced into his court, ably aided the papal machinery in alienating from him the respect and affection of his subjects, and in making him more dependent on the favor of the pope. his extravagance involved him eventually in such pecuniary embarrassments that he became a pensioner on louis, king of france; and in consequence became doubly ironed with the papal shackles--the king of france forming one set of manacles, the priests of england another--and both were equally bound to the interests of the papal monarchy. that every thought and action might be discovered in its incipiency, he was furnished with a french lady to amuse him in his retirement this accomplished but abandoned female obtained such ascendency over his mind, that she induced him to make her a duchess. thus watched, debased and controlled, he became the unconscious tool of the designs of others, and was led to alarm the public mind by forming a disgraceful cabal, by which to concert measures for making himself independent of parliament. to add to the public dissatisfaction the duke of york, the heir presumptive to the throne, openly espoused the cause of catholicism. strong measures were consequently adopted to remove him from his post, as admiral of the navy, and eventually to exclude him from the throne. the violent factions, and fierce criminations and recriminations to which these measures gave rise kept the people in a state of feverish excitement. in the midst of these wild alarms a pretended popish plot was reported to have been discovered, which received universal credence. the design of this plot was said to be to destroy parliament and assassinate the king. a secret catholic faction was supposed to exist in the nation, the object of which was to restore the authority of the pope; and circumstances lending credibility to the supposition, the most intense excitement seized the public mind. parliament was terrific in its denunciations, and the people clamorous for vengeance. lords were arrested, priests hung, the duke of york fled from the country in terror, the earl of stafford was beheaded, and the king, filled with consternation, yielded to the popular demand the habeas corpus act, to avert the storm that was muttering destruction over his head. fortified with this new safeguard to public freedom, the people became tranquil once more; but the king perceiving the formidable obstacle which parliament obtruded in the way of his acquisition of despotic power, resolved to get rid of it by making it the instrument of its own destruction. after having assembled it several times for this purpose, and finding it inflexibly opposed to his measures, he determined to dispense with it altogether, and to substitute his prerogatives in the place of its authority. in order to reduce the corporations to an absolute dependence on his will, he employed with as much baseness as tyranny, intimidations to induce them to surrender their charters, so that they might be remodelled in accordance with the claims of the absolute power of his prerogatives. in order to deplete the ranks of non-catholics, he had recourse to gross and unfounded charges of plots and conspiracies. lord shaftsbury, the author of the habeas corpus act, was arrested, imprisoned in the tower and tried for high treason; but acquitted. dungeons were overcrowded with subjects against whom no allegation laid, except that of love of liberty and opposition to tyranny. but while he was wading through the innocent blood of his subjects to a crown of unlimited monarchy, some desperate spirits were secretly concocting a plot to arrest his atrocious career by the deplorable means of the assassin's dagger. this unsuccessful conspiracy, known as the rhyhouse plot, which could not escape the omniscient eye of the catholic machinery, was, of course, discovered before it had matured its plans, and only gave the king a plausible pretence for gratifying his malignancy against the ablest advocates of constitutional liberty. william russell, who had with undaunted firmness maintained the fundamental principle of free government, was the first victim through this unfortunate affair, to the eagerness of the king's bloodthirsty revenge. foredoomed, he was tried by a packed jury, and condemned against conclusive proof of his innocence. alerngon sidney, another apostle of liberty, was unjustly charged with high treason. the law requiring two witnesses to substantiate allegations of this nature, and but one having appeared, and he as unreliable as he was promptly received, the infamous jeffrey summoned into court a manuscript which had been found in the closet of the defendant. in this manuscript the author expressed a preference for a free to an arbitrary government. the judge deciding that the document was a competent witness in his court, (although he did not swear it), and that it supplied the want of the other witness required by the law of treason, proceeded to pass sentence of death on the accused. by means of similar unwarrantable proceedings, and the co-operation of the papal machinery, the king succeeded in dragooning scotland into conformity, in suppressing the bold covenanters, and in amassing almost sufficient power for the accomplishment of any purpose. after he had, in defiance of parliament and the laws, and by means of tyrannical measures and execrable usurpations, rendered himself as absolute in power as any despot in europe, death interposed in the midst of his success, and removed him from a throne which he had disgraced, and a people whom he had oppressed. had his conduct during his life left a doubt of his genuine catholicism, and hypocritical profession of protestantism, the last moments of his existence were sufficient to dispel them. just before his death he received the sacrament according to the rites of the catholic church, and having no further need of deception, openly professed himself a catholic. james ii., brother of charles ii., in succeeded to the throne of england and scotland. educated like his brother, he had imbibed similar religious and political sentiments. while duke of york he at first secretly, but afterwards openly, professed the catholic faith. when, in the course of intrigue and conflict, the royal party had gained the ascendency in scotland, he retired thither; and manifested his barbarous ferocity by personally assisting at the torturing of the covenanters. the rapid strides which his brother had made towards the acquisition of absolute power, and the paralyzing dread which cruelty and tyranny had cast over the public mind, enabled james ii. to succeed to the british throne without opposition. from the hour he became invested with the royal dignity, he adopted every expedient that craft could devise to convert his royal prerogatives into monarchial authority, and to secure the restoration of catholicism as the religion of the kingdom. as virtue scorns to be the tool of vice, and as sycophants are the most pliable instruments of despotism, he adopted the policy of investing the most unscrupulous with official authority. supreme among his base and cringing creatures stood judge jeffrey. the chief engineer of the papal machinery--the controlling spirit of the king and his councils; insolent, imperious, arbitrary and oppressive, this man was ready for any work that furnished sufficient blood and plunder. by barbarous and inhuman acts, and by the arbitrary execution of innocent subjects, this monster in human form succeeded in casting a deep gloom over the public mind, and in annihilating all apparent opposition to the tyrannical proceedure of the king. amid the death-like silence which hung on the lips of the people the king threw off his disguise, entered into negotiation with the pope for the reception of england into the papal church, celebrated mass invested with the royal paraphernalia, assumed the power of parliament, nullified all test oaths, filled the councils and army with catholics, governed scotland and ireland by his creatures, organized ecclesiastical tribunals to try such clergy as were suspected of holding liberal sentiments, committed bishops to the tower for having remonstrated against the propriety of reading a document concerning a popish indulgence which he had commanded to be read in all the churches, and adopted every possible method to subvert civil and religious liberty, and to bind on his subjects the shackles of papal despotism. towards the final consummation of his calamitous design he appeared to be making rapid strides; but, though the papal machinery was formidable, yet there was another power more formidable still; as wily and as secret: which was quietly maturing its strength for the hour of retribution. the oppressive measures of the king and the failure of every attempt at compromise and conciliation, had created a stern opposition in the mind of the people, of the gentry, and of some lords. silent but powerful, though this opposition seemed to slumber, yet it was but calmly waiting the destined hour, when it would arise and annihilate dynasties find prerogatives. while the king, deceived by the treacherous calm, was trampling in insolent contempt on the people's rights; while sycophantic priests were chaunting his song of triumph; and while the pope was congratulating him on his success, and stretching forth his hand to receive the kingdom, william of orange suddenly appeared on the coast of england with a formidable navy and army, and, as with the stroke of an enchanter's wand, changed the calm and brilliant prospects of the king into storms and sights of horror, and the peans of his sycophants into howling and lamentations. terrified at the sight, the king repealed his unpopular acts, and proffered to his subjects all the rights which they had in vain plead for before. conscious of their strength, and irreconcilable in the memory of their wrongs, they rejected with scorn and indignation all his generous overtures. as he had ruled as a tyrant, he now absconded as a coward. the throne was declared abdicated, and william and mary proclaimed sovereigns of england and scotland. after some fruitless attempts to regain his kingdom, james ii. turned jesuist, and passed the remainder of his life in doing penance, edward, the pretender, grandson of james i., educated at rome, was another instrument which the pope adopted to establish his authority over the crown of england. this treasonable plot was unanimously supported by the tory party. this faction had ever been a prominent branch of the papal machinery. under the disguise of protestantism, in , the tories made vigorous efforts for the subjugation of england to the papal dominion. they were the most strenuous supporters of charles ii. in every scheme of oppression and violence--in the persecution of dissenters, in the banishment of patriots, in the murder of the advocates of popular freedom--in every project of the king to grasp monarchial power, in the abrogation of the free charters, in the assumption of despotic prerogatives, in the efforts to abolish parliament, they were the bold and unequivocal supporters. it was, therefore, consistent with their historic tradition that they should welcome as allies of the pope the invasion of edward, and be ready to repeat their former atrocities in his cause. england's vigilance, however, defeated edward's first attempt, in , but he made another in which was more successful. landing secretly in scotland with but seven trusty officers, yet such was the efficiency of the papal machinery, that it soon enabled him to command an army which made england tremble. but the contest was short and decisive. although he gained some important advantages, yet the signal victory over his forces at culloden, in , effectually checked his career. despairing of success, he fled to france, where, through the intercession of the king's mistress, he received a pension. he finally returned to rome, where he died of diseases engendered by habits of intemperance. we have now alluded, in this chapter to some of those popish intermeddlings in the political concerns of england, so grossly in violation of international law, and which have been so prolific of treason, of popular insurrection, of civil war, and of all that can empoverish a nation and impede its progress; but we have mentioned but few of them. the limits we have prescribed to this work will not allow us to trace the wily and deadly serpent of papal intrigue in all its secret windings, nor dwell upon the important admonitory lessons its history furnishes to patriots, to rulers, and to mankind: these we must leave to the reflection of the reader. chapter xiii. papal political intrigues in france papal intrigues in france during the reign of clovis--of childeric iii--of pepin--of charlemagne--of hugh capet--of philip iv.--of louis xii---of francis i.--of francis ii--of charles ix.--of henry jtk--of louis xiii--of louis xiv. the subtile poison of catholicism was instilled into the french government under the reign of clovis, the great, who succeeded his father childeric, king of the franks, in . aspiring to extend the territory of his kingdom, which was confined within the sea and the scheldt, he made war upon syagrius, the roman governor at soissons; captured and put him to death; subjugated paris, and the cities of belgia secunda; and to obtain assistance in conquering the allemanni; espoused clotilda, neice of gundebald, king of burgundy. clotilda, who had been educated by the catholic priests, became in their hands an instrument for the conversion of her royal husband. conceiving that the god and religion of catholicism were better able to aid him in completing his intended conquests than were the god and religious contrivances of paganism, clovis submitted to be baptized by st. remigius, and anointed with some holy oil which the bishop affirmed had been brought by a dove from heaven. the crimes and devotion of the king, in the cause of the church, were rewarded with numberless miracles and instances of divine interposition. a white hart of singular statue and brilliancy became the conductor of his army through secret passes, a dazzling meteor blazed forth as his forces approached the cathedral at poitiers, and the walls of angouleme fell down at the blast of his warlike bugle. imbibing the orthodoxy of the bishops, he imbibed also their hatred to the heretics. "it grieves me," said he to a company of princes and warriors assembled at paris, "to see the arians still possess the fairest portions of gaul. let us march against them with the aid of god; and, having vanquished the heretics we will possess and divide their fertile provinces." his savage piety led him to declare that had he been at the trial of christ he would have prevented his crucifixion. he summoned and dismissed a council of gaulic bishops; and then deliberately assassinated all the princes belonging to his family. after having removed, by violence or treachery, the princes of the different frankish tribes, incorporated their government into his own, stained the soil with the blood of its proprietors and defenders, bowed in abject reverence before the clergy, and committed the most fiendish and heartrending atrocities, the pope of rome, in consideration of his piety and usefulness, bestowed upon him the title of "the most christian king and eldest son of the church." while the pope professed to be the humble successor of st. peter, the fisherman, he was secretly laboring to become the successor of the cæsars, the masters of the world. with this end in view he had scattered his monks throughout europe to preach the doctrines of humility, of passive obedience, of reverence for the clergy, and of absolute submission to himself. the support which these doctrines gave to despotism rendered them acceptable to kings, and the conveniency with which they supplied the want of morality made them popular with the multitude. the arts and miracles of the holy brotherhood excited the wonder, and commanded the reverence of the crowd; and their tact and sycophancy enabled them to become the companions of kings, the instructors of princes, the confessors of all classes, and the spies upon the most secret recesses of their thoughts. the avaricious character of their religious principles enabled them to accept without scruple the spoils of plundering expeditions, and to augment the stores of their wealth by artful tricks and pious frauds. the success of their missionary rapacity enabled them to build spacious convents, sufficiently sumptuous for the accommodation of pious kings who wished to abdicate their thrones. the dungeons of these sanctuaries sometimes contained a monarch, an heir to a throne, or some distinguished personage whom usurpation, jealousy, ambition or tyranny had there confined; and sometimes their halls afforded a hospitable asylum for the sick, the indigent, or the refugee from oppression. the popes having, with their usual skill and prudence, established the various parts of their political machinery in different sections of europe, and sanctified them in the eyes of princes and people, eagerly watched every opportunity to set them in motion in favor of their cherished design. the saracens, however, entered europe, and threatened to subjugate it to the authority of the religion of mahomet; but the hammer of charles martel, mayor of france, which alone crushed , of the invaders, checked the career of their triumphant arms. but as the warrior had applied the riches of the church to the necessities of the state and the relief of his soldiers, a synod of catholic bishops declared that the man who had saved the catholic church from extinction, was doomed to the flames of hell on account of his sacrilege. the inspired synod, in arriving at this orthodox conclusion was assisted by the reported facts, that a saint while dreaming had seen the soul of the savior of europe, and of christianity, burning in hell, and that upon opening his coffin a strong odor of fire and brimstone had been perceived. the pope entertained a better opinion of his son carloman, whose superstition strikingly resembled the malady of insanity. this mayor of france, while exercising the regal authority of his office, was induced by his spiritual advisers to resign his dignity; to consecrate the remainder of his life to god by shutting himself up in a convent; and to give all his private possessions and valuables to the church. the design which prompted this intrigue seems to have been, to prepare the way for the usurpation of the crown of the franks, by pepin, the short. the pope well knew pepin was ambitious of the diadem, and had only been deterred from supplanting childeric iii., the king of france,--who was but a youth--by fear of carloman. this obstacle being removed by the retirement of the devout warrior, pepin consulted pope zachary about his intentions, who replied: "he only ought to be king who exercised the royal power." encouraged by this papal sanction of prospective treason and usurpation, he had the office of _mais du palais_ abolished, himself proclaimed king of france, and childeric imprisoned in a monastic dungeon, in which he was obliged to pass the remainder of his life. the interests of the pope and pepin, by these artful machinations, became deeply interwoven. the critical state of the holy see soon developed the sagacity and good policy of the pope. the lombards entered italy, conquered the exarchate, and threatened the reduction of rome. oppressed with these misfortunes, the holy father appeared in the camp of pepin, dressed in mourning and covered with ashes, soliciting the assistance of his arms in the defence of the church, and of the consulate government of rome. but pepin was more ready to speculate on the misfortunes of the pope than to assist him in his distress. the cruelties which stained the usurpers crown made him apprehensive of insecurity. he therefore signified to the supplicant a willingness to comply with his wishes, if he would officially sanction all the acts of usurpation of which he had been guilty, crown his two sons, and anoint them with the holy oil which the dove had brought from heaven. terms being satisfactorily arranged between the two parties, pepin drew his sword and reconquered the greater part of italy. the tricks, sophistry, and eloquence of the monks having failed to convert the saxons to the church, the pope was disposed to try the efficacy of the sword. charlemagne, pepin's son, having succeeded to the frankish throne, and papal influence having gained the ascendency in his councils, he was without difficulty tempted to unfurl his banner in the cause of the church. but the saxons were courageous warriors, full of the love of independence and of liberty; and when the alternative of extinction or catholicism was presented to their choice, their proud spirit gave a desperate valor to their arms, in the maintenance of their rights of existence and of religious liberty. against superior numbers, they defended the integrity of their empire for thirty-three years; and had not their chief advised to the contrary, would rather have suffered extermination than to have submitted to a religion baptized in blood, founded upon fraud and treachery, and forced upon their acceptance against their reason and conscience, and by a sword reeking with the blood of their fellow countrymen. the arms of charlemagne, and the religion and policy of the pope triumphed; but not until the land was depopulated, the country converted into a desert, and the cost of subjugation outbalanced the value of the victory. the competition between aspiring candidates for the opulent bishopric of rome had often been productive of turmoil and bloodshed. the favorite and intended successor of adrian i. having been disappointed by the unexpected election of leo iii., his exasperated adherents attacked the sacred procession on the occasion, assaulted the chosen vicar of christ, and, as it is alleged, cut out his tongue, dug out his eyes, and left him dead on the ground. but a miracle, it is averred, interposed in his behalf; restored his life, eyes and tongue; and enabled him to escape a repetition of the outrage by gaining the invisible precincts of the vatican. after having received this assistance from heaven he invoked the temporal aid of the duke of spoleto, and of the friendly interposition of charlemagne in his favor. by the influence of these secular princes he was enabled to ascend the sacerdotal throne, and to exercise his spiritual authority in banishing his competitors and their adherents. on a visit of charlemagne to rome, after these events, the pope abruptly crowned him with a diadem, invested him with the regalia of the cæsars, anointed him with the holy oil which the dove had conveyed from paradise, and pronounced him the pious cæsar crowned by god. the emperor who, professing to have been astonished at the pope's singular conduct, nevertheless took an oath to preserve the faith and privileges of the church. agreeably to this oath he entrusted the clergy with temporal and civil jurisdiction, expended more cost and labor in the construction of cathedrals than on useful undertakings, and as the demons of the air had admonished the payment of tithes he enforced their exaction with extreme rigor. the favor and liberal indulgence of the pope enabled the emperor, consistently with his catholicism to enjoy the possession of nine wives, to divert his capricious fancy with numberless mistresses, to prolong the celibacy of his daughters that it might extend the period of an illicit commerce, and to become the father of numerous illegitimate children, whom, however, in atonement for his indiscretions, he consecrated to the priesthood. the barbarity and usurpations of which charlemagne was guilty, in the enlargement of his vast empire, naturally made him suspicious of the loyalty of his subjects; and the frequent outbursts which disturbed the peace of certain sections excited his most painful fears for the stability of his throne. to prevent the disorganization of a power which he had constructed with so much labor, but endangered with so much crime, he imprudently scorned the wisdom of adopting concessionary measures, and had recourse to the artifices of priestcraft. dividing the empire between two of his sons, he had them crowned and anointed with the celestial oil, in expectation that these superstitious ceremonies would excite in the minds of his subjects such reverence for the imperial dignity as would secure in its favor their devout allegiance. but this arrangement excluding his eldest son--the issue of a divorced wife--from an equal participation with his brothers in the administration of the government, excited him to rebel against the authority of his father. his attempt to obtain by arms the justice denied by parental authority was, in consequence of the loyalty of the papal political machinery, unsuccessful; and the injured son was obliged to expiate the guilt of his unfilial insubordination by serving the church in the capacity of a monk, and passing the remainder of his days in a monastic dungeon. this conspiracy was not the only result that was produced by the policy of charlemagne, in substituting superstition in the place of justice in his efforts to conciliate popular dissatisfaction. while it lent a prop to the governmental structure, it furnished an instrument for undermining its foundation. the division of the monarchy gave occasion, after charlemagne's death, to fraternal disputes and civil conflicts; and as these disorders favored the pope's ambitious desire to succeed to the crown and dominion of the caesars, they were kept active by his machinery until the empire was disintegrated. the last survivor of the carlovingian dynasty was charles, duke of lorraine. the subjects of the realm at that period had become greatly dissatisfied concerning the oppressive privileges which the clergy enjoyed, as well as with the impoverishing exactions which they extorted from their industry. with these popular grievances the temper and disposition of charles engaged his warmest sympathies. pope john xvi., elected in , perceiving that the heir presumptive to the throne would, when he acceded to power, listen to the complaints and lessen the burdens of his subjects; and acting on the historic motive of the holy see, in making rulers its tools, and changing dynasties to suit its purposes, induced the frankish nobility to proclaim hugh capet king of france. but before this sycophantic papal favorite could be crowned king, and anointed with the holy oil, he was obliged to swear to preserve the clergy in all the privileges and immunities which they enjoyed. against this formidable conspiracy charles found himself powerless; and after making some demonstrations against the usurper, retired to lyons, which place was capable of withstanding a vigorous siege. with great skill and energy, but without any flattering success, his adversary assailed the strong-built fortifications. the success which valor denied was, however, accorded by treachery. the bishop of the city having entered into secret negotiations with capet, the gates were thrown open at midnight; and the usurper entering the precincts amid the stillness of the hour captured the royal family, surprised charles in bed and threw him into prison, from which he was never liberated. the capitian dynasty, thus founded in fraud, violence and usurpation, and unsupported by a shadow of legal right, stands forth in history as the grand champion of the legitimacy of kings, or their divine right to rule by virtue of their descent, independent of the consent of the governed. the dynasties of empires and the political events of nations are so intimately connected with the domestic affairs of royal families, that in order to control the one, papal intrigue has constantly intermeddled with the other, robert ii., who became king of france in , married bertha, his cousin, a lady of inestimable qualities. the royal pair were a model of connubial loveliness and felicity; but when an heir had completed the perfection of their happiness the pope interfered, and by the exercise of his sacred authority, embittered the remainder of their existence. robert not having purchased of the church an indulgence for marrying a cousin, pope sylvester ii. pronounced the conjugal union illegal, and commanded the king to abandon his wife. to be guilty of an offence of such a henious character against the most amiable of women; to act in violation of all his matrimonial vows and obligations; to spurn his lawful wife as a prostitute, and to declare his children bastards, was a complication of iniquity which robert declared to the pope that he would rather die than commit. but the obdurate and savage-hearted holy father, whom the view of no misfortune could move, in order to reduce the king to obedience proceeded to pronounce a sentence of excommunication against him. this act was designed to call into requisition all the appliances of the pope's machinery in blasting the happiness of two persons, whose worth was unequaled in the kingdom, and perhaps unsurpassed in the records of history. accordingly the churches were draped in mourning; the pictures of the images of the saints shrouded in black; the bells were tolled night and day; religious worship was suspended in the kingdom; and no funeral ceremony allowed to be performed. the immaculate bertha was declared polluted; stories were circulated that she had given birth to a monster, which had the head of a savage and the tail of a serpent; the poor, on whom she had been accustomed to bestow charity, now fled at her approach; her domestics broke the costly vases which adorned the palace, and taking the viands from the royal table dashed them into the fire. consternation seized the populace; and priests, courtiers and people fled alike from the sight of the amiable couple, as if they were destructive monsters. at length, through the repeated requests of bertha, robert agreed to a separation, and allowed her to retire to a convent. this act, by which he placed his wife at the mercy of licentious priests, conciliated the vengeance of the sacerdotal monster. during the reign of philip ii., who became king of france in , the province of languedoc enjoyed an eminent degree of liberty and prosperity. the charters which the subjects had obtained from their princes secured them in the enjoyment of many important civil rights, fortified by such jealous guards as effectually protected them against the encroachments of executive power. this liberality in their political constitution encouraged liberality in religious inquiry, which consequently led to doubts of the pope's right to temporal power. at the flourishing city of albi these progressive ideas assumed a definite shape in an organization of the people, which received the appellation of the albigenses. the pope finding this sectary increasing in numbers and popularity, in spite of the vigorous counteracting efforts of his appliances of bishops, priests and monks, ordered raymond vi., count of toulouse, to compel the albigenses, by force of arms, to change their religious views. as raymond of rogers, count of beziers, nephew of raymond vi., had declared in favor of the reformer, the count of toulouse refuse to oblige the pope by taking up arms against the count of beziers. on account of this determination, dictated by a high and delicate sense of duty and honor, the pope pronounced sentence of excommunication against him. in addition to this insulting manifesto, he commissioned his legate to raise an army of the cross, for the purpose of exterminating the reformers and their allies. this authorized desperado, through the energetic co-operation of the pope's political machinery, soon collected a numerous army of crusaders; and imposing on them a horrible oath that they would exterminate the albigenses without pity for the cries or tears of their wives or children, immediately commenced the work of blood and devastation. as this army of murderers approached the city of carcassonne, an order was given not to leave one stone upon another, and to put to death every man, woman, youth and infant. the butchery was frightful, and mixed with the most fiendish acts. to arrest the horrible work raymond of rogers offered to resign his authority. with execrable treachery the legate pretended to be willing to negotiate; but no sooner had he betrayed the count into his power than he incarcerated him in a dungeon, where he died after experiencing years of suffering. after the removal of raymond by this base treachery, carcasonne fell; and thirty thousand men, women and children were butchered in one day. tired of the terrible carnage, or disgusted at its atrociousness, the chiefs of the army of the cross declared to the legate, that among the crowd they could not distinguish the heretic from the catholic. "kill on," replied the holy legate, "god will know those which are his." the murderous army moved on; blood flowed at every step; at beziers sixty thousand were put to death; nor did the carnage cease until the inhabitants of almost every town in languedoc, without distinction of age, sex or creed, were weltering in their gore. as an express reward to simon de monfort for having surpassed all others in hardihood and cruelty on those days of blood, the pope bestowed upon him the devastated domains as a fief of the church. but the soil sown with the bones of heroes, and enriched with the blood of patriots, was prolific of formidable avengers; who constantly shook the throne, and rendered it a calamity to its blood-stained occupant. his son succeeded him; but not being able to defend it against the uprising of the people, it was incorporated into the french empire; but still the war raged, until , when a peace was concluded with raymond iv., upon condition of his purchasing absolution at an enormous price, and ceding the greater portion of his domains to france. in , when philip iv. ascended the throne of france, the despotism of rome had perpetually encroached on the rights of the sovereignty of the government, and by an insidious policy subjected it more and more to its influence. among the privileges which the popes arrogated was the right to arbitrate the controversies which arose between independent sovereignties. a dispute having sprung up between philip iv., of france, and edward i., of england, pope boniface viii., wishing to enjoy the advantage of dictating the terms of adjustment, arbitrarily attempted to interfere in the controversy. this officious intermeddling in the affairs of a sovereign state was resisted by philip with patriotic firmness. the irascible pope, transported with rage at the irreverence and independence of philip, and at the recollection of his liberal governmental views and measures, interdicted all religious worship in his dominions, and suspended the dispensation of the means of grace. but the policy of philip, in introducing the "third estates," or deputies of the people, which had been instituted by charlemagne, but discontinued by hugh capet, and in his extending the jurisdiction of parliament over the crowned heads, had fortified him in the affections of his subjects, while the papal establishments, in extracting the life-blood from the industrial classes, had weakened popular attachment to the holy see. the liberality of the king nullified the virtue of the vatican thunder; and the generous support which he commanded from the people, and from a faction of the priests, enabled him to resist the intermeddling of the pope with the rights of the crown; nay more, as the tyranny of the holy father had rendered him unpopular in italy, it placed him at the mercy of a prince whom he had insulted and exasperated, and who was capable of taking revenge. accordingly, emissaries were sent to rome who, seizing the holy father while he was defiantly seated in the apostolic chair, dragged him from his despotic throne, and cast him into prison. from this ignominious predicament he was, however, shortly afterwards released; but as his character was black with crime, it was determined to summon a council for his deposition. depressed with the expectation of certain degradation, chagrined and mortified at the loss of his dignity and the insults to his holiness, and having refused all sustenance in confinement for fear of being poisoned, his constitution broke down, and he died in a paroxysm of rage and fear before arrangements could be completed for his trial. according to catholic authority, "he entered like a fox, reigned like a tiger, and died like a dog." his condition after his death may be variously conjectured by theologians according to their different creeds; but dante, who was a catholic, places him in hell between pope nicholas iii. and pope clement v. during the reign of louis xii., who became king of france in , the duplicity and treachery which has in general characterized the history of the papal intrigues obtained an illustration in the conduct of the popes, which would have disgraced the chiefs of barbaric nations. louis, upon receiving the royal diadem, pardoned the wrongs which had been done to him while he was duke, relieved the industry of his subjects by reducing the burden of their taxation, elevated the literary standard of the nation by the introduction of scientific collections, and displayed a nobleness of disposition, and a capacity for the exercise of the governmental functions prophetic of the highest degree of national prosperity and greatness. pope julius ii. before his election, had professed the warmest friendship for louis, and secured his influence in gaining the sacerdotal crown. having succeeded in this strategic measure, his ambition led him to grasp at another object which he conceived louis's friendship might be made accessory in realizing. that object was the obliteration of the venitian republic. he accordingly formed a holy league, called the "league of cambray," with france, spain and germany, for the accomplishment of his object. faithful to his obligations, louis fought with distinguished bravery in the pope's cause. his heroism won encomiums from all but from the holy father, who was too jealous not to hate superiority, too selfish for sincere friendship, and too sagacious not to perceive that in the further developments of his aggressive designs he was bound to encounter in the heroism and honor of louis a powerful antagonist. the formidable valor of the venitian republicans in the defence of their government, the mutual distrust among the allies, which they managed to excite, and the conflicting interpretations of the terms of the compact eventually dissolved the holy league. but the finesse of the pope, and the adroitness with which he engineered his machinery, gave him the ability to conciliate his difficulties with the republicans, and of inducing that republic to unite with him in a league with spain, england and switzerland, against france. germany and france then called a council at pisa, for reformation in the head and body of the church; at the bar of which they summoned the pope, to explain his conduct. but scorning the mandate of the synod, he convened a council at the lateran; and causing a decree to be passed declaring louis to have forfeited his crown, excommunicated him, and interdicted the celebration of religious worship in his kingdom. louis was now assaulted by the english at guingate, by the spanish at navarre, by the swiss at dijon, while his kingdom was internally convulsed by treacherous priests, crafty spies, false friends, and unpatriotic catholics. unable to contend against these formidable antagonists, he had to surrendered all his possessions beyond the alps and the pyrenees. pope leo x., who succeeded julius ii., governed by motives of nepotism and ambition, concocted a scheme for obtaining for his family the kingdom of naples and the duchies of ferrara and urbino. at the same time louis entertained a design of reconquering milan, which he inherited from his grandmother, valentina visconti. the success of these schemes depended on the mutual friendship of the projectors. the pope, in order to secure the confidence of louis, entered into a secret alliance with him, and pretended to favor all his plans. but while he was flattering his hopes, he was preparing to ruin his cause. to weaken his resources he secretly sent bambo, his legate, to venice to detach its alliance from france; and though this treacherous mission was unsuccessful, yet when the french appeared on the confines of italy, he increased his power by the purchase of modena, and finally reduced louis to a formal submission. in francis i, ascended the throne, and immediately commenced preparations for the re-conquest of milan. pope leo x., to defeat this enterprise formed an alliance with milan, florence, artois, germany and switzerland. a bloody battle ensued in which tigers and giants seemed to struggle with each other, and which was protracted without intermission for two days and nights. france recovered milan; the pope was reduced to the last extremity; yet the prudence or superstition of francis concluded a concordat with him, upon such liberal terms as excited the dissatisfaction of france, and the surprise of the world. after this signal and generous triumph the belligerent powers became reconciled. this event was hailed by the friends of humanity with united acclamations. but the holy see, whose policy has ever been to foster wars and controversies between governments, that it might improve the consequent confusion and disorder in aggrandizing its power, received the news of pacification with chagrin and disappointment. but milan, which had cost france so much to win, was soon lost by the conquest of charles v., emperor of germany and king of spain. this prince having formed a league with pope leo x. against francis i.,--which league was afterwards joined by henry viii., of england--active hostilities were soon commenced. after a war of four disastrous years, the emperor captured francis, obliged him to relinquish his claims to naples, milan, genoa, asti, flanders and artois; to dismember his kingdom by surrendering burgundy; and to ransom himself by the payment of , , crowns. the popularity and victorious march of the german emperor now alarmed the jealous fears of the holy father, pope clement vii., who, apprehending in them his own subjugation, united in an alliance with. francis i:, the former antagonist of the roman see, and with all the italian powers, to arrest the dangerous triumphs of his new rival. the allies succeeded in humbling the pride of charles; but in the midst of their victories a plague, more fearful than their foes, broke out in the french army, and thinned its ranks with fearful mortality. this circumstance led to the peace of cambray. but the ambition of francis, and his indomitable thirst for the reconquest of milan, soon led him to violate the terms of this covenant. confederating with solyman ii., sultan of the ottoman empire, he drove charles before his forces. the interest of the holy see being threatened by the successes of the allied army, and perhaps in the event of the triumph of charles not perfectly secure, pope paul iii. interposed his friendly mediation, and induced the belligerents to conclude a truce of ten years. in francis ii., son of francis i., succeeded to the crown of france. amid the flattering successes of the papal intrigues, the rapid progress of protestantism in europe, and the fearless boldness of its advocates, occasioned great uneasiness to the holy see. scorning the mild but able services of reason and conciliation, it counselled the most sanguinary measures. the records of the times are consequently filled with accounts of disorders, assassinations, massacres, and the most deplorable conflicts. the french nation was divided into two great factions; the one in favor of catholicism, the other in favor of protestantism. by means of the papal machinery of bishops, abbots, priests, monks and spies, the catholics were made to believe that the religious disorders which had convulsed the empire were but a prelude to an intended extermination of all romanists. to narrow-minded bigots, who absurdly believed that their church afforded the only possible method of escaping the pangs of purgatory, and of obtaining eternal happiness, all the zeal which their hopes and fears of eternity could inspire was awakened in the defence of their religion. while the protestants who, on the other hand, believed that catholicism was idolatry, subversive of christianity, demoralizing in its tendency, and destructive of the rights of conscience, reason and religious liberty, became equally heated in the defence of their faith. both factions had been educated in intolerent principles; in the belief that error of opinion was perilous to the soul; that it rendered a person a proper object of aversion and denunciation; and, that a difference of opinion was a sufficient justification of hatred and persecution. both factions being educated in the principles of bigotry and intolerance, nursed amid convulsions and barbarity, embittered against each other by mutual provocations and injury, were incapable of pacification by just and reasonable concession. the catholics, having the power, were enabled to inflict on the protestants the deeper injuries; and, to the credit of the protestants it will ever be remembered, that they sought not to exterminate their foes, but to obtain equal rights with them. the cardinal of lorraine, who had supervision of the clergy, and henry, duke of guise, the uncle of the king, who directed the military affairs, were both uncompromising in their hostility to the protestants. antony of bourbon, king of navarre, and his brother louis, prince of condé, being excluded from the governmental administration, united with the calvinists for the overthrow of the regime, under pretext of religious zeal. catherine de medici, mother of the king, and niece of pope clement vii., jealous of a power in which she could not participate, favored the designs of louis, and employed her art in stimulating the opposition of the reformers to the administration of the duke of guise. under these circumstances a conspiracy against the duke was formed at amboise, which led to a murderous onslaught, and inaugurated civil war. louis was captured and condemned to death. in the midst of the distraction of conflicting parties francis i. died, and charles ix., in , succeeded to the throne at the age of ten years. catherine de medici, his mother, with the acquiesence of parliament, administered the affairs of government. although a bigoted catholic, yet having no principle but the love of sway, she was ready to support any faction or creed that administered to her power, or removed an obstacle to her ambition. without profound views of policy, she was incapable of either originating a great national object, or of supporting it by adequate measures. so indomitable was her passion for dominion, that it as much obdurated her maternal feelings as it disqualified her for a judicious regent. she even studied to incapacitate her sons for the exercise of the governmental functions, and to divert their attention from the state of national affairs. with this end in view she involved them in the grossest dissipation, and strove to keep them in a perpetual whirl of voluptuous intoxication. perfect in the art of dissimulation, she cajoled catholics and protestants. anxious to obtain the support of all parties, she alternately favored the one and the other. to embarrass the duke of guise she threw everything into confusion; but to conciliate the protestants she had to redeem her pledges; and in spite of the opposition of the court, to issue an act of toleration in their favor. the lines of party became now distinctly drawn. the protestant faction, headed by the prince of condé, and coligny, admiral of france, was assisted by the english; and the catholic faction, headed by francis, duke of guise, was assisted by spain. at a season of intense public excitement the duke of guise, with a band of adherents, was passing a barn in which some calvinists were singing psalms. irritating taunts were mutually exchanged between the two parties. this exasperating conduct brought on a collision, in which sixty calvinists were killed, the flames of civil war ignited, and the empire divided and distracted by the hostile conflicts of the two religious parties. the duke, at the head of his forces, pursued the protestants with pitiless revenge, and the protestants retaliated his cruelties with fearful retribution. desperate conflicts perpetually took place, and the land was drenched with blood. the bigotry of both factions stained their cause with deplorable excesses. at the battle of dreux the belligerents came to a decisive engagement. the protestants were defeated, and condé captured. the duke of guise designing to crush protestantism by striking a blow at orleans, its centre, commenced active preparations for the enterprise; but while he was engaged in them he was shot by poltrot de mercy, a huguenot nobleman. advising peace in his last moments, terms of conciliation were accordingly offered the protestants, which being accepted, tranquillity was restored to the empire. the arts of catherine, the intolerance of catholicism, and the suspicion and fervor of protestantism, soon convulsed the nation again with the disorders of civil war. aspiring to rule with more absolute power than she had hitherto been able, catherine conceived the idea of having the king, whom she held helplessly under her control, declared to be of competent age for the exercise of the royal functions. this accomplished, she made a tour through the empire in company with him. at bayonne the young king had an interview with his sister, wife of philip ii., king of spain. the suspicions of the calvinists were immediately excited; they precipitately armed themselves for defence, and formed a conspiracy to assassinate the king. civil war consequently broke out. a severe and bloody engagement took place at st. dennis. the losses were heavy on both sides; but montmorency, a prominent catholic leader being killed, another treaty of peace was concluded. but the artifice and dissimulation of catherine only made treaties which contained the elements of future wars. they satisfied neither the catholics nor the protestants; and were evaded by both. contrary to the stipulations of the treaty of st. dennis, the calvinists still continued to hold places which they had contracted to surrender, and to continue correspondence with england and holland, which they had agreed to break off. the inflammable material of religious bigotry, together with these circumstances, provoked another intestine war. the duke of anjou, afterwards henry iii., commanded the catholic faction; and condé and admiral coligny headed the protestant faction. at the battle of jarnac, condé was captured and shot; and at the battle of montcontour coligny was defeated. amid these discomfitures of the protestants a peace was offered them on terms of such extraordinary generosity by the catholics, that they were unconditionally accepted. henry of navarre, condé's son, subsequently henry iv., on hearing of his father's death swore to revenge his murder; but the peace which had just been concluded rendered him destitute of means and arms. his mother, queen jeanne d'albret, after the death of her husband, condé, king of navarre, had, in order to avoid the intrigues of catherine, retired from the french court to bearn, her hereditary possessions. in this retreat she declared herself in favor of the huguenots. when her son was but eleven years old the guises, in conjunction with philip ii., king of spain, devised a plot for depriving the young prince of his hereditary possessions in lower navarre, and of placing him in the hands of the latter tyrant. the sagacity of elizabeth, queen of england, however, detected this conspiracy in time to frustrate it. in consequence of this base machination, queen jeanne d'albert placed her son henry, when he was but sixteen years old, at the head of a protestant army, and caused him to take an oath to shed the last drop of his blood in the defence of his kingdom and religion. henry guise, son of francis guise, duke of lorraine, became the commander of the royal army. the bloody catherine, in collusion with this ambitious and bigoted duke, concocted a plot for the total extermination of all the protestants in the french empire. the peace which had been concluded with the protestants at jarnac and montcontour was but the preliminary measure in the accomplishment of this horrible project. the terms it accorded were so surprisingly advantageous to the conquered forces, that the more cautious protestants regarded it with suspicion. the next device in this insidious plot, was a specious pretence of uniting all parties in interest and harmony by the bonds of two marriages, the one between the king, charles ix., and elizabeth, daughter of maximilian ii., emperor of germany, and the other between margaret, the queen's sister, and henry, prince of navarre. all the distinguished protestant leaders were earnestly invited to be present at the celebration of the royal nuptials. fearing treachery many of them, however, declined the honor. amid the magnificence and festivity of the occasion queen jeanne d'albert was poisoned. shortly after coligny was wounded by a shot from a window. the king swore to punish the villain who had attempted the assassination. his mother assured him coligny had the same designs on his life. bursting into rage he exclaimed: "kill every protestant--kill coligny." catherine then held her council of blood. all having been concerted for a general massacre, on bartholomew's eve, at midnight of the day fixed, the church bells announced the signal for commencing the horrible butchery. wild shrieks and murderous clamor immediately shook the air. "spare none; it is god's, it is catherine's it is the kings order." shouted the catholic leaders as they led on their gangs of remorseless bigots. in the red glare of terrifying flambeaux, were seen daggers dripping with the blood of men, women, and even babes. the people without means of defence or flight saw they were doomed to perish without mercy or revenge. coligny awakened from his sleep by the terrific yells and screams that filled the air, arose from his bed and opened the door of his mansion. meeting the assassins, he courteously invited them into his chamber. "companions," said he, "finish your work. take the blood sixty years of war have respected: coligny will forgive you. my life is of little consequence, and though i would rather lose it in defending you, yet take it." touched at these words, and his calm, majestic countenance, the ruffians fell upon their knees; one of them threw away his dagger; another embraced the knees of his intended victim, and the courage of all dissolved into tears. besme, the commander of the gang, who had waited in the court for coligny's head, becoming impatient entered the chamber, and seeing the assassins overcome by humanity denounced them as traitors to catherine. at this denunciation one of them averting his head, drew his sword and plunged it into coligny's breast. for thirty days in every part of the kingdom the most atrocious acts were perpetrated. doors were burst open; men and women assassinated night and day; babes torn from their mother's arms were murdered before their parents' eyes. over this dreadful calamity the friends and foes of france might have together wept; but rome was illuminated, cannons were fired in its honor, churches were shaken with the peals of thanksgiving, priests formed themselves into holy processions to testify their joy, jubilees were proclaimed, and the pope, jealous of the authorship of atrocities that shook the world with horror, had medals prepared to immortalize his right to the honor of having originated the most horrible massacre on record. when we consider the atrociousness of the massacre, and the exultations of the holy father, we are at a loss which most to pity, the victims of the catastrophe, or the fiend that rejoiced over it. after the incidents of that day henry of navarre and the prince of condé had to profess catholicism in order to save their lives. this device defeating the designs of catherine on the life of henry, she next added to the ignominy of her character by attempting to dissolve the marriage which, through her influence, had just been consummated. foiled in this scheme, she then sought to poison the happiness of the royal pair. to hold henry spell-bound in the power of her fascinations, she spread around him all the voluptuous allurements of sensual pleasure. but the native magnanimity of his spirit broke the thralls of her enchantment; and secretly escaping from a corrupt and besotted court, he recanted his catholicism, and placed himself at the head of the protestant league as king of navarre; a title which he had rightfully assumed since his mother's death. the revenge which was now rife on the lips of thousands, for slaughtered relatives and citizens, and the portentous disasters which overhung the empire, convinced catherine of her error; and charles, tracing the calamities of the nation to her ambition, resolved to atone for his past neglect by governing the empire himself: but death too soon deprived him of an opportunity to make this atonement. on the death of charles ix., henry iii., his brother, succeeded to the throne. but being then king of poland, catherine, his mother, was permitted to govern in his name until he should be able to assume the administration himself. catherine immediately concluded a peace with the huguenots, which granted them religious liberty but this liberal concession exasperated the catholics, and afforded henry guise a pretext for perfecting a league which had been projected by cardinal lorraine. the professed object of this league was to defend catholicism, and extirpate religious liberty; but it had also a secret object, which was to usurp the throne. after henry iii. had returned to his domains, his profligate disposition, and his want of decision and firmness made him the dupe of his mother's intrigues. by her machinations he was kept imprisoned in the royal palace, occupied with frivolous intrigues and stupefied with debauch, even while dissension was shaking his government, and treason plotting his downfall. besides the unpopularity which his neglect of national affairs engendered in the minds of his subjects, his marriage with the countess of lorraine, giving the guises increased influence in the government, added suspicion to the popular discontent. by the support of the papal machinery, henry guise became sufficiently powerful to dictate laws to the king. he obliged him to annul all provisions in favor of the reformers, and carried his insolence so far that the king forbid him to approach the capitol. it was now discovered that the duke intended to kidnap the king, imprison him in a monastic dungeon, and usurp the imperial authority. conscious of his power, the duke boldly violated the king's command, that he should not enter paris. at this defiance the king called on his troops for assistance; but so effectively had the pope's machinery operated, that the people attacked the royal troops, drove them away, and thirty thousand papists sprung to arms in the defence of the duke. such was the helplessness of the king that he had to fly for safety to chartres, and to conclude a treaty with his enemy. upon the assembling of the estates of blois, they decided that the duke was too powerful to be brought to trial, but that his open treason would justify the king in having him assassinated. appearing to be reconciled to him he then partook of the eucharist in company with him; but while he did so, gave secret orders for his assassination. in a few days after this event the duke was stabbed as he entered the royal palace, and cardinal lorraine met the same fate in a dungeon. the severe disappointments which these melancholy events occasioned to the hopes of the papal see, gave rise to a holy league against henry iii., headed by the duke of mayenne, brother of the duke of guise, which league was supported by all the resources of rome. every department of the papal machinery was now set in the most vigorous action. paris and the principal cities of france were incited to declare against the king. the sorbonne, the highest catholic university in the empire, absolved the subjects from their allegiance to him; the pope threatened him with excommunication; and his assassination was publicly preached in the churches; but by a fortunate coalition with henry of navarre the king defeated the pope and his league, re-captured paris, and established again his authority in the empire. yet the catholic church, which never forgives an offence, and scruples at no means to remove an obstacle, found a dominican monk who executed her vengeance by the assassination of the king. henry iii. left no male heirs; consequently henry of navarre became the legitimate inheritor of the throne of france. the papal machinery which in vain had been called into requisition to destroy him, was now set in vigorous operation to prevent him from establishing a legal right to his heritage. the duke of mayenne, at the head of the catholics, declared against him; philip ii., king of spain, claimed the crown; and several unsuccessful attempts were made to assassinate him. but the valor and sagacity of henry defeated his enemies, and triumphed over all difficulties. the papal machinery was, however, still formidable; and henry iv., convinced that the blood of his subjects must continue to flow as long as they were governed by a protestant sovereign, decided to profess the catholic faith, which of all others he must have sincerely detested. by this politic act of humiliation he acquired for his subjects political security and entire religious liberty, and obtained from the pope a concession to his right to the crown. but in sacrificing principle to expediency he did not conciliate papal malice, nor secure tranquillity to his reign. conspiracies were rife, female intrigue abounded, bigotry and intolerance gave birth to much violence and disorder, and finally; the long-premeditated assassination of henry iv. was accomplished by ravaillac, who stabbed him to the heart with a double-edged sword, the papal symbol of spiritual and temporal power. the papal machinery during the past reigns had demoralized the nation. the national policy was characterized by a system of falsehood, corruption and intrigue. princes of the blood were excluded from the throne, on account of their liberal proclivities. innocent men, women and children were imprisoned, murdered and burnt. female intrigue, the bane of national peace and virtue predominated in political circles; and public robbery and extravagance laid the foundation of a debt which ultimately broke down the government. under louis xiii., who became king of france in , the papal machinery was directed by cardinal richelieu, who governed the king; by m. tellier, his confessor, and madame maitenon, his prostitute, who governed the cabinet. richelieu gave boldness and craft to the national policy, and consummated the governmental absoluteness which had been initiated by louis xi. division of power being more friendly to justice and republicanism than consolidation, the papal political machinery has always vigorously, as well as universally, labored to defeat the first and encourage the second. but what is unfriendly to republicanism is destructive to national prosperity; and consequently the papal intrigues and appliances in favor of absoluteness in france destroyed the greatness of the nation. the political security and religious liberty which henry iv. had secured to the subjects were annulled by the repeal of the edict of nantes, and catholic intolerance again domineered over the lives and fortunes of protestants. kings had been taught by their teachers and spiritual guides that "to dissemble was to reign," and that "to become a great man it was necessary to become a great villain." the consequence was national weakness and demoralization. mock treaties were made to conceal real ones, and kings, to disguise their intentions, acted differently from what they thought. a succession of weak, bigoted, tyrannical, and criminal rulers had oppressed the industry of the country, and drove thousands of subjects to seek a livelihood under less oppressive government. despotic ministers, rapacious favorites, intriguing prostitutes, foolish enterprises absurd laws, professed rakes in the garb of priests and cardinals, prodigality, corruption and tyranny withering the vitality of the nation, and accumulating on the heads of the people an insupportable load of taxation and misery, were the deplorable results of the operation of the pope and his political engine. but while such were the calamities which catholicism was maturing, the eloquent writings of voltaire, of rousseau, and other liberal authors were awakening a spirit of inquiry in the public mind, and preparing the way for political regeneration. the smouldering fires of freedom which burned in the breast of the nation, rendered the conflict between monarchy and republicanism inevitable. it finally took place; the majesty of the people was vindicated; and, a national assembly convened consisting of three hundred and seventeen clergy men, three hundred and seventeen nobles, and six hundred and seventeen deputies of the people; all of whom took an oath never to separate until they had given france a free constitution, from the ruins of the monarchy a republic arose in majesty and power. the feudal estates were abolished without indemnification. the invidious game laws, the feudal tribunals, the church tithes, the ecclesiastical revenues, the hereditary descent of officers, the exemption of church dignities from military taxation, the laws excluding protestants from offices of trust or profit, and denying them the right of inheriting, acquiring or bequeathing property, and all that the toil of the papal machinery had accumulated on the heads of the people, were swept away by the spirit of liberal government. to obtain this freedom the nation had poured out its blood. but the nation had been educated in catholic bigotry and intolerance; and now it visited on the heads of its tutors the lessons which they had taught. the people swept away the despotism of the throne, but left it remaining in the national councils; and, while they made a wreck of oppression, they preserved its elements to be reconstructed in another form. it is not, then, surprising, that hard as their freedom was won, it was so easily betrayed by the genius of napoleon bonaparte, once its advocate, but always its foe; who hated republicanism as much as he hated papacy, for they both were in conflict with his designs; and who loved nothing but himself and supreme dominion. but the boon he sought his ambition defeated. while he stood at the height of his fortune, with the conquest of europe in his grasp, the mask fell from his brow. the confidence of freemen forsook him; and his glory, which else might have outrivalled the splendor of the greatest, flickered, grew dim, and soon vanished away; leaving the world as much astonished at the obscurity it left as it had been at the effulgence it had emitted. chapter xiv. papal political intrigues in germany. papal intrigues in germany under the reigns of otho i--of henry iv.--of henry v--of frederic i--of frederic ii--of conrad iv.--of albert i--of henry vii--of louis of bavaria-- of charles iv.--of sigis-mund--of charles v.--of ferdinand ii,--papal intrigues in austria--in prussia--and in the netherlands. wittikind the great, king of saxony, after a vigorous resistance for thirty-three years against the arms of charlemagne, the confederate of the pope, submitted to be baptized to spare the further effusion of the blood of his subjects. but in the events of one hundred years, the conquered became the emperors, and the franks were supplanted on the throne by the saxons. from the time that the carlovingian dynasty was established until the dissolution of the empire in , the secular power had to continually struggle against the intrigues and usurpations of the papal see. the pope's claim of being the disposer of crowns, and the source of secular power, achieved something of a triumph in , when through a crafty policy the pontiff bestowed the diadem on otho. from motives of policy the emperor conceded the spiritual claims of the pope, but prudently nullified them by placing him under his authority. while otho acknowledged that he was emperor by the grace of god and the pope, he required the latter, who was john xii., to swear allegiance to him, and the roman see to enter into a solemn agreement with him that henceforth no pope should be chosen except in the presence of a germanic imperial commission. this judicious check on the intriguing policy of the papal see, was too unpleasant to be tolerated longer than weakness made it unavoidable. presumptuous as false, pope john xii. was led to violate his oath of allegiance, and to take up arms to acquire independence of secular authority. for this act of perjury, treason, and violation of a solemn treaty--which in a layman would have been a capital offence, but in a priest was aggravated by the additional crime of hypocrisy--the emperor could not do less than depose him. in the papal monarchy virtue and ability were seldom conspicuous, and generally when either appeared in its administration, it was less the offspring of catholicism than of the germanic authority. the emperors of germany were far better men than the popes of rome. while the first labored to reform the church, the latter did little else than corrupt it. virtue, the foundation of public order and concord, could not but be encouraged in the subjects by a sagacious monarch; and vice, the indulgent mother of fraud and imposition, could not but be cultivated by a crafty and ambitious priest. in the progress of the conduct of the papal and the imperial policy, so mutually antagonistical, henry iii., who became emperor of germany in , had to depose three popes, and to fill the papal chair during his life with men of his own choice. he also held the papal monarchy under strict surveillance, and forbade the bestowal of any spiritual dignity, or the appropriation of any church property without his sanction. the wholesome effects of his severity won commendations even from those upon whom they were most rigorously enforced; in proof of which it may be stated that the clergy spontaneously bestowed on him the title of "the pious," which he condescended to accept. in henry iv. ascended the throne of germany. the papal see, bitterly groaning under the jealous restraint which had been imposed on it by the secular authority, eagerly watched, and artfully intrigued for an opportunity to remove them. the impolitic and tyrannical conduct of henry iv. appeared, perhaps in its eye, as a providential circumstance designed to aid the success of its long cherished design. the emperor, governed by the advice of archbishop adelbert, attempted, by building castles, and committing brutal and violent acts, to rule his people through the terror of his authority. neglecting to guard popular interests, which alone can secure popular attachment, his efforts to overawe his subjects produced only dissatisfaction and insurrection. in an outburst of popular violence provoked by his imprudence, considerable damage was done to some churches in saxony and thuringia. these disorders gave henry the opportunity of gratifying his revengeful feelings in accusing the inhabitants before the pope of sacrilege, and of entering their territory and perpetrating the most barbarous cruelty. the consequences of this proceeding eventuated in such a favorable crisis to the papal designs, that, had the ablest pope projected and engineered them they could not have culminated more propitiously. the injured and exasperated inhabitants appealed to the pope. pope gregory vii., having ascended the papal throne without the consent of the german court, eagerly embraced a cause which enabled him to assert his claim claim to independent sovereignty, and supremacy over all secular authority. fully aware that the tyranny of henry had deprived him of the affections and support of his subjects, he commanded the unpopular monarch to appear before him, under pain of excommunication. in punishment for this ferocious warrant the emperor summoned a council of bishops at worms, and obliged them to renounce their allegiance to gregory. this daring act so irritated the pope that he began to lavish, with unsparing liberality, anathemas on the head of the monarch. henry at first treated this display of arrogated divinity with scornful indifference, but his vices had too much disembarrassed the action of the papal machinery not to allow it to disable his power and revenge. his subjects disowned their allegiance to him; his friends deserted him; his soldiers disobeyed his orders; and he found himself helplessly at the mercy of a revengeful and irritated priest. with a refinement of malice that seems to do credit to papal ingenuity, at least, the emperor was required to dress in penitential robes, formally to solicit for three days an interview with the sacerdotal despot, and then to promise unconditional obedience to him in all things. but the acts of tyranny carry with them the seeds of retribution. the tyrant who could impose such conditions on a fallen foe, could also have been guilty, in the exercise of his power, of inflicting injuries on his subjects which would be calculated to excite a disposition to revolt and retaliation, this was precisely the case with pope gregory vii. he had oppressed the italian provinces to such a degree that the inhabitants longed for an opportunity to depose him; and now the misfortunes of henry appearing to render him an available agent in the accomplishment of their designs, they proposed a coalition with him. the pope becoming acquainted with this secret machination, set about to counteract it. by the operation of his skilful machinery he was enabled suddenly to create a conspiracy in the heart of germany, for the deposition of the emperor; but the vigilance and valor of the latter defeated the revolutionary movement. having in vain exhausted all resources to subject the incorrigible monarch to his absolute authority, he now sought to beguile the mortification of his defeat by hurling anathemas at his obstinate head. but the temper of henry not disposing him to indulge the chagrined pope in insolent sports, summoned a council of german and italian bishops at brixen, and by proving to their satisfaction that pope gregory vii. was a heretic, a sorcerer, and had dealings with the devil, effected his degradation, and placed clement iii. in the papal chair. the spirit and pretensions of catholicism are so inimical to secular authority that, to whatever extent they obtain a controlling influence in a government they tend to abridge its sovereignty, and threaten its subversion. this tendency, so clearly indicated by the principles of the papal monarchy, and so fearfully illustrated in its history, is incapable of being restrained by any sense of gratitude, or by any obligation of oaths, a knowledge of this unhappy truth will prevent surprise that the munificent favors which henry bestowed on pope clement iii., in elevating him to the papal dignity, should not have caused the repeal of the anathemas and excommunications which had been pronounced against him, nor arrested the papal machinery in its insidious and treacherous operations, in fostering the elements of discord which existed in the empire. nothing but the surrender of the principles of sovereignty will ever conciliate a pope to the authority of a secular government. the prudence, courage, and talents of the king were hence constantly called into requisition to defeat the secret machinations of his enemies. his eldest son was instigated to rebel against him. after he had subdued him, his second son, whom he had crowned as his successor, obliged him to surrender into his hands the imperial authority. by the implacable revenge of the papal see, operating through its varied machinery, he was deprived of power, reduced to scorn and neglect, and after it had murdered him by degrees, prohibited the interment of his anathematized corpse in consecrated ground. after henry v., in , had wrung from his father's hand the imperial sceptre, he sought to have this atrocious act sanctified in the eyes of his subjects by being crowned at rome by the pope--paschal ii. this sanction of unfilial conduct the pope was willing to accord; but as it seemed to present an opportunity for making a good speculation, he exacted, as the only condition on which the favor could be granted, a concession to the holy see of all the rights and privileges which had been claimed for it by pope gregory vii. this proposition startled henry; he saw the ambitious designs of the pope, and he felt the importance of checking them. boldly denying the papal pretensions, and rejecting with indignant contempt the proposition of paschal, he marched his army on rome, dragged the pope from the altar while he was celebrating mass, and casting him into prison, determined that he should there remain until he consented to crown him without any condition. to be restored to liberty and luxury the pope acceded to all the terms dictated to him by the emperor, but with a secret disposition to render them nugatory at the first opportunity. disturbances occurring in germany, the pope was agreeably relieved of the embarrassing restraints of the emperor's presence. to suppress the germanic revolution the skill and valor of henry was occupied for two years. in the meantime the pope, in order to nullify the concessions which he had made, organized an italian conspiracy against the emperor. soon as henry had quelled the insubordination in germany, he therefore returned to italy to punish the author of the calamities of his reign. but pope paschal evaded the designed chastisement by absconding to apulea, where he shortly afterwards died. pope galatius ii., an enemy of henry, having obtained the papal dignity, the latter deposed him, and caused bourden, under the name of gregory viii., to be substituted in his place. the deposed pope and his cardinals, having the control of the papal machinery, were enabled to oppose, with great success, the policy of henry in every part of his dominion. galatius assembled a council of bishops at vienna and excommunicated him; calaxtus ii. convened one at rheims, and repeated the sentence; the nobles broke out in frequent rebellion; and finally such insubordination prevailed in the empire, and such violent outbursts so frequently disturbed the public peace, that in order to restore tranquillity henry was compelled to subscribe to a concordat at worms, in which he renounced the right of investiture, and to any interference in the consecration of bishops. frederic i. succeeded to the imperial throne in . the increasing opulence and power of the italian and lombardine cities owing allegience to germanic authority, the ambitious aspirations of the papal see for illimitable dominion, and the insidious operations of its machinery in producing public taste and opinion in harmony with its desires, had, at the beginning of the reign of frederic i., produced revolts and usurpations in lombardy and italy, which obliged the emperor to visit and chastise the insurrectionary districts. pope alexander iii., the chief source of the public discord, fled on the approach of frederic to france, and excommunicated him. a league was then formed between the pope, venice, and the greek empire against frederic; and for twenty years the calamities of war were protracted. the cruelty which the emperor had exercised towards the rebellious cities created a desperate opposition to his authority, and exercised an important influence in stimulating the valor and energy of the people, by which their freedom was finally achieved in the treaty of venice in . the spiritual and temporal crown of the world which the roman see attempted to manufacture out of the fishhooks of st. peter, however visionary it might originally have appeared, assumed in the progress of the papal political intrigues, the appearance of a stubborn, formidable and frightful reality. with the profound policy which it elaborated, and the systematic course of measures which it adopted, accommodated to all exigencies and pursued through all periods, and at all places; with its' machinery ramifying the political, social, and literary institutions of christendom; with its confessors transmitting to rome every important fact; with its inquisition extorting from victims an admission of every false charge of which ecclesiastical interests required the establishment; with its preachers and spiritual guides manufacturing, private and public opinion suitable to its demands by perverted facts and false statements; and with its army of monks, knights, sycophant princes, servile kings, and deluded devotees; it had at the period of pope innocent iii. subjugated christendom under its despotic authority. during the progress of its aggressive course the voice of reason and patriotism had often lifted up remonstrances against its advancement; but the eloquent tones died away unheeded amid the clamorous chaunts of superstitious rites. but now, after supineness had allowed it to amass supreme and despotic power, and fortify itself by every means of defence, the antagonism of the people began to be energetically manifested. it is the fate of despotism of every form, when it has developed the full strength of its all-blasting power, to awaken another power destined to trample it in the dust. that power is the strength which slumbers in the popular arm. when the papal despotism was no more a pretension, but a fact, when it stood distinctly before the world clotted with the blood of generations, surrounded by broken sceptres and crushed thrones, with its feet on the neck of kings and people, and its usurping hand grasping at the crowns of earth, heaven and hell, a murmur of horror broke from the lips of the world. then learning began to scoff at its claims, research to expose its frauds, wit to ridicule its pretensions; and then religious liberty, through the albigenses and waldenses uttered that memorable peal, which is destined to reverberate as an undying tone through all future ages. then arose the free cities from their long degradation, and began to perfect their internal organizations by the establishment of corporations; then appeared the first universities, arousing the dormant spirit of free inquiry and investigation; then the abrogation of the system of violence began to restore public security; and then the separate members of the empire began to be assembled and deliberate on public affairs, originating the principle of the provincial diets. frederic ii., son of the emperor henry vi., was born at this illustrious period of german history. philip, duke of suabia, was nominated regent during frederic's minority, but the pope, wishing a more pliant instrument, substituted berthold. finding this scheme impracticable he recommended otho, and philip being murdered, the papal policy succeeded. but the pope soon found that his intrigue had vested with power a mortal foe to the papal see. for otho clearly manifested a design of not only wresting sicily from frederic, which the latter inherited from his mother, princess of constance, but of establishing the authority of germany over certain possessions of italy which it claimed as an inheritance. to counteract the mistake of his policy the pope took frederic under his protection, and called into requisition all the power of his machinery. at the age of twenty-one years he crowned his protege emperor of germany; but in order to bind him to his interests he exacted a coronation oath that he would undertake a crusade in behalf of the church. frederic, enjoying the favor and influence of the pope, and the advantageous co-operation of his machinery, soon defeated otho, and became sole sovereign of the empire. with a grasp of intellect, and versatility of talent that rarely have sprung from a royal cradle, frederic ii. elaborated projects which, although they transcended the liberality and enlightenment of his age, yet laid the foundation for their development in a future period. the possession of the german and sicilian crowns led him to hope that he would be able to repress the powerful hierarchy of rome, and reduce the pope to the dignity of a bishop. impressed with the importance of this object, and the difficulty of its accomplishment, he slowly and cautiously removed obstacle after obstacle, and selected the elements for his great enterprise. as a preliminary measure he caused his son to be crowned king of rome. this act alarmed the jealousy of pope honorious iii., who desired to be acquainted with the motive of it. the emperor replied that his coronation oath required him to undertake a crusade, and the fulfilment of it rendered it necessary to invest his son with regal authority. however ungratifying this reasoning was to the pope, he could not refute it, and as the emperor promised to deal severely with the heretics, and to exclude them from offices of trust or profit, he became greatly pacified. in maturing his measures for the restoration of the italian empire, the emperor procrastinated for twelve years the fulfilment of his undertaking, a crusade; and though the pope frequently reminded him of the solemnity of his obligation, yet his apologies were so plausible that they seemed fully to justify the delay. the inexplicable mystery of frederic's conduct, however, excited the apprehensions of pope gregory ix.--and to get rid of his presence in europe he peremptorily demanded that he should undertake the promised crusade. with a show of obedience to the pope's injunction, he commenced preparing for the enterprise, but upon such an extensive scale, and so interruptedly and slowly that it damped the fire, consumed the provisions, and thinned the ranks of the pilgrims. at length he set sail with his fleet, but becoming indisposed after three days' voyage returned home. the return of his formidable army alarmed the fears of the pope, who appears to have equally dreaded the success of his arms abroad and of his presence at home. adopting the customary policy of the popes in their emergency, he endeavored to embarrass the designs of frederic by pronouncing sentence of excommunication on him, and suspending all religious services in his dominions. the justice of this sentence being attempted to be supported by the failure of the emperor to fulfil his coronation oath, frederic endeavored to nullify it, if not in the eyes of the pope, yet in those of the people, by undertaking a vigorous crusade. but the infallible pope who had excommunicated him for not becoming a crusader, now excommunicated him for becoming one. during the emperor's absence the pope preached a crusade against him in his own dominions, organized a conspiracy against him, and devastated his empire with his own troops. that he might weaken the power and popularity of the emperor abroad, he ordered the bishops and knights of the army of the cross in palestine to dispute his command and oppose his designs. but the remarkable genius of frederic, undaunted by difficulties, and unimpressible by discouragement and reverses, made him victorious, as well over the arms of the turks as over the intrigues of the pope. he entered jerusalem in triumph; and, not finding a bishop who would incur the papal anathemas by crowning him, he performed the ceremony himself. the success of frederic filled christendom with joy, but the pope with indignation. he declared every church into which he entered profaned; interdicted the celebration of divine worship in jerusalem; and such was his influence with the chivalrous knighthood, that among its members were found persons base enough to secretly inform the sultan how he might dispose of his victor, by assassination, in his customary visits to the river jordan. but the magnanimity of the sultan rejected the proposition with contempt, and communicated the matter to the emperor to place him on his guard. while frederic exacted from the pope what justice and self respect demanded, he was so far from being disposed to treat him with unnecessary rigor that, when his vices and tyranny had excited his subjects into a rebellion, he interposed in his behalf and restored tranquillity, an act so generous in the emperor should have awakened in the pope an equal degree of magnanimity, but so far was he incapable of any sense of gratitude, that he instigated the emperors son to conspire against him, and assured him of the assistance of the lombards. this conspiracy was detected, and defeated in its bud; and, the emperor regarding his son more as the victim of sacerdotal craft than as a real foe to his authority, pardoned his disloyalty. the sense of gratitude naturally arising from this act of clemency, added to the weight of filial affection, should have been sufficient to form a disposition which would have subjected the son to the most affectionate subordination to the father. but the dispensations and absolutions with which the church pretends to nullify social and civil obligations, unhappily interfered with the natural instincts of the son's mind, and led him to add to the guilt of his treason, the ignominy of attempting to assassinate his father. this atrocious act cancelling every obligation of nature, would have justified the emperor in proceeding to extremes; but his native magnanimity prevailed, and he sentenced his son to perpetual banishment. the success of the policy of frederic comprehended a union of the hostile elements of his southern territory, the subjugation of the germanic aristocracy, and of the italian cities in alliance with the pope. preparatory to the execution of this policy he made some conquests in lombardy these successes excited the revenge of the pope, who accordingly visited on his head another excommunication. but the vatican thunder was allowed to roll on, as amid its music the emperor inarched on from victory to victory. at length, in the development of the policy of frederic, the time arrived for striking a decisive blow at the heart of the public disorder. by a sudden movement he entered the papal dominions. the pope trembled on his throne. he saw his monarchy at the mercy of an emperor, whom he had anathematized, whose son he had taught to rebel, whose subjects he had corrupted, and whose downfall he had labored to effect. the consummation of the policy of frederic was in his grasp; but the magnificent prospect which skill and valor had obtained, superstition blasted. having some reverence for the office, though none for the character of the pope, and conscious of the powerful influence it wielded over the superstitious, he ventured to listen to the papal monarch, who professed a willingness to concede all his demands, but proposed that they should first be sanctioned by a council of the bishops of the church. the emperor soon perceived, but too late, that this specious proposition was but a popish device. the preliminaries for holding the proposed council established the fact, that the pope intended to have it chiefly composed of the most inveterate enemies of the emperor; in fact none but such were invited to participate in its proceedings. frederic felt justified, therefore, in forbidding the convention to assemble. as his prohibition was disregarded, he intercepted a genoese fleet of one hundred bishops, and brought them captive to naples. this manoeuvre broke up the council, and perhaps broke the pope's heart, as he shortly afterwards died. cardinal fiesco, a warm friend of the emperor, became pope innocent iv.; but the dignity of pope making him regard the emperor as hostile to his monarchial pretensions; converted his former friendship into bitter annimosity. returning to lyons, he confirmed all the anathemas that had been pronounced against frederic, and summoned him to appear at the bar of a grand council to be convened at that place. in the proceedings of this council the most ridiculous and groundless charges were preferred against frederic, and though completely refuted by his deputies, yet as the proceedure was merely the semblance of a judicial trial, to sanction preconcerted malice and revenge by forms of legality, the council did not hesitate to declare him guilty, any proof of innocence to the contrary, it seems to have concentrated its ingenuity in devising new and unheard of methods to give terrific importance to the ventilation of its hate. an anathema was pronounced on the body and soul of the emperor, and on all his interests, friends and allies. while pronouncing these religious curses, the priests, like fiends administering at some infernal ceremonies, held in their hands lighted torches, and upon its conclusion suddenly extinguished them; and by the theatrical trick of uttering discordant shrieks and howls, seemed in the darkness of the cathedral to have converted the holy place into the lower regions, peopled with the arch-fiend and his agents. though these artistical elaborations were not without some effect, yet the vigor of the emperor's genius, the magnanimity which he constantly displayed, his vast popularity, and the triumph of his arms--which continued to his death--demonstrated to the intelligent that there was no real curse in the papal anathemas. conrad iv., son of frederic ii., became emperor of germany in . innocent iv., whose policy it was to profess any friendship, and violate any obligation that contributed to his interests, determined to complete on the son the vengeance he had commenced on the father. presumptuous as vindictive he declared that inasmuch as frederic ii. had been excommunicated, his son could not inherit the throne. on the ground of this ridiculous pretext, he pronounced him dispossessed of all his inheritance; laid on him an interdict; and persecuted him by all the means which his power and influence afforded. but notwithstanding a revengeful pope, whose malice through his machinery operated everywhere, yet, he had more than his equal to contend with. the courage and heroism of conrad defeated the papal army, kept the pope's allies in check, and was about to enter lombardy with the fairest prospects of success when his illegitimate brother, by administering poison to him, relieved the pope of a formidable adversary. conradin, son of conrad iv., the last of the noble house of hohenstaufen, was the heir to the throne, the pope refused to acknowledge his right to succession, because his father had been excommunicated. he declared also that conradin had forfeited his right of inheritance to the crown of naples and sicily, and undertook to bestow it on charles of anjou. but conradin entered italy and defeated the usurper; but while he was pursuing the flying enemy with too much recklessness, he was captured by the vanquished. the world expected that his youth and valor could not but win compassion even from the iron-hearted pope, but the intense hatred of the papal monarch to the noble house of which this intrepid lad was the last scion, would not permit him to allow an opportunity to escape of extinguishing it forever. conradin was therefore, though but sixteen years old, publicly executed as a criminal; but his heroism, and the circumstances under which he met death, crowned his memory with immortal honor, while it cast a deeper tinge of ignominy on the already blackened character of the pope. the usurpation of territory, and interference in political affairs, which are so strongly characteristic of the papal policy, originate from the constitutional principles of the roman see. in conformity with them pope boniface viii. proclaimed himself king of rome; and declared that the roman see was the source whence the germanic electors derived their rights. albert i. being chosen emperor by the electors in ; was summoned by the pope to appear before him and apologize for having accepted the crown without consulting his pleasure, and to expiate the guilt of his offence by the performance of such penance as should be prescribed. to enforce compliance with this injunction the pope formed an allegiance with the archbishop of mentz, a powerful military bishop, and a former friend of albert. to resist the belligerent pope albert effected an alliance with philip la belle, of france. making a sudden diversion into the electorate of mentz, albert obliged the bishop to form a league with him for five years. the pope then suggested peaceful negotiation rather than disastrous war. it was finally agreed between the two contracting parties that the pope should give to albert the possessions of his ally, and that albert should acknowledge that the western empire was a grant as a fief from the pope, that the electors derived their right from the roman see, and that he would defend the papal interests with his arms. the pope then proceeded, by virtue of an excommunication, to invalidate the title of louis la belle, of france, to his kingdom, and officially to transfer it to albert i. during the reign of henry vii., who became emperor of germany in , the tyranny and ambition of the pope were held in decent check, and the papal see was unusually quiet and respectable. the emperor, whom the pope hated, but whom he dared not anathematize, was finally removed by poison administered in the sacramental wine, by moltipulcian, a dominican monk. soon as this event occurred the pope's vengeance, which had been accumulating in fury for years, but which was too much overawed to utter a murmur, now burst forth with the most impetuous and indecent violence in anathemas on the soul, the corpse, the coffin, and the tomb of the dead emperor; but it is not supposed that they done any damage, except to the character and good sense of the roman see. louis iv., of bavaria, became emperor of germany in , to arrest the encroachments of the papal see on the rights of the sovereignty of the empire, the diet of rense framed a constitution, in , which provided that the choice of the electors of the union should be final in its decision, and independent of the pope of rome. these patriotic proceedings seemed to the pope to be interfering with his rights; and john xxi. accordingly prohibited the performance of divine worship in the empire, until the obnoxious constitution should be annulled. but louis soon repaired this calamity by the creation of pope nicholas v., who, having equal authority with pope john xxi., nullified all his acts. pope clement vii., who succeeded to the papal throne in , excommunicated louis, and by his intrigues caused five electors to declare in favor of charles of luxemburg. this violation of the celebrated constitution of induced three electors to assemble at lahstein, and declare the choice of charles null and void; and as louis had died, they elected edward of england, but he declining, they elected frederic the severe; he also declining, the crown was finally settled on gunter of schwarzburg. but gunter being removed by poison, the papal policy triumphed in the coronation of charles of luxemburg. charles iv., in , wishing to be crowned by the pope at rome, visited italy to negotiate for that favor; pope innocent vi., always inclined to make the vanity and ambition of his subjects administer to his aggrandizement, signified a disposition to accommodate the emperor, but on such disgraceful conditions that, by accepting them he subjected himself to the scorn and derision of the world. this self-degradation was much aggravated by the fact that many distinguished romans, oppressed by the papal administration, united in requesting charles to claim the city of rome as a portion of his empire. instead of improving this opportunity to extend the limits of his government, he renounced all rights, not only to the city of rome, but to the states of the church, to naples, sicily, sardinia, and corsica. he also consented to impose a tax on the empire for the benefit of the papal see, equal to one-tenth of the ecclesiastical revenues; and further added to his disgrace by taking an oath never to enter italy without the pope's sanction. for this base sycophancy he was assailed by princes and people with a storm of indignation. to allay the fury of this tempest he announced an intention of convening a council for the reformation of the clergy, and for making liberal concessions to the popular demands. but this attempt to calm the people aroused the indignation of the papal see. the pope exhorted the electors to depose him instantly. assailed on all sides, dangers thickening around him from all quarters, but dreading less the indignation of the empire than the anathema of the roman see, he yielded to the dictation of the pope and confirmed the clergy in all their privileges, sanctioned all their abuses, protected them in all their possessions, and made them entirely independent of the secular power. the papal power, at the period of frederic ii., seemed to tremble on the verge of inevitable destruction; but by a profound and unscrupulous policy, and a system of crafty intrigues, aided by a political machinery whose various parts ramified every portion of the empire, and acted in concert through all ages and dynasties, it had steadily carried its advancements through the blood of millions and the ruins of thrones, until, at the time of charles, it had regained its supremacy in the empire; and dictated treaties to the emperors, measures to the diets, and laws to the people. a power that could at its option excite or quell a popular outburst, create or destroy a dynasty, might be an object of terror to people and princes, but never an object of reverence. the dread it cast on the mind was always unpleasant, and in proportion as its power became oppressive and disadvantageous, opposition and resistance were inevitably excited. the love of independence, the native individualism of the germanic character, was always a mortal foe to papal despotism. it might be cowered into silence, but it still grew in vigor, became more impatient as the pope became more despotic, and bolder as it became more conscious of its numerical strength. this spirit, in , when sigismund became emperor of germany, displayed an energy prophetic of stirring events and important consequences. the spirit of germanic individualism led distinguished men of the nation to deny, with emphatic boldness, the pretensions of the pope; to denounce the profligacy of the clergy; and to demand in the body and head of the church a thorough reformation. prominent among the apostles of religious freedom, which rose into consequence at that time, was john huss, and his disciples. the success of these reformers excited and alarmed the pope. hating any semblance of a right to participate in his authority, or to assume any approach to an equality with him, he was strongly averse to the assembling of a deliberative council; but conscious that his divine attributes and prerogatives were not adequate to the existing emergency, he consented that the council of constance should be called, on condition that it should adopt the most energetic means for the extirpation of the heretics.. with the secret design of betraying the amiable reformer, john huss, he was invited to respond in person to a summons of the council. to quiet his apprehensions of danger, the emperor furnished him with a safe conduct, and the pope pledged his honor to protect him from harm. thus guarded by the honor of the state and the church, he was, notwithstanding, perfidiously betrayed, and condemned to be burnt alive. the perfidy of the infallible pope is justified by the saints and authorities of the catholic church, on the ground that no pledge, assurance, or oath, can rightfully protect a heretic from punishment. sigis-mund attended the horrid ceremonies; and being reminded by a by-stander that the course of the wind might bear an offensive efluvia to the position he occupied, answered: "the odor of a burning heretic can never be offensive to sigismund." the death of john huss was terribly revenged. the stake became the watchword of union. the hitherto mild and submissive reformers became desperate revengers. churches and convents were burnt; monks and priests slaughtered without mercy. the insurgents met and defeated the imperial forces. the strongest armies of the cross withered before their ferocity. for fifteen years they devastated the papal dominions, and shook the government with the violence of their retribution. seeing it impossible to restrain their rage, sigismund obliged the council of basle to negotiate with them for the adjustment of their difficulties. this politic measure so incensed pope eugenius iv., whose uncompromising vengeance longed for the extermination of every opponent to papal despotism, that he ordered his legates to dissolve the obnoxious assembly. but the laity had advanced in liberality and knowledge far beyond the possible attainment of a papal despot, and in defiance of his maledictions and intrigues, continued their useful session, and terminated, by peaceful concessions, the war with the hussites. the grand struggle between religious freedom and catholic despotism was visibly approaching when charles v., king of spain, in became emperor of germany. his design was to conquer the world, and his policy was to unite all parties in augmenting the national strength. to secure the favor of the pope, and the co-operation of his extensive and effective machinery, he declared himself the defender of the catholic faith. to conciliate the protestants he convened a diet at worms, at which, under a plausible show of toleration he allowed luther, in his presence, to defend the principles of the reformation. but his ambiguous policy becoming offensive to the roman see, he issued an edict against the protestants. a catholic from interest, he was more disposed to make the pope auxiliary to the success of his designs than to be governed by him. hence, when francis i. preferred claims to certain portions of the germanic empire, he leagued with the pope and accomplished the defeat of the king; but he was equally disposed to defend his interests against the pope. the papal monarch, always apprehensive of the political power of friend or foe, seeing that his confederacy with charles had vastly augmented the latter's preponderating power, and placed the papal interests at his disposal, formed against him a counter league with the italian states. this effort to retrieve the errors of his policy only aggravated his misfortune. the forces of the holy league were defeated by the arms of charles, rome taken by storm, the city plundered, the pope imprisoned, and four hundred thousand crowns of gold demanded for his ransom. when charles heard of the success of his arms, in evident mockery he dressed himself in mourning for the pope, ordered masses to be said in all the churches for his deliverance from prison, and in alleviation of his misfortune reduced the ransom to , crowns, the power of charles overawing the papal throne, it prudently refrained from venting in insulting anathemas the ebullitions of its wrath. pope clement vii., after the peace of cambray in , crowned charles as king of lombardy and rome. on this occasion the emperor dutifully kissed the feet of the papal monarch. the cause of this affection and harmony was shortly afterwards manifested in an intolerant edict against the protestants. this significant menace led the protestant princes to form the smalkalden league for the protection of protestantism. two years afterwards a holy league was formed by the catholic princes for the protection of catholicism. after some abortive attempts at negotiation, the protestant league raised the standard of war. the emperor by strategetic movements, and by creating jealousy and divisions among the protestant confederates, obtained important advantages over their arms, and finally succeeded in dissolving the league. but maurice of saxony had secretly formed another league, which was joined by henry ii., king of france. while charles was at innspruck, attending the council of trent, maurice suddenly appeared at the head of an army, and the emperor barely escaped amid the darkness of a stormy night from being captured. the council was consequently dissolved, and the protestants dictated the terms of peace at passau; which the emperor ratified at augsburg. by the terms of this treaty it was agreed that no one should be attacked on account of his religious belief; that no one should be molested in the enjoyment of his property or mode of worship; that religious disputes should be adjusted by pacific means; that persons for religious reasons should be allowed to change their residences; that bishops on becoming protestants should forfeit their office and salary; and that every protestant should enjoy his faith until a religious compromise should be established! charles, broken down in health and constitution, enfeebled in mind, and conceiving that he was haunted by some invisible power which blasted all his prospects, abdicated the throne and retired to a monastery, where he passed the remainder of his life in making wooden clocks, and in performing his funeral ceremonies. ferdinand ii., king of spain, succeeded to the crown of germany in . he was by nature of a morose and revengeful disposition, and the bigotry and prejudice which had been instilled into his mind by catholic preceptors made him an accomplished instrument in the hands of the church, in executing its exterminating vengeance on the heretics. during the course of his tutelage he made a pilgrimage to rome, where an oath was administered to him by the pope, that if he should ever become emperor he would exterminate heresy in his dominions. when he ascended the throne germany was divided into two factions. the one was known as the "catholic league," and the other as the "evangelical union." the catholic league was headed by maximilian, elector of bavaria, and comprised the bishops and princes attached to the house of austria. the evangelical union was headed by the duke of wittenberg, the elector of saxony and brandenburg, and composed of lutheran and calvinistic princes and knights. a number of the princes of bavaria assembled at prague, and declaring that they would not submit to maximilian, chose for their king frederic, elector of the palatina, a member of the evangelical union. this revolt benefited the evangelical union by a powerful accession. a desperate and bloody struggle was imminent between these two parties. notwithstanding the protestant influence in bavaria, ferdinand succeeded in having himself elected king. after this event he tore up in a violent rage the charter which rudolph ii. had granted the bohemians, because it allowed them to build churches and school-houses. he then showed his remembrance of his popish oath by persecuting the protestants, banishing their preachers, and depopulating the kingdom by an intolerance which caused emigrations of whole sections from his dominions. the victory of his troops near prague enabling him to dictate a treaty which crushed the protestant cause, and dissolved the evangelical union, he proceeded to restore the ecclesiastical institutions which had been abolished by the protestants, to exclude calvinists from the benefits of the religious peace of augsburg, and to require protestants living under catholic princes to believe in catholicism. besides these decrees, enforced by the military power, the conquest of the palatinate of frederic, the bestowal of that dignity on maximilian, the emperor's favorite, giving the catholics the ascendency in the electoral college, the army of tilly in lower saxony, where no existing enemy made it excusable, depriving the protestants of their churches, committing wanton violence on the lutherans, and compelling thousands to abandon their homes, property and country, were such gross violations of treaties, and such strong incentives to resistance, that the protestant princes were impelled to unite in a league with the king of denmark and the duke of holstein, determining to exhaust every resource in the defence of religious liberty. after some successes the confederated forces were defeated, and the protestants lost all that they had acquired since the peace of augsburg. at this dark hour in the fortunes of the league, gustavus adolphus, with an army of thirty thousand veterans, espoused its cause. his heroism, strategetic skill, and indomitable valor soon annihilated tilly's army, reduced the imperial allies to extreme distress, conquered lower saxony and bavaria, and delivered the protestants from their perilous situation. tilly having died, wallenstein assumed command. having raised an immense and formidable army, the new general was enabled to attack adolphus with such overwhelming force that he compelled him to retire from bavaria. in , at lutzen, the two powerful armies came to a general and decisive engagement; the genius of adolphus crowned his arms with victory, but his intrepidity cost him his life. through a wise policy the swedes still continued a triumphant career, victoriously marching through the empire with incredible rapidity, and finally, after the battle of prague, dictating the peace of westphalia. by the terms of the peace of westphalia calvinists acquired the same rights with lutherans; princes were bound not to persecute subjects on account of religious differences; all acquisitions of protestants since the peace of augsburg were confirmed; entire equality of sect, liberty of conscience, and the exercise of all modes of religion were guaranteed, and the independence of switzerland and of the netherlands acknowledged. pope innocent x. strenuously protested against this peace, complaining in bitter terms of the deep injury it inflicted on the church. though the consequences of the treaty have been of the most benignant nature to europe, still the papal see has, through all periods maintained, with unabated animosity, its original opposition to the invaluable treaty. the papal intrigues, so prolific of disastrous wars, were no less pernicious to austria than they had been to other powers. upon the death of duke frederic, its ruler, frederic ii., of germany, declared the duchy a vacant fief of his empire, and appointed over it a governor. pope innocent v. persuaded margaret, the sister of the deceased duke, and gertrude, his neice, to claim the duchy as their inheritance. the margrave hermann, by the aid of the pope and his machinery, was enabled to command a strong party in support of the project. after a war of thirty-six years the dispute was settled by the interference of the emperor rodolph, who gave it to his two sons, albert and ro-dolph. on the death of maria theresa, joseph, her son, succeeded to the throne of austria. maria theresa was a very devout and superstitious princess, a circumstance which enabled the sacerdotal fraternity to gain and betray her confidence. but in making her an object of their craft they made her son their enemy. their duplicity having excited in the mind of joseph a strong aversion to the intermeddling and intriguing profession, he no sooner ascended the throne than he manifested a disposition to adopt a policy more in accordance with the enlightenment of the age than was agreeable to the pope and the clergy. the world with pleasure, but the church with consternation, beheld him enlarging the liberty of the press, tolerating the protestants, treating the jews with moderation, annulling ecclesiastical sinecures, and abolishing such monasteries and nunneries as were not useful as schools or hospitals. uneasy at these useful reforms, yet not daring to mutter his vatican thunder, and finding his machinery unable to stop their progress, pope pius iv. sought a personal interview with the liberal minded emperor, to dissuade him from the further prosecution of his beneficent intentions. but notwithstanding the earnest remonstrances of the vicar of christ, the emperor still continued to reduce the number of the monasteries, and to effect reforms in the churches, and in the various departments of the government. this wise and sagacious policy, which relieved the people of the oppression of spiritual despotism, and renewed the vigor of national energy, was not appreciated by the masses through the ignorance and superstition of the age. the emperor not only had to contend with opposition from those for whose moral advancement he was laboring, but also with the disguised hostility of the pope, and the subtle operation of his treacherous machinery. but still, amid wars, seditions and rebellions, he pursued his magnanimous policy; and if he did not effect all the reforms in the church, and in his government, that he had contemplated, it was more through the intrigues of the pope than through any want of disposition, skill and energy on his part. the various orders of knights, whose avocation it was to enforce conformity to the demands of catholicism by the vengeance of the sword, was an important part of the papal machinery. all who yielded not to this argument were threatened with extermination; all who did, became the slaves of spiritual despotism. under pretext of protecting poland from the ravages of prussian heathen, the teutonic knights, in , won from conrad of masovia a small strip of land on the vistula. for fifty-three years they carried on a war against the persian tribes, and finally obliged them to embrace catholicism. this war, suggested by papal craft, continued by incredible barbarity, culminated in the grossest perfidy. in their protection of poland they inflicted deeper injuries on her than the savages of prussia had ever contemplated, or in fact had the ability to inflict. they subjugated the baltic seaboard, from the oder to the gulf of finland, and wrung from her her maritime commerce, and her northern line of defence. poland and prussia having both been plundered and oppressed by the knights, united in a bond of union against their common enemy, and a ferocious war was inaugurated, during which the knights lost a great portion of their territory, and finally their power was broken. in the various vicissitudes of the succeeding fifty years the knights became abolished in prussia, and their possessions converted into a hereditary duchy, under the male line of prince albert, which, under francis iii. became the kingdom of prussia. the papal intrigues with regard to the netherlands, were fruitful of sanguinary and deplorable consequences. under the reign of charles v. one hundred thousand protestants fell a sacrifice to the papal intolerance. philip, his son and successor, narrow in his views, irritable in his temper, and implacable in his hate, transcended even charles in the inhumanity of his measures towards his protestant subjects. cardinal granvella having introduced into the netherlands the inquisition, for the extirpation of religious freedom, the prince of orange, in conjunction with other distinguished personages, remonstrated against the measure. this remonstrance was regarded by the government as an act of treason. the haughtiness of the cardinal, and the severe measures he introduced to intimidate the people, produced great disorder and alarm. the nobles conspired to defend their rights; the protestants boldly celebrated their religious ceremonies, and the people fled in crowds to england and saxony. in spite of intolerant edicts and excruciating torture, a bold spirit of resistance was excited in the provinces. philip recalled cardinal granvella, but appointed in his place alva, a more cruel and implacable tyrant. proud, fierce and imperious, this man knew of nothing but to command in a despotic tone, and expect his subjects to tremble and obey. sixty years of warfare always successful, had familiarized him to deeds of blood, without humbling him by the salutary lessons of misfortune. death, the usual penalty of disobedience to his commands, gave his mandate a terrific importance. as soon as he had assumed the direction of the netherland provinces, he established a council of blood by means of, which he condemned all whom he suspected of heresy, or whose fortunes excited a prospect of increasing his own, the noblest of the nation fell under the axe of his executioner; and as avarice had always been a prominent trait of his character, he now illustrated the obduracy with which it is capable of debasing humanity, by confiscating the property, not only of the present but of the absent; not only of the living but of the dead. having cited the prince of orange to appear before his council, and that prince having refused on the ground of his exemption by privilege, law and usage, he declared him dispossessed of all property, and seizing on his son, sent him to spain as a hostage. the prince, heretofore a liberal-minded catholic, now declared himself a protestant, and drew his sword in favor of religious freedom. by a perseverance which no difficulties could prostrate, a sagacity which no subterfuge could deceive, a heroism which no danger could appall, and a magnanimity which commanded the admiration of the world, he struggled through discouragement, vexation and defeat until he had laid a solid foundation for the freedom of the provinces, by reconstructing them in a judicious confederacy, under the name of the united provinces of the netherlands, and inducing them to renounce allegiance to spain. philip hence declared the prince an outlaw, and offered a reward of two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for either his apprehension or his assassination. in the noble prince was shot dead by balthazar gerard, who confessed that he had been instigated to the deed by a franciscan monk and a jesuist priest. but though the founder of the republic fell a victim to romish treachery, its defence was continued with insuperable skill and valor. army after army sent against the republic was annihilated by the indomitable bravery of its troops, until its soil became the cemetery of the military strength of spain. its tolerance gave it population; its freedom, energy; its maritime contests, a knowledge of navigation; and its enterprise, commerce trade and prosperity. after a war of thirty years, replete with heroism and magnanimity, it wrung from spain, in the westphalia treaty, a full recognition of independence. chapter xv. papal political intrigues in portugal and spain. in portugal, under the reign of alphonso i--sancho ii-- dionysus--john ii--emanuel--john iii--sebastian--philip ii-- joseph i--maria francesca isabella--john vi--pedro vi--and dona maria. in spain, under the reign of reccarred i--charles v--philip ii--philip iii--charles ii--charles iii. charles iv.--and ferdinand vii alphonso, in , in the cause of the church and of national independence, subjugated the moors of portugal. the victor was saluted on the field by his army as king of the conquered dominion; the cortes lamego invested him with regal authority; and pope alexander iii. acknowledged his legitimacy, the independence of the nation, and the laws and constitution which were prescribed. by a provision of the constitution, which probably sprung from the religious tolerance of the moorish regime, the king was prohibited under forfeiture of the crown, from becoming tributary to any foreign power. but notwithstanding this proud interdiction, alphonso in the course of severe conflicts which afterwards took place between him and the kings of castile and leon, made his kingdom, in violation of his own constitution, a fief of rome, in order to secure the papal support. in consequence of this concession to papal supremacy, sancho ii., in , became involved in a dispute with the clergy; and upon appealing to pope innocent iv., had the misfortune to lose his crown. alphonso iii. succeeded to the regal dignity. jealous of the rights of sovereignty, and determined to transmit them unimpaired to his successor, his reign was, in consequence, a perpetual contest with the intrigues of the clergy. inflexibly firm and resolute, he defeated their artful attempts to extend their landed estates; to obtain exemption from taxation; to acquire for their persons and possessions an independence of secular jurisdiction; and to subject the temporal to the spiritual authority by an insidious and gradual encroachment on the rights of the crown. dionysus, who succeeded alphonso iii., opposed with prudence and firmness the papal intrigues, which had disturbed the peace of the kingdom from its foundation. in order to moderate the selfishness and tyranny of the first and second estates, composed of the clergy and nobility, he erected the cities into a third estate, of equal legislative authority. by elevating the dignity of the commonality, and taking advantage of the commercial resources which the geography of the country afforded, he awakened in the nation a spirit of indomitable enterprise which laid the foundation of its subsequent greatness. this liberal and enlightened policy cost him the friendship of the papal court, but he disarmed its malice by an admirable course of prudence and courtesy. john ii. became king of portugal in . during his administration ferdinand and isabella, of spain, governed by the spirit of catholic intolerance, instituted a rigorous prosecution against the jews, by which thousands of them were deprived of their fortunes, and driven into exile. the jews had arisen in spain into considerable political influence; they had become farmers of the revenue; and their characteristic avarice had rendered them obnoxious to the people. instead of rectifying the evil by adequate measures, the crown and people, influenced by the church, were made instrumental in gratifying its hatred against the hebrew race, by a persecution as unjust as it was impolitic. john ii., with more liberal views of government, improved the injudicious measures of spain, to the advantage of his own kingdom. discarding the intolerance of his religion, he invited the persecuted jews to his dominion; and by affording them a peaceful asylum, added largely to the wealth, population, prosperity and importance of the nation. emanuel, son of john ii., succeeded to the throne of portugal in . he married elenora, sister of charles v., of germany. he had imbibed the beneficent toleration of his sire, which had been so advantageous to the nation, but which was too antagonistical to the spirit of catholicism, to command its support. the craft of priestly policy might conceal its hostility to tolerance from public perception, but machinations for its subversion would be no less incessantly at work. in the pious system of sacerdotal intrigue the amiable qualities of human nature are the most available, as they are the most insidious, and least liable to be suspected. devoid of the finer sentiments of honor, the priests, in their capacity of spiritual advisers, scruple not to abuse the privileges accorded them, in making the influence which a female may exercise over a husband, lover or parent, subservient to their own purposes. this species of ecclesiastical intrigue is illustrated in the conduct of queen elenora. having acquired a controlling ascendancy over the king's mind, she was induced by her spiritual advisers to extort from him a promise that he would require the jews to embrace christianity under pain of being reduced to slavery for life. by whatever considerations, emanuel was led to promulgate a decree so injurious to the national welfare, and so inconsistent with the tolerant spirit he had manifested, yet he had the humanity or sagacity to procrastinate its execution for twenty years, and thus to ameliorate the horrors with which it was fraught; and to place the development of the catastrophe beyond the period of his administration. john iii., son of emanuel, was crowned king of portugal in . a pliant tool in the hand of papal intrigue, he gave a fatal blow to the tolerance and prosperity of his kingdom. the implacable hatred of the church towards the jews, hoarded for so many years, now relieved of all restraint, exhibited its fiendish barbarism in deeds of exterminating cruelty. to escape the persecution to which they were exposed, the jews practised the externals of catholicism, while they secretly observed their ancient rites. the vigilance of the papal machinery, like a monster with a thousand eyes, penetrating all secrets, soon detected this evasion. in order to discover the persons who thus consulted self-preservation and the dictates of consciences, the inquisition was introduced, and a crusade of blood and devastation preached against the whole hebrew race. their property was confiscated; their children were torn from them and placed under catholic control; and they themselves reduced to slavery, or subjected to the tortures of the inquisition. while john iii., during his reign, was the wretched instrument of catholicism for the accomplishment of its atrocious designs, his grandson, sebastian, who in , at the age of three years succeeded to the throne, was educated, by the express injunction of his father's will, by the jesuists, and consequently was moulded to the same purposes, and reduced to the same flexible subserviency. inclined to extravagance by temper and disposition, and educated by bigotry and craft, his ambition became singularly whimsical; his devotion to the pope absolute; and his thirst indomitable and unquenchable to engage in some enterprise in which he might shed the blood of infidels and heretics. when he arrived at majority, in order to express his devotion to the pope, he assumed the title of "most obedient king." at the age of twenty years his restless fanaticism led him to undertake an expedition against the unoffending infidels of tangiers; and suddenly falling on the astonished inhabitants, gained an easy victory over them. the success of his forces against these defenceless mountaineers led him to imagine that his arms were invincible. muley mohammed having conspired against his uncle muley moloch, the governor of morocco, sebastian conceived that by aiding the conspirators with his personal valor and military forces, he might acquire some distinction for his name, and some advantages for the church. the dictates of prudence and sound policy, the protestations of his ablest counsellors, and the munificent offer of muley moloch to purchase his neutrality by the cession of five fortified places on the coast of africa, were feeble remonstrances to a mind like that of sebastian's, in which fanaticism had supplanted principle, and despotism humanity. to popularize the hazardous undertaking, the papal machinery began to work industriously in its favor. collecting an army of twenty-one thousand three hundred men, comprised of portuguese, germans, spaniards, frenchmen and italians, and a fleet of one hundred vessels, he sailed for africa, and landed with safety at the port of alzira. although the number and skilful disposition of the moorish troops left little doubt of their triumph; although sebastian's provisions were nearly exhausted; although muley moloch, more concerned for the safety of the misguided fanatic than from any apprehension of the success of his arms, again attempted to negotiate a peace; although some of the portuguese commanders advised a retreat, and all of those of the conspirators a retreat to the coast, yet so confident was sebastian of the interposition of divine providence in aiding him to butcher the infidels, that he even refused to defer the engagement until the afternoon, in order that he might have the darkness of the night to cover a retreat, should such a measure become inevitable. sebastian fought with distinguished bravery, yet his desperate fanaticism was equalled, if not surpassed, by the heroic courage of those who had been tortured, outraged, and exiled by his intolerance. the martial semicircle of the moors enclosed his forces in a volume of destructive flame, and their disciplined valor and skilful manoeuvres completely annihilated them. the bodies of the vanquished that strewed the battlefield were, in general, too horribly disfigured with wounds to admit of their persons being identified; and sebastian's corpse being among the number, his actual death became doubtful. this circumstance, twenty years afterwards furnished the papal machinery with a convenient opportunity for manufacturing a bogus sebastian. but although joseph taxera, a dominican monk, traversed europe to enlist the imperial courts in its favor, yet the numerous spurious sebastians that had sprung up, and the eagerness of several crowned heads to seize the kingdom, defeated the object of his mission. the controversy was finally settled by the battle of alancatura, which, crowning with victory the arms of philip ii., of spain, one of the claimants, subjugated portugal to the dominion of spain. the religious frenzy and whimsical ambition of sebastian, the result of his catholic education, cost portugal the flower of her nobility, the strength of her army, and her national independence; overloaded her with debt, and degraded her under the dominion of a government distracted by unsuccessful wars, and governed by a rapacious and unprincipled administration. when john iii., in , introduced the jesuists into his kingdom, the doom of portugal was sealed. from that period, under the intolerant measures of his administration, its power began rapidly to decline, until its disastrous connection with spain secured its downfall. guinea, brazil, the molluccas, and all the fairest dominions of portugal were wrung from her grasp. spain oppressed her with rapacious tyranny; england and the jesuists monopolized her trade, and the calamities which had visited her in such frightful succession exhausted her resources. the capacity of the nation for greatness, notwithstanding the degradation into which she had sunk, still animated the patriotic portuguese with the hopes of a national redemption. in a powerful conspiracy was formed against the spanish regime, and in the political independence of portugal was achieved, and joseph i. elevated to the throne. duke pombal, an able statesman, and the prime minister of the government, regarding the jesuists as the origin of the weakness and disgraces of the government, and believing that their secrecy, dissimulation and treachery, absolved him from any obligation he might assume with regard to them, inconsistent with the public good, became a member of their order that he might acquire a correct knowledge of their principles and mode of operation, and be qualified to counteract their pernicious machinations. with profound dissimulation, he so completely deceived them that they admitted him to an intimate knowledge of all their secrets, plans and designs. after having fully obtained his object he made a public exposition of their secrets. he disclosed the dangerous principles of their constitution, their political objects, the oaths by which they were bound, the baseness of their intrigues, their false professions, their horrible deeds, and their disgraceful rapacity and profligacy. by the exposure which he was enabled to make he succeeded in having them removed from the important position of confessors to the king, and instructors of youth in colleges. he also induced joseph to expel them from the missions of paraguay; to abridge the power of the bishops; and to prohibit the celebration of the "auto-da-fe" of the inquisition. the jesuists not being able successfully to arrest the progress of reform determined to assassinate the king; but failing in this attempt, the whole order fell under the ban of the kingdom, and were officially declared a political organization under the mask of religion, and its members expelled from the kingdom as enemies of the public peace, and traitors to the government. pope clement xiii., enraged at this summary destruction of the most efficient department of his machinery, endeavored to intimidate the reformers by threats of excommunication, and commissioned a legate to adopt any means to arrest proceedings against the jesuists. but his legate was promptly escorted out of the kingdom; and as the conduct of the holy father in protecting and defending an organization of traitors and assassins, implicated him in the guilt of an accessory, all connection with the see of rome was declared dissolved until the imputation should be removed by the abolishment of the jesuistical order. the vanity of pope clement could not permit him to suffer such a mortification, and the decree of dissolution was rigorously enforced; but his successor, at the hazard of disproving the papal infallibility, complying with the demands of portugal, amicable relations were re-established. on the death of joseph i., in , maria francesca isabella, his eldest daughter, succeeded to the royal dignity. the superstitious temperament of this queen, and her natural infirmity, which terminated in confirmed mental alienation, disqualified her for the administration of the governmental powers on sound principles of public policy, and surrendered her to the selfish control of a corrupt priesthood and ambitious nobility. by the intrigues of these two classes, which seldom scruple to sacrifice the popular interest to their personal advantage, pombal was deprived of his useful political influence, most of his regulations were abolished, and portugal, from the dawn of a magnificent future, sunk into the obscurity and lethargy of her former condition. in john vi., who had been regent during the imbecility of the queen, from to her death, ascended the throne. the spirit of french republicanism exerted a liberalizing influence over europe generally, and had apparently a similar effect on the pope and his machinery. those who did not understand the profoundity of sacerdotal craft might have been stupefied with astonishment to see a pope, while professing to be infallible, discarding principles and policies which had been approved by the practice, and defended by the anathemas of his predecessors. he not only sanctioned the prohibition of portugal forbidding jesuists from entering the kingdom, and consented to the abolition of the inquisition, but even requested that all persecution against the jews should cease, and that they should be admitted to greater rights and privileges. the popular current had set in too strongly in favor of change in the constitution and administration of the government for papal sagacity to oppose, and unobstructed by the sacerdotal machinery, it became daily augmented in volume and impetuosity. the liberal feeling of the nation, allowed spontaneously to flow, culminated in in establishing, without violence or bloodshed, a provisional government and a new cortes. tolerance on the lips of a catholic priest is treason to rome; and, though this circumstance might have cautioned prudence against investing any of them with power, yet as they had warmly espoused the liberal cause, they were elected by the people as members to the cortes, with the exception of a few lawyers and governmental officers. at the assemblage of the cortes, under the presidency of the archbishop of braga, the revolutionary measures were sanctioned, the inquisition forever interdicted, and a constitution framed which secured freedom of person and property, the liberty of the press, and legal equality. the king approved the provisions of this constitution, and swore to support it. but under this prosperous appearance of republican progress, the demon of religious intolerance was secretly at work; availing itself of every means to arrest the popular current. the portentous mutterings of an approaching storm were frequently heard; and it was not, therefore, a matter of surprise to the friends of freedom, that in , a regency was established at valladolid, under the bishop of lisbon, with the avowed object of subverting the constitution, and inviting the people to rally under the standard of monarchy; nor that this regency was supported by the queen, don miguel, the clergy and the nobility. the machinations of the papal machinery had so successfully extinguished the popular enthusiasm which had won such important concessions to natural right, that no sooner was the standard of royalty raised, than an enormous reduction took place in the ranks of the liberal party. so many priests, noblemen, soldiers and people espoused the royal cause, that john vi. found no difficulty in declaring the constitution of , which he had sworn to support, null and void, and to protect his perjury and his treason to the freedom of the people, by disarming the military and the national guards. the absolutists then proceeded to annul all the concessions that had been made, in accommodation to the popular feeling; they restored the church confiscated property, established a censorship over the press, imprisoned or banished the liberal members of the cortes, and organized a junta for the purpose of framing a monarchial constitution. but don migual, aspiring to become absolute king, could not submit to the restriction of a constitution; and, being commander-in-chief, and exercising the governmental powers, excited an insurrection against the lisbon cortes, and arbitrarily proceeded to banish all liberals, constitutionalists, freemasons, and members of other secret societies. that he might successfully remove every obstacle that imperiled his ultimate designs, he forbade all appeals to the king. but the acts which his ambition dictated were too reprehensible not to acquire for his administration a dangerous and prejudicial notoriety. in spite of all precaution the rumor of his tyranny penetrated the royal palace, and don miguel was summoned into the presence of the king to explain the reasons for his arbitrary conduct. candidly acknowledging or artfully assuming that he had been the innocent victim of craft and misrepresentation, he succeeded in obtaining the king's pardon. in john vi. died, and isabella becoming regent, administered the government until pedro iv. of brazil, the brother of the deceased king, could make it convenient to visit portugal, and assume the reigns of government. after having done so he established a constitution, providing two legislative chambers, and then abdicated in favor of his eldest daughter, dona maria da gloria. don miguel, his brother, the chamberlains, and the magistrates swore to support the constitution. but the first, in violation of his oath of allegiance, and of his fraternal obligations, entered into a conspiracy for its overthrow. with this object in view he organized an apostolic party, and abusing the power and confidence with which he was honored, secretly filled the army, navy, and civil offices with his adherents. having matured his plans he caused an insurrection to break out against the queen, in order to enable him to seize the royal authority under pretense of restoring public tranquillity. england, however, interfering, the revolution was checked, and the project of usurpation frustrated. but the treasonable plot was skilfully and comprehensively laid, and the zealous support which it derived from the papal machinery soon rendered it popular with the masses. as if enamored of slavery and despotism, the people began to crowd into the ranks of the apostolic party, to second its declaration in favor of don miguel as king, to unite in its shouts of "long live the absolute king," "down with the constitutions," and to denounce, abuse and assault those who refused to echo its suicidal acclamations. a few military garrisons which still withstood the popular frenzy, and adhered to the cause of constitutional government, raised the standard of revolt; and being joined by other troops, an army was organized which marched against lisbon. it was met by the apostolic army, which greatly outnumbered it; and being defeated, the liberal junta was dissolved and don miguel proclaimed absolute king. in don miguel was defeated by don pedro iv., and the constitution of was re-established by the cortes. papal political intrigues in spain we will conclude our history of papal political intrigues, by a cursory glance at a few of its instances with regard to the government of spain. catholicism was introduced into spain in , under the reign of reccared i.; and from that period the governmental affairs were controlled by the political intrigues of the clergy, until , when the kingdom became a province of the caliph of bagdad. the moorish government adopted a more liberal policy than was consistent with the spirit of catholicism. it tolerated the free exercise of all religions. it permitted the subjugated to retain their laws and magistrates. agriculture, commerce, arts and science flourished under its auspices. it established libraries and universities; and, from the hand of its civilization europe has received the knowledge of arithmetical characters, of gunpowder, and of the art of manufacturing rags into paper. but the infidels who conferred these advantages could not conciliate the proud spirit of the spaniard to subjugation under foreign rule, nor the pope to the loss of revenues derivable from an opulent kingdom. a national struggle for indivisibility of empire, and primogenitureship in succession was consequently inaugurated; and a succession of conquests, from to , ultimated in the reduction of the moors under castellian supremacy. with the achievement of nationality, and the discovery of south america, spain began to rank with the first powers of europe. but her decline was as rapid as her elevation. besides the conflicting laws and customs which prevented national unity, and the political tyranny which oppressed the masses, a rigorous persecution was inaugurated against the moors and jews, compelling such as refused to be baptized to leave the kingdom. in charles v. became king of spain, and subsequently, also emperor of germany. after suppressing an insurrection of his spanish subjects, who demanded a liberal constitution, and annihilating the last vestige of civil liberty by separating the deliberative estates, he established over the kingdom a military, religious, and political despotism. so oppressive was his administration, and so reckless were his expenditures, that although mexico, peru, and chili poured a continual stream of wealth into the public treasury, yet excessive taxes had to be imposed, and enormous loans negotiated to satisfy the demands of the rapacious monarch. in philip ii. ascended the throne of spain. the catholic education of this prince fitted him better for a cloister than a throne. his rapacity empoverished the nation, and his religious intolerance perpetually convulsed it with sedition and war. his devoutest wish was to extirpate heretics, and his most pleasing sight was an auto-da-fe, in which he could behold his subjects expiring in the flames. like sigismund, the smell of burning heretics was never offensive to his nostrils. his inhuman and impolitic course having led his minister to intimate that he was depopulating his kingdom by his frequent massacres, he replied: "better be without subjects than to reign over heretics." as cowardly as he was blood-thirsty, it was his custom when his army was engaged in battle, to retire to a safe retreat and pray for its success; and whenever a victory was achieved to assume the head of the command, as if the triumph was the result of his valor and military skill. although his catholicism had transformed him into merely mechanical part of the papal machinery, without feeling or reason, yet when his truce with france was broken by the interference of pope paul iv., and his right to the kingdom of naples was declared forfeited, he awoke from his lethargic slumbers, and commissioned the bloody alva to proceed with an army to rome and chastise the holy father for his insulting political intrigues. the pope alarmed, and, perhaps surprised at the belligerent attitude of a king once so remarkably obedient, thought it better to consult prudence than the divine prerogatives of his office, and to avert the impending chastisement by subscribing to articles of peace. in philip iii. became invested with the royal dignity. by nature a tyrant, by temper a bigot, without any administrative capacity, and educated in superstition and intolerance, he seems to have been born for the the disgrace and destruction of the throne he inherited. in the most brilliant period of spanish history her religious despotism was prophetic of her premature decay, and each succeeding reign verifying the prophecy, she now tottered on the verge of ruin. favorites were allowed to waste the national revenues, england and holland destroyed the spanish commerce, frequent insurrections destroyed the public peace; eight hundred thousand jews, and two million moors were, during this and the preceding administration driven from the country; and to complete the national degradation spain had to submit to the supremacy of england. in charles ii. succeeded to the regal authority. at his death, which occurred in , he made philip of anjou, grandson of his sister, consort of louis xiv., the sole heir of his dominion, in order to prevent the division of the empire, which had been resolved upon by france, england and holland. this will led to the war of the spanish succession, notwithstanding which the bourbon, philip v., maintained himself on the spanish throne. in charles iii. succeeded to the throne of the spanish monarchy. the decaying embers of liberalism which had began to scintillate amid the gloom of despotism, now shone forth with renewed brilliancy. genius and intelligence, which alone are capable of grappling with the astute principles of government, and of developing the latent greatness of a people, were fortunately exhibited in the favorite publicists and statesmen of the monarch. profound and elevated views of political economy began to characterize the administration; and the true principles of commerce, the national importance of agriculture, arts and manufacture, and the best means for their development, became more generally understood by the government and the people. with count florida blanca, a man of extraordinary ability and activity, as ambassador at rome, holding the pope in check; with aranda, a man of penetrating genius, occupying the most influential position of the state; with olavides enjoying the confidence of the monarch, and elaborating laws for public improvement; and with campomanes, a scholar of varied and profound erudition, as fiscal giant of the royal council of castile, defending the enlightened policy of the government against the attacks of bishops; equalizing taxation; and reducing the number of mendicants, the nation could not but increase in splendor and prosperity, notwithstanding it had became involved in a formidable war which raged between france and england. by the co-operation of these patriotic statesmen, whose lofty spirit scowled on despotism and religious bigotry, a pragmatic sanction was obtained from the government which restricted the inquisition, banished the jesuists from the spanish dominions, and confiscated their property. but rome and her priests could not forgive these benefactors of the nation, although their liberal policy had improved every department of government, and had added, amid the disasters of war, wealth to the treasury, and a million men to the population. florida blanca was disgraced, imprisoned, and finally banished to his estates. campomanes was removed from office, and disgraced. aranda, who so greatly contributed to public security, good order, and the abolition of abuses, after passing through several trying vicissitudes, was banished to arragon. and olavides, in the midst of his beneficent and patriotic labors was arrested for heresy, and imprisoned in a monastic dungeon. for the better protection, perhaps, of the monarchy from aggressions from without, and from insubordination from within, the pope, at the request of charles iii., declared the spanish monarchy to be under the supervision of the immaculate conception. st. james, the former protecting genius of spain, was formally deposed from office, and the virgin mary duly invested with his authority and jurisdiction. the truth of the immaculate conception was demonstrated beyond prudent dispute by the oaths of the emperor and the estates; and similar oaths were made the indispensable condition of all who should henceforth receive a university degree, or become a member of any corporation or association. as reverence for the clergy had become the substance of the catholic religion, so now invocations to the virgin mary became the principal act of devotion. in charles iv. was invested with the imperial dignity. in the troops of bonaparte having entered his dominions, he welcomed them as allies, and shortly afterwards resigned the crown in favor of his son, ferdinand vii. a month had not elapsed before he secretly revoked his resignation, and finally ceded his right to the crown to napoleon, who placed joseph bonaparte on the throne. although the ministers of ferdinand vii., and the greater part of the educated classes of spaniards, acknowledged without hesitation the authority of joseph, yet the monks and priests, whose principles and interests are identified with despotism, in conjunction with the absolutists, and supported by england, found sufficient available material in the change of dynasty, in the arrogance of the french, and in the national hostility to foreign domination, to excite a general insurrection against the french regime, and in favor of ferdinand vii. as king. a junta was established at seville which proclaimed war against france, and announced an alliance between england and spain. a desperate struggle was now inaugurated, which, through six bloody campaigns, raged from to ; during which every important city was successively taken and lost, and every province was desolated and drenched in blood. armies after armies, on both sides, were created and destroyed with melancholy rapidity. the papal machinery held the people in such absolute control that, though the french gained victory after victory, abolishing as they triumphed the feudal privileges, the inquisition, the monkish order, and endeavored by the most liberal concessions to conciliate the popular prejudices, yet they retained no place which they did not garrison. their ranks were constantly thinned by the secret dagger, their communications cut off by guerillas, and their wounded murdered in cold blood. insurgent bands everywhere carried on the bloodiest struggles, and women took a fiendish delight in torturing and assassinating the captives of war. a length the dreadful tragedy was closed, by the victory of the english at toulouse. peace being restored to the nation the cortes assembled, and shortly afterwards passed a resolution, declaring that before ferdinand should be acknowledged as king, he should be required to swear to support the constitution which had been drawn up by the cortes of , and which had been acknowledged by the allies of spain. when interrogated as to his disposition of complying with the demands of the cortes, he replied in a tone of insolent indifference: "i have not thought about it." to fortify the absolute power he intended to usurp he professed to abhor despotism, and solemnly pledged his honor to grant the people a new constitution, founded on liberal principles, and which would afford ample protection to the rights of person and property, and to the freedom of the press. but the motives which induced him to make these promises did not urge him to fulfil them. while he nullified the old constitution, he did not restrict his authority by a new one; but in the exercise of absolute power arrested the officers who served under joseph bonaparte, and banished them with their wives and children; abolished freemasonry; restored the jesuists; re-established the inquisition; put liberals to the rack; executed all who opposed the domineering pretensions of the priests; imprisoned those who ventured to remonstrate against his measures; incarcerated in monastic dungeons the members of the cortes; and domineered with absolute despotism over the lives and fortunes of his subjects. these severe proceedings, intended to intimidate insurgents, produced disloyalty, confusion and anarchy. the army became dissatisfied; the people insubordinate; the country infested with plundering and murdering guerillas; and, encouraged by this turbulent state of affairs, four battalions, in , under riago, declared for the constitution of . the progress of this revolution was strenuously opposed by the allied forces of the monks, the priests, and the absolutists. the bishop of cienfuegos defeated it at cadiz. but the people inhaling the patriotic enthusiasm, arose in masses in its favor, and even the apostolics deserted their commanders. ferdinand deprived of troops, and almost of adherents, found himself obliged to submit to the demands of the people. a provisional junta was established to conduct-the public affairs, before which ferdinand appeared and swore to support the constitution of . the inquisition was abolished. the cortes assembled, and in a session of four months, endeavored by the means of moderate measures to conciliate the prejudices and interests of contending factions, and to restore harmony and vigor to the nation. the clergy and absolutists, whom no concession could satisfy, except that of unrestricted monarchy, organized a conspiracy for the overthrow of the constitution; and as the cortes had in their reformatory measures abolished some convents, and banished all non-juring priests, they appealed to the religious frenzy of the people, and succeeded in creating considerable opposition to the constitutions. in the interest of this counter revolution an apostolic junta was established on the frontiers of portugal, for the avowed design of destroying the privileges of the crown and the clergy. numerous bands of armed monks and peasants appeared in the different provinces; and their bold assassinations and barbarous acts produced such universal consternation, that the cortes declared the whole country in a state of siege. it was now evident that the priests and monks who had stimulated the peasants to insurrection had been instigated by the french government. but the cortes met the conspirators with skilful and vigorous measures, and having vanquished them in every engagement, succeeded finally in effecting the disbandment of their forces. in another attempt was made to subvert the constitution. at soi d'urgel, on the confines of france, the absolutists established a regency under the marquis mataflounds. france was the instigator of this regency, and supported it with her influence and money. the army of the absolutists, composed of apostolic soldiers, and soldiers of the faith, were met by the united strength of the nation, and overwhelmed with defeat. the regency fled to france. but this evidence of the capability and determination of spain to maintain a constitutional government, awakened into opposition every element of despotism, not only within her borders, but within all europe. the pope refused to receive the spanish ambassadors. the nuncio left madrid; france, austria, and prussia demanded of the cortes that they should restore to ferdinand full sovereign powers, and england advised a compliance with the demand. the duke angouleme, the commander of the french forces, established a junta which formed a provisional government on absolute principles, and declared the acts of the cortes null and void. france raised an army of the soldiers of the faith, who were received by the spanish clergy with acclamations of joy, and termed by them "good christians." the peasantry, controlled by the priests, espoused the cause of the absolutists, but the army, the educated classes, and the people residing in cities generally adhered to the party of the constitutionalists. the dictatorial interference of foreign powers in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation, and their attempts to defeat a governmental reform which they had sanctioned, and which, to achieve had cost the nation so much treasure, and so many valuable lives, fired the native pride and heroism of the spanish character, and united the different factions of the constitutionalists in a solid body in favor of their country and its liberty. though few in number, without allies, and without pecuniary resources, yet they were full of energy and heroic courage. the cortes repelled with patriotic indignation the insolent interposition of foreign powers, and prepared for the doubtful contest with consummate skill. as the church had been the chief cause of the national calamity, they appropriated its surplus plate to the necessity of the public treasury. the soldiers of the faith, and their guerilla bands, exclusively requiring the attention of the national guards and of the soldiers of the line, the cortes found themselves without an efficient army to oppose the march of the french troops, and the apostolic forces. this serious disadvantage enabled the absolutists to march oh from victory to victory; and though some places made a good defence, and others a stubborn and desperate resistance, yet others submitted with scarcely a struggle. the gloom which now overshadowed the prospects of the constitutionalists, was ominously deepened by the defection of some of their generals. but the undaunted firmness of the remaining leaders, and the unequalled boldness and skill which characterized their manoeuvres, desperately disputed inch by inch the progress of the monarchists, until the fall of valencia terminated the eventful struggle, so honorable to the constitutionalists, so disgraceful to europe, and so full of admonition to freemen. the bloody contests in which the liberals had been engaged greatly depleted their ranks, and now dungeons, exile, and the secret dagger nearly completed their annihilation. under these depressing circumstances, the cortes invested ferdinand with absolute power. the apostolics, the soldiers of the faith, the clergy and the uneducated classes, hailed him with acclamations of "long live the absolute king;" "long live religion;" "death to the nation;" "death to the negroes." ferdinand then declared null and void all the acts of the constitutional government, and all the public approvals by which he had sanctioned them. an attempt was made to introduce the inquisition, but the liberals, supported by france, and even approved by the pope, successfully resisted the obnoxious measure. in , the infirmities of ferdinand having rendered him the dupe of designing favorites, he created christina, the queen, regent for the infanta isabella, his daughter. in the regent was obliged, by an insurrection, to proclaim the constitution of . in , isabella having attained her majority, was declared queen. the constitution, revised and deprived of its democratic provisions, was substituted for that of . after the adoption of this constitution the municipal privileges were abridged, the sale of the sequestered church property suspended, and extraordinary provisions devised for the support of the clergy. chapter xvi. papal intrigues respecting the united states. papal intrigues--catholic persecution--protestant persecution--catholics in the revolutionary war--in the late rebellion--catholic enmity to civil and religious liberty-- an alliance formed for the subversion of the american republic--the duke of richmond's letter--catholic immigration--progress of catholicism--its consequences--the republic in imminent danger--union only means of salvation-- conclusion. that the papal pretensions have been a fruitful source of the seditions and wars which, like successive tornadoes, have swept in fearful rapidity over christendom, the records of history furnish the most unquestionable evidence; yet still no one will venture the assertion that popish machinations have been the sole cause of political discords. treason and popular disaffection have revolutionized and annihilated government after government long before the throne of st. peter was established; yet since that unfortunate period it cannot be denied, that whenever the causes of civil or foreign war became active, the sacerdotal monarchs have inflamed or soothed them according to the dictates of their interests. through their intrigues the exterminating sword of charlemagne compelled the saxons to be baptized; and that of otho i. compelled the danes to accept the same rite. through their intrigues clovis was induced, by his catholic wife, to consent to be baptized; and his troops who had followed him to the field of slaughter, were led to follow him also to the baptismal fount. by the same means ethelbert, who wished to marry bertha, daughter of carobert, king of paris, was persuaded to agree to matrimonial stipulations allowing her, upon becoming his wife, to bring her bishop with her, and permitting him to establish a catholic church in the kingdom for her convenience. by the same artful means ethelwolf was led to confer on the clergy the tithes of all the produce of the land; alfred the great, to expel from his kingdom all the danes that refused to be baptized; edward to accept the title of saint and confessor in lien of an heir to his throne, and to consent to abstain from nuptial congress with his queen; edward iv. to promulgate a law committing to the flames all persons convicted of the heresy of the lollards; and mary i., a person of good natural qualities and administrative abilities, to imprison protestant bishops for high treason, to confine princess elizabeth in the tower, to execute lady jane gray and her husband guilford dudley, to provoke the insurrections of cave and wyat, to commit to the flames two hundred and twenty-seven of her innocent subjects, and to render herself a terror to her nation. by the same disgraceful and impertinent intrigues the reign of queen elizabeth was perpetually disturbed with efforts to overthrow her government. the popes excommunicated her; denied her legitimacy; endeavored to supplant her with mary queen of scots; induced the french to support scotland in a rebellion against her government; created a sedition in the north; incited spain to promote a conspiracy against her, assisted by florentine merchants, the bishop of ross, and the scotchmen residing in england; and when all these efforts proved abortive, to organize a conspiracy to have her assassinated by anthony babbington. by the same disastrous intermeddling the reign of queen ann was disturbed with efforts to restore the succession to james the pretender, the pope's tool for the recovery of england; under that of george i. the duke of marleborough was led to proclaim the pretender in scotland; cardinal alberoni, minister of spain, to form an alliance in his favor with russia, sweden, france and spain; and atterbury, bishop of rochester, to engage in a conspiracy for the same object. similar papal machinations have interfered with the peace of france, germany, spain, portugal, belgium, sweden, russia, poland, china, japan, egypt, abyssinia, and of many other governments, all of which were fearfully productive of sedition, anarchy, war and revolutions. besides these intermeddlings with the national affairs of all governments, the catholic church assails all non-catholics with the most execrable persecution, openly when she dares, secretly when she must. in her fiendish malice she counsels the violation of every principle of justice, of every obligation of humanity, of all contracts, of all pecuniary engagements, of all oaths, and urges as a duty the persecution and extermination of all unbelievers, by means of corporeal punishment, by imprisonment, banishment, murder, fire, swords, racks, stakes and scaffolds. hear the truth of these assertions from the sanctified lips of the holy mother herself: "the catholics believe that the pope's authority is not only ministerial but supreme, so that he has the right to direct and compel, with the power of life and death."--_ecc. jacob. mag., but. reg. oppos._ c. . "two swords were given to peter, the one temporal, the other spiritual."--_bernard de corned. lib_. : c. . "she (the church) bears, by divine right, both swords, but she exercises the temporal sword by the hand of the prince, or the magistrate. the temporal magistrate holds it subject to her order, to be exercised in her service, and under her direction."--_bronsons rev., jan_., . "both swords are in the power of the pope, namely, the spiritual and the temporal sword; but the one is to be exercised by the church, the other for the church; the one by the hands of the priest, the other by the hands of the king and the soldiers, but as the sword of the priest."--_pope boniface, corp. jur. con. ed. bocher_, tome : p. . "civil contracts, promises, or oaths of catholics with heretics, because they are heretics, may be dissolved by the pontiff."--_pope innocent x., caron. ._ engagements made with heretics and schismatics of this kind, after such have been consummated, are inconsiderate, illegal, and in law itself is of no importance, (although made, per chance, by the lapse of those persons into schism, or before the beginning of their heresy), even if confirmed by an oath, or one's honor being pledged."--_pope urban vi., bymer_ : . "though sworn to pay he may refuse the claims of a debtor who falls into error or under excommunication. the debtor's oath implied the tacit condition that the creditor, to be entitled to payment, should remain in a state in which communication would be lawful."--_st. bernard, maynooth report_, . "there are various punishments with which ecclesiastical sanctions and imperial laws order heretics to be punished. some are spiritual, and effect the soul alone; others are corporeal, and effect the body... among the corporeal punishments, one which very much annoys heretics is the proscription and confiscation of their property."--_alphonso ae castro, cap_. : p. . "another punishment," says he, "is the deprival of every sort of preeminence, jurisdiction and government, which they previously had over all persons of all conditions; for he who is a heretic is, _ipso jure_, deprived of all things."--_ib., cap_. : p. . "the last punishment of the body for heretics," he informs us, "is death, with which we will prove, by god's assistance, heretics ought to be punished."--_ib. i cap_. : p. . but it will be said that protestants have been guilty of persecution as well as catholics. this assertion is unquestionably true. we confess, with regret, that protestantism, although she admits the right of private judgment, has proved a foe to civil and religious liberty, but unlike catholicism, she has made concessions; reluctantly, indeed, but still she has made them. guizot confesses that her practice has necessarily been inconsistent with her profession of toleration. she, however, claims not, like catholicism, to be the source and supreme controller of all political power; nor to be the sole disposer of crowns and kingdoms; nor has she elaborated a policy, adopted a systematic course of measures, and organized a clerical force for the acquisition of supreme and universal temporal and spiritual dominion. she has no central head, with spies penetrating all domestic and national secrets, and communicating to it the information they have acquired. she has no political-machinery ramifying every part of christendom, and acting in concert for the promotion of her interests. she has no convents, nor nunneries; nor monastic vows; no father confessors; no religious confessional; no religious orders, no military knights; and no spiritual guides. she imposes no oaths of allegiance on her priests, requiring them to adopt every available method of subjugating all government under her authority. she has no inquisition, no rack and torture for her opponents; no pretensions to absolve subjects from their oaths of allegiance; no interdicts to alarm superstitious minds by the suspension of religious worship in disaffected kingdoms. she has never interfered between rulers and their subjects, concocting treason, fomenting sedition, and producing anarchy. she has never organized armies for the extension of her dominion, and for the subjugation of kingdoms to her authority. she has never butchered whole cities for unbelief, nor in one day put one hundred thousand heretics to death. she has done none of these things, yet her hands are not unstained with innocent blood. would they were. henry viii., of england, persecuted with equal severity those who believed in the pope's right to temporal power, and those who disbelieved the other dogmas of catholicism. the church of england, under charles i., inflicted the most atrocious punishment on the irish catholics; under james i., on the puritans; and under elizabeth, it oppressed both catholics and dissenters with tyrannical measures, and illiberal disabilities. the puritan cromwell persecuted both catholics and episcopalians. in ireland he wasted the catholics with fire and sword; in scotland he put whole garrisons of dissenters to death; and as his schemes for obtaining the royal dignity suggested, persecuted covenanters, republicans, and puritans. when charles ii. was elevated to the throne he deprived dissenting clergymen of their livings; and by his five-mile act prohibited them from approaching within five miles of their former parishes. but the rigor of protestantism eventually relaxed its severity. under william iii. some of the disabilities which oppressed the dissenters were removed; and under that of george iii. additional toleration was accorded. still it must be admitted that the ablest agents in extorting these concessions to religious liberty were the free thinkers of that age. yet the quakers, always the most respectable body of citizens, and the professors of the most harmless of all creeds, were still punished with fines, confiscation, imprisonment and death. all who disbelieved in the holy trinity were also subject to similar persecutions. not until did protestant england cease to punish a belief in unitarianism with imprisonment, and legal disabilities. john calvin, at the head of the consistory of geneva, had john guet beheaded on a charge of attempting to overthrow the doctrines of the calvinistic church; and micheal servetus arrested and burnt alive for having attacked the doctrine of the holy trinity. even in republic america, under the elevating influence of liberal institutions, the intolerant spirit of religious bigotry predominates more or less over the mind of the christian republic. in massachusetts baptists and quakers were once fined, imprisoned, and burnt alive. in virginia all quakers that disbelieved in the holy trinity, and all persons that refused to have their children baptized were scourged, confined, banished or put to death. in pennsylvania, under the charter of william penn, all atheists were excluded from official position. in maryland disbelief in the holy trinity was declared to be a capital offence; and not until recently was any person, who professed not to believe in christianity, unless a jew, eligible to any office of trust or profit in the state; nor even to this day is any person eligible who disbelieves in a god. the statute books of every protestant country bear testimony to the same illiberality. humboldt, cuviert buffon, la place, gibbon, voltaire, hume, jefferson, and other eminent scholars and patriots would, by the provisions of almost every state constitution in the union, be debarred from filling the lowest office that they create. in fact the history of no religious sectary indicates it to be a bond of love, union, or concord. every protestant creed, sectary or conclave, is a perpetual source of mutual jealousy, animosity and persecution, the same intolerant spirit breathes its malignancy over the pages of the religious press. "if we are not christians," says the _church union_, "let us make no hypocritical pretensions of founding governments on christian principles. if we are, i believe that they should predominate over our whole life; let us have them incorporated in the basis of our government, and the national policy shaped by them. let no one hold an office of trust or profit whose life is not conformably thereto." these holy ravings remind us of an attempt once made by the puritans to incorporate the bible into the british constitution. "the wrestlers with god," as they called themselves were, deliberating upon a motion to repeal the laws of england, and substitute in their place the laws of moses and the prophets. but cromwell averted the calamity by a peremptory dissolution of parliament, and a command to "the wrestlers" to go home; nor did he think it prudent to call them together again. the religious politics of the methodist _home journal_ are similar in tone with that of the _church union_. this infuriated orthodox theologian says: "they that deny the doctrines of christianity, ignore the basis on which our government is founded. can they be regarded as citizens? ought any man who holds to this position be admitted to--or permitted to hold christian citizenship under this government? we hold that to be consistent with ourselves. infidelity should not be tolerated in our country, much less encouraged by those who openly profess and teach its doctrines." these assertions are the evident irrepressible ebullitions of innate treason to the republic. they ignore the basis on which our government is founded, and, according to the logic of this fanatic the sect that holds them ought not to be regarded as citizens, nor permitted to hold christian citizenship under this government. but the knife with which this mad-man would cut his own throat infidelity would wrest from him. the sacred basis of our government is equal political and religious rights. had methodism been chosen as the basis of our government, would a republic have been thought of? never! did not john wesley, its founder and spirit, oppose the american revolution? did he not write against it, preach against if, and labor publicly and privately to arrest its progress? was there a man in england that inflicted deeper injury on the american cause? while english infidels aided the struggle for independence with their pens, money and valor,--while english statesmen blushed at the barbarous conduct of their government,--this bigoted priest, a fugitive of justice from the state of north carolina, defended it without shame or compunction. even at this day protestant priests have dared to assert that infidels have no rights which they are bound to respect; but such miscreants have no rights, (for they surrender them by their assertions,) which any person is bound to respect. such self-accursed, self-outlawed bigots, in conjunction with unprincipled demagogues and political aspiring judges, are to-day laboring to incorporate in the national constitution the fanaticism of the _church union_ and of the methodist _home journal_. when their holy treason shall have become a success, liberty will forsake her desecrated abode; despotism will occupy her temple; and, we fondly hope that, in the course of coming events the fanatics will not discover that they have legalized their own extermination. had constantine the great, though frenzied with ambition and crimsoned with guilt, beheld the boundless ocean of gore which was destined to flow from an incorporation of christianity with the civil power, and to roll its heavy surge over all future time, he would have been more obdurate than a fiend had he not cowled his head in horror at the frightful vision, and dropped in mercy the pen already inked to inaugurate the tremendous catastrophe. yet how sickening is the thought that the example of this ambitious tyrant, loaded with the curses of ages, is now attempted to be imitated by protestant priests, political judges, and united states officials. but thanks to nature, the play of the natural principles of liberty in the minds of some priests, have been too strong to be repressed by dogmatic creeds. gloriously inconsistent with their principles, they have inscribed their names in imperishable honor on the scroll of liberty. thankful for the few names blazoned there, freedom must drop a tear over the smallness of the number. it will be asked, perhaps, notwithstanding the facts which have been adduced showing the political nature and designs of the catholic church, what has the american republic to apprehend from it? it will be asked, did not catholics fight for the establishment of a free government in the revolutionary war? did they not fight to defend it in the war of ? did they not fight to preserve its unity in the late rebellion? no well informed person will answer these questions in the negative; and no candid person will fail to acknowledge the distinguished valor and liberality which they displayed on these occasions. catholics are men; and the love of liberty is a natural principle of the human constitution. ignorance may blind it; prejudice mislead it; and superstition overawe it; but when the natural vigor of its disposition is aroused it will assert its rights in defiance of creeds, shackles and stakes. it is not the nature, but the education of catholics, and the religious despotism with which they are enthralled, that has so often deprived freedom of their homage and allegiance. the frequent opposition of catholic princes to the policy and measures of the popes, the numerous leagues which they have formed, and the vast armies which they have raised in their support, abundantly show how often their reverence for the pope has been displaced by defiance to his authority, and contempt for his pretensions. the liberal minded people of france have, from an early date, boldly opposed the pope's claim to temporal power. st. louis ix., in , declared in a pragmatic sanction, that the temporal power of france was independent of the jurisdiction of rome. charles viii., of france, in a pragmatic sanction issued in , asserted for france, in conformity with the canons of the council of basle, independence of rome in all temporal matters. louis xiv., in convened a national council of the clergy at paris, which decided that the pope of rome had no power to interfere, directly or indirectly, in the temporal concerns of princes and sovereigns; that the usages of the french church are inviolable; that the authority of the general councils is superior to that of the pope; and that the pope is not infallible in matters of faith. the popes, by the means of bulls, have attempted to nullify these acts, but nevertheless they form the distinctive principles of the gallican church, and also of other catholic churches in different; kingdoms of europe. the fenian order is another happy instance of the predominance which patriotism may gain, in the minds of catholics, over their reverence for the church and its despotism. if catholics have at various times chastised the pope, deprived him of temporal authority, assaulted his person, imprisoned and deposed him, it is not surprising that they fought in the defence of the independence and freedom of america, no one that has an adequate conception of the papal policy, will be much astonished that the catholics were prominent leaders in the revolutionary war. it was a cause in which the pope himself, in perfect consistency with his pretensions, might have personally engaged. the pope claims england as his fief, and denounces her kings as usurpers. the success of a revolt intended to deprive england of her colonies was as gratifying to his revenge as it was flattering to his ulterior designs on the colonies themselves. in a republic he could plant his machinery, build up at will his monastic penitentiaries, erect his strong castle-like and secret-celled churches, leisurely select and occupy eligible and strategic points for citadels, and collect from every kingdom his most faithful and reliable subjects. bishop hughes asserted that catholicism was friendly to republics, for they allowed its free development. but the development of catholicism involves the subversion of republics, and the establishment in their place of political and religious despotism. the insincerity of any proposed attachment to the american republic by popes or priests, is attested by the very occurrence of the southern rebellion. had the pope and priests been opposed to it a catholic rebel would scarcely have been known; and had not the catholics north and south been in favor of the rebellion, it could not have taken place. that singular and unnecessary intestine collision, in which the south gained nothing but disgrace, the north nothing but depopulation and empoverishment, and at the mystery of which leading secessionists were so much puzzled that they declared it to be the effects of a general lunacy, was nevertheless in perfect harmony with the profound and masterly policy of the roman see, which comprehends in its toils the events of ages, and from the first projection of a plot to its final consummation, shapes every intervening circumstance to the fulfilment of its grand design. the catholics north supported the cause of the union, and the catholics south the cause of the rebellion with votes, money and men; the rebellion, therefore, was not contrary to the teachings of the church. the depopulation of the native element of the north, the influx of foreign catholics, the creation of an oppressive national debt, the demoralization consequent on civil war, the engenderment of civil antipathies, and the supplanting of colored servants by white catholic servants, were all known prospective results of the rebellion; were all in harmony with the papal designs; and to realize which the catholics of the north, and the catholics of the south were stimulated by their priests to meet each in deadly conflict. but dismemberment could not possibly have been intended by the secret projectors of the rebellion. it was an impracticable idea. the geography of the country interposed to its success an insurmountable obstacle. it was also inconsistent with the papal designs. but monarchy was not an impracticable idea. it encountered no difficulty in the country's geography. it was in harmony with the policy of the roman see. the catholic blood which was poured out in such torrents in the civil conflicts was not intended to effect dismemberment, but to create the elements conducive to the establishment of a monarchial government. shortly after the close of the rebellion this soil, hallowed by the blood, and consecrated by the sepulture of millions of freemen, catholic as well as non-catholic, was attempted to be desecrated by the establishment of presses for openly advocating that execrable treason; and it has been asserted by the leaders of the late rebellion, that the civil war is not at an end; but that it will again break out, and then the battle field will not be the south, but every state, city and village in the union. perhaps they mean to intimate that it will be a repetition of the massacre on st. bartholomew's eve. to those who fondly dream that the republic of america has nothing to fear from the pretensions of the pope of rome, and his loyal subjects, we submit the following extracts: "heresy (protestantism) and infidelity have not, and never had, and never can have any right, being, as they undoubtedly are, contrary to the law of god."--_bronson's rev., jan_., . "heresy (protestantism) and unbelief are crimes, and in christian countries, as in italy and spain for instance, where the catholic religion is the essential law of the land, they are punished as other crimes."--_bishop kendrich_. "protestantism of every form has not, and never can have any right, where catholicism is triumphant; and therefore we lose all the breath we expend in declaiming against bigotry and intolerance, and in favor of religious liberty, or the right of any one to be of any religion, or of no religion, as best pleases him."--_catholic rev., jan_., . "religious liberty is merely endured until the opposite can be carried into effect without peril to the catholic world."--_bishop o'connor; of pittsburg_. "if the catholics ever gain, which they surely will, an immense numerical majority, religious freedom in this country will be at an end."--_archbishop of st. louis_. "catholicity will one day rule america, and religious freedom will be at an end."--_bishop of st. louis_. "the catholic church numbers one-third of the american population; and if its membership shall increase for the next thirty years as it has for the thirty years past, in rome will have a majority, and be bound to take the country and keep it."--_seeker_. "should the said church go on increasing for the next twenty years, the papists will be in a majority of the people of the united states."--_william hogan_. "st. thomas aquinas, in his second book, chapter , page , says: 'heretics (non-catholics) may justly be killed.' but you will answer, there is no danger of this. they can never acquire them power in this country to sanction that doctrine. how sadly mistaken are you! how lamentably unacquainted with the secret springs or machinery of popery."--_william hogan_. quoting from an author hogan writes: "america is the promised land of the jesuists. to obtain the ascendency they have no need of swiss guards, or the assistance of the holy alliance, but a majority of votes, which can easily be obtained by the importation of catholic voters from ireland, austria, and bavaria.... i am not a politician, but knowing the active spirit of jesuitism, and the indifference of the generality of protestants, i have no doubt that in ten years the jesuists will have a mighty influence over the ballot box, and in twenty will direct it according to pleasure. now they fawn, in ten years they will menace, in twenty command."--_synopsis, p_. . in the above quoted authorities we have a unanimous declaration of catholic bishops, priests and periodicals, that the catholic church is radically opposed to religious liberty; that she regards protestants and infidels as criminals; that whenever she obtains the political power she punishes them as such; and that the success of her policy and measures in this country has been sufficient to justify her expectation, that in she will be enabled to accomplish all her bloody and treasonable designs. that these hopes are not altogether chimerical, we have also the reluctant and alarming concessions of her opponents. those who abuse liberty should be deprived of its benefits; and those abuse it most who take advantage of its generous indulgence to plot for its destruction. the rights of toleration subsist only by mutual consent; their obligations are reciprocal; and whenever the silent compact is violated by one party, the other is exonerated from its obligations. no man possesses a right which is not possessed by another; nor has he any authority for claiming for himself that which he does not concede to others. when, therefore, the catholic priests proclaim that protestantism in any form has no right where catholicism is triumphant, they surrender their rights where protestantism in any form is triumphant. when they assert heresy and unbelief are crimes, and where the catholic religion is the essential law of the land, are punished as crimes, they authorize heretics and unbelievers to consider catholicism a crime, and where heresy and unbelief are the essential law of the land, to punish catholics as criminals. when they say that catholicity will one day rule america, and then religious liberty will be at an end, they appeal to the instincts of self-preservation, and justify freemen in adopting any measure that is necessary to render their avowed treason and destructive designs abortive. they assail the fundamental principles of the constitution, and forfeit all right to its protection. neither protestants nor infidels may be disposed to avail themselves of the privileges of these concessions, while forbearance is a virtue; but they may be provoked to consider the further tolerance of the jesuists in this country as inconsistent with the peace and stability of the republic. as the treasonable designs of the catholic priests are undeniable, it is important to understand by what means they expect to accomplish their infamous purposes. the subjoined letter of the duke of richmond, formerly governor-general of canada, will explain their policy, their system of measures, and the co-operation which they are to receive from the sovereigns of europe. "_it (the american republic) will be destroyed_" says he, "_it ought not, and will not be permitted to exist_. the curse of the french revolution, and subsequent wars and commotions of europe, are to be attributed to its example, and so long as it exists no prince will be safe on his throne, and the sovereigns of europe are aware of it, and _they are determined on its destruction, and they have come to an understanding on the subject, and have decided on the means to accomplish it_; and they will eventually succeed, by subversion rather than by conquest. all the low and surplus population of the different nations of europe will be carried into that country. it is, and will be, the receptacle of the bad and disaffected population of europe, when they are not wanted for soldiers or to supply navies; and the governments of europe will favor such a cause. this will create a surplus majority of low population, who are so very easily excited, and they will bring with them their principles, and in nine cases out of ten adhere to their ancient and former governments, laws, manners, customs and religion, and will transmit them to their posterity, and in many cases propagate them among the natives. these men will become citizens, and by the constitution and laws be invested with the right of suffrage. hence discord, dissension, anarchy and civil war will ensue, and some popular individual will assume the government, restore order, and the sovereigns of europe, the immigrants, and many of the natives will sustain him. _the church of rome has a design on this country\ and it will in time be the established religion, and it will aid in the destruction of the republic_. i have conversed with many sovereigns and princes of europe, and they have unanimously expressed their opinion relative to the government of the united states, and their determination to subvert it." according to this admonitory letter an alliance has been formed by the european powers and the pope of rome, for the subversion of the american republic, the substitution of a monarchy in its place, and the establishment of catholicism as the national religion. had the duke of richmond been silent, still no well informed person could doubt that all the european sovereigns, whether protestant or catholic, would act upon the avowed principle of the holy alliance in their conduct with regard to north america. would england consent, it may be asked, to ally herself with the papal despot? why not? she has done so before; in the recent troubles of the roman see she sent her war vessels to protect the pope; and she assented to the principles of the holy alliance, which was for the extinguishment of all freedom in europe. the good sense of the english people would never have recognized a policy which inevitably involved their own destruction; but they are a cypher in the great account of the short-sighted government. that england heartily co-operates with the papal priests in their infamous work, may be learned from the subjoined extract of the _dublin evening mail_, elicited by the news from america that certain teachers had been dismissed from a school of the west on account of their foreign birth, &c.: "the foreign birth and roman catholic proclivities of the teachers thus dismissed," says he, "are sufficient evidence that they have been imported into the united states by the church of rome, with a view to pervert the secular education of the country to the purposes of proselytism. they are, in fact, emissaries of the _college de propaganda fide_, and have been trained and qualified, no doubt, by its education, to carry out abroad the principles it has been so successful in disseminating here in dublin. _the pope has not a more efficient free-handed institution at his back than the imperial parliament of the united kingdom_, which spares no expense to furnish his holiness with zealous and well informed agents for the spreading of his dominion over the face of the globe. does he require priests to publish and extend it wherever the english language is spoken, the halls and dormitories of maynooth are enlarged, and their larder abundantly replenished to keep a constant supply of young ecclesiastics for his service. do these in turn send home a requisition for more teachers to assist them in their work, _the chancellor of the exchequer adds some ten thousand pounds for his yearly estimate for national education in ireland_, and continued re-enforcements of propagandists are thus maintained, in readiness to move in obedience to the call, whenever rome may need their service." according to the duke of richmond's letter, one of the means by which the tyrant of rome and his colleagues have adopted for accomplishing the downfall of the government of the united states, is that of foreign immigration. let us examine the operation of this device. the editor of the _louisville journal_, in discussing the question of foreign immigration, makes the following statement: "in our native white population was about , , . in the same year our foreign population was about , , . in the immigration was about , . at that rate it would take only about six years to double the foreign population here in . this is about five times our population's increase, which is in a ratio of three or four per cent, per annum, while the increase of foreigners is from fourteen to sixteen per cent, on the census of , , and . "in our presidential vote was about , , . in it was about , , . in our foreign arrivals, as shown, were about , , and , of these were males, thus showing that in one year, the arrivals of foreign males into this country, was nearly as great as the increase of our whole voting population during four years." in the united states. the foreign arrivals by sea alone were-- "in , " , " , " , from canada and mexico during the same period about , , , it appears from the census of that the total aggregate of foreign population of the united states in was , , . if the tide of immigration has added but two millions to the number of the foreign population every four years since , it must have amounted, in , to , , . all the immigrants are not, however, catholics. some are protestants, some infidels, and some radical republicans. the turners, the free germans, and the members of the revolutionary league are all firm friends of free governments. the proportion of catholics among the immigrants, at a fair computation, is presumed to be about three-fourths of the entire number. they must, therefore, add to the catholic numerical strength about , , at every decade, besides the numerical augmentation of the catholic church through the medium of foreign immigration, there are other appliances acting powerfully in its favor. "it is not long," says william hogan, "since i saw a-letter from the catholic bishop kendrick, of the diocese of massachusetts, in which he informs the authorities of rome that he is making converts of some of the first families in the diocese."--_synopsis_, p. . "i have often conversed," says he, "with american protestants on this subject, and regret finding many of them--especially those of the unitarian creed--are strong advocates of popery, and in favor of its introduction among the people." john l. chapman, a methodist clergyman, in a work written before the southern outbreak, says in substance, according to my recollection, that a methodist preacher cannot now address his congregation upon the subject of catholicism with the same freedom he could formerly; that those who imagine a methodist preacher can now utter in the pulpit, or at a tract or bible meeting, the sentiments of john wesley respecting popery, are entirely mistaken; and that those who suppose that an editor of a methodist periodical can now assail the errors of catholicism without the loss of subscribers, are laboring under a great delusions. while the pulpits, revivals, and evangelical enterprises are making no converts of any account among catholics, the confirmation services of the catholic bishops show the great number of adult non-catholics which they are adding to their church. the number of children kidnapped, and the extraordinary number confirmed by catholic bishops, might suggest a suspicion that the church has not abandoned its historic mode of adding to its members. every non-catholic child educated in a catholic school becomes a catholic, or strongly biassed in favor of that church. we hear of protestant priests, and sometimes of protestant bishops, and of whole bodies of theological students becoming roman catholics. it is an undeniable fact that the annual increase of the catholic population far outstrips that of the non-catholic population; and that at some future period its numerical strength will be capable of deciding in favor of the church every election that takes place. when that unfortunate hour arrives every policeman, councilman, mayor, judge, governor, delegate, congressman, senator, president, civil official, army or naval officer will be a catholic. then the non-catholics will be powerless, and at the mercy of those who believe they have no rights. then, by the secret operation of the papal machinery, one faction will be inflamed against another, and one section of the land against another. then rapine, violence, assassination, sedition, massacre--everything that can render life and property insecure--will distract every state, city and village in the union. then, amid the anarchy and confusion thus produced, some catholic tyrant will arise, and--the civil disorders subsiding at the bidding of the pope--will be proclaimed dictator. supported by the catholic and protestant kings of europe, he will abolish the republic, and establish in its place a catholic monarchial government. then, according to bronson, heresy and infidelity will be declared to have no rights. then, according to archbishop kendrick, protestantism will be declared to be a crime, and punished as such. then, according to the archbishop of st. louis, religious liberty will no longer be endured. then, according to hecker, the catholic church will be bound to take the country, and keep it. then inquisitions will be introduced, and stakes erected. then the darkness of the middle ages will settle over the land. then the school-houses, the colleges, the asylums, and the churches built with protestant funds will be applied to catholic purposes. then the fortunes which non-catholics have amassed will be confiscated. then the territorial acquisitions of the government, all its resources, all the advantages it has acquired by arms and treaties, its navy and its army, will become the property of the papal monarchy, and applied to its defence and extension, then it will be the business of americans, not to create magistrates, but to obey despots; not to share in the sovereignty of the government, but to toil in slavery to support an execrable despotism. then liberty of speech and freedom of the press will be no more. then the ecclesiastical dungeons, which the supineness of americans have allowed catholicism to erect among them, will be the homes and graves of freemen. then will arise a government constructed of schemes for public plunder; where an aristocracy are privileged robbers; where moral worth and dignity are the helpless victims of power and injustice; where laws are made for subjects, not for rulers; and where the people are inherited by royal heirs, like so much land and cattle. then will the monarchial demon, the god of slaves and aristocrats, seated on the people's throne, with his feet on the people's neck, quaff blood like water; and eye with scornful indifference the squalid millions whom he has doomed by an enormous taxation to huddle in hovels, without light or air, with clothing scarcely enough to hide their nakedness, with food scarcely enough to sustain life, or fire scarcely enough to keep them from freezing. when the pope shall have succeeded in his attempts to establish such a monarchy over the american people, he will next proceed to enlarge its dominions by the annexation of canada, mexico, all south america, and all the pacific and atlantic islands. with such a dominion, such resources, such an army and navy, he will be master of the land and the ocean. he will then proceed to plunder and discrown the very kings that had assisted him in erecting his colossal power. he will then enforce, by the thunders of american monitors and war steamers, his claim to the crowns of england and russia; his claim to be the disposer of all crowns; his claim to be the only monarch that ought to wear the token of royalty; in fine, his claim to the supreme temporal and spiritual monarchy of the world. then england will awake, but it will be in the vengeful folds of a serpent crushing out her life. then the european despots will awake, but it will be amid the crumbling of their thrones. then the papal allies will awake, but it will be to find their limbs fettered, and the foot of the sacerdotal monarch placed in malignant triumph upon their necks. then the world will awake, but it will be to find that it has suffered the extinction of the last star of liberty, and involved itself in a night of despotism without the hope of a morn. but the spirit of freedom is immortal; its conflict with despotism will be eternal. bolts, dungeons, shackles cannot confine it; racks, flames and gibbets cannot extinguish it. to annihilate it, the most formidable efforts of bigotry, the most ingenious arts of statesmen, the combined power of church and state, have been applied in vain. though the blood of freedom's sons have streamed in torrents, and the smoke of their stakes have darkened the face of heaven, yet their spirit has still walked abroad over the world. so it has been in the past; so it will be in the future. if the catholic demon should massacre all the freemen in one age, they will rise up more powerful in the next; and successively as time rolls on, shake with their energy the accursed throne. hence civil war will never cease, fields will eternally reek with gore, burning cathedrals and convents will illuminate the night, till the world, instructed by its past errors, will unite in a natural union for the extinguishment of catholicism. we have now alluded to the dangers which begin to blacken our political firmament. can the storm be averted? we believe it can. a union of the protestants, jews, spiritualists, free religionists, infidels, atheists, turners, free germans, and of all non-catholics, without regard to creed, race or color, on a basis of universal civil and religious liberty, with a judicious policy, and a corresponding system of measures, will prove adequate to the emergency. such an organization, if sufficiently liberally constituted, might command the support of gallic and fenian catholics. the life, liberty and welfare of all non-catholics, if not, indeed, of the fenians and gallicans themselves, are in equal danger, and why should they not organize for mutual safety? does prejudice forbid it? millions of lives must be sacrificed if a union be not effected. who would, then, hesitate to sacrifice a prejudice that it may be effected? a tyrant may demand concessions without rendering an equivalent, but freemen can not. can americans sleep in peace, while the clang of the hammers that are forging their chains are sounding in their ears, and the pillars which support their government are tottering over their heads? it seems impossible. their obligations to their country, to posterity, to the world, demand union. union or slavery; union or confiscation; union or the rack, the stake, the gibbet. one or the other is inevitable. which do you now chose? a few more years hence you will have no choice. every citizen knows that under the present form of government his merits have rewards, and his industry has encouragements enjoyed by no people in any country, or under any other form of government. the poorest and the richest are here accorded equal chances, equal privileges; and an equal voice in selecting legislators, judges and rulers. they are equally untrammelled by legal impediments in seeking the highest positions in the government. each citizen is an integral part of the sovereignty of the nation; he participates in its management, and shares its greatness and glory. it is a consolation enjoyed only by an american, that if fame nor fortune should gratify his ambition, he can still bequeath to his children a richer inheritance than that of either fame or fortune, the inheritance of a free government. judging of the future by the past, it is his privilege to believe that the republic will continue to grow in power and greatness with each succeeding age, until the light of her glory shall fill the earth; until despots shall tremble before the majesty of the people; until the clank of slavery, and the groan of the oppressed shall no more be heard; and until the united world shall rise to the majesty and greatness of equal privileges, equal rights and equal laws. such are the blessings guaranteed, and the expectations warranted by the continuance of the republic; but monarchy, like a deadly blast, annihilates them all. with the liberty, it lays the greatness and glory of the nation in the grave. intolerance will then re-establish its racks and torture. industry will then be oppressed, and enterprise annihilated. this land, which has so long resounded with the song of liberty, will then reverberate with the clanking irons of servitude. this nation, which is now the wonder and glory of the earth; which is so powerful and prosperous; this nation will be no more. her life and splendor will have departed with her freedom. history may record her eventful story; her sons may clank in chains around her tomb; future freemen may curse the degenerate sons who wanted the valor or unanimity to transmit to their posterity the government which they inherited from their ancestors; but these will not call her to life and glory again. like a wave she will have rolled away; like a dream, she will have departed; like a thunder peal, she will have muttered into eternal silence. like these she had but one existence, and that will then have ended. [transcriber's note: in the original, chapter headings ii-ix showed subtitles above chapter numbers, disagreeing with the display of numbers above subtitles on the contents page and in chapter i. those headings have been standardized. line spacing in the original varied inconsistently from single to . , making the identification of intended block quotes difficult. for consistency, only speeches, quotes and reprints from document texts that were contained entirely within whole paragraphs--with no other narrative material--were treated as block quotes in this project (exception: beginning p. "to my countrymen...."; this quote continues over several remaining pages and sections to the end of the book, and was not blocked). remaining transcriber's notes are at the end of the text.] [illustration: pope pius x.] the war upon religion being an account of the rise and progress of anti-christianism in europe by rev. francis a. cunningham boston the pilot publishing company * * * * * _copyright , by rev. f. a. cunningham._ * * * * * _nihil obstat_: david j. toomey, ph. d., s. t. d. censor deputatus. _imprimatur_: _gulielmus archiep. boston._ * * * * * contents chapter i. the earlier crises. influence of the reformation-- jansenism-- the abbey of port royal-- quesnel-- the bull "unigenitus"-- destructive influence of jansenism-- not quite extinguished even yet-- quietism-- molinos and madame guyon-- louis xiv. and gallicanism-- the gallican liberties-- resistance to them-- gallicanism one of the chief causes of anti-christianism in france-- van espen and the pseudo-canonists-- johannes von hontheim, known as febronius-- his hostility to the papal supremacy-- scipio di ricci-- the congress of ems-- joseph ii. of austria and the josephine schism-- suppression of the society of jesus-- the sophists-- voltaire and the encyclopaedists-- freemasonry-- neo-paganism page chapter ii. the french revolution. immediate causes-- the states general-- confiscation of church property-- persecution of religious orders-- the civil constitution-- sorrow of pope pius vi.-- his condemnation of the civil constitution-- the constituent assembly-- massacres of september-- the convention-- changing the calendar-- persecution of catholics-- the reign of terror-- the goddess of reason-- the worship of the supreme being-- the council of five hundred, or the directory-- arrest and exile of pope pius vi.-- the death of the pontiff in france page chapter iii. opening of the nineteenth century. state of france at the beginning of the nineteenth century-- the conclave of venice-- cardinal chiaramonti elected pope pius vii.-- sketch of his life-- cardinal consalvi-- napoleon makes proposals of peace with the pope-- preliminary deliberations for the concordat-- diplomacy of cardinal consalvi-- the concordat signed and ratified-- text of the concordat-- the organic articles-- they are repudiated by the pope-- the case of jerome bonaparte-- the coronation of napoleon-- the emperor becomes a persecutor-- excommunication of napoleon-- arrest of pope pius vii.-- his imprisonment at savona-- the council of paris-- the pope is imprisoned at fontainebleau-- defeat of napoleon-- triumphant return of pius vii. to rome page chapter iv. anti-christianism in rome. the holy alliance-- the carbonari-- mazzini and young italy-- hostile congresses-- accession of pope pius ix.-- generous dispositions of the holy father-- eighteen hundred and forty-eight-- flight of the pope-- garibaldi-- rome retaken by the papal allies-- conspiracy against the holy see-- iniquities of piedmont-- hypocrisy of napoleon iii.-- usurpation of victor emmanuel-- fall of rome in -- accession of leo xiii.-- leo xiii. and labor-- accession of pius x.-- modernism-- the methodist in rome-- the insult of mayor nathan-- character of pope pius x page chapter v. the kulturkampf in germany. ( ) the causes-- the liberalism of the rationalists-- the liberalism of pseudo-catholics-- günther-- frohschammer-- doellinger-- the desire for protestant ascendancy-- the hatred for catholic nations-- the determination of caesarism to reduce all religion to the domination of the state-- ( ) the men-- bismarck-- bishop ketteler-- windthorst-- malincrodt-- the centre party-- the laws of hate-- may laws-- courage of the bishops-- war of violence-- the turn of the tide-- reconciliation page chapter vi. the third republic. the franco-prussian war-- the commune of -- its victims-- establishment of third republic-- beginning of the war on the church-- gambetta-- paul bert-- jules ferry-- war on the religious orders in -- irreligious education-- secularization of schools-- peaceful advances of pope leo xiii.-- anarchy and socialism gaining ground-- the affair of dreyfus-- france at the end of the nineteenth century page chapter vii. war on the religious orders. beginning of the war-- the cabinet of freemasons-- waldeck-rousseau-- the associations law of -- its hypocritical character-- suppression of the congregations-- combes-- the closing of religious establishments-- expulsion of monks and nuns-- character of combes-- early attempts at separation-- the affair of "nobis nominavit"-- the bishops of laval and dijon-- the visit of president loubet to rome-- the rupture of diplomatic relations with rome-- the discussion upon the separation law-- speech of m. ribot-- the separation law passed-- its chief measures-- sufferings of catholics-- the associations of worship condemned by the holy see-- the liquidation of ecclesiastical property-- the school question in france page chapter viii. the troubles in spain. accession of ferdinand vii.-- apostolics and liberals-- disaffection of ferdinand-- carlist war-- hatred of the jesuits-- atrocities of espartero-- the pope protests-- papal encyclical-- balmes and cortes-- concordat of -- attempt on the life of the queen-- revolution of -- persecution and calumny-- protests of the holy see-- espartero fails-- the campaign of -- trickery of napoleon iii.-- spain a republic-- persecution of catholics-- amadeus of savoy-- the republic of -- castillo-- canovas in power-- the twentieth century-- canalejas-- ferrer and the barcelona riots page chapter ix. the crisis in portugal. old glories of portugal-- pombal the infamous-- portugal and napoleon-- english influence-- dom pedro-- maria da gloria and dom miguel-- the revolution of -- the present time-- assassination of carlos i.-- revolution always active-- the young king a victim of conspirators-- the revolution of -- violence against the religious and the clergy generally-- letter of the jesuit provincial-- spoliation-- treatment of the prisoners-- outlawed and exiled-- the charges and their answers-- armaments and subterranean galleries-- alleged wealth of the jesuits-- another charge-- alleged secret association-- charge of political activity-- reactionary influence page introduction. if it is true that a nation is what its doctrines are, it becomes very easy to discover in the doctrines of contemporary europe the last reason of the troubles and revolutions which keep it in constant turmoil. it has sowed the wind, now it is reaping the whirlwind. it has destroyed the foundations, and it is but natural that the edifice should begin to fall to its ruin. the english socinians, followed by voltaire, uprooted the christian idea, and rousseau after denying the true nature of god, set up the worship of man in his place. from these ancestors was born a generation of rationalists and atheists, who celebrated their triumphs, first in the french revolution, and afterwards in the general dissolution of organized society. out of the jumble of confused systems arose all those philosophic, religious, moral, and social aberrations which strive to root themselves in the human mind of the twentieth century. among the catholics themselves, whenever ambition or the malign influence of worldly allurements were in the ascendant, there were here and there excrescences of error which tended to diminish the vigor and integrity of the christian spirit, and lead to that mongrel condition characterized under the name of "liberal catholicism." rationalism, properly speaking, began in germany, a country which, until lately, has effected little in the domain of thought, and in the fields of faith and reason, except to ravage and destroy the creations of centuries. unhappily, however, it has built up nothing in their place. emmanuel kant, born in prussia in , began the process of demolition. materialistic philosophy had already denied the existence of the soul, and of the invisible world; kant proceeded to the denial of any certitude regarding the material and visible. with him everything assumed the character of the mythical and ideal. to explain his process he invented in man a second reason, the practical reason, which reconstructs what the speculative reason destroys. in fact, by separating the faculties of the human soul from the objects which they perceive, he led the way to systematic scepticism. kant was followed by fichte. as the former instituted a doubt as to the reality of external objects, fichte declared that there was no external reality, that the universe surrounding us is only a fiction of the mind to which we alone give reality, and the world is only a form of our own activity. kant and fichte assailed the reality of things outside the "ego," the personal mind; it remained for schelling--born in --to destroy both subject and object, and to confound all things mind and matter in one immutable, eternal existence. with hegel, a disciple of schelling everything becomes pure obscurity, absolute confusion, chaos. hegelianism was, in principle, the identity of contradictories, the identity of truth and error, of good and evil. in him was verified the prophesy of isaias of those "who call evil good, and good evil; who put darkness for light, and light for darkness; who put bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter." it was a system that insinuated that nothing really exists, that existence is merely a happening; that truth is not truth in itself, that there is no definite truth. it was the affirmation and negation of one and the same thing, fact, or being, at one and the same time. it was important inasmuch as it led the way to systems even more bizarre and destructive in the intellectual and moral order. not to speak of the eclecticism of cousin in the earlier days of the last century, which consisted in culling what he considered truth out of all the various philosophies of the past, without, however, having any definite idea of what was the truth, the chief product of german rationalism in the first half of the century was the system of positivism. it consisted in confining human knowledge within the sole domain of the observation of the forces of matter, and the study of the mathematical laws and conditions which regulate these forces. beyond that domain it declares that nothing exists scientifically. neither first causes, final causes, nor the essences of things, ought--according to it--to be the object of scientific research, for these, it considers, are not science, but metaphysics. under the name of metaphysics it included religion, theology, and moral teaching, all of which were to be simply eliminated as of no interest to men of intellect. hegelianism had closed the eyes of human understanding; positivism had mutilated and crippled its activities. this disorderly system would have died with its author, august compt, had not two of his disciples taken it up and given it a certain stability. one of these, m. littré gave a resume of its teachings in ; but it was taine who endowed it with a species of life, especially in his later writings. according to littré, positivism would do away with god, the creator, the first cause, the final end, as subjects "worthy of childish minds." he declares that "outside the sphere of material and positive things the eye of the intelligence can perceive only an infinite void." he considers the soul, anatomically, as the _ensemble_ of the functions of the brain and spinal column, and psychologically, as the _ensemble_ of the functions of the cerebral sensibility. he denies all immortality and future life. "the dead," he declares, "survive only in the ideal existence which presents them to our memory, or in the part they played in the collective life of progress accomplished by humanity." there was to be no more religion or worship. instead of supernatural ideas and the dogmas of faith it would substitute the cult of "humanity." finally, in denying the existence of god he ceased to recognize the divinity of christ, his miracles, and the divine authority of his church. the new philosophy became the fad. it was welcomed by young men impatient of restraint; it was preconized by free-thought in a congress of students at liege; it descended into the workshops, infested the schools, and became a necessary accomplishment for professors in academies and colleges. the danger was increased by the hypocrisy of its writings. "one of the characteristic traits of modern irreligion," says mgr. baunard, "is that taint of poetry mingled with mysticism which accompanies the most blasphemous negations." out of the union of hegelianism and positivism--the negation of absolute truth, and the disdain of metaphysics--was born a new historical criticism, which repudiated a priori the supernatural as false and impossible. this new system taught that: "when criticism refuses to believe in the narration of miracles, it has no need to bring proofs to the support of its negation. what is narrated is false, simply because it cannot be," and again, it declares--"the foundation of all criticism consists in setting aside in the life of christ the supernatural," and again, "nothing enters into human affairs but what is human; and every science, particularly history, must bid farewell definitely to the supernatural and the divine." this perversive philosophy once launched needed only a leader to present it in a concrete and popular form. for such a purpose the german life of christ by strauss could serve as a model. a hand was ready in france to take up the enterprise, ernest renan, the modern voltaire, put forth his notorious "life of jesus," which might be called the great crime of the nineteenth century. renan wished to show that jesus is not god, and at every page his demonstration is shattered like glass against the evidence of the texts. these texts he knows, but he is content to falsify them. he does so because in his hegelian school no one assertion is truer than its opposite. sometimes he adopts the respectful, unctuous tone of those who cried out: "hail, king of the jews." in this frame of mind he speaks of christ as "the man who even yet directs the destinies of humanity," "the man who has given the most beautiful code of perfect life that any moralist has ever traced." but almost in the same breath he insults, minimizes and reproaches our lord as a pedantic peasant, an eccentric, an anarchist, and the like. this intermingling of adulation and insult to the divine character of christ had its effect. it seduced the simple-minded, and brought the book into the hands of the imprudent and deluded multitude. it blinded the masses, it brought tears to the eyes of the faithful, it crushed the great heart of mother church, it gave a tone to lying criticism, it gave to blasphemy the character of elegance; it lent assistance to a policy oppressive of truth and liberty; it performed its part in the war of spoliation and sacrilegious confiscation; it renewed the hours of darkness around the cross of the dying redeemer; it essayed to make humanity, regenerated through the blood of the son of god, return back to arius and to paganism. the work of renan and his followers has been the great crime of the century. during the last half of the century anti-christianism underwent a change. the position held by positivism was taken by evolutionist transformation. its authors were charles darwin, the naturalist, and herbert spencer, the philosopher. their doctrines were received with enthusiasm by thousands who had been seeking some new fad in the intellectual line. the anti-christian looked to it to replace christianity. in france it became the religion of the third republic. jules ferry, in the lodge _clemente amitie_, , declared openly: "we can now throw aside our theological toys. let us free humanity from the fear of death, and let us believe in a humanity eternally progressing." it was the religion of atheism, and it has been forcing its creed upon humanity ever since. scepticism, born of kant and hegel, had come to its throne. with hegel all things were only relative; with kant objects are only phenomena, and the truth of things is merely subjective; religion itself was to him only subjective, and was, moreover, relegated to the things unknowable. in this he resembled spencer with whom religion held the first place in the category of the unknowable, and that vast, dark, and bottomless pit into which he consigned everything which could not be known by experimentation. this glorification of ignorance, elevated into a system, became known as agnosticism. the vagaries of sophism in the english-speaking world were hardly less prolific than in continental europe. the great intellectual forces of the nineteenth century allied themselves to two movements, the transcendental and the empiric. the former sprang from the writings of rousseau; created the french revolution, developed into german rationalism, passed into england to the poetry of wordsworth and coleridge, generated in france a whole tribe of soliloquists and dreamers, and was finally crystallized in the half-prophetic, half-delirious preachings of carlyle. crossing the atlantic it inspired and originated new england transcendentalism through the concord school of philosophy, of which emerson, a pupil of carlyle, was the chief exponent. it was a vague and abstract school. it took its very name from the fancy that this new knowledge transcended all experience and was quite independent of reason, authority, the testimony of the senses, or the testimony of mankind. it spoke freely of the infinite, the infinite nothing, the infinite essence of things. carlyle spoke of eternal verities, the immensities, the eternal silences. emerson wrote of it as the over-soul, the spirit of the universe. it permeated all literature, it directed the study of history, it inspired poetry, it became a religious creed; it hypnotized a large portion of the studious world. about the middle of the century men began to question it, especially when it was perceived that its conclusions did not correspond with its premises. human thought suddenly veered to the opposite extreme. the world was tired of abstractions; it called for facts. thenceforth reason was to be omnipotent, and nature began to be studied. the philosophy of the new order made her a god. "she will give up her secrets to us, and we will build our systems upon them. we will tear open the bowels of the mountains, and read their signs. we will pull down the stars from the skies, weigh them, and test their constituents. we will seek the elemental forces of nature, and there we shall find the elemental truths. we will dredge the seas, sweep the rivers, drag fossils out of forgotten caves, construct the forms of dead leviathans from one bone, examine the dust of stars in shattered aerolites, and the structure of the animal creation in the spawn of frogs by the wayside, or the tadpoles in the month of may. and we shall find that all things are made for man; and that man alone is the omnipotent and divine." the world took up the cry and called it progress. mankind was shaken by new emotions. through steamship, telegraph, telephone, and wave currents, distance was annihilated. the world was moved from its solid basis. vast buildings were flung into the sky; the populations flocked to fill them in the dense cities; and in the exultation of the moment men looked back upon the past with a kind of pitying ridicule, and cried: "this is our earth, our world; we want no other. humanity is our god, and the earth its throne!" then in the very height of all this pride, men suddenly discovered that under all this huge mechanism and masonry they had actually driven out the soul of man. the building of sky-scrapers, the slaughter of so many millions of hogs, the stretching of wiry networks over cities and states, the underground railways and sea-tunnels--all these were but a poor substitute or compensation for the ideals that were lost. beneath all this material splendor every noble quality that distinguishes man was utterly extinguished, and one saw only the horrors of the midnight streets, the masses festering in city slums, the great gulf broadening between the rich and the poor, selfishness, greed, mammon-worship, the extinction of the weak, the sovereignty of the strong, the cruelty, the brutality, the latent meanness of the human heart developing day by day like a monstrous disease upon the face of humanity. then came the mutterings of a new terror, the very offspring of the materialism that was worshiped, the spectre of socialism and anarchy, the new belief in the terrible destructiveness of a godless science. the intellectual world drew back in horror at the sight of the child it had begotten. it began to repudiate the transcendentalism that made pantheism, and the empiricism which made nature a god, and now it strives to justify itself by a futile attempt to reconcile god with human fancy. its new religions are but the sugaring of the pill that a docile humanity must swallow. the vagueness of transcendentalism is united with the materialism of nature worship, and the resulting equation is pessimism. charity, kindness, love, the smile of friendship and the laughter of innocence, all must vanish into the black night of despair before the mandate of a moloch who has eaten the heart and smothered the thinking soul. it is the moment of crisis, when the world is beginning to look for a savior; and out of the darkness only one source of hope is seen glowing with eternal fire, one shelter for poor persecuted, over-ridden, oppressed humanity--the mother of order and happiness, the protectress of the home, the warmth of the heart, the life of the soul--the mistress of all true philosophy--the old, the never changing church. _satanism._ in following up the various assaults made by the gates of hell upon the church established by christ, one is struck by the absolute method and order they betray. there is a mind behind them all, and that mind has been working vigorously for nineteen centuries. arianism, manicheeism, the paganism of the sixteenth century, protestantism, all were conceived along religious lines, and the thought of god was ever their central proposition. with the french revolution, born of deism in england and rationalism in germany, there came into view the spirit of paganism, which has set itself against christianity for over a hundred years. even paganism, with its aping of the ancients and its depreciation of christian doctrine and morality, has yielded before the human craving for spirituality, and is falling to pieces rapidly. but the gates of hell never grow weary, and the mind that in past ages could trouble the peace of the church rises to a new effort, an effort that, with strange fatuity, it dreams will be final. arianism, protestantism, paganism failing, the new religion of degeneration takes on a darker, a more repellent aspect. it no longer hides behind religious phrases, but comes out into the open, and those who can read its character have called it satanism. under the guise of modernism it strove to plant its poisonous weeds even in the vestibule of the church, but, exposed through the vigilance of our great pontiff, it made use of the protestant churches to propagate its errors, until in many pulpits the authority of jesus is as much a stranger as if christ had never been born. out of this chaos came the strange philosophy of charles w. eliot with its use of christian phrases and its negation of the christian religion. eliot's nonsense, however, was but a stepping stone whereby the last assault might be made upon the church. the plans of this assault have been developing for years in many universities of the country, in the yellow press, and in many organizations of men who have grown weary of law and seek in absolute license the gratification of animalism. satanism is thus the danger of the day. after many exemplifications of the creed of satanism in the matters of divorce, abortion, race suicide, white slavery, not to speak of burnings at the stake and the thousand and one horrible crimes that a "wicked and adulterous generation" perpetrates in the open light of day, the world was prepared to hear its praises sung from the rostrum of one of america's largest educational establishments. one evening last year an eminent professor, speaking in one of our largest universities, formulated some of its tenets, the horror of which, let us hope, will shock even the most depraved of minds. in satanism charity shall be no more; that spirit of love which made life tolerable, which brought the smile to the face of poverty and suffering, which, born of divine love, spreads its wings over the darkness of earth and creates faith in better things and hope of higher destinies--that charity shall have no place in the creed of these men, no more than it shall have place in that land of eternal despair whence first that creed came forth. more satanic still, the hand of this new religionist is red with the blood of the helpless, the infant whose feeble wailings wring the heart of a human mother, the blood of the infirm whose hollow cheek bespeaks the pity of the more fortunate, or whose halting step awakens the manhood of the young and noble, the blood of the aged who have given the years of their lives to the cause of humanity. to satanism all these, to whom christ had said, "come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy burdened, and i will refresh you," are obstacles, in the pathway of conquest to the gates of hell. this satanism gives as its excuse the cause of economy as against humanitarianism, as if divine providence during the many centuries that have passed has not fully demonstrated its ability to care for the world, to prevent by natural means the danger of over-population to keep the balance in human affairs as wonderfully as it has in the circling of the stars in the firmament. one notes these various assaults not with any sense of fear for the church to which christ has promised his assisting presence, until the end of time, but as signs of the times, as warnings to those who thoughtlessly are led into the toils, to those who for a little temporary gain would deliver up the souls of their children that they may drink the doctrines of satanism and lie down in pleasant places to die of its noxious poison. _modern literature._ the day has gone by when the discussion was between christian and christian; it is now a stand-up fight, a fierce struggle, every day becoming more fierce, between faith and infidelity. a spurious philosophy has prevailed under one name or another in every age, from the days of democritus down to our own; but it has received recently an impetus from the teachings of materialists. emboldened by their success in research, the professors of the materialistic school have attempted to lift the mysterious veil of nature, and have challenged the truths of revelation on the most fundamental principles of the christian creed. in fact the materialistic theories which today deify reason and make matter eternal, and which recognize in matter the principle and perfection of every form of life, are the substratum underlying almost every species of modern literature. it is this materialistic philosophy in the trappings of popular literature which is filling the earth with crime and making the lives of men a veritable inferno. its pernicious influence has been stealing over the minds of men till it has succeeded in shaking to its centre the whole fabric of social life in almost every civilized country. the irreligious works of the european continent have been translated into english, and circulated in every variety of form from the most ornate to the cheapest and most accessible. they are on the counters in the department stores, in the most flashing advertisements where their most prurient qualities are held out as inducements to the buyer. nor are works of a similar spirit and tendency wanting in our own literature. and these works, adapted to every class of readers, and to every grade of intellect, revive the old errors, while fertile in the production of new ones, flatter the pride of the understanding, stimulate the passions of the heart, and diffuse their poison in every department of human learning and through every form of publication by which the popular mind can be reached. an evil press, largely circulated and read by many who suspect no evil, is rapidly sapping the faith of the multitudes. unfortunately there exists in our nature a propensity to evil. whatever flatters our passions or vicious inclinations we, as a rule, are readier to follow than what is good and virtuous. hence we find that bad books are more generally read than good ones, and that newspapers wherein religion and morality are outraged, have a very wide circulation. if anything more than bad example tends to propagate vice, it is bad reading. vice in itself is odious, but when decked out in the false coloring of a cleverly written book it becomes enticing. young inquisitive people--and young people are generally inquisitive--are tempted. after perusing such a book their horror of vice is much lessened; they take up another, and so, by degrees, their ideas become perverted. nearly all men agree that it is the familiarity with vice which develops all the immoral and vicious propensities of human nature, and it is this familiarity with the face of vice which is so contagious, and draws so many into the vortex of crime in the large cities while its absence keeps country life so pure and untarnished. it is indeed hard to say which is the more dangerous among books--those which are written professedly against christ, his church and his laws, or the furtive and stealthy literature which is penetrated through and through with unbelief and passion, false principles, immoral whispers and inflaming imaginations. to read such books is a moral contagion--it is to imbibe poison--it is certain spiritual death. it is certainly a melancholy reflection, that any such books should be extant among us. it is sad to think that any of the human species should have so far lost all sense of shame, all feelings of conscience, as to sit down deliberately and compile a work entirely in the cause of vice and immorality, which, for anything they know, may serve to pollute the minds of millions, and to propagate contagion and iniquity through generations yet unborn--living, and spreading its baneful influence long after the unhappy hand that wrote it is mouldering in the dust. it is a striking observation made by one of the fathers of the church that "as the authors of good books may hope to find their future crown lightened by the degree of wisdom and virtue which their writings impart through successive generations, so the writers of evil books may well dread an increase of punishment in the future world proportionate to the pollution which they spread, and the evil effects which their writings shall produce as long as they continue to be read." to what frightful deserts must the writers of modern literature look forward in accordance with such a prediction! the literature of today, light and popular, stately and philosophical alike, teems with immorality and infidelity. it displays itself in every form of poetry and prose, in lectures, essays, histories, and in biblical criticism. there it stands palpable and terrible, like milton's death, black and horrible, obstructing the light of heaven, and overshadowing god's fair creation. the press is a catholic institution: a catholic invented it; a catholic first printed books, and the catholic church first fostered it. but the enemies of catholicity have seized it and turned it into an engine of destruction to faith and morals. the newspapers in most cases teem with scandals which absorb the thoughts or arouse the passions. such reading familiarizes the young with the details of vice, and their better nature is overshadowed by the vicious existences pictured, while the moral strength to resist temptation is slowly but surely weakened. then there is that inward strife and struggle--that warring of the passions from which no one is free--that tendency to evil which seeks to cast off the salutary restraints of religion, and which has carried down with the current of innate corruption the greater part of mankind. all these things are borne in upon the soul, day by day, and year by year, as though life were to last forever, until the unhappy reader begins to abandon the absolute realities of life and law and to dwell in the house of a diseased imagination like a leper waiting for the moment of final dissolution. what we want thus today is an arousing of the catholic conscience in this regard, the cultivation of catholic instincts, and the acquiring of catholic habits of thought. while the banners of atheism and anarchy are waving throughout europe, the forces of infidelity and indifference are doing their deadly work at home. the spirit of revolt, born of corruption and bred of disease, has swept across the ocean and finds a resting place nearer home. the enemy has laid hold of a great part of the press and is using it for the destruction of morality and the perversion of truth. the wells of knowledge and the fountains of truth are being daily and hourly poisoned by means of the current literature. a spiritual pestilence is passing over the earth, and the souls of millions are perishing through its foul agencies. if god, therefore, has given to catholics wealth of ability and strength of mind, and richness of opportunity to engage in the intellectual combat which is being fought everywhere around us, they ought to use these means to oppose the tide of infidelity and indifference which is sweeping over the nations by putting against it the barrier of good books and catholic reading. in many quarters the mists are beginning to lift; many intelligent people are beginning to look to the catholic church because of her openly proclaimed doctrines, her magnificent works in building up the mighty fabric of the social world, and her lofty ideals of humanity. secularism in education is confessing its failure at home and abroad. the toiling masses are turning to the church for the solution of the vexed problems of labor. the creeds are falling to pieces for want of unity, cohesive principle and authority. thousands are flocking back to the old church in sheer weariness of spirit. the thousands would swell into millions if we were up and active in the dissemination of good books, and did our part in helping on the cause of catholic literature. the catholic book, the catholic magazine, the catholic newspaper is the fiery cross spread from hand to hand, to light up the darkness and to kindle the faith of the multitudes. _socialism._ one of the forces that make most of contemporary conditions is that of socialism. modern socialism originated in a group of uncompromising materialists. marx was one of the young men who revolted from the extravagant idealism of hegel, into the crassest materialism, along with such men as feuerbach, bruno, bauer and engel. his theory of the universe reduces it to matter and force, and that of duty to the pursuit of pleasure in its material forms. the man's life was better than his creed, for there were some heroic sacrifices in it, for the good of the cause. but his theory neither called for nor sanctioned any such sacrifices. they were due to the pervading atmosphere of an imperfectly christian civilization, with its ideals of pity and sympathy. they could not find their roots in a materialist view of the process of human history, which is but the tale of "conflict of existence and survival of the fittest," not much above the wrangling of wild beasts in the forests. while it is only the errors of socialism that meet with opposition from sound minds--the good points not being identified with the system except by accident--there are some of its errors that are fundamental and therefore deserve a larger exposure than the rest. among these is its false conception of the relation of individuals to society. socialism of its very nature absorbs the individual into the state in such a way as to sacrifice the individual rights to the state's authority. this is an essential feature of all forms of real socialism, and it puts an end to morality because it destroys all personal freedom and responsibility. in the early days the christian church vindicated the inherent rights of conscience against the unholy tyranny of pagan rome, which claimed authority to dictate the belief and control the religious practices of its subjects. socialism would sacrifice the rights which the church has won and must continue to defend, and proposes to erect a state, with unlimited power in the civil and ecclesiastical spheres. in the view of the socialist the state does not exist to furnish opportunities for personal development or defend our rights. in that state the individual must exist only for the sake of society, and his principal function is to promote the temporal well-being of the governing section. to this conception of man's nature they attempt to give a scientific authority. they borrow from biology the idea of an organism and then, passing over the essential differences, they apply it in an unqualified sense to the state. thus we are not surprised to read that "the relations of individuals to the social organism are on a par with the relation of cells to an animal organism." this monstrous doctrine implies that man is not a person, a free moral agent, with god-given rights and duties independent of the state. it is gronlund who says of rights: "there are none save what the state gives," and he adds "this conception of the state, as an organism, consigns the rights of man to obscurity." it certainly reduces man to a condition of physical and moral slavery. could it be established socialism would thus prove a more frightful despotism than any pagan government of the past. not a remnant of freedom would be left. the nature of our work, its place, time and reward would be fixed for us. the state could dispose at pleasure of our persons, our families and our property. it would lay its hands upon the family to destroy its unity and stability. the masses of mankind would be placed completely at the disposal of a small and closely centralized body of politicians whose judgments would have the force of infallibility and who would be armed with irresistible power to enforce their ideals and to compel the observance of their laws. the socialists continually assert that religion in their system will be a private affair and no concern of the state. but they also take it for granted that once socialism is realized religious belief must vanish. indeed, it is impossible that church and state, which both claim to be supreme and conflicting directors of mind and conscience, should co-exist. an omnipotent collectivism would not long bear with a spiritual authority which speaks in god's name, which necessarily disputes its jurisdiction and the truth and justice of its fundamental principles, and which is therefore a constant menace to its stability. in order to save itself such a state would naturally try to suppress and destroy the church. in the face of such a proposed revival of pagan society, it becomes more and more necessary to insist upon the doctrine of man's spiritual dignity and moral freedom, and the unassailable basis upon which they rest. a personal god, whose essence is absolutely moral, is the fundamental truth, which alone can safeguard our rights from unjust attack. the obligation to obey the laws which god has imposed upon our conscience carries with it the power and the right to obey. our rights thus are not given and cannot be taken away by such a state. they have their origin and authority in the supreme author of our being. their validity is bound up with the sovereign rights of god, and are therefore, absolute and inalienable. it is in this divine right that we find the broad and strong foundation of our freedom and of all the rights of man. thus socialism is antagonistic to human liberty. inseparably bound up with it is a materialistic philosophy. in the name of science--a word more abused than liberty--its adherents claim the right to revise and revalue all standards of morality. experience shows that it thrives and propagates best in the soil of materialism. its natural allies are the secularists. its irreconcilable foe, and the most formidable obstacle to its progress, is the catholic church. it is, in fact, not merely a party for social reform, but a wing of the irreligious army, operating among the working classes, doing its utmost to sow mistrust and hatred of religion and to excite the hope and belief that the amelioration of the condition of labor depends upon the success of materialism. while thus a warning is in order to those who are led by its utterances, its greatest danger lies in the fact that it may do much mischief in spreading an irreligious spirit, and weakening the foundations of belief among men whom it may not capture to its economic heresies, but who permit themselves to be influenced by what it might term its philosophic doctrines. _modernism._ out of the multiplicity of religious sects and philosophical systems with which europe was deluged at the beginning of the present century, came the new form of modernism, which is, as the holy father has said, but the synthesis of all errors. that vague endeavor to reduce christian life and teaching to the vagaries of modern thought found its exponents in germany, italy, france and england. schell in germany sounded the note, and fogazzaro in milan took it up, picturing it in his novel "il santo." in england it found favor with the unhappy father tyrrell, and in france, with the abbe loisy and houtin. the latter, according to present reports has become reconciled with the church. the watchful eye of the present pontiff, pope pius x., detected the nature and aims of the new sect before it had yet time to fasten itself upon the minds of the faithful. accordingly, on september , , he issued to the world his famous encyclical, _pascendi dominici gregis_, treating of the errors of modernism. the encyclical was divided into four parts as follows i. the errors of modernism--_agnosticism_--this error declares that the human reason is merely a phenomenon, and cannot raise itself to the knowledge of god. this negation offers free access to scientific atheism, which is an opposition to what faith teaches. _immanence_--agnosticism is the negative side of modernism; immanence constitutes its positive constituent. this doctrine would have it, that religion is a fact and as such demands an explanation; this is not to be sought from without, but from within. religious immanence thus places as the basis of faith the _sensus cordis_, or a feeling of the heart, taking its origin from a _need of the divine_ hidden in the folds of the subconscious. _subjectivism_--modernism supposing that the religious conscience is the supreme rule in all things relating to god, declares that that conscience, attracted by the unknowable, either exalts the phenomenon, that is, transfigures it, or deforms, that is, disfigures it, according to circumstances, persons, places or time. _symbolism_--modernism declares that man, before thinking upon his faith, creates that faith, either in an ordinary and vulgar manner, or in a reflex and studied way. in this second case there come what are called the dogmas of the church. these dogmas, modernism says, are the instruments of the believer, the symbols of his faith. thus the essence of modernism tends, from a social point of view, to subject the doctrines of the church to the vague but dominant ideas of the moment, unknown yesterday, and forgotten tomorrow. from the point of view of the individual it would subject objective, theological and philosophic truth to the sensation of the individual and to the sentiment of the ego. ii. how these errors are employed.--the pope then points out the principles which the modernist theologian makes use of. for the theologian of this kind, dogma arises from the need which the believer has of elaborating his own religious thought. for him the sacraments are only the symbols of faith, the consequences of worship, or something instituted for its nourishment. inspiration is the need which the believer has of expressing his thought by writing or by word; in this way it approaches very nearly to poetical inspiration. it teaches, moreover, that the church is only the product of the collective conscience, which, in virtue of vital immanence, comes down from a first believer; autocratic at first, it must now, according to modernism bend itself to the popular forms. to the historian, history is only the relation of phenomena, and should thus exclude god and everything divine. it declares that the apologist ought not to depend upon the church, but should seek the aid of historical and psychological researches in the treatment of religious questions. the reformer would thus reform everything according to the above principles. it would replace positive theology by the history of dogmas, which it would write in accordance with history and science. as to worship, the modernists while desiring to be indulgent in its regard, would nevertheless gradually diminish it. finally, they look for the abolition of the roman congregations in general, and particularly of the holy office and of the index. _condemnation_--the holy father then condemns modernism: "but these suffice to show by how many ways the doctrine of the modernists leads to atheism and to the destruction of all religion. indeed, it was protestantism which made the first step upon this path; then followed the error of the modernists; atheism will follow next." iii. the causes, the results and the purpose of modernism. the proximate cause are the errors of the intellect; its remote causes are curiosity and pride: _non sumus sicut ceteri homines_, and philosophical ignorance. the purpose of modernism is threefold: the abolition of the scholastic method in philosophy, the abolition of tradition and of the authority of the fathers; and the abolition of the ecclesiastical magisterium, the teaching church. iv. _the remedies_--first. the teaching of scholastic philosophy and theology in all seminaries and catholic universities, and at the same time the study of positive theology, which ought to be prosecuted in a sincerely catholic spirit. second. the expulsion of all modernists from the rectorship and professorships of seminaries and catholic universities. third. the care which bishops as delegates of the holy see, should take to keep from their priests and the faithful all modernist writings. they should be exceedingly careful not to give their _imprimatur_ to books which are modernist in any way. fourth. the institution in each diocese of a council of censors to revise carefully all catholic publications. the formula _imprimatur_ of the bishop will be preceded by the _nihil obstat_ of the censor. the priest may not undertake, without permission of the bishop, the direction of journals or reviews, and the bishop will carefully examine those who write as editors or correspondents. fifth. the bishops will forbid congresses of priests, except in rare occasions, when they shall be certain that there is no danger of modernism, laicism, or presbyterianism. sixth. there shall be instituted in every diocese a council of vigilance, to watch over books and schools. they shall make certain as to the authenticity of the relics venerated in the churches, and see that the truth of pious traditions are not ridiculed in the newspapers; they shall maintain a surveillance over institutions of a social character and the publications pertaining thereto. seventh. one year after the publication of this encyclical, the bishops and religious superiors shall hand to the holy see a diligent report, detailed and complete on the matters which constitute the object of the articles of this encyclical; and thenceforth they shall do the same in their triennial report to the holy see. such is in brief the resume of this famous document, whose appearance aroused the interest of the whole world. that its measures were effective is evident from the history of modernism in the last three years. the incipient heresy is practically dead in the pale of the church itself. without it has invaded protestantism, giving rise to pragmatism and all those vagaries which fill the philosophical curriculums of many universities. the holy father himself has gained a signal and complete victory. and now a word as to the purport of the book which begins in the following pages. it is intended primarily to demonstrate that the struggle against the church has ever been a struggle against the holy see as the head and centre of all catholicity. the repudiation of authority began with the reformation. then indeed it was merely an outcry against the claim of the church to possess her authority from god. later this error developed into a repudiation of human authority. finally there came the repudiation of all lawfully constituted authority whether human or divine. it was the sequence of protestantism, rationalism and radical socialism. moreover, in the catholic countries themselves the church ever remained strong as long as all looked loyally to the centre of unity in the holy see at rome. the whole history of jansenism, gallicanism, febronianism and josephinism, is but the history of human ambition battling against the divine authority of the sovereign pontiff. and even then the result would have been a calming down of inordinate ambition before the claims of reason and revelation, had not an impetus come from without. for a hundred years there has not been a revolution in the latin lands which has not been aroused and engineered by the influence of english speaking powers. so that it may be said that if the catholic countries were left to their own ways, they would remain not only catholic, but up to date in every form of enlightenment and progress. the war upon religion chapter i. the earlier crises. the history of christ's church on earth has ever been a story of storm and stress. the faithful heart of today mourns in discouragement over the evils that afflict the church in the opening decade of the twentieth century; yet it needs but a glance at the past to convince us that the severest trials of the spouse of christ have happened in times long gone by. she has seen the tempest arise out of the clear sky; the clouds of persecution have hung low, at times even enveloping her in their gloomy shadows; she has seen the lightning's flash and heard the loud roar of the thunders of human wrath, while the hurricane swept over the face of the earth overturning the fondest memorials of her progress, and levelling to the dust the proudest monuments of her civilization. she has prostrated herself to the ground and with buried face has called upon the mercy of god to comfort her sorrow and heal her wounds. and when the storm has passed, she has lifted up her eyes to behold the glory of a newer day, the rainbow of hope, telling of that ancient promise: "for, behold, i am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world." the story of the past has been told too often to need repetition in this place. our interest lies entirely with modern days, with the struggle of the church against the spirit of anti-christ incarnate in all the movements of error from the sixteenth century until our own times. and thus, while we are seeking the causes of that anti-christian spirit, we cannot help regarding with interest the influence exerted by the protestant reformation upon the intellectual and moral life of europe. the abandonment of the old faith led, by a natural sequence, to estrangement from christianity itself. this is so palpable that it is surprising how the innovators could have overlooked the fact that to abuse and ruin the one meant the wounding and destruction of the other. indeed, had not organized catholicity existed at the time, and in its then form, there would have been no concrete christianity to reform, but only some archaeological remnants out of which it would have been difficult to construct even an imperfect idea of the religion of christ. coincident with the great revolt against the church was the impetus given to the study of the natural sciences. this coincidence, unhappily, assumed to the unthinking the appearance of cause and effect, as if the intellectual powers of man had been stunted and repressed under the regime of ecclesiastical authority, to be freed and exercised in a time of revolt against the church. this unfortunate conviction was gradually instilled into the minds of the masses by men brilliant of intellect, but unscrupulous in their hatred of the church and of her teachings. the people accepted the premise and followed it out to its conclusion; that catholicity should be regarded as an enemy, and as such should be persecuted and destroyed. they were unable to measure the force of circumstances surrounding the new unfolding of the physical sciences, to recognize the evil character of many champions of the new order, or the glamor which the awakening of new studies cast upon minds hitherto engrossed with the sober logic of the schools. the fact, moreover, that many of the old theories with regard to natural phenomena must eventually have yielded to the processes of scientific evolution had not occurred to them. all these were forgotten or missed in the enthusiasm for the novelties of nature, and under the influence of a gaudy literature they permitted themselves to believe that the church was responsible for the tardiness of the awakening, and hence that she should be discarded, that christianity as a consequence should be uprooted, and that the intellect should acknowledge no other deity than the impersonal god of nature. moreover, the church had ever been recognized as the supreme authority in the matter of christian morality. to attack, therefore, her existence could mean nothing less than to open wide the floodgates of iniquity, to cast down the barriers that had hitherto restrained the evil passions, and to proclaim the reign of license and anarchy. these fatal conditions, taking their rise in the sixteenth century, grew into palpable being and gave place later to that monster of iniquity which today holds half of the world in its grasp. _jansenism._ the influences of the protestant revolt were more far-reaching than the limits of any provincial or national territory, for although the council of trent, in , had met the challenge of european discontent with a rigid investigation into every disputed point of ecclesiastical discipline, nevertheless the roots of the new heresy penetrated by secret channels into those very countries which had repudiated the advances of luther, and taken their stand upon the basis of roman catholic unity. it was but natural that a people nurtured upon the living bread of apostolic doctrine as delivered to them through the ministry of the holy see should look with distrust upon the excessive and destructive theories of the german protestantism. they found, however, in the morbid doctrines of calvin a certain weird and uncanny attraction, which like an hypnotic obsession led them on until they mistook empty and high-sounding formulas for the clear light of truth. it was not that they did not see much that was repugnant and absolutely untenable in calvinism; nor would they openly espouse the outward organization which the heretic called his church; but they hoped to find a middle path as far removed from the rigid fatality of the genevan heresiarch as it would be from what they would call, the laxity of the roman church. out of the resulting confusion was born the spirit of jansenism, which proved to be little else than the calvinistic heresy disguised under the external forms of catholic unity. it was a heresy all the more dangerous that its assaults were not directed in the open and from the outside, but were nurtured within the very household of the faith, where it spent its arrows of discontent upon the children of the sanctuary kneeling in devotion under the shadow of the altar. midway between the strongholds of luther and calvin lay the country of the netherlands, rendered important at the time through the influence of its celebrated university of louvain. out of its curious people came that cornelius jansen whose name was to acquire a questionable celebrity through his championship of the new idea. a quondam conspirator in the interests of philip ii., he had been raised, for his services in that direction, to the see of ypres. for twenty years he studied in his own way the great tomes of st. augustine, reading his whole works ten times over, and his refutation of the pelagians as many as thirty times. it was a period when theologians were much interested in grace, free will, predestination, and kindred questions. the church had already condemned the theories of baius in that regard, and calvin's errors, which he claimed to have found in st. augustine, had been refuted time and again. it was the work of jansen to revive in a more classical form all these condemned doctrines and to seal them by an appeal to st. augustine. to this end he finished before his death, in , an immense work entitled _augustinus_, which, however, was not published until , two years after his death. its heretical character was immediately recognized. the university of paris censured five leading propositions extracted from the work, which were in turn formally condemned by pope urban viii., in . the jansenists, however, endeavored to meet the papal condemnation with casuistic subtlety. they resorted to a distinction between the orthodox sense of the propositions and the heretical sense in which they might be read; they thus claimed that jansen understood them only in their orthodox sense, while they agreed that the propositions were rightly condemned in a heretical sense. hence they declared that the five propositions were either not at all contained in the work of jansen, or at least that they were not there in the sense condemned by the bull of urban viii. to these observations pope alexander vii. replied by the bull of , wherein he condemned such distinctions, declaring that the five propositions were taken from the work of jansen, and that they were condemned in the sense of that author. the jansenists retorted by asserting that the papal bull was only a simple regulation of discipline, and that it could exact nothing more than a respectful silence. practically the whole action of the new sectaries amounted to an effort to restrict the scope of papal infallibility, in as much as they declared the pope might rightly adjudicate in regard to dogmatic doctrines, but not in regard to dogmatic facts. thus, he was right in condemning the five propositions, as they held, but wrong in declaring that jansen taught them in a heretical sense. this distinction was formally condemned by clement xi. in , and the bishops and prelates of france were obliged to subscribe to a formula declaring that they condemned the propositions with heart as well as with lips, according to the mind of the holy father. the novelty of the jansenistic ideas raised up, especially in france, a coterie of supporters, brilliant of intellect, but entirely dominated by pride and egotism. foremost of these was the abbe st. cyran, who became the sponsor of the jansenistic doctrine after the death of its inventor. a calvinist in sentiment, however orthodox by profession, his career was hardly such as might be expected of an apostle of truth. his treasonable life had awakened the hostility of the great richelieu long before the advent of jansenism, and he had spent years of weary confinement in the prison of vincennes. his character was one of duplicity as is evident from his general tone of teaching. it was he who, one day, informed st. vincent de paul, that he would speak the truth in one place if he thought the truth would be appreciated there, and its opposite where ever he should find the people unable to apprehend the truth. it is significant of his pride that he declared that the holy scriptures were clearer in his own mind than they were in themselves. this strange individual upon his liberation from prison, at the death of richelieu, set himself up as a martyr and contrived to chant his woes into the ears of the courtly set that hovered about the french throne. he succeeded in casting the glamor of fashion over his jansenistic theories. he was welcomed especially by the members of a family destined to hold the destinies of jansenism in their grasp, the arnaulds of port royal. there were two brothers of especial prominence, and two sisters, angelique and agnes, who had received their initiation into jansenism in all good faith, but who became later on most bitter in their advocacy of principles which no true catholic could hold. the abbey of port royal, near paris, thus became the very stronghold of the new sect and drew to its doors some of the brightest men of the day. among these was that celebrated pascal whose "provincial letters" exerted such an influence in stirring up a national hatred of the jesuits. the abbey of port royal, however, proved itself too great a factor in the seditious movements of the day. it was suppressed by a royal order in , and its buildings demolished in the year following. just at the moment when the followers of jansen seemed most ready to yield to the claims of saner thought, when the instructions of the holy see were already bearing salutary fruit, the heresy took on a new lease of life, and opened up an avenue to greater dissension and error. in the year appeared a work entitled: _moral reflections upon the new testament_ by pasquier quesnel, an ex-priest of the oratory of jesus. he was a man who had already incurred suspicion and censure. the book, although conceived in a tone of lofty piety and deep meditation, was found nevertheless to be a very storehouse of jansenistic ideas. it was received with enthusiasm even by many pious souls whose mental acumen could not perceive the poisonous spirit that it harbored. cardinal noailles, archbishop of paris, was at first one of its strongest supporters until the book, after a critical examination by a papal commission, was condemned by pope clement xi. in . the bull by which this condemnation was proclaimed was the celebrated "_unigenitus_," a factor not alone in the religious, but in the political history of the eighteenth century. after the appearance of the bull, cardinal noailles forbade his people to read the "_moral reflections_," but at the same time he refused to receive the papal bull without some qualification. other prelates proceeded to greater extremes than this, four of them having the hardihood to appeal from the bull to a further ecumenical council. this attitude was a declaration of open rebellion; it was a call to many who had hitherto hidden behind the screen of prudent silence. a new religious faction was formed and rapidly grew in numbers. they termed themselves the appellants from their appeal to a future council. to meet the disastrous effects of this growing schism pope clement xi. in put forth the severe bull, "_pastoralis officii_," wherein it was declared that anyone, though he be cardinal or bishop, refusing to accept the bull "_unigenitus_" should thereby cease to be a member of the church. the contest went on ten years longer before cardinal noailles and the french episcopate with but few exceptions yielded entirely to the demands of the holy see. the affair, however, though quieted to a great extent in the ranks of the clergy, was nevertheless secretly supported by a number of contumacious persons, and openly by the parliament of paris and other governmental bodies, who brought persecution to bear upon the issue. in de beaumont, archbishop of paris, forbade his clergy to administer the sacraments to any sick person who should be unable to produce a certificate from the parish priest stating that he had been to confession. he was cited before the parliament in , and was later banished from paris. the controversy was finally settled by clement xiv. who permitted that the sacraments might be given to a person whose opposition to the bull, "_unigenitus_" was not notorious. such are the barest outlines of the rise and progress of jansenism during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. beneath its surface lay strong and lasting issues, the effect of which is often perceptible even in our own day. one of these was its determined opposition to the society of jesus. ever loyal to the holy see and to the sound doctrine of the church, the jesuits could not but be an obstacle in the path of the sectaries, who in turn strove by every means for their annihilation. both in the circles of religious life and among the courtiers and ever restless against the restraints of morality, the jansenists pursued their foe with relentless energy. through pascal and his followers the resources of polite literature were brought to bear against the defenders of the faith, until, just as jansenism was losing its last hold upon european society, their great purpose was accomplished, and the society of jesus was suppressed. into the private life of the ordinary catholic the principles of jansenism injected a gloom and sadness similar to the extravagant sullenness of puritanism or its sister, calvinism. rigor and haughty reserve were accompanied by a false humility which caused its votaries to shun the sacraments, to despair of god's mercy, to abandon all hope after the commission of one sin, or on the other hand a presumption without grounds upon an election which god had denied to others less fortunate. it threatened for a moment a total overturning of belief in the salutary life of grace and an utter misconception of the free will of man which must lead eventually to a wandering away from god and ultimate atheism. that the spirit of jansenism is not altogether dead our holy father, pope pius x. assures us in recommending the daily reception of holy communion: "the poison of jansenism," he says "did not entirely disappear. the controversy as to the dispositions requisite for the lawful and laudable frequentation of the holy eucharist survived the declarations of the holy see; so much so, indeed, that certain theologians of good repute judged that daily communion should be allowed to the faithful only in rare cases and under many conditions." our present holy father disposes of jansenistic doctrines by opening up freely the graces of the holy sacrament even as far as its daily reception. _quietism._ a movement which rivaled jansenism in its peculiar fanaticism was that quietism which owes its public notoriety to a spanish priest, michael molinos, who in published a work entitled: _spiritual guide leading the soul, by means of interior progress, to attain perfect contemplation, and to the rich treasure of interior peace_. therein was developed a religious system that was apparently in harmony with the most orthodox asceticism, but which upon examination proved to be fundamentally false and seducing towards the most rampant error. the writings of molinos were condemned by pope innocent xi. and their author compelled to do severe penance for the harm they had caused. in substance quietism taught that the interior life or spiritual perfection is reached when the soul, by union with god, holds itself in a thoroughly passive state with regard to everything else. in all things whether of this life or of the next, in questions of virtue as in questions of sin, the perfect soul wishes for nothing and fears nothing, not even hell; it is simply in a state of inactivity. hence good works are not only unnecessary for salvation, but are even a hindrance to perfection, since the soul must act to perform them. farther still went this theory in insinuating that when a person is attacked by even the grossest temptations he should never offer any positive resistance, such resistance being in itself action. hence that the tempted person was never responsible for his actions, be they ever so infamous, since the criminality affects only the sensitive part of the soul, not the higher part which is united with god. it is quite evident that a theory such as this could only lead to grave excesses not only in the matter of doctrine, but especially in that of morality. examples were not wanting to show the practical workings of the new movement, which, however, rapidly disappeared under the watchful eye of the holy see. it is worthy of note that a discussion over the orthodoxy of the writings of one of this class, a certain madame guyon, residing at the time in france, effected an estrangement between those two brilliant lights of the french church, bossuet and fenelon. the latter, in his too great sympathy for one whom he believed too harshly judged, published a sort of defence of her. the defence was at once condemned by the pope, and fenelon out of the humility and true loyalty of his great heart submitted immediately and without reserve to the decision of the holy see. _gallicanism._ [illustration: louis xiv.] in a line with jansenism as a force destructive of the influence of catholic grace upon modern life was the movement of gallicanism. it differed, however, from jansenism inasmuch as the latter affected the interior life of the church while the former touched upon her external regimen. its genesis can be traced far backward in history, though it never attained to proportions capable of inspiring fear until the middle of the seventeenth century. a feeling of restless annoyance at the restraints exercised by the court of rome upon his absolute dominion in france caused the young king louis xiv. to regard the holy see with something of hostility even from the beginning of his reign. in fact, were he disposed in his youth to act with fairness towards his ecclesiastical neighbor there were not wanting courtiers who instilled into his ear the notion that the holy see was seeking his utter abasement and ought therefore to be reminded strongly of its true position. an unfortunate event in the year brought this hidden fire to a flame. at that time the duc de crequy was acting as ambassador of france in the eternal city. this ambitious and testy nobleman signalized his residence in rome by permitting and even encouraging his retainers and friends to defy the city's laws, to insult the roman authorities and to abuse in every way possible the hospitality extended them by the papal government. their acts of rowdyism at length inflamed the police and the soldiery to such an extent that a body of corsican troops in the service of the holy father threw off all restraint and attacked the french retainers, killing three or four of them. the ambassador abandoned rome in an excess of fury and brought a garbled version of the affair to the ears of louis xiv. the king in his anger retaliated by dismissing the papal nuncio, and demanding from the pope the most absurd and extravagant conditions as the price of reconciliation and peace. the holy father, pope alexander vii. had been guiltless in the whole affair, he had suffered patiently the impositions of de crequy and his lawless band, and he displayed an extreme anxiety to repair any evil committed by his own soldiery; he could not, however, yield to the exactions of the french king. thinking to meet the warlike threats of louis by the aid of the catholic sovereigns, he found himself abandoned by all of them, and thus left at the mercy of the infuriated monarch. louis xiv. had already proceeded to take possession of the papal city of avignon, and his armies were already on the march towards rome for the purpose of intimidating the holy see. the pope perceiving that the crisis demanded immediate and radical action, agreed to many of the humiliating conditions, and thus secured an exterior appearance of peace. this was in the year . the passions of louis xiv. were not, however, composed, and were awaiting only a favorable occasion for breaking forth into open heat. this occasion was offered in connection with a dispute concerning certain royal privileges in the ecclesiastical order, termed the _regalia_. this was the right of the kings to enjoy the revenues of a vacant bishopric, and to confer, during the vacancy of a see, benefices without care of souls. the parliament of paris, by a sentence of , had extended the regalia to all benefices which might be included in countries where the regalia had not previously obtained. king louis xiv., by his edicts of and , had confirmed that sentence, and the french clergy for fear of greater evils had approved. two bishops, however, stood out against the edicts, and were deprived of their revenues in consequence; they were at the same time supported in their opposition by pope innocent xi. the holy father, when the question was brought before him, appealed to a decision of the second council of lyons, held in , which opposed the extension of the regalia. in two briefs of march and september , he exhorted the french monarch to respect the rights of the vacant sees; but when his exhortations were only disregarded, he issued two other briefs in and , adding ecclesiastical menaces to his exhortations. _the gallican liberties._ it was at this juncture that louis xiv. had recourse to his influence over the clergy in france, and perceiving that his encroachments were meeting with firmness upon the part of the pope, he determined to effect a legal enactment whereby the powers of the sovereign pontiff should be made forever subservient to the will of the french king. already in the university of the sorbonne had signed six articles denying not only the divinely constituted primacy of the pope, but asserting an undue independence in the powers of the king himself. to revive these articles as well as to strengthen his position in regard to the holy see, the french monarch convoked at paris in an assemblage of the clergy which was attended by thirty-four archbishops and bishops, besides as many minor prelates. the members of this assemblage were invited individually by the king's order, and only such were called as were known to be in harmony with the pretensions of louis xiv. fenelon was not there, nor mabillon, nor bourdalone, nor many another brilliant light of the french church, for the simple reason that they could not support the king in his unjust usurpations. the convocation possessed at least one strong mind, that of bossuet, the celebrated bishop of meaux, whose presence and action in such an assembly it is difficult to reconcile with his usual manly loyalty to catholic principles. his excuse, that he hoped thereby to ward off greater evils and even schism from the church is hardly of any value against the depressing influence of the act itself. the result of this assembly was the formal framing of the notorious gallican liberties which in a few words meant: " . that the pope could not interfere with the temporal concerns of princes either directly or indirectly. " . that in spiritual matters he was subject to a general council. " . that the rules and usages of the gallican church were inviolable. " . that the pope's decision in points of faith was not infallible, unless attended by the consent of the church." four days after the signing of these articles the king put forth an edict imposing their observance strictly upon all the country. his commands were as follows: " . we forbid all our subjects, and all foreigners resident in our kingdom, secular or regular, of whatever order, to teach in their houses, colleges, or seminaries, or to write anything contrary to the doctrine herein stated. " . we order that all those hereafter to be chosen to teach theology in all the colleges of each university, whether seculars or regulars, shall subscribe to the said declaration before being permitted to act; that they shall submit to teach said doctrine, and that the syndics of the faculty of theology shall present to the local ordinaries and to our attorneys-general, copies of the said submission, signed by the secretaries of the said faculties. " . that in all the colleges and houses of the said universities, in which there are several professors, secular or regular, one of them shall be annually appointed to teach the doctrine contained in the said declaration; and in those colleges in which there is but one professor, he shall be bound to teach that in one of every three consecutive years. " . we enjoin upon the syndics of the faculties of theology annually to present, before the commencement of the lectures, to the archbishops and bishops of the cities in which they shall be, and to send to our attorneys-general, the names of the professors appointed to teach said doctrine; and we enjoin the said professors to present to the said prelates the writings which they will dictate to their scholars when they shall order them. " . it is our will that hereafter no bachelor shall be licensed either in theology, or in canon law, or received as doctor, until he shall have maintained that doctrine in one of his theses, and having shown proof of such support in such theses to those having power to confer the degrees. " . we exhort and enjoin all archbishops and bishops to exert their authority to cause the doctrine maintained in the said declaration to be taught within their dioceses." artaud de montor, in his _lives of the popes_ writes in this connection: "assuredly, if the archbishops and bishops made no resistance to the signing of the four articles; if they thought that such a notification might become useful to the church; if they recognized that the authority of the pope was to be thus boldly limited; if they thought it requisite to curb what bruno called the tiberine tyranny, they must now at length have discovered that they were subject to a perfectly insatiable authority, which would employ not even the language of the country to exhort and enjoin them to exert their authority in diffusing a doctrine more administrative than christian, and more military than religious, with a view to substitute for the words of peace, concord, and mildness, new words of command, injunction, unbridled will, to which catholicity was no longer accustomed. from the attorney-general who thus lectures the bishops, to the attorney-general who has immediately under his hand the secular power, there is, in such times, but a step. the same hand countersigned a document, and ordered the sword to leap from the scabbard." in the meantime the roman court was not idle. on the th of april, , pope innocent xi. annulled the propositions by a brief, and refused to grant canonical bulls to the bishops named by king louis xiv. the hostile attitude of france continued openly for ten years, and it was only in that the king agreed that the provisions of his edict were not to be enforced. the spirit of gallicanism, however, after being thus fostered for a decade in the schools and colleges of france was not to be eradicated by a mere permission of tolerance. a generation had grown up imbued with its false principles and ready to cast broadside through the country the seeds of a lasting hostility towards the papal prerogatives. in fact, all through the whole course of the eighteenth century the creed of gallicanism governed in a large measure the whole action and liturgy of the french church. its attitude of independence in regard to the holy see very naturally encouraged that rising anti-christianism which found its most potent foe in the successor of st. peter. even in the nineteenth century it possessed a certain life. napoleon, in his organic articles, imposed it upon the seminaries of france even more strictly than did louis xiv., at an earlier day. it has ever been the great obstacle to catholic unity in france, the source of persecution against the church; and if it virtually died in that country about the time of the vatican council, in , its absence was never more noteworthy and consoling than at the present day when the whole french episcopacy stands united to a man in its loyalty and devotion to the holy see. _van espen._ scarce had the battles of jansenism and gallicanism been ended, than a new campaign of destruction was inaugurated against the peace and unity of the church. born of the confusion of jansenism, it found a sponsor in bernard van espen, the flemish canonist, it was introduced to the world by febronius, and it reached its development under the austrian emperor, joseph ii. until the eighteenth century the student of canon law believed his task fulfilled if he had read diligently the great code of ecclesiastical law, if he had commented upon the decretals, and had drawn therefrom conclusions entirely in harmony with the mind of the church. this mode of procedure seemed altogether too slow and antiquated to van espen, professor in the university of louvain, who accordingly put forth, between the years and a new work upon the laws of the church, the method of which was startling as its purpose was revolutionary. it was styled the _universal ecclesiastical law_. it was no attempt to study or tabulate the old laws; it was rather an investigation, conducted in a spirit of prejudice, into the origin and authority of the laws by which the church was governed, and an endeavor to minimize thereby the rights and prerogatives of the roman see in favor of lesser and more recent human institutions. the new system of van espen was taken up with avidity by every student who imagined he had a grievance against the holy see. it became the order of the day to wander back piously to the primitive days of christianity, to explore its history for evidences of modern institutions, to seek therein for the organization of the vatican and the roman curia, and not finding them in days of clement and cletus, to raise the voice in loud protestation against the novelties introduced by the popes. they scoured the ages of history to gather up every expression of hostility against the temporal power or the institution of the cardinalate; they recorded scrupulously every complaint against the revenues of the holy see; they revived the epithets concerning the "superstition, the fanaticism, and the darkness" of the middle ages. in a word they framed a system whose watchword was the destruction of the papal supremacy, the exaltation of episcopal pretensions, and the ultimate domination of the state in the affairs of the church. _febronianism._ the theories of these pseudo-canonists nowhere found greater favor than among a certain class of prelates in germany, who besides their jurisdiction as bishops of the roman catholic church enjoyed the further dignity and revenues of prince-electors in the german empire. these combinations of politician and churchman could hardly regard with favor the pre-eminence of a bishop in rome who claimed however justly the rights of jurisdiction in any manner over them. they thus welcomed with open arms any daring spirit who would minimize or destroy the value of the papal supremacy, and thus leave them in undisturbed possession of their pretended rights, carrying as these did with them a broad license to all the worldly luxuries and distractions of a political court. the prince bishop of treves in germany was one of this kind, and it is not surprising that when a canonist or theologian of the new order suddenly appeared at his court that the latter should receive all the honor and encouragement such a bishop could bestow. the court of the bishop of treves produced in the middle of the eighteenth century such a spirit in johannes von hontheim, a suffragan of the electoral diocese, and better known under his pseudonym of febronius. in appeared in germany some copies of a mysterious quarto entitled: _the state of the church and of the legitimate power of the roman pontiff_, bearing the name of _justinus febronius_, and the place of publication _bouillon_, though the author was in reality johannes von hontheim, and the place of its publication, frankfort-on-the-main. the book, finally increased to five volumes, was rapidly spread throughout europe. in venice it appeared in two editions, latin and italian. in france it was translated twice. in spain the council of castile defrayed in part the expenses of a new translation, and that edition according to cardinal capara became the law for the court and the nation. portugal provided both a latin and a portuguese text which latter was distributed gratuitously. germany also produced both a latin and german edition. the book was condemned by clement xiii., in , and anathematized by the greater number of the german bishops upon its appearance, yet it made so much noise in the world, was so highly eulogized by the ignorant, and so greedily welcomed by the enemies of the church, besides the fact that it has served to sanction so many desolating assaults upon the faith, the hierarchy and the discipline of the catholic church, that it is necessary to discuss it in detail, in order to undeceive many who even today hold some of the views espoused by febronius. and first as to the theme around which the author has woven his network of sophisms. george goyau, in his _catholicism_, thus synopsises the whole teaching of febronius: "febronius recognized the pope as the vicar of jesus christ; he professes that the church has need of a chief to direct it, and that the bonds which unite the members to the chief ought to be sacred and inviolable; he desires that the primacy be conserved in the church with care, and that it be piously honored; and photius who strove to sap its foundations appears to him a fool. but this primacy is to febronius only a simple pre-eminence; all that it imports is a right of inspection and direction over the different dioceses, similar to that which an archbishop possesses with regard to his suffragans; but it does not signify that the pope has any jurisdiction." he holds, moreover, that "the power of the keys was conferred by christ to the whole body of the faithful; it belongs to them all _radicaliter et principaliter_; the bishops exercise it under the title of _usufruct, usualiter et usufructualiter_; while as to the pope, he is superior to each bishop in particular in virtue of what hontheim terms the _majoritas_; but that majoritas does not extend over the whole episcopal body in its entirety; the episcopal body is thus the real sovereign of the church." it was a consequence of such ideas that febronius should utter the usual outcry against the "abuses" of the roman church, and recommend a general council of all christians to the decisions of which all must bow. in all this he pretended to seek the furtherance of unity in the great christian body. the false doctrines of febronius were met with denunciation and refutation from all reliable sources. clement xiii. in , clement xiv. in , and pius vi. in , raised their voices solemnly in condemnation of the book. the ablest theologians of the church gave their services to combat its errors. among these were especially zaccaria, amort, kleiner and st. alphonsus liguori. it is noteworthy that the first refutation of febronius came from the pen of a lutheran, frederick bahrdt, in leipzig. among the many able discussions upon the work of hontheim that of the abbe bernier deserves to be reproduced in part, not only because it reflects the sentiment of the time, but especially for its keen exposure of the falsehoods and inconsistencies which abound in the work of the heretic. it is found in a letter to the duke louis eugene of wurtemburg dated . "it is astonishing how the treatise on the government of the church and the authority of the pope, by febronius has made so much noise in some of the states of germany; neither in its depth nor in its form was this book ever capable of impressing men of intellect or such as pretend to the faculty of reasoning. whatever of truth the author produces is taken from french theologians, particularly from bossuet, in his _defense of the declaration of the clergy of france of _; his falsehoods and errors are extracted from protestants and jansenists, or from those canonists who seek to humiliate the court of rome in her time of trouble. various materials, which were never intended to be taken together, have been maladroitly compiled by febronius; he has lighted torches which destroy each other; as he never takes his stand upon principles universally admitted, he is continually falling into contradictions; he denies in one place what he affirms in another; he sustains one theory at the very time that he professes to reject it; it would be sufficient to compare the titles of the sections and chapters of his work, to perceive that he either does not understand what he writes, or that he is not in accord with himself." the abbe thereupon goes on to point out the most glaring contradictions in the work, and to show that to any person not yet blinded by prejudice, the very contention of the author is destroyed by his evident lack of truthfulness. in , through the influence brought to bear upon the archbishop elector of treves by the papal nuncios, caprara and bellisomi, febronius was led to reconsider his action, and signed a retractation of his errors in a letter sent to pope pius vi. three years later, however, in , he published a _commentary_ on his _retraction_, which served to show the spirit of insincerity which dominated him throughout his whole career. he died in . febronianism was not so disastrous in itself as (it proved to be) in its consequences. its immediate result was a weakening of that loyalty which catholic peoples owe to the centre of unity in the holy see; but through all that, it affected, in a certain way, the very foundations of the social and political life of europe. although its immediate effects were almost simultaneous in their action, yet for the sake of brevity we shall notice them in order. . the revolt of the elector archbishops of germany. . the schism of scipio de ricci. . the final development into josepheism. _the congress of ems._ for two centuries, there were three nuncios sent by the holy see to germany: to vienna, to cologne, and to lucerne. in , the new elector of bavaria petitioned pius vi. for a fourth nunciature, to munich. this measure, so just and useful in itself, irritated the german archbishops, already too jealous of the jurisdiction of the nuncios in the empire. the three electors, clement wenceslas of saxony, archbishop of treves; maximilian of austria, archbishop of cologne, and baron d'erthal, archbishop of mayence, were the soul of the resistance to the will of the sovereign pastor. jerome collerodo, archbishop of salzburg, and legate of the holy see, joined forces with them, and when cardinal pacca, the papal nuncio, arrived at cologne, the archbishop forbade any official reception, pretending that henceforth he would recognize no external jurisdiction. a like treatment was accorded to zogno, the new nuncio to munich. in august, , the delegates of the above-mentioned four prelates, assembled in a congress at ems, near coblenz, and agreed upon measures to be taken in order to restrict the authority of the pope in his relations with germany, a restriction that, in their anticipations, was to mean nothing less than complete annihilation. the congress of ems formulated twenty-three decisions, which have become known as the punctuations of ems. their purport was to suppress the immunities which were enjoyed by convents in regard to episcopal jurisdiction, to forbid all intercourse between the religious orders of germany and their superiors in rome, to suppress the nunciatures to germany; they would also abolish the custom by which the holy father granted to german bishops the faculty, to be renewed every five years, of granting matrimonial dispensations. moreover the pontifical documents might not be circulated without the formal acceptance of each bishop; they changed the formula of the oath of fidelity to the pope as fixed by pope gregory vii. the electors, in fine, made themselves thenceforth the legislators for the church of germany, and as such addressed their "punctuations" to the emperor for his approval. it is significant that joseph ii. much as he had encouraged the electors, one of whom, maximilian, was his brother, in their hostility to the holy see, nevertheless he received the acts of the congress coldly; it was not his policy to permit so much power to the german bishops when he had already decided that all ecclesiastical authority in his dominions was to reside in his own hands. nor was the king of prussia, protestant as he was, any more enthusiastic in support of the rebellious electors. on the contrary he accorded to the papal nuncio, mgr. pacca, every reasonable service, even receiving the latter, with all the formalities due to his ambassadorial character, at wesel, in . in fact the advent of this great representative of the holy see proved a god-sent blessing to the catholic people of the german states; for the spirit of revolt so obstinately settled in the minds of the ecclesiastical princes, found no echo in the hearts of their subjects, always as loyal to the holy father as they were disgusted and humiliated by the time-serving attitude of those to whom they had the right to look for guidance and example. the anger of the four archbishops against mgr. pacca increased despite all reverses. in they petitioned the diet of ratisbonne to cause the framing of a law suppressing altogether the nunciatures. the german princes, however, had no intention of issuing thus a formal insult to the court of rome, and the law was not passed. moreover, the archbishops had by this time discovered that their suffragans had taken umbrage at the fact that they were not officially notified as to the proceedings of the congress of ems, thus weakening the effect of that assembly in its most vital point, the adhesion of the episcopate to the repudiation of papal authority. finally, after various vain attempts to gain the aid of the secular princes, three of the archbishops, those of salzburg, treves, and cologne, yielded a tardy obedience to the authority of the pope; the archbishop of mayence, von erthal, held obstinately to his position until after seeing himself abandoned by his quondam friends, he was at length driven from his see by the advent of the french revolutionary troops in . by this event febronianism lost, for a time at least, the influence it had exerted for thirty years over the church in germany. _the synod of pistoia._ while these events were taking place in germany a like movement was observable in northern italy. the diocese of pistoia, presided over from by scipione di ricci, was the scene of the trouble. this bishop, fanatically addicted to the reforms introduced into the austrian states by joseph ii. held himself in constant opposition to the holy see, especially because of the pope's rejection of his errors. as counsellor to the grand duke leopold of tuscany, he permitted the government to meddle with ecclesiastical affairs, to regulate all matters of worship and ceremony, and to assume full control of ecclesiastical teaching. catechisms were composed without consulting the bishops, and schools were established by professors imbued with doctrines accredited by the government. in , at the instance of the grand duke, ricci assembled at pistoia a synod which was to formulate regularly the reforms he had in view. the schismatical bishop placed as moderator in this gathering that tamburini who had been deprived of his professional office by cardinal molino, and who had not the right even to be present at an ecclesiastical assembly. the synod adopted all the doctrines of the french appellants, and reconsecrated the old errors of baius, jansen, and quesnel. the year following, the people of prato, in the diocese of pistoia, arose in arms against the tyrannical bishop. they overthrew his episcopal throne and burned his coat-of-arms, after having despoiled his palace and seminary of the books and manuscripts found therein. despite these reverses ricci, still sustained by the grand duke, held firmly to his position. he caused new edicts hostile to legitimate religion to be put forth, which might have had disastrous effects but for the death of joseph ii., which caused leopold to abandon tuscany for the imperial throne. the errors of ricci were formally condemned by pope pius vi., in the constitution _auctorem fidei_ of . ricci, however, held his see in opposition to the will of the sovereign pontiff until , when at length he sent his resignation to the emperor. he was finally reconciled with the church through the good offices of pope pius vii. in , and died in . _josephinism._ joseph ii. of austria, son of the celebrated maria theresa, emperor of the holy roman empire, was the incarnation of that spirit which, beginning its active life in jansenism, was formulated in the doctrines of febronius. more anti-roman than all his predecessors, except perhaps frederic ii. of hohenstaufen, he was destined through his practical alliance with the anti-christian spirit of his day, to sound the knell of that same holy roman empire, which was dissolved fifteen years after his death. [illustration: joseph ii. of austria.] it was not, indeed, that joseph ii. desired to be, or to be considered un-christian or un-catholic. he had his own ideas of the church of christ, which were not the ideas of the rest of christendom. his principle of rendering to god what belongs to god, and to caesar what belongs to caesar, he interpreted with a large margin in favor of caesar, to such an extent, indeed, that the tribute to god besides being determined wholly by himself, was to be so meagre as almost to be non-existent. following the lead of his too liberal counsellor heinke, he distinguished, much in the manner of the modernists of today, between what he considered essential and immutable in the church, and what was only accessory and changeable. the former he would accept as coming from christ, and as manifested in the primitive church; under the latter category he classed all that might not suit his caprices, especially all that was bound up in the authority and functions of the holy see, its supremacy, for instance, its infallibility, its temporal power, its court of cardinals, its curia, and all else that, according to him, were but abuses arising from the mutations of history. hence he looked upon himself as one whose duty it was to reform the church, at least within the extent of his own dominions, and he entered upon that work with a vigor worthy of a nobler cause. in the church as conceived by joseph ii. everything was to be subordinate to the needs of the state. it was to be his church, and its bishops and priests were to be his bishops, his clergy. persuaded that he was the absolute and sole source of authority he employed all his energies in isolating his bishops, clergy and people from the centre of catholic unity. the system of vexatious persecutions which he introduced to uphold his ideas gave to his system the name of josephinism, a system which, but for the intervention of the french invasions, might even today have become the ruling force of germany. on april nd, , he issued his edict against the religious orders; it was at this point, in accordance with the ideas of frederic ii. and the encyclopaedists, that his subversive work ought to begin, a process indeed, which has been imitated in our own days by jules ferry, and by combes. eight days later, another edict exacted the imperial _placet_ for all bulls or other documents emanating from rome. the canonical oath of the austrian bishops at their consecration, was modified to restrict all loyalty to the holy see; the papal nuncio, mgr. varampi, was made the object of vexatious measures, and all recourse to rome, even for marriage dispensations was interdicted. still more, the emperor suppressed all sodalities and confraternities, abolished processions, restricted the number of the holy days, and even went so far in his meddlesome measures as to regulate the number of candles to be lighted at the various devotions, and forbade the use of coffins for burial, making it obligatory to bury the dead in shrouds of cloth. at the same time, however, while interfering with and persecuting his catholic subjects, his mind assumed a spasm of broadness to such an extent as to induce him to offer freely to jews and protestants, what he denied to his co-religionists. at the same time it must be acknowledged that the headstrong attitude of the emperor owed much of its obstinacy to the influence of counsellors in whom the spirit of flattery was more pronounced than any care for the welfare either of the church or the people. foremost among these was that prince kaunitz, who after serving through many successive reigns had acquired an ascendancy in the imperial household which would require strength of character in the sovereign to destroy. the mind and policy of joseph ii. were almost entirely in the hands of this politician, who had imbibed every rampant theory that the times could offer. influenced by voltaire and the encyclopaedists his reverence for religion was dictated only by the demands of expediency. throughout his whole reign the emperor listened to the counsels of this statesman in every matter of state or religion. nevertheless, in order that his reforms might appear to have the sanction of ecclesiastical law, the emperor gathered around him canonists and professors only too willing to prostitute their casuistry to the imperial will. riegger, a disciple of the jesuits in his youth, and later a freemason, compiled in his _outlines of ecclesiastical law_ a new digest out of all sympathy with the laws that bore the papal approval. eybel published an _introduction to the ecclesiastical law of the catholics_, and by his teachings in regard to the laws of marriage, created such scandal as to require his resignation from the professor's chair which he held; this fact, however, in no way diminished his credit at court. pehem, another professor of the same kindred, diffused his untenable theories among the priests of the empire. chief among these destructive canonists was the benedictine rautenstrauch, whose influence extended throughout the dominions of the emperor. it was through the instrumentality of this cleric that joseph ii. brought about the unification of the universities and seminaries of the empire, building them up upon a plan of utter independence of all papal control, and making their programme of ecclesiastical studies emanate from the powers of the state. naturally the guidance of teachers such as the above could lead a selfish and ambitious mind like that of joseph ii. to any extreme of absurdity; nor was the emperor slow in following their counsels. in the meantime pope pius vi. regarded with grave anxiety the eccentric tactics of the emperor. at first he made use of all his paternal condescension in the hope of leading joseph to better sentiments. perceiving, however, that he was gaining nothing by his representations, the pope resolved upon a decision which surprised the world. breaking with all traditions of the holy see, he declared his intention of proceeding in person to vienna. with this end in view he accordingly wrote to the emperor stating his desire for an interview close at hand, with the hope of thus reconciling the rights of the emperor with those of the church. to this letter full of touching kindness, and announcing so unusual an action on the part of the holy see, he answered in his pride: "as the object of your journey touches upon matters which your holiness regards as doubtful, but which i have settled, permit me to believe that you are giving yourself needless trouble. i ought to warn you that, in my resolutions, i act only in conformity with my reason, equity, and religion. before coming to a decision, i weigh the matter long and well, and i consult my council; but once having decided, i remain firm." [illustration: pope pius vi.] pope pius vi. was not discouraged by the discourteous reply of the emperor; nor did he give heed to the remonstrances of the cardinals and of his own family. on february , , he set out for vienna, reaching his destination on march following. the emperor and his brother maximilian, that archbishop of cologne who had already so deeply wounded the heart of the pontiff, came to meet him some leagues from the capital. as soon as the papal carriage was seen, the two royalties descended and walked forward to meet it. the greeting on both sides was most affectionate. the visit of the holy father, however, did not prove in every way a consoling event. an imperial ordinance had forbidden the austrian bishops from appearing in the presence of the pope. the latter, nevertheless, could officiate pontifically on easter day, and a few days later were opened the negotiations which had determined this journey of the sovereign pontiff. unfortunately these conferences produced no result at all commensurate with the sacrifices entailed. joseph showed himself inflexible in every main contention, and his concessions affected only points of the slightest importance, namely the promised cessation of new encroachments, and the renewal of the official relations between the nuncio varampi on the part of the holy see and cardinal herzan, representing the emperor. the departure of the holy father from vienna called forth the same official courtesies as marked his arrival. on his return to rome, pius vi. was pained to see that his journey, which had met with disapprobation at its start, was more loudly censured now on his arrival in the eternal city. these criticisms, indeed, seemed somewhat justified in the events which happened almost immediately, for the news was brought that the emperor still continued to abolish convents and to confiscate their property. moreover, the see of milan being then vacant, joseph appointed its new incumbent, although he knew very well that such right belonged to the holy see. prince kaunitz, the austrian premier, who had added brutality to hostility during the pope's sojourn at vienna, continued his insults, and threatened the bishop of rome officially that he would bring about a startling rupture of relations. the feeble and too confiding emperor encouraged these audacious menaces. indeed, writings of the most venomous character were being circulated throughout the empire, their object being to throw discredit upon the papal authority to the exaltation of that of the emperor. a visit of joseph ii. to rome in december of the following year, , effected little towards softening his sentiments in regard to the rights of religion in his dominions. a change of heart, however, came to him at length, but only when the evil seeds he had sown had sprung up into a harvest of destruction for that empire which he valued more than god. in his mania for regulating everything, he decided to consolidate all the seminaries of his states into four principal establishments at vienna, pesth, pavia, and louvain; and in these institutions the tribunes were to be given only to enlightened professors, that is, to professors in harmony with josephist ideas. at louvain this measure met with a particularly hostile reception: cardinal de frankenberg, archbishop of malines, refused absolutely to send his young men to louvain, until he had obtained the promise that he should have control of the professors. when the university opened, in , the emperor's professors, stagger and leplat, were driven away by the students, who themselves soon abandoned the establishment. cardinal frankenberg and the nuncio oppizzoni, were accused of inciting this movement and were punished, the one by being recalled to vienna, and the other by an order to leave the netherlands. at length, in , the netherlands, disgusted with the conduct of the emperor, declared their independence, and signalized the last day of that year by signing their own constitution. movements of unrest and rebellion began to manifest themselves at the same time in hungary, and in the tyrol, and although pope pius vi., forgetful of the injuries he had received at the hands of the austrian monarch, interceded with the angry people in his behalf, the harm was too great to be remedied. joseph ii., who had brought these evils upon himself by his disregard of the duties he owed to god and his church, died of a broken heart on february , , begging that his monument should bear the inscription: _here lies joseph, who was unfortunate in all his undertakings_. the purpose of joseph ii., however, like those of his teachers, bore fruit more abundant that they would have desired. out of their determined efforts to undermine the authority of the holy see, and the sanctity of catholic institutions, the forces of revolution and anarchy drew their inspiration. the way was prepared, and the enemy had only to march dry-shod to their sanguinary victories. _suppression of the society of jesus._ the rapid rise of the society of jesus in the various countries of europe, naturally attracted the attention of all those whose aim was the acquisition of as much personal power as was possible, to the detriment of individual, family, and social rights, and who had reason to fear an influence that stood for human progress and equal rights to all. the jesuits soon assumed great prominence among the religious orders. their excellence was admitted both in school and seminary; their learning gained for them the spiritual direction of influential persons; they became the confessors to princes and kings; they displayed extraordinary zeal in the practices of devotion, especially that in honor of the sacred heart of jesus, and they had already embraced the whole world in the field of their missions. they became a power that excited the envy of the less active, and the fear of potentates whose greed and inhumanity found a check in the gentle teachings of the followers of st. ignatius. more than all, they had ever shown themselves energetic in their support of ecclesiastical authority, especially in times when the latter was threatened by the vagaries of gallicanism, jansenism, and like movements; in the state itself they showed themselves veritable defenders against the machinations of those secret societies which even in the eighteenth century were very much in evidence. [illustration: father ricci, s. j. the last general of the society of jesus before the suppression in .] it was impossible that an organization such as theirs, blessed by the spirit of religion, going about doing good, defending the principles of true christianity against any and every assault, should escape the odium and persecution of spirits whose chief claim to existence lay in the desire to pull down the structure of civilization and to erect in its place the temple of anti-christ. the vials of irreligious wrath were poured out upon them to the last dregs. in the various countries of europe they met with proscription and expulsion. in they were driven from portugal through the efforts of the infamous pombal; in they were forbidden to live as a society in france; they were exiled from spain in , from naples in , and from parma in . finally every effort of anti-christianism and masonry was exerted to bring about their complete extinction in the whole world. in pressure was brought to bear upon pope clement xiv., who, while refusing to listen to the invidious complaints brought against them, nevertheless, for the sake of a temporary peace, was compelled to sign the decree of their suppression. the suppression of the society of jesus may be regarded as the first great blow in the modern war of anti-christianism. it was the annihilation of the vanguard of the army of civilization and christianity. with the society of jesus out of the way, the campaign of social, moral, intellectual and religious subversion found an open road to the excesses of anarchy and revolution. the jesuits, however, like well-disciplined soldiers of christ, bowed to the will of the vicar of christ, and bore their humiliation in silence for forty years, till the day when the pope, pius vii., freed from the chains of persecution, called them back to honor and usefulness. _the sophists._ the suppression of the jesuits met with no greater joy than in the hearts of a certain class of intellectual perverts who may be regarded as the actual founders of modern anti-christianism; these were the sophists who in that period of the eighteenth century were already flooding france and europe with a deluge of immoral, irreligious and uncivilized literature. it is to england that we must go to find the immediate origin of this desolating spirit. there, among the socinians and deists, a school arose that taught men to trifle with the sublime truths of revelation and to undermine the foundations of religious belief, men like shaftesbury, collins, tindal, and bolingbroke, who strove to subject religion to the state, and regarded virtue as a mere human instinct; who declared reason antagonistic to revelation, and saw in the holy scriptures nothing more than a collection of pretty fables. it was not until the eighteenth century that the influence of their theories began to ruffle the catholic atmosphere of france. there were not wanting birds of passage who, while hibernating among the philosophic haunts of london, gathered up the seeds of infidelity to scatter them broadcast upon the soil of france. [illustration: rousseau.] the writings of montesquieu ( - ) display a sneering attitude towards the most sacred teachings and institutions of the church. jean jacques rousseau ( - ) in his _social contract_ and similar works endeavored to destroy the social order and bring back humanity to primitive barbarism. but more terrible in the rage of his iniquity than all others, in the great war of anti-christianism, was the arch-infidel, francois marie arouet, later called voltaire ( - ). of him might have been written the lines which milton puts into the mouth of satan: "to do aught good never will be our task, but ever to do ill our sole delight; as being contrary to his high will, whom we resist. if then his providence out of our evil seek to bring forth good, our labor must be to pervert that end, and out of good still find means of evil." par. lost, bk. i. born in paris of a mother whose loose morals made her a by-word to all who knew her, he imbibed at her breast that appetite for lawlessness and iniquity which ruled him to the last hour. his mother dying during his infancy, he became the protege of an abbe who had abandoned the duties of his sacred calling for the allurements of the world. in his boyhood he was sent to the jesuit school of louis le grand, where the perversity of his character manifested itself to such an extent that one of his teachers prophesied that he would one day become the coryphee of deism. thereafter his career was one of unlicensed depravity. more than once he was arrested and cast into prison; he had reason to hate the bastille, for he himself had experienced the life of a criminal therein. [illustration: voltaire.] that writer was not far wrong who asserted that irreligion is but one form of the insanity which is born of immoral living. it is remarkable in the anti-christian literature of all times, and of none more than our own, that its heroes and heroines are the abandoned roués and harlots who, having defiled the temples of their own bodies, seek to carry the abomination of desolation into the holy places of god. in this matter voltaire was no exception. his immoral life was lived ostentatiously and boastingly. we will not, however, enter upon a list of the criminal observances of this man, preferring to leave such details to their proper place. it will be sufficient to point out the purpose that underlay all the actions and words of his life. this purpose is best indicated by citations from his letters and other written works. his hatred for the church and for morality is clearly displayed in the works that he gave forth during the later years of his life. in his _age of louis xiv._, a work that has been made an obligatory text book in the educational establishments subject to the university of france, we find passages full of insinuations and falsehoods directed against the holy see. "the pope's spiritual authority," he says, "is now destroyed and abhorred in one-half of christendom; and if in the other half he is regarded as a father, he has children who sometimes properly and successfully resist him." again he asserts: "to swear fidelity to any other than one's own sovereign is high treason in a layman; in the cloister it is an act of religion." he terms the pope "the foreign sovereign." his _pucelle_ is a diabolical attempt to besmirch the pure character of joan of arc. it was a work, however, which excited so much disgust in all circles that voltaire endeavored at first to disclaim it, and it was many years before the whole poem could venture forth with his authorization. the high society that could welcome its foetid pages was already ripe for the horrors of the revolution. from to the end of his life voltaire assumed as his motto the impious expression: _ecrassez l'infame_, "crush the infamous thing," intending thereby to indicate christ and his church. throughout all these years the term appears constantly in his own and his disciples' letters. how he revels in his insane and satanic hatred, hardly finding words that can fitly convey his utter aversion for the things of god! the christian religion he proclaims "an abominable hydra, a monster which a hundred hands must destroy." he bids the philosophers scour the streets to destroy it "as missionaries journey over land and sea to propagate it." he bids them dare everything even to being burned in order to destroy christianity. again he calls upon his fawning admirers to annihilate christianity, to hunt it down, to vilify it, to ruin it. the perusal of his works leaves one with the impression that voltaire was constantly troubled with a nightmare, in the effort to free himself from which he emitted his lugubrious wailings. in the mob of paris united to crown him at the theatre francais. referring to these manifestations the impious one wrote: "my entry into paris was more triumphant than that of jesus into jerusalem." the further work of voltaire was in accordance with expressions like these. his intimacy with frederic ii., of prussia afforded the blasphemer many opportunities of indulging his satanic impulses. among the anti-christian sophists who made the palace of berlin their rendezvous was a school of freemasons who had already begun to celebrate the final downfall of the papacy. for the more rapid realization of this hope various expedients were advocated, among them being the pet resort of irreligious tyrants,--the abolition of the monastic orders, a project which found its foremost exponent in voltaire. such was the man to whom anti-christianism looks up, as to its great and original patriarch, a man utterly devoid of the human moral sense, a man to whom all that savored of the good or virtuous was an abomination and a thing of infamy, a man whose methods of deceit are expressed in his own words: "lying is a vice only when it harms. you ought to lie like the devil, not timidly or once only, but boldly, and all the time. lie, lie! my friends, and some of it will be sure to stick." from his works anti-christianism took the chief formulas of its creed, and following in the footsteps of its master, it has performed deeds worthy of his approbation. close in line with the irreligion of voltaire was the work of denis diderot, the founder of the infamous _encyclopaedia_, a huge mass of calumny against the religion of christ, abounding in falsification of history, in doctrines inviting to immorality of life and subversion of all lawfully constituted authority. the poison of the _encyclopaedia_ was quickly assimilated by the aristocratic element of paris. at first the salons, those rendezvous of the higher classes, took up the work, and by their discussions gave it a tone. it was highly acceptable to a social order, at that time immoral and impious to a degree; but its venom gradually overflowed to the masses, ever eager to imitate the excesses of the great. the efforts of the leaders of irreligion were ably seconded by the various systems that arose towards the close of the eighteenth century, as so many developments of deism and the worship of nature. the sensationalists, under the tutelage of la metrie, condillac, helvetius, and holback, would make of man a mere machine, more ingeniously organized than the brutes; thought was reduced to a mere physical operation of the human body; hence the negation of the spiritual world, the spiritual soul, and the hope of immortality. the rationalists in germany led to disbelief in the inspiration and authenticity of the holy scriptures. pantheism, agnosticism, idealism, and a thousand and one like branches of error, sprang forth from the revolt of the earlier sophists, all contributing their part to inflame and destroy the souls of men, and leading them on by sure steps to final anarchy. the very multiplicity of such sophistic theories, arising amidst the darkness of anti-christian night, like the constantly changing figures in a kaleidoscope, were but the ghosts of a hideous phantasmagoria, that, scarcely seen, resolved themselves into something more strange and more appalling. it was the gathering of the spirits of iniquity for the grand assault upon the city of god. _freemasonry._ prominent among the subversive forces of the eighteenth century was that of freemasonry and its kindred associations. as to its real origin but little is known. the modern order seems to have taken its rise in england in the year , its first constitution appearing in . the new association spread with remarkable rapidity over the continent, founding its lodges in berlin, leipzig, brunswick, naples, paris, and other places, before the middle of the century. on its first appearance it was denounced as subversive of government, and as a peril to the social order. the members of which it was composed were men of evil omen, voltaire, condorcet, volney, laland, mirabeau, frederic ii., and the like. pope clement xii., in his constitution, _in eminenti_, of , condemned the order. thereby all who should join a masonic lodge, assist at any masonic assembly, or have any connection with the sect, were _ipso facto_ excommunicated. benedict xiv., in , issued the bull, _provides_, renewing the decrees of his predecessor, and giving many cogent reasons for his act. the deep secrecy which involved all the operations of regular freemasonry in the eighteenth century was not so closely guarded in one of the independent forms of its spirit, known as the society of the illuminati. the founder of this order was adam weishaupt, a professor of ecclesiastical law at ingolstadt. the end of this secret society, and the purpose which was to dominate it, was clearly the overthrow of all existing social and religious institutions. the statutes exacted from the members a blind obedience. instead of works of devotion, prayer-books and the lives of the saints, it prescribed for its devotees the works of the ancient pagan authors or modern books of a similar description; its books of religion comprised such titles as: _the system of nature_ and the works of rousseau. the new order gained many disciples even among the crowned heads, who were slow to perceive that the very spirit of the organization was centred in hatred of the throne as well as of religion. as soon as the real nature and purposes of the _illuminati_ became known, efforts were at once made by the civil authorities for their suppression. in this they were aided greatly by the inevitable dissensions introduced into the order in the course of time. in all secret societies, communities, and confraternities, were prohibited in bavaria. in weishaupt was expelled from ingolstadt, and after many wanderings finally found refuge with the duke of saxe-gotha. before his death he had the good fortune to repent and was reconciled with the church. the order, everywhere fallen into disfavor, was gradually either disbanded, or incorporated into the other forms of the masonry of the times. its influence, however, like that of freemasonry, remained, and was exerted with great vigor in the unhappy events that began in the year . _neo-paganism._ towards the end of the eighteenth century, the youth of europe, and especially of france, educated to admire merely natural virtue, enamored of the ideal beauty and of the political and civil institutions of other times, found in their schools a spirit of paganism. little in touch with the true spirit of christianity, it was easily led by the glamor of resounding phrases and classical figures. these classical studies, in which the excellent and virtuous teachers of the time found only literary and philological exercises, became through the evil influence of outside doctrinaires a subtle poison to the young mind, and brought to a point that rage for pagan antiquity which formed one of the most dangerous and misleading features of anti-christianism. from the time of the reformation heterodoxy had sought its weapons in antiquity, whose uncertainty and obscurity could easily provide material for the desolating revolt against christian authority. machiavelli had already denounced modern christianity as the cause of popular and national decadence; politicians lost themselves in adoration of the greeks and romans; to the sophists everything was grand and noble, in as far as it was pagan, everything was barbarous in as far as it receded from the ancient type. it was one of the methods of the war of impiety: anti-christianism had need of antiquity as a mantle to cover its emptiness: it felt it must needs seek aid in the names of celebrated pagans, and thus strengthened, it might dare to abandon the christian era, and take refuge around a roman or greek civilization resurrected and placed in a position of honor. classical education unconsciously aided in this mode of warfare, and while the school teacher, with the best of intentions in the world, taught his pupils to admire the great beauties of the classical authors, without attending to the false principles and doctrines, intended for a social order entirely different from the christian, there were not wanting those who profited by these studies to lead the pupil to a love of the pagan philosophy therein contained. by their efforts the roman and greek world was held up as the only condition that could provide true happiness, the only political society worthy of man. [illustration: louis xv.] throughout the whole reign of louis xv. this mania for paganism invaded every part of society, so that when louis xvi. ascended the throne, he found it dominant not only in literature, but in art and in life itself. it was reflected in the corruption of the court, in the sensual epicurism of the people, in the very manners of those whose ecclesiastical dignity ought to lead to more modern types of excellence. the hope of a return to the conditions of pagan rome and greece was one of the saddest hallucinations of the new anti-christianism. chapter ii. the french revolution of . all the various forces indicated in the preceding chapter came together in one appalling union towards the year , forming a veritable cauldron seething with malign influences. an unhappy public opinion had been created, "a power vague and terrible, born of the confusion of all interests, strong in its opposition to every power, constantly caressed by princes who feared it, and feared by those who pretended to defy it." the masses of france, provoked by the arbitrary government of louis xiv., angered by the feeble and scandalous rule of louis xv., broke out into license and destruction under the gentle and paternal administration of louis xvi. the latter monarch had come into an inheritance vitiated by the extravagances and follies of his predecessors; with all the virtues and noble characteristics of a sincere christian and refined gentleman, he was destined to bear the punishment for the sins of his fathers. he had long foreseen the hastening storm, and trembled before its coming. the exhausted state of the treasury and the diminution of credit gave the excuse for demands of the most far-reaching extent. the nobility, regarding the situation with indifference, remained inert before the approaching ruin of the social order. unwilling to be disturbed in their round of pleasure, they permitted the evil to grow until the very moment of the crisis. the royal government betrayed its weakness when it convoked the states general, which held its first session on may , . it was an assembly constituted of the three classes of the french nation--the nobility, the clergy, and the common people. of its members, the third estate was represented by ; there were members of the clergy, of whom forty-four were bishops, curés, fifty-two abbes or canons, and seven religious; the remaining comprised the representatives of the noble class. the states general was an event of rare occurrence in french history, and was called together only in the most extreme crises of the state. it was now nearly two centuries ( ) since a gathering of a similar nature had been convoked, and from its unusual character and the gravity of its purpose much was expected on all sides. in the heat of its first debates, and in the rancor aroused in the public mind through the foolish and humiliating etiquette of the aristocratic elements, a strong sentiment of hostility made itself manifest between the people and their former masters. the popular element was conscious of its power, and made it felt almost from the beginning: in the space of a few months it was master of the situation: it had inaugurated a revolution before which the court, the nobility, the clergy, and every order that stood for law and decency went down in ruin. with the political phases of this great crisis we are not particularly concerned at present; the religious aspects of the conflict will suffice for our consideration. [illustration: meeting of the states general.] _confiscation of church property._ on the night of august , , the privileged classes abandoned their feudal rights, and the clergy renounced their titles, and the offerings usual at baptisms, marriages, and funerals. this sacrifice, however, did not suffice to appease the revolutionary spirits, and on august th, the right of the clergy to hold property was called into question for the first time. it was then that buzot pronounced that phrase which was soon to re-echo through the halls of the assembly: "the property of the clergy belongs to the nation." on october , talleyrand, the bishop of autun, so soon to become an apostate and indefatigable persecutor of the church, returned to the charge. after a fawning address to the popular passions he concluded in proposing a law whose first article declared that "the revenues and property of the clergy are at the disposition of the nation," with the condition that the state should recompense the ministers of worship with a suitable salary, which should be solemnly recognized as a public debt. the project of talleyrand was espoused with fierce eloquence by mirabeau and became a law on nov. , , framed in these terms: "the national assembly decrees: first. that all ecclesiastical property is at the disposition of the nation which charges itself with providing in a suitable manner for the expenses of worship, the maintenance of its ministers, and the relief of the poor, subject to the surveillance and according to the instructions of the provinces. second. that in the dispositions to be made for the maintenance of the ministers of religion, there shall be assured every curé a payment of not less than , livres a year, not including his house and garden." [illustration: talleyrand.] on april , , chasset demanded the actual confiscation of all ecclesiastical property, a motion that was voted a law on april th following. the possessions of the clergy, valued at $ , , , were then put up at auction, and sold to speculators at prices that at once betrayed the venal spirit of the agitators. indignant protests went up on all sides against a sacrilege whose effect could be nothing less than the destruction of religion; but all efforts to stay the action were unavailing. _persecution of the religious orders._ the religious orders have ever been the object of peculiar hatred on the part of all that stands for anti-christianism. their close identification with the best interests of the church, and the exemplification in their life of that evangelical perfection to which the whole doctrine of christ invites, became a crime in the eyes of a generation delivered up to lawlessness, and the slavery of passion. it was only natural, therefore, that the impious spirit of should fasten its fangs upon this order of men and women and do them to death. the laws of the time tell the story very graphically. a decree of october , , suspended the taking of monastic vows. the monastic orders were suppressed by a decree of february , : article . the constitutional law of the realm shall no longer recognize solemn monastic vows of either sex; in consequence the orders and regular corporations in which such vows are taken are and will remain suppressed in france, nor may they be again established in the future. article . all individuals of either sex living in monasteries and religious houses, may leave such houses by making a declaration before the municipality of the place, and they shall receive a suitable pension. houses shall also be indicated to which all religious men who do not desire to profit by the present disposition shall be obliged to retire. for the present there shall be no change in regard to houses charged with public education and establishments of charity, until measures have been taken for that purpose. on march , , a law was passed abolishing the monastic habit. on july , of the same year, all religious houses were declared for sale. on august , , a new decree declares that the pension accorded to religious shall be granted to such as should marry, or who have abandoned or shall abandon their monasteries. on august , , a decree orders the evacuation before october , following, and the sale of "all houses as yet actually occupied by religious men or women," excepting such as are consecrated to the service of hospitals or establishments of charity. on august , , a decree was passed suppressing "the corporations known in france under the name of secular ecclesiastical congregations, such as the priests of the oratory of jesus, of christian doctrine, of the mission of france, of st. lazare, etc., etc., and generally all religious corporations of men and women, ecclesiastical or lay, even those devoted only to the service of hospitals and the relief of the sick, under whatever denomination they may exist in france." all such persons, however, were authorized to continue their care of the poor and sick, "but only as individuals, and under the surveillance of the municipal and administrative bodies, until the definitive organization which the committee on aid shall present as soon as possible to the national assembly. those who shall continue their services in houses indicated by the directories of departments shall receive only a part of the salary which would have been accorded them. all irremovable property of such societies shall be put on sale, except colleges still open in which may be utilized for seminaries. pensions shall be accorded all members of the suppressed societies on condition that they take the oath of fidelity to the nation, of maintaining liberty and equality, and of being ready to die in its defence." _the civil constitution._ the defenders of the revolution take great pains to demonstrate that the object of the earlier laws was not anti-christian or subversive of religion, alleging that the spirit of demolition appeared only after and because of the hostile attitude of the church. one has only to read the speeches in the national assembly, and the early laws emanating therefrom, to perceive the hypocritical nature of such assurances. the spirit of voltaire is evident from the first day of the states general, and its tactics of falsehood and deception mark every stage of revolutionary progress until the end. the pretext of establishing a national church is a fact in evidence, whereby under the pretence of safeguarding the liberties of catholics in france, an effort was made to uproot all idea of religion from the minds of the people. the signal for the opening of such a perversive campaign was the passing of that iniquitous law to which was given the name of the civil constitution of the clergy. on august , , an ecclesiastical committee was formed for the regulation of all affairs pending between church and state. it was composed of thirty members, chosen with great care from among the most violent sectaries of the assembly. out of the thirty only nine were able to approach the discussion of ecclesiastical subjects with any appearance of justice, and this small minority soon found it impossible to advance their views in the face of the twenty-one radicals sworn to enslave and degrade the church; they were consequently compelled to resign from the commission, leaving the great work of church affairs in the hands of an impious cabal. the result of the deliberations of this diminished committee is found in the civil constitution of the clergy, which was voted in the constituent assembly, from july to july , . the adversaries of religion betray a naive surprise that the church should refuse to accept a law so worded as the civil constitution of the clergy. yet to anyone acquainted with the spirit of christianity the reasons for such hostility are sufficiently evident. the abbe hubert mailfait in his comprehensive little work upon the subject thus sums up the most objectionable features of the wholly iniquitous law: first. it destroys the religious hierarchy and annihilates the pontifical supremacy when it stipulates: (a) that the new bishops can no longer address the pope to obtain from him the bulls of confirmation (tit. ii., art. ): (b) that the canonical institution shall no longer be given by the pope, but by the metropolitan (tit. ii., art. and ): (c) that the old division of france into dioceses and parishes shall be substituted by a new repartition, decreed without the advice of ecclesiastical authority, and without the approbation of the head of christianity (tit. i.). second. it destroys ecclesiastical discipline: (a) by attributing the election of bishops and pastors to the laity, by way of the ballot and the absolute plurality of votes (tit. ii., art. ) and in decreeing the conditions of eligibility which should be found in candidates to a bishopric or parish (tit. ii.): (b) in determining the number of foundations, prebends, abbeys, priories, etc. (tit. i., art. - and ); in restricting to the point of annihilation the power of the bishops in the nomination to ecclesiastical employments (tit. ii., art. , , , ). third. it sanctions an inadmissible domination of the temporal over the spiritual power, in subordinating the exercise of ecclesiastical functions to the taking of an oath of fidelity to the constitution decreed by the assembly (tit. ii., art. and ). the civic constitution of the clergy thus established in france not only a schism, by depriving the bishops of the right of recourse to the pope, but heresy also in denying the effective primacy of the pope and his sovereign power in the direction of the church and the nomination of her ministers. _sorrow of pius vi._ when the news was brought to pope pius vi. that the assembly was actually engaged in voting the several articles of the civil constitution, his sorrow knew no bounds. public prayers were at once ordered in the churches of rome, while at the same time the holy father addressed an impressive appeal to louis xvi., insisting on his refusing his sanction to the impious measures. letters were also sent by the pope to the archbishops of bordeaux and vienne, requesting them to use their good offices in dissuading the king from sanctioning the law. unhappily these two prelates betrayed the trust reposed in them and used their influence to the opposite end. it is to their credit that they soon perceived their error and repented bitterly for it. in the meantime louis xvi. wrote to the pope beseeching him to approve, at least provisorily, of the first five articles to which he was in a manner forced to give his sanction. the holy father placed the matter in the hands of a commission of cardinals for examination. on october , of the same year, the thirty bishops who occupied seats in the assembly subscribed their names to a carefully prepared memorial entitled _exposition of principles concerning the civil constitution of the clergy_, wherein the new code of laws was unequivocably condemned. in this position the episcopal deputies were supported by the adherence of nearly all the french bishops. their expression of disapproval, however, came too late, as the civil constitution had already received the royal sanction (august , ), and thereby became a law of the realm. [illustration: mirabeau.] a test of the new decrees developed an unexpected resistance, so bitter and decisive in many quarters as to awaken newer outbursts of harshness from the enemies of the church. on november , , after a violent diatribe delivered by mirabeau against the independent bishops a law was voted in the assembly declaring that all clergy "shall take the oath within eight days" under the penalty of being debarred from the exercise of their functions. it stipulated, moreover, that in case of resistance the offending clergy should be treated as disturbers of the public peace, and deprived of their civic rights. this law received the royal sanction on december , and went into execution from that date. in the assembly itself were many bishops and priests who were called upon to give the example of subservience. only a few, encouraged by such notorious characters as talleyrand, gregoire, camus, and gobel, and tempted by the hope of preferment under the new order, yielded to the demands of the revolutionaries. of the one hundred and thirty-five bishops of france, only four, including talleyrand and cardinal de brienne, took the oath. during the following year the latter prelate was degraded from the honor of the roman purple, for his unworthy act. when the question was put to the priests of the country it met with a like reception. one should not be deceived, in reading the anti-christian records of this time, by the long lists of names purporting to be the official register of priests who had subscribed to the oath. an examination of these lists reveals the usual duplicity of irreligious hatred, for in many cases, notably in the lists of paris, they contain the names of church employees, sacristans, choir-singers, bell-ringers, and other ordinary laymen. in other cases we find the names of young men just preparing for the seminary, and school teachers who taught the catechism. often, too, country pastors were deceived into believing that the taking of such oath was an act demanded by their bishop; these, however, were only too anxious to retract as soon as the true state of the case was made evident to them. of the real pastors of the church the number who proved unfaithful to their duty was inconsiderable; the loyalty of the vast body, both of bishops and clergy, forms one of the brightest pages in the dark history of those unhappy years. [illustration: cardinal domenie d. brienne.] in the midst of the general anxiety there came to paris on april , , the bull of pope pius vi., formally condemning the civil constitution and calling upon the bishops and priests of france to stand firmly to the principles of their faith. this act of the holy father was the signal for outbursts of fury in the hostile camp. the papal bull was publicly burned amidst outcries of hatred and execration; women coming from mass were whipped through the streets; ruffians interrupted the divine services and threw disorder into congregations of the faithful, while in many places disorderly mobs invaded the convents and dragging the nuns out to the public squares inflicted upon them the degrading punishment of the scourge. it was in vain that the directory of paris, frightened at the prospect of civil war, permitted catholics to hire places for the use of divine worship; the very appearance of leniency only drew forth greater exhibitions of hatred and persecution. the king himself was compelled to attend at mass celebrated by a constitutional priest, as a pledge of his adherence to the principles of the civil constitution. throughout the departments the persecution had already gone to great lengths; priests were everywhere imprisoned, and the catholic laity who had dared to assist at the catholic mass, or who had refused to take part in the election of schismatical priests, were declared incapable of all civil functions. on june , , the constituent decreed that no bulls or briefs of the pope might be published or propagated in the kingdom without the authorization of the legislative corps and of the king. in the meantime, the apostate bishop of autun, talleyrand, had consecrated two constitutional bishops, who in their turn proceeded to ordain to the priesthood a list of unworthy, illiterate, immoral, and dishonest rascals. the legitimate clergy, shut out from their churches, and driven to the homes of their friends, had nevertheless the consolation of knowing that the faithful were refusing everywhere to acknowledge the authority of the unlawful priests, and demanding in quiet, but significant ways, the services of those who alone had been called to the sanctuary. _the legislative assembly._ the constituent assembly was dissolved on sept. , , and was succeeded on the following day, by the legislative assembly. the new government, in the hands of men more impious than those of the constituent, began their proceedings with the passage of new laws of persecution, to which, however, the king had the courage to refuse his sanction. in spite, however, of the royal opposition new decrees continued to be published. on the twenty-ninth of november, a law was voted declaring that all ecclesiastics, other than those who had conformed to the decree of november last would be obliged to present themselves before the municipality of the place in which they lived, and there take the civic oath, in the terms of art. , title ii. of the constitution, and sign a legal attestation of the same. such as should refuse would be held as suspects in revolt against the law, and with evil intent against their country, and as such particularly subjected and recommended to the surveillance of all constituted authorities. if trouble should arise in the place of their residence they could be evicted from their domicile, arrested by the directory of the department, and, in case of disobedience, condemned to prison. on may , , the legislative assembly published another decree, stating that the deportation of non-juring ecclesiastics would take place as a measure of public safety and police regulation. ecclesiastics were considered as non-juring who, being subject to the law of december , , had not taken the oath; those also who, though not subject to that law had not taken the oath posterior to september rd, preceding, the day on which the french constitution was considered as completed; those also, who had retracted their oath. the deportation could be pronounced by the local authorities upon the denunciation of twenty citizens. a law of august , , prescribed that "all those ecclesiastics who have not taken the oath, or who having taken it have retracted and persist in their retraction, shall be compelled to leave within eight days, the limits of the district or department in which they reside, and within fifteen days they must leave the country. after fifteen days such ecclesiastics as shall not have obeyed the preceding dispositions should be deported to french guyenne. every ecclesiastic, who should dare to remain in the country after such procedures, should be condemned to ten years of imprisonment." this law was applicable to all priests--both secular and regular. about , priests became victims of these violent proscriptions. [illustration: storming of the bastille.] _the massacres of september._ the passion of hatred for religion never abated during the sad days of . law followed law proscribing, persecuting, hunting down all who dared to oppose the evil suggestions of the revolutionary despots. on august , an order was issued appropriating all the sacred vessels of the churches, with the design of converting them into money or utensils of war. another project of the government had for its purpose the banishment of all clergy within a fortnight. this method, however, of getting rid of the priesthood, seemed too slow to suit the ferocious lust of the tyrants--a quicker and surer plan suggested itself. to secure its execution, the leaders of the anti-christian party sought to inflame the minds of the rabble with stories of plots and treason, perpetrated by the priests against the safety of the nation. above all the threatened invasion of the prussians was laid to their door, and the report of the same circulated through every street and alley of paris. the populace, already made familiar with the sight of blood, seized upon the wild reports with the avidity of hungry animals, and needed only a suggestion to lead them on to acts of violence. this was not wanting. in the assembly, marat, legendre and others openly demanded the slaughter of the priests, while danton, the minister of justice, was appointed to see that the project was executed. in the meantime hundreds of priests, and thousands of catholic laity, men, women and children, had been arrested, and filled the prisons of the country to overflowing. on august , the commune of paris put up everywhere placards containing a proclamation of robespierre: "we have arrested the priestly disturbers; we hold them behind prison bars, and in a few days, the sun of liberty shall be purged of their presence." all was ready for a massacre of gigantic proportions. a signal was agreed upon, for the commencement of the bloody deed; it was to be the third discharge of the cannon on point-neuf. on the morning of september , the dreadful carnage began in the prison house of the carmes, where fell by the sword. the massacre lasted four days, while bands of assassins went from prison to prison, and in that short space of time took the lives of , persons of every sex, age and condition, of whom were priests. [illustration: massacre of princess lambelle.] the abbe lecard, an eye-witness, describes the awful scene at the prison of the abbey: "the massacre took place under my window. the cries of the victims, the blows of the sabres as they fell upon the heads of the innocent victims, the shouts of the murderers, the applause of the witnesses, all resounded in my soul. i even distinguished the voices of my confreres, who were arrested and brought in the night before. i heard the questions put to them, and the responses they gave. they were asked if they had taken the civil oath, but none had done so. all could have escaped death by a lie; but all preferred death. all said when dying: 'we are subject to your law, we die faithful to your constitution, we except only what regards religion and what has reference to conscience.' they were immediately pierced by numerous swords, amid the most frightful vociferations. the spectators while applauding cried out: 'long live the nation!'--at the same time executing abominable dances around the corpses. "towards three or four o'clock in the morning, similar cries, tumult and ribaldry were repeated. this was in consequence of their bringing into the court-yard, now strewn with corpses, two priests whom they had dragged from their beds. the executioners jested over the horrible scene. the two priests were asked to take the oath, but they refused with mildness and firmness. seeing themselves on that account condemned to death, they demanded a few hours to prepare themselves, and they obtained their request. the assassins employed the interval in removing the bodies, in washing and sweeping the court-yard, red with blood--a work which caused them considerable difficulty. to avoid this in the case of others who were about to be massacred, they proposed various expedients and, finally, agreed upon employing a quantity of straw on which they would butcher their victims and which would absorb the blood and prevent the pavement from being stained. one of the assassins complained that the aristocrats died too quickly; that only those in the front row had the pleasure of striking them. it was accordingly determined that the victims should be struck only with the back of the sword, and that they should be made to run between two files of assassins. it was determined that around the place where the victims were to be immolated there should be benches for the ladies and gentlemen. all were free to enter. all this i have seen and heard with my own eyes and ears." these frightful scenes of paris were equalled if not surpassed by the terrorists of the provinces, and especially in the cities of lyons, rheims, nantes, bordeaux, and avignon. it was but natural that the flight of priests from the insane fury of the revolution should be hastened by the events of those days. many succeeded in gaining the frontier and found refuge in the papal states, in spain, portugal and in england where they were received with respect and welcome. many returned secretly to france and bravely defied the dangers of martyrdom in the exercise of their sacred ministry. [illustration: marat.] the legislative assembly, after a final law granting divorce upon mutual consent, or upon the demand of one of the parties, was dissolved on september , . _the convention._ on september st, , a new government, entitled the convention, began its sittings. it has been justly characterized as an organization the most bloody and atrocious in history. it was during its administration that that dark period occurred to which has been given the significant name of the "reign of terror." composed as it was of the vilest and most unscrupulous element of the nation its inauguration gave little promise of peace or security to the country. its sessions were dominated by the jacobins, the girondists, and the mountaineers, parties sworn to oppose each other in all political matters, though uniting in all measures of oppression to religion and the church. their methods of tyranny were conceived with system and precision worthy of a better cause, and were executed by a machinery whose organized efforts reached into every village and hamlet in the land. its committee of public safety, the supreme secret council of the convention, included men like danton, marat, and robespierre. there was a committee of general security for the detection of political crimes, and the punishment of all suspected or proscribed persons. the revolutionary tribunal condemned the victims indicated by the general security, and condemned them to death without a hearing. there were revolutionary committees in every department and municipality throughout the country, whose office it was to imprison suspects, and to employ the guillotine regardless of trial. the revolutionary army--composed of only such as had proven themselves devoted to the anarchistic doctrines of the times--was employed in the guarding the prisons, arresting suspects, demolishing castles, pulling down belfries, ransacking churches for gold and silver vessels, and other like purposes. it had its regiments in every city of france. it was by means of such powerfully organized associations that the convention was able to perpetrate the atrocities of the reign of terror. the first act of the new assembly was to declare the abolition of royalty, and to proclaim france a republic. at the same time it began the attempt to inaugurate a new era, the first day of the first year of which was to be september nd, . _the calendar._ in the new revolutionary calendar the christian order of months and weeks was set aside for an arbitrary arrangement whose awkward and frivolous character was evident, even independently of its sacrilegious intent. instead of weeks of seven days, periods of ten days, or decades, were substituted. as there was to be no sunday, the tenth or last day of the decade, called "decadi," was to be observed as the day of rest, and have all the importance of the lord's day, the place of which it had taken. the months were twelve and consisted each of thirty days; to make up the necessary days of the year, five intercalary days, called _sans culottes_, were added. the months were adorned with festive names taken from nature; thus vendemaire, the vintage month; brumaire, the foggy; frimaire, the frosty; nivose, the snowy; pluvoise, the rainy; ventose, the windy; germinal, the month of sprouting; floréal, the month of flowers; prairial, the haymaking; messidor, the time of harvest; thermidor, the month of heat; and fructidor, the month of fruit. to obliterate, as far as possible, every christian idea associated with the days of the year, the new calendar abolished the christian festivals and substituted strange and uncouth denominations for each successive day. it was a bold stroke, and though the convention succeeded a few months later in causing its execution throughout the country, nevertheless it was never heartily accepted even by the most radical, and only a favorable opportunity was wanting for its final abolition with the revolution itself. [illustration: danton.] on the twenty-seventh of september, the convention reduced ecclesiastical pensions to livres, and on october rd, it decreed that all who had flown the country were to be considered as banished in perpetuity, and should they return they were to be punished with death. on november th, a decree was passed, declaring that if a priest should marry, and be therefore inquieted by the residents of the commune in which he resided, he might retire to any place he liked, and his salary should be paid by the commune which had persecuted him. it was an effort to render the marriage of priests popular, an attempt, however, which always met with failure. it was during the month of december, , and that of january, , that the trial of louis xvi. took place. the convention voted the death sentence, and the crime of regicide against one of the mildest sovereigns of the century was perpetrated january th, of that year. the prescriptive laws against the clergy and the church went on apace. on january nd the constitutional clergy were ordered to disregard all canonical rules in regard to marriage, and to bless the marriages of divorced people as well as those of constitutional priests. on february th, a reward of one hundred livres was offered to whoever should cause the arrest of an émigré, or of a priest under sentence of deportation. on march th, it substituted for the penalty of ten years for such priests the sentence of death. april rd, it put forth the article: "the national convention decrees that all ecclesiastics, regular and secular, brothers or laymen, who have not taken the oath to maintain liberty and equality conformable to the law of august th, , shall be deported without delay to french guiana." immediately on the appearance of this law the sea-ports of france began to witness thousands of captive priests who were placed on board the waiting vessels, ostensibly for transportation to america. as, however, such voyage was at the time impracticable because of danger from the english fleets then patrolling the seas, the victims of proscription were left in the miserable hulks, in some cases for as long as two years. their sufferings in this regard were extreme. huddled together in the holds like so many packages of dead merchandise, the bare floor for a bed, covered with rags and devoured by vermin, their torment was truly horrible. many of them perished; others lost their reason; the survivors bore away with them many souvenirs of physical and moral torture which they carried to the grave. the story of the deportation of priests during the reign of terror is one of the ugliest records of the times. the convention next turned its attention to the constitutional clergy, whom it compelled by every means of proscription and exaction to dishonor the little remnant of sacred character that still remained within them. hence the laws of , decreeing deportation for any bishop who should directly or indirectly oppose an obstacle to the marriage of priests, or who should refuse to recognize divorce. it reduced the salaries of the bishops and limited the number of their curates. it, moreover, dismissed from the exercise of their functions all pastors who failed to display a pronounced enthusiasm for revolutionary principles, and put in their stead men whose ignorance was well known, and whose wives were willing to occupy a prominent position in the church. [illustration: the goddess of reason.] _the reign of terror._ during the latter part of the country had virtually delivered itself up to the will of its tyrants. the war against religion had assumed an open and defiant character, under the influence of the guillotine; churches had already lost their sacred significance, and the names of the saints or holy mysteries which they had hitherto borne gave place to profane and often impious titles; the republican calendar had been formally adopted and enforced upon the nation; everywhere priests were called upon to burn their letters of ordination and to bring to the convention their crosses, chalices, ciboriums and other objects destined for the holy sacrifice. the archbishop of paris, the infamous gobel, entered the hall of the convention at the head of other constitutional clergy, and there despoiled himself of all insignia of episcopal or priestly office, declaring at the same time that he renounced forever all his rights and duties as a minister of catholic worship. _the goddess of reason._ it was at this time, november th, , that the convention proclaimed the worship of reason, and deified that abstract idea by a sacrilegious ceremony in the cathedral of notre dame, at paris. an actress was placed upon a throne within the sanctuary of that ancient temple, and received amidst the hymns and maudlin praises of the multitude the adoration of a fallen nation. the example of paris was imitated in all parts of the country, until the strange spectacle was observed of a whole nation gone mad. the new worship brought with it renewed hostility to christianity. almost every day the convention was called upon to review processions whose object was to ridicule and cast odium upon the things of god. bands of _sans-culottes_ defiled through the streets, or passed through the assembly halls, attired in copes, chasubles and dalmatics which they had pillaged from the churches. no limit was put to these exhibitions of horrible sacrilege. in many cases the processions were headed by an ass bearing a mitre upon his head, a chalice upon his back, with a cross hanging from his tail. it seemed as if the revolution could go no further in its impiety, though men still held their breath waiting anxiously for the next move in the horrible nightmare. in the midst of the general madness the revolution turned against its own creatures and denied its own religion. the people had already begun to mock at the absurdity of the worship of reason, and tired of one false god, looked to their leaders to supply them with another. it was at this juncture that robespierre, the man of blood and crime, suddenly became the apostle of a new cult, which was baptized in the blood of the adorers of reason. the guillotine reaped rich harvests, numbering that year among its victims the apostates, gobel, lamourette, clootz, together with hebert, danton, desmoulins and others. in the beginning of the year , robespierre caused the convention to pass a decree proclaiming the existence of a supreme being, and constituting feast days "to recall mankind to the consideration of the divinity and to the dignity of his being." on june th, he presided personally as high priest, at the first solemn feast of the new worship. the latter, however, proved even less popular as a religion than its predecessor, and served only to demonstrate how the human heart craves for the worship of god, and will not be satisfied with the human imitations of a religion whose origin is divine. [illustration: worship of supreme being.] in its proscriptive decrees the convention hitherto had not included the aged and infirm priests; by a decree of floréal , these also were subjected to all exactions imposed upon others. another decree demanded the accusation of all enemies of the people, and pronounced the penalty of death, without trial or witnesses, upon simple verbal denunciations. the terror was now in its blindest spasm of madness, and in paris alone, during three months, more than two thousand victims laid their heads upon the block, including many constitutional priests, who had the good fortune, through the pious offices of the abbe emery, to retract their errors and become reconciled to god. a pall of moral darkness hung over the nation from end to end, a deep silence, full of anxiety and terror, was broken only by the shrieks of the dying and the insane laughter of the murderers. the silence and holiness of the lord's day was desecrated by labor and unseemly orgies; the _decadi_ was observed instead of sunday, and peasants or others daring to work on that day, or daring to rest on sunday, were treated as suspects and punished with all the violence of irreligious hatred. throughout the land every symbol and remembrance of religion had vanished: the church steeples had been torn down, the bells no longer called the faithful to divine service, the cross was treated as an object of public shame. everywhere men and women suspected of fanaticism or denounced as enemies of the revolution were condemned to death and executed. in the city of lyons the guillotine severed thirty heads a day; but its work proving too slow for the blood-thirst of the assassins, the victims were ranged in rows, and mowed down by storms of bullets. in this way fully one thousand seven hundred fell in a short period of a few months. [illustration: robespierre ( - ).] in the departments of the ain and the saone-et-loire, liberty was decreed to priests who should agree to marry within a month; the aged were exempted from this law upon the condition of adopting a child of revolutionary parents, to care for as their own. in savoy, one thousand two hundred livres was offered as a reward for the arrest of a non-juring priest; all who refused to apostatize, whether faithful or constitutional, were arrested and condemned. at marseilles and at avignon, the infamous maignet emulated his predecessor, jourdan coupetete, with the guillotine and fusillade of bullets. in the south, a young girl was arrested and put to death for having crossed over into spain to confess to a legitimate priest. an aged official was sentenced to imprisonment and a heavy fine for having assisted at the "feast of reason" with an air of sadness and arrogance. six women were guillotined for having assisted at the mass of a non-juring priest. in the vendee one thousand eight hundred persons were murdered within a period of three months. and so the list went on through all the first half of , which has left a record of millions murdered, deported, exiled, imprisoned, or tortured in a thousand and one ways. they were red letter days in the revolutionary calendar, but the red color was made from the blood of frenchmen. a mitigation of the horrors of those days came at last when the head of the arch-assassin, robespierre, rolled away from the block on july th, . _separation of church and state._ among the oppressive laws enacted by the convention, before its final dissolution in , were those concerning education and the separation of church and state. the decree of october st, , decided that primary schools should form the first degree of instruction; therein should be taught all that was rigorously necessary for a citizen to know. persons charged with instruction in such schools should be known as institutors. the decree determined the number of schools to be founded in each commune, according to the number of its inhabitants, and fixed the programme of instruction. the children shall receive in these schools the first physical, moral, and intellectual education, the better to develop in them republican ways, the love of country, and a taste for work. they shall learn to speak, read and write the french language. they shall be taught those virtues which do most to honor free men, and particularly the ideas of the french revolution, which shall serve to elevate their souls and render them worthy of liberty and equality. they shall acquire some notions of french geography. the knowledge of the rights and duties of man and citizen shall be taught them by example and experience. they shall be taught the first notions of the natural objects that surround them, and the natural action of the elements. they shall be exercised in the use of numbers, the compass, weights, measures, etc. another decree, of october th, , declared that "no ci-devant noble, no ecclesiastic or minister of any worship whatsoever, can be a member of the commission of instruction, or be elected a national institutor. no women of the ci-devant nobility, no ci-devant religious women, canonesses, nuns, who have been placed in the old schools by ecclesiastics or ci-devant nobles, can be nominated as institutors in the national schools." a decree of february st, , read as follows: art. . conformable to art. of the declaration of the rights of man, and to art. of the constitution, the exercise of no worship shall be troubled. art. . the republic shall pay salary to no minister of worship. art. . it shall furnish no locality either for the exercise of worship or for the residence of its ministers. art. . the ceremonies of every kind of worship are interdicted outside the enclosures chosen for such exercise. art. . the law does not recognize any minister of worship; no such minister may appear in public with the habit, ornaments, or costume affected in religious ceremonies. art. . all assemblages of citizens for the exercise of any worship whatsoever shall be subject to the surveillance of the constituted authorities. this surveillance shall be fortified by measures of police guard and public security. art. . no particular symbol of any worship may be erected in any public place, neither exteriorly, nor in any manner whatsoever. no inscription can be put up to designate such place of worship. no public proclamation or convocation can be made to draw the citizens thither. art. . the communes or sections of communes may not hire or purchase, in their collective name, any locality for the exercise of worship. art. . no donation, perpetual or temporary, may be formed, and no tax imposed to pay the expenses of such worship. art. . whosoever shall, by violence, disturb the ceremonies of any worship whatsoever, or who offers outrage to its objects, shall be punished, according to the law of july - , , in regard to correctional police. art. . the law (of des sans-culottides, an ii.) with regard to ecclesiastical pensions, is not hereby abrogated, and its dispositions shall be executed according to their form and tenor. art. . every decree whose dispositions are contrary to the present law formulated by the representatives of the people in the departments is annulled. [illustration: marie antoinette and her children.] a decree of may th, , decided that "no one shall fulfill the ministry of any worship in the said edifices, unless he shall have given legal declaration before the municipality of the place in which he desires to exercise such functions, of his submission to the laws of the republic. the ministers of worship who shall contravene the present article, and the citizens who shall invite or admit them, shall each be punished by a fine of , livres." a law of september th, , decreed: it is forbidden to all judges, administrators, and public officials whomsoever, to have any regard for the attestations which ministers of worship, or individuals calling themselves such, shall give relative to the civil condition of citizens. all officials charged with registering the civil state of citizens, who shall make mention in their records of any religious ceremonies, or who shall exact proof that they have been observed, shall also be condemned to the penalties contained in article . the convention concluded its sanguinary existence on october th, , after the conclusion of the constitution of the year iii. _the directory._ the convention was immediately followed by the government of the directory, which lasted until the end of the revolutionary period, in . it was composed of a council of five hundred, whose duty it was to propose laws, a council of two hundred and fifty ancients to approve or reject the laws thus proposed, and a supreme body consisting of five members--all regicides--which was called the directory. the new government was less bold in its persecutions than its predecessor, though the spirit that had actuated the convention still lived in both houses of the directory. the pursuit of priests was still continued, and the laws against them and their protectors enforced with the greatest rigor. in the year eighteen priests were executed under the orders of the government. nevertheless a sentiment of hostility to the oppressive measures of the law was beginning to manifest itself in a number of the departments; churches were again being opened and the practice of religion renewed. [illustration: death of robespierre.] the rigors of the terror, however, were not yet extinct; the worship of the revolution was enforced, the sound of the church bells was forbidden, and the revolutionary calendar still held its place in the ordering of the life of the people. an effort was made in to bring back into full force all the proscriptive laws of the convention, but through the efforts of portalis the council of five hundred refused to vote the bill. in the meantime the exiled and deported priests began to return in great numbers. in paris more than three hundred were exercising their ministry openly; the diocesan administration was reorganized; and a general interest in the unhappy lot of imprisoned priests began to manifest itself among the people. in , june th, a motion was placed before the council of five hundred, demanding liberty of worship, the suppression of the oath, and the abrogation of the laws of deportation. these reforms were voted--after a few weeks of discussion--and in place of the obnoxious oath the directory substituted the words: "i swear to be submissive to the government of the french republic." everything thus seemed to hold out promise of peace and security to the church, and might have thus continued but for the _coup-d'-etat_ of the fructidor, which brought with it the renewal, for two years, of the horrors of the terror. the new government instituted under the three directors, rewbel, la reveillère and barras, brought back the revolutionary forces into the councils, and the old laws of proscription were renewed. priests who had obtained their liberty were again arrested and imprisoned or deported; the oath of the constitution was re-established; the persecution became more rabid than ever in its last struggle for supremacy. to gather greater numbers to the revolutionary ceremonies, it was decreed that marriages could take place only on the "decadi" or tenth day, whereon no manual labor might be performed, or merchandise bought or sold. it became a crime to print or hold in one's possession copies of the christian calendar, and on fridays and saturdays of the old order the very sale of fish was forbidden, that the citizens might be compelled to eat meat. the deported priests suffered intolerable torments through the cruel treatment dealt out to them. out of three hundred transported to conamana, only thirty-nine were alive after a month's detention. in other places many died through famine, sickness and misery. in the midst of these discouraging afflictions of the church, the constitutional bishops, in a council held on august th, , had the hardihood to plan a reconciliation between the schismatic church of france and the orthodox church, and went so far as to send their decrees to the pope for ratification; pius vi., however, refused to honor the communication with an answer. _persecution of pope pius vi._ in the incessant struggle of french anti-christianism against the church, its leaders had not neglected early in the period to turn their attacks against the head and centre of christianity, in the person of the holy pontiff, pius vi. rome, "the mother of nations," was the sanctuary towards which many french students turned their steps to acquire a knowledge of art and literature; these young men, imbued with the false spirit of their unhappy country, made use of the hospitality of the eternal city to betray her. in the academy of france, in the midst of obscene orgies and ribald speeches, the statues and busts of kings, cardinals and popes were overthrown, and sentiments of revolution and irreligion openly pronounced. basseville and laflotte, bearing an insulting message to pope pius vi., utilized their time in rome in an attempt to arouse the populace to accept republican ideas; but the roman people, infuriated at the insulting bravado of these couriers of the french government, attacked them in the corso, giving a death blow to basseville, and causing his companion to fly for his life. this was in . the constituent assembly at paris took up the death of its messenger as a pretext for hostilities against the government of the holy see. it was at this time also, that there began to appear in paris certain _letters_ to the pope, which displayed openly the intention of the new liberty with regard to the papacy. the _moniteur_ of october st, , put forth the following grandiloquent address: holy father, gather your people together, and rising in the midst of them, declare fearlessly: descendants of the grandest people of the world, imposture has too long been desolating your country. the hour of truth has come; come and enjoy the rights that nature gave you; be free, be sovereign; be your own lawmakers; bring back once more the roman republic. but guard well against the abuses and vices which were the ruin of the ancient republic; drive out from you all patricians, cavaliers, prelates, cardinals, bishops, priests, monks and nuns; be citizens all. see, i give you my tiara, and i hope that my example will be followed by my clergy. it was only a month after these words had been printed that general kellerman declared from the tribune: "citizen legislators, to liberate ancient rome from the yoke of the priests, command our soldiers to pass the alps, and we shall pass them." [illustration: lafayette.] it was, however, during the administration of the directory that the first actual assaults upon the holy see were made by the forces of france. under an appearance of good will, which only served to conceal its weakness, the directory stultified itself in the face of europe; the army alone by its victories sustained the honor of the nation. after conquering the rhine countries the republic turned its eyes upon italy. in the beginning of , general bonaparte, with an army of , men, crossed the alps. despite the snows of the winter and the continual blizzards they encountered, the french soldiers continued to descend into piedmont, while the italians still believed them to be on the borders of the rhine. mantua fell, the austrians were driven beyond the adige, and bonaparte hastened to besiege and take bologna. it was the desire of the directory that the conqueror should proceed on his way to rome and annihilate forever the power of the papacy. bonaparte himself proved less greedy than his masters; he would be satisfied with one or two provinces from the revenues of which he might draw funds to defray the expenses of his campaign. his victories, nevertheless, were rapid and decisive, and in a few days made him master of all northern italy. the king of sardinia and the dukes of parma and modena made their act of submission, while the court of naples manifested a desire to frame a treaty of peace. admonished by the fate of the neighboring nations, pius vi. began to frame terms of negotiation with the conqueror. towards the end of , the chevalier d'azara, ambassador of spain to the holy see, was charged with the duty of arranging a convention with the french government. the directory had looked to rome as the repository of immense riches, the plunder of which might help to bolster up the enfeebled finances of france. the first condition imposed upon the pope, in order to gain an armistice, was to turn over to saliceti and garrau, the representatives of france, the sum of , , livres. d'azara rejected the exorbitant terms, and seeing that he could effect nothing with the directory, he opened up negotiations with bonaparte directly. [illustration: capture of louis xvi.] his demands in this part met at first with the usual hauteur of the general, who required that his holiness should first drive from rome all french émigrés, and that he should expedite a bull approving of the revolutionary government. to these first terms the ambassador answered: "if you imagine that you can compel the pope to do the least thing contrary to dogma, and whatever is intimately connected with dogma, you are much mistaken, for he will never do so! you can take revenge by sacking, burning and destroying rome and st. peter's, but religion shall remain in spite of you. if, on the other hand, you desire the pope to exhort all in a general way to good behavior and obedience to legitimate authority, he will do that willingly." the words of d'azara produced a favorable impression upon the general, though at first they had but little real effect. on june th, d'azara was summoned to meet the representatives of the directory at bologna, where a demand for , , livres was made together with the cession of ancona, the occupation of bologna and ferrara, provisions for the soldiery, one hundred pictures or statues from the papal museums, five hundred manuscripts, and the treasures of loretto, or failing the latter, a fine of , , francs. after many discussions the sum of payment in money was fixed at , , livres. to arrange all matters in a more satisfactory manner the holy father sent mgr. pierracchi as plenipotentiary to paris. here the messenger of the pope was received in so barbarous and insulting a manner that he was obliged to leave the french territory with all haste. [illustration: treaty of tollentino.] so discouraging did affairs now appear to the holy father that for a time he thought seriously of abandoning rome for the present and taking refuge in the island of malta. however, he determined to effect if possible a new accommodation; this attempt proved as unsuccessful as those which preceded it, and the holy father in his desolation declared before a commission of the cardinals: "let the directory consider well the motives which constrain the conscience of his holiness to such refusal, a refusal which he will be obliged to sustain at the peril of his life." the representatives of the directory to whom this protest of his holiness was brought, at florence, could not but admire the courage with which it was inspired. the matter was now taken up personally by bonaparte himself, whose influence led finally to the signing of a treaty at tollentino, february th, . by the terms of this convention the pope revoked all treaties of alliance against france, he recognized the republic, he ceded his rights over venaissin, he abandoned to the cis-alpine republic the legations of bologna, and ferrara, and all of romagna; ancona was to remain in the possession of the french; the duchies of urbino and macerata were to be restored to the pope on the payment of , , livres. a like sum was to be paid conformable to the armistice of bologna, not yet executed. these , , livres were payable, two-thirds in money and the rest in diamonds and precious stones; , francs were to be paid to the heirs of basseville. we shall not linger in relating the great difficulties the holy father experienced in raising the immense funds required by this treaty. the generosity of the roman people, the cardinals, and the prelates of italy, was displayed in a manner to reflect lasting honor upon their names. the whole transaction dealt a severe blow to the peace and security of the aged pontiff from the effects of which he never fully recovered. _arrest and death of the pope._ the directory, ever on the watch for a pretext that might seem to justify new attempts against the government of the pope, found one during the month of december, . general duphot, at the head of a band of rebellious romans, had attacked the garrison at ponte sixto. the papal soldiers, angered by the assault and the offensive insults of the mob, endeavored to repulse it by a harmless show of force. one soldier, more quick-tempered than his comrades, forgot himself in the moment of excitement, and fired into the crowd. the bullet struck general duphot, who fell mortally wounded. the affair, accidental though it was, and perfectly natural, considering the circumstances, was taken by the french government as an act demanding summary punishment. accordingly, general berthier, in command of the french forces at ancona, received from general bonaparte the following instructions: paris, nivose an. (january , .) quickness will be of supreme importance in your march upon rome; it alone can assure the success of the operation. the moment that you have sufficient troops at ancona you will take up the march. you will strive secretly for a union of all the surrounding districts with that city, such as the duchy of urbino and the province of macerata. you will not make known your intentions against the pope until your troops are at macerata. you will say very briefly that the reason for your marching on rome is to punish the assassins of general duphot and all those who have dared to be wanting in the respect which is due to the ambassador of france. the king of naples will send his ministers to you, and you will say that the executive directory is not influenced in this affair by any designs of ambition; that, on the contrary, if the french republic was so generous as to restrain itself at tollentino when it had still graver reasons for complaint against rome, it will not be impossible, if the pope gives satisfaction agreeable to our government, to arrange this affair. in the meantime, while making such proposals, you will continue on your way by forced marches. the art of the whole matter will consist in gaining ground, so that when the king of naples becomes convinced that you are actually headed for rome, he will not have the time to prevent it. when you are two days' journey from rome, you will menace the pope and all the members of his government, who have rendered themselves culpable of the greatest of crimes, in order to inspire them with fear and cause them to take flight. the plans of bonaparte were carried out successfully. on february th, , the french troops entered rome by the porta angelica, and the pontifical garrison was obliged to evacuate castle san angelo. on february th, a calvinist named haller brought to the pope the final orders of the directory, announcing his overthrow. french soldiers immediately replaced the pontifical guards of the papal palace, while one of berthier's generals, cervoni, had the effrontery to present to the pope the tri-color cockade, which the holy father refused, saying, "i know no other uniform than that with which the church has honored me." it was the beginning of the end. [illustration: napoleon in council of .] the commissioner haller was now delegated to announce to the pope that he must leave rome. the holy father protested: "i am hardly convalescent, and i cannot abandon my people or my duty; i wish to die here."--"you can die anywhere," answered the brutal messenger. "if the ways of gentleness cannot persuade you to go, we shall employ rigorous means to compel you." pius vi. left alone with his servants, appeared for the first time overcome with sadness. he entered his oratory, and after imploring the aid of the almighty; re-appeared in a few moments. "it is god's will," he said calmly, "let us prepare to accept all his providence has in store for us." on february th, the commissioner, on entering the apartment, found the pope prostrate at the foot of the crucifix. "make haste!" he cried, and pushing his august prisoner before him he compelled him to descend the stairs with undue hurry, nor did he leave him until he had entered the carriage waiting at the gate. a detachment of dragoons, which accompanied the carriage, served to hold in check the crowds that had gathered in the hope of following in the footsteps of their sovereign. it was the intention of the directory to deport the holy pontiff to the island of sardinia; but it abandoned this design in the fear that the english might attempt his deliverance. at sienna, the pope was lodged in the augustinian monastery, where he remained three months, when an extraordinary event compelled his departure thence. on may th, an earthquake destroyed the building, and the holy father had only time to quit his room when the floor collapsed. in june he arrived at florence, where he remained for ten months, a prisoner, indeed, but yet enjoying many comforts from the company of congenial souls who were permitted to offer their words of sympathy. among such were the grand duke of tuscany and the king and queen of sardinia, the latter being a sister of louis xvi., maria clotilda, besides numbers of the poor who craved a blessing from his hands. in the meantime the directory found it a very difficult matter to dispose of its august prisoner. in its fear and cruelty it strove to induce the grand duke to drive the pope out of his dominions, to which demand the noble sovereign answered that as he had not brought the pope to tuscany it was not for him to drive the holy father away. this generous resistance was immediately punished by the invasion of etruria. in the beginning of the year the russian and austrian armies were already menacing italy; the directory thereupon found it expedient to transfer their illustrious captive to france. hence, on april st, despite the paralysis of one of his limbs, he was hurried away to parma, where he could rest only a few days. on the thirteenth the journey was again taken up, although the physicians protested the great danger of proceeding while the pope remained in so feeble a condition. the commissioner, upon learning the opinions of the physicians, entered the apartment of the pontiff, and there dragging the coverings from the bed, inspected the limbs, examined the ulcers that had collected, and proclaimed brutally: "the pope must go on, dead or alive." the journey now led through northern italy, and across the alps. on the evening of july th, the anniversary of the storming of the bastille, the cortege arrived finally at valence, in france. the pope was lodged in the citadel, in the governor's apartments, near the convent of the cordeliers, which served as the prison of thirty-two priests. in this place he died august , , in the eighty-first year of his age. chapter iii. opening of the nineteenth century. never did the shadows of night gather with more sorrow and hopelessness around the afflicted spouse of christ, than on that sad august , , when, in the prison house of valence, the form of the gentle pius vi. lay still and cold in death. gazing out from that chamber of silence, upon the races of men, she might well be tempted to apply to the troubled world that expression whereby the prophet characterized the abode of eternal misery: _ubi nullus ordo, sed sempiternus horror inhabitat_; "where no order, but sempiternal horror dwelleth." politically, all europe was in a frenzy of hope and despair, of triumph and defeat, of luxury and of poverty. the directing reins had been torn from the hands of government, and wild, uncouth, savage, insane mobs held high carnival over the ruins of desecrated homes. in the sanctuary itself the forces of disorder had pushed their way, jansenist, gallican, josephist and every other form of fanatical heresy fighting for possession of those altars from which they had driven the ministers of the living god. the church, indeed, had been so utterly buried beneath the accumulated ruins of her external institutions, and so utterly prostrated through the humiliations poured out upon her, that a triumphant world was almost forgetting that she was, indeed, a power to be dealt with. and now, when the news that her visible head was laid low, was spread abroad, the exultation of anti-christianism knew no bounds. in paris, in every dark alley and lane, as well as in the halls of the mighty the voice of congratulation was heard, for that he, who had stood forth a barrier against the immoral slavery of whole peoples to the passions of the demagogue and the anarchist, was now silent forever. jacobin, constitutionalist, jansenist, gallican, caesarist and protestant, all united in the conviction that catholicity was at an end, and that the superannuated institution of the papacy had fallen into a grave from which no power human or divine might ever again resuscitate it. they had forgotten the promise made by christ of old: "for, behold, i am with you all days even to the consummation of the world." in the meantime divine providence had so ordered the course of european affairs as to confound all the schemes of the enemy. just as napoleon bonaparte was on his way to the distant campaign of egypt, the great powers coalesced in one desperate attempt to overthrow the domination of france, russia and austria, with their combined forces, drove the french from northern italy, and finally austria alone contrived to wrest from french control all those rich provinces for the conquest of which bonaparte had expended so much blood and treasure. thus, it so happened, that when the great general returned from his egyptian wars, all italy was in the hands of the austrians and neapolitans. in europe at the same time, george iii. was reigning in england, francis ii. in austria, paul i. in russia, while the directory at paris dominated directly or indirectly all the more insignificant states. in the church itself the administration of all external ecclesiastical affairs was rendered almost impossible. the cardinals were dispersed in all directions; ten of them with cardinal albani, dean of the sacred college found refuge in naples, whence they sailed at the invitation of austria to venice. _conclave of venice._ in the hush that followed the death of pius vi. the great question began to be asked: how and where shall the conclave be held? it is true, the political changes of the past year had left italy entirely free for such deliberations; and moreover, the martyred pope, before reaching his place of exile, in , had provided with singular wisdom for just such an event. in his encyclical, _quum in superiori anno_, written while at florence, he had enjoined upon the cardinals that, in the event of his death in exile, the conclave for the election of his successor should be held in that city which, while in the dominions of a catholic sovereign, should contain the largest gathering of cardinals, together with any others who should join them. this provision of the late pope seemed thus to point to venice, especially as the emperor, francis ii., graciously offered for that purpose the benedictine abbey of san georgio, on an island directly opposite to st. mark's square. there, accordingly, it was determined to hold the conclave. out of the forty-six cardinals of the sacred college thirty-five repaired to venice. among these were many of international celebrity, as statesmen or writers upon questions of general importance. towards the end of november the conclave had practically begun its preparatory business; mgr. hercules consalvi was elected its secretary, and among his first official acts was that of sending to the european powers a notification of the death of pope pius vi. among those thus remembered was the exile of france, louis xviii., known at the time as the count of provence, and living in poland. as the elder brother of the murdered louis xvi., he was regarded among the courts of europe as the rightful sovereign of france. before the conclave was formally opened the usual interest of the powers began to be felt, although only austria made any public avowal of its determination to interfere in regard to the choice of a new pope. france itself was not altogether indifferent as is shown by the correspondence both of napoleon and of his minister, talleyrand. it was only two years previously that the general, then at mombello, in italy, wrote to his government: "the pope is yet unwell. i beg you to send me new powers with reference to the conclave, so that when it becomes necessary, i may communicate them to the french minister at rome. we have the right to exclude one cardinal; and that one should be albani, if he is put forward." later still in the same year, , he wrote to his brother, joseph, at the time french ambassador in rome: "should the pope die, do all in your power to prevent the election of another, and bring about a revolution. if that is impossible, do not permit cardinal albani to be considered. you should not merely use the right of exclusion; you must threaten the cardinals, declaring that i will march immediately on rome." during the progress of the conclave, talleyrand wrote, on february , , to musquiz, the spanish ambassador in paris, protesting against the influence of austria in the conclave, declaring for reasons of no account except to himself, that the election from such conclave must be illegal, and signifying that it would be for the interest of spain to refuse to acknowledge such an election. as, however, there was only one french cardinal in venice at the time, namely maury, who was then entirely in the interests of louis xviii., it is easy to see that any direct influence from france would hardly be considered. [illustration: pius vii.] in the case of austria the matter assumed greater importance. it is true that austria had proven itself no generous upholder of papal prerogatives for the fifty years past; yet, in the present hour, the prestige of papal influence was something desirable especially by countries which still claimed to be catholic. moreover, the sovereign of austria was still adorned with the title of emperor of the holy roman empire which he was not to lose until six years later; he was thus bound, in a way, to the interests of the papacy. still more, it was in his dominions, and under his protection that the conclave was to be held. hence, his determination to make use of every privilege, real or apparent, which he deemed inherent in his house. it was with this purpose in view that the emperor, francis ii., presented detailed instructions to cardinal herzan, who was to represent austrian interests in the conclave. the instructions are very sweeping in their scope, and were they followed out, the conclave would have proved only a formality for ratifying the choice of austria. they are as follows: "we oppose most seriously the election of any cardinal from the dominions of spain, sardinia, naples, or genoa; or any cardinal who has given evidences of devotion to the interests of any one of the three crowns mentioned. we oppose all cardinals of french origin, and all those who have shown any disposition to espouse the cause of france. especially do we formally and absolutely exclude cardinals gerdil, caprara, antonelli, maury, and those of the doria family. our paternal heart discerns only two cardinals whose qualifications promise a capability to encounter present difficulties.... in the first place stands cardinal mattei, in whom we place more confidence than in any other.... our second choice is solely cardinal valenti." unfortunately for the hopes of the emperor, neither of the two cardinals mentioned was elected. [illustration: cardinal bellisomi.] the conclave was formally opened on december , . the cardinals were divided into three parties, one of which under the leadership of cardinals antonelli and herzan espoused the candidacy of cardinal mattei; a second party was led by cardinals braschi and albani; and in the interests of the papal prerogatives, gave their preferences to cardinal bellisomi at first, and later to cardinal gerdil; a third party called the volauti or unattached, voted independently; among these latter were the french cardinal maury, and the neapolitan, ruffo. in the first ballotings the votes stood to in favor of bellisomi. when it became evident that the latter cardinal would soon secure the necessary two thirds of the votes, cardinal herzan contrived to turn the tide. unfortunately for his interests, however, the favor of the sacred college began to look to cardinal gerdil, one of those whom the emperor had formally and absolutely excluded. thereupon, cardinal herzan applied his right of veto, thus placing cardinal gerdil outside all possibility of election. austria, however, could utilize its power of veto only once in a conclave; hence the cardinals were now practically free to act in disregard to the wishes of austria. in the meantime the favor had again turned to bellisomi, and cardinal herzan begged as a matter of courtesy that the austrian court be asked in regard to its attitude towards the popular candidate. much time was expended in sending a courier to vienna and awaiting his return. in the meantime, mgr. consalvi, secretary of the conclave, contrived to arouse interest in an entirely new candidate, a man whose saintly life and great learning was added to the fact that he appeared wholly outside the quarrels of the nations. this was cardinal chiaramonti, bishop of imola. cardinal maury took up the suggestion with enthusiasm, and employed all his eloquence to impress the sacred college with the idea. as the conclave had now lasted for one hundred and four days, the cardinals already weary of procrastination, were only too eager to manifest their approbation. when the final ballot was taken, on march , , cardinal chiaramonti received every vote except his own. he was accordingly elected pope, taking the name of pius vii. _pope pius vii._ barnabas louis chiaramonti was born at cesena, in the legation of forli, august , . his father was count scipio chiaramonti; his mother jane, was a daughter of the marquis of ghini. the boyhood of the future pope was without any of those marvelous incident which usually give promise of coming greatness. that he was nurtured in a love of god and of religion is evident from the character of his gentle mother, who in , entered the convent of the carmelites, at fano, where she died, in , with the reputation of a saint. indeed, many years later, the cause of her beatification was suggested to her illustrious son, then pius vii., who with his characteristic delicacy, put the proposition aside lest his filial love might seem to dictate where motives of disinterested justice ought to preside. at the age of sixteen, after finishing his course of studies at the college of ravenna, barnabas, feeling the call of god, abandoned the allurements of the world, and entered as a novice at the benedictine abbey of santa maria del monte, near cesena, where he received the name of gregorio. his career of studies was completed in , when he defended a series of theological propositions in the presence of cardinal ganganelli, destined the following year to become pope clement xiv. after his ordination to the priesthood he acted as professor in the colleges of his order, especially at parma and at rome. he was thus engaged at the monastery of st. calixtus in , when cardinal braschi, his townsman and relative, ascended the throne of st. peter, as pope pius vi. through the good offices of the new pope, the young monk was made an abbot of st. paul outside the walls; but this title thus conferred without the concurrence of the regular chapter of the order, while assuring some privileges, did not dispense the incumbent from obedience to the titular abbot. his conduct in the delicate post, thus thrust upon him, so charmed pope pius vi., that on his return from vienna in , he took the humble abbot away from his monastery and raised him to the episcopal see of tivoli. for three years he governed that diocese with such rare wisdom and intelligence that the sovereign pontiff decided that he ought to be placed in a position wherein his abilities and zeal might have a wider field. accordingly, in , he was transferred to the see of imola, and in the same year was created a cardinal. he was bishop of imola more than ten years, when the austrians, pursued by the armies of bonaparte, took refuge at bologna. his conduct in the wars that followed was dictated by the feeling of duty divinely committed to him. his courage in the face of the opposing armies won from bonaparte an expression of admiration and praise; for when that general, on entering ancona, found that the bishop of the place had fled, he exclaimed in the presence of suite. "when i was at imola, i found its bishop at his post." in the uprising at lugo against the french invaders, cardinal chiaramonti was at hand counselling patience on the part of the italians, and later begging mercy when the french were preparing for sanguinary revenge. at times, as in his christmas sermon of , he encouraged the people to accept, at least under existing circumstances, the democratic form of government then forced upon them, as being in no way "opposed to the gospel, and requiring in fact the sublime virtues which are taught in the school of jesus christ, and which if practised religiously by you will redound to your own happiness, and to the glory and spirit of your republic." during the year following the saintly pope pius vi. died at valence and cardinal chiaramonti, a few weeks later repaired to venice to become pope pius vii. the general satisfaction manifested over the election of pius vii. was not shared by austria. apart from the fact that her choice had been disregarded, it began to be rumored about that the new pope was not altogether unwelcome to france, and that the new consul not only admired but sought him. nor was austria slow in displaying marks of her displeasure. the ceremonies of the coronation and consecration coming so soon after the election, it was naturally supposed that the great cathedral of st. mark's would be offered for that purpose. this favor, however, the emperor refused to grant, so that the new pontiff was restricted to the insignificant monastery church of st. george for a function that called for the splendors of a mighty temple. austria went still farther in her vulgar reprisals. her government had the hardihood to ask the holy father to visit vienna before returning to his own states, alleging that "such a journey would prove an incalculable benefit to the holy see, that the personal acquaintance of the emperor would be very useful to his holiness, and for the good of both church and state, and that, since the pope happened to be at venice, he ought not lose so precious an occasion of undertaking a journey, the expenses for which should be payed out of the imperial treasury." the holy father, though declining the offers of the austrian monarch, wrote to him within a week after his election, in terms full of fatherly affection, and ignoring altogether the cowardly treatment he had just received from that source. the answer of francis ii. was one of empty felicitation, which he proceeded at once to falsify by his subsequent actions. at that very time he sent to venice a diplomatic agent, the marquis ghislen who declared that it was his master's formal intention to retain possession of the three legations. it will be remembered that in , the pope, pius vi., by the treaty of tollentino, ceded to france the legations of bologna, ferrara and the romagna. in the signing of this treaty cardinal mattei represented the holy see. in , the austrians gained possession of the legations by conquest over the french. it was for this reason that austria desired to see mattei elected to the papal throne, imagining that in such an event he would honor his signature to the document of tollentino, by permitting austria to keep her spoils of war. as the new pope appeared too earnest a defender of papal rights, it was considered necessary to inform him in this categorical manner of austria's intentions with regard to the conquest territory. the pope opposed most strongly these claims, and announced his resolution of proceeding immediately to his own states. the natural route for such a destination would lead overland through the disputed legations; but again austria stood in the way compelling the pope to proceed to his own territory by sea. in fact, on june , , pius vii. embarked on the bellona, a small vessel which the austrian government had placed at his disposal without the courtesy of providing its crew or provisions. the ship was so utterly unseaworthy, and the hap-hazard crew so inexperienced that the voyage which ought to have taken only twenty-four hours, consumed twelve days. landing at pesaro, in his own states, the pope proceeded to ancona, where the vessels of england and russia harboring there, rendered him military honors. from ancona to rome the journey of the holy father proved to be a triumphal march. he arrived in the eternal city on july , , in the midst of a people intoxicated with joy. as he knelt before the great altar of st. peter's, his heart expanded with gratitude to god, who, after permitting the exile of his vicar for two long years, was now graciously providing for a new era for his afflicted church. one of the first acts of pope pius vii., after his election was the appointment of an official to act as his secretary of state. even in this matter the intermeddling policy of austria made itself felt, for on being denied in so many other pretensions, the emperor sought at least to control the papacy through its chief functionary. hence its request sent to the new pope that he would favor austria by appointing cardinal flangini to that post. the holy father answered that as he had not at present any state he could not appoint a secretary of state; he would, however, name a pro-secretary, and in fact had already provided for such an official. the ecclesiastic chosen for this emergency was that mgr. ercole consalvi, who had already acted as secretary for the conclave. _cardinal consalvi._ this celebrated man was born at rome, june , , of a noble family. the eldest of five children, he was left an orphan in his earlier years. he was educated at urbino, by the piarist brothers founded by st. joseph calasanzio in . after four years at this school, he entered the school at frascati, lately opened by the cardinal duke of york. the latter was a grandchild of king james ii. of england, and a brother of charles edward the pretender, known in italy as the earl of albany. when charles edward died, the cardinal-duke assumed the title of henry ix., king of france and england. the young consalvi became a favorite with the princely protector who recognized in his young protege a gift of character, self-reliance and enthusiasm. during his term at frascati, the future secretary distinguished himself by his literary productions in prose and verse. in , he entered the great ecclesiastical academy in rome, where his abilities brought him to the notice of pope pius vi., who in raised him to the dignity of a cameriere sègreto, with the duty of providing for audiences at the vatican. in he was made a domestic prelate. promotions followed rapidly in the curia; in a few months he became a member of the governmental congregation, and a secretary of the great hospital of san michele. still later he became a member of the pontifical _segnatura_. in he was offered the post of nuncio to cologne, which he declined in favor of mgr. pacca. he next became a member of the roman _rota_, the tribunal of justice. again, he was made assessor of the department of war wherein he effected much good during the times of the french invasion of italy. [illustration: cardinal consalvi.] it was shortly after the celebrated treaty of tollentino, that the unhappy affair of general duphot occurred. on december , , that officer, while commanding a mob of infuriated soldiery, was fatally shot by one of the pontifical troops, and although no blame could be placed upon the government of the pope, nevertheless the assassination was taken up as an excuse for hostility on the part of the french, who descended upon rome, took possession of the city, and drove pius vi. into that cruel exile which caused his death. upon consalvi especially, because of the position he then occupied in the department of war, the full anger of the invaders fell. after an imprisonment in the castel sant angels, he was subjected to many humiliating hardships. he was hurried off from rome to civita vecchia with some cardinals for the purpose of being transported to cayenne. at civita vecchia, however, they were liberated with permission to go where they might choose, except to the roman states. if found in that territory they were to be punished with death. consalvi was again taken prisoner and confined in the castel sant angelo. at this time it was determined to inflict a most trying humiliation upon him; he was to be led through the streets of rome, mounted upon an ass, and beaten by ruffians hired for that purpose. escaping this indignity through the scruples of a french official, he was sent to naples. thence, he was permitted to go to venice, in which journey he met the holy father, pius vi., then at florence on the sorrowful way to death. it was while at venice, that he learned of the death of the sovereign pontiff and remaining there took part in the conclave that elected a successor. _proposals of bonaparte._ in the meantime affairs in france were gradually assuming an aspect of peace and religious freedom. by the _coup d'etat_ of the brumaire. bonaparte, returning from his egyptian campaign, overturned the directory, and effected a new government, december , . the new power was to be presided over by a first consul (bonaparte) with two colleagues. subordinate to these were the senate of eighty members, the tribunate of one hundred; and a legislative assembly of three hundred. the new government by proclaiming bonaparte first consul for life made him thereby a dictator, and placed practically the whole powers of the nation in his hands. it was with the glory of his triumphant elevation still fresh within his soul that the young conqueror set out early in the following year for the campaign of italy. on june th, , occurred the decisive victory of marengo, whereby the french gained in a single day in italy almost all that they had lost during the course of the last two years. the austrians driven beyond the mincio lost the legations, and were finally forced to accept the adige as the boundary of their possessions in northern italy. in the midst of his glory the religious sentiment which had ever lain dormant in the heart of napoleon came to the surface, inspiring him to a course of action which was to have immense importance in the future history of france. his intentions are best summed up in a letter which cardinal martiniana, bishop of vercelli, sent, at the request of napoleon, to pope pius vii., just then entering the eternal city after the conclave of venice. the contents of this letter are found in another letter sent by cardinal maury to louis xviii. to inform him of the turn events were then taking in the affairs of rome and of france: "the consul bonaparte paid a visit to cardinal martiniana (at vercelli). he desired him to go to rome and announce to the pope that he wished to make him a present of , , french catholics; that he desired the return of religion to france; that the intruders of the first and second order (the constitutional bishops and priests) were nothing but a parcel of dishonored rascals of whom he was determined to rid himself; that the dioceses were formerly too numerous in france, and that their number ought to be restricted; that he desired to establish an entirely new clergy; that some of the old bishops were almost forgotten in their dioceses where they had hardly ever resided; that many of them had emigrated for no other purpose than to cabal, and that he did not care to have them return; that he would consider in their regard only their dismissal, although he was willing to grant them a proper salary; that, while waiting until he could donate funded property to the clergy, he would assure them of a very honest living, and that the poorest of the bishops should receive , livres a year; that the exercise of the pope's spiritual jurisdiction should be carried on freely in france; that the pope alone should institute the bishops, who should be nominated by whoever should administer the sovereign authority; finally, that he desired to re-establish the pope in the possession of all his states." this letter of cardinal martiniana was brought to rome by count alciati, nephew of the bishop of vercelli, and was presented to the holy father shortly after his entrance into the eternal city. very naturally the proposition of the first consul met with hostility and protest from many quarters, notably from louis xviii., and from the old catholic party under the leadership of the emigrated bishops. every conceivable objection to such a treaty was placed before the holy father in the hope of influencing him to reject the overtures of the french ruler. he was reminded that the first consul was the same bonaparte who had imposed upon the holy see the treaty of tollentino with its spoliation of papal territory, its seizure of , , francs, and other like exactions; it was the same bonaparte who but a short time before had become a mussulman in order to gain the good graces of the eastern peoples. moreover, what real favor might the pope expect from that french government which he had ignored at the time of his election by neglecting to send to france the notification of that fact, especially when he had taken pains to recognize the rightful authority of louis xviii., by including him among the sovereigns to whom letters of greeting were sent upon his accession to the papal throne? to the great mass of the french catholic people the church and the throne were inseparably bound together; they had existed together for fourteen centuries; they had fallen together amidst the horrors of the revolution, and hence if one was again to rise to its ancient place of power and usefulness it should only be in conjunction with the restoration of the other. added to this was the personal claim of louis xviii., expressed in very decided terms, whereby he declared himself as the only ruler of the french people whom the holy see should recognize, as he was the only one the pope had hitherto recognized; hence if the concordat of , contracted by leo x. and francis i., was to be abrogated and supplied by another, this work belonged by right to the successor of that king and not to a usurper. in presenting these and similar objections to the pope the exiled king had a worthy representative in the person of cardinal maury, a man of singular eloquence and of great personal influence, all of which was brought to bear upon the mind of the holy father and the members of the sacred college. pope pius vii., however, regarded the project from a different standpoint. much as he desired the restoration of the bourbons and of louis xviii. in particular, of whom he had said to cardinal maury, "i would give my life to restore his majesty to the throne," nevertheless the interests of religion appealed more strongly to his heart than the claims of any human affection. the letter of cardinal martiniana thus appeared providential in the midst of the difficulties that beset him, and from which neither austria, naples, spain, or any other human power could liberate him. with every reason to expect hostile measures from bonaparte, he could not but feel relieved by these expressions of cordial good feeling; nor could he help reflecting that this was the first time for many years since a french general had sent to rome any other message than those of threats and exaction. the proposition of the first consul opened up before him visions of future peace and prosperity for the universal church, and seemed like a very answer from heaven to the prayers he had offered up ever since the day of his election. his gratification, therefore was expressed in the letter which he sent in return to cardinal martiniana. "we can certainly receive no more agreeable news than that which is contained in your letter. the overtures it speaks of on the part of the first consul cause us the greatest consolation, since they promise to bring back so many millions of souls to the fold of christ, of whom we are the unworthy vicar. we shall regard it as our glory and an honor, and at the same time as something of benefit to the whole world, to behold the re-establishment in france of that most holy religion which has been the source of her happiness for so many centuries. you may say to the first consul that we lend ourselves willingly to a negotiation whose object is so important.... your presentation of his ideas gives us a well-founded hope that we shall be able to arrange affairs satisfactorily. however, your penetration must certainly perceive all the difficulties they present in themselves and in their application. but we confide in god's mercy and in his assistance in favor of the church.... observing that the first consul has taken you into his confidence, we gladly accept you as a negotiator counting upon your zeal for the re-establishment of religion. with the object of hastening that result, and reflecting upon the extreme difficulty of explaining by letter affairs so intricate and so delicate, we have resolved to send you as soon as possible a person who has our confidence and who will be able to explain our intentions more easily, and to aid you in the negotiations...." the person spoken of in this letter of pope pius vii., was mgr. spina, titular archbishop of corinth, a prelate well versed in the study of canon law, of a mild and pious disposition, one who had accompanied the late pope during his exile and was with him in his last hours, and who had formed some little personal acquaintance with bonaparte, as the latter was returning to paris after his campaign in egypt. _preliminaries of the concordat._ [illustration: archbishop spina.] mgr. spina set forth on the way to vercelli on september th, , and after many reverses, being at one time arrested at modena, he arrived at his destination. it was the understanding of pius vii. that the negotiations should be opened at vercelli, or near at hand. the consternation of mgr. spina was therefore very great when, on reaching that city, he was confronted with the information that the first consul had determined to transfer the place of meeting to paris, a movement inspired no doubt by the twofold reason of making the whole proceeding seem to proceed from the petition of the pope rather than from his own initiative, as also to prevent the appearance on the part of the french government of "going to canossa." the holy father upon being informed of this new move of the first consul yielded in the interests of peace, and directed mgr. spina to proceed as soon as convenient, in the company of padre caselli, general of the servites, to paris. the two negotiators arrived in that city on november th following. [illustration: cardinal caselli.] of the two papal representatives spina alone was regarded as a negotiator, father caselli acting merely in the capacity of a companion, but having no voice in the deliberations. even spina himself was limited in his faculties, having no actual power of treating or of affixing his signature to the definitive documents. he was simply a delegate charged with exploring the ground, listening to the propositions, and of suggesting freely, but obliged to send his report to rome _ad audiendum et referendum_. the papal commissioner was not long left in uncertainty as to the character and intentions of the french officials with whom he had to deal. of these the most conspicuous were the first consul himself, talleyrand, minister of foreign affairs, gregoire, the constitutional bishop of nancy, and the abbe bernier, the official negotiator in the deliberations. the first consul, then in his thirty-second year, was just beginning that role of supreme dictator which was to last to the end of his successful career. in the matter of religious convictions much has been said both in his favor as well as against, though the most probable opinions concede in him a certain undercurrent of religious belief, vague indeed, and clouded by the passion for glory and supremacy which possessed his soul. there was enough of christian sentiment within him to make him esteem the faith of his youth as the most sacred thing on earth and worthy of his best efforts. these convictions, however, were weakened and at times entirely overcome by the overpowering allurements of a life wherein glory was offered at the price of honor, and power was purchased in the surrender of moral restraints. hence, although it may be said that the ruling motive of bonaparte in proposing the concordat was political in its nature, it would be wrong to deny that a sense of religious propriety and affection for his old faith entered also into the influences which moved him. young, popular, penetrating in his genius, and subtle in his political doctrines, he comprehended the necessity of procuring peace of conscience for the people, and saw clearly the immense benefit the state would derive from an understanding with the church, as well as the personal advantage that must accrue to himself therefrom. a few days after his arrival in paris the archbishop of corinth was received by the minister of foreign relations, who obtained an audience with bonaparte almost immediately. "the welcome of the first consul was, i must confess, a welcome full of enthusiasm. he spoke very respectfully of his holiness and manifested towards him very favorable dispositions. he did not, however, conceal his displeasure that his holiness had not officially notified him in his capacity of first consul of the fact of his elevation to the papacy, as he had the kings of england and prussia and the emperor of russia." the audience was terminated by the order of conferring with the minister of foreign affairs--and the party designated by him--upon all matters regarding the concordat. it lasted fully half an hour, and was very satisfactory to the papal delegate. another figure destined to play an important part in the framing of the concordat was the celebrated character of the revolution, charles maurice talleyrand, the former bishop of autun, an apostate who had added to his iniquities the crime of marrying a divorced protestant. the whole work of this strange personage consisted in placing obstacles to the completion of an understanding between the french government and the holy see. in fact, it was only during his absence from paris, while he was taking the waters of a bath, that the negotiators could finally place their signatures to the definitive document. gregoire, the constitutional bishop of nancy, performed with talleyrand, the office of instructor in ecclesiastical matters to the first consul. a gallican of gallicans, an intense hater of the old regime, jansenistic and puritanical in his perverted piety, and obstinate in his adhesion to the principles of the revolution, neither he nor the minister of foreign affairs was a worthy interpreter of the mind and doctrines of the church, especially in an affair of such great importance. it is, no doubt, due to the influence of these two ambitious men that the first consul showed himself at times, during the discussions, somewhat hostile to the interests of the church, and disposed to throw over the whole tenor of the concordat the restrictions of pure gallicanism. [illustration: the abbe bernier.] the abbe bernier, doctor in theology, and former curé of st. laud of angers, was the most intimate of all the officials concerned in the work of the concordat. a man of retired and mysterious ways, living alone in the third story of a house in a side street of the city, he carried into the discussions a mind fully attuned to the demands of bonaparte, and directed by the instructions of talleyrand. he was far from being a revolutionist, having played an important part in the royalist army during the war of the vendee, an episode in his life which was never fully forgiven by bonaparte; yet he could be relied upon by his master as one who would grant to the pope the least possible concessions, while exacting from the holy see as much as one could under the circumstances. against these minds, all astute and all varying in their religious and political doctrines, mgr. spina found himself practically alone. after many discussions, beginning at the first week of november, , and lasting for six months,--during which time many drafts of the concordat had been drawn up only to meet with rejection,--the deliberations seemed nearing their close by the completion of the fourth draft. when this document was at length finished the papal negotiator received peremptory orders from talleyrand to at once affix his signature, in spite of the fact that it contained articles which could not meet with the papal approval. mgr. spina protested in vain that he had no faculties for signing, and begged a delay sufficient for sending the document to rome for examination. the minister of foreign affairs continued obdurate until the papal delegate appealed to the first consul. the latter granted the delay, but required that the messenger chosen for the journey should bear personal instructions from him. when these instructions were opened at rome, march , , they were found to contain an entirely new draft of the concordat drawn up by the first consul himself, thus setting aside definitely that fourth form for the signing of which talleyrand had betrayed so much animosity. while preparing the text of this document the first consul had been casting his eyes around to discover some one capable of representing him at rome in the discussions which must inevitably follow the reception of the new concordat. an aged breton, loyal to his country, moderate and full of tact, who had already performed some important missions in italy--such was m. cacault, the person chosen by bonaparte for this purpose. he was already in his sixtieth year, and notable as a member of the _corps legislatif_, a man in whom the first consul could place the utmost confidence. when departing for rome, during the last week of march, upon asking of bonaparte how he should treat the pope, the general answered: "treat him as if he had two hundred thousand men." cacault arrived in rome on april th, and entered at once upon his duties as minister plenipotentiary of the french government at the court of the holy see. * * * * * the holy father conceived fully the importance of these new moves of the first consul, and began at once to give to them the attention they merited. the draft of the concordat was first submitted to the scrutiny of three cardinals--antonelli, carandini and gerdil--who were charged with the duty of studying the text and proposing such additions or changes as they might deem necessary. their work was then submitted to a commission of twelve cardinals under the presidency of the pope, and entitled the particular congregation. these twelve ecclesiastical princes had all been victims of the revolution, suffering especially in all the evils of ruin, exile and imprisonment. it can thus be easily conceived that their sentiments towards bonaparte and the republic were tinged with something of acerbity, which, however, vanished under the claims of justice and that expediency which the unhappy conditions of the church demanded. to ensure perfect immunity from all external influences, the members of the commission were at once subjected to the oath of secrecy of the holy office. "the slightest revelation would produce most disastrous consequences. each cardinal must study the questions by himself without consulting either theologian or secretary. each should cast a vote written by his own hand and should exercise the greatest care that no familiar or acquaintance should either by day or by night, obtain the least information upon this affair, which is certainly one of the gravest with which holy see has ever had to treat." (_consalvi to the cardinals of the commission._) in spite of the fact that the first consul desired the prompt signing of his document, and was already planning to celebrate its completion during the same ceremonies which would accompany the formal ratification of the peace of austria, nevertheless the work of the cardinals dragged out for nearly two months. in paris the delay was the cause of excitement and anger. mgr. spina was harassed with questions and reproaches; bernier was loud in his complaints; while talleyrand in a fit of jealousy declared that the fault was cacault's who thus hoped to draw to himself the glory of concluding the concordat. the impatience of bonaparte was expressed in the commands which he gave to spina on the twelfth of may, while waiting for the advent of the papal messenger bearing the results of the cardinals' deliberations: "rome wishes to draw out this affair as long as possible in the hope of some political change which might favor her pretensions. i love and esteem the pope very much, but i have little confidence in the cardinals, and in particular cardinal consalvi, who has broken his word with me, and is an enemy of france. he promised that the courier would arrive by the end of april; here it is the twelfth of may and he has not appeared; perhaps he has not even left rome. more than that, my project of the concordat has been changed and i shall not consent to that. cacault writes that the pope is unwilling to admit the article concerning the bishops and wishes me to send him the list of those whom i rejected, together with the reasons for their exclusion. now, i declare that i do not want any of the former bishops, and i shall not yield upon that point. why does the court of rome allow itself to be influenced by these non-catholic powers? it confers with russia, with prussia, with england. do the affairs of the catholic world concern heretics and schismatics? it is i alone and the king of spain who have the right to enter into such matters. you have just wounded spain, and committed an awkward mistake in re-establishing the jesuits at the request of the tzar paul i. take care; it may cost you dearly to put yourself thus under the protection of russia. for doing that the king of sardinia has just lost piedmont. "it is with me that you should arrange matters; it is in me that you should place your confidence; it is i alone who can save you. you demand the restoration of the legations? you wish to be rid of the troops? everything will depend upon the answer you make to my demands, especially with regard to the bishops. i was born a catholic, i wish to live and die a catholic, and i have nothing more at heart than the re-establishment of the catholic worship, but the pope is acting in a way that serves me as a temptation to become a lutheran or calvinist, and to draw all france along with me. let him change his behavior and listen to me. if not, i shall establish a religion, i shall give the people a worship with bells and processions, i shall ignore the holy father, he shall no longer exist for me. send a messenger this very day to rome to tell him that." on the following day spina, talleyrand, and bernier, each sent a letter to rome, with accounts of the first consul's anger. the fears of the holy father at the news thus received were still further intensified by the orders contained in a letter written by talleyrand to cacault and dated the nineteenth of may: ... "i have formal orders from the first consul to inform you that your first move in regard to the holy see must be to demand of the pope, within the term of five days, a definitive determination in regard to the project of the convention and the bull in which the convention is to be inserted, which have been proposed to him for adoption. if in the respite which you are charged to offer, the two projects are adopted without any modification the two states bound together by the ties of peaceful relations whose importance and necessity the holy see ought to perceive now more than ever.... if changes are proposed to you, and the granted time expires, you will announce to the holy see that your presence in rome having become useless for the object of your mission you see yourself obliged with regret to betake yourself to your general-in-chief, and you will leave at once for florence." [illustration: cacault.] m. cacault made haste to transmit this ultimatum to the holy father, who received it with mingled feelings of astonishment and anxiety. though fully determined never to yield upon points that concerned the dogmatic teachings of the church, nevertheless he was careful not to act without first consulting his advisors in the sacred college--the twelve cardinals of the particular congregation. their sentiments agreed fully with his own. they thought it necessary for m. cacault to withdraw from his diplomatic post, but the principle involved was altogether too important to permit of mere temporal considerations. the turn taken by events brought back to the mind of the pope the unhappy episodes of , the exile and death of pius vi., the certainty of eventual schism in the church not only in france but throughout europe. there was apparently much to be gained by a passive yielding to the demands of the first consul; but the loss on the other hand would prove incalculable, besides meaning eventual ruin to the whole church. it was not surprising therefore that after considering the matter from every standpoint the pope finally intimated to the french minister his unalterable resolution of maintaining the position he had taken at any cost. it was in this junction that the genius of m. cacault was called into play. fully acquainted with the temperament and disposition of bonaparte he determined upon a measure that at first seemed foolhardy, but which upon mature reflection commended itself to the roman court. he would carry out the instructions of the first consul to the letter, but at the same time he would so arrange matters that the affair in question should be settled to the satisfaction of every one concerned. his plan, in short, was to induce cardinal consalvi, the papal secretary of state, to proceed at once to paris, and there personally conduct the discussions, feeling certain that the diplomatic skill of the young statesman could effect the result when all other means would be destined to failure. _diplomacy of cardinal consalvi._ full of this idea the french minister approached the cardinal, and urged upon him the duty of hastening at once to paris, to superintend personally the disentangling of the situation. "the first consul does not know you," he said, "he knows still less your talents, and your tact, your persuasiveness, your coquetry, your desire to bring this affair to completion; go to paris.... go tomorrow, you will please him, you will both understand one another; let him see that a cardinal can be a man of spirit, you are the one to conclude the concordat with him. if you do not go to paris i shall be obliged to break with you--remember there are ministers there who persuaded the directory to transport pius vi. to cayenne. there are counsellors of state who are pleading against you, and generals who sneer and shrug their shoulders. if i break with you, murat, a second berthier, will march on rome." the words of m. cacault made a deep impression upon the cardinal, and together the french minister and the secretary of state went to lay the plan before the holy father. the latter, desolated by the thought of losing if only for a time his beloved secretary, yielded only after the necessity of the move had been demonstrated and had received the approval of the sacred college. on june th, the day following the expiration of the time allotted by bonaparte, cardinal consalvi departed from rome, seated in the same carriage with cacault, who, in accordance with his instructions, was taking the way to florence. in the latter city the two diplomats separated, the former continuing his journey to paris, where he arrived on june th, and took up his lodgings at the hotel de rome, in company with mgr. spina. the cardinal writes in his _memoires_: "my first thought on the following morning was to inform general bonaparte of my arrival and to learn at what hour i might have the honor of seeing him. i asked at the same time in what costume he wished me to present myself. this question was necessary, since at that time the ecclesiastical dress was no longer in use in paris, or in the whole of france. the priests were clothed as laymen; the churches consecrated to god were now dedicated to friendship, to abundance, to hymen, to commerce, to liberty, to equality, fraternity, and to other divinities of the democratic reason. every one was entitled citizen; i was so addressed myself during my journey, even though covered with the insignia of the cardinalate. i would not discard that garb for a single day, though i thereby gave proof rather of courage than of prudence. "the abbe bernier returned immediately with the information that the first consul would receive me at two o'clock that afternoon, and that, as to the costume i was to appear as a cardinal as far as was possible." at the stated hour consalvi appeared at the palace. "i entered," he said, "a salon in which i perceived only one solitary individual who advanced toward me, saluted me in silence, and then striding on before introduced me into a neighboring hall. i did not then know who this personage might be, but i learned later that it was the minister of foreign affairs, m. de talleyrand, a name too well-known in the annals of the revolution to need any additional description from me. i imagined he was about to lead me to the private cabinet of the first consul and i was congratulating myself in the hope of being alone with him. but what was my surprise when, on opening that last door, i saw before me in a vast hall a multitude of persons disposed as if for a scene in a drama. in the centre of the hall were symmetrically arranged the various corps of the state government (which were, as i afterwards learned, the senate, the tribunate, the corps legislatif, and the high courts of the magistrature) and, at the sides, generals, officers of all degrees, ministers, grand state functionaries, and before all others, detached and isolated, three persons whom i learned later were the three consuls of the republic. "the central figure came forward a few steps toward me, and it was only by conjecture that i divined that it was bonaparte, a conjecture that was confirmed by the attitude of talleyrand, who still kept company with me and presented me to him. i was about to utter some words of compliment, and to speak of my journey; i had scarcely approached him than he at once opened up the conversation, and said curtly: 'i know the object of your journey to france. i want the conferences to be opened immediately. i give you five days, and i warn you that if, at the expiration of the fifth day, the negotiations are not terminated, you will return to rome, while as to myself, i have already determined on what i shall do in such a hypothesis.'" the calm dignity of the cardinal triumphed over the haughty bearing of the consul who permitted himself to yield somewhat. the audience lasted an hour and a half, and left the roman prelate quite satisfied that he might employ as much time as the proper discussion of the affair should demand. it was the th of july before the negotiators at last came to a definite agreement. the concordat had reached that stage in the discussions when it could at length receive the signatures of the various officials interested. the night of the th was fixed as the date when that happy consummation was to be effected, and it was settled that all the negotiators were to meet for that purpose at p. m., at the house of joseph bonaparte, brother of the first consul. so certain were the officials of the government that the affair was now concluded, that the announcement of the fact appeared in the _moniteur_ of the day, in an article concluding with the words: "cardinal consalvi has succeeded in the object which brought him to paris." moreover, the first consul had confided to his intimates that on the following day, july th, the anniversary of the fall of the bastille, the formal announcement of the signing of the concordat would be made at a grand banquet to be held at the tuileries, at which three hundred or more guests would be present, including the six signers. in the meantime the party of opposition to the concordat had not been idle. under the inspiration of talleyrand a spurious imitation of the document agreed upon was gotten up, and after a note brought by d'hauterive--one of the creatures of the minister of foreign affairs--to the first consul, was substituted for the real paper, under the impression that consalvi would be led to sign it in the haste required for the accomplishment of the other consequent events. the cardinal goes on to relate his discovery of this deception: "seated around the table," (in the house of joseph bonaparte) "a few moments were devoted to the question as to who should subscribe first, as it seemed that the honor belonged to him (joseph) as the brother of the chief of the government. in the mildest manner, yet with all the firmness required by the occasion, i remarked that my quality of cardinal and representative of the pope would not permit me to take second place among the signers; i observed, moreover, that under the old government of france, as in all such cases, the cardinals had undisputed precedence, and that i could not yield in a point which did not concern me personally but the dignity with which i was vested. i must in justice admit that, after some difficulty, he yielded with good grace, and agreed that i should sign first, while he should follow in the second place, then the prelate spina, followed in order by the counsellor cretet, padre caselli, and finally the abbe bernier. "thereupon we immediately prepared for the work in hand, and i took up the pen to affix my signature. but what was my surprise when i saw the abbe bernier presenting me the copy which he had unrolled, in order that i should begin with that rather than with my own, and after glancing over it to assure myself that it was correct, i perceived that the concordat which i was about to sign was not the one upon which not only the negotiators, but the first consul also, had agreed, but one entirely different. the change in the first line caused me to examine with greater diligence the remainder of the document, and i discovered that the present copy not only contained the very same draft which the pope had refused to admit without proper corrections, and which had given cause for the recall of the french envoy through the refusal of the pope, but it changed the same in many points, having inserted many things which had already been rejected before that draft was sent to rome. "a proceeding of such a nature, incredible though a fact, and which i will not permit myself to characterize--the thing speaks for itself--paralyzed, so to speak, my hand before it could sign. i expressed my surprise, and declared decisively that i could not sign that document at any price. the brother of the first consul seemed no less astonished at what he heard, and declared that he could not be persuaded of what i said, since the first consul had told him that everything was agreed and that nothing remained to be done except to sign." the firm stand taken by cardinal consalvi compelled the six commissioners to undertake again a revision of the document in order to be able to please if possible the first consul, and thus end the affair before the banquet of the following day. it was noon of the fourteenth before they had come to a satisfactory agreement. the new copy was then taken by joseph bonaparte who brought it to his brother, the first consul. "he returned in less than an hour revealing in his countenance the anguish of his mind. he informed us that the french consul was seized with a fit of great fury at the news of what had happened; that in the impetuosity of his anger, he had torn into a hundred pieces the draft of the concordat arranged by us; and that finally yielding to his prayers, his solicitation, his reflections and his reason, he had promised, although with unspeakable repugnance, to accept all the articles agreed upon but as to one, which we had left in suspense, he was as inflexible as irritated, charging me in conclusion, that he looked for that article just as it was written in the copy brought by abbe bernier, and that i had only one of two things to do, either to admit that article as it was and sign the concordat, or to break definitely the whole negotiation; that he was absolutely determined to announce at the banquet of that day either the signing or the rupture of the affair." it was two o'clock in the afternoon when joseph bonaparte brought this strange message. for two hours more this same messenger, aided by cretet and bernier, endeavored to bend the unflinching will of consalvi, but to no purpose. he comprehended fully the great temporal evils that must follow a rupture with france, the dangers to the peace and liberty of the pope and the welfare of the church; but he knew at the same time that his action would be precisely in accordance with the wishes of the holy father, and therefore a matter of sacred duty. the discussion remained in the same condition when at four o'clock the six commissioners parted to prepare themselves for the banquet which was to begin at five. that this occasion promised to be one of violent anger on the part of bonaparte was the thought of consalvi as he entered the banquet hall of the tuileries. the scene is described dramatically in his own words: "scarcely had we entered the hall in which the first consul was waiting, and which was thronged with magistrates, officers, grandees of state, ambassadors, and most illustrious foreigners,--guests at the banquet,--than he gave us a welcome easy to imagine, he being already cognizant of the rupture. he had hardly seen me than, with inflamed countenance, and in a loud voice, he said: 'so, monsieur cardinal, you wish to break the negotiations? very well. i have no need of rome. i will act for myself. i have no need of the pope. if henry viii. who had not the twentieth part of my power knew how to change the religion of his country successfully, much more do i know how, and am able to do so. and when i change religion in france, i shall change it in nearly all of europe wheresoever the influence of my power extends. rome will recognize the losses she must suffer, and she will bewail them when it is too late. you are going, well, that is the best you can do. you want a rupture, and let it be so, since you wish it.' "to these words uttered in public in a quick, loud tone of voice, i answered that i could not overstep my powers, nor agree on points contrary to the principles professed by the holy see. 'in things ecclesiastical,' i added, 'one cannot do all that one can in temporal affairs in certain extreme cases. notwithstanding that, it did not seem to me possible to say that the rupture was sought for on the part of the pope, since we were agreed upon all the articles, holding only one in reserve, in regard to which i have proposed to consult the pope himself, even though his own (the french) commissioners had dissented.' he (the consul) interrupted me to say that he wished to leave nothing imperfect, and that he desired to conclude all or nothing. t answered that i had not the right to accept the article in question, as long as it remained precisely as he had proposed it, and without any modification. he replied angrily that he wanted it just as it was, without one syllable more or less. i answered that in that case i should never sign it, because i could not at any cost. he repeated: 'it is precisely for that reason that i say that you want a rupture, and that i consider the affair at an end, and that rome will feel and weep over this rupture with tears of blood.'" after more words uttered in a like strain, the guests proceeded to the banquet which was of short duration and clouded by the irritable temper of the first consul. after it was ended, however, a better spirit entered into bonaparte, and yielding to the solicitations of the count de cobentzel, the peacemaker of the day, he agreed that the commissioners might come together again for the last time on the following day. "let them see if they cannot possibly arrange matters, but if they separate without coming to a conclusion, the rupture will be regarded as definitive, and the cardinal may leave. i declare also that i want this article to remain absolutely as it is, and that i shall admit of no change." and so saying he turned upon his heel. the commissioners met accordingly on the following day at the house of joseph bonaparte, and after twelve hours of discussion finally came to an agreement of such a nature that the honor of the holy see would be guaranteed thereby, while at the same time the obstinacy of the first consul would suffer no perceptible wounding. it was at midnight when the affair was at last pronounced completed, and the commissioners at once affixed their signatures to the document. "the concordat was signed at two o'clock in the morning in the house which i occupied in the rue du faubourg-saint-honore. at the same hour i became the father of a third child whose birth was saluted by the plenipotentiaries of the two great powers, and his prosperity predicted by the envoys of the vicar of christ."[ ] it was midnight instead of two o'clock a. m. _text of the concordat._ the concordat, thus signed on july th, , was conceived in the following terms: convention between his holiness pius vii., and the french government. the government of the republic recognizes that the catholic apostolic roman religion is the religion of the great majority of the french citizens. his holiness also recognizes that this same religion has derived, and at this moment expects anew, the greatest good and glory from the establishment of catholic worship in france, and the especial profession thereof made by the consuls of the republic. consequently, after the mutual recognition, both for the good of religion and the maintenance of internal tranquility, they have agreed upon the following: article i. the catholic apostolic roman religion shall be freely exercised in france. its worship shall be public, conforming to the regulations of internal administration which the government shall deem necessary for the public tranquility. article ii. a new circumscription of the french diocese shall be made by the holy see in concert with the government. article iii. his holiness will declare to the incumbents of the french sees, that it expects from them, with a firm confidence, for the sake of peace and unity, sacrifices of every kind, even to the resignation of their sees. if, after this exhortation they refuse this sacrifice, commanded by the well-being of the church (a refusal nevertheless which his holiness does not expect), the dioceses of the new circumscription shall be provided with new bishops in the following manner: article iv. the first consul of the republic will, within three months after the publication of his holiness' bull, nominate to the archbishoprics and bishoprics of the new circumscription. his holiness will confer canonical institution according to the forms established in regard to france, before the change of government. article v. the nominations to sees, hereafter to fall vacant, shall also be made by the first consul, and canonical institution will be given by the holy see, in conformity with the preceding article. article vi. the bishops, before entering on their functions, shall take directly in the hands of the first consul, the oath of fidelity, which was in use before the change of government, expressed in the following terms: "i swear and promise to god, on his holy gospels, to observe obedience and fidelity to the government established by the constitution of the french republic. i also promise to have no understanding with, assist in no council, entertain no league, either within or without, which shall be contrary to the public tranquility; and if in my diocese or elsewhere i learn that anything is plotted to the prejudice of the state, i will impart it to the government." article vii. ecclesiastics of the second order shall take the same oath, in the hands of the civil authorities named by the government. article viii. the following form of prayer shall be recited at the end of the divine office, in all the catholic churches of france: domine, salvam fac rempublicam. domine, salvos fac consules. article ix. the bishops shall make a new circumscription of the parishes in their dioceses, which shall be of no effect until approved by the government. article x. the bishops shall appoint to the parishes. their choice shall fall only on persons acceptable to the government. article xi. bishops may have a chapter in their cathedral, and a seminary for their diocese, without any obligation on the part of the government to endow them. article xii. all the metropolitan churches, cathedrals, parishes, and others not alienated, necessary for worship, shall be put at the disposal of the bishops. article xiii. his holiness, for the sake of peace and the happy restoration of the catholic religion, declares that neither he nor his successors will disquiet in any manner the holders of alienated ecclesiastical property, and that, consequently, the right to said property, with the rights and revenues attached thereto, shall remain incommutable in their hands or those of their representatives. article xiv. the government will secure a suitable salary to the bishops, and to parish priests whose dioceses and parishes are comprised in the new circumscription. article xv. the government will also take measures to enable french catholics, when so disposed, to create foundations in favor of churches. article xvi. his holiness recognizes, in the first consul of the french republic, the same rights and prerogatives enjoyed at rome by the former government. article xvii. it is agreed between the contracting parties that in case any successor of the present first consul should not be a catholic, the rights and prerogatives mentioned in the preceding article, and the nominations to sees, shall be regulated, so far as he is concerned, by a new convention. the ratifications to be exchanged at paris within forty days. done at paris, th messidor, year ix. of the french republic, july th, . h. cardinal consalvi, j. bonaparte, j. archeveque de corinthe, fr. charles caselli, cretet, bernier. upon its appearance, the new treaty was naturally subjected to criticism, adverse and favorable. that it meant a decided victory for the church over her old enemies was admitted on all sides, and all hostility to its prescriptions could be reduced to the murmurings of the royalists, the émigrés, the gallicans, the constitutionals and the various revolutionary parties. by the great mass of the catholic people it was hailed as a rainbow of promise after the desolating storms of the past ten years. "according to its first article the catholic apostolic and roman religion was to be exercised freely in france; the catholic church was therefore to be free in her organization, free in her preaching and teaching, free in her discipline, in her ministers, in her right of acquiring such property as would be necessary for the accomplishing of her mission. she is no longer as under the old regime, intimately allied with the state; she is no longer the church of the state; the separation of the temporal and the spiritual has been effected.... but if in return one considers the words of the text according to their real value, she is entirely free; she need no longer fear trespassing from outside nor a supervision that tends only to hinder her action; nor those thousand and one interferences which were formerly perpetrated by gallicanism." the article continues: "its worship shall be public"--words which naturally signify the exercise of religious ceremonies not merely within the walls of the church, but exteriorly also, as in public processions, carrying the blessed viaticum to the sick, and such like. nor is it strange that these practices should be permitted in a land where the catholic faith is the religion of the great majority of the people, when in protestant countries they are carried out solemnly and amid the veneration of all. the addition of the words--"in conforming to the regulations of internal administration (reglements de police) which the government shall deem necessary for the public tranquility"--was one of the causes of the delay in framing the concordat; it was the clause against which the first consul declaimed so violently on the famous afternoon of july th, and it has served ever since as the foundation of an anti-liberal jurisprudence. "in practice it is the mayor who in each commune is charged with maintaining public order and tranquility, and, by the same title, whenever a mayor considers that a procession or any other religious manifestation can occasion trouble and disorder upon the public streets, he has the right to interdict it. one must confess that in a country like ours where the idea of liberty is so limited, it is sometimes a means for the protection of the clergy and faithful against injuries and outrages. but very often mayors have interdicted, and permanently, only catholic processions, while they permit freethinkers to pass through the streets in parades that are dangerous to the public. if a mayor acts with such partiality, if he cannot support his interdiction with some serious reason--like that municipal official who would interdict a procession because the white veils of the young girls might frighten horses--if a mayor, in a word, acts by party spirit, and not in view of the public tranquility, he violates the concordat. true liberty of conscience does not take account of the sentimental susceptibilities of occasional nervous individuals, nor would it impose upon anyone the obligation of dissimulating their religious professions or philosophical opinions; on the contrary it imposes on men the obligation of tolerating each other reciprocally in the peaceful manifestation of their beliefs. hence, independently of the concordat, is not such liberty of conscience demanded for all citizens by the declaration of the rights of man?" (croizil.) the articles relating to the bishops excited the greatest amount of dissatisfaction in many quarters. it meant the realization of that idea which bonaparte had expressed to cardinal martiniana in the year preceding--the utter abolition of the old hierarchy--and the substitution of one entirely new and conformable to the order of things about to be established. before the revolution there were in france episcopal sees. in the scheme of bonaparte these were to be reduced to fifty only, of which ten were to be metropolitan, although later, in , he was pleased to add ten other sees to the number. commenting upon this reduction, cardinal mathieu observes: "sixty-six cities were thus subjected to a moral and material decline from which they have never since rallied. indeed, each of these suppressed sees was illustrated with memorials of apostleship and holiness, with monuments, with religious establishments of every kind which gave to the episcopal cities an importance superior to that of their population and made them so many interesting little capitals, wherein were often hidden men of great merit. the dignitaries of the secular and regular clergy, some families of impoverished gentlemen or well-to-do bourgeois and professional people, maintained therein an amiable society which kept up in the most secluded provinces the best traditions of the old regime--courtesy, a taste for literature and charity for the poor. all these little centres of intellectual and moral life were blotted out and the concordat thus only sanctioned the destruction effected by the revolution." it was mainly because of reflections like these that the old émigré bishops received the news of these articles with so sad a grace. the articles which treat of ecclesiastical property and the salaries of the clergy will prove of interest especially at the present time, when in the law of separation they have been so badly misinterpreted. article xii. reveals the fact that the church was placed in _absolute_ possession of her property. the term "shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops" signifies the same thing that it did when in the property of the church was confiscated by the then government and, to use the terms of that law, _mise a la disposition de la nation_, placed at the disposition of the nation. there can be little doubt as to how those words were understood in , for the nation, acting upon the law, immediately proceeded to the sale of all ecclesiastical property. the words, therefore, signified that the nation was placed in full and absolute possession of such property, and the precedent must in all honor apply equally when the terms are used in favor of the church. to say, therefore, that the article gave to the bishops the mere use _ad revocationem_ of such property is only to betray a desire to excuse a robbery under the pretext of a misunderstanding. the concordat thus acknowledged the church's absolute possession of her churches and other religious establishments, a possession which will always remain hers rightfully, and which she shall defend in her own way against any attempt at alienation. in the articles xiii. and xiv. the french government acknowledges that even the alienated property, _i. e._, the churches, etc.--which after the confiscation of were sold, were even in the rightful property of the church; though, nevertheless, the church, for the sake of peace, therein agrees to waive her right. in so doing, however, she requires as a condition that the state shall compensate her for the same. this compensation is expressed in article xiv., wherein it is declared that the state shall assure a suitable salary to the clergy. in accordance with this disposition it follows that whenever--as at present--the concordat should be abolished the church should revert to her natural rights the compensation for alienated property being discontinued, such property or its value should be restored to the church. in this matter the present government of france has shown itself not merely unfair but actuated also by a spirit of robbery. the concordat finished, cardinal consalvi began his preparations for returning to rome. he arrived in the eternal city on august th. he had, however, been preceded by a messenger bearing the precious document, who arrived at the vatican on july th. the instrument was immediately subjected to the examination of a commission of cardinals, and only after long and heated discussions was it finally accepted by the holy see. it was signed by the pope on august th, . in accordance with the prescriptions of the concordat the holy father began at once the execution of that article which required the resignation of the various sees by their actual or rightful incumbents. the brief dispatched by the pope to all the bishops of france, whether resident in that country or living in foreign lands, necessitated that an answer be received within ten days. fourteen prelates residing in london declared, on september th, that they could not consent for the present to his demands, at least without having been heard. twenty-six bishops residing in germany answered in the same terms on october th. on january st the bishops who had taken refuge in england addressed to the holy father a new refusal protesting "against the attempts which had been made or which might be made against the rights of the most christian king, their sovereign lord, rights which the laws of the church commanded the first among the pontiffs to respect religiously, and the defence of which was for the french bishops a duty rendered sacred by their oaths of fidelity from which no power could release them, and whose violation would be a criminal act." some hesitation was likewise manifested by the constitutional bishops resident in france, a hesitation, however, which under the tactful management of cardinal caprara, the new legate a latere at paris, was finally overcome. the holy father, after waiting patiently for several months for a favorable answer to his demands, resolved at length to act notwithstanding all protestations. in the bull, _qui christi domini_, he declared that he derogated to the consent of the bishops who had refused to sign their resignation, he interdicted in them every act of jurisdiction, he abolished the old dioceses existing in france, and erected sixty new sees in their place. in the meanwhile the concordat had been signed by bonaparte, on september th, . it yet, however, required the ratification of the governmental bodies before becoming law. though signed on july th, , it was not until april of the following year that this desired consummation was effected. it was finally ratified on april th, by the corps legislatif. the reason for the delay became apparent upon this occasion, for then there appeared in conjunction with the concordat, and as if forming a part of it, a series of laws entitled _organic articles_, which had been elaborated during those nine months without the knowledge of the pope, just as their publication was now effected without his cognizance. the purport of these latter articles was to destroy or contradict in great part the concessions granted by the concordat. rome has never ceased to protest against them, and to demand their abrogation or modification. in she seemed to have succeeded, deceived by the promises of napoleon at a moment when he desired the aid of the holy father at the ceremonial of his coronation; in , when a new concordat was attempted, the partial abrogation of these articles was one of the stipulations; their suppression was again proposed in ; and again in . they remained, however, in spite of every effort, a constant obstacle to the fulfilment of the concessions of the concordat and a source of perpetual trouble to the church in france. _text of the organic articles._ organic articles of the convention of the messidor, year ix. article . no bull, brief, rescript, decree, mandate, provision, signature serving for provision, nor other documents expedited by the court of rome, even though they concern private individuals can be received, printed, or otherwise put in force without the authorization of the government. article . no individual styling himself a nuncio, legate, vicar, or commissary apostolic, or who makes use of any other determining title can, without the same authorization, exercise upon french soil, or elsewhere, any function relative to the affairs of the gallican church. article . the decrees of the foreign synods, even those of the general councils, cannot be published in france before the government has examined their form, their conformity with the laws, rights and privileges of the french republic, and all that which in their publication could alter or interfere with the public tranquility. article . no council, national or metropolitan, no diocesan synod, no deliberative assembly, shall be held without the express permission of the government. article . all ecclesiastical functions shall be gratuitous, except the offerings which will be authorized and fixed by the regulations. article . recourse to the council of state shall be had in every case of abuse on the part of superiors and other ecclesiastical persons. the cases of abuse are as follows: usurpation or excess of power, contravention of the laws and regulations of the republic; violation of the rules which are consecrated by the canons received in france; any attack on the liberties, privileges, and customs of the french church; and every undertaking or proceeding which, in the exercise of worship, might compromise the honor of citizens, trouble their consciences unnecessarily, or which might degenerate into a source of oppression or injury to them, or become a public scandal. article . recourse to the council of states shall also be permitted whenever an attack is made upon the public exercise of worship, and the liberty which the laws and regulations guarantee to its ministers. article . this recourse is the privilege of all persons interested. in default of a particular complaint, this duty will devolve upon the prefects. public functionaries, ecclesiastics or other persons who wish to make use of this appeal, will address a memorial, detailed and signed, to the counsellor of state charged with all matters concerning religion, whose duty it will be to obtain, in the shortest time possible, all proper information, and upon his report the affair will be taken up and finished in the administrative form, or sent, as the case may demand, to the competent authorities. article . the archbishops and bishops may, with the authorization of the government, establish in their dioceses cathedral chapters and seminaries. all other ecclesiastical establishments are suppressed. article . bishops shall be permitted to add to their names the title of citizen or that of monsieur. all other qualifications are interdicted. article . no one may be nominated to bishopric who has not attained the age of thirty years, or who is not of french origin. article . the priest nominated by the first consul shall make haste to obtain institution from the pope. he cannot exercise any function before the bull containing such institution has received the seal of the government, and before he has taken personally the oath prescribed by the convention made between the french government and the holy see. this oath shall be taken before the first consul: a formal attestation of the same shall be drawn up by the secretary of state. article . the bishops shall name and install the pastors; nevertheless they shall not publish their nomination nor give canonical institution until that nomination has been approved by the first consul. article . the bishops shall be charged with the organization of their seminaries, and the regulation of that organization shall be submitted to the approbation of the first consul. article . those who shall be chosen to teach in the seminaries shall subscribe to the declaration made by the clergy of france in and published by an edict of the same year; they will be obliged to teach the doctrine therein contained; and the bishops shall address a formal attestation of such submission to the counsellor of state charged with all matters concerning religious worship. the bishops will ordain no persons whose names have not been submitted to the government and approved by it. article . pastors may not enter upon their functions before they have taken in the hands of the prefect the oath prescribed by the convention made between the government and the holy see. a formal attestation of this act shall be drawn up by the secretary general of the prefecture, and they shall receive a copy of the same. article . no foreigner can be employed in the functions of the ecclesiastical ministry without the permission of the government. article . there shall be but one liturgy and one catechism for all the catholic churches of france. article . no pastor may order extraordinary public prayers in his parish without the special permission of the bishop. article . no feast, with the exception of sunday, may be established without the permission of the government. article . no religious ceremony shall be held outside the edifices consecrated to catholic worship in such cities as contain temples destined for a different worship. article . they shall not in their powers make any publication foreign to religious worship, unless they be authorized to do so by the government. article . they shall not bestow the nuptial blessing except on such as can prove in good and due form that they have already contracted their marriage before a civil official. article . in all ecclesiastical and religious documents it will be required to observe the equinoctial calendar established by the laws of the republic; the days shall be designated by the names they hold in that calendar. article . the salary of an archbishop shall be , francs. article . the salary of bishops shall be , francs. article . pastors shall be distributed into two classes. the salary of pastors of the first class shall be , francs; that of pastors of the second class shall be , francs. article . the pensions which they receive, in execution of the laws of the constituent assembly, shall be counted as a part of their salary. the councils general of the large communes can, out of their landed property or from the taxes, accord an augmentation of salary if the circumstances require it. article . curates and assistants shall be chosen from ecclesiastics pensioned in execution of the laws of the constituent assembly. the sum of these pensions and the product of offerings made to them shall constitute their salary. article . the bishops shall draw up a list of rules relative to the offerings which ministers of worship are authorized to receive for the administration of the sacraments. these rules drawn up by the bishops may not be put in force without having been approved by the government. article . every ecclesiastic who receives a pension from the state shall be deprived of such pension if he refuses to perform the functions which shall be confided to him. article . the councils general of the department are authorized to provide a suitable residence for the archbishops and bishops. article . the presbyteries and the gardens thereto pertaining shall, if they are not alienated, be turned over to the pastors or to the assistants in charge of the same missions. in default of such presbyteries the councils general are authorized to provide them with a suitable residence and garden. article . the foundations which have for their object the maintenance of ministers and the exercise of worship can only consist of rentals constituted in the state; they shall be accepted by the diocesan bishop, and cannot be executed except with the authorization of the government. article . the immovable property, other than edifices destined for residence and the gardens pertaining, cannot be affected to ecclesiastical titles, nor possessed by ministers of worship by reason of their functions. article . the edifices formerly destined for catholic worship, actually in the hands of the nation, shall be placed at the disposition of the bishops by a written order of the prefect of the department. a copy of this order shall be addressed to the counsellor of state charged with all matters concerning religious worship. _presages of peace._ the concordat signed and ratified catholic france settled down to the enjoyment of comparative peace and security. it was, however, only the security which follows the ravages of disease, the peace of convalescence, full of weariness, languor and exhaustion. the fifty bishops installed by the new decrees could not help a feeling of discouragement as they viewed the situation. the church, it is true, was brought back to a position of honor and importance in the nation; but it was, at the same time, weighed down by the heavy burdens of gallicanism and caesarism; the former severing the ties that bound it to the head and centre of christianity, the holy father; the latter making it subservient to the whims and fancies of a ruler, human at most and liable through the schemes of politics to be hostile and intolerant. the former was suited to the imperialistic ambitions of bonaparte, who had already begun to dream of the glories of the old regime; the latter was couched in the fraudulent laws of the organic articles; the former was to lose its force before the lapse of half a century; the latter was to last as long as the concordat itself. thus it was that the outlook at the beginning of the century was little favorable to the just execution of the concordat. with all correspondence with rome interdicted save under civil surveillance, deprived of the right of assemblage, and bound by slavish ties to a state official who alone could administer, reward, punish, teach, or cause to teach, according to his own pleasure, all true liberty seemed to have vanished as completely as during the dark times of the revolution. with churches, schools and colleges under the direction of politicians, the right of ecclesiastical censure denied, and the number of aspirants to the priesthood limited, the religious society of france had become little more than an annex to the state, inferior in importance and subordinate to it in all things. the religious congregations were dispersed, the missionaries were forbidden to exercise their zeal, and for the thirty millions of catholics in the country there were only eight thousand priests of whom fully two thousand bore the taint of the constitutional oath. the bishops themselves were for the most part victims of the revolutionary tempest. some of them had come forth from prison or from the foot of the scaffold whereon they had seen their fathers, brothers and friends brutally butchered by frenzied mobs. others had come back from an exile wherein they had guarded religiously the dear image of the french church and the hope of her speedy restoration. "but it was the church they had seen flourishing under the shadow of a kingly sceptre, the gallican church with its gaudy livery and its royal servitude decorated with the names of privilege and liberty. accustomed to receive favors from the hand of power, it was easy for them to transfer their adulatory homage from the thrones of louis xiv. and louis xvi. to the boots and spurs of him who, after all, had just opened to them the gates of their country and filled his native land with glory." _coronation of napoleon._ it is not wonderful, therefore, that the will of the conqueror should remain uppermost in all church affairs during the course of the consulate, when only a few courageous and noble souls dared to stand forth in the defence of ecclesiastical rights and liberties. the consulate was termed the _lune-de-miel_, the honeymoon, in this new union of church and state; but its joys, such as they were, were to feel ere long the bitterness entailed by the unreasoning and imperious exactions of an overbearing consort. the soldier who had risen to the command of armies had been honored with the title of first consul; his head, yet uncrowned, was restless till it should feel upon it the emblem of royalty. it was his ambition to be called, and to be like charlemagne, an emperor; he desired that the consecrating oils in the great ceremony should be conferred by no less a personage than the holy father himself, and he wished that the pope should perform this ceremony at paris. the venerable pontiff, when apprised of this new demand of bonaparte, was at a loss how to respond. he looked for counsel to his most prudent friends, and above all to the great giver of light, and then weighing in the balance the great harm he knew must come from a formal refusal, and the immense benefits he felt must accrue to the church from so slight a sacrifice, he determined, leaving the issue to divine providence, to gratify this wish of the general. he did not do so, however, before renewing his protest against the obnoxious organic articles, and obtaining from bonaparte a promise of their speedy revokal. in compliance with these resolves, the holy father set out from rome on november , , and after a journey of nearly a month's duration, through provinces once hostile, but now enthusiastic in their greetings, he reached fontainebleau on sunday, november th. here he was met by bonaparte who displayed at first an apparent desire to shower every honor upon his illustrious guest. yet even this short stay near paris was marked by the same evidences of fickleness and selfishness on the part of the first consul, as were shown in his every relation with the holy see. at one time it would seem as if nothing were too good for the aged pontiff, and the consul, to demonstrate this conviction, would display the most utter obsequiousness to his spiritual superior; an hour afterwards the holy father was made to feel most keenly the sense of humiliating dependence upon his tormentor. yet the spirit of the martyr bore up bravely through storm and sunshine. he met the delegation sent to him from the french senate with a calm undisturbed serenity that drew expressions of admiration from men hostile to the very name of religion; he forebore any words of reproach against the unwarranted demands of bonaparte. there were, however, some things upon which he insisted strongly, and without which he would refuse, even on the eve of the great day, to be present at the coronation. there were among the french bishops men who had signed the civil constitution during the revolution in defiance of ecclesiastical warnings to the contrary. still unrepentant, they hoped under the protection of bonaparte to continue in the exercise of ecclesiastical jurisdiction without yielding proper submission to the holy see. to compel them to this latter course was the determined policy of pius vii. though the constitutional bishops found a ready ally in the first consul himself. the latter at first endeavored to gloss over the objections of the pope, hoping that in the excitement of the day the coronation ceremony might take place before any action would be taken in regard to the obnoxious bishops. but pius vii. was far too vigilant to become a victim to this deception. the aged pontiff demanded the act of submission as a necessary condition before the great ceremony should proceed, and bonaparte, tacitly acknowledging his defeat, yielded. the constitutional bishops at his command repaired to the presence of the holy father and complied fully with his wishes. on the evening of december st, the holy father learned for the first time that the new emperor had never contracted an ecclesiastically legal marriage with josephine, his reputed wife. despite the fact that all preparations for the great ceremony had been completed, the pope sent word to napoleon that he should refuse to take part in the coronation on the morrow unless the emperor and josephine should contract their marriage vows that very night in the presence of a duly authorized priest of the church. again the emperor, fretful and impatient as he was, yielded to the demands of the pope, and the marriage ceremony was performed at midnight in the chapel of the tuileries in the presence of cardinal fesch, uncle to napoleon. the following day, december nd, the conqueror of europe, the great dictator of france, realized the dream of his lifetime. the solemn ceremony of his consecration and coronation as emperor of the french took place in the great cathedral of notre dame in the midst of all the splendor which the united resources of church and state could afford. the ceremony began shortly after ten o'clock, when napoleon, proceeding with josephine to the foot of the altar, in the presence of the holy father made the solemn promise that he would maintain peace in the church of god. the two candidates for royalty knelt upon cushions and received from his holiness the oils and imperial consecration. napoleon then ascended the altar, and taking the crown into his own hands placed it upon his head, after which he took up the smaller crown of the empress and bearing it to josephine crowned her. she received the diadem kneeling. the ceremony was concluded with the _te deum_. pius vii. returned to rome after what was to him a humiliating and exacting journey. indeed he could congratulate himself that he had at all escaped perpetual exile at paris. before he had left that city, the new emperor, flushed with his recent glories, conceived the plan of retaining the pope at paris. the latter, however, had prepared himself for the demand and could answer courageously, that if they were to use force they would have at paris only a poor monk called barnabas chiaramonti. before he had left rome he had arranged that in such an emergency a new pope would be immediately elected. _the affair of jerome._ even at the entrance of the eternal city, new complications met to annoy and confuse him, which, however, he settled with his usual diplomatic firmness and condescension. the affair of prince jerome was just then attracting attention. the latter, a lad of nineteen, and brother of the emperor, had married while in america, december , , a certain miss patterson, a descendant of one of maryland's best families. the ceremony was performed by archbishop carroll, and was valid in the eyes of the church. upon his returning to france with his young bride he was met by the anger of his imperial brother, who as soon as possible wrote to pope pius vii.: "i have several times spoken to your holiness about a brother, nineteen years old, whom i sent on a frigate to america, and who after a month's stay, married in baltimore--although a minor--a protestant daughter of an american merchant. he has just returned; he feels the extent of his fault. i have sent back miss patterson, his alleged wife, to america. according to our laws the marriage is null. a spanish priest so far forgot his duty as to give the nuptial blessing." napoleon then proceeds to request the pope to declare the marriage invalid, giving as his principal reasons: that the lady was a protestant; that jerome was yet a minor according to french law; that the gallican church of france held it invalid, and that the marriage was clandestine and null according to the council of trent. to all these objections the holy father answered that the marriage was entirely valid, that it was not subject to the council of trent, the decrees of which had not been published in america, and that it was not in his power to annul the same unless stronger reasons were brought forward to warrant such action. to this determination the pope adhered unflinchingly, despite the threats and revengeful actions of napoleon. even later, in , when jerome was married to a princess of wurtemburg, the holy father, far from consenting, renewed his declaration as to the validity of the first marriage. napoleon, now at the summit of his political and military career, looked forward to still other conquests. he had crowned himself emperor of the french at paris; he received another crown at milan, making him king of italy. then came austerlitz and jena and eylau to humiliate austria and prussia and russia. he became a king-maker by placing his brothers upon the thrones of naples, holland and westphalia. the battle of wagram, , brought austria to the feet of the emperor, who demanded in marriage the hand of the austrian emperor's daughter, the princess maria louisa. josephine, her claims long vanished, was divorced from napoleon upon the plea of state necessity. an emperor to be an emperor indeed, must be able to look upon the children who shall carry his great name to posterity. the marriage of josephine and napoleon had been fruitless in this regard; reasons of state, therefore, demanded, according to napoleon, that a dissolution should take place, and that a new empress be called to the throne. this reasoning of napoleon was accepted by europe; only the holy father withheld his approbation and assent. josephine was divorced and the emperor remarried to maria louisa. it was on this occasion that the terms were coined in the ecclesiastical world "the red and the black cardinals," at the great ceremony which was performed by cardinal fesch in the tuileries, april , . of the twenty-nine cardinals then in paris, thirteen, including consalvi, refused to honor the occasion with their presence. this mark of disapprobation was punished by the emperor who besides depriving them of their salaries forbade them to wear the colors or insignia of their cardinalatial rank. hence their designation as the black cardinals. these two divorces betray sufficiently the shallow honor of napoleon in dealing with the church, a quality which other events of this period brought more into evidence. the vainglorious assumptions of the emperor knew no bounds. petted and flattered where he was not feared, he often smiled as he heard himself compared with alexander, caesar, or charlemagne. he designed as a means of greater glory the complete solidification of his empire under his own supreme control. only one obstacle lay in the way of his colossal ambition. he chafed at the thought that there was yet in italy one little state which would hold out against his pretensions; and then, hurried on by the lust of power, and blinded by prosperity, this pretended successor of charlemagne proceeded against the pope. again the aged pontiff remonstrated. he reminded napoleon of his former injustice in the matter of the organic articles; he reproached him for the injurious dispositions of the civil code which he had introduced into france, especially the law granting divorce, the tendency of which laws was to render the discipline of the church almost null; and now in the face of this new danger, the projected subjugation of the states of the church, he reminded the emperor of the judgments that the almighty must send upon those who disregard his divine ordinances. the words of the pope, instead of moderating the intentions of napoleon, served only to fill him with violent anger. he determined thenceforth to cast aside all promptings of conscience and to take immediate steps for the complete subjugation of rome. benevento and ponte corvo at once fell into his hands; his troops took possession of ancona and all cities on the adriatic coast; rome itself was invaded; the papal militia was incorporated with the french; the pope was deprived of every official necessary for the direction of ecclesiastical affairs, and surrounded by a guard in his own palace of the quirinal. _excommunication of napoleon._ for these outrages the holy father addressed napoleon: "by the bowels of the mercy of our god we exhort, we pray, we conjure you, emperor and king napoleon, to change your designs, to clothe yourself again with those sentiments which you manifested at the beginning of your reign. remember that there is a god and king above you; remember, and always keep before your mind, that you will see very soon and in a terrible manner how those who command others shall by him be judged with the utmost rigor." the holy pontiff then published in the face of europe a solemn protest against the unjust pretensions of napoleon. in a frenzy of rage the emperor made answer to this complaint from the french camp at schoenbrunn by declaring rome an imperial and free city. on june , , the pontifical standard was taken down from castle san angelo and the tri-color hoisted in its place. the same day pius vii. and cardinal pacca, hearing of the event, exclaimed sorrowfully, in the words of the dying savior: "consummatum est." the pope had long felt the necessity of excommunicating his enemies, but had forborne up to this time in the hope that the emperor might display some spirit of repentance. as soon as he perceived that such hope was groundless, he only needed this crowning act of sacrilege to close the doors of his heart, and to proceed to make use of the spiritual arms of the church. that same night the venerable pontiff signed the bull of excommunication against napoleon and all concerned in this spoliation. a courageous man was found who, before the morning, affixed this bull to the doors of the principal churches of rome. it was of course torn down as soon as discovered and carried to napoleon, who was then in camp at vienna. two years before, in july, , the emperor had asked scornfully: "what does the pope mean by the threat of excommunicating me? does he suppose that the arms will fall from the hands of my soldiers?" it was but a few years later when the arms did actually fall from the hands of his soldiers in the great retreat from moscow when famine and cold tore them from their grasp. _arrest of the pope._ the emperor now determined to proceed against the person of the pope. general radet was commissioned to arrest the holy father and cardinal pacca and to conduct them immediately away from rome. the story of that arrest and the indignities heaped upon the aged pontiff during his journey could not well be told in a few pages. we will then make it suffice to narrate only the salient facts. at six o'clock on the morning of july , , the french troops burst into the palace of the quirinal. radet, after a very few words of explanation, seized the holy father, and hurried him, with his faithful cardinal pacca, into a dingy carriage which was waiting in readiness. the pope was absolutely without proper provision of clothing or money. there was no leave-taking, no words of consolation from his faithful subjects, but as a criminal is dragged away to punishment, so was pius vii. carried out of rome, across the campagna to the north, until he reached the place of his captivity at savona. here he remained for three years, always under restraint and closely guarded. _at savona._ in the meantime the imperial jailer made use of every expedient to break down the firm will of his august prisoner. it was shortly after the marriage of napoleon and maria louisa that the emperor, acting upon the advice of the austrian prince metternich, sent the ritter von lebzeltern, envoy of austria to the holy see, to attempt a mediation. in this meeting the emperor proposed that the pope should take up his residence at avignon, while retaining his title to the temporal sovereignty; if he wished to reside in rome, he must resign the temporal sovereignty, though permitted in such case to keep up the outward forms of papal independence such as receiving and sending ambassadors and envoys. he declared at the same time through lebzeltern, that he had no need of reconciliation with the pope; that his bishops had the necessary powers for the granting of matrimonial dispensations, that the _code napoleon_ authorized civil marriage, and that in the prime difficulty of all, the institution of bishops, he could set aside the action of the pope and make use of a national council. the answer of pius vii. was firm and uncompromising. he rejected the proposal of resigning his temporal power, he demanded free communication with his bishops and the faithful. he dismissed lebzeltern without any concessions whatever, leaving the case exactly as it stood before that envoy's visit. the anger of the emperor upon learning the mind of the pope did not prevent him from making another attempt at reconciliation. this time he sent two of the red cardinals, spina and caselli, formerly the papal negotiators for the concordat, who met with no greater success. napoleon now determined to take the reins of ecclesiastical government into his own hands. he began this course by appointing cardinal maury, the bishop of montefiascone, to the post of archbishop of paris. the measure met with instant condemnation, especially from pope pius vii. who, writing to the cardinal, reproached him for betraying the church: "you are not ashamed," he said, "of taking part against us in a contest which we only carry on to defend the dignity of the church." to these remonstrances of the holy father the unhappy cardinal paid no heed. for daring to thus utter his condemnation of the emperor's conduct and maury's treachery, napoleon determined to punish the pope. the apartments of the holy father were broken into by imperial orders, all writing materials were taken away, his books, even his breviary, were forbidden him, his servants were sent away to fenestrelle, his household expenses were cut down (five _pauli_, about fifty cents a day for each person being allowed for the maintenance of his household), the carriages he had used were sent to turin, and even the fisherman's ring was demanded and sent to paris. before this was done, however, the pope broke the ring in two. napoleon now began to seek precedents in history for the deposing of the pope. not succeeding in this he began a systematic persecution of priests and laymen suspected of too ardent piety, hoping thus to render devotion to the exiled pope odious. chafing at the ill success of all these subversive measures napoleon determined upon a final scheme. he recalled the independence of the russian czar in matters of greek church discipline; he reflected that george iii. was undisturbed by any show of independence on the part of the english hierarchy. why, therefore, should not napoleon, the conqueror of europe, make to himself a new schism, a new hierarchy, institute his own bishops, and be free from the troublesome superintendence of the pope? the idea was inviting, and the emperor immediately took steps towards its accomplishment. a great council was called at paris. its permanent presiding officer was cardinal fesch, the uncle of the emperor, and it numbered among its deliberators one hundred and four french and italian bishops. like other councils it discussed matters of universal importance, but its chief debates concerned the canonical institution of the french hierarchy. in this matter the council decided that no bishop might be considered legitimate who had not obtained his canonical institution from the great father of the faithful. yet that the council might not displease the emperor it was decided that a deputation of bishops be sent to savona to again beg the holy father to institute the candidates proposed. again the pope renewed his refusal, though, for the sake of peace, he agreed that if the sovereign pontiff should delay such institution for six months, it might then be granted by the metropolitan or senior bishop. this was merely a delegation of power, not a cession, and was granted only for the emergency of the time being. the council of paris was, taken collectively, null, inasmuch as it was convoked and carried on without the requisite conditions. its decrees were, therefore, without any binding force. in fact, even the emperor himself recognized this and was only too happy to find a pretext for its dissolution. _at fontainebleau._ napoleon now perceived that if he was to gain anything over the will of the pope he must contrive to have his illustrious prisoner nearer to his own person. under the pretext, therefore, that the english ships were hovering about savona to liberate the pope, the emperor shortly after the termination of the council of paris, caused the holy father to be removed secretly to the palace of fontainebleau. (june , ). the conduct of the emperor during the stay at fontainebleau was in keeping with his past behavior. under a specious display of ceremonial reverence towards pius vii. he concealed a course of cruel treatment unworthy of a man, much less of a sovereign. it is true, the palace of fontainebleau was not wanting in regal magnificence, that the table of the pope was all that might be desired, and that the servants who surrounded him showed due respect for their spiritual ruler. at the same time the emperor himself acted the part of a bully and braggart towards a weak and feeble old man. an insulting tone of voice ever accompanied the most insulting demands, until the pontiff worn out and half delirious with agony was made to yield to the most unwarrantable demands. thus it was that upon the bed of sickness the holy father was finally led to apply his signature to a concordat which, in a state of health, he would have repudiated in the most decided terms. it must be remembered, however, that this yielding was not in an affair of faith and morals, nor did it concern the universal church; it was a cession for the time being of temporal rights, not even a final session, but one made temporarily in the interests of peace, and as such did not affect the papal position as the teacher and ruler of all the faithful. the emperor, in his joy at this apparent victory, began at once to show unwonted kindness towards the pope, and as a sign of his good will, permitted the old cardinals, the faithful black cardinals, to return from prison and exile to comfort him in his captivity. this concession proved unfortunate for napoleon, for scarcely had they gained access to the sovereign pontiff than they began to represent to him the immense importance of the concordat which he had signed. it was represented as a renunciation of all those inalienable rights which belonged to him, not personally, but as the sovereign ruler of the roman states, a most humiliating concession after all he had hitherto borne in their defence. the holy father in deep sorrow protested that the document was not definitive, but merely a preliminary statement, which should be reconsidered before publication, so that the concordat of that year was really without pontifical authority. thereupon, he made known to napoleon his objections, retracted everything contained in the concordat, rendering it thereby null. this decision of the sovereign pontiff only rendered the emperor all the more furious, and incited him to renew the discomforts of his prisoner. his cardinal advisers were again sent into exile or to prison, while he commanded that the concordat of should be everywhere executed without further delay. _return of the pope to rome._ but the hour had already sounded for the total ruin of the tyrant. he who had trodden europe under foot, now discovered europe armed to meet him. with germany consumed by a superhuman resolve to be free; with his old generals weary of fighting and struggling for the glory of a single man; with even his own relative, murat, a partial traitor; with murmurings and threats resounding on all sides, napoleon was not slow to perceive that his fortunes were in a precarious state. the year went by and battles were fought; some gained, some lost. the great campaign against russia, with its consequent humiliating retreat had given the signal. the great conqueror, who had once claimed a kind of sovereignty over a large part of europe, now found france hardly able to uphold his imperial authority. in his desire to repair some of the wrongs he had perpetrated he liberated the holy father, in the beginning of the year . but the repentance came too late. already the enemy stood before the gates of paris, and napoleon learned that the day of his imperial domination was at an end. in his despair he fled to fontainebleau, and there, in the very same chamber wherein he had confined his spiritual superior, he signed the articles of his abdication (april , ). his fate was soon sealed by those triumphant powers against which he had so long contended, and he retired a humbler man to his place of exile upon the island of elba. [illustration: return of pius vii.] meanwhile pius vii., who was by this time far on his way to rome, was waiting at imola for the final ending of the great tragedy which was taking place in france, and hearing of the downfall of his old-time foe, he hurried on with all dispatch to rome. he arrived there on may , , and made a solemn entrance into the eternal city, whence five years before, he had been dragged away with so much violence. the joy and enthusiasm of the people, augmented by the memories of recent usurpation and tyranny, were unbounded. it was not alone that rome had regained her sovereign but the church also had again her beloved head, and all the catholic world took part in the triumph of religion over the unbridled ambition of her enemies. it is true the storm had not entirely subsided. napoleon again broke forth from captivity, and the holy see for a moment trembled lest new outrages might yet be perpetrated against the church. but before the danger could have been brought to its accomplishment, the newly arisen napoleon was again overthrown at waterloo, june , , after which he was exiled beyond all hope of return, to the lonely island of st. helena, where he died on may , , after six years of penance. peace now settled upon the troubled church. religion once more dried the tears of sorrow, and the pope, restored to the love of his faithful people, began to give his attention to arts nobler than that of war; the raising up of catholic peoples in the knowledge of that god, who, after purging them in the land of bondage, had overwhelmed their enemies and brought them to newer and richer prospects in the land of promise. footnote: [footnote : _memoires of king joseph._] chapter iv. anti-christianism in rome. _the holy alliance._ pius vii. re-entered his capital may , . in the meantime the princes of europe had remade the map of europe; but in spite of all hopes of permanent peace, their efforts only served to sow more widely the seeds of trouble and revolution. the congress of vienna, in session from november , , to june , , was, through the triumph it accorded to protestantism, a triumph for the revolution. that coalition was termed the holy alliance. never was appellation more misleading, for the work of those princes only compromised the interests of religion, and put back for generations the empire of peace. religious indifference had become the first article of the international code and the first requisite in the profession of diplomacy. pius vii. found the eternal city despoiled of its artistic treasures, and he hastened to supply the deficiency made by napoleon. he set to work to reorganize his kingdom. he replenished the impoverished treasury; he published civil, commercial, penal and legal codes, and regulated the taxes, re-established the society of jesus, and entered into concordats with bavaria, france, sicily, piedmont, russia and austria. comparative peace settled upon his domains so that when he closed his eyes in death on august , , the fortunes of the papacy in italy were apparently secure. nevertheless, even in his day, the storm was already rumbling and the first threats were heard of that war which was later to wrest the temporal power from the hands of his successor, pius ix. in the forests of italy, in the fastnesses of the abruzzi, among the woods of calabria, in the mountains of sicily and in the caves and valleys of the appenines, a new spirit was in the mold taking shape. _the carbonari._ the freemasons, silenced after the defeat of napoleon, took a new form in the notorious carbonari, a secret society whose branches were spreading throughout every part of the peninsula. they were called carbonari, which signifies charcoal-burners, because they held their assemblies in places called vendite or places for selling coal. their object was the overthrow of all organized government both in church and state, and they swore their oaths with the most bloody promises under the most revolting penalties. like all secret societies they had many degrees, their lowest being formed of young unsuspecting candidates, who were lured into the horrors of the higher grades by professions of loyalty to religion and the promise of quick and certain wealth. the younger portion of italy, quickly caught by the bait, was bound by oaths the infraction of which meant death, and finally led on to associations in which revolution and plunder formed the means and end. pope pius vii. issued an encyclical directed against their insidious and dangerous doctrines, which was followed by another from pope leo xii. both documents were enforced throughout the papal states, and effected some little relief; but the disease had gained too great a headway, and even in secret continued to make its progress felt in various centres of the country. [illustration: pope leo xii.] the efforts of the secret societies in italy became more pronounced during the pontificate of pope gregory xvi., when the carbonari were united with a new association, the young italy of mazzini. _mazzini and young italy._ joseph mazzini, born at genoa in , began to express his revolutionary doctrines in , in the _genoese indicator_, and in the _leghorn indicator_. he was arrested and expelled from genoa, whence he fled to marseilles. there he met with three piedmontese: bianchi, santi, and rimini. these three conspirators furnished him with the idea of a new branch of secret societies, which they called young italy. to this nascent association mazzini gave the motto "for god and the people," giving it to be understood that between god and the people there was to be no intermediary, neither political nor religious. in accord with the carbonari in making war upon catholicism, and inspired by their title, they refused admission into their society to anyone over forty years of age. at first the unity of the peninsula was their apparent end, to which they added hatred of ecclesiastical government, and made the dagger and revolution the means for attaining those purposes. the republic appeared to them the only possible mode of government. nevertheless that preference was not so exclusive but that they could consent to a monarchy as they actually did when they promised to charles felix, in , that they would not molest a monarch who would agree to be a protege of the revolution and of the lodges. [illustration: pope pius viii.] exiled to marseilles, in , mazzini passed on into switzerland, where he made disciples of some polish and german exiles. thence he went to england, whence he directed the expedition in savoie. among the propagators of the young italy movement, who gave most sorrow to the heart of the holy father, were such apostates as achilli, gavazzi and gioberti. it is a significant fact that these disloyal ecclesiastics received no real recognition for their treason, and as soon as their services were no longer of use, they were cast aside by those for whom they had betrayed both country and god. there were also some of the nobility who betrayed a most shameful treason. nearly all of them owed their prestige to the holy see, but abandoned their benefactor when the promise of power was held out to them by mazzini. [illustration: mazzini.] from his retreat in london mazzini sent out his messages of hate and revolt. in he founded a revolutionary sheet called the "popular apostolate," a weekly which propagated his doctrines and sent them as a ferment of disorder into italy. at the same time, in france, michelet, sue and quinet were attacking the jesuits; books with the same object were printed in london; and even in italy, gioberti was publishing his _modern jesuit_, wherein he ventilated for the benefit of revolutionaries and sectaries the idea of a lay pontificate. _hostile congresses._ among the many means employed to attack the pope were certain congresses which were held successively at turin, florence, naples, milan, genoa and venice. these congresses were called _scientific_, and did actually treat of the natural sciences and economic studies; but their true purpose was to afford a forum for the expression of the views of young italy, and of hatred to the holy see. gregory xvi. perceived the real intent of these assemblies and forbade their holding in rome, a refusal which excited the protestations of the conspirators who did not hesitate to proclaim him an enemy of progress and enlightenment. _accession of pius ix._ gregory xvi. died in and was succeeded by cardinal giovanni mastai-ferretti, archbishop of spoleto who took the name of pius ix. the proclamation of the election was marked in rome by indescribable enthusiasm. he was hailed as a savior from the severe rule of this predecessor, and even young italy pretended to see in him a fosterer of their republican intentions. the future indeed looked inviting to the young pope, who nevertheless, could not but see the darkness that hid the horizon from view. the revolution continued its work. despite the ovations of his people, despite the plaudits of the nations and their governments, pius ix. was made to feel that the storm was at hand. at the same time while he felt the obligation of defending the rights of the church with courage, he determined to make all reasonable concessions, and to accord as much liberty as his conscience might permit. for a month he debated with himself and his councillors upon the advisability of granting an amnesty to prisoners confined during the reign of gregory xvi. the cardinals with certain personal experiences to guide them refused to accede to the demand for such amnesty, but the holy father in his solicitude for peace, granted the request actuated by the revolutionaries. all the political prisoners and exiles were amnestied on the condition of recognizing the supreme pontiff as their legitimate king, and of serving him as loyal subjects. all signed the contract, some going so far in their protestations of affection and loyalty as to arouse suspicion in the minds of some very practical ecclesiastics. popular satisfaction manifested itself in enthusiastic fetes and dithyrambic felicitations. _generous dispositions of the holy father._ the amnesty was followed by other marks of generosity on the part of the new pope. on april , , the holy father gave to rome a strong municipal organization; the state had its two chambers, its civic guard, an electoral law, a juris-consult, and a council of ministers. according to the new order of things laymen were permitted to enter the council of his holiness. [illustration: gregory xvi.] the whole world applauded; but the revolutionists were disappointed and prepared for a decisive blow. it looked for only one thing--the overthrow of the papacy. pius ix. had done much in reforming the administration, in laicising it to a reasonable degree, in providing for all the popular needs, in creating asylums for the afflicted, schools for the children, and retreats for the poor; but the fall of the pope was decreed, and rome began to fill up with members of the secret societies, evangelical societies, bible societies, all of whom worked together with implacable perseverance. inspired by the perfidious and meddlesome english agents, they clamored for a larger liberty of the press, and for a greater national representation. full liberty of the press was accorded, march , , and journalism began immediately its work of destruction. _eighteen hundred and forty-eight._ the year came. the situation throughout all southern europe wore a foreboding aspect. the king of naples was menaced by a revolution; venice was in the midst of an insurrection; piedmont was at war with austria; hungary had arisen and driven the emperor ferdinand from his capital; and the july revolution was just beginning in paris. it was then that rome re-echoed with the sound of revolution. demagogues besieged the vatican, and mobs yelled for impossible demands, to all of which pius ix. was forced to answer: "non possumus." his minister rossi was assassinated on the steps of the assembly, and the gentle mgr. palma was shot as he stood near a window of the quirinal palace. the next day, november , the quirinal was invaded; rome was in the hands of the mob. even the holy father yielded for the sake of peace, and signed the list of a new cabinet. when europe learned of this, it concluded that the pope, deprived of his liberty had signed a document which was null. the constituent assembly at paris reproached in severe terms the actions of the roman mob. _flight of the pope._ finally on november , , the holy father, realizing that he was a prisoner of an infuriated revolutionary crowd, determined to escape as soon as possible from rome and seek asylum elsewhere. his release was effected through the strategy of the duke of harcourt. in company with count de spaur, the bavarian ambassador, he contrived to ride incognito through the lines of sentinels around the quirinal and about the city walls, and set out for gaeta, where he arrived after some days. here he was received with cordial welcome by the king of naples, under whose filial care the holy father passed two years of exile. in the meantime mazzini had fastened his yoke upon the city of the popes. clubs were formed here and there. the circolo populare directed by bonaparte canino named a governmental junta, a sort of provisional government. mazzini himself hid behind the scenes and directed the movements of the figures. _garibaldi._ at that time there arrived from south america a personage who was to play a serious part in the final spoliation of the holy see. this was the infamous giuseppe garibaldi, who was born at nice, july , . he was a conspirator from the beginning. as a young man he had conducted a practice of piracy with the moroccan savages, after which he went to south america. the european insurrections of awakened the old passion for turbulence and disorder in his brain, and he hastened back to italy. he came to rome in the very moment of republican triumph. [illustration: garibaldi.] on february , , the roman parliament held a session in the capitol. after a discourse pronounced by armelini, the prince de canino arose and cried out "viva la republica!" in a moment garibaldi was on his feet and added: "we are losing time in vain ceremonies. let us hasten our work." his words were repeated everywhere. by a decree of february , it was declared that the papacy had actually and legally lost the government of the roman states; that the roman pontiff, however, would have all the guarantees necessary for independence in the exercise of his spiritual power, that the form of government of the roman state would be democratic pure and simple, and would be known as the roman republic. mazzini, the soul of the conspiracy, remained its dictator despite the nomination of a triumvirate. garibaldi was charged by him to guard the roman frontier against the operations of the neapolitans. rome itself was delivered up to all the horrors of anarchy. the european powers intervened, and france sent under the walls of rome, general oudinot with a corps of the army. during the first days of the siege garibaldi gained over the french a slight advantage which gained for him the title of general. one of the first acts of the exiled pope at gaeta was to issue a proclamation addressed to his subjects. therein he expressed the hope that his misguided subjects would repent of their conduct toward him. but seeing that they were every day proceeding from one excess to another, he felt constrained to appeal against them to that supreme power of which he was the depository, and to arm himself with the spiritual sword which jesus christ had placed in the hand of his earthly vicar. therefore, he pronounced the decree of excommunication against all those who had taken an active part in the revolution. then, as if in sorrow for the righteous severity, to which he was obliged to have recourse, and of the just defence which he had to make for the rights of the church, he promised mercy and pardon to all who should give evidence of repentance. his words, however, fell upon deaf ears. mazzini was still in power. atrocities of the most horrible type disgraced the streets of rome, imola, ancona and loretto. the clergy were persecuted and some of them strangled. indeed, the triumvirs made use of fallen priests to celebrate the sacred ceremonies. it was then that the catholic nations began to attest their veneration for the exile of gaeta. france sent pressing offers of hospitality. spain, portugal, austria, bavaria, even prussia and russia offered their aid towards his restoration. _rome is taken by papal allies._ it was finally to france that he owed the glory of his return. while the austrians were advancing through the legations, the french army under oudinot, duke of reggio, entered rome after a siege of twenty-six days. at the end of june, , the city finally capitulated, and general oudinot proclaimed the restoration of the pontifical sovereignty. on april , , the holy father took possession of the city. an amnesty was granted, but with certain exclusions, among them being the triumvirs, the military chiefs and the members of the provisional government. on december , , pope pius ix proclaimed the dogma of the immaculate conception, which was received in all catholic lands with a concert of acclamations. but this triumph of mary was only like a symbol of hope before the approaching storm whose mutterings could already be heard in the distance. when pius ix had returned from gaeta, the secret societies made a solemn oath that they would yet obtain possession of rome. not content with wishing to deliver italy from foreign domination, they held up before the italian people the illusory hope of becoming, through the defeat of the papacy, the first nation of europe. to attain this end it was necessary not only that the states should unite in one solid confederation, but that they should constitute one kingdom the government of which should be confided to the princes of the house of savoy, to be held at the discretion of the sectaries. their method consisted in spreading broadcast calumnies against the holy see, in discrediting in austria the house of hapsburg which had been the last in europe to shield the papacy with the sword of the holy roman empire, and in assuring the hypocritical neutrality of napoleon iii., who had ascended the throne only to be their supple instrument. then they would place the king of piedmont and sardinia, victor emmanuel, upon the conquered throne of united italy, first in the north and south, and finally in the eternal city itself. _conspiracy against the holy see._ in fact, the first attacks upon the temporal power of the pope came from the sectaries abroad. in the congress of paris, just after the crimean war, the ministers of france, sardinia and england formulated against the papal states certain accusations, which they hastened to make public. therein they declared the government of the pope to be the most retrograde and perverse of the age. the minister of piedmont, cavour, already dreaming of the unification of italy, placed in the hands of the french and english ministers a verbal note in which he outlined a scheme for the expropriation of the papal states. the note had no immediate effect, but combining with other hostile expressions against the holy see, it was the signal of the storm which was about to burst upon the church. [illustration: pope pius ix.] piedmont had become a veritable hot-bed of liberalism and irreligion. the government had ceased to respect its concordats with the holy see. it had violated the rights of the churches, and had established itself as absolute judge in matters purely religious. the archbishop of turin was banished and died in exile for having spoken in reproof of these unwarranted usurpations. the bishop of cagliari was obliged to leave his diocese. the encroachments of the civil government went from bad to worse; the property of the churches was confiscated, the religious orders persecuted, and a general reign of iniquity inaugurated. in thus abandoning itself to the spirit of revolution, piedmont went far in the way of iniquity. under the pretext of working for the independence of italy, its real design was to subjugate the whole land and make all its princes tributary. in fact, the history of the formation of the kingdom of italy is the history of all the treasons, corruptions, and turpitudes that one can imagine. the records of europe contain nothing more high-handed or shameful. the piedmontese government, at once astute and brutal, secretly arousing the people by its paid emissaries, and then invading territories with violence; shamefully dissimulating the manoeuvres of its ambition, and their unmasking its projects with cynical audacity; scorning equally the rights of the people and the anathemas of the church; recoiling before no means of corruption, and purchasing everything even military honor; insulting after its victories those whom it had surprised and defeated, not by the superiority of courage or skill, but by the aid of lying, treason, and the force of numbers; boasting of having yielded to the will of the peoples whose territory it was invading, and whose will it was forcing by the most odious of martial laws. it was the piedmontese, cialdini, who gave orders to shoot without mercy those peasants who were faithful to their king, the pope, to religion and to country. it was pinelli who said: "we must crush the sacerdotal vampire, the vicar, not of christ, but of satan." it was he who called for fire and sword, an inexorable revenge against the papacy and the church. other like savages were fantoni and fumel, an italian deputy speaking of them from the tribune said: "the proclamations of cialdini and the other piedmontese leaders are worthy of tamerlane, ghengeskhan and attila." in consequence of these barbarous orders, butchery was the order of the day. priests, magistrates, women, mothers, were imprisoned and shot. on one occasion thirteen citizens were burned alive. fourteen towns were set on fire and their inhabitants pursued and shot down. at pontelandolfo thirty unhappy women who had taken refuge under the shelter of a cross were savagely massacred. ancona was bombarded, and then capua, and then gaeta. in that unholy war france hitherto the protectrix of the church forgot her past. it is true she redeemed herself at castelfidardo and at mentana, giving to pius ix her most generous blood; but she was powerless to prevent the consummation of the most perfidious and iniquitous acts of the nineteenth century. cavour recognized in napoleon iii., the french emperor, a worthy accomplice. the two statesmen met at plombieres and there decided to declare war against austria. in the treaty of zurich, concluded november , , it was decided that italy should be formed into one confederation under the honorary presidency of the pope. but hardly had the treaty been signed than piedmont disregarded it by commencing a series of invasions, thanks to the silence of france and the influence of england. pius ix protested in an allocution, reproving those acts of rebellion accomplished against the power and sovereignty of the holy see. _hypocrisy of napoleon iii._ in the midst of these events there appeared a pamphlet entitled: "the pope and the congress," which public opinion attributed to napoleon iii. therein, the author, posing as a pious and sincere catholic, gave his adhesion to what had been done and counselled the separation of the province of romagna. napoleon finding that his trick was discovered wrote a hypocritical letter to the holy father. at the same time victor emmanuel pursued his projects of annexation. after a vote manipulated by cavour, tuscany, modena, parma and the romagnas were confiscated to the piedmontese government. on march , , pius ix issued a bull of excommunication against the usurpers and against all who had participated therein whether by counsel or by action. without being named directly the king of piedmont and napoleon iii. were the objects of the censure. the two accomplices thereupon threw aside all reserve and hastened to direct operations. as the price of his complicity napoleon iii. obtained nice and savoy, in march, . only two states of italy remained to be conquered, those of naples (italy) and the holy see. the revolution intoxicated with success, set to work to gain these two prizes. a revolt in sicily served as a pretext. an italian bandit, garibaldi, favored by england, obtained control of sicily; then naples was delivered to the cause of victor emmanuel by treason and sacrilege. francis ii., its king, was forced to shut himself up in gaeta. at the same time cialdini, a creature of victor emmanuel, invaded the papal territory, and brought his piedmontese army against the forces of the pontifical troupes, commanded by the gallant lamoriciere. this brutal aggression aroused such indignation in france and in europe, that the french government felt itself bound to remonstrate with piedmont. the latter government, however, paid no attention to the remonstrance, but continued its invasion. all the catholic countries of europe sent to the holy father the elite of their young men, and a gallant army of papal zouaves was soon under arms, ready to shed its blood for the cause of the church. piedmont, under the silent and inactive eye of france, crushed that army on september , . a few days later ancona capitulated, and the marches and umbria were lost to the holy see. in the south, francis ii. was still enclosed in gaeta; cialdini hastened thither and laid siege to the town. the king defended himself bravely, but at length, february , , was obliged to yield and retired to rome. _usurpations of victor emmanuel._ at length, through robbery and brigandage, victor emmanuel, in february, , took the title of king of italy, which europe had the weakness to recognize. the moment seemed propitious to make the rome of the popes the capital of the new kingdom; garibaldi tried to effect it, but was shamefully defeated at aspromonte and forced to retreat. on september , , took place the famous convention, whereby piedmont agreed to respect what remained of the pontifical kingdom, while france withdrew her forces from the papal states. the promise of piedmont was illusory, and deceived no one. garibaldi marched almost immediately on rome with six thousand revolutionaries. happily he was overtaken by captain costes, who commanded horsemen, and this delay, although only twenty-six hours, saved the city for that time. the bands of garibaldians were again defeated by the troops of saussier and de charette, at mentana, november , . from that time until , the power of france maintained the pope on his throne. but when the prussian war broke out, napoleon recalled his troops to the number of ; he needed them, he said, for the defence of france in her danger. nothing now could oppose the piedmontese. the court of florence at once sent , men, commanded by a renegade, general caderna, who arrived before rome in september. the whole papal force amounted to scarcely , , so that resistance became practically impossible. the holy father, nevertheless, went through the form of resistance. the enemy was obliged to force its way through a breach in the wall at porta pia, and entered rome thus on september , . _fall of rome._ the same evening cardinal antonelli, the papal secretary of state, sent a circular of protest to all the civilized governments. it met, however, with silence, except in one instance. the republic of equador, through its president, the heroic garcia moreno, sent a message of sympathy, so full of courage and loyalty as to call forth the admiration and affection of pius ix. in order to give an appearance of decency to his usurpation, and to throw dust into the eyes of the european governments, victor emmanuel caused a plebiscite to be taken at rome. this pretence of a popular vote called out only , names, most of which belonged to soldiers of the invading army. a law of guarantees was also published, whereby the person of the pope was declared sacred and inviolable; the honors of sovereignty were to be maintained by him; he was to possess the vatican palace, the lateran, and the country palace at castel gandolfo, besides an annual indemnity of , , francs, which was naturally refused. there was also a guarantee of full liberty for future conclaves and ecumenical councils. only one thing was certain under all the guarantees: that the usurpers would have their way in any case. after the taking of rome by the piedmontese, pius ix shut himself up in the vatican from which he was never to go forth alive. there he died, february , . victor emmanuel, who had fixed his court at the quirinal, lived only until january , . _accession of leo xiii._ the new pope, leo xiii., a native of _carpinetti_, of the family of the pecci, was one fitted to guide the bark of peter in the trying circumstances in which he found it. the law of guarantees apparently in force could be said to shield the person of the holy father only because he gave no opportunity for its infringement. as a prisoner in the vatican he could not easily come into conflict with the radical elements of the city who would show him scant courtesy did he choose to appear in the public streets, notwithstanding the law of guarantees. in fact the temper of the mob has betrayed itself on more than one occasion. on the night of july , , as the remains of the late pope pius ix were being borne to their last resting place in the cemetery of san lorenzo. the event was made the occasion of rowdyism unimpeded by any surveillance on the part of the government authorities. as the funeral cortege moved along, the chorus of mockery and insult was raised on all sides. the police did nothing to silence the disturbers. encouraged by this tolerance the mob went still farther. insults were succeeded by threats. then followed violence; stones were hurled and blows rained upon the members of the cortege. the faithful followed piously chanting the miserere or reciting the rosary, while the enemy howled the garibaldian song. in the piazza dei termi the crowd hurled showers of stones. the attending prelates were insulted, threatened with death, and struck upon the face. the faithful gathered around the funeral car determined to resent the profanations of the savage mob. it was only when the church of san lorenzo was reached that the police at length thought fit to intervene. the danger was then over, and the funeral obsequies proceeded in comparative peace. _leo xiii. and labor._ the true genius of the prisoner of the vatican began first to manifest itself in his attitude towards the knights of labor in the states of america and canada. cardinal taschereau of quebec, and the canadian prelates, as well as some prelates of the extreme party in the united states had almost secured the condemnation of this great labor organization by the sacred congregation at rome. this body, it was claimed, was constituted somewhat after the model of freemasonry; it had its secrets hidden from the outside world, and it had likewise a code of signs and passwords known only to the initiated. catholics numbered largely among its members, and for this reason it was considered that the characteristics of this organization were those of a secret society which brought it under the ban of the church. [illustration: pope leo xiii.] but for the pope the condemnation of the knights of labor by the sacred congregation would no doubt have been pronounced. freemasonry, with its stupendous oaths and its invocations of dire and dreadful penalties in case of the violation of such oaths, with its liturgical services and elaborate ceremonial--not to mention continental freemasonry with its factional political policy and aims--was an altogether different thing from the constitution and workings of the society known as the knights of labor. the avowed object of the knights of labor was the right of the laborer to a voice in determining the price at which he should part with his labor. it had no suggestion of anything revolutionary or anti-christian. to have condemned this particular organization would have meant the condemnation of labor unionism everywhere. leo had already shown his sympathy for the workingman in many an expression of marked significance. his unconcealed admiration for much of what was characteristically american made him glad of the opportunity to pronounce officially in favor of this great organization of american workingmen. the encyclical which followed in made glad the sons of labor throughout the world, and gave satisfaction to all democratic communities. some of the sentences may well be quoted here: "the customs of working by contract, and the concentration of so many branches of trade in the hands of a few individuals, have brought about a condition of things by means of which a very small number of rich men have been able to lay upon the masses of the laboring poor a yoke little better than slavery itself.... is it that the fruit of a man's own sweat and labor should be possessed by someone else?... if the workman has to accept harder conditions because the employer will not grant him better, he is the victim of force and injustice." sentiments like these had been expressed by other writers and other teachers, but coming from such a quarter and at such a time, they powerfully influenced the minds of the working classes, and won a regard for the pope which has not died with his death. even so great an aristocrat as dr. moorehouse, the protestant bishop of melbourne, later of manchester, in speaking of the pope's encyclical, said: "he shows a spirit very vast, a great depth of knowledge and a foresight most sagacious." barres, the celebrated french socialist, said: "let the pope go on, and democracy will no longer see an enemy in the priest." president cleveland recognized the pope's spirit by sending him a bound copy of the american constitution, to which his holiness graciously replied, and added these words: "in your country men enjoy liberty in the true sense of the word, guaranteed by that constitution of which you have sent me a copy. the character of the president rouses my most genuine admiration." the pope's recognition of the french republic was part of his policy of conciliation, and gained for the church many practical benefits in france. leo xiii. died peacefully on july , . he was succeeded by cardinal joseph sarto, patriarch of venice, a native of riese near padua in northern italy, where he was born june , . he was ordained to the priesthood september , ; was made bishop of mantua november , ; cardinal and patriarch of venice in june, ; and finally pope, taking the name of pius x. on august , . _accession of pius x._ pope pius x. came to his inheritance in a time of fearful storm and stress. the war on religion was already far advanced in france, and its mutterings were beginning to be heard in other states. but the new pope, putting his trust in him whose vicar he was, placed before himself the sublime mission of restoring all things in christ. his reign of seven years has already been signalized by an extraordinary virility, and a care for all in the church. his encyclicals are marked by their timeliness and practical character. in , his eyes as they surveyed the new direction of anti-christianism, that modern refinement of error, detected its features in the movement to which he gave the name of modernism. this system condemned by him as the synthesis of all heresies, is the destruction of the idea of christian doctrine by the theoretical or practical subordination of catholicism to the modern spirit. the modern world, with its ideas, its customs, its needs, modernism tells us, is an imposing fact; no power, not even the church, can arrest its progress; it is therefore necessary to prevent the church, intimately allied as it is with the life of modern society, from falling into ruin; it must transform its doctrines, and make them harmonize with the needs of a new age. the ideas of the catholic faith ought to progress like the ideas of philosophy and the profane sciences. such is the contention of the modernists. _modernism._ they forget that the catholic also can have modern ideas and can draw profit for himself from all that is commendable in modern progress. but at the same time the church is actually in possession of a deposit of faith infinitely true and intangible, coming as it does from divine truth itself, and being true it cannot undergo such changes as are signified by the word evolution. but the adaptations which this modern spirit would demand of her are nothing more than an evolution, and would mean the abandonment of her gospel, her dogmas, her supernatural life--in a word of herself. the condemnation of modernism naturally aroused the anger of its votaries. it had already gained to itself many men of prominence such as schell in germany, fogazzaro in italy, loisy in france, and tyrrell in england, all of whom made desperate endeavors to offset the effect of the papal condemnation. but the efforts of the holy father were successful; modernism has lost its prestige as a system, and men now that they are warned of its true character are quickly abandoning its influences. _the methodists in rome._ an incident which created considerable excitement both in europe and america was the visit of ex-president roosevelt to rome in april, . while mr. roosevelt was yet in egypt on his way homeward, he sent a telegram to mr. leishman, the american ambassador in rome, requesting that official to arrange for an audience with the holy father. it was only shortly before that mr. fairbanks, the former vice-president, had been refused an audience because of his expressed determination to visit and address the methodist establishment in the via venti settembre, an institution hostile and insulting to the papacy and the catholic church. just as the desire of mr. roosevelt became known to the vatican, it was also ascertained that strenuous efforts were being made by the methodists to secure the presence of the ex-president at a public gathering. they had enlisted the services of mr. leishman to this end, and as mr. roosevelt had not declined the invitation, it became necessary to ascertain that he would not accept it before being invited to an audience at the vatican. the arrangements for the audience were being made through rt. rev. thomas f. kennedy, d. d., titular bishop of indianapolis and rector of the american college, but the ex-president refused to say that he would not accept the invitation of the methodists, and thus the audience was cancelled. the incident was a sad reflection upon the good judgment of mr. roosevelt, who should have known the character of the roman methodist concern and what it meant to the holy see; that it was an insult to the holy father, and to millions of his fellow-citizens. _situation in rome today._ on september of last year, the fortieth anniversary of the breach of porta pia, an incident took place which betrayed the real character of italian anti-clericalism. it was on that day forty years before that the pope was deprived not only of his temporal dominions but even of his liberty. the vatican became as a little rock, in the midst of a stormy sea whose waves lashed it incessantly. since no pope has ever left the vatican alive. even the dead remains of pope pius ix. could not be carried through the streets without molestations. this fact made it evident last year that the remains of leo xiii. could not be brought safely from their temporary resting place to their tomb in st. john lateran. to avoid all similar trouble pius x. has chosen for his last resting place the crypt of st. peter's. in the beginning of the piedmontese occupation excessive care was taken to show a good face before the world. the politicians and political measures of the new government were at least moderate. but as time went on the enemies of the church became emboldened in their hostility. the confiscations of the early eighties encouraged the spirit of unbelief and outrage which was embedded by evil example in the minds of a new generation. _the insult of mayor nathan._ in , the votaries of every manner of disorder, intellectual, religious, and social, celebrated the reign of anarchy by the unveiling, in the campo dei fiori, of a statue of giordano bruno, an apostate monk, who has thus become the patron of anti-christianism in rome. every year thenceforth the anniversary of the taking of rome has been made the occasion of insult and defamation against the holy see and the catholic religion. last year, nathan, the jewish mayor of rome, carried effrontery to its extreme. in a speech delivered on the occasion of the th september he hurled abuse, calumny and insult upon the holy see in a manner to call for protests from even the anti-clerical forces of the city. the holy father himself uttered a vigorous protest, which met with responsive sympathy from every part of the catholic world. in montreal, especially, a mighty meeting of twenty thousand catholics voiced their indignation in the name of that catholic city. its effectiveness is evident from the fact that it forced a speedy though very lame explanation from nathan himself, whose letter showed both his ignorance and his lack of acquaintance with the elementary notions of good breeding. [illustration: pope pius x.] _character of pius x._ pius x. shines as an exemplar of indomitable christian faith, confronting the infidelity of a modern world. he has the faith of leo i., which stopped the march of attila against rome; the unwavering courage of gregory vii., who died in exile but triumphed after his death over his enemies. the crises which he faces are not new, and he meets them with the old weapons of supernatural manufacture which have proved to be the most effective against the enemies of the church in all the ages which have passed. he is the true diplomat relying not on earthly defences, but on the promises of christ to his church. the latin statesmen who are opposed to him have found an impregnable barrier to their sinister designs. they may exult in a cheap, temporary triumph, but they have set loose to attain it the forces of disorder, and they will reap in time the deadly fruitage of their ill-advised plotting against the rights of the church. the church ever triumphs. it is strange that these masters of a day do not learn a lesson from the history of the past. they are blinded by present power and position, and seek to accomplish what greater than they have failed to achieve. meanwhile, pius x. serenely carries on the government of the universal church. he is unmoved by the clamors of politicians in high places, and quietly steers his course, unmindful of their threats, but calmly confident in the protection of a higher power. he is an inspiration to the catholics of the world. but especially to americans, who like fair play and admire devotion to a high ideal. he is an exemplar whom they venerate and love. they admire his consistency and single-minded devotion to the interests of the church which he guards. they are impressed by his courage and simple faith. in the face of the trying difficulties which beset him on every side they commend his calm faith in the ultimate triumph of right, and his serene confidence in the victory of justice. the enemies opposed to him are powerful and resourceful; but the brave stand against them made by him and his secretary of state elicit the sympathy of all true americans who love the right and adhere to it despite the temporary prestige of those who are opposed to it. the hope of all catholics is that the reign of pius x. may be prolonged until he may reap the reward of his labors for the independence and liberty of the church. but in every event they feel assured that the blessed result will be attained, if not in the lifetime of the present illustrious pontiff, at least in the years to come as a blessed heritage of the intrepid pius x. at present the position of the church is one of great difficulty. represented as rome is in parliament by deputies who are all hostile to the church, she has little to expect in the way of courtesy or justice. the law of guarantees which holds the person and good name of the sovereign pontiff inviolable, offers in fact but little security in the time of need. there are, indeed, hopes that a better era is opening up; that the people are beginning to look clearly upon the illusory promises of men whose only interest is their own elevation and power. if this hope is realized the church may again breathe more freely, and the holy father may hope for some little release from the worries that constantly assail him. chapter v. the kulturkampf--the causes--the men--and the events. _the causes._ looking into the history of the times just preceding the kulturkampf, and the nature of the events transpiring during its progress, among the causes may be enumerated the following: , the liberalism of the rationalists; , the liberalism of certain pseudo-catholics; , the desire for protestant ascendancy; , the hatred of ultramontainism as incarnated in the "old catholic" sect; and , the determination of caesarism to reduce all religion in germany to the domination of the state. _the rationalists._ emanuel kant, and then hegel and his disciples, had opened the way to unrestricted rationalism. they taught that religion was only an inferior form of "the idea," which "idea" formed its truth only in the "superior form" of philosophy. in frederick richter, a disciple of hegel, denied the immortality of the soul, declaring the doctrine the cause of every evil. in , another hegelian, strauss, denied the divinity of christ. in , richard rothe wrote a book to demonstrate that the gospel would triumph only when all churches and religious societies were exterminated from the face of the earth. this species of philosophy, by denying the immortality of the soul, the divinity of christ, and the value of the church, reduced all religion to a vague form without any fixed or determinate existence. but, after all, what did hegel and his disciples mean by religion? it is difficult to give an answer when one examines his works, barbarous as they are in style, and more nebulous in their conceptions than these of any other german writer. nevertheless out of his misty speculations one can thus formulate his conception of religion: "religion is only a creation, a phantasm of the mind of man, who adores a god whom he himself has formed to his own image; so that divine nature is only human nature idealized, unconfined, and then considered as a real and personal being." from this principle which denied god, by confounding him with man, and reducing all religion to simple philanthropy, feuerbach deduced the theory that all theology was founded upon anthropology; that god was man, and that the love of god meant merely the love of man. thus german philosophy had arrived at mystical atheism and was turning rapidly to open paganism with its denial of christianity. this doctrine was preached by stirner and by gaspar schmidt, who esteemed egoism as something sacred, and began to advocate revolution and anarchy. side by side with the school of hegel was that of tubingen, the head and master of which was ferdinand christian baur (died in ). baur had written, in , a work on gnosticism, which suggested many of the errors of renan, and ten years later another work on st. paul, of which renan made much use when after denying the divinity of christ, he wished also to deny the sanctity of paul. baur had once attempted to answer moehler's monumental work, that "_symbolism_" which exposed the contradictions of protestantism and the constant doctrine of the church. under the leadership of baur, the school of tubingen rejected the gospel of st. john, the whole theme of which is the divinity of christ. while the philosophers of tubingen and other german universities were thus assailing the divine foundations of christianity, another class of writers, moleschott, büchrer, vogt, löwenthal, and many protestants, were turning to naturalism and atheistic materialism, the consequences of hegelianism. the materialistic school, which was socialistic in politics, atheistic in religion, realistic in literature, had the impudence to present itself as the savior of society. it would have mattered little had these various systems been compelled to rely upon their un-christian apostles for support; but the pity was that men who pretended to believe in christianity, in the bible, in revelation only too often listened with favor to their teachings and applauded them. thus it was that by the time of the french war of , the protestant mind of germany was deeply infected with rationalistic ideas, so far at least as to render it unfit to understand even the primary principles of christianity. under such conditions it is easy to perceive how the teachings of catholicity, resting firmly upon the gospels and drawing their vigor from the divinity of its founder, could prove a very eyesore to a misguided generation. in germany, in the course of the nineteenth century, until , the church suffered from a weak-kneed policy of many on whom she thought she could rely. the poison of frebonianism was never quite eradicated, and made itself manifest from time to time in various wild disorders. wessenberg and dalberg strove to supplant the authority of the holy see with a national church. efforts were made to abolish clerical celibacy, to establish a new ritual, to inflate catholic doctrine with a certain heretical mysticism, to destroy catholic devotion and loyalty by means of rongeism. these and a hundred similar movements were evidences of the continuing influence of old frebonianism, suppressed in one place only to break out in another. and yet, if the disorders had merely confined themselves to such wild distortions of catholic practices, it would have been only a matter of time to cause their ultimate disappearance. but it is a singular quality in such pseudo catholic movements, that they lead their supporters insensibly to the region of absolute heresy. indeed, as is the case with the modernists of today, the votaries of these "advanced" catholic notions are often actual pantheists and atheists, while proclaiming their loyalty to the church and her teachings. the liberal catholic of germany will have much to answer for when judged for his part in leading to the persecutions of the church in that country. in the first part of the century his presence was noted everywhere, in the court, in the schools, and especially in the universities. _liberal catholics._ about the time that pope gregory xvi. condemned the errors of hermes, a certain ecclesiastic, anthony günther, was already creating a reputation because of his philosophical and theological novelties. as it was then a time when many strange systems were constantly appearing, and confusing the catholic mind, the first writings of günther, far from exciting suspicion, aroused words of admiration, even from men like goerres, moehler, arnoldi and many other prominent ecclesiastics. günther had so ingeniously concealed his true sentiments that their presence was not manifest. _gÜnther._ after , however, he began to show his real position. residing then at cologne, he permitted himself to be drawn into the vortex of unrestrained liberalism, and conceived the project of reconciling the new doctrines of the rationalistic world with the truths of christianity. in his works he accordingly gave the leading place to philosophy, to which he made theology subservient. his attitude, in fact, was nothing less than a return to the theories of abelard, so vigorously condemned and exposed by st. bernard. in this manner günther approached the rationalists; he repudiated tradition wherever it seemed in contradiction to his teachings; he passed carelessly over the holy fathers and ecclesiastical writers, often changing their form; he created new words for his theology, and attempted every conceit to produce a certain harmony between the faith and the spirit of the age. in his doctrines, he purposely clouded the revealed truths. in an attempted explanation of the dogmas of the trinity and of the incarnation he displayed an ignorance as to their true conception. on such questions as the creation, and the union of the soul and body, he reasoned in a manner not only different from that of st. thomas, but entirely opposed to that of the church. the bishops of germany were aroused to this new danger, all the more that many disciples were beginning to show the influence of the new master, and among them he had already begun to be hailed as a saint, the restorer of true philosophy, the savior of the church. his doctrines were examined at rome, and were condemned january , . thereupon günther wrote to pope pius ix., declaring himself obedient and submissive, and accepting in all humility his condemnation. some of his disciples imitated his example; others, however, while declaring themselves obedient to the holy see, continued to defend the condemned doctrines, bolstering their conduct with the sophism, that as the condemnation was given in a general manner, the holy see had not indicated in any way what precise words or propositions of the works had caused them to be placed on the index. hence, they said, that while the system of günther might be condemned taken as a whole, the separate and individual doctrines of the author might be accepted. it was a new mode of evasion, which rejected the condemnation while pretending to accept it. pius ix., accordingly, wrote to cardinal geissel, on june , , explaining clearly the untenableness of this new pretext. the sovereign pontiff, moreover, exhorted the cardinal to forbid the books in his diocese, and to watch with all vigilance "that the doctrine contained in them, and already condemned, be not taught in any manner by anyone, whether in the schools of philosophy or in those of theology." the school of günther was thus suppressed; his teachings, however, continued to influence the minds of germans far into the next decade, and contributed not a little to excite that craving manifested by the liberals for compromising the church in favor of the spirit of the age. _frohschammer._ in pius ix. warned catholics of new dangers. in the university of munich, which from being the centre of german catholic thought in the days of görres, had under maximilian become a very nest of false catholicism, there was a professor of theology, james frohschammer, whose tenets approached so closely to rationalism as to excite suspicion from the very outset. in he published his _introduction to philosophy_, and in a treatise on the _liberty of science_, and another work entitled _atheneus_. these three volumes were full of grave errors and pernicious doctrines. in frohschammer's system reason was accredited with undue authority; full freedom of thought was permitted without regard to revealed or unrevealed truth; philosophy, it was declared, by its own power could arrive at those same principles which are common to faith and to natural reason, and even the divinely revealed truths of the christian religion such as the supernatural end of man, the great mysteries of the incarnation, and others like it were, it was stated, a part of science, and hence the material of philosophy, which could attain to the knowledge of them not through the principle of divine authority, but through its own natural forces. moreover, it was taught that philosophy had no right to subject itself to any authority whatsoever; that its liberty was boundless, even though, as was asserted, the philosopher himself ought not to teach anything contrary to what divine revelation and the church has taught, to call it into doubt because he cannot understand it, or to refuse to accept the judgment of the church. hence the wish expressed by frohschammer that the church should not meddle with philosophy, that it ought to permit philosophy to make its own corrections, even though it should have fallen into error. these errors were especially harmful when rationalism was rampant in germany; in fact the works of frohschammer were condemned by the church, not as if she loved philosophy less than a misguided world, but that she might prevent it from falling from its true position and becoming a poison rather than a food, and it was to that effect that pius ix. wrote to the archbishop of munich on december , . frohschammer had already one of his former books _on the origin of the soul_ condemned by the church: but instead of acknowledging his errors, he repeated them in subsequent works, at the same time maligning the congregation of the index and abusing the church with epithets and calumnies. but frohschammer effected less harm when he placed himself in open rebellion so that all catholics could be on their guard when his teachings were brought forward. to the liberals, however, he was a welcome aid, reading as they did in his works, and as coming from a catholic source, the very tenets they were striving to inject into the german mind. _doellinger._ perhaps no more potent evil genius existed for the corruption of the catholic german mind at the time than the too famous theologian of munich, ignatius doellinger. born at bamberg, on february , , he made rapid and brilliant studies at wurzburg and in his native town. he was ordained priest in and spent a few months in parochial work. in he was made professor of history and canon law in the preparatory college of aschaffenburg, and when the university of landshut was transferred to munich, he was selected for the chair of history in the new institution. [illustration: doellinger.] in his earlier career, in fact as late as , doellinger was one of the foremost and loyal of german catholics. at a time when so many of his co-religionists were being led into the campaign of hostility to papal authority and the ancient discipline of the church, doellinger ever remained true to his ultramontain principles. in appeared his first theological work, _the doctrine of the eucharist during the first three centuries of the church_, which was followed in rapid succession by a series of brilliant expositions of catholic truth and history. in appeared his three magnificent volumes on "_the reformation, its interior development and its effects_." it was the signal for a crusade against the falsehoods of protestant historians as uttered in nearly all the universities of germany. in appeared his "_church and the churches, the papacy and the temporal power_," a collection of public lectures which the author had delivered at the "odeon" of munich during that year. the work created a sensation among the catholic teachers of the land, who could not but recognize in it the germs of the conflict which doellinger was yet to wage with the holy see. the piedmontese had just completed their invasion of the papal states, and naturally the world looked to doellinger for words of protest. the unhappy theologian proved recreant to his duty at a moment of so much importance. instead of uttering an unequivocal protest, doellinger babbled only about the necessity of liberal institutions secularization, etc., imitating to a humiliating degree the expressions of cavour and napoleon iii. doellinger had now steered his bark into the stormy waters of liberalism. in , at an assembly of savants, at munich, he discussed in a very bold manner the "_past and the present of catholic theology_," which called forth words of indignation from scheeben, the eminent theologian of cologne. doellinger, together with some other disaffected catholics, considered that the moment had nearly arrived for displaying open hostility to rome. the man who had defended the church in the bavarian chamber from the year , who had spoken in terms of pure loyalty and affection at the parliament of frankfort, and at the catholic congresses, who had spoken in no uncertain terms against the persecutions incident to the question of mixed marriages, who had flayed with his vehement scorn the supporters of a bill to abolish clerical celibacy, and had denounced the profligacy of king louis and his favorite lola montez, in , was preparing to turn his back upon a career so brilliant, and to take up arms against his mother, the ancient church. in when pope pius ix. named the commission which was to prepare the way for the council of the vatican, the name of doellinger was omitted from the list. although he could expect no other treatment than this, having already signified his utter disregard of all that history and tradition had taught concerning the holy see, and having even gone out of his way to invent calumnies and garbled citations from historical writers in opposition to every papal claim, nevertheless doellinger protested against his exclusion from this august body, and accordingly manifested even in advance his hostile attitude to any and every decision which the future council might make. one of his principal moves in this direction was to instigate prince hohenlohe, president of the bavarian ministry, to arouse all the cabinets of europe against the holy father. during the vatican council he gave his best talents to the cause of opposition. while the episcopate of the whole world was deliberating in st. peter's, doellinger published his heretical views in his _janus_, and in various _roman letters to the allgemeine zeitung_, besides putting forth many "declarations" stigmatizing the work of the council. when the archbishop of munich demanded his submission to the decrees of the council, doellinger made a formal refusal, on march , , and drew upon himself the sentence of excommunication. _apostasy of doellinger._ the decisive step was now taken, and doellinger in separating himself from the catholic body was welcomed by the enthusiastic acclamations of all the liberal camp. dreaming that he was about to play the role of a new luther, the apostate gathered about him the disaffected elements of german catholicism, especially in the various universities of the country. men who held high prestige in the scientific and literary world, threw themselves at his feet and called him the savior of germany. forty-four professors in the university of munich, a stronghold of rationalism ever since , and among them freiderich sepp and reischl, were foremost among the defenders. theologians like hilgers, langen, reusch, and knoodt from the university of bonn; reinkens, baltzer and weber, from breslau; michelis, from braunsberg, and schulte from prague were but the leaders in the list of eminent savants who placed themselves under his rebel banner. the heart of doellinger was inflated with pride and in laying the foundations of that sect to which the euphonious title of "the old catholics" was given, the apostate imagined that a new reformation was beginning, which would presently count its supporters by the thousands and millions. history, with pitiless irony, has told the sad fate of his ambitions. despite the immense aid given by the state to the new religion, despite the prestige even of doellinger and his savants, the old catholics degenerated in a few years into a squabbling, disunited mob, to such an extent that doellinger himself became ashamed of the child of his fancy. too proud to acknowledge publicly the error which his heart recognized, he continued his apostasy until his death, by apoplexy, january , . hermes, günther, frohschammer and doellinger were but the manifestations of that spirit of disorder among the german catholics, whose purpose was primarily to reconcile, by their own methods, the spirit of faith with the spirit of the age. pride had created blindness, and blindness, spiritual suicide. but the liberal world that looked on placed their mutilated carcasses upon the altars of hate, and made their fall the occasion of fiery denunciations against the church and all that it represented. _protestant ascendancy._ a second cause of the kulturkampf lay in the desire of prussia's rulers and statesmen to place the protestant evangelical church in a position whence it might dominate all religious life in the empire. long before efforts were made, especially after the third centenary of luther in , to bring the whole of prussian germany into the ranks of the evangelical church. the schemes manipulated by means of mixed marriages, the long and pitiless persecutions of frederick william iii., followed by the comparative peace during the reign of frederick william iv. this latter period had been prolific in examples of christian life, in pilgrimages to holy shrines, in a great increase of popular devotion, in the spread of religious orders with their sane and vivifying influences. the catholic church had been gradually arising out of a state of torpor and subjection to a position of prominence that called for consideration and respect from all non-catholic sources. the protestants of germany, however, were not altogether gratified at these beautiful results, and indeed, it was not long before they began to resent openly the evidences of catholic progress. in their determination to stem the tide of catholic conversion and increase they were not slow to use every means that opportunity placed at their disposal. among these was the spirit of the prussian people to which the name of borussianism has been given, and which manifested itself as early as . the two great powers of germany then contending for supremacy among the loosely confederated states were prussia and austria. in the parliament of frankfort the presidency of that body was conferred upon an austrian archduke. the alarm was immediately sounded. if germany were to become a united empire, was it not possible that austria, as an integral part, might gain the ascendancy, and thus subject the whole german nation to the rule of a catholic sovereign? in the union of the german empire was set aside, and frederick william iv. even refused to accept an imperial crown that would have among its gems the great austrian state. again in , when the union of german states was being formed, austria was formally excluded, nor has she been invited to enter the confederation ever since. her catholic influences were the obstacles that stood in her way toward prussian favor. _war upon catholic states._ at the same time prussia could not ignore the fact that many powerful and influential states around her and even within her dominions were almost entirely catholic. poland, bavaria and the rhenish provinces were too strongly catholic to permit of any open aggression upon religious lines, although in the secrecy of ministerial cabinets the way for such aggressions was being constantly prepared. what was wanted was only an evidence of political weakness in the catholic states, and this opportunity was offered only too soon. since the papal power had been slowly yielding in italy to the attacks of liberalism, aided very much by the encouragement of german cabinets. in , austria was stricken down by the hand of prussia; in , catholic france felt its force at sedan and at paris; in the same year, rome fell into the hands of usurpers. even among the catholic states of germany the influence of prussian intrigue had weakened the governments and made them tools in the hands of the more powerful ally. all these disasters in catholic countries signified that protestant prussia was now in a position to impose herself with her laws and her religion upon the whole body of people coming within her sway. it is not surprising, therefore, that when william i. felt the glory of the imperial crown upon his brow, he should begin, like his predecessor, frederick william iii., to dream of a universal german church of which he should be the pope, and of which all his people should become willing and faithful members. [illustration: the emperor william i.] closely allied with this desire for a protestant ascendancy was an intense hatred of rome and of ultramontainism, especially as manifested in the dogma of papal infallibility as declared in the council of the vatican in . this spirit had betrayed itself before especially in the words and actions of bismarck, who remarked during the course of the french war: "as soon as the war with france is ended, i shall march against the infallibility." to this end the populace was aroused and protestant fanaticism was given full swing. the tocsin of alarm was sounded before the imaginary peril of a roman invasion, and before the pretended assaults of the church upon the state. _hatred of infallibility._ for two years the secular press had echoed these fears and waved before the eyes of germany the effigy of "infallibility." all sane notions were cast aside, while defiance and hatred were sown in all hearts. all the journals, with one accord, took up the ever new theme of the _syllabus_ and of infallibility to demonstrate to the german people that the jurisdiction of the bishops was absorbed forever by the papal jurisdiction, that the clergy were now slaves, and that every roman catholic, at a sign from the pope, was bound henceforth to betray his king, his conscience, and the laws of the country. feeling, under such impulsion, ran high, to such an extent in fact that the fear of infallibility made many forget the part the catholics had ever taken for the defence of the king, the country, and social order. underlying all these causes was the true reason of the kulturkampf, the spirit of caesarism, the desire to make the church subservient in its life, in its doctrines, and in its hierarchy, to the caprices of the sovereign state. the forces to effect this had been growing steadily for some time. there were especially three parties to which the idea of a state controlled church appealed. there were those who were hostile radically to the idea of religion, and whose campaign was directed against god; their leader was bluntschl. others, antagonistic to the christian idea, attacked all positive religion, and desired the abolition of all christian denominations; they were led on by bennigsen. finally, the prussian evangelicals, jealous of the progress of catholicity, wished to create a great national church in what they would call the evangelical empire, a church that would acknowledge no interference from the outside, from rome or elsewhere. into this national church it was determined to absorb all the catholics of the empire. this was the dream of bismarck. in these various elements of disorder seemed to unite into a compact force directed against the common enemy, the catholic church. rancors, divisions, jealousies, all were forgotten in the common impulse. it was the world banding together to exterminate the handiwork of god. the years have passed by, the kulturkampf is over, its leaders are forgotten, its purposes have lapsed into history; but the church in germany has not been exterminated; indeed, it enjoys at present the most flourishing epoch in its history. ii. _men of the crisis._ _bismarck._ among the characters most prominent in the kulturkampf, we shall confine our more lengthy consideration to bismarck, windthorst, malincrodt and ketteler. in prince bismarck were concentrated all the forces of the various parties uniting against the church. he was born in the patrimonial castle of schoenhausen, april , , and received the name of otto edward leopold von bismarck. in , when seventeen years of age, he entered the university of goettingen. here he attracted attention by his turbulent and fantastic character. a lively, boisterous companion, he was known as a drinker, epicure, smoker, duellist, and eccentric. he fought more than twenty duels. he became popular among his fellow students for his feats of arms, and his reputation in that regard extended to other universities. after leaving the university, he became an assessor of the tribunal of berlin, then referendary at aix-la-chapelle, and at pottsdam, after which he enlisted as a lieutenant in the uhlan guards. shortly after he married johanna von puttkammer, a woman who was later to exercise a malevolent influence over him during the troubles following . [illustration: bismarck.] in bismarck entered actively into the political life of the nation. it was at the time when king frederick william iv., yielding to the importunities of the liberals, convoked a preliminary diet, at which bismarck was present to supply the place of a member rendered incapable of attending through sickness. therein he showed himself an indefatigable defender of the conservatives against the demands of the liberals, making himself soon the chief of his party. this consultive diet was forced to yield, the following year, , to the popular demand for a more representative assembly. another diet accordingly met and voted for universal suffrage and the immediate elaboration of a new constitution. bismarck distinguished himself in that assembly, as in the preceding, by his unyielding opposition to liberal innovations, and by the violence and asperity which characterized his utterances. to propagate his ideas bismarck founded a journal, which remains even yet the organ of the conservative party in germany, the _gazette of the cross_. as a result of bismarck's many efforts, the king, urged on by the nobility, dispersed the parliament, assembled the troops in berlin and placed the city in a state of siege. the same year, , the national diet, composed of liberals and conservatives, met at frankfort, and decided to re-establish the empire, offering the imperial crown to the king of prussia. in this matter bismarck strongly opposed the views of the delegates and induced the king to refuse the proffered honor. the same actions recurred in the following year, bismarck taking the same stand against german unity. thenceforth the new statesman began to be a power for the kingdom of prussia. his hatred of austria seems to have dictated all his policies for the next twenty years. the war for the annexation of schleswig-holstein in , the war against austria in , the question of the duchy of luxembourg, and even the franco-prussian war of , were all inspired by the fear that austria should become too powerful, and deprive the protestant state of prussia of that ascendancy which bismarck more than any other determined that she should have. it was in that bismarck was called upon by the king to take up the post of premier, a position which was to make him in a few years the most powerful statesman of europe. at the ending of the franco-prussian war, on january , , in the palace of versailles, it was the power of bismarck that placed the imperial crown upon the head of the new emperor, william i. of germany. the union of german states against which the chancellor had fought in years gone by, was now the creature of his own making. the time was propitious, france, austria and the papacy were all humbled. prussia had become one of the great powers. if bismarck had rested there, his name would have been greeted with the accumulated blessings of all the german people, even though all these triumphs had been won by the way of deceit, brutality and an absolute disregard of all the promptings of justice and humanity. that bismarck had been preparing for his persecution of the catholics is sufficiently proven from documentary evidence, although after he spent much time and effort to disclaim his part in the kulturkampf. the crown prince of germany in his diary of the date of october , , wrote: "bismarck related to my brother-in-law that immediately after the war he would enter upon the campaign against infallibility." again, the abbe majunke, the eminent historian of the kulturkampf, published in the _historico political papers_ of munich, a sensational article wherein he proved from existing documents that bismarck was meditating the kulturkampf before the opening of the council: "the notes gathered together by poschinger demonstrate that as early as the adversary of windthorst has been the principal instigator of the bavarian kulturkampf," a fact which argued that he was the real instigator of the late prussian persecution. again arnim, the former ambassador to rome, shows that the chancellor was projecting the conflict against infallibility at least while the council was going on. again, on september , , bismarck remarked to the deputy werle, mayor of rheims: "when we have disposed of catholicism, they (i. e. the latin nations) will not be long in disappearing." all these and other evidences remain to show that the mind of bismarck had been meditating the extermination of the catholic religion before the actual hostilities began. his part in the conflict itself will be shown in discussing its events. in , he made his peace with pope leo xiii., from whom he received the grand cross of the order of christ, and died in , after witnessing the final collapse of the kulturkampf and acknowledging its utter failure to accomplish the the end it had in view. directly opposed to bismarck was another statesman in whom with all the energy and determination of his adversary were found the qualities of honor and justice united together in absolute loyalty to catholic principles. this man was louis joseph windthorst, born january , , at osterkapelln in the kingdom of hanover. after showing for some time an inclination for the ecclesiastical state, he finally decided his vocation in by entering the bar at osnabrück. he was later made syndic of the equestrian order of the nobility, and then lay president of the ecclesiastical tribunal. in he married and his union was blessed not only by conjugal happiness, but more than all by the birth of four children, the eldest of whom survived him. [illustration: windthorst.] in there were in germany two political parties; one defending the maintaining of austria in the confederation and desirous that she should be at its head; the other demanding the exclusion of austria, and the preponderance of prussia. elected to the diet from hanover in , windthorst declared himself for austria, a catholic power which promised to permit the different states to retain their autonomy; and he combatted openly the members of the german parliament at frankfort when they offered the imperial crown to william iv. of prussia. windthorst had just been nominated to the presidency of the hanoverian chamber of deputies, in , when upon the accession of george v. to the throne, he received the portfolio of justice. he served in that capacity until when the ministry of which he formed a part was overturned. it was during the period of comparative quiet that followed, that windthorst rendered to his natal diocese a remarkable service. both in the chamber and at court he pleaded for the ancient principality of osnabrück, which had been in the hands of a lay administrator ever since the great secularization. his efforts were crowned with success. in the diocese of osnabrück was re-established and the abbe melchers, then vicar general of münster, was made its bishop. in windthorst was again called to the ministry of justice, and again pleaded the cause of austria. in a short time, however, he again left the ministry and was made procurator general of the court of appeals at celle. hitherto windthorst had been the principal adviser of george v., the intrepid defender of his country's independence, and the influential protector of catholic interests in the midst of a protestant court; when at length his powers in that direction were ended by the action of prussia in taking possession of hanover. the little kingdom thus blotted out, windthorst turned his attention to the larger interests of the whole country. in placing himself, however unwillingly upon the platform of accomplished facts, and in taking the oath of the prussian constitution, windthorst accepted the ruling of the prussian landtag, and was elected first to the constituent assembly, and then to the reichstag of the confederation of northern germany, in . he remained until his death the representative from meppen, whence his soubriquet, the pearl of meppen. he was also sometimes termed his little excellency, from his slight stature, and also "the guelph leader," from his indomitable attitude in defending the interests of the weaker side against the aggressions of the unscrupulous majority. in the kulturkampf his position was the exact antithesis to that of bismarck. by his strict ideas of honor and justice, and his indomitable courage in forcing the issues he had at stake, he gained his cause over the brutal and unscrupulous strength of the chancellor. the ideal which he pursued was that of christian society, the independence of the church, respect for authority, and the maintenance of liberty and of civil equality. he was a contrast in every way to bismarck. windthorst was the champion of right, bismarck the representative of force; the one was calm in his certainty of ultimate victory; the other fought with animosity and fury. windthorst strove to enlighten and convince his adversary; the chancellor was bent upon crushing and annihilating his enemy. in seeking the triumph of a principle, the one recognized neither menaces nor boastings; the other seeking his own personal aggrandisement spoke in terms of haughtiness and contempt of all who dared to differ from him. windthorst was almost the only man who could not be cowed by bismarck, and thus, urged on by the hand of god, the pearl of meppen crushed at last the iron chancellor. windthorst was a man of men, constant, faithful to his friends, and firm as a rock in his trust in god. the words of pope leo xiii., at the time of his death in , were significant: "he so loved his country and respected his sovereign, that he never separated his duties as a citizen from his zeal for religion. so well did he encounter his adversaries by the weight of his arguments and the force of his eloquence, that it was easy to see that it was the love of truth which urged him on, and not any greedy desire for personal advantages or honors." [illustration: malincrodt.] herrmann von malincrodt, the great orator of the centre during the kulturkampf, was a native of minden in westphalia, where he was born on february , . his father was a protestant, yet of such natural honesty, that he would not stand in the way of his son's education in catholic faith and doctrine. the mother of herrmann was a pious catholic, a cultured lady, whose care for the religious bringing up of her children was not satisfied with the religious teaching given them at school, but called a priest to her house to supplement the training of the school. the classical studies of young malincrodt were made at aix-la-chapelle, where his father had taken up his residence in . when, in , the future deputy went to study law at bonn, and later at berlin, his faith was still intact as his heart was pure. he passed through the university with equal safety. the teachings of his good mother, who died some years before, were his safeguard and preserved him against the dangers so often fatal to youth. the anti-christian doctrines of his professors, and the shameless examples of his fellow students had no effect upon his strong character. in his twentieth year he left his studies as good a catholic as he was a learned jurist. after a short period at the tribunal of paderborn, and having been referendary successively at münster and erfurt, he retired for over a year to study for his degree. when his thesis, entitled _juridical relations between church and state_ was presented, the judges marvelled to find in so young a man such an evidence of solid learning, clear reasoning, and originality of thought. they noted moreover the uncompromising catholic character of his essay, and accordingly, while they accounted his endeavor a success, they added the remark: "a work too favorable to the church." in he was named assessor for the regency of minden, and two years later was sent to erfurt to fulfil the same functions. in the latter place he made so favorable an impression upon the people that the government made him first burgomaster of the town. this choice was all the more significant that four-fifths of the population were protestants, while malincrodt was known as an ultra catholic; they were won, indeed, by his characteristic integrity, his tolerance and justice, and the nobility of deportment. so well satisfied were the citizens with his administration that he was accorded the right of the city. the people of westphalia were naturally proud of their fellow citizen, and in the elections of , the district of münster-coesfeld sent him to the prussian landtag. he arrived at parliament at a moment when a new conflict was threatening between the state and the church. the ministers had just interdicted the missions of the jesuits and forbade prussian students to pursue their theological studies at rome. king frederick william iv. was animated with kindlier dispositions. he had witnessed the bravery and loyalty of the catholics during the stirring times of , and in recognition of the same he had effected that a clause should be inscribed in the constitution guaranteeing the most essential ecclesiastical liberties. unfortunately his ministers did not share his sentiments, and the court canonists found it too difficult to break with the old prussian traditions, and accordingly they gave their best efforts to nullify the concessions of the sovereign. in the presence of the hostile manifestations the catholics felt it incumbent upon them to organize for the better defence of their rights. in the elections of , despite every ministerial pressure, they succeeded in sending sixty-three catholics to the parliament, and the group thus elected took the name of the catholic faction. malincrodt had his place in the ranks of these pleaders for the church. on march , , after many months of silence, he made his maiden speech and proved himself an orator of the first rank. during that session he held the floor thirty-six times. in all the parliamentary discussions, whenever it was necessary to defend the holy see, the rights of catholics, or conservative principles, malincrodt was always to the fore. his talents increased year by year, and would have brought him still higher distinction, had not the elections of sent him back to private life. during the following three years events in his country were fast approaching a climax. the danish and austrian wars had demonstrated what bismarck meant by "moral conquests." malincrodt was among those who could foresee the coming storm. in the electors of westphalia sent him to the federal diet of northern germany. it was there that he met for the first time that lilliputian of hanover, already known as the meppen pearl, the little excellency, herr windthorst. the two catholic statesmen recognized each other, and began a friendship which was to continue, under the aegis of the church, until death. the speeches of malincrodt in the reichstag were a revelation to the assembly who recognized in him a man with whom german statesmen would have to reckon. he was as much opposed to german union as desired by the prussians, as was windthorst, and that because he knew how prussia with the power in her hands would not fail to destroy the autonomy of the lesser states. the franco prussian war followed, with its consequence of the unification of germany under the imperial domination of prussia. the kulturkampf made necessary the formation of the centre, of which malincrodt was at first the chief and spokesman. his eloquence throughout that stormy period was terrific, and had his career lasted a little longer, he could no doubt, in conjunction with windthorst, have ended the struggle much earlier. he died, however, in his sixty-third year, in , at berlin after a burst of oratory that convinced even lasker, one of the most implacable of his adversaries. william emmanuel von ketteler was born on december , , at münster in westphalia. he was thus, like his colleagues, windthorst and malincrodt, a saxon. his mother, the former baroness von wenge von beck, exercised a decisive influence over his heart and at an early age she inspired him with that truly christian love for the poor which was one of his salient characteristics during life. he was remarkable even in childhood for his air of reflection and gravity, significant of a mind that was serious and inclined to a sense of conscientious duty. at the age of thirteen, in , he was sent to the jesuit college of brieg in the valais, where he finished his studies. according to the german usage, his family sent him to many universities, and thus he spent a short period successively at goettingen, berlin, heidelberg, and munich. he was everywhere an adept at athletic exercises and an ardent worker. after his examinations in law he was appointed referendary of the government of his natal city, münster. it seemed as if he had found his vocation in law and politics. it was about this time, , that he beheld the venerable archbishop of cologne, clement august von droste vischering, dragged a prisoner to the fortress of minden. indignant at this act of barbarity, ketteler threw up his governmental position. on july , , he wrote to his brother wilderich: "as i do not care to serve a state which demands the sacrifice of my conscience, it seems to me that the priesthood is my most certain refuge. but how far i am from such a determination! to make me worthy of that sublime ministry would require a miracle greater than raising the dead to life." in , he overcame his scruples, and went to seek counsel from mgr. de reisach, the bishop of eichstadt, who assured him that his vocation was genuine. [illustration: bishop ketteler.] he entered the university of munich, then at the zenith of its renown. under the patronage of king louis of bavaria it had become the rendezvous of all that catholic society esteemed as brilliant and distinguished. görres, the great philosopher, was there with philipps, the professor of law, and doellinger, as yet orthodox in his teaching of history. after three years of study he was ordained to the priesthood on june , , after which he was appointed assistant in the little town of beckum, in westphalia, where he shared the labors of two young priests, one of whom, brinckmann, afterwards also became a bishop. after two years he was sent as pastor to hopsten on the confines of hanover, where he spent his time in those duties which had become so dear to his heart, the care of the poor and the instruction of the young. in he was sent as a deputy to the national diet of frankfort from a district composed chiefly of protestants. out of the members present there, he found that forty were priests, while there were a few bishops and many notable catholic laymen. ketteler appeared in the tribune, a man with no political record and no literary glory. but his first speech aroused enthusiasm and proclaimed him one of the orators of the day. ketteler demanded liberty of religious association for all creeds, liberty of education, and autonomy in the commune in all that concerns the public school and the interior administration. after the assassination of prince lichnowsky and general von auerwald by the insurgents, the abbe ketteler was charged by the assembly to pronounce the funeral oration. fifteen days after this event the first great catholic congress was held at mentz, and instituted a programme in which ketteler was for nearly thirty years to have a leading part. this was the catholic action in the social question. in william ketteler was consecrated bishop of mentz, and entered at once into his role as the great social reformer of germany. his solicitude for the poor was constant and practical. for the sick poor he called into his diocese the franciscans of aix-la-chapelle; for the orphans and abandoned children he founded establishments in and . for the workingmen he founded, in , a geselleverein, or workingmen's association, one of the first of its kind, besides bureaus of aid, and circles and societies for procuring cheap lodging for the needy. he had remarked that the numerous class of servant girls were almost altogether without religious attendance, moral protection, or material assistance. with the aid of the countess ida von hahn-hahn he founded refuges for their kind, and looking then toward those others to whom the allurements of the world had proved too fascinating, he established a house of the good shepherd. his work in the direction of the poor and of the laboring men went on without ceasing. his establishments of hospitality for the workers provided board and lodging at the price of eighteen pennies a day. in the association of notre dame de bon secours came to the aid of those who, while out of a place for a time, could find lodging until another situation were found for them. nor was he content with the mere attention to the ordinary routine implied by such works. the service of his brilliant and well stored mind was also devoted to the cause, presenting some works that still remain authoritative guides in the matter of social economics. his great work in this regard was his _christianity and the labor question_, written at a time when the doctrines of lasalle and his companions were beginning to stir the workingmen into a campaign of violence and anarchy. the voice of the great prelate was heard also in the various congresses held every year in germany to discuss questions of catholic interest. in the meeting of the bishops at fulda, in , mgr. ketteler spoke eloquently upon the questions, "does the social question exist in germany?" "can the church aid therein, and what is her duty?" "what are the remedies at her disposal?" in the catholic congress of , he delivered a masterly discourse upon _liberalism, socialism, and christianity_. in the council of the vatican, the position held by ketteler in regard to the definition of the great dogma, was that of many german bishops, namely, that while admitting the doctrine of infallibility as true and essentially catholic, they were unwilling to admit that its definition was just then opportune. on the eve of the last session mgr. ketteler addressed to pius ix. a letter full of submission, and during the rest of his life he defended the doctrine with all the enthusiasm of his heart and soul. during the kulturkampf until his death the great prelate proved a power of resistance against the tyranny of bismarck, and although he could not live to behold the final failure of the enemy, he was rejoiced to know that the persecution was already producing fruits of conversion and edification everywhere. his great soul comprehended that the church must finally come forth from the contest crowned with the glory of triumph. it was in the assurance of this hope that he died in the capuchin convent of bruchhausen in bavaria, as he was returning from his last visit to pope pius ix. his part in the kulturkampf, we shall review in the succeeding paragraphs. such then were the giants who came to the conflict of the kulturkampf armed cap-a-pie, one indeed, with the weapons forged by hate and selfish ambition; the others with those emblems of christian faith the lustre of which called forth the admiration even of the adversaries, and finally brought all opposition to a standstill. iii. the kulturkampf! the name was invented by virchow, the atheistic professor. he calls it a war for civilization, though he of all men very well knew that the reality could mean only a return to savagery and barbarism. but as the kulturkampf began in hypocrisy, was continued in hypocrisy, and finished in cowardly hypocrisy, what matters it, if even the name by which the mongrel is called is also born of hypocrisy! the war was not the sudden ebullition of frenzied fear; it was a carefully prepared campaign. it was launched only when every circumstance seemed favorable to its success. france and austria were helpless to oppose it; england and italy were full of encouragement; the protestants of germany were excited by the spectre of infallibility; the liberals welcomed it as a rebuke against their old enemy, conservatism; the holy father himself was closed in behind the walls of the vatican, a prisoner, and therefore without the prestige of governmental influence. at the beginning of , the catholic church in germany stood alone without an influential friend in the world. it was then that cowardice raised its hand to strike; it was the act of a ruffian felling with a blow of his mailed fist the woman whom robbers had left half dead by the roadside. if the catholics were to blame in any manner, it was only because they had permitted themselves to be cajoled in advance by the smiles and hypocritical advances of bismarck and his henchman, though it is true, they had every right to expect a grateful treatment from the new empire. in , peter reichensperger, one of the most prudent leaders of the catholic party, advised the bavarian diet to join the prussian alliance, through the trust he had in that state at the moment. even bishop ketteler was deceived when he beheld the comparatively fair treatment of catholics in the rhenish province, whose proximity to france rendered it advisable that they should not be discomforted, though at the same time the polish subjects of prussia, at the other end of the kingdom were complaining of political aggressions against their religious liberty. bishop ketteler, however, was soon compelled to avow his mistake. "it was a great fault on our part," he writes, "to have believed in the stability of the prussian constitution, in the rights which it plainly allowed us. we were culpable for having believed that, in prussia, justice could triumph over the inveterate prejudice against catholics, and over party feelings. we were deceived; but our fault is not of the kind that should cause us to blush." the catholics had, indeed, just reason to expect favorable treatment. they had been repeatedly assured that it would be accorded to them. in the emperor, replying to an address from the knights of malta from the rhenish provinces and westphalia, had uttered the significant words: "i regard the occupation of rome by the italians as an act of violence; and when this war is ended, i shall not fail to take it into consideration, in concert with other sovereigns." thus it was that the catholic people of germany, whose men fought against the bullets of france for the fatherland, whose priests and nuns went about the battle fields succoring and comforting the wounded and the dying, who, in a word, stood in every trial foremost among the defenders of the king and of his government, were unprepared to see the hand that they had aided, raised in a moment to strike them down, and the sword that they had supported, uplifted for their extermination. it was again the conflict of the church against a lying, hypocritical, ungrateful world. _the centre._ to the most farseeing catholics of the country it had long been evident that there was need of a strong organization of catholic political forces. before the franco prussian war no such distinctive organization existed. at the reichstag of northern germany the catholics were not grouped together, and at the prussian landtag they formed only an inconsiderable minority. there appeared to be no need of concerted action in the political field since peace and security seemed fully assured. the schools were christian, the religious orders performed their benevolent actions freely and unimpeded, the clergy was respected and honored. nothing being attacked, there was nothing to defend. the catholic deputies could enroll their names in any party they chose to favor. thus it was that when the time of danger came they were scattered on every side. after the war, however, malincrodt, with some of his friends, brought the catholic members together, and elaborated a manifesto which served as a platform for the voters of the country, according to which catholics were asked to cast their votes only for such candidates as would pledge themselves to enter the new catholic party and support its principles. in the elections of march , , the advice of these leaders brought sixty-seven catholic representatives to the chamber, a number that increased as the kulturkampf progressed. the new party took the name of the "centre," and on march affirmed its existence by publishing its programme. at the head of this document was written its motto: "justice, the basis of governments." the chiefs of the party, savigny, windthorst, malincrodt, peter reichensperger, prince loëwenstein, and freitag, were appointed a committee of direction for the party and empowered to act for the furtherance of its interests. the party thus constituted took for its permanent devise the words: "for truth, justice and liberty," and the catholic deputies pledged themselves to defend these three causes with all the energy of their will and intelligence. they demanded, moreover, in the members of the party qualities worthy of its great purposes; no candidate might place his name on their list except such as were without fear and without reproach. for the interests of religion were in danger; and could they be defended efficaciously by men who were not themselves living in conformity with that religion? every inconsistency of behavior would naturally be taken advantage of by the enemy and made the basis of scandal, and hence, as it was necessary not to give an opportunity for criticism, the party bound itself to a platform of moral integrity and austerity. a catholic deputy guilty of having engaged in a duel contrary to the laws of the church, could not be admitted. even the stain of imputation, however undeserved, provided it gained popular credence, could debar one from its numbers. and thus for the thirty years of its existence not one of its members, as far as is known, has cast dishonor upon the standard thus raised by its leaders. it is because of this high moral standard, this unflinching loyalty to the church in all her endeavors, that the centre was enabled to stand uncowed and unconquered throughout the long war that followed its inception. the new centre party was called into action almost from the day of its birth. the first reichstag of the german empire met on march , . in his speech from the throne the emperor solemnly declared that the new empire was to be "the citadel of the peace of europe." the reichstag voted an address in answer to the emperor's speech, which, while containing a sentiment of greeting and congratulation to the sovereign, was at the same time, to define the attitude of germany with regard to european questions of the day. the catholic people still remembered the promises formulated at versailles on november , , and confirmed at the beginning of , and accordingly had reason to hope that germany would make use of her diplomatic intervention in favor of pope pius ix., despoiled by his enemies and imprisoned in the vatican. this hope was expressed in a resolution formulated by the centre and proposed for the acceptation of the reichstag. but the liberal party, at the instigation of bennigsen, repulsed the proposal of the centre as a clerical intrigue, and voted that "germany, without being influenced either by sympathy or antipathy, would permit every nation to attain its unity in its own way, and leave to each state the choice of the form of government which that state might consider best." this attitude of the new government was thus a refusal to support the holy see and an official recognition of the claims of victor emmanuel and his followers. it was an act, moreover, which placed the centre party in a very compromising position, for in refusing to vote the address containing such an article they would lay themselves open to the charge of disloyalty and disrespect toward the sovereign, while in case they should vote for it, they would thereby approve of the iniquitous spoliation of the papal states and the indignities heaped upon the holy father. there was no hesitation, however, in the action of the centre. while faithful to their religious principles, and at the same time loyally devoted to their fatherland, they refused to vote the obnoxious article. as was expected, their action drew upon them the envenomed hatred of all parties, in months they were greeted as traitors, renegades, and the "ultramontaine party." the resolution of bennigsen was voted on march , , by a majority of . it was but the prelude of open hostilities. on april , and , a discussion upon the constitution was in progress, and peter reichensperger, of the centre, endeavored to conserve in the new document the religious liberties guaranteed by the constitution of , with its consequences of freedom of worship and freedom of association. under the leadership of lasker, treitschke and blankenberg, the liberals again repulsed the claims of the catholic despite the fervid and logical eloquence of bishop ketteler. by a vote of to these liberties were expunged from the constitution, and at its reading one of the liberals, marquard, remarked: "we have declared war upon ultramontainism, and we will carry it to a finish." the efforts of the centre, however, although meeting with repulse in their first appearances, were yet indicative of a power with which the liberal party would have to reckon. hence it was considered necessary to effect its ruin in order that the principles of state absolution should acquire the domination to which it aspired. to effect this object, bismarck made use of a stratagem entirely in accord with his usual dishonesty and lack of scruple. his plan was no other than to throw discredit upon the centre attack in the eyes of the catholic people. he had already misrepresented the centre before the holy see as a source of trouble for the church in the empire, and he strove to induce the holy see to formally disavow the operations of the centre. not being able to obtain such a disavowal, he pretended that he had actually obtained it. one of the catholic members, count frankenberg, was deceived by the assurances of the chancellor, and abandoned the party, on may , , without giving any apparent reason. three days later malincrodt, certain of the trickery of bismarck, published a formal protest against such an unworthy manoeuvre. frankenberg, beginning to doubt, asked of bismarck an explanation, and was assured that "the interview of which you have spoken between count tauffkirchen and the cardinal secretary of state will hardly be revoked. the centre party has been disapproved. this disapprobation does not surprise me after the evidences of satisfaction and the expressions of entire confidence which his majesty, the king, has received from his holiness, the pope, on the occasion of the re-establishment of the german empire." so categorical an avowal at first threw the catholics into a state of consternation, but bishop ketteler, of mentz, feeling that something was wrong, wrote to cardinal antonelli, who at once, on june , sent a solemn denial of the interview, which was published as an answer to the declaration of bismarck. the chagrin caused by this exposure found its vent in the non-catholic journals of the time, stigmatizing in the broadest terms the loyalty of catholics. bismarck's own newspaper, the _gazette of the cross_, called all prussia to arms against the centre and ultramontainism, those internal enemies who must be punished as were the austrians and the french "for it is time to take up again the work of the reformation, and to assure the supreme victory of germanism over romanism." in accordance with these sentiments the friends of bismarck set to work with open aggressions. on july , , a royal ordinance suppressed the catholic section of the ministry of worship, which had been founded by frederick william iv. in , to give the catholics an opportunity of presenting their needs and claims before the government. the catholic population was thus shut out from any officially favorable recognition. at the same time bismarck hastened to acts whereby the free action of the german bishops were nullified at the caprice of the state. there was at the time, in the gymnasium of brauensberg, a certain teacher of christian doctrine, named wollmann, who had undertaken to speak openly in opposition to the dogma of papal infallibility, and thus incurred the imputation of heresy, together with a director of the normal school, one freibel, a member of the old catholic sect. bishop krementz, of ermland, after vain endeavors to bring him to a sense of his errors, excommunicated him and his companion, and then reported his action to the minister of worship, von muhler, claiming that an excommunicated heretic should not be permitted to teach in a catholic school. the minister refused to remove the objectionable teacher (june , ), declaring that the dogma of infallibility in no way affected the relations of church and state. when, on july , following, bishop krementz protested in so just and logical a manner that none of the official journals dared to report his words, the ministry replied by threatening to expel any student of the gymnasium who should refuse to attend the lessons of wollmann. the persecution proceeded from day to day. on november , , the bavarian minister, von lutz, presented before the reichstag a law entitled "for abuse of the pulpit," the "kanzel-paragraph," which went into vigor on december , , and which was expressed in the following terms: "any ecclesiastic or official of the church, who during the exercise, or on the occasion of the exercise of his ministry, be it in the church in presence of the crowd, or in any place set apart for religious gatherings, shall, before several persons take as the theme of his discussions affairs relating to the domain of the state, in such a manner as to jeopardize the public tranquility, shall be punished by imprisonment the duration of which can be extended to two years." the purport of this law was plainly perceived by the catholic people. de lutz, who with prince hohenlohe of bavaria, a catholic in a catholic state, had elaborated the law, confessed openly, that "this was the first buttress in the defence of the state against the catholic church, and that still others would yet be erected." he admitted even more, that the law's intent was to protect apostasy, the rebellion of disloyal theologians against the dogmas and discipline of the church. hence he declared: "the law is framed to give courage to 'good priests,' who might suffer from the tyranny of the infalliblist bishops, who might force them to acts which we would punish." in reply to this declaration herr windthorst remarked: "thus this law is an agreement between the new empire and the protestantism of doellinger." on the th of the following february, , another law was proposed, giving to the government all rights over the schools. it had been suggested by muhler, and was sustained by his worthy successor, falk, aided by bismarck. to oppose it more than petitions were placed before the landtag; those from silesia alone contained more than , signatures. in the discussions, bismarck brought to sustain his cause the most influential members of the ministerial group, such as gneist, a freemason, lasker, a hostile jew, the apostate pastor, richter-mariendorf, and the materialist professor, virchow. he himself met with his usual brutal cynicism the protests of windthorst, and malincrodt, and all the polish and guelph orators who dared to take the stand for justice and honor. the law was finally voted and passed with a majority of . thus the government had the right to supervise all institutes of education both public and private, the right to appoint the inspectors of schools, or to deprive those exercising such posts of their office. it was a law in fact which placed catholic pastors under the direct and unreasoning surveillance of the state in a matter most closely connected with religion. the tyrannical character of the law was recognized not by catholics alone, but by all fair-minded men. the _kreutzeitung_, and the _germania_, differing in faith and thought, were in accord in this matter and complained bitterly of a law which meant only "the loss of that which had hitherto been the good fortune of prussia, since it was clear that the government and the national liberals desired only the extinction of religion." the bishops protested with one voice, declaring the law "offensive to the essential and inalienable rights of the church, and that grave perils and dangers were hovering over church and state." then as their protests and petitions remained unheard, they sent forth, on april , , a collective letter informing their priests of their resolution never to yield except to violence: "since no power on earth can dispense us from the obligation of watching over the christian education of the little children who have been confided to us by the divine savior, we are firmly resolved to continue to fulfil faithfully the duties of our pastoral charge in that which touches the popular schools which the law takes away, in principle, from the maternal action of the church, and that duty we shall fulfil to the end, as long as it is not made absolutely impossible." the government, however, which at first pretended to respect the rights of the church, little by little removed many priests from the schools, took away as far as possible the priestly supervision, and favored mixed schools of catholics and protestants. the crucifix was then removed from the school rooms, together with all biblical pictures and the statues of the saints. the bishop of ermland, who in july, , had excommunicated the apostate wollmann, received from the minister of public worship, falk, a notification to the effect that: "as the excommunication was not a merely spiritual penalty, but had also a civil signification, so it could not be admitted that it should be inflicted only by an ecclesiastical superior, and that the latter in using it would violate the prerogatives of citizens placed under the protection of the state, and would commit an assault against the rights of the state, which can and ought to oppose it; hence in his action against the two excommunicated persons, he had gone beyond the limits of his ecclesiastical powers; this act was therefore annulled, and the government would refuse any longer to recognize him who had so acted, as the bishop of ermland." bishop krementz answered, on march , exposing the absurdity of falk's doctrine, the justice of his own action in regard to wollmann and michelis, and dissipating the many sophisms and garbled citations contained in the letter of march . the bishop declared, moreover, that he could not and would not obey, and spurned the malicious action he was commanded to do despite all right and all laws. the words of the courageous bishop only served to fan the flame of hatred, but had no effect in lessening the injustice and violence of the government. when the bureaucrats of berlin perceived that the bishops of the country were holding firm to their principles, they again had recourse to the dishonest methods of strategy. there was at the time a cardinal in germany, the brother of that prince hohenlohe who had been instrumental in bavaria in stirring up an agitation against the papal authority. cardinal hohenlohe was one of those ecclesiastics who at the council of the vatican had held out most strongly against the definition of infallibility, and though he had finally acquiesced with the other bishops, he harbored in his heart something not at all in harmony with the catholic position of his native land. he was therefore looked upon by the government at berlin as a most favorable subject to act as an intermediary between berlin and rome to force the hands of the unwilling bishops. accordingly in the beginning of , bismarck caused it to be reported abroad that the cardinal was to be sent to rome as the german ambassador to the holy see. a strange feature of this appointment was that the pope had received no official intimation of the government's intention, contrary to all diplomatic usages. the cardinal accepted the mission without having asked the consent of the holy see. in fact, the papal secretary, cardinal antonelli, soon received a laconic dispatch from the chancellor informing him of the approaching arrival of the new ambassador. the plan of bismarck was clearly to effect through the offices of cardinal hohenlohe the suppression of the centre party, knowing well that in case the holy see refused to accept the embassy, it would arouse in germany a storm of animosity which must prove invaluable in aiding the anti-catholic movement. the pope naturally refused to receive cardinal hohenlohe as an ambassador. as a result the anti-catholic press began at once to print its most violent invectives against the catholic church. in the reichstag, the deputy bennigsen, boiling with fury, demanded the final suppression of the embassy to the holy see. the embassy was, nevertheless, continued, for bismarck could not think of thus closing up an avenue, which, he fondly thought, would finally lead to the extinction of that centre party which he hated as he hated the catholic church itself. moreover, official documents are existent which betray the fact that bismarck even at that early date was seriously considering the project of directing the future conclave towards a choice which would favor the political ends he had in view. on may , , von roon, minister of war, suspended bishop namszanowski, the high military chaplain, from his office, because the latter had refused to officiate in a place desecrated by the services of the old catholics. it was an act of caesarism which tended to reduce the whole episcopate to the entire will of the state. it was remonstrated that there were no laws to authorize the action of von roon; accordingly it was proposed to make such laws. while these were in preparation the persecution was for a time concentrated upon the jesuits. for two years, indeed, the more bitter among the protestants united at darmstadt had demanded the banishment of the members of this order. it was a proposition most savory to the old catholics, who would find it more easy to banish the jesuits than to conquer them, and it was through their efforts principally that the question of their persecution was finally brought before the reichstag. in the meantime the government began to be besieged with petitions, some demanding the expulsion of the jesuits, others defending them by greater numbers and stronger arguments. by april , , there were forty-one such petitions against the order, while its defenders presented as many as four hundred and seventy-six. on may , the reichstag consigned all petitions to the chancellor, bismarck, as was proposed by the councillor, wagener. thus was left to the arbitration of one man a matter which interested the whole empire, to a man, moreover, who that same day was charged with preparing a law regulating the legal conditions of the religious orders, congregations and associations, and which "should establish penalties for their activity when hurtful to the state." while hardly ten thousand signatures demanded from the reichstag the banishment of the jesuits, more than four hundred thousand more were presented in their favor. on june , a law against the jesuits was proposed; prince hohenlohe and three others aggravated its hostile measures by extending its effects to all congregations bearing a resemblance to the society of jesus. wagener declared openly that its purpose was to combat rome, and hence that the law which was to strike the jesuits should be only the beginning of the war upon catholics. to give some semblance of plausibility to such a far-reaching design, he spread abroad the rumor that there were jesuits hidden under every kind of habit. malincrodt responded ably to the sensational clamorings of wagener, proving that the intentions of the proposed law were violations of the rights of nature, of existing legislation, of the particular constitutions of the states, of that of the empire, and of the primary elements of justice and good sense. the battle that ensued called for the loftiest eloquence of the centre, from windthorst, ballestrem, the two reichenspergers, and from ketteler. one of the reichenspergers declared that the enemies of the jesuits "believe they must break every law to create a new law of proscription in order to protect themselves from two hundred jesuits. ah, gentlemen! confess that your law is but the failure of liberalism!" on june , the infamous law was passed. a few days after pius ix., addressing on june , , some germans at rome, gave them such advice as might be expected from the great father of christendom. "pray," he said, for prayer is the most powerful means of restraining the persecutors of the church. he bade them to oppose their enemies by word and writing, with firmness, and yet with respect. it was god's will that they should obey and respect their superiors, but he wills also that we should speak out the truth and combat error. the discourse of the holy pontiff aroused evil feelings among the enemies of the church in germany, who declared it an exhortation to rebellion, and to civil war, that it was an intolerable usurpation, and that the pope ought not to meddle with such matters. meanwhile the sisters were banished from the public schools, and the communes were ordered to break all contracts made with religious congregations. the young men in the gymnasiums and high schools were forbidden to be members of catholic societies, though protestants were permitted full liberty in such matters. thus in bavaria the government forbade the meetings of the great st. boniface association which looked after the spiritual interests of catholics in protestant districts, while at the same time it tolerated the society of gustavus adolphus, an association which pretended to care for protestants in catholic states. indeed, falk boasted that his aim was to restrain the catholic propaganda. the law against the jesuits as printed in the decree of july , , reads as follows: "the order of the company of jesus, being excluded from the german empire, it is no longer lawful for the members of that order to continue to exercise any office of the order itself, above all in the church and in the school; nor is it permitted to them to preach missions; within six months at the most the houses of the company of jesus must be closed." following the issue of this decree the catholics everywhere were subjected to a most humiliating espionage. jesuits were discovered everywhere and denounced to the authorities. not only secular priests, but laymen and officials of the army were accused. the decree gave the jesuits six months; but in many places their persecution began immediately. colleges, houses and churches were closed; the jesuits were forbidden to preach, to hear confessions and even to say mass. with the jesuits were included also the redemptorists, the lazarists, and the brothers and sisters of the christian schools; even the pious congregations directed by these orders were dispersed as being affiliated with the jesuits. the bishops of germany assembled at fulda on september , , and protested against the persecutions. they made use of the occasion to defend the noble attitude of bishop krementz of ermland, to reproach the government for its open favoritism in the case of the old catholics, to declare that bishop namszanowski had fulfilled his duty. they deplored this new offense against the church through the persecution of the company of jesus and of other orders. in their summing up they declared that "the principles herein expressed by us will always be the criterion of our actions, and we are ready for that end to make the greatest sacrifices, even that of our lives." in the meantime the anti-catholics were busily elaborating their plan of campaign. a certain professor, emile friedberg of the university of leipzig, published a rabid attack upon the church wherein he outlined the policy to be pursued by his party in dealing with them. among his suggestions, nearly all of which were ultimately adopted, were the following: the establishment of obligatory civil marriage; suppression of obligatory baptism; separation of church and state; secularization of charitable works; a penal law against "abuse of the pulpit;" measures to prevent ecclesiastics not in harmony with the government from using the pulpit; a rigorous surveillance of the education of the clergy; an order forbidding the appointment of ecclesiastics who by their civil or political relations could create difficulties for the government; suppression of the order of jesuits; an interdict striking all congregations not authorized by the government; recourse to the state against the decisions of ecclesiastical authority; punishment of "abuse of power" by fines, and by suspension from exercise of jurisdiction; measures compelling the state never to place its powers at the discretion of the church, never to punish an ecclesiastic resisting his ecclesiastical superiors, never to confirm the penalties ordained by the bishops; measures to abolish the sanctification of the holy days, etc. all these measures and many more like them are worthy of note inasmuch as they contained the program of the real hostilities now about to begin. the separation of church and state, being in the eyes of the radicals, the supreme end, it was proposed to proceed gradually, destroying first the means of life in the german church, stopping up its veins and arteries, and finally strangling all its activities, until it should at length have become so weak and inert that any measure for its extinction should be easy and successful. it was the proposal of men; god, himself, however, was to show that the last word remained in his divine power. _may laws._ on january , , falk, the minister of worship, placed upon the desk of the chamber four resolutions, the object of which was to inaugurate a certain civil constitution for the clergy, and to place the church entirely at the mercy of the state. after having proscribed the religious orders, these new resolutions aimed at the destruction of the secular clergy. the first of these laws, "on the appointment and education of ecclesiastics," required that all ecclesiastics should be of german birth, that they should have graduated from a german gymnasium, and have spent three years in a state university, after which they should undergo an examination directed by the prescriptions of the ministry of worship. the state was to supervise all establishments of ecclesiastical training, even the grand seminaries which alone were to remain, all the lesser seminaries being closed. the president of the province had the right to reject every appointment or transfer of ecclesiastics made by a bishop, and the bishops should be obliged to notify the president of all appointments and transfers; moreover, the president could impose a fine of one thousand thallers upon any bishop who should not appoint a person acceptable to the ministry, and this appointment should be made within the space of a year; otherwise he could lay hands upon the property of the bishop or of any other ecclesiastic refusing obedience, nor could the bishop appeal from such judgment to the crown. this civil punishment rendered the ecclesiastic unfit for the divine ministry. a fine was to be imposed upon any priest who after being deposed by the government should dare to exercise his ecclesiastical functions. a second law assigned the limits within which the bishops might judge in ecclesiastical affairs, the penalties they were to pronounce, though always with the consent of the civil authorities; an appeal was instituted from the judgment of the bishop to the high court of justice for ecclesiastical affairs, which court could order the suspension of a bishop who had unjustly condemned a subject. there was to be a penalty for the bishop who should refuse to surrender to the state the records of any ecclesiastical trial; moreover, the high court could justify itself for any deposition of a bishop by the plea that his continuance could not be permitted for reasons of public utility. a third law regarded those who should wish to abandon the catholic religion. it was a measure of encouragement to apostates whose defection it surrounded with the most benevolent and watchful care. the only thing necessary to legalize any act of apostasy was that the unfortunate should appear before a civil official with a declaration written and sealed, and the payment of five silver groschen ( cents). the fourth and last law, "on the limits of the use of means of punishment and correction in the church" was one hardly likely to have any honest interest for the bishops, since it forbade, what they were never likely to do, the physical punishment of lay people, and any punishment attaining the fortune or the honor of the citizens. it was a law which hoped that by formally forbidding any criminal act, would lead an inflamed public opinion to believe such a criminal act had really been perpetrated. such were the may laws which despite the pleading of the centre orators, and their innate and evident injustice passed the lower house on april , . in the landtag, however, the difficulty of pushing them through was at once evident. to win his point at all hazards moved bismarck to a stratagem worthy of his evil genius. the emperor was accordingly induced to appoint twenty-four new members to the landtag, all of whom were warm partisans of the chancellor. the best men of the landtag pleaded eloquently for justice and right, but their voices were drowned in the chorus of hate swelled by these new accessions. on the st of may the whole bill was passed, and by the middle of the month they received the royal signature. as soon as the discussion upon the new laws was begun the german bishops addressed a memorial to the government detailing with all precision and clearness the injustice and the necessary consequences of the proposed legislation. on february , they addressed a collective letter to the landtag containing the principal portions of the former memorial, and declaring firmly: "for, if these projects, which are in direct opposition to the prescriptions and very essence of the church, are adopted, not a catholic, and still less a priest or a bishop, can recognize them, or submit voluntarily to them without betraying his faith." the petitions of the bishops had little effect with the iron chancellor, who smiled at the thought that fifteen aged prelates could turn him aside from his set purpose. on may , the bishops of prussia addressed a circular to the priests and faithful of their dioceses, declaring: "the projects in question have not yet the force of law; if that should happen, however, with god's grace, let us defend unanimously and constantly the principles exposed in our memorials, those principles not being our own, but those of christianity itself and of eternal justice. we shall thus accomplish our pastoral duty even until death, and as we stand before the tribunal of the divine pastor who has called us, and who himself gave his life for his sheep, we shall not be rejected as hirelings." on may , the day when the may laws first appeared before the public, the bishops of prussia sent a collective declaration to secretary of state, again stating their claims to liberty of conscience and affirming the utter impossibility of submitting to these persecuting laws. "the church cannot recognize the principle of a pagan state, according to which the civil laws are the only source of right, so that the church can have only so much liberty as is conceded by legislation and the constitution of the state. she cannot recognize such pretensions without denying the divinity of christ, the heavenly source of her doctrine and institution, and without placing christianity itself under the arbitrary caprice of men." the example of the bishops found an echo in the courageous behavior of the priests and faithful. from all sides the priests of germany joined in collective protestations of their loyalty to the principles of the church, and gave the lie to the liberal sheets which pretended that defections had already begun in the ranks of the clergy. the faithful were not less zealous in manifesting their sentiments of admiration for the courage of their bishops and priests, and of a determined resolve to start firm for all their god and their church should demand of them. an election for the reichstag was approaching, and the influential catholics of the empire bent all their energies to gain whatever might lie in their power. on may , this election took place at neustadt, a place that in had sent count oppensdorf, a strong partisan of bismarck, to the chamber with a majority of votes. the catholics took up the struggle for this district. their candidate was count frederic von stolberg-stolberg. their efforts were successful and the catholic candidate was elected by a vote of against . the glory of this triumph was due principally to the work of the general association of german catholics, which now took up the cause of catholic liberty as never before. as if in gratitude for this and some other similar successes, the general association, at once published an official circular announcing that it had placed all catholic committees under the protection of the sacred hearts of jesus and mary, and declaring: "if we place our confidence in that savior so bitterly rejected by our times, we shall not be confounded." the government looked with astonishment upon these manifestations of catholic loyalty and zeal, and endeavored by subtle trickery to bring them to nothing. to overcome the firm stand of the catholic nobility, bismarck induced prince ratibor, a catholic, whose honor was not immaculate, to address the emperor in the name of the catholic people. his memorial entitled "_address of the catholics of the state_," recognized in the imperial government the right of placing the church in subjection; but nobody, even among the enemies of the church, was deceived by the ruse. the high court for ecclesiastical affairs now began its work. it was composed at the time of nine protestants and two catholics, dooc and forckenbeck, both being creatures of bismarck. it immediately sent out its police inspectors to spy upon all public meetings; every speech was criticized, the audience disturbed, the names of all present at such meetings set down in note books, and, if caprice so dictated, the meetings might be dissolved by the police. while every sheet that attacked the catholics was protected and subsidized, the catholic newspapers were subjected to vexatious intermeddling and suppression. many catholic editors, like dr. majunke, of the _germania_, payed for their zeal by imprisonment. in the midst of these troubles, pope pius ix. wrote on august , , to the emperor: "every measure of the government demonstrates that its intention is to combat catholicity; nor is there any apparent reason for such deeds; his majesty approves of them as is shown by his letters; how then, can they continue? does not the emperor perceive that they are a menace to his throne?" the answer of william was worthy of the injustice of his government; he defended himself by appealing to his rights and casting the blame upon the centre and the german bishops. this correspondence between the emperor and the pope was spread throughout all germany, which in its inflamed state was willing to take every word of the pontiff as an insult and cause for further persecution. but the holy pontiff, in his encyclical of november , , exposed the hypocritical sophisms of the emperor, and upheld both the centre and the bishops in the magnificent work they were carrying on. in the meantime a ministerial ordinance of falk, dated september , abolished all difference between the old catholics and the catholics of rome, declaring that the name, catholic, should be common to both. at the same time, reinkens of breslau, who had been chosen by his co-religionaries as the "german bishop," and consecrated by the jansenists of deventee and harlem, was so highly recognized by the government, that the emperor decided, by an official act, communicated on september , to all the provincial governors, that "bishop" reinkens constituted a part of the catholic church. the document is interesting: "we, william, by the grace of god, king of prussia, etc., announce by these presents that we recognize and wish to have recognized as a catholic bishop joseph hubert reinkens, ordinary professor in the faculty of theology of breslau." _war of violence._ the may laws of were put into operation with hardly any delay. the first to feel their force was archbishop melchers of cologne, who had excommunicated the apostates, rabbers and pasfrath, and who had forbidden any ecclesiastic ordained by the jansenists of utrecht to exercise the clerical offices. the government closed the grand seminaries of posen and of paderborn after the bishops of those sees had refused to submit to the government, or to bend to its will even after the sequestration of their salaries. at treves, cologne and fulda also the income of the seminaries were confiscated. the archbishop of gnesen-posen, mgr. ledochowski, had named a pastor and a vicar without consulting the government. he was cited before the high court, and was condemned to a fine of two hundred thallers, while the two priests he had appointed received notice that they could not exercise any ecclesiastical office. the same courageous archbishop had ordered that the catechism in the catholic school of wongrowitz should be taught in the polish language, while the government demanded that it should be taught in german. as a result the teachers of the school were deprived of their places, and an effort was made to forbid religious instruction even in the churches. again in august the high court condemned for the crime of appointing pastors and assistants, the same archbishop ledochowski, together with bishops förster of breslau, martin of paderborn, cardinal schwartzemberg of prague, the bishop of olmutz and the administrator of freiberg in brisgovia. the two latter prelates were not even subjects of prussia, but were persecuted for having appointed pastors in prussian territory without the permission of berlin. bishop koett of fulda was actually dying when the sentence of condemnation was launched against him; he saw the closing of his seminary just before he died on october , . the furniture of the dead prelate's house was taken to pay the fine imposed upon him. truly even the dead were pursued by the fanatics of hatred. the bishops of heldesheim, osnabrück, münster and treves, were also condemned by the high court. every day the priests of the prussian dioceses were punished for daring to prefer the jurisdiction of the bishops to that of the bureaucrats. religious and sisters were hunted and banished under the pretext that they were affiliated with the jesuits. catholic teachers were driven from the schools, which were then committed to protestants, rationalists, anything but catholics. on november the government invited mgr. ledochowski to resign his see; on the th of that month his palace was forced by agents of the government, and searched, and all his correspondence with rome and with his clergy was seized. in answer to the demand of the government he had declared that as he had been placed over his diocese by god, through the means of his vicar, the government had no power to depose him; nor could any court deprive him of his jurisdiction; as to resigning his see, that would never happen as long as his persecuted people were exposed to such dangers. on february , , the archbishop was arrested in his palace, and without trial or sentence, was carried away to ostrowo, where he was cast into prison. on april the high court passed its sentence upon the archbishop, already in prison, as on march , archbishop mechers had been sentenced and imprisoned. on march , bishop eberhard of treves received the same fate, and three days after soldiers and guards surrounded his grand seminary, banished its directors and professors and confiscated all its property. in the meantime a dissension had arisen in the camp of the enemy. arnim, who had served bismarck during the council of the vatican, had come into disfavor with his powerful employer, and began to show revolutionary tendencies. one of the results of this discord between the chancellor and his former tool was the disclosure of certain shady operations of bismarck prior to . certain documents were brought forth showing that, in , doellinger had influenced the bavarian prince hohenlohe to begin the war against rome, and that at that time bismarck was laboring in every part of europe to arouse the governments against the definition of papal infallibility. it was shown also that from june , , this arnim, whom pius ix. called the "new architofel," had suggested against the church all the measures of which bismarck had made use during the year that followed. these revelations coming thus in , in the very heat of the persecution, gave additional evidence that the council and the infallibility were only pretexts, and not the real causes of the kulturkampf, an event which had been in preparation long before the council was convened. the greater indignities perpetrated upon the heads of the catholic church in germany now followed each other with such rapidity and violence as to overshadow the thousands of minor grievances. on july , , bishop janiczewski, auxiliary of the see of posen, was imprisoned at kosmin for fifteen months for having assumed the episcopal office without the permission of the government. the same day, mgr. koryskowski, delegated by the archbishop of gnesen to administer the affairs of that diocese, was sent into exile at stargard. the canon woiyewski was imprisoned for having continued in his capacity as ecclesiastical judge after the imprisonment of his archbishop. bishop martin of paderborn was deposed from his bishopric; he refused to read the sentence which was nailed to the door of his prison cell; he was liberated, however, but conducted to the frontiers at wesel. on january , , the seminary of fulda, the most ancient establishment of its kind in germany, was closed. the record of persecution during the first five years of the kulturkampf is an appalling arraignment of its perpetrators. five bishops imprisoned, and all bishops fined and insulted, fourteen hundred priests incarcerated, all the seminaries closed, it seemed little short of miraculous that religion survived the merciless onslaught. yet the end had not arrived. on december , , bismarck suppressed the embassy to the vatican, an act which moved the catholic people to send to the sovereign pontiff an address signed by all the faithful of the empire. it was in answer to this address that pius ix. published that eloquent encyclical of february , . strange to say, however, all the previous legislation had not begotten the results that were expected. the clergy like the episcopate resisted the anti-religious laws, preferring exile, imprisonment and fines to defection, however tempting. the faithful stood loyally by their afflicted pastors, refusing with one mind the ministrations of ecclesiastics sent to them by governmental orders. the chancellor, therefore, was driven to a final resort to effect his purpose of extinguishing catholic faith in germany. accordingly a new series of laws was elaborated, entitled the sperrgesetz, or laws suppressing the payments made to ecclesiastics by the state. one cannot rightly term these payments "salaries," a word which indicates no other claim than remuneration for services performed. the amounts annually payed to the church by the state were moneys which the state owed to the church since the beginning of the century on account of the wholesale confiscation of ecclesiastical properties and revenues following upon the treaty of luneville in . as such they had been formally recognized, and hence their payment to the officials of the church was a matter of justice which the state could not afford to refuse without incurring the stigma of robbery. this, however, was the object of the new laws which were as follows: article . beginning from the day on which the present law shall be published, the payment of all that the government has hitherto allotted to dioceses, to institutions and to ecclesiastics who belong to such dioceses shall be suppressed. the same measure shall be extended to such ecclesiastical funds as the state administers permanently. art. . the ecclesiastical salaries shall be re-established whenever the bishop, or the diocesan administrator shall pledge himself in writing to observe the laws of the state. art. . in the dioceses of posen-gnesen and paderborn the ecclesiastical salaries shall be re-established as soon as a new bishop shall be appointed in concert with the government. art. . if in any diocese, in which the ecclesiastical salaries shall have been re-established, any priest refuses obedience to the laws of the state despite the pledges given by his bishop, the government is authorized to suppress anew any allowance in favor of such recalcitrants. art. . the government is authorized to re-establish the salaries of priests who by their acts manifest the intention of obeying the laws of the state. if after that they shall violate the law, the suppression of their salaries shall be enforced. this was the law, variously called the brodkorbgesetz, the sperrgesetz and the like, which was passed on april , , with the hope thereby of starving the priesthood of germany into submission. on may , , the minister falk brought forth another law placing under the power of the state all sales and alienations of ecclesiastical properties and of pious foundations. a law of june gave to the state the temporal administration of catholic parishes; it was a law very much like that of the present french regime which would impose associations cultuelles upon the french churches. on july came a still more iniquitous ordinance, regulating "the rights of the old catholics to the property of the churches." thereby these sectaries were authorized to claim a part of the usufruct of parochial properties, and to employ in their services the use of catholic churches and vestments. if a pastor or curate should apostatize to this sect he might claim possession of the rectory and church, which at his death would pass into the hands of the old catholics, should they be in the majority. in fact, in some places, such as bochum and wiesbaden, the catholics were expelled from their church by a very small minority of the sectaries. on february , , the priest was deprived of the right of directing catholic instruction in the primary schools. on june , of the same year, the state claimed formally the right of surveillance over the administration of the property of the catholic church. there was little more that the state could now do to subjugate catholic faith short of absolute murder. the kulturkampf had reached its most critical stage. it was, indeed, a moment when the human pride of the persecutors impelled them to boast of their crimes, and promise, if it were possible, greater exactitude in the future. the chancellor could declare, in , that the kulturkampf was then at its zenith. in consequence it was time to look for that civilization which virchow had prophesied as its ultimate result. its real fruits were not what bismarck or his protestant clientele would have wished. a new order had arisen in germany, an order of unrest and anarchy which manifested its existence in a manner not at all to the liking of the ruling powers. thus, on may , , the socialist hoedel attempted the life of the emperor, and the crime was repeated by nobiling a few weeks after, on june . even protestantism felt the destructive force of the blow aimed at catholicity. there were hardly any more marriages performed by protestant ministers; their temples were deserted; their pastors openly attacked the divinity of christ, while everywhere like a shadow of death a reign of crime and immorality rested upon the population. _turn of the tide._ the country at length began to awaken to a sense of the criminality of those laws which it had imposed upon an inoffensive people. even the _gazette of the cross_, the organ of the orthodox conservatives, could say: "it is through the kulturkampf that we have encountered our moral and material miseries, miseries that are evident in every part of the german empire. it is only by renouncing the kulturkampf, and the ideas which brought it forth, that we can hope to escape from our embarrassments. such is our opinion, and it is becoming more general every day. where there is a will there is a way." the _gazette_ but echoed the sentiments of nearly all the german protestants who had retained anything of christian faith, and in consequence a demand was sounded throughout the empire for a cessation of the persecution. bismarck, himself, though still wedded to his hope of dominating the spiritual life of the church, saw clearly that his methods had proven abortive. hence, from onward, the trend of governmental action proceeded slowly but surely towards a reconciliation with the catholic elements in the nation. moreover, it was becoming more and more evident that the government needed the co-operation of the catholics in curbing the spirit of revolution now making itself heard above the clamor of intrigue and oppression. it was not surprising, therefore, that prince bismarck should turn to the holy see for succor in his difficulty. mgr. masella, the papal nuncio at munich, afterwards cardinal, was therefore invited to berlin to confer upon matters touching the relations of church and state. such a visit, however, was entirely out of the question as long as the laws against catholics continued in vigor. the chancellor contrived nevertheless to arrange a meeting at the baths of kissingen, but without arriving at any satisfactory agreement. the prince then sent his representative, count hübner, to vienna to confer with the papal nuncio at that court, mgr. jacobini. again negotiations were opened at gastein in the duchy of salzburg, but like the others came to naught, as the papal representative refused conciliation as long as the may laws should continue. it now became quite evident that the plans of bismarck must require a reversal of his former policy. accordingly, in , a beginning was made by a slight modification of the obnoxious laws. the government thereby yielded its claim to the right of deposing ecclesiastics; in , it recognized the vicars-general who had been appointed through ecclesiastical channels to administer the dioceses of paderborn, osnabrück and breslau; nor were these prelates required to take the oath of blind obedience to obnoxious laws. the bishoprics of fulda and of treves had been filled by papal appointment, the former receiving as its incumbent, mgr. kopp, and the latter, mgr. korum; strange to say, the chancellor recognized both prelates. these victories of the catholics, slight in themselves, were powerful as evidencing the direction of governmental policies. the reversion, however, of bismarck, was not so quickly followed by the creatures whom he had placed in the chambers, and whose hostility to catholic interests continued as violent and bitter as ever. "let us be patient for one or two years," cried bennigsen, the leader of the liberals, "and we shall see the fruits of our glorious policy; we shall have conquered the pope." in two years, , the pope remained unconquered, while in germany the catholic party increased in numbers and in power. on may , , new concessions were made to the catholics. provision was made for the pardoning of deposed bishops, the legal formalities required by candidates for ecclesiastical offices could be dispensed with at the option of the minister of worship, the state examinations of ecclesiastical students were set aside. still the may laws remained upon the statute books, and against them the centre party, under the leadership of windthorst, continued to protest even though advised to show some leniency by mgr. galimberti. the firmness of the great leader was rewarded. the affair of the caroline islands, disputed between germany and spain, gave bismarck an opportunity of approaching the holy see with better grace than before. accordingly the chancellor arranged that the holy father, leo xiii., should be invited to arbitrate between the contending nations. the sovereign pontiff could not help being happily impressed by this diplomatic action on the part of the two powers, which thereby recognized the holy father as a temporal sovereign despite the piedmontese occupation of rome. the successful result of the papal arbitration opened up new avenues whereby reconciliation might be effected in germany. the sees of cologne and fribourg were at once filled, and mgr. kopp, bishop of fulda, was offered a seat in the upper house of prussia. in return for the many evidences of good feeling thus betrayed by the government, cardinal ledochowski, who knew himself to be a persona non grata to the prussian state, resigned his diocese of posen, which was immediately filled by a new incumbent, mgr. dinder. on may , , the theological schools were re-established as they had been before the beginning of the kulturkampf. the high court instituted for the adjudging of ecclesiastical affairs was suppressed, and the sovereign pontiff was hitherto to be recognized as the superior judge in such matters. the elections of february, , increased the numbers of the centre party, and bismarck, thereupon, deemed the time fitting to end once for all the supreme trial of the kulturkampf. certain modifications of the may laws were placed in the hands of the centre; some were accepted, others rejected. the concessions, however, were of such a nature that they might be in a way accepted, inasmuch as they gave promise of other and larger benefits. through that diplomatic farsightedness which ever distinguished the great pope leo xiii., affairs were gradually assuming a condition satisfactory to the catholics of germany, although windthorst and the centre party still claimed many concessions due in ordinary justice. the peace finally concluded, the holy father conferred upon the chancellor the order of christ. it was a complimentary decoration that if it did not win the real convictions of bismarck, at least served to silence any open hostility on his part for the future. the may laws were finally revised in the reichstag and abolished. thenceforth cordial relations were established between the pope and the emperor william ii. the catholics of germany began to taste the fruits of peace; today they have become a power in the country. chapter vi. the third republic. the second empire, especially during its last ten years, had proven itself no less hostile and treacherous to the church than had many of its predecessors. this was evident most of all in the unworthy treatment of the holy see during its trying conflict with the revolutionists of italy. france had encouraged the spoliation of the papal states by the forces of garibaldi and victor emmanuel, and in it was forced to abandon rome to the italian unionists. before this last act had been consummated, however, a revolution broke out in france, september , , and overturned the imperial government. [illustration: father olivaint, s. j., and other martyrs of the commune.] the new republic was born in the midst of war and confusion. the prussians were already displaying admirable vigor and activity, and the cause of france was trembling in the balance. a provisory government was established, entitled the government of the national defence. during the five and a half months of its life the national defence held its sessions in paris, then surrounded by the besieging forces of the enemy. in the meantime the french armies met with one defeat after another. paris itself capitulated on jan. , . preliminaries of peace were signed that day at versailles and confirmed by the treaty of frankfort on may of the same year. after the capitulation of paris a general election was held to provide representatives to a national assembly. this assembly met at bordeaux and named adolph thiers, chief of the executive of the french republic. on august of the same year, , thiers was elected president of the republic. the presidents thence to the present time were: marshal macmahon, from may , to ; jules grévy, from january , to december, ; sadi carnot, from december , , to his assassination in june, ; casimir périer, from june , , to january, ; felix faure, from january , , to his death, feb. , ; loubet, from feb. , , to february, ; fallières, at present holding that office. _the commune._ it was while the prussian army was yet encamped near paris, during the months of march, april and may of , that the commune held its sway. at the very moment when france was bleeding from a thousand wounds, the international, taking advantage of the circumstances, and aided by , of the national guard, took possession of paris and ruled the city with a high hand. on march the assembly fled to versailles, leaving the place in the hands of the insurgents. on the th a species of election was held which surrendered the destinies of the capital to the commune. it numbered among its members fifty-four jacobins, blanquists and hebertists, out of a total of seventy-nine. it was an assembly of internationalists indeed. during the two months that followed, from march to may , nothing was done without the approbation or intervention of the international. [illustration: abbe deguerry. a martyr of the commune.] socialists of a later date, in their shame over the excesses of their party, have endeavored to excuse their actions; but the cold facts of history stand unshaken to condemn them, and to point out the sort of destiny to which practical socialism must inevitably lead. the commune was an orgy of dissipation. its officials, to compensate themselves for their services, sat down to banquets worthy of sardanapalus, where there was no lack of the wines of beaune and màcon, nor of litres of cognac, nor of routs unmentionable. the simple national guards gorged themselves with wine and alcohol, while the common people looked on and howled their approbation and applause. there were women in their ranks, dressed as men, who feared neither sword nor rifle, and to whom in their unsexed condition the horrors of bloodshed and conflagration acted as intoxicating draughts of burning absinthe. the commune was above all an explosion of rage against religion and the middle classes. all who in any way represented religion or the social order--priests, magistrates, soldiers, police--were arrested and cast into prison as "hostages." the archbishop of paris, mgr. darboy; m. bonjean, president of the tribunal; m. deguerry, pastor of the madeleine; the jesuits; the fathers of picpus; the dominicans; the sulpicians, and other priests, besides an entire convent of religious women, were confined in the various jails of the city. the commune imprisoned about persons, both lay and clerical. at the same time it laid hands upon the property of the churches, sacked the archbishop's palace, and turned the churches to sacrilegious and scandalous uses. feeling at length that its victory could only be short-lived, and that paris must soon fall before the army of macmahon, surrounding it from without, the commune began its campaign of destruction of the city itself. vast quantities of petroleum were procured, and tons of gun-powder were made the instruments for furthering this end. on the night of may , the army of versailles made a breach in the walls, the savage instincts of the mob were loosened and the "bloody week" began. cluseret, the international, had already written: "it is we, or nothing! paris will be ours, or it will cease to exist." the commune accomplished as much as it could of this sinister programme. [illustration: adolf thiers. first president of french republic.] as the army of versailles advanced, the communards applied the torch to every monument of note that came in their way. during the rd of may petroleum was poured upon the tuileries, and all along the rue de lille. toward the end of the day the buildings on the rue royale and the rue saint-honoré were burning. the court of accounts, the legion of honor, the council of state, the barracks, went down one by one. the next day the flames attacked the prefecture of police, the city hall, the custom house, the archives and other buildings. how far the fury of the communards might have gone toward the complete destruction of paris cannot be said; it was a fortunate circumstance which saved from their torches the louvre with its treasures of art, and the great church of notre dame. when it was not possible to employ fire, the artillery was called into action. the batteries of père-lachaise poured shot and shell against the dome of st. augustine's, the bourse, the post-office, and other prominent edifices. murder accompanied the horrors of fire. men were shot down in the open street, or stabbed in the shadows of dark alleys. six hostages, among them mgr. darboy and m. bonjean fell at la roquette. fifteen priests and religious sustained on that day the agonies that make martyrs, pierced with bullets, transfixed by bayonets, and beaten to death by the blows of a savage mob. with them a number of laymen fell victims to hatred on that fateful th of may, . [illustration: jules ferry.] while all europe felt a thrill of horror at these cowardly and brutal deeds, socialism seized the occasion to chant the praises of the commune. its principal organ, the _vorbote_, calls it a revolution "which the socialist democracy of the whole world ought to hail with enthusiasm," "which is only an episode in the social revolution." "the commune is dead," it cried, "long live the commune!" _anti-clericalism._ it is not surprising that a government born under such auspices should prove very unfavorable to the cause of religious and social freedom. the first promptings of war against the church had sounded in the very first moments of the third republic. its actual declaration and acts of hostility required a preparation of several years. it was on may , , that m. gambetta terminated his vehement assault upon the catholic church in the chamber of deputies with those words which have become famous: "our enemy is clericalism!" in spite of the protest uttered by the count de mun, the chamber acquiesced silently in the charge and thereby betrayed its evident purpose of antagonizing the church. the administration of president macmahon proving unfavorable to anti-religious sectarianism, it was determined to compel the hero of so many battles to resign--a consummation that was finally effected in january, . _the campaign of jules ferry._ the following election placed jules grévy in the chair, with jules ferry as minister of public instruction. the latter, one of the most acrobatic and unscrupulous demagogues of the century, would have courted the favor of the catholic party had it been dominant at the time; but his ambition for power and notoriety led him to the side he found most opportune. his zeal against the church was increased by the competition of such rivals as gambetta, brisson and paul bert, all worthy apostles in the cause of de-christianization. the law of laicisation constitutes the culminating point in the life of jules ferry. this law was not of recent origin; it had already been proposed in , by the extreme left. paul bert was then one of its most enthusiastic exponents. it is a law that denies to french catholics the most essential liberties. it required the elimination of the religious element in the superior council of public instruction, the reservation to the state of the monopoly of degrees, the suppression of mixed juries,--established by the law of in regard to higher education,--the suppression of university rights for every catholic establishment of superior education, and, finally, it asserted that every member of a congregation not authorized should be held incapable of participating in any instruction public or private. in a word, it made the catholic an outcast in the domain of education. the discussion upon the law took place in the chamber from june to july , . during this time the high lodges of masonry hoped to diminish in the eyes of catholics the importance of this law. but the catholic press did its duty; the question was placed in its proper light, public attention was awakened, and the contest promised to become warm. it became especially bitter when the discussions touched upon the congregations. jules ferry had inserted in the bill, under article vii., the words: "no one shall be permitted to participate in instruction, whether public or private, or to direct an establishment of instruction, of whatever order it may be, who belongs to a congregation not authorized." these few lines awakened the catholics of the country, and with them the more honest republicans. to declare an immense category of french citizens incapable of teaching, in spite of the fact that they held diplomas, and that only because they pleased to live in community, constituted the most evident violation of justice and equality. a cry of protest went up from every side. jules ferry, realizing that he was playing his highest stakes, and urged on by his brethren, struggled desperately for his _article_. moreover, all the masonic lodges had entered into the contest; every morning the irreligious journals, denounced the congregations as the great peril of the nation. political questions, both foreign and domestic, seemed to have no more interest; the military reorganization of germany was forgotten; all attention was concentrated upon the congregations, the members of which were themselves astonished at the importance given to them by their adversaries; even in the tribune it was considered proper to discuss cases of conscience selected from old volumes of jesuit theologians. nevertheless, despite the mobilization of all the forces of irreligion, despite the explosion of the most unbridled anger that was ever seen since the revolution, despite the personal intervention of de freycinet at the luxembourg the senate, influenced by more than , , protests from heads of families, vetoed _article vii_. jules ferry was defeated, and every one imagined his defeat to be definitive. [illustration: jules grÉvy.] the worthy minister of public instruction revised his tactics. repulsed in one method of action, he knew how to gain his end by other and more decisive ways. on march , , in concert with his friends of the cabinet, he induced the president to affix his signature to the famous decrees of expulsion. in virtue of these decrees, which were launched under the pretence of "existing laws," thousands of religious were expelled from their convents--with what violence, and in the midst of what protestations and tragic incidents, it would take too long to tell. when the decrees were made known to the pope leo xiii., on march , the holy father replied to m. desprez, then ambassador of france to the holy see: the church, which seeks the salvation of souls, has no more ardent desire than to preserve peace with those who govern public affairs, and to strengthen that peace among peoples. at the same time, the church never changes. we are plunged in grief to learn that it is intended to adopt certain measures in regard to the religious congregations. in the eyes of the holy see the congregations are all of equal value. our heart is torn with the profoundest sorrow to learn that they have become the butt of a hostile power, and it is our duty to raise our voice to protest in their favor. still later, in writing to cardinal guibert, the holy father said: as soon as the expulsion of the company of jesus was ordered, we have directed our nuncio in paris to bear our remonstrances to the members of the government of the republic, and to represent to them the injustice of this treatment accorded to men of virtue, of devotion, and of recognized and approved learning. but, as the remonstrances formulated by our nuncio have been fruitless, we were on the point of raising our apostolic voice, as it was our right and our duty to do, when it was represented to us that there was a chance of arresting the execution of the decrees. this last resource, which m. de freycinet proposed to the holy father, was to obtain from the congregations not yet stricken the written declaration that they were not hostile to the political institutions of france. following the guidance of cardinals guibert and bonnechose, and counselled by the holy father, the congregations appended their signatures to the declaration. the action of m. freycinet only aroused the anger of the masons, whose adherents in the cabinet met the declaration and destroyed it as soon as presented. freycinet was not long in meeting summary punishment from the sectaries. on the day following the presentation of the declaration he was forced to resign his portfolio. _expulsion of religious._ in october, , the expulsions began. the residences and colleges of the jesuits and other congregations were entered and their occupants driven out. very often the military were called upon to enforce the decrees. it was to no purpose that the catholics of the nation lifted up their voices in angry protest, or that bishops--like mgr. gay and mgr. de cabrieres--clothed in their pontifical vestments, uttered sentence of excommunication against the despoilers. the rout went on with ever-increasing ardor. it is to the credit of the french bar of the time that it refused to concur in the shameful acts. m. chesnelong, in , writes: "after the decrees of march , , more than three hundred magistrates abandoned their career rather than sacrifice the least particle of their honor; these heroes of duty displayed a magnificent spirit of sacrifice to the very end." against the congregations not attainted by the decrees, recourse was had to tactics slower but more perfidious. they were rounded up in a pitiless circle of taxes and assessments to such an extent as to rob the congregations of one-fifth of their net revenues. once more the holy father sent forth his vigorous protestations. in an open letter to cardinal guibert of paris, dated october , , after reviewing the situation he writes: "but today, in the midst of these new disasters, our emotion is great, our anguish is extreme; and we cannot help but grieve and protest against the injury done to the catholic church." the great pope ended by declaring that "in the presence of this license, the duties of his office commanded him to safeguard with invincible constancy the institutions of the church, and to defend her rights with a courage that would not end at any peril." following this letter of the sovereign pontiff the apostolic nuncio, mgr. czacki, proceeded in a few weeks, november , to the minister of foreign affairs, and placed before him a ministerial declaration of november , which glorified in having dispersed two hundred and sixty-one non-authorized establishments, together with a note protesting against these avowed and cowardly persecutions. the word, however, had gone forth to pursue the church and her influence wherever they should appear, in any form. during the ten following years a veritable fury of laicisation and de-christianization was let loose. catholicity was hunted down in every section of the social organization. the laws were penetrated more and more with an irreligious spirit. in the army the chaplaincies were disorganized. (law of july , ) the military mass was suppressed, and the troops were forbidden to take part--as a body--in any religious ceremonies (ministerial circulars of december and , ), nor were they permitted even to enter a catholic church in a body (decree october , ); moreover, numerous catholic military associations were closed upon the slightest pretext. in the courts the usual prayers at the opening of judicial proceedings were either suppressed or declared optional (may , ); the members of the bar were forbidden to assist in a body at religious processions (may , ). in the matter of education the bishops and clergy were excluded from the superior council of public instruction. before the episcopate had been represented in this council by four of its members. since that date the representatives of private education held four seats out of sixty; but a priest has never been admitted. [illustration: president sadi carnot.] in the matter of higher education, the faculties of catholic theology in the sorbonne were suppressed (budget of ), while the protestant faculties have been maintained. in secondary education, religious instruction was made optional (december , ). in primary education a law of march , , interdicted anyone from teaching the catechism in the local schools. in the prisons the religious services were notably reduced. in the hospitals of many cities the sisters were driven out despite protestations of all kinds; moreover, no priest was henceforth to be placed upon the administrative commissions of the hospitals (april , ). the curés were also driven from the bureau of charity (april , ). the exterior ceremonies of religion were forbidden in the streets and religious monuments proscribed. in the cemeteries non-catholics were to be admitted to burial side by side with catholics (november , .) in the churches, the mayor of the town was to have a key, could order the church bells to be rung, and exercise police supervision within the church limits, in contradiction to article xv., of the concordat. in the workshops and factories the law of sunday rest was abrogated ( .) in private houses, no private chapels might be maintained. in the family, the law of divorce was felt (july , .) in may, , this law was so transformed that a mere separation lasting three years could then, on the demand of one of the parties, be changed into absolute divorce. civil contracts were elevated to a position of honor. the laws stood at the bedside of the dying to prevent the making of pious legacies; in the cemeteries civil funerals were permitted with attendant anti-religious manifestations, and the new practice of cremation. [illustration: casimer pÉrier.] the laws oppressed the consciences of the people by the pressure constantly exercised and the menace held over the heads of functionaries culpable of confiding their children to christian teachers, of taking part in catholic works, or of simply performing their religious duties. state officials were spied upon, denounced, reprimanded, and disgraced because they endeavored to reconcile the accomplishment of their duties to the state with the open practice of their religious obligations. in the matter of schools the laws were especially unreasonable. in , lyceums were opened for young girls in order to transform their catholic spirit. in october , , a law was voted declaring that thenceforth all congregation teachers, male and female, should be excluded from all public schools, primary and maternal. in schools for boys the law was executed promptly, and their personal administrations were completely laicised before october, . the schools for girls were subjected to the change more gradually but none the less effectively. by the law of march , , priests were excluded from the schools. in november, , it was forbidden to display any longer the crucifix, which was thereupon taken down from the walls and cast, in many cases, into the filth of the sewers. other laws attainted the salaries of the clergy. in that of the bishops was reduced by one-third, and that of the archbishops by one-fourth. the salaries of canons were gradually extinguished altogether, as were also those of many curacies and assistants. the same method of reduction was brought to bear upon the allowances for seminaries; the towns were released from the obligation of repairing churches and religious establishments of charity. from to , the budget for religious worship was reduced from , , to , , francs, or more than , , . still other laws affected the work of the bishops in the administration of their dioceses. in , the archbishop of rheims was condemned for having taught the catholic doctrine of marriage, and the bishop of lucon for defending the rights of the pope. other bishops were prosecuted for instructing the faithful in regard to their duty in the elections. in , a law was framed imposing on all religious without exception the obligation of serving three years in the army. its object was evidently to destroy the spirit of the priesthood in the hearts of young men, an object, however, which happily failed of its realization. [illustration: president felix faure.] in the midst of all these exasperating infractions of religious liberty, the catholic people of france were constantly consoled by the deep and abiding interest manifested by the holy father. in , he addressed to them his celebrated encyclical _nobilissima gallorum gens_, an effusion of fatherly tenderness towards a noble daughter of the church. in a magnificent word-picture he spoke of the past grandeur of france, he deplored her present evils, and he pointed out, as an efficacious remedy, a cordial understanding and necessary concord between church and state. this understanding the concordat of had cemented for the happiness and prosperity of a country which was then at the height of its power. and it was still to the concordat not mutilated and denatured in its letter and spirit, but loyally interpreted and honestly executed that recourse must be had for the re-establishment of union and peace. at the same time he warned the bishops that they should give no occasion for a suspicion of hostility to the republic: "nemo jure criminabitur vos constitutae reipublicae adversari." the same sentiments, calling for close union among catholics in a catholic state, were reiterated in his letter to the bishop of perigueux, and in his encyclicals, _immortale dei_ of november , , in his _libertas_, june , , and still more in the encyclical, _sapientiae christianae_, january , , all of which while defending the glory and rights of the french catholics, instructed them in the duties and methods of unity among themselves, and of loyalty to the republic. _catholics and the republic._ the enemies of the church, who during former periods had rested the defence of their persecutions upon the doctrines and internal life of catholics, began during the period of the third republic to have recourse to tactics more effective among a people to whom republican liberty appeared the consummation of all national well-being. the government no longer dared to touch upon the religion of the soul; it perceived clearly that dogmas and the internal rules of morality were beyond the scope of civil legislation. in its new war upon religion it invoked against the church reasons of state, and interests of a political order. comprehending as they did that the french people were attached to republican institutions, the party of persecution endeavored to represent the catholics as the enemies of the republican government while they would identify their own cause with that of the established power. the catholics were accused of political ends in all their actions, and their zeal in defending the spiritual order was transformed into a greedy desire for exclusive advancement in things temporal. hence the government, menaced by the plots and schemes of catholics, was obliged to defend itself, and to adopt the most effective measures for destroying catholic conspiracy. these insinuations were constantly injected into the masses by anti-christian journals, orators, and demagogues, whose perpetual cry was that the church is the enemy of the state, of civil authority, of modern society and of intellectual progress, all of which were by them comprehended in the term "republic." [illustration: paul bert.] the tactics in themselves are not historically new. you find them mentioned in the gospel as employed by the jews in their false testimony against christ when they represented him as a disturber of the people, as one who would forbid the tribute to caesar, as one who called himself a king. for whosoever maketh himself a king is an enemy to caesar. later still, the pagans in their envy of the christians, called them "useless beings, dangerous and factious citizens, the enemies of the empire and of the emperors." the same complaints and the same bitterness are renewed more or less in the succeeding centuries as often as there are governments unreasonably jealous of their power, and animated with intentions hostile to the church. they always know how to put before the public the pretext of pretended usurpations of the church over the state, in order to furnish the state with the appearance of right in its encroachments and violence toward the catholic religion. (encyclical of leo xiii. to the catholics of france, feb. , .) there were not wanting apologists to place the true position of catholics before the nation. thus cardinal guibert, archbishop of paris, in his letter addressed to the president of the republic, march , , declared: no, the clergy never had, and has not today any spirit of hostility toward existing institutions.... if the republic accepted the obligation, binding on all governments, of respecting the faith and worship of the vast majority of our country, it would find nothing in the doctrine of the church, nor in her traditions, which would justify in a priest a sentiment of mistrust or opposition.... monsieur le president, i appeal to your intelligence and your impartiality.... the catholic clergy has made no opposition to the government which rules france, but the government for six years has not ceased to persecute the clergy, to weaken christian institutions, and to prepare the abolition of religion itself. so also spoke mgr. freppel, the bishop-deputy, in a discussion held in the chamber, december , : it is evident that the president of the council (m. de freycinet) believes in a hostile attitude of the clergy towards the republic. that hostile attitude i deny formally. already, on a former occasion, i was not afraid, from the height of this tribune, to defy our adversaries to produce one single pastoral letter in which a member of the clergy shows himself in favor of the monarchy against the republic. that challenge has remained unanswered. for, monsieur president, to simply demand the modification of certain laws as unjust or anti-religious is not sufficient to merit even for an instant the epithet of an enemy to the republic. we are certainly allowed to form a different conception of the republic than yours; that is the right of every one. it is certainly permissible not to identify in principle the republican idea or form with atheism, anti-christianism, or freemasonry. one may combat these errors or these institutions without having thereby an attitude hostile to the republic itself. all that you have the right to exact is that in no pastoral writing and by no pastoral act shall a member of the clergy pronounce against the actual form of the government. the french cardinals, january , , presented the same ideas: to resume: respect for the laws of the country, where they do not conflict with the exigencies of conscience; respect for the representatives of power; the frank and loyal acceptation of political institutions; but, at the same time, a firm resistance to the encroachments of the secular power upon the spiritual domain ... such are the duties which, at the present hour, are imposed upon the conscience and patriotism of the french catholics. _pope leo xiii. and the republic._ it is sufficiently evident that all these declarations were in perfect conformity with the instructions of the holy see; yet, that there might be no doubt as to the authoritative teaching of the church in that matter, the holy father, pope leo xiii., addressed on february , , an encyclical letter to the catholics of france, wherein he pointed out the basis and conditions of a possible peace--provided it was sincerely wished for--between catholicism and the republican government. [illustration: gambetta.] after denouncing the "vast plot which certain men have formed to annihilate christianity in france, and the animosity they display in striving to realize their design," he proceeds: the church, in her relations with the political powers, abstracts from the forms which differentiate them, in order to treat with them upon the great religious interests of peoples, knowing that to her belongs the duty of teaching them above every other interest. if each political form is good in itself, and can be applied to the government of peoples, the fact is that it does not encounter the political power under the same form among all peoples; each possesses its own. that form arises from the ensemble of circumstances, historical or national, but always human, which give rise in a nation to traditional or even fundamental laws, and through these is determined the particular form of government, the basis of transmission of supreme powers. it is useless to repeat that all individuals are bound to accept such governments, and to attempt in no way to overturn them or to change their form. thence it is that the church, the guardian of the truest and loftiest notion of political sovereignty, since she derives it from god, has always reproved the doctrines and condemned the men rebellious to legitimate authority. and that in times when the depositaries of power used it only to abuse her, thus depriving themselves of the most powerful support of their authority, and of the most efficacious means of popular obedience to their laws. but a difficulty presents itself: "this republic," it may be said, "is animated by sentiments so anti-christian that honest men, and above all catholics, cannot conscientiously accept it." this it is which has given rise to dissensions and aggravated them. these unfortunate divergences would be avoided if one would only take into account the considerable distinction between constituted powers and legislation.... practically the quality of the laws depends more upon the quality of the men invested with power than upon the form of the power.... one can never approve of points of legislation which are hostile to religion and to god; on the contrary it is a duty to reprove them. [illustration: charles de freycinet.] the holy father thus makes it plain that the church, and catholics as catholics, are not opposed to existing governments, nor are they _in principle_ opposed to the legislation of such governments, as long as such legislation is not hostile to god and religion. when hostility of this kind is found in legislation, it is the duty of catholics to oppose it and to strive to obtain a better law. the form of power remains the same, and the catholic people are held by their principles to support it loyally. these declarations coming from so many and such authoritative sources had their effect upon the common sense of the french people. the spirit of hostility to catholicity and its institutions began to show a marked diminution. this was evidenced most of all in the very abiding place of former anti-christianism, the french chamber of deputies. on march , , m. spuller, a disciple of gambetta, and the man who had introduced the famous article vii. in , made the following significant declarations in the chamber of that day: when the republic had to struggle against the coalition of the old parties, when the church served as a bond for all these old parties, i followed at that time the policy exacted by the circumstances, and which the supreme interest of the republic commanded.... but does that mean that i ought to close my eyes to what is taking place today? does it mean that those religious struggles which i once deplored and which i deplore still, which i proclaim a danger that ought to be avoided, a peril that it is to the interest of all of us to dissipate, does it mean that i did not deplore them even at the time i took so ardent a part in them? no, gentlemen, and if it were necessary for me today to summon what i consider the most precious of testimonies, because it is that of a conscience which has never weakened, i would address myself to my honorable and dear friend, m. brisson; i would ask him to recall what he said to me himself in an intimate conversation, namely, that the struggle against clericalism, rendered necessary by the political action of the church, is that which has done the most harm to the republic, and has put back her triumph for ten or rather fifteen years. very well, gentlemen, i believe with the profoundest conviction, that after twenty-five years of existence, after the proofs which the republic has given of her resistance and vitality, this struggle ought, if not to cease altogether, at least to take on a different character.... i declare that now the church, instead of serving as the support of the monarchical parties, has cast herself into the arms of the democracy. i declare that by this movement the church will draw you perhaps, you republicans, further than you would wish to go, for if you do not take care she will regain over the masses the influence which you have lost. that is why i consider that we ought not to abandon any of our old traditions in our incessant struggles for the benefit of secular and civil society; but at the same time i believe that a new spirit ought to animate our democracy and those who represent it. here the speaker began to be interrupted, thus: _voices from the left:_ "what new spirit?" _m. spuller:_ "i will explain.... the new spirit is this: instead of a mean, vexatious and exasperating war...." (protests from the extreme left--applause from the centre). _m. rene boblet:_ "whom are you accusing of carrying on this exasperating war?" _m. camille pelletan:_ "you insult the memory of ferry." _m. spuller:_ "if you permit me, gentlemen, i will say that it is i myself whom i accuse at the present moment, so that nobody can be offended." _m. millerand:_ "that is a _mea culpa_." _m. spuller:_ "precisely, but all your _finesse_, all your casuistry will not prevent the country from understanding my words." _m. chauvin:_ "the country will understand that the government has become clerical." m. spuller replied: i shall certainly be understood without, and when i assert that in a new situation we have need of a new policy, a new spirit, i am sure of being understood by everyone who is not blinded by his passions. that new spirit of which i speak, i do not wish you to think it ought under any pretext to be a spirit of weakness, of condescension, of abandonment, of abdication; on the contrary it ought to be a lofty and large spirit of tolerance, of intellectual and moral renovation, altogether different from that which has prevailed heretofore. such is my profound conviction.... yes, gentlemen, and mark it well the church must not any longer pretend, as she has so long contended, that she is tyrannized, persecuted, hunted, shut out and kept out of the social life of the country. i will say to m. goblet, who has done me the honor of interrupting me, and of crying out as they cry out to me in the public reunions: "confess that you are with the pope;" i will say to him that it would be no more unworthy of me than of him to recognize in the present pope a man who merits the grandest respect, because he is invested with the highest moral authority. these words, in the very chamber itself, and uttered by a man who professed himself bound by no religion, found many echoes in the same quarter. not the least important and significant were those of m. casimir périer, president of the council. the government had spoken its _mea culpa_ with full consciousness of its fault. there was another cause also which at this time awoke the country to the necessity of that moral teaching which only the church can afford. socialism in its rankest form had begun a campaign of assassination and terror which struck all hearts with consternation. the noise of anarchistic bombs was heard from one end to the other of france. in , it was those of ravachol and his accomplices; on december , , vaillant exploded a bomb in the chamber of deputies; emile henri cast another in the café of the hotel terminus on february , ; there was another in the rue saint-jaques on february , , and another in the church of the madeleine on march . these evidences of a social derangement recalled the necessity of religion with its moral power. this was all the more accentuated when on june , , in revenge for the death of the anarchist, henri, an italian assassinated m. sadi carnot, president of the republic, at lyons. the result of the reflections aroused by these revolting crimes was the election on june , , of that casimir périer who had joined m. spuller in his demand for tolerance toward the church. it was under the comparative mildness of the rule thus inaugurated that the catholics of the country could begin to breathe a little the air of freedom. from to , the beneficent works of the church made progress; her schools and colleges were filled; the religious orders, dispossessed in , began to rebuild their houses, open their chapels, and to undertake publicly the direction of houses of education. throughout the whole french church a development was noticeable, to the great comfort of many who had groaned for fifteen years under the iron yoke of anti-christian legislation. _spirit of conciliation._ through the efforts of leo xiii., followed by those of the french cardinals and bishops, a new spirit, a spirit of conciliation, had indeed grown up in france, to which even the representatives of a government hitherto hostile had lent their prestige. nevertheless, it is difficult to define the reasons why these common aspirations of peace, instead of developing into a true religious pacification, ended in a war on religion the most terrible in its significance that france has ever known. nevertheless it can be stated without temerity that the realization of true and definite peace was hindered through the efforts of men and circumstances. the men of france stood in its way. in this matter we can distinguish three classes of men, the sectaries, the liberals and the catholics. it was only natural that the sectaries, whose highest ambition was the destruction of christianity, should repulse from evil principle every convincing argument in favor of peace. it mattered little to them that catholics declared their adhesion to the republican form of government; they sneered at the distinction made by leo xiii. between the form of government and legislation. the catholic in combating unjust legislation was pronounced by them a peril to the republic, and by the republic they understood, not a form of government for the good of the people, but the concrete spirit of revolution, the glorification of free thought, anti-christianism and irreligion. from the sectaries, therefore, nothing could be hoped for in the way of religious pacification. the liberals, on the other hand, if they entered into the _new spirit_ and dictated its methods, were nevertheless, at the best, only opportunists. their attitude was merely political; at the depth of their ideas and sentiments they were always hostile to the church. they feared catholicism because it meant the restraints of virtue; they feared its light, lest it betray the evil of the ways they were treading. there was thus no real sincerity in their false liberalism towards the church. they were, moreover, trimmers, ever on guard lest a false move betray their position and lead them into parties to which they were averse. they feared to favor the right lest the left call them clerical; they guarded themselves against the left, lest the respectable element of the country should accuse them of excess. when their ministers spoke of the _new spirit_, they made plain that they looked upon the church as a vanquished enemy, which they continued to hold in leash, desiring only to let out a little more of the rope. they were, moreover, under the full influence of masonry. at the very time when the ministry of the _new spirit_ was constituted, out of the eleven ministers, seven were freemasons, a preponderance which the sects have not lost in the succeeding ministries. with regard to the catholics, themselves, it must be confessed that their want of unity proved as great a hindrance to any effectual pacification. there were many who refused in a more or less open way to enter into the movement indicated by the sovereign pontiff. they argued, quarrelled, and remained militant monarchists to the end. of those who showed a desire to follow the directions of leo xiii. some lagged behind in the movement, uncertain, timid, and nervous; others rushed to the front with an ardor that proved more bravery than prudence; others, neither timid nor rash, effected nothing through a want of understanding among themselves. thus divided, scattered, disputing among themselves, they gave the vantage ground to the enemy. with a compact, organized army of workers, united upon one single line of policy the catholics of france could have gained immense advantages. _the dreyfus affair._ among the circumstances which contributed to the continuance of the anti-christian spirit must be reckoned the dreyfus affair. dreyfus was condemned on december , . the affair in itself was entirely a matter between him and the french army. yet it served as a pretext for war against the majority of the french nation as comprised within the catholic church. whether the defendant were innocent or guilty mattered little; his condemnation brought with it the humiliation of three orders of men who had acquired much power in france, and who determined to obtain revenge not upon the army, which had exposed them to the scorn of public opinion, but upon a force entirely outside the question, but easily attainable because of its weakness, the church. the jews, pointed out by press and public speech as rapacious money-seekers and place-hunters, were only too happy that the circumstance gave them an opportunity of revenge. freemasonry still quivered under the lash of leo xiii. who had stigmatized them as the powers of darkness, the enemies of religion and the social order; the bishops of france had adhered to the word of the sovereign pontiff; a petition of the _league of patriots_ was gotten up against masonry; books and pamphlets were scattered broadcast exposing their illegality and international character; throughout the whole of france the anti-masonic movement was spreading day by day. it was to the church that the sects attributed their growing unpopularity, and thus masonry determined that the church must be punished. socialism, also, found in the dreyfus affair, a pretext for the solidification of its forces. it had recognized that the church alone disputed with it for the guidance of human souls, and in the church alone could be found remedies for social evils incomparably more apt and human than any socialism could put forth. the dreyfusards arranged themselves under these three banners and, uniting against the common enemy, began their campaign by laying the whole affair at the door of the jesuits, intending through them to strike down eventually every institution of the church existing in france. hence the words of m. jaurès in the chamber, march , : "now that the country, now that the honest people of this country have seen the depths of the corruption, the perjury, falsehood and treason, when it can say that this policy of falsehood was the product of a long _jesuitical_ education ... we can see the immense political character of the battle which has begun." from to the end of the century the anti-jesuitical campaign went on, increasing every year in bitterness and intensity. in june and july, , seven or eight journals of paris every day demanded the expulsion of the jesuits. freemasonry, through the columns of the _siecle_, circulated a petition against the jesuits, laying at their door all recent crimes, especially boulangism and the affair of dreyfus. the masonic congress held in paris during the days of june , and , , placed at the head of its programme the dissolution of the institute of the jesuits and of all congregations not authorized. [decoration] chapter vii. the war on the religious orders. the twentieth century dawned with black and lowering skies, presage of storms to come. even while the hymns of thanksgiving were echoing among the vaulted roofs of cathedral and chapel, the powers of darkness were assembling in high places to formulate plans of destruction. the word had gone forth that catholicity must die, the oath had been taken in the secret lodges, the generals of the campaign were chosen, and work began in earnest. the war with the church was on. it had its skirmishes ever since . any president or minister who dared to favor the cause of catholicity must fall. "they must temporize, resign, or die." macmahon was forced to resign; carnot was assassinated; casimir périer resigned; felix faure, for having steadfastly opposed the revision of the dreyfus case, died almost immediately after swallowing a cup of tea at a soiree, and the dreyfus case was made out against the catholics. president loubet was elected on february , . in taking up the reins of government he was made to understand unmistakably that he must follow out the directions of a party whose slogan was: "death to the church!" [illustration: waldeck-rousseau.] one fact which shows that the spirit of the government, which followed upon the accession of loubet, was born for persecution, was the case of the assumptionist fathers. the latter were accused of interfering in the elections of . a case was made out against them "for violation of the penal code interdicting gatherings of more than twenty persons." the real accusation brought against them, however, was to the effect that they had favored the _wrong_ candidates, that is, candidates not agreeable to the dominant powers. the prosecutor, bulot, in his arraignment, cited the names of thirty-one deputies who, he declared, owed their election to the influence of the assumptionists. the assumptionists were condemned, and their congregation dissolved as illicit. _anti-christian government._ the complexion of the new government which ruled from to may be seen from the following extract taken from the revelations of madame sorgues, sub-editor, a few years ago--of jaurès' socialist organ, _la petite republique_: in fighting the battles of dreyfus, jaurès and his friends brought about a singular meeting of the two most irreconcilable camps.... the first service rendered was to restore the tottering socialist press.... all the advanced (i. e. anti-clerical) dailies have passed into the hands of the great barons of finance; they are their journals now, not the journals of the workers.... they cast their eyes on waldeck-rousseau, the clever rescuer of the panama people.... the agent of the dreyfus politics had the happy thought of introducing into the cabinet, millerand, the socialist leader, with the consent of his party. socialism by becoming ministerial would be domesticated and rendered inoffensive against capital. the cabinet was thus in the hands of men little disposed to show fairness towards anything catholic. in the chamber of deputies of that term there were four hundred freemasons out of five hundred members; in the cabinet out of eleven ministers, ten were freemasons. this was the illustrious band which was to make laws for the guidance of thirty-seven million catholics. at the head of this ministry stood waldeck-rousseau, president of the council. waldeck-rousseau personified the policy which obtained during the two first years of the century, that is, the policy of duplicity and deception. it was necessary, in the beginning of the campaign, to entice the catholics into a trap, after which their annihilation must follow as a matter of course. in the art of deception waldeck-rousseau was an adept. _associations law._ the instrument by which the deception was exercised was the infamous associations law of . the congregations had ever been the _bete-noir_ of the anti-clericals. they represented religion in its perfection. in , when the fallières-constans bill against the religious congregations was broached, and m. carnot, its spokesman, had presented it before the chamber, the _temps_ remarked: "its purpose was to resolve the difficult problem of according the right of association to everyone, with such reserves, however, that the catholics might not benefit by it, and that the congregations might by it be destroyed." in the bill of waldeck-rousseau-trouillot, prepared in june, , such embarrassments were simply set aside. it was determined "to take the bull by the horns." the new project was, therefore, twofold; the first part assured a large liberty to associations _non-suspected_; the second part gave the government a means of suppressing all religious orders. it read as follows: "no religious congregation can be formed without an authorization given by a law which shall determine the conditions of its workings. it cannot found any new establishment except in virtue of a decree emanating from the council of state.--the dissolution of a congregation, or the closing of an establishment can be pronounced by a decree rendered by the council of the ministers." [illustration: ex-president loubet.] the project which bore the names of trouillot and waldeck-rousseau began by declaring all religious congregations "illicit," under the pretext that the members of these associations live in community, that they make the vows of poverty, chastity and obedience, and that article of the civil code declares that "only such things as enter into commerce can be made the object of a convention," and that poverty, chastity and obedience are things which do not enter into commerce. m. emile faguet in his _l'anticlericalism_ (paris, ) scourges this method of persecution: this argumentation was seething with sophisms. in the first place it transposes into the penal code a disposition of the civil code and it makes a crime of that which is only a judiciary incapacity: the party who makes a contract upon something which does not enter into commerce cannot judicially exact the execution of that contract if his co-contractor should refuse. that is all that is meant by article , and there is no penalty against a man who makes a contract not conformable to article of the civil code. indeed, if such were the case, marriage would be illicit, for it is a convention of obedience, fidelity and protection between two persons, and obedience, fidelity and protection are not matters of trade; hence marriage would be contrary to article . but, it will be said, we must count as illicit every convention which is contrary to good morals. without doubt; but it is difficult to conceive how living in common, and taking the vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience are opposed to good morals. finally this position of the question betrays a voluntary confusion of the terms "convention" and "vow." a vow is not a contract, it is a resolution which one takes and in which one persists. thus in no way does article affect the question of associations and congregations. it is strange indeed that these sapient legislators, after declaring religious associations illicit or criminal, contradict themselves by inviting these same "criminal" associations to seek authorization; which amounts to saying that the waldeck-rousseau ministry wished to sanction some things which it considered as essentially wrong. thus the new law stultifies itself almost in its opening sentences, while it makes it quite plain that the subversive intentions of its author were to affect all religious congregations without exception. waldeck-rousseau belonged to the same school as jules ferry; he believed in maintaining _provisorily_ the concordat, but he made it plain that he intended to laicise all the public service, and especially that of teaching, in which the congregations held so large a part. in a speech at toulouse, october , , after arguing that the development of the monastic possessions ought to be arrested, he declared: two classes of youth, less separated by their social condition than by the education they receive, are growing up without any mutual acquaintance, until the day comes when they shall meet and find themselves so unlike that they will not be able to understand one another. little by little two different societies are being prepared--one of them, becoming more and more democratic as it is borne on by the great current of the revolution, and the other, more and more imbued with doctrines which one would not have believed able to survive the great movement of the eighteenth century. in this sentence was contained his plea for compelling the teachers of the second class of youth, the congregations, to seek authorization, while at the same time he made it evident that none should be authorized whose methods should not be in accordance with the principles of the french revolution. another element in the deceptive policy of waldeck-rousseau was the endeavor to bolster his proscriptive laws upon the assertion that they were intended to protect the secular clergy from the encroachments of the regulars. hence the phrase: "the church against the chapel." he ignored the fact that the secular clergy had no need of such protection inasmuch as the harmony between them and the religious orders was never called into question except by these anti-clericals who hated both religious and seculars. still further the same waldeck-rousseau took pains to falsify himself on more than one public occasion. thus he assured m. cochin and mgr. gayraud that the law of july, , would permit members of religious congregations to teach in establishments belonging to persons not members of the congregation, although he knew at the time that decrees were being formulated to prevent such practice. when the iniquitous law was yet before the chamber the holy father, pope leo xiii., in a letter to the superior generals of the orders and religious institutes, complained bitterly of its purpose: we have endeavored by every means to ward off from you a persecution so unworthy, and at the same time to save your country from evils as great as they are unmerited. that is why on many occasions we have pleaded your cause with all our power in the name of religion, of justice, of civilization. but we have hoped in vain that our remonstrances would be heard. behold, indeed, in these days, in a nation singularly fecund in religious vocations, and which we have always surrounded with our most particular care, the public powers have approved and promulgated laws of exception, apropos of which we have, a few months ago, raised our voice in the hope of preventing them. [illustration: orphans dispersed in persecution.] the livre jaune, published in , and containing diplomatic documents, prints the words of cardinal rampolla in the name of the holy father: the holy father, obedient to the duties imposed on him by his sacred ministry, has ordered the subscribed secretary of state to protest, as he does protest in his august name, against the above law, as being an unjust law of reprisals and of exception, which excludes honest and worthy citizens from the benefits of the common right, which equally wounds the rights of the church, which is in opposition to natural right, and which is at the same time replete with deplorable consequences. it would be superfluous to point out how such a law, on the one side, restrains the liberty of the church guaranteed by a solemn contract, and prevents the church from fulfilling her divine mission by depriving her of precious co-operators, while on the other hand, it increases bitterness of spirit at a moment when the need of pacification is most vital and pressing, and it takes away from the state the most zealous apostles of civilization and charity, the most efficacious propagators of the french name, the french tongue and french prestige abroad. the effects of this law which has been well characterized as anti-social, inhuman, anti-religious, and anti-french, began to be felt at once. many religious orders, such as the jesuits, the assumptionists, the benedictines, carmelites, etc., foreseeing that legal authorization would be denied them, abandoned their country, their colleges and their convents; many others still hoped. the government into whose hands they had fallen had invited them to seek authorization, and there was no reason, apparently, to suppose that this invitation was only a mockery. still others, which had formerly been authorized, imagined that they might still continue in the enjoyment of such recognition. both the latter classes were, however, deceived. according to the new law a congregation "might not found a new establishment except in virtue of a decree issued by the council of state." it was thus difficult to see how the law could effect the establishments already founded. the promulgators of the bill, however, intended to confine themselves within no limits, and hence their purpose was very soon made plain. by a circular of december , , the law was formally extended to include all establishments, both old and new, going back as far as those recognized in . later still, january , , the council of state decided that: "in the case of the opening of a school by one or more congregationists, that school should be considered as a new establishment opened by the congregation, whoever might be proprietor or tenant." a few days later, february , waldeck-rousseau sent notice of the same to the prefects. by these various circulars the law was thus aimed at all new schools founded by the congregations, at all new schools not founded by the congregations, but directed by religious, and at all old schools founded by the congregations. it is a notable fact that these iniquitous extensions of an evil law were perpetrated in spite of the clearest assurances of the government that the two latter classes of schools should not be touched. even as late as february , , the government responded to a request of the holy father for an explanation of its intentions, by a note from m. delcasse, which reads as follows: paris, february , . the council of ministers have decided that the law of july, , should not have a retroactive effect, and did not apply to educational establishments opened in virtue of the law of . the conclusions of the council of state enumerated in your despatch of january , do not touch them. this was a point with which the nuncio was very much preoccupied. mgr. lorenzelli appears to be fully satisfied with the decision of the council, of which i immediately made him cognizant.--delcasse. the actions of the government were thus in direct contradiction with its assurances. its protestations of fairness and leniency were falsified by its circulars and decrees. its intentions were aimed at extermination complete and irrevocable. the ending of waldeck-rousseau's career was pathetic and tragical. in he arose one day "from his bed of sickness to unburden his conscience by protesting against the anti-clerical fury of his ci-devant supporters and instruments. in vain he denounced the violations of his law of , travestied by that of suppressing even authorized congregations. the verve of the great tribune had abandoned him. his speech was but a hollow echo of its former eloquence. twice he reeled and was forced to steady himself by clinging to the railing. when he arose for the second time, to reply to the sarcasms of m. combes, he suddenly lost the thread of his discourse, and before he had ended many benches were vacated; the forum, where his words had so often been greeted with wild applause, was almost empty." (brodhead.--_religious persecution in france._) his death came two years later. it was rumored that he attempted to commit suicide. whether he received the last sacraments or not is not known. he had left instructions, however, that he was to be buried from his parish church of st. clothilde. _the combes ministry._ the seventh legislature was dissolved at the beginning of april, , and preparations were at once begun for the election of its successor. the point at issue in the approaching elections was the vindication or the condemnation of the waldeck-rousseau ministry, which had now been in office for three years. the result was entirely satisfactory to the parties whose life had been lived in open hostility to the church. the ministerialists, that is to say, the supporters of the administration of waldeck-rousseau, won seats in the chamber, as against by the several elements of the opposition. the new legislature counted among its members ninety-six radicals, eighty-three republicans of the left, radical-socialists, forty-one unified socialists, fourteen independent socialists. here were men out of , every one of whom was pledged to exert every effort, by fair means or foul, to overthrow the life and power of the church in france. as soon as the result of the election had become known waldeck-rousseau, as if satisfied with his work of destruction, resigned the ministry and retired to private life. before abandoning the active field of political life, waldeck-rousseau was careful to point out the man he desired to take his place and carry into execution the laws he had devised. this man was emile combes, the most violent of politicians. to this man, m. loubet, who could not bear him--but who passed his life in doing what he disapproved of, and in condemning in his speeches the very political acts which he signed with his name,--to this man m. loubet hastened to confide the presidency of the council, and the direction of the government. m. combes! it is a name of ill omen, which echoes like the sound of a funeral bell among the cloisters in the empty convents, and by the firesides of christian homes. the aged mutter the name and grow pale as if they had said an unholy thing. the little ones shrink to their mothers' side as the horror of that name strikes upon their innocent ears, for it brings back the memory of dear sisters who have vanished, engulfed as it were in the cavernous jaws of the anti-christ. it is a name at which many lips hesitate when they utter the prayer! "forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who have trespassed against us." yet, they will hesitate only for the moment, for in those very communities which he has robbed and persecuted a prayer will ever go up to god for his conversion. it is the way in which the true christian takes revenge upon those who wrong him. [illustration: emile combes.] emile combes is a native of roquecourbe, in the south of france, where he was born on september , . his parents were good, honest people, filled with that simple piety which characterizes the true french peasant. he had an uncle, the abbe gaubert, curé of bion to whose generous interest the future politician owed his first advances in life. through the influence of this good man the young combes entered, in , the _petit seminaire_ of castres, the scholars of which were supposed to have the first promptings of ecclesiastical vocation. during his college days the young man certainly gave every evidence of profound faith and devotion. the lessons of his pious mother made him, as he says himself, believe to the very depths of his soul. in his twentieth year he entered the grand seminary at albi. while in this institution he received minor orders, thereby proclaiming to the world his intention of preparing for the priesthood. for two years his purpose remained unchanged. he even fortified himself therein by deep and special studies in scholastic theology, and has left as memorials of his better life two treatises in that matter: _a study of the psychology of st. thomas aquinas_, and _the controversy between st. bernard and abelard_, copies of which are still extant in the library of the sorbonne at paris. whether the vocation of emile combes was real or not, he certainly abandoned it in the midst of his ecclesiastical studies. he quitted the seminary and became a professor in the college of the assumption at nimes, an institution established by the abbe d'alzon, founder of the religious order of the assumptionists. here he remained for three years, until . he taught then in another catholic college at pons. hitherto there had been no certain indications of a weakening in his faith. but in , as he was attending the medical school at paris, he met with renan. the acquaintanceship developed the seeds of that atheism which has since become his ruling quality. to one who reads french history it ought not to be surprising that a catholic seminary should have sheltered the youth of a man like combes. voltaire was a pupil of the jesuits, whom he betrayed; renan was once a student in st. sulpice; gambetta, the leader of anti-clericalism in the stormy 's, studied in his boyhood in a _petit seminaire_. that they proved false to their early teaching is not remarkable when one considers the disaffection of an apostle who was privileged to enjoy an intimacy with the savior of the world. it was during his vacations in that combes was initiated into the freemasons. it marked the first step in that path which he was soon to follow with persistent energy. in he received his degree as doctor of medicine, a profession which he practised at pons. in he was elected mayor of that town. his real political life began in when he was elected senator. re-elected in , he accepted the ministry of public instruction, fine arts and worship in the bourgeois cabinet, wherein he showed himself one of the most obstinate promoters of lay education as opposed to that of the clergy. it was at this time that he inaugurated, in his relations with the vatican relative to the concordat, the policy which, ten years later, led to the separation of church and state. [illustration: a protest of french authors against combes.] as president of the democratic left in the senate he lent his efforts to the policy of waldeck-rousseau from to . he was elected president of the senatorial commission on the law of associations; he contributed largely to its adoption, and notably to the vote on article , when he declared in the tribune his conviction of the moral incompatibility of the profession of teaching with the doctrine and life of the monastic orders. on june , , upon the recommendation of rousseau, he succeeded to the presidency of the council thereby becoming premier in the government. his first words upon taking up this office signalized his determination of carrying on to its ultimate issue the war just inaugurated against the catholic church. "what can the new cabinet do," he asked, "what can any cabinet do but continue the policy of that which precedes us, a policy which is resumed by saying that it has been nothing more than an incessant war of the republican party against two dangers which republican unity alone can overcome; caesarian reaction, and theocratic pretensions. that is the policy which we are determined to pursue and which we invite you to pursue with us until we have completely disarmed the enemy." an _order of the day_ was passed voting confidence in the government, and thus adopting as the policy of the chambers, the war plan enunciated by the president of the council. this was the work of the four groups of the left, all radical and anti-religious to the depths of their hearts. the _bloc_, as they called this cohesion of the different parties of the ministerial majority, was thus constituted, and adopted as its plan of action the war against catholicity. the new premier set to work at once to put into execution the law of july , . beginning with schools recently opened, that is, posterity to the late law, he closed at one stroke on july , , as many as . the congregationist teachers were allowed only eight days before abandoning their establishments and retiring to their mother houses. it was an illegal act in itself; it not only aggravated unduly the rigor of the law, but it was also irregular in form, since article of the law declared that a measure of this nature could not be taken except "by a decree emanating from the council of the ministers," and not by a simple circular as in the present case. cardinal richard, upon learning of this execution, wrote immediately to m. loubet a letter to which many other bishops hastened to give their adhesion; m. jules roche published a letter to the president of the council (combes) in which he proved that the law had been violated; a petition was presented to m. loubet by a delegation of the christian mothers from the district of saint-roch. to these protests the government answered by a presidential decree of aug. , --this time in legal form--whereby it declared the closing of other establishments. the war went on. in brittany many scenes of open conflict took place as the troubled peasantry strove to prevent the sudden spoliation of those institutions which they held dearest on earth. they had reason indeed to rebel, as the persecutors aimed not only at the extinction of their beloved teaching orders, but also at the destruction of that cherished breton tongue which they had inherited from their fathers. the show of violence here and there manifested brought its inevitable consequences from a power only too anxious to find pretexts for persecution. the powers of many mayors were revoked, many ecclesiastics were deprived of their livings and correctional measures were pronounced against all who dared to take part in the various manifestations. then came other decrees in august, laicising _en masse_ the greater part of the public schools as yet directed by the congregations. when the matter was brought into the chamber (oct. , ,) protests went up eloquently from a number of indignant deputies. conspicuous among these were such bright names as messrs. aynard, baudry d'asson, denys cochin, george berry, de ramel, charles benoist and the count de mun. the answer of the latter to the policy of combes is worth recording: majorities may cover your actions and sanction your decisions, but nothing can efface the evil you have done. the country--for i speak not of brittany alone--can never forget those scenes of odious violence executed by your orders, wherein we have witnessed commissaries of police, followed by armed marauders, storming the doors of private houses, not merely the doors of a religious dwelling, but the doors of my own house, to drive out into the streets humble ladies who consecrate their lives, their labors and their devotion to the instruction of the children of the people. nothing--and understand it well--nothing can make us forget that; nothing above all can make us forget that you have condemned the soldiers of france to assist at such scenes, and to march with tears in their eyes, in the midst of a distracted and desperate crowd, the pathway of your persecutors. that shall never be forgotten! that shall never be pardoned. while these things were going on the bishops of france framed a collective letter petitioning the chambers to accede to the application for authorization made by the congregations. this letter when published contained the signatures of seventy-four bishops; only seven, for different reasons had deferred signing, though fully in sympathy with the movement. this letter, moderate and respectful, as it was, and merely asking in the way of petition for favors that might easily be granted, was treated by the council of state as a hostile manifesto and was declared "abusive" and as such it rendered its authors culpable before the law. the archbishop of besancon, together with the bishops of orleans and of séez, were considered as the promoters of the document, and as such were deprived of their salaries. when the war against all new establishments was well under way, the "bloc" then took up the question of congregations unauthorized but applying in due legal form for the favor of authorization. this the orders had been instructed and encouraged to do. their treatment displayed at once the insincerity and hatred of the government. a "commission on congregations" was formed, composed of thirty-three members, of whom twenty-one were freemasons. the commission instructed the anti-clerical rabier to draw up a bill. the discussions of the chamber upon this bill, resulted in the dissolution of fifty-three orders of men. on march , , twenty-five teaching congregations were suppressed, comprising , religious divided into communities. a few days later twenty-eight preaching orders received the same sentence. among these were the capuchins, the redemptorists, the dominicans, the passionists, the salesians, the franciscans, the oblates of mary immaculate, the benedictines, the fathers of the oratory, the barnabites, the carmelites and many others. on march , the carthusians, considered as a commercial order, were condemned by a vote of against . it was at this time that the anti-clerical rouanet uttered that saying so significant of the whole governmental policy: "we need not concern ourselves with either legality or right." the proscriptions were hardly pronounced than measures were at once taken for the liquidation of the property belonging to the dissolved congregations. we need not linger to relate the pathetic scenes accompanying the consequent expulsion of these fifty-three orders of men, nor the wave of indignation it produced throughout france and the civilized world. [illustration: cardinal richard.] after the congregations of men the war was carried on against similar orders of women. it was to no purpose that messrs. plichon and grousseau demonstrated in the chamber the confusion manifested in the articles of the bill which designated as teaching orders the congregations devoted to the hospitals, and those whose lives were purely contemplative; it was in vain that they showed forth the success of the incriminated orders that they brought forth the declarations of the majority of the municipal councils pronouncing for the maintenance of these orders. even m. leygues who had voted for the law of july , , as minister of public instruction at the time, declared that the new bill by rejecting the demands of the sisters _en bloc_ was contrary to that law. in spite of all protests the project was voted and carried by a majority of to . thus eighty-one congregations of women were at a single blow dissolved. on august , , m. combes speaking at marseilles before a congress of teachers declared: i have refused , petitions for authorization. this figure suppressed , teaching establishments, , hospital corps, and establishments of a mixed nature, i. e. hospitaller and teaching. out of the , teaching establishments there are , situated in communes still wanting, i am sorry to say, in public schools. the _temps_ of december , , declared that , schools had been closed within a period of eighteen months, and that there remained only , yet to be suppressed. to these , schools must be added colleges and , schools conducted by the twenty-five orders of men suppressed on the th of march preceding, as also the establishments directed by the eighty-one congregations of women proscribed on june , thus representing a total of , congregationists schools stricken in the space of eighteen months, with about , religious thrown out upon the streets, and more than , , children deprived of their beloved instructors. charles bota in his _grand faute des catholiques de france_ thus reflects upon these sinister events: one can well imagine what went on in the mother-houses, the communities and the schools which the decrees of suppression invaded, bringing ravage and desolation! what sad and heart-rending scenes! the odious perquisitions of procureurs and police commissaries goaded on by superior orders, or even perhaps--it looked that way sometimes--by the quality of the victims; the painful, insidious interrogatories wherein the simplicity and timidity of souls habituated to peace was violated; the alarm of the aged religious, of the sick and the infirm as they begged to know what it all meant; the returning religious hunted from their houses coming back to the mother-house to cast themselves weeping into the arms of their superiors, while the latter pointed out how the house was too small to receive them and too poor to afford them food; the uncertainty as to the morrow, the privations, the anguish, the moral tortures, the desperation of all; one should have seen such scenes near at hand to comprehend all that they meant. 'ah!' cried m. emile olivier, 'all the cruelty, the tears, the consternation contained in those few words written by an official scribe upon the desk of a minister--on such a day, such a congregation of women will be dispersed.' they merited no regard, no commiseration those poor women so good to others, so delicate, so pure, that taine could call them the pride of france. the efforts of the enemy had thus far touched only unauthorized congregations. there were still many orders which lived in the possession of full authorization and which according to the existing laws had nothing to fear from the hatred of the anti-clericals. in this, however, they were very much deceived. a new bill directed at all religious teaching orders, of whatever kind or description, was introduced in the chamber on february , . its first article, declaring the suppression, asserted "teaching of every order and of every nature is interdicted in france to the congregations." it was adopted by a majority of eighty-seven votes on march . the second article stated that from the date of the promulgation of the law the teaching congregations could not receive new members, and that their novitiates must be dissolved. this article also--with the exception in favor of congregations destined for foreign schools--was adopted. it was decided, moreover, in article fourth, that novitiates for foreign missions could not maintain any of the dissolved congregations. the law was carried before the senate, towards the end of june. it became a law of the land, with the official signature of m. loubet, on july , . the triumph of anti-christianism was thus complete, and the death sentence had been pronounced against the very existence of the monastic life in france. it might be of interest to introduce here some appreciations of the premier who had done so much harm to france and who was soon to begin the first scenes in the last act of our sorrowful drama. m. emile faguet, though not a catholic, nor inspired by any definite admiration for catholic principles, thus characterizes m. combes in his _l'anticlericalism_: m. combes, considered unanimously as the protege and choice--no one knows with what secret designs of m. waldeck-rousseau; ... m. combes taken up--no one knows by what weakness--by m. loubet, who felt for him the very contrary of sympathy; m. combes, a minister who was incapable according to the opinion and avowal of everyone, nevertheless maintained himself in office as long, and even longer than waldeck-rousseau, in spite of mistake after mistake, in spite of co-laborers as incapable as himself, despite the procrastination systematically employed as an instrument of his rule, only because he was a determined anti-clerical, headstrong and brutal, whom nothing could arrest in the pursuit of his design and precisely because, as he had said himself, 'he had accepted his office for that alone' and because he was absolutely incapable of seeing anything else in the government of france and in all modern history. [illustration: president falliÈres.] _l'echo_, (lyons), with admirable brevity thus summarizes the salient points in the character of the premier and his policy: m. combes is a sectary, a renegade seminarist given over to freemasonry. his policy is the vigorous application of the anti-liberal law, the refusal of all authorizations asked by the congregations, and the abrogation of the falloux law. m. f. veuillot, writing in the _univers_, pays his respects to the minister in no measured terms. he says m. combes is "devoid of talent, virtue, honor--a brute unable to conceive a generous thought, to realize a great work, to produce anything useful, to show any effort of a patient and beneficial kind. the brute, however, has formidable fists, and he strikes out blindly before him. the man is without a breath of intelligence, a single sentiment of delicacy. he is but a commonplace mediocrity personified, rancid with hatred and puffed up with pride. as he cannot leave anything to make him famous, he will be notorious to posterity for his brutality alone." finally, the abbe felix klein, in the north american review for february, , remarks: m. combes and his friends, who imagine that they are the leaders of all progress, are committing again the errors of the middle ages. that which philip ii. did in spain, in his making use of the inquisition; that which louis xiv. did in france, in revoking the edict of nantes and in driving out the protestants; that which england did, in her treatment of the pilgrim fathers, the anti-clericals in france are doing today in their hatred of the religions orders. they are placing these orders beyond the law; they are preventing members of these orders from living as they see fit to live, and from earning their daily bread; they are practically forcing these members to leave france, all solely because of their ideas and innermost convictions. it is the old crime of heresy reversed. since , the french state has professed no longer to recognize religious vows, either to protect or to attack them; and in this it does well. but how illogical it is, then, to deprive certain individuals of their civil rights, merely because they take vows which it does not recognize! how does it concern the state if young men and women take the vow of chastity before god, and lead a life in common, devoting themselves to doing good in the manner they deem best? is it not monstrous that, in the beginning of the twentieth century, the government of a great country should arrogate to itself the right of interfering in a matter of this kind, even that it should bring such subjects into the scope of its deliberations? whether this vow be good or bad it is a question for one's own conscience. let those who think it bad endeavor to turn others from it by means of persuasion; but to try to prevent it by brute force is the most retrograde course in the world. the measure of true civilization is indicated by the degree of respect in which one person holds the rights of another; every man and woman, so long as not encroaching on the rights of others, is inviolably entitled to act, and, a fortiori, to think, to believe, to pray, as he or she wishes. the french government, by preventing certain categories of citizens from acting together, solely because their ideas are not its ideas, has gone backward several centuries on a capital point, and has resurrected one of the most shameful practices of the past, the misdemeanor of opinion. _the separation of church and state._ the congregations dissolved and dispersed, nothing now remained but the final act in that great tragedy which had been progressing for more than one hundred years. the proposal was in order to lay the axe at the roots of religious life, and by one fell stroke to extinguish the very existence of the catholic church in france. years have passed since this last work was begun; the church has not been extinguished; she is even rising to a greater, a more glorious life; the promise of christ is showing its realization in the midst of a people who, but yesterday, were ready to sing the requiem over her ruins. the project of separating church and state was no new notion in france; it was a very old article in the republican programme. away back in the days of the convention, in , it had already been proclaimed and put into force. again in and in it was put forward by a faction of the republican party. under the empire, especially during the discussions as to the french occupation of the city of rome, it was made a part of the democratic platform. in a session of the corps legislatif on december , , jules simon made a very bitter speech in favor of such separation. the following year henri brisson advocated much the same object when denouncing the payment of salary to the clergy. it was, however, during the period of the third republic that the project began to receive attention in a practical sense, and formed the ideal towards which policies of gambetta, jules ferry, paul bert and their like aspired. all efforts in this direction had proved abortive, not that the project was at all displeasing to the anti-clerical governments, but rather because the people were not "prepared;" and most of all it was necessary first so to weaken the church in her functional life, that when the separation should come, it must mean her annihilation. it is pitiful to note the pretexts alleged by reveillard in his work on the "separation," as the causes which called for the final rupture. speaking of gambetta's acts of hostility in and later, he says: "it was the time of the great clerical demonstrations, of pilgrimages less religious than political, to paray-le-monial, to lourdes, to sainte-anne d'aunay, to the chant of canticles with the refrain: 'oh, save rome and france in the name of the sacred heart!'" he calls up also "the triumph of marie alacoque and of pere lamerliere" and the "law approving as a national public benefit the erection of the basilica of the sacred heart on the heights of montmartre." these demonstrations of national catholic spirit were as so many thorns in the sides of rabid anti-clericalism, and would suffice in themselves to evoke the sentence of extermination against the church that could call them forth. these same complaints are uttered with no less bitterness by paul sabbatier in his work on the "disestablishment of the church in france." in fact the unanimity with which all anti-clerical writers harp upon these manifestations of popular fervor make it plain that it was not a desire for political betterment which inspired the foes of the church in these oppressive measures, but a desire carefully nurtured to strike at her very vitality and life. [illustration: clemenceau.] it would be useless here to rehearse all the various attempts which were made in the legislative chambers up to to introduce the final question in regard to the separation. on each occasion the discussion was voted down, always with the understanding that the time was not yet ripe for the act. affairs had at length, after the law of , arrived at such a pass that the anti-clerical government could afford to set in motion the wheels of its final policy. various happenings at the time served as pretexts for hurrying on its action. some of these were of special importance, and deserve to be recorded for the part they played therein. in the government assumed a hostile attitude on the subject of the nomination of bishops, when it demanded the exclusion from the bull of canonical investiture of the term until then in use: "nobis nominavit." the government demanded the suppression of the word _nobis_, thus changing the meaning of the phrase. it thus made it appear that the nomination of a bishop depended upon the government alone, and that rome had no other part in it than merely to register such nomination as made by the civil power. this question of words thus became a question of principle. the affair of the _nobis nominavit_ was finally arranged at the beginning of . the _osservatore romano_, of january , announced the solution officially, adding: "after a lengthy exchange of ideas, the french government has accepted a solution which the holy see had proposed of its own initiative, and which, without in any way wounding the privilege of nomination conceded to the government in virtue of the concordat, conserves intact and assures for the future the expression of the canonical and dogmatic doctrine." this attempt of the government to stir up a conflict with the holy see was further accentuated by the suppression of the salaries of eleven bishops; and by the reduction, without any reasonable motive, of the budget of worship in . two other cases which, provoked by the government, served as a pretext for urgent separation were the affairs of the bishops of laval and dijon. i prefer to use in its relation the words of m. faguet as found in his work "_l'anticlericalism_." "two bishops, m. gay, bishop of laval, and m. le nordez, bishop of dijon, were agreeable to the french government and suspected, either for their private conduct, or for their administration, by the curia. m. le nordez was advised by rome to resign his functions. the roman letter was turned over by the bishop to the french government, which protested to the vatican, claiming that, according to the concordat, the nominations of french bishops ought to be made by the french government, and only the canonical institution of them was reserved to the holy see, that their revocations ought to follow the same law as their nominations, and hence, that the holy see had not the right to depose a french bishop. exactly the same procedure was followed with regard to m. gay, and exactly the same protests were made by the french government in his case. at the same time the french government commanded m. gay and m. le nordez not to quit their posts. the roman under-secretary of state answered that the deposition of a bishop was one thing, and the notice given to a bishop that he must resign temporally his functions in order to go before the roman curia to justify himself, was another; that such notifications belonged of right to the holy see to which the bishops by it canonically instituted were responsible." "the french government was headstrong, rushed blindly into the affair, recalled its ambassador, and gave his passports to the nuncio. war was declared." "the two bishops, who were obliged to choose between their obedience to the french government and their loyalty to the holy see, decided for the latter. they set out furtively for rome, submitted to the curia, and resigned their french sees." "m. combes saw in all this motives sufficient, not only to break all relations with the holy see, but still more to denounce the concordat and to pronounce for the separation of church and state, at the same time formally casting--as he had done a score of times--all responsibility for these grave measures upon the pontifical government." the anti-clericals were determined to abuse the patience of the holy see until it should finally be driven into an action upon which the french government might seize as a final pretext for a rupture. already pope leo xiii. had pointed out such intentions during his lifetime. in a letter to the clergy and catholics of france, february , , he thus wrote: "for them, separation signifies the negation of the very existence of the church. they make, however, a reservation which might be formulated thus: 'as soon as the church, utilizing the resources which the common law allows to even the least of frenchmen, will be able, by redoubling her native activities, to make her labors fruitful, the state will and must intervene to put the french catholics outside the common law itself.' in a word, the ideal of these men is nothing less than a return to paganism; the state will recognize the church only when it wishes to persecute her." this great pope had, by the end of his life, exhausted every means of condescension and delicacy towards the french government; but his efforts were doomed to failure before the hatred and bad faith of his enemies, and he began at length to feel that the time had come when he should enter a firm and dignified protest. pope pius x. upon his accession was called upon to behold the accelerated progress of official persecution; he began to recognize the utter uselessness of even the most legitimate claims, and he hastened to express his sorrow and indignation for the continuous violation of human rights. on march , , on the occasion of his name-day, he addressed the sacred college upon the subject: "we are profoundly saddened," he said, "by the measures already adopted, and by others on the way to adoption in the legislative houses against the religious congregations which form in this country, by their admirable works of christian charity and education, a glory not less for the church than for the fatherland. they intend to go farther still, when they prevent and defend a project having for its end the interdiction of all teaching to the members of religious institutes even authorized, the suppression of approved institutes and the liquidation of their property. we deplore and strongly censure such harshness so essentially contrary to liberty as it is understood, so essentially opposed to the fundamental laws of the land, to the inherent rights of the catholic church, and to the rules of civilization itself, which forbid the persecution of peaceful citizens. to this end we cannot dispense ourselves from expressing our sorrow over the measures adopted of deferring to the council of state, as abusive, the respectful letters addressed to the first magistrate of the republic by many well deserving pastors, among whom are three members of the sacred college, the august senate of the apostolic see, as if it could be a crime to address the chief of the state to call his attention to subjects intimately connected with the most imperious duties of conscience, and with the common weal." the solicitude of the holy father, however, only served to increase the venom of his foes. toward the end of april, , m. loubet, president of the french republic, visited rome, and contrary to the spirit of the concordat and the rules regulating the relations of the holy see and the french government, went immediately to the quirinal to pay his respects to the italian king. the holy see considered this visit of m. loubet "as a very grave offense against its dignity and rights. at the same time, while uttering in the face of the french government an energetic and formal protest against the offense thus suffered, it sent in analogous terms by means of its foreign representatives, an account of its action to the governments of all the other states with which the holy see held direct relations." the pontifical note declared that "a head of a catholic nation inflicts a grave offense against the sovereign pontiff in coming to give homage at rome, not to the pontifical see but to him who contrary to all right usurps his civil sovereignty." the "note" goes on to remark that the offense is all the greater coming from the "first magistrate of the french republic, presiding over a nation which is bound by the most intimate traditional relations with the roman pontificate, enjoys in virtue of a bilateral contract with the holy see certain signal privileges and a large representation in the sacred college, and possesses by a singular favor the protectorate of catholic interests in the orient." it goes on, moreover, to state that this visit of m. loubet was "sought intentionally by the italian government for the purpose of enfeebling the rights of the holy see," and it concludes by declaring that "the sovereign pontiff makes these most formal and explicit protests to the end that so afflicting an action, (as that of m. loubet) might not constitute a precedent." on the receipt of this protest the french government gave the holy see to understand that it rejected the note in its form and in its substance. the anti-clerical journals went even farther than this, publishing not only the pope's answer to french government, but also the note which had been sent to the other catholic powers. the intention of such publication being to stir up the rancor of all who were moved by hostility to the holy see. in answer, moreover, to the pontifical note, the french ministry demanded that the holy see give an explanation of its words, and that within the space of twenty-four hours; then, rushing headlong upon a solution, as if impatient to hurry on the imminent rupture, it recalled the french ambassador to the holy see (may , ). this action was approved by the chamber six days after; it refused, however, by a vote of to to pronounce for the immediate denunciation of the concordat; but that event was now well on the way, and nothing was needed but to devise the ways and means. the year opened with many muttered evidences of the coming storm. the prime minister, m. combes, though not defeated in the january elections, beheld his majority so far reduced because of his rabid inconsistencies, that although re-elected to his former post he felt it incumbent to resign immediately. he was succeeded by a creature pledged to continue his oppressive policy, m. maurice rouvier. it may be said, however, that the spirit of combes has dominated the french chambers ever since. the new cabinet was destined to put the final touches to the anti-clerical campaign of dissolution. various motions having from time to time been introduced before the chamber of deputies tending towards the separation of church and state, the government finally, decided to place all of them for examination into the hands of a commission of thirty-three, which was nominated on june , . out of the deliberations of this body resulted the first scheme, or project, of the proposed legislation in regard to separation of church and state. the question was formally introduced to the chamber of deputies in the session of march , , and was discussed during forty-eight sessions until july of that year. its reporter, or sponsor, was m. briand. [illustration: briand.] in the first session m. georges berry declared "that the question of separation had not been submitted to the electoral colleges, and that, moreover, every time that it had been put before legislative elections the electoral body had answered very unmistakably that it did not desire separation." in the same session the abbe gayraud, representing catholic interests, spoke: "the chamber, considering that diplomatic loyalty, and public honesty, no less than the interests of public order and of religious peace, exact that the denunciation of the concordat, and the separation of church and state be accomplished in a friendly manner, decides to use care in each deliberation upon the project of the law relative to that subject, and invites the government to form an extra parliamentary commission composed of ministers from the different denominations in concert with the heads of the churches interested to prepare an agreement with those churches as to the conditions of separation." in his speech upon the above thesis the abbe gayraud was led to speak of the organic articles which he characterized as the "servitudes of the gallican church." the argument which then arose in the chamber might well be recorded. _m. gayraud._--the doctrine of the _syllabus_ is the doctrine of the catholic church, as well of the gallican as of the roman church. and i know very well that no one can draw an argument against the concordat of from either the _syllabus_ or the dogma of infallibility. the doctrines of these two pontifical documents represent not only the doctrine of the church in , but also that of the roman church in , and of the gallican church as far as the _syllabus_ is concerned. moreover, another line of complaint against the holy see, upon which m. briand leans, and to which he has today alluded, is the organic articles. very good, but the pope has never recognized the organic articles; the catholics of france, precisely because the pope would not recognize them, are unwilling to recognize them either. this is one good reason, if you wish to avoid the misunderstandings of the past, why it would be well to confer with the pope in regard to the separation which you are planning. but, after all, does the fact of not recognizing the organic articles constitute a violation of the concordat? i am convinced that the real violation consisted in the making and promulgating of these famous articles. _m. briand._--and what of that? _m. jaurès._--that only proves that the concordat was still born. _m. gayraud._--you know very well, m. briand, that the organic articles do not constitute those regulations of police supervision provided for in the first article of the concordat. _m. feron._--you accept only what is favorable to you. _m. gayraud._--"i have already said in this house: i defy any member of this assembly to show me that in the organic articles there is any regulation concerning the publicity of worship, or to show me a single organic article that has anything to do with it. hence you cannot appeal to article , of the concordat to legitimatize the organic articles. some have tried to do this, and why? because the holy see would not recognize them, and it was necessary to find some means of justifying them before the pope." it might seem as if the contention of m. gayraud did not pertain intimately to the subject in hand. yet that it was eminently apposite is evident from the whole course of the subsequent discussions. the supporters of separation had continually accused the church of causing the rupture by her violations of the concordat. indeed, one can hardly restrain his tears as he reads the sorrowful complaints of combes, briand, clemenceau and the others. the church was so wicked in the face of these immaculate champions of civic morality! the facts of the case are very simple. the church in france has always stood loyally to the observance of the concordat, in spite of its many hampering restrictions. that she has often acted in disregard of the organic articles cannot be denied, nor does she wish to deny it. the reason for this is, that the concordat was a real law; the organic articles was neither a law of the state nor of the church, nor of both together. if these articles had been put forth independently of the concordat, we might for the sake of argument, concede that they would have a value. but they were promulgated as a part of a law enacted mutually by two parties, when one of the parties was actually ignorant of their existence until after publication. it is a falsehood thus to assert that they form a part of the concordat. and since they do not form a part of that law, having their value only upon such an assumption, they were no law at all. in disregarding them, therefore, the church could not be accused of violating either an independent law or a part of the concordat. moreover, the church could not observe the concordat without violating the organic articles, and vice versa. to accuse the church therefore of precipitating the conflict because she acted within the limit permitted her by the concordat, is one of the species of false reasoning which the anti-clerical party endeavored to force down the throats of all its hearers. it was well, therefore, that this should be rightly understood in the very beginning of the discussion. among the speeches delivered during the general discussion upon the bill, that of m. ribot deserves to be reproduced in part. it is well, however, to note in advance that this orator, though a foe to anti-clericalism, is not, however, a catholic either in name or conviction. _m. ribot's speech._ m. ribot began thus: "gentlemen, i have already on many occasions indicated the position i hold with regard to the grave question under discussion. my friend, m. barthou, did well, the other day, to recall some lines of a letter which i wrote a year ago, before the incidents which led to the rupture with the holy see and the presentation of this projected law. i said then that the general movement of modern ideas would lead sooner or later to a complete separation of church and state; i added that, if this separation were accomplished by men who had no marked hostility to the catholic church, and who would be willing to give it the character of a measure of pacification, of a measure truly liberal, the catholic church herself would comprehend that the separation could be for her a guarantee of dignity and independence. i retract none of my words. if you ask me: 'do you believe that france in the relations of church and state has arrived at definitive crisis?' i must answer: 'i do not believe so.' i have already explained how such a change, so grave in itself, was particularly difficult in a country like france where liberty is not even yet solidly established in the laws and customs, where civil society has always been particularly and jealously careful not to allow the church too great an independence, where a struggle has been going on for a century between the church and the enemies of religion, whose desire is not to liberate the church, but to attack her from ambush, to weaken her forces, and--perhaps they expect it, in their illusionment and blindness--to suppress her. "i have said that the transition might be more or less lengthy, but that it was indispensable; that we must lead mildly and peacefully that catholic clergy whom you have hitherto held under the tutelage of the state and whom we are about to enfranchise, that we must lead them mildly and peacefully to the practice of a regime altogether different, of a regime of liberty and emancipation, and i have explained that, to my mind, such a transition could not be effected without conferring with the head of the catholic church, with the holy see. "one can conceive of a regime of transition during which the catholic church would be allowed more liberty in the choice of bishops, and the church itself be organized pacifically in view of the gradual suppression of the budget of worship. these are my ideas, and i have given them much reflection. if you are willing to bring about the separation under these conditions, i am with you; i will aid you to the best of my power. in that i foresee for the church more dignity and a greater independence; in that i foresee for the french state neither a diminution of security nor a menace to religious peace." m. ribot then declared that if the separation were to be effected as an act of reprisal against the holy see, "it would be the beginning of a war more protracted, more bitter, and more violent than any we have seen for a long time." "paul bert," he said, "remarked to me, when we were together on the commission of , and when we were examining just such questions as these, that he came from a department in which nearly everyone demanded the separation of church and state, where a candidate could not be elected unless he should put that in his platform; but if one should do so, he was sure that the deputies who should vote for it could not be re-elected." _m. villejean._--"times have changed since then." _m. buisson._--"twenty years after." _m. bienvenu-martin._--"we have made headway since then." _m. ribot._--"yes, i understand. times have changed; we have made headway. but are you sure that you have done enough in all the regions of this country to prevent a terrible misunderstanding following in the wake of the reforms you have made imprudently? are you sure that you will be understood by those peasants who perhaps have voted for your programme, but who tomorrow will be profoundly troubled in their customs and in the customs of their families? some years ago littré spoke of catholicism with a view to universal suffrage. he showed very clearly that there are contradictions in the public spirit, that those very men who are anti-religious in politics may be men of religious habits, or the heads of families in which such religious habits are constantly practised. faith may be sleeping; but it has its sudden awakenings; all habits are living; and, i repeat it, habit holds a firmer place in the life of french families than politics or electoral programmes ever will hold." further on in his speech m. ribot referred to the relations of m. combes with the holy see on the question of the nomination of bishops, and that of the suspension of the bishops, monseigneurs gay and le nordez, declaring that "all these griefs which you call up were not sufficient reasons for making such great changes without taking the indispensable precautions." "we are here to make politics," he said, "we are not here for mere events and secondary incidents. when you set out to hunt up incidents, when in place of following your own ideas and awaiting the hour fixed by prudence, and by your knowledge of political affairs, you take up a pretext for precipitating us into an adventure, you do not act as a statesman; you act as a man of passion, as a man who is determined to carry out his own conceptions, and who without asking if he may not tomorrow be convicted of falsehood by his country, takes upon himself a heavy responsibility. is it statesmanship to strike directly at the secular clergy and to put into their hands a means of agitation far more dangerous than that which was in the hands of the congregationists?... "and then, gentlemen, wishing to express myself with great discretion, i ask: is this the moment for aggravating the coolness between the catholic church and the republican government? i do not believe that we are face to face with imminent perils; no one in europe assuredly desires war. but can we help noting that during the past year, while a great nation, a friend and ally of ours, has met with great difficulties, there has been something of a change in europe? the language we have been hearing for the past year is not altogether in harmony with that which has reached our ears during the last few days. is this not the time when instead of deriding ourselves further, we ought if possible to bring back union to our country?" the orator then went on to answer the objection that "the concordat was by this time broken, and that the government had no need to inform the holy see of its wish to suppress that contract." m. ribot replied that "it would be the greatest mistake we could at this moment commit, to ignore the holy see, as if it no longer existed for us." the speaker then referred to the amicable relations sustained between the holy see and schismatical of protestant nations. "do you not feel that the french activity will be very much weakened, not only in tunis, but in the extreme orient, if we have no longer any relations with the holy see? ... in such case what will become of our protectorate over the catholics of the east? the emperor of germany has gone to morocco during the last few days; some time ago he was at jerusalem and at constantinople. are we going to permit germany, italy, and other nations to divide the debris, the remnants of our patrimony?" _a voice._--"never!" _m. ribot._--"never? when the mistake is committed it will be too late to repair it." m. ribot then continued his speech: "after breaking all relations with rome, after wounding the holy see in its pontifical dignity, by refusing even to confer with it in regard to the denunciation of the concordat, by omitting a formality which you would not neglect with anyone in the world, you are going to give up, carelessly and without a tremor, the complete direction of the french church. he can tomorrow--if you invite it--name the bishops, all the bishops, without leaving to us the right of presenting to him any suggestion, or of obtaining from him, as england obtains for malta, as the united states obtains for the philippines, as we have obtained for tunis, that the religious choice made by him incline sometimes in the direction of political necessity. we cannot do more than that, and you who complain of the disquieting work of ultramontainism in this country, you do not even dream of effecting a transition which permits us to obtain in that regard some guarantees. "i am sure that the pope will not make any choice in a spirit reprisal, but that he will consider purely religious interests only. what consideration ought he to have for you, when you have had none for him? he will make choices that can embarrass you, against whom you will protest. oh! i know you always have a resource at hand after you have made a bad law; you can make another which will be a law of despotism and perhaps of tyranny. that is always the poor resource of short-sighted assemblies. i would prefer to provide for the danger rather than be obliged to remedy it by such means. i am sure that a mutual understanding is desirable, that it is necessary. i wish you could see it, and that if you are determined to proceed resolutely towards separation, you will do it with that prudence, that method which i have indicated, and which is the only one that can save you from danger." m. ribot proceeds to point out the danger of "repulsing the holy see with a violent, almost brutal gesture and of permitting political associations to enslave the clergy after they have been emancipated from the state." "gentlemen, you want to be logical, but you are the most short-sighted of statesmen. you justify in advance all acts of inquietude. my friend, m. lanessan, who is a devoted partisan of the separation of church and state, published, the day before yesterday, in the _siecle_ a letter from a member of the clergy, whom he calls a liberal and republican priest, who does not care to see politics mixed with religion; and that priest declared that the separation, such as you wish to make it, without method, without transition, and without an understanding with the holy see, must have for its result a considerable increase in the action of the papacy and the roman congregations over the french clergy, and that the french clergy will not submit, even in spite of itself, to a domination which drags it between the militant parties of political action." later in his speech, m. ribot contrasts the government's treatment of the catholics with its treatment of other religious denominations. "you agree that you could not and ought not in making a loyal and liberal separation, refuse to the protestant church its traditional organization, because in their case the question of temporal organization is bound by the most intimate ties with the defence of religious ideas themselves, and with the existence of the dogmas upon which religion reposes. you have thus given satisfaction to the protestants. to the israelites you have said: 'you may keep your assemblies of notables, your mode of election, and also the superior council which establishes equally the unity of your faith.' now you find yourselves in the presence of the catholics. have they less reason than the protestants and israelites of a visible organ of unity in france, for the reason that their unity can always be made and is made at rome? however, you cannot refuse them the right of recurring to their ancient practices, those customs followed by the clergy of this country, of having assemblies of bishops, and also, if they wish it, a general assembly. but you find yourselves face to face with an organization altogether different from that of the protestants or israelites; and you have not, i hope, the pretension, under the pretext that it would be an amelioration, to oblige the catholics to adopt the organization of the protestants or israelites; you wish to leave them their own organization. "that organization is known to every one; it is founded upon the principle of authority. the pastors are not elected, they are appointed from above; and even for her temporal government, for the administration of property, the catholic church has organized a system of limited councils, councils de fabrique and others, which proceed from the bishop; he it is who directs the conduct of all of them by his authority. whether this system is good or bad, or whether it is better than a broader democratic system, are questions which i have no right to raise, nor you either." after many discussions and interruptions the orator finally arrived at his peroration: "you see, m. briand, the spirit in which we discuss this law. it is not a spirit of obstruction, nor the attitude of one influenced by foregone conclusions. i want to be associated with you; i would do so willingly if you will do what is indispensable, if the government acts as it ought to act, as any government would act which was not pledged beforehand, which was not bound up in some way by the precautions which preceding ministers have taken to put us in a trap, if the government would hold with rome such an understanding as the conditions of lofty and perfect dignity require. "you assert that rome provoked all this; but you state in your report that rome at this very moment is giving the example of forgiveness, of conciliation in the affair of dijon, and in the affair of the nomination of the patriarch of jerusalem, wherein the holy see is proceeding slowly in order not to make any choice which would injure our influence in the east. "you have read the recent allocution of the pope. it gives you sufficient guarantees of moderation to enable you to enter into this conference with full dignity. there is no intention of humiliating france, or of rehearsing the calamities we have suffered. no! all that is asked for is that you should confer, negotiate, so that the country may not experience the saddest and most cruel misfortunes. i hold no brief for religion, which does not concern me: i am speaking for the state, for which, in my small way, i am responsible. i am defending the rights of the state and the cause of religious peace. "we have had enough of divisions, enough of mortal hatred, enough causes of enfeeblement! look back a little. the preceding ministry could see nothing but a struggle against the congregations. that question covered the whole horizon. let your view be larger and broader. stand for the interests of france, of religious peace, for the interest of those very ideas which are so dear to you, the success of that separation upon which you have entered, and which i would desire like yourselves, if you would undertake it under conditions that are acceptable and less dangerous. "but the separation which you propose i cannot in conscience accept. i cannot place my responsibility side by side with yours. we have not approved by vote the policy of the last cabinet. this law, such as you propose, imports a definitive rupture with the holy see, and is thus the consequence and sorrowful crowning of that policy. we cannot approve of it, but we have a strong hope that the discussion of the various articles will show you still more the difficulty of their application, the dangers to which you are exposing yourselves. i desire most earnestly that, leaving aside all questions of personal ambition which have been the ruin of assemblies and led them into irreparable mistakes, leaving aside all conventional phrases, and acting solely in the interest of our country, you will come back to the true policy of france and the republic." _law of separation._ in the meantime, while the debate was in progress the great majority of catholics could hardly believe in the possibility of separation. events, however, refused to confirm their hopes. the bill presented by the government, confided to a commission, and modified to the point of absolute stringency in the discussions, was finally adopted by the chamber of deputies on july , . docile to orders received, the senatorial commission, and afterwards the senate itself, ratified the decision of the chamber. the haste in putting the new law to a decisive vote was dictated by the fact that a new election was imminent. the law was accordingly voted definitively on december , , and at once promulgated. the council of state was allowed three months delay in order to prepare the details of the rules which should regulate the execution of the law. that delay would end in april, , just a month before the ensuing elections. the separation would thus be an accomplished fact before the entrance of a new government. according to the law of separation the state assumes the position of a government professing no religion, though it pretends to guarantee liberty of conscience and the free exercise of religious worship. the budget of worship and all public maintenance of any religious church or society was suppressed. by this article the catholic church in france was deprived of , , francs, or $ , , a year. in order to make the odious item seem less heavy than it actually was, the law made provision for certain pensions. thus ministers of religion who were not less than sixty years of age at the time the law was passed, and who had passed thirty years in ecclesiastical service, were to receive a life pension equivalent to three-fourths of their former salary. such as were not less than forty-five years of age at the time, and who had passed twenty years in the religious service, were to receive a life pension of one-half of their former salary. to others less than forty-five years of age it granted pensions extending to from four to eight years, which allowances are to decrease progressively until at the end of eight years they shall be completely extinguished. a third article provides for an inventory of ecclesiastical property by government officials. the crucial point in the law of separation was the attempt of the government to place the administration of ecclesiastical property in the hands of certain organizations termed associations of worship. these associations were to consist of seven persons in a parish of one thousand people, of fifteen where the population is over twenty thousand, and of twenty-five where the number is greater. these associations can consist of lay people at least in the majority. they can build up a reserve fund, which, however, must be limited. where the revenue is , francs, they can accumulate a sum only equal to three times their annual expense, and for others the reserve fund should not be in excess of over six times the annual outlay. the association must, moreover, accumulate a special fund, which is to be invested, for the purchase, construction, repair or decoration of the ecclesiastical property. by this article a large recognition is given to the hierarchy, since only such religious bodies can be represented as are in communion with the church which formerly held the property. but by article the state proceeds to place itself as a judge over the bishops in cases where different religious bodies through their associations of worship lay claim to the property. the other numerous items in the law of separation were merely such as might be expected in a law so hostile and so aggressive. _protest of pius x._ naturally the appearance of the new law caused excitement not in france alone but throughout the whole catholic world. the holy father, pope pius x., expressed his grief in no uncertain terms. on february , , he addressed to the hierarchy and people of france his encyclical "_vehementer nos_." the holy father begins, in this letter, by indicating, one by one, all the measures adopted by the french government against the church, measures which naturally would lead to that separation which the holy see has always striven to avoid. he declares that the doctrine of the separation of church and state is false because: , it offers violence to god; , it is an open negation of the supernatural order; , it overturns the order which god has wisely established in the world, an order which exacts a harmonious concurrence between the two societies; , it inflicts heavy injuries upon civil society itself. moreover, the popes have always protested against such a separation. france is less able than any other nation to enter upon such a proceeding, for: , the bonds which consecrate the union of church and state ought to be more inviolable than the pledges of sworn treaties; , it was a bilateral contract which the state abrogated by its own sole authority; , this injury becomes all the greater when one considers that the state has effected this abrogation of the concordat without any preliminary announcement or notification. still more, in this separation, the state has not given to the church her independence nor permitted her to enjoy, in the liberty which it pretends to conceive, the peace guaranteed by common right. the evidence of this is found in the numberless measures of exception which are inserted in the law. these measures are contrary to the divine constitution given by our lord jesus christ to the church, which is a body ruled by pastors and doctors. in contradiction to these principles, the law confers the administration and care of public worship, not to the hierarchy divinely constituted, but to an association of lay persons. these associations of worship shall, moreover, be supervised by the civil authority in such a manner that the ecclesiastical authority can no longer have any power over them. they are absolutely opposed to the liberty of the church. finally, the law violates the property rights of the church, whether by usurpation of these associations of worship, as also by the suppression of the budget of worship, which was in itself a partial indemnity. the pope continues: "for this reason we reprove and condemn the law, voted in france for the separation of church and state, as profoundly injurious to god whom it denies officially when it begins the law with a declaration that the republic recognizes no creed. we reprove and condemn it as violating the natural law, the law of nations, the public fidelity to treaties. we condemn it as contrary to the divine constitution of the church, and to its essential rights and liberties. we condemn it as overturning justice and trampling under feet the property rights which the church has acquired on many titles and in virtue of the concordat itself. we reprove and condemn it as gravely offensive to the dignity of the apostolic see, to our own person, to the episcopate, the clergy and the people of france." the pope then declares that this law can never be cited against the imprescriptible rights of the church. the holy father then addresses himself to the bishops, the clergy and the faithful of france. he asks the bishops to bring a most perfect union of heart and will to the projects which they shall form for the defence of the church, and he declares that he will address them at opportune times practical instructions to guide their conduct in the midst of their great difficulties. the clergy should have in their hearts the sentiments of the apostles and rejoice that they are esteemed worthy to suffer for the name of jesus. the faithful should remember the fate which follows those impious sects which permit themselves to be bound by a yoke, for they have themselves with cynical audacity proclaimed their motto: "decatholicise france!" in their resistance they must be strongly united and possess a large measure of courage and generosity. in the secret consistory, the holy father again referred to the insulting measures of the separation law. meanwhile the country began to feel the excitement attendant upon the various changes in government. on january , the french parliament, senators and deputies, in joint session at versailles, elected a president to succeed m. emile loubet, whose seven year term of office was to expire on the th of the following month. their choice fell upon m. clement armand fallières, president of the senate. the new president represented the more radical wing of the republican party, and was a strong anti-militarist. he had been president of the senate since , and was then in his sixty-fifth year. in march of the same year the ministry of m. rouvier, which had been in office for little more than a year, fell, and was succeeded by that of m. sarrien. the combes ministry, it will be remembered, resigned on january , , because of a vote of want of confidence inspired by the rupture between church and state. the resignation of m. rouvier was also precipitated by the same question though from two opposite points of view. the catholic party reproached him for his drastic application of the congregation law, and the inventories of church property. the socialists, because he had not applied the law as oppressively as they would wish. the new cabinet included among its members certain notorious anti-clericals, among whom were clemenceau, as minister of the interior, briand, as minister of instruction and worship, and doumergue, as minister of commerce. again, on sunday, may , took place the election of deputies. the catholics had, indeed, hoped for some recognition from the voters of the country, but were sadly disappointed when the returns showed a victory for the government. the french socialists were returned with important majorities, and the bloc found itself stronger than ever before. in the meantime the question of the cultuelle associations was being strongly discussed among the catholics of the land. many, indeed, either through ignorance of their real import, or because they hoped through a compromise to pave the way to greater gains, were in favor of accepting the conditions offered by the government in regard to these associations. the bishops, however, assembled early in the year to discuss the question. they displayed a resolution and courage worthy of the best traditions of the church. they condemned almost unanimously the cultuelle associations as contrary to the constitution of the church. their decision was brought to rome and submitted to the final judgment of the holy see. the holy father replied in the encyclical, "_gravissimo officii_," of august , , addressed to the archbishops and bishops of france, and containing the instructions promised by the former encyclical, "_vehementer nos_." the sovereign pontiff again condemned the law of separation, and confirmed the almost unanimous decision of the assembly of the bishops. he condemned the cultuelle associations as imposed by the law. he added, moreover: "we declare it is not permissible to try some other sort of associations at once legal and canonical, and thus to preserve the catholics of france from the grave complications that menace them, so long as it is not established in a sure and legal manner that, under the divine constitution of the church, the immutable rights of the roman pontiff, and of the bishops, their authority over necessary property of the church, particularly over the sacred edifices, shall be irrevocably set in full security above the said associations. to desire the contrary is impossible for us. it would be to betray the sanctity of our office without bringing peace to the church of france." the resolute attitude of the holy father came as a surprise to the french ministry. they had imagined that the pope would not dare to utter words of defiance against the fiat of an irreligious bloc. they began to fear that any further aggressions must only sting the catholics to organized opposition. the bishops met again in september and issued to the catholic people of france a joint pastoral letter signed by every bishop, announcing their hearty agreement with the instructions of the holy father, and forbidding the establishment of of cultuelle associations. the catholic body entered into the spirit of the hierarchy, and only a few unimportant individuals sought to contravene their authority. the government, fearing no doubt the effects of further drastic measures, began to modify the tenor of the law. the provision which required that the clergy might not hold religious service in a church without previously notifying the authorities in each case, was so changed that one general notice would suffice for the whole year. at the same time, however, the seminaries were to be closed and become the property of the commune, while bishops and priests might buy back or rent their own residences. the holy father, however, forbade the bishops and clergy to furnish the notification about public worship: they were to continue to minister in their churches after the term of the notification had expired as if nothing had occurred. the stand taken by the holy see was looked upon by the french government as a declaration of war, and it accordingly began to exercise newer methods of retaliation. on december , , the papal nuncio, mgr. montagnini, who was then in paris guarding the archives of the holy see, was expelled from france, the nunciature was surrounded, and the papers found therein were seized. it was in vain that the vatican protested: the government pursued its oppressive policy with all the more vigor. on december , cardinal richard was expelled from his archiepiscopal residence, and later the seminarians were driven from the seminaries. the position of the catholics in france was thus rendered humiliating and desperate. they still continued, as they do at present, to hold divine service in the churches, but always with the eyes of a hostile government fixed upon them, scrutinizing their actions, and criticizing their words. the clergy, deprived of their usual stipend, are forced to seek in various kinds of employment the necessary sustentation of life except when the generosity of the faithful enables them to observe the discipline of the church which ordinarily forbids the clergy to seek their support elsewhere than from the altar. one of the effects of the separation law was that the holy father was liberated from the vexatious interference of the french government in the appointment of bishops. accordingly on february . , the holy father himself not only appointed fifteen new bishops but even consecrated them with his own hands in st. peter's in rome. it was the first time that a pope consecrated so large a number of prelates at one time. the fall of the year was marked by the creation of a new cabinet of which m. georges clemenceau was premier. the new cabinet included among its members anti-clericals of the most aggressive kind, such as briand, doumergue, picquart, and viviani. it was this viviani who, a few years previously had uttered the notorious boast: "we have at last extinguished the lights of heaven." georges clemenceau has been a rabid foe to religion and to the church from the very beginning of his political career. in he founded for this purpose a journal, "_la justice_," and was a powerful advocate of aggression during the dreyfus trial. from to he was looked upon as the master of the political situation in france. in he founded a weekly paper, "_le bloc_." it was this paper which gave the name to the infamous party which engineered the present anti-catholic war in france. he has been identified with all the oppressive measures by which the french government has, of late, striven to vex the french church. it was only in accordance with his deserts that he himself was driven in disgrace from his leadership in the fall of , when he was succeeded by the no less aggressive but more hypocritical m. briand. one of the most shameful features in the french government's war on the church was the affair of liquidation. when the congregations had been dispersed and their property confiscated, the government appointed certain officials, called liquidators, whose office it was to superintend the sale of religious property. the first estimates of the sum which might be realized by the sale of this property placed the total amount at , , , francs, the sum which, during the last few years has dwindled down to ridiculously small figures. the recent affair of m. duez has brought out the whole official corruption of the scheme. m. duez, one of the three original liquidators attached to the seine tribunal, began life as a clerk in a large department store. afterwards, as solicitor's clerk, he embezzled , francs. in spite of this he was appointed one of the liquidators for the sale of church property. in this capacity he handled millions of francs. for a time things went on well enough until the failures of some of the liquidators to produce anything but continual expenses began to arouse the suspicions of the government. in the government was forced to require from the liquidators an annual report of their proceedings. the report, issued toward the end of , was a curious document. finding that their embezzlements were being exposed, the liquidators began to claim that their work had been seriously hampered by threats of excommunications against the buyers of the property, and by the opposition of the congregations and others who professed to have claims upon the property. moreover, it was said that m. waldeck-rousseau's estimate of a milliard was excessive, for the net result of the liquidation of one hundred and fifteen congregations was not more than , francs. of these one hundred and fifteen liquidations, sixty-nine produced absolutely nothing, yet the liquidators brought in bills amounting to , francs besides the , francs, which were the fees of the lawyers. accordingly in the beginning of , m. combes forced the reluctant government to assimilate the position of the liquidators to that of other functionaries accountable for monies. m. combes, who had been appointed chairman of the commission, saw in the affair only a way of injuring his political opponents. in february, , m. briand, then minister of justice, brought in a measure containing regulations for the sale of the property, and for the simplifying of the judicial procedures attendant. while m. combes would cast the blame on the liquidators, m. briand fixed it on the method of liquidation. the bill of m. briand had at least the effect of rendering the supervision more strict than heretofore. as a consequence suspicions began to be aroused, of late, in regard to m. duez, who was the liquidator of several important congregations. he was forced to submit his accounts to an official auditor, and his irregularities were quickly discovered. at first there was a call for his dismissal, but the seine tribunal merely decreed the acceptance of his resignation, "for reasons of health." he was given three months to produce a full account of his transactions while in office. these, however, were not forthcoming. again and again he was called upon for a detailed account of his work. so the matter dragged on till the middle of march, , when the successor of m. duez became so "insistent" that the matter could not be kept longer in suspense. m. duez was arrested and found upon his own confession to have embezzled more than a million dollars. the scandal through the government created a state of consternation, especially in view of the fact that the elections were already imminent. but the versatile briand with a sympathetic "bloc" has already thrown dust into eyes of the french people. one thing at least the liquidation scandal has effected--it has exposed the frightful corruption of that government which has hypocritically insisted, time and again, that its war on the church was conducted solely in the interests of humanity, has been actuated by the principle of what we americans call by the expressive name of colossal graft. the french people have permitted themselves to be hoodwinked in the most outrageous manner. it only remains to be seen how long they will permit themselves to remain the victims of such official slavery. _school troubles._ it will be remembered that, following on the passage of the associations law of , came the actual attack upon the congregations of france and the catholic schools. the congregations were dispersed generally, their property confiscated and their schools to the number of , closed. it was the day of triumph for m. combes and the anti-clerical horde that followed him. it is remarkable that in when the rigor of the law was most acutely felt, the chief henchman of combes was the minister of public instruction, the notorious aristide briand, erstwhile editor of the infamous lanterne. the catholic schools of the congregations thus closed, a new regime was inaugurated. thenceforth there were to be public schools supported by the state, whilst private, or free schools, might be tolerated but at private expense in this difficulty catholic private schools were established here and there, but as may easily be imagined, their number could only be insignificant and their pupils few, since the catholic people now found themselves obliged to pay for the support of churches and pastors for whom the state refused any further maintenance. thus the great majority of catholics all over france found themselves obliged to send their children to the state schools. this necessity was oppressive and humiliating enough, even though the law of had defined that the state schools should be neutral in the matter of religious teaching. in this assurance of the government the parents found some little comfort, and for a time it appeared as if the law might be observed. but a government that had frankly declared itself atheistic, and opposed to all religion, was careful to place in its schools only such teachers as should reflect the sentiments of their employers. the french schools became thus the home of teachers not only without faith, but absolutely seething with open and implacable hatred of religion. growing bold under the favor of an anti-clerical government, they caused to be introduced into the schools text-books so worded as to impregnate the pupils' minds with anti-religious principles. at first the name of god was allowed in the school, though kept in the background. soon it was admitted in inverted commas, and finally it was banished altogether. in january, , eleven parents at apremont complained to the inspector, but no notice was taken. on june , , the bishop of belley wrote to that official asking him to withdraw an offensive manual from the schools. finally the matter was brought before m. briand, who under the pretence of satisfying the bishop made a few unimportant changes but left the book as atheistic as ever. meanwhile the teachers in the state schools increased in boldness and aggressiveness. all discretion was at length thrown to the winds and doctrines irreligious and impious began to be taught openly and without reserve. the doctrines and practices of the church were made the subject of ridicule, the name of god was omitted or referred to as a relic of superstition, morality was decried and patriotism denounced as an abuse of the middle ages. in , when the government saw that the parents were in earnest in demanding the observance of the school neutrality, it caused a certain radical, m. doumergue, minister of public instruction, to introduce two bills. the first of these sought to inflict penalties upon those parents who shall prevent their children from attending classes in which books are used which are known to contain teachings abusive of religion. by the second bill the responsibility of the state is substituted for that of the teacher, who is thus removed from the jurisdiction of the ordinary courts and placed under the university tribunals. as soon as these bills were proposed the bishops, in a joint pastoral, protested, declaring that the bills meant nothing less than the expropriation of the family and the confiscation of its children by the state. meanwhile the government continued its usual aggressive policy until the parents uniting together began to demand strongly the observance of neutrality. thereupon the bishops, in september of last year, issued another joint pastoral, in which the rights of parents were set forth according to the doctrine of the church, and in which the use of a number of class-books which dealt abusively with the teaching, practice and history of the church, was forbidden to catholic children. at first m. briand sought to discountenance its importance, but when he saw from the pastorals of individual bishops that the episcopate were in dead earnest, and from the action of pastors, parents and children, that the bishops' instructions were likely to be carried out, he joined with the sectaries of the bloc in denouncing what he hypocritically termed "an attack on the republican schools." meanwhile the teachers and the writers of the condemned books came together with prosecutions for libel against some individual bishops who had signed and published the joint pastoral, and had enforced it by pronouncements of their own. in the beginning of last year the matter, which had been carried on without any positive governmental influence, was now carried into the chamber of deputies. there it was debated hotly on both sides. while briand, doumergue, besnard, dessoye and others attacked the church, the vatican and the bishops, the champions of religious liberty counted such orators as the abbe gayraud, m. piou, m. aynard, m. grousseau, m. maurice barres and several other men of eloquence and information. nothing, however, was effected save to fan the flame of anti-clerical hatred, although m. briand, when off his guard, pointedly admitted that the bishops acted within their right in issuing the joint pastoral, that the parents had a right to associate for the care of their children's instruction, and that a state monopoly of education would only be a weapon of conflict and an instrument of tyranny. all of which admissions the versatile briand proceeded to falsify almost in the same speech. the next move was to proceed formally against individual bishops. accordingly, on january cardinal lucon, archbishop of rheims, was cited to court by the "teachers' friendly society." his eminence appeared in person, and at the sitting of the second day spoke in his own defence. as he left the court he was loudly cheered. the verdict of the court imposed upon the cardinal a fine of francs and costs. still later, in march, mgr. turinaz, bishop of nancy, was haled into court, but, strange to say, though the evidence was the same as in the case of cardinal lucon, mgr. turinaz was acquitted. the audacious effrontery of the radical gang now seeks to proceed even farther. not content with forcing its impious books into the public schools, it proposes to lay hands upon private schools as well, and to so trouble them with surveillance so as to compel their dispersion. meanwhile, the affair of m. duez has arisen like a horrible spectre in the eyes of the bloc robbers; the country is aroused at the rottenness and corruption that is being laid bare; the bloc is seeking to cover over the sore spots. there are other matters in hand besides the school question. [decoration] chapter viii. the troubles in spain. although the catholic faith has always been deeply rooted in the hearts of the spanish people, yet during the nineteenth century the anti-christian spirit contrived at times to create disorder and to introduce persecution. the spirit of the french revolution made its way early into the peninsular. the reign of the weak king, carlos iv., who was misled by his shrewd and unscrupulous minister godoy aroused dissatisfaction to such an extent that his own son, the future ferdinand vii., joined with the malcontents in a warlike feud. the kingdom thus distracted by internecine troubles was an easy prey to the conquering napoleon. in , carlos iv., was forced to abdicate his throne which was thereupon bestowed upon joseph bonaparte. the reign of this usurper, especially his oppressive measures towards the clergy and catholic people, stirred up the spaniards, who flew to arms. after three years of heroic struggle, aided by the english, they liberated their country from french rule, and in , restored the spanish throne, with ferdinand vii., as its occupant. _accession of ferdinand vii._ in the liberal cortes at cadiz effected a constitution inimical to the interests of the church. upon his accession, the king annulled the constitution, and restored the church to the position and rights it had held previous to the advent of the french. the jesuits were recalled from banishment, and other religious orders were encouraged to pursue their works of charity and beneficence. unfortunately, ferdinand was always wanting in firmness and in catholic principle. surrounded by astute and ambitious flatterers, he soon fell into the hands of the liberals who induced him to revoke his good resolutions, to violate the rights of the church and to re-establish the old despotism. _apostolics and liberals._ in the sentiment of the country was divided between the two opposing parties, the apostolicals, who defended the claims of the church, and the liberals, who looked for license under the name of liberty. the liberals were soon in the ascendant, and forced the king, in , to restore the constitution of . the apostolical party bitterly resented the treachery of the king, and after an uprising in all parts of the country, aided by french intervention, the liberals were defeated. ferdinand, however, was little disposed to follow the dictates of the victorious party, who in their disgust at his vacillating policy turned to the king's brother, don carlos, whom they determined to place upon the throne. _disaffection of ferdinand vii._ the discontent between ferdinand and the catholic party grew more acute from year to year. when, in , the holy see refused to receive the jansenist, villanueva, as ambassador, the government at madrid dismissed the papal nuncio, guistiniani. those of the clergy who would not accept the constitution were imprisoned, banished, or put to death. only a few took the oath imposed on them. in , the king married maria christina of naples, a woman who was destined to play a notorious part in spanish history. through her influence he abrogated the salic law, which excluded females from the throne, and which had been forced upon spain by the european powers in the treaty of utrecht, in . by this act he hoped to shut out from the succession his brother don carlos and his heirs, in order to place upon the throne his daughter isabella, who was born on october , . by this act ferdinand gave to his country a cause for disorders which remain even to the present day. [illustration: fernando vii. de bourbon, king of spain.] _carlist war._ ferdinand vii. died in , and his daughter was proclaimed queen of spain, under the regency of her mother christina. the country was at once plunged into the horrors of civil war. don carlos, the pretender to the throne, and his adherents were ordered to leave the country. aragon and the basque provinces took up arms in his cause, while the liberals gathered around the regent. in the conflict the followers of don carlos were called the carlists or apostolicals, while the opposing party received the name of christinists. _hatred of the jesuits._ in the enemies of religion took occasion of the cholera, then raging in the peninsular, to incite the populace against the religious orders whom they accused of having poisoned the wells. they began their hostilities with the jesuits who were cut down even at the foot of the altars. the horrible cry was heard everywhere: "away with christ!" on july , a furious mob precipitated itself upon the jesuit college with cries of rage, calling out: "death to the jesuits!" "let not a jesuit escape!" fifteen fathers were massacred, and some of them with a refinement of cruelty that passes description. similar horrors were carried out the same day in the various monasteries of madrid, those of the dominicans, the fathers of the redemption of captives, and the franciscans. forty-four of the latter perished, seven dominicans and nine of the order of mercy. the leader in these atrocities was that espartero, who having imbibed in his boyhood a knowledge of the faith, had learned in south america the awful art of shedding blood for the sake of personal ambition. _atrocities of espartero._ in the massacres were renewed at saragossa, barcelona, cordova and many other places. in , a decree ordered the sale of all property belonging to the religious orders. after the religious--as is always the case--the secular clergy were attacked, and the churches everywhere throughout the land. bishops and priests were banished; ecclesiastical property was pillaged or sold; the supremacy and rights of the pope were set aside; in a word, the catholic kingdom saw the beginning of a national schism. _the pope protests._ pope gregory xvi., in , protested against these persecutions, and the government, awakened to some sense of shame, sent vilalba to rome to effect an agreement with the holy see. the truce was but of short duration. in another revolution broke out, the result of which was the deposition of christina, as regent, and the exaltation of the infamous espartero in that capacity. the change was the signal for renewed hostilities against the church, so that, in , pope gregory xvi. was again moved to utter a vigorous protest. the government replied by forbidding the publication of any papal documents, and by confiscating what remained of the church property. in january , , a law was proposed having for its object the entire separation of the spanish people from the influence of the holy see. _papal encyclical._ the pope replied to this proposal by a strong encyclical, in which he said: "in fact, it is determined by this law that no account of the apostolic see shall be held by the spanish nation; that all communication with it for all manner of graces, indults and concessions shall be intercepted, and that those who contravene this prescript shall be severely punished. it is also decreed that letters apostolic and other rescripts issued by the same holy see, unless they shall have been demanded by spain, shall not only not be kept, and be inefficacious, but that they shall be denounced to the civil authority in the shortest interval of time, by those whom they shall reach, that they may be delivered to the government; and for those who shall violate this prescript a penalty also is fixed. [illustration: don carlos de bourbon, duke of madrid.] "it is moreover ordained that impediments to matrimony shall be subject to the bishops, until a code of civil laws shall establish a distinction between the contract and the sacrament of matrimony; that no cause involving religious matters shall be sent from spain to rome; and that in no time shall a nuncio or legate of the holy see be there admitted with the power of granting graces or dispensations, even gratuitously. "and more! the most sacred right of the roman pontiff to confirm or reject the bishops elected in spain is clearly excluded; and the punishment of exile is to be inflicted as well on all priests designated to any episcopal church, who shall seek confirmation or letters apostolic from this holy see, as on all metropolitans who shall demand the pallium from it. "after this, it is indeed to be wondered at, that the roman pontiff himself is in that law asserted to be, as it were, the centre of the church, since room for communication with him is not left, save by the license and under the inspection of the government. "desiring then to restrain, as much as in us lies, the evils, which in this great perturbation of the catholic religion throughout spain are growing more heavy; and to give our assistance to those most dear of the faithful, who, long since, are stretching forth suppliant hands towards us, we have determined, after the example of our predecessors, to resort to the prayers of the universal church, and most studiously to excite the piety of all catholics toward that nation. "therefore, while we renew and confirm, by these letters apostolic, the complaints and expostulations published in the allocutions before mentioned, and abrogate and declare to be of no force all acts hitherto done by the government of madrid against the rights and dignity of the church and of this most holy see, we again exhort all ... to implore the mercy of the omnipotent god for the unhappy spanish nation." _balmes and cortes._ the government in turn endeavored to suppress the encyclical, but its efforts in that direction only resulted in spreading it the more throughout the land. a veritable awakening followed. both clergy and people publicly demonstrated their loyalty to the persecuted church, whose defence was ably taken up by such writers and orators as the celebrated father james balmes and donoso cortes. in , the young isabella, then being thirteen years of age, was declared of age, and made independent of any regency. the reign of espartero was, for the time at least, at an end. espartero, during his ascendancy, proved himself a scourge to the catholic church in spain. when he fell, the catholics began to breathe more freely. a stop was put to the sale of ecclesiastical property. in , whatever remained was used to give some little maintenance to the clergy, but the real and personal estate had already been disposed of in great part, and could not be recalled. to arrange matters a concordat was drawn up, and castillo y ayensa was sent to gregory xvi. for that purpose. but the good will of the government evaporated before anything definite could be concluded, and the concordat was rejected by the cortes. _concordat of ._ however, after the spanish government had aided the pope in his exile at gaeta, and helped to restore him to rome, more definite proceedings towards a concordat were begun. the new concordat was concluded on march , . it was just before the conclusion of this concordat that donoso cortes delivered a remarkable address to the spanish chamber of deputies, in which he said: "do not tell me that in spain, in italy, in france and in hungary the revolution is conquered; that is not true. all the social forces united and driven to their utmost have only driven the revolution under cover. the people can no longer govern, and the true cause of this is that there is no true conception of divine or of human authority. this is the disease that is strangling europe, society and the world. this is the reason why the people can no longer govern. when revolution in europe shall have destroyed the standing armies, when socialism shall have exterminated patriotism, when we shall see only two parties, the spoilers and the despoiled, then shall russia quietly send its armies into our land, and the world will behold the greatest chastisement recorded in history." the new concordat contained among its articles the following: "the catholic, apostolic, roman religion, will be as in the past, the religion of the state, to the exclusion of all others. the church shall conserve the rights and prerogatives which belong to her according to divine law and the sacred canons; in public and private institutions, education shall be conformable to the catholic religion; the bishops in the exercise of their ministry and of their mission shall enjoy that entire liberty demanded by the sacred canons; the church shall continue to possess, and to acquire new properties, under whatsoever legitimate title; and this her right of possession shall remain inviolable." _attempt on the life of queen isabella._ the concordat was signed at rome, by pope pius ix., who in the consistory of september , , proclaimed its publication in terms of the greatest gratification. but the joy of the catholic people upon this return to spain to better sentiments was not long lived. on february , , queen isabella, as she was speaking on the street with the papal nuncio, was attacked by a ruffian, who attempted to plunge a dagger into her side. the would-be assassin was arrested and thrown into prison. he was one of the conspirators under espartero. as the unhappy man had once been an ecclesiastic and had apostatized under the fury of the revolutionary propaganda, the revolutionary journals made capital of the fact to cast aspersions on the clergy, declaring that the assassin belonged to the clerical party. the government comprehended that it was necessary to put a restraint upon the press, and in consequence, many journals were compelled to stop publication. at the same time a spirit of conversion began to touch the hearts of the people. everywhere the missionaries were active, and out of the religious houses the words of new life were heard to echo into the homes, the factories, the army and the navy. the revolutionists began to be alarmed, and set to work to destroy what the preaching of catholic doctrine had effected. the liberals, haters of god and of country, commenced a series of barbarities. with the intention of destroying the monasteries and convents, they set fire to the jesuit houses in valladolid, huesca, barbastro, saragossa and valencia. at valladolid in one day they burned three convents, and among them the celebrated and magnificent trinidad. and these same incendiaries when they came into power in spain two years later, dared to cry out against the barbarities of the catholic church. _revolution of ._ in the revolution again broke out. many of spain's best generals, among them leopold o'donnell, went over to the party of rebellion, whose object was the overthrow of the monarchy and the establishment of a republic. the people, misled by a thousand rumors, knew not to whom to turn, but finally took as their leader that espartero who had already proven himself a danger to spain, hostile to the church, and a slave to the secret societies. on july , , the royal palace at madrid was sacked by the mob, though the queen succeeded in escaping to safety. though the revolution called for a republic, with espartero at its head, yet that general preferred rather to lead the ministry under royalty, and so contrived to restore isabella to her throne. under this second regime of espartero the church suffered even more cruelly than before. the agents of the secret societies, which controlled the cortes, began to demand the revocation of the concordat, the suppression of the religious orders, and a general persecution of the church. the minister alonzo set the example by driving out of the escurial the monks of st. jerome. _persecution and calumny._ to persecution the anti-christians added calumny against the bishops and clergy of spain, accusing them of desertion in the time of danger, of abandoning the victims of the cholera. these open falsehoods aided somewhat in stirring up a spirit of hostility even in places where the devotion of the clergy was known to be most heroic. stories then were circulated of arms hidden in the sanctuary of loyola; as a consequence, the jesuits were driven from this shrine, even though it was well known that their only occupation at loyola was the maintenance of a college for the education of missionaries to cuba, porto rico and the philippine islands. [illustration: isabel ii., queen of spain.] at the same time certain deputies in the chamber complained that the journal, "the catholic", had dared to publish the bull of pius ix. on the immaculate conception without governmental permission. one of the ministers, madoz, proposed restoring the ruined treasury by the sale of all ecclesiastical property without exception. another deputy, escosura, a furious and fanatic anti-christian, insulted, in a session of the chamber on march , , the bishop of osma, whom he called a butcher because of his defence of the church property; the minister of grace and justice, aguirre, demanded the punishment of those bishops who dared to preach religious unity. for this "crime" the bishop of osma was exiled to the canary islands. the same aguirre caused the bishop of barcelona to be exiled to carthagena. it was in vain that the holy see strove to compose matters. appeals to the ancient piety of spain, and to the well known virtue of the nation were alike unheeded. it was not the nation that ruled, but a clique who had gained control by force of arms, and it was this clique that sent back the appeals of the holy father with contempt and derision. the cortes was filled with irreligious enemies of the catholic name; it was these who set aside the concordat, from its first article to the last. it was these who forbade bishops to ordain priests, who forbade monasteries of nuns to receive new novices; and who converted to state use all chapels and religious schools. in the deliberations of the cortes, on january , , it was determined that the seminaries might no longer teach philosophy and theology, and that all ordinations of the clergy should be suspended. _protests from the holy see._ the holy father in the consistory of july , , protested vigorously against the evils and spoliation of the church in spain. his words were useless, since espartero and his followers continued in their way despite all claims of reason and right. they had driven the bishop of osma into exile, they had closed the seminary of toledo, they had forbidden the priests of saragossa to leave the limits of their parish without governmental permission, they had dispersed the society of st. vincent de paul, they had prevented the bishops from uniting in council, the bishop of urgel was exiled as a carlist, the bishop of plasenza was persecuted because he had refused to give an inventory of church property, the bishop of avila would have been imprisoned but for fear of the people who threatened to intervene. the persecutions became so rabid and frequent that monsignor franchi, the papal nuncio, left madrid, and diplomatic relations were severed with the holy see. moreover, zavala, the minister of foreign affairs, dared to write to the various governments that the concordat was being faithfully executed, that the contract made with the holy see was observed, and that the government was religious and pious. the pontifical allocution unmasked the falsehood, but did not change the condition of affairs. _espartero government falls._ the government of espartero, capable of every evil, incapable of good, finally fell into odium with the people. in spain shook off the yoke imposed upon her by the rebels, who had enslaved the queen and fettered the church. on september , the country returned to its former government, and restored the constitution of . the new minister of grace and justice recognized the necessity of restoring to honor a clergy vilified by the passions and impetuous discords of the times. the elections to churches were made according to the customs of catholic spain, and peace began to smile again upon the religious institutions of the land. the appointment in october , of marshal narvaez, to the presidency of the council, was an act that promised the restoration of law and order. narvaez, the duke of valencia, was one who knew the meaning of conspiracy, civil war, and revolution. he had seen with his own eyes the sad results of them, and how they impoverished, weakened, and strangled the state. a man of character and firm will, he knew how to form a a cabinet in harmony with his own ideas, and with them he set to work to re-establish order. the jesuits, expelled in , were permitted to return; the concordat was again put into execution; all orders and decrees contrary to it were annulled, and on october , de seijas lozano, minister of justice, represented to the queen that it was time to render to the bishops full liberty to confer sacred orders. in his brief he spoke in the highest terms of the spanish episcopate, and of the piety and heroic devotion of the priesthood. it was a new note in contrast to the chorus of infamy that had been heard for the last two years. the end of the year beheld a serene heaven brooding over spain, and a people who sighed with relief as they thought of the nights of horror and iniquity through which they had so lately passed. _the campaign of ._ for a decade at least the church in spain enjoyed comparative peace. the war then broke out again and continued with new vigor. the masonic general prim, returning from mexico disappointed because he had failed to create a position for himself, brought back to spain a new batch of conspiracies. in the moderates were in control with narvaez at their head. they were not altogether unjust, and were somewhat friendly to the church and the catholic party, which was then represented in the cortes by candido nocidal and other illustrious men of spain. at the same time the cortes numbered among its members the progressists, who were hostile to the church and to the queen, and who united in many measures with the socialists, a party which was most dangerous and most opposed to the nature and to the traditions of the spanish people. general prim was the recognized leader of this union. he was a man of most extravagant ambition, who in the hope of becoming president of a future iberian republic, or first minister of the queen, gathered together all the forces of disorder which had lain dormant since the last revolution. [illustration: espartero.] prim first addressed himself to the king of portugal, proposing to unite that country with spain under the crown of portugal. being refused, he turned to the duke of montpensier, who rejected his proposals in the conviction that the time was not ripe for a revolution. he was not, however, disconcerted, and in union with o'donnell, gave himself up to the problem of betraying his country to some foreign ruler. the first skirmishes of the followers of prim were abortive owing to the vigilance of narvaez, and many of the conspirators were driven out of the country. _trickery of napoleon iii._ narvaez, however, died in , and was succeeded as president of the council, by gonzalis bravo. the policy of the latter was built upon an imprudent confidence in the friendship of the french emperor, napoleon iii. trusting to the promises of that crafty prince, both bravo and the queen remained inactive, while the forces of the enemy under general serrano pushed forward. [illustration: leopold o'donnell, duke of tetuan.] bravo in turn relinquished the government to joseph concha, an old conspirator, in whose heart the hatred toward the church had never completely died out. in the meantime the rebels forced their way through the country, and gained as they went forward the favor of a populace whose spirits were inflamed by the lust of bloodshed and plunder. with a nondescript army serrano took possession of madrid in september, . the queen, despairing of her own safety, fled into france, and left the entire country in the hands of the revolutionists. on september , she protested against the treachery of napoleon iii., but no one would or could listen to her. it was only another of the unholy acts of the french sovereign who had thrown ruin into various countries of europe. rome had seen the holy father betrayed by him; florence, naples, parma, and modena fell under his treachery; the emperor of austria had trusted him and found him wanting; he had cajoled the folly of maximilian in that unfortunate prince's adventure into mexico; and now he had betrayed spain. one more piece of treachery remained in his conduct toward the holy see--then came the reward of his double-dealing in the franco-prussian war, when he was himself cast down from his throne and driven into disgraceful exile. _spain a republic._ general prim, whose usual tactics were to raise a great cry, stir up revolt, and then when the danger came, to disappear, had been missing through all the fighting. now that the danger was over he suddenly re-appeared. but both he and the duke of montpensier came too late. serrano was in control with a mob of irreligious ruffians gathered together from paris and brussels and filled with a mortal hatred of the catholic religion. the proofs of this spirit were not long in coming. the jesuits were the first to be hunted down, and after them the other religious; and while the revolutionists were raising the cry of "freedom of worship for all," they sacked and profaned monasteries and churches. dioceses were reduced in number; cathedral chapters, abbacies, and prebenderies were suppressed; the fees to the nuncio and to the seminaries were discontinued. ecclesiastical property was offered for sale, and a thousand iniquities of one kind or another were brought forward to enslave and impoverish the church. in the meantime the question of the form of government to be adopted occupied the minds of all. some called for a republic, some for a monarchy under the regency of montpensier or of serrano; others wished for a union with portugal. still others proposed a stranger king, prince napoleon, duke of genoa, a friend of general prim. during the first three months the government remained in the hands of three worthies, serrano, prim and topete. the usual hypocrisy of all anti-catholic governments betrayed itself immediately. there were outcries, mobs, rumors everywhere; but catholic processions were forbidden. a crowd of corrupt apostates could travel from one end of spain to the other preaching impiety, under the name of the "pure gospel," while they dispersed the conferences of st. vincent de paul and drove from their houses the defenceless nuns only to gather them together in places where they were delivered to the insults of the mob and every degrading humiliation. books, newspapers filled with obscene pictures were spread gratuitously among the populace as a proof of the new civilization. _persecution of catholics._ religious and catholic writings were held up as barbarisms and inimical to the interests of the country. schools for the teaching of falsehood and iniquity were free and untrammelled, while the seminaries and catholic schools were closed at madrid, seville and other places. churches were destroyed and chapels burned to the ground without hindrance or protest. catholics looked on in horror, but had to be silent while the terrors of an infidel government hung around them. the government itself encouraged its partisans to gather the spoils of victory, to satisfy their old punishments with terrible vengeance. to pay the national debt of forty millions of francs the property of the church was again seized and sold. when the revolution began, the motto of the rebels was "spain and honor;" now it had become a cry of irreligion and destruction. at antequera the sectaries attacked a convent of nuns, sacked it and burned it to the ground. through the streets of madrid mobs of vile assassins rushed wildly, calling out "down with the concordat! down with the tyrants of rome!" the anti-catholic press hurled maledictions upon the catholic faith. the espana declared that it would have no catholic sovereign; the nacion proposed alfred of england because he was a protestant. at seville the church of the capuchins was turned into a powder magazine. the old revolutionary aguirre abolished the religious communities, declaring that they were an integral and principal part of the shameful and oppressive regime which the nation had at last gloriously overturned. bishops were ordered to leave their dioceses, and to cease all pastoral visits. at the same time, while catholic churches were closed and religious communities dispersed, synagogues were inaugurated and protestant temples opened. in the meantime the politicians had been busy seeking a head for the government. the hopes of montpensier were easily shattered, and the king of portugal had refused to unite the spanish crown with his own. invitations were then sent to princes in germany and italy, especially to the duke of aosta. some looked to don carlos, who was then known as the duke of madrid, and who would like to be king under the name of carlos vii. he had many partisans in navarre, in the basque provinces, and in catalonia. in his manifesto of june , , he wrote: "spain does not care to see the religion of our fathers outraged and insulted; and possessing in catholicity the real truth, she wishes to see that religion free to exercise her divine mission. spain is determined to preserve at any cost that catholic faith and unity, which are the symbol of our glories, the spirit of our laws, the bond of our people, and the blessing of our country. in spain through the tempest of the revolution many sad things have happened. but there are concordats which must be respected and faithfully executed." carlos vii. presented himself in the name of god and of justice; but napoleon iii. plotted secretly against him; the masonic bodies of europe fought him; the catholic powers abandoned him; and the revolutionaries in control of spain refused him; so that all his efforts were in vain. _amadeus of savoy chosen king of spain._ the next six years found unhappy spain delivered up to every excess of demagogy and disorder. on february , , the cortes met at madrid for the purpose of drawing up a constitution, which was finally completed and published on june of the same year. general serrano was made regent, while the government remained under the presidency of general prim. on november , , the cortes elected as king of spain, amadeus of savoy, duke of aosta, son of the king of italy. amadeus took possession of the throne in january, , but the rivalries of the various parties in the country, and the weak disposition of the king made his reign one of perpetual strife. the carlists under don carlos vii. took up arms and brought about a civil war in . finally, in amadeus, wearied out with a charge that was difficult principally because he permitted himself to be made the tool of the secret societies, renounced the crown on february , . [illustration: amadeus of savoy. duke of aosta, king of spain.] _spain again a republic._ for two years the country suffered under what purported to be a republican form of government. serrano and prim again came into prominence with their old hatred of religion and good order; but they were obliged to yield to the new dictators, salmeron, margal, and castellar. the new government elected a new cortes, and to that body the popular suffrage sent a man who was destined to aid the struggling church and bring back a semblance of peace to spain. this was don antonio canovas de castillo, an old statesman who had served already in the battles of his country. _canovas de castillo._ it was in the midst of these disorders, in the face of adventurers ready to offend all the great principles of social life, liberty, property and religion, and all natural and constitutional rights, that canovas found a role worthy of his character. he grew powerful in that struggle for the defence of christian society. he stood almost alone in the opposition; but his energy was indomitable, and his courage almost amounted to rashness as he set out to give battle to the secret societies, to masonry and to the international whose titled members filled the parliament. as he ascended the tribune he heard the murmurs around him telling him that he was already hated. but his courage gave him words. he was called a doctrinaire. "a doctrinaire!" he said. "but who is not a doctrinaire? is there anyone who does not profess some doctrine, either good or evil? as for myself, i know that my doctrine is good; it is the christian doctrine, and i am proud to declare that i put aside the enjoyments of life as an end of existence, holding for certain that a supreme justice awaits all men at the doors of death. the individual who faces the inevitable afflictions of life, its maladies and its miseries, if you limit his aspirations to the times in which he lives, he becomes a foe of discipline; he carries his negations, not to heaven, which does not exist for him, but to everything which proves an obstacle to his ambitions, to country, family, and society, to destroy them. he becomes an international. "reactionary you call me! there is no one who in these days of trouble ought to bear that name better than i. i have heard that the senors, margal and castellar, were reactionaries; and the successor of proudhon, who has written his diabolical gospel, chaudrey himself, he was shot as a reactionary by the commune of paris. you are preaching social and economical emancipation to the masses; but what obstacle has the workman from performing his labors freely? you promise social liquidation, the revision of property and of public fortune and their better division. what good reasons, political, historical or philosophical do you bring to support these theories? are you bound to accept as gospel truth, every idea that rises in the minds of men? must you take every man as a messiah who proclaims himself an apostle or a prophet? if you do so, you will rob the state of all security, society of all stability, history of all solidity; and if you are indifferent, the philosophic theorizers will soon plunge the land into a torrent of blood." [illustration: antonio canovas del castillo. conservative prime minister.] canovas was listened to in silence, and his auditors uttered no protest; but they remained unchanged. four years of republican rule ruined the country; liberty was betrayed by a license which permitted everyone to live according to his own caprice. religion, buffeted and persecuted, its temples and property confiscated, its ministers proscribed, the public safety destroyed, with pillage unpunished in the cities conflagrations started in the country places, were the fruits of the new ideas which reigned in the high places of the state. valencia, grenada, and seville became principalities, created parliaments, frontiers, custom houses, coined monies, and levied taxes; it was a form of anarchy. carlism took up arms again; cuba revolted; and the government found itself powerless to bring matters to a peaceful condition. in its anxiety the country looked to canovas de castillo. to those who spoke of insurrection he answered: "let us wait; there is no need of bloodshed." on december , , he appeared at the head of the troops at sagonta, and proclaimed alphonso xii. as king. the news spread quickly, and was accepted as a signal of deliverance. there was no resistance; the old government was gone; and the cortes was dispersed. _canovas in power._ canovas was at once recognized as the representative of the absent king, and the country was ready to obey his directions. armed with this power, he set to work to put the country in order. he exiled zorilla, the chief of the demagogues, he banished the revolutionaries and expelled the teachers of disorder, who had the impudence to call themselves "the intellectuals." as the constitution was but the legalization of tyranny, he drew up another, in which catholic principles were respected. the moment had come for inaugurating an era of peace. his ministry again declared that "the catholic religion is the religion of the state," though it professed a tolerance for dissident sects. the monastic orders were received back into the land; churches were restored, the clergy received as much of the ecclesiastical property as had not been absolutely alienated. the carlists were pacified, and the whole country once more brought within the bonds of patriotic union. it was unfortunate that this great statesman, who had placed alphonso xii. upon the throne, and watched over the first years of the present king alphonso xiii., was assassinated by an anarchist, august , . _spain in the twentieth century._ during the regency of maria christina, and the reign of her son, alphonso xiii., the church was not at first openly attacked, although various legislative measures have been proposed to cripple the religious orders and deprive the clergy of all authority in matters of education. [illustration: alfonso xii., king of spain.] there were difficulties in recent years, but while the conservatives ruled under senor maura, or even the liberals under sagasta, the danger of any serious conflict was not imminent. but when the liberals in were led by moret, the rights of the church began to feel the first signs of disrespect. the difficulties aroused by the new government concerned chiefly civil marriages, cemeteries, the toleration of non-catholics, and the religious orders. previously civil marriages were recognized as valid only between such persons as would make a declaration that they were not catholics. count romanones, the minister of justice, caused the suppression of such declaration, thus introducing civil marriages even between careless catholics. the bishops protested, but in vain; and the bishop of tuy was even cited to court for the openness of his language. _canalejas._ after the fall of moret, his successor, canalejas, hastened to urge oppressive measures against the church. senor canalejas was well known ever since for his anti-clerical tendencies, and had more than one conflict with the vatican apropos of the dispersion of the religious orders. when he succeeded to the post of premier, it began to be evident that he would forthwith proceed to laicise spain according to his old vow. it had always been the policy of canalejas to settle old scores with the holy see, and in doing so he descended to many of the brutalities that characterized bonaparte in his dealings with pius vii. king alphonso proved a docile tool, and offered no resistance when ordered to sign any decree, however adverse to catholic interests. the first object of the canalejas ministry was to be the revision of the concordat. the ambassador to the vatican, senor ojeda of perpinan, was charged to place before his eminence cardinal merry del val, the secretary of state of his holiness, the desire of the spanish government to treat the question. the holy see replied that it was ready to enter on the matter, as it had done with preceding cabinets. hence, to make a practical beginning, it offered on its own initiative, the four concessions agreed to in , but which were not ratified by the spanish cortes, owing to the fall of the maura ministry. [illustration: canalejas.] these concessions were as follows: the suppression of all religious houses in which the community did not number twelve, with the exception of a few agreed upon with the government; the authorization of the government was to be obtained before a new religious house could be founded; strangers wishing to establish religious institutions in the country should first become naturalized as spanish citizens; finally, the religious should be subject to the impost duties in accordance with the fiscal laws, like all other citizens. the spanish government was not satisfied with these concessions, and expressed a desire for still others. the holy see yielded even then, and set to work to examine the situation and to study all possible concessions. while matters thus stood in abeyance, the spanish government suddenly, without warning or intimation, proceeded to settle the questions without the concurrence of the holy see. a royal decree was issued with the intention of enforcing the royal order of , whereby religious communities would be obliged to fulfil certain formalities before they could obtain legal existence and recognition. this royal order had never been enforced because it had not been agreed upon by both parties. the holy see protested in an official note to the government of madrid, and requested that the matter be suspended pending the negotiations already going on between the vatican and spain. the answer of the government, only a few days later, was the passing of a new decree giving free practice to alien religions. as this was also one of the subjects under discussion, the holy see again protested. the government, however, was not yet satisfied, and accordingly in the following speech from the throne, uttered many anti-clerical notes, especially its determination to put forward the projected law against the religious orders. the holy see, in the face of these violations of diplomatic procedure, declared that if the government continued to carry on its unilateral measures, it would be useless and impossible to proceed with the negotiations. but the spanish government only replied that it could not recall the measures it had already passed. by this trick canalejas hoped to extend the rule of the civil power over a matter which pertains to mixed questions, and this in open contempt of the concordat and the most elementary laws of diplomacy. it hoped to create the impression that the holy see yields nothing, and in that way place it in the unfavorable light of being blindly obstinate. moreover, it strove to place the holy see in a position so humiliating that it would be obliged to reject its own overtures and accept whatever the opposition might grant. he hoped to discourage the protests of catholic spain by rendering the attitude of the vatican ridiculous. canalejas prided himself upon being the champion of freedom of conscience. it was a play to the gallery in the hope of gaining popular encouragement from abroad. it was an effort to stir up antipathy to the holy see and embittering public opinion against it. the game of the premier was detected, and he at once began to complain of the intransigent attitude of the holy see, and accused the holy father of an intention to threaten. he spoke of "justice" and the "defence of the rights of spain." he deprecated any idea of violating the concordat or of wishing to break with the vatican. his whole policy in fact was but a miserable attempt to hoodwink the spanish people. the vatican, in the meantime, demanded a withdrawal of the obnoxious laws until the negotiations already begun should be terminated. the government in answer played the role of offended innocence, spoke of the tyranny of rome, and lauded the "heroes" who were fighting for a liberal and independent regime. hence the interviews with paid newspaper correspondents who could place the position of the ministry in a favorable light before the world. the spanish nation, however, could not be brought to see any truth in the statements of canalejas, or any sincerity in his intentions, as was evident from the universal demonstrations. in the meantime the holy father's demand that the obnoxious laws be suspended until the consultation in regard to the concordat should be ended, was received as an ultimatum at madrid. in answer thereto, canalejas determined to recall the ambassador accredited to the holy see. in consequence he directed a telegram to that effect to senor ojeda, who at once set out from the eternal city without fixing any day for his return, leaving the first secretary of the embassy as his representative. the papal secretary of state was informed that "the ambassador had been recalled to madrid to receive directions." this event, however, did not cause any great surprise in catholic circles. it was well known that the mere recall of an ambassador does not in itself always signify a definite rupture, although in this case it constituted at least a very serious step. _ferrer and the barcelona riots._ for a long time spain, like portugal, had been made the camping ground of so-called "progressives," men and women who set out with the theory that the world was wrong and they, the prophets appointed by "destiny" to set it right. among these self-constituted prophets of a new order was a certain francisco ferrer of guardia, the son of a catalonian farmer, who had acquired some wealth and influence by means that were shown to be disreputable. fired with an unholy hatred of country and church, his whole history is one of conspiracy and revolution. he had been actively connected with every effort to overturn established government since . on every occasion he was known to be in active correspondence with the leaders of those revolutions, and was connected with everything they did. , , , were years that stand out clearly marked in his career of disorder, down to the time when the anarchist morral attempted to assassinate king alphonsus xiii. after the movement of he fled to paris where he chose for his friends men like the jew, nacquet, who has the unsavory honor of introducing divorce into the french code. an enemy to the sacred institution of marriage, he soon abandoned his wife and three children, and shortly after sealed his desertion by a divorce. to support himself he devoted his time to the teaching of spanish, in which occupation he made the acquaintance of a middle-aged spinster named meunier. out of this friendship ferrer gained some pecuniary profit, for this woman on her deathbed left him a fortune amounting to $ , . with this fortune, after he had become affiliated with the grand orient of paris, ferrer returned to barcelona. it was here, in , that he inaugurated his notorious scheme of "the modern school," while at the same time he increased his fortune by gambling, and lived in a scandalous companionship with a woman of ill fame. in his "modern school" ferrer advocated every doctrine of disorder and insurrection. he chose for his teachers men well known for their anarchistic ideas. his object was to eliminate from the minds of the children every idea of religion, patriotism, and morality. it was not catholicity alone that he assailed, but everything that society stands for: the flag, country, marriage, property, family, and state. his school-books contained such teachings as these: "the flag is nothing but three yards of cloth stitched upon a pole;" or "the family is one of the principal obstacles to the enlightenment of men." other doctrines contained in his teaching are too indecent for reproduction. his principal of the girls' school was madame jacquinet, an anarchist who had been driven out of egypt, and who described herself as "an atheist, a scientific materialist, an anti-militarist, and an anarchist." another of his professors was that mateo morral who attempted to kill the king on his wedding day. another was leon fabre, one of the leaders in the barcelona riots. the schools of ferrer increased in various districts of catalonia, until about , nearly children were receiving his instructions. in the spring of , he went to london, where he lived in company with the ex-school mistress. it was while in england that the first signs of discontent in catalonia began to manifest themselves. the war in morocco demanded soldiers for its prosecution, and on hearing that the government was about to make a requisition in catalonia, ferrer, on june , suddenly left england and hurried back to barcelona. there he again entered upon his campaign of revolutionary teaching, inflaming the minds of the people against the government which had the hardihood to ask soldiers for a foreign war. his teaching had its effect. on july , barcelona broke out into open revolt. there were only soldiers in the town to meet the assaults of the rioters. the general strike ordered by the workingmen's associations crippled all means of trade and commerce. the mobs first assailed the banks and stores, but finding them too strongly guarded turned their attention elsewhere. the city was placed under martial law, and the small detachment of troops were divided where the danger seemed most imminent. there was no thought of the churches, convents, and religious houses. mr. andrew shipman, in his exposé of the case for mcclure's magazine, describes the horrors of the few days that followed. "the day of july was a ghastly one, filled with smoke, murder, and terror. the kerosene can was used after looting had secured every valuable article, and before midnight the mob had attacked and burned some twenty-two institutions in the newer and outer part of barcelona. the police pursued them as best they could; but the revolutionists were divided by their leaders into sections, attacking churches, schools, and houses simultaneously at remote distances from one another. during the night the king and ministry, who were communicated with by cable--for all telegraph lines were cut--suspended the constitutional guarantees, leaving the city and province in an actual state of war. "all day on the th the burning, looting, and destruction of churches, convents and schools went on; but by nightfall the troops had broken some of the barricades, and began to subdue some sections of the rioters. on thursday, the th, they had the rioting under control, and the revolt was crushed. on friday the roving bands of anarchists, rioters, and idlers were entirely stopped, and the next day street traffic began again. "it is sickening to tell of the savagery of the mob. even the dead nuns were dragged from their coffins and paraded with revolting and obscene orgies, and then thrown into the gutters. clerical teachers in the schools were stripped, tortured and shot. even little children were not spared. churches that had stood as monuments from the days of the crusades were destroyed; while everything valuable was plundered from them, and from the schools and religious houses. they even stole the clothes and petty jewelry of the girls in the boarding schools." immediately after the cessation of hostilities the arrest and punishment of the ring leaders were begun. among those arrested was francisco ferrer, who was tried by a court-martial, found guilty of rebellion and treason, and, on october , , was executed. although the trial was fair, and has been officially declared such by canalejas, a man who holds no friendship for the causes of catholicity and spanish right, nevertheless the news of ferrer's execution raised a commotion throughout the world. strangely enough the odium of the act was saddled directly upon the catholic church, against which the secular press delivered itself of diatribes full of bitterness. the fact seemed to be forgotten, or concealed, that the church had no more to do with the execution than an infant just born. in fact the holy father himself had written in terms of clemency; but his advices were disregarded. the matter was purely a political one, the case of a convicted revolutionist, found guilty by one of the fairest courts in the world, and upon the most disinterested testimony. happily the better instincts of civilization soon awoke to the real character of the whole proceeding, and the church was exonerated among good men from any complicity, however just, in the death of the traitor. chapter ix. the crisis in portugal. portugal has never yet recovered from the disasters which crushed it at the end of the sixteenth century. at the end of the eighteenth it was already in a state of decadence, which followed principally on the ruin of the marvelous empire of the indies, won by vasco de gama, albuquerque, and juan de castro, the subjection of portugal to england by the treaty of methuen, and finally in a moral abasement such as the times were then producing in france and all countries affected by the french revolution. this decadence was easily favorable to the reign of the sophists, the encyclopaedists and other open or secret enemies of religion. it was in portugal that the notorious pombal exercised his power by a brutal expulsion of the jesuits, who had brought so much glory to their fatherland by their missionary successes in brazil, paraguay and india. pombal had misused the resources of portugal, leaving that little nation a prey to a profound demoralization, which betrayed itself especially in the higher classes of society. when the french revolution broke out, portugal was weakened by its economic dependence on england, a country which took away the wines and olives, and flooded the land with its own industrial products. in this way the triumphal progress of the french armies placed portugal in a very delicate position. it became a question of following england, and inviting the wrath of the french, or of yielding to napoleon with the consequent certainty of invasion and ruin. [illustration: manuel ii.] the prince regent of portugal at the time was john vi. of braganza, who was enjoined by napoleon to close his ports to the english, and to expel all english persons residing in the country. upon the refusal of the regent, napoleon sent general junot with an army against portugal, and john vi. in his terror embarked with his court for brazil. the fortunes of the portuguese throne were diversified from that time until the present. after the flight of the regent, john vi., the country was governed some years by the brother of napoleon, king joseph bonaparte. when the french were driven out by wellington and moore, the throne reverted to the house of braganza, but remained under the control of the english lord beresford, governing in the name of the absent regent, then exiled in brazil. in , the regent, upon the death of his imbecile mother, maria i., succeeded to the throne. in the cortes adopted a constitution, and the king, john vi., returning from brazil in , swore to observe it, accepting it for portugal and brazil. in john vi. died, and the portuguese crown should descend in the regular line to his eldest son, dom pedro, then reigning in brazil. as emperor of the latter country, he could not at the same time be king of portugal. hence, in , he renounced his claim to the portuguese throne in favor of his daughter, maria da gloria, a child of seven years. the regency for the child was conferred upon the brother of dom pedro, the exiled dom miguel, who returned upon invitation for that purpose. the latter, however, recalling the laws which prohibited succession to the throne to the female children, while a brother of the preceding monarch or a son remained, contrived to place himself upon the throne. dom pedro, in anger at the event, returned to portugal in , after abdicating the brazilian empire in favor of his son, dom pedro ii., and began a war with his brother, in favor of the deposed maria da gloria. in , dom miguel was defeated and forced to leave portugal. thenceforth, the portuguese crown descended by succession to dom pedro v., who succeeded his mother, maria da gloria in and reigned until ; louis i., from to ; carlos i., from to , when he was assassinated. he was then succeeded by manuel ii., the present unhappy victim of the revolution of . [illustration: teofile braga, provisional president of the portuguese republic.] the revolution of was especially marked for its violence. bishops and priests were imprisoned, and men of very questionable virtue were put in their places. ecclesiastical property was confiscated, for which indemnity was promised, but never accorded. convents were suppressed and the religious persecuted. the sacred rites in the administration of the sacraments were regulated by the civil procedure. only the death of the tyrant, maria da gloria, brought some relief to the church. the history of portugal for many years has been a story of gradual decadence. the secret societies aided by english encouragement have honeycombed the country until the terror of the lodges invaded every institution and home in the land. a dynasty represented by a king like carlos i., who showed himself utterly incapable of manly feelings or kingly instincts, gave color to the evil machinations of the hypocritical crew who love to feast upon the decay of ancient glory. _assassination of carlos i._ on the first day of february, , a terrible event horrified the world. in the afternoon of that day carlos i., the king of portugal, and his son luis, the heir apparent, were assassinated, as they were returning with their family to the royal palace at lisbon. the conspirators had shot their victims. queen amelia courageously shielded her loved ones with her own body, but in vain. if she herself was spared it was not through any pity on the part of the regicides, who would have stricken her as fiercely, if they had not believed they had extinguished the royal line in the blood of the king and his children. for the time being, however, the hopes of the revolutionists were not realized, and the monarchy yet lived in the person of the younger son. the blood of the victims, in fact, seemed to have infused new virtue into the portuguese people, who in the horror of the royal tragedy, and the pity aroused for the remainder of the family, tried to forget the past with its faults, and sustained the crown. the younger son, dom manuel, a young man of eighteen, was proclaimed king, in the gloomy afternoon of that sad day, with the title of manuel ii. his proclamation to the people made mention of the "abominable crime," declared his adhesion to the constitution, and promised his every effort for the welfare of his country and the affection of his people. manuel was not educated for the throne, and now under the horror of the awful murder, and with the heavy burden of an unexpected royalty, he made every sacrifice to bring about a thorough pacification. in the two years of his reign manuel appeared to be, but was not, the ruler. seven ministries succeeded one to another in the government, all of them under the influence of one determination: to hush up as far as possible the assassination of the former king. it would not do to divulge the mysterious connection between the revolutionary regicides and the secret societies. the first ministry was conservative, but it was quickly driven out of power, to be succeeded by the party of the left. the door was thus opened to the republicans. already in secret they had manifested their power; they had organized plots against individuals, conspiracies against the monarchy, and violent measures against the church and religion. manuel ii., as yet too young to give a strong impress to his regime, made close relations with england and france. at home, unhappily, he fell under the secret and malign influence of the very men who had assassinated his father. in the speech from the throne, delivered on september , , at the opening of the cortes, he betrayed his subjection to the sectaries who surrounded his throne. the minister teixeira de sousa deceived the king in the anti-clerical struggle against the religious orders. his promises were only a sop thrown to the revolutionaries to calm their anger, but they signified that the last blow was being prepared to destroy the monarchy, since the catholic people showed themselves friendly to it inasmuch as it held out the only guarantee of peace and security. _revolution always active._ in the meantime the republicans were active, building up their forces, and gaining over the army and navy by their promises and insinuations. portugal had forgotten the old traditions which inspired camoens, the greatest of her poets, to sing the memory of those kings who made the name of portugal glorious in far-off lands. the modern muse of portuguese song is represented by a renegade, guerra junqueiro, who reviled the ancient glories of his country, and now a demoralized sense sees only the glory of the regicide and the license of anarchy. the proclamation of the new republic in portugal followed a military pronunciamento of the type that obtained formerly in uncivilized countries, a manifesto of the army and navy rather than of the people. the new political institution with a poet for its president is the fruit of the revolt of insubordinate officials armed for the assassination of their superiors, and of all who would dare to remain faithful to their oath and to their flag. the horde of pretorians, janizaries, and other instruments of tyranny, meant only the momentary preponderance of military power, the followers of a few agitators, the illuminati who relied more on the sharpness of the bayonets than on the justice of any reasons they might adduce. the european and often the american press viewed the whole disgraceful affair with favor. the daily reviews of the situation spoke in glowing terms of the "pacific and honest" event at lisbon, while breaking into tirades against the wickedness of the religious. [illustration: costa.] certain it is that on the night of october , , while the king was at lisbon for the purpose of receiving with due honor the new president of brazil, marshal hermes de fonseca, then visiting portugal, the republican conspirators decided to anticipate the stroke of revolt by imprisoning the king and preventing him from flying to the northern provinces. the vice-admiral, candido reis, awaited with his squadron in the bay of lisbon, and gave the signal to turn the fire of the cannon upon the royal palace. on land the sixteenth regiment of infantry killed the royal officials, joined with the revolutionary mob, took possession of the arsenal in order to arm the rebels, and launched the war against their sovereign and the throne. manuel, taken unawares, found himself practically alone. while his uncle, the duke of porto, attempted a desperate defence by placing himself at the head of the mountain artillery, and was constrained to retreat, the young king, abandoned by his councillors and his courtiers, the friends of his brief day of power, determined to shed no unnecessary blood and took refuge in exile. [illustration: soldiers arresting religious.] there was indeed a moment when the tide of revolution seemed forced back towards failure, and in that moment candido reis, the principal instigator of the revolution, committed suicide. the news only aroused the mob to increased fury, and sent them burning with anti-clerical hatred against the helpless religious. the horrors and the excesses of that oppression have been demonstrated by the numberless murders and by the horrible cruelties practised upon the defenceless victims of "liberty." it is probable that the complete story of the persecution inflicted upon the religious of portugal will never be known. some of the victims have disappeared as completely as if the earth had swallowed them. but the history of the survivors is full enough in its appalling details to give an idea of the utter barbarity of the oppressors and the ignorance which impelled them to action. against the jesuits the portuguese secret societies have entertained an abiding hatred ever since the days of the infamous pombal. long before the late revolution the writer visited the ancient church of the jesuits in ponte delgado in the azores islands, and there beheld the evidences of vandalism perpetrated years before upon altars and shrines that have not their equal in the world. naturally the fury of the mob, in the recent upheaval, sought out these fathers as a worthy object of brutality, and inflicted upon them indignities with a savagery worthy of the inhabitants of the fiji islands. three of the great jesuit institutions met with especial attention, those of quelhas, barro and campolide. when the revolutionists stormed the first of these establishments, they reported a story that the priests had fired bombs upon the soldiers, and then retreated into underground passages to hide. the facts of the case, as it later developed, showed that the house at quelhas had actually been shut by the government and deserted by the jesuits. nevertheless the story of the bombs and the underground passages went the round of the press of the world. these underground passages, by the way, were shown to be little sewer conduits about eight or ten inches in diameter, so that it would be extremely difficult for even the most ascetic jesuit father to enter, much less to live in them. the college at barro was one of the finest in portugal, and it is a noteworthy fact in connection with it, that on the very last day of his reign the young king had signed a decree closing that novitiate. in the house on the day of its attack there were eighty-six priests, brothers, novices and students, all members or intending to be members of the society of jesus. it is well known that the lower class of the portuguese who fell under secret society influence were superstitious to an incredible degree. hence, when it became noised abroad that there were strange apparatus in the college, such things as microscopes, x-rays, radium, and electrical appliances, the excited mob held up its hands in holy horror. the jesuits who had such things, and talked in such learned language could surely be nothing less than hobgoblins, unnatural sprites and wicked spirits. the sentiment was fostered and encouraged in them by the unscrupulous spirits of discontent, who knew that anarchy could never prosper while learning and virtue remained unabused. on october , the college was sacked, and its inmates marched out. after a humiliating journey on the railroad, they were finally imprisoned in the fortress of caxeas. father torrent, a learned scientist of the band, was in a few days liberated as a french citizen. the college at campolide, the glory of portuguese educational institutions, shared the same fate. its fathers were arrested and led away to swell the number of prisoners at caxeas. the collection of laboratory apparatus, one of the finest in europe, was delivered up to the fury of a mob, who could no more appreciate their worth than the savages of africa. the magnificent library of , volumes contained rare works that can never be duplicated. the wave of indignation and contempt that followed in the whole world when the true nature and character of the revolutionists began to be known, has urged the portuguese controllers to excuse and palliate their acts. when the nuns were driven from their convents they were led to the vile quarters of the arsenal where their humiliations were continued. it was said that this was done to protect them from the mob; yet it is now known that the mob had no intention of sacking the convents; this work was done almost altogether by the soldiers and sailors. in fact when a few soldiers guarded the irish convent at belim, the dominican convent at benfrica, and the irish dominican monastery at corpo santo, the mob had nothing to do, and these convents remained untouched. when the nuns were taken from their convents they were piled like criminals into any handy vehicle, and then driven in the midst of a shouting, hooting mob along the streets. the soldiers who marched with them, as is shown in the many photographs taken of the event, laughed with idiotic bravado, and assumed as much importance as if their delicate, helpless charges were so many fierce warrior captives taken on the field of battle. in the arsenal several hundreds of them were huddled together in one large room. here they were visited by senhor affonso costa, the minister of justice, who swaggered about among the gentle-minded ladies, roared at them, and glared with his magnetic eye. for three hours he questioned and insulted them, while a score of attendant press agents took down his magnificent bravadoes to be embellished for the press of the day. except for the misery of the poor sisters, the whole scene was worthy of one of sullivan's comic operas, calling for laughter where it did not inspire contempt. this is the portuguese republic, the government to which the people of portugal have been consigned. its direction is plainly indicated from the fact that one of its first proposed laws is that which permits of free divorce. the republic of portugal has one rival on earth, that of the west indies, to which people, laughing, give the name of hayti. it would be well in speaking of these events to reproduce the letter written by the rev. provincial of the portuguese jesuits, and addressed to his fellow countrymen. the letter was suppressed in portugal, but was published later in england. it is as follows: to my countrymen: the prolonged period of distress which elapsed while the fathers and brothers of the society of jesus were quitting portugal to take the road of exile, being driven from their beloved native land on the charge of abominable crimes, whereas their life had been wholly spent in self-sacrifice on behalf of others, whilst i was moreover occupied with the care of my spiritual children, having to determine for each a new scene for the exercise of his zeal--all this, i say, occupied me to such an extent that hitherto i have been unable to find time to address this protest to my countrymen, which, however, is demanded of me as a relief for my own grief and by my duty as a christian and a religious whose office lays upon him this responsibility. in this, my protestation and complaint, i shall speak only of those religious who, as members of the society of jesus, were subject to my jurisdiction, since for them alone was i responsible. i must, however, begin by saluting the glorious children of all religious orders whom we cherish and reverence as ennobled by their sufferings and their participation in the cross through insults, bondage, and even death itself, some of them having sealed a life of saintliness and self-devotedness with the testimony of their blood. but in thus solemnly addressing my country, i must, as a father, speak of my own well-beloved sons, expressing my grief on beholding what they suffer, and protesting their innocence of the charges brought against them. in this free country men who extol the spirit of liberty, and claim to be leaders of the principle of universal equality, have on the instant expelled from portuguese territory more than three hundred of their fellow citizens, spread amongst some score of houses in the motherland and colonies beyond the seas in asia, africa and oceania. this cruel act was executed without the victims being permitted to speak one word in their defence, no time being allowed them to carry away a stitch of clothing, their books or their papers, though these contained the fruit of active studies pursued for years. _spoliation._ in the name of liberty they have taken from us all that we possess, have seized our property and our houses, built with what by dint of careful economy has been saved out of the pensions of our pupils, or has been assigned by individuals and legally invested for the purpose in their own names. the college of campolide was established in by three english subjects in order to assist father rademaker in the development of education and material progress in portugal. the college of campolide was accordingly for a long period english property and flew the british flag. later, after the death of these persons, the trust was dissolved, and campolide, with all its belongings, was acquired by other individuals, portuguese or foreign. one of these, father bramley, now in india, has, of course, claimed his share. i do not know why the portuguese partner cannot do the same, there being a fundamental law which absolutely prohibits the confiscation in all cases of property belonging to private citizens. since , when the possession of property in portugal was forbidden to religious orders, it has been the rule, as in england, that individuals alone could buy, sell or own such properties as were assigned by their legal owners to the use of jesuits or others. along with buildings and land was seized, likewise the furniture of our houses, comprising first-rate scientific collections in the museums, scientific institutes and laboratories of the colleges at campolide and s. fiel, where for more than half a century, by means of the monthly pensions of our boys, and the generosity of friends inspired by esteem and devotion, the intelligent and disinterested labors of our fathers and brothers had succeeded in accumulating valuable materials for study, which by every right were ours, and ours alone. our libraries disappeared in like manner during the same period, the store where our linen was kept, the private rooms themselves, in each of which could be found, besides a washstand and bed, only a writing table and a modest bookstand with a few books, the companions of our solitude--all were suddenly declared to be the property of the state. we ourselves, thus summarily and arbitrarily despoiled of everything, and turned out of our own doors, were led to prison by a throng of armed soldiers and civilians, amidst the insults and jeers of a mob long excited against us by the calumnies of a ribald press. those who, forewarned of these outrages, succeeded in making their escape, were hunted like wild beasts through fields and streets, some of them--as i know certainly in the case of six--were pursued with gun shots--in some instances their assailants spat in their faces. [illustration: a convent after being sacked.] yet these were men who had never made any appearance in politics, criminals of a novel species, who had renounced and sacrificed all that is attractive in human life to devote themselves, without thought of worldly recompense, to the education of youth in our schools, to preach the gospel to the heathen in our transmarine colonies, or to exercise every kind of priestly ministry, however hard and unattractive. against these men a disreputable press, which in any other country would be sternly repressed, though spreading vague and blustering charges, could not in any single instance succeed in proving, i will not say a solitary crime, but even a misdemeanor. yet such were the men who were clapped into gaols and dungeons as notorious criminals, exposed to barbarous sufferings, and for several days not even permitted any intercourse with one another. let it not be said that all this is but exaggeration prompted by my grief. what has been endured by our exiles and captives went far beyond my simple sketch. [illustration: arresting a priest.] in my own case--of which i may be allowed to speak--to say nothing of what the society of jesus has legitimately obtained through its work and administration, i had at least a right to what i duly inherited from my parents, with which i had acquired personal and landed estates, all registered in my name; yet i was forced to leave portugal without anything but the clothes on my back, and even these i owed to a friend, for i possessed no secular dress in which to make my escape. i had, moreover, no money in my pocket, save what was sent me by a stranger who knew me only by name and sight, and to whom in my exile i desire to testify my gratitude. _treatment in prison._ as to the sufferings of my beloved brethren i will only say that in the artillery barrack, which was under the control not of the military, but of the dregs of the populace, not even a spoon was given to the prisoners wherewith to eat their mess of food, that they were allowed to withdraw privately but once in eight hours, and poor invalids to whom such tyranny might prove fatal, were told that they only sought a pretext for retirement. at night the guards threatened to shoot anyone who attempted to get up. finally, these warders had the brutality to bring in abandoned women, but these were compelled to retreat before the calm and dignified bearing of my worthy brethren. as to their furniture, i will only say that afterwards when, being transferred to caxeas, they were there provided with a mattress laid on the ground, a hard bolster, and a single blanket, they thought themselves in comfort, by comparison. in a dungeon of the town hall, before their removal to the central prison of limovro, some of the captives were still worse treated, being crammed together, to the number of twenty-three, where there was scarce room for three or four, and they had for five days to breathe foul air, not being suffered to leave the chamber, and there being no ventilation save through one small aperture. i am well aware that many officers and soldiers, coming to know the captives, manifested towards them not only sympathy but respect. these kindly feelings, however, for which we all desire to record our heartfelt gratitude, did not hinder the sufferings endured during five whole weeks. _outlawed and exiled._ nor is this all. when after all these hardships and torments the provisional government set about executing the sentence of exile and outlawry against these portuguese subjects in whose breasts there dwelt and still dwells the most ardent affection for their beloved country, these men who had bereft us of everything, who had taken possession of our goods and land, did not hesitate to require that they who, by a special decree, were to be driven from portugal should pay for their own transport; and when one of our fathers ventured to tell one of the officers who was more exigent in this exaction, that we had no means of doing so, he was answered: "well, we shall see; when we squeeze you a bit, and you begin to fester, you'll find a way." money was soon forthcoming, for portugal is not yet entirely in the hands of a crew whose passions are aroused against persecuted innocence. many families contributed to supply funds for the journey, plentiful stores of provisions and clothing were furnished, and i was deeply moved to see many of my spiritual children reach foreign lands in the attire supplied by our well-loved scholars of campolide during their frequent visits to their persecuted masters. in spirit i salute these benefactors, and i shall never forget these young men who, without a hint from us, came to the succor of these poor sons of the society. but ere they took the road of exile there was reserved for them yet one more cruel humiliation. venerable elders, distinguished men of science, held in repute at home and abroad, religious venerated for their virtue, youths still almost boys, with innocence stamped on their features--all had to go to an anthropometric station and to be treated like notorious criminals, being described, photographed and measured in every detail, down to the joints of their fingers. the photographs then appeared in the newspapers, with the number assigned to each as to a convict. i cannot refrain from special protest against a proceeding so incredibly vexatious. one circumstance in the persecution yet remains to be exhibited. a decree with the force of law published by the provisional government on october revokes all exceptional legislation, and in its first article, no. , it assigns as the motive of such revocation that "there are now no permanent penalties of unlimited duration in the portuguese republic." but, strange to say, the law fulminated against the society of jesus is in flat contradiction to this declaration. against us has been issued an exceptional law, so odious that one is astounded to think that in the twentieth century it has been possible to institute in full vigor such draconian legislation, and to claim for it the attribute of most absolute despotism. as though it were not enough to show its palpable opposition to the liberal profession of the new republic, the sentence which condemns us to exile and deprives us of the rights of portuguese subjects is a permanent one, solemnly promulgated with the ruthless formula "for ever." such is the slight sketch of the tyrannies of which we have been the victims in the name of liberty. _the charges and their answers._ it will naturally be asked, what were our crimes? in the first place, it is passing strange that to this moment not a single offense has been alleged against us. the law of october assigns none, but appeals to the ancient obsolete legislation of pombal ( ) and aguiar ( ) it revokes hintese ribeiro's decree, and promulgates antiquated vexations by which to victimize us. on the other hand, public opinion--so-called--misled by the wild declamations of an irreconcilable press, never succeeded in formulating against us more than the vague charges devised by jacobin novelists. in spite of all researches in the columns of anti-jesuit journalism, or amongst the legends which circulate amongst the most credulous of my compatriots, i can find no accusation that does not fall under one of these six heads: . armaments and subterranean galleries. . wealth and fraudulent acquisition of inheritances. . inveigling youths to become jesuits. . secret associations. . political and anti-republican activity. . reactionary influence. in this dark hour, when with sad hearts we are all compelled to quit our beloved portugal, i owe to my country a categorical reply to these accusations of our persecutors. _ . armaments and subterranean galleries._ the answer is simple. we had no armaments whatever, nor in any of our houses were there subterranean passages by which to escape or communicate with others. [illustration: arresting a nun.] and yet, had it been otherwise, had we possessed such covered ways--what then? had we not a right in view of what had occurred? our conduct, though less frank and open, would have been at least more business-like, as was said a few weeks ago in the spanish parliament, by the premier canalejas, in regard of defensive works said to exist in some religious houses. how then, what happened at campolide, where the mob broke in, flooding corridors and private rooms, bursting open everything, throwing about books and papers, and threatening to shoot the unfortunate inmates? does not all this show that it would have been highly advantageous to have had some means of hindering the sack of the college until the public force could come to the rescue? in reality, however, there was nothing of the sort. in the whole building of campolide were only a couple of guns for purposes of sport, when our professors went for a fortnight's holiday to a country house at val de royal. moreover, these guns were not employed when the assault took place. what, then, of the shots fired from our residence at quelhas? these shots were the occasion for bitter calumnies against us, in an official note which has as yet not been contradicted by the provisional government. the general himself commanding at lisbon, who was appointed by the republic, acknowledged to the representative of the paris illustration that, as was clearly proved, none of us had any hand in anything so done. who it was that fired the shots, some being dressed in costumes found in our rooms, can easily be understood, especially when we know what occurred at campolide, where one of these pseudo-jesuits who fell to the shot of one of his comrades, was found under his cassock to be wearing his military uniform, betraying his true character. it is certain, moreover, that two days prior to the assault on the quelhas residence, all the fathers there had been arrested and imprisoned. as to the secret underground passages and communications by which these mythical jesuit riflemen made their escape, no one ever saw them to this moment. moreover, the general in command has likewise declared that there are no such subterranean works excepting narrow sewers. so much for quelhas. as to campolide, i may add that beneath the surface were cut various water channels, amongst them a fine cistern constructed by one of my predecessors as director of the college. but although these channels had been inspected and their real character understood, the anti-clerical press did not hesitate to produce a sketch of one of them and to style it "entrance to a subterranean." i confess that i had never thought i should one day be called upon to defend myself against the charge of such arsenals and ambushes. such arabian night tales, so frequent in the jacobin press, had often amused my brothers and myself, and when about a twelvemonth since terrible stories about an arsenal at campolide were being circulated, and a friend of mine who had recently been a minister of the crown, warned me that we should at last be obliged to provide against an assault i answered plainly that we would rather have our lives taken than take the lives of others. _ . wealth._ the belief in jesuit wealth was so deeply rooted in portugal as to be entertained not only by our enemies but even by our best friends. supposing this belief to be well-grounded, why should it make us criminals? it would be a strange measure to expel a man from his country merely because he possessed a large sum of money. but our reputed wealth was purely fabulous, without any foundation in fact. would that the society had actually in portugal abundant material resources, we should have no lack of good works on which to expend them for the good of our country. but we had no such resources. frequently after my appointment as superior i had a hard struggle against grievous difficulties to find means of supporting my subjects. so many are the misconceptions regarding jesuit property that with a view of dispelling them i long projected the course of lectures on the subject. i was, however, prevented from doing as i wished by the incognito in which i was placed by hintese ribeiro's decree. god knows what a mortification it was to me to have to assume a disguise imposed by law, but wholly repugnant to my own straightforwardness and natural ideas concerning truth as well as to the heartfelt love and admiration which i entertained for the society of jesus. this matter will require but a few words. if the government of the society is strictly monarchial, its administration is, on the contrary, extremely decentralized. each house is separately administered, and nothing can be more imaginary than the bottomless common purse which has inspired so many falsehoods. as a fact, if in portugal, thanks to the careful administration of their superiors, the jesuit houses have been free from debt, they have usually possessed few comforts, and have sometimes endured great hardships. residences subsisted merely upon stipends for masses and preaching, or alms spontaneously offered. in the colleges the great expenses required to provide our boys with board and lodging, with the comforts and amusements they enjoyed, and still more with what was required to keep abreast of modern educational developments. all this, i say, obliged us to interrupt our building works till the number of pupils should be much increased. it is remarkable that while by universal consent campolide ranked first in respect to board, tuition and hygiene as well as physical training, and while other colleges charged £ or £ per month, campolide never charged more than £ . in the provinces, at beira, s. fiel, giving the same education, long exacted only £ s.--only recently was the monthly fee raised to £ . among the recreations provided for our boys must not be forgotten the scientific excursions initiated at campolide two years ago by myself along with father luisier, for the benefit of the elder students who were about to finish their school course and proceed to the university, and were thus introduced to all branches of natural history. the public schools which adopted the same plan later on did but imitate us, and not so thoroughly. the anti-religious movement of having alarmed many families, so that the number of scholars decreased, it was found necessary to suspend operations. at a later period, when i myself was made rector of the college, i contrived to make considerable additions, but the troubles stirred up by the revolutionary press checked the work, which has been at a standstill for two years. such is the truth of our wealth in portugal. what am i to say of our seminary fund, that, i mean, which is devoted to the education of young men in the society? how many of our opponents have expended their eloquence in vigorous denunciation of our wealth, without reflecting on the circumstances under which our recruits are enrolled and trained! the training in the society is very slow; one who goes through the entire course is occupied in it for fifteen or even seventeen years. there are included the ascetical training of the novitiate, then the literary and philosophical and the theological, and as a rule there is introduced one of practical pedagogy for those who are to teach in the colleges. on the other hand, the great majority of vocations to the order were from the middle or lower classes, and the subjects had but little to obtain from their parents. [illustration: nuns arrested.] it thus resulted that for the heavy expenses necessary for this lengthy training of some two hundred priests and scholastics, about a hundred of whom were engaged in study at home or abroad, the sole resource was the fund established by some of our own members who had devoted their own fortunes to this very purpose. i can here testify that the vast majority of ours in portugal never gave aught to the society, either because they had nothing to give or because superiors would not permit them, on account of the poverty of their relatives. hence it resulted that the funds destined for the training and instruction of our young men were wholly inadequate, and opulent benefactors whose generosity might supply the deficit were but rare in our country, where wealthy catholics are few, and the fixed idea of jesuit wealth hinders even our best friends from allowing us to benefit even by the large sums spent upon charitable purposes. what, then, about our methods of acquiring inheritances? against this slander i protest with all my energy. the fantastic pictures, frequently drawn in lurid colors by our enemies, are mere repetitions of the time worn fables invented by pamphleteers. seldom indeed have legacies been bequeathed to us in portugal, and in two cases alone were they at all considerable. had they been more frequent we should have notably extended our propaganda, religious, educational, literary and likewise patriotic--both in our own country and its dominions over sea. how often in conversation with my brethren, when speaking of generous bequests made to the misericordias, and especially to that of o'porto, have i not remarked on the terrible outcry which would be aroused were any portion of such wealth to be assigned to works of the society of jesus. _ . inveigling youths to join the order._ never has it been thought blame-worthy for anyone to invite others, by word or writing, to join the association which he himself esteems, and whose prosperity he accordingly desires; a religious man has a right to recommend any who possess the requisite qualities to join his order, and serve god therein. i must, however, make an exception in the case of our society, which will doubtless astonish many. we have a special rule forbidding us to advise anyone definitely to join the society, or to do more than further what we believe to be a genuine vocation from god, without any particular determination. such i know was the conduct of all my brethren, and had they done otherwise they would not only have transgressed their rule, but, moreover, have acted foolishly. in fact, the first question put to a candidate for admission is whether he has been influenced by anyone in this way, it being certain that a youth so attracted would not persevere. in truth, life in the society demands such self-sacrifice, and obedience so perfect, that nothing but a genuine call from god can insure fidelity, no human influence will avail for perseverance. the long training, too, prior to the taking of final vows, affords such a guarantee of human liberty as there is in no other state of life, for during all this period--extending, as i have said, to fifteen or seventeen years--each of us may be released from the society, as he surely will be if he have not a real vocation. as a matter of fact, our enemies in portugal provided us with abundant arguments to refute this charge. for some weeks before the republic was proclaimed the revolutionary newspapers published various letters of one of our fathers to a young man who had intended for some time to join the society. these letters are models of prudence, moderation and spiritual honor, and whoever without prejudice or heed of the malicious comments in which they were embedded, will but study these harmless epistles, so worthy of a good religious, will find in them a conclusive answer to the slander against us. _ . our secret associations._ if there were any such amongst us would it not be somewhat curious to find that those who prosecute us on this account are amongst the most influential patrons of secret societies? however this may be, there is no accusation more utterly false than this. the institute and rules of the society are today--more than ever--open to all the world in every public library. it is true that since the society has assumed a kind of pseudo character in the eyes of the public and the law. but this was imposed upon us by statesmen who, though at the head of a catholic government, did not dare to grant to a religious order approved by the holy see that liberty given us even in protestant countries which have a true notion of freedom. we had therefore to assume the pseudonym of "association for faith and fatherland" ("associao fe e patria"). i must acknowledge that, threatened as we were with dispersion and banishment, we were but too glad to obtain this simulacrum of liberty, and to avail ourselves of any title under which we might devote ourselves to the utmost for the benefit of religion and of portugal. but, i repeat, it was unwillingly that we adopted this incognito, which moreover hoodwinked nobody. the actual republican government took possession of our own official catalogues, in which were recorded all our names and occupations. they may thus see that we never thought there was any reason to make a mystery of our existence or to shrink from letting it be known to the full that we bear a title which esteem next to that of christian, namely of religious of the society of jesus. _ . political and anti-republican activity._ opinions expressed in certain articles of the mensageiro whispers of later years concerning our share in the polemics of the newspaper named portugal, and innumerable fictions about the jesuits, on occasions of the late elections; such were the causes of the accusation that we meddled with politics. as for the mensageiro, its articles are open to all who choose to read them, and the doctrines there expressed as to the responsibility of the electorate in regard of legislation and its execution, as to the solidarity of the members of our party, its traditions, programme and political life, are after all only those which are common amongst every people with whom the principles of civic culture and the social obligations of catholics have not been so lamentably forgotten as with us. only those who realize how utterly all is ignored which has been ventilated in these subjects outside portugal, by episcopal pastorals, ecclesiastical instructions, and the zealous propaganda of the press, can explain the astonishment of many portuguese, to whom conclusions concerning morals and conduct which elsewhere were familiar to all seemed altogether novel. but however we may differ in regard of such matters, what kind of liberty would a country enjoy in which a theologian or moralist was not permitted to express the doctrines in which he believed or to write in periodicals on subjects of his special study? as to the journal portugal, a letter from its editor-in-chief published a few days ago may take the place of a reply. in it he declares that during the latest phase of the paper, precisely that in which it was most fiercely attacked for its polemical attitude, the society had no share whatever. in saying this i have no desire to shirk responsibility, or to express disapproval of the energy displayed by the catholic press. far from it. truth must be vigorously championed, and the more so in proportion as the enemies of religion claim for themselves unrestrained license of language and calumny. they cannot indeed be fought with their own weapons, which honor and christian charity forbid us to use, but at least they must be encountered with unflinching courage and resolute independence. a revolutionary journal lately published a letter of mine in which i asked a correspondent to interest himself in obtaining support for those responsible for the "portugal." i say nothing of the surreptitious publication of a private letter, nor of the insidious comments by which it was accompanied. i would only observe that the interest which i exhibited in this undertaking shows no more than that its general drift was in accord with my own views. is there any offense in this?--even were it a fact that the articles written during the last stage of this newspaper were in reality ours. finally, as regards the last election, i must absolutely deny the fables circulated concerning my brethren by an unscrupulous press. i say nothing of the silly tales of jesuits, crucifix in hand, threatening all who voted for the government with everlasting damnation. such nonsense proves only how little those who spread these stories know about us. more than this, not one of my brethren took part in any electoral propaganda. some catholics even will be surprised to learn that very few of us recorded our votes, this abstention being justified in most cases for serious reasons, by which alone can it be justified in such circumstances. as to advice given by us when privately consulted, and in matters of conscience, i should not say anything, but for the factitious indignation exhibited by the hostile press, and its misrepresentation of facts divorced from their circumstances. the last government of the monarchy from its commencement not only showed itself distinctly anti-clerical, but after variously infringing the rights of the church, began a persecution of religious orders, affording clear evidence to all who did not choose to shut their eyes that their purpose in regard of these was no other than that exhibited in the last decrees issued in the king's name the day previous to his deposition, and exaltingly proclaimed in the public press immediately after the revolution. now, i would ask, what catholic priest wishing to do his duty in face of such a state of things would not uplift his voice against so manifest a danger and with the baptist denounce what he holds to be unlawful? on this particular question of politics, as on many others, i was honored with gratuitous slander by the enemies of the society, who attributed to my government of the province a new direction given to the society in portugal. the truth is that neither as superior nor as counsellor had i ever to interfere, as these insidious writers pretended, with the conduct of ours. the policy of the society of jesus at the present day, as it has ever been, is that expressed in the lord's prayer, "thy kingdom come, thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven." the enemies of god and his church cannot forgive our combat for this ideal and our constant endeavor for its realization. hence the implacable hostility wherewith we have ever been assailed, with charges the most diverse which in various times and circumstances have been found serviceable against us. in every case our adversaries have proved to be those of god and the catholic church. what is now in progress proves the truth of what i say. it is alleged that we jesuits are the worst enemies of the republic, and must accordingly be treated with exceptional severity. this is a mere pretence. the society has nothing to do with republican institutions as such. when absolute monarchies were the rule throughout the civilized world, the foremost jesuit writers already taught, on grounds of philosophy and divinity, the fundamental principles of democracy, and at the present day none of our provinces are more prosperous or enjoy greater liberty than those established under republics; it will be sufficient to name that of the united states. there is, therefore, no such opposition as is pretended between jesuits and republics. it will, however, be objected that in portugal at least we are anti-republicans. but, in the first place, wherever it is situated, the society, like the catholic church, inculcates loyalty to whatever form of government is duly established. and portugal was a monarchy. a still more powerful reason precluded our sympathy with the republican movement in portugal, namely, that the republic as exhibited in our national history was not the republic imagined by speculative sociologists. it is republicans who make a republic, and who were these in portugal? with few very rare exceptions they were the declared enemies of religion, either avowed unbelievers, or at best wholly indifferent to all beyond politics. could we, without being false to our most cherished principles, affect sympathy with such a party? they themselves undertook to show by their actions that we were not wrong; just as the last government under the monarchy clearly showed by its action that we were not mistaken in its regard. i must, however, acknowledge that for all my dread of the revolutionary intolerance of these advocates of liberty, my simplicity was at fault, since i never dreamed of what we are witnessing today. _ . reactionary influence._ as it seems to me, i have replied to all the pretexts alleged to justify all the arbitrary tyranny, the spoliations and outrages against liberty of which my religious brethren and myself have been the victims. it remains only to speak of what is proclaimed as the final motive of the laws enacted against us, that our influence is reactionary. well! our enemies are right! if this reactionary spirit signifies fidelity and love for the catholic church, self-renunciation for christ's sake, earnest endeavor that no jot or tittle of his law be neglected; if it means that we have striven to produce in portugal a body of active and fearless catholics, who will not confine themselves to prayers, but will labor by word and deed to renew all things in christ; that to this end we employ every means within our reach, the pulpit, the confessional, lectureships, the press, in order thus to promote the glory of god and salvation of souls--then in truth we are reactionaries, and guilty of the offense laid to our charge. strange offense indeed, in a country where on every hand we hear our enemies proclaiming liberty of conscience, of speech, of the press! strange offense of which to be accused by men who denounced the monarchy for suppressing freedom, while in the columns of their newspapers and the rhetoric of their meetings they were violently attacking authority and its representatives; an offense to be punished by those who were never weary of declaring that every man must be allowed to propagate and fight for his own ideas. yet what else did we do? were we ever known to enforce the agreement of others or to avenge ourselves for their disagreement by inflicting upon them what we have ourselves endured--arrest, imprisonment, confiscation, banishment? no, it cannot be said that such conduct was ever ours; it is peculiar to those false prophets of liberty who, instead of responding with reason and argument, seek to reduce us forcibly to silence, or to crush us with insult and declamation. * * * * * transcriber's notes: punctuation and spelling errors repaired. p. xvi, "transcendental and the empiric" original reads "empyric." p. , "abbe st. cyran" original reads "abbie." p. - , original shows block quote as one continuing paragraph, not breaking for each article; retained. p. , "pius vii. embarked" original reads "pius vi. embarked." p. , "j. archeveque de corinthe," original reads "d corinthe." p. - , no "art. " in the original. p. "three months relay" changed to "three months delay." five cases of buonaparte (p. vi, , [ ], ) changed to more frequent bonaparte ( ). p. , "shipman, in his exposé" original reads "expose." p. , "obsolete legislation of pombal" original reads "pomal." the following variant spellings were standardized: abbè, abbé and abbie to abbe; emigre, emigrè, and emigré to émigré; florèal and floreal to floréal; jaures to jaurès; protegé to protege; anti-christian(ism) to anti-christian(ism); anticlerical/ to anti-clerical/, leipsic and leipsig to leipzig, licence to license, offence to offense, salzbourg to salzburg, saviour to savior, texeira to teixeira, souza to sousa, tolentino to tollentino, tranquillity to tranquility, ultra-montainism to ultramontainism, defense to defence (except where "defense" occurred in the title of a referenced document), rouès to roués, despatch to dispatch. both advisers and advisors, monarchial and monarchical, monsignor and monseigneurs, savoy and savoie (an area within savoy), braunsberg and brauensberg, czar and tzar were used in this text. speak without being afraid that the wind will carry away your words and sow them in fresh soils. --_zola._ the church in politics-- americans, beware! a lecture delivered before the independent religious society, orchestra hall, chicago, sunday at a. m. [decoration] by m. m. mangasarian _the mass of the law-abiding and respectable citizens is virtually agnostic. where its agnosticism is not reasoned out, it is habitual and unconcerned. the orderly, honest, duty-doing people who never think about religion one way or the other form by far the largest class in the community._ --_david christy murray._ the church in politics-- americans, beware! in his letter on religion in politics, president roosevelt takes the position, i believe, that we may look forward to the day when a catholic, for instance, may be nominated and elected to the presidency of the united states of america. he also intimates that to refuse to vote for a catholic on account of his religion would be bigotry! the lutheran, baptist and presbyterian bodies have, if i am not mistaken, officially protested against the president's pronouncement. these protestant churches declare that it is not fair to call them bigots for objecting to a catholic for president. speaking only in the capacity of a private citizen, it is my opinion that, according to the constitution, a catholic is not eligible to be a candidate for president. neither is a sincere and consistent christian of any other denomination. nor is a believing jew. the constitution explicitly ignores the religious interests of the nation; it does not even so much as mention the name of god. had the document been created by infidels it could not have been more indifferent to the subject of church or religion. the constitution is a downright secular instrument, having as its end one, and only one, object--the rights of man. but the supreme end of the church is god, not man; or man for god. there is then, between the church and the constitution, an irreconcilable difference. it is because of this that the united presbyterians, for instance, who have a membership of about a million, refuse even to take part in elections, much less to accept office under a government that deliberately ignores the christian religion, as well as every other religion. i submit that the united presbyterians are quite consistent, and that they deserve the respect of all who hold that courage and sincerity are better than ambiguity and inconsistency. a christian, therefore, can accept a nomination to the presidency, for instance, only by either stultifying himself and belittling his church, or by disregarding the constitution, its spirit as well as its letter. nor would it be "bigotry" to contend that a protestant or a catholic candidate, to whom god is first and country second, should under no circumstances be voted into presidential power and influence. even as it would not be an act of intolerance to deny the presidency of this country to a foreign-born citizen, it would not be intolerant to deny it to catholics, for example. they are simply not eligible. both protestant and catholic ought to say, when invited to the office, that they can not conscientiously swear to maintain a constitution which fails in its duties to the creator, and that if elected they will obey god rather than the constitution, for a christian can not serve two masters, neither can he be a christian and not a christian at the same time. i am going to quote a page from the history of modern france, to show that that is precisely what the catholic, at least, does when he comes into power--he obeys god, that is to say, the church, and forgets all about the constitution, that is to say, the rights of man. france has been a turbulent country. its political weather has been more frequently stormy than fair. it makes one nervous, almost, to read the history of france--it is so sensational. its pages are lit up with the lightning. it is a sad and shocking story of intrigues, plots, conspiracies, treason, machination, finesse,--of manoeuvre and scandal, of sudden strokes and startling surprises, which have alternately cooled and heated the brain of the nation, and which have cultivated in the people the unhealthy craving for excitement. let it be admitted that the temperament of the people, its irritability or impetuosity, is in a measure responsible for this. but this in itself is not enough to explain the terrible punishments and misfortunes which have fallen upon that nation. you are all familiar with the remark of one of her great statesmen, gambetta: "the enemy, it is clericalism." another statesman, paul bert, said: "it is not our domestic discords; it is not england; nor even the trained german legions, that constitute the greatest menace to frenchmen and the prosperity of france, still bleeding from her wounds, _but the man in black_." did these statesmen speak the truth? we shall ask history to answer the question. this much, however, we can say without consulting history, that today the french republic and the catholic church are at swords' points. after trying to pull together, church and state have separated--are completely divorced, and each suspects and fears the other. let us try to explain the strained relations between rome and the french republic by a reference to the events in france from the time of the second republic to the franco-prussian war. in , after many attempts to maintain the monarchy, france returned to the republican form of government. the catholic church, always powerful in the country, and having great interests at stake, to the surprise of the nation, welcomed the republic with enthusiasm. the archbishop of cambrai, the bishops of gap, of chalons, of nancy, and the catholic periodicals, _l'univers_, the _moniteur_, etc., declared that the republican form of government was of divine origin, and that there were no other three words in all the world more sacred than the words "liberty, equality, fraternity." in all the churches high mass was celebrated, and a _te deum_ chanted in honor of the new regime. "there are no more devoted and sincere republicans in france than the catholics," wrote veuillot in _l'univers_, the organ of the church. in asking you to keep this in mind, i also request you to note that the catholic church in america seems to be today just as devoted to the american republic as the french catholics professed to be to the republic of . but let us not forget that this same clergy, during the reign of the first napoleon, introduced the following questions and answers into every church catechism in use throughout the land: _question:_ why are we under obligations to our emperor? _answer:_ because, in the first place, god, who creates empires and distributes them according to his pleasure, in blessing our emperor, both in peace and war, has set him over us as our sovereign, and has made him the image of himself upon the earth. to honor and serve the emperor is then to honor and serve god. _question:_ are there not special reasons why we are most profoundly indebted to napoleon the first, our emperor? _answer:_ yes. for in difficult circumstances, he is the man whom god has raised up to re-establish the public worship of the holy religion of our fathers, and to be our protector.... he has become the anointed of the lord by the consecration of the pope, the head of the church universal. _question:_ what shall be thought of those who fail in their respect to our emperor? _answer:_ according to the apostle paul, those who resist the appointed powers shall receive eternal damnation to their souls.[a] [a] _catechisme a l'usage de tantes les eglises de l'empire francais._ of course, when the first napoleon fell, the catholic church quickly withdrew from circulation the catechism from which i have been quoting. it was after considerable effort that i was able to secure a copy of the work. the infallible church, then, was for napoleon, heart and soul, as long as he was in power. without any conscientious scruples whatever, the church hailed the tyrant, whose profession was wholesale murder for his own glory--as the "image of god on earth!" in those days it meant "damnation" not to accept napoleon as the anointed of heaven. such a guide is the church! but at last the church professed to be converted to liberty. now we are in a position to appreciate the sudden and complete change of front on the part of the french clergy. from staunch imperialists they had been converted, judging by their professions, to the principles of the french revolution. an era of peace and brotherhood seemed to open before that much troubled country. priest and magistrate had both buried the hatchet; church and school would now, after endless disputation, co-operate in the work of education, and the vicar of christ and the president of the republic shall join hands in the service of the people. the new republic promised all this. the skies were serene and clear, and the church bells rang in honor of the era that had just dawned. having inaugurated the republic, the next business before the country was the election of a president. the catholic church, having disarmed all suspicion and given tangible proofs of its conversion to republicanism, succeeded in nominating its own candidate to the presidency. this was louis napoleon, the nephew of the great napoleon. to elect its nominee, the church engaged in a most active campaign; sermons were delivered in every church; a house to house canvass was undertaken, and even the confessional was utilized to secure votes for "the star of france," as they called napoleon. on election day, each priest led his parishioners to the voting booth and saw that the ballots were properly deposited. the result was that louis napoleon was elected by , , votes, out of a total of , , votes cast. that is to say, he had a majority of nearly three millions. what made louis napoleon a favorite with the church? to answer that question we shall have to step onto the stage and peep behind the scenes. but to see what was transpiring behind the scenes in france we shall have to go to rome. about the time we are now speaking of, the papal states in italy were up in arms against the pope, who at this time still enjoyed his temporal power. he was still both priest and king. he had his own soldiers, his own generals, his cannons, guns and powder. he went to war; collected taxes, administered the courts, and possessed all the prerogatives of a secular sovereign. he was, of course, besides all this, also the vicar of christ on earth. unfortunately, like any other sovereign of those days, the pope oppressed his subjects, and it was to put an end to their grievances that the italian states revolted, and made an attempt to establish a republic in rome. no doubt our own example in this country, as well as that of the french, encouraged the italians in their efforts to free themselves from oppression. the republican movement spread rapidly--like the rushing waters of a reservoir that had at last broken loose. the whole peninsula was athrill with new aspirations. the italians remembered the days of their pagan ancestors and took heart. the charmed and charming words, "liberty! constitution!" were upon every lip. soon the heavens would beam with the radiant star of garibaldi. the movement was so irresistible that the pope, pius ix, was compelled to make terms with the leaders. it was agreed that, henceforth, the country, instead of being governed exclusively by the clergy, as heretofore, should be governed by two chambers, the members to one of which should be appointed by the pope; the members to the other should be elected by the people. the two chambers, however, as was to be expected, could not get along together. the priests were not used to obeying, they were used to commanding. they obeyed only god. moreover, the secular members undertook to interfere in church matters, which the priests would not tolerate, although they themselves never refrained from interfering in secular matters. the deliberations became anarchic in parliament. the priests declared they represented god and could never be in the wrong. whoever they may have meant by the word "god," he was invariably on the side of the priests. this, the other members declared, was not fair, as it tied up their hands and made them as helpless as the delegates to a russian _douma_ are today. things went from bad to worse; murders became daily occurrences. the pope, fearing assassination, fled from rome. his departure was hailed with joy. rome unfurled the republican flag from the dome of st. peter's. the pope was a fugitive. rome was free. to crush this republican movement and restore the runaway pope to his throne, the church needed an agent. the agent must be strong enough to strangle the italian republic and to recover for the pope his temporal power. spain was too decrepit to be summoned to the task. austria had already too much of italy in her grip; the only nation that could disinterestedly fight for the pope would be france. observe now the double role which the church was playing: in france she was an ardent republican, in italy she anathematized the republic as a blasphemy against god. in france she was ringing bells in honor of the rights of man, in rome she was firing shot and shell into the italian republicans. in france the republic was of divine origin, in italy, it was the work of the devil. let us state it frankly, the church was a republican in france, not from love but from policy. history will confirm our statement. but we have not yet answered why louis napoleon was such a favorite with the church. on the eve of the elections in france, napoleon, who was one of the candidates for the presidency, sent a letter to the _nuncio_ of the pope in paris, in which he expressed his personal opinion, an opinion which at the time looked quite harmless, that, for the peace of italy and the prestige of the catholic world, the temporal power of the pope should be maintained. few people were reflective enough to suspect that there was in those words a pledge on the part of the candidate to employ, if elected to the presidency, the resources of france in the service of rome. naturally enough, not long after his election, the church called upon napoleon to fulfill his promise. but to make a promise is very much easier than to fulfill it. how was the president going to persuade the french to make war upon a sister republic? it was clearly to the interest of the french to have the republican form of government spread. but it was to the interest of the church to overthrow the italian republic and restore the pope to the vatican. the french must, therefore, prefer the interest of the pope to the interest of their own country. americans beware! on the th of march, , louis napoleon succeeded in getting a favorable vote from the assembly upon the following proposition: "if for the maintenance of the integrity of the kingdom of piedmont, and for the preservation of the interests and honor of france, the executive power shall deem it necessary for the enforcement of its negotiations to occupy temporarily any given point in italy, the national assembly shall lend him its cordial and effective support."[b] a short time after, napoleon dispatched to rome a force under the command of oudinat, with secret instructions to reseat the pope on his apostolic as well as temporal throne. on the th of april the french republican army opened fire on the italian republicans defending rome. the french were repulsed. when the news of the disaster to the french forces reached paris it threw the country into a state of delirium. scarcely anybody not in the conspiracy had suspected that the innocent looking measure presented to the assembly by the president of the republic really authorized the declaration of war against italy; and no one so much as imagined that "a given point in italy" meant rome, or that "the interests and the honor of france" required the restoration of the principle of absolutism in italy. but it was too late; the assembly had been caught in a trap. the disgrace and the defeat were matters of fact which could not be undone. [b] _l'eglise et la france._ o. jouvin, page . a moment ago i called attention to the double role of the church. i now ask you to see how the church was trying to drag the french nation into the same insincerity and duplicity. think of a nation which had created the revolution, which had overthrown the monarchy, and had inscribed upon its banner "liberty, equality, fraternity"--think of such a nation going to war against one of its neighbors for following its example! the creators of liberty were urged to become its assassins. into this ludicrous, absurd, nay, infamous role, was the french republic dragged by napoleon and the power that had made him president of the republic. americans beware! on the th of june the french forces made a second attack upon rome, putting the republicans to rout and restoring the pope to the vatican, whence a short time before he had fled to a place of safety. the french republic has now destroyed the italian republic. the words, "liberty, equality, fraternity," shall no longer be heard in rome. the republican flag has been taken down from st. peter's. the pope is king again. mazzini, armellini, saffi, garibaldi and their colleagues, become exiles. france refuses them an asylum. france, the country of the revolution, of the rights of man, of the republic with its glorious motto, "liberty, equality, fraternity"--refuses to shelter the italian republicans! it was to the interest of france to give these men the hand of fellowship; it would have been to the honor and glory of france to have opened her doors to these deliverers of an oppressed nation, but it was not to the interest of the church, and the church comes first; france must be sacrificed to rome. americans beware! the italian patriots crossed the channel and found in protestant england the asylum which the country that had introduced the republic into modern europe denied them. it was then that our great friend, george jacob holyoake, opened his heart and his home to the patriots of italy. for many years and at frequent intervals both mazzini and garibaldi were his guests, and he helped to win for them the friendship of generous men who raised the funds to continue the rebellion, which was ultimately crowned with success. pioneers! o, pioneers! i can not think of these brave men and their work without recalling whitman's bugle call: pioneers! o, pioneers! till with sound of trumpet, far, far off the daybreak call--hark, how loud and clear i hear it wind, swift! to the head of the army!--swift! spring to your places, pioneers! o, pioneers! but let us proceed: one day, somewhere about , the people of france, when they rose in the morning, found that their republic had disappeared. not only was the italian republic no more, but the french republic had gone too. the same power that had driven the republicans out of rome had driven them out of france. as if by a sponge, the free institutions of the country and the constitution, were wiped out by one sweep of the hand. the first places which, after this _coup d'etat_, napoleon iii visited, were the churches. he walked up to the altar in each church which he visited on his triumphal journey through france, and knelt down for prayer and worship. how did the clergy receive him? what did they say to this betrayer of the nation, this traitor, who had violated his solemn oath? let me reproduce the words of the oath which napoleon took on the day of his inauguration as president of the republic: "in the presence of god and before the people of france, i solemnly swear to remain faithful to the democratic republic, one and indivisible, and to fulfill all the duties which the constitution imposes upon me." what did the church say to this man who had trampled the constitution of the country under his feet, and had commanded french soldiers to fire upon italian republicans in the streets of rome, and upon french republicans in the streets of paris? history has preserved the exact words of bishops and cardinals addressed to napoleon, the usurper: "you, sire, have re-established the principle of authority, as indispensable to the church as it is to the state." again, "how can we worthily express our gratitude to a sovereign who has done so much for religion!" and the bishop of grenoble proceeds to enumerate the services of napoleon to the church: the restoration of the pantheon to the church, which an impious government had converted to secular uses by dedicating it to the atheist poets and philosophers of france; the creation of a national fund for the saying of mass for the indigent poor; the appointment of chaplains on all vessels flying the imperial flag; the suggestion of a pension for aged priests; the granting of perfect liberty of action to the ministers of the church, which liberty of action the church will use to confirm the principle of authority and to teach the nation submission to the government and its laws. "behold," cries the bishop, after enumerating these benefits, "our reason for the gratitude we feel." the cardinal of bourges, the bishops of marseilles, of frejus, of aix, of bordeaux, of poitiers, and, in fact, of every important diocese in the country, in the same way praised napoleon, the emperor, and declared he was the special messenger of heaven, and the saviour of christianity, "whom god will never forsake, because in the hour when god's vicar on earth was in trouble, he saved him from his enemies." they called napoleon a constantine, a charlemagne. and the same clergy who, a few years ago, had pronounced the words, "liberty, equality, fraternity," as the holiest in all the world were now busy erasing them from the public buildings and monuments of the country. if the republic was after "god's own heart," if the rights of man were first proclaimed from calvary, as the clergy declared during the republic, why did they make almost a saint of the man who restored oppression and absolutism in france? were they not sincere when they published in the papers that there were not in all france more loyal republicans than the catholics? the interest of the church required the overthrow of the french republic, as it did of the italian, and the interest of the church is first. already in france people were displaying banners on which were inscribed the words, "god save rome and france." rome first. americans beware! on the th of october, napoleon entered the palace of the tuileries as emperor. the cheers and cries of the populace, congregated in the gardens and shouting "_vive l'empereur_," brought him out upon the balcony. he stood between king jerome upon his left, and the archbishop of paris upon his right. on that same day victor hugo fled from paris for his life. the archbishop in the palace with napoleon; victor hugo in exile! my countrymen, beware! under the napoleonic regime the schools rapidly passed into the hands of the clergy. france had labored sincerely and made many sacrifices to reform the schools and to oust the priest--the priest who had declared that "the brains of young frenchmen should be pinched, if necessary, to make them obedient to the authority of the church." michelet, the glorious michelet, was deposed from his chair in the college of france and a clerical given his post. the same fate overtook vacherot and renan. no professors in the sorbonne, or in any institution, who did not bow to the pope and his creature on the throne of france, were permitted to teach. secret orders and religious schools sprang up everywhere like mushrooms over-night. the emissaries and the missionaries of the faith became exceedingly busy in the acquisition of property. in a small town, suddenly, as it were, a few beggarly monks and nuns make their appearance; they have not where to lay their heads; the community has to provide them with the necessaries of life. a short time after, this same religious colony is in possession of the finest establishments in the town, with long bank accounts to their credit. wealth flows into their coffers from rich widows and dying millionaires. every faithful catholic leaves his estate to the parish priest, or to some religious order. property accumulates by leaps and jumps. what happens in one town happens in every other; the country is overrun with the agents of a foreign power. the church is making hay while the sun shines. as some of the principles of free government were still in force, even with napoleon on the throne, these religious orders were asked to obey the law and secure a permit before pursuing their vocation. they answered that the church was above the state, and that they must obey god rather than men. the emperor advised them, from policy, at least, to apply for a license, which would certainly be given to them, but it is of no use. "we are citizens of heaven," declared the monks and priests, "we do not obey laws, we make them." what! shall the bride of christ wait upon the secular powers for permission to serve god! abomination! the church that can elect a president and afterwards elevate him to the throne, can afford to dispense with the laws as it did with the constitution. under the republic it was "long live france," with the catholics in power it is "long live rome and france." encouraged by the flatteries of the church, napoleon invited the pope to paris to place the crown upon his head, even as a former pope had crowned his uncle, the first napoleon, in the church of _notre dame_. the pope was beside himself with joy. the opportunity had come for the vicar of christ to ask for greater concessions from france--yes, from that infidel france, which had converted the church of st. genevieve into a pantheon for atheist poets and philosophers. he sent word to the emperor that he would be glad to go to paris to crown the faithful son of the church, but--but, the other catholic sovereigns would not like it. it would make them jealous. could not, therefore, napoleon come to rome to be crowned in st. peter's cathedral? but the emperor realized that if he went to rome, he would never be thought as big a man as the first napoleon, who not only brought the vicar of christ to paris, but who also took the crown from his hands and placed it himself upon his own head. he wrote an autograph letter, which he sent to the pope by a clerical messenger of great influence, urging the pope to come to paris. then the pope threw aside the mask and opened his heart to the emperor: yes, i will come; you have done much for the church, for our holy religion, but i will not come until you have altogether purged the country of every kind of heresy. how could the emperor expect the vicar of christ to set his foot upon a soil where protestant and jew enjoyed equal freedom of worship with the catholic--listen to that; how could the pope visit a country that allowed freedom of thought and speech, and of the press; that allowed civil marriages; that did not legally compel everybody to go to mass on sundays; that did not punish with pains and penalties all those who departed from the catholic faith? let the emperor exalt catholicism over all the sects,--make it _the_ religion of the state, abolish civil marriages, refuse freedom of assembly to heretics; and then will the tiara of the pope lend its _eclat_ to the crown of the emperor. and this is the church that shortly before had pledged its word of honor to the principles of the republic--"liberty, equality, fraternity!" see what happens to the republic when the catholics are in power. "the lamb and the lion shall lie down together." yes? but what will happen to the lamb? the divine church and a merely human constitution can co-exist in the same country only on one condition--the "divine" shall swallow up the human. this is what has happened in spain; this is what has happened in italy; this is what happened in france under the catholic regime, and this is, in our opinion, what will happen in america, should rome ever come to be installed at the white house in washington! "ah," you say, "the catholics will never do in america the things they have done in europe." no? are there two kinds of catholics? is the church of rome divided? is there any reason why they should hesitate to sacrifice america, if need be, to the "glory of god," if they did not hesitate to sacrifice france? at any rate, all one can do is to give warning and to point to the lesson of history. more than that no one can do, at present, at least. in this connection, i must make an explanation. i respect the right of my neighbor to be a catholic. i am ready to fight for the protection of his liberties as i am for my own. it gives me real pleasure to admit also that there are sincere, brave, noble and pure minded men and women in all the churches. what i am trying to do is to prove, by citing history, that a supernatural order and a merely human state can not pull together. the attempt has always resulted disastrously. the church is supernatural, the state is human. either the one or the other must rule. if the church submits to the state, it ceases to be divine, for how can a divine institution be subject to a man-made state? it would be like asking god to obey man. besides, a state is made up of jews, unbelievers, heretics, turks and pagans, as well as of christians. how can such a state make laws for christians? if, on the other hand, the state would be subject to the church, there will only be the church. we will in that event have no further use for freedom, for instance, as we would not know what to do with it, since we can not use it to criticise or disagree with the church, or help to build up a new church. when we have god for a teacher, or his vicar on earth to rule us, what would liberty be good for? it follows then, that the catholic church can not consistently be subject to any secular power, being a "divine" institution. this statement can not be successfully controverted, and if so, we call the attention of the president of the united states to it, as well as of all those who believe that it is possible to have rome in the white house and be a republic at the same time. nor should people complain because i am so earnest about this matter. if it is a virtue in the catholics to labor night and day to convert this country to their faith, as they say they are doing, why is it improper in me to try to protect the free institutions of the country? i have not said anything against catholicism which cardinal gibbons has not said against what he calls the infidels. in one of his recent letters he declared that no agnostic or atheist should be given office in this country. why may a cardinal stand up for his church, and not i for the secular state? if the framers of the constitution desired only christians, or believers in a church of some kind as office holders, they would not have left the name of the deity out of the nation's charter. according to the constitution, the only persons really eligible to office are the infidels, or at any rate, those only who are willing to place the interests of the country above even those of god or church. are catholics willing to do that? we ask once more, are catholics willing to do that? and we do not have to ask the future to answer that question. the past has answered it in unmistakable fashion. what today is the difference between austria, for instance, and america? in catholic or religious austria, the interest of the church is above the rights of man. it is well for religion to be free, but it is not free in austria; it is well for thought and speech to be free, but they are not free in austria. why? because the interests of the church come first. in secular america, religion is free, thought and speech are free. why? the rights of man come first in a secular state. the church has the power to make an america out of austria. but will she do it? yet if she had the power to make an austria out of america would she hesitate to do it? americans beware! but let us return to napoleon iii and pius ix. encouraged and emboldened by his successes, and his increasing power over the emperor, as well as by his command of the resources of france for his own throne, pius ix about this time promulgated the famous dogma of the infallibility of the pope. until then, the church, or ecclesiastical councils, shared infallibility with the pope, but henceforth the pope alone shall be infallible, and councils and conclaves would no longer be needed to decide religious questions. thus, to the principle of absolutism was given a new endorsement. as soon as he became infallible, the pope announced a new dogma--the immaculate conception of the virgin. the church had never held that mary herself, like her divine son, was born of the holy ghost, but pope pius declared she was, and his word became the belief of the church universal. about this time mary began to appear to shepherds and young girls in the fields, confirming the word of the pope that she was born of the holy ghost. at the commencement of there appeared a pamphlet by an abbot who was not yet ready to accept the virgin birth of mary. the writer charged that a certain woman of grenoble was personating the virgin mother of god in these reputed appearances to shepherds and young people. mlle. de lamerliere, the accused woman, sued the abbot for defamation of character. to the profound regret of the church, the young lady lost her suit. from that time, her name became "the apparition!" the church gave her a famous advocate, berryer, to appeal the case; the abbot was defended by jules favre. the higher court of grenoble confirmed the decision of the lower court, which under ordinary circumstances would have put an end to the new dogma. but it did not. the church was in politics and had therefore many ways of getting over a little embarrassment like that. but the church did more than promulgate new dogmas. about this time, in bologna, the little child of a jew, martara, suddenly disappeared from home. careful search by the distracted father proved that the priests had carried him off to bring him up as a roman catholic. the anti-clerical party poured forth hot shot at a church that would steal, not only the goods, but also the children, whenever it had the power to break into people's homes. even the emperor pleaded with the pope for the return of the child to its outraged parents. but it was all in vain. the church, the holy catholic church, was in the saddle, and she would ride the nation to please herself. the pope replied that as this was a matter pertaining to the salvation of the child's soul it was a spiritual question, and therefore beyond the jurisdiction of the state. shortly after another boy disappeared precisely in the same manner, and was discovered in the catholic seminary. the french ambassador pleaded with the pope as before, but the church was a divine institution, and the secular authorities were guilty of impertinence in attempting to criticise her conduct or to give her advice. it was impossible to live next door to such a power peaceably. in every catholic country there were two kingdoms, the one within the other; two sovereigns, the one the rival of the other. and the result was, as we said it would be a moment ago, the "divine" church swallowed up the secular state whenever it could. in pius ix issued his famous encyclical, in which he boldly condemned the "pernicious" doctrine of the rights of man. for the edification of americans who hope some day to see a catholic in the white house at washington, let us quote one or two passages from this papal bull: "we (the pope) can not pass over in silence the audacity of those who teach that except in matters pertaining to the church, the decrees of the apostolic see are not binding upon the conscience." which means that the pope must be obeyed in secular as well as in religious matters. americans beware! "there are also those who have the audacity to declare that the supreme authority given by jesus christ to the apostolic see is subject to the secular authorities," which means that the pope is the real head of the nation as well as of the church and that she will not obey any man-made constitutions. "_our predecessor_ of blessed memory, gregory xvi, described as a madness[c] the doctrine of liberty of conscience and of worship," which means that with the catholic church in power there will be only one church. then the encyclical proceeds to enumerate the errors which all catholics condemn: [c] _de délire._ error xviii. to say that protestantism is a branch of the true christian church, and that a protestant could be as pleasing to god as a catholic. error xxi. that the catholic church has no right to call itself the only true church. error xxiv. that the church has no right to resort to force. error xxvii. that the holy ministers of the church have no right to interfere in matters temporal (this proves the charge that the catholic church is in politics). error xxxvi. that there can be state churches in any country other than the catholic church. error xlvii. that the schools should be independent of the authority of the church. error lv. that the state ought to be separated from the church.[d] [d] _encyclique addresseé par n. s. p. le pope pie ix._ for the sake of brevity we have not translated the above passages in their entirety, but their _meaning_ has not been sacrificed to brevity. there is much in the passages quoted to make every lover of free institutions to ponder over seriously and long. but let us hasten to the concluding chapter of that period in history reaching from to , with which we have been dealing. the third napoleon began to realize that after all he was a mere figure-head in the empire which he had created by violating his own oath and abrogating the constitution. the real sovereign of the french was pope pius ix. in other words, the relation between pope and emperor was that which the bible suggests should exist between husband and wife. the pope was the husband, the emperor was the wife, and, as commanded in the bible, a wife must obey her husband. napoleon more than once made attempts to free himself from the ever-tightening grip of the pope, but only to find that he was helpless. for instance he had written to the pope about reforms in the papal states, urging the holy father to curb the abuses of the clergy and to introduce modern methods in the government of his territory. but he was compelled to apologize for presuming to give advice to the vicar of christ. on another occasion, the emperor was foolish enough to suggest that frenchmen must obey the laws of their own country before those of a foreign power. did he mean rome, by "a foreign power?" he was clearly made to understand that the catholics in france were first the subjects of the pope, and then the subjects of the emperor. despite these failures to free himself from the authority of the church, the signs of insubordination on the part of the emperor increased. napoleon's principal weakness was vacillation. he never finished an undertaking. his resolutions were like fire-rockets, they fell to the ground as soon as they shot up in the air. vacillation means weakness. napoleon after all was like clay in the hands of the pope. the pope had made him, and the pope could unmake him. to be just to the emperor, we must also make allowances for the influence which the queen, empress eugenie, exerted over him. she was a spaniard, very worldly, and yet very pious. she was one of those women to whom the priest was god in miniature. strange as it may seem, napoleon's son, on the other hand, the prince and presumptive heir to the throne, at whose birth the pope had sent eugenie the golden rose, was an avowed free thinker. napoleon now sided with his queen, and now with his son. he had no mind of his own. it was in one of his independent moods that he decided to make a final effort to shake off rome from his shoulders. he entered into a secret arrangement with victor emmanuel of italy, who was then seeking to seize rome as the capital of united italy, to help humiliate pius ix. napoleon promised to let garibaldi march upon rome. from the moment that the catholics discovered this plot to rob the pope of the city of rome, napoleon was doomed. the church not only showed its displeasure plainly, but it made it also evident that it would not accept any apologies this time. napoleon's resolution sickened again. he became alarmed for his throne. he saw the sword of damocles hanging over his head by a single hair. he hastened to explain, but the priests who had called him a constantine, and a charlemagne, now called him a nero, and a pontius pilate. like judas, he had betrayed his master. it was in the vain hope of once more swinging around the catholic world to his support that the emperor tapped the resources of his country to advance the catholic faith. bent upon this errand he sent an expedition to syria, another to china, another to mexico. everywhere france must become the defender of the catholic church. it was not to the interest of france to waste its substance in a sort of catholic crusade, tramping from east to west, for the glory of the church, but it was only by sacrificing france to the vatican that napoleon hoped to change the frown of the pope into a smile. finally it occurred to the emperor that a war with germany, the rising protestant power of the north, would restore his popularity with the church. he would humiliate germany, overthrow the iron chancellor, and convert berlin into a catholic capital. such a conquest would give catholicism an immense prestige, and it would make of napoleon really another charlemagne. the war was declared. it was an act of sheer madness. the whole nation was going to be thrown into the mouth of the cannon to please rome and to regain her favor for france. but it was survive or perish with napoleon. he did not have the shadow of a foundation for a quarrel with germany. that country was willing to withdraw the candidacy of a hohenzollern for the spanish throne. but napoleon demanded more. france had been injured, he declared, and germany must be punished for it. it must be stated that napoleon counted on the co-operation of the king of italy in the attack upon germany. but when the war was declared victor emmanuel demanded that before he can send an italian army to the aid of the french, napoleon must recall his soldiers from rome. the french were still keeping an army in rome to maintain the pope upon his throne. victor emmanuel asked the french to vacate rome. this napoleon was willing enough to do, but the catholics in france threatened to "boycott" the emperor if he left the pope to his fate. it was a critical situation. the italians would not budge unless the french soldiers were recalled from rome, and the french would not support the emperor if they were. in the meantime, the victorious germans were before the walls of sedan. anon, the cannon's roar was heard in the streets of paris. a wave of blood, red and palpitating, was sweeping onward upon the fair land of france. the nation was upon her knees, mangled, bleeding, torn, ruined. the "faithful" were marching the streets with "god save rome and france." it was too late. the church in politics cost france the slaughter of her armies, the criminal waste of her savings, the destruction of her cities, the loss of two of her provinces--alsace and lorraine--and imposed upon her a blood tax, the enormity of which was appalling. americans beware! and if france did not go the way of spain, it was because, when she returned to the republican form of government once more, she put no faith in the professions of loyalty to the republic by the priests, and refused to consider their candidate to the presidency. by ousting the church from politics in france, that unhappy country has recovered her health, has entered the path of peace and progress, and is today one of the freest and foremost nations of the world. what can the church do for a people? look at spain. what can a country do without the church? look at regenerated france. * * * * * transcriber's note: in general every effort has been made to replicate the original text as faithfully as possible, which may include some instances of no longer standard or incorrect spelling, grammar, hyphenation and punctuation. the use of accents on non-english words was irregular and mostly absent; this has not been altered. italic text is denoted by _underscores_. the following changes were made to repair apparently typographical errors: p. "irritability or impetuousity" impetuousity changed to impetuosity p. "the words, "liberty, equality," fraternity,"" extra " removed p. "could not, therefore, napoelon" napoelon changed to napoleon p. "if the church submtis" submtis changed to submits p. "the true christion church" christion changed to christian p. "has not been sacrificed to brevity[.]" period inserted church reform: the only means to that end, stated in a letter to sir robert peel, bart. first lord of the treasury, &c. by richard carlile. to which is prefaced a correspondence with the bishop of london on the same subject. london: printed & published. by r. carlile, fleet street. preface. correspondence with the bishop of london, in , on the subject of a reform in the church. "to the right reverend father in god, the lord bishop of london. " , fleet street, november , . "my lord, "i have long and deliberately thought, that the state of the country, the state of the church, and the state of the public mind in relation to the church, calls upon me to offer myself for an interview with your lordship, as my diocesan, that your lordship may hear from me what i have to advance against the present state and condition of the church, and what i have to propose as an immediately necessary and proper reform. "i offer to wait on your lordship, with your lordship's consent; and promise, that my conversation shall be altogether courteous and reasonable. "i am one of your lordship's scattered sheep, wishing for the fold of a good shepherd,--(which is christ jesus),-- "richard carlile." "p. s.--i may add, my lord bishop, that i am altogether a christian; save the mark at which superstition has been planted upon christianity." ***** "fulham, november , . "sir, "i have to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, in which you propose an interview with me, for the purpose of making known to me your opinions respecting the present state of the church. "i beg to say, that i shall be ready to receive, and to give all due consideration to any communication which you may think proper to make me in writing; as being, on many accounts, a more convenient method than that of personal conference. "i remain, sir, "your obedient servant, "c. j. london." ***** "to the right reverend father in god, the lord bishop of london. " , fleet street, november , . "my lord bishop, "in answer to my proposal to meet your lordship in conversation, on the state of the country, the state of the church, and the state of the public mind with relation to the church, your lordship has encouraged me to write what i have to say, and has promised to receive it and to give it due consideration. i write as early as my circumstances have afforded me the necessary leisure and composure of mind. "the first point to which i beg leave to call your lordship's attention is--that there is a very numerous degree of dissent from the established church among the people of this country. "the second point is, that this spirit of dissent has led to a very extended opposition to the support of the church in its fiscal claims. "the third point is, that there is a preparation of a public mind going forward for the putting of the present established church on the same footing as the present establishments of the dissenters--the footing of voluntary rather than legal support; and that the preparation of this state of mind is accelerated by the embarrassed state of the country. "the evidence of these three points in prospect is, that the present state of the church will be entirely overthrown in the course of two or three sessions of parliament. "on the principle of dissent from the established church, i have to observe, that it is desirable there should be no dissent; but then the church should be invulnerable. there can be no popular dissent from any institution that can be defended as good and best; and though i am instructed to allow that the general body of dissenters from the church have dissented on very frivolous, even on indefensible grounds, (inasmuch as the dissenters have not corrected in themselves the errors of the church), there still remains the proof that where the church has been assailed or dissented from, it has not been in a condition to defend and justify itself. "this incapability of the church to defend and justify itself, where assailed, must have arisen from a defective state of its doctrine and discipline. "this doctrine and discipline is founded upon the literal reading of the sacred scriptures, or the books of the old and new testament. "i impugn the literal as an erroneous reading: it claims to be local and temporal history, and is not. not one of its apparent historical subjects can be verified. every one of them can be falsified, upon the principle that other things were being done at the time, and that other people dwelt in the places; and that nothing of contemporary character, purporting to be history, has corroborated the historical claims of the old and new testament. "it is said of the writings of the old and new testament, that they are allegorical, and that they contain the moral of human salvation from evil. under this view, they may be true, and may be important as a matter of instruction. i so believe them to be true, and to be important as a matter of instruction; but as your lordship may put me on the task of mentioning some particular facts and grounds on which i impugn the literal reading of the sacred scriptures, and may properly suggest that it is necessary this ground should be first cleared before we try them on the other ground, i submit, as two well-weighed and conclusive propositions:-- " st. that the person of jesus christ, or the name, is not in mention by any author of the first century, if the passage in josephus be excepted as an interpolation; and that this defect in the evidence is fatal to the historical claim. " nd. that the people called jews, or israelites, neither formed colony nor nation in that part of the earth which is now called judea, or holy land, before the time of alexander of macedon; consequently all that is said of their dwelling in and going out of egypt, their sojourn in the wilderness, their warfare with the canaanites and philistines, their occupation of that country, their subsequent conquest, captivity, and restoration, is entirely fiction or allegory. "i read it as political and moral instruction veiled in allegory \ and as it is to be desired, that, in the removal of a system, all its defects be made apparent, so it becomes a desideratum, that we account for the origin of the sects named jews and christians. "this may be done in two ways---one, that they were public philosophical sects; the other, that they were degrees of order in the ancient mysteries. "the moral of the allegory belonging to each is throughout the same, and is an encouragement to the resistance and overthrow of the tyranny of man, when it appears in the open authority of a king, or in the covert authority of a priest; and the preparing of a people to do this, and the doing it, is precisely what is meant by human salvation,--which is a sure and certain salvation from earthly evils. "the absence of a proof of personal identity in the characters sketched in the old and new testament, is the presence of proof (if utility of any kind there be in the form of the allegory), that the persons mentioned are like what all the gods and goddesses of ancient religion were--personifications of principles, either physical or moral, or both. "in so receiving the scriptures of the old and new testament, i find them pregnant with the most important political and moral instruction. in receiving them according to the literal or historical reading, i find difficulties insuperable, and such as justify all that thomas paine or any other straightforward critic has advanced on the subject, while the moral and the allegory were concealed from their view. "the point at which this personification of principles begins, is the point at which superstition begins; for though knowledge may justify the poetic licence taken with language, ignorance mistakes and evil design misrepresents, until the personification is extensively dwelt on as a reality. "here i trace the fundamental errors of the present doctrine and discipline of the established church; the errors upon which dissent has progressed, upon which an outcry of infidelity has been raised, but upon which the church could not defend itself and maintain its position. "my remedy for the present difficulties, and my proposition \ for a reform in the church is, that no difficulties, mysteries, or superstition be allowed to remain attached to its doctrines and discipline; that the allegory of the sacred scriptures be avowed, the personifications taught upon their principles as known principles of nature, and not as personified incomprehensibilities; that the church, in short, be made a school for the people, than which, if it originally meant any good thing, could mean no other thing, where from time to time all acquired or acquirable knowledge should be taught. on this ground, the utility of the institution is evident, the benefit to the people certain, the idea of dissent inadmissible. "in this first letter, i have thought it necessary only to give your lordship the leading points of objection to the present doctrine and discipline of the church. with details in proof, i can proceed to a voluminous length; and i now offer myself to submit to the catechism of your lordship, or to that of any person whom your lordship shall appoint to see me, with the distinct promise, that i will not evade the giving of a direct answer to any distinct and intelligible question that can be put to me upon any part of this important subject. "it may not be improper that i now declare to your lordship, that, after having worn out the spirit of persecution by a large amount of personal and pecuniary suffering, i have never been acting upon any other motive than a love of truth, and honesty, and public good; that it is under such a motive, and no other mixed motive, that i have now presented myself to your lordship, viewing your lordship as a public functionary that has inherited and not created the error of which i complain; and hoping that i shall be met with the disposition of a fair investigation, when so much good is at this moment the promised consequence, "i am, my lord, "your lordship's most obedient humble servant, "richard carlile." letter to sir robert peel sir, i write as a politician to a politician, with oblivion of the past, without any profession of respect for the present, waiting and watching your future. i am stimulated to address you, and the country through your name, on reading your address to the electors of tamworth, after taking the offices of first lord of the treasury and chancellor of the exchequer. the portion of your address which i select as my subject, is that relating to the church--the first of all political subjects. not to understand how to deal with this, is to be utterly deficient in every other political branch. not to reform this, is to reform nothing. state ever did, and ever will, depend upon the church. as far as your individual promise is sufficient, it is, that church rates shall be abolished. this is so far good. it has been a disgrace to all parties concerned, and an injury to every housekeeper, that a church rate has existed. such a rate has existed only because of the dishonest application of that church property which was the legitimate supply for all church buildings and repairs. and should the rate be continued under any other form of taxation, and not supplied from existing church property, an injury and an injustice will still be inflicted upon the people. you seem willing to abate the religious ceremony of marriage, so far as to allow each couple to let it be to its liking. pray go a step farther, and let the law cease to trammel that civil contract with religious ceremony, while each couple will be at liberty of its own accord to go through whatever religious ceremony it may think proper. and while on this subject, i pray you to give, or seek for the poor, justice in facile divorce. the mystery of marriage is too sacred for constraint. it should never be other than a spirit of pure and mutual liberty and consent, subject to some legal recognition for the care of offspring. much of the morals of society must depend on the freedom of marriage and facility of divorce. we have not hitherto been right on this subject. that can be no good tie which opposes the will of an individual in so sacred and delicate an affair as that of marriage. the beginning, middle, and end of marriage should be the love of affection and friendship. marriage should cease when affection between the parties has ceased. it may be truly added, that marriage has morally ceased, when affection has ceased. then the legal tie becomes an abomination, a source of vice and wrong; and, in nine cases out of ten, the religious ceremony is treated as a burlesque, save the idea, that it is a fashionable distinction to have observed it as the chief criterion of legal marriage. i entirely agree with you, that church property should not be alienated from strictly ecclesiastical purposes. i have changed my view, and see more than formerly on this head. for the same reason, i entirely disagree with you on any commutation of tithes. let the original application be restored, and no one will find fault but he who loses by that just principle, that first and best of church property and most important of popular rights. the point, in your address, on which my letter is to be based, is the following paragraph:-- "with regard to alterations in the laws which govern our ecclesiastical establishment, i have had no recent opportunity of giving that grave consideration to a subject of the deepest interest, which could alone justify me in making any public declaration of opinion. it is a subject which must undergo the fullest deliberation, and into that deliberation the government will enter with the sincerest desire to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the establishment, extend the sphere of its usefulness, and to strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people." this is just what i wanted you to say. it is honest, if you will but act up to it. this is the sort of church reform that i propose. here we have from you, as the chief minister, a promise that your administration will enter into the fullest deliberation, with the sincerest desire to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the church establishment, extend the sphere of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people. had i been called to your situation, i could not have promised more; but i should have acted up to that promise, and i hope you will so act. in the performance of that promise, everlasting fame will be yours. so act--and greater than the name of lycurgus or solon--greater than that of cicero, constantine, or napoleon--greater than the name of any past man will be that of robert peel. if the duke of wellington join you in this sentiment, and goes manly and honestly forward to its accomplishment, his, too, will be an imperishable name. this would wreathe him an evergreen chaplet, that would survive the memory of all his physical victories! this is the great moral victory to be obtained before any society can settle down into peace, welfare, and happiness:--_the best use that can be made of the church_. it is a subject of the deepest interest; it requires grave consideration; i pray that it may have that consideration. i pray that i may be heard by a commission, in grave consideration of that subject of the deepest interest, before any legislative change be entered upon. i put myself forward in this letter. many will be the schemes proposed to your consideration: let mine be one, and then select and improve the best. the first consideration is--what is now the church? what are its defects? what the cause of that dissent, which has made a revision necessary? the second consideration will be--what ought the church to be, so as to leave no ground and reason of dissent? to some minds, the fickleness and fallibility of human nature will appear as an insurmountable obstacle to the construction of such a church. i see farther and will propose in order. i flatter myself that i am writing this letter with very proper feelings toward all institutions and all persons. i suspend, _pro tem_., all quarrels that i have with all men, to assist you in this common good, in which you deserve and will have, in the ratio of their goodness, the assistance of all good men. if i can sink the past in oblivion for common good, who should say he cannot? to the altar and shrine of that reformed church, which you contemplate, i have sacrificed property much--all i had, and years of liberty many. i am still worshipping, still so sacrificing, both property and personal liberty, and will so continue to the end. i say it not boastfully; but in comparative claim to attention, and in encouragement and example of union to assist you in the performance of your present promise. let me be permitted to say, too, that the church is a subject which i have studied in its origin, its history, its first principle, all its dissent or variation from that first principle, down to its present standing. i have so studied it, that i cannot now find author or preacher who can present me any thing new as to its general merits, past or present. this is the chief ground on which i solicit your and the public attention to my view of this subject of church reform. i presume to know what the church is, and what it ought to be. it may be taken as a point to be yielded by all parties, that the desire with regard to the law established church is, the removal of all ground of dissent, so as not to leave it a mere sectarian church, which any mere abatement of existing dissenting objections will do. no dissenter can complain, if the ground of his dissent be removed from the church. and if there be no ground of future dissent left, there can be no future complaint, no new dissension arising. without the absence of the possibility of dissent, there can be no just holding and application of a public and common property for the business of the church. with that absence, the property is justly held and applied. any law that recognizes and tolerates the dissenter, recognizes and tolerates the justness of his dissent, and calls for the primary justice of removing the ground of dissent. no man can reasonably say, _let us not be of one church_; but every man can reasonably say, _let the church be purified of its errors_; and while any man can show an error, it is his duty to call for the purification, and the duty of authorities to attend to his call and to purify. a permanent church then must be an improving, self-purifying church, and continue a true picture of the best state of the human mind, meeting every well-founded and majority-decided call upon its utility. any idea of keeping up a law established church with public property, surrounded by dissenting churches, without a public property, can enter the head of no man who understands the subject. there can be no peace or final settlement under such an arrangement. the effect to be accomplished is, not to break up the church property; but to break up the dissenters from the church. this will startle the present state of mind and feeling. i propose no abridgement of equal liberty. is not this the grand _desideratum?_ can it be accomplished?--i think it can, and so proceed to unfold the two-fold consideration. first.--what is now the church? what are its defects? what the cause of that dissent which has made a revision necessary? this, in reality, is but one question, with a three-fold expression. the church is now the theatre of the drama of the books of common prayer, the thirty-nine articles, and the old and new testament; to which is generally added a sermonic epilogue or exhortation, commonly called a sermon. be not offended at my use of the word _theatre_ here: no other would substitute. its root is the greek [------], god, and signified originally, the house, place or stage, where the drama of theism or attributes of deity were exhibited. the word is now much distorted from its root, in being made to describe the place of modern dramatic performances. nor must the word _drama_ be objected to; because the ceremony of the church was originally so constructed, so meant, and so practised, as i will prove in the course of this letter. even the word _tragedy_ has its root in the greek word [------], a goat, and signifies, in the dramatic exhibition of theism, the death of the year, under the form of a personification, in the twelfth or zodiacal month of the goat. so that the death sorrowed for and lamented, was, dramatically, the apparent death of the sun, the death of the year, in the sign or month of the goat; and on st. thomas's day, as we read in the prophet ezekiel, chap. viii. v. --"_and behold there sat women weeping for tammuz;_" and v. --"_about five and twenty men, with their backs toward the temple of the lord, and their faces toward the east; and they worshipped the sun toward the east_," which is no other than a representation of the performance of the tragedy, in which the performers had lost the moral of the lord's temple: precisely the present state and condition of the church. all ancient mythology is in harmony with this conclusion; and the christian tragedy is only a continued version, uniting the general drama of human morals with the annual tragedy of solar physics, and forming a two-fold or two-keyed allegory or mystery, physical and moral, as it was known even in the celtic or druid church. christianity was never new, or young, in this country, by existing records. there are not many persons in this secret, perhaps, not even you, the first minister of the country; so it will be deemed too abstruse and mystical on which to find a warrant for legislation or change of law: but i strenuously maintain, that such was the origin of the christian church, and such is now its generally lost meaning. the proof of the solar part of the allegory is not so much to my present purpose as the proof of the general drama of human morals being the basis of the present mystery of the christian church. to stay a growing difficulty, we must go to the root:--it will grow again, if we do not go to the root. it will be so with the present church, and all attempts to reform it. in plainer language, then, i will describe the existing church, as having, in its ceremonies and business, the mystery of the christian religion, without its revelation; that all the defects and all the grounds of dissent from it are the absence of the revelation, or want of knowing the meaning of the mystery. whatever are called its doctrines, are all mysterious; its discipline is equally mysterious, and by its present ministers, unaccountable. dissenters have dissented without being able to assign a reason for their dissent, and have set up for themselves something equally mysterious and unaccountable; and so the whole principle and practice of religion in the country is in confusion and conflict; and no measure can reconcile the dissentients, short of developing the first principles of the church and the christian religion, the one language, the one course of reason, the one ground of human welfare, the one system of morals, which is now buried in a babel of confused tongues, doctrines, idol-houses, and superstitious ceremonies. the ground, then, on which i proceed, is, that to reform the church, the dissenters must be annihilated. not annihilated by slaughter or physical force; but by superior knowledge, and consequent superior teaching, by openness, by honesty, by throwing off the mask of hypocrisy, and leaving the church of christ to be no longer a theatre of dramatic ceremony in mystery, with parts and actors as ignorant as automata of their subject, and who not knowing, can value it not, beyond the salaries they receive for its performance in unrevealed mystery. can that be a reform of the church, with "just claims upon the respect and affections of the people," which shall leave a ground and excuse for dissent by any one of the people? i say, no. can it be a church of christ? i say, no. do we know what a church of christ is in reality? for myself, i say, yes. a church, too, founded upon an understanding of the _sacred_ scriptures, of the old and new testament, upon the revelation of the mystery of those scriptures, and upon all the first principles essential and conducive to general human and social welfare; that shall no more admit of dissent than the multiplication table, or the accurately placed sun-dial, than the elements of euclid, and all the never-failing tests of the science of chemistry. the apostle that told us to "_prove all things, and hold fast that which is good_," gave us a definition of the exhortation of the evangelist or the baptist--"_repent, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand_." a repenting and a proving people are necessary to make a church of christ. repentance and enquiry are the pillars and foundations of that church; without repentance and enquiry there can be no church of christ; and i ask, confidently ask, with the assurance that a true answer must be in the negative,--has anything calling itself a christian church in europe, established by law, or dissenting from such an establishment, anything to do with the two principles of repentance and proving, the one meaning reflection by animadversion, the other a trial by outward tests of that reflection? there is not a congregation of people in europe, calling itself a church, that is founded upon an understanding of the sacred scriptures, the understanding which shows that the "letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life." i impugn, as being in error,--i denounce, as that error is the cause of all dissent, of dissent uninstructed,--all the churches or congregations called churches in the british dominions; and i call for a reform that shall eradicate that dissent, and make all become one in efficiency, usefulness, and respect and affections of the people. the present state of the church is, that it is a theatre of mystery, giving no solid satisfaction to the people, and for which, among the receivers of salaries and benefits only, can there be a particle of real respect and affection. its defects are, that none understand, neither priests nor people understand what any part of its dramatic ceremonies mean. and this is the cause of that dissent which has made a revision necessary. what, then, ought the church to be, so as to have no ground and reason of dissent? in two words, i answer, a school. what kind of a school? a school for knowledge only; for revelation without mystery; and for practical use and benefit to every member, without parade or pomp, even without ceremony, beyond what order and good may require. and would such be a church of christ? such alone can be a church of christ. christ the logos, jesus the saviour of man, is, in principle, nothing more in its dramatic or mystified and present church presentation, than a personification of the principle of reason, or of the knowledge of which the human being is a recipient, and without which can have no salvation, has no relation to the idea of a salvation, or any evil from which to be saved. such is a true revelation of the mystery of christ. and a church of christ has no other true meaning, than a convenient and sessional gathering of the people in districts, for purposes of mutual enquiry and mutual instruction; for catechism and intelligible and useful exhortation; for revelation of knowledge, or mind, or reason; for mental improvement; and not for mystery, nor dramatic ceremony, nor superstition, nor idolatry. it is in this sense only, that the church of christ is superior to all other churches--the word church meaning a gathering or association of the people for mental improvement. this generation has no proof, nor has history a warrant, that any other generation of man has had a proof of the material existence of the being called jesus christ. the seeming narrative of such a purport is the current mythology of the ancients, or people of two thousand years ago, taken up by us in its literal sense, and so mistaken; so mistaken, as to warrant a belief in the literality and fact of the material, temporal, and local existence of every one of the gods of the pantheon, or of human imagination, and then we shall have rivalry enough for the best. but then, i should make a choice of christ, as the only one that makes due provision for the right cultivation of the human mind; the only one that has laid the foundations of the kingdom of heaven, in the peace and good-will of mankind, dwelling upon a land flowing with milk and honey, and overflowing with knowledge. i challenge the bishops and the whole priesthood, to produce me any knowledge that is intelligible to themselves or to any other person, as an interpretation of the narratives in the old and new testament, about jehovah or christ, other than that which i am now unfolding. mine has a warrant in the spirit of the language of the books, in the roots of words, and in all the principles of things that relate to man's welfare; and more particularly in that to man most important of all, moral science. i am not insensible to the circumstance, that a man might have a knowledge of a thing, of a train of circumstances, of causes and effects, in his own mind, with a difficulty to find language in which to communicate it, that shall be equally and immediately clear to all other states of mind. a resemblance, nearness, or similarity of mind, almost an equality of knowledge, is requisite to a clear understanding. it is thus, that men, in different languages, understand each other, when other men, bystanders, do not understand them. and it so happens, in all first developments of science, the new discovery wants a new language in which to be presented to others, and it often happens, that first words made or chosen are not the best and clearest. know you not, sir, that knowledge is power? you must have read that celebrated axiom of bacon's; but have you considered it, have you reflected, have you repented and proved that axiom? i may add, by way of explanation, that knowledge is the only moral power. what seeks your church to be? or what should it seek to be, other than a moral power? on what rock, then, must the church of christ be built, so that the gates of hell, or of evil design, or of dissent, may not prevail against it? on what, but knowledge? is it now so built? is not, rather, the present ministry of the church more afraid of knowledge than of the people's ignorant dissent; more of "carlile and his crew," than of all the dissenters; more of free discussion, than of any kind of superstition? the dissent of knowledge and the dissent of ignorance, though disunited, are becoming too powerful for your knowledgeless church; and you, at last, have consented to speak of its necessary reform! to which will you yield, or whom will you join? those who dissent by knowledge, or those by ignorance? if you take the former, your work will be perfected at once; if the latter, your work will never be done, and you will become weaker and weaker; for i know not one body of worshipping associated dissenters, whose ground of association and dissent is better than that of the established church. find me the minister of one of them, who will stand up in discussion before a public audience with me, so as to have his language reported. i have not yet found him in england or scotland. the pretences of the kind that have been made, have been so deficient in respectability of character and of good manners, that i do not think them worth a recognition. i am not insensible to the circumstance, that you have a difficult task to perform, and i am not sure that you are equal to it: i hope you are; that is, i would have you so, or any other who may be the king's adviser, and the real head of the church. nothing is wanted for this reform but honesty and moral courage. where the will and the power exist, the task is an easy one. _i desire to save the church and its property, and to annihilate the dissenters_. i would have the present dignities of the church dignify themselves in a triumph over the dissenters. a collusion with the dissenters will be a hugging of pestilence and death to the bosom of the church. there can be no co-existence: there was proof enough of that in the seventeenth century, and still in scotland. a revolution in the affairs and manners of the church must take place, even by your own confession, in language admitting of the inference; and i desire that good may be educed from that revolution. i would make the church triumph in the correction of every mental error in the country, and noble would be that triumph! you may ask, how is this to be done? i will tell you. let the church become the oracle of truth, the fountain of knowledge, the mistress and dispenser of all science. let its ministers declare this great truth:--_that, hitherto, the mystery of christ has alone been taught in the church, without the revelation of that mystery; that the church has been the depository of that sacred mystery, until the fulness of time, in which it is promised, that all people shall be prepared to partake of the revelation; that the mystery has been kept up in outward form and without any spiritual grace; that the spiritual grace and all the pro-mises are to be fulfilled in the understanding of the revelation; that the spirit or revelation has been buried in a resting on the letter of the sacred scriptures; that christ is only now risen or beginning to rise, after thousands of years, we may say three thousand years, rather than three days of crucifixion, death and burial_. in me, he has risen indeed, as, in me, he has been last crucified; and i crave the pleasure of seeing his principles rise in the church; for that craving is the nature of christ. let the church declare _that the time is now come to reveal the mystery of christ_. exhibition has not been revelation. what, then, is the revelation of the mystery of christ? it is, that christ is god and not man, that it is god in man; that it is knowledge, reason, or all its essences in moral principle; and that it is not an idol to be worshipped as a statue, but a principle to be taught and inherited by the human race. the mystery sets forth christ as a statue or image to be worshipped after the fashion of the pagan world. the revelation teaches, that it is the principle of knowledge, to be gained by labour, by asking, seeking and knocking, or prayer; by repentance, that is, reflection; by enquiry, that is, proving all things, and holding fast that which is good; by mutual instruction, by free discussion, by whatever constitutes a school for useful knowledge, and that constitution is a church of christ: all the rest is mistake or imposture, whether it be established by law, or ignorantly dissented from; whether it have a king for its head, or be carried on in a garret or a cellar. i must go to the root of my subject, and leave no excuse for evasion. the root of religion is the relation of god to man, and man to god. what does man know of god? books can teach him nothing, unless those books be written pictures of existing things and things that have existed. things that have existed have no source of trial or test, but in the similarity of things that do exist. man's knowledge of existence is of a twofold nature: the things that do exist, and the power by which he has that knowledge. the first is distinguished as material existence; the second, as spiritual existence. material and spiritual existence are the only two positive existences of which man can speak or write, to which no inspiration can add; for inspiration is only knowledge; and the recognition of material and spiritual existence is the limitation of knowledge. the details of knowledge can be nothing more than definitions and descriptions of existing things,--the plantings of art upon nature. all knowledge is matter of art. nature is the thing known--art the knowledge of the thing. this art can not only know nature, but can invent descriptions of unreal things; can describe things by types, and principles by figurative allegories; can imitate nature by appearances, such as pictures, statues, &c.; and can, by mysterious constructions of language, make the appearance of a thing to represent a principle or describe qualities in the absence of the thing: this is spiritual power. nothing of the kind is seen beyond human life; certainly not beyond animal life. we may, therefore, reasonably speak of spiritual power or spiritual existence as confined to the human race--speech and language being a primary necessity to its existence: the art of other animals extending not beyond their wants. man, then, is the creator of spirit; and, beyond man, spirit is not known. man is not known to be the creature, but the creator of art; not the creature, but the creator of spirit, soul, mind, reason, knowledge, or whatever other term relates to the mental phenomena. i maintain, because it is a truth of the deepest importance to the human race, and without the knowledge of which nothing can work well in human society, that man is the creator of all spiritual existence; and in the sense in which god is a spirit, man is the creator of that god, and has been the creator of every description of existence that has been made of such a god. we may also correctly speak of this two-fold existence as physical and moral. the physical, its forms and compositions excepted, is eternal and immutable--the moral is evanescent, mortal, and mutable in its personal existence, but immutable and immortal as to principle. the root of god, therefore, as of man, is in physical power, which is correctly described as almighty, immutable and omnipresent: it is only omniscient, as being the fountain of knowledge--the all that can be known. science is art; therefore, there can be no science in an infinite or eternal sense, as we can speak of the physical power of deity; but science, as art, is limited to human power,--the all that is known, and not the all that exists to be known. this is evidence, that man has created not only all the descriptions that have been made of spiritual existence, but that existence itself: and so it is true, that man has been the inventor of a spiritual god; that religion and all its appurtenances have been the offspring of the art of man; and that man alone is capable of correcting any of its errors,--which is to be done in the same way by which i propose to put down the dissenters--the acquisition and communication of knowledge by the church. i pass by the pagan mythology, which, in its understood personifications and allegories, is as beautiful a picture of physical and moral nature, as the christian religion itself; and i rest on the christian, as, when understood, the only religion for human improvement that has been presented to the notice of the human race. as man is the inventor of the spiritual deity, which is peculiarly the deity of the christian religion, so i infer, by evidence to come, that the deity of the christian religion is no other, nothing more, than a personification of the mental phenomena of the human race, which was the work of the philosophers and scientific men of the pagan world: and noble was their task--important for man was their production. not the thing called the christian religion now in existence, which is no other than a religion mistaken, a corruption and pagan superstition, the dregs and drivellings of the gross ignorance and superstition of the dark ages; something two thousand times worse than the paganism of the millenium before the so-called christian era. but a personification after deifications of the mental phenomena, is a sounding, preaching, writing, carving or painting god, as the perfection of knowledge; christ, as the perfection of reason; and the holy spirit of communication, as the perfection of all attainable moral power by the human race: making those perfections to be things sought, the things worshipped, the best religion, as it undoubtedly is, for the whole human race. it was the best plan of scholastic improvement, when acted upon, that human wisdom could have devised, and to this i would have you bring our church. there is a two-fold way of reading the bible, which i have before described, as it is described in the second epistle to the corinthians, chap. iii. v. , a reading or a ministration according to the letter, and another according to the spirit. the apostle or author of that epistle declares himself to have been a minister of the new testament according to the spirit, and complains, that the jews, in his time, did not know how to read the old testament. i declare that the church now existing ministers to nothing but the letter of the bible, which is a ministration not to life, but to death; and such is the evidence of the whole era of such a ministration; such has been the cause of the dark ages, on which no dissenting sect has yet thrown a ray of light; and the reform that is now required throughout the church, that established by law and all others, is the understanding of the sacred scriptures, that shall cause them to be taught according to the spirit, the spirit of knowledge, reason and constant human improvement. i now see, that none of the people called jews or christians know how to read either old or new testament according to the spirit. to read the bible according to the letter, is to make it a piece of human history; to make a creation of the world, and an attempt to account for everything past, present and future. i proclaim this conduct to be the folly of ignorance, opposed by all real history of the human race, and by all the developments of science, in relation to the earth's existence, its qualities, and its relation to the general planetary system. i challenge the proof of any one apparent historical fact, in either old or new testament. i challenge the production of the existing mention of any one of the supposed facts about the personal or material jesus christ, within one hundred years of the time at which it is said to have happened, putting the disputed passages of josephus and tacitus out of the question. i challenge the proof of the existence of the jews, in any country, as a distinct nation, before the time of alexander the great. no other contemporaneous history recognizes such an assumed history as that which i challenge. and farther, i am prepared to prove that christianity existed among romans, greeks, persians, hindoos, and celtic druids, or the northern nations, before the christian era. the present ministration of the church entirely depends on the necessity of a clear historical proof of the literal contents of the old and new testaments. but a spiritual reading of that volume solves every difficulty, and teaches us how to extract the truth, the system of religion that is a necessary and sure salvation for the human race, when reduced to practice, and to see it as a part of the wisdom of all ancient men of all times and countries. it is ten years and upwards since i sent a petition to you, sir, to be laid before the king, asking for a commission to examine my oppugnancy to the religion and administration of the existing church. will you now grant that commission? if you will not, you, while you remain in power, will blunder on in and through growing troubles and difficulties, until you, or some other person, be compelled to come to my school for information. it may be a galling pain, a conscience-smitten task to you to do so; but you have no alternative with honesty and wisdom. it is not a little of this cry for church reform, that has sprung out of my labours and sufferings. and here am i, though still in prison through that church's iniquity, in the proud and triumphant position, clearly seeing that you can reform nothing in the church that will satisfy the people without coming to my ground. your pledge is so to reform the church as to make it meet the respect and affection of the people. i rejoiced when i read that sentiment; for i saw and felt, that i alone had proposed a reform equal to that end; and mine, as well as others, by the glorious power of the printing press, must come into consideration. i assure you that the correspondence with the bishop of london, which i shall append to this letter, has been sold to the extent of many thousands, and is in great demand. this is but an enlargement of my second letter to the bishop. so that my lamp has been constantly trimmed for your advent as a reformer of the church. it is not what you and others call "the rabble," "the destructives," "the mob," that i seek. i seek you and the bishops, all the learned men in the country, as in application of mind to mind, learning to learning, and wisdom to wisdom. i will now proceed to explain the distinction between the mystery and the revelation of christ, between the letter and the spirit of the books of the old and new testament, between false and true religion, between superstition and idolatry on one side, and reason with growing knowledge in the church on the other. i begin with the doctrine of the holy trinity. the church of the dark ages has taught the doctrine professedly founded upon the letter of the sacred scriptures: of god, as consisting of three persons in one person, coexistent, co-equal, and co-eternal, which, in expression, has been abridged, under the name of trinity, and described as the holy trinity; and, in definition or distinction, as father, son and holy ghost. this doctrine has always been dissented from while dissent has been tolerated. it is no more a physical absurdity than the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead, or the changing of water to wine, or the feeding of five thousand with five small loaves and two fishes, or any other narrated miracle: still it has been dissented from, and when dissented from, no defence could be made of it. in every other case of dissent, the church could make no defence and no other apology than ancientness of the doctrine in the church. truly this has been a verification of the blind leading the blind, until both fell into the ditch together. with a doctrine of personality in deity, including the ideas of physical and moral power, this of the trinity has been declared a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind; and i declare that a mystery incomprehensible to the human mind, pressed upon human attention, as of importance, is an absurdity, and must be an imposture; for who has comprehended it so to state? this is the matter-of-fact view of the subject. but the subject being a declared mystery in the theological sense, there is a spiritual interpretation to be put upon the language of the letter; and that i take to be thus:-- that the trinity is not to be considered as of persons, but of principles; and then we shall find it a philosophical doctrine, true to nature, and proved by science; true to physical and to moral science. all the ideas that physical science can bring us of creation is the root of three in one. whatever admits of analysis sets forth the truth and doctrine of the trinity. water, the great parent of production on this planet, is known to be composed of two gases--hydrogen and oxygen. they become water through contact and decomposition by electric action. thus, in the order of a trinity in unity, we may describe it as of hydrogen, oxygen, electric contact=water. i do not mention this as any thing new; but it is new in application to a definition of the doctrine of the trinity. water had not been made but by the electric contact of hydrogen with oxygen, by the power of a trinity in unity. chemistry teaches us, that this power of a trinity in unity is an all-creating power; and so far it is man's comprehension of the creating power or deity, and not a thing or principle incomprehensible: it is a doctrine older than the christian era; was a doctrine among the pagan philosophers, and is true as to principles or powers; but not true in our modern sense of persons, as identical and separate beings. a great mistake, too, has been made in the understanding of the word _person_, in relation to theology: it never was meant to express beings in the image of you and me; but the dramatic manner of presenting a description of the principles of nature in the theatre, _per sonantem_, by sound or song, by fiction, by disguise, by allegory, by mask or mystery, by representative action: the revelation of which would be to understand the principles of nature so personated on the stage, as i have defined the trinity. and it is in this, and no other sense, that i read the names of deity in the old or new testament, as brought apparently on the stage of human affairs, in person, by the authors; that _personating_ meaning nothing more than a present picture or representation of an absent or infinite power, by sounds or voice, and sometimes by masks, as was the earliest known practice in dramatic exhibition, which explains everything about gods and oracles, and makes the hymns of orpheus as sacred as the psalms of david; as they are as certainly beautiful in poetic composition, and equally useful to human welfare. you, sir, if you enter the house of commons next month, may be said to personate the electors of tamworth; a power in the abstract greater than you, because many and supposed qualified to reject your personation and to elect another. therefore, the personation is not the power personated. as the king's chief minister, you will also personate the king's government in the house of commons; but you are not in reality that governing power; because, it is something distinct from you, and greater than can be concentrated in your person. you, as plain robert peel, and i, as richard carlile, are not persons; and though it is a custom so to use the word and so to describe us, yet it is a mistake and misuse of the word, unless the body may be said to personate the mind, soul, &c. i hope you see that much of the error of our church has turned upon this point; because a person was never the reality of the power, and consequently the persons of the trinity are not to be considered the reality of the trinity: and hence the unitarian dissenter has no reasonable ground of dissent. the doctrine of the trinity, as a description of deity, is a valid theological and philosophical doctrine, admitting of no rational dissent. i wish the bishops to learn this before the dissenters, so that the church may be taught how to call back her errant and ignorant children, that her property may be held together for useful purposes, and not be wasted at the shrine of dissenting ignorance or bankrupt government. and now, sir, can you yet see your way with me, "to remove every abuse that can impair the efficiency of the establishment; extend the sphere of its usefulness, and strengthen and confirm its just claims upon the respect and affections of the people?" if you cannot, i beg you to follow me farther. it is not only in physics that the doctrine of the trinity is theologically and scientifically correct, but in morals also; and this is the foundation of the christian religion. as god, the father, personates all science, under the attribute of omniscience; that is, personates all existence, both omnipotence and omnipresence, and is, in that reality, the fountain of knowledge--the all and every part that can be known; so god the son, christ or logos, personates the human mind, as the existence or manifestation of knowledge and reason, as jesus or the principle of salvation from evil, in possessing that knowledge, and as the true god, in us and with us, in and with whom we live, and move, and have our being. so god the holy ghost, the spirit of truth, the comforter to come, to complete the happiness of the human race, personates that spirit of free communication of knowledge which should be found in the church, the theatre, not of any superstition or dramatic ceremony, but of the freedom of the human mind, and all its emanations of free enquiry, free discussion, mutual instruction, which are the necessary elements of brotherly love and peace, in the proving of all things and holding fast that which is good. and thus i prove the truth of the doctrine of the trinity. this, sir, is a true picture or effigies of the moral trinity of the christian church, which you will find to be a key to every mysterious sentence of the bible; and i ask you seriously, as between man and man, is any thing of this kind known or practised in the present church? are not the ministers of that church afraid of every new discovery in science? have they not, as far as they could, persecuted every man who has attempted to publish any criticism, enquiry, or objection to their mysterious subjects? history says--yes. and i say that they have known nothing of the subject for themselves, and that they have dreaded all knowledge of, all enquiry into, the subject. will their pride let them learn of me? well may i say:--"come unto me, all that labour and are heavy laden, and i will give you rest. take my yoke upon you, and learn of me: for i am meek and lowly of heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. for my yoke is easy and my burden is light." that is the language of the personated logos, or principle of reason, addressed to the present state of british mind, as it was formerly addressed to the general state of the human mind. the doctrine of the transubstantiation of bread and wine, as the elements of the sacrament of the lord's supper, into the real body and blood of christ, has been another stumbling-block in the church. on this head, our law-established church has dissented from its former self, which when i mentioned on my last jury trial, the judge, sir allan park, called it a vilifying of the church. i knew better; but saw that the judge was not a man to be reasoned with, and so i did not press the subject: but through this letter and your name, sir, i desire to teach him how it has been done. transubstantiation is no stumbling-block to my mind. the twenty-eighth article of the church says on this subject:--"transubstantiation (or the change of the substance of bread and wine) in the supper of the lord, cannot be proved by holy writ; but is repugnant to the plain words of scripture, overthroweth the nature of a sacrament, and hath given occasion to many superstitions. the body of christ is given, taken, and eaten in the supper, only after an heavenly and spiritual manner; and the mean whereby the body of christ is received and eaten in the supper, is faith." it is very clear to me that the bishops of that time, the sixteenth century, did not know how to read holy writ. i could defend the entire doctrine of transubstantiation, in its fullest application, from the language of the gospel according to saint john. this subject affords me another proof, that the doctrine of transubstantiation is much older than any of the books of the new testament: for, where understood, there is nothing in theology more dear than this doctrine, or that comes nearer to a physical and moral truth. first, let us understand that the root of the word _sacrament_ is a secret in the mind; and _transubstantiation_ is a change of substance from one to another thing. now the secret in the mind is, where understood, and where not understood there is no sacrament, that, like the trinity, all the appearances of god are in the principle of transubstantiation or change from one to another thing. all is motion.--nature knows no rest. all is change, all is transubstantiation. it is like the trinity,--one of the attributes of deity, one not to be doubted,--because everywhere visible. the present church of england calls it a damnable doctrine; but it is so called through ignorance. like that of the trinity, it is a doctrine much older than the christian era; and so also was that of the lord's supper, as a practised ceremony. when the name of christ was set up to personate all the attributes of deity, the various names of the pagan gods were decried. it had become a matter of wisdom thus to set up the name of christ as a personation of all the gods and goddesses: it was a concentration of philosophy, to unite mankind in one form of religion and for one great purpose, that of progressive and perpetual improvement. the plan was good; but the principle has never been rightly developed. teaching by mystery is a bad system. the mass of the people are not so to be taught. we must begin and teach by revelation. the christian religion, when revealed, will be eternal, and realise all its real promises of peace on earth, good-will among men, and a land flowing with milk and honey. before the name of christ was used, bacchus was called a saviour, as were many other if not all the gods, as jehovah is declared the only saviour in the old testament. and this bacchus had the name of jesus, or saviour, inscribed on his altar pieces, in the very letters now inscribed in our churches, the three greek letters iota, eta, sigma, i.h.s., not jesus hominum salvator, in initials, though so in meaning; but yes, which is the same as jesus, and signifies saviour. isis is of the same root, one of whose names was ceres. ceres personated corn or bread, and bacchus personated wine. it was a pagan custom, in religious ceremonies, to break and eat bread in honour of ceres, and to pour and drink wine in honour of bacchus, as the bread and wine or body and blood of salvation, of both physical and moral salvation. christ being made all, both physical and moral saviour, was intended to swallow up all the various pagan honours and ceremonies, every one of which, in part or whole, is still retained in our law-established church; and so christ personated both the elements, bread and wine, as his body and blood, as before they had been called body of ceres and blood of bacchus. be it remembered, that the pagans had no other ideas of these matters, than those of dramatic effect. the origin of the drama was in and with the religion of the human race. and we must come back or come up to this for a right understanding and use of the christian religion. as food, bread and wine are the best elemental representatives of the body and blood of the human being, and will sustain human life in health and vigour. as bread and wine, they are elements of the physical nature of god; and when taken into the human body, they transubstantiate in that body, and, in making blood, become the blood which is necessary to sustain the moral god or reason in the godly man: so, through the transubstantiation, they do not cease to be the body and blood of christ. this is what is meant in the matter, and this solves the language of saint augustine, cited in the twenty-ninth article, that though the wicked eat the consecrated bread and drink the wine, they do not eat the real body and blood of christ, because in leading bad lives they do not improve themselves, and so eat and drink but for new condemnation. the revelation of the mysterious word sin, in the sacred scriptures, is generally applicable to the ignorance of the human race; and so of original sin, which is not to be otherwise reasonably understood. man is born without knowledge, but may, by due care, be made a member of the church of christ; that is, may be made a scholar, as the foundation of a wise and good man. i shrink not from a full and reasonable explanation of every part of the mysterious doctrine of the christian church, in this way; and i am prepared to maintain, before all men, that this is the true revelation of the mystery, the true spirit of the letter, both of the old and new testament: "the truth as it is in jesus"--in nature: the truth, by god. this beautiful and deeply-woven allegory embraces, in its mystery, almost every known process of nature; and must, in my opinion, have been the labour of the united science of many generations of the wisest men---of truly inspired men. this very doctrine of transubstantiation in the sacrament of the lord's supper, is descriptive, and is in fact and principle, the death, burial, and resurrection of christ in. man. the bread and wine are swallowed, are buried in the human stomach, there decomposed or transubstantiated, formed into chyle, rise again into blood, and form the spirit of the man: which is, in reality, a death of the body and resurrection of the spirit: and the brain being the chief of the sentient principle, there becomes an ascension into that kingdom of heaven, which it is in a reasonable man, and than; which there can be, by law of nature, no other. the same or similar explanation applies to the first and second birth; the birth of the physical body in its original sin, the second the birth of the spiritual mind or inward man, which is the lord christ jesus. it is a divine riddle, and such is the solution. the riddle is of larger comprehension than the mere relations of god to man. it is an astronomical almanack, a written and dramatized picture of the celestial globe; and is, in truth, a most perfect allegory of all known nature, both in physics and morals, in matter and spirit. there are no such men in the church now as the writers of the sacred scriptures; none even with sufficient knowledge to understand them. we have fallen; yes, we have fallen into the dark ages; and the revelation, when known, is to be the millennium. we have fallen by that scarlet whore, the babylon of mystery; and have to rise again, by getting a knowledge of christ, which is not now in the church, nor yet among any of the dissenters so called. nothing can be imagined more anti-christian in spirit and character, than that which has been called the christian church of the last fifteen hundred years. christ, in his physical character, personates the sun and solar year, while his twelve disciples personate the twelve months, or the signs of the zodiac; and; in this sense, we have a death, descent, resurrection and ascension, once a year. it is in that sense he performs the miracle of turning the water of the pot of aquarius (january or winter) into the wine of autumn; the story, of course, is told, in the gospel, after the form of a personated narrative of a dramatic incident. so the product of the corn-seed of five small loaves and two fishes, becomes sufficient, in the season, to feed five thousand. the knowledge and ingenuity of the state of mind, that could so construct the allegory, as an harmonious picture of the works of nature, is absolutely wonderful, and has my admiration, even my ejaculatory adoration; and i am not a little proud of my own ingenuity, in having penetrated thus far into so deep and mysterious a subject. it has brought me perfect peace of mind, as to the general system of nature, and left me burning with the desire to acquire more knowledge. in the church now existing, is there aught but mystery that can be called its religion? and in mystery unexplained, unrevealed, can there be aught but impudent knavery in the ministration, with general hypocrisy or credulous folly in the reception? i have penetrated the subject so deeply as not to shrink from saying, that the present ministration of the church is an impudent and mischievous imposture, sanctioned by the custom of antiquity, that neither instructs nor moralizes the people; for, notwithstanding all the pretences to religion, greater immorality than is here found cannot be supposed to exist among a people holding or held together as a community, in daily danger of disruption, and utterly without a code of moral guidance or guides: and this not so much among the poor as among the rich. even this city is in danger, from its ill-assorted and ill-conditioned population, of all the disasters that befell babylon, jerusalem, rome, constantinople or paris. and almost every village in the island groans under want, and courts even the desolation of contested revolution for a change. and that very feeling and profession, which is now miscalled the religion of peace, will, from its state of ignorant dissension, only serve to whet the appetite for contention and slaughter, and make another war in the name of god. i call upon you to repent, by which i mean reflection. i ask you to be honest, and that, too, because the season of profitable dishonesty is exhausted, and you have wealth enough: save it. it is never too late to reform and do justly; but the later the reform is deferred, the more necessity that the justice be rigid and prompt. i feel that if i had your authority, i could save the church and its property, not for a farther career of its iniquity and error, but as a noble institution for the good of the people, a sufficient school for all, and a hospital for the infirm; to which, i add, that this, or nothing good, must have been the purpose of its first institution. i believe, from what i now see of the foundation of the christian religion, that this was the first purpose of its institution. banish the superstition of the church, plant the tree of knowledge there, and you will quickly overthrow the morally pestilent dissenters. i mean, of course, by moral means, by the exhibition of more knowledge and wisdom and utility than they. this would be salvation and reform to every good institution in the country; for when knowledge becomes the nation's religion and moral pole-star, everything good is safe, everything evil will vanish before a discussion of its merits. this or blood-thirsty contention is your choice. you may delay for a while; but you cannot otherwise reform. you, by delay, will merely bid the people wait until they are strong enough to combat your authority. delay will be a challenge to them of physical combat. what can confer more dignity on the "dignitaries of the church" than for the legislature to say to them:--"feed the people with knowledge and no longer fill them with superstition?" if i understand human nature rightly, it has more pleasure in honesty than in dishonesty. would the experimental lectures of a faraday, desecrate the building? or a beautifully reflected picture of the heavens and its explanation lessen true devotion? would moral; science profane the pulpit or injure the congregation? would the real catechism; and instruction, of children in matters of physical and moral science be of less importance than the parrotlike catechism of the language of the present mystery? there would then be some ground for a bishop's or overseer's examination and confirmation; but what does confirmation now mean? all that i can remember of it is a learn-ing to repeat from memory a prayer and a creed, perhaps a few commandments, which are studied to-day, to be gone through tomorrow, and neglected ever after. give the people something which they can feel and know to be useful, which they can reduce to practice, and they will emulate each other in flocking to church at the appointed times. you will then have need of still more churches to receive the increasing population. it will be an emulative pleasure to children, a new delight to parents, a mutual gratification to be at school together in church. i can say from observation, comparison and experience, that among the most moral of the working people in the metropolis, will be found those who have attended scientific lectures on the sunday, and who have thereby been taught, to contemn superstition. you find them not in the house of intoxication; but passing soberly in the evening from their homes to the school; and gratifiedly after the lecture from the school to their homes. the greatest error that toryism and superstition have fallen into has been to suppose that knowledge will make a people disorderly. bacon's aphorism is true, that superstition is the _primum mobile_ of sedition, the great agitator; and ignorance the great disorderer of states. is it not so in ireland? is it not your greatest trouble in this island? the wisest act of the life of the late lord castlereagh was to propose to send _paine's age of reason_ among the roman catholics of ireland. if it had been so thoroughly done, when he proposed it, they would have been all quiet enough by this time. real knowledge is the water-cup of sobriety for a people: with that they will seek to rid themselves of nothing but error and evil that cannot be morally defended. make the change that i propose in the business and ceremony of the church, and you instantly make a christian religion, eminently catholic, that will not only annihilate the dissenters, but convert jew, mahometan and pagan. it will be irresistible to all mankind. they cannot argue against science; but each argues against the superstition of the other. science is the essence of judaism, but the men called jews understand it not. it is the foundation of their name, the ground on which they have been considered a chosen people, it is the only sign of god in man, the only proof of true religion. science and morals are the whole duty and all needful to man; beyond which he can gain nothing but superstition, error and evil. science and morals, then, are the only proper business of the church. let us have our national education in the church. let the church be the fountain of knowledge, and all be there baptized, as a true sign of mental birth and membership of christ. gather together all the property that was ever ecclesiastical; get it back from whoever may hold it; take it out of the hands of the priesthood or the ministers of the church, tithes and all; and give it into the hands of its true owners, the people, each parish with its separate share, and let the majority of the parishioners make the best use of it they can for ecclesiastical, that is scholastical purposes; and with it, also, provide for their infirm and accidentally poor. this one act of public justice and public good would go far toward settling the affairs of this distracted and unsettled nation, and do injury to no one. let the state parliament be also the church convocation, which may be well done when there are no superstitious disputes, all will go on smoothly with due and sufficient authority and order, and britain look forward to happy days. it would be the regeneration of the whole earth in a few years. this is what is meant by the promise of the knowledge of the lord covering the earth as the waters fill the ocean. somebody must publicly break through the trammels of superstition, i have done it as far as a private man can do it; but wo public man in england has yet dared to approach the subject. be you the first. no other circumstance could bring you a more imperishable name and fame. of wealth you have enough. i ask nothing more than that you fulfil the promise of your administration made to the electors of tamworth. if you say, that you did not mean what i express, i shall answer you, that you could have no other meaning. were i in parliament, i would carry the subject in spite of prejudice; so strong is my faith in the power of knowledge. i would move, in such a clear and simple way, that a man should not hold up his face to his fellow man after voting against me. give us a commission, with power to enquire into this subject. i will be content to wait all the time that justice to all concerned may require. if religion be any thing more than i make it--mental cultivation from infancy to death, it must be the private business of every man's life and nothing national; like national sobriety, it must be made up of the sobriety of each individual, and cannot rest on social forms and ceremonies. ceremonial sobriety would be but the mockery of a good principle. i care not how much repenting and proving we have, how much trial, let us but have free, full, and fair enquiry and discussion, in parliament and out of parliament. giving a man knowledge cannot be a disqualification for true religion. feeding him with science can have no tendency to injure his morals. occupying his time well can be no source of bad habits. spurring him on to a moral emulation in the acquisition of equal or more knowledge than his neighbour, will not create ill will toward that neighbour. the best occupation of time is a question at the very root of individual happiness and national prosperity: i find it everywhere sadly neglected; here in prison, out in church, at the theatre, in public and private business, in families, in pursuit of pleasure, in the army--everywhere. it can be scarcely said, that there is anything solid in our actions; frivolity prevails everywhere, and is mixed up with our most serious professions. i cannot look back to pagan times without seeing that they were a superior people to ourselves, and that we have fallen, through the management of our religion and politics, from, rather than risen, above them: we exceed them in nothing but hard and lengthy labour for small wages, insufficient for the necessaries of life. we have not learnt from seneca, "that he lives longest who has made the best use of his time." be it your study to seek to give us some sound moral reforms, and sink party politics in the moral of public good; withdraw all licences from houses of intoxication and late hours; let there be no public resort, in parliament or elsewhere, after ten at night; if it would be no abridgement of general liberty, confine shop business to limited hours, that the conductors and assistants may have due time for mental improvement. some of the young men and women in london shops, bitterly lament the want of more time for rational recreation, for health and improvement. they are among the veriest of slaves in confinement. let knowledge be once legislatively encouraged, remove all taxes from it, and then a hundred minor arrangements, by legislation, may be made conducive to public good, and a bar be set against injurious, offensive, and slavish competition. it is the tory fear--and, in justice, i will add, whig fear too--of knowledge that has produced all the present wrongs and evils of the country; for if cunning men have legislated, it has not been done for the public good; because there has not been sufficient public responsibility. this is all church as well as state business that i am proposing. the clear distinction as to church and state is--that the church means the people, congregated for mental improvement; and the state means the exercise of that mental improvement in their public business: so true it is, that church must precede and give character to the state. tithes are a recognition of the original proprietorship of the whole people in the land; a rent paid under that consideration, appropriate-able to the sustenance of the poor, and the mental improvement of all. church property is the property of the whole people who constitute the church; and not, as now, of the ministers, who profess to be, and ought to be, the servants of the church. at present, the servants are set above, defy, and tyrannize over the masters. all public officers in church and state, from the king to the beadle, should be subject to the periodical election of an intelligent people: without this, there can be no just and dignified authority--no proper public officers,--all will be tyranny, corruption, and inefficiency! in thus stating my subject, i am not insensible to the state of mind and conflicting interests with which you have to deal: but you are in a dilemma, from which nothing but wisdom and honesty can relieve you; every false or inefficient step will weaken you; any attempt to patch the holes made by time in the mystery of the church, will be like the tinker's work of mending one and making two: it is rusty and rotten, and must be knocked to pieces and burnt up, to produce the brilliant revelation from its ashes! there can be no mixture of the mystery with the revelation. the latter is a spirit that will explode the former; and, if you be a good christian, let me tell you that the advent of the revelation will be the fulfilment of the promise of the gospel. we have had nothing but the mystery, nothing but the dark ages of ignorance and superstition: the mystery is not christianity; the revelation alone, which we have not had, is christianity. the mystery and the revelation are as unlike each other, as the grossest superstition is unlike reason. what a delightful state of society do i see before me, when the watchword of all shall be--get knowledge! the bible abounds with this exhortation; tells us all our disorders are lack of knowledge; and yet we have been through centuries, almost through millenia, studiously and tyrannically keeping each other blind and ignorant. this has been the reign of the devil, anti-christianity, and not christianity. when the portico of each church-build-ing shall bear the inscription of--know thyself, and enter here to get knowledge, the communicant will see a friend in his minister, and the minister will strive to raise up wisdom in his communicant. now what do we see? studied ignorance, and suppression of knowledge with both: each ashamed to look in the face of the other. and wherever a man advances beyond the existing state of mind, and publishes his sentiments, he is persecuted as an outcast, and unrelentingly subjected to prison-discipline, since the law has ceased to make the "offence" capital. the unrevealed mystery of religion has been the curse and moral devil of the human race. a statesman cannot be wise and honest without setting his face against it, and seeking to rid of it the minds of his countrymen. with it, a state can have no permanent peace, nor can statesmanship be an honour. if you are not master of this subject, i am; if you will not press it upon the attention of the country, i will; and i have not a doubt, but that, by its superior moral power, it will enable me to succeed you in office. i invite you to take the task in your hands, and i will be content to be anything, to remain in prison, if this great reform be but put in motion while i live. it is simply to begin to teach the people something useful in the church, to give them useful knowledge, as easy in practicability as it is for a ripe scholar to become a schoolmaster to uninstructed youth. we have teachers all prepared for the purpose in the clergy themselves. you have now to deal with a suspected and not a respected clergy. though the great mass of the people do not understand where the fault theologically lies, yet they have instinctive discernment enough to see, that the relation of their condition to that of the clergy is not founded in honesty and social utility. as sure as i, who see through the whole subject, the people feel that they are not fairly dealt with by the clergy; and thus feeling, with such a clergy, there can be no social peace. the feeling will increase as they get knowledge on the subject, and i have thrown that knowledge into the market, in defiance of all the power you have possessed or can possess; and that knowledge you cannot withdraw from the market of human intellect: the whole people will get at it in time. your boast is now that of being chief or leader of the conservatives. this is not what the nation wants. it needs purgation of error, abuse and wrong, and a restoration of all the first principles of its institutions. it is a fair question to put to you and your party, if you know the first principles of the institutions of this country? you certainly have seen none of them in practice; for your scholarship and administration have been full of error and wickedness. as i told sir allan park, that the church had dissented from itself, so i now tell you, that every institution in this country that is a thousand years old in name, has dissented from itself, and has, in fact, been changed diabolically--which means directly opposite, or from good to evil; and there never was a country whose cup of iniquity was more filled. conservation means preservation, and there is nothing in the present institutions of this country but public wrongs and private abuses to be preserved. the name of a destructive is far more honourable, in the present state of the country; the only name indeed that can be honourable, if it be interpreted, an intended destruction of error and abuses, of which the country is brim-full, and the fermentation pouring over. i dislike all these names. they are all dishonestly used. they form no real distinction between man and man. the word radical has always been to me an offensive word; the more particularly so as i have seen some very bad and ignorant men making a great noise under it and about it. we want knowledge and honesty to make it practicable, and no names by which to be distinguished: such names spring from ignorance and dishonesty. the origin of our ancient institutions has its foundation laid in the moral of law springing from the law of morals; and the restoration would be easy, if existing authority would resign itself to the change, or if it could be overpowered and made so to do. one or the other of these changes is necessary, before anything can be done, and the first the wisest and to be preferred. i believe there was a time when they existed without a mixture of any kind of deception practised upon the people, and that is just what i desire to see restored; and which, i am sure, from the growth of knowledge and criticism, is the one thing needful to keep the country in a state of inward peace. knowledge is the only spiritual interest of the people: it should be fostered, promoted and increased in the church, so as to be equalized as far as possible among the mass or greater number. the ignorance of the people has been an excuse for many an act of hypocrisy, deception and tyranny: its continuance is now the fault of the church, and of those who have its direction. cunning cannot invent an assumption that any qualification can better serve the spiritual and temporal interests of the people than knowledge. their degree of knowledge is the all that is spiritual or of good within them. it is an affair, too, where honest brokerage is scarcely probable; because no check can be kept upon it. what, therefore, is not to be defended as knowledge is not of god but of the devil. in that sense, i arraign the whole church as now constituted, and challenge it to stand a trial. i fear it is now too corrupt even to be militant. let us suppose you about to attempt a reconciliation with the present dissenters, as to the doctrines and ceremonies of the church. to please the advocates of adult baptism, you must exchange the infant for adult baptism, and then you will displease those who are not pleased with adult baptism. to please the unitarians, you must give up the doctrine of the trinity; and then you will displease all the trinitarians. what is to be done to satisfy the wesleyans or methodists? they will have irregular prayers and preachings, which are contrary to the discipline of the church. what is to be done with the swedenborgians, the muggletonians, and southcotians? how can you furnish spirit and noise enough for the unknown tongues of the irvingites? and what but the spirit of silence will conciliate the quakers? all of them will require the abolition of your bishopricks and other offices, while none of them will object, and all will claim if a chance offer, to divide the church property among them. the spirit of dissent, in matters of religion, prevailing in this country, is nothing more than an infectious mental disease: with it, there is no reason mixed. the moment it becomes a profit to lead such a congregation, men of comparative talent as to capability will take it up and lead; and thus the thing has gone on to confusion and mental distraction, because the church was not in a condition to defend itself and set a better example. you cannot please one sect of the dissenters, without increasing the displeasure of the other: and thus your task is hopeless, on any other ground than that which i propose, to beat them in the superior communication of knowledge. on the other hand, let us suppose the church of england to begin to reveal the mystery of jesus christ, which i define, and maintain, to consist of a cultivation of the human mind, with all possible knowledge and reason; all other churches must instantly bow to its superiority. the effect among men throughout the earth would be wonderful and intellectually electric. it is the only system that can be imagined to be a catholic christianity, and the very thing that is meant by the word catholic, something alike suited to the welfare of every man, and which presents the principle of a moral equality, which is the only foundation for true liberty, and the only guarantee for an improvement of public morals; one that would make the church an attraction to the wisest as well as to the most ignorant of men; those as teachers, these as learners. we may carry the idea farther; and as in the present state of mind, millions in europe and america are attached to an idea of the superiority of the church authorities at rome, through ignorance and custom i grant, but not less attached,--i would, to humour that conceit and turn it to good, consent to make the pope of rome the centre of communication from all parts of the earth for discovered knowledge, as it would be desirable to have such a central recipient and fountain to give it forth again in the best possible manner. this would accelerate the reconciliation of the dissenting race, without an idea of dishonourable submission on the part of an individual. indeed, the perfection of my proposition is, that no man can feel injury or degradation in the change. it is an overthrow of nothing, but simply the development and better understanding of the mystery that has existed since the world of human intellect began: the revelation of that mystery; and, consequently, the completion or carrying out of the true christian scheme. it is not to be expected, that, in a pamphlet letter, i can do more than briefly notice a few leading points of this important subject; but i am quite prepared to extend it through volumes, and shall go on so to do. i am quite prepared to meet or be one of any commission on the subject. i would willingly put my life upon the hazard of verifying my present views of original christianity. it would have been done in former ages, had the printing press existed. its doing now is consequent on the gradual power of criticism which the press has brought with it into existence. it is the truth, and must prevail. it is the god in man. it is the church of christ, against which the gates of hell shall not prevail. they have certainly prevailed against every other existing church, and the whole of the past is a wreck. when speaking of the original christian religion, or of the revelation of the mystery, i wish to be understood, as not meaning that the revelation was ever before preached or openly taught to the human race on any part of the earth. we have no evidence of it beyond the reasoning and moral precepts of the philosophical world, which were not put forth as a scheme or system of religion. but when it is confessedly the fact, that something called a christian scheme has been talked about for eighteen hundred years; and when we can trace the fac simile of that something, even in its whole nomenclature, principle and practice, through greeks and romans, persians and hindoos, up to the celtic druids and earliest known universal worship of budha, the first personation of jesus christ now on record;--i mean, that the mystery has been the only general public part of it, and that the knowledge of the revelation was confined to the learned class and ancient mysteries of all countries, was the esoteric doctrine of the initiated into those mysteries; and the breaking up of those mysteries, from the time of alexander to the augustan era, was the cause of the first publication in writing of the books or traditions handed down through the agency of those secret and sacred associations, bearing the mystery only on its surface and by the letter; and that after the mystery was so published, the very ministers of it lost the revelation, which is what the freemasons profess to be in search of, the lost word, the word that i have found and now declare, that the salvation by jesus christ is only to be found in the increasing cultivation of the human mind with all attainable knowledge; that the true worship of god has no other meaning, the root of the word worship being to cultivate, and the field to be cultivated the human mind; that repentance is reflection for improvement; the second birth is the birth of mind, as distinguished from physical birth or birth of body, the one describing the man adam, the other the god christ; and that the kingdom of heaven is to be established upon a general knowledge and practice of this revelation, is to be upon this earth, in successive generations of the human race, and not reasonably to be sought under any other speculation, calculation or hope. these are not only possibilities but probabilities, and immediate practicabilities, if the existing devil will be pleased to retire: if not, we must resist him, and, as we are promised, on that condition, he will flee. such is the foundation of a catholic church, from which there can be no dissent; for what is understood cannot be dissented from: the existing dissent is ignorance dissenting from ignorance. in the common use of the word, i am not a dissenter; but a trier, prover, teacher, revealer of that which is the true meaning of the mystery that has been through ignorance the cause of the dissent. the personation of deity in the written mystery has been nothing more than a drama prepared for stage effect, which, to the initiated only, would be matter of instruction or refreshment of memory. the ancient mystery meant a play, a drama, in our modern sense; but was first called a mystery, then a morality; was first private, and afterwards made common to the public, and is now for the first time revealed to the general understanding, through the instrumentality of the printing press. in my lecturings and discussions, both in town and country, i find this revelation has a great charm among all classes who have good temper and good manners to hear patiently. it is pure reason, pure knowledge, pure translation of language; it clashes with no other man's knowledge, and i have not found the man who can raise an argument against it. of its final and complete success in regenerating the world, i have not a doubt; it is only a question of time. it is now a question, if you and the parliament will look at it. i know you well enough to know, that you will not like its propounder; but who else has been ripe and bold enough to do it? who else deserves the honour of being its propounder; but i, its honest martyr and zealous student, through a ten years' imprisonment? i call you to witness my fidelity in this matter. i was your prisoner through four years; you sanctioned the two years i had suffered before you came to the home department: you sanctioned my imprisonment by lord melbourne, through thirty-two months: and, by virtue of your office, you are sanctioning my present imprisonment. i do not say this in anger. i am retaliating upon you, as i would have you retaliate upon the dissenters, by superior knowledge. if you do not now or early take me by the hand, i shall drive you out of the field of politics, and all who may succeed of your disposition. it is not to be denied, that there are moral exhortations put forth in every church; the mystery would not pass on the people without them. but it is a truth, that, in all of them, morals are treated as a secondary consideration; and in some of the madder dissenting churches, are counted as of no weight in the question of religion. the truth, as it is in jesus, is, that morals are every thing as to practice, and knowledge with succeeding reason, the principles of speculation, the word to be sought, or the prize to be gained, the crown of glory, the spiritual and immortal life, which is emphatically the language of saint john's gospel; and this is the totality of the root and principle of the christian religion, the promotion of which is the only proper business of the ministration in the church. no mystery: down with mystery. it is the folly of the human race, and worse than ignorance, or knowing, or confessing to know, nothing. there is no christ in the mystery. "how can we reason, but from what we know?" the knowledge must be first. nothing precedes knowledge but the thing to be known. nothing is required after; but a dealing with the thing known by principle of reason. unknown worlds, unknown spirits, unknown matter, is nothing to us, until the knowledge is obtained. our knowledge is our all, in moral power, and we can have nothing of a religious nature but our knowledge. superstitious fears, we know to be the property or sensation of ignorance and misconception. we are morally responsible for nothing but an improper use of our knowledge. it is wickedness to teach ignorance any other doctrine. my christian proposition for the reform of the church harmonizes with all science, and clashes with nothing but positive error and wicked policy; and i venture to tell you, that you can find no other scheme to produce the same effect, and to give satisfaction to the present and to all future generations of men, to make the church "meet the respect and affections of the people." each paltry sect now considers its tenets as a catholic faith; but the truth is, as dr. oeddes well observed, "that what is christian is catholic, and what is catholic must be christian;" but then, this follows, that neither christianity nor catholicity will bear a union with the word dissent, unless the dissenter be an intelligent corrector at the same time: they are adverse to every admissible idea of undiscussed dissent. all standing dissent is of the devil; while christianity and catholicity are of god and heaven. the multiplication table, the elements of euclid, the doctrines of the trinity and transubstantiation, the proved analysis and composition of all known substances, are catholic doctrines, from which nothing but ignorance can dissent. the whole of the present church ritual is a mass of words that conceal a truth; but that truth is not known in the church, cannot therefore be used or worshipped, and the words can only be deemed the lumber of the memory: treating man as man treats a parrot, teaching him constantly to exclaim "pretty poll," without giving him understanding whom or what "poll" personates. if i were to sit in church through a morning or evening service, i should have a perfect understanding of all the words used, and, consequently, should be worshipping according to the limit of the word there presented; because i have in me the spirit of revelation. but this is not the case with those who now attend the church, their attendance is upon form, ceremony, mystery, hypocrisy, which is the real meaning of the whole present business of the church: hypocrisy, or dramatical acting, set forth in a mystery, without a mixture or accompanying revelation; and like the flimsy gildings of a theatre, or the spangles of an actress' dress, gilded over with a little moral exhortation, that you may observe or not, as you please, so as you are a cheerful payer of all dues, rates, and oblations. the first revision wanted in the church is a translation of the revelation from the dead language of its mystery, into language comprehensible by all. consequent upon such a revision would be, that the parishioners would take the management of their own church property into their own hands, and recover and hold their most sacred rent of tithe, on recovery of the knowledge that they are the first and inalienable proprietors of the land. my subject is so far novel as to justify a little repetition. that twice two is four need not be repeated; but where the human being is enveloped in a cloud of verbose mystery, that cloud can only be dispelled by continued flashes of moral lightning. so i will return to methodical statement. the mystery of the existing church, in all its grades of dissent, having set forth and caused the belief of a temporal and local existence of the personated principles of deity, as distinct and separate from ourselves, in imitation of the pagan mythology, and not as simulated beings; it is requisite, as matter of proof, sooth and truth, that a case of clear human history of the circumstances be first made out, the doing of which my knowledge, after trial, challenges; and if that could be done, the more difficult task would remain, to prove, that such beings, the authors of such circumstances, as could be historically proved, were super-human. if the first cannot be done, the clumsy mystery falls to the ground, as the dagon of the day, before historical criticism: and if the first be done, and the second cannot bear the light of scientific and philosophical criticism, the mystery is still but a mummery, which belief can no longer prop, nor physical power farther propagate; it is thrown into the crucible of moral criticism, and men will not longer consent to believe that the same causes will demonstrate differing effects, nor that varying causes may be made to demonstrate the same effect. i have read in public prints of your creditable attendance at the royal institution of albemarle street, on the demonstrative lectures of mr. faraday in the science of chemistry. when there, were you asked to believe anything? was not everything demonstrated, so that the words were verified by the acts of the lecturer? if mr. faraday had played you _hocus pocus_ or legerdemain tricks, as a pretence of chemistry, would you have been satisfied? if he had told you of strange and incomprehensible things, which he could not demonstrate, would you have believed?--i think not: i give you credit for a better state of mind. take a lesson from the inference, and grasp this truth, that the royal institution in albemarle street is the best church in the country, and is, in reality, the nearest existing approach to the catholic church of christ. it would be rational, it would be wisdom, if all were spending their church time at such lectures, who are old enough to receive such instruction. i hope it will not offend you, nor be an untruth, to say, that you learnt something on every occasion of attending mr. faraday; that you, a secretary of state, there found you had something to learn; and that a field was there opened to knowledge, which would, had it pleased you, before all other occupation, have wisely and usefully engaged the whole time of your remaining life. on the other hand, in the spirit of truth and charity, but of free enquiry, allow me to ask, if you could ever say the same, after an attendance at church, on leaving, that you had learned something that was, without pretence, matter of real learning, an acquisition in knowledge possessed, that was not previously known in your school-hours and as a matter of school-business, or that might not have been learned from a book at home? i extend the question, in asking, whether anything that may be taught a boy at seven years of age, is improved on, by an attendance on the present state of the church to seventy or four score years of age? if not, and i say--no, to what good purpose does this expensive establishment exist? or, may it not be put to a better purpose? and if it may, why not? to talk about church reform, without doing something that shall tend to a full amount of practical and permanent good, is to insult the nation; because the existing state of the church is really a burthen and a grievance, and of no general utility. no church was ever reformed by and with the consent of its priesthood. i am of opinion that the bishops and clergy ought not to be consulted in this affair:--they are not the church; but the ministers or servants of the people, which form, or ought to form, the church. a royal or parliamentary commission, with unlimited powers of enquiry, is the first power necessary with which to commence this subject of reform in the church. if we did not know human nature, history affords the warrant, that the bishops and clergy generally will follow the profits of the church: those in the reign of the tudors changed back and forward five times from catholic to protestant. but under this proposition of mine, what dignity is evident in the change! instead of making the bishops overseers and the clergy generally actors of a drama, i purpose to put the whole structure of the human mind under their superintendance and guidance: not to be dealt with as now, but really to be educated in all attainable knowledge. my purpose is as practicable as that any other person can teach any kind of knowledge. give the human being a better occupation of time, let the human mind expand where it may, and you guarantee perpetual peace and improvement, with dignity to every class of men, with injury to none. the change which i propose will be tantamount to a national change from diseased and crippled infancy to healthy adolescence. general man has not yet had fair play. no nation, the history of which is known, has made a real effort to promote the happiness of all its members. class has preyed upon class; idleness has been claimed as a privilege on one side, and slavery, through force, been made an inevitable duty on the other. for the furtherance of such a state of society, superstition has been encouraged, that a pompous class might be decorated to preach submission among the labourers to the spirit of tyranny and imposture that was riding riotously over them. there can be no liberty and solid happiness among a superstitious people; and all attempts, at what is called political reform, that leave the people mentally rotting in superstition, will be abortive. i take credit for one fact--that there has been no change made in the political spirit of this country through any other medium than warfare with superstition; for the baneful and blighting spirit of that superstition admitted not of the thought of any other change. there is a glimpse of light latent to show that all the monastic institutions, the temples, the abbeys, priories, convents, nunneries, the mysteries, the churches, synagogues, and oratories, were originally instituted as schools of useful knowledge; and for what other good purpose could they have been instituted? the better part of the human mind is now making an effort to restore the purity of that state of things. nothing short of this can tend to harmonize the human race in their several nations, with this improvement upon the past, that all, and not a class only, be educated. it was this education of a class only that has created all the mischief of superstitious society. the class educated has imposed untruths upon the uneducated class, until education itself to that class became swallowed up in imposture; and now both preacher and hearer may be truly said to be alike ignorant of all the great truths that are important to man, and necessary to social welfare. in the way in which the bible is now read, after being printed, no preachers or teachers are necessary: to have been taught to read is sufficient. give every man his bible from church property, after teaching him to read, and the present church business is completed: but much otherwise is my view of the subject. there is not a man living that has now a thorough understanding of the contents and meaning of the bible. many are working for the restoration of its lost science; and it is a subject worthy of a church. it may startle a first lord of the treasury into new thought, to be told, that neither of the books of the bible is a piece of human history, not a history of beings like you, me, or any one else. i have given up all idea of the kind as untenable and indefensible. it may startle the chancellor of the exchequer, who is supposed to have the counting or reckoning of millions of money yearly, and contemplating that giant of despair--the debt, to be told, that the bible is fundamentally a mathematical book; and that he who does not so understand it, understands it not at all, or but in a very small degree, as to its moral bearing. the duke of sussex can give you an opinion on this head, as to the bible being a book of algebraical science; though, perhaps, he would not like to say it applied to astronomical motion, and was a record of time so calculated through myriads of ages. a bishop should understand this. it is a book of much more importance than has been made of it in the last thousand years in england. if the bishops were required to have studied this book before they took office, we should find them generally as lean and as sallow as a lawyer who has to wade through the statutes at large, and law reports as large, for his sort of knowledge; a knowledge that i do not like, and will have none of, but what is forced upon me. no kind of knowledge is requisite to make a modern bishop. the very origin of the title of a bishop is that of an astronomical seer, a looker-out or overseer of the subordinate offices of science. there is a plenty of work, so as to allow of no idleness in any office of the church, if justice be done to the people; and i will not grudge a thousand pounds a-year as a salary to a competent bishop, or even more than that, if the property of the church will afford it. ignorant fools they must have been, to have allowed so important, so honourable and dignified an office to become corrupt, and to fall into disrepute among the people. this algebraical reading of the bible subdues all idea of contradiction to any science, geology for instance, chemistry or any other science, as well as of the apparent language of the book in letter to letter. for instance, the letter-objecting infidels have laid great stress on moses being set forth as having seen god; when the author of the gospel according to saint john says "no man hath seen god at any time." this is ignorantly set down as a clear contradiction. the explanation is, that _moses was not a man_; and then there is no appearance of contradiction. one is mythologically, and the other morally, true. the hebrew and greek alphabets, being numerical as well as literal signs, which was probably the case with all other ancient languages, and these accumulating large numbers, by additional points, it is impossible that we can have a clear understanding of the meaning of their mythological sacred books, without a full algebraical knowledge of the language; and this explains how the letter killeth or stupifieth, while the spirit or knowledge of the entire meaning alone giveth life or understanding. the deepest investigators of the hebrew bible of this day maintain that it should be algebraically understood as a book of astronomical science--as a record of time by astronomical motion, which, physically speaking, can alone be the word of the works of god. the only true religion must be founded in man's reasonable comprehension; all other pretences to it are presumptions and nonsense to be condemned. we may as properly speak of religious horses and cows, as of men who are ignorant of the subject, substance and meaning, of what is religion. saint anthony's preaching to fishes is not without its simile in the practical part of that which has been mistakenly called the christian religion. that which is in practice, under the name of the christian religion, among many grades of dissenters, is a disgrace to the government of the country, and to the name of civilized society: it grows worse and worse. madness is beginning to be added to mystery; or is now produced by the mystery without the key of revelation. through revelation there can be healthy excitement and enthusiasm; but none through mystery. our king is not now the head of a church, nor the king of a people: he can only be truly described as the head or king of dissenters, which is an office much more troublesome and dangerous than honourable. to his ministers, the present state of religious mind must be a prolific source of trouble; and has, i believe, made them persecutors, where the inclination of their own hearts was not coincident with the act. the dissenters are now much less tolerant than the law-established church; and if they are not undermined by my proposition, it will not take them many years to undermine that church, or to demand a share of its property. to be able to see this, it is only necessary that we be acquainted with the workings of human nature, where not under the controul of knowledge. i am not content that the established church shall stand merely as one among dissenting churches; no minister of state should be so content: the king is thereby dishonoured, and the state in disorder. i would have it a church morally dominant and militant against all error, as it always should be, and as it was in the beginning. the meaning of the word militant has been entirely lost, in the growth of mystery and decay of revelation in the church. there is a great talk now about revelation, or of something revealed in the church; but there is no reality in the revelation. there is a mystery pregnant with revelation; but not in itself the revelation. it is a fountain of knowledge, but the genius of man must draw it out. it is good for nothing, but has caused a world of mischief, where read and understood as merely by the letter, as we read an ordinary book of history. the church now wants the revelation or spirit. not one of those existing has a particle of spirit. my proposition for a reform will annihilate infidelity as well as dissent. there is no infidelity toward knowledge. it has been ignorance all through, on both sides, that has raised the cry of infidelity: each has been unequal to teaching. the infidel has rejected that literal reading which the professing believer could not defend; because he did not understand its relation, as mystery to revelation. both, in fact, have been alike infidels. if i have been the chief of infidels, i will atone for it in becoming the chief defender of revelation, and the faith, as it is in christ jesus, and not as it is in any dissenting church. already the ignorant infidels murmur at what they mistakenly call my apostacy, while no member of any existing church holds out a hand to my welcome. as the church goes now, it is not required that its ministers be learned men: they have nothing to do for which talent is requisite--it is a mere school-boy's task; and even among the dissenters, where the prayer and preaching is extemporaneous, it is not learning, but memory and habit, that are required. in the church, as i would have it reformed, not only learning but talent to teach would be necessary; and the ministers would rise to bishoprics, not through family or political interest, but through preparation and capability to fill the office; for it would be required of them to be first-rate scholars and practical men in display of science, that sort of science, too, of which they are now so much afraid--the unlimited knowledge of things, rather than of languages. in what class of ages do we place the dark ages of man's history? to whose account are they placed? to the pagan, jew, mahometan, infidel, or whose? i blush for the church when i consider it--to the account of that _misnomer_, the _christian church!_ so your pretended light to lighten the gentiles, made them all darker, did it? yes, it did and does, as your church has mistaken it! and none of you are yet out of the fog created by the mystery. not one of you has gained light of mind sufficient to dispel a particle of that fog of the dark ages. you are all, as churchmen, as dark as any of those who lived in the tenth, eleventh, twelfth, or any other century; talk about your reformation, printing press, bible societies, dissenters, or what you please! the admission which has been made, not by the adversary, but by the church itself, that the dark ages are within its reign, is decisive of the question as between me and any who may oppose me. let it not be said, that the fault was in the roman catholic church, and that it has been removed. i deny the assumption; the fault is not removed, nor has any church made the least improvement on that called roman catholic. the fault lies in the remaining unrevealed mystery of the church and the sacred scriptures. as far as church is in question, this nation is as dark as ever it was, and such is the case throughout europe. there is much thick darkness to be yet dispelled; before our gentility is enlightened. we are precisely in the same error as the hindoos, to whom we send missionaries; and though we talk about civilization, we have it not. our general state of society would shock the moral feelings of an american indian. there are, in reality, but two distinct states of society: the superstitious and the civilized, the dark and the light. can any man reasonably say, that we have yet passed the superstitious state? are we not rather in the very depth of it; the light of a few individuals, now and then visible, acting upon the whole like flashes of lightning on a dark night, are seen and spent quickly, lost or buried in the general darkness, though effects may be left? the liberty which i have won in prison, to make the printing press bear upon this darkness, is the first unextinguished light that has been set up and kept burning. i now desire to light the seven candles of the english church from my lighted torch. i would not be presumptuous if i saw any other man putting himself forward to propose this necessary business. it is not in me conceit: it is a passionate desire to do good and to leave the world better than i found it. so many years of imprisonment (this being the tenth) must shorten the period of my life, so i grow the more anxious to do the more while i remain a bubble on the sea of matter borne. not that i despair of eternal life, but i learn from the gospel that i must provide it for myself. in the present state of the church, there is no sufficient and satisfactory motive given for keeping holy the sabbath-day; there is no reason given for holding a sabbath. i state it as a necessary civil institution for the improvement of the human mind, since labour to live is the condition of life. while the honest labourer is following his social avocation through six days, i would have his children going through a course of education by the ministers in the church, their especial office--"suffer little children to come unto me, and forbid them not; for of such is the kingdom of heaven"--and on the seventh, or sabbath day, i would have such discourses, such teaching in the church, as should be suitable to the united presence of both old and young. this would be a satisfactory motive to keep that day holy; and such, as far as i can see, was the evident purpose of the sabbath and of the christian church. no other use of the church can be more hallowed; no purpose more sacred; no employment more dignified to the minister as well as to the people. when peter, in the gospel, is called upon to feed the lambs of christ, what was meant?--to feed them with grass? no! to feed the infants of the church with true and useful knowledge; not to do which is treason to society and breach of trust in the ministers of the church. oh! here is a fine field open, in which the lambs may gambol and grow up in spiritual stature, without living to be led like sheep to the slaughter! knowledge is the proper business of the church, and the people's only spiritual interest; and this is the foundation of a catholic church and of a christian religion, that is to bring peace on earth and good-will among men, which have not yet been seen, notwithstanding the supposed promise of the mistaken mystery for the last seventeen hundred years, so many centuries of a sinking state of things, of a fall of man from the light into dark ages! let there be light in the church and the people shall be enlightened. the true church is now eclipsed by the mystery, and is a dark body. the knowledge of the revelation will be the extinction of the mystery, the light of the church, and the salvation of the people from war, pestilence and famine. that revelation, according to the gospel itself, i take to be, that, as knowledge is the only distinction between man and any other animal, the more can be accumulated for him in the church, the more good will be done, and the more he will be saved from evil. existing things can alone be the subject of man's knowledge, and it is of more importance to him to know their properties than their time or history. now, nothing of the properties of existing things is taught in the church; but through the medium of the mystery remaining unrevealed, unexplained, or untranslated in our language, every thing is falsified to man's credulous view and consideration, by the ministers of the church; nature appears to him distorted, and he lives without certainty, and dies deceived as to the future. knowledge is as infinite as existing things, and man's power of acquisition illimitable. it is, then, a proper labour and business, and moral duty, of each generation of men, to leave behind them, for their successors, the largest possible amount of knowledge. this is true wealth, and will increase the value of all other wealth: without knowledge, other wealth is mere animal gratification. the spirit of knowledge gives life and new properties to everything, as far as man's use of it be in question. the church is the proper fountain of this knowledge; should be the public library, the parish laboratory for investigations, the school for infants and adults, and everything that is auxiliary to the acquisition and extension of knowledge. from all i can trace, i verily believe that such was the original purpose and construction of the christian church; and that back to this it may be easiest and best reformed. i am confirmed in the opinion, that putting knowledge under the form of an allegorical mystery, for the purpose of confining it to a class, has been the cause of the mistake and its declension, and of the scholar's fall from a former higher estate of knowledge. decidedly do i conclude, that our stock of knowledge is much below the quantity possessed some two or three thousand years ago, when the holders of the sacred books held the revelation with the mystery. i am sure it may be recovered, if fairly and earnestly sought. i see an impulse gathering over both europe and america for the recovery of that knowledge. the church was instituted to become the repository of knowledge; and all would have gone on well, but for the ancient system of deceiving what were and are called the vulgar--of having a double doctrine, the exoteric and esoteric, telling the people one thing and understanding quite another among themselves. such were deceivers and not teachers of the people; and though the revelation has really been lost, lost i may say, as a just punishment for the wickedness of so deceiving the people, the successive clergy has been ignorantly deceivers and not teachers of the people. they have inherited the exoteric or mysterious doctrine, and have not inherited the esoteric doctrine or the revelation of the mystery. this they have to learn, before they can reform their church, or, before any one can reform it for them. i am confident enough to say, that you have no other ground on which to reform the church, than that which i am proposing. whatever other step you take will only be an aggravation of the evil of which you have now to complain; or of which others complain. if the bishops have one item of wisdom among them, they will take me by the hand, and put their houses in order this way: if not, you and they may dissipate the existing church property, which you say you will not do; and after, we shall begin to form such a-new, and recover what we can of that property. i shall not despair of taking an active part in this thorough reform of the church while life remains: the people can do it for themselves, if clergy, ministers and king will not consent. it is what i began to do in my house in the year , in critical and philosophical lectures and free discussion on the sunday: an example which i am happy to see followed in many parts of this metropolis, and which will go on, if it be not cordially met, until it swallows up the church and all the churches. the true meaning of church, is state of mind. church is the state of mind. it is not made up of building and clergy; but of the people, the proper depositaries of mind. property belonging to the church is property belonging to the people, sacred to the preservation, strengthening, and increase of mind or knowledge. it has been monopolized dishonestly by the clergy; and, in that sense, they have been robbers as well as deceivers of the people. this is the matter to be reformed, and nothing short of this will be reform. in tithes, the people stand as the original proprietors of the land, the true inheritors of its tithes and first-fruits. other rent is a minor consideration of value in labour or capital bestowed on the land. we must come back to this by some means or other. the office of king, as head of the church, is a clerical office--the crown both of the church and the state; and, for the sustentation of its true splendour and dignity, the man or woman filling the office should be the first scholar and most wise and virtuous being of the nation. whether this is a principle to be conveyed by hereditary descent, i do not stop to enquire; but the true hereditary principle of church office is talent and moral character; upon which, i doubt if any improvement can be made for purposes of state. originally, in this island, church and state were but one. the branching into two has been the result of wars and evil passions, to distinguish between the instructive and the destructive offices, hierarchy founded upon knowledge would be equal to all that society wants as government. state, as well as church, signifies the people. as the latter relates to their minds, knowledge, or spiritual affairs, so the former expresses their politics and civil arrangements, their local and temporal affairs: they may be well united in one common interest, and under one common authority, in the reign of a people devoted to the acquisition of knowledge. it is matter of curious observation to see how the use of names among political parties is abused, and how they get reversed in applicable meaning. the class that has lately taken the title of conservatives, is the class that, by the showing of this letter, has been destructive of everything valuable in our institutions, so that we have the name only left, without any virtuous principle that formerly existed in those institutions. we have the evidence of this in all the present difficulties of the country, both in church and state. the ancestors of this class have not known how, or not cared to preserve those ancient institutions in their original purity; and the class now wanted is the class of restoratives, of men whose knowledge, wisdom, honesty and virtue, will enable them to purge out the accumulated errors of centuries, and restore the institutions of the country to their pristine purity. i grant that this class is not found among the men who are commonly called or claim to be called radical reformers: there is as much ignorance in that class as in any other. but they certainly are not likely to be more destructive than they who call themselves conservatives; for these have left nothing to be destroyed. the true and real aim of the men now called radicals is to begin something a-new. their profession of respect for existing institutions is hollow, hypocritical and deceitful. i have had acquaintance enough with them to know that; and more than for the reminiscence of which i can now find respect. still they will supersede both tory and whig, if these do not something upon the principle of a true restoration of institutions to original and best principles. i would have the radicals treated as the dissenters: leave them no ground of complaint, and so annihilate them. a wise king or a wise minister would see that the time is now come at which that step should be taken, and that further delays will be dangerous to every man in office. necessary institutions, if destroyed for a time, will rise again. i fear no kind of change as to the prospect of future advantage. is not the idea horrible, and of the worst description, that a church and king, or church and state, should exist and hold together on no better tenure than a military power; than that of an army constantly under arms to keep the people from carrying their complaints to an extent disagreeable or alarming to the men in office? yet such is all that you can boast of in the present state of the institutions of the country. these institutions did not originate under the protection of an army; nor did they, at their origination, require an army to protect and keep them in existence. an army is a disgraceful appendage, and destructive of every good principle in the church:--it is not an honourable appendage to the office of king. to the people, it is a burthen and an immoral pest; less requisite in this island than in a continental nation. give the people knowledge in their churches, and they will soon dispense with an army. evils accumulate because there is error at the bottom. there is now no people's church: it is, as now existing, a church of the clergy, engrossing and wasting a large property of the people's due to a most valuable social purpose. the dissenters have only made the matter worse, in new exactions for no new benefits. not one tittle of good, not a particle of utility, now proceeds from the clergy toward the people. they are obstacles to the people's welfare, and their use of means of provision for a new and better church. god is the subject of man's adoration. but what is god? man is but an idiot if he professes adoration beyond his understanding. indeed, worship is but a synonymy of reason and its cultivation; and as we say:--_how can we reason but from what we know?_ so we may as truly say:--_how can we worship what we do not know?_ there is no worship without knowledge; all other pretence to it is idolatry and superstition. i have not space to enter upon this topic largely here; but a voluminous treatise on the word god will be the subject of my next essay. for the purpose of this illustration of what the church is, and what it ought to be, i can say correctly, that god, as the aggregate of existence, is known to be a physical and moral power. we have distinct ideas of this two-fold power. the american indians, who speak of god as a great spirit, make the best general definition of the word that can be made, and appear to me to have the clearest, purest and wisest idea of deity, as far as the regulation of their actions by that word is in question,--the pursuit of knowledge, by the use of letters and figures excepted. it corresponds with the emphatic declaration of the gospel according to saint john, chap. iv., v. :--"god is a spirit, and they that worship must worship in spirit and in truth"--which means what i have before stated, that they must know what they worship before they can worship. there is evidence of physical as well as moral spirit. both are seen in man, and constitute what may be termed the spirit of man. the one in man is worshipped or cultivated by attention to health; the other by attention to mental improvement or increased acquisition of knowledge. speaking of god, as the aggregate and source of physical and moral spirit, of which man is a part or unit, we experience that we cannot alter our physical construction, or physical spirit, other than by attention to rules of health in the law of nature; but we can, by study and labour, greatly alter the state of mind or moral spirit. it is here we draw from god as from a fountain; and this asking, seeking, drawing from god, constitutes the whole principle of right prayer and worship, and the structure of the true christian church; other than which, i declare, is worship of the devil and not of god. and i do not shrink from saying, that, as revelation is light and knowledge of god, and mystery is darkness and presence of the devil, there has not through the last fifteen hundred years, the dark ages, throughout europe, been carried on any other kind of worship than devil-worship, and evil has been the fruit thereof. it was under this knowledge that i was moved to exhibit the effigy of the devil arm in arm with the bishop, in the front of my house and in several prints, for which i am now suffering imprisonment, like all other martyrs to truth, punished for acting upon my knowledge. my purpose was good, to open the eyes of my neighbours and passers by. it might have inconvenienced some of them; but such is the effect of every newly-published truth in eradication of error: your reform of the church, be it what it may, will inconvenience the bishops and some of the clergy. there would be no devil, if there were not pleasure in hell as well as in heaven; as pardon can be had by asking for it. if all evil were naturally punished, we should not want penal laws. as true worship is a getting of a knowledge of god, so it follows, that the ministry of the church should consist of a teaching that knowledge, which is not now the case; for nothing as knowledge is in the church taught. there can be nothing more clear in mathematical demonstration, than that, as god is a spirit, of which man may partake, the participation must increase with that only which can increase in man--the amount of his knowledge. the whole declaration of the christian creed, read by the spirit, is, that god is the spirit of knowledge, the thing known, the principle of omniscience; and that man approaches and lives with god, as his mind expands in the accumulation of knowledge. a bishop may write or preach spiritually or metaphysically by the year, and he can make no more of the word god, of his church, or of himself, than i have made. the subject now wants a radical reform in the human mind. i have mentioned, in a former page, that the jews can trace no nationality to the time of the emperor alexander of macedon. the highest antiquity that can be given to them as a colony, is the time of ptolomy lagus, who began to encourage science and literature in alexandria; and, from that time, nothing but a colony could they have ever been. it is not in a nationality that the original character of a jew is to be estimated, but in a philosophic character dispersed among the nations; a people devoted to science; and so a chosen or select, because a learned people. there is no resemblance in character between an ancient and a modern jew:--the name is an asiatic name of god; and can only apply to a race of men in the sense of having perfected human nature, which it is very probable the ancient jews had done, as far as it was then possible to do it, according to the system of initiation, through a series of discipline, into all the schools and mysteries of that time and country. the first public reference to a stated existence of the books of the old testament is the reign of ptolomy philadelphus. egypt appears to have been the only country in which it can be said that a series of kings gave encouragement to science, which appears, as far as history is witness, to have brought in the augustan era. it became, as far as wars and tumults would permit, fashionable so to do, until superstition overwhelmed it and usurped all its names, leading on to the dark ages of what has been since mis-called the christian era. cultivation of science is the restorative power, and the only public or private act that confers true dignity on man. this is the only remedy for the disorder of the church; and i have introduced this historical view of the jewish name, to show how flimsy is that web of superstition which has been woven in the existing church on the foundation of a supposed national history and origin of the jews. truth nowhere finds opposition in fact, date, or principle: error is opposed by endless proofs of the kind. it remains now only that i give an outline of the historical defects of the present received view of the mystery of the christian religion, and then draw to a conclusion. no record extant, or referred to, that, having been written in the first century, has mentioned the human existence of an individual of the name of jesus christ. a passage now in josephus is a declared interpolation, inasmuch as it was first known to the world in the ecclesiastical history of eusebius, written in the fourth century, after photius and origen, of the third century, had written, that josephus had not made mention of jesus christ. in the writings of philo judæus, an alexandrian jew of the first century, much is said about the logos, in carrying out the philosophy of plato; but not a word about jesus christ. pliny the younger, in his letter to the emperor trajan, written from bythinia between the years and , is the first to mention the name of christ. this mention is as of a god and not as of a man: no reference is made to judea or to jews; and the worshippers of this god he describes under the name of christians, and as having long existed as a sect in that province. he writes as if he had heard nothing of the sect at rome, and describes their worship as an excessive superstition. the passage in tacitus is rejected, as not noticed by eusebius or any one before the fifteenth century; that it was found in a copy by johannes de spire at venice. this brings us to justin martyr, who can only be considered a christian of the platonic order, making no reference to gospels or epistles. thence we come to st. irenæus, bishop of lyons, who has very much the appearance of a druidical bishop rather than as a newly-appointed christian bishop. irenæus mentions the four gospels of matthew, mark, luke and john, and gives the reason why there should be four; as because there are four seasons in the year. he has many other allegorical extravagancies in his writings, and is not deemed the most respectable of the fathers of the present church. in the third century, and toward the latter part of that century, near three hundred years after the supposed birth of the man jesus christ, we have a recognition of all the books in the new testament, which received the stamp of the authority of a council of bishops, as a selection from many similar and dissimilar books under similar titles, in the fourth century; but whether the revelation of the mystery was then understood by the bishops does not appear. the epistles of the new testament have no dates nor reference to any persons who were known to have lived at any particular time. they are not supported by, nor do they support, the gospels. the idea of allegorism prevailed in the third century. the christian era was not reduced to chronology until the sixth century; and that chronology was very little used or referred to until the tenth, that the era of the hegira of mahomet had come much into use. the real struggle of the present christian church was not with the pagan but with the mahometan religion, and they are near a balance of numerical power to this day. a battle in france, in the reign of charles martel, checked the progress of the mahometans, and saved the entire overthrow of the mysterious christian church on the continent of europe. there was a much greater similarity between the pagan and the christian, than between the christian and the mahometan religion. i have no objection to the religion of the jew or the christian, that is founded on the spiritual reading of the bible. mahometanism is superior to both, while founded on the reading of the letter. the restoration of the jews to original character and the millennium of the christians is only to be brought about by the spiritual reading, which will lead to a devotion to science. the future temple of the new jerusalem must be a temple devoted to the promulgation of truth and all sciences, and such must be the church of rome, and such our english church, under any real state of reformation. the practical part of my proposition for a reform in the church, is, that all indefensible superstition or mystery be banished or explained, that it be made the best possible general school for the people, to which the knowledge of the time is equal; that the people being the church, and the ministers not being the church, the property of the church in each parish shall be managed by the parishioners as their property, and the best provision be made with that property, including tithes, that can be made for all the physical and moral necessities of the people. the property must be put under some authority, cannot be allowed to remain as it is, cannot be well put under extra parochial authority; but may be well and honestly left to parochial management, as the property of the parish. as our institutions were all so first arranged for this purpose, so it will be found, that every thing emanating will fall back easily into its natural, moral, and original use. i cannot see the least difficulty, beyond the dishonesty and reluctance to yield of existing spirit. such as are so weak in mind as to desire the present church ceremony, may have it as long as they like, so as they do not exclude more useful business. i repeat, that, if the bishops and clergy be wise, they will take this advice: if they do not, they will very soon be where their predecessors were in the seventeenth century, not to be restored again. i flatter myself, that, in this letter, i have produced a pamphlet that will not be dead-born. as far as possible, or as clearness of purpose would permit, i have endeavoured to avoid the use of offensive language. whatever the world may think of me, i know nothing more of myself, than that of having a passion to be useful, to my country and fellow-men generally, in and previous to the critical coming time of change. it is not now to be mistaken as near. it is near, and very near. the present system may be dragged on through several years; but no one can insure it a twelve months' existence. i know that all bad passions are allied to ignorance, and i desire to see all those passions softened down by knowledge. i am sure that the new man, the spiritual man, the good and moral man, must be created by knowledge and independent individuality of action; and as i prefer (the government having the choice) a moral to any other revolution, brought about by words rather than by harder and harsher weapons, i feel, that i have but performed a social, a civil, and a religious duty, in presenting this letter to your notice. that it may be read, marked, learned and inwardly digested, is the prayer of your humble servant, and prisoner in the business of church reform, richard carlile. giltspur street compter, january , . tenth year of imprisonment. an account of the growth of deism in england. _london_: printed for the author, mdcxcvi. an account of the growth of deism· _sir_, 'tis now three years since you and i had a serious discourse concerning the rise and progress of _deism_: which is an opinion of late years crept into _england_, tho not so widely spread here as in other parts of _europe_. i well remember we were both agreed, that there was no shadow of reason why any one should suspect the _gospels_ of forgery, since the matter contain'd in them hath not the least favour of any worldly interest, or indirect design, but all the lines of them do only center in the highest improvement humane nature is capable of. so that in conformity every man may take great comfort in himself, and all mankind live well with one another. besides, the preachers of this excellent doctrine had at first all the discouragements which an irreligious and idolatrous age could give them, (as is confessed by their enemies) insomuch that nothing but their own personal full conviction of the truths they professed could engage them to preach 'em; and the intrinsick goodness of the law of _christ_, was sufficient to gain mens hearts, after _miracles_ had born down their prejudices, and gain'd their serious attention. in fine, you and i could see no reason to doubt of the truth of any matter of fact contain'd in the _gospels_, which relate the miraculous birth, life, death, resurrection and ascension of _jesus christ_; but what would oblige us to deny the truth of all history whatsoever. and from these considerations laid together, we concluded that the doctrine of our lord _jesus christ_ was undoubtedly sent to us by god. this still made it appear more strange to us both, how _deism_ (which is a denial of all reveal'd religion) should creep in upon us where the _scriptures_ are made so publick, and where so many learned treaties are written, which so strongly assert their authority to be divine. i confess, i was as desirous to know upon what grounds men rejected the _gospel_, as you your self were, and therefore i willingly undertook the task you laid on me, _viz._ to collect and put together those motives whereby some had been induced to lay aside all _revelation_. for which performance i was the fitter, because it doth not require any learning and strength of wit, but only observation, and inquiry, which i might easily make, because of the numerous acquaintance i have contracted in town, where (you know) i spend the winter, and in the country, where i bestow my summer visits. but all i shall do in this matter, is barely to give you a relation of those prejudices, and (as i think) false reasonings, which have drawn some of my acquaintance from _revelation_ to _deism_. . now, first i have observed, that some who pretend themselves _deists_, are men of loose and sensual lives; and i make no wonder that they dislike the _christian_ doctrine of self-denial, and the severe threatnings against wilful sinners. you may be sure they will not alledge this reason: but having read _spinosa_ and _hobbes_, and been taught to laugh at the story of _baalam_'s ass, and _sampson_'s locks; they proceed to ridicule the reality of all _miracle_ and _revelation_. i have conversed with several of this temper, but could never get any of 'em serious enough to debate the reality of _revelation_: but a witty jest and t'other glass puts an end to all further consideration. these are meer _sceptics_, and practical _atheists_, rather than real _deists_. . but there are others, who, although they have not a due regard to _revelation_, are men of sobriety and probity, who with great freedom have let me into their thoughts, whereby i can very clearly and fully (as i think at least) discern the rise and progress of this their opinion, which is this; . in the time of king _charles_ the first, (which confineth my longest acquaintance with men) 'twas usual for gentlemen to send their sons abroad into _italy_, _spain_, _france_, _germany_, _&c._ to accomplish themselves by travel. but lest they should be prevail'd upon to change their _religion_, care was taken that their tutor or governour, who travelled with 'em, should shew them the idolatry and superstition of the _roman religion_; and also let 'em in to see that _popery_ in all its branches was only a device of the _priesthood_, to carry on a particular interest of their own; to encrease their wealth, honours, and power over the lay-people; to exalt the head of their order above all the crowned heads in the world, and equal one whole order of their clergy, _viz._ the cardinals, to the princes of _christendom_. nay, since all people were obliged to make their confessions to, and receive their absolution from the _priest_, the meanest of which order could create a god for the people's worship; 'tis plain, that their religion was calculated for the profit, power and honour of the whole order of the _priesthood_ in this world, whatsoever advantages they might find by it in the other. now the young gentleman being throughly convinced of this holy cheat, returneth to old _england_; where he meets with very zealous contests about religion (as was pretended) between the _church_ of _england_, headed by arch-bishop _laud_ on the one part, and the _presbyterian kirk_ on the other; and having carefully read the debate (as it appeared in the prints) on both sides, with those very eyes which he had so lately cleared up in _italy_ or _france_, he could not forbear to see that both these _protestant_ parties, under the pretence of religion, were only grasping at _power_, and that the controversy at bottom, was not who's religion was best, but only what sect of the _clergy_ should make the best market of the _meer lay-men_. and as this young gentleman had before resolved with himself not to become a property to the _popish priesthood_, no longer now will he be such to the _protestant clergy_ of any denomination, since both pursue the same ends. he perceiveth that our _protestant high-priests_ do all of them rival the sovereign power; the _bishop_'s house like that of the _king_, must be called his _palace_, he must still keep up his claim to the _miter_ and _crosier_, to vie with the _crown_ and _scepter_; and as the stile of the king's courts is _anno regni nostri_, i.e. in the year of our reign: so that of the bishop's court is _anno consecrationis nostræ_, i.e. in the year of our consecration; the year of the king's reign being unknown in the bishop's court: the king speaking to the people doth usually call 'em his loving subjects; the _bishop_ doth not make himself so familiar, but stileth the people of his _diocese_ barely his subjects, _jurisdictioni nostræ subditos_: the king is _inthroned_, and the arch-bishop _inthronized_; both derive their power from a _divine right_; but the bishop is the higher power, because by the principles of episcopacy he can excommunicate the king, _i.e._ forbid him the very conversation of his subjects, and thereby render them uncapable to make good their oath of allegiance, in yielding their aid and assistance. nor do's he find that the _presbytery_ claims any inferior powers; each party alledge _scriptures_ and _fathers_ on their side; and for ought i can see, (says this gentleman) they are all in the right. through an excess of prejudice thus occasion'd, he makes a further step towards _deism_, and reasons after this manner: 'tis not impossible (continues he) that the ancient _clergy_ might be possess'd with the same spirit of pride, which has prevail'd over the modern. if those writings, which they call _holy scriptures_ are of their side, as they all say they are, i make no doubt but they were of their own inventing; and if _jesus christ_ their patron, laid the foundation of those powers, which both _popish_ and _protestant clergy_ claim to themselves from under him, i think the old _romans_ did him right in punishing him with the death of a slave. after this manner i have heard it said of late, by another of the same constitution, that as the church of _rome_ was a modelled faction against all other christians, so was the church of _england_, by law established, against all other protestants, who were by law excluded from every office of profit and trust; who were made subject to the piques and malice of every church-man, and became a constant revenue to apparitors and spiritual catch-poles. and though at present there be a _toleration_ by law granted, yet 'tis full opposed by the spirit of the church, as appears by sermons preached at visitations, and the constant ordinary discourses of the _clergy_, in which the church of _england_ is always represented, as at this time, in greater danger than ever it was; though i should think the danger had been as great in king _james_'s time: and notwithstanding the toleration (said he) no man can enjoy a place of profit or trust, though he be ever so dutiful a subject, and ever so able or honest a man, unless he hath a conscience by law established: by which church-device men are deprived of the privileges of their country to which they are born, and for the discharge whereof they never did in any respect incapacitate themselves; and hereby it comes to pass, that the nation cannot act vigorously in its own defence, being debarr'd the use of one moiety of it self; and notwithstanding this, they have the confidence to tell us lay-men, that we ought to love our neighbours as our selves. now if this be the way of the _christians_, (concluded he) let my soul be with the _philosophers_. . and this brings to my thoughts what another _deist_ said jestingly to me, _viz._ that since i was a christian, 'twas lucky for me that i was of the bishop's church; for though you were ever so loyal (said he) to the king, yet if you did not pay as dutiful an allegiance to the bishops, you could not hold the place you now enjoy; for as certain as the _cross_ is above the _crown_, so sure a thing is it, that the _bishop_ will be above the _king_; which he undertook would appear to me if i looked back to king _charles_'s restoration, or king _william_'s revolution. the _presbyterians_, though they quarrelled with _charles_ the first, yet became the loving subjects of _charles_ the second; joined with the _episcopalians_ in assisting him to the throne, and made no scruple of swearing their allegiance to him, and owning his supremacy. but after all this, the king was not able to support these his loving subjects against the power of the bishops, who in two years time outed 'em of their livelihoods, and after that, drove 'em five miles distance from all market-towns; and at last the acts made against _papists_ were extended to them. but since king _william_'s revolution the case is alter'd; for the _jacobite clergy_, though turn'd out of their livings by law, for refusing allegiance to the king, yet from the allegiance they bare to the bishops, they find such favour from their lordships, that if the livings they lose are in the bishops gift, he shall present any friend which the dispossessed _jacobite_ shall recommend; now what can be more by them desired, than to enjoy the profits of their livings, and put in what curate they please? and after all, that they may enjoy the full profits of their livings, and pay their curates another way, these _jacobites_ may hold their conventicles where they please, nay, preach publickly and seditiously in an open church near _cheap-side, london_, without the least offence to the spiritual power. and is it not plain (said this gentleman) from all this, that on this side the water as well as on the other, the clergies zeal for their communion, church and religion, is only meant to support their own party, dominion and empire? . now the oldest _deists_ of my acquaintance having conceiv'd so great a prejudice against the christian faith, from the behaviour of the clergy, and having levened their disciples therewith, it has fal'n out unhappily, that the late revolution has by another way also confirmed them in this their prejudice. for the late happy revolution, (which came on too soon, and was cut off too short) though it was not so highly beneficial to us, as was by some expected, was yet of very great importance. but as there is nothing in this world ever so good, but what hath some appending disadvantage; so by meer accident this revolution, which has saved not only the church of _england_, but (as i hope) the whole protestant interest throughout the world, has wonderfully encreased mens prejudices against the _clergy_, and so by false consequence (such as men through resentment will make) against the truth of religion it self. the old _deists_ tell those of their pupils, who never travelled abroad, that there is now no need of going over the water to discover that the name _church_ signifieth only a _self-interested party_, and that the _clergy_ have no godliness but gain. have you not (say they) for many years together heard them preach up the _divine right_, and indefeizable authority of kings, together with _passive obedience_, as the chief distinguishing doctrines whereby their church approved it self _apostolick_ beyond all other churches? nay, were not the doctrines of _loyalty to the king_, insisted upon more than _faith in christ_? and yet when their particular interest required it, their doctrine of _non-resistance_ was qualify'd by _non-assistance_, the whole stream of loyalty was turn'd from the king to the church, the indefeizable right was superseded by a miraculous conquest without blood, the oath of allegiance to the _divinely rightful king james_ has its force allay'd by another oath of the same importance made to the _de facto_ king _william_ and queen _mary_, and all this is sanctify'd by the name of the church, _i.e._ their own party and interest, for the sake whereof it is done. this is indeed keeping to the text--_rem rem quocunque modo rem_. * * * * * and the wretched defence they make for this their apostacy (say the _deists_) maketh the matter worse. for notwithstanding king _james_ is, as they will have it, conquer'd; and his throne, which was declared vacant, is legally filled by one who by act of parliament is declared our rightful king; yet after all this dr. s---- will reserve a right to king _james_, though through success and settlement he will allow a right also to king _william_. and this notion the clergy generally adhere to, because thereby they kill two or three birds with one stone. _st._ they preserve to themselves their ancient right of giving titles to sovereignty. for though both king and parliament have disclaimed and damned the conquest, yet the clergy still insist upon it. _ly._ they make fair weather with king _james_, by keeping his title alive, and by still asserting his right, open him a door to recover his possession again. for what honest christian can oppose a rightful king in regaining the possession of his throne, which is kept from him by a successful usurper? and _ly._ they think they have obliged king _william_ sufficiently by the formality of an oath, and owning him in his possession. put all this together and 'twill prove, that _when all the argument is out, 'tis interest still resolves the doubt._ thus (cry they) you plainly see, that your church is nothing but a party, to which whosoever joineth, himself shall find his account thereby, notwithstanding any error, heresy, immorality or disloyalty to the present government whatsoever; whilst any other who is conformable to the _rubricks_ and _canons_, whose learning and morals are an honour to his gown, and who is truly dutiful to his majesty, shall be excluded from all those benefits his profession would entitle him to. thus the bold asserters of king _james_'s right enjoy some of the best preferments, and particularly dr. s---- sits d---- of st. p---- whilst honest mr. _johnson_ is starving upon charity. the church of _england_ is a meer party, (say they again) and has a watch-word whereby they know one another, which they can vary upon occasion. _non-resistance_ was the word in king _charles_'s days. for though at that time you did conform to every tittle and ceremony, injoin'd by rubrick and canon, yet if you failed in the point of _non-resistance_, you were a _phanatick_ and _republican_, a _rebel_, and what not? now if this doctrine be contain'd in the book of homilies, as the _jacobites_ say, 'tis a sacred record of the unjustice of some of those who concurred in the late revolution. the _shiboleth_ of the church now is king _william's de facto title_; and no conformity to homilies and rubricks will make you owned by the present church, if you should acknowledge the king to be otherwise said than a meer _de facto_. now (say they) although we grant that men will submit to the government, upon their own particular principles, and therefore 'tis reasonable that the king should admit the obedience of his subjects upon what grounds they please, yet we know no reason why the church should set up the _de facto_, as the only principle of obedience: and when the king had better titles to his crown, as the consent of the people in parliament, and his matrimonial title with the queen, yet he must be made to pay the greatest price for the weakest and worst of all titles; and give dr. _s----_ sixteen hundred pounds a year, for a _defactoship_ only. you see, sir, that the _deists_ want not occasions for their prejudices, how far soever they are from having reason o' their side. and pray resolve me, why must this false title be set up as 'twere by the king's consent, to worm out the only true one? why must none be preferr'd to church-dignities, but such who come in upon this title only? and those who own the king's right upon the consent of the people, be still labouring under the church's highest displeasure? and poor _johnson_, a man against whom no immorality was ever objected, that is an object even of the _deists_ compassion, be left to starve for the cause? nay, they have gone so far upon the strength of dr. _s----_ convocation-title, in opposition to that of parliament, that since the good queen is dead, and the consent of the people, according to them, null and void; they have left the king a bare possession, without any title at all. . i am acquainted with a gentleman, who for some years has not gone to church, having taken offence at those practices i was now writing upon. this man, you must know, had an extraordinary veneration for the profound learning (so he thinks much reading and common-placing to be) of a certain eminent divine, who had a fat bishoprick bestow'd on him by king _william_ and queen _mary_. but he to requite their kindness, when a bill was brought before the lords, declaring the king and queen's rightful and lawful title to the crown, not only opposed and voted against it in the house; but when it had passed, he entred his protestation against it in the journal. nay (said this gentleman) if king _william_ be only king _de facto_, then the bishop is _de facto_ only. truly sir, you may believe me, that i was amaz'd at this relation; for (as i then said) though most men look no further, than only to get mony _de facto_, and do not with much strictness inquire _quo jure_; yet 'twas strange that any man should protest that he had no right to that estate, which he openly continued in possession of. but i was soon answer'd by this his former admirer, that if that bishop had strengthened his own title to the bishoprick from king _j._ i might cease my wonder. i am indeed sorry to hear stories of this nature, especially when they assure me of the truth of 'em, and when i see the ill consequences of them. for though nothing be more certain than that the baseness and falshood of man can never disprove the truth of god; yet when men are highly scandaliz'd, and greatly deceived by those for whom they had esteem, and by whose authority they in great measure governed themselves, they will stretch their conclusion beyond their premisses, and disown religion in their principle, because 'tis disregarded by some great men in their practice. but though to strict reasons, such arguments for _deism_ appear ridiculous; yet from the promotion of these _de facto_ men, i am told, hath arisen great disadvantage to the king, and those subjects, whose principles and practices have been always faithful to his majesties interest: since hereby it is, that it hath always been in the power of the open and professed enemies of the king to oppress his most dutiful subjects. for these _de facto_-men, and the _jacobites_, were but lately the same sort of people, both of the same principle and temper. and though the _jacobites_ do now rail at them, for their base complyances (as they term it) with the _p._ of _o_'s revolution; yet the _de factos_ are unwilling, for old acquaintance sake, to pass by their railing, and underhand to shew 'em any kindness: and this they submit to, as being self-conscious, that the _jacobites_ have a right to reproach them; so that they are willing to appease the anger of their old friends by their best services. now the _jacobites_ having always an innate hatred to the _whigs_, (as they now stile all those who think themselves obliged to own the king for their rightful sovereign) and being willing to keep up their old master's right to the crown, (to which the _whigs_ are irreconcileable enemies) easily prevail upon these _de factos_ to oppress those other sort of men, which is an office they are as willing to undertake, as the _jacobites_ can be to put it upon 'em. thus it cometh to pass, that according as an open professed enemy to the government shall dictate, a church-man shall strenuously exert that power the king has given him, to discourage and oppress his dutiful and loyal subjects. i will only (said a certain person) make a supposition, to shew you how this may be; suppose the king should bestow a bishoprick upon a _de facto_ doctor, and this doctor should there find his old acquaintance dr. _h._ and being a stranger in his diocese, should be willing to instruct himself in the characters of men from the good d., would it not fall out so, that the clergy of that diocese must be used well or ill, as the most open and notorious enemy the government hath, shall design? and was it not possible that the e. of _n._ might oblige his old friends in the same manner? thus, though king _james_ be at last excluded, his subjects reign in his stead. and whether an _oath_ of _abjuration_ laid upon the _jacobites_ proxy-men, will put an end to this corruption, time must tell us. . but to return to the reasons, (or prejudices i may rather call 'em) which occasion _deism_; it hath been observed to me, that where the notion of a church hath been carried on with the highest tide, there even natural religion is at the lowest ebb; as in _italy_ of old, and lately in _france_, where gross immoralities and atheism are at the greatest height. and though in our reformation we discarded some idolatrous and superstitious doctrines and practices, which were grown scandalous among the people, yet still _christ_ was made to serve that turn, which his holy vicar can no longer do, _viz._ support an holy order of men in as haughty insolences, in as proud, ambitious and malicious designs, as those which king _henry_ (though a son of the church) and his times could not bear. now in answer to this, i bid these _deists_ only read the _bible_, and see if the spirit of that book be not as good as their thoughts can reach to; or let 'em read the character of the christian religion, given by sir _matthew hale_ in the first of his three letters concerning religion, where he saith, _it teacheth and tutors the soul to a high reverence and veneration of almighty god, a sincere and upright walking, as in the presence of the invisible all-seeing god. it makes a man truly love to honour, to obey him, and therefore careful to know what his will is: it renders the heart highly thankful to him, both as his creator, redeemer and benefactor: it makes a man entirely to depend upon, to seek to him for guidance and direction, and protection, to submit to his will with all patience, and resignation of soul: it gives the law not only to his words and actions, but to his very thoughts and purposes: it bringeth man to such a deportment both of external and internal sobriety, as may be decent in the presence of god and his holy angels: it crusheth and casts down all pride and haughtiness, both in a man's heart and carriage, and gives him an humble frame of soul and life, both in the sight of god and men: it regulates and governs the passions of the mind, and brings them into due moderation and frame: it gives a man a right estimate of this present world; and sets the heart and hopes above it, so that he never loves it more than it deserves. it makes the wealth and glory of this world, high places and great preferments, but of a low and little value to him, so that he is neither covetous nor ambitious, nor over-sollicitous concerning the advantages of it: it brings a man to that frame, that righteousness, justice, honesty and fidelity, is as 'twere part of his nature; he can sooner dye than commit or purpose that which is unjust, dishonest or unworthy a good man: it makes him value the love of god and peace of conscience above all the wealth and honours in the world, and be very vigilant to keep it inviolably: though he be under a due apprehension of the love of god, yet it keeps him humble and watchful, and free from all presumption; so that he dares not under a vain confidence of the indulgence of god, commit or purpose the least injury to man: he performs all his duties to god in sincerity, integrity and constancy; and while he lives on earth, his conversation, his hopes, his treasure, and the flower of his expectation is in heaven; and he entirely endeavours to walk suitably to such a hope. in sum, it restores the image of god unto the soul in righteousness and true holiness._ i prevail'd upon one of my friends, a _deist_, to read those three letters, because therein the substance of the christian religion is distinguish'd from the circumstantials and appendages; for want of which distinction being well understood, _deism_ has arose, as that great man in the fore-cited letter hath observed. _when men_ (says he) _see so much religion placed by professors of christianity in these things which every intelligent man values but as forms, or inventions, or modes, or artifices, and yet as great weight laid upon them, as great fervour and animosity us'd for or against them, as almost for any points of christian religion; they are apt presently to censure and throw off all religion, and reckon all of the same make._ thus that upright judge, whose three letters my friend having read, did well approve of 'em, acknowledging, that with great exactness he had distinguished between religion and priest-craft: and he added, if you will shew me, sir, any christian church where that distinction is observed, i will become a member of it. i recommended the church of _england_; he presently told me that he had read the articles, and observed that of them were wholly design'd to uphold the power of the clergy over the people. and then he had me only compare the _design_, which has been, and still is, carrying on under the name of the church of _england_, with the design of the christian religion, as 'tis described by sir _matthew hale_; and i should find the one in all its parts a contradiction to the other. 'tis plain (_said he_) the clergy do not allow of sir _matthew_'s notions, nor will they suffer us to take any thing for religion, that is distinguished from their particular interest. to what end have so many persecutions and penal laws been set a foot by the clergy in christendom? was it to bring men to any one point of that full description of christian religion, which you cited from sir _matthew hale_? or only to bring them to that short article of their clergy religion, _i.e._ to submit to their power? did not the honourable sir _r. h._ lately write a treatise, wherein with great learning and accurate judgment he distinguished betwixt religion and priest-craft? and was he not treated for it with a true priestly insolence and malice in the pulpit at _white-hall_, by _a._ one of their majesties chaplains, and represented as a scorner and an atheist, because he scorns to submit to any religion but what is of christ's institution? suppose a man should govern himself by the law of _christ_, and go no further, is there any christian church which would own such an one for a member? if you will be a son of the church of _england_ you must hold kings and bishops to be _jure divino_, the apostolical doctrine of _passive obedience_; you must not be indifferent to their ceremonies, though declar'd but indifferent things; and the reason is, because you must have a profound respect for the power of the bishops, by which these ceremonies were ordain'd: and besides this, you must shew a perfect abhorrence of all who do not submit to the spiritual royalties of their diocesan bishops; for your churchmanship will not appear by any mark so well, as by the hatred you bear to all dissenters, in conjunction with a deep aversion to all the ancient rights and just liberties of your native country. in fine, (_said he_) when your clergy preach the law of _christ_ without turning it to any by-end, or false interest, you shall meet me at church. you know the clergy love precedency of the laity; let them turn christians first, and i can follow. . i have known some, who have alledged as a reason why they have forsaken the christian faith, the impossibility of believing. many doctrines (_say these_) are made necessary to salvation, which 'tis impossible to believe, because they are in their nature absurdities. i replied, that these things were _mysteries_, and so above our understanding. but he asked me to what end could an unintelligible doctrine be revealed? not to instruct, but to puzzle and amuse. what can be the effect of an unintelligible _mystery_ upon our minds, but only amusement? that which is only above reason must be above a rational belief, and must i be saved by an irrational belief? if a proposition be inconsistent with it self, i cannot but believe it to be false: 'twas once to serve a turn against the _papists_ your church held all doctrines necessary to save souls, were plainly revealed in scripture; how could you say plainly revealed unless you understood the revelation? besides, i cannot think that the belief of any unprofitable doctrines, _i.e._ such as admit of no application to moral duties, can be a saving faith so much as in part; nor can i imagine that faith tends to save a soul, because what we believe is only _true_, (for so the belief of _euclids elements_ might have a saving effect upon souls) but because our belief is _good_, it has a practical effect, and tends to make us better men. besides, you all agree the belief of your trinity is absolutely necessary to salvation, and yet widely differ in _what_ we must believe concerning it; whether three minds or modes, or properties, or internal relations, or oeconomies, or manifestations, or external denominations; or else no more than a holy three, or three somewhats; or otherwise only one of these three to be god in the highest sense, and each of the other two to be a god without self-subsistence and independence. i am confident, if i should be perswaded that an explanation of the _trinity_ were necessary to save my soul, and see the learned so widely differing and hotly disputing what it is i must believe concerning it, i should certainly run mad through despair of finding out the truth: but since these doctors cannot agree which party of 'em shall captivate my belief in obedience to his faith, i will reserve it to be the hand-maid of truth; whenever she appears she shall command it. . i remember one gentleman objected to the christian faith, that it made men insolent, quarrelsom and ill-natur'd. from whence i concluded, (as i told him) that he had never read over the _gospels_; truly he could not say that he had read 'em carefully, but yet that in reading the history of what had passed in christendom, he observed that most of the quarrels in which this part of the world had been engaged, arose from contentions among the christian _priesthood_. church-history is chiefly a relation of church-mens wrangles, and d. _cave_ in a late book of his had denominated every century from some eminent quarrel which arose among the clergy. but besides this, what was the holy war, what all the holy massacres and croisados which filled _europe_ with blood, but the inventions of holy church? and what is holy inquisition, but a perpetual series of murthers carry'd on in barbarous forms of law against the common sense of mankind? does history account for any barbarities so great as those committed by the popes? any cruelties so savage as those of the holy inquisition? any murthers so solemn, and religiously brutal as the acts of faith? any pragmaticalness so insufferable as that of the jesuits? is not their humanity extinguished by their christian religion? such is their malice that no man can eat bread where they have to do, unless he submit his faith to their guidance, witness the present _french_ persecution. nor can any sovereign prince keep his word or oath, though he had only sworn to maintain those laws by which he reigns as king, any longer than this spiritual fatherhood will give him leave, as _lewis_ xiv. of _france_, and _james_ ii. of _england_ do witness. let these inhumanities be considered, as supported and carried on by the name of catholick church, and (if the devils believe) you may as decently say church of _hell_ as church of _rome_. and as devotion, continu'd our _deist_, to holy church is the center upon which all things turn on the other side the water, so is it the same thing here. do not our priesthood of _england_ make as high pretences to dispose of all offices and trusts in the kingdom, to those of their own faction, as those of _rome_? have they not long since got their bill of exclusion to be passed into a law, whereby no man can enjoy a place of profit or trust in the state, but whom they qualify at their altars? where men were capacitated to be bumbails, keep gaming-houses and sell ale. what was it but the insolence of the priesthood that brought about father _laud_'s and father _peter_'s revolutions? besides (said he) do you not observe what a keen edge christian faith puts upon the ill-nature of divines, when they are disputing about matters of religion? 'tis common for philosophers, lawyers, physicians, _&c._ to differ about matters which concern their professions, and write one against another: but you will find some temper and decorum observed in their writings. but let the controversy be about any branch of christian faith; and then see the _odium theologorum_, the malice of divines in the late writings of two of your church doctors against each other; at least this shews that christian faith doth not improve the temper of such men who are of mean birth, and narrow education. and i cannot but observe, that your _protestant_ malice is under a worse management than the _popish_; they only thirst for the blood of protestants, but you are for sucking one anothers blood; as when for the service of king _charles_ the ii. (who was head of your church) and his popish brother, the blood of the best protestants in _england_, (and some of them of your own church) was to be spilt, the court blood-suckers, _viz._ attorney general, and judges, besides juries and evidence, were all of 'em chosen men out of your own church; and the _posse_ of the clergy was raised to hold their heads to the block, by preaching the doctrine of _passive obedience_. but in requital, it must be confessed, that your clergy require the king to do their persecuting journey-work with the same insolence as the popish priesthood use; for must not the sovereign monarch of _england_, _scotland_, _france_ and _ireland_, by his authority royal, execute the decrees and anathema's of the arch-deacons and bishops chancellors, by imprisoning his loyal and useful subjects, for not conforming to their ceremonies? if a king will submit to this drudgery, he shall have the _vox cleri_ of his side, and be as great as noise and fulsom flattery can make him; but in the mean time is really king but of one moiety of his people, whilst the danger which the other half apprehend from the secular arm directed by spiritual power of necessity, weaneth their hearts from the government. thus _charles_ the ii. who for two years after his return, reigned in the hearts of all his people, was by the act of uniformity reduced to be king of the church-party; and at last, whilst the _popish_ and _protestant_ priesthood zealously contended whose property he should be, (like the truth among controversial divines) he was lost in the scuffle. he instanced in likewise the late king _james_, who (said he) had it in his power to be universally beloved and obey'd, beyond any king of _england_ this age has produced. his right to the crown was owned by all; his wilfulness had passed upon the church of _england_ party for magnanimous resolution, which struck such an awe upon them, that they were coming to a temper, and would have consented to a toleration of protestant dissenters, and _roman_ catholicks too, provided their maintenance might be continued to them. thus the heart of all _england_ had been set upon the king; but the popish priesthood would be content with nothing less than delivering the whole nation to satan, and their king must execute the dreadful anathema, though 'twas manifest that he must thereby lessen himself to the size of one of the kings of _kent_; for he could be sovereign of no more than the two hundredth part of the people. for king _charles_ in numbering the people, had found that the proportion between _papist_ and _protestant_ was as to : whereas had his own priesthood been so favourable to him, as to have excused him from executing that satanical power, which by a right purely divine was vested in sacred majesty, his reign might have been happy, and his memory precious. what an unhappy effect had the spirit of father _laud_ upon king _charles_ the first? and what hath brought _lewis_ the xiv. to the present diminution of his glory, but that haughty insolence and unnatural cruelty in persecuting his own subjects, which father _la chaise_ has inspired him with? what figure will this grand monarch make in story? his name will pollute the annals of this age, and his cowardly conquests be the scorn of posterity. now from all that he had said, he concluded, that for luck-sake, as well as to preserve his good nature, he would be cautious of being (at least) a zealous christian. . 'twas not long since i met one of my old acquaintance, who told me that he had lately cast off these prejudices he had conceived against the christian faith, by the assistance of a book called, _the five letters of inspiration._ by the last of those letters he was convinced of the reality of reveal'd religion, from the intrinsick value and excellency thereof; and he was fully confirmed in his judgment by a late book called, _the reasonableness of christianity, as delivered in the scripture_. upon this, he had read over the _old-testament_ once, and the _new_ several times, with great attention of mind. indeed he always thought the moral part of the _bible_ very good; but then he also thought, that by the strength of his own reason, he could have written as good a moral himself. but by the last of these books he was convinced, that he was indebted to _revelation_ more than he thought of, and considering how long the ceremonial law had obtain'd among the _jews_, and what a profound respect they paid to the scribes, pharisees, and spiritual guides and rulers; he plainly saw that there was need enough of miracle to bear down their prejudices, to make 'em leave their ceremonies, and listen to that excellent moral which christ gave 'em; nay, he was convinced that no miracles were strong enough to prevail over the priest, or a priest-ridden people, to become proselytes to the doctrine of universal love and charity; for (said he) if a teacher should now be sent from heaven with this message, that all the protestant parties in _england_ should be reconciled and live well with one another, making nothing necessary to their religious communion, but what christ had appointed, and such circumstances as time and place, and what in the nature of the thing was needful, and if this teacher's mission were confirm'd by miracle, it would have (as he thought) no better effect upon our several sects of clergy, and those who are bigotted to their parties, than it had upon the _pharisees_ and their disciples of old. having heard him speak so sharply against the clergy after his old way, i could not but tell him that i perceived he was but almost a christian; for he who loveth the institution of christ, cannot but respect those who are the ministers thereof; at least, i hoped that he would pay a respect to the clergy of the church of _england_, which was the best reformed church in the world; and therefore i expected that he was already a member of our church: he reply'd, that he should always be ready to pay his respect to every good man of what order or degree soever; he should always be willing to hear a good minister preach the gospel of jesus christ to him, and exhort him to the sincere practice of it. that he was ready to contribute his share to the maintenance of such ministers, and to join with that church-of-_england_ congregation near to which he liv'd, in publick worship; but yet he could not condemn the worship of other congregations, nor exclude himself from joyning with them as occasion should serve him. so that as to church-membership he could be a member of any church, which would own him upon the terms of faith and practice, contained in the book he mentioned, concerning the reasonableness of the _christian religion_, &c. but still he conceiv'd, that church-communion in holy offices was designed only to raise his devotion towards god, not towards the clergy, which made him admire the unparallell'd impudence of the _roman_ priesthood, who measure the religion of all christians by their devotion to the see of _rome_, i.e. indeed to themselves; and he doubted whether any church were sufficiently reformed from popery, which made any doctrines of faith necessary to salvation that were not declared so in the gospels, and where the clergy would always distinguish between church and state, and give the precedency to themselves. but yet he would join with any church as far as it promoted the honour of god, and separate from it, wherein on pretence of religion, he saw, that it aimed at a by-end of its own. here i urged him again to joyn to our church, which had no other design but god's glory. to this he said, that he should be glad that the church of _england_ would own him, though he could not be of their party: he would willingly pass as a church-man for his credit-sake; for (said he) though a man doth ever so firmly believe jesus christ to be the messiah whom god had of old promised, and in due time sent to give us a perfect rule of life, in order to make us truly religious here, and ever happy hereafter; and though a man should shew forth his faith by an agreeable course of life, in doing justice, loving mercy, and an humble walking with god; yet if he were not owned as a member of some church, he would by all churches be accounted, if not an atheist, yet a sceptic, a man of no settled principle, but own who has his religion to choose. for if you look over the state of religion as it standeth in christendom, there is no church whatsoever which will accept you as a member of its communion, but upon some particular terms of belief, or practice, which christ never appointed, and it may be such as an honest and a wise christian cannot consent to. i am not more able to give up my reason to the church of _england_, than to give up my senses to the church of _rome_; it looks like a trick in all churches to take away the use of mens reason, that they may render us vassals and slaves to all their dictates and commands. but what greater slavery than to force on men a belief of such things as necessary to salvation, of which 'tis not possible to form any idea? though i am satisfied there is no such thing as a change of bread into the flesh of christ, yet i can form an idea, that such a thing may be, that the same power which changed earth into a man, may change bread into flesh: but i can frame to my self no idea of what your church teacheth in the sacrament, that the body and blood of christ are _verily and indeed taken and received of the faithful_: and when i ask how can this be understood by a protestant, who believeth that there is no other body but that of bread? i am told that the church meaneth it in a spiritual sense. now i have try'd, and find it impossible for me to form to my self an idea of a body verily and indeed in a spiritual sense. and therefore i must say 'tis an unwise and a hard thing for any church to impose absurd or unintelligible notions (especially such speculations, which tend to make no body the better) as necessary to salvation; for wise men, and such who will take courage to examine what they believe, will not submit to such an usurpation; and weak men are kept all their life long in fears and doubts of their eternal state, as being always uncertain whether they firmly believe such doctrines, or no. besides this (said he) your church will require me to believe other absurdities as bad as these, as that kings and bishops have a divine right to that power, which they exercise over us, whereas with my own eyes i saw our great and gracious king accept the crown of _england_, as the gift of the people. and i see as plainly, that bishops are an order of men of their own (not of christ's) making. i was told that our bishops order was founded in that of the apostles, and the presbyters order in the disciples: upon this i resolved to see if the and the were different orders, or no, and read over the th chap. of _matthew_, the d and th of _mark_, and the th of _luke_, in which places the power which christ gave to the is set forth, which amounteth to this, _viz._ a charge to preach the gospel, a power to work miracles in casting out devils, healing the sick, _&c._ and i also read in the th chapter of _luke_, that the were sent forth for the same reason, and with the same express power as were the , _viz._ to preach the gospel, heal the sick, and cast out devils, _vers._ . . . and he telleth the at the th verse, _that he who heareth them, heareth him; and he who despiseth them, despiseth him_, as he had said to the , in _matthew_ . . indeed they were only added to the number of the , _because_ (as 'tis said there) _the harvest was great, and the labourers few_, i.e. because multitudes followed christ, and were disposed to become christians, therefore he encreased the number of his apostles, or teaching disciples. i can find no footsteps of any jurisdiction given to the over the , or indeed over any body else; and in the th chapter of _matthew_, where christ speaketh of binding and loosing, 'tis manifest from the first verse, that his discourse was made to his disciples. so in the th of _john_, the holy-ghost and power of remitting and retaining sins, was given to the disciples which met together after christ's death, _vers._ . in which meeting, there might be some of the as well as some of the : 'tis certain the received the holy-ghost, and if baptism be a key of admission into the church, they had it: if binding or loosing be declaring wherein we are bound in duty, and wherein we may use our liberty; if remitting and retaining sins be declaring what iniquity god will forgive, and what he will not; the shared this power with the . as for delivering up to satan, and inflicting diseases; since 'twas a miraculous power, which we read not that christ appropriated to the , we have no reason to think 'twas detained from the . if then christ appointed but one order, _viz._ that of teachers, the order of rulers dignified themselves above, and distinguished themselves from their brethren, yet i am willing to submit to those powers, which the laws of _england_ have given to the bishops, though what they claim by divine right, i esteem as an usurpation. moreover (says he) although i am become a christian, i have not ceased to be an _english-man_, and for that reason cannot be in party with the bishops, who by their false-prerogative doctrines, and other shameful assistances, so lately betray'd the charters and liberties, rights and privileges of their country, were setting up an absolute irresistible power in k. _charles_ ii. which being demised to k. _james_, endangered not only the liberty and property, but body and soul of the nation. nor can i so soon forget how their long debates, about admitting the _p._ of _orange_, our good and great king, to the sovereignty, was the occasion of spilling so much protestant blood in _ireland_; nor the late protestation of some of the chief of their party against his majesties right to the crown; nor how careful they have been since, that (as it now falls out) he should have no pretence to any rightful title. if any clergy-man was so honest as to preach up his right, as justly grounded on the consent of the people, (as mr. _johnson_ for instance) he must lie under pain of the church's highest displeasure, though otherwise ever so orthodox and conformable; so that since the beloved title of conquest is burnt by the parliament, and the matrimonial title is (to the great grief of all good men) dead and buried with the queen; it remaineth according to holy church, that he hath no title at all, but only bare possession; and this they mean when they call him _de facto_. but i cannot find that they will allow him to be king of the clergy so much as _de facto_. alas! his livings, whereby alone he is capable to oblige them to call to mind their now forgotten loyalty, which of late years they preached up, as the summ of the law and the prophets; alas! these good things are taken out of his hands by the conquering bishops, that the clergy may have a separate interest from the state on this side the water, and be led to pay an intire allegiance to the holy order. when _hen._ viii. came to know that his bishops swore allegiance to the _pope_, he began to think of some ways and means how to make himself king of his clergy, which he saw could not be done but by casting out the _pope_'s power; and hence sprung that king's reformation of his politicks, rather than religion. and if our good king were sensible of the reasons why an _english_ papacy is settled in a committee of six, _viz._ to fix the obedience of the clergy on themselves exclusively, (for no man can serve two masters) i doubt not but he would think fit to demand what is so much wanted, _viz._ the allegiance of the clergy to their king; if he dissolves this committee he may ask and have, for where their treasure is, there their hearts will be also. for these reasons (said he) i shall be cautious how i enter into church-membership, since i plainly see that every party of christians embodied, organized, clergy'd and modelled into a national church, casteth an awe upon the sovereign power, and suffereth it not to provide equally for the common good of the subject; but will appropriate the _salus publica_, and influence the government to serve its own particular, its own private ends. thus, sir, i have given you an account of those prejudices, which have brought forth _deism_. but yet these very prejudices without a strong assistance of passion, could never have wrought upon men to cast off revelation; for you see the same prejudices remain in the _deist_ turn'd christian. whosoever therefore, upon the fore-mentioned reasons turneth _deist_, cannot be excused, tho' i could heartily wish all these pretences could be taken away from 'em. i am far from begrudging the bishops and clergy that small maintenance, which by law is settled upon them; and, i hope, they have no other aim in discharging their offices, but to save our souls, by imprinting on our hearts the reason, the excellency and advantages of the law of christ. i hope also, that they comport themselves to the common interest of their native country, and of the protestant religion throughout the world. truly i could wish that notional divinity were laid aside for practical; and that unintelligible mysteries were not insisted on, as matters of necessary belief. he, who lately wrote his thoughts of the causes and occasions of atheism, might have consider'd, that he, who cloggeth the notion of god with absurdities, mis-leadeth men beyond _deism_. i pray god give me his grace, by which i may sincerely conform my self to the law of christ, and i will never concern my self with the speculative drs. in divinity. and i heartily join with our church in that petition, _give grace, o heavenly father, to all bishops and curates, that they may both by their life and doctrine, set forth thy true and lively word, and rightly and duly administer thy holy sacraments_. by this they would bring souls to heaven, gain the love of all good people, secure their own temporal interests, stop the mouths of their adversaries, and compel the deists to become christians. _i am, sir,_ _your affectionate_, &c. _finis._ * * * * * if your curiosity should lead you to be an ear-witness of such discourses i have here written to you, when i come to town, which will be as soon as the parliament sits, i will endeavour to give you that satisfaction. transcriber's note: every effort has been made to replicate this text as faithfully as possible. italic text has been marked with _underscores_. the duty of submission to civil authority. a sermon, preached in the parish church of bradfield, berks, on sunday, november , , on occasion of the late disturbances in that neighbourhood. by the rev. j. f. moor, m.a. london: published by james nisbet, , berners street; and sold by j. rusher, reading. mdcccxxx. _should any profits arise from the sale of this sermon, they will be devoted to charitable purposes._ the following discourse lays no claim to originality. the author acknowledges his obligation to the excellent bishop beveridge for many valuable and leading thoughts contained in it. but having thrown them into a new form, and having had it suggested to him by some members of his congregation, that the publication of them, at the present eventful crisis, might, under the divine blessing, be useful, he has consented to let them appear in print. the author deeply feels the awful responsibility which, in these turbulent times, more especially devolves upon every minister of the sanctuary--to withhold nothing from the public which may have a tendency, through the powerful influence of the holy spirit accompanying it, to strengthen the walls of our spiritual zion, and to preserve among us "that righteousness which" alone "exalteth a nation." it is with the earnest prayer, that the following pages may in the perusal of them be blest to these ends; and that, if they are, all the glory may redound to him, to whom alone it is due, that the author sends them to the press. a sermon, &c. peter ii. , .--_submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the lord's sake; whether it be to the king, as supreme; or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and for the praise of them that do well._ one of the charges brought against the early christians by their enemies, was, that they were rebellious, and despisers of civil authority; and accordingly we find the apostles, in all their epistles to the different churches they had been instrumental in planting, strongly enforcing the duty of submission to "the powers that be:" for, brethren, a more false imputation cannot be thrown upon true christianity, than that which charges it with giving the slightest countenance, either to rebellion or a contempt of authority. true religion will ever make men the best and most loyal subjects, as well as most faithful, and upright, and conscientious, in the discharge of all the other relative and social duties of life. a man cannot be a christian indeed, who "despises dominion, and speaketh evil of dignities."[ ] the apostle jude, speaking of such, classes them among those that are "sensual, not having the spirit." but if this be the case, we seem to have fallen upon times wherein, whatever be the profession of religion that prevails, there is little of the reality of it left. how few are obedient to the "powers that be, as ordained of god!" how general is the indifference shewn to the office and authority of the magistrate! how many seem to consider religion altogether a separate thing from the submission due to their rulers; whereas the one as necessarily grows out of the other, as the branches do out of the stock of the tree. and who, then, that has witnessed the riotous and tumultuous proceedings of our misguided people for the last few weeks, which has led to the issue of the king's proclamation, now affixed to the door of our church, will not be ready to take up the complaint of the psalmist, in saying, "the godly man ceaseth; the faithful fail from among the children of men."[ ] i purpose, therefore, for the conviction of those who may have partaken of the disorderly spirit which has been abroad among us, as well as for the establishment and comfort of the truly pious and submissive christian, to endeavour, in the present discourse, to explain and enforce, from the apostle's words in the text, the duty of submission to civil authority; and i shall, i. shew the nature and extent of the duty. ii. the motive by which the christian is to be actuated in the discharge of it. * * * * * i. i am to endeavour to shew the nature of the duty enjoined in the text, "submit yourselves to every ordinance of man." we must understand, then, first, _what is meant by every ordinance of man_; and this the apostle himself explains to us in the following words: "whether to the king as supreme, or unto governors, as unto them that are sent by him." from which it is plain, that every ordinance of man, means all that are entrusted with the government of the place or country in which we live. to all these the duty enjoined in the text refers. and we should observe, that it refers to them without any allusion to their respective _characters_. the command does not say, submit to the king, as _good_, and _wise_, and _mild_ in his government; neither does it say, submit to the magistrate as being _equal_ in their administration of justice; but it says, submit "to the king as supreme," that is, as deriving his authority not from man, but from god; and, therefore, as responsible to god alone, for the manner in which he exercises it. and again, submit to the magistrates or to governors, as those that are sent by the king, and therefore, as answerable to the king alone, or to those whom he may appoint to judge them, either for the right or wrong administration of justice. what, then, it may perhaps be asked, is a wicked king, or are unjust governors to be submitted to, in the same way that those that are good and just are? is their character and conduct to make no difference in the submission due to them? the apostle, in the text, makes no difference whatever. it belongs to god to punish a wicked king, because it is from god the authority he abuses, by his wickedness, is derived: "by me," he says, "kings reign;"[ ] and it belongs to the king, in a similar way, to punish unjust magistrates, because "by him they are sent for the punishment of evil-doers, and for the praise of them that do well." hence, then, whatever be the character of the king, and of the governors sent by him, the submission due to them from the people is the same. this, too, is remarkably confirmed by the conduct of the apostle peter himself, and of the early christians in general. at the time when the apostle wrote the epistle from which the text is taken, one of the most wicked and cruel tyrants that the world perhaps has ever seen, was upon the throne of the roman empire. not only was he avowedly, in common with the rest of the then known world, (except judea,) a heathen, but he was one of the worst, and most degraded of them, abandoned to the lowest vices, and taking delight in the sufferings of his people. you may judge a little of his character, when i tell you that he is related to have set on fire the capital city of his dominions, and afterwards charged the christians resident in it with his own crime, and caused as many of them as could be seized, to be put to death. and still later in his reign, both st. peter and st. paul suffered martyrdom by his orders. and yet, brethren, this is "the king" to whom, "as supreme," the apostle exhorts christians, in the text, to submit themselves. this is the king to whom, we know, he not only exhorted others to submit, but to whom he submitted himself, even "unto bonds, and imprisonment, and death. but if the duty of submission to civil authority extended even to such a monster as this, and to the governors that were sent by him; if the gospel gave no sanction to rebellion, even under such a reign as this, but, on the contrary, required of its professors a patient endurance of all the cruelties they were exposed to in it; how much more must the gospel require submission of him who lives under a just and a righteous government. we have not a heathen nero for a king, but one whose throne is established in righteousness, and who is ever ready, when applied to through the lawful channel, both to defend the oppressed and to relieve the distressed. well, therefore, may it be said to us, "submit yourselves," &c. but it may perhaps be asked, _what is it to submit rightly_ to every ordinance of man? st. _it is to offer no resistance to the powers that be._ this st. paul shews in rom. xiii. . &c. where, describing the submission required of christians, he opposes it to the act of resisting them: "let every soul," he says, "be subject to the higher powers;" (and, be it remembered, he is here writing to those, who were living under the government of the cruel nero;) "for there is no power but of god; the powers that be are ordained of god; whosoever, therefore, resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of god." it is plain, therefore, that any open _act of resistance_ to the king, or the governors sent by him, is a breach of the duty enjoined in the text. any _conversation_, too, that excites others to such resistance, is a breach of it. there may be resistance in words, as well as in deeds; and those who excite others to rebellion, though they do not themselves engage in the open act, are nevertheless with them partakers in the guilt. cherishing any _principles_ of resistance in our hearts too, is a breach of the duty. such resistance, indeed, is not to be punished, as in other cases, by the arm of civil authority. it is not for man to punish for principles, or for the thoughts and intents of the heart, unless the person holding them, render them mischievous, by communicating them to others; but though they be never made known to others, yet, if they are cherished in the heart, they are known to god, and in his judgment, the person holding them is as guilty, though not to the same degree, of resistance, as though he had given utterance to them in words, or proceeded to any open acts of violence. clearly then, would we submit to every ordinance of man; we must offer no resistance, either open or secret, either "to the king as supreme, or to the governors sent by him." but it may perhaps occur to some one to inquire, how are we to act, if either the king, or the governors sent by him, command us to do something which is _contrary to the laws of god_? are we then to offer no resistance to them? here the saints of old are an example for us. how did the three jewish youths act, when they were commanded to worship the golden image, which the wicked nebuchadnezzar had caused to be set up in the plains of dura? did they offer any resistance "to the king as supreme?" did they endeavour to raise (as it is more than probable they could easily have done, from their rank and influence in the province of babylon) a rebellion against him? no: they would not obey, indeed, the impious command of the king, because it was contrary to the commands of god; but they willingly submitted to the punishment which the king ordered to be inflicted on them. here they offered no resistance. remember the noble answer they made to the king, when they knew that the fiery furnace was awaiting them; "o nebuchadnezzar, we are not careful to answer thee in this matter. if it be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thine hand, o king. but if not, be it known unto thee, o king, that we will not serve thy gods, neither will we worship the image which thou hast set up."[ ] similar to this, also, was the conduct of daniel under the wicked edict of darius, which forbad him to make prayer and supplication to his god. daniel did not rebel against the king's authority, though he would not obey him in opposition to god. he preferred the lion's den, either to rebellion against his sovereign, or to disobedience to his god.[ ] and so too the early christians acted under the persecuting edicts of the roman emperors. they never resisted the authority of their governors, though they refused to obey them in every thing contrary to the commands of god. while they were firm in their adherence to the truth, they were submissive to the power of the magistrate. they "obeyed god, rather than man;"[ ] but they willingly submitted to the punishment to which such obedience exposed them. they preferred oppression to resistance, persecution and martyrdom to sedition and rebellion. and such, brethren, should be the conduct of the christian in every age and country. even suppose it possible, (which, thank god, under our just and mild government, we have no reason to apprehend, but even suppose it possible,) that we should have a wicked king, and unjust governors, who were to impose upon us, commands contrary to the laws of our god, still we must, with the jewish youths, and with daniel, and with "the noble army of martyrs," rather suffer, than resist. there appears to be no limitation to the command; "submit yourselves to _every_ ordinance of man." but further, submitting to every ordinance includes, not only offering no resistance to the civil authority, but also _giving it our assistance and support_. those cannot be said to submit to every ordinance of man, who, when a spirit of rebellion is abroad in a land, use no exertions to suppress it. many are apt to think that, if they sit quietly at home, and take no part in what is going on amiss, they are free from blame, and are fulfilling their duty; and certainly, as far as shewing no disposition to join in any acts of rebellion goes, they are right. "meddle not," says the wise man, "with them that are given to change."[ ] but more is required of the christian, especially in troublous times, than this. "he that is not with me," saith the saviour, "is against me, and he that gathereth not with me, scattereth abroad."[ ] those, _i. e._ who stand neuter in the cause of christ, professing to take neither one side nor the other, are reckoned as his enemies; for by their indifference they add strength to his enemy's cause. it is the same, then, with regard to the king, and the governors sent by him. those that are not with them are against them; those that refuse to support their authority, that do not willingly come forward, at whatever risk to themselves, to assist them in enforcing the laws, are in reality giving countenance and strength to the rebellious. it was on this very ground that that bitter curse was pronounced against the inhabitants of meroz, which we find recorded in the song of deborah, judges v. . they were quiet, peaceable inhabitants of a little town,[ ] on the borders of canaan, and the only fault that we hear of them, was, that, when the israelites, the chosen people of god, were engaged under his guidance, in destroying the canaanites, they remained at home, without declaring themselves either for or against them: but, saith the angel of the lord to deborah, "curse ye meroz, curse ye bitterly the inhabitants thereof; because they came not to the help of the lord, to the help of the lord against the mighty." whence it is evident, that the lord requires of his people a decision of character and conduct suited to the circumstances in which he places them. it is not enough for them "to cease from doing evil," they must "learn to do well."[ ] there must be activity toward that which is right, as well as an abhorrence for that which is wrong. there must not be a sitting still, like the inhabitants of meroz, but an avowing ourselves on the lord's side. and this applies with as much force to the precept of the text, as to any which the scriptures contain. would we submit ourselves to every ordinance of man, we must not only stand aloof from those that oppose themselves, but we must cast in our lot with those that support them: we must be as zealous in the defence of our governors, and as ready to aid them in the execution of the laws, as others are to weaken and destroy their authority; and this leads me to observe, further, that the submission required in the text implies also _obedience to the laws the governors give us_. he cannot be said rightly to submit either to the king or to the governors sent by him, who refuses to _obey_ the laws they enjoin. should those laws indeed be contrary to the laws of god; should, for instance, any earthly prince command us to worship any god except our own god, or enact that murder, or theft, or adultery, or any other crime forbidden by the word of god was lawful, then we must obey god rather than man; then indeed we must act as we have seen the saints of old did--not break out into acts of rebellion, but submit to the punishment of the laws, "suffer for righteousness sake,"--"take joyfully the spoiling of our goods," and be willing to be led either to prison or to death, rather than rebel against the ordinance of man, or disobey the commands of god. but while we have a king whose throne is established in righteousness; while we have a government which, in all the laws it enacts, is, as to all essential points, of necessity guided by the word of god, our submission to our governors must include submission to their laws. while _they_ are restrained from enacting any laws that are contrary to the laws of god--_those_, it is plain, who refuse to obey _their_ laws, do in fact refuse to obey the laws of god. while the laws of the land and the laws of god are one, in breaking the one we break the other, so that if it could be said of the early christians living under a _heathen_ government, "whosoever resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of god; and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation,"[ ] with how much more truth may it be said of us, if, living under a _christian_ government, we refuse to "render unto all their dues, tribute to whom tribute is due; custom to whom custom, fear to whom fear, honour to whom honour."[ ] no, brethren, without obedience to the laws there can be no right submission. such then is the general outline of the duty enjoined in the test, "submit yourselves," &c. * * * * * i now pass on to show, ii. _the_ motive _by which the christian is to be actuated in the discharge of this duty._ did the christian look no higher than to his _worldly interests_, he would surely in these find a very powerful motive to comply with the exhortation in the text. who can estimate the present blessing of a quiet and well ordered government? who can tell what a privilege it is to be able, to sit, as many of us have done, in this hitherto happy land through a long series of years, "every one under his vine and under his fig-tree, no one making him afraid!" and who, on the other hand, can describe the horrors of a turbulent and disordered state of society? i would ask any well-disposed person, whether in the scenes of disorder and confusion which have prevailed around us for the last few weeks, he has not heard and seen enough to shew him the value of the precept, "submit yourselves," &c. but these are not the grounds on which the submission of the christian is founded--it is not from any consideration of mere worldly advantage that his motive to submission is drawn--the christian has a _higher_ and _nobler_ motive to submission, and it is this which the apostle urges upon him in the text--"for the lord's sake." _it is the command of him whom the christian loves_--that he should submit. the lord, to whom he owes his life with all its blessings, enjoins it; the lord who came down from heaven, and "took upon him the form of a servant," "and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross," to "deliver him from the wrath to come," and to restore him to everlasting life and happiness, has commanded it; he who ever liveth interceding for him at the right hand of god, and who is continually procuring for him gracious supplies of his spirit "to help his infirmities," and to enable him to "fight the good fight of faith," that he may "lay hold on eternal life;" he it is that says to him, "submit to every ordinance of man." and can the christian refuse the command of him who has done, and continues to do, such great things for him? must not the love he bears his saviour constrain him to comply with his precepts? can he think for a moment, that one who gave his life a ransom for him, would ever lay upon him a single command that was not conducive to his everlasting interests? no, brethren: if he has "tasted that the lord is gracious," if he has felt any thing of his redeeming mercy, in blotting out his transgressions, and restoring him to that spiritual life, and that hope of everlasting life, which he had forfeited by the fall, he will no longer deem "his commandments grievous," but will count them "the joy and the rejoicing of his heart;" and finding this therefore among the number of them, he will be ready, with david, to say, "i delayed not, but made haste to keep thy commandments."[ ] but further, not only because it is the command of god, does the christian submit, but because _his submission tends to the glory and honour of god_. if he were to _refuse submission_, he would bring _disgrace_ upon that holy name whereby he is called. whenever a professor of the gospel becomes instrumental in stirring up sedition, or in exciting disorder and confusion in his country, all the evils he occasions are immediately charged by the enemies of god upon his principles; they lay it all to the score of _his religion_, as if that had a tendency to make him rebellious and disobedient, and thus the blame of all the mischief he foments is charged indirectly upon god himself, and thereby his name is dishonoured and profaned. but to the true christian, brethren, this is matter of deep and unfeigned regret; the name of god is precious to him, his honour is dear to his soul; he cannot bear that he should be lightly esteemed, or that any reflection injurious to his character should be cast either on his word or on his works. and therefore, that he may never be instrumental to this, he submits himself to every ordinance of man. nor is this all: if the name of god is dishonoured by the christian's refusing submission, it is _honoured by his yielding it_. when he "leads a virtuous and godly life in all quietness and honesty," the power of the principles he holds is seen. men are constrained to admit, that the religion he professes is something more than an empty name. they cannot deny its efficacy in subduing the unruly will, and regulating the sinful affections of the heart. religion then appears what it really is, "the power of god unto salvation:"[ ] and thus honour is brought to god's name. seeing their good works, men glorify god in his people. but this is the point at which all the wishes, and prayers, and endeavours of the real christian are constantly aiming. this is the object of his most ardent desires; this is the end that he is continually proposing to himself in all his thoughts, and words, and actions, that god, both in him and by him may be glorified; that "his name" may be "great among the heathen," and hence, therefore, as the apostle well expresses it, "he must needs be subject not only for wrath but also for conscience sake."[ ] these then are the grounds on which the submission of the christian is founded; this is the high motive from which it springs; he submits for _the lord's sake_. and now, brethren, have i made the duty enjoined in the text plain to you? have i shown you in a scriptural manner its nature and extent, and the motive which is to actuate the christian in the discharge of it? suffer me then, in conclusion, to draw from what has been said, a few words of serious _admonition_ and _exhortation_, suited to the present circumstances of our country. let me admonish you to _beware of those who, in these disturbed times, would induce you to think lightly of the duty we have been considering_. many such are abroad in our land. many wicked and evil designing men would induce you to believe, that there is no connexion between religion and the submission due to the king and to the governors sent by him. but "to the law and to the testimony!" you will learn from them, that wherever there is true religion, there will of _necessity be submission to civil authority_. a man cannot be a faithful subject to his heavenly king, and at the same time a traitor to his earthly king. if a man "fears god," he will "honour the king;"[ ] and if he fail to honour the king, it may be safely concluded, that he has not at heart "the fear of the lord." are there then any here, who are dissatisfied with the government they live under? who are disposed to listen to those "that are given to change," and that would stir them up to acts of violence and outrage, not only in opposition to the authority of their governors; but to the disturbance of the public peace and tranquillity? the religion of such men, whatever be their pretensions to it, is _false_, and _unscriptural_, and _vain_. you have never yet been taught (if i speak to any such) "the truth as it is in jesus." you have never been brought with the simplicity of children--to listen to the instructions of the word of god--you have never been enlightened by the influence of his spirit, to "behold wondrous things out of his law"--you have never learnt, under the teaching of his spirit, "the excellency of the knowledge of christ." if this had been the case with you, if you had been humbled, enlightened, and sanctified by his spirit, his commandments would be no longer grievous to you; you would "esteem all his commandments concerning all things to be right."[ ] and the precept of the text, therefore, would be as dear to you, and as respected by you, as any of the rest. but, brethren, unhumbled, unenlightened, unsanctified by the spirit of christ, reflect upon your condition and prospects! you may resist the authority of man, and may escape for a season the penalties incurred by it; but can you resist with similar impunity the authority of god? can your hands be strong, or your hearts endure in the day when he shall deal with you? no! "be not deceived, god is not mocked."[ ] if you are not now humbled under the sceptre of his grace, you will, ere long, be crushed by the rod of his power. if you are not now brought in the humility of faith to the cross of jesus, and there taught by the renewing of your minds, that the yoke of his commandments is easy, and the burden of them light, when he comes, as he will quickly, "to be glorified in his saints, and to be admired in all them that believe;"[ ] but "taking vengeance on them that know not god, and obey not his gospel;"[ ] you will be "punished with everlasting destruction from his presence, and from the glory of his power."[ ]--"turn ye, turn ye, then at his reproof, for why will ye die?" rest not in an empty profession of the gospel, that does not bring you into submission to its precepts. get, while the means are afforded you, a _practical_ knowledge of its truth. receive _christ_, as he is continually offered to you in the gospel,--a prophet to teach, a priest to atone for you,--a king to reign over, and to govern you. and, oh! if you are once brought to such a reception of christ as this; vain will be the efforts of evil designing men to seduce you from the submission due, either "to the king," whom god's providence has set over you as "supreme," or "to the governors" that are "sent by him for the punishment of evil doers, and the praise of them that do well." if christ rules "in your heart by faith," you will certainly be ready, _for his sake_, to tread the same path that prophets, apostles, and martyrs have trodden before you. you will feel with st. paul, that "rulers are not a terror to good works, but to the evil"--that they "bear not the sword in vain"--that they are "the ministers of god to you for good"--"avengers to execute wrath upon every soul that doeth evil."[ ] you will be ready, in a word, as well in _civil_, as in spiritual matters, "to obey them that have the rule over you, and to submit yourselves."[ ] and "should tribulation arise, because of the word;" should those days be at hand, which, we are told, _will_ arrive, before the end cometh,--when "there shall be on earth distress of nations with perplexity," and "men's hearts failing them for fear, and for looking after those things that are coming upon the earth."[ ] should these days be at hand, look back for your _direction_ and _encouragement_ upon that cloud of witnesses, who through faith have obtained the promises. recollect, how the jewish youths walked unhurt, through the presence of the saviour with them, amid the flames of nebuchadnezzar's furnace--how "their faith quenched the violence of fire."[ ] recollect how the faith of daniel "stopped the mouths of lions."[ ] recollect how the faith of the apostle paul enabled him to say, in the face of bonds, and imprisonment, and death, "none of these things move me;" neither count i my life dear unto myself, so that i might finish my course with joy, and the ministry which i have received of the lord jesus to testify the gospel of the grace of god."[ ] recollect how thousands of others, "of whom the world was not worthy," were enabled to go to the cross, to the rack, and to the stake--"rejoicing that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for his name."[ ] and bear in mind, that the same faith in a crucified saviour, which made them "more than conquerors," and secured to them, "through the blood of the lamb," a crown of immortality and life,--if it produce in you similar effects, "working in you both to will and to do of god's good pleasure, whatsoever is well pleasing in his sight," and making you willing "to suffer the loss of all things," rather than rebel against any ordinance of man, or disobey any precepts of god, is still able to secure for you a similar victory. never be induced, therefore, by any artifices, or any threatenings of the enemies of god's truth, to let go your dependance on the saviour, or to renounce your allegiance to his laws; but, "building up yourselves in your most holy faith, praying in the holy ghost, keep yourselves in the love of god, looking for the mercy of our lord jesus christ unto eternal life;"[ ] and then will the promise at last be yours--"if we suffer with him, we shall also reign with him."[ ] the end. j. dennett, printer, leather lane, london. footnotes: [ ] jude, ver. and . [ ] psal. xii. . [ ] prov. viii. . [ ] see dan. iii. , &c. [ ] see dan. vi. [ ] acts v. . [ ] prov. xxiv. . [ ] matt. xii. . [ ] its exact situation is unknown, as modern travellers inform us that no traces of it now remain. [ ] isaiah i. , . [ ] rom. xiii. . [ ] rom. xiii. . [ ] psal. cxix. . [ ] rom. i. . [ ] rom. xiii. . [ ] see th verse of chapter whence the text is taken, and prov. xxiv. . [ ] ps. cxix. . [ ] gal. vi. . [ ] thess. i. , , . [ ] see rom. xiii. , . [ ] heb. xiii. . [ ] see luke xxi. , . [ ] heb. xi. . [ ] heb. xi. . [ ] acts xx. . [ ] acts v. . [ ] jude , . [ ] tim. ii. . http://mormontextsproject.org/ for a complete list of mormon texts available on project gutenberg, to help proofread similar books, or to report typos. general smith's views of the powers and policy of the government of the united states. nauvoo, illinois. printed by john taylor. . transcriber's note the first edition, which this edition is designed to reproduce, contains a few typographical and other errors corrected in later editions (e. g. that of ). for clarity, several readings from later editions are used in this text; all are marked with brackets. in only one case (a tarriff being 'subversion' in the first edition and 'supervision' in others) did the changes produce a significant difference in meaning, and the context clearly supports the latter as the correct reading. general smith's views born in a land of liberty, and breathing an air uncorrupted with the sirocco of barbarous climes, i ever feel a double anxiety for the happiness of all men, both in time and in eternity. my cogitations, like daniel's, have for a long time troubled me, when i viewed the condition of men throughout the world, and more especially in this boasted realm, where the declaration of independence "holds these truths to be self-evident; that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness," but at the same time some two or three millions of people are held as slaves for life, because the spirit in them is covered with a darker skin than ours: and hundreds of our kindred for an infraction, or supposed infraction of some over wise statute, have to be incarcerated in dungeon glooms, or suffer the more moral penitentiary gravitation of mercy in a nut-shell, while the duelist, the debauchee, and the defaulter for millions, and other criminals, take the upper-most rooms at feasts, or, like the bird of passage find a more congenial clime by flight. the wisdom which ought to characterize the freest, wisest, and most noble nation of the nineteenth century, should, like the sun in his meridian splendor, warm every object beneath its rays: and the main efforts of her officers, who are nothing more nor less than the servants of the people, ought to be directed to ameliorate the condition of all: black or white, bond or free; for the best of books says, "god hath made of one blood all nations of men, for to dwell on the face of the earth." our common country presents to all men the same advantages; the same facilities; the same prospects; the same honors; and the same rewards: and without hypocrisy, the constitution, when it says, "we, the people of the united states, in order to form a more perfect union, establish justice, ensure tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity, [do] ordain and establish this constitution for the united states of america," meant just what it said, without reference to color or condition: _ad [infinitum]_. the aspirations and expectations of a virtuous people, environed with so wise, so liberal, so deep, so broad, and so high a charter of _equal rights_, as appears in said constitution, ought to be treated by those to whom the administration of the laws are intrusted, with as much sanctity, as the prayers of the saints are treated in heaven, that love, confidence and union, like the sun, moon and stars, should bear witness, (for ever singing as they shine,) "_the hand that made us is divine!_" unity is power; and when i reflect on the importance of it to the stability of all governments, i am astounded at the silly moves of persons and parties to foment discord in order to ride into power on the current of popular excitement; nor am i less surprised at the stretches of power, or restrictions of right, which too often appear as acts of legislators, to pave the way to some favorite political schemes, as destitute of intrinsic merit, as a wolf's heart is of the milk of human kindness: a frenchman would say, "prosque tout aimer richesses et pouvoir;" (almost all men like wealth and power.) i must dwell on this subject longer than others, for nearly one hundred years ago that golden patriot, benjamin franklin drew up a plan of union for the then colonies of great britain that _now_ are such an independent nation, which, among many wise provisions for obedient children under their father's more rugged hand,--thus: "they have power to make laws, and lay and levy such general duties, imports, or taxes as to them shall appear most equal and just,--(considering the ability and other circumstances of the inhabitants in the several colonies,) and such as may be collected with the least inconvenience to the people; rather discouraging luxury, than loading industry with unnecessary burthens." great britain surely lacked the laudable humanity and fostering clemency to grant such a just plan of union--but the sentiment remains like the land that honored its birth as a pattern for wise men _to study the convenience of the people more than the comfort of the cabinet_. and one of the most noble fathers of our freedom and country's glory: great in war, great in peace, great in the estimation of the world, and great in the hearts of his countrymen, the illustrious washington, said in his first inaugural address to congress: "i hold the surest pledges that as, on one side, no local prejudices or attachments, no separate views or party animosities, will misdirect the comprehensive and equal eye which ought to watch over this great assemblage of communities and interests, so, on another, that the foundations of our national policy will be laid in pure and immutable principles of private morality; and the pre-eminence of free government be exemplified by all the attributes which can win the affections of its citizens, and command the respect of the world." verily, here shines the virtue and wisdom of a statesman in such lucid rays that had every succeeding congress followed the rich instruction, in all their deliberations and enactments, for the benefit and convenience of the whole community and the communities of which it is composed, no sound of a rebellion in south carolina; no rupture in rhode island; no mob in missouri, expelling her citizens by executive authority; corruption in the ballot boxes; a border warfare between ohio and michigan; hard times and distress; outbreak upon outbreak in the principal cities: murder, robbery, and defalcations, scarcity of money, and a thousand other difficulties, would have torn asunder the bonds of the union; destroyed the confidence of man; and left the great body of the people to mourn over misfortunes in poverty, brought on by corrupt legislation in an hour of proud vanity, for self aggrandizement. the great washington, soon after the foregoing faithful admonition for the common welfare of his nation, further advised congress that "among the many interesting objects which will engage your attention, that of providing for the common defence will merit particular regard. to be prepared for war is one of the most effectual means of preserving peace." as the italian would say: "_buono aviso_," (good advice.) the elder adams in his inaugural address, gives national pride such a grand turn of justification, that every honest citizen must look back upon the infancy of the united states with an approving smile and rejoice, that patriotism in the rulers, virtue in the people, and prosperity in the union, once crowned the expectations of hope; unveiled the sophistry of the hypocrite and silenced the folly of foes: mr. adams said, "if national pride is ever justifiable, or excusable, it is when it springs not from _power_ or riches, grandeur or glory, but from conviction of national innocence, information and benevolence." there is no doubt such was actually the case with our young realm at the close of the last century; peace, prosperity and union, filled the country with religious toleration, temporal enjoyment and virtuous enterprize; and gradually, too, when the deadly winter of the "stamp act," the "tea act," and other _close communion_ acts of royalty had choked the growth of freedom of speech, liberty of the press, and liberty of conscience, did light, liberty, and loyalty flourish like the cedars of god. the respected and venerable thomas jefferson, in his inaugural address made more than forty years ago, shows what a beautiful prospect an innocent, virtuous nation presents to the sage's eye, where there is space for enterprize: hands for industry; heads for heroes, and hearts for moral greatness. he said, "a rising nation, spread over a wide and fruitful land, traversing all the seas with the rich productions of their industry, engaged in commerce with nations who feel power and forget right, advancing rapidly to destinies beyond the reach of mortal eye; when i contemplate these transcendant objects, and see the honor, the happiness, and the hopes of this beloved country committed to the issue and the auspices of this day, i shrink from the contemplation, and humble myself before the magnitude of the undertaking." such a prospect was truly soul stirring to a good man, but "since the fathers have fallen asleep," wicked and designing men have unrobed the government of its glory, and the people, if not in dust and ashes, or in sack cloth, have to lament in poverty, her departed greatness, while demagogues build fires in the north and south, east and west, to keep up their spirits _till it is better times_; but year after year has left the people to _hope_ till the very name of _congress_ or _state legislature_, is as horrible to the sensitive friend of his country, as the house of "blue beard" is to children; or "crockett's" hell of london, to meek men. when the people are secure and their rights properly respected, then the four main pillars of prosperity, viz: agriculture, manufactures, navigation, and commerce, need the fostering care of government: and in so goodly a country as ours, where the soil, the climate, the rivers, the lakes, and the sea coast; the productions, the timber, the minerals; and the inhabitants are so diversified, that a pleasing variety accommodates all tastes, trades and calculations, it certainly is the highest point of [supervision] to protect the whole northern and southern, eastern and western, centre and circumference of the realm, by a judicious tariff. it is an old saying and a true one, "if you wish to be respected, respect yourselves." i will adopt in part the language of mr. madison's inaugural address, "to cherish peace and friendly intercourse with all nations, having correspondent dispositions; to maintain sincere neutrality towards belligerent nations; to prefer in all cases amicable discussion and reasonable accommodation of [differences to a decision of them by an appeal to arms; to exclude] intrigues and foreign partialities, so degrading to all countries, and so baneful to free ones; to foster a spirit of independence too just to invade the rights of others, too proud to surrender their own, too liberal to indulge unworthy prejudices ourselves, and too elevated not to look down upon them in others; to hold the union of the states as the basis of their peace and happiness; to support the constitution, which is the cement of the union, as well in its limitations as in its authorities; to respect the rights and authorities reserved to the states and to the people, as equally incorporated with, and essential to the success, of the general system; to avoid the slightest interference with the rights of conscience, or the functions of religion, so wisely exempted from civil jurisdiction; to preserve in their full energy, the other salutary provisions in behalf of private and personal rights, and of the freedom of the press;" as far as intention aids in the fulfilment of duty, are consummations too big with benefits not to captivate the energies of all honest men to achieve them, when they can be brought to pass by reciprocation, friendly alliances, wise legislation, and honorable treaties. the government has once flourished under the guidance of trusty servants; and the hon. mr. monroe, in his day, while speaking of the constitution; says, "our commerce has been wisely regulated with foreign nations, and between the states; new states have been admitted into our union; our territory has been enlarged by fair and honorable treaty, and with great advantages to the original states; the states respectively protected by the national government, under a mild paternal system against foreign dangers, and enjoying within their separate spheres, by a wise partition of power, a just proportion of the sovereignty, have improved their police, extended their settlements, and attained a strength and maturity which are the best proofs of wholesome law well administered. and if we look to the conditions of individuals, what a proud spectacle does it exhibit? [on whom has oppression fallen in any quarter of the union?] who has been deprived of any right of person or property? who restrained from offering his vows in the mode which he prefers to the divine author of his being? it is well known that all these blessings have been enjoyed in their fullest extent: and i add, with peculiar satisfaction, that there has been no example of a capital punishment being inflicted on any one for the crime of high treason." what a delightful picture of power, policy and prosperity! truly the wise man's proverb is just: "sedaukauh teromain goy, veh-ka-sade le-u-meem khahmaut." righteousness exalteth a nation, but sin is a reproach to any people. but this is not all. the same honorable statesman, after having had about forty years' experience in the government, under the full tide of successful experiment, gives the following commendatory assurance of the efficiency of the _magna charta_ to answer its great end and aim: _to protect the people in their rights_. "such, then, is the happy government under which we live; a government adequate to every purpose for which the social compact is formed; a government elective in all its branches, under which every citizen may, by his merit, obtain the highest trust recognized by the constitution; which contains within it no cause [of] discord; none to put at variance one portion of the community with another; a government which protects every citizen in the full enjoyment of his rights, and is able to protect the nation against injustice from foreign powers." again, the younger adams in the silver age of our country's advancement to fame, in his inaugural address, ( ) thus candidly declares the majesty of the youthful republic, in its increasing greatness; "the year of jubilee since the first formation of our union has just elapsed--that of the declaration of independence is at hand. the consummation of both was effected by this constitution. since that period a population of four millions has multiplied to twelve. a territory, bounded by the mississippi, has been extended from sea to sea. new states have been admitted to the union, in numbers nearly equal to those of the first confederation. treaties of peace, amity and commerce, have been concluded with the principal dominions of the earth. the people of other nations, the inhabitants of regions acquired, not by conquest, but by compact, have been united with us in the participation of our rights and duties, of our burdens and blessings. the forest has fallen by the axe of our woodsmen; the soil has been made to teem by the tillage of our farmers; our commerce has whitened every ocean. the dominion of man over physical nature has been extended by the invention of our artists. liberty and law have walked hand in hand. all the purposes of human association have been accomplished as effectively as under any other government on the globe, and at a cost little exceeding, in a whole generation, the expenditures of other nations in a single year." in continuation of such noble sentiments, general jackson, upon his ascension to the great chair of the chief magistracy, said, "as long as our government is administered for the good of the people, and is regulated by their will; as long as it secures to us the rights of person and property, liberty of conscience, and of the press, it will be worth defending; and so long as it is worth defending, a patriotic militia will cover it with an impenetrable aegis." general jackson's administration may be denominated the _acme_ of american glory, liberty and prosperity; for the national debt, which in , on account of the late war, was $ , , , and lessened gradually, was paid up in his golden day; and preparations were made to distribute the surplus revenue among the several states: and that august patriot, to use his own words in his farewell address, retired, leaving "a great people prosperous and happy, in the full enjoyment of liberty and peace, honored and respected by every nation in the world." at the age, then, of sixty years, our blooming republic began to decline under the withering touch of martin van buren! disappointed ambition; thirst for power, pride, corruption, party spirit, faction, patronage; perquisites, fame, tangling alliances; priest-craft, and spiritual wickedness in _high places_, struck hands, and revelled in midnight splendor. trouble, vexation, perplexity and contention, mingled with hope, fear and murmuring, rumbled, through the union and agitated the whole nation as would an earthquake at the centre of the earth[,] the world, heaving the sea beyond the bounds, and shaking the everlasting hills: so, in hopes of better times, while jealousy, hypocritical pretensions, and pompous ambition, were luxuriating on the ill-gotten spoils of the people, they rose in their majesty like a tornado, and swept through the land, till general harrison appeared, as a star among the storm clouds, for better weather. the calm came; and the language of that venerable patriot, in his inaugural address, while descanting upon the merits of the constitution and its framers, thus expressed himself. "there were in it, features which appeared not to be in harmony with their ideas of a simple representative democracy or republic. and knowing the tendency of power to increase itself, particularly when executed by a single individual, predictions were made that, at no very remote period, the government would terminate in virtual monarchy. it would not become me to say that the fears of these patriots have been already realized. but as i sincerely believe that the tendency of measures and of men's opinions, for some years past, has been in that direction, it is, i conceive, strictly proper that i should take this occasion to repeat the assurances i have heretofore given, of my determination to arrest the progress of that tendency if it really exists, and restore the government to its pristine health and vigor." this good man died before he had the opportunity of applying one balm to ease the pain of our groaning country, and i am willing the nation should be the judge, whether general harrison, in his exalted station, upon the eve of his entrance into the world of spirits, _told the truth or not_: with acting president tyler's three years of perplexity, and pseudo whig democrat reign, to heal the breaches, or show the wounds, _secundum artum_, (according to art.) subsequent events, all things considered, van buren's downfall, harrison's exit, and tyler's self-sufficient turn to the whole, go to shew, as a chaldean might exclaim: beram etai elauh beshmayauh gauhah rauzeen: (_certainly there is a god in heaven to reveal secrets;_) no honest man can doubt for a moment, but the glory of american liberty, is on the wane, and that calamity and confusion will sooner or later destroy the peace of the people. speculators will urge a national bank as a savior of credit and comfort. a hireling pseudo priesthood will plausibly push abolition doctrines and doings, and "human rights," into congress and into every other place, where conquest smells of fame, or opposition swells to popularity.--democracy, whiggery, and cliquery, will attract their elements and foment divisions among the people, to accomplish fancied schemes and accumulate power, while poverty driven to despair, like hunger forcing its way through a wall, will break through the statutes of men, to save life, and mend the breach of prison glooms. a still higher grade, of what the "nobility of nations" call "great men," will dally with all rights, in order to smuggle a fortune at "one fell swoop;" mortgage texas, possess oregon, and claim all the unsettled regions of the world for hunting and trapping; and should an humble, honest man, red, black, or white, exhibit a better title, these gentry have only to clothe the judge with richer ermine, and spangle the lawyer's finger with finer rings, to have the judgment of his peers, and the honor of his lords as a pattern of honesty, virtue and humanity, while the motto hangs on his nation's escutcheon: "_every man has his price!_" now, oh! people! turn unto the lord and live; and reform this nation. frustrate the designs of wicked men. reduce congress at least one half. two senators from a state and two members to a million of population, will do more business than the army that now occupy the halls of the national legislature. pay them two dollars and their board per diem; (except sundays,) that is more than the farmer gets, and he lives honestly. curtail the offices of government in pay, number and power; for the philistine lords have shorn our nation of its goodly locks in the lap of delilah. petition your state legislatures to pardon every convict in their several penitentiaries, blessing them as they go, and saying to them, in the name of the lord, _go thy way and sin no more_. advise your legislators when they make laws for larceny, burglary or any felony, to make the penalty applicable to work upon roads, public works, or any place where the culprit can be taught more wisdom and more virtue; and become more enlightened. rigor and seclusion will never do as much to reform the propensities of man, as reason and friendship. murder only can claim confinement or death. let the penitentiaries be turned into seminaries of learning, where intelligence, like the angels of heaven, would banish such fragments of barbarism: imprisonment for debt is a meaner practice than the savage tolerates with all his ferocity; "amor vincit amnia." love conquers all. petition, also, ye goodly inhabitants of the slave states, your legislators to abolish slavery by the year , or now, and save the abolitionist from reproach and ruin, infamy and shame. pray congress to pay every man a reasonable price for his slaves out of the surplus revenue arising from the sale of public lands, and from the deduction of pay from the members of congress. break off the shackles from the poor black man, and hire him to labor like other human beings; for "an hour of virtuous liberty on earth, is worth a whole eternity of bondage!" abolish the practice in the army and navy of trying men by court martial for desertion; if a soldier or marine runs away, send him his wages, with this instruction, that _his country will never trust him again; he has forfeited his honor_. make honor the standard with all men: be sure that good is rendered for evil in all cases: and the whole nation, like a kingdom of kings and priests, will rise up with righteousness; and be respected as wise and worthy on earth: and as just and holy for heaven; by jehovah the author of perfection. more economy in the national and state governments; would make less taxes among the people: more equality through the cities, towns & country, would make less distinction among the people; and more honesty and familiarity in societies, would make less hypocrisy and flattery in all branches of the community; and open, frank, candid, decorum to all men, in this boasted land of liberty, would beget esteem, confidence, union, and love; and the neighbor from any state, or from any country, of whatever color, clime or tongue, could rejoice when he put his foot on the sacred soil of freedom, and exclaim: the very name of "_american_," is fraught with _friendship_! oh! then, create confidence! restore freedom!--break down slavery! banish imprisonment for debt, and be in love, fellowship and peace with all the world! remember that honesty is not subject to law: the law was made for transgressors: wherefore, a dutchman might exclaim: _ein ehrlicher name ist besser als reichthum_, (a good name is better than riches.) for the accommodation of the people of every state and territory, let congress shew their wisdom by granting a national bank, with branches in each state and territory, where the capital stock shall be held by the nation for the mother bank: and by the states and territories, for the branches: and whose officers and directors shall be elected yearly by the people with wages at the rate of two dollars per day for services: which several banks shall never issue any more bills than the amount of capital stock in her vaults and the interest. the net gain of the mother bank shall be applied to the national revenue, and that of the branches to the states and territories' revenues. and the bills shall be par throughout the nation, which will mercifully cure that fatal disorder known in cities, as _brokerage_; and leave the people's money in their own pockets. give every man his constitutional freedom, and the president full power to send an army to suppress mobs; and the states authority to repeal and impugn that relic of folly, which makes it necessary for the governor of a state to make the demand of the president for troops, in case of invasion or rebellion. the governor himself may be a mobber and, instead of being punished, as he should be for murder and treason, he may destroy the very lives, rights, and property he should protect. like the good samaritan, send every lawyer as soon as he repents and obeys the ordinances of heaven, to preach the gospel to the destitute, without purse or scrip, pouring in the oil and the wine: a learned priesthood is certainly more honorable than an "_hireling clergy_." as to the contiguous territories to the united states, wisdom would direct no tangling alliance: oregon belongs to this government honorably, and when we have the red man's consent, let the union spread from the east to the west sea; and if texas petitions congress to be adopted among the sons of liberty, give her the right hand of fellowship; and refuse not the same friendly grip to canada and mexico; and when the right arm of freemen is stretched out in the character of a navy, for the protection of rights, commerce and honor, let the iron eyes of power, watch from maine to mexico, and from california to columbia; thus may union be strengthened, and foreign speculation prevented from opposing broadside to broadside. seventy years have done much for this goodly land; they have burst the chains of oppression and monarchy; and multiplied its inhabitants from two to twenty millions; with a proportionate share of knowledge: keen enough to circumnavigate the globe; draw the lightning from the clouds: and cope with all the crowned heads of the world. then why? oh! why! will a once flourishing people not arise, phoenix like, over the cinders of martin van buren's power; and over the sinking fragments and smoking ruins of other catamount politicians; and over the windfalls of benton, calhoun, clay, wright, and a caravan of other equally unfortunate law doctors, and cheerfully help to spread a plaster and bind up the _burnt, bleeding wounds_ of a sore but blessed country? the southern people are hospitable and noble: they will help to rid so _free_ a country of every vestige of slavery, when ever they are assured of an equivalent for their property. the country will be full of money and confidence, when a national bank of twenty millions, and a state bank in every state, with a million or more, gives a tone to monetary matters, and makes a circulating medium as valuable in the purses of the whole community, as in the coffers of a speculating banker or broker. the people may have faults but they should never be trifled with. i think mr. pitt's quotation in the british parliament of mr. prior's couplet for the husband and wife, to apply to the course which the king and ministry of england should pursue to the then colonies of the _now_ united states, might be a genuine rule of action for some of the _breath made_ men in high places, to use towards the posterity of this noble, daring people: "be to her faults a little blind; be to her virtues very kind." we have had democratic presidents; whig presidents; a pseudo democratic whig president; and now it is time to have a _president of the united states_; and let the people of the whole union, like the inflexible romans, whenever they find a _promise_ made by a candidate, that is not _practised_ as an officer, hurl the miserable sycophant from his exaltation, as god did nebuchadnezzar, to crop the grass of the field, with a beast's heart among the cattle. mr. van buren said in his inaugural address, that he went "into the presidential chair the inflexible and uncompromising opponent of every attempt, on the part of congress, to abolish slavery in the district of columbia, against the wishes of the slave holding states; and also with a determination equally decided to resist the slightest interference with it in the states where it exists." poor little matty made this rhapsodical sweep with the fact before his eyes, that the state of new york, his native state, had abolished slavery, without a struggle or a groan. great god, how independent! from henceforth slavery is tolerated where it exists: constitution or no constitution; people or no people; right or wrong; vox matti; vox diaboli: "the voice of matty"--"the voice of the devil;" and peradventure, his great "sub-treasury" scheme was a piece of the same mind: but the man and his measures have such a striking resemblance to the anecdote of the welshman and his cart-tongue, that when the constitution was so long that it allowed slavery at the capitol of a free people, it could not be cut off; but when it was so short that it needed a _sub-treasury_, to save the funds of the nation, it _could be spliced_! oh, granny, what a long tail our puss has got! as a greek might say, _hysteron proteron:_ the cart before the horse: but his mighty whisk through the great national fire, for the presidential chestnuts, _burnt the locks of his glory with the blaze of his folly!_ in the united states the people are the government; and their united voice is the only sovereign that should rule; the only power that should be obeyed; and the only gentlemen that should be honored; at home and abroad; on the land and the sea: wherefore, were i president of the united states, by the voice of a virtuous people, i would honor the old paths of the venerated fathers of freedom: i would walk in the tracks of the illustrious patriots, who carried the ark of the government upon their shoulders with an eye single to the glory of the people and when that people petitioned to abolish slavery in the slave states, i would use all honorable means to have their prayers granted: and give liberty to the captive; by paying the southern gentleman a reasonable equivalent for his property, that the whole nation might be free indeed! when the people petitioned for a national bank, i would use my best endeavors to have their prayers answered, and establish one on national principles to save taxes, and make them the controllers of its ways and means; and when the people petitioned to possess the territory of oregon or any other contiguous territory; i would lend the influence of a chief magistrate to grant so reasonable a request, that they might extend the mighty efforts and enterprise of a free people from the east to the west sea; and make the wilderness blossom as the rose; and when a neighboring realm petitioned to join the union of the sons of liberty, my voice would be, _come_: yea, come, texas; come mexico; come canada; and come all the world--let us be brethren: let us be one great family; and let there be universal peace. abolish the cruel custom of prisons (except in certain cases,) penitentiaries, and court martials for desertion; and let reason and friendship reign over the ruins of ignorance and barbarity; yea i would, as the universal friend of man, open the prisons; open the eyes; open the ears and open the hearts of all people, to behold and enjoy freedom, unadulterated freedom: and god, who once cleansed the violence of the earth with a flood; whose son laid down his life for the salvation of all his father gave him out of the world; and who has promised that he will come and purify the world again with fire in the last days, should be supplicated by me for the good of all people. with the highest esteem, i am a friend of virtue and the people, joseph smith. nauvoo, illinois, february , .